11AAA semis will be awesome and more from HS football quarterfinals

The Class 11AAA high school football playoffs should be awesome, and 11B and nine-man teams also offer plenty of excitement.


remaining of

Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.
Hundreds attend funeral services Sunday for dozens of people killed in Saturday nights bomb attack targeting an outdoor wedding party in Gaziantep, southeastern Turkey. (AP Photo/Mahmut Bozarslan)
Crime scene tape marks the home on Jim Platt Road near Citronelle, Ala., where authorities said five people were killed on Saturday. Police said that Derrick Dearman, 27, of Leakesville, Miss., has been taken into custody in connection with the murders. (John Sharp/AL.com via AP)
A man mourns over a graveyard as people attend funeral services for dozens of people killed in last night's bomb attack targeting an outdoor wedding party in Gaziantep, southeastern Turkey, Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said the "barbaric" attack in Gaziantep, near the border with Syria, on Saturday appeared to be a suicide bombing. Turkish authorities have put a temporary ban on distribution of images relating to Saturday's Gaziantep attack within Turkey. (AP Photo/Mahmut Bozarslan)
But the tribe has a long way to go
At least ten persons were killed and 18 injured when a bus fell into a canal in Telangana's Khammam district early on Monday, police said.

The accident occurred near Nayakangudem when the bus lost control and fell off a bridge on Nagarjunasagar canal.

The bus of a private travel company was on its way from Hyderabad to Kakinada in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.

According to the police, seven persons were killed on the spot while three died in the hospital. All the injured were admitted to government-run hospital in Khammam.

The survivors told the police that the negligence by the driver led to the accident.

According to them, the driver was running the vehicle at a high speed and applied sudden brake on reaching the bridge. The bus overturned and fell into the canal.

There were 31 passengers aboard the bus which had left Hyderabad around 11.30 p.m. on Sunday.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N. Chandrababu Naidu expressed shock over the accident.

Rao directed officials to ensure best possible treatment to the injured.
Despite the continuing tussle between the Centre and the Aam Admi Party, a bill brought by the AAP government in Delhi proposing amendments to the Working Journalists Act that envisages imprisonment upto one year and penalty extending to Rs 10,000 for any violations is expected to see the light of the day soon. The Union Home Ministry has sent the Working Journalists and Other Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) and Miscellaneous Provisions (Delhi Amendment) Bill, 2015 to the Law Ministry for legal vetting. Once the Law Ministry gives a green signal, the bill can become a law.

The bill seeks to address the "shortcomings" in providing adequate compensation and strengthens the penal provision in cases of non-adherence to the Act particularly non-payment of the due wages to an employee.

However, as far as the fourfold hike in salaries of AAP MLAs and ministers is concerned, the ball is back in the court of the Delhi government with the Home Ministry returning five legislative proposals. The ministry asked the Delhi government to justify such a hike and explain how they arrived at the formula for the proposed hike.

Other pending legislations are also caught in the cross hairs with an unrelenting Kejriwal government refusing to change the definition of "Delhi government", which it describes as elected government of Delhi instead of the Lieutenant governor as per the home ministry's interpretation of the GNCTD (Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi) Act. The Netaji Subhash University of Technology Bill, 2015 and The Delhi (Right of Citizens to Time Bound Delivery of Services) Amendment Bill, 2015 have also been returned to the delhi government owing to these differences.

The fresh confrontation between the MHA and Kejriwal government had begun after 17 bills and legislative proposals which were cleared by the AAP government landed on the desk of the Home Ministry earlier this year for clearance after a year-long tussle.
Come September, the Maharashtra government will seek the Governor's consent for Maharashtra Protection of Internal Security Act to become an ordinance.

The proposed law, now put out to gauge and map public opinion, is meant to better tackle terrorism, caste violence, insurgency and other forms of violent extremism. It also proposes measures to protect, insulate and defend critical infrastructure in the event of planned attacks.

It is the best thing that could have happened at this point. The well-drafted bill is now put up on the government website and we are in the process of evaluating public reactions and suggestions...If the public reaction is positive, we can quickly move to make it an ordinance in September, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) K.P. Bakshi told THE WEEK.

The law moots hedging and defensive moves on the part of various security agencies and identifies critical infrastructurecommunication systems, commercial facilities, dams, defence units, information and transport systems, water and chemical unitswhich face threats from ideological criminals and determined adversaries. It also empowers the government to regulate and ban sale and distribution of material products and other items deemed detrimental to internal security.

Besides, the proposed act spells out a more involved role for the police as the primary agency responsible for maintenance of law and order and as the first responders in times of crises. The bill also envisages strengthening of internal security arrangements against perceived threats from terrorists and other anti-social elements. The objective is to simultaneously ensure human security and public order and safeguard complex infrastructure against knowledgeable and adaptable adversaries.

The bill also talks about the carving out of special security zones in geographies that are affected by militancy and other forms of social unrest and volatility, and delineates punitive interventions on the part of the security forces in case of an internal security infringement. Offences listed in the bill will not be bailable, non-compoundable and always cognizable.
The new government in Nepal is starting out with making all the right moves vis a vis India. Soon after coming to power, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda sent his special emissary and Deputy Prime Minister Bimalendra Nidhi to call on India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The two day trip was to reemphasise the strong cultural and social ties between the two countries. Now, Prachanda himself will visit India on September 15.

The significance of these visits is not lost on anyone. Former prime minister K.P. Oli took his time making his first foreign trip. As a matter of tradition, the Nepal prime minister's first foreign trip after taking over office is to India. However, as relations soured between India and Nepal over the issue of Nepal's new constitution, Oli kept delaying his trip. Oli, said to have strong pro-China leanings, was even touted to make his visit to Beijing before New Delhi.

Ultimately, tradition prevailed, and Oli came to Delhi to clear the air on the constitution, which India felt was not giving equal rights to Madhesis of Terai, who have close familial and cultural ties with Indians.

Prachanda's decision to choose Delhi over Beijing is even more significant given that during his first term as prime minister in 2008, the Maoist leader chose Beijing as his first port of call.

Clearly, Nepal has become keenly aware of the repercussions of rubbing India the wrong way. India had objections with the Nepali constitution, and had dispatched foreign secretary S. Jaishankar to give a talking to Kathmandu on it. Subsequently, trouble broke out along the border, with supply routes blocked. Given that the bulk of Nepal commodities enter through the Indian border, Nepal found itself facing a bleak winter, with scarcity of essentials and fuel. New Delhi, however, maintained it had nothing to do with the blockade, which it said was being orchestrated by Nepali Madhesis.

Whatever be the reason, the result was that Nepal suffered. The tenuous land connectivity with China through Himalayan heights on the northern side was clearly not enough to replenish diminishing stocks. Nepal's leaders subsequently went public by declaring that the country would have to depend on Indo-Nepal routes, even when Sino-Nepal routes are fully developed. Those lines can never replace the existing ones, in terms of speed, efficiency and cost effectiveness.
Welfare Minister (Likud) Chaim Katz on Sunday morning 17 Menachem Av spoke with Galei Tzahal (Army Radio), addressing the growing number of elderly Israelis who lack sufficient income for food and their medicine regimen. Katz stated that at present, there are 235,000 people receiving monthly government payments and an individual receives NIS 3,150 a month and a couple, NIS 5,000.

He admits he would like to see each individual receive NIS 5,000 towards permitting them to live as they should but approving such a move would require an additional NIS 1 billion annually, and the money simply is not there.

Katz states nevertheless he is doing his utmost and he managed to get an addition NIS 1.3 billion in the new budget will result in an additional NIS 300 a month per person, admittedly not enough for one to exist.

Katz explains that he is painfully aware that today, there are 400,000 elderly Israelis living under the poverty level and 1.7 million poor in Israel. We are doing what we can including senior citizen clubs, hot meals at minimal fee, visitors to prevent the loneliness and more but it is not enough Katz added.

I have asked for NIS 1 billion to assist the elderly in Israel but it is not happening. The entire budget for my minister is NIS 500 million and this is far from sufficient to assist the growing number of elderly and those in need.

We are happy that people are living longer but to my sorrow, there are 400,000 elderly poor and the nation must undertake a national project and the year 2017 must be dedicated to assisting the elderly who simply do not have the means to exist on a minimal level and maintain an honorable lifestyle.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
An indictment was handed down by the Jerusalem Prosecutor against Saif al-Din Abed el-Nabi, 39, from Jerusalem, who is suspected of contacting a foreign agent and conspiring to commit acts of terror.

The indictment states he contacted Hamas agent Zachariah Najib and they met in Turkey during a business trip made by the accused at a clothing store he owns in Istanbul. Najib lives in Jerusalem and asked him to bring cash to Israel which would later be distributed to families of imprisoned terrorists and families of shaheedim, slain terrorists.

The two met a number of times during which the defendant received $25,000 to be distributed in accordance to instructions from Hamas. He transferred the cash to Israel via diverse methods of concealment. Upon his arrival in Israel, the accused tried to conceal the activities of the money transfers using various cellular devices. The indictment alleges he knowingly acted as a foreign agent and carried out transactions in order to promote or pay for acts of terrorism or to compensate the performance of acts of terrorism.

Najib was among the over 1,000 Arab terrorists released by Israel in the 2011 prisoner exchange deal to secure the release of Gilad Shalit. He was deported to Turkey where he appears to have continued in his profession of anti-Israel terror.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Jerusalem City Hall has decided to remove the 1,300 parking meters still operating in the city and beginning in 2017, drivers will use cellular apps exclusively to pay for parking.

This comes after the city spend millions in 2014 to modernize parking meters which today work on WiFi and accept credit cards and cash and while they generate about NIS 1.3 monthly, maintenance and repairs have become too expensive.

The decision will impact motorists who do not have a smartphone; the elderly and chareidim as well as some others. It will also make payment difficult for tourists and other foreigners that rent cars.

Jerusalem officials explain the move was inevitable, following other cities in Israel that have already removed the meters. One will be able to use Easypark, or the smartphone apps Pango and Cellopark.

As far as tourists go, city officials explain that as is done in other cities, they can avail themselves of the many parking lots available in the city. City officials are working on persuading car rentals to offer Easypark to facilitate parking for tourists and others.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is once again trying to persuade Machane Tzioni party leader MK Yitzchak Herzog to join his coalition, Channel 2 News reported on Motzei Shabbos following a similar effort in May 2016, which failed. Both sources close to PM Netanyahu and MK Herzog deny the accuracy of the report.

While most of the Machane Tzioni members expressed opposition to entering a Netanyahu-led coalition, Mr. Netanyahu was working to persuade Herzog to split off and bring an estimated 7-10 MKs with him into the coalition.

According to Channel 2, a secret meeting was held last week in Mr. Netanyahus Caesarea home.

Since the last attempt to enter the coalition, Herzog has fallen out of favor among many party members, who have called upon him to step down and permit primaries to replace him. Recent polls show the Machane Tzioni party would drop from its current 24 seats to a mere 10 seats if elections were held today.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
It appears compelling soldiers to shave their beards remains a high priority for the IDF as no less than 52 new inductees last week were ordered to shave as they were not given authorization to sport a beard when they entered the military.

Speaking to Israel Radio on Sunday, 17 Menachem Av, Minister (Bayit Yehudi) Uri Ariel stated the policy is painful and he calls on IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-General Gadi Eizenkott to reevaluate the new directive, which Ariel feels has no place in the IDF.

The IDF maintains that religious soldiers may maintain a beard for religious reasons as well as a secular soldier who had a beard prior to induction. However, in recent months this has not been the case as many religious soldiers were instructed to shave and failing to comply with a direct order will result in charges of insubordination.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
A rocket fired from Gaza landed between two Sderot homes on Sunday afternoon 17 Menachem Av. Bchasdei Hashem there were no fatalities of injuries. There were reports of property damage.

The IDF responded shortly following the attack and then once again, beginning late at night. According to the IDF Spokesman Unit reports, the air force targeted tens of terrorist objectives in the Bet Hanoun area of northern Gaza, objectives affiliated with Hamas. There were reports of injuries from Gaza.

Hamas released a statement that it views Israel being responsible for the escalation of fighting. A brochure released from Gaza added the rocket attack was the response to Jews visiting Har Habayis.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The PA (Palestinian Authority)-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem Sheikh Mohammad Hussein, on Sunday told his people that all of Jerusalem belongs to Islam. The mufti was speaking on the 47th anniversary of an arson attack against al-Aqsa Mosque which was perpetrated by Australian national Dennis Michael Rohan.

Hussein on Sunday 17 Menachem Av called on the Palestinian people to gather around the mosque, warning of ongoing Israeli efforts to cleanse Har Habayis of any Arab presence. He emphasized how history proves that all of the holy city belongs to them, citing the sacrifices of the Palestinians and how they will never relinquish their claim and right to al-Aqsa and their unwillingness to compromise on the Palestinian character of the city.

On August 21, 1969, Rohan set fire to the mosque. He was arrested two days later, placed on tried and found to be insane. He was hospitalized in a mental institution and in 1974, he was deported from Israel on humanitarian grounds for continued therapy near his family. He reported died in 1995.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for the Five Towns Jewish Times

One of the most remarkable Mussar Seforim that has emerged in recent years is entitled, Sichos im HaRav Shlomo Hoffman  no relation to this reviewer. In the month and a half that the sefer has been on the market, it has sold an astounding 7000 plus copies  something unheard of in recent times. The sefer is filled with such profound insights and wisdom, that it is this authors view that the sefer should be required reading in every Yeshiva.

DEEP INSIGHTS

Rav Shlomo Hoffman was such a remarkable individual with such deep insights that Rav Aron Leib Shteinman shlita would send mashgichim of Yeshivos to Rav Hoffman for training. Indeed, Rav Hoffman was a consultant to the secular court system in Israel in helping determine the best method of rehabilitating a criminal  a secular one. His uncanny insights into kochos hanefesh were recognized both in the Chareidi world and in the secular world alike.

This noteworthy digest of his thought was put together by Rav Meir Simcha Stein, a student of his. Rav Stein is the grandson of Rav Pesach Stein ztl the Rosh Yeshiva of Telshe Cleveland and the son of Rav Shmuel Zalman Stein, author of the Pri Shmuel on the Rambams Zraim and Taharah. Rav Meir Simcha Stein is currently an avreich in Mir Yerushalayim.

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF RAV SHLOMO HOFFMAN

Rav Shlomo Hoffman ztl was born in Seylish, Czechoslovakia in 1922, now Vynohradiv in the Ukraine. His family moved to Eretz Yisroel on the advice of the Spinka Rebbe. Eventually at the age of 16, he became a student of Chevron and was taken under the wing of Rav Yitzchok Isaac Sher ztl. Rav Hoffman thus was heir to the traditions of the Slabodka mussar traditions and combined them with a deep understanding of the kochos hanefesh of human beings.

The Sefer is comprised of 12 shiurim. Each of one them is meant to stand alone.

1. How to Deal With Extremely Difficult Situations (suicides, Chillul Shabbos, A Chareidi person who gos off the derech, and the like.)

2. Sensitivity to Aveirah and the ideal method of Teshuvah

3. The Essence of Teshuvah

4. Dealing with Aveiros

5. Feeling Blame

6. Parents and Teachers  Building up ones charges and not causing them to stumble

7. Recognizing Ones Own Strengths

8. Recognizing Strengths from Rav Isaac Sher ztl

9. The Difficulty in Identifying Desires

10. Introspection

11. Dealing with ones good and evil natures

12. Recognizing Strengths from the Rambam

THE FIRST SHIUR

Rav Stein presents a number of very difficult situations and asked Rav Hoffman how best to deal with them. Specifically, when Rav Stein was 15 years old another bochur took his own life. For many years he and his peers could not concentrate on their studies. Another Yeshiva student from an illustrious family had violated Shabbos  even though he learned and davened well  how does one deal with this?

There was a Jew, a father to a large religious family who one day just picked up and left his family and became irreligious. How can this happen?

While not attempting to give Rav Hoffmans entire response to Rav Stein in this review, some highlights will be mentioned.

Most of the anxieties that these experiences bring are on account of an internal fear that this type of thing might happen to ourselves. These fears cause us to have anxieties that we ourselves may not be immune to these types of things and they scare us. It is up to parents and teachers to attempt to relieve these fears and anxieties.

FIVE METHODS TO CALM SOMEONE



There are essentially five methods in which one can calm down a person.

1] Hergel  become used to it. Even things that are difficult to grasp become part of the norm when one becomes used to it.  This is why adults who have more experiences in life tend to hand difficult

information better than younger people.

2] Tfisa Hegyonit  Rational Exploration  When we use our rational understanding to explore what the exact pathway to bring a person to such a decline, it calms us. Rav Moshe Soloveitchik ztl explained that his illustrious father, Rav Chaim Soloveitchik studied the sugyos of Ohalos and Tumas Mais toward the end of his life. Why did he do so? He did it to acclimate himself to the concept of death. The root of our anxieties is the fear of the unknown. The more we know about it  the calmer we are.

Another example is when one is chas vshalom diagnosed with a terminal illness. One of the calming acts that such a patient does is to read about and explore the nature of the illness. Scary though it may be, it also has a calming and soothing effect.

3] Hakrana regashit  Projecting a Calm Front  When we ourselves present a calm and rational front  this serves to calm others as well  without even discussing the matter.

4] Lessening the Anxiety of Failure and of Sinning  Rather than being in a state of shock and fear of tragedies and dangers we must develop techniques as to how to lessen our fear and anxieties about them.

5] Exploring our early fears and experiences can often have a catharsis like effect on reducing our current anxieties of similar or identical issues. It helps cleanse us and imbues us with bitachon.

Rav Isaac Sher would often quote a tradition he received from the Alter of Slabodka who in turn received it from Rav Yisroel Salanter that the problem is not the sin per se, but rather how we respond and deal with it.

The posuk in Koheles (7:20) tells us, There is not a righteous man on earth who performs good and does not stumble. Rather, slowly, slowly one must learn how to overcome and eventually dominate the yetzer harah.

This author highly recommends this sefer and even if the Hebrew may be a little difficult for the beginner, it is well worth sitting with a dictionary to understand some of the terminology. The rewards will be well worth it.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Attention Readers: The seventh volume of Not Your Usual Halacha has just been released. The authors books, including the Not Your Usual halacha Series, Hilchos Shabbos, Hilchos Meuzah, Hilchos Kashrus can be purchased at amazon.com
I called First Utility to ask it to lower my direct debit amount as I thought the recent rise in my bill was an error.

Much to my surprise the caller told me I had been charged 60 exit fees for recently switching tariffs.

However, as I explained, the reason I switched was because First Utility had been vigorously promoting switching to a longer tariff through frequent and incessant emails to me.

First Utility charged me exit fees for staying with it, is it allowed to do this?

I would expect to pay fees if I was leaving the company, but I dont know why Ive been charged when instead Ive renewed and prolonged my commitment to the firm.

When I asked for the fees to be waived I was told nothing could be done and I had been told when I switched I would pay them. I looked online and can see it says there is a 30 per fuel charge but I can't see see any explicit warnings that existing customers would also incur fees.

I would not have switched if these fees had been made clear and I do not believe actively encouraging customers to switch and then charging them fees is fair.

I believe charging exit fees and effectively penalising customers for staying with a firm goes against what exit fees are supposed to cover. J.D., via email

Rebecca Rutt, of This is Money, replies: Switching energy tariffs is a great way to save money and you can usually knock off around 300 if youve not switched in a while.

However, if exit fees are applied, as they are with some tariffs, the savings made by switching may be wiped out.

Exit fees for each fuel you use may be charged if you leave a contract early

While its not uncommon for energy companies to charge exit fees, and many do of around 30 per fuel, charging a customer who is remaining with the same company seems unduly harsh.

We got in contact with First Utility to ask it why these fees had been applied.

A spokesperson said: We occasionally show our customers different tariff options to help them understand if there is a better deal for them.

'In this instance we flagged details about our latest three-year fixed tariff, which would have given price security for longer and came with exit fees from the current tariff being waived.

'But the customer later chose to switch to a different tariff, which was subject to exit fees from his existing tariff as it was midway through his contract term (as is common across the industry).

The application of an exit fee was flagged throughout the process and detailed in an email, which explained the cooling off period.

As a valued customer we've been in touch to ensure the current tariff is best for him and to waive the exit fee in this instance.

Although it may seem unfair to apply exit fees when remaining with the same energy provider, energy providers are allowed to do this. In fact the only time they cant charge you exit fees is if youre within 49 days of your tariff ending.

Energy companies are allowed to charge exit fees but they need to make them clear

If they are charging exit fees, however, these need to be clearly communicated to you.

First Utility confirmed it charges fees for internally switching tariffs in the following situations:

- If you're on a short fix-rate tariff, unless you move to medium or long-fixed rate tariff

-If you're on a medium fixed-rate tariff, unless you move to a medium or long-fixed rate tariff

- If you're on a long fixed-rate tariff unless you move to another long fixed-rate tariff

We asked the big six providers to confirm when they charge exit fees and the results can be seen below.

EXIT FEES APPLIED BY THE BIG SIX ENERGY FIRMS Energy provider Charges exit fees when switching to an internal tariff? British Gas No Npower No Scottish Power No SSE Yes, it depends on the tariff but some do have fees attached Eon No EDF Only on The Simply Fixed tariff (exclusive to Money Supermarket and Money Saving Expert) Correct: 19 Aug 2016

Although providers are allowed to apply these fees, if you think theyre unfair or you werent made aware of them you can ask for a refund.

The best way to do this is by approaching the company directly and asking it to waive the fee. If its unwilling you can make an official complaint, which it will have eight weeks to resolve.

If after this time youre still not happy you can ask the Energy Ombudsman to look into the complaint. It will do so independently and if it rules that the fee is unfair could ask the energy firm to refund you plus any extra charges youve had to make.
Poacher turned gamekeeper? Nick Leeson

RED TAPE Financial watchdogs are too bogged down in paperwork to focus on catching the next rogue trader, according to the man jailed for bringing down Barings, one of Britain's oldest banks.

Nick Leeson, who lost 830million in risky trades in the 1990s, said although fraud detection has improved, red tape 'is detracting' investigators.

SORRELL'S MILLIONS WPP will hope to divert attention away from chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell's 70million pay packet, which sparked a shareholder revolt in June, when it reports interim results tomorrow.

The ad agency (down 1.2 per cent or 21p to 1739p) will hope sales growth of 3.2 per cent in the first half of the year will allay investor discomfort.

DEBT WARNING More than 1.5million families are in extreme debt, shelling out 40 per cent of their income on repayments, said a report by the TUC and Unison.

Total unsecured debt, excluding mortgages, for households increased by 48billion in the three years to 2015 to 353billion, according to Britain In the Red.

BUMPY ROAD More than 4m cars changed hands between January and June as sales rose 7.9 per cent to an all-time high for the first half, the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders said.

But industry chiefs warned a fall in consumer confidence could hit the market.

LEGAL LIFT Law firm Baker & McKenzie, which reported a 14 per cent rise in profits to 690million for the year to June, is cashing in on a legal fee bonanza following the Brexit vote after firms took on lawyers to help them work out what the referendum result meant for them.

TECH JOBS Auditor PwC is hiring more than 1,000 tech specialists to its UK Risk Assurance team by 2020 to address growing cybersecurity concerns among its clients following a number of high profile hacks on UK businesses.

CAR DEAL Demand for luxury brands among the UK's motorists has seen dealership Lookers snap up smaller rival Knights North West in a 27.2million deal, adding BMWs to its forecourts.

GAS DASH Egdon Resources has increased its stake in the Kirkleatham gas field in North Yorkshire. It now has a 60 per cent stake. It has planning permission for two wells. Shares were flat at 13.25p.

PUB BOOST The Chestnut Group has raised 2.5million from the Government's Enterprise Investment Scheme.
Alexander Macrae is 82 years old, lives alone in a huge house he can't afford to heat - and last week the heavens opened leaving him wading around his kitchen in wellington boots.

But much as he longs to downsize to somewhere warm and dry, he can't - because the moment he moves Bank of Scotland will demand 147,250. Mr Macrae will be left with less than half of the value of his 263,000 home - not enough to buy a small flat.

Mr Macrae is one of tens of thousands of homeowners who took out a shared appreciation mortgage in the 1980s. These allow the lender to snatch up to 75 per cent of any uplift in the value of a home when it is sold.

Mr Macrae's rapidly deteriorating property on the Isle of Skye which flooded last week

Mr Macrae and countless other readers have got in touch with us after we wrote about the plight of Mrs T, who faces a 177,000 bill to repay a 22,000 mortgage.

Many wanted to remain nameless because they were too ashamed to admit to their families that they could have been duped into signing up to these deals.

The majority are pensioners, who long to be able to move closer to family or downsize because they cannot afford the upkeep of a larger home - but are unable to do so.

Mr Macrae is adamant there was no mention of legal advice and indeed a copy of his application form, seen by This is Money, shows that there is a form for completion by a financial adviser included in the application papers. In Mr Macrae's application, this form is blank.

He was sold a 25,000 shared appreciation mortgage in 1997 by this Bank of Scotland staff member - equal to 25 per cent of the value of his home at the time. In exchange, Bank of Scotland will take 75 per cent of the uplift in the value of Mr Macrae's home when he goes to sell. His home is now worth 263,000 and he owes the bank 147,250 - payable when he sells his home.

He added: 'With failing health and a desire to return to a warmer and healthier climate I want to sell and move. But due to the shared appreciation mortgage this is not possible. It has meant winters in a house too big to heat, living in one room, and deteriorating conditions due to not being able to keep up repairs.'

Trapped and alone

Joyce Valentine, 91 and widowed, is also trapped in her home as a result of taking a shared appreciation mortgage in 1996 from Bank of Scotland.

Joyce Valentine, 91, trapped in her home

Her son, David, says it's impossible for her to downsize and her regret at having taken the deal in 1996 from Bank of Scotland is now overwhelming.

She and her late husband James took a shared appreciation mortgage of 22,500 when the house was valued at 90,000. Now, the property is worth at least 350,000, which means she'll owe the bank 217,500 when the property is sold.

'We know there may come a time where my mum has to go into a care home, but these things cost a lot of money and I don't want her to go somewhere cheap and terrible because of this,' he said.

'She signed the contract, fair enough - I understand that the bank is legally within its rights but even if they'd drop the debt by a margin it could make a huge difference to my mum. As it is she'll be left with too little to pay for a good nursing home for more than a year or two. She tells me she did what she thought was right at the time but she was a pensioner already and they weren't offered any alternatives - the whole thing was done by post. She regrets it and finds the whole thing so upsetting.'

Shame: 'I just feel so stupid. We didn't understand what taking this mortgage would mean for us and the bank never explained it.'

Shame, sleepless nights and fear of being left alone

Another borrower, who didn't want to be named, took a shared appreciation mortgage with her husband from Bank of Scotland in 1997. Almost in tears, she said she is too ashamed to tell her children that she cannot move closer to them in her old age because they owe their lender so much money.

DO YOU OR YOUR PARENTS HAVE ONE OF THESE MORTGAGES? Please get in touch; we'd love to hear from you. sarah.davidson@thisismoney.co.uk

She said: 'I just feel so stupid. We didn't understand what taking this mortgage would mean for us and the bank never explained it. We didn't know anything about the property market at the time. The whole thing was carried out by post, we never had any explanations or advice and we never saw a solicitor.

'My husband and I are now in our 70s and I am so frightened about what will happen if one of us dies and the other one is left all alone here. Our children live hundreds of miles away and we can't afford to move from this house now. It just feels like there's no way out and the bank has cut us no slack whatsoever.'

She and her husband took a shared appreciation mortgage from Bank of Scotland in 1997 of 47,000 to buy a property worth 62,750. The couple have been paying interest every month at 5.9 per cent ever since.

It is just so distressing and we are too frightened to ask the bank for help in case it makes it worse.

The property is now worth 160,000 meaning if they sell and trigger the contract, they will owe upwards of 120,000 to Bank of Scotland on top of the 53,000 interest they've already paid over the past 19 years.

'It is just so distressing and we are too frightened to ask the bank for help in case it makes it worse,' she said. 'I just really wish that when I rang them to ask for information they had done more than just tell me to read the brochure and fill in the forms. I don't blame anyone but ourselves for taking this deal but I just feel the bank could do more to help people like us who are stuck.'

Deathbed distress

Poll Should the banks compromise on shared appreciation mortgages and let borrowers pay a bit less? Yes No Should the banks compromise on shared appreciation mortgages and let borrowers pay a bit less? Yes 1462 votes

No 1052 votes Now share your opinion





Another reader got in touch with This is Money after losing her mother earlier this year. She had taken a 50,000 shared appreciation mortgage at 6 per cent with Bank of Scotland to buy a property worth 70,000 in 1996.

The consequent rise in house prices left her owing the bank 178,000 on top of the 54,000 interest paid by her mother over the past 20 years.

She said: 'My mother understood that she was signing a contract but not what that contract meant. She was distraught when she realised.

'It tied her till her dying day to a property that was totally wrong for her needs later in life - she was housebound for three years. She couldn't move closer to my sister when she was dying from cancer.

'Just three days before she passed away herself she was in tears, apologising for leaving me to sort out what she saw as a mess that she'd created without understanding what it would mean. She was deeply upset to the end.'

Grieving daughter: 'I am just astonished at the bank's behaviour.'

To make matters worse, Bank of Scotland contacted this reader four months after she had alerted them to her mother's death, demanding payment for unpaid interest on the loan.

She said: 'I don't care about the money, we are absolutely fine. It's the sheer injustice of it that makes me so angry. I am just astonished at the bank's behaviour. Every time I see their ads claiming that they are there for their customers - it's just such a lie.'

Under the terms of the agreement Bank of Scotland agreed to give the borrower's daughter 18 months to deal with her late mother's affairs and sell the property, thereby triggering the loan repayment.

But she says just four months after burying her mother the bank has been in touch multiple times, pressuring her to sell now.

'It's just shocking the way they've behaved,' she said. 'Not only did this leave my mother deeply distressed and upset for years of her life, we couldn't afford to put her in a nursing home towards the end and now they're clamouring for their cash when I'm still grieving. It's unjust.'

This is Money put the individual allegations to Bank of Scotland, but it declined to address them specifically.
THE CENTRAL ORGAN OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF VIETNAM The Voice of the party, State and Vietnamese people on the internet

Notify:

The requested content was not found or the content is invalid!


Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

By Tom Allon

In July, I asked NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton a very benign question at a Newsmakers Breakfast my company produced: Do you think youll stick around for a second term after 2017?

Absolutely not, was Brattons surprisingly candid response.

Instantly, two reporters scurried out of the room to report this breaking news. I sat there on the podium, feeling a mix of apprehension about the citys future without one of best police commissioners in our history and a journalistic concern that some other news outlet was going to break this story before my company could.

The next day, the daily newspapers had long stories about Brattons surprising announcement. The secret was out and political observers began speculating about his successor while others began contemplating Mayor de Blasios prospects for re-election without his well-respected police commissioner.

This turn of events got me wondering about the state of policing in our country. It has probably never been a more perilous time to be a cop in America, with all-too-frequent assassinations happening as cities become engulfed in protests over police misconduct.

There is no doubt that the tougher crime legislation passed two decades ago in Bill Clintons administration as well as the ascendancy of the Broken Windows theory of policing have made our police more aggressive, enforcing petty crimes like drug dealing, fare-beating and public urination.

At the same time, a few very disparate trends emerged that affected society profoundlyguns became more plentiful and the mentally ill homeless began to fall through the cracks and were left to fend for themselves.

Police became much more concerned about preventing crime, aggressively stopping those suspected of carrying weapons and engaging in the controversial stop, question, and frisk method of policing.

In large cities like New York, crime rates dropped steadily over two decades. Today, our city is the safest large city in America. Bill Bratton and his erstwhile competitor and predecessor, Ray Kelly, started this impressive decline in crime in the early 1990s and now a quarter century later, New Yorkers are the beneficiaries of a very impressive run of police commissioners.

After a huge spike in controversial stop and frisks in the last term of Bloomberg-Kelly, we now see crime rates holding steady while the use of stops has also dropped dramatically the past few years.

With Brattons exit in September, it is the end of an era. What lies ahead?

NYPD officers seem to be going through a period of lower morale because they think that the current mayor is not their ally and that he favors those who criticize police more than he stands up for them. There is some validity to this in the wake of two mayorsRudy Giuliani and Michael Bloombergwho always backed their commissioners and the force despite the heat they sometimes received. De Blasio has always been lukewarm in his support of cops and allowed his very strong ally Bratton to act as a buffer between the him and the NYPD.

Compounding this feeling is the ongoing heated contract negotiations that still have not been resolved. Mayor de Blasio has settled with almost every other union in the city, but the police believe the mayor has not offered them anything near what is fair. Last weeks revelation that many members of the mayors administration got generous raises only rubbed more salt in the wounds of New Yorks Finest.

What to do? Well, the mayor should try to figure out a way to make a grand gesture which shows how much he appreciates the men in blue and their good work in keeping our city safe (while other large cities like Chicago descend into violent chaos). If he cant do it through a more generous contract, then maybe he could offer merit bonuses. Or bonuses for police who live in the communities they serve.

Yes, there have been a number of disturbing events of police misconduct around the country that have been caught on tape and we must make sure these officers are properly disciplined. But we must not lose sight of the fact that every day, New Yorks police keep all of us safe and they continue to do so by breaking previous crime lows.
Country

United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
Hopewell Community Park remains a 'labor of love' for local community

The lush green park is a product of the combined efforts of the Hopewell Township community and a symbol of decades of conservation efforts in Beaver County.
Current aircraft maintenance contractors for DynCorp International at Sheppard Air Force Bases 80th Flying Training Wing will have the right of first refusal for their job, a spokesperson for new contractor M1 Support Services told the Times Record News on Monday.

The Air Force awarded the $414.8 million contract to M1 earlier in August.

Kathy Hildreth, managing director for Denton-based M1, said a transition period will begin Sept. 1 and conclude Sept. 30. The company will officially take over the contract on Oct. 1.

She added they will likely bring on more maintenance personnel than the existing 479 who serve the 80th FTWs flying training mission. By law, the rank-and-file employees have to be given the right of first refusal for like-positions within the company. She said some management will be retained, but other managers from M1 will be added.

The requirements are a little more demanding in the new contract. The metrics  I have a higher standard, she said. So, its probably going to require a little more robust workforce than is presently on the ground.

A specific number of how many employees M1 will ultimately have was not provided given the competitive nature of the business.

Hildreth, who worked for DynCorp from 1991-2003, said the contract is for up to seven years, with the sixth and seventh awarded based on performance during the first three years.

M1 Support Services is also the trainer maintenance contractor for the 982nd Maintenance Support Squadron at the 82nd Training Wing. The company was awarded the roughly $9 million contract instead of longtime contractor L-3.

The Times Record News first learned of a potential change with aircraft maintenance at the 80th FTW through an email from Texas Workforce Commission.

Under certain circumstances, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires you (the employer) to provide notice 60 days in advance of plant closures or mass layoffs, the agencys website shows. The WARN Act is intended to offer protection to workers, their families and communities.

DynCorp International senior public relations specialist Mary Lawrence first confirmed in an email to the TRN that letters were sent to employees regarding the change and that they would transition to the new contractor.

They arent being laid off and they can transition to the new employer, she said.

DynCorp was awarded the seven-year, $31.2 million maintenance contract in September 2009 when Air Education and Training Command selected the contractor, which replaced Lear Siegler Inc. The contract was for 11 months with six option years.

M1 Support Services was established in 2003 and took on its first contract in 2004, replacing L-3 as the support contractor at Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company now holds contracts at about 60 location around the world.

Follow John Ingle on Twitter at @inglejohn1973.
An Iowa Park man was turned down after asking the City Council on Monday night to consider an exemption to the code of ordinances.

After recently writing a letter to the city of Iowa Park, James H. Pappas stood in front of the City Council and requested an exemption for his son, James R. Pappas, who is in his 60s and was convicted of having child pornography in Duluth, Minnesota.

However, the City Council denied the exemption based on Texas state law. Councilwoman Sherrie Williams said, Wed have to void the ordinance entirely, and were not going to do that.

In Pappas letter to the city, he wrote that he is 83, his wife is 81 and they needed their son to move in and take care of them.

Iowa Park city manager Jerry Flemming said the son is currently in Texas, but is not living within Wichita County. Pappas son was hoping to be allowed to move to his parents Iowa Park house, which is within 1,000 feet of Kidwell Elementary and a day care facility.

According to a 2010 article in the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, James R. Pappas, a former high school math teacher, pleaded guilty to possessing pornographic work involving minors. He was charged with 10 counts of possession of pornographic work involving minors, which was consolidated into one charge. Pappas was ordered to undergo psychosexual evaluation before being sentenced. At the time, Pappas said he was aware that it was wrong to possess the images, but never intended to share the material with anyone else. The charges were filed after an investigation by the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

An examination of evidence resulted in 85 images and 17 videos suspected of being child pornography. A search found that three images and seven videos seized from Pappas were identified as child-abuse victims. Nine of these victims were prepubescent girls. Pappas resigned from his teaching position in 2009 and was sentenced in February 2011 to five years supervised probation.
Texas and other plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Obama administration will not have to follow federal guidance on bathroom accommodations for transgender students, a judge ruled this weekend.

On Sunday, a federal judge in Fort Worth awarded an injunction against the administration to Texas and 14 other plaintiffs, ruling that they do not have to allow students to use the bathroom matching their gender identity if that identity does not correspond to their biological sex.

The decision has far-reaching implications for schools across the country. It also comes as a blow to equality activists and other groups who support the implementation of new bathroom rules for transgender students.

Texas was joined in the litigation by the states of Alabama, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah, Georgia, West Virginia, Mississippi and Kentucky; the Harrold Independent School District, the Heber-Overgaard Unified School District; the Arizona Department of Education; and Paul LePage, governor of Maine.

The lawsuit initially was filed after the Obama administration issued guidance to schools in May directing them to allow students to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender identity, lest they lose federal funding. Plaintiffs argued in court filings that the Obama administration skirted statutory rules of lawmaking by issuing the guidance, and that school districts would be put under undue stress in reaching compliance.

The defendants, which include the U.S. departments of Education and Justice, retorted by saying they never threatened to stop funding schools that don't make bathroom accommodations for transgender students.

In a court hearing this month, an attorney for the U.S. government appeared before a federal judge, saying that noncompliant schools weren't being threatened with the loss of funding at the moment, though they could be later.

Now it appears the schools in plaintiff states  and possibly schools in every other state  are safe from funding cuts if they don't follow the federal guidance. It's now unclear how, and if, the U.S. government can force schools to comply with its directive.

In a prepared statement, the Texas Attorney General's Office, which led the charge against the guidance, wrote that it is 'pleased that the court ruled against the Obama administration's latest illegal federal overreach.'

'This President is attempting to rewrite the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people, and is threatening to take away federal funding from schools to force them to conform,' the statement says.

Judge Reed O'Connor, who awarded the injunction, acknowledged in his opinion that the case 'presents the difficult issue of balancing the protection of students' rights and that of personal privacy when using school bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and other intimate facilities ...,' but still ruled that the federal government did not follow 'proper legal procedure' when issuing the guidance.

In issuing its transgender guidance, the U.S. departments of Education and Justice did not follow generally held lawmaking protocols, which include ample notice to concerned parties and a comment period, O'Connor wrote.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott took to Twitter after the decision was handed down, hailing it a 'huge victory slapping down Obama's public school bathroom dictate.'

The U.S. Department of Education referred a Times Record News request for comment to the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ wrote in an email to the newspaper that 'the department is disappointed in the court's decision, and we are reviewing our options.'

Meanwhile, advocate groups have derided the decision.

The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ civil rights organization, wrote in a prepared statement that the ruling will lead to further marginalization of transgender students.

'Judge O'Connor's decision to bar the Department of Justice from enforcing this important guidance puts thousands of transgender students at even greater risk of marginalization, harassment and discrimination as they return to school this fall,' the Campaign wrote.

Adam Briggle, father of 8-year-old transgender boy MG, told the Times Record News on Monday that he is 'disappointed' by the judge's decision. He anticipates the issue will soon be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

'Justice will prevail in the end. We won't have a group of people relegated to second-class citizenship,' he said.
One of the most cynical men in America has taken Donald Trump under his wing and warned the bombastic billionaire to straighten up and fly far, far right or risk losing the November presidential election.

Roger Ailes, ousted earlier this summer as head of Fox News following allegations of sexual harassment from a number of former female employees, is the brains behind Fox's self-aggrandizing 'fair and balanced' slogan, which actually describes the exact opposite of what the network pushes. Ailes probably has done more to foment political division and lack of civility in this country than anyone else and is now telling his old friend Trump what to do if he really wants to win.

And Trump, apparently, really does want to win.

After news of Ailes advising Trump broke, the often foul-mouthed, off-the-rails tycoon immediately read  actually read  a teleprompter speech in a lily white town near Milwaukee in which he stuck to the conservative script of being tough on 'law and order,' berating Hillary Clinton and insisting that Democrats merely want to exploit African-Americans.

Next we learned Ailes is forcing Trump to run TV ads, something Trump so far has not wanted to spend money on, preferring free publicity. Ailes was behind the 'Morning in America' messaging that got Ronald Reagan re-elected. He also helped Richard Nixon get elected and worked to take the patrician edges off George H.W. Bush. He's a best friend of Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who has become one of Trump's hardest-working surrogates.

Up until now, Trump has refused to listen to Republican graybeards who have said he needs to stay on-message, stop bloviating pure nonsense and vitriol, and keep focused on blasting Clinton. But as his polls plummeted and the pundits began looking at Trump's poor performance among college-educated voters, women, and minorities and in swing states, even Trump began to panic.

This is all of a pattern, folks. Rich, influential Republicans want to win. Trump was flailing. Tired of fretting, the big boys have taken the situation in hand.

Trump also tapped for his team two other friends, Kellyanne Conway, a take-no-prisoners GOP strategist, and Stephen Bannon, the 'pit bull' executive chairman of Breitbart News, which long has touted Trump and derided Clinton.

If Trump listens to Ailes, Conway and Bannon, as well as his campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who helped pull strings for the Russians in Ukraine, November will be a narrow contest between Trump and Clinton.

Potentially both have a little over 40 percent of the vote just by virtue of being a Democrat and a Republican. So the real fight is over the roughly 13 to 15 percent of undecided independents who really don't like either one of their choices and who are waiting to see if Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson gets 15 percent of the polls to qualify for the all-important debates.

The first debate on Sept. 26, warns Ailes, will be crucial for Trump, who likes to say he needs no debate preparation and that Americans loved his all-over-the-place, domineering style in the Republican debates. Ailes, Conway, Bannon and Manafort have persuaded Trump that debating Clinton will be a different ballgame and that Trump better learn different rules and behavior. Fast.

Trump sulked a bit and fretted that if he changes, he'll lose his base. The we-who-must-be-obeyed quartet is sweet-talking Trump into realizing that it's not his base he has to worry about now  it's moderate Republicans and disaffected Democrats who want a candidate who isn't Clinton but who sounds rational, especially on economics.

Make no mistake, Trump will keep up his coded braying to his followers, assuring them that political incorrectness, sexism, racism and xenophobia are still OK with him. But he will put a fine sugarcoating on his words. And middle-of-the-roaders will begin to convince themselves that Trump isn't so bad after all. He will say exactly what the oligarchs  and Trump is a true oligarch  want him to say: That lowering taxes on the rich will raise all boats (although it never has), the end justifies the means, cruel as they may be, and strange bedfellows produce results, although they may be the opposite of what most people want.

Do not gloat, Democrats. This is not over. In this wacky world of do-overs and second chances and mass manipulation, sow ears are made into silk purses all the time.

Ann McFeatters is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may send her email at amcfeatters@nationalpress.com.
No matter your age, your background or your profession, making friends can be challenging, especially if you're not an outgoing person.

In the slideshow above you'll find a few examples of community events you can attend to hopefully meet some new people and have fun at the same time. Let us know in the comments if we missed other friendly community events you have attended or heard of.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Stillwater

The Saratoga National Historical Park and other nearby national parks will celebrate the National Park Service's centennial on Thursday.

The nation's 412 national parks will mark Aug. 25, 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the legislation establishing the National Park Service.

Parks will waive entrance fees from Thursday through Sunday.

"It's a really great time to gather around a campfire and have that park experience," said Amy Bracewell, superintendent of the Saratoga battlefield, Route 32, Stillwater.

At 6 p.m. Thursday outside Saratoga's visitors center, Gary Stamm will perform as President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivering a fireside chat. The park was added during Roosevelt's presidency.

Participants may make s'mores to eat around a bonfire.

Martin Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook will have a tree planting ceremony and birthday cake at 2 p.m. Thursday as well as pony rides and games for children.

Fort Stanwix National Monument in Rome, Oneida County, also marks its 40th anniversary Thursday with birthday cake served at 1 p.m. in the visitors center.

The West Point Military Academy Band will perform at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site, part of the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites in Hyde Park, Dutchess County.

Information about the centennial is available online at www.nps.gov
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Malta

A next-generation computer chip that GlobalFoundries is making at its Fab 8 factory in Malta for Advanced Micro Devices is generating significant hype in the semiconductor industry for its performance against chip giant Intel.

The buzz over AMD's new "Zen" processor, which reportedly performs slightly faster than Intel's top chip, helped lift AMD's stock price last Friday by 10 percent.

But it also demonstrates that Fab 8, which employs roughly 3,000 people in Saratoga County, has turned the corner in its quest to become a major commercial force in the chip industry after years of work and billions of dollars of spending on manufacturing development, which has included the licensing of 14 nanometer technology from Samsung.

More Information http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/zen-cpu See More Collapse

"It is our relentless focus on execution that is now allowing our customers to differentiate their products and to bring them to market on time," Fab 8 general manager Thomas Caulfield wrote in a blog post Friday. "Another great example is the latest news from AMD, who recently gave a performance preview of its next-generation 'Zen' processor core."

Caulfield was referring to an event that AMD CEO Lisa Su held last Thursday at the St. Regis hotel in San Francisco to demonstrate the performance of the company's new Zen chip against the Broadwell-E, Intel's top central processor.

Video of the head-to-head test, along with reports of the event by tech journalists, show that the Zen chip was slightly faster than the Broadwell-E. The event was held just a block away from where Intel was holding its annual developer forum.

That's a major coup for AMD, which has struggled to gain market share from Intel, the world's largest chip maker and match its processor speeds.

Caulfield says that AMD, which spun off its manufacturing in 2009 to create GlobalFoundries, is benefiting from its close relationship with GlobalFoundries. Under the terms of the spin-off, AMD must buy a significant amount of chips from GlobalFoundries each year, a move that was designed to help GlobalFoundries sustain itself as it grew its customer base.

"It is the powerful combination of AMD's design expertise and GlobalFoundries' (14 nanometer) technology that allows Zen to deliver a landmark increase in processor performance over previous generations," Caulfield said.

It is rare for companies like GlobalFoundries to disclose which customers it serves at its factories, so there has been a lot of speculation about exactly what chips are being made at Fab 8. Some have speculated that Fab 8 hasn't been able to leap past research and development as it has changed direction and its plans for Fab 8 over the years.

However, AMD spokesman Drew Prairie told the Times Union on Monday that both AMD's Zen central processing chips and its Polaris graphics processors are being made at Fab 8. Zen is being released next year, and Polaris is rumored to be going into some of the next MacBook Pro models that Apple releases later this year.

"Customer traction remains strong across a number of segments, with more than 20 active engagements in the mobility, consumer electronics, and high-performance computing sectors," Caulfield said.

lrulison@timesunion.com  518-454-5504  @larryrulison
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

New York

Twenty-five years after race riots scarred a New York City neighborhood, residents of Crown Heights gathered Sunday to mark the quarter-century anniversary with a memorial service, march, and street festival that organizers said showed how far the community had come. Critics, however, condemned the events as insensitive.

About three dozen people gathered for a series of commemorative events, held as part of "One Crown Heights," which organizers said was a way to bring children of different backgrounds together and acknowledge years of efforts to foster better communication and relations between ethnic groups in the Brooklyn neighborhood.

In August 1991, a riot broke out in the Brooklyn area after 7-year-old Gavin Cato was struck and killed by a car in a rabbi's motorcade. Hours later, a Jewish doctoral student, Yankel Rosenbaum, was stabbed to death. Four days of violence followed.

"We will not allow ourselves to be defined by what happened 25 years ago," Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said to the predominantly white crowd at a memorial service Sunday morning to remember Cato and Rosenbaum. Elected officials joined Cato's father and African-American and Jewish community leaders for the service.

As he held a candle lit in his son's memory, Cato's father, Carmel Cato, told reporters that the service "showed the love and that the community is back together."

"We cannot rewrite history," Rabbi Joseph Potasnik said. "A young man was killed for who he was  because he was a Jew."

Rosenbaum's brother, Norman, did not attend the anniversary events Sunday. He has said a street fair is "insensitive" and a "trivialization of a very, very serious period of time, of a series of incidents culminating in my brother's murder."

Devorah Halberstam, who helped coordinate the events, said she realized "there are deep and painful memories and on this day they resurface." But, she said, it is important to commemorate how the community has come together in the past two decades.

After the memorial service, the group marched about four blocks to a local park, where the street festival was held. About 50 people  mainly African-American families  took part in festivities.
The issue of the provision of further funding to Ukraine under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program is not on the agenda of the International Monetary Fund's Executive Board meeting, according to the Fund's website.

Ukraine's Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk had said earlier the IMF Board could consider issuing a third tranche under the Extended Fund Facility at its meeting during the fourth week of August.

As reported, the four-year EFF program for Ukraine totaling SDR 12.348 billion (about $17 billion at a current exchange rates), opened by the IMF in March 2015, originally foresaw quarterly revisions of the program, as well as the issue of four tranches to Kyiv in 2015, with another four in 2016.

However, Ukraine was able to get only the first two tranches and then there was a time gap due to the political crisis and the government change. Negotiations on renewal of funding were resumed after the appearance of a new Cabinet headed by Volodymyr Groysman in April. Initially it was assumed that the third tranche would amount to about $1.7 billion, and the IMF Board of Directors will be able to take their decision in June. But due to non-fulfillment by Ukraine of a number of conditions, the terms are constantly postponed, that is why the amount of the tranche loan was reduced to $1 billion.
THE ISSUE:

A gap in state lobbying laws may make it possible for big donors to avoid disclosure.

THE STAKES:

When laws aren't equally applied, they lose their legitimacy.

More Information To comment: tuletters@timesunion.com or at http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion See More Collapse

If you're an ordinary New Yorker who wants to donate some money to a candidate or cause you believe in, there are all sorts of rules you have to follow.

But if you're rich, there seem to be all sorts of ways to get around those pesky rules.

What this really creates is two sets of rules when it comes to lobbying and political giving  one for most citizens, and quite another for wealthy individuals and interests.

The Joint Commission on Public Ethics is looking into yet another apparent loophole, this one in state lobbying law. The inquiry concerns a Manhattan non-profit, Pledge 2 Protect, created in 2013 to fight a marine waste transfer station on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The project was aimed at relieving some of the solid waste burden on low-income neighborhoods.

By law, nonprofits like Pledge 2 Protect must, if they spend more than $50,000 on lobbying, report the names of donors who contribute more than $5,000. Those amounts would be cut in half under a law awaiting Gov. Andrew Cuomo's signature.

Nonetheless, almost $700,000 made its way to Pledge 2 Protect the year it was formed with no indication of where the money really came from. The money was given first to a law firm, then to the group, so the only name that had to be disclosed was that of the law firm, not the actual donors.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter.

The plot gets thicker. Among the prime opponents of the waste transfer station was Glenwood Management, a real estate firm that figured prominently in the corruption case against former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver last year. The law firm listed as Pledge 2 Protect's donor, Marquart & Small, was co-founded by Doreen Small, the ex-wife of a key Glenwood executive, Charles Dorego.

If indeed Glenwood used the law firm as an intermediary, it wouldn't be the first time the company has sought to exert influence with the help of a legal loophole. The company has made political contributions far above New York's individual and corporate limits by funneling them through limited liability companies, each considered an "individual" under a questionable 1996 state Board of Elections opinion. Republicans on the board and in the Legislature have blocked efforts to close the loophole.

Even if JCOPE finds that Glenwood used the law firm to funnel money to the group, though, no law may have been broken. One might say that it violates the spirit of the law, but then, so does the LLC loophole. It's up to courts to enforce the letter of the law. The spirit of the law  transparent, ethical governance  ought to be the legislature's concern.

Sadly, it too often is not. A legislature that ought to be closing such loopholes as quickly as lawyers find them instead leaves them gaping for years.

What's ultimately at stake is the credibility of the law itself. Laws and regulations earn respect only if they apply equally to all. If not, they lose their most essential quality: fairness. And when these loopholes are left unaddressed, the public is left to wonder if this corrupt state of things is exactly the way our elected officials want it.
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.
You have permission to edit this article.

Edit Close
[August 22, 2016] Ron Labrum Named Chairman of Beaver-Visitec International's Board of Directors

TPG Capital, the North American- and European-focused private equity platform of leading global alternative asset firm TPG, today announced that Ron Labrum has been appointed Chairman of the Board of Beaver-Visitec International ("BVI"). The appointment comes alongside the close of TPG's acquisition of BVI, a leading global developer, manufacturer, and marketer of specialized surgical devices for the ophthalmic marketplace. The previously-announced transaction was agreed to in July of this year. Labrum has more than 30 years of experience operating companies that develop and distribute medical devices and has led the expansion of numerous healthcare platforms through organic and inorganic growth. Most recently Labrum served as President and CEO of global medical device company Fenwal, which TPG carved out of Baxter Healthcare Corporation in 2007. Before Fenwal, Labrum held various leadership roles with Allegiance (News - Alert) Healthcare, American Hospital Supply Corporation, Baxter International, and Cardinal Health. "BVI has become a leader in the ophthalmology surgical products sector, and with TPG as a partner they are poised for even further growth," said Labrum. "I look forward to joining the BVI board, to working closely with the company's world-class leadership team, and to once again partnering with TPG." "After working closely with Ron during his time at Fenwal, we are confident that his experience leading global, growth-oriented companies will be valuable for BVI as we continue to expand the company's array of products, the markets in which it competes, ad the variety of patients it serves," said Jeffrey Rhodes, Partner at TPG.



"BVI's heritage of precision manufacturing, continuous product innovation, and a market-leading reputation for quality among surgeons has cemented its leadership in the sector. We're very pleased to have successfully completed our acquisition of the company," said John Schilling, Partner at TPG. TPG's investment in BVI adds to the firm's history of identifying and partnering with leading healthcare companies globally. In 2012, for example, TPG invested in Par Pharmaceutical and helped grow the company from a locally focused manufacturer to an international platform that quadrupled its product suite by 2015. This transaction brings the firm's total invested in healthcare to more than $10 billion, with $8.5 billion of that invested since 2007.

About TPG TPG is a leading global private investment firm founded in 1992 with over $70 billion of assets under management and offices in Austin, Beijing, Dallas, Fort Worth, Hong Kong, Houston, Istanbul, London, Luxembourg, Melbourne, Moscow, Mumbai, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, and Tokyo. TPG's investment platforms are across a wide range of asset classes, including private equity, growth venture, real estate, credit, and public equity. TPG aims to build dynamic products and options for its investors while also instituting discipline and operational excellence across the investment strategy and performance of their portfolio. For more information, visit www.tpg.com. About Beaver-Visitec International, Inc. Headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA, Beaver-Visitec International develops, manufactures and markets ophthalmic and other specialty microsurgical products. Beaver-Visitec distributes products in over 90 countries worldwide and operates manufacturing facilities in Waltham, MA, USA and Bidford on Avon, U.K. Beaver-Visitec offers products and services for all aspects of Ophthalmic Surgery, including cataract, refractive, oculoplastic, and vitreoretinal sub-specialties as well as other specialty microsurgery procedures. More information about Beaver-Visitec International can be found at www.beaver-visitec.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160822005423/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[August 21, 2016]

Fusionex Receives Special Mention in Gartner's 2016 Magic Quadrant

SINGAPORE, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fusionex, a multi-award-winning, leading international provider specializing in a multi-award-winning, leading software solutions provider specializing in Big Data Analytics, the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Learning was cited as a vendor of interest by renowned research and advisory firm Gartner's 2016 Magic Quadrant report.

The report, titled "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms", lists and analyzes companies in main technology markets and how well-placed they are to assist clients over the long term.

Fusionex was listed in the "Real-Time Process and Operational Intelligence" category alongside other vendors who were placed in categories such asCloud BI, Hadoop-based data discovery, Link/graph-based data discovery, and Data-blending-centric modern BI platforms.







When listing Fusionex in the report, Gartner took into account case studies on the Internet of Things (IoT) which saw the successful usage by Fusionex of Advanced Analytics to bring about cost savings and higher product yield to the manufacturing industry, resulting in the savings of millions of dollars annually.

Ivan Teh, Fusionex Chief Executive Officer, commented: "Gartner's Magic Quadrant is an often referred to report which provides in depth studies into the competency of IT solution providers. We are honored that Fusionex is mentioned in the report and our team is committed to further improving our Big Data Analytics offerings to better serve our fast growing clientele base."

The Magic Quadrant report, which helps readers determine the performance of technology providers against Gartner's view on the market, further provided that Fusionex was part of a select group of "interesting vendors" and would be featured in forthcoming research by Gartner due later this year.

Being mentioned in the Magic Quadrant report, alongside other renowned names such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Tableau, further advances the position of Fusionex as a leading software provider in the Big Data Analytics arena.




Ukraine imported 3.002 bcm of natural gas worth $586 million in the first half of 2016, including 19.596 million cubic meters worth $4.133 million in June alone.

The average cost of imported gas in June was $210.9 per 1,000 cubic meters, $26.7 per 1,000 cubic meters more than $184.2 in May. The bulk of the imports in June - 14.6 mcm - were supplied by a counteragent in Luxembourg (ArcelorMittal). Naftogaz Ukrainy did not import gas in June.

Ukraine did not import any Russian gas in January-June.

In the six months, Ukraine imported 627.1 million cubic meters of gas worth $121.9 million from counteragents in Germany, from those in France - 457.1 mcm worth $88.7 million, Switzerland - 443.6 mcm worth $87.9 million, the UK - 426.3 mcm worth $86.7 million, Austria - 385.5 mcm worth $71.1 million, Poland - 257.9 mcm worth $49 million, Hungary - 150.5 mcm worth $27 million, Italy - 147.8 mcm worth $30 million and Luxembourg - 105.8 mcm worth $23.9 million.
[August 22, 2016] Wind Turbine Market - 700GW+ Total Installed Wind Power Capacity by 2020

PUNE, India, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- RnRMarketResearch.com adds "Global and China Wind Turbine Industry Report, 2016-2020" and "Global Wind Turbine Industry 2016 Market Research Report" to its online business intelligence library. In 2015, global new installed wind power capacity reached 63.01GW, up 22.41% YoY, refreshing new installed wind power capacity records again. China continues to lead the global wind power market with new installed capacity of 30.75GW in 2015 and the first worldwide ranking for six consecutive years. The wind power market will continue to be buoyant during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020). The global total installed wind power capacity is expected to surpass 700GW by 2020, of which, China will reach around 250GW. Complete Report of 145 pages is available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/global-and-china-wind-turbine-industry-report-2016-2020-market-report.html . Large-scale wind power is the development trend of wind power technology in recent years. China's new per-unit power of wind turbine has been on the rise since 2000, hitting 1,837kW in 2015, more than three times as much as that in 2000. Concerning China's new installed wind power capacity in 2015, 1.5MW and 2MW wind turbines were predominant with a combined 84% share, of which, 2MW wind turbine outperformed 1.5MW wind turbine for the first time and accounted for 50%. Development of offshore wind power growing at a steady pace is expected to accelerate in the future. In 2015, China's new grid-connected capacity of offshore wind power was recorded at 360.5MW, occupying 10.7% of the global total. China's total installed grid-connected capacity of offshore wind power is planned to hit 30GW by 2020, while the cumulative actual installed capacity was merely 1GW in 2015. Given this, the offshore wind power construction will be greatly sped up. To solve the wind turbine suspension problem, distributed wind power generation will be the first choice in the future. There has been a phased saturation for large-scale wind power development in Northwest, Northeast and North China, where the wind turbine suspension problem is increasingly severe. In 2015, wind turbine suspension volume reached a peak i.e. 33.9 billion kWh in five years, registering an average suspension rate of 15%. To improve the situation, the government has proposed the priority development of distributed wind power during the 13th Five-Year Plan period. According to the lan, the installed distributed wind power capacity will be 25GW by 2020 and 70GW by 2050.



With global new installed capacity of 7.8GW, Goldwind Science & Technology Co., Ltd. became the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer in 2015, followed successively by Vestas, GE, Siemens and Gamesa. In June 2016, Siemens announced the signing of a binding agreement with Gamesa on merging wind power business of both sides (including Siemens Wind Power Services). Affected by this, the global wind turbine market structure will be changed in 2016. In addition to Goldwind Science & Technology, there were 8 Chinese players reporting new installed wind power capacity of over 1MW in 2015, namely United Power, Envision Energy, Mingyang Wind Power, CSIC (Chongqing) HaizhuangWindpower Equipment, Shanghai Electric, XEMC Windpower, DongfangElectric Corporation and Zhejiang Windey, in succession. Furthermore, wind-turbine parts companies in China have good supply capability. In terms of wind power blade, China has possessed the 1.5MW wind blade R&D and production capacity, which will increase gradually to 3MW, 5MW and even more; representative firms include AVIC HuitengWindpower Equipment Co., Ltd., Shanghai FRP Research Institute Co., Ltd., Lianyungang ZhongfuLianzhong Composites Group Co., Ltd. and Sinoma Science & Technology Co.,Ltd. With respect to wind power gearbox, Nanjing High Accurate Drive Equipment Manufacturing Group Co., Ltd. (NGC) as a leader in China and even in the world registers a share of 60% domestically and 23% globally. In the aspect of wind power converter, foreign brands like ABB, Converteam and Emerson take the leading position; however, Sungrow Power Supply, Hopewind Electric, Shanghai Hi-tech Control System Co., Ltd. (HITE) and other local firms are rising. Order a copy of Global and China Wind Turbine Industry Report, 2016-2020 at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/contacts/purchase?rname=640501 . Another research titled Global Wind Turbine Industry 2016 Market Research Report provides analysis for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions' development status. The research focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Companies mentioned Global Wind Turbine Engine Industry are Sinovel Wind, Goldwind, DEC, Guodian United Power Technology, MingYang Electrical Appliance, Vestas, XEMC Windpower, GE Wind, Suzlon, Gamesa, Shanghai Electric Wind, Zhejiang Windey Wind Power Enginerring, Repower, China Creative Wind Energy, Beijing BEIZHONG Steam Turbine Generator, Envision Energy, CSR Zhuzhou Insitute, ZheJiang Huayi Wind Energy Development, Nordex and New Unite Holdings. Browse Complete Global Wind Turbine Industry 2016 Market Research Report http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/global-wind-turbine-industry-2016-market-research-report-market-report.html .

Explore more Turbines Industry research report at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/reports/manufacturing-construction/machines-equipment/turbines . About Us: RnRMarketResearch.com is your single source for all market research needs. Our database includes 500,000+ market research reports from over 100+ leading global publishers & in-depth market research studies of over 5000 micro markets. With comprehensive information about the publishers and the industries for which they publish market research reports, we help you in your purchase decision by mapping your information needs with our huge collection of reports. Contact:

Ritesh Tiwari

UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ

Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Pune - 411013

Maharashtra, India.

Tel: +1-888-391-5441

[email protected]

Connect with Us: G+ / Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/104156468549256253075/posts Twitter: https://twitter.com/RnRMR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/RnR-Market-Research/413488545356345 RSS / Feeds: http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/feed SOURCE RnR Market Research

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[August 22, 2016] Hoverboard Originator Hangzhou CHIC Sues Swagway in the United States for Patent Infringement Over Smart Scooter Technologies

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hangzhou Chic Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. ("Chic") is determined to protect its rights in the technologies for the Smart scooter. Beginning in early August 2016, Chic issued Cease & Desist ("C&D") letters to more than a dozen retailers for Swagway, LLC ("Swagway"), demanding immediate desistance of patent infringement activities. Some retailers complied, yet others continue to sell the infringing products. To stop the infringing activities and prevent further infringement upon Chic's property rights, on August 19, 2016 (U.S. time), Chic filed a complaint for patent infringement against Swagway in the United States Court for the Northern District of California. Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP represents Chic in the lawsuit. This is the second lawsuit Chic has initiated against Swagway products. The first one was filed in China this July after Swagway repeatedly tried to have infringing products exported to the U.S. In June 2016, Chic intercepted four containers of such products through the Customs. (http://www.chic-robot.com/en/index.php/news/info/36: Chic Intercepted Four Export Containers of Infringing Smart Boards in Shenzhen Customs.) The intercepted products bore the trademark "SWAGTRON" on both the scooters and the packaes. SWAGTRON is a brand of SWAGWAY, as shown on pages 11 and 12 of the complaint filed in the Northern District of California on August 19, 2016. In July 2016, Chic again learned that Shenzhen Zhouwu Technology Co., Ltd. ("Zhouwu") attempted to export two batches (2520 units) of infringing products through Shenzhen Customs. Customs was able to timely intercept and stop the products from exiting the country after communicating with Chic. Chic then immediately filed a complaint for patent infringement against Zhouwu with the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court. The Court accepted the case on July 12th and the case is proceeding according to court schedule.



About Hangzhou Chic

Hangzhou Chic Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd is a high-tech company, supported by Zhejiang University Ministry of Education Computer Aided Product Innovation, Design and Engineering Center, Zhejiang University International Design and Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Service Robots. The CHIC self-balancing scooter, now commonly known as a 'Hoverboard' was produced under the unique idea of "Embedded Technology :: Industrial Design :: Mechanical and Electrical Integration." Now after 8 years of continuous optimization, Chic successfully developed a high quality product with stylish design appearance and sophisticated internal components.

CHIC Hoverboards are marketed under the HIGH ROLLER brand name and categorized under SMART series, CROSS series and LS series, with 22 independent intellectual property rights. CHIC sets new standards for the precision balance control and power output. It has pioneered the use of vector equilibrium technology within the lines. Chic experts crafted a controlled environment for battery power flow and safety power off. CHIC established a new benchmark in UL product safety, successfully completing UL 2272 Safety Certification. CHIC, is the only company with complete intellectual property rights and sustainable development capacity in China. Supported by continuous research and development capabilities, Chic provides the best self-balancing Hoverboard scooters to customers all over the world. www.chic-robot.com/en/. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hoverboard-originator-hangzhou-chic-sues-swagway-in-the-united-states-for-patent-infringement-over-smart-scooter-technologies-300316456.html SOURCE Hangzhou Chic Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[August 22, 2016] Innodisk is Absolutely On Board with Demos and Display at VM World '16

FREMONT, Calif., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Innodisk, the worldwide innovative leader for service-driven flash and DRAM storage products, is showing what is Absolutely on Board this coming August 28-31 at VM World 2016 in Las Vegas, NV. Innodisk highlights "Total Solutions" for today's technology through demos and displays. While exhibiting the industry's widest selection of DRAM modules and flash form factors, Innodisk will provide a live in-booth demonstration, while partnering with AIC to showcase the latest in innovative solutions. With 62 global patents and growing, come visit booth 2707 and experience Innodisk. Flash is On Board Innodisk will display and demo the latest SATADOM 3IE3 solution. This newest Innodisk innovation supports Innodisk's iSLC solution in extending endurance more than six times over MLC solutions. Along with the live in-booth demonstration highlighting the SATADOM - ML 3IE3 V2 128GB's will be the M.2 P42 3ME, which is a PCIe Gen. 3x1 with NVMe. Because it has a capacity of up to 256GB, it is positioned to be the next generation boot-up device for server applications. Staying on board, Innodisk will display the M.2 (S80) 3MG2-P. This product scales up to 1TB in capacity with iSMART features for disk health and an error recovery system. All of these products are designed to work under harsh conditions with temperature ranges of -40C to +85C. Visit the Innodisk team for a hardware analysis and see why we are a complete storage solutions provider. DRAM Memory for High Performance Innodisk understands that no board is fully complete without the power of memory. Therefore, Innodisk features a live demo and display with DRAM modules that are developed to perform. Showcased inside the demo will be the DDR4 32GB RDIMM 2400MT/S module. This product has Gold Finger 30" along with a JEDEC stadard 1.2V (1.26V~1.14V) Power Supply and a



JEDEC Standard 288-pin. On display is the DDR4 16GB RDIMM 2400MT/S. It has the same features as the 32GB DDR4 2400MT/S, however the DRAM IC is 128Mbit x 4 I/Os x 16banks (2Gx 4)x18ea. It is worthy to note that this high performance module can go up to 128GB. With hundreds of DRAM products supporting their portfolio, Innodisk continues to provide total solutions worldwide.





Innodisk Partnering with AIC Innodisk is "Absolutely On Board" this year and very proud to be partnering with AIC and their SB202-LB storage server. This total server solution features Innodisk DDR4 RDIMM 16GB 2400MT/S modules. Also on board is the M.2 (S80) 3MG2-P and the SATADOM  ML 3IE3 VS. The AIC SB202-LB, supporting dual Intel Xeon Processors E5-2600 v3/ v4 product family and 16 DIMM slots using the Innodisk DDR4 modules, has tool-less drive carriers and features 12Gb/s SAS storage architecture. We invite you to come and view the total collaboration presented by AIC and Innodisk. You are invited to visit us at: VM World 2016

Location: Mandalay Bay Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Date: August 28-31, 2016

Booth: #2707 About VM World 2016 VMworld, hosted by VMware, is the number-one event for enabling the digital enterprise. VMworld offers four full days of innovation to accelerate your journey to software-defined businessfrom mobile devices to the data center and the cloud. Provided is an exhibition to highlight sponsors and other technology companies' products and services. It starts with General Sessions on the trends that matter most to your business and IT, then goes deeper into Breakout Sessions, Group Discussions and Expert Panels. In attendance are a mix of IT technical professionals and business decision-makers representing a wide range of industries. About Innodisk Innodisk is a service driven provider of flash memory and DRAM products for the industrial and enterprise applications. With satisfied customers across the embedded, aerospace and defense, cloud storage markets and more, we have set ourselves apart with a commitment to dependable products and unparalleled service. This has resulted in products including embedded peripherals designed to supplement existing industrial solutions and high IOPS flash arrays for industrial and enterprise applications. The expanded business lines are leading our next step in being a comprehensive solution and service provider in industrial storage industry. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan with engineering support and sales teams in China, Europe, Japan, and the United States, Innodisk is able to support clients globally. With abundant experience and an unrivaled knowledge of the memory industry, Innodisk develops products with excellent quality, remarkable performance, great cost-efficiency, and the highest reliability. For more information about Innodisk, please visit www.innodisk.com. Innodisk Media Contact: Marsha Harrison

Tel:510-770-9421 ext. 106

email:[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120308/SF67400LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/innodisk-is-absolutely-on-board-with-demos-and-display-at-vm-world-16-300316438.html SOURCE Innodisk

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
TMC and INTERNET TELEPHONY are proud to announce the winners of our Channel Excellence Awards. This marks the third iteration of this award program, for which the number of applications and award categories continue to multiply.

The Winners

Grandstream Networks Inc. for the Grandstream Certified Partner Program

Grandstream, which has been in business since 2002, sells SIP unified communications products and solutions. Its partner program, which was established in 2009, is led by Bruce MacAloney.

Today the program has 50 to 75 partners, most of which are value-added distributors that offer products through a reseller-based model. All leads generated from Grandstream.com, its website chat, incoming calls, events, webinars, etc. are passed on to certified partners.

The company offers a marketing development fund program, which provides high-performing Certified Partners with monetary credit for a certain percentage of their sales of Grandstream products to fund sales and marketing activities.

Grandstream's Minimum Advertised Price policy ensures that no Grandstream distribution partner gains an unfair selling advantage by reducing pricing.

Vonage (News - Alert) Holdings Corp. for the Vonage Channel Program

The company provides both business and residential communications solutions via the cloud. In 2014, Vonage established its channel program, which has enabled the company to establish long-term relationships with indirect partners who have an embedded base of thousands of established customer relationships. Kyle Johnson (News - Alert) (News - Alert), senior vice president of sales, leads that program today.

Vonage has 30 channel managers across the country. Its typical channel partners are solution consultants focused on small business clients to large enterprise, multi-location accounts. Those channel partners include PBX value-added resellers, IT consultants, interconnect carriers and MSPs, as well as wireless resellers.

The company offers channel partners residuals on a monthly basis. Vonage pays commissions on the entire amount of recurring billing on each customer, for the life of the customer. Periodic promotions include aggressive upfront one-time bonuses or other attractive incentives to help its partners reach their earnings goals.

Vonage partners have access to a dedicated channel manager, engineering and sales support, and a channel success team. The company also provides extensive training and support to partners.

Talkdesk for the Talkdesk Partner Program

Talkdesk launched the Talkdesk Partner Program just last year in an effort to extend its cloud-based contact center platform to technology service providers around the globe. More than 100 partners are today involved in the program, of which Craig Klemp is the leader.

The referral program offers 20 percent of license revenue for two years, and partners have the ability to bundle implementation fees with those at Talkdesk. The company also is piloting a reseller program with increased compensation tiers.

Each Talkdesk channel partner has a dedicated channel manager to assist with anything it may need throughout the selling process. And, following a customer purchase, partners have access to Talkdesks customer success team for ongoing support and its implementation team for initial setup.

Sonus for Sonus Partner Assure

Sonus sells hardware-based and virtualized solutions, including a cloud exchange networking platform, Diameter signaling controllers, media and signaling gateways, policy/routing servers, and session border controllers.

The company started this partner program in 2012 not only to drive sales in the enterprise market, but also to communicate the companys cross-vendor capabilities  including interworking with Cisco, Avaya (News - Alert) (News - Alert), ShoreTel, Microsoft (News - Alert) Lync and Skype for Business  that facilitate customers transition to UC.

Ingrid Tremblay is the current leader of the program, which now has 725 partner members. The typical profile is a medium-sized enterprise reseller (500 to 2,000 employees) with most of its end customers having some type of legacy communications infrastructure and looking to move to UC.

Sonus Partner Assure does not remunerate its partners. However, for partners who complete requirements for accreditation, Sonus provides a discount on the purchase of support services. This encourages partners to move the discount to the end customer ordering Sonus technologies, thereby generating additional sales and revenue for the partner.

Fonality for the Fonality Channel Partner (News - Alert) Program

Fonality provides business phone systems and applications, which are in use by more than 30,000 businesses in 99 countries.

The Fonality simplified partner program was established in 2014, currently has 607 members, and is led by David Beagle. It offers discounts or commissions at three partner levels: Referrals, Authorized and Certified. Partners at Authorized or Certified levels can choose to work as agents, receiving commission based on recurring revenue, or as resellers, receiving discounts on both software and hardware. The program offers joint marketing funds as a quarterly bonus.

The company offers both upfront and recurring payment schedules to align with the business model of each partner. The channel sales manager, marketing consultants, partner development experts, and sales engineers are all available to partner program members. Fonality also provides tools to support partners through online product and technical training, a community of best practice sharing with other partners, and a robust marketing assistance program.

Broadview Networks for the Broadview Networks Partner Program

This business communications provider launched its partner program back in 1996. Donna Wenk, senior vice president of alternate channels, is the leader of the program, which today has more than 300 partner members.

Broadview says its channel partners earn some of the highest SPIFs in the industry by working with the company. Broadview agents earn both up front and competitive residual commissions.

The companys average OfficeSuite customer bills more than $2,000 per month. That means channel partners can attack any size customer and earn more revenue by targeting larger deals  especially those with multiple locations.

Partners can also leverage the companys partner support teams and systems; win trips; use the MyOfficeSuite Agent portal for account management; and Broadview's Channel Partner Newswire, a monthly newsletter designed to provide partners with the latest news.

Masergy Communications Inc.for the Masergy Global Partner Program

Masergy delivers hybrid networking, managed security, and cloud communication solutions to global enterprises. The company, which launched its partner program in 2011, now has 293 partners; the effort is managed by Chuck Ward.

The companys channel program provides partners with such benefits as future-proof technology that ensures long-term customer value, competitive compensation on all deals and renewals, support with a dedicated account team throughout the customer lifecycle, ongoing technology and product training, and fully co-branded events and collateral.

XO Communications for the XO Partner Channel Program

Business communications and connectivity provider XO put its partner program in place in 1994. William Hooper leads the program.

XO says it uniquely wraps business partners in support, with strategically aligned resources, a dedicated Partner Support Center, state-of-the-art automation, and highly engaged executive leadership.

Calabrio for the Calabrio Partner Program

Calabrio ONE is a suite of customer engagement and workforce optimization software. The companys partner program, which is managed by Terri Kocon and Tammy Marinac, has 120 partners.

The typical Calabrio Channel Partner is a certified Cisco and/or Avaya partner as well. Calabrio reseller partners enjoy generous discounts on software, maintenance, and professional services; increased discounts through deal registration and loyalty programs; a Partner Incentive Program providing the opportunity to earn significant cash rewards on a quarterly or annual basis; sales promotions and rebates; competitive referral fees; and an array of marketing, onboarding, and training tools.

Digium (News - Alert) (News - Alert) Inc. for the Digium Partner Program

A whopping 3,851 partners participate in this program, which was established in 2007 by the provider of Asterisk software, telephony hardware, and on-premises and hosted Switchvox (News - Alert) business phone systems. Steve Harvey is the program leader.

Top partners earn in excess of 35 percent gross selling margin on the Digium software and hardware. Partners can attach additional revenue and profit streams to the sale of a communications solution. This includes the sale of the partners own network design services, installation, training, maintenance, carrier agency fees, and other professional services.

Partners who sell Digium Cloud Services receive monthly recurring commissions of up to 25 percent of the customers billed services.

AireSpring for the AireSpring Channel Sales Division

Managed connectivity and cloud solutions provider AireSpring launched its channel effort at its founding in 2002. It now caters to more than 3,000 master agents and sub agents, which account for 90 percent of the companys revenues.

The company says its channel program is known for offering some of the best SPIFFs and commissions in the industry, as well as the reliability of a stable, debt-free, and profitable company. Channel partners receive bonuses on connectivity services of up to 150 percent and 600 percent respectively. Partners are also eligible for an $800 cash bonus on long-distance services per every $800 in eligible usage. The company also offers the QuoteSpring quoting tool.

Ron McNab is senior vice president of channel sales at AireSpring.

Star2Star Communications LLC for The Star2Star Channel Partner Program

The company provides scalable cloud communications services in North America. Star2Star in 2006 launched its partner program, which now has 700 members and is managed by Gary Testa.

Star2Star is willing to customize how partners are remunerated. In fact, it considers that flexibility the key differentiator of its partner program. For example, some partners prefer to earn larger upfront commissions from hardware sales while others prefer to earn an equivalent (or greater) amount through residual revenue on monthly service and usage.

Edited by Alicia Young
JD England reflects on time as Mayor of Mitchell before stepping down

JD England reflects on his time on the Mitchell police force, his first term election by just four votes and his accomplishments in office.
Several dozen raids are under way enterprises incorporated into PJSC Ukrgazvydobuvannia on Monday as part of criminal investigations, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has said.

"A number of investigative actions on suspicion of money laundering are under way today... Several dozen searches are on across Ukraine. We've got a half-page list of enterprises, including bogus ones, suspected of embezzling public funds on a large-scale basis," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday.

Lutsenko mentioned that no specific names will be mentioned. He said, there are "legal entities and amounts of possibly embezzled funds."

Ukrgazvydobuvannia said earlier on Monday that raids were being held at its enterprises.

"According to the [court] orders presented to Ukrgazvydobuvannia's security service, it appears that the searches are related to an investigation in cases dated to 2012-2014," the company said.

Ukrgazvydobuvannia also said that agents from the Prosecutor General's Office do not block the premises, do not remove computers and telecoms means, as the company's employees assist in investigators' work. At the same time, the searches are not conducive to the company's routine work related to documents and agreements with counterparties, it said.
Erdogan reaffirms Poroshenko that Turkey not to recognize Crimea's accession to Russia

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had a telephone conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Ukrainian presidential press service said late on Saturday.

"Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed Petro Poroshenko on Turkey's unwavering position regarding its support of Ukraine's independence and territorial integrity in the country's internationally recognized borders. The Turkish president also stated that the Republic of Turkey will not recognize Crimea's occupation and will continue to support the Crimean Tatars in every possible way," the press service said in a communication posted on the Ukrainian presidential official website.

"In the context of the military coup attempted in Turkey late on July 15 - early on July 16, 2016, the Ukrainian head of state confirmed the Ukrainian support of the legitimately elected president and government of the Republic of Turkey," it said.

The sides highlighted the mutual intent to use best endeavors to enhance the strategic partnership between the two nations.

Poroshenko offered Erdogan condolences over the recent terror attacks that killed people in eastern Turkey, it said.

The two national leaders discussed separately the issues related to development of interaction in the energy sector, the Ukrainian presidential press service said.

Late on July 15 and early on July 16, a group of Turkish servicemen attempted a coup that failed. The clashes left 190 people dead. Having suppressed the coup attempt, the Turkish authorities arrested about 6,000 people who are currently suspected of participation in the attempted military coup.
A movement has emerged that would like to see the date of triple js annual Hottest 100 countdown broadcast changed from 26th January. A growing number of j listeners say changing the broadcast date from Invasion Day would make a powerful statement.

The Hottest 100, billed as the worlds biggest fan-voted music poll, is traditionally aired on Australia Day on 26th January, a public holiday which has drawn a large degree of criticism in recent years for celebrating colonialism and genocide.

Back in March, Sydneys Daily Telegraph accused the University of NSW of whitewashing Australian history after they learned that UNSW has a set of language guidelines for students and teachers, suggesting they avoid referring to Captain Cook as the person who discovered Australia.

It kicked off a firestorm of controversy, leading to a national debate over whether Australia was discovered or invaded by white settlers, with several Australian musicians, including Briggs and Thelma Plum, hitting back at discovery proponents like Alan Jones.

Rapper Chance Waters also criticised the holiday, writing, Australia Day is a celebration of a brutal colonial invasion that was so vicious there are records of native children being buried in the sand and having their heads kicked off.

But whilst we continue to urge our government to rectify this, Hobart-based collective of thinkers, activists, friends and acquaintances Bar(r)ed Subjects would like to see triple j make a statement of solidarity with Australias Indigenous population.

Australia Day represents, for First Nations Peoples, a date commemorating the invasion of their countries and colonization of their ways of life, rather than a celebration of what it now means to be Australian, their Change.org petition reads.

We recognize that it isnt within the power of Triple J to change this date; however, it is capable of using their broadcast to make a statement of solidarity with the experience of those whose countries were colonised.

The ABC has a long history of excellent broadcasting with a focus on diversity, and Triple J is no exception. Indeed, triple j maintain a strong relationship with NAIDOC and this years Hottest 100 was the first to partner with AIME.

By changing the date of the Hottest 100 Countdown, Bar(r)ed Subjects continue, Triple J can send a message to First Nations Peoples that they, and their experiences, are valued and respected by other Australians.

We are calling on Triple J hosts Matt Okine and Alex Dyson to spearhead this campaign to have Triple J change the date of the Hottest 100 Countdown from Australia Day to a less inflammatory and more inclusive date for First Nations Peoples.

After A.B. Original, a collaboration between Indigenous Australian rappers Briggs and Trials, unveiled their fiery new collaboration with Dan Sultan January 26, many fans suggested it would be a fitting track to top the Hottest 100.

Several listeners have since taken to Twitter to encourage triple j listeners to vote for January 26 in the upcoming Hottest 100 voting round, whilst others have used the song to question why the Hottest 100 still takes place on Invasion Day.

The question ultimately boils down to whether you think holding the Hottest 100 on 26th January is an endorsement of that date or simply a convenient day to hold the broadcast, since a good portion of the nation gets the day off.

But if all we need is a day when a lot of people have the day off, why cant the Hottest 100 be held on the last Saturday of January, for example? Of course, you might see pushback from hospitality workers, so perhaps a different public holiday?

At the time of writing, Bar(r)ed Subjects Change.org petition has accrued 263 signatures of its 500-signature goal. Tone Deaf has reached out to triple j for comment but did not receive a response before press time.
Jackson County Prosecutor's Office: Belton couple charged with child abuse in recent shootings at Prospect and Gregory in KC





TKC TEACHING MOMENT: DON'T BRING YOUR KIDS TO A DRUG DEAL!!!

Recap of the events allegedly preceding a youngster getting shot from the primary source and MSM reports that followed:A Belton man and his girlfriend have been charged with child abuse and child endangerment for firing weapons near the children during a reported drug deal in Kansas City, resulting in one child being shot, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced today.The couple face Child Abuse, a Class A felony, and two counts of Child Endangerment in the 1st Degree, Class C felonies.According to court records, police responded on the evening of Aug. 18, 2016, to the scene of a shooting behind a Church's Chicken near Prospect Avenue and Gregory Blvd. They found a man shot to death in the parking lot and the defendants with two children, 2 and 3 years old. The younger child has been shot. Roberson told police he had set up a drug deal there and had two firearms in the vehicle with the two children. He acknowledged firing a weapon near the children. Kuntz also told police she fired a gun in the vehicle with the children there. Roberson told police they brought the children to the drug deal because they didn't have a babysitter. The defendants told police a gun fight erupted after the man they met for the drug deal pulled a gun. The 19-year-old man died from his wounds.Prosecutors have requested a bond of $100,000 cash for each defendant.Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker will be available for short interviews with the media at 12:45 p.m. at Metro Patrol, 7601 Prospect Avenue.############Links:This should be common knowledge but it's not in Kansas City . . . The more you know.Developing . . .
STL NPR: "In a sign that Donald Trump may be concerned about his political strength in Missouri, the Republican presidential nominee has tapped two veteran GOP operatives to head up his state operation. Aaron Willard, who has held several key posts in the Republican-controlled General Assembly, is Trumps new state director. Todd Abrajano, a consultant with similar GOP ties, is to serve as Trumps communications director . . ."

The Trump campaign organization is growing stronger as Missouri might move back to its bellwether roots. Checkit:Developing . . .
"TKC, I just want to let you know that I live among cretins here in Kansas City where people will not allow me to express my personal political convictions on my own property. What am I talking about? Three times my specially ordered Trump for President sign has been stolen by local Democratic fascists who obviously do not respect our 1st Amendment. I've alerted several media outlets of my plight and none have responded so far because they are leftists organizations. I know that you prize free speech and encourage debate from both sides so I wanted to send this message your way as well.

The Kansas City pro Hillary brigade keeps stealing my yard signs but that's not going to stop me!





Don't worry, I'm not taking this lying down and some of my neighbors are working together to make a massive sign in support of Trump that will be too big for these petty thieves to walk away with. The Democrat crooks should know that there will be 24 hour video surveillance on our sign and I have done the research, stealing it or damaging it is a legal offense punishable by a very strict fine WHEN the perpetrator is caught."

TKC FIRST: THE TRUMP SIGN STEALING EPIDEMIC IS HITTING KANSAS CITY IN FULL FORCE!!!









Here's an angry note sent our way that complains of a YOOGE political problem and promises an even bigger response to people who don't like his message . . .And so . . .Here's confirmation of the trend as we wait for local MSM to report this 1st Amendment election season affront . . .Developing . . .
Idea of Russian as official language backed by 30% of Ukrainians, with 55% against it - poll

More than half of Ukrainian residents do not support the idea of Russian as an official language in Ukraine, while 30% are "in favor" of it, the results of the poll conducted by Ukraine's National Science Academy Sociology Institute in cooperation with the Intellectual Perspective charity foundation suggested.

According to the results of the poll that were published on Thursday, 30% of Ukrainians supported the idea of letting Russian to obtain the status of an official language in their country and 55.5% did not.

However, 42% of the respondents predominantly speak the Ukrainian language in the family circle, while 32% mostly speak Russian and the remaining 25% may opt to speak either of them, according to circumstances.

The attitude towards the idea changed over time. In particular, back in 2000, the official status of Russian had the support of 51% of Ukrainians, with 33% against it. Later the number of supporters decreased and that of the opponents grew and they became almost equal in 2012 (43% "in favor" and 42% "against"). The share of the opponents started to prevail in 2013 (49% "against" and 36.5% "in favor").

The Ukrainian nationwide poll was conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Intellectual Perspective charity foundation from June 13 - July 4. It used a quota sample representing adult residents at least 18 years of age. The respondents were from all Ukrainian regions, except for the Donbas regions not controlled by Kyiv. The sociologists interviewed respondents face to face in their places of residence.

In total, 1,802 people were polled. The margin of sampling error is 2.3%.

For the purpose of comparison, the sociologists published the data of nationwide polls conducted by the Institute in previous years as part of sociological monitoring (i.e. repeatedly conducted polls using the same method).
Federal court rules in Chastain's favor in his defamation suit against Anne Hodgdon

The United States District Court (Kansas) has denied Anne Hodgdon's motion to dismiss Clay Chastains lawsuit against her for defamation.The little guy can be thankful we have an honorable federal court system in which to seek justice when the powerful try and bury the powerless with bottom dealing.Mrs. Hodgdon claimed in a 2015 Facebook post that I sexually assaulted, if not tried to rape, her in 1994, though she never filed a police report at the time. She said it was time to tell her personal Clay Chastain story as the very unstable Clay Chastain legally messes with Kansas Citys great Mayor Sly James.But the not very nice and not very stable Mrs. Hodgdon forgot to do her homework before she concocted her false and malicious lie.Mrs. Hodgdon claimed, in vivid detail, how I lured her to my home to sexually assault her using our mutual love for public transit as my prop. Once there, she said I showed her pages and pages of beautiful hand drawn sketches of streetcars plans I was getting ready to submit to the city. Uh huh, thats right.The inconvenient truth for Mrs. Hodgdon is that I had no streetcar plans or any interest in public transit whatsoever at the time of the alleged incident she described on her Facebook post. I would not design a light rail plan until 1998 and did not design a streetcar plan until 2001!Mrs. Hodgdon claimed that while I was attempting to sexually assault her, she kneed me (in the groin no doubt) as hard as she could. Uh huh, thats right.At that time I was a trained athlete and Mrs. Hodgdon was 7-years older than I.Mrs. Hodgdon claimed that after she kneed me she escaped and I came running after her like an enraged madman. Uh huh, thats right.No man does any running after being kneed in the groin. Whats more, no grown man that has joint custody of a daughter (my eldest was 8-years old at the time of alleged incident and living with me) is going to try and rape a woman and then chase her down the street enraged like a madman.Of course Mrs. Hodgdon has hired a powerful big time Kansas City lawyer to defend her, and I am going up against him pro-se! But the United States Federal Judge was unmoved by his stature, distortions and deliberate attempts to mislead the court.This is what the court had to say in brief(1)  The court finds defendants (Anne Hodgdon) arguments unpersuasive.(2)  Plaintiff (Clay Chastain) properly states a claim of libel of a public figure.(3)  The court denies defendants motion to dismiss.Because I have been relentless in challenging the political leadership of Kansas Citys establishment, some in the establishment have been relentless in their dirty underhanded schemes to try and stop me. "Clay Chastain"#########
The UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, will start a three-day visit to Athens on Tuesday to assess the humanitarian needs of the refugees and migrants hosted in Greece and find ways to help the country tackle the issue.

Grandi will meet with President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, and members of the cabinet. He will also visit refugee centers in Attica and central Macedonia to meet with asylum seekers and representatives of local authorities, civil society and other partners involved in managing the refugee flows.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
The Greek Meteorological Services (EMY) has issued a severe weather warning alert for the next 48 hours

The Greek Meteorological Services (EMY) has issued a severe weather warning alert for the next 48 hours. The report says heavy rains, periodical storms, accompanied by local hail will affect the regions of Macedonia, Epirus and gradually cover western Greece and the Ionian islands, Thessaly and central Greece from Tuesday onwards.

The forecast also notes winds will pick up reaching between 6 and 7 knots leading to a fall in temperatures.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Only a quaint wooden bridge across the Ionian Sea joins Zante to Cameo Island, offering a more rustic option for your soon-to-wed clients

From Zante to Zanzibar ttgmedia.com's Nammie Matthews outlines the pick of the bunch for honeymoons, weddings and vow renewals in the following article:

Zante, Greece

Only a quaint wooden bridge across the Ionian Sea joins Zante to Cameo Island, offering a more rustic option for your soon-to-wed clients. Its beach is available to hire exclusively for weddings  the only place in Greece where this is possible. Melissa Lowe, marketing manager at Perfect Weddings Abroad, says: Cameo Island is the perfect setting for your clients wedding. A small private island off the coast of Laganas in Zante, the island can be accessed only via a wooden bridge, with its beautiful beaches providing the all-important scenic backdrop for wedding photographs. For the reception, the bridal party can enjoy some delicious Greek meze at Vezalis, a local beachfront taverna.

Book it: Perfect Weddings Abroad offers a seven-night stay in a studio room at the nearby all-inclusive Caretta Beach Holiday Village from 650pp, including return flights from Stansted and transfers. Wedding packages start from 999.

Maafushivaru, Maldives

A tiny Maldivian island just 350 metres long, Maafushivaru has all the makings of an idyllic spot for a romantic honeymoon or renewal of vows, with just 30 villas. Its sister island, Lonubo, goes one step further though, with space for just one couple. Samantha Berry, Kuoni wedding specialist, says: Maafushivaru, with its beautiful uninhabited sister island Lonubo, is the perfect option for anyone looking for an exclusive renewal-of-vows ceremony. While guests stay on the main island of Maafushivaru, the ceremony itself can be held privately on Lonubo, which caters for an overnight stay if the couple decide they want to enjoy a secluded night away from the rest of the party.

Book it: Kuoni offers a seven-night stay on Maafushivaru from 3,432pp, including flights, full board, seaplane transfers in resort and the Lonubo renewal-of-vows package.

St John, British Virgin Islands

Situated on the island of love, otherwise known as St John, Caneel Bay Resort hosts seven white-sand beaches on a 170-acre peninsula.

Surrounded by national park, azure seas and an abundance of wildlife, it provides a beautiful backdrop for your clients wedding or honeymoon. And bridal parties can arrive safe in the knowledge that their wedding arrangements are already taken care of, explains Allison Sells, the resorts wedding planner. At Caneel, we specialise in wedding events [catering to parties from] as intimate as two, all the way to 250. We take care of everything on the wedding day so the guest doesnt have to. We even have a beauty lounge on property, so brides and their guests never need to leave the resort.

Book it: Leading Hotels of the World offers B&B stays at Caneel Bay Resort from $429 per person per night. Wedding packages start from $3,500.

Palawan, Philippines

The unspoilt setting of the Pangulasian Island Resort, El Nido, makes it ideal for weddings and honeymoons. The property offers 42 individual villas, all set among palm groves and with a marine sanctuary right on their doorstep. The Pangulasian also offers the option to hire the entire island, so your clients can wallow in total seclusion among their nearest and dearest.

Hayes and Jarviss destination manager for the Philippines, Emma Mitchell, says: Couples in search of bragging rights will find a unique holiday in the Philippines. This is especially true of El Nido Resorts Pangulasian Island. Its absolutely stunning and honeymooners will definitely get that magical wow feeling, but the fact that this is the only hotel on the island means its really exclusive.

Book it: Hayes and Jarvis offers a seven-night stay at the five-star El Nido Pangulasian Resort in Palawan on a B&B basis from 2,799pp, including airport transfers and return international flights from Heathrow with Thai Airways and Philippine Airlines.

Corsica, France

A great option for Francophiles looking for a wedding or honeymoon hideaway in the Mediterranean, the Hotel & Spa des Pecheurs is situated on a small island off the southern coast of Corsica. Elsa Bacry, director of sales EMEA at Small Luxury Hotels (SLH), says: Hotel & Spa des Pecheurs offers a unique backdrop of turquoise waters, white sand and granite rock in an off-the-beaten-track destination. With no other hotels on the island, wedding parties feel like they have the whole place to themselves, while staff are at their disposal to create a truly tailor-made wedding.

Book it: SLH offers half-board stays at the Hotel & Spa des Pecheurs from 450 per person per night. Guests can rent out the entire hotel from 25,000pn.

Petit St Vincent, St Vincent & the Grenadines

Guests can enjoy the pristine beaches and forests of the Caribbean in peace at the Petit St Vincent Resort, where the absence of telephones, televisions and internet ensures an immersive experience for all guests. The option to hire the entire hotel ensures further calm and total exclusivity.

Helen Tabois, senior product and marketing manager for the Caribbean and cruise at ITC Luxury Travel Group, says: The beauty of Petit St Vincent is that with just 22 cottages, its small enough for a wedding party to take over but large enough for everyone to enjoy their privacy as they wish  not least with the fabulous flag system, which is how you signal from your cottage that youd like service.

Book it: ITC offers a seven-night, all-inclusive stay at Petit St Vincent from 4,125pp, based on two people sharing a one-bedroom cottage and including return flights from Gatwick with British Airways, inter-island flights and boat transfers. Hiring the entire resort leads in from 168,476 per week for 44 guests (3,829pp), including all flights and transfers and all-inclusive board.

Whitsundays, Australia

Adjacent to a long, sugared beach in the Whitsunday Passage, One&Only Hayman Island is one of Australias prime island resorts and is an excellent choice for wedding or honeymooning clients. The resort underwent a major facelift, reopening in June 2014. One of the biggest changes was the scale of downsizing  the number of rooms was reduced from 209 to 160, making guest rooms and suites even more spacious.

John Mullen, product manager at Carrier, says: The new-look islands private accommodation is perfect for honeymooners. With the incredible Great Barrier Reef surrounding the whole area, this is an unmatched option for more adventurous clients. Theres also a choice of 12 intimate locations around the island to host weddings  including a beautiful chapel on a hilltop with views of the white shore and Coral Sea.

Book it: Carrier offers seven nights at One&Only Hayman Island from 4,600pp, based on two people sharing, including breakfast, return flights from Heathrow with Emirates and shared luxury yacht transfers.

Zanzibar, Tanzania

An award-winning tropical paradise just off the north-east coast of Zanzibar, &Beyond Mnemba Island Lodge offers the utmost in privacy for your honeymooning clients. With space for just 20 guests, each banda (thatched cottage) overlooks its own stretch of beachfront and the Mnemba atoll, where dolphins and other marine life roam. Jennifer Morris, product coordinator at Abercrombie & Kent, says: Set on a remote, private island, Mnemba is the ultimate oasis for honeymooners. The incredible setting and luxurious facilities will guarantee to make your first moments of marriage truly memorable, whether taking advantage of the superb surrounding diving and snorkelling opportunities or strolling barefoot across the vast white sandy beaches.

Book it: Abercrombie & Kent offers seven nights all-inclusive from 5,535pp, including international flights from the UK and internal flights.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Egypts New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) has launched a project valued at EGP16 billion ($1.8 billion) to build 116,000 housing units in 6th of October City for the middle-income segment, a report said.



A total of 42,700 units are being built in the Bahariya Oasis, Minister of Housing Mustafa Madbouly as quoted as saying in the Daily News Egypt report.



The project includes four schools, four healthcare units, four units related to social service issues, a hall for special occasions, and places of worship alongside a playgrounds, a hospital, parking areas, two police stations, and a public market, he added.



A number of main roads in the city are also being developed, including the Bahariya Oasis road and South Dahshour road, he highlighted.



The development process includes replacing all surface intersections with bridges, in addition to expanding the South Dahshour road. The development of the roads in the area is estimated to cost EGP2.1 billion.



The second phase of the water plant in 6th of October City, which will be capable of processing 400,000 cu m per day, is being implemented and is scheduled to enter operation in 2018, said the minister. The plant will meet the needs of the expansion projects and support development projects in the city, as well as feed all social housing project areas.
South Korea is keen to invest in rail projects in Iran, it was revealed following a visit by a delegation of experts from the country to Iran.



The team studied investment prospects in the sector, the CEO of Iran's Construction and Development of Transportation Infrastructure Company (CDTIC) was quoted as saying by Iran Daily.



Ali Nourzad told the visiting South Korean delegation that CDTIC welcomes foreign investments and is willing to see foreign investors play an active role in the sector, the report said.



South Koreans are keen to take part in a railway project linking the southeastern Iranian cities of Chabahar and Zahedan. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) has been signed by Iran and India to carry out the project.



The official said South Korea can participate in the project by establishing a joint company with India.


The eighth Future Concrete Conference, to be held in Beirut, Lebanon, this week, will focus on managing construction sites, in response to industry trends and feedback from participants.



The conference will be held on August 25 at the Hilton Beirut Habtoor Grand Hotel, Lebanon, and is organised by Advanced Construction and Technology Services (ACTS), a leading consulting organisation in the field of construction materials and geotechnical engineering, in cooperation with the ACI Lebanon Chapter (Lebanese Concrete Society).



Industry professionals and experts from Lebanon, the broader Middle East, Europe and the Americas will address topics including the economic and environmental impact of green concrete in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, lean construction and design, a case study of Sama Beirut, the tallest reinforced concrete structure in Lebanon, and construction operational productivity.



Plenary and discussion sessions include: job-site productivity and scheduling, construction site dos and donts, and concrete development and sustainable change. An analysis of Lebanons real estate sector will also be part of the presentations.



Keynote speakers addressing challenging issues and new developments in contemporary industry include: Beirut mayor Jamal Itani; president of the Order of Engineers & Architects Beirut Khaled Chehab; German consultant on lean construction Tobias Guller; Michigan-based professor Dr Carole Menassa; Alan Mossman from the UK; Adib Hachem of Cimenterie Nationale; Dr Nabil Semaan of the University of Balamand; Lebanon-based project manager Antoine Atallah; and Elie Issa of Sama Beirut.



Khaled Awad, chairman of ACTS and vice president of the American Concrete Institute, said: The development of infrastructure around the Middle East continues to gain traction; our events focus on the different ways to enhance quality in concrete construction projects. This year, we wanted to highlight the theme of construction productivity. We believe it was necessary and timely to assess the challenges and issues faced in managing construction sites and discuss best practices to overcome them. This is our objective in Future Concrete Conference 2016, Lebanon.



"Construction site management is not a simple task; poor management leads to cost overruns and delays, among others, and not only harms the business but the industry and the economy as well. We aim to build and update capacities of industry professionals why effective site management strategies are critical in any project. Clearly, effective construction site management ensures that deliverables are completed in a timely manner, risks are minimised, a projects efficiency is maximised, therefore making it ultimately successful. - TradeArabia News Service
Kuwait-based Equate Petrochemical Company recently participated in the graduation ceremony of the 39th Summer Training Course for University and High School Students by Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR).



For the 11th consecutive year, Equate has sponsored this training course as part of its comprehensive partnership with KISR, a statement said.



The ceremony was held under the patronage of Kuwaits Minister of Information and Minister of State for Youth Affairs Sheikh Salman Al Homoud Al Sabah who was represented by the undersecretary (acting) of the Ministry of Youth Affairs Yousuf Al Yatama, said the statement.



During the ceremony, Equate was represented by its president and CEO Mohammad Husain with the attendance of KISR director general Sameera Al Sayyed Omar, as well as several leading figures from various organisations, it said.



Abeer Al Omar, senior executive for corporate communications and government affairs, Equate, said: KISR plays an integral part through its various initiatives in training, scientific research and industrial development.



The development and nurturing of the youth is a mutual strategic objective for both KISR and Equate. We believe that this training course is a key investment towards overall growth and progress in Kuwait, in the present and future alike, he added.



Al Omar, who also heads Equate Sustainability Committee, added: During 2010, Equate and KISR signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for research about the petrochemical industry, its technology and industrial applications.



Developing the human capital, who represent the cornerstone of sustainability, is at the core this partnership through the training course and all other initiatives, he concluded.



With the participation of over 120 high-school and university students from Kuwait and other Arabian Gulf countries, the course addressed a number of subjects relevant to KISRs activities, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has described provision of international support to Ukraine and preservation of international sanctions against Russia as primary objectives of Kyiv's foreign policy.

"It depends on every one of us how much we will be able to ensure full solidarity of the EU, G7 and the entire civilized world with Ukraine's struggle in the future," the minister told Ukrainian ambassadors at a conference on Monday.

"How much we will be able to maintain this support and to ensure continuation of those sanctions as an element of pressure on Russia, which I deem to be our primary task," Klimkin said.
German exports to Iran, mostly machines and equipment, jumped in the first half of the year following the removal of international sanctions against the Islamic Republic, official trade data showed on Monday.



Exports to Iran surged by 15 per cent year-on-year in the first six months of 2016 to 1.13 billion ($1.3 billion), the Federal Statistics Office said.



This compares with a rise of 1.4 per cent in overall German exports in the same period and a fall of 14 per cent in German exports to Iran in 2015.



"There is a huge demand in Iran for plant and equipment", said Michael Tockuss, head of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce, adding that chemical products and electrical engineering were also doing well.



"And there is growing demand for technology from the renewable energy sector, mainly wind power stations," Tockuss said, adding that the reluctance of banks to finance bigger deals between German and Iranian businesses was slowly eroding.



Tockuss said exports to Iran would further pick up in the coming months and are expected to rise by as much as 25 per cent in the whole of 2016 and by 30 per cent in 2017.



"The sanctions against Iran were built up over several years and it now will take some years to reverse them and establish new business ties," he said.



In another positive sign, German exports to Russia fell only 3.5 per cent to 10.1 billion ($11.43 billion) in the January-June period after having plunged by 25 per cent to 21 billion ($23.7 billion) in 2015.



This indicates that the impact of international sanctions imposed against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine is bottoming out.



CLOUDED OUTLOOK



Overall trade prospects are more clouded, however.



German exports to the US and France, its two most important markets, fell 4 per cent to 53.4 billion ($60.4 billion) and 2 per cent to 52.1 billion ($58.94 billion) respectively on the year in the first six months of 2016.



Exports to Britain, Germany's third-most important market, stagnated in the first half of the year at around 44.8 billion ($50.6 billion).



Demand from emerging markets was subdued, with German exports to China only inching up 1 percent to 36.3 billion ($41.07 million), to Brazil falling 18 per cent to 4.4 billion ($4.98 billion) and to South Africa down 11 percent to 4.4 billion euros.



The head of Germany's BGA trade association has said exports will grow less than expected this year due to external risks, including Britain's vote to leave the European Union and uncertainties ahead of elections in the US and France.



Anton Boerner said late in June that BGA would update its official forecast for export growth of 4.5 per cent at the end of the summer and he expected 4.1 per cent at best.



In 2015, German exports grew by 6.4 per cent on the year, mainly driven by strong demand from other EU countries. This led to net foreign trade contributing 0.2 percentage points to an overall growth rate of 1.7 per cent last year.



The German government expects the economy to grow by the same amount this year, helped by soaring domestic demand, while exports are unlikely to contribute much to overall growth.  Reuters
Iran's Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri has told the oil and finance ministries to start using the approved new draft for the Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC) for oil and gas deals, the Oil Ministry's news agency Shana reported on Monday.



The launch of the IPC has been postponed several times as hardline rivals of President Hassan Rouhani resisted any deal that could end the so-called buy-back system under which foreign firms were banned from owning stakes in Iranian companies.



Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh attended a parliamentary session on Sunday to answer criticisms of the IPC. He said last week the IPC would need minor amendments but that implementation of its final draft would not need the approval of parliament.



Shana published the general terms and conditions of the IPC, specifying that the new contracts are divided into three main categories: exploration, development of discovered fields that would lead to production, and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) to increase output.



The Oil Ministry is allowed to sign contracts up to 20 years from the start of development. This period can be extended for five years if EOR techniques are applied on a field.



A contract's fees will be paid in cash or as a share of output.



Only Iranian exploration and production companies whose credibility has been approved by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) can partner with foreign oil companies.



NIOC is allowed to sign buy-back contracts for the development of discovered but undeveloped fields, after receiving case-by-case approval from the oil minister.



According to the IPC, the second party would bear all costs and risks of exploration and production. The government, the Central Bank of Iran or any of the state banks will not guarantee any of the commitments in the contract. - Reuters
Travel and tourism will contribute less than previously forecast to the economies of France, Turkey and Brazil this year, hit by attacks, political and economic turmoil, though globally the sector is resilient, the World Travel and Tourism Council said.



The global travel and tourism sector is expected to grow by 3.1 percent in 2016, faster than predicted global GDP growth of 2.3 percent, driven by increasing numbers of travellers from Asian countries, especially China and India.



"There's lots of macro-economic weakness around, but the travel and tourism industry is doing very well. It's the same level of growth as 2015," David Scowsill, president of the WTTC told Reuters.



He said that despite security concerns, people were still travelling but had shifted destinations. Asian travellers were tending to choose Australia for vacations this year instead of Europe, for example.



Brazil hosted the Olympic Games this year but its travel and tourism sector has suffered under a political crisis, its worst recession since the 1930s, and the Zika virus.



The sector's contribution to Brazil's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to shrink by 1.6 percent this year, against a previous forecast for a drop of 0.9 percent, the WTTC said.



Islamist militant attacks in Paris, Brussels and Nice have resulted in lower demand for travel to Europe. In France, the travel and tourism sector's contribution to GDP will grow 1.1 percent this year, down from a previous forecast of 2.9 percent.



"The Paris incident did have an impact because it's the first point of entry to Europe for a lot of Asian and North American travellers," Scowsill said.



The number of foreign tourists fell sharply in France in the second quarter of the year, official data showed on Friday. In France, the sector contributed 80.4 billion euros ($90.9 billion), or 3.7 percent of total GDP, in 2015.



A series of militant bombings in Turkey and a failed coup have also deterred tourists, and the sector's contribution to GDP there will shrink by 3.2 percent this year, sharply lower than a previously forecast drop of 0.2 percent.



Brazil's Olympic Games, which ended on Sunday, should help to boost demand for travel there next year, Scowsill said, although he said Brazil had to deal with its economic problems.



In 2015, the direct contribution of the sector to Brazil's GDP was 190.5 billion Brazilian reais ($59.5 billion), equivalent to 3.3 percent of total GDP, the WTTC said.



The fall in sterling as a result of Britain's vote to leave the European Union should boost demand for trips to Britain over the next six to eight months, helping to cancel out any reduction in spending on travel by Brits, Scowsill added. - Reuters
Court again bans PGO from conducting investigation against Klymenko in absentia

Kyiv's Pechersky district court has not permitted Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) to start the investigation in absentia against former Income and Tax Minister Oleksandr Klymenko.

The copy of the court ruling dated August 11, 2016 was published on Klymenko's personal website.

According to the document, Prosecutor General's Office tried to launch an investigation in absentia over the embezzlement of UAH 161 million by the former minister when he ran the post of the head of the State Tax Service of Ukraine. The court established that the Prosecutor General's Office sent a notification to the following address: Mekhanizatoriv Street, apartment 280 in Kyiv, while Klymenko is registered in apartment 270.

The court said that the former minister has been placed on an Interpol wanted list, but not in this criminal case. The court ruling cannot be appealed.

Earlier Kyiv's Pechersky district court banned the start of an investigation in February.

As reported, on March 5, 2014 the EU imposed sanctions in the form of an asset freeze against 18 former high rank officials of Ukraine. In April four people were added to the sanctions list, including Klymenko. The sanctions were imposed on the basis of documents provided by the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine.

Klymenko has repeatedly refuted allegations made against him, saying they are political in nature.

On June 15, 2016, the press service of Klymenko said the EU court decided to annul sanctions imposed in 2014 against the former minister.
ICAR ready to help Ukraine's PGO to investigate into high profile crimes

Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yevhen Yenin met Managing Director of the International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR) of the Basel Institute on Governance Gretta Fenner Zinkernagel.

The public and media relations department of Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) reported last week that at a meeting cooperation of the PGO with ICAR in the issues of investigating high profile crimes and recovery of crime assets for Ukraine was discussed.

"Yenin thanked Mrs. Fenner for provided help and pointed out the importance of using best global practices in the area for the needs of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies," the department said.

Mrs. Fenner assured representatives of PGO that all resources of the ICAR can be applied meeting PGO's top priorities in international cooperation in investigating high profile crimes.

"Concrete agreements to increase efficiency of PGO's cooperation with ICAR specialists were reached at the meeting," the department said.
Images of the White Mountains began appearing in the early 1820s, but it was the paintings of Thomas Cole (1801-1848) that first attracted the larger artistic community. Coles View in the White Mountains (1827) pictured a snowcapped Mount Washington rising above a verdant valley, the peak silhouetted against dark clouds. The image was infused with a sense of national pride, the mountains rough, craggy pinnacle named after Americas first national hero, represented a strong, confident America that could weather any storm.



(TRAVPR.COM) USA - August 22nd, 2016 - A persistent, often fierce wind blows across the barren stone peak that is Mount Washington. Above the tree line very little grows, and yet theres always life here, as scientists, tourists and adventurers share the 6,288-foot mountain. For more than two centuries, the Northeasts highest summit has captured the American imagination. Mount Washington: The Crown of New England, on view at the Currier Museum of Art from October 1, 2016 through January 16, 2017, brings together for the first time many of the most important early images of the Mount Washington region and it returns Albert Bierstadts monumental 10-foot-wide painting, The Emerald Pool (1870), to New England for the first time since it was painted.

The exhibition includes 40 paintings and a rich selection of historic prints, vintage photographs, scientific reports and guidebooks that helped make Mount Washington an international symbol of the American wilderness and its scenic wonders. The Crown of New England is a gorgeous love letter to the Northeasts tallest mountain, and one of the largest exhibitions presented by the Currier.

People are fascinated by the beauty and majesty of Mount Washington, and for good reason, said Andrew Spahr, Currier director of collections and exhibitions. This exhibition will present major paintings by Thomas Cole and John Kensett (1816-1872) that helped alter the course of American art in the 19th century as well as prints, photographs and early guide books that made the region one of the most popular tourist attractions in America in the mid-1800s.

The Art of Mount Washington

Images of the White Mountains began appearing in the early 1820s, but it was the paintings of Thomas Cole (1801-1848) that first attracted the larger artistic community. Coles View in the White Mountains (1827) pictured a snowcapped Mount Washington rising above a verdant valley, the peak silhouetted against dark clouds. The image was infused with a sense of national pride, the mountains rough, craggy pinnacle named after Americas first national hero, represented a strong, confident America that could weather any storm.

The tremendous artistic potential of Mount Washington was fully realized in the early 1850s. New Hampshire-born artist Benjamin Champney (1817-1907) and New York painter John Kensett spent several weeks during the summer of 1850 sketching in and around North Conway. Their summer sketches were later worked up as oils for exhibition in New York and Boston, to strong critical acclaim. Kensetts Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway (1851), became well known through a popular engraving of the time. In turn, these works of art helped boost tourism in the region, especially among individuals seeking adventures away from the city.

During the 1840s and 1850s, the region was also the subject of some of the first landscape photographs ever taken. These images were in some cases experiments with the newly invented and in others served as souvenirs of visits to the scenic White Mountains, further promoting the area. Soon, the availability of accommodations near Crawford and Pinkham Notch, the Conway Valley and eventually atop the mountain, meant artists, scientists and adventurous tourists could spend more time exploring the area.

The Science of Mount Washington

Mount Washington is known internationally for being the home of the worlds worst weather. It regularly records winds that can change from a light breeze to hurricane strength within hours. One wicked 231 mph wind in April 1934 retains the world record for highest wind ever observed on land. Artists often worked together in partnership with scientists, botanists, geologists and meteorologists, who needed accurate yet evocative images that would help bring their research to life visually. Text-based descriptions were enlivened with drawings, some reproduced using the newly invented mediums chromolithography and photography. Artists, many of whom studied sciences such as geology, in turn benefitted from understanding the specific processes that shaped the White Mountain landscape, giving them a more accurate sense of the scenes they committed to paper or canvas.

About the Exhibition

The exhibition includes 146 works of art and related historical objects, presented in mostly chronological order across all three of the Museums special exhibition galleries. It begins with the first major paintings and prints of the region, dating back to 1827.

The exhibition concludes with a dramatic presentation of Bierstadts The Emerald Pool, much as it would have been displayed in late-19th century venues as it toured the United States and Europe. The painting won a medal at the International Exposition in Vienna in 1873.

A fascinating interactive space will offer visitors of all ages opportunities to explore the art and science of the region. It will include displays of real-time weather conditions atop Mount Washington, as well as incredible videos taken from the summit, thanks to our collaboration with the Mount Washington Observatory in North Conway, N.H. Visitors can view stereographs, make art, read colorful tales of the region from period guidebooks and the exhibition includes a fun family guide.

Tickets $5/person in addition to general Museum admission.

General Information

The Currier Museum of Art, located at 150 Ash Street, Manchester, N.H., is open every day except Tuesday. It is home to an internationally respected collection of European and American paintings, decorative arts, photographs and sculpture, including works by Picasso, Matisse, Monet and O'Keeffe. Visitors of all ages will enjoy the engaging exhibitions, the dynamic programs ranging from art-making and lectures to music, a Museum Shop, and an airy, light-filled cafe. Free Wi-Fi is available throughout the Museum. The Currier welcomes visitors with disabilities and special needs. We are wheelchair accessible and offer FM headsets for sound amplification at many public programs. For more information, visit CURRIER.ORG or call 603.669.6144, x108.

The Currier Art Center offers studio classes, art camps, Master classes and intensive workshops for all ages. The Museum also owns the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Zimmerman House, complete with the original furnishings and the owners' fine art collection.

###
NAVIS, the #1 reservation sales and marketing platform for independent hotels, resorts, and vacation rental management companies today announced that its East Coast office has been named one of Orlando Sentinels Top 100 Workplaces in 2016.



(TRAVPR.COM) UNITED STATES - August 22nd, 2016 -

NAVIS, the #1 reservation sales and marketing platform for independent hotels, resorts, and vacation rental management companies today announced that its East Coast office has been named one of Orlando Sentinels Top 100 Workplaces in 2016. This year's recognition marks the fifth consecutive year that NAVIS has been ranked as one of the best places to work, and follows other honors NAVIS has received as a Top Place to Work in Oregon four years in a row.

Headquartered in Bend, NAVIS has over 314 employees and continues expanding to meet the growing demand for the companys innovative hospitality technology and world-class service. NAVIS delivers data-driven, cloud-based sales and marketing solutions for hotel and vacation rental companies to help them attract and convert more profitable demand across all channels, as well as increase staff productivity and delight guests. The company is also recognized for their unrivaled expertise and personal service, and according to their clients, functions with the highest levels of integrity and ethics.

"We are thrilled to be selected as one of the top workplaces in Central Florida, said Kyle Buehner, CEO of NAVIS. "This honor is a direct reflection on every NAVIS team member who has played a part in creating an environment that fosters innovation, collaboration and prioritizes our clients' success. We strive every day to make NAVIS a place where people feel heard, valued and above all, enjoy coming to work. We are very proud of our great company culture and look forward to repeating our win again next year.

For over 20 years, Orlando Sentinel has recognized companies across Central Florida that are committed to making their company a great place to work. Employers are measured on several qualities such as workplace flexibility, company leadership, career opportunities, community service, compensation, and benefits. The Top 100 qualifying companies will be honored at a high-profile, annual celebration luncheon that hosts over 1,000 industry professionals. The event takes place Friday, August 19, 2016, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld.

Interested in being part of an award-winning company? View available career opportunities at https://www.thenavisway.com/careers.

About NAVIS

NAVIS is the #1 reservation sales & marketing platform to empower your team's performance and increase your revenue.

Our Revenue Performance Platform transforms hospitality teams into revenue makers, enabling them to drive, capture and convert more profitable direct bookings. We deliver actionable guest insights so your teams can seamlessly sell and market together. The result is always a dramatic increase in direct sales and profit. We guarantee it.

Because we believe technology should make you money, not cost you money.

NAVIS, founded in 1987 is a privately held company with headquarters in Bend, Oregon and satellite offices across the country. To learn more visit www.thenavisway.com.

###
When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has coordinated positions with Slovak President Andrej Kiska ahead of the informal EU summit in Bratislava in September.

Poroshenko thanked Kiska for his consistent support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and briefed him about the latest developments on the administrative border with Crimea and in Donbas, the Ukrainian president's press service reported on Saturday.

"During the telephone conversation, the two officials noted the importance of continuing efforts, including in the framework of the Normandy format in order to have Russia observe the Minsk agreements, especially those related to security," Poroshenko's website reported.

The Ukrainian president noted the efficiency of the EU solidarity against Russian aggression and underlined the importance of keeping the EU sanctions in place until Moscow fulfills all its commitments under the Minsk agreements.

Poroshenko and Kiska also discussed topical issues on the agenda of bilateral relations and international cooperation.

The Ukrainian president said he hopes Slovakia, as the country presiding over the EU, will support Ukraine on its European integration path, in particular in the ratification of the Association Agreement with the EU, the introduction of the EU visa-free regime for Ukrainians and energy solidarity with Ukraine.

The two president o discussed cooperation between Ukraine and Slovakia within international organizations.
Claims related to Russia's breach of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea will soon be lodged with international courts, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said.

"These are crucial matters which every one of us will support; this is about ways every one of us will use international entities, including international judicial entities, to prove that Russia has breached every fundamental convention," the minister told Ukrainian ambassadors at a conference on Monday.

Ukraine will soon take "a legal action, which pertains to Russia's violation of its commitments under the Convention on the Law of the Sea," at international courts, Klimkin said.

"Within the next few weeks, we will start to prove at arbitration courts upon holding relevant consultations that Russia has violated obligations under the convention banning financing of terrorism. We will certainly prove that what is happening in the territory of temporarily occupied Crimea is actually discrimination," Klimkin said.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in June that Kyiv would appeal to international courts in connection with Russia's breach of the Convention on the Law of the Sea. "This decision aims to protect Ukrainian rights and interests guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 by Russia in the Crimean territorial sea, waters of the Black and Azov seas and the Kerch Strait, including rights to natural resources of the continental shelf," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Klimkin said on August 11 that Ukraine had finalized preparations for an arbitration proceeding against Russia in relation to sovereign rights in Crimean waters.
Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 22

Markets regulator SEBI will e-auction 47 high-end luxury cars and SUVs owned by PACL (formerly Pearls Agrotech Corp) through MSTC, a Government of India Enterprise.

The cars include a Rolls Royce, Bentley, Land Cruiser, eight Audis, six BMWs, four Range Rovers, Porsche Cayenne, Jaguars and Mercedes, among others. The e-auction is scheduled to be held on August 30.

Among the other vehicles to be auctioned include Volvo (3), Mitsubishi Pajero (3), Toyota Fortuner (6), Toyota Camry (1), Lexus (1), Honda CRV (2), Chevrolet Captiva (1) and Volkswagen Touareg (2).

The possession of the vehicles shows the fascination of the people running the company.

The vehicles are being put on auction by the SEBI under the aegis of Supreme Court-appointed committee headed by retired Chief Justice of India RM Lodha. The Lodha committee is supervising the process of selling PACLs assets owned by the key accused Nirmal Singh Bhangoo.

The PACL had raised Rs 49,100 crore from nearly five crore investors. If the interest component and other charges are taken into consideration, the total amount due would be around Rs 55,000 crore.

In compliance of the Supreme Court order, the Committee is arranging sale of vehicles registered in the name of PACL Ltd. Documents of the vehicles were seized by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The first lot of 43 vehicles was thrown open for inspection on Sunday by potential bidders in Badkhalsa village near Sonepat in Haryana. The other four vehicles, which are at a Gurgaon workshop (3) and at Paschim Vihar, Delhi (1), will be available for inspection on Friday and Sunday respectively later this week. The last date of submission of pre-bid earnest money is August 29, 2016. Interested persons or bidders are required to deposit a pre-bid amount of Rs 2 lakh to participate in the auction process. In all, 47 high-end luxury cars are up for grabs. However, insiders say the success of this auction will be a little step in the PACL recovery process, which owes around Rs 55,000 crore to the investors.
Sindhu Radhakrishna & T. R. Shankar Raman

Human-wildlife conflict is certainly not easy to solve. Reactive measures like culling, however, serve little purpose except to indicate a willingness to decimate wildlife in a bid to avoid public discomfiture. Culling is a drastic and cruel measure. No attempt has been made to address adequately the underlying causes that drive wildilife-related conflicts.

Farmers are now aware that they can shoot monkeys if they see them near their crop-fields, said the familiar voice on the phone from Himachal Pradesh. Shaurabh Anand, the young wildlife researcher who called, has been studying rhesus macaques and their crop-raiding activities in Solan since 2014. He said that in a recent meeting in June 2016, the local farmers' union demanded that crop-raiding animals be categorised as vermin under India's Wildlife Protection Act for a period of at least two years. A pamphlet outlining their demands also urged the government to lift the ban on monkey export as a way to resolve human-monkey conflict problems. Listed as vermin

In March 2016, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF), in an attempt to address the "monkey menace" had listed the rhesus macaque as vermin for a period of six months, within the municipal city limits of Shimla. Despite protests by wildlife conservationists, in May 2016, MoEF notified rhesus macaque as vermin in 38 tehsils of 10 districts of Himachal Pradesh for a period of one year. In practice, this has meant that farmers in districts like Solan are approaching the District Collector's office to provide them with guns and ammunition at subsidised rates to shoot rhesus macaques.

Bihar, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, and Telangana have also declared species such as nilgai and wild boar as vermin so that they can be killed by local people or even shooters from other states. These decisions spurred by the Union Ministry have triggered public spats between ministers and debates among conservationists and others over the rightness or wrongness of the orders.

The culling has been portrayed as a drastic and unnecessarily cruel measure to resolve what is an unfortunate problem affecting farmers. What is the real scenario and debate about?

Crop damage or depredation by wildlife species is not new. As many studies have pointed out, when people live alongside animals, inevitably, some non-permitted sharing of resources occurs, and this has historically been a part of human lives in India and globally. The issue now is that crop damage has apparently become so high that resulting financial losses have led farmers to abandon cultivation in some parts of India. Droughts also cause economic ruin for farmers but are usually seen as an act of god, unlike animals like monkeys and wild pigs that have a visible and targetable presence.

Rhesus macaques are hardy, adaptable monkeys and have a long history of living in close contact with human settlements. Apart from crop damage in rural areas, they also enter kitchens and damage property in urban settlements, besides approaching people  sometimes aggressively for food in public parks and temples.

Research on monkeys clearly indicates that provisioning by humans either indirectly through garbage mismanagement or directly through food handouts impacts their behaviour in many ways. For one, it reduces their natural inhibition to interact with human beings and drives them to move toward human food sources. Secondly, easy access to nutritious human food can increase their reproduction and cause aggregation of monkey groups. When macaque densities increase in cities like Hyderabad, Delhi, or Shimla, causing problems for people, the usual response has been to capture macaque groups indiscriminately and release them elsewhere, usually in rural areas that adjoin forests. This in turn increases crop-damage conflicts in these areas, prompting calls for further removal, thus creating a vicious circle.

Himachal Pradesh's attempt to cull macaques is not a new decision. In 2010, the state had declared rhesus macaque as vermin for a period of six months and permitted farmers to shoot the species at will.

This verdict was quashed by the state High Court a couple of months later, but not before over 500 monkeys were shot dead. The decision to cull macaques then, as now, is clearly a dramatic response by the government to defuse a situation that was turning into a public embarrassment. But it is unlikely to actually resolve the conflict because no attempt has been made to understand or address adequately the underlying causes that drive wildlife-related conflicts.

Resolving conflicts

Many techniques have been used to resolve human-wildlife conflicts in India, including physical barriers, farm management and compensation measures, chasing animals, or sterilising or removing problem individuals. These methods have varied rates of success but should they be abandoned completely? Admittedly, we do not have sufficient data on the effectiveness of various mitigation measures to come to an informed opinion about what techniques work or don't work. For example, Himachal Pradesh initiated a macaque sterilisation programme in 2006 in an effort to control population numbers and thereby mitigate conflict. Since 2006, a total of 104,422 macaque individuals has been sterilised. According to the Himachal Pradesh Forest Department website, 51.4 per cent of the macaque population in the state has been sterilised and macaque numbers are dwindling. If this is true, then it is not clear why the state government feels an urgent need to cull macaques.

Appropriate mitigation techniques are only one part of the solution; it is also critical to invest in research to understand how various actors affected by conflict interact with each other. Often, there is a lack of even basic information, such as how much economic damage does a wildlife species actually cause? Additionally, it is important to understand how farmers actually view conflict species.

What studies say

Studies on crop-raiding monkeys in Africa and Sulawesi show that although farmers were informed that rats were found to actually cause more crop damage than monkeys, they still blamed monkeys, as the latter were more visible than rats. A 2008 study by Kalpavriksh in Uttarakhand showed that farmers nurtured a greater sense of grievance against the Forest Department than they did against rhesus macaques. This was because they felt that the Forest Department had not paid sufficient attention to their opinions about how to deal with crop damage by macaques. A more proactive and less destructive approach would be to understand the genesis of the situation, carry out mitigation with continuous monitoring and scientific research, and be responsive to the voices and needs of various affected people. Despite all our problems, India has had an enviable history of wildlife conservation. We should not be in a rush to give that up.

Sindhu Radhakrishna is a Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore & T. R. Shankar Raman is a scientist with the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore.
Sushma Ramachandran

JUST as the hoopla over 25 years of economic reforms has subsided, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has criticised the view that former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao was the force behind the liberalisation drive. His comments may actually find resonance with a section of the Congress that has always sought to downplay Raos role in the launch of economic reforms. The then finance minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, is invariably described as the architect of the economic reforms of 1991 that transformed the moribund Indian economy. The role of Prime Minister Rao is always mentioned in a low-key manner, as if he was just an innocent bystander. Mr Jaitleys comments go a step further, insisting that Mr Rao was not at heart a liberaliser or keen on economic reforms but was forced into taking these measures because of the desperate state of the economy at that time.

It is, of course, correct that the government had been pushed to the wall and only then decided to make the big gamble of reversing the economic policies of the previous 40 years in one fell swoop. But to take that decision was a big risk. If it had failed, the government could have ended up with egg on its face. Such a political decision could only have been taken by the head of the government. And it was indeed the then PM Narasimha Rao who took the tricky political decision to go ahead with industrial delicensing and the raft of economic reforms charted out by his finance minister Manmohan Singh. The boldness of these steps need to be viewed in the current context where subsequent governments have not had the courage to go ahead with equally bold and unconventional measures. The barrage of changes in 1991 and the following few years have not been matched by any government since then, whether led by the Congress or the BJP. Even the tenure of Dr Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister did not lead to any transformatory measures to the economy. It can, of course, be argued that most of the dramatic changes to the system had already been effected in 1991, of converting a license raj administration to a liberal economic setup. However, there were a host of steps that still needed to be taken to ensure that ease of doing business improved in this country. It is the lack of such ease that delayed the pick up in foreign direct investment flows into the country. These grew only slowly since 1991 and increased significantly just in the past five or six years. In other words, it took two decades for FDI inflows to pick up to a level that could come somewhere near that of China. There was thus much that could have been done to push forward the reforms effort after Rao ended his term as Prime Minister.

As for his not being a liberaliser at heart, this is possibly also a correct assertion. But this was true of most political leaders in most political parties at that time. The BJP notably had its vociferous advocates for retaining the Nehruvian approach of import substitution that resulted in quantitative restrictions on imports as well as keeping duty barriers high to prevent easy import of foreign products. The swadeshi lobby in the BJP, in fact, was strongly resistant to the continuance of reforms by the NDA government when it took over in 1998. The Swadeshi Jagran Manch, a wing of the Sangh Parivar, had been opposed to multinational corporations and believed in containing market forces. Former HRD minister Murali Manohar Joshi was also a supporter of the swadeshi movement which opposed liberalisation in foreign investments. Fortunately, however, the Vajpayee-led NDA, however, played little heed to this group and went ahead with the same set of policies as the Rao government. It also became a signatory to many agreements under the multilateral World Trade Organisation, as a result of which it phased out QRs and reduced import duties.

Narasimha Rao, like most political leaders in the 90s, opted for economic reforms simply because there was no option if Indias economic condition was to improve and to push the pace of development beyond the so-called Hindu rate of growth. Had this not been the case, the Vajpayee government could have followed the swadeshi route which had strong roots in the party and tried to reverse or, at least, put a halt to reforms. In fact, it had been widely speculated before the NDA government came to power that it would review many of the policies of the previous government. This did not happen and much to the surprise of many commentators, it went ahead with deepening the reforms process.

As for Rao being the only reluctant liberaliser in the government, one must recall that even his finance minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, had to overturn his carefully laid down policies of decades in the reforms process. It is to his credit, indeed, that Dr Singh did not hesitate to demolish the structure that he himself, as a long time bureaucrat under successive Congress regimes, had actually set up. Perhaps not a reluctant liberaliser but surely a man who must have thought long and hard before taking an enormous risk in the hope of equally enormous gains for the country.

Even so, it was ultimately the responsibility of the Prime Minister for all the radical measures being taken at the time. As Harry Truman famously put it the buck stops here. Rao would have got all the flak if the reforms had failed. Fortunately, the reforms were a success as they put the country on a high growth path for the first time since Independence. Sadly, this success has never been attributed to the man who gave the green light for new policies. Neither in his own party, and now, not even in others. One can only say that history will surely judge Narasimha Rao more fairly and will record that this was the man who changed the face of the Indian economy in the 20th century.
Mukesh Tandon

Tribune News Service

Panipat, August 22

Satbir Singh Kadiyan, former Speaker of the Haryana Legislative Assembly in the INLD government, was among six persons held guilty in the rate interest scam on Saturday. He was arrested and sent to the Tihar Jail on the order of the special CBI court in Karkardooma, Delhi. The court will pronounce sentence on Tuesday.

The others convicts are Mumbai residents Harshad Shantilal Mehta (kingpin of the scam) and Vinayak Narayan Deosthali, Delhi residents Anil Kumar Malhotra and Sunil Gorawara, and Karunapathi Pandey, former Senior Executive Manager, UCO Bank, Sansad Marg, Delhi.

After four years of conviction of INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala and his son Ajay Singh Chautala along with other accused in the JBT scam, this incident has come as a big shock for INLD in the state.

As per case details, Satbir Singh Kadiyan was appointed as the chairman of Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) by then Deputy Prime Minster Devi Lal in December, 1989. He had chaired three years as the IFFCO chairman.

The scam was unearthed in 1993. The CBI had registered a case against Kadiyan and his 25 associates in March 1993 and filed charge-sheet against the accused in June 1996. The CBI named Kadiyan as the main accused in the case. Many of accused died during the trial.

Satbir Singh Kadiyan is a resident of Sewah village of Panipat district. He was appointed as the land valuation officer in Panipat Co-operative Land Mortgage Bank. He is a law graduate and started practice in the court after he left his job.

He joined the Lok Dal in 1987. In 1989, when Devi Lal became the Deputy Prime Minister of India, he appointed Kadiyan as the IFFCO chairman. He again successfully fought the election in 1991. In 1996, he lost the seat. In 1999, he won the election on INLD ticket. He was Speaker of the Assembly from 1999 to 2004.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 22

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the chief guest at the state-level function to be held on November 1 to mark the golden jubilee year of the inception of Haryana.

This was stated by Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar while interacting with mediapersons after a meeting with the PM in New Delhi today.

The PM has accepted Haryanas invitation and given assurance to participate in the Golden Jubilee function. He also congratulated the people of Haryana for holding the International Gita Jayanti Mahotsav in Kurukshetra from December 6 to 10, said the CM.

Various other issues related to the state were also discussed at the CMs meeting with the Prime Minister, including HMT in Pinjore, developing Hisar airport as international or integrated aviation hub, and setting up of mass rapid transit system from Gurgaon to Bawal at a cost of Rs 20,000 core under the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor.

The Chief Minister informed Modi about various development programmes of the state, including WIN City to be developed in Kharkhoda by Wanda Group of China, kerosene-free Haryana by 2017, savings through welfare policies with the use of IT, and teachers transfer policy.

The CM said HMT in Pinjore was a complicated case. The PM sympathetically listened to the issues concerning the arrears payable to the employees, amendment to the VRS proposal and assured to get these resolved.
R Sedhuraman

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, August 22

The Supreme Court today directed Akal Academy, a boarding school in Sirmaur district of Himachal Pradesh, to hand over 9-year-old student Julia to her mother Beata, a Polish citizen living in the United Kingdom.

The child had been abducted by her natural father Amarjit Singh, who had an adulterous relationship with Beata in the UK, and admitted to the school in December 2012 when she was six years old.

Beata Agnieszka Sobieraj fought a legal battle since then to get the custody of her daughter. Singh was arrested in the UK on March 15, 2013, and sentenced to three years in jail in November 2015 for the crime. The Himachal Pradesh High Court had refused to entertain Beatas plea for the custody of her daughter, prompting her to approach the apex court.

In todays order, a Bench comprising Justices Jagdish Singh Khehar and Arun Mishra ruled that there was no justification in the HC ruling, based on an assurance by the school that it would look after the child free of cost.

The handing over of custody to an institution, while ignoring the claim of a parent, especially the mother of the child, is not acceptable, the SC Bench held.

Advocate Pritpal Nijjar had argued for the petitioner at the instance of a UK-based charity, Reunite, specialising in the movement of children across international borders. The Indian government also took time to grant approval for sending the child back to the UK, Nijjar said.
There are no plans to hold a meeting of foreign ministers in the 'Normandy format' (Ukraine, Germany, France and Russia) in the near future, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told reporters in Kyiv on Monday.

"Formally, at the political level - no. Discussions are in progress about the logic and sequence of the roadmap [for implementation of the Minsk agreements] because it is very hard to move on without combining in one document, firstly, a sequence of actions and, secondly, guarantees of their fulfillment," Klimkin said, replying to a question as to whether the ministers might meet in the 'Normandy format' soon.

He said a possible meeting of foreign ministers in the 'Normandy format' had been suggested earlier. "One of the proposed dates, and let me underline that this is just preliminary, was [the date of] an informal meeting of the OSCE foreign ministers in Potsdam [an informal meeting of the OSCE foreign ministers planned to be held in Potsdam on September 1 to discuss security challenges]. It now seems that [Russian Foreign Minister] Lavrov would not participate in that meeting. So, everything is being delayed," Klimkin said.

The keynote issue is the agreements to be presented at the meeting of the 'Normandy Four' ministers, he said. "There is no clear idea as to how the Minsk agreements' roadmap should be structured, but we are working on this," he said.

The roadmap, which is being worked on by the sides, "is not a new document," he said. "I am often asked whether this is a Minsk III or a third version of Minsk. This is not a third version of Minsk," the Ukrainian foreign minister said.
Seema Kaul & Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 22

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today emphasised on dialogue and the need to find a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem within the framework of the Constitution.

His statement makes a significant departure from jingoistic statements by his party colleagues as regards the governments response to the unrest in the Valley (no compromise with those indulging in violence, as stated by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley).

Following a meeting with Opposition leaders from Jammu and Kashmir, the PM asked all political parties to work together to find a solution to the Kashmir issue.

The delegation was led by former CM Omar Abdullah. Modi appreciated the constructive suggestions made by them at the meeting.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Grateful to @narendramodi ji for taking out the time to receive the delegation from J&K and giving us a patient hearing beyond allotted time  Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) August 22, 2016

The statement by the PMO after our meeting says dialogue is necessary for a lasting solution, we are moving in that direction. We have welcomed the PMs statement and we said to him: wherever our support is needed for a lasting solution, we are there with you, said Omar. He was addressing mediapersons after meeting CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury in the evening.

A PMO statement said the government and the nation stood one with Jammu and Kashmir. The Prime Minister expressed concern and pain at the prevailing situation in the state. He said, Those who lost their lives during the recent disturbance are part of us, our nation; whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us.

He said all parties should reach out to the people. Reiterating his commitment to the development of the state and its people, he appealed for restoration of normalcy.

The PM said development has its own role, but it cannot be the only solution. I agree that in such situations, political initiatives and dialogue are essential, said JKPCC chief Ghulam Ahmed Mir.

I told the PM that in the coalition government agenda, you talked about including all political groups in a meaningful dialogue with all stakeholders to build consensus. Had you taken that up earlier, this situation would not have come, Mir said.

CPM leader MY Tarigami said, We requested the PM to take initiatives to reach out to the people of Kashmir, which has unfortunately not been done for 44 days.
Amir Karim Tantray

Tribune News Service

Jammu, August 22

In a scathing attack on separatists and those behind the Kashmir unrest, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today said a handful of the population was creating trouble in the Valley while 95 per cent of the people wanted normalcy to return.

She asked the Government of India and the Congress to work out a solution which would involve people from all walks of life in the Kashmir valley so that normalcy could return to the state.

New Delhi must not see people of Kashmir through one prism as only five per cent of the people are trouble-creators and the rest 95 per cent of them want to send their children to schools, open shops, perform their duties and live peacefully, Mehbooba said while addressing a gathering after inaugurating a sewage treatment plant here.

The Central government should think how it can get 95 per cent of the population out of this crisis. The Congress leadership should also put in efforts alongside the government to search for a solution and talk to people from all walks of life about what they want and how peace could be brought back, she said.

The Chief Minister, who was in Jammu for the first time since July 8 when trouble began in Kashmir after the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani, lashed out at the perpetrators and architects of the unrest who, according to her, were in search of a flame to put the whole Kashmir on fire.

Thousands of encounters have happened in the past 25 years but why is it that this time it went out of control. Since I took over, first the Handwara incident happened and then during the Assembly session, the separate colonies issue was raised but people didnt give much attention to them, Mehbooba said.

After her byelection victory and Eid, the unrest began and a handful of population got the opportunity to continue their agenda as if they were waiting for an issue to put Kashmir on the boil again, she added.

Terming the handful selfish, the Chief Minister said they used children and women as a shield while attacking police stations and security forces camps.

Despite the security forces going for the maximum restraint, which is evident as among the thousands of injured people, the number of security personnel is very high, they have had to fire when their own lives have been put in danger. When youth attack camps, snatch weapons and even try to set camps on fire, the security forces will fire.

Maintaining that J&K is not just about five per cent of the population, she said a woman who stopped youth from attacking a langar (community kitchen) meant for Amarnath pilgrims on way to Pahalgam and people who took injured pilgrims to their homes after they met with an accident in Bijbehara represented the real J&K.

She thanked people of Jammu for maintaining clam during this difficult time despite provocation from many quarters. Nationalism is not about responding to bullets with bullets and stones with stones but by keeping calm despite provocation, the Chief Minister said.

The first woman Chief Minister of the only Muslim-majority state of the country said people of Kashmir had understood the real meaning of freedom. They know that the kind of freedom they enjoy in this country is not available in countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey and Pakistan where the gun has intruded and taken away the freedom, she said.

Suggesting a way to bring back normalcy in the Kashmir valley, Mehbooba said the Central government should adopt the Atal Bihari Vajpayees policy towards Kashmir. Vajpayee Saheb didnt hand over a part of land to anybody but talked about searching a solution within the ambit of humanity. It is just a jugglery of words, Mehbooba said.Apne log tou apne hi hotay hain (they are our own people) and they are in a crisis and we need to help them come out of this crisis, the Chief Minister said.

Replying to a question on Opposition parties of the state meeting the President and the Prime Minister over the current crisis, she said, If the Opposition feels meeting the President and the PM can help, it is good.

Related report P3
Rifat Mohidin

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 22

As the state government continues to pressurise employees to attend their duties despite the Valley being under strict curfew for the last 44 days, the employees said they did not accept any such order and would challenge it in the court.

President of the Employees Joint Action Committee (EJAC) Abdul Qayoom Wani said those issuing such orders were sitting under security cover and want to put the lives of the employees at risk.

Curfew is everywhere, how will the employees reach office in such situation. For us life is priority. We can challenge the order in court. Those who despite hardships try to reach their offices are being shot and harassed. We dont accept this order. We wont attend office till normalcy returns, he said.

The order was issued by Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir, Baseer Ahmad Khan on August 17 directing all government and semi-government employees in Jammu and Kashmir to join their duties immediately or else they would be treated absent from duty and their salary would be deducted for the month of August.

After the trouble began in Valley on July 9 following the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani most of the government employees are not attending their duties due to curfew and restriction in place and also the fear of facing heat of protesters.

There are around 5.50 lakh employees working in J&K in various government and semi-government departments and the government annually spends Rs 15,000 crore on their salaries.

After the agitation started in Kashmir last month, the employees from different districts of the Valley say that they are not able to attend duties despite governments continuous pressure. The recent incidents of firing on an ambulance driver and beating of a High Court employee in Srinagar by forces have further added to the fear among employees.

The government is putting our lives in danger. We cannot attend duty till our safety is ensured. Even curfew passes are not being accepted. Forces are beating everyone. There are strict restrictions and night curfew is in place. Even politicians and their families are either in other states or high-security homes. How can they dictate us to attend offices, when they themselves fear to go out? Even protesters are not allowing employees to move, said an Education Department employee in Srinagar.

Last week, the statement of the Education Minister received severe criticism after he asked the parents to cooperate in the opening of schools in the Valley amid unrest. The parents said they could not send their children to school till normalcy was resumed.
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 22

Protests were organised at different places across the Valley today while curfew was enforced in downtown Srinagar, Anantnag and Pampore towns of south Kashmir coupled with shutdown called by separatists against the recent civilian killings.

The police said the situation across Kashmir remained under control and no untoward incident took place today as the Kashmir unrest completed 45 days. The movement of traffic on the national highway and other roads remained normal, a police spokesman said.

Demonstrations were held in downtown Srinagar against the killing of a youth, Irfan Ahmad Wani, here on Sunday evening. The residents of Fatehkadal took to streets, protesting against the killing of the youth, with whose death the toll in Srinagar city during the present unrest has gone up to three. The downtown Srinagar has been reeling under curfew since the trouble started early last month following the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani on July 8 in south Kashmir. Though the curfew was relaxed in downtown on July 26, the administration enforced it again after widespread demonstrations.

In the fresh efforts to maintain law and order, the administration has also been enforcing night curfew since the Wednesday last to counter the separatists relaxation period. The police here said the curfew was relaxed in Ram Munshi Bagh, Kothi Bagh, Raj Bagh, Saddar, Nowgam, Shaheed Gunj, Karan Nagar, Shergarhi, and Parimpora from 9 am to 5 pm. The curfew was also relaxed in the Soura, Lal Bazaar and Nageen areas of the city, the police said.

During the relaxation hours, no untoward incident was reported. Markets remained open and traffic was normal on roads, the police spokesman said.

The spokesman added that the situation remained peaceful in Srinagar, Pulwama, Kulgam, Ganderbal, Bandipora, Kupwara and Baramulla. However, five incidents of stone-throwing were reported from Budgam, Anantnag, Shopian and Sopore, he added.

Restrictions and prohibitory orders continued in other parts of the Valley to avoid any demonstrations and to maintain law and order. The clashes between protesters and the police have resulted in the death of 67 persons65 civilians and two policemen and injuries to more than 7,000 others so far across the Valley.

Both factions of the separatist Hurriyat Conference, each led by Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and JKLF chief Yasin Malik have been jointly spearheading the agitation issuing protest calendars on a weekly-basis against the civilian killings. They have already called for protests till August 25.
Ludhiana: The Board of Directors of Fortis Healthcare Limited held a meeting on Monday and approved a proposal to demerge its diagnostics business, including that housed in its majority owned subsidiary SRL Limited into another majority owned subsidiary Fortis Malar Hospitals Limited pursuant to a composite scheme of arrangement and amalgamation. The demerger shall be followed by SRL being merged with Fortis Malar as an integral part of the same composite scheme.

Appointed date for the slump sale, demerger and merger under the composite scheme is on January 1, 2017. The composite scheme of arrangement and amalgamation will be subject to the various statutory and regulatory approvals, including those from the stock exchanges, and shareholders, and creditors of the respective entities, and the sanction of the HC.

Commenting on the scheme, Malvinder Singh, executive chairman, Fortis Healthcare, said: We believe this will unlock immense value for all the shareholders. As a result of the new synergistic groupings, both the hospitals and diagnostic businesses will benefit from greater clarity, a stronger focus and an independent growth trajectory.   TNS
Islamabad, August 22

Cases have been registered against separatist Baloch leaders Brahamdagh Bugti, Harbiyar Marri and Banuk Karima Baloch for supporting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis statements on Balochistan, police said on Monday.

The five separate cases were registered on the complaints of petitioners Munir Ahmed, Maulana Muhammad Aslam, Muhammad Hussain, Ghulam Yaseen Jatak and Muhammad Rahim in the provinces Khuzdar area, Dawn online reported.

#WATCH Munir Mengal (exiled Baloch leader) condemns FIR against Baloch leaders for supporting PM Modihttps://t.co/aQKEI6F5Vt  ANI (@ANI_news) August 22, 2016

Acting District Police Officer Khuzdar Muhammad Ashraf Jatak said the petitioners claimed that Bugti, Marri and Baloch had supported Modis August 15 remarks.

Modi in his Independence Day speech had said that the people of Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan had thanked him a lot in the past few days.

Ahmed alleged that the Baloch leaders had asked Modi to commit aggression against Pakistan.

Modis statement sparked protests across Balochistan, with a large number of tribesmen taking to the streets in protest in Dera Bugti, Khuzdar, Quetta, Chaman and other parts of the province.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri, in a speech last week, slammed Modis statements, alleging that the Indian government fully supports the ongoing insurgency in Balochistan.

Zehris speech came days after a video showing exiled Baloch leader Brahamdagh Bugti appreciating support given to the Baloch people by Modi began circulating on social media.

He also alleged that the Indian government is deeply involved in sponsoring elements like Brahamdagh Bugti, Harbiyar Marri, Zamran Marri and Allah Nazar.

He accused Bugti of getting funds from Indians, alleging thats why he supported Modis statement. IANS
New York, August 22

The killing of a nine-year-old Indian girl from Punjab by her stepmother took a sordid turn on Sunday when authorities arrested her ex-husband and accused him of helping her hide.

Raymond Narayan was accused of helping his ex-wife Shamdai Arjun Pardas leave her home after allegedly strangling her stepdaughter on Friday and trying to hide her in his house, Ron Brown, the top public prosecutor for the New York city district of Queens, said in a statement on Sunday.

Read:Punjabi girl found dead in New York, stepmother booked

Meanwhile, Pardas was produced in Queens Criminal Court on Sunday and formally charged before Judge Gerald Beibovitz with murdering Ashdeep Kaur, who had come from India to the US about three months ago to join her father.

"This is a horrifying case of a child  a defenceless 9-year-old who was left in the care of her stepmother, who allegedly strangled her to death," Brown said. "Her actions, if true, are beyond comprehension and must be severely punished." Judah Maltz, Pardas' lawyer, asked the judge to place her in protective custody in jail, the New York Daily News reported.

This will keep her away from other prisoners as New York jails are notorious for brutal attacks by fellow inmates on those accused of heinous crimes, especially those involving children.

When authorities produced her in the court, she wore a white jump suit made of a tough plastic material, Tyvek.

Maltz said the 55-year-old Pardas denied killing the child and claimed there was no proof that she did it.

Michael Curtis, the assistant prosecutor, made chilling new revelations in the court. He said that on Tuesday Pardas had told Kaur's father, Sukhjinder Singh, 35, that she would kill the child, the News reported.

She had "repeatedly and on numerous occasions threatened to kill the victim", Curtis said. "On Friday, she made good on this threat." Curtis told the court that circumstantial evidence that Pardas killed the child is "overwhelming", according to the News.

Brown gave the following account: Narayan, who is 65 years old, was seen by a witness leaving Singh's house in Richmond Hill around 5.30 p.m. on Friday with Pardas and two of her two grandchildren.

When detectives went to Narayan's house in South Ozone Park he kept them at bay for over an hour refusing to come out or letting them in, before relenting and coming out.

Narayan and Pardas were then arrested. He is charged with "obstructing governmental administration" and faces a year prison if convicted. Pardas faces 25 years to life in prison.

Pardas told a witness as they were leaving that Kaur was in the bathroom and waiting for her father to pick her up.

The witness called the child's father and said that the light had been on in the bathroom since 11.30 am Singh asked the witness to break open the door and the child was found dead in the bathtub.

This is the second recent incident involving stepmothers of Indian origin in New York city.

Last month 35-year-old Sheetal Ranot was convicted of slashing her 12-year-old stepdaughter with a broken metal broom handle and cutting her left wrist to the bone, Brown said.

Sheetal Ranot and her husband, Rajesh, of Ozone Park were also accused of torturing Maya Ranot for two years, Brown said.

They locked her up in a room without food or water long periods of time and when she was found by authorities she weighed only about 26 kg.

Sheetal Ranot faces up to 25 years in prison. Rajesh is waiting for his trial. They were both arrested in 2014, but the first case came up for trial only last month.

Richmond Hill has a sizable population of people of Indian descent, while South Asians have a significant presence in the Ozone Park neighbourhoods. IANS
Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 22

As the countrys food safety law completed a decade of operation today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged the apex food regulator to empower consumers and work to build Swastha Bharat (Healthy India).

In his message to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India which was created to regulate the sector under the Food Safety and Standards Act of 2006, the PM said: The authority now needs to focus on empowering the consumers so that manufacturers and suppliers of food become responsive to consumer needs, demands and expectations. Safe wholesome food will create a Swastha Bharat. This has to be the cornerstone of FSSAI.

While the PM asked the food regulator to work on consumer power, ground reality reveals the regulator is far from completing its basic goal of registering all food business operators of the country. An important mandate of the Act was to bring all food business operators under its ambit and ensure quality control.

Data, however, shows that out of Indias estimated 1.8 crore food business operators, the law has managed to cover only about 45,00000 (25 per cent) in the decade of its operation. This means it would take more than a decade more to cover the currently existing operators.

Insiders say Indias food regulator is suffering from severe shortage of trained officers with the entire country making do with just about 5000 food safety officers when food business operators are in crores.

An officer of the FSSAI says: The estimate normally is that 4 per cent of the countrys population is into the food business. But we in India go by a conservative estimate and consider that around 3 pc are in the food business. That brings the number to 1.8 crore. We have covered only 25 pc of these.

Health Minister JP Nadda in his address today at an event held to commemorate a decade of the integrated food law emphasised the need to improve registrations of operators to ensure safe food.

But FSSAI insiders say the sector is reeling under fund crunch and ad-hocism.

That explains several recent instances of unsafe food being sold in the country, such as nine variants of Nestle ready-to-eat foods, including Maggi and a range of breads which were found to be containing potassium bromate, a harmful additive.

We need food safety experts to run the food safety organization but unfortunately, many critical divisions in the organization are currently headed by bureaucrats or non subject people. Professionals alone can ensure safe food. This has to be understood sooner than later, an FSSAI official said.
Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 22

India and the US are set to ink a historic agreement to allow exchange of logistics enabling their militaries to use each others assets and bases for repair and replenishment of supplies.

A formal agreement is on the cards during the three-day US visit of the Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar commencing August 29. The two sides had announced the in-principle decision on April 12 in New Delhi saying they had agreed in principle to conclude a logistics exchange memorandum of agreement (LEMOA) in the coming months.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Now the draft is ready and the two countries have agreed upon the text for the agreement, sources said. This will, however, not entail positioning of US troops on Indian soil.

In April, Parrikar, at a joint press conference with US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, announced the new agreement saying it would take few weeks for the draft to be ready.

The LEMOA is not just expected to help the US, it will act as a vital tool for India as it expands its Naval footprint and outreach. The US has a string of bases in East Africa, Persian Gulf, Diego Garcia (Indian Ocean), The Philippines, Japan, Australia and Japan. Indian warships and planes can seek similar refuel and repair facilities at these bases on long deployments, which are very frequent nowadays.

The LEMOA will cover four aspects  training, exercises, port calls and the humanitarian assistance. Indian planes used refuelling facilities at Djibouti for evacuating Indian citizens from Yemen last year. Both countries will have to seek advance permission to seek facilities and it does not entail any permanent bases for the US in India like it has in countries like Japan.

The LEMOA will be facilitator as earlier such matters of refuelling and repair were considered on a case-to-case basis.

The LEMOA is the new name for the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), which the two countries have been discussing for over a decade. What has been okayed is a re-jigged version of the LSA, a cast-in-iron framework, which the US was keen on getting India to sign. India had asked the US to make it India-specific, and not the standard LSA draft, which the US has with its allies like the UK.

New Delhi will reserve have the discretion of withdrawing in case it feels the US had gone to war with a country which India sees as friendly.

The LEMOA provides for sharing military logistics use of each others bases for resupplies and refuelling.

Since 2006, the US has been insisting on signing three pacts which it calls foundational. The other two, the Communication and Information Security Memorandum Agreement and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement, are still far away from being inked.
Russian activist Roman Roslovtsev has claimed political asylum in Ukraine for reasons of persecution in his home country.

The Russian national asked for political asylum at the Novie Yarilovychy checkpoint on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, a report posted on the Ukrainian State Border Service's website said. "He applied for a refugee status in Ukraine with the Chernihiv border unit due to political persecution in Russia," the report said.

The service did not disclose the applicant's name. "The Russian national is an acclaimed writer and an activist who has been energetically protesting against the political regime in Russia," the State Border Service said.

The Russian citizen has been referred to the Ukrainian Migration Service, it said.

According to the official website of Hromadske TV, it was Russian activist Roman Roslovtsev who explained his request with persecution by FSB.

"The reason why I have decided to claim asylum in Ukraine is the impossibility to continue protest activity in Russia. FSB officers were watching my house in Moscow, so I do not have any luggage, I have come here with nothing," he told Hromadske.

The activist said he would file a formal application with the Migration Service on August 22.

Roslovtsev born in 1979 began his protest activity in late 2013 following the shutdown of his alma mater, the St. Thomas Institute of Philosophy, Theology and History, and the beginning of the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine. He co-organized an action held in Moscow in 2014 on the first anniversary of 'Euro-Maidan'.

The media said Roslovtsev set a record of detentions by police - 21. Protocols on violation of the Russian Code of Administrative Offensives were composed in 16 cases.
Nay Pyi Taw, August 22

Myanmar military authorities have denied that there was a recent exchange of gunfire on its soil between the Indian army and the outlawed National Socialist Council of Nagaland (khaplang) (NSCN-K), the media reported on Monday.

The denial referred to some reports that the Indian Army entered the Myanmar territory and fought with Naga rebels on August 19 and that the fighting lasted for three hours, Xinhua news agency reported.

Myanmar military's information quoted witnesses as saying that the gun battle occurred inside India, one mile west of the Myanmar-India border, and not in Myanmar.

However, Myanmar military columns on the border were on full alert to ward off foreign troops from entering the country, the military authorities said.

Myanmar would neither accept nor encourage any armed group to station on its soil to potentially terrorise the government, it said.

The authorities insisted that Myanmar armed forces was working in tandem with Indian army and rendering cooperation in patrolling the border and exchanging information.

A leading English daily recently reported a gun battle between Indian army and the NSCN-K near the Indo-Myanmar border.

The Indian army had carried out a strike in June last year after the Naga group had ambushed and killed 18 soldiers in Manipur.

Myanmar army had then warned India against such incidents

The Naga militants abrogated a 14-year-old ceasefire in March last year.  Agencies
Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 22

Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani today inaugurated the renovated Stor Palace in Kabul via video conferencing. In December last year, the two leaders had inaugurated the new Kabul Parliament.

Both the buildings serve as perfect symbols of Indias ongoing reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and its commitment to stay put in the country. Sources said the renovated Stor Palace would house the office of the minister of foreign affairs of Afghanistan.

Modi, during the inauguration, said, To those who cannot see beyond shadows of violence in Afghanistan, the restored Stor palace is a reminder of the glory of Afghanistans rich traditions. The PMs comments were directed at Pakistan which has increasingly attempted to push India out of the regional politics. Without mentioning the neighbouring state, the PM went on to state that Afghanistan continues to be challenged by externally sponsored instruments and entities of violence and terror.

Modi talked about the India, Afghanistan and Iran transit corridor deal  to develop the Chabahar port  and about the Salma Dam India has built in the Herat province as symbols of India and Afghanistans joint commitment in strengthening the foundations of modern Afghanistan.

Modi reiterated to Afghan people Indias commitment to stand by them as they march forward in building a modern state. Let me assure the people of Afghanistan that in your quest to build a prosperous Afghanistan and to bring peace, security and stability to your society the 1.25 billion people of India will always be on your side.

Ghani thanked the PM and said India and Afghanistan both have decided to use our history for the advancement of our nations.
New Delhi, August 22

A month since it went off radar en route Port Blair, the search for the missing AN-32 aircraft of Indian Air Force continues without any concrete evidence about the fate of the aircraft.

Meanwhile, as Geological Survey of India ship Samudra Ratnakar found some leads at a depth of around 3,000 meters, officials said it was not clear if it was the debris of the aircraft.

The ship has tracked some echoes from the seabed but it will be a long process to verify if there is any debris belonging to the AN-32, IAF spokesperson Wing Commander Anupam Banerjee told IANS.

According to the Geological Survey of India, the Samudra Ratnakar, which was part of the search operation, had detected some linear pieces.

A GSI official said the objects, around 200 to 300 nautical miles from Chennai, could even be rocks on the sea bed.

Indian Navy Spokesperson Captain D.K. Sharma said: The search for AN-32 is in progress in right earnest. Sharma added that there were no concrete leads.

A month on, the search is being carried on with two Indian Navy and one Coast Guard ship for scanning the surface of the sea.

National Institute of Ocean Technologys vessel, Sagar Nidhi, and Samudra Ratnakar are carrying on the sub-surface search, while aerial survey is being carried out by surveillance aircraft P8I, transport aircraft C130J Super Hercules and Coast Guards Dorniers.

The plane with 29 people on board went missing shortly after taking off from Chennai for Port Blair on July 22.

The recorded transcript of air traffic radar showed the last pick up of the aircraft was 151 nautical miles east of Chennai when it took a left turn with rapid loss of height from 23,000 feet.

A flotilla of Naval and Coast Guard ships and aircraft were deployed on the search operations hours after the aircraft went off radar.

Data from Indian satellites was scanned and help was also sought from other countries to locate the missing aircraft.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, in a detailed statement made in parliament, also clarified that the aircraft, an upgraded version of IAFs workhorse, had adequate lifetime and had undergone just one overhaul.  IANS
Bhopal, August 22

Opposition parties have criticised Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan over a recent photograph showing him being carried across a swollen nullah in the state's Panna district while he was on a tour of the flood-hit district.

The picture that went viral on the Internet soon after it was released by the State Public Relations Department on Sunday invited ridicule, prompting the department to withdraw it quickly.

However, the photo had already made news by then.

Parliamentarian Congress chief Arun Yadav called it Chouhan's "photo-stunt" for cheap publicity that backfired.

"Chouhan in a bid to garner cheap publicity has indulged in this photo stunt. Instead of mitigating the problems of flood-hit people in Panna and other parts, the Chief Minister has himself become a problem for people (security personnel)," Congress leader Arun Yadav said. "Now people know him well. We seek his resignation over his photo depicting his feudal mindset."

Social activist Ajay Dubey posted photo on social media a caption that read: I am a prince".

Dubey took a dig at Chouhan saying the picture has revived memories of feudalism.

Likewise, journalist Abhilash Khandekar, who had written Chouhan's biography, has reacted to the photo saying: "Inhuman. Indecent".

Principal Secretary SK Mishra defended Chouhan saying that the Chief Minister came under category of people with 'Z' security and the security personnel had to ensure that he is not bitten by anything venomous.

"Chouhan in fact risked his life to cross the swollen nullah. He is too sensitive to people's problems. He is meeting people affected by flood round-the-clock. We should appreciate his concern, sensitivity for the people rather taking it the other way round," Mishra said.  PTI
Nay Pyi Daw, August 22

Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj met Myanmar President U Htin Kyaw on Monday to promise India's help to the neighbour strengthen its democratic institutions as the minister became the first high-profile visitor from India since a new civilian government was elected.

Swaraj also held talks with State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi and congratulated her for what she called the first genuine election.

"India is committed to strengthening your democratic institutions and socio-economic development of your people," Swaraj said during her meeting with Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party was voted to power in a historic landslide election last year that finally brought an end to five decades of military rule.

Swaraj was accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior Ministry of External Affairs officials.

Although Foreign Minister Suu Kyi contols Myanmar's civilian government, she was barred from being president by a junta-drafted Constitution.

However, the military still retains control of key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 per cent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.

Swaraj's visit comes just days after Suu Kyis trip to China.  PTI
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 22

Two people were killed and 21 others were injured in a blast in a dryer at a paper mill at Malerkotla in Sangrur district on Monday.

The injured factory workers have been rushed to different hospitals. Malerkotla Sub-Divisional Magistrate and police officials visited the site and inspected the spot.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

The blast in the dryer, which is used to dry paper, took place at around 11 am, DSP (Amargarh) Gurmit Singh said.

Two workers died on the spot while one succumbed to injuries in a hospital, he said.

Out of the injured, six were admitted to Rajendra Hospital in Patiala and ESIC Hospital in Ludhiana. The rest of the injured, who have been admitted to civil hospital in Malerkotla, are out of danger, the DSP said.

With the blast, the roof of the mill and machinery also got damaged, police said, adding investigations are underway to ascertain the reason behind the blast. With agency inputs
Tribune News Service

Bathinda, August 22

Farmer Gurdass Singh (32) of Jeeda village of Bathinda allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself on Sunday evening. He was under pressure as his land was set to be auctioned by an arhtiya.

The notice for the auction was handed over to Gurdass on August 18 while the auction was supposed to be held on August 30.

Gurdass owned 1.5 acres but used to let it out on lease. He used to run a wheat flour shop to earn his livelihood.

He reportedly owed Rs 7.5 lakh to arhtiya Sadhu Singh as a result of a loan  originally Rs 2 lakh  taken by his father Ajaib Singh. Ajaib died four years ago maintaining that he had cleared off the debt.

Ranjit Singh, president, BKU Sidhupur, Bathinda, said, The debt and auction put the farmer under so much tension that he killed himself. He never took any loan. Rather, it was his father who took a loan of Rs 2 lakh, but he had repaid it. But the arhtiya raised the loan amount to Rs 7.5 lakh.

BKU Sidhupur activists staged a protest today at the civil hospital and demanded the arhtiyas arrest.

Police officials, including SP (D), DSP Gurjit Romana and SHO Nahiyanwala, held a meeting with us and the arhtiya in front of the victims family members, said Ranjit Singh.

As a compromise, arhtiya Sadhu Singh has agreed to pay Rs 4 lakh as compensation to the family, besides waiving the debt of Rs 7.5 lakh. The government had also agreed to give Rs 3 lakh compensation, he said.

The SHO said, We have registered a case under Section 174 CrPC. The arhtiya was not at fault. The farmer had died of economic distress.

Under debt, farm labourer hangs self to death

Mansa: Farm labourer Mandeep Singh (25), who was reportedly under debt and had no source of income these days, committed suicide at Bachoana village of Budhlada division in Mansa district on Saturday. A few days ago, Mandeep had lost his one-year-old child, who was reportedly suffering from some ailment. Mandeep had put all his efforts to get his child treated, but couldnt save him. Under stress, he hanged himself at his house. He belonged to the Majbhi Singh community. TNS
Aman Sood

Tribune News Service

Rajpura, August 22

Packed like sardines in trains, thousands of residents of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are arriving in Punjab these days due to the flash floods in their states.

The Jansewa Express coming from Saharsa (Bihar) has already brought many migrants to the Rajpura railway station. They are here in search of work after abandoning their livestock and property back home.

They hope to find work in the industrial units of Ludhiana, Amritsar and Jalandhar, even as the labour-intensive paddy season has ended.

We have lost our livestock and our kutcha houses are inundated with water. I skipped coming to Punjab over the past four years and tried to eke out a living in my state. However, the flash floods have left us devastated, said Ramsharan, a resident of Nakta Diyara, Patna.

I know that the fields do not need migrant labour at this time of the year. Therefore, I have contacted my Ludhiana-based cousin, who is a kite string maker, he said.

We were asleep when the villagers starting shouting that the water level was rising. We vacated the village with the few things we could lay our hands on, said Gaya Ram, a resident of Samastipura.

Instead of moving to the nearby relief camp, I decided to join my uncle who works in a leather factory in Jalandhar, he added. I will go back when the situation returns to normalcy. My nephew is taking care of my father.
New Delhi, August 22

India today requested Iraq for assistance in rescuing 39 Indians taken hostage in war-ravaged Mosul two years back as Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar held extensive talks with President Fuad Masum and other top Iraqi leaders in Baghdad on a range of issues including threat from Islamic State.

Iraq has been hit hard by the Islamic State (IS), which has captured vast swathes of the oil-rich country and the talks focused largely on ways to combat terrorism and the two countries resolved to support each other in fighting the menace.

Besides President Masum, Akbar held talks with President of the Council of Representatives Salim al-Jabouri, Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Eshaiqer Al-Jaafari and National Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayyadh.

In the meetings, Akbar sought Iraqs assistance in tracing the 39 Indians and securing their safe release. The Iraqi leadership assured full cooperation and support in the matter, the Ministry of External Affairs said here.

The two sides discussed the entire gamut of bilateral engagement, including in spheres of trade, investment, energy security, defence and security and counter terrorism.

Akbar arrived in Baghdad yesterday on a three-day visit, as part of a three-nation trip to Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. The two sides acknowledged the threat posed by terrorism and its sponsors to international peace. They conveyed strong support to each other in their common fight against the menace of terrorism, the External Affairs Ministry said, sharing details of Akbars meetings with Iraqi leaders.

The MEA said Akbar conveyed Indias support for the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq and conveyed New Delhis abiding commitment to the emergence of a stable, peaceful, united and democratic Iraq, which was in the interest of regional and global peace and security.  PTI
Consideration of Ukraine's claim against Russia over terrorism financing to start by end of year - Klimkin

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin expects the UN International Court of Justice to start hearing Kyiv's claim against Russia regarding violations of the International Convention for the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism before the end of 2016.

"An arbitration proceeding regarding the International Convention for the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism is due to begin this year," the minister told the press in Kyiv on Monday.

Speaking of the UN International Court of Justice's hearing on this claim, Klimkin said Ukraine was not expecting any problems.

"As to the convention, that situation is clear from the legal angle, because Russia has recognized jurisdiction of the UN International Court of Justice over a limited list of conventions, among them the Convention for the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism," the minister said.

Also, the investigative team tasked with identifying and indicting persons behind the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 crash in Donbas on July 17, 2014, comprising representatives of the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, Belgium and Ukraine will post initial results of its criminal inquiry in late September, the Ukrainian foreign minister said.

"You must have heard that our Dutch friends plan to publish the second part of the report on the Malaysian Boeing tragedy in late September. We will definitely keep that in mind," he said.

Klimkin also mentioned Ukraine's claim against Russia related to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in the context of Crimean events.

There is another area of work of the Ukrainian authorities: "assistance to our Ukrainian companies which have lost their assets. A number of claims are being processed," he said.

"We have presented our formal stance on the temporary occupation of Crimea, and we are ready to represent it. Every arbitration court will naturally make its own decision, but in each case, in the case of either Ukrainian companies, Naftogaz or Ukrzaliznytsia, we will seek compensation for our companies which have lost their assets, have lost their income. These are the two levels we will continue to work on," Klimkin said.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry is closely interacting with legal counselors and international partners in this area to win at international courts, the minister said.
New York, August 22

An Indian-origin woman faces life term in the US for strangling her nine-year-old stepdaughter to death as federal prosecutors charged her with murder and her ex-husband for obstructing the probe.

Arjun Shamdai Pardas, 55, was arraigned yesterday before Queens Criminal Court Judge Gerald Lebovits on a criminal complaint charging her with one count of second-degree murder  an intentional killing that is not premeditated  of Ashdeep Kaur.

Pardas former husband Raymond Narayan, 65, is being held on the charges of obstructing governmental administration and faces up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, if convicted.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said Pardas actions were beyond comprehension and she would be brought to book.

This is a horrifying case of a child, a defenceless nine-year-old, who was left in the care of her stepmother, who allegedly strangled her to death, Brown said.

Queens Assistant District Attorney Michael Curtis said Pardas had repeatedly threatened to kill the girl.

Ashdeep had arrived in the US from India three months ago and was living with her father, Sukhjinder Singh, and Pardas in an apartment in Queens that was shared with another couple.

A report filed by the medical examiners office determined that the cause of death was manual strangulation.

It is alleged that the New York Police Depratment detectives went to Narayans residence and found him, Pardas and the two grandchildren inside the apartment.

Pardas refused to come out and refused to allow entry to the police for over an hour. Narayan later opened the door and both defendants were apprehended.  PTI
New Delhi, August 22

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today expressed concern over the worsening flood situation in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. He promised total support from the Centre in rescue and relief operations.

Modi said Home Minister Rajnath Singh was closely monitoring the situation and had spoken to Chief Ministers of the five states to take stock of rescue and relief operations.

I pray for the safety and wellbeing of those in areas affected by floods in parts of UP, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and MP, he tweeted.

Centre assures total support in the rescue and relief operations. I hope the situation in the affected areas normalises at the earliest, he said in a tweet.

Meanwhile, Home Minister Rajnath Singh also spoke to Chief Ministers of the affected states this morning and took stock of the flood situation in their states.

The Chief Ministers briefed the Home Minister on the flood situation and steps taken for rescue and relief of the marooned people.

The Chief Ministers also told Singh about the operations being carried out by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Forces (SDRF) in the affected areas.

I assured the Chief Ministers of full cooperation from the Centre in the flood mitigation drive launched by the states, an official statement from the Home Ministers office said.PTI
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, August 22

Chief Minister Harish Rawat has said that all legal aspects should be looked into regarding property rights to be given to the displaced people of the state. He held a meeting of senior officials on the problems being faced by displaces people at secretariat, here today.

The issue of giving property rights to Tehri dam oustees settled at Pashulok in Rishikesh, people of Garbayang village of Pithoragarh settled at Sitarganj and Van Gujjar nomads living in the Rajaji National Park was discussed at the meeting. Rawat said the displaced people should get property rights of the land allocated to them and it would lead to more legal complications in the long run.

He said, after taking legal opinion, property rights of the land allotted to Tehri dam oustees should be given at the earliest. It was decided that the Forest Department would denotify the land allotted to the displaced people within 15 days and the Revenue Department would notify the area as a revenue village in 15 days to start the process of settlement.

Regarding the displaced people from Garbayang ,the process of giving property rights after getting legal opinion will start within 15 days at Sitarganj.

The Chief Minister formed a three-member committee of forest, revenue and legal officials to sort out the issue pertaining to property rights to Van Gujjars at Bindukhatta in Haridwar district. The committee would sent its proposal to the Union Environment Ministry and the Supreme Court.
Tribune News Service

Haridwar, August 22

The delay in the clearance of the 300-metre bridge on the Rawasan river, to be built at an estimated cost of Rs 62 crore, has left residents of nearby villages fuming. The bridge will benefit around 25 villages.

The residents, under the aegis of the Chhetriya Vikas Gramin Sangharsh Samiti, organised a protest at the Public Works Department (PWD) office, in which Haridwar (rural) MLA Swami Yatiswaranand also took part.

Swami Yatiswaranand, after finding no PWD official even at 11:15 am, asked protesters to lock the office of Executive Engineer Shrikant Sharma. After doing so, the protesters staged a protest at the main gate of the office and didnt allow any employee or visitor to enter the premises. Though Executive Engineer Shrikant Sharma arrived after some time, but he too was not allowed to enter.

The MLA asked the official to explain the reason behind his late arrival. He also warned of taking this issue to the District Magistrate.

Meanwhile, Sharma said the PWD had sent an estimate of Rs 62 crore for the bridge and Rs 14.8 crore for the road construction covering the stretch of Sajjanpur-Shyampur and Pili, including two small bridges of 40 and 28 metre each. We are waiting for the no-objection certificate from the Forest Department and clearance from the state government. We will carry out the work on a priority basis after receiving the nod, he said.

Lashing out at Chief Minister Harish Rawat, Swami Yatiswaranand said the area was under his constituency so the Congress was deliberately delaying the project. He said an indefinite strike at the PWD office would begin next week in case the government failed to clear the project.

We had staged a protest at the bridge for two weeks last year and District Magistrate Harish Chand Semwal had given us a written assurance to do the needful. Members of the Chhetriya Vikas Gramin Sangarsh Samiti have no allegiance to any political party. They have gathered for the accomplishment of a social cause, he added.

Brij Mohan Pohriyal, a member of the samiti, said people had been demanding the construction of the bridge for over a decade.
Ajay Ramola

Tribune News Service

Mussoorie, August 22

Srinagar, once the capital of Garhwal, is a bustling cultural-educational town with Central Garhwal University situated here today.

A melange of highly qualified teachers and motivated students has led to creation of Srinagar Public Library in quiet bylanes of Srinagar, much to the delight of everyone.

Srinagar Public Library boasts of a collection of around 1,000 books that are displayed in a small room rented for the purpose of motivating the young minds by some teachers and students who met over a cup of tea last year.

The books, right from comics for young minds, to some serious philosophy by Sigmund Freud, Mahatma Gandhi, Marxian philosophy, Vedic Arithmetic adorn its limited shelves.

In the past one year, the small room full of books collected with the help of teachers and students has become a major hub for gaining knowledge and also exchanging diverse thought with each other.

The students, Reshma Panwar, Manisha Semwal, Kusum Pandey, Prakash, Minakshi Negi and many others, operate this library daily after their studies.

Volunteers from the All-India Democratic Students Organisation also make ample contribution in running this library which is a non-commercial venture.

The speciality of the library is the lively discussions on various issues that rock the nation and in particular Uttarakhand.

Several teachers from Garhwal University also attend the lively discussions that take place here from time to time.

The discussions held on Saturday on the topic Migration and Uttarakhand was well-attended and a great hit among the students, says Mukesh Semwal, state president of the Social Unity Centre of India (SUCI) who is the brain behind the concept of students running their own library in the city.

Kusum Pandey, third year BSc student, says, The discussion in library helps us to understand various issues related to Uttarakhand.

To run the library efficiently, a committee comprising Prof RC Dimri (Maths dept), Prof SS Rawat (Education dept) Dr SS Bisht (History dept), Prof Surekha Dangwal (English dept), Suresh Bhatt, Dr Mukesh Semwal has been formed to provide guidance to students.

Prof Dimri says, This library runs on a rented place and we are appealing to some organisation to help us shifting to some permanent structure.

Prof Surekha Dangwal says, A modern library was needed in this town and this void was filled by this small attempt and she hopes that the readers movement will grow big.

Dr Bisht says, We are thankful to Minakshiben Joshi of the Cultural Education (Gujarat) Forum and Colonel Dimri for donations of books to the library.

Mukesh Semwal views that the library is never a leftist, rightist or centrist in its ideology. It is a centre of propagating logic and reason among the students. He says they are not keen on any government help but will love people to donate rare books that could be of help to the students.
Ankara, August 22

At least 22 of the victims in a suicide bomb attack on a wedding party in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep at the weekend were under the age of 14, a government official said on Monday.

A suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 carried out the attack that killed at least 51 persons, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, adding that initial evidence suggested it was orchestrated by Islamic State.

The official said the toll of 51 dead did not include the bomber. Officials said a destroyed suicide vest was found at the scene of what was the deadliest in a series of bombings in Turkey this year.

Islamic State has been blamed for other similar attacks in Turkey, often targeting Kurdish gatherings in an effort to inflame ethnic tensions. The deadliest was last October, when suicide bombers killed more than 100 people at a rally of pro-Kurdish and labour activists in Ankara.

Saturdays attack comes with Turkey still in shock just a month after the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on U.S.-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen. Gulen denies the charge.

Forty-four of the 51 victims have so far been identified, according to the private Dogan news agency. Witnesses said a three-month-old baby was among the dead.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) said the wedding party was for one of its members. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt. Dogan said they were relatives who migrated from the southeastern province of Siirt.  Reuters
The Hague, August 22

A Malian jihadist on Monday confessed to ordering the 2012 attacks on the fabled city of Timbuktu, becoming the first person to plead guilty at the world's only permanent war crimes court.

"Your honour, regrettably I have to say that what I heard so far is accurate and reflects the events. I plead guilty," Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi told the International Criminal Court after the solo war crimes charge of cultural destruction was read to him.

Mahdi, aged about 40, is also the first Islamic extremist charged by the ICC and the first person to face a solo allegation of cultural destruction.

The attacks on the ancient shrines by jihadists in 2012 triggered global outcry, and archaeologists hope the trial will send a stern warning that such plundering of our common heritage will not go unpunished.

Plucked from the edges of the Sahara to a courtroom in The Hague, the bespectacled Mahdi is accused of "intentionally directing attacks" against nine of Timbuktu's famous mausoleums as well as the Sidi Yahia mosque between June 30 and July 11, 2012.

Founded between the fifth and the 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktu's very name evokes centuries of history and has been dubbed "the city of 333 saints" for the number of Muslim sages buried there.

Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries and a designated UNESCO world heritage site, Timbuktu was however condemned as idolatrous by the jihadists.

ICC prosecutors allege that Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly Tuareg movement that in 2012 took control of Timbuktu some 1,000 km (600 miles) northeast of Bamako, along with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

As the head of the Hisbah or the Manners Brigade he ordered the attacks on the shrines, ICC prosecutors say.

Such cultural destruction "is tantamount to an assault on people's history. It robs future generations of their landmarks and their heritage," ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told AFP before the trial.

"No one who destroys that which embodies the very soul and the roots of a people through such crimes should be allowed to escape justice."

The prosecution was due to lay out its case for sentencing, calling three witnesses. The defence and the legal team for the victims will also address the three-judge bench during the five days set aside for the trial. A verdict and judgement will follow later.

Mahdi is also the first person to be charged with war crimes arising out of the conflict in Mali.  AFP
Singapore, August 22

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong fainted while addressing a National Day rally, shocking a live television audience, but officials on Monday said all his tests during a precautionary checkup were normal.

The 64-year-old leader, son of the city-states late founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, suddenly stopped speaking an hour into his speech and had to be assisted off the stage by Cabinet Ministers.

Lee took ill during yesterdays Rally - a traditional address to the nation on economics, policies and politics - after he had a brief fainting spell, Channel News Asia said in its report.

He returned to conclude his speech  part of celebrations for Singapores 51st anniversary as a republic on August 9  an hour later, receiving a standing ovation from the audience.

Thank you for waiting for me. I gave everybody a scare, he said with a smile. The last time I did this was on a parade square at SAFTI; I fainted.

I think thats what happened. Ive never had so many doctors look at me at once. I think Im alright but Im going to have a full checkup after this. Before that, Id like to finish up my speech, said Lee, who has been in power since 2004.

He later headed to Singapore General Hospital (SGH) for the check-up.

Lee, who survived a bout of lymphoma  a form of cancer  in 1992, underwent surgery for prostate cancer last year and has received the all-clear from doctors.

Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan today said the tests were all normal.

PM was feeling unsteady because of prolonged standing, heat and dehydration. His heart is fine and he did not have a stroke, Prime Ministers Office (PMO) said in a statement.

During the break in proceedings, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said Lee has had a gruelling schedule recently, and was just feeling faint after standing for a prolonged period of time. I wouldnt worry too much. This was a little blip.

President Tony Tan Keng Yam posted on Facebook after speaking to Lee.

Spoke with PM this afternoon, after his brief fainting spell last evening during his National Day Rally speech. PM was his usual jovial self, he wrote.

He added that PM had a busy schedule recently, and that the preparation for the National Day Rally took a toll on him. On behalf of all Singaporeans, I wish PM well. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak also tweeted: Heard that youre not feeling well. I hope youre all right. Get well soon.

Lee replied later: Thanks for your good wishes. My doctors tell me I should be OK.  PTI
Diyarbakir (Turkey), August 22

One soldier was killed and three police officers were wounded in a clash with Kurdish militants in southeastern Turkey on Monday, security sources said, as a spike in violence rocks the restive region.

A suicide bomber, as young as 12, late on Saturday blew him or herself up at a wedding party in the city of Gaziantep, killing 51 ethnic Kurds in an attack President Tayyip Erdogan said was carried out by Islamic State.

That attack was the deadliest in a series of bombings in Turkey this year blamed on Islamic State and their rivals, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an outlawed militant group seeking greater autonomy for Turkeys 15 million Kurds.

NATO member Turkey is also roiling with the aftermath of a failed coup on July 15 that killed an estimated 340 people, including around 100 of the rogue soldiers.

A female PKK guerrilla was also killed in the clash, which erupted at dawn near security outposts by the town of Nazimiye in Tunceli province, 500 km (310 miles) northeast of Gaziantep, the security sources said.

Authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew on Nazimiye as security forces, backed by attack helicopters, sealed the area and sent in reinforcements, they said.

On Sunday, the PKK targeted a military vehicle in Viransehir in Sanliurfa province, killing one soldier and wounding four, security sources said. The PKK took responsibility for a car bomb attack on Thursday the in eastern city of Elazig, killing three and wounding hundreds.

The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984, and more than 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, have died. It has close ties to the Syrian Kurdish YPG, which is battling Islamic State in northern Syria and is backed by the United States, a Turkey ally.  Reuters
Seoul, August 22

The United States and South Korea kicked off annual military exercises on Monday, prompting warnings of retaliation from the North, as already-heightened tension on the peninsula has been inflamed by the defection of a Pyongyang diplomat.

North Korea has become further isolated after a January nuclear test, its fourth, and the launch of a long-range rocket in February brought tightened UN Security Council sanctions that Pyongyang defied with several ballistic missile launches.

About 25,000 US troops are joining in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, which runs until September 2. The US-led UN Command Military Armistice Commission said it notified the North Korean army the exercises were non-provocative in nature.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

The North calls the exercises preparations for invasion, and early on Monday threatened a pre-emptive strike. North Korea frequently makes such threats.

From this moment, the first-strike combined units of the Korean Peoples Army keep themselves fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved in Ulji Freedom Guardian, a KPA spokesman said in a statement carried by the Norths state-run KCNA news agency.

Last week, South Korea announced that Thae Yong Ho, the Norths deputy ambassador in London, had defected and arrived in the South with his family, in an embarrassing blow to the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

High-level defections pointed to cracks in the Kim regime, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Monday.

Recently even North Koreas elite group is collapsing, followed by key figures defecting to foreign countries, showing a sign of serious cracks, with chances of shaking the regime further, she told a National Security Council meeting.

North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.  Reuters
Ukraine's second president and Kyiv's representative to the Trilateral Contact Group, Leonid Kuchma at a meeting with the new U.S. coordinator on the situation settlement in Donbas Eileen Malloy have discussed the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

"During the meeting, they talked about the implementation of the Minsk agreements," the website of the presidential foundation Ukraine reported on Monday.
About 40 Russian nationals have come under prosecution in Ukraine for participating in hostilities.

"In total, 39 citizens of the Russian Federation, including 31 servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces, have been prosecuted for participating in the unleashing and waging of an aggressive war against Ukraine," Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy told a press conference in Kyiv.

"Indictments have been submitted to court in relation to 10 citizens of the Russian Federation. Of those, six have already been convicted and given from 11-15 years in prison," he said.

However, the Russian authorities have repeatedly said that there are no Russian troops in Ukraine.
Recently Ive been studying the latest breakthroughs in psychological experiments and behavioral science. My university training is in psychology and sociology, and I find that studying people and how they think is a key to success in every area of life.

Scientists have discovered that we all have several million images around us every day. We only convert approximately 2,000 of these images into conscious thoughts or ideas. The process of how we convert subconscious information into conscious thoughts may well be the most important element of success and defining who we really are.

Unfortunately, too many of us allow people around us, advertisers or the news media to control our flow of images that are converted into thoughts. If you want to know what happened in the world on any given day, you might consult your local newspaper or turn on a news broadcast on the television or radio. Ironically, items become news because they are judged by someone to not be commonplace.

Recently, there has been a lot of media coverage surrounding police officers and how they perform their duties. If the only images about police officers that you allow into your consciousness are the images from the news media, you would believe that all police are corrupt and abusive. While there are certainly abuses and we need to hold our public servants to the highest possible standard, it is important to note while the headlines are screaming about one incident that seeps into your consciousness, the reality is many thousands of policemen and women go to work every day and do their jobs politely and professionally, keeping us all safe.

The media images would indicate that police violence is rampant and commonplace. While one instance of abuse is too many, the subconscious images that rarely reach our consciousness indicate that the vast majority of police officers serve their entire career without discharging or even drawing their weapon.

Images from the news media, by definition, are not commonplace. Stories are chosen to become news items because they are unusual and noteworthy. Police who protect and serve, teachers who sacrifice and mold the next generation, clergy who exemplify the highest ideals and all manner of people living together and doing their best is normal and commonplace but not newsworthy. News stories are real, but they do not portray reality.

Its great to keep up with the news of the day as long as you temper it with powerful and positive thoughts that can put today into perspective and make tomorrow better.

As you go through your day today, be aware of the news but live in reality.

Todays the day!
OKLAHOMA CITY  The states new license plate will feature a scissor-tailed flycatcher, the state bird, officials said Monday.

It will replace the image of an Apache warrior shooting an arrow into the sky. The statue that inspired the image, Sacred Rain Arrow, was created by famed artist Allan Houser.

The new plates will be issued beginning in January and will cost motorists $5. They will generate $18.5 million, said Paula Ross, a spokeswoman with the Oklahoma Tax Commission.

The plates will bring in $11 million in revenue for the state after expenses, she said. An additional $4 million is expected because of increased compliance, she said.

The Tax Commission estimates that the state is owed approximately $4 million from thousands of Oklahomans who are out of compliance and failed to pay their registration fees last year, said Oklahoma Tax Commissioner Dawn Cash. Not only is that unfair to the Oklahomans who are following the law and registering their vehicles, it also significantly diminishes revenue going to public schools, local government and other priority needs.

The plates cost $2.05 to make. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections will make the plates.

The change in plates will make it easier for law enforcement to identify motorists who are not in compliance with state laws, such as a requirement for liability insurance and vehicle registration, said Oklahoma Highway Patrol Chief Rick Adams.

Insurance Commissioner John Doak said 1 in 4 vehicles on the road in Oklahoma does not carry the required liability insurance, making the state No. 1 in the nation for uninsured motorists.

The average cost of liability insurance in the state of Oklahoma is approximately $700 a year or $58 a month, Doak said.

Officials also said new plates are needed because the reflective coating on the existing ones has become dull, making them more difficult to see at night.

It is recommended that the plates be replaced every five years, officials said. The current plates are 7 years old.

The new plates also advertise a state tourism website, travelok.com.

It is also a great opportunity for our license plates to be able to advertise our state, especially to out-of-state tourists, Gov. Mary Fallin said.

Tourism is the states third-largest industry, Fallin said.

The new plates were authorized by House Bill 3208, which passed last session. The authors are House Appropriations and Budget Chairman Earl Sears, R-Bartlesville, and Senate Appropriations Chairman Clark Jolley, R-Edmond.

The scissor-tailed flycatcher became the state bird in 1951, said Dick Dutton, executive director of the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department.

It is just a highly identifiable image of the state, he said.
The CEO of Ramps Logistics says he is "really really disappointed" with the Guyana Revenue A
Prosecutor Generals Office of Ukraine on August 8, 2016 said it had notified 18 top Russian officials on suspicion of committing crimes against the national security of Ukraine. The include top officials and officers in the Russian Armed Forces, including Russian presidential advisor Sergei Glazyev and the Russian Defense Ministry chief Sergei Shoigu.

"Based on evidence collected the Prosecutor Generals Office of Ukraine on August 8 notified the individuals that they are suspected of committing serious crimes against the national security of Ukraine, endangering public safety, peace and breaking international laws  Top elected officials and officers belonging to the Russian Federation Armed Forces are on the list, which includes a Russian presidential advisor, the former authorized representative of the Russian president in the so-called Crimean Federal District, the Russian Defense Minister and his two deputies, along with ten generals from the high command of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation," Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko said at press conference in Kyiv on Monday.

Lutsenko said Ukraine's PGO informed Sergei Glazyev, former presidential envoy to the Crimean Federal District Oleg Belaventsev (March 21, 2014  July 28, 2016), Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, his first Deputy - chief of the Armed Forces staff Valeriy Gerasimov and deputies Dmitry Bulgakov and Nikolai Pankov that they are suspected of violating international law.

Notifications were also handed to the Commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet Alexander Vitko and officers who held senior positions in the Russian Black Sea Fleet in 2014.
ABC International has signed the Victorian government, Swisse vitamins and Monash University as commercial partners of its push into Asia, Australia Plus.

Likening the model as similar to BBC Worldservice, ABC International is a commercial operation and permitted under the ABC Act to partner with commercial organisations.

Whilst ABC International retains full editorial control, the move is notable under new Managing Director and former Google exec, Michelle Guthrie.

ABC International Chief Executive Officer, Lynley Marshall, said ABC International has built a network of media partners across the region, extending the reach of Australia Plus content and establishing a valuable platform for presenting Australian stories.

Partnering with a respected institution like Monash University, organisations like the Victorian State Government and Businesses such as Swisse, offer us enormous potential to showcase Australian life including education, tourism and business, to audiences in the region.

Australia Plus Foundation Partners receive exclusive branding and advertising opportunities across all Australia Plus online platforms, digital and social media channels and Australia Plus TV; exposure through Windows on Australia media events with the ABCs International media partners including Shanghai Media Group, Beijing TV, Singapores Mediacorp and Indonesias MNC and Detik.

Monash University, one of Australias leading international research and education institutions, the Victorian State government, one of the prime tourist destinations in Australia and Swisse Wellness, Australias leading natural health brand, are the first organisations to join Australia Plus as Foundation Partners. AustraliaPlus will build its strong presence in the region and develop its growing audience base through meaningful partnerships with Australian businesses aligned to the same purpose.

The Foundation Partnerships will see ABC International highlight the work of Monash, the Victorian state government and Swisse in their respective fields across its Australia Plus platforms and through Australia Plus media partner networks across Asia. Other partners will be announced in coming months.

Monash President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Margaret Gardner AO said the partnership agreement with ABC International gives Monash unprecedented exposure and reach in key Asia Pacific countries and assists us communicate the scale, scope and excellence of our research and education and our global impact.

Victorian Government Trade Minister, Philip Dalidakis said: this exclusive relationship with ABC International is a great opportunity for Victoria to showcase that we really do have the best of everything  and grow our reputation as the innovation, trade, tourism, major events, food and fashion capital of Australia.

Swisse chief executive Radek Sali said: Our mission at Swisse is to make people around the world healthier and happier, and through this exciting partnership we will be able to take our message to a number of new regions and audiences.

It also gives us the opportunity to learn more about our different consumers needs, so as we launch into new countries we tailor our approach to suit.

Australia Plus, ABC Internationals multi-platform international media service, was launched in 2014 and is currently available to 190 million people across Asia and the Pacific via online, social media and TV, including to Indonesia, China, Singapore, India, Malaysia and Vietnam in languages including Mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia and Tok Pisin.
This week on Foreign Correspondent Sophie McNeill and cameraman Aaron Hollett report from the Yemen war zone.

In a playground of international powers, The War on Children looks at the children who are dying from bombs, bullets and hunger.

A Night Strike: I want to go out and play, says eight-year-old Faris as he lies in his hospital bed. Then the burned and wounded boy turns pleadingly to his grandfather: Will I live? Will I live?

Faris and his family were asleep when a missile hit their house, killing his mother and brother.

A Wedding Party: We didnt expect them to hit a wedding, says Mohammed. He was among the wedding guests who had just finished feasting; the singing and dancing was starting up. Then came the air strike  leaving as many as 40 people dead, among them a little girl named Jood, aged five. She was Mohammeds daughter.

We recognised her from her hair ribbon, he says. There was no face.

A Starving Child: We dont sleep day or night worrying about him, says the father of 17-month-old Eissa. The boy is severely malnourished and needs to move into the hospitals Intensive Care Unit. His family cant afford it.

A Boy Soldier: Are you going to watch your country and your kids and families destroyed? laments another father, as he buries his 16-year-old son, a child soldier taken by a snipers bullet.

Why is the whole world silent about Yemen?

Middle East Correspondent Sophie McNeill travels to Yemen to report on a war that has now claimed more than 6500 lives, many of them children, in just 17 months.

Civilians make up nearly half of all casualties and, according to the UN, they have been deliberately targeted by the US-backed Saudi coalition. Hospitals, schools and homes have been bombed. Nearly 3 million people have fled their homes; 14 million are going hungry; 1.3 million children are severely malnourished.

The hospitals, the schools, public buildings have not been spared in this war and thats been a tragedy, the UNs Jamie McGoldrick tells Sophie McNeill in the capital Sanaa.

McNeill and cameraman Aaron Hollett travel under heavy security to the capital Sanaa and surrounding towns amid rising expectations of the conflict intensifying. They get out just before Saudi-led forces step up their bombing raids and push their troops closer to Sanaa.

As McNeill discovers, hospitals confront not only a steady stream of casualties amid a constant threat of air strikes, but also a lack of equipment and drugs. Thousands of dialysis patients are at risk; there are no medicines for 40,000 cancer patients.

There are many people here dying silent deaths, says Jamie McGoldrick.

This is a civil war  but the protagonists are in debt to outside powers. Houthi rebels who toppled Yemens president last year are allied to Shia Iran. Sunni Saudi Arabia, which leads a regional coalition supported by the US and UK, deploys jet fighters and troops against the Houthis.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes. But when the UN listed countries that maim and kill children in war, the Saudis were controversially included  before being deleted amid claims of pressure being brought to bear on the UN.

9.30pm Tuesday August 23 on ABC.
Actors Takaya Honda and Tim Kano are joining the cast of Neighbours as twin brothers who arrive in Erinsborough to solve a family mystery.

Described as starkly dissimilar in personality, David (Takaya Honda) is a medical doctor with a social conscience while Leo Tanaka (Tim Kano) is a shameless opportunist when it comes to both business and women.

Takaya Honda (pictured left) has appeared in A Gurls World, The Code, Skin Deep, The Family Law, The Great Big Adventure and Play School. New Zealand-born Tim Kano (pictured right) featured in Reservoir Hill, Holding The Man, Berlin Syndrome and Winners and Losers.

TEN Executive Producer, Claire Tonkin, said: When Neighbours first pitched this storyline and these characters, we couldnt wait to hear more. Seeing Takaya and Tims take on these compelling and charming brothers has been a real treat. We cant wait for the audience to get to know them.

Neighbours Executive Producer, Jason Herbison, said: Ive been excited about the Tanaka twins from when we first plotted their story six months ago. To see them brought to life by Takaya and Tim is very thrilling and Im delighted to have them join the Neighbours family.

Takaya Honda said: I feel so privileged to have the opportunity to join the regular cast of Neighbours. To learn from such prominent and long-standing Australian talent is truly seeing my dreams fulfilled.

Tim Kano added: Im loving the role of Leo, who is such a great character to play. Despite the superficial facade, he has a good heart. He is fun and cheeky with a genuine love and respect for his brother.

Both will debut on screen in September.
The issue of access for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) representatives to Ukrainian citizens, who are being held in Russian prisons, remains unsettled, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada First Deputy Speaker Iryna Herashchenko has said.

"The problem of the lack of access for doctors and consuls is common for all those people, who are being held in Russia. For months our consuls have been seeking for the opportunity to get to those hostages, who are being held at the Russian prisons, doctors cannot get there for months," Herashchenko told journalists in Kyiv on Monday.

Ukraine raises at the international top level the issue of access for the ICRC doctors to Ukrainian citizens being held in Russian prisons, but this issue remains blocked as of now, she said.
The National Police of Ukraine took full control of the "amber mafia" in Ukraine.

First Deputy Head of the National Police Vadym Troyan said this on the air of 112 Ukraine TV channel.

In particular, the on-site headquarters of the National Guard have been located in key areas of this illegal business  Rivne, Zhytomyr and Volyn regions.

"The police have taken full control of the amber mafia. We and the National Guard have the on-site headquarters in Rivne, Zhytomyr, and Volyn regions. There were even manifestations in Kyiv region, near the Chernobyl NPP, but they had been quickly curtailed," Troyan said.

ol
Russian-backed militants launched 46 attacks on positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbas over the past day.

This is reported by the ATO Headquarters press center.

In Donetsk direction, the enemy used 152mm and 122mm artillery to fire at Ukrainian positions in Avdiyivka (18km north of Donetsk). Ukrainian servicemen in Verkhniotoretske (22km north-east of Donetsk) came under 82mm mortar fire.

In Mariupol direction, militants used 122mm artillery and 120mm mortars, banned under the Minsk agreements, to shell Ukrainian positions in Novotroitske (32km south of Donetsk). In Krasnohorivka (29 km west of Donetsk), Russian-backed terrorists fired at ATO troops from mortars. In addition, the enemy used 82mm and 120mm mortars, automatic grenade launchers and heavy machine guns to shell Shyrokyne (20km east of Mariupol).

ol
Ukraine will try to bring its defence and security sector into line with the NATO standards till 2020.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said this at the XII meeting of heads of Ukrainian diplomatic missions, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Our ambitious goal is to bring our defence and security sector into line with the NATO standards till 2020, for four years," Klimkin said.

He noted that only Ukraine itself could settle the security issue and the North-Atlantic Alliance provided Ukraine with assistance in this issue. "So we have to coordinate all the efforts to bring our army into line with the NATO standards," the Minister stressed.

ol
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has stated that the Ukrainian side will continue to use all the international courts in order to prove the Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Klimkin said this at the XII meeting of the heads of Ukrainian diplomatic missions, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We will continue to use the international courts to prove that the Russian Federation has violated all the basic agreements and is the aggressor," the Minister said.

In this context, he noted that the Ukrainian side in the coming days would submit for further consideration "a court case regarding Russias violation of its obligations within the maritime law."

ol
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin believes that the introduction of visa-free regime with the European Union will give an impetus to the process of abolishing visa requirements for Ukrainian citizens to travel to other countries, including Asian ones.

Klimkin said this at the XII meeting of the heads of Ukrainian diplomatic missions, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"After the landmark decision on visa-free regime with the EU is made, our reforms, namely the biometric passports, migration management and internal passports instead of Soviet-style passports, will facilitate the visa-free regime with other countries. That is why, we work for a reason, for example, with many Asian countries," Klimkin said.

ol
On September 3, Foreign Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin will discuss at a meeting in Bratislava further political pressure on Russia, in particular the release of hostages.

He said this to journalists, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

"On September 3, I will be in Bratislava, where an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers will be held. There we will discuss ways of further work," the minister said, answering the question about ways to put pressure on Russia in the issue of release of hostages.

Klimkin also said that in October the European Council will discuss the issue on further cooperation with the Russian Federation in modern conditions.

ish
Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States Valeriy Chaly believes that the future relations between Ukraine and the U.S. firstly depend not on a new president of the United States but on reforms in Ukraine.

He said this to journalists on the sidelines of the meeting of the heads of diplomatic missions that takes place in Kyiv, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

"Of course, much depends on whether he or she will be a new US president. But there will be no fundamental changes, all depends on us, if Ukraine will be ready to introduce to a new US president its internal reforms, including the cooperation in space field," Chaly said.

In this context, he said that Ukraine and the United States are planning to launch a spacecraft in the coming weeks. The countries also cooperate in the field of joint production of armaments.

ish
A platform to facilitate the release of Ukrainians imprisoned in Russia with the participation of Ukrainian former political prisoner in Russia Hennadiy Afanasiev will be launched by Ukraine's Foreign Ministry, Foreign Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin has said.

"During the last two years and a half we have faced fundamentally new tasks, such as the release of our political prisoners and hostages. Today I would like to thank all those who have helped our political prisoners, contributed to their release," Klimkin said while opening the 11th meeting of the heads of Ukraine's embassies in Kyiv on Monday.

Klimkin particularly thanked the diplomats working in the Ukrainian diplomatic missions in Russia.

"I can say, that the next week a special platform will start operating at the Foreign Ministry, where we will interact with non-governmental organizations," he said.

The minister added that Afanasiev would work as a special representative of the Foreign Ministry in the framework of this platform.
facebook like button Tweet tweet button for twitter

Published August 22, 2016

MONROE, La.  University of Louisiana Monroe faculty and staff gathered last Thursday in Brown Auditorium to honor excellence in research, teaching, creative/artistic activity, and service at the sixth annual ULM Foundation Awards for Excellence ceremony.

Each winner was chosen based on a set of standards determined by a selection committee.

For each category, recipients were awarded unique honors based on the recipients overall effectiveness in their field and their contributions to the university.

Six awards were given, with four going to faculty members, and two going to staff.

The award for excellence in research was presented to Dr. Seetharama D. Jois, associate professor of medical chemistry.

Jois was recognized for his research in protein-protein interactions, work with graduate students, and his most prestigious achievementa patent.

Jois has earned over $1.5 million in grants, and he obtained funding from the Louisiana Board of Regents to establish a protein and peptide analysis facility at ULM.

The award for excellence in creative/artistic activity was presented to Dr. Bette J. Kauffman, professor of communication.

Kauffman was touted for her work within the community. She created an interactive photo installation called Waterline, which came as her contribution to the political will to rebuild and restore New Orleans and her people after hurricane Katrina.

Kauffmans dedication to the humanities, writing, photography, and the art of teaching are what make her one of the universitys most respected employees.

The award for excellence in service was presented to Dr. Kioh Kim, associate professor of education.

Kims service helped established strong academic and international programs at ULM and its surrounding community. His service in creating collaborative relationships between international universities and ULM has been outstanding as he helped ULM sign academic agreements with one university in Japan, nine universities in Korea, one university in China, and one university in Taiwan.

The award for excellence in teaching was presented to business instructor Thomas J. DeNardin, whose colleagues call him an enthusiastic, motivating, and dedicating teacher who often uses the word 'remarkable' in class to emphasize to students that they should be and can be remarkable in life.

DeNardin has 13 years of teaching experience and 26 years of experience in the field of business, which gives him ability to intertwine real-world lessons into his teaching.

The award for excellence in service, given to an unclassified staff member, was awarded to Sabrina McClain, assistant to the associate dean of the College of Arts, Education, and Sciences.

McClain is the gateway person for the office, working to solve problems for students, staff, and faculty alike.

In addition to her outstanding service to the university, McClain is deeply committed to the community. She is actively engaged in donating to and volunteering at local food banks, area nursing homes, schools, and charitable organizations.

The award for excellence in service, given to a classified staff member, was presented to Martha Sue Oliver, administrative assistant IV for the College of Arts, Education, and Sciences.

Oliver has served the university for more than 36 years and has led the department by assisting and facilitating daily operations.

Olivers dedication to helping the students, staff and faculty has been of immeasurable benefit to the university.

Each winner was presented with a personalized plaque and monetary award.
Musabyenamariya Fratenata and her children at the airport in Angola prior to their departure for Rwanda.  UNHCR/Martim Gray Pereira

LUANDA, Angola  Musabyenamariya Fratenatas husband died five years ago, leaving her struggling to find the money to raise their six children alone in Angola.

Originally from Rwanda, she fled during the horrors of the 1994 genocide and has been a refugee ever since. Now, she is finally going home.

It has been a long time since I left Rwanda and I cannot imagine how everything is now, but I am very excited to go back and finally see my family again, Fratenata said as she packed and prepared to leave Angola, her home for 18 years and the place where all her children were born.

My younger siblings were very little and I cannot remember them very well, and neither can they remember me. I want us to get to know each other.

Fratenata and her family are among 340 Rwandans living in Angola whose legal status as refugees is expected to come to an end in September. The change is encouraging many to consider returning home, and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is ready to help all of those who want to return to Rwanda as part of its global drive to find durable solutions for long-term refugees.

For years, the Rwandese community in Angola was sceptical about returning to Rwanda.

For years, the Rwandese community in Angola was sceptical about returning to Rwanda, says Manuel Abrigada, UNHCR's Senior Protection Associate in Luanda, the Angolan capital. Reasons included historical concerns about insecurity, and more recent worries about integrating back into their communities after staying so long away.

However, with the feedback from the few families that are going back, they are starting to change their minds, Abrigada continues. Repatriation is becoming more appealing for the Rwandese refugees and more are considering going back home.

An estimated 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were killed by their fellow Hutu countrymen over 100 days in 1994. It was sparked by the shooting-down of then-President Juvenal Habyarimanas plane on April 6, 1994.

Fratenata, 38, said she was unsure what the future would hold once she returned to Rwanda, which she fled aged 16 when horrific ethnic violence engulfed the country.

She speaks to her parents and relatives back at home on the telephone when she can afford the call charges, and says they are excited to welcome her back. But she was keen that UNHCR would help her family settle down once they arrived back in rural Rwanda.

My family is waiting for me and they will help us, she says. I will work with my relatives in agriculture and my parents, at the beginning, will assist me sending my children to school.

Seventeen-year-old Lambert, Fratenatas eldest son, was forced to drop out of school after his father died because his mother could no longer afford the school fees. He is excited about restarting his education once he is in Rwanda.

I will miss very much my Angolan friends and the church, but I hope that I can finish my studies in Rwanda and enrol in university to study accounting, he says.

I had never been to Kigali before, but we used to see it on TV and it is totally different from what I thought.

For his younger siblings, there is only the excitement of travelling to the place they are told is their home, even though they have never been there. Nizeyimana and Sebastiao, two of Lamberts brothers, laugh and say together: We are Rwandans.

Fratenatas family are the not the first Rwandan refugees to return home recently from Angola. Several others have already made the move. Among them are two brothers, Uwizeyimana Donatien and Ndasyisabye Donath, who are now home after 22 years away.

Arriving here in Rwanda, everything was quite new, said Uwizeyimana, 33, who worked at an internet cafe in Luanda. I had never been to Kigali before, but we used to see it on TV and it is totally different from what I thought.

His brother said he heard many rumours about the dangers of returning home before he left Angola.

People used to say that there is no security and liberty in Rwanda, he said. They told us that if we went back, we will be imprisoned; but I can see that Rwanda has transformed. It was just gossip.

Eugene Sibomana contributed reporting from Kigali, Rwanda

To find out more about our work in Rwanda, please visit the UNHCR Rwanda website.
Poroshenko promises to elevate status of Ukrainian language as state language with respect for rights of ethnic minorities

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the unity of Ukraine and consolidation of Ukrainians as a modern political nation is his main priority and that the Ukrainian language plays an important role in that.

"The status of Ukrainian language as the only state language will be filled with real content, but with respect for the rights of ethnic minorities. The events of the past two years showed that they stand firmly on the positions of Ukrainian state patriotism. The state should value that, and we value that very highly," Poroshenko said during a meeting with representatives of the diaspora in Kyiv on Monday.

He told the owners of Ukrainian television channels that the share of the Ukrainian language on Ukrainian television is very small.

"I would like to publicly tell the owners and top managers of some television channels: ladies and gentlemen, your share of the Ukrainian language is unacceptably small," Poroshenko said.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's forthcoming meeting with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama is expected to enhance mutual trust, widen win-win cooperation and deliver guidance for management on differences between China and the United States.

"The upcoming meeting between the two heads of state, just as every strategic talk they have held in recent years, will produce very positive and important influence on China-U.S. bilateral relations," Cui Tiankai, Chinese ambassador to the United States, said in a joint interview with Chinese-language news media here on Saturday.

Xi is scheduled to meet Obama during the G20 summit in east China's Hangzhou City next month.

Under the G20 mechanism, the two leaders have already conducted very much coordination and cooperation for years, Cui said, noting that it is also the world's wide expectation that China and the United States can work together to ensure the G20 Hangzhou Summit to achieve a full success.

As the top two economies in the world, China and the United States have responsibilities to play a larger role in ensuring that the Hangzhou summit can yield constructive results as many as possible, Cui said, adding communication channels between the two countries have always been running well.

More than 40 years ago, Hangzhou witnessed the negotiations for the first ever China-U.S. joint communique, the ambassador recalled, stressing "a return to a place full of historic meaning reveals a lot about the direction we should follow."

"The history of their relationship has fully proven that the two global heavyweights must cooperate with each other and must become cooperative partners," said Cui, referring to the building of a new type of major-country relationship.

The ambassador also revealed that China has kept frequent contacts with the United States on the South China Sea issue, reiterating that the issue should not be allowed to define China-U.S. ties since the two countries have neither disputes over even one inch of territory nor fundamental clash of interests in the South China Sea.

The upcoming meeting between Xi and Obama in Hangzhou is the most important agenda of China-U.S. relations in the next stage, said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in his telephone talk with U.S. Secretary of State John earlier this month.

At the time, Kerry said that the Xi-Obama meeting in Hangzhou is very important, noting the United States is willing to work together with China to ensure a full success of the G20 Hangzhou Summit.

The upcoming G20 summit, with the theme "Toward an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive World Economy", will be held in Hangzhou City on Sept. 4-5.
Gulf Petrochem to distribute GP Petroleums IPOL in UAE & Oman

Mumbai, Aug 22 (UNI) Gulf Petrochem, a UAE-based leading player in the oil sector today said that it will distribute Indian subsidiary GP Petroleums Ltds iconic IPOL brand of lubricant in the UAE and Oman, in partnership with NGC Energy and with National Gas Company SAOG, Oman over a period of five years.

Both partners have already set targets of 100 MT/month of lubricant volumes each in the UAE and Oman, by the end of the first year of trading,, a release said.

Gulf Petrochem Group Director, Mr Prerit Goel, who signed the agreement on behalf of GPC, commentd ''This partnership seems like a natural step for all concerned and will only serve to enhance the availability of quality products on the market in UAE and Oman.

UNI JS NV SM1558
Rushdie: US sanctions Iran-based group 29 Oct 2022 | 2:31 PM Washington, Oct 29 (UNI) The United States has announced sanctions against an Iranian foundation accused of putting out a multimillion-dollar bounty on British-American author Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed at a literary event in New York state in August. see more..

Nasa's 'smiling' sun image compared to Halloween pumpkin 29 Oct 2022 | 2:23 PM Washington, Oct 29 (UNI) A Nasa satellite captured an image of what appears to be a happy face pattern on the sun earlier this week, prompting the US space agency to say the sun was seen smiling. see more..

Dozens killed after Philippines storm 29 Oct 2022 | 2:11 PM Manila, Oct 29 (UNI) A severe tropical storm has killed at least 45 people in the Philippines, unleashing floods and landslides in southern provinces, officials say. Earlier on Saturday officials gave a death toll of 72, but that has been revised down. see more..

Man freed after 38 years after DNA evidence 29 Oct 2022 | 1:55 PM Sacramento (US), Oct 29 (UNI) A US man who spent nearly four decades in prison for murder has been released after new DNA evidence pointed to a different person. see more..
G20 bilateral talks unlikely for Xi-Abe, hopes for Park meeting remain

As China, Japan and South Korea on Sunday failed to fix a date for upcoming trilateral foreign ministers' talks, analysts said hopes for a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye on the sidelines of the G20 still remain, although the prospects of a similar meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe look bleak.

Liu Zhenmin, deputy Chinese foreign minister, met with Takeo Akiba and Kim Hyoung-zhin, his Japanese and South Korean counterparts, on Sunday in Tokyo to prepare for a foreign ministers' gathering.

But the three failed to reach a consensus on fixing the gathering envisioned for this week, Japan's Kyodo News Agency quoted Akiba as saying.

Tensions have flared up this year following Seoul's deployment of an advanced US missile shield system and Tokyo's involvement in South China Sea disputes.

According to analysts, the Japanese and South Korean governments planned to use the trilateral foreign ministers meeting to help set up a meeting between their top leaders and Xi on the sidelines of the G20 summit scheduled for September 4-5 in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province.

"It depends on the wisdom and minds of the superpowers, and the ongoing diplomatic exchanges and developments," Yang Bojiang, director of Japanese studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

But he said he is more optimistic about China's relations with South Korea than with Japan, saying that China has no "structural conflicts" with South Korea.

The annual China-Japan-South Korea Foreign Ministers Meeting, which was resumed last year after a three-year suspension due to diplomatic rifts, is likely to be postponed this year.

The meeting, established in 2007, is part of a mechanism for the three East Asian countries to discuss issues including cooperation, leaders' meeting preparation and major regional and global issues.

Japan is this year's coordinator of the mechanism.

US role

The US has played a major role in the strained tensions between Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul, said Huang Dahui, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Renmin University of China.

"Believing that Chinese development will suppress its growth, the US adopted the rebalance to Asia-Pacific strategy. Instead of coming forward, it incites its allies and intensifies regional tensions," Huang told the Global Times.

Da Zhigang, director of the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, agrees.

"The freezing of trilateral relations between China, Japan and South Korea is actually the US' strategic target," Da told the Global Times.

China originally planned to send assistant foreign minister Kong Xuanyou to Japan in mid-August to help prepare for Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi's meeting with his counterparts in Tokyo. But China suspended the visit at the last minute.

Quoting unidentified sources, the Asahi Shimbun reported that Tokyo's repeated protests against Chinese government vessels off the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea were one cause.

China started to send vessels to patrol the waters around the Diaoyu Islands in September 2012, in response to the Japanese government's "nationalization" of the islands. In the past month, China has conducted five patrols in the region, which sparked strong protests from Japan.

Sino-Japanese relations saw an improvement in 2014 when Abe met with Xi in Beijing during APEC.

Relations worsened again this year especially when Tokyo urged Beijing to adhere to the South China Sea arbitration ruling that was unilaterally initiated by the Philippines.

"Japan has assertively meddled in the dispute in the South China Sea, where it is neither a directly concerned party nor a country in the region," Yang said.

"This will become a new factor disturbing Sino-Japanese relations. Japan will not give up its attempts to stress maritime laws at bilateral or multi-party meetings and to besiege and contain China," Yang noted.
Teaching is already challenging enough. Teaching students with learning challenges is another matter altogether. Special education teachers need to be more supportive of the kids and more nurturing.

According to Teach.com, those who want to become special education teachers need to earn their bachelor's degree first. It usually takes about four years and will train teachers-to-be on how to provide students with the resources and materials that can help them learn effectively.

Moreover, earning a master's degree in Special Education would equip teachers-to-be on how to better handle learning disabilities, behavior disorders, intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, low-incidence disabilities (such as blindness, deafness, deaf-blindness, multiple disabilities) and early childhood special education.

In a TED Ed blog post, Laura McClure highlighted Karen Goepen-Wee, an English Language Arts teacher from Canada, and her project named LearnAbilities. It is a digital collection of resources that Goepen-Wee finds useful for her students, their teachers and parents. The collection provides accurate, teacher-approved information on a variety of topics including anxiety and executive function in the classroom.

She shared four lessons that special education teachers can use as reference to make a difference in their classrooms every day.

1. Executive Function

Children with learning disabilities and those who are diagnosed with ADHD often have a difficult time with executive functions such as control planning, organization, memory, time management and flexible thinking. Special education teachers need to be equipped in handling this common problem in learning for students with learning challenges.

2. Anxiety

Anxiety is crippling. There are a lot of children who have diagnosed and undiagnosed anxiety disorders in the school. The challenge for teachers is on how to help these students cope and overcome it by recognizing its symptoms, causes and manifestation.

3. Neurodiversity

To create an effective and inclusive learning community, special education teachers need to understand neurodiversity better. This TED Talk encourages teachers to move toward neuroharmony and help neurodivergent students find their "spark."

4. Accommodation and Differentiation

Special education teachers also need to ensure that they are able to help children overcome their specific learning challenges and meet their needs. This lesson has tools and strategies for parents and educators to use when identifying and working on students' learning needs.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk does not want his children to go through the traditional route of education. He found no school that he liked, so he decided to make one instead.

Business Insider reported that, in an interview on Beijing Television last year, Elon Musk revealed that his school's name is Ad Astra, meaning "To the stars." It is described as "small and relatively secretive" as it does not have its own website or any social media presence.

According to Christina Simon, of Beyond the Brochure, Elon Musk's school only had children from SpaceX employees and a few "non-SpaceX kids" last 2014. Back then, it was still "small and experimental."

In the interview, the Tesla founder confirmed that Ad Astra had 14 kids. It was expected to increase to 20 in Sep. 2015.

Moreover, Elon Musk's school aims to remove grade levels so that there would be no distinction between students. "[I'm] making all the children go through the same grade at the same time, like an assembly line," he said.

"Some people love English or languages. Some people love math. Some people love music. Different abilities, different times. It makes more sense to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities."

Elon Musk's school came about when he found that he did not see regular schools doing the things that he thinks should be done. He added that one of the fundamental flaws in traditional learning can be found in how schools teach problem solving.

"It's important to teach problem solving, or teach to the problem and not the tools," Musk said. "Let's say you're trying to teach people about how engines work. A more traditional approach would be saying, 'we're going to teach all about screwdrivers and wrenches.' This is a very difficult way to do it."

Instead, he claimed that it would make more sense to give students an engine then disassemble it. This way, the function of a tool, such as the screwdriver, would be more relevant. Musk noted that his kids "really love going to school."
Scientists viewed Earth from a satellite and managed to identify the poorest areas of the world.

The journey to eliminate poverty begins with identifying the areas. However, the current studies suggest door-to-door survey which is a time-consuming process. The new method can help the United Nations and many organizations to collect more supporting data of impoverished areas.

How scientists use satellite view to identify the poverty; nightlights and daytime imagery can predict the growth of a city

In the study, Standford University researchers use three parameters: nighttime lightings, daytime imagery and the consumption expenditure opted from survey. They examined African countries including Tanzania, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda and Malawi.

According to these scientists, the expenditure can help to identify the asset of a household. The night time luminosity view has been used in many studies but the estimation is 'rough'.

Neal Jean, one of the authors of this study explained, "In Africa, a lot of these places that are the most poor are actually just uniformly dark at night."

To better differentiate the poorest areas from the well-developed places, scientists combine the nightlight data with daytime imagery.

This technique can 'identify features in the higher-resolution daytime imagery that are correlated with economic development', National Geographics wrote.

Satellite-view of poverty can support household data, map the poverty in low budget

This method will enable organizations to easily identify which areas actually need funds the most. Based on the daytime imagery, it can accurately predict the poorest areas.

Another benefit in using satellite-view to identify poverty is how cheap it is. In fact, it is 'nearly costless', the scientists wrote in their paper.

Scientists hope to replace the traditional method of door-to-door surveys in the future. As for now, the high-res snapshots are only able to support the household data like asset wealth but unable to predict the poverty variations.


The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and long-term clinical impact of tissue protrusion (TP) after stent implantation.

Stent implantation may be associated with tissue (plaque or thrombus) protrusion, especially in unstable lesions, but its clinical impact is unknown.

ADAPT-DES (Assessment of Dual Antiplatelet Therapy With Drug-Eluting Stents) was a prospective multicenter study of 8,663 patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) using drug-eluting stents. In a pre-specified intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) substudy, 2,072 patients with 2,446 culprit lesions underwent post-PCI IVUS (among whom some also underwent pre-PCI IVUS) and were classified according to the presence or absence of post-stent TP.

After PCI, 34.3% of lesions displayed TP on IVUS. Median maximum TP was 0.7 mm(2) (interquartile range: 0.5 to 1.2 mm(2)) in area and 3.0 mm (interquartile range: 1.4 to 6.7 mm) in length. Patients with TP more often presented with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction or non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction but less often with unstable angina or stable ischemic heart disease. In 893 culprit lesions that were also examined pre-PCI, TP was associated with larger reference luminal area, greater plaque burden, and more plaque ruptures, attenuated plaque, and virtual histology thin-cap fibroatheromas. Because a larger stent or post-dilation balloon was used, post-PCI luminal area was significantly larger in lesions with versus without TP. At 2-year follow-up, there was less clinically driven target lesion revascularization in lesions with TP and no significant difference in major adverse cardiac events (defined as cardiac death, myocardial infarction, or stent thrombosis) in patients with versus without TP.

IVUS-detected TP after drug-eluting stent implantation was not associated with worse long-term clinical outcomes, in part because of greater stent expansion in lesions with TP.

JACC. Cardiovascular interventions. 2016 Jul 25 [Epub]

Fuyu Qiu, Gary S Mintz, Bernhard Witzenbichler, D Christopher Metzger, Michael J Rinaldi, Peter L Duffy, Giora Weisz, Thomas D Stuckey, Bruce R Brodie, Rupa Parvataneni, Ajay J Kirtane, Gregg W Stone, Akiko Maehara

Cardiovascular Research Foundation, New York, New York; Columbia University Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York, New York; Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China., Cardiovascular Research Foundation, New York, New York., Helios Amper-Klinikum, Dachau, Germany., Wellmont CVA Heart Institute, Kingsport, Tennessee., Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute/Carolinas HealthCare System, Charlotte, North Carolina., Reid Heart Center, FirstHealth of the Carolinas, Pinehurst, North Carolina., Cardiovascular Research Foundation, New York, New York; Columbia University Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York, New York; Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel., LeBauer Cardiovascular Research Foundation/Cone Health, Greensboro, North Carolina., Cardiovascular Research Foundation, New York, New York; Columbia University Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York, New York., Cardiovascular Research Foundation, New York, New York; Columbia University Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York, New York. Electronic address: .

PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27478119
Two Chinese tourists make a scene on an Air Asia flight from Bangkok to Nanjing last November. [File photo: Weibo]

Chinese tourists blacklisted by the country's tourism authority for behaving poorly while travelling are likely to be banned from travelling abroad as part of the country's efforts to promote civilized tourism.

In a draft industry standard issued by the China National Tourism Administration (NTA), the behavior of travel agencies and tourists will be placed under stricter standards. For example, heavier punishments will be given to travel agencies which force tourists to make purchases, while tourists who are blacklisted will be banned from traveling for a period of time.

China started to blacklist poorly-behaved tourists in November last year. A total of 20 tourists have been placed on the blacklist out of 19 uncivilized incidents. In one case, a plane flying from Bangkok to Nanjing had to return halfway following a quarrel between the flight attendants and two Chinese tourists. In another case, a man tried to stop a plane from taking off by forcing open the plane's emergency hatch.

To prevent these kinds of incidents, the draft industry standard also plans to publicize the people on the blacklist and their uncivilized behavior. Experts say they believe the new industry standard will act as a strong coercive force.

The details of the draft industry standard will be publicized by the end of August in a move to solicit public opinion.
UWs FCAC Changes Meeting Schedule

With the beginning of the fall semester, the University of Wyomings Financial Crisis Advisory Committee (FCAC) will change its meeting schedule.

Starting Monday, Aug. 29, the FCAC will no longer meet on Tuesdays for half of its twice-weekly sessions. Instead, the committee will meet on Mondays from 1-3 p.m., in addition to its Friday meetings from noon-2 p.m.

Most meetings take place in Room 506 of Coe Library, although a handful are scheduled in the Wyoming Union. For the complete schedule of FCAC meetings, locations, minutes and agendas, go online to www.uwyo.edu/president/budget_planning/fcac/.

The FCAC has been meeting twice a week to help President Laurie Nichols prepare a plan to reduce spending by $15 million in the 2018 fiscal year to present to the Board of Trustees in November. The meetings are open to the public, and time is set aside for comments from visitors at the end of each session.

The FCAC and the president continue to invite input from the campus community and others via email as well as in person. People are encouraged to email their comments and ideas to uwpres@uwyo.edu.

Information about UWs budget reductions for the new biennium is available at www.uwyo.edu/president/budget_planning/.
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
Lee Hsien Loong [Photo: sina.com]

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong went back on stage again on Sunday and the National Day Rally resumed.

"I gave everybody a scare. The last time I did this I was on the parade square in Safti, I fainted. I've never had so many doctors look at me all at once. They think I'm all right but I'm going to have a full check-up after this, " said Lee.

Lee suddenly took ill earlier while speaking at the rally. A medical team assessed that the prime minister's condition is not serious.

He was feeling unsteady because of prolonged standing, heat and dehydration and his heart is fine and he did not have a stroke, said the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in an updated statement.

Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies Tharman Shanmugaratnam blamed the tough schedule for his taking unwell.

"He's been having a very tough schedule, hes been standing for some time so he's just feeling a little faint," Tharman said.
(Photo/Sina Weibo)

A man in Chengdu, Sichuan province was recently assaulted by furious animals rights activists after allegedly running a "dog brothel" and sexually violating a number of canines.

According to online videos, the man was dragged out of his house while naked by an angry crowd. The activists kicked and punched him as many onlookers stood nearby. Some held banners reading: Pervert sexually assaulted female dogs, going against morality.

The unidentified man was put into administrative detention for suspected animal abuse, as well as for distributing videos of the abuse for profit, Chengdu Economic Daily reported. It remains unknown whether any members of the crowd have been punished for the assault.

Jiang Yun, an animal rights activist at the scene, told the newspaper that it wasn't the activists who beat the man, but rather his neighbors.

Volunteers dragged him out of his house after we found evidence of what he had done, Jiang said.

Undercover activists began to contact the man after he started posting animal abuse videos in a QQ group chat with over 200 members. Several activists requested further communication with the man, who then allegedly took off his clothes for a demonstration, the newspaper noted.

A number of online posts claimed that the man had not only adopted dogs for the purpose of sexual abuse, but that he even offered Chengdu-based members of the QQ chat the opportunity to rape female dogs in a way that serves us all. Such services were priced at 50 yuan, Chengdu Economic Daily noted.

For now, the abused dogs have been sent to a local animal hospital. They will be taken to an adoption center once they are fully recovered.

According to Sichuan-based lawyer Huo Zishi, it's likely that the man will be punished under criminal law for spreading pornography rather than for organizing prostitution.
SHARE STAR FILE PHOTO The Fillmore Senior Center has lost its lawsuit against the city of Fillmore. It claimed its eviction from a city-owned building was not handled properly.

By Tony Biasotti, Special to The Star

The Fillmore Senior Center has lost it lawsuit against Fillmore over the city's eviction of the independent nonprofit from a city-owned building.

Until last year, the nonprofit ran the city senior center under a rent-free agreement with the city. The city evicted the group in July 2015 and opened its own Fillmore Active Adult and Community Center in the space. The nonprofit found another property to rent and is still operating as Fillmore Senior Center Inc.

Fillmore Senior Center sued, claiming the city did not follow the proper legal procedure for terminating the lease. On Aug. 15, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Kent Kellegrew issued a ruling in the city's favor.

The lease between Fillmore Senior Center and the city stated that the nonprofit would get at least six months notice of a lease termination. Fillmore Senior Center argued in its lawsuit that the six-month clock didn't start when the city said it did, in November 2014, because the City Council never took an official vote to end the lease. It discussed the matter in closed session, and then City Manager David Rowlands notified the senior center that its lease would end.

The City Council has voted twice in open session since then to reaffirm its decision. In his ruling, Kellegrew said the original notification, in November 2014, was sufficient.

"The Fillmore Senior Center received adequate notice of the city of Fillmore's intentions to allow the Fillmore Senior Center to relocate," Kellegrew wrote. "The Fillmore Senior Center should not be permitted to extend its lease because of a typographical error."

The senior center had been seeking reimbursement for expenses incurred when it moved to the new building, as well as the $1,500 per month it has paid in rent since the move. Instead, it faces the possibility of paying for the city's defense against its lawsuit.

A provision in the senior center's lease calls for the loser to pay the winner's legal fees in any lawsuit between the parties, said Tiffany Israel, Fillmore's city attorney. She did not know how much those fees amounted to in this case, but said she will research the matter.

Israel said she will talk to the City Council about whether the council wants to pursue the legal fees, but she doesn't think the senior center nonprofit has the money.

"She's right," said Patti Walker, the president of the Fillmore Senior Center Inc. board. "We don't have the money."

Walker said she hasn't slept well since the decision came down, due to her fears about being forced to pay the city's legal bills. Even selling all of the nonprofit's assets wouldn't come close, she said.

Walker said she will talk to the senior center's attorney over the weekend about what to do next. Israel said she will brief the City Council on the matter during a closed session of Tuesday night's council meeting. State law allows government bodies to meet in closed session to discuss certain topics, including litigation.
SHARE Rick Neal Douglas Tucker

By Tony Biasotti, Special to The Star

Two Fillmore City Council members have elected not to run for re-election when their first term in office ends in November.

Douglas Tucker and Rick Neal say they have their own reasons for not running, but some people in town see their departure as fallout from the suicide in January of Rigo Landeros, the city's longtime fire chief and former acting city manager.

"I quit talking with them after the incident with Rigo, and I suspect that's what happened throughout the town of Fillmore," former City Councilman Roger Campbell said, referring to Tucker and Neal.

It was Campbell, a council member for 16 years in the 1980s and '90s, who helped recruit Tucker, Neal and Manuel Minjares to run for the council in 2012. Campbell organized fundraisers for them and commissioned a public-opinion poll showing widespread dissatisfaction with the incumbents. The three challengers easily won the three open seats.

Four years later, only Minjares is running for re-election. He will be joined on the November ballot by Tim Holmgren and Mark Austin, with the three of them guaranteed the three open seats.

Tucker and Neal are stepping down after both of them, but particularly Neal, were accused of bullying and harassing Landeros. The fire chief died by suicide on Jan. 7.

Two days before Landeros died, at a meeting designed for the City Council to discuss its goals for the year, Neal questioned Landeros about possible improprieties in the way the private foundation that supports the Fillmore Fire Department obtains and spends grant money. Tiffany Israel, Fillmore's city attorney, later told the council she found no legal problems with the foundation or Landeros' role in it.

After Landeros' death, there were reports of long-standing conflicts between Landeros and Tucker and Neal, though the councilmen say those reports were not true. Many people in Fillmore called on Neal and Tucker to resign. One of them was Kenneth Creason, a retired citrus executive, who addressed the City Council at a February meeting in which the council members adopted a new code of conduct to govern their interactions with employees.

"If they ran, believe me, we would have spent a ton of money to beat them," Creason said in a recent interview. "Rigo Landeros was a hero to our community. He was a very proud man. He valued his integrity and his reputation above all, and Rick Neal did everything he could to accuse that man of wrongdoing."

Neal and Tucker have denied any harassment or bullying, and both have said they thought they were on good terms with Landeros.

Tucker said his decision not to run was "a family and personal decision" and had nothing to do with Landeros' death.

"His loss affected me more than most people know," Tucker said. "At the end of the day, I know there was some controversy over it. Unfortunately, people have a tendency to listen to rumors, and in this case they were not founded in reality.  Out of respect for Rigo and the community, I chose to not respond because I just didn't feel it was appropriate. I respect Rigo and his family too much."

Neal said Landeros' death and the surrounding controversies did contribute to his disillusionment with the council and his decision not to run for re-election.

"I can't say it didn't have some impact," Neal said. "Everything affects your decision somehow, when you take everything into consideration."

But Neal said the issue wasn't a big factor in his decision. He said he had always thought about serving just one term if he wasn't happy with the experience.

"There are things I like about it and things I don't," Neal said.

He said he's happy with some of his accomplishments, like leading an effort to get an off-road bicycle track built on a city park with no public money, encouraging the city to bring back its graffiti abatement program and helping the city resolve its sales tax disputes with other cities.

Other parts of the job weren't so fruitful. Neal said he felt his hands were tied at times by strings tied to state funding and by "special interests on both the left and the right."

"It's really interesting getting a peek behind the curtain at politics, small town, state and county," he said. "It's pretty disgusting at times. I think more people should do it, and I think we'd have a lot better-run system if more people knew what was going on."

Campbell said he doesn't regret backing Neal and Tucker in 2012, and he thinks the council "did some good things" in the past four years. But he saves his praise now for Minjares and the other two council members who are not up for re-election until 2016: Diane McCall and Carrie Broggie.

"I was particularly impressed with Manuel," Campbell said. "He handled himself well in a very difficult situation."

Minjares said the decision to run again wasn't an easy one, and he understands why Neal and Tucker wouldn't want to return to the council.

"It would have been tough for them," Minjares said. "There are a lot of folks out there who I think would not have been happy with them running."

After Landeros died, Minjares organized a mental health and suicide prevention fair in Fillmore. He said that event helped him recognize that he still had something to contribute to the council.

"All of us probably felt like a lot of the wind was taken out of our sails after Rigo passed away," he said. "At the time it did not feel like everything we were working on as elected officials was worth it.  I came to a point where I felt like my leadership still was valued with the city and with the residents here, but it was a really hard thing to go through, and there was a long time where I was thinking, I really don't think I'm going to do it again."
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/JEFF CRIDER Cindy Zahner of Ventura carries water for a family in a remote community in Ethiopia so she can experience what life is like where there is no household plumbing. Behind her is Douglas Headrick, a Lifewater International board member who also serves as general manager of San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District; Zahner's husband Bob; and Teshale Asefa, the Ethiopian man whom the Zahners trained in 2011 and who now oversees all of the Lifewater's safe water, sanitation and hygiene outreach in Ethiopia.

SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO/JEFF CRIDER One of the beneficiaries of Lifewater's safe water, sanitation and hygiene projects is 9-year-old Mako Burka, a third-grader who lives in Nensebo Hurobaro Kebele in Gare Kotohashawa, Ethiopia. Here she fills a water container with safe water from a well that was recently installed by Lifewater. Bob and Cindy Zahner of Ventura recently returned from Ethiopia, where they were following up on their 2011 project and found the man they'd trained that year is now a Lifewater employee.

By Doug Thompson, Special to The Star

Five years ago Bob and Cindy Zahner of Ventura taught an Ethiopian named Teshale how to spread the word about the importance of clean water and how it improves health. The Zahners were making their first trip to the African country as field trainers for Lifewater, a Christian nonprofit working to end the global water and sanitation crisis.

Bob, 62, and Cindy, 59, returned to the country this past June on what's called a "vision trip" to see the progress that has been made and to collect feedback for Lifewater. They were thrilled to learn Teshale Asefa was hired by Lifewater and now has seven employees working for him in a district in Southern Ethiopia.

"We saw firsthand the results Lifewater is having," said Bob, a petroleum engineer for DCOR LLC, an oil and gas company in Ventura. "The people are very happy with the results and understand how much this is helping them."

Based in San Luis Obispo, Lifewater focuses all its efforts on the countries of Ethiopia, Uganda and Cambodia, teaching people how to make water safer by building latrines and tippy-taps, a simple gadget used to wash hands with running water.

"On the most recent trip we into the hills of Ethiopia to a village where they've never seen white people," said Cindy Zahner, who is now retired from her career as a dental office manager. "It was six hours south of where we taught in 2011. Teshale took what he learned and showed people the importance of keeping people and livestock separate, how to sterilize water by keeping it in clear plastic bottles in the sun and by drying eating dishes in racks."

Clean drinking water can mean life or death, a fact driven home by testimony from a man whom Teshale had trained in hygiene.

"Through an interpreter, the man in the village said, 'We don't waste our money taking our children to the hospital, now they are surviving,'" Cindy Zahner said. "He told me they can actually name their children now. For over a year they didn't name their children because they didn't live more than a year."

Conversation is about the only way knowledge is spread through Ethiopian villages. There are no newspapers, Internet or social media  primarily because there is no electricity.

"They don't have running water in most of these villages and have to walk for miles every day to get water," Bob Zahner said. "Lifewater helps put in wells and works with existing springs so water can be contained and not contaminated."

Bob Zahner first learned about Lifewater during a 2008 presentation at Bible Fellowship Church in Ventura. He took two training classes and later introduced Cindy to the program.

"Cindy and I were married in 2010, after both of our spouses died of cancer," said Bob Zahner. "When we started dating in 2009 I explained what Lifewater was, and she was also interested. We decided hygiene would be good classes we could teach and do together."

The pair went to Ethiopia in 2011, 2014 and this past June. They recently climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania as part of a fundraiser for Lifewater and were on the summit June 22 on Cindy's 59th birthday.

"From the very first day I got to Ethiopia I fell in love with the people," said Bob Zahner, his voice catching with emotion. "They are not looking for handouts. They just want the tools and knowledge to help themselves. It's a big commitment of time and expense for us, but I can't think of a better way to use my time and the funds I have available."

For more information, visit www.lifewater.org
Appeals court hands down ruling in Godspeak church fight

State appellate judges handed down their ruling in Godspeak Calvary Chapel's more battle with Ventura County over the COVID-19 lockdown.
Fresh Wild Alaska Silver Salmon caught off shore in Nome, Alaska is the featured entree for a fundraising dinner on October 1st at 6:30 pm at the First United Methodist Church in Ventura. Side dishes, deserts, and vegetarian or chicken options will be provided.



Providing the salmon and the after-dinner presentation will be Dennis Weidler, General Manager of KICY AM & FM Radio Station. Funds raised will help support Nomes non-profit Christian radio station.



KICY FM-100.3 is a Contemporary Christian station serving the community of Nome, which plays the top 40 praise and worship songs, Christian rock, adult contemporary music, and even a dose of heavy metal Christian music with some oldies from all categories.



KICY AM-850 broadcasts a largely Southern Gospel/Praise & Worship format with evenings devoted to native singing in all three Eskimo languages. Both stations are staffed by volunteerssome are long-term missionaries and the rest live and work in the community of Nome, a largely Inupiat Eskimo community of 3,700 on the southern coast of the Seward Peninsula of Alaska, located 138 miles south of the Arctic Circle.



Every evening from 11 pm to 4 am, the AM-850 radio station turns their 50,000 watt signal westward and broadcasts into the Russian Far East in the Russian language. The Russian Program Director, Luda Kinok, listened to KICY as a young girl growing up in the Chukotkan village of Sereniki. KICY AM-850, which celebrated 56 years of service on April 17th, 2016, is the only radio station in the United States licensed by both the F.C.C. and the International Telecommunications Union in Geneva, Switzerland, to broadcast into a foreign country in their language.



It is amazing we have this kind of unique international license. Nome is only about 160 miles from the Russian mainland, added Weidler. When the full power of this station is turned to the west, it is equal to 200,000 watts. We have a signal from 1,500 to 3,000 miles into Russia every day.



Most of the fundraising efforts are to offset the rapidly escalating fuel costs. In Nome, a gallon of heating oil or diesel fuel costs $6.00 a gallon and is delivered by barge from the Lower 48. All of the electricity is produced by diesel generators as the nearest power grid is 550 miles away and there are no roads connecting any of the bush villages. In addition, no fuel can be delivered from October through May as the harbor is frozen to a depth of four feet. Prices are literally frozen for a full eight months.



There is no charge for the salmon dinner. A donation to the KICY radio station is requested. For dinner reservations call the church office at (805) 643-8621.


Vegas Magazine celebrated its 12th anniversary with Brittany Snow at Omnia Nightclub at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas (Photo credit:  Patrick Gray / www.KabikPhotoGroup.com).

Photo credit:  Patrick Gray / www.KabikPhotoGroup.com.

Pictured with are Josef Vann, Publisher, Vegas Magazine and Andrea Bennett, Editor in Chief, Vegas Magazine.

Photo credit:  Patrick Gray / www.KabikPhotoGroup.com.

Photo credit:  Patrick Gray / www.KabikPhotoGroup.com.

Photo credit:  Patrick Gray / www.KabikPhotoGroup.com.

Photo credit:  Patrick Gray / www.KabikPhotoGroup.com.


The sexy UFC MMA star, Julianna The Venezuelan Vixen Pena, had two events to celebrate, and she chose to knockout both of them at the D Casino Hotel (Photo credit: the D Casino Hotel).

The fierce fighters birthday happened to fall on UFC weekend, so she thought dinner at the Ds famous Andiamo Steakhouse was the perfect way to celebrate such a cool double-event.

Julianna enjoyed a delicious dinner and didnt tap out after some rounds of Andiamos signature dishes, because there was still a custom-made birthday cake for the UFC 200 champion to takedown.

That pretty floral dress isnt fooling us! After dinner, Julianna flexed for some ferocious photos outside of the famous celebrity hot spot.

Photo credit: the D Casino Hotel.

Its no wonder Ms. Pena was the first woman to win The Ultimate Fighter! The bar was raised when the Ds Flair Bartenders met up with her for a great picture at the world famous LONGBAR. We THINK this photo was planned, but you can never be so sure.

After helping throw Juliannas fun birthday night, we found on Instagram that Richard Wilk (the Ds Director) tried to talk with Julianna about her next big fight, but wound up getting his butt kicked!

VIDEO: UFC fighter Julianna Pena with Director Richard Wilk at the D Casino Hotel Las Vegas

httpvh://youtu.be/8SJmRH3qwco

Video credit: the D Casino Hotel

With the crazy amount of athletes, movie stars, and music phenomenons frequenting the D Casino Hotel, its clear that its the place to party and dine in Vegas. No bouts about it!


Take a break from the summer heat and join Frank Pellegrino Jr. for a special book signing and cooking demonstration at Whole Foods Markets. He will be signing copies of his new cookbook, Raos On the Grill , which features the Raos family summer entertaining secrets.

Frank Pellegrino Jr. is a fourth-generation scion of the family that founded and still owns and operates Raos restaurant, a culinary legend and a New York City landmark in East Harlem. His restaurant Baldoria in New York Citys theater districts was called a prime specimen of a special genre, the Italian-American restaurant (serving) feel-good food in a feel-good setting. Since 2006, he has run Raos Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada, which has received critical acclaim and featured by Food Network, Good Morning America, TODAY, USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Bon Appetit, Los Angeles Times, New York times and many more.

Whole Foods Henderson

Tuesday, June 5; 6-8pm

100 South Green Valley Pkwy., Henderson, NV 89012

Whole Foods Fort Apache

Wednesday, June 6; 6-8pm

8855 West Charleston Blvd., Las Vegas, NV 89117

Whole Foods Las Vegas Boulevard

Thursday, June 7; 6-8pm

6689 South Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas, NV 89119

About Raos Caesars Palace

Raos first opened its doors as a local saloon and 10-table restaurant in East Harlem, New York, in 1896. After receiving three stars in 1977 by former New York Times dining critic, Mimi Sheridan, the restaurant exploded in national popularity and was recently named as the toughest reservation to land in the United States by Bon Appetit magazine. In 2006 Raos opened its second outpost at Caesars Palace and made an immediate impact on the Las Vegas culinary scene and is now recognized as one of the citys top dining experiences. For social media updates connect at www.Facebook.com/RaosRestaurant or follow the fun on Twitter @RaosRestaurants.
Members of the Chinese medical team with Liberian friends

Chinas ninth medical team in Liberia has begun expanding its free services in a bid to reach many institutions and communities.

Members of the team on Saturday, August 20, 2016 carried out a medical outreach program to the Liberia Medicines and Health Product Regulatory Authority (LMHRA) in Monrovia.

Ms. Journey Ben, a member of the team, told journalists that the latest move by the Chinese team was to work along with 40 employees at the LMHRA in carrying out various services.

Ms. Ben said during the service, the team treated patients in various categories such as Internal Medicine, Ophthalmology, OB/GYN, Blood pressure monitoring, EKG for heart patients and Malaria, among others.

She stated that the group also conducted free lab for some diseases including HIV/AIDs, Glu, Cr, and HBsAg, among others.

Other diseases targeted by the Chinese team include Cataract, Glaucoma, Conjunctivitis and Refractive errors in the eye category, and Hypertension, Heart Attack, Diabetes, Malaria and systemic diseases in the medical area. In the OB/GYN category, they treated PID, Vaginitis, UTI among others.

Ms. Ben pointed out that the initiative by the Medical team is aimed at further enhancing the strong bond of friendship between Liberia and China.

We want to enhance the relationship between our two countries, and to achieve that, we decided to devote part of our services to our Liberian friends on a free of charge basis, said Ms. Ben.

Apart from the free medical outreach program, Ms. Ben said the team works during week days at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital, Liberias highest public medical center.

She lauded the JFK management and local doctors for good cooperation and support towards her team. She also thanked the Chinese Government through its Embassy in Monrovia for providing them support to the execution of their assigned task.

Beneficiaries of the medical services were seen in joyous mood praising China for its continuous contributions to Liberia. They described the presence of the Chinese doctors as hope for the Liberias health system. They also recounted Chinas intervention during the Ebola situation and other sectors in Liberia. China is our friend now forever because it comes on our aid anytime we are in need and building our country, one of the female beneficiaries said after going through a successful medical service.

Chinese medical team donating supplies to Liberias health authorities in January

At the same time, employees of the Liberia Medicines and Health Product Regulatory Authority said they are also acquiring added medical knowledge from the Chinese team. The team is not only providing medical services, its members are also sharing.

Emmanuel Weedee-Conway, a Liberian journalist in Monrovia, contributed to this story. Weeedee-Conway is one of the participated in a media training program in China.

The latest medical outreach program by the China Medical Team was in continuation of its free medical services across Monrovia and its environs. It marked the 8th of its kind of the Teams free medical programs. It has been providing services to many institutions and communities including the headquarters of the Liberia National Police (LNP) in Monrovia.

Due to its robustness in the health sector of the country, the Medical Team has gained great recognition. This was manifested when the team was awarded one of Liberias prestigious accolades, the Golden Image Award (GIA).

In January of this year, another Chinese medical team donated some medical and nutritional supplies to Liberias top public health center, JFK, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare as well as other medical center.

Chinese medical team donating supplies to Liberias health authorities in January

Fredrick P. W. Gaye is the News Editor of In Profile Daily Newspaper in Liberia, a fellow at the China Africa Press Center (CAPC) and an intern at Peoples Daily Online. He can be reached by: [email protected]
By: Dezan Shira & Associates

Editor: Anh Ta

Vietnams recent change in leadership with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc taking office has opened the gateway for legislative change. Signed on June 1, 2016 and effective starting July 15, 2016, Decree 50 is one adjustment that investors should be sure to understand. Detailing penalties for administrative violations in a variety of business and investment related situations, the decree covers the administration of public investment projects, investments in Vietnam from domestic and overseas investors, and the bidding process for public investments. More importantly, the decree also sheds light on the business registration process for different business models in Vietnam.

Decree 50 seems to be an effort to improve the legal structure and bureaucracy in order to sustain Vietnams attractiveness to foreign investment. Despite its previous successes in attracting FDI, Vietnams weak legal structure and complicated bureaucracy, amongst other factors, have worsened the investment climate and diverted investors to other ASEAN markets. This decree seems to be an attempt to improve the transparency of the business registration and operations processes, through the outlining of possible violations, fines and remedial actions.

It should be noted that the majority of penalties involve a monetary fine and mandatory remedial measures to be taken. In all cases, individuals will be faced with fines at half the rate that would be applied to a legal entity found in violation of the same infraction.

Violations Relating to the Use of Public Funding

Decree 50 outlines penalties for violations in the usage of funding received from the government from the planning to the execution stages of a given project. During the planning and proposal stage of the project, a fine ranging from VND 1 million (US$45) to VND 20 million (US$897) will be imposed when investors do not follow proper procedure, including creating investment guidelines, a pre-feasibility report, a feasibility report or a budget estimate. Inadequate or false information in such documents, or failure to meet the national standards or technical regulations for such documents are also punishable.

In the execution stage of the project, failure to report adequate and accurate information on the project progress is subject to a fine between VND 2 million (US$90) to VND 10 million (US$448). Any deliberate attempt to withhold, destroy or falsify information on the project execution or implementation progress is fined at VND 10 million (US$45) to VND 20 million (US$897). At the same time, insufficient supervision and periodical assessment of the project or the lack thereof may subject businesses to a fine between VND 2 million (US$90) to 10 million (US$448).

In the case of misusage of public capital, a fine of VND 10 million (US$448) to 20 million (US$897) will be imposed with immediate withdrawal of said capital. When there is construction involved in a project using public capital, any misusage or mishandling of said capital will be fined in according to the regulations on penalties for violations against regulations for construction.

The first section of the decree also details fines regarding misusage of official development assistance (ODA) in any stages of planning, execution and supervision, with fines up to VND 30 million (US$1,345) for going against the governments approved decision on the project.

Investment Registrations Violations

Fines ranging from VND 5 million (US$224) to 80 million (US$3,589) are imposed for failure to adhere to any step of established investment procedures, including obtaining a certificate of investment, registering the investment, planning, executing and supervising the project in Vietnam. In particular, investors should take note of all the investment procedures, as outlined in Vietnams Law on Investment, as a failure to follow these procedures, or to commence the project within 12 months of successful registration can lead to a fine of VND 40 million (US$1,794) to 60 million (US$2,692).

For outward investments, a fine of VND 50 million (US$2,243) to 60 million (US$2,692) is imposed for improper registration, and failures to report truthfully on the investment and its progress can incur a fine of 30 million (US$1,345) to 40 million (US$1,794).

For foreign investors, tax incentives are available in Vietnam. However, failure to fulfill conditions related to incentives after incentives have been applied can incur a fine of VND 10 million (US$448) to 20 million (US$897).

Bidding Management Violations

For investments that involve bidding, decree 50 outlines penalties incurred for violations at each step of the process, including the planning, contractor/investor selection, expression of interest, document preparation, bidding organization, contract negotiation, and posting bidding stages.

Prior to the bidding process, failure to follow procedures for making, appraising and approving contractor/investor selection plans, or failure to satisfy the technical and procedural requirements of the project can incur a fine of VND 10 million (US$448) to 30 million (US$1,345). A fine of VND 5 million to 15 million (US$672) may also be imposed when documents, such as the request for an expression of interest, prequalification documents and bidding documents are not produced, appraised and approved. A higher fine of VND 15 million (US$672) to 30 million (US$1,345) will be imposed if such documents go against any domestic laws and assessment standards, violate competition laws, or do not follow the approved contractor/investor selection plan.

In the organization of bidding, lack of transparency in the verifying, evaluating and notifying bidders can lead to a fine ranging from VND 10 million (US$448) to 20 million (US$897). Going against the approved contractor/investor selection plan or violating the rules of bidding will incur a fine of VND 30 million (US$1,345) to 40 million (US$1,794).

Insufficient communication and failure to provide bidders with adequate information is fined between VND 1 million (US$45) to 10 million (US$448). For other violations in administrative matters of bidding, investors can face a fine between VND 5 million (US$224) and 15 million (US$672).

RELATED: Vietnam Outlines Customs and Tax Plans to Enhance Competitiveness

Business Management Violations

This section outlines the penalties for violations in registering, operating and closing down businesses within Vietnam

Certification of enterprise registration is required for all businesses seeking to invest within Vietnam, and amendments to this document made behind schedule are punishable under Decree 50. Depending on the tardiness of registration or amendments, a fine between VND 1 million (US$45) and 15 million (US$672) can be imposed. Failure to publish enterprise registration on National Enterprise Registration Portal will also lead to a fine of VND 1 (US$45) million to 2 million(US$90); while failure to publish the enterprise information, business and investment plans, and performance reports can lead to a fine of VND 10 million (US$448) to 15 million (US$672).

In the establishment of the enterprise, a fine of VND 2 million (US$90) to 30 million (US$1,345) can be imposed when requirements regarding business type, number of members and value assets assessment are not properly reported. Other report-related offences are fined up to VND 5 million (US$224) and can be found in Articles 30-32 of the decree.

In the operation of a business, violations in the organization of the business, appointment of director and the Control Board are fined up to VND 10 million (US$448). In the dissolution of an enterprise or shutdown of branches, a fine of up to VND 10 million (US$448) can be imposed for lack of proper registration and reporting to tax and local authorities, as seen in Articles 37-38.

For different business types, the decree also details penalties specific to each category. In particular, violations of social enterprises are fined between VND 15 million (US$672) and 20 million (US$897) for not fulfilling their missions, according to Article 40. For business households, fines up to VND 7 million (US$314) can be imposed for violations in registration, operation and dissolution.

Further Support from Dezan Shira & Associates

Decree 50 is a step toward greater transparency in Vietnams Investment framework. However, investors need to pay close attention to the added penalties outlined in the decree to avoid incurring unnecessary costs. Our advisors and experts at Dezan Shira have a strong understanding of Vietnams investment climate and are well positioned to help you make the right business decisions. For more information and assistance, please contact us at vietnam@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com.



About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email vietnam@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight. 

Annual Audit and Compliance in Vietnam 2016

In this issue of Vietnam Briefing, we address pressing changes to audit procedures in 2016, and provide guidance on how to ensure that compliance tasks are completed in an efficient and effective manner. We highlight the continued convergence of VAS with IFRS, discuss the emergence of e-filing, and provide step-by-step instructions on audit and compliance procedures for Foreign Owned Enterprises (FOEs) as well as Representative Offices (ROs).

Navigating the Vietnam Supply Chain

In this edition of Vietnam Briefing, we discuss the advantages of the Vietnamese market over its regional competition and highlight where and how to implement successful investment projects. We examine tariff reduction schedules within the ACFTA and TPP, highlight considerations with regard to rules of origin, and outline the benefits of investing in Vietnams growing economic zones. Finally, we provide expert insight into the issues surrounding the creation of 100 percent Foreign Owned Enterprise in Vietnam.

Tax, Accounting and Audit in Vietnam 2016 (2nd Edition)

This edition of Tax, Accounting, and Audit in Vietnam, updated for 2016, offers a comprehensive overview of the major taxes foreign investors are likely to encounter when establishing or operating a business in Vietnam, as well as other tax-relevant obligations. This concise, detailed, yet pragmatic guide is ideal for CFOs, compliance officers and heads of accounting who must navigate Vietnams complex tax and accounting landscape in order to effectively manage and strategically plan their Vietnam operations.
An industry reborn

So much has changed in the local banking sector since Hussey first worked in Vietnam in 2000. Lenders, during a decade of rapid expansion since the mid-1990s, were set up liberally to cater to the countrys gigantic credit growth in the real estate sector, despite their insufficient expertise and inadequate infrastructure. The system, as a result, produced an alarming number of non-performing loans (NPL), which are still a significant problem to this day.

Changes in the sector, according to Hussey, are the result of structural reform to the banking system over the past three years. The number of domestic banks has been cut back to 35 from 44 in 2011, as weak and poorly managed banks were merged with stronger ones in a bid to strengthen and clean up the banking sector.

In looking just at the past two years, good work has been done in improving the governance and oversight of the banks by the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV), said Hussey.

To reinforce the restructuring process, the Vietnam Asset Management Corporation (VAMC), was set up in 2013, with a remit to handle the prevailing NPLs at credit institutions in Vietnam. By the end of 2015, the ratio of bad debt had been reduced to 2.55 per cent from the dangerous level of 17.21 per cent just three years earlier.

In addition, the size of total assets across the entire banking system was reported at roughly $325 billion in December 2015, a swell of over 12 per cent compared to the same period a year earlier and an average growth of some 15 per cent during the past three years.

Many banks here have emerged much stronger from the NPLs crisis, with better risk management practices, improved systems, and stronger management, said Hussey. Several banks have developed their products and services to a very high standard, so Vietnams consumers are benefiting.

The country is once again in a period of rapid credit expansion, and I am cautiously optimistic as the better banks will have learned lessons from the past. It is very important that banks be cautious in their risk concentrations to cyclical industries such as real estate.

As one of the first international banks to enter the Vietnamese market, ANZ Vietnam has helped lead the way in the banking sectors evolution

Integration begins

The transformation of the banking industry allowed it to stand ready to integrate into regional markets when Vietnam became a member of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) late last year. As part of AEC integration, a single-functioning financial market will be created to connect capital markets across the region, as well as paving the way for easier cross-border financial services.

Given the AEC lists capital market integration as a key goal, it will benefit ASEAN countries in facilitating long-term capital investment, and Vietnam, as noted by Hussey, should be a net beneficiary of regional investment flows.

Indirectly this will benefit banks, as more long-term financing will move out of bank markets to capital markets, freeing up banks to grow their lending portfolios in other sectors of the economy.

However, Hussey believes the Vietnamese banking sector would be fragile under AEC and is not likely to be fully liberalised as there is a recognition that banks in the ASEAN region are not uniformly ready to compete with each other within AEC.

The path for local banks, as pointed out by the CEO, is to make its transition to Basel II, or possibly even move directly to Basel IV, strengthen their capital base as needed, and continue improving their operations. Further consolidation of local banks, in addition, is to be expected, Hussey said.

AEC will not simply profit the local banking sector or financial market, but also open up a wide range of opportunities for Vietnam. Hussey believes the country will play an increasingly important economic and socio-political role within the ASEAN region in the years to come.

Vietnam, according to the banker, has the human and political capital to emulate the development paths of Korea and Japan, and it is encouraging to see more high-value manufacturing and technology companies choosing to be based here.

Modern manufacturing is increasingly reliant upon logistics and supply chain, so we can expect to see components being manufactured across ASEAN, but finished and exported from Vietnam.

It is essential that Vietnam continues investing in efficient customs procedures to allow for AEC to truly work, he said.

Challenges, and opportunities ahead

According to Hussey, among the ASEAN markets, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand have already developed sophisticated modern banks, and over the years have gone through their own banking crises. This has allowed them to build stronger governance, regulation, and capital adequacy. Vietnamese banks, meanwhile, are playing catch up in terms of systems, products and overall management.

Competition is already intense in Vietnam, with very tight margins to the best borrowers compared to other regional markets, said Hussey.

The country, in addition, already has plenty of foreign banks from all over the world. But yes, we are already seeing new entrants this year from ASEAN and I know that there is interest from East and North Asian banks to further participate in this growing market, he noted.

Husseys bank, ANZ, was one of the first to enter Vietnam, an astute move which has allowed them to build a long and successful history in the country. Their head start gives them unique connectivity in the region, sector expertise, and stable leadership combined with a customer-focused and solution-based approach. With such firm foundations, the bank welcomes competition and continually strives to provide the best quality services to keep their clients.

Along with the increased competition, Hussey believes there are other challenges to be overcome if local banks are to stand shoulder to shoulder with their regional peers.

I see two possible challenges. The first is to meet the requirements of Basel II, ensuring capital adequacy, said Hussey. And the second is new technology. It is highly likely that in the years to come, new technology will displace traditional banks in retail payments, possibly also in consumer savings and lending.

Both challenges, if addressed appropriately through further improvements in the banking sector, will benefit the economy as a whole and support local companies in international competition.

ANZ is actively supporting Vietnamese companies expanding overseas through financing their businesses in ASEAN and in broader Asia. We also have an active project and structured finance team who work to finance major infrastructure projects here and in the ASEAN region. Importantly, we facilitate foreign companies investing in Vietnam with access to our award-winning trade, cash, and FX services.
(Graphics: GT)

Seven months after ground was broken for Indonesia's first high-speed railway, which is being developed by a China-Indonesia joint venture, the project received a construction permit for its entire length, media reports said Sunday.

Experts said Sunday that construction should be completed within three years as planned, despite concerns that work might be delayed.

Domestic news portal caixin.com reported on Sunday that the developer of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project, PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC), recently received a construction permit that covers the entire 142 kilometers line. The portal cited sources from China Railway Corp (CRC).

KCIC is a consortium consisting of CRC and four Indonesian state-owned companies.

The source told Caixin that work on the line has been progressing as planned, with absolutely no possibility of a halt, and the person noted that the Ministry of Transportation of Indonesia now lists the railway as a high-priority project.

But construction of the railway linking Jakarta and Bandung, the largest and third-largest cities in Indonesia, has been hindered by licensing woes.

After the ground-breaking ceremony on January 21, KCIC only had a permit to work on a section of 5 kilometers. By the end of June, the permit covered just 56.8 kilometers, or two-fifths of the entire length of the railway, according to Caixin.

The Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, with a maximum designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour, will reduce travel time between the two cities to 40 minutes from more than three hours at present and is planned to be completed in three years, according to the CRC.

Although permits have been slower in coming than expected, KCIC can finish the project within three years, experts said.

"The consortium is capable of finishing the project within 18 months, and it took into consideration that some delays might occur during the construction phase," Wang Mengshu, academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Land acquisition, another factor affecting the progress of the project, should also go smoothly, Xu Liping, a research fellow from the National Institute of International Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday.

"The majority of the land the railway will run through belongs to state-owned firms in Indonesia, with private land accounting for only a small part, so land acquisition should be relatively easy," Xu said, noting that the developer must pay close attention to coordination during construction work.

Differences between the national conditions of the two countries and their respective cultures should be observed, Xu said.

"The developer should also work seamlessly with local partners and abide by local laws. It should also formulate emergency action plans, including those covering security. These approaches can help safeguard construction of the railway to make progress according to its agenda," Xu said.

The construction of the railway is expected to create 40,000 jobs a year in Indonesia, according to media reports.

In March, KCIC was granted the right to operate the Jakarta-Bandung railway line for 50 years, starting from May 31, 2019.

The project is set to cost $5.13 billion.
Women mourn as they kneel by a grave at a cemetery during the funeral for the victims of an Islamic State attack on a wedding party that left 50 dead in Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border. (AFP/Ilyas Akengin)

Erdogan said on Saturday's blast in Gaziantep near the Syria border "was the result of a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 who either detonated (the bomb) or others detonated it."

The explosion was the latest attack to rock the key NATO member in a horrific year that has seen strikes blamed on Kurdish and Islamist militants as well as a bloody Jul 15 botched coup.

The president said the Islamic State group was the "likely perpetrator" of the bomb attack, the deadliest in 2016, that targeted a celebration attended by many Kurds.

The remains of a suicide vest were found at the scene, the chief prosecutor's office said Sunday according to broadcaster CNN-Turk.

Gulser Ates, one of scores wounded in the attack, told Hurriyet the attack took place as the party was breaking up in the mainly Kurdish neighbourhood.

"We were sitting on chairs, having a chat with one of our neighbours. During the explosion, the neighbour died on top of me. I remember being underneath. If my neighbour hadn't fallen on top of me, I would have died," she said. "The bride and groom's happiest day was poisoned."

The bride and groom - Besna and Nurettin Akdogan - were rushed to hospital but were not seriously wounded.

According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, the bride was released from hospital, saying as she left: "They turned our wedding into a bloodbath." She later returned to hospital after repeatedly fainting, Anadolu reported.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN WOUNDED

Funerals for many of the victims took place on Sunday with an AFP photographer saying that some covered relatives' coffins with the Kurdistan flag.

As hundreds waited to say their final goodbye, some voiced anger at what they perceived to be the government's failure to prevent the attack.

Shouts of "shame on you, Erdogan" rang out while others hurled water bottles at police who kept their distance from rowdy crowds for fear of violence. One distraught mother wailed: "I lost my children, now I will never see them again."

Erdogan told reporters the death toll was now 51 with 94 hurt in the attack. A total of 69 people remained in hospital, with 17 in critical condition. Health Minister Recep Akdag said a large number of those injured were women and children.

'YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED'

The bride and groom were reportedly from the mainly Kurdish region of Siirt further to the east and had themselves been uprooted due to the flare-up in violence with Kurdish militants.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said its members had been present at the wedding, also attended by many women and children.

Erdogan said such attacks aimed to sow division between Turkey's different groups including Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen and to "spread incitement along ethnic and religious lines".

Many militants see Kurds as one of their main enemies, with Kurdish militias playing a significant role in the fight against IS on the ground in Syria.

A defiant Erdogan said there was "no difference" between the group of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen - whom he blames for the failed coup bid - the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) "and Daesh (IS), the likely perpetrator of the attack in Gaziantep".

"Our country and our nation have again only one message to those who attack us - you will not succeed!" he said.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Gaziantep would show the same spirit it had shown in 1921, when it defeated French forces in Turkey's Independence War which led to the word Gazi (war hero) being added to its original name of Antep.

World leaders condemned the suicide bombing, with French President Francois Hollande denouncing the "vile" incident and German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling the attack "cowardly and underhand".

The United States also condemned the "heinous attack". "We stand by our ally and partner Turkey and reaffirm our commitment to defeating the common threat of terrorism," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

The pope urged the faithful to pray for the victims while UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for the perpetrators to be "quickly identified and brought to justice".

'MORE ACTIVE' SYRIA ROLE

A major city just 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of the Syrian border, Gaziantep has become a hub for Syrians fleeing the civil war in their country.

But as well as refugees and opposition activists, there have long been fears it was home to a significant militant presence.

IS suicide bombers have carried out several attacks in Istanbul this year, while Kurdish militants have hit targets in both Ankara and Istanbul.

On Thursday, 12 people were killed in three bombings blamed on the PKK, who Erdogan said had killed 70 members of the security forces in the last month alone.

The blast in Gaziantep came just hours after Yildirim said Ankara would play a "more active" role in efforts to solve the Syrian civil war.
A delegation from the National Chamber of Textile Industry of Mexico (Canaintex) will visit Viet Nam from August 27 to 28 to explore the garment-textile sector. - Photo vietq.vn

The delegation is scheduled to visit seven factories and an industrial zone to study the process of making fibre and apparel products.

According to the Mexican chamber, the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, once it takes effect, will allow Viet Nam to ship its garment and textile products to more markets, particularly the United States.

Viet Nam is the second largest garment and textile supplier to the United States, while Mexico is the sixth largest supplier.



Statistics show that Viet Nam shipped garment and textile products worth $11 billion to the United States last year.



In the first half of this year, the figure hit $4.29 billion, up 5.93 per cent year-on-year.
Investors follow transactions at Rong Viet stock trading floor in HCM City. Viet Nam's stock market had a second week of gains.  VNA/VNS Photo Pham Hau

The benchmark VN-Index on the HCM Stock Exchange gained a cumulative 1 per cent last week, closing Friday's session at 662.3 points. It rose 4.5 per cent in the previous week.

On the smaller exchange in Ha Noi, the HNX-Index closed the week marginally unchanged at 83.1 points.

Large-cap stocks maintained the market's driving force. Big gains among shares included in the top 30 stocks by market capitalisation, were seen by dairy firm Vinamilk (VNM), private equity Masan Group (MSN) and confectionery Kinh Do Corp (KDC).

Masan, the seventh largest stock on the HCM Stock Exchange, climbed 11.6 per cent for the week. Its shares reached the daily limit increase of 7 per cent in the last two sessions, following information that the company registered to buy back 20 million shares and raised its 2016 profit forecast by 25 per cent, after recording an impressive half-year profit of VND1.5 trillion (US$67 million), a year-on-year increase of 200 per cent.

Also boosted by positive business results, shares of Kinh Do Corp soared 26.7 per cent last week. The company is expected to earn VND2 trillion from the sale of another 20-per-cent stake in Kinh Do Binh Duong JSC, its arm which specialises in cakes and candies, to Mondelez International. In 2014, Kinh Do sold 80 per cent of its shares to Mondelez for $370 million.

Also, Kinh Do's profits are forecast to reach VND2 trillion by the end of this year.

However, except for some large-cap stocks, overall market conditions were negative, as the number of losing shares often outnumbered those posting gains. Meanwhile, increased selling by foreign investors has put heavy pressure on the development of the market.

Foreigners were also responsible for a net selling value of VND1.1 trillion in the two markets last week. This is the second week they were net sellers, raising the total net selling value to nearly VND1.3 trillion. Their selling focused on blue chips, such as Vinamilk, VinGroup and Masan Group.

"A chain of two-week net selling by foreign investors is likely to be a risky factor which could endanger the market's rise, especially when the market faces a lack of support information this month," analysts at Vietcombank Securities Co wrote in a report.

Nguyen Huu Binh, head of analysis at Investment Vietnam Securities Co, suggested that investors focus on individual stocks, instead of the index, as the rise or fall of the index is being heavily influenced by movements of some large stocks.

Binh said, in the first half of 2016 many stocks recorded very high prices, while at the other end of the spectrum, many shares had set new bottom price levels. Also, macroeconomic developments and external factors had different impacts on different sectors and industries.

"Money is flowing in those shares promising growth potential in the medium and long term," Binh was quoted as saying on the financial website.

Further, liquidity rose slightly on the HCM City's market. The daily trading volume reached 129 million shares, worth nearly VND2.9 trillion, and up 8.7 per cent in volume and 31.8 per cent in value, compared with the previous week's figures.

Similar figures were 39 million shares, with an average value of VND496 billion in the Ha Noi market, down 2.1 per cent in volume and 3.1 per cent in value from the previous week's levels.
Artemia egg importers and shrimp breeder producers have lodged a complaint to the Prime Minister about the imposition of the 5 percent import duty which they say will harm the shrimp breeding industry.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) have also said the tax rate is unreasonable.

Some shrimp breeder production units which are members of the Binh Thuan provincial Shrimp Breeder Association, the Binh Thuan shrimp breeder brand, the best one in Vietnam, is under threat because of declining quality. Artemia, the best shrimp feed product, has to bear the high import tax of 5 percent but the other feed products have only zero percent.

An importer said that Artermia is priced at VND2-3.5 million per kilo. If the 5 percent tax rate is applied, the price will increase, thus pushing up the production cost. This will force businesses to use other normal feed products instead.

A representative of Thong Thuan Company, a shrimp breeding company in Ninh Thuan province, said the company imported two kinds of shrimp feed products from the US (the HS  harmonized system - code was 2309.9013 with the confirmation by the export country) five years ago.

But recently, it has been informed by customs agencies that the product must have another HS code - 0511.9100 - and the product must bear the import tax rate of 5 percent. The company has also been asked to pay tax arrears for the consignments it got five years ago.

The company said that it had sold out all the imports and it cannot ask for more money from farmers to pay tax arrears.

Artermia egg importers have complained that if they have to pay 5 percent import tax arrears, they will be pushed into a corner, while farmers will suffer the most.

When asked why the customs agency accepted the tax declaration submitted by the importer five years ago and let the imports get cleared, Nguyen Anh Tuan, head of the Post-customs clearance Examination Agency said importers must take responsibility for their declarations, while customs agencies have the right to check the declarations within five years and collect tax arrears.

The General Department of Customs (GDC), which insists on imposing the HS code 0511.91, affirmed that many other countries including Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India, Brunei and Indonesia also assigned the HS code to Artermia imports.

In the latest news, MARD on August 12 sent a dispatch to the Ministry of Finance and GDC asking to apply a zero tax rate on Artemia.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong waving after he concluded National Day Rally 2016 (Photo: Xabryna Kek)

"The Prime Minister had taken ill during the National Day Rally due to a temporary drop in blood pressure, due to prolonged standing, exhaustion, and dehydration. Doctors have confirmed there were no cardiac abnormalities and no stroke," PMO said in a statement on Monday afternoon.

On the advice of doctors, Mr Lee will be on medical leave and will resume his duties on Aug 29, it added. He had been due to meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo for a leaders' retreat in Semarang, Central Java this week.

Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean will cover the duties of Mr Lee in his absence, the PMO said.

In a note on Facebook, Mr Lee offered "heartfelt thanks" to all Singaporeans for their concern and good wishes. "Im sorry I didn't have the chance to meet you all after the Rally, as I went straight to the Singapore General Hospital for a thorough checkup. Im glad to report that the doctors think I am OK, but they have advised me to rest, so I will be on MC for this week," he wrote.

Earlier on Monday, Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said Mr Lee's tests at the Singapore General Hospital came back "normal" and that the Prime Minister had a vasovagal episode. The PMO had said Mr Lee felt unsteady midway through his speech on Sunday due to prolonged standing, heat and dehydration.

After a taking a break for more than an hour, Mr Lee returned to the stage to finish his speech, then headed directly to SGH for a full medical check-up.

President Tony Tan Keng Yam spoke to Mr Lee on Monday afternoon and said he was his "usual jovial self". "Glad that he is well," he added.
The PetroVietnam Drilling and Well Services Corporation (PV Drilling) will provide a drilling rig and drilling services for Myanmar from October, PetroVietnam (PVN) said on August 22. - Photo oilgas.vn

Under an agreement with Total E&P Myanmar, PV Drilling will supply its Drilling 1 rig to serve a 164-day drilling campaign in blocks M5 and M6 of Myanmar's sea. Extensions to the drilling will be discussed after this campaign.

Total E&P Myanmar Director Xavier Preel expressed his belief in the management and operation of PV Drilling as well as the ability of PV Drilling 1 staff.

PV Drilling is capable of completing the campaign in a safe manner at a reasonable price, he added.

PV Drilling Chairman of the Management Board Do Van Khanh said that his company will do its utmost to achieve maximum efficiency in the project.

In a situation where large reduction in the world crude oil price has brought rig rentals down and work for drilling rigs has also decreased, PV Drilling 1 has still overtaken 30 other rigs of 10 companies across the world to win contracts.

Since 2007, PV Drilling 1 has continuously achieved operations without any lost time incident (Zero LTI), as acknowledged by the International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC).
The 22nd United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) General Assembly to be held in China next year is expected to present a defining moment for African tourism.

For the first time in the 42-year history of the United Nations (UN) agency, Africa is putting forward a candidate for the post of secretary general and many are convinced it is now the continents turn.

Previous leaders of the important tourism body have come from Europe, the Americas and the Middle East.

But the UNWTO General Assembly in Chengdu, the capital of Sichan province in Southwest China, in September next year is expected to give Africa a chance.

Africa views the post so seriously that it had to take the African Union Heads of States and Governments to endorse the candidature of Zimbabwes Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry Walter Mzembi.

Walter Mzembi

The endorsement came at the continental bodys 27th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government held in Rwanda last month.

Many are now optimistic that Mzembi will defy all the odds as Africas sole candidate and win the contest for one of the top UN jobs.

The endorsement set Mzembi on a campaign trail expected to last almost a year and includes lobbying other countries outside the continent.

The process will culminate in the election of the secretary general when the UNWTO General Assembly meets in Chengdu.

Many Africans think this UNWTO General Assembly will be so important it can leave the continent firmly in control of the world tourism affairs.

And there are many advantages accruing from the continent winning this contest.

There is hope that with an African as the UNWTO secretary general, focus will be re-directed towards the potential that tourism has to lift many countries out of poverty.

In its low state, tourism is already playing a pivotal role in helping turn around the status of many African countries by significantly contributing to the fiscus.

But many believe the status of tourism in Africa can improve pretty fast if an African is at the apex of the world tourism body.

That world tourism has to take a new direction is in no doubt, considering the potential that this trillion-dollar industry holds.

And China has already taken the first steps towards turning around global tourism after it held the successful First World Conference on Tourism and Development in Beijing in May this year.

The theme of that conference  Tourism for Peace and Development  said it all in terms of the expectations that this vast industry can contribute to make the world a better place.

For Africa, peace, poverty alleviation and development are the major prerequisite for future stability.

It is a fact that many African countries lag far behind in development, while some have not known peace for many decades due to internal struggles.

An African candidate is expected to use tourism as a tool of public diplomacy to mitigate against terrorism, wars and under-development.

Although Mzembi is likely to face candidates from other continents like Europe and the Americas, he is confident of triumphing.

There is a very positive acceptance of my statecraft and bureaucratic competence for this post, he said in a widely published interview recently.

Remember, this is an elective international civil servant position which requires competent skills. I have been around long enough to know where to take the organisation (UNWTO) in fulfilling members aspirations and expectations.

The pedigree of my candidature goes beyond just advocacy, marketing and promotion of global tourism to international deal broking and statesmanship, which are all hallmarks needed to confront contemporary challenges.

Global tourism is now big business, generating $1.5 trillion, contributing six percent in exports and employing around 288 million people from nearly 1.2 billion arrivals.

The latest global tourism barometer shows that Africa accounts for only three to five percent of the market and is the only region that registered a decline in arrivals performance at minus three percent in the last few years.

The Middle East claims almost the same market share, while Europe accounts for more than 50 percent and the Americas, Asia and Pacific regions have almost an equal share of the remainder.

Mzembi wishes to ensure that there is universal State membership of the UNWTO and also speaks of working on advancing the vision of open borders, open skies and visa liberalisation.

He says it is time that tourisms natural patent to soft power is deployed in public and people-to-people diplomacy to help fight scourges like terrorism.

It is not hard power alone that will defeat terrorism, he said in an interview. It is complimentary action from soft power that will ultimately win because terrorism is conceived and transported in the mind.

"We must never allow a situation where after traditional diplomacy fails it precipitates war before we invoke the inherent diplomatic characteristics of tourism."

When people arrive in destinations, they are agents of goodwill. Usually they bring an olive branch, so todays 1.2 billion global arrivals can easily be turned into peace ambassadors of this world.

UNWTO, created in 1974, is one of the specialised agencies of the United Nations.

Mzembi seeks to replace secretary general Taleb Rifai of Jordan when he retires at the Chengdu meeting.

China is already preparing for the big event.

Speaking after winning the bid to host the UNWTO General Assembly last year, China National Tourism Administration chairman Li Jinzao said the country was ready to play its part in global tourism.

China will make thorough preparations for it and will endavour to make the UNWTO General Assembly into a platform where tourism departments from across the world can conduct candid and in-depth communication and focus on cooperation, he told Xinhua News Agency then.

Chinas bid for the 22nd Session manifests its aspiration to work together with other countries to hammer out big plans and share fruits of development by utilising the platform offered by the session. Actually, China has accumulated rich experience in hosting large international conferences. We have all the confidence to make the session a success.

In endorsing Mzembi as its candidate for the UNWTO secretary general post, the African leaders considered his wealth of experience and knowledge in the tourism sector.

His brief resume as outlined in a recent issue of the New African magazine shows that he has been a Member of Parliament in Zimbabwe since 2004.

Mzembi was appointed head of the Zimbabwean delegation to the African Caribbean and Pacific and European Union Joint Parliamentary Assembly from 2004 to 2007.

He was a member of the UNWTO Executive Council from 2009 to 2013, has been the chairperson of the UNWTO Commission for Africa since 2013 and is a three-time president of Africa Travel Association.

Mzembi is also the chairperson of the Regional Tourism Organisation of Southern Africa and a recipient of many awards and accolades in various sectors and mostly in the tourism sector.

The co-hosting by Zimbabwe and Zambia of the UNWTO 20th General Assembly in 2013 was largely attributed to Mzembis efforts after he tirelessly pushed the bid.

(Lovemore Chikova is the News Editor of The Herald Newspaper in Zimbabwe, a fellow at the China-Africa Press Centre and an intern at Peoples Daily Online. He can be contacted on [email protected])
Rayid Ghani, director of the Center for Data Science and Public Policy, said police departments can benefit from programs that use big data to, among other things, predict an officer's adverse reaction to a citizen. (Antonio Perez/ Chicago Tribune/TNS)
The Cambodian government has called on long-term ally Vietnam to stop what it called encroachment by Vietnamese on its territory.

A letter sent to Hanoi by the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation late last week detailed alleged violations of the countrys territory by Vietnamese, including the digging of nine reservoirs and the construction of buildings and roads in the countrys east, as well as the construction of a military outpost in Kandal province and a gateway allegedly on Cambodian land in Takeo province.

A meeting has been scheduled between the two sides for August 29 to discuss the issue.

Chum Sounry, foreign affairs spokesman, could not be reached for comment.

Va Kim Hong, head of the government committee tasked with assessing the border dispute, said the government didnt accept this land encroachment, which he said was illegal under international law.

He added that the government had decided to go public with the complaint after closed-door discussions had led to a dead end, but hoped that the Vietnamese government would now work to resolve the issue.

The letter also showed that the two countries have signed an agreement to call on France to assist them in demarcating the border, the exact location of which has been officially disputed since independence from the former colonial power.

Mao Monyvann, an opposition lawmaker with the Cambodia National Rescue Party, welcomed Frances involvement in the dispute, but said the discussions did not lead to an amicable resolution, and said that Cambodia should take the case to an international court of arbitration.
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Monday sentenced Tep Vanny and Bov Sorphea to six days in prison for leading a demonstration in their Boeung Kak lake neighborhood in the capital last week, according to a local rights group.

They were charged with insulting public civil servants for the Black Monday campaign protest, which included the cursing of effigies intended to symbolize corruption in the justice system.

After the 90-minute trial concluded, Judge Pich Vichea Thor read out the sentence. When the activists lawyer attempted to give a presentation in their defense, he was denied the right, according to a statement from the NGO Licadho.

Sia Nareth, a 58-year-old activist from the Boeung Kak lake community, said the activists would absolutely not retreat following the ruling.

Representatives of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court could not be reached for comments.

The trial also drew criticism from expatriate Cambodians.

Youhorn Chea, president of Cambodian Association of Victoria, in Australia, said Prime Minister Hun Sen should be mindful of shifting public opinion following the public murder of prominent political analyst and government critic Kem Ley last month.

If people dont love the government, that government wont last long, he said. So I think Mr. Hun Sen should consider this point.

Ear Kimsrang, a Cambodian living in Australia, said the Black Monday campaign, which has been banned by the government, was a revolution of words rather than an attempt to overthrow Hun Sen as officials have claimed.

Last week Human Rights Watch and some 60 local civil society groups called for the charges against Vanny and Sorphea to be dropped.
A prominent media figure was questioned by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court last week as a witness in an ongoing case against the deputy leader of the countrys main opposition party, leading to concerns from rights workers that it was an attempt to intimidate civil society.

Pa Nguon Teang, the executive director of the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, had taken part in banned protests that were held as part of a campaign known as Black Monday, which was launched after four rights workers and an election official were jailed on bribery charges earlier this year in relation to the same case.

Am Sam Ath, a technical supervisor with local human rights group Licadho, said Nguon Teangs role in the Black Monday protests and the fact that he had been assisting with funeral arrangements for a leading political analyst, Kem Ley, who was gunned down in Phnom Penh last month, meant the court had likely questioned him related to the upcoming election.

It is widely believed in Cambodia that Leys murder was politically motivated, while the alleged killer claimed it was over an unpaid debt.

Ou Virak, founder of the Future Forum think tank, agreed that the court likely had political motivations for summoning Nguon Teang for questioning.

The government seemed to show that it is unhappy with his Black Monday campaign and has displayed a swift and strong reaction towards the campaign, he said.

Nguon Teang told the court on Monday that he did not know what evidence the court had, while Ly Sophanna, a court spokesman, said the judge cannot speak about the investigation in public, because its a secret investigation.

Kem Sokha, the Cambodia National Rescue Partys deputy president, is the subject of an ongoing investigation into an alleged affair he had with a woman named Khom Chandaraty. He has refused to appear in court for questioning in the case.

The four rights workers, from local rights group Adhoc, and election official Ny Chakrya, were detained after Chandaraty apparently claimed they had attempted to bribe her to withhold evidence in the case.
The leaders of Afghanistan and India have vowed to continue their joint efforts to overcome terror and extremism facing the two nations.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated the resolve Monday during a video conference inaugurating the newly-restored Storay (Star) Palace, which is the office of the Afghan president in Kabul.

Lack of proper maintenance and decades of war damaged the nearly century old building, which is seen as a symbol of Afghanistans foreign diplomacy. India's government funded the nearly $6-million restoration project.

Let me assure the people of Afghanistan that in your quest to build a prosperous Afghanistan and to bring peace, security and stability to your society, the 1.25 billion people of India will always be on your side, Modi told the video audience.

India is funding several infrastructure-related projects in war-ravaged Afghanistan. It has poured around $2 billion into Afghan reconstruction efforts, making it one of the largest donors to the war-ravaged nation.

In June, Afghanistan and India inaugurated the nearly $300-million Salma Friendship Dam in western Herat province. New Delhi also funded the construction of a new Afghan parliament building at a cost of $90-million that Ghani and Modi jointly inaugurated last December.

Friends, Afghanistan is a close friend. Our societies and people have had age old ties and links. It, therefore, saddens us to see that your proud nation continues to be challenged by externally sponsored instruments and entities of violence and terror, Modi said in a veiled reference to rival Pakistan.

Afghan leaders allege Pakistani security institutions are covertly supporting the Taliban insurgency to try to retain their influence over affairs of the neighboring country and curtail Indias growing influence in Afghanistan. India also blames Pakistan for being behind terrorist activities on its soil.

Addressing Mondays ceremony, President Ghani thanked New Delhi for helping in the Afghan reconstructions efforts, saying it has strengthened historical bonds between the two countries.

We are decisive to show that we are ready to spare no effort in protecting peace, overcome terror and extremism and work for the prosperity and happiness of our nations, vowed the Afghan president.

This is not only a victory of two nations, Afghanistan and India, but also a victory of friendship over animosity, a victory of cooperation over sabotage, a victory of building over destruction and a victory of wisdom and foresight over superficiality and fanaticism, Ghani added.

Indias growing ties with Afghanistan have raised concerns in Pakistan. Officials in Islamabad recently accused New Delhi of using Afghan soil for terrorist attacks, particularly in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan. India denies the charges.

India and Afghanistan's relationship expanded under former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, which strained Kabuls ties with Islamabad.

After assuming office in September, 2014, Ghani took a political gamble by putting distance between Afghanistan and India as a confidence building measure with Pakistan.

But Ghani has publicly complained Pakistan has not reciprocated his overtures, blaming Islamabad for intensified insurgent attacks across Afghanistan.

Pakistan denies Ghani's assertions and says it is working for peace and stability in Afghanistan because it is linked to Pakistani security and stability.
Twenty years after former U.S. President Bill Clinton's anti-poverty measures became law, there are renewed calls for new approaches to eradicate poverty in America.

Clinton's welfare reform program was the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It emphasized employment, job training and support services such as child care. It replaced a welfare program that offered financial aid to low-income single mothers with a program that featured work requirements and time limits on welfare benefits.

The program was implemented in two stages. The first was the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC, program, which ensured that only full-time, full-year workers with wages below the poverty line would receive a tax reduction benefit.

A program called Aid for Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC, which entitled people to benefits if they proved they were in need, was replaced with a flexible funding stream for the 50 U.S. states, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

The results of TANF are mixed, according to some anti-poverty experts.

Kathryn Edin, a Johns Hopkins University professor and co-author of $2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, said in an interview with VOA, "For people who managed to find full-time work, they're probably better off than they ever have been."

Edin, however, said that of all the children who have been rescued from poverty because of the tax credits, just as many remain mired in poverty because their parents have not been able to find stable employment.

"Most of these people are employed on and off, part time jobs, Edin said. They are deeply engaged in work when they can get it, but they're very, very economically fragile and they've really been left behind."

Ladonna Pavetti and Liz Schott, co-authors of a report published by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, have concluded that TANF has "created a system that provides a safety net to very few families in need and does little to prepare low-income parents for success in today's labor market."

Pavetti and Schott recommend that federal policymakers promote change by creating work preparation programs for parents, ensuring adequate support services, and providing a safety net for poor families with children.

"Welfare in many places in the country  is virtually dead," Edin said. "And whereas those really fragile families used to be able to find a safety net when work failed them, in many places in the country that safety net is no longer there. In fact, in most of America, that safety net is no longer there."

Extreme poor

Since former President Clinton's welfare reform programs were enacted, poverty has increased while fewer families receive welfare benefits. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports there were more than 7 million poverty-stricken families in 1996, nearly three times the number of families who received TANF benefits in 2014.

Edin and the co-author of her book, H. Luke Shaefer, reported the emergence of a new group of American poor since 1996. They are known as the "extreme poor"  families with children who live on $2 or less per person each day.

"After 1996, it became far more difficult to get any cash assistance from the government if you didn't have a job, even if you were raising young children and had no other sources of income," they concluded in a study titled "The Rise of Extreme Poverty in the United States."

Pavetti and Schott attribute much of the blame on the law that governs TANF, saying, "It contains poorly designed incentives and requires no state accountability for providing a safety net."

"The hope was the states would use their flexibility to innovate to find new ways of fighting poverty," said Edin. "This is not what happened."

Edin said some state officials have instead decided to use the money as a flexible slush fund to finance "all kinds of things" to increase their popularity. "Michigan, for example, funds college scholarships, some of which go to rich kids, actually," with the rationale the scholarships may prevent teen pregnancy.

After interacting with poor people for 25 years, Edin said, "They almost universally want work and they want more work." She said about nine out of 10 poor families work during the year but face a low wage labor market that has "grown increasingly perilous for the most vulnerable."

If Edin had her way, she would implement "work-based solutions to poverty" by dramatically increasing work opportunities in the U.S. "Basic access to full-time, full-year work has become a luxury in America and that needs to be the right of everybody who wants to work full-time, full-year."

Edin also recommends that states continue to partner with non-profit groups to provide support services to help keep the most vulnerable people in the workforce.
At Brightwood College in Baltimore, Maryland, Black Girls Vote is reaching out to young eligible female voters, explaining the election process and showing them the connection between their vote and their everyday life.

They try to make the point that everything that happens in a community, even basic safety, has a political angle.

Whether it is the street police patrolling in that community, whether its light in that part across the street from me or whether its more economic opportunities for African-American men, thats tied to policy, explains founder Nykidra Nyki Robinson, adding that Because every single day politics happen, every single day in every single aspect of our life.

The newly founded non-profit organization, is working to raise awareness among eligible voters about the importance of political participation.

With the U.S. presidential election less than 80 days away, some voters have already decided which candidate theyre going to elect, while others are still undecided. It is estimated that around 40 percent of Americans just don't vote at all.

Black Girls Vote founder Robinson, says she is aiming her efforts toward the large group of young black women who just don't vote, despite their growing power at the ballot box.

We know that in 2008 and 2012 that it was the black women that decided the presidency. Seventy-six-percent of African American women were registered to vote with 70 percent of them voting, according to the Center for American Progress," Robinson says.

Why dont they vote?

With statistics like that verifying their power why are so many young black women, between the ages of 19 and 25 still reluctant to cast a vote?

Sometimes they dont understand the ballot voting, Robinson estimates. Many of them dont know what voting is, what impact it has in their day to day life.

And that's where Black Girls Vote comes into play with a message of empowerment, not partisanship.

We have Republicans. We have Democrats and independents. We have folks with the Green Party, Robinson notes. But we advocate things we truly believe will improve our quality of life. We support who supports us. We need to understand our power.

Educating, registering and mobilizing

During the primary elections, the group members collected umbrellas to encourage voters to go to the polls even if it was raining. They called day care providers to arrange late service so mothers could vote after work.

We were blessed with an opportunity of partnership with Lyft, which is the driving company, Robinson says. So what we did here in the city of Baltimore, we lifted people to the poll for free.

The grassroots organization meets women where they are in stores, hair salons, restaurants and college campuses.



Keaira Banks, 20, who is studying at Brightwood College to get a certificate in medical assistance, has never voted before.

I came today to register to vote and become a member of the Black Girls Vote. I think its time for a change, she says.

Keisha Addison who is also studying to become a certified medical assistant is working full time and raising three kids. Middle-aged now, she has been voting since she was nineteen. For the upcoming elections, shes weighing which candidate is going to help her and her community.

My main thing is education because I have children at school, and Im still currently receiving education," Addison says. Also, we have a problem with police brutality with our young men. So Im eager to hear how they feel about that and what theyre going to do about it.

Addison is considering becoming a member of the group because she believes that younger women should be more politically involved. She says her 21-year-old daughter, for example, doesnt want to vote.

She just wanted someone that actually had a voice for youth and was concerned about the voice of youth, she says. So I was telling her that regardless of who you vote for, you need to vote. Your vote counts no matter where you put it.



Your vote, your voice

To get that message across to the community, group members plan neighborhood events, like a campaign for class president for children in Kids Zone, a summer program.

We understand that once we teach them early, so when they go home, they say, Mom, I voted for the president today, not the president of the U.S., but for Kids Zone," Robinson says. So coming November, they hear about voting, they say, Mom, you need to go vote too.

Robinson, says educating younger generations about the democratic process is crucial to help them understand why their vote counts --- and how choosing candidates who represent their needs can bring change into their communities.
The death toll from Sunday's double suicide car bombing in central Somalia has risen to 27, with nearly 90 others injured, according to doctors.

The director of the Galkayo Medical Center, Dr. Abdulkadir Mohamud Jama says the wounds sustained by the victims are unusually complicated.

One person, a man, is paralyzed, some have lost eyes, some with broken bones, some suffered injuries in the abdomen, he told VOA.

He said all of the injuries were caused by shrapnel. He said most of the victims have at least five pieces of shrapnel in their body. These shrapnel are unlike anything we have seen before, Dr. Jama said.

These are big metal shrapnel, with about 10 sharp edges that pierced in body; its even harder to remove them.

Jama said his hospital received support from student volunteers of a nearby medical university. He said the students have helped with the care and emergency services provided to the victims.

Our staff and doctors worked extra shifts but the biggest human resources came from the students, some of them stayed overnight at the hospital, he said.

The al-Shabab militant group claimed responsibility for the bombing, the single deadliest attack the group has committed in the relatively stable, semi-autonomous region of Puntland.

The target was a Galkayo government building which houses the mayor of town and other government officials.

Pictures taken after the explosions show massive destruction of buildings. The impact of the explosions destroyed windows and rooftops of homes far away from the targeted building, and did considerable damage to a nearby market.

Shops and business stalls that survived the attack remained closed on Monday.

What happened was ugly, said Abdulkadir Mohamed Farah, a trader in the Dayah business center. The market is destroyed, you only hear the creaking noise of the metals, there is no electricity, and the area is still cordoned off.

Deputy President of Puntland Abdihakim Abdullahi Amey visited the scene today. He said a delegation of regional ministers who were in the town over the past few days may have been the target.

He appealed to residents to report suspicious people to the security forces.

I say to everyone, if you see a suspicious person passing by or you see one in the restaurant report them to the security forces, he said. "If you have lived this town long enough you can spot new faces.

The Somali government and the United States condemned the attack.

Galkayo, some 700 kilometers northeast of Mogadishu is a city divided into north and south by clan rivalry. The north, where the explosion occurred, is controlled by Puntland, while the south is administered by the region of Galmudug.
(file photo)

Lacking companions, cut off from information technology and in fear of deteriorating health, left-behind elderly Chinese in rural areas are highly vulnerable to illegal schemes related to healthcare products. The latest instance of such a scheme came in the disguise of a gene sequencing test.

Chen Weishan, an elderly woman who lived all her life in the farming town of Jiangyin in Jiangsu province, committed suicide earlier this year by drowning herself in a river after losing 300,000 yuan ($45,250) to a gene sequencing scam. The money she lost was her entire familys life savings, Jiangsu-based Modern Express reported on Aug. 18.

Chen heard about the gene sequencing test through a neighbor. The test, offered by a medical supply company, claimed to detect genetic defects and predict possible health problems for the test-taker and the test-takers offspring, and also predict the talents of the test-takers offspring. As part of the package, Chen was told she could also buy medical supplies at a great discount.

Contrary to her expectations, the six thick reports Chen received after taking the test turned out to be full of unrecognizable symbols and generalized medical results that could apply to a wide range of people. Amid the nonsensical medical jargon, the most comprehensible recommendation was to buy a wide variety of healthcare products.

According to Li Gongkun, who has a PhD in cell biology from Peking University, current gene sequencing services are capable of deciphering individual genetic codes. However, the phenotype of a human being, including a persons talents, height and intelligence, is the result of interaction between multiple genetic codes, which makes it unpredictable.

Xu Chuanhui, a Peking University doctor, said that genes play an important role in disease, natural talents and character; however, based on current scientific developments, its too early to claim that humans have mastered the prediction of talents or character based on gene sequencing.

Any organization claiming that a certain gene can determine a certain human trait is lying, said Li.

(file photo)

Since most young people in rural villages move to bigger cities to work, many elderly people become cut off from the modern world, uninformed about various frauds to which they are susceptible. These senior citizens often have a great desire to maintain their health; they want to be able to farm or help take care of their grandchildren so as to remain valuable and productive when they get too old to work, according to commentary on a QQ news site.

In previous pyramid schemes exposed by the media, healthcare companies have frequently taken advantage of the fact that the elderly desire companion. Fraudulent companies have organized all kinds of activities, including tours and informal chats, in order to win their attention and trust.

Material goods are another valuable lure: A bunch of people suddenly show up in your neighborhood. While dispensing free plastic washbasins, washing powder and soap to residents, they invite you to attend health lectures or free physical exams. They offer complimentary gifts for a few days, and then begin to sell--to cheat, explained a report by China National Radio on May 10.

In Chens case, she was brought to visit the headquarters of the medical supply company, and was put up in a fancy hotel for the duration of her visit. Having never enjoyed such a luxurious environment before, Chen was overwhelmed and filled with gratitude.

The commentary continued: With the migration of the labor force, Chinese rural areas are seeing a rapidly aging population. These senior citizens are easily susceptible to scams, yet have little resourse when it comes to seeking justice.
South Sudan was at the top of the agenda as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Monday with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and foreign ministers from Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, and South Sudan in Nairobi, at the start of a three-country tour.

The secretary of state announced the United States would be giving $138 million in new aid to South Sudan, which he said would be used for food, water, and medicine for those in need.



He also issued a warning to that countrys leadership.

But I want to make this clear, said Kerry. And I particularly think it is important for the people back home who are engaged in trying to help, I am talking about our taxpayers in the United States. We made it crystal clear, that this is not forever, we are not just going to fill in a void. We are not just going to provide help incessantly if they are not willing to accept responsibility and do the things necessary to deliver to their people. That message was delivered loud and clear today.



Kerry also said it is urgent to deploy the 4,000-troop regional protection force in South Sudan recently authorized by the U.N. Security Council. President Kenyatta thanked the U.S. government for sponsoring that resolution.



It is in the interest of many countries in East Africa to deploy this protection force, says Abdullahi Boru Halakhe, a security analyst. He says the only way of stabilizing Juba right now is by doing so.

Countries like Kenya and Uganda are hosting refugees from South Sudan, said Halakhe. They have given aid, the only thing that is left probably is to send peacekeeping troops. The government of Salva Kiir has not been amenable to that, but there is no any other option. Riek Machar cannot go back because a significant number of his military has been decimated so he wont trust Salva Kiir to give him the military.

Deadly clashes

The U.S. proposed the force after clashes in South Sudan's capital last month killed about 300 people and prompted opposition leader Riek Machar to flee the country.

"Let me emphasize, this is not an intervention force, this is a protection force, with a very clear mandate to be able to protect people for their access, their freedom of movement, and their ability to remain free from attack or ambush from any source whatsoever, said Kerry. It is supplementary to the sovereignty and the efforts of South Sudan itself. And I think we had a good clearing of the air today, in the discussion that we had with the participants on the subject.

Kerry also announced the United States would give an additional $117 million to support refugees, returnees and drought victims in Somalia. He said another $29 million will be donated to the U.N. refugee agency for the safe and voluntary return of Somali refugees in Kenya, primarily from the sprawling Dadaab camp.

Following an earlier closed-door meeting, a Kenyatta statement expressed hope Somalia will abide by its presidential election calendar, with polls scheduled for October 30. He also noted the importance of building capacity within the Somali National Army, as the African Union plans to draw down its mission in Somalia by 2018.

Security and Horn of Africa analyst Abdiwahab Abdisamad Abdisamad says a reformation of the Somali national army is the only way to restore security and stability in the country.

Somali military reformation proposed

So many people are asking for themselves the last half a century how 22,000 AMISOM troops, 10,000 Somali troops, the alpha group unit trained by the U.S. government, plus other Somali regional administrations troops are over 100,000 troops," said Abdisamad. "All those forces are struggling to contain 5,000 militants. Therefore, this proves that this project is a failure and it is clear that a reformation of Somali military is better.



Richard Tuta, a Kenyan homeland security expert, argues that Somalia impacts Kenyas national security more than that of South Sudan, and that priority should be given to stabilizing Somalia.



The happenings in South Sudan do not affect Kenya as a country directly, they only affect Kenya on refugee issues. But the happenings in Somalia, the insecurity in Somalia affect Kenya as a country directly," said Tuta. "Somalia has been the command center of al-Shabab. Kenya is always on the receiving end of anything that happens in Somalia. Kenyan engagement in Somalia is of its own interest, but engagement in South Sudan is the opposite.



Kerry noted that he and Kenyatta discussed the importance of preparations for Kenyas 2017 national elections, and he said the United States is investing more than $25 million to support that electoral process.
Clashes continued Monday between Syrian government forces and Kurdish fighters in the northeastern city of Hasaka amid reports of an ongoing effort by Russia to reach a cease-fire agreement, activists and residents said.

Kurdish forces, known as the People's Protection Units (YPG), have made new advances against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad's regime, reports said.

"The YPG is now in control of much of the city," Evan Hassib, who reports on the events in Hasaka, told VOA.

Kurdish fighters' gains were noticeable after government warplanes ceased bombing Kurdish positions in the city on Friday. The Syrian air assaults stopped after U.S. military planes were sent to the region to protect Kurdish forces.

Despite Kurdish advances, many Kurdish residents are unable to leave their homes due to the ongoing government artillery bombing from the ground.

"Many people are still stranded there," Hasaka resident Hasan Mislit told VOA. "They can't get out." Mislit has taken refuge in the nearby town of Amude.

The Pentagon confirmed that Syrian warplanes conducted strikes against "ground forces in the vicinity of Hasaka" last week. The strikes did not threaten coalition forces that are operating there.

"We made it clear that coalition aircraft would defend its troops on the ground if threatened," U.S. Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway said last week.

Hassib said that he could hear U.S. aircraft as fighting between government troops and Kurdish fighters continued on the ground.

Russia mediation

In the meantime, Russia is reportedly mediating between the two sides to reach a truce and come up with a plan to run the city.

A meeting took place Monday between Kurds and government representatives inside Hmeimim, Russia's airbase in the Syrian city of Latakia, a journalist close to the Syrian government told VOA. He requested to remain anonymous.

The YPG has denied participation in any meetings with Syrian officials, saying they would continue fighting until the last government-held areas of the city had been controlled.

Mohammed Za'al Ali, the governor of Hasaka, said that Kurdish fighters intend to push out government forces from strategic points of the Kurdish-majority city.

"The Kurds want us to relinquish power over the city, but that's not going to happen because we represent the state here," he said in an interview with a Kurdish news channel.

The Syrian official said that instead of making such demands, Kurdish forces should cooperate with Syrian government troops to fight Islamic State militants in the country.

The two sides have occasionally worked together to fight IS in parts of northeastern Syria.

The YPG is a key element of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that has the backing of the U.S. in the fight against IS militants in Syria.

Since 2012, the Kurdish region has been run by local Kurdish forces after government troops largely withdrew to focus on fighting rebels in other parts of the country.

In major cities like Hasaka and nearby Qamishli, however, government and Kurdish groups have been working loosely to oversee the area.

Hasaka Residents Flee to Neighboring Syrian Cities as Clashes Intensify:
The Liberian Supreme Court will hear Monday from the feuding sides of the countrys House of Representatives. About 40 of the 73 members of the House want Speaker Alex Tyler to recuse himself while he faces criminal bribery charges.

A grand jury indicted Tyler, other government officials, a Liberian businessman and a foreign mining company in May following a report by London-based advocacy group Global Witness.

We are cognizant that the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. So, we are not asking him to be removed but we want him to recuse himself until hes vindicated," Representative Edwin Snowe, a former speaker of the house and vocal Tyler opponent told VOA.

"We are not looking for a speaker who after sitting on a defendants bench and after his case comes back to preside over the House of Representatives, Snowe said.

The Global Witness report says more than $950,000 in bribes and other suspicious payments were made to top Liberian officials by the Britain-based Sable Mining Company and its Liberian lawyer, Varney Sherman to secure a mining concession in 2010.

The report alleges Tyler received $75,000 in consulting fees. He has accused President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of being behind the effort to unseat him.

Tyler has asked the Supreme Court to issue a writ of prohibition against those trying to conduct House business without his authority.

President Sirleaf wrote a letter to legislators last week in favor of Tyler recusing himself. The president has since withdrawn the letter, citing clerical errors.

The dispute over Tyler has halted legislative proceedings, including the passing of a national budget.
A Malian jihadist has pleaded guilty to destroying cherished monuments in the Malian city of Timbuktu, in the International Criminal Court's first-ever cultural war crimes trial.

\The trial at the International Criminal Court of Islamist Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi is expected to last only a few days. That is because al-Mahdi has accepted the charges against him, directing 2012 attacks against nine mausoleums and a mosque in the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu.

Pleading guilty and reading out a statement at the trials opening -- translated here by an interpreter -- he said he had been influenced by deviant groups, and urged other Muslims not to follow his example.

I am really sorry, I am really remorseful and I regret all the damage my actions have caused," al-Mahdi said. "I regret what I had caused to my family, my community in Timbuktu, what I have caused my home nation Mali and I am really remorseful of what I caused the international community as a whole.

Al-Mahdi is accused of leading a vice squad organized by militant group Ansar Dine, which attacked and occupied Timbuktu, a renown city of culture and learning and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The radical group with ties to al-Qaida imposed a harsh form of Islamic law, until French forces drove it out in 2013.

The trial is the first time a defendant has pled guilty at the ICC, and the first time the international tribunal is holding a war crimes trial for destroying cultural monuments.

Attacking Timbuktus culture, chief ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda argued, is an attack on humanity.

Culture is who we are. Our ancestors created paintings, sculptures, mosques, temples and other forms of cultural possessions all around us," she said. "They put their hearts and souls into the creation of such cultural heritage so that it represents the cultural identity of their times, and is passed on for future generations.

Bensouda stressed the broader implications of the landmark case, at a time when radical groups are attacking ancient monuments and artifacts in places like Syria and Iraq.

While welcoming the trial, rights groups say they regret charges against al-Mahdi were not broadened to include other crimes, and that others involved in war crimes in Mali should also face justice.

Al-Mahdi could face up to 30 years in prison, but prosecutors say they will seek a sentence of nine to 11 years.
Several high-dollar donors to the Clinton Foundation were given access to Hillary Clinton during her time as secretary of state, according to a new batch of emails released Monday.

The documents, provided by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch, are the latest evidence of overlap between Clinton's work at the State Department and that of the Clinton Foundation.

In one instance, Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band attempted to secure a meeting between Clinton and Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain, who had donated millions to Clinton charitable efforts.

"Good friend of ours," Band said in the email.

Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin, later replied by saying that a meeting had been set up. In the emails, Abedin served as a go-between for several other Clinton Foundation donors who sought to meet with Clinton.

Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. She says she kept her work at the State Department separate from that of the Clinton Foundation, which does philanthropic work around the globe.

Her Republican presidential rival, Donald Trump, has used the issue to paint Clinton as corrupt, saying she was engaging in "pay-to-play" practices with donors.

On Monday, Trump renewed his call for the Clinton Foundation to be shut down, repeating his accusation that the charity group represents a conflict of interest for Clinton.

"It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt political enterprise in history," Trump said Monday. "What they were doing during Crooked Hillary's time as secretary of state was wrong then, and it is wrong now. It must be shut down immediately."

Pressure

The foundation last week announced it would stop accepting foreign and corporate donations if Hillary Clinton were elected president. It also said her husband, former President Bill Clinton, would step down from the group's board.

That hasn't been enough to satisfy many critics. This week, the left-leaning Huffington Post became the latest media outlet to call for the Clinton Foundation to be shut down, joining the editorial boards of the Boston Globe and the New York Post.

"It's pretty obvious the Clinton Foundation has presented loads of problems and conflicts of interests for Hillary Clinton so far," said Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "They would be far better off just shutting it down. But they're not willing."

No smoking gun?

Earlier email releases suggested State Department aides to Clinton looked into doing favors for Clinton Foundation donors or those linked to donors. But nothing has shown that the favors were actually granted.

Most of the accusations have focused on two separate instances.

Shortly after Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in 2013, the State Department expressed interest in, but didn't follow through with, buying real estate from a Nigerian company run by a man whose brother donated at least $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.

In another instance, Clinton Foundation official Band asked a top Clinton aide at the State Department about getting a job for an individual whom he said it was "important to take care of." The individual, whose name was redacted in the email, was subsequently sent "options," according to a reply by Abedin, the State Department aide. The outcome of the apparent job placement effort is not clear.

Clinton herself has not been implicated in any of the emails.

Clinton hits back

Clinton campaign officials have firmly denied any wrongdoing, saying any decisions by Clinton were made without considering the influence of donors. More recently, they also have begun to use the issue as a way to launch counterattacks on Trump's business dealings.

"The Clinton Foundation is a charity that helps people around the world. It's already announced major steps it'll take if Clinton wins," Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said on Twitter. "Trump's businesses exist to enrich himself, involve a web of shady connections, and he still hasn't committed to divesting his holdings."

The billionaire Trump has said that, if elected president, he would hand over control of the Trump Organization to his three oldest children, who also are involved with their father's presidential campaign.
Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay says the Pacific nation will stay in the United Nations, downplaying a threat issued by President Rodrigo Duterte.

Duterte issued the threat Sunday in response to criticism of his incendiary anti-drug trafficking campaign by the world body, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Earlier last week, he said the U.N. was making "a very stupid proposition" in criticizing his efforts.

Yasay told reporters in Manila Monday that Duterte's statement merely expressed "profound disappointment and frustration" with the U.N.

At least 1,000 suspected drug traffickers have been killed since the president took office in June, having won election on a pledge of ridding the archipelago of illicit drugs and drug criminals.
Europe needs to invest in defense, education and culture while breaking free of bureaucratic rules, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Monday ahead of a meeting with the leaders of Germany and France.

Renzi will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande at a summit rich with symbolism as the European Union gropes for a way forward following Britain's shock referendum in June to abandon the 28-nation bloc.

The trio will travel first to an island off the coast of Naples to lay a wreath on the tomb of an Italian intellectual seen as one of the founding fathers of European unity. They will then hold talks on an aircraft carrier that is coordinating an EU naval mission against migrant traffickers.

"These are two symbols in one. Ideal values and concrete commitments," Renzi said.



He said Europe needed to overcome the Brexit vote and a recent wave of militant attacks, and rediscover its role.

"We need to invest in a common defense policy, in digital innovation, in schools and culture. Europe is the affectionate mother of our values, it is not the icy guardian of bureaucratic rules that are difficult to accept," Renzi wrote.



Heavily indebted Italy, whose economy has barely grown since the introduction of the euro currency in 1999, has repeatedly chafed against stern EU budget rules, and both Renzi and Hollande want greater flexibility to help boost growth.

Germany is keen for rules to be respected and the issue is not expected to be broached on Monday. But the three leaders are due to discuss common positions ahead of an EU summit in Bratislava next month which Britain was not invited to.

While Italy is eager for greater European consolidation in the wake of Brexit, Merkel wants to cement "a better Europe" rather than forge ahead with "more Europe."

Migration and security



Monday's talks mark the beginning of a week of meetings for Merkel with other European governments that will see her travel to four countries and receive leaders from another eight. "The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27," an EU diplomat said.

Threats to the union that emerged long before the Brexit vote are also likely to be on the agenda, including internal and external security after Islamist militant attacks and Europe's migration crisis.

The three leaders are due to hold a news conference at around 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) on the Italian aircraft carrier, the Garibaldi, which is the flagship of the EU's "Sophia" mission in the Mediterranean. The operation is intended to tackle migrant smugglers, help enforce an arms embargo off Libya, and train the Libyan coast guard.

The EU plans to offer incentives to African governments to help slow the flow of migrants who have poured into Europe over the past three years, but disagreements on how to handle the situation have laid bare divisions between member states.

Italy, the main entry point for Africans but rarely their planned destination, is struggling to house migrants turned back from neighboring countries including France, and has disagreed with Germany over how to finance the response.
On Monday, Cameroon marks 30 years since its worst natural disaster ever, a toxic gas explosion at Lake Nyos in the northwest that killed 2,000 people and 3,500 animals. The victims say they still have not received promised compensation. They also want to return to their homes, but the government says the lake is still toxic.

Lake Nyos and the surrounding land in northwest Cameroon appear to be completely dead. There is no sign of birds or other animals.

The lake was the source of toxic gas 30 years ago that killed by suffocation some 2,000 people and 3,500 livestock animals within 25 kilometers of the lake. Magma under the lake leaks carbon dioxide into the water, and a large cloud of the deadly gas escaped into the air on August 21, 1986.

This camp situated 25 kilometers from the lake is now home to survivors.

Papa Saboum lost his 30-year-old wife at the time and still has fresh memories of what happened to him and his neighbor, a commissioner of police.

I never saw her on the bed but on the floor. I said how, why has this woman decided to take poison inside this house," he said. "From there I heard the wife of the commissioner crying, saying hey my man eh, my husband eh.

Residents say when the incident happened, the government of Cameroon promised to assist them by building new houses and giving them money to do farming and raise animals. The survivors say since then, they have been abandoned.

Human toll



Youssouf Mussa, 36, says he can now read and write only because he walked seven kilometers to the nearest school.

I was six years old when this occurred," he said. "I did my primary school here and there was no secondary school here we had to go to Wum, that is seven kilometers to and from here for five years. At times I did not even have food to eat. I worked very hard and got my advanced level. So many of my school mates dropped out. I was very fortunate.

Mussa raises nine goats behind his house to take care of his family. He remembers that his father lost two herds of cattle in the disaster.

Now we dont have animals but while we were in Nyos, the cows were there, he said.

But today, 9-year-old Aissatou Wilsa may not be that fortunate. She is unable to cover the seven kilometers to the nearest secondary school because of ill health, yet she has a dream.

I want to be a nurse if I have the means, she said.

Lack of health facilities



Besides education, food, electricity and sanitation, the people say they are in need of adequate health facilities.

It has always been the wish of the survivors to return to the villages they left 30 years ago. But Bitta Benoit, an official of Cameroon's Ministry of Territorial Administration, says they still have to persevere.

He says the danger that Lake Nyos and its surrounding villages were exposed to is progressively being reduced because they are degassing the lake. He says it is only when the process is complete and they are sure of the people's safety and security that communities would be allowed to live in the zone.

Benoit refused to comment on the compensation program for the survivors and their children.

The government of Cameroon and some well-wishers do visit the people occasionally to give food to the scores of survivors living in the camp. Camp leader Tcha Ewi says they prefer to be empowered instead of receiving donations each year on the anniversary of the toxic gas explosion.

Since you are here and you are a big journalist, I wish that you should transmit this to the government. That the government has abandoned us. They will come and give us some bags of rice and oil to eat," said Ewi. "Teach somebody how to catch a fish and dont be giving him that fish. The government should give scholarships to students who want to study and tomorrow they will come back and build this village. I am not happy with the government.

The Cameroon government says in the 1980s, the population of Nyos was over 3,000 and growing fast as many people moved to the area for agriculture and cattle ranching. Thirty years after the incident, the population is still estimated at several thousand, but they live far from the killer lake, even though some are ignoring warnings from the government and returning closer to the lake.
Travel and tourism will contribute less than previously forecast to the economies of France, Turkey and Brazil this year, hit by attacks, political and economic turmoil, though globally the sector is resilient, the World Travel and Tourism Council said.

Brazil is hosting the Olympic Games this year but its travel and tourism sector has suffered under a political crisis, its worst recession since the 1930s, and the Zika virus.

The sector's contribution to Brazil's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to shrink by 1.6 percent this year, against a previous forecast for a drop of 0.9 percent, the WTTC said.

Islamist militant attacks in Paris, Brussels and Nice have resulted in lower demand for travel to Europe. In France, the travel and tourism sector's contribution to GDP will grow 1.1 percent this year, down from a previous forecast of 2.9 percent.

"The Paris incident did have an impact because it's the first point of entry to Europe for a lot of Asian and North American travelers," the WTTCs president, David Scowsill, told Reuters.

In France, the number of foreign tourists fell sharply in France in the second quarter, economic indicators showed on Friday. There, the sector contributed 80.4 billion euros ($90.9 billion), or 3.7 percent of total GDP, in 2015.

In Turkey, a series of militant bombings and a failed coup have deterred tourists. The sector's contribution to GDP there will shrink by 3.2 percent this year, sharply lower than a previously forecast drop of 0.2 percent.

Overall growth anticipated

Overall, however, the global travel and tourism sector is expected to grow by 3.1 percent in 2016, faster than predicted global GDP growth of 2.3 percent, driven by increasing numbers of travelers from Asian countries, especially China and India.

"There's lots of macro-economic weakness around, but the travel and tourism industry is doing very well. It's the same level of growth as 2015," Scowsill said.

Travelers have shifted destinations, he said. Asian travelers were tending to choose Australia for vacations this year instead of Europe, for example.

Brazil's Olympic Games, which ended on Sunday, should help to boost demand for travel there next year, Scowsill said, although the country had to deal with its economic problems.

In 2015, tourisms direct contribution to Brazil's GDP was 190.5 billion Brazilian reais ($59.5 billion), equivalent to 3.3 percent of total GDP, the WTTC said.

The fall in sterling as a result of Britain's vote to leave the European Union should boost demand for trips to Britain over the next six to eight months, helping to cancel out any reduction in spending on travel by Brits, Scowsill added.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has renewed his call for the Clinton Foundation to be shut down, doubling down on his accusation that the charity group represents a conflict of interest for his rival, Hillary Clinton.

"It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt political enterprise in history," Trump said in a statement Monday. "What they were doing during Crooked Hillary's time as secretary of state was wrong then, and it is wrong now. It must be shut down immediately."

Trump has repeatedly slammed the nonprofit for accepting money from foreign countries, including some with poor human rights records. He says the donations amounted to corrupt "pay for play" practices.

Clinton, who served as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, says she kept her work at the State Department separate from those at the foundation, which does philanthropic work around the globe.

Conflict of interest?

But recently unveiled emails suggest there was some overlap.

Feeling the pressure, the foundation last week announced it would stop accepting foreign and corporate donations if Hillary Clinton were elected president. It also said her husband, former President Bill Clinton, would step down from the group's board.

That hasn't been enough to satisfy some critics. This week, the left-leaning Huffington Post ran the headline "Just Shut It Down"  linking to a 2015 New York Times expose on the foundation  and joined the editorial boards of The Boston Globe and the New York Post in that assessment.

"It's pretty obvious the Clinton Foundation has presented loads of problems and conflicts of interests for Hillary Clinton so far," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. "They would be far better off just shutting it down. But they're not willing."

No smoking gun?

The emails suggest State Department aides to Clinton looked into doing favors for Clinton Foundation donors or those linked to donors. But nothing has shown that the favors were actually granted.

Most of the accusations have focused on two separate instances.

Shortly after Clinton stepped down as its secretary in 2013, the State Department expressed interest in, but didn't follow through with, buying real estate from a Nigerian company run by a man whose brother donated at least $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.

In another instance, a senior Clinton Foundation official, Doug Band, asked a top Clinton aide at the State Department about getting a job for an individual whom he said it was "important to take care of." The individual, whose name was redacted in the email, was subsequently sent "options," according to a reply by Huma Abedin, the State Department aide. The outcome of the apparent job placement effort is not clear.

Clinton herself has not been implicated in any of the emails.

Clinton hits back

Clinton campaign officials have firmly denied any wrongdoing, saying any decisions by Clinton were made without considering donors influence. More recently, they have also begun to use the issue as a way to launch counterattacks on Trump's business dealings.

"The Clinton Foundation is a charity that helps people around the world. It's already announced major steps it'll take if Clinton wins," Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said on Twitter. "Trump's businesses exist to enrich himself, involve a web of shady connections, and he still hasn't committed to divesting his holdings."

The billionaire Trump has said that, if elected president, he would hand over control of the Trump Organization to his three oldest children, who are also involved with their father's presidential campaign.
Before my arrival in China late February of this year for the China Africa media fellowship, little did I know about the countrys political system, despite hearing and reading about her. What I had heard was: There is no democracy in China because it is a one-party state.

I held this opinion, not because I believed it, but because I was not really interested in knowing about Chinas politics. However, because the call of duty brought me here I have come to know better after covering Chinas most prominent political event.

Politics-As the Africa-China Relations initiative becomes more prominent and captures more worlds attention, the question that lingers is, what lessons African leaders and even the citizens themselves can learn from the fast economic growth and development of China. With its population of 1.37 billion, covering a land area of 9.6 million square km, China has unique political collaboration and consultations that drive her success.

Local and international journalists

China is ruled by a one-party system, the Communist Party of China (CPC); but unique coordination and consultations are the hallmark of the leadership in steering the affairs of the country, as every player, even the other parties, one way or the other, demonstrates nationalism.

That is the take-away I got from covering the sessions on how political leadership of a country could be amicably handled and managed to reduce tension and allow for more progress and development. That system is just unique to China and no matter what other countries say about it and how they misunderstand them, they stick to it and have used it to further the country to its powerful position today.

The 22 African journalists on 10-month fellowship at the China Africa Press Center (CAPC) had arrived few days to the opening of the countrys annual political sessions: The National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese Peoples Political Consultation Conference (CPPCC) in early March.

African journalists in frong of the Great Hall after covering one of the sessions

Under the supervision of our host, the CAPC, we were accredited to cover the two events that caught the attention of the world, as evidenced by the largest media coverage in my career so far. Local and foreign journalists at the events were estimated at about 3,500.

Inside the chambers, a newcomer would wonder how such a big country with large population and diverse cultures is governed by one party over the years without wrangling or political crisis. It could have been expected also that like the typical legislature, there would naturally be dissenting views following the opening sessions, hot and disagreements arguments judging from the polity I know; but members of the Two Sessions conducted the events cordially.

It was a great experience on March 3, when the chairman of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC National Committee, Mr. Yu Zhengsheng delivered report on the 2015 work of the Committee at its Fourth Session opening ceremony.

CPPCC is a political advisory body in China. It consists of delegates from a range of political parties and organizations, as well as independent members. The proportion of representation of the various parties is determined by established convention, negotiated between the parties.

The dominant party in the Conference is the Communist Party of China which has about one third of the seats. Other members are drawn from the United Front parties allied with the CPC, and from independent members who are not members of any party. The Conference is intended to appear to be more representative and is composed of a broader range of people than is typical of government office in the country.

CPPCC, according to the Peoples Daily, is a patriotic united front organization led by the Communist Party of China (CPC). It is made of deputies from the CPC, eight non-CPC parties, non-party democrats and people's organizations, deputies from various minority nationalities and from all walks of life, and Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao compatriots and returned overseas Chinese, as well as specially invited people.

Deputies outside of the Great Hall of the People
Accusations of U.S. involvement in last month's failed coup in Turkey continue to dog relations between the countries.

In rare political consensus, the allegations are crossing Turkeys deep political divide.



There is a very strong belief in Turkey amongst many that America is somehow involved in this coup, says Turkish political columnist Semih Idiz of Al Monitor website. There is a long-standing tradition of anti-Americanism both in the left-wing and in the right-wing in Turkey, and especially amongst Islamists.



Newspapers across Turkeys political spectrum are pointing fingers at Washington for at least being involved in the coup attempt.



"Such accusations have been dismissed as utterly false and harmful to our bilateral relations," says U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby.



Last month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu, to take steps to reign in such claims.



Stoking painful memories



The latest controversy is resurrecting painful memories of suspicions of U.S. involvement in other military coups - in 1960, 1971 and 1980, argues international relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbuls Kadir Has University.



Every coup has been associated in one way or another with the United States. We know that in 1960 that the Americans knew that there was something being prepared and didn't say anything to the government," Ozel said. "On the 12th of March, they were very much aware, if not [involved] in it. On the 12th of September, they were practically in it and they have given unconditional support to the most brutal military coup Turkey has ever had. So that is our collective memory.



What about democracy?



Kerrys initial comment on the July coup attempt omitted the word 'democracy.'

I hope there will be stability and peace and continuity within Turkey, he said. The absence of the word and lack of support by the government added to speculation that Washington, at best, chose to sit on the sidelines.



Turkeys labor minister, Suleyman Soylu, tweeted on July 16, There is the USA behind the coup. Some magazines published there have been organizing activities for some months.

Days later, he repeated the accusation on Turkish national television.



Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans chief international relations adviser, Ayse Sozen Usluer, played down the tweet, insisting it was a personal comment and did not reflect the administrations view.



The dispute, however, is continuing to disrupt bilateral ties, warns international relations expert Ozel.



On the one hand, yes, the Turks complain [U.S. President Barack] Obamas announcement [of the coup] was three hours after the coup was known. On the other hand, the Americans are also saying you must be out of your minds to implicate us in this at the level of your labor minister or justice minister," Ozel said. "So obviously there is a lot of bad blood between the two sides.

Gulen extradition could make matter worse

Ankara also is insisting on the extradition of Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen from the United States. Gulen and his followers are accused of being behind the coup attempt, a charge he denies.



Reducing tensions is seen as the key objective of U.S. Vice President Joe Bidens visit to Turkey Wednesday.



Ozel suggests that ultimately the controversy will die down, but suspicions will remain.



The thing is the charges are such that you cannot either prove or disprove them. Not now," he said. "Maybe 20 years from now when the archives are open, you may be able to prove them in an airtight way.
The United Nations aid chief warned Monday that Syria is the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time and there is a race against time to save hundreds of thousands of besieged civilians with food, water and medical supplies.

In Aleppo, we risk seeing a humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled in the over five years of bloodshed and carnage in the Syrian conflict, Stephen OBrien told the U.N. Security Council in his monthly briefing on the situation.

Once again," he added, "I cannot stress strongly enough the need for a 48-hour pause in fighting to be approved by all sides and come into effect, so that safe and sustained humanitarian access is opened to all areas of Aleppo.

Since last month, the U.N. has been asking for weekly 48-hour pauses in the fighting in Aleppo in order to get aid in and the sick and injured out.

OBrien said the U.N. is ready to move some 70 trucks with aid into eastern Aleppo as soon as it receives the necessary security guarantees. The eastern part of the city is held by opposition forces, but has been encircled and under siege by government forces for weeks, effectively trapping some 250,000 people.

The government controls the citys west, where more than a million people still reside. Aleppo is Syrias largest city and before the civil war began, the countrys commercial center.

OBrien said the humanitarian crisis goes well beyond Aleppo. Despite having asked the Syrian government to authorize aid deliveries to 32 locations across the country in August, he said the government had denied the U.N. access to more than 50 percent of requested beneficiaries. In addition, fighting and administrative delays have contributed to not a single convoy moving so far this month.

The aid chief told the Security Council  which has faced a political divide over Syria  that he is very angry and that the callous carnage has long since moved from the cynical to the sinful.

Now is the moment, this instant, to put differences aside, come together as one and stop this humanitarian shame upon us all, once and for all, OBrien urged.

Russias U.N. envoy, Vitaly Churkin, told the council that the government is doing everything to ensure that the civilian population has a more or less normal life; they are doing this despite unilateral economic sanctions.

Churkin said work is under way to define the parameters of the pauses, and he warned that fighters seeking to resupply and regroup should not exploit them.

Last week, Russia announced its support for the U.N.-proposed 48-hour weekly humanitarian pauses in Aleppo.

We need to see Russia follow its unilateral declaration with genuine steps to support regular and sustained access to Aleppo, U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Michele Sison told the council.

The United States supports the pauses. Sison said they are necessary because the people of Aleppo need U.N. help now, but that a more comprehensive arrangement that revives the collapsed nationwide cessation of hostilities is needed to guarantee wider aid access.
South Korea and the United States have begun their annual joint military exercises under the threat of military retaliation by North Korea.

About 25,000 U.S. forces and 50,000 South Korean troops are involved in the two-week Operation Ulchi Freedom exercise, which is largely simulated.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis told VOA on Monday that the drills are designed to make sure the United States can honor obligations to defend South Korea "against any potential aggression from the North."

"This is an exercise we do every year," Davis said. "It is 100 percent defensive in nature."

'Joint and Combined Exercise'

The drills are a "joint and combined exercise" that involves different capabilities across different branches of the military, Lt. Gen. Stephen Lanza, who commands the Army's I Corps on the U.S. Pacific coast, said Monday.

Speaking to VOA from Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington state, Lanza said the U.S. Army's role in this year's exercise is set apart from previous years because soldiers are carrying out distributed mission commands, covering great distances and multiple time zones during the drills.

Forces in the main command post on the continental U.S. will be operating simultaneously with forces in the U.S. state of Hawaii, in Japan and in Korea.

"We're executing mission command at every echelon," Lanza said. "We have not done that recently for a large exercise."

The troops will practice a wide variety of war-fighting functions, running through sustainment activities and even transitioning a battlefield surveillance brigade forward to practice intelligence sharing with the South Koreans.

"We're training for things we would do as part of our wartime mission," the general told VOA.

The drills routinely anger Pyongyang, which says it sees the exercises as a rehearsal for a full-scale invasion of the North.

A statement issued Monday by the North's military said its first-strike units were ready to turn the United States and Washington "into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike," if North Korea's sovereignty is threatened.

Heightened Tensions

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have worsened in recent months, with North Korea under harsh U.N. sanctions over a series of tests of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Relations are also likely aggravated by the recent defection of a high-ranking diplomat, Thae Yong Ho; Pyongyang's deputy ambassador to Britain. The North denounced Thae as "human scum" and accused him of a number of criminal acts, including child molestation.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye told her National Security Council on Monday that Thae's defection was a sign of "serious cracks" in North Korea's ruling elites.

North and South Korea technically remain under a state of war dating from the 1950-'53 civil war that ended with a truce rather than a peace treaty. South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said Pyongyang is distorting the exercises.

"We express strong regret toward North Korea for distorting the fact and denouncing our annual defensive exercise as a nuclear first-strike and invasion of North Korea,'" Joon-hee said. "Also, we define Pyongyang's acts of threatening us with a nuclear first-strike attack and making such highly threatening remarks as regretful acts that should not be made."
Corruption and security will top the agenda as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visits Nigeria this week.

Kerry also is expected to discuss the state of the economy with Nigerias President Muhammadu Buhari during his trip to the capital, Abuja, and the northern city of Sokoto.

The visit, likely the last by a major American official during the Obama administration, comes as the two countries have gradually been stepping up their cooperation after a period of strained relations.

The relationship remains, sort of, near or at a high water mark in recent history, said Matthew Page, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A rift opened between the two countries during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. Nigerian officials complained the U.S. wasnt supplying them with weapons they needed to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in the countrys northeast, while American officials said they worried the military would use U.S. arms to carry out human rights abuses.

Boko Haram remains one of Nigerias top security challenges. The Islamist group has killed about 20,000 people and displaced as many as 2.7 million.

Since Buhari took office, the U.S. has increased its security commitments to Nigeria, despite continued allegations by rights groups of human rights abuses by Nigerian soldiers.

The U.S. has deployed drones to neighboring Cameroon to hunt for Boko Haram fighters in Nigeria, and also has stationed a small group of troops in Maiduguri, according to a senior military official who spoke on condition of anonymity. That Nigerian city has been repeatedly attacked by Boko Haram and is at the center of the fight against it.

During his campaign for president, Buhari promised to fight the corruption that is seen as one of the reasons that two-thirds of Nigerians live in poverty, even though the country is among Africas top economies.

Cooperation between the U.S. and Nigeria to track down looted funds has been stop-and-start in the past, but has grown better coordinated in recent months, Page said.

They havent really developed a deep, investigative cooperation or information sharing relationship, Page said. I think what were seeing, or what we have started seeing over the last year, is that relationship pick up.

Kerry could use the visit to highlight steps the U.S. has taken against suspected fraudsters, Page said.

He may announce that the U.S. has levied a handful of visa sanctions on individuals that were involved in corruption and vote rigging during the 2015 elections, he said.

Another issue of concern is the state of Nigerias economy. Its poised to enter a recession, due to a decline in the price of oil as well as a series of militant attacks on Nigerias infrastructure that have dropped the countrys oil production substantially.

Its unlikely the U.S. will offer the types of infrastructural assistance  such as building stadiums, railways or bridges  European countries and China are known for, Page said.

The U.S. likely will offer only technical assistance, Page said, or help with getting money from international lenders.
Two factions of President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party have clashed just outside Harare in a primary election to fill a parliamentary seat left vacant following the expulsion of war veterans leader Christopher Mutsvangwa from the former liberation movement for allegedly undermining the authority of the president and first lady, Grace Mugabe.

The two factions, said to be led by Vice President Emerson Mnangagwa and Mrs. Mugabe, nominated different candidates for the Norton by-election set for next month.

Favorite candidates Bybit Tsomondo and Joyce Mukazhu believed to be in the Generation 40 faction allegedly led by Mrs. Mugabe lost to Ronald Tinashe Chindedza, a member of Lacoste group said to be led by Mnangagwa.

Chindedza polled 847 votes, Mukazhu got 617 and Tsomondo came third with 612. Other candidates that participated in the primary election include Mary Zvinavashe and Langton Mutendereki who got 328 and 146 respectively.



But it is the manner in which Chindedza won that angered other candidates who allege that presiding officer Shadreck Mashayamombe had a hand in Chindedzas victory.



Chindedzas victory at three polling stations - Bryn Farm, Mutubva and Janktown - are being questioned by all candidates.



Results at Bryn Farm triggered the protest by losing candidates as seven votes cast at the polling station were allegedly inflated to 247. Voting sheets browsed by Studio 7 also indicate that the 59 votes at Janktown were inflated to 189. Four votes at Mutubva were also allegedly inflated to 154 in favour of Chindedza.

Tsomondo, who lost to former Norton Member of Parliament, Christopher Mutsvangwa, in Zanu PF primaries in 2013 spoke through her election agent, Rexon Zuze.

Zuze said the election results were simple daylight robbery, adding that this is an indication that there is no democracy in the ruling party.



Losing candidate Mutendereki said those who allegedly rigged the Norton primary election in Mashonaland West province should be disqualified and dealt with according to the Zanu PF constitution.



Zuze said it is unfortunate for residents that independent candidate Temba Mliswa and Zanu PF winning candidate Chindedza do not hail from Norton.



Chindedza will battle it out with Mliswa in the by-election. Mnangagwa and Mrs. Mugabe are said to be habouring presidential ambitions though they have in the past dismissed such allegations as unfounded.

Most opposition parties are boycotting the by-election.
Thirteen opposition political parties under a coalition of the National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) on Monday met with other political parties calling themselves Coalition of Democrats (CODE) in an effort to work together.

Transform Zimbabwe president Jacob Ngarivhume said the meeting also served as a platform to officially invite CODE members to join NERA in a massive demonstration scheduled for this Friday in Harare to demand electoral reforms.

The coalition is also demanding that Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chairperson Rita Makarau relinquish either the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission post or that of secretary at the Judicial Services Commission.

"The demonstration of Friday the 26th seeks to achieve basically electoral reforms. We are calling for electoral reforms as NERA. And also as Zimbabweans we have been calling for the leveling of the playing field," Ngarivhume said.

Ngarivhume said that they hope to work with CODE and finally form a coalition in the future.
Some Zimbabwean pastors say the law should take its course on popular prophet Walter Magaya accused of allegedly raping a 25 year old university student.

Several pastors of various denominations told VOA Studio 7 that they hope Magaya of the Prophetic Healing and Deliverance Ministries is innocent as he is viewed as a highly-Godly person by millions of Zimbabweans.

Efforts to speak to Magaya on this issue were fruitless. He told the independent Standard newspaper that the allegations were false. He once faced similar charges sometime last year.

Prophet Magaya was brought before a Harare magistrate on Saturday a few hours after conducting a midnight mass prayer in Harare. He was granted a 2 thousand dollar bail.

One of the pastors Joseph Paganga of the Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe tells Studio 7s Gibbs Dube these are serious allegations being laid against the minister of religion.

Studio 7 also reached Reverend Mudenda of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches who said they are praying for Magaya and victims of rape.
Former Vice President, Joice Mujurus party, the Zimbabwe People First, says although it will not trouble itself much with a story that appeared in the state-controlled Sunday Mail newspaper suggesting that Mujuru was of loose morals during the liberation war, it decries the lack of ethics shown in the story.

The story has salacious details about what allegedly happened behind closed doors during the liberation struggle.

The story, headlined 'Dr. Joice Mujuru Unmasked', quotes a former war veteran, George Rutanhire, as having told the newspaper that Mujuru was not a trained fighter and used her sexuality to rise through the ranks.

Rutanhire rubbishes the popular legend that Mujuru single-handedly brought down an enemy helicopter alleging that the person who actually did this was her boyfriend.

But during the war, we had (rules and warnings) against sleeping with girls or women under such circumstances. Whilst other comrades were relaxing, Joice and Chipembere took that opportunity to enjoy the forbidden fruit.

During the intercourse, a battle broke out (with Rhodesian forces) and Chipembere fought the better part of that battle whilst he was naked," Rutanhire is quoted by the state-run weekly.

The newspaper also quotes an unnamed war veteran but does not make an effort to balance the story by talking to Mujuru or her surrogates.

A member of the ZimPF information department, Methuseli Moyo, told Studio 7 that the partys legal department is going through the story with the intention of seeing if they can seek legal recourse.

"To start off this is not surprising," said Moyo. "It is unfortunate but not surprising. It is keeping with the tradition of Zanu PF when they are under pressure, as they are under pressure from ZimPF and the are resorting to dirty tactics."

He described the story as gutter jouranlism, adding that Zanu PF has decided to concoct the story to make cheap political mileage and "burst Mujuru's bubble".

Moyo said: "Even when you get the basics, the ethics of journalism ... they should have at least given her the chance to respond or at least contacted her spokesmen."

Efforts to get a comment from Sunday Mail editor, Sasa Mabasa, were fruitless as his phone went unanswered.
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.
On Aug. 21, Qingdao Customs announced that a group of smugglers responsible for bringing over 5,000 tons of seafood into China over the past two years had been apprehended. The total value involved in this case is 230 million yuan.

In a survey administered early this year, customs inspectors found that some upscale seafood was being sold for cheaper prices than declared, which stood out as unusual. Customs officer Song Zhening explained that a large quantity of scallops, king crabs and fish was imported by vans licensed in Southwest China's Guangxi.

"The seafood originated in Japan, Russia and the U.S., so why did it come in vans from Guangxi?" Song mused. "It was strange."

As the investigation got underway, a seafood import and export company in Shandong became a primary suspect. Manipulated behind the scenes by a man surnamed Wang, the corporation had branch companies in Shandong, Fujian, Liaoning and Guangxi provinces. There was also a branch in the U.S.

Inspector Li Fudong figured that, in order to avoid sanctions, Wang stayed in the U.S. year round. All of the business's contacts were handled by the U.S. branch. After receiving payments, domestic companies transferred the money abroad via underground money exchangers.

On June 24, Wang was captured by police in Penglai Airport. Meanwhile, customs officials stopped the other suspects in Shandong, Fujian, Guangxi and Liaoning.

Additionally, inspectors found that the seafood came into China via a detour in Vietnam, as the smugglers were trying to avoid duty and quarantines. Some of the seafood also came from Fukushima, Japan.

After the 2011 earthquake, Fukushima was polluted by nuclear radiation. Almost all countries therefore forbade the importation of seafood from Fukushima. Even local residents don't eat it. Thus, the price of upscale seafood from Fukushima dropped precipitously.

Li explained that the smugglers gathered the commodities in Hokkaido. They then transported the seafood to Fangchenggang city of Guangxi and Shandong province.
Fuqua directs Washington in The Magnificent Seven. Photo: Scott Garfield/Courtesy of Columbia Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures

From directing 2004s King Arthur, Antoine Fuqua learned a key lesson about building new movies out of old material. Make it your own, but be conscious of the things that mean a lot to people, he says. When you bend it too far, it gets hard for people to wrap their heads around. Fuqua drew on that lesson while making the new Magnificent Seven, out September 23, a remake of the 1960 Western about a group of gunfighters who defend a town of innocent Mexican villagers, itself adapted from Akira Kurosawas Seven Samurai. I remember looking up the definition of the word samurai when I was younger, and finding out it meant to serve,  Fuqua says. In both the earlier films as well as his own, he says, the characters ultimately risk their lives for the town without having any personal stake: Sometimes you dont need a reason to do the right thing.

Fuquas version does contain one radical departure from its predecessor. This time around, the desperate villagers are white, while the septet of hired gunmen are a more diverse group that includes Fuquas Training Day stars Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, alongside Chris Pratt, Byung-hun Lee, Martin Sensmeier, Vincent DOnofrio, and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo. Its a decision Fuqua says reflects historical reality more than it does any conscious attempt to update the story. There were a lot of black cowboys, a lot of Native Americans; Asians working on the railroads. The truth of the West is more modern than the movies have been.

Throughout the two-month Louisiana shoot, Fuqua dealt with intense physical conditions and some very stubborn animals. But it might all have been worth it for the image of his famously unflappable star astride an ornery Andalusian. Denzel had to boss that thing around a bit. He was yanking and pulling, Fuqua remembers with a laugh. To see him on a horse, thats just fun.

*This article appears in the August 22, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
It never ends. Photo: Getty Images

Okay, so technically Drakes reason for being in Philadelphia on a Sunday night was to perform at his and Futures Summer Sixteen tour stop in Pennsylvania. But we all know his true purpose for stepping across enemy lines: to disembowel his go-to sparring partner on his home turf. Not since Drake and Meek Mills infinite beef began last summer had Drake set foot in Philly, but when he did, he certainly made his presence known. You not really from Philly and they can tell, Drake fired off his first warning shot in altered lyrics to Still Here, as if to personally deport Meek from his own city.

@Drake taking major shots at Meek Mill in his home turf #SummerSixteenTour pic.twitter.com/SM4Ew3avsY  Today In Hip Hop (@todayinhh) August 22, 2016

And just in case the you there felt open to interpretation, allow this added boast to the only Grammy-nominated track to emerge from this beef, Back to Back, to clear things up: I even did this shit in Philly, man, I never run. But no jab bruises like the smug presumption that your rival has nothing better to do than watch your every move  trust Drake to aim below the belt. His parting message: Just remember, when you watch that video over and over tonight, its not about your city, I love your city. You did that shit to your motherfuckin self, boy.

"You did that sh** to yourself." - Drake after performing Back To Back In Philly pic.twitter.com/qlXGyD4fMt  Nigel Int'l D. (@Nigel_D) August 22, 2016

Reports suggest that Meek Mill sent a crew of his Dreamchasers (read: goons) to confront Drake after the concert. In a since-deleted Instagram post, Mill alluded to the ambush, noting that he had to call off the dogs because Drake was being escorted out of the venue by Philly police and his one-man security detail, J Prince, who tagged along with Drake on the tour as it neared Philly. (Meek was previously accused of having his crew assault Quentin Miller, whom he had implicated as Drakes ghostwriter.)

Whatever the truth here, Drake, of course, had the last vague word the on road:
Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

After two weeks of highs (Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, Simone Manuel) and lows (What the hell, Lochte?), the 2016 Olympics has come to a close. And while all endings are bittersweet, were ready to get off this ride down a green-diving-pool river of dreams and return to our normal, regularly scheduled television. And yet, like Dorothy leaving Oz, we cant help but look back at those faces  or fit bodies  that participated in the Closing Ceremonies, and realize theres one athlete we might just miss most of all: Pita Nikolas Taufatofua. Luckily for us, and the world, the 32-year-old Tongan Taekwondo Olympian, who so deftly handled both bearing a flag for his nation and the physical advances of Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager, once again oiled up his bare chest to appear for a final dance. As the rain came down in Rio, Taufatofua glistened as a shiny rainbow of muscles onstage while Julia Michaels and Kygo performed their song Carry Me. See the glory, below.

He's back!



And more oiled than ever.



It wouldn't be the same without Tonga's flag bearerhttps://t.co/3uvB66DQNN pic.twitter.com/jI9WMj8Why  BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 22, 2016

They made sure to lather homie in even more baby oil.  #ClosingCeremony

pic.twitter.com/7pZiN0FFjf  Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) August 22, 2016

Also, heres what he looks like wearing clothes during a competition. He didnt take home a medal, but that should give him incentive to come back in 2020.
Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Another day, another Frank Ocean album: After many months of making needy fans hold their breath (and making editors and music writers hold their breath who, if not for their job, would have been perfectly fine with a release whenever, really), the young wizard of left-field pop unbound by genre distinctions released two collections in as many days. Both the visual album Endless and the album proper Blonde are extensions of their authors mellow sensibility. Yet while Endless seems to lengthen the strain of lovelorn melancholy thats been dominant in the artists work since his debut, Blonde marks a genuine departure: Its far and away the happiest Frank Ocean collection ever committed to wax. Instead of being accentuated by their extreme contrast with deep, vivid orange, Franks native blues and blackness are framed by a full spectrum of hues: pink and mauve synthscapes, summer green, and gold guitars  and no small amount of whiteness. Franks never been big on antagonism, racial or otherwise. In his universe, there are no evil people, just people with differing motives and levels of indifference. So its not really a surprise to behold him absorbing sounds, styles, and people typically associated with whiteness and white people with the same loose, offhanded deftness with which he affirms his continuity with black culture and history. Heres a brief guide to the whiter aspects of his varicolored album.

1. The title (and cover).

Like white skin itself, blond hair is the result of a melanin deficiency; like white skin, blond hair is most commonly found in Europe, particularly Northern Europe; like white skin, blond hair confers, or implies, a certain degree of social advantage. Even if most whites are dark-haired, the blond Caucasian remains the platonic ideal of white beauty. Franks late-breaking selection of Blonde over the original title of Boys Dont Cry is the primary signal to listeners that hes willing to remake whiteness in his own image. The very next indications, of course, are the white background to the album cover and the albums cover photo, where the artist appears with his hair dyed blond on the sides (and green on top, because heaven forbid Mr. Ocean should send any unmixed messages).



2. The guitars.

Obviously theres a long, rich heritage of guitars and guitarists in American black music: blues guitar, jazz guitar, rock-and-roll guitar, funk guitar. The prominence of guitars on Blonde is hardly anything white in and of itself. But the nature of those guitars  all those warm, soft, inviting, leisurely major chords (Ivy, Self Control, Good Guy, Nights, White Ferrari, Seigfried, Godspeed)  seems to owe far more to the Beach Boys and Beatles and any number of other distinctly white rock (not rock and roll) musicians of the 60s and 70s than it does to Howlin Wolf or Eddie Hazel.

3. Seigfried.

Whether hes the tragic warrior-hero of pre-Christian Germanic myth, one half of a gay duo whose Las Vegas stage performances prominently featured white tigers and white lions, or a character who wields a sword as tall as himself in the fighting game series Soulcalibur (which Frank cited on Nostalgia, Ultra), theres no doubt that Siegfried, as a name, is as white as it gets. You can chalk up the misspelling of the 15th track of Blonde to whatever you like, but be sure to use white chalk.

4. SebastiAn.

Not only did the Serbian-French electronic DJ and producer Sebastian Akchote-Bozovic produce a few tracks for the Blonde sessions, this lucky guy, who is white, gets an entire track on the album to himself, recounting in heavily accented English how his unwillingness to accept a girlfriends Facebook friend request led to the demise of their relationship.

5. Berghain.

The Berlin club known as Berghain may not look like much from the outside, but for decades its cavernous interior has been a mecca for European electronic-music culture, drug use, and sexual experimentation, much of it public. On a Tumblr post last night that doubled as an epilogue for Blonde, Frank mentions how he visited Berghain to see things for himself.

6. Raf Simons.

On the same Tumblr post, Frank mentions how the Belgian superdesigner Raf Simons informed him that his obsession with expensive cars was cliched. Frank goes on to speculate whether his car fixation represents some secret identification with straight masculinity on his part, but who knows. The only thing thats certain is that he and Raf are on speaking terms.

7. White Ferrari.

Not only is the titular automobile of the 14th track of Blonde white, its manufactured by white people. Theres a really interesting argument to be made that Italian culture is the European culture most similar to black American culture, but for now its enough to say that, even if you managed to overlook the James Blake feature on it, White Ferrari is white, through and through.

8. Pink + White.

With its swinging rhythm and rich melodic bassline, Pink + White isnt all that white, culturally speaking. But by choosing such a title for a song (as opposed to, say, the black and yellow also mentioned in the song), the artist is sending a signal. The word white featured twice on the track list is as close as youll get to a clear indicator from Frank that whiteness is a prominent theme on the album  we probably wouldnt have noticed otherwise.

9. Yung Lean

A self-proclaimed sad boy rapper whose fans are almost all white American hipsters, the Swede known as Yung Lean (birth name Jonatan Hastad) seems to have contributed backing vocals to Blonde highlight Self Control; heres hoping hes less sad for having done so.

10. Hippie vibes.

Pacifism, free love, vivid colors, a warm, sunlit pastoral ambience, recreational use of hallucinogens  its a lot easier to find convergences between Blonde and the hippie spirit than it is to find differences. Franks album is yet another recent instance of psychedelic culture making inroads with black artists: Think of Chance the Rappers Acid Rap or A$AP Rockys LSD or Kendrick Lamars supergroup, Black Hippy. Hippie-affiliated cultural icons used to be predominantly white, but as boomers fade and the millennials rise, that looks to be changing. It sometimes seems as if Frank Ocean is picking up where Jerry Garcia or Joan Baez left off.

As shown by guest turns from Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, and Andre 3000, several black self-identifications in his lyrics, and a plethora of shout-outs to other black icons, the Frank Ocean of Blonde is as firmly embedded in black American culture as ever: His entry into sounds, motifs, and social circles long considered white is a sign of that cultures autonomy and dominance rather than any dependence and subjection. But its also true that white listeners to Blonde can take heart from its ambience: Franks approval is an unequivocal reminder that excellence can emerge from associating with white people and white cultures. Not all of them, and maybe not even that many  but some, nonetheless.
the national interest

This Is Not the Political Violence That Should Scare Us

This Is Not the Political Violence That Should Scare Us
Photo: Gary Gershoff/WireImage

Payman Maadi was writing his own films when renowned Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi threw him a curveball, asking him to act for the first time in one of his movies (2009s excellent About Elly). But things really changed for the 46-year-old Iranian, now one of the countrys most celebrated actors, when he teamed with Farhadi again two years later as the lead actor in A Separation. The film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2012, and Maadi took home the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival. Maadis role in A Separation caught the attention of American filmmakers, and scripts for Hollywood projects started rolling in. Most of them were for dumb movies, as Maadi puts it, but the first one to actually interest him was The Night Of (which began production in 2013 with James Gandolfini in a starring role, but was delayed due to his death). In the HBO series, he stars as Salim Khan, a Pakistani taxi driver who loses his business after his son, Nasir (Riz Ahmed), takes his cab out the night he is accused of murder. In an interview with Vulture, Maadi talked about why this was the first role he chose to take, refusing to play stereotypical Middle Eastern characters, and getting past the censors in Iran.

How did you get your role on The Night Of?

The Night Of was the first project that came to me [after A Separation]. Before it came on the air, I had three, four other movies I did in the United States, like Camp X-Ray. There was a big gap between the pilot, which we did for HBO, and the rest of it, about two years. The creator, Steven Zaillian, told me he saw A Separation, and he loved the movie and liked my performance. So he found my manager, and my manager called me: Theres this HBO show. They want you for one of the leads.

I love the story of the parents on this show and I wish we had more scenes with them, because I think their story is so interesting.

When we read the script, I liked the story very much. It was one of those stories I really wanted to share with Iranians. Playing a parent, this was the first time I was doing something like that in the U.S.. Im coming from Iran, and this was a Pakistani family in New York. So I had to do some studies. Riz Ahmed and I traveled a lot  we went to some stores, we talked to taxi drivers.

What kinds of conversations did you have with taxi drivers?

Most of the time we were in the cafes they usually go to. I was speaking with them about many things, but you dont really need any inside information. You just talk with them so you learn the accents, so you dont sound stupid or funny. My wife on the show, Poorna Jagannathan, and Naz, Riz Ahmed, we became very close with each other, and we still are today. We became very intimate so it was like a kind of family, and that helped a lot.

Had you gotten other offers before The Night Of?

Not offers, but some scripts, and for some I had to do auditions. But this was one of those roles you dont do auditions [for], its an offer. So if you accept it, you get it. Before this I had received some other scripts, but I didnt like them.

What did you not like? Did you encounter a lot of Middle Eastern stereotypes in the scripts you were getting?

There are two kinds of hesitations I have when I read scripts. One is, like many other actors, you must like the role, the script, and want to be a part of the project. And other times there are political movies, movies I dont like to watch, let alone participate in making them. Movies that focus on a specific religion, specific countries  political movies that are actually dumb movies. And other times there are some other movies that suit me, where I am okay with the script and the role, but you have to refuse it since youre living in Iran as well. So you have to be very careful.

So if you get a script that you like but it has things that might jeopardize your situation in Iran 

Movies that become problematic are most often those movies I myself would rather not do. So its not because of fear or something. Not at all. But you have red lines that so many others dont have. You have to be mindful of that, too.

In Iran, have you encountered any difficulty with the roles youve taken in the U.S.?

No, not at all.

Id read that you prefer not to play Iranian characters in Hollywood films, unless the character is a good person.

Exactly. You know, thats how it works in Hollywood. Usually they make a lot of films with Middle Easterners as bad people. Sometimes the Chinese are the bad people, sometimes the Russians are the bad people, sometimes the Arabs are the bad people. So I dont want to play bad-guy Arab terrorists or Iranian saboteurs. If they offer me an interesting Iranian character, why not? Id like to do that. But as long as its not anything that insults the people in Iran or the Muslims in the world. I dont like to be the representative of this kind of stuff.

It seems like youve been very careful to pick roles that are not like that. But have you gotten offers for Iranian characters like this 

Yes. A lot. I have been offered to do a lot of movies, like Iranian or Arab characters, with terrible characterizations. I saw the movies like a year afterward, and most of them were the most stupid movies Id ever seen, you know?

I came to this world of cinema because I loved art. I still do. Its a better world when you have art in it, when you connect with people. When you make a movie like A Separation, and travel all around with it, you make connections with people. Its the same when I see a beautiful Chinese or Mexican or European movie  I feel myself getting close to these people, and for me it becomes a better world. So thats what I like. And there are dozens of those movies in the world. So why would I get involved with movies I dont like?

The movies youve done in Iran, like A Separation and About Elly, are such beautiful, human stories. In Hollywood, youve also chosen roles that are telling human stories  in Camp X-Ray, you star as a Guantanamo prisoner who strikes up a rapport with a prison guard, played by Kristen Stewart. But its also a political film. Do you see the value in making political films when theres the possibility it will make a positive difference in the U.S.?

Yes. When I read Camp X-Ray, I fell in love with the story. As you said, that was a good reminder that its possible to do good political movies. It was a great character, and I was able to give him some angles, some vision, some dimensions. It was a movie all about humans  about conversations between two people from two absolutely different worlds, when you think they cannot even make a second of conversation with each other.

In roles like this, where it is political, have you ever been uncomfortable with a particular scene, or with how theyre portraying Middle Easterners in a more subtle way?

Sometimes on sets there are misunderstandings, where the director, for example, doesnt know the difference between Iranian people and Arabs. And when you say that Iranians are not Arabs, they ask you, Arent you Muslim? And you say, Yes. But that is totally different. Sometimes they ask me to say, Say this word, say this line in Arabic. And I say, I dont speak Arabic. And they say, But you are Muslim, arent you? So sometimes I just say, All right, give me the line, and give me five minutes. I find some Arab person on the set and I rehearse the line with them instead of convincing them that I cannot speak Arabic. [Laughs.]

Im curious about the career path to acting and filmmaking in Iran. I know you studied metallurgic engineering at first, but how did you move into the film industry?

Its just like every other place in the world: If you want to do something good, its hard to get it. You have to suffer, you have to be very patient. In Iran, its a big country, movie-wise. They make over 100 movies per year. They have won every single prestigious and important award worldwide: Cannes Film Festival, Venice, Berlin, the Oscars. Its an important country for movies, and we have a lot of issues, but these difficulties always make me more creative. They make me work harder, be more motivated, and more serious.

How would you describe the filmmaking climate in Iran right now? In terms of censorship and potentially getting the movies you want to get made. It seems like the government also likes that Iran is very good at making movies  its a source of pride.

Yes, it is. After being in this business as a writer for 14, 15 years, I know how to write movies that dont have any conflict with the system. I dont write anything for anyone else. I dont listen to people to write what suits them. I write my own stories. I have to fight sometimes. You have to write and make something that doesnt have any serious political or challenging issues with the regime or government. We cannot make love scenes like you do in the West, but when they say, You cannot do this, you can put it in in a more beautiful way. It becomes more artistic.

Im definitely not saying censorship is good, but censorship is not strong enough to keep artists from what they want to say. We use it sometimes as a tool. Ive been in so many countries and I speak with so many artists around the world, and they have more serious difficulties than Iran. Making movies in every place in the world is a very difficult thing. And to us, censorship is not a difficulty. Its just how it is. We had Abbas Kiarostami, we have Asghar Farhadi, and we have a lot of other great filmmakers in Iran making their movies in the situation you are naming.

Will you be collaborating with Asghar Farhadi again? You seem to have a good creative partnership.

Of course we will do something in the future. We are very close friends. We are very happy working with each other.

You mentioned Kiarostami, who passed away last month, and was celebrated around the world. How did people react to his death in Iran?

It was a big loss. It affected me more than I was expecting because I was close to him. I liked him very much. I was visiting him when he was in the hospital, but it was news to me. He died too soon, and he was a brilliant person so it was a big shock. The grief was so huge. People are still in shock. Im still not very comfortable talking about that loss.

In terms of working in two countries, in the U.S. and Iran, do you ever have any concerns about being able to continue doing that? I know Golshifteh Farahani was banned from Iran a few years ago. Do you ever worry about something like that happening to you?

Im not at all. I have my boundaries. As a human, or an artist, we all have our own boundaries, our own red lines. Everyone has the right to make decisions for themselves, depending on what their boundaries are. For me, no, I dont think that I have any difficulties. Definitely, I will. Its not easy to work in both climates. Of course its not. But Im not concerned. If they ban me from doing something, Id do something else. Id put my concentration on acting in some other movies, or Id write. I have something in my mind to direct. Having different options makes you feel more safe.

This interview is edited and condensed.
Li Baoshan, People's Daily editor-in-chief

Media cooperation in the Internet Plus era should emphasize conceptual and technical innovations as well as more concrete, general innovations, stressed People's Daily editor-in-chief, Li Baoshan.

Li made the remarks at a forum held in Shenzhen on Aug. 21. The theme of the forum was media integration.

Li said that at this critical stage of media integration, everyone wants to gain an edge. However, some misunderstandings should be carefully avoided.

According to Li, media integration is an inevitable and ongoing process rather than a temporary trend. Whats more, the rules of media integration cannot be ignored. Integration calls for respect for the rules of news distribution, technological development and the evolution of new business models, Li said, adding that it should progress in an orderly, organic and effective way.

He urged those attempting media integration not to be overly hasty, saying that the plan must be implemented step by step rather than all at once. Li also gave advice about how to get the most out of media integration. He called for conceptual innovation to improve productivity, hoping that the forum could foster the exchange of ideas and knowledge.

In addition, he stressed the importance of technical innovation. Li hopes mainstream media will cooperate with alternative enterprises in order to integrate traditional reports with new technologies.

The Forum is co-sponsored by People's Daily and Shenzhen government. Attendees of the forum included Jiang Jianguo, director of the State Council Information Office; Ren Xianliang, vice minister of the Cyberspace Administration of China; officials from various departments of the central and local governments; and representatives of the media and Internet industries.
In 2005, Li Tiejun, a father in the southwestern city of Luzhou, made headlines across China when he challenged the public education system. He had his daughter, Li Jingci, then 9 years old, drop out of primary school since, according to Li Tiejun, the kid cant learn anything there, Chengdu Business News reported on Aug. 22.

Later the same year, Li Jingcis mother sued Li Tiejun for depriving their daughter of her right to receive nine years of compulsory education, as demanded by Chinese law. The high-profile case ruled against Li, and ordered him to send his daughter back to school within five days.

Id rather be sent to jail than hand my daughter back to that school, Li Tiejun was quoted as saying after the ruling was delivered. He never obeyed the courts demand, continuing instead to teach his daughter himself. In 2007, he claimed that by 2014, when his daughter turned 18, she would be an expert in the field of biomagnetism.

On Aug. 17, a reporter from Chengdu Business News visited Li and his daughter in their home. Li Tiejun, now 74, never married the girls mother. After retiring from his construction job, Li has stayed single, living with his daughter.

According to Li, in the past 11 years, he has taught Li Jingci everything from painting, music and literature to astronomy and medicine. To demonstrate the efficacy of his education, Li instructed his daughter to make a pencil sketch of Alexander the Great. With Li pointing out various faults as she worked, the girl kept erasing and correcting lines. One hour later, she still wasnt done with the outline.

The two later played a traditional Chinese piece of music, Moon Reflected on the Er-quan Spring (Er Quan Ying Yue), with Li Tiejun playing the erhu, a stringed instrument, and Li Jingci playing the electronic keyboard. Their cooperation was generally smooth, excepting two sections for which they forget the sheet music. Li said they have practiced dozens of traditional Chinese melodies.

Eager to show off his daughters knowledge of Chinese classic literature, Li Tiejun demanded that Li Jingci tell the reporter the names of the four ugliest woman in Chinese history. As she recited the answer, Lis face registered great satisfaction.

Li Jingci nevertheless admitted that, although she has never tried, she believes she would definitely fail a number of basic high school tests. She says she is terrible at math, physics, chemistry and English, all essential courses in public school. Her father, Li Jingci explained, believes such courses to be useless.

The school teaches nothing but flattery, Li Tiejun told the reporter. And his daughter does indeed have some faith in his doctrine.

Im fine. Many college graduates also cant find jobs, she pointed out.

Neighbors said that as the girls peers entered university and started to get married, she just stayed at home with her dad. Her mother came back once, several years ago, and made an attempt to take Li Jingci away from her father. But she refused.

I learned the most important principle of living in this world from my dad, she said. Here, her father cut in: That is, to have no principle at all, said Li Tiejun.

The two now live on Lis retirement pension, 3,000 yuan each month. Li doesnt worry about his daughters future after he is gone.

Its easy to make a living--just do anything. She can clean peoples shoes, he offers. For his part, Li Tiejun said he will continue teaching and researching with his daughter.

But I wanted to get married before I turn 25, his daughter interjected.

Well, scientists usually stay single for a long time, Li mused.
Beatlemania64, a Beatles tribute band, will play in Hewitts Concert in the Park series at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Creekside Amphitheater in Warren Park, 450 S. Old Temple Road.

Tickets for the event, sponsored by the Hewitt Public Library, cost $15 in advance, $10 for ages 17 and younger, and $20 at the gate.

Tickets for a VIP Experience cost $75 and include priority seating, a meal, a meet-and-greet with the band and photos before the concert.

For more information, call 666-2442 or visit www.cityofhewitt.com.

White Linen Night

Cultural Arts of Waco will have a White Linen Night 2016 fundraiser at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Hawksdene, the lakeside home of Jim and Nell Hawkins.

Tickets for the French Provincial evening cost $75, with proceeds to support Cultural Arts of Waco programs, including the Waco Cultural Arts Fest.

For tickets, visit https://app.mobilecause.com/form/UJEYEw.

Alzheimers education

The Alzheimers Association will continue its Family Caregiver Education Series from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Tuesday at the Heart of Texas Area Agency on Aging, 1514 S. New Road.

Tresa Gray-Dale, community events director with Kindred at Home, will speak about practical approaches for staying engaged with people with any dementia diagnosis.

The program is free, but reservations are requested.

For reservations, call Christine Schroeder-Morren at 753-7722.

Arboretum art exhibit

An exhibit featuring the works of Kimberly Merck-Moore and Kay Skipper Reinke will be on display through Sunday at the Carleen Bright Arboretum, 9001 Bosque Blvd. in Woodway.

Merck-Moore is a 3-D mixed media artist, and Reinke is an acrylic and ink artist.

Arboretum hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.

For more information, call 399-9204.

Retired teachers lunch

The Waco-McLennan County chapter of Texas Retired Teachers Association will have a luncheon to honor newly retired teachers at 11:15 a.m. Sept. 6 at Region 12 Service Center, 2101 W. Loop 340.

Cost is $10 or free to new retirees.

For reservations, call Walter Drake at 776-5960.

For more information, call Bonnie Emmons at 776-3863.

YMCA MEND program

The YMCA of Central Texas is conducting registration for MEND, which stands for Mind, Exercise, Nutrition, Do It. The evidence-based childhood obesity program is designed to help 7- to 13-year-olds and their families learn how to become more fit, healthier and happier.

The next session of the 10-week program will start Sept. 13.

The program is offered at no cost to qualifying families. Advance registration is required as space is limited.

For more information or to enroll, call Crystal Hernandez at 776-6612, ext. 210, or email crystal.hernandez@ymcactx.org.

Submit items for Briefly in printed or typed form to Briefly, P.O. Box 2588, Waco 76702-2588; fax to 757-0302; or email to goingson@wacotrib.com at least one week before an event.
Efforts by local law enforcement to target sex buyers are getting national attention as McLennan County Sheriffs Office detectives ranked in the top 10 for most trafficking or solicitation arrests during a nationwide summer law enforcement initiative.

Agencies rescued 58 adult trafficking victims and 32 juvenile victims during the initiative, organizers reported.

McLennan County Sheriffs Office was one of 38 agencies in 18 states to participate in the National Johns Suppression Initiative, which ran from July 1 to Aug. 7.

A total of 1,358 accused sex buyers and 71 accused sex traffickers were arrested nationwide in the most recent round of the recurring initiative in which agencies conduct undercover stings targeting sex buyers.

McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said after reviewing national statistics, McLennan County stands out as one of the leaders in sex trafficking suppression.

This is a nationwide problem and it is a terrible problem, but more and more police departments are realizing that we need to do something about it, McNamara said. It has kind of been under the radar for quite a while, but now we have put a big spotlight on human trafficking.

In McLennan County, detectives made 55 arrests during the initiative, ranking ninth among the participating agencies. Local efforts ranked above police departments in New York, Las Vegas, Reno, the San Diego and Denver, among others.

We are doing the stings anyway, so this gave us a frame of reference as to how prevalent the crime actually is, particularly in our area, as compared to national trends, Detective Joe Scaramucci said. We are able to show that the demand for prostitution is here locally, on a level that is comparable to any other location in the country.

Scaramucci and his partner, Detective Brad Bond, launched local human trafficking suppression efforts about 20 months ago, arresting about 200 people for human trafficking or prostitution offenses in undercover stings.

To think that McLennan County has ranked in the top 10, above larger departments, it says a lot about Joe, Brad and their dedication to their job, Division Capt. Bubba Colyer said.

Bond said the offices high rank came as a surprise.

We knew we had a significant number because of the amount of work that went into the effort, but when you think about our effort compared to other agencies, we did not expect to rank in the top 10, Bond said.

In addition to the 71 arrests for sex trafficking offenses and 1,358 for sex solicitation offenses nationwide, agencies also collected more than $1 million in fines and towed, impounded or seized 421 vehicles, according to national statistics. Online ads led to 60 percent of the arrests.

So much more comes from human trafficking when you consider the drugs or robberies that are attached, Bond said.

There are also public health concerns involved, Scaramucci said.

Also with human trafficking, it is common for us to see other crimes associated, like money laundering, child abuse or neglect, as well as public health issues such as the spread of STDs, Scaramucci said.

McLennan County authorities have teamed up with Unbound, a nonprofit advocacy group committed to fighting human trafficking internationally.

The groups executive director has assisted McLennan County in past operations to offer resources to victims.

We are sincere about this effort, and when you realize there is a national effort with all these police departments and sheriffs offices to address and try to stop this, you see it is not a Central Texas problem. It is a national problem, McNamara said. Pimps are lowdown, despicable parasites, and I am so proud of our efforts. And we will continue.

Agencies with most arrests in National Johns Suppression Initiative

Cook County, Illinois, Sheriffs Office, in partnership with suburban agencies: 230

Seattle Police Department: 204

Columbus, Ohio, Police Department: 167

Harris County, Texas, Sheriffs Office: 143

Houston Police Department: 82

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation: 74

Portland, Oregon, Police Department: 63

Boston Police Department: 57

McLennan County Sheriffs Office: 55

Oakland, California, Police Department: 42

Other agencies, including in New York City, Las Vegas, Denver and San Diego, combined for a little more than 250 arrests.
(Xinhua) 19:39, August 22, 2016

HANGZHOU, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- A carbon offset project was launched Monday in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou to reduce carbon produced at the upcoming 2016 G20 summit.

China Green Carbon Foundation estimated that 6,674 tonnes of greenhouse gases will be emitted at the summit to be held Sept. 4 and 5 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.

The project, jointly organized by China Green Carbon Foundation, the Zhejiang provincial forestry department and Hangzhou municipal government, aims to plant more than 22 hectares of trees in the Hangzhou suburbs next spring. Over the next 20 years, the trees are expected to absorb all greenhouse gases discharged during the summit.

The project will be funded by two Chinese companies, Wanma Group and Lao Niu Foundation.

Carbon offsetting refers to a program in which a company or organization reduces or offsets its carbon emissions by funding activities and projects that improve the environment.

China attaches great importance to green development. From 2011 to 2015, the country planted 30 million hectares of trees and maintained another 40 million hectares of forest, up by 18 and 29 percent from the previous five years respectively.
(Xinhua) 19:52, August 22, 2016

KATHMANDU, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The number of Chinese tourists visiting Nepal plunged by 28 percent in the first half of 2016, although the Himalayan country witnessed a growth of 13 percent in total tourist arrivals, according to Nepal's Department of Immigration.

The department's statistics showed that Nepal received a total of 33,224 Chinese visitors as of June 2016 against 39,401 during the same period in 2015.

China is the second largest source market for tourism for Nepal, after India.

However, surging arrivals from India, United States, Britain, Germany and Sri Lanka contributed to the rise in overall tourist arrivals, showing the signs that the tourism industry in Nepal is bouncing back from twin disasters of last year's earthquake and blockade in Nepal's southern border points.

Tourist arrivals from India increased by 37 percent while those from the United States soared by 47 percent. Arrivals from Britain also soared by 40 percent.

The United States and Britain are Nepal's third and fourth largest tourism source markets.

Nepal received a total of 313,512 tourists in the first half this year, against 277,992 in the same period a year ago.

Stakeholders at Nepal's tourism industry said that Chinese tourist arrivals slumped because of the lack of adequate connectivity through both air and land following the earthquake.

"Many Chinese airlines which cancelled Nepal flights during the blockade due to the lack of aviation fuel, have not yet started full services that they used to provide before the blockade," said Suman Pandey, chairman of Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), Nepal.

"As the main border point, Tatopani-Khasa (Zhangmu) between Nepal and China has continued to remain closed since the earthquake last year, arrivals of Chinese through land route has also decreased."

Before the earthquake, arrivals of Chinese visitors were in ascending trend.

However, with Chinese airlines moving either to restart their flights in some routes or add flights, Chinese tourist arrivals are expected to go up.

China Southern Airlines has announced daily flights between Guangzhou and Kathmandu from Sept. 1, and the frequency will be upped to double daily flights from Oct. 30.

After last year's fuel crisis, the carrier had cut its frequency to three flights weekly.

China Eastern Airlines, which connects Kathmandu with Kunming, is planning to boost its frequency to daily from three flights weekly from October.

Another Chinese airline, Air China, currently operates nine flights weekly to Nepal.

"The lack of Kathmandu-Guangzhou flight service was one of the major reasons why Chinese visitors declined because the largest number of Chinese tourists comes through this route," said Sudhan Subedi, senior official of Nepal Tourism Board, the main tourism promotion body of Nepal.

"The resumption of the flight in this route will help for the growth of Chinese visitors."

He said that the tourism board has also been intensifying promotional activities in China as it is a very important source market for Nepal.
SYDNEY, Aug. 22 (People's Daily Online) -- Due to the extreme weather in the town of Coober Pedy, located in southern Australia, most locals choose to live underground. Construction on Desert Cave Hotel began in 1984. The hotel finally opened in 1988, delayed by various factors including high temperatures and dust storms.

Visitors have their choice of whether to stay underground or above ground. Underground rooms, which feature high ceilings, offer guests an especially cool, quiet, dry and dark environment, which ensures that guests sleep very well.

The hotel won the South Australian and National Tourism Award for Tourism Development in 1989, and the South Australian Tourism Award in the category of national standard accommodations in 1990 and 1991.

Robert Coro, the managing director of the hotel, says many tourists are attracted by the idea of living underground. They like to visit the underground rooms, and the majority choose to try staying underground themselves. Peak season, which is April to October, is winter in Australia. However, Coro said that most Chinese tourists come during the Australian summer. (People's Daily Online / Qian Guo)
S&P 500 3,901.06

DOW 32,861.80

QQQ 281.22

Apple Inc. Stock Q4 Results Beat Negative Outlook, Stock Rises

Elon Musk takes over Twitter but where will he go from here?

Why is Amazon Stock Falling? Is the Sell-Off Overdone?

McDonalds Stock Sizzles, but Will it Hit a New All-Time High?

Chevron Gushes More Profits; Is it Time for Investors to Buy?

Will Ryanair Stock Gains, Strong Estimates Help it Fly?
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22

Trend:

Armenian armed forces have 10 times violated the ceasefire on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops over the past 24 hours, said Azerbaijans Defense Ministry Aug. 22.

Armenian armed forces, stationed in the villages of Barekamavan, Shavarshavan of Armenias Noyemberyan district and in the village of Vazashen of Ijevan district opened fire at Azerbaijani positions located in the villages of Qaymaqli, Farakhli and on the nameless heights of the Gazakh district.

Azerbaijani positions also underwent fire from the positions located near the occupied Qorgan village of the Fizuli district, Mehdili village of the Jabrayil district and the positions on the nameless heights of the Goranboy district.

Moreover, Azerbaijani positions took fire from the positions located on the nameless heights of the Goranboy and Fizuli districts.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
What if there can be a way for people to choose to share their financial data with external comparison apps, without threatening security by handing over banking passwords?

Britain has found a way. If the Australian government really wants to see banks do a better job serving customers, then it can do the same.

Buried deep in the 2014 financial system inquiry by David Murray was a recommendation for the Productivity Commission to do a detailed review of the costs and benefits of boosting customers' access to the troves of customer data held by companies, especially banks.

Finance is, after all, built on amassing and analysing huge amounts of information about customers.
A surge in the sale of premium fuels helped to offset the squeeze on earnings at Caltex Australia from a steep decline in refining margins.

The net profit fell to $318 million in the June half from $375 million a year earlier on revenue of $8.5 billion down from $9.7 billion a year earlier. A 50c a share interim dividend was declared, up from the 47c a share interim payout a year ago.

Caltex continues to profit from a shift in purchases of higher margin products

Caltex said sales of premium fuels rose a strong 10 per cent to 2.2 billion litres which more than offset weak sales of unleaded and E10 fuels. Much of the rise in premium fuel sales was due to highre sales of makes of autos requiring higher grade fuel products, it said.

In late June, Caltex forecast a June half net profit of $310-$330 million, well short of the $375 million earned in the same period last year, due to lower refining margins at its Lytton refinery, not withstanding a rise in volumes of petrol sold.
A 102-year-old Perth academic told by his university to work from home is not happy about their decision and says he will be stuck inside his flat for most of the day if he has to pack up his office.

David William Goodall is an honorary research associate in the Centre of Ecosystem Management at Perth's Edith Cowan University whose career in ecology spans 70 years.

Home office? Not when you ask Dr Goodall. Credit:Charlotte Hamlyn, ABC News

Dr Goodall has worked in five continents and authored more than 130 scientific works.

He says the decision is due to the fear of possible legal consequences if he has an accident on campus.
A dual Australian-Canadian citizen is to be extradited to the US to face online child exploitation charges after spending five years in custody in Perth.

Christopher Lobban was arrested and detained in July 2011 after his American online girlfriend Robin Pagoria, whom he met through a website, was sentenced for aggravated child abuse, lewd or lascivious battery and using a child in a sexual performance.

Lobban, who allegedly encouraged Pagoria in 2008 to post images on the internet of her 14 and 15-year-old daughters being whipped and spanked, appealed against the justice minister's decision to allow the extradition but lost the federal court bid on Monday.

From his home in Perth, Lobban allegedly gave detailed instructions to Pagoria in Florida on how to build a "spanking bench" and use a leather paddle to beat the girls to fulfil his and Pagoria's sexual desires, authorities allege.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 23



Trend:

Today marks the 23rd anniversary of the occupation of Azerbaijan's Fuzuli and Jabrayil districts by the armed forces of Armenia.

On August 23, 1993, some 51 villages and the center of the Fuzuli district were seized by Armenians, as a result of which over 55,000 residents left their native land.

The district covers a territory stretching from the southeastern slopes of the Karabakh mountain range to the Araz River. It has borders with Azerbaijani districts of Khojavand, Jabrayil, Aghjabadi, Beylagan, as well as Iran along the Araz River.

The area of the Fuzuli district is 1,386 sq. km. Some 13 settlements and 20 villages are located in this district's territory freed from the occupation.

Twelve of the settlements, constructed after liberation, accommodate the internally displaced families.

Since 1988, the Fuzuli district has faced constant Armenian attacks. As a result of the occupation, over 1,100 residents of Fuzuli became martyrs, 113 were taken hostages and 1,450 were left disabled.

Azerbaijani Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry's Operative Center, which inspects the devastating impact of the occupation on environmental and natural resources of Azerbaijan, found out that Armenians destroyed natural resources in the Fuzuli district during the occupation period.

Armenians cut down virtually all the trees in the Dovlatyarli village, and destroyed green spaces along the roads in the Gochahmadli and Yaglivand villages.

After the occupation of the Jabrayil district, which has a territory of 1,050 sq. km, some 72 secondary schools, eight hospitals, five mosques, two museums, 129 historical monuments and 149 cultural centres were left in the occupation zone.

Some 61,100 IDPs from the Jabrayil district were settled in over 2,000 settlements in 58 districts across Azerbaijan.

Edited by CN
Police are hunting for the driver of a Toyota Hilux who rammed a police car and then dumped the four-wheel-drive in a lake in Banksia Grove in the early hours of Monday morning.

Just after midnight Mirrabooka detectives tried to stop the Toyota on Joseph Banks Boulevard in Banksia Grove when the Hilux slammed into the rear doors of the police car, causing damage to the bumper before speeding off.

Loading

Police found the Toyota a short time later dumped in a lake near Grandis Boulevarde and Botanic Ave in Banksia Grove.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22

By Ilaha Mammadli  Trend:

The next round of discussions on Azerbaijans joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) will be held no earlier than the end of the first half of 2017, the countrys Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev told Trend Aug. 22.

By late August, we expect to receive the questions of WTO member states voiced during the talks in the third decade of July 2016 in Geneva from the WTO working party, while some countries, including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Ecuador have already submitted their proposals, said Mammad-Guliyev.

He noted that the proposals are mainly related to the reduction in tariffs, the liberalization in the service sector and others.

It should be noted that Azerbaijan started negotiations with Russia and Saudi Arabia within the WTO in summer. They expressed interest in receiving the initial negotiating rights, if Azerbaijan changes tariffs on some commodity positions, in order to be the first to negotiate on this issue.

We need time for the next negotiation process preparation, thus, I think that the meeting with the WTO working party will be held no earlier than the first half of 2017, explained the deputy foreign minister.

During the latest meeting, the chair of working party on Azerbaijans access to the WTO Walter Werner urged Azerbaijan and WTO members to accelerate the pace of negotiations. He also called on the WTO members to intensify bilateral negotiations with Azerbaijan.

This was the first meeting in 2016. The previous meeting was held in March 2015 in Geneva (Switzerland).

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, Aug. 22

By Ilaha Mammadli  Trend:

Azerbaijan and the European Union are resuming negotiations within the framework of the existing mechanism of cooperation, Azerbaijans Deputy Foreign Minister Mahmud Mammad-Guliyev told Trend Aug. 22.

Subcommittees will start work in September, said Mammad-Guliyev adding that during the autumn, it is planned to hold sessions of four subcommittees, operating in the spheres of trade, energy and transportation, ecology, security and human rights, education and other social issues.

He noted that these consultations will be held regardless of the terms of mandate of the EU Council to start negotiations on a new agreement on strategic partnership.

It is expected that the mandate will be given to Azerbaijan closer to October, but it is still preliminary date, added the deputy minister. Despite this, we are resuming work with the EU within the framework of the existing cooperation mechanism.

Currently, bilateral relations between the EU and Azerbaijan are regulated on the basis of an agreement on partnership and cooperation that was signed in 1996 and entered into force in 1999.

The new agreement envisages the approach of Azerbaijans legislation and procedures to the most important international trade norms and EU standards, which should lead to an improvement in the access of Azerbaijani goods to EU markets.

Today, the EU is Azerbaijans main trade partner.

The share of European countries in Azerbaijans foreign trade was 46.96 percent in 2015, according to the countrys State Customs Committee. Currently, the EU countries account for 31.92 and 59.1 percent of Azerbaijans import and export respectively. European countries mainly deliver vehicles and transportation equipment to Azerbaijan and import oil products from the country.

Azerbaijan put forward the initiative to conclude an agreement with the EU on strategic modernization partnership instead of the Association Agreement (AA). This document is not legal; this is a program, an action plan, aimed at expanding cooperation with the EU beyond energy. The agreement will define new directions of partnership, such as education and other spheres.
LEESVILLE -- In support of those who have lost so much in the flooding in South Louisiana, Leesville schools are banding together to offer aid to those in need.

Students at the school are asked to donate the following items:

Leesville High School -- non-perishable food items

Leesville Junior High School -- school supplies

Vernon Middle School -- non-perishable food items

West Leesville Elementary -- cleaning supplies

East Leesville Elementary -- diapers/wipes

Items are due to the schools by Friday, Aug. 26. Area residents can also take part and donate items.

On Aug. 26, students will be able to wear blue jeans in return for this effort and as a show of support.
Baku, Azerbaijan, August 22

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Some 74 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas and 19 million tons of condensate have been extracted since the beginning of operation at the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field, said Khoshbakht Yusifzade, first vice president of Azerbaijan's state oil company (SOCAR).

Yusifzade made the remarks at the opening of SOCAR Summer School in Baku Aug. 22.

He added that the reserves of the Shah Deniz field are estimated at 1.2 trillion cubic meters of gas and 240 million tons of condensate.

The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996.

The shareholders in the contract are BP (operator - 28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NIOC (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent).

As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

Shah Deniz Stage 2 will add a further 16 billion cubic meters per year (bcma) of gas production to the approximately 9 bcma produced by Shah Deniz Stage 1.

The official exchange rate is 1.6204 AZN/USD.
If you have an event you'd like to list on the site, submit it now!

Submit
Fort Polk, LA (71446)

Today

Light rain this morning. Then remaining cloudy. High 69F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Considerable cloudiness. Low 56F. Winds light and variable.
Advertisement

By West Kentucky Star Staff

Aug. 22, 2016 | WEST PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 22, 2016 | 06:20 PM | WEST PADUCAH, KY

Four people were hurt Monday afternoon in a crash involving an ambulance at a West Paducah intersection.



McCracken County Sheriff's Deputies responded at around 2:30 pm to a crash involving an ambulance at the intersection of Fisher Road and US 60. Deputies said 56-year-old Douglas Smith of West Paducah was driving an ambulance east on US 60 with lights and sirens on approaching the Fisher Road intersection. Smith went to pass other vehicles in the passing lane and then slowed for the red light. Deputies said Smith struck another vehicle, driven by 46-year-old LeeAnn Crabtree of Paducah as he drove through the intersection. Crabtree told deputies that she had the green light and didn't see the ambulance before it hit her. Responders had to use mechanical means to remove Crabtree from her vehicle.



29-year-old Anna Abernathy of Wickliffe, an EMT attending to a patient, 55-year-old Ronald Thompson, of Paducah was ejected during the crash. Thompson was thrown from his stretcher, and struck the interior wheel well of the ambulance.



All four victims were taken to local hospitals for treatment of their injuries.
Advertisement

By West Kentucky Star Staff

Aug. 21, 2016 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 21, 2016 | 06:22 PM | PADUCAH, KY

The all-volunteer Paducah Ambassadors celebrated 28 years of serving the City of Paducah during their annual dinner meeting at Walker Hall this week. Approximately 140 Paducah citizens make up the popular "Red Coats".



Former Mayor Gerry Montgomery founded the group when she was in office and is not surprised that the organization is still alive and well. "This group of dedicated Paducah citizens continues to serve our community, and it is with great pride that Wally and I volunteer with them. While other towns attempt to organize volunteer groups like this but find it almost impossible to keep the program active long term, here in Paducah our eager volunteers keep stepping up and our group is vibrant with leadership and participation. It thrills me to see such devotion to our city."



The Red Coats can be seen on Paducah's riverfront greeting riverboat visitors, welcoming guests downtown, the airport, at City Hall, County Courthouse and Chamber of Commerce events and at Whitehaven, hosting all kinds of ceremonies, ribbon cuttings, grand openings, receptions, festivals and endless happenings around town. They give city tours and tell visitors all about Paducah's history while strolling along the Paducah Wall to Wall Murals.



Official certification and training for tour guides are a new addition to the requirements the Ambassadors have added to better their quality of service.



President Marty Bendick thanked event coordinators from the previous year for organizing volunteer hours. New coordinators were announced for the upcoming year's events. 5,988 volunteer hours were reported this year, just a few shy of the number reported from the previous year.



Bendick shared the evolving job descriptions of the Red Coats as the city is now a United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO) City of Crafts & Folk Art.



President-elect Robert Worden expressed his appreciation to the Ambassadors for sharing Paducah hospitality and for welcoming visitors like no other groups or individuals can. He emphasized how important the presence of the Ambassadors is at community events and encouraged all in attendance to continue to take their responsibilities seriously.



City Commissioner Sandra Wilson swore in five new board members for the upcoming year and the Ambassadors all stood and took a pledge to do their best to represent Paducah in a positive and respectful manner.



George Gillespie put his Santa hat on and shared his plan to organize the Paducah Ambassador volunteer day on December 3rd to ring the Salvation Army bells across the city.



Four Ambassadors passed away this year; Kathryn Batts, Ruth Walsh, Harold Russell and Shirley Litty. All were remembered for their service and all they accomplished for the betterment of the community.



Worden and Bendick thanked David and Linda Curtis for the excellent food and perfect dining atmosphere for the Ambassadors to celebrate 28 years.








By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 22, 2016 | 06:31 AM | KIRKSEY, KY

The Calloway County Sheriffs Office is investigating a vehicle theft and arson that occurred Sunday night.

Deputies arrived at Collins Road in Kirksey Sunday night at around 10:30 to find the truck's passenger compartment fully engulfed in flames. The Calloway County Fire and Rescue extinguished the fire and determined that the truck was unoccupied.



The owner, 32-year-old William Nelson of Murray, told police the truck was at his home on Cambridge Drive in Murray when he left at approximately 9:30 pm.

Nelson told police several items in the truck were missing.



Anyone with any information concerning the theft or arson of the truck is encouraged to contact the Calloway County Sheriffs Office.
By Aug. 22, 2016 | 06:20 AM | HOPKINSVILLE, KY

Members of Calvert Citys William A. Doyle Post 236 of the American Legion met with Legion motorcyclists from across the nation at the Kentucky Veterans Cemetery West Sunday afternoon and presented a $500 donation to a fundraising ride.





The military veteran bikers were on the way from Indianapolis to Fort Campbell on the first day of the American Legion Legacy Run 2016, a five-day journey of 1,264 miles through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Ohio.





The ride is held annually to raise money to help pay for college expenses for children whose parents lost their lives while serving in the armed forces. The American Legion and the Legion Riders offer support through the Legacy Scholarship Fund.





Some 538 riders registered for this years event, and an estimated 400-plus arrived in Hopkinsville around 4 p.m. Sunday.





At a brief stopover at the military cemetery, a ceremony was held with a color guard that included of two members of Post 236, Army veteran Leonard Harp of Gilbertsville and Navy veteran Duane Briggs of Symsonia. Presentations were made, accepted by American Legion National Commander Dale Barnett. Post 236 Commander Bob Zirkle Jr. delivered the check from members of the Calvert City post.





Zirkle headed a delegation of 21 members of Post 236 and its Women's Auxiliary group.





Barnett said more than $300,000 was contributed before the start of the ride, earlier Sunday at Post 64, near American Legion national headquarters in Indianapolis.





The group planned to stay overnight at Fort Campbell before continuing on the way to a conclusion on Thursday at the Yeager-Benson Memorial American Legion Post 199 in Harrison, Ohio, near Cincinnati.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 22, 2016 | 05:05 PM | BENTON, KY

A Marshall County man faces a long list of charges after a weekend incident on the Purchase Parkway.

The Marshall County Sheriff's Office said deputies were called to a disturbance Sunday night at the off ramp of the Purchase Parkway at the 41 mile marker. Deputies said the disturbance started when 40-year-old Chad Miller of Benton passed a vehicle on the side of the road, almost striking someone changing a tire.

Deputies said Miller then stopped, backed up and again almost struck the vehicle and some bystanders. When deputies arrived, Miller was reportedly standing in the middle of the road cussing. According to police, Miller smelled of alcohol and was unsteady on his feet.

Deputies said Miller resisted arrest and lunged at a Kentucky State Trooper. He was taken to the ground and handcuffed.



Miller was lodged in the Marshall County Detention Center on charges of DUI, disorderly conduct, four counts of wanton endangerment, possession of an open alcoholic beverage container in a motor vehicle and resisting arrest.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22

By Aygun Badalova  Trend:

In 1H2016, 5.4 billion cubic meters of gas and 1.3 million tons of condensate (nearly 10 million barrels) were produced at Azerbaijans Shah Deniz gas and condensate field, as compared to 5.2 billion cubic meters of gas and 1.2 million tons of condensate in the same period of 2015, said BP report on the results of the companys activity in 1H2016 in Azerbaijan, issued Aug. 22.

The report says that currently, the average daily volume of gas output at the field is 29.5 million cubic meters (about 10.8 billion cubic meters per year).

In 1H2016, Shah Deniz fields operating expenditures totalled $225 million and capital expenditures  about $1.87 billion, the majority of which was associated with the Shah Deniz Stage 2 project.

The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996.

The shareholders in the contract are BP (operator - 28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NIOC (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent).

As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

The cost of the Shah Deniz Stage 2 project is estimated at $28 billion.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @AygunBadalova
By The Associated Press

By The Associated Press Aug. 22, 2016 | 12:43 PM | FRANKFORT, KY

Kentucky education officials have determined that 241 testing violations occurred on required statewide tests for the 2014-15 school year.

Citing records obtained under the Kentucky Open Records Act, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports that violations were made on tests including the Kentucky Performance Rating for Educational Progress and the ACT.

Kentucky Department of Education spokeswoman Nancy Rodriguez says most violations involved procedural errors instead of intentional efforts to cheat.

Investigators found that students in the Anchorage Independent Schools district were allowed to use dictionaries during tests. In Grant County, investigators determined that a teacher let students use protractors, which aren't allowed during testing.

As a result of the investigation, officials lowered the tests scores of dozens of students. About 216 educators are required to have extra training.

___

Information from: Lexington Herald-Leader, http://www.kentucky.com
Photo: Byron Buffalo

A tribal leader Wednesday said he contacted the White House and met with North Dakota's senators in an effort to halt construction of a $3.8 billion, four-state oil pipeline that crosses the Missouri River near an American Indian reservation in southern North Dakota.Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman David Archambault II, in a teleconference with reporters, stressed that the he and the tribe are working to ensure peace among those protesting the Dakota Access pipeline."There is no place for threats, violence or criminal activity," Archambault said.North Dakota transportation officials, meanwhile, closed a several-mile stretch of Highway 1806 on Wednesday because of the protest along the road.The 1,172-mile pipeline planned by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners is passing through the Dakotas and Iowa on its way to Illinois. Construction crews with armed private security guards arrived last week just north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers, where native Americans have been staging a protest for months at a "spirit camp."Archambault and more than two dozen others have been arrested in the past week for interfering with construction of the project.On Monday, developers of the project sued in federal court to stop protesters  including Archambault  from interfering with the project, alleging the safety of workers and law enforcement is at risk.U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland granted the developer's motion for a temporary restraining order Tuesday.Archambault said he met Wednesday with North Dakota Sens. John Hoeven and Heidi Heitkamp to "express concerns" about the pipeline.The tribe sued federal regulators late last month for approving the pipeline. The tribe argues the pipeline would disturb sacred sites and affect drinking water for the thousands of residents on the reservation and the millions who rely on it downstream.Archambault told reporters he also has urged President Barack Obama to step in. The president and First Lady Michelle Obama traveled to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in 2014 to get a firsthand look at the impoverished living conditions on the reservation that straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border.Archambault said he asked nothing of the president then but is doing so now."I believe both he and Michelle Obama were touched," Archambault said. "So now if there's any way he can intervene and move this pipeline off our treaty lands, I'm asking him."The White House did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
THE SON OF A HENDERSONVILLE REALTOR WAS SHOT AND KILLED OVER THE WEEKEND IN SOUTH CAROLINA

Stations WCIV in Charleston and WLOS in Asheville are reporting:

A teenager who recently graduated from Hendersonville High School died in a shooting over the weekend in South Carolina.

Police in Goose Creek say 19-year-old Kyle David Shirlin was killed during a party near Charleston.

Sunday at approximately 12:50 a.m., authorities dispatched to party's location for excessive cars parked near the party were advised that a shooting had taken place. On arrival, officers found Shirlin in the back yard, with an apparent gunshot wound to the upper body. Medics responded, and Shirlin was pronounced dead at the scene. The incident report says he was wearing a backpack, and that a witness at the scene describes two black males with dreadlocks trying to "get" Shrlin's backpack. The witness said he shouted at them to leave and said police were coming, and they left.

The responding officer describes seeing many young people in their teens and twenties hurriedly getting into cars and leaving the party, not responding to his attempts to wave them down.

One witness said Shirlin was a friend of his, and said that he and Shirlin worked as valets together at the Hyatt Hotel in Charleston.

Shirlin did not know anyone in the local area, the witness said, and had learned of the party from him.

Neighbors in the area said after hearing gunshots, they saw people running from a house in the Cherry Hill area. Authorities blocked off exits to the subdivision and identified people as they left the area. They identified 28 people leaving from the two exits from the Cherry Hill subdivision.

Family members don't have all the answers right now. Kyle's father, Dave, says his son was a great kid: personable, warm and extremely loyal to his close friends.

He was always polite, Kyle's father said, and for him to be shot and killed is just senseless.

WLOS spoke with a family friend who said Kyle was a great kid.

Family friend Dave Lee said he was kind and compassionate. "He was always the kid that stood up for the other kids," Lee said. "He was a beautiful young man with a future ahead of him."

The Berkeley County Coroner's Office has requested an autopsy which will be conducted Monday morning at the Medical University Hospital in Charleston.

GCPD investigators are actively working this case and believe it is an isolated incident.

Investigators ask anyone that was at 122 Westerfield Dr. when the shooting occurred to contact Investigator Powell at (843) 863-5200 ext. 2356 or Crimestoppers at (843) 554-1111
MEADOWS RESPONDS TO ETHICS COMMITTEE INVESTIGATION; HAS FULL SLATE OF EVENTS IN HENDERSON COUNTY THIS WEEK

Western North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows is responding today to a House Ethics Committee investigation. The committee is looking into charges that Meadows paid a former staff member that he fired for a longer time than was appropriate. In an interview on WHKP News today at 7:55 and 11:55am and 505 pm, Meadows points out he terminated the staffer well over a year ago; that he himself reported this and fully co-operated with the committee; and if there was any mis-interpretation of House rules, hell make the whole thing right with the Congress and his constituents.

Meadows is conducting a series of events this week in HendersonCounty. Today hes visit Hendersonville Elementary School at 8:30am. Hendersonville Elementary is one of the countys full time schools and classes are already back in session.

He will be visiting the Johnson Family Farm on Kanuga Roadat Erkwood Drive at 10.

Meadows is conducting a town hall meeting at 6 in the Bo Thomas Auditorium at Blue Ridge Community College.

And on Thursday, Congressman Meadows will be conducting a veterans seminar from 2 to 5pm in Fletcher Town Hall. Local veterans with questions or issues are encouraged to attend.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

Azerbaijan's Sangachal oil terminal exported over 148 million barrels of oil and condensate through pipelines in January-June 2016 compared to 154 million barrels exported in the same period of 2015, the BP report said Aug.22.

According to the report, the volume included over 132 million barrels through Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, about 15.5 million barrels through the Western Route Export Pipeline (WREP), and about 0.5 million barrels via a separate condensate export line.

On average, 29.3 million cubic meters (mcm) of Shah Deniz gas was exported from the terminal daily in January-June 2016, the report said.

At present, the total capacity of the terminal's technical processing systems makes up 1.2 million barrels per day, and for the gas from the Shah Deniz field - 29.5 mcm per day (together with associated gas from Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil and gas fields, the total gas processing capacity at the terminal is 49.3 mcm per day).

Azerbaijan's Sangachal oil terminal exported over 296 million barrels of oil through pipelines in 2015 compared to 298.5 million barrels exported in 2014.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22

Trend:

During a special operation, employees of Kazakhstans National Security Committee (NSC) detained a radical groups four members, who planned to commit a series of terrorist attacks in the country, TASS reported Aug. 22 citing the committees press service.

The detainees were planning armed attacks on employees and bases of NSC and police units, as well as military units, according to the report. During the next stage, the extremists were preparing attacks in crowded places, according to special services.

Operational and investigative activities are continuing, added the press service of the NSC.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/08/2016 (2259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Winnipeg issued an advisory Monday about what residents and businesses should do in the event of a work stoppage at Canada Post.

Canadians were warned Monday that a 72-hour strike notice could be issued this week.

The city is advising people to make arrangements other than the mail to address matters such as paying taxes and water bills, applying for business licences and dealing with other city departments.

Darren Calabrese / The Canadian Press The Canadian Union of Postal Workers warned Canadians Monday that it could issue a 72-hour strike notice this week.

For more information on payment options contact 311 or visit http://www.winnipegassessment.com.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/08/2016 (2259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Denise Allard doesnt let being blind slow her down.

I know I cant do everything, but what I can do, Ill do it to the max, the 53-year-old St. Boniface resident said.

That means volunteering at a variety of places, including Age & Opportunity: Support Services for Older Adults. A & O offers a variety of services that aim to support and empower older Manitobans.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Denise Allard, 53, volunteers with the Connect program at A & O: Support Services for Older Adults. She is also a longtime volunteer with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.

Allard joined A & Os Connect program last November. The goal of the program is to reduce the isolation and loneliness felt by older adults living in the community through regular visits from volunteers.

Each week, Allard visits two people, spending an hour with each of them.

A longtime volunteer at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Allard wanted to spread her wings and add another volunteer opportunity to her schedule. With one client, Allard chats and plays cards. With another, she converses in French and sings French folk songs.

They have a lot to offer, Allard said. They have a lot of good advice to give to the people of today.

Allard is passionate about people, something she attributes to growing up with 11 siblings.

I was raised in a big family, and all of us, including my parents, were social butterflies, she said.

Allard enjoys learning, and speaking with A & O clients gives her the opportunity to do that.

I have a thirst for knowledge and a thirst to learn, she said.

Its nice to learn things from a textbook, but you get a lot more out of talking to people.

Allards parents are deceased, and volunteering with A & O has been a boon in that regard.

I miss my parents a little less, she said. I can see some of their mannerisms when the clients speak. They come from that same era as well.

Most people dont realize there are many older adults who dont have anyone to visit them, said Michelle Ranville, manager of community services at A & O.

Maybe their friends have passed away, or they never had any children, or their children live in another province, Ranville said.

A & O has 285 volunteers, 130 of whom are involved with the Connect program.

Without them, the program wouldnt exist, Ranville said. Its like having a small army of people out there visiting these isolated older adults weekly.

Ranville is looking for more volunteers. She has a list of more than 65 older adults in all areas of Winnipeg who are waiting to be paired with a volunteer visitor.

Anyone interested in getting involved can contact Jessica Harper by email at jharper@aosupportservices.ca or by calling 204-956-6440.

People who can work independently and maintain client confidentiality are ideal candidates.

We look for somebody thats outgoing, positive (and) upbeat, Ranville said. (Someone) that likes to visit, respects their elders and is a good listener.

For Allard, volunteering with A & O has been nothing but positive. She points out older adults are the foundation of todays society.

Theyre the backbone of who we are, Allard said. They should not be forgotten, because they have wisdom and they have experience.

If you know a special volunteer, please contact:

aaron.epp@gmail.com
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 21/08/2016 (2260 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They are peaceful people, but theyre telling real-life horror stories.

For the past two weeks, several practitioners of Falun Gong from Toronto have visited other Canadian cities and towns to raise awareness of forced organ harvesting to members of their spiritual practice in China.

Falun Gong is a combination of tai chi and meditation banned by Chinas communist regime.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Yue Zhao (from left), Jason Liu, Amy Liu and Paula Liu of the Falun Gong Association of Toronto were handing out brochures near the Canadian Museum for Human Rights Sunday. The group is seeking support for imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners and speaking out about Chinas persecution of the minority.

Most are young people, Paula Liu said Monday during a stop in Winnipeg. The group will hold a news conference in front of city hall at 11:30 a.m. today.

One man in their entourage was imprisoned in a labour camp in China.

Three people in the car tour have loved ones who were persecuted, Liu said, adding they dont know what became of them or their body parts. They feel duty-bound to speak up.

Theyre locked up somewhere.

The demonstrators are citizens such as Liu or permanent residents of Canada, she said. In Canada, theyre free to speak and to let people know about the new form of the evil on the planet, the group said.

Today, theyll ask people to sign a petition urging the Canadian government to publicly call for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China. Theyre asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to deliver that message when he visits China in September for meetings and the G20 summit.

They will also call for former Chinese president Jiang Zemin to be brought to justice.

They say he ordered the brutal persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and ordered the crackdown against them starting in 1999.

Last summer, Winnipeg grandmother Ruirong Chen filed a formal complaint with Chinas highest court against the 90-year-old leader. Chen had been a schoolteacher in China who was persecuted for practising Falun Gong. She lost everything.

One of the most outspoken critics of Chinas human rights record is Winnipeg immigration lawyer David Matas. He and former MP David Kilgour literally wrote the book on forced organ harvesting in China in a volume titled Bloody Harvest, which was turned into a documentary film last year.

In the 2009 book and a recent report with updated research, they say the state is persecuting minorities and harvesting organs for the lucrative transplant trade.

Matas was a witness at congressional hearings in the United States earlier this year. The U.S. House of Representatives later passed a motion of concern about persistent and credible reports of systematic, state-sanctioned organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience.

The Chinese government denied the reports.

Since leaving Toronto at the beginning of the month, theyve visited dozens of cities and towns in northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Liu said. On Thursday, theyll head to Thunder Bay, Ont., where another demonstration is planned.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/08/2016 (2259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last month, S&P Global Ratings (formerly Standard & Poors) downgraded the Manitobas credit rating.

It will affect every Manitoban, since the City of Winnipeg and Manitoba Hydro will also see their borrowing costs rise. Governments will get less bang for their buck because more money will be spent on interest and less on education, health care or fixing roads.

The premier and the finance minister have said they are not to blame. They say they havent been in office long enough, that they inherited a fiscal mess from NDP overspending and cuts will be necessary to balance the budget. On top of that, they claim Manitoba faces reduced social and health transfers from the federal Liberal government.

None of this is strictly accurate, though it takes some unpacking to challenge it.

First, S&Ps report makes it clear the downgrade is, in part, because the PCs 2016 budget announced they plan to run deficits for eight years, with no fiscal plan beyond the first year.

The same ratings agency that upheld the provinces credit rating last November now gives a one-in-three chance the government will fail to meet its targets.

The NDP was not a big-spending government. Like many social democratic parties in the 1990s, the Manitoba NDP made a strategic decision to move right and abandon their supporters on the left, assuming they would have no one else to vote for. This meant tax cuts, frozen social spending and tough-on-crime policies from a centre left party.

By spring 2008, the NDPs tax cuts meant $1 billion less a year in revenue for the provincial government  about the size of the current deficit.

In the fall of 2008, the global financial crisis hit. It was a colossal private-sector banking crisis, created by a toxic mix of reckless lending and occasional fraud. Government debt soared as economies tanked, revenue evaporated and banks were bailed out at public expense. The estimated worldwide cost of the bailout to taxpayers is from $3 trillion to $13 trillion.

While Canada was one of the few countries in the world to have no bank failures, Canadian banks were not immune. They took billions in U.S. bailout money, were backstopped by the federal government by $113 billion and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp., a federal Crown corporation, took $66 billion in risky mortgages off the banks books.

Government debt did not cause the crisis. The financial crisis caused government debt, and it remains the root cause of government deficits, debt and slow economic growth here in Manitoba and around the world.

The crisis also turned economic thinking upside down, because a generation of ideas that has informed government policies since the 1970s turned out to be wrong. This is especially true of austerity  the idea we can cut our way to growth in a downturn.

Without exception, every country that stimulated its economy since 2008 ended up with better growth and a better debt-to-GDP ratio. Every country that followed austerity (or had it imposed) ended up with lower growth and more debt. That is evidence, not ideology.

Governments taking on debt is not all bad, if that debt is being used to grow the economy. Manitobas Heavy Construction Association has called for smart debt: if you borrow at three per cent and invest in infrastructure that generates a 15 per cent return on investment, you are ahead.

Much of Manitobas recent economic growth was driven by infrastructure spending.

It may be that the Manitoba government hopes it will be able to balance the budget in less than eight years with more revenue from federal policies  higher transfers, new taxes on carbon or legal marijuana, or better growth from a spillover from the federal stimulus.

However, it is not the federal governments job to balance Manitobas budget.

Ratings agencies dont want cuts: they want to know governments can pay their bills. S&P cited Manitobas majority government as a strength, because it can raise taxes to balance the budget. But the PCs have ruled out tax increases (though they hiked education taxes on seniors), leaving only more debt or cuts as options.

There is little question Manitobas credit rating is being lowered because the PC governments plan is likely to lower growth and increase public debt while decreasing our ability to pay it off. The real question is whether they will do anything to change course.

Dougald Lamont is a lecturer in government business relations at the University of Manitoba. In 2013, he ran for the leadership of the Manitoba Liberal Party.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Aug. 22

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

The 4th session of the Turkmenistan-China intergovernmental committee on cooperation will be held on Aug. 22-24 in Chinas Tianjin city, the Turkmen government said in a message Aug. 22.

The natural gas supply from Turkmenistan to China is the solid foundation of the long-term and strategic economic and trade cooperation between the two countries. Beijing intends to increase the daily volume of Turkmen gas import up to 65 billion cubic meters.

China also intensively cooperates with Turkmenistan in the supply of equipment and services for transportation and communications. The two countries have great potential to increase economic ties.

China expressed its interest in increasing the supplies of cotton fiber, vegetable products, fruit and berry crops and certain raw materials produced by poultry and livestock complexes of Turkmenistan.

Moreover, cooperation in such spheres of the economy as the transportation, electricity, chemical and textile industry, construction materials, agriculture and urban development are also considered as promising areas of cooperation between the two countries.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/08/2016 (2259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last week, an unflattering portrayal of Winnipeg was revealed in a poll that surveyed a relatively small sampling of Canadians and concluded our city was perceived to be the most unsafe of 15 metros examined.

Although many respondents have never been here to experience our great city personally, they consider it unsafe based on things theyve heard or stories theyve read.

Thankfully, this perception doesnt equate with reality. The facts are that Winnipeg is in the middle of the pack when crime statistics are compared. But whichever side of this perception-versus-reality divide you find yourself on, one thing is clear: Winnipeg has work to do when it comes to promoting itself across the country, and each of us has a role to play.

Economic development is a collaborative pursuit, and Winnipegs reputation among future visitors and potential investors is integral to capitalizing on the positive momentum experienced during the last few years.

However, investors are individuals first, and their impressions of Winnipeg are framed by a host of sources and contributing factors, just as mine and yours are.

Ultimately, each of us has our own Winnipeg story, and each of us has the power to influence others stories for better or for worse. The time has come for other proud Winnipeggers to join me in making their voices heard by telling Winnipegs story in the more favourable light it deserves and, more importantly, has earned.

Companies looking to invest in or expand their operations can choose from a dizzying array of location-related options.

Admittedly, multiple factors conspire to narrow the field of feasible cities for every company (e.g., electricity requirements, building specs, labour costs, available workforce, access to markets), but usually, after everything is considered, companies are still left with a laundry list to choose from.

Most times, its not simply facts and figures that determine where a company will invest. These obvious considerations are typically augmented by intangibles that dont always translate well onto an Excel spreadsheet. Call it the secret sauce that makes a preferred selection so much more appetizing.

Thats where MyWinnipeg.ca comes in. MyWinnipeg.ca is a tool you can use, as Winnipegs ambassadors, to help spread the message about what its really like to live, work and invest here in Winnipeg. Developed by Economic Development Winnipeg, it highlights only the most consequential investments, articles, events, itineraries and eateries creating a buzz right now. Our city deserves passionate advocates, and Im asking you to play a part. Whether youre serving as a local host or travelling the country on business, talk about our citys achievements. Let people know Winnipeg is an incredible place thats open for business.

At MyWinnipeg.ca, youll find succinct summaries of the citys biggest projects currently making local and national headlines, including the $400-million True North Square project, the $597-million bus rapid-transit expansion and the proposed $500-million Bishop Grandin Crossing mixed-use development. Looking to wine and dine out-of-town guests? MyWinnipeg.ca has superb suggestions ranging from Enoteca and Pizzeria Gusto to Deer + Almond and the Capital Bar and Grill, all of which are carefully curated by our own master chef, the writer of our Peg City Grub blog.

We need to get on the same page when it comes to extolling our citys virtues. I realize some tiresome cynics like to magnify Winnipegs challenges  last weeks poll is a case in point  but I believe theres a better approach. Our citys proudest champions can serve as a beacon for visitors coming to Winnipeg to experience what we have to offer and for investors looking for a stable yet innovative economy brimming with an intelligent and engaged workforce.

Together, we can influence perception. I invite the silent majority who love this city as much as I do to start telling their story. I want you to be an ambassador.

Dayna Spiring is the president and CEO of Economic Development Winnipeg.
MINNEAPOLIS  Some of the pills taken from Princes estate in Paisley Park after his death were counterfeit drugs that actually contained fentanyl  a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin, an official close to the investigation said Sunday.

The official, who spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, said nearly two dozen pills found in one Aleve bottle were falsely labeled as Watson 385. According to Drugs.com, that stamp is used to identify pills containing a mix of acetaminophen and hydrocodone, but the official said at least one of the pills tested positive for fentanyl.

Autopsy results released in June show Prince died April 21 of an accidental fentanyl overdose. The official who spoke to the AP said records show the 57-year-old Prince had no prescription for any controlled substances in the state of Minnesota in the 12 months before he died.

Authorities are still investigating how Prince obtained the drugs.

Fentanyl has been responsible for a surge in overdose deaths in some parts of the country. When made into counterfeit pills, users dont always know theyre taking fentanyl, increasing the risk of fatal overdose.

The Star Tribune first reported about the mislabeled pills in a story published on its website late Saturday.

Some of the dozens of pills seized from Paisley Park were found to have other drugs in them, some were oxycodone or codeine, and some were not controlled substances.

About a dozen tablets were found in a dressing room at Paisley Park, but the vast majority was in bottles of aspirin and Vitamin C that had been tucked inside a suitcase and bags  including one Prince often carried with him. Some pills were also found loose in the bag, the official said.

One pill with the Watson 385 stamp tested positive for fentanyl, lidocaine and another drug. Officials found nearly two dozen pills similar to the one that was tested, the official said.

Another aspirin bottle had more than 60 counterfeit tablets in it. Some pills that were analyzed contained fentanyl, lidocaine and U-4770  a synthetic drug that is eight times more powerful than morphine.

Authorities also found a prescription bottle in someone elses name that contained 10 oxycodone pills, the official said, without revealing who was listed on the prescription.

The official said Prince had many of these pills with him on April 15 when the airplane he was on made an emergency stop in Moline, Ill., after he fell ill from a suspected drug overdose as he was heading home from a performance in Atlanta. Prince was given two doses of Narcan, an antidote used to reverse suspected opioid overdoses, the official said.

U-4770 can be tested for in toxicology screens, but is not done routinely because it is a relatively new chemical. Presence of the drug was not tested in Princes case, but the levels of fentanyl in his system were more than enough to be toxic, the official said.

Tests on Prince prior to his death did not show fentanyl in his system, which means he wasnt a long-time abuser of that drug, but likely took the fatal dose sometime in the 24 hours before he died, the official said.

The official did not elaborate on those tests. But at least one doctor, Michael Todd Schulenberg, saw Prince on April 7 and again on April 20, the day before he died. According to a search warrant, he told a detective he had ordered tests for Prince and prescribed medications. Schulenbergs attorney, Amy Conners, has said patient-privacy laws do not allow her to say what the prescriptions were.

The autopsy report also shows Prince had diazepam, lidocaine and hydrocodone acids in his body, the official said. Diazepam is an anti-anxiety pill sold as Valium. Its a sedative and can also be used to control seizures, which Prince suffered from as a child. Lidocaine is a local anesthetic.
Winona County Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) funding has been rough the past four to five years. Competitive grant formulas have aligned to lock our district out of many state grant programs. SWCDs do not have levy authority. Winona County SWCD exists on successful grant applications and roughly $2-a-person allotment from Winona County. That's $2 per person from the county for soil and water conservation!

We are asking the Winona County Board to increase the SWCD budget to $2.40 a person. In strict percentages that is a 16 percent increase. But in real terms this is a small amount of additional funding that can be used for cost share. Farmers and landowners, especially small farms, have responded to a survey conducted during the Winona County Fair indicating they would like to see cost share for pond cleanouts. Few people, especially from outside southeast Minnesota, understand the countys unique geology and topography and its impact on water movement. For decades, ponds have served as a tool to slow and stop sediment movement on steep slopes and ravines.

Winona County SWCD is in a unique situation this year and for future years going forward. A county increase as stated above would be matched 1:1 by the state Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR), effectively doubling our opportunities to provide cost share for pond cleanouts and like programs  funds the SWCD would not otherwise have available.

I ask you, residents of Winona County, urban and rural, farmer and homeowner, to contact your county commissioners and encourage them to increase the SWCD funding to $2.40 a county resident. Doing so will help put money on the ground where it is needed and wanted, especially for small farms who struggle to afford to pay for structure stabilization or improvements.

Paul Schollmeier,

Winona County SWCD
Writers dont just write.

They read. They critique. They laugh. They may, from time to time, get a little misty-eyed.

And they drink coffee. Lots of coffee.

For the last half-century, Writers at the Portage has brought together wordsmiths who are amateurs in the literal sense of the word  people who write for the love of writing.

The groups golden anniversary was the focus of Saturdays annual Zona Gale Friendship Days observance.

The celebration normally starts at the gravesite of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Zona Gale (1874-1938) in Silver Lake Cemetery, but on-and-off rain showers prompted the decision to move the opening to the Museum at the Portage, a building that was once the home of Gale and her husband, William Breese.

Shelvy Ritter, president of Writers at the Portage, invited other members to answer the question, Why do you write? She started the discussion by sharing about how, when her youngest daughter was about to leave home, she assuaged the daughters anxiety about leaving her mother by assuring her that I was going on with the things I had put off in my life  including writing.

I think we all write, Ritter said, because we got to get it all out.

Elayne Hanson, one of two living charter members of Writers at the Portage (the other is Idella Anacker) said that over the last 50 years, maybe 200 people have participated in Writers at the Portage. The group currently has maybe five or six active members, who pay annual dues of $5 and take turns hosting the meetings at 7:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month.

Hanson, 87, said she was a young mother (of a fifth-grader and a kindergartner) in 1966, when she got involved with Writers at the Portage. She also was working at Divine Savior Healthcare.

It was a relief for me to go from my job to this, she said, which was pure fun.

There were 10 to 15 people in the inaugural group, Hanson recalled.

According to Hanson, Writers at the Portage was an offshoot of the local Lively Arts Group, which also gave rise to other endeavors such as the Portage Players amateur theater group.

At the beginning, she said, a professor from the University of Wisconsin held a six-week writing class at the Columbia County Courthouse.

Then as now, members got together to read what they had written, suggest revisions or suggest entities that might publish certain pieces.

Two years after the group was founded, the Golden Crow came into being.

Its an inter-club award for writing excellence, available only to members of Writers at the Portage and the Poynette-based Pauquette Wordcrafters, which works closely with Writers at the Portage. (The winner is chosen by an independent judge, who doesnt know any of the group members, or even who wrote what entry.)

According to Hanson, the traveling trophy isnt really a crow, but it once was a cardinal  stuffed, fitted with crow-like features and gilded. At the base, the names of past winners are inscribed.

At a reading Saturday afternoon in Zona Gales study in the Museum at the Portage, Margo Holzman of Poynette read her essay that was the most recent Golden Crow winner.

Titled The Beautiful Grandbaby, it tells the story of a woman who, when downsizing for senior living, reluctantly parted with something that was precious to her, and that she called her grandbaby, but which was not a human infant.

Variety of genres

The participants in Writers at the Portage undertake any writing genre that they wish. Hanson, for instance, favors poetry. Another member writes about wildlife; another, about religion.

Dr. Roxanne Richardson writes about her experiences as a physician, including her essay about a medical mission trip to remote villages in the Dominican Republic.

In my dreams, she wrote, I would give them more than vitamins and antibiotics. I would give them hope and love.

Barb Jensen gravitates toward humor, including a tongue-in-beak essay about what happened to her when she took pills made of chicken cartilage to cure arthritis.

Doug Steele, one of the newest members of Writers at the Portage, said he writes because I can and because I have to.

When he read his poem, titled Charge Me Guilty, he read off the tiny screen of a hand-held electronic device.

Hanson said she isnt personally inclined to explore contemporary avenues to publication, such as weblogs and social media. But she hopes Writers at the Portage will attract younger writers who know how to get their words out on electronic media.

But she said she will keep writing as long as I can string two words together and still have some sense of being.

And for her epitaph, she said, she envisions the final lines of her poem A Prayer for Writers:

May it matter not that we are stars

But that we twinkled.
A home products chain has sued the city of Baraboo over last years tax bill. On Tuesday, the City Council will meet in private to discuss its next move.

The council also will consider an offer to buy and relocate a Fifth Avenue home, and is set to finalize a permit requirement for homeowners offering short-term rentals.

The closed-door discussion of Menards suit will mark the latest step in an eight-month tussle between the Eau Claire retailer and the city. In January, Menards filed a claim saying it was overcharged $40,000 in property taxes for its Baraboo superstore off U.S. Highway 12. Its attorney argued the city assessed the Menards store property at nearly $2 million more than its value.

The company says the propertys fair market value is no more than $6.1 million. Based on its analysis of the propertys value, Menards says its tax bill shouldve been about $145,000. The claim sought nearly $40,000, plus interest.

Menards appealed its initial assessment of $8 million in property value to the citys Board of Review, which upheld the assessment July 29. The Board of Review ruled the comparable properties used by the assessor were more similar to Menards local store than the ones the company presented.

In April the council denied Menards claim, which City Attorney Alene Bolin said has no merit. Menards responded by suing the city in Sauk County Circuit Court on July 11.

House purchase

Another long-discussed matter could be resolved Tuesday if the council accepts a Baraboo couples offer to buy a Fifth Avenue home and move it to 14th Street.

Tim and Stacy Jax submitted the only response to the citys request for proposals to buy the home located at 227 Fifth Ave., thus paving the way for a parking lot, and moving it to a lot the city owns at 212 14th St. They offered $1,005 for the Fifth Avenue building and the 14th Street lot.

The Jaxes propose hiring Egge Movers of Lone Rock to move the home, a project that will cost the couple about $16,500. Site work would begin next month, with the moving date tentatively set for Nov. 1.

The two-story home, built around 1940, covers 1,720 square feet. It was converted to an office building in later years. A 2015 appraisal set the propertys market value at $120,000.

Thats the price the city agreed to pay Fred Lochner for the property late last year. The parcel lies between a municipal parking lot and the Al. Ringling Mansion parking lot, and presents an opportunity to link the two. The city has reached in principle a lease agreement with Ringling Mansion owner Joe Colossa to open his lot to the public in exchange for the city crew restriping it.

Short-term rentals

Also Tuesday, the council will finalize its requirement that property owners renting out their homes for less than a month secure a permit.

The city doesnt currently regulate short-term rentals. In an effort to guard against party houses, the City Council voted unanimously Aug. 9 to require permits.

Baraboo is one of many Wisconsin municipalities looking to regulate the rental of single-family homes in residential neighborhoods for periods shorter than one month. Their challenge is to protect neighbors interests without discouraging tourism. City leaders have noted renting a house for a week is a popular option for travelers, but they dont want neighbors to endure excessive noise or traffic.

The city hasnt encountered issues with short-term rentals. Two property owners currently advertise the availability of their homes for short-term rentals. They would be grandfathered in and exempted from the permit requirement.

Neighbors would be notified, and a public hearing held, when a permit application is filed. Permits could be revoked if problems arise. Applicants would pay a $250 one-time fee and would appear before the Plan Commission, which would have the final say on permits. Property owners would have to pay lodging taxes.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Aug. 22

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmenistans Foreign Ministry hosted a meeting with the UK Ambassador Sanjay Wadvani Obe, who has completed his diplomatic activity in the country, the Turkmen ministry said in a message Aug. 22.

The sides noted high level of political cooperation between the two countries. It was emphasized that bilateral political consultations, which are held on a regular basis, will contribute to the comprehensive strengthening of the constructive intergovernmental dialogue.

The parties attached special attention to the issues of further development of energy cooperation.

Over the recent years, UK companies took part in implementation of a number of big investment projects in Turkmenistan, including the areas of exploration and development of oil and gas fields, increasing gas export potential of the country.

In June 2016, the two countries signed an intergovernmental convention in Ashgabat on the avoidance of double taxation and prevention of fiscal evasion with regard to taxes on income and capital appreciation.
The Dodge County emergency food and shelter program has been awarded federal funds made available through the Department of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Management Agency under the Emergency Food and Shelter National Board Program.

Dodge County has been chosen to receive $10,491 to supplement emergency food and shelter programs in the county.

A local board was charged to distribute funds to help expand the capacity of food and shelter programs in high-need areas around the country.

Under the terms of the grant from the national board, local organizations chosen to receive funds must:

be private voluntary non-profits or units of government,

be eligible to receive federal funds,

have an accounting system,

practice non discrimination,

have demonstrated the capability to deliver emergency food and/or shelter programs, and

if they are a private voluntary organization, have a voluntary board.

Qualifying agencies are urged to apply.

Dodge County has distributed Emergency Food and Shelter funds previously with People Against a Violent Environment, Energy Services of Dodge County, Central Wisconsin Community Action Council, and New Beginnings Homeless Shelter participating.

Public or private voluntary organizations interested in applying for Emergency Food and Shelter Program funds must contact Susan Jentz, interim local board chair at 885-2488 for an application. The deadline for application is Aug. 31.

A local board made up of Susan Jentz, United Way of Dodge County; Jill Lemkuhl, The Salvation Army; Kathy Wheeler, St. Vincent DePaul Society; Sheila Drays, Dodge County Human Services & Health Department; Clancy Knaup, private citizen; and Tom Kennedy, city government of Beaver Dam, will determined how funds awarded to Dodge 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.
Items are listed under the day of the event only, running as space permits prior to the event. To submit items, call 745-3511, email jcutsforth@capitalnewspapers.com or visit www.portagedailyregister.com. Include name and phone number.

Today

Columbia County Public Health Walk-In Clinic, 8 a.m. to noon, Columbia County Division of Health, 2652 Murphy Road, Portage. Use door No. 4. Bring childs immunization record. Visit www.co.columbia.wi.us for more information.

Portage Family Skate Park brat sale fundraiser, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pierces Marketplace Brat Hut, New Pinery Road, Portage.

Portage Pedalers Monday night ride, meet at 6:30 p.m. at Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Monthly rides meet at: Augustparking lot across from Hill Auto; and September at 6 p.m. at Portage Public Library. Wear a helmet and bikers under 18 must ride with a parent.

Second Harvest mobile food pantry, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. St. Marys Catholic Church, 318 S. Main St., Pardeeville. Do not line up before 3 p.m. Bring boxes, bags, wagons, etc., to carry food. Volunteers are needed by calling Cindy at 429-3030.

Euchre card party, 6:30 p.m. Bethlehem Lutheran Church, W8267 Highway 33 East, Portage. Public welcome. Contact: Cloe, 429-2363.

Seniors Bowling Social, 1 p.m. Tollys Alleys, East Wisconsin Street, Portage. Cost is $6 and includes three games of bowling and shoe rental.

Tuesday

Family Summer Movie Series, 10 a.m. Portage Theatres, West Wisconsin Street, Portage. This weeks movie is Angry Birds. Admission is 50 cents. Movies run Tuesday through Thursday at 10 a.m. through Aug. 25. For more information, call 742-6678.

First Presbyterian Church Weekly Quiet Prayer Time, 105 S. Main St., Pardeeville. Each Tuesday from 8 to 8:30 a.m. and each Thursday from 4:30 to 5 p.m. The church will be open to those in the Pardeeville and surrounding communities for quiet, personal time for reflection, thought and prayer. There is no planned service or leader. For more information, call 608-429-2646.

Genealogy Researchers, 1 to 3 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. The topic Cemetery Research Tips will continue the series of meetings aimed at helping beginners to learn about this interesting hobby. Because cemetery records can serve as an alternative to formal death records they are a basic genealogy tool. Learn about websites helpful in finding cemeteries, burial dates and tombstones and dos and donts when visiting cemeteries. Detailed information on Columbia County cemeteries will be shared. All are welcome.

The Historic Indian Agency House welcomes Historian Mary Elise Antoine, 6:30 p.m. Historic Indian Agency House, 1490 Agency House Road, Portage. She will speak about her new book The War of 1812 in Wisconsin: The Battle for Prairie du Chien. Signed copies of The War of 1812 in Wisconsin will be available for purchase. Light refreshments available starting at 6:15 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Museum at the Portage, 804 MacFarlane Road, Portage. Open from 1 to 4 p.m. Thursday through Saturday in April, May, September and October; and 1 to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday in June, July and August. Admission is free.

Portage Family Skate Park Public Meeting, 5 to 6:30 p.m. Gerstenkorn Administration Building, 305 E. Slifer St., Portage. All interested people are welcome to attend. If the Portage Schools are closed or released early the PFSP meeting will be canceled and announced on our Facebook page with a new meeting location as soon as possible.

Wednesday

Bingo, 5:30 p.m. 131 Restaurant, North Main Street, Pardeeville. Bingo will be played every Wednesday, except the first one of the month.

Columbia County Public Health Walk-In Clinic, 8 a.m. to noon, Columbia County Division of Health, 2652 Murphy Road, Portage. Use door No. 4. Bring childs immunization record. Visit www.co.columbia.wi.us for more information.

Concerts at the Portage, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. VFW Hall, 215 W. Collins St., Portage. Featuring Jim Hetzel. Desserts provided by The ARC of Greater Columbia County to benefit Special Olympics. Bring a lawn chair or blanket to enjoy this free concert.

Family Summer Movie Series, 10 a.m. Portage Theater, West Wisconsin Street, Portage. This weeks movie is Angry Birds. Admission is 50 cents. Movies run Tuesday through Thursday at 10 a.m. through Aug. 25. For more information, call 742-6678.

Portage Pedalers Wednesday night ride, meet at 6:30 p.m. at Pat and Dougs house, W7956 Douglas Center Road (East of Briggsville on Highway 23 North via 3rd Avenue). Meeting place in AugustJohn Muir Park; and September at 6 p.m. at Pat and Dougs house. Wear a helmet and bikers under 18 must ride with a parent.

Pauquette Wordcrafters, 9:30 a.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. All writers welcome.

Poynette Red Cross blood drive, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Poynette Middle School, 108 N. Cleveland St., Poynette. Download the American Red Cross Blood Donor app, visit www.redcrossblood.org or call 800-733-2767 to make an appointment or for more information. All blood types are needed. A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required.

St. Vincent de Paul free medical clinic, 9 a.m. to noon. Wilz Drugs lower level, 140 E. Cook St., Portage. No appointments needed. Information needed is name, date of birth and a contact number. A chiropractor is available from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesdays. A foot clinic is available every week. The clinic can do exams and prescribe medications. Physical therapist available. Discounted medications are available at Wilz and Wal-Mart. Call Bonny Oestreich, RN, at 608-234-0159 for information.

Texas Hold em card tournament, VFW Hall, 215 W. Collins St., Portage. Register at 6 p.m. Cards begin at 6:30 p.m. Entry fee is $20. One hundred percent payout. Open to the public. For information, call the VFW Hall at 742-5350.

TLC Community Clothes Closet, corner of East Cook and Main streets, Portage. Open from 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

Free blood pressure screenings, 1 to 5 p.m. Divine Savior Healthcare, 2817 New Pinery Road, Portage. No appointment necessary. Call 745-6405 for more information. Do not eat, smoke, drink caffeine or exercise for 30 minutes prior.

Wednesday Soup, Salad and Sandwich Bar, 11:30 a.m. Portage Senior Dining Site, lower level of the Portage Municipal Building, 115 W. Pleasant St., Portage. For seniors age 60 and older; suggested donation $4. Order by noon the day before by calling 608-742-8726. Bingo held at 10:30 a.m., sponsored by Our House.

Wednesday Evening Bible Stories at St. Johns Lutheran Church, 5:30 p.m. St. Johns Lutheran Church, Armstrong Street, Portage. Wednesday Evening Bible Stories is family friendly fellowship. Bring the whole family for dinner, Bible story/devotion, and game/craft. This Wednesday we will be celebrating going back to school by grilling out hot dogs/brats and playing a family friendly game of kickball  parents versus children. Bring a school supply to help those unable to afford school supplies.

Zumba, 5:30 p.m. 1208 Northport Road (the former Freedom Carpeting building). This is a $5 drop-in class. For more information, contact Deb at DJMACK00001@yahoo.com or Rena at 697-6713.
Death at $40 a gram and its available on the internet with a few keystrokes and a credit card. Legally.

Thats the disturbing news here in Racine County and across the country over the new influx of a synthetic opioid called U-47700 that already is sending people to the morgue in several states with overdoses.

That includes the deaths of two men here in Racine County this summer, according to Racine County Medical Examiner Michael Payne, who put the drugs effects simply enough: U-47700 will kill you. Its something to be considered at this point to be a health hazard to people who elect to try this or use this.

Thats echoed by Michael Bell, the Drug Enforcement Administrations Milwaukee assistant special agent in charge, who told the Journal Times, Experimenting with them (synthetic opioids) is like playing Russian roulette. You dont know what you are getting and the first time could be the last.

The drug, which is reportedly eight times more potent than morphine, has caused an estimated 50 overdose deaths in the United States in recent months and has states scrambling to add it to their controlled substances list.

Three states  Ohio, Wyoming and Georgia  have already done so and Wisconsins Controlled Substances Board is slated to take up possible scheduling of U-47700, but not until its Sept. 20 meeting.

That seems to us to be a bit slow on the response, but it points out the difficulties at both the state and federal levels in dealing with synthetic drugs that are continually being tweaked and having their formulas changed just slightly from drugs that are on the controlled substance list and banned from being sold or possessed.

The U in the name U-47700 stands for Upjohn pharmaceuticals, which developed the drug back in the 1970s in a search for a pain-killer that was less addictive and didnt affect the respiratory system as much.

According to news reports, it was one of many such drugs developed and patented by the since-acquired pharmaceutical company, but not necessarily put into production.

Today chemical companies  mainly in China  are searching through patent records and scientific literature from that time to find those formulas and how to produce them and then marketing the drug online.

When a new synthetic drug is banned, those chemical companies move on to market a new one, which always leaves law enforcement and public health agencies operating from behind.

That is not to say the government of China has not cooperated with the U.S.  according to an Associated Press report, China banned 116 new psychoactive substances last year at the urging of the United States.

Thats a porous system that needs to be addressed by Congress at the federal level to better control these death-dealing drugs that are too easily marketed online.

Wisconsin, meanwhile, should expedite its system of scheduling and banning such drugs before the body count continues to rise.
After the Republicans and Democrats finished their conventions in late July, the Green Party gathered Aug. 6 to nominate Dr. Jill Stein for the presidency. Steins campaign  with her party on ballots in the majority of states  could be a breakthrough bid for the Greens, and for multiparty democracy.

The key word, of course, is could. To make this breakthrough, supporters of the Green nominee, as well as progressives who will be inclined to back Democrat Hillary Clinton in order to block the candidacy of Republican Donald Trump, should advocate for something that is rare in presidential politics: fair play.

Stein is not just up against the Democratic and Republican nominees. She is up against a rigid two-party system that erects high barriers to those who seek to open up the process.

But Steins approach, and the year in which she is running, make it possible to imagine that at least some of the barriers could be knocked down.

Stein is making her second bid for the presidency, which is an asset. Third-party candidates have historically benefited from making multiple bids. A century ago, Eugene Victor Debs made five runs for the presidency on the Socialist Party line, while Norman Thomas made six. History will record that neither man won the nations top job. But their high-profile campaigns popularized radical ideas such as Social Security programs for the elderly and extending civil rights to all Americans.

Stein is mounting her bid in a moment of great political volatility, which is significant. Third parties often record strong showings in turbulent times. Debs won almost 1 million votes in 1920, when he ran from the jail cell to which he had been confined during the Red Scare assault on civil liberties following World War I. Thomas received almost as many votes in 1932, in the first presidential election of the Great Depression era.

No one knows what vote Stein may get this time, though polls suggest that both she and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson are running far better this year than in 2012. (Johnson won 1,275,951 votes that year, while Stein received 469,628.) Several polls have Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, in double digits; and Stein has frequently been at 5 percent or even 6 percent in recent national surveys.

Does this mean that Johnson or Stein could take off and be elected president? History is not generous in this regard; the last time a third-party candidate surpassed either major-party contender was in 1912, when former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt (running as a Bull Moose Progressive) finished ahead of Republican President William Howard Taft. Both men lost that year to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and major parties have dominated the top two spots ever since.

But Johnson and Stein could open up the process this year, and that ought to excite small d democrats.

Even people who do not intend to vote Green or Libertarian should support efforts by credible contenders to secure ballot positions in states that have historically made it hard for third-party contenders to compete. Some states, such as Wisconsin, make it relatively easy for third-party and independent candidates to get on the ballot. But the United States does not have universal election rules, so in some states the requirements are daunting.

As important as ballot access is debate access.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, which was set up by leaders of the two major parties with an eye toward controlling and constraining the most important exchanges during presidential elections, will not make things easy. Johnson is closer to the threshold that the CPD has established for debate participation  a steady 15 percent in the polls  and he already is getting the lions share of third-party attention as debates about the debates ramp up.

A functional democracy should be able to find room for a real debate involving a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian and a Green.

Unfortunately, that may not happen. It is likely that both Stein and Johnson will be ruled out of the debates under the arbitrary rules established by the CPD.

That would be a travesty. And it does not have to happen.

The CPD can set baseline standards for debate participation. But those standards should err on the side of more debate, not less. The best approach would be to include candidates who have qualified for enough state ballots to win 270 electoral votes  the threshold for winning the presidency. Getting on that many ballot lines requires seriousness and a significant level of support nationally and those candidates should be included, at the very least, in the first debate.

The Libertarians and the Greens will meet the ballot-line standard. That should be sufficient to make room for Johnson and Stein on the debate stage.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Aug. 22

By Demir Azizov  Trend:

North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) is closing down its embassy in Uzbekistan as a part of restructuring its missions in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), local media reported Aug. 22 citing a diplomatic source in Tashkent.

The decision to close down the North Korean Embassy in Tashkent was made last month, said the report. The reasons are unknown.

Uzbekistan and North Korea established diplomatic relations in 1992.
Tehran, Iran, August 22

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

The recent trilateral meeting in Baku between Azerbaijan, Iran, and Russia can be adopted as a model for other countries, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said at a press conference in Iran.

He underlined the recent meeting as a significant effort taken over regional security, Trend's correspondent reported from the event August 22.

We are sensitive about our relations with regional countries and would pursue better ties as much as possible. One of the examples of doing so is trilateral meetings, he stated.

The agreements reached during the summit of Azerbaijani, Russian and Iranian leaders will strengthen the stability in the region, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said at a joint press conference with his Azerbaijani and Russian counterparts Elmar Mammadyarov and Sergey Lavrov August 9.

He said the summit of the leaders of the three countries in Baku and negotiations were very productive.

Zarif noted that the heads of the three countries agreed to intensify cooperation in the areas of security, energy, transit and others.

In another part of his speech, the spokesman commented on Iran-Azerbaijan visa regime.

We are trying as much as we can to ease visa affairs. The talks have initiated. But since the recent meeting was trilateral, there was little time to talk over the visa issue. We were seeking some more ease for visa, which Azerbaijan has vowed to fulfill, Qassemi said.




China News on Women





Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page
Tehran, Iran, August 22

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

A couple of Western diplomats who had been stopped by security forces in Western Iran last week are not reported to have been carrying out any suspicious activity while there, Irans Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi has said.

Qassemi said the diplomats had cameras, but were not doing anything illegal, Trend's correspondent reported August 22.

The announcement comes against the backdrop of media reports quoting a security official from the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in the western province of Kurdistan, that a suspicious car with a diplomatic license plate driving through Saqqez County in Kurdistan Province on August 13 was closely monitored by the security forces and finally stopped in the vicinity of Irankhah village.

Men in the car were identified as two notable French and English diplomats, who allegedly had been filming military sites in the area, and fled the location once receiving an order to stop filming.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the two passengers were Sebastien Surun, French political attache, and Charlotte Lopez, second secretary of the British Embassy in Tehran, he said.

After the car was stopped, their camera was seized by the security forces, he added.

However, Qassemi said that the previous reports have all been personal speculations, adding that there has been no official report to the Foreign Ministry to indicate any charge of suspicious operations by the mentioned officials.
By Paul Freedman (Guest Contributor)

Few elegant restaurants have had their names recorded in the titles of best-selling books and only one that I know of was mentioned prominently in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Antoines in New Orleans has both distinctions. Founded in 1840, nearly wrecked by financial difficulties and Hurricane Katrina, Antoines is still going strong as the oldest US restaurant owned by a single family.

Dinner at Antoines was a wildly popular mystery novel by the once-celebrated author Frances Parkinson Keyes that appeared in 1948. The first scene depicts the crowds waiting outside the restaurant, which took reservations only for its socially prominent regulars. The opening scene is a dinner party held in the glowing, red 1840 Room starting a complicated story of passion and betrayal. So familiar was the restaurant to the American public that the concise title needed no elaboration.

The 1951 cartoon French Rarebit merely refers to Antoines, but again its fame requires no explanation. Bugs Bunny falls off a carrot truck and it turns out he is in Paris. Before he can take his bearings, two rival chefs grab him and a dispute ensues over who gets the right to cook the rabbit. The rest of the story involves a complicated escape that begins with a promise on the part of the rabbit that he knows an infallible recipe for Louisiana Back Bay Bunny Bordelaise as made at Antoines. The chefs are impressed and one of them asks, with something approaching awe, Antoines, of New Orleans? Bugs Bunny retorts, in his inimitable fashion, I dont mean Antoines of Flatbush.

If it has lost that universal level of fame, Antoines remain a wonder, both for its marvelous food and its timelessness. It has over a dozen variously decorated dining rooms, ranging in size from the Large Annex and the Japanese Room (the latter seating 200) to the tiny Tabasco Room with a capacity of six and the only slightly larger Escargot Room, originally the preserve of a private dining society. The menu is still in French, although there is an English translation provided (but only since the 1990s). The restaurants most famous specialty is Oysters Rockefeller, oysters cooked in their shells with a green sauce whose ingredients are known only to the owner and maybe one or two others.

From the beginning until sometime in the 1960s Boeuf Robespierre was a featured entree, invented by the original Antoine Alciatore when he was a teenage chef in Marseilles. For the Prince Talleyrand, the eminent diplomat and political intriguer, Antoine prepared a special beef tenderloin saignant (i.e. rare enough to be still bloody) served with a sauce of beef stock, sweetbreads and chicken livers. Summoned from the kitchen to receive the great mans compliments, the youthful chef was asked what he called the dish. He actually hadnt thought to name it but, on impulse, he said Boeuf Robespierre, remembering his fathers description of the grisly execution of the French revolutionary leader.

There are in addition at least two flambe dishes, Cherries Jubilee and Cafe Brulot Diabolique (coffee mixed with brandy and spices), set alight at the table. Before the Second World War the restaurant owner, Jules Alciatore, said the kitchen could prepare over 1,000 different dishes and they had 560 recipes just for eggs. The list of marvels is endless.

Thick, rich French sauces, waiters who seem to have been there since time began and a wonderfully formal but warm-hearted atmosphere, the restaurant seems to be a relic from a distant era even alongside the other grand establishments of the French Quarter such as Galatoires or Arnauds. When Anthony Bourdain visited in 2008 for an episode of No Reservations, he dined on Oysters Rockefeller, soft-shell crabs with brown butter, Tournedos Marchand de Vin and Baked Alaska. Bourdain assumed these were all prepared just for his visit as some sort of homage or ironic gesture to the restaurants past and was incredulous at being shown they were all on the normal menu and ordered all the time.

For most of its history Antoines has identified its food as French, but it really amounts to a combination of French, Louisiana Creole and its own inventions. Perhaps to reaffirm its own pedigree, it either lacks or de-emphasizes certain popular creole dishes an outsider visiting New Orleans might expect: no jambalaya, only in recent years is gumbo given any prominence and alligator soup is new. Its hard to think of another restaurant in this country serving European or American food that doesnt list any pasta dishes.

Some changes are being made in order to draw in new patrons and to take advantage of a revival of the New Orleans restaurant scene and of the beleaguered city as a whole. One of the dining rooms was converted into the Hermes Bar with an informal, convivial atmosphere and a more grazing, small-plates set of dining options. The website is updated and there are special offers and promotions, something unthinkable in the past. The essential spirit of the restaurant, however, is intact and its physical and culinary restoration has made it more attractive than at any time in the recent past.

***

Paul Freedman is the Chester D Tripp Professor of History at Yale University. He specializes in medieval social history, the history of Spain, the study of medieval peasantry, and medieval cuisine.

His newest book, Ten Restaurants That Changed America (Norton, 2016) will be available in September 2016 and may be pre-ordered here.
Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.
Rio Tinto buys into Eclipse uranium project

22 August 2016

Share

Rio Tinto will fund up to AUD5 million ($3.8 million) in exploration expenditure to earn a 90% stake in one of Eclipse Metals' uranium projects in Australia's Northern Territory. It will also have right of first refusal over various other Eclipse uranium tenements in the state.

Under the terms of a farm-in/joint venture agreement signed on 19 August, Rio Tinto has agreed to spend at least AUD250,000 on exploration of Eclipse's Devil's Elbow tenement, one of its Liverpool Uranium Project tenements. It will also fund costs associated with gaining land access to the tenement through the Northern Land Council and tenement grant.

Once Rio Tinto has spent AUD1.5 million on exploration within three years, it will earn an initial 65% joint venture interest in the Devil's Elbow tenement. It may then raise its stake to 75% in the joint venture by spending an additional AUD2 million over a further three-year period.

Rio Tinto may then opt to fund a further AUD1.5 million in exploration over two years to earn a 90% joint venture interest. At that point, Eclipse can either maintain its 10% interest or sell it to Rio Tinto at fair market value.

Eclipse's Liverpool Uranium Project tenements are situated in the Alligator Rivers uranium field in Northern Territory. The Devil's Elbow prospect is situated 24 kilometres from Cameco's Caramel Uranium resource and 41km southeast of the former Nabarlek uranium mine.

Eclipse executive chairman Carl Popal said, "The arrangements with Rio Tinto will mean that standout exploration targets will be given first-class technical assessment by one of the world's largest and most successful mining and exploration companies." He added, "We continue to seek the best results for the Eclipse shareholders and believe that this farm-in and joint venture arrangement significantly enhances the prospects of identifying and developing economically viable mineral deposits at the Liverpool Project."

Popal said the agreement with Rio Tinto also contains a right of first refusal over various Eclipse uranium tenements in Northern Territory "which have been identified as being of interest".

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
Ignalina turbine hall dismantling completed

22 August 2016

Share

Work that began in October 2011 to dismantle the turbine halls of unit 1 of the Ignalina nuclear power plant - or the B9/1 project - has been completed. The dismantled equipment weighs more than 18,000 tonnes and consists mostly of turbines, generators, heat exchangers, pumps, valves and pipes.

Turbine hall of unit 1 of Ignalina nuclear power plant (Image: INPP)

In a statement last week, Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant said work is continuing on the initial treatment of dismantled waste, which involves "crushing, decontamination, radiological measurements and packaging", and which is scheduled for completion in 2019.

Lithuania agreed to shut down Ignalina 1 and 2 as a condition of its accession to the European Union. The European Commission is providing substantial funding for the project, scheduled to be completed in 2038.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in April that Lithuania should plan for potential project risks in the decommissioning of the Ignalina plant. A five-day, IAEA-led expert mission to the plant reviewed project risks and uncertainties related to the decommissioning of the two RBMK-1500 light-water, graphite-moderated reactors, which were permanently shut down in 2004 and 2009, respectively.

The mission - carried out at the invitation of the Lithuanian government - said the operator has "identified risks at both the corporate and individual project level and has taken into consideration the experience of other countries in decommissioning".

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
The informal sector, or the informal economy, is a part of an economy that is not taxed by the government, neither is it monitored by the government authorities. The activities of the informal sector are not part of the national economy because they are not taxed by the government, and they are not closely supervised by the authorities.The informal economy is a gray market in labor because of the grade of labor involved in the sector. The term informal sector was used by W. Arthur Lewis to describe the employment within developing economies. The term was also used to describe an employment that fell outside the modern industrial sector. The informal sector is characterized by easy entry, lack of stable employer-employee relationship and small business operations. Home based workers and street hawkers dominate the informal sector. Below we discuss the global significance of competition from unregistered businesses.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Despite the growth revival experienced by many Sub-Saharan Africa countries in recent years, relatively few formal jobs have been generated. Unemployment remains high in most of the countries. The informal sector has not been exploited fully by most countries to bridge the deficit in employment. The informal sector in Sub-Saharan Africa contributes 55.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and creates around 80% of all employment there. Nine in ten workers in Sub-Saharan Africa are employed in the informal sector thus most formal firms in Sub-Saharan Africa face stiff competition from the informal sector. 65.5% of business organizations are competing against the informal sector either for labor, market or raw material. The informal sector in Sub-Saharan Africa is associated with poverty and social issues. However, the area has proved to be a real threat to firms that produce expensive products by offering lower prices for similar goods.

Latin America

The informal sector has offered more than 27 million jobs to Latin Americans and Caribbean youth alone according to the International Labor Organization. Six out of every ten employment opportunities are in the informal sector. The informal economy in Latin America mostly employ the youths between the age of 15 to 24. Latin America formal firms continue to face competition from the informal sector. 32.6% of the companies in Latin America directly face completion for resources, manpower, and market from the informal sectors. Though the informal sector in Latin America is characterized by low wages, lower productivity, and low quality, the sector continues to offer alternative household incomes and employment

Caribbean

The informal sector plays an important role in the economy of most of the Caribbean region's island nations. Though the sector is overlooked in most countries, it provides the much-needed source of income for most families. The sector is witnessing a rapid growth since it offers an alternative source of livelihood for the many people outside the formal sector. The increase of the informal sector has mainly affected the activities of the formal firms. In the Caribbean, 58.9% of the companies face direct completion from the informal sector for the market share, labor, and raw material. With the continued demand for more goods, the informal sector continues to benefit from the low-income earners in the Caribbean.

The Informal Sector an Important Component of Global Economics

Formal firms in most countries face direct competition from those in the informal sector, especially for raw materials, labor, market shares, and consumer recognition. However, most countries are yet to embrace and promote the activities of the informal sector. Other regions in the world that where registered firms are facing direct and significant competition from the informal sectors include the Arabic-speaking regions, East Asia and the Pacific, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, Central Europe and the Baltic Sea, and Western Europe to a lesser extent.
Tehran, Iran, August 22

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Kurds remain a major point of disagreement among Moscow, Tehran, and Ankara despite new efforts from the three countries to increase the friendly relations, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi believes.

The position of Russia on the Kurds may be different from those of Turkey and Iran because they are not their neighbors and are likely to be manipulated. Also, Turkey and Iran tend to think alike about Kurds in some occasions and vary in some others, the spokesman said at a press conference, Trend's correspondent reported from the event August 22.

Regarding the Tehran-Ankara cooperation over the Syrian crisis, he said disagreements do not make excuse for not working together.

Turkey is our important neighbor and neighbors do not lose significance and one has to work with them. We enjoy various points of bilateral and regional cooperation, he stated.

However, he went on to say, We will not dictate our stance to anybody, nor will we allow anyone to dictate theirs to us. There were some who were looking for a substitute for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but failed to find one over the past five years.

We used to be in disagreement with Turkey over Syria, but in the recent past we have engaged in boosting ties and been holding more talks to make peace return to the region, the diplomat said.

Turkey has grown more welcoming of Russia and Irans position on the Syrian crisis in the past few months. The country sued to side with the US and Saudi Arabia in rearing opposition groups in Syria, but now voices a position that is more like that of Tehran and Moscow.
Italys PM Matteo Renzi will host Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande to the future of Europe after UKs decision to leave the Union, Sputnik International reported.

Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande will join Italy's PM Matteo Renzi on an island off the coast of Naples ahead of September's EU summit to discuss the consequences of Brexit vote and how to shape the future of Europe.

"They will be coming to discuss how to relaunch Europe from the bottom up, there's a big need,"- Prime Minister Renzi said on Sunday.

The three leaders have different views on how to boost economic growth of the Union. They also share different views on the expansion of the EU. While Angela Merkel is likely to conduct a "cementing" policy of strengthening ties within the existent entity of 27 members, Italy is eager for greater European consolidation.

"The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27,"- according to one EU diplomat.

The EU is currently facing risk of another referendum in Netherlands, which may be well followed by other countries.

Germany also opposes any attempts to confront existing deficit and debt constraints, but France and Italy, who have troubles achieving the specified figures, call for expansionary measures and reduced economic austerity.

Others topics for discussion will be EU's current policy on migrants, which is reportedly already opposed by Hungary's PM Viktor Orban, who is going to call for a referendum on whether to accept any future EU migrant settlement quotas.

The leaders will also discuss the naval operation in the Mediterranean, aimed at tackling the migrant smugglers, help enforce an arms embargo off Libya, and train the Libyan coast guard.
Mystery Bangs Were Mortar Style Fireworks

This article is old - Published: Monday, Aug 22nd, 2016

Several eye witnesses have been in touch to say they believe the two huge bangs heard in the area last night were display calibre fireworks being let off.

One person with a vista of the area from their apartment told us: There were two huge mortar style fireworks, I have experience in displays and they were very high, very big and very loud.

Two were let off from the Pen-Y-Bryn area, possibly by St Giles school or even across as far as Bellevue Park however it is hard to say looking out in a split second in the dark.

The shower of sparks was visible with the boom and height indicating it was certainly display mortar style calibre fireworks rather than ones sold to the public.

The first bang was at 10:35pm, the second was at 11:13pm. The bangs were audible across the town, with people in Rossett and Gresford also in touch saying they heard them.

Social media lit up with the bangs going off with hundreds of comments to our twitter and Facebook pages. 380+ comments were left on this Facebook picture comment thread that reached 60,000 people  you can review tweets here in our archive.

North Wales Police told us this morning they had no reports of any related incident.

Bang speculation stakes: #1 is Fireworks, Jets responding to Russians, various dropped wallets jokes, 'ICE IS' (whoever they are) & aliens.  Wrexham.com (@wrexham) August 21, 2016

Some of the more interesting theories included this gem:

@DanJones_04 @wrexham Yes, it's the annual celebration of the knocking down of the old Hightown flats #WeWillRememberThem    Matty Webber (@MattyWebber88) August 21, 2016

Pic: Fireworks, not the ones last night!
Welsh Government Confirm Groves School WILL Be Listed With Immediate Effect

This article is old - Published: Monday, Aug 22nd, 2016

After months of debate and uncertainty, the Welsh Government have today confirmed the former Groves School WILL be listed.

The announcement was made today by Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure, Ken Skates who confirmed that Cadw,Welsh Governments historic environment service, had decided to list the former school.

Speaking today, Mr Skates: On the balance of the evidence presented to me, considering the merits of listing the building against the published criteria and in light of all the representations and all of the advice that has been submitted, I have agreed to the listing for the buildings special architectural interest as a building of definite quality and character as a key example of an interwar girls grammar school in the neo-classical tradition (in a 1930s interpretation) surviving largely intact.

The Cabinet Secretary continued onto say: I believe the building is a key example of its type, with a number of features exhibiting stylistic flair. These include its handsome red brick exterior, the decoration between ground floor and first floor windows with herringbone brickwork and internal quality features such as an impressive elegant double sweep staircase being flooded with natural daylight by roof lanterns.

There is also its parquet and terrazzo flooring, the sleek timber mouldings and the main hall being well proportioned and well lit.

Wrexhams Lesley Griffiths AM added: After lobbying the Cabinet Secretary, Ken Skates AM, on behalf of my constituents, I am pleased the Welsh Government has listened to the concerns of the people of Wrexham.

From the very beginning, Wrexham Councils handling of this process has been extremely poor. Todays news is a victory for the determined group of campaigners who worked tirelessly to help preserve the towns heritage.

Llyr Gruffudd, Plaid Cymru AM for North Wales, said: Im delighted the school building has been listed and will not now be bulldozed as planned. Its important that Wrexham Council now works with the community to ensure the best possible use for the site as a new school or possibly schools.

There is pressure on the towns primary schools and new educational provision on the Groves site will help ease those pressures. I congratulate the Save our Heritage group who fought against all odds to stop the bulldozers and had a vision for a better use of Wrexhams remaining buildings of significance.

The decision to list the building has immediate effect and introduces a requirement for listed building consent to demolish the building or alter, or extend it in a way which affects it character as one of special architectural or historic interest.

The Groves debate has been rumbling on for almost nine months, with Wrexham Councils Executive Board unanimously backing plans to demolish the school early in January 2016.

The town centre site was set to be rejuvenated by Coleg Cambria, however after some helpful bats the land was retained by Wrexham Council to possibly build one or more new schools.

It was noted that in January that mothballing the site was would cost 375,000  with current costs listed as being around 25,000 to maintain security, with retaining just the facaded costed at over 400,000 along with additional ongoing costs.

Speaking at the time Council Leader Mark Pritchard said: We need to move forward and I apologise if Members think it is abit brutal. We have sat on our hands too long and it has not been dealt with for political reasons because it is too difficult. I cant dodge this and I wont. With the responsibility we have, we have to make unpleasant and difficult decisions.

Following Januarys decision there have been a series of protests, the launch of a petition, several debates, a public call-in a more than a few frustrated words exchanged.

Despite the initial plans to press ahead with the demolition, March 2016 saw another twist to the Groves saga, with a letter leaked just hours before a Full Council meeting. The letter, which was addressed to Lesley Griffiths AM stated that an independent peer review had been requested for the building.

Previous attempts to list the building had been knocked back, with this lifeline from Cadw seen as the final chance to save the school from demolition.

Following the announcement regarding the peer review, in April 2016 Cllr Pritchard announced that plans to demolish the building were to be paused while a decision was made on the listing of the building.

More recently in June 2016 it Cadw declared the school was of special architectural interest and that subject to consultation, a Grade II listing would be put on the building. However during Junes Executive Board, Lead Member of Education, Cllr Michael Williams stated that he cannot give any assurance that there will not be problems in the education department if this building is listed at all.

Todays announcement has been welcomed by members of the Save Our Heritage group who spearheaded the campaign to save the Groves School.

Elaine Guntripp-Thomas, from Save Our Heritage said Whilst we have worked tirelessly to save the building and wish to celebrate this important milestone, we know that there is still a long road ahead. We hope that Wrexham Councils Executive Board will reconsider its position in terms of the future use of the school building.

She added: Rather than dismiss the building as unsuitable for the 21st Century School Programme, we urge them to look at the many examples of retrofitted, modernised heritage schools across the UK, and embrace the unique design opportunities presented. We also encourage them to listen to the hearts and minds of local residents, rather than dismiss the collective will of the people.

The group has also stated that they would be happy to provide any information that the Council needs to assist with the restoration and redevelopment of the building. Their research over the past 6 months has uncovered many interesting facts about the school, and their knowledge of how buildings of this type can be brought back to life could be beneficial to the Council in the future.

Commenting on the listing, Lynne Williams from the campaign group said The former Grove Park School is one that the people of Wrexham can be proud of, not only because of its architectural merits, but for being one of the first to offer grammar school education to girls in Wales. As a group, we have remained steadfast in our efforts to save the building for future generations.

We have spent countless hours researching the schools place within the fabric of Wrexham. Some of our members attended Grove Park, others have never stepped foot in the building. What has kept us going is our desire to stop the erosion of Wrexhams architectural character, which in turn impacts heavily on the appeal of the town centre. People simply dont want to visit or live in a bland, boring town.

A sixteen word response has also been issued by the Leader of Wrexham Council, Cllr Mark Pritchard, who said: We have received confirmation of the listing and we will consider its implications in due course.

Prior to this afternoons Wrexham.com drove past the Groves School and it appears someone has turned the campaigners banner around from saying Save The Groves to Everything Must Go!
On Thursday, the Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit (Socialist Equality Party of Germany, PSG) held its first election meeting as part of the Berlin elections. The theme was, After the Brexit vote: Nationalism and Militarism in Europe. The event met with considerable interest and made for a strong start to the series of meetings the PSG is hosting during this crucial stage in the Berlin election campaign.

Approximately 40 people attended the event in the Schoneberg district of Berlin. Dozens more listened in on the Livestream feed. The meeting demonstrated the importance of the PSGs decision to place the struggle against war at the centre of its campaign. Those in attendance encountered a party that can explain where the drive to war comes from and, above all, fights for an international socialist program around which the working class can be mobilized against war.

Germany is heavily arming its military once again, explained Christoph Vandreier, the assistant national secretary of the PSG and candidate for the constituency of Tempelhof-Schoneberg 2. We appeal to the fighting spirit of the working population and youth. Our goal is not the reform of capitalism, but its abolition.

Peter Schwarz, secretary of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and chief editor of the German edition of the World Socialist Web Site, delivered the main report. Schwarz explained that nationalism, which found expression in the Brexit referendum, can only be understood in the context of the growing threat of war and the crisis in Europe.

Schwarz began his remarks with a forceful presentation on the global geopolitical situation. He quoted from the ICFI statement from February 2016, Socialism and the Fight against War, which reads:

The world stands on the brink of a catastrophic global conflict. The statements of heads of capitalist governments grow increasingly bellicose. The proxy wars in Ukraine and Syria have drawn NATO and Russia closer to a full-scale confrontation  As in the years that preceded the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and World War II in 1939, political leaders and military planners are approaching the conclusion that a war between major powers is not a remote possibility, but, rather, highly probable and, perhaps, even inevitable.

This assessment has been fully confirmed, commented Schwarz, before describing how far the preparations for war had advanced since then. NATO continues its encirclement of Russia. In Syria, where the Western powers have for years attempted to bring about regime change like in Iraq and Libya, the war has continued to escalate. Schwarz explained: Because Russias intervention has recently shifted the balance in Assads favour, the US media has suddenly discovered that people are dying therealthough that has of course been the case for years.

The world stands on the brink of a catastrophic military conflict, commented Schwarz. The proxy wars in Ukraine and Syria have brought us closer to an open confrontation between NATO and Russia.

As a consequence, tensions between the major powers are growing. Schwarz explained: This development inevitably leads to larger imperialist wars and could even lead to the outbreak of a war between the US and Germany. The turn in Germanys foreign and security policy over the last three years, which has led to a massive rearmament of the Bundeswehr, can only be understood in this context.

The outcome of this turn is now presented in the so-called White Book 2016. This foundational security policy document on the future of the Bundeswehr has become the official policy of the German government, said Schwarz. He demonstrated that Germany placed its national interests at the heart of the White Paper and demanded that Europeunder German leadershipmust play a leading role in the world. The White Paper states that as a long term goal, Germany would strive for a joint European security and defence union.

Schwarz then took up the deeper causes behind this progression toward new wars, explaining that they are to be found in two fundamental contradictions of the world capitalist system: The economy today is a global economy and billions of people are dependent on one another  the global division of labour has led to an enormous development. The global economy, however, is not organized globally, but rather is split up into nation states that are in conflict with each other. Second, production is organized socially but privately owned: This serves the accumulation of private profit, not the satisfaction of social need.

Schwarz discussed further characteristics of contemporary society and spoke about the dramatic growth of social inequality. In this context, he explained the financialisation of todays economy, which has created an even greater speculative bubble than in 2008 prior to the global stock market crisis. In comparison with actual production, an ever larger portion of earnings is obtained through pure financial speculation. The stocks, money supply and financial markets are exploding while at the same time production stagnates.

Only those who understand this entire development in context can also understand the growth of the nationalism and xenophobia revealed in the Brexit referendum.

The same nationalist development finds expression in several countries: in the rise of Donald Trump in the US, in the Freedom Party of Austria, the National Front in France, Alternative for Germany as well as the UK Independence Party of Nigel Farage in Britain.

Schwarz continued: The vilification of refugees, which we are witnessing today, and the steady shift to the right of all parties, including the Left Party in Germany, is in the final analysis an expression of the interests of affluent layers of the middle class who set the agenda for politics.

Schwarz stressed that the PSG was opposed to all forms of nationalism and xenophobia and calls for the unity of all workers regardless of their skin colour, ethnicity, religion, gender or whatever may be used to divide the working class.

The right-wing movement can only win support on the basis of the complete bankruptcy of the official left, Schwarz continued. Here in Berlin, everyone can see it: It was here that the Left Party governed for 10 years, from 2001 to 2011, and in no other state were social cuts as severe as in Berlin during this period. The Left Party made Berlin into the capital of poverty.

Schwarz then described the principled political fight of the Socialist Equality Party in Britain, which called for an active boycott of the Brexit referendum. He quoted the words of SEP National Secretary Chris Marsden: We want to see the destruction of the EU, but not through the nationalist fracturing of the continent  Our rallying cry is: No to the EU and British nationalismFor the United Socialist States of Europe! Our goal is the building of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout Europe.

After the talk, a lively discussion took place and a number of questions were raised. Participants in the meeting room as well as online made contributions. In addition to questions about the presentation, there was also questions about the strike movement in France and the role of the pseudo-left.

One attendee asked whether the former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis of the Syriza government, always stood on the side of the ruling class or had allowed himself to be bought by them. Peter Schwarz answered that Varoufakis was among the richest people in Greece. He didnt have to be bought. Christoph Vandreier reported on his experience in Greece during the referendum and described Syrizas betrayal.

One visitor explained that this was her first time at an election meeting of the PSG and wanted to know: Why have you placed the theme of war at the centre of your election campaign? Was that a tactical consideration? And havent all the other parties built their campaigns around the issue of refugees?

Several participants answered this and explained the connection between the growing number of refugees and war. Other contributions described how the inhumane treatment of refugees in Berlin was used to incite racism, divide the working class and impose militarist policies.

PSG national secretary and leading candidate Ulrich Rippert emphasized that the decision to place the question of war at the centre of the campaign was not a tactical consideration. We place this issue at the centre of the campaign because of all problems with which workers and youth are confronted, the growing threat of war is the most significant.

In the advance towards war, the crisis of capitalism is revealed in its sharpest form. Workers can only defend their social and democratic rights if they oppose war in every country as part of an international movement. In order to build such a movement, we are intervening in this election. Workers need a socialist perspective and must have as their goal the overthrow of capitalism. There can be no fight for socialism without a fight against war and there can be no fight against war without a fight for socialism.
Following the release of a city inspector generals report, Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson has recommended that the city fire seven cops for their role in conspiring to cover up the 2014 murder of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old unarmed teenager shot down by Officer Jason Van Dyke. The move is part of the ongoing damage control effort by Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel aimed at defusing social anger while shielding killer cops from any meaningful legal consequences.

The city has so far refused to name the seven officers until their cases are sent to the Chicago Police Board, which makes the final decision over whether individual police officers are terminated. The Chicago Tribune reported, however, that Van Dykes partner, Joseph Walsh, was among the seven.

The rest of the cops are thought to be mostly patrol officers who wrote false reports of the incident, particularly in regard to backing Van Dykes assertion that McDonald lunged at him with a knife. This lie was shattered by the release of a police dashboard camera video showing the unarmed teenager attempting to back away from officers before Van Dyke fired 16 bullets into McDonald, most which hit the youths limp body after he crumpled to the ground.

While the Independent Police Review Authority usually handles such cases, the body has been widely discredited for refusing to investigate cops over shootings and other instances of misconduct. The new head of the IPRA, Sharon Fairley, was forced to hand the high-profile McDonald case to the inspector generals office following the November 2015 release of the dashcam video and protests that followed.

City Inspector General Joseph Ferguson reportedly recommended that 10 officers be fired. Two higher-ranking cops under investigation for their role in whitewashing the murder and signing off on the falsified reports have recently retired and left the force.

David McNaughton, at the time a deputy chief at CPD, wrote in his report of the McDonald shooting, Based upon information available at the time of this report it is the preliminary determination of the undersigned that Officer Van Dyke fired his weapon in compliance with Department policy. He added, Officer Van Dyke fired his weapon in fear of his life when the offender while armed with a knife continued to approach and refused all verbal direction.

McNaughton announced his retirement just days after the release of the inspector generals report.

The other ranking officer thought to be named in the inspector generals report is Anthony Wojcik, a lieutenant involved in the investigation of the McDonald shooting. Wojcik retired in May.

Another high-ranking cop at CPD, apparently not among the 10, but certainly implicated in the investigation, first deputy superintendent John Escalante, also recently announced he would be leaving CPD. At the time of the McDonald shooting and investigation, Escalante was chief of detectives, and would have had overall responsibility for the detectives and supervisors who investigated the McDonald shooting. He even served briefly as interim superintendent after the firing of Garry McCarthy by Emanuel in December 2015.

It is expected that the Police Board will receive the seven cases in several weeks. According to the executive director of the Police Board, Max A. Caproni, the median time for a decision from that point on is four months. However, they can often take longer, and the board is notorious for reversing even those rare recommendations to fire by the police superintendent. Decisions of the board can also be challenged in court, and often are, providing yet another opportunity for police to escape prosecution.

Although it has been nearly two years since the McDonald murder, the Emanuel administration remains in crisis over the wave of police killings and the official cover-up by every section of the Democratic Party machine in Chicago. In an effort to dissipate anger, the Democrats have followed a well-worn path of reshuffling of personnel, investigative whitewashes and legal settlements. This has been combined with outright obstruction and delay as with the efforts to withhold the dashcam video from public scrutiny for more than a year.

In this particular case, the behavior of the police was so egregious that in April 2015, before the McDonald video was even released and his family formally filed a lawsuit, the city approved a $5 million dollar settlement.

Eventually, following a rise in protests and anger when the video was released, Emanuel fired McCarthy, then announced the formation of a Police Accountability Task Force. Since then, the head of that task force, Lori Lightfoot, a former police officer and federal prosecutor, has been named President of the Police Board. Among the recommendations produced by Lightfoots task force was that the discredited IPRA be replaced by another body. Lightfoot once headed CPDs Office of Professional Standards, a body that was replaced by IPRA following OPSs failure to act against cops implicated in torture headed up by police commander Jon Burge.

Cook County states attorney Anita Alvarez was also picked for replacement, as the Cook County Democratic Party moved to back her primary challenger, Kim Foxx, who ended up defeating Alvarez in the primary. Alvarez had worked closely with Emanuel to delay the release of the McDonald footage and was replaced because she was seen to be too close to the police department. Foxx said of her campaign, I ran for this office to make sure that we had a criminal justice system people can believe in. Thats my duty.

Even with these personnel changes, in some cases at high levels, the violence perpetrated by the police against the working population has continued to escalate, as with the recent killing of 18-year-old Paul ONeal and the apparent nonfatal shooting of a 15-year-old by the Illinois State Police in Chicago on August 20.

Just like the rest of the country, the daily police violence is the consequence of the immense social inequality in the city and the desire on the part of the wealthy elite to protect their property from an increasingly restive working-class population. Chicagos wealthy elite comprises 15 billionaires, 134,000 millionaires, and 827 multimillionaires (those with over $30 million in assets).

While sections of the Democratic Party and its pseudo-left supporters, including Black Lives Matter, seek to blame police violence solely on racism, the fact is the police murder workers and youth of all races. Moreover, in many cases those perpetuating these crimesfrom local cops to police chiefs, mayors and the US president himselfare African American. What unites all of the victims of killer cops, however, is that they are working class and poor.
Greeces Syriza government has stepped up its repression of refugees and asylum seekers. In the early hours of July 27, riot police raided three separate squats in the city of Thessaloniki, where anarchist groups had set up shelters for refugee families stranded in Greece.

Seventy-four people were taken into custody, with 64 of them reportedly foreign activists, mostly from Europe. Most were charged with disruption of household peace and damage to property.

The majority of the activists arrested were part of the No Borders group, which had held a camp in Thessaloniki between July 14 and 24, attended by 1,500 activists from all over Europe.

The three squats were at the citys old Alexander the Great Orphanage in the Toumpa District, at the Mandalideion building, which was the old site of the Aristoteleian Universitys school of journalism and the Hurryia Community squat on Karolou Ntil Street in the city centre.

Speaking to the Greek edition of VICE News, a resident living close to the orphanage squat said: Between 3 and 4 a.m. two riot police vans arrived outside the building and threw 10 stun grenades and tear gas. At that moment there were more than 10 children inside, mothers and chaperones from student organisations in the city. Not able to breathe they were shouting for help.

Activists at the Hurryia Community squat uploaded a 37-second video on their Facebook page, in which their voices can be heard pleading with police to give them more time to speak with their lawyer. A police officers voice is then heard stating that the legal owner wanted them out, at which point chemicals are seen being sprayed through the metal bars on the door, which had been barricaded by the activists.

Shortly after the orphanage squat was cleared, bulldozers arrived to demolish the building. According to reports, under the rubble there were large amounts of medicines, food and other supplies, as well as refugees possessions. Five years ago, the building had been given by the state to the Greek Orthodox Church, which is planning to build a private care home for people with chronic illnesses.

The following week, five activists from the orphanage squat were taken to court where they received 10-month suspended sentences and fines of 2,000 each. In a separate trial, six activists from the university squat each received four-month suspended sentences.

The trial of 60 activists from the Hurriya squat was postponed until January next year due to a lack of interpreters.

Following the raids, refugees were transported to the citys port to be relocated to different migrant detention centres.

According to recent figures there are over 57,000 migrants and refugees currently stranded in Greece. A pact between Turkey and the European Union (EU) adopted in Brussels on March 18 stipulates that Turkey take back all refugees who come across the Aegean to Greece.

As a result of the dirty deal with Turkey, refugee registration centres on the Greek islands were transformed into internment camps. More than 8,500 refugees are currently confined to the camps, described as hot spots, where living conditions are notoriously bad.

The same week the police operation took place, a report was published by the Health Ministrys Centre for the Control of and Prevention of Diseases (KEELPNO). This was based on inspections carried out in 16 reception centres in the Region of Central Macedonia during the first week of July.

The report states, Refugees are housed in disused old industrial warehouses. Hundreds of people are cramped in a single space without adequate ventilation, an accumulation of litter and sewage, bad hygiene conditions and a lack of access to drinking water and variable quantity and quality of food.

The report specifically cited the site of the old Karamanlis tannery where the water contains high concentrations of heavy metals, while the warehouse roof contains half-ruined asbestos sheets that contaminate the air with fibres.

It warned of the wider public health implications of such conditions, which increase the possibility of food borne and water borne epidemics as well as those transmitted by agents (mosquitoes).

Speaking to Syrizas Sto Kokkino radio station, KEELPNOs vice-president Alexis Benos stated, these centres were created with the rationale that refugees would be housed there for a few days or months. These centres should be shut down urgently and refugees should be gradually integrated into society.

The health agencys warnings were tragically confirmed last week when eight young refugees aged between two and 18 contracted hepatitis at the Nea Kavala reception centre in Northern Greece.

Speaking to the Athens News Agency, Achilleas Kalemkeridis, a representative of the hospital employees union said, This is a serious situation, because in 2015, the recorded hepatitis A cases were 62 while [in 2016] theyve reached eight in just 10 days.

The inhumane treatment of refugees in Greece is entirely in line with the wider policy of the EU, which seeks to fortify its borders against refugees attempting to flee wars fuelled by imperialist intrigues in the wider region. As the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle noted, The conditions in Greek camps, like those on the islands of Idomeni and Lesbos, have acted as a deterrent. The prospect of being sent from those camps back to Turkey has clearly discouraged many refugees from making the expensive and dangerous crossing.

While the raids on the three squats were justified on the pretext of complaints filed by the legal property owners, the real aim was the enforcement of the governments reactionary refugee policy.

The raids were preceded by a series of standoffs between the No Border group and the citys authorities after activists set up their camp headquarters in the Aristotle Universitys Law Faculty.

This is essentially an occupation that is the definition of iniquity, stated Yiannis Boutaris, Mayor of Thessaloniki. I believe that the state should intervene. Laws should be implemented; otherwise we will permanently live in a state of lawlessness. Boutaris, nominally an independent, was a founding member, in 2009, of the pro-capitalist Drassi party.

According to Kathimerini, municipal authorities held an emergency meeting following an attack on Thessaloniki City Hall on July 21 by 150 No Border activists, who reportedly caused damage to equipment, threw paint and sprayed slogans, such as No Border, Open the borders, blood on your hands, across walls.

The raids must be viewed within the context of reports of an increase in the flow of refugees and migrants into Greece, following the attempted coup in Turkey on July 15. According to the Save the Children charity, arrivals to the [Greek] islands [from Turkey] during the first 14 days of August increased by 144 per cent compared to the first 14 days of July.

The failed coup has called into question the EUs reactionary refugees deal with Turkey. Under the agreement, refugees in Europe were to be forcibly removed to Turkey and held in camps. In exchange, Turkish citizens were promised visa-free travel in the EUs passport free Schengen Zone.

The European Commission is refusing to honour this agreement unless Turkish President Erdogan repeals anti-terror laws he has put in place to clamp down on his opponents following the coup. In response, the Turkish government is threatening to back out of the deal.

After overturning the mass rejection of the EUs austerity package by Greek workers in the referendum of July 2015, and proceeding to sign a third devastating cuts package with the EU, the Syriza-led government now exclusively relies on repressive methods in order to enforce the EUs reactionary austerity agenda and clamp down on refugees.

This has caused a crisis within Syriza itself, as the pseudo-left party attempts to maintain a left-wing facade. While the Citizens Protection Minister and Syriza MP Nikos Toskas justified the closure of the shelters, stating, no one can do what he wants, the partys press office released a statement condemning the operation. It stated, We are against the police operation to clear squats in Thessaloniki. The criminalisation of solidarity initiatives requires the use of practices that have nothing to do with the values and principles of the Left.
World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke to a number of those attending the Jeremy Corbyn rally in Sheffield on Friday.

The comments reflected growing opposition among workers and young people to social inequality and war, while at the same time expressing the illusions that Corbyn is seeking to promote in the Labour Party.

There was a significant and glaring contradiction between the comments of those attending the rallyincluding opposition to the right-wing attack on Corbynand the remarks of Corbyn himself, which avoided any mention of the coup against him and its political significance.

Joe is 30 and a former University of Nottingham student who recently started a small business. He was previously employed in retail jobs and said he thought regular employment was now too precarious.

Ive always been on the left but was never in Labour, Joe said. I always voted for them. Living in the north of England, people have always voted Labour.

Asked why he supported Corbyn, Joe said he endorsed his policies on nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation. He was one of the minority of Labour MPs who didnt vote for the Iraq war. Id never heard of Corbyn before he became leader, but nobody would have unless theyd been following closely politics for 30 years.

Asked what he thought was behind the coup being carried out against Corbyn by Labours right, Joe said, Theres a lot of entrenched interests in the country and they want to maintain a false spectrum of debate in the media about the crucial things in society like economic equality and rights for people. They want to maintain an unjust situation. Corbyn seems to be challenging that false spectrum of debate we have in the media. They really seem to dislike anyone who challenges the false spectrum of debate.

The Labour and Conservative politicians doing this [attacking Corbyn] are the same. They are not representatives of the people.

The Westminster bubble that people talk about is real. We have a broken democracy, and I think Corbyn is going some way to help fix some of the problems in society.

Joe said he believed that the Labour right were fearful of the growing left-wing sentiment in society that Corbyns election reflected.

There is a lot of disaffection in politics. Even the left of our politics is not necessarily left-wing. Corbyn is not an extreme left human being. He is for capitalism. Despite being quintessentially reasonable in many ways, he is painted as extreme because politics has gone so far to the right. [Labour leadership challenger] Owen Smith might as well not bother to pretend as he is just a career politician with no principles. He is a Blair with less charisma.

Referring to the 130,000 members and supporters who have been banned from voting in the leadership contest, Joe said, It provides a very good lens into the mentality of these people [the right-wing]. How arrogant are these people? They are saying they are right and hundreds of thousands of people are wrong, and then all those people are being branded as extremists. The people here are not extremists.

Joe said he voted for the UK to remain in the European Union (EU) in the June 23 referendum vote, even though I dont necessarily like the EU as an institution. I didnt like the context in which they were doing it. It seemed too right-wing and xenophobic.

Ben is in his early 20s and an artist who works in a call centre. He joined the Labour Party shortly after the June 23 referendum on British membership of the European Union, which resulted in a Leave vote.

Ben said that many young people joined the Labour Party in order to elect Corbyn as leader, and many more had recently joined to defend him against the rights attempt to remove him.

Asked why he thought this was the case, Ben said, Jeremy Corbyn is the only option at the minute to defend us against the move to the right shown in the Brexit vote. This showed the way people were thinking about politics.

A lot of my friends have joined for the same reasons as me. Labour under Corbyn is saying things that were thinkingthat the world should be a fairer place.

Asked what he thought of the coup, Ben said, I think its shocking the way the Blairites are moving against him.

Ben said he opposed war and had read part of the Chilcot report [into the Iraq war]. Jeremy Corbyn is anti-war. I support the left wing. I dont want racist and fascists taking control. Trident [the UKs nuclear weapons system] is a complete waste of moneyimagine what could be done with that money.

They only want to use it to coerce other nations to agree with their political agenda. This has been happening a long time since the [British] Empire. Its about time somebody said to put a stop to it all and lets be nice to each other.

Joey is 27 and works in retail. He also joined the Labour Party following the Brexit vote. He opposes the Parliamentary Labour Party who are the right-wing of Labour.

He said, Id like to think Corbyn will get elected but dont think it will happen. He added, Thats what we need. Not the right-wing like Tony Blair who are in it for themselves and for the rich getting richer and poor poorer.

Joey said the ruling Conservatives were claiming that the minimum wage was going up but I cant see it happening.

Although he supported Corbyn, he thought he should have campaigned more strongly in favour of a Remain vote in the Brexit referendum, the outcome would have been different as the Leave campaign had stuck together.

I know a lot of people voted Leave as a protest vote as they didnt think that it was going to happen but now regret it. Joey said he believed the Leave vote was more about a vote against the establishment than anything else.

James is a student in his 20s and said he was not in a political party. He had come to the rally to support Corbyn. I think Corbyn is in some way different, but whatever you think of him, the way the Labour Party is treating him is disgusting.

Corbyn has been criticized for not being a good leader, but how can you lead people [the Parliamentary Labour Party] that dont want to be led? Thats the issue here.

He had voted Labour, even though he didnt agree with his local MP. I do not want to support those that supported austerity. Thats not the message you want to put forward.

James said, Some of those within the Labour Party that are carrying out the cuts are just career politicians, they are not really Labour.

If Corbyn is not electable as they say, they have nothing to worry about. If he is electable, he is going to make changes, in which case they are worried. That is why they attack him.
The Liberal-National government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has exploited the latest round of school NAPLAN (National Assessment ProgramLiteracy and Numeracy) results to defend its education budget cuts.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham released on August 3 the preliminary results from the standardised tests done earlier this year by Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 students throughout Australia. Across all year levels, the data reportedly showed an increase in average reading scores of 0.4 percent since 2013, a decrease in writing scores of -0.2 percent and an increase in numeracy of 1.26 percent.

In a media statement headlined, Plateau Not Good Enough, Birmingham declared that the NAPLAN results once again show that, despite significant funding growth, we are not getting sufficient improvements in student outcomes. He claimed that while strong levels of investment in schools are important, its more important to ensure that funding is being used on initiatives proven to boost student results we need to move the conversation on from just how much is being spent in schools to focus on how record funding can best be used for the benefit of students.

Federal school funding, Birmingham claimed, rose by 23 percent in the past three yearsand because students test scores have not risen by comparable levels it was necessary to move the conversation on, away from how much more funding schools actually require. Even within the narrow, stultifying framework of standardised testing and educational cost-benefit analysis, it is absurd to suggest that increased spending should produce endlessly improving test results.

The governments rhetoric on the NAPLAN results serve two purposes. The first aim is to justify previous education spending cuts and prepare the ground for further austerity measures, and the second is to undermine teachers working conditions and impose regressive teaching models in the name of promoting initiatives proven to boost student results.

The government previously abandoned the scheduled Gonski school funding for 2017 and 2018. The Gonski funding model, unveiled by the former Labor government of Julia Gillard, was always a fraud. Ahead of the 2013 federal election, however, then Liberal leader Tony Abbott went along with it, declaring a unity ticket on the policy with Labor. After winning office amid an accelerating economic slowdown, the government abandoned much of the planned funding, amounting to around $4 billion, as part of its moves to defend the interests of finance capital and the ultra-wealthy through budget cuts targeting the working class.

Now Turnbulls education minister is sending a clear signal. As global economic growth falls and signs emerge of an imminent slump in the Australian economy, the government is signalling its intent to slash education and other basic services as part of a stepped-up austerity drive.

The result will be to escalate the crisis confronting the public education system. Birminghams claims of record funding increases in the past period seek to cover up the reality that Australia has one of the most privatised and unequal education systems among advanced capitalist countries. While billions of dollars have been funnelled into private schools, including the most exclusive and lavishly resourced, by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments, overcrowded public schools across the country are struggling to cope with record enrolments and increasingly complex social, psychological and developmental needs of many of their students, for which there is almost no additional support.

The government is now promoting a conversation, not about how to resolve this crisis but rather how to promote evidence-based initiatives to boost NAPLAN results.

In May the government announced a range of reactionary policies under the banner of a Student Achievement Plan. These include advancing so-called performance pay for teachers by linking teacher salary progression to demonstrated competency and achievement, rather than just length of service and incentivising high-performing teachers to work in disadvantaged schools.

Another measure extends standardised testing to Year 1 students (six-year-olds). They will soon have to undergo a phonemic awareness test, which is already used in Britain and has been condemned by literacy experts, involving children being asked to read pseudo-words such as brip or snirt.

The opposition Labor Party and the education trade unions are complicit in all the federal governments education policies.

NAPLAN is the primary mechanism for the assault on public educationand it was introduced by the last Labor government. The Australian Education Union (AEU) played a critical role in sabotaging teacher opposition to the standardised testing regime. The union called off a planned boycott of NAPLAN in 2010, after the Labor government invited the union bureaucracy onto a working party to help organise the implementation of the tests.

NAPLAN is being used in different ways by state Labor and Liberal-National governments to undermine the public education system. In New South Wales, the Liberal-National government of Premier Mike Baird recently announced that Year 9 students will have to achieve a certain benchmark NAPLAN score to qualify for their Higher School Certificate (HSC) at the end of Year 12. The HSC is required to enter university.

In other words, 14-year-olds will be told that the possibility of going on to tertiary study depends on their performance on a standardised test. The New South Wales Teachers Federation (NSWTF) issued a statement making clear that it had no opposition to the governments proposals, requesting only further clarification on the details of the implementation.

In Victoria, the Labor government of Premier Daniel Andrews has directly tied some school funding to NAPLAN test scores. The government has allocated $72 million over four years for schools where students have registered poor NAPLAN results in Year 5. The measure was presented as a means of helping schools and disadvantaged studentsbut what has been established is a reactionary precedent. Moves will no doubt soon be made to tie school funding bonuses to high and improving NAPLAN results, further accelerating the pressure on school administrators and teachers to teach to the test, to the detriment of the real needs of their students.
Home Front opened at the Auckland Museum on February 26 and will run until November 13.

Advertised as focusing on life at home during the First World War, the exhibition is part of multi-million dollar government-sponsored WWI centenary commemorations to promote militarism and nationalism. It consists of patriotic memorabilia, including flags, embroidery, badges and medals, recruitment posters; and clothes and other items sent to soldiers overseas. Photographs and wall texts depict fundraising efforts to support New Zealand troops.

The museum has organised several events connected with the exhibit, mainly aimed at children. In July it advertised a holiday program, Doing Our Bit: Kids on the Home Front, inviting children to do some fundraising with specially created gamescollecting scrap, bottles and even eggs!  Have fun discovering how kids in the First World War made a big difference! In June, members of the public were invited to knit blankets for charity to emulate women who knitted socks and mittens for soldiers during the war.

In a media release, Auckland Museum director Roy Clare laid out the pro-war character of Home Front. He declared: The generosity of spirit and the human concern shown by Aucklanders and New Zealanders towards our own troops and, in turn, to the fate of innocent peoples caught up in the War, as for example this citys care for those in Belgium, is a testament to our ability to come together in times of need.

The WWI celebrations are unfolding amid escalating global instability generated by US imperialisms wars in the Middle East, its military build-up in Asia and belligerent threats against Russia and China.

The Australian and New Zealand ruling elites, who have strengthened their alliance with Washington, are seeking to ideologically prepare the population to come together in support of the next war. The museum recently hosted a secondary school debate on whether individuals should have had the right to object to conscription in WWI. The unstated subtext of the debate called into question the right to oppose contemporary wars.

Home Front presents WWI-era propaganda depicting the British Empires declaration of war as a humanitarian response to Germanys invasion of poor little Belgium. In reality, the war was the outcome of the historic breakdown of the capitalist system, brought about by the contradiction between the global economy and the outmoded nation-state system.

Britain joined the war to defend its vast colonial possessions and conquer new markets and territories. New Zealand, a minor imperialist power, sacrificed 18,500 young lives in the war as the price for annexing German Samoa and sharing the plunder from phosphate-rich Nauru. In 1926 New Zealand was also given the Tokelau Islands, which Britain had annexed during the war.

Like other WWI centenary productions, Home Front covers up the mass opposition to war that emerged in the working class. It gives the impression that anti-war sentiment was confined to a small handful of the population, including pacifist politicians, conscientious objectors and some Maori tribes.

The wall text states: When war was declared  [p]ersonal hardships were put aside and everyone seemed to share the goal of supporting New Zealands fight for King and Country. Later, it says, small cracks appeared in this social cohesion, and [p]ublic discrimination and scorn awaited those who took stands against the war and prevailing opinions.

This picture is completely one-sided and false. The surge of nationalist enthusiasm that accompanied New Zealands entry into the war began to disappear as the fighting progressed and thousands of NZ soldiers were killed and maimed at Gallipoli and on the Western Front.

Home Front notes that criticising conscription and the war effort was made illegal. The text expresses sympathy for the victims of anti-German discrimination and for conscientious objectors who were imprisoned and sometimes tortured. But it obscures the fact that police-state measures were implemented to clamp down on opposition in the working class, above all its most conscious anti-capitalist representatives.

Altogether 208 people were convicted of sedition during the war and 71 were imprisoned. The government suppressed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose leaders had played a major role in a 1913 nationwide strike. Some IWW members fled the country to escape prosecution and others were imprisoned. Wellington IWW leader Joseph Herbert Jones, for instance, was jailed in January 1917 for a speech to 500 people in Dixon Street, where he called on the working class to say to the masters we dont want war. Hysterical newspaper headlines denounced the IWW as Hirelings of the Huns and German-born children of the devil. [1]

The government was acutely aware of anti-war sentiment. In the years leading up to the war more than 7,000 young men were convicted for refusing compulsory military training. By 1916, 70 percent of those eligible to enlist had refused and in mid-1916 the government imposed conscription. About 5,000 soldiers deserted after being called up.

From 1916 onward there were numerous demonstrations against conscription. One anti-conscription meeting in March 1917 attracted 2,600 people in Christchurch, a city with fewer than 100,000 residents.

Defence Minister James Allen feared that illegal strikes by coal miners in 1916 and 1917 against conscription and low wages could spread and trigger another nationwide strike. In February 1917 the Military Service Board warned that the mining Grey district was a powder magazine. Miners Federation leaders Bob Semple and John Dowgray, among the founders of the Labour Party, worked with the government to prevent a general miners strike. Allen eventually agreed with the union leaders to exempt miners from conscription in exchange for an end to industrial action. [2]

Ignoring the mass opposition, Home Front instead focuses on various campaigns in support of the war. It claims that New Zealanders took to war fundraising with gusto and the whole country got involved. Several panels and photographs describe the 1915 Auckland Patriotic Queen Carnival, which raised 344,000 (the equivalent of $NZ45 million in todays dollars) over ten weeks. There are cabinets filled with badges and books sold to raise money. Also on display is a New Zealand flag, covered with embroidered signatures of people who made donations.

Such pro-war events did not involve the whole country. They were coordinated by members of the bourgeoisie and upper middle class. Fundraising organisations such as the War Contigent Association, the Food for Britain Fund, the Otago Patriotic Association were run by some of the countrys wealthiest industrialists and financiers. The exhibition shows examples of the fundraising efforts of Lady Liverpool, the governor-generals wife. Lady Sadie Mills, the wife of Sir James Mills, one of New Zealands richest men, chaired a sewing committee that stitched items of clothing for soldiers.

One panel asserts: Up and down New Zealand  [w]omen and children put in huge efforts to provide comforts and provisions for the war. Another states: New Zealands women  threw themselves into fundraising, selling badges and making clothes.

However, many working class women fiercely opposed the war. In May 1918, around 2,000 people, mostly women, protested at King Edward Barracks in Christchurch, disrupting an intake of conscripts. The crowd jeered, hectored and shouted at army officers [who were] trying to take roll-calls of conscripts  The mayor turned up but was hooted. [3]

The global breakdown of capitalism that produced the war also provided a powerful impulse for socialist revolution. The Russian Revolution of October 1917 provoked fear among the ruling classes of the Allied countries and forced them to bring the war to an end. This earth-shaking event, which is ignored by all the WWI centenary exhibitions, deeply alarmed the New Zealand government. It maintained a strict ban on socialist literature, and on immigrants believed to be socialists, well into the 1920s. The Free Lance newspaper warned that the Bolshevik menace  fed by the manure of I.W.Wism could spread to America, Australia and New Zealand. [4]

There was widespread unrest after the war, including among returned soldiers. By 1920, only around 2,000 disabled former soldiers were receiving permanent war pensions (more than 40,000 had been wounded) and only 8,000 dependents of dead soldiers were receiving payments. A crowd of 2,000 returned soldiers protested outside parliament on September 10, 1919, demanding greater assistance. The Labour Partys Bob Semple made a speech exhorting the men to reasonable behaviour. [5]

Home Front includes a small section about the Labour Party, which was founded in July 1916 by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the United Labour Party. A copy of a December 1916 speech by Labour member Peter Fraser is on display, in which he called for peace negotiations and declared: For the past two years and a half we have been looking at the ruling classes of Europe spreading woe, want and murder over the continent, and it is time that the working classes of the different nations were rising up in protest against them. Fraser was arrested for this speech and sentenced to a year in prison.

The exhibition falsely labels the Labour Party founders socialists. In fact, it was a capitalist party founded to prevent the anti-war upsurge in the working class from threatening the profit system. Labour bitterly opposed the perspective of international socialism that guided the Russian Revolution. The party founders, like their counterparts in the Second International parties in Europe, represented an upper layer of the working class whose privileged position was bound up with the strength of their ruling class.

A typical statement in the SDP newspaper the Maoriland Worker in September 1915 explained that while its leaders opposed conscription, they supported the war, believing that the Empire was in a supreme struggle to uphold the principles of Democracy (see: New Zealands first Labour Party leader was no socialist: A reply to the pseudo-left ISO).

Home Fronts silence on the opposition to war in the working class, its rosy picture of wartime unity and promotion of the Labour Party, serve a definite contemporary political purpose. The ruling elite wants to prevent workers and youth from learning and being inspired by the struggles of the past. Above all, it aims to prevent them from drawing the conclusion that another world war can be prevented only through the unification of the international working class in a revolutionary struggle for socialism.

Notes:

[1] Jared Davidson, Fighting War: Anarchists, Wobblies and the New Zealand State 19051925, May 2014.

[2] Len Richardson, Politics and War: Coal Miners and Conscription 19141918, Miners and Militants: Politics in Westland, Ed. Philip Ross, May 1975, pages 128155.

[3] Stevan Eldred-Grigg, The Great Wrong War, 2010, page 374.

[4] Free Lance, January 16, 1919, page 8.

[5] The Press, September 11, 1919, page 6.

The authors also recommend:

NZ government-produced book describes WWI as successful and profitable

[24 April 2014]

Australian World War I celebration buries history of mass anti-war opposition

[18 April 2015]

New Zealands WWI exhibitions falsify history and glorify war for a new generation

[22 April 2015]
More than six years after it was signed into law, and nearly three years since people began enrolling, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is increasingly acknowledged to be a disaster. The viability of the scheme it authorized is openly being called into question, even by its proponents. The Obama administrations signature domestic achievement stands exposed as a plan concocted by and for the insurance companies and corporate America to slash their costs and increase their profits.

As the World Socialist Web Site explained as early as 2009, the health care reform that is popularly known as Obamacare establishes a framework for the insurers, the corporations and the government to drastically reduce the health benefits available to low- and middle-income individuals and families.

This was always the aim of the legislation. The gutting of benefits and increase in costs for working people are not the unfortunate outcomes of a well-meaning but misguided effort to provide near-universal, quality health care, as President Obama claimed at its inception. As the New York Times, an early, fervent and continuing supporter of Obamacare, recently acknowledged, referring to the barebones government health program for the poor, [T]he reality is that a typical Obamacare plan looks more like Medicaid, only with a high deductible.

Under the ACAs individual mandate, anyone without employer-sponsored coverage who is not covered by Medicare or Medicaid is required under threat of a significant tax penalty to purchase private insurance. Today, large numbers of people are struggling or unable to pay the exorbitant premiums demanded by the private insurers for their shoddy plans, while those who do are forced to self-ration care for their families under the weight of sky-high out-of-pocket costs.

The least expensive plans come with deductibles in excess of $5,000. Networks are increasingly shrinking, forcing enrollees to choose between a dwindling range of doctors and hospitals. Drug formularies are denying access to life-saving drugs. Insurers are requesting and receiving approval for double-digit premium hikes for their wretchedly inadequate insurance policies.

The recent exit of No. 3 health insurer Aetna from a majority of the private Obamacare exchanges across the country where it previously offered plans is certain to exacerbate this trend. Coming on the heels of the pullback of insurers UnitedHealth and Humana from the Obamacare market, conditions have been created where 17 percent of those eligible for an ACA plan next year will have only one insurer from which to choose. This will be the case in five entire states.

In a recent opinion piece in the Times, economist Paul Krugman bemoaned the fact that insurers are finding themselves losing money, because previously uninsured Americans who are signing up turn out to have been sicker and more in need of costly care than we realized. He advocated a reinforced effort to ensure that healthy Americans buy insurance, as the law requires, rather than them waiting until they get sicki.e., hiking the already hefty tax penalties for those who fail to buy policies.

The magic of the Obamacare market has demonstrated the degree to which the ACA is subordinated to the profit interests of the multibillion-dollar insurance companiesto the detriment of the lives and well being of the vast majority of the population. They are the ones calling the shots. There is no meaningful oversight on what they can charge for their plans, so they jack up the premiums. If they are still not making what they consider an adequate profit on the ACA exchanges, they simply pull out.

While there is a legal requirement for individual workers, students, etc., to fork over money to the insurance firms, the corporate CEOs and their bankers are free to do as they please.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton unequivocally defends Obamacare and pledges to build on its success to bring the promise of affordable health care to more people. Her cynical claims that she will not stand for unjustified premium increases and will limit excessive out-of-pocket costs for families are as believable as her lies about her emails.

The entire edifice of Obamas health care overhaul is built on the for-profit health system in America, which includes not only the insurers, but also the giant hospitals, health care chains and pharmaceutical companies. To the extent that Trump and the Republicans oppose the ACA, they propose to junk the Obamacare charade in favor of more open support for the free-market, for-profit health care industry.

In the end, these are tactical differences between the two big business parties. Whichever candidate occupies the White House comes January, he or she will be committed to an intensified attack on health care for ordinary Americans. This sweeping assault on the quality of life for working people will continue as part of the ruling class offensive against all basic social rights, including the right to a decent-paying job, education and housing.

As the WSWS wrote in July 2009, more than six months before the ACA became law, Obamas drive for an overhaul of the health care system, far from representing a reform designed to provide universal coverage and increased access to quality care, marks an unprecedented attack on health care for the working population. It is an effort to roll back social gains associated with the enactment of Medicare in 1965.

It is a counterrevolution in health care, being carried out in the profit interests of the giant pharmaceutical companies, insurance conglomerates and hospital chains, as well as the corporations, which will be encouraged to terminate health care for their employees and force them to buy insurance plans providing less coverage at greater-out-of-pocket expense.

Fast forward seven years and we can draw a balance sheet proving the correctness of these assertions.

Taking their cue from Obamacare, growing numbers of employers are increasing co-pays and deductibles. Some are shifting their employees to individual markets modeled on the ACA marketplace, while others, including some employing public workers, are dumping them onto the Obamacare exchanges.

A study in 2014 predicted that the ACA would save US businesses $3.5 trillion through 2025, largely by ending employer-sponsored coverage and shifting health insurance costs to employees.

In January 2015, Obamas Department of Health and Human Services announced that payments to hospitals and doctors for a large percentage of health care provided under Medicare, the government-run health insurance program for the elderly, would be shifted from the traditional fee for service model to methods that reward health care providers for cutting costs and rationing care.

Half of direct payments to Medicare providers are to be moved to this model by 2018. The sacrifices being demanded of Medicare recipientssupposedly in the interest quality and valuewill translate into the withholding of medical treatments and procedures, resulting in untold suffering and untimely deaths of seniors.

Moreover, the ACA essentially establishes a voucher system, whereby minimal government subsidies are given to individuals to purchase private health insurance. It thereby serves as a model for the future privatization of the key government programs, Medicare and Medicaid, wrenched from the ruling class through bitter working class struggles in the last century.

As we correctly noted in 2009, Obamas health care counterrevolution is of a piece with his entire domestic agenda. It parallels the multitrillion-dollar bailout of the banks, the imposition of mass layoffs and wage and benefits cuts in the auto industry, and a stepped-up attack on public education and on teachers.  All that remains of the social reforms from the 1930s and 1960s, and the gains won by previous generations of workers in bitter struggle, is to be wiped out.

The claims by pseudo-left and nominally liberal forces that Obamacare contained at least some kernel of progressive content have been exposed as apologias for these reactionary policies. A progressive and democratic overhaul of the health care system in America must take as its starting point an end to privately owned health care corporations and medicine-for-profit and the establishment of socialized medicine, democratically administered by a workers government, to provide free, high-quality health care for all.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Turkey has demanded to extradite 62 businessmen related to the movement of Fethullah Gulen from Germany, the Haber7 newspaper reported Aug. 22.

The businessmen that Ankara has urged to extradite are accused of financing the Gulen movement.

An Istanbul court ordered on Aug. 4 to arrest Fethullah Gulen. He is accused in the military coup attempt in Turkey.

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.

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said 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.

Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey on July 20.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
The corporate-controlled media and the Hillary Clinton campaign have chosen to downplay the political significance of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trumps appointment of a figure with close ties to white nationalist and other ultra-right tendencies as his new campaign chief. They are deliberately covering up the orientation of the Trump campaign toward the consolidation of a fascist-type movement in the United States.

Stephen K. Bannon, the new Trump campaign CEO, is the executive chairman of Breitbart News, an on-line publication that celebrates the rise of the neo-fascist right in Europe, including the National Front in France, the Alternative for Germany, and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in Britain, and seeks to create a similar movement in the United States. Bannon hosted then-UKIP leader Nigel Farage during a recent visit to Washington, introducing him to Republican Party bigwigs.

In one of the few serious commentaries in the US media, Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke, in an August 19 article, cited several recent hysterical, bigoted headlines on Breitbart.com, which he described as a right-wing lunatic-fringe website. The site regularly denounces supporters of gay rights as the Gaystapoa peculiar inversion for a publication whose readers frequently leave anti-Semitic comments, such as a reference to the movie industry as Jewlywood.

Huppke cites other comments posted on Breitbart News by readers who threaten violence against immigrants, liberals, Muslims, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, etc. He notes that Bannon himself, on his radio program, interviewed Joseph Schmitz, a Trump foreign policy adviser (and anti-Semite, according to complaints filed by other Pentagon officials during his tenure in the Bush administration). Bannon asked the former Pentagon inspector-general if the Obama administration was using the Muslim Brotherhood to shape US foreign policy. Schmitz replied, No, I dont think it. I know it.

Bannons influence was made apparent in the first general election television commercial broadcast by the Trump campaign, appearing Friday night. It is a vitriolic, racist attack on immigrants, suggesting that unless Trump is elected they will flood in, and immigrant criminals will get to stay, collecting Social Security.

The tone for the media response to Bannons appointment was set, as usual, by the New York Times, whose lead editorial Sunday posed the question, How Can America Recover From Donald Trump?

It notes the appointment of Bannon, identifying him as Breitbarts chief purveyor of conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant venom.

Far from drawing any political conclusions, or issuing a warning, the Times merely expresses the hope that after Trumps expected defeat in November, responsible leaders of the Republican Party will try to separate the economic discontent from the bigotry and paranoia that are the key to the Trump phenomenon.

The Times presents the Trump phenomenon as a bolt from the blue, something completely unanticipated and foreign to American politics. This is a deliberate and dishonest cover-up.

Trump himself is a well-known quantity, promoted and encouraged for years by both big-business parties and the corporate media. He has enjoyed the closest relations with Democrats no less than Republicans, including the Clintons. He was built up as the celebrity CEO par excellence and given television shows to promote the Trump brand. He emerged from the corrupt and super-wealthy circles of New York real estate speculators and embodies the accumulated political reaction of decades of unending war, ever-greater social inequality and the rise of a new, parasitical financial aristocracy.

His candidacy and the ultra-right character of his campaign represent a turn by sections of the American capitalist class, in the face of intractable contradictions and the growth of social opposition, to more authoritarian and violent methods of rule.

As for the Republican Party, it was exploiting economic discontent to foment bigotry and paranoia for decades before Trump came onto the political scene. At every point, the Democratic Party and its liberal defenders like the Times have capitulated to the rise of the ultra-right while embracing the policies of austerity, wage-cutting and war demanded by Wall Street.

The four television interview programs broadcast Sunday morning all made reference to the reshuffle in the leadership of the Trump campaign, and ABC and CNN interviewed Kellyanne Conway, the new campaign manager. She was never asked about the ultra-right views of the new campaign CEO (her boss).

One CBS panelist described Bannon as an eyebrow-raising hire more confrontational, very tied to anti-immigrant voices, but the subject was not further pursued. On Fox News, of course, there was only praise, with one panelist describing him as very competent and tapped into this populist energy that Donald Trump has.

Most remarkable was the appearance on the ABC program This Week of Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. He noted that Trump had appointed a new campaign CEO from Breitbart News, a media outlet that has defended white supremacists and has been sexist, racist, the worst of our politics.

But this was not Mooks real concern. He shifted instead to the bogus allegations that Trump is a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The hand of the Kremlin has been at work in this campaign for some time, Mook said. Its clear that they are supporting Donald Trump there are real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race.

Clinton campaign supporters also released a new campaign ad featuring choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov associating Trump with the Stalinist dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

The Clinton campaign manager prefers to attack Trump from the right, with a McCarthy-style smear about the Kremlin, rather than explore Trumps very real connections with neo-fascist elements. Mooks intervention was a devastating exposure of the class orientation of the Clinton campaign, which seeks to curry favor with Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus by arguing that Clinton, not Trump, is the more reliable defender of the interests of American imperialism.

Even if, as current polls now suggest, Trump is defeated by Clinton, the result will be the most right-wing government in American history, committed to a policy of imperialist war abroad and attacks on democratic rights and the social position of the working class at home. Clinton will be compelled to rely on precisely the political forces cultivated by Trumpchauvinistic and militaristicto support this reactionary course of action.

Tens of millions of working people and youth are sickened by the prospect of choosing between Clinton, the personification of the corporate status quo, and Trump, the fascistic billionaire. According to the most recent Pew poll, only 22 percent say they will vote for Clinton because they actually support her (as opposed to fearing Trump), and only 16 percent support Trump (rather than hating Clinton).

The official two-party system provides no outlet for the mass sentiments of working people and youth, who are moving to the left and seeking a way to fight in defense of their jobs and living standards and oppose the growing drive to war. Only the campaign of the Socialist Equality Party and our candidates, Jerry White for president and Niles Niemuth for vice president, offers a genuine political alternative.
On Friday, UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke at an open-air rally of up to 2,000 people in Sheffield. Called at short notice, the meeting is one of a number organised by his supporters in the run-up to Septembers leadership ballot.

The leadership contest was forced after 172 Labour MPs supported a vote of no-confidence in Corbyn. This followed a walkout by more than 60 MPs from the shadow cabinet, organised as part of a coup to remove Corbyn by the partys Blairite wing.

The Sheffield event was organised by the Momentum group, the Labour leaders network of supporters. Among those attending in Sheffield were Labour members and supporters and numerous campaign groupsfrom those opposing racism, fracking and police brutality to animal rights campaigners. Up to half of the audience comprised young people, including students.

The most striking feature of the rally was the fact that none of the speakers, including Corbyn himself, made any mention of the right-wing coup against him. Nor was there any condemnation of the anti-democratic methods being used to try to rig the outcome of the leadership contest, including the exclusion of some 130,000 members from voting and the suspension of Labour Party branches for the duration of the campaign. A purge of the membership, in order to root out up to 50,000 left-wing members, is also underway, as a result of which 1,000 new applicants to join per day are currently on hold.

Nonetheless, speakers declared that Labour was undergoing a revival, with local councillor Lewis Dagnall asserting that Corbyn and those who supported him had transformed the party so that it now offered a clear alternative to those who are only in politics for the rich. Time and again the call was made for party unity, passing over the fact that the right-wing openly talk of a split if Corbyn wins the contest.

In putting himself forward as a leadership candidate last year, Corbyns objective was to try and rescue Labour from complete electoral annihilation, as it had become reviled as a party of austerity and militarism.

Tosh McDonald, president of the train drivers union ASLEF, described how his union executive had met following Labours defeat in the May 2015 general election in a mood of utter despair. They were supposed to select their preference in the leadership contest that had opened up after leader Ed Miliband resigned.

Corbyn had not entered the race at that point, and McDonald explained that the executive looked at the candidates and all they saw was more of the same. More of the same policies that had lost us five million votes between 1997 to 2010. That had lost us more than a 100-seat majority in parliament.

For the first time in 12 years, the executive adjourned the meeting without being able to nominate somebody. He described the relief of the bureaucracy when Corbyn entered the race, and the ASLEF executive finally felt there was someone who could reverse Labours decline.

His remarks were essentially a plea to the Labour right, although they were never referenced. I wish I didnt have to be here, McDonald said. I wish the whole of the Labour Party, whether that be new members, old members, supporters, councillors, MPs, all stood together against the Tories We should all be together, not disunited and fighting each other.

John Dunn, a former National Union of Mineworker official, also spoke. He was one of the 92 miners beaten and arrested by police at the Orgreave coking plant in 1984 during the year-long strike.

Dunn said of the miners struggle, Those were the days. We were fighting for something. There was movement, an enthusiasm for what the labour movement was doing But what happened? We were abandoned and defeated. We walked back to work after 12 months on strike in defeat That hurt. We are not going to do it again.

Referring to Corbyns leadership, he said, Something new is happening. Those dark days have gone. He added, After we re-elect Jeremy in a few weeks, we go forward The real justice we get is when we abolish this rotten system that looks after the minority and replace it with a socialist society.

In his own speech, however, Corbyn did not use the word socialism. In fact, he was at pains to stress that his policies were entirely reasonable.

No attempt was made to alert his audience to the dangers posed by the right-wing, whose coup has support at the highest level of the state and intelligence apparatus in the UK and United States.

Several times the Labour leader referenced the fact that the rally had been organised as part of the leadership contest, but he said nothing about the contest itself and made no mention of his opponent, Owen Smith. The campaign was about the leadership of the party but it is also about how we do our politics, change society and how we bring people together, he said.

Corbyn specialises in amorphous generalities. He describes various iniquities in society including low pay and cuts in education and health care but never mentions that these are a product of the crisis-ridden capitalist system. Austerity, Corbyn stated, is a political choice, not an economic necessity.

The central thrust of his speech was that all the ills in society can be cured if only people come together and decide on a different course of action. The way forward, he argued, was through the creation of a national investment bank to pay for infrastructure projects, greater investment in manufacturing, sustainable jobs and a council house building programme.

This would start the process of community investment for the good of all of us, he claimed, as it was the function of government to reach out to everybody in our society. This was hardly extremist, Marxist, left stuff, he said.
South Koreas three largest shipbuilders slashed 5,000 jobs in the first half of 2016 as part of ongoing restructuring by the struggling companies. Both regular and non-regular workers have been forced to quit or accept retirement.

More layoffs are planned over the next few years, with the moves expected to affect related positions in the sector. The entire ruling elite, including the trade unions, is in agreement that the working class must pay to rescue big business.

Shipbuilding is a major component of the South Korean economy, with Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries, and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering the worlds largest firms in the industry.

The companies have been greatly impacted by the downturn in global trade, particularly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the drop in the oil industry. They have also faced increased competition from cheaper competitors in countries like China.

While Hyundai, Samsung and Daewoo, known in South Korea as the Big Three, were initially able to weather the crisis, their combined net losses reached $US4.9 billion last year. They now face a lack of orders as well as overcapacity.

Smaller shipbuilders like STX Offshore and Shipbuilding, Sungdong Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering and Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction are also facing serious debt crises. The combined debt of the top nine shipbuilders has reached 102.6 trillion won ($92.6 billion).

Daewoo is at the center of an accounting scandal, with the firm accused of hiding billions of dollars in losses over the past several years. Its headquarters were raided in June, but any punishment coming out of the investigation and trial, assuming a guilty verdict is actually reached, will amount to nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

As part of the restructuring, the Big Three forced 3,000 workers to retire, while at Hyundai (no longer directly affiliated with Hyundai Motors) an additional 2,000 workers were laid off through a voluntary retirement scheme. The three companies plan to eliminate upward of 6,000 positions this year, but far more workers are likely to be sacked. Some 5,000 positions, including subcontractors, were also eliminated last year. As a result of this job destruction, Hyundai Heavy managed to return to profitability in the first half of 2016, earning $577 million.

As the business environment is getting worse [in the shipbuilding industry] and more workers are expected to apply for the voluntary retirement programs later this year, the number of workers leaving the shipbuilders will be bigger [than the present 6,000] at the end of this year, an industry official told South Koreas Yonhap news agency.

The Big Three intend to eliminate 30 percent of their combined workforces by 2018, meaning a total of 16,000 laborers will be sacked. Close to 30,000 jobs, including subcontractors, will be lost in the coming months alone. On Geoje Island, 22,031 jobs are likely to be lost by the end of this year, with that number rising to 27,257 by March, according to a report by the islands local municipal government. Both Samsung and Daewoo are located on the island.

State-owned banks such as the Korea Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of Korea have provided loans to the companies, running a risk that the lenders themselves could face financial crises. As a result, the government agreed in June to hand over $9.5 billion to bail out the institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) supported the measures, but insisted on even more restructuring.

The companies, along with creditor banks, should make bone-crushing efforts to revive their businesses, President Park Geun-hye said in a speech in June, emphasizing that those responsible for the financial problems would not be held accountable. If we dont carry out a bold restructuring by downsizing the overgrown workforce  and cutting costs, the future of not only the shipbuilders but also the whole economy will be in jeopardy.

The labor unions, under the Federation of Shipbuilding Industry Unions, are entirely on board with these plans. These so-called workers representatives at the companies are directly controlled by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), and its affiliate the Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU) or, in the case of Hyundai Heavy, nominally independent unions that are close to KCTU.

There is no shortage of will to fight the restructuring amongst workers, with several unions approving strike action. Workers at Daewoo, for example, approved strike action by 85 percent. However, the KCTU and its allies have stepped in to prevent a larger struggle spreading, particularly into other industries.

This entails the unions sanctioning only partial walkouts, designed to make the least impact on the companies. All of this is entirely for show, in order to dissipate workers anger, with unions not even holding strikes on the same days. The union at Samsung held the first such walkout on July 6, during which only 3,000 workers out of the total 14,000-strong workforce struck for four hours. Then on July 20, workers at all Big Three shipyards held a similar four-hour walkout. Unions at Hyundai and its smaller affiliates are scheduled to strike on August 31.

At smaller firms Hanjin and Sungdong, the unions, which both belong to the KMWU, are reportedly in harmony mood with management, according to the magazine Business Korea.

Workers must not place trust in any of the unions to wage a genuine struggle against layoffs. The KCTUs goal is to isolate shipbuilding workers from each other and the rest of the South Korean and international working class to prepare sellout agreements with the companies.

Autoworkers at Hyundai Motors, who are also covered by the KMWU, have joined partial strikes in recent weeks. Despite a few token expressions of solidarity, the struggles have largely been kept separated from each other. Workers in auto and shipbuilding, both in South Korea and internationally, need to develop an independent industrial and political struggle in defence of jobs, conditions and all the social rights of the working class.
25 Years Ago | 50 Years Ago | 75 Years Ago | 100 Years Ago

25 years ago: Gorbachev purges cabinet after failed August putsch

On August 22, 1991, after the failure of the coup against him, Soviet President Michael Gorbachev conducted a wide-ranging purge of his cabinet. Gorbachev and his family had been held captive in Crimea by the plotters during the attempted putsch.

Because Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin was not arrested during the coup, he was able to play up his role as Gorbachevs savior and after its collapse, in turn, pushed through federation decrees asserting the domination of his faction over the USSR.

The coup was an act of desperation by a faction of the Stalinist bureaucracy revealing deep divisions within it. The main aim of its organizers within the bureaucratic apparatus was to merely strengthen their position against an emerging Russian bourgeoisie, rather than actually to destroy it. It was little more than an attempt by the Stalinists to compel the comprador bourgeoisie to accept a leading position for the Stalinist bureaucracy in the impending division of the spoils from the dismantling of the Soviet economy. But they lacked any coherent aims and had no viable program, leading to the rapid collapse of the coup.

Meanwhile, the imperialists responded with triumph, perceiving the failure of the coup as the last obstacle to restoring capitalism in the Soviet Union. The New York Times published an August 27 editorial advising the bureaucracy to proceed with the restoration of capitalism at a rapid pace: Stop printing rubles  When stores and factories close, tens of millions would, at least temporarily, lose their jobs.

[top]

50 years ago: First clash between South African forces and Namibian fighters

On August 26, 1966, a combined attack by South African Police and South African Defense Forces on a unit of the Peoples Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) at Ongulumbashe marked the first battle of the Namibian War of Independence.

The PLAN was badly overmatched in the South African ambush, which was likely set up by a well-placed informant among the ranks of the guerrillas. Only 17 ill-equipped soldiers faced off against the South African force of approximately 40 soldiers and eight helicopters. In the wake of the skirmish several PLAN leaders were arrested and sentenced to life in prison on Robben Island.

At this stage, the nationalist armed units could not take on superior South African military forces directly. The primary goal of the guerrillas was to force the diplomatic intervention of those elements of western imperialism, including the United Nations, which sought to forestall the emergence of a revolutionary struggle among Africas masses by turning over nominal independence to the native elite in the process of decolonization. This was the basis for conflict with the white South African elite, whose Apartheid rule was based on a strict racial hierarchy and which had its own designs to dominate the southern part of the African continent.

In October 1966, the United Nations General Assembly revoked South Africas mandate over Namibia, which had been awarded in 1920 after South African troops seized the former German colony in World War I. The war of Namibian independence and the related civil war in Angola would continue throughout the 1970s and 1980s, supported materially by the Soviet Union and with troops by Cuba. Arrayed against the faction-ridden independence movement were South Africa, the colonial ruler of Angola, Portugal, and, covertly, the United States.

[top]

75 years ago: Paris workers fight Nazi occupation

On August 27, 1941 two of the leading French collaborators with the Nazis, Pierre Laval and Marcel Deat, were wounded in a terrorist attack in Paris after weeks of growing sabotage by sections of French workers and the middle class against Hitlers occupation of France.

For a full year after the defeat of France in 1940, Germany had plundered French agriculture and industry with little resistance. But after German imperialism attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Stalinist parties around the world, which had largely blocked working-class action against Nazism during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, reversed themselves.

Activity began in the 11th Arrondissement, a historic center of radical activity dating back to the 1871 Paris Commune. Many tons of illegal leaflets were distributed, despite extreme penalties to both those who dispersed propaganda and those receiving it. German officers and soldiers were attacked and military vehicles overturned. In a short period of time there were more than 100 cases of railway sabotage, as French railroad workers sought to block all food and industrial products being shipped back to Germany to sustain the Nazi blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union.

Hitler and the French Vichy authorities dropped all pretenses that they held mass support for their rule. Twenty thousand German troops along with armored cars were dispatched to

patrol Paris streets. Sanctions were issued against rail workers and workers suspected of sabotage on track maintenance crews were arrested.

Thirty to forty thousand workers and youth were arrested and held hostage, many thousands being accused as communist Jews. Nazi authorities threatened that prisoners would be shot in random numbers corresponding to acts of sabotage. Marshal Philippe Petain, Prime Minister of Vichy France, set up death courts and shot workers before firing squads. Three workers were executed at the guillotine.

[top]

100 years ago: Romania enters World War I on the side of the Allies

On August 27, 1916, the Kingdom of Romania entered the imperialist First World War on the side of the Allied powers, including Britain, France and Russia. The Romanian government declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire and immediately launched a surprise assault against positions of the Central Powers in Transylvania, then under Hungarian rule, now part of in modern-day Romania.

Romanias military intervention followed two years of formal neutrality in the global conflagration that had erupted in August 1914, despite the fact that the Kingdom had longstanding ties to the Central Powers. In 1883 it had established a defensive military alliance with Germany, which had been renewed by King Carol I in 1913. The Romanian ruling line also had familial ties to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and German ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II.

At the outbreak of the war, King Ferdinand II, Romanias new monarch, declared that the country was only obliged to fight alongside Germany in the event of a defensive conflict. Like the bulk of his governing cabinet, Ferdinand initially favored remaining outside the war. The Romanian government, however, came under increasing pressure from Russia and the other Allied powers to enter the conflict, and to cut off rail supply lines that ran between Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Divisions emerged within the ruling elite, and the Allies appealed to Romanian aspirations to seize Transylvania, long part of Austro-Hungary but with a majority ethnic Romanian population.

Announcing their entrance into the war, Ferdinand appealed to Romanian nationalism, declaring, Today we are able to complete the task of our forefathers and to establish forever that which Michael the Great was only able to establish for a moment, namely, a Romanian union on both slopes of the Carpathians.

The initial stages of the Transylvania offensive saw Romanian troops sweep across large areas of that territory. The Allied Powers had hoped that Germany would be unable to aid the Austro-Hungarian defense, because of the heavy fighting taking place on the Western Front. This proved to be mistaken, with eight divisions of the German Alpine Corps joining the defense. Over the following weeks, Romanian forces were pushed back, and were forced to halt the offensive on September 15. The Central Powers launched a counter-offensive. By the end of the conflict, 220,000 Romanian soldiers had been killed.

[top]
On Saturday, Socialist Equality Party supporters spoke to Washington, DC residents at an intersection along Minnesota Avenue in Ward 7, located in Southeast DC, while campaigning for SEP presidential candidates Jerry White and Niles Niemuth.

Located east of the Anacostia River, Wards 7 and 8 are home to some of the starkest levels of poverty in the US. A December 2015 report released by the non-profit DC Action for Children shows that from 2009-2013 40 percent of all children in Ward 8 lived in poverty. Similarly, the number of children receiving Medicaid grew by more than 2,000 recipients from 2010 to 2014. According to the 2015 Kids Count Data Book released by the Annie. E. Casey Foundation, 40 percent of children across the city live in homes where their parents lack secure, full-time, year-round employment.

A federal estimate of homelessness in the District released in May found that, for the first time since the annual census began collecting such data in 2001, the number of homeless children and their parents now outnumber homeless single adults4,667 to 3,683, according to a count conducted in January.

While the federal estimate stated that the number of homeless families increased by 30 percent over the past year, the latest Hunger and Homelessness Survey issued by the United States Conference of Mayors this past December put the figure at 60 percent. The survey noted that 34 percent of homeless adults are employed.

A common concern raised by residents is the high cost of housing, which has contributed to the rise in homelessness. Starting in 2010, real estate speculation sent housing prices soaring in working-class neighborhoods. Meanwhile, affordable housing units have declined significantly, shrinking from 60,000 units in 2002 (about 40 percent of total housing) to 33,000 in 2013 (less than 20 percent), according to a report by the DC Fiscal Policy Institute released in March of last year.

I know they have all these building developers coming up from 8th Street that are moving all these poor people out of the neighborhood, said Raymond, 61. I read in the newspaper last week that some developers are kicking people out for being $25 short on their rent. In Brookland Manor they even had the Washington Post run a story on it.

Brookland Manor is a subsidized public housing apartment complex located in Northeast DC, and home to 1,200 mainly low-income residents. Developers are currently seeking to gentrify the area, refurbishing the apartment complex with units designed for smaller and wealthier families. In a bid to evict its residents, Brookland Manor has been filing lawsuits against residents based on delinquent payments, often as small as between $25 and $100, and minor infractions such as walking a dog without a leash, the Post reported earlier this month.

I feel for these younger folks today; theyre not getting anything from the wealthy. They wont be taught an education or be able to engage with society. The rich just want them for fighting more wars, Raymond said.

The SEP asked Raymond about the role played by the Obama administration. Obama has only helped the wealthy, he replied.

Delonte, 21, a young father with his one-year-old daughter, Ariel, said, We do okay as far as government assistance, but lately theyve been cracking down. They tend not to let you get on assistance until you are jobless and on the brink of poverty, but for people working jobs and trying to support a family, theres no way to get ahead. Its like the government wants you to do worse.

It has been two decades since the Clinton administration signed legislation that limited welfare benefits to 60 weeks. Nearly 40 percent of Washington DCs welfare recipients, consisting of around 5,700 adults and 12,000 dependents, have reached this limit and are facing dramatic cuts to their assistance.

While the city has attempted to make up for these cuts in the past, these funds have declined in recent years from an average of $441 per month, basically matching the funds recipients received from federal grants, to $158. Even more cuts are expected in October 2017.

When asked about those that say these programs should be cut, Delonte said, I dont agree with that.

Some people really need these programs and they shouldnt just be thrown away. My relative just came home from doing 13 years [in jail]. He can barely read. He added, Most jobs around here only allow you to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment. Once people spend their money on rent, they need some extra assistance.

Delonte continued, One of my moms friends has been homeless for seven years. Sometimes she has to spend nights on friends couches. How can she go in for a job appointment under those circumstances?

Welfare recipients face difficult barriers to employment, including unaffordable childcare, illiteracy, lack of job skills, health problems and issues related to domestic violence.

Tyrone, an older worker, spoke about issues related to neighborhood crime. There are no jobs, no education available. When people are not taught anything, they have no skills, you are going to resort to desperate measures. That will happen whether you are black or white, he said.

We need to get people jobs, thats the root [of it], he said. Politicians need to give us opportunities like our parents had, so young people can get out and be responsible.

When asked about the elections, Tyrone said, I cant trust either of them. How can Hillary Clinton say she is against the billionaires when she is connected to billionaires?

SEP campaigners also spoke to a woman about the costs of war and how it affected social conditions in the DC area.

War will do nothing for us. There is already a war being fought right here! When asked to elaborate, she said: A war on drugs, a war on our young people.

A class war, said an SEP campaigner. Exactly, the woman replied.
On Friday, Florida Governor Rick Scott announced that the Zika virus is now being spread locally by mosquitoes in Miami Beach, Florida. This is considered an expansion of the outbreak, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have issued a new travel advisory, warning pregnant women not to visit the area. Pregnant women who already live in Miami Beach have been instructed to stay indoors and guard as best they can from the virus.

The Zika virus has been known for more than half a century, but little effort has been made until recently to develop a vaccine, largely due to it being an affliction of impoverished countries. That the same conditions prevail in many parts of the United States, however, including in Florida, mean that the virus has found fresh ground.

Zika has been linked to birth defects in fetuses where pregnant women are infected with the virus. Thousands of infants throughout the Americas have recently been born with microcephaly, a brain defect which has been linked to Zika. Many women have chosen to terminate their pregnancies rather than give birth.

The virus is transmitted by mosquitoes; if one bites an infected person, it can then pass Zika to another person it bites. Medical officials have also discovered this year that it can be transmitted sexually. Hundreds of cases have already been discovered in the United States in people who had traveled to areas where Zika had been found, or had sexual contact with such persons.

The first cases of mosquito-borne Zika in the continental United States were discovered by the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) earlier this month in what was initially a one-square-mile zone of Miami, just west across Biscayne Bay from Miami Beach.

The new area that has been added to the warning area is a 1.5-square-mile area in Miami Beach, between the beach itself and the Intracoastal Waterwaya space that contains the densely-packed South Beach tourist district. Within this warning area is the Miami Beach Convention Center, a 45,000-person capacity venue that holds a variety of sporting events and other happenings throughout the year.

As of Friday, health officials reported that at least five people have been infected with Zika by mosquitoes in this area, two of whom reside there. The other three were visiting from Texas, New York, and Taiwan, respectively.

The CDC issued a new travel advisory on Friday afternoon, saying pregnant women should avoid the new warning zone in Miami Beach. This is the first time since the CDC was founded in 1946 that it has issued such a warning within the United States. They also advised that pregnant women and their sexual partners living in the affected area should take extra precautions to protect themselves from mosquitoes, including wearing repellent.

Zika prevention kits that include repellant, condoms, and mosquito nets have been given to pregnant women in the affected areas. Obstetricians have been instructed to assess every pregnant patient at each prenatal visit for exposure to Zika.

Dr. Aaron Elkin, an obstetrician in the area, reported to the New York Times that every woman coming in for prenatal care wanted Zika testing. You cant say no to them, he related. Theyre very frightened. Im doing 15 tests a day. Some patients are considering leaving the state, at least for the durations of their pregnancies.

One of the new concerns, now that the mosquitoes have been found in a popular tourist destination, is that people will bring the virus home with them. According to statistics, Miami Beach hosts 35 percent of the approximately 10 million tourists who visit Greater Miami every year. Nearly half of these come from outside of the United States. The three infected individuals visiting from Texas, New York, and Taiwan had already returned home.

Another possible channel for international exposure is through PortMiami, the leading cruise-line port in the world. Some cruise lines, as well as airlines like JetBlue, have begun offering refunds and rescheduling to customers who have concerns about visiting Zika-affected areas, including Miami.

Other barriers to controlling the spread of the virus are the presence of high-rise buildings that prevent low-flying planes from spraying specialized insecticide over the area, as they have done on the other side of the bay, as well as the prevalence of clothing used at the beach that does little to protect against mosquito bites.

Another important concern, especially for people like Governor Scott, is the negative economic impact the Zika outbreak will have on tourism in Florida.

Tourism is a driving force of our economy, he stated on Friday. This industry has the full support of our state in the fight against the Zika virus. We want to do all we can to ensure Florida remains safe for businesses and our families. On Thursday, Scotts office denied the presence of Zika-carrying mosquitoes in Miami Beach, and he has since been accused of trying to obscure evidence in order to protect the states $82 billion tourism industry.

To date, Zika has officially spread to 70 countries. There have been a confirmed number of 2,200 cases in the United States and more than 8,000 in US territories, mostly in Puerto Rico. The CDC is currently tracking the health of 529 pregnant women within the US and nearly 700 within the territories who have been afflicted with the virus. The number of locally-acquired cases of Zika in Florida has now reached a total of 36.

CDC Director Tom Frieden has stated that there are undoubtedly more infections that we are not aware of right now because roughly 80 percent of those infected see no symptoms. We cant predict how long this will continue, but we do know that it will be difficult to control. Frieden has stated that the mosquito, Aedes aegypti, is very difficult to kill, dubbing it the cockroach of mosquitoes.

The Obama administration has asked for $1.9 billion to help fight Zika, but Congress has not come to a decision, leaving for a summer recess without allocating any funds. The administration recently reallocated $81 million from other programs, but health officials say that there will be no money left by the end of September.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

A group of people who tried to break into the Israeli Consulate General has been detained in Istanbul, Turkey, the Hurriyet newspaper reported Aug. 22.

Five people tried to break into the Israeli Consulate General Aug. 22 at 02:30 (GMT + 2 hours). All the detainees are citizens of Turkey.

It is reported that the purpose of the detainees was a protest against the recent military operations of the Israeli Air Force in the Gaza Strip.

The Israel Defense Forces on Aug. 21 inflicted a strike upon a number of facilities of Hamas (a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization) in the Gaza Strip in response to a rocket launched earlier from this area into the Israeli city of Sderot.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) -- A Tallahassee school is collecting supplies for a school in Louisiana damaged by recent flooding.

This week, Maclay School kicked off "Backpacks for Baton Rouge," in an effort to help students at Runnels School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Maclay middle school teacher Laurie Coburn grew up in Baton Rouge. She said her hometown has been devastated by the flooding, and she wanted to give back to the community there.

Coburn said students were supposed to start school already, but the flooding damaged classrooms and destroyed supplies.

"I think it's important that, if that ever happened to us, I would want somebody to do this for me," Coburn said. "It's important for us to pay it forward. Everybody has always taken care of everybody else, and now, it's our turn to take care and to just keep it moving forward."

Even though it's started as a school effort, Coburn said the public is more than welcome to pitch in.

People can drop off supplies at the school and mention they're for "Backpacks for Baton Rouge."

The drive will end Friday. Coburn will travel to Baton Rouge Saturday to deliver the supplies.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

The issue of Fethullah Gulens extradition will be discussed today, on Aug. 22, during a visit of the delegation of the US Department of Justice to Turkey, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, TRT Haber TV channel reported.

He also said that this issue will be discussed during the visit of US Vice President Joe Biden to Turkey.

Turkish media outlets earlier reported that Joe Bidens visit to Turkey is expected before September 2016.

An Istanbul court ordered on Aug. 4 to arrest Fethullah Gulen. He is accused in the military coup attempt in Turkey.

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.

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said 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.

Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey on July 20.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
You are the owner of this article.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016, 9:55pm: The phone in the Eztion Brigade's situation room is ringing. An intelligence officer is on the line. "There is an indication that the terrorist has arrived at the destination," he reports to the territorial brigade's special operations officer, Lt. P.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



"Within 20 minutes, we had forces inside the village," Lt. P. recalls. "I sent ten different units into Surif, among them were five Special Forces units that were scrambled to the area: The Border Police's counter-terrorism unit (Yamam), Duvdevan, and others. This was the beginning of a procedure known as 'pressure cooker' (code name for surrounding a terrorist who barricaded himself in a house). The adrenaline was insane: Sky-high excitement as we were all watching on the monitors. I organized the forces around the house. The village was still quiet. All of a sudden, we found ourselves in a state of crazy uncertainty. It turned out that the terrorist wasn't there. For a week, information was flowing to us that he was moving between the villages in the Hebron and Etzion area. We had concrete information that he was planning to carry out a shooting attack in the immediate future, and all of a sudden he went missing on us.

Left to right: P. from the Eztion Brigade, E. from the Ephraim Brigade, R, from the Binyamin Brigade, S. from the Menashe Brigade, and S. from the Yehudo Brigade (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

"The clock was ticking. There was immense pressure in the situation room. Then, a gun battle erupted. It was like the Wild West. The shots were coming from houses and rooftops. Then, a sigh of relief: The terrorist was sighted on one of the building's floors. We used a bulldozer, which took a 'bite' out of one of the sides of the house. We gave the terrorist time to surrender, but the shooting continued. He refused to come out. We started demolishing the house. Later, I spoke on the phone to S., the officer in charge of special operations in the Judea District. She asked me, 'did you get him?' and I answered 'yes.' I felt a tremendous sense of satisfaction, a little rest after almost a month."

That is how Lt. P. directed the forces that eliminated the terrorist Mohammed al-Fakih , who murdered Rabbi Miki Mark in Mount Hebron, about a month prior.

'Why aren't the forces moving?'

The interview with the five special operations officers, all women, took place in the Judea and Samaria Division headquarters. This is a position that only exists in the Judea and Samaria Division and is filledalmost exclusivelyby young, female officers who are about 22 years old and hold the rank of lieutenant.

Their weapon is an encrypted cellular device known as the "Mountain Rose," which they don't let out of their sight for a moment, constantly stepping out during the interview to talk to commanders and prepare them for the next operation. Their eyes are red with exhaustion and they're fueled with massive amounts of coffee and adrenaline.

"One time, I decided to count the number of calls I made in a day," said Lt. E., the Ephraim Brigade's (Qalqilya area) special operations officer. "I got to 400, but during the last wave of terror attacks, I think I got to more."



Their names and faces cannot be published, due to the sensitive nature of their position. Each one of them has at her disposal phone numbers of the commanders and officers of some of the IDF's elite units, the Shin Bet, the Yamam, and the Israel Police.

From the moment they receive confirmation, they are in charge of deploying the Special Forces, positioning them and coordinating between them so as to prevent a situation of friendly fire.

Each operation is incredibly nerve-racking, said R., a special operations officer at the Binyamin Brigade. I look at the monitor and see that a unit I instructed to move left is actually moving right, which makes me realize that we had lost communications with it. The brigade commander starts yelling in the war room, Why isnt that unit moving? The pressure is unreal. And then the unit responds and I immediately yell, go left! And now, somehow, I need to explain the communications glitch to the brigade commander."

S., the special operations officer of the Menashe Brigade (Jenin area), enlisted in the IDF in October 2012. She served as a lookout on the Lebanon border and then served as the aid to the 36th Division's operations officer during Protective Edge n 2014. It was under the 36th Division that the Golani Brigade fought some difficult battles in Saja'iyya.

"One night, we were at the Operations Directorate and our commanders told us an operation is probably about to start," she remembers. "The next day, we were to leave the Golan Heights and head to the gathering areas outside Gaza, where we then managed the division's situation room. There, the entire operation unfolds in front of you, and you find yourself in the midst of everything. I remember Golani's APC disaster. I remember knowing what happened to the soldiers and having to exercise restraint and not cry, while the emotions came flooding and I was hurting for every name that came up. The situation is complex, but the experience is different. You're not at home listening to the news. You're in the midst of fighting and have no time to dwell on the pain. One event follows another, and you have to stay as professional as possible."

Paratrooper forces coordinating in the field (Photo: IDF Spokesperson)

E., the special operations officer of the Ephraim Brigade, enlisted in January 2013 as an infantry instructor and later served as a coordinations officer in the Central Command's headquarters.

R., the special operations office of the Binyamin Brigade, enlisted in October 2012 and served as a situation room's commander at the 80th Regional Divisionwhich is in charge of the Arabah region, Eilat, and a large part of the Egyptian borderand a team commander at a course for field unit officers.

S., the special operations officer of the Judea Division, also enlisted in October 2012, and served as the operations NCO of the Etzion Regional Division. After attending officers' course, she became a situation room commander in the 769th Regional Division on the Lebanon border.

P., the special operations office of the Etzion Division, enlisted in July 2013 and served as an anti-tank weapons instructor. Later, she was a team commander at officers' course.

Most of them entered their current position in the fall of 2015, at the beginning of the wave of terror attacks, and very quickly found themselves in the midst of daily fighting.

There are weeks when we hardly get any sleep, S. says. I knew what I was getting into, but I didnt know how intense everything would be."

Immediately following a terrorist attack, says Lt. E., she and her colleagues begin exchanging messages to figure out where the terrorist came from. Once you realize he came out of your area, you know youre not going to be getting any sleep over the next few days, she says.

Shortly after starting at her position as the Judea Brigade's special forces officer, S. had to deal with one of the most serious terrorist attacks of the latest wave of violence. In January, a Palestinian teenager, entered the Israeli settlement of Otniel and murdered Dafna Meir in front of her children. The terrorist, 16-year-old Morad Adais, managed to escape back to his village.

Former Judea Brigade commander Col. Yariv Ben-Ezra briefing the forces at the scene of the attack in which Dafna Meir was murdered.

"I was in the war room, and I heard 'open circle' on the comms, which is the code for an infiltration into one of the settlements," recalls S. "You immediately realize this might be a very serious incident. And this is the first time I had to manage such an incident. There was a lot of tension and stress. We had to find the terrorist. We formulated an initial assessment of the situation with the help of the Shin Bet and Military Intelligence. The hours passed. And then we fortunately got testimony bt one of the settlers, who described the terrorist.

"I got the order and started gathering the forces. I had a lot of Special Forces units taking part in this operation, even airborne ones. An unfathomable (amount of) responsibility. (The forces) got into the village of Beit Imra near Yatta and met with no real resistance. Then, they found him sitting in his living room. The tension was replaced by a certain feeling of satisfaction."

And at the same time, are you thinking of the woman who was murdered, or are you focused solely on the mission at hand?

"You can't not think about it. It's hard and perhaps unbelievable, but during the operation you have to separate (these things). Sometimes I think of the victims and get choked up. It's a feeling that's hard to explain."

Do you go out into the field?

"I often go out into the field with the senior commanders, but most of the time they prefer that I remain in the situation room and give them an accurate view of things. Inside the situation room, when you have the entire array of forces and missions in front of you, you know what each force is supposed to be doing and you have to coordinate between them. It's a different feeling from being in the field, very challenging and stressful," says Lt. S.

S. has been in her position for nearly 10 months. She wears a brown military beret, in memory of her brother, Golani Brigade fighter

Staff Sgt. Itamar Shai, who was killed in the IDF's helicopter disaster of February 1997.

"He was killed when I was three, so I didn't really know him. My memories of him are blurry, just fractions of memories of playing together when he came home from the army. I mostly heard stories about him by friends and family. They always spoke about him takng care of those weaker than him. It's hard for me to not have him here beside me."

When she became a situation room officer, in the 769th Regional Brigade where her brother had died, it marked a kind of closure for S. "My commanders believed that serving where my brother was killed would be meaningful for me. It wasn't easy, but I really felt I was commemorating him this way."

Another sleepless night

One of the gravest incidents in IDF of the past few years occurred in the West Bank on February 29, 2016. "Around 10pm, the phone rang," R., the Binyamin Brigade's special operations officer, remembers. "An officer from Oketz (the IDF's special forces canine unit) was on the line. ' Two soldiers got lost in Ramallah ,' he told me. Chaos immediately erupted. Meanwhile, I started getting reports of stone-throwing and Molotov cocktails (being hurled) at a military vehicle in Qalandiya. I asked the officer if the lost soldiers were in Ramallah or Qalandiya, he didn't know the answer. Soon, we realized everything was happening in Qalandiya. I immediately thought of the lynch in Ramallah

"Within seconds, the situation room was flooded with senior officers. Lots of shouting, many orders. And I started sending a massive amount of forces to Qalandiya. It's massive responsibility, making sure everyone is safe and coordinating between them. I sent all the forces I had there, hundreds of soldiers. At a certain point, we found the vehicle, which was (damaged by being) pelted with stones. At that point, contact with the soldiers was lost. It's a suffocating feeling, helplessness. We found one of the soldiers hiding in a neighborhood trash container, but the event wasn't over. Another soldier was missing, with whom contact had been lost. Everyone was going crazy.

"Serious rioting began at that point. Qalandiya is a difficult place. Molotov cocktails, stones. The forces I sent in kept searching. There was major concern over the possibility of friendly fire. After half an hour, I got a phone call: The soldier was found near the fence of the settlement Kokhav Ya'akov. Everyone calmed down. The situation room emptied out. But I still needed to get the forces out (of the area), and continue the operation of capturing the stone and Molotov cocktail-throwers. It takes until morning. Another sleepless night."

Troops at one of the IDF's situation rooms.

In the Ephraim region, things are slightly calmer. The IDF mostly operates to prevent terror attacks there, actions that don't always make headlines.

"There's a settlement in the Samaria region where dozens of attacks have been foiled," says Ephraim special operations officer Lt. E. "We foil an infiltration attempt there three or four times a month. Once, we caught two kids with knives there, and they admitted that they were going there to commit an attack. Later, we learned that a relative of theirs was killed when he tried to stab a soldier in Huwara, which is in the Samaria region. So we monitor relatives of terrorists who were killed and conduct operations to arrest those who raise concerns. It's true that there's a lot less stress. But we're still saving lives."

With all of the intensity of the job, it's easy to forget we're talking about young women, who are dealing with complex situations and who carry the heavy burden of responsibility on their shoulders. Only few others their age have to handle such responsibility every day. They try to also lead normal liveswith families, friends, dating, and funbut it's not always possible.

"Just a few days ago I went on a date, the first in a long time," says E., "We sat at a cafe and suddenly (the phone started ringing) and I had to answer it. I disappeared for 40 minutes. It was terribly embarrassing. I then returned to the table and the date continued, but we haven't spoken since. I don't know if it'll go on."

But despite the difficulties, two of the ladies are in relationships. "On one of my leaves, I took my partner to meet my friends," says Lt. S. "It was after we haven't seen each other in a long time. I wore a special, pretty dress. We went out, I introduced them. Suddenly the phone started ringing. 'There is an indication (we found) a wanted suspect, you need to come back to base quickly.' And I, with this dress on, jumped into the car and rushed to the situation room. I had a spare set of my combat uniform in my car. I started changing, and then I realized I left my boyfriend with a bunch of people he doesn't know."

The special operation officer of the Judea Brigade, whose first initial is also S., has a partner as well. "We seldom see each other, but try to keep our heads above water," she says.

"A day before the terrible murder of Hallel Ariel, I got to go home after a whole month, because my cousin was getting married. The wedding was set for Thursday. I was at home, getting ready, and all of a sudden the phone started ringing. Infiltration into Kiryat Arba. Without thinking twice, I took the car and drove to the situation room, hoping to get it all done on time to come back for the wedding. It didn't happen. I sent large amounts of forces into the village of Bani Na'im to find the terrorist's home. On Friday morning, the brigade commander told me, 'you're dismissed.' I was disappointed because I missed the wedding, but at least I was going to be home for Shabbat. (As soon as) I got home, there was an attack on Highway 60the drive-by shooting on the Mark family's car. So again, I drove my private vehicle back to base, this time for two weeks. I didn't get to see my boyfriend."

Lt. E. is a religious woman, who has to nevertheless have her phone with her on Shabbat as well, because of her duties. She has been trying to balance her faith with her operational duty. "Every religious person knows that Shabbat is when you disconnect from it all and connect to God in your own way. You press pause on life. I go to prayer with my phone on, and when there's an operational need, I find myself speaking on the phone on Saturday as well. On one of my weekends off, I didn't feel like I was not on base. There were constant phone calls. It doesn't stop and you can't control it."

The special operations officers' crazy schedule and their work environment are a surefire recipe for stress. But the importance of their position and the enormous responsibility it carries with it give them the strength to go on.

"I won't say it's pleasant, being in the company of men who came from the battlefield and need to take instructions from a 22-year-old female officer, but they show us respect," said S., the Menashe officer. "We meet with senior commanders: Battalion commanders, brigade commanders, and commanders of elite units. It's a little intimidating, but also really emphasizes my responsibility. When a battalion commander is demanding answers of me about the forces operating in his area, I realize how much responsibility this job carries. The most important thing is to show confidence and professionalism and ignore any background noise. It's not simple. You're always under scrutiny."

Events keep following them even after the forces return to base. "I dealt with the attack on Shlomit Krigman, who was murdered in January in Beit Horon," says R., the Binyamin officer. "She was a woman about my age. It's incomprehensible that a woman at the beginning of her life is murdered inside her settlement. It's difficult and unrelenting, but I have to make that separation. And when a terrorist's home is demolished, there's no feeling of relief, but there is closure. And the fact the military goes into a village and controls it for a few hours while demolishing the terrorist's home aids in deterrence and can prevent future attacks. Not everyone gets to take part in the fight against terrorism."
Birthright Israel has finished the first cohort of a new program called "Excel Ventures" this summer. In this innovative, first of its kind, global initiative, American entrepreneur students from leading universities in the US and Israeli graduates of elite technology units of the IDF take part in a technology startup training boot camp.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



During the 10-week intensive program, participants spent their time in the startup scene of Tel Aviv and became partners in the initial development stages of their very own startups.

These ventures served as an accelerator for these young ambitious entrepreneurs going through all the critical stages of bringing a startup to life: from putting a team together, creating prototypes, and finding investors to create groundbreaking new concepts.

However, as program manager Adam Lazovski said, "Birthright Ventures is more than just a business program. It empowers and accelerates the participants, and enables the participants to meet with the best and brightest Israel has to offer."





The first Birthright Excel cohort with Adam Lazovski, center (Photo: Adam Lazovski)

Compared to the normal 10-day Birthright experience, in which all Jews are invited to participate, this exclusive program is looking for the cream of the crop in terms of business acumen, marketing, and computer sciences. Therefore, the program's application process is quite rigorous.

Lazovski said that the ideal candidate for the program is "someone with an entrepreneurial mindset someone who wakes up and wants to change the reality around them, along with having a propensity for risk-taking, the ability to function under ambiguity, being a team player, has strong Jewish values, and who wants to foster their relationship with Israel."

While he said that technical abilities are always nice, those are soft skills and do not make or break a candidate's eligibility. "We're looking for people with the right mindset not necessarily with a formal educationwe have people from the IDF who didn't go through school."

Although the application process is lengthyincluding two interviews, a group project, and even a venture proposalit is done to ensure that the cohort is productive and successful, and so that the participants get the most out of the program.

"We choose candidates not only on individual terms, but also how they fit within the framework of the cohort as a whole," Lazovski explained. "Maybe someone is good for a cohort one year, but that person wouldn't fit into a cohort another year because the dynamics in the cohort may not be productive."

The program includes seminars and lectures given by Israeli tech experts, including the head of Discount Bank and the developer of the Iron Dome missile-defense system, and a very involved alumni association in conjunction with the Birthright Israel Excel Fellowship Programa sister Birthright program for college students which sets up the participants with internships in various prominent Israeli based multi-national corporations. These alumni, amongst others, help Birthright Excel Ventures participants succeed in founding their startups via feedback sessions, mentoring, and helping participants gain access to venture capitalists for funding.

Birthright Excel (Photo: Adam Lazovski)

There is also a non-business aspect to the program, with weekend trips all over Israel to help the participants strengthen their connection with the Jewish state and get more in touch with their Judaism.

Having been on a Birthright trip doesn't preclude anyone from participating in this program, but participants are ineligible from going on a 10-day Birthright trip afterwards.

Although Birthright Ventures has had only one cohort, there have already been notable successes.

"Industry experts told us that success would be having one of the teams in the cohort continue on with their ventures after the program ended," Lazovski said. "I'm proud to say that we have five out of our six teams continuing to develop their ideas, with one team even having a member go back to the US to open an office for their startup there."

"This is exactly what we strive for," he continued, "international cooperation and connections."

The Birthright Excel Ventures is geared towards recent graduates under 30 years old, and lasts for ten weeks in the summer.
Hamas's spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Sami Abu Zuhri, responded to the Israeli Air Force (IAF) retaliatory strikes by saying overnight Sunday, "The escalation is the Israeli occupation's desire to create new equations in the Gaza Strip." The IAF attacks are in response to a rocket fired from the north Gaza Strip at Sderot on Sunday afternoon.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Abu Zuhri stated further, "We hold (Israel) responsible for the escalation in the Gaza Strip and we stress that its aggression will not succeed in breaking the will of our people and dictate terms to the resistance."

The IAF strikes are noteworthy in their breadth. Normally, the IDF retaliates once, in the hours following the rocket attack or in the night afterwards.

IAF strikes in Gaza overnight (Photo: Said Kilani)

Israeli army spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said in a statement that the military "remains committed to the stability of the region and operated in order to bring quiet to the people of southern Israel."

"When terrorists in Hamas' Gaza Strip, driven by a radical agenda based on hatred, attack people in the middle of the summer vacation, their intentions are clearto inflict pain, cause fear and to terrorize," Lerner said.

Rocket fell in Sderot (Photo: Roee Idan)

Further statements from the IDF Spokesperson Unit stated that rocket fire at Sderot "constitutes a threat to the security of Israeli citizens and violates the sovereignty of the State of Israelthe terrorist organization Hamas is sovereign in the Gaza Strip, and it bears the responsibility for all terrorist activity emanating from there."

Sderot after rocket fell

X

Some reports state that one of the targets attacked by the IAF was an outpost of the national security forces belonging to Hamas. Others were outposts of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Palestinian press has reported that a 17-year-old boy was lightly injured and three further children suffered from panic attacks.

Water tower damaged in Beit Hanoun

Tensions mounted between Israel and Hamas after a Code Red rocket alert was sounded in Sderot and Sha'ar Hanegev just before 2:30pm on Sunday.

Shortly afterwards, an explosion was heard, and a rocket was found between two residential houses in Sderot. There were no injuries or damage, though forces were immediately dispatched to the area.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has expressed condolences to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in connection with a bloody terror attack in Gaziantep province that killed over 50 people, the Anadolu Agency reported Aug. 22.

Fifty-four people were killed, 69 were injured, 17 of them are in serious condition as a result of Aug. 20 blast in the city of Gaziantep in southern Turkey. The attack occurred during a wedding celebration.

I grieve together with the families of the victims and wish the injured a speedy recovery, read the Israeli presidents message.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Egyptian President Abel Fattah a-Sisi announced Sunday night that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him that Russia is ready to host direct negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Speaking during an interview with various Egyptian newspaper editors, the Egyptian president said that Israel is becoming more and more convinced of the need for peace. Al-Sisi also said that everyone is invited to take part in moving along the political process, a process which is the key to stability in the region.

He added that it is essential that the internal divisions within Fatah be fixed, and that the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority should be completed so that real efforts can be made to create a Palestinian state.

Russian President Putin meets with Egyptian President a-Sisi (Photo: Reuters)

When asked about Russia's role in the peace process, al-Sisi replied "we support any positive effort from any country involved, and from all those who are able to influence (the peace process), no matter if it's the US, EU, or Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin updated me and told me that he invited both Netanyahu and Abbas to meet in Moscow for direct talks. We support these efforts, and everyone is invited to work on this issue. This issue requires a huge amount of effort, and several initiatives are being formulated. There is a light at the end of the tunnel for the Palestinians, who will have a state next to Israel."

The Egyptian president continued, saying "our position regarding the peace process remains the same; we support any effort to try and solve this complex issue. The continuation of this conflict is very negative for the region. An agreement will impact the future of our nations. Egypt supported and still support the efforts the United States has made over the past two years."

Egyptian President al-Sisi meets with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Photo: Reuters)

"Egypt supports the Arab Peace Initiative, and also the Paris Peace Initiative," al-Sisi continued. "Our relations with both Israel and the Palestinians enable us to play a central role in the search for a peaceful solution between the two sides."

Al-Sisi was also asked if he sees any changes in the Israeli position in regards to peace.

"I believe that Israel is becoming more and more convinced as to the importance of a peace agreement, and that's a positive sign," replied the Egyptian president. "Unfortunately, the process is stagnant, and there needs to be efforts as long as there is an initiative from the Israelis, Palestinians, other countries in the region, and the international community."
SARAJEVO- Abdulah Al Sanousi enjoys the breeze in the lush resort outside Sarajevo where his family bought a flat to escape the summer heat at home in Kuwait, one of thousands of new Gulf buyers whose investment has polarized local opinion.

They discovered mountainous Bosnia, where half the population is Muslim, after the Arab Spring which destabilised many traditional holiday destinations such as Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. The trend has picked up with more direct flights, new resorts and the end of visa restrictions.

Estate agents and local businesses have welcomed the economic boost. But in a secular country where many Muslims drink alcohol and wear European-style clothing, the arrival of a Saudi-built mall where no alcohol is sold and the sight of burqas and traditional Arab robes is worrying for some.
MANILA - The number of drug-related killings since President Rodrigo Duterte took power in May and began his anti-narcotics war has doubled to about 1,800, police said on Monday.

Philippine National Police Chief Ronald Dela Rosa told a Senate committee investigating extrajudicial killings that 712 drug traffickers and users had been killed during police operations. Police were also investigating 1,067 drug-related killings outside police work, Dela Rosa said.

The United Nations has urged Manila to stop the extra-judicial executions and killings that have escalated since Duterte won the presidency on a promise to wipe out drugs.
The latest publications about the group calling itself the Shadow Brokers and its break-in of the National Security Agencys computers are troubling officials in the United States. The group claims to have stolen classified malware codes, used at least until 2003, with which the NSA managed to penetrate and spy on foreign governments and organizations. The group is now offering to sell the codes for the fantastical amount of one million Bitcoins, currently worth upward of half a billion dollars.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The target of the break-in was the servers of Equation Group, a company linked to the NSA. Last week, in a series of tweets to his Twitter account, Edward Snowden hastened to note that this exposure might have dire political ramifications should it emerge that the NSA used the codes to spy on US allies and friends.

This is the nature of the beast. Espionage agencies, such as the NSA, have one main mission: to collect and provide high-grade intelligence for a wide array of state needs. In recent decades, there has been a real revolution in the processes and tools used in intelligence gathering, a revolution linked to two phenomena.

IDF's Cyber Division (Photo: IDF Spokesperson)

The first was the technological development in cyberspace, which meant a significant shift of intel gathering efforts from more traditional means to cyberspace. The second was the information revolution and distribution, and the possibilitywhich caused the needto gather wide-ranging intel from all traffic, servers, computers, and end devices in cyberspace, in order to use sophisticated analytical tools to extract relevant intelligence.

But these phenomena also made intelligence organizations vulnerable in new ways. Cyberspace is not the sole hunting grounds of espionage organizations. It is also the very space where sophisticated hackers, motivated by a range of reasons, roam free. Thus, intelligence organizations find themselves having to invest huge effort into defending and securing their information and sources.

The challenge grows because cyberspace provides significant advantages to attackers over defenders. Suffice it to note the advantage of the attacker over the defender, as it is the former who chooses the time, location, and method, not to mention the fact that so far adequate defensive capabilities capable of withstanding unknown malware codes have yet to be invented. This advantage requires defenders to invest tremendous resources to protect their core assets.

These insights require intelligence organizations, and all other security agencies that gather and attack in cyberspace, to allocate significant attention and resources to defense. To make this a little more concrete, the assessment is that, because of the critical nature of the threat, resources devoted to defense should be no less than 60 percent of the total, whereas only 40 percent of the total resources should be going toward gathering and attack missions. This is a very conservative estimate.

It is unclear what actually took place in the last break-in, and how the secret codes were stolen from the NSA-affiliated Equation Groups servers. But one thing must be clear to anyone heading a security organization: defense is the key to everything, whether were talking about security agencies around the world or those of the IDF and the intelligence communitys agencies in Israel. The traditional ethos of these organizations has always privileged the attack and intelligence gathering. The results are quick in coming, and the gratification is great, compared with the dry, dreary, hard-to-measure efforts of defense.

Defense is the core of the problem. Decision-makers will do well to pay the necessary attention to it, and provide the commensurate resources to protection, which is the central challenge at this time.

Col. (res.) Gabi Siboni, PhD, is the director of the Cyber Security Program at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University.
TEHRAN- Iran's defense minister is chastising Russia, saying Moscow's announcement on using Iranian bases for attacks on Syrian militants was "kind of show off and ungentlemanly."

State TV's website on Monday quoted Gen. Hossein Dehghan as saying "Russians seek to show that they are a superpower."

Dehghan's remarks were the first sign of pushback from Tehran after Russia last week began using Iranian territory to launch airstrikes in Syria, with Moscow's bombers flying out of the Islamic Republic for three straight days to hit what Russia says are Islamic State targets and other militants in the war-ravaged country.
MOSCOW- Ukrainian authorities say a Russian activist has requested political asylum in their country.

Ukraine's State Border Guard Service said in a statement on Sunday that a Russian citizen requested political asylum at a border crossing in western Ukraine, citing his activism in Russia. The agency described the man as a political activist who had protested against Kremlin policies.

Ukraine's Hromadske television late Sunday identified the man as Roman Roslovtsev who is better known for his walks across Red Square in a President Vladimir Putin mask. He has been detained more than 20 times and served 20 days in police custody in May for one of his protest walks.

Since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 a number of Russian activists have moved to Ukraine to protest Putin's policies.
A spokesperson of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Abu Zeid, issued a statement on Monday evening condemning what he described as attempts in the media to twist of Egyptian Foreign Minister Samah Shoukrys words into implying that the killing of Palestinian children did not constitute terror.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Anybody who has ears can check the video of the meeting with the high school students that is available on the Facebook page of the the spokesman of the Foreign Ministry and be sure that the question posed by the children had no connection whatsoever to the murder of innocent Palestinians, the statement read.

The question was a theoretical and general one regarding the reason that the international community does not define Israeli actions against Palestinians as terror. The minister answered that there is no international consensus on the specific legal definition of terror and that there is an international debate regarding the distinction between legal meanings and state meanings of the term terror.

Egyptian high schooler asking Foreign Minister Shoukry a question

The statement was issued after Egyptian Foreign Minister Samah Shoukry spoke with Egyptian high school students at the Foreign Ministry headquarters in Cairo when he was asked why the Egyptian government doesn't define Israeli and American actions in the Middle East as terrorism.

The student also inquired as to why attacks occur all over the Arab world, but not in Israel.

"We can look at this issue and define it as a 'rule by force,'" the foreign minister answered. "However, there is nothing to suggest that there is any connection between Israel and terrorist organizations. There is nothing that leads to this conclusion."

He continued, saying "Of course Israel, in keeping with its history, is very strong in terms of security. Since 1948, for some perspective, that same society has been dealing with a lot of challenges which have instilled in it the concept of security, the takeover of land, and the control of border crossings."

Shoukry clarified in his discussion with the students that "the international community has yet to come to a consensus as to what constitutes terror. Under a political framework, illegitimate military actions are also considered illegitimate by the international community. The state's intervention into the affairs of other states goes against the UN charter. In order for a specific action to be considered terror, it must be a consensus amongst the international community, as there is no exact legal definition regarding what is terror."

The discussion with the high schoolers grabbed headlines all over Egyptian and Arabic media, with the London based "al-Arabi al-Jadida" writing in its headline "Samah Shoukry: the murder of Palestinian children by Israel isn't terrorism."

Egptian FM Shoukry and PM Netanyahu (Photo: AFP)

The newspaper also pointed out the fact that the Egyptian Foreign Ministry website only says that Shoukry met with high schoolers at the Foreign Ministry Headquarters, but says nothing about the questions posed by the students.

Meanwhile, Turkish news agency Antalya reported that a delegation Israelis left Cairo following a meeting which lasted several hours. According to the report, the Israelis met with high ranking Egyptian officials to discuss renewing the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
Dan Nordman, owner of the beachfront cafe Gordo, knows a thing or two about running a restaurant. So when he decided to put his passion for meat into practice, he opened a new eatery: the Rio Grande steakhouse.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The decor of the Rio Grande is modern, with furnishings of dark wood and black leather. It is cool and inviting place in the Tel Aviv summer, with a few tables on the sidewalk in the shadow of the imposing Shalom Tower. The unimposing interior is dominated by a well-stocked bar and semi-open kitchen; pleasant light rock music plays in the background.

There is a short list of specialty cocktails. A house sangria is often a tempting choice in hot weather, but we decided to pass when we were told it would be served warm, even in the summertime. Instead, we opted for the margarita with a twistthe classic lime version, with a splash of melon syrup to make it a bit sweeter.

The mojito, meanwhile, purported to be the standard cocktail; apparently what qualifies it as special here is the size: huge, meant for sharing. We ordered the regular size anyway; the drink turned out not to be a mojito, however, but actually limonana, with a barely noticeable dash of rum. Fortunately, both drinks were refreshing, at least.

No-one comes to a steakhouse expecting the food to be healthful, but Dan is keen to point out that nothing on the menu is fried. Additionally, most menu items are gluten-free, and labeled accordingly.

Listed under the appetizers is the house bread with garlic butteractually a very pale baguette, served with an innocuous herbed butter.

The meat theme is evident in the appetizers as well. Since we were not going to order a sirloin steak as an entree, we opted for the grilled sirloin with root salad as an appetizer. Given the amount of cucumbers atop the sliced radishes, carrots, red onions and beets, anywhere else this would be called a tossed salad. In any event, the small slices of sirloin were excellent.

Our second appetizer was the tomato salad with busche cheese: red and yellow cherry tomatoes with parsley, grilled onion and cubes of the white cheese in a balsamic vinaigrette. There could have been a bit more cheese, but it was a very good salad nonetheless.

When it came to the entrees, our knowledgeable waiter Yam gave a thorough explanation of the cuts of meatseven different steaksincluding recommendations for how to have each grilled.

We were also informed that the smoked spare ribs are a specialty of the house, so we elected to try them, along with a T-bone steak.

Two things set these ribs apart: they were basted with teriyaki sauce, rather than the more common barbecue sauce; and they were large, rather than baby backs, with a layer of fat to be trimmed away. The meat was fall-off-the-bone tender, and the caramelized teriyaki crust imparted a marvelous flavor.

The T-bone is even easier to describe: it was one of the best steaks I have had in Israel.

Entrees come with one choice of a side dish: baked potato, smoked pumpkin, stir-fried mushrooms or a salad. Of these, the pumpkin was the standout. Additional sides may be ordered for a slight extra charge.

Steaks come with a trio of condiments: mustard brandy, chimichurri, and something mysteriously called white relishwhich is nothing more than aioli. All were good; but steaks of this quality are rarely in need of a flavor enhancer.

There is an eclectic wine list of domestic and imported vintages, with a handful available by the glass.

With four tantalizing choices for dessert, we took the owners suggestions of the basbousa and the chocolate pate. The former is a surprisingly light and moist semolina cake, enhanced with pistachio cream, rose water, cinnamon and whipped cream; the latter a thick mousse practically the consistency of cake, with a unique marzipan frosting of macha green tea.

Both desserts were worthy of the superb ribs and steak we had enjoyed earlier.

From Shine and Sharp to Meat Kitchen

Another Tel Aviv steakhouse is at the same time both older and newer than Rio Grande. This riddle is easily solved: the older steakhouse is the venerable Shine and Sharp, which only recently transitionedunder the same ownershipfrom its non-kosher status to its kosher iteration, bearing the name Meat Kitchen.

In size, Meat Kitchen is practically the polar opposite of Rio Grande: the former is very large, with a handsome bar and comfortable leather seats. Behind the bar is an impressive view of sides of beef aging: according to restaurant manager Koby, Meat Kitchen applies a layer of goose fat to its cuts of beef, and then ages them in-house for at least 31 days.

While the food menu is bilingual, the list of specialty cocktails is in Hebrew only. Our friendly waiter recommended the Chefs Recommendation: melon vodka, cucumber, crushed basil, sour and tonica truly distinctive drink. We found the margarita, on the other hand, to be less satisfactory.

Our second appetizer was the seared sirloin with black eggplant cream and glazed shallots in a beef and mustard bouillon with hazelnut croquant. The beef was chewy and flavorful, although care must be taken not to overpower it with everything thats going on in this dish.

Among the main courses were two that are designed to be shared. One is the prime rib, which is described by its weight, and the other is identified helpfully on the English menu as a share platea full kilogram of meat comprising veal chops, chorizo, entrecote and sirloin. The variety is what swayed our decision in favor of the quartetand the fact that it is so rare to find veal chops on the menu.

Apparently, veal chops will continue to be elusive: it turns out that there was a translation mistake, and they are actually lamb chops. Fortunately, even if the menu disappoints, the meatserved on a sizzling platterdoes not: the chorizo is authentic, the lamb chops succulent, the entrecote delicious, and the sirloin steak even better than the first time around.

The meat was washed down nicely by the house wine, the Meat Kitchen private label Cabernet Sauvignon from Yaffa Winery.

Although it is not easy to save room for dessert here, it is worth effort. The restaurant has its own dedicated pastry chef, who came up with such masterpieces as chocolate mousse and truffles with fresh blackberries, coffee cream and pina colada caviar, and the apple in honey: apple sorbet that is closer to real ice cream, Granny Smith granita, meringue and a crispy apple tulleall in an exotic honey-thyme sauce.

Meat Kitchen reminds me of an old Levys rye bread commercial. To paraphrase: you dont have to keep kosher to enjoy eating here.

Rio Grande , 4 Herzl St., Tel Aviv. Tel. (03) 573-7277.
LONDON- Britain announced plans Monday to house imprisoned Islamist extremists in separate units from other inmates, after a review found that some charismatic convicts were radicalizing the wider Muslim population in prisons.

The government-ordered study concluded that "cultural sensitivity" among National Offender Management Service staff toward Muslim prisoners went too far and "could inhibit the effective confrontation of extremist views."

"There are a small number of individuals, very subversive individuals, who do need to be held in separate units," Justice Secretary Liz Truss told the BBC.
Israel responded Monday evening to a condemnation issued by the Turkish Foreign Ministry slamming Israeli retaliatory attacks Gaza the previous night following rockets fired from the Strip earlier into Sderot.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



"The normalization of our relations with Turkey does not mean that we will remain silent in the face of its baseless condemnations," said a statement from the Israeli foreign ministry. "Israel will continue to defend its civilians from all rocket fire on our territory, in accordance with international law and our conscience. Turkey should think twice before criticizing the military actions of others."

The statement came several hours after a Turkish news agency quoted the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Monday strongly condemning Israel's actions

One of the targets struck by the IDF in Gaza (Photo:AFP)

In a statement released by the ministry it was said that the new Israel-Turkey reconciliation deal which was officially ratified by the Turkish parliament at the end of the weekdoes not change Ankaras fundamental stance toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The normalization of relations with Israel does not mean that we have to remain silent about attacks against the Palestinian people in Gaza, the statement read. On the contrary, we will continue to defend the Palestinian issue in the face of Israeli actions which violate international law and are contrary to basic human morality.

Shortly after Israel's original response, other senior officials were quoted as saying: "We have clarified for Turkey that we will not allow them to lash out at us. Overall the reconciliation with Turkey will continue as usual and will not slow down. There is no need to become excited over the damning criticism by Turkey. We never though Erdogan would become a Zionist overnight. Obviously he has to pay lip service to his Hamas allies. By the same token, we are not suckers and we wont ignore the baseless condemnation of the legitimate attacks on Gaza.

Israel launched a series of fresh strikes on Hamas targets throughout Sunday night after a Code Red rocket alert was sounded in Sderot and Sha'ar Hanegev just before 2:30pm on Sunday.

Photo: AFP

Shortly afterwards, an explosion was heard, and a rocket was found between two residential houses in Sderot . There were no injuries or damage, though forces were immediately dispatched to the area.

The response of the IDF signalled a departure from the norm as it usually retaliates once during the hours immediately following the rocket fire or the night after. On this occasion, explosions could be heard throughout the night by residents of towns bordering Gaza.

The strikes were predominantly carried out by the Israel Air Force and Israeli artillery units on a Hamas military wing position in Beit Hanoun in the north Gaza Strip, from which the rocket was launched earlier that afternoon. One of the targets was a military outpost belonging to Hamass security apparatus.

Commenting on the attacks, high-ranking Israeli officials said that "the hits that Hamas took last night are the hardest they've taken in Operation Protective Edge."

Hamas terrorist displays prison cell with words written in Hebrew, 'Prison for enemy prisoners' (Photo: Reuters)

Just a few hour after the Hamas rocket fire into Israel, the organizations military wing staged a parade in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip during which they presented rockets produced by the group and bragged about terrorists from the commando unit. Tiny prison cells were also exhibited at the parade bearing the words, written in Hebrew: Prison for the enemy, an apparent hint at future kidnapping attempts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 22

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Withdrawal of military bases outside major cities has started in Turkey, the TRT Haber TV channel reported Aug. 22

The military bases deployed in Istanbul are currently being withdrawn.

The process of withdrawal of military bases outside Istanbul and Ankara will be completed by September 15.

Earlier, the countrys Prime Minister Binali Yildirim informed about the closing of military bases in Istanbul and Ankara.

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.

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said 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.

Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey on July 20.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
US Secretary of State John Kerry said East African foreign ministers from countries including South Sudan have agreed to move ahead with the deployment of a regional peacekeeping force.

South Sudan at first rejected the regional protection force after the UN Security Council earlier this month voted to deploy the 4,000 additional peacekeepers to help restore calm. Fighting that erupted in the capital last month killed hundreds.

Kerry said Monday after the meeting there is "absolutely no question" that the force should be deployed, but did not say whenthat might happen. Kerry also announced nearly $138 million in humanitarian assistance from the United States to South Sudan, where a humanitarian crisis has worsened amid the recent turmoil.
Peace talks between the government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and communist rebels aimed at ending one of Asia's longest-running rebellions formally resumed Monday, with hosts Norway cautioning against a quick result.

Some 150,000 people have died in the conflict that began almost half a century ago. "We are going to have five very demanding days here ... but I would like to congratulate the two parties on the resumption of the formal peace talks," said Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende.

The peace process, which has dragged on for decades, broke down in 2001 when the Maoist rebels backed out after the US government and then the European Union placed them on a list of terrorist organizations. It was resumed in 2011 under the leadership of Norway.
The IDF identified a mortar hit in an open area in the Golan Heights on Monday, near the border fence with Syria. It responded by using an aerial vehicle to target a mortar launchpad belonging to the Syrian Army, located on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

Following the incident, the IDF released a statement saying that it holds Syria responsible for any action originating from within its borders, and that it would not tolerate any attempt to undermine Israel's sovereignty or the security of it citizens.

The mortar attack is considered to likely be the result of the Syrian civil war and not a deliberate attack on Israel.
The IDF struck at a mortar launchpad belonging to the Syrian army, located on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, Monday evening after it identified a mortar which had landed in an open area in Israels Golan Heights near the border fence with Syria.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Security fence on the border in the Golan Heights (Photo: AFP)

Following the incident, the IDF released a statement saying that The IDF it holds the Syrian regime as responsible for any action originating from within its borders, and will not tolerate any attempt to undermine Israel's sovereignty or the security of it citizens.

The mortar attack is considered to likely be the result of the Syrian civil war rather than a deliberate attack on Israel.

The strikes come one day after a marked day of violence sparked by a rocket fired into the Israeli town of Sderot on Sunday afternoon from the Gaza Strip. In retalation, the IDF launched combined artillery and air stike on dozens of Hamas targets in Gaza which continued into the night.

Israel's response drew heavy criticism from Turkey despite the Israel-Turkey reconciliation agreement being recently ratified by the Turkish parliament. Israel, in turn, issued its own statement calling on Turkey to "think twice" before telling other countries what to do.
The State Department is reviewing nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed emails recovered as part of the FBI's now-closed investigation into the handling of sensitive information that flowed through Hillary Clinton's private home server.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Lawyers for the department told US District Court Judge James E. Boasberg on Monday that they anticipate processing and releasing the first batch of these new emails in mid-October, raising the prospect that new messages sent or received by the Democratic presidential nominee could become public just before November's election.

Boasberg is overseeing production of the emails as part of a federal public-records lawsuit filed by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch.

Representing the State Department, Justice Department lawyer Lisa Olson told the judge that officials do not yet know what portion of the emails is work-related, rather than personal.

Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, had claimed that she deleted only personal emails prior to returning over 55,000 pages of her work-related messages to the State Department last year. The department has publicly released most of those work-related emails, although some have been withheld because they contain information considered sensitive to national security.

Hillary Clinton (Photo: TNS)

The thousands of previously undisclosed Clinton emails obtained by the FBI came from the accounts of other people she communicated with or were recovered through the bureau's forensic examination of her old server.

Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon reiterated Monday that Clinton provided all the work-related emails she had "in her possession" when the State Department asked for copies in 2014.

"We are not sure what additional materials the Justice Department may have located, but if the State Department determines any of them to be work-related, then obviously we support those documents being released publicly as well," Fallon said.

Republicans are pressing to keep the issue of Clinton's email use alive after the FBI closed its investigation last month without recommending criminal charges. GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump routinely criticizes Clinton for her handling of emails containing classified information.

In a separate development, Judicial Watch also released 20 previously undisclosed email exchanges involving Clinton that were turned over by her former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin.

Among them is a June 23, 2009 message to Abedin from Doug Band, a longtime aide to former President Bill Clinton who then was an official at the Clinton family's charitable foundation. Republicans charge that donors to the foundation, including foreign governments and corporations, got preferential treatment from the State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

Band sought to arrange for the crown prince of Bahrain to meet with Hillary Clinton while the prince was visiting Washington. "Good friend of ours," Band wrote to Abedin, one of Clinton's closest aides.

Crown Prince Salman had, in 2005, made a $32 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, a program run by the foundation.

In later emails Abedin confirmed that Clinton would meet with the prince. Copies of Clinton's calendar obtained confirm the meeting occurred in her State Department office on June 26, 2009.

Photo: AP

In court on Monday, the State Department's lawyer said the department earlier this month received seven discs containing "tens of thousands" of emails Clinton sent or received during her tenure as the nation's top diplomat. The first disc, labeled by the FBI as containing non-classified emails not previously disclosed by Clinton, contains about 14,900 documents, Olson said. The second disc is labeled as emails containing classified information.

She said it was "extremely ambitious" for the agency to complete its review and begin releasing the first batches of emails to Judicial Watch by Oct. 14, given the volume of messages.

Judicial Watch lawyer Lauren Burke told Boasberg that the proposed schedule is too slow and pressed for faster release of the emails from the first disc. The judge ordered the department to focus on processing emails from the first disc and report back to him by September 22.

The emails released Monday by Judicial Watch also offer more detail about Clinton's meetings with Daniel Abrahamthe SlimFast billionaire, founder of the Center for Middle East Peace and another Clinton Foundation donor.

Clinton met with Abraham on a day's notice in May 2009, the emails show. The calendars show the meeting was one of eight between Abraham and Clinton during her tenure as secretary, the most of any Clinton Foundation donor.

Abraham last year told AP that his discussions with Clinton were about Middle East policy, and one of the newly released emails show that the following month Abedin wrote that Abraham wanted to talk with Clinton about Israel.
More than 50 reservists from Hill Air Force Bases 419th Medical Squadron completed two weeks of annual training at military installations across Oahu, Hawaii. The women and men took time away from their civilian careers to assist as medical, dental, optometry, and lab technicians augmenting three medical facilities that serve almost 40,000 military members and their families from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.

Working alongside medical professionals from other branches, the Utah reservists completed more than 80 percent of their required annual skills. The Airmen worked in wards and sections that gave them a broad spectrum of unique experiences, such as administering chemotherapy to veterans, practicing field medic techniques, and working in an emergency room. One Airman helped with the birth of nearly 50 babies, including two sets of twins.

In addition to serving one weekend a month, Citizen Airmen also complete two weeks of intensive training each year to ensure they are ready to deploy at a moments notice.
Three new Airmen join YARS

Michael Amato, Cross Scarpaci and Dan Madeline raise their right hands and recite the oath of enlistment following the lead of public affairs officer Maj. Polly Orcutt here, Aug. 19, 2016. Master Sgt. Joseph Poltor, a Youngstown Air Reserve Station recruiter, recruited the three new Airmen. Poltor recently made 150 percent of his recruitment quota, becoming the third Youngstown recruiter in recent history to reach the Century Club. (U.S. Air Force photo/Eric White)
This Account has been suspended.
This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

As of 2020, Minuteman Review is now the proud owner and operator of Your Defence News, a website with a long history of breaking huge news stories and investigative journalism.

We hope you are equally as excited as us.

This means that now the teams of Minuteman can combine with the firepower of Your Defence News to stay at the absolute forefront for our readers.

Keep an eye. Big things are coming soon. We couldn't be more excited.

In the meanwhile, here are some of our most popular posts and categories to keep you busy.

Happy shootin' my friends!

Buying Guides:

Firearms

Firearm Accessories

Ammunition

Gun Safes

Scopes & Optics

Hunting

Air Rifles

Best AR-15

Best AR 15 Scope

Best Hunting Rifle

Best Gun Safe

Best AK 47

Best AR 10

Best Glock Triggers

Best Glock

Best Home Defense Shotgun
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug.22

Trend:

Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Vienna "for consultations and to revise relations," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday, Anadolu agency reported.

The minister said the move came after Austrian authorities did not allow Turkish citizens to hold anti-coup demonstrations in the country but allowed a pro-PKK march to take place on Saturday.

That is why we called the Austrian charge d'affaires at our ministry. [...] Likewise, we also recalled to Ankara our ambassador to Vienna for consultations and to revise our relations, Cavusoglu said, speaking at a joint news conference with Moldovan Foreign Minister Andrei Galbur in Ankara.

Cavusoglu said Ankara had complained to Austria for trying to give us freedom of assembly lessons, and on the other hand not allowing even a peaceful march [in support of Turkish democracy].

However we saw they gave permission to demonstrate in Vienna to the PKK and its supporters, Cavusoglu said. We cannot remain insensitive to this attitude supporting terrorism.

He accused Austria of being against some terror organizations while supporting terror organizations attacking Turkey.

Unfortunately, the ground on which our bilateral relations and cooperation with Austria can be normally sustained has disappeared, Cavusoglu said.

We will not remain insensitive in our bilateral relations, we will take certain steps, he said.

Cavusoglu added: We cannot be two-faced like them, we are against all kinds of terror.

The minister did not give further details on the steps to be taken, but warned: We will approach them the way they approach us.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has reacted to the Israeli rocket attack in the blockaded Gaza Strip on Sunday, Anadolu reported.

In a news conference in Ankara on Monday, Yildirim said: "We want to clearly express that these attacks against civilians were not approved."

"The normalization of our relations with Israel will never prevent, stop our stand for Palestinians' justified cases and our common action with them," added Yildirim.

Israeli warplanes launched airstrikes in the blockaded Gaza Strip on Sunday, shortly after a rocket was fired into southern Israel.

On Sunday, the Israeli military said in a statement that a rocket hit the southern city of Sderot from the Palestinian territory.

"In response to the attack, the Israeli air forces and armored corps targeted two Hamas posts in southern Gaza Strip, the statement said.
Vice President Joe Biden will emphasize Washingtons ongoing strong support for Turkey and condemn Julys failed coup attempt when he visits the country later this week, the White House said Monday, Anadolu reported.

That is a coup attempt that was roundly and publicly condemned by the United States government and we continue to strongly support the democratic government of our allies in Turkey, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters, adding that Biden will also "indicate his support for and appreciation for" Turkey's contributions to the counter-Daesh effort.

The American vice president will, if asked during his Aug. 24 visit, reiterate that efforts to extradite U.S.-based Fetuallah Gulen would be governed by an extradition treaty that's been on the books between the United States and Turkey for more than 30 years, Earnest said.

Turkey accuses Gulen of masterminding the failed putsch and has demanded the U.S. extradite Gulen to face trial.

Earnest added that the decision is ultimately not a presidential decision, but rather one for the Justice Department.

They certainly are going to do the due diligence that's required to follow that process, to follow those guidelines and to arrive at a conclusion, he said.

Coordination between Justice Department officials and their Turkish counterparts has been extensive, Earnest said.

A team from the department will visit Turkey this week to meet with their counterparts to review some of the materials that have been produced by Turkish officials, Earnest said.

Turkey's government has said the defeated coup, which left 240 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured, was organized by followers of Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania since 1999, and his Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) network.

Gulen is accused of leading a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police and judiciary, forming what is commonly known as the parallel state.
Research from CoreLogic has revealed that the number of property sales with a price tag of at least $1 million has boomed over recent years, with 20.9% of houses sold in the capital cities over the year to June selling for $1 million or more. Almost one in 10 units (8.9%) sold for a price tag of at least $1 million.

Over the past 10 years, the proportion of house sales of at least $1 million has increased almost 4.5 times, with figures from CoreLogic revealing that just 4.7% of houses sold in the year to June 2006 went for at least $1 million.

When compared to twenty years ago, in the year to June 1996, the proportion of houses sold for at least $1 million has increased 42 times. Just 0.5% of homes in the year to June 1996 sold for a minimum of $1 million.

In the unit market, the proportion of $1 million sales has increased 3.5 times from 2006 and 30 times from 1996.

Source: CoreLogic

Sydney, unsurprisingly, recorded the highest proportion of house sales over $1 million, with more than two in five (43.4%) of houses sold in the year to June 2016 selling for $1 million or more. Just under one in five Sydney apartments (16.6%) sold for at least $1 million.

Melbourne was next, with 21.8% of houses and 6.7% of apartments selling for at least $1 million over the past year.

Hobart recorded the lowest proportion of seven figure sales, with 1.7% of houses selling for at least $1 million and 0.6% of units selling for at least $1 million over the past year.

Source: CoreLogic

CoreLogic research analyst Cameron Kusher said he expects this trend to continue.

Demand for premium housing and within the most expensive areas of the country remains buoyant which suggests that over the coming year the proportion of sales at a price point of at least $1 million will continue to rise, Kusher said.
Dobra, k. Szczecina 900 m2

40 miejsc parkingowych



Atut: Dodatkowe dochody z paczkomatow InPostu, a juz niedugo i z myjni samoobsugowej.



Tradycyjny zakup nieruchomosci, mozliwosc wykupienia uzytkowania wieczystego.
Obama will be making an eight-day swing from China to Laos as part of his administration's "pivot to Asia" strategy. (Photo : Getty Images)

U.S. President Barack Obama is set to make what is expected to be his 11th and final trip to Asia next month, a region at the center of his administration's foreign policy, to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and other world leaders, the White House said on Thursday.



During the eight-day trip, scheduled from September 2-9, Obama will attend the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China and hold a private meeting with Xi, the White House said in the statement.



Advertisement

He will also travel to Laos to participate in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit and East Asia summit, with China's increasingly aggressive territorial claims in the South China Sea expected to be a major talking point.



Obama, who is the first U.S. president to visit Laos, will have a bilateral meeting with Laotian president Bounnhang Vorachith and attend a town hall with youth leaders, according to Reuters.



The trip will also be an opportunity for Obama to promote the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement, a key part of his Asia strategy that will enable U.S. businesses and workers to further expand into some of the world's fastest growing markets.



The president has been urging the U.S. Congress to pass the TPP before he leaves office in January next year but is facing an uphill battle on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail. Both Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump have both expressed their opposition to the expansive deal.



Obama has argued that the TPP is crucial for setting the standard for global trade rules ahead of Beijing.



China is not a member of the TPP, but trade with the world's biggest economy has been a key issue during the presidential campaign.



Trump has accused Beijing as a rule-breaker that has led to a growing trade deficit with the U.S. and cost countless Americans their jobs, while Clinton has vowed to "stand up to China and anyone" who will try to take advantage of American workers and companies.


Arizona News

Tucson, Arizona - On Aug. 15, 2016, Monique Pablo-Johnson, 47, of Sells, Ariz., a member of Tohono Oodham Indian Nation, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Marquez to 11 years in custody. Pablo-Johnson had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter.

On June 6, 2013, Pablo-Johnson was under the influence of alcohol and cocaine while driving on SR 86, near Sells, on the Tohono Oodham Nation. Pablo-Johnson had three passengers in the car: her 25-year-old daughter, 7-week-old granddaughter, and adult male cousin. Pablo-Johnson was driving extremely recklessly, well over the speed limit and on the wrong side of the road. As an oncoming vehicle drew near, Pablo-Johnson swerved to her side of the road and lost control. Her car flew off of the road and struck the side of a hill. Pablo-Johnsons daughter and granddaughter were ejected from the vehicle as they were not wearing seatbelts nor in a child restraint seat, and died from their injuries at the scene. Pablo-Johnson moved from the drivers seat to the front passenger seat after the crash, and falsely claimed to the police that her daughter was the driver at the time of the crash.

At sentencing, Judge Marquez sentenced the Pablo-Johnson to eight (8) years of imprisonment for the death of Pablo-Johnsons seven-week-old granddaughter and three (3) more consecutive years for the death of her daughter. In pronouncing the sentence, the Judge noted that her job was to protect the public from incapacitated drivers like Pablo-Johnson and to warn others that that there are consequences for driving while impaired.

The investigation in this case was conducted by Tohono Oodham Police Department. The prosecution was handled by Serra M. Tsethlikai, Assistant U.S. Attorney, District of Arizona, Tucson.
Latest News

Washington, DC - The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms yesterdays terrorist attack in Gaziantep, Turkey. The perpetrators of this barbaric act cynically and cowardly targeted a wedding, killing dozens and leaving scores wounded.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and loved ones of those killed, and we wish a speedy recovery to those injured. We stand with the people of Turkey as they defend their democracy in the face of all forms of terrorism. We are in close touch with Turkish authorities, and Vice President Biden will visit Ankara on Wednesday, August 24 to reaffirm our commitment to work together with Turkey, our valued NATO Ally and partner, to confront the scourge of terrorism.
Latest News

Tucson, Arizona - On August 10, 2016, a federal grand jury in Tucson returned a 17-count indictment against Peter Cash Doye, 40, of San Diego, California for violations of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering statutes.

The indictment alleges that Doye, as senior managing director of Variant Holding Company, a real estate development firm with offices in San Diego and Tucson, participated in a scheme to fraudulently divert millions of dollars of renovation loan money and profits from asset sales to himself and his co-conspirators. Co-conspirators Courtland Gettel, CEO of Variant Holding Company, and attorney Jeffrey Greenberg have previously pleaded guilty to their conduct in the scheme. Doye has been summoned to answer these charges on August 26, 2016 in U.S. District Court, District of Arizona, Tucson.

If anyone has information regarding these allegations against Peter Cash Doye, please contact the Phoenix FBI Field Office at (623) 466-1999.

An indictment is simply a method by which a person is charged with criminal activity and raises no inference of guilt. An individual is presumed innocent until competent evidence is presented to a jury that establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The investigation preceding the indictment was conducted by the Phoenix Division, Tucson Resident Agency of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Tucson Office of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation. The prosecution is being handled by Michael Jette, Assistant U.S. Attorney, District of Arizona, Tucson.
In April, the photos of 61-year-old Chinese grandfather became viral on Weibo because of the old mans killer abs. In early August, some young Chinese men found a 71-year-old geese farmer in Luoyang, Henan, and took photos of the septuagenarian because of his fashion sense.



The images, posted on Weibo, became trending on the social media site, making the former soldier a viral sensation. Like Liang Yuxiang, the grandpa with killer abs, Wang Zhousong could make men in their 20s and 30s insecure with his trim physique, reported China Daily.



Advertisement

What caught the attention of Chinese netizens are the trendy clothes of Wang which is what younger urban men would wear on their rest day. In one photo, he paired a yellow shirt with white T-shirt with a red design on the front, partly covered by an open denim jacket with sleeves partly folded.



He has as accessories a trendy watch, backpack and sunglasses atop wavy black hair. To complete the youthful look, Wang has a pair of black-and-white rubber shoes and black and blue socks.



His photos elicited a lot of positive response from Weibo users such as Azhe who said being fashionable has no age limit, so long as a person has a young heart. Qinaidekui wrote that Wang should be a good example for other retired seniors who should also be trendy, while taking care of their grandchildren.



Even when wearing formal attire apt for his age, Wang still manages to look dapper and trendy by using a black bow tie to go with a purple shirt for a dark blue suit. In another photo, he drapes a black sweater over a white long-sleeve polo shirt. Even in his work clothes, Wang still looks neat by wearing a grey collared T-shirt and dark gray shorts while feeding his flock of geese.



Meanwhile, also in Henan, a 79-year-old Chinese man is impressing people with his energetic workout routine, shaming current crop of much younger pole dancers.






My sole motivation behind letting myself into that abominable prison house called school was the little white stick that my mother allowed me to grab and lick after the classes were over. I used to look with wishful eyes the attractive white box of ice cream walla who also had other varieties-the red tangy one that came in twenty five paisa, the slightly yellow one that came in fifty paisa and the expensive white creamy one that came in full one rupee. My mother had warned me against eating the orange one as she said it contained worms that came out if you sprinkled salt on it! So my childhood remained deprived of that one single taste that so often contented the appetite of my not-so-affluent friends. <BR><BR> When I went to college I read about globalisation, about the invasion of markets by foreign goods and of absolute wiping out of the local economy by organized production houses. But I could not understand these things till one day while crossing from near my school my eyes failed to spot that old ice cream walla whose presence had become such an inseparable part of the entire set up. It came as a rude shock to me that his place was now taken by three four colourful wheeled vans endorsing attractive logos and pictures of branded ice cream. <BR><BR> That changes are always for better or worse is like putting an emotion into plain black and white. I may have in my own personal way some attachment with the white stick ice cream or with the more expensive soapy, frothy softie of my school days but the accessibility, taste and variety that the present day ice cream industry is offering is no doubt incomparable. <BR><BR> Who would have thought barely a decade ago of eating ice creams made of real fresh fruits- a la Gelato Vittorio or a cool creamy liquid fried in hot boiling oil or what is called today the fried ice cream. <BR><BR> In India the ice cream industry took sometimes to catch the global cue because the country has an indigenous rich and well developed dessert market. What ice cream would stand in competition against Indian sweets? But no you cant say so just because you are born in the land of Kulfi. You will have the authority only when you taste Baked Alaska (an ice-cream sponge cake dish topped with meringue), Arctic roll (British dessert made of vanilla and flour), Adzuki (Japanese red bean ice cream) and Dondruma( a Turkish ice made of salep and mastic resin). <BR><BR> We Indians who generally go gaga over a handful of varieties that Baskin Robbins offers are unaware of the fact that the company actually makes 1000 flavours! What we get in India generally as branded ice cream is nothing but milk and corn flour seasoned with a few chemicals and packed in attractive cones, cups and cornettos. Our knowledge of Ice cream is so poor that we do not even know what cornetto is! Most of us think it is the name of an ice cream that Kwality offers. Update your dictionary- it is actually the registered name of an improved variety of waffle cone that does not become soggy and that was invented and patented by an Italian firm called Spica in 1960! <BR><BR> The world offers so much in shape of that delicate, cool, tender delight called ice cream that I being a lover of it feel choked with emotion at my own minisculeness and misfortune of not having tasted even a fraction of that tremendous, rich and inexhaustible treasure. What is thy life O mortal, my heart cries out, if thou hast not known the glories of the Australian Giant Sandwich Monster, the Manoco Bar, the Irish Scottish Sliders, the Argentine Helado, the Greek Kimaki and the Japanese Macha! <BR><BR> Sometimes I wonder whether there is an intricate connection between the survival of a race and its appetite for ice cream! Otherwise why would the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese and the Persians survive the ravages of time and the Glorious Harappan civilization fade into oblivion? And let us be pragmatic and not blame some harmless ecology or innocent river for their decline. The reason I am sure was hidden in their food habits-they having failed to secure the divine blessings of the Gods. Yes, thats precisely what the ancient Greeks called ice cream! Imagine what foodies they must have been that nearly 4000 years ago they got for themselves ice houses constructed at the banks of Euphrates and as early as 5th century BC they began its marketing by selling ice cones mixed with fruit and honey. A honey flavoured cornetto.! <BR><BR> Roman emperor Nero (62 AD) was fond of fruit ice cream and hence sent his servants to fetch ice from mountains! The Falooda that we eat today is actually a Persian dish Faloodeh made from starch and has its origin around 400BC. The Chinese who claim to be the pioneers in almost everything -be it the first currency notes, the first stint with silk or the first to flood the markets of neighbours with cheap plastic goods-were not far behind in making ice cream too. They are credited to have invented a device that made quick ice using salt peter (no, it was not imported from Bihar, China had enough of it). <BR><BR> The unfortunate Charles I whom the world knows as an autocrat, a despot, a tyrant, an enemy of democracy and parliament was also a lover of ice cream! It is said that he made his chef keep the formula a secret so that it remained a royal prerogative. <BR><BR> Our great Mughals, we should not forget were the die hard lovers of food and all that is rich and luxurious in the modern Indian cuisine has a Mughal origin. So they too loved ice cream and they too enjoyed it in royal feasts and ceremonies. When they could get choicest fruits from Farghana and Samarquand and the best wines from Persia, why couldnt they send relays of horsemen to bring ice from Hindukush for their aromatic fruit sherbets? <BR><BR> But were sending horsemen to run and fetch ice or storing ice in underground icehouses near rivers, the only way of making ice creams in those days? Sadly, yes. And thats why the common man remained deprived of and unknown to its delectable taste. But lets thank Nancy Johnson of Philadelphia who first got the patent for a small hand run ice cream freezer. Gradually with the coming of electricity there also came a revolution in ice cream making. Thereafter Giant corporates like Howard Johnson, Dairy Queen, Baskin Robbins, Gelato Vittorio, Ben and Jerrys, Haagen Dazs and Carvel changed the concept of ice cream in the world. Soft serves, Sundaes and super premiums began to be offered by shops next door. <BR><BR> Thanks to globalisation, the world has really become a small place to live in. Today I can access any ice cream from the world over in my local confectionary shop. but among the confused tastes of multitudinous flavours I some how always try to find that one singular taste of the white stick ice-cream which trickled through my fingers and ran into my nursery uniformspoiling it but leaving an imprint on my memory which has failed to faint in all these years.
Hi there, reader! Yes you, my dear, ogling at this bright page spilling into red. Its because of you that we at Zee News are all worked up! From the bossy types (hey boss its just a blog!) to the <I> chai chors</I> (the peon who is too busy looking at Mallika Sherawat on site)! All excited and taking a deep breath before plunging into the spicy world that the new India- Your India, my India- has come to live in.<br/><br/>Welcome to the heady times of a youngistan India. Where the gentlemens game has turned into a sporting orgy incomplete without a bevy firang beauties jiggling what they got, where your fav stars are willing to shake what they got with YOU on a reality show, where blogs have replaced eyes as the window to ones soul, and where the letter S truly represents everything we love- silver spoons, saucy curves, sushi, sex, street food, style, smooth skin, saree, spotlight, speaking (arguing, if a certain Sen is to be believed), soul-searching, sparkling drinks and spice.<br/><br/>Lots of the last S.<br/><br/>Its not for nothing that our land is often called the spice bowl. Since the time our ancients found spices to churn the curry culture, our <I>mirch-masala</I> has tickled many a-nose and made them stream with tears of gluttonous gratitude.<br/><br/>You see, we are like that only.<br/><br/>Celebrating birth and death, kindling a thousand lights on a moonless night, squeezing lemon into our soft-drinks, making our <I>sati-savitris</I> drench on screen with proper <I>jhtakas</I> in my-white-is whiter-than-your-white sarees, throwing colours at none other than Godthe spice train just goes on.<br/><br/>Spice is truly the way of life in India. And in such a charged atmosphere, how could we ignore the amount of fun you are having and, indeed, want to have?<br/><br/>After all underneath us all Indians is a <I>chaat </I>loving foodie who just cant do without his daily mouthful of <I>golgappa</I>. No, not even the hard news nosed nosey types (us) who like to drown themselves under the Sethusamudram or periodically choke themselves with nuclear deal dramas.<br/><br/>So it was that we decided to add some <I>tadka</I> in your- and our- life. Smelling it already? Well thats Spicezee.com brewing!<br/><br/>Its your adda, dhaba, lounge, pub, disc, mehfil- call it what you will- of glamour, glitz and girls. From Rakhi Sawants latest nakhra to Britneys newest revelation (not just the sans underwear type), from movies and music ratings to whats happening at a theatre near you, from the latest offering from Salman Rushdie to Sri Sri Ravishankars enlightening musings- Spicezee is your first and last stop on the entertainment trail.<br/><br/>Basically spicezee.com puts anything and everything about the well heeled and sought after trendsetters from India and across the world just a click away.<br/><br/>Television, Fashion, fads, funny & weird stories from around the world, Bollywood/Hollywood gossip, hotties on the dating circuit, latest pictures & videos, blogs, interviews, reviews & previews, fitness & yoga- you ask it, Spicezees got it.<br/><br/>And oh I hope you didnt miss the main ingredient of this mouth watering salami of a site, its main <I>masala</I>- You. This offering is made entirely with you in mind. You can have your say on every story posted, every picture shown, every video played- you type it, we make it live instantly.<br/><br/>Believe me you, feedback is something taken very seriously here. So bring on the compliments/<I>Wah Wahs</I>, the brickbats/<I>Chi Chis</I>- we are all ears dear reader.<br/><br/>And in the end, well a statutory warning:<br/><br/>Logging on to Spicezee.com can be intoxicating. You may feel like abandoning the eggs simmering on your pan or the sandwich grilling in the oven and find your eyes & ears glued to the computer screen. We take no responsibility for sudden wardrobe changes due to the fashion tips offered on site nor would the company be liable in case of your sudden urge to karaoke your neighbours deaf just to be published on the website. We will entertain no complaints about any rise in the number of gossip aunts who know why Katrina has become such a cat or why Amy Winehouse craves for pills. In short, click at your own risk.<br/><br/>Happy snee..ee.e.aAAAcChHOOOO..zing!<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>
Canadian Prime Minister Goes to China to Attend G20 Summit to Discuss Economic Partnerships and Human Rights

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be in China for the G20 Summit. (Photo : Getty Images)

Trudeau is expected to engage in bilateral talks with government officials to improve relations with China, known to be one of the largest economies in the world.



The Prime Minister will be visiting Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Hanzhou from Aug. 30 to Sept. 6.



As he starts the discussion on how to improve economic partnerships with China, he also plans to discuss how human rights will be upheld in the country. Trudeau criticized China when Foreign Mister Wang Yi publicly berating a Canadian journalist in June.



Advertisement

When the Canadian journalist asked Yi about human rights in China, the minister called the journalist "arrogant," "full of prejudice" and "irresponsible."



Trudeau said that he will bring up the issue on human rights "every chance he gets."



He said, "The fact is the way Canada has always engaged best in the world is to be active and vocal about the things that we are concerned about and disagree on, while at the same time looking for common ground that will be of mutual benefit for all of our citizens."



Another case of human rights violation was seen with Kevin Garratt who was jailed in China because he was accused of espionage.



The Prime Minister sad that the Canadian was "in prison for espionage without any evidence to support the allegations and accusations."



In spite of these issues contended by the two countries, Trudeau and Chinese President Xi Jingping had a productive discussion during the President's visit to Canada.



Xi even gave praises to the former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his good relations with the country in the '70s.



The Canadian government is hoping that they will be able to build a stable economic partnership with China as the country has not had growth in the past decade.



Trudeau said, "I will strive for a closer, more balanced relationship between Canada and China, one that unlocks the untapped potential in our two countries' commercial ties, and advances important issues like good governance, the rule of law and the environment."


Mali: An Islamist militant has admitted and apologised for destroying cultural sites in Mali`s Timbuktu in a trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), a media report said.

Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi said he was "really sorry" for his actions and asked for forgiveness, BBC reported on Monday.

Mahdi was accused of leading rebel forces who destroyed historic shrines at the world heritage site in 2012. It was the first time that the court in The Hague tried a case of cultural destruction.

It was also the first time a suspected Islamist militant has stood trial at the ICC and the first time a suspect has pleaded guilty.

Prosecutors said Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, an Islamist terrorist group that occupied Timbuktu.

Islamists regard the shrines and the city`s ancient manuscripts, covering everything from history to astronomy, as idolatrous.

Court documents describe Mahdi as a religious scholar who directed fighters to wreck several sites with pickaxes and chisels after failing to deter locals from praying at them.

He was charged with war crimes over the destruction of nine mausoleums and a mosque.

Pleading guilty, he said: "I am really sorry, I am really remorseful, and I regret all the damage that my actions have caused."

"I would like to give a piece of advice to all Muslims in the world, not to get involved in the same acts I got involved in, because they are not going to lead to any good for humanity," the BBC quoted him as saying.

Given his guilty plea the trial will probably be over by the end of this week. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in jail. Nine victims were later due to share their experiences in court.

Ansar Dine, an extremist militia with roots in the nomadic Tuareg people, has ties to al-Qaeda. It was eventually driven out of Mali in a French-led intervention.

The court has previously heard that Mahdi, a former teacher aged about 40, was a "zealous member" of the militia. He was alleged to have been the head of the section that enforced strict Islamic law in Timbuktu.
New York: The killing of a nine-year-old Indian girl from Punjab by her stepmother took a sordid turn on Sunday when authorities arrested her ex-husband and accused him of helping her hide.

Raymond Narayan was accused of helping his ex-wife Shamdai Arjun Pardas leave her home after allegedly strangling her stepdaughter on Friday and trying to hide her in his house, Ron Brown, the top public prosecutor for the New York city district of Queens, said in a statement on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Pardas was produced in Queens Criminal Court on Sunday and formally charged before Judge Gerald Beibovitz with murdering Ashdeep Kaur, who had come from India to the US about three months ago to join her father.

"This is a horrifying case of a child, a defenceless nine-year-old, who was left in the care of her stepmother who allegedly strangled her to death," Brown said. "Her actions, if true, are beyond comprehension and must be severely punished."

Judah Maltz, Pardas` lawyer, asked the judge to place her in protective custody in jail, the New York Daily News reported.

This will keep her away from other prisoners as New York jails are notorious for brutal attacks by fellow inmates on those accused of heinous crimes, especially those involving children.

When authorities produced her in the court, she wore a white jump suit made of a tough plastic material, Tyvek.

Maltz said the 55-year-old Pardas denied killing the child and claimed there was no proof that she did it.

Michael Curtis, the assistant prosecutor, made chilling new revelations in the court. He said that on Tuesday Pardas had told Kaur`s father, Sukhjinder Singh, 35, that she would kill the child, the News reported.

She had "repeatedly and on numerous occasions threatened to kill the victim", Curtis said. "On Friday, she made good on this threat."

Curtis told the court that circumstantial evidence that Pardas killed the child is "overwhelming", according to the News.

Brown gave the following account: Narayan, who is 65 years old, was seen by a witness leaving Singh`s house in Richmond Hill around 5.30 p.m. on Friday with Pardas and two of her two grandchildren.

When detectives went to Narayan`s house in South Ozone Park he kept them at bay for over an hour refusing to come out or letting them in, before relenting and coming out.

Narayan and Pardas were then arrested. He is charged with "obstructing governmental administration" and faces a year prison if convicted. Pardas faces 25 years to life in prison.

Pardas told a witness as they were leaving that Kaur was in the bathroom and waiting for her father to pick her up.

The witness called the child`s father and said that the light had been on in the bathroom since 11.30 a.m. Singh asked the witness to break open the door and the child was found dead in the bath tub.

This is the second recent incident involving step-mothers of Indian origin in New York city.

Last month 35-year-old Sheetal Ranot was convicted of slashing her 12-year-old step-daughter with a broken metal broom handle and cutting her left wrist to the bone, Brown said.

Sheetal Ranot and her husband, Rajesh, of Ozone Park were also accused of torturing Maya Ranot for two years, Brown said.

They locked her up in a room without food or water long periods of time and when she was found by authorities she weighed only about 26 kg.

Sheetal Ranot faces up to 25 years in prison. Rajesh is waiting for his trial. They were both arrested in 2014, but the first case came up for trial only last month.

Richmond Hill has a sizable population of people of Indian descent, while South Asians have a significant presence in the Ozone Park neighbourhoods.
Islamabad: At least three militants, including a local commander, were killed on Monday when paramilitary troops raided their hideout in Pakistan`s Balochistan province, officials said.

Home Minister of Balochistan Sarfraz Bugti said the militants were involved in an attack on President Momnoon Hussain`s son and other terrorist activities in the province, Xinhua news agency reported.

Bugti said security forces gunned down the militants in Hub district of the province on an intelligence tip-off, who were members of separatist group Balochistan Liberation army.

The paramilitary forces launched an operation to hunt down the militants, but they opened fire at the troops, engaging them into a gun battle, he added.

The operation is part of the ongoing combing operation in the province, following a bomb explosion inside a hospital in Balochistan`s Quetta on August 8, in which at least 75 lawyers were killed, and over 100 injured.
Dhaka: Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has accused the former Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-Jamaat government of perpetrating a grenade attack on an Awami League rally on August 21, 2014.

Speaking at the rally yesterday marking anniversary of the gruesome grenade attack, Hasina said the incident jolted the world`s conscience but the conscience of the BNP leader or the party was not stirred. "We were not allowed to utter a single word or discuss the matter in parliament. We were even barred from bringing any motion in Jatiya Sangsad to condemn the attack," the Daily Star quoted Hasina, as saying.

In a veiled attack on the BNP leaders, Hasina, who narrowly escaped the attack, said it is clear who were involved in that incident and that there is no need to prove it. "Begum Zia had said I [Hasina] would never be the prime minister or even the leader of the opposition in future, while her elder son [Tarique] stayed at his father-in-law`s home in Dhanmondi for eight to 10 months consecutively," she said.

"It seemed from the comments of the BNP leader and her party men that they wanted to remove me from this world," Hasina added.She also placed wreaths at a makeshift memorial for martyrs of the gruesome grenade attack which was set up by Awami League in front of its Bangabandhu Avenue central office where militants had lobbed 13 grenades.

Twenty-four leaders and workers of party and its associate bodies were killed and over 500 others suffered injuries in the attack.Though Hasina narrowly escaped the attack, she lost her hearing ability.
A staff works in the office at Tencent headquarters in Shenzhen in Guandong Province. (Photo : Getty Images)

Tencent has now become China's most valuable technology company after surpassing e-commerce giant Alibaba, according to a report by CNBC.



Advertisement

Tencent's market capitalization was placed at 1.9103 trillion Hong Kong dollars, or around $246.35 billion, compared with Alibaba's, whose market capitalization reached only $242.04 billion, based on the data compiled by spreadbettor IG.



Tencent said on Wednesday, Aug. 17, that it has improved forecasts for its second quarter earnings as mobile gaming and advertising show strong growth.



The company beat the forecast of a Thomson Reuters poll of analysts which predicted a revenue of 33.2 billion yuan as the total revenue for the second quarter reached 35.69 billion ($5.38 billion), an increase of 52 percent on-year.



Tencent's WeChat/Weixin platform's monthly active users also jumped by 34 percent on year to 806 million, the report said.



On Thursday, Aug. 18, Tencent shares went up 5.08 percent during the morning trade, which drove its market capitalization ahead of Alibaba's. The company is also hailed as the best performing stock on Hong Kong's Seng index, an increase of 26.56 percent, on-year to date basis.



As Tencent's earnings went up, analysts offered price increases on shares, citing the company's dominance of the online and mobile gaming sector.



Majority of the company's revenue in the second quarter could be attributed to online gaming, which gre 32 percent on-year to 17.124 billion yuan. This was particularly driven by smartphone games, which revenue more than double to 9.6 billion yuan for the quarter.



Tencent strengthened its position in June when it acquired majority stake in Finnish game-maker Supercell, the producer of popular titles such as Clash of Clans and Clash Royale.



"Tencent's mobile game pipeline in second half 2016 and 2017 looks solid to us," analysts John Choi and Alex Liu from Daiwa Capital Markets, said. "We see revenue upside from the monetisation of Supercell's vast China user base and the introduction of new genre games (such as location-based games)."



Although Tencent has overtaken Alibaba in market capitalization, it did not mean that they are exempt from competition with other players such as Baidu.



"Tencent and Alibaba's fundamentals are much better than Baidu, in terms of the platform business model and also the monetization momentum currently," Marie Sun, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, told CNBC.



An Alibaba spokesperson however told CNBC by email that stock performance will not affect the company's strategy.



"Alibaba has proven its unique competitive position and a strong foundation for sustainable growth," the spokesperson said.



The e-commerce giant posted a 59 percent increase in quarterly revenue last week.


New Delhi: Condemning the move to register cases against Baloch leaders-in-exile for allegedly backing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday said this step has been taken out of frustration and intolerance.

BJP leader Sudesh Verma said this is yet another proof of human rights violation in Balochistan.

"We are very convinced that the Pakistani establishment is not able to give justice to the people of Balochistan. If some people there found that Indian Prime Minister`s statement was correct and represented. there is no reason to take action against them. Action should be taken to provide remedy to the situation," Verma told ANI.

"Balochistan is suffering and India has rightly raised the issue. What Pakistan is doing now in the name of vendetta is going to further add to the criticism on the issue of human rights violation in Pakistan," he added.

Verma said it reflects Pakistan`s frustration as the Asian neighbour would never tolerate that someone in Balochistan is supporting the Indian Prime Minister`s statement.

"This has to be understood that the Indian Prime Minister`s statement came because India cannot be silent to what is happening in Balochistan. India aspires to be a member of the UN Security Council and has to live up to its` responsibility and raise the issues of human rights violation in its neighbourhood also," he said.

Five cases have been registered against Baloch leaders-in-exile in Balochistan`s Khuzdar area for allegedly backing Prime Minister Modi`s remarks on the atrocities in Pakistan`s Balochistan province.

The cases were registered against Baloch Republican Party`s (BRP) Brahamdagh Bugti, Baloch liberation leader Harbiyar Marri and Baloch Students Organisation chairperson Karima Baloch. The complaints were filed by Munir Ahmed, Maulana Muhammad Aslam, Muhammad Hussain, Ghulam Yaseen Jatak and Muhammad Rahim at five police stations in Balochistan`s Khuzdar area, reports the Dawn.

Acting District Police Officer Khuzdar Muhammad Ashraf Jatak said the petitioners claimed that Bugti, Marri and Karima Baloch had `supported` Prime Minister Modi`s August 15 speech.

The Baloch leaders-in-exile were booked under Sections 120, 121, 123 and 353 of the Pakistan Penal Code which refer to "concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment", "waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against Pakistan", "concealing with intent to facilitate design to wage war", and "assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty".

Prime Minister Modi, in his Independence Day address, had thanked the people of Balochistan, Gilgit and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for the goodwill they have shown towards him.He had in an all-party meeting on Kashmir said the "time has come that Pakistan shall have to answer to the world for the atrocities committed by it against the people in Balochistan and PoK".

His statement about atrocities in Balochistan has hit a nerve with Pakistan, which has now voiced that it would raise the Kashmir issue at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

Last week, Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri slammed the Indian Premier`s remarks days after Baloch leader Bugti appreciated `support` given to the Baloch people.He also accused Bugti of "getting funds from Indians".
New Delhi: Japan`s first lady Akie Abe made an unofficial visit to Pearl Harbor on Sunday where she paid tribute to Americans killed in Japan`s surprise attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941.

Japan`s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Monday the first lady made her visit as a private individual, and it was not an indication that Japan`s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would visit Pearl Harbor, the Japan Times reported.

A visit by Abe would mark the first time an incumbent Japanese prime minister had gone to the Pearl Harbor memorial.

The attack on the naval base by Japanese torpedo planes, bombers and fighter planes drew the United States into World War Two when it declared war on Japan.

In May, Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, one of two cities the United States hit with atomic bombs in 1945. The other was Nagasaki.

Since Obama`s visit there has been speculation over whether Abe would visit Pearl Harbor.

Akie Abe posted photographs on Facebook and wrote that she had gone to the Arizona Memorial offering flowers and prayer. No previous first lady has visited the site while her husband was in office.

More than 1,100 sailors and Marines were killed on the USS Arizona in the Japanese attack. The sunken battleship, at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, is the resting place of almost all of them.

I have been to Hawaii many times but I have never been to Pearl Harbor," Japanese publication Gendai Business quoted the first lady as saying. "Over the past year ... I have had many chances to think about (World War Two), and I felt a strong urge to visit at least once in my lifetime," she said.

Last year marked the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two.

Katina Adams, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department`s bureau of East Asian and Pacific affairs, said, "We are aware of First Lady Akie Abe`s visit to Pearl Harbor." She declined further comment.

"The fact that Akie Abe has gone is a tremendous step forward for Japan to come to terms with its past," Shihoko Goto, senior Northeast Asia associate for the Asia program at Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said in a telephone interview. "This is certainly a balloon test to see what the public reaction will be."

Japan`s embassy in Washington said in an email, "As Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga stated, First Lady Akie Abe visited Pearl Harbor as a personal visit, and we would like to refrain from making further comments on this subject."

More than 2,400 U.S. service members were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as a date that would "live in infamy."

In April, Prime Minister Abe spoke to the U.S. Congress and expressed "deep repentance" over Japan`s role in World War Two. Japan is America`s staunchest Asian ally.

Japanese Emperor Akihito has expressed remorse over the war.

"Looking back at the past, together with deep remorse over the war, I pray that this tragedy of war will not be repeated and together with the people, express my deep condolences for those who fell in battle and in the ravages of war, and pray for world peace and the further prosperity of our country," Akihito said at a memorial service on the 70th anniversary of the day his father, Hirohito, announced Japan`s defeat.
Islamabad: At least one person was killed and nine others were injured in Pakistan`s Karachi city after activists attacked an office of a TV channel, police said.

At least 2,000 activists of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) stormed the office of ARY TV channel and nearby shops. The MQM blamed the TV channel for not giving proper coverage to its anti-government hunger strike, Xinhua news agency reported on Monday.

TV footage showed MQM angry workers entering the ARY office and destroying equipments and furniture in its office in Karachi.

The ARY Chief Executive Salman Iqbal said that the MQM workers fired inside its office located in Medina Shopping Mall.

According to police officials, MQM party leader Altaf Hussain instigated the incident after speaking to workers over phone from London. Hussain lives in self-imposed exile in Britain.

The MQM is observing hunger strike against the arrest of its workers.

Apart from ARY, other TV channels Samaa and Neo were also attacked by the MQM workers.

Police said that several persons were arrested in connection with the firing in the offices of the TV channels.

Murad Ali Shah, Chief Minister of Sindh visited the ARY office and assured its workers that the culprits will not be spared.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned the attack on ARY, Samaa and Neo offices in Karachi. It is an attack on freedom of Press and expression, the Prime Minister said in a statement.
Jerusalem: A new poll of Israelis and Palestinians released today found that a slim majority on both sides still favor a peace settlement establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, despite years of conflict and deadlock in negotiations.

The results of the joint poll may provide some small signs of encouragement when peace prospects appear bleak. The last round of negotiations broke down two years ago, and a resumption of talks, much less progress between the sides, at this point seems unlikely.

Tamar Hermann, an Israeli political scientist who conducted the survey with Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, said that under the current circumstances, the results were "not amazingly encouraging," but also "not discouraging."

"It showed there is still some basis for optimism with the right leadership," she said.

"Right now I don't see on the horizon a leader on either side willing or capable of using this as a springboard for intensifying the negotiations. But it's not impossible."

The poll found that 51 percent of Palestinians and 59 per cent of Israelis still support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On the Israeli side, 53 per cent of Jews support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Among Israel's Arab minority, the number is much higher, at 87 per cent. Conversely, just 34 percent of Palestinians and 20 per cent of Israelis support the idea of a single shared state where they are both citizens with equal rights.

After two decades of failed peace efforts, and nearly a year of low-level violence, distrust is strong. The poll found that 89 per cent of Palestinians feel Israeli Jews are untrustworthy, while 68 per cent of Israeli Jews held similar opinions toward the Palestinians.

It also found that 65 per cent of Israelis fear Palestinians. In contrast, just 45 per cent of Palestinians fear Israelis.

Hermann said she was surprised by the higher fear level on the Israeli side, and cited a number of factors. She said many Israelis have no contact with Palestinians, making it easier to "dehumanize the other side."

She also said a recent wave of violence had jolted Israeli society, which had been more insulated from the conflict than Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. In addition, she said Israeli leaders by painting the Palestinians as "utterly hostile" and Israeli media reports had contributed to the atmosphere.
London (United Kingdom): Faulting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon`s letter to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in which he noted that "Pakistan is committed to peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute for the sake of regional peace and security", founder member of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Dr. Shabir Choudhry has said it is "not impressive" as it exhibits "poor understanding" of history of Kashmir and the India-Pakistan relations."

Holding Pakistan responsible for waging successive wars on India and promoting terrorism, violence and religious intolerance in Jammu and Kashmir that resulted in deaths of more than hundreds of thousands of people and immense suffering, besides massive human rights violations, Choudhry contended: "Your Excellency, I don`t know what was on your CV that qualified you for the highest post in the UN; but your letter written to Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan, on August 12 is not impressive, as it exhibits poor understanding of history of Kashmir and the India-Pakistan relations.

"Then, Choudhry presented some historic facts regarding history of Kashmir and the India-Pakistan relations to the UN Secretary General for his better understanding of the situation."Pakistan signed a `Standstill Agreement` with the state of Jammu and Kashmir in August 1947, which it violated and attacked its weak and small neighbour on October 22, 1947, in which tens of thousands of people were killed, women raped and kidnapped," he said, adding, "Please don`t tell me that Pakistan did this to resolve the Kashmir dispute peacefully."

"This Pakistani attack on Jammu and Kashmir culminated in to the first India and Pakistan war. I can assure your Excellency that this unprovoked Pakistani attack did not stabilise the region," he added. Furthermore, Pakistan sent thousands of armed men in Kashmir in 1965, with the code name of `Operation Gibraltar`, and this military adventure of Pakistan also resulted in the India and Pakistan war of September 1965. I don`t need to tell that this war also resulted in death and suffering of tens of thousands of people. This military adventure also did not promote peace or stability of the region," stated Choudhry who is, at present, Spokesman of the Kashmir National Party (KNP)

Apart from the above, he said, Pakistan is also a mastermind of the ongoing militancy and a proxy war in Jammu and Kashmir started in 1988, and the code name of this military adventure was `Operation Topac`."Your Excellency may know that this adventure has already resulted in death of more than hundreds of thousands of people and immense suffering of the people, and massive human rights violations.

I hope your Excellency is aware of many terrorist incidents, which took place in India, and which brought both India and Pakistan close to a nuclear clash," he added.Choudhry reminded the UN Secretary General that Pakistan promotes terrorism, violence and religious intolerance in Jammu and Kashmir, and also started another military adventure in Kargil, which also nearly resulted in a nuclear clash between India and Pakistan.In view of the above, he questioned, how can you say that Pakistan is committed to `peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute for the sake of regional peace and security`?

"I hope your Excellency will take note of the above facts and play some role in resolving the Kashmir dispute that there could be peace and stability in the region," Choudhry concluded.In the letter to Sharif, the UN Secretary General wrote: "I appreciate the continued commitment of Pakistan to the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute for the sake of regional peace and security, as you affirmed in your letter. The United Nations remains convinced that it is only through dialogue that the outstanding issues between Pakistan and India, including on Kashmir, can be addressed."
Ankara: Turkey said on Monday Islamic State (IS) jihadists must be totally pushed out of the Syrian border region, after a weekend suicide bombing in the city of Gaziantep blamed on the group left at least 54 dead.

"Our border must be completely cleansed from Daesh," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in televised remarks, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.

"It is our most natural right to fight at home and abroad against such a terrorist organisation."

A child suicide bomber, aged "between 12 and 14," is suspected of carrying out the attack in the southeastern city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border late on Saturday on the orders of IS jihadists, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Cavusoglu said Monday Turkey has already taken an "active" role in the fight against IS, allowing coalition forces to use a key base in the southern part of the country for air raids on the extremist group.

Quoting security sources, some Turkish media reported earlier the Gaziantep attack could have been retaliation by IS for an operation carried out by Ankara-backed opposition rebels against the jihadists in Jarablus in northern Syria.

Asked if the government supported the operation, Cavusoglu said: "We can back anyone, especially the moderate opposition fighting against Daesh on the ground."

"We will fight Daesh to the end and continue to support countries and forces fighting them," he added, without giving further details.

Cavusoglu said Turkey was a "prime target of Daesh" because the government had dried up the group`s resources of foreign terrorist fighters, placing an entry ban on 55,000 members and deporting around 4,000 suspects.

"In this sense we have dealt the biggest blow to Daesh," he said.

The foreign minister said Turkey and Erdogan played a key role in defeating the ideology of IS, adding: "Therefore, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is their number-one target."

Turkey was long accused of turning a blind eye to or even abetting the rise of IS in Syria, claims it vehemently denies.

However Western states say Ankara has begun to move strongly against the group and seal its borders to jihadist traffic after the attacks blamed on IS on its soil this year.
Guwahati: Banwarilal Purohit was sworn in as the Assam Governor at a solemn function held at the Durbar Hall of Raj Bhavan in Guwahati on Monday.

Chief Justice of the Gauhati High Court, Justice Ajit Singh, administered the oath of office and secrecy to the new governor.

Nagaland Governor PB Acharya was holding the additional charge as Governor of Assam since December 2014.

Purohit was appointed as the Governor of Assam by the President on August 17 this year.

"I am happy to be sworn in as the Governor of Assam and I assure you all that I will give my best for the welfare of all sections of the people of Assam," Purohit said after the ceremony.

Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who was present with some of his cabinet colleagues, exuded confidence that under the new governor, the state can march forward and can scale new heights taking everybody from Barak, Brahmaputra, hills and plains on board.

Assam legislative assembly Speaker Ranjeet Das, Environment and Forest Minister Pramila Rani Brahma, Minister Public Health Engineering Rihon Daimary, Minister of State (independent charge) for Power Pallab Lochan Das, Chief Secretary V.K. Pipersenia, Director General of Police Mukesh Sahay and a host of other guests were also present on the occasion.


Patna: Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday said the flood situation in Bihar is under control, adding he has urged the Centre to deploy experts who can analyze the situation and come up with measures to avoid such calamities and damages in future.

Nitish, who is a strong critique of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sarcastically said that he has not asked much from the Centre in this hour of crisis.

"We have not kept any demand, we have only asked the Centre to send experts so that they can come and inspect the affected areas so that we can combat the situation and stop further damage, otherwise the situation can aggravate," said Kumar.

"The situation is that initially the water level was a matter of concern, but the water level has reduced of late. The water resources department yesterday told us that slowly everything will come back on track. The water level might increase a bit but that would not be a matter of concern. Similarly, the water which has already entered the villages will also flush out soon," he added.

As floods ravaged some parts of the country, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh earlier today spoke to the Chief Ministers of four flood-hit states - Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Rajasthan - and assured all central help in dealing with the disaster.

The Chief Ministers - Akhilesh Yadav, Harish Rawat, Nitish Kumar and Vasundhara Raje - briefed the Home Minister on the flood situation during the telephonic conversation.

According to reports, the Chief Ministers also informed Singh about the operations carried out by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and State Disaster Response Forces in affected areas.
Chennai: It's Madras Day today!

It's celebration time as Madras turns 378 on Monday.

What is Madras Day?

Basically, Madras Day is a festival organised to commemorate the founding of the city of Madras (now Chennai) in Tamil Nadu, India.

It is celebrated on 22 August every year.

On the occasion of Madras Day, we list here 5 amazing things that make Chennai so special; check these out:-

Cooperative nature of citizens

People of Chennai are known for their down-to-earth nature, simplicity and civility.

Food

Chennai is superbly rich when it comes to food. The city is known for a number of food items which are famous around the world.

Movies

Chennai's culture is full of movies. One can't imagine Chennai without movies; it's like body without soul.

After all, it's 'Thalaiva' Rajini sir's home here!

Tourist places

If you begin talking about tourist sites in Chennai, there will be no end to it.

From Marina Beach to Kapaleeshwarar Temple to Fort St. George, there are several places-to-be in this amazing city.

Culture

Concerts, drama shows, exhibitions and what not! Chennai is known for its rich culture. Every day there is one or other concert, drama show, contest or exhibition happens in this beautiful city.
New Delhi: A Delhi court on Monday awarded death sentences to two convicts in connection with the kidnapping and sensational killing of IT executive Jigisha Ghosh in March 2009.

Delhi's Saket court, which had on Saturday reserved its order on the quantum, also awarded a life sentence to the third convict in the case.

The quantum of sentence was pronounced by Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav, who had set set August 22 for determining the punishment to be given to convicts Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla and Baljit Singh Malik.

Public Prosecutor Rajiv Mohan had requested the court to award maximum punishment - death penalty - to the convicts as they have shown no remorse for killing the executive.

The convicts are also facing trial for killing a journalist Soumya Vishwanathan and a taxi driver, the prosecution apprised the court.

However, the defence counsel pleaded for leniency, contending that the convicts are young.

The court on July 14 convicted the three men under Section 302 (murder), Section 201 (destruction of evidence), Section 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder), Section 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery), Section 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), Section 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record), Section 482 (punishment for using a false property mark) with Section 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.

Jigisha, 28, who was working with Hewitt Associate Pvt Ltd as an operations manager, was kidnapped and killed on March 18, 2009 after her office cab dropped her near her home in Vasant Vihar area in south Delhi around 4 am.

Her body was found on March 20, 2009 near Surajkund in Haryana.

The police later arrested Kapoor, Shukla and Malik in the case.
A worker polishing metal in a steel factory in Rizhao in Shandong Province. (Photo : Getty Images)

A venture capital fund worth about $30 billion was launched by the Chinese government with the aim to upgrade technology and boost the country's industrial sector.



Advertisement

According to a statement from the regulator responsible for state-owned assets, the setting up of the fund was led by big banks and government holding companies.



The Financial Times reported that the model was similar to the one organized by Temasek, a state investment company launched in the 1970s to promote the reform of government-owned enterprises in Singapore.



The government has reportedly hesitated on the plan as it promoted a more hands-off approach in investment.



But some analysts doubt if the Singaporean-style of reform would be allowed by China's Communist Party which has vowed to strengthen control of state assets.



"This looks similar to the Temasek model. It's also an experiment in state enterprise reform," Shen Jianguang, chief Asia economist at Mizuho Securities, said. "This is a sort of stimulus, but it's probably better than releasing a lot of liquidity into the system because that just goes to property and financial companies."



The companies that supported the fund said that they will choose their investments carefully.



The reform of state-owned enterprise is seen as the key to revitalize the country's economy and the billions of dollars for the country's industrial sector came as President Xi Jinping called for state cash to be directed to help the ailing industry.



The central government urged state companies in June to increase capital spending as fixed-asset investment dropped to a 16-year low.



The fund will be based in Shenzhen, known as the region's tech hub, indicating that the effort would assume a more market-oriented role.



"Shenzhen has become famous as the house of private-sector VC and PE that supports start-ups," Raymond Yeung, chief greater China economist at ANZ Bank, said. "My concern is whether the government can ensure state funds go into the hands of genuine projects."


New Delhi: To encourage the bright students to take up more research work, the government is considering to launch a Prime Minister's research fellowship programme for the IIT graduates.

The quality of research depends on people who undertake it and that is why it is important the best minds are encouraged to take it, the India Today quoted a top HRD official as saying.

"A committee headed by former director of IIT Mumbai Anil Kakodkar recommended that third year students of IITs and NITs should be initiated into PhD programmes," an official said.

It is hoped the programme would encourage innovation which in turn will help boost productivity and raise the standards of the people in the country.

According to official sources, the ministry is expected to extend the fellowship programme to around 1,000 students from the next academic year.

The IIT council is expected to meet on August 23 to discuss the modalities of the programme.

It is envisioned that under this programme, B Tech students in the IITs will register for PhD immediately on completion of the undergraduate course.

"The idea is to make research attractive to the fresh IIT passouts so that they can focus their energies on path breaking research which can throw up solutions and strengthen the academic environment in the long run," the report quoted an unnamed official as saying.
Panaji: Abrogation of Article 370, which grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir, will happen in due course of time, but right now the priority is to bring normalcy and restore peace in the troubled state, Union Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir said on Monday.

Ahir, who was addressing a press conference at the BJP state headquarters in Panaji, also blamed the Congress for trying to make political capital on the issue of atrocities against Dalits, claiming there was only one such attack in Gujarat.

"Such Issues can be handled when time comes," he said, when asked by a media person as to whether the BJP, which is part of a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir and in office at the Centre, was ready to abolish Article 370 of the Indian Constitution.

"At this juncture peace in the valley is a priority," he said, adding that the demand of the BJP, right from the Jan Sangh days, to do away with Article 370 "will be dealt with at appropriate time and not now".

Commenting on the controversies surrounding atrocities against Dalits, Ahir said: "The Congress is trying to make much out of a one-off incident in Gujarat... But the government will take steps to ensure that the atrocities against Dalits are reduced."


Panaji: Memories of the 2011 tribal agitation which resulted in the death of two young activists came alive during AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal's visit to the village of Cauvrem in south Goa.

"Two youth were burnt to death just because they were agitating for their rights. Till date not a single person has been punished for the murder. If tribals raise their voice, it is suppressed using police, and they are murdered," Ravindra Velip, a tribal youth activist told Kejriwal yesterday.

Two youths--Manguesh Gaonkar and Dilip Velip-- who were part of a tribal group that blocked a National Highway pressing for their 12-point demands were charred to death when a building --Adarsh Co-operative Society--an initiative by tribals, was set on fire after the agitation turned violent in 2011.

State Agriculture Minister Ramesh Tawadkar was also part of the group, which faced resistance from locals, who had attacked tribals, Velip said.

"Police were mute spectators, criminals were never arrested," he said.

Kejriwal who gave a patient hearing to the issues of tribal said, "If voted to power, AAP will punish all those who are involved in the incident." ?

At Quepem Municipal Hall yesterday, Kejriwal was all ears for the community for almost two hours before heading to Cauvrem, a village which was amongst the first to witness tribal protests against mining activities claiming it to be illegal.

"There is no voice for tribals of Goa in policy making. Our lands have become playgrounds of the rich," Nilesh Naik, another leader, who was attacked by unknown assailants in 2011 for raising the tribal issues, said.

Police are yet to identify the assailants who had hit Naik on his neck outside Verna Industrial Estate, where he had gone for work.

"Atrocities on tribals are observed at every step. The Commission for Scheduled Tribes has power but is controlled by politicians. Dozens of cases are pending before the Commission," Velip said.

Goa has 89 per cent literacy rate but it is less than 40 per cent amongst tribals.

"Very few tribal students choose higher and technical education," he added.
Ahmedabad: Family members of three Dalit boys who died in a controversial police firing in 2012, have demanded that the case be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as they have lost faith in the police.

The family, which has been demanding justice for the boys, reiterated this after the Gujarat government ordered constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the case.

They had staged demonstrations at the Gh-3 circle in Gandhinagar, under the banner of the Gujarat Anusuchit Jati Atyachar Sangharsh Samiti, though the government appointed the SIT on Saturday evening. The family has threatened to stage demonstrations again on August 30 if the case was not handed over to the CBI.

Three dalit boys -- Pankaj Sumra, 16, Mehul Rathod, 17, and Prakash Parmar, 26 -- were killed during police firing at a clash between Dalit and Bhadwad communities in Thangadh, Surendranagar district, in September 2012. Investigations had later revealed that the police even used AK-47 rifles on the victims.

Mehul`s father Valji Rathod, his wife Chandrikaben and daughter Parul, along with Prakash`s mother Manjuben and his wife Geetaben have begun their fast for justice at Gh-3 circle at Gandhinagar.

Addressing the gathering, Rathod said: "We have no trust in Gujarat Police as they were involved in the firing. The government should hand over the probe to CBI if they really want to conduct a fair investigation."

"I will again sit on a dharna from August 30 if our demand is not considered," added Rathod.

The state government on Saturday formed the SIT comprising Rajkot city Police Commissioner Anupamsinh Gehlot, Surat city DCP Parikshita Rathod and Porbandar SP Tarunkumar Duggal to probe the case.
Lahore: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Monday sent an alleged financier of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack to judicial custody after snubbing the investigators, saying they got enough time to probe the accused.

Sufayan Zafar is accused of supplying nearly Rs 4 million to the LeT men who carried out the attack. The FIA had sought the court's permission to extend his custody.

Zafar will now join five other suspects - Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Mohammad Younis Anjum - in the high-security Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, where they are lodged since 2009.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operations commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the Mumbai attack, is living at an undisclosed location after being released from jail on bail over a year ago.

The anti-terrorism court sent Zafar on the judicial remand on Saturday noting that the Federal Investigation Agency had been given enough time to probe the suspect, a source in the FIA told PTI today.

He is accused of providing Rs 3.98 million to co-accused Riaz through account no. 2338-2 of the Muslim Commercial Bank's Drigh Road branch in Karachi and account no. 2464-0 of the Allied Bank's Drigh Colony branch in Karachi prior to the Mumbai terror attack.

During interrogation by the FIA, he was quizzed over providing millions of rupees to the suspected terrorists of the Mumbai attack case, his relations with them and other absconding suspects, the source said.

"The FIA has interrogated Zafar for providing financial assistance to the co-accused in the Mumbai case besides his connection with the terrorists and the LeT. He was also interrogated for the channel/source from which he got the huge sum of money to provide it to the co-accused," he said.

Zafar was absconding after being declared proclaimed offender in the Mumbai case. He was arrested early this month (on August 3 or 4) from?his hideout in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. A resident of Gujrawala district of Punjab - some 80 kms from Lahore, Zafar is among 21 other absconding suspects wanted in this high-profile case.

According to court documents, the other?suspects who allegedly arranged funds for the attacks include undertrial Ahmed and Anjum and proclaimed offenders Mohammad Usman Zia, Mukhtar Ahmed, Abbas Nasir and Javed Iqbal.

The FIA wanted more time to investigate him further, the source said, adding that the agency would indict him along with the seven other suspects of the case in the trial court after completing his challan.

The trial court will resume the hearing of the case on September 7 after over a month-long court summer vacation.

Defence lawyers are of the view that indicting Zafar along with the seven accused may further delay the conclusion of the case, which has been pending in an anti-terrorism court (ATC) since 2009, due to repeating the exercise of cross- examining witnesses in the light of the new arrest.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: At a time when China and Pakistan are trying to increase their influence in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed India's historic ties with Afghanistan and assured his country's full support to the Taiban militancy-hit neighbouring state.

PM Modi, while addressing a gathering at the inauguration of the restored Stor Palace in Afghanistan via video conferencing, said that the ties between the two states will

only strengthen and grow deeper in the days to come.

Inauguration of renovated Stor Palace,Kabul. PM Modi joins Afghan President Ghani via video conferencing from Delhi pic.twitter.com/m9W0lZw7b1  ANI (@ANI_news) August 22, 2016

I assure Afghan people that 1.25 billion people of India will always be on their side to build a prosperous Afghanistan, PM Modi said.

I repeat 1.25 billion people of India will always be on your side, he added.

He used the occasion to talk again about the India, Afghanistan and Iran transit corridor deal - to develop the Chabahar port - and about the Salma Dam India has built in the Herat province.

"Salma Dam will renew not just the economy and agriculture of Afghanistan's Herat, but will build a strong pillar of support for Afghan's overall growth. And the Afghanistan and Iran transit corridor (deal) that we signed this year is another landmark in our partnership," Modi said.

The PM said that the inauguration of the restored Stor Palace is "an entirely different, yet in many ways more fundamental, dimension" of Indo-Afghan ties.

"I say this because it brings back to life a valuable landmark of Afghanistan's cultural heritage. To those who can't see beyond shadows of violence in Afghanistan, the restored Stor palace is a reminder of the glory of Afghanistan's traditions," the PM said.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, on his part, said that Kabul is ready to spare no effort in protecting peace, overcoming terror and extremism.

Ghani also thanked India for helping with the restoration of the Stor palace.

"I express my most sincere appreciation for the government of India and its people," the Afghan President said.

India has played a significant role in the reconstruction of the palace that's located on the grounds of the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Stor Palace, also known as Qasre-stor, was initially built as a one-story pavilion during the reign of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. It was expanded on at least two occasions in the 20th century.

In 1919, one of the rooms in the Palace was the setting for the signing of the Rawalpindi agreement, by which Afghanistan became an independent sovereign state.

Watch PM Modi's speech here.
Delhi: State authorities on Monday removed Omar Abdullah's nameplate from the government bungalow at Akbar Road, where his wife Payal is residing at the moment.

Police team arrived today at Payal Abdullah's residence after Delhi High Court ordered her on August 19 to vacate the bungalow.

She is the estranged wife of former Jammu and Kashmir CM Omar.

A squad from the J&K Resident Commissioner's office broke the outer gate of the bungalow and were reported to be taking out her belongings.

After asking her orally to "gracefully" vacate the official bungalow, the court had said that Payal and the estranged couple's two sons staying with her are "liable to be evicted forthwith", terming their entitlement to retain it as "wholly illegal".

Payal, who has been residing at the bungalow since 1999, had approached the High Court after the trial court on August 16 had asked her to move out of the house in Lutyen's zone.

"Will you gracefully evict or I should pass an order?" Justice Indermeet Kaur had asked Payal's counsel, who had categorically stated that the court should pass the order.

The judge had also orally observed that every person who retires from the office has to move out.

The judge also noted that Delhi Police will provide security to Payal and her children, who are 'Z' and 'Z plus' security protectees, during their stay in the capital.

The J&K government had opposed Payal's stay in the bungalow, saying it was faced with an extremely piquant situation as it does not have an appropriate accommodation to house the Chief Minister in Delhi befitting her position and security imperatives.

(With PTI inputs)
Delhi: China has warned that deployment of a special version of the BrahMos cruise missile in the Northeast would have 'negative influence' on stability along the border, as per a media report.

Chinese reaction comes weeks after the Indian government cleared the deployment of the missile.

The Cabinet committee on security, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had cleared the raising of a new regiment to be equipped with an advanced version of the BrahMos, earlier this month.

It is developed for mountain warfare at a cost of more than Rs 4,300 crore.

The new regiment is to be deployed in Arunachal Pradesh.

As per Hindustan Times, the official publication of Peoples Liberation Army, PLA Daily, has said that the deployment of the supersonic cruise missiles could lead to counter-measures by China.

India deploying supersonic missiles on the border has exceeded its own needs for self-defense and poses a serious threat to Chinas Tibet and Yunnan provinces, the commentary said.

Deploying BrahMos missiles is bound to increase competitiveness and confrontation in Sino-Indian relations and bring a negative influence to stability of the region, it added, as per the Daily.

Further, it was quoted as saying that the BrahMos missile could increase suddenness and effectivity of attacks, including crushing blows on time-sensitive targets like missile launchers and solid targets like command centres.

Moreover, the commentary by an expert from the PLA Navys engineering university also said that the missiles penetration capabilities poses a threat to Chinas border regions, but at the same time maintained that the BrahMos missiles range of 290 km cannot threaten Chinas deep zones.

BrahMos is a 290-km range supersonic land attack cruise missile.

The fire-and-forget missile has the capability to take on surface-based targets by flying a combined high-low trajectory and having a range of 290-km and a Mach 2.8 speed, is capable of being launched from land, sea, sub-sea and air against sea and land targets.

It is a joint venture between DRDO of India and NPOM of Russia.
New Delhi: The Islamic State (IS) terror group is a bigger threat to the country than the Pakistani militants, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which has arrested scores of terrorists in various raids against the terror network, has revealed.

"The sheer number of cases and recruitment attempts that have come to light in less than two years clearly show the level of threat we are facing.

Daesh has become the biggest terrorist organisation," the Times of India (TOI) quoted NIA DIG Alok Mittal as saying. In the rest past, the agency had arrested dozens of IS operatives and sympathisers in different parts of the country.

Mittal said, "The NIA has registered eight cases so far. Chargesheets have been filed in six of them, while the remaining two are under investigation."

Though there is no official confirmation regarding the number of youths radicalised by the terror network, but according to an estimate, the figure is in the range of 7,000 to 8,000.

Mittal, a 1993 batch IPS officer, was awarded the 'President's Police Medal' at the Independence Day celebrations in Delhi for his anti-Daesh efforts.

Around 50 people, like Mumbai businessman Ashfaque Ahmed (26) and his two cousins, have already left the country, and a few hundred are prepared to travel to Iraq and Syria, where the extremists control large swathes of territory.

Such recruits pose major security challenge as there are fears that they may carry out lone-wolf attacks on their return, the report said citing the officer. Some of the recent attacks in Europe have been blamed on people who had previously travelled to Syria.

"There is a high possibility of lone-wolf terror activity in the country. Recently, we arrested a Daesh operative from Kolkata, Abu Musa, who had planned to travel to Srinagar and stab foreign tourists," the report said quoting Mittal.

Indian security agencies were focused on Pakistan-based militant groups such LeT, Hizbul Mujahideen and Indian Mujahideen, but after the Kalyan engineering student Areeb Majeed's arrest in 2014, authorities started to seriously consider the threat from Daesh.

Majeed was radicalised online and travelled to Iraq to join the group. He later returned to India. Majid's arrest was our first success. He is currently facing trial, Mittal said.

"The internet, especially social media, provides the extremists a convenient platform to recruit youngsters. In all the eight cases we detected, the suspects were drawn to Daesh after becoming acquainted with the group's handlers on social media.

It's a challenge for all countries to monitor such activity. But we have had some success in this area and we continue to keep a close watch on the online chatter," he added.

Contrary to common belief that Daesh's activities in India have been restricted to drawing youngsters to its fold, the NIA has recovered arms and explosives in at least three cases, the report said.

"The sheer number of cases and recruitment attempts that have come to light in less than two years clearly show the level of threat we are facing, NIA officer.
Organ transplants may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to a new drug discovered by Chinese scientists. (Photo : Twitter)

China is expected to put more effort into research on animal-grown human tissues and organs for transplant once a proposed lifting of the ban on the technology is enacted in the United States.



According to Liu Changqiu, a research fellow on organ donation at the Shanghai Academy of Science's Institute of Law, once the ban is lifted, it will not be very long before China is able to catch up to the progress made by other countries in the field, the Global Times reported.



Advertisement

China's research on human tissues grown on animals, referred to as chimeras after the Greek mythological creature, has focused mainly on smaller and simpler tissues and organs like the skin, corneas, and cartilage. Progress on growing major organs like hearts and lungs is still a long way off due to the complexities of these that often lead to rejection by the recipient patient's body.



Liu added that there is also the risk of the transplanted tissue or organ carrying viruses or other disease-carrying pathogens could be transmitted from the animal where it was grown to the patient. He added that these concerns need to be addressed first before hospital ethics committees would be willing to allow clinical trials.



In 2015, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a moratorium on the funding of such research due to the above concerns, as well as due to questions on how the human cells inject into the animal for growing the transplant will function and how these will affect the animal itself.



However, an NIH presentation in November outlined the potential of the technology to provide animal models with human organs for styling organ development, as well as growing interest in the field. This was one of the factors that prompted the proposal to lift the ban.



Experts say that China will definitely welcome the lifting of the ban, as it will help in dealing with a growing number of organ donation cases. According to China Organ Transplant Response System head Wang Haibo, there were already 1,795 organ donation cases in the first half alone of 2016, Shanghai Daily reported.



Wang added that the country's annual transplant average already ranks first in Asia and third globally.



China is extensively revamping its organ donation system to meet the standards set by the World Health Organization. One significant step the country has undertaken is stopping the use of organs from executed prisoners, shifting to voluntary donations instead.



China is set to host an international conference on organ transplants later this year in Hong Kong.


New Delhi: The Election Commission on Monday announced that status review of political parties, national or of state level, will now be done every 10 years instead of the present five.

"Now, status of a political party -- national or state -- will be reviewed after a period of 10 years instead of five years, as used to be the case till now," an official told IANS.

The decision may be a major reprieve for political parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Nationalist Congress Party, and the CPI, which were facing the prospects of losing their national party status after their dismal performance at the general elections of 2014.

The announcement to this effect was made through an official notification issued here.

The Election Commission has amended Paragraph 6C of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968, to affect the change. It was last amended in 2011.
Nay Pyi Daw: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj arrived here today to hold talks with the top Myanmarese leadership, including State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, in pursuance of India's 'Act East Policy'.

The one-day trip by Swaraj, accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior Ministry of External Affairs officials, is the first high profile Indian visit after Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won a historic landslide election last year that finally brought an end to five decades of military rule.

She will call on President U Htin Kyaw, apart from meeting Nobel laureate and democracy icon Suu Kyi, who is the de facto leader.

Banned from becoming president by a junta-era Constitution, Suu Kyi has a strong control over the country's first civilian-led government.

The Constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president -- Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.

The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 per cent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.

Incidentally, Swaraj's visit comes just days after Suu Kyi made a high-profile trip to China.

The discussions between Swaraj and Suu Kyi are expected to focus on New Delhi's bilateral relations with Nay Pyi Daw, as well as plans for the upcoming BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit scheduled to be held in Goa.

Security issues concerning certain Myanmar-based militant groups operating in India's North East could also come up for discussion.

India and Myanmar share close relations with a robust development cooperation programme in areas such as agriculture, IT, human resource development, infrastructure development, culture among others.

The visit reaffirms India's commitment to heighten partnership with Myanmar in the areas of priority by the new government of Myanmar, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.
Srinagar: A day after a teenager was killed in clashes with the security forces, authorities decided to continue curfew in the entire Srinagar city on Monday.

"Curfew will continue in Srinagar without any relaxation today (Monday)," a police official said here.

Restrictions under Section 144 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPc) have also been imposed in Anantnag, Kulgam, Shopian, Pulwama, Pampore, Badgam, Sopore, Bandipora, Baramulla, Ganderbal, Kupwara, Handwara, Awantipora and Qaimoh towns on Monday to maintain law and order in Kashmir Valley.

Irfan Ahmad, 17, from Fateh Kadal area of old Srinagar city was killed during clashes with the security forces in Malarata area on Sunday evening.

Ahmad was hit in the chest with a tear smoke shell. According to doctors, he was brought dead in the hospital.

With the teenager's death, the toll in the ongoing unrest in the valley has risen to 68.

Separatists have already extended the ongoing protest shutdown till August 25.

The valley has been crippled by officially imposed curfew and separatist called protest shutdown since July 9, a day after the killing of top militant, Burhan Wani, in a gunfight with the security forces.

Due to the deteriorating law and order situation in Jammu and Kashmir and a general sense of insecurity, oil tanker owners association and truck owners association have decided not to carry the supplies of fuels and foods to the valley.

Authorities maintained that there was sufficient stock in the valley to last for at least two months without any replenishment.

The blockade of supplies from outside to the landlocked valley will hit the common Kashmiris hard unless the issue is resolved quickly.
Srinagar: The Border Security Force (BSF), which was taken off counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir in 2004, was today deployed in the summer capital here after a gap of 12 years.

BSF personnel were deployed in the commercial hub of Lal Chowk in the city and adjoining areas for law and order duties, a police official said.

Officials from the civil administration, BSF and police top brass refused to comment on the deployment of the force in the city.

This is for the first time since 2004 that BSF has been called for active duty in the city.

BSF, which conducted anti-militancy operations in Kashmir for nearly 13 years from 1991, was replaced in the city by CRPF in 2004.

The BSF troops were then moved to their primary duty of guarding the Line of Control and the international border.
New Delhi: The ongoing trouble in Kashmir should be "dealt with politically" and everything cannot be managed within judicial parameters, Supreme Court said on Monday.

The apex court also asked the Solicitor General to help activist lawyer and Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) leader Bhim Singh to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue.

"This issue has various dimensions and therefore should be dealt politically and moreover, everything cannot be managed within the judicial parameters," a bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur said.

The bench, which also comprised Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, referred to a meeting today between a delegation of the state's opposition parties led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked Singh to join the delegation.

When the senior lawyer said the "RSS-dictated" government would not invite him, the court, which asked Solicitor General (SG) Ranjit Kumar to facilitate Singh's meeting with Modi, was annoyed.

"Don't make a political statement here. You tell us whether you want to go and meet the political leadership or not," the bench said.

The SG said with regard to facilitating the meeting with the Prime Minister, he would "personally talk" to the Home Secretary.

In his plea, Singh, who sought various reliefs, also demanded imposition of Governor's Rule in Jammu and Kashmir.

The bench also asked Singh to file his response on the status report filed by the Centre on prevailing ground situation in the Valley.

At the outset, the Centre said the Jammu and Kashmir High Court was already seized of the matter and hence the plea, pending in the apex court, be disposed of.

The bench said the statements made by Bhim Singh may not be "relevant judicially" but they may be "relevant politically".

Earlier, the Centre, in its status report filed in the court on August 5, had said that the law and order situation in the Valley has improved considerably with incidents of violent protests having gone down from 201 on July 9 to 11 on August 3.

The Valley has been witnessing a spate of violent protests following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. The Centre, in its report, had said that in view of the

improved situation, curfew had been lifted from most parts of the Valley on July 30.

The Solicitor General, referring to the report, had said that curfew was in force only in certain areas of three districts in the Valley.

"Due to persistent efforts of the security forces/Jammu and Kashmir Police, the situation has shown remarkable improvement, with the number of incidents declining progressively since the outbreak of violent protests and clashes.

"Compared to 201 incidents on July 9, 2016, only 11 incidents were witnessed as on August 3, 2016," Kumar had said, adding that a total of 872 incidents of violence were reported mainly from south Kashmir and parts of central and north Kashmir.

He said that in these 872 incidents, 42 civilians and two security personnel were killed, while 2656 civilians and 3783 security personnel were injured.

Kumar said 28 government establishments were set ablaze and 49 such establishments were damaged. Due to the violent incidents, curfew was initially imposed in 10 districts out of 22 districts of the state.

He said the incidents of violence started after Wani and two other militants were killed by the security forces on July 8, leading to large-scale protests and law and order trouble in different parts of the Valley.

The apex court had earlier asked the Centre to file a status report detailing "ground realities" prevailing in Jammu and Kashmir after Wani's killing by security agencies.

Bhim Singh's petition had said that due to the use of pellet guns by the security forces, people were becoming blind and there was a shortage of medicines and medical facilities available to the citizens.

The plea had said that Governor's rule under section 92 of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir should be imposed and had sought a direction to the Governor to dissolve the Assembly, claiming it "has failed to discharge its duties and functions".
Delhi: A delegation of Opposition parties led by former Jammu and Kashhmir chief minister Omar Abdullah met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

The delegation, headed by working president of National Conference, also submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister and urged him to initiate a dialogue with all stake holders to bring normalcy in Kshmir.

The delegation also demanded an immediate ban on pellet gun  weapon used by the central forces to control mob and disperse them.

Delhi: Delegation of J&K opposition parties led by Omar Abdullah meet PM Modi on J&K situation pic.twitter.com/v9lEvK0kRk  ANI (@ANI_news) August 22, 2016

The delegation had on August 20 met President Pranab Mukherjee, requesting him to urge the Centre in finding a solution 'politically'.

The Opposition delegation while seeking the President's intervention had also submitted a memorandum and apprised him of the 'worsening' situation in the state.

Omar had said that the delegation had also requested the President to use his 'influence' on the state as well as the Centre "to stop the use of lethal force against civilians in the Valley".

"The failure of the Central government to acknowledge that the issue in Kashmir is largely of a political nature has worsened the already volatile situation," Omar had told reporters after an hour-long meeting with the President, as per PTI.

"We have requested the President to impress upon the central government to initiate a credible and meaningful process of political dialogue without any further delay involving all stakeholders to address the political issue in the state," the NC leader had said.

The delegation had also comprised CPI-M MLA M Y Tarigami, Congress MLAs led by its PCC Chief GA Mir and independent MLA Hakeem Yaseen.

Blaming Mehbooba Mufti-headed PDP-BJP government for having failed on all fronts to normalise the situation, Omar had added that the CM was directly responsible for the deteriorating situation.

The former CM, who was also accompanied by senior leaders of NC including provincial presidents of his party Nasir Wani and Davinder Rana, Ali Mohammed Sagar and AR Rather, had said, "The fire that has been raging in Kashmir Valley has already started spreading across Peer Panjal and Chenab Valley in Jammu region and Kargil area."

(With PTI inputs)
Jammu: The All Jammu and Kashmir Oil Tankers Association on Monday called off their strike after the government accepted their demands, and would resume the supply for the Jammu region from today.

"The government has agreed to accept our two demands of providing compensation to the injured truck drivers and for the damaged tankers, hence we have decided to call off our indefinite strike from today," President of the association, Anan Sharma said.

He said the services have been resumed for Jammu region only and "the decision to restore services for Kashmir and Ladakh would be taken only after the government assures us to provide security to our drivers and vehicles".

"Large number of our vehicles were damaged and drivers and cleaners were injured by stone pelting mob in various parts of the Kashmir Valley when they were transporting fuel.

Though we faced no problems in Ladakh, the vehicles going to Ladakh have to travel from Kashmir Valley," Sharma said.

After several rounds of meetings with the government representatives which failed yesterday, it accepted their demand today.

"Yesterday, the government agreed to?provide compensation to the injured drivers and the damaged trucks but there was nothing in writing, today they have agreed to give it in writing so we have called off the strike," he said.

Deputy Commissioner Jammu, Simrandeep Singh said, the tankers' strike has been called off in Jammu and the petrol pumps will start getting supply in next two hours.

Regarding restoration of supplies to Kashmir and Ladakh, he said it too will follow within next 24 hours as some demands are being worked upon.

The life across Jammu region was crippled after the petrol pumps ran dry when the supply was stopped following the strike by the Oil Tankers Association on Saturday.

Long queues were seen outside petrol pumps yesterday as people were desperate to get their vehicles refilled.
Jammu: With the opposition National Conference urging Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address the prevailing unrest in Kashmir at the earliest, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today said a handful of people against peace were inciting the youth to brew violence in the valley for their vested interests.

Mehbooba said the Kashmiris want freedom from such forces, who are troublemakers and creating disturbances, disrupting peace.

"Kashmiris are not stone-pelters. They are peace loving, they want to open their shops, they want to send their wards to school," she said.

Urging the Centre not to see the people of Kashmir with the same eye, Mehbooba said: "There are only five percent of people, who are disturbing peace and creating law and order situation in the valley. But 95 percent are innocent people and they want to live in peace, but are suffering due to a section of selfish creatures.

"Stating that violence brings only destruction and nothing else, Mehbooba said, "Guns went into Afghanistan, Syria and Russia. Was anything achieved there by using those guns? Violence brings only destruction and nothing else.

"The Chief Minister, who was speaking after inaugurating a sewage treatment plant here, said these elements also tried to raise the issues of separate colonies for retired soldiers and Kashmiri Pandits but failed miserably in their attempts.

The Kashmir Valley has been on the boil since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday acknowledged that "only development can't resolve the problem in Jammu and Kashmir", said former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who led a delegation of opposition parties from the state to meet central leaders in the national capital.

"The Prime Minister has acknowledged that development alone can't resolve the problem in the state," Abdullah told the media after the meeeting.

As curfew continued for the 45th day in Kashmir, the delegation told the Prime Minister that a "political solution" would have to be found to the "political issue" in the state.

"We stressed on the fact that the issue in Jammu and Kashmir is a political issue. If we don't find a political solution to this, then every time we'll repeat the same mistakes.

The delegation warned that the continuing law and order problem and unrest in the state will only further alienate the people.

"We have told the Prime Minister that it is required to understand the problem that has led to the current situation in Jammu and Kashmir and find a right solution to the issue," Abdullah said.

The delegation, he said had come with the "hope that our voices will be heard. We have not come here with any complaints, we have come here with a request. The message with which we've come here, if it is executed, it will not only benefit the state of Jammu and Kashmir, but the country as a whole".

The delegation also submitted to the Prime Minister a memorandum that demanded an immediate ban on the use of pellet guns in the troubled state.

The meeting came a day after the delegation met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi here on Sunday to discuss ways to contain the prevailing unrest in Kashmir Valley.

The Valley has been crippled by a curfew and protests called by separatists since July 9, a day after the killing of a top militant, Burhan Wani, in a gunfight with the security forces.

At least 68 people have died in clashes with the security forces.

With IANS inputs
New Delhi: The Congress on Monday questioned the "contradictory policy" of the government on Jammu and Kashmir and said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley were "not on the same page" on the sensitive issue.

The Congress also said that the Prime Minister is talking about dialogue, "but with whom does he want to have a dialogue". It suggested a "coherant approach" towards the issue of Jammu and Kashmir.

"The Finance Minister should explain the contradiction between what he is saying and what the Prime Minister is saying. The essence of the Finance Minister's statement was that there is no political problem in Jammu and Kashmir. It is a developmental problem. Development is the anti-dote to the 45 days of curfew which has been prevailing in the Valley," Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari told reporters.

"The Prime Minister, on the other hand, for two years has been using three words Insaniyat, Jamooriyat, Kashmiriyat, which we do not think that he himself understands the essence of these concepts. This is mere empty rhetoric of the Prime Minister," said Tewari.

"Today, he talks about dialouge. So, if the Prime Minister is talking about a dialogue, but the dialogue is going to be with whom? So, in essence the PM and the finance minister are not on the same page," added Tewari.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday during a meet with a delegation of opposition parties from Jammu and Kashmir "acknowledged that only development can't resolve the problem in Jammu and Kashmir".


A satellite photo from Airbus Defence and Space shows the hull of CV-17 in dry dock at Dalian. (Photo : Airbus Defence and Space)

China's second aircraft carrier, and the first completely made in China, might become operational by 2020 but will still feature a ski ramp runway that limits combat loads for its Shenyang J-15 stealth jets while also preventing the use of turboprop aircraft.



The ship, identified as CV-17 by the West, is nearing completion at the Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Company in Liaoning that also refurbished the Liaoning (CV-16), China's first aircraft carrier. Liaoning was originally laid down as the Admiral Kuznetsov-class multirole aircraft carrier Riga for the Soviet Navy and was renamed Varyag in 1990. China bought the stripped-down hulk of the Varyag in 1998 and towed it to the Dalian shipyard.



Advertisement

Satellite photographs from an Airbus Defense and Space satellite reveal most major construction on CV-17 is complete. This ship will be the first of the Type 001A class. China plans to build at least three carriers of this class before transitioning to a new class featuring the more efficient catapult launch system used on all 10 Nimitz-class supercarriers of the U.S. Navy.



The satellite photos show the flight deck hasn't yet been installed. The hull, however, is mostly complete. Just one aircraft elevator, superstructure and some deck sections are to be added.



The new carrier might displace 70,000 tons compared to the 100,000 tons for the U.S. Navy Nimitz-class.



It will also carry far fewer aircraft than the Nimitz-class. CV-17 might carry some 48 aircraft including 36 of the troubled Shenyang J-15 multi-role fighters and 12 Changhe Z-18 medium transport helicopters or the Harbin Z-9 utility helicopters.



In comparison, the Nimitz-class can carry up to 90 fixed wing and rotary aircraft.



A weak point of CV-17 is its ski jump launch system. Only jet powered planes such as the J-15 can develop sufficient speed to launch from them. The same can't be said for turboprop aircraft. The ski ramp suggests China hasn't yet mastered the catapult system.



The absence of airborne early warning and cargo turboprop aircraft aboard the CV-17 increases the danger to the carrier from far distant threats.


Jammu: Two persons were arrested and large quantity of narcotic capsules and injections were recovered from their possession here today, a police officer said.

Wipan Balgotra and Ajay Verma were arrested near the railway station here and 4,280 intoxicative capsules and 11 injections were recovered from their possession, the officer said.

A case has been registered and investigations initiated, he said.

Meanwhile in another incident a truck driver identified as Gurdeep Singh, a resident of Punjab, was arrested in Samba and 1.5 kg of poppy straw was recovered from his possession, the officer said.

He said that the accused has been booked under various sections of the NDPS act.
Mumbai: Amid debate over incidents of cow vigilantism in Gujarat and other parts of the country is fresh, a 24-year-old man was allegedly stopped and questioned by some men in Mumbai.

The people who questioned him suspected that the leather bag he was carrying was made of cowhide.

What happened actually?

The incident took place in suburban Andheri on Friday. The man shared his experience on social media and it went viral.

According to the complainant Barun Kashyap, who works as a creative director, he was travelling to his workplace in an autorickshaw when the driver became curious about his identity.

"He was quite curious and intrigued by my long hair and nose piercing right from the beginning and asked me about my native place. He stopped at a traffic signal and started looking at my leather bag," Kashyap, a native of Assam, said in his Facebook post.

The autorickshaw driver then touched the bag and concluded that it was made of cowhide.

Kashyap told him the bag was made of camel leather and he had bought it from Pushkar.

"Not satisfied with the reply, the auto-driver moved forward and stopped the auto near a small temple on the way to my office. Before I could say anything, I saw the driver signalling at three men sitting in front of a temple, smoking," Barun Kashyap said.

"The three men then approached the auto and started conversing in Marathi, which I could not decipher. They asked me to step out of the auto which I refused. When I was busy protesting, one of the men came to the other side of auto and started checking my bag."

"One of them asked my full name. He looked at the other two and said something in Marathi out of which I could only understand the word 'Brahmin'. Maybe hearing Kashyap, they thought I am a Brahmin and left the spot," he said.

Kashyap said he got off the three-wheeler at the next traffic signal and noted the auto number. He said he also asked the driver his phone number, "which he (driver) proudly gave to me saying 'aaj toh bach gaye'."

Kashyap said he then approached DN Nagar Police Station on Saturday and filed a complaint against the suspected cow vigilantes (driver and three others).

No FIR; probe on

A senior police official of D N Nagar Police Station said, "Since no physical harm was done to the complainant, we have registered a non cognisable offence. Further investigations into the matter are on."

"All such actions will be dealt with strictly as per the law," Mumbai police's spokesperson, DCP Ashok Dudhe said.

"We have started an enquiry to identify those involved and will take up investigation immediately after getting an approval of the metropolitan magistrate," he added.
Itanagar: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ratnaswer Moran's son has been kidnapped allegedly by suspected United Liberation Front of Assam -Independent militants in Arunachal Pradesh, media report said.

Kuldeep Moran, son of Tinsukia district panchayat vice-president Ratneshwar Moran, was abducted by suspected ULFA militants from Nampong area of Arunachal Pradesh on August 1.

Shockingly, in its first any instance, the banned outfit today released a video where the abducted minister's son is seen appealing for his release.

"I have been abducted by ULFA-I and they are taking me to different places blindfolded," said the youth who is seen kneeling down in the video. "I have become very weak and my health has also deteriorated. I am afraid I might die in cross-firing."

A day after Kuldeep was abducted, his father received a call from an unknown person, claiming to be the abductor as he demanded a ransom of Rs 1 crore in exchange of his son's release.

Meanwhile, ULFA general secretary has denied that the banned outfit is involved in the abduction. "I doubt if ULFA is behind the abduction of BJP leader's son," he told News18.
Coimbatore: At least 55 girl students of Government Polytechnic College here were hospitalised following complaints of nausea and diarrhoea after they had food from the hostel, police said.

Some 25 students, staying in the college hostel, had consumed rice yesterday and they complained of nausea and diarrhoea and were immediately taken to government hospital late last night.

Another 30 students were taken to hospital with similar symptoms this morning and all the students were undergoing treatment, they said.

The hospital dean Edwin Joe said the students were admitted after they complained of nausea and diarrhoea and their condition was out of danger.

The samples of the food and drinking water the students had consumed were sent for testing, the official said.

District Collector T N Hariharan visited the students at the hospital and inquired about their health condition with the authorities.
Hyderabad: At least ten persons were killed and 18 injured when a bus fell into a canal in Telangana's Khammam district early on Monday, police said.

The accident occurred near Nayakangudem when the bus lost control and fell off a bridge on Nagarjunasagar canal.

The bus of a private travel company was on its way from Hyderabad to Kakinada in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.

According to the police, seven persons were killed on the spot while three died in the hospital. All the injured were admitted to government-run hospital in Khammam.

The survivors told the police that the negligence by the driver led to the accident.

According to them, the driver was running the vehicle at a high speed and applied sudden brake on reaching the bridge. The bus overturned and fell into the canal.

There were 31 passengers aboard the bus which had left Hyderabad around 11.30 p.m. on Sunday.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N. Chandrababu Naidu expressed shock over the accident.

Rao directed officials to ensure best possible treatment to the injured.
Delhi: The ruling Samajwadi Party has a slight edge in the high-stakes Uttar Pradesh 2017 Assembly elections, marginally ahead of the BJP, as per an opinion poll.

On the other hand, the Congress is nowhere on the radar of the voters.

Following are some of the key findings of the ABP News-Lokniti, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) poll:

- 30 percent of the voters surveyed from July 23rd through August 7th said they would vote for the SP if elections were held right now.

- BJP along with its two small allies, Apna Dal (Anupriya Patel faction) and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, is the choice of 27 percent of the voters.

- It is followed by the BSP at 26 percent.

- The Congress party is nowhere in the race currently with a mere 5 percent voters opting for it.

- SP is likely to win between 141-151 seats in the 403-member Assembly.

- BJP is likely to fetch 124-134 seats, BSP 103-113, Congress 8-14 and Others in the fray 6-12.

- Compared to 2012 polls, the BJP is the biggest gainer in terms of votes with an 11 percentage point swing towards it.

- But compared with the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, BJP is down by 16 points.

- SP is doing much better among Yadav and Muslim communities with the 68 percent of the former and 62 percent of the latter indicating support for at present.

- BJP is drawing most of its support from upper castes and lower OBCs.

- BJP is ahead of others in the Western and Eastern parts of UP.

- Samajwadi Party is doing well in the Awadh and Rohilkhand regions.

- SP is doing much better in rural areas (78 percent of Uttar Pradesh is rural) than in urban parts of UP.

- While 32 percent of rural respondents expressed their support for the ruling party, only 24 percent of urban voters did the same.

- BSP is getting greater support in towns and cities (29 percent) than in villages (25 percent).

- Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati were the preference of 24 percent voters each (in response to an open ended question that provided no specific names).

- 4 percent of the respondents said they wanted to see SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav as CM and 2 percent took his cousin Ram Gopal Yadavs name for the top job.

- For BJP, Rajnath Singh was CM choice of 7 percent respondents, Adityanath of 5 percent, Varun Gandhi of 3 percent and PM Narendra Modi of 2 percent.

- 68 percent of the voters expressed their satisfaction (full and somewhat) with PM Modi's work.

- Satisfaction with the NDA government is quite high at 63 percent.

- 52 percent were of the opinion that PM Modi has failed to keep his electoral promise of ushering in achhe din (good days).

- As per the survey, price rise is the second most important issue for the electorate of UP (18 percent) after development (33 percent) at this juncture. More voters blame PM Modis government (29 percent) for it than they blame Akhilesh Yadavs (12 percent).

- 61 percent of the voters expressed satisfaction with Akhilesh Yadav's performance as CM over the last four years and 60 percent were satisfied with the work done by the government he leads.

- On governance, 29 percent of the respondents said BSP, 25 percent chose BJP and 24 opted for SP.

- On the issue of maintaining law and order, 34 percent chose BSP as opposed to 23 and 21 percent who said BJP and SP respectively.

- When asked to choose between the present SP government and the previous BSP government on the basis of performance, a slightly greater proportion chose Mayawatis rule to Akhilesh Yadavs rule, 34:31.

- On Sheila Dikshit as Congress' CM candidate, 17 percent said it did not make a difference to them and another 40 percent did not express any opinion.

(The survey was conducted in the immediate aftermath of the Una flogging incident and the Dayashankar Singh controversy).
Aligarh: A 14-year-old Dalit girl was allegedly raped by two youths in Atrauli town here, police said today.

Additional Superintendent of Police Brijesh Singh said a woman who stayed in a neighbouring house lured the victim on some pretext and locked her inside her house.

Two youths, identified as Sailesh Singh and Lokesh, who are outsiders, were already inside the house when the girl entered.

The victim, sensing that something was wrong tried to escape, but her attempt was foiled with the help of the woman.

She succeeded in raising an alarm and neighbours rushed in to release her from the clutches of the captors, police said.

All three have been arrested, police said.

As news of the rape incident spread, members of the Valmiki community staged a protest at the Atrauli Police Station, police added.

Several political leaders, including Rajveer Singh, MP from Etah also rushed to the scene of the crime and assured the victim's family of prompt action against the culprits.
Tehran: Iran's defence minister criticised Russia today for having "kind of show-off and ungentlemanly" attitude for publicising that it used an Iranian air base to launch airstrikes on Syria, the first sign of government dissent over the unprecedented stationing of foreign troops in the Islamic Republic.

The comments by General Hossein Dehghan come after he chastised parliament this weekend for asking questions about Russia using the Shahid Nojeh Air Base to refuel its bombers striking Syria.

His remarks today, reported by state television, signal officials beginning to recognise how unpopular the decision could be with the public.

There was no immediate response from Moscow.

Last week, Russia announced it used the airfield some 50 kilometres north of the Iranian city of Hamedan. Iranian officials only confirmed Russia's presence a day later.

Today, state TV quoted Dehghan as saying that Russia "will use the base for a very short and fixed span, corresponding (to) operation in Syria." So far, Russia has carried out three days' worth of strikes from the base.

Responding to a question about why Iran didn't initially announce Russia's presence at the airfield, Dehghan appeared prickly on the state TV broadcast.

"Russians are interested to show they are a superpower to guarantee their share in political future of Syria and, of course, there has been a kind of show-off and ungentlemanly (attitude) in this field," he said.

His remarks also suggest Russia and Iran initially agreed to keep Moscow's use of the air base quiet. Its announcement likely will force a response from Iran's Sunni-ruled Mideast neighbours, which host American military personnel.

For Iran, allowing Russia to launch strikes from inside the country is likely to prove unpopular. Many still remember how Russia, alongside Britain, invaded and occupied Iran during World War II to secure oil fields and Allied supply lines. But while Britain withdrew, Russia refused to leave, sparking the first international rebuke by the nascent United Nations Security Council in 1946.

Analysts have suggested Russia potentially leveraged Iran into allowing it to use the airfield over either economic or military interests, such as Tehran wanting to purchase Sukhoi-30 fighter jets or its deployment of Russian S-300 air defence missile systems.

Russia initially held off on supplying the missile system to Tehran amid negotiations over Iran's contested nuclear program.
Nairobi: US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Monday for the deployment of a 4,000-strong "protection force" to bolster the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.

"There is absolutely no question that we need to move forward with the deployment of the regional protection force authorised by the UN Security Council,"

Kerry said after meeting with five regional foreign ministers in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed urged a speedy deployment. "When should it be there? Sooner rather than later," she said.

In the wake of fresh fighting in the South Sudanese capital Juba last month, Kenya offered to provide troops for a new force, approved by the Security Council on August 12, alongside Ethiopia and Rwanda.

The 4,000 new troops will join 12,000 already deployed as part of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).

Mohamed said a "gradual deployment" would allow troops to reach Juba, the capital of the world`s newest nation, more quickly.

"Any number of soldiers that goes in in the name of a protection force would be welcome and would open the door to everything else," she said.

Kerry said the new force would only seek to improve security in Juba and allow for the implementation of a peace deal signed a year ago.

"This is not an intervention force, it is a protection force, with a very clear mandate to protect people, to ensure access, freedom of movement and to be free from ambush or attack of any sort," he said.
Nairobi: US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Monday for the deployment of a 4,000-strong "protection force" to bolster the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.

"There is absolutely no question that we need to move forward with the deployment of the regional protection force authorised by the UN Security Council," Kerry said after meeting with five regional foreign ministers in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
The Jason series of US/European satellites can measure the height of the ocean surface. (Photo : NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The world's average surface temperature will increase up to 0.28 C (0.5 F) in 2016 compared to 2014 based on the height of sea level rise in the Pacific Ocean, predicts a new study.



The study by University of Arizona geoscientists discovered the height of sea level rise in the Pacific Ocean triggered by global warming can be used to estimate future global surface temperatures. It said the average global surface temperature increased by 0.18 C (0.32 F) in 2015.



Advertisement

"Our prediction is through the end of 2016," said first author Cheryl Peyser. "The prediction is looking on target so far."



Scientists knew that both the rate at which global surface temperature is rising and sea level in the western Pacific varied but had not connected the two phenomena, said Peyser, a UA doctoral candidate in geosciences.



"We're using sea level in a different way by using the pattern of sea level changes in the Pacific to look at global surface temperatures -- and this hasn't been done before."



Peyser and her colleagues used measurements of sea level changes taken by NASA/NOAA/European satellites starting 1993.



Using sea surface height rather than sea surface temperatures gives a more accurate reflection of the heat stored in the entire water column, said co-author Jianjun Yin, a UA associate professor of geosciences.



"We are the first to use sea level observations to quantify the global surface temperature variability," said Yin.



The team found when sea level in the western Pacific rises more than average -- as it did from 1998 to 2012 -- the rise in global surface temperatures slows.



In contrast, when sea level drops in the western Pacific but increases in the eastern Pacific as it did in 2015, global surface temperatures increase because the heat stored in the ocean is released, Yin said.



From 1998 to 2012, the rate at which the global surface temperature increased slowed down -- a phenomenon dubbed "the global warming hiatus." During the same time period, sea level in the western tropical Pacific Ocean increased four times faster than the average global sea level rise.



Yin wondered if the two phenomena -- sea level and global surface temperature -- were related and asked Peyser, his graduate student, to investigate.



To figure out if there was a connection, Peyser used state-of-the-art climate models that show what the climate system would do in the absence of global warming.



The models showed that changes in sea level in the western Pacific were correlated with changes in global surface temperature. Verifying the correlation allowed researchers to calculate the numerical relationship between amount of tilt and global surface temperature.



Once the researchers had the correlation, they used actual Pacific sea level data from satellites to calculate the Pacific Ocean's contribution to global surface temperature.



Yin was surprised to find the Pacific Ocean plays such an important role in the global surface temperature.



"Our research shows that the internal variability of the global climate system can conceal anthropogenic global warming, and at other times the internal variability of the system can enhance anthropogenic warming."



The next step, he said, is figuring out the mechanisms that allow the Pacific to change the global surface temperature so quickly.



The paper by Peyser, Yin, Felix Landerer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and Julia Cole, a UA professor of geosciences, titled, "Pacific Sea Level Rise Patterns and Global Surface Temperature Variability," is published online in Geophysical Research Letters.


Oslo: The Philippine government and Maoist-led guerrillas opened peace talks in Oslo on Monday to try and end nearly five decades of conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people.

Both sides, who agreed a truce over the weekend, sat facing each other in the Holmenkollen Park Hotel`s "Nobel" room, named after the Nobel Peace Prize, with photographs of former winners including the Dalai Lama on the walls.

"This is a conflict that has been lasting for far too long," Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende told the meeting, saying there now seemed to be a "historic momentum" building to end the conflict.

"I`m really crossing my fingers," for progress, he told the parties, each represented by six negotiators.

Talks brokered by Norway between the government and the Maoist-led rebels` National Democratic Front stalled in 2012 over the government`s refusal to free communist leaders who had been in jail for decades.

Both sides declared a truce at the weekend to pave the way for the week-long talks in Oslo. Last week, Manila also freed 17 captured communist guerrilla leaders in the Philippines so they could attend the talks in Norway.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had previously ended a unilateral truce with the communist New People`s Army late last month as rebels did not respond to a deadline to reciprocate the government`s truce.

The 3,000-strong New People`s Army, the armed wing of the communist party, operates mainly in the eastern and southern regions of the country.
Seoul: South Korean and US forces kicked off their joint annual war game on Monday despite strong a backlash from North Korea.

Operation Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) will run till September 2, Xinhua news agency quoted Combined Forces Command as saying.

The computer-assisted simulation exercise will mobilise about 25,000 US troops, including 2,500 reinforcements from the US mainland and the US Pacific Command, while some 50,000 forces from South Korean will join the military exercise.

The combined forces will apply Operation Plan 5015 (Oplan) to this year`s UFG exercise.

The Oplan 5015 is a wartime joint defence scenario signed in June last year between Seoul and Washington to preemptively destroy the Pyonyang`s nuclear and missile bases in times of military conflicts.

All military communications lines between Seoul and Pyongyang have been shut after North Korea`s nuclear detonation in January and its launch of long-range rocket in February which was seen as a disguised test of ballistic missile technology.

North Korea slammed the UFG exercises, saying that the drill was "an outrageous provocation for a nuclear war against the North aimed to encroach upon the dignity and sovereignty of the country and infringe on the vital rights of its people".

Seoul`s unification ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said it was very regrettable for North Korea to distort and denounce the "annually-held defensive" exercise, urging Pyongyang to make a right choice by stopping nuclear and missile developments and avoiding provocative acts.
Alpes-Maritimes: A French administrative tribunal on Monday upheld a burkini ban decided by a Riviera resort which was one of a growing number of towns to outlaw the body-concealing Islamic swimsuit.

The Nice tribunal rejected an appeal by two human rights groups, ruling that the ban in Villeneuve-Loubet was "necessary, appropriate and proportionate" to prevent public disorder after a succession of jihadists attacks in France, including one in Nice on July 14.

The burkini was "liable to offend the religious convictions or (religious) non-convictions of other users of the beach," and "be felt as a defiance or a provocation exacerbating tensions felt by" the community, it added.

Villeneuve-Loubet, just west of Nice, was among the first French towns to ban the burkini, triggering a fierce debate in France and elsewhere about the highly-contentious issue.

So far 15 towns in the southeast, including Nice itself, have already banned the burkini including nearby film festival host city Cannes, where three women were each fined 38 euros ($43) under the ban at the weekend.

The Human Rights League (LDH), which brought the appeal with the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), announced it would appeal the decision to the Conseil d`Etat, France`s highest administrative jurisdiction.

The Council "should give its ruling within (a couple of weeks) and definitively fix the matter, legally," LDH lawyer Patrice Spinosi told AFP.

"The administrative tribunal rejected our request. It`s a decision along the way and it`s not really a surprise," he added, noting that the same tribunal earlier this month upheld a burkini ban by Cannes, the first French town to impose one.
Columbia: Donald Trump on Monday demanded that Hillary Clinton shut down the charitable foundation run by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, branding it a "corrupt enterprise."

"The Clintons have spent decades as insiders lining their own pockets and taking care of donors instead of the American people," the Republican presidential candidate said in a statement.

"It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history," Trump said, blasting the charity, which has raised some two billion dollars over the years.

Speaking Monday on Fox News, Trump said the foundation had received financial contributions from various countries "that discriminated against women and gays and everybody else."

That remark was an apparent allusion to various nations seen as having checkered histories on human rights, Saudi Arabia among them, that made generous donations to the foundation while Clinton served as President Barack Obama`s secretary of state between 2009 and 2013.

"I mean, that money -- it should be given back. they should not take that money," Trump told Fox.

The Clinton Foundation, created by the former president in 2001 after his departure from the White House, disburses funds domestically and overseas, handing out some 218 million dollars in 2014.

But questions have been raised about possible conflicts of interest while Clinton, currently the Democratic presidential nominee, worked as a public servant in the Obama administration.

A firewall was supposed to have been in place to ensure that the foundation`s work remained completely separate from Hillary Clinton`s role as head of US diplomacy, but critics said that that barrier has been permeable at best.

Concerns were raised anew after emails surfaced recently showing that a close aide to Bill Clinton contacted two senior aides of Hillary Clinton`s at the State Department, seeking their assistance in helping a donor -- Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury -- secure a meeting with a US diplomat in Lebanon.

Bill Clinton sought to tamp down the controversy last week, announcing that, if his wife is elected president in November, he would no longer accept foreign or corporate donations, and would step away from the board of the foundation.

Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton`s presidential campaign manager, told CNN on Sunday that the additional safeguards were "unprecedented... in terms of disclosure and limits."

Mook also urged the public to keep in mind the "important, lifesaving work" that it has done over the years.

"Over 10 million people around the world get important AIDS medication, lifesaving AIDS and HIV medication because of the foundation," Mook said, adding that "the foundation has reduced the cost of malaria drugs by 90 percent."
Ankara: Turkey on Monday went back on claims that a child bomber linked to Islamic State (IS) jihadists carried out a deadly suicide bombing close to Syria, saying it had no clue who was behind the attack.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Ankara could not confirm who was the perpetrator of the attack on a Kurdish wedding in the city of Gaziantep which left 54 dead, apparently contradicting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who had said it was a child bomber acting on IS orders.

"We do not have a clue about who the perpetrators behind the attack were. Early information on who did the attack, in what organisation`s name, is unfortunately not right," Yildirim told reporters in Ankara.

His comments were in stark contract with those by Erdogan who said on Sunday that the bomber was a child aged between 12-14 acting on orders of IS jihadists.

Yildirim described as "rumours" whether the attack was conducted by a child or an adult, while insisting security agencies would continue their work to find out who was responsible.

"Those who were behind the attack will be revealed, there is no doubt about this."

The Hurriyet daily said DNA tests were under way to ascertain the bomber`s identity, nationality and gender.Earlier Turkish press reports said security forces believed the attack had been timed as retaliation by jihadists for offensives both by Kurdish militias and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition forces against IS in Syria.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, hundreds of rebel fighters were preparing inside Turkish territory to launch an offensive on the IS-held Syrian town of Jarablus.

Without explicitly confirming the rebel offensive, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey backed anyone fighting against IS and would itself fight the group "to the end".

"Our border must be completely cleansed from Daesh," he said in televised remarks, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.

CNN-Turk and NTV channels later reported that Turkish armed forces launched artillery strikes on separate targets of IS jihadists and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Kurdish militia in northern Syria.

Turkish army howitzers stationed inside Turkey fired on IS targets in the town of Jarablus and PYD targets around the area of Manbij, the reports said.Media said the majority of those killed were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18.

The death toll rose to 54 after three more died in hospital in the early morning, the Dogan news agency reported.

Sixty-six people were still in hospital, 14 of them in a serious condition. Television pictures showed fire brigade workers hosing down the area of the attack with water in a clean-up.

The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples` Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas said in a statement that "all of those killed were Kurds".

The bride and groom -- a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast -- were rushed to hospital but not seriously wounded.

The attack followed a string of strikes blamed on IS and Kurdish militants in recent months but if IS launched the attack, it would be the first significant jihadist action in Turkey since a failed July 15 coup.

Hurriyet said the type of bomb used -- stuffed with 2-3 centimetre shards of iron and detonated with C-4 explosives -- was similar to that used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on IS in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station last year.

The authorities were also looking for two individuals said to have accompanied the suspected suicide bomber into the wedding party but who then left the scene.

All 44 victims identified so far were laid to rest in harrowing ceremonies in Gaziantep on Sunday, with relatives throwing themselves on the coffins in grief, an AFP correspondent said.

The hillside graveyard was pock-marked before the ceremony with the holes of dozens of freshly dug graves for the victims.

One mother, Emine Ayhan, lost four of her five children in the bombing while her husband is in intensive care, the Yeni Safak daily said.

According to the list of victims in Turkish media, the youngest -- named as Gurbet Akcan and Muhammet Yagiz -- were both aged four.
Diyarkabir, Turkey: One soldier was killed and three police officers were wounded in a clash with Kurdish militants in southeastern Turkey on Monday, security sources said, as a spike in violence rocks the restive region.

A suicide bomber, as young as 12, late on Saturday blew him or herself up at a wedding party in the city of Gaziantep, killing 51 ethnic Kurds in an attack President Tayyip Erdogan said was carried out by Islamic State.

That attack was the deadliest in a series of bombings in Turkey this year blamed on Islamic State and their rivals, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an outlawed militant group seeking greater autonomy for Turkey`s 15 million Kurds.

NATO member Turkey is also roiling with the aftermath of a failed coup on July 15 that killed an estimated 340 people, including around 100 of the rogue soldiers.

A female PKK guerrilla was also killed in the clash, which erupted at dawn near security outposts by the town of Nazimiye in Tunceli province, 500 km (310 miles) northeast of Gaziantep, the security sources said.

Authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew on Nazimiye as security forces, backed by attack helicopters, sealed the area and sent in reinforcements, they said.

On Sunday, the PKK targeted a military vehicle in Viransehir in Sanliurfa province, killing one soldier and wounding four, security sources said. The PKK took responsibility for a car bomb attack on Thursday the in eastern city of Elazig, killing three and wounding hundreds.

The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984, and more than 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, have died. It has close ties to the Syrian Kurdish YPG, which is battling Islamic State in northern Syria and is backed by the United States, a Turkey ally.
Washington: A US federal judge in Texas blocked the Obama administration from enforcing new actions that were intended to expand restroom access for transgender students across the nation.

The order came as many of the nation`s public schools were preparing to begin the new academic year, and means they might not face federal sanctions if they choose to do nothing different to accommodate the restroom and locker room choices of transgender students, NBC news reported on Monday.

Thirteen states sued the federal government after the Education and Justice Departments sent a letter to schools nationwide in May, informing them that they honour the bathroom choices of transgender students and could risk losing federal education funds if they failed to do so.

Judge Reed O`Connor of Texas said the federal government failed to seek public comment first before issuing the letter.

The Obama administration argued that no such notice was necessary, because the letter was simply informing schools what courts and federal agencies had already determined.

The letter was not merely advisory, because schools "jeopardise their federal educational funding by choosing not to comply," O`Connor said.

O`Connor also said the federal law that bars public schools from discriminating on the basis of sex does not apply to transgender students. When the law was passed, "the plain meaning of the term sex," he wrote, "meant the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth."

The federal government is almost certain to appeal, especially because the judge said his order applies nationwide.

According to NBC news, the Justice Department had argued that such an order would improperly impose one court`s view on the many other courts wresting with the same issue "and on the many other states that have opted not to join this lawsuit, thereby preventing fuller development of the law on these important questions."

"The department is disappointed in the court`s decision, and we are reviewing our options," said Dena Iverson, a Justice Department spokeswoman.

Civil rights groups condemned the order.

Sarah Warbelow, Legal Director of the Human Rights Campaign, said it "puts thousands of transgender students at even greater risk of marginalisation, harassment, and discrimination as they return to school this fall."
Seoul: The United States and South Korea kicked off annual military exercises on Monday, prompting warnings of retaliation from the North, as already-heightened tension on the peninsula has been inflamed by the defection of a Pyongyang diplomat.

North Korea has become further isolated after a January nuclear test, its fourth, and the launch of a long-range rocket in February brought tightened UN Security Council sanctions that Pyongyang defied with several ballistic missile launches.

About 25,000 US troops are joining in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, which runs until Sept 2. The US-led UN Command Military Armistice Commission said it notified the North Korean army the exercises were "non-provocative" in nature.

The North calls the exercises preparations for invasion, and early on Monday threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike. North Korea frequently makes such threats.

"From this moment, the first-strike combined units of the Korean People`s Army keep themselves fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved in Ulji Freedom Guardian," a KPA spokesman said in a statement carried by the North`s state-run KCNA news agency.

"The nuclear warmongers should bear in mind that if they show the slightest sign of aggression, it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike."

Last week, South Korea announced that Thae Yong Ho, the North`s deputy ambassador in London, had defected and arrived in the South with his family, in an embarrassing blow to the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

High-level defections pointed to cracks in the Kim regime, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Monday.

"Recently even North Korea`s elite group is collapsing, followed by key figures defecting to foreign countries, showing a sign of serious cracks, with chances of shaking the regime further," she told a National Security Council meeting.

Thae`s defection followed the flight to Seoul this year of 12 waitresses from a North Korean restaurant in China.

On Monday, North Korea`s Red Cross sent a letter to its South Korean counterpart asking for the women to be sent back, saying they had been kidnapped by the South, according to KCNA. South Korea denies they were kidnapped.

North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Moscow: The US and Ukraine will carry out from August 22 to 27 observation flights over Russian territory using a US observation plane monitored by Russian experts, authorities said on Monday.

The flights will be conducted in accordance with the Treaty on Open Skies signed in March 1992, Sputnik news agency quoted Sergei Zabello, the acting head of the Russian Defence Ministry`s Nuclear Risk Reduction Centre, as saying.

Russian experts aboard the OS-135B US aircraft will monitor the flights and ensure that the aircraft and the survey equipment used are in compliance with the treaty, he added.

The Treaty on Open Skies, which entered into force on January 1, 2002, was one of the confidence-building measures after the end of the Cold War and currently has 34 states as parties.
Android 7.0, 7.1.1 Nougat Update: Nexus 5X/6P, Nexus 9 Will Get Latest Build and Security Patch Dec 5-6; Other Android Devices Remain Waiting (Photo : Facebook/TheAndroidN)

A Canadian carrier's support site had revealed that the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X would be getting Android 7.0 Nougat on Aug. 22. However, fresh information suggests that the update has been delayed until the end of this month.



In the previous week, Telus had revealed through its software schedule page that it would be releasing Android N update to Huawei Nexus 6P and LG Nexus 5X on Aug. 22. As of this writing, the update has not been released yet. However, Optus Australia has revealed that the Android 7.0 Nougat update would begin seeding by the end of August.



Advertisement

Vodafone Australia has stated that a problem was found while testing the Android Nougat software for the Nexus 6P and this has resulted in the delayed of the update, Android Headlines reported. Smartphone companies and carriers are known for carrying out several tests on a software update before releasing it to the user. If an issue is found during the testing, the release of the update is delayed.



LG has confirmed that its upcoming flagship smartphone, LG V20, will come preinstalled with Android 7.0 Nougat update. The LG V20 is scheduled to get announced on Sept. 6. Usually, fresh versions of Android OS are made available first on Nexus devices. Hence, it is likely that the software update would arrive by the end of this month.



Every year Google release its latest Android upgrade through the newest Google Nexus devices. However, as previous rumors have revealed, this year the Android upgrade may not be arriving on Google Nexus 2016 smartphones but it is rumored to first arrive on 2015 Nexus smartphones, LG Nexus 5X and Huawei Nexus 6P.



LG has started limited preview of Android 7.0 Nougat update for LG G5 users in South Korea. Sony has started Xperia Beta Program for the owners of Xperia X Performance in European countries to try the Nougat software. HTC has also announced that will be making the software available to HTC 10, HTC One M9 and HTC One A9 as soon as it is officially released.



Samsung has also stated that the recently announced Galaxy Note 7 will receive Android 7.0 Nougat before the end of this year. This information suggest that smartphone OEMs are gunning to release the Android 7.0 Nougat to the flagship smartphones from this year and 2015 as soon as it is officially released by Google.



Check out the new features of Android N:






City Please select Admiral Alida Assiniboia Balcarres Balgonie Bangor Bellegarde Bengough Benson Bienfait Broadview Buchanan Cabri Cadillac Candiac Canora Carlyle Carnduff Central Butte Churchbridge Claybank Climax Coderre Consul Coronach Cowessess Reserve Craik Cupar Dilke Dysart Eastend Esterhazy Estevan Fillmore Forget Fort Qu'Appelle Francis Gerald Glenavon Glentworth Govan Gravelbourg Grayson Grenfell Gull Lake Hodgeville Holdfast Indian Head Ituna Kamsack Kelliher Kendal Kennedy Kenosee Killaly Kipling Kronau Lac Pelletier LaFleche Lake Alma Lampman Langenburg Lebret Lemberg Lestock Liberty Lumsden Maple Creek Marquis Maryland Melville Minton Montmartre Moose Jaw Moosomin Mossbank Nokomis Norquay Odessa Oxbow Pangman Pelly Pilot Butte Ponteix Qu'Appelle Quinton Radville Rama Raymore Redvers Regina Regina Beach Rocanville Rockglen Sedley Shaunavon Southey Spring Valley Spy Hill Stockholm Storthoaks Strasbourg Sturgis Swift Current Torquay Tribune Val Marie Vanguard Vibank Wapella Wawota Weyburn Whitewood Wilcox Willow Bunch Windthorst Wolseley Wood Mountain Yorkton

Mass Times Day of the Week ANY Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

Weekday Mass Times ANY 7:00 AM 8:00 AM 9:00 AM 10:00 AM 11:00 AM 12:00 PM 1:00 PM 2:00 PM 3:00 PM 4:00 PM 5:00 PM 6:00 PM 7:00 PM 8:00 PM
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. The United States and South Korea kicked off annual military exercises on August 22, prompting warnings of retaliation from the North, as already-heightened tension on the peninsula has been inflamed by the defection of a Pyongyang diplomat, Reuters reported.

North Korea has become further isolated after a January nuclear test, its fourth, and the launch of a long-range rocket in February brought tightened U.N. Security Council sanctions that Pyongyang defied with several ballistic missile launches.

About 25,000 U.S. troops are joining in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, which runs until Sept 2. The U.S.-led U.N. Command Military Armistice Commission said it notified the North Korean army the exercises were "non-provocative" in nature.

The North calls the exercises preparations for invasion, and early on Monday threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike. North Korea frequently makes such threats.

"From this moment, the first-strike combined units of the Korean People's Army keep themselves fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved in Ulji Freedom Guardian," a KPA spokesman said in a statement carried by the North's state-run KCNA news agency.

"The nuclear warmongers should bear in mind that if they show the slightest sign of aggression, it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike."

Last week, South Korea announced that Thae Yong Ho, the North's deputy ambassador in London, had defected and arrived in the South with his family, in an embarrassing blow to the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

High-level defections pointed to cracks in the Kim regime, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Monday.

"Recently even North Korea's elite group is collapsing, followed by key figures defecting to foreign countries, showing a sign of serious cracks, with chances of shaking the regime further," she told a National Security Council meeting.

Thae's defection followed the flight to Seoul this year of 12 waitresses from a North Korean restaurant in China.

On Monday, North Korea's Red Cross sent a letter to its South Korean counterpart asking for the women to be sent back, saying they had been kidnapped by the South, according to KCNA. South Korea denies they were kidnapped.

North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. Last week, U.S. President Obama received an update from DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson on the ongoing response and recovery efforts to the severe flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, following the Secretary's trip to the region on Thursday, the White House reported.

During his visit, Secretary Johnson met with state and local officials, viewed the ongoing response and recovery efforts, and visited local shelters where those impacted by the flooding are receiving food and disaster-caused needs.

While in Martha's Vineyard, the President has received updates on the situation in Louisiana, including from the DHS Secretary and the FEMA Administrator, who took separate trips there. The President today directed his team to coordinate with Louisiana officials to determine an appropriate time for him to visit, and together they have determined that the President will visit Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Tuesday, August 23rd. Additional details will be announced in the coming days.

The President is mindful of the impact that his travel has on first responders and wants to ensure that his presence does not interfere with ongoing recovery efforts. He is also eager to get a first-hand look at the impact of the devastating floods, hear from more officials about the response, including how the federal government can assist and tell the people of Louisiana that the American people will be with them as they rebuild their community and come back stronger than ever.

The state of Louisiana continues to deal with a significant level of flooding and one of the worst natural disasters in recent years. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson traveled to Louisiana yesterday to assess damages with Governor Edwards, Federal and state responders, and the National Guard, meet with survivors in shelters, and receive an update on the response to ongoing flooding in the state. During the press conference with Governor Edwards, Secretary Johnson reiterated the Presidents message that the Federal government will continue to do everything we can to help the survivors and get people back into homes. Secretary Johnson is providing an update on his visit to the President today.

According to the National Weather Service, significant river flooding will persist into this weekend across portions of southern Louisiana as a result of the heavy rainfall that occurred late last week. Major flooding will mainly continue along portions of the Vermilion and Mermentau Rivers over the next several days. Moderate flooding will continue along the Amite and Calcasieu Rivers through the weekend. Additional rain is possible over the weekend in Louisiana where pockets of flash flooding may develop as a result of this additional rainfall.

President Obama has declared 20 parishes for a major disaster for severe storms and flooding, a declaration that makes federal funding available to affected people in Acadia, Ascension, Avoyelles, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Iberia, Iberville, Jefferson Davis, Lafayette, Livingston, Pointe Coupee, St. Helena, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Vermilion, Washington and West Feliciana. In addition to the 20 parishes, FEMA is conducting a joint Federal and state damage assessment in Assumption and St. Charles.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. The State Security Service of Georgia thwarted a terrorist plot. 7 people were arrested including police officer of Poti city Levan Mamporia. They are being accused of having links with a terrorist organization, Gruzia Online reported.

The representative of the State Security Service said the arrested people were planning to bomb the gas pipeline which passes through the territory of Saguramo village and connects Russia and Armenia. 5 Georgian citizens are arrested. They are charged with plotting a terror attack.

The criminals went to the forested area near the Zhinvali-Shatili highway in order to acquire explosives. But at that moment they were apprehended.

The representative also said one of the group members often visited Ukraine, but there is still no information whether the group has been directed from abroad or not. He also refuted the information that one of the group members is related to Georgian Defense Minister Levan Izoria.

The Counter-Intelligence Department of the Georgian State Security Service carries out the investigation.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. The Court of Appeal has denied defining bail for gunman Toros Torosyan  one of the gunmen who captured the police station of July 17.

Torosyans attorney Liparit Simonyan told ARMENPRESS : There was no bail plea because he didnt have an attorney in the Court of First Instance. Bail wasnt mediated there, now we will make a separate bail plea to the Court, the attorney said.

Toros Torosyan has been charged for illegal acquisition, use, possession and transportation of firearms, ammunition, explosive devices or materials and for kidnapping.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. Iran will not need additional air defense systems after getting from Russia the S-300 anti-aircraft missile defense systems and commissioning Irans similar system Bavar (Belief) 373. Therefore, Iran's Ministry of Defense intends to focus on negotiations with Russia on the purchase of the Sukhoi aircraft, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan told Irans TV on Sunday evening, TASS reported.

"We dont need other long-range air defense systems, (in addition to the S-300 and Bavar-373), we no longer plan to purchase them. Therefore, the Iranian Defense Ministrys agenda includes consultations with Russia on the purchase of Sukhoi aircraft. We need to strengthen our Air Force," he said.

According to him, complex tests of the Bavar-373 air defense missile system will be held in the near future. "At the request of the President (of Iran Hassan Rouhani), the first test will be intercepting a ballistic missile. If the tests prove successful, the system will go into serial production, and its combat deployment will begin before the end of the year", the minister said.

On Sunday, Tehran hosted an exhibition of achievements of the Iranian defense industry. The exhibition for the first time presented to the general public the Bavar 373 system, which, according to Iranian sources, is an analogue of Russias S-300, as well as Irans first national turbojet engine that has been named Owj.

Iran had signed a contract with Russia on the supply of the S-300 missile defense systems in 2007. However, its implementation was suspended after the United Nations Security Council passed on June 9, 2010 resolution 1929 which banned the transfer of any state-of-the-art weapons, including missile and missile systems, to Teheran. In April 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin lifted the ban on supplies of S-300 systems to Iran and the contract was resumed in November 2015.

The contract will be implemented by the year end, according to Sergei Chemezov, CEO of Russias state corporation Rostec.

Russias Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said previously Russia had fulfilled 50% of its liabilities under the contract.






YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. Russia has taken a timeout from using the Iranian military base Shahid Nojeh, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi announced at a Monday news briefing in Tehran, reports TASS.

"Russia has stopped using the air force base for now," he declared, adding there had been no special arrangement between Tehran and Moscow on using the facility.

"We have a number of agreements with Russia on conducting joint (anti-terrorist) operations. One such agreement envisages the possibility that Iran may grant Russia use of its airspace and infrastructures to fight terrorism in Syria," he affirmed, noting that Tehrans relations with Moscow were booming over recent years, describing them as strategic.

"Russia and Iran stand closely on the issue of fighting terrorism and the Islamic State (terrorist group outlawed in Russia)," Qasemi stated. "The situation in the region is a very sensitive one. Irans own security depends on it and it is of paramount importance to us."

Last week for the first time ever, Russias military used an airfield in Iran to attack terrorists in Syria. Long-range bombers, namely Tupolev-22M3 and Sukhoi-34 front-line bombers participated in the raid. Earlier, these aircraft flew sorties from airdromes in Russia and front-line bombers, from the Hmeymim base in Syria.
(Reuters) - Canadian convenience store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc (ATDb.TO) said on Monday it would buy U.S. convenience store chain CST Brands Inc (NYSE:CST - News) in a deal valued at about $4.4 billion, boosting its presence in southeast United States.

San Antonio, Texas-based CST is one of the largest publicly traded fuel retailers in North America and also controls the general partner of gas station company CrossAmerica Partners LP (NYSE:CAPL - News).

The company, spun off from Valero Energy Corp (NYSE:VLO - News) in 2013, also operates convenience stores and gas stations in Canada.

"With this transaction we would strategically strengthen our positioning in both the "sun belt" and the east coast of North America," Couche-Tard Chief Executive Brian Hannasch said in a statement on Monday.

Sun Belt refers to the region that stretches across the southern and southwestern portions of the United States.

Couche-Tard will offer CST Brands shareholders $48.53 per share in cash, a premium of 2.15 percent to the stock's Friday close.

However, the offer represents a premium of 41.9 percent to CST's closing price on March 3, the last trading day before the company said it would explore strategic alternatives.

CST, which has been under pressure from activist investors JCP Investment Management and Engine Capital LP, said in March it would explore strategic alternatives.

Excluding debt, the deal is valued at about $3.67 billion, based on Thomson Reuters data.

The deal also underlines the Canadian convenience store operator's position as one of most acquisitive players in the industry.

Couche-Tard, which has made at least eight acquisitions since 2014, agreed in March to buy 279 Esso-branded fuel and convenience sites from Imperial Oil Ltd (Toronto:IMO.TO - News) for about C$1.69 billion ($1.31 billion).

Couche-Tard also said on Monday it would sell some Canadian assets of CST to Parkland Fuel Corp (Toronto:PKI.TO - News) for about $750 million, after the deal closes, expected in early 2017.

Story continues

The assets include CST's self-service fueling stations, commercial and home energy business, and a number of company-operated stores to be determined following the Competition Bureau of Canada's review of the transaction.

Couche-Tard said it would fund the deal with available cash, existing credit facilities and a new term loan.

($1 = 1.2909 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
By Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzanian president John Magufuli ordered officials on Monday to speed up long-delayed work on a planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, saying implementation of the project had taken too long. BG Group, recently acquired by Royal Dutch Shell, alongside Statoil, Exxon Mobil and Ophir Energy, plan to build a $30 billion-onshore LNG export terminal in partnership with the state-run Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) by the early 2020s. But a final investment decision has been held up by government delays in finalising issues relating to acquisition of land at the site and establishing a legal framework for the nascent hydrocarbon industry. "I want to see this plant being built, we are taking too long. Sort out all the remaining issues so investors can start construction work immediately," the presidency quoted Magufuli as saying in a statement. Magufuli, a reformist who took office in November, has sacked several senior officials for graft and cut spending he deemed wasteful, such as curbing foreign travel by public officials. The president's office said Magufuli issued the instructions for the LNG project to be fast-tracked during talks with Oystein Michelsen, Statoil's Tanzania country manager, and senior Tanzanian government energy officials. The Tanzanian presidency did not give the construction schedule for the project, but said once completed the LNG plant would have an expected economic lifespan of more than 40 years. The government said it has acquired over 2,000 hectares of land for the construction of the planned two-train LNG terminal at Likong'o village in the southern Tanzanian town of Lindi. Tanzania discovered an additional 2.17 trillion cubic feet of possible natural gas deposits in February, raising the east African nation's total estimated recoverable natural gas reserves to more than 57 trillion cubic feet. East Africa is a new hotspot in hydrocarbon exploration after substantial deposits of crude oil were found in Uganda and major gas reserves discovered in Tanzania and Mozambique. (Editing by Aaron Maasho and Richard Balmforth)
E-Portfolios

Tarleton State U Launches Digital Portfolio Network for All Students

The Texas-based university partnered with Portfolium to develop an e-portfolio network to connect its students to job opportunities.

A public university within the Texas A&M University System has recently launched an e-portfolio network for all of its students, in an effort to help students land jobs. Students at Tarleton State University (TSU) can now create digital portfolios of their academic and professional work for free through a partnership with Portfolium.

TSU worked with Portfolium to design an interface that highlights talents and achievements, and showcases individual work in a collaborative environment that connects students directly to companies, recruiters, internships and jobs, according to a news release. Students can connect to more than 40,000 recruiters and potential job opportunities at Disney, Nike, Google, Apple and more through Porfoliums partners. Additionally, future employers can browse through galleries to discover talent across all fields of study through a powerful search engine and matching algorithm that streamlines campus recruiting efforts. Users can also search for specific portfolios and connect with students and alumni.

Portfolium enables students to demonstrate skills in digital form, something that is increasingly critical in the modern age, said Kelly Shaffer, director of the Center for Instructional Innovation at TSU, in a statement.

Potential employers want to see evidence of specific skills and competencies beyond listings on a resume, and Portfolium makes that a reality, said Diane Taylor, associate vice president for curriculum at TSU, in a statement.

To view the e-portfolio network, visit the TSU site. Further information about the platform is available on the Portfolium site.
The Future Of Sustainable Energy

As the world's population continues to grow, we require more resources to meet our increasing needs. The production of food, clothing, and shelter alone requires a massive amount of energy. While the earth is abundant in resources, many of them cannot be replenished. Environmental damage is also an important issue. Pollution, ecosystem disruption, and global warming are just some of the problems brought about by wanton disregard in the past. Now both governments and businesses are looking for ways to meet energy needs in a clean and sustainable manner.

Emerging Alternatives

Heavy dependence on fossil fuels has proven to be detrimental for the environment. Fortunately, the use of alternatives is on the rise thanks to advancements in their efficiency and steady reductions in cost. Renewable energy is becoming easier to produce. In 2013, around 9.5 percent of U.S. energy consumption came from renewable sources. This is expected to shoot up to 52 percent by 2040 according to the projections of the Energy information Administration. Several emerging industries will contribute to this incredible rise with the help of government subsidies, business ventures, and technological breakthroughs. These will depend on natural resources in a way that is safe and responsible.

Tapping Natural Resources

Solar energy is a prime example. There is virtually unlimited power that can be harvested from the sun. Panels are angled to catch its light, which is then converted into electricity. This can be used right away or stored in batteries for later. The efficiency of conversion has been gradually increasing while the cost of panels has dropped enough to make them affordable for many households.

Wind power is also generating large amount of energy thanks to the large windmills located on the coasts. This invisible force moves the blades and produces energy while generating negligible amounts of CO 2 emissions compared to traditional sources. Geothermal energy, on the other hand, is produced using the heat deep below the earth's surface. Some HVAC systems are already using geothermal technology for greater efficiency.

Biomass comes in different forms: wood, biofuel, and waste. Each of these can be utilized in the production of clean energy. Indeed, wood already accounts for 23 percent of the country's renewable consumption, while biofuel is responsible for 22 percent. The practice of turning waste into valuable energy is on the rise as well. Farms and other agriculture-focused businesses are becoming more interested.

World Water Week

Water is another precious resource that can be tapped to generate hydropower. Participants in Stockholm's annual World Water Week will discuss the issue of using water for sustainable growth. The event is expected to draw more than 3,000 participants from some 130 countries. These will be composed of academics, decision-makers, business innovators, and other stakeholders. There will be plenty of opportunities to exchange ideas, build networks, and think of possible solutions to old and emerging challenges. Everyone is keenly aware of the importance of water for long-term growth. This conference will try to hammer out concrete steps to protect it while maximizing its potential.

The Future of Sustainable Energy, an infographic created by students in Ohio University's Master of Engineering Management program, demonstrates the United States' current renewable energy practices and how innovative research is creating energy from sea water.
Icelandic English

1H16 HIGHLIGHTS:

Profit after tax was ISK 13.0bn in 1H16 compared to ISK 10.8bn in 1H15. The profit is driven by strong core income and the completion of the sale of Borgun's shares in Visa Europe

Return on equity was 12.9% in 1H16, compared to 11.7% in 1H15

Earnings from regular operations was ISK 8.0bn, compared to ISK 8.2bn in 1H15. Return on equity from regular operations on 14% CET1 was 11.9% in 1H16 compared to 13.9% in 1H15

Net interest income amounted to ISK 15.9bn in 1H16 (1H15 ISK 13.6bn) up 17.3%. The net interest margin was 3.1% in 1H16 (1H15: 2.9%)

Net fee and commission income was ISK 6.7bn in 1H16 (1H15 6.4bn), a 4.3% year on year increase; thereof 1.3% was achieved in the parent company

A a loss of 1.2bn was recognised due to building damages in current headquarters at Kirkjusandur

Cost to income ratio was 56.0% in 1H16 (1H15: 56.0%), the cost to income ratio excludes the Bank tax and one-off cost items

Loans to customers grew by 5.0% in 1H16 to ISK 698.7bn, the increase is well diversified across various lending divisions

Total assets amounted to ISK 1,030bn (Mar16: ISK 1,021bn)

Deposits from customers decreased by 4.6% in 1H16 to ISK 566bn

Issued two foreign denominated bond transaction in the first half of 2016 a USD 35m private placement and EUR 75m tap issue, resulting in the Bank's first EUR 300m benchmark issue

Total capital ratio remains strong at 28.9% (Mar16: 29.7%) and CET1 ratio was 27.1% (Mar16: 28.1%)

The liquidity position is strong and exceeds internal and external requirements. At June 2016, the Bank's liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) was 173% (Mar16: 154%) and the total net stable funding ratio (NSFR) was 117% (Mar16: 118%)

Leverage ratio was at 18.3% at the end of June compared to 18.7% at Mar16, indicating a moderate leverage

Ratio of loans more than 90 days past due and impaired was 2.5% (Mar16: 2.1%)

S&P placed the Bank's BBB-/A-3 rating on positive outlook in January 2016, and Fitch affirmed a BBB-/F3 rating with a stable outlook in April. Islandsbanki is the only Icelandic bank to have investment grade ratings from both S&P and Fitch

2Q16 HIGHLIGHTS

Profit after tax was ISK 9.5bn in 2Q16 (2Q15: ISK 5.4bn)

Return on regular operations 14% CET1 was 13.9% in the quarter (2Q15: 12.8%)

Net interest income amount to ISK 8.4bn in 2Q16 (2Q15: ISK 7.4bn)

Net fee and commission income was ISK 3.5bn in 2Q16 (2Q15: ISK 3.5bn)

Birna Einarsdottir, Chief Executive Officer at Islandsbanki:

"Islandsbanki's performance was good in the first half of 2016, and the Bank's position is strong. The profit for the period was about ISK 13bn, and return on capital was 12.9% The increased profit is due in large part to income from the Bank's subsidiary Borgun. Credit growth measured 5% to June, with loans granted to a wide variety of sectors.

The streamlining of the Bank's branch network continues, and the number of branches will be 14 at the beginning of 2017. Islandsbanki operates the most efficient branch network in Iceland and has done so for years.

According to a new service survey, customer satisfaction has never measured higher, and satisfaction scores have risen for all service elements since last year. In addition, the Bank was named Iceland's best bank by international financial magazine Euromoney for the fourth year in a row. This confirms that Islandsbanki's vision of providing the best banking services in Iceland is bearing fruit, both in operating results and in customer satisfaction levels.

There is good news about the liberalisation of capital controls, which is extremely beneficial for the Icelandic economy. Islandsbanki is well prepared for the liberalisation process, and both its liquidity and its capital position are very strong. The Bank's asset management function, VIB, has collaborated for years with several of the strongest asset management firms in the world. VIB will continue to provide sound information about foreign markets and will assist savers with diversifying their savings, thereby reducing risk."

Investor Presentation in Icelandic

On Tuesday at 11.30 pm Icelandic time, Birna Einarsdottir, CEO of Islandsbanki, and Jon Guni Omarsson, CFO, will present the 1H2016 financial results to market participants, followed by a Q&A session. The meeting is conducted in Icelandic and held at the Bank's headquarters at Kirkjusandur.

Registration to the investor meeting at Kirkjusandur.

Investor call in English

On Tuesday, the Bank will also host an investor call in English to present the results at 10 am Icelandic time. The call will start with a short macro update on the Icelandic economy, followed by a review of the financial results and Q&A. Please register by replying to ir@islandsbanki.is. Dial-in details and presentation will be sent out two hours prior to the call.

All presentation material will subsequently be available and archived on www.islandsbanki.is/ir.

For information on Islandsbanki's financial calendar and silent periods see http://www.islandsbanki.is/english/investor-relations/calendar/.

For further information:

Investor Relations - Tinna Molphy, tinna.molphy@islandsbanki.is, tel +354 440 3187.

Media Relations - Edda Hermannsdottir, edda.hermannsdottir@islandsbanki.is and tel: +354 440 4005.

HUG#2036594
As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ
Military court sentences over four hundred Brotherhood supporters to prison on violence charges

An Egyptian military court sentenced on Thursday more than four hundred supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood group to jail terms of up to 25 years.

Some 418 people were sentenced over convictions of committing various violent crimes in the governorate of Minya on the back of the 2013 ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

The defendants were charged with "sabotaging public, judicial and police buildings" following the deadly dispersal of two pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo more than one month after his ouster.

The court handed 249 defendants terms of life in prison in absentia, while sentencing 50 others who were present in court to between two and 10 years in prison. The defendants were accused of storming a provincial police station in Minya.

The court sentenced 101 others to life in prison, also in absentia, over the storming and burning of the government telecommunications centre in the governorate.

Eighteen other defendants were given 10-year sentences on the same charges.

The verdicts can still be appealed.

According to Egyptian law, defendants sentenced in absentia automatically receive retrials when they turn themselves in.

Egypt's government has banned the Muslim Brotherhood, declaring it a terrorist organisation in October 2013.

In October 2014, Egypt allowed military courts to try civilians accused of attacking state facilities or blocking roads for two years, following deadly assaults that killed dozens of security forces in the Sinai Peninsula.

On Wednesday, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi extended this provision for five more years.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


A maverick Egyptian MP, Ilhami Agina, decided on Sunday to resign from parliament's human rights committee in protest at what he called "the repeated attempts of the committee head Anwar El-Sadat to manipulate its MPs to serve the agenda of foreign institutions."

Agina, an independent MP from the Nile Delta governorate of Daqahliya, told reporters that the decision of El-Sadat and a number of the committee's members to pay a "secret" visit to Geneva to attend a human rights conference has cast doubts about the national loyalty of the committee as a whole.

"The fact that the visit was conducted in a secret way and without getting parliament's approval in advance was by no means a correct move, not to mention that it lends credence to media accusations that Sadat is making use of his position as head of Egypt parliament's human rights committee to obtain money from ill-reputed foreign organisations," said Agina.

Agina also argued the MPs' visit to Geneva, led by El-Sadat, also lacked transparency.



"This was clear in the fact that the complete members of the committee was not informed of the Geneva visit in advance," said Agina, adding that "he knew about the visit only from the media and as a result of this 'secret visit', most of the committee's members now face accusations that they have clandestine relations with foreign organisations." 

For the above reasons, Agina said he decided to resign from the committee, preferring instead to join the foreign relations committee. "It is completely unfair for me to remain a member in a committee facing such accusations," said Agina.

"If El-Sadat thinks that the visit was important, why did he decline to inform all the members of the committee of it or get the approval of the speaker in advance?" he added.



Geneva conference

The visit of Sadat and nine members to Switzerland to attend a conference organised by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue on 10 August has left the 38-member human rights committee divided into two camps.

The first is led by committee head Anwar Mohamed Esmat El-Sadat, a nephew of late president Anwar El-Sadat, and the second is led by its deputy Atef Makhaleef who filed a complaint against the Geneva visit with parliament's speaker Ali Abdel-Aal, asking that El-Sadat be referred to the ethics committee to be disciplined.

Makhaleef told reporters on Sunday that "El-Sadat should be disciplined because of his suspicious links with hostile foreign human rights organisations."

Makhaleef told the private TV channel Al-Ghad on Saturday that "the approval of MPs to travel abroad to attend foreign conferences as representatives of the Egyptian parliament should be strictly regulated."

"If we opened this door wide, it would be like a hell for parliament as a whole," said Makhaleef, adding that "we are MPs to serve national interests rather than foreign agendas."

Makhaleef has also charged that El-Sadat is manipulating the committee to serve the agenda of the US embassy in Egypt on human rights. He said the US embassy contacted him over one month ago in a bid to convince him to join El-Sadat in implementing the US embassy's agenda on human rights.

Sadat told Al-Ghad channel that his visit to Geneva came upon an official invitation and in coordination with Egypt's foreign ministry. "Not to mention that I had already informed parliament speaker Abdel-Aal of the Geneva visit in advance," said El-Sadat.

In a plenary session on 7 August the speaker told MPs that El-Sadat had informed me of the Geneva trip in advance, "but I rejected because I am against invitations from Western human rights forums which are hostile to Egypt," said Abdel-Aal.

El-Sadat told Al-Ghad that his participation in the Geneva conference gave him a chance to change the hostile attitude of some Western organisations towards Egypt in the area of human rights.

"These organisations were listening only to voices from the terrorist organisation of Muslim Brotherhood and our role are to reverse this tide," he said.



Search Keywords:

Short link:


President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi gave an interview to state-owned newspapers about different regional issues, including relations with the US, Turkey, and developments related to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

In a long interview with Egypt's three major publicly owned newspapers published on Monday, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi announced that he is going to participate in the upcoming G20 summit in China in early September.

I am looking forward to meeting with many of the world leaders there, El-Sisi said in the first part of the interview published in Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar, and Al-Gomhouria.

Egypt is keen to deliver the voice of Africa at the upcoming G20 summit, he said.

The Egyptian president also revealed that he will participate in the upcoming session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, also in September.

I am going to participating in the General Assembly to reaffirm the Egyptian vision to fight terrorism and radicalism, he said.

In a seven-hour interview on Sunday with the editors of the three dailies, El-Sisi discussed a range of domestic and international issues.

The first part of the interview, published on Monday tackled Egypts relations with the world as well regional developments in the Middle East for three hours.

The second part of the interview, to be published on Tuesday, will deal with domestic issues.

Egypt and Russia

El-Sisi said that he was "optimistic" about the return of Russian tourists to Egypt.

Russian tourism to Egypt was halted last year, after a Russian airliner crashed in Sinai killing all on board, mostly Russian holidaymakers.

Following the crash Moscow suspended all flights to Egyptian airports. A number of European countries suspended flights to Sharm El-Sheikh, the airport from which the airliner had taken off.

I totally understand the concerns of the Russian leadership towards its citizens after the incident of the airliner, President El-Sisi said, adding that the crash did not negatively affect Egyptian-Russian relations.

The Russian investigative committee has officially classified the plane crash as a terrorist attack, after an Islamic State militant group affiliate in North Sinai claimed responsibility for bringing down the airliner with a bomb.

Egypt's domestic investigation committee has yet to release any findings on the cause of the crash.

The drop in tourists from Russia, one of the main sources for foreign visitors to Egypt, has had a major impact on the local tourist indusry, as have the reduction in tourists from other countries. The knock-on effect for Egypt's economy has also been significant, as tourism is one of the major sources of foreign curency.

El-Sisi also announced in the interview that the final agreement between Egypt and Russia to build the El-Dabaa nuclear power plant will be signed this year.

The nuclear plant, the country's first, will be constructed at El-Dabaa south of the country's Mediterranean coast.

The Middle East peace process

On developments related to the peace process in the Middle East, El-Sisi said that Egypt supports all ongoing efforts that seek to resolve an "extremely complicated issue."

He explained that Egypts relationships with both the Palestinian and Israeli sides allow Egypt to play a pivotal role in finding a solution.

In July, Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry reiterated --during the first visit by an Egyptian foreign minister to Tel Aviv since 200-- to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Egypt is a "steadfast and unwavering" supporter of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

El-Sisi said the efforts status on reaching a solution were in still water and efforts should be exerted to move the process forward on the condition that all will is available, whether from the Palestinian or the Israeli side, or from the international community.

The president also said it was necessary to finalise the national reconciliation between the Palestinian authority and the Hamas movement so "there would be a real effort to found a Palestinian state."

El-Sisi stated that Egypt doesnt aim for an exclusive role in resolving the Palestinian crisis as much as it wants to push the idea for to others that peace is a glaring right that could change the region if accomplished.

The president also revealed for the first time that Russian President Vladimir Putin was ready to host direct peace talks between the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu in Moscow.

Egypt and Italy

El-Sisi said he was thankful for the positive statements from Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi regarding the Giulio Regini murder investigation.

The Italians feel that we cooperate with them in order to find out the truth, said El-Sisi repeating that he sympathised with the family of the Italian student.

Regeni, who was in Cairo conducting research on independent trade unions, went missing on 25 January. His body was found nine days later in by the roadside on the outskirts of the captial, bearing signs of severe torture.

El-Sisi also said that he believed that public diplomacy delegations from Egypt had helped in clarifying the image in Italy.

Still, let me tell you that the way some media outlets in Egypt dealt with that case complicated the matter, he said without explaining further.

This is not the first time El-Sisi has criticised some Egyptian media outlets for their take on the PhD student's murder.

In April, El-Sisi blamed "evil" people in Egypt for "lie- and allegation-mongering" about the case and embarrasing Egypt internationally.

Egypt and the US

In March 2015, the Obama administration resumed US military aid following a suspension of aid in October 2013 over Egypts crackdown on the now banned Muslim Brotherhood group following the ousting of president Mohamed Morsi and violent attacks by Islamists against security forces

The resumption of US aid to Cairo came despite continuing criticism of Egypt's human rights record by local and international rights watchdogs.

In May, Egypt also received an initial shipment of mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles from the United States at no-cost, to help Egyptian security forces with their war against Islamist militants in North Sinai governorate.

Hundreds of Egyptian security personnel have been killed by bombs and shootings in northern Sinai.

Egyptian-American relations are strategic and they have been improving, said President El-Sisi, when asked about the future of the bilateral relationship.

We both are interested in giving ourselves a chance to review our stances. During the past three years, facts about the situation in Egypt were clarified to them, and our policies are characterised with balance, prudence, and keenness on such relationships, he said.

Regarding whether they are currently talks with the US presidential candidates or not, El-Sisi said there were talks with all the sectors of the US political scene including officials in the Congress, the US administration and the Pentagon.

Developments in Syria, Libya, Yemen

El-Sisi said he believes that the US-Russian understanding as well as the flexibility of the regional powers involved in the Syrian conflict can find an end to the crisis in the war-torn country.

In his interview, the president summarised the Egyptian position regarding the Syrian crisis as respecting the unity of Syrian territory and the Syrian peoples will, finding a political solution to the crisis, disarming the militias and radical groups, and reactivating the role of state institutions.

The terrorist groups are already moving from Syria and Iraq to Libya and there are international efforts to deal with that danger, El-Sisi said in his interview.

Speaking about Libya, he said Egypt supported Libyas national army as well its elected parliament because they represented the will of the Libyan people.

We are already to confront any threat on our borders with Libya, he said.

On Yemen, El-Sisi said that Egypt had no naval forces deployed in combat to any country in the region, adding that the Egyptian navy was only securing navigation in the Bab Al-Mandab strait and the passage of ships to the Suez Canal.

He added that the Egyptian air force was working with our brothers in Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

Egypt's air force has been participating in the Saudi-led military coalition against Houthi rebels in Yemen since the coalition was launched in March 2015.

Relationship with the Gulf states

Our relationship with the Gulf states is solid and strong and cannot be reduced to financial support only, said El-Sisi.

Since the 2013 ouster of Mohamed Morsi, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have provided Egypt with billions of dollars in aid.

El-Sisi also added that Arab states need to deal with one another more positivity and to work on unity.

The controversy over Tiran and Sanafir

El-Sisi also spoke about the controversy regarding a maritime demarcation border agreeement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia that placed two Red Sea Islands Tiran and Sanafir, long administered by Egypt, under Saudi Arabia's sovereignty.

The decision in April caused immediate controversy locally, with many public figures arguing the islands were in fact Egyptian territory.

At protests organised against the decision, dozens were arrested and stood trial mostly for breaking the Protest Law. Most have been released after found innocent or receiving heavy fines.

The Egyptian government has repeatedly said that the islands have always belonged to Saudi Arabia and that Egypt has merely been administering them on behalf of the Saudis since the 1950s.

El-Sisi said that he was dealing with the issue in complete respect for the state's institutions and the independence of its judiciary and its verdicts.

Egypt's State Lawsuits Authority  the body that represents the government in legal cases  appealed before the High Constitutional Court in June after an Egyptian administrative court voided the decision by the government to place the two islands under Saudi control.

The government has also been challenged by an appeal to the High Administrative Court, which would stop the execution of the verdict until the High Constitutional Court looks into the case. Both courts have yet to issue a ruling.

The maritime border demarcation agreement, signed during Saudi King Salman's historical visit to Egypt in April, is yet to be presented to parliament.

El-Sisi stressed that parliament will have a chance to scrutinise the agreement.

Another Egypt-Cyprus-Greece summit

El-Sisi also revealed that there would be another Egyptian-Cypriot-Greek summit in October to push forward cooperation between the three countries.

In the past two years, three-way summit meetings have been held in Athens, Cairo and Nicosia to establish maritime boundaries in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as cooperating in the fields of energy, tourism and agriculture.

"Redrawing the maritime boundaries give us a real opportunity to search for (marine wealth)," he said.

Egypt and Turkey

Regarding the troubled relationship with Turkey, El-Sisi said Egypt was giving the Turks" time to correct their position.

There is no enmity between the Egyptian people and Turkish people, said El-Sisi, adding that the Egyptian government would not respond to statements of Turkish officials except in a way that represents Egypts civilization, culture and values.

The Ankara government has been a vocal opponent of the Egyptian regime following the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi in the summer of 2013.

On Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirm said during a briefing that Turkey wanted to repair ties with Egypt.

We think we need to develop economic and cultural ties with Egypt as countries that use the two sides of the Mediterranean, he said.

Egypt and Nile Basin countries

Egypt has started a new era to develop its relations with African countries, especially Nile Basin countries, said El-Sisi during the interview.

El-Sisi said that the negotiations on the technical studies into the impact of the under-construction Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam were progressing in a way that is reassuring to all.

The Nile water will continue to flow to Egypt and to everyone else, he said.

According to the Egyptian President, President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan will visit in next October for a meeting of the Sudanese-Egyptian Higher Committee.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry says procedures to form the joint Arab military force might take time

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said last year's plans to form a joint Arab military force are still ongoing despite the long delay.

Egypt proposed the creation of the force duirng an Arab League summit in March 2015, with the aim of combating threat from Islamist extemists and intervening in troubled areas in the region.

The idea of the initiative gained steam when first intoduced last year after Saudi Arabia and Arab allies launched air strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen in March 2015.

Steps were taken by the league member countries and Arab ministers of defence, but the process was postponed indefinitely in August 2015.

But Shoukry stressed on Sunday that the Egyptian initiative to "preserve national Arab security" is still alive.

During a gathering with high school students, Shoukry said steps on the matter are delayed "because of our ambition to not intoduce [the force] unless the vision is totally complete to achieve our hopes."

"[Finalising procedures to create the force and measures to guarantee its success] might take time so parties can be reassured it is implemented in a way that serves its purpose," Shoukry said in comments carried by state news agency MENA.

There was consensus duirng last year's summit in the resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh that the initiative is necessary and "should be impelmented," he added.

Arab leaders who gathered at an Arab summit in Mauritania last month renewed their backing for the initiative and called for speedy steps to implement it, Shoukry added.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Yemen troops on Thursday launched a bid to break a rebel siege of third city Taez, with fierce fighting leaving five soldiers and 13 insurgents dead, military sources said.

Soldiers attacked positions of the Iran-backed Shia Houthi rebels from the east, west and north of the flashpoint southwestern city that has been under siege for more than a year, they said.

One military source said the troops made "a relative breakthrough" by driving the Houthi rebels from several positions around the city.

A pro-government activist, Abdel Majid al-Dhababi, confirmed that troops had made progress after months of trying to break the siege of Taez.

He told AFP the army "practically succeeded in breaking the blockade from the west.

"But the road leading to Aden is still unsafe and this is preventing civilians from fleeing south," said Dhababi.

Yemen has been hit by unrest since the Houthi rebels and allied loyalists of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh overran the capital Sanaa in September 2014.

The violence increased after a Saudi-led Arab coalition launched a military campaign in March last year to help shore up the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

The government had fled to Saudi Arabia after the Houthis seized Sanaa and pushed south to second city Aden.

But with help from the coalition authorities have recaptured Aden, where the government has set up temporary headquarters.

In March, loyalist forces backed by Saudi-led air strikes managed to break the rebel siege of Taez after fierce clashes but the insurgents later re-imposed a blockade on the city.

Tens of thousands of civilians are said to be caught in the fierce and protracted battle for Taez.

Saud-led aircraft meanwhile pounded rebels positions around Sanaa on Thursday, scoring hits on three military camps held by the insurgents, military sources said.

Violence on Thursday also rocked the southern Abyan province where an Al-Qaeda suicide bomber killed four Yemeni soldiers and wounded four others, a military official told AFP.

The attack comes after government forces launched an anti-jihadist operation in Abyan.

The bomber rammed his car into two military vehicles parked on a road linking the towns of Loder and Moudia, the military official said.

The attack came after troops recaptured both towns from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the official added.

He said the bombing was apparently in retaliation for the capture Sunday of provincial capital Zinjibar by the army backed by Saudi-led air strikes.

Jihadists fled into the mountains as the army entered, the military official said.

Abyan lies east of the province of Aden, where authorities have trained hundreds of soldiers over the past two months to retake Abyan.

Al-Qaeda and Islamic State group jihadists have exploited a power vacuum in Yemen to expand their presence in the country's south and southeast.

The United States considers AQAP to be Al-Qaeda's deadliest franchise and has conducted a drone war against the group in Yemen.

The UN says more than 6,600 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since last March and more than 80 percent of the population needs humanitarian aid.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Fighters of Libya's unity government, backed by US air strikes, have recaptured more ground from militants holed up in the centre of the coastal city of Sirte, loyalist forces said Monday.

"Our forces have retaken the internal security building used as a prison by the Islamic State (IS)" group, as well as a courthouse, the Al-Naga district and Dubai Street, the operations centre for fighters loyal to the Government of National Accord (GNA) said.

A statement said "the new victory" was achieved in clashes which raged throughout Sunday in the face of "desperate resistance by the militants".

IS sniper positions were "neutralised" in two US air strikes and "our forces destroyed two booby-trapped cars... without loss in our ranks," it said.

However, 12 fighters were killed and 85 wounded in Sunday's clashes, the hospital in Misrata, 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of Tripoli where the pro-GNA military command is based, said on its Facebook page.

Pro-GNA forces, backed since the start of August by US air strikes, began an assault in mid-May to expel IS from what had been its Sirte stronghold.

The militants seized control of the city, which had been the hometown of Libya's slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi, in June 2015.

They fought their way into Sirte on June 9 and have since faced a barrage of sniper fire, suicide bombings and booby traps, pinning down the jihadists in a downtown area near the sea.

More than 350 pro-GNA fighters have been killed and nearly 2,000 wounded in the battle, according to medical sources. IS casualties figures are unavailable.

Sirte itself has been emptied of its residents, apart from families of IS militants, according to the pro-GNA forces.

American warplanes had carried out 65 strikes on IS positions in Sirte up until August 19, according to US Africa Command (AFRICOM).

Pentagon spokesman Gordon Trowbridge in mid-August estimated that militant fighters in Sirte numbered fewer than 1,000.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Turkey on Monday condemned what it said were "disproportionate" Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, insisting that a recent reconciliation pact does not preclude it from speaking out against the country's actions.

The Israeli military carried out a series of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip late Sunday, targeting Hamas positions in response to a Palestinian rocket attack that hit an Israeli border town.

"The fact that our ties with Israel have normalized does not mean that we will remain silent in the face of such attacks that target the Palestinian people," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"On the contrary, we will continue to (defend) the Palestinian cause," it said, calling Israel's actions "against international laws and especially against consciences."

Turkey and Israel reached an agreement last month to end a six-year rift caused by an Israeli naval raid on a Turkish aid ship trying to breach Israel's blockade of Gaza. Ten Turkish activists were killed in the raid.

Turkey's parliament last week approved the reconciliation agreement under which Israel will pay $20 million in compensation to the victims within 25 days. Under the agreement, individual Israeli nationals also would not be held criminally or financially liable for the incident.

Earlier, police detained five people who tried to break into Israel's consulate in Istanbul to protest the Gaza airstrikes.

State-run Anadolu Agency said the five entered a business center housing the consulate early Monday and were detained by police who were called to the scene.

Security around the building was increased, the agency reported.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Hi Tom, I don't have a question but a great big compliment to give the folks at Hazel Restaurant. I had contacted them a few weeks ago regarding the ingredients in their Lazy Susan dishes because several of my dining companions have allergies and dietary restrictions and I wanted to ensure that nothing in these dishes would cause my companions to become ill. Peter Koll, Restaurant Director, responded that they couldn't guarantee that no ingredients on my rather long list wouldn't be in these dishes, BUT that he spoke with the chef, who was more than happy to create a special Lazy Susan menu just for us. Christopher Metts, General Manager, sent the menu a few days prior to dinner and we couldn't wait to try the dishes. Wow! Everyone in my dining party was blown away with the creativity, deliciousness and presentation of the dishes and all-around wonderful experience they had. The wine suggestions were perfect as well. Everyone on staff were great, explaining every dish to everyone at the table, ensuring a great experience was had by all. While I sent them a thank you email, I wanted to give them a more public shout out for being just plain awesome. But all of this probably wouldn't have happened if not for your review, Tom. So a big thank you for putting the fantastic new restaurant on my radar. I'm planning my return visit soon.
Today's update is a poll. It's an exercise in Manichean thinking: Black / white / either / or / yes / no / good / evil

Take the poll in a minute or less. There's an age split, so click the version that applies to you:

- 36 and younger

- 37 and older
Russia's ambassador to Iran says all Russian jets have left the base in Iran that they used to carry out airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria.

Russia first announced last week that its planes had flown combat missions from Iran, a move that represented a historical rapprochement between Moscow and Tehran.

Iran's Foreign Ministry, however, said Monday that Russia will stop using the base for the time being.

The Interfax news agency on Monday quoted Russia's ambassador to Tehran Levan Dzhagaryan as confirming that all warplanes have been withdrawn. He said, however, that he does "not see any reason" why the Russians can't use the base again.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Bloomberg Becomes WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases

NCDs include heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases. Together with injuries, they are responsible for 43 million deaths each year, or almost 80 percent of all deaths worldwide.

The World Health Organization named Michael Bloomberg, who served three terms as mayor of the New York City, as Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases on Aug. 17. Bloomberg has been working with WHO on tobacco control and injury prevention for the past decade.

"Michael Bloomberg is a valued partner and has a long track record of supporting WHO in the areas of tobacco control, improving data for health, road safety, and drowning prevention," said Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general. "I am therefore absolutely delighted to be able to appoint him as Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases. This will enable us to strengthen our response together to the major public health challenges of NCDs and injuries."

NCDs include heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases. Together with injuries, they are responsible for 43 million deaths each year, or almost 80 percent of all deaths worldwide. Each year, 16 million people die from NCDs before the age of 70, with road traffic crashes accounting for a further 1.25 million deaths each year and being the leading cause of death among young people ages 15-29.

Bloomberg will work with national and local political leaders worldwide on strategies to reduce the burden of NCDs and injuries and will help WHO in supporting the attainment of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. "I am honored to become WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and excited about the possibilities that are within our reach. Cities and countries around the world are making great progress reducing preventable, premature deaths and, by replicating the most effective measures on a global scale, we can save many millions of lives," he said. "Together with WHO, we'll support low- and middle-income countries as they work to achieve their policy goals and direct resources in ways that will best improve public health. We'll also work to raise awareness among leaders and policy makers at the local level about the real gains that can be achieved when effective programs are in place."
Red Cross Estimates Louisiana Flood Relief's Cost at $30 Million

Meanwhile, officials from the city of New Orleans urged residents to protect themselves and their homes from mosquitoes, which can transmit diseases such as Zika virus, West Nile, and chikungunya.

As residents try to recover from this month's floods in northern Louisiana, the American Red Cross estimates its relief work to provide feed, shelter, and comfort to thousands of people affected by the disaster will cost at least $30 million. ARC calls it the worst U.S. disaster since "Superstorm" Sandy and reports the relief costs may grow as information about the scope and magnitude of the devastation comes in

The Red Cross is asking the public to donate money to assist by visiting redcross.org, calling 1-800-RED CROSS, or texting the word LAFLOODS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. "Our volunteers are tirelessly working around the clock to help thousands of people in Louisiana," said Brad Kieserman, vice president of Disaster Services Operations and Logistics for the Red Cross, on Aug. 19. "Right now we are concentrating on providing food, shelter, and relief supplies. But with thousands of homes affected, our work is just getting started. We'll be there for the long run to help people recover from this historic disaster."

More than 1,500 Red Cross representatives from all 50 states and hundreds of local volunteers are part of the relief effort.

Meanwhile, officials from the city of New Orleans urged residents to protect themselves and their homes from mosquitoes, which can transmit diseases such as Zika virus, West Nile, and chikungunya. The threat is greater because recent heavy rainfall and high temperatures in New Orleans mean more mosquitoes are in the area. As of Aug. 19, no locally transmitted cases of the Zika virus in New Orleans or Louisiana had been recorded, but travel-related cases have been identified in New Orleans and elsewhere in Louisiana.

On Aug. 14, the National Geodetic Survey (part of NOAA) began collecting damage assessment photos of flooded areas identified by FEMA and the National Weather Service. These areas had experienced historically heavy rainfall. A team of NOAA aviators used remote-sensing cameras aboard King Air aircraft flying above the area between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. Aerial photos help in determining the extent of damage inflicted by flooding and are used to compare baseline coastal areas to assess the damage to major ports and waterways, coastlines, critical infrastructure, and coastal communities.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong speaking at the National Day Rally. Screengrab from YouTube.



Update at 3.35pm: The Prime Ministers Office (PMO) said that PM Lee Hsien Loong will be on medical leave from now till 29 August. Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean will cover the duties of the Prime Minister in his absence. PMO added that Lees medical checks at the Singapore General Hospital early this morning confirmed that there were no cardiac abnormalities and no stroke.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has been given the all-clear by doctors after taking ill during the National Day Rally on Sunday (21 August), said Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan.

Balakrishnan said that the Prime Minister had a vasovagal episode, or a fainting spell caused by a brief lack of blood supply to the brain, typically seen in individuals who have been standing for long periods.

Lee had been speaking for about 90 minutes when he stumbled and fainted on stage. He resumed speaking after more than an hours delay.

The 64-year-old prime minister assured the audience that it was nothing serious, but added that he would be going for a full check-up immediately after the rally just to be sure.

In a

Facebook note

, Balakrishan admitted that he and his colleagues had been rattled by Lees fall. My initial thought was Oh no, not again, wrote the minister in apparent reference to Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat, who collapsed from a stroke during a Cabinet meeting in May.

When we rushed up on stage, we found PM Lee fully conscious but having classic symptoms and signs - sweatiness, low heart rate and low blood pressure. The initial light headedness resolved within minutes, and I knew he just wanted to get back on stage to complete his speech.

Balakrishnan added, Whilst the initial tests were being done, he was busy re-editing his speech!

After the National Day Rally, which ended at about 11.30pm, Lee went to Singapore General Hospital for more tests before calling it a night at about 1.30am.


The house of Gigih Rahmat Dewa in Batam, the suspected leader of KGR@Katibah GR, which was cordoned off. The group was suspected to have plotted to launch a rocket attack on Marina Bay in Singapore. (Photo: Safhras Khan/Yahoo Singapore)



Several members of the Malay-Muslim community have expressed support for the Singapore governments counter-terrorism efforts, a day after Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong highlighted the threat of radicalisation in his National Day Rally speech on Sunday (21 August).

They said on Monday (22 August) that the community will remain vigilant to fight against plans by terrorist groups to sow discord and launch attacks against Singapore.

Lee flagged the terror threat in his speeches in Malay, Chinese and English, saying that it has both external and domestic dimensions. He cited the plot to launch a rocket attack on Marina Bay by a group of alleged terrorists in Batam, who were arrested by local authorities earlier this month

Singapore is not immune to jihadist propaganda and the government is heartened by the efforts of the Malay-Muslim community to combat radicalisation, Lee said.

Lee added that the authorities had known about plans by terrorists to attack targets in Singapore and quietly acted on the information by taking precautions, such as cancelling certain events.

Threat is real and Singapore needs to be vigilant



Member of Parliament for Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC, Saktiandi Supaat, 42, said, It is worrying especially in the current global environment. From what Prime Minister Lee said in his rally speech, I infer the number (of terror suspects) picked up in the neighbouring countries is more.

But I am very certain Singapore will continue to be very vigilant and efforts must be made to make sure communities remain more united in spite of the current environment.

Dr Mustafa Izzuddin, a Fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, agreed with Saktiandi, saying that Singapore, as a global city, is not immune to external influences. These include the threat of transnational terrorism, which extends to Southeast Asia, Dr Mustafa said.

Story continues

Siti Farhana Shariff, a teacher, said she was not surprised that PM Lee warned about the real threat of terrorism.

It has happened, it is happening and it will happen. I am saying this because of the state the world is in right now, she said.

As such, Siti Farhana, 25, said Singaporeans have to be fully prepared to guard against any outcome, citing the example of the Batam terror plot.

It is no surprise that the government is planning to tighten security. But I have to say that Singaporeans, myself included, are too comfortable with the mindset that Singapore is safe and thus take things for granted. To change that mindset will be tough, said Siti Farhana.

But the counter-terrorism efforts should not be limited to Singaporeans and the government should also educate the foreign workers in Singapore about the threat, said editor Sofianna Ng.

Ng, 36, said she hoped that if a terror attack were to take place in Singapore, Islamophobia will not happen here, as was the case after nationalist politicians in Europe called for a ban against Muslims in the wake of the Paris terror attacks in January this year.

Political leadership and unity key in worst-case scenario



Dr Mustafa, 35, said that political leadership is of utmost importance in the event of a terrorist attack in Singapore. The government must work closely alongside the leaders of the different faiths to rally Singaporeans and help the country recover from the impact of such an attack.



The more Singaporeans stand together and the less they react in distrust and suspicion, the quicker Singapore would recover from a terrorist attack on its shores, said Dr Mustafa.



Saktiandi agreed, and said that Singapores cohesive multi-racial and multi-religious society puts it in a good stead to withstand the ripple effects of a terrorist attack.



The MP said that there is a need to show future generations how the country stands as one people in the face of such adversity.



That is fundamental. So if an attack happens, I think our response will be and should be united and resolute, he said.
Sam Beckett hits up a sun dappled backyard concrete dream before heading indoors for a vert sesh, backed up by Jimmy Wilkins and Zach Miller, in this new clip for Blind Skateboards. Press play for powerful transition shredding from Wymondhams finest!

The following is an account of what went down during a fleeting visit to the UK from a cross selection of riders under the Dwindle...

The first volume of 'Trannies' sees Sam Beckett, Paul-luc Ronchetti, Jimmy Wilkins, Moto Shibata and more hitting up Tony Hawk's vert ramp for some vertical...

With the CPH Open leading almost directly into the Vans Pro Skate Park Series finals in Malmo, the timing and situation were both perfectly set...

The Marseille Red Bull Bowl Rippers contest has been taking place this weekend just gone, with the legendary Prado Bowl getting a revamp and seeing...

Were big fans of Canadian skate podcast The Bunt which seamlessly mixes in-depth interviews with similarly in-depth piss-taking and drops comedy on the regular. Episode 3...

Newsletter Terms & Conditions

Please enter your email so we can keep you updated with news, features and the latest offers. If you are not interested you can unsubscribe at any time. We will never sell your data and you'll only get messages from us and our partners whose products and services we think you'll enjoy.

Read our full Privacy Policy as well as Terms & Conditions.
The Levis Skateboarding crew paid a visit to Mexico recently, to help built a skatepark with the locals in the town of Puerto Penasco. A few of the locals as well as Marius Syvanen, Al Partanen and Dan Plunkett talk the town, the scene and the new park, with skate footage shot at some on locale street spots and the parks first quarter/jersey barrier offering places you definitely wont have seen on film before!

A heavily stacked New Balance squad make the most of the Spanish summertime and architecture in 'Tinto de Verano', nine minutes of beautifully shot skate...

Newsletter Terms & Conditions

Please enter your email so we can keep you updated with news, features and the latest offers. If you are not interested you can unsubscribe at any time. We will never sell your data and you'll only get messages from us and our partners whose products and services we think you'll enjoy.

Read our full Privacy Policy as well as Terms & Conditions.
Last year a crack Rollersnakes squad of Nick Roberts , Daryl Dominguez and Matlok Bennett-Jones headed up to the Scottish Highlands with Derby Daz and Chris Johnson to explore some lesser-sessioned terrain with the money they won from round one of Store Wars, a mission which also resulted in an edit and article in Sidewalk Issue 222 . Now, with Store Wars kicking off once again, Rollersnakes have dropped the extended cut from the trip. Check out unseen angles of next level ditch spots, sweeping scenery and wildlife cameos you wouldnt get on your annual Barcelona edit.

Its been a long three and a half years since Mark landed himself his First Light, and during that time hes worked his way through...

Shaun Currie, John Onyehara, Matlok Bennett-Jones and more hit the streets, hills and parks of the Steel City, rain or shine...

Jake Martinelli presents  Boroughs Episode 1  Waltham Forest Part 1 of a new series from London-based VX wielder Jake Martinelli where he and his...

SKATE NEPAL is a non-profit organisation based in London, England. Our aim is to spread awareness for the social, creative and cultural benefits of...

Newsletter Terms & Conditions

Please enter your email so we can keep you updated with news, features and the latest offers. If you are not interested you can unsubscribe at any time. We will never sell your data and you'll only get messages from us and our partners whose products and services we think you'll enjoy.

Read our full Privacy Policy as well as Terms & Conditions.
The human gut is a complex and amazing system, and the more we learn about it, the more amazed we are. It turns out
- Former president Mwai Kibaki has been moved from Karen Hospital to South Africa for specialised treatment

- The family has released an official statement saying Kibaki flew with his personal doctor and that he will be back soon

- The family has not stated what he is ailing from

Former president Mwai Kibaki has been flown to South Africa for specialised treatment, his family has said.as by a statement issued by the family.

In a statement released on Sunday, August 21, the family said Mwai Kibaki was accompanied by his doctor and was expected to return soon.

READ ALSO: Mwai Kibaki was with Lucy when she died in London

Mwai Kibaki served as Kenya's president between 2003 and 2013 before handing over to President Uhuru Kenyatta. Image: PSCU

The family asked Kenyans to pray for him, and to respect the privacy of the family at this difficult time.

The statement did not state what was ailing the 84-year-old former president.

Sources close to the family, however, claim Mwai Kibaki fell ill at his Muthaiga home on the night of Saturday, August 20 and was taken to Karen Hospital.

READ ALSO: How Mwai Kibaki met Othaya MP Mary Wambui

In April 2016, Mwai Kibaki lost his wife, Mama Lucy Kibaki, while undergoing treatment at the Bupa Cromwell Hospital in London, England.

Mwai Kibaki in a past family photo. The 84-year-old former head of state lost his wife - Lucy Kibaki - in April 2016.

Mwai Kibaki served as Kenya's president from 2002 to 2013 when his two terms came to an end.

READ ALSO: Chaos hit Kibakis party over support for Uhuru Kenyatta

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Israeli occupation forces targeted Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip by air and with tank fire Sunday, injuring four people, after a rocket fired from the Israeli-beseiged strip crashed into the Israeli city of Sderot.

Israeli police said the rocket hit "between two buildings on a road" in Sderot, which is less than four kilometres (2.5 miles) from Gaza, causing no casualties.

Army spokesman Peter Lerner said Israeli troops retaliated by hitting targets of the Palestinian Islamist movement in northern Gaza.

"In response to the rocket attack from the Gaza Strip, the IAF (Israeli air force) and tanks targeted two Hamas posts in the northern Gaza Strip," Lerner said in a statement.

Palestinian health and security sources said two people were lightly wounded by the Israeli fire.

"One of them is a 20-year-old (young man) who was hit by shrapnel in the face," said Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the Palestinian health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Later on Sunday, two more Palestinians were wounded by further Israeli strikes in the area, Qudra added.

Security sources in the territory said several targets in northen Gaza were struck by Israeli fire, and that a reservoir in Beit Hanun was destroyed.

Witnesses said a base of Hamas's military wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, in nearby Beit Lahya, was also hit.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack on Sderot.

Since the start of October 2015, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least 160 Palestinians In the West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli media said it was the first time downtown Sderot had been hit by a rocket from Gaza since the last Israeli deadly war on Gaza in 2004.

*This report was edited by Ahram Online*

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Jabhat Fateh al-Sham Syria

One rebel group in Syria just denounced its terrorist ties, and its leaders are already trying to rehabilitate its image in the media.

Jabhat al-Nusra's split from Al Qaeda is largely thought to be a public-relations move, and it could help the group achieve its ultimate goal in Syria  establishing an Islamic emirate not unlike the one ISIS has declared across the Middle East.

Sheikh Mostafa Mahamed, a senior leader within the newly established Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS), spoke to Sky News this week in a rare interview given to a Western media outlet. Mahamed was educated in Australia, speaks fluent English, and now coordinates with the Western press.

In his interview with Sky, he marketed JFS as a defender of the Syrian people and insisted the group's ideology is in line with what the population wants.

"It's very clear here that by extension [Western governments] are trying to infer that our ideology is completely alien to the general masses of the Syrian population and we totally reject that," Mahamed said. "If Western governments are expecting us to come out and say we want liberal, Western democracy, secular democracy, they have to understand that as a Muslim society our core beliefs and values define all spheres of our life."

He also advocated establishing a "system of governance that will remove oppression" and "see justice for everyone." He lamented that Sharia law has a bad reputation in the West.

Abu Faisal, a Syrian aid worker who goes by a pseudonym, explained what this means.

"The primary goal of the split is that al-Nusra now sees itself with a real opportunity to actually govern significant parts of Syria, nothing any Al Qaeda franchise has ever dreamed of," he told Business Insider via email. "Even though it's Al Qaeda's stated goal to create/run an Islamic State, it was always more of a dream than reality."

Story continues

Now that the group has denounced its ties to Al Qaeda, it has a better chance of winning popular support.

JFS is selling the split as a move toward unification of Syria's rebel groups against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his allies, including Russia and Iran. Despite the terrorist presence inside Syria, the Assad regime is still widely regarded as the primary enemy of the Syrian people. The Assad regime has relentlessly bombed civilians and killed more people in the country than ISIS or Al Qaeda.

Jabhat al-Nusra proved to be one of the most well-armed and effective groups fighting the Assad regime on the ground. Its resources alone gained the group many members, but some were still put off by its terrorist image.

And al-Nusra ran into problems in Idlib province, where the population rebelled once it tried to govern.

"Al-Nusra is mostly Syrians and that is on purpose, to make them more palatable to locals," Faisal said. "But still, the only problem was that al-Nusra was Al Qaeda. Most Syrians could not accept this no matter how effective al-Nusra was against the regime. People will cheer them in battle, but when they tried to rule using very similar methods to ISIS, people would push back and say 'go back to the front, your place is not here.'"

That could change now that al-Nusra has rebranded.

The rebrand has been a long time coming, and Al Qaeda's awareness of its image problem stretches back to its founding father, Osama bin Laden.

"Bin Laden actually, before he died, in his letters, he was telling Al Qaeda, 'do not use Al Qaeda's name, I do not want anyone to use Al Qaeda's name because the moment you use Al Qaeda's name, the West and the locals are going to come and they're going to beat you up," Ali Soufan, the CEO of strategic-security firm The Soufan Group, said in May at a national-security conference in New York.

"Every time they change their name, we get so confused."

But all these groups are "poisonous fruits coming from the same evil tree," Soufan said.

Despite this, the violence in Syria has made those still living in the country desperate.

"You see, if the devil himself rode a horse into Aleppo and freed the people from siege, starvation and bombing, people would accept it," Faisal said. "Very few people outside of Syria realize what it must feel like to live in those conditions every day of your life with no hope that it ends and with only the expectation that it gets worse (as it has)."

Al-Nusra's move capitalizes on its power, as people inside Syria feel increasingly hopeless about their future.

"People don't like al-Nusra's ideology (and that has not changed in the 'split') but will accept it more so now given that it's their only hope at maybe living some sort of decent life after years of this war," Faisal said.

Ultimately, Jabhat al-Nusra's divorce from Al Qaeda will likely help it outlast ISIS in Syria.

"This is all the long game," Thomas Joscelyn, an Al Qaeda expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider in March. "The concept of jihad and the notion of jihad as [Al Qaeda] understands it was missing in Syria for decades. Their whole idea is to use the war to inculcate the ideology of jihad among the population."

NOW WATCH: EX-PENTAGON CHIEF: These are the 2 main reasons ISIS was born





More From Business Insider


Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

Bern, 22.08.2016 - Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter opened this years Ambassadors and International Network Conference on Monday 22 August 2016. The four-day conference has as its theme Switzerland  stakeholder and beneficiary of the multilateral system and this year is being held in Genevas Palais des Nations, the highly symbolic building opened in 1936 to house the League of Nations. International Geneva is the European heart of multilateral diplomacy while also serving as a platform for Swiss foreign policy. The choice of venue for this years conference emphasises Switzerlands role as a host country and an active and innovative member of the UN. Italys Minister of Foreign Affairs Paolo Gentiloni attended the conference as guest speaker. On Tuesday, the President of the Swiss Confederation, Johann N. Schneider-Ammann, and other members of the Federal Council will also address the ambassadors in a series of presentations and seminars.

Around 320 representatives of Switzerland (ambassadors, consuls-general, heads of SDC cooperation offices as well as senior managers from the Federal Administration) are meeting from 22 to 25 August 2016 at the annual Ambassadors and International Network Conference. This years conference is being held in the Palais des Nations, the UNs headquarters in Geneva, and will focus on Switzerlands role as a host country and stakeholder in multilateral diplomacy.

Following the welcome speech given by UN Director-General Michael Mller, Federal Councillor and Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs Didier Burkhalter used his opening address to talk about Switzerlands candidature for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for the 202324 term. He noted that as both a full member of the organisation and the home of the UNs European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland is an innovative, assertive and reliable partner to the UN. In addition, he said, Switzerlands contributions in the fields of humanitarian aid, international humanitarian law and human rights, conflict prevention, the rule of law, the fight against poverty and global environmental issues are held in high esteem around the world. He emphasised that the country intends to hone and amplify its priorities in these areas in the next few years. Following the opening of the conference, Mr Burkhalter met with Paolo Gentiloni, Italys minister of foreign affairs and guest speaker at the conference, for bilateral talks.

The first two days of the conference will be devoted to panel discussions and workshops tackling current foreign policy issues and global challenges, including issues surrounding peace and security, sustainable development, migration, global health and economic cooperation. Violent extremism, weapons of mass destruction, the impact of changing environmental conditions on security policy (environmental security) and the use of information technology will also be discussed with experts from the UN, civil society and the private sector. These discussions are an opportunity to demonstrate tangibly that Switzerland, as an active member and host of the UN in Geneva, has a wide range of tools to hand to contribute to solving global problems and promoting peace and security. On Tuesday afternoon, the President of the Swiss Confederation, Johann N. Schneider-Ammann, as well as Federal Councillors Doris Leuthard, Simonetta Sommaruga and Alain Berset and Federal Chancellor Walter Thurnherr will address the ambassadors.



The programme for Wednesday 24 August has been organised by the City and Canton of Geneva and includes several visits to state and private institutions. The ambassadors will also meet with Francois Longchamp, a member of Genevas Cantonal Council.



On Thursday, conference participants are invited to attend the presidents annual outing, which will stop at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne (where they will also get a taste of the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics), Aigle Castle and a manufacturing plant in Romont. Members of the Vaud and Fribourg cantonal governments are expected to be present at the stops in Lausanne and Aigle.



The tradition of the Ambassadors and International Network Conference dates back to 1887, when the then President of the Confederation, Numa Droz, invited the heads of the five missions that existed at the time  Paris, Vienna, Rome, Berlin and Washington  to attend a conference.

Address for enquiries

FDFA Communication

Federal Palace West Wing

CH-3003 Bern, Switzerland

Tel. Communication service: +41 58 462 31 53

Tel. Press service: +41 58 460 55 55

E-mail: kommunikation@eda.admin.ch

Twitter: @SwissMFA

Publisher

Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home.html




Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

Bern, 22.08.2016 - Bilateral relations between Switzerland and Italy and policy on Europe were the focus of talks which Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter held with his Italian counterpart Paolo Gentiloni on 22 August 2016 on the margins of this year's Ambassadors and International Network Conference in Geneva. The two foreign ministers agreed to coordinate more closely, particularly in the area of European policy.

Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter, who heads the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), and Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni met for a bilateral working lunch to discuss bilateral topics, Switzerland's policy on Europe, the latest developments in European migration policy and various matters related to European security.

With respect to bilateral cooperation, Mr Burkhalter highlighted the positive developments in the revision of the bilateral police agreement and expressed Switzerland's desire to move forward swiftly to sign the bilateral agreement on the taxation of cross-border commuters. In light of the migration crisis and the situation in the Mediterranean region, the two foreign ministers also expressed their intention to step up cooperation on migration-related matters. The two ministers stressed the need to apply existing rules and to continue to work towards a pan-European solution.

The two ministers also highlighted the importance of a joint approach to tackling issues related to European security. In this context, Mr Burkhalter assured Mr Gentiloni of Switzerland's support for Italy's chairmanship of the OSCE in 2018. They also discussed possible joint approaches to fighting terrorism and preventing radicalisation. Mr Gentiloni also stated that Italy supports Switzerland's efforts to find a mutually agreed solution with the EU concerning the implementation of the new constitutional article on immigration.

The last bilateral meeting between Federal Councillor Burkhalter and Foreign Minister Gentiloni took place on 21 March 2016 in Neuchatel.

Switzerland and Italy have very close and diverse ties. The volume of trade between the two countries was around CHF 34 billion in 2015. Italy is Switzerland's third-largest trading partner. For its part, Switzerland is Italy's fifth-largest export market. Around 310,000 Italian citizens live in Switzerland, making them the largest group of resident foreign nationals. In addition, about 70,000 cross-border commuters from Italy come to work in Switzerland every day. Approximately 50,000 Swiss citizens live in Italy.

Address for enquiries

FDFA Communication

Federal Palace West Wing

CH-3003 Bern, Switzerland

Tel. Communication service: +41 58 462 31 53

Tel. Press service: +41 58 460 55 55

E-mail: kommunikation@eda.admin.ch

Twitter: @SwissMFA

Publisher

Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home.html




U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday talks between the United States and Russia on military cooperation in the fight against Islamic State group in Syria were nearing an end, with technical teams meeting this week to discuss details.

"We are in indeed engaged currently in ongoing conversations, and it is my hope that we are reaching the end of those discussions one way or another," Kerry told a news conference during a visit to Kenya.

"In the next days our team will meet this week, and depending on where those discussions go, it is very possible, very likely, that Foreign Minister (Sergei) Lavrov and I would meet," he said.

"But that decision has to be made on the basis of where we are in the next couple of days."

Kerry said the "Syrian travesty" had gone on for too long and it was imperative that powers supporting the Syrian regime, - Russia and Iran - and those backing the opposition - the United States and its Middle East partners - came together to end the fighting.

Kerry's proposal would have Washington and Moscow share intelligence to coordinate air strikes against the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front and prohibit the Syrian air force from attacking moderate rebel groups.

Meanwhile, Iran said on Monday Russia had stopped using an Iranian air base for strikes in Syria, bringing an abrupt halt to an unprecedented deployment that had been criticized both by the White House and some Iranian lawmakers.

Last week long-range Russian Tupolev-22M3 bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers used Nojeh air base, near the city of Hamadan, in northwest Iran to launch air strikes against armed groups in Syria.

In his first comments on Russia's use of the base, Kerry said: "You'll have to ask the Iranians and the Russians why they made whatever decision they made to something I'm not sure anybody had admitted previously was in fact going on."

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Two senior Moroccan Islamist figures have been suspended from their party, the group announced Monday, following media reports that they were arrested in a "sexual position" on a beach.

Moulay Omar Benhammad and Fatima Nejjar, both in their 60s and vice presidents of the Unity and Reform Movement (MUR), have been "suspended from all structures of the movement", the party said in a statement issued after an emergency meeting of its leadership.

The MUR is the religious and ideological wing of the Justice and Development Party (PJD) which has led a coalition governing the conservative Muslim kingdom since late 2011.

It said they had committed an "extremely serious fault" that amounted to "a violation of the principles of the movement, of its orientation and its values".

According to a private website, Al-Ahdath, police detained Benhammad and Nejjar early last Saturday on a beach in Mohammedia, around 60 kilometres (35 miles) south of Rabat.

They were allegedly found in a "sexual position" inside a car, it said.

A magistrate has released the couple but they both have to appear in court on September 1.

Nejjar, a 62-year-old widow and mother of six, faces a charge of complicity to adultery.

A married 63-year-old father of seven, Benhammad faces charges of "attempted corruption" of the policemen who detained the couple, the website said.

Benhammad said in his defence that he is linked to Nejjar by a common law marriage, according to Al-Ahdath which said that his legitimate wife has not pressed for adultery charges.

Under Moroccan law, extra-marital sex is punishable by a jail term of between one and 12 months.

But Al-Omq al-Maghribi website, which is close to the PJD, quotes sources close to Benhammad saying that was merely "having a meal... and not in any sexual position" with Nejjar.

Some social media in Morocco have revelled in the case, posting videos of Nejjar in full Islamic headdress exhorting female students not to give in to "temptation and vice".

But others sought to portray the incident as a "conspiracy" targeting the MUR and the PJD ahead of legislative elections expected to take place in October.

Cleric Ahmed Raissouni, who is close to the PJD, denounced what he called "police machinations".

Search Keywords:

Short link:


An Indonesian radio station Monday denied airing extremist sermons after Singapore linked it to the radicalisation of two men detained in the city-state who allegedly planned to join the Islamic State group.

Singapore announced last week that Rosli bin Hamzah, 50, and Mohamed Omar bin Mahadi, 33, were being held under a tough internal security law after authorities discovered they intended to travel to Syria to fight for IS.

Several years ago the Singaporean men started listening to Radio Hang, based on the Indonesian island of Batam just south of Singapore, according to the city-state's Ministry of Home Affairs.

The station "sometimes features speakers who preach extreme religious views", the ministry said, and the pair went on to read more radical material about IS which fuelled their desire to join the jihadists.

Radio Hang station manager Abu Yusuf said the station broadcast religious sermons but never spread "IS teachings".

"On the contrary, we have been preaching against people who are not practising true Islam," he told AFP.

"We have been helping the government to broadcast teachings against terrorism."

The broadcasting regulator had monitored Radio Hang but did not find any violations and the station's broadcasts were "very anti-radical", said Suyono, a local official from the body who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, has long struggled with Islamic militancy. After a lull of several years there has been an increase in attacks and attempted attacks in the past year due to growing support for IS.

The Singapore ministry said Rosli, who worked as a car washer, became convinced IS militants were fighting for Islam while Omar, a waste truck driver, had made preparations with his wife and children to travel to Syria.

They are being held under the Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial.

Singaporean officials have repeatedly warned that the city-state -- a US ally in the region -- is a prime target for IS militants.

Earlier this month Indonesian police arrested six suspected militants over a plot to launch a rocket attack on an upmarket Singapore waterfront district from Batam.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Published On Aug 22, 2016 05:25 PM By Alshaar

Honda Cars India announced the installation of its 300th showroom in the country on Monday. Located in Kochi, the showroom was inaugurated in the presence of the companys president Yoichiro Ueno, informed a press release.

Located at Aryabhangy Grande, Muttam in Thaikattukara, the dealership will cater to various needs of the customers, from sales to service and spare parts. The outlet encompasses a showroom and a state-of-the-art workshop with facilities for body and paint related repairs, wheel alignment, wheel balancing and other services, according to the release.

The dealership will also provide facilities of Auto Terrace  Hondas one-stop facility for exchange and pre-owned car purchase, and the Honda Assure facility that takes care of motor insurance requirements.

In an attempt to reach out to a wider audience, spanning across various tier II and tier III Indian cities, the Japanese manufacturer added approximately a hundred dealerships within the past two years. And Honda believes that this is just a stepping stone in its massive enhancement plans for customer reach.

READ: Honda BR-V vs Mahindra Scorpio comparison

Dealerships are the most significant and important touch-points, said Ueno on the occasion. In order to realize the potential of the market by moving closer to our customers, we are not only ensuring access to our customers but also providing them with best-in-class services across all our dealerships, he added.

Kerala has always been a very important market for Honda Cars India. The state contributes about 9 percent to our All India sales and with the opening of new facility Perfect Honda, we now have a strong network of 20 outlets in the state, said the Honda India president.
A Malian militant on Monday asked the people of Mali for "forgiveness" after he pleaded guilty to ordering 2012 attacks on the fabled site of Timbuktu.

"I seek their forgiveness and I ask them to look at me as a son who has lost his way," Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi told the International Criminal Court.

As his unprecedented trial got under way in The Hague, Mahdi added he was "really sorry" and "remorseful" regretted "all the damage that my actions have caused."

He pleaded guilty to intentionally ordering the attacks on nine shrines and the Sidi Yahia mosque between June 30 and July 11, 2012 when the militants seized control of part of northern Mali.

Mahdi, aged about 40, is also the first Islamic extremist charged by the ICC and the first person to face a solo allegation of cultural destruction.

"I would like to seek the pardon of all the whole people of Timbuktu," he said, adding he also begged forgiveness from "the ancestors of the mausoleums I have destroyed."

The attacks on the ancient shrines by militants triggered a global outcry, and archaeologists hope the trial will send a stern warning that such plundering of our common heritage will not go unpunished.

"I would like to make you a solemn promise that this was the first and the last wrongful act I will ever commit," Madhi said.

The prosecutors revealed at the start of trial that they had made a deal with the defence team to ask for a jail term of nine to 11 years. In return, Mahdi said he would not appeal.

The judges recognised this, but also warned Mahdi that they were not necessarily bound by the deal and he faced a maximum term of 20 years.

Mahdi also distanced himself from the militants describing their acts as "evil."

He said he wanted to "give a piece of advice to all Muslims in the world -- not to get involved in the same acts I got involved in because they are not going to lead to any good for humanity."

After making his first court appearances in a white collarless shirt, Mahdi this time was dressed in a charcoal suit, with a striped blue shirt, and a blue-and-white striped tie.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


U.S. District Court Judge Cathy Bissoon in Pittsburgh sentenced a former president/CEO of an Ohio credit union Tuesday to two years in federal prison.

In April, Charles Robert Poore, 45, pleaded guilty to embezzlement when he was president/CEO of the $50 million Toledo Metro FCU. Judge Bissoon also ordered him to pay $251,438 in restitution and serve five years of supervised released following his prison term.

Poores lawyer, Jay J. Finkelstein requested a reduced sentence because his client had no previous criminal record, was making restitutions payments and was not a threat to the community.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas  a candidate in this years Republican presidential primary  has joined the growing list of lawmakers set to speak before credit union leaders next month during NAFCUs Congressional Caucus in Washington.

The Caucus is NAFCUs lobbying event of the year, providing member and nonmember credit union leaders an opportunity to hear about the top issues affecting the industry and to meet face-to-face about those issues with lawmakers.

Cruz is one of the 70 senators who wrote CFPB in July to urge more regulatory relief for credit unions under the bureaus exemption authority. Cruz also joined Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, in April to introduce a NAFCU-backed measure that would fight the Justice Departments Operation Choke Point Initiative.

Cruz chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts and the Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. Cruz also serves on the Joint Economic Committee, the Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Rules and Administration.
A common language forms a bond between humans and strengthens their ability to cooperate. Credit unions must agree on common semantics to establish powerful business analytics throughout the industry.

Language is very powerful tool. The ability for people to understand each other forms one of the strongest bonds known to man. The credit union industry has remained strong through the power of collaboration. However, new challenges have been mounting against the industry such as big banks and fintech competitors, stricter regulations and the increasing complexity of products and channels. Therefore, being on the same page is more important than ever. Currently, credit unions are speaking different languages and trying to collaborate. This results in miscommunication throughout the industry which depends on unity for strength. The ability to communicate easily and effectively is the foundation of credit union analytics.

Data Sources

Credit unions use a vast array of databases (many of which were designed for purposes outside of the credit union industry). On top of that, databases must be designed for ease of storage, international data standards, and tight budgets and timelines. This results in confusing database languages that are only understood by the most experienced users which creates more confusion between IT and business (which do not need any more reasons to misunderstand each other). Data elements (stored on disparate databases) have different meanings throughout a credit union and the industry. These database silos cause disunity within a credit union. If a single credit union is not able to agree on the semantics of their databases, the credit union industry cannot be united.

Data Integration

When credit unions attempt to integrate their databases, many think it will be as easy as routing data from each database into a common location (based on a few database keys). However, when they attempt to roll out the database integrations, they quickly realize this approach will not work for the business. Data integration must be done with the end in mind. If data is integrated without a Common Data Model (CDM) in mind, confusion will be multiplied. The CDM must be designed for the credit unions long-term goals and for the ability to establish common semantics throughout the credit union industry.

Common Data Model (CDM)

In order to begin forming common semantics, credit unions must establish a CDM that span across all their data and is indifferent to vendors. The Credit Union Financial Exchange (CUFX) has established industry standards for database integration using standard business terms that span across databases regardless of vendor. This initiative is strengthening the unity of the credit union industry. CUFX has established common semantics to foster a common credit union language. For example, one credit union might call the application id for a loan, loan appl id, while another might call it ln applic numbr. With a CDM, credit unions can all agree to call it loan application Id and thereby establishing a common term for this data element. As business users begin speaking the same language they will bring greater unity to their credit union and the industry as a whole.

Semantic Layer

Once the CDM has been adopted, credit unions must establish a semantic layer to develop their reporting and analytics. As Joy Mundy, from Kimball Group, explains in her article, The semantic layer provides a translation of the underlying database structures into business user oriented terms and constructs. The semantic layer provides an environment for quick report development and analytics. Common semantics (developed into a format that is easy to consume) will give credit unions the ability to develop insights and share them across the industry much more effectively. If one credit union discovers a pattern in their data, they can develop an app that displays the information intuitively and share their insights with other credit unions to cooperate at a deeper level than ever before.

Cooperative Analytics

Once a common semantic layer (using a CDM) has been implemented throughout the credit union industry, credit unions will truly excel in cooperating on analytics. They can continue to strengthen communication by agreeing on industry standard business terms and definitions for all their data. Cooperation requires a common language to flourish and is essential to foster the collaborative spirit on which the credit union movement was founded.
WASHINGTON  A northern Ohio wetland mitigation bank project received $350,000 through the Natural Resources Conservation Service, part of a $7 million effort to help farmers comply with wetland conservation provisions in the last farm bill.

NRCS Chief Jason Weller announced Aug. 18 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is funding agricultural wetland mitigation banks in 10 Midwest and Northern Great Plain states.

The Ohio project is coordinated by the North Coast Regional Council of Park Districts, comprised of the Erie MetroParks, Lorain County Metropolitan Park District, and the Sandusky, Medina County and Wood county park districts.

The Northern Ohio project area will be close to Lake Erie. Five wetlands mitigation bank sites will be immediately available, with 40 more additional bank sites planned for restoration. The proposed bank sites will be publicly owned.

What is it

The Wetland Mitigation Banking Program, created by the 2014 farm bill, helps states, local governments or other qualified partners develop wetland mitigation banks that restore, create, or enhance wetland ecosystems, broadening the conservation options available to farmers and ranchers so they can maintain eligibility for other USDA programs.

Wetland mitigation banking uses a market-based approach to restore, create, or enhance wetlands in one place to compensate for unavoidable impacts to wetlands at another location.

Banked wetland mitigation credits are made available after the restoration, creation, or enhancement of previously converted wetlands protected by a conservation easement. Wetland mitigation requires the replacement of all lost wetland functions, values, and acres.

Other projects receiving funding include:

Georgia  Corblu Ecology Group, LLC;

Illinois  Magnolia Land Partners, LLC;

Iowa  Iowa Agricultural Mitigation, Inc.;

Michigan  Michigan Quality of Life Agencies (Department of Natural Resources, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and Department of Environmental Quality);

Minnesota  Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources;

Missouri  Minton Environmental Consultants, LLC;

Nebraska  Westervelt Ecological Services, LLC;

North Dakota  Dakota Wetland Partners, LLC;

South Dakota  Dakota Wetland Partners, LLC.
REYNOLDSBURG, Ohio  State Veterinarian Dr. Tony Forshey is recommending cattle owners in southwest Ohio monitor their herds closely after the Indiana Board of Animal Health reported Aug. 19 that bovine tuberculosis (TB) had been diagnosed in a wild white-tailed deer in Franklin County in southeast Indiana. No cases have been diagnosed in Ohio.

While the extent to which the disease may be present in the wild deer population is not known, cattle owners in southwest Ohio should be aware of this finding and take precautions, said Forshey. Monitor your cattle for signs of TB, including lethargy, low-grade fever, and cough, and to take steps to prevent contact between your cattle and wild animals.

Signs and symptoms

Bovine tuberculosis is a chronic bacterial disease that primarily affects cattle, but can be transmitted to any warm-blooded animal. While clinical signs are not visible in early stages, signs that the disease is progressing may include emaciation, lethargy, weakness, anorexia, low-grade fever and pneumonia with a chronic, moist cough. Cattle owners who notice any of these signs in their livestock should contact their veterinarian immediately.

Hunters

Hunters should take precautions to protect themselves, including wearing gloves when field dressing animals and fully cooking all meat. Deer can be infected without noticeable signs of disease, like the doe that tested positive in Indiana. Hunters who notice signs of TB in wildlife should contact the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife at 1-800-945-3543.
Email received from Joy Newhart on Aug. 22, 2016:>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Joy NewhartTo tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com Today at 6:42 AMAt the same time Danny Haber was targeting the tenants in Chinatown he was also targeting the residents at 1919 Market Street. I am a former resident and currently homeless after being Evicted on Jan 28, 2016.>>>>>>>>>>>>
Afghanistan: Still Occupied by US Troops on "Independence Day" by Bay Area Report

Afghans views are divided with regards to their thoughts and feelings towards Independence Day. Some feel that Afghanistan is not an independent state since its still under occupation; foreign troops are present in the country. Today some Bay Area residents of Afghan descent said that the tradition of displaying the flag on Independence Day represents cultural pride, political feelings aside.

Independence Day in Afghanistan is celebrated in August to commemorate the country's independence from Britain in 1919. A participant at a celebration in Palo Alto, California on Saturday, August 21 said, It is a day when Afghans celebrate their emancipation.



Afghans views are divided with regards to their thoughts and feelings towards Independence Day. Some feel that Afghanistan is not an independent state since its still under occupation; foreign troops are present in the country. Today some Bay Area residents of Afghan descent said that the tradition of displaying the flag on Independence Day represents cultural pride, political feelings aside.



On this day in Palo Altos downtown Lytton Plaza, many wore clothes with the flags theme colors, of black, red and green or draped the countrys flag around them as they danced.
California Indians Demand Cruelty to Ancestors Be Disclosed as California Mission Foundation Tries to Declare El Camino Real a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Photo: Map showing El Camino Real.

A proposal by the California Mission Foundation to have the states famed El Camino Real route declared a UNESCO Heritage Site is being bitterly opposed by state Indians who said it would only honor and glorify the brutal conquest of Indian lands.Our tribe and many other California Tribes impacted by the California Mission system oppose this effort, said Valentine Lopez, chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of Costanoan/Ohlone Indians. El Camino Real originally linked Californias 21 Franciscan missions, that were a days horseback ride apart.He was joined in his opposition by Antonio Gonzales, the regional representative for the American Indian Movement, who stressed that in too many cases the foundation has undermined the credibility of ownership of the original peoples of those lands and trails. The foundation also supported sainthood for Serra without considering the brutality that he imposed on California Indians.El Camino Real was originally an extensive trade route used by Indigenous peoples linking the United States and Mexico long before the Spanish arrived in 1769. Once the Indigenous peoples were conquered and dominated, the victors named the trade route El Camino Real, Lopez said. The name in English means The Kings Road.It stretches through the San Francisco Bay Area linking missions there then runs south to San Diego intersecting other missions. For many years small bells were used to mark the route. Most markers have disappeared, either being stolen or vandalized. Serra founded the first nine missions but established the directive that Indians within all the compounds be imprisoned until their deaths disobeying the order by Spanish King Carlos III that the Indians be educated for 10 years then released as full fledged Spanish subjects. While Serra died in 1864, the missions followed his draconian rules until they were disbanded by the Mexican government in 1833.More than 62,000 Indians imprisoned in the missions, perished from disease, malnutrition, torture and stress. All were forced into the missions by Serra and the Franciscans who brutally ruled over the missions, said Lopez. He estimates that actually more than 140,000 Indians, not counted in surveys, actually died in California. The natives, living outside the compounds, were contaminated after contracting diseases from infected mission Indians.The Indians had no immunity to European diseases such as mumps, measles, chickenpox, colds and flu brought by the Spaniards. Once confined to the missions by the Franciscans, Indians suffered horrendous epidemics of those diseases, spread by the terrible living conditions within the mission compounds that were akin to concentration camps.Serra was, made a saint by Pope Francis in 2015. Lopez criticized the Popes actions stating he had earlier apologized for the sins, crimes and offenses and the destruction of the Indigenous peoples, culture and environments, then made a saint of one of the great offenders against the Indians.This is the true history of the El Camino Real and this is the story that the California Mission Foundation endeavors to ignore, erase and deny in their efforts to declare El Camino Real as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, stressed Lopez.Also joining the protest was Elias Castillo, author of A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of Californias Indians by the Spanish Missions. In writing the book, Castillo, relied on his discovery of preserved letters by Serra and other Franciscans in California in which they denigrate Indians, their languages, beliefs and culture. The Academy of American Franciscan History published all those letters in separate volumes. The letters, along with carefully preserved mission records, uncovered irrefutable evidence of the cruelty in which Serra and his Franciscans treated the Indians. Unless the truth is clearly explained, Lopez stressed, El Camino Real should not become a World Heritage Site. Too many Indians died from the inhumanity of Serra and the Franciscans.Castillos book, hailed by Indian leaders as the first accurate and complete description of the Missions, cites letters written by Serra ordering the whipping of Indians. In another letter he describes the Indians as so savage they can only be controlled by blows. His successor, Friar Fermin Lasuen likens the Indians to animals, while the last Spanish Franciscan to head the missions, Friar Mariano Payeras, in a total turnaround, blames the constant deaths of Indians on abominable conditions within the missions. Unlike Pope Francis and other Roman Catholic hierarchy, Payeras openly admitted to the terrible conditions in the missions suffered by the California Indians. We did as were ordered, Payeras states in a letter to his superior in Mexico City. The Franciscan, in his letter, written February 2, 1820, laments the manner in which the Indians have been treated and warned of the Franciscans being subjected to slander and sarcasm for what they did to the Indians.In 1832, the Mexican Assembly in California hailed their governments order to dissolve the Missions, describing them as a detestable system that had oppressed the Indians.July 27th, 2016 By Cathy CastilloAmah Mutsun Tribal Band
The meeting was expected to discuss plans by the U.N. to deploy a 4,000-strong protection force in the capital Juba, as part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission. The UN has threatened an arms embargo if the government does not cooperate.

"We will ... talk about how we move forward in trying to implement peace in this country," a senior State Department official said before the meeting.

"The people of South Sudan have suffered for far too long, and the continued instability there has led almost a million refugees and a humanitarian crisis that is far beyond the abilities of even the international community to respond to," the official added.

South Sudan initially said it would not cooperate with the 4,000-strong force that will be under the command of the existing 12,000-strong U.N. mission UNMISS. Juba has since said it was still considering its position.

"We have not rejected it or accepted it, the sovereignty of the people of South Sudan will be decided by the parliament," South Sudan's presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said.

Since the world's youngest nation gained independence in 2011, oil production - by far the biggest source of government revenue - has plummeted.

Worsening violence has raised fears of a return to civil war that erupted in late 2013, which broadly ran along ethnic lines, pitting President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, against his rival and vice president Riek Machar, a Nuer.

Machar led a two-year rebellion against forces loyal to rival Kiir before the two sides reached a peace deal in August 2015. Under the deal, Machar returned to Juba in April to resume his role as vice president.

After violence flared in the capital Juba last month, Machar withdrew his forces and Kiir subsequently sacked him as vice president.

Machar was picked up by U.N. peacekeepers in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo a week ago with a leg injury and was handed over to authorities in Congo.

Especially of concern to Washington was an attack on a Juba hotel in July by uniformed men who killed a U.S.-funded journalist and raped civilians, including aid workers. The U.N. has launched an investigation into accusations U.N. peacekeepers in Juba failed to respond properly to the attack.

In a letter to Kerry before his visit, the Human Rights Watch group urged him to discuss rights concerns with Kenyatta. The group said it had documented 34 cases of extrajudicial killings and another 11 deaths of people last seen in state custody over alleged links with al-Shabaab militants in Nairobi and in the northeast.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Supporter of public transit and transit workers rallied and spoke out on August 12, 2016 to demand that video tape of the beating of SF MTA TWU 250 A driver Carla Ramero be released. The SF MTA management and now the SF Police refuse to release the tape. Also fired TWU 250A OSHA whistleblower Dorian Maxwell talked about the systemic corruption at the SF MTA and the role of the Democrats.

Supporters of public transit workers and public workers rallied at the San Francisco MTA on August 12, 2016 to demand that a video tape of a confrontation between MTA TWU 250A member Carla Ramero who was attacked and beaten by an irate motorist.Speakers talked about the continual workplace bullying and terrorism against SFMuni TWU 250A members.The MTA which has the tape turned it over the the SF Police Department which is sitting on it.Dorian Maxwell and fired OSHA whistleblower at the SF MTA reported that he had received a CA Labor Commissioner order to go back to work but the MTA managers and Mayor Ed Lee have blocked his return to work. Other speakers discussed the racist component of this attack on the mostly Black and Latino drivers of the MTA. The union advised Ramero not to talk to the press and only called for the release of the tape after this rally was announced.For more media:Supporters of public transit workers and public workers rallied at the San Francisco MTA on August 12, 2016 to demand that a video tape of a confrontation between MTA TWU 250A member Carla Ramero who was attacked and beaten by an irate motorist.Speakers talked about the continual workplace bullying and terrorism against SFMuni TWU 250A members.The MTA which has the tape turned it over the the SF Police Department which is sitting on it.Dorian Maxwell and fired OSHA whistleblower at the SF MTA reported that he had received a CA Labor Commissioner order to go back to work but the MTA managers and Mayor Ed Lee have blocked his return to work. Other speakers discussed the racist component of this attack on the mostly Black and Latino drivers of the MTA. The union advised Ramero not to talk to the press and only called for the release of the tape after this rally was announced.The rally was sponsored by United Public Workers For ActionFor more media:Production of Labor Video Project
- Factional PDP chairman, Ali Modu Sheriff has come under harsh criticisms again

- Barr. Chris Okewulonu wondered why Sheriff was bent on remaining PDP chairman

- He said a critical check will show Sheriff was a non-card carrying member of the PDP

Barr. Chris Okewulonu, a former secretary to the Imo state government (SGI), has described the embattled factional chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Senator Ali Modu Sheriff as a pretender.

According to him, Sheriff was bent on bringing the party to its knees, Leadership reports.

Okewulonu was reacting to leadership crisis rocking the party and the ruling of a Federal High Court in Port Harcourt.

READ ALSO: PDP National Convention: Nigerian speaks on crisis

Speaking in Owerri, the Imo state capital, the former SGI said Sheriffs desperation to remain chairman was a bad omen to the party.

He insinuated that Sheriff was a non-card carrying member of the PDP, saying a critical check on his membership will prove that he was not even registered in his ward and therefore may not even have a PDP membership card.

Okewulonu said: The ward is where membership of a party is anchored. I bet you, Sheriffs name is not in PDPs membership register in his ward because he suddenly jumped into PDP from APC. He is acting as if he is harbouring an age long bitterness against PDP and the opportunity has now provided itself for him to strike.

The former SGI wondered what Sheriff stands to lose if he does not become the national chairman of the PDP.

READ ALSO: PDP will bounce back, Sheriff to decide next move - Gana

He noted that the issue of Sheriff has been blown out of proportion by the media thereby, portraying our party as being in crisis.

Okewulonu stated that the PDP is greater than any of its members and is still intact, Sheriff or no Sheriff.

He therefore cautioned party members to be humble enough to subject themselves to party constitution.

For months, Sheriff and the leadership of the opposition PDP have been at loggerheads following his removal as the national chairman of the party and the inauguration of a caretaker committee headed by Ahmed Makarfi to lead its activities.

Despite his removal, Sheriff has maintained that he remains the chairman of the party.

Some stakeholders in the PDP have said that he is mole in the party and thus want him severely punished.

Source: Legit.ng
- Federal Government is set to probe Senators and House of Representative members over non executed constituency projects earmarked for them in the 2014 and 2015 budgets

- The sum of constituency projects totalled N200bn for the two years- N100bn each year

Many nigerians have accused the National Assembly of wanton corruption

The Muhammadu Buhari led Federal Government is set to probe Senators and House of Representative members over non executed constituency projects earmarked for them in the 2014 and 2015 budgets.

Recall that recently, former chairman, House committee on appropriation, Mr Abdulmumin Jibrin had petitioned the EFCC, ICPC, the police and the Department of State Services, alleging that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara, and three other principal officers had requested the inclusion of N40bn projects in the 2016 budget, besides other projects in sums ranging from N20bn to N30bn.

READ ALSO: Read why Senator Shehu Sani lacks the gift of inward assessment

According to the attorney general of the federation and minister of justice, Mr Abubakar Malami (SAN) who revealed this to Punch newspaper, the sum of constituency projects totalled N200bn for the two years, that is, N100bn each year.

He revealed that the compilation was being done by the police, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission.

The money for constituency projects had been taken, but certain allegations prevailed that some constituency projects were not executed after the money had been paid 100 per cent.

If money is appropriated in the budget, paid and the projects the funds were meant for were not executed, it is only natural to take steps to find out what happened. If neither the money nor the project can be produced, then you must take steps in accordance with the law.

There are cases that are specific; we are compiling them. I will not want to pre-empt investigation, we have to allow investigation to be concluded before we go public, the AGF was quoted.

But both the Senate and House of Reps have denied pocketing funds for constituency projects stating that ministries, departments and agencies under the executive were responsible for the execution of constituency projects.

The chairman, House committee on media and public affairs, Mr Abdulrazak Namdas, said; Members do not execute constituency projects, and they dont receive money for the projects.

For example, a health centre will naturally be done by the Ministry of Health or any agency so designated by the executive to handle the project. It is not the member who implements the project or appoints the contractors.

READ ALSO: Scandals in legislature: Kill all Senators, Reps found guilty?

On his part, Senator Adesoji Akanbi who represents Oyo South senatorial district at the Senate said any probe into the constituency projects should start from the executive.

There is a certain amount set aside for constituency projects. Each lawmaker is allocated a certain amount of money and they will identify the projects of their choice. But the execution by contractors has nothing to do with lawmakers. The main role we play is to name the project and make sure that the project is executed.

Akanbi, however, said lawmakers could be culpable in the manipulation because they had to certify that the job had been done before the contractor could be paid.

Meanwhile, there have been a lot of drama at the National Assembly these few months which in some cases has generated backlash from Nigerians. Legit.ng has gathered the top five stories that rocked the National Assembly these past months.

Source: Legit.ng
Supporters of a powerful political party in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi fired shots at the office of a television channel on Monday before ransacking the building, police said.

The protesters belonged to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), senior superintendent of police Saqib Ismail said. Media reported they were angry about a lack of coverage of a hunger strike.

"MQM workers fired shots at the ARY (News) office, ransacked the premises and set fire to a police mobile," he said.

Local media said the protesters had rushed to the office of ARY shortly after the MQM leader Altaf Hussain, who lives in exile in London, had criticised Pakistan's media in a telephone address for failing to report on his workers' hunger strikes.

Security forces later arrived and dispersed the crowds. Local media said several people were wounded in the clashes.

The MQM protesters had earlier gathered outside the nearby press club where some had been on hunger strike to protest against alleged attacks by security forces on their members in Pakistan's violent commercial hub.

The MQM has held sway over Karachi for years and law enforcement agencies, its opponents and many residents have accused it of racketeering, abduction, torture and murder in its bid to maintain power. The party denies links to crime.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Editor's note: Since President Muhammadu Buhari took over power in 2015, Nigeria has seen a resurgence of Niger Delta militancy and this has led series of bombings of oil and gas pipelines in the region. Nigeria had assumed that with the granting of amnesty to the Movement fir the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, militancy had been grounded but Buharis emergence as president has seen a deadlier resurgence.

Without mincing words, it is fair to conclude that the renewed agitation and vandalism is targeted at President Buharis administration. The most notorious, Niger Delta Avengers has carried out systematic destruction of pipelines that indicates a well-coordinated, heavily-equipped and hugely financed group.

Following the trail of the Avengers are other mushroom groups that have also issued threats and claimed responsibility for pipeline bombings too. Some of them include: Reformed Niger Delta Avengers, Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate, Adaka Boro Avengers, Joint Niger Delta Liberation Force, Red Egbesu Water Lions, Niger Delta Vigilante and Oyobio-Oyobio.

Niger Delta militants

It is significant to know that their demands to President Buhari are different although a call for the development of the Niger Delta region seems to be a collective demand of the groups. With each militant group having its own self-styled General issuing threats and trying to outdo the other in demand and vandalism, President Buhari has a lot of requests to attend to. However, some of the demands from the militants my not be provided by the president.

1. Independence or breaking away from Nigeria

The Adaka Boro Avengers had earlier threatened that it would officially declare a Niger Delta Republic on August 1 but a day before it; the group cancelled its planned declaration and in its statement credited former president, Goodluck Jonathan for appealing to them not to go ahead with the secession. While this may be true to some extent, the move by the Nigerian military may be another factor. This is because heavy military presence was deployed to Bayelsa with the intention to repel any move that might be considered treasonable. While it may easy to blow up a pipeline in the dead of the night considering that most of these region had long networks of pipelines, it will be difficult to declare an independent republic as this will require physical presence and a need to carry-out administrative duties.

READ ALSO: Lawyers warn Buhari on probing Jonathan over ND Avengers

President Buhari might be struggling to deal with vandalism of oil and gas pipelines but a declaration of an independent state would pit the secessionists against the army and the president would not hesitate to exercise the superior weaponry in quelling what may be considered an insult. As he has reiterated, the unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable .

2. Financial amnesty

Granting MEND amnesty during the administration of the late president, Umaru Musa YarAdua and facilitated by then vice president, Jonathan has been a solution that can best be described as a future disaster. In retrospect, Nigeria must regret signing off millions of naira to able-bodied but jobless youths who have been exposed to free lavish lifestyles without doing an honest days work.

File photo of militants

After militants laid down their arms during YarAduas administration, they did so because the government promised to pump their bank account with funds without contributing anything in return. While this was a way to stop the incessant attack on oil workers and bombing of pipelines, it created a bigger financial problem that President Buhari is likely not to repeat.

The president has insisted that he is ready to explore various ways of ending the problem in the Niger Delta but the militants waiting for financial amnesty should think twice as Buhari may not thread this path of wasting fund on jobless youths as this continues to put the country at their mercy.

3. Resource control

Niger Delta militants have called for a restructuring of the control of oil as the current 13 per cent the region was receiving from the federal government was not acceptable. Some militant groups have demanded that that since oil is generated from the region, it should also control it the same way other regions control their agriculture and other resources.

While this is an issue that calls for debate, it is clear that it will take a long time before this will even be considered by President Muhammadu Buhari. First, oil being the main source of Nigerias export cannot be quickly and easily relinquished to the region as this will create a vacuum in Nigerias financial terrain.

READ ALSO: Don't repair blown up facilities - Militants warn NPDC

Professor Yemi Osinbajo, the vice president has reiterated that if corruption remains in Nigerias system, the same problems will still persists even if each region controls it natural resource. Perhaps if oil is discovered in the north, each region will be allowed to control it. Until then, militants should not expect Buhari to relinquish federal governments control of oil to the Niger Delta.

4. Headquarters of oil companies

Oyobio-Oyobio, a militants group recently gave a seven-day ultimatum to oil companies to move their headquaters to the Niger Delta region. They made this demand because they felt the people from the region have a lot to benefit if executive workers of oil companies operate from the Niger Delta.

READ ALSO: ND Avengers ceasefire: MEND attacks Clark

First, the decision to set-up or operate a company from a particular operation is not within President Buharis terrain. Secondly, if he wants these companies to move from Lagos and Abuja to the Niger Delta region, there must security guarantee but unfortunately, the region has had a history of kidnapping for ransom. While the establishment of companies would greatly help to develop the Niger Delta region, the demand is not one Buhari is likely to fulfil soon.

Niger-Delta militants during the amnesty programme

5. Resignation

President Buhari has been blamed for what many considered his lopsided appointment of key persons in his cabinet and some militants have called for his resignation. This is probably the last thing Buhari will do as one would wonder if someone who contested for presidency four times will resign in his first term in office. To Buhari, the idea of resignation as a way of conceding to the demand of some militants is laughable and almost impossible.

The Avengers have finally agreed to a ceasefire and to dialogue with the federal government with Edwin Clark to lead the negotiation. While the terms for the negotiation has not been known yet, it is fair to assume that Buhari may not agree to any of the terms listed above

Source: Legit.ng
UAE has offered a deposit worth $1 billion to the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) lasting for six years, Emirati news agency WAM reported on Monday, a move that aims at alleviating Egypt's dollar crisis.

"This support comes in the framework of cooperation and strategic coordination between the two countries and out of the UAE's firm position supporting Egypt and its brotherly people," WAM stated.

The deal was signed by Abu Dhabi's Fund for Development's General Director Mohammed Saif Al-Suwaidi and CBE's governor Tarek Amer.

Egypt, which relies heavily on imports, particularly foodstuffs, has been suffering an acute shortage of US dollars in the wake of political and security unrest following the 2011 revolution which has discouraged tourists and foreign investors, two major sources of hard currency.

Last April, the UAE pledged $4 billion to Egypt, half as a deposit in the central bank and the other half in investments in developmental projects.

Egypt reached a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $12 billion fund facility over a three-year period to support the ailing economy.

IMF mission chief Chris Jarvis previously told Ahram Online that "all IMF-supported programmes have to be fully financed."

"In Egypts case, we would be looking for commitments of around $5 billion to $6 billion from bilateral creditors before the programme is brought to the board so that we can be sure that the programme is fully financed."

Last week, Egypt's Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said his country is in talks with friendly countries over possible financial aids to meet the programme's terms over the coming three years, Ahram Arabic website reported.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egyptian short film Dry Hot Summers won Best Film, the top prize at the Dhofar Arab Film Forum in Oman.

Directed by Sherif El-Bendary, the film is written by Nura El-Sheikh and co-produced by Claudia Jubeh (Germany) and Hossam El-Ouan (Egypt).

The film was one of two Egyptian entries in the forum  along with Tahra's Life by Mohanad Diab  where 17 films from nine Arab countries competed.

Dry Hot Summers won the Robert Bosch Stiftung Film Prize for International Cooperation at a gala held during Berlinale Talents, a six-day creative summit for up-and-coming filmmakers at the Berlin Film Festival. It also scooped up the main award in the Short Films category at Algerias ninth Oran Arab Film Festival.

The 30-minute film captures the chance meeting of two lonely Egyptians on a bustling and hot summer day in Cairo; a cancer patient and a bride anxious to get her photo taken in the white dress. The day's journey disturbs the stifling routines of the two characters, taking them on an expedition of self-discovery.

The film had its world premiere at the Dubai International Film Festival's 13th edition, 2016.

Other winning films included the Syrian film Darag (Stairs) for best documentary, and Noqta Sawdaa (Black Spot) for best Omani film. The Jury Prize went to Tunisian film Shoof (Look), with the special appreciation prize going to Bahraini film Makan Khas Geddan (A Very Special Place), and Saudi film Taradodat (Frequencies).

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Rapping, drunkenness and "Star Wars" are some of the twists given to William Shakespeare's plays at the Edinburgh festival this year, marking the 400th anniversary of his death.

It may not always be clear whether the treatment of the English playwright's work is homage, mockery or a mixture of both, but packed theatres at the world's largest annual cultural event are testament to his continued popularity and versatility.

Dozens of reimaginings of Shakespeare's work at the festival include "Measure for Measure" in a mesmeric and critically acclaimed Russian-language staging. In a different version, the actor playing villain Angelo says his lines in a rap style and grabs a "victim" from the audience to be dressed up as a nun.

Shakespeare, who died in 1616, wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets which have been translated into over 80 languages and are performed the world over. A British Council survey earlier this year found he is internationally known and understood, but more popular in non-English speaking countries.

One Edinburgh version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" has King of the Fairies Oberon as Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars, while "Romeo and Juliet" is told in Chinese operatic style. The festival also offers an animated version of "The Tempest" and a French-language "Twelfth Night" set at a 1970s seaside resort.

"Measure for Measure" as performed by "Shit-Faced Shakespeare" has toured Britain and the US for seven years, winning sell-out runs due to its unique approach: before every performance one cast member is chosen to get drunk before going on stage.

The idea is "classical theatre as it was always meant to be seen," according to theatre company behind the idea, Magnificent Bastards.

The play's Angelo this week had to apologise shortly after walking onstage for insulting the Bard in bawdy language.

The audience is invited to pause the show at any point, should they see the actor sobering, and immediately he is required to have another drink to chants of "Chug, chug, chug!"

Those who feel the treatment is disrespectful of the great playwright's work may take solace from Shakespeare himself: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Hrishikesh Hirway is a man whos deeply interested in the parts of things and how theyre put together. The musician (The One AM Radio and MOORS) and designer explores how artists assemble music in the popular Radiotopia podcast that he hosts and produces. In each episode of Song Exploder some of your favorite songs are deconstructed, each part and decision explained by the musicians who created them. Hirway is driven to both create and to pull-apart creative works searching tool-marks left by those that created them  for the joints and seams that show how the pieces are put together. The 80-plus episodes of Song Exploder cover a wide swath of pop music, from The Postal Service to U2 and with occasional detours into music made for TV and film. The show presents unrivaled glimpses into the creative process, and as any creative professional knows, food is fuel for the creative mind. I wanted to know what food fueled Hirways busy days.

We met at Amara Kitchen  a small organic cafe in Highland Park  on a blistering August afternoon. Hirway  slender and long limbed with dark eyes and close a cropped beard  orders a plate of poached eggs greens, and purple potato pancakes. I ask him what I should order, and he says the cafe is one of his favorite spots and that I cant go wrong with anything on the menu (I ordered the lentil salad). We find a table in the back corner of the room, and at first he seems reserved, uncomfortable being the subject of the interview instead of the one with the pad and the questions. I thought it was a kind of a strange idea for a story, he reveals, puzzled that I wanted to talk to him about restaurants. But I like it too, he adds. Im ready to talk about food.

He often uses a food analogy to explain his podcast to people. [The podcast is] like being able to taste all of the ingredients in a meal before you eat it, he says. Listening to a song is like just going to a restaurant and getting a dish, but theres a deeper appreciation for what youre consuming when you can take it apart. If you like a certain dish your enjoyment of its flavors is elevated with you understand the ingredients and processes that went into its cooking. Its the

driving idea behind the Song Exploder podcast; episodes feature a track-by track breakdown as the musicians reveal how they realized their ideas and why they made their creative choices.

Thinking about the individual components of whole  be it a song or a dish  may have been instilled into Hirway by his food scientist father, Sumesh Hirway. As a kid growing up in Massachusetts, normal conversations about food would be derailed by science. If you remarked about how spicy a jalapeno was, for example, the elder Hirway would explain the Scoville heat scale and the capsaicin-producing glands of a chile pepper. He cant help it, hes always pointing out what ingredient or aspect or technique is responsible for what youre experiencing, Hirway says. Theres a clear line between Sumesh Hirways impulse to explain how flavors work and Hrishikeshs explorations of song craft in Song Exploder.

The result of all this analysis, and an innate love for food, is that Hirway thinks about food a lot and Los Angeles is a wonderful place for the detail-oriented and food conscious. While he cooks at home with his wife four or five nights a week, the gaps are filled largely by a rotation of their favorite spots near his Northeast L.A. neighborhood. He mentions some of the usual suspects: popular sushi peddlers SugarFish and related hand-roll specialists KazuNori, Silver Lake's Taiwanese cafe Pine and Crane, and the hip Thai hotspot Night Market Song top his list  restaurants that showcase loud flavors and that skew good and healthy with plenty of vegetarian options. But its not all organic greens and farm-to- table. Im a fiend for breakfast burritos, he says, calling the much lauded Tacos Villa Corona the best in the city (for what its worth, Anthony Bourdain agrees with him). Though not a strict vegetarian, Hirway doesnt eat beef or pork and also abstains from alcohol and caffeine.

Sugar is my main vice, he says. Ice cream is his drug of choice, and his favorite hookup is Scoops  a pioneering artisanal ice cream emporium known for its revolving array of far-out flavors such as blackberry Jasmine and balsamic fig. While he likes to explore new flavors at Scoops, his default for ice cream in general is to ask for whatever has the most chocolate, he says. Any time my life is threatened by the amount of chocolate, thats how much chocolate I want.

Hes trying to be better about his ice cream habit, and recently hes been gorging on fruit instead. Were so spoiled in California, so Im eating a lot of fruit. I can binge with a lot less guilt, he admits. Ill eat a pint of blueberries and then a pint of raspberries. He adds that hes been really stoked on almonds because theyre natural and probably seem more healthful than they are. Under normal circumstances, he admits, chocolate chip cookies are my snack of choice. And in his search for the best chocolate chip cookie, hes discovered his favorite cookie in L.A. is not chocolate chip at all but the mocha chip cookie from the bakery at The Line Hotel.

I actually made a Song Exploder episode thats never come out  Cookie Exploder  about how the recipe was created, he reveals. Hes even planned a 10-part series about the best cookies in America but says he hasnt had the time to see it through, or eat that many cookies.

Hirway travels often  at least once a month  and hes always on the lookout for the best cookies, most chocolate and  most importantly  a restaurant serving Marathi cuisine. His favorite restaurant in the world, called Gypsy Marathi, is in India and its the only restaurant that hes found serving regional Marathi food like his mom made when he was growing up. As popular as Indian cuisine is in America and internationally, he says that true Marathi dishes  more subtly spiced than typical southern Indian dishes  are nearly impossible to find.

Its no surprise that subtle differences between regional cooking is important to Hirway, a man absorbed by the details and parts of a whole. When he finds a perfectly assembled creation  be it a song or a fried avocado taco  hes driven to delve into how all the pieces come together. Those aforementioned avocado tacos  from Eagle Rocks Cacao Mexicatessen, also the favorite restaurant of another popular podcaster: Marc Maron  may be Hirways favorite dish in Los Angeles. Its just incredible, he says.  When people come to visit Los Angeles I take them there and make them eat that.
To me, there wasnt much to do to improve the Cuba Libre. I didnt really want to go near it anymore: too simple, too sweet, and having been too easy to drink underage, I couldnt help but associate it with the vertigo that immediately followed a night full of this simple cocktail.

However, recently at Victors Social Club in Charleston, S.C., bartender Shawn Murray challenged me: You need to try my Cuba Libre. No bartender has ever said that to me, so I knew there had to be a catch. There was  gin.

I watched as he filled a slender clear Collins glass with ice, poured a hefty shot of white rum over it, topped it with cola, and then left a little room at the top for a floater of Beefeater gin. A squeeze of lime juice and freshly grated lime zest completed the drink, and he slid it toward me with a smile.

The London style dry gins juniper-forward profile brought out the long-forgotten complexities of cola, and lime juice (but not too much) coupled with the zest added to the overall freshness of a beverage Id long ago given up. This was a real damn drink, not something made in a dorm room.

Although Murray suggested that his twist on the drink was how Cubans originally imagined the cocktail, thats not quite true. It is actually a variation on the Venezuelan Cuba Libre (Preparado) or Improved Cuba Libre, according to Home Bar Basics, Fine Cooking, and many more sites that recycle the same story.

In the 1990s bartender Paul Harrington heeded a suggestion from a Venezuelan customer to add Gin and Angostura bitters to the rum and coke. Apparently the customer said, thats the way we did it in my country. Murrays variation doesnt have the bitters but it does have lime zest, and so it is yet another variation on a refreshing variation.

Murray bartends in a city known for its heat and humidity this time of year, and his beautifully appointed bar is tucked away steps from tourists and traffic. Its cool, dim interior and marble-topped bar is elegant and retro, but not cloyingly so, which seems natural since the drink is the same. In a world where soft drinks are being seen as an ill to be taxed, theres something deliciously retro and revolutionary about drinking this cocktail. Viva la Cuba, and cheers to the improved Cuba Libre.

Improved Cuba Libre

From Shawn Murray, Victor Social Club, Charleston, S.C.

Ingredients

3 oz. Brugal rum

Mexican Coca-Cola

1 oz. Beefeater Gin

Ice

Lime for garnish

Directions: Fill a Collins glass  full with ice. Build drink, pouring first rum, then cola almost to the top of the glass, then top with gin. Squeeze juice of one lime wedge in drink and garnish with a fresh zest of lime peel over the glass.
Ms. Magdelen Neh Ngwa to Lead the Development of a Human Resources Strategy

By: Saint Monica University

End

-- Saint Monica University (SMU): The American International University today announced that it has named Ms. Magdelen Neh Ngwa to the newly created position of Associate Vice President of Human Resources (AVPHR). Reporting to the Vice President of Administration and Finance, the AVPHR is responsible for leading the development and execution of a human resources strategy in support of the overall strategic direction of an institution advancing to become one of the nation's premier universities."I am extremely grateful for the opportunity that Saint Monica University has provided not just me, but the entire faculty and staff of the University,"said Ms. Magdelen Neh Ngwa, Associate Vice President of Human Resources at SMU. "I will continue to put in my utmost best to make SMU the best place to work and make our employees become the best they can be. Key to my success in this role is partnering with leadership to drive the University's objectives through the application of human resource processes, policies, practices and development of the University culture."The AVPHR will provide executive level leadership and management for all human resources functions of the University including recruitment & retention, onboarding, talent and performance management, employee engagement, change management, organizational development, compensation and salary administration, training and development, employee relations, employee wellness, benefits/rewards administration and a variety of compliance functions."Ms. Ngwa has been the Director of Human Resources at SMU from the very start and I am very satisfied with her work and commitment to the success of the University,"said Professor Januarius Jingwa (JJ) Asongu, President and Chief Executive Officer of SMU. "She has always been at the helm of human resources operations at this University and the change of title emphasizes the importance of the HR function at SMU. Furthermore, Ms. Ngwa is a change agent with a customer focus, who understands that everything noteworthy is accomplished due to great people operating in a university environment that allows everyone to be their best, individually and as a team."Prior to joining the pioneer team of employees at SMU, Ms. Ngwa worked in the environmental industry for many years. She holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a concentration in Human Resource Management from SMU, that she earned while working for the institution. She also has a Bachelor's degree in Geography.Saint Monica University (SMU) is a leading private university in Cameroon. It is an American-style non-ecclesiastical Catholic institution, offering career-focused programs that are at the intersection of the liberal arts, science and technology. It is dedicated to providing educational opportunities for the intellectual, social, entrepreneurial and professional development of a diverse student population. SMU is focused on the student experience and helping our students achieve their educational and career goals, and contributing to a more sustainable society. We offer various certificates and diplomas as well as bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees through the School of Arts, Education, & Humanities (SAEH); School of Business & Public Policy (SBPP); School of Health & Human Services (SHHS); and School of Science, Engineering & Technology (SSET). SMU is accredited in the United Kingdom by the Accreditation Service for International Schools, Colleges, and Universities (ASIC) with Accreditation No: AS22357/0614 and is listed on the UK Register of Learning Providers (UKRLP) with the UK Provider Reference Number (UKPRN): 10048183. SMU is also fully accredited in Cameroon by the National Commission on Private Higher Education at the Ministry of Higher Education (MINESUP) with the Ordinance of Creation No: E14/0028/MINESUP/SG/DDES and the Ministerial Letter No: 15-09643/L/MINESUP/SG/DDES/ESUP/SDA/MM authorizing SMU to offer over 60 undergraduate and graduate diploma and degree programs. SMU is a member of many international academic organizations including the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), Global Universities In Distance Education (GUIDE), and the Talloires Network. For more information about SMU, visit our website: http://www.smuedu.org or write to us at admissions@smuedu.org.
Insights, Transition, Impact on SAP BW on SAP HANA, and Embedding Predictive Analysis

By: T.A.Cook Conferences

Contact

T.A.Cook Conferences

***@tacook.com T.A.Cook Conferences

End

-- SAP's S/4HANA suite offers companies a great platform for innovation and improved business efficiency. If you and your team are new to the solution or if you are an existing customer and want to explore the full capabilities of S/4HANA, don't miss this two day seminar specifically designed for the utilities industry.SAP S/4HANA Seminar for the Utilities Industry takes place on 10-11 November in Amsterdam, Netherlands.Packed with use cases, demos and interactive content join the SAP experts behind S/4HANA and industry professionals to discuss key concepts, deliveries, road map items and considerations when moving your IT landscape. Take this opportunity to have your questions answered, share best practice and take a deep dive into SAP's next-generation ERP business suite.Registration is now live, the Early Bird rate is on and group offers are currently available. Visit the seminar web site to download the agenda and for more information on the event: http://uk.tacook.com/events/conferences/details/seminar-sap-s4hana-for-the-utilities-industry.html?utm_source=PR%20Log&utm_medium=Foc%20PR&utm_term=Homepage&utm_content=22%20Aug&utm_campaign=SAPSemU2016
Al-Ahram foundation will cooperate with the ministry in organising an international exhibition

Egypt's antiquities ministry will sign on Monday a protocol of cooperation with Al-Ahram foundation on organising the ministry's first ever touring exhibition of replicas.

Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany told Ahram Online that the exhibition comes after the success of the first local replicas exhibition held in July in the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square.

The touring exhibition will start in April 2017 in Tokyo before moving on to Osaka.

Amr El-Tibi, executive director of the Replicas Unit at the ministry, explaineed that the exhibition, The Treasures of Tutankhamun, includes a collection of 150 replicas from the boy king's funerary collection.

The exhibition will last for 18 days, nine days in each city.

El-Tibi said that books published by the ministry and replicas produced by the ministry are to be sold during the exhibition.

Al-Ahram foundation will cover all the costs of the exhibition.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


This fall, Montana State University's Extended University offers two courses for online instructors. Both are taught by award-winning online instructor John Graves.

By: MSU Extended University

Contact

Suzi Taylor

***@montana.edu Suzi Taylor

End

-- Montana State University's National Teachers Enhancement Network (NTEN) offers two non-credit courses this fall that help online instructors improve their skills, maximize student engagement and build high-quality online courses. Both MSU courses are fully online and available to anyone in any location.The courses are designed for both new and experienced online instructors who are teaching at the middle school, high school, community college or university level. Students can take either or both courses.Fundamentals of Online Instruction runs from Oct. 3 to Nov. 11 and offers participants a practitioner's look at the art of online instruction. Students will be introduced to the basics of online instruction by using and examining many of the current pedagogical approaches of online instruction. The course covers topics such as how online teaching differs from classroom teaching; keeping online students engaged; and maximizing the features of a learning management system.Advanced Online Instruction runs from Nov. 7 to Dec. 16 and includes classes on incorporating strategies like podcasting, webinars, and alternative assignments;creating an online culture; facilitating online discussions, and more.Both courses are designed to be highly active, fully engaging and professionally stimulating as students learn from one another and from award-winning instructor John Graves of MSU. Graves has 20 years of experience in online instruction. He serves as a core faculty member in MSU's Intercollege Programs for Science Education (IPSE) department and has a passion for inquiry instruction and models thought-provoking, challenging examples of creative engaging, effective online courses.Each course is $375. Participants taking both courses receive a $50 discount on each course for a total discount of $100. Students who successfully complete the requirements of each course will receive a certificate of completion as well as Continuing Education Units (CEUs) or OPI renewal units (for Montana teachers).The National Teachers Enhancement Network (NTEN) is a program of MSU's Extended University that offers online graduate courses, non-credit learning opportunities and free resources for teachers. The program has served 20,000 teachers since its launch in 1993.Register or learn more at http://eu.montana.edu/NTEN/ ( http://scienceteacher.org ) or contact Kelly Boyce at kboyce@montana.edu or (406) 994-6812. The NTEN Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/scienceteachers/
According to a Bucharest City Report by JLL GDP grew by 3.7% (y-o-y) in the first 9 months of 2015 and is forecast to increase by 3.7% (Goldman Sachs) until the end of the year. The cut in VAT from 24% to 9% for food products since the 1st of

[]
After Tata and Mahindra managed to score 5 star safety rating for Altroz and XUV300 last month, Global NCAP urged Maruti to make cars with 5 star safety.

At the launch of Tata Altroz, which received 5-star safety rating (for adult occupants) from Global-NCAP, the testing agencys CEO and President, David Ward, urged other automakers, especially Maruti Suzuki, to start developing cars for India which are safe enough for a 5-star rating. If you had hoped Maruti to respond to this challenge with a yes, you would be wrong.

India-made Maruti Suzuki vehicles like Alto, Eeco, Ertiga, Wagon R, Swift, Vitara Brezza etc, have been tested by Global NCAP so far (the vehicles were sourced by the testing agency on its own accord). Save for the Vitara Brezza which managed to score 4-stars and Ertiga which received 3 (both for adult occupants), other vehicles performed very poorly in the crash tests with some failing miserably.

Given that Tata Motors and Mahindra already have 5-star rated products in their portfolio, will Maruti Suzuki focus on receiving similar ratings at Global-NCAP tests with its future products? Well, as it turns out, that is not going to be the case.

Speaking to Electric Vehicle Web on the sidelines of the Auto Expo 2020, CV Raman, Senior Executive Director, Maruti Suzuki, stated that the company will not be voluntarily sending its vehicles to be tested by Global-NCAP. His exact words were, As far as Maruti Suzuki is concerned, we believe that all safety regulations which are mandated by the government and the recently introduced offset side impact and pedestrian regulation we are meeting..going forward SIAM as a body with the manufacturer are working to bring out the BNCAP. Anything that is led or driven by the government and recognized by the government is something that we would be definitely looking at. Any other agency, its okay for the strategy of other manufacturers but Maruti Suzuki would like to work within the ambit of the Indian government regulations.

While Global-NCAPs test results are acknowledged as measure of a vehicles safety in most international markets, SIAM (Society of Indian Automobile Manufacuters) has a different stand in this matter. According to the industry body, Global-NCAP is merely an NGO with its own safety standards and it is not an authority when it comes to setting standards of safety.

India is not far away from implementing its own mandatory crash tests under BNVSAP (Bharat New Vehicle Safety Assessement Program) which is likely to follow similar star-rating system. With this program, the government is aiming to improve the vehicular safety in India to global standards.

Source
At the grocery store, most foods -- meats, breads, cheeses, snacks -- come wrapped in plastic packaging. Not only does this create a lot of non-recyclable, non-biodegradable waste, but thin plastic films are not great at preventing spoilage. And some plastics are suspected of leaching potentially harmful compounds into food. To address these issues, scientists are now developing a packaging film made of milk proteins -- and it is even edible.

The researchers are presenting their work today at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

"The protein-based films are powerful oxygen blockers that help prevent food spoilage. When used in packaging, they could prevent food waste during distribution along the food chain," says research leader Peggy Tomasula, D.Sc.

And spoiled food is just one issue. Current food packaging is mainly petroleum-based, which is not sustainable. It also does not degrade, creating tons of plastic waste that sits in landfills for years.

To create an all-around better packaging solution, Tomasula and colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are developing an environmentally friendly film made of the milk protein casein. These casein-based films are up to 500 times better than plastics at keeping oxygen away from food and, because they are derived from milk, are biodegradable, sustainable and edible. Some commercially available edible packaging varieties are already on the market, but these are made of starch, which is more porous and allows oxygen to seep through its microholes. The milk-based packaging, however, has smaller pores and can thus create a tighter network that keeps oxygen out.

Although the researchers' first attempt using pure casein resulted in a strong and effective oxygen blocker, it was relatively hard to handle and would dissolve in water too quickly. They made some improvements by incorporating citrus pectin into the blend to make the packaging even stronger, as well as more resistant to humidity and high temperatures.

After a few additional improvements, this casein-based packaging looks similar to store-bought plastic wrap, but it is less stretchy and is better at blocking oxygen. The material is edible and made almost entirely of proteins. Nutritious additives such as vitamins, probiotics and nutraceuticals could be included in the future. It does not have much taste, the researchers say, but flavorings could be added.

"The coatings applications for this product are endless," says Laetitia Bonnaillie, Ph.D., co-leader of the study. "We are currently testing applications such as single-serve, edible food wrappers. For instance, individually wrapped cheese sticks use a large proportion of plastic -- we would like to fix that."

Because single-serve pouches would need to stay sanitary, they would have to be encased in a larger plastic or cardboard container for sale on store shelves to prevent them from getting wet or dirty.

In addition to being used as plastic pouches and wraps, this casein coating could be sprayed onto food, such as cereal flakes or bars. Right now, cereals keep their crunch in milk due to a sugar coating. Instead of all that sugar, manufacturers could spray on casein-protein coatings to prevent soggy cereal. The spray also could line pizza or other food boxes to keep the grease from staining the packaging, or to serve as a lamination step for paper or cardboard food boxes or plastic pouches. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration recently banned the perfluorinated substances that used to coat these containers, so casein coatings could be a safe, biodegradable alternative.

Bonnaillie says her group is currently creating prototype film samples for a small company in Texas, and the development has garnered interest among other companies, too. The group plans to keep making improvements, and she predicts this casein packaging will be on store shelves within 3 years.
Squatters who illegally occupy vacant homes or buildings are not always contributing to apathy or social disorder, says a new University of Michigan study that will be presented at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

It can actually be a good situation for a neighborhood to have these individuals move into abandoned homes, lessening the chance of them becoming sites for drug users or burned by arsonists, the study indicates.

In urban communities nationwide, such as Detroit, which are experiencing population decline, homes have been abandoned by owners or left unattended by private investors who often purchase them in bundles of tens, hundreds, or even thousands.

"While attempts to revitalize a city rely on private ownership to induce responsible care for property, that isn't always an option," said study author Claire Herbert, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she earned a PhD in sociology.

That's where squatters come in.

Herbert, who will be an assistant professor at Drexel University in the fall, interviewed more than 60 people, including squatters, city authorities, and residents between 2013-2015, while also gathering ethnographic data on illegal property use from various sources, such as community meetings and squatted areas across Detroit.

Surprisingly, many of the residents in the study welcome squatters to keep abandoned homes occupied. Squatting, however, was not considered acceptable to residents if the home was still occupied or if the legal owner was maintaining and overseeing the property.

But, when there is minimal police or city oversight to enforce legal owners to maintain their vacant properties, neighboring residents seek solutions, Herbert said. Many forego involving the police or other city authorities to enforce legal ownership, but instead encourage responsible squatters in order to bring about the kind of positive impact that legal ownership is supposed to bring -- improved neighborhood conditions, such as safety, community, and care for physical structures.
Astronomers have identified a young star, located almost 11,000 light years away, which could help us understand how the most massive stars in the Universe are formed. This young star, already more than 30 times the mass of our Sun, is still in the process of gathering material from its parent molecular cloud, and may be even more massive when it finally reaches adulthood.

The researchers, led by a team at the University of Cambridge, have identified a key stage in the birth of a very massive star, and found that these stars form in a similar way to much smaller stars like our Sun -- from a rotating disc of gas and dust. The results will be presented this week at the Star Formation 2016 conference held at the University of Exeter, and are reported in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

In our galaxy, massive young stars -- those with a mass at least eight times greater than the Sun -- are much more difficult to study than smaller stars. This is because they live fast and die young, making them rare among the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, and on average, they are much further away.

"An average star like our Sun is formed over a few million years, whereas massive stars are formed orders of magnitude faster -- around 100,000 years," said Dr John Ilee from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, the study's lead author. "These massive stars also burn through their fuel much more quickly, so they have shorter overall lifespans, making them harder to catch when they are infants."

The protostar that Ilee and his colleagues identified resides in an infrared dark cloud -- a very cold and dense region of space which makes for an ideal stellar nursery. However, this rich star-forming region is difficult to observe using conventional telescopes, since the young stars are surrounded by a thick, opaque cloud of gas and dust. But by using the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii and the Karl G Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, both of which use relatively long wavelengths of light to observe the sky, the researchers were able to 'see' through the cloud and into the stellar nursery itself.

By measuring the amount of radiation emitted by cold dust near the star, and by using unique fingerprints of various different molecules in the gas, the researchers were able to determine the presence of a 'Keplerian' disc -- one which rotates more quickly at its centre than at its edge.

"This type of rotation is also seen in the Solar System -- the inner planets rotate around the Sun more quickly than the outer planets," said Ilee. "It's exciting to find such a disc around a massive young star, because it suggests that massive stars form in a similar way to lower mass stars, like our Sun."

The initial phases of this work were part of an undergraduate summer research project at the University of St Andrews, funded by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The undergraduate carrying out the work, Pooneh Nazari, said, "My project involved an initial exploration of the observations, and writing a piece of software to 'weigh' the central star. I'm very grateful to the RAS for providing me with funding for the summer project -- I'd encourage anyone interested in academic research to try one!"

From these observations, the team measured the mass of the protostar to be over 30 times the mass of the Sun. In addition, the disc surrounding the young star was also calculated to be relatively massive, between two and three times the mass of our Sun. Dr Duncan Forgan, also from St Andrews and lead author of a companion paper, said, "Our theoretical calculations suggest that the disc could in fact be hiding even more mass under layers of gas and dust. The disc may even be so massive that it can break up under its own gravity, forming a series of less massive companion protostars."

The next step for the researchers will be to observe the region with the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA), located in Chile. This powerful instrument will allow any potential companions to be seen, and allow researchers to learn more about this intriguing young heavyweight in our galaxy.

This work has been supported by a grant from the European Research Council.
Kansans who own water wells show more awareness of state water policy issues than those who rely on municipal water supplies, according to a study that could have implications for groundwater management and environmental policies.

Brock Ternes, a University of Kansas doctoral student in sociology, found that well owners prioritized issues related to the depletion of the High Plains Aquifer -- which is the underground reservoir of freshwater beneath much of the western half of the state.

Based on a survey he conducted of 864 Kansans, Ternes discovered that well owners were significantly more aware of water supplies and water-related policies and agencies, including the Kansas Water Office, Groundwater Management Districts, and the Governor's Long-Term Vision for the Future of Water Supply in Kansas.

"The people who use private wells for water are more likely to hear about water-related policy issues and pay attention to them," said Ternes, who will present his study at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

For example, he found that well owners also tended to be more aware of the Kansas Aqueduct proposal, an $18 billion undertaking that would divert water from the Missouri River to western Kansas. Non-well owners were less familiar with this enormous waterworks project.

Like so many regions suffering from recent droughts, rural Kansas has been particularly hard-hit by the scarcity of water. The High Plains Aquifer has been over-pumped for its valuable irrigation water, and researchers estimate that unless pumping is curtailed, the aquifer will no longer support irrigation wells in portions of southwestern Kansas within 25 years, Ternes said.

advertisement

"Sociological studies are imperative for understanding the mindsets of well owners, who are a distinct group of Kansans who will continue to influence the availability of groundwater," Ternes said.

As part of his survey, Ternes found that private well owners highly prioritize conserving water for the future.

"Most well owners believe securing water is one of the top political challenges facing Kansas, and water policies are more likely to influence their vote in local and state elections than Kansans who don't own wells," said Ternes. In this study, he coins the term "groundwater citizenship," which emphasizes the stewardship of aquifers and deliberate water conservation in order to conserve supplies of groundwater.

"My data suggest that well owners have different political priorities than non-well owners and conserve water with the hopes of extending their supply, which makes them a unique type of citizen," he said.

This research could be valuable for policymakers and water officials in Kansas as they seek to examine possible solutions for protecting the High Plains Aquifer. If they understand the importance of engaging well owners who are passionate about these issues, it can help bring water conservation more to the public forefront.

"Water supply infrastructure is clearly connected to how in-tune people are with their natural resources, which is profoundly important for environmental policymaking and survival in the Anthropocene," Ternes said.

The study has broader implications for environmental stewardship as many states grapple with vulnerability to drought, he added.

"Technologies might grant us access to natural resources and make them seem more readily available when they are in reality much more scarce," Ternes said. "This is why we need to analyze the systems that provide access to finite resources like water."
Scientists from the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered a new mechanism of cell boundary elongation. Elongation and contraction of the cell boundary is essential for directing changes in cell shape, which is required for the correct development of tissues and organs. The study was published in Current Biology on 11 August 2016.

How do contractile forces lengthen cell boundaries?

During development of an embryo, cells assemble to form tissues and organs. This requires cells to grow, divide, and occasionally undergo programmed death. However, a common property observed in many of these biological processes is cell deformation, which is essentially a dynamic change in cell shape. Based on mechanical principles, these shape changes have been broken down as either a contraction or elongation of the cell boundary. Cell boundary contraction has been extensively studied, and is driven by contraction of a network of protein filaments within the cell. The two major components of this contractile network are actin, a structural protein that forms long filaments or cables, and myosin II, a motor protein that binds to actin and uses energy to slide the actin filaments past each other. Known as actomyosin, this network is responsible for generating contractile force in cells.

As actomyosin contraction is a "pulling" force, it is easy to visualise how activity of this network can pull in the cell boundaries, causing contraction. However, as the actomyosin network is unable to generate the opposite "pushing" force, scientists have long sought to answer the question of how do cell boundaries elongate.

In order to answer this question, MBI researchers Associate Professor Yusuke Toyama, who is the Principal Investigator of the research, and Dr Yusuke Hara, together with Mr Murat Shagirov, who was formerly a researcher at the Institute, used live embryo imaging and laser surgery to probe cell boundaries in the developing fruit fly embryo, a model system which has many similarities to mammalian development. The researchers focused their investigation on a patch of about 200 polygon shaped cells called the amnioserosa, which "zip up" to seal the embryo. The dynamic deformations that amnioserosa cells undergo make them an ideal choice for studying cell shape changes.

Careful observation and computational analysis of the amnioserosa revealed that cells underwent rhythmic changes in both area (growing and shrinking in size), and also in boundary length (becoming longer and shorter). However, these two processes were not synchronised as might be expected -- i.e. a cell increasing in area was not necessarily undergoing elongation of all of its boundaries. This complication prompted the scientists to examine the distribution of myosin II across the amnioserosa. This led to the discovery that there was an increase in myosin II in the cells next to the cell undergoing boundary elongation. By disrupting the myosin II in these neighbouring cells with a laser, cell boundary elongation was terminated. This demonstrated that myosin II in neighbouring cells actively elongates the cell boundary via pulling of the boundary ends, much like stretching a rubber band with your fingers.

This study revealed that actomyosin networks are responsible for both contraction and elongation of the cell boundary. Actomyosin contractility within a cell results in cell boundary contraction. However, it is the activity of the actomyosin network in surrounding cells that results in the elongation of the cell boundary, suggesting the cell boundary elongation in a tissue is not a single cell process, but one which requires help from neighbouring cells. Understanding how actomyosin networks of neighbouring cells cooperate to direct changes in cell shape will be invaluable for deciphering many biological processes, such as tissue development, organ specialisation, and wound healing.
A protocol of cooperation between the Al-Ahram and the Ministry of Antiquities was signed an hour ago to establish the ministry's first international touring replica exhibition

Chairman of Al-Ahram Foundation Ahmed El-Naggar and Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany signed on Monday a protocol of cooperation to launch a touring exhibition in Japan of replicas from Tutankhamun's funerary collection.

During the signing, which took place in the presence of Japanese ambassador Takehiro Kagawa, El-Naggar offered El-Enany and Kagawa the Al-Ahram Foundation award and a collection of books published by Al-Ahram.

The exhibition tour will start in April 2017 in Tokyo before moving on to Osaka, Japan.

El-Enany told Ahram Online that this would not be the last cooperation effort with Al-Ahram. El-Enany and El-Naggar also priliminarly agreed to publish illustrated books for Egyptian children to raise their awareness of their heritage.

El-Enany said that the replica exhibition comes after the success of the first local replica exhibition held in July at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square.

Al-Ahram foundation will cover all the costs of the exhibition, including insurance fees, which cost EGP 3,7 million, as well as EGP 100,000 for the right to use the replicas.

Amr El-Tibi, executive director of the Replica Unit at the ministry, explained that the exhibition, The Treasures of Tutankhamun, includes a collection of 150 replicas from the boy-king's funerary collection.

The exhibition will last for 18 days, with nine days in each of the two Japanese cities. El-Tibi said that books published by the ministry and replicas produced by the ministry are to be sold during the exhibition.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


When an Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin was captured in the wild and sold to an aquarium in South Korea, it seemed like her life, as she knew it, was over.

Little did she know, people were working to free her.

Chunsam and four other dolphins had been caught and sold illegally to aquariums between 2009 and 2010, according to Ric O'Barry's Dolphin Project.

Thanks to tireless efforts of advocates on the dolphins' behalf, in 2013 the Korean Supreme Court ruled to release them back to the wild.

Longtime animal advocate Ric O'Barry himself went to South Korea to prepare the dolphins for their release. After a few months of rehabilitation in a sea pen, Chunsam was ready to be free again. She was released in the summer of 2013.
It's not every day a guy is relieving himself in the cool, country air of northern Quebec, Canada - and a runaway pig barrels toward him. Then again, not everyone is Rob Boisvert, a team member of Refuge RR, who seems to be a magnet for pigs in distress.

The Dodo wrote about Boisvert last month, after he made a death-defying run across several lanes of highway traffic to save a piglet who had just fallen off a slaughterhouse truck. This time, he was visiting a friend and looking to use Mother Nature's restroom - a convenient patch of woods on his friend's property - when the pig came to him. "I look across the road and I see something's running at the edge of the forest... and then right at me," he tells The Dodo. Boisvert and his friends corralled the 4-month-old pig, loading her into the back of a van. Once there, she just flopped down, completely spent.

Dodo Shows Cat Crazy Fluffy Cat Wants To Sit On His Dad At All Times

"She was that worn out," Boisvert explains. "She was running for a while. I've been around a lot of pigs. And to see them that tired. She was running from something. You never know, she could have been chased by dogs, coyotes, anything." But after an hour into the three-hour drive back to the sanctuary in Alexandria, Ontario, the pig started showing her gratitude to Boisvert and his partner in rescue, Nadine Leblanc.

By the time the pig arrived at Refuge RR, she had a name - Tilly - and a future.

Tilly is in quarantine right now, as staff members assess her medical condition. But soon, she will join the tiny pig who came before her, the highway rescue named Gracie - and live out her years at the sprawling sanctuary.

"She's drinking and doing fine," Boisvert says. "I'm still cleaning up my van as we speak. She had some fun in there."

At first glance, Boisvert may not have seemed like the kind of guy a pig in trouble goes running to - heavily tattooed, wearing his "Cannibal Corpse" concert t-shirt and, well, peeing in the woods. But then again, animals have a funny way of looking past all that and finding just the right heart they need at just the right time.
When Adam Bryk moved from York Mills Rd. and Leslie St. in North York to Danforth and Coxwell Aves. downtown, his car insurance went up $300 a year, while his partners dropped by $40.

Both are the same age, have been licensed drivers for many years and drive older cars  his is a 4-year-old Mazda 3 and hers a Mazda CX7 that is a few years older.

Its a mystery, says Bryk, an accountant. The only change was the address. Youd think they would both go the same way  up or down.

When Bryk queried TD Meloche Monnex about the increase, the agent wasnt interested in information about what exactly had changed. This included going from private indoor parking to street parking and a shorter drive to work.

It was only the neighbourhood that seemed important.

Needless to say I switched to (my partners insurer) and saved a lot.

Bryks new premium with RBC insurance has dropped by $100 a year, as opposed to a $300 increase proposed by TD. Thats a hefty saving of $400.

Bryks story is one of several coming out of last weeks column about how insurance companies use postal codes to collect accident and claims benefit data, which is used to determine your annual premium.

His situation is more proof of the importance of shopping around.

Related: Insurers fraud effort drives good customer away

Gord Miller had a similar experience.

Miller lives in Trenton and retired in December. For 26 years he drove an hour each way to work, putting between 35,000 and 40,000 km a year on his car. His wife who is self-employed drives a similar amount.

I had expected big savings when I retired since I'm driving only half as much and hardly ever during bad weather, Miller said.

(My wife and I) have been told more than once by insurance companies that one of the biggest factors in premiums was the fact that we were driving a lot of miles.

Miller was surprised on renewal to see an annual increase of $176 in the policy.

(This is) even though I had no claims, no tickets and am driving the same three-year-old car about half as much as I was, he says.

It seems to me that insurance companies are playing some sort of game that has little to do with your driving. Needless to say I am no longer with my old insurance company.

I have found that you have to change companies every three to five years if you don't want to be treated like a chump.

Miller has bundled his car and home insurance with a new company and has reduced his cost by $220 a year.

One reader, who worked in the insurance industry in the United States, noted that since 2007 California insurers have been prohibited from using zip codes as a main factor in determining rates.

Ratings must be based primarily on a person's driving record and miles driven.

This is something the Ontario insurance regulator should consider, he said.

A spokesman for the Financial Services Commission of Ontario (FSCO) says a decision on what factors insurers can use to determine your rates is a political one.

Malon Edwards says that FSCO's mandate is to protect the public interest in the sectors it regulates, including auto insurance. Prohibiting insurers from using one or other measure requires a legislative or regulatory change that must be proposed and approved by the Ontario government, and is outside of FSCO's authority, he added.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada thinks the use of postal codes is the best way to insure the lowest rates for consumers.

A territory is a good and legitimate predictor of risk, says IBCs Celyeste Power. It doesnt make sense for people in a lower risk area to pay higher rates (to subsidize) those in higher risk areas.

In the end there are many actuarial measures that go into the price of insurance. Location is one. You cant easily change where you live, but with 30 companies competing for your business, you can easily change your insurer.

More columns by Adam Mayers END

Adam Mayers writes about investing and personal finance. Reach him at amayers@thestar.ca

SHARE:
The recent arrests of two men accused of failing to disclose their HIV status to their sexual partners have led to renewed calls for changes to legislation that advocates say contributes to the fear and stigma surrounding the disease.

Canadians with HIV are legally required to disclose their status to their partner before engaging in sexual activity. Those who fail to do so can be charged with aggravated sexual assault, whether the virus is transmitted or not.

If convicted, they are automatically added to the sex-offenders registry and face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

But advocates say Canadas HIV disclosure law has never been shown to deter unsafe sexual practices. Rather, they argue, it has made patients feel more isolated and fearful.

People living with HIV tend to come from many marginalized groups already, said Sandra Chu, of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. (The law is) adding a further layer of marginalization and fear.

Chu said she would like Canada to adopt HIV legislation proposed by the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), which would prosecute only people who knowingly and intentionally transmit the HIV virus to their partner.

There is a lack of definite evidence on whether criminalization deters HIV patients from exposing others, UNAIDS said in a report released in 2012. It also said that studies from Canada and the U.S. show few people with HIV are aware of the legal requirements pertaining to their illness, and those who are probably already disclose their status to partners.

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has said people with HIV/AIDS report increased feelings of fear and stigma as a result of high-profile non-disclosure criminal cases.

Stigma has a negative impact on prevention efforts by contributing to secrecy and HIV non-disclosure, reinforcing HIV risk and discouraging condom use in some communities, the agency said in a 2015 report.

A spokesman for the Department of Justice said the Canadian government is aware of some of the criticisms of non-disclosure laws and appreciates the difficult circumstances individuals face with regards to HIV disclosure.

In 2012, UNAIDS reported that Canada had convicted more people in connection with HIV non-disclosure, exposure and transmission than any country in the world except the United States.

The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network says there have been at least 180 people charged with HIV non-disclosure-related offences in Canada  with five new cases in 2015.

Earlier this month, Toronto police charged a man with sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault for allegedly having unprotected sex with a woman multiple times over the course of 18 months without telling her he had HIV.

A few days later, Canadian Forces investigators charged a civilian cadet instructor with four counts of aggravated sexual assault for allegedly failing to disclose his HIV status before engaging in a relationship with a member of the military.

In a 1998 ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada said a legal requirement to disclose HIV will, through deterrence ... protect and serve to encourage honesty, frankness and safer sexual practices.

The court clarified its stance in 2012, ruling that a person with HIV does not have to disclose it to a partner as long as a condom is used and the person has a low viral load. A viral load measures the number of copies of the HIV virus per millilitre of blood  the lower a viral load, the lower the chance of transmitting HIV.

However, a group of more than 50 Canadian doctors and researchers released a statement in 2014 saying that a poor appreciation of the science related to HIV contributes to an overly broad use of the criminal law against individuals living with the virus.

Using a condom during sexual intercourse is enough to render the risk of transmission negligible, the group said, regardless of viral load.

The fact that people can be charged with mere exposure when theres a negligible risk of transmission is unjust, said Chu.

To equate not disclosing ones HIV status with the traditional understanding of aggravated sexual assault, we dont think is fair.

SHARE:
Kensington Palace tweeted Monday morning that Prince William and his wife, Kate, will visit Vancouver, Victoria, Bella Bella, Haida Gwaii and Kelowna in British Columbia and Whitehorse and Carcross in Yukon on their visit to Canada.

The trip is Sept. 24 to Oct. 1.

This will be the royal couples second visit to Canada. Their first, following their 2011 wedding, took them to Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Charlottetown, Summerside, Yellowknife and Calgary. They also visited Slave Lake, after a forest fire ravaged the community there.

The then-newlyweds drew large crowds wherever they went, including on Canada Day at Parliament Hill.

The visit was seen as a way to engage young Canadians with the monarchy, given the perception that there is waning interest among them.

The couples children, George and Charlotte, will accompany their parents on their Canadian trip.

Canadian Heritage Minister Melanie Joly said it will be a pleasure to greet the royal visitors.

Were very excited to have the Duke and Duchess in the country, she said.

SHARE:
SUDBURY, ONT.Justin Trudeau is acknowledging that his government faces a tough year ahead full of hard choices that wont please everyone.

And he already seems to be trying to dampen expectations, at least when it comes to one of his most ambitious promises: to establish a new nation-to-nation relationship with Canadas indigenous people.

The prime minister wrapped up a two-day cabinet retreat Monday, praising his governments accomplishments thus far but conceding theres more work ahead of it than behind.

There are going to be difficult decisions and challenges ahead of us on everything from natural resources to investments to trade deals, Trudeau told a closing news conference, his ministers arrayed behind him on the bank of a picturesque northern Ontario lake.

Trudeaus comment echoed a warning issued at the retreat Sunday by Sir Michael Barber, a British guru on deliverology  the art of ensuring governments deliver on their promises  whos been advising the Liberal administration.

Having spent the first 10 months of their mandate enjoying a prolonged honeymoon and consulting with Canadians on dozens of different issues, Barber effectively told ministers its time to fish or cut bait.

If you want to generate results ... then in Year 2 you really need a focus on relentless implementation, on taking some difficult decisions where you cant please all of the people all the time, Barber said outside the retreat.

Trudeau continued Monday to use soaring rhetoric to describe his ambition to fix the historic wrongs suffered by Canadas Aboriginal Peoples and set the country on a new path of reconciliation.

Canadians are telling us that in the same way that womens issues are Canadas issues, indigenous issues are Canadas issues, he said. So, know this. Our government will not rest until we make life better for indigenous people right across this country.

Still, Trudeau took pains to warn that it will be a long process ... and a complex one.

Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie used the bands last concert Saturday, watched by millions on television, to give a high-profile endorsement of Trudeaus ability to get the job done.

While the prime minister said Downies vote of confidence was extremely touching, he again stressed that we have an awful lot of work to do and its not going to happen overnight.

One of hard choices the government must make soon is how to square the circle of Trudeaus promise to combat climate change while promoting natural resource development and exports.

But Trudeau dodged Monday when asked whether he favours the Pacific NorthWest LNG (liquified natural gas) project, the fate of which his government must determine this fall and which is opposed by some British Columbia aboriginal leaders and environmentalists.

Trudeau continued to straddle the fence, saying his government is committed to building a strong economy while protecting and preserving our natural environment.

It will wait for an imminent report from the Canadian Environmental Review Agency, which conducted a more robust review of the project as mandated by the Trudeau government, before deciding whether it should go ahead, he added.

We know that in terms of emissions that coal is worse than oil, which is worse than LNGm but we certainly need to make sure were looking at the whole range of challenges and opportunities to improve our development of these resources, our exporting of these resources and our use of these resources, he said.

While such hard choices may inevitably sour some segments of the population against the Trudeau government, the prime minister continued to bask Monday in his post-election honeymoon.

He was mobbed by excited Sudburians at a community barbecue hosted by the areas local Liberal MPs. RCMP had expected as many as 2,500 to attend but the massive crowd may well have swelled beyond that.

The cabinet retreat was held at Laurentian University, where the ministers bunked together in student dorms. Trudeau also stayed in the dorm but didnt have to share a room.

Being prime minister has its advantages. I think I got a floor monitors room, he said.

This was a great opportunity for collegiality. We had a bit of a floor party last night as we swapped what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation stories.

SHARE:
MONTREALA slander trial is set to begin next month pitting a fiercely secular, feminist author against a private, Muslim school in Montreal she likened to militant Islamic training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Djemila Benhabib, an award-winning author and twice-failed Parti Quebecois candidate, is claiming freedom of expression, while the school wants $95,000 from her for greatly tarnishing its reputation.

Julius Grey, a well-known human-rights and freedom-of-expression lawyer, is defending the school in this case and says he will argue Benhabib crossed the line and caused real harm to the institution.

I regret nothing, Benhabib said in an interview Monday as she referred to the 2012 radio comments that have landed her in court.

Benhabib told the Montreal host in 2012 she was concerned by the selection of Quranic verses published on the website of the Muslims Schools of Montreal, a private institution that teaches elementary and high school.

The school is accredited by the provincial government and follows the curriculum outlined by the Education Department.

During the 2012 interview, Benhabib said the verses, which have since been removed from the website, inappropriately referred to the need for young girls to stay pure. She also stated they criticized non-Muslims.

Additionally, she was upset at a school pamphlet distributed in the community showing young girls wearing the hijab. And Benhabib took umbrage at the document stating that part of the institutions mission was to help students establish a solid relationship with Allah.

(The school) resembles the kind of indoctrination similar to what goes on in a military camp in Afghanistan or Pakistan, she told the radio host.

Moreover, she added the school models itself on a society different than ours. Its a model where women have to lower their heads and walk behind men. Where kids are forced to learn Quranic verses and where, probably, men will commit honour crimes against their sisters.

Benhabib was born in Ukraine to a Muslim-Algerian father and a Greek-Cypriot mother.

She said she suffered through an Islamic educational system and has vowed to fight against what she calls political Islam.

Grey said in an interview the case isnt about freedom of expression but about slander.

We are going to argue that the comparison made with terrorism is a particular dangerous one in our time, Grey said.

Its used to create fear and discredit people without any basis and, because of the atmosphere, one has to be careful before one suggests that an organization  which is a perfectly normal and reasonable association  has anything to do with terrorism or training radicalization.

Benhabib said she never used the word terrorism. She is hosting a fundraiser in early September to help pay her legal costs.

The court case begins Sept. 26.

Read more about:

SHARE:
Russia has stopped using an airbase in Iran to stage bombing raids against militants in Syria, shortly after it was accused of showing off by the Iranian Defense Minister for announcing its presence there.

Russia was inconsiderate and keen to show off as a superpower by disclosing its use of the Hamadan base for the missions, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said on state-run Channel 2 television late Sunday. They also have a desire to show themselves to be effective in the theatre of operations in Syria, in order to be able to negotiate with the Americans and guarantee themselves a stake in Syrias political future, he said.

Aircraft involved in operations from Iran have returned to Russia, Igor Konashenkov, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, said in an emailed statement Monday. Further use of the Hamadan base will occur on the basis of mutual agreements with Iranian officials for combating terrorism, and will also depend on the situation in Syria, he said.

The abrupt halt to the Russian presence in Iran casts doubt on prospects for deeper military co-operation between the two biggest backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russian Tu-22M3 and Su-34 bombers flew on three occasions from the Iranian base to attack Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, and the former Nusra Front, now called Jabhat Fath al-Sham, in Syrias Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor and Idlib provinces last week. It was the first time that Iran had allowed its territory to be used by a foreign military power since the Second World War.

Amid complaints in Irans parliament that the Russian presence was unconstitutional, Iranian officials said that the jets used the base only to refuel and were not stationed there.

Russias use of the base was a task that was performed and that has finished for now, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said on Monday, according to the Tasnim news agency.

The bombers were supported by fighter jets from Syrias Hmeimeem base that Russia has used since September to carry out airstrikes in support of Assad against opposition groups. While the U.S. and Europe have repeatedly called for Assads ouster, Russia and Iran are backing him in the civil war that has killed more than 280,000 people and displaced millions.

Read more about:

SHARE:






Egyptians pray in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) Egyptians pray in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

Egyptians pray in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) Egyptians pray in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

Egyptians pray in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) Egyptians pray in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) Virgin Mary Festival in St. Mary's and St. Samuel Church

A woman pray in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) A woman pray in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

A choir sings in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) A choir sings in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

A woman prays in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) A woman prays in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

A choir sings in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) A choir sings in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

A woman prays in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches in Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) A woman prays in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches in Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

A woman prays in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches in Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) A woman prays in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches in Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

A woman prays in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches in Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) A woman prays in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches in Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

Egyptians pray in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) Egyptians pray in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

A choir sings in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) A choir sings in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)

A choir sings in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen) A choir sings in St. Mary and St. Samuel Churches celebrating Virgin Mary feast in Sheikh El-Zayed in 6th of October. (Photo: Mai Shaheen)
Queens University students driving back to Kingston this September from the Toronto area could be among the first to participate in ride-sharing along largely untouched real estate for ride-share startups  400-series highways and country roads.

Our focus is entirely on travel between cities  so were not looking to go up against Uber and Lyft for the downtown core in Toronto, said OpenRide co-founder Owen Scott, a Los Angeles resident and Ottawa native.

The Kingston- and L.A.-based startup debuted in California in March, and its website as of Sunday shows dozens of drivers offering rides to strangers for the coming days, mostly around the U.S. West Coast, but also in Texas, Britain and Europe. Some offer a lift for less than $20, while others seek $300 or more to drive a rider across the country. OpenRide isnt operating in the GTA quite yet but considers it to be one of North Americas most lucrative regions for ride-sharing companies.

You have Kitchener, Waterloo, Kingston  all those towns out there that are relatively poorly served by both train and bus transit, Scott said.

Queens already has an active car-pooling community, he said, adding a lot of people in Queens are from Toronto, and so theres a really, really big informal ride-sharing (community) that goes on there to get back to Toronto every weekend.

OpenRides expansion plans come as the Ontario government considers overhauling regulations for long-distance, inter-city transit companies. Its focused on large-scale highway travel (such as buses), but could impact smaller vehicles.

The challenge is encouraging new and innovative services that use smaller vehicles (those carrying less than 10 passengers), while balancing the need for reasonable safety rules, reads a report issued by the Ministry of Transportation in June.

Scott said hes excited about the possibility of new regulation. He said that part of the difficulty now is the the ambiguity of the regulation not existing for companies like his.

(Regulation) is not something were worried about. Its something were very keyed into, Scott said.

Part of OpenRides strategy for avoiding regulatory hurdles thus far has been to ensure drivers cant make a commercial profit, Scott said. OpenRide drivers are allowed to set their own prices, he explained, as long as they dont exceed a cost-per-mile rate calculated by the U.S. Department of Transportation  the idea for us is its a cost-recovery service. Its not a for-profit service.

That may also be a wise strategy in Ontario. Under the Public Vehicles Act, companies who shuttle paying passengers across municipal boundaries for profit must get a special licence from the Ontario Highway Transport Board. However, the Ministry of Transportation says that taxicabs and car pool vehicles  as OpenRide drivers cars would typically be classified  dont need this licence.

As long as OpenRide drivers ferry fewer than 10 passengers and only get paid enough to cover expenses, they are it would be considered a car pool vehicle under the (Public Vehicles Act) and therefore exempt from (the Acts) requirements, said Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Kwok Wong.

Regulations aside, Scott said their policy also ensures city governments and unions dont fume at a loss in business.

I think its much harder for people to get mad about like, Im driving to Montreal for the weekend. I take you along, we split the cost of gas,  Scott said.

When asked about OpenRide, Uber spokesperson Susie Heath said the ride-sharing giant certainly welcomes any innovation that provides more transportation options for consumers.

Metrolinx spokesperson Anne-Marie Aikins said the Ontario-owned transit network is also keen to provide a more diverse array of choices for riders, especially for getting to and from GO Transit stations. One option for them is to encourage car-pooling via Smart Commute, a program which matches GO Transit riders travelling to the same stations.

Its also to cut down on the number of people who drive alone to GO Stations. If a service like OpenRide operates legally, Aikins said, we would encourage people to do whatever it is that takes cars off roads.

Ride-sharing has remained relatively rare in North America, according to Sharing the Road, a recent report commissioned by Metrolinx on the possibilities for vehicle and ride-sharing in the GTA. However, the report, like Scott, notes the success of apps for long-distance ride-sharing in Europe.

Among the reports many recommendations are that the Ontario government develop regulatory frameworks to allow both public transit and private companies to work together. Crucially, for ride-sharing companies like OpenRide, it also encourages the government to explore small changes to the legal definition of ride-sharing related to the level of compensation allowed by passengers.

Building rapport with university students in the GTA  or festival-goers out West  is not just about securing a future fare-base. Scott said OpenRide is also trying to brew something of a user culture.

The big thing we want to do is we want it to be about more than a commercial exchange, but also a fun thing to do, Scott said.

Like, youd rather go on OpenRide to get a cool person to chat with you for four hours in your car than drive alone.

SHARE:
Thousands of children taken from their homes. A lost cultural identity. A painful, but little-known or -understood chapter in Canadas history.

The Sixties Scoop  the removal of indigenous children from their families and placement in non-indigenous care over a period of about 20 years beginning in the 1960s  has certainly never received the kind of mainstream attention as residential schools, although its legacy has been described as equally devastating.

Today, the effects of the residential school experience and the Sixties Scoop have adversely affected parenting skills and the success of many Aboriginal families, says the final report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

These factors, combined with prejudicial attitudes toward Aboriginal parenting skills and a tendency to see Aboriginal poverty as a symptom of neglect, rather than as a consequence of failed government policies, have resulted in grossly disproportionate rates of child apprehension among Aboriginal people.

Unlike survivors of residential schools, the children, now adults, of the Sixties Scoop have never received an apology from the federal government. (An apology was offered last year by the Manitoba provincial government, and Saskatchewan has promised to do the same.)

It is estimated there are nearly 16,000 affected individuals in Ontario alone.

What they have faced, since launching a class-action lawsuit in Ontario against Canada in 2009, is a federal government that has often tried to have the case delayed or dismissed, appealing rulings which allowed the plaintiffs to move forward with their action.

Canada, during those years, made it very apparent that they did not want to acknowledge the fact of history, and their involvement, in the lives of thousands of children, who were wronged, who were hurt, and who suffered the consequences of an action committed by Canada, said Marcia Brown Martel, the representative plaintiff in the class action, who was removed from her home at the age of 4 at Beaverhouse First Nation near Kirkland Lake, Ont. in 1967.

Now, the delaying has been put to a halt, and the plaintiffs are finally about to have their true day in court. On Tuesday, a Superior Court judge will begin hearing arguments in what is known as a summary judgment proceeding.

The plaintiffs will attempt to prove that they have enough evidence to forego a trial and prove that Canada had an obligation in law to ensure that indigenous children removed from their homes retain their cultural identity and heritage. The allegations have yet to be proven in court.

Canada has wielded the knowledge of the judicial system to serve its own purpose; however, we have come to this day, within Canada, Brown Martel said in an interview from Kirkland Lake, about 250 km north of North Bay.

It is one of those milestones that one can stand beside and say: The judicial system in Canada, however flawed, however manipulated by those who know how to use it, does come through. This may have been a long time, but we are at this place now, and part of the healing is the journey.

Brown Martel, now 53, was placed in a series of foster homes after being removed from her home. The young Ojibwa girl was later adopted by a non-indigenous family at the age of 9, but the relationship broke down after her adoptive parents separated.

She spent some time with her adoptive mother in Texas, before returning to Beaverhouse around the age of 18, where she later became chief.

Terror, is how she describes feeling when the social workers and police came to take her away from home as a child. No one said anything.

I didnt know these people. I didnt know different colours of people. All I knew was that these were not my people, and I couldnt speak to them. I didnt know that I didnt speak the same language as them, she said.

She recalls being told to wash off her dirty brown colour in at least one foster home. Years later, she said she would learn from elementary school records that she was described as mentally retarded, and not expected to make it past the mental age of 10 years old.

Those were the kinds of consequences one had for being involved in a community, however caring it may be, that didnt understand that your base language was a different language, said Brown Martel, who is no longer able to speak her native language today.

The lawsuit  which has a long, complicated procedural history in the Ontario judicial system  is one of several currently moving through the courts in Canada.

It covers the period from December 1965  when the federal government signed an agreement with Ontario known as the Canada-Ontario Welfare Services Agreement  to December 1984, when Aboriginality was made an important factor in child protection and placement practices through Ontarios Child and Family Services Act.

As part of the old agreement, Canada agreed to pay Ontario for the per capita cost of extending some provincial welfare programs to Indians in the Province, according to a 2014 Divisional Court ruling dismissing Canadas appeal of the class action lawsuits certification.

The respondents allege that . . . Canada wrongfully delegated its executive responsibility as guardian, trustee, protector and fiduciary of aboriginal persons by entering into an agreement with Ontario that authorized a child welfare program that systemically eradicated the aboriginal culture, society, language, customs, traditions and spirituality of these children, wrote Justice Ian Nordheimer on behalf of a three-judge panel.

The plaintiffs  who were asking for $85,000 each in damages in 2014  allege that many children suffered emotional, psychological and spiritual harm as a result of a loss of connection to their indigenous culture, which led to experiences of lost self-esteem, identity crisis and trauma.

Last week, a spokesman for Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada said the government could not comment on the Sixties Scoop litigation as it is before the court, while acknowledging that historically, indigenous children have been harmed in care settings and this has impacted indigenous communities.

Then on Wednesday, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said the government is open to finding a solution to the Sixties Scoop lawsuits.

We, as you know  as a government  would like to get things out of court and to a table where we can make those kinds of agreements together, as a way forward, Bennett told reporters in Winnipeg.

We want to work together with all of the litigants that are presently in court and try and get to the table.

A number of indigenous leaders called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in an open letter last week to resolve the issue without further delay and to recognize and right an immense wrong  with both words and deeds.

This is an opportunity for your government to make a statement about what Canada stands for as it approaches its 150th birthday: a country that respects every person in Canadas right to live the life they wish to have with all their rights recognized and affirmed, says the letter.

Theres an important difference between this lawsuit and those in the other provinces, said the plaintiffs lead counsel Jeffery Wilson. He pointed out that other lawsuits focus on the actual removal of the child and that it was wrong to place them in non-indigenous care.

Our case is not about that, he said. Our case is this: once removed, for whatever reason, and when placed, for whatever reason, does that end the states responsibility to enable the First Nations person to know they are First Nations? So that they are able to exercise their rights as First Nations? Because Canada has a special constitutional relationship with First Nations that it doesnt have with anyone else.

Acknowledging that efforts to have the lawsuit dismissed took place under the previous Conservative government, Wilson said he does believe the federal Liberal government, with its message of reconciliation, is committed to searching out a resolution.

But we are going to court. That speaks for itself, he said.

Brown Martel plans on attending a rally Tuesday in Toronto outside the courthouse where the hearing on the class-action lawsuit will take place.

What would I like to see Canada do? To uphold the honourable words of the Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to acknowledge the history of this country, to embrace the coming change, and accept that there will be a new way of relationship with indigenous people. It will be good.

With files from The Canadian Press

SHARE:
Jason Jacobs wanted more than anything to escape the toxic cycle of booze and drug binges, the depression and psychosis, the arrests and jail time that had come to define his life. He didnt want to be an alcoholic. He didnt want to be a drug addict. He wanted to take control.

And so at a breaking point last August, Jason, 32, walked into a Toronto hospital emergency room and told staff he was suicidal. A few days later, he phoned his mother and left a voicemail announcing he had got into a rehab program.

Im basically on track, Jason said, sounding more confident than he had in years.

His parents, Pat and Suzanne Jacobs, were cautiously optimistic. I thought this time it might stick, says Suzanne.

Weeks later, Jason was dead. Social workers discovered his body on Sept. 30 in his Crescent Town supportive housing apartment.Pill bottles  dozens of them  were scattered across tables and shelves and stuffed into drawers. An empty bottle of lorazepam, an anxiety drug, was found near the bed where he lay.

Jason had been dead for days. His body was so decomposed his own social worker could not identify him, and the coroner could not determine a cause of death. There was no suicide note.It was likely an overdose, but whether accidental or intentional, no one knows.

Nearly a year after Jasons death, Pat, 64, a retired hydro worker, and Suzanne, 63, a school secretary, sit at the dinner table in their Scarborough home, searching for meaning in a stack of their sons journals. Had a bad day, Jason wrote months before he died. Kept busy with Dad. Suzanne covers her face to hide the tears. Pat cries openly.

Jason wanted to get better, Pat says. But he had no way of getting there.

Seeking change, Pat and Suzanne asked the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario to launch a discretionary inquest into Jasons death. They want their sons life examined, not because they believe his case is unique or deserving of special treatment, but because they know it is inexcusably common.

Even though most psychiatric illnesses surface during adolescence, 75 per cent of children with mental disorders do not access specialized treatment services, according to research published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among Canadians aged 15 to 34.

When a person with mental illness commits a violent act or is killed in a police encounter  rare events, despite the public attention they receive  the root causes are examined in trials, inquiries and inquests that bring accountability and hope for systemic change. But the lives that end quietly as a result of addiction and suicide often come with no public outcry, no promise things will be different next time.

The tragic stories are strikingly similar. A desperate family seeks help for a mentally unwell child and finds the system impossible to navigate, the opportunity for early intervention easily lost. Crises are met with short and ineffective hospitalizations. When the health system fails, parents turn to police, viewing the justice system as the only direct route to treatment. Criminal charges and jail time exacerbate the problems, and the cycle continues.

Pat and Suzanne recently received disappointing news. In a letter, regional coroner Dr. James Edwards said while Jasons death is understandably difficult for the family, there would be no broader public interest served in an inquest.

Last month, the coroners office denied a similar plea from the parents of 12-year-old Chazz Petrella, who hanged himself in 2014 after struggling for years to get help.

Irwin Elman, Ontarios youth advocate, has asked the chief coroner to reconsider. I cant think of an inquest that is more in the public interest than one that focuses on the challenges faced by youth with mental health issues, he says.

The Petrella and Jacobs families are appealing.

Pat and Suzanne have spent the difficult year since Jasons death identifying moments when a more effective approach might have altered his destructive path.

At 12, Jason morphed from a fun-loving boy with a knack for drawing and making people laugh to a paranoid child who wouldnt let anyone touch his food and believed people were after him. He cycled in and out of hospital and from one treatment program to the next, with no consistency and little followup. As a teen, he lost trust in doctors and began to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol.

At 18, Jason became a legal adult and his parents were shut out of his treatment.Pat and Suzanne struggled to help without knowing what was going on. They believe strongly that he needed more supervision and monitoring. Jason did not have the capacity to help himself, Pat says.

At 21, high on drugs and mentally unwell, Jason stole a sandwich from a grocery store and was arrested. Pat says there is no excuse for stealing, but he would like to know the price of Jasons arrest, jail time, court appearance and probation. Whats the cost of Jason doing that once, versus getting some proper help?

Bail conditions required that Jason abstain from alcohol, and his parents were expected to report violations to police. How do you keep an alcoholic away from alcohol, if they want it? Pat asks.

Pat and Suzanne arent out to lay blame, but they dont want others to suffer as they have. Driving their quest for change is the heartbreaking tone of their sons final journal entries:

Stay sober if you want your life back  if you want to feel more confident  if you want to feel good not guilty

Day 1: Congrads!!!

Day 2: Congrads!!! Feeling better, losing weight, saved money, confidence

Day 3: Congrads!!! Close call. Hard day had to smoke. No alcohol. Eye on the prize.

Jason never got the prize he sought, which was nothing more than an ordinary life.

SHARE:
WASHINGTONLast week, David Wright decided that his candidate was a moron.

Wright, an optical technician and Reagan Republican in Tennessee, had been willing to ignore a certain amount of foolishness from party nominee Donald Trump. But when Trump suggested that gun owners might assassinate Hillary Clinton, Wright came to a new conclusion: I cant, I cant, I cant.

That comment: that was it. Theres some things you just dont say, said Wright, 44, now an undecided voter. Theres just a certain amount of etiquette, certain decorum that has to come into this thing.

Trump said during the Republican primary that he could shoot someone on the street and not lose voters and he seemed to be exaggerating only slightly. He was gaffe proof, Teflon Don, leader of a political cult whose hypnotized admirers would love him no matter what he did.

No longer. Not even close.

His campaign rallies are as crowded and raucous as ever. Polling data and interviews, though, suggest that a small but important minority of former devotees is abandoning him over new qualms about his character, temperament and judgment.

I live in the country and I think I want to make one of those bunkers like they used to when we were afraid of nuclear war. Because every time he opens his mouth, I feel like hes putting us at risk, said Kimberly McBride, 45, of Louisiana. I think hes going to get us all killed.

McBride, a former teacher with health challenges, is struggling to pay her mortgage and she was drawn to Trumps economic message. She was aghast, though, when he invited Russian hackers in late July to obtain Clintons emails. When he then insulted the Muslim parents of a soldier killed in Iraq, she broke with her husband and flipped to Clinton.

The Khan controversy appears to have been a campaign tipping point. Polls suggest that well over half of Republicans disapproved of Trumps furious response, which reinforced Clintons criticism of his temper.

He doesnt act like a presidential candidate and some days he hardly acts like an adult, said Nick Lucasti, 19, an engineering student in Indiana. The constant name-calling and slander are not necessary.

Lucasti had once liked Trumps outspokenness and promise to improve border security. After the Republican convention a month ago, he decided he could no longer tolerate the businessmans refusal to moderate his remarks or make his vague pledges more specific and realistic.

For a while I thought he was very metaphorical  his wall was really just a metaphor for him wanting to secure the borders, said Lucasti, now undecided. After months of watching him, though, I now know for sure that this guy honestly wants to build a concrete wall hundreds of miles long. Just ridiculous.

It is impossible to know how many supporters have become defectors. Swing-state polls, though, show a decline in his share of the vote as Clintons has increased sharply. In must-win Pennsylvania, he has fallen from 44 per cent in July to 40 per cent today. In New Hampshire, he has gone from 42 per cent to 36 per cent.

He has been crushed in the last couple weeks, said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. Hes losing people from every possible demographic.

And he is struggling with the right far more than Democratic nominee Clinton is struggling with the left. Clinton has the support of about 90 per cent of Democrats, Trump about 80 per cent of Republicans.

A lot of the summer has not been used well, said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

The Star interviewed 10 people who have recently ditched Trump or wavered. They cited a wide variety of complaints: his vice-presidential choice of religious conservative Mike Pence, his insistence that Barack Obama is the founder of Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, even his rejection of a debate with Bernie Sanders. By far the most common concern, though, was his behaviour.

There was just something off about him, said Alabama finance student Frank Smyser, 21, who ditched Trump a month ago in favour of Libertarian Gary Johnson.

Nate Harlan, a 26-year-old Ohio student from a Republican-leaning lower-middle-class family, became a Trump supporter after it became clear that Ohio Gov. John Kasich was not going to win. By July, he had grown dismayed by Trumps racism, failure to offer detailed plans and constant pessimism.

It just seems so much that when he speaks, hes always angry, said Harlan, now backing Green Party Leader Jill Stein. It doesnt really seem like hes trying to project this good image of my own country onto me. Hes trying to project an image of you shouldnt like your country. 

Rhonda Loomis, a Republican former city councillor in Newark, Ohio, spent part of early August begging Trump on Twitter to stop calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas, stop veering from message, stop tweeting, stop talking.

Whether you care or not, she told him, you lost my vote. I wont vote at all for the first time in my life. You are coming unglued.

By Friday, the 57-year-old office manager had found reason for hope. Trump had delivered two consecutive rally speeches from a Teleprompter script. He then visited the site of the flooding in Louisiana.

I am tentatively hanging on the caboose of the Trump train again. I am ready to get off if it looks like its going to derail as bad as it has, Loomis said. I guess the balls in his court. If he continues to embarrass me: absolutely not.

Read more about:

SHARE:
For some time, scientists who focus on Antarctica have been watching the progression of a large crack in one of the worlds great ice shelves  Larsen C, the most northern major ice shelf of the Antarctic Peninsula, and the fourth largest Antarctic ice shelf overall.

Larsen C, according to the British Antarctic Survey, is slightly smaller than Scotland. Its called an ice shelf because the entirety of this country-sized area is covered by 350 metre thick ice that is floating on top of deep ocean waters.

The crack in Larsen C grew around 30 kilometres in length between 2011 and 2015. And as it grew, also became wider  by 2015, yawning some 200 meters in length. Since then, growth has only continued  and now, a team of researchers monitoring Larsen C say that with the intense winter polar night over Antarctica coming to an end, theyve been able to catch of glimpse of what happened to the crack during the time when it could not be observed by satellite.

The result was astonishing.

The rift had grown another 22 kilometres since it was last observed in March 2016, and has widened to about 350 meters, report researchers from Project MIDAS, a British Antarctic Survey funded collaboration of researchers from Swansea and Aberystwyth Universities in Wales, and other institutions. The full length of the rift is now 130 kilometres.

What this means is that it may be only a matter of time before we see the loss of an enormous chunk of Larsen C  a historic event that would bring to mind the losses of the Larsen A ice shelf in 1995 and the sudden breakup of Larsen B in 2002. When that last event happened, the National Snow and Ice Data Center remarked that the Earth had lost a major feature that had likely existed since the end of the last major glaciation 12,000 years ago.

We previously showed that this will remove between nine and twelve per cent of the ice shelf area and leave the ice front at its most retreated position ever, write Adrian Luckman, Daniela Jansen, Martin OLeary and members of the Project MIDAS team. The trajectory of the rift now implies that the higher of these two estimates is more likely.

The amount of ice that could be lost would be around 6,000 square kilometres  a little more than the size of Prince Edward Island, said OLeary, a glaciologist at Swansea University and one of the teams members, by email.

Its hard to tell how soon it could break  we really dont have a good handle on the processes which control the timing of the crack propagation, OLeary said. Its a lot like predicting an earthquake  exact timings are hard to come by. Probably not tomorrow, probably not more than a few years.

So in sum, were talking about a possible ice island in the Southern Ocean that is larger than Canadas smallest province. Moreover, researchers studying the widening crack in a 2015 paper  many of whom overlap with the MIDAS team  predict that after the loss of this ice, the remaining shelf could be unstable and continue to lose more mass.

If this will calve off in the next, say two or three years, the calving front will be retreated very far back, further than weve seen it since we were able to monitor this, says Daniela Jansen, a researcher with the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. And our theory in this paper was basically that the calving front might become unstable. Once the iceberg has calved off completely, there might be a tendency for the ice front to crumble backwards. That could be further enhanced, she said, if warmer air temperatures cause the formation of large numbers of meltwater lakes atop the shelf.

The fear is that something could then happen with Larsen C analogous to the loss of the smaller Larsen B ice shelf, which proceeded slowly  until it didnt.

In the 1980s, said Jansen, the Larsen B ice shelf underwent a large iceberg calving event much like whats expected in the coming years at Larsen C, setting off a series of similar episodes until eventually the whole shelf disappeared.

That took a while, but we think it might actually happen here as well, Jansen said.

The Larsen C ice shelf is the fourth largest in Antarctica, but all of the continents shelves pale in comparison to the Ross and Ronne-Filchner ice shelves, each of which is over 400,000 square kilometres in area.

When ice shelves lose large chunks, it does not raise sea level because these bodies are already afloat. However, the loss of an ice shelf can speed up the seaward flow of the nonfloating glacial ice behind it, and this ice can in turn contribute to sea-level rise. Researchers have estimated that the loss of all the ice that the Larsen C ice shelf currently holds back would raise global sea levels by 10 centimetres.

Granted, there is at least an argument to be made that even a large loss of ice from Larsen C would not be immediately bad news for the global sea level. A study earlier this year in Nature Climate Change looked at ice shelves around Antarctica to determine how much area they could lose without ceasing to form their crucial function of buttressing glaciers and holding them in back, and found that Larsen C actually has a lot of passive ice that it can lose without major consequences.

The MIDAS researchers, though, think the consequences could be considerably more severe. If the crack continues on its current pace, we may soon learn who is correct.

While the major worry outside of Antarctica is sea-level rise from the glaciers behind Larsen C, it will also be a shame if the Larsen C ice shelf disappears as well, said Jansen. I have spent so much time now looking at the satellite images, and I really love this ice shelf, it would be such a tragic thing to see this thing go.

Read more about:

SHARE:
SAN SIMEON, CALIF.A wildfire in central California that destroyed 47 structures and forced the closure of the famed Hearst Castle has grown.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says Monday that the blaze in San Luis Obispo County has charred nearly 130 square kilometers  up from about 110 square kilometres a day earlier. Its partially contained.

Residents of at least 50 mostly rural homes near Lake Nacimiento were ordered to leave late Sunday. Several other nearby communities have been under evacuation orders for days.

Hearst Castle was closed over the weekend, though officials say the fire is growing in the opposite direction of the popular tourist attraction.

Meanwhile, a 150-square-kilometre fire that destroyed 105 homes in Southern California is almost entirely contained and all evacuation orders have been lifted.

SHARE:
LITCHFIELD, MINN.A man has been jailed on suspicion of first-degree murder and kidnapping in the death of a co-workers 5-year-old daughter whose mother says was taken from their home in central Minnesota.

Zachary Todd Anderson, 26, of Monticello, was being held in the Crow Wing County Jail in the death of Alayna Ertl.

Alayna was last seen around 2 a.m. Saturday when she was put to bed at her home in Watkins, about 110 kilometres northwest of Minneapolis. Her mother reported her missing at 8 a.m. and her body was found later Saturday in a wooded area about 130 kilometres to the north.

Also missing from the home Saturday morning was Anderson, who authorities said had been spending the night with the Ertl family. A pickup truck belonging to the girls father was also gone.

Our suspect in this case is a family friend, co-worker of the victims father, and was staying the night up in Watkins last night, Meeker County Sheriff Brian Cruze said Saturday night. He had previously been to that residence and spent a night here and there  so hes not a stranger and not new to the residence, but was just there for the night.

Alaynas disappearance led authorities to issue an Amber Alert.

Sheriffs deputies found the stolen truck on property owned by Andersons family in rural Cass County, according to a statement from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. K-9 officers searching the property found Anderson just before 4:30 p.m. Saturday. He did not attempt to flee, did not have a weapon and did not resist arrest, according to the statement.

Information provided by the suspect and other investigative efforts led officials to Alaynas remains in a wooded, swampy area a few hundred yards from the Anderson family cabin, the statement said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

A medical examiner said Alayna died of homicidal violence, according to the statement, which gave no further details about the cause of death.

Online court records available Saturday listed only minor traffic violations for Anderson, and it wasnt immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could comment on his behalf. He has not been charged.

We have no known predatory sexual offender information on him or anything like that, Cruze said. We have no known motive. We are at a loss as to why this happened at this time.

Read more about:

SHARE:
It began with a heated argument between mother and son.

The pair was standing near the shallow end of a pool in the back yard of one of Long Islands most exclusive neighbourhoods on Wednesday morning.

Authorities said Denis D. Cullen Jr. was refusing to take his medication and his mother, Elizabeth Cullen, was scolding the 23-year-old, according to Newsday.

At some point, Cullen would later tell police, he decided he had had enough.

The argument escalated to the point where she had poked him, Assistant District Attorney Robert Biancavilla told reporters, according to Newsday. After she poked him, he put her in a headlock, walked her from the shallow end of the pool with her in the headlock to the deep end of the pool, all the while she was struggling.

He said she struggled violently and he was surprised a woman of her stature could struggle as much as she did, Biancavilla said.

Cullen told police that he removed his mothers body from the pool and placed it next to a shed, where he covered the corpse with a dinghy, according to Newsday. After taking a shower, he told police that he took money from his mothers wallet and drove from his familys $1.8 million (U.S.) home in Lloyd Harbor to a Long Island Rail Road station, where he caught a train into the city, the paper reported.

Cullen told police that he met up with one of his sisters and confessed to the crime, which led family members to call police, the paper reported.

Lloyd Harbor police received a call about a possible, intentional drowning, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Tim Sini told CBS New York. While we were processing the scene, the suspect returned to the home and we placed him under arrest.

That arrest occurred Wednesday night at the familys home, located in an exclusive enclave of multimillion-dollar properties, according to Yahoo News.

Cullen has a history of drug addiction and mental problems, Yahoo reported, but he doesnt have a criminal record. He lived with his mother and had been hospitalized after a suicide attempt, CBS reported, noting that the victim is a daughter of famed Vietnam Maj. Gen. George Casey and the sister of the U.S. army commander of the same name.

Neighbours on the private road said she devoted her life to her children and are stunned by its tragic ending, CBS added.

During a court appearance Thursday, Cullen pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. A judge set Cullens bail at $5 million cash or $8 million bond in 1st District Court in Central Islip, according to Newsday.

Police told the paper that Cullens confession included chilling detail and was made after he turned himself over to authorities.

This is a son who killed his mother, and the way he killed her, the way he describes, how it was done, is chilling, Biancavilla said, according to Newsday.

After speaking to his client for several minutes last week, Steve Fondulis, Cullens attorney, described his clients demeanour as calm.

Theres a lot of work to be done, Fondulis told Newsday. I have to determine if he has a psychiatric background. I have to determine if hes under a doctors care. And I have to look at a videotape.

He hasnt been convicted of anything, so hes not sorry at this point; he hasnt said Im sorry, the lawyer added after being asked whether Cullen had shown remorse.

SHARE:
ANKARA, TURKEYTurkey is withdrawing its ambassador to Austria, the Turkish foreign minister said Monday, amid a growing diplomatic spat.

Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ambassador Hasan Gogus was called back to Ankara for consultations and to review ties, citing Austrian authorities decision to allow alleged supporters of Turkeys Kurdish rebels to hold a demonstration in Vienna over the weekend as well as rising anti-Turkish rhetoric in Austria.

Ties between Turkey and Austria have been tense for several weeks, with a top Austrian official saying Turkey was heading toward a dictatorship and other leaders calling for an end to Turkeys European Union membership talks.

Turkey, in turn, has described Austria as the capital of radical racism.

We saw that ... the PKK and its supporters were given permission to stage a demonstration in Vienna, Cavusoglu said. This does not comply with honesty or sincerity. We couldnt stay inactive against this attitude which supports terrorism. He was referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party, which Turkey and its allies consider a terror organization.

Fighting between the PKK and Turkeys security forces resumed last year after a fragile peace process collapsed. The group has stepped up attacks targeting police and military in Turkey and at least a dozen people were killed in a string of bombings last week.

Cavusoglu said Austrias top diplomat in Ankara was also called to the ministry over the demonstration in Vienna.

There was no immediate response from Austrian officials.

Unfortunately, the ground for our bilateral relations and co-operation to continue as normal has disappeared, Cavusoglu said.

SHARE:
She may not remember, but when Elizabeth May first contemplated running for leader of the Green Party, I was among those enthusiastically suggested she go for it.

Now, as she contemplates giving up the job she has successfully held for the past ten years, I offer some unsolicited advice: Dont resign.

Shes thinking of stepping down over her disagreement with a vote at the Green Partys convention earlier this month endorsing the international campaign for a boycott against Israel known as BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).

Id be very disappointed to see May step down, but Im also disappointed by media commentary that, in siding with May, has vilified members of the Green Party for taking this controversial stand.

Whether you agree with the boycott strategy or not, it is a peaceful way to protest a serious violation of human rights: the fact that millions of Palestinians have been living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza for almost 50 years, with Israel effectively annexing their land.

Some commentators have suggested that its OK to criticize Israel, but a boycott goes too far.

But how then to address this increasingly urgent situation?

For decades, Canada, along with most Western nations, has officially supported the UNs endorsement of a two-state solution, but has done nothing to pressure Israel to stop building settlements on land designated for a Palestinian state.

This lack of pressure from the West has given Israels right-wing government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, a green light to continue its expansion of settlements, which now house more than 500,000 Israelis, making the creation of a future Palestinian state more and more difficult.

Critics argue that a boycott would unfairly single out Israel, when there are many bad actors in the world.

True, but those nations dont enjoy the high level of Western support that Israel does. Israel is hailed as a beacon of democracy by Western nations, including Canada.

Given Canadas strong support, surely Canadians expect Israel to be held to the minimal standard of respecting basic human rights and complying with international law.

Its true that that a boycott would be divisive, but sometimes thats inevitable on difficult issues.

Back in the 1980s, it was divisive when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney imposed sanctions against the white-minority regime in South Africa.

Today, everyone agrees that Mulroneys stance was laudable. But at the time it was highly controversial, with Mulroney acting in defiance of business leaders, members of his own cabinet and caucus, as well as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Some consider it unfair to compare Israel with South Africa. But Archbishop Desmond Tutu considers the comparison valid. In a 2010 letter to students urging the University of California to divest from Israel, Tutu wrote: [D]espite what detractors may allege, you are doing the right thing. You are doing the moral thingI have been in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

Still, the BDS movement remains highly contentious, even as its won growing support on North American campuses and among Church and union groups.

Its apparently having an impact; a 2014 UN report found that foreign investment in Israel had dropped almost by half from the previous year, partly because of the campaign.

But theres been huge push-back. U.S. casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson brought 50 groups to Las Vegas last year to organize a strategy for fighting BDS.

In Canada, Conservatives and Liberals combined earlier this year to support a Parliamentary motion condemning BDS, without suggesting any alternative for pressuring Israel to stop building settlements on Palestinian land.

In a letter released this week, Elizabeth May clarified that shes not condemning those who support BDS; indeed, shes organizing a petition to reverse the Parliamentary vote denouncing it. But she considers the campaign potentially divisive.

But there may be support for it too.

During Israels incursion into Gaza two years ago, thousands of Canadians turned out to protest Israels bombing  while barely a word of protest was uttered by Canadian political leaders. (May was the most outspoken.)

It could be that many Canadians would like to see their government begin pressuring Israel to end its military occupation.

Certainly, it would take a leader with independence and courage to champion such a bold position  someone like Elizabeth May.

Linda McQuaig is a journalist and author.

Read more about:

SHARE:
Indonesian President Joko Widodo (third from right) and member of China's State Council Wang Yong (fourth from right) at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Jakarta-Bandung project in January

(Beijing)  The Indonesian government has issued a construction permit in early August for the full length of the Chinese funded 142-kilometer high-speed rail line, seven months after the project's groundbreaking ceremony.

Indonesian authorities had earlier granted a construction license to a joint venture formed by Chinese and Indonesian state-owned rail companies to build only the first five kilometers of the link connecting Indonesia's capital Jakarta and the country's third-largest city Bandung, because provincial authorities in areas where the link would cut across had to give approval for the rest of the construction, several people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Chinese consortium led by China Railway Corp. (CRC), the state-owned railroad operator, had to negotiate with local governments "one by one" for permission to expropriate land, a person close to the Chinese bidders told Caixin.

The joint venture was still in talks with local governments to buy land for the project, and the deadline is set for December 2017 to complete procurement, Prasetyo Boeditjahjono, director general for railway transportation at the Indonesian Ministry of Transportation, told Jakarta Post.

The permit will unlock funding from the China Development Bank for the project slated for completion in late 2019 the source said. The Chinese lender will provide 75 percent of the estimated US$ 5 billion investment.

The Jakarta-Bandung link has seen several proposal changes before it was finally awarded to the Chinese consortium. Last year, when the Southeast Asian nation floated a plan to build the country's first bullet train line to upgrade its infrastructure, both China and Japan expressed interest in the project. But the Indonesian government scrapped bids from the two sides in September, saying it wanted to build a rail link where trains run at less than 250 kmph. But in an unexpected reversal, Indonesia chose China's bid over Japan's in October to build a high-speed line whose trains could run at speeds of up to 300 kmph due to the flexible funding options included in the Chinese bid. Japan had asked for a loan guarantee from the Indonesian government, said Rini Soemarno Indonesia's minister of state-owned enterprises.

The groundbreaking ceremony in January, attended by Indonesian President Joko Widodo, was a "merely symbolic" move to secure the deal, said the person close to CRC.

The license comes after Chinese rail companies encountered a string of setbacks when expanding into foreign markets. American railway developer XpressWest called off a deal to develop a 298-kilometer, US$ 12.5 billion railroad linking Los Angeles and Las Vegas in June after the Chinese consortium failed to get relevant government approvals. A 2014 agreement between China and Mexico for high-speed line was derailed after rivals complained of discrepancies in the bidding process.

In addition to Indonesia, Chinese companies also won a bid to construct a 770-kilometer line connecting the Russian capital Moscow with the southwestern city of Kazan.

Chinese companies are also bidding for a 330-kilometer high-speed rail line linking Singapore and Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur.

Contact reporter Chen Na (nachen@caixin.com); editor Poornima Weerasekara (poornima@caixin.com)
Re: No to partisan ads, Aug. 14

No to partisan ads, Aug. 14

I could not agree more with you excellent and timely call to reintroduce more oversight into the Wynne governments ads, including more authority for the auditor general to screen them for partisanship.

One good example of why this is required is the Wynne government spent over $8 million of our scarce tax dollars on partisan advertising trying to convince Ontarians about the merits of the now abandoned made in Ontario pension plan.

Since it is our tax dollars that pay for these ads, the government should not be allowed to blow its own horn with our money. With the ongoing reckless spending by the Wynne government, the more oversight like this the better.

Larry Comeau, Ottawa

Break trust and the consequences can be severe: our doctors, teachers, police, employers and politicians. This editorial is resounding support for independent verification. Restore the auditor generals authority.

I buy that. Does this make me a cynic? If it did I wouldnt bother writing this. Colour me an abused optimist. The Star does a good job at pointing out why.

Authority over partisan ads. Is there a cover-up, a possible abuse of power? Having voted for over 50 years, Ive been roughed up, trust-wise, at the polls. Independent verification is security. Thats what happens when your experience turns you into a bruised optimist.

Health care? The agenda appears to be divide and control. Different data appear logical. Is confusion the governments strategy? I demand the truth: at my age I cant afford to gamble. Will health care still love me when Im 74? Wheres the truth?

The same with education. Health and education are too important to be left to politicians. Wheres the truth?

Local government. Why isnt the GO going? Whats the truth about our infrastructure that triggers park-in-the-sky nightmares? Why isnt the 407 part of the solution in the larger transit crawl? Wheres the truth?

Whats the cause of this breach of trust at so many levels? Do politicians enter the ring to beat up the truth? Why the need to muzzle our auditor general? Is this politics versus governing? Is the voter to blame for lowering the election bar so low? ( In the U.S., were looking at an underground high jump!) Or do we promise our vote as long as we get what we want and not pay for it?

History points out that it doesnt matter whether were right-wing, left-wing or in between. Why has this layer of independent verification become a critical component of trust with our governments?

With the way our lives are unfolding, wed better figure this out soon. In the meantime, I vote for prove it!

Don Graves, Burlington

SHARE:
Re: TransCanada pitches safety of proposed Energy East, Aug. 9

TransCanada pitches safety of proposed Energy East, Aug. 9

The Huffington Post Canada states, The IEA found the risk of a rail spill is six times as high as the risk of a pipeline spill, but pipelines simply spill more when they rupture. And based on various reports of the damage caused by pipeline ruptures, I cant help but think this makes sense. Just like it makes sense that using pipelines instead of rail tankers would improve the bottom line for Big Oil.

Meanwhile we have John Van der Put of TransCanada telling us theyre committed to delivering oil safely and reliably with zero incidents and even if the Titanic should happen to sink again and it has yet another oil spill, well TC would have personnel on site in three hours and equipment on site in six hours.

He apparently made no qualifications whatsoever regarding the location of the leak or the nature of the leak, which would seem to indicate their having a massive coast to coast infrastructure ready to back his claims.

But despite his supreme confidence in the competence of TC, Van der Put chose not to mention his companys past defilements of our environment, the amount of oil that would be leaked in the six hours required for the arrival of repair equipment in the event of a leak, how long the repair would take or the relative amounts of oil released in rail and pipeline leaks.

He says pipelines are best  but for whom?

Randy Gostlin, Oshawa

Monday April 4: TransCanada announced that it has shut down its Keystone pipeline south of Freeman, S.D., after an oil spill was reported by a local rancher. TransCanada Keystone Pipeline opened in 2010.

In 2014, the Wall Street Journal reviewed 251 hazardous liquids incidents that happened in the U.S. since 2010. Leak-detection software, special alarms and round-the-clock monitoring by control rooms made initial discoveries in just 19.5 per cent of the 251 spills reported. On-site employees and local residents combined were nearly three times as likely to be first to spot trouble.

Pipeline companies admit that they cant detect leaks under 2 per cent of total volume carried. EnergyEast will carry around 1 million barrel of crude oil per day. At 1 per cent, EnergyEast will leak 10,000 barrels per day. Almost half of the pipeline, which is more than 40 years old, is crossing Northern Ontario.

Rene Ebacher, Toronto

New Brunswick is the land of lakes and rivers. Charles and David Koch own 1.1 million acres of the Alberta oil patch. David Koch (according to Forbes) is worth $56 billion. The oilsands must be diluted with a cocktail of other petroleum products in order to be transported through pipelines. It is very heavy and sinks to the bottom of fresh water lakes if spilled and can never be cleaned up.

The Koch brothers make some of their billions on petroleum products. Are their companies providing the cocktail mix to dilute the oilsands?

Why isnt the oil refined in Alberta so it is light and wont sink if spilled? This would avoid the need to use the toxic cocktail mix needed to dilute the heavy tar for transportation.

Marjorie Cormier, Toronto

SHARE:
Amidst a $3.4 billion repair backlog, the Toronto District School Board is opening its books on the conditions of its almost 600 schools  the good and the bad.

The move is a first for a school board in Ontario and comes days before the Ministry of Education is expected to release the same information for every school in the province.

The TDSBs release of its Facility Condition Index numbers for its 588 schools on Monday, unlike the ministrys list, also includes a complete list of all repairs needed at each school.

The release of the index  a sort of testing score for bricks and mortar  comes at a time when the board estimates it needs to spend $3.4 billion to complete repairs. Although a recent $1.1 billion funding announcement by the province is helping, TDSB chair Robin Pilkey said much more cash is still needed.

There isnt enough money in the system right now. We can only get money from the province, Pilkey said.

The Facility Condition Index is an industry-standard term that measures the condition of a building. Its calculated by taking the total cost of repairs, and dividing it by the replacement value of the building. The TDSB considers anything below 10 per cent to be in good condition. Between 10 and 30 per cent is fair, while between 30 and 65 per cent is poor. Anything higher than 65 per cent is considered critical.

In 2015, there were 226 schools  38 per cent of all TDSB schools  listed as being in critical condition.

But Pilkey stressed the numbers have nothing to do with safety.

Obviously, if it was a safety issue we would fix that  Were not sending our kids to schools in unsafe buildings. That would be ridiculous, she said.

Instead, the repair backlogs show work that needs to be done, sometimes imminently, even if its not a direct problem right now, Pilkey said.

Its like your house. If your roof is 30 years old, your roof might not leak, but you know at some point in the very near future you need a new roof, she said. All repairs  anything from a broken door handle, to a busted boiler  are counted in the FCI.

The board wants to be transparent and disclose this information so that parents can understand what their childs school needs, Pilkey said. The numbers wont be released together. Instead, parents can go to the website of their childs school and see its FCI and list of needed repairs.

It is public information and were happy to share it with the public, she said.

The FCI data is gathered by the Ministry of Education, but the ministry has so far declined to release it. When asked for comment on the TDSBs announcement, Education Minister Mitzie Hunter said in a statement the province was planning on releasing the same numbers in the coming days.

Advocates are applauding the move. Krista Wylie, co-founder of the Fix Our Schools campaign, said she was happy with the release of the data.

Theyre showing, I think, a degree of leadership in transparency in issuing all of this information, Wylie said.

For us and for our campaign it underscores the reality of what weve been talking about for two years now, she said.

Some of the repairs might come as a surprise to parents, Wylie said. Old boilers and roofs are not visible the way that cracks in walls are, and the repair backlog list will show these for the first time.

For many parents who arent inside the schools and who are busy, I think this will be a bit of a wake-up call, she said, adding she hopes any backlash doesnt come in the direction of the TDSB.

They are being very transparent and demonstrating leadership in a way the Ministry has not, she said.

Hunter, in her statement, stressed the provinces previous funding announcements for Ontario schools.

Investing in our schools is one of the most important infrastructure investments we can make for nearly 2 million students in Ontario and we remain committed to working with school boards to ensure that students have safe and healthy environments in which to learn, Hunter said.

Pilkey said shes ready for parents to come to her with questions once they see this data.

That would be kind of encouraging to me because you could justify the decision because people are interested.

State of Torontos schools

Here are the schools with the highest and lowest ratings on the Facility Condition Index (FCI) at the TDSB. The higher the FCI score, the bigger the state of disrepair a school is in  though other factors, like the replacement value of the school, also affect the numbers.

Schools in most need of repair

Park Lane Public School - 197.93%

The school, located in Torontos Bridle Path neighbourhood and serving students with developmental disabilities, needs two urgent and 18 high-priority repairs. They include carpets, water pipes, and the main switchboard. Lower-priority repairs include doors and roof coverings.

Jesse Ketchum Jr. & Sr. Public School - 121.03%

The school, located in Yorkville, needs eight urgent and 44 high-priority repairs. Urgent repairs include the interior stairs, two steam boilers and the hot and cold water pipes.

Winona Drive Sr. Public School - 119.22%

The school, near Wychwood, has four hot water boilers that need to be urgently replaced. Interior stairs and elevators also need to be replaced. In total, there are 23 urgent repairs needed.

Deer Park Jr. & Sr. Public School - 114.19 %

The school, just east of Yonge St. and north of St. Clair, needs six urgent repairs, including the replacement of two boilers, the water pipes, main switchboard and emergency lighting.

Earl Grey Sr. Public School - 109.89 %

The school, on Strathcona Ave., south of Danforth Ave., needs 15 urgent repairs, including the replacement of the fire alarm systems, two boilers and exterior doors.

Schools needing fewest repairs

Thomas L. Wells P.S. - 0.00%

The school, located in a corner of Scarborough not far from the Toronto Zoo, serves a large multicultural community. It opened in September 2005, and has no repairs currently listed.

Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy - 0.34%

The school, in Thorncliffe Park, opened in September 2013 and serves only Junior and Senior Kindergarten students. There are no repairs currently listed.

North Toronto CI - 0.54%

The school, near Yonge and Eglinton, was renovated and reopened in September 2010. The renovation turned one of the TDSBs oldest buildings into a showpiece. Currently no repairs are listed.

Humberwood Downs JMA - 1.24%

The school, in north Etobicoke, has seven high-priority repairs, including spot repairs of exterior walls and foundations, as well as replacing exterior doors.

Claude Watson School for the Arts - 1.26%

The school, near Yonge St. and Sheppard Ave., currently has no repairs listed.

Correction  Sept. 23, 2016: A photo caption in this article was updated from a previous version that mistakenly said North Toronto Collegiate had been renovated.

SHARE:
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Urban Outfitters (URBN) were slumping in pre-market trading on Monday as Goldman Sachs cut its rating on the stock to "neutral" from "buy," the Fly reports.

The firm also raised its price target to $35 from $33 on shares of the Philadelphia-based retailer.

Goldman said the company has successfully turned around the Urban Outfitters brand and it is near-peak operating performance. That leaves less room for meaningful improvement from here, the Fly noted.

Last week, Urban Outfitters posted better-than-anticipated results for the 2017 fiscal second quarter.

The company's brands include Free People, Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Buy" rating with a score of B- on the stock.

The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, solid stock price performance, growth in earnings per share and increase in net income.

Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: URBN
Oil's August bull run came to an end on Monday when crude prices ended their brief stay above $50 a barrel rumors of an OPEC production freeze gave way to the reality of burgeoning supplies.

Oil prices fell nearly 3% by midday in London, with Brent crude tumbling to $49.36, down $1.52 or 2.99%, while West Texas Intermediate crude retreated to $47.21, down $1.31 or 2.7%.

The falls came as traders accepted that a glut of oil was likely to be underpinned by increasing exports from Iraq, Iran and Nigeria, a growing rig count in the U.S. and ongoing strong exports of refined products from China.

Oil had rallied 20% in the first three weeks of August on rumors that OPEC would agree to cap oil production. That agreement would have broken a decade-long run, during which time the cartel has failed to agree on the amount of gas its 13 member-nations should pump.

Goldman Sachs on Monday dismissed talk of an OPEC production cap as a successful ploy to squeeze speculators with short oil positions. "The risk to OPEC production remains skewed to the upside," Goldman's Peter Hackworth and Henry Tarr noted. Morgan Stanley and Barclays analysts also issued notes speculating that buying by traders covering short positions likely drove the recent rally.

Meanwhile, signs that supply remains strong, and indications that it could grow, have become difficult to ignore.

China said last week its July exports of diesel and gasoline climbed 182% and 145% respectively compared with the same month last year, boosted by independent refineries that have returned to production as oil prices have risen. In the U.S., oil field services company Baker Hughes (BHI) said Friday that nine new rigs had come online in the past week, taking the total to 406, up 11% quarter on quarter.

Iraq said it expects operations at its 150,000 barrels a day Kirkuk fields to return to normal by the end of this week, while Libya has recommenced exports from its Zueitina terminal.

Good news out of Nigeria also added to the pressure on oil prices. Rebels in the nation's key oil region of the Niger Delta announced, over the weekend, a tentative cease fire that could enable pumping from three sites accounting for 750,000 barrels a day.

And all the while Iran's output continues to grow. Oil minister Bijan Zanganeh last week told parliament that output from the West Karooon field, which is shared with Iraq, will rise 70,000 barrels a day to 290,000 barrels within six months.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- L Brands (LB) stock was advancing in premarket trade on Monday after it was upgraded to a "buy" rating from "neutral" at Goldman Sachs, according to a note cited by the Fly.

The firm also raised its price target to $94 from $74 on shares of the Columbus, OH-based retailer.

Goldman Sachs said the company, which operates Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works stores, posted second quarter results that reduced concerns about how disruptive the new promotional strategy at Victoria's Secret would be to business in general.

L Brands reported second quarter results last week, beating analysts' estimates on both earnings and revenue.

In the near term, Goldman Sachs said Victoria's Secret will likely show sequential improvement in margins and keep comp declines contained.

The company remains a "compelling secular growth story" in the long term, the firm noted.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

TheStreet Ratings rated this stock as a "hold" with a ratings score of C+.

The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, increase in net income and expanding profit margins. However, as a counter to these strengths, we find that the stock has had a generally disappointing performance in the past year.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: LB
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Whiting Petroleum (WLL) were falling mid-Monday morning as oil prices retreated.

Oil began to fall after analysts predicted that upcoming oil producer meetings are not likely to result in output freezes, CNBC reports.

Last week, oil rallied on reports that OPEC producers would be meeting in September to discuss how to bolster oil prices amid a global oversupply. However, analysts no longer see a deal between the countries as feasible.

"Positioning data seems to confirm our view that the latest oil bounce is more technical and positioning-oriented than fundamental," Morgan Stanley said in a note cited by CNBC. "In fact, new buyers have been mostly absent the past few months."

The firm noted that there were "too many headwinds and logistical challenges" to result in a meaningful agreement between OPEC members come September.

Crude oil (WTI) was down 2.54% to $47.29 per barrel while Brent crude retreated 2.46% to $49.63 per barrel.

Whiting Petroleum is based in Denver.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.

TheStreet Ratings rated this stock as a "sell" with a ratings score of D.

The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, generally high debt management risk, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: WLL
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- AT&T (T) said it will work with Empresa De Telecomunicaciones De Cuba (ETECSA), the Cuban government-owned telecommunications company, to install roaming and direct interconnection in the country.

The Dallas-based telecommunications giant said it will soon announce details of roaming availability and pricing.

"Cuba is a growing international calling destination for out customers," said Bill Hague, AT&T's executive VP of Global Connection Management. "With this agreement, AT&T customers soon will be able to seamlessly connect with talk, text and data while visiting Cuba."

AT&T joins a growing list of U.S. companies who are expanding into Cuba. Starwood Hotels & Resorts (HOT) announced in March that it would open three hotels in Havana, marking the first venture by a U.S. hospitality company into Cuba in about six decades, the Wall Street Journal noted.

Marriott (MAR) received approval in March by the Department of Treasury (DOT) to pursue opportunities in Cuba. The hospitality companies had timed their expansions around President Barack Obama's historic visit to Cuba earlier this year, the Journal noted.

Carnival Corp. (CCL) completed its first voyage to Cuba in May, while Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH) is in the process of gaining DOT approval.

Shares of AT&T were lower in late morning trading on Monday.

(AT&T is a holding in David Peltier's Dividend Stock Advisor.)

Separately, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation:

We rate AT&T INC as a Buy with a ratings score of A+. This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that we rate. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its robust revenue growth, increase in net income, good cash flow from operations, expanding profit margins and solid stock price performance. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that we evaluated.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: T

T

data by

YCharts
A few months ago I wrote about the impact that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) could have on the global apparel industry if it were to pass.

Proponents of the TPP argue it will create more open markets by lowering trade barriers for all countries involved -- the U.S., Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam -- thus reducing costs for manufacturers, which should ultimately trickle down to consumers.

Opponents argue it gives companies that outsource manufacturing to foreign countries a competitive advantage, while moving more manufacturing jobs out of the U.S.

Regardless of how one might personally feel about the TPP, the impact it could have on the global apparel industry will be substantial. As such, it's important to keep an eye on how the outcome of the 2016 presidential election could affect the fate of this trade agreement.

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) | InsideGov

Let's start by looking at Democratic Party nominee Hilary Clinton's position on the issue.

Although Clinton famously declared her hope that the TPP would become the "gold standard" of trade agreements in her 2012 memoir Hard Choices, she has since made it clear that she does not support the TPP as it is currently written. Clinton's primary concerns are that the deal would kill jobs in the U.S. and benefit big pharmaceutical companies, while failing to address currency manipulation and protect American national security.

Clinton's anti-TPP stance has won the support of two critical segment of voters: those who supported Bernie Sanders and were reluctant to back Clinton from the outset, and labor unions, who have always been against free trade.

On the flip-side, Clinton's opposition to the TPP puts her at odds with President Obama, one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party at the moment and someone whose support Clinton is counting on in order to help her win in November. Until recently, Clinton has largely been able to avoid any major conflict, as Obama has done everything he can to make their different stances on the TPP seem like a non-issue. But with Democrat Howard Dean's Super PAC Democracy for America calling on Clinton to directly challenge Obama on the deal, Clinton is in a tough spot.

So what does that mean for the TPP if Clinton is elected? We have to assume Obama will submit the trade agreement to the lame duck Congress after the election, so Congress will be able to vote on the current deal, as is -- per the terms of fast track authority. If Congress votes yes, Clinton could veto the deal and renegotiate the terms to satisfy the liberal wing of the Democratic Party before sending it back to Congress.

Now let's consider Republican Party nominee Donald Trump's stance on the TPP. Trump has been clear that he is firmly against the TPP, describing it as a terrible deal that would reward outsourcing and benefit other countries at the expense of the U.S.

At first glance it might seem odd for Trump to oppose an agreement that many Republicans support from both an ideological and business standpoint, not to mention the fact that Senate Republicans have been pushing for the TPP for years. However, Trump's voter base is heavily populated with blue collar workers who could be negatively impacted by the deal. Once elected, he may move more toward the more traditional Republican position.

As such, one would assume that if Trump wins the election and Congress votes to pass the TPP, he would likely veto the deal. Whether or not he would renegotiate the terms and send it back to Congress would depend on the amount of pressure he'd get from groups that support the agreement, such as the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable.

Now, one might wonder, if the TPP is one of Obama's top priorities, and passing it would be one of the biggest accomplishments of his presidency, why doesn't he submit the deal to Congress now while it's still controlled by pro-TPP Republicans? According to Brown University political scientist Wendy Schiller, the answer is two-fold. First, Obama doesn't want to put Hilary Clinton in an even more uncomfortable position as she's working to win over anti-TPP voters. Second, the Republican senators that would vote to pass the TPP as is are fighting to win their own elections in November, and voting for the TPP to pass means they risk losing the support of Trump voters, which is a risk that Congressional leadership is unwilling to take.

Regardless of how Clinton and Trump feel about the TPP, it really boils down to Congress. If it doesn't pass in the lame duck session and signed into law, despite the incoming administration's opposition, don't look for it to pass until after the 2018 mid-term elections, when Republicans will have better leverage to influence the White House, regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Support us - Help us upgrade our services!

Maintaining our website and our free apps does require, however, considerable time and resources.

We're aiming to achieve uninterrupted service wherever an earthquake or volcano eruption unfolds, and your donations can make it happen! Every donation will be highly appreciated.

Improved multilanguage support

Tsunami alerts

Faster responsiveness

Design upgrade

Detailed quake stats

Additional seismic data sources

Download and Upgrade the Volcanoes & Earthquakes app to get one of the fastest seismic and volcano alerts online:

Android | IOS to get one of the fastest seismic and volcano alerts online:

We truly love working to bring you the latest volcano and earthquake data from around the world.We need financing to increase hard- and software capacity as well as support our editor team.If you find the information useful and would like to support our team in integrating further features, write great content, and in upgrading our soft- and hardware, please PayPal or Online credit card payment )., these features have been added recently:
Bessemer Venture Partners is one of Californias more successful technology investors, an early backer in the likes of Yelp, LinkedIn and Skype. Lately, the venture firm has taken a particular interest in the Washington areas cybersecurity scene. Its fund owns stakes in at least 40 cybersecurity companies, and recently added three local companies to its portfolio.

All three  PhishMe, Distil Networks and Virtru  are niche cybersecurity outfits that draw heavily on the regions three-letter agencies for top talent.

The engineers in Silicon Valley dont really understand the anatomy of a cyberattack, Bessemer partner David Cowan said.

There are people around [the District] who invented the anatomy of a cyberattack. The only place to find people with operational cyber expertise is within driving distance of [the National Security Agencys campus at] Fort Meade.

Big ticket investors tend to see cybersecurity as a chameleonic market prone to quick exits and constant consolidation.

In cybersecurity, theres a whole other industry of people who are constantly rendering your product obsolete, Cowan said. That means older and bigger cybersecurity companies have to always be buying up start-ups to stay advanced.

[Related: Heres what Shmoocon 2016, the D.C. hacker fest, tells us about the cybersecurity industry]

The sector got a jolt of energy after 2014, when a wave of high-profile breaches gave information security professionals newfound C-suite representation. The trend shows no sign of slowing. For Bessemer, the constant churn has yielded eight public offerings and 20 acquisitions.

In the past month, the fund participated in a $21 million round for Arlington-based Distil Networks and joined a $42.5 million investment in Leesburg-based PhishMe. The latest, to be announced Monday, is a $29 million round for D.C.-based Virtru, an encrypted communications app designed by a former NSA engineer.

Bessemer was also an early investor in Endgame, once a notorious seller of zero day vulnerabilities in computer systems, so called because the operator of the networks is unaware that the holes exist. (Forbes called it the Blackwater of Hacking).

Endgames first moments in the limelight came when Anonymous, the vigilante hacker collective, revealed confidential details of its zero day sales business. Then-chief executive Chris Rouland became a controversial figure in cybersecurity, openly advocating that private companies should be allowed to hack back against the criminal organizations trying to steal their data.

Bessemer moved Endgame from Atlanta to Arlington and installed one of its own partners, a former Marine named Nate Fick, as chief executive. Under Ficks leadership Endgame polished its image into that of a defense-oriented cybersecurity firm and distanced itself from the zero day industry. The company still has an entire department devoted to vulnerability research, but says it doesnt sell exploits outside the company, instead using them to improve the companys technology platform.

Today, the company openly capitalizes on its roots in the offensive side of hacking. Endgames website describes its technology as using stealth operations to hunt hackers within a companys network.

You have to eradicate the adversary without disrupting the core business process, Fick said of Endgames approach.

Bessemers newest bet, Virtru, also emerged from the intelligence community. Chief executive John Ackerly was a Bush administration technology adviser. His brother Will was an engineer at the NSA, where he designed an encryption system that the agency used to build walls between different streams of classified data.

[App review: Virtru will shield your emails from hackers and the FBI, but not from your boss]

Virtru has been around a few years, but this is its first time raising a significant chunk of capital.

The $29 million infusion definitely dwarfed what weve done so far, co-founder Will Ackerly said.

The small firm makes money charging big organizations for a suite of management services that let employees encrypt their communications while still giving managers a set of tools that can closely monitor the employees chatter, decrypting communications when necessary.

The Ackerlys plan to use the new capital to aggressively expand into Europe, but they said they want to keep their headquarters here. The brothers grew up in the District and still run the company out of an office in Dupont Circle.

People ask me all the time, Why arent you in the valley?  Will Ackerly said. But there would have to be a really clear reason to move, and I cant think of any.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) on Monday asked the Department of Homeland Security to end its use of privately operated detention centers, a step they said would save the government money and open the door for more humane alternatives.

The request  coming in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson  is hardly the first time politicians have criticized the use of privatized immigration detention centers. But it indicates how homeland security officials could face greater pressure to revisit their use of the for-profit facilities, coming days after the Justice Department said it would wind down the use of private prisons.

U.S. immigration authorities maintain a sprawling network of detention centers for immigrants who have committed crimes, are pressing asylum claims, or are awaiting deportation.

Stepping away from privatization would require a massive and difficult transformation for the federal government, forcing it to build its own detention centers, place more detainees in state and local facilities, or slash the number of immigrants being held. Nine of the 10 largest immigration detention facilities in the United States are private, run either by Corrections Corporation of America or the GEO Group.

According to the letter written by Sanders and Grijalva, among the 400,000 people held annually by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, 62 percent are at private facilities. The agency spends more than $2 billion a year detaining individuals, and in 2014, it entered into particularly pricey contracts to detain Central American women and children seeking asylum.

Given the impact on detainees, the high cost to taxpayers and the Department of Justices recent decision, we believe the Department of Homeland Security can and should immediately begin phasing out for-profit, privately run immigration detention facilities, the letter said. As each contract comes to the end of its term, the department should either decline to renew the contract or substantially reduce its scope.

The letter raised concerns about safety at immigration detention centers, saying that adults and children detained in private detention facilities often go without due process protections and proper medical care.

The Justice Departments decision last week was spurred in part by a critical report from its inspector generals office that concluded that privately run facilities lagged behind federal prisons in terms of safety and security. That report, though, did not apply to the immigration detention facilities and looked only at the 14 privately run federal prisons.

In a statement, CCA spokesman Jonathan Burns said the letter represented stale arguments peddled by familiar critics and noted that ICE planned to continue using safe, humane, and appropriate solutions like the companys facilities. He added that the inspector generals report had significant flaws and is at odds with other reviews.

ICE said in a statement that it remains committed to providing a safe and humane environment for all those in its custody. For individuals in its custody, ICE seeks to reduce transfers, maximize access to counsel and visitation, promote recreation, improve conditions of confinement and ensure quality medical, mental health and dental care.

GEO, in a statement Monday, did not directly address the letter but also criticized the inspector generals report, saying that it was severely flawed and failed to account for significant differences in inmate populations housed in privately operated facilities versus public facilities.

Additionally, despite claims to the contrary, the report in fact shows lower annual per capita costs for privately operated facilities, GEOs statement said.

For both GEO and CCA, immigration detention in recent years has emerged as a growing part of their business models. In 2015, CCA made 51 percent of its revenue from the federal government. Of that amount, nearly half came from immigration detention contracts.
This novels brilliant journey into the past begins in 1888, when the use of electricity was in its infancy and two great inventors, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, were fighting to control its spread across the United States and to reap the wealth and glory that would follow. In The Last Days of Night, Graham Moore digs deep into long-forgotten facts to give us an exciting, sometimes astonishing story of two geniuses locked in a brutal battle to change the world.

Moore  also the author of The Sherlockian, a fascinating novel about Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Oscar-winning screenplay for The Imitation Game  tells this amazing story through the eyes of Paul Cravath, a 26-year-old lawyer who was hired by Westinghouse to lead his legal battle with Edison. He would later found the prominent New York law firm that still bears his name.

[Best summer mysteries and thrillers]

"The Last Days of Night" by Graham Moore (Random House)

The legal case, simply put, was that Edison had patented a lightbulb and that Westinghouse had invented a better one, but the U.S. patent office had ruled that Westinghouses bulb violated Edisons patent. Edison was demanding $1 billion in damages. Cravaths job was to persuade the courts that, despite the patent office ruling, his clients bulb was different from Edisons.

Another inventor enters the story, the Serbian-born, highly eccentric, often unstable Nikola Tesla. At that point, Edison could offer only direct current, or DC, power. Unfortunately, DC could be transmitted only short distances, and therefore only those with enough money to buy a generator for their homes could enjoy electricity.

Tesla found a way to use the higher-voltage alternating current, or AC, to overcome the distance limit and thus revolutionize the spread of electricity. He went to work for Westinghouse to perfect his invention. Cravath, fearing that Edison might have Tesla killed  his laboratory did mysteriously burn down  kept him in hiding for months. Edison, he knew, was not a man to cross.

Edison set out to persuade the country that his rivals AC current was so dangerous that it would murder your children. He sent a man up and down the East Coast to hold public exhibitions at which DC and then AC power were sent through the bodies of dogs. The DC power caused the dogs to yelp in pain; the stronger AC voltage inflicted horrid deaths upon them. Proof, Edisons man declared, of the fate that might befall Americas children if Westinghouse had his way.

Edison did not stop with dogs. He used his political influence to convince the New York legislature that electrocution  using the AC current  should replace hanging in carrying out the death penalty. Soon enough, a condemned man was gagged and strapped into the first electric chair. The horror that followed, although factual, is almost beyond belief.

The novel abounds with fascinating real-life characters. Cravaths grandfather helped found Ohios Oberlin College to foster coeducation. Cravaths father, a clergyman, co-founded Fisk University in Nashville after the Civil War to provide education for freed slaves.

Cravath himself engages in a cautious romance with the beautiful, formidable Agnes Huntington, who sang with the Metropolitan Opera. This romance really happened, although Moore admits embellishments.

Other prominent men figure in the novel. The financier J.P. Morgan finally wields his money like a bludgeon to force a settlement of the long war between Edison and Westinghouse. He, too, was not a man to cross. A detailed authors note makes clear what is historical fact in the novel  most of the story  and what is fiction.

The author Graham Moore (Matt Sayles)

Ultimately, Moores novel addresses more than the epic battle between two great inventors. Hes fascinated by the nature of genius and its remarkable flowering near the end of the 19th century. In many ways, the inventor he most admires is the often bewildering Tesla, who cared not a whit for fame and fortune. He lived for ideas, solutions to problems, and was content to have lesser men implement them. When his work went well, Tesla would gladly live in furnished rooms and subsist on saltine crackers. Although, if Cravath was buying, he did sometimes enjoy lobster and good wine at Delmonicos.

As the story ends, Cravath looks back on the birth of electricity  the world-changing end of night  and concludes that in order to produce such a wonder the world required men like each of them. Visionaries like Tesla. Craftsmen like Westinghouse. Salesmen like Edison. He mentions other innovators then emerging, including Henry Ford and the Wright brothers. For good or ill, human inventiveness is inexhaustible.

Moores book demonstrates this point well, and his intellectual curiosity, graceful prose and tireless research have made The Last Days of Night a model of superior historical fiction.

Patrick Anderson regularly reviews mysteries and thrillers for The Washington Post.
Fatal force: This article is part of an ongoing examination by The Washington Post of fatal shootings by police. In 2015, The Post began tracking cases nationwide and compiled a database of all fatal shootings by officers in the line of duty. The project has expanded this year to include details about the officers involved. View the 2016 database here.



Harvey, Ill., Police Chief Denard Eaves, second from left, listens as the citys mayor, Eric Kellogg, second from right, addresses a city council meeting. The Harvey Police Department was investigated by the Justice Department over allegations of police misconduct and was told in 2012 to create a system that tracks officer behavior. (Joshua Lott/for The Washington Post)

The Justice Departments investigation of Baltimore police this month rebuked the agency for an entrenched culture of discriminatory policing. Deep within their findings, Justice investigators singled out a core failure: Baltimores system for identifying troubled officers was broken and existed in name only.

In Baltimore, Justice found that critical disciplinary records were excluded from its early intervention system, that police supervisors often intervened only after an officers behavior became egregious and that when they did, the steps they took were inadequate.

Justice highlighted the case of an unnamed officer who was criminally charged after he shot at a car as it drove toward him. When investigators looked into the officers background, they found that he had been involved in two prior shootings, had a history of complaints for harassment and excessive force, and had been flagged repeatedly in the early intervention system.

The Department failed to respond to those alerts in a way that could have uncovered the officers condition or otherwise allowed for an intervention, Justice reported.

The problems with Baltimores early intervention system are not isolated to police in that city. In numerous departments nationwide, police have failed to use early intervention systems effectively, Justice has found. Since 1994, 36 civil rights investigations by Justice discovered that local agencies had deeply flawed early intervention systems or no system in place at all, according to a review of those investigations by The Washington Post.

The Newark Police Department abandoned its early intervention system after just one year and lost track of more than 100 officers who had been flagged for monitoring, Justice found in 2014.

Justice told the Harvey Police Department in suburban Chicago to adopt a system in 2012 after its officers were accused of excessive force. The departments system logged tardiness and grooming violations, but it failed to track lawsuits alleging misconduct or abuse, The Post found.

[Read about how Kimbriell Kelly investigated the Harvey Police Department for this story.]

The New Orleans Police Departments system was found in 2011 to be outdated and essentially exists in name only, Justice said. Rank-and-file officers mocked the system and considered inclusion a badge of honor.

Early intervention systems are supposed to collect a wide range of public and private information and use predictive modeling to determine whether officers are prone to misconduct. Once an officer is flagged, a supervisor is supposed to intervene, heading off potential problems.

Justice, which has investigated dozens of police departments nationwide for civil rights violations, considers early intervention systems critical to reforming embattled agencies. Some of the troubled police departments had early intervention systems and collected information about officers behavior but did nothing with the data, investigators found.

There was nobody actually reading it, or looking at it and evaluating it, and then taking action thereafter, said Vanita Gupta, head of the Justice Departments civil rights division. You can have a system and technology, but you actually need human beings to use the information, to act on it and to analyze it over time.

Police accountability was thrust into the spotlight just over two years ago when a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Mo. That shooting and others led to calls for reforms nationwide. Recent fatal shootings by police in Minnesota, Louisiana and Wisconsin have reignited the debate. (In 2015, The Post began tracking all fatal shootings by on-duty police officers, an effort that continues this year.)

[The Washington Posts database of fatal shootings by police]

Many of the Justice Departments civil rights probes into local police agencies have been prompted by allegations that police have a pattern of using excessive force against civilians. One of the areas that Justice scrutinizes is whether departments have functioning early intervention systems.

In Ferguson, for example, one of Justices key findings was that police records were so incomplete and scattered that the department was unable to implement an early intervention system. In February, Justice settled the case, ordering a broad range of reforms, including the creation of such a system.

The Justice Department began investigating Baltimore police for civil rights violations after Freddie Gray, 25, suffered a fatal spine injury in the back of a police van in April 2015. Officers who arrested Gray failed to secure him in the van, and he died several days later from his injuries. Prosecutors charged six officers in Grays death, but the cases ended in a mistrial, acquittals or dismissed charges.

Earlier this month , Justice said that its 14-month investigation revealed that officers in Baltimore discriminated against black residents, violated peoples civil rights with unconstitutional arrests, used excessive force and retaliated against police critics. On Aug. 10 , city leaders promised sweeping reforms in the 2,600-officer force and said that they would work with Justice officials to hammer out the details.

As part of those reforms, Baltimore police will likely be told to fix the early intervention system or create a new one, as has happened in many of the cities where Justice has intervened.

Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist who has extensively studied the systems, said police departments could prevent officer misconduct if they adopted intervention systems and actively used them.

I think a lot of them [police leaders] give lip service to it because its important to have one, but they dont really use it, Alpert said.





Early systems

Nationwide, the first early intervention systems are thought to have been adopted by police agencies in Florida in the late 1970s. Miami police implemented a system after complaints about officer misconduct, and Miami-Dade police did so after four white officers were acquitted of beating to death a black insurance salesman.

Other police departments followed their lead after the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1981 issued a report called Who is Guarding the Guardians? that looked at police misconduct. It called for police departments to devise systems to assist officials in early identification of violence-prone officers. About 10 percent of any departments officers cause 90 percent of its problems, according to estimates.

Early systems varied. In some departments, supervisors tracked officers by writing their questionable actions on index cards, which were then placed in an officers personnel file. Other departments implemented electronic databases that tracked one or two categories of information, such as citizen complaints and the use of force, Alpert said.

In recent years, the databases have become more sophisticated, recording dozens of variables, analyzing patterns and sending emails to supervisors on their cellphones. Some departments even track reports of domestic violence or work-related traffic accidents.

Experts say departments are increasingly adopting the systems, but its unclear how many have done so.

When an officer is flagged too many times, a supervisor is supposed to sit down with the officer to discuss the incident, and if warranted, the officer should be retrained or receive counseling.

In 2007, the Los Angeles Police Department implemented one of the nations most elaborate systems following the Rampart scandal in the late 1990s, a wide-ranging corruption probe that began when an officer shot and paralyzed a suspected gang member and then planted a gun to cover it up.

The Justice Department investigated Los Angeles police and forced them to adopt an intervention system for its 10,000 officers. To help do so, police studied the behavior of officers involved in the Rampart scandal and others who had been sued for major misconduct, said David Doan, the now-retired deputy chief who oversaw the study.

The findings helped develop the criteria by which officers are flagged in the system, which pulls information from a dozen databases. Too many sick days may be an indicator of alcoholism, Doan said. Too many traffic accidents may point to aggressive behavior.

But even the Los Angeles system, which cost $4.2 million, has had challenges. In 2014, the inspector general for the police department found that of the 40 police officers fired within a two-year period, three-fourths had never been flagged or were flagged only once in five years.

No system is perfect, Doan said. And if you think it is, youve got a problem.

Funded by a Justice Department grant, Alpert studied whether early intervention systems were effective, taking a deeper look at how they worked for police in Miami-Dade, Minneapolis and New Orleans.

In all three sites, complaints or use of force reports declined by about two-thirds for those officers subject to intervention, his 2000 report concluded. The study, however, said it is unclear whether an officers behavior changes in the long run.

Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said that early intervention systems are double-edged. When used effectively, he said, they can correct officers who are developing bad habits. But, he said, the systems also can be used as a weapon for retaliation by management for dealing with personality conflicts.





Excluding information

Justice Department investigators found that of the 18 departments that already had intervention systems, more than half were excluding important information.

In 2008, Justice told the Austin Police Department that its criteria were so open-ended that officers were not being flagged. [T]here was no specific threshold that the APD was using that would trigger a review of an officers conduct, the report said. Only three officers on the department had been flagged, Justice said.

Austin police Lt. Richard Guajardo called the report accurate and said the system had been operating only a year at that point. It was brand-new; we were still working the kinks out, Guajardo said.

Outside Chicago, the Harvey Police department had no early intervention system in place before Justice investigated the 71-officer department in 2012. Justice told Harvey to create an early-warning system that included lawsuits against officers.

Harveys system was implemented in March 2014. At the time, Officer Richard Jones, 47, and the city were facing a federal lawsuit, which was settled three months later for $500,000.

The case was not included in the system, police said.

In the lawsuit, Kwamesha Sharp said that in 2011 she was 17 years old and pregnant and coming home from an ultrasound appointment. When she arrived at the house, police were investigating a domestic dispute. She alleged that Jones wrestled her to the ground, rolled her onto her back and kneed her in the abdomen, causing her to miscarry. Jones arrested Sharp, and she was charged with battery and resisting arrest, although she was later acquitted in court.

Joness attorney in the case, Cliff Kosoff, told The Post that there was no way to prove that the incident caused Sharps miscarriage. The evidence was that she was interfering with a lawful arrest and the force used by this officer was reasonable, Kosoff said.

In January of this year, another federal lawsuit was filed against Jones and the city of Harvey, alleging sexual assault. In the complaint, a 20-year-old woman said that she met Jones in June 2015 and that he began calling her. She said that two months later, he pulled her over for driving without a license, then led her to a weedy gravel lot. There, she alleges in the lawsuit, he forced her to have sex with him. She said she went to the hospital for an examination and filed a complaint with the Cook County Sheriffs Department, which told The Post that it is investigating.

In response to the lawsuit, Jones said in a court filing that he had previously spoken to the woman and once issued a warning to her for parking on a sidewalk. But he denied stopping her for driving without a license and said that he never assaulted her. His attorney in the case, Ken Hurst, said Jones declined to comment. Hurst also declined to comment because the case is pending.

That case also was not included in the early intervention system, police said.

Police officials said they were aware of both lawsuits, which received media coverage, but did not include them because the department policy was to track a lawsuit only if it was part of a complaint accompanied by a notarized affidavit.

When pressed for a copy of this policy, Harvey officials said they consulted with city attorneys and determined that they would track all lawsuits going forward.

Harvey Police Chief Denard Eaves said the change will allow supervisors to at the push of a button see how many times an officer has been sued and determine whether we need to talk to this individual and/or talk to our legal representation.

Since Harvey began using its system, officials said Jones had been flagged four times and had four interventions: three for calling in sick and once for grooming standards because he grew a beard, which is against department policy.

Jones resigned from the department in July, records show.



Kwamesha Sharp displays a tattoo memorializing her unborn child. In a lawsuit, Sharp alleged that a Harvey police officer in 2011 kneed her in the abdomen, which caused her to miscarry. The officer, Richard Jones, denied the allegation. The lawsuit was settled for $500,000. (Joshua Lott/for The Washington Post)

This woman also sued Jones and the city of Harvey, alleging that the officer forced her to have sex with him in 2015. Jones has denied the allegation, and the lawsuit is pending. Neither lawsuit was included in the police departments system that tracks officer conduct. (Joshua Lott/for The Washington Post)

Abandoned efforts

The Justice Department found that some troubled police departments had abandoned their early intervention systems.

In 2010, the Newark Police Department implemented a system for its nearly 1,000 officers. While investigating the department in 2014 for complaints about racial profiling and excessive force, Justice investigators found that 100 officers had been identified in the system for monitoring, but the department couldnt provide documents detailing what, if anything, happened to them.

One year after the system was put in place, it was defunct, investigators found.

Newark Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose said he cant address what happened because he wasnt with the department at the time, but he said the system is functioning now.

You can have all the early-warning signs, but if no ones looking at it or following up on it, then you have failure, Ambrose said.

When the New Orleans Police Department was investigated in 2011 for racial profiling and other issues, federal investigators found that data was haphazardly entered, and there was only one type of intervention  a class for officers. Officers were sent so often that it was nicknamed the bad boy school and was viewed by some as a badge of honor, according to Justices investigation.

New Orleans police officials, now under federal supervision, have set aside $4 million to install a new system, which is expected to launch in the fall.

Its the difference between a Model T and a Maserati, Jonathan Wisbey, deputy chief of staff for police, said of the old system and the new system.

The Metropolitan Police Department in the District has struggled to improve its early intervention system after Justice investigated in 2001 because of a spate of fatal officer-involved shootings.

Since then, the department, which has 3,900 officers, has cycled through three systems, Chief Cathy L. Lanier said.

The first $2 million system was custom-designed and didnt work, Lanier said. The department sued the vendor, recouping $1 million, Lanier said. The second system didnt go far enough to identify misconduct-prone officers, she said. The current system is a hybrid of the second system and a police review board that was instituted three years ago.

Officers are flagged by amassing points. Lanier said she meets monthly with supervisors to discuss flagged officers, along with others who may be of concern.

Lanier said that having worked with three early intervention systems taught her a valuable lesson: You cant put everything into a computer and expect it to do the job for you.
Dear Readers: Todays Sound Off is about a craft stores coupons:

A fabric store sends out valuable coupons for its patrons to use. At first glance, the deals look amazing, offering as much as 60 percent off the total purchase.

Reading the fine print  and believe me, its really, really fine  youll see that anything you might consider using the coupon for is exempt from the discount! Listed on each coupon can be as many as 25-plus categories/items.

The items listed are printed in the tiniest font possible. I used a magnifying glass just to read it! Even my son, whose vision is fine, couldnt believe the font used on the coupons.

Anna A. in San Antonio

Dear Readers: Here are some other uses for an empty, cleaned-out potato-chip can. Repurpose it to:

1. Store multiple coffee pods.

2. Hold crochet or knitting needles.

3. Carry or store condiment packets.

4. Protect some of the more popular store-bought cookies.

5. Contain childrens small toys.

Dear Heloise: In March 2013, you printed a hint about supporting the valuable nonprofit Operation Care and Comfort, which sends care packages to deployed troops.

Ive since discovered that the address you provided then (I clipped and saved the column) is no longer valid. The new address is:

Operation Care and Comfort

c/o American Red Cross

2731 North First Street

San Jose, CA 95134

Thanks!

Beth, via email

Beth: Thanks for the update. Further research on this topic gave me the following websites, for those of you who prefer going that route. Here is a list:

Operationcomfort.org

Operationgratitude.com

Military-missions.org

Redcross.org.

Dear Heloise: A few weeks ago, you posted other uses for gripping shelf liner, and I wanted to thank you for the soap-dish hint.

My bar of soap kept falling out of the cutout soap dish in my shower stall. I had some leftover liner, so I cut a small piece to fit in the soap dish. Now the bar stays put, and if I ever have to clean the liner, I simply take it out of the dish and wring it a few times under the water spray.

Again, thanks for the wonderful hint! So simple, but not necessarily so obvious!

Frankie H., via email

Dear Heloise: Im a retired teacher and am always trying to find different ways to reinforce my middle-school-age grandchildrens academic skills. I recently acquired a catalog from a local office-supply store and used it to reinforce many math, reading and language skills.

The great thing is that the children actually enjoy looking through it, so it was easy to follow along and ask questions related to a certain pages content. They know that I love learning and will try to fit in some learning time while were together. I make it fun, and they seem to enjoy it.

Gam in Minnesota

Heloises column appears six days a week at washingtonpost.com/advice. Send a hint to Heloise , P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Tex. 78279-5000, or email it to Heloise@Heloise.com.
When students arrive for their first day at Theodore Roosevelt High School on Monday, they will walk up a grand staircase surrounded by large, colonial columns and into the results of a $127 million renovation that includes an Olympic-size swimming pool.

The restored 1932 building has a capacity of about 1,100 students; just 460 are enrolled at the long-struggling school in the Districts Petworth neighborhood. But Monday  the first day of class for most D.C. schools  marks a renewed city effort to transform Roosevelt into a high-achieving neighborhood school that parents from all demographics in the gentrifying area want to choose for their children.

And its going to be a challenge: In 2012, there were 1,906 high school students living within Roosevelts boundaries, and just 301 of them attended the school, according to data from the 21st Century School Fund. In the 2014-2015 school year, no Roosevelt students met or exceeded expectations on math and English standardized tests linked to the Common Core state standards. Just 9 percent of students approached expectations, making it one of the lowest-performing high schools in the city.

[Delayed reopening of Roosevelt High School stokes ire in community]

Mayor Muriel Bowser celebrates the reopening of the school. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

But with new program offerings, a state-of-the-art building and heightened recruitment efforts, school leaders think they can achieve a major transformation.

D.C. Public Schools also is reopening MacFarland Middle School on Monday with a sixth-grade class in an attempt to further attract Ward 4 families back to their neighborhood schools. MacFarland was shuttered in 2013 along with more than a dozen other under-enrolled city schools.

My goal is to have both MacFarland and Roosevelt operate as the neighborhood school of choice, said Aqueelha James, the new principal for both Roosevelt and MacFarland.

The citys plan to draw students back to these schools has many layers, and it involves trying to lure students from other neighborhoods with the schools programs, including a comprehensive dual-language track. It also relies on the citys ability to boost performance at both schools enough to eventually attract the neighborhoods newly arrived residents, who are largely young, educated, middle- and high-income families.

Both MacFarland and Roosevelt will become Spanish dual-language schools beginning next school year. Roosevelt will start with a ninth-grade program and will add a grade each year.

Dual-language options are in high demand in the District, with 13 traditional public and public charter elementary schools offering such programs, each attracting long wait lists. Houston Elementary, a low-performing school in Ward 7, also will become a Spanish-language immersion school starting next school year.

[One D.C. school is turning to Spanish immersion to help its students learn English]

A bronze statue of Roosevelt inside the school. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

All DCPS dual-language elementary and middle school students will have the option to feed into MacFarland or Roosevelt. For example, when students complete eighth grade at Oyster-Adams Bilingual Education Campus in Adams Morgan which feeds into the sought-after Wilson High School  they can choose to attend Roosevelt instead to continue their dual-language education.

Roosevelt also will have an international academy to serve students who have recently immigrated to the United States. Thirty-seven percent of Roosevelt students are Hispanic, and 30 percent are English language learners. The school also will have a global studies program in which students take courses in Asian, Latin American, African and Middle Eastern studies, with Georgetown University professors helping to develop the curriculum.

So far, these boosted offerings are helping to recruit new students, James said. Last year, Roosevelt had 85 ninth-graders. This year, it is starting the academic year with 117 students. Fifteen of these ninth-graders are in the dual-language program. (Students in the high school program must have previously attended a dual-language program or test into the program.)

We havent seen these numbers in years, said James, who visited middle schools throughout the District to encourage families to enroll at Roosevelt. We managed to attract young people that we havent attracted in the past.

Although some students living inside Roosevelts boundaries are opting for charter schools, more of them are enrolling in high-performing DCPS programs.

Data from the D.C.-based 21st Century School Fund showed that 209 high school students living in Roosevelts boundaries during the 2012-2013 school year attended Wilson High School. An additional 200 students attended Columbia Heights Education Campus, and 124 enrolled at McKinley Technology High School.

There is a strong community of families who could be using Roosevelt but instead they use Wilson High School and other higher-performing high schools, said Mary Filardo, executive director of the 21st Century School Fund. However, since Wilson High School is crowded, hopefully families will be encouraged to use their own communitys high school. This is what it really takes to improve schools  families investing, not exiting the schools.

Julian Hipkins III purchased a home with his wife in Petworth in 2012, and they have a 7-month-old daughter. He joined a group of community stakeholders at Roosevelt as a way to become involved in the community and ensure that the school is one he will want for his child. Hipkins works in education and since becoming involved at Roosevelt has been hired on to become the coordinator for the schools global studies program.

Our dream would be for her to go to Barnard Elementary School, MacFarland and Roosevelt, Hipkins said. We would love for her to walk to all of her schools.

There are 71 sixth-graders starting in MacFarlands dual-language program Monday. The school will be solely a dual-language school for its first three years, and after that it also will have a standard middle school program. There are three kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools that feed into Roosevelt  West, Raymond and Truesdell education campuses  and these schools are slated to lose their middle school grades in three years, after which the students will attend MacFarland instead.

Roosevelt STAY, an alternative high school and career technical program, also is housed in the main Roosevelt academic building. There are 481 students enrolled in that program.
Monday wasnt just the first day of school for the 110 freshmen at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Northeast Washington. It was first day of school for the school itself.

The Districts newest high school, the only single-sex public high school in Washington, opened with a mid-morning ceremony punctuated by piped-in soft jazz and speeches from the mayor, the chancellor of the school district and D.C. Council members.

But even as the officials spoke, the teaching and learning was well under way. The students, wearing the school uniform  blue blazer, white shirt, purple-and-gold striped tie and khakis  began their day in gleaming new classrooms at 7:15 a.m., while most of Washington was still on its first cup of coffee.

Ben Williams, the schools 36-year-old principal, woke up at 6 a.m. Monday. And at 5. And at 4. It was a sleepless night for a leader who has great expectations for his young kings.

[Men dont wear clip-on ties. A new all-male high school gets a head start.]

Students enter Ron Brown College Preparatory High School as it opens its doors Monday. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

Finally. Its finally here, Williams said Monday morning. I want them to have a positive experience. I want them to feel that this is an environment where they feel welcome, where they can take chances and where they feel comfortable from day one being vulnerable.

On the first day of classes for most public schools across the city, Williams said he saw pride in the faces of the young Ron Brown students as they were starting to realize that this is their school. In a brief speech to students, Williams noted that Ron Browns community has adopted a quote from W.E.B. Dubois as its motto: Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season.

The school opens with a class of ninth-graders. It will add a class each year so that when the current freshmen graduate in 2020, Ron Brown will have a full student body.

The school, in what used to be Ron Brown Middle School in the citys Deanwood neighborhood, is in the middle of a $58 million phased renovation project that is completed on the lower floors and will continue on the upper floors. The capacity of the school is slated to be between 500 and 600 students by fall 2019.

Absalom Bolling, 14, is one of the schools proud new students. He chose Ron Brown because he wanted to go to an all-boys school and is excited about the opportunities that await him. A highly competitive swimmer, Bolling is pushing to get a swim team started at the school. Thats just one of the many plans hes making.

Im ready to hit the ground running, he said. I have a lot of goals. I plan to get a 4.0 and just do my best all the time and impress a lot of people.

Later, Bolling introduced D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, a task he handled with a politicians aplomb, welcoming her as the mayor of the soon-to-be 51st state, which drew a wide smile from Bowser.

The mayor said that the opening of the school was a historic day. The school, she told an audience that included D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and council member David Grosso, will get students ready to be the fathers and young men that will lead our city forward.

The creation of Ron Brown was a pet project of outgoing D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who decided last year to invest $20 million in a city initiative for black and Latino boys, who make up 43 percent of the students enrolled in D.C. Public Schools and whose academic achievements have fallen short of other groups.

This is a dream come true, and we will continue to defy expectations, Henderson said at Mondays opening ceremony.

[ACLU questions legality of D.C.s minority male school program: What about black girls?]

The decision to have an all-boys public high school has drawn some criticism because there is not a similar high school for girls. But Bowser and Henderson both defended the school.

Were not a one-size-fits-all school district, Henderson said, adding that the school system is looking at data about its girls and is exploring whether an all-girls school also would be a good idea.

Bowser spoke about the importance of meeting the needs of all of our children in D.C. Public Schools. If you look over the District of Columbia, if we have a group of people that is very vulnerable, its boys and young men, she said.

Charles Curtis, a psychologist on the schools staff, said that one of the reasons he wanted to work there was to change the experience that many young men of color have in school.

Its often a springboard for negative outcomes for them, Curtis said. We want to change the narrative and create a space where we foster their greatness.
BLOOD DONATIONS

BLOOD DRIVES Sept. 6, 3-8 p.m., Ashburn Farm Association, 21400 Windmill Dr., Ashburn, 800-733-2767; Sept. 10, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Leesburg Public Safety Center, 65 Plaza St., Leesburg, 800-733-2767.

INOVA BLOOD DONOR CENTER Mondays noon-8 p.m., Tuesdays 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Fridays 6 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sundays noon-4 p.m. Dulles Town Center, 45745 Nokes Blvd., Sterling. 866-256-6372 or inova.org/donateblood.

FIRST AID

FIRST AID/ADULT, INFANT AND CHILD CPR/AED Fauquier Hospital Medical Office Building, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. Call for schedule. 540-316-3588. $85. Registration required.

HEARING

DISABILITY RESOURCE CENTER Technical assistance through the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and presentations to businesses, civic groups and schools. Third Tuesdays 2-5 p.m., Workplace, 205 Keith St., Warrenton. Call for an appointment, 800-648-6324; TDD, 540-373-5890. Free.

FREE HEARING TESTS Age 18 and older. Mondays-Thursdays 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Blue Ridge Speech and Hearing Center, 19465 Deerfield Ave., Suite 201, Lansdowne. 703-858-7620. Registration required.

HEARING LOSS, TINNITUS AND MENIERES SYNDROME SUPPORT For all ages, including parents of children with hearing loss. First Fridays at 2 p.m., Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 703-430-2906.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING Age 18 and older, second Tuesdays 10 a.m., Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400.

HEARING LOSS OUTREACH Free referrals. Fourth Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Loudoun County Workforce Center, 102 Heritage Way, Leesburg; third Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. Free appointments: 703-430-2906 or nvrcloudoun@aol.com .

MENTAL HEALTH

COUNSELING FOR SEXUAL VIOLENCE SURVIVORS Provided by Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice. 703-771-9020.

CRISISLINK Suicide and crisis intervention. The organization provides community education, has a volunteer crisis response team and offers CareRing, a daily telephone outreach program for the elderly and disabled. 703-527-6016, volunteer@crisislink.org or crisislink.org.

PIEDMONT CHAPTER, NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS Serves Fauquier, Orange, Madison and Rappahannock counties. Support group, education classes and events for people living with mental illness and their family members. First Wednesdays 7-9 p.m. Fauquier Hospital, 500 Hospital Dr., Sycamore Room A, Warrenton. 571-426-8213.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA CHAPTER, NATIONAL ALLIANCE ON MENTAL ILLNESS A support group, classes and programs for people living with mental illness and their family members. naminorthernvirginia.org.

PREGNANCY, PARENTING

ADOPTIVE FAMILY PRESERVATION Adoptive families discuss common experiences; registration required. Third Tuesdays 12_2 p.m., Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd. Call 703-941-9008, Ext. 23, or email jmellario@umfs.org.

BABY CARE ESSENTIALS Thursday 6-8:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Family Birthing Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. Register. $25.

BIRTHRIGHT OF LOUDOUN COUNTY Free pregnancy tests, baby clothing, transportation and support throughout pregnancy, 823 S. King St., Leesburg. 703-777-7272.

BOND BETWEEN US A nonprofit organization that offers support to birth parents when children have been placed for adoption. Fourth Tuesdays 7:30 p.m. Call for location. 703-771-7844.

BREASTFEEDING SUPPORT Mondays 9:30-10:30 a.m., Fauquier Hospital Family Birthing Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588.

DAD SUPPORT New and expectant fathers share ideas. First Tuesdays 7 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg. 703-858-6360.

FOR THE CHILDRENS SAKE A group for separating or divorcing parents to share advice. Four-hour session weekly. Information : 703-391-8599 or fitsfoundation.org.

LA LECHE LEAGUE Mother-to-mother support and breastfeeding information. 10 a.m. second Wednesdays in Warrenton, 540-351-6103. Third Fridays 10:15-11:45 a.m., call for location, 703-444-7386. Second Fridays 10:15 a.m., Ashburn Library, 43316 Hay Rd., 703-431-3852; Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon, Panera Bread, 43670 Greenway Corp. Dr., Ashburn, email lllashburn@gmail.com. Third Fridays 10:15 a.m., Christ the Redeemer Church, 46833 Harry F. Byrd. Hwy., Sterling, 540-338-4637.

LOUDOUN FATHERHOOD PROGRAM Fathers discuss the joys and challenges of being a parent. Meets every other Saturday for two hours for four months; sponsored by Northern Virginia Family Service. 571-748-2796. Free.

LOUDOUN NURTURING PARENTING PROGRAM Positive parenting techniques; children attend with parents. Registration required. Call 703-771-3973, Ext. 27, or email nurturingprogram@lcsj.org . Free.

MOTHERNET/HEALTHY FAMILIES LOUDOUN Program links first-time parents with medical, social and educational resources to give children a socially and physically healthy start in life. Family support workers meet with participants in homes. English-Spanish translation provided. 703-444-4477, Ext. 217 , or inmed.org.

NEW MOTHERS SUPPORT Wednesdays 9:30-11:30 a.m. Inova Loudoun Medical Pavilion, 224 Cornwall St., Leesburg, main entrance. Babies welcome. 703-858-6360.

YOUNG PARENT SERVICES Support for teenage parents. Loudoun County Department of Family Social Services, 52 Sycolin Rd., Leesburg. Call for times. 703-771-5375.

ONLINE CHILDBIRTH EDUCATION PROGRAM Inova Loudoun Hospitals Web-based program uses animation, videos and interactive activities to guide users through the basics of childbirth, breastfeeding and caring for newborns. 703-858-6360. thebirthinginn.org/classes.

PARENTING ALONE GROUP For parents of school-age children who have lost a spouse or partner to cancer. Second Tuesdays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-698-2536 or email jennifer.eckert@inova.org .

PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH SUPPORT Childbirth Solutions Resource Center, 8393 W. Main St., Marshall. 571-344-0438.

SENIORS

EXERCUSE EQUIPMENT: Weights, treadmills, bikes and a cardio-glide. Instruction provided. Age 55 and older. Weekdays 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

FITNESS FOR PEOPLE 55 AND OLDER Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 1-1:45 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 571-258-3400. $36, 12-visit card.

EYE CARE LensCrafters staff members will clean glasses and make minor repairs. Second Wednesdays 1-2 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 703-430-2397. Free.

INOVA LOUDOUN MOBILE VAN Blood pressure checks. Second and fourth Tuesdays 9:30 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling, 571-258-3280; first Wednesdays 9:30 a.m.-noon, Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039.

LAUGHING YOGA FOR SENIORS I mprove flexibility and balance. Thursdays 9:30-10 :30 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

LOUDOUN ADULT DAY CENTERS For seniors with physical limitations or memory loss, a safe and social environment, therapeutic activities, individualized care and respite for caregivers. Limited transportation. Sliding-scale fees. Weekdays in Leesburg, 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., 703-771-5334; Purcellville, 571-258-3402; and Ashburn-Sterling, 571-258-3232.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging case manager. Call for an appointment or sign up at the Senior Center at Cascades. First and third Wednesdays 11 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 571-258-3280.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging Elder case manager. Sign up in the Leesburg Senior Center lobby. Second and fourth Thursdays 11 a.m.-noon and 12:30-4:30 p.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

SENIOR OUTREACH SERVICES Free and confidential assistance from an Area Agency on Aging Elder case manager. Call for an appointment or sign up at the Carver Center. First and third Mondays, 12:30-5 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 703-737-8741. Free.

ZUMBA: For people 55 and older who are learning Zumba for the first time, or those who prefer a lower-impact version. The fitness program combines Latin and international music with dance.Thursdays 11 a.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. 571-258-3280. $12.

TAI CHI Stretching and strengthening movements. Mondays 11 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039. Free.

ZUMBA GOLD CLASS Age 55 and older. Wear rubber-soled shoes and comfortable clothing; bring water and a towel. Tuesdays 11 a.m., Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 p.m. Senior Center of Leesburg, 102 North St. NW, Leesburg. 703-737-8039. $24 per month.

SUPPORT GROUPS

AL-ANON SERVICE CENTER OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA A volunteer is available 24 hours with information for spouses, family members and friends of problem drinkers. 703-534-4357 or 877-339-8350. Mondays 8 p.m. Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 125 W. Washington St., Middleburg, 540-554-2747; Tuesdays 7:30 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg, 877-339-8350; Fridays 8:30 p.m. Grace Episcopal Church, 6507 Main St., The Plains, 800-344-2666; Tuesdays 12:15 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, Route 29 N., 540-347-7448; Tuesdays 7 p.m. and Saturdays 8:30 p.m. Warrenton Presbyterian Church, 91 Main St., 800-344-2666.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS Various meeting times and locations in Loudoun County. 800-208-8649 or 703-876-6166. nvintergroup.org.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVER SUPPORT For those who care for people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Fourth Wednesdays 4-5:30 p.m. The Villa at Suffield Meadows, 6735 Suffield Lane, Warrenton. 540-316-3800.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVERS SUPPORT For those caring for people with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. Second Mondays 7-8:30 p.m. Galilee United Methodist Church, 45425 Winding Rd., Sterling. 703-430-9229. galileeumc.org.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVER SUPPORT Emotional, educational and social support for family members and friends of people with the disease. Third Saturdays 10 a.m. Loudoun County Area Agency on Aging, 20145 Ashbrook Pl., Ashburn. Call 703-771-5407 or email lesley.katz@loudoun.gov.

ALZHEIMERS CAREGIVER SUPPORT GROUP Fourth Thursdays 3-4 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 540-903-6831 or alz.org.

ALZHEIMERS SUPPORT First Tuesdays 10-11 a.m. Spring Arbor Assisted Living, 237 Fairview St. NW, Leesburg. 540-338-6520.

ALZHEIMERS SUPPORT First Wednesdays 4 p.m. Leesburg Adult Day Center, 16501 Meadowview Ct., Leesburg. 703-771-5334.

TALK ABOUT CURING AUTISM A nonprofit organization educating and supporting families affected by autism. tacanow.org.

AUTOIMMUNE SUPPORT Last Thursdays 6:30-7:30 p.m. Jackson Building, 209 Gibson St., Leesburg. Email autoimmunesupport@hotmail.com .

BEREAVED PARENT SUPPORT One-on-one counseling is available. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. scsm.tv.

BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT For those experiencing loss because of the death of a loved one. Age 18 and older. Third Mondays 1 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. Sponsored by Capital Caring. 703-957-1800.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT Fourth Tuesdays 7-8 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Tower, Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-349-0588.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT For those with new diagnoses or starting treatment. Register if attending for the first time. Fourth Mondays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8857.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT For those who have finished treatment, have had a recurrence or metastatic breast cancer. Register if attending for the first time. Fourth Mondays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8857. Free.

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT ASSISTANCE FUND Loudoun County residents who have received a diagnosis or have undergone treatment in the past 12 months are eligible to apply for financial assistance. Areas included are wigs, bras, puffs and prostheses, mammograms and medical bills, food and help with utilities, rent or mortgage, and transportation costs. The Pink Assistance Fund has been established by the Loudoun Breast Health Network. lbhn.org.

CANCER SUPPORT Oncology nurses, social workers and spiritual care providers offer education and support to patients, families and caregivers. Second Mondays 5:30-6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Sycamore Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-2273.

CANCER SUPPORT Life with Cancer, for patients, family members and friends. Second Thursdays 7 p.m. Ashburn Presbyterian Church, Room 202, 20962 Ashburn Rd. 703-729-2012. ashburnpresbyterian.org.

CAREGIVER SUPPORT Provides emotional, educational and social support. Encourages caregivers to maintain their personal, physical and emotional health while caring for people with demenita or other chronic illness. Fourth Thursdays 3-4 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. 540-903-6831.

CAREGIVER SUPPORT AND RESOURCE GROUP Wednesdays 10:30 a.m.-noon (no meeting first Wednesdays), Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. scsm.tv.

CARING FOR AGING PARENTS Support group. Confidential. Fourth Wednesdays 7:30 p.m., Family Focus Counseling Service, 20-B John Marshall St., Warrenton. 540-349-4537.

CHADD PARENTS SUPPORT For parents of children with ADD/ADHD. Fourth Sundays 3 p.m. KinderCare, 44051 Ashburn Village Shopping Plaza. chadd.nova loudoun@gmail. com .

CHRONIC ILLNESS SUPPORT Tuesdays 10:30-11:30 a.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministries, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814 or scsm.tv.

COFFEE AND CONVERSATION: Support for those discouraged because of illness, bereavement, caregiving or a loved one in the military. Thursdays 10 a.m.-noon. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814.

COMPASSIONATE FRIENDS For parents who have experienced the death of a child. First Wednesdays 7:30 p.m. St. James Episcopal Church, 14 Cornwall St. NW, Leesburg. 540-882-9707.

CREATING AND CONNECTING Two-hour art therapy and relaxation workshop for cancer patients. Every other month, 12:30-2:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call for dates. 703-858-8850.

DEPRESSION BIPOLAR SUPPORT ALLIANCE OF WESTERN LOUDOUN Saturdays 3 p.m. Purcellville Library, 220 E. Main St., Carruthers Room. Call 703-431-7160 or email kathy@dbsanca.org.

DROP-IN GRIEF SUPPORT For those coping with a death. Second and fourth Wednesdays 1-2 p.m. St. Davids Episcopal Church, 43600 Russell Branch Pkwy., Ashburn. Sponsored by Capital Caring. 703-597-1781.

FAMILIES OVERCOMING DRUG ADDICTION SUPPORT First and third Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Sycamore Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-9221 or email myfodafamily@gmail.com.

GRIEFSHARE Open to anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one. Tuesdays from 7-8:30 p.m. Purcellville Baptist Church, 601 Yaxley Dr., Purcellville. Call 540-338-0918 or email caring@purbap.org . Workbook, $15.

GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER YOUTH AND PARENT SUPPORT A group in partnership with Metro DC PFLAG. Fourth Sundays 4-6 p.m. Unitarian Universalist Church, 22135 Davis Dr., Sterling. 703-328-6518.

GRIEFSHARE Nondenominational seminar and support group. Tuesdays 7:30-9 p.m., and Wednesdays, 1-2:30 p.m. Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814. Free.

GRIEF SUPPORT Sponsored by Hospice Support of Fauquier County. Individual counseling available. First and third Thursdays 3:30-5 p.m. Hospice Support Office, 42 N. Fifth St., Warrenton. Registration required. Call 540-347-5922 or email hospicesupport@verizon.net.

GRIEF SUPPORT Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m.-noon, Spiritual Care Support Ministry Center, 76 W. Shirley Ave., Warrenton. 540-349-5814.

HOSPICE SUPPORT Free medical-equipment loan facility for Fauquier County residents. Especially needed are donations of wheelchairs, bedside commodes, rolling walkers, electric hospital beds, shower benches and chairs, adult diapers, lift chairs, Ensure and hospital bed mattresses. 540-347-5922.

LOOK GOOD, FEEL BETTER For women undergoing or emerging from cancer treatment. Every other month, 6:45 to 9 p.m. ,Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Call for dates. 703-776-2820. Free.

LOUDOUN CHADD SUPPORT Led by Children and Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Third Thursdays 7 p.m. Leesburg Town Hall, lower-level conference room, 25 W. Market St. 703-669-2445.

LOUDOUN INTERGROUP OF OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS Fellowship and support. For locations and times, call 571-420-2012. oa.org.

LYME DISEASE SUPPORT Fourth Sundays 2-4 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Conference Room A and B, Leesburg. Go to natcaplyme.org or email loudounlymeadvocates@gmail.com.

LYME DISEASE SUPPORT Third Thursdays at 7 p.m. Warrenton Church of Christ, 6398 Lee Hwy. Access Road, Warrenton. 540-347-7265 or email lymeinfauquier@gmail.com.

LYME DISEASE SUPPORT First Tuesdays 7-8:30 p.m. Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville. Email charphealy@yahoo.com.

MADD LOUDOUN VICTIM SUPPORT For those who have been affected by drunken driving. Third Wednesdays 7:30 p.m. 210 Wirt St., Leesburg. 540-338-6491.

MAN-TO-MAN CANCER SUPPORT Sponsored by Loudoun Cancer Care Center, for prostate cancer patients and their families. Second Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling. Call 703-858-8857 or email karen.archer@inova.org.

MENDED HEARTS Northern Virginia chapter, for heart surgery patients and families and friends of heart disease patients. Third Saturdays 11 a.m., Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg (Patient Information Lounge) . 703-924-6244 or mendedhearts200.org.

MENOPAUSE SUPPORT Third Thursdays 6:30-9 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg (second floor, Patient Education Room). 703-858-8060.

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUPPORT Saturdays 10:30 a.m. Fauquier Hospital Chestnut Room, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-349-2826.

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS SUPPORT Last Sundays 2-4 p.m. Cascades Library, 21030 Whitfield Pl., Potomac Falls. 703-771-4256.

NAR-ANON FAMILY SUPPORT For those affected by loved ones with addiction. Meaningful Mondays, 7-8 p.m., Galilee United Methodist Church, 45425 Winding Rd., Sterling. 703-203-9792; Wisdom Wednesdays 7-8 p.m., St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, 37730 St. Francis Ct., Purcellville, 703-606-7125; Serenity Thursdays, 7-8 p.m. Leesburg Presbyterian Church, 207 W. Market St., Leesburg, 703-606-7125.

PARKINSON'S SUPPORT Open to those with Parkinson's disease, their family members and caregivers. First Tuesdays 1:30-3 p.m. Call for Ashburn location. 571-442-8851.

POST-PARTUM SUPPORT Second and fourth Wednesdays 1-2:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Cornwall Campus, 224 Cornwall St., Leesburg. 703-909-9877. Email lamckeough@gmail.com. Registration required.

REACH TO RECOVERY Home visit program for mastectomy and lumpectomy patients. Temporary prostheses, exercise instruction and encouragement. 703-938-5550.

SEXUAL ASSAULT AND INCEST SURVIVORS GROUP COUNSELING Services provided by Loudoun Citizens for Social Justice and the Loudoun Abused Womens Shelter are free and confidential. 703-771-9020.

SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVORS EMPOWERMENT SUPPORT Sponsored by Sexual Assault Victims Volunteer Initiative. Child care available with 48-hours notice. Mondays; call for times and locations. 540-349-7720.

SPIRITUAL SUPPORT GROUP For cancer patients, family members and friends. Third Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. 703-858-8850.

STROKE SURVIVORS AND CAREGIVERS SUPPORT Second Wednesdays 11 a.m.-noon, Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg, second floor, Patient Education Room. 703-858-6667 or robynthomson@inova.org .

SUICIDE COUNSELING Third Wednesdays 7-8:30 p.m. Leesburg Town Office, Conference Room 2, lower level, 25 W. Market St., Leesburg. 703-587-1618 or survivorsofsuicidelossleesburg@gmail.com.

WOMENS SUPPORT Sponsored by Services to Abused Families. Tuesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Confidential location. 540-825-8876.

WIDOW AND WIDOWER SUPPORT Third Mondays 11 a.m. Leesburg Senior Center, 102 North St. NW. 703-737-8039.

WOMENS CANCER SUPPORT Woman to Woman, first Wednesdays 6:30-8 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital Radiation Oncology Center, 44035 Riverside Pkwy., Suite 100, Leesburg. Registration required. 703-858-8850.

MISCELLANEOUS

BRAIN TRAUMA SURVIVORS BROWN BAG LUNCH For survivors and caregivers, first Tuesdays, noon-1:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riverside Pkwy., Leesburg, second-floor Patient Education Room. Call 703-737-3150 or email jberg@braininjurysvcs.org. Free.

CHILD DEVELOPMENTAL SCREENINGS For ages 2-5. Children may not be kindergarten-age-eligible. Sponsored by the Loudoun County public schools Child Find Center. 571-252 - 2180.

CHOLESTEROL SCREENINGS Weekdays 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Fauquier Health LIFE Center, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-2640. Registration required. $35.

EMERGENCY FOOD SUPPLIES Loudoun residents who are in need can receive a free three-day supply of groceries. Supplies are distributed Mondays through Saturdays by Loudoun Interfaith Relief. 703-777-5911. interfaithrelief.org.

PREVENTING FALLS, WORKSHOP AND SCREENING Balance, Balance and More Balance, Sept. 28 at 10:30 a.m. Loudoun County Area Agency on Aging, 20145 Ashbrook Pl., Suite 170, Ashburn. 703-771-5407. aaasupport@loudoun.gov. Free.

FAUQUIER FREE WALK-IN MEDICAL CLINIC Patients must call Thursdays from 12:30 to 1 p.m. to register for the clinic, which begins at 5:30 p.m. Patients are also seen by appointment Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Fauquier and Rappahannock residents only. Bring proof of address for the first visit. Patients cannot have Medicaid, Medicare or private insurance. Information: 540-347-0394 Tuesdays or Thursdays, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

FAUQUIER HOSPITAL BISTRO SENIOR SUPPER CLUB Nutritious meals and fellowship for people 55 and older. Tuesdays and Thursdays 4:30-6:30 p.m. Fauquier Hospital Bistro on the Hill, 500 Hospital Dr., Warrenton. 540-316-3588. $5.49.

HEROES (Hometown Enabling Relationships, Opportunities and Empowerment through Support) is a program for military families. A trained volunteer provides support to military members and their families, from pre-deployment up to two years post-deployment. Assistance includes financial help, job placement, family care and mental health services. heroescare.org or email caring@purbap.org .

INOVA LOUDOUN HOSPITAL MOBILE HEALTH SERVICES BLOOD PRESSURE SCREENINGS Tuesday 9 a.m.-noon, Senior Center at Cascades, 21060 Whitfield Pl., Sterling; Thursday 10 a.m.-noon, Carver Center, 200 Willie Palmer Way, Purcellville; Aug. 31, 10 a.m.-noon, Lansdowne Woods, 19400 Leisure World Blvd., Leesburg. For information, call 703-858-8818 or go to inova.org/mobilehealth. Free.

LOUDOUN CARES INFORMATION AND REFERRAL HELP LINE Call for help in finding resources for county residents who are dealing with rent eviction, utility cut-offs, needed health care, employment and more. 703-669-4636.

MOTOR SKILL SCREENINGS Birth to 21 months. First Thursdays, Blue Ridge Speech and Hearing Center, 19465 Deerfield Ave., Suite 201, Lansdowne. Call for an appointment. 703-858-7620. Free.

NORTHERN VIRGINIA LONG-TERM CARE OMBUDSMAN Call for help in resolving complaints related to long-term-care facilities. 703-324-5861.

ROAD TO RECOVERY For cancer patients who need rides to appointments. 410-781-6909. Email jen.burdette@cancer.org. Free.

SAFE SITTER CLASSES For girls and boys ages 11-14. First Saturdays except for holiday weekends. 7:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Inova Loudoun Hospital, 44045 Riveerside Pkwy., Leesburg. To receive a Safe Sitter Certificate, students must pass practical and written tests on babysitting concepts and handling an emergency. Take a lunch from home or buy lunch in the cafeteria. $70, includes handbook and snacks during the day. Registration required. Call 703-858-8818 or email charlene.martin@inova.org.

SEVEN LOAVES FOOD PANTRY Individuals and families can receive a three-day supply of food, distributed Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 10 a.m.-noon. 540-687-3489 or sevenloavesmiddleburg.org.

TREE OF LIFE FOOD PANTRY Serving western Loudoun County. Food is delivered Wednesdays and Saturdays. 703-554-3595.

 Compiled by Sandy Mauck

TO SUBMIT AN ITEM

Email: ldliving@washpost.com

Fax: 703-777-8437

Mail: Health Calendar, The Washington Post, 104 Dry Mill Rd. SW, Suite 101, Leesburg, Va. 20175

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar

Loudoun County and Fauquier County health calendar
Principal David Stewart in front of Madisons Trust Elementary School in Brambleton, which opens Aug. 29. (Jim Barnes/For The Washington Post)

Madisons Trust Elementary in Brambleton will become Loudouns newest school when students return to classes Aug. 29.

The schools name refers to a notable incident during the War of 1812, when the British burned the White House, and important government documents were temporarily hidden in Loudoun County. The word trust refers to the faith President James Madison placed in Loudoun residents to keep the records safe, county public schools spokesman Wayde Byard said.

David Stewart is the schools principal. Stewart, 43, comes to Madisons Trust from Guilford Elementary School in Sterling, where he was principal for 10 years. Before that, he taught fourth and fifth grades in Spotsylvania and Loudoun counties, and he was assistant principal at Cedar Lane Elementary School in Ashburn.

In an interview for The Washington Post, Stewart discussed his expectations for the new school, which will open with about 775 students. These are edited excerpts from the interview.

What is your guiding philosophy regarding education?

If you have an environment thats positive, and you get people that have enthusiasm and a passion for students and learning, and a lot of energy, you cant go wrong. It makes the kids want to come to school, it makes learning fun and, at the end of the day, the kids are reaching or exceeding their potential.

What qualities do you look for in teachers?

Youve got to have a passion for it, and youve got to be enthusiastic . . . and youve got to have a big heart.

We had a two-day retreat with the new [teaching] staff at the end of June, and almost everybody was able to make it. Getting them all together for the first time was humbling for me. But at the same time, I felt like they had the traits that Im looking for. It was the most positive two days Ive ever experienced.

What is the most important job of a principal in a new school?

Making sure everybody feels welcome and making sure everyone knows that its a team effort. Youve got to work together.

Youve got people coming from all over the place, with all kinds of ideas. . . . I just want to make sure I capture it all and do as much as we can to make this a very positive experience.

How was the school mascot name chosen, the Mighty Macaws?

The name of the school came from James Madison. A macaw was his pet when he was president. We put a form on our website and had kids put in what they thought the mascot should be, and then we got about 200 to 300 entries. I just took the top four or five and made it a vote.

Are there any major challenges before school opens?

We need to walk around the school and make sure we have arrival and dismissal procedures, because this is a unique setup. It has three different entrances, because it has a bus loop, a car loop and a parking lot, and none of them are intertwined. So its just logistics.

If you had one message for the parents, what would it be?

Were here for the kids. So whatever they need, were going to make sure that every child is met where they are, and make it a positive experience for everyone.

What would you tell the kids?

Be ready for a great year. Were going to have a lot of fun, and youre going to learn a lot. And youre going to love your teachers.
Prince George's County Police released surveillance footage of a suspect wanted in connection with a shooting death during an attempted robbery. (Prince George's County Police)

Prince George's County Police released surveillance footage of a suspect wanted in connection with a shooting death during an attempted robbery. (Prince George's County Police)

In the short time he worked at the store, regular customers of the 7-Eleven on Brandywine Road in Clinton, Md., were almost always greeted by the quiet, friendly smile of Taiwo Oduwole.

The native of Nigeria was behind the counter morning, noon and night as he worked to pay for his masters degree, said Phyllis Boone, a longtime Clinton resident who often visited the convenience store.

He was the face of the 7-Eleven, Boone said. You cant walk into the store without seeing him.

But Sunday morning, during one of Oduwoles early shifts, a masked man armed with a gun entered the store and demanded money, police said. The man assaulted Oduwole, who managed to jump over the counter in an attempt to escape. Then the gunman shot Oduwole in the back  twice.

Our suspect raised his gun, pointed it at our victim and shot him in his back one time, said Capt. Brian Reilly, the head of the homicide unit for Prince Georges County Police. As Oduwole made it out the door, the suspect then, a second time, raised his gun and shot Mr. Oduwole in the back again. Mr. Oduwole collapsed in the parking lot.

Taiwo Oduwole (Family Photo)

[Tracking D.C.-area homicides]

Police released video Monday of a suspect wanted in connection with Oduwoles slaying. Police hope that the images showing a man wearing a distinct North Face jacket with a backpack attached to it will lead to an arrest in the killing of the recent immigrant from Nigeria.

Oduwole, 31, died at a local hospital. The gunman left the convenience store without any money, Reilly said. About 30 minutes later, the same masked man robbed a hotel down the street, he said. Police said they are also looking for a second suspect in the case who probably drove a getaway car in both incidents.

This is an absolutely senseless crime that should have never taken place, Reilly said of Oduwoles shooting. Its a heartless and cowardly act.

Family gathered at Oduwoles home in Upper Marlboro on Monday were too grief-stricken to speak at length.

Its tough to talk about right now, said a man at the door who identified himself as Oduwoles brother but did not provide his name.

The man described his brother as an intelligent, kindhearted and decent person.

He touched everyone who he comes across, Oduwoles brother said. Everybody misses him.

Keith Turner, an active member of the community and regular customer, was at the store early Monday morning with Boone and other neighbors to remember Oduwole.

He was really nice, Turner said of Oduwole. He didnt have to die over some money.

A police flier showing an image of the suspect sought by police was taped to the front of the store. Turner pointed at the mans picture and called him trifling.

Weve got to come together, get this guy and make him an example, Turner said.

Boone, who also was at the 7-Eleven on Monday morning, remembered Oduwole as someone who was respectful and generous. When kids in the neighborhood came into the store and they couldnt afford a drink or a treat, Oduwole would often take some of his own money and pay for them, Boone said.

She called Oduwoles killing disgusting.

This coward has taken away a beautiful person in this community, said Boone, who has lived in the Clinton area for 25 years. He had just a wonderful spirit.

Police on Monday announced that the reward in the case has increased to $50,000 from $25,000 with the FBI contributing additional cash for information leading to an arrest and indictment. Police are asking anyone with information about the case to call 301-772-4925, or to remain anonymous, 1-866-411-TIPS (8477).

Oduwoles slaying was one of three fatal shootings that occurred in Prince Georges over the weekend. D.C.-area rapper Swipey, whose real name was Douglas Brooks, died in a targeted shooting shortly after 1 a.m. Sunday outside a house in Suitland, police said. Two groups confronted Brooks in the parking lot of an apartment building and shot him, Reilly said.

[D.C. rapper Swipey shot and killed in Prince Georges County early Sunday]

Police are also investigating the fatal shooting of Damien Rowlett, 22. Rowlett was shot around 1:30 a.m. Sunday and died at a local hospital.
The FBIs year-long investigation of Hillary Clintons private email server uncovered 14,900 emails and documents from her time as secretary of state that had not been disclosed by her attorneys, and a federal judge on Monday pressed the State Department to begin releasing emails sooner than mid-October as it planned.

Justice Department lawyers said last week that the State Department would review and turn over Clintons work-related emails to a conservative legal group. The records are among tens of thousands of documents found by the FBI in its probe and turned over to the State Department, Justice Department attorney Lisa Ann Olson said Monday in court.

The 14,900 Clinton documents are nearly 50 percent more than the roughly 30,000 emails that Clintons lawyers deemed work-related and returned to the department in December 2014.

Lawyers for the State Department and Judicial Watch, the legal group, are negotiating a plan for the release of the emails in a civil public records lawsuit before U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of Washington.

[Clinton Foundation to restrict foreign, corporate donations if Hillary Clinton wins]

The Fix's Chris Cillizza explains why the FBI's announcement that investigators uncovered nearly 15,000 additional emails from her private server could cause the Clinton campaign problems through the election in November. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

In a statement after a hearing at the U.S. district courthouse in Washington, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said the group was pleased that Boasberg rejected the departments proposal to begin releasing documents weekly on Oct. 14, ordering it instead to prioritize Clintons emails and to return to court Sept. 22 with a new plan.

Were pleased the court accelerated the State Departments timing, Fitton said. Were trying to work with the State Department here, but lets be clear: They have slow-walked and stonewalled the release of these records. Theyve had many of them since July 25 ... and not one record has yet been released, and we dont understand why thats the case.

In a statement, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the agency previously agreed voluntarily to hand over emails sent or received by Clinton in her official capacity as secretary from 2009 to 2013 but that tens of thousands of documents would have to be carefully appraised at State to separate official records from personal ones.

State has not yet had the opportunity to complete a review of the documents to determine whether they are agency records or if they are duplicative of documents State has already produced through the Freedom of Information Act, Toner said. We cannot comment further as this matter is in ongoing litigation.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said, As we have always said, Hillary Clinton provided the State Department with all the work-related emails she had in her possession in 2014. We are not sure what additional materials the Justice Department may have located, but if the State Department determines any of them to be work-related, then obviously we support those documents being released publicly as well.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in May 2015 after disclosures that Clinton had exclusively used a personal email server while secretary of state. Judicial Watch had sought all emails sent or received by Clinton at the State Department in a request made under the federal Freedom of Information Act, which covers the release of public records.

[Email batch provides additional evidence that Clinton Foundation donors got access at State Department]

The State Department says it is reviewing nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed emails recovered as part of the FBI's now-closed investigation into Hillary Clintons handling of emails while Secretary of State. (AP)

Mondays hearing comes seven weeks after the Justice Department closed a criminal investigation without charges into the handling of classified material in Clintons email setup, which FBI Director James B. Comey called extremely careless.

On Aug. 5, the FBI completed transferring what Comey said were several thousand previously undisclosed work-related Clinton emails that the FBI found in its investigation for the State Department to review and make public. Government lawyers until now had given no details about how many emails the FBI found or when the full set would be released. It is unclear how many documents might be attachments, duplicates or exempt from release for privacy or legal reasons.

Government lawyers disclosed last week that the FBI has turned over eight computer discs of information: one including emails and attachments that were sent directly to or from Clinton, or to or from her at some point in an email chain, and were not previously turned over by her lawyers; a second with classified documents; another with emails returned by Clinton; and five containing materials from other people retrieved by the FBI.

The 14,900 documents at issue now come from the first disc, Fitton said.

In announcing the FBIs findings in July, Comey said investigators found no evidence that the emails it found were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Like many users, Clinton periodically deleted emails, or they were purged when devices were changed.

Clintons lawyers also may have deleted some of the emails as personal, Comey said, noting their review relied on header information and search terms, not a line-by-line reading as the FBI conducted.

Also on Monday, a GOP lawmaker issued subpoenas to three private companies that helped run or protect Clintons email server. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, is demanding documents by Sept. 9 after the firms declined earlier this year to produce them voluntarily.

The demands are part of a joint probe by Smith and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), who heads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs panel. The lawmakers say that while the criminal investigation has ended, they have questions about the structure and security of Clintons email system and whether it met federally-recommended standards for cybersecurity and record preservation.

The subpoenas target Platte River Networks, which provided information technology services for Clintons server; Datto, Inc., which furnished immediate recovery of back-up data in the event the primary server failed; and SECNAP Network Security Corp., which carried out threat monitoring of the network connected to Clintons server. The firms services were retained in 2013.

A science committee aide said they are looking for information about breaches or potential breaches, and documents that detail the firms scope of work, for example.

Companies providing services to Secretary Hillary Clintons private email account and server are not above the law, said Smith. The data sought, he said, is critical toinforming policy changes in how to prevent similar email arrangements in the future.

Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.
When Fairfax County firefighter Nicole Mittendorff hanged herself in April, a fellow firefighter likened the suicide to a fire bell in the night demanding an urgent response.

It is not known why the 31-year-old took her life, but Mittendorffs death stirred anger about lewd and harassing comments that had been made about her in a popular online forum. The messages, which appeared to have been posted by colleagues, reverberated painfully with women in firefighting locally and across the nation.

Now some are heeding that bell.

Nicole Mittendorff (AP)

Female firefighters from the highly regarded Fairfax department and others nationwide have come forward in the wake of Mittendorffs death, filing lawsuits and sharing stories that some say reveal festering problems with the treatment of women in a male-dominated field.

A top-ranking woman in Fairfax filed a lawsuit last month accusing department officials of failing to stop sexual harassment. A female colleague also recently sued, saying that she was ostracized for reporting that male firefighters were partying on a firetruck with Hooters waitresses.

A former paramedic with a Carroll County, Md., department wrote online about how she was regularly propositioned for sex by male colleagues. When she complained, she wrote, she was told in effect: Youre in a mans job, what do you expect?

Many hope that Mittendorffs case and their own stories trigger changes, as have similar discussions about sexual assault on college campuses. Some fear that if issues of bullying and sexism are not addressed there could be other suicides.

The culture that resides around women is that were not supposed to actually be on the hose lines or driving the fire apparatus, said Cheri Zosh, a battalion chief in Fairfax. That attitude of the past still resides in a large percentage of the nation.

William R. Metcalf, the former president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, called firefighting a white guys club. He said too few departments have made a sustained effort to welcome women.

In a surprisingly large number of fire departments . . . its OK to harass and physically assault women and minorities  even rape women  in our fire stations, Metcalf wrote in 2014 in an open letter to the organizations membership that he said he could have written today because so little has changed.

Others think that such negative assessments are overblown and that women have made slow but steady progress within the field. Some female firefighters in Fairfax and other departments say they see few barriers to acceptance or advancement.

Fairfax County Fire Chief Richard R. Bowers Jr. declined to comment on specific allegations leveled against his department, citing ongoing litigation, but said that the department has worked hard to include women and said the proof is in the numbers.

The 1,400-member Fairfax department has about twice the number of female firefighters as the national average. Bowers said any large organization will encounter the type of issues Fairfax is facing.

Do we have bad actors? We certainly probably do, Bowers said. When those bad actors display something that is inappropriate, they are dealt with.

Firefighting remains among the nations least-diverse professions along gender lines. In 2015, just 6 percent were female, while women made up 47 percent of the general workforce, according to federal statistics. In Fairfax, 165 firefighters are women, or about 12 percent.

The most recent national report on women in firefighting, published in 2008, found widespread challenges.

A survey that accompanied the report found that 85 percent of female firefighters reported being treated differently because of their gender, 65 percent said their department had no procedure for addressing discrimination, and 30 percent reported unwanted sexual advances.

The report, commissioned by a national womens firefighting organization, also found that more than half of the nations fire departments had never had a paid female firefighter and that women were scarce at the highest ranks: Just 3 percent were led by a woman.

Grief turns to outrage



Nicole K. Mittendorff, 31, of Woodbridge was assigned Fairfax County Fire Station No. 32 in Fairfax Station. (Justin Jouvenal/The Washington Post)

Nicole Mittendorffs face would soon be broadcast nationwide, but her disappearance began quietly April 13. She called in sick and sent texts to her family before abruptly vanishing.

The search for the Woodbridge, Va., woman quickly became national news and generated intense interest on social media. Her family and fellow Fairfax firefighters stood side by side at a tearful news conference asking for help locating her.

Her body was discovered about a week later in Shenandoah National Park, and her death was ruled a suicide.

The grief over Mittendorffs death soon turned to outrage.

Anonymous and sexually suggestive messages about Mittendorff that were posted on the Web forum Fairfax Underground before her death were cited in news stories that raised concerns about the departments culture. The writers seemed to have inside knowledge of the county fire department.

Nicole K. Mittendorff's locker at Fairfax County Fire Station No. 32 in Fairfax Station, Va. (Justin Jouvenal/The Washington Post)

Suddenly, a department that was accustomed to saving people in distress was faced with an uncomfortable question: Had its firefighters contributed to the mental anguish that led Mittendorff to take her life?

Bowers announced an aggressive internal investigation to determine whether any of the departments firefighters wrote the posts. That probe remains ongoing, and Bowers said he has not determined the writers identities.

Mittendorffs family did not respond to a request for comment but have said they thought she had put the posts behind her.

Still, the combination of a high-profile suicide and cyber-harassment touched a nerve and prompted raw conversations within a profession that has had high-profile struggles with gender issues.

The tragic suicide death of Fairfax County Firefighter Nicole Mittendorff may end up being the one,  Billy Goldfeder, a deputy chief in Ohio, wrote in an online message asking male firefighters to examine their treatment of female colleagues.

Ruth Anne Phillips, a former firefighter living in Arkansas, was one of many who went online to vent about the nasty, hateful things she had seen in her department.

I had a personal [Facebook] message from one of my brothers citing the Bible  women shall remain silent and another one explaining to me why women shouldnt be firefighters, Phillips wrote.

Mittendorffs case comes after fire departments have been hit with dozens of gender discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits in recent years and have been forced to pay out millions in settlements and jury awards.

Last year, the Justice Department reached a settlement with a small Florida department, which was accused of forcing a firefighter to fight a fire while pregnant. She suffered a miscarriage.

In 2013, a jury awarded a female firefighter in Ohio $1.7 million after she was sexually harassed. Testimony revealed the department didnt take sexual-harassment education seriously, showing firefighters training videos on a split screen with NASCAR races.

That same year a male firefighter in Arkansas was charged with the sexual assault of a female colleague, one of a number of such cases in the field.

Experts trace some of the problems to the tradition-bound culture of firefighting, which for decades was largely the province of men. Close quarters and long shifts created a fraternity-like environment in many fire stations.

Women began entering the world of professional firefighting only in the mid-70s. Experts also said that haphazard recruiting of women, a lack of proper facilities and equipment, and physical tests geared toward men have kept the number of female firefighters low.

Youve got a very male-oriented service. You have a very physically demanding service, said Curt Varone, a lawyer and former firefighter who tracks complaints about gender discrimination in the field. Both of those lend themselves to reaffirming in some mens eyes that women dont belong in the fire service. The fire service is steeped in tradition. There is resistance to change.

Judy Brewer, the nations first professional female firefighter, said she saw positive changes in the field during her 26-year career with the Arlington County Fire Department, but it was uneven.

I think its a complete mixed bag, Brewer said. I think some people feel like women are being shoved down their throats. Other places, if you can do the job, they are accepting.

A suicide resonates in Fairfax



Patricia Tomasello poses for a portrait at her home in Fredericksburg, Va. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

Mittendorffs death hit most forcefully with her female colleagues, such as Patricia Tomasello, who is one of a number of Fairfax County firefighters who have filed lawsuits or come forward to describe sexist treatment.

The veteran firefighter said that as a child, she would pester her brother to take her by the fire station near their home.

I would tell my brother, I want to be a firefighter,  Tomasello said. He would say, Theres no women firefighters. 

Tomasello, who set out to prove those youthful taunts wrong in the mid-1990s, recalled feeling uncertain walking the halls of the Fairfax fire academy, which was lined with photographs of male firefighters.

But the true challenge wouldnt become apparent until she arrived on the job soon after. She recalled a colleague calling her a derogatory name for a woman and telling her that women were a distraction.

Patricia Tomasello shows off a plaque received for her service as a firefighter at her home in Fredericksburg, Va. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

It hit me like a rock, Tomasello said.

Tomasello alleges in her lawsuit filed in May that she was subjected to unwanted sexual advances, passed over for promotions and ostracized for reporting the incident involving the male firefighters on the firetruck with Hooters waitresses.

A statement released by the county said harassment claims are handled properly.

All county employees are required to participate in training regarding sexual harassment and hostile work environments, the statement read. Allegations of harassment are taken seriously and fully investigated.

Bowers said the department has made changes. They include revised policies for investigating sexual harassment claims, mental-health training and a summit on suicide prevention. He said that one of the efforts  handing out pocket-size cards with suicide hotline numbers  helped head off another suicide in the department.

The same month Tomasello filed her suit, the department suspended the official who ran its Office of Professional Standards for posting lewd images on his Facebook page. Guy Morgan remains on administrative leave.

Magaly Hernandez, another female firefighter, also filed a lawsuit in May, claiming that a captain had made sexual advances, stalked her using department software and isolated her.

Isolating Hernandez from her colleagues quite literally put Hernandezs life in danger, as firefighters must rely on one another to survive life-threatening emergency situations, the suit read.

Hernandez says that the department did nothing to discipline Capt. Jon Bruley and that she was retaliated against for coming forward. Neither Hernandez nor Bruley responded to requests for comment, but a county attorney denied Hernandezs claims in a response filed to her lawsuit.

One of the highest-ranking women in the department became the latest to file suit last month. Zosh, the battalion chief, says that officials at the top of the command staff failed to address Hernandezs claims.

She alleges that Bowers did not consider her for a deputy chief position because she spoke on Hernandezs behalf.

Bowers denied Zoshs claims in an interview before her suit was filed.

Zosh said that discrimination is not endemic in the department but that it exists in certain firehouses and shifts.

A group of female firefighters in Fairfax said the lawsuits dont represent their experience with the department.

For me, I dont see myself as a woman when I come to work; Im a firefighter, Alisha Reakoff wrote in an email. Ive never felt different or separate from anyone.

Fairfax County, Va., firefighter Nicole Mittendorff vanished April 15, and a major search effort has turned up nothing. Heres whats known about her disappearance. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

After Bowers announced his investigation into who posted the comments about Mittendorff in April, comments about another female firefighter appeared on Fairfax Underground.

Tomasello said that whatever the outcome of her suit, she hopes it puts an end to such harassment. Tomasello said she was touched by Mittendorffs death because of her own struggles as a woman in the department.

I could have been Nicole Mittendorff, she said.
A federal judge sentenced a North Carolina man to 14 years in prison for giving a Maryland woman silicone butt injections before her death, officials said.

Vinnie Lysander Taylor, 44, of Wilmington, N.C., traveled the country injecting women with silicone that he said would give them larger buttocks, and at least one of the women died days after undergoing the procedure at a hotel in Capitol Heights, according to prosecutors.

Officials said Taylor would typically meet his clients in hotel rooms along the East Coast equipped with gallons of silicone, super glue and cotton balls, and performed procedures that he claimed would give them fuller figures and were safe.

[Man pleads guilty to giving deadly buttocks injections using silicone, super glue and cotton balls]

In seven years, authorities said Taylor administered the injections to women in more than 3,000 sessions. He is not a doctor and did not have a medical license.

Vinnie Taylor of Wilmington, N.C., was sentenced to 14 years in a case of injecting a woman with silicone injections. She later died. (Courtesy of Prince George's County Sheriff's Office)

He had a scheme where he set up several branches of a clothing store called Shuga Ks in Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina. He used the stores name and ordered liquid silicone from a Pennsylvania company.

It was food-grade silicone that was meant for bottling and canning, not medical-grade silicone, according to an indictment and prosecutors. About 180 times from 2008 to 2014, officials said, Taylor received gallons of it from the company.

He also stored it in unlabeled plastic bottles and used it on women who were looking for services in Maryland, Virginia and St. Louis. He charged clients fees ranging from $800 to $1,000 for initial visits and $350 to $800 for repeat sessions. Officials said he made about $1.59 million.

After injecting the silicone, Taylor used super glue and cotton balls to prevent the silicone from leaking and wrapped her buttocks in plastic wrap, a May plea agreement stated in describing the process.

In the case of the Maryland woman, officials said she meet him at a hotel room in March 2014. She began having troubles breathing after she left. She was taken to an area hospital where she later died.

The medical examiner found the womans cause of death to be acute and chronic respiratory failure due to a foreign substance, court records stated.

After that incident, Taylor told other clients that her death was not his fault as he was just trying to fix her,  federal prosecutors have said. He also said that she had been sick when she came to him.

Authorities arrested Taylor in January. He pleaded guilty in May to federal fraud charges for administering the illegal injections. He was sentenced Friday by U.S. District Judge George J. Hazel to the term, which will be followed by three years of supervised release.

[Deadly butt injections: Silicone was meant for food processing]

Industrial-grade silicone that is injected into individuals bodies can cause serious bodily injury or death, said Mark S. McCormack, a special agent in charge of the Metro Washington field office of the Food and Drug Administrations Office of Criminal Investigation, in a statement.

Lynh Bui and Julie Zauzmer contributed to this report.
An inbound Metro train passes workers on the tracks July 22, 2016, near Ballston during SafeTrack work along the outbound Orange-Silver Line tracks. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

A coalition of open-government advocates is raising concerns that the public could be barred from reviewing records and attending meetings held by a new multistate agency responsible for overseeing the safety of the Metro system.

In May, officials in the District, Maryland and Virginia released draft legislation outlining how the Metrorail Safety Commission, a new oversight body, would operate. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) promised robust oversight of the regions troubled Metro system.

But in a letter sent last week to officials in the three jurisdictions, leaders of the D.C. Open Government Coalition, the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association and the Virginia Coalition for Open Government take issue with some of the language in the bill, saying the proposed legislation offers no guarantee of public access.

[Read the coalitions letter]

The result, coalition members wrote, could mean transparency only when it suits the Commission, not when it is necessary to serve the public interest.

I have no reason to mistrust them, but they are a government entity, and the public should have the ability to monitor them and hold them accountable, said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.

Added Kevin M. Goldberg, president of the D.C. Open Government Coalition: The problem is, when push comes to shove, there is no guarantee of rights of access to records. Youve got an agency, a transportation system that people just dont trust, and one really good way to bring back trust is to be transparent.

The legislation is expected to be reviewed by the D.C. Council this fall and will be taken up by the Maryland and Virginia general assemblies during their 2017 legislative sessions. All three jurisdictions must approve legislation in order for the commission to be formed.

[DC, Md. and Va. reach agreement on new Metro safety oversight committee]

Goldberg said he received a message from D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) and several other council members acknowledging the letter and thanking him for bringing the coalitions concerns to their attention.

The push to create a new state-based safety oversight committee is part of an effort to beef up scrutiny of Metros operations and has been a priority for federal officials, who have been frustrated at what they saw as a lack of action by local jurisdictions. Earlier this year, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx threatened to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding from the District, Maryland and Virginia if they failed to create a new oversight body by February 2017.

[Foxx urges quick action on new Metro safety commission]

For years, safety oversight of Metro was handled by a regional panel called the Tri-State Oversight Committee, which included representatives from the District, Maryland and Virginia. But the group had almost no enforcement authority and operated largely out of public view. After several calamities, including a fatal smoke incident in January 2015, the Federal Transit Administration last fall temporarily took over safety monitoring of the rail system, making it the first U.S. subway to be placed under federal oversight.

But the FTAs ultimate goal is for local officials to resume safety oversight.

[Federal funding for D.C., Va., Md. at risk due to lack of progress on Metro oversight]

The proposed legislation does seek give the commission more authority, including the authority to adopt and enforce Metro safety rules, conduct inspections, order corrective action plans, impose citations and fines for noncompliance, issue subpoenas during safety-related investigations, and compel the transit agency to prioritize spending on safety-critical items.

But the confidentiality provisions in the proposed 18-page legislation have open-government experts concerned.

The commission shall not be subject to the freedom of information and open meeting laws of Virginia, Maryland or the District, the draft says. Instead, the panel would adopt its own policies based on a federal public-information statute, the proposed legislation reads.

[Federal officials assume safety oversight of Metros rail operations]

The legislation also says that the Commission may withhold from public view the contents of any investigation report prepared, reviewed, or adopted by the panel. Such reports would be given to the D.C. mayor and the Maryland and Virginia governors, provided that the confidentiality of such records is maintained by the three executives.

Public input  ideally from riders themselves  is going to be necessary to paint the real pictures regarding the Metrorail system and any specific incidents being investigated, the coalition wrote in the letter to officials in the three jurisdictions. Beyond that, however, it is the publics perception of the Commissions findings and actions, which will be shaped by their perception of whether the process is fair or not; yet the default starting point for public perception will be negative if the public feels it is being shut out.

Some Metro critics and observers, including U.S. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), also have expressed concern about the privacy provision.

At this point, transparency and accountability are very much in short supply with Metro, Connolly said when the agreement was announced in May. And I am concerned that whatever the intentions are here with the commission, it has the consequence of further eroding public confidence.
One month after the state Supreme Court threw out his blanket clemency order, Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced Monday that he has individually restored voting rights to 13,000 felons and is working on doing the same for a total of about 200,000.

McAuliffe (D) said he had found a way to comply with the courts order while addressing an issue of basic justice.

I personally believe in the power of second chances and in the dignity and worth of every single human being, he said beside a civil rights monument on Capitol Square. These individuals are gainfully employed. They send their children and their grandchildren to our schools. They shop at our grocery stores and they pay taxes. And I am not content to condemn them for eternity as inferior, second-class citizens.

Republican legislative leaders who successfully sued over McAuliffes original order said they will examine his latest restoration effort.

The General Assembly will carefully review Governor McAuliffes process to determine if he followed the legal requirements, said state House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford). From the beginning, we have done nothing more than hold the governor accountable to the constitution and the rule of law. The Supreme Courts decision vindicated our efforts and we will continue to fulfill our role as a check on the excesses of executive power.

With great fanfare in April, McAuliffe issued an executive order that restored voting rights to more than 200,000 felons who had completed their sentences. McAuliffe said his original order would move Virginia away from a harsh lifetime disenfranchisement policy that hits African Americans particularly hard.

[McAuliffe promises to dodge court ruling against sweeping clemency order]

Republicans, incensed that it covered violent as well as nonviolent offenders, said the move was really a bid to add Democratic voters to the rolls ahead of Novembers presidential elections, when the governors close friend and political ally Hillary Clinton will be on the ballot.

The administrations implementation of the order was botched; it mistakenly restored rights to 132 sex offenders still in custody as well as to several convicted killers on probation in other states.

Contending that the governor had overstepped his authority by restoring rights en masse rather than individually, GOP legislative leaders took him to court and won. Because 13,000 of the 200,000 felons already had registered to vote, the court ordered the state to once again put their names on its list of banned voters.

Immediately after that ruling, McAuliffe vowed to use an autopen to individually sign orders restoring rights. He promised to do the first 13,000 within a week and all 200,000 within two. But that effort ran into unspecified delays.

On Monday, McAuliffe announced that he had restored voting rights to the 13,000 felons, making them free to register once again. He said he would do the same for the remainder of the 200,000 but offered no timetable.

The difference between McAuliffes original action and his current approach is largely procedural. Instead of simply announcing that any felon whose sentence is complete is eligible to vote, the administration now will mail a notice to that effect to each one.

The administration will review each record, but only to confirm that the individual has completed the sentence and any supervised release. McAuliffe will not individually sign the orders or make use of an autopen, but an image of his signature will be printed on each letter, spokesman Brian Coy said.

McAuliffes Republican predecessor, Robert F. McDonnell, had instituted a similar approach, automatically sending a letter to felons who met his criteria. But McDonnell did so only for nonviolent felons and required that they pay any fines or restitution. As with his original order, McAuliffe said he will not require payment or distinguish between violent and nonviolent felons.

Now I know there are those who believe that the governor should make certain individuals wait longer based on the severity of their crime, he said. That principle is not found anywhere in our constitution. . . . Those who commit more serious crimes, of course, have longer sentences imposed by a judge or a jury of their peers. Therefore, they must wait longer to have their rights restored.

McAuliffe discussed his actions in a 15-minute speech that quoted St. Paul and Thomas Jefferson while sharply criticizing the Republicans and state Supreme Court justices who had thwarted his original order. He said Republicans had sued to suppress felons voices and insisted that he had the authority to grant his original motion.

The Virginia constitution is clear: I have the authority to restore civil rights without limitation, he said. But the court dismissed the clear text of the constitution by simply saying that the rights had never before been restored in this manner here in Virginia. In other words, we were messing around with the way things have always been done in the Old Dominion. But if Virginia did things the way they had always been done . . . our children would still attend segregated schools. . . . Our buses would have seats assigned by race. Interracial marriage would be illegal. Same-sex partners would not be allowed to marry. And Virginians would be forced to pay a tax at the polls on Election Day.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment (R-James City) blamed McAuliffe for causing confusion and disappointment for felons who regained their right to vote, lost it and regained it yet again in the space of four months.

Had the governor followed the Constitution of Virginia on April 22 when he initially attempted this, those affected by todays announcement might not have endured the roller-coaster of bureaucratic incompetence his executive overreach exposed, Norment said.

This episode should serve as a cautionary tale for those who would declare policies by fiat, circumventing the protections enshrined in the Constitution of Virginia. The Governors decision to lash out at the Court and the General Assembly after his unconstitutional order was overturned was petulant and imprudent. He, and he alone, is responsible for the fiasco that ensued after his April 22 announcement.
CALIFORNIA

Court rejects case on

teacher tenure laws

The California Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a case challenging the states laws on teacher tenure, dismissal and layoffs, a decision that leaves the laws in place and hands a major victory to teachers unions.

The plaintiffs were nine schoolchildren backed by the nonprofit advocacy group Student Matters, and they had argued that job-protection statutes for teachers created illegal inequalities: They said poor and minority children were more likely to be saddled with ineffective teachers who were difficult to fire.

It was a new civil rights argument against teacher tenure laws, and at first it seemed successful. After a 10-week trial in 2014, the trial court sided with the plaintiffs, whose lawyers described the California case as the first in a series of state-by-state legal challenges to tenure laws.

But in April, an appeals court overturned the lower courts decision, finding that although deplorable staffing decisions have harmed poor and minority children in the states public schools, those decisions are the fault of principals and other administrators  not the result of the laws themselves.

The California Supreme Courts decision not to take up the case, Vergara v. Calif ornia, means that the appeals courts decision stands. Three of the seven justices on the court disagreed with the decision to decline the case. Two explained their dissent in statements filed with the court.

 Emma Brown

Court upholds ban on gold-mining technique

Californias ban on the use of suction dredges to extract gold from rivers is legal and not overridden by a 19th century federal law that allows mining on federal land, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The courts unanimous decision was a victory for environmentalists and a blow to miners, who argued that the ban essentially stopped gold mining because doing it by hand is labor-intensive and makes the enterprise unprofitable.

Environmentalists say suction dredge mining risks killing fish and stirring up toxic mercury.

The high courts ruling came in an appeal of a criminal case in which miner Brandon Rinehart was convicted of a misdemeanor for suction dredge mining without a permit in 2012 and sentenced to three years of probation.

 Associated Press

FLORIDA

Report: Alligator bit boys head at Disney

The father of a toddler killed by an alligator at Walt Disney World last June reached into the animals mouth in an attempt to free his sons head from the reptiles jaw, according to a final report on the death released Monday by Floridas wildlife agency.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission report said that the seven-foot alligator bit 2-year-old Lane Graves head as the boy bent down at the edge of a lagoon gathering sand for a sandcastle at Disneys Grand Floridian Resort and that the boy died from a crushing bite and drowning.

Separately, the Orange County Sheriffs Office released its report and ruled the death an accident. One witness, a 16-year-old tourist, said he was walking with his younger siblings on a beach-area walkway when he saw the alligator taking the boy away.

 Associated Press

Mass. tornado spares home of Little Women author: A tornado that briefly touched down in Concord, Mass., uprooted trees and damaged dozens of houses but spared the family home of author Louisa May Alcott. The National Weather Service said the EF1 tornado had winds of about 100 mph. It struck just after 3 a.m. Monday. EF1 is the second-lowest of six tornado levels. Fire officials said 39 homes were damaged, including one that suffered significant structural damage. But Orchard House, where Alcott wrote her 1868 novel, Little Women, was untouched.

 Associted Press
When my father was 88 and the picture of health for his age, he taught me, an experienced physician, an unexpected lesson.

We were discussing treatment options promoted by his primary-care physician and other doctors for an aortic aneurysm  a ballooned segment of blood vessel at risk for dangerous rupture in his abdomen. He turned to me and asked, Why would I want to fix something that is going to carry me away the way I want to go?

My father had the generally accurate impression that if his aneurysm ruptured, he could demand pain medicine, decline emergency surgery and be dead from internal bleeding within a few hours or, at most, a day or two.

With his unexpected question, he directly challenged the assumption that a doctors advice is always in a patients best interest, particularly regarding a medical problem late in life. This proposition had been my general belief, but after more than two decades as an internist and gastroenterologist, he had prompted me to reconsider it.

Furthermore, Dad was making an important distinction, between care at the end of life (in this case, palliative care for pain) and treatment (aneurysm repair). He was also suggesting a natural exit strategy. Not suicide, to which he had a moral objection, and not physician-assisted suicide, which was not a legal option in his home state of Wisconsin.

Despite his generally decent health, we both thought that he was too old for a major surgical repair, so I suggested he undergo an outpatient procedure to insert a stent to prevent the ballooning artery from worsening  that would at least postpone the threat of rupture. My reasoning was that with the stent, he was likely to enjoy the birth of his first great-grandchild and that without it, he would probably never know her.

My father lived five more years and met 12 great-grandchildren. Three of those years were good ones, but two of them were not.

I have asked myself, Was it worth it? I know that he asked himself that, too. His mantra for the last two years of his life was I have lived too long.

The 2003 book Tyranny of Treatment documented the terrible medical procedures used in 18th-century England: draining blood from swollen legs and testicles, radical mastectomy without anesthesia; bleeding arms to cure eye problems.

Painful, futile treatment continues to this day, particularly with elderly patients who often are not informed of the difference between palliative care, designed to minimize pain while trying to preserve quality of life at the end, and aggressive treatment more designed to prolong life at any cost, using such methods as surgery or chemotherapy. Often they are not informed about the benefits of letting some conditions run their course.

Here in America, there is a deeply held belief that advances in medicine will eventually conquer or cure the chronic scourges of cancer, dementia, heart disease, lung disease and diabetes. This notion leads many elderly patients to seek aggressive treatment not only to spare their loved ones grief but because they hope (and expect) to be cured, if only they hold on just a little longer.

This is one reason that every year more than 75,000 people older than 85 die in intensive care units seeking care that proves to be futile, according to a 2004 study, and why more than 65 percent of our senior citizens die in institutions when a significant majority say they would prefer to die at home, according to a 2014 report by the Institute of Medicine.

The impulse to treat often prompts us to forget that many elderly patients have multiple medical problems brought on by chronic organ system weaknesses. Focusing aggressive therapy on one serious diagnosis can complicate another to the point of death, disability or prolonged hospitalization. Beyond that, too many doctors succumb to research from drug and device makers that show incrementally positive results for therapies that mean little to someone at the end of a long life.

As an example, a friend recently told me about her 89-year-old mothers consultation with an oncologist for a Stage 4 cancer of the pancreas. The doctor launched into a description of some new treatment options.

After listening carefully to what the doctor offered, the patient posed the question, How long can I expect to live if I decline chemotherapy, and how much longer can I expect to live if I undertake therapy? When the doctor responded that the answer to both questions was three to six months, she cut short the consultation.

According to the science behind the studies, three months of added life expectancy is considered a statistically significant improvement. But for many people at an advanced age, three months of added life in hospitals or nursing homes, possibly suffering side effects, may not be an appealing prospect. My friends mother looked at the statistics and saw no practical benefit.

Facing the tyranny of treatment is not usually so dramatic. Not every patient has the option to decline surgery for a threatening aneurysm or chemotherapy for late-stage cancer. Most patients have multiple smaller decisions to make in the mission creep of treatment vs. care. These patients and their families need help thinking about the natural progression of aging and visualizing what they want at the end. Then, if they decline treatment and choose palliative care, they can consider an exit strategy.

One patient I spoke with was living a bed-to-chair existence and suffering urinary incontinence from multiple mini-strokes. She resisted the initial insertion of a bladder catheter as one indignity too far. The thought of an invasion of body, followed by regular catheter exchanges, brought a ripple of sadness to her eyes.

She brightened, however, when I explained that refusing to exchange the catheter would ultimately create a painless urinary-tract infection. If she chose, she could then decline antibiotics, and with the help of palliative medications would be able to die comparatively comfortably of a progressive systemic infection. She now had an exit strategy.

If asked by patients, most doctors are willing to discuss quality of life at the expense of quantity of life. In elder care, that conversation should include a discussion about futile treatments vs. making sure the last days on earth are comfortable. As Sherwin Nuland wrote in How We Die, The real event taking place at the end of our life is our death, not the attempts to prevent it.

Therefore, discussions with our trusted physicians should evolve from how to die later to how to die better, including with an exit strategy.

In my fathers case, he was clear at the end that he wanted to avoid further interventions designed to prolong life. At age 93, after six months in hospice, medicated for comfort, he died quietly at home.

Harrington practiced medicine for more than 30 years in the Washington area, where he served on the boards of Sibley Memorial Hospital and the former Hospice Care of D.C. He is writing a book about end-of-life decisions for elderly patients and their families.
If the need to go the emergency room arises, your first instinct is likely to be a 911 call. In an emergency, getting the right care fast should be the focus. If youre having a heart attack, youre not going to ask if the doctor takes your insurance, says Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

But that ER visit may have a big price tag. A Kaiser-New York Times survey of insured and uninsured people who had trouble paying medical bills found that ER bills accounted for the largest portion of what they owed.

Going to a hospital that takes your insurance may not protect you from getting billed. About two-thirds of ER doctors are independent contractors who might not be in your insurance plan. Any out-of-network doctor (or lab) may bill you for whatever your insurance doesnt cover, a practice called balance billing.

If the ambulance company that transports you doesnt take your insurance, your cost could be more than $2,200, depending on such factors as where you live and the level of care you receive before you get to the hospital. (A breathing tube, for example, might bump up the price.) You cant completely protect yourself from ER billing problems and you never want to put cost concerns ahead of emergency care. But these strategies may help:

Be prepared

Ask your insurer for documentation on what the plan will and wont cover if you need emergency care. (The insurers website or handbook may not be up-to-date.) Your insurer can also tell you which area hospitals take your insurance. You can then ask the billing department at your hospital of choice whether its ER doctors participate in your insurance plan.

And because most insurers cover medically necessary ambulance rides, know how your plan defines medically necessary: it could mean you are unconscious, bleeding heavily or in severe pain.

Going to the ER

When you call 911, a dispatcher will send the closest available ambulance, so you may not know whether it will be in your insurance network. And although you can request a particular hospital, its the ambulance personnels call  and usually they will choose the closest facility thats properly equipped to treat you.

Under the Affordable Care Act, if you need emergency care, your copay or coinsurance cannot be higher than your in-network rate, even at out-of-network hospitals. But the law doesnt prevent out-of-network providers from billing you for the remainder after youve received care.

At the hospital, you (or the family member or friend who is with you) will fill out admission forms. This is the time, if possible, to request an in-network health-care provider. At discharge, you or your companion should ask for all paperwork, including an itemized list of charges.

When you get billed

Youll probably get separate bills from each out-of-network provider involved in your ER care. Pay nothing until you get explanation of benefits (EOB) statements from your insurer; they tell you what the plan has covered and what your portion may be. Compare bills and EOBs to make sure you received the services noted, and have your insurer confirm that providers who sent bills are not in your plan.

Then work on getting bills covered. Ask your insurer whether it will do so. You can also ask the providers who billed you to settle for what insurance has already paid them. Some doctors will negotiate with you, says Pat Palmer, founder and chief executive of Medical Billing Advocates of America, in Roanoke, Va. Your insurer may also negotiate on your behalf.

If the insurer and providers wont budge, file an appeal with your insurance company. To bolster your case, ask your primary-care doctor or specialist for a letter noting that your ER treatment was medically necessary. The Patient Advocate Foundation (patientadvocate.org) offers guidance at no charge. Professional claims consultants work for a fee or a percentage of the sum reimbursed. You can find help via the National Association of Healthcare Advocacy Consultants (nahac.memberlodge.com) or the Alliance of Claims Assistance Professionals (claims.org).

At least 25 states are working toward or already have some protections against surprise medical bills. For example, in New York those bills now can go through independent dispute resolution if the health plan and provider disagree on a payment. To learn more, go to Consumers Union.org/surprise-medical-bills and click on Get Help With a Bill.

Copyright 2016. Consumers Union of United States Inc.
Watching the sheer gleeful power of so many women at the Olympics was pretty exhilarating and, for those of us who share that double-X chromosome, empowering. But writing in Runners World, Meghan Kita reminds us that out in the real world, female athletes are often harassed or worse.

Earlier this month, she writes, the magazine reported on three women who in a span of nine days had been killed while out running alone  one in Detroit, one in New York City and one in a small town in Massachusetts. The apparently unrelated killings set off a spate of online cautions that women should always run with a friend.

Kita has a problem with that response, which she makes clear in an essay headlined The problem is not women running alone. The warnings are a variation on blaming the victim, she says, and theyre both sexist and self-defeating.

Lets start with something that most RW readers already know: Running is great exercise. Its value in general physical fitness and weight loss is generally unquestioned. Its also variously (and with varying degrees of proof) credited with relieving depression, improving sleep, building bone strength, alleviating menstruation-related mood swings, brightening the complexion, cutting the risk of breast or uterine cancer and increasing sexual satisfaction.

Kita notes that women make up 57 percent of finishers in U.S. races as well as more than half the readership of Runners World. And anything that discourages them from running, she says, is a bad idea.

You can take your generic safety tips and shove em, she writes. Every woman she knows understands that its safer to run in groups, she writes, but she rejects the idea that women just have to do so. Like some men, some women prefer to run alone  what they need to do is to be as smart while running on their own as they have to be in other aspects of their life. The best practices of being aware of your surroundings, trusting your gut instincts, and staying within shouting distance of people who might be able to help in case of emergency are instilled in women from an early age, and theyre not just useful while running.
Meanwhile, officials say the Blue Cut wildfire in Southern California that has destroyed more than 300 homes and outbuildings is 80 percent contained. The fire has burned more than 15,000 hectares in the mountain areas of San Bernardino County 120 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles.

The fire in San Luis Obispo county has destroyed 48 structures and burned more than 8,000 hectares since Aug. 13 and is about four kilometers from the popular tourist attraction that houses a large art collection that belonged to William Randolph Hearst.

A wind-driven fire in central California has forced the closing of the historic Hearst Castle.

No deaths have been reported in the Blue Cut fire, officials said, adding that an investigation into the cause of the blaze continues. At its height, the wildfire threatened more than 34,000 homes, and more than 82,000 residents were told to evacuate.

Firefighters are battling at least six other wildfires in the western U.S. state.

A five-year drought has left huge swaths of land with dried trees and brush. Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 13, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reported 3,874 fires that have burned 45,700 hectares and killed seven people, according to the Los Angeles Times.

This week, nearly 30 major wildfires have burned about 850 square kilometers in eight western U.S. states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
WEST BANK

Israeli settlement to be expanded in restive city

Israeli authorities on Monday confirmed that they have begun the process of expanding an Israeli settlement in Hebron, a West Bank city that has been the focus of nearly a year of violence.

The Palestinians condemned the move, saying they would seek international pressure to halt the plan from going forward.

The Palestinians oppose all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories they seek for a future independent state. Israel captured both areas in the 1967 Middle East war.

Construction in Hebron, the West Banks largest city, is especially contentious. About 1,000 Jewish settlers live in heavily fortified enclaves in the city, surrounded by about 200,000 Palestinians. The city has been a flash point of violence during nearly a year of fighting between the two sides.

COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for civilian affairs in the West Bank, confirmed Monday that permission to plan infrastructures has been granted.

Although any construction is probably years away, the plan threatened to worsen the already tense climate in Hebron.

The Israeli move comes at a time of deadlock in peace efforts. Despite that, an Israeli-Palestinian poll released Monday showed that a narrow majority on both sides still favor a peace settlement that would establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

 Associated Press

PHILIPPINES

Talks resume between rebels, government

Peace talks between the Philippine government and communist rebels aimed at ending one of Asias longest-running insurgencies formally resumed Monday, with host Norway cautioning against a quick result.

About 150,000 people have died in the conflict, which began almost half a century ago.

The negotiations were facilitated by a cease-fire imposed by the new president, Rodrigo Duterte, and a truce announced by the rebels that began Sunday.

The peace process, which has dragged on for decades, broke down in 2001 when the Maoist rebels backed out after the United States  followed by the European Union  placed them on a list of terrorist organizations. It was resumed in 2011 under the leadership of Norway.

Although less numerous and less violent than Muslim separatists in the countrys south, the Maoists have fought and outlived successive Philippine administrations for nearly 50 years.

As they sat down to talk in the Norwegian capital, both sides agreed that the resumption of talks was fostered by Duterte supporting the peace process with cease-fires, the release of political prisoners, and the appointment of two allies of the guerrillas to cabinet posts.

Attending the talks are two communist rebel leaders who were released from a maximum-security jail on Friday.

 Associated Press

Turkey pulls envoy to Austria: Turkey is withdrawing its ambassador to Austria, the Turkish foreign minister said, amid a growing diplomatic spat. Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ambassador Hasan Gogus was called back to Ankara for consultations, citing Austrias decision to allow alleged allies of Turkeys Kurdish rebels to hold a rally in Vienna and rising anti-Turkey rhetoric in Austria. Ties have been tense for weeks, with an Austrian official saying Turkey was heading toward a dictatorship and other leaders urging an end to Turkeys European Union membership talks. Turkey has called Austria the capital of radical racism.

Sarkozy to run for French presidency next year: Former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy has formally announced that he will run again for Frances presidency. In an extract of a book released on his Facebook page and Twitter account, Sarkozy wrote, I have decided to be a candidate to the 2017 presidential election. The 61-year-old is expected to lead a campaign based on hard-line ideas about immigration and security in a country that has faced recent attacks by Islamist extremists.

40 dead in India flooding: At least 40 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been evacuated as floods hit vast swaths of central and eastern India in recent days, officials said. Days of heavy rain have caused the Ganges River and its tributaries to rise above the danger level. Officials said at least 17 people died in the state of Madhya Pradesh, 14 in Bihar and nine in Uttar Pradesh over the weekend.

Belgian police shoot woman after knife attack: A woman stabbed three people in Brussels and was later shot by police when she refused to obey orders, prosecutors said. The attacker stabbed and lightly wounded two people on a bus, then fled and stabbed a third person at a nearby shopping center. The reason for the attack remains unclear. Belgium has been on alert since attacks in Brussels killed 32 people in March. Belgian media said the woman appeared to be mentally unstable.

 From news services
A protester from the Refugee Action Coalition at a demonstration outside the offices of the Australian Government Department of Immigration and Border Protection in Sydney in April. (David Gray/Reuters)

Tom Switzer is a presenter on the Australian Broadcasting Corporations Radio National.

In recent years, Australia has been condemned for deterring boat people. Brutal, callous, inhumane, racist, xenophobic  all these barbs have been hurled at Canberra for its treatment of refugees. The tough border-protection policies have included turning back boats, mandatory detention and refugee camps in neighboring islands of Nauru and, up until last week, Manus in Papua New Guinea. The measures are indeed severe and allegations of human rights abuse persist.

At first glance, this criticism is not surprising: That Australia, a nation of 23 million built by immigrants, is acting heartlessly toward those who want a better life would seem like the height of hypocrisy. It is true that boat people are confined to unnecessarily difficult conditions, and we need more transparency on their treatment. All that said, the hard truth is this: Deterrence against people-smuggling requires firmness  and even harshness. You dont deter traffickers by being gentle and compassionate.

It is precisely because Australia is an immigrant nation that we understand the necessity of tough border protection: It serves to discourage people from making the dangerous journey on unseaworthy vessels. It also, crucially, boosts public confidence in a large-scale, nondiscriminatory migration program, which includes an orderly, humanitarian refugee intake. The tough border policies command broad bipartisan and public support.

At the heart of the matter is a firm but fair post-World War II policy that mass migration is conditional on government control over who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come, as then-prime minister John Howard put it in 2001. Since 1945, Australias population has more than tripled, largely because of influxes from Asia in recent decades. And we moved successfully from a White Australia immigration policy to a multicultural one. Today, one in every four Australian residents is foreign born.

As unfashionable as it is to say so, tough border protection acts as a declaration that the nation state is in charge of its destiny. If the compact with the Australian people is undermined, public support for high levels of immigration will collapse. If entry to Australia were perceived to be easy, unlawful and unsafe arrivals could skyrocket, a fact that refugee activists seem to not consider.

The record tells the story: Unauthorized boat arrivals to Australia slowed dramatically after former prime minister John Howards government introduced offshore detention in 2001. From that point on, the rate of legal, nondiscriminatory immigration doubled during the rest of his tenure until 2007. This flowed directly from a sense that the Australian people, through their elected representatives, were deciding who is allowed to come to our shores. According to Katharine Betts, a sociologist specializing in population studies at Swinburne University of Technology, a strong emphasis on border protection helped increase public confidence in legal immigration.

However, when Howards successor Kevin Rudd broke an election pledge and ended the so-called Pacific Solution of refugee detention as well as Australias system of temporary protection visas in 2008, the disincentives were removed and the people-smugglers were back in business. For the next five years, more than 50,000 people arrived in unauthorized boats, and about 1,200 souls died at sea. Not surprisingly, public faith in the governments handling of the issue collapsed dramatically.

The situation became so grave that the Labor foreign minister in 2012-2013, Bob Carr, later wrote in his diaries that the surge in asylum seekers was a catastrophe and represented the biggest threat to Australian territorial integrity since World War II. That all changed in 2013 when the center-right Liberal-National Coalition was returned to power and reintroduced many of the Howard-era policies, including the deployment of the Australian navy and customs officials to turn back boats. The result: For the past three years, the boats have stopped coming. Lives have been saved. Thousands have been released from detention and smugglers have had to look elsewhere for their wicked trade.

The success of tough border restrictions means that public confidence in our immigration program has been restored. There is no public backlash against politicians for losing control of national borders. Unlike Europe, Australia has not witnessed the rise of nativist and extreme-right-wing senior political figures. Anti-immigrant political parties are marginalized here. In fact, most Australians had no qualms about the governments pledge to accept 12,000 Syrian refugees last September. When it comes refugee resettlement, Australia is one of the most generous nations in the world on a per capita basis.

The lesson is that a firm and controlled process of entry selection benefits immigrants and asylum seekers who go to a nation fairly and legally. Strict controls also help dampen down anti-immigrant prejudice. Bear all this in mind the next time you hear that Australias refugee policy is inhumane and xenophobic.
WHEN VICE PRESIDENT Biden meets with the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Ankara this week, Mr. Biden will need all the reservoirs of patience and persuasion he can muster. Mr. Erdogan, having survived a coup attempt July 15, which brought huge crowds to the streets to defend democracy, has subsequently launched a sweeping purge aimed at perceived enemies. Mr. Biden needs to deliver some tough counsel to the Turkish president.

In the past, Mr. Biden has paid tribute to Turkeys importance as a NATO ally and cornerstone of a region in turmoil. Both are still true. Mr. Biden should not hesitate to reassure Mr. Erdogan once again that the two nations share vital interests, not the least of which are fighting the Islamic State and ending the conflagration that has consumed Syria. He should make clear he understands how much Turkish civilians are suffering from terrorist attacks. Turkey also participates in NATOs nuclear mission, and nuclear weapons are stored in vaults on its soil. Mr. Biden should do his best to convince Mr. Erdogan that the United States does not desire to destabilize Turkey.

But Mr. Erdogan may not want to hear the rest of the message that Mr. Biden should deliver. The coup attempt, in which 240 people were killed, was apparently staged by a loose coalition of disaffected military officers and others worried about Mr. Erdogans slide toward authoritarianism. The outpouring in the streets that confronted the coup plotters was an encouraging sign of peoples faith in a tattered democracy. But Mr. Erdogans actions since then have seriously undermined democracy and the rule of law.

He blamed the coup primarily on Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania and who has inspired a large civil society and educational movement in Turkey. Mr. Gulen had a falling out with Mr. Erdogan in recent years. Mr. Gulen said he had nothing to do with the coup and denounced it. While some Gulenists may have participated in the coup effort, Mr. Erdogans assault on Mr. Gulen and his movement has been over the top. The authorities have said 4,262 companies and institutions with links to Mr. Gulen have been shut and 40,029 people detained, while in the military, police and civil service, 79,900 people have been removed from duty. Some 38,000 prisoners are being released to open up cells for the newly arrested. Mr. Erdogan has demanded Mr. Gulen be extradited from the United States, but according to a senior U.S. official quoted in The Post, the material submitted by Turkey thus far does not include evidence of his involvement in the coup.

Mr. Biden ought to candidly tell his host that the United States did not instigate the coup and that it will not relinquish Mr. Gulen to a witchhunt. Mr. Erdogan may not want to hear it, but he also should be reminded that crushing the rule of law will dim Turkeys prospects. Mr. Erdogan may bask in the crowds today, but using the coup as a pretext to purge the media, academia and other spheres of independent voices will not strengthen the nation in the long run.
Im a journalist who interviews people who I disagree with all the time.

 Sean Hannity, 2008

I never claimed to be a journalist.

 Sean Hannity, 2016

***

Not since lawmakers diagnosed Terri Schiavos condition from the Senate floor has there been such medical quackery in the political realm.

Last week, Newsweeks Kurt Eichenwald reported that a letter attesting to Donald Trumps magnificent health (he will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency) was not from an internist but from a gastroenterologist. This belly doctor boasted that Mr. Trump has had a recent complete medical examination that showed only positive results. Like for giardia?

That followed a segment on Sean Hannitys show on Fox News Channel in which the host elicited speculation about Hillary Clintons neurological health from . . . a urologist. The urinary-tract specialist, part of a Fox News Medical A-Team, speculated for Hannity that a photo of the Democratic presidential nominee being assisted by her Secret Service detail while climbing stairs could indicate dehydration, arthritis, back pain or a fall. (The original photo caption said she merely stumbled and was caught by her agents.)

Im not a doctor, but my brother is a urologist, and I went to night school for bartending. By current standards, therefore, I am qualified to diagnose Hannity as having professional dissociative identity disorder: He cant decide whether hes a journalist or a Trump operative.

In Mondays New York Times, the prime-time TV news host admitted to media columnist Jim Rutenberg that he has been privately advising Trump. Hannity, who according to CNN paid for a private jet last month to fly Newt Gingrich to meet with Trump, told Rutenberg that his unabashed promotion of Trump isnt a problem because he never claimed to be a journalist. Except that he had. And he plays a journalist on television for an hour each weeknight.

The affliction is common, apparently. Stephen Bannon, the head of Breitbart News, has become the chief executive of Trumps campaign. Fox News founder Roger Ailes, just ousted, is advising the campaign, too.

The overt campaigning for Trump by the likes of Hannity, Ailes and Bannon does no favors for conservatism. And Hannitys collusion with the candidate and his peddling of conspiracy theories in support of Trump undermine the many serious journalists at Fox News.

Donald Trump appeared at a town hall event on Fox News on April 4  but it felt a lot more like a rally than a question-and-answer session. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

But the network has been here before. Remember Glenn Beck? I tell you all the time: Im not a journalist, the self-proclaimed rodeo clown liked to tell his Fox News audience.

Instead of journalism, Beck gave viewers paranoia  helping to create the fear and loathing in the electorate that gave rise to Trump. Before Fox finally showed him the door in 2011, Beck urged viewers to hoard food in their homes, spun endless conspiracy theories, and played with anti-Semitic stereotypes and violent imagery.

Now Trump has run with Becks apocalyptic themes  alarming even Beck, who has become a fierce critic of Trump. When Beck said recently that the Trump campaigns then-chairman, Paul Manafort, had been illegally soliciting foreign money, Hannitys Fox News colleague Bill OReilly, another Trump booster, cautioned Beck that he could end up in jail for disparaging Manafort.

Thats my point, Beck replied, adding: Donald Trump has people chanting, Put them in jail, put them in jail, about the press. When is someones opinion on a public figure something that is jail-worthy and not First Amendment protected?

Such a question might have troubled Hannity during those occasions when he fancied himself a journalist over the years. Instead, he has gone full Grassy Knoll, in a manner reminiscent of Beck. In recent days, he has floated the theories that Clintons Secret Service agents carried a syringe to administer anti-seizure medicine to her (the syringe turned out to be a flashlight) and that a video showing what Hannity claimed were violent, out-of-control movements of Clintons head was evidence of a seizure (she had been joking with reporters).

While were doing conspiracy theories, heres another: Could the highly unpopular Trump have won the GOP nomination if he hadnt had so much help from Fox News  and, in particular, from Hannity?

A tally in April by the liberal ThinkProgress blog found that Trump appeared on Hannitys show 41 times in the first 10 months of his campaign. Hannity talked up Trumps poll numbers, defended Trump against accusations and asked him questions such as Is it time for all American politicians to get rid of political correctness?

Now that Hannity acknowledges advising Trump, he needs only a title to make his role official. Maybe he could be Trumps personal physician?

Twitter: @Milbank

Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Sarah Jaffe is a Nation Institute reporting fellow and the author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt.

On July 20, as the medias attention was focused on Cleveland and Sen. Ted Cruzs refusal to endorse Donald Trump, a group of organizers in Chicago marched to a vacant lot at the intersection of Homan Avenue and Fillmore Street. This lot, in Chicagos North Lawndale neighborhood, 50 years ago the site of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s Chicago Freedom Summer campaign, is across the street from a building that has been infamously revealed as a police black site where thousands of prisoners were held incommunicado for interrogation.

The marchers, members of the Let Us Breathe collective and other groups including Black Lives Matter Chicago, built a camp in the space and have been there ever since. They built a kitchen, art and education stations, a library, and sleeping spaces, in sharp contrast to the Homan Square facility where people not convicted of crimes were kept unfree. They held the space, dubbed Freedom Square, as Trump accepted his partys nomination, as the RNC drew to a close and the Democratic National Convention opened, as Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton and Clinton herself officially became the Democrats nominee for president.

The Sanders campaign is over. But the political revolution is not. After all, the political revolution that has been rippling across the country was never about the senator from Vermont. Sanders was simply observant enough to notice that there was one already happening. While Sanders was riding a wave of discontent with the existing state of U.S. politics, inequality and injustice to over 12 million votes, activists in the Movement for Black Lives, the Fight for $15, and other struggles against injustice, racism, and inequality continued their work of trying to change the country.

Most of the action has not been happening in electoral politics, so it has often flown under the radar, with too few reporters connecting the dots between the different surges of what representative and civil rights hero John Lewis calls necessary trouble. But in the streets and in homes, in state capitols and McDonalds and Walmart stores around the country, Americans have rediscovered the value of direct action, of finding a way to get in the way, as Lewis says. While outside observers wonder where each protest movement comes from, the protesters themselves are connecting their struggles to one another, coming together to demand bigger, more structural changes than will be seen in a presidential election.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, when the inequality that had been growing steadily for decades spiked and became impossible to ignore, Americans have been angry. Angry as unemployment escalated, jobs disappeared and millions lost homes to foreclosure. Angry as police officers who shoot or choke a black person to death walk away with paid leave and the people who videotape the death are themselves sent to jail. Angry as the wealthy have bounced back better than ever, with politicians still catering to their whims, while ordinary people get crumbs. Angry enough not just to support insurgent presidential candidates, but also angry enough to get out in the streets, to occupy space, to insist that they be acknowledged.

We in the media have mostly told the story of Americans anger through the lens of Trump and Sanderss campaigns, but in doing so we misunderstand the way change happens in this country, the way it is happening right now. These activists seek long-term radical changes  radical in the sense of to get to the root of something, because to make the kind of changes that these activists demand will require deep changes at the heart of political structures, while most elected officials seem content to tinker on the surface, disconnected from the pain most Americans are feeling.

The Vision for Black Lives policy document released this month is perhaps the best example of this: Despite the usual description of the movement as one focused on police, the more than 50 groups involved in writing the platform have laid out a comprehensive plan for justice that focuses on the specific harms done to black people but also includes demands ranging from universal health care to divestment from fossil fuels to federal and state jobs programs.

On August 1, a little less than two weeks after the founding of Freedom Square in Chicago, protesters took over City Hall Park in New York. Walking through the occupation, I saw familiar faces from Occupy Wall Street making sandwiches and new protesters chalking slogans on the sidewalk. Family members of those killed by the NYPD gave talks. Initiated by Millions March NYC, the occupation demanded the firing of Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, the disavowal of broken windows policing, reparations for victims of police violence, and the defunding of the police and the reinvestment of the money in public services in communities of color.

The next day, Bratton announced his resignation. Apparently it had been planned, but the news conference at the same City Hall where the protesters had gathered was a site of jubilation. Yet the protesters didnt go home. One woman held up a cardboard sign that featured check boxes next to the demands: Fire Bratton checked off, but Reparations and Divest & Reinvest still waiting.

The demands of these movements are big, and to see them occur would mean that a true political revolution has taken place. Until that time, theyre committed to making necessary trouble to bring them about.
Mark Patterson was surely right in his Aug. 18 op-ed, Holding Trump to a lower standard, that the American people should see Republican presidential nominee Donald Trumps tax returns before the Nov. 8 election, but he was wrong that a law requiring Mr. Trump to make those returns public is the way to go.

The American people already have demanded that Mr. Trumps tax returns be public, and he has suffered, and will suffer on Election Day, for refusing to comply. And if there were such a law, how would it be enforced? Would the Internal Revenue Service be directed to make the returns public? Would it be a crime not to do so? Or would a winner of the electoral votes who did not make his taxes public be denied the office?

Why stop with presidential candidates? Why not members of Congress, who, unlike the presidential appointees Mr. Patterson cited who must disclose their taxes to the Senate even to get a confirmation hearing, are under no obligation to make their returns public?

Mr. Trump already knows that he will pay a very heavy price when voters cast their ballots because he has chosen to keep his tax returns private. If Mr. Pattersons goal is to be sure that we never elect a president who has refused to show his tax returns to the voters, we already have the means of seeing that it does not happen. Its called an election.

Alan B. Morrison, Washington
Outside groups that back Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Monday plan to expand their targeting of female millennial voters online with a scathing and snarky viral advertising campaign against GOP rival Donald Trump. (Women Vote)

Outside groups that back Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Monday expanded their targeting of female millennial voters online with a scathing and snarky viral advertising campaign against GOP rival Donald Trump.

The ads, created by Women Vote, the independent expenditure arm of Emilys List, are part of a partnership between the group and the pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA Action. It aims to reach young women through sponsored content on viral media sites such as BuzzFeed and Elite Daily in the lead-up to Election Day.

Younger women in particular are motivated to turn out and vote when they understand whats at stake in the election regarding their issues and values, said Denise Feriozzi, deputy executive director for Emilys List. And theres no bigger demonstration of that than Donald Trumps statements.

The push is the latest in an effort by Clinton and her allies to connect with younger voters  especially young women  after a bruising Democratic primary in which many of them sided with her opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Polls, however, show that younger voters are choosing Clinton over Donald Trump by wide margins in the general election. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News survey, voters 29 years old and younger supported Clinton over Trump by a 26-percentage-point margin. And the newest USA Today-Rock the Vote poll found Clinton leading Trump 56 to 20 percent.

Samples of an ad campaign to attract female millennial voters to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. (Women Vote)

Still, many young voters say they feel disengaged and even apathetic about the choice they will face in November.

Two of the ads that went live on BuzzFeed on Monday use the sites signature formats to deliver a sharply political message. Emilys List and Priorities USA are the only groups working with the site to target millennial voters through native advertising.

A quiz titled Hey, Ladies: What Does Donald Trump Want to Do to You? asks women questions derived from Trumps comments about women that are intended to elicit cringes from young women.

After providing their age, the quiz-takers are asked, So are you a young and beautiful piece of a--?   a reference to Trumps comments in a 1991 Esquire interview.

The questions continue in a similar fashion, some quoting Trumps most off-color commentary about women, and others highlighting his policy-related statements, including one in which he suggested that women who had abortions should be punished.

Respondents will be matched to one of four possible outcomes, all with the same point: reject Trump.

The GOP nominee would make your life a living hell by being president, the ad says. We cant afford a president who behaves that way. So make sure to shut down the most racist, sexist, hateful candidate of our lifetime!

The push for female millennial voters is the latest effort by Clinton and her allies to connect with younger voters  especially young women  after a bruising Democratic primary. (Women Vote)

A second ad features animated videos of sentimental greeting cards that flip open to reveal Trump quotes inside.

On the inside of a Happy Anniversary greeting card, young women will find a quote of Trumps in which he brags about never needing the male erectile dysfunction drug Viagra.

Frankly, I wouldnt mind if there were an anti-Viagra, something with the opposite effect, he said. Im not bragging. Im just lucky. I dont need it. Ive always said, if you need Viagra, youre probably with the wrong girl.

It is signed: With love, from me & Donald.

The sponsored content on Elite Daily  which brands itself as the voice of Generation Y  is slated to launch as early as September and is expected to take a more sober tone than the BuzzFeed ads. The groups have committed $500,000 to the native advertising campaign with viral news sites.

The BuzzFeed ads  three posts  were created with the sites advertising team and staff for Emilys List and Priorities USA. They will target women in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada and Pennsylvania through Facebook and other social-media sites. They will remain in circulation through the end of September and are targeted to reach at least 8.3 million impressions, which measures how many times an ad is loaded on a Web page.

It is part of a larger, $20 million digital media campaign aimed at millennial women that focuses on more traditional forms of outreach. Ads targeting young women play ahead of YouTube and other Web videos and they appear on Facebook, Instagram, and on other sites frequented by younger women, such as Refinery 29.

The use of sponsored content helps push political advertising methods closer in line with advertising techniques that are increasingly becoming popular with corporate advertisers and are also designed to target the millennial generation.

We have the ability to test it and to run a program to look at it and say that its reaching these voters and persuading them in different ways, said Anne Caprara, executive director of Priorities USA. It informs the decision-making.

Young voters have long been a bedrock of the Democratic Partys base, but the millennial generation is particularly unlikely to participate and is more drawn to appeals deemed authentic.

According to Scott Goodstein, whose firm Revolution Messaging was responsible for much of the Sanders campaigns outreach to millennial voters, the 74-year-old avowed democratic socialist was able to tap into a desire among millennials for no-frills talk.

I do think that the Hillary campaign should not try to patronize millennial voters in any way, shape or form and just give it to them straight, Goodstein said, referring in general to millennial outreach in this election. I dont think that doing zany efforts for young voters is what millennial voters want.

They want an authentic, real fact base, he said.
Sometimes a presidential visit following a disaster is intended as a call to action. Other times it amounts to a kind of apology, aimed at rebutting the impression that the federal government has failed in its response.

These days it has become a standard part of just about every natural calamity to befall the United States. President Obama in recent years has visited the sites of hurricanes, tornadoes and a devastating mudslide in Washington state. On Tuesday, Air Force One will touch down in Baton Rouge, La., where epic flooding caused the countrys worst natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

Why has a presidential visit become such a standard part of the federal governments response? The main benefit is to rally support and bring in donations at a time when media attention can be fleeting.

A visit from the president shines a light on the situation, said Andrew Card, a top official in both Bush administrations. He brings the national media. He brings attention. Americans are great at responding to a tragedy if they know about it.

Just about every presidential trip carries with it an element of politics. Obamas visit to Louisiana follows a stopover by Republican nominee Donald Trump, who slammed the president last week for not cutting short his Marthas Vineyard vacation to deal with the damage. The White House announced Tuesdays visit as Trump was touring the flood-damaged area Friday.

1 of 71 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Days of rain and flooding cause widespread damage in Louisiana View Photos Gov. John Bel Edwards says more than 20,000 people have been displaced. Caption More than 106,000 people have registered for federal disaster aid, so far. Aug. 22, 2016 Billy Bethley throws a flood-damaged floor board on to a pile of debris in Prairieville, La. Jonathan Bachman/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue.

Obamas trips to disaster areas, though, have tended to focus on the business of drumming up donations and managing the dynamics of the federal response.

If Ive got one message for folks here today, it is go online and donate, Obama said in 2013 after tornadoes blew through Moore, Okla.

On Staten Island, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, he called for federal, state and local officials to work together. Were going to have to put some of the turf battles aside, he warned.

American presidents have for decades turned up at the sites of the biggest natural disasters. President Richard M. Nixon visited Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Camille. President George H.W. Bush surveyed the damage from Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and was on-site just days after Hurricane Andrew swept through South Florida, killing dozens and causing more than $25 billion in damage. Federal assets were also set aside so that Bill Clinton, then the Democratic nominee, could make the trip, Card said.

Until recently, though, smaller natural disasters typically fell to vice presidents and their staffs. We would joke we would go to funerals and disasters, said Joseph Hagin, who worked as then-Vice President George H.W. Bushs personal aide in the Reagan administration.

Compared with the president, the vice president brings a relatively light logistical footprint  a smaller plane, motorcade and traveling press contingent  all of which place fewer demands on locals when resources are stretched thin. Vice President Biden, for example, visited Scranton, Pa., and Colorado when those areas were hit by flooding; Obama did not. And it was Biden, not Obama, who attended a memorial service for the 19 firefighters who died battling the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona.

Increasingly, though, Americans expect their president to visit. Some of that change can be traced to George W. Bushs decision not to visit New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At the time, Bush was returning to the White House from a vacation in Texas, and White House officials decided to fly low over the flood-ravaged city. A photograph of the president looking out the window of his jet became a symbol of his administrations neglect.

People asked, Why didnt he stop? The reason was that it would have diverted critical resources from the search-and-rescue effort, said Card, who served as White House chief of staff.

Other Bush administration officials said that a presidential stopover would have required assistance from Coast Guard rescue helicopters and probably would have cost lives. Those same helicopters . . . would have been pulling people off rooftops, said Steve Atkiss, a special assistant for operations in the Bush administration.

The Katrina aftermath unquestionably made it harder for presidents to stay away from natural disasters, but demands for executive attention date back as far as the Calvin Coolidge administration.

Your coming would center the eyes of the nation and the consequent publicity would result in securing millions of dollars of additional aid for sufferers, the governor of Mississippi wired after the historic floods of 1927.

Instead, Coolidge dispatched Herbert Hoover, his commerce secretary, to lead the relief effort. To reassure an anxious public, Hoover was heard regularly on radio broadcasts, said David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers University. He made sure that people could hear a raging river in the background, Greenberg said.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry on Monday condemned a recent outburst of violence in South Sudan as tragic and in some cases even reprehensible, and said the United States would not automatically continue to provide humanitarian support for the country unless its leaders commit to peace.

Kerry also defended a recent decision by the United Nations Security Council to send 4,000 peacekeepers to South Sudan, in addition to the 13,000 already there. The peacekeepers have been accused of doing little to protect South Sudanese civilians and foreign aid workers who were raped and murdered by combatants during clashes last month.

[South Sudanese fear U.N. peacekeepers cant protect them from a massacre]

The United States played a key role in the creation of South Sudan, which became independent from Sudan in 2011. The country collapsed into civil war in 2013, leaving tens of thousands dead in fighting that occurred largely between ethnic groups aligned with the countrys two most prominent politicians. In 2015, the United States helped broker a peace deal between those politicians, President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar.

But in July, that deal fell apart as violence consumed the capital, Juba. Machar fled, announcing last week that he had arrived in Congo. Kerry called for the resumption of the countrys peace process, but it is unclear when, or if, Machar will return.

Kerry spoke at a news conference after meeting with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and foreign ministers from around the region. Kerry is on a trip that also includes stops in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.

He announced $138 million in new humanitarian assistance to South Sudan, aimed at getting food, water and medicine to a population that has become ever more desperate as recent fighting has prompted thousands to flee their homes. The U.S. government has already provided the country with about $1.6 billion in aid since late 2013, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

But Kerry said he had made clear to South Sudans leaders that the money would not continue indefinitely.

We made it crystal clear that this is not forever. Were not just going to fill in a void. We are not just going to provide help incessantly if they are not going to provide security and do the things necessary to deliver to their people, he said. He called on the countrys leaders to care for their citizens and refrain from violent and provocative acts.

[The U.S. midwifed South Sudan five years ago. Now it is falling apart.]

Government forces, which are under Kiir, struck U.N. compounds and personnel during last months fighting, raided warehouses full of emergency food rations and blocked U.N. convoys from providing humanitarian support.

Experts have questioned the effect that the additional U.N. troops would have  both because of the peacekeepers dismal record of protecting civilians and the South Sudanese governments lack of respect for the U.N. mission. Defending civilians is part of the peacekeepers mandate.

Kerry said that the peacekeepers were not being sent as a response to the overall crisis, but would be able to guarantee freedom of movement for civilians and humanitarian workers in Juba.

Read more:

The U.N. faces scrutiny in South Sudan after failing to stop an attack on aid workers

In South Sudan, bodies are being counted as peace accord appears to unravel

South Sudans conflict reflects rivalry between president and his former deputy

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
He pointed out that Germany already bans wearing any kind of face covering at demonstrations, such as masks meant to hide protesters' identities.

But he acknowledged constitutional problems with a blanket burqa ban and said the proposal seeks only to prohibit face coverings "where showing the face has a function."

Full-face coverings worn by some Muslim women are "not part of our open society" and officials "urge everyone to show their faces," Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said after meeting his state counterparts from Merkel's conservative Union bloc.

Security officials from German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc on Friday proposed a ban on wearing the burqa and other face-covering veils in public schools, courts, while driving and in other situations.

Calls for a ban on burqas and other full-face veils emerged from parts of Merkel's bloc over the past two weeks amid discussions of how to step up security following several attacks last month -- two of them claimed by the Islamic State group -- which rattled Germany.

Among the loudest advocates were the conservative interior ministers of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin, which both hold state elections next month. Both are anxious to fend off a strong challenge from the nationalist, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, which has been bolstered by concerns over the hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers Germany allowed in last year.

There has been criticism from some even within their own party, however, who view the election-season focus on a burqa ban as a distraction from more important issues.

Armin Laschet, a deputy leader of Merkel's Christian Democrats, was quoted Friday in Focus magazine as saying that getting tangled up in such debates was unhelpful for the party.

"The security situation is so serious that we need to fully concentrate on internal security and not on symbolic topics," he said. "A burqa may displease some, but it has nothing to do with domestic security."

De Maiziere acknowledged the face veil was not a security issue and also that "overall it's not a big problem in Germany." But he said the interior ministers felt strongly about sending a signal about what it found "unacceptable for our open society."

The proposal still faces several hurdles, including getting Merkel's coalition partners in the national government, the center-left Social Democrats, on board and then winning parliamentary approval.
A still image, taken from video footage and released by Russia's Defense Ministry shows a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber based at Iran's Hamadan Air Base dropping bombs in the Syrian province of Deir al-Zour. (Russian Defense Ministry via Reuters TV )

An Iranian official said Monday that Russia would no longer use the Islamic republics air bases to strike targets in Syria  an apparent rebuke of Moscow for announcing the deployment in the media last week.

At a news conference in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said that Russias use of Irans Hamadan Air Base was temporary, based on a Russian request, and that it is finished for now. Russia has no base in Iran, Ghasemi added, according to an Associated Press translation of his remarks.

Russia began launching strikes into Syria from Iranian territory Aug. 16 in a surprise announcement that indicated Russias growing clout in the region, where it already has military aircraft stationed in Syria and has negotiated the use of airspace and intelligence-sharing with Iraq. Along with fighters from Iran and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia, Russian muscle is helping to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, striking a wide range of his enemies, from the Islamic State to more-moderate armed opposition groups.

[Russian strikes from Iranian air base show expanding footprint]

But Irans sudden reversal Monday showed that allies with a common cause, fighting against Assads enemies, maintain diverse goals in the region. While Russian politicians indicated a long-term deployment, saying that warplanes stationed in Iran would conserve fuel instead of flying a longer route from the Russian Caucasus, Iranian officials made clear that they were unhappy about the publicity and being seen as a Russian client in the region.

Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan on Monday attacked publications of the Russian military press that reported the use of Irans air base. There has been a kind of showing-off and inconsiderate attitude behind the announcement of this news, he told an Iranian television channel.

Naturally, the Russians are keen to show that they are a superpower and an influential country and that they are active in security issues in the region and the world, Dehghan said, according to Agence France-Presse.

[Why Russia deployed advanced strike fighters to Iran]

Russias Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for further comment Monday. Russia conducted at least three sorties from the air base over the past week, using Tu-22 long-range bombers usually stationed in Mozdok, Russia, as well as Su-34 strike aircraft that Russia also has stationed in Syria. They were accompanied by Su-30SM and Su-35S fighters also flying from Irans air base, the Russian military said in statements published last week.

Russia never said the deployment would be permanent, although there were indications that officials thought it would be long-term.

There is no other country in that region to be friendlier and better from the security angle, and we have to deliver those strikes if we want to end that war, Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov, chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, said Aug. 16. He was referring to Iran.

Read more

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed Government of National Accord stand in Sirte as they comb through some residential neighborhoods that were previously controlled by Islamic State. (Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images)

Lawmakers in Libyas parliament refused to give their approval to the countrys U.N.-backed government Monday, delivering a fresh setback to efforts to stabilize a country fractured by conflict and wounded by a sinking economy.

The no-confidence vote against the Government of National Accord (GNA), which is based in the capital city of Tripoli, occurred in a rare session of the parliament, which is based in the eastern city of Tobruk. Of the 101 lawmakers who attended, 61 voted against the government, 39 abstained, and only one sided in favor, according to a statement on the parliaments website.

The United States and other Western powers view the GNA as Libyas best chance to fight a virulent Islamic State, resuscitate dwindling oil production and combat the human-trafficking networks behind the flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europes shores.

But even as pro-GNA militias are on the verge of driving out the Islamic State from its stronghold in the coastal city of Sirte with help of U.S. airstrikes, the government has been unable to extend its authority beyond Tripoli.

[Even with U.S. airstrikes, a struggle to oust ISIS from Libyan stronghold]

Mondays vote triggered disputes between the supporters of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj and his opponents in the parliament over the legitimacy of the vote. Members of the pro-Serraj bloc claimed they were blindsided, saying the vote was not included in the parliamentary agenda on Monday. Many Serraj supporters did not attend the session.

The vote can potentially throw the whole unity process up in the air, said Mattia Toaldo, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in London.

Libya plunged into chaos after the overthrow and killing of dictator Moammar Gaddafi five years ago. It has had rival governments , each supported by a meld of tribes and militias. Serrajs unity government was set up in December under a U.N.-brokered agreement.

In the east, though, powerful figures remain opposed to Serraj and the GNAs leadership committee. Mondays session was chaired by the speaker, Agilah Saleh, who is allied with Gen. Khalifa Hifter, a military commander who controls large swaths of the east. Both have refused to back Serraj.

In January, the parliament rejected an initial list of ministers proposed by the GNA, and opposition lawmakers have continued to demand a shake-up in Serrajs cabinet to include more eastern representation.

Its unclear whether Mondays vote would dissolve the unity government, and compel Serraj to replace some or all members of his cabinet. If it does, analysts say, Libyas instability could deepen.

The legitimacy of the vote could be questioned by some players, Toaldo said. It could also take months, he added, to reach consensus on new cabinet nominations, and in the meantime, violence could flare up again either in the oil installations east of Sirte or in and around the capital.

The only way out could be a stronger international mediation that avoids both a stalemate of the institutions and an escalation on the ground, Toaldo added.

U.S. Special Operations troops aiding Libyan forces in battle against ISIS

Libyas U.N.-backed government decries French troop presence in rival zone

A former CIA asset has become a U.S. headache in Libya

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Taliban insurgents intensified a third day of attacks Monday near the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, cutting off main roads to adjacent provinces and reportedly blowing up a bridge that links Afghanistan to neighboring Tajikistan. The sustained assault deepened fears that Kunduz could fall again into insurgent hands, as it did for two weeks in September and October in one of the worst setbacks for government forces in the 15-year war.

Senior Afghan military officials, as well as the civilian defense minister, have rushed to Kunduz to take charge of the fighting. Government forces have waged seesaw battles with insurgents since Saturday, and the Taliban has gained control of two districts near the provincial capital as well as another area in adjacent Takhar province.

The latest fighting comes days after a major Taliban push into Baghlan province just south of Kunduz and several weeks after Taliban forces began closing in on Lashkar Gah in Helmand province. Lashkar Gah is another strategic city the insurgents have long sought to seize, forcing both Afghan and U.S. reinforcements to rush to the region.

Speaking to reporters in Kunduz on Monday, the deputy army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Murad Ali Murad, vowed not to allow the Taliban to retake Kunduz. In Kabul, the senior U.S. military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, told journalists Monday that U.S. officials are very confident that Kunduz will not fall. We will be there to assist.

Cleveland said that the Taliban insurgents are still clearly a threat but that they have still not been able to achieve their main strategic goal, to seize a major population center. He would not specify what role U.S. forces are playing in Kunduz, but he said A-29 light-attack aircraft have been deployed there, with U.S.-trained Afghan pilots.

Afghan families leave Kunduz city after clashes between Taliban and Afghan security forces on Aug 22. (Jawed Kargar/European Pressphoto Agency )

Afghan police officials said U.S. attack helicopters were also brought into the fight Monday and were attacking positions in Ali Abad District, which connects Kunduz city to Baghlan.

Cleveland noted that although U.S. forces are not authorized to participate in direct ground combat in Afghanistan, they can help Afghan forces prevent strategic defeat and, under recent orders from President Obama, can also provide strategic effects, such as allowing U.S. warplanes to do more deliberate targeting.

In Helmand, U.S. warplanes and Special Forces troops have been deployed during the recent fighting, and on Monday, U.S. military officials said they had sent an extra 100 troops to provide force protection in a police zone in Lashkar Gah.

While eager to help save Kunduz, U.S. military officials are anxious to avoid the kind of errors that led to a fatal U.S. airstrike on a trauma hospital run by Doctors Without Borders during last years battle in early October. That inadvertent bombing, blamed on a mix of human error and missing equipment, killed at least 42 people, including patients and medical staff.

Despite vows by Afghan and U.S. officials that Taliban fighters would not be permitted to repeat their humiliating takeover of Kunduz, provincial officials said the insurgents had launched a multi-pronged attack from three sides of the city. The officials described numerous fluid clashes, with Taliban and government forces gaining and losing ground. They also said electricity has been cut off in Kunduz and Takhar provinces.

It is a fighting situation up here, the Kunduz police chief, Qaseem Jangalbagh, said in a brief telephone interview Monday, as loud sounds of gunfire and heavy weapons could be heard in the background. He said the government has regained control of Khan Abad district near Kunduz, which fell to the Taliban on Saturday, as well as another district in Takhar. The insurgents attacked from four directions but have suffered heavy casualties, he said. Our losses are very low.

Mohammed Yusuf Ayobi, head of the provincial council, described a more chaotic and dire situation when reached by phone. He said that government helicopters were pounding Taliban positions but that the insurgents still controlled 80 percent of Khan Abad. Taliban spokesmen have also said they seized weapons and vehicles from retreating Afghan forces.

There are lots of civilian and military casualties, Ayobi said. Hundreds of people who can are fleeing day by day. He said that the insurgents were attacking the north and northwest sectors of the city and that the roads linking Kunduz to three neighboring provinces and Tajikistan are all closed, mostly because of the fighting.

Analysts said Kunduz would be an important strategic prize for the Taliban for several reasons: It is close to the border and an important corridor to Central Asia, it produces an abundance of wheat and rice for domestic consumption, and it is an important city in the northern region far from the insurgents traditional home base in southern Afghanistan.

They also said the latest Taliban assaults are especially destabilizing for the Afghan government, which is facing strong public criticism and a crisis of legitimacy amid growing disputes between its two top leaders. Its most vocal critics include former militia commanders from the northeast who control numerous troops in the Kunduz region.

The Taliban attacks on Kunduz come at a very sensitive time politically, said retired Afghan army general Atiqullah Amarkhel. The insurgent advances and the discord between President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah can demoralize the army and security forces in general, he said. The Taliban could not have chosen a better time for their attacks than now.

Read more

Kunduz struggles back to life after Taliban takeover ends

Report finds multiple errors in U.S. airstrike on Afghan hospital

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Nurses at five hospitals in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota have once again overwhelmingly voted to reject Allina Healths demands for sweeping concessions. Nurses rejected the companys latest offer for a new three-year contractwhich includes demands for increased out-of-pocket health insurance costs and dangerously high workloadsand voted instead to approve an open-ended walkout by 4,800 nurses against the Minneapolis-based hospital chain.

Ignoring the mandate of rank-and-file health care workers, the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) has not announced any strike date. Instead MNA officials have stepped up their appeals to hospital management to accept a compromise deal when talks resume Tuesday.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Union officials said they will begin planning for a strike, but expect that federal mediators or Allina might pursue another round of talks before any walkout begins. The conciliation by the MNA has only made management more intransigent.

It was disappointing to read that the focus of the unions meeting today was on planning a strike, rather than working on a solution, Allina spokesman David Kanihan told the Minneapolis Star Tribune Saturday. We look forward to hearing what the unions ideas are when we meet on Tuesday, Kanihan said, adding that a health insurance agreement with the union would be absolutely essential to reaching a contract and putting this behind us.

The nurses vote follows the limited one-week strike called by the MNA at the end of June. After the union shut down that walkout, the MNA offered to abandon two traditional union-backed health insurance plans. Allina officials responded by demanding that all additional costs for the remaining two plans be shifted onto nurses in order to save $10 million a year.

More than two-thirds of the members voted to reject the latest contract offer and authorize a strike, according to the MNA. Nurses say if they accept concessions now their previous walkout would have been for nothing.

The MNA has all but conceded the issue of increased workloads, which nurses still place at the forefront of their struggle. Nurses who spoke with the World Socialist Web Site on the day of the vote indicated that they were determined to reduce staffing ratios as well as protect health benefits.

A nurse who spoke with the WSWS recalled the 2010 struggle, where an open-ended strike was authorized on the issue of safe staffing ratios by all 12,000 of the nurses represented by the MNA in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. After the vote, nurses came under a deluge of criticism from the media and corporate establishment, which hypocritically slandered them for not caring about their patients.

After mass meetings were held where nurses expressed their determination to defeat the six hospital systems on this issue, the MNA met the companies behind the backs of the nurses and came to an agreement to head off an upcoming open-ended strike. The nurse characterized the overnight agreement by the MNA as caving in on these issues the night before.

Increasing workloads for nurses and other health care providers is a key tenet of the Obama administrations misnamed Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare, which is pressing hospital chains to cut costs. While servicing an increased number of insured patients, hospitals have not hired a corresponding number of nurses and others. The MNA and its parent organization, National Nurses United (NNU) are politically allied to Obama and have endorsed his successor, Hillary Clinton. They are therefore determined to prevent any struggle by nurses that could quickly erupt into a political confrontation with the Democratic Party, particularly in an election year.

The MNA is begging Allina to hand it some cosmetic concession to sell to their increasingly restive members. However, the hospital officials have essentially responded by telling the MNA that the militancy of the nurses is the unions problem, not theirs. Having taken the measure of the MNA long ago, Allina Health executives and the powerful health care and financial interests that stand behind it are doubling down and demanding even further concessions.

Nurses are determined to fight and a stand taken by them would generate widespread support from health care workers and all workers. The biggest obstacle to such a struggle, however, is the MNA, the NNU and the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win labor federations that are allied with the Democrats and support capitalism and the system of for-profit medicine.

If nurses are to move their courageous struggle forward they must take the conduct of this fight into their own hands by electing rank-and-file committees to monitor all negotiations and to prepare opposition to whatever sellout agreement is reached by the MNA or a so-called independent mediator. At the same time these committees must reach out to all health care workers throughout the Twin Cities area and nationally to prepare a genuine struggle to defend jobs and living standards and protect patient safety.

A powerful counteroffensive on the industrial level must be combined with a political struggle to unite every section of the working class against both big-business parties and the capitalist system they defend.
Fifty-one people died and 69 were injured Saturday when a horrific suicide bombing hit a Kurdish wedding in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the border with Syria. At least 17 of the wounded are severely injured and clinging to life.

The pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) has confirmed that one of its members was getting married at the wedding. The wedding party was winding down and guests were beginning to leave when the suicide bomber, identified as a boy aged 12 to 14, detonated his explosive vest. The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion, one of the guests said. There was blood and body parts everywhere.

Many of the victims were children, apparently because they had gathered to one side of the folk dancing at the party, and were therefore closer to the blast.

The bride and groom, Besna and Nurettin Akdogan, were injured. They turned our wedding into a blood bath, the bride told Turkey's Anadolu News Agency after being released from the hospital.

The couple had reportedly fled the town of Siirt to Gaziantep in order to escape fighting between the Turkish army and ethnic Kurdish militias in Turkey. The government offensive against Kurdish separatists escalated as Kurdish militias across the border in Syria began playing a larger role in the war in that country.

Yesterday, a mass funeral was held for victims of the bombing in Gaziantep, though authorities said further DNA testing will be needed to identify all of the victims, many of whom were blown apart.

Several international heads of state issued condemnations of the bombing. Russian President Vladimir Putin called it shockingly cruel and cynical, and French President Francois Hollande denounced it as an infamous terrorist attack. German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yldrm regretting that Again, innocent men, women, and children have fallen victim to cowardly and treacherous violence.

Notable for his silence on the bombing was US President Barack Obama, whose relations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have collapsed since Erdogan publicly attacked Washington for supporting last months failed military coup against him.

While as of this writing no one has claimed responsibility for the Gaziantep bombing, international media and several Turkish officials blamed the atrocity on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has reportedly recruited children to be used as suicide bombers.

Initial evidence suggests it was an ISIS attack, Erdogan said while visiting Gaziantep after the bombing, which he called a heinous crime. Stating that the attackers aim to provoke people by abusing ethnic and sectarian sensitivities, he added, Our country and nation have only a single message to those who attack us: you will not succeed.

The atrocity in Gaziantep is the outcome of years of incitement of Islamist terror and ethnic bloodshed in the region by Washington and its imperialist allies in Europe as part of their proxy war for regime-change in Syria. Since 2011, the NATO powers and their Middle East allies have funneled billions of dollars and vast weapons shipments to Islamist and Kurdish nationalist militias fighting in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have died and over 10 million have fled their homes, unleashing the greatest global refugee crisis since World War II.

Erdogans attempts to follow the twists and turns of imperialist policy have had devastating consequences for Turkey itself, particularly since Washington and its European allies began attacking ISIS in 2014 after it invaded Iraq and threatened to topple the US-backed puppet regime in Baghdad. ISIS had developed an extensive logistical network in Turkey and, starting last year, retaliated with a string of terror bombings inside Turkey.

These included the October 2015 attack in Ankara that killed 105 people and the March 2016 bombing on Istiqlal Avenue in Istanbul, both of which were planned by ISIS forces in Gaziantep.

The latest attack is retaliation for an even broader shift in the alignment of forces in the Syrian war that has intensified the conflict between the Erdogan government and ISIS. Since last years Russian military intervention tipped the scales of the war in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Turkish government has steadily shifted its policy. Having found itself isolated after it recklessly shot down a Russian bomber over Syria last fall, and facing the prospect of a defeat of US-backed forces in Syria, it reoriented its policy towards Moscow and the Assad regime.

This reorientation accelerated last month after Moscow warned Erdogan of the coup being prepared against him by Turkish officers acting out of the Incirlik air base in Turkey, a critical staging ground for US and NATO air strikes on Syria and Iraq.

Both Washington and ISIS are furious at the developing ties between Turkey, Syria, Russia and now China, which pledged last week to begin expanding its aid to the Assad regime.

Shortly before the Gaziantep bombing on Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yldrm made clear that his government is considering taking the unprecedented step of allowing Moscow to use Incirlik air base to bomb ISIS. The base has historically been used by Washington to further its designs against Moscow. Yldrms remarks confirmed rumors that have circulated since Igor Morozov, a member of the Russian upper house, called for Moscow to make an agreement with Erdogan that we get the NATO base at Incirlik as our primary air base.

At a press conference, Yldrm said, Turkey opened Incirlik airbase to fight ISIS terrorists. It is being used by the United States and Qatar. Other nations might also wish to use the airbase, which the Germans are also now using. Asked specifically if Moscow could also use Incirlik air base, Yldrm replied, If necessary, the Incirlik base can be used.

US officials are increasingly desperate over these shifts, which threaten to split Turkey from the NATO alliance and create a broad realignment of major powers in Eurasia against the United States. They are responding by escalating their reckless threats of military action against Russian and Syrian government forces, at the risk of provoking a global war.

Last week, after Assads Air Force bombed Kurdish militia among whom were embedded US Special Forces operating extra-legally within Syria, Pentagon spokesmen warned that the US was prepared to attack anyone who threatened its troops, risking a direct clash with Russian, Iranian or Syrian forces.

On Saturday, the commander of US forces in Iraq and Syria, Lt. General Stephen Townsend, issued a more official threat to take military action against Syria and Russia. He told CNN, Weve informed the Russians where were at [They] tell us theyve informed the Syrians, and Id just say that we will defend ourselves if we feel threatened.

If the Syrians try this again, they are at great risk of losing an aircraft, an anonymous senior US military officials told CNN.

CNN commentators added that the situation increases the probability of direct conflict between US forces on the one hand, and Moscow and Damascus on the other.
Lydia Hearst is a married woman! The actress wed the Talking Dead's Chris Hardwick on Saturday in front of 450 guests at the Langham hotel in Pasadena, California.

For the big day, the star chose a stunning custom-made Christian Siriano gown while her fiance opted for a beautifully cut custom Prada suit. The 31-year-old gave her fans a sneak peek of her dress last week when she posted a photo of herself wearing the gown and staring wistfully out of a window.

CLICK TO VIEW GALLERY



Lydia Hearst and Chris Hardwick wed on Saturday afternoon Photo: Getty Images

I am truly blessed to have you in my life @hardwick. I love you, and I will never stop loving you. I cannot wait to marry you in one week, she captioned the sweet pic.

Speaking to People before the big day, the Condemned star said she and her mother, Patricia Hearst, had planned the perfect wedding. I could never have envisioned a more perfect wedding day, she said.

CELEBRITY ENGAGEMENTS OF 2016

It's better and more magical than I could have ever dreamed of...It's going to be perfect, and even if it isn't that's how it was meant to be. I'm more excited than anything else! Although, Lydia admitted that despite the lavish celebrations the most important thing to her is Chris' happiness.



The actress wore a stunning Christian Siriano gown for the nuptials Photo: Instagram/@lydiahearst

Everything else is just a bonus, but Chris is the most important person and vital component to me...This is a celebration of our love and an incredible moment to share with our family and friends.

INSIDE LYDIA HEARST'S AMAZING BACHELORETTE PARTY

On Friday evening the groom-to-be shared a candid snap of the pair at their rehearsal dinner held at Lucky Strike in Downtown L.A. Wedding rehearsal! #AllTheEmoji, the Nerdist CEO captioned the picture of him embracing and kissing his wife-to-be.

Last month Lydia and her closest friends, including her former Gossip Girl co-star Michelle Trachtenberg, jetted off to Hearst Castle in California to celebrate her bachelorette party. The women enjoyed horse rides through the castle's ranch, a viewing in the castle's private screening room and lunch outside in the luscious grounds.
A 27-year-old man has been charged with killing five people, including a pregnant woman, early Saturday morning in Alabama, police say.



Derrick Dearman, of Mississippi, allegedly killed the victims at a home in Citronelle using guns and several other weapons. He then allegedly kidnapped a woman and a 3-month-old baby before surrendering to police in his home state, WALA reports.



"In a a 20-year career as a prosecutor, I have never seen a scene where there were five people brutally and viciously murdered. That's what we have here," Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich told WALA



The victims include Robert Brown, 26; Chelsea Reed, 22; Joseph Turner, 26; Shannon Randall, 35; Justin Reed, 23, NBC News reports. Chelsea was five months pregnant.



 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.



Police in Citronelle received a call about a trespasser on the property at around 1 a.m., but responding officers did not find Dearman at the home, according to NBC. Between 1:15 a.m. and sunrise, Dearman allegedly returned and attacked the victims while they slept.



Authorities told NBC news that one of the multiple weapons used in the attacks was possibly an ax.



A 4-month old boy survived the attack, CNN reports. Police reportedly found the infant in the home after the killings. It is unclear whether the boy was injured.



Dearman allegedly let the kidnapped woman and baby go free before surrendering at the Greene County Sheriff's Office, according to CNN. The pair are reportedly safe and in good health.



Extradition proceedings were expected to begin immediately and Dearman will be charged with six counts of capital murder, CNN reports. Investigators are working to determine Dearman's relationship to the victims. It is unclear if he has retained an attorney or if he has entered a plea.
The 44th Norwegian Intl. Film Festival kicked off its main program Aug. 21 with the world premiere of a local film, Vibeke Idses The Lion Woman (Lvekvinnen), and it will close Aug. 25 with the launch of another domestic production, Henrik Martin Dahlsbakkens Cave. On Aug. 22, Benjamin Ree will have the first Norwegian presentation of his documentary Magnus after it has toured five international festivals including Tribeca-New York, Munich and Moscow.

But not only the main competition has Norwegian entries: a total of 19 local films have been selected for this years showcase, with Peder Hamdahl Nss Little Grey Fergie  Full Throttle (Grasass gir gass), the fifth film about Norways most famous tractor, a Ferguson TE20, in Cinemagi, the childrens festival, others in the documentary, short film, Next Nordic Generation and Norwegian National Film School sections. Three Haugesund films sneak-opened the festival: Karl Johan Paulsens documentary Gold Is Running in the Streets  a City Built on Herring Bones, Cato M. Ekrenes short Run, and Andre Lynings documentary Cocks & Crosses.

There are several reasons for the strong Norwegian representation, said festival and program director Tonje Hardersen, of the Norwegian International Film Festival. First and foremost the opening films in 2015 and 2016  Roar Uthaugs The Wave and The Lion Woman  show that Norway can deliver productions that are not inferior to Hollywood grandeur, though on significantly smaller budgets. At the same time Norwegian cinema in 2016 is marked by a couple of young, aspiring filmmakers, who already deliver top level features  at this years festival we have two films by 27-year-old directors, Dahlsbakkens Cave and Rees Magnus. 

Hardersen notes that kidpics are usually best-sellers in the Norwegian cinemas  last year they accounted for almost half of Norwegian admissions, and four titles exceeded a total of one million admissions. But most of them are adaptations, and the reviewers didnt like them. So I look forward to the Aug. 23 festival debate about childrens cinema. Norwegian documentaries have in recent years reached still larger audiences, and we show them in several sections, including Cinemagi: Dancing Hearts from, Erlend E. Mo, Hanna Heilborn and Victor Kossakovsky.

Story continues

While Denmarks LevelK is only starting international sales for Cave in Haugesund, both The Lion Woman and Magnus have been widely licensed internationally by Denmarks TrustNordisk. Idses period drama has been acquired for 70 countries including China, France, Benelux, and Latin America; 46 have been contracted for Rees documentary including North America, UK/Ireland, Germany/Austria, France, Benelux, and Russia.

Based on Norwegian author Erik Fosnes Hansens novel, although with a new ending, The Lion Woman  which, with a $10 million budget, is Norways second-most expensive feature  is set between 1912-1937 and follows Eva, who is born with hair covering her whole body. Despite the many challenges she faces, she manages to overcome them. Starring Rolf Lassgard, Connie Nielsen, Burghart Klaussner and Kjersti Tveteras, it was produced by Norwegian veteran producer John M Jacobsens Oslo outfit, Filmkameratene.

In Magnus, Ree portrays Magnus Carlsen, who as a 13-year-old introvert schoolboy mostly interested in chess and bullied by his classmates, declared, I hope to become the world chess champion. In 2013, at 22, he did become the world chess champion. The documentary about his way to the title was produced by Sigurd Mikal Karoliussen, for Moskus Film.

 Cave is something different from my previous films, an intense action-thriller about a group of former military elites who set out to explore an uncharted abyss. We filmed everything on location in Norway, except for some underwater scenes in Mexico  I think people will be utterly surprised when they see the result, said Norwegian director Dahlsbakken about his festival closing feature. Starring Heidi Toini, Mads Sjgard Pettersen, Benjamin Helstad and Ingar Helge Gimle, it was produced by Dahlsbakken for Filmbros.

Pictured above: Magnus

Related stories

Danish Distributor LevelK Launches Sales of Norwegian Festival Thriller Cave'

Nordic Co-Production Market Adds Heft With Eurimages Selection

Haugesund: Scary Movies Get Showcase From Nordic Genre Boost
An Ohio lawyer who was sentenced to jail time after she refused to remove a Black Lives Matter pin in court last month, is taking legal action.

Andrea Burton filed a lawsuit against Youngstown Municipal Court Judge Robert Milich and his colleague Elizabeth Kobly on Thursday (Aug. 18), reports ABC News.

Milich found Burton in contempt of court because she wouldnt remove the pin, which he said was against the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that bans political pins from court. Milich sentenced Burton to five days in jail, though she was granted a stay of appeal and released from custody.

A judge doesnt support either side, he later explained an interview. 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.

By ordering her to remove the pin, Burton felt that the judge dishonored her First Amendment Rights. She wore the pin as a show of support for the Black Lives Matter movement and to make a statement against police brutality.

Im not neutral in injustice , Burton said after the incident. To remain neutral becomes an accomplice to oppression.
The Rui Feng Night Market  is one of the biggest night markets in Taiwan and is also one of the busiest night market in Kaohsiung.

It is packed with amazing street vendors and local night market goers. Rui Feng Night Market is probably the most local night market you could come across in Taiwan, so you know youll be in for a real authentic Taiwanese experience.

To make the journey through the grid of streets, here is a guide on what to eat and skip in Rui Feng Night Market.

10. Sweet Cool Round Powder Packes ( )

ruifeng--2

This was my first time try sweet cool round powder packes (NT30 for 8pcs). It is perfect during summer in Taiwan, and cools you down whilst you are shopping in the night market.

They even come in different flavours. My favourite was hami melon!

Stall: Sweet Cool Round Powder Packe 

9. Stone-Roasted Chicken

ruifeng-

These blobs of juicy goodness were undeniably delicious. Although Japanese-influenced, this chicken skewer (NT45) definitely had a peppery Taiwanese touch to it, which did not disappoint, especially with how tender the meat was.

Stall:  Japanese-Style Stone-Roasted Chicken

8. Takoyaki Balls

ruifeng--12

Although this is originally a Japanese snack,  gave it a Taiwanese twist by making it extra large. The Takoyaki Ball (NT60) is so huge that it could be considered a meal!

The octopus was really fresh and went well with the takoyaki coating. Definitely a must-try for all takoyaki fans.

Stall: 

7. Small Sausage in Large Sausage ()

ruifeng--4

A true-blue local street food, the Small Sausage in Large Sausage  (NT 70) consists of a Taiwanese pork sausage wrapped in a slightly bigger sticky rice sausage. Here, the chargrilled sausage is perfectly balanced by vegetables and freshly squeezed droplets of lime juice.

Stall:  

6. Milk Tea ()

ruifeng--13

No trip to Rui Feng is complete without sipping on some Milk Tea (NT35).  perfectly combines the semi-bitter taste of strong tea with creamy goodness of milk. It is perhaps the smoothest milk tea I have tried so far.

Story continues

Stall: 

5. Sweet Potato Balls ()

ruifeng--11

These sweet potato balls (NT30) are super yummy. They are a pretty light snack, perfect to start your night market stroll with. The balls are chewy yet airy and somewhat crispy on the outside.

A combination of different textures truly make these balls unique.

Stall: QQ

4. Mochi (  )

ruifeng--5

This is perhaps the freshest mochi I have ever tasted in my life. Rolled in front of my eyes, the mochi (NT10) was chewy and stretches like no tomorrow. It is also warm and smooth in texture.

ruifeng--6

There are various of flavours you can choose from. I liked mine plain with sesame seed powder, which was bouncy and fragrant in every bite.

Stall: 

3. Taro Milk ()

ruifeng--16

Although the stall is famous for papaya milk , you have to give the taro milk  (NT45) a try.

ruifeng--15

The taro is steamed right before your eyes. Silky and smooth, you cant taste any chunks of taro unless you leave it for too long. So drink up!

Stall: Y_

2. Angel Fried Chicken ()

ruifeng--10

Angel Fried Chicken (NT70) is a must-try at Kaohsiung Night Market. It is very different from Hot Star and outlets in Shilin Night Market in Taipei. The chicken chop is super thick. And I mean SUPER thick.

ruifeng--9

The best part of it all is how tender it is. Chicken chop tend to be too hard to bite in some parts, but this was really tender and well seasoned. Not too peppery at all.

The serving is plentiful so you may want to share it if you intend to try other street snacks here.

Stall: Angel Fried Chicken 

1. Bubble Tea Toast

ruifeng--7

I guess you can never get enough of bubble tea in Taiwan. At Rui Feng, you can even get it in warm, hot toast.

ruifeng--8

Bubble Tea Toast (NT60) tastes surprisingly good. The crusts were really crispy and the pearls were so chewy and melts in your mouth. The milk tea spread was really smooth and balanced the sweetness of the pearls. An interesting alternative to drinking bubble milk tea!

Stall: Good to Eat Hot Toast

Rui Feng Night Market: 1128/ Yu Cheng Road #1128 | Opening Hours: 6.30 PM  1AM (Tues & Thurs  Sunday)| Nearest MRT: Kaohsiong Arena Station

The post 10 Taiwanese Street Snacks to Eat at Kaohsiungs Rui Feng Night Market  appeared first on SETHLUI.com.
jeremy clarkson

Good morning. Here's everything you need to know in the world of advertising today.

1. Under Armour has dropped its deal with a hunter who filmed her husband brutally killing a bear with a homemade spear. Sarah Bowmar was signed by Under Armour in January to sign in an all-female hunting campaign, but the sports brand confirmed on Friday she had been dropped.

2. This is what it's like to be an intern at Facebook. Think cool projects, cushy wages, and an emphasis on empowerment.

3. Donald Trump's campaign is spending $4 million to air its first ad in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. The spot attacks Clinton on immigration.

4. Bleacher Report's CEO explained why ESPN is in trouble. Dave Finocchio said with the rise of mobile, ESPN is less relevant now than it was in the '90s.

5. The New York Times chief executive and former BBC director general Mark Thompson says the BBC was mad to let Jeremy Clarkson leave. Thompson did admit the former "Top Gear" presenter was "deeply objectionable," however.

6. Apple is losing its lead in smartphones. Samsung has out-designed and outperformed the iPhone with the Galaxy Note 7  and the iPhone 7 doesn't look like it will offer a great deal of improvement from previous models.

7. The Washington Post has written about the 98 personal data points advertisers can use to target you on Facebook. From people who recently acquired a smartphone, to users who carry a balance on their debit card.

8. Facebook made a surprising move that could save one of its shrinking businesses. Last week, the company announced an "all-new PC gaming platform" in partnership with game engine Unity that will be a standalone application and should help boost revenue from payments.

9. Facebook has severed an important data stream for publishers, Digiday reports. Domain Insights offered data on how content performed when users shared it on Facebook.

Story continues

10. Former Gawker editor Max Read has written an op-ed in the New York Magazine asking: "Did I kill Gawker?" The piece gives some insight into the inner workings of the site, which is being closed down on Monday.

NOW WATCH: New guidelines have led to a big change for uniforms at the Rio Olympics





More From Business Insider


Weston Imer, a 12-year-old living in Colorado, is running operations for Donald Trumps presidential campaign in one of the states most populous counties.

Technically, Imers mother, Laurel Imer, is the official field coordinator for the Trump office in Jefferson County, Colorado. But her son, the co-chair for the Jefferson County Trump campaign, has taken a large share of the responsibility in persuading people to vote, according to KDVR, a local news station.

Sitting behind a desk at the Trump office, Imer makes phone calls to supporters and coordinates volunteers. He said he hopes his experiences will inspire his peers to do the same.

Get involved, Imer told KDVR. Thats what Im going to say. Just get involved. Kids need to be educated.

Imers mother said working for the campaign was a good introduction to the U.S. political process for her son before he goes back to school this fall.

You have a responsibility to your children to teach them, she said.

Imer said running the operations from Trump has prompted his own political ambitions.

Watch for me  2040, he said. And Barron Trump, if you are watching, in 2040 Ill take you as my running mate.
Returning athletes will be screened for the Zika virus after the Rio Olympics come to a close on Sunday.

The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will test 836 athletes, support staff, cheerleaders and journalists for the virus at health clinics nationwide, a spokesman said on Sunday.

A few dozen did not agree to tests.

The subjects will be tested seven to 21 days after their return home because that is the incubation period.

A KCDC official said, "We're going to test everyone who visited Brazil during the Olympics and agreed to undergo testing, even if they have no symptoms like fever and rashes."

Meanwhile, a man in his mid-30s who visited Pattaya, Thailand on July 31 and returned on Aug. 8 has tested positive for Zika, the KCDC said on Sunday.

He is the 10th Zika virus infection in the country. The man is believed to have been bitten by a mosquito in Thailand and is in stable condition.


Two Massachusetts women are accused of robbing a nun at knifepoint and stealing her rosary beads.

The sister, from the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth Convent in Quincy, was walking down the street Sunday when she told police a woman approached her and attempted to snatch a small satchel from her hand.

While one suspect allegedly accosted the woman of God, the other acted as a lookout, CBS Boston reported.

Read: Missing Professor Was Pushed Off Cliff Into 80-Foot Quarry: Cops

The nun said she opened her satchel when she noticed the knife. There was no money inside, but the suspect allegedly wanted it anyway.

I guess Ill take the rosary beads, the suspect, identified by police as Vanessa Young, allegedly told the nun.

After giving up her holy beads, the nun  who was wearing street clothes and not the traditional habit  was able to return safely to her convent.

Later Sunday, two women who reportedly matched the nun's description of the suspects, were arrested.

While they denied involvement, police searched the women and allegedly recovered a small locking knife, six cellphones of various makes and models, and a checkbook belonging to a resident of a neighboring town.

Police did not, however, recover the rosary beads.

Read: Drug Trafficking Suspect, 31, Disguises Himself as Elderly Man to Evade Arrest: Cops

Police arrested Vanessa Young and charged her with armed robbery, assault with a dangerous weapon (knife) and daytime breaking and entering to commit a felony.

Crystal Young was arrested and charged with armed robbery and accessory after the fact.

The rosary beads have not yet been recovered.

Watch: Shoplifter Wreaks Havoc on Convenience Store After Shopkeeper Asks Her to Return Stolen Candy: Cops

Related Articles:
A Minnesota man was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and killing his coworkers 5-year-old daughter before dumping her body in the woods, police say.

Zachary Todd Anderson, 25, who was friends with the young girls parents, was staying overnight in the familys home when he disappeared with 5-year-old Alayna Ertl and her fathers truck, police said.

Authorities tracked the truck to a cabin Anderson owns about 90 minutes north of Alaynas Watkins, Minn. home, and found Anderson alone in a wooded area about a quarter mile away, according to a statement from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. Anderson told the officers where to find Alaynas body in a swampy wooded area a few hundred yards from the cabin, the statement said.

Anderson was arrested and was being held Monday on suspicion of murder and kidnapping. He was awaiting charges and was expected to make his first court appearance early this week. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer, the Associated Press reported.

Anderson worked with Ertls father at Vanguard, a company that locates underground utility lines, Meeker County Sheriff Brian Cruze told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Investigators are working to determine a motive.

We are at a loss as to why this happened at this time, Cruze said.

Related:

For more news videos, visit Yahoo View.
6 major back to school struggles all young mothers know to be true

6 major back to school struggles all young mothers know to be true

Back to school season can be exciting for most.

Families meeting their childrens teachers for the first time. Kids receiving new backpacks, clothes and school supplies. Stay-at-home parents finally being able to get work done. Youll even see a slight decrease in your grocery and electricity bills.

Oh, and your kid will have a bed time again. Ahhh, the gifts just keep on coming.

Harry Potter

But before you get to bask in those said gifts, youll need to do a ton of prep-work. Prep-work that has the potential to keep your nerves on edge and panties in a wadespecially for all of us procrastinators.

Immunizations

Shots are purely the devils work. Getting your kid into the doctors office before they head back to school is almost impossible. Every other parent in your area is on the grind to make sure those immunizations are up-to-date. And, if theyre not, you can kiss those upcoming lunch-dates goodbye. How deadly can measles really be, anyway?

sick

Uniforms

If your child attends a school that requires uniforms (like mine), this could potentially be the most expensive part of the back-to-school season. Why should we have to pay $50 for an embroidered collared shirt that they will probably outgrow before Thanksgiving? Ill never understand

frustrated

Registration fees

They can add up, and sometimes equate to as much as rent  depending on what kind of school youre enrolling in. Luckily for me, mine didnt exceed more than $300 this time around, but thats still $300 less than what I have left to spend on more important things Like, the uniform shirts that Ill have to replace once my 3-year-old outgrows them.

Dave Chappelle

Schedules

Summers are great because they allow for laxed schedules. However, when school is back in session youll have to get reacquainted with your alarm clock. Your kid missing the bus because you got tangled in a Netflix web the night before isnt a viable excuse. Your colleagues may understand, but your kids teacher may not.

Story continues

running late

Playdates

If youre like me, and are completely weirded out by Mommy-and-Me groups, you probably havent kept in touch with your kids former classmates all summer. Nows the time to get back in the groove of things, but dont look to me for advice on how not to do this awkwardly. Sorry

Beyonce

Sharing all of the not-so-exciting things youve done all summer

While other kids may have learned native languages while vacationing in exotic islands, my 3-year-old became fluent in all-things Hawaii 5-0. Because Netflix. Duh.

Steve McGarrett and Chin Ho Kelly kept him quiet on my work-from-home days, but in hindsight, this probably wasnt the best idea. Now Im just praying that he doesnt impress his teacher with his extensive knowledge of cop procedures.

Hawaii 5-0

Oh joy.

But in all seriousness, the last few months of summer have been a positive whirlwind for my family. Weve watched our toddler transition into a full-fledged pre-ker. And although were spending money like its going out of style, we realize that the peace of mind coming from knowing your kid is in a safe, fun and loving environment is priceless.

The post 6 major back to school struggles all young mothers know to be true appeared first on HelloGiggles.
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.
Its happening all across America right now: Hordes of renters, innocently perusing their social media accounts, are noticing a theme. Its not that everyone is getting married or obsessing over spiralized vegetables  theyre posting pictures of newly purchased homes.

But like your mother always said, just because everyone is doing it doesnt mean you should  or should you? There are certainly pros and cons of becoming a homeowner, and stumbling across just one dreamy listing of a home for sale in Anaheim, CA, with the perfect open-concept kitchen and fenced-in backyard can leave you thinking about little else. But then you realize youd rather save your money for a travel adventure, and said dreamy house doesnt come with the amenities you love at your apartment, like an on-site gym, pool, and doggie day care.

Dont jump the gun and assume you need to buy a house. Heres some truth talk: You might not be ready to buy. Pay attention to these seven signs that reveal that even if you think youre ready to buy a house, you might not be.

1. You dont make enough money

You might think you make enough money to buy a home, but crunch the numbers first and see what your costs would actually be  a mortgage calculator can come in handy here. You need both upfront and ongoing money, says Roger Ma, a New York, NY agent. Upfront money includes having enough for the down payment and closing costs and enough left over for an emergency fund, says Ma. On an ongoing basis, a buyers salary will need to be enough to pay for mortgage interest and principal, HOA fees, homeowners insurance, and taxes. These costs, according to many financial planners, should be less than 28% of your gross income.

2. You have too much debt

Lets say you do make enough money to afford to buy a house and make your monthly mortgage payments. You also need to factor in any debt you might have. Hint: If all your credit cards are maxed out, you may want to get those bills under control before entering homeownership. Lenders typically want your total debt load (which includes your potential mortgage payment) to be less than 36% of your gross income. Take a hard look at your spending habits and change them to improve your chances of being able to support a mortgage, says Casey Fleming, author of The Loan Guide: How to Get the Best Possible Mortgage.

Story continues

3. You dont have enough savings

If youve saved enough for the down payment, youve made it over one big hurdle. But you need more than just that. What if your home needs an emergency repair? Would you have the money to pay for it, or would a surprise expense put you in debt? Expect the unexpected, says Josh Moffitt, president of Silverton Mortgage Specialists in Atlanta, GA. Your air conditioner may die on a sweltering holiday weekend, or a sewage pipe could burst in the basement.

And then there are those costs that arent necessarily unexpected but that you might not have considered. Not only does a prospective buyer need money for closing costs and the first few months mortgage payments, they also need money for moving costs, says Brian Davis, a real estate investor and director of education at Spark Rental. They need money for furnishings and decorating the new house. They need money to pay the property taxes upfront at settlement. As you can see, you dont want to drain your savings on just the down payment.

4. You havent been on the job long enough

Most mortgage lenders like to see that youve been working the same job for at least two years. In fact, they calculate your average income based on your job history for the last 24 months. Being on the job that long shows a certain stability, and changing jobs or having an income gap signals insecurity. A major job change, such as moving from salary to commission-based pay, may cause your income to fluctuate and can add to uncertainty about your readiness to buy a home, says Moffitt. Even if you qualify based on expected income, what if you dont make that money in your new position?

5. You have poor (or no) credit

A bad credit score indicates some sort of financial problem, such as skipping out on paying a bill or two, filing for bankruptcy, or carrying too much debt. Take a close look at your credit report before making a decision to buy, says Moffitt. A mortgage lender may have questions about payments, loans, or other debts and may make suggestions that could require time to resolve. If it takes six months to fix, you might not be ready to buy just yet.

Having little or no credit history can also be problematic. David Hosterman, branch manager with Castle & Cooke Mortgage in Colorado, offers a tip: We take into account alternative credit trade lines. These types of credit are anything from rental history, car insurance, utilities, monthly subscription services, and cellphones. We are looking for a pattern of good credit with those companies for 12 months or longer.

6. Youre not sure what type of home you want

You might have thought only about buying a single-family home, but you have more options than you might think. For example, you could buy a duplex and earn some rent money by living on one side and renting out the other. Perhaps a condo or townhouse might better suit your needs  and be an easier transition from apartment living. Each has unique considerations for upkeep and responsibility. Its hard to say, Im ready to buy without knowing what each type of home has to offer, says Moffitt.

7. Youre not ready to stick around

Unless youre pretty sure that youll want to stay in the area for the next three to five years, youre not ready to buy. If you buy a house and have to sell the next year, youre likely to lose money because appreciation wont catch up to the closing costs and postpurchase expenses during that short time, says Moffitt. If your job is in limbo, or youre considering moving a few hours away to be closer to family in the near future, its wise to hold off on buying a home.

Are you ready to buy a house? Tell us why or why not in the comments!
As we enter the waning part of 2016 (yes, really), 2018 suddenly doesnt seem so far away. For half the country, give or take, that might be a scary thought; by 2018, well be well into the presidency of a Trump or a Clinton II, either of whom is going to make someone unhappy. At least we can look forward to the Film Academys new movie museum, which is set to open late that year.

Of course, weve been looking forward for a while. An academy museum has long been an academy objective, Jean Hersholt wrote on April 30, 1949.

Its right there in the 1948-1949 report of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, of which Hersholt was then president. We own many pieces of old equipment such as a Pathe camera, a nickelodeon, old projectors, etc. Hersholt explained. Within the past month, he added, arrangements have been made to set up an embryo museum exhibit in our present building. We are confident that a comprehensive museum collection will grow from this small beginning and that a museum building will someday be provided to house it.

Twelve years ago  time flies when youre having fun  Bruce Davis, then executive director of the Academy, and Frank Pierson, then president, told James Bates and me, then reporters for the Los Angeles Times, that the promised building was at hand. Pierson died in 2012. Davis retired. The museum, once meant to occupy Academy-owned land in Hollywood, eventually migrated to the Miracle Mile, where it will someday nest near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in a building that used to house the May Co. department store, and in a new, Renzo Piano-designed sphere, with glass bridges and a 1,000-seat theater.

That project isnt the only one chewing up mid-Wilshire Blvd.

From 6-8 PM on Wednesday, LACMA is hosting a public meeting on its campus to tell the public about its own planned makeover, a $600 million expansion that will obliterate some existing buildings, and send a new, Peter Zumthor-designed exhibition hall snaking right across Wilshire. Work is supposed to start in 2018, just as the Academy museum is scheduled to open, and it wont be done until 2023, exactly when construction of the Metro Rail Purple Line, which has already turned Wilshire into a no-go zone, is set to wrap. If all goes according to plan, most of the rubble should be clear in time for the movie museums fifth anniversary.

Story continues

An Academy spokesperson said Bill Kramer, who departed last year as the museums chief fundraiser, should have a replacement in the near future. In the future, too, is the intended appointment of a separate board to govern the museum.

Meanwhile, the Academy project is roaring along. Well, sometimes whimpering along, as the museum builders often have to schedule around the Purple Line diggers. At 3:32 PM last Thursday, things were pretty quiet. A construction elevator was jerking up and down the east side of the gutted May company structure, presumably servicing a crew that wasnt quite visible, though the entire back of the five-story building is missing. Someone was using a jack-hammer, deep inside. Outside, 10 hard-hats were carting lunch-buckets and leaning on fences, next to a pit full of pilings that might have something to do with that planned sphere.

Maybe the hard-hats were prepping for a Tuesday visit by Gregory Pomish, of the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. No stranger to the site, Pomish has stopped by at least 68 times since March to check on compliance with a supplemental micro-pile permit issued earlier this year. On Tuesday, hes supposed to look at some concrete slab that was OKd under an early start foundation permit from 2015. That one has already triggered 56 inspections, according to the records.

On the upside, according to a helpful person who answered the phone at the Los Angeles planning department, once youve cleared a condition through the inspectors, its good forever.

Presumably, the Academy wont need forever; but its not hard to imagine the $388 million museum project, which was once set for completion in 2017, slipping again, even though it is burning through donations and the proceeds of more than $340 million in so-called Oscar bonds. After all, the new museum is planted in and around the La Brea tar pits, where the hazards include stray methane (which once blew a manhole cover as high as my head in the middle of Wilshire) and an eerie indifference to time.

Those hard-hats were lounging near a mound of black dirt that may or may not hold scraps from the Ice Age. In the middle of Wilshire, a 50-foot boring machine is crusted with asphalt: Test drilling churned up fossils that say this used to be the beach. A few hundred yards away, paleontologists and volunteers were using chisels and dental picks to work through 23 crates of hardened goo that had been removed when LACMA built its underground parking, right next to the movie museum site. We dont know how long it will take, says a visitors guide, to pick through the crates, which weigh up to 123,000 pounds each, and hold the remains of dire wolves and giant camels who used to live here up to 30,000 years ago.

LIKE, MAN. IM TIRED, (OF WAITING), declares a sign that looks down from the side of one LACMA building. (It is a work of art by Sam Durant.)

Be calm, and dig on, responds a placard at the paleontologists work site.

Nearby, the Academy, its hard-hats and Inspector Pomish  sharp-eyed as a teratorn, risen from the muck  seem to be doing exactly that.

Related stories

Academy Pulls Back Curtain On 12 Focus Areas For Sci-Tech Oscars

Arthur Hiller Dies: Oscar-Nominated 'Love Story' Director & Former Academy President Was 92

Movie Academy Names Its 2016 Film Scholars
North Korea shut down its embassy in Uzbekistan early this month.

Embassy staff returned to North Korea late last month, while the building in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent was sold along with the official cars and other assets.

The Uzbek government demanded the closure as part of international sanctions against North Korea in response to the North's latest nuclear test in January.

A diplomatic source in Uzbekistan said, "Diplomatic relations have not been severed, but North Korean diplomats were virtually evicted by the Uzbek government rather than voluntarily closing down the mission due to financial problems."

The Tashkent embassy was the North's sole remaining diplomatic mission in Central Asia after the embassy in Kazakhstan was shut down in 1998.

Uzbekistan is home to around 180,000 descendants of ethnic Koreans and has been a strategic post for North Korea by supplying it with cheap raw materials like cotton.

Diplomatic sources expect more countries to follow suit.

Russia is the only former Soviet-bloc nation to house a North Korean embassy. Pyongyang is trying to reopen its embassy in Kazakhstan but has met with a lukewarm response.

North Korea now has 46 embassies around the world.
Adele's back at it! After postponing a concert in Phoenix, Arizona, last week, Adele returned to the stage at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The 28-year-old British songstress looked no worse for the wear while performing to the sold out arena, but backstage, she showed that she's still recovering from her recent illness.

On Instagram she shared a black and white photo of herself seemingly blowing her nose during Saturday night's show.

WATCH: Adele Ditches the Glam for Fresh-Faced Close-Up, But Is Forced to Cancel Concert  Find Out Why

After having to postpone the Aug. 16 date, Adele powered through two L.A. shows in a row, and even had some fun with fans during Sunday night's concert.

She invited one small female fan named Emerson on stage, even greeting her dog. An audience member recounted the event on Twitter, writing, "I was at the Adele concert and a little girl named Emerson yelled at her and asked to come on stage. Adele, adorable as always said.. A very British 'oh alright then, come on up' Emerson is 4 and it's her bday. Her parents bring her up on stage. Adele chats her up. Then Adele asks, 'and who's this?' Emerson says, 'Thats my mommy and my Mama' and it took a moment of recognition but the crowd went NUTS."

Though she's had a very successful start to her North American leg of her tour, Adele did face some difficulties last week when she fell ill. On Wednesday, she apologized for having to postpone her Phoenix show.

WATCH: Adele Wasn't Given a 'Formal Offer' to Perform at Super Bowl, According to NFL and Pepsi

"I can't do my show tonight, my second show here. I'm really, really sorry," she said in a video clip. "I've had a cold for a couple of days and I've been pushing through it and I did my show last night, and I loved it, but I pushed too hard. My cold has gotten the better of me."

Related Articles
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD recently announced that it will move out of its Sunnyvale headquarters to a 220,000 square foot, six-storied building in Santa Clara featuring modern amenities and features.



The company intends to shift to the new facility during the second half of 2017.



Why this Move?



The decision is an attempt to reduce the companys large footprint at One AMD Place. Efficiency and renovation are two other factors leading to the shift to the Santa Clara location.



As per some media reports, Advanced Micro has signed a long-term agreement with the Irvine Company for the under-construction site in Santa Clara Square that will include office spaces and retail shops alongside apartments. The Irvine Company has already signed on Ericsson and the Cambridge Industries Group for the mixed-use hub.



We also note that the 319,000 square-foot campus in Sunnyvale was acquired by the Irvine Company from W. P. Carey for $175 million for building apartments a few weeks ago. However, Advanced Micros management stated that the acquisition of the Sunnyvale location by the Irvine Company was not the reason for the companys relocation decision. Rather, Advanced Micro wanted to have its own building and hence the move.



Competition Comes Closer



The move to Santa Clara brings AMDs headquarters closer to those of its two major competitors Intel Corporation INTC and NVIDIA Corporation NVDA. While the former is a tough contender in the CPU space, the latter is a graphics processor behemoth. However, given the good growth trend in the video gaming industry, along with some of the companys innovative products such as Zen microarchitecture, Advanced Micro Devices looks poised for steady growth ahead.



ADV MICRO DEV Price

ADV MICRO DEV Price | ADV MICRO DEV Quote

Zacks Rank



At present, Advanced Micro Devices has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).



A better-ranked stock in the broader technology space is Alpha & Omega Semiconductor, Ltd. AOSL, sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



ADV MICRO DEV (AMD): Free Stock Analysis Report



ALPHA&OMEGA SEM (AOSL): Free Stock Analysis Report



INTEL CORP (INTC): Free Stock Analysis Report



NVIDIA CORP (NVDA): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
The AES Corporations AES subsidiary, AES Energy Storage, has won a contract from San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), a utility unit of Sempra Energy SRE, to build two new energy storage projects, totaling 37.5 megawatts (MW), in San Diego County, CA.



The contract followed the California Public Utilities Commissions (CPUC) approval of a proposal by SDG&E to build two energy storage projects. In May, the Southern California electric utilities were asked to speed up the installation of new energy storage alternatives by the CPUC to improve regional energy reliability and facilitate the addition of new renewable energy resources.



SDG&E has chosen Advancion 4, AES Corp.s fourth-generation battery-based energy storage platform, which has been designed for swift operation. Advancion is a smart, reliable and cost competitive substitute to peaking power plants which helps improve existing electric infrastructure and improves penetration of clean energy resources.



The energy storage arrays are scheduled to be operational by the end of Jan 2017. Once operational, they will improve regional reliability and incorporate an increasing share of renewable energy. The SDG&E arrays are expected to provide 37.5 MW of power for four hours at a stretch and serve as a flexible resource with a capacity of 75 MW for the grid.



The arrays will be integrated at two substation facilities of SDG&E  30 MW in Escondido and 7.5 MW in El Cajon. After completion, the Escondido array will be the leading battery-based energy storage operational project in the U.S. Both the arrays will comprise components from the finest Advancion certified suppliers, which include Samsung SDIs batteries and Parker Hannifins power conversion systems.

AES CORP Price

AES CORP Price | AES CORP Quote

According to James P. Avery, SDG&Es chief development officer, the batteries will maintain a reliable flow of energy to customers during times of urgent requirement. Being the countrys leading distributor of renewable resources, the company expects these batteries to efficiently incorporate the supply of clean energy in the power grid.



Since 2008, AES Corp. has been installing advanced battery-based energy storage on electric grids. Its recent installations were spread across the U.S., Northern Ireland and the Netherlands. AES Corp. is the most experienced energy storage provider in the world. It has over 3.0 million MW-hours of delivered service across 136 MW of energy storage projects in four countries. Additionally, it has 296 MW under construction or in late-stage development.



AES Corp. currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).



Stocks to Consider



A couple of better-ranked stocks in the utility space include Spark Energy, Inc. SPKE and Korean Electric Power Corp. KEP, both sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



KOREA ELEC PWR (KEP): Free Stock Analysis Report



AES CORP (AES): Free Stock Analysis Report



SEMPRA ENERGY (SRE): Free Stock Analysis Report



SPARK ENERGY (SPKE): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
By Sanjeev Miglani NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is set to deliver more arms to Afghanistan to help it fight Islamist militants, Kabul's envoy to New Delhi said, even if Pakistan is wary of closer military cooperation between countries lying to its east and west. India has provided a little over $2 billion in economic assistance to Afghanistan in the last 15 years, but has been more measured in providing weapons in order to avoid a backlash from Pakistan, which sees Afghanistan as its area of influence. Last December, after years of dragging its feet, New Delhi announced the supply of four attack helicopters in India's first transfer of lethal equipment to the government in Kabul since the hardline Islamist Taliban movement was toppled. Kabul immediately deployed three of the Russian Mi-25 attack helicopters to go after insurgents, and the fourth will be inducted in the next few weeks. Shaida Mohammad Abdali, the Afghan ambassador to India, said regional security was deteriorating and Afghan national forces were in dire need of military supplies to tackle the Taliban, Islamic State and other militant groups. "We are grateful for the four helicopters. But we need more, we need much more. Today we are heading into a situation that is worrisome for everyone in the region including India," he told Reuters in an interview. On Aug. 29, the head of the Afghan army, General Qadam Shah Shahim, is expected in New Delhi to submit a list of military equipment drawn up in consultation with the U.S. military, Indian defense officials said. It is not yet clear how much would be paid for and how much would be handed over for free. The equipment includes more Mi-25s, smaller helicopters used for transporting troops and medical emergencies, and spares for existing Russian-origin aircraft in the Afghan air force fleet. "The agenda for the army chief's visit is clear. We will be finalizing the enhancement of defense ties," Abdali said. India, he added, had told the Afghans that it would do whatever it could to meet the security forces' requirements. INDIAN LEADER RANKLES PAKISTAN The fact that much of the proposed equipment originates from Russia need not be a stumbling block to an agreement, the United States has said, despite Western sanctions against Moscow. Russia and the United States share a common goal in stabilizing Afghanistan, and India can act as a go-between to help re-equip Afghan forces which fall well short of the capacity required despite billions of dollars in U.S. spending. The Afghan government lost control or influence of nearly 5 percent of its territory between January and May, the U.S. government's top watchdog on Afghanistan said in a report, highlighting the challenges its forces are facing. But the move to increase cooperation with Afghanistan is likely to aggravate fears in Pakistan of being wedged between two hostile neighbors. Relations with both countries have cooled lately. Afghanistan says Pakistan must do more to stop militants operating on its territory, while India has blamed Pakistan for unrest in the disputed region of Kashmir. Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned up the dial a notch by making a rare reference to Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province in a recent speech. Asked about the prospect of closer military ties between Afghanistan and India, a Pakistan foreign ministry spokesman said the government did not comment on bilateral ties between two countries. But he warned against attempts to destabilize Pakistan, which, like its arch-rival India, has a nuclear arsenal. "Our expectation is that India should not be allowed to use Afghan soil to create instability in Pakistan." According to an Indian defense ministry official, discussions with Kabul included the possibility of increasing the number of Afghan officers being trained in Indian military institutions each year from around 800 now. U.S. SUPPORT The United States, which has allocated more than $68 billion to train and equip the Afghan security forces since 2002, has welcomed greater Indian military assistance to fill shortfalls in hardware and personnel. Earlier this month, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, held talks with Indian officials to find ways in which New Delhi could help the Afghan air force, which is struggling to maintain aging Russian aircraft because of sanctions on Moscow. Nicholson said donor nations had contributed $4.5 billion to Afghanistan, but those funds could not be used to buy Russian aircraft or spare parts because of the restrictions triggered by the conflict in Ukraine. India is not constrained by such considerations and can export Russian-made equipment it already owns or source hardware and spares from Russia to send on to Afghanistan. "Any additional aircraft or spare parts that India can provide Afghanistan would be greatly appreciated and welcomed by them to help build and maintain the Afghan Air Force," Nicholson said at the end of his trip. A Russian diplomat said Moscow supported efforts to strengthen Afghan forces, even if it cannot directly equip it. "Our policy is simple; we would not like to be involved directly, but we would support any initiative that strengthens the ability of the Afghan authorities to fight against terrorist groups and stabilize the situation in the country," the diplomat said. (Additional reporting by Doug Busvine in New Delhi, Josh Smith in Kabul and Tommy Wilkes in Islamabad; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
DENVER, CO / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2016 / New Age Beverages Corporation (NBEV) (formerly ABRW) the Colorado-based owner of the XingTea, XingEnergy, Aspen Pure, and the Bucha Live Kombucha brands today announced that they will hold an investor conference call to discuss the Company's quarterly and 1st half results, commercial and integration progress.

The Company will hold an investor conference call on Wednesday, August 24th, at 12:00 PM EST. Interested investors can listen to the call and participate in a question and answer session by dialing into the conference line at:

1-877-876-9176

Conference ID: Q2.

New Age Beverages Corporation was formed on June 30th 2016 when Bucha, Inc. acquired the assets and XingTea, AspenPure, and New Age Beverages LLC. One of the major planned benefits of the acquisition was a range of cost and revenue synergies totaling more than $7.5 million. In cost synergies the group is targeting cost of goods sold, shipping, operating expense and other savings. In revenue synergies, the Company is looking to leverage its existing customer relationships, and utilize existing distribution relationships with its own DSD operations and its network of DSD providers across the United States.

About New Age Beverages Corporation (nBev)

New Age Beverage Corporation is a Colorado-based, healthy functional beverage company originally founded in 2003 and re-created via the combination of XingTea, Aspen Pure Artesian Water, Bucha Live Kombucha, and New Age Beverages in June 2016. The Company trades under the newly issued symbol nBev (formerly ABRW) on the OTC exchange. The Company competes in the fast growing healthy functional beverage segments including Ready to Drink (RTD) Tea, Kombucha, Energy Drinks and Functional Waters with the Brands XingTea, Bucha Live Kombucha, XingEnergy, and Aspen Pure. The brands are sold in 46 states within the US and in more than 10 countries internationally across all channels via direct and store door distribution systems. The company operates the websites www.mybucha.com, www.xingtea.com, www.aspenpure.com.

Story continues

Safe Harbor Disclosure

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements are any statement reflecting management's current expectations regarding future results of operations, economic performance, financial condition and achievements of the Company including statements regarding New Age Beverage's expectation to see continued growth. The forward-looking statements are based on the assumption that operating performance and results will continue in line with historical results. Management believes these assumptions to be reasonable but there is no assurance that they will prove to be accurate. Forward-looking statements, specifically those concerning future performance are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. New Age Beverages competes in a rapidly growing and transforming industry, and other factors disclosed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission might affect the Company's operations. Unless required by applicable law, nBev undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

For investor inquiries about New Age Beverages Corporation please contact:

Chuck Ence

cence@newagebev.us

Websites:

www.mybucha.com

www.xingtea.com

www.aspenpure.com

SOURCE: New Age Beverages Corporation
Taiwanese shouting anti-communist slogans staged protests at an airport and a school on Monday against a visit by a top Shanghai official which they see as intended to promote China's unification with Taiwan.

Sha Hailin, a standing committee member of the Communist Party in the city and head of the United Front Work Department there, is the highest-level mainlander to visit since cross-strait ties worsened under Taiwan's new government.

He arrived in Taipei for an annual forum on municipal exchanges as protesters shouted "Sha Hailin, go back to China!" at the capital's Songshan airport.

Dozens of demonstrators waved placards reading "Expel propaganda communist, defend Taiwan's sovereignty" and "(Taipei mayor) Ko Wen-je sells out Taiwan". Some supporters also rallied outside the airport with welcome signs.

While most demonstrators were cordoned off, one man holding a poster got into the airport arrivals hall and shouted "Sha Hailin, get out!" as Sha walked by.

The protester scuffled briefly with policemen before being taken away.

Scores of protesters rallied again when Sha visited a high school to open a sports festival and played table tennis with Taiwanese students.

Relations with China have grown increasing frosty since Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency in January. Beijing is highly suspicious of Tsai because her party is traditionally pro-independence, and has warned her against any attempt at a breakaway.

China's Taiwan Affairs Office announced it had suspended official contact with Taipei after Tsai's government, which took office in May, failed publicly to accept the "one China" principle which governed relations under her predecessor.

Sha stressed that the basis for peaceful cross-strait relations was the recognition of "one China".

"If we want to maintain peaceful developments in cross-strait ties, I believe the political basis cannot be avoided... We will continue to work hard to build and solidify this political basis," Sha, who heads the visiting delegation in place of Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong, told reporters.

Story continues

Asked about the protests, he said: "There were also many people who welcomed me. Their voices were small but their number was bigger."

Taiwan has been self-ruling since splitting with the mainland in 1949 following a civil war but has never formally declared independence. Beijing still sees it as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

Critics claim Sha, as Shanghai's propoganda chief, intends to push during his visit for reunification and accuse Taipei mayor Ko of "selling out" to Beijing.

"We are very angry and we refuse China's propoganda to reunify Taiwan. Taiwan is an independent country. We must maintain our sovereignty and dignity," said protester Sherry Huang from the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) party.

"China has long wanted to annex Taiwan and we don't need to continue exchanges with it," said protester Hsu Ya-chi.

The TSU said it planned another demonstration Monday night at a welcome dinner for the Shanghai delegation in Taipei city hall, and vowed to protest throughout Sha's stay.
This report is part of a project on voting rights in America produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program.

SPARTA, Ga.  The cleansing of Americas voter registration rolls occurs every two years and has become a legal battleground between politicians who say the purges are fair and necessary, and voting rights advocates who contend that they discriminate.

Voting rights groups repeatedly have challenged states registration purges, including those in Ohio, Georgia, Kansas and Iowa, contending that black, Latino, poor, young and homeless voters have been disproportionately purged. In Florida, Kansas, Iowa and Harris County, Texas, courts have ordered elections officials to restore thousands of voters to the registration rolls or to halt purges they found discriminatory.

The 1993 National Voter Registration Act mandates that state and local elections officers keep voter registration lists accurate by removing the names of people who die, move or fail in successive elections to vote. Voters whove been convicted of a felony, ruled mentally incompetent or found to be noncitizens also can be removed. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission reported that 15 million names were scrubbed from the lists nationally in 2014.

News21 analyzed lists of nearly 50 million registered voters from a dozen states, and 7 million more who were removed over the last year. By comparing voter registration and purge lists against U.S. Census data, News21 found no national or statewide pattern of discrimination against voters based on race, ethnicity, poverty, age or surname.

But the data did show that purges disproportionately affected minority or low-income voters in certain communities, and white voters in others. In Cincinnati, poverty rates and voter removals appeared interrelated, while race appeared to affect the removal of voters in rural Hancock County, Georgia. In Vermillion County, Indiana, a shrinking population accounted for large numbers of white registered voters being removed from the rolls.

Story continues

David Becker, the director of elections initiatives at the nonpartisan Pew Center for Charitable Trusts, said the national pattern makes sense to him. I think youre finding exactly what Ive found in my experience, he told News21.

But Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who created the United States Election Project to track election and demographic data, said he was surprised by the lack of a pattern in the national findings, although hidden patterns of discrimination can be found on the local level. Sometimes you have to look under the hood, McDonald said.

Local election officials clean up voting registration lists under state laws governing who should be removed from the lists. Some states bar felons from voting, but they vary dramatically on which crimes disqualify voters or how quickly they can be reinstated. Some, but not all, states require elections officials to mail warning notifications to voters whose names are slated for removal. States also vary on how many elections a voter can sit out before being classified as inactive and later culled.

This story is part of Accountability. The latest investigations about waste, fraud, corruption, abuse and mismanagement. Click here to read more stories in this topic.

Don't miss another Accountability investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email.

Most states work together or with the federal government to compare voter registration lists to stop people from voting in two states in the same election. One in eight Americans move every year and often remain registered in two places. Few cancel their old registrations. The NVRA directed local elections officials to mail reminders to registered voters who had stopped voting in their jurisdictions to verify whether voters still live where they are registered and to establish who has moved. Those who fail to respond are placed on an inactive list and cut from voter registration rolls after one more missed election.

In 2005, Kansas created the Interstate Crosscheck System in which 30 states compare registration lists for duplicate entries. When duplicate listings are found, state elections notify each other or local elections offices. Its up to those local offices to remove those names from the voter rolls. Some do, some dont.

Pew created another name-matching tool in 2012. Its Electronic Registration Information Center has 21 state partners and compares more extensive records than Crosscheck.

At least 16 states also work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to apply its immigration database, called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, to confirm the citizenship of registered voters.

Some states use multiple systems to verify registrations. About 24 million U.S. voters have a mismatched name, address, signature or other clerical error on their voter registration forms, according to Pew, that can cause them to be struck from the rolls.

Nationwide, there are around 10,500 state, county and local elections offices. Resources for managing elections vary widely from large urban counties like Chicagos Cook County to small rural communities like Starr County, Texas. That accounts for much of the variety in how registration rolls are maintained.

Often its an administrative or technical issue, Pews Becker said. People are not deliberately trying to remove people. They have a very hard job. They have a legitimate interest to make sure we are not spending taxpayer money to send information to people who are not voters.

You want to make sure all eligible voters have a chance to vote and only eligible voters register, Becker said. Every eligible voter who wants to vote should have one record in one state list. That should be the goal. Thats an attainable goal.

Vermillion County, Indiana, typifies why cleaning up voter registration rolls is necessary.

In the two years leading up to the 2014 election, Vermillion County Clerk Florinda Pruitt scrubbed nearly 4 registrants in 10 in the small western county of corn and soybean fields.

Most of the 1,191 voters were removed in the current election cycle because of death or change of address, a News21 analysis found.

We really want people to vote. We really work at it. But if you dont want to vote, dont register. Dont clog our system, Pruitt said, adding no voter there had ever challenged a removal.

Indiana counties grew more assertive about culling registrations after the U.S. Justice Department sued in 2006 and the conservative group Judicial Watch sued in 2012. Judicial Watch argued successfully that Indiana had violated the NVRA by falling behind on keeping voter lists accurate.

Vermillion Countys seat, Newport, boomed during World War II, when locals worked in a nerve gas factory. A peeling mural portraying GIs and aircraft winning the war covers one side of a brick building. Like the munitions plant, residents are gone now.

Lots of people move. The powerhouse cut down work, construction worker Byron Fultz said over a Jim Beam and Sprite at Corner Bar, Newports place for drink and debate. A lot of people move here regularly, live here a year and move on.

By contrast, few people leave Sparta, the seat of Hancock County, Georgia, where race appeared to play a critical role in a voter purge in 2015. Hancock County has the third-lowest median income in the state. Half of the storefronts on Spartas main street are boarded up.

Last year, Sparta, whose population of around 1,300 is about 80 percent black, was about to choose between white and black candidates for mayor. The majority-white Hancock County Board of Elections sent teams block by block through Sparta looking for residents to vouch that their neighbors still lived where they were registered to vote.

On the say-so of neighbors, 174 voters were listed for removal, including Dion Hubert and his brother, whod been taking care of their ailing mother across town. Hubert, 29, skipped work to attend a hearing at the courthouse to petition the elections board. He prevailed, but many other Sparta residents never showed up.

They called name by name and if they didnt answer, theyd just cross them off the list, Hubert said. They got a kind of excitement out of what they were doing, by taking peoples names off the list.

Almost all voters purged from the rolls were black, according to a lawsuit filed later by the NAACP. The Hancock County Board of Elections declined interviews, but the county denied every allegation in court without elaboration. The case has not yet gone to trial.

Don't miss another Accountability investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email.

Ohio became a target of a voting rights lawsuit after Secretary of State Jon Husted oversaw the removal of about 2 million voters in the last two years. The ACLU and other advocacy groups argued that Ohio struck names exclusively because of voter inactivity, in violation of the NVRA.

Ohio State University election law professor Daniel Tokaji, who volunteered for the plaintiffs, told News21 that purges tend to disportionately harm poor people and minorities. We dont have to prove a racially discriminatory impact to win.

A federal judge agreed with Husted, ruling that Ohio did not violate the law because voters were purged for a variety of reasons. The case has since been appealed to the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which heard oral arguments in late July and has not yet ruled.

When Hamilton County, Ohio, where Cincinnati is the county seat, removed 75,000 voters this year, nearly half, and in some neighborhoods far more, were purged because of non-response. A News21 analysis found a connection between the poverty rate and racial composition of ZIP codes in the county and the purge rates of registered voters.

In central Cincinnati, where the poverty rate in the Clifton Heights neighborhood is double the citys average, Hamilton County officials so far removed 27 percent of the voters. Six miles west, in the almost exclusively white suburban Cheviot neighborhood where the poverty rate is half that of the region, the county purged 9 percent of voters.

Just south of Clifton Heights, near downtown Cincinnati, Brittany Middlebrooks, 26, walked through Washington Park with a clipboard, registering voters earlier this summer. She cited Ohios recent purges to warn people they might not get to vote if they dont re-register. I feel like they are trying to do their best to get us not be able to vote, MIddlebrooks told News21.

But conservative activist groups view inaccurate registration rolls as a problem for democracy. The conservative American Civil Rights Union has sued eight counties to cleanse the rolls. A year ago the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which litigates on behalf of the ACRU, said it sent warning letters to 141 more. In January, the legal foundation said it threatened to sue 30 counties.

Across the country, hundreds of other counties have more registered voters than people alive. If they dont clean up their rolls, they risk litigation, ACRU Chairwoman Susan Carleson wrote on the groups website. Every time an illegal voter casts a ballot, it steals someone elses legal vote. The goal is to ensure the integrity of the voting process.

The ACRU sued three small counties in Texas along the Rio Grande, which are overwhelmingly Latino, plus four Mississippi counties with black populations ranging from 34 percent to 72 percent. In Mississippis Jefferson Davis and Walthall counties, plus Zavala County, Texas, the ACRU won what it called historic consent decrees to compel reinvigorated purges.

Sean Young, senior staff attorney for the Voting Rights Project at the liberal-leaning American Civil Liberties Union, said the renewed focus on purging registration lists is no coincidence.

These groups are trying to use the statutes in the NVRA as a tool to disenfranchise voters, Young said. Their efforts have certainly been reinvigorated, in direct response to record numbers of registrations of African-Americans.

Election officials rely on a hodgepodge of data sources and name-matching tools to clear out ineligible voters: local death and marriage records, state or federal prison and court notices, the U.S. Social Security Administrations Death Index, the U.S Postal Services national change of address database, various immigration databases, vehicle registration records and other state voter lists.

The 30 states using the Kansas-based Interstate Crosscheck System match last names, first names and partial Social Security numbers to identify people who potentially have registered in more than one state. Some states include birthdays, ages or full birthdates. The service is free to member states.

Pews ERIC system charges 21 states $25,000 a year, plus their share of annual overhead costs. Created in 2012, ERIC is managed by a nonprofit partnership comprising the states elections officials. ERIC adds full middle names, suffixes like Jr. or Sr., full drivers license numbers, addresses and full birthdates to the matching software. States pay for the subscription to access more complete federal databases and promise to mail all eligible voters to remind them to register.

States also can use the Homeland Security Departments SAVE immigration database to check individuals in the voting rolls against the governments lists detailing the citizenship status of foreigners whove entered the country.

In 2012, Florida used SAVE to identify 180,000 mostly Hispanic noncitizens and told county elections officials 2,650 of them were registered to vote, according to court records. The Justice Department sued to halt the purge. When Latino advocates alleged that some purged voters were, in fact, citizens, they also sued in federal court. Florida volunteered to suspend its use of SAVE, recognizing mistakes.

Latinos and Asians are more likely to be falsely matched with noncitizens because those cultures have fewer surnames, demographers and election experts widely agree. Nonetheless, at least 16 states, many, such as Texas and Arizona, with large Latino and immigrant populations, still use SAVE or have sought federal approval to use the database.

State elections officials in Washington and Colorado, which both use Crosscheck and ERIC, told News21 that ERIC was more reliable.

Colorado Elections Director Judd Choate gave Crosscheck mixed grades. Its the only tool for identifying double voters across states, Choate said, noting ERIC does not yet track voting histories and when they do, well drop out of the interstate (Crosscheck) compact. He said the Crosscheck data can be a year out of date, which makes it kind of lousy for keeping accurate lists and finding people who voted in two states.

A Washington state audit of the ERIC system in 2014 found statistically no cases in which people who were legally registered were falsely flagged as ineligible. ERIC also identified more dead voters, Washington found.

We never took action on any of the Interstate Crosscheck, the Kansas program, said Stuart Holmes, election information systems supervisor for the Washington secretary of states office.

There will always be problems. We will not have a mistake-free election, Pews Becker said. Were doing better than we ever have before. Were not doing as well as wed like in an ideal world.

Emily L. Mahoney, Hillary Davis and Jimmy Miller contributed to this report.

This story is part of Accountability. The latest investigations about waste, fraud, corruption, abuse and mismanagement. Click here to read more stories in this topic.

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.
Another member of the American Crime cadre of actors is set for the third installment of the ABC anthology series from John Ridley. Benito Martinez, who co-starred in the first season and guest starred in Season 2, will return to American Crime for season 3.

He joins fellow retuning players Timothy Hutton, Felicity Huffman, Regina King, Lili Taylor, Richard Cabral and Connor Jessup in the acclaimed series, executive produced by Ridley and Michael McDonald. His character provides a further glimpse into Season 3, which explores labor issues, economic divides and individual rights in North Carolina.

Ever since Benito brought the role of Alonzo Gutierrez to life in season one, John and I have been looking for a character that would be as memorable and worthy of Benitos talent. He will be tackling the role of a man searching for his missing son, said McDonald.

The Shield alum Martinez, who recently worked opposite Tom Cruise on the crime thriller American Made and had recurring roles on How To Get Away with Murder and The Blacklist, is repped by Ro Diamond at SDB Partners.

Related stories

'The View' 20th Anniversary Show: Some Co-Hosts Look Back In Clips

Pete Hammond's Emmy Handicaps 2016: Outstanding Limited Series

Pundits Weigh In On Degree Of Desperation In ABC's 'Scandal'-less Thursday Promo. Mission Accomplished.
North Korea on Saturday accused defector Thae Yong-ho, the No. 2 diplomat in its London embassy, of running from punishment and called him "human scum."

It was Pyongyang's first public reaction since news of Thae's defection to South Korea broke last week.

The official [North] Korean Central News Agency said Thae had been recalled to Pyongyang in June because he embezzled state funds, sold official secrets and sexually assaulted a minor.

The statement gave no evidence of the claim but added Thae "proved himself to be human scum who betrayed the fatherland" by fleeing.

The shrill reaction seems aimed at minimizing the impact of Thae's defection on morale. A Unification Ministry official here said the claims are "ludicrous" and "seek to tarnish Thae as a criminal simply to protect the regime."

Other state media did not mention the defection.


Donald Trump may regret some of his recent public comments that have caused personal pain. But conservative commentator Ann Coulter, author of a new book boosting Donald Trumps candidacy, is refusing to back down from her attacks on the father of a fallen Muslim American soldier. Indeed, Coulter accused the father of wanting Sharia to be enforced in the U.S.

She had taken issue with Khizr Khans speech at the Democratic National Convention last month when he waved his pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution and implored the Republican presidential candidate to read it.

At the time, Coulter, a political provocateur, fired off a tweet criticizing the Gold Star father  who lost his son Humayun Khan in the Iraq War  as an angry Muslim with a thick accent.

You know what this convention really needed? An angry Muslim with a thick accent like Fareed Zacaria.  Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) July 29, 2016

On Monday, Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff asked Coulter if she regretted anything about the tweet, other than misspelling journalist Fareed Zakarias last name in a comparison to Khan.

Oh no! I love that tweet! she replied.

Coulter said she sent that tweet while exercising on the elliptical machine and watching the angry Muslim speak.

To have this angry Muslim standing with his hajjib-wearing wife  saying nothing  haranguing us, telling us lies about our Constitution, she continued. You know, what he shouldve been doing was waving Sharia law and telling Americans to read it instead of telling Trump to read the Constitution, because were all going to be living under Sharia law if this guy has his way.

Despite Coulters claim, Khan previously told CNNs Anderson Cooper, I do not stand for any Sharia law because there is no such thing.

In a different tweet, Coulter was critical of Ghazala Khan for standing silently beside her husband while he spoke. The comment echoed Donald Trumps own reaction to the speech  implying that a strict form of Islam kept her from speaking. At the time, Ghazala Khan responded to Trump by saying she was too overwhelmed with emotion over her sons death to address the convention crowd.

Story continues

What about the MOTHER of an American hero? She stood submissively in a hijab by husbands side. https://t.co/2prFRoyoaM  Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) July 29, 2016

Isikoff asked if it was appropriate way to discuss a woman who lost her son fighting for the United States.

This is the way to talk about someone haranguing us about an important public policy. If Democrats want to make that argument, send out someone I cant attack, she said.

Coulter accused Democrats of having a habit of using victims as human shields who are beyond criticism. She argued that Democratic politicians such as Tim Kaine or John Kerry should have been tapped to give the convention speech attacking Trumps proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

What, are they going send out an orphan whose parents had just been murdered [sic] in a horrible auto accident to present their tax plan? Coulter asked.
Tripoli (AFP) - Fighters of Libya's unity government, backed by US air strikes, have recaptured more ground from jihadists holed up in the centre of the coastal city of Sirte, loyalist forces said Monday.

"Our forces have retaken the internal security building used as a prison by the Islamic State (IS)" group, as well as a courthouse, the Al-Naga district and Dubai Street, the operations centre for fighters loyal to the Government of National Accord (GNA) said.

A statement said "the new victory" was achieved in clashes which raged throughout Sunday in the face of "desperate resistance by the jihadists".

IS sniper positions were "neutralised" in two US air strikes and "our forces destroyed two booby-trapped cars... without loss in our ranks," it said.

However, 12 fighters were killed and 85 wounded in Sunday's clashes, the hospital in Misrata, 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of Tripoli where the pro-GNA military command is based, said on its Facebook page.

Pro-GNA forces, backed since the start of August by US air strikes, began an assault in mid-May to expel IS from what had been its Sirte stronghold.

The jihadists seized control of the city, which had been the hometown of Libya's slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi, in June 2015.

They fought their way into Sirte on June 9 and have since faced a barrage of sniper fire, suicide bombings and booby traps, pinning down the jihadists in a downtown area near the sea.

More than 350 pro-GNA fighters have been killed and nearly 2,000 wounded in the battle, according to medical sources. IS casualties figures are unavailable.

Sirte itself has been emptied of its residents, apart from families of IS militants, according to the pro-GNA forces.

American warplanes had carried out 65 strikes on IS positions in Sirte up until August 19, according to US Africa Command (AFRICOM).

Pentagon spokesman Gordon Trowbridge in mid-August estimated that jihadist fighters in Sirte numbered fewer than 1,000.
Apple has acquired a California-based startup thats been working on a platform for users to store and manage their personal health data, Fast Company reports. The acquisition happened earlier this year; the company is just now confirming it.

The startup, Gliimpse, was relatively small, having only $1 million in funding since launching in 2013, according to CrunchBase. And Apple did not reveal terms of the deal, instead offering FastCo the companys boilerplate acquisition comment: Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.

That said, Apples interest in the firm is another signal of the companys growing interest in personal health and wellbeing. The company has already rolled out health software like HealthKit (which aims to provide users a one-stop-shop for their personal health data) and ResearchKit (designed to let researchers gather data from subjects devices). The Apple Watch, meanwhile, is rumored to be getting a big health-oriented revamp in the coming weeks.

What explains Apples healthcare projects? The companys CEO, Tim Cook, has offered two reasons in recent interviews. First, the death of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs clearly impacted Cook on a personal level, perhaps driving the companys efforts. I know this sounds probably bizarre at this point, but I had convinced myself that he would bounce, because he always did, said Cook of his predecessor in an interview with The Washington Post. (Cook volunteered to donate a piece of his liver to the ailing Jobs; Jobs refused the offer.)

But Cook also spies a business opportunity in the nearly $3 trillion healthcare industry as the company faces flagging hardware sales. Heres an excerpt from another recent Cook interview, this one with FastCos Rick Tetzeli:
Arctic sea ice is melting at a rate far faster than anyone thought, and it is already wildly, and perhaps permanently, changing the region, and the planet.

Historically, sea ice forms every winter across the top of the planet, and covers much of the Arctic Ocean. Every summer, the ice melts a bit and retreats, only to repeat the cycle again. But since the 1980s, the ice has been retreating further and further overall, contributing to sea level rise, changes to ecosystems, and erosion so severe it is biting off chunks of coastlines in Alaska, Canada and elsewhere.

As 2016 continues apace to be one of the warmest years on record , Arctic sea ice levels appear to be among the lowest on record, said Tom Wagner, program manager for NASA's cryosphere research  a name given to the study of frozen regions of the planet. "It doesn't look like the ice is healing or growing back."

An animation showing the annual retreat of Arctic ice between 1989 and 2015. (Source: NASA)

"By some accounts we have lost more than two-thirds of the ice that used to be back in the 1980s," Wagner said. "This looks to be a very, very long-term trend and we are only going to be losing more ice.

This matters because the "health" of the ice is considered a general indicator of what is going on in the Earth's total climate system.

"This is not something that will affect humanity in the far off future," Wagner said, "loss of this ice is already wildly changing the Arctic," and rippling outward to the rest of the planet.

"The planet is not just changing, it is changed," Wagner said. "And we have to deal with the change that has occurred. The melting of the glaciers in Alaska and Canada and Greenland is already raising sea levels to the point that Miami and New York are experiencing flooding."
Hong Kongs rapidly growing independence movement has intensified its battle against the citys pro-China establishment, with one of the movements main parties challenging the government to arrest its members en masse after a prominent lawyer demanded it be deemed illegal.

In a statement released late Thursday, the Hong Kong National Party (HKNP) said the semiautonomous territorys independence is not something that an individual can stop, and moreover not something that a country can reverse, according to local news website Hong Kong Free Press.

The party invites the Hong Kong Communist Colonial government to gazette and list the Hong Kong National Party as an illegal organization and to arrest all members, so destroying the facade of the so-called one country, two systems, the statement added, referring to the principle under which the city is ruled by China but enjoys a high degree of autonomy and certain political freedoms.

The HKNP was responding to a statement earlier in the day by Alan Hoo, a very prominent local barrister and chairman of the Basic Law Institute  a shadowy, pro-Beijing entity set up to promote Hong Kongs de facto constitution.

Hoo demanded that the Chinese government criminalize any advocacy of secession from China, and declare the party an illegal organization.

It wants to topple the Chinese Peoples Governments sovereignty in Hong Kong, he said, according to local media reports.

Hong Kongs separatist movement  long dismissed as a radical fringe  has gathered momentum in recent weeks, with a recent poll showing 1 in 6 Hong Kongers supports independence from China (the figure climbs to 40% for the 15-to-24 age group). A pro-independence rally earlier this month, the first of its kind, saw an attendance of thousands.

The movement has grown pretty fast, David Zweig, an expert on Chinese politics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, tells TIME. Five or six years ago it was a couple hundred people, he adds, now its well into the thousands.

Story continues

The Hong Kong government has responded by attempting to stymie the movements proponents wherever possible, banning six pro-independence activists from next months legislative elections and warning teachers in the citys schools that discussing independence could see their teaching licenses revoked. The election ban has been met with more demonstrations, with hundreds taking to the streets on Sunday in protest.

Leading establishment figures have also stepped up their rhetoric, not only against the separatist groups but also younger pro-democracy activists like Joshua Wong.

Fanny Law, a member of the citys top decisionmaking body known as the Executive Council, called for a probe into the family backgrounds of those advocating independence in secondary schools, foremost among them a group that recently called for a the formation of a pro-independence Hong Kong Army. The former president of the Hong Kong Law Society, meanwhile, denounced the recent sentences handed down to student leaders Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow  who were given community service in lieu of being imprisoned for their role in the 2014 pro-democracy protests known as the Umbrella Revolution  as inappropriately lenient, demanding that they be reviewed and increased.

The Hong Kong government also issued a terse, seemingly out-of-the-blue statement that independence activists from neighboring, self-ruled island of Taiwan are not welcome in the city.

Beijing sees this as one more component or one more threat from the periphery for separatism, and just something that they will not tolerate, says Zweig. They dont like it in Taiwan, but they dont have the leverage in Taiwan that they have in Hong Kong, so theyre going to squeeze Hong Kong.

But the more Beijing tries to actively suppress Hong Kong independence, he says, the larger the section of the population it could invariably galvanize.

Hong Kong society is likely to push back and support the right of people to express themselves, Zweig says.

Indeed, many of the protesters at Sundays rally told the South China Morning Post that they didnt necessarily support independence but found the banning of political candidates unacceptable.

Theres also a more ominous potential effect of Beijings increasing belligerence towards the independence movement.

The more radical elements within society will, if you push them, turn towards more violent means, Zweig warns. Maybe [Chinese authorities] want to do that, and they have an excuse to crack down even further.
The Unification Ministry in an emergency briefing Sunday warned of an impending provocation from North Korea after the defection of a senior diplomat.

The Ministry did not say why it decided to call an emergency briefing at the weekend or what kind of provocation it expects.

"North Korea intended to hold a rally on Liberation Day on Aug. 15 to criticize joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises and divide public sentiment in the South," the ministry said in a press release handed out to reporters. "But it abruptly abandoned the plan."

The ministry said the defection of Thae Yong-ho, the No. 2 man at the North Korean Embassy in London, "may be causing tremors in the North as well as hurting the country's image abroad."

It is therefore likely that, on past form, the regime will carry out some kind of stunt for internal purposes and to vent its rage.

"There is a considerable chance that the North may implement some sort of provocation to help rally its people and consolidate the regime's hold on power," the ministry said.

A ministry official said the regime also sent agents abroad to target South Korean nationals after claiming that the South kidnapped a group of North Korean restaurant staff in China in April.

The ministry in a separate handout said in the early years of leader Kim Jong-un's rule, North Koreans defected primarily to escape tough living conditions, but more recently they are fleeing due to disillusionment with his leadership.

From 2010 to 2013, 40.1 percent of North Korean defectors cited "hunger and economic difficulties" as the prime reason for their defection, while 39.6 percent cited "discontent and disillusionment" with the regime and "yearning for freedom" as the main reason. But from 2014 to 2016, only 12.1 percent cited poverty but 64.9 percent disaffection.


Ascena Retail Group Inc. ASNA seems to be gearing up for the fall season, as the company announced the relocation of one of its dressbarn stores. The relocated store is housed at 1200 Hamburg Turnpike, in Waynes Preakness Shopping Center.



As part of the store opening, the company announced free gifts for customers with every purchase. Also, shoppers at the store will have access to designer clothing and smart style solutions, along with personalized wardrobe advice from expert associates on the floor.



A wholly-owned subsidiary of Ascena, dressbarn seeks to enhance customers shopping experience with its attractive, unique and reasonably priced product assortments ranging from sizes 424. Ascena currently operates over 830 dressbarn stores in the U.S.



Ascena has been on a roll in terms of store expansion. In fact, earlier this month, the company announced plans to open a dressbarn outlet in California. The company has been implementing the store expansion strategy for its other brands as well.



Evidently, over the last weekend, Ascena opened a new Lane Bryant outlet in Florida. Lane Bryant operates about 764 full-line and outlet stores in the country. It targets plus-size women aged 3045, catering to sizes 1428. The brand also has an online presence.



With the consistent implementation of its store expansion strategy, Ascena aims to expand its presence and recognition across communities. As of the end of third-quarter fiscal 2016 and following the acquisition of ANN Inc., Ascena operates over 4,900 stores across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.



This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock closed trade at $8.95 on the last trading day, marking an upside of 2.1%.



ASCENA RETAIL Price

ASCENA RETAIL Price | ASCENA RETAIL Quote

Stocks to Consider



Some better-ranked stocks in the same industry include The Children's Place, Inc. PLCE, sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), American Eagle Outfitters Inc. AEO and Citi Trends, Inc. CTRN, both carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



AMER EAGLE OUTF (AEO): Free Stock Analysis Report



CITI TRENDS INC (CTRN): Free Stock Analysis Report



CHILDRENS PLACE (PLCE): Free Stock Analysis Report



ASCENA RETAIL (ASNA): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
MADRID  AT&T-owned DirecTV Latin America, the regions biggest satellite TV multi-channel operator, has acquired rights to European heist thriller The Last Panthers, a flagship television-series co-production of Europes biggest two pay-TV groups, Sky and Vivendis Canal Plus.

The Last Panthers joint distribution worldwide is handled by Vivendi-owned Studiocanal and Sky Vision. DTVLA will broadcast The Last Panthers, an intricate Europe-wide crime saga, from Aug. 22.

With 19 million clients in Latin America, thanks in large part to partnerships with Globo at Sky Brasil and Televisa at Sky Mexico, DirecTV will add a score or more territories to The Last Panther sales markets, which now reach 122 territories in total, a mark of just how widely select Euro TV series are licensing these days.

Canal Plus aired The Last Panthers in France, which Sky rolled it out Nov. 22 across all five European territories where it operates, reaching 21 million subscribers in Britain, Germany, Italy, Austria and Ireland. Prior sales were closed with SBS Australia, HBO Nordics and across all of Fox Networks Group Crime channels in Eastern Europe.

DirecTVs bow of The Last Panthers is the latest deal announced in a bold drive by Sky and Canal Plus to partner on crime thrillers which have the authenticity of great U.S. modern TV classics but bring distinctly European locales and a European feel to the table.

Commissioned by Sky Atlantic and Canal Plus with Sundance TV, the series was produced by Frances Haut et Court TV, makers of The Returned (which also aired on Sundance TV), and Britains Warp Films (Southcliffe), a regular Studiocanal movie production partner. Featuring a prestige European cast  Samantha Morton (Minority Report, Longford), French star Tahar Rahim (A Prophet, The Past), Croatian Goran Bogdan (We Will Be the Champions) and John Hurt (Midnight Express, Elephant Man)  The Last Panthers was shot in English, French and Serbo-Croat and set in London, Marseilles and the Balkans.

Story continues

It kicks off with a daring diamond robbery in London, which has all the hallmarks of the Balkans Pink Panthers, then transfers to Marseilles and the Balkans as a British loss adjuster, Naomi (Morton), is sent by her shady boss (Hurt) to investigate the crime.

Naomi and her boss both have their personal agendas, though Naomis key backstory is delayed until late in the first seasons six episodes. The Last Panthers also posits a new European crime scene where the smart money isnt in small-time local racketeering (Marseilles) or jewel heists (London) but rather in a development contract for a new E.U.-backed airport in the Balkans. And everyone  Eurocrats, Naomis insurance firm, the Pink Panthers  wants a bit of the action.

Willard Tessel, general manager of OnDirecTV, said the series felt closer to cinema than to television.

The Last Panthers was selected as the 2015 Mipcom opening-night world-premiere TV screening. It was also nominated for best international co-production by the Edinburgh Intl. Television Festival 2016, and competes in the category of best breakout international drama for Mipcom 2016s upcoming Content Innovation Awards, presented by Digital TV Europe.

Related stories

Mediaset Takes Legal Action Against Vivendi Citing Breach of Contract in Pay-TV Deal

Pay TV Operator Sky Plans Spain Launch of Streaming Service Now TV

Channel 4, Sky Invest in TV Rights Trading Platform TRX
WHITE ROCK, BC / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2016 / Azarga Metals Corp. ("Azarga Metals" or the "Company") (AZR.V) announces an update on drilling at its Unkur Copper-Silver Project in the Zabaikalsky administrative region of eastern Russia. Two holes have been completed since drilling commenced approximately two weeks ago and both have intersected distinct zones of visible mineralization.

Hole AM-007 intersected approximately 23 meters of visible copper-bearing mineralization from 56 meters to 78 meters and hole AM-003 intersected approximately 20 meters of visible copper-bearing mineralization from 40 meters to 60 meters.

Azarga Metals' president and CEO Dorian L. (Dusty) Nicol commented, "My enthusiasm for Unkur, already very high, is now even higher and I am very optimistic about what we will be able to drill out. Its encouraging technically and for our shareholders."

DRILLING UPDATE:

Since commencing with two rigs drilling diamond core drill-holes two weeks ago, Azarga Metals has completed the first two holes at its Unkur Copper-Silver Project as per the table below.

Both holes encountered mineralized intersections in excess of 20 meters. Visual inspection of the core shows the presence of both oxidized copper and copper-bearing sulphide mineralization principally in the form of chalcocite.

Core from drill-hole AM-007 showing visible mineralization

To view the image, please click here

Source: Azarga Metals

Close-up of core from drill-hole AM-003 showing combination of chalcocite and oxidized copper

To view theimage, please click here

Source: Azarga Metals

Core samples from the two completed holes will be dispatched to SGS Minerals Services in Chita today and assay results for those are expected in October.

FIRST PHASE DRILLING PROGRAM:

Azarga Metals is now approximately one quarter through its first phase drilling program, which aims to drill between eight and ten holes totaling approximately 3,000 cumulative linear meters. The two drill rigs currently at Unkur are expected to operate through the end of October. Assays for the program should be received by the Company in the October through December period.

Story continues

Drill rig operating at drill-hole location AM-003

To view the image, please click here

Source: Azarga Metals



CEO Dorian L. (Dusty) Nicol and General Manager Sergei Stefanovich inspecting core from drill-hole AM-003

To view the image, please click here

Source: Azarga Metals

Further details of the first phase drilling program at Unkur were contained in the Company's news release of 2 June 2016.

UNKUR COPPER-SILVER PROJECT:

Azarga Metals owns 60% of the Unkur Copper-Silver Project along with the right to acquire the remaining 40% in the future.

Sediment-hosted copper and silver mineralization has been identified across the 5,390 hectare project license area, in outcrops, trenches and by historical diamond drilling. The prior exploration outlined a large area of high-grade shallow stratiform sediment hosted copper-silver 20 to 50 meters thick over an area four to six kilometers long.

Further details concerning Unkur Copper-Silver Project are contained in a technical report filed by the Company as per its news release of 5 April 2016.

Qualified Person:

The Company's President and Chief Executive Officer, Dorian L. (Dusty) Nicol, B.Sc. Geo, MA Geo, a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101, has reviewed and approved the exploration information disclosures contained in this Press Release.

About Azarga Metals Corp.:

Azarga Metals is a mineral exploration and development company that owns 60% of the Unkur Copper-Silver Project in the Zabaikalsky province in eastern Russia.

AZARGA METALS CORP.

"Dusty Nicol"

Dorian L. (Dusty) Nicol, President and CEO

For further information please contact: Doris Meyer, at +1 (604) 536-2711 ext 6, or visit www.azargametals.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.

Cautionary Statement:

This news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on the Corporation's current expectations and estimates. Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "suggest", "indicate" and other similar words or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from estimated or anticipated events or results implied or expressed in such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others: the actual results of current planned exploration activities; conclusions of economic evaluations; changes in project parameters as plans to continue to be refined; possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates; accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing; and fluctuations in metal prices. There may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Corporation disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein.

SOURCE: Azarga Metals Corp.
Newly-released emails from Hillary Clintons tenure as secretary of state raise fresh questions about whether the Clinton Foundation helped its donors gain access and special treatment from the State Department during her time in office.

The documents, released by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, appear to show Bahraini Crown Prince Salman attempting to arrange a meeting with Clinton in June 2009 by using his connections to the foundation after failing to get immediate access to her through what one of her aides refers to as normal channels.

The emails show Clinton aide Huma Abedin and Doug Band, a senior executive at the Clinton Foundation, discussing a request by Bahraini Crown Prince Salman to meet with Clinton in June 2009.

[Hes] asking to see her, said Band. Good friend of ours.

But Abedin, a longtime Clinton confidante who was serving as Clintons deputy chief of staff, notes that he already placed a request through normal channels.

I asked and she said she doesnt want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel, Abedin wrote, referring to Clinton.

According to the Clinton Foundation website, Bahrain has given up to $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

In a follow up email two days later, Abedin wrote that shed suggested a 10 a.m. meeting with the crown prince and HRC. The two eventually met in June and a photographer captured images.

The Clinton campaign denied that Clinton ever did any favors for the charitys donors during her tenure in a statement on Monday. No matter how this group tries to mischaracterize these documents, the fact remains that Hillary Clinton never took action as Secretary of State because of donations to the Clinton Foundation, said Josh Schwerin, a campaign spokesman.

Judicial Watch obtained the emails after receiving them through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The group released a previous batch of emails earlier this month that showed an executive at the charity trying to put a billionaire in contact with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon because of the donors interest in the region. Another email appeared to show the foundation trying to get a job for an individual in the U.S. government and Clintons staffers said they would look into it.

Story continues

The latest release comes as the State Department said Monday it is reviewing almost 15,000 previously undisclosed emails that the FBI recovered as part of its investigation into Clintons email practices. Those emails had not originally been disclosed by Clintons attorneys. A federal judge is pushing the State Department to start releasing those documents before Foggy Bottoms planned mid-October drop date.

Clintons Republican rival, Donald Trump, has repeatedly criticized her for the potential conflict of interest.

The Clintons have spent decades as insiders lining their own pockets and taking care of donors instead of the American people, Trump said last week. It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history.

The Clinton campaign has said it will ban foreign and corporate donations to the charity if Clinton wins the presidency.
Brussels (AFP) - Belgian legend "Toots" Thielemans has died after a 70-year career as the world's most famous harmonica player during which he made music with some of the biggest names in jazz.

Jean-Baptiste Frederic Isidore Thielemans, known affectionately as "Toots", died in his sleep in a Brussels hospital early on Monday, his manager Veerle Van de Poel said. He was 94.

"It comes as a bit of a shock and surprise as he was doing very well after suffering a fall last month," Van de Poel told AFP.

Born in 1922 in the working class Marolles district of Brussels, Thielemans got his big break when he joined Benny Goodman on a European tour in 1950 before moving to the United States where he teamed up with other jazz greats, including Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.

He took up the harmonica as a hobby and then during World War II, as described on his official website, he became hooked on jazz.

The nickname followed, taken from US musician Toots Mondello, a swing jazz saxophonist, and Toots Camarata, a trumpet player, composer and arranger.

"He brought a rather banal instrument intended for campsites to almost sacred heights," said jazz historian Marc Danval.

Gypsy-jazz great Django Reinhardt and Ray Ventura were major inspirations. A chronic asthma condition also influenced his unique style of play.

- 'One of the greatest' -

Buoyed by the commercial success of his now standard "Bluesette" in 1962, he played harmonica on the soundtrack for the hit Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight film "Midnight Cowboy" in 1969 and many others.

Thielemans also accompanied non-jazz artists such as Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Nick Cave. He also played the closing theme on the popular children's TV programme Sesame Street.

In 2001, Belgian King Albert II made him a baron, sealing his status as one of the country's best-known figures on a par with Tour de France great Eddy Merckx.

Story continues

In recent years, Thielemans had to cope with failing health but he refused to let this put him off and in 2012 he played a concert in Brussels to mark his 90th birthday before setting out on a world tour.

However, age and poor health caught up with Toots, and he gave up touring in 2014.

"We have lost a great musician, a heart-warming personality. All my thoughts are with the family and friends of Toots Thielemans," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said in a tweet.

For musician and producer Quincy Jones, who famously took Michael Jackson's career to new heights with "Thriller", Toots was one of the all-time greats.

"I can say without hesitation that Toots is one of the greatest musicians of our time," Jones is quoted as saying on Thieleman's website.

A jazz festival held in his name was due to take place next month in the Belgian town of La Hulpe where Thielemans resided.
They may be on different parts of the food chain, but this lion cub and a sea otter have become instant, inseparable best friends.

Bosu, the 3-month-old cub, loves spending time with Kappa the otter. The unlikely dynamic duo met when Bosu was only 2 months old.

Read: Abandoned Lion and Tiger Cubs Will Grow Up Together as Siblings

Both animals were brought to the Zoological Wildlife Foundation in Florida at a very young age.

Bosu was donated to the conservation by Myrtle Beach Safari while Kappa was acquired from an exchange program, Nurtured by Nature.

Read: Rescued Otter Flies To New Home On Private FedEx Jet, Dines On Shrimp

According to Frances Ramos, a public relations specialist for the wildlife foundation, the four-legged friends often play in an animal encounter room where guests can visit and interact with them.

We let the animals play so they can become better acquainted, Ramos told InsideEdition.com. It is safe for the otter to be with the lion because there is also supervision around.

Although the two wouldnt cross paths in the wild, thanks to the volunteers at the conservation, Bosu and Kappa can chase each others tails to their hearts content.

Watch: Lion, Tiger, and Bear Are Inseparable After Being Found Abused in Basement

Related Articles:
Naples (Italy) (AFP) - The leaders of Italy, France and Germany meet Monday to lay the groundwork for a summit aimed at salvaging the European project in the wake of Britain's shock vote to leave.

Europe's economic outlook, jihadist attacks, the refugee and migrant drama, the Syrian conflict, and relations with Russia and Turkey will all be on the table on the lush Italian island of Ventotene.

But more than anything else, the meeting, held three weeks before an informal EU summit in Bratislava of 27 states -- minus Britain -- will focus on how to reverse the rise of euroscepticism and strengthen the hard-hit bloc.

It will be the second round of trilateral talks between Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At their first, shortly after Britain's June 23 vote, the leaders called for "a new impulse" for the EU.

Critics have demanded less talk more action over a crisis some states fear could lead to similar referendums in other countries, particularly the Netherlands, which opposes changes to the EU to achieve closer integration.

Coming up with a road map acceptable to all will not be easy, with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia vowing after Britain's vote to draw up their own plans for a less-centralised EU.

Renzi will welcome Hollande and Merkel in Naples at 1400 GMT before they travel on to Ventotene, where they will visit the grave of Altiero Spinelli, one of the founding fathers of the ideal of European integration.

Imprisoned on the island by the fascist government during the Second World War, Spinelli and fellow captive Ernesto Rossi co-wrote the "Ventotene manifesto" calling for a federation of European states.

- Defence, economy, culture -

In another symbolic move, the leaders will hold a working dinner and press conference on Italy's Garibaldi aircraft carrier, the flagship of the EU's "Sophia" mission against people trafficking in the Mediterranean.

Story continues

It will be the start of an intensive tour of talks for the German chancellor as she attempts to coordinate a response to one of the EU's biggest crises in decades and quell fears Berlin wants to monopolise the debate.

After a series of deadly attacks by the Islamic State group (IS), the three leaders are expected to explore greater co-operation on counter-terrorism and an integrated European security and defence policy -- a long-cherished objective that could be easier to achieve now sceptical Britain has departed.

Italy's defence and foreign affairs ministers have proposed creating "a Schengen-like defence agreement to respond to terrorism", with a "multinational force" under a single command for specific missions.

It is an idea France is keen on, but Germany is unlikely to get behind Paris's suggestion for it to be funded with eurobonds, a move Berlin fears would leave it vulnerable to the debt burdens of eurozone peers.

In terms of the economy, Hollande wants the Juncker Plan -- the EU's investment fund for infrastructure, education, research and innovation -- to be doubled, according to a French diplomatic source.

Renzi is tipped to unveil a proposal to use part of those funds to restore European cultural monuments.

But while Hollande and Renzi want to tackle Europe's identity crisis through investments, Merkel is unlikely to be moved by their anti-austerity overtures.

All three leaders have been hit in the polls by varying toxic combinations of refugee crisis, economic slump and terror attacks, with eurosceptic or populist parties gaining ground.

And with 2017 bringing a general election in Germany and presidential election in France, they will be wary of ignoring opposition to further European integration at home, leaving them little room for manoeuvre.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2016 / BlackIce Enterprise Risk Management Inc. (CSE:BIS) (B2I.F) ("BlackIce"), has appointed Dale Paruk and Jens Brunke as Directors. Jim Donovan has resigned in order to make room on the Board for the new Directors. Mr. Donovan remains on the BlackIce advisory Board.

Dale Paruk is an experienced public market participant, most recently with NioGold Mining Corp. for 9 years where he was VP Corporate Development. NioGold was acquired by Oban Mining Corporation which has changed its name to Osisko Mining Inc. Dale has been appointed VP of Corporate Finance at BlackIce.

Jens Brunke is the Managing Director and Head of Portfolio Management for CM-Equity AG of Munich, Germany where he is responsible for Compliance and Fund Management. Jens has extensive know-how in Compliance / Regulatory Law and Regulation of Financial Institutions in Germany/Europe (MiFID) which is well-suited for BlackIce's banking regulatory and risk management focus.

CM-Equity AG provides a wide range of financial services to a diversified client base that includes corporations, institutional investors, family offices and fund managers as well as high-net-worth individuals.

BlackIce Advisory Board

Jim Donovan currently serves as Chief Marketing and Sales Officer at Panasas, a privately held data storage software company in Silicon Valley, California. Prior to Panasas Jim was SVP of Global Marketing at Teradata and earlier in his career he was VP of the financial services industry for Teradata. Jim is a seasoned sales and marketing software executive with subject matter knowledge in the risk management realm of the financial services industry. Jim will continue in an advisory capacity to BlackIce Inc.

About BlackIce Enterprise Risk Management Inc.

BlackIce is a global enterprise risk management technology firm delivering practical solutions for problems that global banks face every day.

BlackIce has developed an Enterprise Risk Aggregation (ERA) solution, an open platform software application that delivers end-to-end data and analytical standards to meet all of the regulatory expectations of Basel (I, II & III) as well as the BCBS Risk Data Aggregation & Reporting (RDA) requirements, and the FSB (Financial Stability Board) Legal Entity Identifier program for monitoring concentration risk.

Story continues

The company's Governance & Compliance Database (GCD) is an application that allows financial institutions to assess, govern and manage adherence and compliance to regulatory guidelines across multiple regulatory requirements including: Basel II/III; Living Wills; Risk Data Aggregation and Financial Stability Oversight.

For more information about BlackIce Inc., and ERA visit www.blackiceinc.com.

BlackIce Enterprise Risk Management Inc.

Judy Kalyan, Director and CEO

Forward-Looking Information

This press release may include forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation, concerning the business and trading in the common stock of BlackIce Enterprise Risk Management Inc. The forward-looking information is based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by the company's management. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release and the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, other than as required by applicable securities laws.

The CSE has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this press release.

SOURCE: BlackIce Enterprise Risk Management Inc.
Aug 21 (Reuters) - Bonnie Baha, head of Global Developed Credit at DoubleLine Capital LP, has died as a result of an automobile accident over the weekend, the firm told Reuters late Sunday.

Baha, 57, helped steer the Los Angeles-based DoubleLine Capital into one of the fastest growing asset management firms in the United States. Her team managed the firm's investments in fixed and floating-rate corporate and sovereign securities issued within developed market economies.

"For a quarter century Bonnie was my trusted colleague and dear friend. She was honest and direct, with a sardonic wit perfectly matching her investment skepticism helping shape the DoubleLine philosophy," said Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive of the $100 billion DoubleLine.

Prior to DoubleLine, Baha was a managing director and portfolio manager overseeing the corporate bond investments at TCW for 19 years, where she worked closely with Gundlach.

Baha was regarded as one of the best corporate credit analysts in the United States.

(Reporting by Jennifer Ablan in New York; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)
BRASILIA, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The Brazilian government is committed to overhaul its expensive pension system despite an incipient economic recovery that could ease social security expenditures in the short run, pension secretary Marcelo Caetano said on Monday.

Caetano, who is helping draft the unpopular reform that is expected to be submitted to Congress this year, said in an interview that the overhaul is crucial to sustain a pension system that represents more than a quarter of the country's overall expenditures.

He said short-term measures to reduce the system's deficit, such as lifting social security contribution exemptions for commodities' exporters and charities, are not enough to solve the problem. He added that the government has not yet decided over those exemptions or other measures.

"The executive is very conscious of the need to carry out the pension reform to preserve the system," said Caetano, a former pension researcher with the government's think tank IPEA.

The Brazilian pension system is one of the world's most generous, with ample benefits to workers, putting the fiscal accounts under great pressure at a time when the population is rapidly growing older. The system's annual deficit is expected to nearly double to around 150 billion reais ($46.70 billion) this year.

Brazil is one of the few countries in the world without a minimum retirement age.

The pension reform and a public spending cap are at the heart of interim President Michel Temer's plan to rebalance the budget, which is expected to post a record deficit above 10 percent of gross domestic product this year.

A crippling recession in its second year has curbed tax revenues and widened a record budget deficit in a country that not long ago posted hefty surpluses amid a booming economy.

Unions have vowed street demonstrations and strikes to protest the reform, which they say hurt the fundamental rights of workers in a country that struggles with wide income inequalities.

Caetano said the government will strive to reduce inequalities in the pension system, reviewing the preferential treatment of military staff, police officers and teachers, who currently can retire at a younger age with full pension benefits.

The government is considering setting a minimum retirement age of 65 for men and 60 for women, according to public comments from officials. Brazilian workers retire at an average age of 54. ($1 = 3.2117 Brazilian reais) (Reporting by Alonso Soto and Marcela Ayres; Editing by Dan Grebler)
* Teresa May launches post-Brexit inequality drive

* Move to curb company executive pay risks failing

* Data shows binding pay policy votes little used

By Simon Jessop and Sinead Cruise

LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May's ambitious plans to curb excessive pay for top company executives could prove unpopular with some big investors and may in the end have little impact.

BP and WPP were among major companies to face high-profile revolts at shareholders' meetings this year, reflecting broader anger at inequality that helped persuade Britons to vote to leave the European Union in June.

As a result, May has promised to overhaul corporate governance to try and close a wealth gap that sees bosses being paid more than 140 times what their staff receive.

She has pledged to force companies to publish figures showing the difference between the average worker's salary and that of the chief executive. She also wants employees to sit on the committee that oversees how much bosses are paid.

But her key proposal - giving shareholders the annual power of veto over boardroom pay - may not have the desired effect, some industry analysts say.

"Fund managers will be too afraid that the transparency torch they shine on boardroom pay would then be shone on their excessive pay packages," said Gina Miller, a partner at boutique investment manager SCM Direct, and a long-time campaigner for better value for money in UK fund management.

Investors already have the right to block longer-term pay policies, typically put to a vote every three years, but experience shows that having the power to act does not necessarily lead more votes against a company.

London-based ISS Corporate Solutions, a unit of Institutional Shareholder Services, which tracks the votes, said that of the 134 binding votes put to shareholders in FTSE 100 firms over the last five years, all went in favour of the company's pay policies.

Of those votes, ISS had recommended investors oppose the company on eight occasions and abstain on three. Across the FTSE All-Share index over the same period, 766 votes were completed, with just one failing to gain approval - suggesting fund managers were broadly untroubled by the issue of executive pay.

Story continues

TIME TO BE AMBITIOUS

But for Stefan Stern, head of the High Pay Centre, an independent think-tank which reported a 10 percent rise in chief executives' pay to 5.5 million pounds last year, an annual vote would nevertheless keep the issue on the agenda.

"We're still in the realm of symbolism, in a sense, but it's a much more meaningful one because it's happening every year ... it is a propitious moment to try something ambitious."

Among the highest paid bosses in 2015 were WPP's Martin Sorrell, with 70.4 million pounds, Berkeley Group's Tony Pidgeley, with 23.3 million pounds, and Reckitt Benckiser's Rakesh Kapoor, with 23.2 million pounds, the report said.

Part of the problem is that many asset managers do not have big enough governance teams to vote on pay at all the companies they invest in.

Many managers outsource the duty, preferring to focus on their largest holdings or other environmental and social issues they feel more directly affect investment returns.

World leader BlackRock has a relatively large team of just over 20 corporate governance and stewardship staff globally, but most rivals have far fewer.

And if fund managers are required to assess pay policies every year instead of every three, they could be forced to invest in bigger governance teams at a time when costs are soaring and investors want lower fund fees.

"The thing I hear time and time again is 'we're stretched'," said Oliver Parry, head of corporate governance at the Institute of Directors. Asset managers would need to add more resources to make a success of any changes brought in by May, he said.

LEGAL DANGER

Lawyers say giving fund managers a binding vote on pay could lead to possible infringement of contract or employment law, making it tough for a company to renege on salaries and bonuses already promised or paid.

"If a bonus or salary is set out in a contract, and the employer for whatever reason doesn't honour that, they are in breach of contract and that could lead to a number of claims - the most serious being constructive dismissal," Paula Rome, an employment partner at law firm Shoosmiths, told Reuters.

May's plans to disclose the pay ratio between bosses and their employees and bring staff on board mirror actions elsewhere.

U.S. authorities say firms based there must disclose the gap from next year, while employee representation rules borrow heavily from Germany, where works councils can wield real power over a company's strategic direction.

May has yet to flesh out her plans to give employees or consumers representation on the board, but the IoD's Parry said it was not clear how effective it would be.

There was no evidence to suggest workers actually have much direct impact, he said, but it might make directors think twice about the boardroom pay packages they put forward.

(Editing by Rachel Armstrong and Giles Elgood)
Denpasar (Indonesia) (AFP) - A British man accused of murdering a policeman on Indonesia's Bali island hit the victim in the head with binoculars during a struggle on a beach, his lawyer said Monday.

David Taylor claims he was pushed by the Balinese traffic policeman, Wayan Sudarsa, which led to the struggle, and he hit him after his Australian girlfriend pulled at the officer in a bid to break up the fight, the lawyer said.

Sudarsa's battered body was found in the early hours last Wednesday on Kuta beach, a popular tourist spot in southern Bali. Taylor and the Australian woman Sara Connor were arrested two days later.

They were named suspects over the weekend, a step in the Indonesian legal system that means authorities believe they have enough evidence to consider filing charges, and could face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty of murder.

The couple have so far given often contradictory and confusing accounts about last week's events, but before police questioning Monday Taylor's legal team promised he would tell "the honest story".

After the interrogation in the Balinese capital Denpasar, Taylor's lawyer Haposan Sihombing said his client had become involved in a late-night confrontation with Sudarsa.

He and Connor had headed to the beach late Tuesday. But Sihombing said Connor lost her bag, and Taylor approached Sudarsa on the beach to ask if he had seen it.

"After that, the police officer pushed him, kept pushing him," the lawyer said, adding that they then began wrestling on the beach.

As the fight played out, Connor pulled at the policeman from behind in an attempt to separate them and Taylor spotted binoculars around Sudarsa's neck, said Sihombing.

"He saw a pair of binoculars on the victim's neck -- those were the binoculars that David used to hit the head of the victim twice," the lawyer said.

During separate questioning earlier Monday, Connor claimed she saw Sudarsa lying face-down on the beach and when she approached to ask whether he had seen her bag, the victim bit her on the leg, according to lawyer Erwin Siregar.

Story continues

He said that she maintained her innocence.

Bali, a pocket of Hinduism in Muslim-majority Indonesia, is a popular tourist destination known for its tropical climate and palm-fringed beaches.

Petty crime is common but murders are rare.
Baghdad (AFP) - A British national working for a US company clearing ordnance in the Iraqi city of Ramadi was killed Monday as he tried to defuse a bomb, his company and officials said.

"We've just been made aware that there has been a British national killed in Ramadi," a British embassy spokesperson told AFP.

The mayor of Ramadi, which is the capital of the western Anbar province and was retaken by Iraqi forces from the Islamic State group earlier this year, confirmed the incident.

"A contractor of British origin was killed and another wounded as they attempted to defuse an IED (improvised explosive device) in the Malaab neighbourhood," Ibrahim al-Osej told AFP.

The contract for clearing the thousands of improvised explosive devices and booby-traps the jihadists left behind in Ramadi was awarded to US company Janus.

"The incident is under investigation, but what we can confirm is that, sadly, there was one fatality, a national of the United Kingdom. Another national of the United Kingdom suffered minor injuries," the firm said in a statement.

Rigging homes and planting bombs on roads was a key component of the system IS set up to defend the city, which lies about 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad.

Iraqi forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes eventually retook Ramadi six months ago after a battle that completely emptied the city of its population and left it in ruins.

Massive mine-clearing operations need to be completed before the city's inhabitants can start returning and reconstruction efforts begin.
From Cosmopolitan

Marcus Bellamy, a 32-year-old dancer who once performed in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, was charged with murder and manslaughter Friday. The New York Daily News reports Bellamy posted a slew of Facebook statuses confessing to killing his 27-year-old boyfriend Bernardo Almonte.

A law enforcement official told the Daily News that Almonte was found facedown on the floor of his and Bellamy's shared apartment, and that Almonte was bleeding from a major head wound. Police also believe Bellamy strangled and bit Almonte as they fought.

The timing is unclear, but PIX 11 reports Bellamy then posted several Facebook statuses, one of which asked for forgiveness. In another he proclaimed himself god. Before both of those, he posted "Nevermind. False alarm."

Photo credit: Facebook

Photo credit: Facebook

Photo credit: Facebook

According to the Daily News, Bellamy then left the apartment, told a neighbor what he'd done, and stood outside the Bronx building and "raised his hands in the air and stared at the sky," which is how the police found and arrested him. The neighbor he'd spoken to called them.

Bellamy, who also had small roles in Smash and Across the Universe, has been arrested four times since 2007, but the police confirmed none of his previous arrests stemmed from violence. He was taken to Lincoln Hospital on Saturday because of chest pains and is currently pending arraignment.

Follow Tess on Twitter.
Enters into Agreement to Acquire Three Mexican Silver Projects from First Mining Finance; Private Placement Financing of $2.5 Million and 3:1 Forward Stock Split; Appointment of Greg Crowe as Chief Executive Officer

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2016 / BRS Ventures Ltd. (BRV.V) ("BRS" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement dated August 22, 2016 with a subsidiary of First Mining Finance Ltd. ("First Mining") to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Minera Terra Plata S.A. de C.V. ("Terra Plata"), which owns three Mexican silver projects. Concurrently, BRS intends to complete a non-brokered private placement financing of up to 12.5 million post-split shares at a price of 20 cents per post-split share to raise gross proceeds of up to $2.5 million. BRS will also be undergoing a name change to Silver One Resources Inc. ("Silver One") and will complete a 3:1 forward stock split.

BRS is also pleased to announce that Greg Crowe, a director of BRS, has been appointed as President and CEO of BRS and Luke Norman will assume the Chairman of the Board position.

PROPERTY ACQUISITION

BRS's (Silver One) aim is to become a Mexican based silver exploration / development company. The Company will acquire a 100% interest in three significant silver assets from First Mining Finance (TSX-V:FF) for 6 million post-split shares for all 3 projects. After closing of the transaction and the financing, First Mining will own 7.2% of the issued and outstanding shares of BRS (Silver One) on a post-split basis. First Mining will also have a 2.5% Net Smelter Return ("NSR") on each of the properties. However, BRS can buy down 1.5% of the NSR for USD$ 1 million. No finder's fees are payable in connection with this transaction. The transaction is an arm's length transaction and is subject to acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange.

The three properties include: Penasco Quemado in the State of Sonora, Mexico, La Frazada in the State of Nayarit, Mexico, and Pluton in the State of Durango, Mexico. Penasco Quemado and La Frazada have historical resource estimates. Pluton hosts significant exploration potential. The Company plans to update these technical resource reports which upon completion will be filed on SEDAR.

Story continues

Penasco Quemado, Sonora, Mexico

Penasco Quemado, is located in northern Sonora, 60 km south of the town of Sasabe on the US-Mexican border and comprises 3,746 hectares in seven concessions. A 2006 drilling program outlined a historical measured and indicated resource of 2.57 million tonnes at a grade of 117 g/t Ag for a silver resource of 9.63 million ounces. The silver mineralization is associated with manganese oxides in a near surface shallow westerly dipping zone of polymictic conglomerate in the northern part of the deposit and in stockwork quartz and manganese oxides in a rhyolite dome in the southern part of the deposit. The mineralization has been traced along a 2 km strike length and drilling to date has been relatively shallow, less than 100m deep, mainly focused on the silver-bearing conglomerate. Given the unusual nature of the mineralization, its long strike length with potential extensions, the permeable sedimentary host coupled with the shallow nature of the drilling, it is possible that a larger resource could be developed on the property. If the manganese oxide is an indication of shallower near surface mineralization deposited under oxidized conditions, there remains the possibility that deeper mineralization could be associated with sulfides.

Historical Mineral Resource



Resource Category

(Underground) Mineral Type Tonnes

(Mt) Ag

(g/t) Ag

(Moz) Measured Oxides 0.12 152 0.60 Indicated Oxides 2.44 115 9.03 Total M + I Oxides 2.57 117 9.63 Inferred Oxides 0.10 41 0.13

** Silvermex Resources Limited reported in a technical report titled "Updated NI 43-101 Technical Report and Resource Estimate for the Penasco Quemado Silver Property" dated March 9, 2007 (filed on SEDAR on March 16, 2007), prepared by William J. Lewis and James A. McCrea, the above historical mineral resource estimate. The historical mineral resource estimate used "measured mineral resource", "indicated mineral resource" and "inferred mineral resource", which are categories set out in NI 43-101. Accordingly, BRS (Silver One) considers these historical estimates reliable as well as relevant as it represents a target for exploration work by BRS (Silver One). The data base for the historical resource estimate consisted of 24 reverse circulation holes from a 1981/82 program, 17 reverse circulation holes from a 2006 program and 8 diamond drill holes from a 2006 drill program. Assay data was available for all 49 of the drill holes and 12 trenches. The mineral resource estimate used a kriging estimation method to establish ore zones with a cut-off grade of 30 g/t Ag and assays capped at 700 g/t Ag. Resource blocks were estimated by ordinary kriging with samples within a search radius of 25 meters classified as a measured mineral resource, within 47 meters classified as an indicated mineral resource and within 70 meters classified as an inferred mineral resource. As required by NI 43-101, CIM definitions (August, 2004) were used to classify mineral resources with the classification of each kriged ore block dependent upon the number of penetrating holes. An in-situ block density of 2.50 t/cu meter was assigned the ore blocks. The qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as a current mineral resource therefore BRS (Silver One) is treating these historical estimates as relevant but not current mineral resources.

La Frazada, Nayarit, Mexico

La Frazada is located approximately 300 km northwest of Guadalajara and hosts silver rich epithermal veins with base metals. The 299 hectare exploration concession lies within the western foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental. Access is good, being only a few kilometers from the main coastal highway with average elevations less than 200m above sea level. La Frazada was mined in the late 1890's by an English company, with the Mexican revolution effectively stopping all activity by 1910. A small ornate smelter stack is all that remains of that early historical production. Two parallel quartz veins with galena and sphalerite have been traced for over 1800m along strike and host mineralization in three known mineralized shoots. A 2008 NI 43-101 Technical Report calculated a historical measured and indicated resource totaling 583,000 tonnes at 250 g/t Ag, 0.87% Pb, and 2.44% Zn; historical inferred resources are an additional 534,000 tonnes at 225 g/t Ag, 0.92% Pb, and 2.62% Zn. These resources are near surface and within the existing mine workings. A drilling program targeting deeper levels of the projected ore shoots has never been undertaken, but could appreciably add to the resource. Additional resources could also exist along strike, outside the areas of the underground workings. For more detailed information, please review the NI 43-101 report on the La Frazada Silver Property posted on the corporate website.

Historical Mineral Resource



Resource Category

(Underground) Mineral Type Tonnes

(Mt) Ag

(g/t) Au

(g/t) Pb

(%) Zn

(%) Ag

(Moz) Au

(oz) Pb

(Mlb) Zn

(Mlb) Cu

(Mlb) Measured Sulphides 0.30 260 0.20 0.88 2.36 2.54 1,900 5.86 15.78 0.63 Indicated Sulphides 0.28 241 0.14 0.86 2.52 2.16 1,300 5.30 15.50 0.55 Total M+ I Sulphides 0.58 251 0.17 0.87 2.44 4.70 3,200 11.16 31.28 1.18 Inferred Sulphides 0.53 225 0.17 0.92 2.62 3.86 3,100 10.86 30.77 1.05

* Silvermex Resources Limited reported in a technical report titled "Technical Report and Preliminary Resource Estimate for the La Frazada Silver Property, El Zopilote Mining District, Nayarit, Mexico) dated November 24, 2008 (amended January 19, 2009) (filed on SEDAR on February 18, 2009), prepared by William J. Lewis, the above historical mineral resource estimate. The historical mineral resource estimate used "measured mineral resource", "indicated mineral resource" and "inferred mineral resource", which are categories set out in NI 43-101. Accordingly, BRS (Silver One) considers these historical estimates reliable as well as relevant as it represents a target for exploration work by BRS (Silver One). The data base for the historical resource estimate consisted of 729 samples; 233 belonging to the La Jabalina West vein, 384 to the La Frazada vein and 112 samples corresponding to the La Jabalina East-Tiro Real vein. The mineral resource estimate used a block model method with a cut-off grade of 80 g/t Ag, 0.75% Pb and 1% Zn. The qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as a current mineral resource therefore BRS (Silver One) is treating these historical estimates as relevant but not current mineral resources.

Pluton, Durango, Mexico

Pluton is a 6,534 hectare property comprised of 3 contiguous exploration concessions. It is strategically located within the historic "Ojuela-Mapimi Mining District" and lies along the eastern front of the Sierra Madre Oriental in northern Durango. Exploration targets at Pluton are silver-lead-zinc carbonate replacement deposits, which may lie beneath the shallow alluvial cover. The property lies adjacent to and just north of the famous Mapimi Mining District, and west of Excellon's (TSX:EXN) Platosa mine, an active silver producer with grades greater than 1000 g/t AgEq. Aeromag and ZTEM surveys show that Pluton, Platosa and the Mapimi districts all lie on the edge of a 40km wide buried intrusion, which does not outcrop. These geophysical surveys, along with geochemistry and IP, resulted in a 3900 m diamond drill program in 2011 aimed at testing for high grade carbonate replacement mineralization in the favourable limestone horizon marginal to the intrusives. All holes encountered silver-lead-zinc mineralization in veins in a shale hornfels overlying the carbonate horizon, but none of the holes passed into the host carbonate rocks. This vein mineralization is interpreted as leakage into the nonreactive hornfels from the intrusion and/or carbonates below. The high-grade target of silver-rich massive sulfides could lie at the contact of the limestone and the downward projection of the mineralized fractures seen in the hornfels. An ancillary advantage to the district is that the Penoles Torreon smelter is only 50km away, and transport and power infrastructure is excellent.

FINANCING, FORWARD STOCK-SPLIT and NAME CHANGE

Private Placement Financing

The Company intends to complete a non-brokered private placement financing of up to 12.5 million post-split shares at a price of 20 cents per post-split share to raise gross proceeds of up to C$2.5 million (the "Offering"). The Offering will not be subject to a minimum offering amount.

The Offering will be completed pursuant to National Instrument 45-106 - Prospectus and Registration Exemptions ("NI 45-106") and to certain subscribers pursuant to B.C. Instrument 45-536 - Exemptions from prospectus requirement for certain distributions through an investment dealer. The Company confirms that there is no material fact or material change regarding the Company that has not been generally disclosed.

Proceeds of the financing will be used for an exploration program on the newly acquired silver projects and for general working capital.

Closing of the Offering is subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

Forward Split and Name Change

The Company will also undertake a 3 for 1 forward stock-split. As of the date of this news release, there are 21,641,659 common shares issued and outstanding. Following closing of the transaction, financing and forward stock split, there will be a total of 83,424,977 common shares issued and outstanding. The Company anticipates that the forward stock split will make its shares more accessible to investors and enhance liquidity for its shareholders. In conjunction with the stock split, the Company also plans to change its name to "Silver One Resources Inc.".

The company's new website, which is currently under construction, will be www.silverone.com.

The stock split and name change are subject to the acceptance of the TSX Venture Exchange.

NEW MANAGEMENT

The Company has appointed Greg Crowe as its new President and CEO. Mr. Crowe is a seasoned resource company executive and director and comes to the company after 13+ years as President of Entree Gold Inc. A brief bio for Mr. Crowe was included in the BRS news release of August 5, 2016 and is available on the Company's website.

Greg Crowe, President and CEO commented: "I am excited to be heading a new silver company, especially one with the quality of silver assets acquired from First Mining Finance. Having First Mining as a significant shareholder shows a high level of confidence in their placing these assets into Silver One. The company is well positioned from the outset to take advantage of rising metal prices in this time of overall economic uncertainty and continued tightness in silver supplies."

Mr. Luke Norman, who was one of the founders of Gold Standard Ventures (TSX-V:GSV), will become the company's non-Executive Chairman.

The Company has also appointed Ms. Claudia Tornquist and Mr. Raul Diaz as advisors to the company.

Ms. Tornquist is an independent consultant in the metals and mining sector and a director of Kennady Diamonds and Dunnedin Ventures. She previously served as Executive Vice President of Business Development at Sandstorm Gold and as General Manager at Rio Tinto where she held a number of roles in business evaluation, M&A, strategy and business development over 9 years. Ms. Tornquist has a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Munich and a Masters of Business Administration from INSEAD.

Mr. Diaz is an exploration geologist with 35 years of experience, much of it with Penoles where he discovered several mines including the Mezcala/Bermejal deposit, part of Goldcorp's Los Filos operation in Mexico, and Capajorco in Peru. He also spearheaded Penoles' internationalization by opening and managing the Peruvian subsidiary until 1999. He has served as V.P. Exploration and Director of First Mining Finance, a successor company of Sundance Minerals Ltd. that he cofounded in 2008. Raul received a Geological Engineering degree from the University of Mexico and master degrees from the University of Arizona and Cleveland State University.

QUALIFED PERSON

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Greg Crowe, P.Geo, President and CEO of BRS (Silver One), and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

For more information, please contact:

BRS Ventures Ltd.

Greg Crowe, CEO and President

info@silverone.com

(604) 974-5274

Forward-Looking Statements

Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. BRS cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond BRS's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to BRS's limited operating history, the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations and its ability to complete its acquisition and private placement financing. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, BRS undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

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.

SOURCE: BRS Ventures Ltd.
Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, in conjunction with Zag.com, Inc., is offering the Build & Buy Report as an extra benefit to online subscribers and to purchasers of CR's New Car Price Reports. Intended to complement CR's suite of auto ratings, reviews, and buying advice, the program is designed to help consumers buy vehicles at a competitive price from dealers who have agreed to abide by certain guidelines.

While Consumer Reports has long provided in-depth car-buying advice, subscribers have been on their own in finding dealerships that they want to work with and doing their own price negotiations. The Consumer Reports Build & Buy Report is intended to help make car buying easier, with less hassle and anxiety. The program also helps Consumers Union further its ongoing work and mission, because Zag pays us fees for vehicles sold through the program. Consumers Union has no direct contact or any financial relationship with any dealerships. For more details, see "What is Zag and what is its relationship to Consumer Reports?"

What are the advantages of using the Build & Buy program?

Dealer price quote. Participating dealers have agreed to sell their vehicles at a competitive, no-haggle price that's typically well below the manufacturer's suggested retail price and sometimes below the dealer-invoice price. (The dealer-invoice price, sometimes also known as the manufacturer-invoice price, is the standard price that a manufacturer charges a dealer for a specific vehicle. Because of various manufacturer-to-dealer incentives, rebates, and discounts, the actual amount that a dealer pays for a vehicle could be less than the invoice price. But dealers participating in the Zag program agree to pass along any savings from manufacturer-to-dealer incentives to the customer.)

Pre-screened dealers. The program includes more than 3,100 participating dealers nationwide who have been recognized for providing high customer satisfaction and have agreed to follow strict guidelines of conduct.

Easy-to-use tools. The program allows you to quickly configure a vehicle with the trim, color, and options you want and then get a Build & Buy Report, including guaranteed price quotes from dealers in your area. (Please note that users searching in Texas ZIP codes will not receive an upfront price quote due to Texas state regulations preventing the publishing of dealer prices. Instead, a Target Price will be shown. The Target Price is a below-market-average price. In most cases, participating dealers will match or beat the Target Price.)

Free and anonymous. You can use this free service as much as you want without revealing your identity to any dealers until you choose to. Your identity will be concealed from dealers, and theirs from you, when the price quote is initially given. You may then choose to send your identity to none, any or all of the dealers, and in return their identities will be revealed to you.

No obligation. Even after you get your certificate with your guaranteed price quote (or Target Price, in Texas ZIP codes), there's no obligation to buy. You can always change your mind about the vehicle, price, or dealership, or whether you want to buy a car at all.

You receive all applicable incentives. Participating dealers are required to pass along to you any discounts provided by any applicable manufacturer incentives for the vehicle you're buying. This includes unadvertised manufacturer-to-dealer incentives, for which it's typically up to the dealer whether to keep the savings or pass them on to the customer.

How does the program work?

Step 1

Select the make, model, and trim level that you want to buy. Then specify the exterior and interior colors and choose the options you want.

Step 2

Based on your choices in Step 1, you will be presented with dealer price quotes from up to three participating dealerships in your area, although the identity of the dealerships remains confidential at this point and your identity is hidden from them. If you so choose, you will then have the option to send your contact and vehicle information to any of the dealers and, in doing so, you will go on to Step 3 in which the dealers' identities will be revealed to you.

Step 3

You get a Consumer Reports Build & Buy Report, which includes the identities of and price quotes from the dealer(s) you selected in Step 2. The Report also includes detailed step-by-step instructions on how to use the price quote to get the best deal on a car, so we hope you will print it out and follow its advice.

(Please note that users searching in Texas ZIP codes will not receive an upfront price quote due to Texas state regulations preventing the publishing of dealer prices. Instead, a Target Price will be shown. The Target Price is a below-market-average price. In most cases, participating dealers will match or beat the Target Price.)

You may opt out of this process at any point, and you are under no obligation to buy. In addition, no dealer gets your name or contact information unless and until you choose to contact that dealer.

What is Zag and what is its relationship to Consumer Reports?

The Consumer Reports Build & Buy program is provided as a service to our ConsumerReports.org subscribers and Consumer Reports New Car Price Report purchasers in cooperation with Zag.com, Inc. Zag contracts with large membership organizations, including Consumers Union, to provide their members and subscribers with competitive, dealer-guaranteed price quotes on new cars. Zag leverages the group buying power of these organizations with its nationwide dealer network to help provide a positive buying experience. To participate, dealers must meet certain customer-service standards and agree to a code of conduct.

For consumers, the service is completely free. You are not charged a fee by Consumers Union, Zag, or the dealership. In addition to helping our subscribers, the Build & Buy program also helps Consumers Union, a nonprofit organization, do its work. Zag pays Consumers Union fees for cars sold through the program, without regard to what makes or models were bought, where they were bought, or who bought them. Whatever amounts Consumers Union receives are used to help defray the costs of its ongoing work and mission.

If you decide to use the Consumer Reports Build & Buy program we'd like to learn from your experience as we continue to develop and refine the service. So, if you submit your contact information to a participating dealer(s), we'll send you an e-mail asking for your feedback.

Consumers Union does not have any financial relationship with dealers, and the fee that Consumers Union receives is not related to the model or to Consumer Reports' rating of a specific model.

What guidelines must participating dealers follow?

To qualify for participation in the Consumer Reports Build & Buy program, dealers must follow strict guidelines intended to provide you, the customer, with a guaranteed price and easier, more transparent car-buying experience. Dealers are continuously re-evaluated for compliance with these guidelines.

Here are some of the guidelines that dealers must follow:

The dealer ensures the confidentiality of all non-public personal information you provide to complete a vehicle sales transaction. The dealer will confirm your price prior to your arrival at the dealership. The dealer will assist you with a test drive or test drives once you arrive at the dealership. All factory-installed vehicle options are priced at the dealer's invoice price. Upon your request, the dealer will show you its current pricing on each model and trim of vehicle offered through the program (the "Dealer Price") and the dealer's invoice price (the maximum amount the dealer pays the manufacturer for the vehicle) applicable to any dealer vehicle. The dealer will pass any and all manufacturer-to-dealer and manufacturer-to-customer incentives to you. Incentives are discounts that the manufacturer gives to the dealer or consumer to increase the sales of a particular model. If you have already arranged financing of your vehicle purchase, the dealer will not present you with a competing financing offer unless you request information on alternative financing offers. The dealer will complete all necessary titling documents and, in cases where you provide financing, pay all titling fees and perfect liens in exchange for accepting payment from the financing institution. A trained dealer representative will respond to your inquiry within twenty-four (24) hours by both phone and e-mail to confirm the Dealer Price and inform you of the availability of the vehicle, equipped as you specified in your inquiry to the dealer. If the specifically equipped vehicle is not on the dealer's lot, the dealer representative will explain how he or she can assist you in acquiring that specifically equipped vehicle or how your program price can be applied to a differently equipped vehicle that may be available for quicker delivery. For a given trim line (a model with a standard set of equipment, packages and available options), you are guaranteed the same amount relative to the dealer-invoice price, regardless of the factory-installed options on a vehicle. Dealer-installed accessories, however, may affect the total amount off invoice. (Factory-installed options are added to the vehicle by the manufacturer at the manufacturing facility, whereas dealer-installed accessories are installed after the dealer receives the vehicle from the manufacturer.) The dealer sells all aftermarket products below market value under the program. In accordance with the law, any price charged to you in excess of the Dealer Price will be refunded to you by the dealer within three (3) days of any request for such refund by Zag or you. The dealer must contact Zag to resolve all customer complaints or program issues immediately.

What if I have a question or complaint about this service?

The Build & Buy program is administered by Zag, Inc. Consumers Union has no direct contact with participating dealers.

If you have complaints about a dealership or the service, please call Zag's customer service at 877-924-2585.

If you decide to not buy a car through the program and want to stop receiving e-mails from the Build & Buy Program or e-mails from dealers, use the unsubscribe link near the bottom of the e-mail you received.

To halt telephone calls from a dealer, just tell the dealer representative that you do not wish to receive further calls.

If you continue to have problems, contact the customer service department at Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, at buildandbuy@customerrelations.consumer.org.

We want the service to be a positive experience for our subscribers. So, a Zag customer service specialist will make a follow-up courtesy phone call to every consumer who uses the Program to help ensure that your expectations are being met and to address your outstanding questions. In addition, Zag and Consumers Union will work together to review every complaint and issue reported.

How do I know what the price is?

The Build & Buy Report includes the dealer price quotes for the specific vehicle you configured, along with the dealer's invoice price for that vehicle, plus information on available incentives. Once you select the price and dealer of your choice, our system automatically sends a copy of the Build & Buy Report to the e-mail address you provided; the Report includes the dealer contact information and the Zag price quote for the exact vehicle you configured.

Is the price I receive the lowest available?

The price that you receive is the lowest offered through the program by a participating dealer in your area. It is formulated to be competitive and will include all available incentives. But it may not be the absolute lowest price for which a specific vehicle can be purchased. That figure depends on a variety of factors, including when you buy, the availability of the model, and how much time and effort you want to invest in negotiating. Even after you receive your Price Certificate, you are free to try and negotiate a lower price with any dealer. The Build & Buy Report includes a great deal of specific advice on how to negotiate the best deal.

Does the price include all fees?

The dealer prices shown by Zag in the Build & Buy Report include all manufacturer fees, including destination charges. You are responsible for tax, title, registration, documentation, and dealer-installed accessories. The dealer pays all titling fees and perfects liens in exchange for accepting payment from the financing institution. The Build & Buy Report includes more specific advice on fees, and which ones you should question or negotiate before accepting.

Will the dealer honor the upfront program price?

Participating dealers are obligated to honor their upfront price if the exact vehicle you configured is in stock. If the participating dealer has the exact car in stock but refuses to honor the price quoted, please call Zag's customer service line at 877-924-2585. Consumers Union does not have a direct relationship with the dealers.

What if the dealer doesn't have the exact vehicle I want?

Given the many possible trim choices and configurations of modern cars, it is possible that some or all of the dealers who provided a price for the program will not have that exact car in stock. Zag research shows that nearly 25 percent of consumers who have contacted program dealers and who ultimately purchased from dealers outside the Zag dealer network did so because the Zag dealer could not provide the car they wanted. If the dealer does not have the exact car you wanted, you have several options:

Check with other dealers that you selected. Keep in mind that the program price may differ at another dealership.

Custom order a vehicle with your configuration. Some automakers allow you to place a special order for the vehicle. The only downside is that custom orders typically take several weeks to arrive, and sales incentives and/or dealer invoice prices may change during that time, affecting your price. (The dealer-invoice price is the standard price that a manufacturer charges a dealer for a specific vehicle. For more, see "What are the advantages of using the Build & Buy program?" above.)

Buy a similar model from the dealer's inventory. The dealer may have the same car with slightly different features. Obviously, that will affect your price. If the car has fewer features, your price will be less; if it has more features, the price will be more. But the final price should still differ from the dealer-invoice price by the same margin that is shown on the Price Certificate. For example, if the certificate says the price is "$500 below invoice," then the new price should still be $500 below the invoice price for any differently configured model. To verify this, the dealer is required to show you the invoice price for any vehicle offered through the program.

Shop around. You're under no obligation to purchase a vehicle through the Build & Buy program, so you always have the option to negotiate a price on your own with dealers outside the program.

Can I lease the vehicle instead?

Yes. Your dealer price quotes are valid for vehicle leases as well as purchases and will be used in calculating the capital cost (price of the vehicle, for the purposes of the lease). See the Build & Buy Report for specific advice on how to negotiate a better lease deal. Note: some manufacturer incentives may not be available with some lease programs. However, under program guidelines the dealer is required to include all eligible incentives in the price offered to you.

Can I use my dealer price quote on a used car?

No. The Zag price quote is only good for a new car that the dealer has in stock or custom orders on your behalf. That said, it's always good to compare the price for a new car with what's available among used cars. Late-model used cars, in particular, provide some of the best value when car buying. That's because they typically have relatively low mileage, are equipped with modern safety features, and, because they've already taken their biggest depreciation hit, are priced considerably lower than similar new cars. On average, a new car's value drops about 47 percent in the first three years.

How does Zag figure out which dealers to present to you?

After configuring your car, the program presents up to three dealers in your area, including the one with the lowest Dealer Price, the dealer nearest you (sometimes the nearest dealer also offers the lowest Dealer Price), and one or more dealers in your area with a high customer satisfaction rating.

What's the difference between Consumer Reports Build & Buy program and Consumer Reports.org Cars Best Deals Plus?

These programs offer you two different ways to get a low price on a new car.

The Consumer Reports Build & Buy program lets you configure and buy the car you want for a dealer guaranteed low price without the need to negotiate the price. It also directs you to pre-screened dealers who will honor that price. The service is free and you are under no obligation to buy.

If you prefer to negotiate the price for a new car, Consumer Reports Cars Best Deals Plus gives you the tools you need. This service provides unlimited new-car price reports, which include the Consumer Reports Bottom Line Price. The Consumer Reports Bottom Line Price is the dealer-invoice price, minus any customer rebate, dealer incentive, or holdback amount. This figure provides a good place to begin your new-car price negotiations. Cars Best Deals Plus also helps you research which car to buy, with more detailed road-test reports and owner-satisfaction and reliability information than is published anywhere else. The service costs $13 a year, in addition to your ConsumerReports.org annual subscription.

How does the Consumer Reports Build & Buy program differ from price-quote services on other car-shopping Web sites?

This program differs from dealer lead-referral systemstypically presented as price-quote services on popular car Web sitesin several ways.

Traditional lead-referral systems exist to draw the car-shopper into the showroom, not to present guaranteed upfront pricing. Consumers are enticed to submit contact information in exchange for the promise of a vehicle price quote, but most sites will not provide an actual price quote upon first contact with the consumer. Instead, the shopper is encouraged to come into the dealership to negotiate and finalize a price.

With the Consumer Reports Build & Buy program, car shoppers receive multiple upfront, dealer price quotes before their contact information is ever revealed to a dealer. The consumer chooses which dealers, if any, he or she wishes to have contact him and only then is his/her contact information revealed to the dealer. The no-haggle price the consumer receives at the start of the process helps create an easier car-buying experience, with less hassle and anxiety.

Under typical lead-referral systems, consumers' contact information is often sold and re-sold. Car shoppers, who only wanted a price quote for a particular car from a particular dealer, are often left without the price quote but instead with multiple unwanted contacts from various dealers and accessories vendors.

Under the Consumer Reports Build & Buy program, your contact information is never sold or re-sold. And if you tell a dealer that you want no further contact because you've chosen not to purchase, the dealer will honor your request. If you purchase a vehicle through the program, the dealer from whom you purchased may contact you from time to time as part of its post-purchase program. Such contact is outside the control of the program but in the unlikely case that you receive too many unwanted contacts after asking the dealer to reduce or eliminate e-mails or phone calls, contact Zag, which will work with the dealer to resolve the situation to your satisfaction.

To participate in the Build & Buy program, dealers must adhere to strict guidelines governing their interactions with the consumer (see "What are the customer service guidelines that program dealers must follow?". In traditional lead-referral systems there is no such rigorous list of guidelines.

Dealers who participate in the Build & Buy program must have at least one representative on staff who has completed Zag's program training. This helps to ensure that the dealer provides a high level of customer service consistent with program guidelines.

Dealers in the Zag program set prices in terms of the dollar amount above or below the dealer-invoice price for a given make, model, and trim line. The dealer will share this pricing with you for all vehicles it markets under the program upon your request. This approach allows you to easily estimate the effect on total price of adding or removing factory options to a given vehicle since those options are necessarily priced at or below invoice. (To estimate the impact of dealer-installed accessories on the total price, the dealer can provide you with documentation for the price of accessories it has installed; your price will be below market rates).

The method for pricing vehicles under traditional internet lead-referral/price-quote systems typically is not shared with the consumer, creating an opaque process that can heighten shopper distrust of dealers.

All manufacturer-to-dealer incentives (unadvertised payments that the manufacturer offers a dealer for selling certain models) are passed to the consumer under the program, helping to lower the price. Lead-referral systems make no such guarantee.

Finally, while Zag does have other partners besides Consumers Union, there is no other version of the Zag price quote that includes the Consumer Reports step-by-step advice on how to use the price quote to get the best deal. So we hope you will heed the detailed advice that comes with your price quote. Even though the Zag price quote takes some of the hassle out of buying a car, there are still many potential potholes to watch out for as you negotiate your deal and - we hope - get exactly the car and set of options that will work best for you.

Consumer Reports is pleased to offer access to the Build & Buy Car Buying Service at no additional charge. Intended to complement Consumer Reports' suite of auto ratings, reviews, and buying advice, the program, provided by TrueCar, Inc. is designed to help consumers buy vehicles at competitive prices from dealers who have agreed to abide by certain guidelines.

The Consumer Reports Build & Buy Car Buying Service is intended to help make car buying easier, with more transparency and less stress and anxiety. The program also helps Consumer Reports further its ongoing work and mission, because TrueCar pays us a flat fee for each vehicle sold to a program participant by a participating dealer. Consumer Reports has no direct contact or any financial relationship with any dealerships.

For more details, see "What is TrueCar and what is its relationship to Consumer Reports?"

What are the advantages of using the Build & Buy Car Buying Service?

See what others paid for the car you want : You can search for the make and model youre interested in purchasing and see what others have recently paid for that vehicle in your local area. This gives you a benchmark as to what is currently a fair market price for that vehicle.

Real Pricing on Actual Cars: Participating dealers price all their inventory in advance. This means you can see participating dealer pricing on cars actually on the dealers lot.

Special Consumer Reports Subscriber Savings: Most dealers have already included an additional discount in the pricing you receive, so the price will be lower than what is shown on TrueCar.com.

Guaranteed Savings Certificate: The Service allows you to obtain a Guaranteed Savings Certificate from a participating dealer that will guarantee you a certain amount of savings from MSRP on specific vehicles in the dealers inventory. There will also be a Guaranteed Savings Certificate for the configured vehicle that will provide an amount of savings from MSRP on any vehicle of the same make, model, and trim as the vehicle you configured on the website so you can confidently determine your pricing on the lot for any vehicle of that trim.

Pre-screened dealers. The program has more than 13,000 participating dealers nationwide who have been certified by TrueCar for their commitment to providing high customer satisfaction, have been trained on the program, and have agreed to follow strict guidelines of conduct.

Your Information is safeguarded. You can use the service as much as you want to see the TrueCar Average on any vehicle you search without revealing your information to any dealers. Your information will be concealed from dealers, and theirs from you, when the TrueCar Average is initially displayed. You may then choose to send your information to up to three local dealers, and in return their information and the actual pricing on vehicles in their inventory will be shared with you by them.

No obligation. There is never an obligation to buy when using the service. You can always change your mind about the vehicle, price, or dealership, or whether you to buy a car at all.

How Does the Program Work?

Step 1

Select the make, model, and trim level of the vehicle that you want to buy. Then specify the exterior and interior colors, and choose the options that interest you. After you have done this, the service will display a TrueCar Average, which represents the average price paid by users of TrueCar-powered auto buying programs at participating dealers in your area for the vehicle you configured.

Step 2

Verify your contact information. You will then have the option to send your contact and vehicle information to up to three participating dealers in order to see real pricing on their inventory.

Step 3

If you decide to share your information with local participating dealers, you will then see their name, location and pricing on vehicles in their inventory that match your vehicle preferences. If they do not have a vehicle that is a close match to the one you configured, you can still use the Savings Certificate to price any similar vehicle on that dealers lot.

Remember, you are under no obligation to buy. In addition, no dealer gets your name or contact information unless and until you choose to release your information to dealers.

Step 4

Connect with any of the participating dealers you want and set up a test drive. Print your Certificate or have it available to show on your mobile device so you are identified as a Consumer Reports subscriber and receive all appropriate savings. Make sure to check the expiration date of any listed incentives.

If you decide to select a different vehicle on the lot, the dealer can generate a new Certificate for you that will show your new pricing information with your Guaranteed Savings and available incentives.

How does my Guaranteed Savings work?

Its simple, the Certificate you receive from the participating dealer entitles you to a stated amount of savings off MSRP on any vehicle on that dealers lot that is of the same make, model, and trim as the vehicle you configured on the website. For the specific inventory (VIN based), offers you receive each will list a specific Guaranteed Savings amount.

If you choose a different vehicle on the lot than the vehicle you configured, the dealer can generate a new Certificate for you.

What is TrueCar and what is its relationship to Consumer Reports?

The Consumer Reports Build & Buy Car Buying Service is provided by. TrueCar, an entity independent of Consumer Reports, contracts with large membership organizations, including Consumer Reports, to provide their members and subscribers with access to current local market data on new car pricing, real dealer pricing on actual cars in their inventory in advance of visiting the dealership, and a means to contact participating dealers who are committed to providing program users with a positive buying experience. To participate, dealers must meet certain program standards and undergo periodic training.

In addition to helping our readers, the Build & Buy Car Buying Service also helps Consumer Reports, a nonprofit organization, do its work. TrueCar pays a fee to Consumer Reports based on cars sold to program participants by participating dealers, without regard to what makes or models were bought, where they were bought, or who bought them. Whatever amounts Consumer Reports receives are used to help defray the costs of its ongoing work and mission. Consumer Reports does not have any financial relationship with dealers, and the compensation that Consumer Reports receives from TrueCar is not related to the model purchased or to our rating of a specific model.

If you decide to use the Consumer Reports Build & Buy Car Buying Service, we'd like to learn from your experience as we continue to develop and refine the service. So, if you submit your contact information to a participating dealer, we may send you an e-mail asking for your feedback.

What guidelines must participating dealers follow?

To qualify for participation in the Consumer Reports Build & Buy Car Buying Service, dealers in the TrueCar Certified Dealer network must follow strict guidelines intended to provide you, the subscriber, with a better car-buying experience.

Here are some of the guidelines that dealers must follow:

The dealer will honor any pricing information communicated to you, including the Guaranteed Savings stated on the Guaranteed Savings Certificate for any in-stock vehicle of the same make, model and trim as the vehicle you configured. The dealer will provide you with a transparent and professional buying experience. The dealer must successfully complete training on the program, including periodic updates. The dealer will honor any used car discount or price communicated to you until either the communicated discount or price expires, or the vehicle is no longer in the dealers inventory. The dealer will complete all necessary titling and registration documents, including in cases where you provide your own financing. In addition, the dealer will send the applicable finance institution the application for certificate of title (or other appropriate documentation necessary in the jurisdiction where the transaction occurs) evidencing the VIN, customer signature, and finance institution as the lien holder. In Texas, the dealer will apply in your name for the registration of the vehicle, if the vehicle is to be registered, and a certificate of title for the vehicle, and file with the appropriate designated agent, each document necessary to transfer title to or register the vehicle and remit any required motor vehicle sales tax. A trained dealer representative will respond to your inquiry through the program within twenty-four (24) hours by both phone and e-mail. The dealer will contact TrueCar to resolve all customer complaints or program issues promptly.

What If I Have a Question or Complaint About This Service?

The Build & Buy Car Buying Service is administered by TrueCar, Inc. Consumer Reports has no direct contact with participating dealers.

If you have complaints about a dealership or the service, please call TrueCar's customer service at (877) 924-2585.

If you decide to not buy a car from a dealer participating in the program and want to stop receiving e-mails from the Build & Buy Car Buying Service, use the unsubscribe link near the bottom of the e-mail you received. To stop receiving emails from participating dealers, please contact them directly.

To halt telephone calls from a dealer, just tell the dealer representative that you do not wish to receive further calls.

If you continue to have problems, contact the Consumer Reports customer service department.

We want the service to be a positive experience for our subscribers. TrueCar and Consumer Reports will work together to review and try to resolve every complaint and issue that is reported.

How Do I Know What the Price Is?

The program allows you to quickly configure a vehicle with the trim, color, and options you want and see what others have paid for that same vehicle as configured in your area and see the TrueCar Average, which represents the average price paid by users of TrueCar-powered auto buying programs from participating dealers in your area for the vehicle you configured. The TrueCar Average is not an actual offer. In order to see real pricing on actual cars in inventory at one of the participating dealers, you will need to opt in to share your contact information with up to three participating dealers who will present you with pricing information on vehicles in their inventory that match, or closely match, the vehicle you have configured in the form of a Consumer Reports Build & Buy Car Buying Service Certificate. The Certificate will provide a Total Before Tax and your Guaranteed Savings off of MSRP on a specific vehicle at the listed dealership. Even if there is not a close enough vehicle match in a dealers inventory, you will receive a Certificate that entitles you to a specified amount of savings off MSRP on any vehicle of the same make, model and trim as the vehicle you configured that is available at that dealership. With this information and your Certificate in hand, you are well positioned to recognize a fair price and determine what you are willing to pay. The actual price you pay, of course, will be determined by you and the dealer based on the final car you select on the lot.

Is the Pricing I Receive the Lowest Available?

The pricing information you receive from participating dealers should be competitive in your local area and is formulated to include all available incentives. However, it may not be the absolute lowest price for which a specific vehicle can be purchased. Similarly, you might not be able to purchase a given vehicle for the TrueCar Average. The actual price you may obtain from a participating dealer depends on a variety of factors, including when you buy, the availability of the model, incentive availability, and how much time and effort you want to invest in negotiating.

Additionally, the information on this website and other Consumer Reports publications includes a great deal of specific advice on how to negotiate the best deal.

Does the Total Before Tax on My Certificate Include All Fees?

Your program Certificate includes a list of fees included in your dealers Total Before Tax, as well as some specific, common fees that are excluded. Your dealer will provide a breakdown of any government fees and charges as required or permitted by the laws in your state.

What If the Dealer Doesn't Have the Exact Vehicle I Want?

Given the many possible trim choices and configurations of modern cars, it is possible that some or all of the dealers in your area who participate in the program will not have that exact car you want in stock. If the dealer does not have the exact car you wanted, you have several options:

Check with other dealers that you selected. Keep in mind that the ultimate price you receive may vary between participating dealers.

Custom order a vehicle with your configuration. Some automakers allow you to place a special order for the vehicle. A downside to this approach is that custom orders typically take several weeks to arrive, and sales incentives and/or prices may change during that time.

Buy a similar model from the dealer's inventory. The dealer may have the same make and model car with slightly different features. Ordinarily, the specific features included on the car you select will affect your price. If the car has fewer features, your price will normally be less; if it has more features, the price will normally be more.

Shop around. You're under no obligation to purchase a vehicle through a dealer participating in the Build & Buy Car Buying Service, so you always have the option to negotiate a price on your own with dealers outside the program.

Can I Lease the Vehicle Instead?

Yes. The ultimate price you agree on for a vehicle will be used in calculating the capital cost (price of the vehicle, for the purposes of the lease). Please note that some manufacturer incentives may not be available with some lease programs and that other factors may influence lease pricing.

Can I Use My Guaranteed Savings on a Used Car?

No. The Guaranteed Savings off MSRP you receive from participating dealers is applicable only to new vehicles. That said, it's always good to compare the price for a new car with what's available among used cars. Late-model used cars, in particular, provide some of the best value when car buying. That's because they typically have relatively low mileage, are equipped with modern safety features, and, because they've already taken their biggest depreciation hit, are priced considerably lower than similar new cars. On average, a new car's value drops about 47 percent in the first three years.

What Determines the Dealers I Have the Option of Contacting Through the Program?

After configuring your vehicle, the program presents dealers in your area who have vehicles in their inventory that match your preferences, based upon a formula that considers a variety of factors such as location, pricing levels, inventory, and success on the TrueCar program.

How Does the Consumer Reports Build & Buy Car Buying Service Differ From Price-Quote Services on Other Car-Shopping Web Sites?

The Consumer Reports Build & Buy Service differs in several important ways from dealer lead-referral systems presented on a number of other car websites.

Under typical lead-referral systems, consumers' contact information is often sold and re-sold. Under the Consumer Reports Build & Buy Car Buying Service, your contact information is never sold or re-sold, although dealers are able to contact you about their offering. And if you tell a TrueCar Certified Dealer that you want no further contact because you've chosen not to purchase, the dealer has agreed to honor your request promptly. If you purchase a vehicle through the program, the dealer from whom you purchased may contact you from time to time as part of its post-purchase program. Such contact is outside the control of the program but in the unlikely case that you receive too many unwanted contacts after asking the dealer to reduce or eliminate e-mails or phone calls, contact TrueCar, which will work with the dealer in an effort to resolve the situation to your satisfaction.

To participate in the Build & Buy Car Buying Service, TrueCar Certified Dealers must adhere to specific program guidelines and training (see "What guidelines must participating dealers follow?"). In traditional lead-referral systems, there are no such rigorous program guidelines or training requirements.

We hope you will make full use of all the advantages available to your through the Build & Buy Car Buying Service. There are still many potential potholes to watch out for as you negotiate your deal, and we hope you get exactly the car and set of options that will work best for you at a price that is right for you.





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  2006-2017 Consumers Union of U.S.
A woman on a beach in her burkini. (Photo: Tim Wimborne/Reuters)

In the wake of recent terror attacks in France, a few French towns have adopted a ban on the burkini, or the full-body swimming costume some Muslim women wear at the beach to keep covered. Most notably, the mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, banned the swimsuit earlier this month, saying access to beaches and for swimming is banned to anyone who does not have [bathing apparel] which respects good customs and secularism.

Lisnard argued that the burkini ostentatiously displays religious affiliation and is liable to create risks of disrupting public order (crowds, scuffles, etc.) which it is necessary to prevent. He explained that the ban isnt meant to violate the liberties of Muslim people. We are not talking about banning the wearing of religious symbols on the beach  but ostentatious clothing which refers to an allegiance to terrorist movements which are at war with us.

None of this sits well with Rachid Nekkaz, who is fighting the ban by taking out his checkbook. The businessman, who is of Algerian descent, has so far paid the fines of three women who violated the ban and has also offered to help other people who are victims of this law.

Nekkaz has a history of standing up for women affected by these laws, which includes the bans on full-face veils. Nekkaz, who started a fund to help, has spent 245,000 (about $277,315) over the years footing the bill for these women, even though he personally is not a fan of burkinis or the niqab, a cloth that covers a womans face with an opening for the eyes. I am like the philosopher Voltaire, he said to the Telegraph. Once I do not agree, I will fight to the death to give the possibility to these people to express their opinion or to dress as they please. That is freedom. It is a question of principle.

He also argues that this kind of extreme legislation might provoke people to embrace the very kind of radical thinking and behaviors theyre hoping to curb. This sort of politics, these types of decisions, which do not respect fundamental liberties, will create new clients for the Islamic State [ISIS], he said.

What is most confusing about the ban, or at least Lisnards explanation of it, is the notion that wearing a burkini is an automatic reference to an allegiance to terrorist movements. Thats akin to saying wearing a Make America Great Again hat means youre broadcasting support of the Ku Klux Klan, which we know isnt necessarily true. Maybe Muslim women want to enjoy the beach in whatever attire they feel most comfortable in? Shouldnt they be allowed to do so in a country that considers liberte, egalite, and fraternite as its national values?

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The California Supreme Court on Monday upheld a ruling that protected the state's tenure laws for public school teachers, marking a victory for unions.

The decision dealt a blow to education reform groups that sued on behalf of nine students, arguing teacher tenure put poor and minority students at a disproportionately greater risk of being taught by less effective instructors.

A ruling by the state's Second Appellate District in April overturned a lower court ruling that sided with the plaintiffs in the case, known as Vergara v. California.

The California Supreme Court on Monday denied a review of the appeal without explanation. Justice Goodwin Liu was one of three judges who disagreed with that decision.

"As the state's highest court, we owe the plaintiffs in this case, as well as school children throughout California, our transparent and reasoned judgment on whether the challenged statutes deprive a significant subset of students of their fundamental right to education and violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws," Liu wrote.

The case comes at a time of bitter political wrangling over how best to improve a U.S. public school system that leaves many children lagging behind students in countries such as Finland and South Korea.

The original decision in June 2014 that struck down tenure drew national attention. Then-U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan hailed it as a "mandate" to fix problems in public schools, while some education reformers and newspaper editorialists joined in cheering the ruling.

But teachers unions denounced the decision, and California Attorney General Kamala Harris appealed with the backing of Governor Jerry Brown. Both are Democrats.

California Federation of Teachers President Joshua Pechthalt applauded Monday's ruling, saying: "We can now turn closer attention to solving the actual problems we confront in our schools," highlighting inadequate funding and large class sizes.

Story continues

Attorneys for Students Matter, the school reform group that backed the lawsuit, argued the state's teacher tenure law makes dismissing teachers prohibitively costly and allows school districts to transfer bad teachers to low-income and predominantly minority campuses.

"The California Supreme Court has unfortunately declined to review Vergara v. California. But these issues aren't going away, and we're not done fighting for a public education system that gives all students the opportunity to learn and succeed," the group said in a statement after the ruling.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Andrew Hay)
On Sunday (Aug. 22), Calvin Harris closed out Billboard Hot 100 Fest's second year with a crowd-pleasing medley of the songs that have made him one of dance music's biggest pop stars.

Billboard Hot 100 Fest 2016: Calvin Harris, J. Cole, Galantis & More Day 2 Highlights

The Scottish DJ/producer only took to the mic occasionally during a hit-packed headline performance that included recent releases "This is What You Came For" and "How Deep is Your Love" alongside more classic output like "We Found Love."

With fans high up in the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater's grandstands singing along to every song, the moment recalled Axwell & Ingrosso's memorable headlining performance last year. As a flurry of pyrotechnics signaled his set's end, the Hot 100 Stage faithful made their approval known in a shower of cheers.

[[{"fid":"624788","view_mode":"media_original","type":"media","attributes":{"height":1024,"width":1548,"class":"media-element file-media-original"}}]]

Calvin Harris performs onstage during the 2016 Billboard Hot 100 Festival - Day 2 at Nikon at Jones Beach Theater on Aug. 21, 2016 in Wantagh, New York. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Billboard
An 11-year-old girl has reported received $155,000 in a settlement from a Virginia safari park after she suffered a ghastly injury when she was attacked by a camel in May 2015.

Read: Mother Fuming After Her 2-Year-Old Son Viciously Attacked by Peacock at Local Park

Madison Holland was hospitalized for three days when she was bitten in her forearm while attending a birthday party at the Virginia Safari Park in Natural Bridge.

She was riding inside a wagon and according to her lawyer, was not trying to feed the animal when it attacked.

Holland will reportedly get $10,000 from the park when she turns 18, followed by $1,000 per month for 14 years after she turns 21. Interest added over time will also increase the payments.

Nearly $40,000 will go to medical and legal expenses.

Many safari parks in the country allow visitors to drive their cars or sit on wagons to go through the property. Some are permitted to feed the animals with food supplied by the park.

But camels have been known to attack humans and are not as friendly as popular belief suggests. Incidents on YouTube show how the seemingly friendly camels can attack unprovoked.

In 2011, a Virginia TV reporter was doing a live report from an exotic animal farm when a camel leaned and tried to take a bite out of her hair. She wasn't hurt.

Read: Veteran Zookeeper Called 'The Tiger Whisperer' Attacked and Killed By Her Beloved Big Cat

In 2013, a camel inside a drive-thru zoo in Kansas City, Missouri, thought a little girl inside a vehicle looked delicious when she tried to feed the animal. It tried to bite down on the girl's head, luckily, her father pushed the camel's head away before the animal could do any damage.

Animal expert Corbin Maxley told Inside Edition "When you are feeding these animals, anything with a mouth can bite. Sometimes these accidents can occur."

Watch: Alligator Bites Off Man's Arm During A Mental Breakdown That Led Him Into Lake: Cops

Related Articles:
Ottawa (AFP) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday defended individual rights and freedoms while touting cultural diversity and tolerance when asked about a controversy swirling in France over a burkini ban.

"We should be past tolerance in Canada," Trudeau told reporters after meeting with his ministers to plan the government's legislative agenda.

Some lawmakers in Canada's Quebec province have called for outlawing "burkinis" -- body-concealing Islamic swimsuits -- following bans in at least 15 towns in France's southeast.

They include the French Riviera resort town of Nice, the target of a jihadist attack on July 14, with the proponents citing the need to prevent public disorder.

Trudeau called for "the respect of individual rights and choices."

This, he said, should be "at the top of public discourse and debate."

Trudeau dismissed the idea of a burkini ban in Canada, saying Canadians should rise above the controversy.

"In Canada, can we speak of acceptance, openness, friendship, understanding? It is about where we are going and what we are going through every day in our diverse and rich communities," he said.

Trudeau bemoaned instances where governments preach tolerance but act to undermine individual rights, saying with irony: "Tolerating someone means accepting their right to exist on the condition that they don't disturb us too, too much."
By Fergal Smith TORONTO (Reuters) - The Canadian dollar weakened to a one-week low against its U.S. counterpart on Monday as lower oil prices offset solid domestic data, but losses were restrained as investor attention turned to a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Friday. Hesitation ahead of Yellen's speech capped gains for the U.S. dollar <.DXY> against a basket of major currencies a day after a top Federal Reserve official made comments perceived as hawkish. "I think it's going to be pretty directionless for the remainder of this week until we get through to Friday (when Yellen speaks)," said Mark Chandler, head of Canadian fixed income and currency strategy at RBC Capital Markets. "There is a big question market on what we might get (from Yellen)," Chandler added, noting the inconsistency of recent comments by Fed officials. U.S. crude oil futures settled down $1.47 at $47.05 a barrel on worries about burgeoning Chinese fuel exports, more Iraqi and Nigerian crude shipments and a rising U.S. oil rig count. Canadian wholesale trade increased by 0.7 percent in June from May, the third consecutive monthly gain. Analysts surveyed by Reuters had forecast a 0.1 percent increase. The Canadian dollar closed at C$1.2950 to the greenback, or 77.22 U.S. cents, weaker than Friday's official close of C$1.2858, or 77.77 U.S. cents. The currency's strongest level of the session was C$1.2874, while it touched its weakest since Aug. 15 at C$1.2965. On Friday, the loonie snapped a nearly two-week winning streak as domestic retail sales data disappointed. Speculators reduced bullish bets on the Canadian dollar for a third straight week, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed on Friday. Net long Canadian dollar positions fell to 12,473 contracts in the week ended Aug. 16 from 15,366 contracts in the prior week. Canadian government bond prices were higher across the maturity curve in sympathy with U.S. Treasuries as a jump in an index of equity market volatility <.VIX> supported demand for safe haven assets. Canadian government bond prices were higher across the maturity curve, with the two-year bond up 3.5 Canadian cents to yield 0.555 percent and the benchmark 10-year rising 50 Canadian cents to yield 1.025 percent. The curve flattened as the spread between the 2-year and 10-year yields narrowed by 3.5 basis points to 47 basis points, indicating outperformance for longer-dated maturities. On Thursday, the spread hit its narrowest since June 2008 at 46.8 basis points. (Reporting by Fergal Smith; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
Sports marketing executive Casey Wasserman appears in the latest batch of Clinton emails, which show close ties between Clinton Foundation donors and the U.S. State Department.

Wasserman, whose charitable organization donated between $5 million and $10 million to the Clinton Foundation, asked Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band for help setting up an interview for one of his high-profile clients with the U.S. Embassy in London, the emails show. The client's name was redacted by the State Department.

The interview was necessary because the client had faced a "criminal charge" at some point in his past and was having difficulty getting into the country. Band then emailed Huma Abedin, one of Clinton's top aides at the State Department.

"I doubt we can do anything but maybe we can help with an interview," Abedin responded to Band. "I'll ask."

Later in the conversation, Abedin writes that the situation "makes me nervous to get involved, but I'll ask."

Agents at Wasserman's company also had reached out to the offices of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) for help securing an interview for their client, but had come up short.

The new parcel of emails challenges statements made by Clinton, who is the Democratic nominee for president, that all of her government emails had been turned over to the State Department, after initially being stored on a private server.

The emails were made public Monday, after watchdog organization Judicial Watch sued for their release. A rep said that Judicial Watch made the decision to sue for the documents after a Freedom of Information Act request went unanswered. A representative for Wasserman's office said that the forwarded email exchange never resulted in a visa.

The exchange between Wasserman and Band took place in May 2009.

Band, a trusted aide to former President Bill Clinton, left the Clinton Foundation in 2015 to found consulting firm Teneo Holdings.

Read more: Street Art Puts Leonardo DiCaprio and Hillary Clinton in Money-Laundering Machine
A crucial air transport agreement between the United States and Mexico, which was signed last year, goes into effect on Sunday.

The agreement will open new opportunities for traveling to and from the two countries, as it opens up the ability for an unlimited number of airlines to operate routes between cities.

Only two to three airlines were previously allowed to serve each city pair, keeping options quite limited, according to Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Affairs Thomas Engle at the U.S. Department of State.

Related: The Best All-Inclusive Resorts in Cancun

As the new agreement goes into effect, several airlines are looking to enter and expand in the market, which Engle told Travel + Leisure could include major U.S. carriers like Southwest Airlines and JetBlue, as well as low-cost carriers from Mexico.

Engle said this will not only give passengers more options, but could also help keep prices down as airlines start seeing more competition in the markets.

Mexico is one of the biggest sources of inbound tourism for America, Engle said.

According to Engle, preliminary data from the Department of Commerce indicates that the United States saw more than 18 million tourists from Mexico last year, who spent a total of about $19 billion while visiting.

Related: Amazing All-Inclusive Resorts in Mexico

Besides opening up new travel opportunities, the agreement will also allow for increased trade and economic benefits between the two countries.

Talia Avakian is a digital reporter at Travel + Leisure. Follow her on Twitter at @TaliaAvak.
SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Chileans took to the streets throughout the country on Sunday, seeking to increase pressure on the government to throw out Chile's private pension system in favor of one that would provide better retirement benefits. Under the current system, which was started in the 1980s during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, six private pension funds, known as AFPs, manage some $160 billion in assets. Opponents of Chile's private pension system say it forces workers to give their earnings to for-profit funds that do not ensure a dignified old age for all Chileans. "We expect the president and her government to open a dialogue and listen to the citizens of the country, and not just the owners of the AFPs," said Luis Mesina, spokesman for a group called No More AFPs, which organized the march. Organizers of the protest said 350,000 participated in the capital, Santiago, alone. Local police put the number at 80,000. Some marchers carried signs reading: "Chileans Ripped Off". President Michelle Bachelet has offered a plan to hike the pension contribution rate by 5 percentage points. That would cost about $3.8 billion a year, with the state paying $1.5 billion, the government said earlier this month. But the protesters said they wanted the current system dismantled. Any reforms must be passed by Congress, where there is broad support for boosting pensions. (Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Miami (AFP) - Cooperation is often hailed as a key trait that separates humans from animals, but researchers said Monday that our closest relative, the chimpanzee, can learn to work as a team.

In fact, chimps prefer cooperation by a ratio of five to one over competition, and find ways to discourage peers from freeloading, said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.

"Given the ratio of conflict to cooperation is quite similar in humans and chimpanzees, our study shows striking similarities across species and gives another insight into human evolution," said lead author Malini Suchak, who was a graduate student at the Yerkes Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time of the study.

She is now an assistant professor of animal behavior, ecology and conservation at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York.

Previous studies that found chimps were unlikely to cooperate took place in strictly controlled lab settings.

So researchers at Yerkes National Primate Research Center tried instead to mimic the chimps' natural environment for this study, placing 11 of them in a grassy outdoor area near a rope-like apparatus they could tug to get treats and rewards.

But they had to work together to get the goods, either in groups of two or three.

Chimps were allowed to choose their own partners.

Though they started out primarily competing against each other, they soon figured out that it was more advantageous to help each other.

Across 94 hour-long test sessions, researchers tallied 3,656 successful cooperative acts.

On the flip side, there were more than 600 competitive interactions, when chimps stole -- or tried to steal -- rewards without working to get them, pushed others out of the way or started fights.

Chimps sometimes overcame these forms of competition by "directly protesting against others," said the study.

Or, they refused to work in the presence of a freeloader, a strategy known as "avoidance," and which humans use, too.

Story continues

Other times, more dominant chimpanzees intervened to fend off the freeloaders, displaying what researchers called third-party punishment -- also a human strategy.

"We gave them the freedom to employ their own enforcement strategies," said Suchak.

"And it turns out, they are really quite good at preventing competition and favoring cooperation."

According to co-author Frans de Waal, a primate expert and professor of psychology at Emory University, the study should prompt scientists to reconsider the extent to which cooperation aids survival in the animal world.

"It has become a popular claim in the literature that human cooperation is unique. This is especially curious because the best ideas we have about the evolution of cooperation come straight from animal studies," he said.

"The natural world is full of cooperation, from ants to killer whales. Our study is the first to show that our closest relatives know very well how to discourage competition and freeloading. Cooperation wins!"
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is investigating the vice mayor of the city of Tianjin, the anti-graft watchdog agency said on Monday, the latest senior official to be implicated in a crackdown on corruption. Yin Hailin, 56, a long-time city planning official who became deputy mayor in 2012, is being investigated for "serious violations of discipline", the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement on its website. It did not elaborate. President Xi Jinping has made rooting out corruption a cornerstone of his administration. He has warned that the problem was so severe it threatened the survival of the ruling Communist Party. The party's anti-graft body has brought to book dozens of senior officials in the crackdown, including many of Xi's top political opponents. Several other Tianjin officials have been taken down in the campaign, including Wu Changshun, a former public security boss there. Yang Dongliang, the former work safety agency chief who was a vice mayor in Tianjin before Yin, was investigated for corruption days after big explosions at a chemicals warehouse in the northern port city killed about 170 people in August 2015. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Shanghai (AFP) - China's biggest property firm Vanke on Monday blamed a takeover it is trying to fight off for worsening business conditions, even as it reported higher profits.

Bosses of Vanke, China's largest residential developer by sales, have for months been trying to stave off what would be the country's first hostile blue-chip takeover, after private conglomerate Baoneng bought a stake of more than 20 percent, becoming its biggest shareholder.

Chairman Wang Shi and his executives currently own only around 0.2 percent of the 270 billion yuan (around $40 billion) firm.

But they retain a tight grip on it by virtue of their positions, and have proposed a controversial asset swap deal with a state-owned subway operator that would heavily dilute existing shareholders.

Analysts say that takeovers are crucial to efficient markets and the allocation of resources.

But in its earnings statement to the Hong Kong exchange, where it is listed, the company said the battle had "caused negative impacts on the normal operation of the Group".

From June to August, 31 land acquisition projects and five property management schemes have been terminated, suspended, or had renegotiations sought due to the fight, the statement said, adding the firm also faced tightened credit conditions from banks.

But surging Chinese home prices saw its earnings jump 48.8 percent in the first half to 74.8 billion yuan, it said.

The company said it could not rule out the possibility of future results being affected by the shareholding issue.

Employee resignations were running at double the rate of a year ago, putting the firm in a "difficult situation", company secretary Zhu Xu told a briefing in Shenzhen, according to Bloomberg News.

Another property firm, Evergrande, has stepped in to buy a stake of nearly seven percent in Vanke -- worth nearly $3 billion -- but has yet to make its intentions clear.

By midday, Vanke was up 1.34 percent in Shenzhen and was 0.74 percent higher in Hong Kong after the earnings statement.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has issued new rules demanding the establishment of Communist Party panels in non-government bodies, aiming to beef up the ruling party's role in such social groups, amid a broad crackdown on civil society. Western governments and rights groups have already lambasted a law passed in April, saying it treats foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a criminal threat and would effectively force many out of the country. The new guidelines, released late on Sunday by the general office of the party's central committee and the State Council, or cabinet, say party committees must be set up to ensure "effective cover" in all NGOs. "Strengthen political thought education for responsible people at social groups, and guide them to actively support party building," the guidelines said. "Promote the place of party building in the social group's charters." Supervision of the groups must also be placed high among the daily tasks of local party committees, whose performance will be judged on how well they manage the groups, the guidelines added. Party committees can also assign their own representatives to run party activities in groups judged sufficiently large, the guidelines say. The Civil Affairs Ministry will have a role in rooting out bad or illegal behavior, including banning groups. The ministry this month released its own proposals for new rules on NGOs, among them a demand that they publicize details such as funding and membership or face bans. China had about 329,000 registered social groups by the end of 2015, state media say. Chinese officials have defended the foreign NGO law, saying only a few law-breaking groups would be punished and there was no reason to fear the police. The government also says it has been trying to bring order to a sector that has been plagued by scandals in recent years, including the embezzlement of funds meant for charities. But rights groups say ambiguous language in the foreign NGO law banning activities that threaten national security or social stability could push out groups the party does not like. The curbs on Chinese NGOs come as President Xi Jinping reins in civil society, including rights lawyers and the press, a step critics say is meant to quash dissent. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe signed an agreement on Monday with Chinese and Austrian firms to upgrade a busy highway, a deal that will be one of the country's biggest road projects since independence 36 years ago. China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd (CHEC), a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Co Ltd, will partner Austria's Geiger International to upgrade and add more lanes to the 900 km (558 mile) highway from Beitbridge on the border with South Africa to Chirundu on the Zambian border. The highway is economically significant as it links landlocked Zimbabwe and Zambia to the Indian Ocean ports of Durban and Richards Bay in South Africa. Transport Minister Joram Gumbo said the cost of the project, which the minister had estimated at $2.7 billion in March, was yet to be determined. CHEC joins several Chinese firms that have been given contracts in Zimbabwe, for projects such as building power stations or revamping water plants, since President Robert Mugabe's government fell out with Western financiers in 2000. The road project is split in two phases, with the Chinese-Austrian venture building and getting a 20-year concession to operate part of the road, while the other part will be financed by a loan from an unnamed party and investment from CHEC. (Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; editing by James Macharia and David Clarke)
China navy

Its that time of year again.

South Korea and the US are holding their annual 12-day exercise, the Ulchi Freedom Guardian. Composed of 25,000 American and 50,000 South Korean soldiers, according to the Republic of Korea and United States Combined Forces Command, this massive war game is being conducted purely as a defense-oriented exercise.

But one of South Koreas neighbors may not necessarily see it that way. Not to be outdone, China has began what appears to be its own version of a war game, complete with its latest-generation aircraft and ships.

According to their Defense Ministry, China began conducting a simulated bomber attack on a naval task force late last week in the Sea of Japan.

In a statement from one Beijing's flight commanders to the Associated Press, Zhang Wenzhong announced that his aircraft had identified and struck their respective targets in a "radically short time." However, there appeared to be no reference to critical details of the exercise  including the specific purpose it was geared towards, who the prospective foes were, and why the Sea of Japan was chosen as its designated location.

China navy

But there are a few guesses as to why Chinas exercises were conducted in the Sea of Japan. For one, China has been leveraging their naval powers to make an impromptu move towards ruling not just the South China Sea, which blatantly defies The Hagues verdict, but the naval zones around it as well. This includes the uninhabited islands that litter the Sea of Japan that are currently under Japanese control.

The vessels that are scheduled to take part in this exercise include more than two dozen of Chinas latest-generation and stealth-equipped Type 054A class frigates and a Type 052C destroyer.

Story continues

In addition to this drill, China and Russia have agreed to hold Joint Sea 2016, a joint naval drill, next month.

You can view a portion of the drill in the Sea of Japan below:

Bomber aircrafts from the East Sea Fleet of #Chinas #PLA Navy held combat drill in int'l waters in the Sea of Japan pic.twitter.com/TBFU3K4dzp  People's Daily,China (@PDChina) August 21, 2016

NOW WATCH: The US and 25 other nations are working together in the worlds largest maritime exercise





More From Business Insider


Veteran investigative journalist and Killer Instincts Chris Hansen is joining Emmy-nominatedsyndicated series Crime Watch Daily as host. Now-titled Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hansen premieres its second season on September 12.

Known for his investigations on Dateline NBC, where he helped put predators behind bars with his hidden camera series To Catch a Predator, Hansen will bring the franchise back to life in a revamped, new signature series called Hansen vs. Predator. In the segments, Hansen will help bust a new breed of child predators that can now target children through a myriad of new social media platforms. He will also go after predatory teachers, dirty politicians, financial scammers and even celebrities.

For its second season, Hansen will anchor the series from New York City, while the show maintains its newsroom in Los Angeles. Hansen will lead the shows team reporters that includes Matt Doran, Jason Mattera, Ana Garcia, Andrea Isom and Michelle Sigona. Returning to the show will be special correspondent Elizabeth Smart, an activist and journalist who came to national attention in 2002 when she was abducted from her Salt Lake City home at the age of 14.

Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hansen is nationally syndicated on Tribune-owned stations in 30 markets, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The show is also cleared on additional stations representing 99% of the country. Affiliate news stations will continue to serve as an extended newsrooms, sharing local resources and reporters to cover the stories in local markets all over the country.

Hansen has won eight Emmy Awards for investigative reporting, outstanding coverage of a news story and outstanding coverage of breaking news. Hansen also hosts the Investigation Discovery (ID) series Killer Instinct, now entering its second season.

Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hansen is produced by Telepictures Productions and is distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution. Lisa Gregorisch-Dempsey, Jeremy Spiegel and Scott Eldridge serve as executive producers.

Story continues

Related stories

Billy Howle Boards On Chesil Beach For 'Carol Producer Number 9 Films

Keegan-Michael Key, Cobie Smulders & Fred Savage Lead Cast of Nick Stoller Netflix Series 'Friends From College

Ava DuVernay & David Oyelowo Lift Urbanworld Film Festival
(Adds AT&T statement, paragraph 7)

By Jonathan Stempel and Andrew Chung

NEW YORK, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc and AT&T Inc have ended a court battle over whether the "AT&T thanks" customer loyalty program infringed Citigroup's trademark in the phrase "thankyou."

According to a Monday filing with a Manhattan federal court, the companies have dropped claims against each other with prejudice, meaning they cannot be brought again.

Citigroup sued AT&T in June, calling "AT&T thanks" too similar to the "thankyou" that the New York-based bank had used since 2004 on its own customer programs.

AT&T countered that Citigroup has no monopoly over the word "thanks" and sought a court order to that effect.

The resolution may help preserve a relationship between Citigroup and AT&T dating to 1998 that includes 1.7 million U.S. customers with co-branded credit cards.

"We have decided not to pursue this matter any further and look forward to continuing to work with AT&T," Citigroup spokeswoman Jennifer Bombardier said in a statement.

AT&T spokesman Fletcher Cook said: "We consider the matter closed."

The case was dropped 11 days after U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan rejected Citigroup's request for a preliminary injunction against "AT&T thanks."

She said Citigroup did not show that "AT&T thanks" would necessarily confuse customers or cause it irreparable harm, though "AT&T thanks" and "thankyou" share some letters and pronunciation, and both "convey a message of gratitude."

The case is Citigroup Inc v. AT&T Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 16-04333.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Andrew Hay)
Huma Abedin Hillary Clinton

The Hillary Clinton campaign denied on Sunday that a top aide had an active role at a Muslim journal that has published articles whose ideology clashes with major tenets of Clinton's campaign.

The New York Post noted this weekend that the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, where Huma Abedin was listed as an assistant editor from 1996 to 2008, published an article in 1996 titled "Women's Rights are Islamic Rights," a likely play on Clinton's "women's rights are human rights" quote.

The article reportedly espoused antifeminist views.

Abedin's mother remains the journal's editor-in-chief. Her father founded the think tank that publishes the journal.

Clinton's campaign told the Post that Abedin was just a figurehead at the journal.

"My understanding is that her name was simply listed on the masthead in that period," Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told the Post. "She did not play a role in editing at the publication."

Merrill declined to say whether Abedin was paid by the journal.

NOW WATCH: 'I don't even really know where to start on answering this question': Watch President Obama respond to Trump's claim that the election will be rigged





More From Business Insider


Trump Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway weighed in on the issues where Hillary Clinton is most vulnerable and calls by the Trump campaign to shut down the Clinton Foundation.

Conway pointed to the key issues that could weigh on Hillary Clintons campaign.

Shes most vulnerable in owning I think the failures of these past eight years when it comes to foreign policy, Americas place around the world. But also, you know whats really striking to me, she is to the left of President Obama on an issue like immigration. She has said that they favor executive orders which means, as a presidential candidate, shes not even entertaining dealing with leader McConnell, or Speaker Ryan on an issue thats so searing and so robust, so fully present as immigration, Conway told the FOX Business Networks Sandra Smith.

Conway then explained why Obamacare could be a major vulnerability for the Clinton campaign as well.

She is very vulnerable on Obamacare. The question for her is do you own it, would you expand it? Are you going to go single-payer? What about the fact that UnitedHealthcare (NYSE:UNH) dropped out a billion dollars in losses, removed itself from 30 states? What about the fact that Aetna (NYSE:AET) followed up with $430 million worth of losses, removing itself from 11 of 15 exchanges?

Conway then weighed in on a Trump campaign statement calling for the Clinton Foundation to be shut down immediately.

Why not? First of all, they can donate $100 million to people in Louisiana who are in need, or other Americans who are in need, then they can shut it down.

Conway viewed reports that the Clinton Foundation would stop accepting foreign donations if Hillary Clinton is elected president as implying Clinton is aware of a potential conflict of interest which should be ended now, not if she is elected.

The idea that the Clinton campaign came out and said if she is elected president, well stop accepting foreign donations, is an implicit admission that its probably not a good idea right now, when shes not president, to accept these foreign donations.

Story continues

When questioned why attacks on Clinton havent seemed successful or resonated with voters, Conway explained that that would change with the Trump campaigns focus on facts and figures.

The Clinton campaign and all of her supporters out there, they want this to be just about tone and temperament, tone and temperament, we want it to be facts and figures, facts and figures about Obamacare, facts and figures about energy independence, facts and figures about ISIS.

Related Articles
Hillary Clinton PAC, Priorities USA, has slammed Donald Trump for his ableism, sexism, classism and his comments against veterans in a new video published on Monday. The video shows a collection of people as they watch broadcasts of Trump.

First we see a man on a couch at home watching the presidential nominee on TV making fun of a reporter, jerking his arms saying You got to see this guy. Ahhh. I dont remember what I said. Ahhh. I dont remember.

We then see a woman heading out as Trump says, Putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing. I dont want to sound too much like a chauvinist, but.

Then we see a laborer at work grimacing as Trump says, You have to be wealthy in order to be great. Im sorry to say it.

The final clip is of an older man with a cap that says Korea Veteran. Trumps words capture his attention as he says, He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people that werent captured. Credit: YouTube/Priorities USA
CNN Films said today it has acquired the Naudet brothers documentary 9/11 that first aired on CBS, ahead of the 15th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon.

The docu from French-born filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet, who also executive produced with retired Manhattan firefighter James Hanlon, will be updated to include a new introduction by Denis Leary, for broadcast on CNN worldwide. CNN Films will work with the team to update the film for the 2016 edition, and will retain worldwide broadcast rights for the film franchise and its archival material in perpetuity.

The project will be re-titled 9/11 Fifteen Years Later and will debut with limited commercial interruption, in back-to-back broadcasts, on Sunday, September 11, 2016, at 8 PM and 11 PM on CNN/U.S. On CNN International, it will premiere September 11 at 6 AM with encore broadcasts at 3 PM and 8 PM.

The Naudets were at the Duane Street New York Fire Department house on the morning of September 11, 2001, to film the training of a rookie New York firefighter, when hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into Tower One of the World Trade Center. An image of that moment of impact was filmed by Jules Naudet, and first aired that evening on CNN. Their completed film, however, debuted on CBS.

Separated throughout that day, and accompanying different members of the fire company, the brothers continued filming the rescue efforts of the first responders in what became a rough, gripping, minute-by-minute account of the attack, through the lens of the filmmakers who just happened to be on the scene at the time. Capturing the only video from inside the World Trade Center during the attack, the brothers kept filming from within and around Tower One during the collapse of both towers.

In the update, the filmmakers revisit some of the firefighters and their families. Daniel Nigro, New York Citys Fire Commissioner, answers questions about his departments readiness in the event of another attack, particularly at the recently completed One World Trade Center, aka Freedom Tower.

Story continues

Nancy Duffy, VP Program Development at CNN, Amy Entelis of CNN Films, and Ben Silverman of Propagate Content, are executive producers for CNN Films Presents 9/11 Fifteen Years Later; Courtney Sexton, VP Pprogram Development, and Jessica Velmans, senior producer, are supervising producers for the film.

The acquisition deal between CNN Films and Goldfish Pictureswas negotiated by Stacey Wolf, VP Business Affairs, and Kelly MacLanahan, senior legal counsel, both of CNN, on behalf of CNN Films, and by Silverman of Propagate and Lisa Davis of Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein & Selz on behalf of the filmmakers.

Related stories

Fall Premiere Dates For New & Returning Series: 2016 Edition

Ashleigh Banfield Moving To HLN Primetime, Ending 'Legal View' Run On CNN

Stephen Colbert Books Veep Nominee Tim Kaine For Thursday 'Late Show'
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)

By Andy Home

LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Hope springs eternal in Cornwall when it comes to reviving tin mining in this southwestern corner of the United Kingdom.

Canada's Strongbow Exploration is the latest to try to rekindle the dying embers of what once was one of the world's largest tin-mining hubs.

It has just bought out of administration the South Crofty mine, which was the last Cornish tin mine to close in 1998.

Many others have tried and failed to get South Crofty producing again.

There is still plenty of tin in the area, albeit submerged beneath the water that has flooded the mine since closure.

The real issue is price.

Low prices laid the Cornish tin industry low in the 1990s. And although the current London Metal Exchange (LME) tin price of around $18,500 a tonne is much higher than back then, it is a far cry from the peak of $33,600 recorded in 2011.

The price slide in the intervening five years derives in part from the same sort of supply shock that sent prices spiralling in the early 1990s.

Then it was the surprise emergence of a new mega-mine in Brazil. Today it is the equally unexpected impact of a huge, new tin-mining area in Myanmar.

BRAZIL THEN...

No one knew there was tin at what became the Bom Futuro mine in Brazil until a chance discovery by loggers in 1986.

Wildcat miners, termed "garimpeiros" in Portuguese, flooded into the area in their thousands.

By 1989 Bom Futuro is thought to have been producing at an annual rate of almost 30,000 tonnes of contained metal in concentrates.

Exact numbers are hard to come by since Bom Futuro existed in the shadows of the global organised tin trade.

Operated on an artisanal basis, much of its output was smuggled out of the country until the government and the official sector finally wrested legal control from the "garimpeiros" in 1992.

By that stage Bom Futuro was almost a ghost mine, a victim of the price collapse it had triggered by flooding the tin market with surplus supply. (This potted history comes from "The International Tin Trade", by Peter Roddy, published in 1995.)

Story continues

When LME trading resumed in 1989 after a break occasioned by the collapse of the International Tin Council, the tin price made it as high as $10,000 per tonne. By 1991, it had slumped to half that. Stocks ballooned to 47,000 tonnes over the same period.

The "Happy Future" mine translated into an unhappy end for the Cornish mining sector.

Geevor and Mount Wellington closed in 1991. South Crofty struggled on for several more years, selling surplus land to offset operating losses, before succumbing to the inevitable in 1998.

...NOW MYANMAR

The parallels between Bom Futuro back in the late 1980s and the Man Maw tin-mining hub in Myanmar today are uncanny.

As with Bom Futuro, no one saw the new supply coming.

The first indication came in the unlikely form of China's trade figures, which from May 2013 started showing a steady flow of raw material into the country from its neighbour.

Chinese imports of tin concentrates had totalled just 32,400 tonnes (bulk weight, not metal contained) in 2012.

That figure mushroomed to 96,600 tonnes in 2013; almost all of it, 89,100 tonnes, coming from Myanmar.

As the flows steadily increased over the course of 2014 and 2015, the global tin industry woke up to the existence of a major new driver of mine supply.

China's imports of Myanmar material totalled 285,600 tonnes last year, equivalent to around 41,000 tonnes of tin metal, according to industry group ITRI.

To put that figure into context, ITRI estimates world production of refined tin at 340,600 tonnes last year.

Myanmar, in other words, now accounts for well over 10 percent of global tin mine supply. Just a couple of years ago, the figure was close to zero.

DEFICIT DREAMS

The running ironic theme of the tin market for many years has been the fear of structural supply shortfall.

The mining boom of the last decade passed tin by. While major resource houses poured investment into the likes of copper and iron ore to feed Chinese demand, spending on new tin mines was negligible.

Indonesia, the world's largest tin exporter, has seen production and exports steadily fall since 2012, partly due to degrading mine economics but partly because of a government clampdown on the anarchic cluster of independent tin mines and smelters operating on the islands of Bangka and Belitung.

Indonesia is an echo of the free-wheeling days of the Bom Futuro wildcatters and the Brazilian authorities' five-year battle to control them.

Now it is Myanmar's turn to emerge from the shadows as a major new source of the metal.

ITRI, the official tin producers body, has itself only recently got into Myanmar to see what's happening.

Its assessment is that production is plateauing at around 50,000 tonnes per year as the easily accessible reserves are exhausted.

But somewhat ominously, it also notes that while smaller operators have left the area, bigger players are mechanising what was previously an artisanal operation.

And "there is still significant potential for the discovery of new ore resources". ("Myanmar tin production may have reached peak", Aug. 18, 2016).

Man Maw is the hard reality that looms large over Cornwall's dreams of reviving its historic tin sector.

Perhaps tin is not the answer at all.

Consider, for example, the Hemerdon tin mine in neighbouring Devon which closed in 1944.

It has just been put back into action by Wolf Minerals , not as a tin operation but as a tungsten mine with a bit of tin by-product.

Strongbow's attempt to revive South Crofty would benefit greatly if the company could find something other than tin in those flooded shafts.

How about lithium? Unlike tin with its flat-line usage profile, there's a metal with a very bright future indeed!

(Editing by Dale Hudson)
We're members of a minority: Jewish Blue-State professionals who plan to vote for Donald Trump . As Blue-Staters and as Jews, we have many friends and co-religionists who consider themselves progressives. As often disappointed conservatives and chagrined members of the Republicans' professional class, we have many friends and colleagues who consider themselves NeverTrumps. We get their angst, but we're tired of the self-righteous insistence that support for Trump is "unprincipled." They get the principle exactly backwards.

According to Rasmussenwhose polls tend to favor the GOPTrump's support among Republicans is only 69 percent. Our inclusion in that number flows from our principled opposition to the damage that progressivism has already inflicted on our great nation. Under Obama, the United Statesfounded as the embodiment of classic eighteenth century liberal idealshas turned away from its Judeo-Christian and Western roots, expanded government intrusiveness and control, robbed individuals of their agency as autonomous decision-makers, ignored the rule of law, and imperiled the global spread of prosperity. Hillary Clinton seeks to finish the job.



If there are conservatives arguing that Clinton is either unserious or incapable of achieving her stated goal, those trumpetingand trumping upTrump's shortcomings have drowned them outhelping Clinton in effect, if not in intent. The 11 percent of Republicans that Rasmussen shows supporting Gary Johnson stand between Clinton's aggressively progressive America and a philosophically idiosyncratic Trump presidency. We prefer the latteron principleand implore all principled conservatives (explicitly including the NeverTrumps) to do the same. Trump was not the champion we sought, but he is the one we have. The only one.



The distinction may be clearest in the cultural and social realms. Trump seems content to let homosexual couples form families, Christian bakers opt out of gay weddings, states decide the question of transgender bathroom use, and women choose abortions as long as they are not subsidizedeven when his personal beliefs and choices may point in other directions. He seems singularly unlikely to crusade over such issues. This stance defines a libertarian middle ground likely to satisfy neither social conservatives nor social progressives. And while the two of us do not always agree on these issues, we are clear that a non-ideological libertarian neutral is far superior to the crusading progressive that Clinton has promised to be.







When it comes to racehistorically, the most difficult issue in AmericaTrump can indeed seem tone-deaf. Nevertheless, his long history in the public eye suggests colorblindness rather than malice, and a healthy disdain for politically correct fascism. Trump has had close personal relationshipsand antagonismswith people of all races, ethnicities, and religions. His preference for "content of character" (as he defines it) over color of skin, coupled with his characteristic bluntness, is almost guaranteed to offend in our hypersensitive age.

Still, the idea that we should reward racial hostility and reorient society to avoid unavoidable "microagressions" against the perpetually thin-skinned is a particularly progressive failing. Conservatives ought to value respect and decorum, but in a clash between an insufficiently sensitive candidate and an overly sensitive victim class, a principled conservative can remain safely ambivalent.

And while America might do better with a conciliatory president, it will not find one in Clinton. Many attendees, and even some honorees, at the Democratic convention engaged in blatant anti-Semitism and outright hostility towards the police. Principled conservatives have a right to demand unqualified repudiation of such statements, people, and organizations--not the lukewarm distancing the candidate and the DNC provided. During the convention, a sitting Democratic Member of Congress publicly called Israeli Jews "termites" and a former Member tweeted conspiracy theories blaming Jews for Islamic terror in Europe. Meanwhile, attendees waved the flag of the terrorist PLO/Palestinian Authority (on Thursday it was labeled as anti-Semitic by the State Department) and burned American and Israeli flags. Is that a mandate "principled" conservatives are content to tolerate, let alone assist?



On economics, both campaigns disappoint. Growth is a prerequisite for almost all beneficial advancements, and free trade is critical to growth. Granted, democratic institutions that remain oblivious to distribution will eventually induce society's many losers to vote against growthas we are seeing today. From that perspective, Trump's coupling of concerns about the distributional effects of trade and immigration with pro-growth regulatory and tax reform is less disturbing than Clinton's all-encompassing anti-growth redistribution agenda.



On judicial nominations, Trump has provided ample reason for optimism among constitutional conservativesand it is hard to see how he could be worse than Clinton's relentless focus on the full progressive takeover of the federal judiciary.



Finally, in the Middle East, Trump is far more inclined than Clinton to correctly see Israelis as good guys, radical Muslims as evil, and moderate Muslims as potential allies who need our help. Clinton may spout politically popular pro-Israel platitudes, but her track record of strong-arming Israel while embracing and mainstreaming Muslim terrorists speaks far louder than her words. She would continue the shocking Obama policies in which she was complicit  including the horrendous Iran Deal.



We appeal to conservatives still waving the NeverTrump banner to reconsider while time remains. Much is at stake. Principled progressives committed to completing America's transformation can vote for Clinton. Principled conservatives must fight her.

Commentary by Bruce Abramson, Ph.D., J.D. and Jeff Ballabon. Abramson is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, and director of policy at the Iron Dome Alliance. Ballabon is CEO of B2 Strategic where he advises and represents corporate and political clients on interacting with the government and media. He previously headed the communications and public policy departments of major media corporations including CBS News and Court TV. Follow them on Twitter @bdabramson and @ballabon.



For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion onTwitter.
Constitution Daily Supreme Court correspondent Lyle Denniston looks at a lawsuit from an Army officer that contests the legality of military actions against taken against the Islamic State.

THE STATEMENT AT ISSUE:

isis456

August 8, 2014, is generally understood as the beginning of the current war against the Islamic State [in Syria]. This implies that the 60-day deadline [under the War Powers Resolution] for Congresss explicit authorization lapsed on October 7 [2014], and in the absence of such a mandate, the required moment for withdrawal was November 6 [2014]. But the President failed, during this critical period, to gain a new Authorization for the Use of Force.These undisputed facts suffice to establish a prima facie violation of the War Powers Resolution.

 Excerpt from a legal brief filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., on August 18, by lawyers for Army Captain Nathan Michael Smith, who has sued President Obama to test the legality of the U.S. military action against the Islamic State. The brief was filed in response to a government effort to have the case dismissed. The government will file a further brief on September 14 before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly makes a decision.

WE CHECKED THE CONSTITUTION, AND

America has now had more than four decades of experience with Congresss effort to reclaim the primary constitutional role of deciding when the U.S. military can be sent into war or its equivalent. Still, no one in either Congress or the Executive Branch is pleased with the way that effort, in the War Powers Resolution of 1973, has worked out. President Obamas use of force against the Islamic State in Syria shows that the mutual frustration continues.

An Army captain, just back in the States from a tour of duty in Kuwait during the action against ISIS (formally called Operation Inherent Resolve), is pressing ahead in federal court with his claim that the war is illegal, and thus he was deployed to serve in it under illegal orders. He is not seeking a court order to immediately end the conflict, but rather a ruling that the War Powers Resolution must be set in motion to end it unless Congress specifically gives its authorization.

Story continues

Under that 1973 mandate, a president must notify Congress within 48 hours after ordering U.S. troops into military action. The operation can continue for 90 days while Congress considers whether to formally authorize it. If it does not do so within that time span, the president has 30 more days to wind down the involvement of military forces and bring them home.

Captain Smiths lawyers are now arguing that the operation against ISIS in Syria has now entered its third year, and has been illegal from the start because Congress has never approved it.

In the operation against Syria, President Obama and his aides have insisted that there is no need for a new authorization from Congress, since they claim continuing effect from formal authorizations given in 2001 to react to the September 11 terrorist attacks and in 2002 to launch the invasion of Iraq to topple the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

Last month, the Obama administrations lawyers filed their formal request that Captain Smiths case be dismissed. Besides making a series of procedural arguments, and a constitutional claim that the dispute is one for the President and Congress and not the courts, the government lawyers laid out their full legal argument that Congress has done enough to show that it supports the military campaign against ISIS.

Last week, it was the turn of Captain Smiths lawyers to file a brief seeking to keep his case going. They did so with a full defense of what he personally has at stake  obey illegal orders to take part in the war or risk being imprisoned for failing to follow orders  and a sweeping legal counter-attack on the White Houses arguments.

Although the captain has just returned home and is now assigned to Fort Hood in Texas, his lawyers contended that he is a career officer and may be re-deployed in the future to take part in illegal military operations, and, in any event, his case is the kind that should be allowed to proceed because the courts did not have time to rule on his challenge until after he returned to the U.S.

His legal right to test the legality of orders from the Commander in Chief, his attorneys claimed, was established by the Supreme Court as long ago as 1804, when then-Chief Justice John Marshall wrote for the court that a military officer must obey only the orders that Congress has given the president the authority to issue, not military orders that go further than that.

The legal brief sought to make the case that President Obama, beginning with the bombing of Libya in 2011 and following that with the war against ISIS, is trying to stretch the war-making powers of the presidency further than any other Commander in Chief has done since the War Powers Resolution was enacted.

To the presidential argument that Congress has actually approved the ISIS operation by approving funding bills, the captains legal filing argued that Congress itself has said repeatedly that its funding legislation cannot be used as a substitute for a clear and distinct authorization to engage in military operations. Congress, the brief noted, has added to all of its military spending bills in recent years the specific proviso that the power to spend the money does not include an implied grant of power under the War Powers Resolution.

The White House brief in the case also had contended that, if such provisos are taken to mean a lack of authorization, then that kind of language is itself unconstitutional because it tries to use the War Powers Resolution to limit what future Congresses can do to approve military spending. Captain Smiths lawyers flatly dispute that, arguing that Congress at any time in the future could repeal the Resolution, to end the need for specific authorizations for future combat.

Captain Smith has the support in the case of the Constitution Project, a liberal advocacy group on constitutional issues, joined by Michael J. Glennon, a professor of international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, who was a Senate legal aide at the time the War Powers Resolution was enacted.

Legendary journalist Lyle Denniston is Constitution Dailys Supreme Court correspondent. Denniston has written for us as a contributor since June 2011. Denniston has covered the Supreme Court since 1958. His work also appears on lyldenlawnews.com.

Recent Stories on Constitution Daily

Why Election Day really starts on September 23 (and not November 8)

Constitution Check: Might the Second Amendment be redefined?

Sister Wives case moves slowly toward Supreme Court
Costcos marriage to Visa has been rocky pretty much from the start  and this weekend shoppers faced a new problem, despite assurances that issues in the relationship were being ironed out.

On Friday evening, a number of Costco members received emails from Citi, the issuer of the new Visa-Costco credit card, alerting them that their credit card accounts had been closed.

In at least some cases, members reported that they received emails addressed to other people that contained the last four digits of other users account numbers, raising concerns that their accounts had been hacked.

Citi told Business Insider that Fridays emails were intended to be sent to Costco shoppers whose memberships had lapsed to alert them they could no longer use their Costco Anywhere Visa cards. But because of a systematic error, some active Costco members received emails intended for other cardholders.

Citi said that the users accounts were not compromised and that the mistake affected only a small percentage of Costco members.

The emails represent another speed bump in Costcos transition from American Express to Visa as its credit card of choice. The move, finalized in June, affected 11 million Costco members who were required to transition from the TrueEarnings American Express Costco cards to the Costco Anywhere Visa to earn rewards through a Costco cobranded credit card.

Following the transition, users threatened to cancel their Costco memberships because of initial and ongoing issues.

Some of those affected by Fridays email blunder complained on social media:

got email from @Costco @Citi stating account cancelled with someone elses name attached to my account. Anyone else? #Costco #citi #visa

Shocked that @Citi and @Costco havent done anything to address what looks like a mass-cancellation or data breach. @AskCiti

Why cant @Citi get their Costco act together? 5 phone calls and 2 months to get my membership # corrected!! Then they cancelled my card!

Story continues

@Mathew_Rzepecki @Costco YES. 37mn hold time to be told to its all a glitch. Really @Citi? Thats one helluva glitch. #iwantmyamexback

Costco members said they had to wait more than 30 minutes on Friday and Saturday to speak with Citi representatives about their accounts.

On Saturday evening, Costco emailed all customers who were affected, instructing them to disregard prior emails regarding the Costco Anywhere Visa.

Your account and the cards for any existing authorized user(s) are open and available to use, the email reads. We apologize for any concern or inconvenience this may have caused and please be assured your account has not been compromised.

The transition from the TrueEarnings American Express Costco card to the Costco Anywhere Visa card has been a longer process than anticipated.

Were working through that, Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat said of the transition in a call with analysts after reporting second-quarter earnings in July. Were gaining on it. Were very focused on it. Weve got a lot of resources deployed against it, and its something we can fix in the short order.

(Tim Boyle / Staff / Getty Images)





According to Corbat, Citi faced extremely high calling volumes from customers with questions about card activation, statements, and payments.

Citis inability to respond to customer questions was one of the biggest problems in the Costco credit card transition in late June, with members facing long wait times and dropped calls while waiting to speak with Citi customer-service representatives.

Worst credit card transition ever  4 hours and counting on the phone with Citibank and they still cant get my cards to me, one Costco member wrote on Facebook. Saving money isnt worth alienating your members  seriously rethinking my patronage.

Customers complained in June of not receiving their new Citi Visa cards in the mail and not being able to use corporate American Express cards at Costco, following the switch to making Visa the retailers exclusive credit card partner. Theyve also complained about charges being flagged as fraud, and that the transfer of rewards dollars has been lower than expected.

Despite the complaints, Citi says the swap has been an overall success.

Citi reported more than 337,000 new account acquisitions to date since the switch  a number that significantly exceeded Citis expectations. Purchase sales on Costco Visa cobranded cards totaled $5.7 billion in the 3 1/2 weeks following the transition, according to Citi.

Have you been faced issues following Costcos credit card transition? Email ktaylor@businessinsider.com to share your story.

Related:

For more news videos, visit Yahoo View.

NOW WATCH: Here are the 8 food items you should only get from Costco

More From Business Insider
New York (AFP) - Investigators looking into pop legend Prince's death believe that counterfeit pills may have killed him, a report said Monday.

The Star Tribune, the daily newspaper in Prince's hometown of Minneapolis, said that authorities turned to the theory after seizing pills from Prince's Paisley Park estate.

The confiscated pills were marked as hydrocodone, a commonly prescribed drug for moderate pain relief, but in fact contained fentanyl, an intensely powerful painkiller for which Prince had no prescription.

An autopsy earlier found that Prince died on April 21 from an accidental overdose of fentanyl but did not address how he obtained the drug.

The Star Tribune, which quoted an anonymous source, said that investigators were "leaning toward the theory that he took the pills not knowing they contained the drug."

Prince was found dead in his Paisley Park estate just as he prepared to discuss treatment with a California expert in painkiller addiction.

The 57-year-old "Purple Rain" star was outwardly a model of health who was known to be conscientious in his food choices and critical of musicians who abused drugs.

But Prince was private about his personal life and was believed to be quietly in pain from a hip operation after years of awe-inspiring stage moves.

One of the most influential artists of his generation, the sprightly rocker was just five-foot-two (1.6-meter) and 112 pounds (51 kilograms).

In his death, Prince became the highest-profile victim of a US epidemic of painkiller addiction.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration in a report last month said that fentanyl was more widely available and killing more people than at any point since the drug's creation in 1959.

The federal agency said that hundreds of thousands of counterfeit painkiller pills were on the US market, many containing fentanyl that was mass-produced in labs in China.
This couple is taking their relationship to new heights.

Read: Teen Illegally Scales Great Pyramid of Giza, Taking Video and Photographs All the Way

Russian adrenaline fanatics Ivan Kuzenetsov, 22, and Angela Nikolau, 23, have spent years traveling the world to free climb some of its tallest structures and now they've scaled their greatest yet.

In the past, they've climbed landmarks that include the Sagrada Familia in Spain, the Shanghai Tower in China and the Eiffel Tower in France.

The pair recently became a romantic couple, and Kuzenetsov and Nikolau decided to celebrate by becoming the first people to climb the world's tallest construction site, the Goldin Finance 117, which is also known as the China 117 Tower.

Climbing up on the highest construction in the world #china #rooftop A photo posted by Ivan Beerkus (@beerkus) on Jul 27, 2016 at 8:53am PDT

And according to Travel Ticker, which helped organize their romantic getaway, the couple didn't even bother to pack their safety harnesses.

"They enjoy the thrill of this sport, the adrenaline it gives," Travel Ticker's Dovile Miller told InsideEdition.com. "Of course, they have to be extremely cautious while doing these. After all, they're extremely high off the ground."

Kuzenetsov and Nikolau traveled to Tianjin, China, earlier this month to scale the tower.

Construction for the building is estimated to be completed in 2018 or 2019, and will surpass the Shanghai World Financial Center as the second tallest building in the world at 117 stories high.

"I did this to prove [to] myself that I can do this," Kuzenetsov told InsideEdition.com.

He said to prepare for the trip, they double checked around the area of the construction site to come up with a plan to bypass security.

"Yes, it was illegal to climb," Kuzenetsov clarified. "We didn't have permission to do this climb."

Story continues

But, in Travel Ticker's footage of the experience, he and his girlfriend made it to the top, and even took a moment to hold hands and enjoy the scenery from the top of the crane hanging off the summit of what will become the tower.

Read: Who is the Trump Supporter Who Climbed His Fifth Avenue Tower?

"I always climb to the top if I'm fully confident with my abilities," Kuzenetsov said. "I'm not afraid of getting caught."

While the man said the next skyscrapers he plans to scale will remain a secret, he hinted that he is looking forward to visiting Canada, Japan, Malaysia and even the U.S.

Read: College Student Spends Financial Aid on Trip to Thailand with his Girlfriend

Related Articles:
Sumner Redstone's granddaughter wants an unredacted copy of ousted CEO Philippe Dauman's settlement with Viacom - and a Massachusetts judge is willing to hear her out.

Keryn Redstone on Monday asked the court to allow her "to scrutinize the entire Settlement Agreement ... in order to inform this Court about any issues affecting its fairness and negotiation, the role (if any) of Sumner in negotiating and approving the settlement." She questions why Dauman is giving up his fierce battle to keep Shari Redstone from seizing control of her father's media empire.

Keryn Redstone's attorney Pierce O'Donnell issued a statement Monday announcing Judge George Phelan's decision.

"Keryn Redstone seeks these documents so that she can review for herself whether the settlement adequately protects Sumner Redstone and the trust beneficiaries, or whether it is a back-room deal between Shari Redstone and others seeking to benefit from Redstone's media empire," said O'Donnell. "It has always been Keryn's top priority in this case to make sure that Sumner Redstone's interests and wishes are protected, and the hearings on Friday are a part of this."

The hearing is set for Friday morning, and Phelan also is expected to decide whether Sumner Redstone will undergo a mental evaluation to determine whether he is competent and if he is susceptible to undue influence.

Read more: Sumner Redstone Drama Cheat Sheet: Who's Suing Whom?
Washington (AFP) - A five-year-old securities fraud case rooted in the financial crisis against the former chief executive of mortgage giant Fannie Mae ended Monday in stalemate, court filings showed.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the CEO, Daniel Mudd, decided to resolve the case being tried in civil court with no finding of guilt or innocence.

The two sides "agree that no party is the prevailing party in this case," they said.

The agreed "that it is not in the interest of justice to continue to litigate this matter."

After the massive 2008 bailout of Fannie Mae and sister mortgage firm Freddie Mac in the financial collapse, in 2011 the SEC filed securities fraud charges against six former executives of the companies.

The SEC said the executives approved misleading statements that claimed the companies held low levels of risky sub-prime mortgage loans.

The statements were made in 2007-2008, as the housing market crashed and US financial institutions were rocked by losses tied to millions of bad home loans and the securities they underpinned.

The SEC had argued that Fannie and Freddie executives had defrauded shareholders -- including the government -- by vastly understating the weakness of their own loan holdings.

Mudd's case was the last of the six, which likewise were inconclusive.

The agreement to conclude the case included a stipulation that Mudd will "contribute" $100,000 to the US Treasury, with no explanation given as to what that represented.

Mudd's total compensation in 2007, before the bailout which left Fannie and Freddie under government control and supervision until today, was $11.6 million.
Geneva (AFP) - An arms watchdog on Monday urged major weapons exporters, including the United States and France, to cut sales to Saudi Arabia over its actions in Yemen, as a conference on global arms trade opened in Geneva.

The World Trade Organization is hosting the second conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which came into force in 2014 laying out new rules governing the international arms market.

By continuing to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, which has led a 17-month-long campaign against rebels in Yemen, major weapons exporters that signed the ATT are guilty of "the worst kind of hypocrisy," said Anna Macdonald, director of the watchdog Control Arms.

"The ATT has been in force for nearly two years but some States Parties are violating it with impunity," Macdonald added in a statement.

"Every day, we are seeing the devastating impact of the sale of arms and ammunition for use on civilians in Yemen."

The ATT requires states to block any arms deal if they have knowledge at the time of the sale that the weapons will be used against civilians.

Saudi Arabia has faced fierce criticism over its Yemen offensive in support of the internationally recognised government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

There have been repeated strikes on civilian targets. Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has described the Saudi-led coalition bombings as "indiscriminate."

France authorised $18 billion (16 billion euros) in weapons sales to Saudi Arabi last year, Control Arms said in a report this month.

The United States approved arms deals with Riyadh worth $5.9 billion in 2015, while for Britain the figure was $4.0 billion.

France and Britain have ratified the ATT. The US has signed the deal, but Congress has not approved it.

Control Arms accused those countries of "flouting international law in plain sight by continuing to sell billions of dollars worth of deadly weapons to Saudi Arabia."

The US Navy announced Saturday it had slashed the number of intelligence advisers directly supporting the Saudi-led coalition's air war in Yemen following concerns over civilian casualties.
BERLIN (Reuters) - A plaque honoring David Bowie was unveiled on Monday at the home where the late rock star lived during his stay in Cold War-era Berlin. Bowie, who died in January, moved to Berlin in the mid-1970s. He lived there while he worked on albums "Low", "Heroes" and "Lodger". Fans gathered at the building on Monday, laying flowers and candles outside, before Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller unveiled the plaque reading "David Bowie (1947-2016) lived in this house 1976-1978". The plaque also quotes a line from "Heroes". "I think one can say David Bowie and West Berlin had quite a special partnership," Mueller told the crowd. (Reporting By Reuters Television, editing by Larry King)
Aden (AFP) - Deadly clashes raged on Monday between pro-Iran rebels and Yemeni government forces battling to secure an entrance to the besieged city of Taez, military sources said.

Backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition, Yemeni troops launched an offensive last week to break the rebel siege on Yemen's flashpoint third city, in the country's southwest.

The heaviest fighting Monday was near its western entrance where air strikes by the Arab coalition and ground battles left 11 dead among Huthi rebels and their allies, loyalist military sources said.

An air raid killed two more rebels at the northern entrance to Taez, which has been encircled for more than year, the sources said.

AFP could not confirm the toll from independent sources and the Iran-backed rebels rarely acknowledge their losses.

"The blockade of Taez is almost broken after the retaking of Jabal al-Dhabab mountain" by loyalist forces, Colonel Abdulaziz al-Majidi, a spokesman of pro-government forces in the area, told AFP.

"The road is now open between the west of Taez and southern provinces," he said, adding however that he was referring to a "rugged" route and not the main road.

The main road linking Taez to the south is still under rebel control.

Southern provinces are held by loyalist forces, while the rebels control the capital Sanaa, as well as the north and much of western Yemen.

Tens of thousands of civilians are said to be caught in the fierce and protracted battle for Taez.

Despite the latest loyalist advances, mines planted by the rebels around the city are so far hampering the delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid to Taez, according to military sources.

But dozens of residents have been using the sole open road, even before demining operations have been completed, to reach villages along the western outskirts, the sources added.

Yemen has been hit by unrest since the Huthi rebels and allied forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh overran Sanaa in September 2014.

Story continues

Violence escalated after the Saudi-led coalition launched a military campaign in March last year to shore up the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

The UN says more than 6,600 people, mostly civilians, have since been killed and more than 80 percent of the population left in need of humanitarian aid.

The official sabanew.net website reported Monday that local charities have distributed around 40 tonnes of food supplies funded by Qatari businessmen to some 1,000 families across Taez province.

In Saudi Arabia, where rebel attacks on the kingdom's side of the border intensified this month, civil defence authorities said three foreign residents were wounded Monday in shelling from Yemen on the city of Najran.

More than 100 civilians and soldiers have been killed in southern Saudi Arabia by retaliatory rocket strikes or skirmishes since the coalition operations began.
Twisted Sisters Were Not Gonna Take It was one of the great teen rebel anthems of the hard-rock 80s. But now an older, wiser, kinder, gentler Dee Snider  the bands infamous frontman  has transformed the fist-pumping rocker into a tear-jerking piano ballad for magician Criss Angels HELP (Heal Every Life Possible) charity.

Angel also directed the music video, which is a far cry from the original Twisted Sister version, which depicted a snarling, warpainted Snider terrorizing an uptight suburban family. Instead, Snider sings in the deserts outside of Las Vegas, his heartfelt performance juxtaposed with footage of young cancer patients.

Related: Twisted Sister Frontman Wont Vote for His Friend Donald Trump

Dee and I have known each other since the 1990s and he was a strong proponent of mine for years. We are both from Long Island, or as we like to think of it, Strong Island, and his record publishing company gave me the rights to the song and it is our anthem for gratis, Angel told the Las Vegas Review-Journal about the project. Dee was unbelievably generous with his time and participation.

Related: Dee Snider Remembers the PMRC Hearing of 1985

Last month, Snider re-released Were Not Gonna Take It for a different cause: calling for fair compensation for members of the music industry. The tune was chosen as the official fight song for the Recording Academys advocacy efforts, including the Fair Play Fair Pay Act.

Coming up, Snider will perform his acoustic version of Were Not Gonna Take It at Criss Angels HELP fundraising launch party and auction on Sept. 12 at Las Vegass Luxor resort; other scheduled performers and guests include Richie Sambora, Vince Neil, Mike Tyson, Black Eyed Peas Taboo, Jerry Lewis, and Wayne Newton.
By Theopolis Waters

CHICAGO, Aug 22 (Reuters) - U.S. hog farms devastated by a swine virus three years ago have rebuilt their herds to record levels, an accomplishment that has brought equally formidable problems.

The value of young "feeder" pigs weighing 10 to 12 pounds, the building block of the U.S. pork sector, has plunged by nearly three-quarters this year, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

This is the latest pain point for a sector that has struggled to bounce back from the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus outbreak, which has killed an estimated 8 million pigs since May 2013.

Cheaper feed grain prices, including a 60 percent plunge for corn since 2012, also convinced farmers to increase their herds, according to federal data.

But others were also rebuilding, said Iowa State University economist Lee Schulz. Canadian feeder pig imports to the United States are up more than 8 percent so far this year, he noted.

Livestock analysts said packers might be turning their eyes north to take advantage of the strong U.S. dollar.

Competition from other U.S. protein producers also has eroded the pork farmers' gains. Bigger cattle herds and poultry flocks in recent years began to vie for retailer and consumer dollars, industry analysts said.

That heated competition has been eroding slaughter hog prices since early July, which in turn trimmed farmers' profits. As a result, producers looking to add to their herds started to shy away from buying young pigs.

Another warning sign: Farmers may have rushed animals to market ahead of schedule, which may have contributed to weaker hog and piglet prices, consultant Len Steiner recently wrote in his Daily Livestock Report newsletter to clients.

Recent USDA data showed the average price of feeder pigs hit a low of $17.67 per head for the week ended on July 30, down almost 73 percent from its Jan. 30 high.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange two-day lean hog index , a barometer of slaughter prices, fell to 67.32 cents per pound on Friday from this year's peak of 85.03 cents on June 30.

Story continues

The declines could not occur at a worse time for hog farmers. The U.S. summer grilling season, which usually puts more money in packers' and farmers' pockets, is nearing its close. Demand from retailers for the Sept. 3-5 U.S. Labor Day holiday weekend may offer only short-term relief for hog prices, analysts said.

After that, Schulz said, hopes for pricing will rest heavily on whether domestic demand for pork grows and whether the United States can boost exports.

The USDA estimated pork exports at 5.22 billion pounds (2.37 million metric tonnes) for 2016 and 5.30 billion pounds for 2017. Last year the United States exported 4.94 billion pounds.

(Editing by P.J. Huffstutter and Lisa Von Ahn)
ANKARA (Reuters) - The device used in a bombing of a wedding in southeastern Turkey that killed more than 50 people over the weekend was the same type used in 2015 attacks on a peace rally in Ankara and on the border district of Suruc, a senior security official said on Monday. Both the Ankara and Suruc attacks were blamed on Islamic State, reinforcing the suspicion that the militant group was also behind the Gaziantep bombing on Saturday evening, the official said. (Reporting by Orhan Coskun; Writing by Can Sezer and David Dolan; editing by Patrick Markey)
Talk about a mature breakup.

Although Joshua Jackson and Diane Kruger ended their 10-year relationship last month, the two were spotted hugging at Los Angeles International Airport on Friday, looking pretty close.

FameFlynet

WATCH: Joshua Jackson and Diane Kruger Embrace at Airport One Month After Split

However, a source tells ET they haven't rekindled their romance.

"They're not back together [and are] just friends," the source says.

And 40-year-old Kruger seems to have a message for all the speculation going on surrounding her love life.

"New couple alert!" she Instagrammed on Sunday, hugging a giant poop emoji pool float. "#neverlookbackinanger #thepastisjustaplaceofreference #stoptalkingsh*thahahah."

Kruger and Jackson started dating in 2006 after the actress split from her husband of five years, French director Guillaume Canet. But in July, her rep confirmed to ET that she and 38-year-old Jackson broke up after a decade together, during which they dodged plenty of marriage questions.

WATCH: Diane Kruger and Joshua Jackson Split After 10 Years Together

Still, the two are obviously enjoying one another's company post-breakup. Aside from Kruger and Jackson's cute airport embrace, they were again seen out and about together in Los Angeles earlier this month, grabbing a bottle of wine.

Watch below:

Related Articles
Justice Robert Jackson (courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Justice Robert Jackson (courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Among the most important Supreme Court cases about the separation of powers is Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. The decision was a slap in the face to a wartime president. More important, the famous concurring opinion penned by Justice Robert Jackson offered a durable framework for analyzing disputes between the executive and legislative branches. But a recent essay from Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law Schoola past speaker at the National Constitution Centersuggests that Jackson didnt get it quite right.

In 1950, the United States entered the Korean War. At the time, President Harry Truman was concerned with the output of the nations steel mills, as he believed that a strike would cause severe problems for the war effort and the countrys economy.

However, the presidents efforts to avoid labor issues did not succeed. The United Steelworkers of America sought a new contract that would increase wages for its members; the Wage Stabilization Board attempted to have the workers and the industry agree on a compromise. Failing to do so, the union announced that a strike was on, and the steel companies began to shut down their mills.

President Truman decided that he needed to force the mills to stay open. In his executive order on April 8, 1952now on display at the CenterTruman warns that American fighting men and fighting men of the United Nations are now engaged in deadly combat with the forces of aggression in Korea, and that a work stoppage would immediately jeopardize and imperil our national defense and the defense of those joined with us in resisting aggression, and would add to the continuing danger of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen engaged in combat in the field.

Within an hour of the announcement, attorneys for the steel industry sought a temporary restraining order to keep the president from carrying out the order. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, where five hours of oral argument focused on whether the inherent powers of the presidency under Article II authorized the seizure of private property.

Story continues

On June 2, 1952, the Court ruled 6-3 against Truman, with the strident textualist Justice Hugo Black authoring the majority opinion. However, the other five Justices in the majority wrote concurring opinionsincluding Justice Jackson, whose tripartite framework has endured as a guide for adjudicating disputes between the President and Congress.

The actual art of governing under our Constitution does not, and cannot, conform to judicial definitions of the power of any of its branches based on isolated clauses, or even single Articles torn from context, writes Jackson. While the Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty, it also contemplates that practice will integrate the dispersed powers into a workable government.  Presidential powers are not fixed but fluctuate depending upon their disjunction or conjunction with those of Congress.

Michael Gerhardt and William Howell discuss the Youngstown case on Landmark Cases

William Howell and Michael Gerhardt (right) discuss the Youngstown case with host Susan Swain on Landmark Cases

So it was that the Youngstown triptych was born. In Jacksons articulation, the presidents power is at its maximum when he or she acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, at its lowest ebb when he or she acts against the expressed or implied will of Congress, and in a zone of twilight when he or she acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority.

Though elegant, Jacksons concurrence provides little guidance for judges to determine when the President has erred in the face of congressional silence. In this area, Jackson notes, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables, rather than on abstract theories of law.

Into this ambiguity steps Professor Tribe. In a July piece for The Yale Law Journal Forum, Tribe not only highlights the difficulty of ascertaining Congresss will, but also suggests that Jacksons two-dimensional analysis fails to take into account other important constitutional principles.

The truth is that Youngstown offers no meaningful baseline against which to assess the operative legal significance of Congresss silence, Tribe writes. [R]eferences to the undefined will of Congress leave the field wide open for unguided imputations to Congress of an inchoate set of floating intentions and purposesand for giving those imputed intentions operative legal consequences. Vaguely related statutes, joint resolutions, and other congressional actions can be cited as approval or rejection of executive actions, with no clear standard for judging either way. Indeed, as a result, courts may be running roughshod over the lawmaking process outlined in Article I, Section 7.

So when a case falls within the zone of twilight, what other factors should the Court consider in making its decision?

First, Tribe defends executive enforcement discretion, citing the ongoing debate over President Barack Obamas executive actions on immigration. Congresss instructions  frequently bear little relation to the facts on the ground and may indeed be internally inconsistent, he notes. In the case of immigration, Tribe explains, deporting the approximately 11 million immigrants living the U.S. illegally would require more money than Congress allocated for the task, as well as policing mechanisms that could raise liberty concerns. President Obamas deferred deportation programs, then, are a permissible way of dealing with this inconsistency.

Tribe then suggests two other principlesfederalism and individual rightsare worthy of consideration as well. While federalism cuts in favor of national executive power on immigration, Tribe argues that on an issue like marijuana legalization, courts should err on the side of states rights. Moreover, Jacksons concurrence itself notes that executive power must be matched against words of the Fifth Amendment, leading Tribe to call for greater attention to individual rights. Tribe cites a lawsuit challenging the legality of the war on ISIL and a dispute over listing Jerusalem as part of Israel on a U.S. passport as cases where this could make a difference.

Both leading presidential candidates have suggested that executive power will be an important tool in the next administration. We can be confident, then, that the separation of powers will remain a potent issue in our constitutional debates for years to come. Perhaps Professor Tribes analysis can help a future Court sort it all out.

Nicandro Iannacci is a web content strategist at the National Constitution Center.

Recent Stories at Constitution Daily

Why Election Day really starts on September 23 (and not November 8)

Faith and military duty: Do they conflict?

Podcast: The history and meaning of the 19th Amendment
One of the key leaders listed as part of Donald Trumps new Hispanic Advisory Council has not actually agreed to the role, citing concerns over Trumps lack of an adequate immigration policy, even though the official announcement on the Republican National Committee website touted his name. When the council first met in New York on Saturday, Dallas pastor Mark Gonzales was not invited and did not attend.

I wasnt aware that I was on any list in that capacity, officially, Gonzales says. We are waiting for more details, we want to see what he will do on immigration.  Our stance remains the same, we are willing to serve in that capacity if that takes place.

Gonzales is the founder of the Hispanic Prayer Network and the Hispanic Action Network, which represent some 10,000 Latino evangelical churches in the U.S. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he chaired the National Hispanic Advisory Council for Senator John McCain. Earlier this August, Gonzales told TIME that he had been invited to be part of Trumps Hispanic advisory council, but he qualified that he would only consider the position once he had learned Trumps plan for immigration, in particular how Trump plans handle the undocumented population currently living in the United States.

On Saturday, the Republican National Committee released a statement on its website naming Gonzales as one of two-dozen Hispanic business, faith, and civic leaders on the new National Hispanic Advisory Council for Trump. The move attempts to counter Trumps unfavorable rating among Hispanics nationwide, which hovers around 80%. The statement specifically highlighted that key Latino evangelical leaders with large networks are ready to act on Trumps behalf: Many of these faith leaders represent hundreds of thousands of Hispanic evangelicals nationwide concerned about the direction of the nation, and are prepared to relay Mr. Trumps message of ending the failed status quo to their congregations and media audiences, it said.

When asked why the statement included Gonzales, RNC spokesperson Helen Aguirre Ferre told TIME he had not officially been added to the board, and she pointed to a different version of the press release without Gonzales name that was emailed to reporters at 7 a.m. on Saturday. However, the press release on the RNC website listed Gonzales name as of Monday morning. I dont know how that occurred except to say is obviously human error and his name should not have been on there, Aguirre Ferre, a spokesperson for the RNC told TIME. We are going to correct it immediately. Gonzales name was deleted without annotation after the conversation with TIME.

This is not the first time that Trumps outreach has inaccurately claimed the support of pastors to shore up support with non-white racial or ethnic groups. In November, the Trump campaign claimed to win the endorsement of 100 African-American pastors, only to have several announce that they actually had not agreed to endorse Trump, and others, such as prominent Detroit bishop Corletta Vaughn, say they never had even agreed to participate in the meeting in any way. When the meeting actually happened, only several dozen pastors joined, and Vaughn endorsed Hillary Clinton in January.

Cuban-American pastor Mario Bramnick of Miami, a recent Trump surrogate and a chapter director for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, is on the advisory board, and did attend the meeting. A smaller task force, he says, is in the process of preparing reports for the campaign on immigration policy. We agreed we need a better legal immigration policy for the undocumented, how that will shape out, I dont know, Bramnick said. We will see the policy develop as we move forward.

Bramnicks support for Trump differs from NHCLCs president, pastor Samuel Rodriguez Jr., who has repeatedly criticized Trumps plan to build a southern wall and deport with force the roughly 10 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States. The NHCLC represents more than 40,000 Hispanic evangelical churches.

Bramnick adds that Trump told the group he did not mean all Mexicans are rapists and murderers, and that his wife Melania is a legal immigrant who has all her paperworkquestions have risen over whether she worked legally in the U.S. as model in 1995. The group, he says, also discussed other topics including the economy and education.

Gonzales says he has raised suggestions with Trump campaign representatives about how to handle immigration in recent months. Gonzales even has a longstanding Patriotic Immigration plan for the undocumented population in the U.S. that includes paying a fine and back taxes; getting health, criminal, and background checks; learning English and taking a civic class; and then being put on a pathway to legal permanent residence status after a probationary period. He says he is tired of politicians skirting the issue. You are saying, I want you to work here, I want to be able to profit off you, but we never want to give you a voice, he says. Thats slaverywe dont do that in America.

Trump is expected to give an immigration policy speech on Thursday, and Gonzales is still willing to serve on the board depending on what he hears. He routinely votes Republican, and he already supports the GOP nominee because of his positions on Supreme Court nominations, Israel, abortion, and the Johnson Amendment, which would give churches greater freedom to engage in politics. He is continuing to raise support for his coming campaign to increase voter turnout among Hispanic evangelicals, traveling to Arizona and Colorado this week to meet with pastors.

We are stuck with the Republican nominee this particular election, Gonzales said. We are just looking for a glimmer of light come Thursday  If he wants the support of the Latino community in the numbers that he needs to win the election, that is on him.
Donald Trump on Monday went back on the attack after last week telling supporters he may have gone too far with some of his comments in general while out on the campaign trail.

The GOP presidential nominee, through Twitter, on which he has more than 11 million followers, threatened to expose an alleged romantic link between MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, hosts of Morning Joe.

"Tried watching low-rated @Morning_Joe this morning, unwatchable! @morningmika [Brzezinski] is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!" the billionaire businessman said in the initial tweet.

"Some day, when things calm down, I'll tell the real story of @JoeNBC [Scarborough] and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika [Brzezinski]. Two clowns!" he added.

It is unclear exactly what set Trump off on Monday.

Scarborough was quick to respond, through Twitter, to Trump's attacks, saying first, "Neurotic and not very bright? Look in the mirror." He followed with, "Thanks for watching. Morning Joe is enjoying it's best ratings ever thanks to obsessed fans like you. GLAD." The last tweet included a smiley face emoji.

The attack from Trump - which he has done on a regular basis toward media since announcing his White House run last June - comes just days after telling a crowd in North Carolina he had some regrets about comments made in the past.

"Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that," said Trump. "And believe it or not, I regret it. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues."

Tried watching low-rated @Morning_Joe this morning, unwatchable! @morningmika is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2016

Story continues

Some day, when things calm down, I'll tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika. Two clowns!

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2016

Neurotic and not very bright?

Look in the mirror. https://t.co/FPaqGW9JWv- Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 22, 2016

Thanks for watching.

Morning Joe is enjoying it's best ratings ever thanks to obsessed fans like you. GLADhttps://t.co/FPaqGW9JWv- Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 22, 2016

Read more: Watch Arnold Schwarzenegger "Get Down to Business" in New 'Celebrity Apprentice' Promo
joe scarborough donald trump

Donald Trump took his escalating feud with "Morning Joe" to a new level on Monday, threatening to "tell the real story" of the relationship between hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

In a series of tweets on Monday, the Republican presidential nominee slammed the MSNBC hosts over their criticism of his brash campaign style.

Trump claimed that he would share information about the personal relationship between the two hosts  the subject of much speculation.

"Tried watching low-rated @Morning_Joe this morning, unwatchable! @morningmika is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!" Trump wrote.

Some day, when things calm down, I'll tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika. Two clowns!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2016

Scarborough quickly responded in kind on Twitter, slamming the real-estate mogul over his comments about Brzezinski and refuting Trump's claims that the show's ratings are low.

Neurotic and not very bright?

Look in the mirror. https://t.co/FPaqGW9JWv  Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 22, 2016

Thanks for watching.

Morning Joe is enjoying it's best ratings ever thanks to obsessed fans like you. GLAD https://t.co/FPaqGW9JWv  Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 22, 2016

Trump's comments on Monday come after months of criticism from the MSNBC hosts.

Last week, Scarborough authored an op-ed in The Washington Post urging Republicans to remove Trump from the ticket, citing his plan to bar all Muslims from entering the US and his refusal to tone down his occasionally authoritarian rhetoric.

Story continues

The relationship between the hosts and Trump wasn't always tense.

Earlier in the campaign, critics charged the MSNBC hosts of going too easy on the real-estate magnate, who Scarborough and Brzezinski predicted would be successful in the Republican primary. Scarborough told an audience at a New York event last year that he'd given Trump some advice in preparation for the Republican presidential debates. And during an interview in February, Trump characterized the hosts as "supporters," though both hosts denied the assertion.

NOW WATCH: Trump strikes back after 'Morning Joe' host says he sounded like 'he's had a lot to drink'





More From Business Insider


From Esquire

Fugitives have done some (impressively) elaborate things people have done to avoid getting caught by the fuzz-like using spikes and a smoke shield during a car chase, for example. And if there's an award for Most Creative Fugitive, we're gonna have to give it to Shaun Miller for his pretty legit "old man" disguise-even though it didn't work.

NECN reports that authorities went to a house in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, looking for alleged drug dealer Shaun Miller. They surrounded the home and ordered Miller to come outside, only to be greeted by a hunched-over elderly man. Seems innocent enough, right?

The police themselves admitted that the disguise was "realistic," but they saw through it anyway, pulled it off, and placed the 31-year-old under arrest.

The disguise cost Miller $2,000, and he wore it everywhere, according to police. Unfortunately for him, $2,000 isn't enough to keep police from finding you and your $30,000 worth of cash inside the house. Nice try, dude, but it could be worse-you could have been eaten by an alligator while hiding from the popos.

You Might Also Like
LONDON (Reuters) - While Amazon and the British government are looking into how to use drones to deliver parcels to customers, criminals are already exploiting the technology to send drugs to accomplices in prison.

Police said on Monday they recovered two drones carrying mobile phones and drugs near London's Pentonville prison and have set up a special task force - Operation Airborne - to catch offenders trying to get contraband into the jail.

In the early hours of Saturday, police saw a man acting suspiciously near the prison. He ran away, dropping two bags containing drugs and mobile phones and managed to evade arrest, according to a police statement.

Next day, police found a drone that had crashed after being tracked flying over Pentonville.

They were later alerted to another drone being flown at low altitude toward the prison. The unmanned aircraft was stopped in mid-flight by a police officer and a package containing large amounts of drugs and two mobile phones was recovered from it.

Appealing for witnesses, Detective Chief Inspector Steve Heatley said: "These recovered drones carried a substantial amount of Class B drugs, legal highs and a large quantity of mobile phones."

Last month, Amazon announced a partnership with the British government "to explore the steps needed to make the delivery of parcels by small drones a reality, allowing Amazon to trial new methods of testing its delivery systems".

But while the U.S. giant is looking into how to use drones safely and reliably, criminals are pushing ahead with the technology.

British media reported in February that there were more than 30 incidents last year in which drones were found in or around prisons and items such as drugs, phones and USB drives recovered.

(Reporting by Giles Elgood; editing by Stephen Addison)
Duke Energy DUK is negotiating with North Carolinas environment agency over a $6.6 million fine that it was given over a large spill of liquefied coal ash, according to a report from the Associated Press.

Based in Charlotte, NC, Duke, along with its subsidiaries operates as an energy company in both the United States and Latin America. Based in data from Statista, Duke is the largest energy company in the U.S. in terms of market value. The company has a current market cap of $56.3 billion.

Earlier this year, the Department of Environmental Quality in North Carolina ordered Duke to pay the fine, which the company has since contested. Duke first pleaded guilty to nine violations of the Federal Clean Water Act in May of 2015. It was supposed to pay $102 million in fines for allowing its coal-ash dumps at five power plants to illegally pollute the environment.

Specifically, it was revealed that Dukes pollution had entered the Dan River. Investigations began after a pipe collapsed under a coal ash dump in 2014 and seeped into the river. Later, prosecutors found that the company had been illegally dumping toxic discharge since 2010.

The $6.6 million case is an offshoot of the original 2014 spill. According to the Charlotte Observer, Duke believes the fine amount is arbitrary and that the company is not being treated fairly. North Carolina is proposing penalties for pollution violations dating as far back as January 2012, but the company does not believe that is appropriate.

This is not the first time that Duke has continued to appeal a fine. In 2015, the company was handed a $25 million fine over groundwater pollution at a closed power plant. However, after many appeals it was able to reduce the fine to $7 million.

Dukes case is one of many in the conversation involving our current means of energy production. Coal-burning power plants release harmful toxins such as arsenic, mercury amongst many others, which result in acid rain and damage water supplies.

Story continues

Even so, shares of the company are up nearly 16% year-to-date, and earnings estimate revisions have not moved much. Current quarter estimates stand at $1.51 in earnings per share while full-year estimates stand at $4.59 respectively. Both of these estimates are down a cent from those of 60 days ago.

Incidents like the Dan River spill highlight the inefficiency of non-renewable energy, an issue that is being addressed through increased use of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.

But for now, Duke Energy still retains its spot on the throne, and at 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



DUKE ENERGY CP (DUK): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
By Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - Investigators found two handwritten manifestos espousing white supremacy in the car and jail cell of a white man accused of killing nine black parishioners at a Charleston, South Carolina, church last year, according to a court document filed on Monday.

Investigators also found handwritten letters and a list of churches among the papers belonging to accused killer Dylann Roof, who faces trial on 33 federal crimes including hate crimes, obstruction of religious practice and firearms charges.

Roof has offered to plead guilty if prosecutors agree to drop the death penalty, his defense attorney has said. But prosecutors have so far refused to make a plea deal over the June 2015 slaying of nine Bible study members at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The shootings shook the country and intensified debate over U.S. race relations, already roiled at the time by high-profile police killings of unarmed black people.

Much of the evidence against Roof has been sealed but the latest details were disclosed in a court filing by prosecutors listing the expert witnesses they plan to call at the trial, which is scheduled to begin on Nov. 7.

Roof also faces the death penalty on murder charges in state court trial scheduled for next year.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said Roof wrote an online racist manifesto in the weeks before the shootings. The writings referred to on Monday would be the first physical documents to be used against Roof.

Prosecutors plan to call a handwriting expert to testify that the manifestos match Roof's penmanship.

They will also summon at least one expert on white supremacy who will testify that Roof's "statements, writings, travel, personal interests and dress are consistent with the adoption of white supremacist beliefs ... including a belief in the need to use violence to achieve white supremacy," the court documents said.

Story continues

The prosecution experts, identified as Eric Sorensen and Jacquelyn Hamelryck, will testify that white supremacists believe people generally fit into the categories of white and non-white.

"Whites are defined as non-Jewish people of European descent, and 'non-whites' are everyone else," according to court documents.

Prosecutors say Roof became radicalized online on his own rather than from associating with white supremacist groups.

(Reporting by Harriet McLeod; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Peter Cooney)
Cairo (AFP) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his Russian counterpart and close ally Vladimir Putin wants to host an Israeli-Palestinian summit to revive peace talks, in an interview published Monday.

Sisi told state newspaper editors that he believed Israel was increasingly convinced of the need for a peace deal, saying it was a "positive sign."

But Palestinian infighting between the Islamist Hamas rulers of Gaza and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah in the West Bank remained an obstacle, he said in the interview.

Talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas have been suspended since 2014, despite a push by Washington and France to resume the peace process.

Sisi, who is seen as having good ties with both Israel and Abbas's Palestinian Authority, has also been pushing for a resumption of negotiations.

"Putin has told me that he is ready to receive both (Abbas) and Netanyahu in Moscow to carry out direct talks to find a solution and solve the issue," Sisi said.

"I see that the conviction of the importance of peace is rising among the Israeli side, and the conviction about finding an exit to the issue is a positive sign.

"At the same time, it is important to end the Palestinian-Palestinian rift... and to have national reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas so that the climate be ready for real efforts to establish a state," he said.

Sisi said last month that his country was making serious efforts to break the deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians.

His remarks followed a trip by Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to Israel, the first in nine years.

Egypt became in 1979 the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, after four wars.

Netanyahu has called on Palestinians to engage in direct negotiations with Israel, but Palestinian leaders say years of talks have not ended Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

Abbas has instead tried to put pressure on Israel through diplomacy at the UN.
Tukulj To Receive Honor At ERA's 2016 Moxie Awards Gala Taking Place Thursday, September 15 At Wynn Hotel Las Vegas

WASHINGTON, DC / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2016 / The Electronic Retailing Association (ERA) (www.retailing.org) has announced Amir Tukulj, Chief Executive Officer of Thane Direct, as recipient of the 2016 Marketer of the Year award. The award, which recognizes an executive or company that has clearly shown outstanding success over the past year, will be presented to Tukulj during the 2016 ERA Moxie Awards Gala to be held Thursday, September 15 in conjunction with the 2016 ERA D2C Convention at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas.

As Chief Executive Officer of global direct response leader Thane Direct, Tukulj presides over the company's worldwide operations. Respected industry-wide for his pioneering achievements in helping establish the worldwide presence of direct response throughout the international marketplace, Tukulj was named CEO in July, 2005 after joining the company to spearhead the establishment of its international distribution division in 1997.

Prior to joining Thane, Tukulj was among a small group of elite executives who helped bring direct response marketing to the global marketplace. As a senior executive with Canada-based Interwood Marketing, he traveled the world to introduce products that had achieved direct marketing success in the U.S. to regions throughout the world - at the same time playing a significant role in establishing the infrastructure for direct marketing in each international territory.

His mandate with Thane Direct was to grow the company's non-U.S. business, a responsibility he fulfilled with unprecedented and unparalleled success. In 2006, Tukulj demonstrated the crucial importance of the international market to Thane Direct, laying the groundwork for the company's transformation from a U.S. company with an international division to an international company with a U.S. division.

Tukulj brought to Thane - and to the industry at large - unmatched expertise in the intricacies of the markets and the mentality of the international distributor. He led the direct marketing industry in underscoring the international marketplace as a major revenue generator, rather than an afterthought to the U.S. market. In so doing, Tukulj has propelled Thane Direct into the industry's dominant partner to product owners seeking effective global distribution for their brands.

Story continues

Under his guidance, Thane has burgeoned into a global leader in the multichannel direct marketing of consumer products with a powerful presence in the fitness, health & beauty, and housewares product categories. Tukulj and his senior management team have built a distribution network that encompasses more than 100 countries worldwide. He launched Thane wholly-owned subsidiaries throughout the world's key markets, creating vertically integrated operations that covered U.S., Canada, Mexico, UK, Germany, Middle East, and Australia.

Thane has been a private equity-owned company since 1999. Recently, Tukulj engineered a successful management buyout and together with his management team are the company's controlling shareholders. For Tukulj, the management buyout represented a natural progression having spent 17 years building the company and, along with his senior management, had served as its core value creators.

Today, Tukulj and Thane Direct epitomize the global direct response industry, with wholly-owned international corporate subsidiaries, strategic partners, and distributors building brands and maximizing sales across all marketing channels - including direct response TV, home shopping networks, catalogues, retail, print advertising, credit card inserts, and the Internet.



"It is with tremendous pleasure that ERA announces Amir Tukulj as 2016 Marketer of the Year. Amir has devoted his entire adult life towards expanding his company - and the entire direct response industry - across the worldwide marketplace. Amir's dedication and hard work is evident in every corner of the world where you find direct response thriving. From building one of our industry's most prolific stable of proprietary direct response brands to representing the global distribution of Thane's numerous high-profile product owner client, Amir Tukulj and his company serve our association as outstanding members, and our industry as pioneering leaders," said Chris Reinmuth, President of the Electronic Retailing Association.

About the Moxie Awards

The ERA Moxie Awards Gala is direct response marketing's premier celebration, honoring the best campaigns of the year. Moxie's famous posh blue carpet will welcome guests for a grand entrance. The Gala features live music, exceptional dinner and superb company. For more information, visit www.retailing.org/moxies.

About the 2016 ERA D2C Convention

The Electronic Retailing Association's 2016 ERA D2C Convention is the 24th annual show where the industry's top technology innovators, manufacturers, buyers and marketers meet to learn about the hottest trends in the direct-to-consumer marketplace and network with partners and potential customers to seal critical business relationships. The event will feature nearly 4,000 attendees and 130 exhibitors, a variety of education sessions on industry-related topics and expansive networking opportunities, as well as a wide variety of events on the tradeshow floor. For more information, please visit www.retailing.org/d2c.

About the Electronic Retailing Association:

The Electronic Retailing Association (ERA) serves as the exclusive trade association representing the $350 billion direct-to-consumer marketplace. ERA membership spans the globe to encompass all levels of direct marketers, from start-up companies to global leaders that employ the power of direct response to market across all platforms including television, digital media and radio to achieve a consumer-direct, measurable and accountable response. In addition to helping grow its members' business opportunities and profitability as a major resource for networking, business tools and information, ERA is also the voice of the direct-to-consumer industry in the nation's Capital, working daily to protect the regulatory and legislative climate in an ongoing effort to ensure direct response marketers' ability to bring quality products and services to the consumer. Through its acclaimed self-regulatory guidelines, ERA is also dedicated to building consumer trust in direct response-marketed products and services. ERA can be visited on the Internet at www.Retailing.org.

CONTACT:

SSA Public Relations

Steve Syatt

steve@ssapr.com

(818) 907-0500

SOURCE: Electronic Retailing Association
FEBRUARY 05: Pupils at Williamwood High School sit prelim exams on February 5, 2010 in Glasgow, Scotland As the UK gears up for one of the most hotly contested general elections in recent history it is expected that that the economy, immigration, the NHS and education are likely to form the basis of many of the debates. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Conversations about SAT and ACT scores are ubiquitous among high school students applying to colleges.

Increasingly, however, many colleges and universities have begun to eschew mandatory standardized test scores as requirements for their application processes.

Amherst College, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Vassar College, and Williams College have all dropped requirements that students take SAT subject-matter tests, also referred to as the SAT II, for admission, The Boston Globe reports.

The elite schools' reasoning: The exams are not reliable indicators of students' performance in college and may harm low-income students.

"We want to make the application process as fair to all students as possible," Mary Dettloff, a spokeswoman for Williams College, told The Globe. "We felt like we weren't getting any valuable data from the SAT II scores to help us."

The news comes on the heels of similar pushes to drop the regular SAT and ACT exams from college admissions.

Last year, George Washington University  with 11,000 undergraduates and 25,500 total students  became the largest private university in the US News and World Report's list of best colleges to forgo rigid testing requirements in favor of a more holistic application review process.

And more than 800 other schools do not use SAT or ACT scores for admitting substantial numbers of students into bachelor's degree programs, according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, which tracks the schools with open testing policies.

Many of the schools on that list, however, are less selective private schools. The move to drop SAT II exams from admissions requirements signals that more elite schools are starting to rethink the merits of standardized testing.

NOW WATCH: Why law school is a waste of money unless you get into a top school





More From Business Insider


SELLERS: Ellen DeGeneres and Portia Di Rossi DeGeneres

BUYERS: Barry and Sheryl Schwartz

LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA

PRICE: $9,900,000

SIZE: (approx.) 4,000 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES:

Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, two of Hollywoods most prolific buyers and sellers of multimillion dollar homes across Southern California, have quietly sold a house in the Hollywood Hills in a covert off-market deal for $9.9 million. The buyer, as we first heard from impeccably plugged in real estate yenta Yolanda Yakketyyak and later confirmed with property records, is a corporate entity linked to retail fashion businessman, thoroughbred racing aficionado, and dedicated philatelist Barry Schwartz, a man otherwise and probably best known as Calvin Kleins childhood friend and long-time business partner.

The design savvy daytime chat fest queen acquired the property in November 2014 for $8.75 million  she later leased it to pop star and actor Nick Jonas  but avid celebrity real estate watchers will recall this was actually and somewhat curiously not the first but the second time the house-mad comedian bought the property. The first time was in late 2005 when she snapped it up for undisclosed amount that weve heard but cannot confirm was in the neighborhood of $6.5 million. As is typical for Miz DeGeneres, she didnt hang on to the house for very long and sold it in September 2007 along with a smaller neighboring residence she also owned for a total of $10 million to Allison Milgard, philanthropic heiress to a Washington State window fortune.

The low-slung 1950s ranch style residence, rebuilt and redesigned in the early 2000s by innovative architecture firm Marmol Radziner, measures in at about around 4,000-square feet with panoramic canyon and city views. The house sits behind gates on private knoll of 1.63 acres near the top of Nichols Canyon and, according to our research, features an 1,100-square-foot great room plus 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms that include a 900-plus-square-foot master suite. Pennsylvania bluestone flooring runs throughout and then right on out of the house where its used for more than 2,500-square-feet of terracing that surrounds a swimming pool and spa.

Story continues

Since the late 1970s Mister Schwartz and his wife Sheryl have owned and for the last decade or so made their primary home at Stonewall Farms, a sprawling, 750-acre equestrian estate north of New York City in the Granite Springs area of picturesquely pastoral and prodigiously prosperous Westchester County. Said to be the largest privately owned property in Westchester County besides the fabled Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills, the Schwartzes spread is anchored by an elegant, custom-built mansion of approximately 26,000-square-feet that, according to a glowing article in the glossy pages of Architectural Digest in 2005, has a total of 30 rooms and 13 bathrooms plus 10-inch thick walls, super-wide pine plank floorboards, a slate roof reclaimed from the Yale Divinity School, and a 60-foot long indoor swimming pool complete with stone fireplace and vintage French chandeliers. The Schwartzes purchase of a Los Angeles home is not their first foray into the high-end West Coast real estate scene and comes less than two years after property records indicate they coughed up $12.5 million for an ocean-front property on a coveted stretch of beach in Carpinteria, California. Last year, according documentation we turned up online, the Schwartzes received permission from the County of Santa Barbara to raze all the existing structures on the property  a modest cottage and several small accessory structures  to make way for a brand new residence of 7,980-square-feet plus a detached garage with 480-square-feet of additional living space above.

As for the tirelessly peripatetic de Rossi-DeGenereses, their perpetually in-flux property portfolio currently contains: a 1960s contemporary privately positioned at the end of a gated drive in a particularly prime pocket of Beverly Hills they scooped up in a hush-hush off-market deal in late 2014 for $15.995 million; two adjacent condominiums that overlook the L.A. Country Club along the Wilshire Corridor near Westwood they snapped up in July 2014 for a combined $16,000,000; and a 17-acre estate with a 10,522-square-foot Tuscan villa on the fancy-pants border between Santa Barbara and Montecito they picked up in May 2013 for $26.5 million.

Aerial image: Google

Related stories

'Finding Dory' Tops $900 Million in Worldwide Box Office

Ellen DeGeneres Responds to Accusations of Racism Over Usain Bolt Tweet

Disney Moving Ahead on 'Castle Hangnail' with Ellen DeGeneres
CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Enbridge Inc, Canada's largest pipeline company, filed a mixed shelf offering of up to $7 billion (5.32 billion pounds) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions on Monday, according to a SEC filing.

The company said the proceeds from the sale of the securities are not expected to be applied to fund any specific project, but will be added to Enbridge's funds for general corporate purchases.

The mixed shelf will include debt securities, common shares and preference shares and the prospectus is valid for 25 months, according to the filing.

Enbridge has been steadily expanding its North American pipeline network, which carries the bulk of Canadian crude oil exports to the United States.

Earlier this month, it acquired a minority stake in the Bakken Pipeline system through a joint venture, and also won the auction for a stake in EnBW's Hohe See, one of Europe's largest offshore wind power projects, according to a source familiar with the matter.

(Reporting by Nia Williams, editing by G Crosse)
(Adds details of offering, context on Enbridge)

CALGARY, Alberta, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Enbridge Inc, Canada's largest pipeline company, filed a mixed shelf offering of up to $7 billion with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissions on Monday, according to a SEC filing.

The company said the proceeds from the sale of the securities are not expected to be applied to fund any specific project, but will be added to Enbridge's funds for general corporate purchases.

The mixed shelf will include debt securities, common shares and preference shares and the prospectus is valid for 25 months, according to the filing.

Enbridge has been steadily expanding its North American pipeline network, which carries the bulk of Canadian crude oil exports to the United States.

Earlier this month, it acquired a minority stake in the Bakken Pipeline system through a joint venture, and also won the auction for a stake in EnBW's Hohe See, one of Europe's largest offshore wind power projects, according to a source familiar with the matter.

(Reporting by Nia Williams, editing by G Crosse)
The Energy Select Sector SPDR (XLE) , the largest equity-based energy exchange traded fund, is the second-best performer among this year among the sector SPDR ETFs, trailing only its utilities counterpart.

XLE also proved steady during oils recent downturn and that strength could be a sign of more upside to come for the benchmark energy ETF. The third quarter is historically unkind to the energy sector, but some industry observers believe the recent pullback in crude prices is not a cause for alarm and that there is still upside available with some of the big-name integrated oil companies held by ETFs like XLE.

SEE MORE: 4 Energy ETFs may be at Near-Term Tops

Rivals to XLE include the Vanguard Energy ETF (VDE), iShares U.S. Energy ETF (IYE) and the Fidelity MSCI Energy Index ETF (FENY) .

Investors should be aware that XLE and its aforementioned rivals allocated hefty portions of their lineups to the largest oil companies, including Dow components Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) along with Schlumberger (SLB), the largest oilfield services provider. In some cases Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest U.S. oil companies, combine for up to a third of these ETFs weights.

Trending on ETF Trends

Technical Sell-Off Grips Gold Miner ETFs

Italy ETF Could Face Exit Questions

Bearish Commentary on Euro ETFs

EPHE: Philippines ETF Up 19% Year-to-Date

REIT ETF Investors Shouldnt Expect Too Much After A Great Year

Integrated oil stocks have refining exposure, a segment that benefits when oil prices are low due to improved margins. That can help steady diversified energy ETFs like XLE because these are not dedicated exploration and production funds.

XLE is vaulting above inverse head & shoulders neckline looks positive (crude has similar pattern, though yet to take out trigger line), according to Reuters. The ETF is set to to rally to 50-pct and 61.8-pct Fibo retracements of 2014-2016 bear can target $75.72 and $81.81; inverse H&S calls for surprise longer-term advance to at least $91.00.

Story continues

Crude oil prices have been rallying as investors anticipated oil producers will take action to rein in the ongoing supply glut after Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said the kingdom would work with other major producers to stabilize markets, reports Libby George for Reuters.

SEE MORE: OPEC Output Freeze Speculation Lift Oil, Energy ETFs

Further supporting prices, over 700,000 barrels per day of oil were missing in Nigeria due to militant attacks and pipeline problems. Venezuela is also on track for its steepest annual oil output decline in 14 years as the government tackles with economic and political problems after years of under investment and mismanagement.

Oil majors have tightened their belts, reducing costs by laying off thousands of workers and halted many new projects. Large integrated oil companies are expected to hold up better than drilling stocks as these giants have both upstream exploration and production, along with downstream refining operations.

For more information on Energy ETFs, visit our Energy category .

Energy Select Sector SPDR
IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2016 / Khang & Khang LLP (the "Firm") announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Embraer S.A. ("Embraer" or the "Company") (ERJ). Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares between April 16, 2012 and July 28, 2016 inclusive (the "Class Period"), are encouraged to contact the Firm prior to the October 7, 2016 lead plaintiff motion deadline.

If you purchased Embraer shares during the Class Period, please contact Joon M. Khang, Esquire, of Khang & Khang, 18101 Von Karman Avenue, 3rd Floor, Irvine, CA 92612, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com.

There has been no class certification in this case yet. Until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. You may choose to take no action and remain a passive class member.

According to the complaint, the Company made false and misleading statements and/or failed to disclose material facts, specifically that it paid bribes to Dominican Republic officials to secure contracts for aircraft sales; that Embraer's President and CEO Frederico Curado had knowledge of the bribe; that the fallout from this misconduct would cost Embraer hundreds of millions of dollars; and as a result of the above, the Company's statements about its business, operations, and prospects were false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times.

In June 2016, the Company announced that its CEO Frederico Curado would be stepping down. On July 29, 2016, Embraer announced a loss of $99.4 million for the quarter after setting aside $200 million in connection with a U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act probe that it was negotiating with the U.S. Department of Justice since May 2015. The Company also reduced 2016 guidance for its executive jet business. When this news was disclosed, Embraer shares fell in value, causing investors harm.

If you wish to learn more about this lawsuit, or if you have any questions concerning this notice or your rights, please contact Joon M. Khang, a prominent litigator for almost two decades, by telephone: (949) 419-3834, or by e-mail at joon@khanglaw.com.

Story continues

This press release may constitute Attorney Advertising in certain jurisdictions.

Contact:

Joon M. Khang, Esq.

Telephone: 949-419-3834

Facsimile: 949-225-4474

joon@khanglaw.com

SOURCE: Khang & Khang LLP
BRUSSELS, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The following are mergers under review by the European Commission and a brief guide to the EU merger process:

APPROVALS AND WITHDRAWALS

-- British industrial property developer Segro and Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board to acquire a French logistics business (approved Aug.22)

NEW LISTINGS

-- Swiss bank PostFinance and infrastructure group SIX to acquire joint control of a new mobile payment system Twint. (notified Aug.19/deadline Sept.23/simplified)

-- Allergan to sell its Anda distribution business to Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. (notified Aug. 19/deadline Sept. 23/simplified)

-- Buyout firm Hellman & Friedman, Permira Advisers and Technology Crossover Ventures buy stake in Genesys, a U.S. provider of call centre software. (notified Aug.19/deadline Sept.23/simplified)

-- Triton Group to acquire sole control over Stromboli, holding entity of Flakt Woods. (notified Aug.19/deadline Sept.23)

-- FIH Mobile to buy from Microsoft Mobile Vietnam and other assets from Microsoft Mobile. (notified Aug.19/deadline Sept.23)

-- Valeo and Siemens to set up 50/50 joint venture. (notified Aug.19/deadline Sept.23/simplified)

-- Verlinvest and China Resources Co. to acquire joint control over Resources Verlinvest Health Investment.

(notified Aug.18/deadline Sept.22/simplified)

-- Czech investor EPH and private equity group PPF Investments to buy from Sweden's stale-owned utility Vattenfall lignite mines and power plants in Germany - Vattenfall Mining and Vattenfall Generation. (notified Aug.18/deadline Sept.22)

EXTENSIONS AND OTHER CHANGES

None

FIRST-STAGE REVIEWS BY DEADLINE

AUG 23

--Private equity firm CVC Capital Partners to buy Italian betting company Sisal Group (notified Aug. 15/deadline Aug. 23)

AUG 25

-- Japan Tunnel Systems Corp and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to set up a joint venture (notified July 19/deadline Aug. 25/simplified)

AUG 29

-- Dutch employment agency Randstad to acquire French peer Ausy (notified July 22/deadline Aug. 29/simplified)

Story continues

-- Canadian private equity firm Onex Corp to acquire U.S. wire and cable maker Wireco (notified July 22/deadline Aug. 29/simplified)

AUG 30

-- Polish chemicals company Synthos to acquire Swiss-based chemicals group Ineos' expandable polystyrene business INEOS Styrenics (notified July 25/deadline Aug. 30)

SEPT 1

-- U.S. healthcare services provider McKesson Corp and asset manager Blackstone to set up a joint venture (notified July 27/deadline Sept. 1/simplified)

-- Private equity firm Advent International to acquire New Zealand resins and coating company Nuplex Industries (notified July 27/deadline Sept. 1)

SEPT 2

-- Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board and Public Sector Pension Board to jointly acquire Cubico Sustainable Investments Holdings Ltd which in turn will acquire five renewable energy power generation companies in Italy and the UK (notified July 28/deadline Sept. 2/simplified)

-- Investment bank Goldman Sachs and private equity firm Altor Fund to jointly acquire marine electronics maker Navico and marine maps provider C-Map (notified July 28/deadline Sept. 2/simplified)

SEPT 6

-- Buyout group CVC to acquire Swedish cigarette pack maker AR Packaging (notified Aug. 1/deadline Sept. 6)

-- German forklift truck and robotics maker Kion to acquire U.S. peer Dematic (notified Aug. 1/deadline Sept. 6/simplified)

SEPT 7

-- German energy companies Alpiq AG and Getec Energie AG to set up a joint venture (notified Aug. 2/deadline Sept. 7/simplified)

-- Buyout firm Carlyle to acquire a 50-percent stake in Portuguese plastics packaging company Logoplaste (notified Aug. 2/deadline Sept. 7/simplified)

SEPT 8

-- CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd and Vimpelcom to merge their Italian mobile operations (notified Feb. 5/deadline extended to Sept. 8 from Aug 18)

SEPT 9

-- Commodities trader Archer Daniels Midland Co and Singaporean palm oil processor Wilmar International Ltd to acquire joint control of Olenex joint venture (notified Aug. 4/deadline Sept. 9)

-- Investment fund Partners Group to acquire real estate services provider Foncia Holding and its subsidiaries (notified July 4/deadline Aug. 9/simplified)

SEPT 12

-- South African furniture and household goods retailer Steinhoff International to acquire British retailer Poundland (notified Aug. 5/deadline Sept. 12/simplified)

-- French carmaker Groupe PSA subsidiary Automobiles Citroen SA and Spanish management services provider Estacionamientos y servicios, S.A.U. to set up a car sharing joint venture (notified Aug. 5/deadline Sept. 12/simplified)

-- Investment fund OpenGate Capital to acquire Belgian materials group Umicore's zinc chemicals business (notified Aug. 5/deadline Sept. 12/simplified)

SEPT 14

-- Private equity firm First Reserve to acquire UK service provider Morrison Utility Services (notified Aug. 9/deadline Sept. 14/simplified)

-- Investment company Cerberus to acquire control of French financial companies GE Money Bank SCA, Sorefi SCA, Somafi-Soguafi SCA and General Electric Financement Pacifique (notified Aug. 9/Sept. 14/simplified)

SEPT 15

-- Private investment company Ardian to acquire joint control of fibre product producer Kemide and its subsidiary Kermel (notified Aug. 10/deadline Sept. 15/simplified)

SEPT 16

-- Dutch infrastructure fund DIF and French utility EDF to acquire German gas grid Thyssengas (notified Aug. 11/deadline Sept. 16)

SEPT 19

--French oil and gas major Total to take over Lampiris, Belgium's third-largest natural gas and renewable power vendor (notified Aug. 12/deadline Sept. 19)

--Canon Inc to acquire Toshiba Corp's medical equipment unit (notified Aug. 12/deadline Sept. 19)

--A division of Chinese aviation and shipping conglomerate HNA Group to buy U.S-based Carlson Hotels Inc, owner of the Radisson hotel chain (notified Aug. 12/deadline Sept. 19)

SEPT 20

-- Impulsora Del Desarrollo Y El Empleo En America Latina, S.A.B. De C.V., CPPIB and Ontario teachers' pension plan create strategic partnership to invest in infrastructure assets in Mexico (notified Aug. 16/deadline Sept. 20/simplified)

-- China's HNA Group to acquire Swiss airline catering firm Gategroup (notified Aug. 16/deadline Sept. 20)

-- Agricultural commodities trader Bunge to acquire majority stake in German company Walter Rau (notified Aug. 16/deadline Sept. 20/simplified)

SEPT 21

-- Computer Sciences Corporation to merge with Hewlett Packard Enterprise's information technology services segment.

(notified Aug.18/eadline Sept.21/simplified)

OCT 24

-- U.S. rail equipment maker Wabtec Corp to acquire French peer Faiveley Transport SA (notified April 4/deadline Oct. 24/commitments offered July 25)

DEC 20

-- U.S. chemicals company Dow Chemical to merge with DuPont (notified June 22/deadline extended to Dec. 20 from Aug. 11 after the European Commission opened an in-depth investigation)

SUSPENDED

-- SOCAR, Azerbaijan's state energy company, to buy stakes in Greek natural gas grid operator DESFA from Greek natural gas utility DEPA (notified Oct. 1/deadline suspended on Jan. 21)

GUIDE TO EU MERGER PROCESS

DEADLINES:

The European Commission has 25 working days after a deal is filed for a first-stage review. It may extend that by 10 working days to 35 working days, to consider either a company's proposed remedies or an EU member state's request to handle the case.

Most mergers win approval but occasionally the Commission opens a detailed second-stage investigation for up to 90 additional working days, which it may extend to 105 working days.

SIMPLIFIED:

Under the simplified procedure, the Commission announces the clearance of uncontroversial first-stage mergers without giving any reason for its decision. Cases may be reclassified as non-simplified - that is, ordinary first-stage reviews - until they are approved.

(Compiled by Brussels Newsroom)
Evanescence has announced a full-fledged U.S. tour for this fall, its first since returning from a 2012-15 hiatus.

The crossover metal act broke the news Monday (Aug. 22). Beginning Oct. 28 in Dallas, they'll embark on a 16-date U.S. tour, which will carry them to the day before Thanksgiving.

It's encouraging news for Evanescence fans, who have had to remain patient since the band took a break from the road in late 2012. This period saw the departure of longtime guitarist Terry Balsamo and the band's release from Wind-Up Records, which frontwoman Amy Lee had sued for unpaid royalties. Equilibrium guitarist Jen Majura took his place when Evanescence returned to the stage for a trio of U.S. shows ahead of a Japanese Ozziest gig last November.

Watch Evanescence's Amy Lee Cover U2's 'With or Without You'

Before Evanescence hits the road, Amy Lee fans will get to hear her debut children's album. It's called Dream Too Much, and it drops Sept. 30, featuring Lee originals and covers of kid-friendly tunes like "Rubber Duckie."

On the album front, we last heard from Evanescence in 2011, when they released a self-titled LP on Wind-Up. Could the new dates signal a return to the studio too?

Tickets for the upcoming tour go on sale Friday, preceded by a fan club pre-sale Tuesday at 10 a.m. local time. Find the full itinerary below.

Oct. 28: Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom

Oct. 30: Oklahoma City, OK @ Diamond Ballroom

Nov. 1: Austin, TX @ ACL Live at the Moody Theater

Nov. 3: San Antonio, TX @ Majestic Theatre

Nov. 5: Houston, TX @ Revention Music Center

Nov. 6: New Orleans, LA @ Saenger Theatre

Nov. 9: Mobile, AL @ Saenger Theatre

Nov. 10: Saint Augustine, FL @ St Augustine Amphitheater

Nov. 12: Orlando, FL @ Central Florida Fairgrounds

Nov. 13: Miami Beach, FL @ The Fillmore at Jackie Gleason

Nov. 15: Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore Charlotte

Nov. 16: Greenville, SC @ Peace Concert Hall

Nov. 18: Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore

Story continues

Nov. 19: Atlantic City, NJ @ Harrah's Atlantic City

Nov. 22: Montclair, NJ @ The Wellmont Theatre

Nov. 23: Huntington, NY @ The Paramount
Aug 22 (Reuters) - The former Comverse Technology Inc chief executive officer who authorities say fled to Africa a decade ago to avoid prosecution in a stock options scandal will return to the United States and plead guilty to a criminal charge, his lawyer said on Monday.

Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, 64, will plead guilty to one count of backdating stock options, the lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said in an email.

The defendant had been arrested in Namibia in September 2006 after a global manhunt. He had long been fighting extradition to the United States, where he was indicted on 35 charges that included securities fraud, money laundering and obstruction.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In connection with a 2009 settlement of a lawsuit by Comverse investors, Alexander agreed to pay $60 million to the software developer and waive more than $72 million of claims against it.

The next year, he reached a $53.6 million civil settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Comverse was bought out in 2013 by a former unit, Verint Systems Inc.

Alexander's expected plea was reported earlier by CNBC.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
By Nate Raymond and Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ending a decade on the run, the former chief executive officer of Comverse Technology Inc who fled to Africa to avoid a fraud prosecution over a stock options scandal is returning to the United States to plead guilty.

Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, 64, will admit to one count of backdating stock options in the federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday, his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said in an email on Monday.

The Israeli-born Alexander has been considered a fugitive by the U.S. government, and lived in Namibia since his September 2006 arrest there, following a global manhunt.

After being freed on bail the following month, Alexander had been fighting extradition to the United States, where he faced 35 counts including securities fraud, money laundering and obstruction.

But Alexander now "wants to accept responsibility for his conduct" after reaching a "favorable plea agreement," Brafman said.

Comverse, a Woodbury, New York, software developer, was bought out in 2013 by its former unit, Verint Systems Inc <VRNT.O>.

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the plea, which was reported earlier by CNBC television.

Alexander's case is one of the last remaining major criminal cases stemming from the dot-com bubble, and from federal probes into stock options backdating at more than 200 companies.

In backdating, a company retroactively grants stock options on dates when stock prices are lower, making them more valuable. Concealing the practice through improper accounting is illegal, and can inflate earnings.

Alexander and Comverse's general counsel William Sorin and finance chief David Kreinberg were charged in what prosecutors said was a "fraudulent scheme" to reap millions of dollars from backdating between 1998 and 2001.

Prosecutors said Alexander also created a slush fund for options intended for favored employees, known as "Phantom" and later renamed "Fargo."

Story continues

Sorin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in prison, while Kreinberg was spared prison after his guilty plea.

Alexander has separately resolved U.S. civil lawsuits related to Comverse.

In December 2009, he agreed to pay $60 million to Comverse and waive more than $72 million in severance and other claims in a settlement with shareholders.

The following November, he agreed to pay $53.6 million to settle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Alexander's lawyers said he plans to continue charitable work in Namibia, including operating soup kitchens that, according to local reports, serve hundreds of children each day.

(Additional reporting by T.J. Strydom in Johannesburg; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Jeffrey Benkoe)
(Adds comment from lawyer, details on co-defendants)

By Nate Raymond and Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Ending a decade on the run, the former chief executive officer of Comverse Technology Inc who fled to Africa to avoid a fraud prosecution over a stock options scandal is returning to the United States to plead guilty.

Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, 64, will admit to one count of backdating stock options in the federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday, his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said in an email on Monday.

The Israeli-born Alexander has been considered a fugitive by the U.S. government, and lived in Namibia since his September 2006 arrest there, following a global manhunt.

After being freed on bail the following month, Alexander had been fighting extradition to the United States, where he faced 35 counts including securities fraud, money laundering and obstruction.

But Alexander now "wants to accept responsibility for his conduct" after reaching a "favorable plea agreement," Brafman said.

Comverse, a Woodbury, New York, software developer, was bought out in 2013 by its former unit, Verint Systems Inc .

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the plea, which was reported earlier by CNBC television.

Alexander's case is one of the last remaining major criminal cases stemming from the dot-com bubble, and from federal probes into stock options backdating at more than 200 companies.

In backdating, a company retroactively grants stock options on dates when stock prices are lower, making them more valuable. Concealing the practice through improper accounting is illegal, and can inflate earnings.

Alexander and Comverse's general counsel William Sorin and finance chief David Kreinberg were charged in what prosecutors said was a "fraudulent scheme" to reap millions of dollars from backdating between 1998 and 2001.

Prosecutors said Alexander also created a slush fund for options intended for favored employees, known as "Phantom" and later renamed "Fargo."

Story continues

Sorin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in prison, while Kreinberg was spared prison after his guilty plea.

Alexander has separately resolved U.S. civil lawsuits related to Comverse.

In December 2009, he agreed to pay $60 million to Comverse and waive more than $72 million in severance and other claims in a settlement with shareholders.

The following November, he agreed to pay $53.6 million to settle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Alexander's lawyers said he plans to continue charitable work in Namibia, including operating soup kitchens that, according to local reports, serve hundreds of children each day.

(Additional reporting by T.J. Strydom in Johannesburg; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Jeffrey Benkoe)
Yahoo file photo

Former Singapore president S R Nathan has died, the Prime Ministers Office said on Monday (22 Aug). He was 92.

The Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues are sad to learn of the passing of Mr S R Nathan and would like to convey their condolences to his family. The late Mr Nathan passed away peacefully at Singapore General Hospital on Monday at 9.48 pm. He was 92., the PMO said in its statement.

Arrangements for the public to pay respects and for the funeral will be announced later, the PMO added.

Nathan was hospitalised on 31 July and had been in intensive care after suffering a stroke. He is survived by his wife Urmila Nandi, two children and three grandchildren.

Nathan, Singapores sixth and longest-serving president, served for 12 years after succeeding the late Ong Teng Cheong in 1999.

Early life

He was born in 1924, and spent much of his childhood in Muar, Johor, where his father held a clerical job in the rubber industry. The family moved back to Singapore in the 1930s following the decline of the rubber industry.

Nathan was educated at Anglo-Chinese Primary School, Anglo-Chinese Middle School, Rangoon Road Afternoon School and Victoria School. He later attended the University of Malaya,, graduating with a diploma in social studies.

During the Japanese Occupation of Singapore (194245), he learned Japanese and eventually became a translator and interpreter for the top official in the Japanese civilian police.

The civil servant

Nathan inspects an honour guard in New Delhi in 2003. Photo: Reuters

Nathan had a long and distinguished career in the civil service, starting as a medical social worker in 1955.

From 1971-79, Nathan was director of the Security and Intelligence Division, when he dealt with a number of terrorist acts.

In 1974, he led a negotiation team to resolve the Laju hostage crisis, when terrorists attacked an oil refinery complex on Pulau Bukom and took five hostages. All five emerged from the crisis unharmed.

Story continues

Nathan was Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1979-82. He also served as executive chairman of Straits Times Press, High Commissioner to Malaysia and Ambassador to the United States.

Becoming president

In 1999, Nathan was serving as Singapores ambassador-at-large when then-President Ong Teng Cheong decided not to run for office again. Nathan was then asked to run for president by several public figures, including the late Lee Kuan Yew.

Nathan became the only eligible candidate after two other potential candidates failed to meet the constitutional criteria to run. He was then sworn into office on 1 Sept, 1999. Nathan was re-elected in 2005 for a second term without contest, as there were again no eligible challengers.

In 2009, Nathan approved the governments application to use almost $5 billion from the national reserves to fight the recession. It was the first time that the government used part of the reserves, a move which requires the approval of the president and the Council of Presidential Advisers.

This obituary was compiled with information from numerous sources, including The Straits Times and The National Library Board.





Related stories:

Ex-president S R Nathan dies

[PHOTOS] Singapore mourns passing of former president S R Nathan



State funeral for Singapores ex-President S. R. Nathan on Friday

Singapores ministers lead tributes to ex-President S R Nathan

S R Nathan leaves lasting legacy in Singapore: Colleagues, analysts

Above all, Nathan was an LKY loyalist and believer

[PHOTOS] S R Nathans life in photos
Claudia O'Doherty has logged a whole lot of miles, both physically and in the acting world. As if it wasn't enough that the delightfully chipper Australian was handpicked by Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer for a role in Trainwreck, which led to her essentially becoming their ingenue in buzzy projects thereafter, she recently scored an accolade she can proudly take home to mom: her first Emmy nomination.

The writers of Inside Amy Schumer scored their second nod in as many years for "Outstanding Writing For a Variety Series," which was as much a relief for O'Doherty as it was a thrill.

"I only came onboard this year, so if they weren't nominated, it would have been my fault!" she (mostly) jokes with ET about her job on season four of the Comedy Central sketch show. "I was also excited, because this is something my parents and grandparents can watch  and it proves that I do have jobs in America! It feels like such a lovely treat."

WATCH: Amy Schumer Responds to 'Inside Amy Schumer' Cancellation Rumors

Schumer, who has become a good friend of O'Doherty's over the last couple years, was the one who directly asked the 32-year-old comedian to join her show's staff, a far from shabby job recommendation. "It was my favorite show so then the idea of writing for it was a terrifying yet very exciting idea," O'Doherty admits.

In fact, the job was a dream come true -- literally.

"I had always wanted to [write for TV]. This'll make me sound like such a mega dork, but I remember being a teenager and dreaming of being in the writer's room for SNL," she admits, laughing. "I remember once I got the job on Amy Schumer, I was in New York going to the writer's room every day for a show that I love, and I was like, 'Wait a second, I did that thing! That's crazy.'"

"In a way, it was like a very early foundational dream," she continues. "Then I was doing comedy, and it feels like one thing lead to another, and Amy was just very nice to give me that job. But I guess it is what I always wanted to do."

Story continues

RELATED: Jimmy Kimmel to Host the 2016 Primetime Emmy Awards

Comedian Mike Lawrence -- who also joined the Inside staff last season and, much like O'Doherty, admitted that the Emmy nod was "definitely validation in terms of leaving my hometown" -- was pretty pleased about his new co-worker.

"Claudia is incredibly talented and funny as both a writer and actress -- genuine genius," he says. "It was fun working with her and fun having a fellow new person to take it all in with."

The predominately female writer's room has a strong feminist perspective that's obvious to even the most casual of Inside viewers, which not only aligned with O'Doherty's inclinations but added a level of comfort in an otherwise daunting new environment.

"That's a helpful thing in my writing for the show -- it has such a strong point of view, and that point of view is Amy's point of view," she says. "As an audience member watching that show, I was always like, 'Oh wow, these are sketches from the point of view of someone who shares what I think,' which is generally not the case. It was so fun to write sketches for the show for that reason."

MORE: Amy Schumer Spoofs 'The Real Housewives' With Andy Cohen

Working so closely with Schumer, who O'Doherty describes as "an amazing example of someone who's just doing it," has also helped the Sydney native improve her own work ethic.

"The hardest part of writing is doing it," she explains. "The great thing about acting is everyone is making sure that you do the acting. There are camera people and directors, and if you're not there acting, it's a big problem. But if you don't write, you just haven't written the thing you needed to write. You can easily not write for your whole life and no one will care. That's really hard."

Hard, but not impossible, as O'Doherty can attest. She's proven herself both behind and in front of the camera, with cameos on Inside and a supporting role as Bertie on Apatow's Netflix dramedy, Love.

Netflix

"Acting is challenging in a completely different way," she muses. "Lots of times, it's really easy compared to writing, because people are looking after you and putting makeup on you and putting your clothes on, and the role I have on [Love] is so fun and easy. It's not like a harrowing drama, which I would find really hard and scary."

Despite the years she's logged in the comedy scene, she is proud yet relatively reserved about her career boons in the States. Though she was cast on the Australian comedy Problems in 2012, O'Doherty quickly realized there wasn't a big enough television or film industry Down Under, so she made her way to the far less sunny shores of England.

"There's a great writing scene in London, but it's mainly panel show over there, which is not exactly what I always dreamed of doing," she explains, noting she did a lot of live comedy while there. "So when I started to get opportunities here in L.A., of course I took them -- they were dream jobs! Then I was like, 'Wait a second, you can get jobs the whole time if you're in Los Angeles! And, also, I like the sunny weather. I didn't consider myself outdoorsy at all, but after two very gloomy winters in London, I was very relieved to get back to the sunshine."

That two-year detour across the pond was nonetheless a step in the right direction, as it was her web series for Britain's Channel 4 that made its way to Apatow and Schumer, who initially hired her for last year's Trainwreck.

Though she only worked on set for three days for her memorable but small role as a bridal shower guest named Wendy, it was enough to win over Apatow. "On the last day I was shooting on Trainwreck, Judd was like, 'We're developing a show about Silver Lake [a neighborhood in L.A.] Do you have any ideas for a character?'" she recalls.

That show turned out to be Love, a cripplingly realistic look at thirtysomething life in L.A. Though she had a list of what she describes as "much crazier ideas" for what would become her character, Bertie, her on-screen counterpart ended up looking a lot like, well, O'Doherty.

"I think that he realized that in my real story, there's a lot of stuff there, so my character is much more based on that: of being new and starting over," she says. "They're all about, 'That's true, that's all real.'"

MORE: Why Amber Tamblyn Likes Pal Amy Schumer's Balls

Bertie is so chirpy and optimistic, it can almost be discerning at first, but the beauty of O'Doherty is that she steals the show so discreetly, it's tough to pinpoint the moment she won you over. That combined with her natural comedic timing may be exactly what Apatow saw from the get-go.

"Before I got there, the character was written much cooler," she reveals. "She was not particularly optimistic at all. She was very cool, which it turns out I'm not even capable of acting. As a person, I seem to be weirdly optimistic, and they thought it was funny, and that's why the character's like that."

If we'll get to see Bertie be just as naively positive in season two, O'Doherty can't say. Though filming has wrapped, Apatow runs a notoriously tight-lipped set, and she wasn't about to break that trust. What she can reveal, however, is that Bertie will still be living with cynical screw-up Mickey Dobbs (Gillian Jacobs) and dating giant teddy bear of a man, Randy (Mike Mitchell). "In the beginning, things are going -- things are on," she says of Bertie and Randy's relationship. "That's all I can say!"

EXCLUSIVE: Gillian Jacobs On 'Don't Think Twice', Struggling in Comedy

So, has the City of Angels been everything O'Doherty dreamed it would be?

"It's been a really great place to be living and working because there's actually a formal television industry," she says. "I would say that the idea of living in L.A. was sort of preposterous and depressed me and [seemed] like a thing I'd never do."

Preposterous? Maybe. The right move? Clearly.

Related Articles
By Patrick Rucker and Nate Raymond

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - In one of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's biggest cases tied to the 2008 financial crisis, former Fannie Mae <FNMA.PK> Chief Executive Daniel Mudd has reached a settlement with regulators, according to court papers filed on Monday.

The deal with the SEC, detailed in papers filed in Manhattan federal court, resolves a 2011 lawsuit accusing Mudd of misleading investors about Fannie's exposure to risky mortgages before the crisis.

Mudd had denied wrongdoing and he did not admit any in the Monday agreement. The deal concludes one of the SEC's few remaining cases tied to the housing downturn.

Mudd was one of six executives at mortgage funding giants Fannie Mae <FNMA.PK> and Freddie Mac <FMCC.PK> sued by the SEC. The prosecutions were announced at a press conference in December 2011 but they ended in modest settlements over the following years.

Under terms of the latest deal, Fannie Mae will contribute $100,000 on Mudd's behalf to a Treasury Department account that receives financial gifts to the United States, according to documents.

Fannie's former chief risk officer, Enrico Dallavecchia, and former Executive Vice President, Thomas Lund, agreed to similar terms when they settled for $25,000 and $10,000 respectively in September 2015.

A Fannie Mae spokesman declined to comment on the Mudd case. The SEC did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

Mudd had continued to litigate alone after Lund and Dallavecchia settled last year and he was due to face trial in November.

"I appreciate Fannie Mae and the current leadership of the SEC stepping in to end a case that should have never been brought," Mudd told Reuters.

CRISIS TENURE

Mudd led Fannie Mae as a national housing bubble grew to bursting point from December 2004 to September 2008, when the Treasury Department effectively took control of the company.

Story continues

That same month, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc filed for bankruptcy as Wall Street was rattled by a wave of mortgage defaults.

Officials injected taxpayer money to stabilize Fannie and it's sibling Freddie which were conceived by Washington to promote home ownership and had helped underwrite a share of the easy-to-get subprime loans.

The SEC had accused Mudd and the five other Fannie and Freddie executives of downplaying the companies' exposure to risky loans.

The SEC said Fannie Mae concealed exposure to more than $100 billion of subprime and $341 billion of Alt-A loans - another class of mortgage offered to risky borrowers.

Former Freddie Mac chief Richard Syron as well as former executives Patricia Cook and Donald Bisenius previously settled their cases for $250,000, $50,000 and $10,000, respectively.

The case is U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Mudd, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-9202.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Andrew Hay)
Don't mess with Heather Locklear.

The 54-year-old actress makes a splashy return to television playing the icy, but savvy first lady in TLC's first scripted series ever, Tyler Perry's soapy drama Too Close to Home, which debuts Monday.

Too Close to Home, an eight-part series filmed in an impressive eight days, follows Anna (Danielle Savre), a White House intern with a checkered Alabama past, who is at the center of a political scandal when she is caught sleeping with the president of the United States (Matthew Battaglia).

RELATED: 'Tyler Perry's Too Close to Home' Brings Heather Locklear Back to TV

ET has the exclusive first look at the dramatic confrontation between Anna and Locklear's Katelyn, the powerful, no-nonsense president's wife, after she discovers Anna and her husband in a rather compromising position in the Oval Office.

"So, this is how he keeps you. You must be really good," Katelyn says to Anna, insinuating that their extracurricular activities are, ahem, more than sufficient. "How long have you been f***ing?"

When Anna fails to answer, Katelyn starts to verbally bury the young Washington, D.C., intern and Anna doesn't exactly make it any easier on herself. "We're just friends," Anna croaks out.

"Friends?" the first lady asks in near disbelief. "He's the president. You're a lying bit of trailer park trash. You can't be friends with the president. That's laughable. Is that a tear, dear?" Katelyn goes on to lay down the law to Anna, showing her just why she's the president's wife and Anna is nowhere close to getting there.

RELATED: Tyler Perry Praises Heather Locklear's New 'Bad Girl' Role

"He made you feel special, didn't he? That's what he does. He has the ability to make you feel like you're the only one that matters. It's an act. It's a gift and it's no match for a kid from happy Alabama," she says, before promising one thing: There will be hell to pay. "You took this leap into my life. Do you think I'm just going to let you walk away freely?" Consider that a fair warning.

Story continues

ET was on the scene at the premiere for Too Close to Home last week, where creator Tyler Perry shared why audiences who loved Amanda on Melrose Place will be sucked into Locklear's unapologetic new role.

"All I can tell you, Heather Locklear is going to be one of the most cold-blooded people you have ever seen in film," Perry recently told ET's Nischelle Turner. "That's all I am going to say. Once you see the show, you will get an understanding."

If the scene above is any indication of what's to come, we're in for one wild ride.

Tyler Perry's Too Close to Home debuts with a two-hour premiere Monday at 9 p.m. ET/PT on TLC.

RELATED: Heather Locklear Is 'Very Healthy' and Doing Well Despite Tabloid Reports

Related Articles
The parents of the 19-year-old Florida State University student accused of fatally stabbing a couple and trying to eat one victim's face has issued a statement, expressing condolences to the victims and claiming Austin Harrouff "is not the person some are making him to be for their own purposes."



The statement, obtained by PEOPLE, expresses Wade and Mina Harrouff's "deepest sympathy for the pain and suffering caused by Austin Harrouff," who remains in stable but critical condition at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, police say.



Investigators say they are still trying to determine what drove Harrouff to allegedly kill John Stevens III, 59, and his wife Michelle Mishcon, 53, last week.



Authorities initially believed Harrouff may have been under the influence of the synthetic drug flakka when he allegedly attacked the couple and spent minutes trying to eat Stevens' face. Authorities are awaiting the results of toxicology tests, which are being conducted by the FBI and could take up to three weeks to complete, the Martin County Sheriff's Office tells PEOPLE.



 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.



A neighbor, 47-year-old Jeff Fisher, came to the couple's aid and tried fending off their attacker. He was injured in the process, and was treated at a nearby hospital before being released.



"The Harrouff family loves Austin as they know the Stevens and Mischon families loved John Stevens III and Michelle Mischon," the statement reads.



"There are no words we can offer to give any real comfort for this tragic loss," it continues. "There are no words we can offer that we can make up for the injury sustained by Jeff Fisher who is doing what we would want all good neighbors to do which was to try to help innocent people from being hurt or killed."



The statement says Harrouff "is not the person some are making him to be for their own purposes." The family has asked for privacy and says they "will allow the full legal process to find the full facts and the truth here."



Once he's been cleared medically, Harrouff will be charged with two counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, one burglary count, and a single resisting arrest count, police say. A judge has signed off on an arrest warrant for Harrouff, which he'll be served with once he's released from the hospital.



On Friday, the Martin County Sheriff's Office released video showing Harrouff walking out of the Duffy's Restaurant in Jupiter, Florida, the night of the attack.







It is unclear whether Harrouff has retained legal counsel. A motive for the alleged attacks has not been revealed by police.



In YouTube videos uploaded four days before the attack, Harrouff is seen discussing steroid use. In other clips, Harrouff appears to lift weights and makes references to himself as "The God of Fitness." Harrouff wrote on YouTube page believed to be his, "I've got a psycho side and a normal side," and "I've lost my mind help me find it."
DigInn (11)

Dig Inn  the Manhattan-born chain known for organic meals at affordable prices  will soon buy its own farm and hire its own farmers.

By October 2016, the popular farm-to-counter chain will open a 50-acre organic farm near Hudson, New York, CEO Adam Eskin tells Business Insider. The company is still settling on an exact location, but it will be a quick train ride from Manhattan.

There are upscale restaurants, like The French Laundry and Blue Hill, that have their own farms. Dig Inn is aiming to do the same as a chain, but its prices will remain low (ranging from $7 to $10).

Only a small percentage of the farm's crops will end up at its restaurants, Eskin says. The larger goal of the farm is, instead, to learn exactly how things grow  similar to a lab.

Dig Inn's farmers will experiment with different organic farming methods, seed varieties, and crop rotations, Taylor Lanzet, Dig Inn's sustainability manager, tells BI. The farm will harvest both staples, like apples and plums, and what she calls "forgotten veggies"  varieties of squash, kale, and onion that were "left out of modern agriculture." Some of these items are already on Dig Inn's menu, but Lanzet says customers can expect to find an even greater variety of veggies in the future.

The company is searching for a farmer to spearhead the farm, an assistant manager, and three to four other farmers to work the land. Its existing servers will also periodically visit and work on the farm, Eskin says.

dig inn

Since its launch in 2011, Dig Inn has opened 11 New York locations and one in Boston. The chain will open six to eight New York and Massachusetts restaurants by 2018, and build in a third state soon after.

The ultimate goal of the farm, Eskin says, is to figure out how Dig Inn can get the highest quality crops while preserving affordable prices.

Dig Inn is able to keep prices low, Eskin says, because it plans its menu around what's in-season, sometimes buys blemished  though still fresh  produce at a cheaper rate, and experiments with different items at every location. The chain's strong relationships with partnering farmers also helps.

Story continues

DigInn (10)

Dig Inn has been working with farmers and visiting its partner farms for years, but Eskin says it's not enough.

"A visit for a day gives you somewhat of a sense [of how to farm sustainably], but it doesn't give you a full sense of the challenges and burdens of producing food in a real way," Eskin says. "We want to have a holistic view of sustainable food."

To that end, Dig Inn wants its chefs and servers to get the farm experience. They'll periodically spend time working the fields, Eskin says.

"Their days might not always start with going to the cooler [to get ingredients]," Eskin says. "It might start with going to get the seeds."

NOW WATCH: Millions of people are obsessed with this app that turns you into a work of art





More From Business Insider






Mike Platinum Perry got on everyones radar with a ridiculous, laughable attempt at getting in his opponent, Hyun Gyu The Ace Lims head during the UFC 202 weigh-ins. Perry made up some ground in the not a complete idiot runnings by knocking out Lim in the first round.

However, after a cursory check of corner audio on Fight Pass and some eagle-eared listening, Perrys off worse than he started. A corner member, while hyping up Perry before the fighter introductions, says,

Related Links:





Thats your post-winner dinner. Hes got nothing for you, Mike. He cant even open his motherf*cking eyes, boy.

Just in case youre curious as to why this is important, Lim is Korean. It might not have been an actual ethnic slur, but someone on Perrys team clearly used racist language against an Asian opponent.





Perry trains at an official UFC gym in Florida with fellow UFC fighter Alex Nicholson. There are some thoughts that Nicholson was the voice behind the words, but after listening to some of Nicholsons interviews, Im not entirely convinced one way or another. Regardless of who said it, that corner should face some sort of disciplinary action, because while these people are fighting each other, theres no need and no place for racism, and as is more often the case, homophobia.
Istanbul (AFP) - Turkey on Monday began pulling out tanks and other military vehicles from bases in its main cities in line with an order to move all barracks outside Istanbul and Ankara following the failed July 15 coup.

Military barracks and bases on the outskirts of Ankara and Istanbul were one of the main hubs of the foiled coup, from where tanks and units of rebel soldiers moved in a bid to seize key positions in Turkey's two main cities.

The authorities have decided it is too big a risk to maintain bases in urban centres and have given the army until September 11 to move them elsewhere.

In the first such pullout, a convoy of half a dozen military trucks hauling other military vehicles concealed by tarpaulins left the Bastabya base in Istanbul for the barracks of Corlu and Besiktepe in the northwest province of Tekirdag, AFP correspondents said.

The Turkish flag was hung from the front of the trucks which were seen heading down the motorway towards Tekirdag along with the rest of the normal commuter traffic.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said that on the night of the coup armoured vehicles from Bastabya had taken soldiers to occupy Ataturk International airport and Vatan Street where the police headquarters is located.

In Ankara, six trucks carrying four tanks and four armoured personnel carries pulled out of a base in the district of Etimesgut for Sereflikochisar to the south.

A similar number left a base in the Ankara district of Mamak bound for Cankiri to the northeast, Anadolu added.

The tanks had become symbols of the failed coup, running amok on the streets but then being surrounded by angry crowds of people carrying Turkish flags who opposed the coup.

Defence Minister Fikri Isik has said it will take between 10 days to a month for the transfer of the bases to other locations.

Reports have said hundreds of armoured vehicles and tanks will have to be withdrawn from each base.

The authorities have said the vacated bases will ultimately be made open to the Turkish people, credited by the authorities for helping to defeat the coup by flooding into the streets in support of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Isik has said that Akinci Air Base outside Ankara -- from where the coup plotters launched air raids on targets including parliament -- will be made into a Democracy Park.
Genesis is the all-new luxury brand aimed at taking on the likes of Lexus, Infiniti, and established European rivals. Spun off by Hyundai, Genesis is the result of nearly a decade of deliberation within the Korean parent company, whose dedication has catapulted it from back-marker to industry leader, collecting accolades along the way for design, value, and safety.

The G90 is Genesiss full-size flagship, but unlike some luxury cars based on non-luxury counterparts, the G90 isnt a Hyundai with a fancy badge slapped on. It uses its own dedicated platform and is powered by one of two exclusive engines: either a 3.3-liter twin-turbo V-6 or a 5.0-liter V-8, both available with rear-wheel or all-wheel drive.

We drove the V-6-powered G90 on a day-long road trip from Vancouver to Vernon, British Columbia, and found the 365 hp engine hearty and smooth. A superb power band offers plenty of power at every speed, with peak torque of 376 ft lbs coming in as early as 1,300 rpm, aided by an eight-speed automatic transmission developed from the one found on the now-defunct Eqqus, Hyundais previous attempt at a high-end sedan.

Adjustable driving modes for the G90 include Adaptive, which can learn driving behavior and adjusts throttle response, shift points, and suspension accordingly. On long straight stretches of highway, we kept it in Adaptive mode and enjoyed a smooth quiet ride, aided in part by acoustic glass and a plethora of sound-dampening technology. Off the highway and up into the hills, we switched into Sport mode, which tightens up the steering and suspension, shifting at higher revs to maximize performance. The G90 is also equipped with an Eco mode for better fuel economy.

Genesis shines when it comes to design. Just as Hyundai (and sister company Kia) lured away former Audi designer Peter Schreyer to oversee the design direction of all of its brands, Genesis also poached former Bentley designers Luc Donckerwolke and Sang Yup Lee to work on future Genesis models.

Story continues

We made the decision on day one that design is what we are after, says Erwin Raphael, general manager of Genesis and former head of the Western Region for Hyundai. The G90s front grille is wide yet tasteful, with the Genesis winged emblem sitting atop. Stretched-back headlamps are accented with LED running lights in the air intakes below. A long hood and short overhangs hint at the cars rear-wheel drive platform, while a distinct character line runs the length of the car into the wraparound taillights. The view from behind is just as elegant, with integrated dual exhaust pipes and an oh-so-subtle lip on the decklid.

The interior layout is as good as any in the luxury space, with an arrangement of knobs and hard buttons that look orderly, not overwhelming. A 12.3-inch high-definition widescreen display sits atop an analog clock and is flanked by handsome wood trim. A 17-speaker premium Lexicon sound system with 10-inch subwoofer comes standard, as do heated and ventilated leather seats with a wide range of adjustability. Even the front headrests can move back far enough to accommodate ponytails or man-buns, a trick we discovered with the help of one of the Genesis engineers. Other standard features include semi-autonomous functions such as adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, and automatic braking with pedestrian detection.

Pricing details are expected to emerge in September, but Genesis executives say the Genesis G90 will cost more than the current Hyundai Genesis sedan, but less than any similarly equipped competitors, with deliveries slated to begin in September. Genesis covers maintenance for the first three years and offers a 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty. (genesismotorsusa.com)

More From Robbreport.com

Fijis Jean-Michel Cousteau Resort Is Better Than Ever After Tropical Cyclone



A Look Inside the New Secret Cottage at Irelands Ashford Castle Resort



Celebrity Jeweler Martin Katz Highlights Your Jewelry Must-Haves



Driving the F-Type SVR, the Fastest Jaguar Series Production Car



Aston Martin Drops Its Top with the Red-Hot Vanquish Zagato Volante Convertible



Jacob & Co.s New Watch with Star Chart Is Out of This World


doctor patient concern worry

Pinal County, Arizona, right next to Phoenix, was founded in 1875 and is home to roughly 400,000 people.

It's also the county that Obamacare forgot.

After Aetna's announcement that it will roll back 70% of its offerings in public exchanges, Pinal County appears to be the only county in the US with a public exchange but zero insurers offering Affordable Care Act plans in 2017.

This leaves people that need insurance through the ACA in Pinal County with limited options. Currently, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona is participating in the county, but it has plans to pull out in 2017.

According to Cynthia Cox of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan healthcare-focused think tank, convincing BCBS to stick around seems to be the easiest option.

"Plan A is to try and work with the Blue Cross Blue Shield in that state or another provider in the state to get them to move in," Cox said. "The question is if there is any plan B."

The plan B could simply be that there is no exchange offering and people have to buy insurance on their own, but that presents issues as well.

"If that's the case, it's mostly going to be unaffordable for those who are already receiving subsidies," Cox told Business Insider. "They're no longer going to be eligible for the subsidies, and it is likely that private coverage is not going to be affordable without the subsidies."

Cox said that these people would not be subject to any penalties under the individual mandate, but if they were injured or got sick during the year, they "could be faced with significant medical bills."

To be fair, even before Obamacare, many areas of the country had limited options when it came to health insurance, but that probably isn't much relief for people in Pinal County and other places around the US.

Even if BCBS stays in Pinal County, the situation will be far from ideal.

The number of insurers available and competing in a market is linked closely to the cost of premiums, and the withdrawals are leaving more and more areas with only one or two insurers. With that sort of monopoly or duopoly, premiums can increase even more than they already are.

Story continues

Cox told Business Insider that the situation in Pinal County will likely raise calls for a public option, or a government-run health insurance option similar to Medicare or Medicaid. This would provide an insurer of last resort for a county like Pinal and would drive competition where there are limited private options.

As it stands now, however, there is no such option for Pinal County and it appears that unless someone steps in, there will be an Obamacare marketplace, but no one selling anything in it.

NOW WATCH: Forget the gross factor: There are serious health reasons for why you shouldn't pick your nose





More From Business Insider


Bamako (AFP) - The trial of a Malian jihadist charged with war crimes for orchestrating the 2012 destruction of nine Timbuktu mausoleums and a section of a famous mosque, opens Monday at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

How did the monuments come to be considered important and why were they destroyed?

Who built the mausoleums?

The mausoleums of Muslim saints located in Timbuktu's cemeteries and mosques date back to the ancient caravan city's golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries as an economic, intellectual and spiritual centre. Some date back as far as the 14th century.

The construction of the original tombs of Muslim saints was undertaken by anonymous groups of family members or disciples of the saints, according to experts.

The earthen mausoleums around them were erected after the tombs were desecrated by those who believed they could gain power from being close to the remains.

In the centuries that followed, their maintenance and upkeep was taken on by descendants, local residents and patrons of the sites.

Thirteen of the city's most revered sites became UNESCO-protected in 1988.

Why are they revered?

Known as the "City of 333 saints", or the "Pearl of the Desert", Muslims from across the world visited the tombs of saints as holy places where those in difficulty could ask for divine intervention.

The city's inhabitants have long believed the tombs protect them from danger and they appeal to the saints for help.

Throughout the years, residents have asked the saints to intervene in anything from securing a woman's hand in marriage to making the rains come.

UNESCO describes them as "pilgrimage sites for Malians and neighbouring west African countries."

Why were they destroyed?

Islamist fighters desecrated the centuries-old shrines using pickaxes and chisels after seizing the city in April 2012.

The jihadists considered the shrines, as well as priceless ancient manuscripts from Timbuktu's golden age, to be idolatrous.

Story continues

On trial next week for his alleged role in spearheading the destruction is Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly Tuareg group which at the time held sway over Mali's desert north.

Ansar Dine allied with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and a third group to occupy the city, until being routed in a French-led intervention in January 2013.

Court prosecutors say the jihadists' first attempted to dissuade Timbuktu's residents from their long-held practice of worshipping the shrines, but after failing set upon their wholesale destruction.

The Islamists also implemented a version of Islamic law which forced women to wear veils and set whipping and stoning as punishment for transgressions.

Why is the ICC case important?

The case is the first to be brought by the world's only permanent war crimes court over the extremist violence that rocked Mali in 2012 and 2013.

It is also the first time that a jihadist has appeared before the court in The Hague and the first ICC case investigating the destruction of religious buildings and historical monuments.

The defendant has made clear he will plead guilty -- another first for the court -- to a single charge of jointly ordering or carrying out the destruction.

What happened to the mausoleums?

The reconstruction of the shrines began in March 2014, relying heavily on traditional methods and employing local masons.

To make sure the rebuilt shrines matched the old ones as closely as possible, work was checked against old photos and local elders were consulted throughout the process -- an important step in a city where culture has traditionally been passed on by word of mouth.

Several countries and organisations financed the reconstruction, including UNESCO.

Work finished on the site in July 2015, and a ceremony marking the completion was held on February 4, 2016.

Five head of cattle were ritually sacrificed just after dawn, ahead of a reading of the entire Muslim holy book, the Koran, and the handing of the keys to the families in charge of their care.
By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) - A Florida private investigator was sentenced to 42 years in prison on Monday for using a minor to produce child pornography, which was discovered after authorities searched his computers following his arrest last year for hacking a global charity.

Timothy Sedlak, 43, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton in Orlando after a federal jury in May found him guilty on charges including that he produced and possessed child pornography, according to court records.

A lawyer for Sedlak did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sedlak, of Ocoee, Florida, was arrested in September 2015 on charges that he launched almost 400,000 attempts to gain unauthorized access to an unidentified New York-based global charitable organization's computer network.

At the time of his arrest, Sedlak told authorities he was researching charities to determine if any were unintentionally financing Islamist militant groups by sending funds to Middle East charities that were then seized by militants.

The same day as Sedlak's arrest, U.S. Secret Service agents executed a search warrant at his home, seizing among other things, 30 computers and four external hard drives.

An examination of those computers found files containing child pornography, including a number of images taken from 2009 to 2011 depicting Sedlak himself sexually abusing a toddler, prosecutors said.

Agents also discovered hundreds of child pornography images that were downloaded from the internet, prosecutors said.

The separate hacking case remains pending in federal court in Manhattan. He has plead not guilty in that case.

(Editing by Alistair Bell)
drift founders

Chat bots broke onto the tech scene earlier this year with a torrent of hype, but most have so far failed to live up to it.

Part of that is because many consumer chat bots seem like just another repackaging of an app. You chat with a robot instead of pushing buttons, but you didnt really get anything new.

They dont feel like a net efficiency gain, David Cancel, former HubSpot exec and CEO of Cambridge startup Drift tells Business Insider.

Drift is trying to use chat bots to provided something new, Cancel says. Its Drift Bot works as a concierge for businesses when potential customers arrive at places like the company's website. Its goal is to make sure these people are routed to the right person.

It wants to get out of the way as soon as possible, Cancel says.

Drift Bot is, in some ways, meant to replace the online form. Online forms transferred the work [of initial intake] from company to the [customer], Cancel says. Drift Bot makes the labor feel more 50/50. It pops up, asks a few questions, and gets you where you need to go. Its like reaching a digital operator.

Cancel says Drift is trying to use the artificial to make something feel personal.

drift interface

How it works

Drift Bot uses your words and actions to determine who within the company to route you to.

And Cancel's goal is to make Drift Bot smarter, both by improving the artificial intelligence aspects and by letting companies give more fine-grain roles to employees. Cancel also wants to keep the cadence of his time at HubSpot, which releases features at a ferocious pace.

Drift Bot lives on many different platforms: web, HipChat, Slack, email, and so on. And you can set up rules for what platforms you want it to route through. For instance, your potential customer might be chatting on your website, but Drift Bot could route their messages to an employee on email or Slack, depending on your preference.

Story continues

drift routing

What businesses is Drift targeting?

The Fortune 500,000, Cancel says. Mid-market, as many businesses as possible. Cancel says Drift Bot has already signed up over 6,000 businesses, though not all are paying, as its priced as a freemium model.

Drift has also raised $15 million in funding from CRV, General Catalyst Partners, NextView Ventures, Founder Collective and angel investors including Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot.

The future

The ultimate goal of Drift is to integrate AI and human workflow in a way that helps businesses snag customers. Cancel says that all the best bot initiatives hes seen have been in the human-assisted AI realm. That's where Drift is playing.

I dont get a lot of the bot stuff, Cancel says. Its cool engineer stuff, but it doesnt solve a problem. Everything looks like a toy.

Cancel thinks the best way to push beyond toy status is to make something that can hook into existing, human workflows. A bot doesnt have to do everything, it just has to actually be useful.

NOW WATCH: These lights bloom like flowers and dance like jellyfish





More From Business Insider


Rosen head shot 2013

The Fox News reporter who first noticed that the State Department had edited out a key section from a 2013 briefing video about the Iran nuclear deal said he is still searching for answers about why the edit was made.

"It's not over," Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen told Business Insider in an interview late last week. "There's really a lot of unanswered questions that remain here."

The State Department on Thursday released findings from a monthslong investigation in which 34 people were interviewed. While the department said the video was deliberately edited, the investigation was unable to conclude who was responsible.

"I think the central answers remain elusive and will be further pursued," Rosen said. "Who ordered the edits made? Why? When? For what reasons? And what consequences should befall that person? Those are the central questions."

The part of the 2013 video in question showed then department spokeswoman Jen Psaki appearing to admit that the press was deliberately misled about an aspect of the Iran nuclear deal.

The State Department investigation found that the video of Psaki's remarks was likely edited in the immediate aftermath of the 2013 news conference. A technician remembered receiving a call requesting the edit, but the employee claimed the passage of time had made it impossible to recall who gave the order, according to the report, which was obtained by Business Insider.

"The bottom line is ... [the investigation] was inconclusive," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters at a press briefing.

Rosen said he was not satisfied with the report's conclusions and expected it to be examined more closely in the coming days and weeks.

"I think the report will be very closely scrutinized, and I think that there will be further questions raised by both the news media and the Congress in this," he said. "And, of course, the Congress has powers to be brought to bear in investigation in an episode like this that the news media do not."

Story continues

In June, the House Oversight Committee demanded the State Department provide documents to show why the portion of the 2013 video was deleted.

Rosen, who had his movements tracked and was named by the administration as a "co-conspirator" over possible classified leaks in 2013, called himself a "walking embodiment" of President Barack Obama's failure to be assemble the most transparent administration in US history. He said the briefing video fiasco was just another example of that alleged failure.

NOW WATCH: Naked Donald Trump statues are popping up across America





More From Business Insider


TAIPEI (Reuters) - Foxconn, which assembles Apple Inc products, said on Monday two workers at its manufacturing facilities in China died last week, even as the company made efforts to improve labor conditions that came under scrutiny after a spate of suicides in recent years.

Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, said a male employee, who joined the company last month, was found dead outside a building in Zhengzhou on Thursday, while a female employee died in a train accident on her way to work on Friday.

The company did not give further details, but said it was cooperating with authorities investigating the deaths.

The two employees worked at the Zhengzhou plant in the Henan province, which analysts say has become a hub for Foxconn's production of Apple devices such as iPhone.

A year ago, another employee in Zhengzhou died. A labor rights group said at the time that it was a suicide.

Employee deaths in China are sensitive for the Taiwanese firm. After a series of suicides in 2010-2011, most at its Shenzhen manufacturing operation, Foxconn sought to improve labour conditions.

"Our efforts are ongoing and we are determined to do whatever we can to anticipate the changing needs of our large workforce in China," Foxconn said in a statement Monday.

Foxconn employs about 1.3 million people during peak production times, making it one of the largest private employers in the world.

(Reporting by J.R. Wu; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
VENTOTENE, Italy (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande said on Monday the international community would be left ashamed if nothing was done to stop the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Syria's northern city of Aleppo. An upsurge in fighting and air strikes in and around the city, split between government-held west and rebel-held eastern sectors, has prompted growing international concern, galvanized by pictures on Thursday of a dazed, bloodied child. "We know there are conflicts that are unresolved and I'm thinking of what's happening in Syria with this crisis in Aleppo, this humanitarian catastrophe which one day will bring shame to the international community if we do nothing," Hollande told reporters alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The plight of thousands of civilians in Aleppo has been aggravated in besieged areas by dire shortages of basic goods, leading the World Food Programme to warn of a "nightmarish" situation. (Reporting By Isla Binnie; writing by John Irish; editing by Michel Rose)
The wait for Frank Ocean's Blonde album -- which finally dropped over the weekend -- felt interminable. But as obsessive fans dug into every aspect of the unusual release, they noticed that at least two of the songs sounded somewhat familiar. As it turns out, Ocean performed a pair of the tracks back in Munich in the summer of 2013, and of course there's video of it.

Kanye West Writes Poem About McDonald's for Frank Ocean's 'Boys Don't Cry' Magazine

Though the ballads are a bit different from the final versions on the album. Check out the clips:

"Ivy"

Frank Ocean Drops Visually Stunning 'Nikes' Video

"Seigfried"

The build-up to the final release of Blonde included a confusing tease involving a livestream of two desks that confounded fans. It eventually led to the visual album Endless, which included a 45-minute video of Ocean constructing a spiral staircase. In an interview with Pitchfork, Blonde collaborator artist Tom Sachs said there is a way, way longer version of Endless out there that contains hours of additional footage.

Frank Ocean Drops New Album 'Blonde,' Give Out 'Boys Don't Cry' Magazine at Pop-Up Shops

"When you see the video, you see him building a stairway to heaven in real time," Sachs told the site. "The 40-minute version is edited, but there's something like a 140-hour version. That's the whole thing. That exists, that's the art piece."
Kinshasa (AFP) - The tense DR Congo faces a nationwide shutdown Tuesday after the country's main opposition alliance refused to join talks with President Joseph Kabila's government in a stormy row over delayed presidential elections.

The fractured opposition recently came together in a new coalition -- "Rassemblement" (Gathering) -- headed by veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi to demand Kabila end his 15-year rule and step down when his mandate expires on December 20.

The coalition this weekend rejected an offer of all-party talks on the election that had been scheduled for Tuesday by Togo's former premier Edem Kodjo, who was asked to step in by the African Union (AU) to avoid a crisis.

In a statement it also called on "the people to mobilise as one to stop this umpteenth abuse of authority by observing a dead city strike this Tuesday August 23."

The opposition has signalled agreement to join the AU-run talks but only on condition Kodjo, seen as biased towards Kabila, be booted, and that the government release all political prisoners.

In an apparent sign of compromise, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo last week promised to free some two dozen prisoners of conscience to "ease political tensions" ahead of "inclusive national dialogue" -- the all-party talks.

But the coalition says 112 political prisoners remain behind bars, with only four facing release.

And in the latest sign of a delay of the election, the electoral commission said this weekend that a voter registration drive launched in March would not be complete by December as it would need around a year of work.

The country's highest court earlier this year ruled that Kabila could stay in office beyond December if no election were held.

- Warnings of 'high treason' -

Tension has been building for months in the vast mineral-rich nation of 71 million over fears Kabila will follow in the footsteps of neighbouring heads of state and change the constitution to extend his rule with a third term.

Story continues

When Tshisekedi, who is 83 and frail, returned to DR Congo last month after a two-year absence he was welcomed by hundreds of thousands of supporters.

In a fiery speech in Kinshasa, Tshisekedi warned Kabila not to extend his rule, saying it would be "high treason" if the electoral process were not launched on schedule on September 19.

He told a rally that date was the "first red line which must not be crossed".

"The electoral body must be convened (by that date) for the presidential election. If it is not, high treason will be proved in the person of Mr Kabila, who will take responsibility for the misery of the Congolese people," Tshisekedi said.

"From that moment, his three-month notice period on the presidential palace begins. On December 19 the notice expires and on the 20th the house must be free," he added, to rousing cheers.

An immensely popular figure who emerged as a leading dissenting voice as far back as the 1980s, when he was a critic of strongman Mobutu Sese Seko, Tshisekedi in June in Brussels accomplished the rare feat of uniting the opposition.

Also in June, another leading light of the opposition, Moise Katumbi, was sentenced in absentia to three years in jail for property fraud.

The presiding judge in the case has since claimed she was pressured by the authorities into signing off on a guilty verdict, to ensure Katumbi would be ineligible to run for office, according to a letter seen by AFP.
From Cosmopolitan

This is some straight-up Scooby Doo shit!

CNN reports on Shaun Miller, a 31-year-old suspected drug dealer fugitive who kept a relatively convincing old man mask around to evade authorities. Unfortunately for him, Massachusetts law enforcement who broke into the house he was staying in on Thursday were able to see past his disguise.

But not at first! There was some initial confusion when they found an elderly man inside. However, it wasn't long before authorities figured out what was going on.

"Upon further investigation, officers determined that the 'elderly man' was in fact Miller," Yarmouth police said in a press release. "At that point, officers pulled off Miller's realistic disguise and placed him under arrest."

Miller, who is one of over a dozen people named in a federal drug trafficking indictment in April of this year, was considered a fugitive from the law. Police seized two loaded weapons, almost $30,000 in cash, and detained him on possession of heroin with intent to distribute.

Miller's attorney, James Cipoletta, says his client will plead not guilty when he is scheduled to appear at U.S. District Court in Boston on August 31st. His mask will be donated to a local school to make a very creepy Halloween costume. (J/K it'll probably be kept in evidence for a long time and eventually be tossed. What a waste!)

Follow Laura on Twitter.
Though the Gawker website shuttered on Monday, its legacy will live on via the Writers Guild of America East contract covering six surviving Gawker Media sites.

WGA East executive director Lowell Peterson told Variety that the five-month-old contract that the guild negotiated with Gawker Media earlier this year remains in effect at the remaining Gawker sites, which include Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Jezebel, Kotaku, and Lifehacker. The contract  the first WGA deal covering digital employees  currently covers about 90 employees.

Univision recently won an auction to buy the Gawker assets for $135 million and has agreed to continue the provisions of the WGA East contract. Two days later, the media-gossip blog Gawker announced it would close down operations this week while the other sites remained live.

Univision has been very welcoming to the Gawker employees, Peterson said. I think its a testimony to the power of the collective bargaining agreement.

Hamilton Nolan, who led the union drive at Gawker Media and is now writing for Deadspin, said he was pleased that Univision had agreed to continue operating the sites under the guild contract at the urging of the WGA East and Gawker Media.

Theres a continuity for the employees with the same healthcare, benefits, and salary structures, Nolan said. It also really shows the value of having a union contract. Amid all the uncertainty in this business, its something everyone should look at.

The disappearance of the Gawker site is the culmination of long battles with wrestler Hulk Hogan and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. Hogan had won a $140 million judgement in March against Gawker Media, its founder Nick Denton, and one of its editors over Gawkers publication of a sex tape featuring Hogan, whose suit was funded by Thiel.

On March 1, the WGA East announced that Gawker staffers had ratified the first contract by an 88-2 margin. The guild also unionized writers and producers last year at the Huffington Post, Vice, Salon, and ThinkProgress, but Gawker was the first with a union contract.

Story continues

The staffs at Vice and ThinkProgress have also subsequently ratified WGA East contracts and negotiations on a deal at Huffington Post are ongoing, according to Peterson. Additionally, the guild is continuing to seek organization of other digital sites, but will keep those efforts under wraps until staffers are ready to announce their support for unionization.

Related stories

Gawker to Shut Down Next Week

Univision Buys Gawker for $135 Million

Copa America, Political Spend Lift Univision to Second Quarter Profits
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German court ruled on Monday that a Muslim woman could not wear a niqab to evening school, fuelling a debate about the face veil after conservatives pressed the government to ban women from wearing it in schools, at courts and while driving. The woman had complained on Friday to the administrative court in the northeastern city of Osnabrueck after a school overturned its decision to give her a place because she felt obliged to wear the niqab - which covers the hair and face except for the eyes - for religious reasons. The Sophie Scholl evening school in Osnabrueck had informed the woman back in April that she had been accepted to a course. She had said she would be prepared to show a female employee her face before classes started so that she could be identified but then wanted to wear the garment during lessons. The school did not think it was in a position to teach the woman given these circumstances, according to a statement from the court. The Sophie Scholl school declined to comment on the case when contacted by Reuters. The woman had been due to appear in court on Monday but did not turn up for the hearing, after widespread media attention to the case. The court then rejected her application. The conservative calls to introduce a partial ban on the face veil comes at a time when many Germans are on edge after two Islamist attacks. Many are also concerned about the influx last year of more than a million, mainly Muslim, migrants. (Reporting by Michelle Martin, editing by Larry King)
By Michael Nienaber

BERLIN (Reuters) - German exports to Iran, mostly machines and equipment, jumped in the first half of the year following the removal of international sanctions against the Islamic Republic, official trade data showed on Monday.

Exports to Iran surged by 15 percent year-on-year in the first six months of 2016 to 1.13 billion euros ($1.3 billion), the Federal Statistics Office said.

This compares with a rise of 1.4 percent in overall German exports in the same period and a fall of 14 percent in German exports to Iran in 2015.

"There is a huge demand in Iran for plant and equipment", said Michael Tockuss, head of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce, adding that chemical products and electrical engineering were also doing well.

"And there is growing demand for technology from the renewable energy sector, mainly wind power stations," Tockuss said, adding that the reluctance of banks to finance bigger deals between German and Iranian businesses was slowly eroding.

Tockuss said exports to Iran would further pick up in the coming months and are expected to rise by as much as 25 percent in the whole of 2016 and by 30 percent in 2017.

"The sanctions against Iran were built up over several years and it now will take some years to reverse them and establish new business ties," he said.

In another positive sign, German exports to Russia fell only 3.5 percent to 10.1 billion euros in the January-June period after having plunged by 25 percent to 21 billion euros in 2015.

This indicates that the impact of international sanctions imposed against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine is bottoming out.

CLOUDED OUTLOOK

Overall trade prospects are more clouded, however.

German exports to the Unites States and France, its two most important markets, fell 4 percent to 53.4 billion euros and 2 percent to 52.1 billion euros respectively on the year in the first six months of 2016.

Exports to Britain, Germany's third-most important market, stagnated in the first half of the year at around 44.8 billion euros.

Story continues

Demand from emerging markets was subdued, with German exports to China only inching up 1 percent to 36.3 billion euros, to Brazil falling 18 percent to 4.4 billion euros and to South Africa down 11 percent to 4.4 billion euros.

The head of Germany's BGA trade association has said exports will grow less than expected this year due to external risks, including Britain's vote to leave the European Union and uncertainties ahead of elections in the United States and France.

Anton Boerner said late in June that BGA would update its official forecast for export growth of 4.5 percent at the end of the summer and he expected 4.1 percent at best.

In 2015, German exports grew by 6.4 percent on the year, mainly driven by strong demand from other EU countries. This led to net foreign trade contributing 0.2 percentage points to an overall growth rate of 1.7 percent last year.

The German government expects the economy to grow by the same amount this year, helped by soaring domestic demand, while exports are unlikely to contribute much to overall growth.

($1 = 0.8857 euros)

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber,; Additional reporting by Rene Wagner; Editing by Paul Carrel)
BERLIN (Reuters) - The German Economy Ministry on Monday urged Volkswagen and its suppliers to quickly end a dispute that has prompted production delays at six plants including at the car maker's main Wolfsburg factory.

"We assume and also expect the companies to solve the sticking issues as soon as possible," Economy Ministry spokesman Andreas Audretsch said during a regular government news conference.

He added: "It is about thousands of jobs, which could be affected by shorter work hours, and the responsibility to tackle these problems constructively is very high."

(Reporting by Hans-Edzard Busemann; Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Michael Nienaber)
(Recasts after news conference)

By Isla Binnie

ABOARD ITALIAN WARSHIP GARIBALDI, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The leaders of the euro zone's biggest economies held talks on Monday in the aftermath of Britain's shock decision to leave the European Union and said Europe had to turn its back on populists who blamed Brussels for all its problems.

Speaking on an aircraft carrier off the Italian island of Ventotene, Germany's Angela Merkel, France's Francois Hollande and Italy's Matteo Renzi issued calls for closer security cooperation and better opportunities for young people.

In a meeting heavy on symbolism, the three leaders visited Ventotene to lay a wreath on the tomb of Altiero Spinelli, an Italian intellectual seen as a founding father of European unity.

They then boarded the Garibaldi, which is in the front line of an EU mission to combat people traffickers who have carried hundreds of thousands of migrants to Europe across the Mediterranean.

"For many populists, Europe is to blame for everything that goes wrong," Renzi said at the joint news conference before the leaders sat down for talks aboard the ship.

"Immigration, it's Europe's fault, the economy is bad, it's Europe's fault. But that is not the case."

The meeting was designed to lay the groundwork for an EU summit in Bratislava next month.

Monday's talks marked the beginning of a week of meetings for Merkel with other European governments that will see her travel to four countries and receive leaders from another eight.

"We respect Great Britain's decision but we also want to make clear that the other 27 (member states) are banking on a safe and prospering Europe," the German chancellor said.

DIVISIONS

But questions of how to bring about prosperity have divided the three countries.

Heavily-indebted Italy, whose economy has barely grown since the introduction of the euro currency in 1999, has repeatedly chafed against stern EU budget rules, and both Renzi and Hollande want greater flexibility to help boost growth.

Story continues

Germany is keen for rules to be respected, and Renzi and Merkel sidestepped a question on deficit limits.

All three leaders are threatened at home. Merkel faces discontent over her controversial decision to let in a million mainly Muslim migrants last year.

France is reeling from a wave of Islamist attacks and Renzi faces a referendum on constitutional reform this autumn that could trigger his downfall.

The EU plans to offer incentives to African governments to help slow the flow of migrants into Europe, but divisions among member states are stark.

Italy, the main entry point for Africans but rarely their planned destination, is struggling to house migrants turned back from neighbouring countries including France, and disagrees with Germany over how to finance the response.

Hollande stressed the need to protect the EU from militant violence by tightening borders and sharing intelligence.

"To have security we need frontiers that are controlled so that is why we are working to reinforce coastguards and border guards," he said. "We want more coordination in the fight against terrorism." (Additional reporting Michelle Martin in Berlin, John Irish in Paris; Writing by Gavin Jones and Crispian Balmer; Editing by Philip Pullella and Andrew Roche)
By Jessica Dye

NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Motors Co <GM.N> on Monday asked a Texas judge to throw out a lawsuit over a fatal 2011 crash blamed on a faulty ignition switch, accusing plaintiffs and their lawyers of fabricating evidence about the vehicles key during the ongoing trial.

According to a GM court filing, plaintiffs Zachary Stevens and his parents and their lawyers showed jurors in Harris County court a key attached to a chain containing several other items, claiming it was the one used to drive the 2007 Saturn Sky involved in the crash.

But GM said the key displayed in the courtroom did not in fact belong to that vehicle. The carmaker, which recalled 2.6 million vehicles in 2014 for defective ignition switches, has warned that added weight to key chains can cause the switches to slip out of position.

Stevens said ignition-switch rotation caused him to lose control of the Sky, hitting another vehicle and killing that driver. His 2015 lawsuit is the first to go to trial among roughly 20 pending in Texas state court.

In its filing Monday, GM said Stevens initially said he was driving with just a few items attached to his key. But the key chain shown to jurors comprised three rings holding additional items like a souvenir Eiffel Tower and gym membership card, according to the motion.

GM said plaintiffs fabricated evidence to support their theory that key rotation, not Stevens driving, caused the crash. A manslaughter charge initially brought against Stevens was dropped following GM's recall announcement.

The company asked the judge to either dismiss the case altogether, or to inform jurors about the allegedly false statements with instructions to disregard them.

The alleged misstatements "have hamstrung the search for the truth," GM wrote.

Lawyers for Stevens were not immediately available for comment Monday. GM declined to comment.

Earlier this year, a judge overseeing federal switch litigation dismissed the first of those cases to go to trial. The only switch case to reach a jury resulted in a verdict absolving GM of liability for a 2014 crash in New Orleans.

Story continues

GM has paid roughly $2 billion in criminal and civil penalties and settlements in connection with the switch.

Another switch trial is set to begin September 12 in Manhattan federal court.

The case is Stevens v. General Motor, Harris County Court, 2015-04442

(Reporting by Jessica Dye; Editing by Anthony Lin and Andrew Hay)
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2016 / Golden Predator Mining Corp. (GPY.V) (the "Company") is pleased to announce it has received all necessary permits under the Yukon Waters Act and the Yukon Quartz Mining Act permitting the construction, and operation of a clear span bridge across the Little Hyland River at the 3 Aces Project. The clear span bridge has been purchased and is in the community of Watson Lake, Yukon, assembled and ready for transport to the 3 Aces Project site for installation. Construction is expected to commence on August 26th, 2016.

The bridge, identified in the 2016 work plan as key element of the 3 Aces Project infrastructure, provides cost-effective, year-round access to the Aces of Spades Vein, Aces of Hearts Vein and the Jack of Spades Vein as well as the other 16 soil anomalies present across the 10 km2 central core area of the 225 km2 property. In addition to saving on helicopter-supported exploration costs of over $2,500/day, the bridge provides year-round access and the use of heavier equipment including reverse circulation drill rigs, service trucks, and bulk sampling equipment which are largely unavailable by helicopter support.

For more information, please see the attached map of the 3 Aces Project: http://goldenpredator.com/_resources/maps/3-aces/3Ace_Bridge_Map_20160818.jpg

"I am extremely pleased at the collective team approach across the Yukon agencies and our staff in the permit review and approval process, which has been completed ahead of schedule. Most important, this would not have been possible without the assistance of the Kaska Nation, represented by the Ross River Dena Council and Liard First Nation. We could not have made these timelines without their on-going support," said Janet Lee-Sheriff, Chief Executive Officer.

In addition to the Liard First Nation and the Ross River Dena Council, Golden Predator also wishes to thanks the staff and leadership of the Yukon Government Department of Energy, Mines and Resource, the Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment staff and Board and the Water Board staff and Board whose leadership and approach to timely decision making allowed the Company to exceed projected timelines.

Story continues

3 Aces Project, Yukon

The 3 Aces property is a 225 km property consisting of 1,118 contiguous quartz claims (23,000 hectares) located in southeast Yukon and includes the two highest grade surface outcrops discovered to date in the Yukon. The veins discovered to date are characterized by coarse nuggetty gold with a low sulphide content consistent with an orogenic vein model. The property is located along the all-season Nahanni Range Road which accesses the Cantung Mine located 40 kilometers to the north.

The 3 Aces property contains a number of quartz veins and vein zones that cut Cambrian aged limestone, shale, quartz grits and chert pebble conglomerates of the Hyland Group. Previous sampling and exploration by Golden Predator has outlined extensive gold-in-soil anomalies over ten square kilometers, including the five high grade gold in quartz veins that contain coarse visible gold. Exploration work in 2015 and 2016 to date, including metallurgical studies, Rotary Air Blast drilling, Reverse circulation drilling and bulk sampling, has focused on establishing the grade and continuity of the Ace of Spades vein where previous diamond drilling had intersected the vein but returned lower than expected grades. The work in 2015 and 2016 has confirmed the high grades of the vein by establishing a sampling protocol which is resulting in a better estimation of gold grades within the veins. This work, the sampling protocol and the Phase II program are designed to significantly advance the understanding and discoveries on the project in 2016 and 2017.

The 3 Aces property is located in the traditional territory of the Kaska Nation. In January 2013, Golden Predator signed an Exploration Agreement with the Kaska Nation, as represented by the Ross River Dena Council and the Liard First Nation, with respect to activities within their traditional territories.

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mike Burke, P. Geo, a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and Chief Geologist for the Company.

Golden Predator Mining Corp.

Golden Predator Mining Corp., a Canadian gold mineral exploration company, is focused on advancing its high grade 3 Aces Project and the Brewery Creek project, a past producing heap leach gold operation in Canada's Yukon.

For Additional Information:

Janet Lee-Sheriff

Chief Executive Officer

(604)260-5029 Ext.101

info@goldenpredator.com

www.goldenpredator.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein. This press release contains forward-looking information that involve various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information can include without limitation statements based on current expectations that the private placement will complete as described herein, that the Project will advance through permitting and feasibility. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. These and all subsequent written and oral forward-looking information are based on estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking information should circumstances or management's estimates or opinions change.

SOURCE: Golden Predator Mining Corp.
Google has officially rolled out the latest version of Android, version 7.0 Nougat. For the most part, it looks great. Among its many additions are a multi-window mode that lets you run two apps onscreen simultaneously, a more polished and capable notification panel, and, naturally, more emojis. Its not a monumental upgrade, but its a step forward.

The issue, as always, is that very few people are actually going to see it  at least not while its new.

android market share

According to

Googles Android developer dashboards, 15.2% of Android customers were using version 6.0 Marshmallow as of August 1. Thats twice as much market share as it had this past May, but still a fairly small amount for an update thats been available for 10 months. Meanwhile, 35.5% of users were on some form of Android 5.0 Lollipop, while 29.2% were on Android 4.4 KitKat, which launched in late 2013.

This fragmentation problem is anything but new for Google, but its worth reiterating with todays launch: Android is beholden to the device manufacturers that use it, as well as the carriers that service those OEMs devices. Year after year, very few of those companies are capable of and/or willing to supply their customers with everything their devices could do.

Lately, a chunk of them havent even committed to rolling out of Googles monthly security updates on time, putting an already iffy piece of software with regard to keeping data secure on even shakier ground.

As hackneyed as it is to say, it has to be noted that iOS doesnt have this problem. According to Apples developer support page, 87% of iDevice users were on the latest iOS 9 update as of August 15. Another 10% were on 2014s iOS 8 update, while just 3% were on anything before that.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai

This doesnt mean iOS is better than Android. Rather, its another reminder that Google faces structural, industry-wide issues that Apple has done well to bypass. (Though its allowed Google to have a much higher global market share.)

Story continues

Android Nougat does nothing to fix them. Right now, the only way to ensure you get those updates quick is to buy a Nexus device. Even that has its limits, though  Google confirmed on Monday that Nougats rollout doesnt apply to 2013s Nexus 5 phone or Nexus 7 tablet, a faster cutoff than what Apples doing with iOS 10.

Beyond that, Google would either have to make some sort of major technical change that allows it to update Android itself, or some sort of major contractual change that puts more pressure on Android-using companies to push updates faster.

Or, as has been rumored, Google could try creating its own iPhone competitor, cutting those third parties off at the knees. (My colleague Kif Leswing has made a case for this before.)

Whatever happens, Nougat is what weve got today. Heres hoping you dont have to wait too long to see it.

NOW WATCH: Sorry Apple fans  the iPhone 7 is going to be boring





More From Business Insider


From Esquire

Authorities raided a Houston-area bingo hall and uncovered more than pennies and extra sets of dentures. They found around 100 guns, ammunition, and body armor in addition to $87,000 cash stored in an underground bunker.

The hall was run by a crime family that reportedly laundered upwards of $15 million using a string of ATM machines.

Police said that the bingo hall's back rooms also contained slot-type machines where customers could gamble illegally for cash prizes.

"[There were enough guns], I would consider, to start a small war," Lieutenant Ruben Diaz of the Harris County Sheriff's Office told KHOU. "This is one of largest seizures of guns I've seen in one particular spot."

"Like a whole table... filled with ammo boxes that were full of all caliber [ammunition], including 50 caliber," said Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson. "I mean, when do you see that?"

At granny's bingo hall. That's where.

You Might Also Like
When she formally launched her presidential campaign a year ago, Hillary Clinton was deemed by many the candidate of destiny  a political powerhouse who was certain to win the Democratic nomination and go on to claim the White House.

With seemingly limitless campaign financial resources and one of the biggest names in politics, the former secretary of state and U.S. senator appeared to be a shoe-in.

Related: Hillary Clintons New Motto? Let Trump Be Trump

But that was before she was saddled with a controversy over her gross mishandling of top secret State Department emails and documents, before the rise of Donald Trump as a powerful populist voice of angry white Americans and before liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont turned his upstart challenge into a full-fledged movement during the Democratic primaries.

Clinton escaped the clutches of Sanders and an FBI investigation of her private email server that nearly led to an indictment. And now, in the aftermath of the mid-summer Republican and Democratic national conventions and a torrent of outrageous pronouncements and missteps by Trump, Clinton appears to be back on track as the candidate of destiny.

Clinton has soared in the polls since the conventions, she is surging in many of the key battleground states like Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and she holds a substantial lead in the all-important contest for 270 electoral votes necessary to secure victory.

However, experts caution that her lead in the national polls and massive advantage in the Electoral College tally could prove to be ephemeral as the campaign heats up this fall. Thats especially true if Clinton somehow falters during her three nationally televised debates with the bombastic Trump, who has warned he will engage in no-holds-barred warfare. Trump was repeatedly underestimated by the media and his rivals throughout the 2016 primary season, yet eliminated his 16 rivals one by one and went on to secure the GOP presidential nomination.

Story continues

Clinton will also feel the continued heat of congressional Republicans trying to make the case that she perjured herself in testimony to a House investigative committee and to the FBI on her handling of State Department emails.

Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, said on Monday that while Clintons campaign is feeling highly confident today, theres still plenty of time between now and November.

They just have to avoid making the assumption that theyre going to win, and continue to be competitive, he said. Trumps campaign hasnt shown itself to be very fast on its feet, but they could certainly turn it into a race much more than it is now.

And campaigns are just unpredictable, he added. Things can happen. I mean, something could come up in regard to the Clinton server, in regard to the FBI interview, in any number of things. I think that theyve got to keep their edge in the Clinton campaign, and I think their biggest enemy now is complacency.

Related: Trump Really Wants White People to Know How Much He Cares About Black People

Indeed, with growing signs that it would take a miracle for Trump to bounce back in the polls, especially in key battleground states, Clinton and her top aides are warning major donors and other Democrats that there is still time for Trump to turn things around before election day, according to The Hill. They noted that the U.K.s June 23 Brexit vote to leave the European Union caught just about everybody by surprise and led to the demise of former Prime Minister David Cameron.

Yet there is plenty of evidence that the Clinton camp isnt following its own advice to avoid overconfidence.

The Washington Post reported on Sunday in a front page article that Clintons increasingly confident campaign has begun crafting a detailed agenda for her first term, with particular focus on creating jobs, sharply increasing infrastructure spending and enacting immigration reform.

The pace and scale of the planning reflect the growing expectations among Democrats that she will win and take office in January alongside a new Democratic majority in the Senate, the article stated.

Related: Trump Tries to Seize Law and Order Mantle in Outreach to Black Voters

Then Politico reported that Democrats have begun fighting among themselves about how big a margin of victory over Trump they should shoot for, and how much emphasis should be placed on down ballot races for the Senate and House.

Some Democrats are arguing that the bigger her win across the country, the bigger her mandate to govern. Others say the campaign should sharply focus on winning the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to claim the presidency, and not get hung up on the need to widen the political map. A new Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report/Rollcall rating published today shows Clinton picking up steam in seven battleground states. Clinton is currently projected to win 332 electoral votes to just 191 for Trump.

I come from the school of keep your eye on the 270, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), told Politico. The conservative approach is the proper approach: Make sure you have enough to win the Electoral College; dont take your eye off those states. If youre so strong in one state, then move to another  thats all fine. But I think you have to be very wary and very careful.

Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) said he disagrees. I would hope that shes got a clear political mandate to get things done the next four years.

Related: Is Trump Dumping His Plan to Deport 11 Million Illegal Immigrants?

Clinton enjoyed a seven- to eight-point lead on average in early August, although that lead began to recede late last week following a major shakeup in Trumps campaign and his effort to stay more on script in delivering major policy pronouncements on terrorism, jobs and trade. Real Clear Politics shows Clinton now leading Trump nationally by a cumulative average of 5.5 percentage points.

However, Clinton continues to do far better than Trump in many of the swing states that will determine the outcome of the election. Nate Silvers forecast at FiveThirtyEight shows Trump slightly gaining, up to a 15 percent chance of winning, according to its model. That compares with a low of 11 percent a week ago.

Related: Is the Clinton Foundation Hillarys Achilles Heel?

But the evidence is conflicting enough that I dont think we can rule out a larger swing toward Trump or, alternatively, that his position hasnt improved at all, Silver wrote.

And that is reason enough for Clinton and her advisers to keep their guards up.

Trumps new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, acknowledged today that the past two weeks were among the worst for Trump in the entire campaign. Yet she marveled that Clinton maintained a relatively low profile and failed to take full advantage of Trumps dilemma.

I think well look back and say, Why in the world didnt Hillary Clintons campaign totally put us away in those two weeks? Conway said on CNBC.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein is blaming global warming for the devastating flooding in Louisiana that began over one week ago.

Were seeing flood after flood which is coming in at a level of a so-called a 500 year storm or 1,000 year flood, Stein told the FOX Business Network. And when you have a whole bunch of them, and weve had some devastating floods recently in West Virginia, in Texas. There was a so-called rain bomb over Phoenix recently. When youre having so many severe storms and floods, you have to say theres something going on here.

However, Stein said it isnt only flooding that in her opinion is being caused by rising temperatures of the global climate.

Its also the fires in California where weve seen 80,000 people who had to evacuate this fire thats still not contained, she said. And we have heatwaves and we have droughts. Youve got to connect the dots here. This is exactly what is predicted when the climate continues to warm with rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So fortunately we can fix it.

The Green Party presidential nominee said by getting rid of fossil fuels, Americans will be much healthier. She also explained how switching to cleaner energy can save money and create more jobs.

We create three times as many through renewable energy. And this is the prescription and this is how we pay for it, that we save so much money that we get so much healthier because you may know were spending $3 trillion a year. Its not a healthcare system, its a sick care system. But by switching over to a clean energy economy we get so much healthier, the savings in healthcare is actually enough to pay for the cost of the energy transitions.

Related Articles
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f186280%2fe987a258d63048f68b9865e58f9cbe2b

Normally it would be nice for people to still be honoring a gorilla three months after his death.

However, most of the Harambe tributes are coming via meme. The internet is still consistently flooded with petitions and tweets (mostly sarcastic) protesting the gorilla's death.

Well, The Cincinnati Zoo's director has had enough. He commented on the Harambe memes this morning, and he is urging people to stop.

SEE ALSO: Paul Ryan tweeted about Harambe's presidential polling numbers

"We are not amused by the memes, petitions and signs about Harambe," Thane Maynard, Cincinnati Zoo director, wrote to the Associated Press. "Our zoo family is still healing, and the constant mention of Harambe makes moving forward more difficult for us."

Maynard is no doubt also referring to the comments the zoo's Twitter posts typically receive. For example, their recent tweet about a Zebra was met with endless replies about Harambe:

For some further context, here are some Harambe memes, still going strong three months after his death:

Unfortunately for the zoo employees who are still upset by the Harambe craze, telling meme makers to stop only makes a meme grow stronger.

While Maynard is distressed by the memes and the comments that are being directed at the zoo, other animal rights activists have mixed feelings.

"For the most part, I'm very happy with it. It shows people are remembering what a wonderful being he was," Animal rights activist Anthony Seta told the Associated Press. "The ones that are mocking and making light of the death of this being, I find incredibly offensive."

Ashley Byrne, an associate director at PETA also sees the positivity in the internet's reactions.

"This tragic incident really did start a new conversation," she said to the Associated Press. "Most people who saw the video came away with a great degree of empathy for animals forced to live in captivity."

Maynard encourages people who want to honor Harambe's controversial death to lighten up on the memes and instead donate to the Mbeli Bai Study.

RIP Harambe and RIP to any chance of the Harambe meme ever ending.
Hailey Baldwin is coming out with her very own makeup collection

Hailey Baldwin is coming out with her very own makeup collection

Considering the insane success of Kylie Jenners cosmetics collection  seriously, her Valentines Day lip kits sold out in less than 10 minutes  its no surprise that another young Hollywood starlet has launched a makeup line.

The latest in celebrity cosmetics offerings comes courtesy of Kylies BFF, Hailey Baldwin.

So excited to reveal my exclusive limited edition, cosmetics collaboration with @modelco_cosmetics. #TheBeautySquad COMING SOON Join my list at www.modelcocosmetics.com #ModelCo A photo posted by Hailey Baldwin (@haileybaldwin) on Aug 20, 2016 at 5:24pm PDT

The 19-year-old model announced this week that shes partnering with Australian beauty brand ModelCo on a limited-edition line. The 25-piece collection will include everything from a $19 lipstick to a $42 contouring palette, according to Womens Wear Daily.

Says Baldwin,

My product range is affordable, accessible and combines quality and femininity for a photo-finish inspired look and feel. Think filter-esque hues, sleek packaging and premium formulas.

Filter-esque hues? Well take em!

Baldwin will soon be shooting an ad campaign for the line at Bondi Beach near Sydney, and the products will be available from ModelCos website and Australian beauty chain Mecca Maxima in November.

 A photo posted by Hailey Baldwin (@haileybaldwin) on Jul 31, 2016 at 9:18pm PDT

Want to keep with every development until then? Sign up for #TheBeautySquad newsletter here.

The post Hailey Baldwin is coming out with her very own makeup collection appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Chinese leaders attend opening of minority art festival

From:Xinhua | 2016-08-19 09:15

BEIJING, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping and other senior Chinese leaders watched an opening gala of the Fifth Minorities Art Festival Thursday evening in Beijing.

Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan and other senior leaders joined over 3,000 spectators to watch the gala held at the Great Hall of the People.

The performances, including songs and dances, showcased distinctive cultures of different ethnic groups, under the theme of pursuing solidarity and development, and realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Before the gala, the leaders met with representatives of the performers.

The Fifth Minorities Art Festival is sponsored by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, the Ministry of Culture, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, and the Beijing municipal government.

From Tuesday to Sept. 14, more than 7,000 ethnic minority artists will perform a total of 43 shows in Beijing.
BERLIN (AP) -- Shinji Kagawa scored twice as Borussia Dortmund progressed from the first round of the German Cup with a comfortable 3-0 win at fourth-tier Eintracht Trier on Monday.

The Japan international was in the right place at the right time to open the scoring in the eighth minute, and then again in the 33rd. Andre Schuerrle made it 3-0 before the break, thanks to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's second assist.

Aubameyang was earlier denied by the far post after lifting the ball over Trier 'keeper Chris Keilmann. He also struck the crossbar with a header in the second half, when Dortmund's intensity dropped after a disciplined first half.

Keilmann made a great save to deny Adrian Ramos, while Aubameyang and new signing Emre Mor also went close.

Earlier, Croatia midfielder Alen Halilovic came off the bench to score on his competitive debut as Hamburger SV beat third-division FSV Zwickau 1-0.

The 20-year-old Halilovic, who joined Hamburg from Barcelona in the off-season, went on as a substitute in the 62nd minute, eight minutes before winning the ball from a defender and surging forward on the right from where he curled a brilliant strike in off the far post.

Zwickau came close to an equalizer but Hamburg held out.

Salif Sane secured a late victory for second-division Hannover at fourth-tier Kickers Offenbach, converting a penalty in injury time of extra time for a 3-2 win.

Stefano Maier conceded the spot kick in the final minute for a foul on Hannover's Felix Klaus. Both sides finished normal time with 10 men.

SV Sandhausen, from the second division, came from behind to beat third-division Paderborn 2-1.

Defending champion Bayern Munich progressed on Friday, while Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Moenchengladbach, Schalke and Hertha Berlin also booked their places in the second round.

Werder Bremen was knocked out by third-division Sportfreunde Lotte on Sunday, the club's 12th exit in the first round, a record for a Bundesliga side.
AMC quietly rebooted Halt and Catch Fire two days early, slipping into Sunday nights lineup the first half of the 1980s-set dramas two-hour Season 3 premiere.

RELATEDHalt and Catch Fires Two-Hour Season 3 Premiere Set

Viewers got their first taste of the new season on Sunday at 11/10c (following the midseason return of Talking Dead, which was conspicuously scheduled to run two hours). AMC corporate communications SVP Jim Maiella confirmed the move on Twitter:

First half of Tuesday's excellent two-hour @HaltAMC premiere is sneaking tonight at 11 on AMC. (cc: @sepinwall) pic.twitter.com/W1nUsStQ9T  Jim Maiella (@jimmaiella) August 22, 2016

Halt and Catch Fires Season 3 opener will officially premiere, in full, on Tuesday, Aug. 23, at 9/8c; subsequent episodes will air Tuesdays at 10 pm. (The series first two seasons of course aired on Sunday nights.)

In the third season, which picks up in March 1986, Mutiny leaves Texas for the big leagues of Silicon Valley. Founders Cameron Howe and Donna Clark search for the idea that will launch Mutiny as a player, but new collaborators test their partnership. Gordon struggles to find a place within his wifes company as Joe McMillan builds upon his empire, reinventing himself with a bold play that shocks the Valley and sends him back into the lives of his old partners.

The low-rated-yet-critically-adored series was renewed in October after a much-buzzed-about second season.

Related stories

Fear the Walking Dead Midseason Premiere Recap: The Hills Have Eyes

The Walking Dead Season 7 Sneak Peek: Has Dwight Taken Daryl's Life?

Fear the Walking Dead Showrunner Previews Season 2B's 'Extreme' Twist
From Delish

It's always a joy for Potterheads when a new location inspired by Harry Potter opens in a country different from one's own, reminding everyone that our similarities are greater than our differences. We couldn't stop drooling last year over the photos of a Harry Potter-themed bar that opened in Toronto, Canada, and now we're similarly stupefied over a Harry Potter-themed cafe that's opened in Islamabad.

It's in Pakistan, Ron.

The Hogwarts Cafe was created by brothers Hassan and Haider Khan, who pass the Potterhead test.

"Our childhood has been spent daydreaming about Hogwarts," Hassan Khan told The Huffinton Post. "Turning 11 was a milestone for us while we sat in a corner of our homes with the hope that an owl would tap on our windows with a letter any time; but it never happened."

As true fans, they transfigured the wonder of the books into their own location by serving homemade butterbeer...

and items from "Cho Chang's Kitchen," among other tasty treats.

But the real draw is the extensive drinks menu, which looks just like potions bubbling over with sweet brew.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of State has issued a warning against non-essential travel to Pakistan, so you can't really plan a leisurely jaunt over there at the moment. But you can enjoy the cafe through the magic of the Internet!

There are floating candles.

And Timeturners.

Books and memorabilia abound.

Much of it is for sale.

The glass wall is an homage to the Dudleys' fireplace.

They've got a selection of sweets that would satisfy even Ron's sweet tooth.

And, best of all, a bevy of delectable beverages.

Makes you wish you can just grab a broom or a handful of Floo Powder and go!
Lofty predictions for sizable hedge fund industry support for the Donald Trump presidential campaign have fallen short, as public filings indicated a relatively modest showing from that group for July.

Filings made with the Federal Election Commission suggest that the Trump effort took in little more than $2 million in hedge fund money last month  and that the bulk of it came largely from a single donor, Renaissance Technologies co-chief Robert Mercer.

Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign donations and spending, said that while the absolute amounts of money hedge funds are giving to Trump may appear low, the trend for him is positive. "We can see that it has gone from a pittance  a mere thousands of dollars  to millions, but it's impossible for us to say at this point what the final figure is for July," said Krumholz. "It's possible we'll see, if not a sea change, then a big leap forward for Trump."

Spokespeople for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.

The pro-Trump Great America PAC, the pro- Hillary Clinton Priorities USA PAC and other monthly filers were supposed to log their latest fundraising and spending records no later than midnight on Sunday morning. [However, even by Monday afternoon, the picture remained incomplete: other important filers, including the Trump Victory PAC, are on a quarterly schedule, and because some entities may have made paper filings not yet updated online, additional details have yet to surface.]



In an interview with Fortune a few weeks ago, Anthony Scaramucci, the fund-of-funds manager who is also an outspoken Trump supporter, predicted that some 20 percent of the estimated $70 million the Trump campaign had taken in in July was from hedge funds  a haul that would have amounted to about $14 million.

Scaramucci himself recently donated $100,000 to the PAC Trump Victory and at least an additional $90,200 to the Republican National Committee, as well as to the Trump campaign and Paul Ryan 's congressional campaign, among other entities, according to FEC records. He doesn't appear to have given additional donations in July, and declined to elaborate on his comments to Fortune.

Story continues

But the participation of other hedge fund executives has been muted.

Billionaire fund manager and Trump backer Carl Icahn appears to have given just $50,000 to the Trump effort  the cost of a ticket to a Manhattan fundraiser at the restaurant Le Cirque in late June. Trump at one point invited Icahn to become Treasury secretary in his potential administration, an offer Icahn jokingly accepted via Twitter , only to have both men later brush off the idea.

Paulson & Co. founder John Paulson , another hedge fund manager who has become an economic advisor to Trump, was co-host of the event, and he reportedly gave $250,000 to attend along with his wife.

An assistant to Icahn said he was traveling Monday and couldn't immediately be reached for comment, and a spokeswoman for Paulson, whose reported June donation, made out to Trump Victory, couldn't immediately be verified, had no comment.

After initially supporting Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for president, Robert Mercer, the mathematician and conservative activist who helps run Renaissance, has become highly engaged with the Trump campaign this summer, according to people who know him.

He and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, who helped produce a documentary about the Clinton family's money, were reportedly influential in the Trump campaign's latest shake-up, which resulted in the installation of Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon as CEO.

In July, the father donated $2 million to Make America Number 1, a PAC reportedly dedicated to undermining Clinton for president, presumably by promoting Trump. Mercer has not responded to messages left at Renaissance's East Setauket, New York, offices, and a spokesman for him has declined to comment.



Elsewhere in the weekend's FEC reports, other hedge fund industry names also appeared.

Robert Bishop, CEO of New Canaan, Connecticut-based Impala Asset Management, donated $75,000 to the Great America PAC, which supports Trump. Vincent Intrieri, an official at Icahn's hedge fund company, gave $200, for a total of $1,050 to the PAC this year. Bishop declined through an assistant to comment, and Intrieri did not respond to a request for comment.



By contrast, Clinton continues to draw big money from the hedge fund community, which according to a Center for Responsive Politics tally had given Clinton and her PACs more than $25 million through the first half of this year (the corresponding figure for Trump was $2,054, a figure that clearly doesn't include the Le Cirque event contributions).

Donald Sussman, founder of the Greenwich hedge fund Paloma Partners, gave $3 million, bringing his total for this year to $8.5 million to the Priorities PAC alone. George Soros , who has donated some $25 million to Clinton overall this election cycle, according to someone familiar with the matter, gave the Priorities PAC an additional $35,308.50. Spokesmen for Sussman and Soros declined to comment specifically on the July contributions.

Correction: The public filings were made with the Federal Election Commission. An earlier version misstated the name.
It used to be that signing up for your first credit card was one of those college rites of passage. Youd fill out some forms at a booth on the quad, get a free T-shirt or Frisbee, and receive your plastic a few weeks later in the mail.

It was so easy, that many college students ended up with more credit cardsand more debtthan they could easily manage, especially when the recession hit. The Card Act of 2009 changed all that, making it a lot harder for adults under 21 to obtain a credit card and barring issuers from marketing to them.

Now, if unemployed younger students want to get a card, theyll need their parents help. (Students who can provide proof of income can still get a card on their own.) There are some valid reasons for parents to provide assistance: Getting a card early can help students learn to responsibly manage credit, and it provides a source of funds that could be tapped in an emergency 24 hours a day. Students can also benefit from building up a good credit history before they graduate college. That puts them in a better position when they graduate and theyre looking to get loans for their first car or their first home, says Bruce McClary, a spokesman for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.

If you think your college student is ready for a credit card, follow the steps below:

Talk to your child about the importance of credit and credit scores. Most high schools dont teach financial literacy. If you havent had a discussion about the basics of credit with your child, its something you need to do before he or she leaves for school, whether your child gets a new credit card or not. Nearly 60 percent of college students recently polled by LendEdu didnt know what a credit score was. Its not intuitive stuff, says Beverly Harzog, author of The Debt Escape Plan: How to Free Yourself from Credit Card Balances, Boost Your Credit Score, and Live Debt-Free. Young people can get into trouble with credit fast.

Story continues

Make sure your child understands that using a credit card responsibly means never charging more than she can pay off in a month. One way to start is by showing your child a few of your recent statements, explaining how to figure out how much you owe and how interest is calculated. Point out the minimum payment warning to show how much it would cost and how long it would take if you only made the minimum payment on the current balance each month.

Understand your parental options. If youre planning to pay all the bills, you can simply add your child as an authorized user to a card you already have. The bills will come to you, and you can remove your kid at any time, but he or she will still be building a credit history.

You could also co-sign for a student card. Many issuers offer cards with low fees, relatively low limits, and student-oriented rewards for college kids. You can compare offers online at CardRatings.com or LowCards.com. As a co-signer, youll be equally responsible for the debt, but the bills will go to your childs address. If he misses payments or runs up a balance, it could hurt your credit score, and it could be difficult to remove yourself from the account later. When you co-sign on a card, both parties are equally liable for the debt, says John Ulzheimer, a credit expert who once worked for FICO, Equifax, and Credit.com.

Another option is to co-sign for a secured card. With a secured card, youll have to set up a bank account with a cash deposit that becomes the collateral for the card. The card has a limit at or close to the amount of money in the bank. Look for a card that reports payments to the credit bureaus (not all secured cards do), so that your child will be able to start building up a credit history. As with a student card, if you co-sign for the secured card youre on the hook for payments.



Keep tabs on your child's payments. Since you may be financially responsible for card payments, its important to communicate regularly with your child about how hes managing his expenses. Sign up for text alerts that can let you know if spending goes above a certain limit or if a bill goes unpaid.





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.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., July 27, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Via Dave Lutz, head of ETFs at JonesTrading, here's a super-quick guide to what traders are talking about right now:

Good Morning! US Futures are retreating 30bp right now, as falling commodities outweigh M&A Headers (PFE for MDVN; ChinaChem gets SYT approval). Over in Europe, all major exchanges firmly in the red  led by the DAX dropping nearly 1%. Miners under pressure on falling metal prices and Tech retreating from the recent pop, but EU banks continue to outperform tho, which has the periphery nearing unchanged. FTSE is off 50bp as those miners get clubbed in London. Volumes light tho, with most exchanges trading 20-30% light to trend. Quiet overnight in Asia, China dropped 80bp, with Shenzen off 1.3% on profit-taking - Aussie lost 20bp as banks retreated, while Nikkei managed a 30bp rally as the Yen fell.

Thanks to Vice Chair Stanley Fischers hawkish comments last night, US Yields are all higher, with that Policy Sensitive 2YY hitting 2month highs and nearing the 200dma into Jackson Hole later this week. The DXY is stronger, weighing on the commodity complex  with Base Metals getting whacked despite Ore higher in China  Silver, Nickel and Copper all off 1%+ while the stringer greenback hits Gold for 50bp. The Oil complex is getting whacked for nearly 3% tho on headers of a Nigeria Cease-Fire and a ramp Iraq exports. Natty is jumping 2% tho as cooler weather grips the north-east. Sorts are mostly weaker, with corn and Wheat falling nearly 1% early.

Ahead of us today, we get the Chicago Fed Nat Activity Index at 8:30  the ECB Publishes Weekly QE Data at 9:30  while the results of the BOEs latest bond-buying operation occur around 9:50. At 11, German Chancellor Merkel, French President Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Renzi hold a presser  while at 2pm we get the Brazil Trade Balance. At 2:30 today the Spot WTI Contract Rolls. Big focus overnight as Kuroda Speaks at BOJ's Fintech Conference

Story continues

NOW WATCH: Forget the gross factor: There are serious health reasons for why you shouldn't pick your nose





More From Business Insider


Hillary Clintons campaign has reserved nearly $80 million in television advertising this fall, according to a senior aide, widening her lead over Donald Trump on the airwaves.

The campaign will spend nearly $77 million in September and October, in addition to more than $3 million for the rest of August, the aide said, part of voter targeting on the airwaves ongoing in eight states: Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and the congressional district centered in Omaha. (Nebraska is one of two states that splits its Electoral College votes by congressional district.)

With polls showing Clinton with a significant lead over Trump nationwide, the Clinton campaign has chosen not to spend on ads in Virginia and Colorado, reflecting the campaigns confidence in her lead in two states that have become increasingly Democratic.

The new Clinton ad spending is in contrast to Donald Trump, who launched his first general-election television ad last week with a plan to spend $4.8 million over 10 days in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Clintons campaign has already aired about $70 million in advertising in those states as well as in Colorado and Virginia since beginning general election advertising in mid-June.

Clinton sees a wide path to victory over a number of battleground states, while Trumps more limited ad buy reflects that he is eyeing a narrower field of states.

On Monday Clinton revealed a new ad that targets Trump for his lack of steady leadership, calm judgement and clear thinking, showing television clips of Trump swearing. All it takes is one wrong move, a narrator says ominously. I would bomb the st out of them, Trump is heard saying in the ad with the White House in the background. Just one, says the narrator, to the sound of a bomb.

The Clinton campaign has cast a much broader net in fundraising, fueling much of her ad spending: this past weekend, she attended several fundraisers including in Nantucket, Marthas Vineyard and on Cape Cod.
Fast fashion comes at a cost, as shown by a new book published in Sweden. One of the largest retailers in the world is reportedly guilty of working with preteen employees.

H&M, which has a global presence and is headquartered in the Scandinavian nation, has contracts with two factories in Myanmar that have employed children as young as 14 to work more than 12 hours a day, according to Modeslavar (fashion slaves in English). And they make under $3 a day, the lowest minimum wage in the world, reports The Guardian.

How was your shirt so cheap? the books description asks. The Western world often talks of the democratization of fashion, how the cheap clothing chain allows everyone to dress fashionably. Recent trends ironed out to customers at a furious pace. Meanwhile, it is reported repeatedly about the clothing industrys dirty back, where slave factories, deadly poisons, and child labor are part of everyday life. Nothing indicates that it has gotten better. How can this continue? The authors traveled around Southeast Asia to report back on the people who pay the real price for our cheap clothes.

Zu Zu, who started work at the age of 14, told authors Moa Karnstrand and Tobias Andersson Akerblom that the factories employed anyone who wanted to work. The writers claim to have spoken with a handful of 15-year-old girls who were working until 10 p.m. at two factories, Myanmar Century Liaoyuan Knitted Wear and Myanmar Wedge Garment, both near the capital city of Yangon.

These long days are in breach of the laws both of Myanmar and the International Labour Organization, which sets the minimum working age at 14 in countries where the economy and educational facilities are insufficiently developed, (although The Guardian notes that the county allows children aged 13 to 15 to do light work, as long as it does not threaten their health, safety, or education).

According to a feature about the book on the Swedish news site Geo, the young girls got the jobs with the help of forged identification cards, because younger workers are only supposed to work four hours a day. However, even adults are only supposed to work eight. We tried to protest in the summer, because we had been forced to work until 10 p.m. every night that week, 17-year-old Maw Maw, who works for one of H&Ms factories, told the authors of the book (which we translated from the Swedish). The girls said that when the factory knows they will be inspected, workers under the age of 18 are ordered to take two days off, because inspectors will often look into how old the workers are and how long they work.

Story continues

A girl named Myat, 17, told the authors shes been working since she was 11. She says that there are at least four girls under the age of 15 at her production line in the factory.

H&M is only one of the major retailers that has worked with such factories in Myanmar. The book also names British brands like Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Primark, as well as Gap.

H&M is claiming that it has attempted to play by the rules. When 14- to 18-year-olds are working, it is therefore not a case of child labour, according to international labour laws, the company said in a statement to The Guardian. ILO instead stresses the importance of not excluding this age group from work in Myanmar. H&M does of course not tolerate child labour in any form." H&M said it has taken action in the past with both factories over ID-cards and overtime after being made aware that a group of 14- to 17-year-olds had been working long hours since 2013.

"It is of utmost importance to us that our products are made under good working conditions and with consideration to safety, health, and the environment, H&M said. We have therefore taken action regarding two suppliers in Myanmar which have had problems with ID-cards and overtimeany overtime must be in accordance with legislation as well as our own demands, this is particularly important when it comes to the age group 14-18. If a supplier doesnt live up to our standards or national legislation we  in accordance with our routines  demand that the supplier immediately establishes an action plan, which has been done also in this case. One of the measures concerning the two suppliers in question is improved recruitment routines, which has resulted in improved handling of ID-cards.

The apparel company added that teenagers working long hours at suppliers factories was unacceptable.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.


Walmart

Walmart and The Home Depot are trying to catch up to Amazon by using their vast network of stores to pack and ship online orders.

Walmart uses 80 of its 4,500 stores across the US to pack and ship online orders, spokesman Ravi Jariwala told Business Insider.

The retailer also has five large-scale distribution centers devoted solely to online orders and a network of about 100 smaller e-commerce facilities across the country. Amazon, by comparison, has 180 fulfillment centers in the US.

Like Walmart, Home Depot has also been using its stores to ship products to customers.

Home Depot says that almost half of its online orders  about 42%  are picked up in its stores. That share is expected to grow with the recent rollout of what Home Depot calls "BODFS," or "buy online and deliver from store," according to Home Depot CEO Craig Menear.

BODFS allows customers to pick a much-shorter delivery window and have purchases delivered from their local Home Depot store.

The program has rolled out in 700 of Home Depot's 2,200 stores, and will be available at all stores by the end of the year, Menear said last week on an earnings call.

Retail-industry experts and analysts have long encouraged brick-and-mortar retailers to better use their physical stores to compete with Amazon online.

Walmart and Home Depot have a long way to go before they catch up to Amazon in terms of online revenue, however.

Walmart's online sales were $13.7 billion in 2015, compared to Amazon's $107 billion. Home Depot doesn't break out sales for e-commerce, but said that online sales accounted for about 5.6% of its $26.5 billion in second-quarter sales.

NOW WATCH: Amazon has an oddly efficient way of storing stuff in its warehouses





More From Business Insider


Budapest (AFP) - A Hungarian state honour given to a prominent journalist close to Prime Minister Viktor Orban but seen by his critics as "racist" has prompted several dozen recipients of the same award to return theirs in protest.

The journalist Zsolt Bayer was one of several Hungarian citizens handed an Order of Merit of the Knight's Cross by President Janos Ader on Thursday, to mark one of Hungary's national days.

By late Monday, according to Hungarian media, some 44 previous recipients of the decoration including scientists, artists and academics, had declared they were returning their own awards in protest.

An occasional columnist for the right-wing Magyar Hirlap daily, Bayer has often been photographed in Orban's company, and co-founded a civil group that has organised massive pro-government street demonstrations.

He has in the past compared the Roma people, Hungary's 600,000- to 700,000-strong largest minority group, to "animals", and written remarks deemed anti-Semitic in a country with a Jewish community estimated at over 100,000.

The head of Hungary's largest Jewish organisation Mazsihisz, Andras Heisler, said he too was handing back his award given to him in 2011 as he did not want to belong to the same "group of people" as Bayer.

The journalist "is a racist, an anti-Semite, who pollutes Hungary with his incandescent Gypsy-hatred and nation-destroying ideas," Heisler wrote in a Facebook message Monday.

In 2013 the Magyar Hirlap newspaper was fined around 250,000 forints (around 800 euros, $1,000) by Hungary's media regulator for publishing Bayer's anti-Roma comments.

"They are not suitable for being among people. Most are animals, and behave like animals," the journalist wrote at the time.

Bayer's award was given for his work with a body representing victims of Communism, Orban's office said in a weekend statement, adding that there were no plans to withdraw the honour.

Story continues

Bayer was also decorated however for his "exemplary journalistic activity," according to the government's official legal gazette Magyar Kozlony published late Monday.

Bayer himself said he didn't understand why other recipients were giving up their awards and that his quotes were misinterpreted and taken out of context.

"I don't really get how people can be so shut off in their own closed, narrow, sad worlds," he told a television news programme in reaction to the protests.
TIMBUKTU, Mali  When the first-ever trial of a jihadi at the International Criminal Court (ICC) began this week in The Hague, the charges were of the destruction of historic Muslim shrines in this ancient city on the edge of the Sahara. What wont be litigated are the more than 100 allegations of sexual violence and rape that occurred during the same 10-month reign of terror in 2012 and 2013, when al Qaeda-linked militants overran parts of northern Mali and declared their own state.

Yet the man on trial, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, is allegedly responsible for both sets of crimes. As a top police official during the jihadi occupation of Timbuktu, Mahdi not only supervised the razing of religious shrines; he oversaw the systematic torture, rape, and sexual enslavement of women under the militants control, residents and independent investigators say.

Thirty-three victims have already come forward as part of a complaint filed last year before the High Court of Bamako, in the Malian capital. Their testimony, as well as the results of an extensive investigation by the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), was shared with Hague officials.

Yet ICC prosecutors chose to focus solely on the destruction of cultural heritage. Mahdi was caught on video tearing apart the door of a mosque and encouraging his men to demolish shrines that were protected UNESCO World Heritage sites. From an evidentiary perspective, its a slam-dunk  indeed, Mahdi will plead guilty in what is expected to be a rare win for a court whose reputation has suffered in recent years. But by building its case exclusively around the shrines, some feel that the ICC is missing a symbolically important opportunity to punish more heinous crimes.

The office of the [ICC] prosecutor should have continued its investigation to establish all the facts, said Florent Geel, the Africa director at FIDH. Since its first proceedings, the ICC has chosen to prosecute cases based on charges it can defend and prove. This is unfortunate since a FIDH investigation indicates that these sexual crimes have probably been the most massive crimes committed in Timbuktu.

Story continues

Alimata, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, will never forget the day in 2012, during the citys Islamist occupation, when armed men dragged her away to a police station that was likely under Mahdis command. She was 15 at the time, and the jihadis detained her for two days before declaring her married to one fighter. Alimatas designated husband kept her prisoner in a house for a month, where he raped her on a daily basis. Sometimes he allowed other armed men  as many as five at a time  to gang-rape her as well.

He was beating me all the time. Especially when I tried to resist him, he punched me and kicked me, Alimata recalled in an interview at the home of a local activist in Timbuktu.

Alimatas ordeal was not an isolated case. Dozens of other women and teenage girls recounted similar stories to FIDH investigators of abduction, forced marriage, and rape by Islamist occupiers.

Timbuktus descent into chaos began in January 2012, when nomadic Tuaregs from the north joined forces with several Islamist groups, including the al Qaeda-linked organization Ansar Dine, to launch a rebellion against the Malian government. They declared an independent state in much of the northern part of the country and imposed a strict version of sharia, or Islamic law. Music was outlawed, unmarried men and women were forbidden from speaking to each other, and shopkeepers could be arrested for selling tobacco. The jihadis imposed cruel punishments on those who broke their rules, including public floggings and amputations.

But while the jihadis enforced their uncompromising moral code in public, they engaged in all manner of horrific abuses in private. According to a U.N. official in Timbuktu who spoke on the condition of anonymity, roughly 100 women have come forward with allegations of sexual violence by jihadis since French forces liberated the city in January 2013. Given the stigma attached to such allegations in Malis conservative Muslim society, the real number of victims is almost certainly higher.

At the time these abuses took place, Mahdi was one of the most powerful men in the city. He served first as the head of the Hisbah, or morality police, and later, the jihadis main police force, known as the Islamic Police, according to FIDH. In both positions, he was partly responsible for enforcing the jihadis strict rules. Mahdi appears in videos of sessions of the Islamic Court, the jihadis highest judicial authority, which validated forced marriages, among other Islamist impositions. (As head of the Islamic Police, Mahdi implemented the Islamic Courts decisions.) It is therefore difficult to argue that he didnt know about the sexual violence perpetrated by police officers who served under him.

Yet the ICC chose not to make these allegations a part of its case against Mahdi. Because they were able to rely heavily on video evidence of the destruction of monuments, prosecutors never conducted a thorough on-the-ground investigation of other crimes alleged to have taken place in Timbuktu during the occupation. They didnt even interview victims of sexual violence, despite having been handed evidence gathered by FIDH, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

Richard Nsanzabaganwa, an advisor to the ICC prosecutors office, said a broader investigation that encompasses other alleged crimes, including sexual violence, is still in progress. But he admitted that the ICC prosecutor doesnt have evidence that is solid enough to broaden the charges against Mahdi. And now that the trial is underway, any subsequent charges would need to be brought as a separate case.

Building a case around sexual violence is not easy, especially given the ICCs limited resources. Its difficult to prove sexual violence, said Kevin Heller, a professor of criminal law at SOAS University of London. You have to investigate, to get witnesses. Its not like cultural monuments that people saw. This is time-consuming and expensive.

Moreover, ICC prosecutors have long emphasized the potential deterrent effect of prosecuting those who destroy cultural heritage. Its important to send the message that this is a grave crime that must be punished and that attacking the identity of people and their values cannot be left as a secondary crime, Nsanzabaganwa said.

Still, there are those who see an element of self-service in the ICCs prosecutorial strategy. The international tribunal has suffered a series of embarrassing setbacks in recent years. Not only did its case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, fall apart because of what some have argued was an unwise prosecutorial strategy, but it has also watched its most high-profile indictee, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, evade arrest even in countries that are bound by the Rome Statute, which created the ICC.

The ICCs reputational slide began during the tenure of chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, whose term ended in 2012. His successor, former Gambian Justice Minister Fatou Bensouda, has a shot at a clear victory with this trial, which is expected to last only a week because Mahdi is pleading guilty in the face of overwhelming evidence. Yet some critics allege that she has been overly focused on getting a quick conviction.

The prosecutor has it upside down. She established an accusation from a political opportunity, said Juan Branco, who served as a liaison officer in the ICC prosecutors office in 2010-2011. In a context of a tight budget and long procedures, [the prosecutor] reduced the charges to shorten the proceeding.

The emphasis on speed and decisiveness has arguably come at the cost of the ICCs own commitment to bring perpetrators of sexual violence to justice. Its been a little more than two years since the office of the ICC prosecutor adopted a new policy regarding the prosecution of sexual and gender-based crimes. According to this policy, the prosecutor must offer explicit justification for failure to prosecute such crimes when convincing evidence points to them. Yet in the case of Mahdi, prosecutors have offered no such justification, saying only that the investigation is ongoing. In fact, the new policy has yet to translate into a single new case.

In Timbuktu, Alimata longs for justice. Like others who survived sexual violence during the Islamist occupation, she wants her rapists to be punished and her suffering to be acknowledged.

I want reparation, and I want to open a shop, she said. I need to be self-sufficient because no one wants to marry me since I was married by force to a jihadi.

She says she would even testify before a court  either in Mali or in The Hague  if only one was willing to hear her.

Image credit: ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN/AFP/Getty Images
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi came under pressure on Monday over weeks of deadly violence in Kashmir, with the region's opposition leaders calling on him to rein in troops and police.

Modi stressed the need for dialogue to end the unrest in the disputed Himalayan region, after meeting the opposition leaders in New Delhi at their request.

"He (Modi) emphasised on the need for all political parties to work together to find a solution to the problems in the state of Jammu and Kashmir," his office said in a statement after talks with the delegation.

Much of Indian-administered Kashmir has been under curfew since protests broke out over the death on July 8 of a popular young rebel leader in a gunfight with security forces.

More than 60 civilians have been killed in clashes between protesters and police and troops and thousands more injured in the worst violence to hit the restive region since 2010.

Opposition delegates led by former Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah singled out security forces' firing of shotguns to disperse the protesters.

Hospitals have reported hundreds of young men and boys suffering serious eye and other injuries from the pellets.

"We also implore you to announce an immediate ban on pellet guns," said a memorandum handed to Modi. Use of the guns, along with harassment, raids and arrest of residents, "has worsened an already volatile situation in the state".

The meeting comes a day after Modi's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley warned that ongoing violence in the region would not be tolerated and described stone-throwers as among the aggressors.

Many of the young men who have come onto the streets since the rebel's death are throwing stones at security forces, an increasingly common form of protest in the area.

Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is part of an uneasy coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.

The Kashmir region is divided between India and Pakistan but both claim the territory in full.

The Kashmir Valley, where the recent violence has occurred, is the epicentre of a separatist insurgency, with several rebel groups fighting Indian troops and police. They seek either independence or merger of the territory with Pakistan.
From Cosmopolitan

Because some people are garbage, WHSV reported on a waitress who received a mean, racist note instead of a tip. Not OK, garbage person!

Last Monday, Sadie Elledge, a waitress at Jess' Lunch in Harrisonburg, Virginia, served a man and woman a meal. Elledge said the interaction was weird from the get-go, with the couple treating her strangely.

"They wouldn't talk to me. They would just nod their heads," said Elledge.

Before they left, the woman of the couple signed the receipt with "We only tip citizens."

"It shouldn't even matter. I just feel like it's rude and disrespectful. I've never met them, I've never done anything to them," Elledge told WHSV.

Luckily for humanity, the entire exchange was caught on surveillance camera so you can watch it below (the woman of the couple is blonde), and get *extra angry* about how some people are, again, total garbage.

However, there is a bit of a happy ending: The owner of Jess' Lunch says the couple is no longer allowed in her establishment. Let's hoping the entire world sees this video, and they're never allowed in any other establishment, either.

Follow Laura on Twitter.
HAVANA (Reuters) - Kicking off a six-day tour of Latin America, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Monday in Havana his visit would open a new chapter in the Islamic Republic's relations with Communist-ruled Cuba. Iran, which has long been friendly with Cuba, is on a drive to improve foreign commerce after the removal in January of international sanctions against the Islamic Republic. "We will start a new chapter in the bilateral relations with Cuba on the basis of a big (business) delegation accompanying me on this visit," Zarif said at a meeting with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez. The international community lifted sanctions on Iran as part of the deal under which Tehran curbed its nuclear program. Rodriguez congratulated Iran on the "success of its foreign policy" while reiterating its longstanding support for "all countries to develop nuclear energy with pacific ends". Cuba and Iran have in common a long stand-off with the United States. They were both on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorism sponsoring countries until Havana was removed last year as part of a detente with Washington. "We have always been on the side of the great Cuban people in view of atrocities and unjust sanctions," Zarif said. "The government and Cuban people have also always shown us solidarity with regards to the atrocities committed by the empire." Zarif's tour will also take him to Chile, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela. Just last week, Cuba's new Economy Minister Ricardo Cabrisas made a trip to Tehran where he met with President Hassan Rouhani. German exports to Iran, mostly machines and equipment, jumped in the first half of the year following the removal of international sanctions against the Islamic Republic, official trade data showed on Monday. (Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Alistair Bell)
By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin DUBAI (Reuters) - The Russian military said on Monday its aircraft operating from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes in Syria had completed their tasks, but left open the possibility of using the Hamadan base again if circumstances warranted. Iran's Foreign Ministry said Russia had stopped using the base for strikes in Syria, bringing an abrupt halt to an unprecedented deployment that was criticized both by the White House and by some Iranian lawmakers. "Russian military aircraft that took part in the operation of conducting air strikes from Iran's Hamadan air base on terrorist targets in Syria have successfully completed all tasks," a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, said in a statement. "Further use of the Hamadan air base in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Russian Aerospace Forces will be carried out on the basis of mutual agreements to fight terrorism and depending on the prevailing circumstances in Syria," Konashenkov said. Last week, long-range Russian Tupolev-22M3 bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers used Nojeh air base, near the city of Hamadan, in north-west Iran to launch air strikes against armed groups in Syria. It was the first time a foreign power had used an Iranian base since World War Two. Russia and Iran are both providing crucial military support to President Bashar al-Assad against rebels and jihadi fighters in Syria's five-year-old conflict. Some Iranian lawmakers called the move a breach of Iran's constitution which forbids "the establishment of any kind of foreign military base in Iran, even for peaceful purposes". Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan dismissed that criticism but also chided Moscow for publicizing the move, describing it as showing off and a "betrayal of trust." "We have not given any military base to the Russians and they are not here to stay," Dehghan was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency late on Sunday. He said there was "no written agreement" between the two countries and the "operational cooperation" was temporary and limited to refueling. The U.S. State Department, which last week called the move "unfortunate but not surprising" and said it was studying if it violated a U.N. Security Council resolution that bars supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran, said that it was unclear if Moscow's use of the base had "definitively stopped." ABRUPT END On Monday, Iran's Foreign Ministry said Russia's use of the base had ended. "Russia has no base in Iran and is not stationed here. They did this (operation) and it is finished for now," Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency. Iran's defense minister had said last week that Russia would be permitted to use the Nojeh base "for as long as they need". While noting that Iran has long supported Assad, a U.S. official said Tehran may not have wanted its involvement to be so public ahead of the 2017 Iranian presidential election. "The Iranians dont mind helping out quietly. They just dont want the world to know that they are contributing to the deaths of thousands of Syrian civilians," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Its their elections ... Everybody gets squeamish around election time," he added. Relations between Iran and Russia, long cordial, appeared to reach a new level last September when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered military intervention in Syria in support of Assad. After some delay, Russia supplied Iran with its S-300 missile air defense system, evidence of a growing partnership that is testing U.S. influence in the Middle East. Dehghan said that to make up for the delay, Russia had suggested providing Iran with its advanced S-400, but that Tehran was not interested as it is working to advance its own home-made defense system. Iran unveiled its new missile defense system, Bavar 373, on Monday, a system designed to intercept cruise missiles, drones, combat aircraft and ballistic missiles. Iran's defense minister also said Tehran has shown interest in buying Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets and Moscow's reply "has not been negative so far." The United States has said it would use its veto power in the U.N. Security Council to block the possible sales of the fighter jets to Iran. (Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Additional reporting by Polina Devitt in Moscow and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Editing by Richard Balmforth and James Dalgleish)
Havana (AFP) - Iran wants to forge a "new path" in its relations with Cuba by tightening ties, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Monday at the start of a Latin American tour.

"It's a very opportune moment to extend our relations," he told journalists at the start of a meeting with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.

"We have always been on the side of the great Cuban people in the face of the atrocities and unjust sanctions they have faced, and vice versa," he said, in an apparent reference to Cuba's long history of enmity with the United States.

Cuba re-established diplomatic ties with the United States last year, but their historic rapprochement has not yet brought an end to the US embargo imposed on the communist island since 1962.

Zarif praised Cuba's "resistance" to the United States, with which Iran has not had formal diplomatic relations since 1980.

"We are going to forge a new path in our bilateral relations with Cuba," he said, mentioning the energy, industrial and technology sectors as possible areas for cooperation.

Rodriguez for his part reiterated Cuba's support for Iran in its dispute with the United States and other world powers over its nuclear program.

Iran sealed a deal last year with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US to limit the program in return for the lifting of international sanctions.

But although the deal took effect in January, Iran says it is still largely cut off from the international financial system.

"We continue to oppose all sanctions and unilateral coercive measures, especially in the financial domain," said Rodriguez.

Zarif, who is traveling with a large delegation of officials and business executives, will also visit Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela on his trip, according to Cuban state media.
Iraqi police detained an 11-year-old boy near a Shi'ite mosque in Kirkuk city on Sunday (August 21) after removing a suicide vest from him. Kurdish TV channel Kurdistan 24 showed footage of two policemen holding the shirtless boy, while a third officer stripped the explosive belt off his body. Kiruk's police chief Brigadier Khatab Omar said that the boy was carrying two kilograms of TNT explosive materials. He said the boy had entered the city five to six days ago. The capture of the boy followed a deadly attack at a wedding party early on Sunday in the Turkish city of Gaziantep., which the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said was carried out by a child between the ages of 12 and 14. Erdogan said Islamic State was the likely perpetrator of the attack.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq wants to review contracts with oil companies to cut the fees that the firms receive when crude prices are low, the OPEC nation's new oil minister said, standing by a demand made by his predecessor.

Oil Minister Jabar Ali Al-Luaibi conveyed his position at a meeting on Monday in Baghdad with BP's head in Iraq, Michael Townshend, the ministry said in a statement.

The minister also discussed increasing oil and gas output from BP's giant Rumaila field in southern Iraq.

Iraq was in talks with foreign oil companies to link the fees they charge for developing their fields to oil prices and have them share the burden when markets go down, former oil minister Adel Abdul Mahdi told Reuters in January.

Iraq generates 95 percent of its public budget from oil sales. It has service agreements with companies including CNPC, BP, Shell, Eni, Exxon Mobil and Lukoil, which get paid for the extra barrels produced at fields awarded to them through a bidding process.

Current service agreements with oil companies are straining Iraq's budget as the government pays them a fixed fee for increasing production at ageing fields. Its own revenue dropped as oil prices have more than halved compared to 2014.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Dale Hudson)
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f186034%2fginger

LONDON  The land of Gingerdom is a place, and Andy ONeill from Kilkenny and Emma Ni Chearuil from Galway have been crowned its newest King and Queen.

SEE ALSO: What your favorite celebrities would look like as redheads

Now in its seventh year, the Irish Redhead Convention attracts thousands of redheads to the Irish village of Crosshaven to celebrate "all things to do with having fabulous red hair, the rarest hair colour in the world."

The festival presents a number of "Best Ginger Awards, including The most freckles per square inch, "Best Wannabe Redhead," and The worlds greatest ginger beard.

Over 40 ginger-themed events took place at the event.

Image: Ian Macaulay

To date, the Convention has raised over 30,000 ($33,887) on behalf of its charity partner, the Irish Cancer Society. Because redheads are particularly susceptible to melanoma and other forms of skin cancer, the festival seeks to raise awareness about being "SunSmart."

Red haired folks account for only 0.6% of the global population.

Image: Ian Macaulay

Festival founder Joleen Cronin said in a press release, "Through social media, the redhead community is truly global and it is wonderful that the festival attracts people from as far away as Australia, Europe and the U.S."

Redheads from around the world travel to Cork to attend the Convention.

Image: The Irish redhead convention

Non-redheads are invited to attend the festival too, but are strongly encouraged to join in the spirit of the event.

Among a host of other activities, festival-goers partook in the "ginger jig" to set a world record for the largest redhead traditional ceili dance.

Turns out blondes don't have more fun  it's definitely the gingers that do.
By Toby Sterling AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A former Islamist rebel admitted wrecking holy shrines during Mali's 2012 conflict and apologized at the start of his trial at the International Criminal Court on Monday - its first case to focus on cultural destruction as a war crime. Mahdi asked for forgiveness and said he had been swept up in an "evil wave" by Al Qaeda and the Ansar Dine Islamist groups which briefly seized control of Timbuktu during the fighting. Prosecutors said they hoped the case would help put an end to wrecking of cultural sites reported in wars from Libya in the west to Afghanistan in the east. "This is the first and last wrongful act I will ever commit," Mahdi told the Hague court in a measured and grave opening address. "I regret what I have caused to my family, my community in Timbuktu, what I have caused to my home nation Mali," he added. Mahdi would be the first defendant convicted of Islamist-related charges by the global court that has only secured three other convictions in its 14-year existence. Court officials said the trial would proceed despite his confession, as the judges still needed to be satisfied he was guilty. Prosecutors say Mahdi led a group of religious police using pick-axes and crowbars to destroy nine mausoleums and the door of a mosque, and at times took part himself. Most of the sites dated from Mali's 14th-century golden age as a trading hub and center of Sufi Islam - a branch of the religion seen as idolatrous by some hardline Muslim groups. In the build-up to the hearing, prosecutor Fatima Bensouda compared the attacks to Islamic State's smashing of monuments in the Syrian city of Palmyra and the Taliban's 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan. On Monday, she praised Mahdi's cooperation while setting out the charges against him and saying she hoped his case would help bring an end to destruction of cultural objects by drawing attention to the fact it is a war crime. "What must it have felt like in that fateful day in 2012 ... to witness the wanton destruction of that cultural heritage, a deliberate assault on one's identity, spiritual beliefs and prized cultural possessions?" she said. "All of this was reduced to dust by a destruction operation led by the accused," she added. Mahdi faces a maximum sentence of 30 years, but prosecutors are expected to ask for a lesser sentence, given his cooperation. He told the court he was not sure of his age, but estimated it at 45. (Editing by Andrew Heavens)
By Toby Sterling AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A former Islamist rebel admitted wrecking holy shrines during Mali's 2012 conflict and apologised at the start of his trial at the International Criminal Court on Monday - its first case to focus on cultural destruction as a war crime. Mahdi asked for forgiveness and said he had been swept up in an "evil wave" by Al Qaeda and the Ansar Dine Islamist groups which briefly seized control of Timbuktu during the fighting. Prosecutors said they hoped the case would help put an end to wrecking of cultural sites reported in wars from Libya in the west to Afghanistan in the east. "This is the first and last wrongful act I will ever commit," Mahdi told the Hague court in a measured and grave opening address. "I regret what I have caused to my family, my community in Timbuktu, what I have caused to my home nation Mali," he added. Mahdi would be the first defendant convicted of Islamist-related charges by the global court that has only secured three other convictions in its 14-year existence. Court officials said the trial would proceed despite his confession, as the judges still needed to be satisfied he was guilty. Prosecutors say Mahdi led a group of religious police using pick-axes and crowbars to destroy nine mausoleums and the door of a mosque, and at times took part himself. Most of the sites dated from Mali's 14th-century golden age as a trading hub and centre of Sufi Islam - a branch of the religion seen as idolatrous by some hardline Muslim groups. In the build-up to the hearing, prosecutor Fatima Bensouda compared the attacks to Islamic State's smashing of monuments in the Syrian city of Palmyra and the Taliban's 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan. On Monday, she praised Mahdi's cooperation while setting out the charges against him and saying she hoped his case would help bring an end to destruction of cultural objects by drawing attention to the fact it is a war crime. "What must it have felt like in that fateful day in 2012 ... to witness the wanton destruction of that cultural heritage, a deliberate assault on one's identity, spiritual beliefs and prized cultural possessions?" she said. "All of this was reduced to dust by a destruction operation led by the accused," she added. Mahdi faces a maximum sentence of 30 years, but prosecutors are expected to ask for a lesser sentence, given his cooperation. He told the court he was not sure of his age, but estimated it at 45. (Editing by Andrew Heavens)
Jerusalem (AFP) - The Israeli air force struck a Syrian army target Monday in response to what the military said was stray fire into its zone of control on the Golan Heights.

"Earlier, stray fire from Syrian conflict breached Israeli territory in the Golan Heights," army spokesman Peter Lerner wrote on Twitter.

"Israel Air Force targeted Syrian Army launcher in Syrian Golan Heights, in response," he added.

A separate army statement said no injuries were reported on the Israeli side.

No further details were given.

Israel has sought to avoid being drawn into neighbouring 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)  Israeli authorities on Monday confirmed that they have begun the process of expanding an Israeli settlement in Hebron, a West Bank city that has been the focus of nearly a year of violence.

The Palestinians swiftly condemned the move, saying they would seek international pressure to halt the plan from going forward.

The Palestinians, along with the international community, oppose all settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories they seek for a future independent state. Israel captured both areas in the 1967 Mideast war.

Construction in Hebron, the West Banks largest city, is especially contentious. About 1,000 Jewish settlers live in heavily fortified enclaves in the city, surrounded by some 200,000 Palestinians. The city is holy to both Jews and Muslims. There is frequent friction between the sides, and the city has been a flashpoint of violence during nearly a year of fighting.

Since last September, Palestinians have killed 34 Israelis in shootings, stabbings and vehicular attacks. At least 206 Palestinians have died by Israeli fire in the same period. Israel says most of the dead were attackers, though the Palestinians have challenged many of the Israeli accounts.

The site in question is next to Beit Romano, one of the settler enclaves inside Hebron. Most recently, it has been used by the Israeli military.

COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for civilian affairs in the West Bank, confirmed Monday that permission to plan infrastructures has been granted.

Hagit Ofran of the anti-settlement group Peace Now said it was the first approval in the area in more than a decade. She accused Israel of using legal acrobatics of allocating the land to settlers, instead of turning it over to the Palestinian-run municipality.

Settlers say they are returning to properties that belonged to Jews before they fled the area following deadly Arab riots in 1929.

Story continues

Yishai Fleisher, a spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, welcomed expanding the settlement, saying it would be good news for the Jewish community here. However, he said there are no building plans yet.

Although any construction is likely years away, the plan threatened to upset the already-tense climate in Hebron.

Kamel Hmeid, the Palestinian governor of Hebron, called it one of the most dangerous decisions by Israel. What is happening is a cooperation and collusion between the government and the settlers.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, issued a statement accusing Israel of trying to Judaize Hebron.

It vowed to turn to the Israeli Supreme Court, United Nations and international courts to stop the plan. We stress the need for immediate action to prevent the implementation of this new settlement plan, it said.

The Israeli steps come at a time of deadlock in international peace efforts. The most recent round of U.S.-mediated talks broke down more than two years ago.

A number of parties, including the U.S., France and European Union, have attempted to restart negotiations. On Monday, both Egypts president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Palestinian officials said that Russia has also offered to host peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Gaps between the sides are so vast that talks appear unlikely anytime soon. Nabil Abu Rdeneh, the spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Monday that the Palestinian leader is ready to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but only if he meets a series of conditions, including a freeze on settlement construction. The Palestinians say that continued construction on occupied lands is a sign of bad faith by Israel.

Netanyahus government is dominated by West Bank settlers and their supporters, and Netanyahu is unlikely to agree to halt construction.

Despite the continued deadlock, a new Israeli-Palestinian poll released Monday showed that a narrow majority on both sides still favor a peace settlement that would establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The poll found that 51 percent of Palestinians and 59 percent of Israelis still support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Tamar Hermann, an Israeli political scientist who conducted the survey with Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, said that under the current circumstances, the results were not amazingly encouraging, but also not discouraging.

It showed there is still some basis for optimism with the right leadership, she said.

The survey interviewed 1,270 Palestinians and 1,184 Israelis in June, and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Eyad Moghrabi in Hebron, West Bank contributed to this report.
From Popular Mechanics

Spacewalking astronauts installed a new front door for visitors at the International Space Station on Friday, the crucial first step in welcoming commercial crew capsules as soon as next year.

The two Americans, Jeffrey Williams and Kate Rubins, hooked up the docking port - their major objective - in just a few hours.

They were about to tackle some extra chores, but a problem cropped up with the right earpiece in Williams' helmet and he had trouble hearing. Mission Control decided to play it safe and bring them inside about a half hour early. The spacewalk concluded at the six-hour mark.

"We're done for the day," Mission Control advised the crew.

Williams assured flight controllers that his helmet was dry. The last NASA spacewalk in January was cut short because of a small water leak in one helmet. A much bigger leak, from the suit's cooling system, almost led to a spacewalker's drowning in 2013.

The station's new gateway arrived last month, packed in the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule.

Americans haven't rocketed into orbit from their home turf since NASA's last shuttle flight in 2011. SpaceX and Boeing expect to resume human launches from Cape Canaveral in another year or two. But their crew capsules can't dock without this new-style parking spot, which replaces the now obsolete shuttle setup and is meant to beinternationally compatible.

Friday's success paved the way for these future spaceships.

"Thanks for your help in getting the front door on the space station," Mission Control radioed.

SpaceX is shooting for a test flight of its souped-up Dragon with two astronauts as early as a year from now. Boeing is aiming for a two-person shakedown of its Starliner capsule in early 2018. Until then, Russia will keep providing all the rides - at a hefty price for U.S. taxpayers.

NASA started using private U.S. companies to carry out cargo shipments a few years back. Commercial crew launches will be an even bigger advance. This commercial handoff is freeing up NASA to focus on true outer-space exploration; the space agency is working to get astronauts to Mars in the 2030s.

Story continues

This is actually NASA's second new docking ring. The first was destroyed in a SpaceX launch accident last summer. NASA ultimately wants two of these 3 1/2-foot-by-5-foot-on-the-inside parking places at the lab. Another one - cobbled together from spare parts - should fly up in about a year.

Flight controllers in Houston set the spacewalking stage earlier in the week, using a robot arm to move the docking port to within a few feet of its intended lock-down position - the very spot where Atlantis undocked on July 19, 2011, to close out the shuttle era. An hour into Friday's spacewalk, the mechanical arm let go, and Williams and Rubins took over, connecting a slew of hooks and cables. The last of the 12 hooks were driven into place, firmly securing the port, as the 250-mile-high complex soared over the Indian Ocean.

The space station is currently home to two Americans, one Japanese and three Russians. Up there for five months, Williams and two of the Russians will return to Earth in a couple weeks. Williams will conduct one more spacewalk with Rubins on Sept. 1 to retract a radiator.

A newcomer to spacewalking, Rubins is only the 11th American woman to conduct a spacewalk and the 12th in the world. The first professional virus-hunter in space, she has been experimenting with a DNA decoder also delivered last month.

SpaceX's crew Dragon ship will fly on the company's own Falcon rocket from a former shuttle launch pad at Kennedy Space Center and, at mission's end, splash down off the Florida coast. Boeing's Starliner, meanwhile, will launch aboard the United Launch Alliance's trusty Atlas V rocket and parachute down somewhere in the American Southwest, possibly New Mexico. These test flights - intended to go all the way to the space stationand dock - will last about two weeks. NASA will provide most if not all of the initial test pilots.

One of four NASA astronauts training for these test flights, Robert Behnken noted last week that the spaceagency has come a long way since 2011, when he kept being asked, "Hey, now that they've retired the shuttle, is there still a NASA?"

"We can't tell you exactly what month this launch is going to be," Behnken said during a visit to Kennedy SpaceCenter. "But we're well on a track to actually get launches off the Florida coast happening again."

You Might Also Like
ABOARD the GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI aircraft carrier (Italy) (AFP) - The European Union needs a reboot in the wake of Britain's vote to leave, Italy's prime minister said Monday as he prepared to meet his French and German counterparts to discuss the fallout from Brexit.

"It is easy to blame Europe for everything -- harder to try to build a different Europe that pays more attention to values and less to big finance," Matteo Renzi said on his Facebook page, explaining why he had called the meeting with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"That is what we are trying to do with all the energy we possess."

Europe's economic outlook, jihadist attacks, the refugee and migrant drama, the Syrian conflict, and relations with Russia and Turkey were all on the agenda for the talks later Monday on the island of Ventotene, one of the cradles of the European dream.

The big three are hoping to forge a common position ahead of an informal EU summit in Bratislava that will attempt to plot a way forward for the 27 remaining member states.

Renzi admitted Brexit had left the bloc facing tough challenges.

"Confronted with problems, one has a choice: find someone to blame or find a solution," he wrote.

"We are working to solve the problems. And that means we want a post-Brexit Europe, that has been hit in the heart by terrorism, to relaunch an ideal based on unity and peace, freedom and dreams, dialogue and identity."

It will be the second round of talks between the three leaders. At their first, shortly after Britain's June 23 vote, the leaders called for "a new impulse" for the EU.

Critics have demanded less talk and more action over a crisis some states fear could lead to similar referendums in other countries, particularly the Netherlands, which opposes changes to the EU to achieve closer integration.

Coming up with a road map acceptable to all will not be easy, with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia vowing after Britain's vote to draw up their own plans for a less centralised EU.

Story continues

Renzi was to welcome Hollande and Merkel in Naples at 1400 GMT before travelling to Ventotene, where they will visit the grave of Altiero Spinelli, one of the founding fathers of the ideal of European integration.

Imprisoned on the island by the fascist government during World War II, Spinelli and fellow captive Ernesto Rossi co-wrote the "Ventotene manifesto" calling for a federation of European states.

- Defence, economy, culture -

In another symbolic move, the leaders will hold a working dinner and press conference on Italy's Garibaldi aircraft carrier, the flagship of the EU's "Sophia" mission against people trafficking in the Mediterranean.

It will be the start of an intensive tour for Merkel as she attempts to coordinate a response to one of the EU's biggest crises in decades and quell fears Berlin wants to monopolise the debate.

After a series of deadly attacks by the Islamic State group, the three leaders are also expected to explore greater co-operation on counter-terrorism and an integrated European security and defence policy -- a long-cherished objective that could be easier to achieve now sceptical Britain has departed.

In terms of the economy, Hollande wants an EU investment fund for infrastructure, education, research and innovation to be doubled, according to a French diplomatic source.

Renzi is tipped to unveil a proposal to use part of those funds to restore European cultural monuments.

But while Hollande and Renzi want to tackle Europe's identity crisis through investments, Merkel is unlikely to be moved by their anti-austerity overtures.

All three leaders have been hit in the polls by varying toxic combinations of refugee crisis, economic slump and terror attacks, with eurosceptic or populist parties gaining ground.

And with 2017 bringing a general election in Germany and presidential election in France, they will be wary of ignoring opposition to further European integration at home, leaving them little room for manoeuvre.
ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Light rains in most of Ivory Coast's main cocoa regions augur well for the crop in the world's biggest producer, farmers said on Monday, but cloudy weather has stoked fears of disease in the south. Farmers need the right mix of rain and sunny spells in July and August to strengthen the development of pods and avoid cocoa rot and disease ahead of the main crop, which runs from October to March. In the western region of Soubre, at the heart of the cocoa belt, an analyst reported 65 millimeters of rain last week, compared with no rain the previous week. "We are happy with the rain. It will help many small pods to grow and to be of good quality for the main crop," said Kouassi Kouame, a cocoa farmer on the outskirts of Soubre. "There are enough middle pods on the trees to ensure good pickings from October." In the center-western region of Daloa, which produces a quarter of Ivory Coast's cocoa, farmers reported one heavy downpour. "Many small pods are now growing because the weather is good," said Raphael Kouadio, who farms near Daloa. In the southern region of Abgboville and Tiassale and in the western region of Duekoue and Gagnoa, farmers said the weather was supporting good crop development. In the southern region of Aboisso, however, farmers were concerned about overcast conditions. "The weather is very overcast and there is not enough sun. We fear the appearance of brown rot from next month if this weather persists. For now, the pods are growing well on trees," said Etienne Yao, a farmer in Aboisso. (Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly, editing by Edward McAllister and Susan Fenton)
Https%3a%2f%2fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2fuploads%2fcard%2fimage%2f185755%2f5410c382778b40239399be30d1056093

Some parts of Australia's Top End are teaming with crocodiles, but throwing a few into a school is going to get you in a lot of trouble.

Northern Territory police are on the search for four men who were captured on CCTV footage breaking a window of a school's administration off, then let off three saltwater crocodiles into the area.

SEE ALSO: See Australian Geographic's top picks for Nature Photographer of the Year

The incident happened early on Sunday morning, with police particularly concerned about the condition of the crocodiles dumped by the vandals.

Image: nt police

Image: NT POLICE

"The ranger that turned up was very concerned for them  they had their mouths taped up," Senior Constable David Gregory told ABC News. "They haven't seen water for a long time and are undernourished."

It's believed the reptiles originated from a crocodile farm, but the state of the animals will likely result in them being put down.

"We'll determine what farm theyre from and we'll try to take them back to that farm but looking at their condition its likely they'll have to be destroyed," ranger Luke McLaren told ABC Radio according to AAP.

Saltwater crocodiles are a protected species in the Northern Territory and taking or interfering with the animals is a criminal offence. Fines are A$77,000 or five years in jail. Plus, let's face it, it's a pretty awful thing to do.
DAKAR (Reuters) - A detained official from Gambia's main opposition movement died in hospital over the weekend, his United Democratic Party said, its second member to lose their life in custody since the start of a crackdown on protests. Solo Krummah was arrested with 14 others on May 9 during rallies calling for electoral reform, and died on Saturday after an operation at the Edward Francis's Small Teaching Hospital in the capital Banjul, the UDP said. His family had not authorized any operation and there were no details on what the treatment involved or how he died, the party added in a statement. There was no immediate comment from the government or hospital authorities. The U.S. State Department said the United States was "deeply concerned" by Krummah's death and was "troubled" by reports of government mistreatment of detained opposition figures, including allegations of torture. State Department spokesman Mark Toner called for an "independent investigation of all credible allegations of torture and abuse" and urged Gambia to release all political prisoners and halt its crackdown on opposition politicians. Activists and opposition members have been staging sporadic protests, demanding reforms before December elections - a rare display of defiance against President Yahya Jammeh. Nearly 50 protesters were arrested in April and May, including UDP party leader Ousainu Darboe and at least 18 other senior members. Eleven opposition supporters were convicted in July, with sentences ranging from fines to three years in prison. Krummah, the UDP's deputy chairman of the Sandu Constituency in eastern Gambia, was detained in Mile 2 prison in Banjul and admitted to hospital on August 8 under armed guard, the UDP said in its statement. "The lawyers have been consulted and will act accordingly to get to the cause of the death of Solo and for the body to be given to the party and family for a fitting burial," the UPD added. The party's national organizing secretary, Solo Sandeng, died in custody in April after being arrested in a similar protest. The UDP says Sandeng was tortured to death - a charge dismissed by the government. Foreign powers and rights groups have regularly accused Jammeh of stamping out dissent. He has ruled the West African nation of 2 million people since taking power in a coup in 1994. (Reporting by Edward McAllister; Additional reporting by David Alexander in Washington; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Sandra Maler)
DAKAR (Reuters) - A detained official from Gambia's main opposition movement died in hospital over the weekend, his United Democratic Party said, its second member to lose their life in custody since the start of a crackdown on protests. Solo Krummah was arrested with 14 others on May 9 during rallies calling for electoral reform, and died on Saturday after an operation at the Edward Francis's Small Teaching Hospital in the capital Banjul, the UDP said. His family had not authorised any operation and there were no details on what the treatment involved or how he died, the party added in a statement. There was no immediate comment from the government or hospital authorities. Activists and opposition members have been staging sporadic protests, demanding reforms before December elections - a rare display of defiance against President Yahya Jammeh. Nearly fifty protestors were arrested in April and May, including UDP party leader Ousainu Darboe and at least 18 other senior members. Eleven opposition supporters were convicted in July, with sentences ranging from fines to three years in prison. Krummah, the UDP's deputy chairman of the Sandu Constituency in eastern Gambia, was detained in Mile 2 prison in Banjul and admitted to hospital on August 8 under armed guard, the UDP said in its statement. "The lawyers have been consulted and will act accordingly to get to the cause of the death of Solo and for the body to be given to the party and family for a fitting burial," the UPD added. The party's national organising secretary, Solo Sandeng, died in custody in April after being arrested in similar protests. The UDP says Sandeng was tortured to death - a charge dismissed by the government. Foreign powers and rights groups have regularly accused Jammeh of stamping out dissent. He has ruled the West African nation of 2 million people since taking power in a coup in 1994. (Reporting By Edward McAllister; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
In an interview with Yahoo News on Monday, Democratic strategist James Carville stated that Rudy Giuliani might be the one suffering from medical issues in response to the former New York mayors attacks on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clintons health.

I think Rudy Giuliani might have something going on in his brain, said Carville, who worked on Bill Clintons 1992 presidential campaign. Im not too sure. Its obviously a man telling people youre going to get better information online than from a highly trained physician.

The comments were in response to a weekend interview where Giuliani told a Fox News audience to go online and put down Hillary Clinton illness and take a look at the videos for yourself.

Last week, Clintons longtime physician released a statement through the campaign stating that the former secretary of state was in excellent health. Giuliani is one of many Trump supporters who have been pushing the theory that Clinton is in poor health.

During the interview Carville also defended the Clinton Foundation, calling it one of the great organizations in the world and claiming that the media was trying to shut it down.

I think tens of millions of poor kids in Africa are going to be in much worse shape but I think the press can claim some great victory, said Carville. I always thought taking money from rich people and giving it to poor people was a good thing, but apparently Im in the minority view among the swans of Georgetown.

Its a made-up thing, if somebody wanted to buy influence, the Clintons dont make a nickel off the Clinton Foundation. They donate their time, why not just pay a direct consulting fee, seems like an elaborate pass-through to me.

A June ABC News report stated that a prominent Foundation donor was given a position on an intelligence board despite zero history working with nuclear security. A New York Times story from Saturday cited the Foundations history of accepting millions from countries with histories of sex discrimination and human rights violations.
James Gunn and Chris Pratt at Comic-Con (Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Late last week, The Wrap reported that Zendaya  the 19-year-old Disney Channel star  would be playing Mary Jane Watson, the famed girlfriend of Peter Parker in next years Spider-Man: Homecoming. Theres yet to be any confirmation from official sources, but the Internet responded as the Internet will: Given that Mary Jane has traditionally been a Caucasian character (she was previously played by Kirsten Dunst in the first Spider-Man movies), and Zendaya is of mixed-race descent, there was a firestorm in certain fanboy corners, which objected to the idea of reimagining the character. And now, this dont-mess-with-tradition argument has been countered by one of Marvels biggest directors.

In a new Facebook post, Guardians of the Galaxy helmer James Gunn  whose own franchise boasts a distinctly multicultural cast  has chimed in on the brewing controversy. While he admits that he can neither confirm nor deny that Zendaya is, in fact, playing Mary Jane, Gunn takes to task the idea that comic-book figures should forever be stuck looking exactly like they did when they were originally introduced.

Zendaya earlier this year (Photo: Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

For me, if a characters primary attribute  the thing that makes them iconic  is the color of their skin, or their hair color, frankly, that character is shallow and sucks. For me, what makes MJ MJ is her alpha female playfulness, and if the actress captures that, then shell work.

As Gunn himself notes, this isnt the first time Marvel has taken such a tack  just last year, Michael B. Jordan had to cope with an intolerant backlash over his casting as Fantastic Fours Johnny Storm (a.k.a. the Human Torch), who began life on the page as a blond-haired, blue-eyed stud. If Zendaya is assuming the role of Peter Parkers most famous girlfriend, shell no doubt have to weather a similar storm when Spider-Man: Homecoming  starring Tom Holland and also featuring Michael Keaton, Donald Glover and Marissa Tomei  hits theaters on July 7, 2017. At least she now knows that shell have Gunn in her corner, whose post concludes with the inarguable point: If were going to continue to make movies based on the almost all white heroes and supporting characters from the comics of the last century, were going to have to get used to them being more reflective of our diverse present world.

You can read Gunns entire post here.
Tokyo (AFP) - The foreign ministers of Japan, China and South Korea will meet this week in Tokyo, with their countries at odds over territorial disputes and a US missile defence system.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, China's Wang Yi and South Korea's Yun Byung-Se will have dinner Tuesday before formal talks on Wednesday, Japan's foreign ministry said in a statement Monday.

They "will discuss trilateral cooperation as well as regional and global issues", it said.

Among those issues are likely to be North Korea.

Japan and South Korea regularly condemn Pyongyang for its nuclear and missile development, but feel frustrated by what they see as a lack of pressure on the country by China, its longtime ally and economic lifeline.

The talks also come as Sino-Japanese tensions over a territorial dispute in the East China Sea rose this month, while China and South Korea have sparred over the planned deployment in the latter country of a US anti-missile system.

Japan and China are locked in a long-running dispute over uninhabited islets in the East China Sea, with tensions over them a frequent hindrance to closer ties.

Tokyo has lodged more than 30 protests through diplomatic channels since August 5, saying there have been about 30 intrusions by Chinese vessels into its territorial waters.

Separately, China has complained about the planned deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea, arguing the missile shield goes against its own national security interests and warning it will heighten regional tension.

South Korea, wary of offending key trade partner China, had wavered on its introduction, but went ahead in the face of North Korea's continued missile development.

The Japan-South Korea relationship is also prone to periodic tension.

A maritime dispute resurfaced on Monday last week when 10 South Korean lawmakers visited islets controlled by Seoul but claimed by Japan.

Story continues

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on the same day, however, called for a "future-oriented" relationship with Tokyo.

Bilateral meetings between Kishida and his Chinese and South Korean counterparts are being arranged, though nothing is set, a Japanese foreign ministry official told AFP.

The foreign ministerial meeting is expected to be followed later this year by a trilateral summit. The leaders of the three countries met in November last year in South Korea.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese companies overwhelmingly say the government's latest stimulus will do little to boost the economy and the Bank of Japan should not ease further, a Reuters poll showed, a setback for policymakers' efforts to overcome deflation and stagnation.

Below are the questions and answers to the poll conducted Aug. 1-16 for Reuters by Nikkei Research. Answers are denoted in percentage points, while poll and reply totals are represented in actual figures.

1a. How do you expect the government's planned stimulus will have effects on the underlying economy? (Pick one)

Sectors Considerably A little bit Not much Not at all Polled Replied

All 3 63 31 3 533 267

Manufacturers 3 60 36 1 261 141

Non-Manufacturers 4 67 25 4 272 126

1b. How do you expect the government's planned stimulus will have effects on bolstering Japan's potential growth? (Pick one)

Sectors Considerably A little bit Not much Not at all Polled Replied

All 2 45 45 8 533 266

Manufacturers 1 46 46 6 261 140

Non-Manufacturers 4 44 43 9 272 126

1c. How do you expect the government's planned stimulus will have effects on stimulating private consumption? (Pick one)

Sectors Considerably A little bit Not much Not at all Polled Replied

All 0 43 49 8 533 266

Manufacturers 0 44 49 8 261 140

Non-Manufacturers 1 42 49 8 272 126

1d. Do you expect growth to accelerate with government's plan to bring forward opening of maglev train services by tapping Fiscal Investment and Loan Program?

Sectors Greatly A little bit Not much Not at all Polled Replied

All 5 60 31 3 533 269

Manufacturers 5 62 30 3 261 143

Non-Manufacturers 6 59 33 3 272 126

1e. Should the government expand fiscal spending to promote new technology such as IoT and AI? (Pick one)

Sectors Considerably Not really Polled Replied

All 63 37 533 268

Manufacturers 58 42 261 142

Non-Manufacturers 67 33 272 126

2. With the government showing active stance on fiscal spending, how should the Bank of Japan act? (Pick one)

Sectors Enhancing Maintaining Taming monetary Others Polled Replied

Story continues

monetary easing status quo easing and head

to exit

All 37 35 27 1 533 263

Manufacturers 38 30 30 1 261 138

Non-Manufacturers 34 42 23 1 272 125

3a. Japan's main securities industry body set new guidelines to prevent leaks of unpublished corporate information by analysts. Are you changing the way you deal with analysts? (Pick one)

Sectors Yes Plan to change No plan to Polled Replied

from now on change

All 4 19 77 533 262

Manufacturers 5 21 74 261 140

Non-Manufacturers 3 16 81 272 122

3b. Do you see any problems in dealing with the securities industry's new guidelines? (Pick plural choices)

Sectors Considering Considering whether Others Polled Replied

to what to change content of

extent discussions with

qualitative securities companies

information and investment fund

can be management companies

discussed

All 65 27 23 533 208

Manufacturers 63 32 19 261 111

Non-Manufacturers 68 22 27 272 97

(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto and Izumi Nakagawa; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
Tokyo (AFP) - The wife of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has visited Pearl Harbor, bombed by Japanese planes nearly 75 years ago in an attack that brought the United States into World War II.

It was not clear exactly when Akie Abe made the visit. But she posted 11 pictures on her official Facebook page, apparently early Monday.

"I offered flowers and my prayers at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor," she wrote.

Her visit to the Hawaii memorial came just months after President Barack Obama journeyed to Hiroshima, the Japanese city where a US plane dropped the world's first atom bomb in the closing days of World War II.

Obama's trip to Hiroshima sparked speculation that Shinzo Abe could visit Pearl Harbor in response.

But top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga on Monday denied that, while confirming the first lady was in Hawaii for a "private trip".

"There is no such plan for the prime minister to visit Hawaii," Suga said.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes swept low over the US naval base, killing more than 2,400 American troops and civilians, a date which then-president Franklin Roosevelt declared would live in "infamy".

The two-hour bombardment of the US Pacific Fleet at anchor sank or damaged some 20 ships and destroyed 164 planes.

Akie Abe is seen in one of the Facebook photos bowing before a wall on which the names of victims are inscribed.

"Many people must have given fresh thought to the bombed city of Hiroshima and the war after President Obama visited the city," she told the Gendai Business web magazine, which apparently accompanied her to Pearl Harbor.

"I am aware that there are various debates and views about Pearl Harbor, but I believe we must go beyond hatred and anger, and pass down these memories to following generations."

Abe is seen in Japan as playing a political role that complements her husband, sometimes by softening his hawkish image and at others by soothing his nationalist supporters.

Story continues

She has visited Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honours millions of Japan's war dead as well as several senior figures convicted of war crimes after World War II.

Her husband has been forced to stay away from the shrine after making a visit there in December 2013.

The visit set off a firestorm of criticism in China and South Korea, and also earned a rare rebuke from top ally the United States.
Instagram/jillianmichaels

Jillian Michaels is one cool mom.

Recently, the fitness guru posted a cute photo of her 4-year-old son, Phoenix, to her Instagram account.

The little man works on his selfie skills. And yes, he got his ears pierced. His sister got hers pierced, and he wanted his done, Michaels captioned the photo. I wasnt about to say thats for girls.

The little man works on his selfie skills. And yes, he got his ears pierced. His sister got hers pierced and he wanted his done. I wasnt about to say thats for girls. A photo posted by Jillian Michaels (@jillianmichaels) on Aug 6, 2016 at 6:00am PDT

Some were quick to say the 42-year-old mom of two made a poor decision.

I think it was wrong..he is a young boy..when he is older that should be his decision if his parents agree with it..sorry.., wrote cmt1821.

But, overwhelmingly, the comments were extremely positive and supportive.

Very handsome young man. My daughter asked for her third holes in her ears. Shes 11. To me, its the momma you are in the present that realizes these are the little things that matter. They could be asking for and doing much worse, wrote carlenebensch.

Love the earrings!! My son says when he turns 8, he will get his pierced. I am a strong believer in letting them grow without the stereotypical gender roles/boundaries. In our house, there is no such thing as girl colors and boy colours, girl or boy hair cuts and no girl only or boy only toys, etc, said ever1needsalilshade. My boy has long hair and painted nails and I love that he will grow to be whoever he wants to be, and will love and accept anyone, just the way they are.

I seriously love seeing parents teach their kids that all people are created equal regardless of gender or race. My favorite is when my 3 year old niece asks my sister if someone is a boy or a girl and she responds, Who cares?! Theyre your friend and thats all that matters!' said chelle_gets_fit.

Its 2016, telling a boy, earrings are only for girls is about as outdated as telling girls, jobs are only for boys.,' said kenriquez1122. Way to your child be who he is! If he decides later he doesnt like the earrings guess what, he can take them out. Lets not crush anyones spirit with old societal norms.

Story continues

In all honesty, his karate teacher and my brother had it done soto him, its something the cool guys do, explained Michaels in an Instagram comment. I figure if he ever doesnt like them, he takes them out and the holes close.

We love how Michaels let her son make the call when it came to getting his ears pierced  and even more, we loved seeing all the support from her Instagram followers.

What do you think about Michaelss decision to let her son pierce his ears? Let us know by tweeting @YahooStyleCA.
John Oliver apologized on Last Week Tonight because he once again found a need to talk about Donald Trump, or as Oliver prefers to call him, a racist voodoo doll made of discarded cat hair. (That name doesnt roll off the tongue quite as easily as Olivers other nickname for the Republican presidential nominee: Donald Drumpf.)

Oliver felt he could not avoid the subject, though, because hes going to be off the air for a month, and felt compelled to offer a few parting thoughts. In light of the fact that Trump is having a rough week  his campaign manager resigned and hes reportedly receiving advice from former Fox News chief Roger Ailes  Oliver feels that Trumps presidential campaign is at a crossroads. In Olivers opinion Trump has hit bottom, from which he will either rebound to victory or, its basically the beginning of the end. Losing, particularly to Hillary Clinton would be disastrous for a man who, according to Oliver (and a helpful video montage), has built his brand on winning. But Oliver seems to believe that winning the presidency would be equally bad for Trump and so proposed a third path for the presidential nominee: Drop out.

Oliver believes that Trump should simply quit the race and claim his entire candidacy was a stunt meant to expose the flaws in Americas political system. According to Oliver, Trumps campaign has succeeded at that, even as the rest of his campaign was the political equivalent of a bigoted clowns blazing funeral fire.

Oliver even found Trump a how-to guide for dropping out taken from the The Kid Who Ran For President, as read by Will Arnett. To sweeten the deal, Oliver even extended an olive branch to Trump saying that if he did drop out of the presidential race, Oliver would lift his Trump ban and invite him on the show.
John Oliver charter schools

Politicians in both major parties love to praise charter schools, but John Oliver is warning us to be more hesitant about jumping on that bandwagon.

"Yes, charter schools unite both sides of the aisle more quickly than when a wedding DJ throws on 'Hey Ya!'" Oliver said in a segement on Sunday's "Last Week Tonight."

Charters are public schools that are taxpayer-funded but privately run. But even though they educate nearly 3 million students and are backed by celebrities such as Pitbull and P. Diddy, charter schools have some serious problems, according to Oliver.

"For this piece  and I know this is going to make some people on both sides very angry  were going to set aside whether or not charter schools are a good idea in principle, because whether they are or not, in 42 states and D.C., were doing them," Oliver said on his show. "So, instead, were going to look at how they operate in practice."

Some charters are "so flawed," Oliver said, that they don't make it through the year. The most flawed are in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio  areas Oliver dug into more.

Charters have also had problems with misuse of funds, as they are supposed to be nonprofit but certain groups aim to make a profit, and there's been lackadaisical attendance monitoring for online charters.

Oliver bashed Ohio Governor John Kasich's comments about the need for choice in schooling options like the need for a competitive market for "pizza shops."

"The problem with letting the free market decide when it comes to kids is that kids change faster than the market, and by the time its obvious the school is failing, futures may have been ruined," Oliver said. "So if we are going to treat charter schools like pizza shops, we should monitor them at least as well as we do pizzerias. Its like the old saying: Give a kid a s----y pizza, you f--- up their day; treat a kid like a s----y pizza, you could f--- up their entire life.

Watch the full clip:

NOW WATCH: 7 things you missed in the new Star Wars Rogue One trailer





More From Business Insider


john oliver donald trump drop out last week tonight hbo

John Oliver thinks it's an opportune time in the presidential campaign for Donald Trump to quit.

The host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight" apologized for having to speak about Trump again at the end of Sunday's episode, but felt he should ahead of the show's one-month break from airing.

"There are some things I need to say," the host said, in light of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's resignation, the revelation that Roger Ailes is acting as an adviser, and Trump's sagging poll numbers.

"This feels like a fork in the road for Trump," Oliver said. "He's either hitting bottom, from which he'll rebound to victory, or it's the beginning of the end ... Obviously, losing would be disastrous, because his entire brand is built around not doing that ... And the problem is Trump wouldn't just be losing any election, he'd be losing it to Hillary Clinton. And that wouldn't just be off-brand, it would be brand-destroying. And he knows it."

It would be especially bad for Trump, Oliver pointed out, with a new Washington Post-ABC poll showing that 60% of registered voters doubt Hillary Clinton's trustworthiness.

"The other option is that Trump resets, comes from behind, and wins," Oliver said. "And I would argue that's even worse for him, because then he actually has to run the country. And that means living in government housing, conversing with fully clothed women, and traveling in a plane that doesn't even have his name on it."

Oliver then turned to his idea for a third option for Trump, which he thinks would work best for the real-estate mogul.

"I would like to propose to you a third option," he said. "That is, drop out. Simply drop out, and tell America this entire candidacy was a stunt  a satire designed to expose the flaws in the system."

Watch Oliver argue for Trump to drop out:

NOW WATCH: Trump attacks Clinton on immigration in his first general election TV ad





More From Business Insider


Amman (AFP) - Jordan has taken measures to allow more Syrian refugee children access to education, winning praise on Monday from Human Rights Watch ahead of the new academic year.

The government has instructed state schools to allow Syrian children to enrol for the new year starting in September even if their paperwork is not in order, government spokesman Mohamed Momani said.

"The children can get their situation sorted out during the school year," he told AFP.

"Carrying out this and other announced policy changes could help thousands more children attend school this semester," HRW said in a statement.

The education ministry has also set up double-shifts in 102 state schools, allowing 50,000 Syrian children to enrol, Momani said.

On Monday, the government also announced plans to create special classes for some 25,000 children aged 8 to 12 who had been deprived of schooling for the past three years or more.

These will allow refugee children to catch up and have been funded in part by donations from the United States, Britain, Norway and Switzerland to the tune of around $100 million.

Bill Van Esveld, senior children's rights researcher at HRW, described the measures -- announced after the watchdog had urged Jordan to educate more Syrian children -- as "important".

"Jordan's education ministry has taken an important step by ordering schools to accept Syrian children this fall even if they don't have their papers in order," he said in the statement.

In a report issued on Tuesday, the New York-based watchdog said more than 80,000 school-aged Syrian children in Jordan had received no formal education in the past school year.

HRW said Syrian refugees in Jordan are required to have so-called interior ministry-issued "service cards" which are also needed for children to enrol in public schools.

Jordan says it currently hosts nearly 1.4 million refugees -- including 630,000 registered with the United Nations -- and has repeatedly called for more international help to cope.

"We have reached our limits... This is an international crisis and an international responsibility, and the world has to do its part," King Abdullah II said in statements published Monday.
In an ornately decorated steam-filled room in Amman, a group of men are getting scrubbed, washed and massaged. They are in one of several newly established Turkish baths, which have become increasingly popular in Jordan over the past several years. General Manager of the Umayyad Bath, which opened two months ago, said he was happy that this ancient tradition has become current again. "Thank God, we have been popular since the first day we opened our doors. As time goes by (turkish baths) are becoming more popular in Jordan, they have moved here from Damascus. Their style emulate the Syrian and Turkish styles, and they are known as Turkish or Moroccan baths," said Ihsan Al-Taweel. Al-Taweel attributes this surge in interest in the baths to the influx of Syrian refugees into the country. "(Turkish baths) have become more popular after a lot of people from Damascus re-settled here in Amman. More projects were found to meet this increased demand for the baths. We had to respond to these desires, and now these places are very popular," he added. The baths have also become a popular destination for grooms ahead of their wedding party. The soon to be married man is joined by family members and close fiends who celebrate by dancing and clapping before getting cleansed. One groom who came to the Umayyad bath before his wedding, Maher Abdelhadi, said this was a unique experience which he enjoyed. "Turkish baths are quite popular. It is a great and novel idea. We are used to celebrating the groom by having a wedding procession in his parents house, but this is a new idea, something unique. We are seeing more and more people invited to such events, and they enjoy it, great atmosphere, fun evenings, new ideas," he said. Turkish baths, which first emerged during the Ottoman empire, are the Islamic adaptation of the Roman baths. The bath usually starts with a heated relaxation room, followed by a full-body scrub and wash, ending with a massage. Many Jordanians used to travel to Damascus for their famous baths, but such trips came to an abrupt halt when the civil-war broke out in the country more than five years ago. "I expect that more people will want to attend these baths, this is something we have lost in Syria, since the problems started there four years ago. But thank God they have now opened up here in our country," said Hani Abdelkarim, one of the customers in the bath. Jordan currently hosts more than 1.4 million refugees with most of them living in urban areas and around 100,000 Syrians in the camps. More than 3.8 million people have fled Syria since 2011, when the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began.
Joshua Jackson and Diane Kruger may have ended their 10-year relationship just over a month ago, but the two still appeared to be very close, hugging at the Los Angeles International Airport on Friday.

The former Fringe star was spotted in a tight embrace with Kruger after dropping her off for her flight.

FAMEFLYNET PICTURES

PHOTOS: PDA Alert! Celebrity Couples Who Can't Keep Their Hands Off Each Other

Jackson, 38, went incognito in a dark shirt and shades while Kruger looked fit and healthy in high-waisted jeans and a gray tie-up bodysuit.

The pair were very cordial with their goodbyes, which seems to be their m.o. Despite the breakup, the exes were spotted chatting and grabbing a bottle of wine while taking a stroll through L.A. earlier this week.

WATCH: Diane Kruger Flaunts Bikini Body After Split From Joshua Jackson

Jackson and Kruger sparked their romance in 2006, right after she split from French director Guillaume Canet, her husband of five years.

A rep for Jackson and Kruger confirmed their break up on July 18, just days after the Inglourious Basterds actress' 40th birthday.

Weeks after their split, Jackson appeared on a panel discussion for his Showtime series, The Affair, during the Television Critics Association press tour in Beverly Hills. The star got very candid when a reporter asked what he thinks leads a relationship to fall apart.

NEWS: Diane Kruger Reflects on First Meeting Joshua Jackson and His 'Different Perspective' on Life

"I don't know, truthfully," replied Jackson, who plays a man going through a divorce on his critically acclaimed show. "I think each one of the situations is individual."

In his real life, it's clear Jackson's managed to remain friendly with his ex in the wake of their long-term relationship coming to an end. For more on their recent outing in L.A., check out the video below.

Related Articles
Closing the doors on yet another matter pertaining to its acquisition of Washington Mutual Inc.s (WaMu) banking business during the height of the 2008 financial crisis, JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM announced the ending of dispute with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ("FDIC") and Deutsche Bank AG DB. Per a regulatory filing, following the court approval, the company will receive $645 million as part of the deal.



Legal Burden Eases for JPMorgan



As part of the settlement deal, JPMorgan will drop its claims of $1 billion against the FDIC related to the WaMu purchase. Also, the settlement will end four other lawsuits to which JPMorgan and the FDIC are parties.



Further, the agreement allows JPMorgan to avoid nearly $6 billion in legal liabilities related to Deutsche Bank case. Deutsche Bank was the trustee to 99 trusts holding residential mortgage backed securities underlying WaMu home loans. Now, the FDIC will allow Deutsche Bank to have a claim against the estate.



Root Cause: Failure of FDIC to Assume WaMus Legal Liability



It all started in 2008, when JPMorgan acquired WaMu. Prior to the financial crisis, WaMu had sold risky mortgage-backed securities (MBS). After its acquisition by JPMorgan, all legal problems related to the sale of MBS fell on the bank.



Therefore, in 2013, JPMorgan sued the FDIC for failure to assume WaMus legal liabilities and sought more than $1 billion. The company had alleged that the FDIC wrongly declined to acknowledge or honor its indemnification obligations pertaining to WaMu.



JPMorgan claimed that the FDIC had agreed to protect the bank from legal liability claims, per the terms of deal to acquire WaMu. Also, the company asserted that it assumed only limited liability in its acquisition of WaMus assets.



Hence, JPMorgan argued that it is not liable in the cases that have been filed against it by various institutional investors and even the U.S. government for misrepresentation of the facts while selling MBS. However, the FDIC opposed this and claimed that the bank had taken over WaMus legal accountabilities as well.



Additionally in 2009, Deutsche Bank had filed a $10 billion case against the FDIC and JPMorgan over losses related to alleged flaws in WaMu's mortgage underwriting.



A Victory for JPMorgan



With the end of this major lawsuit, we can easily conclude that it is a victory for JPMorgan and similar other banks who acquired failed financial firms during the 2008 financial crisis. A company should be protected from significant legal liabilities arising from the failure of collapsed entity to properly manage business.



In case JPMorgan had lost the case, it would have discouraged other firms from acquiring failed banks, eventually shifting the burden to the taxpayers money.



Currently, JPMorgan carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked banking stocks include Comerica Incorporated CMA and Hancock Holding Company HBHC. Both these stocks hold a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



JPMORGAN CHASE (JPM): Free Stock Analysis Report



COMERICA INC (CMA): Free Stock Analysis Report



DEUTSCHE BK AG (DB): Free Stock Analysis Report



HANCOCK HLDG CO (HBHC): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
The Cambridges are off on tour [Photo: PA Images]

Today, Kensington Palace revealed a whole lot more information about the Duke and Duchess of Cambridges tour of Canada. In addition to revealing the dates that the duo will be across the pond for, the Palace released the couples jam-packed itinerary.

However, the Palace declined to put a stop to the rumour mill and is yet to confirm whether Prince George and Princess Charlotte will join their parents on the working holiday.

The Duke and Duchess still have a month to decide whether theyll take their little ones with them: The couple leaves London for Victoria, British Columbia on September 24 before heading on to Vancouver the following day.

Next up, on September 26, is a stop-off in Bella Bella and a visit to the Great Bear Rainforest.

Chances are, this outfit will be dusted off as the Duchess takes to the Canadian rainforest [Photo: PA Images]



While touring India earlier this year, the Duchess donned a number of Indian designers - suggesting shell do the same in Canada [Photo: PA Images]

On September 27, the couple will arrive in Kelowna where theyll spend the day before heading on to Whitehorse and Carcross, Yukon.

Then on September 29, theyll head back to Victoria before spending the day in Haida Gwaii and returning to Victoria once again.

The diverse schedule suggests that Kate will pack a wide array of outfits, from walking boots and trousers that she can navigate the rainforest in to designer dresses that shell no doubt wear while dining with the Canadian Prime Ministers stylish wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau.

Sophies style is not that different to Kates: lots of lace and printed midi knee-length dresses [Photo: PA Images]

Sophie is known for her well-stocked wardrobe and is a keen supporter of designers from her own country, including the likes of Aleks Susak, Lucian Matis, Ellie Mae and DUY.

Who knows, perhaps Kate will be inspired to have a browse of the Canadian womenswear stores - if she has time.

You Can Now Buy The Duchess Of Cambridges Wedding Dress For 130

Kate And Wills Jet Off On Holiday With George And Charlotte
NAIROBI (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on Monday for immediate steps to give "momentum" to the planned deployment of extra U.N. troops to South Sudan and told the country's leaders to adhere in "word and deed" to a peace deal reached last year. "We need to move forward with the deployment of a regional protection force, authorized by the U.N. Security Council, in order to be part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in that country," he told a news conference in Nairobi after talks with foreign ministers from Kenya and other regional states. South Sudan's government has said it is still considering a response to the U.N. decision to send 4,000 extra troops to the country after violence flared in the capital in July. Kenya's foreign minister also said on Monday she wanted the mission to be deployed "sooner rather than later", but said that its deployment could be gradual. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Louise Ireland)
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's Equity Group Holdings reported a rise in first-half pretax profit on Monday to 14.23 billion shillings ($140.50 million) from 12.10 billion helped by higher net interest income. Chief Executive Officer James Mwangi told an investor briefing that net interest income rose 37 percent to 21.2 billion shillings. Equity, which focuses on the lower-income part of the Kenyan market, also operates in Uganda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo. First-half customer deposits rose to 320.8 billion shillings from 301.0 billion, Mwangi said. The bank said the value of transactions on its mobile phone banking service, launched in July 2015, stood at 97.8 billion shillings at the end of June versus 49.5 billion in July 2015. It said its total assets rose to 444.4 billion shillings from 400.9 billion a year earlier. ($1 = 101.2800 Kenyan shillings) (Reporting by George Obulutsa; editing by Elias Biryabarema and Jason Neely)
By Lesley Wroughton NAIROBI (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday he and regional states were committed to giving momentum to the planned deployment of extra U.N. troops to South Sudan and said the country's leaders needed to recommit to a peace deal. Fierce fighting in the capital Juba last month has raised fears that the five-year-old nation could slide back into civil war. It prompted the United Nations to authorize the deployment of 4,000 additional U.N. troops to bolster a U.N. mission there. "We need to move forward with the deployment of a regional protection force," Kerry told a news conference in Nairobi after talks with foreign ministers from Kenya and other African states that had focused on South Sudan and Somalia's reconstruction. Kerry said regional states, which have pushed for sending the new troops to help South Sudan's 12,000-strong U.N. mission UNMISS, had agreed on "the immediate implementation process" of meetings and steps to "guarantee some momentum builds up." About two years of conflict that pitted troops loyal to President Salva Kiir against those of his former deputy Riek Machar was supposed to have ended with a peace deal last year. But fighting persisted and flared again last month in Juba. After the latest violence, Machar, who had returned to the capital in April to resume his post as vice president, withdrew again to the bush and was picked up this month by U.N. peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo with a leg injury. Kiir has again sacked him and appointed a new vice president. Kerry said it was up to South Sudan's leaders, political parties and neighbors to work out "what is best or not best with respect to Machar", but all sides had to stop fighting. "We urged all the parties to recommit in word and deed to the full implementation of the peace agreement," Kerry said. Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed, speaking at the same news conference, said the new U.N. force should be deployed "sooner rather than later" but said it could be sent gradually. South Sudan's government initially said it would not cooperate with the new U.N. troops which will be under the command of the 12,000-strong UNMISS mission. But since then it has said it was still considering its position. "We have not rejected it or accepted it. The sovereignty of the people of South Sudan will be decided by the parliament," South Sudan's presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said. World powers and regional states have struggled to find leverage over South Sudan's warring factions despite U.S. and European sanctions on some military leaders and African threats of punitive actions. South Sudan secured its independence in 2011, but by December 2013 the longtime political rivalry between Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and Machar, a Nuer, had led to civil conflict that often followed ethnic lines. The fighting has killed thousands of people and driven more than 2 million people from their homes, with many of them fleeing to neighboring states. Kerry, who pledged new humanitarian aid to South Sudan worth $138 million, said the new U.N. troop contingent was "not an intervention force" but would protect civilians and support those working to ensure peace prevailed. In the latest flare-up in July, Washington was particularly concerned by an attack on a Juba hotel by uniformed men who killed a U.S.-funded journalist and raped civilians, including aid workers. The U.N. has launched an investigation into accusations U.N. peacekeepers in Juba failed to respond properly to the attack. South Sudanese government officials say that just because the perpetrators were in uniform did not mean they were either under the command of the government or the opposition. (Additional reporting by Denis Dumo in Juba; Editing by Edmund Blair and Dominic Evans)
By Lesley Wroughton NAIROBI (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and counterparts from eight African nations meet in Nairobi on Monday to discuss ways to prevent South Sudan from sliding back into civil war and advance a political transition in Somalia. Kerry arrived in the Kenyan capital late on Sunday - after a two-week summer break - for his second trip as secretary of state to Nairobi since May 2015. On Tuesday, he travels to Sokoto, Nigeria, the historic Muslim city in the remote northwest, followed by talks with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja. "We will ... talk about how we move forward in trying to implement peace in this country," a senior State Department official said of South Sudan. "The people of South Sudan have suffered for far too long, and the continued instability there has led almost a million refugees and a humanitarian crisis that is far beyond the abilities of even the international community to respond to," the official told a conference call. The international community has poured billions of aid into supporting the world's youngest nation, which gained independence in 2011. Oil production, by far the biggest source of government revenue, has plummeted. But worsening violence has raised fears of a return to civil war that erupted in late 2013, which broadly ran along ethnic lines, pitting President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, against his rival and vice president Riek Machar, a Nuer. Violence flared when Machar withdrew his forces from the capital Juba in July and was sacked by Kiir as vice president. Machar was picked up by U.N. peacekeepers in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo a week ago with a leg injury and was handed over to authorities in Congo. Machar led a two-year rebellion against forces loyal to rival Kiir before the two sides reached a peace deal in August 2015. Under the deal, Machar returned to Juba in April to resume his role as vice president. On Monday, Kerry will meet Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta before joining foreign ministers from Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, Djibouti, Tanzania, Somalia and Ethiopia to discuss South Sudan and Somalia, where there are concerns that delays in the approval of new election rules could dampen its recovery from conflict. World powers and regional states have struggled to find leverage over the warring factions in South Sudan, despite U.S. and European sanctions on some military leaders and African threats of punitive actions. Especially of concern to Washington was an attack on a Juba hotel in July by uniformed men who killed a U.S.-funded journalist and raped civilians, including aid workers. The U.N. has launched an investigation into accusations U.N. peacekeepers in Juba failed to respond properly to the attack. In Kerry's talks with Kenyatta, he will also discuss Kenya's presidential election set for August 2017, the senior State Department official said. Opposition protests in Nairobi since April have stoked fears among church leaders and Western diplomats of a repeat of the violence following the 2007 election in which 1,200 people were killed. In a letter to Kerry before his visit, the Human Rights Watch group urged him to discuss rights concerns with Kenyatta. The group said it had documented 34 cases of extrajudicial killings and another 11 deaths of people last seen in state custody over alleged links with al-Shabaab militants in Nairobi and in the northeast. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Nairobi (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Monday for the deployment of a 4,000-strong "protection force" to bolster the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.

"There is absolutely no question that we need to move forward with the deployment of the regional protection force authorised by the UN Security Council," Kerry said after meeting with five regional foreign ministers in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed also urged a speedy deployment. "When should it be there? Sooner rather than later," she said.

In the wake of fresh fighting in the South Sudanese capital Juba last month, Kenya offered to provide troops for a new force, approved by the Security Council on August 12, alongside Ethiopia and Rwanda.

The 4,000 new troops will join 12,000 already deployed as part of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) which has been widely criticised for its serial failure to protect civilians.

- Not an 'intervention force' -

Mohamed said a "gradual deployment" would allow troops to reach Juba more quickly.

"Any number of soldiers that goes in in the name of a protection force would be welcome and would open the door to everything else," she said.

Kerry said the new force would only seek to improve security in Juba and allow for the implementation of a peace deal signed a year ago.

"This is not an intervention force, it is a protection force, with a very clear mandate to protect people, to ensure access, freedom of movement and to be free from ambush or attack of any sort," he said.

No timeline has been given for the deployment but South Sudan's government has expressed strong reservations over the plan and called for further discussions.

"We want to know the mandate of this protection force," said South Sudan Vice President Taban Deng Gai during a visit to the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Monday. "We want to sit with them in Juba, not in New York."

Story continues

Deng is strengthening his position after seizing the vice presidency from his old friend and ally Riek Machar who was forced to flee Juba during last month's fighting.

Kerry signalled that Machar's ouster did not undermine the August 2015 peace agreement of which he was a key signatory. "Legally, under the agreement, there is an allowance for the replacement of personnel and that has been effected with the appointment of a new vice president," he said.

- Regional threat -

Kerry also announced an additional $138 million (122 million euros) in aid for South Sudan where 2.5 million people have been uprooted by war since December 2013 and close to half the population is in need of emergency food aid.

During his meetings in Nairobi Kerry also addressed the threat of terrorism emanating from Somalia where a new government is due to be chosen next month.

"Al-Shabaab may have had its start in Somalia but it doesn't care about national borders," Kerry said. "The terrorists are a regional threat and demand a regional response."

He pledged continuing support for the internationally-backed government in Mogadishu and the cash-strapped African Union force fighting the Shabaab in Somalia.
NAIROBI (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday talks between the United States and Russia on military cooperation in the fight against Islamic State in Syria were nearing an end, with technical teams meeting this week to discuss details. "We are in indeed engaged currently in ongoing conversations, and it is my hope that we are reaching the end of those discussions one way or another," Kerry told a news conference during a visit to Kenya. "In the next days our team will meet this week, and depending on where those discussions go, it is very possible, very likely, that Foreign Minister (Sergei) Lavrov and I would meet," he said. "But that decision has to be made on the basis of where we are in the next couple of days." Kerry said the "Syrian travesty" had gone on for too long and it was imperative that powers supporting the Syrian regime, - Russia and Iran - and those backing the opposition - the United States and its Middle East partners - came together to end the fighting. Kerry's proposal would have Washington and Moscow share intelligence to coordinate air strikes against the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front and prohibit the Syrian air force from attacking moderate rebel groups. Meanwhile, Iran said on Monday Russia had stopped using an Iranian air base for strikes in Syria, bringing an abrupt halt to an unprecedented deployment that had been criticized both by the White House and some Iranian lawmakers. Last week long-range Russian Tupolev-22M3 bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers used Nojeh air base, near the city of Hamadan, in northwest Iran to launch air strikes against armed groups in Syria. In his first comments on Russia's use of the base, Kerry said: "You'll have to ask the Iranians and the Russians why they made whatever decision they made to something I'm not sure anybody had admitted previously was in fact going on." (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Andrew Roche)
Nairobi (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday said he hoped it was "very possible, even likely" he would hold talks on Syria with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

Washington and Moscow have been in contact for weeks over establishing military cooperation to fight the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria.

"We are indeed engaged currently in ongoing conversations that have been going on now for several weeks and it is my hope that we are reaching the end of those discussions one way or the other," Kerry told reporters during a visit to Kenya.

"In the next days, our teams will meet, this week, and depending on where those discussions go, it is very possible, even likely, that Foreign Minister Lavrov and I would meet," he said.

"But that decision has to be made on the basis of where we are in the next couple of days."

He added: "It is possible that something could be agreed at upon before the end of the month but I can't tell you whether it's likely. I wouldn't express optimism -- I would express hope."

Russia and the United States back opposing sides in Syria's five-year war, which has left 280,000 people dead and forced half the population to flee their homes.

Successive rounds of international negotiations to end the war, which erupted in 2011 after President Bashar al-Assad's regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against a pro-democracy revolt, have so far failed.

Russian planes have also been carrying out raids on Syrian rebel groups, some of which are supported by the United States.

US and allied forces, meanwhile, have been striking IS -- a target that Russia, separately, says it too pounding.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday Russia struck at IS from a base in western Iran, which is also an ally of Syria.

But Iran on Monday said that Russian raids from its territory were "a specific, authorised mission and it's over for now."

Kerry, asked about this development, declined to comment.

"On Russia, and bombings, and Iran, you'd have to ask the Iranians and the Russians why they made whatever decision they made to something that I'm not sure anybody had admitted previously was in fact going on," the secretary of state said.
Hasakeh (Syria) (AFP) - Kurdish fighters on Monday captured the central prison in Hasakeh after fierce clashes with Syrian regime forces and are in control of 90 percent of the northern city, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighting escalated after heavy overnight clashes that saw the Kurds make advances mostly in the south of the flashpoint city.

Hasakeh, capital of the northeastern province of the same name, is already mostly controlled by Kurdish forces although the majority of its residents are Arabs.

Regime and Kurdish forces share a common enemy in the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, but tensions have been growing between the two sides in Hasakeh leading to the latest clashes.

After hours of calm late Sunday, clashes broke out after midnight in the southern district of Ghweiran and around the buildings of Al-Masaken, which the Kurds later captured, said the monitor.

They also routed regime forces from the eastern part of Ghweiran, the largest neighbourhood in Hasakeh, and overran the An-Nashwa area in the south of the city.

The Kurdish forces also seized control of the central prison located in Ghweiran, said the Observatory.

"The Kurds now control 90 percent of the city," said the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

A Kurdish official in the city had earlier said that Kurdish police known as the Asayesh were in control of 85 percent of Hasakeh.

"The areas that have been captured will not be returned to the regime. They will remain under Asayesh control," Meskin Ahmed said in an online conference call with reporters.

The Observatory said the fighting came as Russian officials pressed mediation efforts amid conflicting reports on whether a truce had been agreed.

Syrian military source and state media had said a ceasefire deal had been reached but the Kurds denied this.

A journalist working with AFP confirmed that clashes were heard in southern and central Hasakeh and that pro-government fighters could be seen retreating from parts of Ghweiran.

Story continues

- Russian mediation -

Clashes erupted last week between the Asayesh and the pro-government National Defence Forces militia (NDF). It escalated Thursday when regime warplanes bombarded Kurdish-held positions in the city for the first time.

That action came close to sparking the intervention of US warplanes when Washington warned against strikes that might endanger its military advisers with the Kurds on the ground.

The fighting in Hasakeh has also drawn in the Syrian army and the powerful Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

Kurds, who run autonomous institutions across much of northeast Syria, have often called for the dissolution of the NDF.

In an attempt to end the violence, Russian officials based at Hmeimim military airport on the coast flew to the nearby city of Qamishli to hold mediation talks.

A Syrian military source told AFP late Sunday that a ceasefire deal had been reached to end hostilities, hand back any new positions seized during the clashes and evacuate the wounded to Qamishli.

On Monday, a Syrian military source accused the YPG of "violating the agreement by refusing to allow safe passage for the dead and wounded to reach Qamishli".

But Kurdish sources have insisted that no agreement was reached at all.

One official in the Kurdish autonomous administration said talks "via indirect mediation" were still discussing "the dissolution of the NDF in Hasakeh".

He said Kurdish forces "have no plans as of now to seize control of all of Hasakeh".
This Sunday on TNTs The Last Ship, the Nathan James was the site of some unexpected on-board battles, while back home Kara scrambled to find someone to trust.

RELATEDTNTs The Last Ship Renewed for Season 4

Having witnessed the execution of Secretary Rivera and Senator Beatty by Secret Service agents, Kara sent her baby off to be safe with her mother (and Tom Chandlers father), before carefully reaching out to Allison Shaw. Upon seeing that Allison dispatched Secret Service agents to nab her at their arranged rendezvous, Kara realized that the chief of staff was in on the coup. Kara sought out and looped in reporter Jacob Barnes, who himself was shocked to see President Oliver reverse Micheners domestic policies. Since Barnes has White House access, Kara tasked him with snooping in Beattys office to see why the senator was delivering troop readiness reports to Rivera at the time they were killed.

Barnes has little luck  Beattys office was already being cleared out  but his conspicuous visit landed him on the Secret Services radar. As such, an agent showed up at the reporters apartment to take both him and Kara out. Barnes got winged, but Kara used Barnes shotgun to blow away their attacker. Thanks to Karas computer-savvy colleague Dennis, she and Barnes had deduced that the regional leaders were fortifying remote prisons, to accommodate the citizens who do not comply with the new policies. Whats more, they learn while driving away, actual walls are being erected on the regional borders!

RELATEDThe Librarians Season 3, Michelle Dockerys Good Behavior Get TNT Premiere Dates

Meanwhile on the Nathan James.

Captain Meylan of the critically damaged Hayward is already iffy on Chandlers decision-making, especially when the CNO barters scarce rations to Takehayas pirate pals in exchange for a needed cipher. After Allison Shaw leverages President Oliver to sign off on Chandlers arrest order, Meylan is empowered to relieve the CNO as well as Slattery of duty, and steer the Nathan James back toward Pearl Harbor. Chandler, though, smells a rat back home and thus sets in motion a plan that will dictate an immediate at-sea trial, upon him resigning his commission. Slattery meanwhile conspires with the James crew to stage a mess hall riot, during which they get their hands on the key to the armory. They then deftly take over the ship (using ammo-free guns, we were told and shown many times!!!!), ending with the room in which Chandler is giving an opening statement at his trial.

Story continues

Meylan gets in a self-righteous moment, gloating about how he was right about Chandler all along, to which the CNO shoots back that when all is said and done, if he is in the wrong, hell have a far higher power to answer to than the likes of Meylan!

What did you think of the episode Scuttle? And which among you has surmised who Kara has set out to track down?

Related stories

Major Crimes: Jaime Ray Newman to Recur in 'Difficult' Storyline

What Is Mr. Robot's Crime? Did Guilt Wig You Out? Will Ryan Lochte Go Dancing With the Stars? And More Qs!

Carrie Preston Joins TNT's Claws Pilot
Madrid (AFP) - Victor Diaz scored the only goal as Leganes defeated Celta Vigo 1-0 on Monday in the club's first ever game in the Spanish top flight.

Diaz steered in from a corner on 75 minutes to hand Leganes victory on their La Liga debut, having won promotion to the top tier by finishing runners-up in Spain's second division last season.

Leganes, who were founded in 1928, will host Atletico Madrid at their modest 8,000-seater stadium on the outskirts of the Spanish capital in their first home game next weekend before champions Barcelona visit next month.

Meanwhile, Las Palmas stunned Valencia 4-2 at the Mestalla with Croatian striker Marko Livaja netting a brace in the final game of the opening round of matches in Spain.

Santi Mina headed Valencia into a sixth-minute lead, but Livaja equalised before Jonathan Viera converted a penalty and Kevin-Prince Boateng stretched the visitors' advantage on his Las Palmas debut.

Mina struck again to make it 3-2 after just 34 minutes but Livaja rounded out a famous victory late on.
Benghazi (Libya) (AFP) - Libya's internationally recognised parliament on Monday voted no confidence in a UN-backed unity government, in a blow to efforts to end the country's political chaos.

But lawmakers gave prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj a 10-day deadline to come up with a new unity government line-up, they said in a statement issued later.

The Government of National Accord led by Sarraj is struggling to assert its authority in Libya, which has been riven by turmoil since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

National support for the GNA is seen as crucial to restoring stability and to tackling the Libyan branch of the Islamic State group, which pro-GNA forces are battling in the jihadists' coastal stronghold of Sirte.

But at a session on Monday, the House of Representatives, Libya's recognised legislature based in the far east, refused to give its support to the GNA.

"The majority of lawmakers present at the parliament session voted no confidence in the government," said parliament spokesman Adam Boussakhra.

Parliament speaker Aguila Saleh as well as 101 lawmakers attended Monday's vote, the assembly said on its website.

Sixty-one parliamentarians rejected the GNA, it said, 39 abstained from voting and a lone parliamentarian voted confidence in the government.

The unity government was the result of a UN-brokered power-sharing deal struck in December, but has struggled to unite the North African country and fully assert its authority.

A rival government in the east has refused to cede power until the House of Representatives passes a vote of confidence, which has been repeatedly delayed including over a lack of quorum.

Monday's vote was "the first time quorum has been reached in five months," Boussakhra said.

After one such vote postponement in February, 100 lawmakers in the 198-member legislature said they supported the GNA but had faced intimidation.

- 'Last chance' -

Story continues

The parliament, in a statement approved by lawmakers who attended Monday's session, gave Sarraj a "last chance" to present a new line-up for a unity government within 10 days.

It called for "a consensus between members of the presidential council" of the GNA headed by Sarraj to select no more than eight to 12 candidates for the new cabinet.

Sarraj named a cabinet of 18 ministers in February, and four of them were dismissed last month because they never took office.

Mattia Toaldo, a Libya expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, warned Monday's vote could lead to "a new institutional crisis" in the war-wracked country and called for "immediate international mediation".

"We will have to see if Sarraj and the members of the (House of Representatives) who support him will accept the legitimacy of the vote," he said.

The GNA last month moved into its official Tripoli offices, more than 100 days after starting to work from a naval base in the capital.

Since the prime minister-designate arrived in Tripoli on March 30, the GNA has won the loyalty of the central bank and national oil corporation -- depositors of the country's wealth -- as well as cities and armed groups in western Libya.

And Sarraj's government has managed to gather forces who since May 12 have been battling to kick IS out of Sirte east of the capital.

Pro-GNA fighters, backed by US air strikes, have recaptured more ground from jihadists holed up in the centre of Sirte in recent days.

The jihadists seized control of Sirte, Kadhafi's hometown, in June 2015, raising fears they would use the city as a springboard for attacks across the Mediterranean in Europe.

Libya descended into chaos after the 2011 revolution that toppled and killed Kadhafi, with rival authorities vying for control of the country.

The House of Representatives has been based in the eastern city of Tobruk since a militia alliance including Islamists seized the capital in mid-2014.

More than 2.4 million people in Libya are in need of humanitarian assistance, the UN said on Friday.
Vilnius (AFP) - Lithuania on Monday signed a deal for German-made armoured vehicles intended to boost its defence capabilities, as it seeks to allay concerns of a military resurgence of Russia on its doorstep.

In its biggest-ever arms purchase, the Baltic NATO member will buy 88 Boxer armoured fighting vehicles for 386 million euros ($435 million).

Produced by the German-Dutch ARTEC consortium, the vehicles are fitted with Israeli-made turrets.

"It's a long-term investment into national defence and also a signal that Lithuania takes its security and investing in it seriously," Defence Minister Juozas Olekas said after inking the deal.

The first vehicles are expected to arrive in Lithuania in 2017 and the rest by 2021.

The largest of the three Baltic states that broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991, Lithuania has increased its defence budget by about a third each year since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.

Next year, the nation of three million has earmarked 725 million euros for defence, or 1.79 percent of economic output.

Alarmed by the Russian annexation of Crimea and a series of war drills staged near its borders, it also reintroduced limited conscription last year.

Despite the efforts, Lithuania largely depends on its NATO partners to guarantee its security.

Germany agreed to lead a multinational battalion in Lithuania last month when NATO approved a troop boost in the Baltic states and Poland to reassure allies once ruled from Moscow.

The Kremlin denies any territorial ambitions and insists that NATO is trying to encircle Russia.
Controversial pop music svengali Lou Pearlman - who died on Aug. 19 at 62, while serving a 25-year prison sentence for running a $300 million Ponzi scheme - managed, signed and/or helped create a number of acts that notched mega hits and massive sales. Among them: *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, O-Town, LFO and Aaron Carter. While his legacy is unquestionably a troubled one, there's no contesting the impact his acts had on the charts. Here's a look at some of the chart numbers and staggering sales figures behind a few of those acts.

Lou Pearlman, Disgraced Backstreet Boys, 'NSYNC Svengali, Dies at 62

Backstreet Boys: The quintet made its Billboard chart debut on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart dated Oct. 14, 1995 with "We've Got It Goin' On," and two weeks later, hit the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 97.

While "We've Got It Goin' On" only rose to No. 69, it was the start of something big for Backstreet Boys on the charts. The group claimed its second Hot 100 hit in June of 1997 with what would become its highest charting single ever: "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)." The track would peak at No. 2 for two weeks that summer. Meanwhile, the act's self-titled debut album entered the Billboard 200 chart on Aug. 30, 1997 and eventually peaked at No. 4 the following January. The set was a monster hit, spending 133 weeks on the chart, and was ranked in the top 10 for nearly every week for the following year.

However, in May of 1998, Backstreet Boys filed suit against Pearlman, claiming they had not been properly compensated for their work. (Pearlman recruited the members of Backstreet Boys in 1992 and 1993, and eventually signed them to Jive Records.)

By the end of 1998, Backstreet Boys' eponymous album had sold 7 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music. It was the year's third-biggest selling album (5.7 million), behind only Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love (5.9 million) and the Titanic soundtrack (9.3 million).

Story continues

As for its suit against Pearlman, the group eventually settled with him in 1999, though the act sued him again numerous times until the deal was renegotiated.

In the midst of all these legal entanglements, Backstreet Boys were still racking up the hits. By the end of 1999, the group had claimed nine hits on the Pop Songs airplay chart, including the chart-topping "I Want It That Way." The tune would later earn a Grammy Award nomination for record of the year.

In the summer of 1999, the group issued its second album, Millennium, led by "I Want It That Way." The album blasted in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart dated June 5, selling 1.13 million copies in its first week - at the time, the largest sales week for an album since Nielsen began tracking sales in 1991. The album spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and finished 1999 as the year's top selling album (9.4 million sold that year).

Backstreet Boys chalked up another million-selling week, and another No. 1, with its next album, 2000's Black & Blue (selling 1.6 million in its first week). In total, Backstreet Boys scored nine charting albums on the Billboard 200 in its career - with all nine of them reaching the top 10. To date, Backstreet Boys have sold 31.5 million albums in the U.S. Of that sum, 12.3 million is from Millennium, and 10.2 million is from the group's self-titled debut.

Archives -- Boy Band Mogul Lou Pearlman's Prison Interview: My Ponzi Scheme Was Smarter Than Madoff's

*NSYNC: As Backstreet Boys made waves on the charts, another Pearlman-commissioned act, *NSYNC, began to flourish. The group was assembled in 1995 by TransContinental Records and signed to BMG Ariola in Germany the next year. *NSYNC found its initial success in Europe before being embraced by American audiences. BMG label RCA Records issued the group's self-titled debut album in the U.S. in 1998, and released its first American single, "I Want You Back." The track debuted on the Pop Songs airplay chart dated Jan. 31, 1998 and eventually peaked at No. 7 on May 9 of that year.

The *NSYNC album debuted on the Billboard 200 chart on April 11, 1998, and rose to No. 2 in October. The set spawned four Pop Songs chart hits: "I Want You Back," "Tearin' Up My Heart" (No. 6), "(God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time On You" (No. 5) and "I Drive Myself Crazy" (No. 14).

Toward the end of 1998, the group issued a holiday album, Home for Christmas, which peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on the Holiday Albums chart. For five weeks, both *NSYNC and Home for Christmas concurrently charted in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart. At the close of 1998, *NSYNC's debut album ranked as the year's No. 5 biggest seller (4.3 million).

The following March, *NSYNC attempted to renegotiate its deal with TransContinental Records, but could not agree on new terms. Eventually, after months of legal wrangling, *NSYNC signed a deal with Jive Records in September of 1999. That move prompted BMG and Pearlman to sue *NSYNC and Jive's parent company, Zomba, for breach of contract. Ultimately, in December of 1999, all parties settled, clearing the path for *NSYNC to announce the release of its second studio album, No Strings Attached.

The set was led by the single "Bye Bye Bye" in January of 2000, and the track shot to No. 1 on the Pop Songs chart dated March 4, 2000 and spent 10 weeks at No. 1. It was followed by a second No. 1, "It's Gonna Be Me," in July. (That was also the group's first No. 1 on Hot 100 chart.)

No Strings Attached arrived on the Billboard 200 albums chart dated April 8, 2000, selling a then-Nielsen-era record of 2.42 million copies in its first week. That record would stand until Adele's 25 was released in 2015, selling 3.38 million in its first frame.

No Strings Attached spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and finished the year as the top selling album (9.93 million).

In total, *NSYNC racked up 12 hits on both the Pop Songs airplay chart and the Billboard Hot 100, and a total of six albums on the Billboard 200. Following No Strings Attached, *NSYNC claimed one more No. 1: Celebrity, in 2001 (bowing with 1.88 million sold). It remains the group's final studio effort. In total, *NSYNC has sold 28.7 million albums in the U.S. (including 11.2 million from No Strings Attached, its biggest seller, and 8.9 million from its eponymous debut).

Justin Timberlake, Lance Bass & More React to Lou Pearlman's Death

O-Town, Aaron Carter and LFO: Pearlman initially managed O-Town after the group was assembled on the reality show Making the Band in 2000. O-Town busted out of the gate in late 2000 with the No. 10-peaking Hot 100 hit "Liquid Dreams." The quintet followed it up with its highest charting single, the No. 3-peaking "All or Nothing." The group's self-titled debut album peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart in February of 2001, and has sold 1.7 million copies. A second album, O2, followed in 2002, peaking at No. 28 (258,000 copies sold).

Carter - the younger brother of Backstreet Boys' Nick Carter - was signed to a recording deal with TransContinental Records in 1997 when he was 10 years old. By 2002, Carter's parents sued TransContinental for payments and royalties owed to Aaron. They eventually settled out of court. He later sued Pearlman in 2007 to get out of his recording contract and won.

Carter didn't find much success on the radio airwaves (he never charted a hit on the Pop Songs airplay chart), but was a big seller in terms of albums. He moved a total of 4.7 million albums in the U.S., notching a pair of million sellers with Aaron's Party (Come Get It) (2.7 million) and Oh Aaron (1.3 million).

LFO, who notched a smash single with "Summer Girls," was also managed by TransContinental Management and signed to its label. "Summer Girls" peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100 in August of 1999 and was followed by a second top 10 single, "Girl on TV," which reached No. 10 that December. The trio's self-titled album (released through Arista Records) peaked at No. 21 on the Billboard 200 and went on to sell 1.5 million. A follow-up set, Life Is Good, was issued in 2001 and sold 310,000.
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore (Ret.), who was the Joint Katrina Task Force commander, weighed in on the aftermath from the flooding in southern Louisiana.

Honore explained that along with the direct impact on Louisiana residents, their families and homes, the flooding also affected a tremendous amount of local businesses.

This is a real tragedy that has happened here in this flood because its taken out so many of our local businesses  about 7,300 businesses in the flood zone we estimate, are now closed. People are not going to go to work there today because they have nothing to sell and they cant do business and about 60% of our people here work in small businesses so it has a cascading effect, Honore told the FOX Business Networks Sandra Smith.

According to Honore, the school system in the area was affected as well.

In some parishes nearly three-quarters of schools were under water and we have to find alternative places for children to go to school.

Honore responded to criticisms of President Obamas decision not to cut his vacation on Marthas Vineyard short to survey the damage in the region.

As a military guy having done this twice while in uniform, deal with a major disaster, now as a volunteer here on the ground and a resident of Baton Rouge, Ive come to a resounding conclusion. We do not need presidents doing search and rescue. We ought to make it a rule, we dont need them on the ground, we need to be able to spend those assets saving peoples lives. What we do need from these presidents is the authority for the federal government, just like FEMA did after this storm and during this storm, to get on the ground early.

Honore then discussed the insufficient funding making it to Louisiana residents to get them back in their homes.

And were going to have to get FEMA to open the books up a little bit because the amount of recovery money theyve been paying is too small to help these people get back in their homes.

Story continues

Honore gave kudos to many in the private sector that have donated time and money to helping those impacted by the flooding.

We have companies that have been reaching out from throughout America. Tyson, to mention oneCoca-Cola, theyve all stepped up. Budweiser turning their distributors into making water. And theyre taking care of their employees.

Honore then spoke of the ways Americans across the country can help support flood victims in Louisiana through the recovery process.

Well the quickest way to help is donations through the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, which the governor has commissioned to accept donations, as well as through the American Red Cross. The Red Cross estimates they will spend $30 million here, about $10 million a week as long as we have people in shelters and taking food out to people in the communities. But reach out through your church, where you work, everybody around here, everywhere you go is looking out for their neighbors, looking out for their employees.

Related Articles
By Sam Karlin BATON ROUGE, La. (Reuters) - Quenton Robins watched on Sunday morning as a giant metal claw clamped down on his mother's ruined belongings, snapping wooden cabinets with an audible crack as the operator of a giant mechanized arm slowly cleared a mound of debris from her yard in Baton Rouge. Five feet (1.5 meters) of water swept through the homes in the quiet Park Forest neighborhood just over a week ago, shocking residents who had been told they did not live in a flood zone. "It's not a flood zone," said Robins, a 27-year-old Navy veteran. "At least it didn't used to be." As efforts in Louisiana turn from rescue to recovery, renters and homeowners who do not have flood insurance are facing an uncertain financial future. Private insurers do not cover flood damage and flood insurance in the United States is underwritten by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Homeowners who live in designated high-risk flood zones are required to carry flood insurance if they have a federally backed mortgage. In Louisiana, an estimated 42 percent of homes in high-risk areas have flood insurance, according to FEMA. Only 12.5 percent of homeowners in low and moderate-risk zones do. Many of the areas hit hard by record rainfall last week were not considered at high risk for flooding. Those residents without flood insurance are eligible for up to $33,000 in FEMA individual disaster assistance funds, although most will likely receive less than that, based on payments following other major disasters. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, FEMA paid $6.6 billion to approximately 1.07 million households and individuals in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, an average of just over $6,000 per grant, according to agency figures. Superstorm Sandy in 2012 produced an average payout of under $8,000 for about 180,000 residents of New York and New Jersey. FEMA spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said the individual assistance is intended to supplement insurance and to provide short-term relief for immediate needs. "It's not designed to make survivors whole again," said Lemaitre, adding that FEMA recommends all homeowners obtain flood insurance regardless of the risk in their area. He also said residents could apply for low-cost loans from the Small Business Administration. FEMA has approved more than $55 million in aid so far and some 106,000 Louisiana residents have registered for emergency assistance after the record floods, which killed at least 13 and damaged more than 60,000 homes. U.S. President Barack Obama plans to visit Baton Rouge on Tuesday. Down the street from Robins' mother, retired widow Betty Bailey sat in the shade of her carport, waiting for her damaged possessions to be taken away. Bailey, who did not have flood insurance, said she moved to the neighborhood in part because it is not in a flood zone. When she applied for FEMA aid, she said they recommended she look into loans to cover her losses. "How do they know I can afford a loan with all the bills I already have?" Bailey said. "That's not right." Looking out at her neighborhood, Bailey added, "Some of these houses will never be built back." (Additional reporting and writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Bill Trott)
Access speeds to boost to more than 1Gbps by 2017.

M1 subscribers can look forward to faster internet speeds as the company commenced the rollout of Singapore's first commercial nationwide Heterogenous Network (HetNet), the integration of large and small cells with wireless radio technologies such as cellular and WiFi.

HetNet will enable M1 to provide the best coverage and network capacity to meet the escalating consumer demands.

With the help of Nokia's Flexi Zone small cells and WiFi equipment across hundreds of high-traffic hotspots, M1 plans to deploy HetNet spots in MRT/LRT stations, malls and popular outdoor areas to boost peak download speeds of more than 1Gbps.

Nokia's small cells' compact footprints would allow M1 to deploy HetNet to hard-to-reach areas such as car parks, basements and parks.

Earlier this year, M1 started HetNet trials in different sites across the city-state. The trials saw subscribers reporting up to 60% improvement in download speeds.

Info-communications Media Development Authority of Singapore Chief Executive Gabriel Lim said this project is part of the city-state's thrust to gear towards a Smart Nation.

"The results from our HetNet technology trials were positive. 90% of users enjoyed a better mobile experience, with faster download and upload speeds. We are pleased that the trials have given our partners such as M1 useful insights and confidence to further enhance the mobile experience through commercial HetNet deployment," he said.

Meanwhile, M1 Chief Executive Officer Karen Kooi sees HetNet deployment as an integral part of the telco's 5G network roadmap.

Our HetNet rollout will enable us to further enrich our customers lives. This HetNet deployment is also an integral part of our 5G network roadmap, the infrastructure on which we will build an ubiquitous on-demand, high-performance 5G service for our customers and that enables us to support our Smart Nation vision," Kooi said.





More From Singapore Business Review


A prosecutor who helped get Steven Avery exonerated in 2003 slams the filmmakers behind Making a Murderer in an upcoming tell-all book, claiming they manipulate and distort the truth about the murder trial that landed Avery back in prison.

Michael Griesbach, author of Indefensible: The Missing Truth about Steven Avery, Teresa Halbach and Making a Murderer,' told TheWrap that the Netflix docuseries makes for compelling television, but is wittingly misleading.

I do have a lot of respect for the scale and hard work  its an engrossing show or series and its very well done, Griesbach said. I know they are well intentioned, but what I dont have respect for is presenting something as objective and claiming its objectivity while clearly knowing it isnt.

Also Read: 'Making a Murderer': Nancy Grace Thinks Brendan Dassey Belongs in Prison

Griesbach, while working as an assistant District Attorney in Manitowoc in 2003, spent days analyzing the hair evidence that would later exonerate Avery in the 1985 rape of Penny Beerntsen. Working with the Wisconsin Innocence Project, Griesbach saw Avery freed after he spent 18 years in prison.

And when the call came in that Halbachs car had been found at the Avery Salvage Yard, Griesbach was on call in the DAs office and was dispatched to the scene.

Following the December 2015 debut of Making a Murderer, Griesbach, who is currently on the board of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, re-examined the evidence, comparing it in painstaking detail with the show. After around a month and a half researching and reading through transcripts and online coverage, he took three months off from work to write his book.

What he found, he claims in the book, was an instance of selective editing that would make any propagandist proud. For instance, Griesbach compared the transcript from the trial with the footage of Sgt. Andrew Colborns testimony used in Making a Murderer, which many believe proved that he found Halbachs Toyota RAV4 two days before it was officially discovered on the Avery property. The discrepancy has been used to fuel accusations that he planting the evidence.

Story continues

Also Read: 'Making a Murderer': Brendan Dassey's Former Lawyer Speaks Out on Conviction Being Overturned

First, portions of Colborns actual trial testimony were removed from the documentary to make it appear he answered a question in the affirmative that he never answered at all, Griesbach writes. Second, a question that would have helped explain his side of the story to the viewers is never heard.

Griesbach included the official transcript from the trial, including three passages of dialogue that were omitted by Making a Murderer documentarians Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos.

Whoa! The documentarians had literally spliced testimony to manipulate and distort the truth, he adds in the book.

Griesbach told TheWrap he had an inkling that the documentary was biased while being interviewed for it. I made it clear that I thought Avery was getting a fair trial. It became clear very quickly that they didnt look at it that way.

When he began watching the series, it really hit me. Really quickly, within a couple minutes, I could tell that this was not going to be an objective account of the story.

Later in the book, he talks about the infamous blood vial, which Averys defense team, consisting of Jerry Buting and Dean Strang, claimed was tampered with because of a hole on the rubber stopper.

Also Read: 'Making a Murderer' Filmmakers Respond to Brendan Dassey's Overturned Conviction

It was a red herring  a misleading piece of filmmaking if ever there was one, using an argument so outlandish that not even Averys attorneys made much of it during the trial, wrote Griesbach. It was clear that Making a Murderer had badly manipulated the significance of the vials condition  neither the hole in the stopper nor the dried blood were signs of tampering.

Furthermore, Griesbach claims in the book that the documentary has harmed a good number of innocent people  some on a minor level, but others on a grander scale. Hes referring to Brendans brother Bobby Dassey and his future stepfather, Scott Tadych, who quickly became suspects among viewers of the Netflix series.

Neither Dassey nor Tadych had anything to do with Halbachs murder, but by carefully editing court testimony, the makers of Making a Murderer made them into murderers, at least in the eyes of some viewers.

Griesbach told TheWrap that no reasonable person who considers all the evidence in this case, and not just what Making a Murderer chose to show them, could come away thinking anything other than that Steven Avery is guilty.

By excluding facts that dont fit their aim and manipulating others, they have distorted the truth beyond recognition, he writes at the end of the book. Making a Murderer is part of a troubling trend  the courting of public opinion in support of a cause by the production of a propaganda piece disguised as an objective documentary.

Also Read: 'Making a Murderer': Would Brendan Dassey's Conviction Have Been Overturned Without the Series?

Indefensible, which hits shelves on Aug. 30, is Griesbachs second book about Avery. In 2014, he published The Innocent Killer, which focused on both Averys first wrongful conviction and the Halbach case. Griesbach wants to make it clear that he is not speaking on behalf of the prosecution or the Wisconsin Innocence Project.

The filmmakers declined TheWraps request for comment.

Related stories from TheWrap:

Lawyers: Brendan Dassey of 'Making a Murderer' Could Sue for Millions

'Making a Murderer' DA Explains 5 Pieces of Evidence Not Shown in Doc Series (Video)

'Making a Murderer': Would Brendan Dassey's Conviction Have Been Overturned Without the Series?
The Hague (AFP) - A Malian jihadist pleaded guilty Monday to attacking the fabled city of Timbuktu and begged forgiveness as the world was shown sickening videos of him tearing down centuries-old Muslim shrines with a pick-axe.

At the opening of his unprecedented war crimes trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC), Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi also urged other Muslims not to follow such "evil" ways.

Mahdi, a former teacher and Islamic scholar, is the first person to plead guilty before the ICC and the first to face a lone charge for the war crime of directing an attack on a historic or religious monument.

"I plead guilty," Mahdi said, after being read the charge arising from the 2012 attack on the UNESCO world heritage site when a group of Islamist jihadists swept across Mali's remote north.

Armed with videos, graphics and 360 degree landscapes, ICC prosecutors minutely catalogued before the three judges the destruction in the west African city, dubbed "The Pearl of the Desert."

The first of three prosecution witness also described the detailed methods, including satellite imagery, used to investigate the destruction.

Aged about 40, Mahdi is also the first Islamist extremist to appear before the tribunal launched in The Hague in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes, and the first facing allegations stemming from the conflict in Mali.

He is accused of "intentionally directing attacks" against nine of Timbuktu's famous mausoleums as well as the Sidi Yahia mosque between June 30 and July 11, 2012.

- City of saints -

Founded between the fifth and the 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktu's very name evokes centuries of history and has also been called "the city of 333 saints" for the number of Muslim sages buried there.

Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries and a designated UNESCO world heritage site, Timbuktu was considered idolatrous by the jihadists.

Story continues

Prosecutors on Monday showed shocking images of jihadists smashing down the tombs, pushing down earthen walls that had stood for hundreds of years and hacking at them with pick-axes while their assault rifles lay nearby.

In one video, Mahdi and others were seen ripping open the door of the Sidi Yahia mosque, which had been kept closed for hundreds of years.

ICC prosecutors allege Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly ethnic Tuareg movement that in 2012 took control of Timbuktu, some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) northeast of Bamako, along with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Mahdi, who was then head of the "Hisbah" or the "Manners Brigade", said he regretted the damage he had caused and was "really sorry".

"I would like to seek the pardon of all the whole people of Timbuktu," he said.

Transferred to the ICC by Niger in 2015, Mahdi was seen as a ruthless jihadist enforcer, fiercely imposing the strictest interpretation of Sharia law.

But vowing that was all in the past, he sought to distance himself from the jihadists describing their acts as "evil."

Dressed in a Western suit with a blue-and-white striped tie instead of his earlier white collarless shirt, he said he hoped "the years I will spend in prison will be a source of purging the evil spirits that had overtaken me".

- Mankind's heritage -

Amid scenes of similar destruction in Iraq and Syria, the ICC prosecutors have said the case is about much more than just stones and walls.

Such "deliberate attacks on cultural property have become actual weapons of war," ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the court.

"The heritage of mankind was ransacked," she said, adding that the jihadists "wanted to destroy these monuments and simply wipe them off the map".

The judgement will follow later, but it was revealed that the defence and prosecution have struck a deal under which Mahdi would not appeal a jail term of between nine to 11 years.

The judges warned however the court is not bound by the deal, and he could face up to 30 years imprisonment.

Critics have also urged the court to investigate allegations of other crimes committed during the Mali conflict, including rape and other sexual violence.
From Popular Mechanics

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker just signed into law a new fee that will be levied on ride sharing companies like Uber and Lyft. Five cents of every 20 cent fee will go to a subsidy for traditional taxi services. The rest of the fee will be split among local municipalities and public transportation. This is the first fee of its kind in the United States.

This small fee could be a major boon for the ailing taxi industry, making millions every year. Lyft and Uber serve a combined 2.5 million rides per month in the state.

Some ride sharing executives are not pleased by the decision. "I don't think we should be in the business of subsidizing potential competitors," Kirill Evdakov, the the CEO of ride sharing service Fasten, told Reuters.

Taxi associations, on the other hand, wish the law had gone further, possibly by banning the ride sharing services altogether. "They've been breaking the laws that are on the books, that we've been following for many years," Larry Meister, manager of Boston's Independent Taxi Operator's Association, said.

The fee is temporary, designed to scale itself back over the next few years. The five cent fee for the taxi industry will be collected until 2021. At that point, the 20 cent fee will be split between towns and cities and the state. The fee will go away altogether in 2026.

Officials hope that the fee will go towards needed improvements to taxi service, like a revamped smartphone app and driver hospitality training. "We definitely need some infrastructure changes," Meister said.

Source: Reuters

You Might Also Like
PORT LOUIS (Reuters) - Mauritius said on Monday its trade deficit widened 7.1 percent to 6.21 billion rupees in June from the same period a year earlier, hit by a dip in exports of machinery and transport equipment. The Indian Ocean island nation's earnings from exports fell 15 percent to 7.37 billion rupees, the government's statistics office said in a statement. France was the main destination for Mauritius's exports, followed by the United States and Britain. Foreign sales of machinery and transport equipment declined to 621 million rupees from 1.48 billion. Total imports fell 6.1 percent to 13.59 billion rupees. Some 19.9 percent came from China. (Reporting by Jean Paul Arouff; Editing by Aaron Maasho and John Stonestreet)
habitable goldilocks zone earth exoplanets nasa

How does life emerge in the universe?

Just seat a rocky, Earth-like planet at the right distance from a sun  not too close and hot, not too far and cold  and liquid water and perhaps alien life could exist. Scientists call this the "Goldilocks zone:" just right for life.

But astronomers have increasingly wondered what else makes Earth so unique a world.

One "killer app" of our home planet seems to be its ever-creeping plates of rocky crust and active volcanoes, a system called plate tectonics. After all, plate tectonics once saved Earth from turning into a snowball (as well as a Venus-like hothouse) by regulating greenhouse gases. It also constantly shuttles minerals to the surface that life needs to survive.

Many scientists assume that plate tectonics is a given on rocky, Earth-like worlds, but this may be rarer than anyone imagined.

A new study in the journal Science Advances questions the idea that rocky worlds "self regulate" their heat after forming.

The implications could be enormous, says study author Jun Korenaga, a geophysicist at Yale University. Essentially, we could be overlooking another "Goldilocks" factor in our searches for worlds habitable to aliens: a planet's initial temperature.

If you're a planet and you start out too hot, the thick layer of rock below the crust called the mantle doesn't give you plate tectonics. If you're too cold, you also don't get plate tectonics. The mantle is not as forgiving as scientists once assumed: you have to have the right internal temperature to begin with.

"Though it's difficult to be specific about how much, it surely does reduce the number of habitable worlds," Korenaga wrote in an email to Business Insider. "Most ... Earth-like planets (in terms of size) probably wouldn't evolve like Earth and wouldn't have an Earth-like atmosphere."

That would mean that many planets in the "Goldilocks" zone may not be habitable after all.

Story continues

Core dynamics

earth core crust mantle layers shutterstock

Most planets come together by sweeping up gas and dust around a star  a fairly calm and cool process, as far as building worlds is concerned.

But Earth's birth was hot and messy.

Around 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-size planet smacked into a much larger planet, spraying a cloud of debris into space that became the moon. The bigger, molten mass of rock, metal, and radioactive elements left behind coalesced into Earth, trapping the heat of its violent collision inside.

Korenaga's study argues that this starting internal temperature could be far more important than previous studies suggest.

"[H]ow a planet forms in the first few tens of million years could have a profound impact on its subsequent evolution over a few billion years," Korenaga wrote in the study.

A popular idea about Earth-size rocky planets is that, within about 200 million years, the mantle  the engine of plate tectonics  starts to self-regulate the escape of a planet's internal heat. It does this by convecting hot rock upward and pulling cold rock downward. (Convection is the same action that moves water being heated up on a stove and causes warm air to rise up through the floors of a house.)

venus hemisphere nasa map

This action can stabilize surface temperature, bury carbon, birth volcanoes that belch out complex atmospheres, and expose rare minerals that life needs to grow and survive.

This worked splendidly on Earth, but smaller rocky planets like Mars and Venus weren't so lucky. Those planets have a "stagnant lid" of relatively unbroken crust, and in Venus' case, the consequences are clear: Without the ability to bury carbon in the atmosphere, the surface turned into an 860-degree-Fahrenheit hell.

Something needs to kick-start the process required to regulate a planet's surface temperature, that careful balancing act that traps the right amount of cold and pushes up the right amount of heat. Typically, the thinking goes, its radioactive elements in the rock that set this process in motion.

But Korenaga recently learned that radioactive elements may be warming and stirring up Earth's mantle a lot less than previously thought  so he decided to run advanced computer simulations to account for this new information.

The new models suggest that rocky planets which can regulate their temperature, and thus develop all the geologic support systems life needs to emerge and thrive, are much rarer than we might hope.

What's more, the models also hint that "super-Earths"  rocky worlds more than two times Earth's mass  may be more likely to have stagnant lids, and thus have a harder go at developing a surface that's cozy enough for aliens.

"Most ... previous studies have assumed that Earth-like planets self-regulate, and we need to lift the assumption and become much more open-minded," he wrote. "[A] planet like Earth could well be the one of a kind in the universe."

Korenaga noted that measuring the internal temperature of rocky worlds from afar, even with future space-based observatories, is not going to be easy. "We can't remote-sense the internal temperature directly, so we will need to rely on the connection between the atmospheric composition and the internal temperature," he wrote.

Life may still find a way on 'stagnant' worlds

earth and moon

Lena Noack, a planetary scientist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium who wasn't involved in Korenaga's study, said the work adds an important variable to consider when seeking out extraterrestrial life.

"[I]t is not enough to consider only the distance of the planet to the star," Noack wrote in an email to Business Insider. "If Earth would have evolved into a stagnant lid planet, therefore lacking plate tectonics and continents, it is questionable how life on Earth would have evolved."

But other researchers we contacted, who also didn't contribute to the study, seemed more optimistic.

Tilman Spohn, a planetary scientist at the German Aerospace Center, said that while he agrees the traditional "Goldilocks" zone for habitable worlds is a bit "crude," Korenaga's study is "not as straightforward" as a press release about it suggests.

"[W]e still do not fully understand how plate tectonics comes about," Spohn wrote in an email to Business Insider, noting that plate tectonics does seem useful to life. "Does that mean that only plate tectonics planets would be habitable? It depends, I think, on the question of how far evolved life forms you request."

Vinciane Debaille, a geochemist at Universite libre de Bruxelles, added to this idea, making clear that plate tectonics may not be a necessary condition for life to emerge.

"For life appearing, we need liquid water, organic matter and nutriments, [and] this can be done on a planet without plate tectonics, because the heat needed for keeping the water liquid at the surface is mainly provided by the star," Debaille told Business Insider in an email.

What's more, she said, "Several studies indicate that the Earth was in a stagnant-lid state 3 billions years ago, and yet, life appeared ... so we should still be optimistic."

And Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at MIT who has thoroughly studied exoplanet habitability, has no plans to give up looking for cozy worlds among the stars.

"[R]ocky planets are very common," Seager wrote in an email to Business Insider. "[D]espite the expectations of huge planet diversity and the implications, there will still be a large number of planets that are habitable no matter what we think is required."

NOW WATCH: This Earth-moving event may have led to an explosion of coral reef species





More From Business Insider


Micrograph of prostatic adenocarcinoma (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

A number of hedge funds snapped up cancer drug maker Medivations stock during the second quarter possibly making for a nice win.

On Monday, Medivations (MDVN) stock surged around 20% after pharma giant Pfizer (PFE) said it would acquire the biotech company in a $14 billion deal. The stock was last trading up $13.33 at $80.50 per share.

Medivation just made its debut on Goldman Sachs 50 stocks that matter most to hedge funds list, ranking No. 17 on the list.

According to Goldman, 32 funds with 10 to 200 positions owned the stock as of the end of the second quarter. Of those funds, 23 held the stock as one of its top 10 long equity holdings, the report said.

Some hedge funds that opened a new position in Medivation during the second quarter include York Capital Management (5.07 million shares), Tourbillon Capital Partners (4.72 million shares), Pentwater Capital (4.28 million shares), and Eton Park Capital Management (3.08 million shares), 13-F filings show.

Meanwhile, hedge funds Adage Capital Partners and BlueMountain Capital Management increased their already existing position during the second quarter, the filings show.

Medivation investors are doing very well this year.

Elsewhere, a number of hedge funds ditched their Pfizer positions during the second quarter.

Pfizers stock also debuted on Goldman Sachs 50 stocks representing important short positions, placing 23 on the banks list of popular hedge fund shorts in the second quarter.

Hedge funds only have to disclose their long equity holdings in 13-F filings. These filings come out 45 days after the end of each quarter, so its possible they could have traded in and out of these positions.

Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance.

Read more:

Legends of finance have big bets on the stock market going down

Tiger Global ditches its billion-dollar Netflix stake, cuts Apple

Heres what hedge fund titans have been buying and selling

Hedge fund billionaire Dan Loeb bought a bunch of Facebook

Warren Buffett ramps up his huge bet on Apple, cuts back Walmart
The workers, atop a 6-metre-high stage, were pouring in pumpable concrete to make the slab when the supporting pipes underneath gave away.
(Photo: Marvel)

Last month, comic-book fans heard the news that Marvels upcoming Invincible Iron Man series has a young science prodigy stepping in for original Iron Man Tony Stark. He name is Riri Williams, an African-American teenager who receives Starks blessing after engineering her own Iron Man suit. Along with her new superhero gig, Williams, acquires a new crime-fighting name. As revealed by Wired magazine on Monday, the new Iron Man will be known as Ironheart.

The name Ironheart, said writer Brian Michael Bendis, speaks not only to the soul of the character, but to the Iron Man franchise as a whole. Tony first put on the armor to save his heart. Riri puts it on for different reasons altogether, but still heart-related.

The new Ironheart (Photo: Marvel)

Marvels bold naming choice is a departure from comics tradition. Historically, female versions of male characters have taken a feminized version of the original name, i.e. Spider-woman, She-Hulk, or Supergirl. Sometimes, a woman will assume the identity of the hero with no name change, as in the case of Marvels female Thor and Hawkeye, or D.C.s female Robin. In this case, though, Bendis said it was clear a brand-new moniker was required.

Iron Woman seemed old fashioned to some, he told the magazine. And Iron Maiden? A legal nightmare.

Invincible Iron Man #1 will be published in November.
Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles (Photo: Warner Bros./Everett)

Mel Brooks has made a host of classic cinematic comedies, but if he were tasked with making arguably his most famous  and beloved  film today, the writer-producer-director-star believes hed be destined for failure.

In a new interview with Craig Modderno at The Daily Beast, the 90-year-old Hollywood icon was asked if he thought he could get Blazing Saddles  his 1974 Western comedy starring Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder as a railroad worker-turned-sheriff and a drunken gunslinger, respectively  made in todays movie-industry climate. The answer? An emphatic no!

Brooks, who will speak after a special screening of Blazing Saddles at New York Citys Radio City Music Hall on Sept. 1, discusses how, even back in the 70s, Warner Bros. studio executives were far from eager to see his version of the film released.

They wanted to bury me and the film. The head of distribution told the owners not to release the picture, but they only did because it was already booked in theaters, and they didnt have a picture they could replace it with If I had made their changes the film would have been just 14 minutes long! I stupidly threw all their notes in the trash. Imagine the book I could have written on them today. Among the choice suggestions Brooks remembers: Lose the fart scene, cut out any racial and ethnic jokes, edit scenes where a horse and an old lady get punched, and my favorite note: Can you reshoot Black Bart with a white actor?'

History has proven that Brooks was right about his film, as it remains one of American cinemas most well-loved (and oft-quoted) comedies. To read Brooks thoughts on his struggle to get both Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein produced  as well as the way Dustin Hoffman backed out of starring in 1968s The Producers in order to work opposite Brooks wife Anne Bancroft in The Graduate  check out his entire interview with The Daily Beast here.

Watch the Blazing Saddles trailer:




Ventotene (Italy) (AFP) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave strong backing Monday to Italian premier Matteo Renzi, suggesting she could be flexible over EU budget rules as Rome grapples to kickstart its stalling economy.

She made the comments at a press conference on the Giuseppe Garibaldi aircraft carrier, after talks with Renzi and French President Francois Hollande.

"Matteo Renzi has initiated courageous reforms including the jobs act here in Italy. It won't show results within four weeks but it sets the parameters for a sustainable and successful Italy.

"I am doing everything in my power to support him with this," she said.

Rome is seeking a new deal with the European Union to allow it to boost its weak economy with an expansionary 2017 budget.

A minister suggested earlier this month this could mean letting the 2017 budget deficit run higher than previously planned, possibly up to the three percent of GDP ceiling enshrined in the eurozone's Stability Pact.

Asked about flexibility Renzi is seeking to finance investment in 2017 to kickstart Italy's timid economic growth, Merkel signalled her openness.

"I think the Stability Pact has quite a lot of flexibility that we can use in a clever way. That is the responsibility of the (European) Commission -- it's not one (EU) member state that decides vis-a-vis another.

"We are all in a discussion with the Commission. We want Italy, France and Germany to grow such that jobs with future can be created and for me, that means creating conditions for private investment to have a chance," she added.

The comments come as Renzi's poll ratings are waning, and ahead of a constitutional referendum due before the end of the year which could trigger political instability.

Weighed down by sluggish domestic demand and a bad debt-laden banking sector's inability to finance investment, the eurozone's third biggest economy ground to a standstill in the second quarter of 2016.

That was bad news for Renzi, who has staked his political future on the referendum scheduled for November and has to produce a 2017 budget by mid-October.
By Stephen Woodman MEXICO CITY, August 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Betzy Ballesteros' brush with death came on a windy night in December, when a man in a black Chevy Suburban pulled up to the street corner in the Mexican city of Guadalajara where the sex worker was plying her trade. After agreeing on a price, she opened the car door and sat in the passenger seat. But the client turned to the 25-year-old transgender woman, said he preferred her friend and asked if she would switch places. "He was very polite," Ballesteros told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "So I said 'no problem' and called my friend over." Flower Gonzalez, another transgender sex worker, slid into the vehicle, and the pair drove away. Gonzalez was found dead in an alley three hours later, in the early hours of Christmas Eve. She had been stabbed with an ice pick. Ballesteros keeps a faded photo of her late friend amid the candy and candles in a shrine at her home. Five friends have been killed on the job since she left home in Tlaquepaque, in the western state of Jalisco, after arguing with her mother about her gender identity at the age of 14, she said. To survive, she took to the streets of nearby Zapopan as a sex worker. POLICE RESPONSE Ballesteros said she believes police do little to protect the transgender community and that no one has been arrested in connection to any of her friends' deaths. "They don't help us at all," she said. The Jalisco Attorney General's office did not respond to a request for comment. Zapopan Police Commissioner Juan Pablo Hernandez said his department aims to protect all citizens. "We have been providing sensitivity training to promote police empathy towards different vulnerable communities, including the transgender community," Hernandez said. In recent years, legislators have passed a series of anti-discrimination laws to protect gay rights in Mexico. In May, President Enrique Pena Nieto proposed a constitutional reform to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. But advances in LGBT rights have not been accompanied by a decline in homophobic and transphobic attacks. Mexico has one of the highest rates of transphobic violence in the world, according to a recent report by the Cornell University Law School in New York and the Transgender Law Center, a California-based civil rights organization. The number of documented murders of transgender people rose to 46 in 2012 from four in 2008, with actual figures likely to be significantly higher, said the report in May. The report also said transgender women in particular have suffered from a fierce backlash against same-sex marriage and other advances. A U.S. immigration judge warned last year of "an epidemic of unsolved violent crimes" against transgender people in Mexico.Although gender identity is not the same as sexual orientation, many transgender women in Mexico are persecuted on the assumption they are gay, experts said. "Transgender women have become a focal point for hatred because they are often easier to detect," said Maria Martha Collignon, a sociologist at Guadalajara's Western Institute of Technology and Higher Education. In addition, laws protecting gay rights in Mexico do not extend to gender identity discrimination. Transgender activist Ari Vera Morales said she had been studying for a degree in special education when she was derailed by discrimination. "The school asked me to leave because I was going to influence the children and encourage them to be homosexual or transgender," she said. Morales now directs Captive Souls, a non-profit group dedicated to defending rights of transgender prisoners in Mexico City. Most transgender women find their appearance prevents them from working in regular jobs, said Cymene Howe, professor of anthropology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. "It may be difficult to find work in a bank or in a retail establishment or as a food server," Howe said. Many turn to sex work for money. "You are afraid every time you go out onto the street, but you need to do it to survive, to eat," Ballesteros said. "You need to leave the fear to one side." Street-based sex workers often develop substance and alcohol abuse problems and typically lack strong family networks for support, Howe said. The Transgender Law Center report said roughly a third of Latin American transgender women are infected with HIV. The life expectancy for Latin American transgender women is 35, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Due to the illicit nature of their work, street-based sex workers who may be victimized are unlikely to contact police for fear of harassment or extortion, Ballesteros said. Hernandez said Zapopan police were cracking down on extortion, dismissing officers for misconduct and improving training. "We are trying to prevent public servants from behaving this way," he said. Ballesteros said transgender women are also at risk from the drug cartels that demand money from sex workers on the streets. "They started charging us every week, then every night. I didn't want to pay twice so I was attacked," she said. The violence has helped unify and mobilize the transgender community, and campaigners such as Morales are helping lead an emerging activist movement.In March, Rubi Araujo, a prominent LGBT campaigner, became Mexico's first transgender city council member in the traditionally conservative state of Guanajuato.In May, Morales met the Mexican president when he signed a reform initiative to allow transgender people to change their gender legally without a court order. (Reporting by Stephen Woodman, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Jo Griffin. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)
Laying down arms.

Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), a leading disruptive militant group in Nigerias oil-rich south, has announced a ceasefire and committed to negotiating with the Nigerian government. This comes after months of sabotage of oil installations across the Niger Delta region.

Oil firms operating in the region, including Shell and Chevron, were forced to evacuate and shut down oil fields and facilities. As a result of NDAs attacks, Nigerias oil production fell to 20-year lows as Africas largest economy lost its place as the continents largest oil producer.

After a number of false starts, it appears the group is finally ready to have a sit-down with the government. In a statement on its website the group says it will support negotiations aimed at de-escalating conflicts in the Niger Delta.

To this end, the group says it will observe a cessation of hostilities in the Niger Delta. But the ceasefire came with a warning the group will revert to violence if the government continues to arrest, intimidate, invade and harass suspected members of the group.

In the short-term, a ceasefire will see an uptick in Nigerias oil output if production operations in the area return to normal. On the brink of a recession, the prospect of increased revenue from improved oil exports is critical for Nigerias economy. But, long-term, negotiations, which will likely see the NDA paid off and granted amnesty, will only serve to reinforce the notion of paid militancy while ignoring the root cause of the problems in the area.

Oil spills have damaged farmlands across the Niger Delta region

Oil spills have damaged farmlands across the Niger Delta region

Over the years, Niger Delta has been badly damagedenvironmentally and ecologically. Severe oil spills have damaged farms and water bodies robbing residents of food and sources of livelihood. Despite providing the country with its oil riches, the region has been mostly ignored. In the past, advocates like the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa who brought attention to the ills of reckless oil production, paid with their lives. Resentment of government is rife and militants often find it easy to play on residents raw emotions to drive agendas which ultimately end in a big pay day for militants rather than progress for the region.

Story continues

It is unclear how long the negotiations will last for but NDA has already made alternate plans. If the negotiations fail, the group says it will fight more for the Niger Delta.

Sign up for the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief  the most important and interesting news from across the continent, in your inbox.

Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief, our free daily newsletter with the worlds most important and interesting news.

More stories from Quartz:
This moms viral Facebook status perfectly explains the problem with a lot of school dress code policies

This moms viral Facebook status perfectly explains the problem with a lot of school dress code policies

Teenage girls are frequently subjected to slut-shaming dress codes  sexualizing them without their consent, and prioritizing the apparently uncontrollable hormones of teenage boys over a girls ability to comfortably receive an education.

Bye! A photo posted by Chloe Niccole (@chloe_niccole) on May 19, 2015 at 10:32am PDT

It feels like another infuriating dress code policy goes viral every week, and the most recent flawless takedown of inherently sexist dress codes was executed by an Australian mother of a high school girl.

Catherine Mannings daughter is a student at Kambrya College, a secondary school in Victoria, Australia.

Approximately 70 Australian schools, including Kambrya College, have been found to be targeted by a horrific website sharing thousands of stolen sexual images of teenage girls. The administration of Kambrya College discovered that the website had outreached to boys at the school, and they had started sending images to the site without the photographed girls consent.

Kambrya College responded to this despicable act by calling two separate assemblies: one for the schools boy students, and one for their girl students. But as Manning writes in her now viral Facebook status, the teenage girls; short skirts were blamed for the boys disgusting behavior.

I received a furious text from my daughter yesterday about a meeting all year seven to ten girls were ordered to attend.... Posted by Catherine Manning on Thursday, August 18, 2016

You absolutely must read the status in its entirety, but here is one of the most important excerpts:

The problem is not with the girls and the length of their skirts, nor whether or not they choose to share photos with their boyfriends or anyone else. Its with the boys themselves; their sense of entitlement and sexist attitudes towards women and girls, their lack of respect, and the trust they CHOOSE to break.

Twenty-four hours later, and Ive received messages from the girls telling me they are feeling extremely uncomfortable at school. They feel judged and victimised by school staff, like all eyes are on them, and they dont feel comfortable around their male peers. They feel their school has sexualised and demonised them, and compounded the problem by sending a strong message that it is them, the girls, who are responsible for the boys behaviour, and that the boys are the victims here.

Story continues

Today, my sister was sent home from school for wearing the clothes in the picture below. And I'm sorry but I have to... Posted by Erica Alyse Edgerly on Thursday, April 2, 2015

Manning told APlus that her daughter and her daughters friends angry and passionate responses to the assembly motivated her to speak out.

Her incredibly important status has been liked over 24,000 times, and shared over 14,000 times so far. And according to Mannings most recent status, things are starting to change:

From my daughter, her friends, and myself, thank you so much for the overwhelming support over the past few days. A most... Posted by Catherine Manning on Sunday, August 21, 2016

More proof of how vital it is to speak out. Thank you, Catherine Manning!

The post This moms viral Facebook status perfectly explains the problem with a lot of school dress code policies appeared first on HelloGiggles.
NEW YORK, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A closely watched measure of the cost for banks to borrow dollars rose on Monday to a more than seven-year high on U.S. money market funds' reduced demand for bank debt.

The London interbank offered rate on three-month dollars , or Libor, was fixed at 0.82544 percent, up from 0.81711 percent on Friday.

Three-month Libor, a benchmark for more than $300 trillion worth of financial products worldwide, posted its first weekly drop last week since June.

Libor for other maturities kept rising, however.

One-month Libor rose on Monday to 0.52217 percent, its highest since March 2009, while six-month Libor climbed to 1.22900 percent, its highest since June 2009.

Since July, some U.S. prime money market funds, which had been major holders of commercial paper and other bank debt, have changed over to funds that hold only government securities.

Government-only money funds are exempt from rules on share value and fees from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that will take effect on Oct. 14.

Prime funds overall are holding more short-term maturity debt in anticipation of heavy redemption from investors before Oct. 14.

"Prime funds remain extremely cautious, and have continued to pull in maturities," J.P. Morgan Securities analysts wrote in a research note on Monday.

U.S. commercial paper outstanding shrank in recent weeks in the wake of this conversion among prime money funds. Last week, the commercial paper supply fell to $1.012 trillion on a seasonally adjusted basis, its lowest level in 10 months, according to Federal Reserve data released on Thursday.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
Nonresidential construction spending is set to peak in the third quarter, according to Morgan Stanley economists.

In a note to clients on Monday, Ellen Zentner, chief US economist, wrote that the bank's Non-Resi Permits Index fell 1.3% in August, reversing a gain in July and returning to the downward trajectory it had been on.

Because permit issuance is an indicator of future building activity, the decline suggests that commercial construction spending is set to falter in the coming months, according to Zentner.

From the note (emphasis hers):

"The latest data from the Census Bureau showed nonresidential construction spending at $405.21 billion annualized in June  our Non-Resi Permits Index suggests private nonresidential construction spending is on track to peak around $415 billion in 3Q; however, the recent weakness in the non-resi permits index raises downside risks for the trajectory of construction spending into year-end."

Zentner also noted minutes of the Federal Reserve's July meeting, which showed that there was discussion about "potential overvaluation" in the market for commercial real estate.

Morgan Stanley's call echoes recent warnings on the commercial real-estate market from Deutsche Bank, Pimco, and others. It comes at a time when weak business spending is weighing on overall economic growth, even as consumer spending remains robust.

non residential permits COTD

Like Deutsche Bank, Zentner wrote that a forthcoming slump in spending has been indicated by tightening lending standards for commercial real-estate loans.

The most recent Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey report showed that businesses continued to face tighter standards for getting commercial and industrial loans. That's because banks are facing increased competition and economic conditions are improving, as Business Insider's Bob Bryan noted.

In the third quarter, a net 8.5% of loan officers reported tighter standards for lending to medium and large firms, up from -7% a year ago.

Story continues

During the last six months, however, nonresidential construction spending has declined only in some sectors, including healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing.

NOW WATCH: REVEALED: Insider tips contractors hope you dont know





More From Business Insider


Morgan Stanley MS and its Board of Directors have been accused of mismanaging the companys 401(k) retirement plan, costing its roughly 60,000 employees hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

A participant in Morgan Stanleys 401(k) retirement plan, Robert Patterson, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in New York, alleging the company of offering inappropriate and high-priced investment options, including some mutual funds run by the company itself. The suit seeks damages worth $150 million.

Mishandling of 401(k) Plan Led to Losses

The lawsuit alleges that most of Morgan Stanleys mutual funds included in the retirement plan performed poorly compared to its peers. Per the complaint, the small-cap growth fund included in the 401(k) plan underperformed 99% of its comparables in 2014 and 94% in 2015.

Further, the plan has $8 billion worth of assets under management, of which $200$300 million of funds were invested in institutional Mid-Cap Growth Fund of the bank. This fund was given the worst possible rating by Morningstar Inc., for investors seeking to hold it for three to five years, and only a slightly better rating for those holding it for a decade.

According to the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, companies that deal in 401(k) plans hold a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interest of their employees. However, Morgan Stanley used its own low-quality funds, which were known for poor results and high fees, without considering other funds in the market. Further, the employees were charged higher fees for the companys mutual funds, compared to Morgan Stanleys outside clients.

Robert Patterson, the lead plaintiff in the breach-of-duty lawsuit, stated The firm treated the plan as an opportunity to promote Morgan Stanleys own mutual fund business and maximize profits. Morgan Stanley selected their proprietary funds not based on their merits as investments, or because doing so was in the interest of plan participants, but because these products provided significant revenues and profits to Morgan Stanley.

Story continues

Robert Patterson has been identified as a retirement plan member from Jan 2011 to Apr 2014. He has demanded a class action status for his lawsuit, including current and former employees who were part of the retirement plan from Mar 2010 to Feb 2016.

What Next?

Banks across the globe have been facing increasing scrutiny for their business practices. Many of the firms have paid billions of dollars as fines and compensation to settle lawsuits and probes. Many investors have lost their hard-earned money as a result of such business malpractices.

Morgan Stanley should start taking care of these issues, which can otherwise impact the companys business as well as lead to a rise in legal expenses.

Currently, Morgan Stanley carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked finance stocks include Meta Financial Group, Inc. CASH, Comerica Incorporated CMA and Flagstar Bancorp Inc. FBC, each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



COMERICA INC (CMA): Free Stock Analysis Report



MORGAN STANLEY (MS): Free Stock Analysis Report



FLAGSTAR BANCP (FBC): Free Stock Analysis Report



META FINL GRP (CASH): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Morton Schindel, founder of Weston Woods Studios which was Oscar-nominated for an animated short childrens film, died Saturday, August 20, at age 98. Schindel produced more than 300 films and 450 recordings based on award-winning childrens books that are found in school and library collections worldwide. His films have been translated into more than 20 languages.

He actually developed the iconographic style of filmmaking, in which original artwork from an open book glides in front of a motion picture camera, giving the still imagery cinematic life. By moving the pictures at deliberate, controlled speeds, the camera captures the mood and action that the illustrator conveyed on the pages of the book. Mr. Schindel brought hundreds of award-winning childrens books into schools via film.

Morton Schindel not only founded the art form and business of creating films based on outstanding childrens books, he also helped generations of teachers and librarians understand how they could reach more children with these great stories through the medium of film, video and television, said Richard Robinson, chairman, president and CEO of Scholastic. He pioneered this important art form by working with hundreds of authors and illustrators including Maurice Sendak, William Steig and Robert McCloskey, winning their support by making creative films like Where the Wild Things Are, Blueberries for Sal, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and The Amazing Bone, which adhered absolutely to the spirit and story of the original printed work.

Born in Orange, NJ in 1918, Schindel moved to New York City after college and worked as a clerk in Sterns Department Store. He first founded ELMOR Manufacturing Company, a machine shop, but ending up contracting tuberculosis and had to stop work to convalesce. In early 1950, he tried his hand at film, but the company he worked for, Teaching Films, went bankrupt and so he became an independent producer.

Story continues

He was recruited to serve as Film Officer and Attache in the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey a year later and then returned to Connecticut in 1953 to launch Weston Woods Studios. The company struggled in the early years, but in 1966, the federal government passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the first school libraries were opened. After that, Weston Woods sales quadrupled virtually overnight.

The company soon gained prestige, receiving an Academy Award nomination for best animated short in 1984 for Doctor DeSoto, based on the childrens book of the same name by William Steig, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Childrens Video in 1996 for Owen, based on the book of the same name by Kevin Henkes.

In 1996, Weston Woods Studios was acquired by Scholastic, the global childrens publishing, education and media company and Schindel stayed on as an advisor. Weston Woods produced more than 200 additional films based on the books of Scholastic and all publishers.

Produced by Paul Gagne, Linda Lee and three others who were on Schindels original team, these films have been honored with innumerable prizes including 15 Carnegie Medals awarded by the American Library Association for best video of the year based on a childrens book.

From 1982 to 2016, Schindel served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Weston Woods Institute, a non-profit organization for the support of innovative techniques for educational and cultural communications with children. At the age of 78, he founded Mediamobiles, Inc., a company that developed mobile multimedia learning environments.

He received many awards and honors during his lifetime, including The Regina Medal, awarded each year for a lifetime contribution to the field of childrens literature, the Distinguished Service Award from the Association of Education Technology, The Action for Childrens Television Hall of Fame Award and the American Libraries Services for Children Lifetime Achievement Award for reaching children from the hills of Appalachia to the suburbs of Tokyo with books, films, stories and songs. He also received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Teachers College, Columbia University as the only graduate who never earned a dime as a librarian or a classroom teacher, but nonetheless became a teacher to millions.

Schindel graduated from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Economics and received his Masters in Curriculum and Teaching at Columbia Teachers College. He is survived by his wife, Cari Best of CT, a sister, Elaine Martens of NJ, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

Related stories

'Star Wars' Kenny Baker Dies: R2-D2 Actor Was 81

Norman Twain Dies; 'Lean On Me' Producer Who Staged Broadway's Legendary 1969 'Hamlet' Was 85

Dave Schwartz Dies At 63; Longtime Weather Channel Anchor Announced Cancer Diagnosis Last February
A mother in Japan is under investigation for murder after her four children, including a girl as young as three, were found dead at home, Japanese media reports and police said Monday.

Local media reported the victims were killed by their mother before she tried to take her own life.

A 10-year-old boy, two six-year-old girls, and a three-year-old girl were found dead early Monday, according to police in the southern Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka.

"Their father found them dead and reported it to police," a police spokesman told AFP, without providing further details.

Police are questioning the children's 41-year-old mother as a suspect in a possible murder-suicide attempt, according to Jiji Press and public broadcaster NHK.

The mother confessed to police she had killed the children, according to TV Asahi.

Police reportedly told media that at least one child had a mark indicating strangulation.

The mother was sent to hospital as her wrist was bleeding, the Asahi Shimbun daily said. She told police she cut herself with a kitchen knife but her injury was mild.

Murder-suicide cases are not uncommon in Japan and usually involve a mother killing her child or children.

Some parent-child murder-suicides have been attributed to poverty. In 2014, a single mother in Chiba prefecture killed her teenage daughter and tried to kill herself apparently because she could no longer afford to pay the rent.

On Monday, a mother and her two sons aged six and one, went missing in Gunma prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, and her car was found near a river.

Police suspect that the mother and her sons jumped into the river in a murder-suicide, the Sankei Shimbun daily reported.

Last month, a mother in Chiba prefecture killed herself after stabbing her three children, according to local media. Her 10-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son were confirmed dead.
It was in August of 1831 that Nat Turner led a rebellion of Virginia slaves that left dozens of people dead, including small children. One-hundred and eighty-five years ago this week, in the early hours of Aug. 22, Turner and a some of his fellow slaves entered Turners masters home, having decided that Turner must spill the first blood to start the rebellion, as Turner would later recount. Turner was soon captured and the uprising was suppressed. But in the weeks immediately afterward, Americans everywhere clamored to know something that may now seem obvious: Why had he done it? Nearly two centuries later, the legacy of that question is still evolving.

In November of 1831, shortly before to his execution, Turner gave a jailhouse confession, to attorney Thomas Gray, to answer the question. The story began, Turner said, in his childhood, when he had an experience that seemed to his family an indication of the powers of prophesy. Growing up believing that he was destined for great things, he eventually reached a turning point, as he recalled:

As I was praying one day at my plough, the spirit spoke to me, saying, Seek ye the kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you. Questionwhat do you mean by the Spirit. Ans. The Spirit that spoke to the prophets in former daysand I was greatly astonished, and for two years prayed continually, whenever my duty would permitand then again I had the same revelation, which fully confirmed me in the impression that I was ordained for some great purpose in the hands of the Almighty. Several years rolled round, in which many events occurred to strengthen me in this my belief. At this time I reverted in my mind to the remarks made of me in my childhood, and the things that had been shewn meand as it had been said of me in my childhood by those by whom I had been taught to pray, both white and black, and in whom I had the greatest confidence, that I had too much sense to be raised, and if I was, I would never be of any use to any one as a slave. Now finding I had arrived to mans estate, and was a slave, and these revelations being made known to me, I began to direct my attention to this great object, to fulfil the purpose for which, by this time, I felt assured I was intended.

Story continues

That sense of purpose was why Turner once ran away but soon returned to the plantation and to bondage. That was why, he said, he waited for a signand, believing he had seen it, took action. That was why, shortly before his execution, he reflected, I am here loaded with chains, and willing to suffer the fate that awaits me.

Grays judgment on all this? He is a complete fanatic.

But, even then, some saw his fanaticism in a different context. The next session of the Virginia Legislature was the scene of several speeches that used the rebellion as reason to call for abolitionincluding one by Thomas Jefferson Randolph, the founding fathers grandson, and C.J. Faulkner who, in speaking of the differences between the North and the South, was particularly prescient: You must adopt some plan of emancipation, he declared, or worse will follow.

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

During the mid-20th century, the Nat Turner story was revisited by many, in the course of the movement for the study of black history in schools, an attempt to remedy the fact that many mainstream textbooks glossed over or omitted major turning points in the history of the U.S. if the people involved were black. For example, as TIME explained in 1964, a teachers guide had to be distributed to schools to point out to educators and students that contrary to folklore, slaves hated slavery so passionately that thousands joined bloody revolts. The biggest was led in 1831 by Nat Turner, a Virginia slave preacher, whose rebels killed 60 whites before he was captured and hanged.

Then, in 1967, the novelist William Styrons The Confessions of Nat Turner turned Turners story into an award-winning bestseller, which he called a meditation on history rather than a historical novel. This novel goes beyond a mere retelling of history to show how the fettered human spirit can splinter into murderous rage when it is goaded beyond endurance, raved TIMEs critic.

Not everyone, however, loved the novelwhich inspired a backlash that culminated in the 1968 publication of William Styrons Nat Turner: Ten Black Writer Respond, in which Styron was called out for minimizing the degree to which Turner was just one of many slaves who rightfully harbored rebellious desires, among other critiques. Some of the reaction to that book, at least as expressed by TIME, now reads as dated: the magazines review of the responses called the black writers blinded by their own racism against Styron, who was white.

The opportunities to assess and reassess Turners legacy, however, are far from over: The Sundance sensation Nat Turner film, The Birth of a Nation, arrives in theaters in October.
Natalie Portman in A Tale of Love and Darkness (Photo: Cannes 2015)

Lauren Bacall had no patience for an indecisive director  even if that director was Natalie Portman. When she was 26 years old, Portman directed the octogenarian Bacall in the 2008 short film Eve. In an interview promoting her feature-length directorial debut A Tale of Love and Darkness, Portman remembered that the Hollywood legend (who died in 2014 at the age of 89) didnt much like her.

I must be honest: She did not like me, but I loved her and admired her so much, Portman said during a panel discussion on Thursday (via Us Weekly). She sensed in me what I learned later about myselfthat I had a really hard time saying what I wanted and being the boss.

Portman had little directing experience when she made Eve, a 17-minute comedy that played at the Venice Film Festival in 2008. (Around the same time, Portman directed a six-minute segment of the anthology film New York I Love You, which premiered in theaters in 2009.) A Tale of Love and Darkness, a drama about a Jewish family who moves to Palestine in the 1940s, is the first thing shes directed since. Portman also starred in, wrote, and produced the Hebrew-language film, based on the bestselling memoir by Amos Oz. Yet despite having major control over the production, Portman still found it difficult to assert herself as a directorat first.

It took me a few weeks to be comfortable saying I want this, I want that, Portman explained.When I was 26 on Eve with [Lauren Bacall] I was not decisive, and she called me out on it and was totally right. (The movie, which premiere at Cannes in 2015, just opened in limited release.)

Even though Ball touched a nerve with her criticism, Portman has nothing but admiration for the late actress. She was a total pro, despite the fact that she was so unimpressed by me, said the director. She was amazing in every take.

Watch a trailer for A Tale of Love and Darkness:




Twice a year, a normally deserted border checkpoint high on the Tibetan plateau throngs with activity as traders from Nepal flock to do business with their giant northern neighbour China.

A biannual trade fair in Tibet offers a rare opportunity for those living in the remote former Buddhist kingdom of Upper Mustang in Nepal to cross the usually closed border into China, which is cultivating closer ties with the Himalayan nation.

"This trade is very important for us because we live in such an isolated area," said trucker Pasang Gurung, who was driving to China for the fair.

"Access to Chinese customers and products makes our lives much easier... I wish the border were open all the time."

The border is usually closed for security reasons as Upper Mustang has history as a base for the Tibetan resistance.

But authorities in Nepal are increasingly looked to strengthen economic ties with China and reduce its dependence on its other giant neighbour India.

But it will have a long way to go in order to accomplish that. Bilateral trade with India between July 2014 and June 2015 amounted to nearly $4.5 billion, dwarfing China's $882 million.

An energy agreement between Kathmandu and Beijing in March ended India's monopoly over fuel supplies to Nepal, although it remains the biggest supplier by far.

That deal was prompted by a months-long blockade at the border with India to protest the terms of a new national constitution that led New Delhi to halt supplies, leading to crippling shortages.

Kathmandu accused New Delhi of imposing an "unofficial blockade" in support of the protesters, an ethnic community that shares close family links with Indians across the border -- a claim India denied.

Sujeev Shakya, chairman of the Nepal Economic Forum think tank, says that even before the blockade India had a reputation in Nepal for being slow to deliver.

A number of Indian hydropower projects have stalled due to disagreements over the terms of the deal, while China has pressed ahead.

Story continues

One 60-megawatt power plant is under construction and a 750-megawatt joint venture worth $1.6 billion is due for completion by December 2019.

"The perception here is that the Chinese tend to deliver while India keeps talking," Shakya told AFP.

"Over the years, China has gained more credibility in Nepal because of the pace at which they have put up infrastructure projects."

- Thriving trade -

In Upper Mustang's medieval walled capital of Lo Manthang, construction of a Chinese-funded 70-kilowatt solar power station last year has allowed residents to access electricity even during the months-long dry season, when hydropower supplies fall short.

Locals have welcomed the investment and are clamouring for deeper economic ties.

"If the border opens up, Lo Manthang can be a centre for trade, religious activities, tourism," said shopkeeper Kunga Dorje Gurung.

Around 1,000 visitors a day use the Korala checkpoint during the fair, trading in everything from carpets and clothing to tea and biscuits.

The journey has been made easier by a new road to the border that opened this year, and which locals hope will put pressure on Beijing to open the checkpoint more often.

"The road has made transportation of goods much easier," said Nepali businessman Tshering Phuntsok Gurung, travelling to the border with friends.

"Earlier, everything had to be carried on horses and the costs involved in hiring and feeding animals meant that the prices of the goods would also go up."

The thriving cross-border trade in Upper Mustang is particularly remarkable because the region was once the base for a CIA-funded guerrilla campaign to oust Chinese forces from Tibet after a failed uprising in 1959.

Thutop Dadhul, a Tibetan refugee, was just 17 when he and his family of nomadic herders fled Chinese troops and crossed over into Upper Mustang.

He threw himself into the Tibetan resistance movement, making daring trips across the border to gather intelligence.

"We had to win back Tibet... I am proud of the fact that I tried to do something for my country," the 75-year-old told AFP in the resort town of Pokhara, where tourist shopfronts display signs in Mandarin.

Outgunned on every front, the revolutionaries continued their fight even after the US government withdrew support in 1968 and only surrendered when the Dalai Lama asked them to lay down arms.

"I know the Chinese are being very generous to Nepal now, but that will change," he said.

"Eventually they will seek more control... and things will get worse for refugees like us."
Over the past year, we have made our opposition to Republican nominee Donald Trump fairly clear (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and  well you get the idea). In sum, we consider Trump to be unfit for office: temperamentally unsound to wield the powers of the presidency, profoundly ignorant about the national security challenges we face, staggeringly wrong on many of the positions he has adopted, and unjustifiably confident in his own abilities. While we have made it clear we will not vote for Trump, we also will not vote for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Secretary Clintons candidacy has provoked considerable discussion among Republican foreign policy ranks. Quite a few of our friends in the foreign policy expert community have ridden their opposition to Trump all the way into Clintons camp, declaring they will vote for her bid for president. Some prominent Asia experts posted as much here on Shadow Government last week. We respect their reasoning and their position but want to explain why we arrive at a different conclusion.

But first there are two preliminary observations about the difficulty of taking the right stance during this extraordinary election that must be considered. We understand the reasoning that led some Republicans like Brent Scowcroft, Hank Paulson, Kori Schake, Steve Krasner, David Gordon, and Reuel Gerecht to endorse Clinton, just as we understand the reasoning that led others to decline adding their signatures to anti-Trump letters despite their misgivings about his candidacy. These are difficult times for Republican foreign policy specialists, and we believe there are good and principled reasons to land in any of the following three baskets of political positions on the 2016 presidential election: publicly oppose Trump, publicly support Clinton, or keep ones powder dry.

One of the post-November priorities will be for Republicans to interpret this extraordinary election, particularly coming to terms with how the party could nominate such an inept candidate so manifestly unfit for the presidency. But we will not learn all the lessons that we need to learn if we arbitrarily excommunicate those who made different decisions from what we made.

Undoubtedly, the post-election period will bring a season of hard introspection and self-reflection for conservatives and Republicans about the future of our movement and our ideas. In the spirit of our partys founding president, Abraham Lincoln, it is incumbent on us to be charitable toward all  especially if there is to be any hope of restoring unity and a forward-looking vision of conservative internationalism amid our many fractures.

We also understand the brutal math of elections. When Republicans like us declare we will not vote for the GOP nominee, an argument can be made that our refusal (inevitably, even if inadvertently) helps the principal alternative, which in this case is the Democratic nominee. While we intend to write in a different name on the ballot, it is with the understanding that this will likely nullify our presidential vote. In North Carolina, its already too late (and in Texas it is all but too late) to write in a tabulated vote for our favored candidate. Write-in candidates for president are essentially symbolic anyway, so this technical limitation only infinitesimally changes the material impact of our vote. More consequentially, we recognize that our public opposition to Trump has potentially helped the Clinton campaign simply by reinforcing her message that Trump is unfit to be commander in chief.

But we think there is an important rhetorical space between publicly opposing Trump and publicly supporting Clinton. We also believe that more people need to fill that space for three main reasons.

First, though we care deeply about foreign policy and national security, the rest of the presidential portfolio is also of great consequence. And it is here where we see ample reason to worry about a Clinton presidency. It is striking that her team is making such public outreach to disaffected Republicans without making even the tiniest symbolic concession to Republican concerns. The Clinton team is talking about the need for national unity in the face of a genuine political crisis, but its idea of unity seems to be for Republicans to abandon all of their policies and interests. This is not how other great leaders  think Lincoln or Winston Churchill  acted in times of crisis.

And such good-faith compromise is especially important this year because Clinton is running on a platform markedly to the left of Obama on domestic and economic policies. One indicator of her inclinations is that she wont even promise to re-nominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. The implication is obvious: While Garland is already far to the left of the kind of candidate Republicans would prefer to see fill the vacancy left by Antonin Scalias untimely demise, he is not the worst nominee they can imagine. By refusing to promise to re-nominate him, the Clinton team is preparing to exploit its likely new political clout post-election to appoint someone even further to the left of Garland.

Of course, to borrow from Thucydides, in politics the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. So we understand why the Democrats are keen to take advantage of the crisis, drive the courts further to the left, and thus do even more damage on issues many Republicans, including us, care deeply about. Democrats will share blame for this with those Republican primary voters who nominated an unelectable candidate. But understanding it does not justify supporting it.

Second, Republican and other surprising endorsers of Clinton will have a much harder time speaking candidly about her many liabilities. Of course, it is not a foregone conclusion that such supporters will mute their criticisms of the former secretary of state. For example, our friend and Shadow Government colleague Mike Green, one of the most respected Asia hands in either party, signed the recent letter in Shadow Government indicating he would vote for Clinton. He is a reluctant Clinton voter, evidenced by his forthcoming article that, among other things, critiques the candidate for her newfound opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and he has elsewhere called for a strong Republican Congress to help further the trade agenda. (The piece will be out here next week, and the full interview the week after that.)

Yet we note that the recent letter that was published in Shadow Government may have offered a persuasive critique of Trumps policies, but its discussion of Clinton was less so. The letter did not say what the authors know well: Clintons opportunistic flip-flop on the TPP is deeply damaging to Americas Asia strategy, more damaging than Trumps bombastic rhetoric on the TPP. Clintons opposition to the TPP has wrought serious harm to our relations with our Asian allies and has effectively nullified the one legitimate legacy item from her tenure as secretary of state: the way she and Obama tried to build upon and further the Bush-era strategic outreach to Asia. The most experienced Asia hands in both parties understand that without the TPP, this bipartisan policy is in trouble. Having the very person who most boasted about the pivot and the role of the TPP in that pivot cavalierly abandon that support because of pressure from the left has dispirited allies and partners throughout the region.

There are many other tough questions that we hope Clintons Republican voters will nonetheless hold her to account on, such as:

Clintons opposition to the Iraq surge; opposition that, according to former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, was based on partisan political considerations.

Her diplomatic failure to negotiate and implement an adequate post-2011 U.S. presence in Iraq that might have inhibited the rise of the Islamic State. As a recent Washington Post article documents in withering detail, the Obama administration fundamentally mishandled the Iraq file under Secretary Clintons tenure, and yet she has avoided acknowledging her role in the debacle. Referencing her memoir titled Hard Choices, the Post article has a pithy observation: On the rest of what happened in Iraq during her tenure as Americas top diplomat, the 635-page book is silent.

Clintons opposition to the congressional sanctions on Iran that led to the tougher multilateral economic pressure that she boasts about securing.

The former secretary of states silence on the ways the Iran deal and the Obama administrations subsequent actions have fallen short of the promises her own team has made about how to confront Iran.

Her manifest failure to plan for and resource post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction efforts after leading a regime change operation in Libya, contributing to tragedies like the Benghazi attacks, the proliferation of jihadi groups, and the countrys near-collapse into a failed state and terrorist safe haven.

Clintons leading role in the Obama administrations blinkered reset policy toward Russia and its failure to deter Putins aggression.

The Obama administrations failure to halt North Koreas dangerous nuclear arms program  a failure, it must be said, that it shares with the Bush administration in which we served. There is plenty of blame to go around in both parties, yet what both current candidates lack is a persuasive account of how either would handle North Korea differently in the future.

The same argument applies to all the other scandals swirling around the candidate: the way she put personal interest above the public trust and placed highly classified information at the disposal of Americas adversaries through her illicit private computer server; the multiple apparent conflicts of interest between her public role as secretary of state and her familys private role raising money from foreign individuals eager to curry favor with the State Department; the way the Obama administration let electoral politics drive national security in the run-up to the 2012 campaign; and her continued refusal to speak with candor and honesty on these and other issues. In short, it is quite reasonable to have concerns about a presidential candidate who in almost any other role would be denied a security clearance due to serial violations with sensitive information.

Overall, Clintons record on foreign policy is not nearly as strong as her backers say, a fact that gets obscured because Trump is himself so weak. Her tenure as secretary could be summed up thus: Where she was right on policy (for instance, the need to arm the Syrian rebels earlier) she was not very influential, and where she was influential (intervening in Libya) it did not turn out so well as a policy.

Because of Trumps myriad deficiencies as a candidate, he has thus far shown himself unable to effectively put these and other questions to Clinton during the campaign. And because she was challenged only from the far left during the primaries, she avoided the tough questions then, too. That means she is on track to win  and perhaps to win big  without candidly addressing the many weaknesses in her foreign policy record and without presenting a persuasive account of how she could do better as commander in chief.

These are not mere gotcha questions. In every case, Clintons inability to answer the question satisfactorily raises doubts about how she would manage a related issue as president. How can she lead the country into a more strategic approach to cybersecurity if she cannot answer candidly her personal record on cybersecurity? How can she mobilize a wary public to support difficult military operations when her Iraq policies were dictated by political considerations? How can she forge a more promising policy on North Korea if she cannot acknowledge what went wrong on her watch? And so on.

Third, the country needs a strong Republican counterweight to the Democratic Party. Should the current forecasts hold and Clinton wins in a landslide, Republican control of the Senate and House would be in serious jeopardy. Without the checks and balances of divided government, we could be in for a very rocky time  perhaps less rocky than a hypothetical Trump presidency, but rocky enough to worry about.

From the point of view of defending American interests at home and abroad, the following conditions are markedly different. Condition A: President Clinton obliged to cut deals with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Condition B: President Clinton obliged to cut deals with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (himself obliged to cut deals with super-senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren).

Republicans who oppose Trump are making Condition A more likely. Republicans who support Clinton without pointing out her liabilities that make split government desirable could be making Condition B more likely. We are quite confident that if Condition B arises, it will be much harder to forge the policies this country needs to deal with the mess the next president will inherit.

Thus, we are keen to strengthen the Republican voice in Congress, and to highlight those strong voices that are already having an impact. That is why on Election Day we will be writing in a vote for Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska for president. We do this mindful that Sasse has declined numerous entreaties to run for president and has disavowed any presidential campaign efforts, of the write-in, draft, or other varieties. Our support for him is merely a symbolic statement about the caliber of leader we would like to see in the Oval Office. Even though he is not a candidate, we believe Sasse reflects what is best about the Republican political bench  deeply principled, honorable, possessed of abundant professional experience across multiple sectors, well versed on policy, and savvy about new directions in political communication. He has taken a courageous position against Trump, and stands as an articulate voice for conservative internationalism. Leaders like Sasse represent the best future of the Republican Party, and we intend to cast our votes for that future now.

If Clinton wins, she would be our president, and as patriots we would do what we could from the cheap seats here on the opposition bench to help her administration develop and implement policies that advance American interests at home and abroad. But until that point, in this troubled political season we believe we can best serve our own party and our country, not by promising to vote for her, but rather by speaking these inconvenient truths and raising these hard questions.

Photo credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images
One of the best Star Wars trailers to come out this year wasn't for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. It was a fan trailer imagining the life of Obi-Wan Kenobi, existing in exile following the events of 2005's Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith.

That got us thinking: What should the next Star Wars stand-alone project be? So far, two have been announced, with Rogue One set for December and a young Han Solo movie expected for 2018. A third was to be directed by Josh Trank, who exited the project amid the disaster that was last year's Fantastic Four.

Vote for your choice in the poll below, and share your pitch over on Heat Vision's Facebook page. The best idea will receive a shout-out on Friday, when we will post a full-on debate about what this unknown third film should be.

What Should the Next 'Star Wars' Standalone Movie Be About?

Ahsoka Tano: In the time period between her appearances in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels animated series, one-time Jedi Padawan Tano did something central to the whole Star Wars mythology: She founded the Rebellion with Bail Organa. Doesn't that mean she's earned her own live-action movie already?

Boba Fett: The bounty hunter has received a groundswell of support for a film chronicling his exploits before his ignominious death in Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi. Preferably something that demonstrates why he was such a feared figure across the galaxy in the first place, and avoids any more jetpack mishaps.

Chewbacca: A young Chewie would be adorable, but then again, it's hard to imagine that the young Han Solo movie won't address the Wookiee's life before the events of the original Star Wars. It's about time that Lumpy finally made his big-screen debut.

Darth Vader: He's already appearing in Rogue One, and James Earl Jones could certainly provide the iconic voice for a solo adventure. For inspiration, look at the current Marvel Comics series, which explores his machinations between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back.

Story continues

Jabba the Hutt: None other than Guillermo del Toro suggested a spinoff in the style of The Godfather starring Star Wars' kingpin of crime - and when del Toro speaks, fans listen.

Knights of the Old Republic: With the 2014 realignment of the Star Wars canon, almost all of the grand mythology of the franchise that took place before Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace disappeared into the galactic ether. This means that there's space (no pun intended) for a new take on the Knights of the Old Republic series, which told of conflicts between Jedi and Sith thousands of years before the movies, with stories spanning video games and comics. After all, even for tales set in space, nature abhors a vacuum.

Kylo Ren: Seeing him in training with Uncle Luke may be something we get in the current trilogy, but there's plenty of interest in that backstory and what went wrong with the Knights of Ren.

Obi-Wan Kenobi: The fan trailer that set the internet ablaze last week paints a picture of a tortured Jedi struggling with his role in the downfall of the Republic - and his new duty to protect a young Luke. Ewan McGregor's take on the character remains one of the most popular aspects of the prequels, so it could be his time to return.

Post-Clone Wars: Even the animated Star Wars: Rebels series jumps ahead in time from the events of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith to a point more than a decade later when the Empire is up and running and keeping the galaxy on a tight leash in order to please Darth Sidious. But just how things actually got that way remains a mystery. For instance, how did the former Republic respond to the disappearance of the Jedi? How did the galaxy realize that things had suddenly gotten a lot worse? How has this movie not been made already?

IG-88: if Boba Fett is worthy of his own solo movie, perhaps his key rival for bounty hunter supremacy is also deserving. Especially if fellow bounty hunters Dengar, Bossk and 4-LOM are involved - surely everyone out there is ready for a galaxy-spanning Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid-style romp?

Mace Windu: George Lucas recently gave his blessing to Samuel L. Jackson's assertions that Mace Windu somehow survived getting blown off a skyscraper with Force lightning in Revenge of the Sith. Well, let's see Jackson back that up: Where did he go? What did he do? We all know he'd never let the Empire secure its hold on the galaxy without a fight. Nick Fury can resist his enemies from the shadows - maybe Windu has it in him, too.

Quinlan Vos: A Jedi who appeared in the Clone Wars animated series, Vos is one of the few who turned to the Dark Side and managed to return. In the no-longer-canonical Expanded Universe, he fought alongside the Wookiees and survived the slaughter of the Jedi to maintain peace while the Empire rose to power. Could he do the same in the official version of events?

Wedge Antilles: The only pilot to fly in and survive every air and space battle of the original trilogy - from Yavin to Hoth to Endor. If Poe Dameron's appeal comes in part from his Top Gun-style skills, Wedge deserves a shot at his own flick.

Yoda's backstory: The ancient Jedi proved he could really kick butt in the prequels. How'd he become the master that he is? And how scrappy would he be if this were set back when he were a mere 100-year-old?

Something from the Empire's point of view: With these stand-alones meant to be one-off stories that we might not get in the mainstream Star Wars trilogies, it could make sense to flip convention on its head and get a film from the perspective of the bad guys for once.

None! Forget these stand-alones: This is the sentiment that many Star Wars purists have expressed. But face it - that's not an option right now, with Disney stating they plan on putting out one movie from a galaxy far, far away per year.

Check back Friday for a full debate of these issues, and don't forget to weigh in on Facebook.

As promised, here's the best answer we received about last week's debate on who the next Batman big-screen villain should be. Man-Bat/Kirk Langstrom may not be the obvious choice, but reader Ben Morse made a strong case for how it could bring together elements of the DC Extended Universe.

"Batman has to re-take Langstrom alive, as the Joker has poisoned the Gotham water supply with something based on Lanstrom's research," Morse wrote. "Batman hunts down Man-Bat and in doing so regains his own humanity. Run it in parallel with Harley finding her own agency against the Joker, and you've got parallel stories in light and dark. It uses the good bits of the existing franchise, and ties the plot off. After taking Langstrom, Batman realizes he can't kill anymore."
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced over Facebook Monday that he will run for President again in 2017.

Sarkozy lost the 2012 election to the current president, Socialist Francois Hollande. Hollandes historically low approval ratings have given the parties to the right the upper hand in Frances 2017 election. He did not say whether he will run again for the Republicans party.

I have decided to be a candidate for the 2017 presidential election. I felt I had the strength to lead this battle at a troubled time in our history, he wrote in the message announcing his candidacy. Sarkozy is also releasing a book on Wednesday, titled Everything for France.

As reports of his possible run have circulated, the politician has been vocal about the need to strengthen France by expelling citizens with links to terror groups in the wake of recent attacks.

[Reuters]
* Exporters gain ground as dollar stands high against yen

* Mining shares underperform hit by weak oil prices

By Ayai Tomisawa

TOKYO, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Japan's Nikkei edged up on Monday, but gains were limited as investors were cautiously focused on this week's meeting of global central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the U.S. Federal Reserve may provide insight on the rate outlook.

The Nikkei share average rose 0.3 percent to 16,598.19.

The broader Topix gained 0.6 percent to 1,303.68 and the JPX-Nikkei Index 400 added 0.5 percent to 11,715.58.

(Reporting by Ayai Tomisawa; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
Japanese brokerage giant Nomura Holdings Inc. NMR is planning to hire bankers in the U.S., with an aim to boost the investment banking business in its priority market, per a Bloomberg report. This follows a series of cost cutting initiatives adopted by the company earlier this year.

Earlier in Dec 2015, Nomura Holdings had announced its plan to hire bankers in the U.S., before the investment banks across the world reported one of the worst quarters in history. The company is now reviving its hiring plans after reporting its biggest pre-tax profit abroad in seven years, for the quarter ended Jun 30, 2016.

Growth Opportunities Driving Expansion Plans

The year began with Nomura Holdings eliminating jobs and shutting businesses in Europe and America. This was in line with the companys strategy to cut costs. Nevertheless, the company is now strategizing to tap growth opportunities in the worlds biggest investment banking market.

Nomura Holdings seeks to provide merger advice to mid-size U.S. companies (having a market value less than $10 billion) and to increase the number of cross-border deals involving Japanese firms through its hiring initiatives. Further, the company seeks to manage more equity offerings and provide strategies for currency hedging for acquisitions.

The rising volume of mergers and stock offerings in the U.S. market will help enhance the companys growth as it plans to employ bankers to cover industries like technology, consumer and pharmaceuticals.

According to the Bloomberg data, Nomura Holdings was ranked third among Japanese financial advisers in the first half of 2016. Notably, the company has not been able to regain its top position since 2011. So, the company plans to regain strength in cross-border merger advice as most of the Japanese companies are increasingly depending upon overseas expansion for their growth.

Though the brokerage firm has no target fixed for number of investment bankers to be hired, it can recruit up to 20 bankers. Earlier, the company boosted the number of M&A bankers in Japan by about 1015% in order to handle more cross-border transactions. Further in America, the company added six investment bankers and more than thirty junior staff in 2015.

Story continues

Currently, Nomura Holdings carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked finance stocks include Meta Financial Group, Inc. CASH, Comerica Incorporated CMA and Flagstar Bancorp Inc. FBC, each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



COMERICA INC (CMA): Free Stock Analysis Report



NOMURA HLDG-ADR (NMR): Free Stock Analysis Report



FLAGSTAR BANCP (FBC): Free Stock Analysis Report



META FINL GRP (CASH): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
(Corrects expected time of GDA process to around four years from around two years for large plants - clarifies time frame for SMRs not yet established in 5th to last paragraph)

By Susanna Twidale

LONDON (Reuters) - A range of mini-nuclear power plants could help solve Britain's looming power crunch, rather than the $24 billion Hinkley project snarled up in delays, companies developing the technology say.

So-called small modular reactors (SMRs) use existing or new nuclear technology scaled down to a fraction of the size of larger plants and would be able to produce around a tenth of the electricity created by large-scale projects, such as Hinkley.

The mini plants, still under development, would be made in factories, with parts small enough to be transported on trucks and barges to sites where they could be assembled in around six to 12 months, up to a tenth of the time it takes to build some larger plants.

"The real promise of SMRs is their modularisation. You can assemble them in a factory with an explicable design meaning consistent standards and predicable costs and delivery timescale," said Anurag Gupta, director and global lead for power infrastructure at consultancy KPMG.

In a nuclear power plant, heat is created when uranium atoms split. Different reactor designs use this heat in different ways to raise the temperature of water and create steam, which then powers turbines to produce electricity.

Manufacturing advancements mean SMR developers are only a few years from being able to replicate this technology on a smaller scale, and plants could be ready for deployment by the mid-2020s.

"From a technical perspective there is no reason why you wouldn't be able to make a smaller version of an already commercially viable nuclear technology such as PWR (pressurised water reactor)," Mike Tynan, director of Britain's Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC), said.

There are already more than 100 nuclear plants using PWR technology in operation across the globe.

Story continues

NuScale, majority owned by U.S. Fluor Corp, is developing 50 megawatt (MW) SMRs using PWRs which could be deployed at a site hosting up to 12 units generating a total of 600 MW. The 50 MW units would be 65 feet (20 metres) tall, roughly the length of two busses, and nine feet in diameter.

Rolls-Royce, which already makes components for PWR nuclear submarines, is part of a consortium developing a 220 MW SMR unit which could be doubled for a larger-scale project.

Rolls-Royce Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stein said the first 440 MW power plant would cost around 1.75 billion pounds ($2.3 billion) but costs would likely fall once production is ramped up.

"One of the advantages of the SMRs is that they cost a lot less (than large nuclear plants), and it is an easier case to present to private investors," Stein said.

COSTS, VIABILITY QUESTIONED

Critics, however, say there is no guarantee that SMR developers will be able to cut costs enough to make the plants viable.

"SMR vendors say factory production will save a lot of money, but it will take a long time and a lot of units to achieve what they are calling economies of mass production," said Edwin Lyman, nuclear expert at the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

"Factory manufacture is not a panacea. Just because you are manufacturing in a factory, it doesn't mean you are certain to solve problems of cost overruns," he said.

Costs are a sensitive issue and could have played a part in Britain's decision to review the $24 billion project to build the two new Hinkley Point nuclear reactors led by French utility EDF and Chinese partner China General Nuclear.

Almost half of Britain's electricity capacity is expected to close by 2030, as older, large nuclear plants come to the end of their operational lives and coal plants shut as part of the country's efforts to meet its climate goals.

The two new reactors at Hinkley Point are supposed to provide around 7 percent of Britain's electricity, helping to fill that supply gap. Nuclear developers are confident SMRs could be up and running by the late 2020s, in time to help bridge the looming electricity supply shortfall.

A study carried out by the National Nuclear Laboratory, a government owned and operated advisory body, said Britain could host up to 7 gigawatts (GW) of SMR capacity by 2035, more than double the capacity of Hinkley.

But anti-nuclear green groups such as Greenpeace argue that with advances in renewable technology, such as offshore wind, Britain may not need any new nuclear plants.

This week Britain approved Dong Energy's plans to expand an offshore wind farm project that could ultimately span an area of the North Sea more than twice the size of London and produce up to 4 GW of electricity, more than Hinkley Point.

Nuclear power defenders say the intermittent nature of renewable electricity production and lack of grid-scale storage mean nuclear plants are needed to ensure continuous supply of power if the country is to meet its emission reduction targets.

"Working alongside renewables, nuclear provides the reliable low carbon energy required to balance variable wind and solar generation," said Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association.

SAFETY TESTS

NuScale's UK and Europe Managing Director Tom Mundy said providing NuScale gets the necessary regulator approvals and partners its first SMRs could be running in Britain by 2026.

All nuclear power projects need approval from Britain's Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), and its Generic Design Assessment (GDA), which tests the safety and design of new reactors and can take around four years to complete for large plants.

A spokeswoman for the ONR said as the plans are at an early stage, it does not yet know how long the GDA process would take for SMRs.

The GDA is seen as the "gold standard around the world", KPMG's Gupta said.

Nuclear power plants in Britain can also only be built on sites licensed by the government, and the first SMRs could be set up at existing nuclear plant sites or at licensed sites where older plants are being decommissioned.

Britain said this year SMRs could play an important part in the country's energy future, and committed 250 million pounds to research, including a competition to identify the best-value SMR design for the country.

NuScale, Rolls Royce and Toshiba Corp's Westinghouse were among 33 companies the government has identified as eligible for the competition.

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has given no further details and had no further comment on SMRs.

(Editing by Susan Thomas and Adrian Croft)
By Karen Lema MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines has recorded about 1,800 drug-related killings since President Rodrigo Duterte took office seven weeks ago and launched a war on narcotics, far higher than previously believed, according to police figures. Philippine National Police Chief Ronald Dela Rosa told a Senate committee on Monday that 712 drug traffickers and users had been killed in police operations since July 1. Police were also investigating 1,067 other drug-related killings, Dela Rosa said, without giving details. On Sunday, Duterte railed against the United Nations for criticizing the wave of deaths. The United States, a close ally of the Philippines, said it was "deeply concerned" by the reports, and U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner urged Duterte's government to ensure that law-enforcement authorities abided by human rights norms. The drug trafficking crackdown and some strongly worded criticisms Duterte has made of the United States since coming to power present a dilemma for Washington, which has been seeking to forge unity among allies and partners in Asia in the face of an increasingly assertive China, especially in the strategic South China Sea. Toner made the dilemma clear in responses to questions at a regular State Department briefing in Washington, in which he referred to Duterte as "a plain-speaking politician." "We continue to make clear to the Philippines government ... our concern about human rights, extrajudicial killings, but we are also committed to our bilateral relationship and strengthening that bilateral relationship," he said. Toner said there was no question of the United States turning a blind eye to rights abuses and that the relationship with Manila, while good, was "frank and candid." As recently as Sunday, the number of suspected drug traffickers killed in Duterte's war on drugs had been put at about 900 by Philippine officials. But this number included people who died since Duterte won the May 9 presidential election. Duterte said in a strongly worded late-night news conference on Sunday the Philippines might leave the United Nations and invite China and others to form a new global forum, accusing it of failing to fulfill its mandate. His foreign minister, Perfecto Yasay, said on Monday the Philippines would remain a U.N. member and described the president's comments as expressions of "profound disappointment and frustration". "We are committed to the U.N. despite our numerous frustrations and disappointments with the international agency," Yasay told a news conference. U.S. officials declined comment on Duterte's U.N. remarks. Last week, two U.N. human rights experts urged Manila to stop the extra-judicial executions and killings. Yasay said Duterte has promised to uphold human rights in the fight against drugs and has ordered the police to investigate and prosecute offenders. He criticized the U.N. rapporteurs for "jumping to an arbitrary conclusion that we have violated human rights of people". "It is highly irresponsible on their part to solely rely on such allegations based on information from unnamed sources without proper substantiation," he said of the United Nations. Senator Leila de Lima, a staunch critic of the president, started a two-day congressional inquiry into the killings on Monday, questioning top police and anti-narcotics officials to explain the "unprecedented" rise in killings. "I am disturbed that we have killings left and right as breakfast every morning," she said. "My concern does not only revolve around the growing tally of killings reported by the police. What is particularly worrisome is that the campaign against drugs seems to be an excuse for some law enforcers and other elements like vigilantes to commit murder with impunity," De Lima said. (Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Alan Crosby, Grant McCool)
Its official: most Americans are nervous about how divided we are over politics

Its official: most Americans are nervous about how divided we are over politics

You may or may not have noticed, especially with the upcoming presidential election, how everything feels a little, er, on fire. It often feels like there is no end in sight to the totally intense political division that has our country split AF. But it turns out that its not just us feeling that way; its all of us, or the majority of us. Because, yeah, its official: most Americans think weve become hardcore divided about politicsand none of us see it ending any time soon.

A new study from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research used funding from NORC at the University of Chicago to find out how Americans feel about our current politics and values. According to EurekAlert, the participants were selected randomly, and there were over 1k total responses. The findings are actually super interesting, and validating.

Heres what you should know about the results.

1. We think were hugely split when it comes to values and politics.

Eighty percent said theres a split when it comes to the most important values, with 85 percent saying the same about politics. Thats a huge amount, and its validating for those of us who feel like everything is falling apart.

2. But we do have more hope for our local communities.

When we zoom in a bit, though, 62 percent said members of their local community are in agreement about those important values, showing we think differently on a small scale than a large one.

giphy

3. Most of us think diversity is a good thing.

When it comes to diversity, 56% of us said diversity makes the U.S. stronger, while 16 percent say it weakens our country. Twenty-eight percent were in the middle, saying its not good or bad.

4. At the end of the day, the majority of us think a Trump win would cause more division.

Only 43 percent said that if Hillary Clinton becomes president, well have a more divided country, while 73 percent say the same about Trump. Not surprising considering some of his more scandalous statements about certain groups.

The post Its official: most Americans are nervous about how divided we are over politics appeared first on HelloGiggles.
By Ian Ransom RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 22 (Reuters) - South Korea danced all over their rivals to complete an unprecedented sweep of all four titles in the Olympic archery at the Sambadrome, which is the venue of the samba school parade during Rio's annual Carnival. The Koreans were disappointed to grab only three golds in London, where their men missed out on the team title, but none were off target at the Rio Games. The archery superpower made its intentions clear on the opening day, with men's world number one Kim Woo-jin shooting a 72-arrow world record during the ranking rounds. A week later, Ku Bon-chan fired the winning arrow against France's Jean-Charles Valladont in the men's individual final to cap a tournament of complete dominance for the Asian nation. Ku emerged a two-gold hero, stepping up in the individual event after compatriot Kim crashed out in the second round. The 23-year-old also anchored the men's team in their victory over a strong United States, firing six perfect arrows to condemn the Americans to another silver after their disappointment against Italy in London. South Korea's formidable women continued their stranglehold over the team event, notching their eighth straight title since it joined the Olympic programme in 1988. London Olympic champion Ki Bo-bae won her third gold in that team triumph but the country crowned a new archery queen in Chang Hye-jin, who upset Ki on the way to the individual title. With the rest of the world left to fight over the scraps, rank outsider Lisa Unruh won Germany's first individual medal as runner-up to Chang. Russia's women celebrated winning the team silver, having been worried they would be banned from the Rio Games over the nation's state-sponsored doping scandal. American game hunter Brady Ellison claimed a long-coveted individual medal with bronze to go with his team silver. (Editing by Ken Ferris)
An Islamist rebel has admitted to ordering attacks on ancient cultural sites in Timbuktu, Mali, in a unique trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Ahmad al Faqi al Mahdi, aged around 40, said he was really sorry for his actions and asked to be forgiven, the BBC reported. He appeared at The Hague in the Netherlands on Monday, accused of leading rebel forces who destroyed nine mausoleums and a mosque with pickaxes and iron bars in 2012.

This is the first time a suspected Islamist militant has been charged by the ICC on a charge of cultural destruction, and the first time a suspect has pleaded guilty. According to the U.K.s Sky News, al Mahdi told the judge that the details of his charge were regrettably accurate and reflect[ed] the events.

He added that he was pleading guilty with deep regret and deep pain and that if he were to give a piece of advice to all Muslims in the world, it would be to not to get involved in the same acts I got involved in. ISIS militants have destroyed relics and cultural sites in Syria, most notably the ancient city of Palmyra.

Court documents state that the buildings in Mali were regarded and protected as a significant part of the cultural heritage of Timbuktu and that the community in Timbuktu was involved in their maintenance and used them for their religious practices.

At the time of their destruction, the cemeteries were classified as world heritage sites, and under the protection of UNESCO.

[BBC]
Womens Law Project, which represented the woman who accused Birth of a Nation director Nate Parker of rape while they were both students at Penn State, issued a statement on the controversy on Monday.

In 2002, the Womens Law Project represented a young woman in a complaint charging Penn State University with violating Title IX by failing to properly respond to the harassment to which she was subjected after she filed complaints to the police and the school alleging she was raped by PSU wrestlers Nate Parker and Jean Celestin, reads the statement from Carol E. Tracy, executive director of the Womens Law Project, on the organizations blog. As is now known, she tragically died in 2012. We chose to refrain from participating in the public dissection of the case out of respect for the privacy of our client who, throughout our representation, requested anonymity.

However, as advocates of improving responses of both the criminal justice and campus systems to sexual assault, we come forward to address our clients objectives, the statement goes on. Our client took the actions she did with the goal of protecting other women from sexual assault and harassment, and to do what she could to ensure justice for rape survivors.

The allegations the woman made against Parker and Celestin resurfaced in the past couple of weeks. The accusers brother revealed to Variety that his sister died by suicide in April 2012, and Parker responded with a Facebook post that said he was filled with profound sorrow over the news.

Tracy took aim at sexual assault laws at large, but also at Penn State for failing to properly address the situation after the woman first reported the allegations against Parker and Celestin in 1999. In court documents, the woman reported suffering harassment at the hands of the two men after the alleged rape, and later dropped out of the university.

Our college campuses, appropriately reminded of their obligations under Title IX by the Office for Civil Rights in 2011, need to comply in both word and practice with the law and strive to prevent sexual misconduct and harassment so studentsall studentscan fully benefit from their education, reads the statement.

Story continues

Parker was acquitted of the charges in a 2001 trial. Celestin, his co-writer on Birth of a Nation and college roommate at the time, was found guilty, but successfully appealed four years later. The men have been pushed back into the spotlight after Birth of a Nation, about Nat Turners slave rebellion, debuted at Sundance to critical acclaim and was picked up by Fox Searchlight for a record $17.5 million.

Our sex crime laws need to be updated and stripped of archaic notions about sexual assault such as those that impose, by word or practice, perpetual consent based on previous sexual relationships, Tracy said. The criminal justice system must free itself of pervasive bias and victim-blaming.

Tracy ends the statement with a quote from Parkers accuser from 2004: A victim should not have to worry about harassment, safety, classes, and finances after she has experienced and reported a heinous crime. If victims feel protected, more will come forward, and perpetrators will learn that their behavior will not be tolerated.

Read the full statement here.

Related stories

Fox Searchlight Moving Forward With Nate Parker's Publicity Tour, Toronto Film Festival Appearance

Nate Parker Pens Response to New Details of College Rape Case: 'I Am Filled With Profound Sorrow'

Nate Parker's Rape Accuser Committed Suicide in 2012: Her Brother Speaks Out (EXCLUSIVE)
chart 08-22-2016

The S&P was firm on Thursdays close then sold off on Globex overnight. After another sell off on Friday mornings 8:30 CT RTH open, the ES did what it does best, it ripped higher. While the sentiment still remains bullish many traders are starting to think the S&P maybe setting up for a sell off. While we can not rule out something like that, we also think the current price action in the S&P futures has not changed, meaning sell off a little and rally. Until that changes we still think S&P 2200.00 is on tap.

Record Inflows for 2016

For several weeks the S&P 500 futures have been stuck in narrow trading ranges. Last week it looked like the futures were poised to take out the highs, but they fell back into the same range its been trading in. According to Bank of Americas Merrill Lynch, global investors continue putting money to work in stocks. Over $5 billion went into global stock funds last week bringing the total inflows to $11.6 billion over the last two weeks.

After a shaky start to 2016, and a more than 10% drop, the S&P has recovered to make new all time record highs over the summer. The rally had done little to reassure investors that continue to pull money out of stock investment funds. According to Credit Suisse, July outflows deepened to the worst month in six years after $52 billion was pulled from stock funds in the first 6 month of 2016.

Global Markets

Overnight global equity markets have traded mostly weaker. The ESU6 traded lower on the Asian session, making a 2175.50 low going into the Euro open, before continuing the routing of a European bounce. The index futures pushed up to 2184.50 shortly after 4:00 am cst before selling off again. The ES currently sits a tick above globex low, on volume that has hit about 150K before 6:30 am cst this morning, which is higher than the recent globex trend.

This week offers several relevant economic reports and Janet Yellens speech. Usually after the markets have been slow in the summer they begin to pick up gradually in late August before Labor Day. That is what we may start seeing this week. If volume picks up, then this will likely lead to some downside price action, or at least some real two sided opportunities.

Story continues

I did speak with one desk manager who believes that the current market slowdown will last beyond Labor Day and until the Presidential debates. One thing I do know is that, as tired as traders are of this range, the market wont change until it has a reason to change. In the meantime we play both sides, still giving respect to the buyers who prop up every dip, but knowing there is weakness on every new high. As much as the market seems difficult now, looking back, it will seem to have been easy to trade.

Early Weakness/Late Strenght

This week the bulls need to hold above 2172 and finally make the push up to the 2200. Remember, the last few weeks have seen weakness in the early part of the week, and strength later in the week. Bears need a push to close below last weeks 2165 low then follow through to 2155 and then 2145. It seems like a lot to ask from sellers who have been exhausted by a couple 10 handle dips.

tech levels 08-22-2016

In Asia, 6 out of 11 markets closed lower (Shanghai -0.75%), and in Europe 9 out of 12 markets are trading lower this morning (DAX -0.38%). This weeks economic calendar features the two day Monetary policy symposium and Janet Yellens speech, and includes 21 reports and 12 US Treasury events. Todays economic calendar includes Chicago Fed National Activity Index, a 4-Week Bill Announcement, a 3-Month Bill Auction, and a 6-Month Bill Auction.

Our View

I am bullish, but I have to admit, there are some red flags popping up. Goldman Sachs Prime Brokerage reporting a surge in net long exposure to 63%, approaching the highest levels in 12 months and rising from below 50% in Q2, is probably not a good sign. That said, the ES closed more than 210 handles above the June 27th 1981 low, and 9.75 handles off it 2190.75 high. Guessing when the ES will break out of its mold, or narrow range and small net changes, just has not happened yet, so we / I have to go back to the existing patterns of selling off and going back up.

Is ES 2200.00 still on TAP? I think so Its possible the ES stays kind of weak for the first few days of the week, then starts going back up later in the week. Our view is to sell the early rallies and buy weakness. I doubt the S&P is going to go down very much.

The S&P 500 Futures: The August Options Expiration and ES 2200 No Show

As always, please use protective buy and sell stops when trading futures and options.

EuroIMPRO

[s_static_display]

Facebook

twitter

reddit

linkedin

tumblr
By Asad Hashim ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani security forces have killed six people in a remote northwestern valley near the Afghan border in a new offensive against Islamist militants in the area, the military said. All six of those killed in the offensive in the Khyber region were "terrorists", the military said in a statement late on Sunday. Reuters was unable to independently verify their identities as access to the area is restricted. The army launched air and ground operations in the Rajgal valley, about 90 km (60 miles) west of the city of Peshawar, last week, the latest leg of an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and its allies that began in 2014. Pakistan has for years been battling militants who want to impose a strict version of Islamist law in Pakistan, while quietly backing others who are seen as furthering Pakistani objectives against old rival India and in Afghanistan. The Pakistani offensive has squeezed some groups into small pockets of territory, while others have fled over the border into lawless areas of eastern Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the militants are still capable of launching deadly attacks across Pakistan. A bomb attack on a crowd in a hospital courtyard in the city of Quetta on Aug. 8 killed more than 70 people, the deadliest attack in Pakistan since 2014. The military says it has killed at least 31 people in coordinated ground and air strikes in the Rajgal area since Aug. 16. The attacks would "effectively check and guard against terrorists movement along high mountains and all-weather passes", the army said. Pakistan and Afghanistan have accused each other repeatedly of not doing enough to stop the movement of militants across the border. Pakistan has been battling the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella organization of hardline Islamist groups, since its inception in 2007. The Pakistani Taliban are allied with but separate from the Afghan Taliban. (Writing by Asad Hashim; Editing by Tommy Wilkes, Robert Birsel)
There was a time, not long ago, when the Television Academy could barely make a category out of miniseries, or what is now called Limited Series. And usually, it would be HBO dominating whatever list it had, including last years winner Olive Kitteridge. Now, this is one of the hottest areas of the Emmys and continues to be separated in the top program category from TV Movies. They were once combined, as they continue to be in the acting, writing and directing categories. But the field is too rich in terms of Limited Series now, so the separate program designation was adopted.

And to show the degree of heavyweight competition in this category, HBO was completely shut out, with no nominations for its big 2016 hopeful, Show Me A Hero, which had won a Golden Globe for star Oscar Isaac. FXs staple here, American Horror Story, is also AWOL in the category for the first time since its inception, but that cable powerhouse still finds it is competing against itself with the top two nomination-getters in the category, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and 2014 champ, Fargo.

American Crime

ABC

The second season Limited Series from creator John Ridley is carrying the flag for the broadcast networks with a television form they practically invented, but had abandoned in recent years. Though not a ratings juggernaut, the show, with a strong ensemble cast changing parts each season like American Horror Story, tackles controversial themes in powerful ways. But with a mere four nominations, it is falling far behind its cable competitors and looks like a long shot for victory.

Fargo

FX

With 18 nominations, the 2014 champ in this categorywhen it also garnered 18 nominationshas come on very strong in its second season and is breathing heavily behind FX stablemate The People V. O.J. Simpson. With virtually a new cast, it has lost none of its punch and could repeat if only FX didnt already have another dog in this hunt that threatens to suck the air out of the room.

Story continues

Roots

History

This remake of perhaps the most famous miniseries of them all is trying to make history for History. Adapted from Alex Haleys famous book, this version was very well received, but its chances are hampered by the fact that it received no acting nominations (unless you count its bid for Narrator) and only five other relatively minor technical nods. With no mentions for writing, directing or acting, the road will be a long one if it is to prevail here, especially in the shadow of the original.

The Night Manager

AMC

With 12 nominations, this exquisite six-part adaptation of John le Carres novel would be a likely winner in any other year with lesser competition. Shot like an expansive widescreen motion picture, its intelligent script, top direction from Oscar winner Susanne Bier on locations around the world, and a remarkable cast led by Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colmanall nominatedwould seem to spell a real contender. Look for this to be a sleeper here.

The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story

FX

Perhaps the trick of this 10-part limited series was to make fresh a story everyone thought they already knew. Seeing it all presented in a new light, that made the viewer feel they were truly a fly on the wall of perhaps the most famous murder trial of the 20th century, has given this FX contender 22 nominations and a real shot at the crown. Instantly making the O.J. Simpson trial watercooler fodder again, this is the one to beat.

PETES PICK: The People V. O.J. Simpson, but dont be surprised by a British upset with The Night Manager.

This post was originally published August 22, 2016.

Related stories

Patton Oswalt Reflects On His Late Wife Michelle McNamara: Emmys Backstage

Emmys TV Review: Jimmy Kimmel Soars In Second Stint As Host

Emmy Awards 2016: The Complete Winners List
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced on Sunday that he would be sacking every member of his administration who was appointed by a previous President. The move  the latest in what Duterte calls a campaign against corruption  is one of several that have left critics troubled over what they say is an excessive wielding of executive power.

Until now, in my provincial visits, I still hear that corruption is being committed, he said in a long press conference in the earliest hours of Sunday morning, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. My mouth is, as they say, lousy. If you are there because of a presidential appointment, I will declare all your positions, all throughout the country, vacant.

As for the number of government employees to be sacked: It will number in the thousands.

Duterte, formerly the tough-on-crime mayor of the city of Davao, has long been known as a bombastic firebrand, but in the less than two months since he was inaugurated as President of the Southeast Asian nation, many there have expressed concern over what that zeal means at the level of federal politics. He has in recent weeks threatened to impose martial law if the countrys judiciary infringes upon his campaign to eradicate drugs from the country  an exercise that has left hundreds dead.

The U.N. has condemned the war on drugs as a human-rights violation, prompting Duterte to publicly venture that he may pull the country from the organization.

I do not want to insult you. But maybe well just have to decide to separate from the United Nations, he said on Sunday, according to al-Jazeera. He continued: You know, United Nations, if you can say one bad thing about me, I can give you 10 [about you].

He then said he did not give a sh-t about the consequences of his remarks.
Aides to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte sought to backtrack Monday on his threat to leave the United Nations, saying he only meant to express frustration at UN criticism of his deadly war on crime.

"It was a way of stating that the nation is sovereign. Okay? It was not a statement of fact that we are leaving," presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella told reporters.

In a press conference that began just after 1:00am on Sunday, Duterte launched a profanity-laced tirade against the UN after two of its rapporteurs expressed alarm at his war on crime, which has claimed more than 1,700 lives in less than two months.

"Maybe well just have to decide to separate from the United Nations. If you are that disrespectful, son of a whore, then I will just leave you," Duterte, who frequently uses swear words to insult his critics and others, said in the press conference.

The UN's special rapporteur on summary executions, Agnes Callamard, said Duterte's promise of immunity and bounties to security forces who killed drug suspects violated international law.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June also strongly criticised Duterte, who during the election campaign promised to kill 100,000 people and dump so many bodies in Manila Bay that the fish would grow fat from feeding on them.

With Duterte's threats making global headlines, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay held a brief news conference specifically on the issue on Monday.

"The statement of the president is a statement expressing profound disappointment and frustrations and it is not any statement that should indicate a threat to leave the United Nations," Yasay said.

Yasay also sought to lay blame on the reporter who asked Duterte a question about the issue.

"He already ended up the press conference, as I observed, but the press was still needling him with a lot of questions so it was in this context that he made these statements," Yasay said.

Story continues

"And if you're especially tired, disappointed and frustrated and angry, and under the circumstances, we must give a leeway on the part of the president for this kind of reaction. Like us, he is also human."

Nevertheless, Yasay said the final word rested with Duterte.

"I will assure you the president is very responsible in making statements. He will not make statements unless he means them," he said.
These photos of Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston filming Thor: Ragnarok look bananas

These photos of Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston filming Thor: Ragnarok look bananas

Ever since we saw the first image from Thor: Ragnarok, weve been waiting in eager anticipation for November 3rd, 2017. Luckily some photos have surfaced of swoon-worthy Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston, and theyre making the wait seem SLIGHTLY more bearable.

First up, heres a post by the New Zealand director of Thor: Ragnarok, Taika Waititi. This might be stating the obvious, but Thor looks mighty cute with his nobody messes with me face.

Spoiler. @chrishemsworth will be appearing in Thor: Ragnarok. Sorry. #ThorRagnarok A photo posted by Taika Waititi (@taikawaititi) on Aug 21, 2016 at 9:32pm PDT

Soooooo. Are you swooning already?

Hey! Its the dynamic duo just chillin at a paper stand.

Just sellin papers with my mate @twhiddleston #parttimejob #thorragnarok @taikawaititi A photo posted by Chris Hemsworth (@chrishemsworth) on Aug 21, 2016 at 4:33pm PDT

More of Thor and Loki please!

Of course, none of this would be complete without an obligatory photo of Thor with all his beloved fans (were currently picturing ourselves in the photo).

Thank you Brisbane for letting us disrupt the traffic and shoot a piece for our little film #thorragnarok in your beautiful city!!! @taikawaititi @twhiddleston @australia A photo posted by Chris Hemsworth (@chrishemsworth) on Aug 21, 2016 at 11:15pm PDT

Thank you Brisbane for letting us disrupt the traffic and shoot a piece for our little film, Hemsworth humbly says in the caption. Well we CANNOT. WAIT. to see this HUGE little film on the big screen. Come on 2017!

Also, we speak on behalf of everyone when we say: more photos from the set are in high demand.

The post These photos of Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston filming Thor: Ragnarok look bananas appeared first on HelloGiggles.
Theres an unsubstantiated internet story about Bill Murray that gets told around the campfire about how he helped himself to some French fries off of a strangers plate and when the stranger gawked at the fry-loving Ghostbusters star, Murray simply laughed, No one will ever believe you! and walked off. That story, true or not, has been passed around the internet more than tiny hamsters eating tiny food. Now theres more compelling evidence.

A new story of French fry aficionado, engagement fan, and noted party crasher Murray is being spread online with one distinct differencephotos.

According to Reddit user Sonowthatimhere, Murray shared some fries with his friend at the Marthas Vineyard Airport on Saturday and he was able to snap a photo of it. According to the Redditor, Seemed like [Murray] was just getting his friends to the airport; flight was delayed so they went for a bite. He added that Murray sharing in the fries gave everyone in the restaurant a good laugh, which is all anyone really wants when their flight is delayed.

This September, when Bill Murray Day comes, eat some fries to celebrate.
On Aug 19, 2016, we issued an updated research report on Plains All American Pipeline, L.P. PAA. Plains All American Pipelines systematic capital investment and strategy to expand operations via acquisitions will allow it to serve customers more efficiently. Nonetheless, increasingly stringent regulations and completion of ongoing expansion projects within time and budget are major obstacles.

Recently, Plains All American reported second-quarter 2016 adjusted loss of 12 cents per unit while the Zacks Consensus Estimate was earnings of 3 cents. On the other hand, the partnership reported total revenue of $4,950 million, which beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4,592 million by 7.8%. However, revenues plunged around 25.7% year over year primarily due to lower contribution from the Supply & Logistics segment.

Plains All American Pipeline maintains a systematic capital investment strategy to expand its operations through organic growth initiatives. It plans to invest nearly $1.4 billion in expansion programs this year. The partnership currently has a deep pipeline of new projects in resource-rich regions.

Moreover, Plains All American Pipeline has been pursuing a divestment strategy to utilize the proceeds to focus on core areas. The partnership closed asset sales worth $130 million in total, including the spin-off of its 50% stake in Cheyenne Pipeline LLC and the divestiture of the Gulf Coast CAM pipeline system, in the second quarter of 2016. It anticipates non-core assets divestment proceeds in the range of $500$600 million for 2016, having closed transactions worth $480 million year to date.

PLAINS ALL AMER Price

PLAINS ALL AMER Price | PLAINS ALL AMER Quote

On the flip side, Plains All American Pipelines operations are subject to extensive federal, state and local regulations managing transportation and processing of materials, and protecting the environment. While the execution of all of these regulations increases the partnerships operating costs, violating them would pose risks of administrative, civil and criminal penalties.

Story continues

Also, many upstream players are currently entering the midstream business by forming MLPs and upgrading infrastructure. If this trend persists, Plains All American will be up against tough competition as they generate revenues from exploration and production companies by providing transportation services.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Plains All American Pipeline carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A few better-ranked stocks in the same space include Enbridge Energy Partners, L.P. EEP with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and Archrock Partners, L.P. APLP and CONE Midstream Partners LP CNNX, both carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



PLAINS ALL AMER (PAA): Free Stock Analysis Report



CONE MIDSTREAM (CNNX): Free Stock Analysis Report



ENBRIDGE EGY PT (EEP): Free Stock Analysis Report



ARCHROCK PTNRS (APLP): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Police in Westbrook, Maine have cautioned the public after a massive piece of snakeskin was found in the middle of a public park over the weekend.

Read: School of Croc: Police on the Hunt for Vandals Caught Throwing 3 Crocodiles Into High School

The Westbrook Maine Police Department posted on Facebook Saturday that a citizen discovered the discarded skin along the Presumpscot River near a carry-in boat area.

The massive skin discovery forced the police to issue a public safety warning.

Westbrook Police Officers responded, photographed, collected, and tagged the skin which will be examined in attempts to determine what type of snake shed it and what risks this type of snake poses to public safety, they said.

Adding: "Until the type of snake is determined and we can assess the safety risk, we caution people who recreate along the Presumpscot River to remain alert, maintain a safe distance from any wildlife, and report any sightings of the snake to the Westbrook Police Department."

Read: Man Who Tossed 3-Foot Alligator Into Drive-Thru Window Faces Assault Charges

Of course the skin discovery led to a Twitter parody account for the snake, even giving him a name  Wessie P. Thon.

The latest is I shed a few pounds and have my sights set on a certain beaver for lunch today. https://t.co/RiXZBzURFp  Wessie P. Thon (@WessieThon) August 22, 2016

In June, police in the area reported a 10-foot-long snake eat a beaver-like animal along the river. It has not been determined whether the skin belongs to that particular snake.

Watch: Baby's Best Friend: Family Dog Rescues 8-Month-Old Child From Venomous Snake Attack

Related Articles:
T20 World Cup 2022: It Takes Two to Tango - Virat Kohli & SKY

T20 World Cup 2022 Points Table Update: The Latest Standings in Group 1 After Friday's Washout

T20 World Cup 2022: All to Play For After Australia-England Washout in Melbourne

Watch: Suryakumar Yadav Reacts After Ravi Shastri Calls Him a 'Three Format Player', Claims he Can Surprise in Test Cricket
By John Geddie

LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Portugal's 10-year bond yield edged back from a three-week high on Monday after the country passed a ratings test that soothed concerns it could be on the brink of a potentially catastrophic downgrade.

The move marked a modest recovery from last week's biggest jump in bond yields seen in nearly four months after DBRS, the agency that holds the only investment grade rank Lisbon needs to qualify for the ECB's bond-buying scheme, hinted that it could be on the brink of a downgrade.

Those comments had thrust the focus on a routine review by another agency Fitch on Friday, which already rates Portugal in junk territory, as investors waited to see if they saw the same pressures building on Portugal's rating as DBRS had flagged.

In the end, Fitch affirmed its BB+ ranking with a stable outlook, although their comments that Lisbon's economic growth continued to disappoint kept some analysts cautious.

"Despite the rating affirmation by Fitch on Friday we affirm our cautious stance in Portuguese government bonds," Commerzbank strategist David Schnautz said.

Lisbon's benchmark 10-year yield fell 5 basis points, edging back below 3 percent and recovering from a three-week high of 3.08 percent hit on Friday. Yields had hit a five-month low of 2.69 percent at the start of the week.

That marked the biggest weekly jump in yields seen since early May, surpassing a surge seen in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the European Union in June which dealt a fresh blow on the outlook for global growth.

Portugal's bonds outperformed others in the euro zone on Monday, with benchmark German equivalents edging down 1 bps to minus 0.06 percent, according to Tradeweb.

Strategists said mounting expectations that the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve may signal tighter monetary policy in a speech on Friday should prevent yields from falling further.

U.S. 10-year yields hit a two-week high of 1.60 percent earlier on Monday, after Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer gave a generally upbeat assessment of the U.S. economy's current strength, saying the job market was close to full strength and still improving.

His comments chimed with those of New York Fed President William Dudley last week, raising the prospect of a near-term hike even though minutes of the Fed's last meeting showed the rate-setting committee spilt on the matter.

For Reuters new Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarkets (Editing by Andrew Heavens)
(Updates prices, adds quote)

By John Geddie

LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Portugal's 10-year bond yield edged back from a three-week high on Monday after the country passed a ratings test that soothed concerns it could be on the brink of a potentially catastrophic downgrade.

The move marked a modest recovery from last week's biggest jump in yields in nearly four months after DBRS, the agency that holds Lisbon's only investment grade rank - which it needs to qualify for the European Central Bank's bond-buying scheme - hinted that it could be on the brink of a downgrade.

Fitch affirmed its BB+ ranking with a stable outlook, although its comments that economic growth continued to disappoint kept some analysts wary.

"Despite the rating affirmation by Fitch on Friday we affirm our cautious stance in Portuguese government bonds," Commerzbank strategist David Schnautz said.

Lisbon's benchmark 10-year yield was steady on the day at 3.03 percent, edging back from a three-week high of 3.08 percent hit on Friday. Yields had hit a five-month low of 2.69 percent at the start of last week.

That marked the biggest weekly jump in yields since early May, surpassing a surge seen in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the European Union in June which dealt a fresh blow to the outlook for global growth.

Still, Portugal's bonds continued to underperform others in the euro zone on Monday, with benchmark German equivalents edging down 3.5 bps to minus 0.08 percent, according to Tradeweb.

Other euro zone bond yields were 1-4 bps lower on the day.

"Last week's DBRS comments highlight that Portugal is under pressure a bit and has drawn attention back to an issue that some people had forgotten about," said Owen Callan, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Strategists said mounting expectations that the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve may signal tighter monetary policy in a speech on Friday should prevent yields from falling further.

U.S. 10-year yields briefly hit a two-week high of 1.60 percent earlier on Monday, after Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer gave a generally upbeat assessment of the U.S. economy's strength, saying the job market was close to full strength and still improving.

His comments chimed with those of New York Fed President William Dudley last week, raising the prospect of a near-term hike even though minutes of the Fed's last meeting showed the rate-setting committee spilt.

For Reuters new Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarkets (Additional reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
In the three seasons that were vacant since Sir Alex Fergusons retirement, the Manchester United were a shadow of their former selves. With David Moyes and then Louis van Gaal in charge, there was a distinct lack of identity and personality on the pitch - muddled ideals on how they saw their team playing was evident when 81 crosses were spammed into Fulhams box or Ashley Young was playing as a lone striker.

However, now with Jose Mourinho taking charge and in the United dugout, things are immediately changing. They might have only played three games so far, but the mood surrounding Old Trafford is reminiscent of times under Ferguson.

With the help of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Eric Bailly and Paul Pogba, Manchester United now have personality and identity back in their team. A proper spine. Bailly might have been a very quiet signing, but the Ivorian is already proving pivotal in reclaiming the aura that lived and breathed at Old Trafford.

Noticeably, Mourinho has recruited three players that are all over 6 foot 2, and while that might not seem the most important characteristic about them, its obvious to see why the Portuguese boss has done it. Apart from Marouane Fellaini, David De Gea and Chris Smalling, there has been a prominent lack of height in Manchester Uniteds first-team for a number of years. How do you expect to be on the front-foot and possess authority over your opponents without the added value of height?

Thats not to say you should recruit 11 players based on their height, but there was a clear imbalance in the Red Devilss team when it came stature. Now with Ibrahimovic, Pogba and Bailly, that makes five out of the starting eleven to be over 6 foot 1.

When facing up in the dugout ready to go to war on the pitch, theres a clear psychological advantage knowing that youre bigger than the other team - it intimidates the opposition. Its human nature. Perhaps a part of Manchester Uniteds timidness on the pitch in the last three years came to the fact there was no true authoritative leaders.

Story continues

Not only is there an increase in threatening aerial prowess, there are personalities and clear big game players. Pogba might only be 23-years-old, but hes demanded a world-record fee of 89 million to release him from his Juventus contract and rejoin United. Pogbas one of the best midfielders in the world and hasnt even reached his peak yet; hes a box-to-box, powerful midfielder that isnt afraid to drive at the hearts of the opposition and a player that the Red Devils have longed for.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic may well be the most important cog in Jose Mourinhos plans so far. His ego is unrivalled, which is not always a good thing, and the presence he brings  not only in terms of height but also in terms of what hes achieved and his global superstar status  is invaluable to this new era.

The Swede is a born winner and a natural leader, on and off the pitch. Wayne Rooney may have the armband, but its clear to see whos the top dog at the club now - just look at who took the penalty versus Southampton on Friday night.

Manchester United are certainly not back to their full powers under Ferguson, not by any stretch, but theres a distinguishable difference in their attitude and enjoyment on the pitch to anything weve seen in the last three years. Theres something palpable brewing in the atmosphere at Old Trafford and it could be rather special.
Aug 22 (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.

- Pfizer Inc is nearing a deal to buy biotech company Medivation Inc in a move that would add one of the crown jewels of the multibillion-dollar market for cancer drugs to Pfizer's portfolio, people familiar with the matter said. http://on.wsj.com/2byG9G4

- Turkey's president blamed Islamic State for turning a youth into a human bomb at a crowded outdoor wedding party in southeast Turkey's largest city, killing at least 51 people in a weekend attack that underscored how the war in neighboring Syria is destabilizing the region. http://on.wsj.com/2bG3za6

- India's next central bank chief, Urjit Patel, spent most of the past three years quietly in the shadows of charismatic Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan, but when he spoke he did so with conviction. "We are in the midst of the age of competitive depreciation and of beggar-thy-neighbor monetary policy," said Patel, who usually sat next to Rajan at press conferences after policy decisions. http://on.wsj.com/2btNuW2

- Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc is expected to announce it has hired Paul Herendeen as its new chief financial officer, luring the executive away from animal-health giant Zoetis Inc, according to sources close to the companies. http://on.wsj.com/2butPoZ

- President Barack Obama's troubled Pacific-region trade deal is threatening to become a foreign policy failure in Asia, where the U.S. loaded the accord with strategic significance as a counterweight to the rise of China. http://on.wsj.com/2boleoD

- The European Central Bank's corporate-bond-buying program has stirred so much action in credit markets that some investment banks and companies are creating new debt especially for the central bank to buy. In two instances, the ECB has bought bonds directly from European companies through so-called private placements. http://on.wsj.com/2bvP3Fq

- Volkswagen AG will resume negotiations Monday to resolve a dispute with parts suppliers that has led to reduced working hours for thousands of its employees across Germany. http://on.wsj.com/2bsxSQN

- One of China's most popular 'selfie' app makers, Meitu (IPO-XMMT.HK), is preparing to raise up to $1 billion through a listing on the Hong Kong exchange, in a test of whether that market can compete with New York and mainland China for a wave of expected Chinese startup offerings. http://on.wsj.com/2bnbJG8 (Compiled by Shivam Srivastava in Bengaluru)
About a year ago, Martin Shkrelis Turing Pharmaceuticals bought a drug and then increased its price 5,000%, raising awareness about how the cost of a drug can skyrocket virtually overnight, especially when it doesnt face much generic competition.

Today, drug prices are still going up across the board. Case in point: the EpiPen.

In 2007, when drugmaker Mylan bought the autoinjecting device, which contains epinephrine (otherwise known as adrenaline), the list price was $57. Now, a two-pack EpiPen will set you back more than $600 without insurance, according to prescription-drug price comparison website GoodRx. Since 2009, when it was $100 for a pack of two, the price has gone up about 500% (though the price varies among pharmacies). And senators are starting to ask for answers.

The price increases have helped transform the EpiPen into a billion-dollar business despite it being a decades-old product.

Meanwhile, according to Consumer Reports, some desperate patients who cant afford EpiPens anymore have turned to filling syringes with epinephrine themselves  an extremely tricky and potentially dangerous alternative.

Why the EpiPen doesnt have much competition

The EpiPen has competitors, though one, called Auvi-Q, has been recalled since last October. The other, called Adrenaclick, is a little different to use (it uses two caps instead of one, for example) and costs more than $400 without insurance, according to GoodRx (though significantly cheaper options may be available with coupons).

A generic version of the EpiPen did not get approval from the Food and Drug Administration; the agency cited certain major deficiencies.

These devices are used in emergencies to treat anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction that can make people go into shock, struggle to breathe, or get a skin rash. Its a common symptom of severe allergies, with one report saying about one in 50 people in the US could be at risk.

And these medications, which are kept on hand in case of a reaction, expire after a year, which means people have to stay up to date with new prescriptions even if they havent used a past one.

Story continues

In its second-quarter earnings, reported August 9, Mylan attributed its increased sales for specialty drugs (up 33% over 2015) to higher unit volumes and the realization of the benefits of customer contract negotiations over the last several quarters related to the EpiPen Auto-Injector, combined with higher sales for some of its other specialty products.

In response to questions about its high list price, Mylan noted in an email to Business Insider that about 80% of people with commercial insurance who also used a My EpiPen Savings Card received the device for $0.

With changes in the healthcare insurance landscape, an increasing number of people and families are enrolled in high-deductible health plans, and deductible amounts continue to rise, Mylan said. This shift has presented new challenges for consumers, and they are bearing more of the cost. This change to the industry is not an easy challenge to address, but we recognize the need and are committed to working with customers and payors to find solutions to meet the needs of the patients and families we serve.

With the new school year starting, people are losing patience

As a mom of a kid with food allergies, this is seriously infuriating. https://t.co/LbjiwNr6RV @MylanNews #allergies #foodallergy #epipen

Senators are starting to ask questions

Politicians, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, and Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, are weighing in on the issue as well.

Theres no reason an EpiPen, which costs Mylan just a few dollars to make, should cost families more than $600. https://t.co/rVWUlMxD0Q

Calling on Mylan Pharmaceutical to reduce price of EpiPen. Price rose from $100 in 2009 to $600 this year. https://t.co/I1pF6PVr5Z

On Saturday, Klobuchar called for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to investigate the price increase. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, on Monday asked for more information regarding the cost, as well as Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who penned a letter and gave Mylan until Sept. 5 to respond.

NOW WATCH: Research reveals why women cheat, but its not why you think

More From Business Insider
Holidaymakers looking to extend their summers with a fall vacation may want to keep Grenada, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic on their radar, for the chance to save up to 30 percent.

That's according to airfare pricewatching app Hopper, which crunched the numbers and came up with a guide to the best times to book fall travel, and the destinations where travelers can reap the most rewards.

American sunseekers, for instance, can save up to 30 percent on airfare to Grenada, and 27 percent on air travel to Liberia in Costa Rica and to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, if they book their fall travel in August.

Those planning a domestic trip this fall are advised to book in October, when the average airfare is predicted to drop to an average of $213, versus $215 in September and $219 in November.

The cities where travelers stand to save the most include Dallas (27 percent) Austin (23 percent) and Washington DC (20 percent).

Here are the top 10 international destinations where airfares are most likely to drop in August, via Hopper:

1. Grenada 30%

2. Liberia, Costa Rica 27%

3. Punta Cana, Dominican Republic 27%

4. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 26%

5. Tokyo, Japan 25%

6. Bogota, Colombia 25%

7. Cali, Colombia 24%

8. Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago 23%

9. Cancun, Mexico 22%

10. Vancouver, Canada 22%
London (AFP) - A Briton accused of child sex offences while working as a Catholic priest in a London school appeared in court here Monday, after being sent back to the UK from Kosovo following a five-year police search.

Laurence Soper, 72, has been charged with nine offences including buggery and gross indecency against five alleged victims between 1971 and 1983.

He made a brief appearance at Ealing Magistrates' Court in west London at the start of the court process against him.

The offences are alleged to have taken place at a private Catholic school in London where Soper taught.

His arrest at Luton airport north of London on Sunday concluded a lengthy legal battle between Britain and Kosovo, where Soper had been arrested in May on a European warrant issued by Britain.
Oh, Canada!



Prince William and Princess Kate are set to visit remote rainforests, the city of Vancouver and the sub-Arctic Yukon when they head to Canada next month.



The royal couple is set to arrive in British Columbia for their first set of duties in Victoria on September 24, their office at Kensington Palace announced Monday.



Their eight-day tour ends in the same city on October 1.







Amid the formal occasions that always accompany a royal tour, the wildlife-loving couple will enjoy the Great Bear Rainforest, which was recently announced as protected by the local British Columbia government.



 Want to keep up with the latest royals coverage? Click here to subscribe to the Royals Newsletter.



And, further north in Yukon, they will visit Carcross  which was originally a hunting camp and received the name because caribou herds would cross the narrow land between two lakes.



If  as expected  Prince George and Princess Charlotte make the journey too (they are yet to be confirmed by the palace), the tour is likely to be structured a little like it was in New Zealand and Australia, when George stayed at a home base while the couple traveled back and forth for their various visits Down Under.



The full itinerary is as follows:



September 24: Victoria, British Columbia

September 25: Vancouver, British Columbia

September 26: Bella Bella and Great Bear Rainforest, British Columbia

September 27: Kelowna, British Columbia and Whitehorse, Yukon

September 28: Whitehorse and Carcross, Yukon

September 29: Victoria, British Columbia

September 30: Haida Gwaii, British Columbia

October 1: Victoria, British Columbia





In July, it was revealed that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had invited the couple and their children to Canada.





Prince William and Princess Kate Are Going Back to Canada!





Then, last month, the palace confirmed that couple was " delighted to be returning."



The country holds fond memories for the couple, as it was where they took their first royal tour as newlyweds in July 2011.



"They are really looking forward to seeing other parts of this beautiful country and having the opportunity to meet many more Canadians along the way," the palace added.




Activists of a key Pakistani political party clashed with police and ransacked a private television station in the southern port city of Karachi on Monday, leaving at least one man dead and seven others injured.

The violence erupted soon after the powerful exiled leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Altaf Hussain, gave a telephone address to his supporters in which he castigated the media for not giving due coverage of his workers.

Hussain's activists, who had just ended a week-long hunger strike over a government crackdown against them, attacked the ARY station after his address from self-imposed exile in London.

MQM workers also clashed with police on the streets, sparking volleys of gunshots and tear gas in several places across the city, police and witnesses said.

"We have carried out teargas shelling to disperse the mob, who were trying to attack a television office," senior police officer Saqib Ismail said.

One unidentified man was killed and seven others injured, two with gunshot wounds, according to hospital officials.

"One was brought (to the hospital) dead, who was shot with a gun," doctor Seemi Jamali, the director at a state-run hospital, told AFP.

Three of the injured belonged to media organisations, she said.

Television footage showed dozens of men and women barging into ARY's office, smashing doors, windows and equipment with rods and batons and setting fire to several vehicles.

Paramilitary Rangers arrested the MQM's top leader in Pakistan, Farooq Sattar, as he arrived to address a press conference at Karachi Press Club late Monday, an AFP reporter witnessed.Officials said Sattar had been arrested in connection with the unrest.

The MQM, run by Hussain from London -- and accused of using extortion and murder to cement its grip on power -- has long been blamed for ethnic violence in Karachi.

It has clashed repeatedly with authorities who, according to rights groups, have resorted to hundreds of extra-judicial killings during a "clean-up" operation that began in 2013 in a city already plagued by violence.
From Esquire

The word "citizen" has been injected with new meaning since the ascendancy of Donald Trump and his promises to build a wall-a great wall, it's gonna be so great-and kick all illegal immigrants out of the country.

In the wake of his hateful rhetoric, "not a citizen" has become a catch-all for any person who looks vaguely non-white. And now, apparently, it's also an excuse to be a cheap ass and not tip a waitress.

A couple dining at Jess' Lunch in Harrisonburg, Virginia, stiffed their waitress, 18-year-old Sadie Elledge, because she is Latina. Elledge, who was born in America and is a citizen, showed the receipt to her grandfather who posted it on Facebook. From there, it went viral.

"I was born here but I'm Mexican and Honduran," Elledge told WHSV, but the cheapskate couple never even spoke with Elledge. "They wouldn't talk to me. They would just nod their heads," she said.

It's ironic. Anti-immigrant voters are always whining about how people come here illegally to steal jobs and government benefits from citizens. Meanwhile, they're the ones greedily stiffing a hardworking citizen.

God bless America.

You Might Also Like
Annie Golden, the theater veteran and regular on TVs Orange Is the New Black (playing inmate Norma), isnt precisely Annie Golden, protagonist of Joe Iconiss new musical Broadway Bounty Hunter, world premiering at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Mass. But the affinities between actor and character invest a personal touch to an otherwise campy, Alice-in-Blaxploitation-land fantasy glancingly concerned with self-empowerment. Its not unlike Cole Porter contriving prewar vehicles for Ethel Merman or Bert Lahr: Though the materials flimsy, a distinctive performer gets a chance to shine.

Actually, the limited opportunities for older performers to shine are the focus of the opening (and strongest) sequence here. As our Annie gamely, vainly trods the New York boards, director Julianne Boyd skillfully manages a collage of frustrating encounters with snotty ingenues and condescending directors who cant see a tested pro as anything but the mother or the kooky maid.

Golden does woebegone really well. (A bum returns her buck, singing Looks like you need it more than me.) Where most musicals open with an I Want song, this one presents two Ive Had It numbers, the first bewailing the marginal status of A Woman of a Certain Age, followed by a reminiscence of when I used to be new the next big thing but they dont spin these records anymore. Both are character-driven, tightly built showtunes, of the sort few pen better than Iconis (The Black Suits, Things to Ruin) these days.

At this point, he and co-librettists Lance Rubin and Jason SweetTooth Williams elect to abandon the coldwater flat for the rabbit hole. They send in Shiro Jin (Scott Watanabe), a Mr. Miyagi type of fearsome mien, to recruit her for his dojo for bounty hunters, of which there are of course so many on the Main Stem.

Unaccountably, this Golden girl sets off on a regimen of head kicks, body slams and Kung Fu fighting recognizable from Foxy Brown and her 70s ilk. Annies assigned a resentful, reluctant partner (Alan H. Green), who you know will come around eventually, and a Jabberwock to fight in the person of Mac Roundtree (Jeff McCarthy), a Venezuela-based drug dealer whose name is homage to the star of 1971s Shaft.

Story continues

But what does Annie Goldens story have to do with a disreputable B-movie genre? Not much, as it turns out. Coffy and Superfly memes are trotted out rather than satirized or commented upon. They do allow costume designer Bobby Frederick Tilley to go wild with gold lame and upholstery-grade polyester, and orchestrator Charlie Rosen to gleefully channel his inner Isaac Hayes into Iconis R&B funk pastiche. (If youre wondering how long into the show before they bring out the wocka-wocka guitar: one second.)

Its all quite enjoyable, if repetitious after a while. Theres not a weak link in the diverse ensemble, put through delightful disco-era paces by choreographer Jeffrey Page.

Surprisingly, however, the show underserves its star. Told repeatedly that bounty hunting requires one part animal instinct/One part primal rage/One part valiant courage/And the wisdom/That comes with age, we expect to see our heroine employ all of those traits. Yet none of them come into play during the cartoony caper. Indeed, the fish-out-of-water plot virtually demands Golden overdo the waif routine, the bangs and Walter Keane eyes she sported in Milos Formans 1979 cinematic Hair, though shes shown she can give so much more.

To be fair, voice and energy were clearly not 100% on an opening weekend after heavy rehearsals. But except for a rousing, climactic paean to the blood back in my veins, the material isnt there even if Golden were operating on all cylinders. Theres only limited chance to see her take full command of stage and story, as she did in 2000s The Full Monty and as the shows theme implies she will in the end.

It might be time for Iconis to set his sights a little higher than chopsocky or the thin nostalgia of The Black Suits. Porter wrote Merman brilliant songs for trivial vehicles but only won his rep as a premier Broadway artist when handed the stronger narrative of Kiss Me, Kate. Perhaps a story emphasizing substance over glossy surfaces is whats needed to propel Iconis to the next rank. Certainly whatever he writes, Golden has the chops to play it.

Related stories

TV Uses Comedy to Tackle Heavy Issues Like Police Brutality, Abortion & Mental Illness

Lionsgate TV Adds Chad Kennedy as Senior VP of Current Programming

Q&A: 'Tallulah' Director Sian Heder on Working With Ellen Page, Allison Janney and a Baby
Renee Zellweger was on top form as she greeted fans during a press call in Sydney on Monday. The Hollywood actress chose a demure and chic burgundy polka dot dress for the Sydney Harbor event, where she was joined by her handsome Bridget Joness Baby co-star, Patrick Dempsey.

With her blonde hair tousled into loose waves, and wearing just a hint of makeup, 47-year-old Renee smiled as she waved to fans who had gathered at the venue, before happily signing autographs along with Patrick.

Click here to view gallery



Renee touched down in Sydney on Saturday  coincidentally on the same fight as Justin Theroux  with her longtime boyfriend Doyle Bramhall II. She and Patrick are in town to promote the third installment of the Bridget Jones movies, in which serial singleton Bridget falls pregnant shortly before her 43rd birthday  but theres a hitch; she can only be fifty percent sure of who the babys father is.

Renee  who famously put on about 30 pounds for the original 2001 film, Bridget Joness Diary, and again three years later for the sequel, The Edge Of Reason  has revealed that she had intended to put on weight once more for the role, but that director Sharon Maguire had talked her out of it.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Renee explained: Sharon was hoping that we could show that Bridget has achieved her ideal weight, but at the same time it didnt mean her life was perfect.

"I wasnt sure about that one though because we all have something we think is wrong, that needs fixing, that in our minds represents the ideal we are meant to obtain, she admitted. And I like the idea that that stays with us throughout our lives.

During an interview with British Vogue earlier this year, Renee described her character as being a perfectly normal weight.

I put on a few pounds. I also put on some breasts and a baby bump, the actress laughed. Bridget is a perfectly normal weight and Ive never understood why it matters so much. No male actor would get such scrutiny if he did the same thing for a role.
By Makiko Yamazaki

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Renesas Electronics Corp is in the final stages of negotiations to acquire U.S. chipmaker Intersil Corp (ISIL.O) for as much as 300 billion yen (2.28 billion pounds), an industry source familiar with the deal said on Monday.

An agreement on the deal, which would be the latest in a trend of consolidation among global chipmakers, was likely to come "soon", said the person, who was not authorised to discuss the matter and thus asked not to be named.

Renesas said in a statement it was considering various options to grow, including a deal with a U.S. chipmaker, but that nothing had been decided. Intersil could not be reached for comment outside business hours in the United States.

Renesas shares rose as much as 4.2 percent in early morning trade before closing down 3.1 percent.

Some investors have doubts about how much the deal could boost Renesas's profits, said Gavin Parry, managing director of Parry International Trading Ltd in Hong Kong.

Renesas Chief Financial Officer Hidetoshi Shibata told Reuters in an interview late last year that the company had earmarked billions of dollars for acquisitions to defend an industry lead under threat from merging peers. He noted that Renesas had over 300 billion yen in cash to fund potential acquisitions.

Intersil had a market capitalisation of more than $2.1 billion as of Friday. Renesas will add a premium to buy Intersil, seeking to take full control of the Milpitas, California-based company, the Nikkei business daily reported earlier on Monday.

Renesas plans to use cash on hand and may also consider borrowing funds from banks, the Nikkei said, adding that the deal could be reached as early as this month.

Slowing growth in computers and smartphones - the traditional mainstays of the industry - fuelled a wave of mergers last year, with chipmakers turning to areas such as auto electronics for sales growth.

Demand for cheaper chips and new products to power internet-connected gadgets has also driven consolidation in the industry.

Story continues

Worldwide semiconductor M&A topped $80 billion last year, Thomson Reuters data showed.

Renesas was created in 2010 from a merger of NEC Corp's chip division and Renesas Technology, which itself was established through a merger of the chip units of Hitachi Ltd and Mitsubishi Electric Corp .

At the end of last year, Tokyo-based Renesas was the world's third-largest chipmaker by market share, with 9.1 percent, data from technology research firm Gartner showed.

The Japanese company lost its second-place spot after Dutch rival (NXPI.O) bought U.S. chipmaker Freescale Semiconductor Ltd in a $12 billion deal in December.

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki, Chang-Ran Kim and Thomas Wilson in TOKYO and Catherine Ngai in NEW YORK,; Editing by Stephen Coates and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
* Renzi, Merkel, Hollande to discuss post-Brexit scenarios

* Italy wants closer EU integration, less rigidity

By Isla Binnie

NAPLES, Italy, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Europe needs to invest in defence, education and culture while breaking free of bureaucratic rules, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Monday ahead of a meeting with the leaders of Germany and France.

Renzi will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande at a summit rich with symbolism as the European Union gropes for a way forward following Britain's shock referendum in June to abandon the 28-nation bloc.

The trio will travel first to an island off the coast of Naples to lay a wreath on the tomb of an Italian intellectual seen as one of the founding fathers of European unity. They will then hold talks on an aircraft carrier that is coordinating an EU naval mission against migrant traffickers.

"These are two symbols in one. Ideal values and concrete commitments," Renzi said.

He said Europe needed to overcome the Brexit vote and a recent wave of militant attacks, and rediscover its role.

"We need to invest in a common defence policy, in digital innovation, in schools and culture. Europe is the affectionate mother of our values, it is not the icy guardian of bureaucratic rules that are difficult to accept," Renzi wrote.

Heavily indebted Italy, whose economy has barely grown since the introduction of the euro currency in 1999, has repeatedly chafed against stern EU budget rules, and both Renzi and Hollande want greater flexibility to help boost growth.

Germany is keen for rules to be respected and the issue is not expected to be broached on Monday. But the three leaders are due to discuss common positions ahead of an EU summit in Bratislava next month which Britain was not invited to.

While Italy is eager for greater European consolidation in the wake of Brexit, Merkel wants to cement "a better Europe" rather than forge ahead with "more Europe".

Story continues

MIGRATION AND SECURITY

Monday's talks mark the beginning of a week of meetings for Merkel with other European governments that will see her travel to four countries and receive leaders from another eight. "The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27," an EU diplomat said.

Threats to the union that emerged long before the Brexit vote are also likely to be on the agenda, including internal and external security after Islamist militant attacks and Europe's migration crisis.

The three leaders are due to hold a news conference at around 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) on the Italian aircraft carrier, the Garibaldi, which is the flagship of the EU's "Sophia" mission in the Mediterranean. The operation is intended to tackle migrant smugglers, help enforce an arms embargo off Libya, and train the Libyan coast guard.

The EU plans to offer incentives to African governments to help slow the flow of migrants who have poured into Europe over the past three years, but disagreements on how to handle the situation have laid bare divisions between member states.

Italy, the main entry point for Africans but rarely their planned destination, is struggling to house migrants turned back from neighbouring countries including France, and has disagreed with Germany over how to finance the response.

(Writing by Crispian Balmer; editing by Giles Elgood)
Even before Frank Ocean fell quiet for the better part of four years, leaving a legion of fans to wonder when  if?  he'd ever muster a follow-up to his stunning 2012 debut, Channel Orange, the New Orleans-born pop savant was one of music's most elusive figures. He made his name, after all, by dodging tidy categorization, confounding expectation and disobeying prevailing rules of genre and sexuality. So it's only fitting that the roll-out for his new album, upon us at last, unfolded as a series of riddles, unpredictable detours and winks. It began in earnest in early August, after a string of blown deadlines and teasingly cryptic Tumblr posts: Ocean's site crackled to life with a bare-bones video stream capturing him in a workshop, wordlessly and methodically constructing what gradually revealed itself as a staircase. That feed gave way to Endless, a short film posted online in which dreamlike half-songs soundtracked footage cut together from the workshop sessions. The link between music and visuals was impressionistic at best, but the subtext was clear: Ocean is a craftsman, and craftsmanship requires patience. A day later, pop-up stores opened across the country, stocked with copies of Ocean's Boys Don't Cry, a glossy zine full of poems, photos of hot cars and hot boys and, affixed to one of its pages, a CD containing an album called Blonde. The title was stylized in accompanying art as the masculine blond  a grammatical tweak that gave the LP, intriguingly, two genders at once. Apple Music, meanwhile, unveiled a different Blonde, its tracklist featuring slight modifications. If all these twists and turns left observers feeling dizzy, well, isn't that exactly how Ocean wanted it?

On Blonde, dizziness is a common sensation. The album is by turns oblique, smolderingly direct, forlorn, funny, dissonant and gorgeous: a vertiginous marvel of digital-age psychedelic pop. On the lead single, "Nikes," Ocean wraps his voice in woozy distortion and pivots in the space of just two lines from blunt loverman braggadocio ("If you need dick, I got you") to mournfulness over Trayvon Martin's killing ("that nigga look just like me"). There are other moments where ugly American history crashes in  memories of how Hurricane Katrina uprooted Ocean bubble up on "Nights"  but his main preoccupation is romance. He approaches the subject from oblique angles, time-shifting the different phases of relationships like he's got them loaded on DVR: skipping from the blossoming of love directly into its demise, backing up a bit, leaving out big chunks. "I broke your heart last week," he sings on "Ivy," "You'll probably feel better by the weekend." When the chorus comes, he spits, "The start of nothing/I could hate you now." Ocean has an extreme facility with offbeat love songs, and can distill complex emotions: "I'm not him, but I'll mean something to you," he sings to a lover on "Nikes," diagramming an asymmetrical relationship in just nine words. There are lines about sex and about its unwanted consequences: On "Solo," accompanied by a soft-stirred organ melody, he slips stream-of-consciousness style from a line about vaping weed into a digression on the soul-killing toll of visits to "that clinic"  whether to terminate pregnancies or treat STDs, it's not entirely clear. The mood on Blonde oscillates in this way from light to dark, exultant to somber, following a weird logic available only to Ocean, and yet achieving a sense of sweep all the same.

Story continues

It's a trippy album, and whereas the lines about lovers point Ocean outward, there are many lines about drugs, leading him deep into his own skull. References to altered states recur on Blonde, abetted mostly by marijuana, with assists from psilocybin and LSD. (Ayahuasca gets a shout-out on Endless.) On "Seigfried," which Ocean has been tinkering with since at least the summer of 2013, hazy synths bleed into symphonic flourishes as he gets mired in over-the-top stoner philosophizing  "dreaming a thought that could dream about a thought that could think of the dreamer that thought," he half-raps  then eats some mushrooms and, in a lovely poetic flash, watches "light hang-glide off the moon." (Ocean's dealer should put this verse on his business card: His product is clearly phenomenal.)

The music is sparer than it was on Channel Orange  more mature, jammed less feverishly with ideas  but adventurous nonetheless. Minimalist rock guitar and simple electric keyboard work drive numerous songs; twitchy rhythms and bizarre vocal effects creep in from the edges. Songs change shape subtly as they go, rarely ending in the same place they began. On the standout "Nights," a sunny rock lick segues into shimmering keyboards that morph in turn into a smoky piano section, at which point Ocean breaks into a rapper-ly singsong that evokes Drake in its catchy amphibiousness. Ocean, who has sung hooks for Beyonce, Jay Z and Kanye West, has long chafed at being designated an R&B artist; here he quotes from Elliott Smith; interpolates the Beatles and Burt Bacharach; nods to Bowie and Brian Eno in the acknowledgments (the list, included in Boys Don't Cry, also includes Rick Rubin, James Blake and Gang of Four); and enlists a cameo from gospel stalwart Kim Burrell. Ocean works in the black-American pop-music vernacular, but this is an R&B album in only the most elastic and expansive sense of the term.

On Ocean's debut he imagined the lives of sordid characters: crack addicts, suicidal trust-funders, a stripper who may have been Cleopatra reincarnated. Those tracks could be engrossing but felt less potent on balance than more palpably personal songs like "Thinking Bout You," "Bad Religion" and "Forrest Gump," in which Ocean addressed his lovestruck lyrics to men  blazing a trail as the most prominent queer voice to broach the hip-hop/R&B mainstream yet. On Tumblr, days before Channel Orange's release, Ocean published a candid account of falling in love with a man and second-guessing romances he'd had with women  a young artist taking stock of his sexuality in full public view. On Blonde, Ocean leaves the range of his desires, and his lover's genders, provocatively ambiguous. On "Good Guy" he visits a "gay bar" on a blind date; on "Futura Free" he warns an antagonist, "I don't cut bitches no more, but your bitch my exception"  his sexuality isn't just a spectrum here, but a weapon. There's something radical about that, and it affirms Ocean's greatest strength: He refuses to be pinned down.





Related Content:
Godzilla arises in Shin Godzilla. (Encore Films)

Secret ending? No.

Running time: 2 hours (120 minutes)

Shin Godzilla (also known as Godzilla Resurgence) is a Japanese science fiction giant monster movie thats the first in the third reboot of the Godzilla film franchise.

When a giant monster that has been mutated by radiation threatens Tokyo, the best and brightest in Japan must devise a solution to stop it before it destroys the world. It stars Hiroki Hasegawa (Rando Yaguchi), Satomi Ishihara (Kayoco Anne Paterson), and Yutaka Takenouchi (Hideki Akasaka). The movie is rated PG.

Shin Godzilla was directed by the person behind Neon Genesis Evangelion  Hideaki Anno himself! The Japanese reimagining of Godzilla is much better than the American version a few years ago because it focuses on what audiences come to a Godzilla film to see, which is the massive behemoth himself. It definitely appeals to Japanese film sensibilities, but then, isnt Godzilla fundamentally a very Japanese concept?

Godzilla attacks in Shin Godzilla. (Encore Films)

Highlights

Collateral damage

Theres something amazingly cathartic about watching a giant monster lay waste to a densely populated city (something that the upcoming Power Rangers movie should definitely learn from). Although its ultimately still a man in a suit, albeit a CGI suit generated from the motion capture of a man acting as Godzilla, its still fun to watch the oddly human-like movements of Godzilla result in billions of dollars of destruction. Collapsing buildings are always entertaining.

Bureaucratic nonsense

Godzillas initial appearance has the government in decision paralysis, especially since virtually everything requires the Prime Ministers approval. Then theres all the red tape that our protagonists have to wade through, and the politicking that comes with navigating giant organisations. Fortunately (for us), the imbecilic governments inaction allows Godzilla to reach his full, magnificent potential and showcase his radioactive breath.

Story continues

Feel of classic Godzilla films

Whether its a homage or an intentional attempt to ape the style of the older Godzilla films, the treatment certainly evokes the feel of old Godzilla films. It might be a modern take on the topic and the responses of our protagonists are slightly more realistic, but it doesnt change the fact that theyre behaving very impractically to a very implausible situation. And ultimately, its their pluckiness and sheer determination that save the day, which is a hopeful message to include.

Godzilla is invincible in Shin Godzilla. (Encore Films)

Letdowns

Godzilla is hard to take seriously

Godzilla goes through a few evolutions in the course of the film to reach his final, poster-worthy form. But the problem is that his first few forms have gigantic googly eyes that make him look like an adorable, if cross-eyed, lizard. You almost want to throw a Pokeball and catch small Godzilla when you first see him. So when he finally evolves youre not too scared, because youve developed a connection with him when he was a younger, cuter creature.

The protagonists plan to stop Godzilla is silly

The plan may be approached fairly realistically, but its still an incredibly ridiculous plan. Visually, its not all that impressive. And as for the execution, its hard to fathom why they dont come up with a more lethal solution for neutralising Godzilla. Its a way to ensure the franchise continues, but its hard to believe why all the nations in the film agreed to it.

The face of death in Shin Godzilla. (Encore Films)

Shin Godzilla preserves the feel of Godzilla movies while updating it with modern responses.

Should you watch this at weekday movie ticket prices? Yes.

Should you watch this at weekend movie ticket prices? If youre a Godzilla fan.

Score: 3.1/5

Shin Godzilla opens in cinemas:

- 25 August, 2016 (Singapore)

- 22 September, 2016 (Malaysia)

- 31 August, 2016 (Philippines)

Marcus Goh is a Singapore television scriptwriter. Hes also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. He Tweets/Instagrams at Optimarcus and writes at marcusgohmarcusgoh.com. The views expressed are his own.
On Aug 22, 2016, we issued an updated research report on premium basic materials company  Rio Tinto plc RIO. Being one of the largest diversified resource firms in the world, this company locates, mines and processes various types of mineral resources across several continents. However, despite its successful global operations, Rio Tinto currently of the Silvergrass mine, Nammuldi Incremental Tonnes project and expansion faces threats from various external headwinds.



Bullish Factors

Increasing extent of global industrialization has been enhancing demand for industrial raw materials in the market. Moreover, Rio Tinto is trying to reinforce its business on the back of new solutions provided via big data analytics solutions.

Also, completion of major projects such as development of Kitimat smelter would boost the companys productivity over time. In order to invest in new organic and inorganic growth projects, Rio Tinto is strategically improving its liquidity over time. The company is preserving greater cash by lowering capital expenditure, introducing cost-reduction plans and releasing greater amount of working capital in business.

At the same time, it aims to fortify its balance sheet with reduction in net debt. Rinto Tinto has implemented a new flexible dividend policy since Feb 2016. The company percives that this policy would assist in maximising shareholders value over time.

Looming Concerns

We believe this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) stock would continue to grow its business over the long run. However, certain industry-specific headwinds might hurt Rio Tintos commercial prospects. For instance, reduced investments of companies belonging to the manufacturing and industrial sectors are hampering the demand for core metals and, hence, hurting sales of mining companies like Rio Tinto. Extensive business rivalry existing in the mining industry exposes the company to risks of market-share loss.

Other Stocks to Consider



Rio Tinto currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Some other stocks within the industry include Klondex Mines Ltd. KLDX, McEwen Mining Inc. MUX and Uranium Resources, Inc. URRE. All these three stocks carry the same Zacks Rank as Rio Tinto.



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



RIO TINTO-ADR (RIO): Free Stock Analysis Report



URANIUM RES INC (URRE): Free Stock Analysis Report



KLONDEX MINES (KLDX): Free Stock Analysis Report



MCEWEN MINING (MUX): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
To figure out how life on Earth started, scientists must recreate the world as it was, or at least know the ins and outs of our primordial planet. This week, scientists moved in that direction, putting together a mix of chemicals simpler than DNA that reproduced similar molecules  a step toward actually being alive.

Scientists studying the origin of life think that the first molecules to replicate themselves  the very first living things  lived in what is called "RNA world." The RNA world hypothesis says that before there was DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, there was RNA (ribonucleic acid) serving as a kind of primitive genetic material and simple enzymes. This is simpler than the protein-based chemistry that governs life today, in which the genetic material and enzymes are separate. [7 Wild Theories on the Origin of Life]

RNA replicator

In the new study, David Horning and Gerald Joyce, both at The Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California, mixed a cocktail of water, RNA and an enzyme called ribozyme. They found that the ribozyme linked to the pieces of RNA, and in turn allowed those RNA bits to link with other chemicals called monomers, to make more RNA.

"It's the first example of nucleic acids (or genetic information in general) being replicated by anything other than a protein enzyme, and further shows that replication of genetic material could be accomplished with RNA alone, confirming part of the RNA world hypothesis," Horning told Live Science in an email.

Ribozymes have been used in biochemistry for decades. But in this experiment, Horning and Joyce took the ribozyme and made millions of variants. The idea was to have these different types of ribozyme interact with RNA in a test-tube environment. The ribozymes that could link up to RNA and form more RNA were the "survivors." Effectively, what happened was very like the natural selection process. [Extreme Life on Earth: 8 Bizarre Creatures]

Story continues

The reason the resulting material isn't a fully living thing is that the ribozyme can neither duplicate itself nor any RNAs that are larger than the enzyme. Even so, the new research did show it's at least possible to make proto-life out of RNA alone. "If the polymerase is made better, it should be able to replicate itself." Essentially, the only missing piece is the right molecule to link with the RNA.

The reason this works is that like DNA, RNA is made of a specific set of chemical bases called nucleotides. They differ in their shapes. DNA is a double-stranded helix shape made of adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine, the famous A, G, C and T of the genetic code. RNA shares three of the nucleotides with DNA; the fourth is a chemical called uracil  so the "alphabet" is A, G, C and U. Instead of making a double-helix shape, RNA comes in single strands that sometimes fold on themselves. Ribozyme links to RNA and unfolds it, which allows the nucleotides to come in contact with their complementary partners, making more RNA.

Why DNA is better at creating life

DNA replicates by coming in contact with enzymes and breaking into two strands. Because the A can link only with T, and G can link only with C, DNA can preserve its shape  the DNA molecule can only be put together in a certain way. That's why genetic information can be preserved; the DNA always duplicates itself.

Horning and Joyce's work got RNA to replicate itself, but only for a limited amount of time before it stopped. And on top of that, the process did not always reproduce exactly the same kind of RNA, nor can it make copies of molecules bigger than itself. With DNA and the enzymes that unzip the helix, that's not the case  DNA molecules are quite a bit larger than the enzymes that cut them in two.

Yet some in the field are skeptical. Parallel research last year looked at the possibilities of simple chemicals that may have worked with RNA to give life a jumpstart, notably that RNA might have worked with simple amino acids and avoided the use of complex enzymes entirely. While that work shares some characteristics with the RNA world hypothesis, there are some differences.

Charles Carter, of the University of North Carolina, who worked on one of those studies, said while this experiment was a "tour de force," it might not tell scientists everything they hope about the first living molecules. He said the chemicals used  ribozyme in this case  might not reveal how evolution could have happened billions of years ago, because they are artificial. Ribozyme "is entirely the product of 21st-century technology," and doesn't answer the question of how pre-biotic chemistry could give rise to the kind of reactions Joyce and Horning set up.

The experiments Carter and others did last year, he said, seem to point in a different direction, in which RNA molecules interacted with simple amino acids to act as a primitive kind of code for biochemistry.

Horning, though, likened the stage of their research to early nuclear experiments in physics. "For a while before they built a bomb, they understood that if you enrich uranium, you get generation of heat," he said. "Only after you had a critical mass, enough uranium together, could you get a process that was self-sustaining."

The next steps, he added, will be finding that combination of enzyme and RNA that sustains itself, and keeps reproducing.

No need to worry about creating life that will take over the world, Horning noted. RNA-based life was replaced by protein-based life precisely because protein-based life worked better. This is one reason why it's so hard to find evidence of what kind of RNAs existed billions of years ago. "[The] RNA world probably died out no less than 3 billion years ago," he said.

There are also implications for finding life elsewhere. While there's no real data on how often life happens in the universe as a whole, the research does point to the kind of chemistry that can get it started. "It begins to confirm something  that life doesn't need the genetic code."

The research appeared in the Aug. 15 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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 more politics videos, visit Yahoo View.

One segment of Triumph, the Insult Comic Dogs recent Summer Election Special is getting a lot of traction virally  its a real-life focus group of supporters of Donald Trump reacting to outrageous, fake 30-second Trump campaign spots.

In one of the faux spots, Trump boasts of a plan to outfit Mexicans with shock collars to prevent them from crossing an invisible fence on the U.S.-Mexican border. Not only did the focus group seem to accept that the ad was really one under consideration by the Trump campaign, but one woman in the group suggested that perhaps a better idea would be to inoculate would-be illegal immigrants with a vaccine that would be like a tracking device.

The segment has generated more than 2.2 million views on YouTube.

I was shocked, to be honest with you, Robert Smigel, the man behind Triumph and creator of the puppet character, tells Varietys PopPolitics on SiriusXM. All we were really hoping for is that they would believe that the ads were real. That was the goal, to fool them, and give the piece some added life by seeing people just react honestly to it, hopefully not condemn it.

Smigels special  produced by Funny or Die and posted on Hulu  also includes Triumphs visits to the Republican and Democratic conventions. Triumph is an equal opportunity insulter, and he gets the chilliest reaction from the Democratic Florida delegation, particularly after he wears a wig of loopy pasta and poses as former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Smigel also says that as astonishing as it was that the focus group apparently believed the ads were real, I dont believe that all of his supporters are raving lunatics.

I have also been to Trump rallies in Iowa and in fairness there are a lot of reasonable people out there who are really just responding to the freshness of Trumps message, compared to the old boilerplate Republican lines about lowering taxes and stimulating the economy that way, he says. His whole message of reform really has resonated with sensible people in the Republican party.

Story continues

He says that the Triumph segments are also becoming part of the partisan fray. Triumph has been so above the fray all these years, if you can call a gross dog puppet above anything. Now that I am covering politics in such depth, it is fascinating to me to see one side or the other embrace one of Triumphs pieces and use it as almost propaganda.

Triumphs election special from earlier this year was recently nominated for an Emmy.

Listen below:

Southside With You: The First Day of Barack and Michelle Obamas Courtship

Richard Tanne talks about Southside With You, his movie, debuting on Friday in theaters, about Barack and Michelle Obamas first date. He says that the First Couple will probably screen the movie soon.

Listen below:

Trumps Debate Advantage: Unpredictability

Many of the headlines about the Trump campaign in the past week have been about his campaign shakeup and an apparent shift in tone. David Cohen of Variety and Nikki Schwab of Daily Mail talk about how Trumps unpredictability could serve him well in debating Hillary Clinton.

Listen below:

PopPolitics, hosted by Ted Johnson, airs Thursdays at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT on SiriusXMs political channel POTUS. It also is available on demand.

Related stories

Clinton Campaign Manager Suggests Trump Is a Puppet for the Kremlin

Twitter Imagines Donald Trump as a Film Critic With #TrumpExplainsMoviePlots

Paul Manafort Resigns From Donald Trumps Campaign
22 Aug - Actor Robin Padilla has requested for the Malacanang not to release the names of the celebrities allegedly involved in illegal drugs.



As reported on Coconuts Manila, the actor, who spoke to the media recently, stated that these celebs and their managers should be given the chance to have a dialogue with the Philippine National Police (PNP) first before the authority decide to take any action.



"Artistes are taxpayers too. I hope they will be given some space because they are victims too," he said.



Nonetheless, Padilla stressed that he is only talking about the users, and not drug pushers, adding, "They don't have a place in this industry. I am more concerned about the users."



Padilla, who is a firm supporter of President Rodrigo Duterte, also stated that he believes in Duterte's mission, and that the latter will give these drug users a chance to turn over a new leaf.



(Photo source: facebook.com/ROBINPADILLA.OFFICIAL)
Twitter has been aflame with reports that the United States is moving the few dozen nuclear weapons stored at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to Deveselu military base in Romania. I am calling bullshit on this one  but its bullshit in a telling way.

Its most likely Russian propaganda, all part of an elaborate strategy to build opposition to U.S. missile defense efforts and deflect criticism of Moscow for violating arms control treaties. This is a particularly irritating manifestation of the bullshit asymmetry principle: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

The evidence to suggest that there are U.S. bombs in Romania is pretty thin. An anonymous person blindsided a former Romanian president with a sources say question that he was dumb enough to answer  allowing Romanian media to cover it as though sources actually say  and then an obscure EU-focused website called EurActiv stated the outrageous rumor as outright fact, citing nothing more than independent sources.

The Romanian government has already denied it  and, come on, the story never made much sense to begin with. For one thing, there are no storage facilities at Deveselu for the nuclear bombs. The United States has specific security requirements for its nuclear weapons, and Deveselu does not meet them. For example, B61s in Europe are stored in specially designed vaults called the Weapons Storage and Security System, or WS3. There are none at Deveselu or anywhere in Romania. I even checked some recent satellite images supplied by Planet. I found nothing remotely looking like new construction, let alone nuclear weapons storage.

For another thing, the NATO-Russia Founding Act contains a political commitment by NATO not to store nuclear weapons in former Warsaw Pact states. The United States and its allies could renege on this commitment, of course, but that is the sort of thing that would require consultation among NATO members. Consultation means talking, which NATO is really good at. That process would take months, if not years, and would be bound to leak.

Story continues

No, if the United States withdraws its nuclear weapons from Turkey as it did from Greece in 2001, those weapons will go to another location in Europe with appropriate storage facilities, like Italys Aviano Air Base, or simply come back to the United States.

So why is an obscure news outlet like EurActiv reporting that nuclear weapons are to be stored at Deveselu? Lets just say EurActiv Measures is more like it.

Heres some important context: Deveselu is an Aegis Ashore site for U.S. missile defense interceptors  that is to say, it is a land-based version of the ship-based missile defense system. (It even kind of looks like a ship on land.) The Russians have always hated the idea of U.S. missile defenses being stationed in the territories of their erstwhile Warsaw Pact allies and have said so repeatedly. Claiming that U.S. nuclear weapons are going to be stored at Deveselu is a surefire way to stir up local European populations against a given military site. You dont need to be an arms control wonk to connect the dots here.

Moreover, the Russians, including President Vladimir Putin himself, have repeatedly asserted that U.S. missile defenses are a pretext for stationing offensive, nuclear-armed missiles in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. It is impossible to know how sincere the Russians are about this fear, but they say it a lot. And it certainly helps raise concern about what might be going on at Deveselu, which makes Putin happy.

The whole thing reads like a pretty classic Russian disinformation operation. A few anonymous sources make a claim in an obscure foreign newspaper. That allows Russias state media to cover the allegations without quite taking responsibility for them. The story gets redistributed by the usual nitwits  looking at you, Breitbart!  and useful idiots connect the dots for Moscow. And, thanks to the geniuses in the Defense Departments press shop who neither confirm nor deny any story about the location of U.S. nuclear weapons, Russian media are having a ball.

The Soviets used to do this all the time. One of my favorite examples is the claim that HIV is a U.S. bioweapon gone rogue. In the early 1980s, the KGB planted the story in an obscure newspaper in India. Thomas Boghardt tells the story expertly in an article for the journal Studies in Intelligence. They let the story fester for bit, before having Soviet media kick it into high gear. That was followed by a campaign by an East German doctor. It would all be very funny, except these views are prevalent in Africa and complicate efforts to fight HIV infection. Many important African figures have flirted with AIDS denialism, something that, in part, seems to have been strengthened by the circulation of such conspiracy theories (and which conspiracy theorists then recycle as further support). These sort of stories become impossible to beat back once they go, if youll forgive the pun, viral. Once the AIDS conspiracy theory was lodged in the global [subconscious], Boghardt wrote, it became a pandemic in its own right.

There are literally dozens of other examples of Soviet propaganda like this. I strongly suspect the same thing is happening here. The Russians are using the concern about nuclear weapons located at Incirlik to push the idea that those weapons might come to Romania, largely in an effort to stir up local opposition to missile defense.

There is, however, another disturbing possibility. Even if the Russians  or some Russians  know that the EurActiv story is hokum, they may genuinely be worried about the idea that the United States would convert missile defense interceptors into INF-like weapons that could kill the Russian leadership with little or no warning. Although it is ridiculous from an American perspective, I have long argued that the Russian General Staff is genuinely terrified about the threat of decapitation  the ability of the United States to use nuclear weapons and precision munitions to kill the Russian leadership in a surprise attack. Ive written about this before:

It is a funny sort of paranoid fantasy, the notion that the United States might place nuclear weapons on missile defense interceptors and use them to decapitate the Russian leadership in Moscow. But I suspect this is the rub. The simplest explanation for Russias overwhelming concern with missile defense is that the General Staff fears that Russia is much, much more vulnerable to an attack against the countrys command-and-control infrastructure  what used to be called decapitation  than we realize. Part of this is a fear that missile defense interceptors could be armed as offensive missiles, part of it is that missile defenses could mop up a disorganized Russian retaliation. Most of it, however, is probably sheer terror at the persistent technological advantage held by the United States in light of Russian vulnerabilities.

I know it seems absurd, but I think the Russians do believe it. Moscow was unmoving during the New START negotiations at the beginning of President Barack Obamas administration on the issue of missile defense interceptors and offensive missiles using the same silos. Thats why it insisted on an obscure and politically troublesome provision prohibiting the placement of missile defense interceptors in silos built for intercontinental ballistic missiles and vice versa. Then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates also mentioned that Moscow expressed concern that ground-based interceptors in Poland could be fitted with nuclear weapons and become an offensive weapon like a Pershing and a weapon for which they would have virtually no warning time. A senior official later told me he was surprised to see that remark in an unclassified setting. And this year, Putin made precisely the same claim in public. I know it is weird. But it just may be that the Russians think some weird things.

Even if Russia is paranoid, the increasing performance of missile defense interceptors means that the missiles could also be used to attack ground targets. I asked my friend David Wright to model an SM-3 Block IIB interceptor based in Poland converted to a nuclear weapon, and, sure enough, it would violate the 1987 INF Treaty and pose a threat to Moscow.

As far as I can tell, no one in the United States is planning to do this, but one reason the Russians may be suspicious is that they may be thinking about it themselves. John Krempasky likes to say the easiest way to figure out what the Russians are up to is to look at what they are accusing the United States of doing. He has a point. Many countries have adapted surface-to-air missiles to have surface-to-surface roles, including Russia and the United States. Some foreign observers are already warning that it is Russia that is planning on converting its most advanced air defense missiles into intermediate-range nuclear weapons.

I have long pressed the Obama administration to try to talk to the Russians about dealing with this problem. In particular, I have proposed that the United States and Russia agree to a ban on nuclear-armed missile defense interceptors.

The United States, after all, doesnt use nuclear weapons on its missile defenses. In fact, a 2002 bipartisan amendment put forward by Sens. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) prohibits the Defense Department from spending money on the research, development, test, evaluation, procurement or deployment of nuclear-armed interceptors of a missile defense system. Thats because after the chairman of the Pentagons Defense Science Board indicated that then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was interested in looking at nuclear-armed missile defenses, Stevens freaked out.

On the other hand, Russias missile defense system, at least the one around Moscow, may still be armed with nuclear warheads. Russia is reportedly moving toward a conventional missile defense of the city, something we should hasten along if at all possible. And if Putin intends to keep the Moscow anti-ballistic missile system armed with nuclear warheads, that is a sufficiently terrible idea to make this proposal all the more important.

So why not agree to prohibit nuclear-armed ballistic missile defenses? Everyone bangs on about reducing the massive stockpile of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Well, a lot of those nuclear weapons are thought to be air defense warheads. Lets do it!

Banning nuclear-armed missile defense interceptors would help shore up the INF Treaty at a time when it looks to be faltering. There are any number of challenges facing the treaty. Addressing one of them would be a step in the right direction.

Perhaps most importantly, a ban would require verification, in the form of confidence-building measures, that demonstrates that neither side is converting missile defenses into nuclear-armed offensive missiles. That would probably involve visits to missile defense sites to examine the interceptor warheads and ensure nothing worrisome is stored at the base. Imagine if we had such an agreement today. It would be a simple thing to demonstrate to the Russians, as well as to the rest of the world, that there are no nuclear weapons at Deveselu and that the story  whether it was hatched in Moscow or not  is bunk.

Photo credit: Yusuf Koyun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
(TEHRAN, Iran)  Russia has stopped using an Iranian air base for launching airstrikes on Syria for the time being, Irans Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday, just hours after the Iranian defense minister criticized Moscow for having kind of show-off and ungentlemanly attitude by publicizing their actions.

There was no immediate response from Moscow, which had used the Shahid Nojeh Air Base to refuel its bombers striking Syria at least three times last week.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told reporters in Tehran that the Russian airstrikes on militants in Syria were temporary, based on a Russian request.

It is finished, for now, Ghasemi said, without elaborating.

Last week, Russia announced it used the airfield, located some 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of the Iranian city of Hamedan. Iranian officials only confirmed Russias presence a day later.

Earlier Monday, state TV quoted Irans defense minister as saying that Russia will use the base for a very short and fixed span. The comments by Gen. Hossein Dehghan came after he chastised parliament this weekend for asking questions about Russia using the base.

Responding to a question about why Iran didnt initially announce Russias presence at the airfield, Dehghan appeared prickly on the state TV broadcast.

Russians are interested to show they are a superpower to guarantee their share in political future of Syria and, of course, there has been a kind of show-off and ungentlemanly (attitude) in this field, he said.

His remarks also suggest Russia and Iran initially agreed to keep Moscows use of the air base quiet. Its announcement likely worried Irans Sunni-ruled Mideast neighbors, which host American military personnel.

For Iran, allowing Russia to launch strikes from inside the country is likely to prove unpopular. Many still remember how Russia, alongside Britain, invaded and occupied Iran during World War II to secure oil fields and Allied supply lines. But while Britain withdrew, Russia refused to leave, sparking the first international rebuke by the nascent United Nations Security Council in 1946.

Story continues

Analysts have suggested Russia potentially leveraged Iran into allowing it to use the airfield over either economic or military interests, such as Tehran wanting to purchase Sukhoi-30 fighter jets or its deployment of Russian S-300 air defense missile systems. Russia initially held off on supplying the missile system to Tehran amid negotiations over Irans contested nuclear program.

Over the weekend, photographs of President Hassan Rouhani were published in Iranian state media near a Bavar-373 missile defense system. That system is designed to be the local equivalent of the S-300  perhaps an Iranian signal back to Moscow that its capable of defending itself without the Russian missile system.

In his comments, Dehghan said the Bavar-373 can hit targets at the height of 27 kilometers (16.7 miles)  the same height the S-300 can reach.

When we make Bavar-373 operational, we will not need to purchase another high-altitude and long-range air defense system, he said.

Dehghan added that Iran still sees the Sukhoi-30 as an appropriate fighting aircraft, though he acknowledged the U.S. could seek to block any fighter jet deal. The U.N. resolution enshrining last years nuclear deal with Iran prohibits the supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran unless approved in advance by the Security Council.

The issue of purchasing the fighters has been raised and we have not heard any negative answer, he said. We are negotiating to learn how we can do this with the restriction that can be raised for the Russians.

Meanwhile, fighting continued Monday in Syria. In the northern Syrian city of Hasakeh, clashes again erupted between Kurdish fighters and pro-government militias, according to the Kurdish Hawar News Agency. The government and the Kurdish movement have shared control of the city since the early years of the Syrian civil war.

Syrian government planes bombed Kurdish positions in Hasakeh last week as the struggle for predominance in the city escalated.

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Philip Issa in Beirut contributed to this report.
Reuters file photo

Even 40 years after he had first met someone, former president S. R. Nathan could recall their names, their relatives and what their children did.

This was all down to his fabulous memory, said Singapores High Commissioner to Fiji Verghese Mathews. This always happened when we were at functions with lots of Singaporeans, even when he was President, recalled Mathews, who worked under Nathan at the Singapore High Commission in Kuala Lumpur from 1988-90.

Nathan died on Monday evening (22 August) at the age of 92, almost a month after he suffered a stroke. He had been in intensive care ever since.

Former colleagues told Yahoo Singapore that Nathan was a down to earth, caring boss who kept up with his subordinates careers long after they had stopped working under him.

Books Kinokuniya store and merchandise director Kenny Chan, 64, was a junior officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the early 1980s, when Nathan was its Permanent Secretary. The former president was tough but caring, and inspired confidence, said Chan.

One incident that I will never forget is when he called me over to introduce me to his wife and daughter and invited me to have a meal at the Empress Place hawker centre way back then. He really had no airs, said Chan, a well-known figure in the literary scene.

Ambassador Mathews added that alongside the late foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam, Nathan will be remembered as one of the pioneers of the Foreign Ministry. Mathews marvelled at his capacity for putting the fluff aside and getting to the core of issues.

This was not a man who sat down and drank coffee. He was always on the go, always asking questions, and he trained his staff to do the same. This was a man who insisted on high standards, and always went for accuracy and integrity.

He added, There are many ambassadors, past and present, who have had the singular advantage of Mr Nathans tutoring hand and incisive mind.

Political analyst Viswa Sadasivan interacted extensively with Nathan while serving as a Nominated Member of Parliament (2009-11) and in his capacity as vice-president of the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA). Nathan was one of the founding members of SINDA.

Story continues

He was not cardboard. He had a great sense of humour, recalled Sadasivan. You could chat with him for the longest time. He was curious about everything.

He noted that one of Nathans great passions was for social service. He said the one job that gave him the greatest joy was being a social worker, because it connected him with people at a human level. Thats why he said when he became president, it gave him a second chance in life to be a social worker.

A presidential legacy

Reuters file photo

Singapore Management University law don Eugene Tan noted that Nathans presidency came in the wake of the late Ong Teng Cheong, whose term ended in controversy. In 2000, Ong told the now-defunct magazine Asiaweek that he had consistent disagreements with the government over his role as president.

Nathans two terms in office played a big part in working out the intricate details of the Elected Presidency, and helped improve ties and establish work processes and norms between the office of the Elected President and the government at large, noted Tan.

Tan also reckoned that there is insufficient information available for a fine-grained analysis of whether Nathan was effective as a reactive check and balance to the elected government of the day. "Much of what the president does in terms of his checks and balances powers  use of reserves, key appointments  these are often not known to the public. But going by the workings of the Government during his term, especially during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09, it would be invidious to say the office and his term were ineffectual.

Political analyst Viswa Sadasivan said Nathan would be remembered as a dignified president. He understood the role of the elected President , who serves as head of state, very well, and was very particular not to confuse it with the role of an executive president, who is the head of government.

It is reasonable for people to conclude that he was very much in sync with the government, said Sadasivan, who pointed out that Nathan had spent his entire career serving the PAP government as a civil servant. But there is no evidence that he did not exercise his discretionary powers with sufficient autonomy and independence.

Sadasivan stressed that Nathan was far from being in cahoots with the government. In 2009, Nathan acceded to the governments request to draw $4.9 billion from the reserves amid the global economic slowdown in the wake of the financial crisis.

He did go through the procedure of checking with the Council of Presidential Advisors (CPA) very carefully. They had very robust conversations, it was not going through the motions, noted Sadasivan, who added that he had personally verified this with members of the CPA.

Like the late Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and S. Rajaratnam, said Sadasivan, S. R. Nathan belongs to a vintage breed of patriots defined by conviction. He almost always had a clear point of view which he would articulate in an unwavering manner, regardless of the force of contrary views. He was prepared to be judged.

Related stories:

Ex-president S R Nathan dies

[PHOTOS] Singapore mourns passing of former president S R Nathan



Singapores ministers lead tributes to ex-President S R Nathan

State funeral for Singapores ex-President S. R. Nathan on Friday

Above all, Nathan was an LKY loyalist and believer

[PHOTOS] S R Nathans life in photos
Launched in 2014, Milk Music is a music streaming service created by Samsung exclusively for its mobile devices.

Although there were rumors earlier this year that Milk would be sold to Tidal, owned by rapper Jay-Z, Samsung has instead announced the shutdown of its music streaming service on September 22, 2016. With several big-name streaming services like Apple, Spotify and Tidal, competition in the streaming market is fierce. According to technology source Tech Crunch, this closure is not surprising, considering that Milk Music was available only to consumers in the United States.
* Plan could be launched as early as next year

* Could boost mid-tier sales, defend market share

* And may appeal to enterprise clients

* May free up capital for investments, marketing

* But risk of cannibalising mid-tier device sales

By Se Young Lee and Miyoung Kim

SEOUL/SINGAPORE, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd plans to launch a programme to sell refurbished used versions of its premium smartphones as early as next year, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The South Korean technology firm is looking for ways to sustain earnings momentum after reviving its mobile profits by restructuring its product line-up. As growth in the global smartphone market hits a plateau, Samsung wants to maximise its cost efficiency and keep operating margins above 10 percent.

The world's top smartphone maker will refurbish high-end phones returned to the company by users who signed up for one-year upgrade programmes in markets such as South Korea and the United States.

Samsung would then re-sell these phones at a lower price, the person said, declining to be identified as the plan was not yet public.

The person declined to say how big a discount the refurbished phones would be sold at, which markets the phones would be sold in or how many refurbished devices Samsung could sell.

A Samsung spokeswoman said the company does not comment on speculation.

It was not clear to what extent the phones would be altered, but refurbished phones typically are fitted with parts such as a new casing or battery.

Rival Apple Inc's iPhone has a re-sale value of around 69 percent of its original price after about one year from launch, while Samsung's flagship Galaxy sells for 51 percent of the original price in the U.S. market, according to BNP Paribas.

Refurbished phones could help vendors such as Samsung boost their presence in emerging markets such as India, where high-end devices costing $800 or so are beyond most buyers.

Apple sells refurbished iPhones in a number of markets including the United States, but does not disclose sales figures. It is trying to sell such iPhones in India, where the average smartphone sells for less than $90.

Story continues

Selling used phones could help Samsung fend off lower-cost Chinese rivals that have been eating into its market share, and free up some capital to invest elsewhere or boost marketing expenditure.

Deloitte says the used smartphone market will be worth more than $17 billion this year, with 120 million devices sold or traded in to manufacturers or carriers - around 8 percent of total smartphone sales. Some market experts expect the used market to grow fast as there are fewer technology breakthroughs.

"Some consumers may prefer to buy refurbished, used premium models in lieu of new budget brands, possibly cannibalizing sales of new devices from those budget manufacturers," Deloitte said in a report.

CANNIBALISATION RISK

Samsung's refurbishment programme, details of which the person said could be finalised as early as 2017, could help the firm generate revenue from dated high-end smartphones returned by users upgrading to newer versions.

The company's latest premium phones, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note 7, have received favourable reviews, suggesting cheaper, refurbished versions could be popular. At U.S. carrier Verizon Communications, the Galaxy S7 edge with 32-gigabyte storage retails for $792 without subsidies, while the Note 7 costs $864.

The programme could help Samsung defend market share in emerging countries by bolstering mid-tier sales. Refurbished phones could also appeal to enterprise clients who want certain security or software products pre-installed on phones to give to their employees, the source said.

The risk of offering refurbished devices is that they could potentially cannibalise sales of Samsung's other mid-tier devices.

Expectations for solid smartphone sales helped Samsung shares to a record 1.675 million won each on Friday, taking two-day gains to 7 percent and adding $15 billion in market value. The shares traded down 0.36 percent in Seoul on Monday.

($1 = 1,116.2700 won) (Reporting by Se Young Lee and Miyoung Kim; Editing by Tony Munroe and Ian Geoghegan)
BARCELONA  Jeff Nichols Midnight Special, Todd Solondzs Wiener Dog, Joao Pedro Rodrigues The Ornithologist and Paz Encinas Memory Exercises are some of the newest titles that will round up San Sebastians overhauled Zabaltegi-Tabakalera sidebar.

Winner of a Cannes Fipresci Prize with Paraguayan Hammock, Paz Encinas awaited second feature, Memory Exercises turns on Agustin Goiburu, who made a valiant attempt to organise opposition to Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner.

Premiered at the 2016 Berlinale, Nichols FilmNation-sold fourth feature won glowing reviews  Variety called it limitlessly imaginative  for a supernatural thriller mixed with sci-fi and road movie elements.

Portuguese Joao Pedro Rodrigues fifth picture, the playful The Ornithologist, in which a solitary bird watcher embarks on a journey of self discovery, won best director at early Augusts Locarno Festival. Films Boutique sells; Portugals Blackmaria produces.

A wandering short story compendium, bound by deadpan musings on mortality and the presence of one winsome Dachshund, according to Variety, Solondzs Sundance entry Weiner Dog is distributed by Amazon in the U.S.

Billed by the San Sebastian Festival, along with When I Grow Old, as an outstanding Latin American debut, another new Zabaltegi addition is Felipe Guerreros Oscuro animal, a three-part, near-dialogue-free, chronicle of the brutal impact of Colombias armed conflict on three women.

Produced by Buenos Aires Gema Films, Oscuro Animal swept Mexicos Guadalajara Fest and has just topped Perus Lima Festival, consolidating Guerreros status as a director to watch.

Sold by FiGa Films,Brazilian Marilia Rochas Where I Grow Old, which was selected for Toulouses Films in Progress last year and premiered at Rotterdam, features the halting friendship of two Portuguese girls in Brazil, under self-pressure to decide where they will make their home.

Once San Sebastians major sidebar, housing fest gems and event-s now standalone New Directors competition, Zabaltegi has been refashioned under San Sebastian director Jose Luis Rebordinos as a travellers bag reflecting the digital era driven revolution in film formats as well as some of the more out-there or challenging movies on the independent film scene.

Story continues

Now named Zabaltegi-Tabakalera from 2016 it has also become competitive section with no formal rules or restrictions on subject matter, according to Rebordinos, who added: We dont mind if the films comes in 16 mm, 35 mm or Super 8 or HD with a length of five minutes or eight hours.

Zabaltegi-Tabakalera New now carries a cash prize of 20,000 ($22,282), of which 6,000 ($6,684) will go to the director and the rest to the Spanish distributor. The new showcase last name Tabakalera comes from the building which hosts the sidebar, now also the festival headquarters, once a tobacco factory but now turned into a center for Contemporary Art.

A Golden Lion winner at Venice for Still Life, Jia Zhang-kes short film The Hedonists depicts the dramatic odyssey of unemployed Shanxi miners in search of work.

In San Sebastian competition with Nocturama, Bertrand Bonello will present short entry Sarah Winchester, a ghost story framed historical rumination which premiered at the FID Marseille.

Ghosts also haunt the Rotterdam Fest-premiered Ghost Ship, whose associations take in vampires, cinema, love and shipwrecks, marking creative essay from director Basque Koldo Almandoz and active Basque production house Txintxua Films.

Of newly announced totles, section also includes two Basque productions from the Kimuak short film program, an initiative of the Basque Government s Department of Culture and the Filmoteca Vasca, and one of the drivers of Basque cinema renaissance this decade: Mikel Ruedas On the Path and Maria Elorza and Maider Fernandez Iriartes Our Walls.

Pablo Alvarez delivers a 25-minute piece, El Extrano, a collage of night-time images of central Santiago de Chile and fragmented portrait of an individual caught in some shots.

Also in Zabaltegi-Tabakalera: Short film The Disco Shines by Spaniard Chema Garcia Ibarra whose previous works have been selected for Cannes Directors Fortnight, Sundance or Berlin.

Among other newly announce titles, Aaron Brookners Uncle Howard, depicts the singular figure of his uncle, Howard Brookner who captured in Burroughs: The Movie the cultural revolution underway in the New York of the early eighties, prior to his premature death.

Zoology, by Ivan I. Tverdovsky who garnered some 30 awards with debut Corrections Class, won the Special Jury Prize at this years Karlovy Vary.

Of documentaries, Thorsten Schuttes Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words offers an intimate look at the life and work of the Baltimore musician.

Sold by Gaumont, Bertrand Taverniersvastly knowledgeable and enthusiastic A Journey Through French Cinema, the great French directors attempt to do for France what Scorsese did for Italian cinema,

opens the Zabaltegi-Tabakalera showcase.

The San Sebastian Festival runs Sept. 16-24.

Related stories

San Sebastian Fest Launches Glocal in Progress

San Sebastian: Rufus Norris' 'London Road' to Close Fest

Benicio del Toro Talks About Playing One of the World's Most Notorious Criminals
* Former leader aims to win back presidency from Hollande

* Sarkozy must first tackle party primaries in November

* Recent focus has been on security, immigration

* Socialists fractured as candidate list swells (Adds Sarkozy quote, details on primaries, Socialist divisions)

By John Irish and Richard Lough

PARIS, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Nicolas Sarkozy will run for president in 2017, hoping to return as France's head of state after being unseated in 2012 by the now deeply unpopular Francois Hollande, he announced on Monday.

A figure either loved or loathed by conservative voters, Sarkozy says in a forthcoming book he will join more than a dozen contenders vying for the party ticket in primaries, where former prime minister Alain Juppe will be his strongest rival.

"I felt I had the strength to lead this battle at a troubled time in our history," Sarkozy wrote on his social media pages ahead of the publication on Wednesday of "Everything for France".

Sarkozy has done little to conceal his desire to return to the Elysee Palace since returning to high-level politics in late 2014 when he took the helm of France's main centre-right party, Les Republicains.

In July his poll rating overtook Juppe's among core Les Republicains supporters, though he was still less popular among centre-right voters as a whole.

With a string of deadly Islamist attacks shaping the political discourse, Sarkozy has been scathing of Hollande's security record, urging France to get tough on immigration, crack down on Islamist militancy and halt the erosion of France's secular identity.

Courting voters tempted by France's far-right National Front, Sarkozy has laced speeches with references to national identity and blamed "cowardly leaders" for a loss of French culture.

"It wasn't that long ago that when we talked about immigration, identity and removing citizenship we were called fascists," Sarkozy told supporters in June.

"But minds have changed, the masses are rising, the people are standing up and they are saying louder and louder: 'That's enough!'"

Story continues

With France in a state of emergency, Sarkozy's emphasis on national identity and the credentials to present himself as a former interior minister and experienced Commander-in-Chief may help his chances.

But legal troubles surrounding party financing and over-spending by his 2012 presidential campaign, as well as his divisive personality could trip him up.

Sarkozy credits himself with steering Europe through the financial crisis during his 2007-2012 term. But his weak performance on free-market reforms to revive the economy disappointed business leaders.

The Nov. 20 primary is the first ever to be held by France's main right-wing party. If, as expected, no candidate, wins an absolute majority a run-off vote will be held a week later.

FRACTURED SOCIALISTS

Sarkozy's announcement comes as the list of candidates to replace Hollande grows and fractures between the Socialists are getting deeper just eight months before the presidential poll.

Government spokesman Stephane Le Foll urged leftist lawmakers on Monday not to place personal ambitions before the party after former industry minister Arnaud Montebourg threw his hat into the ring, saying it was "impossible to support the current president" who had betrayed socialist values.

Montebourg split with Hollande's government in 2014 over his shift in favour of market-friendly reforms. So did former education minister Benoit Hamon and former housing minister Cecile Duflot, a Green, both of whom are also running.

The simmering rebellion has already forced Hollande to allow an unprecedented primary contest to select the party's candidate.

But the increasingly crowded field complicates his re-election prospects should he chose to run for a second term.

A large pool of candidates, ranging from the communists to centre-left, would further dilute Hollande's support base.

Most polls show that if Hollande does run as the left's candidate, he will come third to far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen and whoever heads the main centre-right campaign.

Splits in the main parties is a gift to the National Front which hopes to convince voters it alone can offer a new form of leadership.

"Montebourg, Duflot, Sarkozy: Why are all those who have governed and failed recently coming back? Do they hope that we have forgotten?," the party's vice-president Florian Philippot said on Twitter.

(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander, Michel Rose and Simon Carraud; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
Australian police are on the hunt for vandals who are accused of throwing three crocodiles into a school through a broken window.

Read: Man Who Tossed 3-Foot Alligator Into Drive-Thru Window Faces Assault Charges

Four shirtless males were caught on surveillance footage early Sunday morning, breaking a window of Taminmin College, a high school in the town of Humpty Doo.

They then forced three female crocodiles, who had their jaws taped shut, into the office through the opening.

The shirtless males then proceeded to enter through the doors and ransack the office, tossing a computer and other documents on the floor before fleeing the scene.

The saltwater crocodiles continued to roam the school until Northern Territory police and Parks and Wildlife rangers were able to remove the reptiles.

While saltwater crocodiles are some of the most dangerous animals in the county, they apparently posed no threat to officials since their jaws were taped shut.

In fact, the park ranger who responded to the scene was concerned for the health of the animals. The species is protected in the region.

"They're in very poor shape, they haven't seen water for a long time, they're undernourished," Senior Constable David Gregory of the Northern Territory Police said in a statement.

Read: Man Threatened to Feed 8-Year-Old Boy to Alligators

In a statement to InsideEdition.com, the Parks and Wildlife Commission said the crocodiles were assessed by a veterinarian and animal welfare officers on Monday before being transported to a local crocodile farm.

"It's likely that each of the crocs will need to be put down, although the final decision rests with the farm, which has its own vet," an official said. "If any of the crocs survive they'll likely become breeding stock, if that's what the farm decides."

Watch: 911 Call Reveals Boy, 8, Frantically Describing How He Saved Brother, 2, From Kidnapper

Related Articles:
transparent rat udisco ali erturk nature methods

When you're a scientist trying to understand a disease, it's common to experiment on rodents, slice up their tissues for glass slides, and pop those specimens under a microscope.

This basic approach has barely changed in a century, and it's not hard to see why: It's relatively simple, cheap, and keeps leading to powerful drugs and treatments for humans.

That's not to say there aren't steep costs, though.

About 25 million lab animals are sacrificed each year, and a few thin-tissue slides are hard to reuse for other research. Experts also say it's difficult (and sometimes impossible) to build up a 3D model of a whole animal by scanning individual tissue slides.

But Ali Erturk, a neurobiologist at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen, hopes to solve these and other problems with a new lab process called "ultimate 3D imaging of solvent-cleared organs" (uDISCO)  which some scientists say will be "transformative" for studying brain diseases like Alzheimer's and schizophrenia.

uDISCO, as Erturk and his team describe in study published Monday in the journal Nature Methods, can turn mice, rats, and other mammals almost entirely clear.

Skin, muscle, bone, brain tissue  nothing stays entirely opaque.

"I love it," Dr. Ingo Bechmann, a neuroscientist at the University of Leipzig who wasn't involved in Erturk's study, told Business Insider in an email. "It will revolutionize anatomy in countless ways, in particular neuroanatomy."

What's more, uDISCO doesn't damage fluorescent proteins that scientists use to "light up" certain tissues in transgenic animals. It can also shrink a whole mouse to fit into laser-powered microscopes designed to 3D-scan small specimens like organs.

In effect, Erturk and his team have created "whole boy atlases" of an animal that can be flown through down to a cellular level, like this nervous system of a mouse:

Story continues

These high-resolution digital maps, says Erturk, will make more out of an animal's sacrifice by letting other scientists study it down to a cellular level.

"One would just need to go to [the] website, choose the organ of their interest, and visualize various cellular systems within the individual organ or in the entire organism if desired," Erturk said in a statement given to Business Insider.

Reinventing a bag of old lab tricks

transparent rat body ali erturk nature methods

All the tricks that make uDISCO work have been around for awhile. However, this is the first method to make use of them all  and without destroying important bits of an organism.

Clearing up animal tissue, for example, was pioneered by German anatomist Werner Spalteholz at the turn of the 19th century. (He made parts of human cadavers translucent.)

Whole-body scanning of animals that produce fluorescent proteins also isn't that new. The process is called "ultramicroscopy," and it was shown to work on fruit flies in the early 2010s.

And while see-through glowing rodents are also at least a couple years old, no one has rendered any this clear without damaging fluorescent proteins locked away in their cells, says Erturk  everything becomes roughly 85% to 90% transparent after uDISCO.

"It's really the most potent, highest transparency you could achieve with a large specimen," he told Business Insider.

"[I]f we want to know how water pipes are organized within a wall without any prior knowledge, the easiest way would be to be able see-through the wall. [Imagine] that the concrete wall becomes glass without any destruction," Erturk said in the statement. "Now we can see every pipe connection, and easily identify if one is disconnected."

The process begins with a mammal that's born to produce fluorescent jellyfish proteins in certain cells, like nerves or heart muscle tissue. Under special lighting conditions, those proteins glow brightly to illuminate that body system while leaving other tissues dark. The animal is eventually sacrificed for use as a lab specimen.

Erturk and his team's innovation is amping up tissue clarity in such specimens (so proteins glow more brightly) while shrinking everything down by as much as 65% (so the whole creature can fit in a laser-scanning microscope).

The secret ingredients? Tert-butyl alcohol, which gently pushes water out of animal cells and replaces it, and diphenyl ether, which dissolves fats. Both chemicals are flushed through sacrificed animals over the course of a few days, rendering them transparent.

"The clarity is quite complete," Erturk says. "You see a yellowish hue, but that is coming from residual tissue."

'Transformative discoveries' on the horizon

transparent mouse brain ali erturk nature methods

But the real development is what these animals look like after being scanned my a laser-powered "ultramicroscope."

The machine builds up the animal in 3D, allowing a researcher to fly through it and zoom in on individual cells.

In an email to Business Insider, Dr. Matthias H. Tschoep, a molecular biologist at the German Research Center for Environmental Health, said uDISCO will lead to "transformative discoveries," including ones that researchers can't yet predict.

The reason, Dr. Tschoep noted, is that uDISCO will accelerate the work of scanning an animal's entire body by 10 to 100 times  now done tediously done by slicing up a lab animal and scanning individual microscope slides  and with improved resolution.

"Obviously, mice aren't humans and these methods will not be applicable to human physiology or clinical medicine," Dr. Tschoep cautioned. "However, these methods may in the future offer highly detailed three dimensional analysis of human post-mortem organs or ... surgically removed tumors, with a speed that was previously unimaginable."

One human organ that Erturk is especially focused on is in your head.

"Governments are putting in billions of dollars to map the human brain. But it's like going out of the solar system  it's impossible with current technology," Erturk said, noting a complete brain map  similar to a human genome map  could lead to radical medical advancements.

"It'd be important to see connectivity in a schizophrenia or Alzheimer's brain," Erturk said, explaining that brain-scanning machines, like fMRI, only show large-scale anatomy. Microscopes, meanwhile, don't reveal all of the mind's neuron-to-neuron connections.

"I believe we have a tool that's a good compromise," Erturk said. "I don't think we're far away from mapping the brain in this way."

In the meantime, he hopes fewer mice, rats, and other lab animals will meet their demise.

"It's hard to predict how many" uDISCO could save, Erturk said. "Even if it's 5% or 10% or 20%, it would mean hundreds of thousands of animals worldwide every year."

NOW WATCH: A Passionate Argument For Killing Animals You Eat With Your Own Hands





More From Business Insider


Scientists have statistically proven that two 5,000-year-old stone circles located on islands in Scotland have a series of astronomical alignments that ancient builders intentionally created.

The stone circles were created in such a way as to create alignments between the sun and the stones, along with various landscape features, during winter and summer solstices. The circles also align with the moon during a "major lunar standstill," an event that happens once every 18.6 years.

The summer and winter solstices mark the longest and shortest days of the year, respectively  when the sun is highest and lowest in the sky. During a major lunar standstill (the next one will occur in 2025), the moon can move through the sky at points that appear very high or very lowon the horizon.

The two stone circles are located at sites called Callanish, which is on the Isle of Lewis, and Stenness, on the Orkney Isles. [In Photos: Hidden Monuments Discovered Beneath Stonehenge]

Considered the "first great circles of Scotland," Callanish and Stenness consist of 16 and 12 stones, respectively, wrote Gail Higginbottom, a visiting research fellow at the University of Adelaide in Australia, and Roger Clay, a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, in an article recently published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The two researchers noted that by 2,800 years ago, hundreds of stone circles had been constructed in Britain, including the famous example at Stonehenge. "The number of these monuments, and the fact that they were likely constructed over a far longer time frame than any other megalithic monument type highlights their continual relevance for Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures," wrote Higginbottom and Clay in their journal article.

Statistically proving it

Scientists have long suspected that these two stone circles were aligned with the solstices and major lunar standstill. Journal articles published at least as far back as the 1950s have presented possible alignments. Additionally, numerous YouTube videosrecord possible alignments involving the solstices and major lunar standstills at Callanish (the last major lunar standstill occurred in 2006). The challenge is statistically proving that these alignments are intentional and not the result of random chance, said Higginbottom and Clay in their paper.

Story continues

The researchers identified eight possible alignments involving the solstices and major lunar standstill at Callanish and six more possible alignments at Stenness. For instance, if you are in the center of the circle at Callanish during the summer solstice you will see the sun rise over one of its stones. Also if you are at Stenness during the major lunar standstill, on a day when the moon appears at the highest point on the horizon, the last glimmer of the moon will occur behind one of its stones.

The investigators then used a series of statistical tests to try to determine the chances that these possible alignments were nothing but chance. Results showed that there was only a 1.25-percent possibility that the alignments at Callanish were entirely chance and a 3.75-percent possibility that the alignments at Stenness were due to chance.

The calculations also showed that "the likelihood of the monuments being astronomical is above 97.87 percent for Stenness and 97.87 percent for Callanish," wrote Higginbottom and Clay in their paper. In other words, the alignments are likely not random, and instead the ancient builders intentionally constructed the circles to create alignments with the solstice sun and the major lunar standstill, the researchers said.

"Nobody before this has ever statistically determined that a single stone circle was constructed with astronomical phenomena in mind  it was all supposition," Higginbottom said in a statement. "This research is finally proof that the ancient Britons connected the Earth to the sky with their earliest standing stones, and that this practice continued in the same way for 2,000 years."

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.
Recognizing that Louisiana is not only home to 100,000 families in desperate need but also an important production hub for the film and television industry, 21st Century Fox is partnering with Scream Queens creator Ryan Murphy and cast to drive support for the regions flood victims.

The company is donating $100,000 to the Louisiana Association of United Ways Flood Fund, which has been set up to make a targeted impact by distributing flood relief donations to six local United Way member organizations operating across the region. 21CF is also leveraging its networks, talent and social media to drive additional donations and is calling on its 15,000+ U.S. employee base to extend the donation amount even further.

Murphy, who also created FXs American Horror Story and the upcoming Katrina: American Crime Story, worked with Scream Queens cast members, including Jamie Lee Curtis and Emma Roberts, and 21CF to film a short PSA, calling on viewers to help the relief effort. Watch it above.

After shooting two series in New Orleans, I feel particularly connected to the state of Louisiana and the wonderful and talented people Ive met there, Murphy said in a statement, We want everyone affected by these devastating floods to know that we see you and that help is on the way.

Scream Queens and AHS relocated back to California because of state tax incentives.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEEHKgZr_y4&w=970&h=546]

Related stories

Sarah Paulson Will Play Geraldine Page In Ryan Murphy's 'Feud' For FX

'American Horror Story' Season 6 Teaser: Confirmation Of 'AHS' Shared Universe?

'Scream Queens' Season 2 Teaser: Looks Like This Hospital's Specialty Is Torture
Many 401(k) plan participants utilize the most popular features that these accounts offer, including getting a 401(k) match and a tax break for the contribution. But there are many other aspects of 401(k) plans that are lesser known and seldom used. And a few features of 401(k) plans are best used only in an emergency because they trigger taxes and fees. Here are some little-used features of 401(k) plans.

Roth 401(k). A Roth 401(k) permits after-tax contributions that may be withdrawn tax-free in retirement. Roth 401(k)s are growing in popularity from 46 percent of plans offering a Roth option in 2011 to 60 percent in 2015, according to Vanguard data from 1,900 retirement plans with 3.9 million participants. However, only 15 percent of participants save in the Roth 401(k) when it's available, up from 9 percent in 2011. Younger employees and those with only a few years of job tenure are the most likely to use the Roth option. "If you are in a high tax bracket today, it may make sense to defer paying income tax and going the traditional route," says Scott Frank, a certified financial planner and founder of Stone Steps Financial in Encinitas, California. "If you are just out of school or switching careers and you are in a lower tax bracket, it may make sense to consider Roth contributions."

[Read: How Your 401(k) Balance Stacks Up.]

Maxing out. Most workers are eligible to contribute up to $18,000 to a 401(k) plan in 2016. The benefit of doing this depends on your tax bracket and ranges from a tax break of $4,500 for someone in the 25 percent tax bracket to $6,300 for someone paying a 35 percent tax rate. However, only 12 percent of Vanguard 401(k) participants were able to max out their 401(k) plan in 2015. Older and higher-income employees were the most likely to fully fund their retirement account.

Catch-up contributions. Almost all 401(k) plans (97 percent) offer the opportunity to make catch-up contributions worth up to $6,000 to people age 50 and older. However, only 16 percent of 401(k) plan participants take advantage of catch-up contributions. High-income employees and those with more years on the job are the most likely to make catch-up contributions, which means a total 401(k) contribution over $18,000 and up to a maximum of $24,000 in 2016.

Story continues

A wide variety of funds. In 2015, 401(k) plans offered an average of 18 funds, according to the Vanguard data. However, 401(k) participants use an average of just three funds, and half of participants contribute to only one fund. "I recommend looking at index funds, as it is the cheapest and most diverse way to invest," says Michael Solari, a certified financial planner and principal of Solari Financial Planning in Boston. "The best way to start out is to find an index tracking a U.S. large cap index, S&P 500 or Russell 1000, an international index and a bond index fund."

[See: 10 Ways to Make Your 401(k) Balance Grow Faster.]

401(k) loans. Many 401(k) plans (78 percent) offer the option to take a loan, and 16 percent of participants have an outstanding loan. When loans are allowed, the account owner may borrow up to 50 percent of the vested account balance up to a maximum of $50,000. However, the loan will likely trigger origination and maintenance fees and must be repaid quickly, typically within five years. And if you leave your job, the loan could become due sooner. "If the loan is not repaid on time, the remaining balance will be subject to income taxes and an early withdrawal penalty, if applicable," cautions Derek Tharp, a certified financial planner and founder of Conscious Capital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "For someone borrowing due to an emergency, subsequently losing their job and being hit with taxes and an early withdrawal penalty can be financially devastating." The average loan balance is $9,900, and low-income employees are the most likely to initiate a 401(k) loan, according to the Vanguard data.

401(k) hardship withdrawals. While 84 percent of 401(k) plans offer the option to take hardship withdrawals, only about 3 percent of 401(k) participants use them when they are offered. However, the option to take a withdrawal might be important for an individual who needs access to that cash early, as participants who use them typically withdraw 18 percent of their account balance.

Trading. You can typically change your investment selections in your 401(k) plan at any time, but most people don't. Only 9 percent of 401(k) participants traded within their accounts in 2015, down from 14 percent in 2008. Vanguard says participant trading has declined over the past 10 years due to the increased adoption of target-date funds, which automatically grow more conservative over time.

[Read: How to Avoid 401(k) Fees and Penalties.]

Investment advice. Recognizing that some employees don't have the financial planning skills or time to manage their own investments, some 401(k) plans offer online advice (39 percent), Vanguard found. However, only 6 percent of participants access these online recommendations to develop and manage their portfolio. A few employers also offer managed account advice (25 percent) and professional financial planner services (68 percent), sometimes for an additional fee, but only 10 percent of employees take advantage of either of these services.

Emily Brandon is the author of "Pensionless: The 10-Step Solution for a Stress-Free Retirement."





More From US News & World Report


NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2016 / The following statement is being issued by Levi & Korsinsky, LLP:

To: All Persons or Entities who purchased Medivation, Inc. ("Medivation") (MDVN) stock prior to August 22, 2016 .

You are hereby notified that Levi & Korsinsky, LLP has commenced an investigation into the fairness of the sale of Medivation to Pfizer Inc. (PFE) for $81.50 per share. The deal has a total transaction value of approximately $14 billion. To learn more about the action and your rights, go to:

http://zlk.9nl.com/medivation-mdvn

or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at jlevi@zlk.com or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972. There is no cost or obligation to you.

Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities lawsuits and have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for aggrieved shareholders. For more information, please feel free to contact any of the attorneys listed below. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Levi & Korsinsky, LLP

Joseph E. Levi, Esq.

Eduard Korsinsky, Esq.

30 Broad Street - 24th Floor

New York, NY 10004

Tel: (212) 363-7500

Toll Free: (877) 363-5972

Fax: (212) 363-7171

www.zlk.com

SOURCE: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP
By Isla Binnie NAPLES, Italy (Reuters) - The leaders of Germany, France and Italy will meet on Monday to discuss how to keep the European project together in the second set of talks between the premiers of the euro zone's three largest economies since Britain's shock vote to leave the bloc. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi hosts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on an island off the coast of Naples ahead of September's EU summit called to discuss reverberations from the Brexit vote. "They will be coming to discuss how to relaunch Europe from the bottom up, there's a big need," Renzi said on Sunday. "Relaunching Europe is a totally open game but it needs to be played," he said. Officials in Brussels and Berlin fear the June 23 vote could lead to a referendum in the Netherlands - a founding member of the union - on whether to also leave the bloc. "Monday aims to show the unity of Europe's three biggest countries, but not to create a specific club," a French diplomatic source said, noting that the aim was to prepare for the groundwork for the forthcoming Bratislava summit. Faced with existential risks, Merkel wants to cement "a better Europe" rather than forge ahead with "more Europe". Renzi wants Italy to have a strong voice in how the bloc's future is shaped after Brexit and, according to the French diplomatic source, Hollande wants an EU-wide investment plan to be doubled. The three leaders differ over how to boost economic growth - which slowed across the 28-nation bloc in the second quarter and stagnated in France and Italy - and cut unemployment. France supports Renzi's push for expansionary measures and against austerity, Germany is likely to oppose any undermining of Europe's deficit and the debt constraints that Italy and France have struggled to comply with. Italy is eager for greater European consolidation in the wake of Brexit, but Merkel is more concerned about preserving the integrity of the eventual 27-member bloc. For her it will be the beginning of a whirlwind week of meetings with other European governments that will see her travel to four countries and receive leaders from another eight. "The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27," said one EU diplomat. MORE THREATS Renzi chose to meet on the island of Ventotene because of its symbolic significance as the place where two Italian intellectuals, held there in World War Two, wrote an influential manifesto calling for European political unification. One of the two, Altiero Spinelli, is buried on the island and the three leaders will lay a wreath on his tomb. Lingering threats to the union that emerged long before the Brexit vote are also likely to be on the agenda, including internal and external security after Islamist militant attacks and Europe's migration crisis. Emboldened by the Brexit vote, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called a referendum on Oct. 2 on whether to accept any future EU migrant settlement quotas as his government steps up its fight against the EU's migration policies. In another symbolic choice of venue, the three leaders will hold their closing news conference on the Italian aircraft carrier, the Garibaldi, which is the flagship of the EU's "Sophia" mission in the Mediterranean. The naval operation has a mandate to tackle migrant smugglers, help enforce an arms embargo off Libya, and train the Libyan coast guard. The EU plans to offer incentives to African governments to help slow the flow of migrants who have poured into Europe over the past three years, but disagreements on how to handle the situation have laid bare divisions between member states. Italy, the main entry point for Africans but rarely their planned destination, is struggling to house migrants turned back from neighbouring countries including France, and has disagreed with Germany over how to finance the response. (Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau in Paris, Paul Carrel in Berlin and Silvia Ognibene in Marina di Pietrasanta, Italy; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Louise Ireland)
Targeting Mosul and Raqqa. Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend is stepping into a tough job. On Sunday, he took command of the U.S. war on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, tasked with retaking the cities of Mosul and Raqqa, working with (or around) the Russians in Syria, trying to keep Iraqi and Kurdish forces from pointing their guns at one another, and avoiding aerial dogfights between American and Syrian warplanes over Syrias crowded skies.

Townsend  the seventh U.S. general since 2003 to lead troops in Iraq  told the Washington Post that his plan is to pick up our pace of operations, our rate of fire if you will, so [Iraqi, Kurdish, and Syrian Arab allies] can posture themselves for the next big step. Hell be there for a year, and its my intent to have liberated Mosul and Raqqa and be in a pursuit phase by the end of our tour.

Harsh vibes. Russia has already pulled out of its temporary base in Iran, just hours after the Tehran government criticized Moscow for the kind of show-off and ungentlemanly way in which the Russians publicized the deployment. Over the weekend, members of the Iranian parliament started asking about the basing agreement, forcing Gen. Hossein Dehghan to take to the airwaves to say the visitors were there on a temporary basis but it is finished, for now.

And this little dig was interesting: Russians are interested to show they are a superpower to guarantee their share in political future of Syria and, of course, there has been a kind of show-off and ungentlemanly (attitude) in this field, he said. Russian bombers used the base to hit targets in Syria at least three times last week.

Syria strike update. There doesnt appear to have been any more close calls over the weekend for U.S. special operations forces after Syrian warplanes nearly hit them in northern Syria Thursday. The U.S. scrambled fighter jets to protect the Americans, but the Syrian jets had already left by time they reached the area. FPs Paul McLeary has more here.

Story continues

Two offensives in Syria. U.S.-backed Kurdish YPG fighters kicked off a major offensive against Syrian government troops in the area around the city of Hasaka on Monday, a major escalation in the fighting between the two sides. U.S. advisors are in the area  or at least they were, until they almost got caught in the Syrian airstrike.

Not to be left out, Syrian Arab rebels are also staging at a Turkish military base to take the Islamic State-controlled Syrian town of Jarablus, according to new reports. The move is planned to blunt the advance of Kurdish forces in northern Syria. The Turkish government, which has been battling Kurdish militants for decades, is worried that the Kurds will gain too much of a foothold along its southern border.

Moscow cant keep the lights on. Crimeans arent happy with their new-ish landlords from Moscow, saying that since Russia invaded and took the area from the Ukrainian government in 2014, prices have soared, wages have flattened, and things like electric power remain more aspirational than they were before. Amid increasing tensions with Ukraine, Russian troops are in the middle of exercises practicing how to land troops and quickly resupply them in Crimea. Vessels from Russias Black Sea Fleet had also taken part, including a submarine, a large landing ship, mine-sweepers and an unspecified number of guided missile cruisers. Around 2,500 troops and up to 350 armored vehicles had also been involved, Reuters reports.

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

Japan

Japan is gearing up to submit its largest defense budget in the countrys post-war history. Japanese officials tell Reuters that the government plans to ask for $51 billion for defense in fiscal year 2017. The money will go to a host of new programs, including a project to develop an unmanned fighter jet and missile defense programs. Japan has traditionally shied away from spending big on the defense, but has begun to change course in the face of growing military threats from rivals such as China and North Korea.

Israel

Israeli officials say Hezbollah operatives snuck a bag full of explosives across the border from Lebanon to a farm in the town of Metulla, the Times of Israel reports. The explosives, authorities say, were likely lying in wait for use in a terrorist attack. The discovery comes amid growing tensions between Israel and Hezbollah following a series of airstrikes from Israeli forces against top Hezbollah officials in Syria. Last week, Israels domestic intelligence agency reported the arrest of Palestinians in the West Bank whom it says were recruited to carry out terrorist attacks by Hezbollahs external operations arm, Unit 133.

Iraq

Dramatic footage out of Iraq shows Iraqi police thwarting a child suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest. Cops caught the young boy, whom they say was sent by the Islamic State from Mosul, in the city of Kirkuk shortly after an attack on a Shiite mosque in the city, according to the AP. The boy claims to have been kidnapped and forced into carrying out the attempted attack.

Iraq has executed three dozen people it says were responsible for the Camp Speicher massacre, one of the largest and infamous atrocities carried out by the Islamic State. Jihadists from the group killed somewhere between 1,500-1,700 Iraqi military recruits in at the camp in Tikrit in June of 2014. Iraqi authorities hanged 36 people it accused of involvement in the massacre at Al-Hoot prison, with family members of the victims in attendance.

Yemen

Yemens deposed former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh says hes willing to roll out the welcome mat for the Russian military if he comes back to power. Reuters reports that Saleh told Russian media hed be okay with letting Russian aircraft and naval vessels use bases in the country in order to fight terrorism. Saleh, once the president of Yemen, now belongs to a political coalition that includes members of the Houthi movement backed by Iran and fought by a Saudi-led coalition of Gulf states.

The Pentagon recently pulled a small group of military planners from an operations center helping Saudi Arabia plan air strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, possibly as a result of the Saudi-led coalition continuing to hit civilian targets in Yemen. FPs Colum Lynch has more.

Turkey

Unspeakable horror hit Turkey once again over the weekend as a suicide bombing carried out by a child killed more than 50 people at a wedding party. The New York Times reports that the child bomber, 14 years old, hit a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep. Turkish officials say the attack, the most lethal to hit the country this year, was orchestrated by the Islamic State.

Justice Department personnel are headed to Turkey to evaluate the Turkish governments request to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a political rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan whom Turkey claims orchestrated the July coup attempt against Erdogan. The announcement comes just ahead of Vice President Joe Bidens trip to Turkey on Wednesday. Anonymous U.S. officials complain that Turkeys requests to extradite Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, are long on accusation and short on evidence. What evidence they Turkey has provided, however, has focused on certain alleged criminal activities that pre-date the coup, according to one U.S. official.

Photo Credit: DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images
The Global X Social Media Index ETF (SOCL) , the first exchange traded fund dedicated to social media stocks, is up 18% this year, but that does not mean the ETFs upside from here is limited.

SOCL has been boosted this year by Facebook Inc. (FB) being one of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 and Microsofts (MSFT) purchase of LinkedIn (LNKD), among other factors.

Microsoft is acquiring LinkedIn Corp. for $26.2 billion in one of the largest tech-industry deals on record as a way to integrate the networking site with Windows. That deal was announced in June.

Related: 46 Tech ETFs to Tap Into Big Growth Names

Recent ebullience towards tech and Internet ETFs is represents a rapid reversal of fortune. Just a few weeks ago, investors were worried about the impact Brexit could have on technology, the S&P 500s largest sector allocation.

Trending on ETF Trends

The Best Performing Utilities ETF of the Year

Emerging Market ETFs Look Strong But Pick Your Spots

Technical Sell-Off Grips Gold Miner ETFs

Italy ETF Could Face Exit Questions

Bearish Commentary on Euro ETFs

A fund of this nature is likely to be used as more of a small tactical theme rather than a core holding. It can be used to focus the technology exposure in your ETF portfolio toward some of the largest social media companies in the world. This may be preferable to the hit-or-miss proposition of choosing individual stocks for some investors, according to InvestorPlace.

SOCL tracks the Solactive Social Media Index. That index is designed to reflect the performance of companies involved in the social media industry, i ncluding companies that provide social networking, file sharing, and other web-based media applications, according to Global X.

SEE MORE: Earnings and the Social Media ETF

Facebook and Chinas Tencent are among the most important drivers of SOCLs returns. Fortunately, analysts are most bullish on Facebook.

Evercore ISI raised its price target on Facebook to $160 from $155, representing record-high territory for the shares. The stock is currently off 0.2% at $124.07, but touched an all-time peak of $128.33 as recently as July 28. Year-over-year, FB has been an absolute beast on the charts, advancing more than 30%., according to Schaeffers Investment Research.



Story continues

For more information on the social media sector, visit our social media category.

Global X Social Media Index ETF
Residents in Kidal in northern Mali are finding it easier to work and study into the night thanks to a solar lighting project recently introduced to the area. About 1,500 households are now able to switch on their lights thanks to a 50,000 US dollar project funded by the U.N. Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). The government has been trying to promote renewable energy technologies since 2007, hoping they will reach 15 percent of the total national energy supply by 2020. "The families that have benefited from these kits are very happy, not only because they have left the darkness behind, but it has also helped people in many ways, especially in families where there are children, the kits have allowed children to study in the evenings and women to continue their activities at night," said Assikaday Ag Wayerzagane, a chief in Kidal. Mali's government has not had a military presence in Kidal since clashes between the army and Tuareg rebels killed 50 soldiers there in 2014, making access to services like electricity difficult. Mali, a landlocked desert nation and an important gold exporter, has suffered from endemic corruption and instability over the years, and more lately from multiple insurrections by Islamist groups in the north, as well as infighting between armed factions. Most of the country's electricity supply is produced by a shared dam on the River Senegal in Mali, which also provides power to three neighboring countries, including Mauritania and Senegal. The country remains one of the world's poorest nations, with around half its population living on less than $1.25 a day, according to U.N. data. That means most families cannot afford a solar energy kit - including solar panels, batteries and lights - which can cost as much as $1,000 upfront. Local NGO AFORD or Association for Training, Research and Development, was selected to implement the 6-month long lighting project. Mohamed Aly Ag Albessaty, is the organization's president. "This project has distributed solar kits to populations in need to allow people to light their homes and it allows children to study at home now that they get electricity service in Kidal," he said. Many Malians complain about regular power cuts or live in remote parts that are not on the national grid. National energy company, Energie du Mali (EDM) has begun to add solar power capacity to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, which provide around half the West African nation's power. Aicha Abdoulaye a Kidal resident says solar lighting has also helped improve security in the area and improved their lives. "We use it to charge our mobile telephones, before it was so difficult to charge our telephones. At night, we can also light up to see what we are doing until we go to sleep," she said. The government says the country is building two large-scale solar power plants to feed into the national grid, including one in the central region of Segou which is slated to be West Africa's first utility-scale solar plant, with a planned capacity of 33 megawatts able to cover 5 percent of Mali's electricity needs.
(SEOUL)  South Korea and the United States began annual military drills Monday despite North Koreas threat of nuclear strikes in response to the exercises that it calls an invasion rehearsal.

Such fiery rhetoric by Pyongyang is not unusual. But the latest warning comes at a time of more tension following the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a U.S. plan to place a high-tech defense missile system in South Korea.

The Norths military said in a statement Monday that it will turn Seoul and Washington into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style pre-emptive nuclear strike if they show any signs of aggression toward the Norths territory.

The Norths first-strike units are ready to mount retaliatory attacks on South Korean and U.S. forces involved in the drills, according to the statement, carried by Pyongyangs state media.

South Koreas Unification Ministry expressed strong regret over the Norths warning, saying the drills with the U.S. are defensive in nature. Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said they have no intentions of invading Pyongyang.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday for a 12-day run are largely computer-simulated war games. The training involves 25,000 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers, according to the U.S. and South Korean militaries.

The drills come just days after Seoul announced that Thae Yong Ho, No. 2 at the Norths embassy in London, had recently defected to South Korea because he was disillusioned with the Norths leadership. Pyongyangs state media called him human scum and a criminal who had been ordered home for a series of alleged criminal acts, including sexually assaulting a minor.

South Koreas President Park Geun-hye said Monday that there were signs of serious cracks in the Norths ruling elite class after defections of key figures she didnt identity. Park told a security meeting that Pyongyang could carry out cyberattacks or other provocations on South Korea to divert public attention away from such domestic problems.

Story continues

Many analysts said Thaes defection was an embarrassment to the North Korean government of leader Kim Jong Un, but would not weaken the unity of the countrys elite class.

North Korea has already boosted its war rhetoric because of the planned deployment of the U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system in South Korea, which Washington and Seoul says is needed because of the increasing North Korean threats.

About 28,500 U.S. troops are in South Korea to help deter potential aggression from North Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with armistice, not a peace treaty.
Ryan Lochte

Speedo announced Monday that it will no longer sponsor Ryan Lochte. Soon after, Ralph Lauren followed suit, saying it wouldn't renew its sponsorship of the Olympic swimmer. By Monday afternoon, Lochte lost all of his sponsors.

Lochte admitted on Saturday that he "overexaggerated" a story about being robbed at gunpoint at a gas station in Rio during the Olympics. There were conflicting reports about the incident with some accusing Lochte and three of his teammates of vandalism.

Lochte released a statement last week apologizing for what he had done.

But Speedo USA said Monday it "cannot condone behavior that is counter to the values this brand has long stood for." Speedo USA will be donating $50,000 of Lochte's sponsorship to the charity Save The Children to benefit children in Brazil.

The official response regarding our sponsorship of Ryan Lochte. pic.twitter.com/0DdP2RyceD  Speedo USA (@SpeedoUSA) August 22, 2016

Less than two hours later, Ralph Lauren released the following statement saying it would not renew Lochte's contract.

"Ralph Lauren continues to proudly sponsor the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Team and the values that its athletes embody. Ralph Laurens endorsement agreement with Ryan Lochte was specifically in support of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and the company will not be renewing his contract."

On Monday afternoon, mattress company Airweave tweeted that they were ending their sponsorship of Lochte. He also lost his sponsorship deal with Gentle Hair Removal parent company Syneron-Candela, ESPN's Darren Rovell tweeted.

NOW WATCH: Speedo drops Lochte  will donate $50,000 of his fee to benefit children in Brazil





More From Business Insider


Swimsuit and apparel manufacturer Speedo, the leading brand in the industry in America, has terminated its sponsorship of Ryan Lochte.

Speedo sent out a statement Monday morning announcing that it has parted ways with Lochte. The one-paragraph statement, in its entirety:

Speedo USA today announces the decision to end its sponsorship of Ryan Lochte. As part of this decision, Speedo USA will donate a $50,000 portion of Lochtes fee to Save The Children, a global charity partner of Speedo USAs parent company, for children in Brazil. While we have enjoyed a winning relationship with Ryan for over a decade and he has been an important member of the Speedo team, we cannot condone behavior that is counter to the values this brand has long stood for. We appreciate his many achievements and hope he moves forward and learns from this experience

Losing Speedo as a sponsor is a significant blow for Ryan Lochte. (AP)

This was the first  but not the last  known business repercussion for Lochte after his involvement in the widely publicized incident in Rio de Janeiro the night after the swimming portion of the Olympic Games ended. CNBC reported that Ralph Lauren is not renewing its sponsorship contract with Lochte, and airweave mattresses announced it had cut ties with the swimmer Monday afternoon.

Lochte claimed he was robbed by a fake policeman who held a gun to his head, sparking an international firestorm, but later admitted to an over-exaggeration of events that occurred in the company of fellow American swimmers Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and Jimmy Feigen. Lochte and Feigen were charged with filing a false report with police; Bentz and Conger were detained for 24 hours as witnesses; and the U.S. Olympic Committee ultimately issued an apology for the affair, which overshadowed much of the second week of the Olympics.

Losing Speedo as a sponsor is a significant blow for Lochte. Swimming apparel manufacturers are a major element of the sponsorship money available to professional swimmers, who can otherwise struggle to find enough endorsement revenue to make swimming a full-time job.

More Olympics coverage:
By Subrat Patnaik and Liana B. Baker (Reuters) - U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte lost the last of his four major sponsors, Japanese mattress maker Airweave, days after he admitted to exaggerating his story about being robbed at gunpoint in Rio during the Olympics. The incident embarrassed the host city, angered the local police and government and dominated news coverage of South America's first Olympics, leading the U.S. Olympic Committee to issue an apology. Lochte, a 12-time Olympic medalist, apologized on Saturday in an interview to Brazil's largest broadcaster, Globo TV. "I wasn't lying to a certain extent," he said. "I over-exaggerated what was happening to me." Within hours of the Games coming to a close, Speedo USA issued a statement saying it would drop Lochte as one of its endorsers, while Ralph Lauren Corp said it would not be renewing its contract with the swimmer. Hair removal company Syneron Candela also ended its partnership with Lochte, four months after naming him its global brand ambassador for one of its products. Sponsorship and endorsement deals typically include "morals clauses" that allow sponsors to terminate deals early if they feel the athlete has behaved poorly in public. Nottingham, UK-based Speedo's U.S. unit said on Monday it would donate $50,000 of Lochte's fee to Save The Children, a global charity partner of Speedo. Lochte said in an email that he respected Speedo's decision. "I was immature and I made a stupid mistake. I'm human. I made a mistake and I definitely learned from this," Lochte said in an interview on the Today show. "They (the people of Rio) put on a great Games ... And my immature, intoxicated behavior tarnished that a little," Lochte said. Ralph Lauren and Airweave said its endorsement agreement with Lochte was for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Ralph Lauren had taken down references to the gold medalist from its website last week. Lochte, 32, won one gold medal at the Rio Olympics. He was the breakout star of the 2012 London Olympics, landing a short-lived reality TV series called "What Would Ryan Lochte Do?" and appearing, as himself, on top shows such as "30 Rock" and "90210". (Reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru and Liana Baker in Rio de Janeiro, Additional reporting by Jill Serjeant in New York and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru, Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Shounak Dasgupta)
* Standard Chartered reduces private equity Africa team

* West Africa head will also leave to launch own fund

* African economies struggling due to low commodity prices

By Joe Brock

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The head of Standard Chartered's African fund, which has $800 million invested, is set to leave the bank as it trims its private equity team on the continent, its global head of private equity said on Monday.

Peter Baird, who was appointed in 2011 and has 20 years experience in private equity and investment banking, will be replaced by Ronald Tamale, a former Goldman Sachs analyst, CEO of Standard Chartered Private Equity Joe Stevens told Reuters.

Baird declined to comment. It was not clear if he quit or was removed.

African economies have struggled over the last year with lower commodity prices, rising government debt and weakening currencies.

Many of Standard Chartered's investments are in Nigeria, where subdued oil prices have pushed Africa's biggest economy to the brink of recession and banks have wrestled with acute foreign exchange shortages.

Yemi Osindero, head of Standard Chartered's West Africa private equity business, is also leaving the bank, along with his colleague Nana Dankwa, to start an independent African fund, a Standard Chartered private equity source told Reuters.

Stevens said there would now be eight Africa specialists working on its private equity business.

However, two private equity sources close to Standard Chartered's fund said there would be five staff working directly on the Africa private equity team, down from 11 a year ago.

Goldman Sachs and Blackrock are among the investors in the fund, two industry sources said.

Stevens said that the reduced staff numbers were in line with its broader strategy and its fund was performing well, despite some economic challenges in Nigeria.

"This is part of a strategy to be leaner, more efficient and more integrated," Stevens said.

"Our portfolio in Africa is in very strong shape. Africa remains a key part of our strategy."

Story continues

Standard Chartered's Africa investments include Union Bank , aluminium can manufacturer GZI and gas-focused explorer, Seven Energy, all in Nigeria.

Nigerian banks have been hammered by a shrinking economy, a plunging currency and acute foreign exchange shortages.

Union Bank's share price has almost halved since January.

"The UBN share price is largely a currency issue ... we anticipate that its share price will increase significantly over time," Stevens said.

Standard Chartered's fund also invests in Choppies, a Botswana-based budget supermarket chain.

(Additional reporting by Sinead Cruise and Rachel Armstrong in London; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
By Joe Brock

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The head of Standard Chartered's (STANB.UL) African fund, which has $800 million invested, is set to leave the bank as it trims its private equity team on the continent, its global head of private equity said on Monday.

Peter Baird, who was appointed in 2011 and has 20 years experience in private equity and investment banking, will be replaced by Ronald Tamale, a former Goldman Sachs (GS.N) analyst, CEO of Standard Chartered Private Equity Joe Stevens told Reuters.

Baird declined to comment. It was not clear if he quit or was removed.

African economies have struggled over the last year with lower commodity prices, rising government debt and weakening currencies.

Many of Standard Chartered's investments are in Nigeria, where subdued oil prices have pushed Africa's biggest economy to the brink of recession and banks have wrestled with acute foreign exchange shortages.

Yemi Osindero, head of Standard Chartered's West Africa private equity business, is also leaving the bank, along with his colleague Nana Dankwa, to start an independent African fund, a Standard Chartered private equity source told Reuters.

Stevens said there would now be eight Africa specialists working on its private equity business.

However, two private equity sources close to Standard Chartered's fund said there would be five staff working directly on the Africa private equity team, down from 11 a year ago.

Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and Blackrock are among the investors in the fund, two industry sources said.

Stevens said that the reduced staff numbers were in line with its broader strategy and its fund was performing well, despite some economic challenges in Nigeria.

"This is part of a strategy to be leaner, more efficient and more integrated," Stevens said.

"Our portfolio in Africa is in very strong shape. Africa remains a key part of our strategy."

Standard Chartered's Africa investments include Union Bank (UBN.LG), aluminium can manufacturer GZI and gas-focused explorer, Seven Energy, all in Nigeria.

Story continues

Nigerian banks have been hammered by a shrinking economy, a plunging currency and acute foreign exchange shortages.

Union Bank's share price has almost halved since January.

"The UBN share price is largely a currency issue ... we anticipate that its share price will increase significantly over time," Stevens said.

Standard Chartered's fund also invests in Choppies (CHPJ.J), a Botswana-based budget supermarket chain.

(Additional reporting by Sinead Cruise and Rachel Armstrong in London; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
If not for the Chicago Cubs, the Washington Nationals would be the leading story in the National League. After a disastrous 2015, the team is playing like everyone expected. Dusty Baker has fixed the clubhouse, Daniel Murphy is an MVP candidate and Stephen Strasburg is pitching like everyone expected.

At 73-50, the team is a lock for the postseason. Once they get there, the Nationals quest will be all about erasing the memories of last season and making up for lost opportunities.

Their chances may have taken a slight hit Monday. Prior to Mondays contest against the Baltimore Orioles, the club placed Strasburg on the disabled list with an elbow injury.

#Nats recall RHP A.J. Cole from AAA & place RHP Stephen Strasburg on the 15-day DL with right elbow soreness. Cole will start Mon at BAL.  Washington Nationals (@Nationals) August 22, 2016

Through 145 1/3 innings, Strasburg has posted a 3.59 ERA. He was struck out an incredible 179 batters this year. Strasburg previously spent time on the disabled list earlier this season with a back injury.

Arm injuries are never a good thing for a pitcher, particularly one who has already experienced Tommy John surgery during his career. The Nationals, however, are playing it safe in this instance, and do not believe Strasburgs injury is serious.

Source: Strasburg has had touch of inflammation last few GS would pitch thru if playoffs, #Nationals see as chance to get him right with DL  Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) August 22, 2016

That sound you just heard was all of Washington D.C. breathing a huge sigh of relief. That doesnt mean Strasburg is completely out of the woods, but it sounds as though things could be a lot worse. If Strasburg is able to return to the rotation in two weeks, the Nationals remain in great shape heading into October.

Story continues

Not only that, but Strasburgs long-term future doesnt seem to be compromised at the moment. Though hes a Scott Boras client, Strasburg bucked the trend by signing a massive seven-year, $175 million extension with the Nationals in May. He was just a few months away from becoming a free-agent.

Stephen Strasburg is on the DL with an elbow injury. (Justin EdMonds/Getty Images)

Arm health has always been a major concern for Strasburg. The 28-year-old had perhaps the most publicized Tommy John surgery in recent memory following his exceptional rookie season.

Strasburg was able to return in 2012 to help the Nationals reach the playoffs, but was shut down once he reached his very public innings limit. The Nationals were bounced from the playoffs that season in the NLDS. Strasburg didnt throw a single pitch during the series.

At the time, the thinking behind the shut down was that Strasburg would remain healthy in future seasons, and dominate in October as the Nationals young core made multiple postseasons.

That hasnt gone exactly to plan. The Nationals failed to make the postseason in both 2013 and 2015. The team did reach October in 2014, but were bounced in the NLDS once again. In Strasburgs seven years in Washington, hes made just one playoff start.

That narrative could still be erased as early as this season. As long as this elbow injury isnt serious, Strasburg should be back and ready to go by October. And if things break the right way for the Nationals, its possible hell make more than one start during the playoffs this time around.

More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:

      

Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at christophercwik@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik
The charitable foundations of Leonardo DiCaprio and Hillary Clinton are lampooned as money-laundering enterprises in a new poster hung early Monday in a historic portion of Los Angeles by conservative street artist Sabo, known for creating fake outdoor advertisements that skewer Hollywood liberals.

DiCaprio had been set to host a $33,400-per-plate fundraising event Tuesday for the Democratic presidential candidate at his Hollywood Hills home, but he abruptly canceled over the weekend citing a scheduling conflict (the event will now be held at the nearby residence of Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel).

DiCaprio, 41, has been linked in the media to a $3 billion Malaysian embezzlement scandal involving a wealth fund called 1MDB, and a U.S. Department of Justice complaint suggests the actor's charitable organization may have benefited financially from figures at the center of the scandal.

The Clinton Foundation, meanwhile, has been under scrutiny for donations provided to it by overseas figures. Bill Clinton said recently that the foundation would not accept international money if Hillary is elected president.

Read more: Leonardo DiCaprio, the Malaysian Money Scandal and His "Unusual" Foundation

Sabo told The Hollywood Reporter he tried hanging his newest creation near DiCaprio's home, but security personnel stopped him. Instead, he hung the poster on Sunset Boulevard across the street from ArcLight Cinemas (see below).

The artwork features the heads of both DiCaprio and Clinton spinning in stacked clothes dryers with $100 bills swirling around them. "The Clinton Crime Family: Laundering Money Since 1997," says one part of the washing machine. Another bit references former Clinton challenger Bernie Sanders and reads: "Bernie sold out for a lake house!!!"

Previous Sabo targets have included J.J. Abrams and President Barack Obama, Lena Dunham and, just last week, Birth of a Nation director-star Nate Parker.

Story continues

A rep for DiCaprio did not respond to a request for comment.

Sabo's DiCaprio-Clinton street art on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The closing ceremonies for the 31st Summer Olympics in Rio on NBC were an indication of just how exhausted everyone has become from the last 16 days. A mere two weeks have passed since Matt Lauer, Hoda Kotb, and Meredith Vieira set the stage for what would ultimately become a global demonstration of the Ugly American trope. In lieu of those three heavy-hitters, the closing ceremonies were hosted by Mary Carillo, Ryan Seacrest, and Mike Tirico finishing things the way they beganby complaining that Brazil thinks Alberto Santos-Dumont is the true father of aviation. Theyre not letting this go, the announcers sniped.

Somehow, the last two weeks have crammed in everything, from Katie Ledeckys triumphs to Ryan Lochtes implosion; Daily Beast journalist Nico Hines widely condemned outing stunt; Hope Solos epic dis of her Swedish rivals; the online bullying of Gabby Douglas. In fact, Douglas is apparently one of the few American athletes for whom consequences had actionsthatll teach her to not put her hand on her heart! And as for the athletes from other countries, unless their names were Usain Bolt or Tom Daley they were mostly ignoredwith the exception of that Japanese pole vaulter who had the misfortune of toppling over when it appeared as if his package hit the pole. Much to his dismay, his eminently GIF-able moment launched a thousand pun-filled headlines.

After all that drama, no wonder the closing ceremony felt anti-climactic, even in the midst of a downpour. Brightly clad performers performing synchronized, Carnivale-esque routines and small children singing the Brazilian national anthem just cant compete with the tone-deaf ramblings of commentators and the literal finger-wagging of American swimmers. Somehow watching projections of athletes awkwardly dancing and posing in front of a green screen (as they inexplicably did while Julia Michaels and Kygo performed) lacks the same I-gotta-jump-on-Twitter-right-now urgency as hearing a female athletes accomplishments attributed to the man in her life.

Story continues

Also Read: Why Katie Ledecky and 2 Other Olympics MVPs Rule Social Media Right Now

At least we were treated to the first meeting of the international Simone Biles fan club as the athletes entered the stadium, most of them promptly joining a long procession of new Biles acolytes pausing to take a selfie with her. That almost made up for the numerous repetitive Busby Berkeley-lite choreographed numbers celebrating Brazil, including one dedicated to lace. Luckily, Seacrest gave Brazilian music his seal of approvalI love the beat!so we all knew that it was OK to enjoy it.

In fact, the highlight of the closing ceremony came from 2020s host, Tokyo. From the moment the Prime Minister turned into everyones favorite mustachioed plumber, Mario, and emerged on stage from a green pipe to the sleek, elegant 2020 logo, Tokyos production was crisp, sharp, and actually movedeverything that Rio, from opening to closing, was missing. Even the extinguishing of the torch felt a little second-rate, coming as it did accompanied by stage rain shortly after the real-life downpour ended. Like the rest of these Olympics, it had the best of intentions and the most lackluster of executions.

But heyat least the Rio Olympics served everyone an important lesson in geography. Now we all know exactly where Tonga is.

Related stories from TheWrap:

Rio Olympics Most Memorable Moments on Facebook, Week 2

Ryan Lochte Tells Matt Lauer It's All His Fault in Rio: 'It Was My Immature Behavior'

Al Roker Goes HAM on Ryan Lochte, Billy Bush Over Rio Robbery Scandal (Video)
Keryn Redstone is asking to review a recent settlement agreement that resulted in the ouster of Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman and the installation of new leadership atop the media conglomerate behind VH1, MTV, and Paramount Pictures.

In legal filings, Redstone, who is the granddaughter of Viacoms controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone, questions why Dauman has abandoned a series of legal challenges in favor of a golden parachute that will pay him in excess of $70 million to leave his perch. The deal could end a series of interconnected courtroom battles.

Dauman had previously allied himself with Frederic Salerno and George Abrams, members of the boards of Viacom and National Amusements, the holding company that manages the Redstone stake, after the men were tossed out in a leadership shuffle. They had claimed that the move was being orchestrated by Keryn Redstones aunt, Shari Redstone, in an attempt to gain control of Sumner Redstones media empire.

Now, in the blink of an eye, Plaintiffs have apparently turned tail, agreed to acquiesce to Sharis palace coup, and suddenly seek to go gentle into that good night with their pockets full of nearly $100 million, reads the motion.

Beyond quoting Dylan Thomas, the filing goes on to ask, why Plaintiffs have joined hands with Shari and are singing Kumbaya.

Because Viacom is a publicly traded company, it will have to release settlement details, but Keryn Redstones legal team is asking to review the particulars as soon as possible. Shes asking for a hearing this week.

Ira Steinberg, an attorney for Keryn Redstone, wrote in an email that this client was preparing to go to trial, where which she will make her case that the tragically incapacitated Sumner Redstone has been unduly influenced by Shari Redstone in modifying the succession plan for his businesses.

Over the weekend, Viacom announced that Dauman will be replaced on an interim basis by Chief Operating Officer Thomas Dooley. Dauman will also be given the opportunity to try to persuade the Viacom board to move ahead with his plan to sell a 49% stake in Paramount.

Story continues

The 93-year-old Sumner Redstones health has been failing in recent years. A settlement with Dauman could prevent him from having to undergo court-mandated medical examinations into his mental capacity.

A spokesman for Viacom declined to comment on Keryn Redstones filing.

Related stories

Viacom Finally Announces Philippe Dauman Ouster, Thomas Dooley Promotion

Viacom's New Chief Prepares to Woo Board, Investors

Sources: Philippe Dauman Ousted From Viacom, Ending Nasty Feud With Redstone Family
Updated with Redstone response: Viacom civil war ended with an agreement that led to Philippe Daumans exit last week as CEO. But the Battle of the Redstones continues with a court complaint today by Sumner Redstones granddaughter, Keryn.

Calling the settlement deal a palace coup, she wants the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court to provide for her to see the agreement that led Dauman and Viacom to withdraw two lawsuits charging that Redstone, 93, was not competent to manage his affairs and was being manipulated by his daughter, Shari.

Shari and Redstone-controlled National Amusements  which owns 80% of the voting shares in Viacom and CBS  vigorously denied the charges.

Keryn also wants to see a copy of Sumner Redstones family trust, which will benefit her and other grandchildren when hes deemed unable to make rational decisions. The complaint says that her grandfathers lawyer promised in June to provide a copy but promptly reneged and produced only [a] heavily-redacted and in places, unintelligible version.

Judge George Phelan agreed to hold a hearing on the motion this Friday.

But the Redstones and National Amusements asked him to simply hold a status conference, deferring any major decisions, saying that they plan to file a motion this week to dismiss Keryns request.

They question whether it warrants the broad discovery [she] now seeks as the sole remaining party pursuing claims in this action.

Keryn Redstones lawyers said today with an almost tabloid toned ex parte motion filed in Massachusetts (read it here) that the court needs to know what did Sumner know, how was he informed about the settlements terms, did he appreciate its significance for his succession planning, and what was Sharis role in this whole affair, The Settlement Agreement and an unredacted version of the Trust instrument are critical to that evaluation.

Story continues

It adds that Keryn believes Shari has systematically maneuvered to gain physical and mental control of her enfeebled father in order to unduly influence him to replace his hand-picked Trustees with Trustees loyal only to her  cronies who will faithfully carry out Sharis self-interested agenda in administering the Trust to the detriment of Keryn and other beneficiaries.

Viacom Logo

Seeking an August 26 hearing, the paperwork from Bostons Sherin and Lodgen LLP and L.A.s Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP challenges the perceived victory by Shari Redstone that last week. The settlement downgraded Dauman from CEO and Chair to non-Executive Chairman until September 13, when hell leave. It also affirmed his ouster from the Redstone family trust and the board of National Amusements. Hell leave with a $72 million platinum parachute.

Having joined the war against her Aunt Shari earlier this summer, Keryn Redstone could still raise important questions about who does, or should, run Sumners $42 billion media empire.

RelatedSumner Redstone Might Be Deposed In Case Challenging His Competence

Inquiring minds want toindeed, mustknowwhy Plaintiffs have joined hands with Shari and are singing Kumbaya, Mondays filing says. With everyone but Keryn acquiescing in this abrupt termination of those issues, the Court needs to hear an independent voice to assist it in deciding whether to bless this settlement as being in the best interests of Sumner and the Trust beneficiaries, the 9-page shot across the bow adds. That lone voice is Sumners beloved granddaughter whoat great expense and personal risk has sought to protect those interests amidst the jockeying for power and money of the other litigants.

The settlement will become public once the parties put it before the court for approval but the younger Redstone wants to see it ASAP.

Fundamental fairness requires that Keryn be given an opportunity to evaluate why Plaintiffs have done a complete about-face, to consider fully the settlements implications and its impact on Keryns status and entitlement as a beneficiary of the Trust, and to explore and, if necessary, challenge the purported acquiescence of a vulnerable mentally challenged Sumner in the settlement, todays filing notes with no small amount of purple in its prose.

The official response from Team Redstone will determine the next countermove.

Related stories

Bart & Fleming: A Cruel Summer; Philippe Dauman's Powerball-Sized Parting Gift; Katzenberg Memo 25 Years Later

How To Cure Ailing Viacom? Wall Street's Prescriptions Are Mixed

Viacom Officially Resolves Leadership Dispute: Dauman Out, Thomas Dooley Interim President & CEO
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Hotel and gaming group Sun International became the latest South African business to pull out of Nigeria because of weak economic growth and clashes with regulators in the west African country. In January Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) launched a probe into Sun International's initial investment in the Tourist Company of Nigeria, which owns and operates the 5-star Federal Palace hotel in Lagos. Sun International, which reported a 20 percent fall in diluted adjusted headline earnings per share (AHEPS) to 628 cents for the year to June, said the Federal Palace had been hit by slow economic growth, the low oil price, the threat from Boko Haram and a weakening naira. "The board has decided to exit Nigeria and steps will be taken to achieve this in a manner that does not erode further value," the company said in a statement. "Continued setbacks in Nigeria as well as the ongoing shareholder dispute have frustrated all attempts to develop and improve the property." Sun International is the latest South African company to clash with Nigerian authorities after telecoms group MTN was fined for failing to disconnect users with unregistered SIM cards. Sun International's decision to exit Nigeria follows food and clothing retailer Woolworths and Tiger Brands, which sold its loss-making Nigerian division to Dangote Industries. Nigeria, Africa's largest economy, is suffering its worst financial crisis in decades as a slump in oil revenues hammers public finances and the naira. The central bank governor has said recession is likely. Shares in Sun International were down 0.7 percent by 0855 GMT. Reporting its results, the company said poor economic conditions and general negative sentiment in its home market of South Africa resulted in revenue growth at casinos of only 0.8 percent at 7 billion rand ($514.78 million). "In South Africa, the economic environment remains a serious concern. We do not anticipate any meaningful growth in gaming revenue until there is a recovery in the economy and renewed consumer confidence," Chief Executive Graeme Stephens said. The South African Reserve Bank expects economic growth at zero percent this year, due to a severe drought and falling commodity prices. ($1 = 13.5980 rand) (Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by Tiisetso Motsoeneng/Keith Weir)
Shinzo Abe's epic entrance at the Rio Olympics tonight pretty much couldn't have been more flawless in kicking off the drumbeat of excitement for Tokyo 2020.

After the International Olympic Committee performed the official handoff from Rio to Tokyo at Sunday's closing ceremony, Japan's prime minister surprised everyone by popping up as Super Mario, an homage to Nintendos beloved Mario Brothers.

PM Abe appears at Rio closing ceremony dressed as Mario. pic.twitter.com/CK7HjKUk0c  Nippon.com (@nippon_en) August 22, 2016

Before Abe's entrance, video shown inside the Maracana Stadium had depicted "Mario" running through the streets of Tokyo and pulling out a map that highlighted Rio de Janeiro, The Associated Press reported.

See also: How Pok?mon Go Is Propelling Business in Rural Asia

The video game character then hopped into a green warp tube. Inside the stadium, a familiar "level up" sound rang out. Out came Prime Minister Abe, complete with Marios familiar red cap and red ball in hand.

Plenty of viewers took to social media to cheer on the prime minister's performance, with some even calling it best moment of the night.

THE JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER SHINZO ABE JUST SHOWED UP AT THE OLYMPICS DRESSED AS MARIO, POPPING UP THROUGH A PIPE. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.  Mark:Di-Stefano (@MarkDiStef) August 22, 2016

I'm not a fan of Shinzo Abe's revisionist politics, but I gotta give him geek props for this. https://t.co/FzDEfyJ4Vo  TJ Dimacali (@tjdimacali) August 22, 2016

Ima let you finish but Shinzo Abe had the best entrance of all time pic.twitter.com/uQsQt5SmLI  Olympic Bun (@Rxbun) August 22, 2016

Shinzo Abe just popped out of a Mario tube at the Rio Olympics. What a time to be alive.  Matt Ford (@fordm) August 22, 2016

Looks like I can cross out "Shinzo Abe coming out of a green pipe as Mario" off my "must see list". #ClosingCeremony pic.twitter.com/wdkxygMgTT  Basith (@aBasithH) August 22, 2016

In only five minutes, the Japanese overshadowed the entire #ClosingCeremony. They absolutely Beyonc?d #Rio2016.  Fernando (@coverfer) August 22, 2016

See also: Japans Defense Ministry Is Seeking a Record Budget for Next Year

Story continues

The only slight hiccup--if one could even call it that--came later, when workers had difficulty removing the tube from the stadium floor, according to the AP.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
ZURICH (Reuters) - Syngenta <SYNN.S> on Monday was tightlipped on the agreement it has clinched with a U.S. national security panel to approve its blockbuster takeover by ChemChina but said any concessions it made to secure the go-ahead would not be significant.

"We are not disclosing the details of the agreement with CFIUS to respect the confidentiality of the process," a Syngenta spokesman said by email in response to a Reuters query. "Any mitigation measures are not material to Syngenta's business."

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) cleared ChemChina's $43 billion takeover of Swiss pesticides and seeds group, the two companies said earlier, boosting chances that the largest foreign acquisition ever by a Chinese company will go through.

(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Michael Shields)
A family received a surprise visit from police in Canada after their teenage daughter called 911 and complained that she had been forced to go on a trip with them, officials said.

The 15-year-old called 911 at around 12:30 a.m. last Tuesday and said she was upset that she was made to spend time with her mother and father, Northumberland OPP Constable Stephen Bates told InsideEdition.com.

Though there didnt seem to be any emergency behind the call, police were obligated to respond to the family's cottage on the Trent River in Trent Hills, Ontario, Bates said.

Read: Conscientious Burglar Calls 911 on Himself After Holding Girlfriend At Gunpoint: Cops

Officers were met at the door by her mother, who had no idea her daughter had called 911, he said.

After OPP determined that the girl and all those at the cottage were safe, they cautioned the teen for misusing 911.

Although [the teen] perceived it as a real issue... obviously its not an appropriate use of 911, Bates said. It was a teenager being a teenager.

Read: From Complaining About Pizza to Being 'Too High,' 7 Ridiculous Reasons People Have Called 911

Bates said that in his 28 years of policing, he had never had a call like this one.

He said he decided to include this call in his news release to inspire parents to discuss the appropriate use of 911 with their children.

Calls like this tie up police resources, which could impact the safety of others in the community who are in real need of assistance, Bates said. There is a serious message to this as well.

Watch: Boy Calls 911 On Dad For Running Red Light: 'I Told The Cop To Give Him a Ticket'

Related Articles:
By Joachim Dagenborg

ARENDAL, Norway (Reuters) - Norway's Telenor will set up a separate business unit to claim a share of the rapidly growing mobile advertising market in Asia, Chief Executive Sigve Brekke told Reuters.

Telecom operators like Telenor are facing challenges to their traditional business as increased data usage has opened the door for digital content providers like Netflix and Spotify and messaging companies such as Facebook to capture an increasing share of network revenue.

Telenor aims to fight back by staking a claim to a slice of the mobile ad market that is growing fast, especially in emerging and developing markets where a rise in smartphone sales is giving many consumers access to the internet for the first time.

"A lot of digital players are coming in and taking parts of the value chain," Brekke said in an interview last week. "It's a very demanding situation for mobile players right now and we are forced to make a decision on what we want to do going forward."

Its advertising strategy builds on technology from Tapad, a U.S.-based startup it acquired earlier this year for $360 million, which is designed to place relevant ads as individual users switch between their devices.

"We will try to use Tapad as an entry into mobile advertising as a separate business unit in our Asian growth markets," Brekke said, adding that Telenor "needs to be able to do business in a different way going forward."

Telenor has more than 211 million mobile phone subscribers across Asia, Scandinavia and southeastern Europe. More than 90 percent of those subscribers are in its six Asian markets, including Bangladesh, Pakistan and Thailand.

Global mobile advertising is set to top $100 billion in revenue in 2016, representing around 16.5 percent of all media ad spending, according to a forecast last year by eMarketer.

More mature markets like the United States, China and Britain now account for two-thirds of all mobile ad spending among the top 20 markets, but mobile ad markets in the rest of Asia such as India and Indonesia are at least doubling in size every year, albeit from a far lower spending base, the media research firm projected.

Story continues

"DUMB PIPE"

"You can choose to be a 'dumb pipe', a network provider or you can try to take a larger digital position," Brekke said.

Industry-wide, he said he expected annual growth in networks of 1 percent, compared to 20-30 percent in digital.

In addition to the Tapad acquisition, Telenor has started a joint venture with Norway's Schibsted within online classified ads in Asia and Latin America. It also operates two bank and financial services providers in Serbia and Pakistan.

Digital businesses such as advertising and financial services accounted for just 2 percent of the group's total 2015 revenues of 26.5 billion crowns ($3.22 billion).

"The question is how far you should go into this segment. We will not do as some of our competitors have done and take positions in content like music and video streaming. That is not for us," Brekke said.

However, he did expect the company to make some smaller acquisitions to boost the move into mobile advertising.

"Some of it we can manage ourselves, but sometimes we will also need to acquire competence. These are just small acquisitions. We are not planning any major acquisitions right now," said Brekke.

Telenor is expected to give more details on its future digital strategy at its capital markets day in London on Sept. 22.

(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in Frankfurt; Editing by Adrian Croft)
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  August 22, 2016  Zacks Equity Research highlights Tempur Sealy (TPX) as the Bull of the Day and Vitamin Shoppe (VSI) as the Bear of the Day. In addition, Zacks Equity Research provides analysis on Corrections Corporation of America (CXW) and GEO Group (GEO).

Here is a synopsis of all four stocks:

Bull of the Day :

The housing market is definitely back on track these days. Prices are jumping in many key markets, while pent up demand and high rent prices bode well for continued housing market growth in the near term too.

In this type of environment, many people look to homebuilders and construction materials companies as top ways to play the trend. However, other companies can definitely benefit too, and particularly in the home furnishing market. After all, when someone buys a new home they often upgrade various things around the house, acting as a nice boost for companies in this market.

For a great example of this, we can look to Tempur Sealy (TPX), a major player in the mattress world. In the companys most recent earnings report, the company thoroughly crushed estimates, and the CEO cited the strong housing market as a primary reason for the earnings beat. No wonder shares of TPX are up 30% in the past month, and why shares are posting a double digit percentage gain for 2016 as well.

Can This Continue?

With such an epic move, some investors might be worried about the continuation of this trend for the long term. However, if we look to longer term trading activity, we can see that TPX is actually only up 6% in the past year and is even underperforming the S&P 500 from this time frame.

So based on that and the fact that TPX still has a forward PE below 20, there should be little concern that the stock is overbought right now. But more than anything, investors should be looking to fresh earnings estimates as these could signal, more than anything, TPXs solid potential.

Story continues

Bear of the Day:

This earnings season marked a bit of a turnaround for a number of companies in the retail world. Several firms here seem to have finally hit bottom and saw their share prices jump in the past few weeks.

However, not every retail name has been able to turn things around, as several still face an uncertain outlook thanks to intense competition and uncertain growth opportunities. Some have even struggled to beat subdued earnings estimates, and shareholders have paid the price. A great example of this trend is with Vitamin Shoppe (VSI).

VSI in Focus

Like many retail stocks lately, VSI has been in trouble. A more competitive market and intense online pressures have made for some serious headwinds for investors in this stock lately. And if that wasnt enough, VSI also struggled in its most recent earnings report too.

The company posted earnings of 55 cents per share compared to expectations of 59 cents, a miss of nearly seven percent. While an earnings miss is always bad, it is especially awful news in this environment, as numerous retail companies have made this the quarter to surge back, leaving VSI in the dust. And what is even worse, is that analysts have been ratcheting down expectations for VSIs future quarters, slashing the consensus estimate in the process.

Recent Estimates

In just the past month, six estimates have gone lower for the current quarter compared to zero higher, while we have seen eight go lower for the full year compared to, once again, zero higher. But it hasnt just the been the agreement among analysts that is worrisome, as the magnitude of the adjustments has also been pretty intense.

In fact, the current quarter consensus estimate has fallen by over 14% in the last month, while the full year and next year figures are down more than 6.5% each in the same time period too. Clearly, analysts believe that more pain could be ahead for VSI, and that at least in the earnings picture, things arent expected to turn around any time soon.

Additional content:

Heres Why Private Prison Stocks Rebounded Friday

The U.S. Department of Justice announced plans Thursday to phase out its use of private prisons, sending the publicly-traded companies in the industry,Corrections Corporation of America (CXW) and the GEO Group (GEO), tumbling as much as 40%. However, both stocks bounced back on Friday after investors realized that the Justice Departments decision wasnt necessarily a death notice for both companies.

After a horrific day of trading Thursday that caused both stocks to be temporarily halted, CXW gained about 8.6% on Friday, while shares of GEO rallied an impressive 21.4%.

(Also Read: Is This the End of the Private Prison Industry ?)

Several key questions were raised following Thursdays announcement that eventually helped these companies regain some of their lost value. First of all, the DoJ is not terminating any of its contracts; instead, it will simply not renew any contracts once they run out.

Some of these contracts will not be up for renewal for another five years, which gives the successor to the Obama administration time to potentially change this policy and not follow through with the plan.

Furthermore, investors seemed to realize the limited scope of the DoJs decision. Technically speaking, yesterdays announcement only applies to the 13 privately-run prisons in the Bureau of Prisons system. For Corrections Corp., thats just seven percent of its annual business, while GEO Group relies on the BoP for about 16% of its revenue.

For now, both companies will still be able to do business with the U.S. Marshals, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and governments at the state and local level. If these other entities were to follow in the footsteps of the DoJ, then Corrections Corp. and GEO Group could be in some serious trouble.

Its also worth noting that GEO Group operates facilities in Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Any international business from either company would obviously remain untouched after the DoJs decision.

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>

Get todays Zacks #1 Stock of the Day with your free subscription to Profit from the Pros newsletter:

About the Bull and Bear of the Day

Every day, the analysts at Zacks Equity Research select two stocks that are likely to outperform (Bull) or underperform (Bear) the markets over the next 3-6 months.

About the Analyst Blog

Updated throughout every trading day, the Analyst Blog provides analysis from Zacks Equity Research about the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets.

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 analyst 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. Click here to 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

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



TEMPUR SEALY (TPX): Free Stock Analysis Report



VITAMIN SHOPPE (VSI): Free Stock Analysis Report



CORRECTIONS CRP (CXW): Free Stock Analysis Report



GEO GRP INC/THE (GEO): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
By Colleen Jenkins WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - When Ashley Nurkin's 7-year-old daughter begins second grade in Charlotte, North Carolina, next week, it will be her first time going to school as a girl. She will not be allowed to use the same bathroom as female classmates, leaving Nurkin even more worried about how her daughter will be received as the first transgender student at her public school. "The anxiety before my kids go back to school goes up a notch every day," said Nurkin, who has not yet told her daughter she will instead have access to staff restrooms. "I am dreading having that conversation." The emotional roller-coaster for U.S. transgender students going back to school in the next few weeks hit a new curve when a federal judge in Texas ruled late on Sunday that states did not have to follow Obama administration guidance that public schools should allow students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. The injunction follows the U.S. Supreme Court's decision earlier in August to halt a lower court ruling that would have permitted a transgender student who was born a girl to use the boys' bathroom at his Virginia high school. The rulings come as transgender rights are debated in courts, state legislatures and school districts across the United States, with arguments about bathroom usage eclipsing fights by students seeking to dress according to their gender identity and go by their preferred pronouns. Parents and advocates of transgender youths say the heated political rhetoric and conflicting interpretations by courts will result in an already vulnerable population entering the new school year under a cloud of confusion and concern. Forcing transgender students to use bathrooms consistent with their sex assigned at birth or single-stall accommodations away from their peers sets them up for isolation, embarrassment and harassment, advocates say. "Every student should be able to go back to school being treated equally and consistent with their gender identity," said American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Josh Block, who represents Virginia student Gavin Grimm in the first transgender bathroom rights case to reach the Supreme Court. "It's very unfortunate that what happens to them is going to depend on what the courts say is required instead of what administrators know is the right thing to do," Block added. School districts that have sought to give students access to bathrooms that align with their gender identity faced resistance from some parents and conservative groups. Critics rallied earlier this month against a policy that would have let students attending North Carolina's Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools use bathrooms and changing facilities and participate in extracurricular activities, school photos and dress codes according to their gender identity. Donica Hudson, a mother of three school-aged children, said the rules did not consider the dignity and privacy of all students. "They want to force the rest of us to be uncomfortable," Hudson said of those pushing for transgender rights. "This is all unnerving." The school district put a temporary hold on the bathroom and changing facilities provision in light of the stay issued by the Supreme Court in the Virginia school case on Aug. 3. The Texas judge's decision has further angered some parents of transgender students, such as Chelsa Morrison. On Monday, she dropped her eight-year-old daughter, Marilyn, off for her first day of third grade at a suburban Dallas school, where district policy requires the transgender child to use a restroom in the library or nurse's office if she does not want to use the boys' bathroom. Morrison pulled Marilyn out of school last spring when the stress of transitioning to living as a girl caused her to have violent stomach problems. "They are letting our kids know they are less than,'" she said in a phone interview. "These are not transgender rights. They are human rights for my daughter." (Reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Bill Rigby)
Most of those behind a string of bombings in Thai tourist towns are Muslims from the kingdom's insurgency-plagued southern provinces, the country's police chief said Monday.

It was the first clear indication that police believe a group of southern Muslims played some sort of role in the attacks which killed four and wounded dozens, including European visitors, this month.

Police chief Chakthip Chaijinda told reporters investigators believe a group of "more than 20 people" were behind the coordinated attacks.

"Most of them are from the area of the southern border provinces police operation centre," he said, referencing a policing area that encompasses the Muslim-majority southernmost region.

Asked whether the suspects were Thai nationals he replied: "They are not Buddhists."

He added that investigators had recently searched an Islamic school where he believed some of the suspects had studied or graduated from.

More than 6,500 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in 12 years of violence between the Buddhist-majority state and shadowy ethnic Malay Muslim rebels seeking greater autonomy.

But the violence has largely remained local and foreign visitors are also largely insulated from domestic political clashes that have hit the capital.

That changed on 11-12 August when a string of coordinated bomb and arson attacks struck multiple tourist resort towns in Thailand's south.

No one has claimed responsibility but authorities quickly ruled out international terrorism, saying the perpetrators were domestic.

The junta which seized power in 2014 has been reluctant to finger insurgents in the deep south, suggesting disgruntled domestic opponents instead.

Analysts say the leadership fears any admission that southern insurgents were behind the attack might harm tourism and raise questions over the military's ability to ensure security.

However in recent days the police investigation has increasingly pointed southwards.

Story continues

One arrest warrant has so far been issued for a named suspect over the attacks, a Muslim man from the southern province of Narathiwat.

Local media have reported that the man, Ahama Lengha, has a history of involvement with insurgents.

At his briefing police chief Chakthip said he was not ruling out any motive, adding that the group "might have been hired" by others to carry out the attacks.

He said he believed the perpetrators were previously unknown to police, not veterans from within the Malay insurgency who might be easier to catch and identify.

"They are almost all new blood which makes the investigation harder, but we do have evidence," he said.
weight watchers points smart ones food package label

When's the last time you looked at a food's nutrition label before you downed its contents?

More importantly, did the mishmash of black-and-white numbers, letters, and scientific lingo mean anything to you?

If the answer is "never" and "no," you're not alone.

Nutrition labels, which haven't been updated since 1994, are notoriously confusing. But if you're looking to lose weight, the information they include  from calories to sugar, fat, and protein  is important.

Instead of trying to break it all down for consumers, Weight Watchers made up its own system instead.

That's what that tiny blue icon in the corner of many packaged foods refers to. It tells you how many points a food has based on four key things you'll find on a standard nutrition label: calories, fat, sugar, and protein. You don't have to worry about the rest, like the oft-ignored part where it says "standard serving size."

What the heck is a 'standard serving size'?

In FDA parlance, the "standard serving size" section towards the top of any nutrition label refers to something called a "reference amount customarily consumed per eating occasion," or the amount of a food that the average person would typically eat in one sitting. The problem with this is that people tend to eat far more than the amount specified on the label. For reference, a "standard serving size" of Oreo cookies is two cookies. That's right, two.

In an interview last year, Marion Nestle, New York University professor of food science and author of the book "Food Politics," told Business Insider that this section is one of the biggest problems with current food labels, since it's "completely out of line with what people actually eat." An FDA-sanctioned "serving size" of ice cream, Nestle pointed out, is just half a cup.

"Who sits down with a container of ice cream and measures out a half of a cup? No one. You're eating a cup or a bowl of ice cream," said Nestle.

fda nutrition label

Story continues

In response to these and other concerns, the FDA announced its first major overhaul of nutrition information in May, which goes into effect in 2018. But even the new designs, which increase the serving size and include a line for "added sugars" leave a lot of room for improvement, Nestle wrote on her "Food Politics" blog.

Scrapping calories, serving sizes, and fat for points

Rather than trying to explain nutrition labels to its customers, Weight Watchers came up with their own system for easily evaluating the nutritional makeup of foods. It's called the points system.

Although its exact name and calculation system has changed several times since it was first introduced in 1997, the gist remains the same. With the point system, every food you eat is allotted a certain number of points based on its sugar, fat, protein, and calorie content. As part of the program, you're assigned a daily and a weekly points goal based on your current weight and how much you want to lose. Nutritious, filling foods get fewer points while junk foods with empty calories get more. Fruits and veggies are zero-point foods.

salad healthy food hummus vegetables eating meal

"We're solving for the complexity of the nutrition label," Dr. Gary Foster, Weight Watchers' chief scientific officer and a professor of psychology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, told Business Insider.

Dozens of other weight loss apps and programs now use various versions of point systems to try and help you lose weight. Unlike Weight Watchers, however, which has been around for decades and benefits from having thousands of participants, most of these programs haven't been rigorously studied.

Does it work?

The short answer is yes, Weight Watchers works. Several comprehensive, large-scale studies suggest the program can help some people lose weight and keep it off. When researchers compare weight loss programs, Weight Watchers is often among those recommended as effective.

A randomized controlled trial funded by Weight Watchers and published in the American Journal of Medicine in 2013, for example, showed that people in the study who used Weight Watchers lost more weight than a comparison group of people who tried to shed pounds on their own. For a 2008 study in the British Journal of Nutrition, researchers (including one from Weight Watchers) studied more than 600 Weight Watchers participants and followed up with them one year, two years, and five years after they completed the program. A year after they'd finished the program, close to 60% were still within 5 pounds of their goal weight. At two years, 45% were still in this category, and at five years 37% were.

Still, research suggests that there's more to the program than just its points system. Its meetings, app, and other online tools appear to help people lose weight too.

That Weight Watchers-sponsored study from 2013, for example, found that people who tried to count points on their own without making use of other parts of the program  like attending its meetings or using its app  didn't lose as much weight as people who participated in all of them, although certainly that's the outcome the company might have been hoping for.

But, if you're trying to lose weight and you've been struggling with nutrition labels, the key takeaway is this: You're not alone! Nutrition is complicated, and fortunately there are tools that can help. Evaluating foods with a point system is just one of them.

NOW WATCH: A dentist reveals the most effective way to whiten your teeth





More From Business Insider


Nanny Faye is enjoying that aloha lifestyle!



During a family vacation to Hawaii, Chrisley Knows Best star Todd Chrisley is not happy when he discovers that his mother, Faye Chrisley, was left alone and had one too many drinks.



In a PEOPLE exclusive sneak peek of the upcoming "Hawaii Love You So" episode, Todd, 47, asks his daughters  Savannah and Lindsie  where they were all afternoon after returning to the hotel room with their grandmother.



"They've been riding horses and I've been playing cards with the cowboys," Nanny Faye chimes in.







"What did you fail to leave out of that story, Nanny?" Todd's daughter Savannah, 19, questions her grandmother. "What did we come back to?"



"I just had a shot or two," Nanny Faye admits.



With his arms folded, Todd exclaims in surprise, "A what?!"



"I just toast a couple times. I didn't really drink," Nanny Faye explains to her grandchildren and son.



"How many times did you toast?" Todd asks.



"Twiced," she admits.



"Twiced?" Todd questions. "Is it twiced?"



"Twice," she clarifies. "Two times."



"You two were responsible for her," he says while pointing at his giggling daughters.



"We went to ride horses. We didn't know Granny was going to get drunk," Savannah explains.



Chrisley Knows Best airs Tuesdays (10 p.m. ET) on USA Network.
A Florida toddler survived while trapped in a pocket of air beneath a boat in an astonishing turn of events after the vessel overturned following a crash over the weekend.

The 23-month-old girl's family was returning from dinner when their boat apparently struck power lines, causing it to flip over and send its passengers plunging into the Indian River in Brevard County on Saturday.

Read: Couple Marries in NICU So Their Baby, Once Given 0 Percent Survival Rate, Can Witness Wedding

While authorities were quickly able to save Tammy Bossard  the child's mother  another adult and the toddler's infant sibling, the girl herself somehow remained out of reach.

"Im in the river. My boat crashed and I have a baby still in the water," Bossard told the 911 operator in a frantic call. "Please, God, send someone now."

It took rescuers nearly an hour to finally find the little girl.

And for all that time, she'd stayed afloat with her head above water inside an air pocket beneath the capsized boat.

Watch: Officers Save a Woman Trapped in Her Burning Car

"We heard [her] crying and we couldn't find her," Bossard told reporters after the terrifying crash. "I jumped in the water and tried to search but couldn't hear where the crying was coming from."

Rescuers pulled out the child out from under the boat and got her to paramedics for treatment. She was wearing a life jacket and was in good condition along with the rest of her family, the Cocoa Police Department said in a statement.

All were taken to the hospital for evaluation.

Police said the girl was in good condition. Cocoa police photos taken after the girl's rescue show Bossard was allowed to cradle her daughter in her arms, apparently just after she was pulled from the water.

Watch: Teen Alone on Kayak at Night Gets Rescued After Drifting Away From Family

Related Articles:
The little girl who miraculously survived in an air pocket under a capsized boat after it overturned in Florida has reunited with her rescuers.

Read: Toddler Miraculously Survives in Pocket of Air Beneath Overturned Boat

Tammy and Brian Bossard, the parents of 23-month-old Kennedy, expressed their gratitude as the rescue team from the Cocoa Beach Police Department who saved the young girls life visited her at their home.

Brian told Capt. Alan Worthy and Sgt. Mike Dellatore: "You saved our world."

The officers also shed light on the rescue effort that thankfully had a happy ending.

Dellatore said that the little girl "stayed in the boat and her life jacket kept her afloat."

Worthy added that he put his ear to the boat and heard her tapping from the inside of the boat.

The family was on the vessel near Orlando with their daughters, Kennedy, who's almost 2, and Charlotte, just 9 months.

Their boat hit something in the water Saturday night, possibly an underwater power cable, and flipped over.

They grabbed the baby and pulled themselves on top of the overturned boat but Kennedy was nowhere to be seen.

Read: 911 Call Reveals Boy, 8, Frantically Describing How He Saved Brother, 2, From Kidnapper

Tammy, whose cell phone was surprisingly working, called 911 and said: I'm on top of the boat and we're trying to find our other one. I think she's under the boat. We're totally flipped upside down.

When rescuers arrived, they searched the dark waters for the little girl, who was wearing a life jacket. Finally, Kennedy was pulled to safety and survived by finding a pocket of air under the boat.

"We just kept praying. Praying on the boat, holding hands, praying to God," Tammy told Inside Edition.

Kennedy spent two days in the hospital recovering. She was sent home Monday.

Watch: Student Headed to the Olympics Reveals How She Learned to Swim After Cousins Drowned

Related Articles:
Tampon use isnt the only cause of toxic shock syndrome. (Photo: Getty)



Three-year-old Reuben Harvey-Smith first visited the hospital last year after accidentally burning himself at his home. When his mom took him back three days later, doctors said he had tonsillitis, although he actually had a case of potentially deadly toxic shock syndrome (TSS).



The toddler wound up losing both of his legs and seven of his fingers after the misdiagnosis, according to a report in the Sun. Because Harvey-Smiths amputations would have been preventable had the TSS been caught earlier, his mother, Lou, is now doing everything in her power to raise awareness for a condition you can develop in more ways than you might be aware  some of which are completely unrelated to tampon use.

According to Alejandro Jordan-Villegas, M.D., a pediatric infectious disease expert at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, roughly 50 percent of cases of toxic shock syndrome arise from tampon use and 50 percent can be attributed to other sources. In the past, TSS was almost always ascribed to menstruation, he tells Yahoo Beauty. But you can develop it by way of skin wounds or infections, or if youve had recent surgery.

Toxic shock syndrome develops as a rare complication of a bacterial infection, either from toxins created by the Staphylococcus aureus (staph) or group A streptococcus (strep) bacteria. Men, women, and children who have had recent surgery or a recent deep wound or skin infection should be cognizant of the symptoms. Look for high fever, skin rash like a sunburn, multi-organ system dysfunction, vomiting, and diarrhea, Jordan-Villegas says.

Menstruating women still have to be the most aware of TSS, making sure to change tampons frequently. At most, leave a tampon in for just a few hours and use the lowest possible absorbency. But everyone should be getting skin infections and sunburn-like rashes checked out and treated right away. Immediately visit a doctor if youve had a recent surgery and start developing symptoms of toxic shock.

Story continues

Jordan-Villegas says that recurrence of toxic shock syndrome is possible; if youve had TSS, or a severe case of staph or strep, dont use tampons. Or if you develop the syndrome and its treated, doctors can test to see if your blood has the antibody that will reduce the risk of developing it again, he says. This will tell you if you can safely use tampons.

Harvey-Smiths family has filed a lawsuit against Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, which misdiagnosed him with tonsillitis. According to the Sun, the hospital said in a statement: We are now working with the family to ensure that lessons are learnt from Reubens case and further training has been provided to A&E staff on recognizing the warning signs of septic shock treatment. The Trust are committed to ensuring that Reuben is appropriately compensated so that he has the care, prostheses and equipment that he needs throughout his life.

The family is trying to move forward. Despite all that her son has been through, Harvey-Smiths mother still calls him Mr. Positive. I try not to waste energy getting angry because at the end of the day Ive still got my son, she says, but what I have got to do now is make sure it doesnt happen to anyone else.

Lets keep in touch! Follow Yahoo Beauty on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and, Pinterest.
For transgender students returning to school this week, the rules on which bathrooms they can use remain unsettled.

An attempt by the Obama Administration to set recommended guidelines for school districts to follow was blocked by a Texas judge Sunday, one day before the first day of school in many districts across the country.

Diego Sanchez, director of policy at PFLAG National, an organization of LGBTQ individuals, families and allies, said that means many students will be returning to schools that will not allow them to use the bathroom that fits their gender identity.

As a transgender man, I remember what it was like to be 17 years old or a teenager going to school, and how that first day of school is always filled with imaginary anxiety, he said. It makes me very sad that a lot of people today are having to go to school with very real anxiety.

The injunction will not change the situation at many schools, however, since the guidelines were not legally binding, and nothing about the legal order prevents school administrators from following the guidelines if they want.

Jacinto Ramos, president of the Fort Worth Independent School District board, where decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, said it was business as usual when students returned from summer vacation Monday morning.

No, not at all, he said of whether the ruling was a big deal in his district today. I heard it on the news, but as I visited campuses today for the first day of school, I didnt hear anything about it.

But the injunction from U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor in Fort Worth could slow down efforts to force schools to adopt the guidelines in the future. The Obama Administration had said that it might cut off federal funding for schools that dont follow the guidelines.

William Eskridge, a Yale Law School professor who studies legal and political rules on sexual minorities, said OConnors decision could end up having serious ramifications for the Obama Administration. Whatever implementation they might have done, now its stopped in its tracks, he said.

Story continues

The injunction focused on how the rules were made. The Obama Administration had argued that the transgender bathroom directive was simply a set of voluntary guidelines, so the 13 states that sued did not have standing in court. But OConnor decided that the guidelines were the functional equivalent to a new federal rule, which meant they needed to be put through the usual procedure for rule making, such as a notice and comment period, and that the states had standing.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who helped spearhead the lawsuit, cheered OConnors decision, saying, We are pleased that the court ruled against the Obama Administrations latest illegal federal overreach. This President is attempting to rewrite the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people, and is threatening to take away federal funding from schools to force them to conform.

Supporters of transgender rights argue that students are still protected by Title IX, a law that prohibits sex discrimination in any federally funded education program or activity.

[School districts] obligations under the law have not changed, and you are still not only allowed but required to treat transgender students fairly, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. The scope of this injunction has no effect on the ability of other courts or lawyers representing transgender people to continue to rely on the federal governments interpretations of Title IX or on prior decisions that have reached similar conclusions about the scope of federal sex discrimination laws.

Mara Keisling, executive director of National Center for Transgender Equality, put it more simply: It doesnt take away any students rights, what this judge has done.

The ruling could affect any transgender students who decide to sue for Title IX discrimination on their own, such as Gavin Grimm, the Virginia high-schooler caught in a legal battle over whether he can use the boys bathroom. If other students like Grimm sue while the injunction is in place, they wont be able to rely on the Obama Administrations guidelines in their case. Private lawsuits will now be difficult, if not impossible to mount, Eskridge said.

For now, the injunction is in place nationwide. The ruling could be appealed to the Fifth Circuit, whose rulings on related cases OConnor cited in his decision. But the Supreme Court already temporarily blocked a decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Grimms case while the justices decided whether they want to hear an appeal, so the legal fight may soon be headed to the highest court in the land.
The Hague (AFP) - History is set to be made Monday at the world's only permanent war crimes court when an alleged Malian jihadist is due to plead guilty to attacking the fabled city of Timbuktu.

Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, aged about 40, is the first Islamic extremist charged by the International Criminal Court and the first person to face a solo allegation of cultural destruction.

He will likely also become the first to admit his guilt in the ICC's dock, in a trial which archaeologists hope will send a stern warning that the plundering and pillaging of the planet's ancient artifacts and sites will not go unpunished.

Plucked from the edges of the Sahara to a courtroom on the sand dunes of The Hague, the bespectacled Mahdi is accused of "intentionally directing attacks" against nine of Timbuktu's famous mausoleums as well as the Sidi Yahia mosque between June 30 and July 11, 2012.

Founded between the 5th and the 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktu's very name evokes centuries of history and has been dubbed "the city of 333 saints" for the number of Muslim sages buried there.

Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries, the site also known as the "Pearl of the Desert" was however condemned as idolatrous by the jihadists.

- 'Robbing future generations' -

ICC prosecutors allege that Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly Tuareg movement that in 2012 took control of Timbuktu some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) northeast of Bamako, along with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

As the head of the "Hisbah" or the "Manners Brigade" he ordered the attacks on the shrines, ICC prosecutors say.

Such cultural destruction "is tantamount to an assault on people's history. It robs future generations of their landmarks and their heritage," ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told AFP.

"No one who destroys that which embodies the very soul and the roots of a people through such crimes should be allowed to escape justice."

Story continues

Mahdi's trial will formally get underway at 9:00 am (0700 GMT) on Monday, when he will be asked if he understands the charges against him and how he pleads.

If, as his defence team has indicated, he pleads guilty, the prosecution will start to lay out its case, calling three witnesses.

The defence and the legal team for the victims will also address the three-judge bench during the five days set aside for the trial. A verdict and judgement will follow later.

If Mahdi denies the charge, then the hearing will be postponed and a new trial date set. Mahdi is also the first person to be charged with war crimes arising out of the conflict in Mali.

Handed over to the ICC by Niger in late 2015, Mahdi plans to plead guilty, as he is "a Muslim who believes in justice," defence lawyer Mohamed Aouini told a June hearing.

"He wants to be truthful to himself and he wants to admit the acts that he has committed," Aouini said, adding he also sought "pardon" for his acts.

- Pickaxes and chisels -

Mahdi has been described as a quiet Koranic scholar who turned ruthless jihadist enforcer, fiercely imposing the strictest interpretation of Sharia law.

Frustrated when local people refused to stop worshipping at the ancient shrines, with such rites as praying for rain, or a good marriage, Mahdi ordered the attacks with pickaxes, chisels and pick-up trucks.

UNESCO chief Irina Bokova said recently the case was close to her heart and that she "would never forget" the scenes of ransacked and damaged shrines she saw on a visit to Timbuktu in January 2013 shortly after the jihadists had been driven out by a French-led operation.

But Malian rights activists who have travelled to The Hague for the trial called on the ICC to continue its investigations into other crimes committed in the Mali conflict.

"The women of the north have suffered forced marriages and rape perpetrated by the jihadists," Bakary Camara, an official with the Malian association for human rights, told AFP.
Nice (France) (AFP) - A French administrative tribunal on Monday upheld a burkini ban decided by a Riviera resort which was one of a growing number of towns to outlaw the body-concealing Islamic swimsuit.

The Nice tribunal rejected an appeal by two human rights groups, ruling that the ban in Villeneuve-Loubet was "necessary, appropriate and proportionate" to prevent public disorder after a succession of jihadists attacks in France, including one in Nice on July 14.

The burkini was "liable to offend the religious convictions or (religious) non-convictions of other users of the beach," and "be felt as a defiance or a provocation exacerbating tensions felt by" the community, it added.

Villeneuve-Loubet, just west of Nice, was among the first French towns to ban the burkini, triggering a fierce debate in France and elsewhere about the highly-contentious issue.

So far 15 towns in the southeast, including Nice itself, have already banned the burkini including nearby film festival host city Cannes, where three women were each fined 38 euros ($43) under the ban at the weekend.

The Human Rights League (LDH), which brought the appeal with the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), announced it would appeal the decision to the Conseil d'Etat, France's highest administrative jurisdiction.

The Council "should give its ruling within (a couple of weeks) and definitively fix the matter, legally," LDH lawyer Patrice Spinosi told AFP.

"The administrative tribunal rejected our request. It's a decision along the way and it's not really a surprise," he added, noting that the same tribunal earlier this month upheld a burkini ban by Cannes, the first French town to impose one.
New York (AFP) - With US presidential front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both suffering high disapproval rates, a new outside candidate sees an opening  Alice Cooper.

The veteran shock rocker announced Monday that he is running for president with the slogan, A Troubled Man for Troubled Times.

While the 68-year-old has enjoyed a fan base for decades, his platform, unveiled on a campaign website, revealed that he is not overly serious about his ambitions.

Cooper calls for late Motorhead frontman Lemmys likeness to be added to Mount Rushmore, the massive mountain sculpture that honors four US presidents, and for comedian Groucho Marx to grace the $50 bill.

Leaving aside sovereignty concerns in Britain, which recently voted to leave the European Union, Coopers platform also calls for Britain  where the rocker has long been popular  to put comic Peter Sellers on the 20-pound note.

Coopers campaign so far consists of selling merchandise and reissuing his bands 1972 song Elected. The song, a hit during Richard Nixons successful re-election campaign, ends with a politician promising, Everybody has problems / And personally, I dont care.

Even if Coopers campaign is a longshot, another musician  rap superstar Kanye West  has vowed to run for president in 2020.

Trump, a real estate tycoon and former host of a reality television game show, himself shocked the political establishment by winning the Republican nomination.

Cooper  the voice behind youth anthems such as Im Eighteen, Schools Out and No More Mr. Nice Guy  has in the past described himself as apolitical.

He hinted at Republican sympathies in 2004 when he criticized musicians who campaigned for John Kerry against George W. Bush, arguing that rock and politics should not mix.
Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump has demanded that Hillary Clinton shut down the charitable foundation founded by her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, branding it a "corrupt enterprise."

The Republican presidential candidate also called for a special prosecutor to investigate his Democratic rival, accusing the FBI and Justice Department of a "whitewash" during their probe of her use of a private email server while secretary of state.

"The amounts involved, the favors done and the significant number of times it was done require an expedited investigation by a special prosecutor immediately, immediately, immediately," Trump told a rally in Akron, Ohio, speaking of the State Department under Clinton.

The crowd responded with rowdy chants of "Lock her up! Lock her up!"

In an earlier statement, Trump called the Clinton Foundation "the most corrupt enterprise in political history."

The charity has raised some $2 billion since it was founded in 2001 after Bill Clinton left office.

"It must be shut down immediately," Trump said.

The Republican nominee said the foundation had received financial contributions from various countries "that discriminated against women and gays and everybody else."

That remark apparently referred to various nations seen as having checkered histories on human rights, Saudi Arabia among them, that made generous donations to the foundation when Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee, served as President Barack Obama's secretary of state between 2009 and 2013.

"I mean, that money -- it should be given back. They should not take that money," Trump told Fox.

- 'People are gonna die' -

James Carville, Bill Clinton's top strategist in his ultimately successful campaign for the presidency in the 1990s, warned of dire consequences should Trump and his supporters manage to shutter the foundation.

"There will be people that are gonna die because of this," Carville told CNN, estimating that the foundation helped around 10 million people get access to low-cost HIV drugs.

Story continues

"All of the people that helped shut it down will say, 'Gee, some people, a million people, had to die, but we had to prove a point,'" Carville said.

The Clinton Foundation disburses funds domestically and overseas, handing out some $218 million in 2014.

A firewall was supposed to have been in place to ensure that the foundation's work remained completely separate from Hillary Clinton's role as head of US diplomacy, but critics said that barrier was permeable at best.

- Newly released Clinton emails -

Meanwhile, nearly 15,000 emails Hillary Clinton sent from her private server while secretary of state were released, and raised fresh concerns about potential conflicts of interest between the foundation and her service as the top US diplomat.

Judicial Watch, a conservative group that has targeted Clinton for years, released the emails, including some purporting to show that various donors to the Clinton Foundation had lobbied one of her top aides, Huma Abedin, for access to the former first lady.

The emails were made public by a judge after the group filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

The newly released email exchanges appeared to show that a rich donor, Casey Wasserman, asked Bill Clinton aide Doug Band to contact Abedin for help in setting up a meeting with diplomatic officials in London, raising fresh questions about special favors for top Clinton Foundation donors.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had handed over about 14,900 new emails to the department, both personal and government-related, that would be made public.

"There was nothing that we have seen that implied any kind of untoward relationship" giving a donor to the Foundation privileged access to the then-secretary of state, he said.

Concerns were recently revived after emails surfaced showing that Band had contacted two senior State Department aides of Hillary Clinton, seeking their assistance in helping a donor -- Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury -- to secure a meeting with a US diplomat in Lebanon.

Bill Clinton sought to tamp down the controversy, announcing last week that -- if his wife is elected president in November -- the Clinton Foundation would no longer accept foreign or corporate donations, and he would step down from the board.

The former president said additional measures would also be taken under a Hillary Clinton presidency to make sure some programs are continued independently.

"Much of the foundation's international work, like that of most global NGOs, is funded in part by donor governments' bilateral aid programs. If Hillary is elected, we will transition those programs out of the foundation to other organizations committed to continuing their work," Bill Clinton said.

Robby Mook, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign manager, told CNN on Sunday that the additional safeguards were "unprecedented... in terms of disclosure and limits."
Donald Trump says he is not flip-flopping on his plan to deport millions of people who immigrated to the U.S. illegally, days after reports indicated he was hedging on one of his signature campaign vows.

Im not flip-flopping, the Republican nominee said on Fox & Friends on Monday. We want to come up with a really fair but firm answer.

We have to be very firm. We have to be very, very strong when people come in illegally, Trump said. We have a lot of people that want to come in through the legal process. Its not fair to them. And were working with a lot of people in the Hispanic community to try and come up with an answer.

DONALD TRUMP: Im not flip-flopping on immigration; We need very firm but fair policieshttps://t.co/WsxakhQulX  FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) August 22, 2016

On Saturday, Trump met with his Hispanic advisory council at Trump Tower in New York City, where he reportedly told Hispanic leaders that he plans to unveil a new policy that would help find a way to legalize some of those living illegally in the United States.

Trump acknowledged that there is a big problem with the 11 million [undocumented] people who are here, Jacob Monty, a Texas immigration lawyer who attended the meeting, told Univision. And that deporting them is neither possible nor humane.

That acknowledgement would stand in sharp contrast with what the real estate mogul has previously said about immigration. Trump began his presidential campaign last summer with a speech in which he accused the Mexican government of sending rapists over the border. He has also vowed to build a massive wall along the U.S. border and have Mexico pay for it.

And last fall, the former Celebrity Apprentice host said he would utilize a deportation force to carry out his plan.

But on Sunday, Trumps new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, would not say whether the candidate was softening his stance on the deportation force that he had previously pledged to install.

Story continues

To be determined, Conway said on CNNs State of the Union.

Conway also disputed the notion that Trump had changed his tune.

What Donald Trump said yesterday in that meeting  varied little from what he has said publicly, Conway said. What he supports is to make sure we enforce the law, that we are respectful of those Americans who are looking for jobs, and that we are fair and humane to those who live among us.
As a campaign rally over the weekend drew near its end, Donald Trump told his supporters he wanted to address an issue of great and deep personal importance. He went on: In recent days, across this country, Ive asked the African-American community to honor me with their vote. I fully recognize that outreach to the African-American community is an area where the Republican Party must do better.

The GOP is the Party of Lincoln, and I want our party to be the home of the African-American vote once again. I want an inclusive country, and I want an inclusive party.

Related: Trump Tries to Seize Law and Order Mantle in Outreach to Black Voters

Under other circumstances, Trumps words might have signaled a major shift not just for Trump but for the GOP as a whole, which has struggled badly with black voters for nearly two full generations.

However, given that Trump was addressing an overwhelmingly white crowd in overwhelmingly white Fredericksburg, Virginia, the message was far from clear.

Trump is actually spending a lot of time these days telling white people how much he cares about black people. Maybe hes hoping the news will spread to the African-American community since he doesnt seem inclined to actually address black organizations like the NAACP or the National Urban League even when hes invited.

Or perhaps Trump isnt really talking to black people at all, either in person or indirectly.

Related: Is Trump Dumping His Plan to Deport 11 Million Illegal Immigrants?

In the week since Trump brought in bomb-throwing Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon as campaign CEO, the candidate has repeatedly asked for the African-American vote while speaking to white crowds. Last week, in a speech delivered in a 95-percent white suburb of riot-scarred Milwaukee, Trump railed against the gangs, the cartels and criminal syndicates terrorizing our neighborhoods.

He said, There is no compassion in allowing drug dealers, gang members and felons to prey on innocent people. It is the first duty of government to keep the innocent safe, and when I am president I will fight for the safety of every American  and especially those Americans who have not known safety for a very, very long time.

Story continues

When journalists covering the event took pictures of the crowd, there were no African-American faces to be seen.

There is a long history of Republican politicians, including George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater, telling their majority white constituencies about the horrors of crime in American cities (read: where black people live) and promising to bring back law and order. The object was never really to win over the African-American vote so much as to frighten nervous whites into voting for the person who promised to protect them. Trumps new message looks like a variation on that theme.

Related: Is Trump Really Running a Campaign Anymore?

The change in tone toward African-Americans followed on the heels of Bannons appearance on the scene. As the proprietor of Breitbart News, he has overseen the conversion of the site into a bastion of the so-called alt-right, a branch of the Republican Party that traffics in what can be charitably described as white ethnocentrism.

The idea that Trump would bring Bannon on board and immediately begin to seriously court the African-American vote doesnt pass the laugh test. Chances are whats happening here is more subtle  and deeply cynical.

Related: Trumps First Campaign Ad Strikes a Dark, Familiar Tone

The racial animosity of Trumps core supporters has long been apparent to anybody paying attention, and it may be costing him votes among Republicans who want to support their partys nominee but find themselves embarrassed to be associated with some elements of the Trump coalition.

Sending the candidate out on stage to talk repeatedly about his abiding concern for the African-American community creates at least a plausible argument that Trump hasnt been playing to the resentments of disaffected white people all along: He cant be a racist. Just listen to what he says about black people.

It also works without sending Trump to talk to actual living, breathing African-Americans in the places where they live  because the message isnt meant for them, anyway.

And if any of Trumps alt-right fans start to wonder if the GOPs nominee really shares their attitudes after all, they need only look at whos standing behind him. Bannons presence should be all the reassurance they need.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
By Ginger Gibson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump insisted on Monday he was not changing his stance on immigration, despite a comment from a top aide who said his plan to deport 11 million illegal immigrants was still under review. "I'm not flip-flopping. We want to come up with a really fair but firm answer," Trump told Fox News. He did not elaborate on his policy. Trump had planned to deliver a speech on Thursday in Denver about his immigration policy, but that event has been postponed, a campaign official confirmed. On Sunday, Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, was pressed repeatedly in a CNN interview on whether Trump would go ahead with a call he made in November to set up a "deportation force" to remove undocumented immigrants. "To be determined," Conway said. She also said Trump was committed to a "fair and humane" approach to those living in the country illegally. Trump's immigration position has been a centerpiece of his campaign. When he announced he was running for president, he called for construction of a wall along the nation's border with Mexico to stop undocumented immigrants from entering the country. He has insisted that he will make Mexico pay for the wall. Trump also said that Mexico was sending "rapists" and "criminals" across the border. (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham and Ginger Gibson; Editing by Alden Bentley and Jonathan Oatis)
Donald Trump is notoriously thin-skinned. And when provoked, he tends to overreact wildly.

His latest fit of pique is over comments that Mika Brzezinski of MSNBCs Morning Joe made about a speech Trump gave in Virginia a few days ago in which she said he delivered it as if hes had a lot to drink.

An unfortunate comment, since Trumps brother, an alcoholic, died at age 43, prompting Trump to swear off booze for life. But instead of letting it go, Trump aimed a bazooka at Brzezinski and her insensitive comment.

Related: The Trump-Seinfeld Connection Goes Back Further Than You Think

This morning at 7:21, he tweeted:

Tried watching low-rated @Morning_Joe this morning, unwatchable! @morningmika is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2016

But he didnt stop there. Eight minutes later, he tweeted:

Some day, when things calm down, I'll tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika. Two clowns!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2016

Taking shots at Joe Scarborough and co-host Brzezinski isnt going to cost Trump many if any, votes, but his apparent inability to move past slights without exacting revenge keeps damaging his candidacy and giving voters pause. Among the petty grievances that he couldnt leave alone:

The Kahn Controversy: After the Muslim father of an Army Captain killed in Afghanistan criticized Trump at the Democratic National Convention, Trump responded harshly instead of just letting it go. In doing so, he turned a moment that most voters no doubt missed into a damaging national spectacle that brought a flood of rebukes, including one from the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Story continues

Raising McCain: The Kahn flare-up prompted John McCain to take Trump to task and that reminded those who had forgotten that early on in his campaign, the mogul, who never served in the military, had said the Arizona senator was not a war hero. Trump had dismissed McCain as a loser and a dummy after McCain was critical of an anti-immigration rally Trump held in Phoenix last summer.

Related: Ryan Rebukes Trumps 'Racist' Comments About Judge in Trump U Case

The Mexican Judge: Angered that Indiana-born federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel issued a ruling in a lawsuit against the now defunct Trump University, the candidate spent 12 minutes at a rally last May in San Diego excoriating the jurist, calling him a hater and suggesting he should recuse himself from the case because hes of Mexican heritage. His remarks set off a wave of criticism, including from members of his own party.

Little Marco: After a string of Trump digs about GOP primary rival Marco Rubios profuse sweating, the senator from Florida struck back, crudely suggesting that Trumps small fingers signal a size problem elsewhere. Trump responded by referring to the none-too-tall Rubio as Little Marco. Now one of the only paths to victory for Trump leads through Florida, and he will need Rubios support.

Related: Election 2016: Will It All Be About Florida Again?

How much is Trump driven by revenge?

A column in Salon last spring suggested that Trump has the knives out for Mexico because a project there with his name on it failed and he had to settle a lawsuit. It also theorized that he regularly bashes China because the Hong Kong investors who bailed him out of a Manhattan real estate project later treated him disrespectfully.

Whats most astounding is the notion, also floated in Salon, that Trump may be running for president because he was the butt of jokes President Obama told at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner. His ego bruised, Trump stepped up his attacks on Obama and his political activity after the ribbing.

Winning the presidency, then, would be the ultimate revenge.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Tunis (AFP) - Tunisia's parliament will meet on Friday to hold a vote of confidence on a new unity government announced over the weekend by premier-designate Youssef Chahed.

A parliamentary session will be held before the vote, parliament's official website announced on Monday, adding that the meeting could last at least a day.

Parliament spokesman Hassen Fathalli said Chahed would present his proposed new cabinet to lawmakers at the session before they discussed the line-up.

If his cabinet is confirmed by parliament, Chahed, 40, would become Tunisia's youngest prime minister since the North African country won independence from France in 1956.

He was appointed by President Beji Caid Essebsi early this month after lawmakers passed a vote of no confidence in premier Habib Essid's government after just 18 months in office.

On Saturday, Chahed -- a member of Essebsi's Nidaa Tounes party -- said he would head a 27-member cabinet which will also include 14 ministers of state, eight women "in important" positions and "14 young" ministers.

On Sunday, the Islamist Ennahda party, the largest in parliament, said it has "some reservations" about the line-up.

Two Ennahda ministers figure in the proposed cabinet, as opposed to one previously.

If approved, the new government will have to tackle the economic and social crises gripping the North African country since the 2011 revolution that toppled longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

Chahed will also have to address security in the country after a wave of jihadist attacks, including two that killed dozens of foreign tourists last year.
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel and Turkey traded fierce recriminations Monday over Israeli actions in Gaza, less than 72 hours after the Ankara parliament ratified renewed ties with the Jewish state following a six-year rift.

Israel on Sunday carried out dozens of air and tank strikes in Gaza in response to a rocket fired from the Palestinian territory into a southern Israeli town.

Palestinian medical officials said four people were wounded in the strikes, launched after a rocket was fired from Gaza into the town of Sderot without causing any casualties.

Turkey issued a blistering condemnation.

"We strongly condemn these disproportionate attacks," its foreign ministry said in a statement.

"These attacks, which caused injury to innocent Palestinian civilians, are unacceptable whatever prompted them.

"The normalisation of our country's relations with Israel does not mean we will stay silent in the face of such attacks against the Palestinian people," it added.

Israel responded in kind.

"The normalisation of our relations with Turkey does not mean that we will remain silent in the face of its baseless condemnations," said its foreign ministry.

"Israel will continue to defend its civilians from all rocket fire on our territory, in accordance with international law and our conscience.

"Turkey should think twice before criticising the military actions of others," the Israeli statement added, without elaborating.

Turkish troops last month staged a failed coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

It was followed by a massive government crackdown on alleged coup sympathisers which has drawn EU criticism that it may violate human rights.

Turkey and Israel were formerly close regional allies, but fell out in 2010 when Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists in a raid on a flotilla seeking to run the blockade.

A 10th died after years in a coma.

Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador and suspended all defence ties in 2011.

Story continues

The following year, Erdogan -- then prime minister -- denounced Israel as a "terrorist state", accusing it of "ethnic cleansing" in Gaza.

In June 2016 the two countries reached agreement on restoring ties and Israel's security cabinet approved the deal.

The Turkish parliament formally ratified it late on Friday, after a delay caused by the attempted coup.
Ankara (Turkey) (AFP) - Turkey has "no clue" about who was behind the attack on a Kurdish wedding in a city close to the Syrian border that left 54 people dead, the prime minister said on Monday.

"We do not have a clue about who the perpetrators behind the attack were. Early information on who did the attack, in what organisation's name, is unfortunately not right," Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters in Ankara.

His comments apparently contradicted those by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who said on Sunday that the bomber was a child aged between 12-14 acting on orders of Islamic State (IS) jihadists.

Yildirim dismissed the "rumours" about whether the attack was conducted by a child or an adult and insisted security agencies continued their work to find out who was responsible.

"Those who were behind the attack will be revealed, there is no doubt about this."

The attack on Saturday on a crowded street wedding in the southeastern city of Gaziantep was the deadliest this year.

The country has suffered a string of attacks in the last 12 months blamed on Kurdish militants and IS.

In June, at least 47 were killed in a triple suicide bombing and gun attack at Istanbul's Ataturk airport, with authorities pointing the finger at IS.
Ankara (AFP) - Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Austria to review relations after a series of disputes with the European Union member state, the Turkish foreign minister said on Monday.

"We have recalled to Ankara our ambassador to Vienna for consultations and reviewing our relations," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, in quotes carried by the state-run news agency Anadolu.

The move came after Turkish media reported that Austrian authorities allowed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) supporters to stage a demonstration in Vienna.

Cavusoglu, speaking at a news conference alongside his Moldovan counterpart, accused Austria of "supporting terror".

"Unfortunately, the reasons to keep our bilateral ties and cooperation with Austria as before have been removed," he said.

Turkey also summoned on Monday the Austrian charge d'affaires to the foreign ministry. It was the second time the diplomat has been ordered to the ministry in a spat over the age of consent in Turkey.

The row was sparked by a news ticker headline that was broadcast on screens at Vienna's airport which said Turkey allowed sex with children under the age of 15.

Cavusoglu said Turkey would take "other measures" about bilateral relations with Austria in the coming period.

Austria has also enraged Turkey by saying membership talks with Ankara should be halted due to the relentless purge launched in the wake of the July 15 failed coup in Turkey.

"We have to face reality: the membership negotiations are currently no more than fiction," Chancellor Christian Kern told Austrian media earlier this month.

Austrian Defence Minister Hans-Peter Doskozil meanwhile compared Turkey to a "dictatorship", adding that "such a state has no place in the EU".

Austria's Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz then said Vienna opposes any steps that would bring Turkey closer to joining the European Union.
Ankara (AFP) - Turkey went back on claims that a child bomber linked to Islamic State (IS) jihadists carried out a deadly suicide bombing close to Syria, saying it had no clue who was behind the attack.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Ankara could not confirm who was the perpetrator of the attack on a Kurdish wedding in the city of Gaziantep which left 54 dead, apparently contradicting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who had said it was a child bomber acting on IS orders.

"We do not have a clue about who the perpetrators behind the attack were. Early information on who did the attack, in what organisation's name, is unfortunately not right," Yildirim told reporters in Ankara.

His comments were in stark contrast with those by Erdogan who said on Sunday that the bomber was a child aged between 12-14 acting on orders of IS jihadists.

Yildirim described as "rumours" whether the attack was conducted by a child or an adult, while insisting security agencies would continue their work to find out who was responsible.

"Those who were behind the attack will be revealed, there is no doubt about this."

The Hurriyet daily said DNA tests were under way to ascertain the bomber's identity, nationality and gender.

- 'Strikes on IS, PYD' -

Security forces believed jihadists had timed the attack as retaliation for offensives both by Kurdish militias and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition forces against IS in Syria, according to earlier Turkish press reports.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, hundreds of rebel fighters were preparing inside Turkish territory to launch an offensive on the IS-held Syrian town of Jarablus.

Without explicitly confirming the rebel offensive, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey backed anyone fighting against IS and would itself fight the group "to the end".

"Our border must be completely cleansed from Daesh," he said in televised remarks, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.

Story continues

CNN-Turk and NTV channels later reported that Turkish armed forces launched artillery strikes on separate targets of IS jihadists and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Kurdish militia in northern Syria.

Turkish army howitzers stationed inside Turkey fired on IS targets in the town of Jarablus and PYD targets around the area of Manbij, the reports said.

- Dead mainly under 18 -

The majority of those killed in the wedding blast were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18, media said.

The death toll rose to 54 after three more died in hospital in the early morning, the Dogan news agency reported.

Sixty-six people were still in hospital, 14 of them in a serious condition. Television pictures showed fire brigade workers hosing down the area of the attack with water in a clean-up.

The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas said in a statement that "all of those killed were Kurds".

The bride and groom -- a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast -- were rushed to hospital but not seriously wounded.

The attack followed a string of strikes blamed on IS and Kurdish militants in recent months but if IS launched the attack, it would be the first significant jihadist action in Turkey since a failed July 15 coup.

Hurriyet said the type of bomb used -- stuffed with 2-3 centimetre shards of iron and detonated with C-4 explosives -- was similar to that used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on IS in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station last year.

The authorities were also looking for two individuals said to have accompanied the suspected suicide bomber into the wedding party but who then left the scene.

All 44 victims identified so far were laid to rest in harrowing ceremonies in Gaziantep on Sunday, with relatives throwing themselves on the coffins in grief, an AFP correspondent said.

The hillside graveyard was pock-marked before the ceremony with the holes of dozens of freshly dug graves for the victims.

One mother, Emine Ayhan, lost four of her five children in the bombing while her husband is in intensive care, the Yeni Safak daily said.

According to the list of victims in Turkish media, the youngest -- named as Gurbet Akcan and Muhammet Yagiz -- were both aged four.

The UN Security Council on Monday condemned what it described as a "heinous and cowardly terrorist attack".
Istanbul (AFP) - Turkish authorities were on Monday scrambling to identify a child suicide bomber acting on the orders of Islamic State (IS) jihadists who killed 54 people at a crowded Kurdish wedding close to the Syrian border.

The attack late Saturday on a street wedding in the city of Gaziantep was latest in a devastating series of bombings in Turkey at a time when the country is riven by internal upheaval and shaken by the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the bomber was aged "between 12 and 14" and that initial findings showed it had been "perpetrated by Daesh (IS)".

Media said the majority of those dead were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18. At least 22 victims were under 14, a Turkish official added.

There were no further details on the bomber, but Erdogan said IS had been trying to "position itself" in Gaziantep, which lies just 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Syria and is a major hub for refugees from the over five-year civil war.

The death toll rose to 54 after three of those in the most critical condition died in hospital in the early morning, the Dogan news agency reported.

Sixty-six people were still in hospital, 14 of them in a serious condition.

The Hurriyet daily said that DNA tests were under way to ascertain the identity, nationality and gender of the bomber.

It is possible that the bomber had come over the border from Syria but IS is also known to have built homegrown cells inside Turkey in Gaziantep and even Istanbul, wrote its well-connected columnist Abdulkadir Selvi.

He said Turkish security forces believed that attack had been timed as retaliation by jihadists for offensives both by Kurdish militias and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition forces against IS in Syria.

"There's a fight against IS but we are paying the price," he wrote.

- 'All the dead Kurds' -

The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas said in a statement that "all of those killed were Kurds".

Story continues

The bride and groom -- a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast -- were rushed to hospital but not seriously wounded.

The attack followed a string of strikes blamed on IS and Kurdish militants in the last months but was the deadliest so far this year and first significant jihadist action in Turkey since the failed July 15 coup.

Erdogan said that in his view all "terror" groups are the same, be it the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, the supporters of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen who he blames for the coup or IS.

Despite the gravity of the attack, pro-government Turkish TV channels had returned to a normal agenda Monday focusing as much on the defeat of the coup over a month ago as the Gaziantep attack.

Hurriyet said the type of bomb used -- stuffed with scraps of metal -- was similar to the explosives used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on IS in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station last year.

A suicide vest was also found at the scene, according to prosecutors.

The authorities were also looking for two individuals said to have accompanied the suspected suicide bomber into the wedding party but who then left the scene.

All 44 victims identified so far were laid to rest in harrowing ceremonies in Gaziantep on Sunday with relatives throwing themselves on the coffins in desperation, an AFP correspondent said.

The hillside graveyard was pock-marked before the ceremony with the holes of dozens of freshly dug graves for the victims.

One mother, Emine Ayhan, lost four of her five children in the bombing while her husband is in intensive care, the Yeni Safak daily said.

According to the list of victims in Turkish media, the youngest -- named as Gurbet Akcan and Muhammet Yagiz -- were both aged four. There was one Syrian among the dead, Husam Cuma, aged 7.
By Orhan Coskun and Daren Butler ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey vowed on Monday to "completely cleanse" Islamic State militants from its border region after a suicide bomber suspected of links to the group killed 54 people, including 22 children, at a Kurdish wedding. Saturday's attack in the southeastern city of Gaziantep is the deadliest in Turkey this year. President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday it was carried out by a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14, adding that initial evidence pointed to Islamic State. But speaking to reporters in Ankara on Monday Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said it was too early to verify the organization responsible or whether the attack was carried out by a child. A senior security official told Reuters the device used was the same type as those employed in the July 2015 suicide attack in the border town of Suruc and the October 2015 suicide bombing of a rally of pro-Kurdish activists in Ankara. Both of those attacks were blamed on Islamic State. The group has targeted Kurdish gatherings in an apparent effort to further inflame ethnic tensions strained by a long Kurdish insurgency. The Ankara bombing was the deadliest of its kind in Turkey, killing more than 100 people. "Daesh should be completely cleansed from our borders and we are ready to do what it takes for that," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference in Ankara, using an Arabic name for the group. On Monday, Turkey's military launched howitzer attacks on Islamic State while artillery pounded Kurdish YPG militants in Syria, whom Ankara sees as an extension of its own Kurdish insurgency. An official said the strikes were designed to "open a corridor for moderate rebels". A senior rebel official said Turkish-backed Syrian rebels were preparing to launch an attack to seize Jarablus from Islamic State, a move that would deny control to advancing Syrian Kurdish fighters. The rebels, groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, are expected to attack Jarablus from inside Turkey in the next few days. Reuters TV footage showed around 10 Turkish tanks deployed at a village around 4 km (2.5 miles) from the border gate immediately across from Jarablus. It was not clear how long the tanks had been there. Prime Minister Binali Yilidirm has said Turkey would take a more active role in Syria in the next six months to prevent the country from being divided along ethnic lines. TURKEY TARGET Cavusoglu said Turkey, a member of NATO and the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, had become the "number one target" for the militants because of its work to stop recruits traveling through Turkey across its over 800 km (500 mile) border into Syria to join the Sunni hardline group. For Ankara, Islamic State is not the only threat across its frontier. Turkey is also concerned that attempts by Syrian Kurds to extend their control along the common border could add momentum to an insurgency by Kurds on its own territory. Dogan news agency said the death toll in the Gaziantep bombing had risen on Monday to 54 after three more people died. Sixty-six were being treated in hospital, 14 in serious condition. The attack comes with Turkey still shaken just a month after the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on U.S.-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen. Gulen denies the charge. Turkish authorities have said a destroyed suicide vest was found at the scene of the bombing. A second security official told Reuters that they were investigating the possibility militants could have placed the explosives on the child without his or her knowledge and detonated them remotely, or that a child with a learning disability was duped into carrying the device, a tactic seen elsewhere in the region. "It could be that someone was loaded with explosives without even being aware of it and it may have been detonated remotely," the official said, adding a search was underway for suspected militants who may have played a reconnaissance role. In the latest southeast violence, two Turkish security force members and five PKK militants were killed in clashes and attacks in three areas of eastern Turkey over the last 24 hours, officials said. Some in Turkey, particularly in the Kurdish southeast, feel the government has not done enough to protect its citizens from Islamic State. The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said the wedding party was for one of its members. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt. (This version of the story corrects quotation in seventh paragraph) (Additional reporting by Dasha Afanasieva and Gulsen Solaker in Ankara, Cagan Uslu and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Ralph Boulton and Alison Williams)
The wedding of Besna and Nurettin Akdogan was no small affair: as the celebrations were winding down, the streets were still packed with hundreds of people. Amid the festivities, no one took notice of the guest who crept in with explosives packed to his chest.

An hour before midnight, the bomber detonated his vest of explosives, killing 53 wedding guests, including at least 22 children. The bride and groom survived, but were among the 69 wounded. The killer was originally believed to be no more than 14 years old, though authorities later said they didnt know whether a child or an adult had been responsible. There was little doubt as to who was behind the deadliest bombing to hit Turkey this year, however  Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President, blamed ISIS shortly afterwards.

Circumstantial evidence suggests Erdogan is right: Gaziantep, the southern Turkish city where the attack occurred, is known to harbor ISIS sleeper cells, and the use of suicide vests echoes the groups previous attacks. ISIS is not the prime suspect for bombings in Turkey. The majority of attacks this year, especially in the countrys southeastern region, were carried out by the Kurdish militant group PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.

But the choice of target points to the jihadists. Sahinbey, the Akdogans neighbourhood in Gaziantep, is a predominantly Kurdish area, and the wedding couple are said to be members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party, the HDP.

Read More: Turkey Has Become the New Front of ISISs War on the World

Even  or perhaps especially  the absence of a claim of responsibility suggests the attack was carried out by ISIS. Despite strong evidence that the group was behind several bombings in Turkey, it has never taken credit for any of them.

However, ISIS has claimed responsibility for assassinations of Syrian activists and journalists in Turkey: in April, when opposition TV presenter Mohammed Zahir al-Sherqat was shot and killed in Gaziantep, the group quickly announced that it had targeted him for his work.

Story continues

Some believe the group stays silent to avoid alienating Turks. For years, Ankara turned a blind eye to thousands of foreign fighters joining the fight, hoping they would help Syrias rebels topple its friend-turned-foe Bashar Assad. Turkey soon became the jihadists main gateway for fighters, equipment and money.

But last summer, Turkey gave in to the Wests pressure and joined the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS, stepping up efforts to seal its border. Since then, suspected ISIS-linked bombers have killed dozens in Istanbul, Ankara and southern cities in apparent revenge attacks. The group also has a motive to take revenge on Turkeys Kurds, whose Syrian kin have recently driven ISIS from their stronghold of Manbij.

Read More: These 5 Stats Explain Turkeys War on ISIS  and the Kurds

Yet many see ISIS attacks and its subsequent silence not as a simple message of revenge or warning but a strategic attempt to sow discord and instability in Turkey. ISIS has previously targeted Kurdish gatherings in an apparent bid to inflame tensions between the state and its largest ethnic minority.

The group has been successful in that regard. In summer 2015, as the two-year-old ceasefire between Turkey and the PKK looked increasingly shaky, ISIS bombed a Kurdish political rally in Diyarbakir and a gathering of activists in Suruc. The PKK, which believes Turkey collaborates with ISIS, responded with revenge attacks against Turkish security forces, setting off a chain of events that led to the ceasefires collapse days later. In the past year, fighting between the state and the PKK has destroyed entire neighbourhoods, displacing hundreds of thousands, and killed nearly 300 civilians.

The hostility unleashed in Suruc intensified after ISIS deadliest bombing on Turkish soil, which targeted a Kurdish peace rally in Ankara last October, killing at least 100 people. At the victims funerals, relatives blamed the government, shouting murderer Erdogan during burial ceremonies.

Analysts note that ISIS predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, similarly did not take credit for several attacks carried out in 2005, sparking tensions and retribution attacks between the countrys Sunni and Shia populations. By not taking responsibility for its attacks in Turkey, ISIS wants to do the same, triggering societal fault lines, wrote the Washington Institutes Soner Cagaptay in an op-ed for CNN shortly after the Ataturk Airport bombing in June. The attack, which left more than 40 dead, was also blamed on ISIS but went unclaimed.

After an attempted coup left 240 dead last month, the Turkish government has sought to counteract the deepening polarisation engulfing the country, standing shoulder to shoulder with opposition leaders. Condemning the Gaziantep attack, Erdogan vowed: Those who try to provoke people by exploiting ethnic and sectarian sensitivities will not prevail.

Yet to Turkeys Kurds, his words ring hollow; Erdogan himself has been happy to capitalise on internal divisions to gain votes and continues to sideline the Kurdish opposition. In Gaziantep yesterday, as in Ankara last year, mourners again chanted murderer Erdogan and threw bottles at the police as they carried coffins to the city cemetery.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - One soldier was killed and three police officers were wounded in a clash with Kurdish militants in southeastern Turkey on Monday, security sources said, as a spike in violence rocks the restive region. A suicide bomber, as young as 12, late on Saturday blew him or herself up at a wedding party in the city of Gaziantep, killing 51 ethnic Kurds in an attack President Tayyip Erdogan said was carried out by Islamic State. That attack was the deadliest in a series of bombings in Turkey this year blamed on Islamic State and their rivals, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), an outlawed militant group seeking greater autonomy for Turkey's 15 million Kurds. NATO member Turkey is also roiling with the aftermath of a failed coup on July 15 that killed an estimated 340 people, including around 100 of the rogue soldiers. A female PKK guerrilla was also killed in the clash, which erupted at dawn near security outposts by the town of Nazimiye in Tunceli province, 500 km (310 miles) northeast of Gaziantep, the security sources said. Authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew on Nazimiye as security forces, backed by attack helicopters, sealed the area and sent in reinforcements, they said. On Sunday, the PKK targeted a military vehicle in Viransehir in Sanliurfa province, killing one soldier and wounding four, security sources said. The PKK took responsibility for a car bomb attack on Thursday the in eastern city of Elazig, killing three and wounding hundreds. The PKK took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984, and more than 40,000 people, mainly Kurds, have died. It has close ties to the Syrian Kurdish YPG, which is battling Islamic State in northern Syria and is backed by the United States, a Turkey ally. (Writing by Ayla Jean Yackley and Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan)
PARIS (Reuters) - Two French people working for an environmental organization in Madagascar have been killed, authorities said. The French foreign ministry, in a statement late on Sunday, said they were killed "in an odious crime" on the small island of Sainte Marie, off the northeast coast of Madagascar. Radio France International said the bodies of a young man and a young woman, aged 25 and 23, were found early on Sunday about 150 meters from a night club. Both had injuries to the head. They were volunteers for Cetamada, an environmental NGO that works for the protection of marine mammals. French police will arrive on Monday to help the local police investigation, local authorities said. (Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Sign us up! Tyra Banks has a new gig as a guest lecturer at Stanford University. The supermodel will be coteaching a class on creating a personal brand, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The class, which is part of the MBA program, will focus on using different types of media to present students brand. By the end of the semester, students will share what theyve created via Facebook Live, local television and YouTube.

PHOTOS: Celebrity CEOs: Stars Who Run Their Own Business Empires

The former Victorias Secret model, 42, will teach alongside Stanford management professor Allison Kluger, who previously worked as a producer for Good Morning America and The View. After seeing Banks speak at a recent Stanford event, Kluger approached her with the idea of taking on the challenge of teaching.

PHOTOS: Supermodels: Then and Now

As former host and mentor to hundreds of aspiring models on Americas Next Top Model and creator of TYRA Beauty, shes well equipped to teach the subject.

Banks said that while the course will be fun, shell be tough on the 25 students who enroll in her class. If I see somebody not paying attention, Im gonna call on them, she told The Wall Street Journal, adding that she hopes to keep them interested and off their phones, unless they are using it tweet something Ive said.

PHOTOS: 10 Summer Beauty Steals Under $20

The former FABLife host is the latest in a string of celebrities to take on gigs teaching college classes. Angelina Jolie took on a role as a visiting professor at the London School of Economics to teach a course on the impact of war on women. Matthew McConaughey will also return to his alma mater, University of Texas at Austin, this fall to instruct a filmmaking course.





Related Content:
By Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court refused on Monday to reconsider its decision to overturn a $1.27 billion penalty against Bank of America Corp and a jury verdict finding it liable for mortgage fraud leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York rejected a petition by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office to have a three-judge panel rehear the case and give the government at least an opportunity to seek a new trial.

Bharara's office had argued that the ruling in May "overlooked a wealth of evidence" establishing the fraud perpetrated through a mortgage program called "Hustle" run by Countrywide Financial Corp, which Bank of America acquired in 2008.

The appellate court gave no reason for its decision to reject the petition to rehear the case, which was contained in a one-page order.

A spokesman for Bharara declined comment. Bank of America also declined to comment. Marc Mukasey, a lawyer for Rebecca Mairone, a former midlevel Countrywide executive who was also found liable at trial, said he was pleased with the result.

The lawsuit was filed in 2012 following a whistleblower's complaint and remains one of the biggest government enforcement cases to go to trial in connection with the U.S. housing meltdown and financial crisis.

A federal jury in 2013 found Bank of America and Mairone liable for fraudulently selling shoddy loans originated through Countrywide's "High Speed Swim Lane" program, also called HSSL or "Hustle."

The Justice Department said the program rewarded staff for generating more mortgages and emphasized speed over quality, resulting in mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being lied to about the quality of loans they bought.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were seized by the government in September 2008 and remain in conservatorship.

Following the verdict, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in 2014 imposed a $1.27 billion penalty on Bank of America and ordered Mairone to pay $1 million.

Story continues

But the 2nd Circuit ruled in May that the evidence at most showed that Countrywide breached contracts to sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac investment-quality loans, and that there was no proof it intended any deception.

The case is U.S. v. Countrywide Home Loans Inc et at, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 15-496.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney)
(Adds missing word in paragraph 5)

By Robert Iafolla

Aug 22 (Reuters) - Ernst & Young LLP cannot require its employees to give up their rights to pursue work-related claims together, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, giving a major boost to the U.S. National Labor Relations Board's campaign against so-called class action waivers.

Companies have increasingly included provisions in employment contracts forcing workers to arbitrate claims individually as a way to avoid the cost of litigating class actions.

The NLRB has struck down such requirements imposed by dozens of companies, including American Express Co, Citigroup Inc and Domino's Pizza Inc.

With its 2-1 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco became the second appellate court to sign off on the NLRB's position that federal labor law prohibits workers' arbitration agreements from including class action waivers.

But two appellate courts previously rejected the NLRB's view, making it likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually rule on the enforceability of such waivers.

The lawyers for Ernst & Young and the plaintiffs were not immediately available for comment.

Judge Sidney Thomas, chief of the 9th circuit, said Ernst & Young's arbitration agreement violated the National Labor Relations Act by making workers arbitrate work-related claims as individuals in separate proceedings. The law guarantees workers' rights to act together, he said.

Former Ernst & Young employees Stephen Morris and Kelly McDaniel had claimed in a proposed class action that Ernst & Young did not pay them overtime as required by federal and California law.

Ernst & Young, a London-based professional services provider, argued the Federal Arbitration Act, a 90-year-old law that says courts cannot disfavor arbitration, trumps the National Labor Relations Act and entitles it to enforce its employment contract requiring Morris and McDaniel to pursue their claims individually in arbitration.

Story continues

Thomas said in Monday's opinion that those two federal laws are not in conflict. The case is not about whether the claims should be heard in court or arbitration, but about a contract that is fatally flawed because it would deny workers their rights to act as a group.

"The same infirmity would exist if the contract required disputes to be resolved through casting lots, coin toss, duel, trial by ordeal or any other dispute resolution mechanism, if the contract limited resolution to that mechanism and required separate individual proceedings," Thomas said.

In dissent, Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta said workers could still exercise their right to act collectively in individual arbitration by hiring the same lawyers and sharing resources.

The case is Morris v. Ernst & Young, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 13-16599.

(Reporting by Robert Iafolla; editing by Alexia Garamfalvi)
By Robert Iafolla

(Reuters) - Ernst & Young LLP [ERNY.UL] cannot require its employees to give up their rights to pursue work-related claims together, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, giving a major boost to the U.S. National Labor Relations Board's campaign against so-called class action waivers.

Companies have increasingly included provisions in employment contracts forcing workers to arbitrate claims individually as a way to avoid the cost of litigating class actions.

The NLRB has struck down such requirements imposed by dozens of companies, including American Express Co (AXP.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and Domino's Pizza Inc (DPZ.N).

With its 2-1 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco became the second appellate court to sign off on the NLRB's position that federal labor law prohibits workers' arbitration agreements from including class action waivers.

But two appellate courts previously rejected the NLRBs view, making it likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually rule on the enforceability of such waivers.

The lawyers for Ernst & Young and the plaintiffs were not immediately available for comment.

Judge Sidney Thomas, chief of the 9th circuit, said Ernst & Youngs arbitration agreement violated the National Labor Relations Act by making workers arbitrate work-related claims as individuals in separate proceedings. The law guarantees workers' rights to act together, he said.

Former Ernst & Young employees Stephen Morris and Kelly McDaniel had claimed in a proposed class action that Ernst & Young did not pay them overtime as required by federal and California law.

Ernst & Young, a London-based professional services provider, argued the Federal Arbitration Act, a 90-year-old law that says courts cannot disfavor arbitration, trumps the National Labor Relations Act and entitles it to enforce its employment contract requiring Morris and McDaniel to pursue their claims individually in arbitration.

Story continues

Thomas said in Mondays opinion that those two federal laws are not in conflict. The case is not about whether the claims should be heard in court or arbitration, but about a contract that is fatally flawed because it would deny workers their rights to act as a group.

The same infirmity would exist if the contract required disputes to be resolved through casting lots, coin toss, duel, trial by ordeal or any other dispute resolution mechanism, if the contract limited resolution to that mechanism and required separate individual proceedings, Thomas said.

In dissent, Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta said workers could still exercise their right to act collectively in individual arbitration by hiring the same lawyers and sharing resources.

The case is Morris v. Ernst & Young, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 13-16599.

(This version of the story was refiled to add missing word in paragraph five)

(Reporting by Robert Iafolla; editing by Alexia Garamfalvi)
The man from Eritrea (or Syria, or Afghanistan) walks gingerly into the arrivals terminal at Dulles (or Hartsfield, or LAX), clutching a plastic bag that contains the papers he needs to start his new life. He looks lost and uncertain. But wherever this refugee came from and wherever hes landed, he already has something in common with his new countrymen: debt.

Little-known fact: When the United States gives asylum to the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the refugees foot the bill for their ride over. The American government fronts the money to the International Organization for Migration, a sister agency to the United Nations, which buys the tickets; refugees are expected to begin repaying the debt six months after they arrive. The average cost is $1,200 per person, a pretty penny for people whove fled war and persecution and are trying to start a new life with no savings, next to no English skills and no job. We have a solution: Take money for the airfare from someone else  specifically from the civil servants at IOM and the U.N. Arent they out to make the world a better, more prosperous place anyway?

As it happens, international civil servants have a pretty sweet life: Many in the U.N. and its affiliates have diplomatic passports; six-figure, tax-exempt salaries; and de facto tenure, because it is so very hard to get fired. You might see them in the business-class compartment of long-haul flights, or holing up in the last remaining five-star hotel in some humanitarian hellhole. The dissonance is jarring  even if the salaries and perks are lower than in the private sector, according to one IOM source.

There are other solutions, of course: The U.N. could redirect funds for refugee airfare in some other manner  say, by chopping 10 percent from its agencies per diems. Or the U.S. could take a cue from Canada, says IOM spokesman Leonard Doyle, and allow groups of citizens to sponsor new refugee arrivals. For the 69,933 refugees who came to the U.S. last year, anything would be better than the status quo.

One might ask why refugees should receive special treatment. After all, most who come to this nation of immigrants paid their own way. But refugees are a special case. They bring little with them except, in many cases, psychological trauma from war or persecution. Many have lost homes, even homelands. Unlike other immigrants, refugees are expressly forbidden from working in their host country. Their modest camp expenses are paid for, but most refugees couldnt start saving up for a new life in America even if they wanted to.

So why does the pay your own way system for refugees exist? The theory behind it stems from an up-by-the-boostraps, all-American mentality: Self-help is ennobling. This isnt charity, says Chris Boian, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which operates camps all over the world. This is helping people help themselves and recover their own basic dignity.

Look, were all for basic dignity  we just suspect that dignity doesnt start in the red. It comes with work and being able to send money back home and to support a family. Its time to give refugees economic freedom as well as political freedom, and release the debtors ball and chain that hinders progress toward their American dreams. And ours too.
Ruling that the Obama administration has violated federal laws against sex bias in education, a federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sunday night issued a sweeping, nationwide order against the policy on the rights of transgender students.

U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor, rejecting all of the arguments of government lawyers in favor of that policy, refused to confine the enforcement ban to the 13 states and two local school districts that had sued to challenge the policy.

Under the judges order, transgender students at all levels  kindergarten through college  will have to use restrooms, locker rooms, housing and other intimate facilities based on their gender at birth, not on the gender that they have accepted as theirs. The government policy required equal access based on gender identity.

Because other federal courts are considering other cases on the legality of the policy, Judge OConnor said he would later consider narrowing down his order, so as not to intrude on the review other courts are making. He told both sides to notify him of where other cases are pending.

For now, his enforcement ban applies to all federal agencies and bars the government from taking any action to protect transgender students under Title IX, a 1972 law that bans sex bias in federally funded education. The challenging states and school districts had also challenged the governments view about the meaning of Title VII, a 1964 law that bars sex discrimination in workplaces across the nation, but the final order only applies to Title IX enforcement.

There were two legal foundations for the judges order, both involving the federal Administrative Procedure Act: first, the Obama administrations view that sex bias also includes bias against transgender people was adopted without notifying the public and seeking comment, and, second, that view is directly contrary to what Congress had written into Title IX. That law, the judge declared, limits discrimination based on sex to bias based on biological sex  that is, the physical characteristics of being male and female at birth.

Story continues

Congress, the judge declared, did not contemplate the status of transgender people in schools  that is, people who are assigned one gender at birth, but later accept themselves as of the opposite gender.

Judge OConnors view directly contradicts a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in a Virginia case involving a 17-year-old high school student who is transgender. But the Fort Worth judge noted that the Supreme Court has recently blocked, temporarily, the Fourth Circuit Courts ruling, awaiting an appeal by the school board in that case.

The Obama administration has the option of challenging the nationwide order issued by Judge OConnor, first in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and, beyond that, in the Supreme Court.

The Obama administration had tried to persuade Judge OConnor that its view on what Title IX covers was only advisory and imposed no binding legal duties on schools in the 13 states and two local districts that had sued. The judge disagreed, noting that the government is actively seeking to enforce its Title IX policy in a case now pending in a federal trial court in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Before deciding that the administration policy was illegal under the Administrative Procedure Act, the Fort Worth judge rejected all of the procedural challenges that Justice Department lawyers had raised in seeking to head off the kind of order the judge has now issued.

No part of the case before Judge OConnor involves constitutional issues; the nationwide controversy now unfolding over transgender rights is focused  at least for the time being  on the meaning of Title IX, and how the government interprets it. A separate strand of the controversy applies to sex discrimination in the workplace under Title VII.

Judge OConnors nationwide ban on enforcement of the administrations view on transgender students rights is similar to the across-the-nation ban that another federal judge in Texas previously imposed to block President Obamas broad attempt to postpone the deportation of upwards of four million undocumented immigrants. The Supreme Court, during its last term, split 4-to-4 on the immigration policy dispute, thus leaving intact a nationwide injunction against its enforcement.

In the immigration case, the administration has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its divided order on the policy. If the normal schedule of considering such requests is followed, the Justices may act on that request as early as this Friday.

Also, in that case, the federal judge  Andrew S. Hanen of Brownsville  is to meet with lawyers for both sides on August 31 to consider the next steps toward an actual trial on the legality of the policy.

Legendary journalist Lyle Denniston is Constitution Dailys Supreme Court correspondent. Denniston has written for us as a contributor since June 2011. Denniston has covered the Supreme Court since 1958. His work also appears on lyldenlawnews.com.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Monday it had seen reports that Russia had ended its use of an Iranian air base to carry out strikes against Syrian militants, but it was not clear whether Russian use of the base actually had stopped. Iran said earlier on Monday that Russia had stopped using the air base "for now." Russia said further use of the base would depend on the situation in Syria. State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a briefing the United States was closely monitoring the cooperation between Russia and Iran and "it's not clear to us ... whether their (Moscow's) use of this air base has definitively stopped." (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Writing by David Alexander; Editing by Eric Walsh)
By Ju-min Park SEOUL (Reuters) - The United States and South Korea kicked off annual military exercises on Monday, prompting warnings of retaliation from the North, as already-heightened tension on the peninsula has been inflamed by the defection of a Pyongyang diplomat. North Korea has become further isolated after a January nuclear test, its fourth, and the launch of a long-range rocket in February brought tightened U.N. Security Council sanctions that Pyongyang defied with several ballistic missile launches. About 25,000 U.S. troops are joining in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, which runs until Sept 2. The U.S.-led U.N. Command Military Armistice Commission said it notified the North Korean army the exercises were "non-provocative" in nature. The North calls the exercises preparations for invasion, and early on Monday threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike. North Korea frequently makes such threats. "From this moment, the first-strike combined units of the Korean People's Army keep themselves fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved in Ulji Freedom Guardian," a KPA spokesman said in a statement carried by the North's state-run KCNA news agency. "The nuclear warmongers should bear in mind that if they show the slightest sign of aggression, it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike." Last week, South Korea announced that Thae Yong Ho, the North's deputy ambassador in London, had defected and arrived in the South with his family, in an embarrassing blow to the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. High-level defections pointed to cracks in the Kim regime, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Monday. "Recently even North Korea's elite group is collapsing, followed by key figures defecting to foreign countries, showing a sign of serious cracks, with chances of shaking the regime further," she told a National Security Council meeting. Thae's defection followed the flight to Seoul this year of 12 waitresses from a North Korean restaurant in China. On Monday, North Korea's Red Cross sent a letter to its South Korean counterpart asking for the women to be sent back, saying they had been kidnapped by the South, according to KCNA. South Korea denies they were kidnapped. North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. (Editing by Tony Munroe and Clarence Fernandez)
ZURICH, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A U.S. regulator has cleared ChemChina's blockbuster takeover of Swiss pesticides and seeds group Syngenta, the companies said on Monday.

"China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) and Syngenta today announced that the companies have received clearance on their proposed transaction from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)," a joint statement released by Syngenta said.

"In addition to CFIUS clearance, the closing of the transaction is subject to anti-trust review by numerous regulators around the world and other customary closing conditions. Both companies are working closely with the regulatory agencies involved and discussions remain constructive.

"The proposed transaction is expected to close by the end of the year."

Syngenta had said in July it expected the deal to close this year despite concerns that U.S. regulators could throw a spanner in the works.

(Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by John Revill)
By Michael Shields and Greg Roumeliotis

(Reuters) - A U.S. national security panel has cleared ChemChina's $43 billion takeover of Swiss pesticides and seeds group Syngenta <SYNN.S>, the companies said, boosting chances that the largest foreign acquisition ever by a Chinese company will go through.

The decision removes significant uncertainty over the takeover of the world's largest pesticides maker. Several U.S. lawmakers and groups representing farmers had expressed fears over a Chinese state-owned company being in a position to influence the U.S. food supply.

Syngenta shares jumped as much as 12.5 percent on the news and ended trading on Monday up 10.6 percent at 421.20 Swiss francs ($437.9). ChemChina's $465 per share cash offer values the company at around 448 Swiss francs per share at current exchange rates, plus a special five-franc dividend.

"This sends a very good signal to China that the U.S. is open for investments in most sectors. But this also shows the need for a bilateral investment treaty so that similar U.S. investments are possible in China," said Georgetown McDonough School of Business professor Charles Skuba, who studies market development in China.

The United States reviewed the deal because more than a quarter of the company's seeds and crop protection revenue last year came from North America. The major regulatory hurdle the deal now has to clear is an antitrust review by the European Union, which the companies may seek to facilitate through divestitures, if need be.

Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Christian Faitz called the step a "major milestone for the deal," adding in a note to clients that "approval removes a major potential hurdle and should come as a relief to Syngenta shareholders." Kepler Cheuvreux rates Syngenta shares a "Buy." Reuters reported earlier on Monday that the acquisition was in the final stages of being cleared by the U.S. panel that scrutinizes deals for national security implications.

Story continues

"We are not disclosing the details of the agreement with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to respect the confidentiality of the process," a Syngenta spokesman said by email in response to a Reuters query. "Any mitigation measures are not material to Syngenta's business."

Syngenta reiterated that it expected the deal to close by the end of the year. It added that completing the transaction was subject to "anti-trust review by numerous regulators around the world and other customary closing conditions."

RIPPLES ACROSS SECTOR

The CFIUS review was monitored closely by Monsanto Co <MON.N>, the world's largest seed company, which has been deliberating whether it should sell itself to Germany's Bayer AG <BAYGn.DE>. Syngenta last year turned down offers to be acquired by Monsanto.

The deal comes as China looks to secure food supplies for its population. Syngenta is a key player in the market for pesticides and seeds. It has facilities in North Carolina, as well a presence in California, Delaware, Iowa and Minnesota among other states.

Several U.S. lawmakers wrote to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew this year asking for CFIUS to subject the deal to additional scrutiny over its impact on domestic food security. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also joined the CFIUS review, Reuters previously reported.

"Its clear that China is looking at purchasing companies with food production expertise as part of a long-term strategic plan and a component of their national security. The fact that a state owned enterprise may have yet another stake in U.S. agriculture is alarming," said U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, who is sponsoring a bill to permanently add the U.S. Department of Agriculture to the CFIUS review process.

Syngenta had said this year it would make a voluntary filing with CFIUS "even though no obvious national security concerns were identified during due diligence."

With a growing number of Chinese companies looking to acquire U.S. peers, CFIUS has emerged as a significant risk for such deals, particularly those with potential cyber security implications.

For example, in February, state-backed Chinese firm Unisplendor Corp <000938.SZ> scrapped a $3.78 billion investment in Western Digital Corp <WDC.O> after CFIUS said it would investigate the transaction.

(Reporting by Michael Shields in Zurich and Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Additional reporting by John Revill in Zurich and Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Adrian Croft and Tom Brown)
By Padraic Halpin

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish building materials group Kingspan (KSP.I) said new orders at its large UK business had risen by 7 percent year-on-year since the end of June, dispelling fears that it would be hit by Britain's vote to leave the European Union.

Kingspan, a leading maker of insulation products in Britain where it generates over a quarter of its revenue, reported a 50 percent rise in first-half profits on Monday thanks to strong North America and European growth and a big increase in margins.

It said it expected a solid performance in the second half with group revenue since June 30 comfortably ahead year-on-year and specifically singled out the order growth in Britain where the longer term project pipeline "remained robust".

Chief Executive Gene Murtagh said fears the UK business would suffer after Britons voted to leave the European Union in a June 23 referendum had not yet materialised.

"It's kind of a foregone conclusion that this is going to be a bit of a catastrophe but frankly from a trading perspective, we haven't seen any sign whatsoever of that," Murtagh told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"The June 23 vote has led to uncertainty but it hasn't led to any tangible change in the market as far as we can glean and whether it does or not, to be quite frank, is still something people don't understand."

Murtagh said the jury was still out on whether a slowdown in sentiment in the UK would translate into lower investment, adding to the mixed reports from the sector since the referendum.

A survey earlier this month showed that the UK construction industry suffered its sharpest downturn in seven years in July following the vote but others, including Kier Group (KIE.L) and Taylor Wimpey (TW.L), have reported little impact so far.

Shares in Kingspan were 4.9 percent higher at 23.9 euros by 0800 GMT, returning to the level seen before June 23 after fully recovering the 25 percent loss recorded in the aftermath.

(Editing by Adrian Croft)
LONDON (Reuters) - British police have charged a former priest with child sex crimes after he returned to the UK from Kosovo, where he had been on the run for around five years living under a false name. Laurence Soper, 72, was due to appear at a west London court later on Monday to face charges for crimes he is accused of committing from 1972 to 1986. He was arrested at Luton Airport on Sunday after he flew back to Britain. He faces nine charges in total, according to a police statement, which said there were five victims. Described by police as a monk, Soper had lived in the town of Peja in Kosovo for about five years under the name Andrew Charles Kingston. British media said the former abbot from Ealing, west London, who was a teacher in the 1970s and 80s, had jumped bail in 2011. Kosovan authorities detained Soper on an international arrest warrant in May but two extradition requests were rejected by courts in the country, the second because the crimes were committed too long ago. Police in Kosovo told Reuters that Soper had exceeded the time limit of his stay in the country and had been deported. (Reporting by Sarah Young; additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci; editing by Giles Elgood)
From Mali to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, Islamist fighters have regularly turned their sights on the priceless vestiges of peoples' cultural heritage -- for being un-Islamic.

The International Criminal Court on Monday opens the war crimes trial of a jihadist charged with orchestrating the destruction of shrines at the World Heritage site of Timbuktu in Mali.

The following are examples of world cultural heritage destroyed or damaged during recent conflicts.

- Mali -

The fabled desert city of Timbuktu, named as the "City of 333 saints" and listed by UNESCO, was for months attacked by jihadists bent on imposing a brutal version of Islamic law.

In June 2012, Al-Qaeda-linked militants destroyed 14 of the northern city's mausoleums, important buildings that date back to Timbuktu's golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries as an economic, intellectual and spiritual hub.

The reconstruction of the shrines began in March 2014, relying heavily on traditional methods and employing local masons. Several countries and organisations financed the reconstruction, including UNESCO.

Work finished on the site in July 2015, and a ceremony marking the completion was held on February 4, 2016.

- Syria -

More than 900 monuments or archeological sites have been looted, damaged or destroyed by the regime, rebels or jihadists in Syria, where a devastating war has raged since 2011, according to APSA, the association charged with protecting Syrian architecture.

In September 2015, Islamic State (IS) fighters destroyed two of the most important temples in the UNESCO-listed Syrian city of Palmyra as they pressed a campaign to wipe out some of the Middle East's most important heritage sites.

They include the ancient city's most famed shrine, the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel, blown up a week after the destruction of the temple of Baal Shamin.

Other notable sites damaged or looted include Dura-Europos in eastern Syria, once known as the "Pompeii of the desert", Apamea, Ebla and Tal Ajaja.

Story continues

However, the IS group is not the only one responsible for ravaging Syria's heritage, with all sides in the fighting looting and destroying ancient sites.

"Two thirds of the ancient city of Aleppo have been bombarded and set on fire," according to UNESCO.

- Iraq -

IS has carried out a campaign of "cultural cleansing", razing part of ancient Mesopotamia's relics and looting others to sell valued artefacts on the black market.

In a video released by IS on February 26, 2015 militants were shown using sledgehammers to smash pre-Islamic treasures in the museum in the country's second city Mosul, sparking global outrage.

Thousands of books and rare manuscripts were also burned in February in Mosul's library.

According to the Iraqi government, IS militants on March 5, 2015 bulldozed and blew up Nimrud, an ancient Assyrian city south of Mosul.

They also attacked Hatra, a Roman-period site, in the northern Niniveh province.

- Libya -

Several mausoleums have been destroyed by Islamist extremists since the overthrow of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

In August 2012, Islamist hardliners bulldozed part of the mausoleum of Al-Shaab Al-Dahman, close to the centre of the Libyan capital.

The demolition came a day after hardliners blew up the mausoleum of Sheikh Abdessalem al-Asmar in the western city of Zliten.

In 2013 suspected Islamic extremists destroyed the centuries-old mausoleum of Murad Agha in Tripoli, but the tomb inside withstood the attack.

- Afghanistan -

In March 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of two 1,500-year-old Buddha statues in the eastern town of Bamiyan, because they were judged to be anti-Islamic.

Hundreds of members of the Taliban from across the country spent more than three weeks demolishing the gigantic statues carved into the side of a cliff.

In 2003 the cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley were put on UNESCO'S world heritage list.

- Algeria -

Armed Islamic groups in the 1990s destroyed several sanctuaries which dotted Algerian soil.
From Cosmopolitan

Welp, this is very bonkers and incredibly sad.

Buzzfeed has a brilliant, riveting long read about Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose Blancharde, a mother and daughter from Springfield, Missouri. The abbreviated version of their tragic story goes something like this:

Dee Dee and Gypsy were a seemingly sweet mother-daughter combo. They lived in a small pink house that was built for them by Habitat for Humanity. That's because Gypsy had a variety of illnesses that she lived with since birth that left her pale, skinny, and confined to a wheelchair. Her mother Dee Dee was her faithful caretaker, making sure she took all her meds and went to her myriad of doctor's appointments. Even though Gypsy was 19, Dee Dee said she had the brain of a 7-year-old and needed full-time attention.

Photo credit: YouTube

Everything was fine until one day, this update appeared on Dee Dee's Facebook page:

As friends and neighbors debated what to do about the bizarre update, a new updated appeared on Dee Dee's page: "I fucken SLASHED THAT FAT PIG AND RAPED HER SWEET INNOCENT DAUGHTERHER SCREAM WAS SOOOO FUCKEN LOUD LOL."

Friends and neighbors immediately reacted, calling the police. Once inside the house, the police discovered Dee Dee's body in her bedroom. She'd been stabbed to death, and had been dead for several days. And Gypsy was missing.

And here's where it gets really strange!

Through talking to a neighbor, the police figured out that Gypsy wasn't sick, and never had been. And that she and Nicholas Godejohn, a man she had met on the Internet, had carried out the crime together and were now in hiding at his house. Oh, and Gypsy wasn't 19, she was actually 23.

As it turns out, Dee Dee most likely had Munchausen by Proxy, which is when someone feigns or actually induces physical and psychological symptoms in another person for no obvious benefit other than attention and sympathy.

Gypsy is currently serving the minimum sentence for her crimes: 10 years. She will be eligible for parole in seven and a half years, when she is 32.

Story continues

Gypsy spoke with Buzzfeed's Michelle Dean from jail.

"The doctors thought that she was so devoted and caring," she said. "I think she would have been the perfect mom for someone that actually was sick. But I'm not sick. There's that big, big difference."

You have to read the entire story, for it is filled with so many insane twists and turns that it'll truly boggle your mind.

Follow Laura on Twitter.
Consumer products giant Unilever Plc UL has been focused on shaping its portfolio to deliver sustainable growth. With an aim to widen its position in home care, Unilever has recently announced the acquisition of Stockholm-based Blueair. However, the terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in 1996 by Bengt Rittri, Blueair is a Swedish maker of indoor air purifying systems for homes and businesses. The company, which reported sales of $106 million last year, is one of the largest manufacturers of premium air purifiers in China, the U.S., Japan, South Korea and India.

Unilevers acquisition of Blueair is amied to benefit asthma patients as the purifier can remove allergens, thereby making it easier for patients to breathe. The transaction will complement Unilever's water purification business.

Post acquisition, Blueair will continue to operate under the same name in all existing markets, within Unilever's home care division, which accounted for 19% of its 2015 sales.

UNILEVER PLC Price and Consensus

UNILEVER PLC Price and Consensus | UNILEVER PLC Quote

The Anglo-Dutch buyer has been on an acquisition spree since the last few quarters, especially in the home care space. On Aug 10, Unilever completed the purchase of Dollar Shave Club for about $1 billion, in a transaction that was announced in July. Dollar Shave Club is a men's grooming brand and this acquisition could prove particularly lucrative for Unilever, which does not own a direct-to-consumer mens shaving product line yet.

We note that the company has been relying on deodorants and hair care products to propel revenues this year, amid lagging sales of its margarine and bread spreads. It has also added personal care and other consumer brands, including Dermalogica and Kate Somervile, and the Zest soap brands, last year.

Besides acquisitions, Unilever has also been shedding off assets in its battered food business, as the category has been delivering sluggish growth due to a lack of innovation and declining demand. Demand has been weak due to saturated markets in the U.S.  the companys major revenue source.

Story continues

In June, Unilever reportedly reached an agreement with beverage giant Coca-Cola Co. KO and its largest Latin American bottler, Coca-Cola Femsa SAB KOF, to sell the AdeS soy-based beverage business for about $575 million. In Jul 2014, Unilever had sold its Slim-Fast brand to a middle market private equity firm, Kainos Capital, in accordance with its divestiture strategy. The divestiture included the sale of the Slim-Fast trademark and the global Slim-Fast business portfolio. In May 2014, the company completed the sale of the Ragu and Bertolli pasta sauce brands for $2.15 billion.

Apart from these, the company has divested many other brands in the past. In Feb 2014, the company sold its meat snacks business to Berlin-based Jack Links Meat Snacks and in January, it spun off the Royal pasta brand to RFM Corporation, one of the biggest diversified food and beverage companies in the Philippines. In 2013, Unilever sold its Soft & Beautiful, TCB and Pro-Line Comb-Thru brands in the hair care category to an international company  Strength of Nature. The company has also divested its Wish-Bone salad dressing business to food company Pinnacle Foods Inc. PF. Moreover, it shed Bertolli and P.F. Chang's frozen meals brands to ConAgra Foods Inc. and its Skippy peanut butter business to Austin, MN-based producer of branded food and meat, Hormel Foods Corporation.

Unilever currently holds a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download7 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



COCA COLA CO (KO): Free Stock Analysis Report



COCA-COLA FEMSA (KOF): Free Stock Analysis Report



UNILEVER PLC (UL): Free Stock Analysis Report



PINNACLE FOODS (PF): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Washington (AFP) - The White House expressed outrage Sunday over twin explosions which claimed the lives of at least 10 people in central Somalia, condemning the attacks as "cowardly."

"The United States strongly condemns the terrorist attacks in Puntland, Somalia," read a statement from the National Security Council, which advises President Barack Obama.

"Today's cowardly attacks targeting Puntland security forces, government officials, and civilians are another attempt by terrorists to weaken Somalia ahead of its historic scheduled political transition this autumn toward greater representation," the statement said.

"We join international expressions of outrage against these brutal terrorist acts," the White House continued, offering condolences to the loved ones of the victims.

"We will continue to stand by Somalia in its fight against terrorism and extremism and support Somalis in their quest for a peaceful, inclusive, and prosperous future."

The Shabaab militant group has claimed responsibility for the blasts in the town of Galkayo, some 700 kilometers (440 miles) northeast of Mogadishu.

The US State Department decried Shabaab's "vicious and persistent attacks" in a separate release, vowing to help "rebuild a more peaceful, inclusive, and secure country for the citizens of Somalia."

Shabaab carries out regular attacks against government, military and civilian targets using suicide car bombers and gunmen.

An Al-Qaeda aligned group, Shabaab is fighting to overthrow the internationally-backed government in the capital Mogadishu.

It is expected to try and violently disrupt elections due to be held in September and October.
DailyFX.com -

Talking Points:

US Dollar outperforms as Fed rate hike speculation gathers steam

Aussie, Kiwi Dollars face selling pressure on shifting yield spreads

Yen veers away from sentiment cues as US yields take center stage

The US Dollar traded broadly higher against its major counterparts on building FOMC rate hike speculation ahead of a much-anticipated Janet Yellen speech on Friday. Investors appear to be driven by a conspicuous about-face in rhetoric from San Francisco Fed President John Williams, whose pronouncements are closely monitored because the markets see him as a close confidant of the Fed Chair.

Williams unveiled a decidedly dovish essay early last week, driving the greenback lower. He rushed to reposition by Thursday however, speaking almost as though he had been chastised to get back in line. Williams said he would prefer to hike rates sooner rather than later and even echoed hawkish comments from New York Fed President Bill Dudley expressing concern about the markets under-pricing of rate hike probability.

The Australian and New Zealand Dollars facedoutsized selling pressure as the prospect of nearing Fed tightening weighed heaviest on the yield-sensitive high beta FX space. Interestingly, the Japanese Yen is also on the defensive. It appears as though the typically anti-risk currency is finding greater momentum in shifting yield expectations than sentiment trends (at least in the near term), with USDJPYtracking 2-year US Treasury yields.

Looking ahead, a quiet European and US economic calendar presents few roadblocks to continuation of established trade dynamics. Momentum may fizzle however if overnight price action turns out to reflect catch-up flows on Fridays price action rather than a further deepening of conviction in the Fed outlook.

Check out the latest standings for the FXCM $10k trading contest HERE.

Asia Session

GMT CCY EVENT ACT EXP PREV 05:00 JPY Supermarket Sales (YoY) (JUL) 0.2% - -0.5%

European Session

Story continues

GMT CCY EVENT EXP PREV IMPACT 07:00 CHF Money Supply M3 (YoY) (JUL) - 2.5% Low 07:00 JPY Convenience Store Sales (YoY) (JUL) - 0.8% Low 08:00 CHF Total Sight Deposits - 512.9b Low 08:00 CHF Domestic Sight Deposits - 434.7b Low

Critical Levels

CCY Supp 3 Supp 2 Supp 1 Pivot Point Res 1 Res 2 Res 3 EUR/USD 1.1218 1.1274 1.1299 1.1330 1.1355 1.1386 1.1442 GBP/USD 1.2773 1.2934 1.3004 1.3095 1.3165 1.3256 1.3417

--- Written by Ilya Spivak, Currency Strategist for DailyFX.com

To receive Ilya's analysis directly via email, please SIGN UP HERE

Contact and follow Ilya on Twitter: @IlyaSpivak



original source

DailyFX provides forex news and technical analysis on the trends that influence the global currency markets.

Learn forex trading with a free practice account and trading charts from FXCM.
Washington (AFP) - The Pentagon warned the Syrian regime Monday it is prepared to shoot down planes threatening US-led coalition forces in northern Syria, but stopped short of declaring a no-fly zone.

US military officials reacted furiously last week after jets from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad targeted Kurdish forces and coalition advisers fighting Islamic State jihadists around the northeastern city of Hasakeh.

The US military scrambled fighters on at least two occasions to ward off the Syrian planes, but neither incident resulted in air-to-air contact.

It was apparently the first time the coalition scrambled jets in response to regime action, and possibly the closest call yet in terms of Syrian forces wounding coalition advisers.

"We would continue to advise the Syrian regime to steer clear of those areas," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters.

"We are going to defend our people on the ground, and do what we need to defend them."

Despite the warning, Cook avoided using the politically charged term "no-fly zone."

Secretary of State John Kerry and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton have both said they support no-fly zones, but President Barack Obama is reluctant to commit resources and troops to enforce such a measure.

"It's not a no-fly zone," Cook said.

"But... the Syrian regime would be wise to avoid areas where coalition forces have been operating."

The United States has passed warnings to Syria via Russia, with which the US military has an established line of communication.

When pressed, Cook said the warning also extended to jets from Russia, which has been bombing in support of Assad since last year.

"If they threaten US forces, we always have the right to defend our forces," he said.

The United States would protect not only coalition advisers, but also partner forces on the ground -- in this case Kurdish fighters.

America has for two years led an international coalition against the IS group, conducting daily strikes and working with local forces on the ground to help them fight the jihadists.

Story continues

Russia started bombing in Syria last year, but most of its strikes have been in support of the regime.

In June, Russian aircraft conducted a series of air strikes near al-Tanf in southern Syria targeting US-backed counter-IS forces.

In that incident, the United States did not scramble jets, but the attack frayed an already tense relationship between the coalition and Russia.

Washington and Moscow have been in contact for weeks over establishing military cooperation to fight IS in Syria.

But Cook said such an agreement was far from a done deal.

"We are not there yet, and the regime and Russia's recent actions only make it harder to consider any potential coordination," he said.
Zurich (AFP) - A US national security regulator has approved a state-owned China National Chemical Corp.'s planned $43-billion (38 billion-euro) takeover of Swiss pesticide and seed giant Syngenta, the two companies said Monday.

ChemChina and Syngenta said in a joint statement that they had "received clearance on their proposed transaction from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)."

They said a number of anti-trust regulators around the world still need to approve what would be by far the biggest-ever overseas acquisition by a Chinese firm.

They said the transaction was expected to close by the end of the year.

ChemChina announced the blockbuster deal in early February, vowing to dish out $465 for each Syngenta share, plus a special dividend.

Initially, the companies had expected to wrap up the first part of the transaction by May 23, but the period has been prolonged twice as the companies wait for the verdict of various competition authorities, which is now set for September 13.

There have been few hurdles to the planned deal in Switzerland, but it raised more than a few eyebrows in the United States, where much of Syngenta's business is based.

At the end of March, four members of the US Senate agriculture committee wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew voicing their concerns.

The senators, from both the Republican and Democratic parties, asked that the planned deal be scrutinised for "any potential ramifications the purchase may have for American national security, with a specific focus on the potential effects on food security and the safety of our food system."

This led to the review by CFIUS, an inter-agency committee that assesses the national security implications of foreign investments in US companies.

Syngenta rebuffed US-rival Monsanto three times last year before accepting ChemChina's offer.

The proposed merger is not the only mega takeover planned in the sector as low crop prices push demand down for many agricultural products.

Story continues

German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer is intent on snapping up Monsanto, last month saying it would raise its initial $62-billion offer for the company.

And last December, two of the oldest US companies, Dow Chemical and DuPont, announced a tie-up to create the world's biggest chemical and materials group, valued at $180 billion.

Following Monday's announcement, Syngenta saw its share price soar 11.58 percent in mid-morning trading to 424.90 Swiss francs a piece, as the Swiss stock exchange's main SMI index swelled just 0.69 percent.
By Leah Schnurr

OTTAWA, Aug 22 (Reuters) - With a new tax on foreign homebuyers in Vancouver expected to slow purchase activity, there is a greater risk that the city's lofty real estate prices would be vulnerable to a potential jump in local unemployment, Fitch Ratings said on Monday.

Earlier this month, Vancouver implemented a 15 percent tax on foreign home buyers to try to address a lack of affordability for residents.

The new tax will likely be effective in tamping down buyer activity, Fitch analysts wrote, but with signs that the market may have begun to cool even before the tax, that leaves Vancouver home prices more exposed to potential changes in Canada's economy.

"We feel that the foreign investors have been propping up real estate in Vancouver, creating more demand, which is raising prices," said Susan Hosterman, director of U.S. structured finance at Fitch Ratings.

"With them potentially out of the picture, Vancouver is more susceptible to Canadian supply and demand behavior, which is mainly driven by employment."

While Vancouver's job growth has been strong, Hosterman said it was a question of how long that will last given lackluster job creation in other parts of the country.

Vancouver's unemployment rate was 5.4 percent in July, according to Statistics Canada, one of the lowest amongst Canada's major cities.

The foreign buyers tax was the latest effort by authorities to reign in the housing market in recent years. Last December, the new Liberal federal government introduced measures requiring those who want to buy more expensive homes to provide a bigger down payment.

Some cooling in the Vancouver market may have already begun, Fitch said, pointing to recent data from the Canadian Real Estate Association that showed monthly sales have dropped 21.5 percent since peaking in February.

Canada's housing market has been robust in the years since the financial crisis, lifted in part by cheap borrowing costs. The national real estate landscape has become more fragmented recently with activity in oil-sensitive regions slowing and prices in Vancouver and Toronto accelerating.

Story continues

The Bank of Canada has warned about possible speculation occurring in the two major cities.

Fitch estimates that national home prices are more than 20 percent overvalued compared to long-term economic growth, with markets increasingly exposed to downside risk.

Fitch said it plans to publish updated overvaluation estimates for major Canadian cities by the end of the year.

(Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Alan Crosby)
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's interior minister and former boss of the country's anti-narcotics agency, General Nestor Reverol, hit back on Monday at accusations by a U.S. federal court that he abetted cocaine trafficking. Earlier this month, U.S. prosecutors announced an indictment charging that from 2008 to 2010, Reverol and another official took payments to alert traffickers over raids, hinder investigations and arrange the release of suspects, cash and drugs. He called the accusations "unfounded." "I reject them categorically in all their parts," Reverol, 51, said at a news conference at the anti-narcotics agency he used to lead in Caracas. "They want to use it as a political weapon," Reverol said, flanked by General Edylberto Molina, his former deputy and until recently Venezuela's defense attache in Germany. Molina was also named in the Brooklyn court indictment and sat stony faced in a gray suit during the conference, without speaking. Venezuela is a large, lightly populated country that shares a long and lawless border with Colombia. It is a major transport hub for its neighbor's cocaine destined to Europe and to a lesser extent to the United States. Washington has long alleged senior Venezuelan military officials and political allies of President Nicolas Maduro were complicit in the trade. Last year, two nephews of the first lady were indicted in New York on charges of attempting to smuggle cocaine to the United States via Honduras. Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez kicked out the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2005 and Reverol said cocaine seizures almost doubled the following year. The numbers have varied since then, but last year overall drug seizures were 79 tonnes, most of that cocaine, current ONA head Irwin Escalona told Reuters. This year until Aug. 21, Venezuela had seized 33 tonnes of drugs, including 29 tonnes of cocaine, Escalona said. Venezuela started seizing precursor chemicals used in cocaine production last year along the Colombian border, leading them to cocaine laboratories in Venezuela, he said. Reverol accused the United States of hypocrisy, leading the fight against drugs on one hand while being lax on marijuana cultivation on its own territory and overseeing a surge in opium production in Afghanistan. He detailed his actions against drug trafficking and organized crime while he was in charge of Venezuela's National Anti-Drugs Organization from 2006-12, including installing a radar network covering all Venezuela's airspace for the first time, arresting traffickers and eradicating illicit crops. (Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Bernard Orr)
Viacom Inc. VIAB has finally reached an agreement with National Amusements Inc. (NAI), the company which holds majority of the controlling shares in Viacom.

Terms of the Agreement

Per the agreement, the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President, Philippe Dauman will resign with immediate effect. For an interim period upto Sep 30, 2016, Dauman will be succeeded by Thomas Dooley, the current Chief Operating Officer of Viacom. Meanwhile, the board of directors will finalize the companys future leadership structure. The board will also be expanded to include five additional directors who were elected by NAI in June this year. Additionally, all lawsuits between NAI and Viacom will be terminated.

Dauman will continue as a Non-Executive Chairman at Viacom till Sep 13 this year, post which a new Chairman will be appointed. Meanwhile, Sumner Redstone and his daughter Shari Redstone will continue to hold the positions of Chairman Emeritus and Non-execute vice chair, respectively. After the departure of Dauman, the board will comprise 15 directors.

Before leaving Viacom, Dauman will be presenting a proposal to the expanded board to consider selling a minority stake in the companys Paramount Pictures film unit. This proposal would require to be unanimously approved by the Board for any decision. Paramount has been struggling with to remain profitable and after media reports of Ben Hur being a box-office flop, the units revenues are expected to take a further hit.

Why was the Change Imperative?

The current board of directors unanimously approved the leadership change after months of indecisiveness. The differences mainly arose with the President of NAI, Sumner Redstone and Shari Redstone, calling for a change in the companys leadership along with a change in the companys board. Viacom has been consistently underperforming and as per some media reports, the company has also seen top level management exits due to Dauman. The company also posted unflattering third-quarter 2016 results following which NAI called for Dauman to step down due to concerns over the companys future prospects.

Story continues

Now that Viacom, a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) stock, has finally reached an agreement over its corporate management issue, investors can breathe a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the company has been facing strong competition from media giants like The Walt Disney Co. DIS, Discovery Communications Inc. DISCA and Time Warner Inc. TWX. As the media industry goes through rapid changes with the increasing popularity of web-based content, it is to be seen how the new leadership structure helps the company brave the challenging environment.

VIACOM INC-B Price

VIACOM INC-B Price | VIACOM INC-B 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



TIME WARNER INC (TWX): Free Stock Analysis Report



DISNEY WALT (DIS): Free Stock Analysis Report



DISCOVERY COM-A (DISCA): Free Stock Analysis Report



VIACOM INC-B (VIAB): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
For five years Virginie Devesa, has successfully been running Paris-based sales company Alpha Violet together with colleague Keiko Funato. Alpha Violet is primarily dedicated to making visible promising talents. It has a special interest in female voices. While Alpha points to transparency and professionalism, Violet symbolizes overlooked, hidden or marginalized contents. Devesa and Funato carefully hand-pick their films by asking: Does this material need us? Variety talked to Devesa at the Locarno Festival, as she gears up for late-Summer festival.

Whats the history of Alpha Violet?

Its a Paris-based sales company I founded five years ago with my good Japanese friend Keiko Funato. I worked with her in a sales company prior to our deciding to become independent and to create our own female label. We later brought on board Jean-Baptiste Bailly-Maitre who helped us building up the project and financing it.

What are your mission and values?

We are primarily dedicated to first features  we like to discover new talents and their raw material with a preference for female filmmakers. Around 35% of Alpha Violets catalogue of now 30 features are made by women. Moreover, we seek to discover new territories and continents. Our last movie, Wolf and Sheep, is a good example. Its a first feature film from Afghanistan made by the female director Shahrbanoo Sadat. It fuses fantasy and contemporary Afghan reality with originality and won the Art Cinema Award at Directors Fortnight in Cannes.

Are you looking to specialize and to cover a specific niche of films with Alpha Violet?

We have two directions: Female filmmaking, which is always our priority, and Eastern Europe. I always dreamt of representing a Ukrainian film. Like Romanian or Bulgarian cinema that today are building, we aspire to shed a light on Ukrainian cinema. With The Tribe we already managed to get people interested internationally. We adore this country and would be highly interested in working on more Ukrainian films and in developing a real industry. Look at Romanian cinema: 10 years ago we knew only the classics, but suddenly we have four-or-five new well-known Romanian filmmakers. So why not the Ukraine?

Story continues

Another question would be the role of the festivals in your work, also with you being here at Locarno?

Very important. For arthouse films and to launch the career of a first feature film, festivals are of great value. Thats where it starts and thats also our knowledge base. We can link our support for a film with festivals. In building up a career, especially for a first film, the presence at festivals is key. However, we carefully and strategically select which festivals to attend.

The next film you will work on is Luxembourg, by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy that you are co-producing. Isnt it a dilemma being a producer and a sales agent at the same time?

Its difficult, but thats why we have Jean-Baptiste supporting us with the producing branch of Alpha Violet. Of course, there are moments where I feel slightly schizophrenic about it. Because I do have ideas for selling it, while I am confronted with another set of questions regarding its production. Its the first project we are co-producing. It certainly is a challenge and takes up a lot of time and energy. But how can you resist?

How do you find your films?

By searching for them, travelling to festivals like Locarno and tracking the work of production companies whose line-up we like and whose projects we keep an eye on. Of course we also consider the films sent in by newcomers. We take the time to screen and reply to all of them. We focus on only five-or-six films per year, hence the greatest difficulty is that we need to be very selective.

Related stories

'The Tribe' Director Signs With CAA (EXCLUSIVE)

Cannes: Alpha Violet Takes Peloquin's 'Trees'

Alpha Violet Primes 'The Tribe' Follow-Up 'Luxembourg,' 'Soviet Heroes'
London (AFP) - Voting starts Monday to decide if veteran leftist Jeremy Corbyn will remain leader of Britain's Labour party, with an ill-tempered campaign deepening divisions that threaten the party's future.

Ballots and online voting forms were being sent to party members, who have until September 21 to decide whether to replace Corbyn with MP Owen Smith, previously little known outside parliament.

Corbyn, 67, is favourite and retains the backing of most trade unions and many grassroots supporters who signed up last year to propel him to a shock leadership election win.

But he has failed to win over many of the party's MPs, 80 percent of whom backed a recent vote of no-confidence in Corbyn.

Britain's vote on June 23 to leave the European Union provided the catalyst for the leadership challenge, with many lawmakers criticising Corbyn's performance during the campaign as lacklustre.

London mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour's leader in Scotland, Kezia Dugdale, are among those backing Smith over Corbyn.

Smith triggered the contest by declaring his candidacy last month, warning that Corbyn's leadership was making the possibility of a split in the party "dangerously real".

- Principles and pragmatism -

The 46-year-old is, like Corbyn, targeting voters to the left of the party but says he is better placed to sell the message to the country and take Labour to ballot box success.

Smith distanced himself from the centrist New Labour governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown -- the last time the party held power, between 1997 and 2010 -- in a speech in Wales Monday.

He said that sometimes those administrations "hid away from our principles" and believed that "what matters is what works".

"What works cannot trump what is right," Smith stressed.

Meanwhile, Corbyn released a list of four key pledges including replacing the House of Lords with an elected upper chamber of parliament and introducing mandatory collective bargaining for companies with over 250 employees.

Story continues

Loud boos, cheers and heckling have characterised many of the debates between Corbyn and Smith while local party meetings have been suspended during the contest over allegations of intimidation levelled against Corbyn's supporters.

- Membership surge -

An estimated 640,000 people will be able to vote in the contest. Membership of Labour has surged since Corbyn became leader, with the party now Britain's biggest by far.

However, he received a setback earlier this month when a court ruled that 130,000 new party members who joined in the six months up to July 12 could not vote.

Khan also delivered a blow on Sunday by declaring his support for Smith.

"Jeremy's personal ratings are the worst of any opposition leader on record and the Labour party is suffering badly as a result," Khan wrote in the Observer newspaper.

"Jeremy has already proved that he is unable to organise an effective team and has failed to win the trust and respect of the British people," he added.

A YouGov poll conducted last week gave the ruling Conservatives 38 percent support among voters compared to 30 percent for Labour and 13 percent for the anti-EU UK Independence Party.

Corbyn was seen as the best person to be prime minister by only 19 percent, compared to 51 percent for the incumbent, Theresa May.

Backing Smith, Dugdale wrote in the Scottish newspaper the Daily Record: "We can't pin our hopes on a leadership who speak only to the converted, rather than speaking to the country as a whole."

While May, who became premier in July after David Cameron quit following the Brexit vote, has ruled out an election soon, many commentators believe a snap poll could still be possible.

The Labour result is to be announced on September 24 at a special conference in Liverpool, northwest England.
Warner/Chappell Music has signed an impressive group of Latin urban artists/songwriters to its roster.

They include Cuban urban star Jacob Forever, known for his hit "Hasta que se seque el malecon" ('Til the Boardwalk Dries Up) and Alejandro Ramirez Suarez (better known as Sky) and Rene David Cano Rios (aka Bull Nene), the songwriting/production team behind many of J Balvin's greatest hits.

"In all these cases, our modus operandi is trying to get into these deals as early as possible," said Gustavo Menendez, EVP/GM U.S. Latin and Latin America, noting that this will be Sky and Bull Nene's first major publishing agreement.

The two, who often work together, have crafted hits with J Balvin for several years now. Both co-wrote "Ay Vamos," "Bobo" and "Ginza" with Balvin, among other songs, and Sky also produced the tracks. All three tracks are major international hits; the official video for "Ay vamos" has close to 1 billion views on Youtube, for example, and "Ginza" has over 600 million views.

In addition, Sky and Bull Nene are working on new music with Juanes, and Bull Nene also co-wrote Maluma's hit "Borro Casette."

"When I heard their new music, I realized they're not only urban songwriters," said Menendez.

Previous to their Warner/Chappell deal, which includes both their catalog and upcoming new tracks, Sky and Bull Nene had negotiated individual deals with independent publishers. Now, Sky signed a co-publishing deal and Bull Nene is signed to an admin deal.

On his end, Jacob Forever, who was formerly part of Gente De Zona, is part of the new urban Cuban movement that is finally seeing life outside the island.

"We knew he was pumping out album after album since leaving Gente de Zona, and that he was working on a new one," said Lazaro Hernandez, Warner/Chappell's Sr. manager of A&R for U.S. Latin and Latin America.

"It took us one listen of 'Hasta Que Se Seque El Malecon' last December to know we had to sign him," adds Hernandez, noting Warner/Chappell was the first publisher to officially reach out.

In recent weeks, Warner/Chappell has also reached deals with Mauricio Rengifo, one half of pop/urban duo Cali y El Danee and who's written and produced for Thalia and Luis Fonsi, among others, and with Silverio Lozada and Patrick Ingunza, co-writers of "Duele el corazon." The Enrique Iglesias hit featuting Wisin is currently at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart.
A group of four vandals pushed three crocodiles through a broken window into a school office in Australia on Sunday, and now face a fine almost $40,000 for animal cruelty.

Security camera footage shows three saltwater crocodiles, with the largest about 6 ft. long, being propelled through a flap in the the office door window at Taminmin College in the northern town of Humpty Doo. The group of people, who appear to have their shirts wrapped around their heads, proceed to trash the office quickly before fleeing.

Wildlife rangers rescued the three crocodiles from the office and David Gregory, Senior Constable for the Northern Territory Police, said the animals were found with their mouths taped and not in great shape.

They havent seen water for a long time and are undernourished, Gregory said.

Its unclear where the crocodiles came from and what motivated the vandals to drop them into a school office over the weekend, but rangers suspect they originated from a nearby crocodile farm. One ranger said they may have to be put down upon their return, the Australian AP reports.

Watch the footage above to see the strange crime take place.

[BBC]
A waterspout was spotted over Chesapeake Bay on Sunday, August 21, as seen in this video shot near Downs Bay in Pasadena, Maryland. According to reports citing local sources, the waterspout formed around 3pm.

A waterspout was also reported over Lake Erie on Sunday. Credit: Facebook/Maria Beam Gray
Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - The International Weightlifting Federation may need a painkiller to get over the next few months as it moves to ban several countries over doping and tries to change a culture of drug taking.

Weightlifting has long been afflicted by high-profile positive tests for illegal substances and one medallist from the Rio Olympics has already been stripped of his podium finish for doping.

Kyrgyzstan's Izzat Artykov won bronze in the 69kg contest but later tested positive for the stimulant strychnine, becoming the first Olympian from the Brazil Games to have a medal revoked.

He claimed that a rival competitor had spiked his drink and said he would appeal the decision but the ruling meant that the weightlifting competition ended under a familiar doping cloud.

Eleven weightlifters who previously served doping bans, including three gold medallists, won medals at Rio, while four others were sent home for failed tests before they were due to compete.

Another, a Mongolian weightlifter who didn't threaten the podium, also failed a dope test, the Court of Arbitration for Sport announced on Sunday.

The IWF is cracking down on doping. In June, it adopted a resolution that said any country which returns three or more positive drugs tests from the reanalysis of samples from the last two Olympics would be suspended for a year.

The governing body plans to ban Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and several other nations for 12 months from around September or October for doping violations stemming from the 2008 and 2012 Games.

"We had to react. It will be very painful for me to suspend some countries but we will do this," IWF president Tamas Ajan told AFP in an interview last week.

"We wish weightlifting to be a clean sport and there's only one way. We have to ban all the countries which violate our rules," he added.

Ajan said the suspensions would be just "the start", but added that there was a twin approach to the problem that included educating as well as punishing countries and athletes.

Story continues

"Not only do we suspend countries but we also organise many anti-doping seminars to help them. We give assistance so they can change completely," he explained.

Ajan has a fight on his hands however.

"Unfortunately there are some countries who use forbidden substances as a part of their training programme," he said, pointing the finger at some former Soviet republics.

By the time Tokyo 2020 comes around the IWF doesn't want to be in a situation similar to the one it's in now where medallists are being retrospectively stripped of medals following reanalysis of samples.

"Improved laboratory techniques have created a situation where the sport can get cleaner and cleaner," said Ajan.

"The next two years are a very, very sensitive period," he added.
LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - West Ham defender Reece Burke signed a new four-year contract on Monday, tying him to the Premier League club until 2020. The 19-year-old centre back spent last season on loan at Bradford City but is hoping to play in Thursday's Europa League play-off round, second-leg match against Romania's FC Astra, having played in the away leg earlier this month. "I'm hoping to be involved and if Slaven (Bilic, the manager) asks me to do a job anywhere on the pitch I'll definitely be up for it," Burke told West Ham's website (www.whufc.com). "The club has a few centre-halves this season so there's a lot of competition there. If he asks me, I'm just going to say 'Yes'." (Reporting by Simon Cambers; Editing by Clare Fallon)
EXCLUSIVE: With Season 2 of Underground about to go into production, WGN America and Get Lifted Film Co. are deepening their relationship on American hidden history with another series. The company run by John Legend, Mike Jackson and Ty Stiklorious has inked a deal for early development on Black Wall Street, Ive learned. Added to the mix is Get Lifted alum and Obamas first-date pic Southside with You actress-producer Tika Sumpter as an exec producer.

With additional time to get the deal in place for the WME-repped The Haves and the Have Nots star Sumpter in place, the overall agreement about the project focusing on what became one of the largest mass killings of African-Americans in the nations history came together pretty quickly, Ive heard. It makes perfect sense as the critically acclaimed Underground, created by Misha Green and Joe Pokaski, has become WGNs most-watched original series ever.

WGN America's "Underground" World Premiere

Were so excited to continue to grow our relationship with WGN America, Get Lifteds Jackson told Deadline today. Our experience working with them on Underground has been fantastic. Additionally, were looking forward to working with our friend Tika Sumpter to help tell this incredible story that many people know nothing about.

Essence Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon, Los Angeles, America - 25 Feb 2016

Set in Tulsa, OK, in the opening decades of the 20th century, Black Wall Street examines the strong middle-class African-American community that built up in the divided city. Owning businesses and employing many whites in the segregated state, the Greenwood area of Tulsa was a haven for black professionals and raised capital for its own entrepreneurs and ventures. In May 1921, several white attackers burned the neighborhood in a two-day rampage that saw 300 die and the community devastated and largely forgotten for decades.

After several books about the massacre and lobbying by descendants, the Oklahoma Legislature passed the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Reconciliation Act in 2001, providing scholarships and creating a memorial to the victims that was dedicated in 2010.

Story continues

Early in the development stage, Black Wall Street could debut in 2018 if picked up to series. Renewed in April, Season 2 of Underground will debut next year.

Related stories

Hulu Acquires 'Community' Final Season, 'Underground' & 'Outsiders'

Martin Donovan Cast In 'Roadside Picnic' WGN America Pilot Based On Sci-Fi Novel

TCA Panel On Diversity: "You Have To Be Part Of The Solution"
HP Inc. HPQ is set to report third-quarter 2016 results on Aug 24. Last quarter, the company posted a positive earnings surprise of 5.1%. Let's see how things are shaping up for this announcement.



Factors to Consider



HP reported mixed results for the second-quarter of fiscal 2016, wherein earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate but revenues lagged the same. The year-over-year top-line comparison was unfavorable as well. HPs top-line performance was hurt primarily by a persistent decline in PC shipments and tepid IT spending.



The persistent decline in PC shipments is a substantial headwind for HP. As the PC business generates over 60% of its total revenue, the reduction in business volume at the segment is a concern. The company is also witnessing a secular decline in this segment due to the ongoing shift toward tablets and smartphones, a space in which it is yet to gain a foothold.



It is worth mentioning that the company recently entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Customer Communications Management (CCM) assets to Open Text Corporation, a Canada-based business software maker. We believe that HPs latest asset divestment is a part of the companys restructuring plan. The move will help the company to realign its businesses and focus better on the PC and printing businesses.



However, macroeconomic challenges and tepid IT spending remain near-term concerns. Competition from International Business Machines IBM and Accenture add to its woes.



HP INC Price and EPS Surprise

HP INC Price and EPS Surprise | HP INC Quote

Earnings Whispers?



Our proven model does not conclusively show that HP is likely to beat earnings this quarter. A stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) to surpass earnings estimates. However, that is not the case here due to the following factors:



Zacks ESP: HPs ESP is 0.00% since both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate stand at 45 cents.



Zacks Rank: HPs Zacks Rank #3 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.



Stocks to Consider



Here are some companies, which you may want to consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:



Broadcom Limited AVGO, with an Earnings ESP of +0.87% and a Zacks Rank #3



Movado Group, Inc. MOV, with an Earnings ESP of +6.45% 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



HP INC (HPQ): Free Stock Analysis Report



INTL BUS MACH (IBM): Free Stock Analysis Report



BROADCOM LTD (AVGO): Free Stock Analysis Report



MOVADO GRP INC (MOV): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Ireland-based medical device major Medtronic plc MDT is slated to report its first-quarter fiscal 2017 earnings on Aug 25, before the opening bell.

Last quarter, the company delivered earnings of $1.27 per share, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a penny. In fact, Medtronics earnings have outpaced the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three out of the past four quarters, with an average beat of 1.2%. Lets see how things are shaping up prior to this announcement.

Factors at Play

Despite the fact that Medtronic continues to be plagued by strong foreign exchange headwinds, the companys robust operations indicate a brighter start to fiscal 2017.

The company, in its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call, noted that revenue growth for the first quarter will remain at the lower half of its annual revenue outlook range of 5% to 6% at CER on a constant week basis. First quarter earnings per share on a constant week basis should remain around the upper end of the companys annual earnings per share growth guidance range of 12% to 16%.

MEDTRONIC Price and EPS Surprise

MEDTRONIC Price and EPS Surprise | MEDTRONIC Quote

Operating margin is also anticipated to continue the uptrend witnessed through 2016. While Covidien synergy is estimated to decelerate a bit, the operating leverage from the rest of the business is expected to be exceptionally well.

We are optimistic on this balanced growth performance across all the business groups of Medtronic, and expect the same to be exhibited in the first quarter itself. We also anticipate Medtronic to witness strong share gains from the flow of recent product launches, which should also get reflected in the first quarter performance.

Within the Minimally Invasive Technologies Group (MITG), Medtronic continues to grow through tuck-in acquisitions. In addition to Bellco, in May, the business acquired Smith & Nephews highly profitable and fast growing gynecology business including a minimally invasive surgical solution. We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Medtronics surgical solutions segment within MITG from the beginning of 2017.

Story continues

However, the companys prediction on the impact of currency movement continues to pose a threat.

According to Medtronic, negative impact from foreign currency translation in the first quarter is expected to the tune of approximately $25 to $75 million based on current exchange rates on revenues.

Over the past few quarters, Medtronics core Spine revenues have been a major disappointment, persistently underperforming the broader market growth. Although, of late the company witnessed growth in international Core Spine and U.S. BMP, severe weakness in U.S. Core Spine continues to act as a dampener.

However, with the recent realignment of RTG commercial sales management, the implementation of the surgical synergy programs and the numerous recent and upcoming product launches, Medtronic strongly anticipates a change of trend in the U.S. core Spine performance down the line.

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not conclusively show that Medtronic 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 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. That is not the case here as you will see below.

Zacks ESP: Medtronic has an Earnings ESP of 0.00%. That is because both the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate are pegged at $1.01.

Zacks Rank: Medtronic has a Zacks Rank #3 which increases the predictive power of ESP. However, a 0.00% ESP makes surprise prediction difficult.

Note that 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 to Consider

Here are some companies you may want to consider as our model shows these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter:

The Bank of Nova Scotia BNS, with an Earnings ESP of +1.75% and a Zacks Rank #2.

Dollar Tree, Inc. DLTR, with an Earnings ESP of +4.11% and a Zacks Rank #2.

The Cooper Companies Inc. COO, with an Earnings ESP of +0.44% 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



BANK OF NOVA SC (BNS): Free Stock Analysis Report



MEDTRONIC (MDT): Free Stock Analysis Report



COOPER COS (COO): Free Stock Analysis Report



DOLLAR TREE INC (DLTR): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
We cant believe its been a year since Nadiya Hussain was crowned the 2015 Great British Bake Off champ. Since winning the BBC series Nadiyas career has skyrocketed, with book deals and TV appearances.

She even landed the gig of baking the Queens 90th birthday cake. What an honour.

So youd think that her trophy for winning the popular baking contest would be sitting pride of place in her house? Wrong!

Credit:BBC



The mum-of three has admitted her trophy is still in its box and has been for the past year.

As she has struggled to find a place in her Buckingham home worthy of such an award, Nadiya, 31, said: Its in a box in the conservatory, it has been almost a year and I still havent found a place for it.



And to make matters worse, Nadiyas hunky husband Abdal, 34, often pranks her, by hiding her cherished trophy every now and again.



Nadiya said: [He] knows how much I love that trophy. Last week I packed it in a box, opened the box to check it was still there and hed moved it. He knew Id check that it wasnt broken.

Credit: Twitter/Abdal Hussain



Nadiya asked her husband of twelve years, who only met once before they wed: What have you done with my trophy?

He told her: 'I dont know what youre talking about.



She revealed: He moves it around on purpose.

Credit: Twitter/Abdal Hussain



Its been a whirlwind year for Nadiya, who balances her busy career around caring for her three children, Musa, nine, eight-year-old Dawud and Maryam, five.

She published her own cookbook entitled Nadiyas Kitchen earlier this summer and is back on our TV screens this week, fronting her own two-part BBC series Chronicles Of Nadiya, which sees the Luton-born baker exploring her familys roots in Bangladesh and visiting her familys village to dish out her delicious cakes.



Credit: BBC



Nadiya, a woman after our own heart!

Chronicles of Nadiya is on Wednesday, BBC1, 9pm


Value investing is always a very popular strategy, and for good reason. After all, who doesnt want to find stocks that have low PEs, solid outlooks, and decent dividends?

Fortunately for investors looking for this combination, we have identified a strong candidate which may be an impressive value; Alliance Resource Partners LP ARLP.

Alliance Resource Partners in Focus

ARLP may be an interesting play thanks to its forward PE of 7.82, its P/S ratio of 0.74, and its decent dividend yield of 8.9%. These factors suggest that Alliance Resource Partners is a pretty good value pick, as investors have to pay a relatively low level for each dollar of earnings, and that ARLP has decent revenue metrics to back up its earnings.

ALLIANCE RES PE Ratio (TTM)

ALLIANCE RES PE Ratio (TTM) | ALLIANCE RES Quote

But before you think that Alliance Resource Partners is just a pure value play, it is important to note that it has been seeing solid activity on the earnings estimate front as well. For current year earnings, the consensus has gone up by 20.8% in the past 30 days, thanks to 1 upward revision in the past one month compared to none lower.

This estimate strength is actually enough to push ARLP to a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), suggesting it is poised to outperform. So really, Alliance Resource Partners is looking great from a number of angles thanks to its PE below 20, a P/S ratio below one, and a strong Zacks Rank, meaning that this company could be a great choice for value investors at this time.

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



ALLIANCE RES (ARLP): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Value investing is always a very popular strategy, and for good reason. After all, who doesnt want to find stocks that have low PEs, solid outlooks, and decent dividends?

Fortunately for investors looking for this combination, we have identified a strong candidate which may be an impressive value; Hallador Energy Company HNRG.

Hallador Energy in Focus

HNRG may be an interesting play thanks to its forward PE of 10.32, its P/S ratio of 0.61, and its decent dividend yield 2.63%. These factors suggest that Hallador Energy is a pretty good value pick, as investors have to pay a rel atively low level for each dollar of earnings, and that HNRG has decent revenue metrics to back up its earnings.

HALLADOR ENERGY PE Ratio (TTM)

HALLADOR ENERGY PE Ratio (TTM) | HALLADOR ENERGY Quote

But before you think that Hallador Energy is just a pure value play, it is important to note that it has been seeing solid activity on the earnings estimate front as well. For current year earnings, the consensus has gone up by a significant margin in the past 30 days, thanks to 1 upward revision in the past one month compared to none lower.

This estimate strength is actually enough to push HNRG to a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), suggesting it is poised to outperform. So really, Hallador Energy is looking great from a number of angles thanks to its PE below 20, a P/S ratio below one, and a strong Zacks Rank, meaning that this company could be a great choice for value investors at this time.

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



HALLADOR ENERGY (HNRG): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Caracas (AFP) - The wife of jailed Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez said her husband had received a death threat from prison guards.

Lopez, one of leftist President Nicolas Maduro's most hardline opponents, was arrested in February 2014 amid a wave of anti-government protests that swept Venezuela and left 43 people dead. He is serving a 14-year sentence at a military prison.

According to Lopez's wife Lilian Tintori, a sergeant "said in front of other guards that Leopoldo needed to be killed and if they gave him the order, he would do it himself."

Lopez asked the man why he said that, "and the sergeant answered that he was only following orders from above," Tintori said in a video posted on her Twitter account.

Tintori said that she has asked for an "urgent" meeting with Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez to discuss "what is going on" at the Ramo Verde military prison on the outskirts of Caracas.

Lopez has repeatedly declared himself innocent of the crime for which he was convicted -- inciting violence at the 2014 anti-government protests.

The 45-year-old US-educated economist's sentence was upheld in the court of appeals on August 12.

The sentence, handed down after a closed-door trial, was strongly condemned by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union.

Once-booming Venezuela, home to the world's largest oil reserves, is gripped by a recession that has contributed to severe shortages of food, medicine and basic goods that have triggered violence and looting.

The opposition is trying to force a referendum to recall Maduro from office, blaming him for the crisis and mishandling the state-led economy.
WME has acquired the well-regarded boutique lit agency Rabineau Wachter Sanford & Gillett (RWSG) Literary Agency. The agency, run by Sylvie Rabineau and Jill Holwager Gillett, has been a wellspring of tasteful material that formed the basis for the upcoming films The Girl On The Train, The Snowman, Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid and such TV projects as The Leftovers, Olive Kitteridge, and the upcoming Berlin Station.

Rabineau (whose husband Steve recently joined the agency as a partner after a run at UTA) and Gillett will become co-heads of WMEs Book to Film/TV division. RWSGs Geoffrey Sanford becomes an agent repping his list of authors. Liza Wachter will exit to pursue various philanthropic and producing projects, per WME.

This acquisition builds upon WMEs commitment to great storytelling and our love of books. With Sylvie and Jill at the helm, we are thrilled to extend our great resources to embrace the co-agent community, said WMEs Head of Books Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. Sylvie and Jill are responsible for bringing some of the most iconic projects to the screen and we cant wait to have them bring their vision, strategic thinking and expertise to WME.

Rabineau and Gillett, in a joint statement, said, By joining WME, we are excited to continue working with storytellers across all media and having the exceptional resources, expertise and support of such an innovative and dynamic company.

Related stories

'The Departed' TV Series Based On Oscar-Winning Movie In Works At Amazon

'La La Land' Trailer: It's Emma Stone's Turn To Sing

'Narcos': New Season 2 Trailer & Key Art Unveiled
A young woman plunged to her death last week after reportedly tripped over her own flip-flops while trying to take a photo of the Southern California shoreline.

Authorities say Lorena Barrera was in the San Pedro area of Los Angeles Friday when she reportedly climbed a three-foot wall that keeps visitors back from the precipice.

While making her way to the cliffside, authorities believe the 21-year-old tripped over her flip-flops before tumbling 100-feet to her death, KCBS reports.

Watch: Woman Once Suspected Of Killing Her Identical Twin Sister Is Now Busted for DWI

Barrera's body was discovered at the bottom by the Los Angeles Fire Department. The LAFD told reporters that Barrera's friends made an effort to save her but lost her their grip.

Her family has created a GoFundMe page to pay tribute to a woman they called a "Beloved Daughter, Sister, Auntie and Exceptional Friend."

Read: Missing Professor Was Pushed Off Cliff Into 80-Foot Quarry: Cops

"She passed over in such an unexpected and horrific way. Lorena was visiting her hometown of LA from Reno Nevada," wrote Luz Dorantes. "She was Life! In that one word the Most Lively Positive vibrant and Shinning Being .Always lend a helping hand and words of encouragement to anyone in need."

Dorantes said she hopes the GoFundMe campaign will help Barrera get the goodbye she and her loved ones deserve.

"Wana [sic] be able to send the Body back to her Loved ones...please help us MAKE THIS HAPPEN!!!!AND GIVE HER A PROPER GOODBYE!!!"

Watch: One Wild Ride: Texas Man in Good Spirits After Falling Off Water Slide and Into Rocky Cliff

Related Articles:
Zhangjiajie bridge

Across Chinas Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon, 980 feet above the floor of the deep, tree-lined chasm, stretches a terrifying new glass-bottomed bridge.

The Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge opened to the public on August 20th in the Hunan Province, and is now the tallest and longest glass bridge ever built. The walkway is more than 1400 feet long and 6 feet wide, and can accommodate 800 visitors at a time.

Designed by Israeli Architect Haim Dotam, the bridges floor is made of 99 panels of multilayered glass, allowing those who dare to cross the chance to see just how far above the ground they stand.

Zhangjiajie open

The Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge was designed to be invisible as possible  a white bridge disappearing into the clouds, Dotam said in a statement.

According to Chinas CCTV, the bridge cost $3.4 million to build. It was originally slated to open earlier this summer, but the date was pushed back to allow for more rigorous safety inspections.

In June, volunteers were invited to try to smash the glass panels with sledgehammers to demonstrate their strength and durability. Officials also drove a car across the bridge during the test ceremony.

Zhangjiajie test

The Zhangjiajie Bridge is the latest  and perhaps most impressive  in a series of glass walkways that have been constructed in China over the past couple of years. Earlier this summer, an 88-story glass skywalk debuted on the outside of Shanghais Jin Mao Tower, offering similar thrills.

In September 2015, the Brave Mans Bridge opened in Shiniuzhai National Geologic Park, also in the Hunan province. A glass walkway built into the side of the Henan provinces Yuntai Mountain debuted the same month, reaching a height of 3,500 feet in certain places. But a little over two weeks after it opened, cracks appeared on one layer of a glass panel, prompting the skywalk to close temporarily, according to CBS News. The extra safety tests on the Zhangjiajie Bridge were conducted to avoid a similar problem.

Story continues

Though the Zhangjiajie Bridge is now open to the public, construction is not entirely finished. By June 2017, courageous tourists will also be able to go bungee jumping off the side, in what will likely be the worlds highest bungee jump. Three enormous swings are also expected to dangle from the bridge, the biggest of which could be 500 feet long.

So if the thrill of crossing the worlds highest glass bridge doesnt get your heart pumping, just wait until next summer.

NOW WATCH: A couple got married dangling underneath a glass bridge above a 590-foot canyon





More From Business Insider


Xenetic Biosciences, Inc. XBIO announced that the FDA has accepted the companys Investigational New Drug (IND) application to initiate a phase II study on Virexxa (sodium cridanimod) in endometrial cancer.



The study will evaluate Virexxa, in conjunction with progestin therapy, for the treatment of endometrial cancer in women with recurrent or persistent disease who have failed progestin monotherapy.



The primary objective of the study is the assessment of anti-tumor activity of Virexxa, while secondary objectives include the evaluation of additional efficacy, pharmacokinetic and safety/tolerability parameters of the candidate.



Note that, Virexxa is currently being evaluated in phase II study in patients with documented evidence of progesterone receptor-negative endometrial cancer as determined by tumor biopsy. The candidate enjoys Orphan drug status in the U.S. for the treatment of progesterone receptor-negative endometrial cancer.

XENETIC BIOSCI Price

XENETIC BIOSCI Price | XENETIC BIOSCI Quote

We remind investors that in Nov 2015, Xenetic signed an Asset Purchase Agreement with Estonian biotech company, AS Kevelt and OJSC Pharmsynthez related to Virexxa. Under the terms of the agreement, the company received the worldwide rights to develop, market and license Virexxa for all uses, except for certain uses within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).



As per the companys press release, over 60,050 patients are diagnosed with endometrial cancer each year in the U.S. Moreover, about 10,470 deaths occur from the disease, representing about 1.8% of all cancer-related deaths in the U.S.



Investors looking for a well-placed stock in the health care sector may consider Actelion Ltd. ALIOF, Anika Therapeutics Inc. ANIK and ANI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ANIP. All of these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



ACTELION LTD (ALIOF): Free Stock Analysis Report



ANIKA THERAPEUT (ANIK): Free Stock Analysis Report



ANI PHARMACEUT (ANIP): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
By Gina Cherelus NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York City grand jury on Monday indicted a Brooklyn man who is accused of fatally shooting a Muslim cleric and his assistant this month after they left a mosque in Queens. Oscar Morel, 35, was charged with one count of first degree murder, two counts of second degree murder and two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, court documents showed. He has denied committing the killings. "The defendant's alleged actions strike at the very heart of our county's Muslim community," Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement on Monday. "Both victims were gentlemen of peace and their deaths are a devastating loss to their families and the community that they served." Imam Maulana Akonjee, 55, and Thara Uddin, 64, were gunned down after they left their mosque on Saturday, Aug. 13, in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens in an attack that shocked the area's largely Bangladeshi community. Authorities have said the gunman's motive remains unclear and the possibility it was a hate crime is being investigated. Morel, who has been held without bail since his initial court appearance last week, will be arraigned on the grand jury's indictment at a later date. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Akonjee, a father of seven, emigrated to the United States from Bangladesh several years ago. Community members who knew him well described the slain imam as a humble man who lived and breathed his religious faith. (Reporting by Gina Cherelus; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Dan Grebler)
Shaun and Mindy McKnight almost turned down the opportunity of a lifetime.



Mindy  one of the top 25 women and number one mom on YouTube with over 4.4 million subscribers  and her husband of 17 years, Shaun, knew they had something special going for their family when the video-sharing website contacted them just a few months after they uploaded their first hairstyle tutorials in 2009 and offered them to join the YouTube Partner revenue-sharing program  but they almost didn't accept the offer.



"Because the link in the invitation prompted us to include personal and banking information, we suspected the whole thing could be a phishing scam and nearly deleted the email," Shaun tells PEOPLE of his first impression on the program. "Weare certainly glad we didnat!"



Now the couple make enough off their social media empire to support their family of eight  but that didn't happen overnight.







"That first month we made about $7... just enough for a burrito," he jokes, "but we are better off financially than we were in Shaunas prior career, and the first four years of YouTube earnings went towards adopting our youngest two children, Daxton and Paisley."



Currently, Shaun and Mindy run their 16-year-old twin daughters' Brooklyn and Bailey's channel BrooklynAndBaily, their 13-year-old daughter Kamri's channel KamriNoel, the family dog Braidy's channel BraidyTheDog, a channel dedicated to young moms called MillennialMoms, a channel featuring seven sets of twins from around the world called Squared and the channel that started it all, CuteGirlsHairstyles.



"Many YouTuberas had recommended that we make the switch to full-time once our YouTube income exceeded Shaunas salary, [but] with a family of eight we had to be more careful," says Mindy. "September 2013 was the moment we made the switch to having Shaun help me full time."



"It wasnat an easy switch, because losing Shaunas guaranteed income was immediately felt, and we were really worried how long we could last," she adds. "That income going away incentivized us to work really hard in those next few months to replace that lost income."



And sometimes they have to step away from the camera to focus on their non-video endeavors.



"We are partners in a zippered-bedding company called Beddy's, a brand that merges a sleeping bag zipper with your bedding sheets/comforter to make kidsa bed making super quick and easy in the mornings, [and] we also co-founded CVX Live, the fastest-growing, family-focused online video convention, located in Salt Lake City," Mindy says about the other revenue streams they've taken advantage of. "We just finished our second event in March with over 7,000 attendees."



"Weave also partnered in a new YouTube channel called SuperHeroRealityTV, which amazingly reached 240 million views in May alone, after only three months of operation," she adds.



And they don't plan on stopping after they've conquered the digital space.



"Wead love to write a book," says Mindy. "Possibly in the parenting genre, given that we have learned a lot while raising six children."
A 4.1 magnitude earthquake struck South Korea's central county of Goesan on Saturday, the weather agency said, with no damage or casualties reported so far. The quake occurred i...

Flights from Seoul's Gimpo International Airport to Osaka and Taipei will resume later this week, the state-run airport operator here said Saturday, more than two years after the r...
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  August 22, 2016  Today, Zacks Equity Research discusses Industrial Metals, Part 2, including Ford Motor Co. (F), Alcoa (AA), Boeing Company (BA), Lockheed Martin Corp. ( LMT) and Embraer (ERJ).

Industry: Industrial Metals, Part 2

Link: https://www.zacks.com/commentary/88670/industrial-metals-good-bet-for-the-long-haul

Industrial metals are the building blocks of any economy. At present, even though global concerns have added an element of uncertainty to the outlook, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the space for the long term.

Here we discuss some of the key reasons and what investors in the industrial metals sector can look forward to in the coming months and years:

Strong Demand in Automotive & Aerospace

On the demand side, aluminum consumption is expected to improve on a global basis, spurred on by the automotive and packaging industries  the key end markets. The automobile market is becoming increasingly aluminum-intensive, given the metal's recyclability and light-weight properties. Automakers consumed a record amount of aluminum last year as plummeting prices and technological breakthroughs made it a viable alternative to steel.

The global push to improve fuel efficiency in vehicles is expected to more than double the demand for aluminum in the auto industry by 2025. In line with this, Alcoa has completed an expansion at its Tennessee facility dedicated to supplying aluminum sheet to automakers like Ford Motor Co. ( F).

The airline industry is also expected to boost demand for the metal. In Jan 2016, Alcoa (AA) clinched a long-term agreement from The Boeing Company ( BA) to supply multi-material aerospace parts, marking its fourth multi-year contract with the aerospace giant in a series of recent deals.

Moreover, in December last year, Boeing had awarded Alcoa two multi-year supply contracts worth more than $2.5 billion. The agreements built on Alcoa's 2014 aluminum sheet and plate deal with Boeing, with its worth being more than $1 billion. Alcoa also has big aerospace deals with Airbus and Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), both inked in Oct 2015. Recently, Alcoa landed a multi-year supply contract with Brazil-based leading commercial jets maker Embraer ( ERJ) worth around $470 million. The deal makes Alcoa the sole supplier for proprietary wing skins and fuselage sheet to Embraer.

Story continues

To capitalize on the lucrative aerospace market, Alcoa acquired RTI International, which broadened its titanium offerings and added advanced technologies and materials to its portfolio. Moreover, the buyout of UK-based leading jet engine components maker Firth Rixson has placed Alcoa to grab more opportunities in the growing aerospace market through a broad spectrum of high-growth, value-added jet engine components.

In addition, the acquisition of Tital, the Germany-based leading provider of titanium and aluminum structural castings, has strengthened Alcoas position to leverage growth in the commercial aerospace sector and, therefore, capture rising demand for advanced jet engine components made of titanium.

Improvement in Construction

The housing and construction sector is the largest consumer of steel today and, consequently, of iron ore. Building construction (pipes and wires) is also the largest market for copper. An uptrend has been noticed in real estate activity, like new home initiatives and construction spends, in the U.S. over the past few quarters. Long-stalled construction projects are being renewed. Requirement for emerging projects, such as education facilities and government buildings, is also creating demand in the sector.

In the long term, as the urban population increases worldwide, so will the need for steel increase in tandem with the need to build skyscrapers and public transport infrastructure. Emerging economies will also continue to be major demand drivers to support increasing urbanization and industrialization. Naturally, a rebound in construction bodes well for the iron ore and copper industries.

Pickup in Economic Activity to Drive Copper Demand

Copper is a major industrial metal playing a particularly important role in emerging countries. Given its varied applications, the trends in the copper market are often considered useful indicators of the state of the global economy.

Developments in the world economy are strongly correlated with movements in copper prices. Given that China accounts for the largest share of global copper consumption as well as its having a large share in the total production of pure copper, its no surprise that there is a strong correlation of the metal with Chinas ups and downs in economy. .

In the long run, expectations of a rising middle class in Asia, particularly in India and China, who will spend more on consumer goods such as air conditioners and refrigerators in the years to come, will spur demand for copper. Chinese demand for the metal will likely grow to comprise 46% of the worldwide copper consumption by 2018.

Rectifying the Aluminum Demand-Supply Imbalance

After aluminum prices bore the brunt of chronic surplus, the global aluminum industry underwent substantial changes to correct the supply-demand picture. This will eventually lead to firm prices. RUSAL is contemplating further aluminum production cuts totaling approximately 200,000 tons per annum. This came after a reduction of 316,000 tons in 2013, 256,000 tons in 2014 and 38,000 tons in the last quarter of 2015.

Likewise, Alcoa has undertaken a number of restructuring measures (including closure of smelters) over the past few years, apart from aggressively pursuing cost-cutting actions. In the first quarter, the new Alcoa closed 269,000 metric tons of smelting capacity at its Warrick smelter in Indiana, and in the second quarter, it completed the curtailment at its Point Comfort, TX facility.

As a result of these activities, the new Alcoa remains on track to meet or even exceed its 2016 goals of moving to the 38th percentile on the global aluminum cost curve and the 21st percentile on the global alumina cost curve.

For 2016, Alcoa projects a global aluminum deficit of approximately 775000 metric tons as 5% global demand growth outweighs the 2.5% improvement in global supply of the metal. RUSAL estimates a global aluminum market deficit of 1.2 million ton this year compared to a surplus of 0.6 million tons in 2015.

India to Be a Growth Driver

As per the World Steel Association, Indias prospects look bright due to low oil prices, the reform momentum and favorable policies to improve infrastructure and manufacturing output. The sub-continent expects steel demand to increase 5.4% in 2016 as well as in 2017, reaching a peak of 88.3 Mt in 2017.

Also, IMF projects Indias GDP growth to rise to 7.5% this year, above last years already robust growth rate of 7.3%. Given that India's consumption of metals has almost doubled over the past 20 years, it will be a major consumer in the years to come.

Bottom Line

As you can see, there is no reason for not being optimistic about the industrial metals industry over the long haul. But what about investing in the space right now?

Check out our latest Industrial Metals Outlook here for more on the current state of affairs in this market from an earnings perspective, and how the trend is shaping up for this sector going forward.

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 >>

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/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/performance

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



FORD MOTOR CO (F): Free Stock Analysis Report



ALCOA INC (AA): Free Stock Analysis Report



BOEING CO (BA): Free Stock Analysis Report



LOCKHEED MARTIN (LMT): Free Stock Analysis Report



EMBRAER AIR-ADR (ERJ): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
Aug 21 (Reuters) - Animal health company Zoetis Inc said Paul Herendeen resigned as its chief financial officer (CFO) and the company promoted Glenn David as its new CFO.

Zoetis said Herendeen left the company effective Aug. 18 to accept the position of CFO at another public company.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc is expected to announce it has hired Herendeen as its new CFO, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday citing sources.

David is currently senior vice president of finance operations at Zoetis.

Zoetis, which was spun off from Pfizer in 2013, is engaged in the discovery, development, manufacture and marketing of animal health medicines and vaccines, with a focus on both livestock and companion animals.

(Reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)
Google is bringing its new version of Android to certain Nexus devices starting Monday, the company just announced.

Developers have been able to use an early version of the software since March. But over the coming weeks, the final iteration of Android 7.0 Nougat will be making its way to the Nexus 6, Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, Nexus 9, Nexus Player, Pixel C, and General Mobile 4G, which is part of Googles Android One program. Any device enrolled in the Android Beta Program will also get the update, while LGs V20 will be the first phone to come with the software out of the box when it debuts later this year.

Android 7.0 Nougat brings several upgrades to Googles mobile software, including 72 new emoji characters, the ability to open more than one app at the same time in separate windows, and support for Googles mobile virtual reality platform, called Daydream, among other additions. Google says there are 250 new features in total.

Google doesnt typically allow developers to access the beta version of its new Android software so far ahead of its release. This year, however, the company gave app makers a longer lead time so they could optimize their software for the new platform closer to its official launch.

Because Android is open source and available across a wide range of products made by different manufacturers, the wait for a new software update can sometimes take months depending on which phone you own. When Google releases a new version of Android, it must be approved, and, in some cases, modified by handset manufacturers and carriers before it arrives on your phone. This is why updates dont reach all Android devices at the same time, as Apples iOS updates typically do for iPhones. The fact that Google has granted earlier access than usual to its beta program this year suggests its trying to expedite the rollout process moving forward.
Googles Android 7.0 Nougat is available today

Google is finally rolling out the latest version of the worlds most popular mobile operating system: Android 7.0 Nougat. Available Monday as an update for Googles Nexus devices, Android Nougat includes more than 250 improvements to the companys OS.

Nougats biggest features include updates to the Quick Settings menu, new emojis, multitasking, battery management improvements and the release of Googles DayDream mobile virtual reality platform.

The subtlest, but most welcome, change to Android N is its new Quick Settings menu. Rather than having to swipe down on the notifications shade twice to get access to your quick settings like Wi-Fi, GPS and the flashlight, you now only have to swipe down once. That seems like a small change, but its certainly welcome considering Android handset makers like Samsung, LG and HTC have been including the feature for some time now.

Android Nougats new quick settings menu

Youll also now be able to reply directly to messages from the notifications shade without having to open any corresponding apps. Because if youre going to hit someone with a snappy comeback, you want to make sure you send it before you forget it.

And since it seems like 99.99% of the population has given up on the written word in favor of emojis anyway, Google is bringing a whole slew of updates for its mini works of art to Nougat. Some 72 new emojis will make their Android debut when the OS is released, including a more ethnically diverse cast of male and female characters for your texts and Hangouts messages.

Android Nougats new emojis

Multitasking is also coming to Android 7.0 in the form of split-screen apps. That means youll be able to do things like watch your favorite YouTube streamer and send out texts messages or browse Chrome and check Gmail from the same screen. While this feature isnt likely to be too useful on most smartphones, it will certainly come in handy on larger tablets.

Battery life in Android Nougat also gets an update via a new feature that automatically puts your phone into low-power mode when it detects that its in your pocket or bag while on the move.

Story continues

Android Nougat gets a splitscreen option

And then theres Googles ambitious DayDream virtual reality platform. The software will work with Googles upcoming virtual reality headset and work with apps and games from the likes of Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft. The software will also integrate with Googles own Google Play Movies, Google Photos and YouTube.

Heres where we get to bad news. Like every version of Android, Nougat will only be begin rolling out as an over-the-air update for Googles Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, Nexus 6P, Nexus 9, Nexus Player and Pixel C devices as soon as the company flips the switch today. Since the update will be seeded slowly it could take a few weeks until everyone with a Nexus device can download it.

Unfortunately, if youve got an Android device made by one of the many companies that modify the operating system for their own needs, such as Samsung, LG, HTC and Sony, youre going to have to wait for them to release their own version of Nougat. And that can take quite some time. Then youll have to wait even longer for your carrier to approve those companies versions of Android. After all of that, youll finally get your hands on Nougat. So yeah, it might be a while.

More from Dan:

Email Dan Howley at dhowley@yahoo-inc.com; follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
Samsung has decided to retire its web radio service Milk Music in the United States, nearly five months after doing the same in Australia. In a statement on its website, the company said it would instead focus on making its popular Galaxy smartphones a better home for third-party music streaming services.

"We have made the strategic decision to invest in a partner model focused on seamlessly integrating the best music services available today into our family of Galaxy devices," the statement said. "We believe that working with partners will accelerate innovation, enhance device sales and provide amazing new experiences for our customers."

Milk Music launched in 2014 and was aimed at giving Galaxy users a digital radio option outside of Pandora. A premium version of Milk Music, which removed ads and allowed for unlimited skips, cost $3.99 per month, the same as Pandora One.

A service announcement posted to milk.samsung.com said technical support for Milk would end on Sept. 22 and encouraged users to sign up for two free weeks of Slacker Radio, which has always powered Milk. The core functionality of Milk Music's web client -- creating free stations based on an artist or song -- continues to work.

Though it has exited the world's largest market, Samsung is not ready to abandon Milk Music altogether. When contacted by Billboard, a Samsung rep said that Milk continues to operate in China, Malaysia and South Korea. The service was live in Australia for just over a year before it was nixed in March.

This article was updated with information about other markets where Milk Music continues to operate.
The hottest news last week came out of the Intel INTC Developer Forum (IDF) 2016. But Facebooks FB decision to open source its artificial intelligence (A.I.) research, Alphabets GOOGL Duo and Oracle ORCL asking for a retrial in its case against Alphabet over Java also made headlines.

Here are the top stories-

Intel Developer Forum

This was a mega event where Intel talked about everything but PCs. Well, almost. The company seems to think that the next big thing driving chip growth for PCs is VR capabilities (since its a computationally intensive exercise, its a good way to sell its chips).

To that end, it announced Project Alloy, a reference design for cordless headgear that merges the AR and VR worlds and runs on Microsofts MSFT Windows Holographic OS. Alloys design will be open sourced sometime next year when Holographic will also be offered to all Windows PCs.

Intel didnt say how this will impact its processor business (specs werent revealed) but we do know that the device uses a couple of its Real Sense 3D cameras. So the plan seems to be to push Intel-powered and Microsoft run PC like devices at around when VR goes mainstream. Classic Wintel.

Intel did say however that Kaby Lake (Core i7-7700K enabling up to 4.5 GHz clock speed) would have the power to support 4K video and that the first laptops with Kaby Lake would ship in the fall with PCs getting the chips next year. The claim is that with integrated graphics in Kaby lake a discrete specialized GPU like the ones sold by NVIDIA NVDA or AMD wont be necessary any more.

But AMD had a few things to say about processor speed as well. The company displayed its upcoming 8-core Zen chip, comparing it with Intels 8-core i7 6900K at 3GHz clock speeds. The demo showed that the AMD chip was a tad faster than Intels currently available lineup.

Not to be left out of any major new chip development, Intel announced Knights Mill to target the A.I. segment. Lots have been said about A.I. already, especially that it uses neural networks resembling the way the human brain processes information. The Xeon Phi chip, which is not a successor to the current generation Phi but a different grade, offers low-precision calculations that work well when used together to make decisions in neural networks.

Story continues

On the memory side, Intel said it was working on DDR5 for a 2020 launch. Initial specs could be available later this year. Intel expects it to be denser and more energy efficient than DRAM (though DRAM will most certainly also evolve!). At any rate, battery life is set to increase. On the 3D XPoint front, Intel said its Optane chips will ship next year (as will Microns version). For now, its making the technology available for testing through the cloud because enterprise users typically try and test things before implementation. ScaleMP, which offers virtualization solutions for HPC applications, also announced that it will be using some Optanes to run its virtual machines. This is the first step toward creating flash-based DRAM alternatives for the cloud.

Intel also has plans for the self-driving car segment and announced a partnership with Baidu to further these plans.

For the maker community, it announced Joule, a maker board for robots, drones, smart devices, and wearables that comes packed with 802.11ac connectivity, DDR4 memory, 4K capable graphics, a 64-bit quad-core Atom processor and support for Intels RealSense 3D camera. There was also the Euclid computer for robots and Aero development kit for drones.

To wrap up with the bombshell, Intel said it would license ARM designs and manufacture at its leading edge foundries and it even has a partner in LG. And pigs fly!

Facebook Open Sourcing AI-Based Language Research

Facebook AI Research (FAIR) lab is open sourcing its fastText bot-building AI library in the hopes of attracting more developers to its platform and thereby speeding up its development. This is something like an advanced auto-text corrector (which most people know is often incorrect and usually irritating). Facebook says that a compiler with good C++11 support can now be used to access fastText on Github. It talked up its tech saying that it can train bot models on more than a billion words in less than 10 minutes using a standard multi-core CPU. It also has a rather interesting feature: breaking words down into root words, suffixes and prefixes so they are better understood by computers.

Google Duo

Google wants to get into easy communication with video calling and text messaging, so it has been working on Duo and Allo to meet these two needs, respectively. Last week, the company launched Duo that is a free app enabling you to connect with friends and family as long as they have an Android or iOS phone number.

Since this is the umpteenth messaging app out there, it probably wont stir up much excitement. But Duo could still gather some momentum because the thing has been designed with a slower Internet connection in mind. So it could gain momentum in developing countries where smartphone penetration is still low and where Android phones continue to sell well. Of course Facebooks WhatsApp and Messenger have picked up strongly across developed and developing markets and video calling on WhatsApp is just around the corner.

Oracle Wants Re-Trial In Google Case

Oracle lost the retrial of its case against Alphabet when the jury decided that the companys use of Java API code should be considered fair use. But last week, Oracle lawyers made a fresh appeal saying that Google withheld key information. One of the defenses Google took in the retrial was that it had used the desktop version of Java while Android was used in mobile devices. Oracle says that the recent launch of Google Play on Chrome therefore renders this defense groundless. They therefore think another retrial is justified so the jury can have access to this information.

Googles response was that during discovery Oracle had asked for and received information about App Runtime for Chrome (ARC), so Oracle could have pursued the matter then. And the update ARC++ was still in the works at the time, so wasnt mentioned, especially since it was beyond the scope of the trial.

The judge told Google "If I had been in your position, I would have disclosed." But he also questioned Oracles asking for a retrial because it didnt use the information available to influence this jury and was asking for another hearing. He will rule on the new angle in writing. For more details read: Why Google Needs To Win The Android Case Against Oracle

Sector Price Index

Sector Price Index

Company Last Week Last 6 Months AAPL +1.09% +13.86% FB -1.06% +21.12% GOOGL -0.92% +13.11% MSFT -0.55% +14.09% INTC +1.94% +23.03% CSCO -1.12% +21.55% AMZN -1.97% +49.35%

Other stories you might have missed-

Corporate

Apple R&D Center in China: In line with standard policy to sweeten the companys position in emerging economies, Apple AAPL is reportedly looking to build an R&D center in China before year-end. iPhone sales in China have plummeted and reduced the companys market share. At the same time, China has put regulations on iTunes and iBooks to further squeeze sales. Apple has to get cracking with government appeasement and this seems to be the result of Tim Cooks two visits to China in the last four months.

Cisco Layoff: Along with its strong earnings results, Cisco said that it would reduce its headcount by 5,500 or 7%. The changing market conditions favoring software and standard hardware instead of specialized hardware has led to changing focus at the company, which necessitated an adjustment in its human resources.

Cisco expects to pay $700 million in severance and termination benefits but didnt say when most of the expense would hit results. The company generally reduces jobs over a period of time. Also, since resources will be redirected into new efforts, its also possible that the net decline in employees wont be as big.

Twitter to Join Apple TV?: Twitter shares jumped on this unconfirmed rumor because sentiments are high following the many video deals it has been ratcheting up recently.

Legal/Regulatory

Aussie Ruling Favors Apple Pay: Australias anti-competitive regulator has turned down a request by the countrys three biggest banks to collectively negotiate with Apple to allow their payment software on Apple devices. Apple blocks third-party payment apps from iPhone unless they sign up for Apple Pay (keeping a nice fat cut for itself). Australia and New Zealand Bank has finally agreed to sign up for Apple Pay while the National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Westpac Banking Corp continue to negotiate with Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

Googles Russia Problems Continue: Google failed to come to an out-of-court settlement with Russia's state anti-monopoly watchdog FAS over the preloading of its apps into Android phones and also preventing the preloading of Yandex. This means that it is now required to pay the fine of 438 million rubles ($6.85 million) for abuse of its dominant position in the segment.

Googles Anti-trust Scrutiny in South Korea: The problem is South Korea seems to be the same. Despite being cleared in a 2013 investigation, the countrys Fair Trade Commission is now objecting to the pre-loading of Google apps on Android phones.

New Technology/Products

Advertising on Facebook Messenger: Last week, Facebook made changes to its subscriber policies that will allow brands to start interacting with its billion+ subscribers. For user-generated messages such as customer service queries, the brands chatbot has 24 hours to reply. Companies that are already using Messenger have three months to convert their bots to standard messaging in accordance with the new rules. New companies have to submit plans about how their bots will function in the next six months.

Instagram Gets Even Better: The 500 million users of Facebooks Instagram are in for a treat. The company has just announced an events channel in the Explore tab that will feature personalized videos from concerts, sporting events and more. Its currently available in the U.S. alone but is expected to reach other markets soon.

Amazon Free Series for YouTube: Amazon is determined to capture more Prime members. And if this means it has to give away something for free, it certainly hesitate. If it has to wrest share from companies like Netflix, it must do something radical. So thats what its doing. For the first time, the company has decided to give away some content to Facebook and YouTube. This includes two Golden Globe winners, primetime series "Transparent" and "Mozart in the Jungle," as well as the pilot of Emmy-nominated detective series "Bosch," and the highly popular, "The Man in the High Castle."

Pandora Shows Fruits of Next Big Sound Acquisition: Pandora used Next Big Sound technology to roll out three new charts: Trendsetters (most popular songs at a given time), Predictions (the numbers likely to be most popular in the future) and Top Spins (the songs that top Pandora charts). The charts are intended to help artists understand the trends and produce music that people want to listen to.

NVIDIA Chip

M&A and Collaborations

Amazons Twitch Makes Strategic Buy: Amazon has made another gaming purchase as it works steadily towards becoming a gaming heavy-weight. It has now added a company called Curse that allows conversation with other players over the Internet while playing. Its main products are Curse Voice, Curse Client and Gamepedia enabling editorial/video content production to gaming databases to game-mod management in addition to the on-game cursing!

Alibaba Partners with Ingenico: Alipay has scored a big win in Europe based on its popularity with Chinese customers. Around 10 million Chinese visited Europe in 2014, representing purchasing power of $21 billion, according to European payments processor Ingenico, which did more than 3.5 billion transactions itself last year. Since AliPay has 450 million users, the opportunity seems tremendous. Luckily for Alipay, Ingenico figured that this was too much opportunity to leave on the table.

IBM-Workday Have A Deal

Some Numbers

Apple Sales Decline at Target: Colin Gillis of BGC Partners discussed some negative numbers coming out of Target with CNBC. The retailer said that one major reason for Targets double-digit decline in electronics sales was a 20% decline in Apple products. While this is a small fraction of Apples sales, it is a disturbing trend, bringing back memories of its recent weakness in China. Particularly since the feature enhancements iPhone 7 is offering doesnt appear to have resonated with people.

Amazon Share Gains in IaaS: The latest data from Gartner shows that Amazon continues to lead the cloud infrastructure segment with a 31% share in the second quarter of 2016. Microsoft with 11%, IBM with 7% and Google with 5% are the next three major players. Microsoft has gained 2 points of market share while Google has gained 1 point since December 2015.

Some Companies That Reported Last Week: Cisco, NVIDIA, Analog Devices, Agilent, Applied Materials, NetApp

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



APPLE INC (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report



MICROSOFT CORP (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report



ORACLE CORP (ORCL): Free Stock Analysis Report



INTEL CORP (INTC): Free Stock Analysis Report



NVIDIA CORP (NVDA): Free Stock Analysis Report



FACEBOOK INC-A (FB): Free Stock Analysis Report



ALPHABET INC-A (GOOGL): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
On Jul 26, we issued an updated research report on Verizon Communications Inc. VZ. The company reported mixed financial numbers in the second quarter of 2016 wherein the top line missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate while the bottom line managed to beat the same.

Verizon is set for the initial deployment of 5G wireless networks in 2017. The company recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with SK Telecom Co. Ltd. SKM to merge their 5G technical specifications on a global basis.

The acquisition of Yahoos core assets will help Verizon become the third major player in the $187 billion digital advertising space, well behind market leaders Google and Facebook. Verizons Internet-based mobile video service Go90, targeting the young generation, has been increasingly gaining traction.

Additionally, the company is strengthening its foothold in the fleet management and telematics businesses post the acquisitions of Telogis Inc. and Fleetmatics Grp Plc. Verizon is also focusing on online content delivery, mobile video and online advertising for growth. These businesses have the potential to generate significant revenues for the company, given that its legacy telecom business is facing serious pricing competition.

The Risks

The U.S. wireless market is almost saturated. Tough competition from smaller competitors like T-Mobile US TMUS and Sprint Corp. S are increasing by the day. In the second quarter of 2016, Verizons postpaid wireless customer addition was down 45.8% year over year. Quarterly retail postpaid churn rate was 0.94% compared with 0.90% in the year-ago quarter whereas total retail churn rate was 1.19% against 1.18% in the year-ago quarter.

Meanwhile, spectrum crunch has become a major issue for the U.S. telecom industry. Also, Verizons Go90 app has recently disappointed audiences and advertisers. Moreover, in order to expand its customer base, Verizon continues to spend heavily on promotions and offers lucrative discounts which may further impact its EBITDA and EBITDA service margins at the wireless segment. The companys wireline division is also grappling with persistent losses in access lines due to competitive pressure from voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) service providers and aggressive triple-play (voice, data, video) offerings by cable companies.

Story continues

Verizon currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

VERIZON COMM Price

VERIZON COMM Price | VERIZON COMM 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



SPRINT CORP (S): Free Stock Analysis Report



VERIZON COMM (VZ): Free Stock Analysis Report



SK TELECOM CO (SKM): Free Stock Analysis Report



T-MOBILE US INC (TMUS): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Over the weekend, we saw the first leaked images of the upcoming "PS4 Slim"  a slimmer PlayStation 4 console that is expected to be unveiled alongside the PS4 Neo at Sony's PlayStation Meeting in New York next month.

The leak was about as convincing as they come, but in case you were still skeptical about the console's legitimacy, a new video all but proves it.

DON'T MISS: One of the iPhones best RPGs is getting a sequel

On Monday morning, Eurogamer shared a video of the PS4 Slim booting up while connected to a television. According to the article, Digital Foundry's own Richard Leadbetter actually visited the person who claims to have bought the unannounced console from Gumtree in order to see it for himself:

[UPDATE: The video has been taken down by Eurogamer.]

The hardware has a fresh look, but the software hasn't changed at all. As reports suggested, this will likely replace the "fat" PS4 altogether in the coming months and years, sitting alongside the PS4 Neo as the only two models on store shelves.

Eurogamer plans to have more details about the console later this week, but for now, at least we know it's real. With the Xbox One S already on the market, we wouldn't be surprised to see the PS4 Slim launch within days of its reveal in early September, so it won't be long before we know everything there is to know about the slimmed-down console anyway.

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
Here in Ghana, there remain strange acts and habits that, as the saying goes, are only identical to Ghanaians.

READ ALSO: Everyone thought she just wanted to be near the masters grave but when they took a closer look

This article shares some of such strange and funny things;

READ ALSO: Photos: Meet Asamoah Gyans adorable wife and kids

1. Only in Ghana that one can buy all his material needs from the comfort of his car while in traffic.

2. Only in Ghana are professional mourners (wailers) hired at funerals for bereaved people who do not know how to cry 'properly'.

3. Only in Ghana that presidents pray for the sick

4. Only in Ghana that politicians are jailed 2 months for causing financial loss and criminals, 50 years for stealing plantain.

5. Only in Ghana does a mayor direct traffic.

6. Only in Ghana that you receive your water bill months or years late.

7. Only in Ghana that the unemployed get jobs when they protest at Flagstaff house.

8. Only in Ghana that Guinness is beer

9. Only in Ghana that police stop "trotros" the most and not private cars!

10. Only in Ghana that newspapers are all called; "Graphic".

Ghana is such a lovely place to live! in What other things can you say only happens in Ghana? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. We are available on Facebook and on Twitter.

Source: YEN.com.gh
The European Union has condemned the human rights situation in Guatemala and expressed its sincere condolences to the families of the assassinated human rights defenders. Over the past half a year, the country has witnessed the assassinations of ten activists. Most recently, armed men posing as policemen forced their way into the house of Ramon Cadena Ramila, Director of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists and one of Central Americas most prominent human rights lawyers. Mr Cadena, who played a key role in high-profile human rights cases, was not at home at the time of the raid.

The attacks on human rights defenders and lawyers have intensified as Guatemalan prosecutors are making progress in cases of corruption and extrajudicial killings. Yet, the efforts to punish the perpetrators of atrocities committed during the 1960-1996 civil war have had mixed results and impunity for human rights abuses is still widespread. Violence against human rights defenders, lawyers, trade unionists and journalists thus remains a major concern. The EU supports the countrys efforts to step up the fight against collusion and impunity.

In the previous 2007-2013 budgetary framework, human security and social cohesion were among the main sectors together with economic growth and trade. The EU has played a crucial role in supporting the fight against impunity by strengthening capacity on criminal investigation and special investigation methods, witness protection, fight against organized crime and money laundering. Moreover, Guatemala has had a substantial portfolio of EU thematic projects, which amounted to a over 30 million for the 2007-2013 period. This portfolio includes 52 projects in the sectors such as democracy, human rights, civil society organizations, food security, environment and health.

In 2014-2020, the key development challenges remain to be ensuring human security, defending and developing the rule of law and ending impunity. Other goals include fighting against structural economic and social inequality and discrimination, guaranteeing respect for human rights, in particular those of indigenous people, women and children and combating widespread poverty and malnutrition, in particular in rural areas. The indicative funding for this period is 186.8 million.
Francois Godement (European Council of Foreign Relations)

By 11 December 2016, the European Union will have made a decision on whether China should join the exclusive club of countries with market economy status. However, the rules against Chinese dumping, which are being applied in the Union and are about to expire in December 2016, seem to be more important than the market economy status itself. Should trading with China, if its market economy status is recognized, be subject to the policy of specific duties or not? And what will happen once anti-dumping rules have expired?

China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and with that began its 15-year interim period. During this period, other WTO members have had the opportunity to apply anti-dumping duties in response to the unfairly low prices of the Chinese exporters. China has promised to carry out economic reforms during this period with the aim to become a market economy. However, since 2004, China has met only one of the five criteria set by the European Commission, which the country must meet before it can be granted the market economy status. With the end of the interim period, China has also begun to focus on a intermediate target, which is the cancellation of anti-dumping measures by European states, since Beijing perceives the market economy status to be more less of a symbolic value.

China is certainly not yet a market economy. Unlike in Europe, the price of land for business, energy prices and other forms of financing, which the companies acquire, are determined by the government. Thanks to these relative comparative advantages, Chinese companies are capable of buying even such European companies as Volvo and Syngenta. As a result of the government support and subsidies, China floods the international market with products with the prices lower than their actual production costs. Thus, the question is how should the EU deal with this market asymmetry? There are several possibilities that may occur after 11 December. The Union may change anti-dumping criteria without implementing mitigation measures that would protect European producers, it can modify the criteria and implement mitigation measures, or may not do anything at all. In that case, a lawsuit from the Chinese side can be expected.

Granting the market economy status for China could be a possible approach. The status is moreover poorly defined and the failure to grant it would cause an unnecessary conflict. Moreover, it can also encourage Chinas current efforts to transform to a market economy. The Union should not change its anti-dumping measures for the time being since the overall reform of the protective instruments is not possible before 11 December. Brexit will also most likely delay this process even more. The EU should also renew its efforts to prompt China to commit to the economic dialogue and take measures to avoid a sudden surge in exports.

(The study can be downloaded here:http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/chinas_market_economy_status_and_the_european_interest_7050)
Alessandro Marrone, Olivier de France and Daniele Fattibene (Istituto Affari Internazionali)

In the current unstable times, it is very important to monitor the military and defense trends of the European states and critically evaluate them. But what direction are the European military capabilities and the cooperation between countries across Europe headed? A detailed analysis of the defense budgets of the European countries reveals a growing trend of expenditures in this area and their likely increase by an average of 8.3 percent in 2016 compared to the previous year. This positive trend is, however, not the only factor and it is also necessary to look into the development of military and defense cooperation.

In recent months, this cooperation has given risen to several major trends that have been reported in 31 European countries. Bilateral cooperation remains to be its main form. Poland, which signed bilateral military cooperation agreements individually with Sweden, Germany, the United States, Bulgaria and Italy, is one example. France has started an important bilateral cooperation with Great Britain with the aim to develop a new generation of airborne anti-ship missiles. Overall, 22 cases of bilateral cooperation have been identified out of the total 39 that have been analyzed. It is also important to note that countries prefer to establish relations in defense and military exercises with neighboring countries rather than with others. 16 cases of such neighborly military cooperation have been recorded.

Another trend reveals an increased importance that countries have been lately attaching to multilateral cooperation, which is being manifested especially in the EU and NATO. In the case of the Union, these positive developments have been positively connected especially with the projects focused on improving the automation of remotely controlled aircraft and on the support of the research by the European Space Agency. Regarding the Alliance, it has been most active in the field of crisis management operations and collective defense.

Increasing defense spending and intensive cooperation within Europe are, however, not the only thing that can lead 31 European states to a greater defense self-sufficiency and responsibility. From this perspective, the latest significant trend that has been recorded is the fact that the Central, Eastern and Southeastern European countries seek to reduce their dependence on Russian military equipment. Finalizing the intergovernmental agreement between the Polish and Bulgarian Ministries of Defense, which focuses on logistical support for MIG-29 fighters, only confirms this trend. Moreover, a training center should be built in the Slovak Republic, which is designed to promote cooperation among the European owners of the UH-60M helicopters.

(The study can be downloaded here:http://www.iai.it/en/pubblicazioni/defence-budgets-and-cooperation-europe-trends-and-investments)
China's largest desert freshwater lake under threat Updated: 2016-08-10 09:36 By Ma Lie in Xi'an(chinadaily.com.cn)

Sunset over the Hongjiannao Lake. [Photo provided to China Daily]

China's largest desert freshwater lake is in danger of drying up, experts have warned.

Hongjiannao Lake, on the border between Shaanxi province's Shenmu county and Ejin Horo Banner in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, has shrunk significantly in recent years, according to the Shenmu county government.

The water quality has also deteriorated, leaving the lake almost devoid of fish life and hitting the local population of relict gulls, which are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

According to information issued by the county government, the surface area of the lake has decreased from 67 sq km in 1969 to 32.8 square kilometers today.

Since 2006, the water level of the lake has dropped by 30 cm to 60 cm annually, and the average water depth has dropped from 8.2 meters to less than 4 meters.

Data provided by Shaanxi Provincial Water Conservancy Department also shows that the pH value of the lake has now reached 9.8, making the water too alkaline to support most life. As a result, 17 species of wild freshwater fish, which originally lived in the lake, have now vanished.

As the lake disappears, an islet in its middle that was previously used by gulls to breed has become a peninsula, said Xiao Hong, researcher with the Northwest Institute of Endangered Animals.

Consequently, the population of relict gulls at Hongjiannao has declined from 7,700 nesting pairs in 2011 to just 2,000 last year.

At the present rate of decline, the lake will dry up entirely within 10 years, said Huo Xueqi, assistant to the president of the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University.
Data reviews are the system's backbone Updated: 2016-08-18 07:58 By Zheng Jinran(China Daily)

Zhao Chenying is an inspector for the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Team. It's a demanding job, because the companies he deals with cover a wide range of sectors, from restaurants to chemical companies to power plants, which requires Zhao to understand technicalities in a number of fields.

On July 21, Zhao reviewed the validity of emissions data provided by the Huadian Thermal Power Plant in Beijing, a branch of China Huadian Corp.

He inspected the entire process, starting by collecting and measuring pollutants in the 100-meter-high chimney, where he measured the emissions data with portable equipment before comparing the results with those supplied by the company.

Similar crosschecks are applied to follow-up processes, including checking data readings from both the host machines and the boxes that upload the data to the municipal platform on pollutant emissions.

"If the two groups show large discrepancies in any of the processes, the company will be required to review and fix the facilities to guarantee data validity," Zhao said.

Crosschecking is an uncomfortable job because most of the facilities installed near pollutant-discharging outlets are situated in high, wet or noisy positions, such as the host machine installed near the thermal plant's steam boiler, where the temperature was around 50 C.

In addition to quarterly reviews of data validity, Zhao and his colleagues are responsible for monthly inspections at businesses known to be large emitters, such as Huadian, while other companies are subject to random monitoring.

There are about 500 inspectors for the capital's downtown and suburban districts, but there are more than 10,000 pollutant-discharging companies. "It's impossible to inspect them all frequently," said Li Bin, Zhang's colleague.

Beijing's emissions-monitoring platform, which became operational in 2012, covers 172 major companies with high levels of emissions, supplementing the work of field inspectors, Li said.

The platform allows inspectors immediate access to hourly emissions data, he added.

In the past two years, only 12 companies have been exposed as having excessive levels of emissions or failing to install monitoring facilities in accordance with their own schedules.

"The companies have gradually realized the importance of auto-monitoring facilities, which provide a good way of proving their performance in reducing pollution," Li said, adding that strict controls mean companies must become environmentally friendly if they want to continue operating in the capital.

In the first months of operation, when an alert was sounded the inspectors had to call companies to discover the reason, but now, companies voluntarily notify the inspectors of the causes of abnormal readings and the measures they will take to rectify the problem, Li said.
Setting the records straight Updated: 2016-08-18 07:58 By Zheng Jinran(China Daily)

Li Bin, an official with the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Team, introduces the city's automonitoring system to visitors via a screen that displays the locations of major pollutantdischarging companies in the capital. Zou Hong / China Daily

Environmental authorities have strengthened the laws to crack down on companies that falsify or distort emissions data. Zheng Jinran reports from Wuhan and Beijing.

China is intensifying efforts to fight falsified emissions-monitoring data supplied by companies that ignore national standards and illegally discharge pollutants in pursuit of profits.

On Sept 11 last year, environmental inspectors from Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, discovered that Gansu COFCO Coca-Cola Beverage Co had tampered with data related to treated wastewater by redirecting a sample-collection pipe from a wastewater pool to a water container, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said.

Field monitoring by inspectors showed the level of chemical oxygen demand - a major indicator of pollution - in the outlet was 16 times that of the water container, and the actual concentration exceeded the national wastewater standards.

Although the company's internal investigation found that the anomaly was the result of irregularities with the monitoring equipment, the environmental department determined that a manager from the company had been forging monitoring data since Oct 15, and ordered that he be held at a detention center for five days.

Since 2014, a large number of companies have been found guilty of pollutant-emissions violations, and last year environmental watchdogs uncovered problems with emissions-monitoring equipment at 2,658 companies nationwide.

"Environmental-monitoring data are the inspectors' eyes and ears and a crucial element in scientific decisions about environmental protection," said Chen Jining, the minister of environmental protection, when he inspected a monitoring center in Guangdong province on April 15.

A tough task

The revised Environmental Protection Law, which came into effect in January last year, and the laws on control of air and water pollution, stipulate that major pollutant-discharging companies should release information about their main pollutants, the methods of discharge, the concentrations of pollutants and the volume of emissions either hourly or once a day.

Despite that, the environmental ministry said many companies still have a long way to go to meet the targets.

Two years ago, 14,410 major companies were listed with the national monitoring service, but only 10,270 have installed auto-monitoring facilities.

The remainder only keep daily emissions records compiled by staff members, said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing.

Ma said the pursuit of profits is the main reason that a large number of companies falsify emissions data.

"Some senior officials in charge of environmental protection told me the cost of falsifying the data is very low, around 80 to 100 yuan ($12 to $15). That means they can save half a million yuan by reducing investment in monitoring facilities and technologies," he said.

Moreover, companies that require emissions supervision far outnumber staff members at environmental watchdogs, rendering the authorities powerless.

"We only have a team of 219 in the downtown and suburbs. They are responsible for inspecting more than 1,000 large companies scattered across 14,000 square kilometers, and there are also more than 10,000 small companies that discharge pollutants," said Liu Mingchun, head of the Environmental Protection Bureau in Jingzhou, Hubei province.

In addition, most of the inspectors lack sufficient knowledge to deal with inspections at specialty companies, such as chemical plants, so they find it difficult to uncover falsified data, he said.

Many leaders of environmental watchdogs in the province voiced similar concerns at the Trans-Century Tour of Chinese Environmental Protection in June, an event organized by the Environment and Resources Committee of the National People's Congress.

A shortage of inspectors is common in China's environmental bureaus. In 2014, there were just 6.3 inspectors per 10,000 people nationwide, according to the annual national environmental monitoring bulletin.

"We have to focus on companies that produce significant amounts of emissions, records that contain falsified data or plants with excessive emissions levels," said Xiang Weian, head of the Jingzhou Environmental Supervision Brigade.

Technology and law

Environmental authorities in many cities have built emissions-monitoring platforms, which allow them to check real-time data from companies with high levels of emissions and keep records.

"We immediately send inspectors to companies that trigger warnings to check whether they have excessive emissions levels or if their auto-monitoring facilities are malfunctioning. That makes our targeted inspections more efficient," said Zhao Aihua, head of the Environmental Supervision Brigade in Zhijiang, Hubei.

Zhou Shuihua, chief engineer at the Hubei provincial Environmental Protection Bureau, urged improved use of auto-monitoring platforms to provide hard-pressed inspectors with backup.

"We will give full support to the platform and other technologies, such as portable equipment, and we hope improved technologies will solve the problems caused by staff shortages within three years," he said.

However, some experts have warned that auto-monitoring platforms should be improved to ensure that companies release real-time emissions data.

Ruan Qingyuan, an expert in auto-monitoring facilities at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said she has noticed some provincial platforms only release data for a limited number of days.

"It gives companies time to change their emissions data, which could make the data supplied to monitoring platforms virtually useless," she said.

The central government has revised the laws to better support emissions-monitoring via tougher punishments designed to deter potential polluters.

The Regulation on Identifying and Treating the Falsification of Pollutants Emission Data - which targets violations, and complements the revised Environmental Protection Law - came into effect on Jan 1.

The environmental protection ministry said the new regulations will bolster emissions monitoring by providing a range of administrative punishments, such as denying promotion to officials with poor records, and through legal strictures that mainly target polluting companies.
Insurance market sees big potential Updated: 2016-08-19 08:54 By HU YUANYUAN/CAI XIAO(China Daily)

China will probably surpass Japan as the world's second-largest insurance market this year, boosted by surging demand from the nation's ever-growing middle class, the industry regulator said on Thursday.

The country's premium income reached 1.9 trillion yuan ($287.9 billion) in the first six months, a jump of 37.3 percent year-on-year. The growth rate has accelerated from 17.5 percent in the first half of 2014 and 20 percent in the first half of 2015, according to the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.

"A healthy society should not be full of stock investors but policyholders," said Jack Ma, founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Currently, there are 330 million policyholders in China, triple the number of stock investors.

"In terms of serving the country's 1.3 billion population, we have too few insurance companies and products right now, which means there is still huge potential in the sector," Ma added.

With a stake of 19.9 percent, Alibaba is the largest shareholder in ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance Co, the country's first online insurance company, which was set up in 2013. Other major shareholders in the company include Tencent Holdings Ltd and Ping An Insurance (Group) Co of China Ltd.

Liang Xinjun, deputy chairman and CEO of Fosun Group, is also very optimistic about the prospects for China's insurance sector.

"The country's ballooning middle class, with its ever-growing consumption power, will be the main client of insurance companies," said Liang.

Fosun has been increasing its stakes in a number of insurers.

With the growing interest in the rapidly developing insurance sector, Xiang Junbo, chairman of the CIRC, emphasized that insurers should be risk managers rather than risk makers.

"For those shareholders who just want to take advantage of insurance as a financing channel, we will seriously punish such shareholders based on laws and regulations," said Xiang.

Statistics from the CIRC showed that the premium income of foreign insurers in China in the first half of the year totaled 95.9 billion yuan, accounting for 5.1 percent of the total market, up from 4.38 percent during the same period of last year.

Steven Lam, life insurance analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said Chinese insurance market is open, but the competition is also fierce.

"Foreign insurance companies should either have strong financial strength or innovative capabilities to stand out in the Chinese market," said Lam, adding that expanding channels is a very costly exercise.
China Vanke profits up; takeover battle hits normal operation Updated: 2016-08-22 07:51 (Xinhua)

Vanke's net profits in the first half of 2016 rose 10.4 percent to reach 5.35 billion yuan ($808 million), notably lower than the 28.1 percent growth in the first quarter of the year. [Photo/VCG]

BEIJING - China Vanke Co Ltd, the country's leading property developer, reported decent net profits in the first half of this year while admitting that the heated takeover battle has hit its normal operation.

The prolonged tussle over control of Vanke "has not been resolved satisfactorily up until now," according to a statement the company filed to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Sunday.

The current management will strive to stabilize operation but it cannot rule out the possibility of future results being affected by the takeover battle, the Shenzhen-listed developer said in the statement.

Profits up

Vanke's net profits in the first half of 2016 rose 10.4 percent to reach 5.35 billion yuan ($808 million), notably lower than the 28.1 percent growth in the first quarter of the year.

The company's operating revenue soared 48.8 percent to 74.8 billion yuan, lower than the 64.3 percent rise reported in the first quarter of the year.

"The growth in profit was slower than that in operating revenue, as certain projects booked during the period were sold during the property market adjustment in 2014," Vanke said in the statement.

Vanke's sales of residential property, in terms of floor space, soared 55.8 percent to 14.1 million square meters in the first half of 2016. In revenue terms, Vanke's sales of residential property jumped nearly 70 percent to 190.1 billion yuan.

The Shenzhen-based developer said China's property market registered satisfactory sales in the first half of 2016.

Since the second half of 2014, sales of residential property in medium- and large-sized cities have rebounded, showing increases for 20 months in a row. The recovery in transaction numbers has continued for 15 months.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, sales of residential property in China, in terms of floor space, rose 28.6 percent year on year to 570 million square meters in the first half of 2016. In revenue terms, sales of residential property jumped 44.4 percent to 4.2 trillion yuan.

Control war continues

At present, the turf war between Vanke's shareholders and management has "already caused negative impacts on the normal operation," Vanke said in the statement.

The heated war over Vanke's control kicked off last September, when privately-owned Baoneng's sudden and massive buying of shares triggered a suspension of the company's shares on the stock market. Vanke chairman Wang Shi openly opposed the acquisition shortly afterwards.

The turf war between shareholders and management escalated last month, when Vanke announced an asset restructuring plan worth 45.6 billion yuan with Shenzhen Metro Group that would make the subway operator overtake Baoneng to become the biggest shareholder.

In response, Baoneng proposed ejecting Vanke's senior management team, including Wang Shi, who is also founder of the company. But the proposal was voted down by the board later.

Vanke is currently China's largest property developer by sales revenue, while Baoneng, headquartered in the same city, is a conglomerate with real estate and finance businesses.

"Since the end of June, the (Vanke) Group's partners, customers, employees and other minority shareholders have greater doubts and worries about the company's future prospects," Vanke said.

According to the statement, the impacts on the normal operation included the acquisition of new land projects, less confidence of partners and customers, Vanke's business expansion and rocked team stability.

Vanke's management promised to do its best to eliminate interference and stabilize the team.

It will also strengthen mutual trust of shareholders and minimize the effect of the takeover battle on the company's operation, even though it is still extremely difficult because of the situation, it said.

Vanke also said no consensus has been reached on the controversial asset restructuring plan, which was rejected by major shareholders, including Baoneng.

The management hoped that relevant parties will overcome their differences and reach consensus to seek an appropriate solution to lead Vanke back on track of normal development and strive for the best interest for all shareholders, the statement added.
O2O service links millions to family doctors Updated: 2016-08-22 07:55 (Xinhua)

A hospital doctor provides hospital-to-home service for community residents in Xiamen, Fujian province. PAN SONGGANG/FOR CHINA DAILY

It used to be a big headache for Xu Li when her children got sick. She would search the internet for solutions and call friends for suggestions, but usually ended up rushing to a hospital where she sometimes had to queue for hours before seeing a doctor.

"I remember thinking, if only I had a doctor right downstairs," said the 36-year-old mother who lives in the Shangqingsi community in southwest China's Chongqing municipality. Now things have changed.

Xu signed a contract with a team of family doctors with the community health center late in 2014. Since then, she has enjoyed a set of personal medical services round the clock, including the use of a family doctor.

Now, using the imaginative application of the online-to-offline or O2O concept, she immediately calls the contracted doctor if any of her family feels unwell, and the doctor visits her at home and gives medical instructions.

"It gives me a sense of safety," she said.

Chongqing began piloting the family doctor program in 2012, under which community doctors sign contracts with residents and provide them customized medical services, including health management, disease prevention and regular physical examinations at home.

A family doctor team is generally composed of at least one general practitioner, a nurse, and a public health physician. In some places, there is also a pharmacist.

They can handle most minor illnesses, while they will register and transfer patients with complications to major hospitals through an internal fast-track system.

The program means every family has a doctor that they can consult first, rather than the internet, said Fang Laiying, director of the Beijing municipal health and family planning commission. Once a preserve of the rich, family doctor services are now becoming available to ordinary Chinese citizens.

Alongside Kunming, 200 Chinese cities will introduce such services this year. By 2020, China is planning to extend family doctor services to the entire population.

In Shanghai, 10.27 million citizens, nearly half of its population, have joined the program, which is mostly paid for by the government.

"It's not such a high-end medical service as private doctors. Residents covered by medical insurance only need to pay about 10 yuan for a single home service," said Liu Wei, who signed contracts with dozens of households at Gumei community, Shanghai. The money does not include the cost of medicines.

In Chongqing, a home visit from a general practitioner costs about 15 yuan, while other services, such as consultations and basic physical examinations from public health physicians, are free of charge

Liu Wei can visit over 20 families a day. He has also created a WeChat group for all his customers to keep close contact with them.

"I regularly visit my contracted families, examining and documenting their health conditions. I know what they need," he said.

The family doctors have saved residents' time and money as well as reduced the heavy burdens of hospitals, said Meng Shan, head nurse at the Chongqing-based Southwest Hospital.

Liang Hong, dean of the School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University, said that the program is key to establishing a tiered disease treatment system, which means different medical institutions receive different patients according to the severity of their illnesses.

The tiered treatment is seen as a solution in helping people see a doctor in good time, as often patients have to wait for hours, even days, to get medical treatment at hospitals.

The program will make use of community-level medical resources and ensure the long-term health care of citizens, Liang of Fudan University said.

In 2015, community health centers in Shanghai received 84.5 million visits, one-third of that in the city's hospitals, according to government statistics. In Beijing, the figure was 48.9 million last year, or 21 percent of total visits to all medical institutions.

"On one hand, family doctors should enhance their professional skills and provide better services to win trust; on the other, we hope people can give us more support and be confident in us," said Zhu Lan, a Shanghai family doctor who received the nation's top award for doctors in 2014.
China is vital in global governance landscape Updated: 2016-08-22 10:08 (Xinhua)

MELBOURNE - China has a very important role to play in the global governance landscape against the backdrop of a faltering global growth, a Sydney-based partner at the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) told Xinhua in an interview ahead of the upcoming G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China.

Andrew Parker, who is also director of China Matters, an independent not-for-profit entity focused from a policy perspective on China's rise and how it matters to Australia, said he is optimistic about the first G20 summit chaired by China.

"This is an opportunity for China to step into the leadership role that I think it both deserve and crave on the global stage. The Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the BRICS bank and of course the 'One Belt One Road' initiative, these are the important plans to help the global economies to achieve critical objectives," he said.

"China today is the second-largest economy in the world, and more importantly, the No.1 emerging market economy which contributed around one-third of the global growth last year. China's contribution to global growth is extremely important," he added.

However, considerable institutional and political inertia remain challenges for China during its G20 presidency.

Parker said the G20's proclaimed objectives have seen slow progress in recent years, something China hopes to change.

"The forum's central mandate has been, for a few years, strong, sustainable and inclusive growth. Back in November 2014 in Brisbane, the G20 ministers all agreed to lift global growth by two percentage points by 2018 over the IMF's 2013 forecast," said Parker.

"But the achievement against its objective has been patchy. I think it would be fair to suggest that growth has definitely not being strong, the global economy is certainly not sustainable. I would argue that the growth has not been particularly inclusive either," he added.

Referring to the Beijing-led push to upgrade the G20 from a crisis response mechanism to a long-term governance platform, he regarded a lack of execution mechanisms as one of the significant impediment to the G20's endeavors.

"This has long been a criticism of the G20. The fact that matters is G20 doesn't have a secretary and it doesn't have any enforcement mechanism, so it relies on what you might call political will or leadership to make progress on the issues," he said.

At a time of sluggish global growth, he said that collaboration is needed to stimulate growth.

"If you look at 2016, the forecast of global growth is pretty flat. We are heading to the IMF's 3 percent line under which generally a global recession is considered to be in progress," he said.

For Australia and China, two major economies in the region, "it is absolutely vital that both China and Australia find common ground and work together towards that development of the region," he said.

Parker is the lead author of PwC's landmark report "Passing us by" released in 2014, in which he revealed some insightful and ground-breaking points of view on the significance of engaging with the world's engine of economic growth.

"Our world is changing, China is changing. Australia's economy has been heavily reliant on a resources and investment boom that was largely driven by China's industrialization and its growth," said Parker. "There is no question in my mind that a well-implemented 'One Belt One Road' program will deliver significant benefits to the region, to Australia and of course to the Chinese economy."
Medical kidnapping? Canadian children were injected with vaccines without their parents consent

Parents are bombarded by physicians and the pharmaceutical industrys vaccine dogma. Many choose to help build their childrens immunity naturally with turmeric and other superfoods. But how would you feel if one of your children had died following the routine recommended vaccination schedule? The Bootsma family  who live in British Columbia, Canada  had a daughter who met this tragic end. They determined that their second child, also a daughter, would not be poked, prodded, injected and otherwise coerced into receiving vaccines. As Natural News reports, the family remained vigilant and were successful in protecting their daughter for 14 years, until the local school system decided to take matters into their own hands.

Canadian school officials didnt care that the parents and daughter had said NO to vaccines.

One day, unbeknownst to the parents, the Bootsmas second daughter, whose name wasnt published, was pulled out of the her ninth grade classroom, marched down to the nurses station and injected with a combination vaccine called DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis). The Frasier Health Authority was now in charge of the matter. They defended their position by citing the British Columbia Infants Act, which in part says that if children over the age of 14 are mature, they can make their own decisions without any input from guardians or parents. But if the Bootsmas daughter had stated that she didnt want the vaccine and the authorities paid no attention, or convinced her otherwise, didnt they break their own law? Or do they care?

The parents were outraged at this blatant medical kidnapping of their child.

There was no parental consent form. The parents had no idea this was happening and the daughter stated that even though she didnt want the vaccine  and she knew her parents were opposed  she didnt feel as though the nurse had given her a choice to say no. The Bootsma family was devastated. They had seen one daughter die a decade earlier by a vaccine-induced cerebral dysgenesis. Natural News reports that the father, Dean Bootsma, had never felt so violated. And hes not alone.

Minors who arent vaccinated are targeted by Canadian school authorities and medical officials.

According to the Canadian Broadcast Company, this type of event  which takes the medical choice and decision making out of the hands of parents and puts it into the hands of medical and educational authorities  is not a unique event. Its targeted at the Canadian families were are opting out of vaccinations for their children. So when the inoculation rates drop to a pre-determined 84% compliance rate, Canadian nurses are trained to boost the numbers. And they do that under the force of the B.C. Infants Act. In America, the vaccination divide is growing daily. For the latest information on where your state stands, visit the National Vaccine Information Network.

Sources:

Science.NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

CBC.ca

NVIC.org
Two females aged 16 and 20 arrested in central London on Sunday night

They are suspected of trying to travel to Syria to link up with ISIS

Record number of women have been arrested over terrorism in the UK

Two women aged 16 and 20 have been arrested on suspicion of trying to travel to Syria to join ISIS.

The pair were held in central London at around 9pm on Sunday on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts.

Scotland Yard said: 'Officers from the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command arrested a 20-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts, namely travelling to Syria to join a proscribed organisation .

+5 A teenage girl, 16, and 20-year-old woman have been arrested on suspicion of trying to travel to Syria to join ISIS (file picture)

'They were arrested in central London at approximately 9pm on Sunday, August 21. Both were taken into custody at a central London police station.'





Official figures for 2015/16 showed that a record number of women and girls were arrested in Britain as part of counter-terrorism investigations.





A total of 36 females were held in the 12 months to the end of March - the highest number in any financial year on record.





Rising numbers of youngsters are also being detained, with under-18s the only age group to see a rise in the number of arrests year-on-year - increasing from eight to 14.





It comes a week after British schoolgirl Kadiza Sultana, who fled the UK to join ISIS in Syria, was killed by an airstrike in Raqqa.





+5 Kadiza Sultana, pictured, 17, is thought to have died in a bombing in Syria after fleeing there in Easter 2015

Miss Sultana, 17, is thought to have died earlier this year after her home in the terror state's stronghold city was hit by a bomb believed to have been dropped by a Russian plane.





The teenager had quickly become disillusioned with Isis and told her family last summer that she wanted to return home.





Her sister Halima Khanom said: 'We were expecting this, in a way. But at least we know she is in a better place.'





The schoolgirl had been living in Syria after leaving her home in East London during the Easter 2015 school holidays to join Islamic State.





She travelled with friends Amira Base and Shamima Begum, who were both just 15 when they fled and are believed to still be in Raqqa. All three had attended Bethnal Green Academy in Tower Hamlets.





It is believed that all three wed fellow foreigners who were fighting for the Islamic State.





Khadiza's husband was an American national of Somali origin who died late last year.





The trio shocked the nation after leaving their A-Level courses and their families to marry ISIS fighters in Syria.





It is thought more than 800 Britons believed to have left the UK to join Isis or other militant groups in Syria and Iraq.





It is thought that at least 250 have since returned. Some have faced prosecution on arrival in Britain, with others allowed to re-enter society under the watch of security services.





As previously reported, ISIS have targeted vulnerable women and girls over the internet in 'matchmaking' schemes to recruit them to become 'Jihadi brides'.





The Mail on Sunday revealed one such 'bride-maker' is Umm Muthanna Al Britaniyah, a former London student whose real name is Tooba Gondal.





She is 22 years old and her father is a successful businessman.





Through her prolific output on social media, she commands a powerful influence on her following of largely young girls as she grooms them, urging them, as she has done, to travel to Syria and marry bloodthirsty IS killers.





In her online rants, she described Britain as a filthy country and praised the Paris massacre last November, which left more than 130 dead, saying: EXPLOSIONS AND SHOOTINGS 80 dead.





And all praise is due to Allah Almighty. #ParisUnderAttack.





Gondol, from Walthamstow, London, added: Wish I could have seen the hostages being slaughtered last night with my own eyes. Would have been just beautiful.





In May last year, using the name Fatima, she encouraged a British teenager she met on social media to travel to Syria and join IS.





She then asked the teenage recruit to meet one of her own relatives  a 16-year-old girl  and bring her to Syria too.





The plan was to fly to Switzerland then Istanbul, and then travel by land to the Syrian border.

But it all fell apart because the teenager that Gondal thought she was grooming was actually an undercover reporter.





ISIS are also using dating websites to lure Jihadi brides to Iraq and Syria, it has been claimed.

The fanatics have infiltrated at least one Arabic-language platform in an attempt to marry off women to its fighters .








TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - August 22, 2016) - LINUXCON + CONTAINERCON -- The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration, today announced the immediate release of its 2016 report "Linux Kernel Development - How Fast It is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and Who is Sponsoring It". The report comes just days before the 25th anniversary of the initial release of the Linux kernel by Linus Torvalds on August 25, 1991, and analyzes the work done by over 13,500 developers over more than a decade, as well as more recent trends.

This is the seventh such report that is released on a roughly annual basis to help illustrate the Linux kernel development process and the work that defines the largest collaborative project in the history of computing. This year's paper covers work completed through Linux kernel 4.7, with an emphasis on releases 3.19 to 4.7. The last report was released March 2015 and focused on 3.11 to 3.18.

Key findings from this year's paper include:

Over 13,500 developers from more than 1,300 companies have contributed to the Linux kernel since the adoption of Git made detailed tracking possible. Since the last report, just shy of 5,000 developers from 400 companies have contributed to the kernel; nearly half of these developers contributed for the first time.

The Top 10 organizations sponsoring Linux kernel development since the last report include Intel, Red Hat, Linaro, Samsung, SUSE, IBM, Renesas, Google, AMD, Texas Instruments and ARM. The Outreachy program, which provides open source internships to underrepresented groups, ranks #13 for contributions to the Linux kernel during this last cycle with the interns contributing 1.4 percent of the patches since Linux kernel 3.18. The complete top 30 contributing organizations can be seen in the full report.

The rate of Linux development continues to increase, as does the number of developers and companies involved in the process. The average number of changes accepted into the kernel per hour is 7.8, up from 7.71 in the last report, which translates to 187 changes every day and nearly 1,310 per week. The average days of development per release remained steady at 66 days, with every release spaced either 63 or 70 days apart, providing significant predictability.

The number of unpaid developers continues its slow decline, as Linux kernel development proves an increasingly valuable skill sought by employers, ensuring experienced kernel developers do not stay unpaid for long. The volume of contributions from unpaid developers in the period covered by this report has fallen to 7.7% from 11.8% in 2014.

The report is co-authored by Jonathan Corbet, Linux kernel developer and editor of LWN.net, and Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel maintainer and Linux Foundation fellow.

"Even after 25 years, Linux still serves as an example of how collaborative development can work, which can be applied to other open source projects," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. "This report provides insight into the development trends and methodologies used by thousands of different individuals collectively to create some of the most important software code on the planet."

To download the full report, please visit The Linux Foundation's Publication's website at: http://go.linuxfoundation.org/rd-2016-linux-kernel-report-pr.

The paper is being released today at LinuxCon + ContainerCon North America, hosted by The Linux Foundation. LinuxCon is where developers, sys admins, architects and all types and levels of technical talent gather together under one roof for education, collaboration and problem-solving to further the Linux platform. ContainerCon expands upon the Linux Foundation's success in Linux by bringing together leaders in the development and deployment of containers, the Linux kernel, to continue to innovate on the delivery of open source infrastructure. For more information or to access the live streaming video, please visit: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-north-america.

Additional Resources

Infographic

Video: Greg Kroah-Hartman: Linux Kernel Development - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmu0pkSI5sw

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world's top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see our trademark usage page: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - August 22, 2016) -

THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Macarthur Minerals Limited (TSX VENTURE: MMS) (the "Company" or "Macarthur Minerals") is pleased to announce that it has applied for an additional exploration licence E45/4824, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, adjacent to its existing exploration licences E45/4708 and E45/4709, to extend the contiguous area to 367 square kilometres (90,687 acres). The Company now has total tenement acreage under application in the Pilbara region of 1,449 square kilometres (358,055 acres), in addition to its Yalgoo, Edah Hill, Ravensthorpe, Sulphur Springs, Whim Creek interests in Western Australia and Nevada Stonewall interests in the United States of America.

David Taplin, President, CEO and Director of Macarthur commented:

"The Company has applied for further acreage in the Pilbara to extend exploration licence applications E45/4708 and E45/4709, with new exploration licence application E45/4824, into a contiguous area bringing the total tenement acreage under application in the Pilbara region of 1,449 square kilometres in addition to its Yalgoo, Edah Hill, Ravensthorpe, Sulphur Springs, Whim Creek and Nevada Stonewall interests. The majority of the tenement acreage under application is due to be granted by November or December, which will allow the Company to commence initial lithium exploration."

New Pilbara Tenement

The location of the new Pilbara exploration licence application (E45/4824), which covers an area of 211 square kilometres is shown in Figure 1.

The Pilbara applications cover similar geological settings to the Pilgangoora Li-Ta pegmatite deposits, which host the lithium projects of Australian Securities Exchange listed companies, Pilbara Minerals Limited and Altura Mining Limited.

Geological Setting of the Tenement Applications

Macarthur's applications in the Pilbara are selected on the basis of geological attributes that are broadly consistent with the currently accepted exploration/mineral system model for Lithium-Caesium-Tantalum ("LCT" type) rare element pegmatites. The tenement applications cover areas of potential LCT pegmatite host rocks such as greenstone belts (meta-volcanic sequences), earlier granitoids and gneisses. The tenement applications are located within 5-10 km of ~2.89 to 2.83 Ga(1) post-tectonic monzogranite (S-type) intrusions, which are considered to be the source of magmatic melts from which the LCT pegmatites evolved. The fertile character of the highly fractionated younger monzogranites(2), and their potential link to lithium mineralisation, adjacent to and within the new application is supported by numerous associated occurrences of lithium (Li), tantalum (Ta), tin (Sn), and beryllium (Be).

Story continues

Acreage Package

The Company now holds 21 Exploration Licence Applications and prospective interest in rights to lithium covering a total area of 2,029 square kilometres (501,376 acres) in the Pilbara, Ravensthorpe and the Yalgoo/Edah regions of Western Australia. In addition, the Company has also entered into an agreement to acquire the Stonewall Project in Nevada, which covers an area of approximately 5,700 acres (23 km2).

Macarthur is currently evaluating its acreage and commencing discussions with various third parties concerning potential joint ventures to maximise the exploration effort throughout 2016.

ABOUT MACARTHUR MINERALS LIMITED (TSX VENTURE: MMS)

Macarthur Minerals Limited is an exploration and development company that is focused on identifying and developing high grade lithium and counter cyclical investments, with significant lithium exploration interest in Australia and Nevada. In addition, Macarthur retains its two iron ore projects in Western Australia; the Ularring hematite project (Indicated 54.46 million tonnes @ 47.2% Fe, Inferred 25.99 million tonnes @ 45.4% Fe -- Pre-Feasibility Study)(3) and the Moonshine magnetite project (1.3 billion tonnes @ 30.1% Fe -- Preliminary Economic Assessment)(4).

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

MACARTHUR MINERALS LIMITED

"Cameron McCall"

Cameron McCall, Chairman

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.

Caution Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain of the statements made and information contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The forward-looking statements in this press release reflect the current expectations, assumptions or beliefs of the Company based upon information currently available to the Company. With respect to forward-looking statements contained in this press release, assumptions have been made regarding, among other things, the timely receipt of required approvals, the reliability of information, including historical mineral resource or mineral reserve estimates, prepared and/or published by third parties that are referenced in this press release or was otherwise relied upon by the Company in preparing this press release. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct as actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include fluctuations in exchange rates and certain commodity prices, uncertainties related to mineral title in the project, unforeseen technology changes that results in a reduction in iron ore demand or substitution by other metals or materials, the discovery of new large low cost deposits of iron ore, uncertainty in successfully returning the project into full operation, and the general level of global economic activity. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to the inherent uncertainty thereof. Such statements relate to future events and expectations and, as such, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and except as may otherwise be required pursuant to applicable laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

(1) Ga is giga anna -- 1 Billion years.

(2) S-type monzogranites are biotite-bearing granitoids considered to have formed by crystallisation of melts from metasedimentary protoliths.

(3) Previously announced on August 16, 2012 NI 43-101 Technical Report filed October 1, 2012, titled "NI 43-101 Technical Report, Macarthur Minerals Limited, Pre-Feasibility Study, Ularring Hematite Project, Western Australia."

(4) NI43-101 Technical Report filed December 17, 2009, titled "NI43-101 Technical Report on Lake Giles Iron Ore Project: Western Australia" and was updated by Snowden Mining Industry Consultants (NI43-101 Technical Report filed March 25, 2011, titled "Macarthur Minerals Limited: Moonshine and Moonshine North Prospects, Lake Giles Iron Project, Western Australia, NI43-101 Technical Report -- Preliminary Assessment."

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/8/22/11G111293/Images/Figure_1-857261e1b5d29d0eb8ce0c02eef4b961.jpg


Nekter Juice Bar offers an array of freshly made and cold-pressed juices, smoothies, and acai bowls that are natural, unprocessed, nutrient-rich, great tasting, and affordable. Click here for high-resolution version

SANTA ANA, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 22, 2016) - Nekter Juice Bar, leader of the modern juice bar experience offering a delicious, nutrient-dense array of affordable, freshly made and cold-pressed juices, smoothies and acai bowls, today announced that in Q2 the company signed agreements to develop 41 new restaurants. The agreements cover a broad region of existing territories for Nekter Juice Bar and also include the new markets of Salt Lake City, Houston and Sacramento, which offer significant growth opportunities. With 58 restaurants now open in California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Colorado, this represents a 71 percent increase in store count.

In February 2016, Nekter announced plans for national expansion with a goal of growing to 300 franchise and corporate locations within five years, and the success in Q2 puts the company on par to exceed this goal by 2020. Nekter's expansion plans followed five years of fine-tuning the company's business model, which has resulted in an impressive average unit volume (AUV) of $840,740, per the company's 2016 Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD). Looking ahead, key growth markets include Northern and Central California, Los Angeles, Texas, and Nevada.

"The momentum we continue to experience at Nekter Juice Bar stems from our steadfast commitment to offering a menu based on integrity of ingredients -- we use only fresh, pure and nutrient-rich ingredients, and provide an engaging and inspiring experience for our guests," said Steve Schulze, CEO, Nekter Juice Bar. "In doing so, we continue to enjoy high average unit volumes in the juice bar world and the franchise community is responding. We continue to seek out entrepreneurs and leaders, who are looking to own a business in the thriving health and wellness sector of the restaurant industry, and want to make a real difference in their communities."

In addition to its record growth, Nekter experienced several other successes and achievements in Q2, including:

Receiving the prestigious 2016 "Hot Concepts" award from Nation's Restaurant News magazine, an award that recognizes emerging restaurant brands that are changing the face of foodservice, have solid financial standing, and are poised for future growth.

The opening of four new restaurants in Sacramento, a new market, and Huntington Beach, Calif., Tustin, Calif., and San Diego.

The launch of a refreshed menu in June, including the new Mango Delight Smoothie, Acai Mango Bowl and Acai Superfood Bowl, four new bottled, cold-pressed juices and Superfood Proteins, as well as a new and improved low-glycemic, nutrient-dense Advanced Cleanse.

The seasonal return of Nekter on the Rocks, Nekter's popular line of low-calorie, handcrafted cocktail mixers.

The two-year anniversary of its entry into the Northern California market, now with seven locations in Danville, Mill Valley, Mountain View, Napa, Novato, Roseville, and Sunnyvale.

The introduction of an inspirational lifestyle blog, "Live the Nekter Life," featuring tips and advice for living a balanced, healthier life.

"As evidenced by our accomplishments in these past three months alone, Nekter is on an upward trajectory by continuing to delight our guests through product innovation and by providing our franchise partners with an award-winning, proven concept that delivers on sales and ongoing support," said Schulze. "Americans are increasingly embracing healthy lifestyles and at Nekter, we're providing them with a pathway to affordable and great-tasting wellness."

About Nekter Juice Bar

Privately-owned and founded in Southern California by two healthy living enthusiasts, Steve and Alexis Schulze, Nekter Juice Bar is dedicated to inspiring a community of kids and adults to live an active, well-balanced, health-minded and compassionate life. Now with 58 corporate and franchise locations in California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Texas, Nekter Juice Bar is a modern reinvention of the juice bar, and continues to be at the forefront of the juicing revolution, offering an array of freshly made and cold-pressed juices, smoothies, and acai bowls that are natural, unprocessed, nutrient-rich, great tasting, and affordable. The "Nekter Life" also includes making a positive difference by offering food with a purpose and by supporting charitable organizations in the communities they serve. Connect with Nekter Juice Bar on social media at www.facebook.com/Nekterjuicebar, or www.instagram.com/Nekterjuicebar. For more information about the company or franchise opportunities, visit http://www.Nekterjuicebar.com/pages/franchise.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3047393


DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, plans to discuss energy cooperation agreements with China and Japan, the Saudi cabinet said on Monday.

"The cabinet has approved to delegate a number of ministers to discuss with the Chinese side the following projects: a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to cooperate in the energy sector; an initial cooperation memorandum in the field of crude storage," a cabinet statement on state news agency SPA said.

Discussions with Japan for an MOU for cooperating in the energy sector were also approved by the cabinet, SPA said.

Saudi Arabia has traditionally accounted for most of the crude imports by Asia, the world's biggest oil-consuming region.

But recently OPEC's top producer has lost ground in a number of major markets including Russia and China, and faces a further threat from Iran, which is ramping up exports after the removal of Western sanctions.

The kingdom, however, has responded by pumping and shipping more oil, and with knockdown prices in Asia from state oil giant Saudi Aramco.

In 2015, Asia accounted for 65 percent of Saudi Aramco's oil exports; an increase from 62.3 percent a year earlier.

Aramco has been in talks with China's CNPC and Sinopec for investment opportunities in refining, marketing and petrochemicals, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said earlier this year.

Saudi and Japanese officials had discussed in June possible Japanese investments into the planned initial public offering (IPO) of Aramco.

Saudi Arabia's deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, unveiled ambitious plans earlier this year aimed at ending the country's "addiction" to oil and transforming it into a global investment power. An IPO of less than 5 percent of state-run Aramco is a centrepiece of that effort.

So big is Aramco given its rights to the crude reserves of Saudi Arabia, that selling even 1 percent of it would create the world's biggest IPO, Prince Mohammed has said. He expects the IPO will value Aramco at least at $2 trillion.

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Dale Hudson)
PLYMOUTH, MN--(Marketwired - August 22, 2016) - TruStone Financial Federal Credit Union celebrated the opening of its newest branch at 527 Central Avenue NE, Suite 2 in Northeast Minneapolis, Minnesota on Monday, August 22, 2016.

"TruStone Financial is excited to remain a part of the vibrant Northeast Minneapolis community," said Chief Business Officer Steve Steen. "With features unique to this branch location, we will maintain the credit union's neighborhood atmosphere while implementing modern technology into essential everyday banking."

The Northeast Minneapolis community houses more than 36,000 residents and is already home to a large number of current TruStone Financial members. The improved accessibility to the branch will give the credit union the opportunity to better interact with members. Plus, the branch features a 24-hour walk-up ATM and night deposit for convenient banking along with reserved parking spaces available in the Red20 lot for members to utilize.

"With an already strong presence in the Northeast Minneapolis Community, we look forward to strengthening our relationships with current and new members alike," said Chief Executive Officer Tim Bosiacki.

The location at 527 Central Avenue NE, Suite 2 in Northeast Minneapolis opened for business on Monday, August 22, 2016. Community members are welcome to visit our new location during normal business hours.

About TruStone Financial

TruStone Financial is one of the fastest growing credit unions in the Midwest with assets of $1.1 billion and nearly 100,000 members. There are 13 branches across Minnesota and Wisconsin. The credit union is headquartered in Plymouth, Minnesota. For more information and full membership criteria, visit TruStoneFinancial.org.
Local mayor Bessaou Ismak Ado Crophe on the resort island of Sainte Marie told AFP both bodies showed signs of head trauma, with officials suspecting murder (AFP Photo/Rijasolo) (AFP/File)

Antananarivo (AFP) - Two young French volunteers found dead Sunday on an island off the northeast coast of Madagascar were likely murdered, French and Madagascan authorities said.

Local mayor Bessaou Ismak Ado Crophe on the resort island of Sainte Marie told AFP that the bodies of both victims, a man and a woman in their twenties, showed signs of head trauma, with officials suspecting murder.

"They spent the evening in a nightclub and were found on the beach nearby," he said.

"I saw the bodies. Both had injuries to the head."

The two had in recent months been volunteering at Cetamada, a local environmental non-profit organisation working to protect ocean mammals.

The French foreign ministry in a statement condemned the "odious crime that claimed the lives of two French nationals".

It offered its condolences to the families and said an investigation was under way in Madagascar.

Madagascan Tourism Minister Roland Ratsiraka said he had spoken to the French ambassador to the Indian Ocean island and that the consul would be visiting Sainte Marie on Monday.

"The government strongly condemns this act and will ensure that the investigation will be transparent," he said.

Cetamada vice-president Jean-Jacques Ravello, who is also France's honorary consul to Sainte Marie island, called the incident "barbaric".

"I do not want to minimise this barbaric act, but we've been bringing dozens of volunteers here for 15 years and we've never had a problem this big," he told AFP.

He said fellow volunteers had gathered together following the incident and were "shocked psychologically".

In 2012, a French couple was found dead on a beach in southern Madagascar.

A year later, two Europeans were attacked and killed by a mob on the northwest island of Nosy Be, suspected of involvement in the death of an eight-year-old local boy.
2000 - 2022   24 .-   .       focus-news.net,                 () .                  24 .                 24      .       .       24 .
We value your privacy.

Focus Taiwan (CNA) uses tracking technologies to provide better reading experiences, but it also respects readers' privacy. Click here to find out more about Focus Taiwan's privacy policy. When you close this window, it means you agree with this policy.
A Kansas man accused of attempted murder pleaded not-guilty to a multitude of charges Monday morning in Dodge County District Court.

William D. Cady, 32, pleaded not-guilty to attempted first-degree murder, not-guilty of using a weapon to commit a felony, not-guilty of first-degree assault, not-guilty of conspiracy to commit first-degree assault, not-guilty of tampering with physical evidence, not-guilty of tampering with a witness and not-guilty of false reporting.

On June 5, the Dodge County Sheriffs Office released information saying that William Cady and Fremont residents Andria N. Cady, 35, and Jacob Cross, 43, attempted to rob/assault 41-year old Fremont resident Jason Marty.

Deputies were dispatched at 4:30 a.m. to BP Fuel Express, 1305 E. Morningside Road, in reference to a man who had driven to the location after sustaining gunshot wounds.

Upon arrival, deputies discovered that Jason Marty drove his gray 2002 Dodge Dakota pickup truck near the front entrance of the business where he was found.

Marty was transported by the Fremont Rescue Squad to Fremont Health Medical Center and later taken via helicopter to Nebraska Medicine in Omaha where he was operated on and was able to make a recovery.

An investigation led to the discovery that Marty was shot while his vehicle was at a rural location approximately 2 miles southeast of Fremont. He then drove by himself to the gas station.

Released information says that William Cady and Andria Cady (Williams estranged wife), Jacob Cross and another male were together in a vehicle driven by William Cady.

While riding in the vehicle, Andria Cady was in contact with Marty, with whom she had been in a relationship for the past couple months, via phone and text message. Arrangements were made to meet at the location southeast of Fremont and discuss an argument from a few days prior.

The investigation showed that William Cady and Andria Cady conspired to arrange the meeting with Marty for the purpose of robbery and/or assault.

William Cady parked the vehicle on the side of the gravel road and exited the vehicle, while the other persons remained in the vehicle. As Marty arrived at the location and toward the parked car, William Cady began firing a .40-cal. handgun, striking both Marty and the vehicle. Marty then drove from the scene, colliding with a parked vehicle and a utility pole at a residence on Hills Farm Road before arriving at the BP Fuel Express.

The Douglas County Crime Scene Investigation Team was in charge of processing the scene and additional assistance was provided by the Nebraska State Patrol.

In addition to William Cadys charges, Andria Cady was charged with accessory to a felony, a Class IV felony; and aiding and abetting  attempted first-degree murder, a Class IIA felony.

Cross was charged with two counts of being an accessory to a felony, a Class IIA Felony; and Class IV felony.

Judge Geoffrey Hall scheduled a status hearing for William Cady at 9 a.m. Oct. 3.
Two men were arrested over the weekend for trespassing in unrelated cases, Fremont Police reported.

Officers were first dispatched at 12:06 a.m. Sunday to John C. Fremont Park in reference to an individual who was told to leave the park but wouldn't comply. Upon arrival, officers cited 28-year-old Joshua C. Grover with second-degree trespassing.

After leaving, officers returned to the same location at 12:19 because Grover returned, and the man was subsequently arrested for second-degree trespassing.

At 12:30 a.m. officers responded to a residence located in the 700 block of East Fourth Street in reference to a male who broke into the home.

An investigation determined the reporting party knew the individual, however, he didn't have permission to be there.

Officers were called after Clayton J. Busche, 37, of Manhattan, Montana, was acting in a disruptive manner.

Busche was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace and second-degree criminal trespassing.
A Fremont woman was sentenced to prison Monday in Dodge County District Court for her role in the death of a man who died from an accidental overdose.

Barbara Christensen, 37, pleaded guilty and was found guilty of felony delivery of a controlled substance  methadone, a Class IIA felony.

Christensen was sentenced by Judge Geoffrey Hall to spend the next three years in the Nebraska Correctional Facility for Women. The defendant was credited with serving three days in Saunders County Jail and under the Good Time Law of Nebraska, she could be eligible for release in 1  years.

Court records show that of Feb. 13, Fremont Police responded to a local business in reference to an unresponsive individual located in the business basement.

An investigation and autopsy determined that methadone was one of several substances that led to the mans death, said Oliver Glass, Dodge County attorney.

Dont do drugs and dont deal drugs, Glass said. People can die from drugs and thats exactly what happened in this situation.

Glass implored Hall to hand down a straight sentence. Defense attorney James Dake, however, argued that his client isnt a drug dealer, she just made a severe lapse in judgement. Because of this, Dake pushed for a sentence of probation.

Dake explained that the methadone pills given to the deceased man were to help with a wrist injury resulting from a motorcycle accident.

She wasnt out peddling these things, she had a friend come over after he broke his wrist in a motorcycle accident, Dake said. He demanded pain medication from her at 10 p.m. at night.

Christensen, Dake said, received no payment for the methadone pills. In addition to the methadone, several other substances were found in the deceased mans body during an autopsy.

Some of them included methadone, alprazolam, traces of marijuana, alcohol and methamphetamine.

He was a virtual medicine cabinet and he did this to his own body, Dake said.

Dake stated the obvious that his client isnt a pharmacist, however, he argued her intentions werent malicious.

She made no money off of this and lost a friend in the incident, he said.  Under the law this is distribution, but its really kind of a gray area.

Christensen showed remorse for her actions, saying, I am very sorry for what I did. I really wish I could take it back.

Hall ultimately made the decision to send Christensen to prison because of her lack of willingness to address her own substance abuse problems, highlighted in the pre-sentence investigation report.

It appears that you arent ready yet to be sober, he said. You need help.
Thousands of migrant construction workers are refusing to leave the Saudi desert camps where they were abandoned by their employers during the countrys economic slump. The Saudi government had offered free flights home for the migrants, but the workers say they will not accept the offer until months of back wages owed are paid.

The poor conditions and maltreatment of the workers have alarmed their home countries and drawn international attention to the plight of some of the 10 million foreign workers in Saudi Arabia. Workers have been stranded for months in crowded living quarters with little money and limited access to food, water and medical care.

In an attempt to compensate for the unpaid wages, the government says it is offering the workers the right to visit their home countries and then return, as well as leeway to remain in Saudi Arabia while looking for other jobs.

"We will wait here one year, two years. We will wait for our money. Then we will go back," said Sardar Naseer, 35, a Pakistani welder at the Qadisiya Labour Camp, which houses around 2,000 workers from construction conglomerate Saudi Oger about 20 kilometers outside of the capital, Riyadh.

Naseer says he is owed 22,000 riyals ($5,900) after receiving no wages for eight months. Workers said they had stopped work about four months ago, and none had been paid since January.

Oger, the family firm of billionaire former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, did not respond to requests for comment for this story. The Hariri family did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

According to men at the camp, Oger stopped providing food, electricity, maintenance, and medical services at several of its camps in July, including Qadisiyah, at which point the Saudi Labor Ministry took over provision of basic services.

There is no regular supply of clean drinking water -- a filter on a public water fountain meant to be changed daily has not been serviced in a year -- so they are forced to buy bottled water with their own money.

Saudi Oger, which employs some 30,000 workers, is responsible for mega-projects such as Riyadh's 500-room Ritz Carlton hotel. Oger and the Saudi Binladin Group are Saudi Arabias most prominent construction companies, both of which have faced financial difficulties as the world's biggest oil exporter has suffered from the fall in the price of crude.

Amid the economic slump, construction projects have been halted or slowed, and some frustrated workers have staged public protests over the worsening salary delays.

Several of the workers home countries, including Pakistan, India, and the Philippines, have dispatched officials to Riyadh to seek assistance on behalf of their citizens. Indian officials said this month that more than 6,200 former Indian employees of Oger were stranded in Saudi camps after being laid off and owed wages.

Philippines Secretary of Labor Silvestre Bello, who visited Riyadh for talks with Saudi Labour Minister Mufrej al-Haqbani recently, said that with the assistance of Saudi authorities, about 1,000 Filipino workers could be sent home by mid-September.

"Our government has sent half billion (500 million) pesos as initial financial assistance for migrant workers," Bello said.

After Indian authorities raised their concerns, King Salman set aside 100 million riyals of government funds to help the stranded workers, who mostly hail from Pakistan, India, the Philippines, and Bangladesh.

Al-Haqbani said that several of the firms in question, including Saudi Binladin Group, have started paying overdue wages. He said Binladin executives had promised him that payments would be finished by September.

Oger is the only company still broadly withholding payments. Haqbani said the Labour Ministry will press the wage claims of the foreign workers through the kingdom's labor dispute system, although he refrained from detailing a timeline for the process.

"Saudi Oger -- now we'll take it to the courts. Now we are responsible for that. We've hired lawyers," he said. "As the ministry, we will go through the labor dispute courts to go after Saudi Oger and to collect the claims."

He also distanced Ogers troubles from Saudi Arabias overall employment of foreign workers, emphasizing that most of them have chosen to remain in the country.

"This is a small segment ... of the labor market. We have more than 10 million expats working happily here in the country, he said. When a company like Saudi Oger fails to comply with the rules, this will never destroy the good image of our labor market."

At the camp, Mohammed Niaz, 42, said his two daughters back in Pakistan had stopped attending school because he could no longer send money home for fees.

"I'm wasting my time. I want to go to Pakistan," he said, allowed he added that he is refusing to leave Saudi Arabia until he receives the money owed to him by Oger. "My family has no money. My daughters are out of school. How can I go to Pakistan?"

Reported by Marwa Rashad and Katie Paul for Reuters
DES MOINES  Gov. Terry Branstad on Monday defended the states switch to privately-managed care for Iowas Medicaid recipients, saying the new system is saving significant money by rooting out fraud and abuse that previously was going undetected.

Branstad did not provide specific data documenting his claim, but pointed to experiences in other states that have adopted similar managed care models.

He said budget expectations are that Iowa will save more than $100 million this fiscal year with three private managed care organizations (MCOs) overseeing Medicaid services for 560,000 Iowans.

Were getting good reports, the governor told reporters at his weekly news conference. The reports that were getting is that this new system of managed care, replacing the unmanaged care that we had before, is stopping significant fraud and abuse that had occurred previously in our state and across the country, and it is designed to try to improve health outcomes.

Under the former state-run approach, Branstad said it was more difficult to detect unnecessary or redundant medical services being delivered by doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who were treating Medicaid patients.

The new verification system employed by state-contracted MCOs is making payments on a capitated basis that pays per person enrolled, rather than by procedures performed.

The governor downplayed reports of Iowa providers not getting paid timely or paid at all and recipients being denied services.

He said complaints have been resolved by MCOs and state Department of Human Services overseers, with many instances involving people not following the program rules or meeting the verification requirements.

Branstad did acknowledge an Associated Press report that state sanctions and late-payment fines were waived for the three for-profit MCOs in April and May while Iowas system transitioned to the private management.

That decision has drawn some legislative criticism, but Branstad said the leeway was granted as part of a collaborative effort to transition to the new system.

We want to focus on things that are actually going to improve the health of Iowans and were doing this in a collaborative way, he said. I know that there are those who would like to be involved in partisanship and confrontation. That is not our interest.

Our interest is to provide the very best services and when there are shortcomings or problems, I encourage them to contact our office, he said.

Branstad said the processing time under the new system is about 8 days, while previously it took about eight days for claims to clear the process and for payments to be reimbursed.

Before, when you had unmanaged care, you submitted the bill and you got paid. You didnt know whether the service was ever provided. Now we are verifying to see that the service is provided, and obviously that may delay it a day or so, the governor told reporters Monday.
WATERLOO  Disappointing, but not unexpected.

Thats how one United Auto Workers Local 838 official described John Deeres announcement Monday that 115 Deere Waterloo workers and another 30 at the Davenport works are being placed on indefinite layoff by the end of September.

The announcement came after company officials announced a 10th consecutive quarter of declining year-over-year earnings Friday and noted a sustained agricultural downturn has been most pronounced in the sale of higher-horsepower models, which are made in Waterloo.

It was pretty much expected, said Tim Niedert, a UAW Local 838 shop chairman who, along with other union representatives, met with company officials and affected employees Monday morning.It isnt just Deere, Niedert said, noting other ag equipment manufacturers and dealers have a high inventory right now in proportion to product demand.

Niedert said some workers had already been on temporary layoff as company officials tried to adjust production to meet demand. The Deere-UAW contract allows temporary layoff inventory adjustment shutdowns under which workers could be idled up to 16 weeks in a production year. The layoffs announced Monday, however, are indefinite.

Its a bad deal, UAW Local 838 President Tom Ralston said. Our hearts go out to the guys and gals getting affected. Well do everything we can to make sure they have all the benefits coming to them. We were hoping we were done with this, and it turned out not to be the case.

Ralston said 663 Deere Waterloo workers are still on indefinite layoff following a pair of major work force reductions announced in fall 2014 and spring 2015 that initially idled about 1,000 people. Some workers have been called back since then and subsequent layoffs were announced but did not occur.

We had just called back 25 in the Foundry, Niedert said, in a move by company and union officials to bring as much outsourced work back into the plant as possible as provided under the contract. That was just two weeks ago.

Workers affected by the current layoff are at other facilities in town, including tractor cab assembly on East Donald Street and drive train operations along Westfield Avenue near downtown, among others. Foundry operations function separately, with a separate seniority list.Ralston and Niedert said the union will meet with affected workers over the next month.

Well get together with them at the union hall like we did the last time and go through what
CEDAR RAPIDS  Democratic U.S. Senate challenger Patty Judge took issue with her opponents doubts that Cedar Rapids will see the $73 million in federal flood protection money authorized by Congress.

In Cedar Rapids on Friday, Grassley said that unless rules are changed, the money authorized by Congress in 2014 may never be appropriated. The federal funds are part of the citys planned $600 million project.

Judge, who was praised by State Sen. Liz Mathis, D-Cedar Rapids, for her role in helping the city rebuild after the 2008 flood, acknowledged that the job isnt done.

If Im elected, please know that I will never give up, Judge said at a Cedar Rapids campaign event Sunday afternoon. I would never give you the kind of answer Chuck Grassley gave in Cedar Rapids.

What I would tell you is, I dont know if I can do it, but, by god, Im going to try to do it as hard as I can, Judge said. I would try to buttonhole everybody, Id raise the phones, I would be beating on the doors at FEMA, I would be seeing what is possible to do to get assistance that you deserve.

According to Grassley, the holdup is not FEMA but the Army Corps of Engineers rules on cost-benefit ratios for funding flood protection projects.

He encouraged the city to keep pushing for the funds and said he and other members of the Iowa congressional delegation are going to help wherever we can.

Mathis told about three dozen Judge supporters that the former lieutenant governor was integral to Cedar Rapids flood recovery.

Look at this building, look around New Bo, look around Cedar Rapids, she said at a campaign event at CSPS in the New Bohemia District. You will see the fingerprints of Patty Judge. Without Patty Judge, we wouldnt be where we are with our reconstruction. We are indebted to Patty Judge.

However, the Grassley campaign said there is a disconnect between what Judge said and what she thinks she could do as a U.S. senator.

I dont know what else she could do now that she didnt have the authority to do as lieutenant governor when she controlled billions of dollars of relief money, Grassley campaign manager Robert Haus said.

As she frequently does, Judge told her audience that the Senate race is winnable, that she can defeat the six-term Republican who is leading in various polls by seven to 10 percentage points.

Right now were at a place where people are hungry for change and eager to see us get to work, she said.

Judge also made the case that Hillary Clinton needs her in the Senate. Grassley and the entire GOP Senate caucus have been dedicated to blocking President Barack Obamas initiatives.

So if we dont change some seats, Hillary Clinton is going to have the same problem, she said.
CEDAR RAPIDS  Larry Riley was a Walter Mondale delegate to the Iowa Democratic Party state convention back in 1984. Monday he was cheering Donald Trump.

Im for him because hes an outsider and not controlled by big business and the Washington politicians, Riley, of Springville, said at a town hall meeting with Trumps running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

Pence assured Riley that he and Trump understand that the American people are sick and tired of pay-to-play politics that he said characterize the relationship between Hillary Clinton and donors to the Clinton family foundation.

When Donald Trump becomes president of the United States, were going to bring pay-to-play politics to a crashing halt on Day 1, the vice presidential nominee said in a 25-minute speech before taking questions.

Pence described Trump as a man who never quits, who never backs down. He is a fighter and he is a winner  a doer in a game usually reserved for talkers.

And when he talks, Trump doesnt go tiptoeing around those thousands of rules of political correctness that people lay in the path of people who are trying to turn this country around, Pence said.

But sometimes he says things that he shouldnt, Ron Meyer, of Solon, said. However, Meyer, who is retired from the Johnson County Sheriffs Department and Iowa Army National Guard, likes Trumps law-and-order positions.

His wife, Becky, likes Trumps border protection plans. During 34 years at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics she said she saw too many people who overstayed their visas.

This country welcomes anybody who comes, but we want them to come legally, Becky Meyer said.

Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire questioned whether Trump shares that spirit. She called it ironic that Pence, one-half of the ticket that has repeatedly called for a ban to keep Muslims from entering our country, was in Cedar Rapids, home to the nations oldest Islamic mosque.

Immigrants from all over the world continue to make valuable contributions to Cedar Rapids and to our state, McGuire said. The Trump-Pence ticket of exclusion, not inclusion, is not in line with Iowa values.

Unlike Riley and the Meyers, Ross McCutchen wasnt a Trump supporter from the start. He originally backed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Now hes all in for Trump. He drove 4 hours from St. Louis to attend the Pence town hall and is the Missouri director of Trump Millennials.

Im looking for the best negotiator, McCutchen said. Hes proven he can work with everyone.

Trump will use his negotiating skills to make sure trade deals work for the American worker, for the American people, and not just the multi-national corporations, Pence said.

However, Trumps promise to run the country like hes run his businesses should scare everyone  because his economic record has left a trail of victims as he has made millions of dollars on the backs of others, Charlie Wishman of the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL-CIO told reporters on a conference call organized by Hillary for Iowa.

In many cases, Wishman said, Trump didnt pay what was owed not because he couldnt pay them but because he could stiff them.

That didnt faze Riley, who is semi-retired from a career in construction and now manages rental property. To be successful in business you have to know how to play the business game, he said.

Not even the historic nature of Clintons candidacy found support among the audience estimated at 300 people.

Although she believes that in her lifetime America will elect a woman to the presidency, Kim Reem of Marion, president of the National Federation of Republican Women, said, Clinton doesnt speak for us.

Not that woman. Not this year. Not ever, she said.
DAVENPORT  U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack urged support for Hillary Clinton during a stop Sunday in Davenport.

Vilsack spoke at the Scott County Democrats Picnic in the Park, where about 60 people gathered.

Its a tight race in an election that is the single most important election in my lifetime, the former Iowa governor said.

We will be a different country  if we sit on the sidelines, dont vote, and allow this country to elect Donald Trump, Vilsack said.

Vilsack drew cheers and applause when he talked about Clintons plan to create an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the very top.

He contrasted Clintons plans to invest in Iowa families with Trumps plan, which would create a new tax loophole that would benefit the wealthy by cutting a significant portion of their taxes. Additionally, he criticized Trump for not making his tax returns public.

Every year I was governor, I put out my tax return, Vilsack said. Why doesnt Donald Trump? Part of the reason, he said, is that Trump is not as charitable as hed like you to think.

Vilsack thinks Trump has money parked outside the United States. But the Republican standard-bearer Trump could prove him wrong, Vilsack said. All he has to do is show us his tax returns.

He compared Clintons approach to Trumps on several issues:

Minimum wage: Clinton wants to raise the minimum wage while Trump has said the minimum wage should be lowered.

National security: Trump wants to isolate the United States and to bring torture back, Vilsack said. It wont be any of us that pay the price for that, he said  it will be people in uniform.

Building relationships: Clinton has built relationships to get things done as secretary of state, Vilsack said. Trump essentially plans to delegate running the country to his vice president, Vilsack said.

The middle class: The 10 percent of wealthy families have 76 percent of the wealth in the United States, Vilsack said. Trump want to cut the estate tax. Theres not a single person in this audience that will benefit. Clintons economic plan, including making public college tuition-free, will help working families.

Clinton is a loyal, caring person, Vilsack said. In 1998, when he was behind in the gubernatorial election, Clinton supported him.

I want you to know how loyal this woman is, Vilsack said.
LAKE MILLS  We were on a dark gravel road with a curve, and she didnt see the curve, said Carol Yocum as she described the car accident that fractured and burned her ankle 14 years ago.

The car she was riding in hit a tree and was totaled. Her foot went through the bottom of the car, fracturing her ankle. Battery acid burned her leg.

Yocum, who is now 79 and a former certified occupational therapy assistant, spent time in and out of three hospitals and a nursing home that summer. Unable to work since, she walks with the help of orthotics, a cane, and special shoes. Shes missing a major bone in her ankle, and without the shoes, her ankle rolls to one side.

When her first pair of shoes wore out recently, Yocum had trouble finding a similar pair that left room for her orthotics and didnt rub sores on her skin. Yocum, who lives on Social Security with rent assistance and food stamps, couldnt afford the $344 price of custom shoes.

She remembered Elderbridge Agency on Aging in Mason City had given her help every year with figuring out her best health coverage options, so she gave the office a call. She was connected with Lifelong Links Aging and Disability Resource Center, a service of Elderbridge.

After she provided her doctors order for the shoes, she heard within a week that the staff found funding to pay the bill.

I was just thrilled, Yocum said. The new shoes made all the difference. Now I dont even have to put on padding or dressing, and I can walk straighter and have better balance.

She no longer drives, but wearing the shoes enables her to continue volunteering at the Village General Store in Clear Lake. She has donated more than 5,000 hours over the past several years.

The local Elderbridge Agency on Aging is one of six regional centers in the state empowering older Iowans and adults with disabilities to live with dignity and independence.

Agencies on Aging were created with the federal Older Americans Act in 1973, meeting the needs of citizens age 60 and over, according to Elderbridge Community Outreach Coordinator Doug Merbach.

Lifelong Links staff make the connections between an individuals needs and the services available to improve that persons life.

A call for help might result in a referral to one of many local support services, such as a hospice liaison, a veterans program, the public health department or a volunteer counselor specializing in health insurance information.

One of our cornerstone programs from the very beginning has been to provide information to Iowans and caregivers about assistance that might be available and about referral services, said Donell Doering, co-executive director of Elderbridge and director of LifeLong Links.

If an elderly or disabled person is being financial exploited or physically abused, she said, counselors can help that person find a safe environment.

Merbach said it all boils down to keeping seniors in their own homes as long as possible. That includes a nutrition program providing 600,000 meals annually and farmers market vouchers to those who meet eligibility requirements.

It makes more sense financially if you cant afford nursing care or dont want it, he said. Its less burden on taxpayers who have to foot the bill for those who dont have long-term care insurance or cant pay for supports.

Yocum is one of the agencys biggest fans now.

If any senior I know has problems, I tell them about Elderbridge, she said. I think Iowa takes care of its elderly very well.
OSAGE  Opening statements and testimony are scheduled to begin Tuesday in the trial of a Hampton man accused of killing his girlfriend.

Ronald Rand, 61, is charged with first-degree murder. He is accused of fatally shooting Michelle Key, 51, with a shotgun on Dec. 13, 2015, after an argument in his home on First Street Northeast in Hampton.

Documents shed light on Hampton death HAMPTON  A Waterloo woman killed in Hampton last week was shot to death with a shotgun afte

Jury selection began Monday at the Mitchell County Courthouse in Osage. The trial was moved from Franklin County to Mitchell County due to press coverage.

Court documents state Keys body was found after Rand, who was allegedly contemplating suicide, called a friend.

Police say Rand admitted to an officer at the scene that he had killed Key.

If convicted, Rand faces a mandatory lifetime prison sentence without possibility of parole.

 Mary Pieper
CLARION  The Wright County Board of Supervisors on Monday approved some of the final steps in securing a $240 million pork processing plant.

The supervisors unanimously approved a development agreement with Prestage Foods of Iowa and an urban renewal plan, which will allow the county to finance development where Prestage wants to locate.

Development includes constructing wastewater treatment facilities, resurfacing and improving roads and supporting other plant development.

Close to 110 people attended the meeting, with about 40 from Wright and surrounding counties speaking in favor of Prestage during a public hearing. About 12 people from Wright County and outside North Iowa spoke against the plant proposal.

Nicole Woodley, pastor at First Lutheran Church in Clarion, spoke in support of the plant, as did her husband. Speaking about change, Woodley said its an opportunity to welcome new people to the community.

Change is never easy, Woodley said. When change is well thought out, fears begin to dissolve.

Kathy Schnell of Belmond spoke against the agreement and chastised the supervisors.

I feel that youre creating a culture of fear  grow or die, Schnell said.

A Des Moines-based environmental advocacy group said in a statement it wants a moratorium on new or expanding factory farms until the state has fewer than 100 polluted waterways.

Were not against agriculture  were against corporate ags system that traps farmers in a cycle of debt, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement organizer Erica Blair said in the statement. Were against agribusiness that puts their private profits above our communities and above our environment.

We can do better. Its time for big corporations like Prestage, Iowa Select, Monsanto and others to get out of Iowa, she said in the written statement.

Blair also spoke during the public hearing.

Prestage is taking advantage of you, she told the county.

Before the vote, the supervisors took a moment to comment on the project.

I sense tremendous overwhelming public support, Supervisor Stan Watne said, referencing several meetings and the feedback hes received from the public.

Watne said if the county does not try to grow business, population and opportunities, it will continue to shrink.

Karl Helgevold took a moment to thank Economic Development Director Bryce Davis for his work on the development agreement.

There was loud applause from the audience as the supervisors approved the development agreement and urban renewal plan.

The positive outweighs the negatives, Helgevold said after the meeting. We have two years before its built and everybodys working together.

I bet you theres problems we dont even know about right now, but well overcome them, Watne said. Weve got to grow this rural area.

Ron Prestage, a company executive, said in a statement hes pleased the company can move forward with its state-of-the-art plant.

The Mason City Council turned down in May on a tie vote a development agreement for a similar plant proposed by Prestage to be located in Mason City.

We are investing in Iowa and believe it is good for the state, good for agriculture and good for our family-owned and run business, Prestage said.

He said the company has been raising hogs in Iowa for more than a decade, and plans to buy 40 percent of the hogs needed for the Wright County plant from local, independent farmers.

After the meeting, Prestage told the Globe Gazette that he expected the supervisors to vote in favor of the agreement.

Kudos to the Wright County supervisors for doing a very good job of having a healthy, respectful debate in Wright County, he said. We look forward now to proving were going to do what we said we would do and being an asset to this community.

Company founder Bill Prestage said the company felt humbled and honored by the supervisors approval.

This is a great group of people, Bill Prestage said. We hope they feel the same as they do today five years from now.

The next steps are getting the required state and Department of Natural Resource permits. Development Director Davis said the plant is not a sure thing until permits are approved, but passing the county development agreement is a huge step.

Well take this time to prepare for development, to prepare for the growth, Davis said. We have a lot of other businesses were working with.

Prestage COO Jere Null said in a statement the company plans to break ground in early spring 2017, with construction finished by late 2018. The company says it will use Epstein Contractors of Chicago as its architect and general contractor due to its experience building food plants worldwide, but plans to employ a number of Iowa contractors during plant construction.

Prestage announced in July it wanted to locate its $240 million pork processing plant near Highway 17 and 320th Street, about 5 miles south of Eagle Grove. The company says it is committed to running a sustainable operation by placing emphasis on clean air, water quality and energy efficiency.

At full strength, Prestage says it will employ about 1,750, with the average worker earning more than $47,000. The plant will boost Wright County payroll by $43 million, according to the company, and will also provide economic benefits to surrounding counties.

The state economic development board last week awarded Prestage a $11.5 million incentive package, which includes an $8.6 million tax credit and $2.9 million tax refund.
No matter who wins the special City Council election on Sept. 20, a milestone will have been reached in Mason City political history.

Half of the City Council will have turned over in the space of a year.

Last year, Councilman Scott Tornquist resigned because he and his wife were moving to Indiana. Bill Schickel was elected to replace him in a special election in August.

Also last year, three weeks after Schickel was elected, Third Ward Councilwoman Jean Marinos announced she would not seek re-election. In November, Brett Schoneman was elected to succeed her.

Incidentally, another oddity  between August when Schickel took office and the end of December when Marinos left office, we had two former mayors serving on the City Council, something that probably has never happened before.

A review of recent history shows some turnovers of three. In 2009, when Mayor Eric Bookmeyer was elected to his first term, Travis Hickey and Janet Solberg were also elected to their first terms -- but that turnover was in four years, not one.

Two years later, when Don Nelson and Jeff Marsters chose not to run for re-election, Marinos and John Lee were elected to succeed them. Max Weaver, who had been the at-large councilman, chose to run for the Third Ward position and lost to Marinos. Alex Kuhn was elected to the at-large position vacated by Weaver.

So, the long and short of the 2011 election is that three new council members were elected  Lee, Marinos and Kuhn, but the three-member council turnover was not within the space of a year like it will be this year.

As of Friday, six residents have filed for the council special election on Sept. 20. This Friday is the deadline for filing.

Of the six, only Weaver has previous experience in elective office, having served three terms on the council.

The other five candidates are Paul Adams, Jeff Christie, Jacob Krueger, Joshua Masson and Andy O'Brien, all of whom have been actively campaigning through traditional means  door-knocking, holding meet-and-greets, issuing press releases and using social media.

Voters have some interesting choices to make.

Weaver, the graybeard of the bunch, is the only one with any type of political experience but he has lost his last two elections  to Marinos for a council seat in 2011 and to Bookmeyer for mayor in 2013.

Weaver has said the City Council's handling of the Prestage pork processing plant deliberations served as the launching pad for him to get back into the political fray.

The anti-Prestage crowd seems to have rallied around Weaver and Adams, who also has said he was opposed to Prestage moving into the city.

O'Brien was a Prestage supporter and was one of the people who helped with the Chamber of Commerce's last-ditch effort to resurrect the issue after the City Council had voted it down. There are plenty of people in the city who supported the Prestage proposal who also may support O'Brien.

But the Prestage vote has come and gone. Should it be a factor in how voters view candidates in the coming election? We'll see.

Some citizens are surely more interested in the candidates' visions for the future than what they would have done on one particular vote from the past.

The voter turnout in last year's general election was dismally low, 7.2 percent. That is not likely to be the case on Sept. 20, and that's a good thing.
Brandon Ketchum should have never been in Iraq. The U.S. Marine Corps veteran should have never faced the demons he brought home. Sgt. Brandon Ketchum should be alive today.

All eyes are on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Iowa City, which treated and released Ketchum hours before he took his own life.

Iowa's congressional delegation, Republican and Democrat alike, are calling for answers. The VA's Office of Inspector General has opened an investigation.

Throughout the state, federal lawmakers are sitting down with veterans -- old and young -- and hearing story after story about a hospital network that, too often, treats people like unfeeling statistics. It all plays into growing suspicion that, for years, VA bureaucracy has failed far too many young men and women with scars, physical and emotional. And, just since Ketchum's death, local veterans advocates speak openly of more suicides.

The Inspector General's report isn't expected for months. In that time, hundreds of Iraq War veterans will die. Overall, about 20 veterans a day kill themselves, a rate several times higher than the general public. But if, in some fit of legislative or bureaucratic magic, that rate was halved, it would still be too many.

The VA is the nation's back-end catch-all for U.S. military adventurism. Millions are sent off to fight, sometimes repeatedly. Tens of thousands return battered and broken. The fallout funnels to the VA. It's an epidemic beyond even the most efficient, well-run agency.

Needless, senseless war is the real problem here. And it's a cycle that will continue until elected officials devise some basic threshold for waging war beyond the simple politics of the moment. Politicians hope to dodge culpability when they pin all the blame on the VA. Then Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger proposed just such a test way back in 1983.

The VA didn't send Sgt. Ketchum to Iraq. For every justifiable action in Bosnia, and perhaps Afghanistan, there's a more damaging Vietnam or Iraq. The political class owns it.

This summer, the United Kingdom released its exhaustive probe into that country's foray into Iraq. Then-Prime Minister Tony Blair bought into President George Bush's War on Terror, it concludes. Information was twisted, intelligence was ignored, jingoism replaced reason -- all to justify a wholly unwarranted invasion.

More than 1.5 million U.S. soldiers, sailors and Marines were sent to Iraq between 2003 and 2011. More than 32,000 were physically wounded, the Pentagon says. About 4,500 died. Exponentially more were psychologically scarred and the number of those who took their own lives far surpasses those killed in action.

More than $800 billion was spent during the actual conflict, reports the Congressional Budget Office. That number is expected to multiply several times over due to treatment and benefit costs for those who came back.

And, again, it was based on a lie.

The very generation that decided Saddam Hussein's regime should topple were victims of a similar ruse pulled off by those in power. The Vietnam War was fought on a lie, paid for by 2.7 million Americans troops. Drug addiction and homelessness among those who remain far surpasses what's expected in the general population. The VA failed them, too.

But this time, soldiers returned as local celebrities and heroes. All the jingoism, patriotism and saber rattling doesn't change war's effect on the human psyche. A parade doesn't cleanse the effects of post-traumatic stress or rampant guilt.

Brandon Ketchum fell victim to more than 60 years of U.S. foreign policy predicated on the use of force. It's more than a half-century of overthrowing governments and backing despots who ultimately turned on us. It's three full generations of needless intervention that, like in Iraq, destabilized entire regions.

It seems likely that the VA failed Sgt. Ketchum. The IG's report might detail the extent of the shortcomings and, hopefully, drive reform that saves lives.

But the fact remains, he should have never been there in the first place.

-- By the Quad-City Times,

another Lee Enterprises newspaper
Its hard to imagine any questions that havent been raised about Prestage Foods plans to build a pork slaughter and fabrication plant in Wright County.

Its hard to imagine what other information is still needed after the weeks-long series of meetings on the companys plans to build its $240 million plant in the heart of Iowa hog-raising country, 5 miles south of Eagle Grove  or at meetings earlier when the plant was proposed for Mason City.

With answers in hand and the promise of $11.5 million in state incentives on the table, it seems all is in order for the final step  Mondays meeting where the Wright County Board of Supervisors will cast the ultimate yay or nay vote on the plant that promises to provide jobs for more than 900 workers initially and close to 2,000 in the future.

With thoughts of economic benefits flowing to many corners of North Iowa, we urge Wright County supervisors to approve the proposal with the North Carolina-based company. And if they do, we have to admit well be more than a little jealous.

There was great fanfare when the plant was introduced in Mason City. But the proposal that seemed to be on the fast track toward approval got waylaid by considerable public outcry  some from local residents, some from the state organization Citizens for Community Involvement. After a long, emotional period of weeks, the City Councils 3-3 tie vote meant those jobs were lost, along with the substantial payroll.

While the Mason City Council allowed everyone to speak in meetings that took hours, Wright County took a different route  limiting meetings to two hours, with local residents given first opportunity to speak. We dont like limiting free speech, but it was their house and their rules. There were no new arguments, and although we appreciated every opinion, the positives far outweighed any concerns we heard.

On Thursday, another big step in the process took place when the Iowa Economic Development Authority approved $11.5 million in state tax incentives for Prestage  the same incentives the plant would have had in Mason City.

Approval came after 23 people in the crowd of roughly 70 spoke against the plant while eight spoke in favor of it. Many of the concerns involved opposition to taxpayer assistance for out-of-state companies, even though, as a story by Globe Gazette Des Moines Bureau reporter Erin Murphy pointed out, Prestage has operated in Iowa since 2003 and can receive the incentives only if it pays state taxes.

An important point to remember is that the majority of the assistance Prestage will receive from Wright County and the state of Iowa is simply a refund or credit on taxes and other fees it will be paying. This isnt money coming from other taxpayers and being given to Prestage. It is a reduction for a specific length of time in the money that Prestage itself will be paying to do business in the county and the state  money that wouldnt exist at all if Prestage wasnt locating here.

Incentive backing of projects has become a routine part of industrial recruitment and development, and if Iowa didnt approve it, another state might have. It would have been a huge disappointment to let those jobs, that gigantic payroll and promise of related development through the years slip away.

Which brings us, then, to this Monday and the Wright County supervisors final decision.

In rural Iowa, rarely do county officials have the opportunity to approve projects that offer such potential to dramatically change the face of their region for the better.

Rarely are they given a chance at projects that will pump millions of dollars into the economy, through payroll, increased housing and retail trade and through related industrial and other business developments.

Rarely are they given a chance to reverse the trend of declining populations with an opportunity to bring in new workers and families, to bring new students into schools ready to embrace them, to bring fresh faces into surrounding communities to be woven into the fabric of the good life in Iowa.

Thats the opportunity in the hands of the Wright County supervisors on Monday. We urge them to approve the development agreement with Prestage Foods and not let North Iowa lose this remarkable opportunity again.
I was a Bernie Sanders supporter but we couldn't overcome the Democratic National Committee hierarchy. I caucused for Joe Biden and not Hillary Clinton in '08 but voted for Barack Obama.

I have been happy with Obama and he got my vote in 2012 also. He has been remarkable against all odds, including the GOP.

I don't like the idea of having the Clintons in the White House again. But there are no other sensible choices. I won't even get into Trump. Besides, he is diminishing himself and those who support him should not be allowed to vote. Trump cares only about himself and his family.

The Green Party has good ideas but Jill is too nice to be commander-in-chief and deal with rancorous Republicans. I could go for the qualifications of the Libertarian ticket but I'm not sure if those guys are all that serious. They are a bit too jovial for me.

The latest Repub blub is the so-called "ransom payment to Iran." Facts: The Obama administration announced in January that this $400 million payment would be made to Iran. It was money received from Iran in the '80s for the purchase of U.S. weapons. Why? You would have to ask President Reagan. Anyway, circumstances warranted that we should not give them the weapons and the Iranian assets were frozen.

After the Iranian nuclear ban treaty, negotiations were made to return $400 million to Iran, and this was confirmed again later on. It was no secret. Negotiations were also going on for the release of captives held by Iran. In the Obama administration's wisdom, it decided since the timing was so close that it should not release the funds until the captives were released. How else would you do it? It is not ransom when it is the kidnappers' own money.

Steve Epperly, Mason City
Golden Ocean Group Limited (the "Company") announces that its 2016 Annual General Meeting will be held on September 23, 2016. A copy of the Notice of Annual General Meeting and associated information including the Company`s Consolidated Financial Statements on Form 20-F for 2015 can be found on our website at www.goldenocean.bm and in the links below.

August 22, 2016

The Board of Directors

Golden Ocean Group Limited

Hamilton, Bermuda
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Aug. 22, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gross revenue of DKK 5.4 billion was slightly higher than in the first half of 2015 despite continued adverse conditions in the oil & gas related markets. Operating profit before amortisation (EBITA) of DKK 279 million was DKK 91 million higher than the same period last year. EBITA margin of 5.2% was 1.7%-point higher than in the first half of 2015 (3.5%). Profit before tax was DKK 142 million compared to DKK 82 million in the same period last year. Globally, Ramboll now has 13,200 employees in 35 countries.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e616973b-8451-488c-b33c-01b60cb8a762

Ramboll has delivered a significantly better first half year result in 2016 than in the same period last year. Im pleased that over the last 12 months, we have managed to deliver the highest operating profit (EBITA) in the companys history despite challenging market conditions. The continued difficult oil & gas market and the yet unknown consequences of Brexit give rise to uncertainties and challenges in the future that we are determined to overcome. However, with a strong client focus we expect continued growth in the second half of 2016 and a healthy result for the full year, says Jens-Peter Saul, CEO of the Ramboll Group.

A global leader in green energy solutions

The satisfying half year result can in particular be attributed to solid performances in the Nordic business units and in the global Energy business unit  clear evidence that Ramboll has created a strong foothold in the global market for green energy.

In the first half of 2016, Ramboll secured several high-profile projects globally especially within the green energy sector.

Project wins include the design of one of Chinas largest offshore wind farms consisting of 100 turbines with a capacity of 400 megawatts, which amounts to the total energy consumption of 350,000 households.

In the UK, Ramboll has been appointed to provide engineering consultancy to the conversion of Lynemouth Power Station from coal to biomass, which will reduce CO2 emissions from the plant by 90 percent.

In the US, Ramboll will support New York with their important efforts on climate adaptation by helping the city adapt to and manage storm water in a changing climate.

In Denmark, project wins include consultancy for hundreds of million DKK related to the construction of laboratories and production facilities for the pharmaceutical industry.

In addition, the much anticipated Tate Modern extension in London opened in June 2016. Ramboll was appointed by the Trustees of Tate and over a number of years has played an intrinsic role in helping to realise the vision for the extension of the museum, which is one of the most visited modern art galleries in the world.



Key figures and financial ratios H1 2016 H1 2016 H1 2015 2015 Income statement, DKK million EUR m Revenue 726.6 5,413.3 5,391.0 10,589.3 Operating profit before goodwill amort. (EBITA) 37.4 278.9 188.1 474.7 Operating profit (EBIT) 22.7 168.8 74.3 146.7 Profit before tax 19.0 141.9 82.0 222.6 Profit for the period 9.3 69.3 33.5 75.4

Balance sheet, DKK million Total assets 870.9 6,488.0 6,792.3 6,837.5 Shareholders' equity 272.9 2,032.9 2,058.1 2,109.7 Net interest bearing debt (57.0 ) (424.9 ) (582.6 ) (194.1 )

Cash flow, DKK million Cash flow from operating activities (5.9 ) (43.6 ) (52.3 ) 515.8 Investment in tangible assets, net (7.5 ) (55.8 ) (59.8 ) (166.7 ) Free cash flow (13.4 ) (99.5 ) (112.1 ) 349.1 Acquisitions of companies (6.9 ) (51.4 ) (850.4 ) (1,081.4 )

Employees Number of employees, end of period 13,194 12,841 13,074 Number of full-time employee equivalents 12,343 12,137 12,269

Financial ratios in % Revenue growth 0.4 29.7 27.7 Organic growth 1.9 1.3 1.5 EBITA margin 5.2 3.5 4.5 Operating margin (EBIT margin) 3.1 1.4 1.4 Return on invested capital (ROIC) 9.9 7.3 8.5 Return on equity (ROE) 6.7 3.4 3.8 Cash conversion ratio 19.6 Neg. 125.8 Equity ratio 31.3 30.3 30.9

About Ramboll

Ramboll is a leading engineering, design and consultancy company founded in Denmark in 1945. The company employs 13,200 globally and has especially strong representation in the Nordics, UK, North America, Continental Europe, Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

With more than 300 offices in 35 countries, Ramboll combines local experience with a global knowledgebase constantly striving to achieve inspiring and exacting solutions that make a genuine difference to our clients, the end-users and society at large. Ramboll works across the markets: Buildings, Transport, Planning & Urban Design, Water, Environment & Health, Energy, Oil & Gas and Management Consulting. www.ramboll.com

Ownership

The Ramboll Foundation is the main owner of Ramboll Group A/S and its main objective is to promote the companys continuance alongside the long-term development of the company, its employees and the communities it serves. All shares in Ramboll Group A/S are owned by either the Ramboll Foundation (98%) or Ramboll employees (2%).
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Aug. 22, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alliance BioEnergy Plus, Inc. (OTCQB:ALLM) (the "Company"), is pleased to announce today that its patented CTS process will be used to demonstrate the viability of advanced Aviation Biofuel and Biodiesels for use in Military applications. ALLMs CTS process is poised to become the preferred, lowest cost producer of Aviation Biofuels and Biodiesels (providing 99+% conversion efficiency, feed-stock flexibility, portable and module, yet upwardly scalable to refinery outputs) for conversion of Bio-Mass into Sugar and/or Phospholipids (Bio-Oil) for the production of Biodiesel, Bio-Jet and other Biofuels to be used on Land, Sea and in the Air by the Military, Commercial Airlines and the Transportation Industries.



Biofuels are presently being produced; however, there are inherent drawbacks to the present methods of production which make them highly inefficient, expensive and in the case of the Military, potentially hazardous to use ..... they are:

Fixed, stationary land based and refinery sized production facilities

Inefficient, expensive, old Bio-Mass to Sugar technologies

Inability to be scaled-down for local (Airport, Shipboard or Forward Operating Base {FOB}) production, use and support

Inability to accept multiple feedstock sources w/o major process changes

Require transportation for use anywhere beyond the production facility

Alliances CTS Process solves ALL of the Above and More

Military

Logistics are the problem. In the Navy, fuel resupply ships (Fleet Replenishment Oilers such as the USNS Big Horn or USNS Henry J. Kaiser) are limited in the amount of Diesel and Jet Fuel that they can carry during an at sea refueling deployment. When the supply is depleted, the Oiler must return to a supply depot (generally in an unfriendly or hostile port) to take on a new supply of fuels and redeployment.

With the advent of the CTS process, the local production of Biofuels becomes a reality. The Biofuel production facility is built into standard size, ocean going shipping containers. The Bio-Mass for conversion to Sugar and/or Phospholipids is grown onboard in self-contained tanks using rapidly reproducing Micro-Organisms (such as Genetically Modified Algae or specialty plants) and fleet born cellulose based waste streams. To increase Biofuel production, one simply adds additional container sized processing plants.

Air and Ground Forward Operating Base (FOBs)

All FOBs have two Logistical problems. The FOB is not independent or self-sustaining and requires resupply from a Rear supply depot, and, in the case of volatile fuels, they must be transported at distance and through hostile territory subjecting the driver and convoy to Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), sniper fire and mechanical failure, all which can result in a loss of life and much needed fuel supply.

These logistical problems are eliminated by airlifting or delivering a CTS/Biofuel containerized processing plant(s) capable of using local Cellulosic, Bio-Waste and/or Micro-Organism Feedstock; thus providing the FOB with independence, self-sufficiency and sustainability.

Alliances CTS process when configured into a portable, modular unit can be easily transported, quickly connected and configured to use virtually any feedstock available. The portable unit can be run onboard ships that are in route to far away conflicts then off-loaded to provide a constant supply of aviation Biofuel and Biodiesel for heavy equipment, armored vehicles and fighter aircraft, using locally grown/sourced biomass and waste. This will dramatically change the way our Military plans and executes logistics for all future campaigns, drastically reducing costs and protecting the lives of sailors, soldiers, marines and airmen.

About ALLM:

Alliance BioEnergy +, Inc. (ALLM) is a publicly traded company focusing on the commercialization and licensing of a patented cellulose conversion technology that it controls through a master license agreement with the University of Central Florida. ALLMs subsidiary, AMG Energy Group, LLC (AMG), owns 50% of Carbolosic, LLC, in a joint venture with Thor Renewable Energy Singapore. Carbolosic holds the exclusive, worldwide license to three (3) issued patents and fifteen (15) filed and pending patents revolving around the core CTS (cellulose to sugar) technology. ALLM also holds the exclusive CTS rights to North America (Canada, US, and Mexico) and Africa.

The CTS process is the only known patented, dry mechanical process that can convert virtually any cellulose material into sugars and other products in a matter of minutes with no liquid acids, no applied heat, pressure or hazardous materials of any kind. The CTS process when used in the production of Ethanol is clean, less expensive to build and operate than traditional ethanol plants or other cellulose ethanol technologies and is completely environmentally friendly.

Information in this document constitute forward-looking statements or statements which may be deemed or construed to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words "forecast", "anticipate", "estimate", "project", "intend", "expect", "should", "believe", and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve, and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause Alliance BioEnergy Plus, Inc. actual results, performance (financial or operating) or achievements to differ from the future results, performance (financial or operating) or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks, uncertainties and other factors are more fully discussed in Alliance Media Group Holdings, Incs filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements attributable to Alliance BioEnergy Plus, Inc herein are expressly qualified in their entirety by the above-mentioned cautionary statement. Alliance BioEnergy Plus, Inc. disclaims any obligation to update forward-looking statements contained in this estimate, except as may be required by law.
NEW YORK, Aug. 22, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Halyard Health, Inc. (Halyard or the Company) (NYSE:HYH), Kimberly-Clark Corporation (Kimberly-Clark) (NYSE:KMB) and certain of the companies officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and docketed under 16-cv-05093, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons other than Defendants who: (1) purchased or otherwise acquired Kimberly-Clark securities on or after February 25, 2013 and subsequently received Halyard securities pursuant to Kimberly-Clarks spin-off of Halyard, effective as of October 31, 2014; and/or (2) purchased or otherwise acquired Halyard securities between October 21, 2014 and April 29, 2016, both dates inclusive (collectively, the Class Period), seeking to recover damages caused by Defendants violations of the federal securities laws and to pursue remedies under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act) and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder.



If you are a shareholder who purchased or otherwise acquired Halyard securities during the Class Period, you have until August 29, 2016 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Halyard provides health and healthcare supplies and solutions worldwide. The Company operates through two segments, Surgical and Infection Prevention (S&IP), and Medical Devices. Halyard markets its products directly to hospitals and other healthcare providers, as well as through third-party distribution channels.

Prior to October 2014, Halyard was the Health Care operating segment of Kimberly-Clark, a manufacturer of personal care, consumer tissue, and professional products. Kimberly-Clarks common stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KMB. On October 7, 2014, Kimberly-Clark announced the details for the completion of the spin-off of its Health Care segment as Halyard Health, Inc., advising its shareholders that they would receive one share of Halyard Health common stock for every eight shares of Kimberly-Clark common stock held as of the close of trading on October 23, 2014, the record date for the spin-off.

In late 2013, an outbreak of the Ebola virus began in Guinea, subsequently spreading to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other West African nations. In August 2014, after meeting with health ministers from eleven countries, the World Health Organization designated the outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, a rarely-used designation that invokes legal measures on disease prevention, surveillance, control, and response by 194 signatory countries. On September 30, 2014, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared the first case of Ebola virus in the United States.

As awareness of the Ebola epidemic grew, demand surged for the personal protective equipmenti.e., eye shields, face masks and disposable gownsmade by Kimberly-Clarks Health Care segment and subsequently by Halyard, including the Companys MICROCOOL surgical gowns.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) the Companys MICROCOOL surgical gowns consistently failed effectiveness tests and failed to meet industry standards; (ii) Kimberly-Clark and Halyard had knowingly provided defective MICROCOOL surgical gowns to U.S. workers during the Ebola crisis; and (iii) as a result of the foregoing, Defendants public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On May 1, 2016, 60 Minutes reported that Kimberly-Clark and Halyard had knowingly provided defective surgical gowns to U.S. workers at the height of the Ebola crisis. A Company insider claimed that Halyards MICROCOOL surgical gowns were prone to leaks and did not consistently meet the industry safety standards for the treatment of Ebola, but that Kimberly-Clark and Halyard had nonetheless aggressively marketed the MICROCOOL gowns to hospitals during the epidemic.

On this news, Halyard stock fell $1.21, or 4.3%, to close at $26.95 on May 2, 2016.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com
Solar ponds are bodies of water in which circulation is incomplete and there is a very high salt concentration that increases with depth. This vertical change in salinity serves to trap heat because concentrated brine in the lowest water level acts as a collector and storage area for solar heat, while the less saline, lighter water at the upper levels provides insulation. Heat is thus retained in the depths.



An artificial pond of this type has been constructed on the western shore of the Dead Sea in Israel in order to test its suitability as a source of low-grade heat for conversion into electricity. An immediate threat to the success of the venture was the growth of algae. Water in solar ponds must be kept maximally transparent to allow penetration of light to the deep storage area. Therefore, any particles of matter in the water, such as algae cells, that scatter or absorb light will interfere with the collection of heat.



One proposed method of controlling the algae was the application of an algicide. However, the Dead Sea is a closed body of water without any outlet and as such is very easily contaminated. Extensive use of chemicals in numerous future full-scale solar ponds would lead to such contamination of the Dead Sea, which now enjoys a lucrative tourist trade.



A recent experiment has supplied a more promising method for controlling the algae. To repress the algae cells' capacity for accommodating themselves to environmental changes, the water in the solar pond was first made more saline through evaporation and then diluted by a rapid inflow of fresh water. This shock reduced the cells' ability to regulate the movement of water through their membranes. They rapidly absorbed water, resulting in distortions of shape, increase in volume, and impairment to motility. Their buoyancy adversely affected, the cells sank to the bottom of the pond, where they encountered the hot waters of the storage layer and were destroyed. This method allows for effective control of nuisance algae while leaving solar ponds as one of the cleanest technologies providing energy for human use.



Show Spoiler A

1.The primary purpose of the passage is to



(A) discuss ways of solving a problem that threatens to limit the usefulness of an energy source

(B) explain the mechanisms by which solar heat may be converted into energy

(C) detail the processes by which algae cells colonize highly saline bodies of water

(D) report the results of an experiment designed to clean contaminated bodies of water

(E) describe the unique properties of a solar pond on the edge of the Dead Sea





Show Spoiler A

2. It can be inferred from the passage that which of the following is true about the salinity and temperatures of the highest and lowest water layers in a typical solar pond?



(A) The bottom layer is both highly saline and quite hot, while the top layer is less saline and cooler.

(B) The two layers have similar salinity levels, but the bottom layer is hotter than the top.

(C) There is no way to predict the salinity and temperature of the different water layers in different solar ponds.

(D) The bottom layer is less saline and quite hot, while the top layer is more saline and cooler.

(E) The top layer has both higher salinity and higher temperatures than the bottom layer.





Show Spoiler D

3. According to the passage, the growth of algae was considered a threat to the success of the artificial pond near the Dead Sea because the algae



(A) produce excess oxygen that lowers the water temperature in the pond

(B) restrict the circulation of water within the pond

(C) enable heat to escape through the upper level of the pond

(D) prevent light from penetrating to the lowest levels of the pond

(E) prevent accurate measurement of the heat collected in the pond





Show Spoiler C

4. Which of the following, if true, would seriously undermine the validity of the conclusions drawn from the experiment described in the last paragraph of the passage?



(A) The algae cells that sank to the bottom of the pond were destroyed only after a time lag of twenty-four hours.

(B) The lateral motility of the algae cells that sank to the bottom of the pond was not impaired.

(C) The water with which the artificial solar pond was diluted contained microorganisms that kill algae.

(D) The algae cells that sank to the bottom of the pond were actually killed by the rapid change in pressure.

(E) The higher salinity brought about through evaporation increased the transparency of the upper levels of water in the pond. (A) discuss ways of solving a problem that threatens to limit the usefulness of an energy source(B) explain the mechanisms by which solar heat may be converted into energy(C) detail the processes by which algae cells colonize highly saline bodies of water(D) report the results of an experiment designed to clean contaminated bodies of water(E) describe the unique properties of a solar pond on the edge of the Dead Sea(A) The bottom layer is both highly saline and quite hot, while the top layer is less saline and cooler.(B) The two layers have similar salinity levels, but the bottom layer is hotter than the top.(C) There is no way to predict the salinity and temperature of the different water layers in different solar ponds.(D) The bottom layer is less saline and quite hot, while the top layer is more saline and cooler.(E) The top layer has both higher salinity and higher temperatures than the bottom layer.(A) produce excess oxygen that lowers the water temperature in the pond(B) restrict the circulation of water within the pond(C) enable heat to escape through the upper level of the pond(D) prevent light from penetrating to the lowest levels of the pond(E) prevent accurate measurement of the heat collected in the pond(A) The algae cells that sank to the bottom of the pond were destroyed only after a time lag of twenty-four hours.(B) The lateral motility of the algae cells that sank to the bottom of the pond was not impaired.(C) The water with which the artificial solar pond was diluted contained microorganisms that kill algae.(D) The algae cells that sank to the bottom of the pond were actually killed by the rapid change in pressure.(E) The higher salinity brought about through evaporation increased the transparency of the upper levels of water in the pond.
Populism, Past and Present

.





MADRID  It seems that practically no Western democracy nowadays is immune to right-wing populism. While populist rhetoric seems to be reaching fever pitch, with far-reaching consequences  most notably the United Kingdoms vote to Brexit the European Union  the reality is that the strain of nativism that it represents has long bedeviled democratic politics.

Populist movements tend to focus on blame. Father Charles Coughlin, the 1930s-era Roman Catholic priest from Detroit who promoted a fascist agenda for America, consistently sought to root out the culprits for societys problems. Likewise, todays right-wing populists have eagerly turned on the establishment and the elites.

In Europe, this has meant blaming the EU for everything that goes wrong. Addressing the complex roots of current economic and social challenges  the UK and France, for example, suffer substantially from hereditary privilege and frozen class systems  is a lot harder than decrying the EU as a villainous behemoth.

Beyond blame, populist ideology relies heavily on nostalgia. Much of the current upheaval in Europe evokes Edmund Burkes repudiation in 1790 of the French Revolution as the product of a misguided faith in ideas that defied peoples attachment to history and tradition.

For the UKs Brexiteers, the borderless world that the EU, with its commitment to globalization, represents is destroying the nation-state, which better protected their interests. In their referendum campaign, they recalled a past when jobs were secure, neighbors were familiar, and security was assured. Whether that past ever really existed was irrelevant.

The last time European democracies were overtaken by radical political movements, in the 1930s, demagogues based their support largely on the old lower middle class, whose members feared being dispossessed and pushed into poverty by uncontrolled economic forces. In the wake of the protracted euro crisis, and the painful austerity that followed, todays populists have been able to play on similar fears, again primarily among older workers and other vulnerable groups.

Of course, Europe is not alone in being swept up by populism. The United States, where Donald Trump has secured the Republican nomination to be president, is also in serious danger.

Trump paints a bleak picture of life in the US today, blaming globalization (specifically, immigration) and the establishment leaders who have advanced it for the struggles of ordinary American workers. His slogan, Make America Great Again, is the ultimate display of false populist nostalgia.

Moreover, just as Brexiteers want to withdraw from Europe, Trump wants to withdraw the US from international arrangements of which it is a part, if not the linchpin. He has suggested dispensing with NATO, declaring that US allies should have to pay for Americas protection.



He has also launched tirades against free trade and even the United Nations.

As elsewhere, Trumps protectionism and national narcissism are sustained by the anxiety of those hit by the impersonal dark forces of the market. The turn toward populism constitutes a revolt against intellectual orthodoxy, embodied by cosmopolitan professional elites. In the Brexit campaign, expert became a slur.

This is not to say that challenging the establishment is entirely without merit. The establishment is not always in touch with the people. Populism can sometimes be a legitimate channel for aggrieved voters to make their frustrations known, and to call for a change of course. And in Europe, there are plenty of legitimate grievances: austerity, widespread youth unemployment, a democratic deficit in the EU, and an overloaded bureaucracy in Brussels.

But, rather than focus on real solutions, todays populists are often appealing to peoples basest instincts. In many cases, they are emphasizing feelings over facts, stoking fear and hate, and relying on nativist appeals. And, in fact, they are less interested in tackling economic grievances than they are in using those grievances to win support for an agenda that would roll back social and cultural openness.

This is most apparent in the immigration debate. In the US, Trump has won support with proposals to block Muslims from entering the US and to build a wall to keep out those crossing the border from Mexico. Likewise, in Europe, populist leaders have capitalized on the influx of refugees fleeing conflicts in the Middle East to convince people that EU-imposed policies threaten not just Europeans security, but also their culture.

The fact that nearly all of the regions in Britain that voted for Brexit received massive EU subsidies supports this interpretation. So do circumstances in Germany. Though the arrival of a million largely Muslim immigrants last year has not hurt the economy  which remains at full employment  many people are rejecting Chancellor Angela Merkels vision of a new, more multicultural Germany.

Simply put, for many Europeans, immigrants represent less a threat to their livelihoods than a challenge to their national and tribal identities. Populist leaders like the UK Independence Partys Nigel Farage have not hesitated to capitalize on this cultural anxiety, leading British voters ultimately to vote against their own interests.

And yet the grievances which populists like Farage and Trump manipulate are real. To preserve the principles of openness and democracy on which continued social and economic progress depends, those grievances must be understood and addressed. Otherwise, populists will continue to win support, with potentially severe consequences, as the Brexit debacle shows.

Fortunately, there is also precedent for escaping populist takeovers. In the 1930s, as Europe drifted into the hands of either tyrants or banal democratic leaders, Americas Coughlins and others were overshadowed by President Franklin Roosevelts New Deal. And a new deal  one that corrects the EUs yawning democratic deficit and puts an end to self-defeating austerity policies  is precisely what will save Europe today.
Estimados amigos,

Les doy cordialmente la bienvenida a este Blog informativo con articulos, analisis y comentarios de publicaciones especializadas y especialmente seleccionadas, principalmente sobre temas economicos, financieros y politicos de actualidad, que esperamos y deseamos, sean de su maximo interes, utilidad y conveniencia.

Pensamos que solo comprendiendo cabalmente el presente, es que podemos proyectarnos acertadamente hacia el futuro.

Las convicciones son mas peligrosos enemigos de la verdad que las mentiras.

There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

No soy alguien que sabe, sino alguien que busca.

Only Gold is money. Everything else is debt.

Las grandes almas tienen voluntades; las debiles tan solo deseos.

Quien no lo ha dado todo no ha dado nada.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.
A meal is only as good as the drinks you pair with it. Whether your preferred food and beverage combo is wine and cheese, beer and cheese, whiskey and cheese, or... vegan lobster rolls and kombucha?... there are plenty of ways for you to imbibe this week.

Did you know that approximately 65 percent of humans are lactose intolerant? If you happen to be in that sweet 35 percent (or have some Lactaid pills on hand), head to Murray's Cheese on Tuesday and Friday for two cheesy, boozy events. On Tuesday, learn how to pair six summer brews with picnic basket cheeses, then go to your closest park to practice what you've learned. If that's not hands-on enough for you, there's a mozzarella-making lesson on Friday, where you can learn to make the cheese at home, all while downing unlimited sparkling and red wine. Purchase tickets for Tuesday ($85) and Friday ($100), but hurrythey're going fast.



(Yue S. / Yelp)

Road trips are the ideal way to get a taste of a country (or a region's) culinary landscape, but they require more free time and gas money than most people are willing to expend. Live vicariously through Roadfood's Jane and Michael Sternthe "original culinary road warriors" (sorry, Guy Fieri)on Thursday. They'll be showing off their favorite NYC eats at Gargulio's, a old-school Italian joint in Coney Island. It's a bit of a trek, but still not quite road-trip status. Purchase tickets ($75) here.

If you prefer to drink your dinner, Thursday night's Whisky Cruise is ideal (don't worry, there's food, too). This has all the necessary components for a good time: all the food you can eat, all the whisky you can drink (good whisky at that; none of that bottom-shelf stuff) and the chance to hang out on a big boat. You can sip on everything from Akashi Eigashima Whisky from Japan to Hyde Irish Whisky to Kelt Cognac. Purchase tickets ($137) here.

On Thursday, Veganizer NYC is hosting a 12-course dinner at Communal Oven & Earth, featuring their take on meals from around the world. The menu includes vegan interpretations of sliders, chicken marsala, tacos, and much more, and each course is paired with beer, wine, or a kombucha cocktail. Best of all, there's nary a kale salad in sight. Purchase tickets ($125) here


Video by Jessica Leibowitz/Gothamist

The first thing you need to know about Samson is that Samson isn't fat. Samson is a naturally large cat with a lot of fur and a lot of length (he's four feet long!). The purebred Maine coon is four years old and weighs around 28 pounds, according to his owner Jonathan Zurbel, who claims he is the "largest cat in the city." (Do you have a larger cat? Email us!)

Zurbel says he adopted the cat from his brother, and the two now live in Williamsburg, where we recently visited them. Samson (whose Instagram handle is @catstradamus) has spent the last week or two getting frequent visits from the press, which is a-okay with his owner, who earlier this week posted the following on his own Instagram page:

"Finally my cat went viral! It took a lot of work because the pet scene on IG is very competitive, everyone thinks they have the cutest pet. All the cat blogs were ignoring me until the story broke, then everyone got onboard. It's important to always stay the course when you are pushing something on the Internet. It takes time, hard work and consistency with some clever strategies."

Oh dear. Samson is in good hands, however, and his human loves him very much. While we were scheduling a time to meet him, both his vet (whom he gets frequent checks from) and Zurbel were careful to make sure they weren't stressing the cat out, and had us come to his home instead of sending Samson out for a shoot.

Samson is also well-fed, getting six cans of wet food a day, and dry food on top of that! In the two-and-a-half years since Zurbel has had him, Samson has gained over 10 pounds, and he's probably going to grow a little more (Maine coons grow until age five).

Currently Zurbel is hoping to put together a calendar that features Samson being held by different models.

#CatTips : Humans make great pillows A photo posted by SAMSON AKA CATSTRADAMUS (@catstradamus) on Aug 13, 2016 at 9:27pm PDT

And here's Samson with his vet at Off The Leash:

@offleashvet tryna hold me, I'm a lotta cat #more2love A photo posted by SAMSON AKA CATSTRADAMUS (@catstradamus) on Aug 18, 2016 at 12:22pm PDT

N.B.: While this doesn't appear to be the case with Samson, please don't adopt animals for the sake of virality.
Aug. 20

At 12:17 a.m., officers responded to the 10 block of North Last Chance Gulch on reports of a male assaulting people. After speaking with witnesses and victims, officers arrested a 21-year-old Helena man for two counts of misdemeanor assault, as well as a warrant from municipal court. He was booked at the detention center.

At 2:40 a.m., an officer stopped to investigate a vehicle parked near Seventh and Warren. The officer arrested a 25-year-old Helena woman for first offense driving under the influence and expired vehicle registration. She was booked at the detention center.

At 8:41 a.m., an officer arrested a Helena man for an outstanding warrant in the 600 block of North Last Chance. He was booked at the detention center.

At 8:20 a.m., an officer arrested a 61-year-old Helena man for an outstanding warrant. He was booked at the detention center.

At 10:42 p.m., officers were called to a residence in the 1900 block of Jerome Place concerning a possible assault. After investigation, officers arrested a 33-year-old Helena woman first offense partner or family member assault. She was booked at the detention center.

Aug. 21

At 2:13 a.m., officers responded to the area of the 600 block of West Main concerning a disturbance. After investigation, officers arrested a 21-year-old Helena man for first offense partner or family member assault and tampering with a communication device. He was booked at the detention center.

At 2:47 a.m., an officer observed a vehicle stopped in traffic at Lyndale and Last Chance Gulch and stopped to investigate. The officer arrested a 59-year-old Frenchtown man for first offense driving under the influence and for aggravated DUI. He was booked at the detention center.
Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading.

Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy
BILLINGS -- The bid kept going up and up and up. And tears formed in the Leiser family's eyes.

On Saturday during the Patrick K. Goggins Junior Livestock Sale at MontanaFair, Kamrey Leiser's sheep fetched a remarkable sale.

The sheep, Mr. Ramsbottom, garnered more than $14,000 from the sale at $105 per pound. Normally, the animals auction for $4 to $6 per pound, said Nicole Leiser, Kamrey's mother.

The bidding started, and went astronomically high," Nicole Leiser said. "It was pretty emotional for all of us.

The money will go toward medical bills for Leiser, 10, who endured months of intensive surgery after a hiking accident in June.

The Shepherd family was out camping with a group near Big Timber. During a hike, Leiser was leading the pack and got caught in a rock slide. After tumbling 45 feet, she was pinned beneath a boulder.

Leiser was flown to St. Vincent Healthcare with serious internal injuries. Two surgeries were done at the facility before she was flown to another facility in Salt Lake City. There, she went through four more surgeries.

"She went into septic shock the day after we got there, and she had all sorts of things wrong inside of her," Nicole Leiser said.

Leiser spent 44 days in intensive care before she was released onto the regular pediatric wing. A week ago, she returned to St. Vincent.

She was just released on Tuesday.

With help from the local 4-H community, Leiser's older sister was able to show the sheep on Saturday. Leiser and her family were in attendance when the bid kept rising.

And like the bid, Leiser's health has been improving.

"As of about three weeks ago, she just turned a corner and started regaining rapidly," Nicole Leiser said.

She said that the support from the community  4-H, their church and their neighbors  has been incredibly generous. An old friend of Leiser's from Huntley sold rubber bracelets while she was hospitalized to raise money for the bills.

A long road of rehabilitation lies ahead, Nicole Leiser said. But the show of support on Saturday gave the family a feeling of grace.

Hence the tears, she said.

"Amongst all the crazy and evil in the world, there's still good people willing to get out and help," she said.
BUTTE -- Butte-Silver Bow County will assume ownership of the sprawling, vacant NorthWestern Energy office building in Uptown Butte after two years of marketing the property failed to land a buyer.

County officials said last fall they were still hopeful NorthWestern would find a buyer so local government wouldnt have to take on the building at 40 E. Broadway St. and pay utility and other costs to keep it in sellable condition.

The power company built a $25 million office building at Park and Main streets in Uptown Butte and more than 200 employees moved to it last December and January. As part of a deal to keep the company here, the county agreed to assume ownership of the old building if a buyer could not be found in 18 months.

NorthWestern kept ownership longer than required because a possible purchase seemed promising. But that deal fell through so ownership will be transferred to the county Aug. 24, Community Development Director Karen Byrnes told commissioners Wednesday night.

There have been 12 to 14 "walk-throughs" to show the building to prospective buyers, she said, and five to six had expressed serious interest.

"To cut to the chase, the building has not been sold to this date," she said.

A real estate company priced it at $750,000.

It will cost the county more than $1,000 a month to mothball the building, which includes keeping the heat on and water running so it can be sold in quick fashion once a buyer is found.

Its a cost the county did not want to bear, Chief Executive Matt Vincent told The Standard, but it was lower than initially expected. In the meantime, marketing efforts will continue.

Byrnes showed commissioners a video made to promote the building, it has been listed on numerous real-estate lists and websites and NorthWestern would continue to help market it, Byrnes said.

It would not, she said, become "one of those dark, cold places that nobody is interested in looking at."

The old office complex, comprised of five buildings that were joined over the decades, could be marketed as one entity or one that could be chopped up, Vincent said. But its combined 110,000 square feet is daunting in itself.

Our goal is to divest of that building as soon as possible, but that being said, we would like to see it go to somebody that has a really good use for it, he said. It has always been our goal to have that building serve its highest and best use, top to bottom.

The building still has furniture and telephones and a computer system wired for 21st century business, Vincent said. It would be ideal as a call center or perhaps a high-tech incubator with shared work spaces that are becoming more popular in the U.S., he said.

Top to bottom, it is one of the most functional buildings in Uptown Butte, Vincent said. Even though NorthWestern had outgrown its usefulness, it is still as usable as a building gets Uptown.

The building and its possible transfer were part of a development agreement commissioners approved in April 2014 to help keep NorthWesterns Montana headquarters and its 220 employees in Butte.

The county also gave the company land to construct its new, five-story office building and agreed to build a parking garage Uptown where some NorthWestern employees could park.

But even as the council signed off on the agreement in 2014, some commissioners were wary of getting stuck with the old building, saying the county should not be in the real estate business.

Bob Rowe, NorthWesterns president and chief executive officer, said in an editorial in the Standard in November 2015 that the company had been diligently pursuing the marketing effort over the previous year.

It included a marketing plan, work with McLeod Realty of Butte and hiring a Texas-based marketing firm to identify possible uses for the building.

Mike McLeod, a broker with McLeod Realty, said then that the marketing firm determined that mixed uses for the building were possible. But the best fit for the community and market, he said, was multi-family residential.

He priced the building at $750,000.
BUTTE -- Most would describe Kathy Faroni as a woman who speaks her mind.

Energy, said gaming vendor Bill Janney. She has a lot of energy, and she shoots straight with me. If she needs something she asks; if shes mad about something she tells me.

Faroni  who recently purchased Shortys Saloon on Meadowlark Lane in Butte with business partner Dave Smith  said she inherited her appreciation for hard work from her father Harry Muzzy Faroni, whom she described as a hard, Italian, old-fashioned type of guy.

If youve ever enjoyed a Wop Chop sandwich  one of Buttes delicacies, along with the proverbial pasty  youre probably familiar with the work of Muzzy Faroni and his business partner and brother-in-law George Judo Stanisich.

After the construction of the interstate in the 1960s, Faroni and Stanisich opened Muzz and Stan's Freeway Tavern on Montana Street, where the world famous pork chop sandwich was invented.

In 2010 the Wop Chop made an appearance on Travel Channels Man v. Food. The Freeway Tavern was also site to Fox News 2014 interview with Navy SEAL Rob O'Neill.

But before the TV cameras arrived, Freeway Tavern was a modest neighborhood bar where Kathy Faroni says she learned the ins and outs of running a small business.

I was born and raised into it, said Faroni. Its in my blood  the bar, the food industry.

Faroni recalls coming to the bar as a little girl with her mother, who said she was allowed to keep any money she found on the floor. Five or six years old, Faroni would scour the bar, picking up dimes and nickels from bowls filled with peanut shells.

However, Faronis first real taste of entrepreneurship came later on in the form of peeling her weight in potatoes.

When she was 12, Faroni said, her father told her she needed to earn an allowance.

One day he took me to The Freeway, said Faroni. He took a five gallon bucket and put that bucket down on the floor and he said sit, I dont want you to move And the next thing I know, I look and he had potatoes all over the floor. And I remember crying and I said, I dont want to do this and he said then you wont get your allowance. So that was my first job at The Freeway  peeling hundreds of pounds of potatoes.

Today Faroni attributes her hard-working attitude to her parents.

My dad and mom were the best parents you could ever want, said Faroni. We had anything we wanted, but we had to work for it. And if we borrowed, we had to pay (it) back.

And since her time at The Freeway, Faroni has gone on to launch her own businesses, including K&J Construction Cleaning.

In June she and Dave Smith purchased Shortys in a 50-50 partnership.

Under Smith and Faronis ownership, Shortys boasts a casino with 19 gaming machines, two outdoor decks, two full bars and a restaurant. Gaming options include machines by U1 Gaming and Power Vision, among others. Faroni said she also hopes to offer horseshoe and volleyball tournaments and live music in the future.

Although she has a lot of experience in the service industry, Faroni said shes never operated a casino before, so there was a learning curve at first.

However, one challenge she didnt anticipate were the ghosts.

According to Faroni, Shortys Saloon is haunted.

Faroni said previous owners Mark and David Wass had mentioned something about strange occurrences at the property, but she didnt think much of it until doors at the bar started to slam shut and footsteps could be heard going up and down the stairs leading to the administrative office in the basement.

Even the CO2 on the beer taps mysteriously turned off by itself one day, Faroni said.

Because of the strange happenings at Shortys, Faroni said, she was contacted by producers from Travel Channels Ghost Adventures to film an episode at the purportedly haunted location. She said she isnt sure when the filming will begin, but anticipates the crew will arrive sometime in September. Ghost Adventures also filmed at the Metlen Hotel Bar & Cafe in Dillon earlier this month.

But Ghost Adventures wont be Shortys only TV appearance.

Scenes for an upcoming documentary, Chasing Evel: The Life of Robbie Knievel, were also filmed at the casino bar. The documentary is slated for a September 2017 release date on Canadas Super Channel.
April 5, 2019





T he speech shows that science of enslavement was remarkably sophisticated



and closely resembled modern feminism and miscegenation.



Toxic Masculinity? Discrediting the male in the eyes of the female

was a precondition.



The slave-makers in the 18th century are the same people as today.






















Here are six famous quotes from movies. Your job is to guess whether the quote is exactly what made it to the screen, or just what you remember it to be.

ANSWERS: 1. No -- actual line from "Dirty Harry" was Youve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk? 2. Yes: it was what Elwood Blues said during "The Blues Brothers." 3. Yes, again: Fanny Brice greeted her reflection in the mirror in "Funny Girl." 4. Not exactly: Darth Vader said, "No. I am your father. 5. Uh-uh: Casablanca's Rick Blaine rushes over to his piano player and spits out, You played it for her, you can play it for me. If she can stand it, I can. Play it! 6. We heard it wrong: Al Pacino's character in "... And Justice for All" says, Youre out of order! Youre out of order! The whole trial is out of order! Theyre out of order!
DECATUR  Over the course of the weekend, the latest addition to Decaturs public art scene became increasingly hard to miss.

By Sunday, the unmistakable likeness of Bob Marley caught the attention of many drivers as it was being painted on the eastern-facing wall of G-Bs CDs DVDs Records at 702 E. Eldorado St.

Plenty of people honked, shouted encouragement or stopped to chat, said Shani Goss, who designed the mural and was painting it with the help of her husband, Tronnie. A family from Bloomington even dropped off some bottled water on Saturday.

As the artist was being interviewed by a reporter, her design lured in yet another admirer.

I rolled past it two or three times, and it just captured me every single time, said Jamahl Jones, 30, who finally parked his vehicle and got out to talk to the Gosses.

Jones said he lives in Indianapolis but visits Decatur for work. He asked Shani Goss to take his picture in front of the mural and promptly posted it on Facebook.

Im a Bob Marley fan, but I also love murals and artwork, he said. Thats one of the nicest things Ive seen in awhile.

The design features Marleys face, resplendent in vivid oranges, yellows, greens, blues and pinks. When complete, he will be surrounded by a bright pattern of diamonds, along with the song title One Love and the lyrics, Lets get together and feel alright.

By Sunday afternoon, the couple, who own Goss Advertising, had spent more than 20 hours on the mural. They started on Thursday night, when Jerry Johnson, executive director of the Decatur Area Arts Council, helped them trace the outline on the wall.

As they filled it in, Tronnie spent most of his time on a ladder because Shani isnt keen on heights. She concentrated on the portions of work closer to the ground.

Shani said she chose Marley for his wide appeal and upbeat themes.

I wanted to find something that conveyed a positive message, and that appealed to the most broad audience, she said. With all the stuff going on right now, something to make people happy.

Gary and Bob Laskowski, who own the 29-year-old business, are certainly pleased. They said its great for Decaturs morale, and Marley represents positive themes of peace and love.

I hope they keep doing this on different buildings. It kind of makes you smile, Gary Laskowski said.

It cheers up the landscape, his brother added.

Thats exactly the plan, Johnson said. The arts councils Public Art Committee identifies sites for murals, then puts out a call for artists to submit designs. A few designs are chosen by the committee and brought to the building owner for consideration.

In this case, the arts council worked with both the Laskowskis and the buildings owner, Rachel LaGala, Johnson said. A sponsor provided funding for materials and a stipend for the artist, and Lowes donated paint.

This is the first of Decaturs murals to be painted outside of downtown.

Johnson designed and painted the mural of Commodore Stephen Decatur at 145 S. Water St. in July 2013.

Last year, a group of private citizens commissioned the mural of former Mayor Mike McElroy that was painted during Decatur Celebration weekend at 240 N. Park St. It was designed by Goss, who painted it along with Johnson.

A few weeks later, Johnson and a group of volunteers painted the mural depicting the Decatur Staleys and birthplace of the Chicago Bears at 111 E. Main St.

Now, Johnson said hes eager to expand the effort to other parts of the city. The next likely location is in the Oakwood area, where the mural of posters pasted to the wall in 2011 has begun to look worn.

One of my goals here at the arts council is to grow the mural project outside of the downtown area, and this is Step 1, Johnson said.
DECATUR  The first reports of farming prospects in Illinois suggested it would be a tough row to hoe.

French explorer Rene-Robert Cavalier, writing in 1680, said the flat lands are drowned by ever so little rain or were just too dry. ... And the best require considerable labor to clear off the aspens which cover them, as well as to drain the marshes which comprise wide areas, he added.

But what did he know? It turned out that, drained and cleared, you could do an awful lot with Illinois soil. Eastern Illinois history professor Debra A. Reid looked back from a Central Illinois perspective with a Sunday afternoon talk called Macon County: A History of Agriculture and Rural Life.

She told a 25-strong audience at Rock Springs Nature Center that the first Illinois farmers were more interested in cattle than corn and beans. Vast herds were moved around to graze lush grasses until rising land prices subdivided the prairie into more smaller farms. These mixed crops with livestock but there was always a place for horses, whose muscles ran everything from plows to baling machines.

But the turn of the 20th century marked the beginning of the end for horses in favor of horsepower from gasoline and the rise of the tractor. Generally, a farmer with four horses has to dedicate about five acres per horse both for their feed and pasture and that's 20 acres of land, Reid explained. So tractors became something that could also allow a farmer to cultivate more crops.

Things were really booming in the run-up to World War I and conspicuous consumption farmer-style meant building your family a nice home. The hot trend was a big, square two-story place that was hard to miss. The 'Corn Belt Cube' they called it or, sometimes, the 'Foursquare,'  Reid told her audience.

Reid said farmers have always embraced technology, and it wasn't long before their homes were making garage space for cars as well as tractors. Fast-forward to today, and she said some farms were now working with vehicles that don't need farmers.

Jim Beckhart, 75, from Mount Zion, one of her listeners who grew up on a farm, can see which direction the prairie wind is blowing. Autonomous tractors? I think we are moving that way, he said.
DECATUR  Fresh off an eight-month stint as interim dean at Millikin University's Tabor School of Business, Professor J. Mark Munoz admits he'd rather write about running a university than do it himself.

Once he stops laughing at the idea, that is.

Serving as dean has been a good experience, but I love being in the classroom and doing research, Munoz said. I just love writing books more.

It shows.

His latest work, a two-volume tome co-edited by Neal King, is the eleventh book he's published over the past 11 years. Titled Strategies for University Management, it pulls together best practices in university management from leaders and experts from all over the world.

The publisher, Business Expert Press, is identical and the format similar to three of his earlier books one about international social entrepreneurship, another about Hispanic-Latino entrepreneurs and the most recent about managerial forensics.

Our goal was to find out what are the possible solutions and what are the creative ideas that others could use to meet the challenges academe is facing all over the world, he said.

Munoz had the publishing experience, and King, as chairman of the International Association of University Presidents, had the network of potential contributors. They teamed up two years ago, and Strategies for University Management is the result.

Volume I is organized into four sections on planning and leading, offering tools to transform, reinvigorate and turn around educational institutions. Volume II covers effective organizing and controlling.

Munoz, professor of management and international business at Millikin, wrote Chapter 4 in the second volume about pathways to entrepreneurship in academe. It includes a Q and As with Sharon Alpi, former director for the Center for Entrepreneurship in the Tabor School, and other experts.

I tried to weave their information all together to see if there's a common message and was able to come up with a framework, he said.

An award-winning author and educator, Munoz will deliver the keynote address in November at the Academy for Global Business World Congress in Indonesia, where he will also be recognized at the 2016 AGBA Distinguished Business Dean.

Najiba Benabess began work July 1 as dean of the Tabor School of Business, freeing Munoz of the administrative duties he assumed when Susan Kruml left Millikin in November to become vice president for academic affairs at Midland University in Fremont, Neb.

Munoz said he is grateful to Millikin's leaders for their guidance and support.

The students, faculty and staff have been a daily source of inspiration, he said. I honestly don't think this award belongs to me, it belongs to the Tabor School of Business and Millikin University.
NORMAL  Indiana automaker AM General is not buying the former Mitsubishi plant in Normal despite discussions with the plant's owner.

The military and commercial vehicle manufacturer had negotiated with officials to use the facility, but no agreement was reached, said Taso Sofikitis, CEO and president of plant co-owner Maynards Industries USA Division.

AM General spokesman Jeff Adams declined comment.

The company "designs, engineers, manufactures, supplies and supports specialized vehicles" including the Humvee, which it originated, according to its website. AM General is based in South Bend and has "major facilities" in Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.

Maynards, a Michigan company specializing in industrial asset auction, appraisal and liquidation services, has been working with local officials to sell the Mitsubishi plant since agreeing to buy it in partnership with Industrial Assets Machinery of California in May.

I have no comment, said Kyle Ham, CEO of the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council and chairman of a task force searching for a buyer for the plant. I'm under nondisclosure (agreements) for activities that I'm working on out there."

Bloomington and Normal officials referred questions on the plant to Ham.

"There have probably been upwards of two dozen different groups and entities that have been through (the plant) since (Mitsubishi) announcing last year it was closing, Ham said. "We continue to try and find new users. That's our priority and will be until the end."

The real estate, buildings and contents of the plant are set to be sold at auction Oct. 18 to 21.

Sofikitis declined to comment on whether delays in negotiations with AM General led Maynards to twice delay that auction.

Kyle Ann Sebastian, public information officer for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, said she was not aware of any state incentives that might be offered to companies who might use the site, including AM General.

Rod DeVary, president for United Auto Workers Local 2488 during the plant's final year, said he had no direct knowledge of a deal with AM General and was unaware of any job interviews involving the company and former plant workers.

DeVary said he is hopeful the plant will be sold to an employer who could create union jobs.

The UAW chapter, which represented about 1,000 plant workers, dissolved with the plant's closure at the end of May.

AM General's "1,500 employees include the proud members of United Auto Workers Local 5," according to its website.

Mitsubishi laid off most of the plant's 1,200 employees in November after announcing in July 2015 it would end production. The remaining 170 workers lost their jobs with the plant's closure.
COLUMBUS, Ohio  The prosecutor calls it "bomb week," his shorthand for eight school threats over a few days in May that set off evacuations, parental panic, and the rumor mill of students linked by social media in his Ohio county.

Track athletes missed an end-of-season competition, and some high schoolers started carrying their car keys with them instead of leaving them in lockers, Warren County prosecutor David Fornshell said. One mother complained that a girl who uses an insulin pump had taken it off for gym class and had to evacuate without it.

"Nobody who sends their kids to school should have to go through that kind of stress and that type of disruption," Fornshell said.

Such threats are increasing nationwide, according to police, school employees, security consultants and others, blamed sometimes on local students and sometimes on outsiders seeking to cause disruptions or a big emergency response.

State and local agencies don't track the threats, meaning there's no formal accounting of the collective costs. The disruptions typically aren't long enough to merit makeup classes, but the learning time lost to evacuations and cancellations adds up, as do the hours police spend investigating.

Less measurable but still significant are the ways threats can dent staff and students' sense of security even though they're usually false alarms.

"Schools are in a really bad position," said researcher Amy Klinger of the nonprofit Educator's School Safety Network. "People are going to be mad if you evacuate; people are going to be upset if you don't evacuate."

The number of school bomb threats the last academic year, based on media reports, was at least 1,267, roughly twice as many as in 2012-13, said Klinger, who also teaches educational administration at Ohio's Ashland University.

Her group estimates there were about eight bomb threats per school day last year, and that doesn't include other threats of violence. Massachusetts had the most in that tally at 135 bomb threats, followed by Ohio with 96.

Because administrators and police can't simply ignore threats, they grapple with the fallout while trying to deter copycats.

In Ohio, more than 170 school threats were reported in the 2015-16 school year, according to an Associated Press tally based on police updates and media coverage. Threats of bombs, shootings and unspecified violence were called in, written as notes, scrawled on walls and shared on social media and apps. More than 100 Ohio public school districts dealt with at least one threat, as did a handful of private and charter schools and several college-level facilities.

Consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services said it studied more than 800 threats around the country in the first half of the previous school year, up from 315 in a similar span a year earlier.

One day in late May, dozens of threats were made against schools nationwide. Officials investigated whether it might be a case of "swatting," when hoaxers playing online games anonymously make threats online or by phone to trigger big responses from police and SWAT teams.

Schools where students and visitors entered freely a decade or two ago now have surveillance cameras, locked doors and special security procedures. The National Association of School Resource Officers estimates the number of such officers in schools has grown to between 14,000 and 20,000, some armed.

Lawmakers in Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin have explored strengthening penalties for school threats.

In Ohio, lawmakers are proposing legislation to let schools expel students for months for making certain kinds of threats and have them evaluated to determine whether they're a danger.

The bill, supported by associations representing school boards, superintendents and school business managers, also would let districts and law enforcement agencies seek restitution from a student's parents for the costs of responding to their threat.

The frequency of evacuations concerns Lt. Joe Hendry, a veteran Kent State University police officer and a consultant on threat responses. He suggests schools consider whether it would be better to evaluate the legitimacy of a threat before automatically evacuating.

Besides the disruption, security experts note that neatly filing out of a building and gathering masses of people in one place potentially puts them in further jeopardy if someone wants to target them.

People intending real violence don't generally call ahead, Hendry said, so "I'm more worried about the threat that I don't know about rather than the threat that I do."
WASHINGTON -- Shaken by the fact that he's losing, Donald Trump has fled into the parallel universe of the extreme right -- and apparently plans to stay there for the remainder of the campaign. Let's see if the rest of the Republican Party is dumb enough to follow him.

Trump has reportedly been feeling "boxed in" and "controlled" by the few people around him who actually know something about politics. Advice from these professionals to tone it down must be responsible for his slide in the polls, he seems to believe. So he has hired as chief executive of his campaign a man named Stephen Bannon, who will not only let Trump be Trump, but encourage him to be even Trumpier.

Bannon runs Breitbart News, a website that creates its own ultranationalist far-right reality -- one that often bears little resemblance to the world as it really is. As I write, the site is claiming that Hillary Clinton has some serious undisclosed health problem (her doctor says she is just fine), that one of Clinton's aides has "very clear ties" to radical Islam (which is totally untrue) and that Clinton herself has "clear ties" to Russian President Vladimir Putin (when in fact it is Trump who often reveals his man-crush on the Russian leader).

The site's late founder, Andrew Breitbart, once "described Bannon, with sincere admiration, as the Leni Riefenstahl of the tea party movement," according to a Bloomberg News profile. Riefenstahl was the brilliant filmmaker who became one of Hitler's most effective propagandists. I think the comparison is wrong; Bannon is not nearly as talented.

He is a practiced provocateur, however, with a gift for reinforcing the worldview of far-right true believers. Bannon gives readers the impression that the nation is in grave and imminent peril, that Muslims are conspiring to impose Shariah law throughout the land, that Mexican immigrants are running rampant in a wild crime spree, that only Trump can save us -- and that polls showing him far behind Clinton are somehow skewed, incompetent or irrelevant.

None of this is true, not a word. It's all a paranoid fantasy, designed to exploit anxieties about demographic and economic change. And Trump has decided that his best chance of winning is to peddle this garbage, some of which he may actually believe.

So if anyone was wondering if this election cycle could get any worse for the GOP, it just did.

The fact is that there hasn't been a single national poll since July 24 showing Trump in the lead, according to the tally kept by RealClearPolitics. Clinton has also pulled ahead in all the battleground states and has become competitive in traditional Republican strongholds such as Georgia and Arizona.

It now appears to be a good bet that Republicans will lose control of the Senate. It is far too early to predict a "wave" election that might threaten the GOP's big majority in the House, but Democrats are allowing themselves to dream. For Republicans, the two most likely outcomes of the election are bad and worse.

Trump's decision to throw in with the likes of Bannon can only increase the probability of a GOP debacle. Does it have to be spelled out for you in neon lights, Republicans? Trump could not care less about the party, and he would happily destroy it to feed his own ego.

Bannon, likewise, appears to view the Party of Lincoln as merely a vehicle for his own ambition, which is to nurture and grow a nationalist-right movement. His website is as critical of the Republican establishment as it is of the Democrats. He has no interest in making Trump more palatable to the general electorate. Like all would-be revolutionaries, he first wants to heighten the contradictions within the system he ultimately seeks to destroy.

It was perhaps foolish of me to hope that very many Republican elected officials would reject Trump on principle. But now, perhaps, more will do so for reasons of self-preservation.

Trump has made his decision. In a town hall meeting this week moderated by Sean Hannity of Fox News, Trump ignored opportunities to embrace traditional American values and instead reinforced a message of nationalism, xenophobia and fear. He offered himself as the only solution, promising, like any tinhorn strongman, that "I have as big a heart as anybody."

But there is no room in that heart for the GOP. Trump won't save you, Republicans. You had better save yourselves.
Taking advantage of a resettlement plan, the Virabyan family from the town of Charentsavan in Armenia moved to the village of Nor (New) Verinshen in the Nor Shahumyan district of Artsakh.

One member of the family, the mother-in-law Alvard Arakelyan, wants to return. Shes had enough of the hard life and the way the familys been treated by the regional authorities in Karvatchar.

If my daughter-in-law doesnt provide for me, I take my children and return to Charentsavan, to my home, says Mrs. Arakelyan

Alvard Arakelyan

Aregnazan, her daughter-in-law doesnt want to leave. I love the place very much. If I leave Karvatchar for a few days I want to quickly return. I dont see myself living anywhere else, says Aregnazan.

In 1999, Alvard Arakelyan moved to Nor Verinshen with her two sons. When the village was Azeri-populated, before the Artsakh War, it was called Chaykyand. One of the sons later moved to Russia.

Robert, the other son, fell in love with Aregnazan who moved to Nor Verinshen from Yerevan, with her family.

Robert and Aregnazan have six kids  Siranuysh, Alvard, Armenak, Shoushanik, Aram and Khandut. The eldest is nine and the youngest eight months old.

Armenak and Aram

Alvard Arakelyan has had her fill of Nor Verinshen. When I ask why, she responds that there is no land to till. And then theres the house the government allocated as settlers.

My children wanted to move, so we did. We saw the house. What an embarrassment. We figure to leave after the five-year contract. The five years turned into ten and then fifteen. Weve lived here for over fifteen years, but these four walls havent become our property. Every year, we present the documents to the regional authorities in Karvatchar but they dont privatize the house. The land is privatized in our name but not the house, says Alvard Arakelyan.

Aram

The house is in bad shape. The roof leaks and the floor has buckled. Aregnazans husband used to serve in the military. For the past several months, he been unemployed. Hes gone to Armenia, Ararat Province, on a construction job.

Siranuysh

Aregnazan was born in Alaverdi, a town in Armenias northern Lori Province. Her father, Albert Avetyan, was a reporter who covered the Artsakh War of the early 1990s. Afterwards, he stayed in the army and moved to Yerevan for work. After retiring, he sold his Yerevan apartment and moved the family to Karvatchar, to resettle the liberated territories. Aregnazan says her father loved the area and did his best to keep his children in Artsakh.

Alvard

When we arrived, it was very hard. There was no electricity or transportation. In those conditions wed travel from the village to Stepanakert for class. Now, thank god, we have water, electricity and the internet. Whats the problem? Let my kids grow up in the midst of this wonderful natural beauty, Aregnazan says.

Shoushan

The Artsakh government allocates a house to every family with five children or more. Aregnazan says that while she has six kids, they havent yet been allocated a house. Seven other families in New Shahumyan have.

Ive submitted the paperwork. A sixth child has been born to us, but it seems that no one remembers, says Aregnazan.

Aregnazan and daughter Khandut

Aregnazan works as a band director at the Karvatchar Cultural Center. Ovsanna, her sister, is the art director at the same center.

While the two sisters studied music in Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh, and have had opportunities to relocate there, they say they are tied to the land.

I, as a resident of Karvatchar, am closely linked to the land. Our father infused us with that love. His grave is here. I am tied to Karvatchar. If we dont make it prosper, who will? asks Ovsanna.

Ovsanna (right) expresses her love for Karvatchar

Rather than giving up and moving, Ovsanna believes in tackling the issues one is faced with. She perseveres when it comes to improving the water system and roads in the district. Shes been so persistent that Artsakh President Bako Sahakyan has promised that these problems will be solved by 2017.

Theres a unique clock hanging on the wall in the apartment of Aregnazan and her parents. It is adorned with a photo of Aregnazans sister Khandut, who passed away in 2015 after battling cancer.

Khandut Avetyan is famous for uttering the words: I am telling you, you will not give anything back.
On 18 August 2016 the Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan Argo Avakov met with the Deputy Head of the Armenian Police Vardan Yeghiazaryan to discuss developments related to the 17 July seizure of the Erebuni police compound in Yerevan and the OSCE Office in Yerevans willingness to provide assistance to Armenian authorities and civil society to strengthen trust and co-operation between the police and the public.

Ambassador Avakov informed the police about the OSCEs approach to overall security sector reform, which promotes co-operation between civil society and authorities and supports the strengthening of independent monitoring and oversight mechanisms. He described the Offices initiative to create a civil society advisory council that will serve as a consultative body for the OSCEs work in security sector reform. In the specific area of policing, the Ambassador described OSCE initiatives that can promote direct dialogue between police, civil society and the public at large on issues such as public order management and the exercise of freedom of assembly.

The Deputy Head of the police proposed to organize police-media roundtable events to improve police relations with the mass media and civil society. The Office representatives noted that in the course of the previous roundtable discussions between the police and the media facilitated by the OSCE Office some of the concerns raised by civil society representatives about the police behavior during assemblies unfortunately remained unresolved. The Office proposed that the police take into consideration the issues raised and suggested that the roundtable discussions could come up with recommendations and solutions on the improvement of public order management in Armenia.

Ambassador Avakov expressed his condolences to the Deputy Head of the Police and the families of the police officers who lost their lives and commended the professionalism of negotiators who had prevented further loss of life among hostages and armed men in the Erebuni compound.

Ambassador Avakov welcomes the actions taken to investigate allegations of inappropriate behavior and violence by individual police officers toward journalists and demonstrators during the recent demonstrations.

OSCE good practice is that police forces, other law enforcement agencies and prison services are subject to independent oversight systems, with transparent internal discipline and public complaint procedures.
Yeah, I Ate That: Swedish Fish Oreos may be great, or I may have given up
On Sunday, Yum Yum Fest 2016 drew some 4,500-5,000 people down to Central Park on Madison's near east side for a display of culinary fireworks.
State Debate: Where are all the business leaders in Milwaukee's turmoil? asks columnist Bruce Murphy
Plenty of speakers, including comedian John Fugelsang, were part of Fighting Bob Fest last year at Breese Stevens Field on the east side.
Quick Question: Wisconsin has been called a presidential 'battleground' state. Will the election here be that close?
The body of a Chicago woman who drowned in the Mississippi River on Aug. 3 was found in the water by a fisherman on Saturday, near a Grant County boat landing.

Virginia Aberle, 29, was reported missing early in the morning on Aug. 3 after she jumped into the river at Wyalusing Beach, while on a canoeing trip with friends.

The Sheriff's Office got a call Saturday morning from a fisherman near the Glen Haven boat landing; Glen Haven is about 10 miles downstream from Wyalusing.

"The caller indicated he found what he believed to be a body in the water," said Sheriff Nate Dreckman.

The Glen Haven Fire Department went to the scene, and located the body in a foot of water, about 100 yards west of the boat landing.

An autopsy was performed on Sunday at the Dane County Medical Examiner's office, confirming the body was that of Eberle, and that her death was an accidental drowning.

"The Sheriff's Office and the family of Virginia would like to thank all of the volunteers that have assisted in looking for Virginia over the past 17 days," Dreckman said.
One of two men convicted of killing a state and federal drug informant last year was sentenced Monday to 15 years in prison, and told by a judge that had he gone to trial his case would have ended much worse.

Dane County Circuit Judge Ellen Berz told Rudy Ramirez-Milian, 29, who had aspired to become a U.S. citizen, that he had the qualities sought in citizens, such as being a good father and a hard worker free of criminal convictions.

Those qualities are overshadowed by your character as a drug dealer, your character as a liar, and your character as a murderer, Berz said, handing down a sentence close to what Assistant District Attorney Robert Jambois had sought.

Ramirez-Milians lawyer, Michael Short, asked for three years in prison and seven years of extended supervision.

Ramirez-Milian pleaded guilty in June to second-degree intentional homicide for the death of Jacob Payne, 23, whose stabbed and bludgeoned body was found anchored in Lake Mendota in April 2015.

Payne was killed a few days earlier at a town of Burke auto garage that Ramirez-Milian operated. He was first stabbed and slashed by Ramirez-Milian, then was hit on the head with a sledgehammer by Juan Aguilar-Vargas, 28, who was later convicted of first-degree intentional homicide. He is to be sentenced Oct. 31.

Payne was secretly helping to build a drug case against Ramirez-Milian, but in text messages to state and federal agents was becoming increasingly anxious and angry about being around Ramirez-Milian. Payne was virtually homeless and slept in a car parked at the garage.

Berz told Ramirez-Milian that had he gone to trial, he would certainly have been convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, resulting in a vastly longer sentence than the one she handed out Monday.

At a trial in June for Aguilar-Vargas, others who were at the shop told the jury that Ramirez-Milian was arguing with Payne, locked the doors to the garage, warned them not to be alarmed by what was to happen next and then approached Payne from behind and cut his throat.

Berz said that the witnesses, all friends of Ramirez-Milian, testified that Ramirez-Milian began stabbing Payne repeatedly, then asked for help from Aguilar-Vargas.

Juan did, by taking a sledgehammer and crushing the skull of Mr. Payne, at your request, Berz said. She said Ramirez-Milian was the only person there who had motive to attack Payne.

I feel bad for what happened, Ramirez-Milian said in a statement in court, but claimed he was defending himself.

Ramirez-Milians wife, Casey Ramirez, said they married in 2012 and have known one another for nine years. They have a 19-month-old son together.

The tragedy that happened is not in Rudys nature at all, she told Berz.

An immigrant from Guatemala, Ramirez-Milian is likely to be deported after finishing his prison term.
An eight-month old puppy found dead outside a home on Madison's Southwest Side appeared to have been killed, police said.

The puppy, Queen, a Pomeranian-Chihuahua mix, had been on a leash tethered to the front porch of the home in the 6300 block of Alison Lane.

"She was found deceased Thursday night," said police spokesman Joel DeSpain. "Queen suffered head injuries and it appeared someone had intentionally harmed the small dog."

The family reported the dog's death to police on Sunday.

Anyone with information about what happened to the dog is asked to call Crime Stoppers, 266-6014.
A longtime critic of Wisconsin election auditing practices is calling attention to Dane Countys measures for verifying voting machine accuracy in an attempt to unseat County Clerk Scott McDonell this November.

Using newly authorized funding from the County Board, McDonell this year began conducting post-election audits of vote tabulators at two polling places.

But Karen McKim, a retired Waunakee resident who spent her career working in quality control for the states Legislative Audit Bureau and Department of Health Services, says McDonells process is unreliable  from its counting method to its sample size and timing.

He introduced his own odd process  It doesnt meet any of the national best practices for post-election audits, McKim said. It doesnt even follow (Government Accountability Board) or Elections Commission instructions for auditing voting machines.

Most inexplicably, he does it only after he has declared election results final, which is when he no longer has statutory authority to correct any errors he might find.

McDonell says hes gone beyond what clerks have done in other counties, that hes done as much auditing as funding allows, and that hes adhering to state law by conducting audits only after the votes have been certified.

There is also no provision in state law that allows clerks to change the results of a race after an equipment audit. Election results can only be changed following a recount.

Each state runs their election much differently, so having a national best-practice isnt really a thing, McDonell said. We are the only county in the state to audit our results following the election. These audits show that the votes are being counted and (voters) should have faith in the results.

The state began monitoring performance of electronic voting equipment in 2006. Under its current policy, the state selects 100 wards to be audited by municipal clerks, not county clerks, but only after partisan general elections, held in November.

The state requires those municipalities to perform two hand counts for four contests on the ballot, including the top race, before comparing totals with the machines. If discrepancies exist, the cause must be investigated.

Outside of occasional state-mandated audits, Dane County had no system in place for regular checks of machine accuracy until McDonell implemented audits beginning with the spring primary in February. McDonell, however, admits theres been a learning curve.

The audit of the February primary was bogged down by time-consuming technical problems because images of each side of the ballot had to be individually unzipped from files, causing a computer crash. For the April general election, McDonell elected to move to examining paper ballots, which he said provided a smoother process.

I think were at a point now that we have a process were comfortable with, he said. The group of auditors we have, I think theyre going to be faster and more efficient at it now.

Audit procedures at issue

Though shes running as an independent, McKims positions on other issues are similar to McDonells. Both candidates have criticized Republican-led changes to election laws, including voter ID requirements, and McKim applauded McDonell for issuing the states first same-sex marriage license. But she splits sharply with McDonell on the question of post-election audits.

McKim helped found the Wisconsin Election Integrity Action Team in 2012 to conduct citizens audits and advocate for changes to post-election procedures in Dane County and statewide. She faults the countys two completed audits for not precisely verifying the machine totals.

Results of the Aug. 9 partisan primary will not be audited until Wednesday, but audits for both the Feb. 2 nonpartisan primary and April 5 general election found differences of a few votes, though not enough to alter the outcome of any of the races.

In his report on the February primary, lead auditor David Spies wrote that the discrepancies were most likely due to human error by auditors extracting files late at night after resolving a computer crash.

Spies noted minor variances in Aprils vote totals and pointed to instances where voters had clearly communicated voter intent yet creatively marked ballots in a manner which could not be detected by the machine. Those included putting an X above the ovals that were supposed to be filled in, inadequately filled-in ovals, circled names and circled ovals.

Accounting for voter intent is not a state-recommended procedure, though audits conducted independently are not subject to state rules. For the 2014 post-election audit, the now-defunct GAB directed municipal clerks to only count votes as the equipment would have counted them. Voter intent is not a factor, the instructions said.

In neither audit did he end up precisely verifying the voting machine, and in neither did he provide an explanation for the discrepancy, McKim said.

McKim has proposed doing manual counts of small groups of scanned ballot images to improve the likelihood of catching auditing errors. She also wants to use a formula developed by statisticians at the University of California-Berkeley to determine necessary sample sizes, but McDonell says hes not comfortable using software that is not federally certified.

As for the timing of audits, the two differ on the legality of county clerks auditing ballots before results are certified. While McKim believes clerks are free to audit in advance, McDonell has taken a more cautious view of state election law.

My understanding is the way the statute is set up, the candidates can request a recount ... so we kind of treat everything like evidence, he said. If you start opening ballot bags during that interim period, youve sort of violated what is the right of the candidate in a recount.

In October 2014, McKim lobbied the GAB to change the states post-election audit procedures. At the time, GAB staff said Wisconsin law did not contemplate the post-election audit to be related to certification but expressed concern about timing and security.

According to meeting minutes, Judge John Franke expressed concern about waiting until after certification, so Judge Elsa Lamelas suggested leaving the issue for clerks to decide. The result was a procedure in which the GAB did not explicitly say audits could or couldnt occur before certification, but which said they could not happen before the recount filing period had passed.

Reid Magney, a spokesman for the state Elections Commission who worked in the same role for the GAB, said the policy was targeted at municipal clerks selected for state audits, not audits commissioned independently by other levels of government.

We never recommend opening a ballot container until the election is certified unless there is an error that requires it, Magney said. Think about issues of chain of custody and the seals on containers: They are sealed up on election night for the reason of ensuring there is no question about whether the ballots have been tampered with prior to a recount.
Republican Vice Presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana stopped in Madison for a private fundraiser Monday.

Pete Meachum, Donald Trump's presidential campaign manager in Wisconsin, confirmed the visit but provided no other details because it is a private event.

The visit is Pence's third to Wisconsin since joining the Republican presidential ticket last month. He also made stops in La Crosse and Milwaukee on Aug. 11 and Waukesha on July 27. Trump has visited the state twice, including stops in La Crosse, Milwaukee and West Bend last Tuesday.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, a U.S. Senator from Virginia, was in Madison last Tuesday. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has not visited Wisconsin yet.

Dane County Republican Party Chairman Scott Grabins said the Pence visit caught him by surprise as he learned about it for the first time on Monday morning. Grabins said he has been in talks with the Trump campaign about bringing the candidates for a public event to Dane County, a Democratic stronghold.

"I'd love to have a more public event with the county party," Grabins said. "(Dane County) is important in terms of the statewide total."

Gov. Scott Walker did not attend the Pence event because he was participating in other events around the state during the time of Pence's visit, spokesman Joe Fadness said.
Cass Downing was born a boy. In school, she said, other students made fun of her, and she didnt fit in.

Now a transgender woman, Downing said she has finally found her home in Madisons gay community.

They became my friends and my family, Downing said. They told me it was OK to be who I am.

On Sunday, she was royalty. Wearing a dress that combined elements of the American flag and the rainbow colors of the LGBT pride flag, Downing embraced her role as Miss Madison Pride 2016, waving from a float to the crowds who came out to watch Madisons annual OutReach Pride Parade.

The parade, which began at 1 p.m., drew members of the LGBT community and its allies, who marched up State Street and around Capitol Square, rode on floats and rollerbladed in front of cheering onlookers.

Local businesses and groups joined in, including Woofs bar, CUNA Mutual Group and the Madison Police Department.

Wrapped in a rainbow flag, Adam Schaenzer stood at the east corner of Capitol Square to show his support for what he calls his community.

We all need a reminder that love conquers all, and that were all here together, Schaenzer said.

With a banner reading Embracing Diversity Among Gods People, First Congregational United Church of Christ members marched with the parade. Member Jeanne Marshall joined the church more than 20 years ago because, she said, she wanted to be a part of a congregation that supported LGBT people.

Marshall said LGBT people have held leadership positions in her church since it opened almost 25 years ago, and the church performed same-sex unions before marriages were legal.

Theyre Gods people just the same as the rest of us, Marshall said.

Despite recent advances in rights for the LBGT community such as the right to marry in all 50 states and growing social acceptance, many still say they face social challenges. Schaenzer pointed to a nearby protest on the Capitol lawn.

Five men stood on a hill in front of the Capitol holding signs reading homo sex is sin and homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God. One preached that pride is the greatest sin of all. The signs and speech were met with jeers from marchers and their supporters.

For the second year, Cid Silvano stood in front of the protesters waving a rainbow flag. Silvano said she served as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps to protect the rights of others to express who they are.

This is what it is all about, Silvano said. This is freedom. This is what America is.

It was a day for flags of all kinds, some worn as capes to represent different sexualities and gender identities, including the pink, purple and blue flag of bisexual pride and the blue, pink and white stripes of transgender pride.

Were here to say, Its OK to live an alternative lifestyle, Downing said.
Scrapbook welcomes news of academic honors other than deans or honors lists. We accept news of scholarships, class reunions, service club officers, honors to volunteers, military promotions and decorations and other special recognitions. Please type or write clearly, and include a phone number. Submissions must be received at least one full week prior to publication. All items received may not necessarily be used. Please send contributions to Scrapbook, Wisconsin State Journal, P.O. Box 8058, Madison, WI 53708; or by email to

ageiger@madison.com.
A federal judge in Texas has blocked the Obama administration from enforcing its guidance requiring public schools to let students who are transgender use the bathrooms and locker rooms associated with their gender identity.

In a temporary injunction signed Sunday, U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor ruled that the federal education law known as Title IX is not ambiguous about sex being defined as the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth.

While the injunction is in place, the Obama administration cannot enforce its rules on schools in states that were party to the lawsuit  which includes Wisconsin, according to the order.

Wisconsin, and 12 other states, challenged the White House directive as unconstitutional. OConnors order specified that the Obama administration could not enforce its guidelines on the plaintiff states schools.

Schools face the loss of federal funding if their policies and practices regarding bathroom facilities for transgender students go against the Obama administrations guidelines.

In a statement, Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said the injunction was a victory for the rule of law and a clear statement that the federal government cannot force states to comply with an illegal policy that directly conflicts with existing federal law.

The Obama administrations efforts to rewrite federal law without congressional approval have been, once again, rejected by a federal court, said Schimel.

Guidance from state education officials to districts grappling with how to accommodate students who are transgender will likely not change, according to Wisconsin State Superintendent Tony Evers.

The best decisions for Wisconsin kids are made with the input of their local communities, Evers said in a statement. While national litigation around this issue will continue, it does not absolve a schools responsibility to provide a safe environment for all kids to learn. I do not anticipate any changes being made to our work to help Wisconsin schools achieve that goal.

Brian Juchems, senior director of education and policy at Madison LGBT advocacy group GSAFE, said its guidance for districts seeking their input wont change.

Juchems said the issue is clearly headed to the Supreme Court.

GSAFE continues to know that gender-inclusive practices, like those issued by the DOE/DOJ earlier this year, create learning environments that allow all students to not only be their full selves but also be successful, Juchems said. There continues to be no evidence, despite what some lawmakers and advocates continue to claim, that gender-inclusive practices makes anyone less safe. If anything, transgender and gender expansive students continue to be the target of violence, discrimination, and humiliation.

The lawsuit came after a legislative session during which a bill co-authored by Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, that would set gender restrictions on school bathrooms and locker rooms failed to get traction. Kremer has said he hopes to bring the legislation back.

The original bill would have set a statewide standard for bathroom use in Wisconsin schools. As it stands, schools are free to establish their own policies.

The federal guidance was issued after the Justice Department and North Carolina sued each other over a state law that requires transgender people to use the public bathroom that corresponds to the gender on their birth certificate. The law applies to schools and many other places.

Schimel called the directive a new policy that conflicts with the plain language of Title IX, and is therefore an unlawful interpretation. Title IX does not prohibit gender identity discrimination, but sex discrimination.

The judge in the Sunday order also sided with Republican leaders in Texas who argued that schools should have been allowed to weigh in before the White House directive was announced in May.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, had argued that halting the Obama order before school began was necessary because districts risked losing federal education dollars if they did not comply. Federal officials did not explicitly make that threat upon issuing the directive, although they also never ruled out the possibility.

This president is attempting to rewrite the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people and is threatening to take away federal funding from schools to force them to conform, Paxton said. That cannot be allowed to continue, which is why we took action to protect states and school districts.

The Justice Department issued a brief statement saying it was disappointed in the ruling and was now reviewing its options.

The ruling does not prohibit schools that allow transgender students to use the facilities of their choice from continuing to do so.

Transgender rights in public schools are a growing legal battleground. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Virginia school board can block for now a transgender male from using the boys restroom while justices decide whether to fully intervene.

Paul Castillo, a Dallas attorney for the gay rights group Lambda Legal, said the latest ruling was a continuation of attacks on transgender people.

I think today is going to be a hard day for transgender students, Castillo said. The decision is certainly emotional and certainly an attack on transgender students dignity.

The federal government issued the mandate days after the Justice Department sued North Carolina over its bathroom law, which U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch likened to policies of racial segregation. Republicans have argued such laws are common-sense privacy safeguards.

The Obama administration had told the court that recipients of federal education dollars were clearly on notice that anti-discrimination policies must be followed. Texas alone gets roughly $10 billion in federal education funds.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Libertarianism has long been treated as a fringe ideology obsessed with the gold standard, legalization of hard drugs and Atlas Shrugged. Ron Paul, who ran for president in the 2012 GOP primaries, was the archetype, calling for an end to Social Security and the Federal Reserve.

But when Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson extols fiscal responsibility and social tolerance, he brings to mind a different political tradition: that of moderate Republicans.

There was a time, not so long ago, when they dominated the GOP. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush sprang from this wing of the party. So, arguably, did George W. Bush, along with nominees such as Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

But the party has moved steadily to the right recently. Rank-and-file GOP voters grew significantly more conservative in the first decade of this century. Its a measure of how conservative House Republicans have become that Speaker Paul Ryan, once a tea party hero, is now viewed with distrust by many in his caucus.

That growing tilt leaves an electoral opening for a candidate who thinks the government shouldnt meddle too much in either markets or morals. Hillary Clinton isnt interested in occupying it. So Johnson, who is averaging 9 percent support in the RealClearPolitics average of four-way polls that include him and Green Party nominee Jill Stein, has that niche to himself.

In Kansas, long solidly Republican, moderates are rebounding, thanks to the unpopularity of conservative Gov. Sam Brownback. In the Aug. 2 legislative primary, moderates defeated incumbent Brownback allies in more than a dozen races. U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a tea party stalwart, also got evicted.

Since 2012, the share of Republicans who say they are economically and socially conservative has shrunk from 57 percent to 42 percent. But the national partys message hasnt caught up with that trend.

If Trump loses  and particularly if he loses big  moderates may find themselves taken more seriously in Congress and the party. Many Republicans are probably already wondering how much brighter their electoral prospects would be with, say, John Kasich of Ohio atop the ballot in November.

Victories by senators who have clashed with Trump  such as Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Rob Portman of Ohio, as well as Kirk and McCain  would give them more influence on the GOPs direction. A strong showing by Libertarian Johnson would encourage Republicans to adopt at least some of his ideas. And voter frustration with gridlock may aid lawmakers who dont treat compromise as a crime.

Pragmatic, centrist Republicans have largely vanished from the American political scene. But their absence leaves a vacuum that begs to be filled.
Twenty years ago this week  on Aug. 22, 1996  President Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform bill he hailed as the fulfillment of his campaign promise to end welfare as we know it.

At the heart of it were two new rules: Recipients were required to seek work, and they were subject to time limits. The central goal was to reduce poverty and its associated ills by averting long-term dependency.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act could be seen merely as an effort to save money. More important, though, was fostering the self-respect and independence that go with holding down a job and proving ones economic value. The old welfare system, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, didnt do those  one reason it was widely deplored.

By its own standards, welfare reform has been a success. The new system, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), exceeded the most optimistic hopes. In a decade, the number of people getting welfare dropped by two-thirds, and the majority of women leaving the rolls were able to find jobs. Critics feared a million people would fall into poverty  but the poverty rate fell, particularly for blacks and children.

The 1996 law created strong incentives, both positive and negative, for the most uneducated, untrained and unpromising welfare recipients to join the workforce, Ron Haskins and Peter Schuck wrote in a 2012 Brookings Institution analysis. Poor mothers responded to these incentives even more resourcefully than most policymakers had expected, despite their often chaotic domestic circumstances. The Congressional Research Service reports, In 2013, the official poverty level was still below pre-1996 welfare reform levels, despite two recessions since 1996.

The Great Recession severely tested the program, throwing people out of work and making jobs harder to find. But work participation by recipients remained far higher even after the downturn than it had been before welfare reform.

Work requirements didnt accomplish all of this alone. Another factor was the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which supplements the wages of low-income workers. Providing more than $5,500 a year to families with two children, it has been the single most effective antipoverty program targeted at working-age households, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Nor was welfare reform a cure-all. In the wake of the Great Recession came a sharp increase in the number of people applying for federal disability benefits, which dont carry the same work mandate. The federal food stamp program, known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has grown considerably, partly due to more generous eligibility rules and partly to hardship.

Even some advocates of welfare reform say it has sometimes been implemented badly. Some states have used their federal block grants, which were set at a fixed amount in 1996, for purposes only faintly related to combating poverty. As the official who oversees Oklahomas program told Slate, We pay for a lot of other important things with TANF dollars.

But some valuable lessons have been learned. One is that given sensible incentives, a lot of people are able and willing to join the productive sector. Another is that when cash assistance carries a work requirement, it creates better feelings not just in taxpayers but in recipients.

At the 1996 signing ceremony, President Clinton recalled his encounter with a woman who had left the rolls after finding a job. When he asked her the best thing about being off of welfare, she replied, When my boy goes to school and they say, What does your mama do for a living? he can give an answer.

Welfare reform was an admirable attempt to combine two ideas: that Americans have an obligation to help women and children who fall into poverty, and that those they help have a duty to help themselves. It struck the right balance then, and it still does.
Exploring the creative journey...MY creative journey...as expressed through textiles. What nurtures it, what blocks it? Inspirations, frustrations and "doing the work." Oh yes - and the occasional rant.
George Soros gave Ivanka's husband's business a $250 million credit line in 2015 per WSJ. Soros is also an investor in Jared's business.
By PTI: mishap

Hyderabad, Aug 22 (PTI) Ten passengers, including two women, were killed and 18 others injured when a private bus they were travelling in fell into a canal at Nayakangudem in Telanganas Khammam district in wee hours today, police said.

Besides, in another accident, three persons died in Andhra Pradesh when their car met with an accident in Chittoor district early this morning when they were returning from the Krishna Pushkaram festival, they said.

advertisement

The bus accident occurred at around 3 AM when the vehicle, proceeding to Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh from Hyderabad, hit a road railing of a bridge and fell into the canal under Kusumanchi Mandal of Kammam district resulting in the death of 10 passengers and injuries to 18 others, a senior police officer said.

"Around 30 passengers, besides two drivers and two attendants, were travelling in the ill-fated bus when the mishap occurred. After the accident, both the drivers and the attendants are not to be seen," DIG (Warangal Range) T Prabhakar Rao told PTI over phone.

As per preliminary information, the bus was on high speed and the driver seems to have lost control over the wheels resulting in the accident, the DIG said.

The injured were rushed to Government General Hospital in Khammam, he said adding that police were in the process of registering a case.

Earlier, Khammam Collector Lokesh Kumar and senior police officials visited the spot and monitored the rescue operation.

The Andhra Pradesh government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 3 lakh each to the kin of the 10 deceased.

Some of the victims belonged to East Godavari and some were from West Godavari district of the AP.

Meanwhile, three persons were killed in a separate road accident in the APs Chittoor district early today.

The car they were travelling in rammed into a stationary lorry on the highway at Srimallavaram village, killing three persons belonging to Madanapalle.

The victims were returning to their town after taking part in the Krishna Pushkaram.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed grief over the accidents and spoke to the Collectors of East Godavari and Chittoor districts over phone to enquire about the incidents, a communication from the CMO here said. PTI VVK DBV GK RCJ

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Malerkotla (Pb), Aug 22 (PTI) Three workers were today killed while 19 others sustained injuries after a blast in the dryer of a paper mill here, police said.

The blast in the dryer, which is used to dry paper, took place at around 11 AM in Malerkotla, Sangrur, DSP (Amargarh) Gurmit Singh said here today.

Two workers died on the spot while one succumbed to injuries in a hospital, he said.

advertisement

Out of 19, six injured persons were admitted to Rajendra Hospital in Patiala and ESIC Hospital in Ludhiana. Rest of the injured, who have been admitted to civil hospital in Malerkotla, are out of danger, DSP said.

With the blast, the roof of the mill and machinery also got damaged, police said, adding investigations are underway to ascertain the reason behind the blast. PTI CHS DV

--- ENDS ---
"My husband said, 'I've seen Mahdi, I've found him,' his mother recalled. "I said, "You've seen Mahdi? Nader, please don't tease me, don't joke!' He said, 'I'm not joking. He is with me right now."

By AP: Love, not war, sent an Afghan family fleeing from Iran during last summer's chaotic mass migration to Europe. Luck reunited them a year later, after a dark night in a Turkish forest separated 14-year-old Mahdi Azizi from his parents and sisters.

LUCKY REUNION AT CONCERT

The boy's father was at an open-air concert in central Sweden this summer when he thought he spotted his son. Nader Azizi had spent anguished months seeking information about Mahdi's fate, not knowing if he were alive or also made it to Sweden.

advertisement

"Is that Mahdi?" Azizi, 36, recalled thinking as he strained to keep sight of the youth in the crowd. "I told myself it was a dream." He pushed closer and shouted out his son's name. Mahdi turned around and exclaimed "Baba!" the Farsi word for dad.

The chance father-and-son reunion at a small town racetrack, along with a warm welcome from Mahdi's Swedish foster family, offers a bright spot amid the bleak stories emerging from the migrant crisis.

SPLIT

After joining the waves of refugees - mostly Syrian but some from Afghan and Iraq - pinning their hopes on human smugglers, Mahdi got split up from the rest of his family in Turkey during the rush to board a truck headed for the border.

The boy traveled thousands of miles under the watch of different smugglers. He managed to reach Sweden, unaware his family was at an asylum center less than 150 kilometers (93 miles) away from the foster home where he was placed.

"I was really confused," Mahdi said of his first days alone in the country. "At night, I couldn't sleep. I was crying myself to sleep thinking of my mother."

Azizi had moments during their yearlong separation when he felt confident he would see his son again, others when he feared the worst.

"When I thought about the difficult route, I was pessimistic," he said. "But then I could see lots of people still making it, and I found hope again."



DISBELIEF

Mahdi's mother, Raheleh Azizi, 34, at first didn't believe her husband when he called to tell her their son was safe and only moments away.

"He said, 'I've seen Mahdi, I've found him,'" she recalled. "I said, "You've seen Mahdi? Nader, please don't tease me, don't joke!' He said, 'I'm not joking. He is with me right now.'"

She paced around the family's room at the asylum center, not daring to believe the news. Then, Mahdi knocked on the door.

"We embraced and I cried," Raheleh Azizi said.

FAMILY FEUD

What triggered the Azizis' journey was an old family feud that began in their native Afghanistan.

Nader and Raheleh fell in love as teenagers while he was working as a servant in her wealthy family's home. Her family opposed the relationship, so the young couple ran away together.

advertisement

Relatives attacked and made repeated death threats against the pair over the course of their marriage, believing Raheleh had dishonored the family, Nader Azizi said. Family members continued to pursue them, with the aid of a tight Afghan community in Iran, even after they moved with their two oldest children to Tehran a dozen years ago.

Azizi said he decided his family needed to leave the region when the threats turned to kidnapping the children. The family sold their belongings and gave 40,000 euros ($44,000) last year to smugglers who promised to take them from Iran to Sweden.

Asked about the night Mahdi got left behind in the woods, son and father are overwhelmed by painful memories.

"We were sitting in different groups underneath the trees. Then suddenly, the trucks arrived and we all rushed toward them," the elder Azizi recalled. He was carrying his younger daughter, a toddler at the time, and thought his son was following just behind.

"Once we were inside the truck, I yelled, 'Mahdi!' But I didn't hear him," he said, breaking off the story to compose himself.

advertisement

Mahdi boarded another truck and eventually was pushed onto a boat for the crossing to Greece. Forced to keep moving, the boy said he could not get anyone to understand or care that he wasn't supposed to be by himself.

"I tried to explain that my family were still there, that I couldn't continue without them," he said. "But the smugglers wouldn't listen, and I didn't understand their language."

FOSTER FAMILY

Last year, more than one million migrants reached Europe by sea, and a further 34,000 have crossed from Turkey into Bulgaria and Greece by land. After Germany, Sweden was the top destination for asylum-seekers entering Europe last year, with a record 163,000 people pursuing shelter there.

Among the 35,369 unaccompanied minors to arrive in the welcoming Nordic nation was Mahdi Azizi.

He quickly was placed with a Swedish foster family. His guardian, Carina Arnberg, took Mahdi and two other boys she and her husband were caring for to the July 29 concert at a racetrack about an hour's drive from her home.

Little could she have imagined that Mahdi's family was living nearby, or that his father would stop to listen to the music of a Swedish pop duo at the racetrack.

advertisement

Arnberg gets goose bumps when she talks about how the stars aligned that day. One of the boys she was chaperoning pointed to a tree other children had climbed for a better view.

"Mahdi and I turned around to look at the tree," she said. "Mahdi said 'Wow! It's my dad.' And his dad said 'Mahdi!' They were so happy."

Arnberg and her husband invited the rest of the Azizis to stay in a cottage next to their home. There, Mahdi reconnected with his sisters - 3-year-old Ghazal, who forgot him during his long absence, and 12-year-old Parvaneh.

But the happy ending is not yet complete. Although Sweden is known for its welcoming attitude to immigrants, lawmakers tightened regulations for asylum and family reunification in January to help manage the growing flow from the Middle East.

As an unaccompanied minor who has been granted asylum, Mahdi, now 15, lives at an apartment provided by the Swedish government. However, his parents' and sisters' applications were rejected on the grounds that they could live safely in Afghanistan.

They are appealing, but if forced to leave, hope another country will take the whole family. In the meantime, Mahdi had to return to school a six-hour bus ride away this month, interrupting their reunion.

"I don't know when we'll be able to see Mahdi again," Azizi lamented as he watched the boy who was lost and found board a bus for school. "I really don't know what's going to happen. We don't know anything."

But for a few strange and joyful days at the end of the short Scandinavian summer, just knowing Mahdi was safe was enough.

ALSO READ:

From Syria to Rio: Meet the Olympian swimmer who saved 20 lives by pushing sinking refugee boat for hours

US accepted over 53,000 Hindu refugees: State Department

--- ENDS ---
Cory Morris, 21, from Minneapolis, has been charged with second-degree murder for allegedly punching the baby girl named Emersyn in her face and chest to quiet her "baby talk"

By Press Trust of India: In a horrific incident in the US, a father allegedly murdered his four-month-old daughter by punching her 22 times as she was making baby noises while he was watching television.



ATTEMPTED TO QUIET HER

Cory Morris, 21, from Minneapolis, has been charged with second-degree murder for allegedly punching the baby girl named Emersyn in her face and chest to quiet her "baby talk".

advertisement

According to the charges, Morris called police on August 13 and admitted he had just killed his daughter. When police arrived, they found the 4-month-old unconscious on a changing table.

Morris, who was alone watching the child at the time of the incident, told police that he punched the child approximately 15 times in the face and 7 times in the chest with a closed fist, then squeezed her chest with his hands in an attempt to quiet her.

The Hennepin County medical examiner confirmed the baby died from blunt force trauma.

I DID SOMETHING BAD

After he did this he called both his mother and his wife and said, "'I did something bad', but didn't tell them what he actually did," Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman was quoted as saying by KMSP-TV.

Morris told police he was watching TV when his daughter began making 'baby talk' noises. He took the baby out of her swing and carried her into a bedroom, placing her on a changing table. Morris said he started punching the baby because she continued to make noises.

SHORT TEMPERED AND ABUSIVE

According to the criminal complaint, Morris was left to care for the baby girl three to four times per week while his girlfriend worked. His girlfriend reported that Morris went from happy to mad easily, and has grabbed her or thrown things in the past.

"Family members have suggested there may be mental health issues here. These will need to be evaluated during the course of this case," Freeman said.

Morris remains in the Hennepin County Jail, with bail set at USD 2 million.

Also Read: Indian origin stepmother charged with killing 9-year-old girl in New York City

--- ENDS ---
Speaking to a group of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes members in South Goa, Kejriwal said, "It would look odd but it is true that despite a one-and-half year of governance in Delhi, AAP does not have money to fight election. I can show you my bank account, even the party does not have money."

By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal risks getting labelled as a politician whose claims are high on hype but low on substance. He said in Goa yesterday that his Aam Admi Party (AAP) does not have money to fight election despite running Delhi government for one-and-a-half years.

WHAT KEJRIWAL SAID

Speaking to a group of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes members in South Goa, the AAP convener said, "It would look odd but it is true that despite a one-and-half year of governance in Delhi, AAP does not have money to fight election. I can show you my bank account, even the party does not have money."

advertisement

The Delhi Chief Minister elaborated his statement by saying that when the AAP contested in Delhi, the people fought the election. Similar should be the situation in Goa where local people will contest the polls because, he claimed, the AAP is a platform for everyone to fight for their better future.

WHAT EC FIGURES SAY



However, contrary to Kejriwal's claims, facts speak otherwise. Going by the Election Commission, the AAP is the fourth largest political party in the country in terms of receiving contributions. In the financial year 2014-15, it received contributions worth Rs 37.45 crore.

Only three parties - and all of them national ones - had received larger contributions than the AAP. The BJP, with 437.35 crore is at the top, followed by the Congress (Rs 141.55 crore) and the NCP (Rs 38.82 crore).

http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/PolPar/ContributionReports2015_National.aspx

The AAP has the distinction of receiving the highest contribution compared with the regional parties, even those who are ruling other states.

For instance, the Samajwadi Party, ruling the country's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, received donations to the tune of Rs 19.50 crore, BJD in Odisha (21.80 crore), Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab (3.01 crore), TRS in Telangana (Rs 8.69 crore), Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh (Rs 7.57 crore), TMC in West Bengal (Rs 8.32 crore) and BJP's alliance partner Shiv Sena in Maharashtra (25.58 crore).

http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/PolPar/ContributionReports2015_State.aspx

No wonder, AAP's rivals - the Congress and the BJP both - have refused to trust Kejriwal.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari told India Today Digital that what the Delhi CM said the most hypocritical claim one can make. "This is the most sanctimonious statement which really undermines the humbug that the AAP is. Till today, these fellows have not disclosed the funds collected by India Against Corruption (IAC)," he said.

The former Union Information and Broadcasting Minister said no sanctity could be attached to Kejriwal's claim till the collections by the IAC are made public. "Till then, it will not reflect the true story of their finances," he added.

advertisement

KEJRIWAL IS A BUNDLE OF LIES: BJP

The BJP was more hard-hitting in attacking Kejriwal. Party leader Vijay Jolly said, "Kejriwal is always a bundle of lies. What he said (in Goa) is a ploy to collect huge funds and then spend them according to his whims and fancies. He has great penchant for collecting funds. In Delhi, he collected crores and crores. But, what has he done for the capital?" he said.

Jolly charged that the Delhi CM cannot be trusted and his image among the people has got tarnished. He collects massive funds before every election but later claims that he does not have money. He too lashed out at Kejriwal for not disclosing the funds collected by Anna Hazare-led IAC. "His bluff has been called. The people do not feel excited any more about his claims," he said.

With the rival parties gunning for Kejriwal, he will have a tough time convincing the voters, also of Goa, of the lack of funds which the AAP supposedly faces.

Also read:

Kejriwal: Congress was in Ambani's pockets, Modi government in Adani's

Kejriwal keeps Punjab, assigns Gujarat, Goa to senior AAP leaders for election season



--- ENDS ---

advertisement
By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 22 (PTI) Contemporary Tamil author Perumal Murugan today ended a self-imposed literary exile of 19 months with a new book - a collection of 200 poems "A Cowards Song".

Threatened by protests from Hindutva activists against his Tamil novel "Madhorubagan" (One Part Woman), which they deemed offensive, a dismayed Murugan had announced in a Facebook post in December 2014 that the writer in him was dead.

advertisement

"Author Perumal Murugan is dead," he had written. In July, the Madras High Court had dismissed a plea seeking prosecution of the author and ban of his "offensive" book in Tamil, besides forfeiting all the copies of its English translation "One Part Woman" saying there was nothing obscene in the book.

Dressed in a white shirt and dhoti, Murugan, speaking in Tamil read out a powerful statement after the launch of his new book at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, which was translated and read out in English.

The 50-year-old author also recited two poems "Hometown" and "A Cowards Song" before that.

Describing the first three months after he had declared his "death", Murugan said he did not want to "even write one word". He said during that time he felt like a like "a walking corpse", and "like a rat in a burrow".

"It was poetry that saved me. My mind has now attained a state of being able to write poetry," he said, adding now when he writes he feels a censor seated within him and "unable to shake him off".

"My writing will do little to change the world so let me be quiet and speak through my writings," said the author, who began writing poetry when he was a child.

In the discussion with Nilanjana Roy following the reading statement, Murugan said he believed "No writer can write a single work in defence of caste."

"In my perception caste is ubiquitous but present subtly in society. Why caste exists and why is so divisive is a question that plagues me," Murugan said.

The author was introduced by poet Ashok Vajpeyi, who said it was "encouraging for poets like us that he is alive and that he chose to write poetry instead of prose".

Refusing to delve into the dark days following his self- imposed exile, the author, who is also a professor of literature, said he never believed he would be able to write again.

"Today is a happy day for me. My book of poems has been published and released in Delhi. I dont want to relive my dark days of 2015," he said.

advertisement

Murugan, who has previously written six novels, four collections of short stories and four anthologies of poetry, said he doubts whether he can continue to write in his usual realist mode.

"I doubt whether I can continue to write in future in the realist mode. I might have to resort to other techniques. Only time will tell on that," he said. PTI ANS ZMN

--- ENDS ---
Everyone Has A Story became a bestseller on Amazon. Less than a year later, the fiction has found a new publisher, Westland Books.

By India Today Web Desk: The 26-year-old author, Savi Sharma, has taken the literary world by storm. Her book, Everyone has a Story, not only topped the charts on Amazon but is also going into re-publishing by Westland.

Eager to launch her book, Savi took the publishing and distributing responsibilities in her own hands and made her debut with Everyone has a Story, last year, which sold over 5000 within a month.

advertisement

This overwhelming response prompted leading Indian publishers to line up to print the fiction. The tremendous sales of the book resulted in a multi-publisher bid, which was finally bagged by Westland in early 2016.

The book tells the tale of "Meera, a fledgling writer in search of a story that can touch millions of lives and Vivaan who dreams of travelling the world but gets trapped in the corporate world. The story unwinds when Kabir, a cafe manager and Nisha, the despondent cafe customer joins the crew."

Also read: Author Jon Wilson's book, India Conquered, is an objective take on why the British flourished in India

According to Savi, in a way, the story is autobiographical. All characters of Everyone Has A Story are fragments of her own personality, imagination and thoughts. They have been sketched based on her experiences and feelings.

"Meera is a carbon copy of mine. Her search for story, her thoughts about life and love, her struggles and weaknesses, her lifestyle, almost everything is a reflection of mine," says Savi.

"Vivaan, the bank manager and traveller, is that part of mine who doesn't just want to live but feel lively. It's not about escaping what we are doing but exploring so much more in this one lifetime. I love to explore new places and people as they inspire me to write stories", she says.

"I guessed having stories stuck in my own soul was the reason and the need to hear other people's stories. But I didn't just want to hear stories; my heart was aching to tell a beautiful story which would change people's lives or at least mine," says Savi.

Also read: This IIT Calcutta graduate left her successful corporate job to write a bestselling book

"The success of her first novel was so significant that it has gone back into reprint and even the second print is an Amazon bestseller," publishers said.

The book has 112 reviews on Amazon, 80 of which gave her 5 out of 5 stars. Her average was 4.5/5.

advertisement

Last year, Savi self-published the book, as she had decided to opt out of the conventional publishing route for a faster output. She approached Thompson Press with her manuscript. And so, Everyone Has A Story was out in the open.



(With inputs from PTI)



--- ENDS ---
In a sweeping cyber law reform, Bangladesh proposed on Monday to make propaganda against its Father of the Nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman or the War of Liberation punishable with life term and a fine of Taka one crore.

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: Bangladesh government on Monday approved a very stringent draft law, which may attract life imprisonment and a fine of Taka one crore for criticizing its Father of the Nation, Bangbandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The draft law got cabinet nod in meeting chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the Bangladesh Secretariat in Dhaka.



Briefing reporters after the meeting, Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam said that primary aim of the new law is to check cyber crime.



advertisement

"As per the draft law, if anybody spreads false propaganda against the War of Liberation and its spirit or Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman or matters relating to the War of Liberation using electronic media, he/she shall be punishable with a jail term of minimum three years, which may extend up to life imprisonment and/or a fine of Taka one crore or both," Alam said.



14-YEAR JAIL-TERM FOR CYBER CRIME

The Cabinet Secretary said that under the new law, if anybody attacks or hacks secure information infrastructure, like Biman Cyber Management, the offender shall be punishable with a minimum of two-year jail term which may extend up to 14-year imprisonment and/or a fine of Taka one crore or both.

Alam said that the draft law was formulated to replace Sections 54, 55, 56 and 57 of the Information and Communication Technology (Amendment) Act, 2013 in order to curb cyber terrorism among other cyber crimes that could cause immense damage to the country financially and administratively.



Once the new law is passed and implemented, crimes committed using computer, mobile or any digital device, would attract imprisonment for minimum two years, which may extend up to five years and/or a fine of Taka three lakhs or both.

TACKLING CYBER TERRORISM



Cyber terrorism is on rise as terror outfits tend to use social media for brainwashing gullible youths and recruiting them to their fold. The new Bangladeshi law has proposed a jail term of maximum 14 years and a fine of Taka one crore for any connection with cyber terrorism.

Alam said that cyber terrorism affected the unity and solidarity of Bangladesh and affected its relation with other countries. The new law would help bettering Bangladesh's relation with other countries.



OTHER CRIMES COVERED IN THE LAW

The new law intends to deal with other common cyber crimes making the punishment harsher. Under the new law, violating secrecy shall invite a punishment of up to two years of jail term and/or a fine of Taka two lakhs.



Pornography shall be punishable with a jail term of two years, which may be extended up to ten years and a fine of Taka ten lakhs.



Defamation and hurting religious sentiments shall be punishable with a two-month's imprisonment, which may be extended up to two years and/or a fine of Taka two lakhs.



advertisement

Creating enmity and disturbing law and order shall be punishable with a maximum jail term of 7 years and/or a fine of Taka seven lakhs.



--- ENDS ---
Six districts in the state have been hit by floods and water level has crossed the danger level at many points.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar conducted an aerial survey on Sunday to take stock of the flood situation in Bihar.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: With the flood condition in Bihar remaining critical, the Army and Air Force have been requested to remain on alert in case if any eventuality.

Six districts in the state have been hit by floods and water level has crossed the danger level at many points. Water in Ganga, Sone, Punpun are all flowing above the danger level, however, showing a declining trend.

advertisement

"Army and Air Force have been briefed about the present situation on floods and asked to remain on alert", said Bihar CM Nitish Kumar.

PATNA IS SAFE, PEOPLE NEED NOT WORRY: CM



Bihar CM held an emergency meeting on the present flood situation in the state and also conducted an aerial survey on Sunday to take stock of the situation. Nitish dispelled fear that Ganga which was swelling at the moment in Patna could threaten the state capital.

"People of Patna should not be fear as there is no possibility of flood water entering residential areas", assured Nitish.

The state government asserted that it has made all arrangements and set up several relief camps for affected people. Government also appealed to people stranded in riverine areas to leave their homes and come to safer places through govt or private boats deployed for evacuation.

RELIEF CAMPS SET UP IN FLOOD-AFFECTED AREAS: CM



"Sufficient relief camps set up in flood-affected areas, safe transport of people and cattle to the camps will be ensured", the Bihar CM said.

However, with the met department forecasting heavy rains in central and eastern parts of Bihar in next 24 hours, the alarm bell are ringing as the water level which is showing a declining trend may again rise.

As directed by Nitish, DMs of Patna, Vaishali and Bhojpur conducted an aerial survey of the flood situation on Monday.

ALSO READ:

Bihar floods: Villagers camp on Patna-Bakhtiyarpur Expressway over lack of aid from government



--- ENDS ---
Union Minister Ram Kripal Yadav's boat got stuck in Ganga for nearly 30 minutes while he was inspecting flood-affected areas in Maner, Patna.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: While the Union Minister Ram Kripal Yadav was today helping in the relief and rescue work being carried out by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) in the Maner area on the outskirts of Patna, his own boat got stuck.

Yadav was taking stock of the flood affected areas in the NDRF boat when the boat got stuck in the Ganga due to strong water current and wind.

advertisement



The Minister was in the middle of the river for nearly 30 minutes but on-time action by the NDRF personnel ensured that the boat reached the bank safely.

The NDRF personnel got into the water and pushed the boat to the river bank.

YADAV VISITS HIS SUBMERGED CONSTITUENCY

Maner falls under Yadav's Patliputra constituency. He toured the flooded villages and got first-hand account of the situation. Water level in Ganga is touching danger level and several villages in Maner panchayat are submerged under water, displacing thousands of people.

Ram Kripal, along with a team of doctors, visited Ratan Tola, Dudhaila, Chihantar, Rampur and Haldi Chapra villages falling in the riverine area in an NDRF boat.

"Relief and rehabilitation work is not reaching the people who are stranded. There is an immediate need of medical assistance in the flood-hit villages", Yadav said.

Bihar flood crisis: Army and air force on alert, Nitish holds emergency meeting

Bihar floods: Villagers camp on Patna-Bakhtiyarpur Expressway over lack of aid from government

BIHAR GOVT NOT DOING ENOUGH?

The Union Minister was disappointed with the role being played by the Bihar government in carrying out relief and rescue operations.

He said that the state government was limiting itself to just relief camps and was not reaching out to the people stuck in remote areas.

"There is an acute shortage of milk for small children, drinking water and dry food items. The administration is not reaching out to the remote villages but only limiting itself to relief camps", he said.

He advised the Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to work on the ground and expedite the relief work to the affected people.

"Nitish should not run the rescue and relief work only in newspapers but on the ground also", said Yadav.

Also Read:

Rescue operations underway in Bihar, MP, UP and Rajasthan after rain spell halts

States deal with flood-like situation, government holds meet on disaster management



--- ENDS ---
The PLA Daily suggested, deploying BrahMos missiles is bound to increase competitiveness and confrontation in Sino-Indian relations and bring a negative influence to stability of the region.

The 290-km range BrahMos is a tactical or non-nuclear missile jointly developed with Russia and has become the preferred precision-strike weapon for the Indian Armed Forces.

By Ananth Krishnan: India's move to deploy BrahMos cruise missiles in Arunachal Pradesh as a deterrent against China has provoked a sharp response from the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA).

The NDA government had given the final go-ahead for the Army to induct and deploy an advanced version of the BrahMos missile for mountain warfare in the northeast earlier this month.

advertisement

CHINA WARNS INDIA

The PLA's official mouthpiece, the PLA Daily, has warned India that doing so could bring countermeasures from China and bring "a negative influence" to "stability" of border areas.

"India deploying supersonic missiles on the border has exceeded its own needs for self-defense and poses a serious threat to China's Tibet and Yunnan provinces," said the commentary that was published this weekend in the PLA's influential official newspaper.

The Cabinet Committee on Security, chaired by PM Narendra Modi, had cleared this fourth BrahMos regiment at a cost of over Rs 4,300 crore. The regiment consists of around 100 missiles, five mobile autonomous launchers on 12x12 heavy-duty trucks and a mobile command post.

The PLA Daily claimed that India's views of "counterbalance and confrontation" were behind the move, noting other steps to bolster the border such as deploying Sukhoi Su-30MKIs and drones in border areas as "deterrence to China to create a military advantage in the boundary". India, however, is still playing catch up with China having gone forward and setting up massive infrastructure in Tibet and Xinjiang, including airports, roads, and a rail network that is set to reach the border.

THREAT BY BRAHMOS CRUISE MISSILE

The PLA Daily suggested deploying the BrahMos could threaten some of this infrastructure. "The supersonic BrahMos cruise missile has excellent dive attack capabilities, and fits in the Sino-Indian border where it's mostly mountain topography," the commentary said, adding that the "low observable" nature and "penetration capabilities" of the 2.5 Mach-speed missile posed a threat to China's border areas.

The commentary, authored by an expert from the PLA Navy's Engineering University, also presented a detailed assessment of the nature of the threat posed by the deployment of an advanced version of BrahMos with "steep div"" capabilities suited to mountain warfare.

The deployment of the missile "could increase suddenness and effectivity of attacks" and land "crushing blows on time-sensitive targets like missile launchers and solid targets like command centres", it said.

"Deploying BrahMos missiles is bound to increase competitiveness and confrontation in Sino-Indian relations and bring a negative influence to stability of the region," the commentary concluded. On the other hand, the newspaper suggested, the missile also had certain "defects", such as "a relatively short range that cannot threaten China's deep zones" as well "a heavy weight that makes it difficult for even a Sukhoi Su-30MKI to carry more than one".

advertisement

The 290-km range BrahMos is a tactical or non-nuclear missile with "nine times more kinetic energy than sub-sonic missiles" for greater destructive potential. Jointly developed with Russia, it has become the preferred precision-strike weapon for the Indian armed forces.

The missile was under test by the Army and last known test of the missile in the Eastern sector was done in May, 2015. The steep-dive attack cruise missile can hit enemy targets hidden in the shadows of mountains. The BrahMos can be launched from multiple platforms like submarine,ship,aircraft and land based Mobile Autonomous Launchers (MAL). The missile can fly at 2.8 times the speed of sound. It can carry conventional warheads up to 300 kg.

Also Read

World's most formidable supersonic cruise missile BrahMos integrated on Su-30MKI



--- ENDS ---
The Modi government looks set to do away with the colonial practice of presenting Budget on the last working day of February. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may present the next Budget in January, 2017.

By India Today Web Desk: Since the colonial days, every year Budget is presented on the last day of February. But, the Modi government is considering doing away with this colonial practice. If things go as being planned in the government, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may present the next Budget by January end.

Presenting Budget in January would mean convening an early Budget Session, which now spreads from February to May. As the financial year begins on April 1, the government wants to sum up the entire process by March 31.

advertisement

NO RAILWAY BUDGET, SLIMMER MAIN BUDGET

Finance Ministry is doing an overhaul of the entire Budget making exercise, which may also see scrapping of the current practice of presenting a separate budget for Railways.

The Budget document is set to get slimmer with indirect tax proposals finding almost no mention after excise duties, service tax and cesses being subsumed under the Goods and Service Tax (GST) regime.

They may be no distinction between Plan and non-Plan expenditure, which will be replaced with capital and revenue expenditure. The Finance Minister has already his reservation over this distinction, which disables the ministry from moving fund from one segment to other, should a pressing need arises.

WHAT DOES CONSTITUTION SAY?

There is no mention of any specific date for presentation of Budget in the Constitution. But, in continuation of the pre-Independence practice, it is usually presented on last working day of February and the two-stage process of Parliamentary approval takes it to mid-May.

Since, Budget is passed by Parliament in May, while the financial year begins on April, the government seeks Parliamentary approval for Vote on Account for a sum of money sufficient to meet expenditure on various items for two to three months. This is mandated by the Constitution.

BUDGET REVIEW TO START EARLY

The finance ministry is of the view that if the process is initiated earlier, there would be no need for getting a Vote on Account and a full Budget can be approved in one stage process before March 31.

The revenue department is also mulling advancing its pre-Budget meetings with various stakeholders to September instead of holding them in November/December.

VAJPAYEE GOVT CHANGED THE TIMING

Till 1999, the Budget was presented at 5.00 pm on the last working day of February, in keeping with the British practice. However, the Vajpayee government changed the time to 11.00 am.

It is also interesting to note that the Modi government has set up a panel to review the financial year cycle. The committee is likely to present its report later this year.



ALSO READ:

GST will integrate the country into one single market, says Arun Jaitley



--- ENDS ---

advertisement
A bus fell into a canal at Nayakangudem in Khammam district of Telangana in the wee hours today.

By India Today Web Desk: Eight people were killed and 15 others injured when their bus fell into a canal at Nayakangudem in Khammam district of Telangana in the wee hours today, police said.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed grief over the accident and spoke to East Godavari district Collector Arun Kumar over phone.

Meanwhile, the Andhra Pradesh government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 3 lakh each to the kin of the deceased.



advertisement

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

The driver of the private bus was apparently driving the vehicle at a very high speed. He lost control over the wheels, as a result the bus on its way to Kakinada from Hyderabad, fell into the canal under Kusumanchi mandal, police said. Some of the victims belonged to East Godavari and some were from West Godavari district of the Andhra Pradesh. The injured persons have been admitted to the Government General Hospital for treatment.

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From K J M Varma

Beijing, Aug 22 (PTI) China today opposed Taiwans reported plans to join the UN saying only "sovereign states" can apply for a membership of the top world body and the communist-nation is firmly opposed to any attempts by Taipei to seek independence.

China firmly opposes any acts or words supporting "Taiwan independence," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in response to a question about Taiwans possible application for UN membership.

advertisement

He was reacting to reports from Taipei that Tsai Ming Shian, a senior member of the "Taiwan United Nations Alliance," asked Taiwans new President Tsai Ing-Wen to write to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to apply for membership last week.

It is known to all that the UN is an inter-governmental organisation consisting of sovereign states.

"Only a sovereign state can apply for a membership," Lu told a media briefing here.

There is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is a part of China,Lu said.

The Chinese government and people firmly oppose any form of "Taiwan independence" secessionist activities, Lu said.

"Any attempt to challenge the one-China policy or create two Chinas or one China, one Taiwan will not succeed," he said.

China claims Taiwan as part of the mainland never recognised Taiwans estrangement in 1949.

Taiwan, which enjoys close ties with US has been carrying out military buildup to deter any threat from China. Relations between the two sides which showed significant improvement in recent years took a hit after election of Tsai defeating Ma Ying-Jeou who promoted normalisation of ties between the two sides in recent election.

China has scaled down the normalisation process since then. PTI KJV AJR

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Kolkata, Aug 22 (PTI) In a blow to Congress in its stronghold Malda, 14 Congress and Left members today switched over to Trinamool Congress, giving the ruling party in West Bengal control of the districts council.

State Transport minister and TMCs in-charge of Malda district Suvendu Adhikari told reporters that in the 38-member Malda zilla parishad, eight Left and six Congress members, including ZP sabhadhipati Sarala Murmu, joined the party during the day, while two Samajwadi Party members extended support.

advertisement

Dipali Biswas, who won on CPI(M) ticket in the Assembly poll, and a zilla parishad member had joined TMC last month.

He said that those who joined TMC did not support the "unethical alliance" between Congress and Left during the last Assembly election.

"They have also been inspired by the development works undertaken by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee," he said.

Todays development is significant as TMC drew a blank in Malda in the last Assembly poll, held only about three months ago.

Congress also faced a serious challenge to defend its zilla parishad in neighbouring Murshidabad district as eight of its members, one of CPI(M) and another from AIFB had recently joined TMC taking the number of TMC zilla parishad members to 29 in the 70-member council.

State Congress president and MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury hailed from Murshidabad district.

Adhikari had earlier claimed that within the next few months his party would take control of Murshidabad and Malda zilla parishads. PTI SUN MM KIS

--- ENDS ---
Mumbai police have filed an FIR in connection with the incident where a man was heckled by a rickshaw driver in Andheri over suspicion of carrying a bag made of cowhide.

By Vidya : The entire police force of Amboli police station is leaving no stone unturned in identifying the auto rickshaw driver who had been mentioned in a complainant by Barun Kashyap. He had filed a non cognizable offence with the D N Nagar police station on Saturday alleging that he was heckled by an auto rickshaw driver and his friends.

advertisement

According to Kashyap the auto rickshaw driver objected to his leather bag which he claimed was made of cowhide. Kashyap reportedly told him that he had recently visited Pushkar in Rajasthan and had purchased the bag made of camel hide from there.



RICKSHAW DRIVER ASSAULTED KASHYAP OUTSIDE TEMPLE

However, the auto rickshaw driver was not convinced and stopped his vehicle near a temple called on to a few people and all of them heckled him.

After the incident garnered media attention, Mumbai police got cracking and took permission from the magistrate and converted the NC into an First Information Report (FIR) and started investigation.

According to Mumbai police spokesperson DCP Ashok Dudhe, the complaint was lodged on August 19. He said that the cops are working towards tracing the auto rickshaw driver.

COPS TO TAKE STRINGENT ACTION



"This matter has been taken up very seriously by police. We have informed all police stations across the city to take strict action if such cases come in the forefront," Dudhe said.

The FIR has been registered under Section 504 and 506 of Indian Penal Code for criminal intimidation and intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace.

The intensity with which Mumbai police is said to be investigating this case can be gauged from the fact that about 10 police personnel from Amboli police station last night at around 10.30 pm reached the regional transport office (RTO) at Andheri, got the records department opened and took photos of approximately 1,000 auto rickshaw numbers.

RICKSHAW BEING TRACED

An officer from the RTO said on condition of anonymity that the complainant remembers only two digits which is 96 from the registration while there are many three digit and four digit registrations.

Also every series has many such combinations. According to the RTO officer, the documents do not even carry photograph of the drivers so it certainly seems like an uphill task for the force.

"I remember quite a bit of the registration number but it was just that the number was written in Marathi and the digits are written differently in Marathi. So when I told this to policeman they asked me for other possibilities too," said Kashyap.



FULL FAITH IN INVESTIGATION

advertisement

Kashyap nevertheless refused to elaborate on the issue adding that with all the investigation that is going on, he had full faith in the investigation and that the culprit will be nabbed soon.

Mumbai Police is also examining CCTV footage of the area near Andheri RTO where Kashyap was heckled and have also questioned people around. However, when India Today journalist asked if they had seen anything, they simply denied.

Also read:

Man harassed on suspicion of carrying bag made from cowhide,



--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Mumbai, Aug 21 (PTI) Ahead of the commercial launch of payments banks, credit information companies (CICs) have urged RBI to ensure these newbies in the banking space become their members and share data on the transactions.

"Payments banks will not be into lending, but the transactions which they undertake will help understand borrowers. Therefore, we have requested the RBI to make them our members," Experian Credit Information Company Managing Director Mohan Jayaraman told PTI.

advertisement

He said RBI has been receptive to the idea and has shown its willingness for the demand, but the changes cannot happen overnight as it will require amendments to the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act.

Jayaraman further said even though payments banks will not be lending themselves, the data they share will help analyse borrower behaviour in a better way and will help the broader banking system. "These are banks finally and it is for the benefit of the system," he added.

Harshala Chandorkar, Chief Operating Officer at Cibil, the countrys largest CIC, also confirmed the companies have spoken to RBI about the need to include payments banks as members.

Stating that the talks are in the initial stages, she said such an eventuality would be a "win-win" for both CICs as well as payments banks, which can use some of their solutions on the customer acquisition front.

Jayaraman elaborated that the issue was discussed with the regulator during a recent meeting.

CICs keep data on borrowing and debt servicing, and have been credited for lessening the asset quality pain especially in the retail segment which is becoming the mainstay for fresh credit now.

RBI gave in-principle nod to 11 aspirants to set up payments banks last August. While some like Tech Mahindra and Cholamandalam have since opted out, some like Airtel have received the final approvals.

Others in the fray include corporate giants like Reliance Industries, Aditya Birla Group, PayTM etc. Many of them are already existing non-banking lenders or have tied up with banks, which are members of CICs. Apart from that, the other common theme is that many of them are telecom companies.

Jayaraman said the talks of getting the telecom players to be members of CICs are still on and the decision has to be taken by the telecom department and the sectoral regulator Trai. Similarly, with insurance as well, the ball lies in regulator Irdais court, he said.

It can be noted that getting telecom and insurance transactions, apart from utility payments, is among the prime issues raised by the industry in the past. PTI AA BEN NRB ABK SBT ABK SRE

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 21 (PTI) Rejecting the notion that 3Cs -- CVC, CAG and CBI -- are hampering lending operations, Vigilance Commissioner T M Bhasin said CVC understands that banks are in commercial and risk-taking business and protects all honest decisions.

"CVC is duly protecting all honest decisions and actions of bankers and would continue to do so in future as well," Bhasin told PTI.

advertisement

On various occasions, bankers have voiced fears that the 3Cs -- the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) -- act as deterrents for them for not taking lending decisions.

Asked if the charges are true, he said one C, that is CAG, is not auditing the books of accounts or looking into the lending operations or recovery management of public sector banks (PSBs).

As for other 2Cs, he said "the powers and functions of CVC have been laid down in Section 8 of the CVC Act 2003 through which CVC exercises superintendence over functioning of CBI in investigation of offences committed under the Prevention of Corruption Act or offences with which public servants may be charged under CPC".

There is proper co-ordination and symbiotic relationship between CVC and CBI, he maintained, adding that CVC issues directions to CBI either on its own or on a reference by the central government for inquiries or investigation to be made.

CVC, according to Bhasin, periodically reviews the progress of investigations conducted by CBI on a monthly basis and the focus is always on ensuring malafide or actions with criminal intent should not go unpunished.

However, at the same time, all bonafide, rule-based and policy driven actions of the officials are duly protected, he asserted.

To instil confidence and boost morale of Group A and above officers in government and officials of public sector enterprises, Bhasin said various policy decisions have been enforced by CVC.

Recently, the CVC sought to put in place a mechanism to look into rising cases of misconduct and instances of fraud by top officials of PSBs. It has written to the Department of Financial Services in this regard.

"The Commission, taking into account the rising misconduct and instances of frauds and irregular decisions pertaining to CMDs and EDs of PSBs, was of the considered view that there is a need for a specific deterrent mechanism for initiation of disciplinary action against Whole Time Directors and continuation of the same after completion of their tenure in office and demission of office," it said. MORE PTI DP CS ARD ANU

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Bharosi Mallah, 54, designated as T-42 in the wanted dacoit list, was carrying a reward of Rs 30,000 announced by the MP police and Rs 5,000 announced by the Rajasthan police.

Bharosi Mallah had a total of 19 cases against him in Madhya Pradesh alone including those of murder, extortion, attempt to murder and abductions.

By Rahul Noronha: A dacoit wanted by the Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan police was killed in an encounter with the Madhya Pradesh Police in Sheopur district on Sunday morning. The dacoit had been wanted for the last 36 years.

Bharosi Mallah, 54, designated as T-42 in the wanted dacoit list, was carrying a reward of Rs 30,000 announced by the MP police and Rs 5,000 announced by the Rajasthan police. The encounter took place at a spot under the Virpur police station in Sheopur district.

Mallah was accompanied by his nephew who managed to get away.

advertisement

MALLAH WAS WANTED IN SEVERAL CASES



IG, Chambal, Umesh Joga said that a 12 bore gun and a 0.315 bore rifle were recovered from the slain dacoit. He had a total of 19 cases against him in Madhya Pradesh alone including those of murder, extortion, attempt to murder and abductions. He also had cases registered against him at various police stations in Dholpur and Karauli in Rajasthan as well. Mallah was accompanied by his nephew who managed to get away.

COMMUNITY MEMBERS INFORMED POLICE ABOUT MALLAH'S PRESENCE



Joga said that Bharosi Mallah was running an extortion and abduction racket targeting members of the cattle grazing community who had come from Rajasthan and set up camp on the borders of Shivpuri and Sheopur district. Members of the community had informed the police about Mallah's presence in the area. Patrolling was enhanced in the area and an encounter took place on Sunday morning leading to Mallah's death.

ALSO READ:

3 dacoits arrested in UP; SHO injured



--- ENDS ---
Do you portray your true self on Facebook? Or do you portray an aspirational image of yourself, the way you'd like the world to see you?

What does your Facebook wall say about you? Picture courtesy: Instagram/thevralstadsadventures

By Indo-Asian News Service: If you do not portray your true self on Facebook, be warned, as you may experience social alienation and fall prey to stress, anxiety and depression soon.

According to researchers, the more one's 'Facebook self' differs from their true self, the greater their stress level and less socially connected they tend to be.

"Less emotional labour is required to present oneself authentically on Facebook; therefore, it results in less stress," said Rachel Grieve and Jarrah Watkinson from the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia.

advertisement

Moreover, the authentic self-presentation on Facebook can lead to positive psychological outcomes, including higher self-esteem and subjective well-being, greater psychological well-being, and lower negative effect.

Conversely, individuals who are unable to express their true self are more likely to have poorer mental health.

"However, at the same time, emotions such as anxiety, depression and life satisfaction didn't show an association with authentic self-presentation on Facebook," the study noted.

For the study, the team put 164 participants ranging from ages 18 to 55 through a series of personality questionnaires.

The first test measured the participants' humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness.

The second test measured these same qualities and participants were only asked questions about the way they presented themselves on Facebook.

They also filled out questionnaires that measured anxiety, depression, subjective well-being, and their sense of social connectedness.

The larger the gap between participants' "true" selves and their Facebook selves, the less socially connected they felt and the more stressed they were.

"Perhaps Facebook users who are less stressed, or who experience greater social connectedness, feel more comfortable expressing their authentic self online," the team pointed out.

"As of the second quarter of 2016, active Facebook users totalled 1.71 billion. As such, we must consider how Facebook may serve as a tool to positively impact our patients' lives," said Brenda K. Wiederhold from Virtual Reality Medical Institute in Brussels, Belgium.

"It might be fruitful to consider the potential utility of Facebook in reducing stress and enhancing social connectedness," said the paper published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

--- ENDS ---
Mail Today visited the infamous Mall Mile area in Gurgaon late night to see how sex workers were using auto-rickshaws to avoid public gaze and police action.

A suspected sex worker moves out of her auto-rickshaw into the car of a prospective client late on Gurugram's Mall Mile stretch.

By Ajay Kumar: You must keep moving.

This Albert Einstein's quote appears to be the new mantra for flesh trade in Gurugram. A late night visit by Mail Today team to Mall Mile, an infamous 2km stretch on MG Road which hosts several shopping malls and night clubs, revealed that sex workers were using auto-rickshaws to avoid public gaze and police action.

advertisement

The area was in media spotlight several times in the past as a hub for unlawful activities in public view, drawing police crackdown on the night clubs situated there. The business begins after 1am, which is the deadline for the pubs to down their shutters, as Mail Today team found out.

As night club goers start moving out in their vehicles, several auto-rickshaws begin to court them.

These autos have two to three girls sitting inside as passengers. The negotiations take place even as both vehicles keep moving albeit at a slow pace. If the deal is struck, the vehicles pull over to the roadside, money is exchanged and the woman moves out of autorickshaw and into the car.



HOW DOES IT WORK

The oddity is all but apparent when one sees an auto-rickshaw and a luxury car move parallel at a slow pace on a busy road.

As many as seven autos were involved with sex business on Mall Mile on the night when our team visited the spot.

"A deal starts from Rs1,000 and can go up to Rs5,000," an auto driver disclosed to our team.

Another auto driver, who identified himself as Tayab Hussain, told MAIL TODAY, "I have been doing 'night shift' to earn quick money. My daily earnings are between Rs1,000 and Rs1,500 without much travelling."

Hussain picked up "these girls" outside Sahara Mall around 1am.

"We continued to move up and down this road for about half an hour before a deal was finalised for Rs2,000. I was paid my cut and then I moved on in search for other girls," he said.

There were only three police personnel, one Haryana Police constable and two contractual employees performing duties at IFFCO Chowk on the night with little patrolling on the stretch.



WHAT DOES THE POLICE HAVE TO SAY

Gurugram police spokesperson ACP Hawa Singh refused to comment on the matter when our correspondent tried to seek his reaction to our findings.

The police constable posted at IFFCO Chowk, however, admitted that the sex business thrived on the stretch but there was hardly any manpower to trap the players.

advertisement

The constable requested anonymity.

"This kind of trend has possibilities of ending into a tragedy," the constable said.

"A deal may go wrong; there could be a gang rape; a drunk client may get involved into an accident or act violently with the sex worker. There could be a major case waiting to happen."

Several policemen, who have worked in the area in night shifts, said that these activities were going on for some time. Some of the employees of these night clubs may also be involved in these activities. "They keep finding new ways to avoid police," one of the policemen approached by Mail Today said. "It is difficult to prove the act where the players could act as club goers or late shift workers travelling back," he pointed out.



DRIVE AGAINST THREE WHEELER



Ironically, newly appointed Police Commissioner Sandeep Khirwar has recently launched a drive against three-wheelers.

The police have impounded 1,835 vehicles, the majority of them being auto-rickshaws for violating rules and endangering the life of common road users.

The drive is being seen as a part of an effort by Khirwar to inculcate a sense of discipline among the auto-rickshaw drivers in the city and ensure better traffic management. Many autorickshaws drivers in the city are notorious for violating traffic norms, leading to jams, and plying without valid documents.

advertisement

The drive has led to strong resentment among the autorickshaw drivers who threatened to go on a strike if the drive continued. As many as 350 auto-rickshaws were impounded on Thursday and another 690 auto-rickshaws on Friday. Besides, 108 cars were impounded for wrong parking on Thursday.

Also, 1,364 challans were issued for various traffic violations and 131 vehicles were towed away on Friday.

Also Read

Sex racket: Gurgaon Police helpless in face of lack of proof



Exclusive: Lethal mix of malls, pubs and liquor shops breed flesh racket in Gurgaon



--- ENDS ---
Fifty six teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) are helping in rescue and relief operations in flood-hit Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

A 24x7, NDRF Control Room in Delhi is closely monitoring the situation and remains in touch with other agencies. (Photo courtesy: NDRF)

By Jitendra Bahadur Singh: The rescue and relief operations by National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) in the flood-affected districts of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are in full swing.

Fifty six flood rescue teams of NDRF are operational in various flood prone areas of the different states to assist the respective state administration in rescue and relief work. NDRF rescuers are delivering their best to evacuate the trapped people to safer places. Besides, the are are also providing medical care to the affected persons.

advertisement

NDRF TEAMS DEPLOYED IN BIHAR, UP



Sixteen rescue teams of the NDRF have been deployed in flood-hit Bihar. On August 21, NDRF teams evacuated 3400 persons at Didarganj, 580 persons at Bakhtiyarpur, 545 at Danapur, 380 at Chhapra, 355 at Vaishali and 15 persons at Maner District, Patna. SS Guleria DIG, NDRF and other NDRF officials are also present there to supervise the flood rescue and relief operations.

Eleven rescue teams of NDRF have been deployed in various flood prone areas of Uttar Pradesh. On August 21, NDRF teams conducted rescue and relief operation and evacuated 275 at Ballia, 275 at Varanasi and 325 at Chitrakoot, In addition to rescue work NDRF teams also distributed relief materials and provided medical care to the needy people. Shri Randeep Kumar Rana, DIG NDRF is present in Varanasi to supervise the ongoing rescue operation.

NDRF TEAMS SAVE LIVES IN MP AND SIKKIM



Seven flood rescue teams of NDRF are pre-positioned in Madhya Pradesh. The teams evacuated 147 marooned persons to safer places at District Rewa on Saturday.

In addition, a team of NDRF prepositioned in Sikkim in connection with monsoon season conducted rescue and relief operation at Village Tingbung and Lingdang in East Sikkim and evacuated more than 450 persons to the safer places Saturday.

So far NDRF teams have evacuated more than 26,400 people in various flood prone areas of the country during this monsoon season. In addition to rescue work, NDRF teams have provided medical care to more than 9100 people in various states.

A 24x7, NDRF Control Room in Delhi is closely monitoring the situation and remains in touch with other agencies.

ALSO READ:

Bihar flood crisis: Army and air force on alert, CM holds emergency meeting



--- ENDS ---
Even as several states in the country are dealing with flood-like situation, the government is hosting the 2nd meeting of BRICS ministers for disaster management.

By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: Even as several states in the country are dealing with flood-like situation, the government is hosting the 2nd meeting of BRICS ministers for disaster management in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

MHA is the nodal agency conducting the BRICS summit, while NDRF chief is also camping in Udaipur for the summit as the district itself faces flood like situation. MoS Home, Kiren Rijuju, is heading the Indian delegation, besides being the host of the summit. Interestingly, UN office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) had awarded Rijuju last year as Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) champion for the Asia region.

advertisement

Centre has deployed NDRF and even Army columns in states fighting adverse weather situations.

AGENDA OF THE MEET

BRICS ministers for disaster management meet is being held on August 22 - 23, where two distinct issues take centerstage - flood risk management and forecasting of extreme weather events in the context of changing climate. Ministers from BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - will share experiences on flood risk management.

The delegates will share experience on current systems in each country for forecasting extreme weather events. They will also identify opportunities for collaboration between institutions of respective BRICS' countries in the area of flood risk management and extreme weather-related events. On the second day, each country will have a 15-minute presentation on climate change and possible risks in each country.

MEET TO FOCUS ON CHALLENGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

The meeting will also focus on challenges for disaster risk management, mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in key development sectors, capacity building at local level and strengthening of response mechanism. The meeting is a follow-up of the first meeting of the BRICS ministers for disaster management convened by the Russian Federation in St Petersburg on April 19-20. Recognising the common challenge posed by natural and man-made disasters, BRICS countries have identified disaster management as an important area of collaboration.

Also read:

Bihar flood crisis: Army and air force on alert, Nitish holds emergency meeting

Uttar Pradesh floods: 11 killed, Rihand dam gates opened to ease out pressure



--- ENDS ---
By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 22 (PTI) Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) today sought quashing of an FIR against it on alleged irregularities in raising the price of gas from KG 6 basin, telling Delhi High Court that the AAP government was "never entitled" to lodge an FIR against it.

Seeking quashing of the FIR lodged against it by the Anti-Corruption Branch of Delhi government in 2014, the company told Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva that ACB did not have the jurisdiction to probe such matter.

advertisement

"Delhi government was never entitled to lodge this FIR. This FIR has to be quashed as it has been lodged by a police station (ACB) which does not have the jurisdiction," senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for RIL, told the court which sought the response of AAP government on the companys plea.

Besides the company, erstwhile UPA ministers M Veerappa Moily and Murli Deora (since dead), RILs Chairman Mukesh Ambani, former Director General of Hydrocarbons V K Sibal and other unknown persons were named in the FIR lodged by ACB. All of them have denied the allegations.

During the days hearing, Salve contended that the then Chief Minister (Arvind Kejriwal during his first stint) had asked the ACB to lodge an FIR in the matter despite the fact that ACB did not have any jurisdiction to probe the matter.

He also referred to the August 4 judgement of the division bench of the High Court which had held that powers of the ACB were limited to probing graft cases in various departments which were under the administrative authority of LG and not extending to central government employees.

Delhi governments senior standing counsel Rahul Mehra told the court that they were in the process of approaching the Supreme Court challenging the August 4 verdict.

"We are entitled to go to the Supreme Court. We are in the process," he told the court and said the government would file its response on RILs plea.

The court then asked Mehra "what has happened in the FIR?"

In response, Mehra said "nothing has happended for the last two years" as the matter pertaining to powers of ACB was pending in the high court.

The court then posted the matter for further hearing on September 29. (More) PTI ABA HMP RKS ARC

--- ENDS ---
An Israeli shell during an initial retaliation damaged a Beit Hanoun water tower and there were no casualties, local residents said.

By Reuters: Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip launched a rocket that landed in the Israeli border town of Sderot on Sunday and Israeli aircraft and tanks responded by shelling the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the army and police said.

The rocket caused no injuries or damage in Sderot, where it landed in a residential area, police said.

An Israeli shell during an initial retaliation damaged a Beit Hanoun water tower and there were no casualties, local residents said.

advertisement

Key Highlights Multiple air strikes later in the evening hit at least 30 different sites in the Gaza Strip belonging to Hamas, the smaller Islamic Jihad and other militant groups and two people were lightly hurt, Gaza health officials said. A music festival in Sderot attended by hundreds of Israelis was temporarily disrupted as people sought shelter, television footage showed. The Israeli military said aircraft had attacked targets in the northern Gaza Strip and added that since the beginning of the year, 14 Gaza rockets had hit Israel. Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said in a statement that the military "remains committed to the stability of the region and operated in order to bring quiet to the people of southern Israel." "When terrorists in Hamas' Gaza Strip, driven by a radical agenda based on hatred, attack people in the middle of the summer vacation, their intentions are clear - to inflict pain, cause fear and to terrorize," Lerner said. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: "We hold (Israel) responsible for the escalation in the Gaza Strip and we stress that its aggression will not succeed in breaking the will of our people and dictate terms to the resistance." Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and has observed a de-facto ceasefire with Israel since a 2014 war but some small armed cells of Jihadist Salafis have defied the agreement and have continued to occasionally launch rockets at Israel. Israel has held Hamas responsible for all attacks originating in the coastal enclave.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.

Despite the ceasefire, Hamas has vowed to continue to dig tunnels intended to infiltrate Israel, and while Hamas leaders stress they do not seek an imminent war, they see tunnels as a strategic weapon in any future armed confrontation.





--- ENDS ---
By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 21 (PTI) In a significant step aimed at encouraging the best talent to take up research, the government is mulling a "Prime Ministers Research Fellowship" for students passing out of IITs.

According to top officials in the HRD Ministry, the quality of research is directly related to the quality of people who undertake it which is why it is important that the best minds are encouraged to take it.

advertisement

"A committee headed by former IIT Mumbai Director and eminent scientist Anil Kakodkar too had recommended that third year students of IITs and NITs should be initiated into PhD programmes," a senior functionary said.

There is a strong realisation in the government that innovation is necessary to increase productivity and raise overall standards of our country, and quality research is needed for innovation, sources said.

Keeping this in mind, the HRD Ministry is considering launching a PM Research Fellowship for around 1,000 students from the next academic year.

Sources said the IIT Council, which is the top decision making body for these premier technological institutes, will meet on the August 23 and is likely to discuss these fellowships and the modalities for instituting it.

It is envisaged that under this programme, B Tech students in the IITs will register for PhD immediately on completion of the undergraduate course.

It has been suggested that B Tech fourth year course students shall be eligible for fellowships.

The students would write the outline of the research project they wish to undertake and these would be evaluated by committees formed by IIT Board, sources said.

"The idea is to make research attractive to the fresh IIT passouts so that they can focus their energies on pathbreaking research which can throw up solutions and strengthen the academic environment in the long run," an official said.

Sources also said since research is a key criterion in ranking educational institutes globally, the proposed step may benefit those in India in this respect as well. PTI ADS SK IKA

--- ENDS ---
On Chiranjeevi's 61st birthday, the team of his upcoming film Khaidi No 150 gifted the Megastara special teaser.

Chiranjeevi in a still from the teaser

By India Today Web Desk: Chiranjeevi is coming back to the big screen in a lead role after ten years. His last lead role was in 2007's Shankar Dada Zindabad. He will be seen again in a hero-role in Khaidi No 150, a remake of Vijay-starrer Tamil film Kaththi, that is scheduled to release next year.



ALSO READ: Chiranjeevi's new film is titled Khaidi No 150

advertisement

ALSO READ: Khaidi No 150 first look to be out on Chiranjeevi's 61st birthday

On the occassion of his 61st birthday, the makers of Khaidi No 150 presented the Megastar a special teaser as a birthday gift. The 52-second long video introduces viewers to the technical team of the Chiranjeevi film. Directed by VV Vinayak, the film also stars Kajal Aggarwal. Noted production designer Thota Tharani and composer Devi Sri Prasad are a part of the project. Ram Charan is producing the film.

The video projects Chiranjeevi as "warrior of 149 movies, emperor for 37 years and conqueror of millions of hearts".

On a concluding note, the video says that the 'Boss is Back'. Ever since the release of the video, #BossIsBack has been trending on Twitter.

The film will release during Sankranti festival next year.



Watch the teaser by Team Khaidi No 150.



--- ENDS ---
In a shocking incident son of a Mumbai businessman left the country with wife, daughter and two cousins to ISIS.

The Mumbai police investigations in the missing Kerala youths' case have revealed that five out of 21 people who allegedly joined ISIS were from the same family.

By Mustafa Shaikh: India is not foreign to the budding scare of youths leaving the country's shores to join the ISIS. Now, the Mumbai police investigations in the missing Kerala youths case has revealed that five out of 21 people who allegedly joined ISIS were from the same family.

This family is of Ashfaque Ahmed, son of a Mumbai-based businessman, Abdul Majeed. Ahmed left the country to join ISIS with his wife, infant daughter and two cousins. The cousins have been identified as 22-year-old businessman Mohammed Siraj and 30-year-old Ejaz Rehman, who is a medical practitioner by profession. A distraught Majeed has blamed three persons - Haneef Abdur Rasheed, a Kerala school teacher who travelled to Syria with Ashfaque, Navi Mumbai resident Arshi Qureshi and Kalyan resident Rizwan Khan - for instigating "his son to join the IS".

advertisement

FAMILY SHOCKED



The family was alarmed when Ashfaque's younger brother received a message saying "I have migrated to the IS territory and I do not want to come back".

Abdul Majeed filed an FIR on August 6 under sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), which is the country's foremost anti-terrorism legislation, which has been amended twice - in 2008 and 2012.

In the FIR, Abdul named Rasheed, Qureshi and Rizwan for instigating his son to join the terror group.

Haneef was arrested by the Mumbai police on August 13. Arshi and Rizwan were arrested in the case previously and are in the custody of Kochi police.

According to sources, the Mumbai police is now trying to confirm whether it was Haneef who sent Ashfaque to join ISIS.



WHAT HAPPENED

According to the FIR with Nagapada police, Abdul said there were changes in Ashaque's behaviour as he inclined towards the Ahl-e-Hadees sect and converted to it in 2014. He got married in April 2014. Ashfaque informed us about his marriage later. He stopped listening to music, watching television, changed his clothing style and started sporting a beard.

Abdul Majeed also mentioned in the FIR that his son was in constant touch with the two cousins but he never got a whiff of their plans.

Abdul Majeed, who runs a guest house near Mumbai Central station, has alleged that his son was radicalised in Mumbai and Kerala.

Rizwan Khan has been arrested for converting and getting a Kerala couple married who too have left the country in a similar manner.

Haneef, who was arrested last week by the city crime branch, told the police that while a person named Rashid, a teacher at the Peace International School in Kerala, indoctrinated 11 well-educated men into joining the group to fight in Syria and Iraq, Arshid Qureshi, who is attached to the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), sponsored their trips to Sri Lanka and Iraq.

Also Read

15 Kerala youths go missing: Did they join ISIS? Families fear they did

Kerala: Yet another youth goes missing, ISIS link suspected



--- ENDS ---
Unions have not agreed to supply oil to Kashmir and Ladhakh regions till government provides security on Jammu-Srinagar national highway particularly in south Kashmir.

By Ashwini Kumar: All Jammu and Kashmir oil tanker drivers, Conductors Union and petrol tanker owners have decided to restart petrol and diesel supply today to Jammu region only after the divisional administration has agreed to give them compensation.

But Unions have not agreed to supply oil to Kashmir and Ladakh regions till government provides security on Jammu-Srinagar national highway particularly in south Kashmir.

advertisement

NO OIL FOR KASHMIR AND LADAKH



Anan Sharma, the President of Tankers Owners Association, said that the oil tanker strike has been called off and petrol and diesel will be supplied to Jammu region only, not for Kashmir and Ladakh.

"Let the state government prepared a plan on how to give protection to oil tankers from Banihal to Srinagar,then we will decide our next course of action," he said in Jammu.

Simrandeep Singh, Deputy Commissioner, Jammu, who is negotiating with oil tankers owners and drivers said that oil supply to Kashmir Valley will be restored within the next 24 hours. He said that government is preparing modalities for security of drivers and conductors on National Highway so that the oil tankers can restore petrol and diesel to Kashmir and Ladakh.

There are 1900 oil tankers operating in whole state, out of which daily supply to Kashmir valley and Ladakh is 300 to 400 tankers.

--- ENDS ---
The alleged rape of a first year PhD student by a leading activist of student organisation AISA, has led to ABVP calling for protests throughout the day at various schools of JNU.

By Anindya Banerjee: The country's premier education institute Jawaharlal Nehru University has been rocked by yet another controversy - this time around an unfortunate incident of alleged rape of one of its student by another PhD scholar. But no sooner than the incident took place, it has assumed political colours.

LACK OF SECURITY FOR WOMEN

Since the accused Anmol Ratan is a leading face of left leaning student body AISA, ABVP an RSS affiliate has once again blamed Ratan's organisation for lack of women's security inside the university campus.

advertisement

The ABVP has chalked out elaborate plans to protest throughout the day. From 10 am to 1 pm, it will organise something called 'Class Campaign' in all schools of JNU talking about the incident.

At 3 pm, a protest is being organised at Admin Block to demand rustication of the accused and AISA activist.

PROTESTS TO BE CARRIED OUT

Later in the evening, campaigns will be carried out by the saffron group in all hostels raising the issue of women's security, which will culminate in an effigy burning at the famous Sabarmati Dhaba at 10 pm.

Though AISA has, in a statement, distanced itself from the incident stating they have expelled Ratan, the incident has however once again proved how everything in JNU assumes political significance. And all this as police is still on the look out for Ratan who is currently on the run.

--- ENDS ---
According to a new study, feelings of envy occupy people when they go home, and spill over onto the next day, hampering productivity.

Envy at the workplace doesn't help at all. Image for representational purposes only. Picture courtesy: YouTube

By Indo-Asian News Service: Do you feel envious when your co-worker gets extra respect and attention from your boss? If so, be warned that these feelings of envy may lead to a higher degree of ego depletion as well as negatively affect your overall productivity, says a study.

The study shows that while employees are concerned with their treatment by an authority, they are equally concerned with that treatment relative to others in their work group.

advertisement

The findings revealed that the more the envy increases, the more one may become "ego depleted" -- a general lack of the personal resources one needs to focus on and complete daily tasks, the researchers said.

Employees who carried home these negative feelings went to bed with them, woke up with them and stuck with them into the following day, ultimately wasting valuable time and productivity.

Also Read: Men hate sexual infidelity, while women are jealous of emotional cheating

This is significant because the workers who are valuable for problem-solving, skilled negotiating and finding timely solutions are also the ones who ruminate longer over processing the social injustice and envy they feel," said Joel Koopman, Assistant Professor at University of Cincinnati, in the US.

The more energy employees expend on processing the injustice, the less their resources are, and they become less likely to help others in the office.

"This cycle can build to the point that tremendous time and energy is wasted on simply processing negative emotions, leaving critical work projects to flounder until resolutions are achieved," Koopman added.

Further, a strong link was found between an employee's feelings of envy after they perceive a supervisor has treated them worse relative to their co-workers and the length of time by which they process this information.

For the study, the team tested a group of participants with two surveys per day for 15 workdays, each day asking the participants how fairly they had been treated by their supervisor relative to their co-workers.

The survey measured for the possible experience of envy immediately, and then how that envy persisted into the next day.

The results showed that during such a response, the length of that envy response affected the employee's willingness to help co-workers with their tasks and were less likely to listen to personal problems.

"Future research looking at solving the risk and benefits of workplace coping mechanisms can be key for maintaining a happy balance at work," Koopman noted.

The study was presented recently, at the 76th annual meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM) in Anaheim, California.

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
The Delhi Police on Saturday sought death penalty for the three men on the grounds that they killed Jigisha for "pleasure" and showed no remorse.

By India Today Web Desk: A Delhi court will pronounce the quantum of sentence today to three men convicted of murdering and robbing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh in Delhi in 2009.

Twenty-eight-year-old Jigisha, working as an operations manager in a management consultancy firm, was abducted and killed on March 18, 2009 after she was dropped by her office cab near her home in Vasant Vihar area of South Delhi. Her body was recovered three days later from a place near Surajkund in Haryana.

advertisement

ADDITIONAL SESSIONS JUDGE RESERVES ORDER



Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav reserved the order on sentence after the arguments concluded on Saturday and a pre-sentencing report (PSR) was submitted by probationary officer.

"Pre-sentencing report received...Copy has been supplied to counsel for the convicts. Arguments heard. Order on sentence to be pronounced on Monday," the judge said after hearing the arguments of prosecution, convicts and perusing the pre-sentencing report which gave details about the background of the guilty persons.

However, the judge ordered for maintaining confidentiality of the report.

DELHI POLICE SEEKS DEATH PENALTY



The Delhi Police on Saturday sought death penalty for the three men on the grounds that they killed Jigisha for "pleasure" and showed no remorse.

Seeking death sentence for the convicts - Ravi Kapoor, Baljeet and Amit Shukla, Special Public Prosecutor Rajiv Mohan argued that they had abducted Jigisha, robbed her, killed her and used her debit card for shopping, and a CCTV footage of their shopping showed they had no remorse for their act.

"There was no provocation. There is no mitigating factor in the matter. It was murder for pleasure. The footage shows they had no remorse at all, which is an aggravating factor," he said.

DEFENCE SEEKS MINIMUM SENTENCE

Rebutting the arguments of prosecution, defence counsel sought minimum sentence of life for the convicts contending that they did not have any previous criminal involvement and were young at the time of the incident.

Advocate Amit Kumar, appearing for convicts Baljeet and Amit Shukla, argued that his clients have already spent over seven years in jail and maintainted good conduct.

The counsel for convict Ravi Kapoor sought leniency for his client saying he suffered from a life threatening disease and belonged to a poor background.

The defence counsel also termed the PSR contradictory and biased contending that it did not mention the incident when convict Amit Shukla was brutally beaten inside the jail.

ACCUSED INVOLVED IN SOUMYA VISHWANATHAN MURDER CASE?



During arguments when the SPP referred to the alleged involvement of the three convicts in the Soumya Vishwanathan murder case, the defence counsel objected to it saying it was a separate case which was still pending and referring to it would cause them prejudice during the proceedings.



advertisement

The court had, a month ago, held the three men guilty of murder, abduction, robbery, forgery and common intention under IPC, saying it was "abundantly clear" that they had committed the crime. Kapoor was also convicted for the offence of using firearms under the Arms Act.

While convicting them on July 14, the judge had said "they committed her murder and disposed of her body in bushes and circumstantial evidence makes it clear that it was these men who committed the crime."

The police had filed the charge sheet in the case in June 2009 and trial began on April 15, 2010.

SOUMYA VISHWANATHAN MURDER CASE CRACKED

Recovery of the weapon allegedly used in Jigisha's murder had led to the cracking of the murder case of Soumya Vishwanathan, who was a journalist with a news channel.

Soumya was shot dead on September 30, 2008 while she was returning home in her car from office in the wee hours.

Police had claimed robbery as the motive behind the killing of both Jigisha and Soumya.

The accused had used Jigisha's ATM card to buy expensive goggles, wrist watches and shoes from Sarojini Nagar market in South Delhi, police had said.

advertisement

ALSO READ:

Jigisha Ghosh murder case: All 3 accused convicted of abducting, killing Delhi techie



--- ENDS ---
By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 22 (PTI) Two convicts in the 2009 Jigisha Ghosh murder case were today awarded death penalty while one escaped with life term, as a Delhi court held that the 28- year-old IT executive was killed in a "cold-blooded, inhuman and cruel manner" and "brutally mauled to death".

The court said the magnitude and brutality exhibited by the convicts made the case rarest of rare, warranting capital punishment for Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla. The third offender Baljeet Malik was given reprieve from gallows for his good conduct in jail.

advertisement

The court also imposed varying fines on the convicts, with Kapoor being slapped with a fine of Rs 1.2 lakh due to his incapacity to pay, while Shukla and Malik directed to pay Rs 2.8 lakh and Rs 5.8 lakh respectively as the pre-sentencing report suggested they were financially strong.

The trio are also facing trial for the murder of TV journalist Soumya Viswanathan, killed a year before Jigisha.

While awarding the extreme punishment to Kapoor and Shukla, Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav said "they are a threat to the society" and the magnitude and brutality exhibited by the convicts brings the case within the category of rarest of rare.

"The offence was committed in cold-blooded, inhuman and cruel manner. Innocent, helpless and vulnerable victim remained in the captivity of the convicts for hours. She pleaded to convicts not to take her life and to save herself, she handed over her debit card and other belongings to them. Victim also disclosed the pin number of her debit card to the convicts.

"However, they were satisfied only by brutally mauling her to death. In other words, convicts behaved in uncivilised and barbaric manner against a helpless girl," the judge said, pronouncing the order on sentence in a packed court room.

The court said leniency cannot be shown to these convicts as there was a rise of gruesome crimes against women which needed to be dealt with an appropriate sentence.

"Gruesome crimes against women are on the rise in the recent years. Any leniency in such cases will send very wrong message in society and encourage criminals like the convicts. Passing appropriate sentence in such cases will go a long way in arresting the increasing trend of crime against women.

"Some cruelty and brutality is involved in every crime against human body. It is the level, magnitude and degree of brutality, attitude and mindset of wrongdoer behind the crime along with other factors which make it a rarest of rare case. The magnitude and brutality exhibited by convicts brings this case within the category of rarest of rare," the judge said. (more) PTI AG UK RKS ARC

--- ENDS ---
Continuing with its commitment to the rebuilding and reconstruction of Afghanistan, India dedicated the renovated Stor Palace to the people of the country.

By Smita Sharma: On Monday morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked an opposition delegation to stay back if they could for further discussions on Kashmir. He had to step out of the room for another crucial project. The joint inauguration ceremony of the renovated Stor Palace in Afghanistan's capital Kabul , via video conference.

Continuing with its commitment to the rebuilding and reconstruction of Afghanistan, India dedicated the renovated Stor Palace to the people of the country.

advertisement

Former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh had committed to renovate and restore the Palace, during his Kabul visit in 2011. The project was entrusted to the renowned Agha Khan Trust for Culture. The work was completed in nearly 48 months instead of the scheduled 36 months with an Indian grant of 5.7 million USD .

SOME HISTORY

Built in the 1880 by Amir Abdul Rehman Khan ,the Stor Palace also known as Star Palace or Kasre-estar brought back fond memories for Afghans, in and outside of the country ravaged by war and internal strife for decades. This place witnessed history in 1919 as the Rawalpindi Agreement that recognised Afghanistan as an independent sovereign state, was signed in one of its rooms. The palace was home to the late King Amir Habibullah Khan and the nation's first Foreign Minister Mahmood Tarzi used it as his office. It continued to house the Ministry of Foreign Affairs within its huge walls till 1965.

The renovated building will provide high-quality space for hosting official domestic & international events and functions by Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Government of Afghanistan, sources said. It is also expected to now function as the office of the Afghan Foreign Minister.

STOR PALACE, REMINDER OF GLORY

Inaugurating the palace via video conference jointly with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Prime Minister Modi said, "The Stor Palace has been the setting for many momentous historical events. To those who cannot see beyond shadows of violence in Afghanistan, the restored Stor Palace is a reminder of the glory of Afghanistan's rich traditions."

"And for our Afghan brothers and sisters, it revives the beauty, the richness and splendour of lost memories of Afghan society," Modi added.

http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/news_updates/pms-remarks-at-the-inauguration-ceremony-of-renovated-stor-palace-in-kabul-via-video-conferencing/?comment=disable



Saad Mohseni, a prominent Afghan heading a media consultancy firm The Moby Group in Dubai, reminisced about the days when 'Stor' Palace was popular as the 'Storee Palace'and thanked the Indian government for their help in restoring it.

He tweeted that as children they used to attend movie nights at the 'storee' palace at the Foreign Ministry in Afghanistan.

Son of a former Afghan diplomat, Saad remembers the Wednesday night movie screenings of the Foreign Ministry at the big hall in the Palace, where burgers and fries would be served by caterers to those in attendance. "It is one of Kabul's most beautiful and historical buildings," Saad told India Today .

advertisement

INDIA-AFGHAN TIES

President Ashraf Ghani in his remarks recalled that the Government of India in Exile formed by Raja Mahendra Pratap had declared independence from the British rule in 1915 from this very palace. Expressing his sincerest appreciation for the Government of India, Ghani said," We-Afghanistan and India have decided to use our history for the advancement of our nations."

"We are ready to spare no effort in protecting peace, overcome terror & extremism and work for prosperity of our nations," President Ghani added.

Over the last few months, New Delhi and Kabul have jointly inaugurated several completed symbols of cooperation. In December last year the new highly secured Afghan Parliament built with Indian aid was inaugurated by PM Modi in Kabul.

India-Afghanistan-Pakistan also signed the transit corridor Agreement in May this year, in what was read as an important message to the China-Pakistan economic axis in the region. And in June this year the two countries jointly inaugurated the Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam also called the Salma dam, it is important for revival of economy and agriculture of the Herat province and Afghanistan's larger growth and development.



--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Kareena Kapoor is one of the most popular Bollywood actors of our generation

By India Today Web Desk: Long before Kareena Kapoor Khan became the Fevicol Se girl, she was just another young pre-teen trying to figure life out. If you wonder how she looked back then, well, you're in for a shock! In a new photo shared by Karisma Kapoor on her Instagram account, Bebo is seen posing for the camera at the chubbiest best.



Major throwback ??? my first #filmfare#award#sistersupport#sisterlove??#always#forever#cutie#cherishedmoments#the90's#repost#regram A photo posted by KK (@therealkarismakapoor) on Aug 22, 2016 at 12:01am PDT

advertisement

The photo was clicked around the time Karisma won her first Filmfare award for Raja Hindustani in 1997. Karisma is seen smiling and holding the award with Kareena by her side. The caption reads, "Major throwback my first"

WATCH: Kareena Kapoor's baby bump makes Neha Dhupia jump with joy

ALSO READ: 5 maxis that match Kareena Kapoor's pregnancy loungewear style



Married to Saif Ali Khan, the 35-year-old actor is pregnant with her first child. However, she is not pleased with unwarranted and unwanted attention that she and her baby has got of late.

Interestingly, Bebo went on to make her Bollywood debut, just three years later, in JP Dutta's Refugee opposite Abhishek Bachchan who was also making his Bollywood debut.

While Saif will be next seen in Vishal Bhardwaj's period drama Rangoon, Kareena will soon begin shooting for Rhea Kapoor's Veere Di Wedding.

--- ENDS ---
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said that the Kashmir issue was almost resolved under Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure but the later governments did not follow up on his efforts.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said Vajpayee had almost resolved the Kashmir issue.

By PTI: The Kashmir issue was on the verge of resolution under the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said but lamented that the later governments did not follow up on Vajpayee's efforts.

"Kashimiri people do not want to live with Pakistan. We should develop nationalistic feelings among the people in Kashmir," the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader said on the unrest in the Valley while addressing an event on Sunday.

advertisement

Bhagwat recalled how Vajpayee "had almost solved the Kashmir issue but later governments did not follow up on Vajpayees efforts".

Addressing about 2,000 young couples in the city, the RSS chief answered a volley of questions from his audience on Kashmir issue, cow protection, missionary schools, uniform civil code among others.

Also Read: Not a 'messenger' of the BJP government, says RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat

NEED TO TEACH SANSKARS TO YOUNG GENERATION



On the issue of cow vigilantism, he said cow protection work should be done within the legal framework.

The RSS chief batted for strong value systems, especially among the younger generations.

"Western influences are affecting society. We have to move ahead following the guidelines and codes given to us by our ancestors. If the nation has to move ahead confidently, we will need to teach sanskar (values) to our young ones. Young couples have to imbibe these values. Our identity should be from the country," he said.

Invoking Shivaji, he said the Maratha warrior king derived strength and inspiration from his family that stood for values.

"Civilisations change with times but cultures do not. It is the responsibility of the family to inculcate values in children who must learn how to live for others," he added.

Bhagwat is in the city for a four-day visit to interact with groups representing various social strata and professions.

Also Read:

PM Modi on Kashmir: Dialogue must for lasting solution

Kashmir unrest: Curfew continues for 45th day as civilian death toll reaches 67

Modi government is aloof to Kashmir and its suffering, says Ghulam Nabi Azad



--- ENDS ---
A 24-year-old civilian was reportedly killed after he was hit by a tear gas canister during a clash with the police and the CRPF in Srinagar on Sunday.

A Kashmiri protester runs for cover as a tear gas shell explodes near him in Srinagar on August 21, 2016. Photo: AP

By Shuja-ul-Haq : The curfew imposed in the Kashmir Valley has now touched its 45th day with tension still prevailing in most parts of the state.

On August 21, a 24-year-old protester was killed during a clash with the police and the CRPF in Srinagar, raising the death toll of civilians to 67.

ONE DEAD IN CLASH

The incident, which took place around 7:15 pm as the police and paramilitary forces were being withdrawn, happened after a group of unruly youths began pelting stones at the police and CRPF in Malarata-Bohrikadal area of Srinagar.

advertisement

The police and CRPF retaliated by firing tear gas canisters at the group, and in the exchange, Irfan Ahmad of Fatehkadal was reportedly hit in the chest, leading to his death.

Over a dozen police and personnel of the 44th battalion of the CRPF reportedly sustained injuries during the stone pelting by the unruly group.

CURFEW CONTINUES

In another incident, around 400 people clashed with the police and the CRPF at Bhan Mohalla in downtown Srinagar.

Reports from north Kashmir said that dozens of protesters sustained injuries at Behrampora Sopore, in Rafiabad area, after protesters clashed with the police and security forces. A student reportedly sustained injuries during a clash between protesters and police in Anantnag area. Reports said that minor clashes took place in Bijbehara, Achhabal and Kulgam.

At Mool Chitragam in Shopian area, Hurriyat leader Mohammad Yousuf Falahi led a peaceful protest demonstration of around 2500 people. It was later dispersed.

Curfew and restrictions were carried at most parts of the Valley on Monday. Opposition parties met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi after meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee in Delhi to discuss the Kashmir situation.

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Jammu, Aug 22 (PTI) Contending that the unrest in Kashmir was "pre-planned", Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today said a "handful of people" were deliberately keeping the Valley on the boil while 95 per cent people were peace-loving and should not be punished for the fault of 5 per cent.

She expressed pain that children are being used as a shield by "vested interests" while attacking camps and posts of security forces to incite them, as a result of which innocent kids become a casualty.

advertisement

Mehbooba also sent out a message to those raising "pro- azadi" slogans, asking them to see the condition of Muslims in Islamic countries like Pakistan, Syria, Turkey and Afghanistan even though these nations have "freedom". She said once gun makes inroads in a society, then the meaning of azadi is lost.

"I have been saying that gun will not solve anything. Stones also will not solve anything," she said at a public meeting here, while underlining that anybody having any grievance should come forward to discuss it through talks.

Contending that she had planned so many developmental programmes to be pushed after Eid, she said the unrest was "pre-planned" as "vested interests" were keen to latch on to something to trigger unrest.

"I dont understand what happened... people were waiting for a chance. Whenever the situation becomes little better in J&K, tourism starts, work begins, something or the other happens which creates problems in normal functioning," Mehbooba said.

"After the Assembly (session) was over, we had decided to work more. But after (her) Assembly (election) result and Eid, all this began," she said.

Referring to the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in a gunfight, the Chief Minister said, "there was nothing new in this. Killing of militants has been happening for the past 25 years. I want to tell you this because all this was pre-planned. They were waiting for a reason, a chance to put the state back into that fire in which it was always."

She said, "they (those indulging in violence) are only a handful of people. Most Kashmiris want peace. They understand that the kind of freedom Kashmir is enjoying today is not there even in Islamic countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey and Pakistanis. When gun enters a country, it is no more free, no matter how much it claims to be free." (MORE) PTI AB NKS AKK AKK

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 22 (PTI) With the split between CPI(M)-led LDF government and Travancore Devaswom Board widening over the rituals at Sabarimala temple, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan today said the controversies were attempts to distance the Left party from believers.

In a Facebook post, Vijayan said the Left government could pay equal attention in improving the facilities for Ayyappa devotees at Sabarimala and take initiative to help Haj pilgrims as it viewed all human beings as one irrespective of religion and caste barriers.

advertisement

"There have always been attempts to distance the Left from believers. Our political rivals, who wished to disintegrate Communist party in its budding stage itself, had unleashed campaign that Communists were going to demolish places of worship," Vijayan said.

"However, people, including believers and atheists, and those belonging to different religions and castes dismissed all these false propaganda and had placed their hope and faith on the party," he said.

The Chief Ministers statement comes in the wake of the controversy triggered over some of his suggestions like ending the VIP queue at Sabarimala and to keep the hillock shrine open throughout the year.

TDB president Prayar Gopalakrishnan and Sabarimala tantri (head priest) Kandaru Rajeevaru came out openly against Vijayans suggestion.

The tantri said the decision to keep the shrine open for darshan throughout the year could not be taken by the government unilaterally.

Coming out against the stand of TDB president, Devaswom minister Kadakampally Surendran described him as "communal" and said he was trying to sabotage the governments development plans at Sabarimala.

Indicating that the Left governments effort is to provide equal treatment to all people, Vijayan said in his Facebook post that it was with happiness that he inaugurated a Haj camp in Nedumbassery airport.

"The camp can accommodate 1,600 pilgrims and others at a stretch," he added.

Claiming that Kerala was a model for ensuring better facilities for Haj pilgrims, the Chief Minister also said this time 11,000 people would go to Haj under the government quota, the highest ever so far. PTI LGK JRK RC KIS NTR

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Mumbai, Aug 22 (PTI) A day-long session of the Maharashtra Legislature has been convened on August 29 to ratify the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill passed by both Houses of Parliament recently.

The decision was taken today at a state cabinet meeting chaired by Chief M Devendra Fadnavis, a CMO official said.

The Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill, 2014 on GST has already been passed by the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

advertisement

The GST Bill, seen as single biggest tax reform in a long time, needs to be ratified by at least 15 state legislatures before the President can notify the GST Council which will decide the new tax rate and other issues.

Assam became the first state to ratify the Bill. Last week, Bihar became the first non-NDA state to ratify it after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar counted virtues of the tax reform.

The government has set a deadline of April, 2017 for its rollout.

GST aims to do away with multiple-tax regime on goods and services and bring them under one rate. It will alter the present system of production-based taxation to a consumption-based one.

While manufactured consumer goods will become cheaper as the incidence of excise duty and VAT will come down from 25-26 per cent at present, the cost of services would by and large, go up from the present 15 per cent levels. PTI VT DK GVS SDM

--- ENDS ---
A special session of the Maharashtra Assembly has been called on August 29 to ratify the GST Constitution Amendment Bill in the state.

The state cabinet, chaired by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, today decided to recommend the convening of a special session of the state legislature on August 29 to state Governor.

By Kamlesh Damodar Sutar: The Maharashtra government called for a special session of the state legislature on August 29 to ratify the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Constitution Amendment Bill.

The state cabinet, chaired by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, today decided to recommend the convening of a special session of the state legislature on August 29 to governor Chennamaneni Vidyasagar Rao.

advertisement

The states of Assam, Bihar and Jharkhand have already ratified the amendment Bill, while Madhya Pradesh and Telangana have also announced that they too will hold special sessions for the same purpose soon.

'GST WILL CHANGE ECONOMIC SITUATION OF THE STATE'

"While the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha have passed the bill, we will be ratifying it on 29th through a special session. There could be some initial problems, but I am sure that the GST bill will change the economic situation of the state and accelerate its growth" said State Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar while speaking to India Today.

The Opposition Congress and Nationalist Congress Party have decided to support the amendment Bill.

But for the Bharatiya Janata Party, its ally Shiv Sena could be a concern.

WILL SHIV SENA SUPPORT?

Shivsena leaders have been vocal saying that abolition of Octroi Duty after the introduction of GST should not hamper the finances of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). But though the Shiv Sena has raised objections to GST, it did not vote against the constitutional amendment in parliament.

The Shiv Sena claims that the BMC will stand to lose around Rs 7,000 crore per annum that it generates from the octroi collection.

The Sena, which rules the BMC with the BJP, has demanded direct compensation for the loss of octroi.

Also Read:

How GST impacts common man: Here's what you need to know

GST will integrate the country into one single market, says Arun Jaitley

Bihar becomes first Opposition-ruled state to ratify GST Bill



--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Udaipur, Aug 22 (PTI) The concept of disaster management should be incorporated in designing buildings and infrastructure and for making a smart disaster control programme which is workable from top to bottom, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said today.

"Disaster management should be in our thought. Houses, roads, shopping malls, schools, colleges and other buildings should be designed and constructed and even street poles should be installed in accordance with this thought," Rijiju said here while addressing the inaugural session of two-day meeting of ministers for disaster management from the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

advertisement

He said that the policies should be incorporated while ensuring participation from the people.

The minister said that the BRICS nations will be able to achieve targets as per the Ufa declaration after the policies, research and resolutions reach out properly to the level of community.

He said that the world is facing new challenges in the field of disaster management due to rapidly increasing urbanisation, population and arbitrary exploitation of natural resources and the new policies should be incorporated while considering these challenges.

Rajasthan disaster management and relief minister Gulab Chand Kataria said that the state government provided relief to farmers and transferred Rs 2,467 crore to bank accounts of those who suffered losses in crops due to hailstorm last year.

Delegates from other member nations also addressed the meeting which began today.

The meeting is focused on the themes of Flood Risk Management and Forecasting of Extreme Weather Events in the context of Changing Climate.

This is the second meeting and is the follow up of the first meeting of the BRICS ministers for disaster management convened by the Russian Federation in St Petersburg.

The Ufa Declaration signed by BRICS nations in July last year identified the need to promote cooperation in developing responses to emergency situations. PTI Corr SDA KUN

--- ENDS ---
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti appealed to the Centre to take care of the 95 per cent people who love peace and harmony.

By Ashwini Kumar: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti today lashed out at the troublemakers for fomenting unrest in the Valley. Advocating for "innocent" Kashmiris, Mehbooba said only 5 per cent are creating violence in Kashmir while the rest 95 per cent are peace loving people.

In Jammu, she said, "Kashmiris are not stone-pelters. They are peace loving, they want to open their shops, they want to send their wards to school."

advertisement

The CM said, "I want to make an appeal to the Centre that do not see people of Kashmir with same eye. There are only 5 per cent of people, who are disturbing peace and creating law and order situation in the Valley, but 95 per cent are innocent people and they want to live in peace but are suffering due to a section of selfish creatures."

MEHBOOBA URGES CENTRE TO PUNISH TROUBLEMAKERS

"I appeal to Centre to take care of those 95 per cent people. 'Apne to apne log hein' and they are in problem," she added.

Without naming separatists and opposition parties including National Conference and Congress, Mufti said, "There are a section of people who are making all attempts to create disturbance in the Valley and this shows that they do not represent the state."

KASHMIRIS WANT FREEDOM FROM EVIL FORCES

People of Kashmir have understood the real meaning of "Azaadi" (freedom), she said adding, "They want freedom from such forces, who are troublemakers and creating disturbances, disrupting peace."

With naming Kashmiri separatists, she said one section of people, who themselves are not facing the bullets and the canes, are instigating children, teenagers to indulge into violence, she said, adding, "They are using young minds as their shields. The youngsters and our blue-eyed are being used as tool by negative forces, who instead of channelising energies, make use of them in escalating the violence."

"There are forces who could not digest the developmental programmes initiated under Agenda of Alliance (AoA) by PDP-BJP Government and were not able to see peace returning to the state," the CM said.

COMMON MAN BEARS THE BRUNT OF VIOLENCE

Whenever it is peace, tourism season on its peak, Amarnath Yatra in progress, such forces try to create trouble and ultimately its common man, who suffers.

Actor Salman Khan last year was in Kashmir to shoot for his film 'Bajrangi Bhaijaan' but this year he preferred to go to Ladakh due to prevailing tension, she said claiming that violence has hit the tourism industry thus affecting the economy of the state.

advertisement

"In 2010, fake encounter, Shopian rape case and then deaths of minors happened and Kashmir remained tense but this time nothing such incident happened," she added.

SECTION OF PEOPLE RAKED UP BURHAN WANI'S ENCOUNTER

The chief minister said that three militants were killed in a gunbattle and it was nothing new as encounters and killing of militants is 25 years long matter, "but section of people got an opportunity to rake up the issue and put peaceful Kashmir on boil."

Mehbooba Mufti said, "I want to say that there are countries who claim themselves as independent but are the worst victims of terrorism.

She said countries like Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan are victims of terrorism, adding, "Once weapon enters such independent nations, there remains no peace."

The PDP chief said, "Dialogue is the only solution to solve all the crisis not the weapon and due to terrorism. Muslims are facing embarrassment across the world and only a section of people and class are responsible for this".

When asked about Omar Abdullah-led opposition leaders meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee and the Prime Narendra Modi for the last three days, she said if the meeting helps resolve Kashmir unrest this is a welcome step and centre should listen their view point also.

advertisement

ALSO READ:



Curfew not enough in Kashmir, CM Mehbooba wants to starve people: National Conference

Mehbooba Mufti calls Rajnath Singh to revive dialogue with Pakistan



--- ENDS ---
MJ Akbar met the top leadership in Iraq and discussed a wide range of issues- from terrorism, defense to economic, trade and investment.

Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar is in Iraq as a part of his West Asia tour.

By Maha Siddiqui: Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar is in Iraq as a part of his West Asia tour.

He met the top leadership in Iraq, including President Fuad Masum, President of the Council of Representatives Salim al-Jabouri, Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Eshaiqer Al-Jaafari, and National Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayyadh.

DISCUSS TERRORISM

The two sides acknowledged the grave threat that international terrorism and its sponsors posed to international peace and security and also the very architecture of nation state.

advertisement

They conveyed strong support to each other in their common fight against the menace of terrorism.

India's expressed support for the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq and conveyed India's abiding commitment to the emergence of a stable, peaceful, united and democratic Iraq, which was in the interest of regional and global peace and security.

INDIA ASKS FOR RELEASE OF 39 ABDUCTED INDIANS

The minister sought Iraq's assistance to trace the whereabouts and safe release of 39 abducted Indians. The Iraqi leadership assured of full cooperation and support in the matter.

The two sides discussed the entire gamut of bilateral engagement, including economic, trade, investment, energy security, defence, security and counter terrorism.

India conveyed its willingness to partner in the reconstruction of Iraq and for continued assistance through Indian government's capacity-building programmes under ITEC.

--- ENDS ---
By Siraj Qureshi: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat has said that the current crisis in Kashmir is entirely due to bad governance on part of the Kashmir government and it has nothing to do with the separatists.

Talking to the media in Agra from an RSS camp where he has been staying for the past three days, Bhagwat said that Kashmiri separatists have lost the plot and they no longer enjoy the support they once had among the local populace of Kashmir. The current crisis has been generated by the poor governance of the J&K government and Pakistani interference in the internal issues of India.



KASHMIR VICTIM OF PAK SPONSORED TERRORISM

He said that the Kashmir issue would have been resolved in the then PM Vajpayee's tenure, but it could not happen due to mistakes on both sides. He said that the Modi government's attitude towards the resolution of this issue is also positive and is hopeful it would be resolved during Modi's tenure. He also added that Kashmir was not a victim of separatist sentiments, but a victim of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.

advertisement

Mohan Bhagwat states "It has been 69 years since independence, but this country could not achieve what it was capable of in a long time. Whoever may have been at the helm of the country, the pace of development was lackluster." He further added that there were several experiments were attempted to kickstart this country's development at a respectable pace. With India's massive potential they tried to develop the country which included Samajwad, public welfare schemes and even two years of emergency, but nothing changed, because the mindset of the people didn't change and unless the mindset changes, India will continue to remain a developing country."



SAFFRON BRIGADE UNHAPPY

Talking to India Today, Bhagwat said that some sections of the Saffron Brigade are unhappy with Modi's policies and the RSS is trying to arrive at a peaceful resolution to the objections raised by these sections. This includes the Hindu outfits engaged in cow vigilantism. He said that he is personally working on controlling the simmering anger of outfits like the VHP against the Modi government.

He said that the RSS is also working with the BJP on making the labor laws of the country favorable to the laborers after the "Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh", which is a part of the RSS. It joined the protest demonstrations against the Modi government's anti-labour policies. He said that it is a serious issue and the RSS is fully aware of its gravity.

Also Read: Vajpayee almost solved Kashmir issue but other govts didn't follow up: RSS chief Bhagwat

--- ENDS ---
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today met opposition leaders in Jammu and Kashmir. PM Modi expressed his deep concerns over the ongoing unrest in the Valley.

By Brijesh Pandey: Meeting opposition leaders from Jammu and Kashmir over the continuing unrest in the valley, Prime Minster Narendra Modi today said that doors are open for dialogue and there is a need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the constitution.

The Prime Minster today had a 45-minute long meeting with leaders of opposition parties from Jammu and Kashmir and said that the solution to this problem lies through dialogue only.

advertisement

This statement of the Prime Minster has come after the finance minister had issued a stern statement calling stone pelters stooges of Pakistan. However there was no mention of stone pelters in the statement of PM.

Expressing his pain at the prevailing situation, the Prime Minister said that whosoever has lost his life in this violence, be it a Jawan or youth of the valley, it is a matter of deep concern. He emphasized the need for all political parties to work together to find solution to the problems in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

NO POLITICS OVER KASHMIR ISSUE

It seemed that the opposition leaders were satisfied with the interaction with the prime minister. Omar Abdullah said that he is not doing politics over the issue and neither should anybody else do it.

"PM told us in categorical term that development alone is not the solution to the problem," said Omar.

When asked about his Twitter spat with BJP's Ram Madhav who accused him of not able to handle the 2010 violence well, Omar said that he doesn't want to score Political points.

PEOPLE DYING IN MY STATE

He further said, "yesterday one more youth in valley was killed. I am not heartless. People of my state are dying".

They also gave a memorandum to PM Modi and said that the political process promised during the formation of BJP-PDP govt should start without delay. The government should start a meaningful and constructive dialogue in valley without any further delay.

Also read:

Kashmiris are not stone-pelters: 95% people are innocent but suffer due to selfish 5%, says Mehbooba





--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Aug 22 (PTI) Nepal has disconnected power supply to Mahendra Manjil, the residence of former Queen Mother Ratna Rajya Laxmi Shah, for failing to pay utility bills that have mounted to 3.7 million rupees.

The 88-year-old Queen Mother, stepmother of deposed king Gyandendra, is the only former royal family member residing in the building located within the old Narayanhity Palace complex in Kathmandu.

advertisement

According to Deputy Executive Director of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) Gopal Babu Bhattarai, the former queen mother owed 3.7 million rupees for using electricity.

According to NEA sources, the authority has not received any payment for power supply from Ratna since 2008, when the monarchy was abolished in the country.

With the abolition of monarchy, other members left the Palace, but Ratna continues to live in Mahendra Manjil a house built and gifted to her by her husband late King Mahendra some five decades ago, which has been converted into a Museum.

According to Bhattarai, NEA disconnected electricity to dozens of households, including institutions in Janakpur, Bharatpur and Kathmandu on Sunday.

NEAs action against the erring households comes on the heels of newly appointed Energy Minister and Maoist leader Janardan Sharmas instruction to disconnect power supply to those big customers who fail to pay utility bills on time.

Bhattarai said NEA had been taking action against erring households and institutions for the last few months and it intensified its drive following the energy ministers directives.

According to NEA sources, the governmnet authority needs to collect almost Rs 9 billion dues, a large chunk of which is owed by big houses and municipalities, which have installed street lights.

Former Queen Mothers personal secretary Shambhu Adhikari said the staff of Mahendra Manjil had been submitting the utility bills to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, which was supposed to pay the bills.

Adhikari claimed that former chief governmet secretary Leela Mani Paudyal had told him that the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation would pay the utility bills.

He said the government should either treat Mahendra Manjil as Ratnas personal property or it should pay electricity, water and telephone bills.

Former king Gyanendra Shahs press secretary Phani Raj Pathak said former home minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula had assured the former king in 2008 that former queen mother could live at Mahendra Manjil and as per that agreement the government would pay all the utility bills.

As per the rules, the NEA can disconnect power supply to customers if they fail to pay bills within 60 days. PTI SBP AMS ABH AMS

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
Mother of a teenaged girl was beaten to death by eve teasers for protesting against their lewd remarks on her daughter.

By Manogya Loiwal : Tension prevailed in Ganjam district of Odisha after a mother of a teenager was killed because she protested against eve teasers who passed derogatory remarks on her daughter. The incident took place in Ganjam district of Odisha.

Just after the incident, the irate locals of Odisha's Bhabarada village in Ganjam district staged an agitation and blocked the road demanding arrest of the eve teasers who passed lewd comments on a girl and then killed her mother for filing a complaint in the local police station.

advertisement

According to locals present there, four youths attacked the girl's parents after they filed a complaint against the eve-teasers with the Polasara police station.

Prakash Swain and his wife Kamala were attacked on Sunday when they were working in their crop field. Even though the girl's father managed to escape with minor injuries the mother, Kamala was thrashed to death with an iron rod.

MOTHER SUCCUMBED TO CRITICAL INJURIES

They both were rushed to a local hospital where Kamala was declared brought dead. Following this incident the locals blocked a road by placing the body of the deceased and demanding immediate arrest of the accused Manoj Nahak and his acquaintance.

Irate villagers gathered outside the Polasara police station demanding arrest of the accused.(Photo: Mohammad Wasim) Irate villagers gathered outside the Polasara police station demanding arrest of the accused.(Photo: Mohammad Wasim)

The mob further gheraod and ransacked the Polasara police station and set a police jeep ablaze. The road blockade was withdrawn after Director General of Police of Odisha KB Singh ordered the suspension of Sub Inspector of Polasara police station.

Later seven platoons of police force were deployed to bring the furore under control. However the area still remains tensed.

With inputs from Mohammad Wasim.



Also read:

Prez urged to intervene in Mahanadi issue



--- ENDS ---
By PTI: 4

Bhubaneswar, Aug 22 (PTI) The toll in the Parlakhemundi royal palace "suicide" case today increased to four with the death of former palace manager Anang Manjari Patras another brother during treatment at a hospital in Berhampur.

The police had yesterday recovered bodies of Ananga Manjari, her brother Sanjay Patra, ex-personal assistant of Maharaj Gopinath Gajapati Narayan Deo, and their sister Bijaylaxmi from a house at Parlakhemundi.

advertisement

"Santosh Patra alias Tulu died this evening during treatment. He was yesterday admitted at the medical college hospital here," MKCG Medical College Hospital superintendent A K Behera said.

Santosh was rescued from the kitchen of the house in Paralakhemundi yesterday in a critical condition while his three siblings were found dead.

Santoshs statement was significant in investigation point of view as he was the lone survivor in the suicide case. However, he died this evening when the investigators were trying to record his statement at the hospital.

Though DGP K B Singh said the police have recovered three suicide notes from the house at Parlakhemundi, Santoshs statement was vital to uncover the mystery behind the death, said a senior police officer.

The family members of the former palace manager today cremated the bodies of Ananga Manjari Patra, Sanjay Patra and Bijaylaxmi Patra after postmortem.

The police yesterday had recovered bodies of Anang Manjari, Sanjay and Bijaylaxmi from their house after local residents complained of foul smell emanating from their house bolted from inside.

The former manager and her brother Sanjay were accused of keeping the Parala Maharaj under house arrest and financial misappropriation pertaining to the property transactions of the royal family. PTI AAM MD DIP SNP

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: assault on colleague

Chandigarh, Aug 22 (PTI) Resident doctors of the prestigious PGIMER here today launched an indefinite flash strike to protest the alleged assault on one of their colleagues.

They also took out a march to protest the incident in which a doctor was allegedly assaulted by a patients relatives last night.

The doctors, who are demanding adequate security measures to prevent such incidents from happening in the future, alleged that the relatives of a patient "manhandled" one of them on duty.

advertisement

The relatives had blamed the doctors for allegedly not attending to the patient brought to the emergency wing.

"Resident doctors of PGIMER, Chandigarh went on an indefinite flash strike on 22.8.2016. Keeping this in view, it was decided to reduce the OPD registration timings. However, registration timings of Radiotherapy OPD dealing with cancer patients was not reduced...ICU emergency and trauma services functioned normally. Emergency OPD, Trauma OPD as well as emergency OT and trauma OT services functioned as usual. The diagnostic services also functioned normally," PGIMERs official spokesperson said in a release. PTI SUN GS RC RG RC

--- ENDS ---
PM Modi emphasised on the need for dialogue to find a lasting solution for Kashmir problem.

By Press Trust of India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday expressed "deep pain" and concern over the prevailing situation in Kashmir Valley and emphasised on the need for dialogue to find a lasting solution within the framework of the Constitution.

He told a delegation of opposition leaders of Jammu and Kashmir that those who lost their lives during the recent disturbances are a "part of us" and it is a matter of "distress" whether the lives lost are of "our youth, security personnel or police," official sources said.

advertisement

The Prime Minister said his government stands with the state of Jammu and Kashmir and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same.

During the meeting with the delegation led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, the Prime Minister expressed "deep concern and pain" at the prevailing situation in the state and appealed for restoration of normalcy in the Valley which has been witnessing unrest for the last 44 days.

"We need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution," the Prime Minister said.

Modi emphasised on the need for all political parties to work together to find a solution to the problems of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the sources said.

He also expressed his commitment to the development of the state.

Earlier in the day, a delegation led by National Conference leader Omar Abdullah had called on the Prime Minister and appealed that a political approach needs to be adopted for resolving the present crisis in the Valley and to ensure that the "mistakes" of the past are not repeated.

Kashmir has been witnessing unrest since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8.

ALSO READ | Kashmir unrest: Curfew continues for 45th day as civilian death toll reaches 67







--- ENDS ---
By India Today Web Desk: The Kamal Hassan-Rajinikanth friendship is one for the ages. The two actors who rose to stardom steadily through the 80s and the decades that followed are seen as the two distinct faces of Tamil cinema. While Rajini is known his commercial, blockbuster, 'mass' films, Rajini has carved a niche for himself by doing intellectual cinema. Irrespective of their image and the nature of their films, the two stars have maintained their camaraderie over the years.



advertisement

ALSO READ: Kamal Haasan to be conferred with French honour



ALSO READ: My accident is silly, just like Amitabh's in the '80s, says Kamal Haasan



Twitterati bore witness to the relationship between the aging stars on Monday (August 22) when Thalaiva Rajinikanth congratulated the Sabash Naidu star for being appointed Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres (Knight in the National Order Arts and Letters) by the Minister of Culture and Communication, France.

Rajinikanth congratulated Kamal Haasan on Twitter

Rajinikanth tweeted in Tamil. The English translation goes as, "I wish this generation's Chevalier Sivaji and my good friend Kamal Haasan for receiving the prestigious award."

The award will be conferred on Kamal Haasan at a special ceremony. Ordre des Arts et Lettres is the recognition of significant contributions to the arts, literature, or the propagation of these fields, given by the Minister of Culture, France.

In a career spanning over five decades, he has won three National Awards for the Best Actor and President's Gold Medal for the Best Child Artist for the film Kalathur Kannamma (1960). He was conferred with Padma Bhushan by the Indian government in 2014. Other Indians who have been an awardee of the Chevalier Order include actors Sivaji Ganesan, Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Nandita Das and Shah Rukh Khan.

On the career front, the Vishwaroopam star will resume shooting his upcoming trilingual comedy Sabash Naidu after recovering from a leg fracture. Meanwhile Rajinikanth awaits the release of 2.0, the sequel to his 2010 hit Enthiran, next year.



--- ENDS ---
BJP MP Subramanian Swamy raked up the Ram Temple issue again saying that all parties now want a speedy Supreme Court hearing.

By Harish V Nair: Raking up the Ram Temple issue yet again, BJP MP Subramanian Swamy on Sunday said that all parties involved in the long pending suit in the Supreme Court were in favour of day-to-day hearing.

"Pressure is mounting for a speedy SC hearing of the Ram Temple petitions with all parties in favour of day to day hearing", Subramanian Swamy tweeted. Swamy who has demanded immediate commencing of day-to-day hearing had earlier said pendency of the appeals against the Allahabad High Court order since 2011 has "restricted his fundamental right to worship and dignity of life" under the Constitution.

advertisement

DISCUSSION ON RAM TEMPLE IN RAJYA SABHA: SWAMY

He had also sought discussion on the matter in Rajya Sabha. Raising the matter during the Zero Hour recently, Swamy said it is very necessary to have a discussion in the House on an "urgent developing issue" of building a Ram temple in Ayodhya.

"In the manifesto of BJP, we had made a solemn assurance that as per legal methods, and that is through courts, we will find a solution. And this is now widely accepted by all parties," he had said.

"All parties had agreed that there should be day-to-day hearing on the issue to find a solution. Therefore, I urge, through you, the government to see that their law officers go to the Supreme Court as they did in the High Court and say that this matter should be expeditiously disposed off and day-to-day hearing takes place," he said.

Swamy had also demanded that the issue "should be discussed threadbare in the House so that harmony can be restored in the country". The SC had earlier assured Swamy that his plea on the issue will be heard along with appeals challenging a 2010 Allahabad HC decision fixing the exact birthplace of Lord Ram at the disputed Ayodhya site.

HISTORY

A three-judge Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad HC had in September 2010 given a unanimous decision that Lord Ram was born under the central dome of the makeshift temple and Hindus have right to worship there.

Subsequently, SC had stayed implementation of the HC decision soon after. The case has remained in limbo ever since. The High Court had also directed that the controversial land of 2.77 acres at Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid be divided equally among Hindus, Muslims and Nirmohi Akhara, the parties to the suit.

Also Read

Subramanian Swamy is my hero, believe his word on Ram temple: Uma Bharti

SC dismisses Subramanian Swamy's plea seeking early hearing on Ram temple issue



--- ENDS ---
Angela Nikolau, a Russian Instagram star, is shooting to fame for her dangerous selfies. Do not try this, we would say.

By India Today Web Desk:

Russia's Instagram star, Angela Nikolau, is risking her life to take some amazing photographs of herself and some selfies. No, we are not exaggerating.

See this one.

Photo: InstagramAngelaNikolau

Before showing you some of her other photos, let us tell you that her pictures could be vertigo-inducing.

Okay, now we are exaggerating, but what's the harm in warning for greater good?

advertisement

Here we go!

Photo: InstagramAngelaNikolau

Photo: InstagramAngelaNikolau

Photo: InstagramAngelaNikolau

Photo: InstagramAngelaNikolau

Nikolau's Instagram bio reads, "No limit, no control". She seems to be taking that quite literally.





Photo: InstagramAngelaNikolau Photo: InstagramAngelaNikolau

Photo: InstagramAngelaNikolau

Photo: InstagramAngelaNikolau

If that wasn't enough, here's her performing a stunt atop a skyscraper in Hong-Kong.



#hongkong #rooftop #roof #selfie #girl #gimnastic #yoga #china #acrobatics A video posted by Angela Nikolau (@angela_nikolau) on Aug 19, 2016 at 10:57pm PDT







Nikolau now has 1,56,000 followers Instagram. But we don't recommend this at all! Angela has also shared a video of she getting one of these photos clicked.











This is the photographer of the girl and he has got 2,19,000 followers on Instagram.



A photo posted by Ivan Beerkus (@beerkus) on Aug 1, 2016 at 3:56am PDT

We say again, do not try these stunts. A selfie is not worth such risks!



--- ENDS ---
More than 2,000 Indian labourers who have been imprisoned in Jeddah shared their ordeal with India Today through a video on WhatsApp.

By Mrityunjay Singh, Anil Kumar: Over 2,000 Indian workers are awaiting release after being jailed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for over a month. Despite several representations before the Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia, there has been no respite for the stranded labourers.

The issue came to light after few of the labourers shared a WhatsApp video with India Today. In the video they have appealed to the Prime Minister and the Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj for their safe release.

advertisement

The labourers said that their previous employer did not pay them salaries for past few months forcing them to take up work with other companies. One of them said that the police raided the company site and rounded up all of them.

SLAPPED A FINE OF RS 1.80 LAKH

According to them the police said that they have been penalised for a sum of 10,000 Riyals which is equivalent to Rs 1.80 lakh. The labourers were fined as they left the previous company without collecting their passports. According to the norms, the labourers will only be allowed to leave for their countries after they pay the fine.

Mohammad Ibrahim a native of Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur and Sukhdeep Singh from Hoshiyarpur of Punjab told India Today that they had approached the Indian Embassy. However, they did not get any help from the embassy.

Labourers appealed to the prime minister and external affairs minister using a WhatsApp video. Labourers appealed to the prime minister and external affairs minister using a WhatsApp video.

The labourers are presently kept at barrack 79 of the prison in Jeddah. They said that several other labourers are being kept at different barracks in the prison. One of them said that while a barrack has a capacity of about 64 people, the authorities crammed over 140 persons in a barrack.

They told India Today that the jail authorities told them that they will not be released even if the Indian Embassy intervenes. However, the labourers who shared their ordeal through the video are pinning hope on Indian government's intervention.

Also read:

Indian workers in Saudi, file your claims and return home: Sushma Swaraj



--- ENDS ---
Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier were accused of attempting to stab their 12-year-old friend to death in 2014 to appease a fictional character. Geyser will plead not guilty stating mental health reasons.

By India Today Web Desk:



Two 12-year-old girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, were accused of attempting to kill their friend of the same age as a human sacrifice to appease a fictional character in 2014.

Geyser, who has been held in a psychiatric facility after being diagnosed with schizophrenia, will plead not guilty stating the same.



Slender Man stabbing case of 2014

advertisement

? fictional character called 'Slender Man', who preyed on children, influenced Geyser and Weier so much that they took their classmate to a park in Wisconsin's Waukesha, in the pretext of going bird-watching, with a plan to murder her.

The 12-year-old victim survived 19 stab wounds. She recovered and is back in school.

Rescue workers taking the victim to an ambulance. Photo: AP

In the chilling interrogation videos, Geyser and Weier told the officers that they knew they'd get into trouble, that they have never seen 'Slender Man' but that he's everywhere, and that he watches children all the time.

The girls were charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide, says an Independent report.



Pleading not guilty



The girls, both of them 14 years old now, are being tried as adults for attempted murder and will face decades in prison if convicted.

Weier pleaded not guilty last year.

Morgan Geyser, who has been undergoing treatment in a psychiatric centre for the last two years after being diagnosed with schizophrenia, will plead not guilty stating mental health grounds.





--- ENDS ---
By PTI: Kalia

Jalandhar, Aug 21 (PTI) Punjab BJP leader Manoranjan Kalia today asked senior party leader Shanta Kumar why he had not raised his voice on the appointment of chief parliamentary secretaries when he was the state BJP in-charge.

Stressing that Kumar was the BJP state-in-charge when the SAD-BJP alliance was formed government in the state, Kalia asked why Kumar did not oppose the appointments if they were wrong.

advertisement

The Punjab and Haryana High Court had recently quashed the appointment of 18 CPS by the Prakash Singh Badal government in April 2012, terming it "unconstitutional".

Kumar had recently written an article in a vernacular daily criticising the appointments of CPS.

Kalia alleged that between 1990 and 1992, Kumar, as Himachal Pradesh chief minister, had appointed CPS apart from 12 ministers. PTI SRT ANB AAR RG AAR

--- ENDS ---
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan being carried by two policemen during his visit to the flood-hit areas of the state was caught on camera and the photo has gone viral.

Viral photo of MP CM Shivraj Chouhan being carried by two policemen. Photo Source: Twitter\Aditalks

By India Today Web Desk:



Being a VIP comes with a lot of privileges. Why else would those folks be called Very Important Person, right? Chief minister of a state is certainly a VIP.



And here's proof.

Photo Source: Twitteraditalks

That is Shiraj Singh Chouhan, Madhya Pradesh's chief minister, enjoying his VIP status. CM was photographed yesterday while being carried by two policemen during his visit to the flood-hit areas of his state. To be exact, the incident was caught on camera when he was 'inspecting' Amanganj Tehsil in Panna district.

advertisement

The photo went viral on social media soon after. Here are some reactions from Twitter.

Aerial survey of MP CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan in flood hit areas. pic.twitter.com/8ULqd9Z0aT Iftikhar Gilani (@iftikhargilani) August 22, 2016

Shivraj Singh Chauhan ji,I know you are 8 years older than David Cameron,but you can do better than this inspection pic.twitter.com/IoXiNnA08z Adithya (@aditalks) August 21, 2016

Shivraj Singh Chauhan- Winner of Gold Medal in FLOOD OLYMPICS being carried by his coaches for Victory Lap!! pic.twitter.com/v6CPgsdRHc Rosy (@rose_k01) August 21, 2016





Aerial survey of floods being done by CM, Shivraj Singh Chouhan Ji in J class seat!!! See it to believe it: pic.twitter.com/4tfWfTjaRd Randeep S Surjewala (@rssurjewala) August 21, 2016

MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan: "Chalo floods dekhne jaate hain!"

*arrives* "Guys, yeh mera favourite white pant hai." pic.twitter.com/ojFk9nOvRw Jos Covaco (@HoeZaay) August 21, 2016

Pic 1: Applicants appearing for an exam conducted by VYAPAM Pic 2: Topper, when the results are declared pic.twitter.com/Fcqrm7QFUd Pyaar Se Mario (@SquareGas) August 22, 2016





An NDTV report says that government sources said that the CM was being carried by policemen to avoid the risk of him being bitten by snakes or GETTING HURT.



*slow claps*

Flood in Madhya Pradesh has already claimed 17 lives. Incessant rains have badly affected normal life in Vindhya and Bundelkhand regions. Major rivers and streams including Son, Ken and Tamas could over-flow and add to the misery. Rewa, Satna, Sidhi, Chattarpur, Panna, Katni, Damoh are some of the districts under threat.





--- ENDS ---
This Pakistani man wants social media users to help an Indian find his long lost family friends.

By India Today Web Desk: A Pakistani man living in Reading, United Kingdom, is trying to help an 87-year-old Indian man find his lost friends from 30-years ago.

Eighty-seven-year-old Tarsen Mall is currently living with Kamran Iqbal, and he wanted Iqbal to help find his family friends.

He has not been in touch with Ruby Grover for past 30 years. After a two-week discussion, Tarsen came up with a letter form his archives, it was addressed to Kiran Mall, his daughter, and was sent by Ruby Gorver on 8 May 1984.

advertisement

In the letter Ruby mentioned her father's office address through which Tarsen came up with some 'clues'. Mr Grover, Ruby's father, should be more than 70-years old and is from Kaporthala, Panjab. He was working with the Department of Lighthouse and Light Ship as an officer in charge and his office address was "Lighthouse PO Onjal Machhiwad via Navasar, Gujarat - 396412 ".

Comedian Varun Grover tweeted about it.



A Pakistani in UK is trying to help an 87-year old Indian find lost friends. Social media can help. Read/share. pic.twitter.com/UzQWSXUWt4 ? (@varungrover) 22 August 2016

According to Tarsen, Mr Grover worked there 25-35 years ago. Iqbal has tried searching for Mr Grover's address using the website of Department of Lighthouse and Light Ship, but could not find it.

"I can see the desperation on Mr Mall's face that I feel I can still do more", Iqbal writes in his post.

After trying contacting different offices, Iqbal decided to use social media.

Here are further details of the Grover family:

photo: Twitter/VarunGrover

Tarsen Mall is ready to give a reward of Rs.10,000 to the person who is able to find the whereabouts of his family friends.

--- ENDS ---
Suicide bombers from Al-Shabaab group detonated two car bombs in Somalia killing more than 20 people.

By Reuters: More than 20 people were killed on Sunday when suicide bombers from the militant Al-Shabaab group detonated two car bombs at a local government headquarters in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region, witnesses and officials said.

Residents of the town of Galkayo in north central Somalia said they heard two loud blasts in quick succession followed by heavy gunfire.



WHAT HAPPENED



"There were two huge bombs. The first one was a truck bomb, followed a minute or so (later) by another car bomb. My brother was injured at the scene," Halima Ismail, a local resident said.

advertisement

Islamist Al-Shabaab, which has carried out a series of deadly attacks in the Horn of Africa country as it seeks to topple the Western-backed government, claimed responsibility for the bombings.

"There were two suicide car bombs," Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group's spokesman for military operations, told Reuters.

DEATH TOLL

Police initially put the death toll at 10, including civilians and security forces personnel, but a medical official said that number had doubled.

"Death toll is over 20 and it may rise further," said Ahmed Sugule, a doctor at Galkayo hospital. He said another 30 people were wounded in the attack.

Al-Shabaab has become more active in Puntland, a large part of northern Somalia, since moving more forces there after being pushed out of strongholds farther south by an African Union force and the Somali National Army, experts and officials say.

The group controlled Mogadishu for several years until 2011 when African Union forces drove it out.

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From Aditi Khanna

London, Aug 22 (PTI) The UK government today said it will isolate Islamist extremists in specialist units in high security jails to limit their ability to radicalise other inmates, days after the conviction of well-known radical Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary.

UK justice secretary Liz Truss spoke on the issue after it had emerged over the weekend that specialist units were part of a wider review of the countrys prison system to tackle extremism.

advertisement

"Preventing the most dangerous extremists from radicalising other prisoners is essential to the safe running of our prisons and fundamental to public protection," Truss said.

"Islamist extremism is a danger to society and a threat to public safety ? it must be defeated wherever it is found. I am committed to confronting and countering the spread of this poisonous ideology behind bars," she added.

The most dangerous Islamist extremists will be removed from the general prison population and held in "specialist units", as part of one of the main recommendations by a review ordered by the government last year and led by Ian Acheson.

The move comes soon after the conviction of one of the UKs most extremist preachers Anjem Choudary.

He is expected to be jailed for 10 years after being found guilty of pledging allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS) at a sentencing hearing scheduled for September.

The review, which remains classified with only excerpts released to the media, looked at the risks posed by Islamist extremists in prisons, and also recommended prison officers, on the front line, be equipped to crack down on extremist behaviour.

They will be supported by a new directorate for Security, Order and Counter-Terrorism, responsible for monitoring and dealing with this evolving threat.

Governors have also been instructed to ban extremist literature and to remove anyone from Friday prayers who is promoting anti-British beliefs or other dangerous views.

Lack of confidence in challenging unacceptable extremist behaviour and views was highlighted as a key concern across the prison estate, resulting in reluctance to confront extremist views.

Prison chaplains will also face more stringent vetting procedures to ensure that they are not linked to any extremist organisations.

Figures show there were 12,633 Muslims in prison in England and Wales as of the end of June.

At the end of March 2016, of the 147 people in prison for terrorism-related offences, 137 of them considered themselves to be Muslim.

Acheson said his report had concluded that the National Offender Management Service, which is responsible for correctional services in England and Wales, was "very far from being effective in both understanding and reacting properly to the obvious threat posed" by Islamist extremism.

advertisement

"This must change in order to protect staff, prisoners and wider society and we have made dozens of recommendations to that end," he said in an email to the BBC.

His review found there was evidence of a weak understanding of Islamist extremists, including a lack of data on conversions and lack of management control over extremist literature and materials. PTI AK AMS

--- ENDS ---
Media Movement

KABEER KHURANA, 18, ANUPAMA AGARWAL, 18, ARTYCULATE

'Confidently weird' Kabeer Khurana and 'confidently clueless' Anupama Agarwal were constantly bullied in school. "Bullies believe they are somehow superior, but we could never understand how being different made us inferior," says Agarwal. "The stem of bringing social change was because of this seed that was sown in our childhood."

Procrastination during their 12th standard board exams allowed the best friends to conceptualise their production house Artyculate, which would help them use films and other forms of media to inspire others to make a social change. An architecture student and an aspiring filmmaker, Khurana's first short film Project Oneness, which talked about discrimination, won him a 'special mention' at the Corti a Ponte Film Festival in Venice last year. Commissioned two films for non-profit organisations during the summer, he is now itching to create his next titled Isms.

advertisement

The Creative Itch

Visual isn't the only way the students are going. Agarwal, a first-year BBA student at Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, enjoys the written word. She runs their blog, Artyculate Ink, with the help of five volunteers who write regularly about individuality, vulnerability, the education system and so on. It's their third vertical, Artyculate Mic, that has really helped them spread the word about their work. Their first campaign, Confidently Flawed, had people share stories about appreciating oneself. Their first post had Saffana Siddiqui talk about her dyslexia. It went viral with over 400 likes and 200 shares. Website artyculate.net

Water woes

SALONI GOPANI, 18, SALONI KUKREJA, 20, PROJECT JALVRUDDH

A sari-clad woman carefully balancing pots of water on her head during her trek back home-isn't that the quintessential image of rural India? The enthusiastic students behind Project Jalvruddhi could well change that picture with their bright blue Wello water wheels.

Project Jalvruddhi, HR College student Saloni Gopani's brainchild, came after months of primary research which lead the students to understand that purification, accessibility and availability of water was one of the major problems faced in rural Maharastra. "Pipelines had never worked in the villages in the district of Wada, and the people had resigned themselves to collecting water from the source. But it was very time-consuming," says Gopani, one of the 30 who make up the student-run organisation, Enactus, at HR College.

Village Ways

When they came across Wello, manufacturer of the water wheel, the students realised that an economically viable solution existed but had never made it to the village. Similarly, the students found that there was an existing solution to the villagers' problem of clean, potable water-Wockhardt's filtration pills. "Considering electricity is either too expensive or not available, the pills were a more feasible solution," explains Gopani. Project Jalvruddhi has managed to reach out to 28 villages till now. "We began to focus on creating a cross-subsidy model that will help fund Jalvruddhi. We taught the women from the villages to stitch tote bags, which we are now selling to corporates in bulk and retailing on e-commerce portals," says Gopani. Website facebook.com/projectjalvruddhi

advertisement

Championing culture

ISHAAN JAJODIA, 18, THE MUMBAI ART COLLECTIVE

Ishaan Jajodia's eyes light up when he talks about the Art Deco and Victorian architecture along the two sides of the Oval Maidan, the forgotten frescoes inside the dome at the General Post Office building and the heirloom silverware at his grandmother's Marine Drive apartment. His appreciation for art comes from a privilege of access and Jajodia is keen to pay it forward. This June, he founded The Mumbai Art Collective (TMAC), a non-profit organisation that aims to promote and preserve art digitally. It is an ambitious project, and step one, says Jajodia is to identify and reach out to artists. He and his co-curator Aryaman Sen decide what goes on their web page and what doesn't.

Multimedia Mavericks

Jajodia, who is headed to Dartmouth College for a degree in art history in a few months, has been employing a multimedia strategy to create his art repository. Videos of classical dance performances in the city will soon be up on the website, as will photographs of Mumbai's vibrant street art. Jajodia hopes to be able to use virtual reality and other digital technology to do justice to Mumbai's heritage, but in the meantime, he is telling the stories of the buildings through video interviews of the people who embody them-the pastor at Afghan Church, for instance. "Not only do we wish to create a platform for art-lovers and historians to get a picture of Indian culture, we also wish to promote art amongst the citizens of Mumbai," says Jajodia. Website themum-baiartcollective.com

advertisement

Food for the Feeders

BANAT KAUR BAGGA, 21, GAYATRI CHOPRA, 21, GANEEV BAGGA, 18, VARUN CHOPRA, 17, FEEDERS

Housing societies in Mumbai tend to have two kinds of people- those who feed stray animals and those who complain about the feeders. Banat Kaur Bagga has faced several complaints about her generosity towards stray dogs and cats in the neighbourhood, but that has never stopped her.

Last June, the law student set up Feeders with the help of her classmate Gayatri Chopra and their siblings Ganeev and Varun, to raise funds for others like her. They began with a raddi (dry waste) collection drive in their society, but when that wasn't as successful as they'd hoped. "It wasn't until we began organising quirky events targeted at the youth that we finally saw some success," reveals Bagga.

Fun and Philanthropy

Versova's Cat Cafe Studio proved to be the perfect venue for Pet Stories, a session meant for pet owners to come and share tales about their beloved tail-waggers."We didn't charge an entry fee. Donations were to be made in kind-pet food, rice and biscuits were welcome," says Bagga. Their last event was an open mic night that saw musicians, poets and comedians come together for the cause of hungry street cats and dogs. While the others are in charge of spreading the word and documenting Feeders' stories, Bagga holds herself responsible for identifying the city's feeders who best deserve the aid. Website facebook.com/feedersmumbai

advertisement

Home Remedy

ANOOVRAT SINGH, 20, NOT JUST COLLEGE

Lucknow boy Anoovrat Singh learnt about Mumbai's real estate mess the hard way when he first moved to the city two years ago to study Economics at St Xavier's College. He'd meet brokers every other day, but it was months before he found a suitable home and like-minded roommates. "Brokers tend to randomly club clients together, and it can get difficult if your frequency doesn't match," explains Singh. The natural-born entrepreneur, who made his first buck by making mixed CDs for his classmates in school, knew this was a problem he could find a solution to.

Serious Business

Not Just College is different from other social media platforms because it is to be a student-only forum. Singh's website goes live this month. The plan is to charge a nominal membership fee when you first sign up. The website will also have a compulsory questionnaire to determine preferences such as smoking, socialising and study patterns. Within six months, his pilot project has helped over 50 students find accommodation. "I have started getting requests from students from other colleges, so I know there's a big demand," he says. Website facebook. com/NotJustCollege

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: From Aditi Khanna

London, Aug 22 (PTI) Britains broadcast regulator today rejected complaints that it was inappropriate for a hijab- wearing Muslim reporter to cover the terrorist attacks in Nice in July.

Ofcom had received 17 complaints about Channel 4 News reporter Fatima Manji and today said there are no grounds to launch a full investigation.

advertisement

"We received a small number of complaints that it was inappropriate for a presenter wearing a hijab to present a report on the attack in Nice," said a spokesperson for Ofcom.

"We wont be taking the matter forward for investigation. The selection of a presenter is an editorial matter for the broadcaster, and the way in which the presenter chose to dress in this case did not raise any issues under our rules," he added.

The controversy had been triggered after Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor and now columnist at the Sun newspaper, attacked the decision in his column and called on readers to complain over the channels coverage of the mass killings at Nice in France on July 15.

"Was it appropriate for her to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim? Was it done to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer who looks at the hijab as a sign of the slavery of Muslim women by a male-dominated and clearly violent religion?"

Channel 4 News editor Ben De Pearhad said last month that the channel had made an official complaint to the UK?s Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).

"ITN believes the article was in breach of a number of provisions of the Editors Code, in particular discrimination, harassment by intimidation and inaccuracy," De Pear said.

IPSO has received around 1,700 complaints over MacKenzies remarks afterManjico-presented the Channel 4 News bulletin - produced by ITN - from London while Jon Snow reported from France during the coverage of the terrorist attacks.

Rupert Murdoch owned Sun had distanced itself from MacKenzies column, deleting a tweet promoting it. PTI AK AMS

--- ENDS ---
TV actor Vivek Dahiya, who recently got married to Divyanka Tripathi, is one fitness freak. And looking at his pics, we're sure you'd be motivated on not just Monday but every day of the week.

By Nikita Bhalla: If you thought working out is a concept taken seriously only by our B-town stars, it's about time you started following Vivek Dahiya. The Kawach actor has all it takes to look smoking hot and fit both on and off screen.

While the world knows him best as an actor and of course as TV's favourite female lead Divyanka Tripathi's husband, we think Vivek is much more than everything he's typecast to be.

advertisement

Glancing through his Instagram profile, we discovered a completely different side to him--that of a fitness freak. In fact, the actor was recently quoted as saying, "This profession has made me more particular about fitness and maintaining a good physique, and I really like it because it's a good thing, after all, a healthy body is a healthy mind."

Fancy a 2 AM workout?! #BrringIt #TurboCharged #NitricOxide A photo posted by Vivek Dahiya (@officialvivekdahiya) on May 12, 2016 at 1:24pm PDT

Dahiya has also been quite vocal about following a religious diet and working out regularly. He also claims to make his wife work out with him whenever she can. (We see #CoupleGoals!)



This is outrageously delicious @divyankatripathi #WifeToBeAtHerBest #OatmealWithMyFavFruits #Kickstarter A photo posted by Vivek Dahiya (@officialvivekdahiya) on Apr 14, 2016 at 10:54pm PDT

'That' feeling after an amazing workout. #NoPainNoGain #ArmsDay A photo posted by Vivek Dahiya (@officialvivekdahiya) on Jan 30, 2016 at 4:09am PST

Despite playing the lead in an ongoing TV show called Kawach: Kali Shaktiyon Se, Vivek manages to sneak out some quality time for his exercise sessions and keeps fit with his regular gym workouts. TV stars lead pretty hectic lives because of their shooting schedules, and finding time for exercise isn't easy.



Today's story so far, 590 lbs leg press- final set 12 reps. Walking lunges to follow... A photo posted by Vivek Dahiya (@officialvivekdahiya) on Dec 17, 2015 at 6:22am PST

Now calling him an adrenaline junkie wouldn't be wrong because a late night workout is his 'thing'. And here's proof!



And his spot-on captions are giving us various reasons to be inspired. ('Note to self: Marriage is not the end of my fitness journey!')

--- ENDS ---

advertisement
The video shows security forces removing a suicide bomb vest from the young boy in Kirkuk, Iraq.

By India Today Web Desk: A video showing the arrest of a presumed 12-year-old boy by Iraqi security forces is doing rounds on the internet. The officers believed the boy was about to carry a bomb attack.

The video shows security forces removing a suicide bomb vest from the young boy in Kirkuk, Iraq.

The boy wearing the bomb-vest started crying when he was captured by the police. It is unclear whether he was forced to carry out the attack by the Islamic State.



advertisement

The bomb laden vest was detonated in a controlled environment.

Just a few hours before the arrest, a series of attacks had taken place. Two suicide bombers blew themselves in Kirkuk. One happened in front of a Shia shrine in Kirkuk and injured 3 people. The second one took place in the same neighbourhood but did not cause any causalities.

"There is a dangerous campaign tonight against Kirkuk," a security official told Kurdish news agency Rudaw.

This came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that an ISIS child suicide bomber was behind and attack that killed 51 people during a Kurdish wedding. Turkey has vowed to 'completely cleanse' Islamic State militants from its border region.



Watch the video here:

#Iraq#Kirkuk

|#ISISchild suicide bomber is stripped of his explosive belt by Iraqi police before they detonate itpic.twitter.com/vxhDpoFX05

Syria Today (@todayinsyria) August 22, 2016

--- ENDS ---
According to Asharq Al Awsat newspaper, the assassinations were planned to be carried out by firing RPJ7 rockets on Mr. Al Sabhans armour-plated car from three plots. Fake plates that matched those of the Ministry of Interior would intercept the ambassadors envoy as it made its way to the airport. The cars would then be driven into Al Radwaneyye, a Sunni area where they would be hidden, leaving ISIS to be blamed for the attack.

According to statements made by an Iraqi security official, the plot was a way to stop Mr. Al Sabhan speaking out against Iran. Since the action would have taken place in Iraq, the assassination would impede on the co-operation between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, causing tension between the two governments. The official also revealed how these plots were uncovered: We tracked phone calls between members of this militia and personnel at Baghdad International Airport who belong to the Khorasan battalions. They were alerting them about the ambassadors travel plans from and to Baghdad.

The officials managed to capture a member of the Khorasan battalion at the airport, who was one of a total of eight members of the assassination group, according to the Iranian security official. The captured confessed Irans involvement in the assassination plans.

In response, the Saudi embassy has reported the threats to the government of Iraq, leaving the issue in their hands to be dealt with under the eyes of the international community. The threats seem to have fuelled the conviction of Al Sabhan who is determined to carry on with his duties, even more than before.
[August 22, 2016] Pinnaca and Onstream Form Partnership to Stream High-Quality Video

Pinnaca, a leading provider of managed videoconferencing, telepresence and visual collaboration services, has formed a strategic partnership with Onstream Media, a leading online service provider of live and on-demand media communications. Pinnaca will launch the new service under the brand Event Streaming and will provide the service through Onstream's video webcasting and webinar platforms. Onstream's Internet-based platform has proven to be effective for broadcasting large meetings, conducting keynotes and product launchings, and for holding large public events - all managed and streamed to thousands of people. Onstream's webcasting also is an effective way to connect with new audiences, identify leads, generate new revenue and increase brand awareness. The complementary service offering is an easy-to-use, intuitive system with no downloads required, and no software to manage. "Because Pinnaca is a premium services provider, our partnership allows us to further deliver an integrated workflow and extend our global reach and footprint to more enterprise users," said Randy Selman, president and CEO of Onstream Media. "With Onstream technology, Pinnaca users can rest assured they are getting the most robust webcasting and webinar technology available." One of the most popular applications is in continuing education and online learning. Onstream's visual webcasting platform offers feature-rich webcasts that provide high-quality streaming video, audio, presentation materials, graphics and other media. The service also will complement corporate talent management programs, where the webcasting platform provides participants with a clear definition of credit hours available to be earned and requirements for receiving certification. /p>



Event Streaming to our global customers as part of our managed services and VCaaS offerings," said Dan Tanel, CTO of Pinnaca. "Our integrated solution will offer customers a robust global platform that's a great solution for many business applications -- from corporate training and new product announcements to investor relations." Pinnaca is highly regarded for its managed and cloud-based conferencing solutions, bringing visual communications to every boardroom, desktop and mobile device, making visual collaboration an easy-to-use business productivity tool for any enterprise across the globe.

Event Streaming, as well as Pinnaca's recently launched Record and Stream offering, adds high quality video recording and streaming to address the multiple requirements and global reach expansion of today's enterprises and businesses. About Pinnaca

Pinnaca (www.pinnaca.com) is an independent leading provider of managed videoconferencing, telepresence and visual collaboration services. Privately held and headquartered in Berkshire, UK with regional offices in Minnesota, New York, Toronto, Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong, Pinnaca provides customized state-of-the-art products, services and solutions from the world's finest manufacturers. Pinnaca is a global certified partner of Acano, Cisco, Polycom (News - Alert), Pexip, Vidyo, Avizia and Vyopta, and maintains strategic alliances with key vendors, including Ashton Bentley, in the company's A/V integration practice. About Onstream Media

Onstream Media Corporation (www.onstreammedia.com) is a leading online service provider of corporate audio and web communications, including webcasting, webinar, conferencing and virtual event technology. Onstream Media's innovative webcasting platform has recently been ranked #1 by TopTenREVIEWS. The company's video streaming, hosting and publishing platform - Streaming Publisher - provides customers with cost effective tools for encoding, managing, indexing, and publishing content to the Internet or virtually any mobile device. To date, almost half of the Fortune 1000 companies and 78% of the Fortune 100 CEOs and CFOs have used Onstream Media's services. Select Onstream Media customers include American Honda (News - Alert), Dell, GE Capital, IRS, HubSpot, PR Newswire, Pfizer, Stanford University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Onstream Media's strategic relationships include Akamai (News - Alert), BT Conferencing and Trade Show News Network. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160822005107/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[August 22, 2016] 5G Technology Market Worth 89.0 Million Subscriptions by 2022

PUNE, India, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "5G Technology Market and Its Impact on Communication and IoT Market (R&D Spending and Trial Investments, Technology Requirements, Future Roadmap, Spectrum Consideration, Key Strategies, Regulatory Landscape, and Application Trends & Geographical Analysis)", published by MarketsandMarkets. The market is expected to get developed by 2020 and is yet to be commercialized. The total number of subscriptions for 5G technology is expected to reach 89.0 Million by 2022. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )

Browse 4 market data Tables and 94 Figures spread through 164 Pages and in-depth TOC on "5G Technology Market".

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/5g-technology-market-202955795.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. The prominent factors that are driving the paradigm shift toward new broadband technology include the rising demand for high data speed and large network coverage, significant growth in the mobile data traffic, growing machine-to- machine communication in organizations, and need to support the increasing demand for broadband services over mobile networks. Funding from governments and several private organizations is adding the pace for the deployment of 5G technology A significant amount of funding have been provided by the public and private organizations, and established research projects have been undertaken for the development and promotion of 5G technology in European Union (EU) and APAC. The EU has invested heavily in R&D to ensure that Europe takes the leading role in deploying the new-generation mobile broadband technology. For example, 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5G PPP) has been initiated by the EU Commission and industry manufacturers, telecommunications operators, service providers, SMEs, and researchers. In addition, several countries in APAC such as China, Japan, and South Korea have stated to taking up developmental projects to establish regional and/or national leadership positions in wireless R&D related to the 5G technology. LTE would be the dominant technology by 2022 On a global scale, GSM/EDGE would continu to lead, in terms of subscription numbers, till 2017. This is because new and less affluent users entering the networks in growing markets are likely to use low-cost mobile phones and subscriptions available. Currently, the number of subscriptions in GSM/EDGE represents the largest share; but by 2021, both LTE and WCDMA/HSPA mobile subscription numbers are expected to be more than double of GSM/EDGE subscriptions. In technologically advanced markets such as the U.S. and Japan, there already has been a substantial shift toward more advanced technologies which has resulted in a slight decline in GSM/EDGE subscriptions. However, in developing markets such as India EDGE/GSM remains a viable option as less affluent users are likely to choose low-cost mobile phones and subscriptions.



Inquiry Before Buying:- http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=202955795 The key players in the 5G Technology Market include Cisco (U.S.), Ericsson (Sweden), SK Telecom (South Korea), Korea Telecom (South Korea), Nokia Networks (Finland), Samsung (South Korea), Qualcomm (U.S.), Intel (U.S.), NEC Corporation (Japan), Huawei (China), Verizon (U.S.), AT&T (U.S.), T-Mobile USA, Inc., LG (South Korea), and China Mobile (China).

Browse Related Reports IoT Communication Protocol Market by Connectivity Technology (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Bluetooth Smart), End-Use Application (Consumer Electronics, Automotive & Transportation, Building Automation, Healthcare), Region - Global Forecast to 2022

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/iot-communication-protocol-market-172564879.html IoT Gateway Market by Nodes (Smart Watch, Camera, RADAR, Thermostat, Actuator, Smart TV), by Connectivity Technology (Bluetooth, WiFi, ZigBee, Ethernet, Z-Wave), by Component (MCU, FPGA, Sensor, Memory), by End-Use and Geography - Global Forecast to 2022

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/iot-gateway-market-248007097.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.

Contact:

Mr. Rohan

Markets and Markets

UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ

Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Pune, Maharashtra 411013, India

Tel: 1-888-600-6441

Email: [email protected]

Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/electronics-and-semiconductors

Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets





[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[August 22, 2016] Bodhi Healthcare Group Brings Cloud-Based Healthcare Solution to Chinese Hospital with IBM LinuxONE

BEIJING and ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Bodhi Healthcare Group turned to IBM (NYSE: IBM) to develop a new cloud-based healthcare platform built on the IBM LinuxONE to power a new cloud-based healthcare platform to support the new technology branch of Qingdao Municipal Hospital Group. By leveraging the security, scale and reliability of LinuxONE, the Bodhi Healthcare Cloud Platform offers an integrated, private cloud solution to promote information exchange within and between hospitals, aid in treatment decision-making and help drive seamless interactions between patients and their care providers. Bodhi Healthcare Group, part of the BAHEAL Pharmaceutical Holdings network, works to apply and manage advanced technology solutions to address pain points in the healthcare industry, helping drive decentralization and greater efficiency. With this dedicated cloud, Qingdao Municipal Healthcare Group can provide its users with an integrated information platform containing physician and patient data. The platform helps support the various steps of the healthcare process, including disease screening, cause analysis, diagnosis and treatment, care and rehabilitation and pharmacy and health management. To better engage and empower users, Bodhi Healthcare provides physicians with a talet device that allows them to communicate with patients, remotely manage patients' care and make treatment decisions.



The healthcare industry in China is shifting rapidly, as policies to support a more proactive model of care encourage the adoption of healthcare technology services like the new cloud platform for Qingdao Municipal Healthcare Group. While information silos persist, the launch of this solution could help create a more integrated approach to health information, enhanced therapy decision-making and improved patient experience. "Medical reform in China will rely on a transformation in how data is used and shared, enabling the establishment of stronger doctor-patient decisions and relationships. We believe data is the future of the healthcare industry. With the current accelerated transformation of the healthcare industry, we want to utilize advanced technical capabilities to enable smarter healthcare, improve the overall capabilities of physicians with a professional cloud platform, enhance communication between physicians and their patients and promote the creation of a proactive healthcare system through the cloud and mobile technology model," said Fu Gang, Founder of BAHEAL and Chairman of Bodhi Healthcare Group.

LinuxONE, introduced in August 2015, is the industry's most powerful and secure Linux-only enterprise system. LinuxONE is enabled for a broad range of popular open source and ISV tools, as well as mobile technologies, and can help organizations like Qindgdao Municipal Healthcare Group manage a secure, dedicated cloud environment. In China, IBM will provide comprehensive training, testing and technical support for local customers, partners, universities and developers on the platform. "There is a proliferation of medical data in health systems around the world. The healthcare providers that Bodhi Medical Group supports needed a solution that helped them integrate and draw insights from previously siloed data," said Gary Shih, Vice President, Server Solution, Hardware Systems, IBM GCG. "This local cloud environment based on our leading infrastructure technology helps meet hospitals' security needs while supporting them as they transform through technology." In addition to providing and managing the Bodhi Healthcare Cloud Platform, BAHEAL also works with public hospitals like Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital to help them become regional healthcare leaders. Contact:

Hannah Slocum

IBM Media Relations

+1 978 877 0105

[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bodhi-healthcare-group-brings-cloud-based-healthcare-solution-to-chinese-hospital-with-ibm-linuxone-300316196.html SOURCE IBM

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
DriveSavers Offers Data Recovery to Victims of California Wildfires

DriveSavers, the worldwide leader in data recovery, eDiscovery and digital forensic services, announced today a $300 discount for data recovery services to victims of the wildfires currently burning throughout California. This discount will be available through September 30, 2016.

Dry conditions have contributed to several fires currently raging throughout California, affecting over 100,000 acres and destroying hundreds of homes, businesses and other structures.

"We hope, that by extending a discount for our services, we can help those impacted by these fires to recover lost data and regain a sense of normalcy," said DriveSavers President Scott Moyer. "Over the last thirty years, DriveSavers has recovered photos, videos, contact lists, financial records and other important data stored on devices damaged by wildfires and other disasters."

If you have a smoke-damaged or burned computer, smartphone or tablet, do not attempt to power it up or clean the device. If a computer is wet from fire hoses, remove the hard drive, place in a plastic bag with n airtight zip closure and contact a professional data recovery service company such as DriveSavers.







DriveSavers is coordinating relief efforts with its broad network of computer service providers in and around the area. Those affected by the wildfires can visit local computer service providers that are partnered with DriveSavers to receive $300 off data recovery services through September 30, 2016. They can also receive this discount by contacting DriveSavers directly at 800.440.1904.

Visit www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com for more information.

About DriveSavers

DriveSavers, the worldwide leader in data recovery, eDiscovery and digital forensics, provides the fastest, most reliable and only certified secure data recovery and eDiscovery service in the industry. All of the company's services meet security protocols for financial, legal, corporate and healthcare industries, and it is the only company that posts proof of its annual SOC 2 Type II audit and HIPAA data security and privacy compliance. DriveSavers adheres to U.S. government security protocols, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) Data Security Rule, the Data-At-Rest mandate (DAR) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). DriveSavers engineers are trained and certified in all leading encryption and forensic technologies and operate a Certified ISO Class 5 Cleanroom. Customers include: Bank of America, Google (News - Alert), Lucasfilm, NASA, Harvard University, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, U.S. Army and Sandia National Laboratories.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160822005980/en/
Joseph Gurney Cannon

Joseph Cannon born on May 7, 1836, was a United States politician from Illinois and leader of the Republican Party. Serving as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1903 to 1911, he was a legislative leader with such control over the House that he could often control debate.

Cannon has the distinction of being the second-longest continuously serving Speaker in history. The honor of having the longest control is fellow Illinoisan Dennis Hastert. Cannon is also the longest serving Republican Representative in history. His congressional career spanned 46 years of cumulative service.

Cannon's interest in politics was strengthened by becoming a follower of Abraham Lincoln during the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Lincoln rewarded Cannon's loyalty by appointing him as a regional prosecutor.

Cannon was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Illinois to the Forty-second and to the eight succeeding Congresses. The time period of his service stretched from March 4, 1873 to March 4, 1891.

He attempted to assume the position of Speaker of the House four times before succeeding. Cannon's antic speaking style, diminutive stature and pugnacious manner were his trademarks. The newspapers frequently portrayed him as a colorful character and referred to Cannon as "Uncle Joe."

Cannon's role as Speaker of the House of Representatives yielded him unprecedented power. During the time of Cannon's election, the Speaker of the House concurrently held the chair of the Rules Committee. This committee determined under what rules and restrictions bills could be debated, amended, and voted on, and in some cases whether they would be allowed on the floor for other representatives to have a chance to vote up or down. With Cannon's power he effectively controlled every aspect of the House's agenda.

Cannon also had the power to appoint not only the chairs of the various House committees, but also all of the committees' members. He used this power to appoint his friends to leadership positions and punished those who opposed his legislation.

Cannon lost his power when Nebraska Representative George Norris led a coalition of 42 progressive Republicans and the entire delegation of 149 Democrats in a revolt on March 17, 1910. Norris introduced a resolution that would remove the Speaker from the Rules Committee and strip him of his power to assign committees.

Cannon was a "thorn" in President Woodrow Wilson's administration as he opposed the United States entry into World War I and was also an outspoken critic of Wilson's League of Nations. As such, Joseph Gurney Cannon was labeled as

an isolationist.

Cannon lived until age 90 and died in Danville, Illinois on November 12, 1926.
CHARLESTON -- For David Glassman, spending much of his first year as Eastern Illinois University's president working without state appropriations was frustrating and unusual, to say the least, but it did not dampen his spirit.

Glassman said he had to spend a substantial amount of time toward lobbying for an appropriation from the state -- time that could have otherwise been used to further the university.

It kind of falls under the it is what it is, Glassman said. You have to deal with the cards that you are dealt, however, it was disappointing, and it was frustrating that the impasse in Springfield took so much time away from other activities that would be helpful in moving the university forward.

Before the state budget impasse, a university president would likely only head up to Springfield once or twice a year, but for Glassman, the number of trips was significantly more, or plenty, as he put it.

Going into the university presidency role, Glassman said he had an understanding of what issues he would have to deal with, such as enrollment problems, and what steps he would take to mitigate them. However, as with most people, Glassman said he had no clue the university would have to wait to see an appropriation for as long as it did.

Previously serving as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Bradley University, a private university located in Peoria, Glassman was brought on as the university president June 1, 2015, just a month before the state legislature was supposed to have a budget in place -- a task they still have not been able to accomplish.

He said it was a real challenge tackling an external issue like that, especially right out of the gate.

One of my major responsibilities is to plan for the university, and if you don't know what finances you have, it makes short-term and long-term planning very difficult, Glassman said. That is a frustrating position to be in.

Despite the issues raised due to the state's budget problems, EIU and the Charleston community demonstrated a meaningful support for the university and campus dwellers, something Glassman said he found particularly profound.

Here we have a situation, not just affecting EIU, but affecting all universities, affecting social services and things like that. When you have these kinds of extremely difficult situations, people pull together, and they certainly did at Eastern, Glassman said. You could feel it. There still was certainly disappointment and challenges, but people came together and that's really a beautiful thing.

The year was not without its positive highlights, Glassman said, namely Move-in Day last year. After dealing with growing stresses with finances, he said it was revitalizing seeing students return for the fall semester.

There is an element of finally, Glassman said. The infectious enjoyment that is being expressed by the students and their families ... it just rolls into me.

While he has been to numerous graduations being in academics for 36 years, he said his first graduation as EIU president was also particularly exciting as well. It was just a moment where it all clicked, Glassman explained.

You are at graduation and you go, 'Now, I get it. Now, I know why I am here. Now, I know why I spend hours and hours in the office. Now, I know why I do the things that I do, he said. It is for them.

Eventually, Eastern, as well as other universities, got some relief from budgetary stresses in the form of two stop-gap appropriations expecting to get the university through the fall semester without emergency needs for more funding.

We had to deal with a number of circumstances that we didn't have any anticipation or prior knowledge that we would have to deal with, and I am proud that we met all of those challenges, he said.

The university president said the woes from the previous school year, which have partially seeped into this year, have not diminished his spirit for what he and other university leaders plan to do, are doing and might do in the future.

I am the eternal optimist, he said. I am always optimistic and that remains. Optimism is exciting to me because I know what EIU is and know what it can become.

He said he and other university officials have now found time to work on the visionary plans he had coming into the role a year ago, which he is excited about.

That is what is going to take place this year, he said. That is what I am focusing on this year.

This will be a year about moving forward, he said. Glassman will shed more light on those plans for the future of EIU in his address to the university in early September.
MOSCOW (AP)  Several dozen Russians gathered on Friday for a protest reunion to mark the 25th anniversary of a coup attempt which heralded the demise of the Soviet Union, a holiday ignored in official circles because of its revolutionary, anti-establishment nature.

On Aug. 19, 1991, eight hard-line Communist leaders seized power from Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, declaring him ill. In fact, Gorbachev was under arrest. Thousands of Muscovites took to the streets to protest against the coup and the clout of the powerful security services.

The defeat of the coup several days later set in motion the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and is widely regarded as a triumph of democracy and civil liberties in Russia.

Those who opposed the coup 25 years ago gathered on a rainy Friday evening outside the Russian White House  a massive government building where Boris Yeltsin, at the time the president of the Russian constituent republic within the Soviet Union, famously climbed atop a tank to defy the coup in possibly the most cinematic moment of the August resistance.

Several dozen, mostly elderly or middle-aged people mingled outside the White House, some of them carried Russian flags and photographs of the 1991 protests.

Lyudmila Skryabina, a nanny from St. Petersburg, said she takes a vacation every year to come to Moscow for this reunion.

Skryabina said she is proud that she had stood at the makeshift barricades at the same spot 25 years ago but is disappointed in today's political regime, economic hardships and what she calls the cynicism of the government  "this flag-waving patriotism as if things are so great right now."

Earlier this week, Moscow city hall refused to give protesters permission to march from the White House to the tunnel where three protesters were killed 25 years ago, the only victims of the otherwise bloodless coup. Most of the August 1991 celebrations, lectures and exhibitions this weekend were organized by the grass-roots movement and a foundation established to honor the legacy of Yeltsin, who died in 2007.

Unlike the lavish state-sponsored celebrations of Victory Day, which marks the Soviet army's victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War, the government largely ignores the day which is largely regarded as the birthday of a new Russia.

Skryabina said that during Yeltsin's presidency, from 1991 to 1999, there was always a government presence and wreaths at the cemetery where the three protesters killed in the coup are buried. "Now every time I come here I call my friends and ask: 'Are they going to allow us at all?'''.

The government has in recent years tightened its grip on public gatherings, and several dozen people were sent to prison for minor offenses at an opposition rally the day before Putin's inauguration in May 2012.

Many Russians who opposed the coup have grown disillusioned with democracy, which they have come to associate with the hardships of the initial years of the dismantling of the Soviet state and a transition to the market economy. The August 1991 events are rarely discussed and remembered in the media, leaving a younger generation largely ignorant of what happened 25 years ago.

A survey by the authoritative Levada pollster released earlier this month showed that only 50 percent of Russians could identify what happened on Aug. 19, 1991.

At that time, President Vladimir Putin was an ally of St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, a fierce coup opponent, but Putin's KGB past keeps him from honoring this landmark event, analysts say.

Both Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev were visiting Crimea, which was annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and did not come to lay the flowers at the monument of the three killed protesters in Moscow.

"Aug. 19-21 could have been become a symbol of a new Russian state," Pavel Aptekar said in an opinion piece in the respected Vedomosti daily on Friday. "The three August days of 1991 remind the establishment that people could disobey their orders and hold the government accountable. In the past 25 years the government has transformed into one that is appalled by the very possibility."

The otherwise Kremlin-friendly Moskovsky Komsomolets daily published an opinion piece on Friday titled "25 years since the loss of freedom" and illustrated by a cartoon showing a hand with a KGB emblem wrestling a Russian flag away from a group of people.

"August 1991 brought about a stunning wave of enthusiasm, you felt there was no mountain high enough," Alexander Minkin wrote. "Those who had power and a unique historical opportunity drop in their lap turned out to be unworthy: they stole and drank the country away, the country and its future. And this still goes on."

Mark Galperin, 48, was a rare person at the reunion outside the White House who was not there in 1991. He carried a placard that read: "Let's repeat August 1991."

"I was a student but I was apolitical, but right now I'd like to revive what was here in August. We need a democratic revolution again," he said.
1. Comments must not be racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted.

2. Comments must not involve little more than name-calling and insulting remarks.

3. Comments must not be made by "anonymous" or "unknown".

4. Comments must not try to sneak in some free advertising for themselves (like spam).

I invite anyone who wishes to comment on this blog to do so. I enjoy the comments, whether you agree with what I have said or not. But some people want to abuse the right to comment, and since this is my blog, I have decided to lay down the following rules. If your comment violates these rules, it will not be published.
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 ...
Van: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Verzonden: zondag 22 mei 2:15 2016

Onderwerp: Re: Lydia on Zorpia



Thank you so much for your mail My Name is Lydia,i am 39 years of

age,i am the only daughter of my parents. .i live in New York City

with my parent,my dad is from US and my mom is from France. my dad and

mom got to meet each other in France and i was born there as well. but

i moved to the states with my mum when i was 4 years of age. My Mum

have been taking good care of me since then and my dad want to Africa

cus his having some companies and his working for a oil company there

before he died,I'm presently in South Africa now with my mother to see

my dad lawyer about all the properties my dad his having here before

he died and We just got to Africa like 4 weeks ago and on planing to

get back to the states soon. to complete my dream and career. it has

really been a dream come true for me to become a real fashion designer

and i have committed all my time and all i have into this career and i

hope it leads to a very great future of mine Well,i am a very sincere

and honest person,am caring,kind,social,smart,

intelligent,passionate,friendly,romantic,and i believe in the truth

and honest of love. i am really a very sincere person when it comes to

sharing feelings and emotions with that special person and i really am

down to heart honest about the things i say and do cause i don't like

hurting peoples feelings,cause everyone has a chance to laugh,so why

do i make them sad. i am really very easy to get along with,fun to be

with and am very adaptive and communicative when it comes to

conversant conversation.and my life is based on the truth and honest

of self personality. .here is my numbers. .+27746531468 and you can

add me on your whatsapp if you have it on your phone Waiting for your

reply. Yours in Christ. Lydia James





From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Fri, Aug 5, 2016 1:41 am

Subject: Waiting for your reply



My Name is Lydia, i am 39 years of age,i am the only daughter of my parents. .i live in New York City

with my parent, my dad is from US and my mom is from France. my dad and mom got to meet each other in France and i was born there as well, but i moved to the united states with my mum when i was 4 years of age. My mum have been taking good care of me since then and my dad want to Africa becausehis having some companies and his working for a oil company there before he died, I'm presently in South Africa now with my mother to see my dad lawyer about all the properties my dad his having here before he died and We just got to Africa like 4 weeks ago and on planning to get back to the states soon. to complete my dream and career, it has really been a dream come true for me to become a real fashion designer and i have committed all my time and all i have into this career and i hope it leads to a very great future of mine Well, i am a very sincere and honest person, am caring, kind, social, smart, intelligent, passionate, friendly, romantic and i believe in the truth and honest of love. i am really a very sincere person when it comes to sharing feelings and emotions with that special person and i really am down to heart honest about the things i say and do cause i don't like

hurting peoples feelings, cause everyone has a chance to laugh, so why do i make them sad. i am really very easy to get along with, fun to be with and am very adaptive and communicative when it comes to conversant conversation. and my life is based on the truth and honest of self personality. . here is my number. . +277.46531468 and you can add me on your whatsapp if you have it on your phone Waiting for your reply. Yours in Christ. Lydia James





From: Lydia James < lydia_james52@yahoo.com >

Sent: Mon, Aug 8, 2016 9:45 pm

Subject: To share feelings and emotions, get back to me



Hello, My name is Lydia, i am 39 years of age, i am the only daughter of my parents. I live in New York City with my parents, my dad is from USA and my mom is from France. My dad and mom got to meet each other in France and i was born there as well. but i moved to the states with my mum when i was 4 years of age. My mum have been taking good care of me since then and my dad want to Africa because his having some companies and his working for a oil company there before he died, I'm presently in South Africa now with my mother to see my dad lawyer about all the properties my dad his having here before he died and we just got to Africa like 4 weeks ago and on planning to get back to the states soon. to complete my dream and career. It has really been a dream come true for me to become a real fashion designer and i have committed all my time and all i have into this career and i hope it leads to a very great future of mine Well, i am a very sincere and honest person, am caring, kind, social, smart, intelligent, passionate, friendly, romantic and i believe in the truth and honest of love. . i am really a very sincere person when it comes to sharing feelings and emotions with that special person and i really am down to heart honest about the things i say and do cause i don't like hurting peoples feelings, cause everyone has a chance to laugh, so why do i make them sad. . i am really very easy to get along with, fun to be with and am very adaptive and communicative when it comes to conversant conversation and my life is based on the truth and honest of self personality. .here is my number. . +277.46531468 and you can add me on your whatsapp if you have it on your phone Waiting for your reply. Yours in Christ. Lydia James



From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Mon, Aug 8, 2016 9:46 pm

Subject: You can add me on your whatsapp or email me back Hello,



My name is Lydia, i am 39 years of age, i am the only daughter of my parents. . i live in New York City with my parents, my dad is from US and my mum is from France. my dad and mom got to meet each other in France and i was born there as well. but i moved to the states with my mum when i was 4 years of age. My mum

have been taking good care of me since then and my dad want to Africa because us his having some companies and his working for a oil company there

before he died, I'm presently in South Africa now with my mother to see

my dad lawyer about all the properties my dad his having here before

he died and We just got to Africa like 4 weeks ago and on planning to

get back to the states soon. to complete my dream and career. it has

really been a dream come true for me to become a real fashion designer

and i have committed all my time and all i have into this career and i

hope it leads to a very great future of mine. Well, i am a very sincere

and honest person, am caring, kind, social, smart,

intelligent, passionate, friendly, romantic, and i believe in the truth

and honest of love. i am really a very sincere person when it comes to

sharing feelings and emotions with that special person and i really am

down to heart honest about the things i say and do cause i don't like

hurting peoples feelings, because everyone has a chance to laugh, so why

do i make them sad. i am really very easy to get along with, fun to be

with and am very adaptive and communicative when it comes to

conversant conversation and my life is based on the truth and honest

of self personality. .here is my number. . +277.46531468 and you can add me on your whatsapp if you have it on your phone Waiting for your reply. Yours in Christ. Lydia James







From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Thu, Aug 11, 2016 10:49 am

Subject: I believe in the truth and honest love. .



Thank you so much for your mail My name is Lydia,i am 39 years of age, i am the only daughter of my parents. .i live in New York City with my parent,my dad is from US and my mom is from France. my dad and mom got to meet each other in France and i was born there as well. but i moved to the states with my mum when i was 4 years of age. My mum have been taking good care of me since then and my dad want to Africa

cus his having some companies and his working for a oil company there before he died, I'm presently in South Africa now with my mother to see my dad lawyer about all the properties my dad his having here before he died and We just got to Africa like 4 weeks ago and on planing to get back to the United States soon. to complete my dream and career. it has really been a dream come true for me to become a real fashion designer and i have committed all my time and all i have into this career and i hope it leads to a very great future of mine Well, I am a very sincere and honest person, am caring, kind, social, smart, intelligent, passionate, friendly, romantic, and i believe in the truth and honestlove. i am really a very sincere person when it comes to sharing feelings and emotions with that special person and i really am down to heart honest about the things i say and do cause i don't like hurting peoples feelings, cause everyone has a chance to laugh, so why do i make them sad. i am really very easy to get along with, fun to be with and am very adaptive and communicative when it comes to conversant conversation. and my life is based on the truth and honest of self personality. .here is my numbers. . +277.46531468 and you can add me on your whatsapp if you have it on your phone Waiting for your reply. Yours in Christ. Lydia James











From: Lydia James < lydia_james52@yahoo.com >

Sent: Thu, Aug 11, 2016 11:14 am

Subject: I believe in the truth and honest of love. .



Thank you so much for your mail My name is Lydia,i am 39 years of age,i am the only daughter of my parents. .i live in New York City with my parent,my dad is from US and my mom is from France. my dad and mom got to meet each other in France and i was born there as well. but i moved to the states with my mum when i was 4 years of age. My mum have been taking good care of me since then and my dad want to Africa cus his having some companies and his working for a oil company there before he died,I'm presently in South Africa now with my mother to see my dad lawyer about all the properties my dad his having here before he died and We just got to Africa like 4 weeks ago and on planing to get back to the states soon. to complete my dream and career. it has really been a dream come true for me to become a real fashion designer and i have committed all my time and all i have into this career and i hope it leads to a very great future of mine Well,i am a very sincere and honest person,am caring,kind,social,smart, intelligent,passionate,friendly,romantic,and i believe in the truth and honest of love. i am really a very sincere person when it comes to sharing feelings and emotions with that special person and i really am down to heart honest about the things i say and do cause i don't like hurting peoples feelings,cause everyone has a chance to laugh,so why do i make them sad. i am really very easy to get along with,fun to be with and am very adaptive and communicative when it comes to conversant conversation.and my life is based on the truth and honest of self personality. .here is my numbers +277.46531468 and you can add me on your whatsapp if you have it on your phone Waiting for your reply. Yours in Christ. Lydia James













From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Sat, Aug 13, 2016 10:08 am

Subject: I am really very easy to get along with, darling



My name is Lydia, i am 39 years of age, i am the only daughter of my parents. . i live in New York City

with my parent, my dad is from US and my mom is from France. . my dad and mom got to meet each other in France and i was born there as well. but i moved to the united states with my mum when i was 4 years of age. . My mum have been taking good care of me since then and my dad want to Africa cus his having some companies and his working for a oil company there before he died, I'm presently in South Africa now with my mother to see my dad lawyer about all the properties my dad his having here before he died and we just got to Africa like 4 weeks ago and on planing to get back to the states soon. to complete my dream and career. it has really been a dream come true for me to become a real fashion designer and i have committed all my time and all i have into this career and i

hope it leads to a very great future of mine. Well, i am a very sincere and honest person, am caring, kind, social, smart, intelligent, passionate, friendly, romantic, and i believe in the truth and honest of love. i am really a very sincere person when it comes to sharing feelings and emotions with that special person and i really am down to heart honest about the things i say and do cause i don't like

hurting peoples feelings, cause everyone has a chance to laugh, so why do i make them sad. I am really very easy to get along with, fun to be with and am very adaptive and communicative when it comes to conversant conversation. and my life is based on the truth and honest of self personality. . here is my numbers. . +277.46531468 and you can add me on your whatsapp if you have it on your phone Waiting for your reply. Yours in Christ. Lydia James









From: Lydia James < lydia_james52@yahoo.com >

Sent: Tue, Aug 16, 2016 6:20 am

Subject: I'm willing to come there anytimeif you can help me with the ticket, darling



Thanks so much, love, and I am so happy to have you in my life, and am not working here, we are here for something with my Mom and yes, I'm willing to come there anytime and if you willing to help me with the ticket and things I need to get before coming ? And do you have WhatsApp on your phone so we can talk more there. . so I wait your mail again. . Lydia





From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Tue, Aug 16, 2016 8:02 am

Subject: Hope to hear from you soon, darling



Good Day, Baby ! My heart has already found it's way and the way is you. I want you and no one else. You mean everything to me. I think we should try and make this work. You have to know you're the one, and only one I want. Not only are you perfect for me, you're the perfect lover and I hope we can and will be more. I could never ask for better then what we have had. I am hoping you're feeling the same way because my heart is set on you, and only you, Hope to hear from you soon, Lydia

From: Lydia James < lydia_james52@yahoo.com >

Sent: Sun, Aug 21, 2016 8:56 am

Subject: tell me how much can you send me for the Ticket to come there, darling



Thanks so much and am so happy to have you in my life, so tell me how much can you send me for the Ticket to come there cos I want to come there next weekend and how do you send the Money here so I can get the details for you now. .I wait your mail again.





From: Lydia James < lydia_james52@yahoo.com >

Sent: Wed, Aug 24, 2016 12:26 pm

Subject: tell me how much money youcan send me for the Ticket, darling



Thanks so much, you just tell me how much money you have you can send me for the Ticket so I can add what I have here to come there. . So I wait your mail again so I can give you the details to send what you have here. .



















From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Sat, Aug 27, 2016 12:09 pm

Subject: Ok love, you can send $400and get back to me



Ok love, you can send 400 dollars and get back to me so I can give you the Money Gram details . . I wait for your mail again. . Xoxox Lydia



















From: Lydia James < lydia_james52@yahoo.com >

Sent: Sat, Aug 27, 2016 1:18 pm

Subject: That is the Money Gram details to send the 400 dollars, darling



Name - Adekunle Samson Adebayo

State - Pretoria

Code - 0002

Country - South Africa





That is the Money Gram details to send the 400 dollars and send me the slip as to my mail here so I can get the Ticket as soon as, and you need to tell the Name of the closer Airport to your house in your next mail. . I wait your mail again. .









From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Sat, Aug 27, 2016 1:22 pm

Subject: Here is the Money Gram details, darling



Here is the Money Gram details : Name - Adekunle Samson Adebayo

State - Pretoria

Code - 0002

Country - South Africa





From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Sun, Aug 28, 2016 12:03 pm

Subject: Here is the MoneyGram details. .



Here is the MoneyGram details. .



Name - Adekunle Samson Adebayo

State - Pretoria

Code - 0002

Country - South Africa



Money Gram details and please try and send it on Monday. . I wait your mail again. xoxox

From: Lydia James < lydia_james52@yahoo.com >

Sent: Sun, Sep 4, 2016 4:54 am

Subject: Where are the 400 dollars ?



Where are the 400 dollars ?I gave you the Money Gram details to send me to come there. If you did not send the money on Monday morning, please stop talking to me. . You have the Money Gram details with you, use it to send it. . I wait Here is the MoneyGram details. .



Name - Adekunle Samson Adebayo

State - Pretoria

Code - 0002

Country - South Africa



Money Gram details and please try and send it on Monday. . I wait your mail again.







From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Sun, Oct 2, 2016 11:05 am

Subject: That is the details of the doctor taking care of my sick Mom. .



That is the details of the doctor taking care of my sick Mom, and if you send it on my name I can't get it, so send it with that details. . I wait now.

Name - Adekunle Samson Adebayo

State - Pretoria

Code - 0002

Country - South Africa



Money Gram details and please try and send it on Monday. . I wait your mail again.

From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Mon, Oct 3, 2016 8:28 am

Subject: in your next mail I want to see the MTC numbers. .



Let me tell you this now if you know you want to send me the money you go on and send the money with the details below and if you know you don't want to send it you let me know so I will stop talking to you now. .in your next mail I want to see the MTC numbers and all the details you use to send the Money if not pls let me be. . I wait now

That it the details of the doctor taking care of my sick Mom, and if you send it on my Name I can't get it so send it with that details. I wait now. . Name - Adekunle Samson Adebayo

State - Pretoria

Code - 0002

Country - South Africa



Money Gram details and please try and send it on Monday. . I wait your mail again. .



From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Tue, Oct 4, 2016 6:24 am

Subject: You can use it to send MG or WU. . .



I can't get the money out in South Africa if you send it with my names, so use these details to send it and pls send the money before this coming Friday, I wait your mail again. . You can use it to send MG or WU. . . Name-. . Adekunle Samson Adebayo

State-. . . . . . Pretoria

Code-. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0002

Country-. . South Africa. And send me the slip as soon as you done sending. . I wait





From: Lydia Herber James < lydia101112@gmail.com >

Sent: Tue, Oct 11, 2016 3:25 pm

Subject: all you need to send money with Money Gram. .



To send money to South Africa is just 10 dollars and all you need to send money with Money Gram is all just these details I sent you now, that's all you need. . I am waiting now as soon as you have send it. . xox Name-. . Adekunle Samson Adebayo

State-. . Pretoria

Code-. . 0002

Country-. . South Africa

450 Dollars If you received a similar letter, please ignore it. Do not answer it. If you do, you will end up on more of the mailing lists used by the criminals behind this fraud. Read more....
First State Bank Nebraska, a community bank in Southeast Nebraska, recently promoted Brenda Watson to chief customer officer and Jeff Kanger to executive vice president. "Both Brenda and Jeff have been a key part of our success and we are thrilled to promote them into their new roles," said Jerry Lentfer, president of First State.

Watson, who has been part of the First State family since 1997, has had several management positions during her career. Watson will oversee the Customer Service Department, and will continue to bring new ideas to the ever-changing banking industry. Watson works at the First State location in Wilber, where her family resides. Watson is a graduate of the Nebraska Banker's Association Leadership Program and also serves as a director on the First State Bank Nebraska Board. "The future of banking is changing. You will see a shift of technology and a greater emphasis on exceptional customer service." Watson said.

Kanger joined First State in 2010 as legal intern and has quickly rose to several supervisory positions. With his new role, he will focus on lending, bank development, marketing and human resources. Kanger works out of First State Bank Nebraska's new location opening this fall at 2701 Grainger Pkwy in Lincoln. Kanger, originally from Omaha, received a bachelor's degree from Northwest Missouri State, followed by his law degree from University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "First State has created a lot of opportunities within our communities and staff, and I'm excited to be part of that. " Kanger said.

First State Bank Nebraska, a $475 million bank with locations in Beatrice, Cortland, DeWitt, Dorchester, Filley, Firth, Hallam, Hickman, Lincoln, Pickrell, Valley, Waverly, Western, Wilber and Yutan. First State has nearly 150 employees.
Lincoln, First State Bank Nebraska welcomes Lindsay Selig as human resources officer. Selig has been working in the human resources profession for 11 years. She has experience in recruiting, benefits administration, staff development and employee relations.

A native of Lincoln, she and her husband, Chris, continue to reside here. "I am excited to start my new role with First State, and looking forward to working for a bank that has a strong community presence," Lindsay Selig.

First State Bank Nebraska is a $475 million bank with locations in Beatrice, Cortland, DeWitt, Dorchester, Filley, Firth, Hallam, Hickman, Lincoln, Pickrell, Valley, Waverly, Western, Wilber and Yutan. First State has nearly 150 employees.
Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading.

The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy
Omaha, Neb., the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association has named Omaha lawyer Brandon Dickerson as the 2016 recipient of its Nonprofit Organizations Committee's Outstanding Young Lawyer Award. Dickerson, a partner at the Omaha law firm of Likes Meyerson Hatch LLC, works with local and national nonprofit organizations, including community hospitals, on such matters as corporate governance, regulatory compliance, executive compensation and business transactions.

Dickerson is a 2007 graduate of the Creighton University School of Law, where he received the Judge Donald P. Lay Law Review Student Prize for his contributions to the Creighton Law Review. In 2015 and 2016, Dickerson was selected by his peers for inclusion as a Great Plains Super Lawyers "Rising Star" in the specialty of Mergers and Acquisitions.

The American Bar Association's Nonprofit Organizations Committee grants its Outstanding Young Lawyer Award to recognize a young attorney who has made outstanding contributions to the nonprofit sector and/or the development of nonprofit law. It is one of five national awards the committee grants to lawyers in the nonprofit sector each year. Other 2016 award recipients are Omaha native Thomas A. Troyer of Washington, D.C. (Vanguard Award for lifetime achievement); Judith Andrews of Seattle and Gene Takagi of San Francisco (co-recipients of the Outstanding Lawyer Award), and Shari Hibbert of Houston (Outstanding In-House Counsel Award).
A Mississippi man was arrested after police say he held a woman captive and assaulted her early Sunday.

Two men told police they saw a naked woman run from a vehicle parked at Whittier and Potter streets just before 2 a.m. They told officers she appeared to be in distress. They then saw a man, later identified as Keith Thomas, 35, run after the woman and tackle her, according to court documents.

The witnesses ran toward the woman and Thomas ran back to his car and drove off, documents say.

The woman, 47, told police she met Thomas earlier in the day. They drove around Lincoln for several hours. When she asked Thomas to take her home, she told police he refused and forced her to perform sexual acts on him while in the vehicle, documents say.

When she tried to fight him off, he sped off and wouldn't let her out.

She said Thomas tore off her clothes and punched her several times. When she was able, she ran from the vehicle, documents say.

The witnesses gave police a description of Thomas' vehicle, and they arrested him near 17th and Y streets on suspicion of first-degree false imprisonment and third-degree assault. He remained in jail on Monday.

Officer Katie Flood said the sexual assault is still under investigation. Thomas initially gave officers an address in Lincoln, but records confirmed an address for him in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
A training program for law enforcement officers that stresses honor and community service will soon be available to every policing agency in Nebraska.

Called Blue Courage, the two-day program was developed by a retired commander from the Aurora, Illinois, Police Department with help from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance. It is used by dozens of law enforcement agencies across the country.

The goal is to "work on the mindset, work on the heartset" of law enforcement officers to combat cynicism and improve relationships with those they serve, said Bill Muldoon, director of the Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center in Grand Island.

Hundreds of Nebraska cops already have received the training, including 114 at the Lincoln Police Department, thanks to a pilot project last year.

That effort was mostly limited to new recruits at the Grand Island training center, the Lincoln and Omaha police academies and the Nebraska State Patrol academy, also in Grand Island.

This year, Nebraska is joining a handful of states that will seek complete immersion of their law enforcement ranks  from fresh-faced officers to dogged detectives.

Gov. Pete Ricketts announced the development Monday at a news conference at the Capitol.

Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister alluded to recent officer-involved shootings around the country, and the related divisiveness and heated rhetoric.

"Blue Courage and the principles that are taught within this curriculum make sure that that doesn't happen," he said.

The 16-hour course encourages a holistic approach to policing and includes lessons such as the difference between courage and bravery, the nobility of police work and the "dimensions of a whole person."

"We want our young officers, as well as to re-invigorate our veteran officers, to remind them why they came here: And that's service," said Darrell Fisher, executive director of the Nebraska Crime Commission.

A $40,000 grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance will allow police academy lessons to continue, while preparing new instructors to share the program with veteran officers in their local agencies.

For example, Hall County Sheriff Jerry Watson, a trained instructor, plans to bring the training to others in central Nebraska.

Lincoln police already have 10 instructors on staff, with a round of training scheduled for late September. Bliemeister plans to attend, and hopes all 324 Lincoln cops will eventually receive the training.

All 444 Nebraska state troopers already received a more limited, two-hour version of the program.

Ricketts said the training reflects the importance of having good community relations between law enforcement and the people they serve.

Fisher referenced "The Republic" by Plato, the classical Greek philosopher, saying, "Those that are the most trusted become the guardians of the democracy. That's kind of the way we look at ourselves, but we need to be reminded of that."
For new faculty members at the University of Nebraska-Lincolns Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the first day of the fall semester is an exciting time, too.

Forrest Kievit, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering, visited an introductory biomaterials class early Monday afternoon to see how things are done at UNL.

It looked like the students had loaded in from the front back, instead of the back forward, like Ive seen before, he said. The only empty seats were in the back.

Chalk it up to the excitement of a new school year, the opportunity to take advantage of an academic do-over to begin the fall semester, or a class eager to get in good with a professor from the get-go.

And Kievit, who attended the University of Washington and held a research position there before joining UNL, said early opportunities to collaborate with other new faculty on research projects or student-led programs have already presented themselves.

With his interest in using nanoparticles to deliver treatments into the human brain to fight cancer or traumatic injuries, Kievit said a talk with another faculty member at a recent orientation opened his mind to new possibilities his expertise could bring to agriculture.

I was talking with someone from the entomology department and we talked about how nanoparticles could make a better delivery vehicle for a pesticide through the delivery of nucleic acids to inhibit these insects from growing, he said.

Some of Kievit's work may sound like science fiction, but it will soon be going to clinical trials.

Whats to say it wont work in plants, too?

Theres a lot of agricultural focus here I havent really had exposure to, he said. Applying these techniques to more agricultural-based applications or finding people interested in using nanoparticles in their applications would be perfect.

Kievit is one of 63 new faculty members at the ag and natural resources institute.

The truth is, UNLs East Campus is undergoing something of a renaissance, even beyond the physical changes seen with the new Animal Diagnostic Center, College of Law expansion and construction of a new residence hall set to open next year.

Since 2012, more than 120 new faculty have been hired to work on East Campus or in programs affiliated with UNLs ag division, with another 24 position searches taking place, said Ron Yoder, interim vice chancellor for IANR.

Thats in a total faculty of about 340, he said. Forty-five percent of our tenure-line faculty will be new since the beginning of 2012. Thats adding a lot of great talent with the team we already have.

Jamilynn Poletto, an animal behaviorist specializing in fish biology and conservation, is one of the new hires who joined the team this year after witnessing the momentum building at UNL.

Its really exciting to see the university is growing both in its infrastructure -- you can see that in the resources the university is dedicating to new buildings -- but also in the staff, the faculty and the student population, she said.

Hiring new faculty, particularly those from outside the state, is a good sign, Poletto said, as is growing enrollment both of in-state and out-of-state students.

Last year, the ag college enrolled nearly 3,000 students -- a 12 percent bump over the previous year, according to UNL data.

According to Yoder, who spoke at IANRs All Hands meeting broadcast across the state and online last week, student enrollment across the institute has risen for the 12th straight year -- a result of strong recruiting and retention efforts on behalf of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources.

Those efforts are apparent to new faculty too, said Poletto, who moved to Lincoln from the University of California, Davis.

There is a lot of mentorship that is offered freely from senior faculty members, said Poletto, who will teach a course on ichthyology later this year and hopes to create a course on wildlife physiology. Not only in navigating the university, but also getting personally acquainted with the area.

Its reflected in the resources provided to students.
I have a confession to make.

I am tired of Donald Trump.

At this point, November cant come fast enough. If we could cancel September and October, Id do so in a heartbeat.

In this, Im hardly alone. Other pundits have said as much. Even comedians, for whom Trump is the functional equivalent of time off with pay, seem weary of him. As Larry Wilmore of the late, lamented Nightly Show recently put it, Donald Trump has stopped being funny. Hes stopped being outrageous. Hes stopped being politically incorrect. Hes just downright dangerous.

For an opinion writer, no less than for a comedian, Trump has been the gift that keeps on giving. He is Sarah Palin on steroids, Ben Carson in IMAX. He is an extra-large platter of George W. Bush washed down with a tall glass of Ted Cruz.

Stuck for something to write about? Editor on your back? Thats not a problem in the Trump era. Just Google his name and take your pick of the fresh offerings of Longhorn waste that dribble from his lips  and his Twitter feed  on an hourly basis.

He makes my job easier. But I am tired of Donald Trump.

The weird thing is that my Trump fatigue lives side by side with a certain Trump fascination that compels me to keep abreast of all his absurdities. You might liken it to the proverbial wreck on the highway that you cant help staring at, but the analogy is inexact. Heres a better one:

You know how it is when youve eaten the all-you-can-eat buffet into bankruptcy and youre sitting in agony with your pants unbuckled so your gut can breathe, and the food wasnt even that good  but you still go back for one more helping of coconut shrimp?

Thats kind of how it is with me and Trump right now, a cycle of repulsion and attraction. Hes the bad buffet you cant resist. Hes the cheating girlfriend you keep taking back.

I am tired of Donald Trump. But I am fascinated by Donald Trump. But I am tired of Donald Trump.

A couple weeks ago, I got an email from a friend of mine, a former journalist who attended a Trump rally in Jacksonville, Florida. He wrote that at one point, Trump insinuated Hillary Clinton is having an affair with Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Im surprised, wrote my friend, such a repugnant comment wasnt picked up on by the national media. A major candidate implying that his opponent is sleeping with another man? How awful is this guy that even a comment like that gets lost in the mix?

The short answer? Very.

My friend urged me to write about it, but I demurred. Ive been thinking about that ever since.

I have passed on writing about so much of what Trump and his surrogates have said and done  there is simply not enough space or time. But it strikes me that there is a danger here subtler and more insidious than that posed by the candidate himself. By which I mean, the idea that we might learn to shrug off his epic coarseness, brazen mendacity, appalling ignorance, enormous narcissism and utter incompetence.

I dont know that we can afford that luxury.

Granted, no one can maintain a state of perpetual outrage. And yet, accommodating yourself to Trumpism  getting used to it  feels too much like surrender, like giving up on reasoned discourse, civil dissent, coherent logic, and other theoretical north stars of political debate.

I dont know what the answer is.

All I know is that I am sick and tired of Donald Trump.

Yet, here I am, still writing about Donald Trump.

And November is a hundred years away.
How about that Carhenge, anyway?

The truth, now.

The Cause Collective -- a group of public artists based in San Francisco -- is bringing the Truth Booth to the unique tourist attraction near Alliance.

Its all about transforming public spaces into sites for candor, said Truth Booth spokeswoman Hannah Holden. In public places were all in our social bubbles not really talking to each other. This creates an occasion for people to say something really personal and subjective.

Started in 2011, the Truth Booth is a giant, inflatable sculpture of a speech bubble, which people can enter and complete the sentence, The truth is , in a 2-minute, videotaped response.

Carhenge is one of Nebraska's top tourist attractions, and definitely its quirkiest. The replica of Stonehenge is made with 39 vintage American cars, which are arranged in the same shape of the famous prehistoric monument in England.

Eliciting honest evaluations of the nearly 30-year-old landmark near Alliance isn't the goal of the Truth Booth, which will be at Carhenge from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday. The goal is to empower visitors to speak freely and to give them a unique opportunity to make their voices heard.

The Truth Booth debuted in Ireland in 2011 and has made stops all over the world, including Afghanistan and South Africa. This year, the sculpture is on an American tour.

Holden said the plan is to visit as many places and cultures across the country as possible -- hopefully, all 50 states -- and to hear from all types of people, not just those in big cities. As a result, Carhenge made plenty of sense.

A lot of people talk about the circumstances of their life, she said when asked how people respond to the prompt. They talk about their aspirations or fears about jobs; they also talk about their hopes and dreams. Really its just whatever is their truth.

Holden hopes people feel solace in sharing their truths in an environment where judgment is withheld.

It is sort of therapeutic in a way, she said. It doesnt have to be therapeutic, but its giving people the freedom to say what their truth is.

In November, the Cause Collective plans to put many of the thousands of responses into an exhibit that will be on display at the Cranbrook Art Museum near Detroit. In the meantime, some people who have visited the booth have uploaded their videos to social media.
He and his girlfriend applied for public housing in Broken Bow in February 2014 and checked "no" to a question of whether anyone in the household had ever been convicted of a crime, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. He signed the application and attested to its accuracy.
COLUMBUS  Several people were injured when a school bus transporting Lakeview Community Schools students collided with another vehicle Monday afternoon near the district's junior/senior high school.

Rescue personnel were called to the accident around 4 p.m.

According to a Platte County Sheriff's deputy, the westbound bus was transporting students from Shell Creek Elementary School when it struck a Chevrolet Avalanche that was stopped in the roadway while waiting to turn into the Lake North camping area.

The deputy said the bus driver attempted to stop before the collision, but was unable to do so. Lakeview contracts with Mid States School Bus Inc. of Wayne for its busing services.

No one on the bus was injured, but four passengers in the Avalanche were taken to Columbus Community Hospital, including a 6-year-old girl who was later flown by medical helicopter to an Omaha hospital. The driver, 29-year-old Brian Zierke of rural Columbus, wasn't hurt.
A 19-year-old Mitchell man died early Saturday after being thrown from a pickup truck that crashed into a utility pole and then a tractor in Scotts Bluff County.

Joshua P. Bolzer, 23, lost control of the 2004 Chevy Silverado on the west side of Mitchell about 4 a.m., the Nebraska State Patrol said in a news release.

The truck didn't make the curve and hit the pole and then the nearby tractor. Bolzer and his three passengers were thrown from the truck.

Dereon Betancur, 19, died at the scene. Bolzer, Thomas Riley, 19, and Braydon Wiedeman, 19, all from Mitchell, were taken to Regional West Medical Center for treatment, the patrol said. None was wearing a seat belt.

Troopers arrested Bolzer, and he was charged Monday with drunk driving, motor vehicle homicide and willful reckless driving.

One of the passengers told troopers he was driving 120 mph right before the crash, an affidavit for his arrest said.

Bolzer remained in jail Monday.
CALEDONIA  When she was a little girl, Emily Lovdahl would stare at the stage, tantalized and transfixed by the tiaras and tutus of beautiful ballerinas.

One day, she dreamed, that would be her  leaping and lunging, spinning and twirling.

For Caledonia native Lovdahl, that day is about to happen.

The 20-year-old will be performing with the Nevada Ballet Theatre this upcoming season  not as a beginner, not as a student, but as a professional ballerina.

Shes stepping up to big league ballet.

You never really think you have made it, because there is always another goal to strive for, said Lovdahl, a 2014 Prairie School graduate. Its a pretty big deal to move from being considered a student to a professional. My biggest thought was that all the work is paying off.

Nevada Ballet Theatre, which celebrated its 35th anniversary this season, is the largest professional ballet company and dance academy in the state.

Last week, Lovdahl drove 26 hours to Las Vegas to begin her professional career. She was hired by the NBT as an apprentice ballerina for the theatres six shows during the 2016-17 season.

They sent me an email, she said. I read the contract and it said apprentice. For a second I thought there must be a mistake. I read it again and I knew this was something I wanted. I was pretty excited.

Between January and March, Lovdahl auditioned for about 20 ballet companies across the county, either in person or via a DVD. Nevada offered her a contract in June, one of four apprentices the company hired this season.

As an apprentice with NBT, Lovdahl will participate in the same classes, rehearsals and shows as the rest of the dancers. The troupe has class for almost two hours each weekday, and then will rehearse for about six hours.

The performances begin at the end of August and continue until May 2017. This year, the companys presentation list includes Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and Peter Pan. Those classic ballets are near and dear to Lovdahls heart and she cant wait to participate in them.

I love to perform on a stage and for an audience, Lovdahl said. When I first started dancing, when I waited in the wings, I couldnt wait to get on stage. When I was on stage I never wanted it to end.

Last year Lovdahl served as a trainee with the Ballet Met in Columbus, Ohio. Before that, she trained at the Milwaukee Ballet II.

The beginning

Lovdahl said she started taking ballet seriously in middle school and began taking classes at the Studio for Classical Dance Arts in Racine.

The school is owned and operated by Linda Bennett and Marc Darling, both of whom danced professionally with the Milwaukee Ballet and other companies prior to opening the studio in 2005.

She has the ability to reach out over the footlights and grab an audience, Bennett said about Lovdahl in 2014. Shes been working really hard with that and has been getting stronger every year.

Moving to the professional ranks shows how strong she has become.

I have great support from my parents, my teachers, my friends and my boyfriend to get here, Lovdahl said. Im proud of what I have accomplished. I want them to be just as proud and show them their all their support has been worth it.
RACINE  The city's Finance and Personnel Committee tonight will discuss a $10 million claim from a man who has been in jail since March.

The claim comes from Clyde Oliver Jr., of the 1800 block of Geneva Street, and requests $10 million in reimbursement for "damages allegedly arising from his arrest" on March 19. Oliver, a convicted felon, allegedly robbed Dusty Treasures, a thrift shop at 1709 Douglas Ave., at gun point and fled from police.

Jail records show Oliver has been behind bars since March 23 on a probationary hold. He was charged with seven offenses including two felonies the next day, and his bond was set at $50,000, according to court records.

Oliver pleaded not guilty in late April and has a status conference scheduled for Friday, records show. City Attorney Scott Letteney has recommended denying Oliver's claim, according to the agenda and attached letter.

Also on the agenda

Mound Cemetery, 1147 West Blvd., is requesting to add 132 graves for sale on their property.

The Racine Fire Department is looking to acquire a "Quint 3" truck. The funding, estimated at $760,000, is provided by the 2017 Capital Improvement Project budget.

The Racine Police Department will enter into a memorandum of understanding with the Mount Pleasant Police Department to allow Racine officers to use Mount Pleasant's shooting range. The $11,000 annual cost has been budgeted for by the Racine Police Department.

The meeting takes place at 5 p.m. Monday at City Hall, 730 Washington Ave., in Room 307.
Theres a movement in the segment of the U.S. medical community which specializes in organ donation to streamline the donation network, to make it fairer. On the surface, that sounds good.

On the surface, that is.

The United Network for Organ Sharing, which runs the nations transplant program, released a proposal on Aug. 12 for additional feedback before its board is expected to vote on the matter next year.

Currently, livers are distributed among 58 local areas and 11 regions, and supply, demand and access varies from place to place, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. Relatively healthy patients can get livers in some areas, such as parts of Indiana, South Carolina and Tennessee, while sicker patients elsewhere, including much of California, Massachusetts and New York, deteriorate or die on the waiting list, according to UNOS.

Under the new proposal, eight regions would replace the 11 regions, meaning more livers would be shipped to places with greater demand. Proximity circles would give patients within 150 miles of donor hospitals extra medical urgency points, so livers wouldnt travel a long way because of minor differences in how much patients need them.

The new system would cut in half the significant variance today in how sick patients are when they get transplants, said Dr. Ryutaro Hirose, of the University of California-San Francisco, chairman of the UNOS liver committee.

When we redraw the lines, it actually matches better the organ supply and the demand and ensures more equitable access across the country, Hirose said. Everything is more evened out.

As we said earlier, that sounds good. But should potential transplant patients who live in regions with high organ-donation numbers be deprived of the benefit of living in those areas?

Dr. Dixon Kaufman, transplant chairman at UW Hospital in Madison, and doctors from other transplant programs that could be negatively affected, mostly in the Midwest and the South, say urban centers on the coasts should beef up donation efforts to meet demand.

Focusing our communal energy and resources to increasing donation and maximizing organ utilization will save more lives by providing a greater number of transplant opportunities rather than shuffling who gets the existing opportunity, Kaufman wrote in his comments.

Kaufman has said one of his major concerns involves how medical urgency points are given to patients, through a system known as Model of End-Stage Liver Disease. MELD scores range from 6 for least ill to 40 for gravely ill.

Extra points can be given to patients with conditions such as liver cancer, who otherwise have low MELD scores. Use of exception points varies, with some studies showing more liberal use on the coasts.

People have gamed the system to have livers sent their way, Dr. Tony DAlessandro, a transplant surgeon at UW Hospital, told the State Journal last year.

Picture the scene: A liver literally being driven or flown past a Wisconsin patient in need of a transplant because someone on the East Coast has a doctor whos figured out a way to manipulate the process.

One area in which organ donation is working well is recruiting donors through the state departments of motor vehicles: A single question when renewing a drivers license. Those acts of goodwill will continue regardless of what UNOS decides.

Were in favor of fairness when it comes to organ donation. That should mean that the sickest receive the donor organs first. But it should also mean that all participating hospitals and communities are operating under the same set of rules, both in terms of evaluating a patients sickness and in the recruitment of donors.

Organs are a national resource, not something that is local and provincial, Dr. Hirose said.

Thats an admirable way of thinking, Dr. Hirose. But if were going to treat organs as a national resource, we must have national standards.

Until then, dont punish those hospitals and communities which are doing it well.
5pc of 2,846 plaints ineligible for second phase of inquest

The Commission of Investigation on enforced Disappeared Persons (CIEDP) has found approximately 5 percent of the 2,846 complaints ineligible for the second phase of investigation during the first screening of the complaints.
Bibeksheel Nepali lodges complaint at NIC seeking CIAA Chief Karkis property details

Bibeksheel Nepali, a political party, has lodged a complaint at the National Information Commission (NIC) seeking property details of chief of Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) Lok Man Singh Karki on Sunday.
Childhood memory on BR Ambedkar

One day in October 1956, it was announced over the radio that Babasaheb BR Ambedkar, eminent jurist and the chief architect of the Constitution of the Republic of India, was going to visit Nepal.
Corruption abyss

Fight against corruption is winnable only if the anti-graft agency is free of political interference
CSC-Nepal team in Tibet

A 10-member delegation of China Study Center (CSC-Nepal) led by its Secretary General Upendra Gautam held discussions on matters of mutual interests with Prof Yang Dan, vice-president of Tibet University in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China on Sunday.
Dahal set to visit India on Sept 15

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal is set to embark on a three-day official visit to India starting September 15.
Decision on MMIHS sale likely next week

The Ministry of Health (MoH) on Sunday decided to hold a consultation meeting with line ministries and concerned authorities next week to initiate the process for purchasing Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS).
DPM Nidhi meets former Indian PM Singh

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs Bimalendra Nidhi on Monday called on Indian former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the latter's residence in the Indian capital of New Delhi.
Failure to implement constitution will have dangerous fallouts

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal last week sent two special envoysDeputy Prime Ministers Bimalendra Nidhi and Krishna Bahadur Maharato India and China respectively, with a view to improving bilateral ties that have remained stagnant in recent times.
Fine balance

Nidhis visit is a progress in Nepal-India relations, but it is only a humble start
Healthcare firms, food sellers face action

A number of food outlets, including CG Marts Kalanki outlet, faced action on Sunday as the government intensifies market monitoring ahead of the festive season.
Alisha Sijapati is an arts and culture reporter at The Kathmandu Post, primarily covering human interest stories. She is intrigued by history, culture and films. Before joining the Post in 2015, she worked as a journalist for The Himalayan Times and ECS Media.
Injured rhino rescued, brought to Chitwan

A one-horned rhino that was found with multiple bullet wounds has been rescued and brought to Sauraha in Chitwan for treatment on Sunday.
NC open to local polls under existing structure

Majority of Nepali Congress (NC) leaders on Sunday expressed their disagreement with the Local Body Restructuring Commissions proposal to carve out 565 local units across the country
NEA starts cuting power supply to defaulters

Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has started to disconnect power supply to defaulters.
Oppn MPs say govt undermined Parliament

Lawmakers from the opposition parties on Sunday came down heavily on the government, saying that it undermined Parliaments supremacy by discussing the issue of constitution amendment with the Indian authorities.
Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte threatens to leave UN

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to "separate" from the UN after it criticised his war on drugs as a crime under international law.
PM directs Supplies Minister Bohara to resolve fuel crisis

Even as Kathmanduites are reeling under a shortage of fuel for the past few days, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal instructed Supply Minister Deepak Bohara to resolve the crisis immediately on Monday.
Pregnant woman beaten, thrown out of house

A pregnant woman has been allegedly beaten and driven out of house by her husband and in-laws at Belhi Chapena VDC in Saptari district.
Rahul Gandhi pledges Indian Natl Congs support to Nepal

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Bimalendra Nidhi on Sunday met Vice-president of Indian National Congress Rahul Gandhi.
Ruling, agitating parties to form new taskforce

A new taskforce comprising representatives of the governing Maoist Centre-Nepali Congress alliance and the agitating parties is expected to start fresh negotiations, possibly from next week, in a bid to settle the disputed issues of the constitution.
SAARC finance ministerial meeting to give priority to investment promotion

The eighth finance ministerial meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) would give priority to the issues of trade and investment promotion in the region.
Yadav condemns govt for sending special envoys to China, India

Sanghiya Samajwadi Forum Nepal Chairman Upendra Yadav has said that issue of constitution amendment should not be a matter of concern to any foreigners.
Stolen artefacts recovered

Police have recovered 400-year-old idols and ornaments stolen from a temple in Naudobahal, Lalitpur, and arrested three persons involved in the theft.
Tourist arrivals jump 13pc in first half of 16

Tourist arrivals to Nepal jumped 12.77 percent in the first six months of 2016, showing incipient signs that the tourism industry is stirring back to normal after suffering a series of disasters last year.
Turkey wedding suicide bomber 'was child aged 12-14'

A suicide bombing which killed 51 people in the Turkish city of Gaziantep was carried out by a 12 to 14-year-old, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Two shot dead in Dang, assailant nabbed with rifle

Two persons were shot dead in an apparent revenge attack at Gadhawa of Dang district on Sunday night.
Yes, its hard to to tell when one enters the city limits

Yes, they will make the city more inviting

Maybe ... does it really matter?

No, the signs in place are fine

No, it would be a waste of taxpayer dollars

Vote

View Results
No

Yes, a light case

Yes, two or more light cases

One serious case

Two or more serious bouts

Vote

View Results
ANGOLA  The mental health of a 26-year-old man who allegedly shot his father in March is under examination.

Cody Scott Smith is charged with murder, which carries 45-65 years in prison. He allegedly shot his father, Rusty Smith, 51, during an altercation in front of Rustys residence in the 5300 block of C.R. 400N on March 9.

Smith appeared in Steuben Superior Court Monday morning with his public defender Anthony Kraus. Judge William Fee agreed to continue the jury trial to allow time for mental health assessments.

The trial is now set for April 25-28 in Superior Court.

We checked with our witnesses so that should be good for everybody, said Chief Deputy Prosecutor Travis Musser.

Kraus requested a pretrial conference later this year to keep things moving. A hearing is set for Dec. 12 at 8:30 a.m.

Friday, Kraus filed a motion to determine Smiths competency to stand trial. Fee appointed Cates and Associates of Fort Wayne and the Bowen Center for the purpose of evaluating Smiths ability to understand court proceedings.

If he is found mentally unfit to participate in a trial, Smith could be remanded to a state mental health facility until he is able to stand trial. He is being held without bail in Steuben County Jail. Transportation orders were entered to the Bowen Center in Angola on Sept. 26 and the Bowen Center in Warsaw on Oct. 27.

Monday, Kraus said he had no objection to the professionals assigned by the court.

As the short hearing drew to a close, Smith spoke up. May I say something? he asked the judge. Fee suggested Smith speak through his attorney and after Kraus and Smith spoke in hushed tones, no further commentary was made.

When Smith appeared by videoconferencing equipment at his initial hearing before Steuben Magistrate Randy Coffey the day after the alleged shooting, his words sounded garbled and he seemed confused. He was arrested at a residence on Nevada Mills Road several hours after Rusty Smith was found dead from an apparent gunshot wound to his head early in the afternoon of March 9.

According to court documents, Smith admitted to a passing mail carrier that he had shot his father. Police recovered a semiautomatic pistol believed to be the murder weapon.

Cody denied shooting Rusty in an interview with Detective Mike Meeks at the sheriffs department, say court documents. In the affidavit of probable cause, Meeks reported that Codys pupils were fully dilated and he appeared to be agitated one second and then crying the next. From his experience, Meeks said Cody appeared to be under the influence of a stimulant.

At least two witnesses were reported to be at the scene of the shooting, including Codys girlfriend who had her infant child with her.

The shooting was reported by the mail carrier. According to court documents, Cody told the mail carrier his prints would be on the gun.

Cody had lived in the Angola and New Haven areas earlier this year.
MILLSTON  The marshes of eastern Jackson County  remnants of a prehistoric inland sea called Glacial Lake Wisconsin  are home to one of the states most unusual crops. From late spring until late fall, harvest of long-fibered sphagnum moss takes place in Jackson County, the largest producer of the horticulture product in the United States.

My dad called it Wisconsins silent industry, said David Epstein, owner of Mosser Lee of Millston, Wisconsin.

Epsteins grandfather William, his father, Lewis, and uncle Max began the company in 1932. This year the company will ship an estimated 50,000 3.5-cubic-foot bales of moss  worth between $1 million and $2 million  to horticultural businesses all over the country and to Europe. Chile and New Zealand are the two other main producers of long-fibered sphagnum moss; they primarily serve the Asian market.

When the glaciers from the last ice age melted some 14,000 years ago, they left behind swamps and marshland in eastern Jackson County  plus parts of Monroe, Clark and Juneau counties  where long-fibered sphagnum moss grew and flourished. Its ability to retain water at 20 times its weight and its antibacterial qualities were well-known to Native Americans.

The moss also regenerates itself. Marshes are carefully harvested every seven to 10 years. Epstein said his company has never had a marsh go fallow in 85 years. Most of them are on public land and are regulated by the Jackson County Forestry and Parks, which oversees the bidding process that harvesters go through.

Marshes are complicated ecosystems; moss helps sustain them. Mossers rake moss by hand or by machine, breaking it off at the soil line. That allows the perennial plant to continue to propagate through sporing.

Jim Zahasky, Jackson County Forestry director, said the county opened 61 acres of marshes for moss harvesting this year, although the average is about 50 acres. Most bids go to Mosser Lees parent company, Deli Inc., and to Hancock Brothers, a family business in nearby Warrens, Wisconsin.

Once in a while we will have a small producer purchase a marsh that still pulls by hand, Zahasky said.

Epstein and company president Guy Huus recently took me to a harvest in process at Marsh 50 in the town of City Point, Wis. Dozens of boats  basically flat sleds built with oak  were loaded with moss. The boats are pulled across the marsh by old tractors equipped with wooden tracks that allow them to travel across the spongy surface without damaging the marsh.

Mosser Lee has a custom-built pulling machine that it uses to harvest the moss, but on this day it was in the shop for repairs. But the show goes on, so mossers still have their forks to harvest by hand, which is necessary near the edge of the marsh where the machines cant reach.

The marsh was surprisingly solid, and my muck boots sank in only a few inches. Underfoot was layer upon layer of decomposed sphagnum moss that had formed peat. Along with the moss the marsh was also thick with wild cranberries, which are separated along with any weeds from the final product.

The loaded boats are emptied on dry land and trucked to the drying plant, which is a large sandy field. Similar to hay, the moss is spread out in windrows, allowed to dry under the hot sun and then taken into a shed, where it is compressed into bales  all done by hand. Huus said the companys employments peaks at about 40 during harvest season.

In charge of the harvest at Marsh 50 is Mark Zillmer, who has mossed for about 35 years. Zillmer left the businesses for a few years to run a resort in South Dakota but came back when the Great Recession hit.

This is where I belong, Zillmer said, sloshing barefoot through the marsh.

While his co-workers wear boots, Zillmer said he quit wearing them a few years ago. Using a fork with curved tines, Zillmer smoothly worked his way through a patch of moss, neatly dropping it on the boat. Its back-breaking work, especially under the hot summer sun with biting flies. Even with the harvesting machine, its still hard to find mossers, Epstein said.

The best people to hire are from farms, who understand hard work, he said.

Workers start at about $10 an hour; Epstein said his company usually loses employees to the nearby cranberry industry when its fall harvest begins. About 75 percent of the companys moss comes from its own workers, but there are still a few individuals who can make $20,000 to $25,000 a year by hand-pulling moss. A proficient hand-puller can do about 100 bales a day.

Epstein said they once mossed marshes owned by the state, but the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources stopped the practice in the 1990s. He said some of those marshes are now overgrown with invasive weeds and tamarack.

Long-fibered sphagnum moss has been used for bandages and for purifying water, but most of its use today is in the horticulture industry for seed germination, orchid propagation and hanging baskets. Epstein said his moss lines decorative flower baskets in Chicago. Home Depot and Lowes are two of his larger customers.

Epstein said moss is used as a natural scrubber in coal-fired electrical plants, removing mercury emissions. He said its also ground up and mixed with iron as a supplement for baby pigs born anemic.

No one can predict the future, but Epstein said business is growing and research continues. We may yet find new uses for a prehistoric product that has grown for millions of years.
Investing in the University of Wisconsin System is an investment in the states human capital, President Ray Cross said during a visit Monday with the La Crosse Tribunes editorial board.

Cross has been advocating for the UW System and an additional $42.5 million in the next budget cycle after UW campuses absorbed a cut of $250 million last year. The funding is part of the systems 2020FWD Strategic Framework, which was built on feedback Cross and system leaders received during statewide listening sessions and public comment last year.

The additional funding would be be focused on four keys areas in the framework: the education pipeline, university experience, connections with communities and operations. Efforts include expanding credit options for high school students, improving curricula and producing more graduates while streamlining non-instructional costs.

In recent years, more jobs have been lost than created that require a high school diploma, and job creation for positions requiring a bachelors degree or higher has outpaced the growth of the trades and two-year degrees, according to data Cross shared from Georgetown University. Investment in the UW System has one of the best returns in the state, with Cross saying that $10 is created for every dollar spent.

Part of our job is explaining how critical this is to our economy, he said. And you cant ignore the data.

Cross shared a few examples of this impact, such as the more than 300 UW-related startup companies in the state, many of which survive past the five-year mark. UW research is also a big economic booster, with breakthroughs in medicine and science, such as new techniques for skin grafts or using stem cells not taken from fetal tissue in medical applications.

The system does have opportunities to be streamlined, he said, and work more effectively, such as obtaining more power to oversee and manage infrastructure projects. Closer collaboration with business is one of Cross big goals, and he said he believed students should have some sort of workforce experience such as an internship or a job shadow before they graduate.

During his remarks, Cross addressed U.S. Sen. Ron Johnsons recent interview with WisPolitics in which the Wisconsin Republican claimed several tenured professors could be replaced with technology, such as online lectures or videos, with the need for only one professor to proctor examinations.

This reveals his lack of understanding about learning, Cross said. A dialogue must occur (between the professor and the pupil). It is hard to make that efficient.

Politicians and pundits have also criticized UW campuses about incidents such as the UW-Madison class on racial bias that required the reading of an essay about gay sex, and at UW-L, where a residence hall director sent an email about the female orgasm that offended some.

Some of these complaints are petty, he said, or taken out of context. The essay in question shone a light on the discrimination some races face in the gay community, which Cross said is touted for being inclusive and tolerant. Other incidents have merit, he acknowledged, but take the focus off the vast majority of beneficial things the university does.

Its like focusing on the ant when the elephant is around, he said.

Since Cross held his listening session tour, attitudes have been changing at the state Capitol. Cross said he was pleased that Gov. Scott Walker has moved higher education near the top of his priority list, and the systems Board of Regents, many of whom were Walker appointees, supported the $ 42.5 million budget request at their meeting Thursday.

Im always cautiously optimistic, Cross said. But I think we are in the sweet spot with our request.

Investment in the UW System has one of the best returns in the state, with (UW President Ray) Cross saying that $10 is created

for every dollar spent.
LITCHFIELD, Minn. (AP)  A Minnesota man remained jailed Sunday on suspicion of first-degree murder and kidnapping in the death of a co-workers 5-year-old daughter while investigators worked to determine what happened.

Zachary Todd Anderson, 26, of Monticello, was being held in the Crow Wing County Jail in the death of Alayna Ertl, whose mother discovered her missing from her home in the central Minnesota town of Watkins about 8 a.m. Saturday. She was last seen about 2 a.m. when she was put to bed.

Also missing was a pickup truck belonging to the girls father, Matt Ertl, whose cellphone was still in the truck. It was pinged at 9 a.m. in Todd County before it was turned off, authorities said.

Alaynas disappearance led authorities to issue an Amber Alert. Her body was found nine hours later in a wooded area near Motley in Cass County, about 80 miles to the north. Authorities arrested Anderson and found the missing truck in the same county.

Our suspect in this case is a family friend, co-worker of the victims father, and was staying the night up in Watkins last night, Meeker County Sheriff Brian Cruze said Saturday night. He had previously been to that residence and spent a night here and there  so hes not a stranger and not new to the residence, but was just there for the night.

Investigators have not disclosed how the girl died. Autopsy results were pending. Online court records available Saturday listed only minor traffic violations for Anderson, and it wasnt immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could comment on his behalf. He was not immediately charged.

We have no known predatory sexual offender information on him or anything like that, Cruze said. We have no known motive. We are at a loss as to why this happened at this time.

On Sunday, the sheriffs office was referring reporters to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which had no immediate updates on the investigation.

The sheriff said Alaynas death was a blow to investigators.

Obviously not the outcome that we wanted and when we did learn the information, the officers in the room, you could see ... it weighed heavy on them, Cruze said. We tried everything we could today to find her safely and obviously that didnt happen. And we know that it doesnt compare to what the familys going through right now, but we felt we did everything we possibly could.
The Justice Department plans to phase out its use of private prisons, after a report concluded that they are significantly inferior to government-run prisons. Thats a significant step forward, but America has much further to go if we hope to fix our deeply flawed criminal justice system.

In a memo released Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote that private prisons simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Departments Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security. For these reasons, Yates goal is reducing  and ultimately ending  our use of privately operated prisons.

Unquestionably, thats a noble and important goal. Private prisons are one of the most egregious examples of crony capitalism in America. The Federal Bureau of Prisons spent $639 million on private prisons in 2014. Aiming for as much profit as possible, private prisons cut corners that government-run prisons dont.

These corporations exploit, and sometimes encourage, mass incarceration and overcriminalization in order to boost their profits.

In many situations, its a good thing that profit motive makes companies more productive and effective; mass incarceration is not one of those situations. No one should profit from the imprisonment of human beings. As Matt Zwolinski, a libertarian and philosophy professor at the University of San Diego, has written, If the government is violating peoples rights, do we really want to help them be more efficient about it?

With that said, the fight against private prisons  and especially mass incarceration  is far from over.

For one, Yates told The Washington Post that its hard to know precisely when private prisons will no longer have federal inmates, but she hopes that, by May 1, there will be fewer than 14,200 inmates in such facilities. Thats less than half of the nearly 30,000 federal inmates that were held in private prisons at the peak in 2013. The federal prison population surged almost 800 percent from 1980 to 2013.

Furthermore, this announcement only affects the Federal Bureau of Prisons system. It has 13 private prisons, five of which are in Texas. But there are around 130 private prisons across the country in total.

Nor does the change affect one of the private prisons best clients: Immigration and Customs Enforcement, under the Department of Homeland Security. According to the Center for American Progress, for-profit prisons operated 62 percent of all immigration detention beds in 2015; in comparison, in 2014, for-profit prisons only held 8.4 percent of federal and state prisoners.

Again, the Justice Departments announcement is a step in the right direction. But the department is only trying to phase out  not immediately end  its use of private prisons, which held almost 23,000 federal inmates as of December 2015.

In total, though, over 2 million people are incarcerated in the United States. That makes America home to almost a quarter of the worlds prison population, despite having less than 5 percent of the worlds population. According to the BBC, more than 90 percent of U.S. prisoners are held in state and local prisons  not federal prisons, let alone private prisons funded by the federal government.

Private prisons are a serious problem that need to be addressed, and I hope more government agencies follow the lead of the Justice Department. But mass incarceration and overcriminalization are much bigger problems.

In addition to working against locking people up in for-profit prisons, we must work against locking up so many people altogether.
A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is introducing a course this fall that aims to foster public discourse about UWs role in current issues in the spirit of the Wisconsin Idea.

FORWARD? The Wisconsin Idea, Past and Present, combines a small undergraduate seminar with a public lecture series that examines UWs relationship with the people of the state, the creators of the sociology course state on their website.

At a time when powerful political forces are working to reshape the mission of the university, we think its important to foster a public conversation among students, faculty and the citizens of the state about the meaning and history of the Wisconsin Idea, said professor Chad Alan Goldberg.

The Wisconsin Idea, a bedrock principle of the university, holds that its beneficent influence should reach into every home in the state. The tenet dates back to 1904, when UW President Charles Van Hise famously gave expression to the idea that knowledge produced at UW could help illuminate the states challenges and contribute to solutions.

Gov. Scott Walker unleashed a public uproar in 2015 when his budget bill sought to remove such aspirational language from the mission statement of the university and replace it with a reference to workforce development. The public outcry forced budget writers to abandon the effort and leave the mission of the university intact.

The new course, Sociology 496-002, will host free public lectures on 15 consecutive Tuesdays, staring on Sept. 6, at 6 p.m. at the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St.

Scheduled lecture topics include the future of higher education in Wisconsin, the politics of oligarchy and resentment, criminal justice and the role of the university in making public policy. They will be presented by UW-Madison faculty and other expert guest lecturers.

Students enrolled for credit must attend the public lectures, as well as a separate seminar.

Each of the lectures will be recorded and made available on the internet for viewing. A social media outlet for the course is also being constructed.

To enroll as a student or adult auditor, contact the Department of Sociology at 262-2921 or forward@ssc.wisc.edu.
WARRENS  John A. Kaisermann, 81, of Warrens died Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016, at Gundersen Health System in La Crosse.

He was born March 1, 1935, to Frank A. and Eva D. (Riggs) Kaisermann in Delavan, Wis. The Kaisermann family moved to California for several years, where John attended Mento Park High School. John enrolled in college for two years and then enlisted into the U.S. Army. After being discharged from the military, John returned to the Delavan area and returned to college. John made his way up to the Augusta area.

On March 1, 1979, John was united in marriage to Jacqueline Sells in Eau Claire, Wis. She preceded him in death Dec. 27, 1995. After his wifes passing, John moved down to the Warrens area to be closer to his car show friends and family. He then attended technical college. Most recently, he worked for Mosser Lee in Millston, as a welder for many years. In 2007, John met Sharon Roznos and they started to build a life full of love, adventure and endless car shows. Many car show enthusiasts refer to John as Papa John, a name he was affectionately given by his granddaughter, Courtney. John and Sharon frequently spent weekends and holidays attending various car shows around the area. Not only did he love anything that was associated with cars, but dearly enjoyed the hours spent with all his car show buddies. He was a member of the Dip Sticks and the Wizards of Rods Car Club. Throughout the years, Papa John was awarded many different car show awards; most recently he was the recipient of the Work in Progress award at the Millston Memorial Day Car Show.

He is survived by his fiancee, Sharon Roznos of Warrens; a very special granddaughter, Courtney Stillwagon; nieces, nephews, many other relatives and countless car show friends.

In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by a sister, Barbara Kaisermann Draves.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Aug. 27, at the Sonnenburg Family Funeral Home, 801 E. Monowau St., Tomah. Relatives and friends are invited for a time of visitation from 9 a.m. until the time of the service Aug. 27, at the funeral home. Online condolences may be given at www.sonnenburgfamilyfh.com.

The Kaisermann family would like to extend a special thank you to the Gundersen Health Systems ICU staff for the exemplary care that was given to John, especially Eric-RN whose care for John extended to his family and friends and for the conversation in Johns room to be filled with car talk.
News Story not available

This story has been published on: 2022-10-29. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.

This story is no longer available on our site.
MAPLEWOOD School for severely disabled children has received an Investors in People award for its commitment to its staff.

The school, in Cressex, High Wycombe, went through two days of intensive inspection to gain the accolade.

Headteacher Julie Appleyard, said: "It felt like we went through a mini Ofsted.

"We are all very, very proud. We started with Investors last October and put in for a early inspection in February. We didn't expect to get it. We knew we would do quite well but thought there might be areas to work on.

"But we did achieve all the standards and were formally awarded the Investors in People this month."

Investors in People is a national quality standard which sets a level of good practice for improving an organisation's performance through its people.

The Government launched a three-year Investors in People Strategy for Schools in Spring 1999, to encourage more schools to use the standard as part of their agenda for raising achievement in schools.

Kate Love, a spokesman for Investors in People, said: "The schools must follow exactly the same standards as any other organisation but we are targeting the awards in schools at the moment.

"We really strongly believe in promoting not just teachers, but teaching support even catering staff and cleaning staff, because they all have important roles in the development in improvement of the school."

The school is moving to a new site in Downley, High Wycombe, next year and is trying to raise 500,000 for a hydrotherapy pool.

The pool provides some of the children with a freedom of movement they cannot get because of their disability.

A Black Tie Ball is being held as one of the school's major events and the guest of honour will be TV celebrity Lorraine Kelly, who has become patron of the charity.

The ball takes place on Saturday, May 12 and tickets cost 50, which includes a three-course meal. Other attractions at the ball will include a mini casino, live band, henna body painting, a raffle with lots of prizes, some donated from celebrities and loads more.

Anyone who wants tickets to the Black Tie Ball or wants to donate or help the charity please contact (01628) 521115 or Hazel Howe on (01494) 875021
As recently as 2014, people could use WiFi to connect to voting machines inside certain voting places in the state of Virginia. They simply had to be nearby. Once connected, they could interfere with ballots.

That major problem in election security has been fixed. Virginia stopped using those machines last year.



But election cybersecurity is getting a closer look.

Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested that the election in November may be rigged. And, a politically sensitive hacking of the Democratic National Committee computer system increased public concern about election cybersecurity.



Security experts say the risks are real. But, the probability of attacks on voting cybersystems is hard to estimate.

Every machine a possible target

David Wagner is a computer science professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He worked on a 2007 statewide examination of California's voting system.

He says a sophisticated attacker could hack machines and steal votes. He says every machine is at risk. But, such a hack would not be easy, he says.

"It would require considerable technical sophistication. And it would require someone to be physically present in each county, tampering with at least one machine. This is not something that some random teenager can do over a weekend. It's not something that can be done from across the world over the Internet."



Hard-copy ballots help



The best defense against cheating is a system that has a hard-copy ballot and a system in place to look for ballot irregularities.



These systems are on the rise. This November, 75 percent of voters across the United States will vote on machines that retain a hard copy of their choices, says Verified Voting. It is an election observation organization.

Also, 26 states require ballot audits after the voting.



But that leaves 25 percent of voters entering ballots with no paper copy. And nearly half of the 50 states do not require audits.



Wagner says a lot more can and should be done to improve cybersecurity. But, he adds, "We've come a long way in protecting our elections."



Locks and keys



If attackers want to hack voting machines, they would have to get to them first.

"Most of them are under lock and key," says Denise Merrill, Connecticut secretary of state and president of the National Association of Secretaries of State.



Usually they are under two keys, in fact -- one for a Republican representative and one for a Democrat. Both keys are required to unlock the machine.



Local jurisdictions control their elections, and there are more than 7,000 jurisdictions nationwide. The voting equipment and methods differ widely from place to place.

As a result, security can differ widely. But, that also means an attack on one jurisdiction would not affect the others.

Secretary of State Merrill says someone who is really determined and had a very large operation might be able to attack. "But, she says, even then, it would have to be in very specific places."



Safety comes from understanding risks



Pam Smith is president of Verified Voting, the election observation organization. She says more states are already moving toward paper ballots and increased physical security of voting equipment.



"I think what will happen as we go forward is that people will want to have any and every extra tool they can to eliminate any lingering concerns or questions that people might have."



The U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson, spoke to state election officials Monday. He offered them help in finding and fixing election cybersecurity risks.

The department is considering designating the nations election systems as critical infrastructure. The government provides extra resources to protect critical infrastructure.

Verified Votings Pam Smith has another idea for anyone concerned about possible election cheating.

"It's not too late to sign up to be a poll worker. You can learn more about it from the inside out and see what some of the safeguards are.

On November 8, those safeguards  as well as the presidential candidates  will be put to the test.

Im Dorothy Gundy.

And I'm Kaveh Razaei.

VOA Steve Baragona wrote this report. Caty Weaver adapted his report for Learning English. Kelly Jean Kelly was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

rigged - v. having fixed something for a desired result; to control, usually through dishonest methods

sophisticated - adj. having or showing a lot of knowledge or experience about the world; highly developed

tampering - v. to interfere with so as to weaken or change for the worse

random - n. without aim, direction or rule

irregularities - n. things that are not usual, often a sign of dishonest behavior

audits - n. complete and careful examinations of official records

jurisdictions - n. areas where a system of laws is used

determined - v. found to be the cause of or reason for something; to lean or find out

specific - adj. special; clearly and exactly presented

eliminate - v. to remove; to defeat and remove

linger - v. to stay somewhere after the usual or expected time; to continue to exist as time passes

designating - v. to officially choose someone or something; to be used as a name for something

poll - adj. of or related to a study of public opinion


Researchers hired to study part of the deep sea floor of the Pacific Ocean found a surprising number of new animal species.

Scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa studied a 900-square-kilometer area in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, or CCZ. Their goal was to find and study new kinds of sea life. Their task included documenting what is living in the deep sea area, known as an abyss.

The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

Diva Amon is a researcher at the University of Hawaii. She is assistant director of the ABYSSLINE project to study undersea life.

She spoke with VOA on Skype from her laboratory in Hawaii. Amon says usually deep sea biologists think there is not a lot living in the abyss.

But we found that actually there is quite a lot living there, and so that was really exciting..."

The group is studying the area because the CCZ is known to have valuable minerals, including copper, nickel and cobalt.

The metals are found in pieces, five to 10 centimeters in size, called nodules. They are spread along the seafloor from 3,000 to 6,000 meters below the oceans surface.

The CCZ is a huge, flat area of seabed, almost the size of the United States. It is located between the mountainous Clarion and Clipperton Fracture Zones. These are areas where the Earths crust is cracked or fractured.

The CCZ sits between Central America and the Hawaiian Islands.

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is permitting the company UK Seabed Resources Ltd. to explore the area on the Pacific Ocean floor for mining. However, the ISA said the company must first complete a biological study of the area before it can begin mining for metals.

So, the company hired Diva Amon and the ABYSSLINE project. Their job is to find out what sea life exists in the area. They want to know how marine life depends on the mineral deposits on the ocean floor.

Amon says that more than half of the animals they collected were completely new to science.

It just shows how much more work really needs to be done in that area because we know so little..."

Her group discovered a new species of anemone and two new species of sponges. But three of the animals Amon collected were not only new species, but new categories of animals. Two of these are in the coral family and the third is a completely new genus and species.

Paul Snelgrove is a biological oceanographer with the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. He told VOA that finding new species in the deep ocean is common. But, he said, finding a new genus "is really quite profound."



Amon's work centers on the relationship between the living things and the metallic nodules. She found that more than half of the animals collected were attached to the nodules. The CCZ seabed is a soft, flat seafloor. The nodules provide the only hard surface where many creatures can attach themselves.

Amon warns that if mining happens across the entire area, the ecosystem would be, in her words, decimated. But, she says, scientists want to find the least damaging way to make mining possible.

"There is a sort of scientific push to try and slow things a bit so that the science can be done before  so this [mining] can be done as sustainably, and least impacting as possible..."



That is why these studies are so important, says Snelgrove, who is not part of the ABYSSLINE project.

"It's likely we are going to develop at least some aspects of these deep ocean environments and we should try to do that with knowledge in hand and do it in a way that's going to minimize our impact."

More cruises into the deep



The ABYSSLINE project has five years to study deep sea life in the eastern Pacific. Amon expects that more new life forms will be discovered on future trips. She says she is studying data.

She calls the deep sea a fascinating place. There are so many things there that no one has ever seen before that are weird and wonderful.

We need to be careful and hope fully by doing the studies that we're doing we can provide the data that can be used to manage the areas as best as possible."

The deep sea is one of the last areas on Earth that has not been greatly affected by humans. So, there could be many strange new worlds yet to explore.

Im Anne Ball.

JoEllen McBride reported on this story for VOANews.com. Anne Ball wrote this story for Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and find us on our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

abyss  n. a hole so deep or so great that it cannot be measured

anemone  n. a small brightly colored sea animal that looks like a flower

sponge  n. a type of sea animal

genus  n. a group of related animals or plants that includes several different species

profound  adj. very great

decimated  v. severely destroyed

aspect  n. part

fascinating  adj. very interesting

manage  v. to take care of and make decisions about
Incumbent Wayne Rieskamp will not be challenged for his Ward 1 City Council seat in the Nov. 8 general election, not because he doesn't have any opponents but because he dropped out.
Ill admit it from the first: food often plays a role when Im in the process of choosing my next travel destination. Ill start my research responsibly: Ill look at things to do in a particular destination. Despite my best intentions, however, I inevitably end up perusing photo upon photo of the countrys cuisine on Instagram. It may be images of indulgent pastas in Italy, or of decadent desserts in France, but the effect is identical. If I happen to be hungry, a spontaneous flight booking may follow.

Ive written about memorable travel meals before, but this time my focus is slightly different. While I feel like Im edging away from some of my backpacker tendencies, I still classify myself as a budget traveller. I might choose a budget hotel over hostels more often than not nowadays, but one thing has stayed the same: there is little that delights me more than finding a bargain meal that ends up blowing me away. Fine dining is wonderful, but sometimes the best food in a country is not on the plates carrying the heftiest price tags.

This may be a list of my favourite cheap eats, but these dishes and snacks are also some of my most memorable food experiences. So, to celebrate these amazing meals and to inspire any other budget-conscious travellers out there, lets get this list started.

Pad Thai, Thailand

After a year of summoning up the courage to go on my first solo holiday, I finally took the plunge and booked a trip to Thailand. I already knew that it was an ideal spot for a first-time solo traveller, but I didnt expect that I would fall madly in love with the countrys cuisine.

Granted, my spice threshold is on the low end of the spectrum, but that didnt stop me from wanting to try every dish I heard of. I bought meals from street food vendors, I visited hole-in-the-wall eateries and splashed out at beach-side restaurants. I couldnt believe that such tasty, flavourful food could be so affordable. When I was in Bangkok, I received a few tweets from some friends. Following their advice, I made my way to a dining venue that carried an impressive reputation: it was considered the home of the citys best Pad Thai.

Situated close to the Golden Mount, Thip Samai is a constantly busy yet casual restaurant. You can order your Pad Thai to go, but I opted to take a seat in the dining area. And Im so glad that I did  I needed time to appreciate every aspect of the Pad Thai that was placed before me. With the vegetables and chicken stir fried at lightning speed and then enveloped in an omelette, this remains the very best Pad Thai Ive ever eaten.

When in Thailand, though, the best approach is to be open and try as many dishes as you can. One thing you can be sure of: youll be getting plenty of value for your money when dining in this country.

Boerewors rolls, South Africa

This is the first of two occasions where Ill be drawing on my heritage for choosing my best cheap eats. As I was born and grew up in South Africa, the next foodstuff is rather close to my heart.

Reminiscent of my school days, as well as naughty late-night treats during my uni-going partying days, the boerewors roll has been a consistent foodie feature in my South African life. For those unfamiliar with it, boerewors (Afrikaans for farmers sausage) is a type of sausage. And there are some strict rules to follow if a sausage is going to be classified as such. Firstly, boerewors is meaty, with the minimum percentage of meat sitting at an impressive 90%. Secondly, the meat cannot contain more than 30% fat. In terms of the ingredients, boerewors can be bought in a range of meats and flavours. Cheese boerewors  yup, it exists. For spice lovers, you can get boerewors laced with chakalaka, an intense vegetable relish.

Youre more than likely to encounter the humble boerewors roll (ie boerewors served in buttered bread) at a braai, which is the South African version of a barbecue. Or, as mentioned above, if youre partying in one of the cities, you may be tempted to buy one from a street vendor. My most recent favourite boerewors moment happened at Gourmet Boerie, which takes the boerewors roll of most South Africans respective childhoods to the next level.

Sadly, this restaurant very recently closed its doors, but its offering was amazing. It served up every kind of boerewors roll imaginable. Ill be going back to Cape Town in a few months time, and Ill do my best to report on other spots where you can find good boerewors rolls.

Elk soup, Estonia

Ok, so I cant say that Im the biggest fan of game meat. Actually, I usually exert every effort to avoid having to eat this kind of meat  but this was the only time when I couldnt refuse.

In my defense, Chris and I were exploring Tallinn, Estonia, in the dead of winter. Although I always persevere to explore no matter whats happening outside, the cold did start to get to us. So, when we spotted a sign that stated Decent Bowl of Elk Soup, the idea of a warming soup instantly drew us in. We first tried this at Ill Draakon; a tiny medieval tavern, this venue is tucked into one corner of Tallinns Town Hall.

There are other Estonian staples here, including pickles, pies and sausages, but the star of the menu is undoubtedly the elk soup. Served in wooden bowls, the soup is hearty and filling. And, at 2 euros per bowl, its an absolute steal.

It may sound like a simple meal, but when I think back on Tallinn and all of the meals we had there (some of which were on the expensive side), our decent bowl of elk soup is the dish I remember the most. In fact, we loved it so much that we stopped by Ill Draakon yet again while en route to the airport for our return flight to London!

Pastizzi, Malta

Yes, Ive raved about these before, but, when it comes to cheap eats, I would never be able to leave pastizzi off the list!

There are endless reasons for why I fell in love with Malta, yet discovering the countrys food ranks highly amongst these. Maltese cuisine reflects its history, and you can find hints of Sicily, Spain, England and France throughout Maltas most iconic dishes. The food is affordable, as is the local wine (I almost cried when I compared the price of Maltese wine to the bottles I buy in London). But, when it comes to the top of the budget options, pastizzi was my go-to.

Pastizzi are, in a nutshell, savoury pastries. Made with a dough thats similar to phyllo, there are two traditional fillings: ricotta cheese and mushy peas. Both are lovely, with the ricotta variety being light and cheesy, while the mushy peas is usually well seasoned and packed with flavour. Thanks to the pastry, you will be covered in crumbs by the time you finish consuming this heavenly morsel, but itll be completely worth it.

You can get pastizzi everywhere in Malta, even as a snack in a bar, but the two best spots for pastizzi have to be the Crystal Palace bakery in Rabat, as well as the kiosks located at the main bus station of Valletta. Since pastizzi cost less than one euro a pop, theyre an affordable way to fuel up for busy days of sightseeing. Plus, you can worry about eating healthily when youre back at home.

Pierogi, Poland

Yes, Im drawing on my genetics on this one, since both of parents are Polish. Even though I grew up on the other side of the world, Ive visited Poland, specifically the Gdansk area, numerous times to see my extended family. If you havent made it to Poland yet, Im going to let you in on a secret: Polish food is incredible. The second thing you need to know? Its all extremely affordable.

If youd ask me what my favourite Polish dish is, my first reaction is to start rattling off every meal Ive tried. Theres zurek, a delicious soup thats often served inside a hollowed-out bread bowl. Theres kotlet schabowy, a breaded pork cutlet that, in my mind, is the embodiment of comfort cooking. For dessert, theres szarlotka, a Polish apple pie thats served warm and often accompanied by a generous portion of whipped cream.

All of these carry a surprisingly small price tag in Poland, but theres one cheap eat that I can never resist ordering when visiting the country: pierogi. Pierogi are Polish dumplings  and, once you try them, theyll become powerfully moreish. Traditionally, there are three variations: meat (miesem), mashed potato and cheese (ruskie), or mushroom and cabbage (grzybami i kapusta). When served, these are topped with fried onions or bacon lardons. Any of the aforementioned fillings are delicious, but a lot of Polish restaurants are more experimental with their pierogi; Ive had everything from bacon and buckwheat groats pierogi to ones filled with pepperoni! Top tip: If youre looking for eateries that specialise in pierogi, look out for those classifying themselves as a pierogarnia.

There are many reasons why youll want to revisit Poland  the sights, the history, the beautiful cities  but I have a strong suspicion that the food will have a fair bit to do with the temptation as well.

Tapas & pintxos, Spain

Were not about to get into the debate on the differences between tapas, pintxos and pinchos, as that could be the topic of an entirely separate blog post. For the sake of simplicity, I got to sample pintxos in San Sebastian (which is part of the Basque Country), while I feasted on tapas in cities like Seville, Madrid and Barcelona.

In terms of all of the countries Ive been to, Spain is one of the places Ive travelled to the most. I cant get enough of the history and architecture, but I can also say that Ive yet to be disappointed by a single thing Ive eaten while in the country. If you, like me, suffer from food envy, where you eye up your companions dishes and question whether you shouldve ordered those instead, then Spains tapas and pintxos are the ideal remedy.

Consisting of small plates, the idea is that you order a few different tapas/pintxos so that you get to have a little bit of everything. While the fact that these are small plates might imply that the dishes are simple, thats often not the case. From calamari to patatas bravas (potatoes served with a spicy tomato sauce) to even slices of jamon (ham), each plate showcases a range of different flavours. Of course, you can find expensive tapas and pintxos in Spain but, for the most part, each plate will only cost a few euros.

Its difficult to whittle it down, but three of my favourite Spanish foodie destinations have to be Madrid, Seville and San Sebastian; for the latter, check out my pintxos guide.

Bitterballen & poffertjes, The Netherlands

Because you simply cant make me choose between these two.

Just a short flight away, Amsterdam is one of my favourite destinations for a quick city break. I can never get enough of this city and, although I always try to do something new when I go there, there are two things I have to do on every visit. Or, rather, I have to order two dishes.

Resembling small, round croquettes, bitterballen contain a thick roux featuring beef or veal. And I could inhale a full plate of these in what feels like a matter of seconds. You can get bitterballen from street food vendors or in most Dutch restaurants. Once Ive polished off this savoury snack, my mind will wander to the sweet.

I first tried poffertjes back at a food fair in South Africa, and I thought that they were one of the most faultless things Ive ever tasted. Served warm, these mini pancakes melt in the mouth. You can get them with a variety of toppings, like Nutella, chocolate or fruit, but my favourite accompaniments are icing sugar and plenty of butter.

Both of these only cost a few euros; heck, you can even order bitterballen from a vending machine when in Amsterdam!

Waffles, Belgium

For the sweet-tooths, I struggle to think of a destination better suited to these tastes than Belgium.

A country known for its excellent beer, high-quality chocolate and  my entry into this list  waffles, eating will take up the same amount of time as sightseeing on the average travel itinerary. At least, thats definitely what happened for us when we visited Bruges last year! Im a serious chocolate fiend, but when it comes to my favourite Belgian sweet treats, the freshly made waffles are my clear winner.

There are two types of waffles in Belgium: Brussels or Liege. Brussels waffles (the ones pictured here) are rectangular and made with a light, fluffy batter. Liege waffles are irregularly shaped, and use a dense batter that contains clusters of sugar. Belgian waffles can get pricier in the tourist areas of Belgian cities, but they should still only cost a few euros. Pick the topping of your choice and order the waffle to go.

We ate our waffles in the sunshine by a canal in Bruges; it was a lovely summer moment  and the flawless waffles made it all the more special.

***

Im a glutton, so I feel like I could add so many other dishes and countries to this list. After all, there are plenty of delicious, budget-friendly options when it comes to choosing a travel destination. I did not pay much for any of the meals Ive listed above, yet these are some of the tastiest Ive had anywhere. If a countrys cuisine  and how affordable it is  plays a role in planning your next trip, then take a look at Cheapflights list of top foodie cities around the world. It includes destinations Im aching to get to, like Peru, but Im so excited that were headed to one of their recommendations, Siem Reap in Cambodia, this December!

What are your favourite budget-friendly destinations? Do you have a top cheat eat? Let me know in the comments below.

* Pin it for later: *
It is often asserted that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 proved that HWA was right and he really did see the future.

This of course is nonsense. Herbert W. Armstrong said that Christ would return within twenty years in his book Mystery of the Ages. (PCG has since deleted those words so someone in there knows HWA spoke nonsense.) How convenient for them to forget this.

Also Herbert W. Armstrong never said the Soviet Union would collapse. He thought it would survive intact until a few years after Christ's return. It shows how biased some many in the COGs are that they never seem to notice this. This inconvenient truth is just tossed into the memory hole.

It is true that HWA said that some Eastern European states would break away from Moscow's orbit and join the European Empire he said would arise at any moment. But he never talked of the Soviet Union collapsing. He did not teach that. Also he portrayed the rise of the European Empire to be far quicker then what has actually happened. In Mystery of the Ages Christ was supposed to return by 2005 at the most.

So assertions that the fall of the Berlin Wall somehow prove that HWA was right is just complete nonsense spread by people who, for whatever reason, are still in denial that HWA was a false prophet who merely talked out of his own "human reasoning".


Ronald Reagan

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

Albert Einstein

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.

Winston Churchill





It isnt so much that liberals are ignorant. Its just that they know so many things that arent so.

With integrity nothing else counts; Without integrity nothing else counts.

Winston Churchill





Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.

Harvey S. Firestone





It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office. H. L. Menken



Referenda insure all have a voice in land use decisions.

U.S. Supreme Court

Listen carefully to first criticism of your work. Note just what it is about your work the critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.

Jean Cocteau
Now that the Clearwater Christian College has closed its doors, there's a lot less traffic using the signal on State Road 60 at Damascus.

The light is the last of four traffic signals from McMullen Booth Road headed toward Tampa on the Courtney Campbell Causeway. Some commuters believe it's contributing to congestion.

Drivers question effectiveness of light at State Road 60 at Damascus

FDOT spokeperson said they've looked into it, but for now keeping the light functioning is safest

New study will begin in September

Bay News 9's Real Time Traffic Reporter Chuck Henson takes an in-depth look at transportation issues around the Bay area.

"They tell me they're doing studies," said Dale Tindall of the Florida Department of Transportation. "They have a plan for 2040 that they've got to consider. They won't do anything till school starts - school has started - to do some tests. All I want is people not backed up for three miles - eight miles - trying to get home."

Initially it was suggested to remove the signal at Damascus or to set it to flash mode, allowing through traffic full right-of-way. However, according to FDOT spokesperson Kris Carson, that probably isn't the safest approach.

"Citizens are concerned because if there's side traffic, it'll stop the traffic on State Road 60 to let a pedestrian or side traffic cross," explained Carson. "There's not much side traffic there now, but we're going to keep the signal in so if there is side traffic it can get out safely."

Plus, when a signal is placed in flash mode the pedestrian features are disabled.

The state says it will study the signal timing in the area in the hopes of making some adjustments to better increase the flow of traffic. That study is scheduled for September.


The Government of Japan has announced a donation of US$5 million towards the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) emergency operations in southern Africa, where hundreds of thousands of people are currently facing food shortages due to drought, resulting in significant increases in acute food insecurity and malnutrition.

This timely contribution will allow WFP to provide food assistance to more than 300,000 drought-affected people in the four countries worst affected by El Nino between September and November 2016: Mozambique is to receive US$2.7 million; Malawi US$1.85 million Lesotho US$250,000 and Swaziland US$200,000.

WFP deeply appreciates this generous contribution by the Japanese government at a moment when we urgently need to move huge amounts of relief assistance into drought-hit areas - especially those which will be cut off when the rainy season starts, said Chris Nikoi, regional director for WFP southern Africa, adding that the drought emergency operation has only received 20% of the funding required to assist almost 12 million people across the region until April 2017.

WFP deeply appreciates this generous contribution by the Japanese government at a moment when we urgently need to move huge amounts of relief assistance into drought-hit areas.

In Mozambique, Japans donation will allow WFP to address persisting needs and significant funding gaps while supporting community efforts towards recovery, greater resilience and ultimately progress towards Zero Hunger. The drought response in Mozambique includes emergency school feeding to 100,000 children and treatment of moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) to 51,000 children and pregnant and nursing women.

During the 2015/16 growing season, Malawi was in the eye of the strongest El Nino event to hit Southern Africa in 35 years  causing widespread drought, primarily in the southern region of the country. Japans donation will help WFP assist food-insecure households while at the same time benefit individuals and the community through the Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) programme whereby communities participate in activities such as repairing irrigation systems, building bridges, soil conservation and setting up community granaries in exchange for food vouchers or cash transfers.

Emergency food and cash assistance will also be brought into remote parts of both Lesotho and Swaziland to help hard-hit populations, while supporting the protection and rebuilding of livelihoods of food insecure households to improve their ability to withstand recurrent shocks.

The Government of Japan has been providing food support for communities in need in developing countries since 1968. During the past decade, Japan has contributed more than US$166 million to WFPs operations in southern Africa.
Chicago: Matt Roberts, the original lead guitarist for American rock band 3 Doors Down, was found dead at a hotel in Milwaukee, his father said. He was 38.

Roberts was found dead in a hotel outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Saturday morning, reports variety.com.

While a cause of death is currently unknown, his father, Darrell Roberts, said his son has had problems with anxiety and prescription drugs. He said that he believes an accidental overdose is to blame.

I know he had prescription drug addiction. He suffered greatly from anxiety. This was his way of dealing with it, Darrell said.

Police responded to a call about a man who was either passed out or asleep in the hallway at the Hampton Inn in West Bend, Wisconsin, at about 7 am on Saturday morning. Emergency responders were unable to revive the man, who was identified as Matt Roberts.

He was in Wisconsin preparing to perform at a Saturday night concert at the Our Place bar, benefiting veterans organisation Stars and Stripes Honor Flight.

He co-founded 3 Doors Down with friends Brad Arnold and Todd Harrell in 1996. The band found success through touring and in 2000 released its first studio album, The Better Life.

Roberts had left the band in 2012, citing health problems.
The French government has honoured Kamal Haasan, one of the finest actors in Indian cinema, with prestigious Chevalier de L'Ordre Arts et Lettres (The Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters).

The French government honours excellence in arts by conferring the Chevalier award to 200 artists every year.

A statement was issued by his publicist, stating, The distinction, which is yet another laurel for the actor, is in recognition of his high level of artistic excellence and his distinguished career achievements. The award will be conferred on Kamal Haasan at a special ceremony.

The order of merit is awarded to recognize eminent artists and writers, as well as people who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world.

The other Indians who have been conferred the Chevalier Order include Satyajit Ray and actors Sivaji Ganesan, Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Nandita Das and Shah Rukh Khan.

Kamal Haasan is currently recovering from a fractured leg, but did share his gratitude in a voice message.

"The French Government has kindly conferred the Chevalier award for Arts and Letters on me. On this occasion, I bow before my more deserving forerunners, Mr. Satyajit Ray and Mr. Sivaji Ganesan, who made even the common man realise the value of the Chevalier award. I thank His Excellency, the Ambassador of France in India, Mr. Alexandre Ziegler, who inimated me of this honour."

This award humbles me rather than stiffen me with pride.

"I realise my journey in my chosen field has not been alone. Teachers and admirers abounded around me. With motherly care they have applauded my every little step forward. The melancholy of my parents not being alive to see this day is allayed by the fact that the elders and the young are still around in my family to enjoy it. I dedicate this award to my admirers and audience, who give me the tenacity of purpose to pursue, to this day and moment, my arts and letters. Thank you."

Kamal Haasan who recently underwent a surgery for a fractured leg is now on the path of recovery. He's been tweeting updates about it as well:

Was up on my feet. A small spin around the room. Of course with two to assist on either side like Gandhiji;). Today was less painful.  Kamal Haasan (@ikamalhaasan) August 2, 2016

Stitches off. Hobbling up to the gym past 2 days. Physio at full swing . Thank you all who persisted & insisted on my getting better soon  Kamal Haasan (@ikamalhaasan) August 13, 2016

Rajinikanth has also tweeted about the award, congratulating Hassan:

Translation: Congratulations to my generation's 'Nadigar Thilakam', Chevalier and my dear Friend Kamal Haasan

Sources close to Haasan say that he is very keen to start work again on Sabash Naidu, in which he is bringing back the popular character Balram Naidu from the 2008 blockbuster film Dasavatharam.

He had taken over the project as director after its original director Rajeev Kumar, fell ill during shoot in USA. He has already completed edit work on 42 minutes of the film.

The film which was supposed to be a Diwali release has now been pushed to early 2017.

Hear Kamal Hassan's audio clip here:
Curiouser and curiouser.

Alice (of Adventures in Wonderland fame) said those words when drinking a potion (or was it eating a portion of cake?) made her elongate and grow tall.

The shock of "folding out like a telescope" apparently made Alice forget her English.

As for us, we've forgotten all our grammar and syntax at the latest developments in the Padmavati case.

Let's do a whirlwind recap of the story so far:

Sanjay Leela Bhansali wanted to make Padmavati  a film that is based on his opera-ballet of the same name from 2008.

For his magnum opus, he wanted to cast together, for the third time (after Goliyon Ki Raasleela: Ram-Leela and Bajirao Mastani) his muses (or is it musae?) du jour  Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone. They would play the roles of Alauddin Khilji and Rani Padmini.

Padukone was apparently a shoo-in, thanks to a glass ceiling-shattering paycheque worth Rs 12 crore in total.

But even as fans were preparing for the big screen fest that would be Singh as Khilji, some bad news was reported.

The "villain" in this case was seemingly the good guy from the real story  Rani Padmini's husband Rawal Ratan Singh. Or rather who would play him on screen.

Speculation flew fast and thick over who would play the part: Would it be Vicky Kaushal? Would it be Shahid Kapoor?

Kapoor seemed to be the chosen one.

But just as casting for Ratan Singh's part seemed to have been finalised, came the shocker:

Bhansali might have been on the lookout for a new Alauddin Khilji  and may have approached Shah Rukh Khan (who, reportedly, didn't have the 200 days the shoot required) or Hrithik Roshan for the same.

What! Why?

Cue, some more speculation: Bhansali was apparently displeased with his protege (Ranveer Singh) having asked for a bound script of Padmavati. Singh, now facing a fall out with Bhansali, decided to focus on his film with his other favourite director Zoya Akhtar instead.

Note that through this all, not one word of confirmation came from Deepika, Ranveer or Sanjay Leela Bhansali about this reported round of casting-couch-musical-chairs.

Ranveer of course, has been in Switzerland, vacationing with friends.

Despite being on a break, he has regularly posted updates to his Instagram account (and not just about his holiday or fanboy odes to other stars) but also work-related commitments such as his new ad film with Rohit Shetty. But he didn't issue any clarifications about the status of the Padmavati project.

And now, we may finally have a reason for this: Perhaps Singh had never been 'replaced' at all?

The actor paid a visit to Bhansali's home over this weekend 20-21 August, soon after his return to Mumbai. He even shared an image of himself with the director, in which both seem completely at ease, and without any hint of the acrimony that has formed the basis for many of the stories around Padmavati.

Singh was all smiles as he ran into the paparazzi posted outside Bhansali's home, but refused to answer any questions about the purpose of his visit.

Does this mean we'll soon hear a formal announcement about Ranveer being cast as Alauddin Khilji? And what if another actor is indeed announced for the part?

Watch this space.

Update:

News reports have now emerged that say Ranveer Singh has moved to a new residence to be closer to the sets of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmavati shoot. As per this Times of India article, Ranveer is preparing for his Padmavati look. Truth or speculation? We'll know in a while.
Torrential rains triggered by the Southwest monsoon have created flood-like situation in four districts of Rajasthan where six people have reportedly died and more than 70 airlifted, officials said on Sunday. The Met department has issued a warning of heavy to very heavy rainfall in isolated places in Eastern parts and heavy rainfall for isolated areas in Western parts of the state in the next 24 hours.

Baran, Pratapgarh, Chittogarh and Jhalawar are the worst affected districts.

Army, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and RAC (Rajasthan Armed Constabulary) have been deployed in the affected areas and several people have been shifted to safer places. Army has been deployed in Baran while many people were airlifted by Air Force from different locations in Baran and Pratapgarh district since Saturday, relief secretary Rohit Kumar told PTI.

He said Army, NDRF and RAC were deployed in Baran while NDRF and RAC teams were in Chittorgarh and NDRF in Jhalawar and Pratapgarh was having RAC teams doing the rescue work.

Defence spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Manish Ojha said that a total of 72 people have been airlifted since Saturday. "At least 34 people were airlifted in Baran district on Saturday and 38 were airlifted in Pratapgarh on Sunday. More airlifting is also likely," Ojha said.

People were rescued from seven locations in Baran and nearby region by Indian Air Force helicopter.

"Several villagers were sitting dangerously on tree tops amidst gushing waters waiting for help. MI 17 V5 helicopter airborne from air force station in Phalodi conducted rescue operation and 24 people were rescued," Ojha added.

Six persons of a family died when a portion of their house collapsed in Baran district. The house collapsed leaving Laxmi Narayan (72), his wife Shanti Bai (70) and four others of their family members namely Deepu (18), Anita Bai (26), Aishwarya (10) and Suraj (9) dead, police said.

Four others were also injured in the incident and are admitted at the district hospital, police added.

The Southwest Monsoon has been vigorous for the last two days, triggering torrential rains at isolated places in Udaipur division, heavy to very heavy in Kota and Udaipur divisions and light to moderate at many places.

According to Met department, Danpur (Banswara), Arnod Sr (Pratapgarh), Badesar and Nimbahera (both in Chittorgarh) each have received 23 cm rainfall since Saturday. Badi Sadri (Chittorgarh) and Pipalkhunt (Pratapgarh) recorded 22-cm and many other places received below 22-cm rain during the same period.

Dabok, Barmer, Kota, Jaipur and Ajmer have also recorded 56.2, 30.59, 2.6 and 0.3 mm of rainfall respectively, it said. Meanwhile, water level in Chambal river in Dholpur on Sunday crossed the danger mark.

The water level is posing threat of flood-like situation in more than two dozen villages near the river. Rajasthan agriculture minister Prabhu Lal Saini and minister of state for transport Babu Lal visited the rain-hit areas in Baran and reviewed rescue and relief works.

They also distributed cheques of Rs 4 lakh each to the next of the kin of those killed in a house collapse in Karwai area. They distributed total Rs 24 lakh as compensation, a release said. The ministers also gave necessary directions to official to provide relief to the affected people and conduct assessment of losses caused by the heavy rain.
New Delhi: Two fresh petitions were filed on Monday in the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court order upholding the ban on beef imposed by Maharashtra government through an enactment.

The pleas filed by All India Jamiatul Quresh of Maharashtra and Delhi respectively alleged that politics was being played on the issue of slaughtering cows.

They also said the petitioner organisations respected cows and calves but the members of Qureshi community be allowed to slaughter bulls and bullocks who have crossed the age of 16 years as they are of no use to farmers.

The Bombay High Court had upheld the beef ban imposed by the state government after the enactment of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act banning the slaughter of

bulls and bullocks, besides cows.

The high court, however, had said that mere possession of the meat cannot invite criminal action while striking down the relevant sections of the Act.

Earlier, Supreme Court had issued the notice to Maharashtra government on a separate plea challenging the High Court verdict which held that mere possession of beef of animals slaughtered outside the state cannot invite criminal action.

The plea was filed by 'Akhil Bharat Krishi Goseva Sangh' which had told the apex court that they were challenging part of the 6 May verdict of the High Court which had said provisions of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act was an infringement on the right to privacy of citizens and unconstitutional.

The high court order had come on a bunch of petitions challenging the provision of the law which had said that mere possession of beef in any place in the state is a crime.

As per the Act, slaughter attracts a five-year jail term and Rs 10,000 fine and possession of meat of bull or bullock leads to one-year jail and Rs 2,000 fine.
A court in New Delhi on Monday awarded death sentence to two out of three persons convicted for murdering and robbing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh in New Delhi in 2009.

Convicts Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla were awarded the death penalty while the third convict Baljeet Malik was sentenced to life in prison.

The court observed that the crime was a "brutal" and "cold blooded murder". "To be hanged by neck till death," Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav said, while awarding death to convicts Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla.

The judge also observed that gruesome crimes against women were on the rise and any leniency to the criminals would send a wrong message to society.

"The offence was committed in a brutal, cold blooded and cruel manner. The victim was helpless and remained in captivity for hours and the convicts brutally mauled her to death. It was an uncivilised act done in a barbaric manner.

"The magnitude and brutality of the crime makes it fall in the category of rarest of rare," the judge said.

Here's a timeline of the murder case:

While awarding death penalty, the court said according to the pre-sentencing report (PSR), there was "no scope for Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla to reform".

As per the report, Baljeet's conduct was normal and there was no complaint against him and he was not a threat to society.

The court also imposed a total fine of Rs nine lakh on the three convicts, who were present at the hearing, out of which Rs six lakh is to be given to the victim's family as compensation.

It also said this amount was not adequate and asked the legal aid authority to decide appropriate compensation for the victim's family.

"The pain, agony and trauma of victim's parents cannot be compensated," the court observed.

The Delhi Police had earlier sought death penalty for the convicts, saying they killed her for "pleasure" and showed no remorse.

Additional sessions judge Sandeep Yadav on Saturday had reserved the order on sentence after the arguments concluded and a pre-sentencing report (PSR) was submitted by probationary officer.

"Pre-sentencing report received...Copy has been supplied to counsel for the convicts. Arguments heard. Order on sentence to be pronounced on Monday," the judge had said after hearing the arguments of prosecution, convicts and perusing the pre-sentencing report which gave details about the background of the guilty persons.

Working as an operations manager in a management consultancy firm, 28-year-old Jigisha Ghosh was abducted and killed on 18 March, 2009 after she was dropped by her office cab at around 4 am near her home in Vasant Vihar area of South Delhi.

Her body was recovered three days later from a place near Surajkund in Haryana, police had said.

The court had convicted the three culprits on 14 July this year. It had held accused Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla and Baljit Singh Malik guilty of the offences of murder, abduction, robbery, forgery and common intention under the IPC. Kapoor was also convicted for the offence of using firearms under the Arms Act.

While pronouncing the judgement, the judge had said, "they (accused) committed her murder and disposed of her body in bushes and circumstantial evidence makes it clear that it was these men who committed the crime.

"It is abundantly clear from evidence that they committed the crime. There is no missing link of crime (and) hence innocence is ruled out. It is proved on record that Jigisha did not return home on expected time on the day of incident."

The court had said that it was proved that the three convicts had abducted Jigisha, robbed her of her gold chain, two mobile phones, two rings and debit and credit cards and killed her.

With inputs from agencies
New Delhi:JNU Students Union on Monday approached the varsity Vice Chancellor seeking action against a student who has been accused of sexual assault by a fellow mate.

A 28-year-old JNU student had yesterday approached Delhi Police and filed a rape case against an activist of the left-affiliated All India Students Association (AISA), accusing him of raping her in a hostel room on the university campus.

The woman, a Ph.D student, alleged that Anmol Ratan, also a Ph.D student, offered her a copy of a that she was looking for, took her to his hostel room and offered her a spiked drink.

She told police that he raped her when she was unconscious. He also threatened her and asked her not to report the matter.

Taking strong note of the incident, AISA had on Sunday expelled Anmol from the party which ended his primary membership.

"We condemn the incident and call for speedy action in the case. Since the complaint has been filed with police, we demand that the force takes all necessary steps to ensure justice and arrest the accused without delay. Also, the University must take necessary action against the accused student," a statement issued by JNU Students Union (JNUSU) said.

Meanwhile, the complainant could not record her statement before the magistrate citing illness.

"The victim was sent for recording of her statement before a magistrate under Section 164 of CrPC but she cited illness due to which it has been postponed now," said RP Upadhyay, Jt Commissioner of Police, southeastern range.

He said that the statement is expected to be recorded on Tuesday.

The accused student has not joined the probe and is unavailable for questioning, he added.

The university authorities condemned the incident as a blot on the university's image and urged the JNU community to remain vigilant against such incidents.

"JNU administration strongly condemns an incident of heinous rape in a campus hostel. It has completely shaken the JNU community and has tarnished the image of the university.

"The administration does not tolerate such incidences and resolves to take appropriate measures to prevent them in future. We appeal the students, staff and teachers to remain vigilant against such incidences," an official statement said.

The BJP's student wing-ABVP which is locked in an ideological battle with the left-groups on campus on Monday staged a protest in university demanding rustication of Anmol.

They also submitted a memorandum to Vice Chancellor Jagadesh Kumar in this regard.

"We will not let JNU become a rape capital. The way these people conduct anti-national activities on campus similarly they indulge in rapes and are habitual offenders," alleged a statement from ABVP.
New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday appealed to youth in turbulent Kashmir to shun violence and at the same time said security forces will have to act in self-defense if they are attacked.

Stating that a political solution to the problem in Jammu and Kashmir will have to be fond soon within the Constitutional parameters, Jaitley said security forces need not use force if the protests are peaceful.

"But if they bring weapons, explosives (and) attack security forces... come in thousands and pelt stones on security forces, this constitutes an attack and security forces will have to act in self-defence," he told Aaj Tak news channel.

At an event in Jammu on Sunday, Jaitley while acknowledging that the situation in Kashmir is "serious" asserted that there can be no compromise with those indulging in violence and described stone-pelters as "not satyagrahis but aggressors" who target police and security forces.

"I want to appeal to the youth of this country who have strayed on the wrong path, that they should leave the wrong path as they will otherwise be a loser in the end," he said.

Jaitley also blamed Pakistan for not just training and funding terrorists but also for instigating the youth in Kashmir Valley.

Several reports of my speech in Jammu have appeared in media. Some reports are inaccurate. The entire speech is here https://t.co/xPPDJ36Nki  Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) August 22, 2016

"Security forces cannot lower their guard (against terrorists)," he said, adding, "Those who live by the gun, (will) perish (by the gun)."

On possible solution to the problem, he said separatists and terrorists will have to be isolated while needs of the common citizens in the Valley addressed compassionately.

"We have to take along the common citizen of Kashmir Valley. There cannot be any scope for any injustice to the public at large but at the same time there is also no room for any compassion for terrorists," he said.

On talks with Pakistan, he said the present government as well as the previous ones were of the view that dialogue with the neighbour has to continue but the issues to be discussed will be decided by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Jaitley said armed separatists receive "weapons, training as well as funding from Pakistan with a view to destabilise the country... there is evidence to this effect."
New Delhi: National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah on Monday said that the lessons learnt in Jammu and Kashmir in the 2010 unrest were unlearnt in 2016.

"People must appreciate that after 2010 we learnt lessons that allowed us to bring six years of peace and calm in Jammu and Kashmir," former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah told India Today in an interview.

"The lessons of 2010 allowed us to deal with a far more threatening situation when Afzal Guru was hanged," the NC leader said, adding, "You don't appreciate when the good work is done, you don't appreciate that Jammu and Kashmir has some peaceful years in the last eight to ten years."

"And suddenly when you have a problem like this then people make sweeping generalisations that nothing good has been done there and mainstream politicians have only hoodwinked the people and worsened the situation," he rued.

"But, it is not the truth. Yes, we are not blameless, I have never said that mistakes were never made by us. I have always accepted," he added.

"But the fact is that the lessons learnt in 2010 was unlearnt in 2016 and that's what we need to correct," Abdullah said.

The NC leader's remark came on a day he led a delegation of opposition leaders from the state to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the current unrest in the valley where over 65 people have died in clashes with security forces following the 8 July killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani.

The delegation also met Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) leader Sitaram Yechury.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday indicated that there might be some political initiative for finding a lasting solution to the current unrest in valley. The Prime Minister also expressed grief over the loss of every life in valley weather that be of a protester or a security force personally. The Prime Minister told a delegation led by Omar Abdullah that development alone cant resolve the issue.

The valley of Kashmir has been reeling under a curfew for the past 45 days, since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. Close to seventy 70 people have died and almost 8000 people have been injured in clashes with government forces trying to quell the unrest.

"There has to be dialogue and we need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution," a government statement said after the meeting.

National Conference working president, Omar, who along with other opposition parties has been camping in Delhi from last few days, appealed that a political approach needs to be adopted for resolving the present crisis in the Valley.

"We talked about the same thing that we have been talking with other leaders ever since we arrived in Delhi that the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, especially in light of the present crisis, needs to be understood correctly after which a solution is required. Omar told reporters in New Delhi. "We emphasised that the issue of Jammu and Kashmir is more of political (sic) in nature. Time and again such situations do arise but if we are unable to find a political solution to it, we will be repeating our mistakes again and again," Omar told reporters after the meeting.

"The Prime Minister told us in categorical terms that development alone will not resolve this problem," he said and refused to draw any conclusion from that.

In Srinagar, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) welcomed the statement of the government of India and said that if Opposition parties in Jammu and Kashmir are able to take the state out of the current morass, it is welcomed.

We appreciate the move and welcome the prime ministers statement on Kashmir. We have been saying it from day one that we all need to understand that to bring peace back to the streets of Kashmir, we need to hold dialogue with everyone, Peoples Democratic Party leader, Waheed ur Rehman Para said.

But National Conference leaders said that it should have been the state government, instead of Opposition, that should have initiated the process of finding a peaceful solution to the ongoing crises in Kashmir.

It should be the primary objective of the state government to impress upon its alliance partner to hold dialogue with stakeholders to ensure peace in the state, National Conference leader, Tanvir Sadiq, said. I wish this was done before 45 days of curfew, more than 60 killing and eight thousand people injured the state government should have taken every initiative to bring peace to the valley. At least we are happy that he (PM) understood that there is a need to have dialogue, Sadiq added.

In Jammu, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti told reporters that if the Opposition parties have gone to Delhi to help contribute in the situation, it is (a) good thing.

Jammu and Kashmir Congress chief Ghulam Ahamd Mir said that to bring a lasting peace in the region, it was important for the New Delhi to institutionalise the dialogue process with all the stake holders of the valley and there was nothing new in it as both NDA and UPA have held dialogue with leaders from valley previously.

We just hope that the current situation in valley changes. And some kind of road map evolves to bring peace back, he said.

A senior Hurriyat leader said that they will wait for the Prime Minister's invitation than respond to what he has told Omar Abdullah.
Chennai: The Madras High Court today declined to grant an interim stay on suspension of 79 DMK MLAs from the state Assembly but issued notice to the state Chief Secretary on petitions filed by leader of the opposition MK Stalin and another DMK member.

The petitions challenged their en masse suspension from the Assembly and sought a direction to declare all proceedings and actions taken as illegal, ultra vires and unconstitutional.

Declining to pass an interim order, the First Bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan, said, "Since it is a matter of function of the House and the order has been passed by the Speaker, we are not inclined to pass interim orders.

"But there will be no question of making the prayer infructuous as ultimately the validity of the resolution would have to be decided as it may have other ramifications," it said.

The bench directed the petitioners-Stalin and DMK MLA Thiagarajan  to serve private notices to the Speaker, P Dhanapal, and the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly Secretary, and posted the matter for further hearing to 1 September.

When the matter came up, senior counsel for Stalin, Mohan Parasaran submitted that it was for the first time in the history of the Assembly that a resolution had been passed suspending en masse all opposition DMK MLAs.

In his plea, Stalin sought an interim direction to permit him and other suspended members to attend and participate in the present session.

He submitted that the blanket resolution to suspend all DMK members, who had signed the attendance register on the date was without any basis or material. He said the majority of DMK members, including he himself, were not in the House when the resolution was passed by voice vote.

He submitted that the resolution was later modified to include the DMK members who had been present and those who had not signed the attendance register and alleged that the Speaker's action was "unprecedented, motivated and biased which completely undermines democracy".
The issue of the radicalisation of Indian Muslims is one that has been gaining momentum for a while now. While some continue to swim in the 'this only happens in other country' sea of denial, others are beginning to grasp the gravity of the situation and suggesting ways to counter it. In an exclusive four-part series on radicalisation in India, Tufail Ahmad examines a variety of conditions and scenarios that have made it possible to radicalise youths in Maharashtra, Hyderabad, Kerala and indeed, India as a whole. The first part of the series follows:

From early 2014 through this year, the radicalisation of Indian Muslims in favour of the Islamic State (or IS) has not ceased, although intelligence agencies have succeeded in preventing dozens of youths from leaving India to join the jihadi group. A review of media reports over the past three years indicates that the number of affected youths  ie those who left for Syria, others who were stopped from leaving India and counselled, and those under surveillance  is around 350. This figure is on the lower side, but does not take into account the situation in Jammu and Kashmir.

Radicalisation is the process of directly and indirectly motivating Muslims to participate in jihadi terror, based on religious teachings and grievance-nurturing by Islamic preachers, the Urdu press and other Islamic media. Radicalisation has always existed in India leading to bomb blasts on many occasions, but that it could pose a serious challenge to the security of India was realised first in mid-2014 when four youths left Mumbai for Iraq and Syria  one of them, Areeb Majeed, returned later from Turkey, where he had ended up for medical treatment after being wounded in Syria.

From then till now, around a dozen states have witnessed incidents of radicalisation including Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Assam, Punjab (for pro-Khalistan radicalisation), Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. In the run-up to Republic Day this year, at least 14 suspects were arrested. In June, five youths were arrested in Hyderabad, leading to two more arrests in July. Around two dozen youths, who were known to each other, left Kerala in early July for Syria. In the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, four youths were arrested in July. The argument here is this: Radicalisation in India has not ceased since 2014, leaving no room for complacency.

Political correctness forces analysts not to see the ideological nature of the jihadi terror. A usual shortcut is to blame the internet for radicalisation. This is contrary to evidence. In the 20th Century when there was no internet, the streets of Lahore looked much like the streets of Paris today. In December 1926, Swami Shraddhanand was killed by Abdur Rasheed, perhaps the first lone-wolf jihadi, for publishing Satyarth Prakash, a book critical of Prophet Muhammad. In 1929, Rajpal of the Rajpal Publisher of Lahore, was killed, much like the editors of Charlie Hebdo magazine and exactly for the same theological reason, by Ghazi Ilmuddin for publishing the book. The Islamist poet Muhammad Iqbal praised him. Hyderabadi leader Asaduddin Owaisi is not the first Muslim leader to offer legal aid to IS suspects. Ilmuddin's case was defended in court by MA Jinnah.

In modern times, Sufism, supported by the Barelvi school of Sunni Islam, is presented as peaceful. In 1936, Murid Hussain, a Sufi from Chakwal in the present-day Pakistan, went on to kill Dr Ram Gopal after he was visited by Prophet Muhammad in dream. The alleged reason for killing was that an animal was named by Gopal after the prophet. Major Nidal Hasan, who shot dead his colleagues at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, is not the first Muslim soldier to be radicalised. In 1937, Miyan Muhammad of the Indian Army shot dead a Hindu soldier in Karachi. In 1942, Babu Merajuddin killed his Sikh officer Major Hardyal Singh allegedly for questioning the sacrifice of animals on Eid-al-Azha, the feast of sacrifice. Guantanamo Bay is also not the first offshore prison for jihadis. Lone-wolf attackers were sent by British officers to Andaman Islands.

While the Mumbai's four had left India before Abu Bakr Al-Baghadi declared himself on June 30, 2014 as the caliph of all Muslims, soon his call for all Muslims to perform Hijrah (migration) to the IS in the Iraq-Syria region caught the imagination of youths. Hijrah marks the migration of Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina where a large number of people had converted to Islam. It has special connotation in the minds of Muslims. In India, the pattern of Hijrah over the past three years showed two trends: One, Indian Muslim youths based in London, Qatar, the UAE, Afghanista-Pakistan region, Singapore and Australia travelled directly to Syria to join the ISIS; two, some youths left directly from India for Afghanistan, Iran and some West Asian capitals to join the IS or were prevented from boarding flights at Nagpur and Hyderabad, or stopped in Kolkata.

In July 2015, a note prepared by the Home Ministry noted: "As per available intelligence inputs, very few number of Indian youth(s) have joined ISIS after travelling to Iraq and Syria. Further, intelligence/security agencies have foiled the plan of some youth(s) to travel to Iraq/Syria who are under counselling and monitoring at present. A certain number of IS sympathisers are also under surveillance by security agencies."

A report dated 28 September, 2015, published by the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, put the number of those under surveillance at 250. As of last July, it appears that the number of Muslim youths arrested over the past three years in different states of India for pro-IS radicalisation is at least 60. Reports in the press indicate that at least 30 Muslims from India could be present in Syria with IS and there are some Indians based in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. While the fundamental reasons for radicalisation and justifications for jihad are rooted in Islamic teachings, glorification of Islamic history and grievance mongering, one must bear in mind that the jihadi threat to India emanates also from the rise of jihadi movements in West Asia and the inability of the big powers to stabilise the situation.

Unless that happens, security agencies in India will need to remain alert.

Stay tuned for the next three parts of the series:

Part Two: Radicalisation of Muslim youths in Maharashtra

Part Three: Radicalisation of Muslim youths in Hyderabad

Part Four: Radicalisation of Muslim youths in Kerala

Former BBC journalist Tufail Ahmad is a contributing editor at Firstpost, and Executive Director of the Open Source Institute, New Delhi. He tweets @tufailelif
WHY DONT YOU READ THESE?
Manila: At least 1,779 persons have been killed in the Philippines' war on illicit drugs since 1 July this year, authorities said on Monday.

A total of 712 were killed in ongoing police operations while 1,067 died in "vigilante-type" killings, Xinhua news agency quoted police as saying.

The police's "stand against extrajudicial killings is uncompromising", a police official said in a statement.

"If any cop is found violating the law of self-defence, he will be investigated, prosecuted and accordingly punished," he said. "On the speculation of vigilante killings, the police does not and will never condone vigilante killings," he added.

"I have previously mentioned that these killings are perpetrated by various syndicate groups involved in illegal drugs."

The official vowed to apply the "full force of the law against those responsible for these killings outside of police operations".

The increasing number of killings in the administration's war against drugs has caught the attention of the UN and other international human rights groups.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, however, remains unfazed by the growing criticism and repeatedly says that the fight against drugs will be relentless and will be sustained.

"I am willing to answer all (my critics). I assume full responsibility for what happened because I was the one who ordered it," Duterte told the media in Davao City on Sunday.

"My instructions at the very first day of my term were that: go out and hunt for these criminals. Arrest them if they surrender peacefully but if they put up a violent stunt then you just have to kill them because I do not want people in government dying needlessly for doing his work when you were then leaving behind a family and children," he said.

So far, Duterte said 6,00,000 drug users and pushers have "surrendered" and taken the drug test since his administration launched the campaign after he took over the presidency on 30 June this year.
Washington: Donald Trump's vow to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants if elected president appeared to be undergoing a shift as the struggling Republican candidate reaches out to minorities alienated by his harsh rhetoric.

The New York real estate magnate intends to lay out specifics of his immigration plan over the next few weeks, Trump's new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said.

Asked on CNN's State of the Union whether they will include a "deportation force" that Trump has previously called for, Conway said, "To be determined."

Trump met with Hispanic supporters at his Trump Tower headquarters in New York, when several participants told Spanish-language network Univision that he said his plan will include finding a way to legalise millions of undocumented immigrants.

Trump acknowledged "that there is a big problem with the 11 million people who are here, and that deporting them is neither possible nor humane," Univision quoted Jacob Monty, a Texas immigration lawyer who attended the meeting, as saying.

The billionaire candidate, who has slid precipitously in polls since last month's Republican convention, told the group of Hispanic conservatives that his plan would grant undocumented immigrants legal status "that wouldn't be citizenship but would allow them to be here without fear of deportation," Monty added.

If true, it would mark a sharp reversal for a candidate who launched his campaign for the presidency with a vow to build a giant wall on Mexico's border, while disparaging illegal immigrants from Mexico as criminals and rapists. He has repeatedly called for mass deportations of people in the country illegally, a stance critics say is inhumane and unrealistic.

"What Donald Trump said in that meeting differed very little from what he's said publicly, including in his convention speech last month in Cleveland," Conway told CNN.

"It's that we need a, quote, fair and humane way of dealing with what is estimated to be about 11 million illegal immigrants in this country," said Conway, who also took part in the meeting.

"Nothing was said yesterday that differs from what Trump said previously," she added.

"He supports making sure that we enforce the law, that we are respectful of those Americans who are looking for well-paying jobs and that we are fair and humane for those who live among us in this country."
Nay Pyi Daw: India is ready to give "all help" was the message given to the Myanmar leadership by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who is in Myanmar on the first high-level visit from India after the new government came to power in March following decades of military rule.

Swaraj, who called on President U Htin Kyaw here, also held talks with State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi.

Congratulating Suu Kyi for the victory in the "first genuine election", Swaraj assured her of "all help".

"India is committed to strengthening your democratic institutions and socio-economic development of your people," Swaraj said during her meeting with Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party won a historic landslide election last year that finally brought an end to five decades of military rule.

Swaraj said this was the message of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee.

The one-day trip by Swaraj, accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior Ministry of External Affairs officials, is the first high-level visit from India since the civilian government took over earlier this year.

Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar and a Nobel laureate besides being a democracy icon, thanked Swaraj for the support.

Banned from becoming president by a junta-era Constitution, Suu Kyi has a strong control over the country's first civilian-led government.

The Constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president. Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.

The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 percent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.

Incidentally, Swaraj's visit comes just days after Suu Kyi made a high-profile trip to China.

India and Myanmar share close relations with a robust development cooperation programme in areas such as agriculture, IT, human resource development, infrastructure development, culture among others.

The visit reaffirms India's commitment to heighten partnership with Myanmar in the areas of priority by the new government of Myanmar, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.
New Delhi: India has sought the release of 39 Indians abducted in Iraq while expressing support for unity and territorial integrity of Iraq, the External Affairs Ministry said on Monday.

Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar, who is on an official visit to Iraq from 21 to 23 August, conveyed this while meeting the top Iraqi leadership, according to a statement issued by the ministry.

Among others, Akbar met President Fuad Masum, President of the Council of Representatives Salim al-Jabouri, Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Eshaiqer Al-Jaafari, and National Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayyadh.

During the official meetings, the two sides acknowledged the grave threat posed by international terrorism and its sponsors to international peace and security as also the very architecture of nation state, the statement said.

Both sides conveyed strong support to each other in their common fight against the menace of terrorism.

The minister expressed India's support for the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq and conveyed India's abiding commitment to the emergence of a stable, peaceful, united and democratic Iraq, which was in the interest of regional and global peace and security, the statement said.

Akbar also sought Iraq's assistance to trace the whereabouts and safe release of 39 abducted Indians.

The Iraqi leadership assured of full cooperation and support in the matter, the statement said.

The 39 Indians were reportedly abducted by the Islamic State terrorist organisation in Iraq in 2014.

The two sides also discussed the entire gamut of bilateral engagement, including economic, trade, investment, energy security, defence, security and counter-terrorism.

Akbar conveyed India's willingness to partner in the reconstruction of Iraq as also for continued assistance through the Indian government's well acknowledged capacity-building programmes under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme.
Tokyo: The wife of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has visited Pearl Harbour, bombed by Japanese planes nearly 75 years ago in an attack that brought the United States into World War II.

It was not clear exactly when Akie Abe made the visit. But she posted 11 pictures on her official Facebook page, apparently early on Monday.

"I offered flowers and my prayers at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor," she wrote.

Her visit to the Hawaii memorial came just months after President Barack Obama journeyed to Hiroshima, the Japanese city where a US plane dropped the world's first atom bomb in the closing days of World War II.

Obama's trip to Hiroshima sparked speculation that Shinzo Abe could visit Pearl Harbor in response.

But top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga on Monday denied that, while confirming the first lady was in Hawaii for a "private trip".

"There is no such plan for the prime minister to visit Hawaii," Suga said.

On 7 December, 1941, Japanese planes swept low over the US naval base, killing more than 2,400 American troops and civilians, a date which then-president Franklin Roosevelt declared would live in "infamy".

The two-hour bombardment of the US Pacific Fleet at anchor sank or damaged some 20 ships and destroyed 164 planes. Akie Abe is seen in one of the Facebook photos bowing before a wall on which the names of victims are inscribed.

"Many people must have given fresh thought to the bombed city of Hiroshima and the war after President Obama visited the city," she told the Gendai Business web magazine, which apparently accompanied her to Pearl Harbor.

"I am aware that there are various debates and views about Pearl Harbor, but I believe we must go beyond hatred and anger, and pass down these memories to following generations."

Abe is seen in Japan as playing a political role that complements her husband, sometimes by softening his hawkish image and at others by soothing his nationalist supporters.

She has visited Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honours millions of Japan's war dead as well as several senior figures convicted of war crimes after World War II.

Her husband has been forced to stay away from the shrine after making a visit there in December 2013. The visit set off a firestorm of criticism in China and South Korea, and also earned a rare rebuke from top ally the United States.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, during his meeting with Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar in Damascus on Saturday, sought Indias help in the reconstruction of his countrys economy while the two countries agreed to upgrade their security consultations as well following the ongoing war in Syria and recurring cases of Indians being influenced by the Islamic State.

During his official visit to Syria, MoS @mjakbar called on President Bashar Al Assad in Damascus today pic.twitter.com/LjjSZABiaa  Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) August 20, 2016

"There was an agreement between both sides for further upgrading security consultations," The Indian Express quoted a source as saying.

Both the leaders acknowledged that terrorism was a global problem. Akbar said that the age of destruction should give way to reconstruction in Syria.

Assad also welcomed Indias objective position on the conflict in Syria. According to a report by DNA, he urged India to play the role of a growing power to stabilise West Asia rather than being defensive.

Indias opposition to foreign intervention and support for state sovereignty might make its position favorable to the Assad government. Almost seven million Indians are currently working in West Asia.

Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had reiterated Indias opposition to foreign interference in Syria during his meeting with the Syrian Prime Minister Wael Al-Halki on the sidelines of the NAM Summit in Tehran in 2012. He had said that the solution to the crisis in the country should be through a comprehensive political process that achieves and accommodates the aspirations of the Syrian people, reported AMN.

Singh had also hailed the friendly bilateral and cultural ties between the two countries while stressing the importance of halting the violence.

Assad addressed a letter to Singh on the eve of the fourth Brics summit in 2012 and delivered it via envoy Bouthaina Shaaban. According to Syrian Radio & TV, Shaaban thanked India for its support to a political solution in Syria away from foreign meddling.

According to the Ministry of External Affairs, the then External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid reiterated Indias position with respect to Syria in the UN-sponsored international conference on Syria in 2014.

"India supports an all-inclusive Syrian-led process to chart out the future of Syria, its political structures and leadership," Khurshid had said.

During President Pranab Mukherjees visit to Jordan, Israel and Palestine last year, Indias then Secretary (East) at the Ministry of External Affairs said that India wants a peaceful resolution to the Syrian crisis and its stance on Russian military intervention in Syria was acknowledgement that Moscow was doing so to halt the advances of the Islamic State (IS), according to a Scroll article.

Syrian Ambassador to India, Riad Kamel Abbas, referred to India as a friend of Syria. In an interview with The Hindu, he said, If everybody has done what India has done, we wouldnt have any problem in Syria. Its a champion of the principle that there should not be any external interference in the internal affairs of a country.

He further hailed PM Narendra Modi and said that the prime minister has made it very clear that "theres no bad terrorism and good terrorism. Theres only terrorism."

Indias interest lies in Syria mainly because of the seven million Indians working in the West Asia region. The terror attack in Dhaka claimed by Islamic State and the arrests of suspected Islamic State operatives in the country has become a matter of concern.

The growing threat of Islamic State in India

Six Islamic State operatives had allegedly conspired to carry out terror activities in the national capital and adjoining regions during the Ardh Kumbh in Haridwar to terrorise people, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said.

Al-Hindi, head of a group of Indian jihadists based out of Raqqa in Syria, is still on the run. In June this year, NIA arrested five men from Hyderabad who alleged that they were members of an Islamic State cell that was being operated under the command of Muhammad Shafi Armar.

Earlier this year, a special cell of the Delhi Police arrested Mohsin Ibrahim Sayeed  another suspected Islamic State operative.

The Kerala Police too arrested a 24-year-old man for his alleged Islamic State links, Firstpost had earlier reported. The NIA described Kerala as a highly volatile state with a huge presence of Indian Mujahideen and the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) elements.

On 7 August, a youth from Parbhani was caught by the Maharashtra Police for his alleged Islamic State links.

Areeb Majeed, another Islamic State operative and a civil engineering student from Kalyan in Mumbai, was a part of a group of four who had left India on 23 May 2013.

Islamic State has gradually been seeping into India and therefore, India does not want Syria to follow the path of Libya, which has become a breeding ground for Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. However, if Assad is dethroned, Syria is likely to follow the same path because of the political vacuum.

With inputs from agencies
Washington: Russia is at the "core" of Donald Trump's campaign and the Republican nominee himself could be a "puppet" for the Kremlin, the rival Clinton Campaign alleged on Monday.

"The hand of the Kremlin has been at work in this campaign for some time. It's clear that they are supporting Donald Trump," the Clinton Campaign Manager, Robby Mook told ABC News during a Sunday talk show.

"But we now need Donald Trump to explain to us the extent to which the hand of the Kremlin is at the core of his own campaign. There's a web of financial interests that have not been disclosed. And there are real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race?" he alleged.

"You're saying he's a puppet for the Kremlin?" Mook was asked.

"Well, real questions are being raised about that. There's a web of financial ties to the Russians that he refuses to disclose. We've seen over the last few week, him parroted Vladimir Putin in his own remarks. We saw the Republican Party platform changed," he alleged.

"She saw Donald Trump talk about leaving Nato and leaving our Eastern European allies vulnerable to a Russian attack. The gentleman he brought with him to his security briefing just last week is someone who's on the payroll of the Russia Times, which is a basically a propaganda arm of the Kremlin. He was sitting two seats away from Vladimir Putin at heir 10th Anniversary gala," he said.

"There are a lot of questions here. We need Donald Trump to disclose all of his financial ties and whether his advisers are having meetings with the Kremlin," Mook alleged.

Responding to a question on Clinton Foundations decision not to take foreign money as donation if Hillary Clinton is elected as the president she said it is unprecedented.

"The steps that are being taken if she should become president are unprecedented. We're happy that that planning is taking place. But I think when we talk about transparency, when we talk about disclosure, Donald Trump needs to release his taxes. He needs to explain his financial ties," he said.

"Just yesterday, we read in The New York Times, that his businesses owe millions of dollars to the Bank of China. Donald Trump talks all the time about a trade war with China. How can he really do that when millions of dollars of his own bottom line could be affected directly by the Chinese government?" he asked.

Mook, according to the Clinton Foundation, is saying that they don't want to become a distraction, that they want to go as far as they possibly can to make sure there's no possible conflict of interests.

"But again I just want to be fair here, Donald Trump is refusing to disclose deep financial ties that potentially reach into the Kremlin, which could influence his foreign policy decisions, but also where countries like China have leverage over him and could potentially distort his decision making there," he said.

"None of this is being disclosed. You and I are having this conversation because the foundation has chosen on the take unprecedented steps to disclose their donors from the last few years," Mook said.
Ankara: Turkey said today the Syrian border region must be "completely cleansed" from the Islamic State group, after a weekend suicide bombing in Gaziantep blamed on the jihadists left at least 54 dead.

In a sign of a key battle to come, Syrian rebel fighters have amassed on the Turkish side of the border in preparation for an offensive on the town of Jarablus, IS's last major transit point on the Syrian side of the border.

"Our border must be completely cleansed from Daesh," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in televised remarks, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"It is our most natural right to fight at home and abroad against such a terrorist organisation."

A child suicide bomber, aged "between 12 and 14", is suspected of having carried out the attack late Saturday in the southeastern city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border on the orders of the IS jihadist group, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Cavusoglu said Turkey has already taken an "active" role in the fight against IS, allowing coalition forces to use a key air base in the south of the country for strikes on the extremist group.

Quoting security sources, some Turkish media reported earlier that the Gaziantep attack could have been retaliation by IS for an operation carried out by Ankara-backed Syrian rebels against the jihadists in Jarablus, northern Syria.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, "hundreds of rebel fighters are inside Turkish territory, preparing to launch an offensive on Jarablus against IS".

"There is already daily artillery fire from Turkey on the edges of the town," said the Britain-based monitoring group's head, Rami Abdel Rahman.

The Dogan news agency reported that Turkish artillery fired 65 mortar shells at IS targets around Jarablus on Saturday.

A rebel source confirmed that opposition fighters were "preparing for a large offensive against Daesh in Jarablus which will be launched from Turkey".

"Yesterday we liberated Al-Rai, and tomorrow, Jarablus," said Ahmad Othman, a commander in the Sultan Murad rebel group.

Al-Rai was also used by IS as a smaller transit point along the border, but was it seized by rebels on Friday after changing hands several times.

Jarablus has been held by IS for more than three years.
Tehran: Iran's defence minister said Russia had been "inconsiderate" and was "showing off" by revealing its use of an Iranian airbase for bombing missions into Syria, in a televised interview.

The apparent criticism of a close ally came after Russia announced last week that it was using Iran's Hamedan base in western Iran for aerial strikes against insurgent groups in Syria.

"Naturally, the Russians are keen to show that they are a superpower and an influential country and that they are active in security issues in the region and the world," said defence minister Hossein Dehghan in an interview with Iran's Channel 2 television yesterday.

"There has been a kind of showing-off and inconsiderate attitude behind the announcement of this news," he said.

Iran and Russia are key backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but Tehran has remained relatively guarded about its precise involvement in the conflict.

The Islamic republic is also highly sensitive to any suggestion that it would allow foreign militaries to be based in its territory, which is outlawed under its constitution.

"We have collaborated and will continue to collaborate with Syria and Russia. Russia decided to bring in more planes and boost its speed and accuracy in operations," Dehghan said.

"Therefore, it needed to refuel in an area closer to the operation. That's why they used the Nojeh base (in Hamedan) but we have definitely not given them a military base."
Gaziantep: A suicide bomber as young as 12 killed at least 51 people at a wedding in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, pointing the finger at the Islamic State group.

Erdogan said Saturday's blast in Gaziantep near the Syria border "was the result of a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 who either detonated (the bomb) or others detonated it."

The explosion was the latest attack to rock the key Nato member in a horrific year that has seen strikes blamed on Kurdish and Islamist militants as well as a bloody 15 July botched coup.

The president said the Islamic State group was the "likely perpetrator" of the bomb attack, the deadliest in 2016, that targeted a celebration attended by many Kurds.

The remains of a suicide vest were found at the scene, the chief prosecutor's office said according to broadcaster CNN-Turk.

Gulser Ates, one of scores wounded in the attack, told Hurriyet the attack took place as the party was breaking up in the mainly Kurdish neighbourhood.

"We were sitting on chairs, having a chat with one of our neighbours.

"During the explosion, the neighbour died on top of me. I remember being underneath. If my neighbour hadn't fallen on top of me, I would have died," she said.

"The bride and groom's happiest day was poisoned."

The bride and groom  Besna and Nurettin Akdogan  were rushed to hospital but were not seriously wounded.

According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, the bride was released from hospital, saying as she left: "They turned our wedding into a bloodbath."

She later returned to hospital after repeatedly fainting, Anadolu reported.

Women and children wounded

Funerals for many of the victims took place on Sunday with an AFP photographer saying some covered relatives' coffins with the Kurdistan flag.

As hundreds waited to say their final goodbye, some voiced anger at what they perceived to be the government's failure to prevent the attack.

Shouts of "shame on you, Erdogan" rang out while others hurled water bottles at police who kept their distance from rowdy crowds for fear of violence.

One distraught mother wailed: "I lost my children, now I will never see them again."

Erdogan told reporters the death toll was now 51 with 94 hurt in the attack.

A total of 69 people remained in hospital, with 17 in critical condition.

Health Minister Recep Akdag said a large number of those injured were women and children.

'You will not succeed'

The bride and groom were reportedly from the mainly Kurdish region of Siirt further to the east and had themselves been uprooted due to the flare-up in violence with Kurdish militants.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said its members had been present at the wedding, also attended by many women and children.

Erdogan said such attacks aimed to sow division between Turkey's different groups including Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen and to "spread incitement along ethnic and religious lines".

Many jihadists see Kurds as one of their main enemies, with Kurdish militias playing a significant role in the fight against IS on the ground in Syria.

A defiant Erdogan said there was "no difference" between the group of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen  whom he blames for the failed coup bid  the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) "and Daesh (IS), the likely perpetrator of the attack in Gaziantep".

"Our country and our nation have again only one message to those who attack us  you will not succeed!" he said.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Gaziantep would show the same spirit it had shown in 1921, when it defeated French forces in Turkey's Independence War which led to the word Gazi (war hero) being added to its original name of Antep.

World leaders condemned the suicide bombing, with French President Francois Hollande denouncing the "vile" incident and German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling the attack "cowardly and underhand".

The United States also condemned the "heinous attack". "We stand by our ally and partner Turkey and reaffirm our commitment to defeating the common threat of terrorism," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

The pope urged the faithful to pray for the victims while UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for the perpetrators to be "quickly identified and brought to justice".

'More active' Syria role

A major city just 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of the Syrian border, Gaziantep has become a hub for Syrians fleeing the civil war in their country.

But as well as refugees and opposition activists, there have long been fears it was home to a significant jihadist presence.

IS suicide bombers have carried out several attacks in Istanbul this year, while Kurdish militants have hit targets in both Ankara and Istanbul.

On Thursday, 12 people were killed in three bombings blamed on the PKK, who Erdogan said had killed 70 members of the security forces in the last month alone.

The blast in Gaziantep came just hours after Yildirim said Ankara would play a "more active" role in efforts to solve the Syrian civil war.
In an unprecedented crackdown on the extremist tweets, Twitter has banned hundreds of thousands of terrorist accounts. The Times of India carried a report on its front-page stating that,

Twitter has suspended 2, 35,000 accounts promoting terrorism since February this year.

Many of these accounts are those of Islamic State supporters.

Daily suspensions are up 80 percent since last year.

Terrorism experts and researchers explore that the Islamic State (IS) terrorists use almost all social media platforms, practically Twitter, Facebook, Ask.fm, Instagram, Viper, Whatsapp, Tumblr, PalTalk, Kik, and JustPaste.it. But they have used Twitter most particularly to drive communications over other social media platforms. As a result, counter-terrorism agencies have often criticised Twitter for serving as a breeding ground for the terrorists. And this is precisely why Twitter is now applying an even more aggressive strategy to eliminate extremism on its platform. Apparently for being questioned on its efforts to combat terrorist activities on its network, Twitter has now announced its committal crackdown on the activities of the IS extremists by suspending accounts and deleting posts that promote violence and terrorism. It could no longer pussyfoot over the online combat against ISIS.

In an article in The Wall Street Journal, Christopher S Stewart and Mark Maremont write:

Islamic State controls a limited amount of territory in Iraq and Syria, but social media puts the terror group within reach of every Smartphone, laptop and desktop computer in the world. Its potent use of social media has far surpassed al Qaeda, which in past years released poor-quality videos to Al Jazeera and other media outlets to bolster calls for global jihad.

Several times in the past, Washington and third-party groups have lamented on Twitter for not doing enough to stop accounts linked to IS jihadists. This time, the criticism came as part of the radical Islamist preacher Anjem Choudarys trial in which Twitter, along with other social networking sites, was blamed for helping amplify the preachers hate speeches. A New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi, one of the best reporters covering terrorism, told in her recent interview that Twitter has been the main engine for IS fighters to further their nefarious ends and attract the new recruits. But at the same time, she explores the usefulness of Twitter to get inside the minds of IS jihadists.

Thus, Twitter is a key tool not only for the terrorists but also for the journalists to cover real issues of terrorism liked with the IS folks. But now when the Twitter Company has more aggressively shut down the jihadist accounts, one wonders if it will also hamper the journalists easy way to terror coverage. Perhaps, this is the reason why a request which was sent on 23 June, 2016, to YouTube for the removal of a video: Duties of the Kilafah by Anjem Choudary was refused. Another extremist video, The [Islamic] Caliphate will expand into Europe and US was not referred because YouTube considered it "journalistic" as it was uploaded on Memri TV, a Middle East research institute.

It is noteworthy that Anjem Choudary had over 32,000 followers on Twitter until 18 August, 2016 when Twitter finally removed the account of the hate preacher who supported IS. He used to post ten tweets a day in his attempt to radicalise more than 32,000 followers. But the removal of his Twitter account came after a year of repeated requests from the UK government authorities which charged Choudary for spreading messages of terror, as a report in Daily Mail tells us.

According to The Independent, last year in August and in March 2016, a British officer argued that the preachers account showed support for so-called Islamic State contrary to section 12 Terrorism Act 2000 and breached Twitter rules on threatening or promoting terrorism. He said it in the British court. At first, Twitter refused to delete the radical preacher's extremist posts. It took the company a year to crack down on the account. Therefore, the company is now facing an emerging criticism of many of its anti-IS users. They are questioning as to why Twitter which quickly responds to copyright issues, did not launch an immediate action on the jihadist preachers offensive material despite repeated requests from UK authorities. Even after an oath of allegiance to the IS surfaced online with the preacher's name on it, Twitter remained indifferent to his account. By contrast, Twitter took only a few minutes to tackle potential copyright infringement of Olympics coverage, critics say.

An undeniable reason why Twitter had to pussyfoot over the committal crackdown on the accounts of its pro-IS users is the grave thereat they posed to Twitter employees. In the middle of last year, when Twitter suspended 125,000 pro-IS accounts for promoting terrorist posts, IS threatened the companys co-founder Jack Dorsey as well as other employees with death. Like Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has also received clear threats from the group of hackers working for IS, known as 'The Sons of Caliphate Army'. It posted a video showing photos of Mark Zuckerberg engulfed in flames and as being the target for bullets. This 25-minute video titled, Flames of the Supporters, is has also been authenticated by Storyful, a startup that focuses on verifying news coming from the social web. In 2015, the group issued a clear warning that, Jack Dorsey and Twitter employees have become a target for the soldiers of the Caliphate and supporters scattered among your midst!, as reported in The Guardian.

According to this report, the IS uploaded a post in Arabic to the image-sharing site JustPaste.it in which it aggressively warned Twitter: your virtual war on us will cause a real war on you. It continued: You started this failed war We told you from the beginning its not your war, but you didnt get it and kept closing our accounts on Twitter, but we always come back. But when our lions come and take your breath, you will never come back to life. It cannot be denied that the pro-IS online users, particularly on Twitter, have always defied the companys blocking by opening their new accounts more quickly than they were deleted. In fact, the IS is now more actively engaged in an online onslaught on Twitter. It continues to tweet radical Islamism and violent jihadism promising a paradise for its supporters and sympathisers, and at the same time, threatening those who block their path of the digital jihad with an atrocious death.

The author is a scholar of Comparative Religion, Classical Arabic and Islamic sciences, cultural analyst and researcher in Media and Communication Studies. Write to him at grdehlavi@gmail.com
A sought-after visa that offers a speedy path to US citizenship is temporarily closed to Chinese and Indian nationals. The US State Department announced it would stop processing EB-1 applications from Indian and Chinese nationals until later in October.

Immigration lawyers explained that the EB-1 visa is available to three categories of candidates: people with extraordinary abilities in arts, science and business; researchers and professors; and multinational business executives and managers.

EB-1 visas are typically limited to 40,135 for this fiscal year, and no more than 7 percent can go to immigrants from any one country. Currently, we have a problem because there are too many Indian and Chinese trying to get their hands on the EB-1, exhausting the limit. The last time this happened was back in 2007.

Why do we continue to artificially limit this program?" asked immigration lawyer David Parker. "It defies logic that we are turning away extraordinary and outstanding artists, scientists and business people from India and China," he added.

The EB-1 visa typically results in a green card in less than a year  one of the quickest pathways to receive one. And unlike many visas, some kinds of EB-1 visas don't require applicants to be sponsored by employers. This is a godsend as it gives talented artists and brilliant scientists frustrated with the more traditional path to US citizenship, like the H-1B visa, a speedy alternative.

The H-1B is one of the most heavily used visas by Indian techies and professionals. Demand far exceeds the annual allotment. The H-1B requires workers to be sponsored by an employer and leaves applicants at the whim of lotteries. This year demand for H-1B visas surpassed the entire year's allocation within five days and the US government ultimately awarded H-1Bs through a computer generated random lottery.

"A lot of people saw the EB-1 as the light at the end of the tunnel," Shah Peerally, who heads up an immigration law firm in Newark, California, told CNN.

Indian violinist Anita Krishnan who has played with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra said she was deeply disappointed as she was seeking out the EB-1 visa for "extraordinary ability".

"It is difficult for a musician to find a conventional employer to sponsor a H-1B visa so I was banking on the EB-1 to work in America," said Anita Krishnan.

"I came here as a student and need to work to pay back my college loans," she added. "This is a setback."

The limit resets when the government's fiscal year begins on 1 October. But Krishnan says she fears applicants from China and India will hit the ceiling again.
Washington: Nearly four in ten voters believe that the US media was biased for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US election, a new poll said.

According to the Morning Consult poll released on Friday, 38 percent US voters say that news coverage favoured Clinton, while only 12 percent believe that same was true for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Xinhua news agency reported.

The voters voiced dissatisfaction with the fairness of the media, with 33 per cent saying that the media's fairness to each candidate was "poor".

According to the poll, 22 per cent voters believe the media coverage of each candidate was "only fair", and those who describe the media coverage as either "excellent" or "good" account for 35 per cent in total.

The poll came as Trump doubled down on his accusation against "the crooked media".

"I am not running against Crooked Hillary. I am running against the crooked media," Trump said during a rally on 13 August.

Though benefitting heavily from the media's wall-to-wall coverage of his campaign during the nomination contests, relations between Trump and the media deteriorated in the past weeks as the billionaire developer got embroiled in one political firestorm after another.

The media targeted Trump during the Democratic National Convention after he derisively answered criticism from Khizr Khan, the father of a US Muslim soldier killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq.

Khan blasted Trump for his divisive remarks and proposal to temporary ban Muslims entering the country.

On 9 August, Trump caused another round of media frenzy after suggesting that supporters of gun rights could take action against Clinton if she won the election.

As he was still scrambling to tackle the backlash after his gun rights comments, Trump on 10 August handed the US media new prime fodder after declaring that US President Barack Obama "is the founder of the Islamic State".

Trump eventually backtracked on his accusation, blaming the media for missing his sarcasm.
On 17 August, amid sinking poll numbers Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announced a shake-up in his senior campaign staff and appointed right-wing news executive Stephen Bannon as campaign CEO and promoted pollster Kellyanne Conway to campaign manager. It may be recalled that the move to replace Republican Party's presidential nominee's previous chairman Paul Manafort  who had been pushing Trump to stick to a teleprompter-mandated script rather than flying off the handle  was seen as a step down or demotion of sorts for Manafort.

Trump hired Bannon, head of Breitbart News, to head his campaign with an eye on playing up his populist message  and to double down on his raucous rallies. Interestingly, Bannon's Breitbart News website is virulently anti-Hillary Clinton and his appointment was seen as Trump's way of thumbing his nose at Republican leaders who have been urging him to tone down the shoot-from-the-hip style of speech he used effectively in the primaries. A couple of days after Bannon's appointment, Trump, who had vowed to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants if elected president, appeared to undergo a shift as the struggling Republican candidate reached out to minorities alienated by his harsh rhetoric. However, we are not too sure how long will his campaign CEO, an extreme right-winger, be able to keep up his end of the deal.

Breitbart News and its high-pitched rhetoric for same-race baiting diatribes when Bannon was its editor makes it hard to understand how he will play down Trump's virulent image as an anti-immigrant or a "racist" person, now that he is Trump's campaign CEO. In the same vein, Breitbart News has been accused of pushing anti-gay bigotry and has even given a mouthpiece to anti-LGBTQ hate group leaders like Austin Ruse, whose faction the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), has been labeled a hate group.

What brings us to question the hilarity of Bannon's appointment, are his views on immigrants. Bannon is a pernicious opponent of H-1B visa  a programme that brings thousands of Indian skilled workers to the US. In an interview with Trump in November 2015, Bannon lamented that two thirds of Silicon Valley CEOs were Asians. Breitbart News has been a vocal supporter of anti-immigrant policies and has even run campaigns against the H-1B visa programme.

The interview, which was aired in Novemnber 2015, discusses the case of Snapdeal founder Kunal Bahl. Citing Bahl's instance, Trump refers to him as "a man who went to Harvard" (Bahl went to Wharton Business School) and who could not stay in the US after his studies were over because his H-1B visa was turned down. Asserting that talented people must not leave the country, Trump says that "this successful company with thousands and thousands of employees" could have been generated jobs in the US. "It is not good. We have to do something about it. People are coming in and they are taking jobs. They are getting paid less money."

Agreeing with Trump, Bannon had then said that American technology companies were letting go highly trained IT workers, and even forcing them to train their foreign replacements brought in through the H-1B visa programme. The interview is just a peg  a peg for something the Trump camp represents.

Donald Trump's new campaign CEO is a flame-thrower in cargo shorts, Associated Press report said. Bannon's career path has been an improbable journey from Goldman Sachs insider to conservative filmmaker to media provocateur to campaign chieftain. His installation at the top of the Trump campaign offers fresh evidence that the GOP nominee has no intention of reining in his brash, outsider's style or cozying up to the GOP establishment despite his campaign's recent struggles.

"There has been no bigger cheerleader in the media for (Trump) than Breitbart News, and he just hired his biggest cheerleader to continue massaging him," said Ben Shapiro, a former Breitbart News editor told AP. Shapiro resigned in March, saying Breitbart had shaped the website into "Trump's personal Pravda" and had failed to defend one its own reporters who said she'd been roughed up by Trump's then-campaign manager.

Shapiro, in fact said, "But there will be no screaming matches between Steve and Trump. Steve knows where his bread is buttered."

Bannon "may focus Trump, because he's good at working with talent," Shapiro said Wednesday. "He may also just confirm to Trump that he ought to double down on being Trump."

Shapiro described Bannon's skill set as that of a knife fighter  one with a "vicious, unstable quality." "There are very few people who have ever worked with Steve Bannon who have escaped without a Steve Bannon thoroughly blue tirade," Shapiro said.

Keith Appell, a political consultant whom Bannon hired to promote a movie he'd made about Sarah Palin, describes Bannon as a hard-driving perfectionist with both strong organisational skills and a film-maker's gift for storytelling.

Unafraid to play favorites, Breitbart early last year prominently featured positive stories about Ted Cruz, including an exclusive behind-the-scenes photo shoot with his family the night before the Texas senator announced his presidential run. As Trump gained steam later in the year, the media site began pumping out pro-Trump stories.

Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, said the website has figured out how to push political story angles that animate "an audience of a particular orientation," in this case an angry subset of Republicans that predates the tea party movement and now overlaps with Trump's base.

"It's almost a throwback to an era when media outlets and political organisations were closely aligned," Rosenstiel said. He said it's an open question whether Trump, in turning to Bannon, can use the internet "as an animating structure" for his campaign without embracing more traditional methods involving party structure, get-out-the-vote efforts and a political ground game.

"There's a larger question here," Rosenstiel said. "Can you use the internet to win a general election?"

"He gets the need to personalise and humanise what Trump wants to do," Appell said.

The Breitbart News website's founder, the late Andrew Breitbart, once admiringly described Bannon as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek profile of Bannon. Riefenstahl, for the uninitiated, was a filmmaker vilified after World War II for her propaganda pieces about Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

With inputs from agencies
Birmingham, Alabama -- HP Hotels, a full-service third-party hotel management company, announced that it has been awarded the management contract for the 237-room DoubleTree hotel in Columbia, South Carolina. The property is owned by TT&C Hotel Group, LLC. Charles Oswald, President and Chief Operating Officer, made the announcement.

This modern hotel is adjacent to Interstate 20 and is close to the State Capitol and the University of South Carolina. All of its rooms offer sophisticated decor and custom-designed beds, plus flat-screen TVs and free Wi-Fi. Suites add separate living areas. Also, with nearly 23,000 sq. ft. of flexible event space the hotel is one of the largest event venues in Columbia.

"We will leverage the strengths of the property to capitalize on the built-in demand generators of the State Capital and the University of South Carolina to make this hotel a true market leader for tourists and guests," said Oswald. "One of those distinguishing factors is the significant amount of meeting space we can offer. This advantage makes DoubleTree the hotel of choice for those planning gatherings and events."

About HP Hotels

HP Hotels is a third-party management group with a portfolio of more than 25 hotels in 8 states comprised of major brands like Hilton, Marriott, InterContinental and Choice, as well as independent properties, among full service, boutique, lifestyle and upscale, select service properties. With significant expertise in operations, asset management and profitability, HP has earned preferred hotel management company status with name brand hotel chains while ranking among the Top 50 largest Hotel Management Companies in the United States.

Paul Kesman

248-321-2035

HP Hotels, Inc.
MADISON  High electric rates in Wisconsin could spark some of the states big manufacturers to move or expand elsewhere, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission is being warned.

Consumers should be able to choose their power provider rather than being restricted to the current utility monopolies, the state regulatory panel was told, in a request to revive the long-dormant issue of electric choice in Wisconsin.

The comments are among 30 submitted in response to the Strategic Energy Assessment 2022 (SEA), a 70-page report projecting Wisconsins energy needs and expectations over the next six years, approved by the PSC in late July.

Wisconsins average electric rates are highest among eight Midwest states for the first time since 2006, according to the SEA, at 10.97 cents per kilowatt-hour. The other states average rates range from 8.65 cents in Iowa to 10.87 cents in Michigan. The U.S. average is 11.02 cents per kilowatt-hour, the report says.

For industrial customers, rates are also highest in Wisconsin at 7.81 cents per kilowatt-hour compared with those in other Midwest states, ranging from 6.06 cents to 7.25 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Charter Steel, in written comments to the PSC, said other than scrap metal, whose price changes can be passed along to customers, electricity is its highest expense, exceeding labor costs at its Saukville steel melting operations where 700 people are employed.

Because a commodity business like steel is extremely competitive, it is vital that Charter Steels key input costs be competitive. This is no longer the case for electricity, Charter said.

The Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group, representing more than 30 of the states largest companies, and the Wisconsin Paper Council submitted a joint, 18-page statement contending that electricity is not available to industries at reasonable prices in Wisconsin compared to other states.

It is particularly troubling to note in a state whose economy is built on manufacturing that in 2015, not only did Wisconsin have the highest average industrial rate when compared to surrounding states, the Midwest and U.S. averages respectively, but the growth rate from 2001 to 2015 was the highest as well, the groups said.

This trend is of grave concern and results in more industrial load being at risk of expanding or relocating in states with greater market access and/or much lower rates, the statement said.

Charter Steel could be one of those businesses planning to grow outside the state.

Bob Venable, president and chief operating officer of Charter Manufacturing, Charter Steels parent company, said We Energies, the Milwaukee utility company that provides power to the Saukville steel mill, charges 25 percent more than the average regional and national industrial rates. And the difference is significantly larger when compared with our rates in Illinois and Ohio, where Charter also has operations, he said.

We are not considering moving  we have a very large investment in our Wisconsin operations and are committed to Wisconsin. That said, the non-competitive cost of electricity in the We Energies service territory is a key reason we are looking to expand outside of Wisconsin for future growth projects, Venable said, in an email exchange with the State Journal.

In its comments to the PSC, Charter said most of the blame for We Energies high rates was its massive level of excess electric generating capacity created when it added two units to the coal-fired Oak Creek power plant in 2010 and 2011, adding 1,230 megawatts of power, as the main element of its Power the Future plan.

We Energies spokesman Brian Manthey said many industries supported Power the Future because it made the states electric grid more reliable.

As youll recall, the risk of blackouts because of power deficiencies was all too real for all of our customers a number of years ago. In response, we launched Power the Future to make sure we could keep businesses open and the lights on, Manthey said.

Manthey said We Energies has worked closely with its industrial customers to help lower their energy costs. That includes getting PSC approval for large companies to pay wholesale market prices for power tied to factory and production expansions.

Manthey said We Energies has been ahead in adding pollution controls to its coal-fired power plants, an expense that other states will soon have to bear.

The Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group and the Wisconsin Paper Council point the finger at high transmission costs from MISO and ATC. MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, governs the movement of electricity across parts of 15 states and the Canadian province of Manitoba while ATC, American Transmission Co., operates transmission lines in much of Wisconsin and parts of Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan.

The two lobbying groups suggest competitive bidding for transmission projects; sale of excess generation capacity; and more innovative rate options.

Two other interest groups from outside Wisconsin called on the PSC to start a thorough investigation into the possibility of opening the states electricity market to retail choice.

Competitive electricity retail choice is operating fully and well in 13 states and the District of Columbia, accounting for one-third of all electricity consumption in the United States, said the Illinois Energy Professionals Association, in its written comments to the PSC.

When Illinois adopted customer choice in 1997, its average industrial price was 42.2 percent higher than Wisconsins; by 2015, Wisconsins average industrial cost was 22.4 percent higher than in Illinois, the association said. This represents a massive, policy-driven change, the group contended.

Meanwhile, the Retail Energy Supply Association said consumers can access more personalized arrangements through retail competition that could let them control their energy costs or support renewables.

RESA maintains that competition in electricity markets fosters innovation, clean energy solutions, jobs and competitive rates, and enables customers to shop for innovative energy management solutions and helps lower costs and preserve jobs, the Hummelstown, Pennsylvania organization said, in its comments.

In approving the Strategic Energy Assessment, the three-member PSC did not comment on the prospect of reopening a discussion of electric deregulation. The issue has not come to the forefront here for years. The PSC opened a docket on deregulation in 1994 and closed it in 2000.

Opponents still say it would not lower the cost of power in Wisconsin.

Deregulation is a very minor element in electric rates and mainly benefits the very largest commercial users, not the average small business or residential user, said Nathan Franklin, government relations spokesman for Dairyland Power Cooperative, La Crosse.

The PSC has addressed deregulation in the past and found it wasnt right for Wisconsin then, and it isnt right for Wisconsin now, said Franklin, chair of the Customers First! Coalition, formed in the 1990s to fight the issue. The organization represents Madison Gas & Electric, municipal utilities, small business, environmental and low-income groups.

Alliant Energy Corp., Madison, says its rates are similar to those in Illinois, below the Wisconsin average.

Wisconsin and much of the Midwest already have price competition at the wholesale level, said Alliant spokeswoman Annemarie Newman. She said price is the main factor MISO considers when it decides which power supplies to tap first.

That is the appropriate place to harness the forces of competition, Newman said.

Electric competition is a really tough issue, said Tyler Huebner, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a Madison renewable power advocacy group. He said from a practical perspective, he doesnt see the need to revisit the issue.

Huebner said the problem with retail choice is that if some customers choose to switch away from a Wisconsin utility company, the remaining customers will face higher charges. Its likely that the cost the utility has incurred wont change. So theyre going to spread those costs over fewer customers, he said.

If deregulation were to be suggested by the PSC, it would require approval from the state Legislature, PSC spokeswoman Elise Nelson said.

The pros and cons of retail choice are speculative at best given the unique nature of each states utilities, customers, load, etc. A number of states have suspended or rescinded so-called retail choice and moved back to the traditional regulatory model, Nelson said.

The PSC conducts a Strategic Energy Assessment every two years.

The most recent report says the state should have enough power supply to meet its needs, with 14.2 percent to 17.5 percent more generation than the projected peak electricity demand, through 2022.
GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here.
The leaders of Italy, France and Germany headed yesterday to one of the birthplaces of European unity in a symbolic bid to relaunch the European project following Britains decision to leave the EU.

Spurring economic growth, bolstering security and creating new options for European youth are among the topics expected to be discussed by Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Holland.

Renzi greeted Hollande and Merkel at Naples military airport, and the three were then heading by helicopter to the island of Ventotene to pay their respects at the tomb of Altiero Spinelli, considered one of the founding fathers of European unity.

Spinelli, along with another anti-fascist confined to Ventotene in the 1940s, co-wrote the Ventotene Manifesto calling for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war.

The document is considered the inspiration for European federalism.

Two symbols in one: idealistic values and concrete commitment, Renzi wrote yesterday of Ventotene and the Garibaldi in his weekly newsletter. We want that the Europe after Brexit  the Europe hit in its heart by terrorism  will relaunch the powerful ideals of unity and peace, freedom and dreams, dialogue and identity.

Italy has a lot to gain from a reinvigorated EU as it copes with flat GDP, the migrant crisis and political uncertainties over a constitutional referendum this fall on which Renzi has staked his governments survival.

Renzi has called Ventotene the cradle of Europe and is keen to highlight its historic role in the founding of the EU as Italy seeks even greater integration, particularly on the security front to help it cope with migrants, and flexibility from Brussels as it tries to rein in its record public debt.

Yesterdays mini-summit will now serve as a warmup for an EU-wide summit in Bratislava in September designed to chart the EUs post-Brexit way forward. It follows an initial three-way huddle by Renzi, Merkel and Holland in Berlin in the days immediately following the June 23 British referendum.

There, the three leaders pledged their commitment to European unity and plotted a common proposal to relaunch the European project focusing on three key areas: improving security, boosting economic growth and strengthening options and programs for young people.

This summit will also give Renzi a chance to hash out options as Italy copes with slow growth and other financial worries, especially at its banks which are struggling under some 360 billion euros (USD408 billion) in bad loans.

According to recent Eurostat figures, growth was flat in Italy in the second quarter, compared with 0.4 percent growth in the EU. Unemployment was 11.6 percent in June, well above the EU average of 8.6 percent. Youth unemployment was even worse: 36.5 percent in Italy, exceeded in the EU only by Spain, and nearly twice as high as the EU average of 18.5 percent.

Renzi, however, has a bigger concern on the horizon, a gamble that he brought on himself and is worrying Europe as it could affect Italys political stability and strengthen the euroskeptic, populist 5-Star Movement.

He has called a referendum for this fall proposing a host of changes to the constitution, including reducing the power of the Senate and giving the central government control of some policy areas now in the hands of regions. Renzi has suggested he would resign if it fails, an outcome that Italys business lobby Confindustria has warned would create political chaos and lead Italy back into recession.

In an interview this weekend with La Repubblica, Renata Colorni, whose father helped spread the Ventotene Manifesto through Italys resistance movement and whose mother married Spinelli, said she had little hope that todays Europe could ever meet the Ventotene founders original ideals.

Honestly, today I dont see first-rate politicians, I only see statesmen who move through the European scene worried about losing the next national elections, she was quoted as saying. Whats missing is the will to risk it all for an ideal.

Charting a course is difficult until Britain formally begins the exit process, probably next year, and lays out proposals for its future relationship with the EU. Paolo Santalucia, Nicole Winfield, Ventotene, AP/MDT
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has appeared on state television with western hostages, provoking a storm of outrage.

Saddam told the group of more than a dozen mainly British people they had been detained to prevent war and said Iraq wanted to see that they were safe.

They are among hundreds of foreigners being held in Iraq since its invasion of Kuwait at the beginning of August.

However, the Iraqi leader told them they were not being held as human shields saying Iraq was in a position to destroy any attacker.

Saddam singled out one young British boy  named only as Stuart  and ruffled the childs hair.

Speaking through an interpreter, he asked Stuart if he was getting his milk.

The Iraqi leader told the group: We hope your presence as guests here will not be for too long.

Your presence here, and in other places, is meant to prevent the scourge of war.

They would become heroes of peace, Saddam added.

The detainees, who looked strained and nervous, were promised tuition for their children and given permission to write to their families.

At the end of the 30-minute taped appearance, the Iraqi leader posed for photographs with the hostages before shaking each one by the hand.

A spokesman for the Gulf Support Group, set up by relatives of stranded Britons, said the interview made all of us feel sick.

The British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, also criticised the broadcast.

Mr Hurd said: I think the manipulation of children in that sort of way is contemptible.

The TV appearance has also been condemned by the US.

Courtesy BBC News

In context

Saddam made a second TV appearance with the hostages.

In early September the women and children, including five-year old Stuart Lockwood, were allowed to fly home.

The men were not allowed to leave until early December.

Stuart Lockwood returned with his family to Worcester, central England but suffered a personal loss in 2001 when his father, Derek, died of a heart attack.

The refusal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait led to the UN-backed Operation Desert Storm in January 1991.

It would end in February with the defeat of the Iraqis and their subsequent forced departure from Kuwait.

On 13 December 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured by American forces at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near Tikrit in a hole in Operation Red Dawn.

On 5 November 2006, Saddam Hussein was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. Saddams half brother, Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraqs Revolutionary Court in 1982, were convicted of similar charges. The verdict and sentencing were both appealed, but subsequently affirmed by Iraqs Supreme Court of Appeals.

On 30 December 2006, Saddam was hanged.
The European Union will need a common army to bolster its security over the long term after the U.K. follows through on its decision to exit the bloc, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said.

The 28-nation trading pact will need to muster a joint military to face intensifying threats including terrorism, a newly aggressive Russia and the unprecedented influx of refugees from the Middle East and beyond, Sobotka told a gathering of Czech diplomats in Prague Monday. A common EU army shouldnt compete with NATO but should rather make the EU a more actionable and reliable partner, he said.

Sobotka joins a number of European officials who, following terrorist attacks in Paris and the U.K.s Brexit vote, have called for greater military integration. The U.K. has in the past preferred to coordinate all military action through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but its departure from the EU may pave the way for Germany and France, who support closer cooperation, to change the approach to security in the bloc. Sobotka said leaders may discuss a joint army at a September meeting of EU leaders.

Im convinced that we cant do without a common European army in the long term, he said. I hope that the autumn European summit will bring concrete proposals and pledges.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in March 2015 he supported the creation of a European army to show Russia the EUs members are determined to defend their values. In May, the EUs foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, was reported to have prepared a defense document that included creating common defense structures via provisions laid out in the blocs 2009 Lisbon Treaty, the Times reported. The Commission said in June that there were no plans to propose an EU army. Bloomberg
Used tractor sales bad for Deere as farmers pinch pennies

Deep in the heart of the U.S. grain belt, farm-equipment auctions are attracting bidders from as far away as South Africa as the agriculture rout makes used machinery more attractive.

As farmers move away from buying new tractors and combines, it could mean more pain for Deere & Co., the worlds biggest agricultural equipment manufacturer, which is already struggling through an industrywide glut. To understand why, look no further than Matt Maring, owner of an eponymous Kenyon, Minnesota-based auction operation.

Buyers are driving more than 400 miles to attend his auctions and online simulcasts are drawing participants from around the globe, boosting the bidding field, said Maring, whos been an auctioneer for 36 years. Farmers are spending $50,000 on replacement tractors that would otherwise cost more than $100,000 new from Deere, he said.

As a global grain glut is poised to reduce U.S. farmer incomes for a third straight year, growers are tightening their pocket books and increasingly turning to used machinery to trim spending. Adding to the picture, credit conditions have eroded and made it tougher to get a loan for new equipment. For Moline, Ill.-based Deere, farmers turning away from its dealerships could further pressure profits and underscores why Moodys Investors Service this week downgraded its outlook on the companys credit rating to negative from stable.

This is much worse than expected, Eli Lustgarten, an analyst at Longbow Research in Independence, Ohio, said by telephone. The crops are so much bigger, making farmers less willing to spend, he said.

Deeres third-quarter adjusted profit is expected to drop 38 percent from a year earlier to 94 cents a share, the average of 19 estimates in a Bloomberg survey showed. The company is scheduled to report on Friday before the start of trading in New York. A Deere spokesman declined to comment on the earnings outlook, citing its quiet period ahead of the report.

The companys shares have fallen 18 percent over the past 12 months, compared with an 8.6 percent advance in the Standard and Poors 500 Industrials Index. Even as Deere has shed jobs and reduced output, the prolonged slump in commodity prices has crimped demand and limited the impact of cost savings. Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Deeres second-biggest shareholder, reported a reduced stake in the company in a filing this week.

While inventories of farm tractors have declined since reaching a 16-year high in April, stockpiles are still at record seasonal highs, data from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers show. As farmers buy more used equipment, the glut is unlikely to be wiped out any time soon.

Its like a bus service, Maring said. If business is slow, but you need to get a new bus, youre going to go out and buy a well-cared-for used one.

Analysts are expecting that Deeres full-year net income will get dragged down to $1.23 billion, compared with the $1.2 billion the company forecast in May when it slashed guidance. That would be the lowest since 2009. Last month, it said it was laying off 120 workers at an Illinois plant because of slow sales.

Meanwhile, machinery auctions are on the rise, said Greg Peterson, the founder of MachineryPete.com, a website that monitors prices of farm equipment at auctions. Hes seen a 20 percent jump in the past year for search traffic for low-horsepower machinery on his website.

At an auction last week in Hammond, Illinois, it took about 17 minutes for a large tractor in excellent condition to sell, when it should take about three minutes in a healthy market, Peterson said. The longer auction time reflects the increased number of bidders and an aversion to escalating prices.

Peterson said even dealers are showing up at auctions to get good deals and resale at a profit. For Deere, it means a prolonged rough market to navigate, according to Karen Ubelhart, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence in New York.

People are comfortable that its bad and that it will take a while to recover, Ubelhart said. Its not great, but theyre not bleeding. Its just not getting better.
TWIN FALLS  Corey King doesnt hesitate when asked why he loves to rock climb.

The movement. The dance. The community.

These three pillars are the epitome of a passion ignited in King almost 20 years ago on a Boy Scout trip where he rock climbed for the very first time.

King was born and raised in Twin Falls and has had many opportunities to grow his love for the sport. But his biggest contributions come from how hes managed to engage the community with an activity he couldnt see his life without, by creating Dierkes BoulderFest and the Southern Idaho Climbers Coalition.

I wanted to do something for my hometown, King said. Growing up climbing here, the climbers have always been very antisocial, and I wanted to bring an event to Twin Falls that would help network this community.

The first Dierkes BoulderFest was held in 2011. The inspiration for the event came from two places: the city of Rexburg and Adventure Outfitters, a now-closed store in Twin Falls.

While going to Brigham Young University-Idaho in Rexburg, King had the idea to hold some small events for climbers at a local gym. They all went great, and after that success, King knew he had to bring something similar to his hometown.

Some time passed, but the seed was planted.

A company in Twin Falls called Adventure Outfitters started an event called Clean-A-Crag, which quickly became a favorite for King. It served as a yearly clean up of the Dierkes Lake climbing area, but when the store closed its doors several years ago, the event also came to an end.

King knew what he had to do.

He wanted to carry on that legacy, but also expand on it.

Dierkes BoulderFest, which he and his wife, Jentri, work countless hours on each year, has become a fun-filled event for climbers of all skill levels.

It starts in the morning with a bouldering competition, followed by a clean-up of the Dierkes Lake north shore and fishing areas, and it ends with a party and bouldering gear giveaway.

Anybody can win based on how its designed. The difficulty of each route  its all bouldering, said King. The climbs are given point values based on difficulty, and then their total tally that they can climb within four hours.

This year, the event will be Oct. 8, and is already promising to be bigger and better than previous years. King has found companies that donate time and products to help even the most inexperienced climber feel like a pro for a day.

But all this work he does for BoulderFest wouldnt be possible if the positive relationship that the climbing community has with Dierkes wasnt preserved.

Thats where Kings work with the Southern Idaho Climbing Coalition comes into the picture.

King is a huge advocate of the mission for a national climbing organization called The Access Fund, a nonprofit organization all about supporting access to local climbing areas.

They work with local climbing organizations to help support access to our areas, King said. So I wanted to get a coalition going to help locally to resolve some small access issues that were trying to work with.

Within Twin Falls, Dierkes Lake is a very popular site for climbers to go, and he hopes that through his work with SICC and BoulderFest, they can continue a positive relationship with Dierkes Lake for many years to come.

This mindset is what Tim Hamilton, longtime friend of King, thinks makes him such a wonderful person.

Thats what makes Corey unique. He is a community member, hes just an average, everyday guy that does this because hes passionate about it, Hamilton said. He doesnt make anything from it, he doesnt gain anything from it, except for this big sense of accomplishment that he did something wonderful for his community.

When King isnt working to preserve the climbing treasures available to the Twin Falls community, he works as a Finish Manager at Premiere Woodworking and spending time with his wife and two kids.

Their favorite activity to do together?  Rock climbing.

In fact, Kings 2-year-old daughter recently went on her first rock climbing adventure. Its a passion King hopes will continue throughout their lives.

So why does King love rock climbing so much? It might be the movement, the dance and the community, but it might be deeper than that.

It might be because hes found a true bond with his family and the friends hes made while climbing. Or, it might be that in the effort to preserve the sport he loves, hes found that the true happiness is in giving back to his community.

But if you ask his friends, the reason he loves rock climbing doesnt matter. What does matter is his hard working spirit, and his unwavering passion to a sport and the community that loves it too.

I think hes someone we can learn to be more like. If you have a passion, it doesnt matter where you come from, if its a passion, go for it, Hamilton said. If somebody takes that much time and effort into a small section of (the community), it might inspire somebody to do something as well.
Jerome County

Felony Sentencings

Jacob L. Marshall, battery- aggravated  guilty, officer- flee or attempt to elude a police officer in a motor vehicle, theft by receiving, possession or disposing of stolen property, driving- operating vehicle without owners consent, property- malicious injury to property, failure to purchase a drivers license, 5 years in prison determinate, 5 years indeterminate, credit for 365 days served, $1,145.50 fine.
2:15 .m. UPDATE: Aaliah has been found safe in Gooding, the sheriff's office said in a statement.

WENDELL  The Gooding County Sheriffs Office is seeking the publics help to find a 14-year-old Wendell girl missing since Friday who likely ran away.

Aaliah Lilliana Quiroz was last seen by her mother Friday in Wendell, and she sent her mother a Facebook message Saturday, Gooding County Sheriffs Det. Jocelyne Nunnally said. But since that time, the girls family has not seen or heard from her.

Aaliah is described as 5 foot 1 inch and 110 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes.

She is likely a runaway, the detective said, and probably not in imminent danger, but she didnt take clothes or belongings as if she was planned to be away long.

As far as I know, shes probably gone because she wants to be, Nunnally said.

But two days after her last contact with family, investigators still havent been able to contact any of Aaliahs friends or determine where she might be. The teen was supposed to start school Monday but didnt show up, and investigators are asking her friends or anyone else with information about her whereabouts to come forward with whatever information they have.
Twin Falls Senior Citizen Center

530 Shoshone St. W., Twin Falls. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $5, seniors 60 and older; $6, non-seniors; $3, children 9 and younger. Other items: cinnamon roll, $2; coffee 50 cents; soup to go, $3; lunch to go, $5.50. For lunch take-out, 11 a.m. to noon daily: 208-734-5084.

Today: Chicken enchilada casserole

Tuesday: Beef pot pie

Wednesday: Pork loin

Thursday: Fried fish fillet

Friday: Spaghetti with meat sauce

Today: Quilting, 9 a.m.

Fit and Fall Proof exercise, 10:30 a.m., free

Encompass Health Care blood pressure checks, 11:30 a.m.

Mega Monday game, 11:45 a.m.

Bridge, 1 p.m.

TOPS meeting, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday: Tai Chi exercise class, 9 a.m., free

Ticket Tuesday, 11:45 a.m.

Hand and foot canasta, 1 p.m.

Art classes, 3:30 and 6:30 p.m.

Pinochle, 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday: Cinnamon roll sales, 7:30 a.m.

Quilting, 9 a.m.

Fit and Fall Proof, 10:30 a.m., free

Music by Tom Lancaster and Beryl Bevercomb, 11:30 a.m.

City of Twin Falls presentation on Senior Citizens Advisory Commission, 11:45 a.m.

Bridge, 1 p.m.

Laughter Therapy, 5:30 p.m.

Thursday: Tai Chi, 9 a.m., free

Organ music by Pat Blessin, 11:30 a.m.

Thunder Thursday game, 11:50 a.m.

Visually Impaired Support Group meeting, 12:45 p.m.; information: Verna Motes, 208-732-0627

Pinochle, 1 p.m.

Art classes, 3:30 and 6:30 p.m.

Ladies AA, 6 p.m.

Friday: Quilting, 9 a.m.

Fit and Fall Proof, 10:30 a.m., free

Bingo, 11:45 a.m.

Art class, 1:30 p.m.

Summertime community dance with Mary Baldwin and friends, 7 to 10 p.m.; $5 per person

Saturday: Sourdough pancake fundraising breakfast; 8 to 10 a.m.; $7 per person

****

West End Senior Citizens Inc.

1010 Main St., Buhl. Lunch at noon, suggested donation: $5, seniors, 60 and older; $7, non-seniors; $7 for take-out dinners; and $4, children 10 and younger. Sunday buffet at 1 p.m.: $5, seniors, 60 and older; $7, non-seniors; $4, children 10 and younger. Bus for lunch pickup: 208-543-4577 by 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.

Today: Chicken noodle soup, egg sandwich

Tuesday: Bacon-swiss-mushroom burger

Wednesday: Cooks choice

Thursday: Polish sausage and sauerkraut

Sunday: Roast beef

Today: SilverSneakers exercise program, 10:30 a.m.

Pinochle, 7 p.m.

Wednesday: SilverSneakers, 10:30 a.m.

Bingo, early bird starts at 6:45 p.m., doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Spudnuts

****

Filer Senior Haven

222 Main St., Filer. Lunch at noon Tuesday through Thursday. Suggested donation: $5. 208-326-4608.

Tuesday: Sloppy Joe on a bun

Wednesday: Beef macaroni and cheese

Thursday: Fried chicken

Today: Bingo, 7 p.m.

Tuesday: Puzzles, 11:30 a.m.

Bingo, 12:45 p.m.

Wednesday: Puzzles, 11:30 a.m.

Thursday: Puzzles, 11:30 a.m.

Bingo, 12:45 p.m.

Cards, 1:30 p.m.

****

Ageless Senior Center

310 Main St. N., Kimberly. Salad bar at 11:30 a.m., lunch served at noon; take-out; home delivery. Seniors 60 and older, suggested donation is $5, under 60, $6.50 (not donations); children 10 and younger, $3. 208-423-4338.

Wednesday: Beef stroganoff

Thursday: Battered cod

Friday: Pork chops

Today: Exercise, 10 a.m.

AA, 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday: Snooker, 1 p.m.

Bingo, 7 p.m.

Wednesday: Tai Chi, 9 a.m.

Exercise: 10 a.m.

Thursday: Crafts, 1 p.m.

Snooker, 1 p.m.

Friday: Exercise, 10 a.m.

Pinochle, 1 p.m.

Saturday: Pinochle, 7 p.m.

Fundraising all-you-can-eat breakfast, 8 to 11 a.m.; cost is $7

Pinochle, 7 p.m.

****

Gooding County Senior Citizen Center

308 Senior Ave., Gooding. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $3.50 for seniors. 208-934-5504.

Today: Mexican dinner

Tuesday: Chicken ala king

Wednesday: Pork chops

Thursday: Baked chicken breast

Today: Fit and Fall Proof exercise, 11 a.m.

Pinochle, 12:30 p.m.

Pool, 1 p.m.

Tuesday: Pool, 1 p.m.

Hand and foot, 3:30 p.m.

Wednesday: Fit and Fall Proof, 11 a.m.

Pool, 1 p.m.

Shuffleboard, 3:30 p.m.

Thursday: Morning out, 9 a.m.

Birthday party

Pool, 1 p.m.

Pinochle, 1 p.m.

Friday: Duplicate bridge, 1 p.m.

Bingo, 6 p.m.

Saturday: Pinochle, 1 p.m.

****

Wendell Senior Center

380 First Ave. E. Lunch served at noon. Suggested donation: $4 for seniors; $6 for under 60. 208-536-9951.

Today: Biscuits with sausage gravy

Friday: Chili, baked potato

****

Hagerman Valley Senior and Community Center

140 E. Lake, Hagerman. Senior center is open 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $5, seniors 60 and older; $7, non-seniors. All take-outs, $6. 208-837-6120.

Today: Baked salmon

Wednesday: Tamale pie

Friday: Meatloaf

Today: Blood draws (by doctors order), 8 to 10:30 a.m.

50/50 raffle

Bridge Club, 1 p.m.

Tuesday: Hot August Tuesdays free concert with Wild Horses band, 7 p.m. at Hagerman City Park

Friday: Two bingo games

****

Jerome Senior Center

520 N. Lincoln St., Jerome. 208-324-5642. Salad bar at 11:30 a.m.; lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $4, seniors (age 60 and older); $5, non-seniors; $3, children under 12.

Today: Chicken strips

Tuesday: Beef burritos

Wednesday: Liver and onions

Thursday: Grilled hamburgers

Friday: Birthdays, pork chops with apples

Sunday: Brunch

Today: Fitness classes with certified instructors, 10:30 a.m. and 5:20 p.m.

Music by Ricki Lee, 11:30 a.m.

Bridge, 12:30 p.m.

Bunco, 12:45 p.m.

Tuesday: Pinochle, 1 p.m.

Wednesday: Breakfast, 7:45 a.m.

Fitness classes, 10:30 a.m.

Country Boys Band, 11:30 a.m.

Womens pool, 1 p.m.

Pinochle, 6:30 p.m.

Thursday: Yoga, 10:30 a.m.

Pinochle, 1 p.m.

Hand and foot, 1 p.m.

Fitness class, 5:20 p.m.

Womens pool, 7 p.m.

Friday: Fitness class, 10:30 a.m.

Pinochle, 1 p.m.

Bingo, 6 p.m., doors open at 5 p.m.

****

Silver and Gold Senior Center

210 E. Wilson, Eden. Lunch at noon Tuesday and Thursday. Breakfast at 8 a.m. Wednesday. Suggested donation: $5, seniors (age 60 and older); $6.50, non-seniors. 208-825-5662.

Today: Coffee, 7 a.m.

Tuesday: Coffee, 7 a.m.

Speghetti

Wednesday: Bible study, 7 a.m.

Breakfast, sausage, eggs, 8 a.m.

Thursday: Coffee, 7 a.m.

Barbecue chicken drumsticks

Friday: Coffee, 7 a.m.

****

Richfield Senior Center

130 S. Main, Richfield. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $4, seniors; $5.50, under 60.

Today: Chicken chow mein

Thursday: Submarine sandwich

****

Golden Years Senior Citizens Inc.

218 N. Rail St. W., Shoshone. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $4, seniors 60 and older; $5.50, non-seniors. 208-886-2369.

Tuesday: Enchiladas

Wednesday: Chef salad

Friday: Pork roast

Today: Quilting, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Tuesday: Pinochle, 1 p.m.

Friday: Pinochle, 1 p.m.

****

Camas County Senior Center

129 Willow Ave. W., Fairfield. Breakfast, 7:30-11 a.m. Monday through Friday. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $4, seniors 60 and older; $5, non-seniors; $2.50, children 10 and younger. 208-764-2226.

Tuesday: Pulled pork

Wednesday: Cooks choice

Friday: Meatloaf

Monday: Exercise class, 9 a.m.

Tuesday: Cards after lunch

Wednesday: Exercise class, 9 a.m.

Foot clinic, 9:30 a.m.

Main Street Salon

Cards after lunch

Thursday: Art class, 10 a.m.

Friday: Music by Old Time Fiddlers

Cards after lunch

****

Blaine County Senior Center

721 Third Ave. S., Hailey. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $5, seniors; $7, non-seniors. 208-788-3468.

Today: Pan-seared chicken breast

Tuesday: Carved pork loin

Wednesday: Barbecued ribs

Thursday: Carved turkey and stuffing

Friday: Parmesan baked pollock

Today: Fit and Fall Proof exercise, 11 a.m.

Connection Club, 11 a.m.

Tuesday: Walking class, 9 a.m.

Foot clinic

Connection Club, 11 a.m.

Bingo, 1 p.m.

Wednesday: Fit and Fall Proof, 11 a.m.

Kiwanis lunch, 11:30 a.m.

Watercolor painting class, 1 p.m.

Thursday: Connection Club, 11 a.m.

Card games, 1 p.m.

Diners Club, The Spud, 5:30 p.m.

Friday: Connection Club, 11 a.m.

Fit and Fall Proof, 11 a.m.

Card games, 1 p.m.

****

Minidoka County Senior Citizens Center

702 11th St., Rupert. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $5, seniors; $6, non-seniors; $3, children 10 and younger; $4.50, home delivery. 208-436-9107.

Today: Chef salad

Tuesday: Stuffed bell peppers

Wednesday: Bacon cheeseburger

Thursday: Lasagna

Friday: Ribs

Thursday: Pinochle, 6 p.m.

Friday: Bingo, 7 p.m.

Saturday: Hawaiian luau, 5 p.m.; advance tickets are $12 for adults, $6 for children ages 10 and younger, tickets: 208-436-9107.

****

Golden Heritage Senior Center

2421 Overland Ave., Burley. Lunch at noon. Suggested donation: $5, seniors and children 12 and younger; $6, non-seniors.208-878-8646.

Today: Chili burgers

Tuesday: Sweet and sour chicken with rice

Wednesday: Hot beef sandwich

Thursday: Turkey dinner

Friday: Teriyaki chicken with rice

Today: Open billiards, 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.

Pinochle, 1 p.m.

Tuesday: Bingo, 5:30 p.m.

Wednesday: Open billiards, 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.

Pinochle, 1 p.m.

Thursday: Pinochle, 5:30 p.m.

Friday: Open billiards, 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.

Pinochle, 1 p.m.

****

Albion Senior Center

424 Market St., Albion. Open Wednesdays, 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; lunch at noon. Suggested donation, $5 seniors, $5 non-seniors. Take-out available ($8.50), call by 11:30 a.m. 208-673-6210.

Wednesday: Hamburgers
FORT BRAGG, N.C.  The judge overseeing Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahls military trial said Monday that a top general must testify about destroying letters that he received from supporters and critics of the soldier who walked off his post in Afghanistan.

The judge, Army Col. Jeffery Nance, also cast doubt on the viability of an early 2017 trial date for Bergdahl, but stopped short of changing it.

Nance expressed skepticism about the relevance of the approximately 100 letters that Gen. Robert B. Abrams put in a burn bag to be incinerated, but the judge still decided that the head of U.S. Army Forces command must testify. Abrams has been traveling and has the option to testify in person or by phone at a pretrial hearing this week.

There are some questions I have to ask about the 100 or so letters, Nance told the lawyers.

The destruction of the letters is one of several reasons why the defense says Abrams, who referred the case to a general court martial, should be disqualified from the case. They also cite his prior role advising former U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel during efforts to return Bergdahl from captivity and questions about whether Abrams considered defense objections to the findings of a preliminary hearing.

The defense is seeking a reset in the case that would allow another commander to decide whether it warrants a general court-martial.

Prosecutors say the letters  which were largely sent by members of the public  didnt constitute evidence and that Abrams shouldnt be required to testify, nor should he be disqualified.

Bringing him into court to testify would provide no value, said prosecutor Maj. Justin Oshana, who noted that defense lawyers have already interviewed Abrams outside of court.

Defense attorney Eugene Fidell argued in court that the letters were valuable for reasons including that they may have contained leads that Bergdahls lawyers could have pursued.

Well never know what they said. All we have are Gen. Abrams assurances, Fidell told reporters afterward, stressing the need to question him further.

The judge also said Monday that defense attorneys can propose a significant revamping of pretrial deadlines, and he may consider changing the trial date in the future.

The defense has argued that trial deadlines have been jeopardized by the pace at which prosecutors are producing classified information. Prosecutors acknowledged Monday that they were likely to miss an upcoming deadline on the documents, saying its taking time to get military and intelligence agencies to review them.

Fidell said after the hearing that there is a lot of doubt surrounding the February trial date.

Bergdahl, who is from Hailey, walked off his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and wound up as a captive of the Taliban and its allies until 2014. The Obama administration won his release by swapping him for Guantanamo Bay detainees. Bergdahl faces a court-martial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. The latter charge carries up to a life sentence.
This appeared in Sundays Washington Post.

The director of the FBI, James Comey, did the right thing in announcing the results of the bureaus investigation of Hillary Clintons email in early July. Realizing that the case was hyper-sensitive in the middle of a presidential campaign, Comey spoke up when ordinarily he would have simply forwarded his recommendation to prosecutors. He said the investigation determined that she was extremely careless in using a home-brew server while secretary of state, but that Clintons actions did not warrant prosecution. It was important for the apolitical FBI director to say one way or the other whether there was criminal behavior so voters could make up their own minds.

But now Comey has taken a misstep. The FBI has provided to Congress portions of the investigative files from the year-long probe. Although it is not known precisely which portions, some of the materials include interviews conducted by the FBI. On Capitol Hill, the FBI has deposited the material in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, a room with restricted access.

According to the Associated Press, the documents were transmitted to Congress with written warnings not to leak them. These materials are nonpublic and contain classified and other sensitive material, FBI Acting Assistant Director Jason Herring wrote. For that reason, these materials may not be further disseminated or disclosed, in part or in full, without obtaining the FBIs concurrence. Access to the documents is restricted to members of the judiciary, intelligence and government affairs committees.

Republicans in Congress are unlikely to heed the warnings. Are these members of the GOP, who have enthusiastically exploited the Benghazi and email stories for partisan advantage, whose convention delegates chanted lock her up, really going to read the FBI files and stay mum? The temptation here for mischiefpartial leaksis enormous.

It is extremely rare for the FBI to turn over to Congress internal case files from a criminal investigation that did not lead to a prosecution. In some cases in the pastcounterintelligence probes, for examplethe FBI has orally briefed Congress or, in the case of nominations, brought the raw interview notes to senators to read but not keep.

In this case, it seems a bad precedent to put the Clinton investigative materials before Congress. Will lawmakers demand more such sensitive documents in the future? If informants know their cooperation with the FBI might eventually be shared with members of Congress, will it have a chilling effect?

At this point, the best course of action, and the most transparent, would be to put the documents through a suitable declassification process and then release them for all to see. But it shouldnt have come to that.
Morocco has adopted a genuine solidarity-based policy regarding sub-Saharan migrants, designed to make sure migrants rights and dignity are safeguarded.

The statement came in the speech that King Mohammed VI delivered on Saturday on the occasion of the 63rd anniversary of the Revolution of the King and the People.

We attach as much importance to improving the livelihood of Africans in their countries as we do to African migrants in Morocco, the Sovereign said, adding that as a result of this policy, the migrants in Morocco do not suffer the same hardships endured in many parts of the world.

Over time Morocco has evolved from one of the worlds leading emigration countries in the second half of the twentieth century, when Moroccans were forming one of the largest and most dispersed non-Western migrant communities in Western Europe, to a country of transit for migrants seeking to reach Europe. Over the past few years, an increasing number of migrants who fail to enter Europe prefer to settle in Morocco on a more long-term basis rather than return to their more unstable and substantially poorer home countries, as explained by the Migration Policy Institute.

In view of the increasing number of migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan countries, who chose to settle in Morocco, authorities adopted a new migration policy in 2014 that enabled to regularize the situation of more than 30,000 African migrants.

As stated by King Mohammed VI in his speech, Morocco was one of the first countries of the South to adopt a genuine solidarity-based policy regarding sub-Saharan migrants. This integrated policy, which is rooted in humanitarian values, is designed to make sure migrants rights and dignity are safeguarded.

As part of the implementation of this policy, my country has, without any arrogance, pomposity or discrimination, regularized the situation of migrants using fair and reasonable standards. It has provided the conditions needed for migrants to reside, work and lead a dignified life within our community, the Sovereign said, adding that despite the few difficulties the African migrants face in Morocco, these difficulties have nothing to do with the color of their skin, their nationality or their status as migrants. They enjoy the same rights, he insisted.

This humanitarian policy has earned Morocco the honor of co-chairing, alongside Germany, the Global Forum on Migration and Development for 2017-2018, the King said.

He stated further that Morocco, which has long rejected the methods adopted by some to address migration issues and which have turned out to be a failure, is proud of what it is doing in terms of receiving and integrating migrants. He pledged that Morocco will keep up this practical, humanitarian approach.

As for those who criticize Morocco, or dare to disparage my country, they have yet to provide migrants with something  if only a fraction of what we have offered, he said, before he deplored what he called a distorted approach to migration issues adopted in the Mediterranean, which resulted in having no real policy to integrate migrants.

The entire world is talking about migration and the tragedies migrants have to endure. The situation is further compounded by the spread of the phenomenon of extremism and terrorism, and by attempts to link it  rightly or wrongly  to migrants, especially in Europe, King Mohammed VI stated further.

In his speech, the Sovereign also addressed the Moroccans settled abroad, calling them to remain firmly committed to their religious values and to their time-honored traditions as they face up to this phenomenon of extremism and terrorism which has nothing to do with their culture or background.

He urged them to maintain their good reputation, to show forbearance in these trying circumstances, to close ranks and to be, as always, staunch advocates of peace, concord and co-existence in their country of residence.

Those who engage in terrorism, in the name of Islam, are not Muslims. Their only link to Islam is the pretexts they use to justify their crimes and their folly.

He warned that terrorists take advantage of some young Muslims  particularly in Europe  and of their ignorance of the Arabic language and of true Islam, to spread their distorted messages and misleading promises.

Terrorists and extremists use all means to convince young people to join them in order to attack societies profoundly committed to the ideals of freedom, openness and tolerance, he said adding that as ignorance spreads in the name of religion, Muslims, Christians and Jews have to close ranks in order to tackle all forms of extremism, hatred and reclusiveness.
The first global-scale genetic study of Salmonella Enteritidis bacteria, which is a major cause of blood poisoning and death in Africa and food poisoning in the Western World, has discovered that there are in fact three separate types. Scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and University of Liverpool found two novel African types, which looked the same, but were genetically different from the Western type.

Reported in Nature Genetics today, the study showed the African types had developed resistance to many antibiotics and behaved slightly differently to the type commonly found in the West. This suggests a need to understand where in the African environment the bacteria live, in order to prevent this disease.

Once Salmonella reaches the bloodstream it's known as invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella (iNTS) disease, a serious and Neglected Tropical Disease. Last year, it was estimated to cause 680,000 per year deaths worldwide, more than half of which were in Africa.

The scientists sequenced 675 isolates of S. Enteritidis from 45 countries and six continents. Analysis of the Salmonella genomes revealed three major types - a common global one and two novel African types. Routine microbiological testing is not able to distinguish between the S. Enteritidis circulating in Africa and the rest of the world.

Identifying these new types is important because the common global type of S. Enteritidis, is normally associated with poultry and predominantly infects the intestine, causing diarrhoea. However, in Africa the two newly identified types are a major cause of blood poisoning and death, because in people with weak immune systems, Salmonellae are able to pass with greater ease from the gut into the bloodstream. The environmental reservoir from which these African bacteria are transmitted to people is unknown.

The study also showed that the two African types carried more of the genes that give them resistance to common antibiotics. These strains do not respond to the antibiotics commonly available, and have to be treated with cephalosporins or ciprofloxacin, antibiotics of last resort in many African settings.

Dr Nick Feasey, first author from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Sanger Institute, said: " iNTS disease is a huge problem in Africa, but it is difficult to identify due to lack of laboratory capacity and difficult to treat due antibiotic resistance. Using whole genome sequencing of S. Enteritidis bacteria from different settings we have revealed three distinct types of this bacteria, which was previously thought to have only one type. In the two novel types of Salmonella Enteritidis we found resistance genes to antibiotics such as amoxicillin and chloramphenicol, that are still widely used in Africa and it may be only a matter of time before resistance to the last line antibiotic, cephalosporin, spreads. We urgently need to find strategies to eradicate this disease."

Professor Melita Gordon, joint lead author from the University of Liverpool's Institute of Infection and Global Health, said: "To help prevent this disease, further investigations are urgently needed into where these African types reside in the environment and how they are passed on to or between people. It is possible that the Salmonella lives in standing water, so improving access to sanitation and clean water is extremely important. A human vaccine is also under development. Our research in Malawi, at the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust (MLW) Clinical Research Programme, will hopefully yield and implement relevant public health strategies to prevent this disease."

Professor Nick Thomson, joint lead author from the Sanger Institute, said: "This study highlights a very important issue; that a relatively mild version of a bacterium can evolve into a more dangerous pathogen under the right conditions. A combination of HIV, antibiotic resistance and lack of health care and sanitation has facilitated the emergence of Salmonella as a deadly disease in Africa and its importance was not originally recognised. The more we look, the more we understand the potential for bacteria which cause mild disease in rich settings to emerge as causes of highly deadly disease in Africa. Hence a critical first step in tackling diseases such as this is to be able to recognise the different 'types', which will in turn allow us to better understand how bacteria can exploit different ecological niches to which the global human population is exposed".

Explore further Genomic data reveals emergence in Africa of drug resistant strain of typhoid

More information: Distinct Salmonella Enteritidis lineages associated with enterocolitis in high-income settings and invasive disease in low-income settings, Nature Genetics , DOI: 10.1038/ng.3644 Journal information: Nature Genetics Distinct Salmonella Enteritidis lineages associated with enterocolitis in high-income settings and invasive disease in low-income settings,
Credit: University of Dundee

The world's most commonly used Type 2 diabetes drug, Metformin, may be 'repurposed' to treat non-diabetic conditions according to researchers from the University of Dundee.

The international study led by Professor Chim Lang and Dr Graham Rena at the Division of Molecular and Clinical Medicine at Dundee suggests that there is now strong evidence that the drug exhibits an anti-inflammatory action which may prove significant in non-diabetic cardiovascular disease.

Inflammation is understood to contribute to cardiovascular disease (CVD) but existing nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have shown limited utility in CVD treatment.

Metformin, used by hundreds of millions of people with Type 2 diabetes worldwide, has been in use for over 50 years but continues to reveal significant possibilities for treatments other than those for diabetes.

Other recent studies undertaken at the University of Dundee have shown that metformin may help treat Alzheimer's disease and could potentially prevent cancer. The drug is also undergoing new clinical trials to determine if it can promote healthy aging.

This report, however, finds that THE anti-inflammatory effects of metformin are exerted irrespective of diabetes status, meaning further testing is required.

Professor Chim Lang, Deputy Head of Molecular and Clinical Medicine Division at the University, said, "The anti-inflammatory effects of the drug were observed, not only in those with diabetes, but also in a cohort of non-diabetic heart failure patients."

Dr Graham Rena, Senior Lecturer, said, "In this study, we investigated anti-inflammatory effects of metformin, as these may contribute to the CVD benefit of this drug.

"We found that this drug acts differently to NSAIDs, by inhibiting a different target, known as NF-kB. The next steps will be to establish exactly how metformin inhibits NF-kB and to identify specific nondiabetic patient groups that benefit from this anti-inflammatory action.

"These results suggest that metformin suppresses chronic inflammation by a different mechanism to NSAIDs and provide a non-empirical rationale for further testing of the drug in non-diabetic CVD."

The research, a collaboration with researchers in Paris and Helsinki, is published in Circulation Research, one of the leading international journals in cardiovascular medicine, on Friday, 19th August.

The UK arm of the study was funded by the Medical Research Council, Diabetes UK and British Heart Foundation.

Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the BHF, said, "These findings offer further evidence that old drugs can perform new tricks. Repurposed medicines can much more quickly benefit patients.

"If this existing and affordable drug can be repurposed as a heart disease treatment, then this is excellent news for the 2.3 million people in the UK living with the condition.

"Research like this is essential to improving how we treat heart disease and preventing the sudden tragedies caused by heart attacks. We look forward to seeing how the research progresses in patient studies."

Dr Emily Burns, Research Communications Manager at Diabetes UK, said, "While inflammation may contribute to the development of cardiovascular disease, current anti-inflammatory drugs (known as NSAIDs) haven't proven to be effective as a treatment so far. It's therefore very interesting to see that metformin may have anti-inflammatory properties that work in a different way to NSAIDs.

"We welcome further research to tell us if metformin could be used to treat cardiovascular disease, in those with and without Type 2 diabetes, in the future.

"We're very pleased to see that Diabetes UK research is having a real impact, exploring the future potential of a drug that already helps millions of people with Type 2 diabetes."

Explore further Pioneering use of diabetic drug to treat heart disease

More information: Amy R. Cameron et al. Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Metformin Irrespective of Diabetes StatusNovelty and Significance, Circulation Research (2016). Journal information: Circulation Research Amy R. Cameron et al. Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Metformin Irrespective of Diabetes StatusNovelty and Significance,(2016). DOI: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.116.308445
On the first of May, 2015, Angelique Bell waited in a hair salon, reading the weekend section of the newspaper. She noticed an ad for a health research study that needed participants who had risk factors for diabetes. Since she met the criteria and had some time to pass, she decided to call about the study right then, from the salon chair. It was her 45th birthday.

"I don't have diabetes, but I have a strong family history of diabetes and some of the risk factors, and I thought that the information from this study could be something that could benefit me in the future," said Bell.

She didn't expect, however, that her impromptu birthday decision to call about the study would potentially save her life.

As part of the screening for the study, Bell had to do bloodwork and an EKGstandard tests to get baseline health data. Her results, however, were anything but standard: they showed extremely low levels of potassium and an arrhythmia in her heart that could be fatal if not treated.

"When she came in, she was having a lot premature ventricular contractions, which is potentially dangerous because your heart could suddenly go into ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation, which can kill you," said Dr. Philip A. Kern, director of the University of Kentucky Center for Clinical and Translational Science and principal investigator of the diabetes study in which Bell participated.

At the time Bell was taking two medications to help control her blood pressure. One medication was a diuretic, which, unknown to Bell, was causing her to lose too much potassium through her urine. The resulting potassium deficiency was causing the arrhythmia in her heart.

Kern and the research team sent Bell to the UK Gill Heart Institute for further evaluation and treatment. She was taken off the diuretic, had to wear a heart monitor for 48 hours, and received potassium supplements.

"I was 45 years old at the time and I had to wear this heart monitor. Three-fourths of my grandparents had heart attacks. My mother had congestive heart failure. So it was a scary," said Bell. "I was relieved to find out that the condition had not gotten to a point of causing damage. A really serious problem was averted."

Once the arrhythmia was resolved, Bell, undeterred by her own health scare, went back to Kern and participated in the diabetes-related study that she had originally phoned about.

The study was not Bell's first experience as a research participant, nor was it her last. She had previously participated in two asthma-related studies at other institutions, motivated by her own diagnosis as a child, and she subsequently volunteered again at UK as a healthy participant in a study examining how our bodies process fat intake. Through each experience she learned more about her own health.

"That is one of the good things about being in the studya lot of times when people get in studies, they find out about other issues with their health. There's a pretty in-depth amount of testing done, and it could uncover something that wouldn't be found in a routine exam."

Bell was also familiar with health research through family members' experiences. Her father participated in a longitudinal study on gout, and her uncle was a researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("he was very excited about science"). Exposure to both researcher and participant experiences has convinced Bell of the importance of empirical, evidence-based information, as well as the need for research participants.

"Having people around who do research, you see how important it is for them to get people in their studies so they have enough evidence," she said.

She additionally emphasizes the importance of racial and gender diversity among research participants, in order to understand how health conditions and treatments affect people differently, but she simultaneously acknowledges the legacy of the infamous Tuskegee experiment conducted between 1932 and 1972. In the course of that study, hundreds of poor, African American men were knowingly left untreated for syphilis.

When the Tuskegee story was uncovered, it created an understandable distrust of health research, particularly among African Americans. At the same time, however, the story initiated a host of stringent federal regulations enacted to protect research participants. In 1974, Congress passed the National Research Act and created the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which developed guidelines for human subject protection, including the landmark Belmont Report.

Health research involving people is now "very highly regulated, with multiple layers of protection," said Kern. Studies require a process of informed consent and communication of diagnosis, as well as reporting of the study results. Institutions like UK that conduct health research must have institutional review boards (which include community members) to review the plans for all studies. UK also has an Office of Research Integrity that can answer questions and support research participants.

"Because of Tuskegee I think a lot of African Americans are leery of participating in research studies," said Bell. "But if you don't participate in the research then the data that relates to you is not there. Some things do have a genetic factor, and some things might affect people of African descent differently than people of European and Asian descent."

If there is residual distrust about health research, there is also a great deal altruism that motivates many people to participate. According to Roxane Poskin, participant recruitment manager at the UK CCTS, a large percentage of volunteers join studies as way to give back to society and contribute to discoveries that improve health for others and future generations. This is particularly true for healthy participants, who don't have a health condition they hope to address through a study but who are essential to research that broadens our understanding of what Kern calls "the basic mechanisms of disease and how the body works." While participants receive information about their health and sometimes receive compensation for participating, they don't always receive a direct health benefit for themselves.

"They want to be involved and help others even, if it doesn't help them directly," Poskin said. "If we didn't have volunteers, we wouldn't be able to accomplish research studies. Even the smallest things have been researched, like thermometers and crutches."

Bell, who has spent her career in non-profits organizations (she currently works with Kentucky Refugee Ministries and ITNBluegrass), says she doesn't personally know many people who participate in studies, but that she would encourage anyone to participate, either for their own benefit or to advance medical knowledge that could help others.

"We have to have evidence-based research," she said. "And you get a lot more information about your health than you would in a normal physical."

Explore further Stubborn inequities in heart health persist for some African Americans in the South
Intelligence is about more than just biology. Credit: Shutterstock

Recent research has suggested that academic performance, reading ability and IQ have a genetic basis. This reinforces the popular notion that intelligence and related cognitive capacities are somehow "in our genes".

This has led some people to reject the importance of educational interventions on the grounds that spending money on nurture isn't going to significantly affect the abilities nature has given us.

However, genes are not destiny. There is good evidence to show how effective environmental interventions can be for educational outcomes.

Genetics and intelligence

The way in which genes actually contribute to intelligent individuals is often overlooked.

Genes can act in a variety of ways to produce their effects. Some genes may alter brain chemistry so that a person is better able to learn. Other genes could cause behavioural differences, causing some people to self-select more stimulating environments.

And it is likely that the genetics of intelligence works at least in part by a genetic influence on the environment. This means that a genetic basis for intelligence is as much about one's nurture as about one's nature.

Intelligence is the most widely studied trait in behavioural genetics. It is correlated with a suite of other characteristics ranging from income, to lifespan, to happiness.

Researchers have found a significant genetic contribution to intelligence differences using the method of heritability estimates.

These studies compare populations of identical (monozygotic) and fraternal (dizygotic) twins. Identical twins are genetically identical  they're nature's clones. Fraternal twins, like siblings, share an average of 50% of their genes.

If there is a heritable basis for intelligence, then identical twins should be more similar than fraternal twin pairs. This method gives researchers an idea of how heritable intelligence is, but tells us nothing about the actual genes involved.

Since the advent of gene sequencing, new techniques have allowed scientists to identify specific candidate genes that are correlated with intellectual outcomes.

More recently, researchers have investigated the relative effects of many specific genes working together. Earlier this year researchers at Kings College London used this method to explain a substantial proportion of exam score differences.

The standard interpretation of these kinds of results is that intelligence genes work through innate biological processes, causing individual differences. But this may not always be the case.

A thought experiment

Imagine two groups of children who have different versions of a candidate intelligence gene: Gene X.

Children with one version of this gene have an insatiable love for the musty smell of books. The other group of children feel the opposite way and detest the smell.

You can imagine the first group actively seeking out and surrounding themselves with books, while the second group actively avoids them. As a result, the first group of children will likely attain better reading scores than the second group, simply because of their increased exposure to books.

A genetic analysis of these results could easily lead researchers to declare that Gene X is the gene for reading ability. But it makes more sense to think of Gene X as a gene for smell preferences.

These smell preferences then cause environmental differences between the two groups, and it is the environment that plays the final part in generating differences in reading scores.

Nature via nurture

Genes can cause differences in brain development. But they can also predispose individuals to experience different kinds of environments. In behaviour genetics this is termed "gene-environment correlation".

There are many ways in which people behave that could influence their environment. Personality differences will influence whether or not a child has the confidence to attend an extracurricular class. Differences in temperament will affect the kinds of resources children will seek out for themselves.

More social children might spend less time constructing an academically rich environment than those spending more time alone. If personality differences of this kind are correlated with academic performance, then it is likely that associated genetic effects are thought of as due to "intelligence genes".

A danger with the genetic research of human abilities is the way in which findings are understood. If results are interpreted prematurely or incorrectly, then ineffective and potentially disastrous policy decisions could follow.

This was illustrated in the 1960s when prominent geneticist Arthur Jensen criticised the Head Start education program, which offers compensatory education to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

One reason for its instigation was to bridge the divide in school performance between black and white American students. Jensen claimed that interventions of this type would be of no use because of the genetic basis of intelligence.

This sparked debate about the causes of intelligence differences between racial groups, fuelling racism at a cultural and political level. Genetic accounts of intelligence differences between racial groups have since been debunked. We now know that these differences are due to associated environmental differences, including the prejudices some groups face within society today.

Unfortunately, racism still persists, as does prejudice in many other forms. Because of this, scientists and media professionals should be extra careful when they present findings about genetic causes.

There is more work to be done to uncover the environmental factors associated with genes. But we should pay close attention, as this information can be used to create a fairer education system for all.

Explore further Stronger early reading skills predict higher intelligence later

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.


Compared to other types of hydrogels being developed (left), a new hydrogel (right) can form crosslinks after injection into the heart, making the material stiffer and longer-lasting. Credit: American Chemical Society

During a heart attack, clots or narrowed arteries block blood flow, harming or killing cells within the tissue. But the damage doesn't end after the crushing pain subsides. Instead, the heart's walls thin out, the organ becomes enlarged, and scar tissue forms. If nothing is done, the patient can eventually experience heart failure. But scientists now report they have developed gels that, in animal tests, can be injected into the heart to shore up weakened areas and prevent heart failure.

The researchers will present their work today at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

Heart attacks strike 750,000 people each year in the U.S., according to the American Heart Association. And more than 5 million U.S. residents are living with heart failure, with symptoms that progress from fatigue and shortness of breath to eventual death. "Heart failure is a huge problem, and few therapies are available for these patients," says Jason A. Burdick, Ph.D., leader of the study.

Treatments include lifestyle changes, medication, implants or heart transplants. Burdick, who is at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), explains that these options often don't work well or, in the case of transplants, are hard to come by. So scientists are pursuing other treatment methods. For instance, researchers at other institutions have done animal studies in which they injected cells into the damaged section of the heart to try to repair damage. To prevent the cells from leaking out, those researchers embedded them in biodegradable "hydrogels"water-swollen networks of polymer chains with a consistency similar to Jell-OTM. But the scientists noticed something odd when they ran control experiments in which they injected the hydrogel without added cells: Some of the animals' hearts still showed improvement compared with untreated animals.

Based on those findings, a handful of labs are now experimenting with hydrogel treatments, including two materials that are in clinical trials. Neither is from Burdick's lab, but as he notes, "It's important we all keep moving forward to figure out how this therapy could be used, because it's different than any current treatment." In addition, different types of hydrogels could suit different patients' needs.

Some experimental heart attack treatments require surgery to open up the chest, but the two hydrogel materials already in clinical trials are injected into the damaged tissue through a long catheter inserted through the skineliminating the need for open-chest surgery.

Burdick and his graduate student Christopher B. Rodell, in collaboration with Robert C. Gorman, M.D., also at Penn, are using this same minimally invasive technique in their own work. But his team has gone a step further by identifying properties that would be useful in treating heart attack patients and then designing hydrogels with those properties. For instance, his group developed a hydrogel that forms additional crosslinks between the polymer chains after injection. The resulting material is stiffer and lasts longer than a gel without these additional crosslinks and the gels in clinical trials.

In fact, Burdick's gel is unique among hydrogels in providing mechanical support to stabilize the damaged area. In sheep studies, this gel limits formation of scar tissue, thinning of the heart's walls and enlargement of the heart. By preserving the organ's size, the gels also reduce leakage of blood through the mitral valve. Together, these benefits maintain the heart's blood-pumping ability and could stave off heart failure.

The team's materials are based on hyaluronic acid (HA), a type of sugar molecule that occurs naturally in the body. The researchers modified the HA molecules by attaching adamantane and cyclodextrin groups to allow the gels to flow through catheters, and they added thiol and methacrylate groups to enable post-injection cross-linking to stiffen the hydrogel. Once the researchers finalize the hydrogel formulation and delivery method, they hope to partner with a catheter firm to bring a product to market. Burdick's team and other research groups are also designing hydrogels that contain drugs or cells that can repair heart tissue.

Explore further New injectable hydrogel encourages regeneration, improves functionality after heart attack

More information: Engineered injectable supramolecular hydrogels for myocardial applications, 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), 2016. Engineered injectable supramolecular hydrogels for myocardial applications, 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), 2016. Abstract

Heart disease is a major clinical problem and post myocardial infarction (MI), left ventricular (LV) remodeling ensues and leads to geometric changes that result in dilation and thinning of the myocardial wall. This increases stress in the infarct and healthy tissue and can ultimately result in heart failure. Injectable biomaterials are being investigated to address this clinical problem, including to alter stresses in the infarct region when injected and to deliver biologics, such as stem cells and biomolecules. My laboratory is interested in a class of hydrogels based on the molecule hyaluronic acid (HA) and we have synthesized variations of HA macromers that form hydrogels with a range of mechanical properties and degradation (from a few weeks to stable over many months). This tunability in properties allows us to investigate how material properties (e.g., mechanics and degradation) influence the ability of injectable HA hydrogels to alter stress profiles and LV remodeling and to deliver therapeutic molecules (e.g., TIMP-3, to alter matrix remodeling within infarcts). Most recently, we have designed a class of shear-thinning and self-assembling hydrogels that can be used for the delivery of mechanical signals, as well as cells and therapeutics. Ultimately, these iterations on material design are teaching us what important signals are needed in these hydrogels towards the next generation of translatable therapeutics for cardiac repair.
Job satisfaction in your late 20s and 30s has a link to overall health in your early 40s, according to a new nationwide study.

While job satisfaction had some impact on physical health, its effect was particularly strong for mental health, researchers found.

Those less than happy with their work early in their careers said they were more depressed and worried and had more trouble sleeping.

And the direction of your job satisfaction - whether it is getting better or worse in your early career - has an influence on your later health, the study showed.

The good news is that people whose job satisfaction started low but got better over the course of their early career didn't have the health problems associated with consistently low or declining satisfaction.

"We found that there is a cumulative effect of job satisfaction on health that appears as early as your 40s," said Jonathan Dirlam, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at The Ohio State University.

Dirlam conducted the study with Hui Zheng, associate professor of sociology at Ohio State. They presented their research Aug. 22 in Seattle at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Zheng said the results showed the importance that early jobs have on people's lives.

"You don't have to be near the end of your career to see the health impact of job satisfaction, particularly on your mental health," Zheng said.

The researchers used data from 6,432 Americans who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, which followed adults who were between the ages of 14 and 22 when the survey began in 1979.

The NLSY79 is conducted by Ohio State's Center for Human Resource Research for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For this study, the researchers examined job satisfaction trajectories for people from age 25 to 39. These participants then reported a variety of health measures after they turned 40.

Participants rated how much they liked their jobs from 1 (dislike very much) to 4 (like very much).

The researchers put participants in four groups: consistently low and consistently high job satisfaction, those whose satisfaction started high but was trending down and those who started low but were trending higher.

The average score of those classified as the low group was nearly 3 (indicating they liked their job "fairly well"), Dirlam noted. But there was a lot of variance in that group, meaning that it included all the people who said they disliked their jobs somewhat or very much.

About 45 percent of participants had consistently low job satisfaction, while another 23 percent had levels that were trending downward through their early career.

About 15 percent of people were consistently happy at their jobs (nearly 4 on the scale) and about 17 percent were trending upward.

Using those who were consistently happy as the reference, the researchers compared how the health of the other three groups compared.

Mental health was most affected by people's feelings about their jobs.

People who were in the low job satisfaction group throughout their early careers scored worse on all five of the mental health measures studied, study results showed.

They reported higher levels of depression, sleep problems and excessive worry. They were also more likely to have been diagnosed with emotional problems and scored lower on a test of overall mental health.

Those whose job satisfaction started out higher but declined through their early career were more likely than those with consistently high satisfaction to have frequent trouble sleeping and excessive worry, and had lower scores for overall mental health. But they didn't see an impact on depression scores or their probability of being diagnosed with emotional problems.

Those whose scores went up through the early career years did not see any comparative health problems.

The physical health of those who were unhappy with their jobs wasn't impacted as much as mental health. Those who were in the low satisfaction group and those who were trending downwards reported poorer overall health and more problems like back pain and frequent colds compared to the high satisfaction group. But they weren't different in physical functioning and in doctor-diagnosed health problems such as diabetes and cancer.

As was true for mental health, no effects were seen on physical health for those trending upward.

Zheng said it is important to remember that participants were studied when they were only in their 40s.

"The higher levels of mental health problems for those with low job satisfaction may be a precursor to future physical problems," Zheng said.

"Increased anxiety and depression could lead to cardiovascular or other health problems that won't show up until they are older."

Dirlam noted that the study ended before the Great Recession.

"The recession almost certainly increased job insecurity and dissatisfaction, and that could have resulted in more negative health effects," he said.

Explore further Study links lower life satisfaction to sleep problems during midlife
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.
l-r, Kimberly VanHaitsma, associate professor of nursing, Pennsylvania State University; Katherine Abbott, assistant professor of sociology & gerontology and research fellow, Miami University Scripps Gerontology Center; Jane Straker, director of research, Miami University Scripps Gerontology Center; Jerry Gannod, chair and professor of computer science, Tennessee Tech University.

Miami Universitys Scripps Gerontology Center has been awarded a $1 million grant from the Ohio Department of Medicaid to improve nursing home residents quality of life.

The project, Incorporating the Preferences for Everyday Living into Ohios Nursing Homes to Improve Resident Care, is intended to guide nursing home providers on the best way to deliver person-centered care by honoring their residents preferences for everyday living.

Recent research suggests practicing person-centered care, an approach that emphasizes knowing the person and honoring each individuals preferences, has the ability to improve health-related quality of life among nursing home residents, said Katy Abbott, principal investigator of the study and assistant professor of gerontology.

Using data collected from the Preferences for Everyday Living Inventory (PELI), a valid and reliable instrument known to indicate nursing home residents most strongly held preferences, the project will assist providers with training on how to capitalize on the information collected.

Pete Van Runkle, executive director of the Ohio Health Care Association, said, We are excited about this study by Scripps, because it will help move the ball forward on personalizing care in Ohios skilled nursing centers. Our members work hard everyday to make each patients experience the best it can be, and there is no better place to start than by understanding what really makes each person tick.

The project is interdisciplinary in nature - comprised of researchers from the fields of gerontology, clinical psychology and computer science. By utilizing the expertise of all team members, the project will deliver nursing home providers with practical training about implementing preference-based person-centered care, as well as provide a user-friendly, technological framework to track nursing home residents preferences for everyday living over time.

LeadingAge Ohio members are committed to quality in the services they provide, said Kathryn Brod, president/CEO of LeadingAge Ohio. Measurements of quality can be complex, and at the heart of quality is the satisfaction of those being served. Understanding resident preferences, therefore, is a key focus of proactive providers.

For more information, please contact Kendall Leser, leserka@miamioh.edu.
The directors of a documentary feature about the Yosemite climbing scene had a problem.

They needed to tell the story of the freewheeling revolution that occurred in the sport, but their film would comprise a full 60 minutes of still photographs.

How are we going to keep the audience engaged? motion designer Barry Thompson recalls them wondering. How can we make their stomachs start to feel a little queasy from the heights?

Thompson and a team of motion designers, mostly based in Missoula, created effects that give those historic photographs the adrenaline rush climbing deserves for "Valley Uprising." The 2014 film was picked up by the Discovery Channel and earned a 2016 News and Documentary Emmy Award nomination for motion graphics.

Thompson shares the honor with a full team: assistant motion designer Sari Jones; assistant motion designer Greg Twigg, a media arts professor at the University of Montana; Eric Bucy, a motion designer; Wesley Meeks, a 3-D animator. Those Missoula residents were assisted by motion designer Mark Palkoski of New York and Marten Blumen, a compositor who lives in New Zealand.

The movie was directed by Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen of Sender Films and produced by Big Up Productions.

***

Thompson and the Sender team had long discussed a Yosemite climbing documentary, and as far back as 2008 they flew Thompson to Yosemite. He'd done research with the historic photographs and took new ones.

The filmmakers were inspired by effects work in "The Kid Stays in the Picture," a 2002 documentary about Hollywood producer Robert Evans, in which old photographs were brought to life via motion design; and "Dogtown and Z-Boys," Stacy Peralta's film about the birth of the skateboarding. Thompson cited the way the filmmakers used creative editing to "slide" in and out of the pictures.

While the techniques are quite complicated, Thompson said you can think of it just like a pop-up book.

There are layers that are stacked in space behind one another that the software camera can slowly move through. The designers can add depth of field, camera warping and create a sense of realism through dust particles floating in the air, sunlight and clouds.

"It all gels together into this nice space," he said.

A jittering motion also gives the sequences a natural look.

"It would trick the viewer into think it was real film," he said.

Meeks, the 3-D designer, projection mapped textures onto the 3-D shapes of the rocks, in addition to other effects.

One tricky aspect of the technique: when you cut a climber out of a photograph to create the 3-D effect, you have to fill the empty space behind that person, Twigg said.

"It's easy to cut out something; it's a real science and art to figure out how to fill the hole that's left when you pull a person out of a shot," he said.

Twigg said many of the pictures were complex: A photograph might have three climbers and their myriad gear such as ropes, carabiners and bags set against craggy rocks and overhangs.

Some holes were easier to fill, such as copying a rock texture, altering it and using it to fill the space.

But when dealing with mountain snowfields, ridges, trees or other less ambiguous forms, "you have to be really careful you're not leaving evidence of repeated patterns," he said.

If a viewer can tell two trees are the same, "that could spoil the magic of the shot."

As a whole, they generated almost 60 minutes of effects for the 90-minute film.

Thompson said they took liberties illustrating some stories, such as a climber smoking marijuana soaked in fuel after a plane crash, or a dirtbag tripping on acid.

The awards ceremony is set for Sept. 21 at the Lincoln Center. At least Thompson, Twigg and Meeks will attend.

"If we do win, I think it's prestigious for our university," Thompson said.

Thompson is a University of Montana grad with a master's degree in media arts and a bachelor's in fine arts in painting. He moved out of state to cultivate experience.

While living in Seattle, he'd begun working with Sender, a rock-climbing and adventure film company based in Boulder, Colorado. They'd earned work with North Face and National Geographic, to name a few.

He returned to Missoula in 2006 to raise a daughter here with his wife.

He'd lived here before: he was one of the first graduates of UM's School of Media Arts. When he returned to Missoula, he taught there as an adjunct and Bucy, Jones and Meeks were his students. Twigg, too, graduated from the program before becoming a professor.

Twigg said the surprise nomination helps draw attention to the program and the creative work being done in Missoula that's not always visible.

"There's a lot of people there kind of hiding in the shadows here that are doing pretty significant work," he said.

For his part, Thompson hopes it leads to more work on history projects.

In addition to his work with Sender, he and Bucy have a company called Half Wild that works frequently with North Face, Patagonia and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and recently had a job with Facebook.
Working collaboratively is a phrase Jan Schweitzer is fond of when describing her new role as chair of the Missoula Area Chamber of Commerces board of directors.

Thats because she has to work with a diverse array of 820 Chamber members and other business organizations to find common ground on a wide range of issues, from workforce shortages to a lack of affordable housing.

I think we can work together with all these organizations and help solidify what the common goals should be based on community needs and community feedback, she explained.

The Chamber of Commerce is the voice of business for its members, she said, and acts as the front organization to advocate positions on certain topics.

We are one of a lot of very different organizations that are trying to move Missoula forward and become a vital piece of the collaboration of doing that, Schweitzer said. I think weve made a lot of great strides. My job function is to make sure members of the board and the Chamber management team work collaboratively together in terms of what they see. If members have a specific goal or challenge or issue in mind, they look to us, quite honestly, as part of that collaborative piece, that advocacy piece.

Schweitzer graduated from Montana State University, but dont hold that against her. She worked for a large accounting firm in California right after college, but decided she didnt like that and went into private industry. Then she switched to the public side, helping nonprofits and other entities navigate the financial world.

So Ive seen both sides of how it should work in a business, she said. So that helps me consult with my clients and let them know, based on experience, heres what I think should happen. So Ive got both-sides-of-the-fence experience.

Shes lived in Missoula with her husband for 15 years now and has developed a lot of relationships and insight into the business community through her work as a certified public accountant with Anderson ZurMuehlen, one of the largest certified public accounting and business advisory firms in the state.

She will now oversee a board of 24 and a Chamber staff of eight, including longtime president and CEO Kim Latrielle. For Schweitzer, who served as the Chambers treasurer, the opportunity to become just the eighth woman to hold the board chair position in its 126-year history was one she couldn't pass up.

Im always up for challenges, she said. Realistically, just seeing the different things that I didnt know about the community and how the Chamber works in conjunction with these other organizations that are also trying to move Missoula forward, if you will. That just really became an enticing thought for me, to see if that was something that would fit well within my challenges and my goals.

One of her top priorities will be just to listen to the different concerns brought forward by businesses and other entities.

Theres several different challenges, she said. Theres workforce, theres (finding) a quality workforce. Affordable housing, transportation, I mean all of these things that are challenges.

As a CPA, Schweitzer often helps business owners achieve efficiency and find flaws they didnt even know existed.

I just think that (sometimes) businesses dont know that they have issues, she said. So thats what were there for. What keeps them up at night.

She has a positive outlook for Missoulas economy, but she knows that the picture isnt entirely rosy. The effects of the recession linger, and Missoula has challenges such as budget shortfalls at the University of Montana and job cuts at Montana Rail Link.

Its getting better, she said of the economy here. I dont know as though I would say its good, but its getting better. There are some industries that are lagging and (some that are) booming. It depends on industry sectors.

Schweitzer said the Chamber of Commerce is valuable to businesses because it can act as an advocate when an issue is controversial or complicated. That way, the Chamber can collaborate with others to make sure its stated position on any one topic isnt stepping on the toes of any other members or industries. In recent years, the Chamber has conducted surveys of its members and then advocated, for example, for the passage of the schools bond and for construction of a new hotel at the site of the Missoula Mercantile.

Schweitzer said she's already got a list of things she's ready to work on.

Were energized, she said. Weve got a lot of great ideas that have come out in the last few weeks with that goal of collaboration in mind. Were pretty excited.
Two people charged with helping smuggle drugs into the Montana State Prison last year have pleaded guilty as part of agreements with federal prosecutors.

In May, prosecutors charged Rachel Ross, Erin Bernhardt and three others with the drug conspiracy.

According to court documents, prisoner Ian Barclay allegedly convinced Bernhardt, a prison employee, to smuggle drugs into the prison between April and August 2015. Cordero Metzger, a friend of Barclays, arranged for the drugs to be mailed to Bernhardts Deer Lodge home by Ross and Lauren Hoskins, who lived in Tennessee. Barclay then distributed the methamphetamine and Suboxone to other prisoners.

After signing plea agreements with prosecutors, Ross and Bernhardt pleaded guilty last week in U.S. District Court in Missoula to a charge of conspiracy to possess and distribute drugs. Bernhardt also pleaded guilty to accepting bribes.

Both will be sentenced on Dec. 1, and remain released on their own recognizance until then.

Metzker, a former prisoner, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in July as part of an agreement that dropped three other federal drug charges against him, and will be sentenced Oct. 27.

Also under a plea agreement, Hoskins is set to plead guilty on Sept. 6 to a charge of aiding and abetting drug possession. Barclays criminal trial will begin Sept. 19.
They say nature abhors a vacuum and it would appear voters do, too. Given the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the two most disliked presidential candidates in U.S. history, supporters of Libertarian Gary Johnson or the Green Partys Dr. Jill Stein have gathered enough signatures to put them on Montanas presidential ballot in November.

Given that this is undoubtedly one of the strangest election cycles voters have ever experienced, its no surprise that alternatives to Trump and Clinton would appear. The Donald seems intent on committing political suicide by mouth, having alienated not only GOP party stalwarts, but just about everybody in the media. The old adage that you dont argue with people who buy ink by the barrel seems to have eluded Trump, who not only argues with but insults national media figures, political pundits and even everyday reporters.

But in politics, as in physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and the predictable reaction is an unending barrage of bad press for Trump. So bad, in fact, that with his already-low poll numbers falling he decided last week to shake up and reorganize his campaign. With just six weeks left before early voting by mail begins, Trumps new people have their work cut out for them  and not just triage for the considerable damage already done by Trumps always open mouth, but in trying to bring some focus as to what voters could expect should he become president.

Hillary Clinton, in the meantime, is steaming ahead fully expecting to be the first woman president while refusing to acknowledge just how much the electorate finds her both unlikeable and untrustworthy. The announcement last week of her transition staff didnt exactly bolster hope of progressive change in a Clinton presidency since its rife with tired old political insiders. Plus, theres little to celebrate about a team being led by Trans-Pacific Partnership supporter and fracking advocate Ken Salazar. Given that Clinton changed her stance during the primary to oppose those seminal issues, is it any wonder voters dont trust her?

While both Demo and Republican party loyalists dismiss the impact that third- or fourth-party candidates will have on the election, they may be fooling themselves with that arrogant stance. As noted in a recent Politico article: Johnsons anti-war foreign policy and liberal stances on social issues have resonated among Bernie Sanders stragglers. And lastly, his message of bipartisanship  or, rather, tripartisanship  is attracting independents frustrated with an increasingly dysfunctional two-party system. For her part, Green Party candidate Jill Stein represents a future much more in line with the aspirations of the millions of voters who supported Bernie Sanders than does Hillary Clinton.

Of course there will be the warnings that voting for either Stein or Johnson will result in potential losses for the two major party candidates. But marching out the old Ralph Nader Syndrome, which is still being blamed by some for Al Gores loss to George W. Bush, is losing its appeal among voters anxious to find someone to vote for, not just someone to vote against. Thats especially true among independents which, at more than 40 percent, account for a bigger slice of the electorate than either Democrats or Republicans.

Any prognostications about Novembers outcome must be tempered thanks to the political equivalent of Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle  namely, that our observations affect the objects we are observing. The political arena is now being bombarded with heretofore unknown information being leaked onto the internet by an increasing number of groups and individuals. Its definitely affecting how voters view Clinton and Trump and its not good for either.

Revelations of millions of dollars being funneled to lobbying firms tied to Trumps recently resigned campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Tony Podesta, brother of John Podesta who chairs Clintons campaign, surfaced just last week. According to AP reports, the payments were for support of the pro-Russian position in the Ukraine. Add to that recent announcements that hackers had uncovered a treasure trove of information from both the Trump and Clinton campaigns that may radically affect Novembers outcome.

For those who openly wondered if Clinton and Trump were the best we could come up with out of 324 million Americans, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson offer alternatives. Whether they pull disenfranchised and disillusioned voters back to the voting booths is unknown. But given the previous options, its a clear sign that the two parties are no longer alone as choices for the electorate.
Dark money has taken on such a high level of prominence in Montana elections under Gov. Steve Bullocks administration. No governor in Montana history has played a larger role in raising dark money, and now it looks like hes also going to take the No. 1 spot in benefiting from dark money in his re-election as well.

Recently, the group called Montana Conservation Voters announced they were ponying up $500,000 to Bullocks re-election campaign. Most Montanans dont know much about MCV, but they really should.

MCV is funded almost entirely from large, progressive, social justice foundations from outside Montana in places like California and Washington, D.C.

Those groups funnel large amounts of cash to MCV in order to influence our politics and state policy. This year, a primary policy motive behind a lot of that money is to eliminate Montanas coal industry.

The same outside groups funnel money to other Montana organizations as well for the same purpose. The notorious Montana Environmental Information Center is the litigation arm for this national money network. MCV is the political arm.

If you recall recent news, MEIC is the group responsible for the litigation to shut down Colstrip and put thousands of Montanans out of work. That litigation was funded by the network of outside groups.

For instance, one of those national groups is the Brainerd Foundation, based in Seattle. Brainerd is one of MEICs biggest funders, giving them $287,000 over the last five years. Brainerd is also one of MCVs largest funders, giving them $213,000 in the last five years. Brainerd takes credit for funding the litigation to shut down Colstrip, listing it as their biggest success of this year.

As a dark money group, its impossible to know where Brainerds funding actually comes from. But at the very least, its important for Montanans to know the extent to which this dark money is influencing our politics, our state policy and now, our economy.

The Colstrip shutdown is going to have huge effects on Montana. According to a study from the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research, Colstrips shutdown will cost Montana over 7,000 jobs in the next decade and result in a $1.5 billion hit to our states economy. Thats a bigger impact that Montana felt in the Great Recession.

For our state government, its going to amount to nearly a $400 million reduction in revenues per biennium. Were likely to see big cutbacks in state services, large tax hikes, or a combination of the two.

So, dark money under Bullocks administration isnt just about politics. The influence of the enormous amount of outside dark money flowing into Montana to be spent by groups like the Montana Conservation Voters and the Montana Environmental Information Center is having real impacts on the pocketbooks of everyday Montanans.

And most important of all, Montanans deserve to know that the group spending half a million dollars on Bullocks campaign  Montana Conservation Voters  is tied directly to the shutdown of Colstrip and shares in the responsibility for economic impacts were already starting to feel.
What sad news to read: the death of Richard Geary's dog and his consideration of moving back to Brazil.

I know his columns speak to many of us, especially those of us who are of his "vintage."

Coming from ranch country in Nevada, I relate to his life in Helmville and look forward to every other Monday to read his latest column. Many of us wish it were a weekly.

But most acute is his relationship to his dogs. This speaks to me like nothing else.

My dog Arrow and I are inseparable. I, too, only go to Missoula early mornings to shop in order to beat the heat of the day, for Arrow's welfare. When I have to travel due to my work, I kennel her at my vet's and call at least twice a day to check on her. And I feed her only the best, including her daily raw burger and stew meat from Helmville ranchers the Mannix brothers, mixing it with her non-grain kibble. I buy Mannix Brothers' beef for her, not for me (though I will fix a burger patty once in a while for me). She absolutely comes first.

If Geary does move to Brazil, his column will be greatly missed.

But while I understand, I also know "you can't go back." I fear that if he indeed returns to Brazil, what he remembers from his past no longer exists.

Carleen Gonder,

Ovando
If the anti-refugee group were indigenous, I could understand why they want them vetted. As an indigenous woman, I wish we had thought of this when the "refugees" came over from Europe. Instead we took in these European rejects and taught them how to survive and even bathe. In return they killed us with disease, guns, and then stole our land while putting us on reservations.

Maybe they are afraid their own evil-doings will come back on them. But what troubles me is they have made a mockery of the Bible. After all, doesn't the Bible say: love they neighbor as thyself and do unto others as you would want to have done to you.

And doesn't the Constitution guarantee freedom of religion?

While the Statue of Liberty says: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Maybe its time to rethink what we stand for.

Jackie Trotchie,

Missoula
The Rev. Eda Lorello is among a tiny minority of Roman Catholic women who have been ordained as priests.

The 2013 ceremony was performed through Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an international movement of women who have been ordained in defiance of canon law, at the risk of excommunication.

On Thursday evening, she will host a screening of Pink Smoke over the Vatican, a 2011 documentary about Catholic women who have been ordained. And she will participate in a Q&A with her audience.

Lorello has never been one to shy away from living out her convictions. The lifelong Catholic partially credits that to her parents.

My mother taught me prayer, my father taught me justice, and both (attributes) have been extremely helpful in my life, Lorello said Wednesday in a telephone interview from her home in Long Island, N.Y.

Lorello, who has been a peace activist, has engaged in civil disobedience. But shes always seen that as a final option.

I didnt get up and say I think Ill be arrested today,' she said. Thats a last resort, otherwise it contributes to the violence youre trying to prevent.

Lorello, 83, has masters degrees in theology and pastoral counseling. Both aided her in her lay parish ministry over the years.

Much of her work was in adult formation, at one church teaching precepts of the faith, especially in the aftermath of Vatican II. Then she moved to another parish and took on other roles, but mostly in the teaching area.

She earned a certification in spiritual direction and another as a midlife/long-life directions consultant.

I did workshops on personal and spiritual growth in midlife and beyond not only locally but in other states, Lorello said. I even went to Ireland.

Lorello, the mother of seven, has nine grandchildren, one great-grandson and another great-grandchild on the way. She never felt pulled toward the more traditional path for women  becoming a nun.

Lorello has many friends in different religious orders who are dedicated to their work, for whom she has tremendous respect. But it wasnt for her.

My call centered on bread, wine, oil and water, Lorello said. And those are the sacramental elements.

The desire first arose in childhood. She struggled for a time not because of the call, but I had doubt if this what God wanted me to do.

Lorello put the thought aside during her teenage years. The turning point came while she was in college and she was given The Seven Storey Mountain, an autobiography by Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk.

The book focused on his journey through life in search of a faith, his conversion to Catholicism and his acceptance into the Trappist order. As Lorello read it, the book touched her soul on a very personal level.

And even though she never met Merton, who died in 1968, through his writings he became her mentor. It was after a visit to the Abbey of Gethsemani, where Merton lived, that Lorello finally knew the course she should take.

It convinced me that my call was indeed a call from God for the priesthood, she said.

Lorello called Roman Catholic Womenpriests and asked for an application, which she promptly put into a drawer. A year later, she submitted the paperwork, and she was ordained in 2013.

Lorello knew her ordination went against canon law, which states, A baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly.

Ecclesiastically, thats an unjust law, she said. According to Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, an unjust law is no law.

Lorello knew that her actions meant she would no longer be allowed to work in a Catholic parish. But she viewed the choice as a different kind of civil disobedience, a last option.

Ive waited through five popes and Im going to be ordained as a last resort, to do the sacramental work I was called to do, Lorello said.

She is among the more than 200 women who have been ordained since 2002.

"We're not a schismatic group," Lorello said. "We're about reforming the church, bringing inclusivity, bringing equality."

Lorello presides over a weekly house church. She also teaches spiritual direction, visits the sick, and conducts baptisms and wedding ceremonies.

She was pleased that Pope Francis recently called for the creation of a commission to study the possibility of allowing women to serve as deacons in the Catholic Church. It is uncertain what that study will conclude, but Lorello views it as a positive step.

I wont see it in my lifetime, the church ordaining women, she said. But its going to come, and this is a step in that direction."
A community meeting to discuss the Copper King Fire in Sanders County has been called for 7 p.m. Monday in Thompson Falls.

With the fire activity today, we have planned a community meeting to share information, said the notice sent Monday morning by the fires public information officer.

The meeting will be held at the Thompson Falls Community Center, 108 Fulton St.

The fire burning eight miles east of Thompson Falls, and a mile north of Highway 200, increased by a few hundred acres, to 6,400 acres, over the weekend, according to InciWeb, the federal wildfire information system.

Because of the Copper King fire, the following closures are in effect: Forest Road No. 56 on the west side of Thompson River is still open, but visitors are asked to limit travel in the area. Road No. 9991 (ACM Road) on the east side of Thompson River is closed from the junction with Road No. 56 to the 17-mile marker. Road No. 5587 (Spring Creek) is also closed, as are Forest Trail No. 345 (Todd Creek), No. 368 (Big Hole Lookout), No. 370 (Spring Creek), No. 372 (Munson Creek), No. 445 (Kookoosint) and No.1268 (Bay State).

The Copper King and Clark Memorial campgrounds are closed. Further closures in the area are being considered depending on fire activity.
Tombstones can only hint at the story of the person buried there, often vaguely.

They have inscriptions like: He was a kind and loving father; or she was a beloved mother and sister. And a white cross inscribed with only the persons name and the dates of birth and death indicate the resting place of a soldier.

So maybe its not surprising to discover that two marked graves greeting visitors along a popular forest route to the Cloud Peak Wilderness in Wyoming, a short drive west of the community of Buffalo, hint at a larger but inaccurate story.

Pre-Buffalo

Buffalo, Wyo., was founded in 1879 along the base of the southeastern face of the Bighorn Mountains. The community was established next to Fort McKinney, one of several U.S. Army encampments created to protect travelers along the Bozeman Trail as they migrated west in search of riches in Montana gold camps.

Two years earlier, in 1877, a French member of an Army survey crew died along North Clear Creek, a now popular entryway for hikers, horseback and off-trail vehicle riders.

Theres not an awful lot of information, said Sylvia Bruner, director of the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo.

But from a slim folder she pulled information gathered from earlier newspaper articles written based on the memories of some of the first forest workers. Within that folder the story of P. Garde seems somewhat unlikely, maybe an excuse concocted for a more tragic death.

He was cleaning his gun and accidentally shot himself, Bruner said the story of the 28-year-old Garde goes.

Garde was buried along the winding creek that is lush with willow. His grave was placed on a hillside that provides a broad view of the granite bulk of the Bighorn Mountains to the west. A cross must have marked the original gravesite.

Tie hack

Forty-five years later, in 1922, a lumberjack hired to cut, or hack, ties for the railroad  workers known as tie hackers  suffered an apparent heart attack while hiking back from nearby Seven Brothers Lakes after a day of fishing.

Carl Johnson, a Swedish immigrant, wasnt found until May of that year and was buried by his coworkers. His birth date was not printed on the tombstone. Tie hackers would often work in the winter since it was easier to peel the logs and skid them out in the snow, according to information on the Shoshone National Forests website.

Although Buffalo is situated in Johnson County, Bruner said Carl does not appear to have been related to any of the founders of the area.

There are a lot of Johnsons around and, from what I can tell, none of them are related to each other, Bruner joked.

Memorialized

Over the ensuing years the burial sites have been maintained and small, six-sided concrete headstones were added at some point, in addition to wooden crosses and log enclosures. Under P-Garde the stone reads: Soldier.

A 1925-era photo, probably shot by Forest Service regional manager John Spencer, shows three men and their horses standing next to the knee-high log-enclosed graves with large white crosses erected. Bruner provided the photo from the museums collection and noted the black and white shot was lushly hand-tinted.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the nearby large meadow was given the name Soldier Park on maps starting in 1979, although the name likely predated that official recognition in local lore because of the graves. Yet according to Bruners slim file of facts neither one of the men were soldiers.

People just must have though Peter Garde was a soldier, Bruner speculated.

And now people assume the gravesites are two soldiers resting places since the nearby field is named Soldier Park  an odd quirk of history.

Rough route

The road to reach the gravesites is a rutted, rocky and narrow route about three miles from the Hunter trailhead, a popular spot for horsemen and women to park and unload their trailers. Vehicles are allowed along the road in the summer, but only the most brave or ignorant drive the entire way to Soldier Park.

I have seen a LeBaron (sedan) all the way at the top, Bruner said, amazed that the low-clearance vehicle had driven so far. I guess they made it out, but weve found car parts on the way out.

The road cuts the distance to the Solitude Trail, one of Bruners favorite places to ride with her husband and their mules in the Cloud Peak Wilderness. Its also a popular route for hikers following the Clear Creek drainage up to Florence Pass.

The route is one of the most scenic and popular routes in the Cloud Peak Wilderness, according to Erik Molvars book, Hiking Wyomings Cloud Peak Wilderness. Its also a wilderness entryway with a unique, and maybe a bit misleading, history.
BOZEMAN (AP)  Police have identified a 9-year-old boy who was shot and killed in Montana.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that police say Greydun Flinn Stockinger of Belgrade was fatally shot with a semi-automatic handgun Thursday morning.

Belgrade police say Stockinger did not live n the home where the shooting occurred. Authorities say there was another boy in the house at the time of the shooting but no adults were home.

Belgrade police and the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office are investigating. Authorities have not released any information about the circumstances of the shooting, and no one has been arrested.

According to a press release, detectives sent some evidence to the state crime lab for analysis.

Stockinger's family released a statement calling the incident a "tragic accident."

___

Information from: Bozeman Daily Chronicle, http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com
The stink of wildfire smoke rolled into the Missoula Valley on Monday morning, and continued hot weather may keep the skies hazy for a few more days.

The Roaring Lion fire west of Hamilton got help from several other forest fires in Idaho to push the air quality rating in the Bitterroot Valley to unhealthy for sensitive groups by late Monday morning. While Missoula and Frenchtown remained in the good zone, morning joggers and commuters noted the unpleasant change from Sundays bluebird skies.

Hamilton was solidly in the good zone until about 9 a.m. when particulate matter levels went from 14 to 59, according to Montana Department of Environmental Quality monitors. Levels between 50 and 100 drop the air quality index to moderate, meaning the levels may cause problems for a very small number of people unusually sensitive to pollution.

The Copper King fire 8 miles east of Thompson Falls took a significant run on Sunday afternoon, sending up large columns of smoke as it expanded to 6,908 acres. Red flag weather is forecast to continue through Monday, with west winds blowing 20 to 30 mph and gusts in the 40 mph range. A Type I incident management team, which handles the most serious fires, is moving into position on Monday afternoon to coordinate expanded containment efforts. The fire employs 317 people.

The Roaring Lion fire west of Hamilton sent up visible columns of smoke, but fire officials reported no outbreaks from the containment lines. Instead, they said the fire was consuming interior pockets of trees that hadnt already burned in earlier runs. Those flare-ups will continue until a season-ending rain or snow storm arrives. Smoke from Idahos Moose, Cedar and Elk Ridge fires were also contributing to the haze, but all were more than 11 air miles from the Roaring Lions western edge.

Across the border in Idaho, the Pioneer fire near Boise jumped almost 10,000 acres on Sunday to a total 96,469 acres. Activity in eastern Washington and Oregon has also picked up.

A low-pressure weather pattern should move over the Montana-Idaho border in the next 24 hours. While that will sustain the red flag warnings for firefighters through Tuesday, it may also shift the general wind direction to north-south by Wednesday. Thats expected to direct smoke from out-of-state fires away from Montana and bring cooler temperatures to boot.
BILLINGS  Just this week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the Missoula County Attorney's Office was in full compliance with an agreement seeking to improve the way prosecutors handle sexual assault cases.

But at least four women in Billings Thursday highlighted how little education there is in Montana communities regarding domestic violence, rape and stalking.

The women, and others, spoke during the Billings Crime Victim's Forum, the fourth forum organized by the Montana Attorney General's office since April.

Attorney General Tim Fox, along with local law enforcement leaders and the Yellowstone County Attorney, came to the Billings Public Library to hear the experiences of victims.

Those who spoke, however, considered themselves not victims but survivors.

Jennifer Dodson was raped at a bar in Missoula by a friend 13 years ago. She was taken to a hospital for a sexual assault exam. The machines meant to capture the internal damage done to her during the brutal assault weren't working, so very little evidence was gathered. Dodson never got justice. Missoula Police Detectives declined to prosecute after finding out Dodson had drunk that night.

Dodson told a more recent story of a young girl she knew from Laurel who was sexually assaulted by her boyfriend. The girl kept her "panties as proof," Dodson said. The Laurel police didn't take the girl's underwear, and no charges were ever filed.

The extreme violence of domestic abuse and sexual assault, mostly against women, are crimes that are not well understood by both juries and the justice system, Fox said.

Wendy Rogers spoke after Dodson. Rogers is waiting for her day in court after reporting her husband had raped her throughout their marriage in addition to psychologically abusing her.

Rogers' ex-husband shares custody of their daughter. Sometimes her daughter will repeat threats Rogers' ex-husband has made.

"'Mommy is evil and Daddy is going to bury her,'" Rogers said, quoting her 4-year-old.

Rogers said prosecutors told her it is too hard to prove mental abuse and too hard to prove partner family member rape.

The use of prosecutorial discretion was cited by several victims as why they never had their day in court.

Fox's office declined to prosecute Columbus Police Sgt. Paul Caraway in 2015. Caraway was accused of exposing himself to a police dispatcher in a government building. In a letter to the Columbus police chief, Assistant Attorney General Brant Light said he believed it was possible the "alleged act of sexual assault did in fact take place," but he did not believe he could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, citing questions about the woman's character.

During the investigation, it was revealed Caraway had also allegedly groped another law enforcement employee in the past, and two other civilian women had also filed complaints.

Fox said to The Gazette he was unfamiliar with the case and declined to comment.

Fox acknowledged the justice system can do more for victims of sexual assault.

Fox's office has taken steps to further the prosecution of sexual assault cases. He created a task force to examine untested rape kits collected across Montana and Indian Country. He advocated the changes made to Montana statutes acknowledging women sex workers are often more victim than criminal. In the next legislative session Fox said he wants to work on changing the definitions of consent and incapacitation to better reflect "what is actually happening in our communities."

Fox also shared a personal story at the forum. He said a member of his family brought her friend to the hospital for a rape exam. Because of that, the girl was ostracized by her friends and blamed for getting the perpetrator into trouble. She had to leave the place where she was living because of how she was tormented by her peers, Fox said.

Yellowstone County Attorney Scott Twito said after the forum that the difficult nature of sexual assault, domestic abuse and stalking cases comes down to educating juries. Twito said his office pushed for legislation to make strangulation an aggravated assault, but it didn't change the way juries view a domestic violence case when it comes before them.

"We need to educate them on the realities of these crimes," Twito said. "There is no expert witness who is going to say, 'That was the person who put their hand around that person's throat.'"

Stalking cases are even more difficult. Yellowstone County pushed for the stalking statute in the early '90s. However, fewer than 10 stalking cases were prosecuted in Yellowstone County in the past 10 years.

When stalking victims continue to have contact with the person they fear, it makes juries doubt the victims' stories, Twito said. Juries don't take into account that victims often continue to communicate with stalkers or abusive spouses because they know if they don't, things could get worse.

"We've got to change the preconceived ideas," Twito said. "It's one thing for a prosecutor to understand these crimes, another to convince a jury."

All who spoke during the forum were able to meet with one of the members of the justice system in the room. One man who had spoken to a Division of Criminal Investigation agent in the past said the agent had looked into a complaint that the man's brother had sexually abused him as a child. No charges were filed. The man no longer seeks his brother's arrest, he just worries for his brother's children, he said. DCI Bureau Chief John Strandell spoke with the man after the forum.

Fox spoke with Rogers, who said she had called his office three times seeking help with her case. The two sat together long after most others had left the room.
Where theres smoke, theres Montana.

West Coast fires may be far away, but a new study from Harvard and Yale universities predicts most of the smoke they generate will flow straight to western Montana as North America warms through the coming century. The researchers suggest this adds a new health risk to the discussion of climate change.

Were used to talking about heat waves or sea levels rising, but this is an unexpected consequence, said Loretta Mickley, one of the studys authors from Harvards School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. This is a conversation forest-management people need to have with health people.

Its a conversation Montanans have grown used to during hot summers when smoke from Idaho or Oregon fires obscures the horizon and prompts health alerts. Wildfire smoke generates lots of particulate matter 2.5 microns or less in diameter, known as PM2.5. Those particles are so small, they easily bypass most of the human bodys defenses and move directly from the lungs into the bloodstream.

To identify the highest-risk areas, the team used a fire prediction model and advanced atmospheric modeling to separate pollution caused by wildfires from other pollution sources. They also tracked the likely movement of smoke. They focused on what they called smoke waves two or more consecutive days of unhealthy levels of PM2.5 from fires.

The study found that between 2004 and 2009, wildfire smoke was the source for 71 percent of the pollution on hazardous-air days.

The researchers predict those days will increase by almost two-thirds as the climate warms, and the PM2.5 levels will be 31 percent more intense. Thats going to be a problem for 82 million people, mainly in northern California, western Oregon, and the Great Plains.

The Harvard-Yale studys conclusions mainly looked at where the largest number of affected people lived. It doesnt highlight the fact that sparsely populated places like western Montana will move from a 3 or 4 rating on its 5-point smoke risk index to a greatest risk 5 by mid-century.

That's because continental wind patterns move from the Pacific Ocean in an easterly or northeasterly path. Big-fire areas like California, Oregon and Idaho send their smoke straight to Montana.

Eastern Montana, now at a 1 or 2 on the index, will shift to 3 or 4. Currently about 20 counties in the western United States fall in the Category 5 wildfire smoke risk level. Thats likely to climb to 97 counties by 2050.

Nationwide, the average length of the smoke-wave season is forecast to grow from 14 days a year to 29. Western Montana counties, however, could see smoke-wave seasons ranging from 25 to 69 days.

The main takeaway for me is a lack of surprise, said Missoula County air quality technician Sarah Coefield. A lot of smoke seems to get funneled here. The Bitterroot Valley seems to be the landing place. They have this amazing, beautiful scenery, but they also get a lot of wildfire smoke.

The basic premise of the study was simple, Mickley explained. As the summers grow hotter and winters grow drier, the chances of large wildfires occurring grow larger. The research team compared the trends from 15 separate climate prediction models and concluded the warming trend was likely to swamp present warm-cool patterns like the El Nino/La Nina effect. The number of wildfires would follow the same upward line.

To our knowledge, this is the first study to estimate daily ambient levels of wildfire-specific PM2.5 at the county scale across the western U.S. and to map the frequency and intensity of wildfire PM2.5 episodes (smoke waves) in the present day and in the future under climate change, the study authors wrote. Our study demonstrated that smoke waves are likely to be longer, more intense, and more frequent under climate change, which raises health, ecological and economic concerns.

That could have serious health impacts but not necessarily change state policy, according to officials at Montanas Department of Environmental Quality. Missoula County recently cured its federal non-attainment status for air quality after decades of effort removing wood-burning stoves, cleaning winter road sand, and carefully monitoring open burning in its inversion-prone airshed.

Because wildfires are considered exceptional events, they are not anticipated to impact the day-to-day operation of other industrial sources, DEQ air quality meteorologist Kristen Martin said in an email. Governments cant control wildfires or where they send smoke, so they dont count wildfire pollution against a communitys air quality standards.

But DEQ does foresee a need to better inform the public about smoke health hazards during a smoke-wave event. And the agency also hopes to see future research on ways firefighters might reduce smoke production.

Climate change is a public health crisis, and its happening right now, said Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and coauthor of the paper. Asthmatic kids are going to the hospital today in California because of the smoke from wildfires. If we can figure out who is most at risk, we can start thinking about smoke evacuations and early alert systems for hospitals and local primary care physicians.

Smoke also affects things like road safety, tourism and property values as lingering pales of haze lower visibility. Coefield said it could influence how people think about housing, exercise and public spaces.

Organizations like Climate Smart Missoula have been putting together ideas for dealing with smoke, like finding public places with air conditioning or filtered air when it gets bad, Coefield said. Theres also the importance of situational awareness  we need to pay attention to how our bodies respond to smoke and not dismiss it. Even if youre OK, your neighbor might not be.

"Weve done pretty well this summer, so far. But theres still a month left in that potential wildfire smoke season.
In the fall of 2008, a troubled man, Philip Brode, who had been living a hoarder's life in southern Colorado, packed 125 German shepherds and Siberian huskies  half of which were pregnant  into an old school bus and large trailer and started driving to Alaska where he planned to sell them all as sled dogs.

As Brode drove from southern Colorado and through Utah; Idaho; and Dillon, Montana, he stopped several times along the way, selling puppies to get money for food and gas. Although witnesses described the stench from the bus as "overwhelming and gagging at 20 feet" and the sound of the sick and half-starved dogs as "pitiful," authorities turned a blind eye to the plight of the dogs until the bus broke down at the Rocker truck stop outside of Butte.

In a newly released book, Montana Tech professor Roberta Ray documents one of the largest and most challenging dog rescues anywhere in the United States starting with an account of how one man and four women from Butte, all volunteers, initiated the rescue and recruited more than 120 other volunteers who would do the work of operating what became known as the Camp Husky Rescue.

Volunteers from Butte and Anaconda and as far away as Three Forks labored in freezing temperatures from morning to night seven days a week for six months cleaning kennels, feeding and administering medications to the dogs, walking and socializing them, and raising money for the operation.

THE RESCUE BEGINS

The rescue effort was started with one compassionate and persistent man named Donald Frost who realized that the dogs and Brode would likely perish if the bus was allowed to leave Butte.

Soon, four women from the community stepped forward to make the rescue possible. These women initiated a publicity campaign; recruited volunteers to care for the dogs; obtained permission to use the Anselmo hoist house buildings to house the dogs; obtained kennels; and solicited donations of cash, dog food, dishes, mops, buckets, and all the other supplies needed to undertake the rescue. Many local businesses supported the rescue effort, and donations came in from many Butte residents and as far away as Chicago.

"Angels on a School Bus: How a Community of Volunteers Saved Two Hundred German Shepherds and Huskies" documents the dedication of Butte and Anaconda residents from all walks of life, ranging in age from teens to octogenarians who took on a seemingly impossible task and never lost faith that they could and would save the sick, malnourished, and frightened dogs as well as the many litters of puppies that were born starting the first week of the rescue.

What made this rescue effort both unique and extra challenging was the fact that the rescue took place in the winter in an unheated building and that most of the adult dogs were giant-sized, weighing between 80 and 100-plus pounds even in their sick and malnourished state.

People with full-time jobs drove to Camp Husky after work to do hard labor or volunteered four to 16 hours every weekend. High school and Montana Tech students were regular volunteers. Among those who logged the most hours were seniors, including a World War II veteran and a Korean War veteran. Based on interviews with 40 volunteers as well as city officials, Prof. Ray tells how the operation took place and profiles 28 volunteers.

EXTREME COLD, DISEASE

As volunteers battled both extreme cold and disease, they had no way of knowing how far-reaching their impact would be.

"Angels on a School Bus" is unique in that the author documents what happened to nearly half the rescued dogs based on interviews with individuals and families who adopted the dogs. Six chapters of the book tell the stories of 81 dogs now living all over Montana and throughout the United States. Thirty-seven of the dogs featured in the book were adopted by people from Butte and Anaconda.

Sarah Sadowski from Helena adopted one of the least socialized mother dogs, a German shepherd named Gypsy, and transformed her into a confident, affectionate, and obedient hiking companion.

Jewelie and Duane Hoxworth of Ovando, Montana, decided to adopt a dog "to help the folks in Butte." They chose one of Gypsy's puppies, and at 9 months of age, that puppy named Mylie saved Duane's life in an incredible act of courage. "We drove to Butte to help out those folks by adopting one of the puppies. In the end, the puppy that Butte people saved saved us!"

In North Carolina a young military wife named Erin Macer credits her white German shepherd, Sergeant Huck, with giving her the ability to cope with the deployment of her husband, a Marine sergeant major. In Montana a young Army veteran is slowly healing from the physical and emotional wounds sustained during his service in Iraq with the help of his husky mix named Bella, who is part clown and part therapy dog.

At the Perfume Vault in South Lake Tahoe, California, a beautiful husky mix greets visitors. In Three Forks everyone knows Lucy, the German shepherd who recently retired as greeter at the hardware store when her owner sold the business this year.

THE PROTECTOR

When volunteers unloaded the bus, they found a very large, sweet-natured adult husky with a small puppy he was protecting. Volunteers named this puppy and his protector Simba and Mufasa after the characters in "The Lion King." Walt Harvey, who grew up in Butte, and his wife Susie drove all the way from Port Orchard, Washington, to adopt Simba. John and Mary Lawrence of Butte provided a loving home for Mufasa as well as Wooley, one of the oldest dogs on the bus.

An 8-year-old girl in Great Falls named Katie Evans adopted a white German shepherd puppy. Within a year, that puppy would save Katie's girlfriend's miniature pinscher from being trampled to death. Now Katie is a teen, and this talented young woman and her dog, Bear, are winning awards in agility competition.

In Colorado, two little boys named Henry and Wren Brodhead have been loved and protected by two husky-shepherd mixes since each child was born. Another little boy named Logan Rowe lives in Washington with a white German shepherd protector named Apollo.

In Houston, Texas, a young pilot named Casey Clark refers to his dog Lucy as his best friend while in Pullman, Washington, Casey Drummond credits her dog Japhy with helping her cope with the stress of her veterinary studies.

These are just a few of the heartwarming stories from "Angels on a School Bus."
The ninth annual Montana Downtown Coalition conference will be held Wednesday-Friday, Oct. 5-7, at the Hotel Finlen, 100 E. Broadway St.

The conference is in collaboration with Mainstreet Uptown Butte, the Butte Local Development Corporation, the Butte-Silver Bow Convention and Visitor's Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, and the Butte-Silver Bow Urban Revitalization Agency.

The conference will provide an opportunity to collaborate, share ideas, and develop best practices. Download a registration form by visiting www.mainstreetbutte.org and clicking on the Montana Downtown Coalition logo in the left column. The direct link to conference information is www.mainstreetbutte.org/mtdc16.htm. Fill out your registration form and return it with your check.

Lodging arrangements can be made at the Hotel Finlen or at other lodging properties close by. Details are available on our web site. If you have any questions, call George Everett at 406-565-2249 or email him at geverett@montana.com.
Passmore Canyon south of Butte recalls a prominent business family from Buttes early days. Charles Sumner Passmore came to Butte in 1889 not long after a major fire devastated the growing business district and led to the first city ordinance, mandating construction with brick and stone. He reportedly parlayed the $10 in his pocket into ownership of a real estate firm within seven months.

In 1907, Passmore was the architectural firm that designed the new First Baptist Church at Broadway and Montana Street, although historically the Passmores were devout Quakers with heritage traced back to colonists associated with William Penn, arriving in America about 1717. Their earlier ancestors came from Normandy as part of the invasion of England with William the Conqueror in 1066. In Butte, the Passmores became stalwarts of the Presbyterian Church.

By 1910, Passmore & Co. were involved in real estate, loans, insurance, collections, conveyancing (property transfer law), and building (the first in Butte to sell homes on the installment payment plan) and were working as architects, mining dealers, surety bondsmen, liability contractors, and patent guarantors. Charles named the Maryland Block on West Quartz, a three-story boarding house that stood west of the fire station  todays Archives  for his native state.

Charles was joined by his older brother John in 1891, but John soon branched out on his own. After a short stint with the Anaconda Standard publishing company, he started the Passmore Paper Company, the only wholesale paper business in Montana, selling products ranging from stationery to asbestos paper for building construction.

Johns son Ellis became proprietor of the Citizens Coal Company (later named S.J. Monroe & Co.), dealers in coal, wood, brick, stone, lime, and cement, with an office at 4 E. Broadway, probably upstairs above the old California Saloon.

The upscale West Side was dotted with long-time Passmore homes. Charles and his family lived for decades at 717 W. Granite, while Johns home was a block east at 613. Charles built three homes in the 800 block of West Mercury for family members, including his nephew Ellis and his wife Martha at 827.
MISSOULA  Two people charged with helping to smuggle drugs into the Montana State Prison last year have pleaded guilty as part of agreements with federal prosecutors.

In May, prosecutors charged Rachel Ross, Erin Bernhardt and three others with the drug conspiracy.

According to court documents, prisoner Ian Barclay allegedly convinced Bernhardt, a prison employee, to smuggle drugs into the prison between April and August 2015. Cordero Metzger, a friend of Barclays, arranged for the drugs to be mailed to Bernhardts Deer Lodge home by Ross and Lauren Hoskins, who lived in Tennessee. Barclay then distributed the methamphetamine and Suboxone to other prisoners.

Ross and Bernhardt pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to possess and distribute drugs on Aug. 17 in U.S. District Court in Missoula after signing plea agreements with prosecutors. Bernhardt also pleaded guilty to accepting bribes.

Both will be sentenced on Dec. 1, and remain released on their own recognizance until then.

Metzker, a former prisoner, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in July as part of an agreement that dropped three other federal drug charges against him, and will be sentenced Oct. 27.

Hoskins is set to plead guilty on Sept. 6 to a charge of aiding and abetting drug possession under a plea agreement. Barclays criminal trial will begin Sept. 19.
The stink of wildfire smoke rolled into the Missoula Valley Monday morning, and continued hot weather may keep the skies hazy for a few more days.

The Roaring Lion fire west of Hamilton got help from several other forest fires in Idaho to push the air quality rating in the Bitterroot Valley to unhealthy for sensitive groups by late Monday morning. While Missoula and Frenchtown remained in the good zone, morning joggers and commuters noted the unpleasant change from Sundays bluebird skies.

Hamilton was solidly in the good zone until about 9 a.m. when particulate matter levels went from 14 to 59, according to Montana Department of Environmental Quality monitors. Levels between 50 and 100 drop the air quality index to moderate, meaning the levels may cause problems for a very small number of people unusually sensitive to pollution.

The Copper King fire 8 miles east of Thompson Falls took a significant run on Sunday afternoon, sending up large columns of smoke as it expanded to 6,908 acres. Red flag weather is forecast to continue through Monday, with west winds blowing 20 to 30 mph and gusts in the 40 mph range. A Type I incident management team, which handles the most serious fires, is moving into position on Monday afternoon to coordinate expanded containment efforts. The fire employs 317 people.

The Roaring Lion fire west of Hamilton sent up visible columns of smoke, but fire officials reported no outbreaks from the containment lines. Instead, they said the fire was consuming interior pockets of trees that hadnt already burned in earlier runs. Those flare-ups will continue until a season-ending rain or snow storm arrives. Smoke from Idahos Moose, Cedar and Elk Ridge fires were also contributing to the haze, but all were more than 11 air miles from the Roaring Lions western edge.

Across the border in Idaho, the Pioneer fire near Boise jumped almost 10,000 acres on Sunday to a total 96,469 acres. Activity in eastern Washington and Oregon has also picked up.

A low-pressure weather pattern should move over the Montana-Idaho border in the next 24 hours. While that will sustain the red flag warnings for firefighters through Tuesday, it may also shift the general wind direction to north-south by Wednesday. Thats expected to direct smoke from out-of-state fires away from Montana and bring cooler temperatures to boot.
BILLINGS  The bid kept going up and up and up. And tears formed in the Leiser family's eyes.

On Saturday during the Patrick K. Goggins Junior Livestock Sale at MontanaFair, Kamrey Leiser's sheep fetched a remarkable sale.

The sheep, Mr. Ramsbottom, garnered more than $14,000 from the sale at $105 per pound. Normally the animals auction for $4 to $6 per pound, said Nicole Leiser, Kamrey's mother.

The bidding started and went astronomically high," Nicole Leiser said. "It was pretty emotional for all of us.

The money will go toward medical bills for Leiser, 10, who endured months of intensive surgery after a hiking accident in June.

The Shepherd family was out camping with a group near Big Timber. During a hike, Leiser was leading the pack and got caught in a rock slide. After tumbling 45 feet, she was pinned beneath a boulder.

Leiser was flown to St. Vincent Healthcare with serious internal injuries. Two surgeries were done at the facility before she was flown to another facility in Salt Lake City. There, she went through four more surgeries.

"She went into septic shock the day after we got there, and she had all sorts of things wrong inside of her," Nicole Leiser said.

Leiser spent 44 days in intensive care before she was released onto the regular pediatric wing. A week ago, she returned to St. Vincent.

She was just released on Tuesday.

With help from the local 4-H community, Leiser's older sister was able to show the sheep on Saturday. Leiser and her family were in attendance when the bid kept rising.

And like the bid, Leiser's health has been improving.

"As of about three weeks ago, she just turned a corner and started regaining rapidly," Nicole Leiser said.

She said that the support from the community  4-H, their church and their neighbors  has been incredibly generous. An old friend of Leiser's from Huntley sold rubber bracelets while she was hospitalized to raise money for the bills.

A long road of rehabilitation lies ahead, Nicole Leiser said. But the show of support on Saturday gave the family a feeling of grace.

Hence the tears, she said.

"Amongst all the crazy and evil in the world, there's still good people willing to get out and help," she said.
A single drop of water, the stuff NASA searches the stars to indicate the possibility of life, doused Richard O'Connor's hope he had photographed an alien space ship.

The south-facing camera on the outside of his home in the hilly country in Jefferson County in November captured an image of what looked like an unidentified flying object. The oval-shaped object appeared to be rocketing across the sky.

"It's a falling water drop, is what it is," O'Connor said. "It's a huge disappointment to me.

"These things happen apparently."

Part of the photo with its dark blue sky and white, high cirrus clouds is now the backdrop on his laptop computer screen.

"I put it there as a reminder to me not to jump to conclusions," he said, but noted that, "I'm still continuing to try to get a good photograph."

O'Connor is a retired doctor who left St. Peter's Hospital in Helena in July after 28 years as an anesthesiologist. When his other medical experience is added in, he's been working in operating rooms for more than 30 years.

Seated in the living room of his home with its view of timbered and snowy mountains, he said, "I'm one of the people that believe our world is being visited.

"For me there's no single piece of evidence that leads me to that conclusion."

Instead, it is the preponderous amount of evidence on the subject, he said, that supports his conclusion.

The testimony of government officials, those in the military as well as the sightings by pilots and ordinary people, he explained, all point to a "first contact" being underway  something that's been happening for decades and even centuries before these more recent encounters.

"Who has the motive to lie about this?" he asked.

For him the answer to who is withholding the truth is obvious: those in the military and who hold the political reins, as aliens have far greater power as evidenced by their ability to travel great distances to reach Earth.

Intricate designs carved overnight into crop fields are other evidence of such contacts, O'Connor said.

These designs that come in all shapes, he added, "They're trying to tell us something."

Several websites are devoted to explaining and pondering crop circles and one decodes the binary code employed in one that reportedly says, "Beware the bearers of false gifts and their broken promises. Much pain, but still time. Believe there is good out there. We oppose deception. Conduit closing. 0x07"

The closing sequence of numbers, 0x07, is said by the website to produce the tone of a typewriter bell.

Livestock mutilations in farm and ranch fields are also among what leads O'Connor to conclude otherworldly life forms are slowly revealing their presence as they watch and interact with Earth's inhabitants.

At one time he had set up a radio dish in his yard pointing toward the sky directly overhead. A computer with an open email program was attached to the dish in hopes of enticing a message.

"But it just did not happen," he said.

More than two years ago, he posted an Internet message inviting alien space ships to reveal themselves by flying by his cameras. A computer program helped him scan the roughly 270,000 photographs he had acquired by November from those cameras.

Late last year he was startled by what he thought he saw among those photographs.

"On November the 4th, I thought I had found it," he said.

"It certainly fit a lot of descriptions people have given about their own sightings," he said.

A link to an incident

O'Connor, 60, is tall with blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses. His brown hair is pulled into a pony tail.

Although he's soft spoken, an emotional intensity surfaces when he talks about the threat nuclear weapons pose to the planet and the attention they've drawn from aliens.

"I think when nuclear weapons entered the picture, UFO activity on this planet really picked up," he said and explained that Earth's civilization can't be the first to discover the power within an atom nor will be the first to vanish because of it.

O'Connor's interest in UFOs spans decades, yet a single event, meeting Dr. Jesse A. Marcel Jr., who practiced medicine with him at St. Peter's Hospital, helped cement his belief.

Marcel told O'Connor had seen some of the July 1947 crash debris from the desert northwest of Roswell, New Mexico.

O'Connor and Marcel worked together as colleagues. They were friends too, and, "His story was always the same," O'Connor said.

"I came to the conclusion 30 years ago that this man was not a liar," he added. "He was a very responsible person."

Marcel's father, who was also Jesse A. Marcel, was the chief intelligence officer with the 509th Bombardment Group and was among the military personnel who responded to the Roswell crash site, O'Connor said.

Marcel's father brought home some of the crash debris to show his family. His son, who was 11 years old at the time, never forgot what he saw and described the thin metal I-beam parts with their peculiar purple markings, O'Connor said.

According to the Roswell UFO Museum website, the crash was reported by rancher W.W. "Mack" Brazel, who with the son of another family rode to check on sheep after a fierce thunderstorm the previous night.

Brazel noticed metal debris and saw a shallow trench several hundred feet long carved into the land.

The rancher recovered several large pieces of the debris and took them home with him. He then showed them to the family of the man that had ridden with him.

Brazel then reported his discovery to the county sheriff who reported it to Maj. Marcel at the Roswell Army Air Field. The debris site was closed while the wreckage was recovered.

"I didn't know what we were picking up," the museum website reads as Marcel's comments regarding the debris. "I still don't know what it was  It could not have been part of an aircraft, not part of any kind of weather balloon or experimental balloon  I've seen rockets  sent up at the White Sands Testing Grounds. It definitely was not part of an aircraft or missile or rocket."

Bodies were also reported to have been recovered from the wreckage, according to the website.

A news release from the Roswell Army Air Base was printed by the local newspaper and broadcast by radio stations that the "wreckage of a crashed disk had been recovered."

A weather balloon was substituted for the wreckage during a subsequent evaluation at what was then Fort Worth Army Air Field, the website explained, and the wreckage was now that of the balloon.

"(It) was a cover story. The whole balloon part of it. That was the part of the story we were told to give to the public and news, and that was it," the website quoted Brig. Gen. Thomas DuBose, chief of staff of the 8th Air Force, as having said.

"As far as I'm concerned, the Roswell event was a UFO that crashed in the desert," O'Connor said. "And our military recovered it, and then they covered it up.

"I think that's been a huge disservice to humanity, in my opinion."

Jesse A. Marcel Library

"There's been a concerted effort to cover all this up," O'Connor said. "At some point in the future, that's got to stop."

A Freedom of Information Act request was made to the Department of the Air Force, headquarters 341st missile wing, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls regarding sightings of unidentified flying objects over Montana since 1999.

"Manual and computer searches were conducted and we have no records responsive to your request and we are not aware of any other records systems which are likely to produce any responsive records," stated the Feb. 19 response.

"That's unfortunate," O'Connor said. "I guarantee you that's not true."

O'Connor sees withholding of information as hindering the scientific and social evolution of the world and called for funding for study and evaluation.

For more than 60 years people have been convinced that contact by aliens is not real, O'Connor said, explaining that daily life with jobs and families leaves little time for people to consider the issue in depth.

"Trying to sort out what's fact and what's fiction is not a simple process," he added.

To help people learn about these first contacts, O'Connor opened the Jesse A. Marcel Library in March 2012. It's named for the elder Marcel and located in a building near his home.

On Tuesday nights between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. when it's open, presentations and discussions are held for the typical 10 to 20 people who come.

Perhaps 150 have come when the museum's open on most Tuesday nights. Some were there to learn. Others came to share stories.

The museum's website is found at jamal.org and O'Connor can be reached at richard@cropcirclesresearchfoundation.org.

"I think this is so important, I want to take every opportunity I can to educate people about it," he said.

O'Connor said he asked Marcel, who died about a year and a half after the museum's opening, how the elder Marcel would have reacted at having the museum named after him. Marcel said his father would have been honored.

"For me, this has evolved beyond the realm of belief," O'Connor said.

People who look will find enough good and credible information, he explained, that will transition into "something they will know to be pretty much true."

Risking ridicule

Ridicule has helped to keep people from talking about what they have seen and experienced, O'Connor said.

"We don't want to be labeled as the kook down the block that believes in little green men."

Yet this is the risk he takes and explained he's had the time to look at the evidence that support his beliefs.

And had he not known and worked with Marcel at St. Peter's Hospital, he too might be among those who express disbelief, he said.

If people from Earth were to find a planet where life existed, it would make sense to hold off from barging in and instead first watch and study life on that world, O'Connor said.

Earth, he said, may be "the most profound reality show that an intelligent being can observe."

Aliens watching this planet may be studying us to learn from our actions, he said, but he's quick to add that this is all speculation. There's no way anyone can know.

"But these all seem to be plausible explanations, of course, given that they're here," he said.

O'Connor, who created an Internal Revenue Service recognized non-profit organization for his research, said he's spent several tens of thousands of dollars on what he's doing to foster awareness of alien contacts.

"I want to help people get up to speed on this and understand," he said.

And, still, the quest continues to document an encounter, even if it's a fleeting image captured as a result of a response to his email invitation to fly past his cameras.

"I was just sort of hopeful that they would see it," he said. "It seems reasonable to me that they would be able to do that."

"It would be remarkable if it did happen," he said and added, "But so far it hasn't happened yet.

"I'm just interested in finding out the truth about this," O'Connor said.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Two Muscatine Power and Water employees were surprised in 2013 when their sons were born on the same day, and were even more surprised this July when it happened again.

Keith Dickens and Christal Schreiber, who both work at Muscatine Power and Water, have each had two sons born on the same day.

Jetson Schreiber and Conner Dickens are both two years old, born Dec. 12, 2013, and James Dickens and Henry Schreiber were born July 28, 2016.

"We were blown away the first time," Keith Dickens said.

The two families, while surprised by the events, said having another family experiencing the same difficulties, with two two-year-olds and two three-week-olds, has been helpful.

The two mothers, Jessica Dickens and Christal Schreiber, compared stories, asking how the two-year-olds were handling their new sibling, and how the three-week-olds were sleeping.

"They always seem to be kind of on the same page," Christal Schreiber said.

Although Jessica and Keith Dickens have a nine-year-old son as well, Mason, they are still encountering new challenges every day.

"We've never had a toddler and an infant in the house at the same time before," Keith Dickens said.

When Christal Schreiber and her husband, John Schreiber, were awaiting their new son's arrival, their friends who also knew the Dickens family told them they were also about to have their son.

"I was in labor and I was getting text messages, like 'Did you know Keith is having his baby today too?'" Christal Schreiber laughed.

While many of their friends are amazed by the unique situation, Keith Dickens said many of them had trouble believing having two sons born to different Muscatine Power and Water employees on the same days was a coincidence.

"We can't make this up," laughed Jessica Dickens.

The families are glad to have each others' support, and Christal Schreiber and Keith Dickens said every conversation they have at work starts with questions about their sons.

"We can't have a conversation without asking 'How're Jetson and Henry,' or 'How's James and Conner,'" Keith Dickens said.

"It's just a really unique situation."
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
South Africans are struggling to afford new tech due to the weakness of the rand, and according to Fred Roberts  a photographer and Nikon enthusiast  Nikon South Africa is not helping.

Roberts told MyBroadband that he has been an avid supporter of Nikon for the past 30 years.

He recently decided to purchase a 28-300mm Nikon lens for his Nikon D810.

I set out to make my new purchase and got some pricing from some of the Nikon agents. To my horror and amazement, the Nikon 28-300mm lens was going to cost me R24,795, said Roberts.

I started to compare it to overseas prices, and to my astonishment I discovered that they are selling the identical lens for below half that price in Australia.

He described the local pricing as a crazy rip-off. Words cannot describe my disappointment with Nikon South Africa for what they are doing to the market and the South African people.

Roberts imported the lens to save money, and said my Australian Nikon 28-300 lens is working perfectly.

Nikon pricing comparison

MyBroadband compared the South African pricing of the Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 28-300mm lens with international prices, as detailed below. (Prices from 18 August).

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 28-300mm DSLR Camera Lens Retailer Country Local Currency Price Price in ZAR Orms Direct South Africa R22,195 R22,195 Techno Pro South Africa R24,738 R24,738 Techrific Australia AU$1,074 R11,000 Amazon United States US$947 R12,647 1 AUD = 10.2425 ZAR; 1 USD = 13.3529 ZAR

Nikon mum on high local pricing

Orms Direct referred questions about the high prices of Nikon products in South Africa to Nikon South Africa.

Nikon South Africa said it was not in a position to make any official comments on behalf on Nikon.

It did say that many consumers are under the impression that they can buy products cheaper in the USA based on the incorrect information.

Nikon South Africa did not explain what it meant by incorrect information.

More on Nikon

New Nikon D3400 camera aimed at aspiring photographers

Nikon unveils the D5  its new flagship DSLR camera
Roadblocks are used in South Africa to improve safety on our roads, and includes testing for drunk driving and road-worthiness of vehicles.

Roadblocks can be frustrating, though, especially when they are done on busy roads or during peak traffic.

Voicing your frustration at police, however, is not the best way to handle the situation.

Arrive Alive editor Johan Jonck said motorists must consider the necessity for roadblocks, even though they can be frustrating.

Some frustrations are caused by an uncertainty about what police may do when they stop you, and when they are allowed to set up a roadblock.

MyBroadband spoke to Justice Project South Africa chairman Howard Dembovsky about the matter, as detailed below.

Under what conditions can a roadblock be set up?

Metro police are appointed in terms of the SA Police Service Act and must comply with its provisions. Should metro police wish to mount a roadblock, they must be in possession of a written authorisation in terms of Section 13(8) of the SAPS Act, to conduct that roadblock on that particular day. Specified times for a location are issued, and the authorisation must stipulate the purpose of the roadblock. The above does not apply to roadside checkpoints where certain vehicles are pulled over, and where the road is not physically blocked.

What rights do the police have at a roadblock? What can they do?

The rights of police at roadblocks are much the same as they are anywhere else. The public often forget that law enforcement officers are also people and that the Constitution is applicable to all persons. Every constitutional right which applies to you applies to a law enforcement official. When it comes to their powers at roadblocks, typically the purpose of a roadblock includes combating crime. If this is the case, the authorisation contemplated will act as a means of circumventing the prohibition against search and seizure without a warrant. It is also not prohibited for police to check for outstanding traffic fines, if this is done at a roadblock for which an SAPS authorisation has been issued. This purpose must be listed on the authorisation. All police may, without a warrant, arrest a person who they suspect may have been involved in or about to engage in a crime. For example, if they find unlicensed firearms, tools used for housebreaking, drugs, they may arrest you without a warrant. If a warrant of arrest exists for a person, they must arrest that person immediately.

What rights do drivers have at a roadblock, and what advice do you have for them?

Every person has the constitutional right to be treated with dignity. They also have the constitutional responsibility to treat others, including law enforcement personnel, with the same dignity. We strongly advise the public to remember this and to refrain from becoming rude, uncooperative, and belligerent with law enforcement officials. If you are treated disrespectfully or abusively by police, do not retaliate. Rather take notes of their names, and when and where it took place. A common abuse perpetrated by law enforcement personnel at roadblocks is threatening people with arrest if they have outstanding traffic fines. This is not sanctioned by any law. Policemen and peace officers may arrest a person who has a warrant of arrest issued by a court against them. Unfortunately, because the government is experimenting with the roll-out of the AARTO Act, there is no consistent answer to the question of warrants of arrest. The AARTO Act does not cater for summonses and therefore does not cater for warrants of arrest, while the Criminal Procedure Act caters for both. Note: the AARTO Act is only applicable in the cities of Johannesburg and Tshwane. Where a person has outstanding infringement notices issued under the AARTO Act, police may provide them with a printout listing the infringement notices and let them deal with those infringement notices as prescribed by the AARTO Act. Where a person has outstanding traffic fines issued in terms of Section 341, an outstanding matter upon a summons issued in terms of Section 54, or a written notice issued in terms of Section 56 of the Criminal Procedure Act for which the court date has not yet passed, law enforcement personnel at roadblocks may provide them with a printout listing those notices and let them deal with those notices as prescribed by the Criminal Procedure Act. Where a person has failed to appear in Court on a summons issued in terms of Section 54, or a written notice issued in terms of Section 56 of the Criminal Procedure Act, a court may have issued a warrant for that persons arrest. Police are obliged to execute that warrant. Should that person pay the contempt of court fine and the original penalty amount, that person may be released from custody. In summary, forcing people to pay their outstanding traffic fines at a roadblock is not catered for by the law. Only when a warrant of arrest exists must a payment be made to circumvent detention of that person until they can be brought before the court which issued the warrant. Any detention outside of this scope  including for outstanding traffic fines  is unlawful.

General advice from the JPSA

Motorists have rights and responsibilities. One of these responsibilities is to obey road traffic laws. A responsible citizen is not one who pays their traffic fines, it is one who does not incur traffic fines. Ignoring traffic fines, while enormously popular in South Africa, is irresponsible. It is true to suggest the authorities rarely follow protocol regarding traffic fines, but this is not true in all cases. If you regularly incur traffic fines and ignore them until something drastic happens, we urge you to adjust your behaviour. Obey traffic laws, particularly the speed limit  as this is the focus of law enforcement authorities due to its revenue generation. Should you incur a fine, dont ignore it  either pay it or confront the allegation by challenging the evidence it is based on, etc. If everyone obeyed the speed limit, this would drive cops out of the bushes and make them focus on moving violations  like the use of cellphones while driving, which is immeasurably more dangerous. The JMPD may hate you if you do this, as the City of Joburg states it relies on traffic fine income in its budget to provide basic services. This is not what traffic law enforcement should be about.

More on motoring

How to check if a speeding fine is legal in South Africa

Speed camera detectors, jammers  whats legal in South Africa

Average Speed Over Distance cameras: where in South Africa you can find them
After almost 20 years, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will no longer be administered by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration, TechRepublic reported.

It will hand over control of ICANN to a multi-stakeholder entity on 1 October 2016.

This means the United States will no longer be in control of the worlds domain and IP address database.

The management of the Internets domain name system will be conducted by a body of international representatives.

Internet users should not notice any changes.

More on the ICANN

US judge rules in favour of ZA Central Registry over dotAfrica

No .DStv and .SuperSport domains
Oops... This is embarrassing...

We're Sorry, the page you're looking for may have been moved.

Let's help you find the page you were looking for...

First, try using the search form below. Type what you're looking for and search;

If the search forms above won't help you find exactly what you're looking for, perhaps one of the links from our sitemap below will help you;

If you prefer to visit a particular school's information page on this website, please select the school from the form presented on the Myschool Homepage by clicking here.

Sitemap

Home

Store | News | Classroom | Scholarships | Questions | Connect2Me | Marketplace | Events | Groups | Dashboard | Contact Us

Buy Now

Myschool Mobile App | Myschool Computer Software | Post-UTME Past Questions | Project & Research Materials | Video Lessons Subscription

News

Post a News | All News | Latest News | JAMB | O' Level (WAEC, NECO, NABTEB) News | Post-UTME

Classroom

Classroom | Take a Free CBT Test | Topic by Topic Video Lessons | Past Questions Video Lessons | Study Novels | JAMB Novel | JAMB Syllabus | JAMB Brochure

Scholarships

Local Scholarships | International Scholarships | Undergraduate Scholarships | Undergraduate Scholarships | All Scholarships

Questions

Ask a Question | Academic Questions | School-based Questions

Connect2Me

Find a Friend | Update Your Profile | Create an Account

MarketPlace

Buy an Item | Sell an Item

Events

Check all Events | Post an Event

Groups

Join a Group | Create a Group

Dashboard

Dashboard | Notifications | Blog: View Posts | Create Post | Events: View Events | Create Event | Reminders | Private Messages: Inbox Messages | Compose | Sent Messages | Friends: Friend Requests | Confirmed Friends | Sent Requests | Orders: All Orders | Place an Order | App Manager: Mobile App Activation Codes | Desktop App Activation Codes | Mobile App Customization | Desktop App Customization | Materials & Research Works: Post a Research Work | All Research Works | Sales Information | Downloads | Groups: Join a Group | Membership | Create a Group | View Groups | Classroom: Exam History | Performance Analysis | Video Subscription | Bookmark | Questions: View all your Questions | Post a Question | MarketPlace: Post an Advert | All Your Adverts | Transactions: Request Payout | All Transactions | My Account: Update Profile | Change Password | Bank Information | Logout
TEHRAN, Iran  Russia has stopped using an Iranian air base for launching airstrikes on Syria for the time being, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday, just hours after the Iranian defense minister criticized Moscow for having "kind of show-off and ungentlemanly" attitude by publicizing their actions.

Moscow, which had used the Shahid Nojeh Air Base to refuel its bombers striking Syria at least three times last week, confirmed that all Russian warplanes that were based in Iran have returned to Russia.

A statement issued by the Russian Defense Ministry said Monday that as long as Iran agreed, Russia could use the Iranian air base again, "depending on the situation" in Syria.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told reporters in Tehran that the Russian airstrikes on militants in Syria were "temporary, based on a Russian request."

"It is finished, for now," Ghasemi said, without elaborating.

Last week, Russia announced it used the airfield, located some 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of the Iranian city of Hamedan. Iranian officials only confirmed Russia's presence a day later.

Earlier Monday, state TV quoted Iran's defense minister as saying that Russia "will use the base for a very short and fixed span." The comments by Gen. Hossein Dehghan came after he chastised parliament this weekend for asking questions about Russia using the base.

Responding to a question about why Iran didn't initially announce Russia's presence at the airfield, Dehghan appeared prickly on the state TV broadcast.

"Russians are interested to show they are a superpower to guarantee their share in political future of Syria and, of course, there has been a kind of show-off and ungentlemanly (attitude) in this field," he said.

Dehghan's remarks also suggest Russia and Iran initially agreed to keep Moscow's use of the air base quiet. Its announcement likely worried Iran's Sunni-ruled Mideast neighbors, which host American military personnel.

The Interfax news agency on Monday also quoted Russia's ambassador to Tehran, Levan Dzhagaryan, as confirming that all of Moscow's warplanes have been withdrawn from Iran. Dzhagaryan said, however, that he does "not see any reason" why the Russians can't use the Iranian base again.

For Iran, allowing Russia to launch strikes from inside the country is likely to prove unpopular. Many still remember how Russia, alongside Britain, invaded and occupied Iran during World War II to secure oil fields and Allied supply lines. But while Britain withdrew, Russia refused to leave, sparking the first international rebuke by the nascent United Nations Security Council in 1946.

Analysts have suggested Russia potentially leveraged Iran into allowing it to use the airfield over either economic or military interests, such as Tehran wanting to purchase Sukhoi-30 fighter jets or its deployment of Russian S-300 air defense missile systems. Russia initially held off on supplying the missile system to Tehran amid negotiations over Iran's contested nuclear program.

Over the weekend, photographs of President Hassan Rouhani were published in Iranian state media near a Bavar-373 missile defense system. That system is designed to be the local equivalent of the S-300  perhaps an Iranian signal back to Moscow that it's capable of defending itself without the Russian missile system.

In his comments, Dehghan said the Bavar-373 can hit targets at the height of 27 kilometers (16.7 miles)  the same height the S-300 can reach.

"When we make Bavar-373 operational, we will not need to purchase another high-altitude and long-range air defense system," he said.

Dehghan added that Iran still sees the Sukhoi-30 as "an appropriate fighting aircraft," though he acknowledged the U.S. could seek to block any fighter jet deal. The U.N. resolution enshrining last year's nuclear deal with Iran prohibits the supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran unless approved in advance by the Security Council.

"The issue of purchasing the fighters has been raised and we have not heard any negative answer," he said. "We are negotiating to learn how we can do this with the restriction that can be raised for the Russians."

Meanwhile, fighting continued Monday in Syria. In the northern Syrian city of Hasakeh, clashes again erupted between Kurdish fighters and pro-government militias, according to the Kurdish Hawar News Agency. The government and the Kurdish movement have shared control of the city since the early years of the Syrian civil war.

Syrian government planes bombed Kurdish positions in Hasakeh last week as the struggle for predominance in the city escalated.
The compelling saga of Mutiny on the Bounty is entering a new chapter, with Pacific Union College in Angwin providing 10 pigtails, supposedly from sailors who mutinied in 1789, for DNA authentication.

The 10 braids of hair are thought to be from seven mutineers of Mutiny on the Bounty fame and three of their female Polynesian companions. They will be analyzed in a collaboration between the Pitcairn Islands Study Center at PUC and the forensic DNA group at Kings College London.

If the tests and genealogical studies of this hair authenticate that it is of seven of the nine mutineers who hid out from British justice on Pitcairn in 1790, it will be the only tangible evidence of their having existed, said Herbert Ford, director of the Pitcairn study center.

The pigtails are a popular exhibit at the Pitcairn Islands Study Center, but we want to be very sure we are not traveling under false colors about these hairs, Ford said. If the research findings tell us the hair is not that of the mutineers, we will stop telling visitors to the study center that they are.

The mutiny that took place on the British Navy ship H.M.S. Bounty in the South Pacific Ocean in 1789 was made famous by the publication of a trilogy of books published in the 1930s, then five Hollywood motion pictures.

The British mutineers, led by Acting Lt. Fletcher Christian, cast off their captain, William Bligh, then settled on Pitcairn and Tahiti islands in the South Pacific. Its an adventure. It has romance. It has murder in it. It has duplicity  all the human emotions in it. It just refuses to die, Ford said of the events grip on the popular imagination.

There is only one known mutineer grave on Pitcairn, that of John Adams. Of the whereabouts of the remains of the eight others we can only speculate, Ford said.

Pitcairn, a remote speck of land, hid a group of mutineers until 1808 when only Adams remained alive.

There had been warfare between the mutineers themselves and with the Polynesian men who had been brought to Pitcairn as workers, Ford said. It was a terrible time.

According to Ford, the hair is a gift from Joy Allward, wife of the late Maurice Allward of Hartfield, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom.

In 2000, Maurice Allward successfully bid for the hair at a Sothebys auction in London. The pigtails were housed in a 19th-century cylindrical tobacco tin. Also with the locks of hair was a handkerchief, said to have belonged to Sarah, the daughter of William McCoy, one of the Bounty mutineers.

As the pigtails purportedly date back to the pre-1800s, the Kings team will first attempt to extract mitochondrial DNA from the historical hair samples. If sufficient mitochondrial DNA can be collected, the first step will be to investigate the ancestral origins of the owners of the pigtails.

Unlike nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA does not discriminate between all individuals, as people sharing a common maternal ancestor will also share a similar profile. However, this type of DNA can provide some indication of maternal geographical origin, e.g., whether someone is likely to be of European descent. Kings DNA team will aim to establish whether the hair samples do indeed come from seven Europeans and three Polynesians individuals.

More detailed identification will require genealogical methods to trace the ancestors of the pigtail owners to be able to link samples to names from historical records and other sources of information. Kings College London and the Pitcairn Islands Study Center will both be involved in this tracing.

The study will try to identify the mutineers maternal ancestors, such as their respective mothers and maternal grandmothers, and research other direct female descendants down to individuals living today.

The Pitcairn Islands Study Center, established in 1977, is a museum-research facility providing information about the mutiny and its aftermath to academics, journalists, researchers, authors, students and others throughout the world. The center holds the worlds largest collection of information about this still popular and much-studied sea saga.

The Seventh-day Adventist church provides the connection that led to the Pitcairn Islands Study Center being located at Pacific Union College. PUC is an Adventist college. In the late 19th century, long after the mutineers were dead, Adventist missionary efforts resulted in many conversions.

The four Pitcairn Islands are the last British Overseas Territory in the Pacific.

For information visit PitcairnStudyCenter.org.
Recently, I read two very different stories about dealing with the homeless.

One was local, the other national about yet anothers citys approach to dealing with the issue of those living on the streets.

I chose to say the word issue when I could have easily used the word problem, which often is how the homeless are addressed in many communities across the country.

Take the city of Napa, for example.

The local story I read last week, published in the Napa Valley Register, was about the problem of homeless people congregating in Old Town, where the Hope Resource Center is on Fourth Street.

Residents there have complained that the Hope Resource Center has made their neighborhood a magnet for homeless people.

Some of the complaints were understandable, particularly when homeless people use homeowners properties as toilets.

Having lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles, I can tell you it is a very unpleasant experience having someone defecate in a doorway or pass out on a front lawn.

But the complaints from Old Town also echoed an all too familiar cry heard in many cities across the country, that its time to move the homeless somewhere else.

In Napas case, some residents want the Hope Resource Center relocated to another part of town.

Often public discussions about homelessness have focused on shifting the problem to another neighborhood, or another community altogether.

This philosophy has led civic leaders from Florida to California to adopt ordinances banning people from panhandling or sleeping in public parks.

American Canyon adopted its own local law last year, making it a crime for anyone to camp in a public space. The ordinance came in response to what police said were repeated incidents of homeless individuals sleeping in Veterans Park and other locations in the city.

The criminalization of homelessness throughout the U.S. has been criticized by activists and others seeking a more humane, engaging approach to helping these people instead of just trying to make them invisible.

Thats where the other story I read comes in.

The Washington Post last Thursday published a story about Albuquerques simple idea for helping the homeless.

The Post actually was just the latest publication to write about whats been going on in New Mexicos largest city for the past year.

Governing magazine, PBS Newshour, The New York Times and other news outlets have written about Albuquerques Theres a Better Way program.

The program is indeed pretty simple, as the Post described.

A van goes around the city four days a week, picking up any panhandlers willing to work for a days pay.

The work has them helping with the citys beautification effort. Picking up trash, pulling weeds, cleaning up sidewalks, etc.

Theyre paid $9 an hour, higher than the local minimum wage.

Theyre also fed lunch and offered overnight shelter at the end of their day.

St. Martins Hospitality Center, which operates the program with funding from the city, informs participants about free services available to them.

Theres a Better Way seems to be working, for both the homeless and the city.

Since last September, when it began, the program has given out 932 jobs clearing 69,601 pounds of litter and weeds from 196 city blocks. And more than 100 people have been connected to permanent employment, wrote the Posts Colby Itkowitz.

The programs champion has been Albuquerques mayor, Richard Berry, the citys first Republican leader in 30 years.

Berry not only supports the effort, but also stops during his drives through the city to talk to panhandlers about their lives.

You can just see the spiral theyve been on to end up on the corner, Berry told the Post. Sometimes it takes a little catalyst in their lives to stop the downward spiral, to let them catch their breath, and its remarkable.

Berry added: Theyve had the dignity of work for a day; someone believed in them today.

Theres a Better Way wont solve Albuquerques homeless issue. The program is small, with only one van that holds a maximum of 10 people a day.

Even if St. Martins had a fleet of vans, there would still be homeless who wouldnt participate, either out of choice or because their mental health troubles make them unreachable through vocational opportunity alone.

But the program is a refreshing approach to aiding these Americans. It acknowledges not everyone on the street is a lost cause, and it is treating them like people, not a nuisance to be shoved out of sight.
Marco Rubio declares support for NASA plan, calls on presidential nominees to do same, Florida Politics

Saying NASA needs long-range political assurances, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio declared broad backing for the space agencys agenda Friday and called on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to do the same. Rubio met Friday with space industry representatives and others in a roundtable discussion organized by the Economic Development Commission of Floridas Space Coast and Space Florida, the states space industry development corporation. They heard from him what they wanted: that Floridas junior senator, seeking re-election, is behind NASAs most ambitious programs, to turn over as much lower-Earth orbit activity as possible to private companies, and focus the nations manned space flight efforts on getting to Mars.
Pentagon getting very close to functional lasers that can stop inbound ICBMs

(NationalSecurity.news) For years the Defense Department has invested billions of dollars to develop laser technology for all kinds of military activities, both offensive and defensive.

One of the Pentagons goals in all of that research has been to develop laser weapons powerful enough to knock out inbound intercontinental ballistic missiles. Now, Pentagon officials say, the day is close when that capability becomes a reality.

As reported by Defense One, the Pentagon has especially been focused on lasers as a cheaper, more effective way to shoot down long-range missiles fired at the U.S. from North Korea and Iran. And after testing and experimenting with the technology for better than a decade, U.S. military officials say directed energy is approaching the point where it can be deployed on the battlefield.

Its not a hope. This is what were doing, Vice Adm. James Syring, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told the defense news site recently. I view this [as] highly important for the future.

He and other military officials said similar things at last weeks annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Ala. All argued that lasers could eventually augment existing missile defense interceptors.

And the lasers are a popular option for a couple of reasons: They are much cheaper to operate and they can shoot down missiles much earlier than todays interceptors.

We have to deal with the fact that our interceptors are more costly, said Katrina McFarland, the Armys acting acquisition executive. The cost dimension of warfare must be switched from our side to the adversary side.

Army leaders have expressed concern they would have to employ expensive interceptors against much cheaper rockets and small drones that are packed with explosives. Lasers present a far better solution.

The problem we have now is the worldwide demand for missile defense is greater than the capacity, James Johnson, director of the Future Warfare Center of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, told Defense One.

In all, Congress has appropriated $119 billion for U.S. missile defense capabilities. That money has funded the development of ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, THAAD interceptors, and radars, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said. The Defense Department has requested an additional $34.87 billion for those projects between fiscal years 2017 and 2021, Defense One noted.

Spending will likely continue at roughly the current rate for the foreseeable future, the think tank said in a recent report.

In addition, the U.S. Navy is getting into laser defenses, having mounted a prototype 30-kilowatt weapon on the USS Ponce. That system is said to be capable of downing small drones and disabling speedboats, while costing less than $1 to fire compared to missiles at millions of dollars apiece.

Shooting down a missile, however, would require much more kilowatt power  hundreds, say experts. So the technology to generate that kind of power will have to shrink dramatically before a fighter jet or drone could carry a laser powerful enough to down a missile.

Thats why were pursuing the technology in terms of trying to mature, not just the technology, but drive the size and weight down and we can start to think operationally about what that means, Syring said.

The Pentagons goal is to dramatically reduce the size and weight of existing laser systems, which it has been working on for at least a decade.

More:

NationalSecurity.news is part of USA Features Media.
Did the U.S. transfer its nuclear bombs from Turkey to Romania because of recent coup attempt?

(NationalSecurity.news) Romanian officials have repudiated a report that the United States is transferring nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania.

The Romanian foreign ministry firmly rejects these pieces of information, the ministry wrote in a statement published on the Serbian-based Balkan Insight website. The statement accurately represents Romanias position, a Romanian Embassy spokesman told AMI Newswire.

About 50 American B61 nuclear gravity bombs are widely believed to be stored at Incirlik air base in Turkey as part of the U.S. commitment to NATO. The aftermath of the failed coup in July has raised concerns about the security of U.S. military assets in Turkey.

In an Aug. 18 story labeled exclusive, the web portal EurActiv posted a story describing the transfer of B61s from Turkey to Romania.

Two independent sources told EurActiv.com that the U.S. has started transferring nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey to Romania, against the background of worsening relations between Washington and Ankara, the story reads.

The transfer has presented a number of challenges, the story said, quoting an unnamed source.

Its not easy to move 20-plus nukes, the anonymous source reportedly said.

The weapons were moved because relations between the United States and Turkey had deteriorated so much following the coup that Washington no longer trusted Ankara to host the weapons, the anonymous source reportedly told EurActiv.

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was apparently targeted by Turkish Armed Forces officers in a coup attempt July 15. The attempt failed the following day.

As reported by AMI Newswire, a Washington think tank issued a report earlier this month citing the coup as a reason to question the security of American B61 nuclear bombs at Incirlik air base.

Whether the U.S. could have maintained control of the weapons in the event of a protracted civil conflict in Turkey is an unanswerable question, states the report from the Stimson Center.

The think tank raised the question within the larger context of recommending that B61 weapons be removed from Europe altogether.

According to the Stimson Center, 180 tactical versions of the B61s are stored at six bases in Europe: in Belgium, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkey.

The EurActiv website, which publishes in English, French and German, speculated that the Turkey weapons are being moved to Deveselu in Romania. Deveselu is the home of a new missile shield designed to protect NATO. The defense shield, housed at a U.S. Navy facility, was denounced by Russia as a threat.

The nuclear-transfer story is a fake report, tweeted Paul Ivan, a senior policy analyst at the European Policy Centre in Brussels.

I have very strong doubts about this story, Ivan posted. [Deveselu] base doesnt even have a functioning runway.

Additionally, Ivan wrote, moving the weapons to Romania would be politically too risky given that Romania is not part of NATOs nuclear sharing policy.

The notion that the United States would move nuclear weapons to Romania in violation of treaty agreements is silly, a Pentagon official told AMI Newswire. The official is not authorized to comment to the press, and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Silly or not, the EurActiv report has gained attention in Romania, Russia, China, Macedonia, Iran and elsewhere. And NationalSecurity.news reported last month that indeed there were concerns in the Pentagon about the security of the nuclear stockpile stored at Incerlik Air Base.

The Pentagon did not acknowledge the existence of any nuclear weapons in Europe.

We do not discuss the locations of strategic assets, said Defense Department spokesman Lt. Commander Patrick L. Evans.

Reporting by Susan Katz Keating of AMI Newswire.

More:

(c) 2016 USA Features Media.
European Parliament calls on Armenia to consider diversifying its security partnerships

Visiting Armenia MPs brief Canada lawmaker on recent Azerbaijan military aggression

Karabakh President: Russia leaders statement inspires certain hopes

Armenia ruling party congress kicks off

Man breaks into US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home, demands to speak with her, beats husband with hammer

EU-Armenia Joint Committee on Research and Innovation first meeting to be held in November

Provincial governor of Armenias Gegharkunik: EU monitoring mission already started

US accuses Russia of disinformation regarding Washington intentions towards Armenia, Azerbaijan

Mexico fully legalizes gay marriage

Newspaper: Azerbaijan not inclined to sign anything with Armenia in Russias Sochi

Armenia ruling party convening closed convention

Italian prime minister demands that she be addressed as prime minister in masculine form

Pentagon to send Ukraine new aid package worth $275 million

Europe will ban sale of one type of car

European Commission head announces new aid and investments for Serbia

Biden calls Putin's rhetoric on nuclear weapons 'dangerous'

Lukashenko on Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict: What are you fighting for in these mountains, where not even goats walk?

Swedish authorities offer to create united northern army

Lukashenko: Conflict issue between Armenia and Azerbaijan must be resolved now - with Ilham Aliyev

Lukashenko about situation on Armenian-Azerbaijani border: Where are we racing horses, where are we rushing to?

Pashinyan: Armenia-Diaspora relations undergo profound substantive changes

Lukashenko to Pashinyan: Sit down with Aliyev and make a decision, if you don't make it today, it will be worse

Bulgarian interim government urges to speed up transition to euro zone

President of Karabakh: It is necessary to unite all national potential and efforts

IMF: China's sharp and uncharacteristic economic slowdown will stall growth in Asia by the end of 2023

Iran: Riots in country were planned by the intelligence services of the USA, England, Israel and the KSA

Steinmeier: Ukraine war caused 'epochal break' in Germany's relations with Russia

Gas prices in Europe remain high in coming years

Ararat Mirzoyan and Toivo Klaar stress importance of hosting EU civilian mission in Armenia

Armenia's ambassador-at-large: Daily false propaganda can't cover up Azerbaijani war crimes

Taiwan MFA outraged by Putin's speech on his status and Pelosi's visit

Armenia gives no response to peace treaty proposals, Bayramov says

Netanyahu expects return to power after 5th Israeli election in 4 years

Armenian gravestone found in Trabzon, Turkey neighborhood

Pashinyan: CSTO Secretary General's report mainly reflects existing realities

Azerbaijan talks possible deliveries of its gas to international Turkish hub

CSTO leaders to meet in late November: Situation on Armenian-Azerbaijani border will be discussed

Dollar, euro continue falling in Armenia

Pelosi's house attacked, her husband injured

Russias Putin to have private talks with Armenias Pashinyan, Azerbaijans Aliyev

Mher Grigoryan: CIS needs a new scientific and technical agreement

Pentagon strategy doesn't rule out use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear threats

French National Assembly plans to pass resolution proposing certain sanctions against Azerbaijan

Mher Grigoryan: There are no other corridors in the trilateral statement other than Lachin's

Konstantin Zatulin: Russia should have made maximum efforts so that there would be no war in Karabakh

The Hill: The American people deserve to know how the war in Ukraine will end

Sochi to host trilateral talks of Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders on October 31

Poland receives first Turkish drones

Hungarian government may extend price limits on fuel and some basic foodstuffs

Armenias Simonyan attends meeting of heads of EEU countries parliaments

Polish general appointed as head of EU mission to train Ukrainian troops

Russia MP: Karabakh status decision is in fact its Armenians safety guarantee

Zatulin: West seeks to push Russia out of negotiation process at any cost

Legislature head proposes to organize, under CIS auspices, return of Armenians detained in Azerbaijan

Iran prevents bomb explosion in Shiraz crowded street

Iraqi parliament expresses vote of confidence in new cabinet

France lawmakers visit Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan

Putin: Moscow is doing everything possible to normalize relations between Yerevan and Baku

Annual shopping festival kicks off in Dubai on December 15

Lazarevsky Club: Minute of silence held in memory of fallen Russian and Armenian soldiers

Bayramov and US Assistant Secretary of State discuss Yerevan-Baku relations

Expansion of cooperation with Interpol is important, Armenia PM says

Armenia defense minister briefs Austria envoy on situation due to recent Azerbaijan military aggression (PHOTOS)

Australia can't rule out energy price caps

Armenia parliament speaker: Use, threat of force undermine processes aimed at establishing peace

Garo Paylan is in Yerevan

Barack Obama tries to help Democrats win midterm elections

Azerbaijan president, Russia first deputy PM discuss North-South transport corridor project

PM Pashinyan receives France-Armenia friendship group delegation from French parliament

Taiwan urges China to start talking

Armen Grigoryan and Toivo Klaar discuss Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiation process

Matviyenko: Russia will continue mediation for signing Armenia-Azerbaijan peace treaty

Politico: Scholz and Macron threaten U.S. trade retaliation

CIS premiers sign several agreements at Kazakhstan meeting

Konstantin Zatulin: Nagorno-Karabakh peoples right to self-determination must be respected

Armenia legislature head: Policy of threats, coercion is unacceptable to us

U.S. must strengthen its defense against growing threats from both China, Russia

Karabakh ex-President: Necessary to rule out mistakes, miscalculations which will have irreversible consequences

EU reaches agreement to ban new cars with internal combustion engine by 2035

Benny Gantz: Future of Israel and Turkey is promising

EU Special Representative for South Caucasus arrives in Armenia

Lazarevsky Club meeting underway in Yerevan, Moscow

Yellen sees no sign of recession in U.S. economy in near future

Cannes palm trees promenade named after Charles Aznavour

Pashinyan: Armenia agrees to work on basis of main principles proposed by Russia

CIS prime ministers meeting kicks off in Kazakhstan

Newspaper: Karabakh people to make appeal to Armenia authorities

Viking swords embedded in mound 1,200 years ago discovered in Sweden

Residents of Moldova asked not to go out into street in dark

Bloomberg reports fuel shortages in some parts of Europe

British schoolboy writes book that became bestseller

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
YEREVAN. - Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan Argo Avakov met with the Deputy Head of Armenian Police Vardan Yeghiazaryan on August 18 to discuss the developments related to the seizure of Erebuni police station on July 17. He noted that the OSCE Office in Yerevan is ready to help the Armenian authorities and civil society to strengthen the confidence and cooperation between the police and society.

Ambassador Avakov informed the police representative about the OSCE stance on the reforms in the security area. In the framework of the reforms, it is planned to foster the cooperation between the civil society and authorities and provide support in carrying out independent monitoring and strengthening of control mechanisms.

Avakov also referred to the Offices initiative to set up a Civil Society Advisory Council, which will serve as an advisory body in the area of security reforms. Specifically touching on the work of the police, the Ambassador described the OSCE initiatives, which can foster direct dialogue between the police, civil society and wide public on such issues as maintaining public order and exercise of the freedom of assembly.

For his part, Deputy Head of Police Vardan Yeghiazaryan suggested organizing police-mass media round tables to improve the relations of the police with the representatives of media and civil society. The Office representatives noted that some of the concerns raised by the representatives of the civil society during the previous round-table discussions regarding the actions of the police during assemblies have unfortunately remained unresolved.

The Office thus proposed the police to take into account the issues raised and prepare recommendations and solutions as a result of the discussions to improve maintaining of the public order.

Ambassador Avakov offered his condolences on the death of the policemen killed during the riot and highly appreciated the professionalism of the negotiators, who prevented the loss of lives of the hostages and the gunmen in the police station. He also welcomed the actions launched towards investigating the improper conduct and violence charges of the police against journalist and protestors during the recent rallies.

Avakov also stressed that the best OSCE practice supposes that not only the police forces, but also the law enforcement authorities and prison services should be subject to independent monitoring systems with transparent internal regulation and public complaints procedure.
YEREVAN. - The health of Sasna Tsrer armed group member Hovhannes Harutyunyan is deteriorating every day, but he isnt operated on.

His attorney, Ara Gharagyozyan, told the aforementioned to Armenian News  NEWS.am on Monday.

Hovhannes Harutyunyanm who suffered a gunshot wound in his leg in the seized police station, is currently in the Prison Hospital.

He can no longer move the fingers of his foot; his health is deteriorating every day, but no operation is performed. Shrapnel was first taken out of his leg, and now an operation should be performed. The pains are getting worse every day: he is injected painkillers, which do not help. The doctors say its not yet time for the operation, the attorney said.

In his words, the failure to provide proper medical assistance in that condition is considered torture.

The European Court [of Human Rights] has a precedent decision, under which failure to provide proper medical assistance is considered torture. The attorneys consider it as an inhuman treatment and torture, since a man is not operated on on time. Today we had to turn to the International Health Service of the Red Cross so that they can respond to us and send an inquiry about the reason of not operating [my client]. They should visit Hovhannes today, Gharagyozyan said.

He also added that the Erebuni Medical Center will no longer execute control over the patients of the Prison Hospital. The attorney has been provided no justification on this.
15:19

Contradicting marathon runner OP Jaisha's claim of official apathy in the Rio Olympics, co-runner Kavita Raut said that the Athletics Federation of Indian had provided her with an option of having energy drinks during the race and, therefore, she has no complaints against the apex body.





"The Athletics Federation of Indian had offered to provide personalised drinks ahead of the marathon, but I had refused. I am speaking only about myself. I refused because I am not used to take glucose or honey while running. I only take water. That is why I refused to avail personalised drink during the marathon.AFI provided all facilities and, therefore, I have no complaints against them," Kavita said.





Jaisha, who fainted at the end of gruelling race at the recently-concluded Rio Olympics, alleged that she neither received water nor energy drinks at refreshment points from the Indian officials during her marathon event under blistering heat.





"Running that distance, in that heat, you need so much water. There is a common water point after 8 km, but you need water after each kilometre. Other athletes were getting food along the way but I got nothing," added the 33-year-old Kerala-born athlete, who currently holds the national record in marathon.





While accusing the Indian authorities of showing partiality towards the long-distance runners, the veteran athlete, who finished 89th in Rio Olympics women's marathon event with a timing of 2:47:19, insisted that she would have made a better finish had she received water and refreshments on time.





As per rules, India could have assigned four officials at four points in addition to the official stations to provide water and refreshments but Jaisha had to rely on the latter which was placed about 8 km apart.





The AFI, however, had countered Jaisha's charges about official apathy and callousness in the prestigious quadrennial games, saying the athlete and her coach themselves refused to avail the option of having personalized drinks during the race.





The AFI further insisted that Jaisha and Raut had said that they would use the drinks available at the water booth and refreshment booth provided by the organizers in case they needed.





According to reports, as per the rule, Indian team manager carried 16 empty bottles, eight each for Jaisha and Raut and visited the duo and their coach Nikolai Snesarev on the eve of the women's marathon race. He provided them with the choice of personalised drink which would then be sealed in their presence and handed over to the organisers for installing them on the booth along with a placard as per the requirement of the athlete.
The requested page is currently unavailable on this server.

Back to [RTHK News Homepage]
TOKYO: Japan's Riken research institute, along with over 20 other companies, have created a joint platform to develop applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of medicine, industry and infrastructure.

The Centre for Advanced Integrated Intelligence Research, which will receive state funding of $99.7 million during the next financial year, will open its doors on September 1 in Tokyo, EFE news reported.

It will include the participation of leading Japanese automaker Toyota Motor as well as other tech giants, including Sony and NEC, along with other large Japanese firms and start-ups, the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University.

The centre aims to develop AI systems that will be able to solve specific problems involving large amounts of analyzed data.

One of the specific fields of application is industrial manufacturing, in which Toyota and NEC will work on an AI technology to boost the efficiency of production lines through the analysis of details of the process missed by human workers.

In the field of medicine, Sony's scientific research wing is developing an AI system to recommend personalised treatments to patients after comparing their medical records with all clinical studies available.

The two projects will be backed by the new public-private platform, with the participating companies too contributing significant funding, apart from providing specialized human and other resources to the centre.

Read Also: Facebook Teams Up With Unity To Build Gaming Platform

New Twitter Feature To Filter 'Bad' Tweets
The cases were registered against Brahamdagh Bugti, Harbiyar Marri and Banuk Karima Baloch on the complaints of petitioners Munir Ahmed, Maulana Muhammad Aslam, Muhammad Hussain, Ghulam Yaseen Jatak and Muhammad Rahim at five police stations in the province's Khuzdar area, Dawn online reported.

The Baloch leaders were booked under different sections of the Pakistan Penal Code. The sections refer to "concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment", "waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against Pakistan", "concealing with intent to facilitate design to wage war", and "assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty".

Acting District Police Officer Khuzdar Muhammad Ashraf Jatak said the applicants claimed Bugti, Marri and Baloch had 'supported' Modi's August 15 remarks.

Modi in his speech on India's independence day said the people of Balochistan, Gilgit Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 'thanked him a lot in the past few days'.

One of the complainants, Ahmed alleged that the Baloch leaders had asked Modi to commit aggression against Pakistan.

Modi's controversial statement sparked protests across Balochistan, with large numbers of tribesmen taking to the streets in protest in Dera Bugti, Khuzdar, Quetta, Chaman and other parts of the province, Dawn said.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri, in a speech last week alleged that the Indian government "fully supports the ongoing insurgency in Balochistan".

Zehri's speech came days after a video showing exiled Baloch leader Brahamdagh Bugti appreciating "support" given to the Baloch people by Modi began circulating on social media.

He also alleged that the Indian government "is deeply involved in sponsoring elements like Brahamdagh Bugti, Harbiyar Marri, Zamran Marri and Allah Nazar".

He accused Bugti of "getting funds from Indians", alleging "that's why he supported Modi's statement".

--IANS ss/rn

( 332 Words)

2016-08-22-18:32:06 (IANS)
India's leading B2B e-commerce platform Industrybuying announces the appointment of Manvinder Kaur as Vice President, Human Resource. In her current role Kaur will lead the Human resource of the company and drive the core functions such as talent management, employee engagement and corporate trainings at Industrybuying. "I am confident that Manvinder will play an important role in enabling the team at Industrybuying to fulfill our long term mission of revolutionizing B2B e-commerce in country through internet technology and supply chain. Having her on our management team will surely empower our prospects at hiring the finest talent in India," said Co-founder and CEO Industrybuying, Swati Gupta. IndustryBuying is currently eyeing to garner young untapped talent that lies across the length and breadth of India. It is looking forward to streamline the processes in various divisions such as operations, marketing, sales, product, technology, logistics, etc. "It's a privilege to be a part of a leading, vibrant and growing team of Industrybuying. I see immense potential in the goal of Industrybuying and look forward to HR being a strategic role as the company moves into its next stage of evolution," said Manvinder Kaur. Kaur, who holds an MBA from the ICFAI Business School, Hyderabad and an undergraduate degree in engineering from the Punjab Technical University, comes with more than a decade's experience in Human Resource - strategy, planning, employee relations, management and policies redesign. In her earlier stint, Manvinder has led HR function at Gap Inc, and BT Global services. She also held the post of Assistant Vice President at IndusInd bank. Her years of experience in designing and setting systems that are nimble and efficient at each stage, building high performing teams and handling compliance and process are some of the key assets that she brings with herself. (ANI)
A small idea can lead towards a substantial transformation and guide us towards a sustainable advancement. Running on the same lines, Hawa badlo with its new campaign #WeShallOvercome focuses on bringing a mindset change, to get rid of any barrier for advancement. 70 years after independence, there is an urge among the citizens to attain freedom from not just from aristocracy but everything which hampers development in true sense. This can be sensed from the substantial traction that the people's movement has been attaining in its short journey of eight few months. We shall overcome' a video initiative by HawaBadlo campaign which is supported by GAIL is now trending nationally on social media platform Twitter and it has been a viral outbreak on Facebook too. Massive support that the initiative has received confirms the sentiments of citizens appreciating and supporting the campaign. With regard to air pollution, situation is alarming. A Boston-based Health Effects Institute (HEI) Report stated that there has been noticeable hike in deaths due to air pollution, and India will soon outpace China running on the same rate, as India drags its heels over environmental rules while opening more coal mines. While China is proactively involved in controlling the emissions, the Indian capital still has coal-fired power station located in southern part. So when HEI report says, "India has not taken as much action on air pollution," no one would come forward to disagree. Thousands of people have already engaged with the drive we shall overcome and the reactions coming in from the netizens are quite touching. The video initiative pushes us to be determined to control and gradually curb air pollution crisis in the country, awakening Gandhi within us and pledging to change the air around us for a better and healthier life. The video stimulates the emotion of patriotism and the spirit of independence. It creatively showcases the emotions of a grandparent suffering from dementia, who have lost his memory and is seen worrying about the independence of his country and the future of his family under the rule of britishers. On the video, Nipun Arora, Founder, Hawa Badlo quotes "Our objective with the launch of this video is to remind people of the true spirit of independence which our ancestors have fought for and how we are losing it again to air pollution in the current scenario. #WeShallOvercome adds to our mission of spreading awareness amongst the citizens and doing our bits to rectify the same." "With a large number of viewership on the video, it gives us confidence that the people are being sensitized. Air pollution has is being curbed. Digitally gaining so much appreciation and followership, it makes us nothing but happy that we are on the right path to achieve our goal to #ChangetheAir," he adds. (ANI)
Members of civil society groups on Monday urged the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to address the many "shortcomings" of the Transgender Bill, before passing it. Members of 'Sangama' and 'Reach Law', two Bangalore-based minority rights group, presented a chapter wise review of 'The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill', 2016, introduced in Lok Sabha on August 2, to bring to notice the Bill's flaws and gaps with respect to transgenders' abuse, rehabilitation, education, and equal status in the society. Among its many shortcomings discussed, they strongly opposed the use of 'biological test' to pronounce a person as transgender as proposed in the draft bill and advocated for the use of 'psychological test' instead. They also recommended to the ministry to extend reservation in educational institutes and for public appointments to transgender persons. They also demanded removal of the derogatory words such as "chakka, ombotthu, gandu etc." and the removal of the term 'Third gender' to refer to transgenders as they're discriminatory. B.T. Venkatesh, former public prosecuter, Karnataka High Court, and a lawyer with Reach Law, told IANS that the term 'third gender' is discriminatory and has emerged from a patriarchal mindset. "Third to what? who are first and second?", he said. "The proposed Bill is far from inclusive and there many flaws in it. Government must make changes in the corresponding laws as well to make to wholly applicable and inclusive," he said. "Section 377 needs to be abolished. It's in contradiction to what we are trying to do with the Bill. Who will identify as a transgender as long as 377 is there.. same needs to be done with domestic violence law which recognises only wife as the one who can seek redressal," he continued. " There always are at least 10 percent people in a given community who identify themselves as transgenders.. we also demand that sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) be struck off from the Bill as one of the criteria to be identified as transgender, as in India changing one's sex is illegal, again a contradiction!," Venkatesh added. The current Bill is a redrafted version of 'The Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2015', proposed by DMK, MP, Tiruchi Siva as a private member bill. Siva himself has in the past called the bill a "diluted" version of the original. --IANS vn/rn/dg ( 398 Words) 2016-08-22-20:46:06 (IANS)
In fact, the 26-year-old actor is such a huge fan of Spidey that he would love to play that character on some golden day.

This prompted us to ask the 'Baaghi' actor which Hollywood superhero would suit our young Bollywood actors according to their personalities.

Talking about Varun Dhawan, Tiger decided to stick with Captain America since the former had recently dubbed for Hindi version of the superhero movie.

When we asked about Ranveer Singh, he told ANI, "Ranveer Singh has an electrifying energy and he is a live wire, so if Mask is a superhero then, Ranveer would be perfect for the role."

He further continued about Sidharth Malhotra and decided to give him the Superman tag as the role would suit him perfectly according to his personality.

How could we for forget the svelte and dashing Pakistani actor Fawad Khan.

Without any second thought, Tiger Shroff said he would love to see Fawad in the role of a Batman because of his cool and composed personality.

Tiger, who was recently in the national capital to promote his new film, also revealed that he became more serious in life after taking up acting.

The young actor is all set to show his action skills in his new superhero film 'A Flying Jatt' which also stars actress Jacqueline Fernandez in a prominent role.

Directed by Remo D' Souza, the film is all set to fly near your theatres on August 25. (ANI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today expressed India's solidarity with Afghanistan in its fight against terrorism and quest for peace and development. Describing Afghanistan as a close friend, the Prime Minister said India was pained to see the country being continuously challenged by externally sponsored instruments and entities of violence and terror. ''Let me assure the people of Afghanistan that in your quest to build a prosperous Afghanistan andto bring peace, security and stability to your society, the 1.25 billion people of India will always be on your side. The pledge of our partnership and strength of our friendship with Afghanistan is unwavering,'' Mr Modi said in his remarks at the inauguration ceremony of renovated Stor Palace in Kabul, which he attended via video-conferencing. The inauguration signaled and exhibited the joint commitment to strengthening the foundation of modern Afghanistan, the Prime Minister said. ''The India-Afghanistan-Iran transit corridor Agreement that we signed in May this year was another land mark in our partnership,'' Mr Modi added. More UNI NY SB 1332 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0099-898151.Xml
The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned the hearing of a Gujarat government plea that challenged a high court order on quashing of its ordinance of providing 10 per cent quota for the economically backward among the unreserved category, including the agitating Patel community. A three-judge bench comprising of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, which had listed the matter for hearing on August 22 instructed parties to the plea that there would be no new admissions under the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) category or quota in Gujarat till the Supreme Court ruled on the matter at its next hearing fixed for August 29. It may be recalled that the high court had quashed the ordinance, and had stayed the operation of its order by a fortnight on the request of the state government to enable it to file an appeal in the apex court. The high court had termed the Gujarat government ordinance issued on May 1 as "inappropriate and unconstitutional", and rejected the state government's argument that it is a classification under the general category and not the reserved category. The court had then maintained that such classification had the dangerous potential of breaching the 50 per cent quota cap set up by the Supreme Court. The court said in May this year that the 10 per cent reservation for poor among the unreserved category would take the total quota beyond 50 per cent, which the apex court had not permitted. The high court also pulled up the then state government for taking a decision without conducting any study or scientific data. The Supreme Court was hearing challenges to the Gujarat government ordinance from petitioners Dayaram Verma, Ravjibhai Manani, Dulari Basarge and the Gujarat Parents' Association. The ordinance had declared reservation of 10 per cent seats to candidates belonging to the unreserved category with family income cap of Rs.6 lakh annually in government jobs and educational institutions. The state government claimed the fresh classification did not violate either the Supreme Court order or the constitutional provisions. (ANI)
Fortifying augmentation globally in entry-level car segment, French auto giant Renault today rolled out Kwid with 1 litre engine at Rs 3.83 lakh here. The new variant packs with 4.5 per cent share in the domestic passenger vehicle market and the sales volume has increased by 195 per cent in the current year. Sumit Sawhney, country chief executive and managing director at Renault India said, "Kwid was an innovation in design, innovation and value. The 1 litre engine is best in its category in the country." The new Kwid model has been launched in two variants with the RXT optional pack priced at Rs 3.95 lakh. Both the cars are priced at Rs 22,000 higher than identical variants of 0.8 litre Kwid that was launched in September last year. ''Our road map for India is very clear, with an immediate goal of achieving a market share of over 5 per cent by the end of this year. The company will continue with its product offensive strategy in India, as is reinforced by the Kwid 1.0L SCe launch, to substantially grow the Renault brand in India,'' Mr Sawhney added. The company also plans to increase its sales network to 270 outlets by the end of this year. The company currently sells the Kwid with an 800cc (0.8L) engine priced between Rs 2.64 lakh and Rs 3.73 lakh. The company has started selling the Kwid in Sri Lanka and plans to launch it in Nepal later this month. UNI SDR ASH RSA 1641 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0388-898548.Xml
Condemning the move to register cases against Baloch leaders-in-exile for allegedly backing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday said this step has been taken out of frustration and intolerance. BJP leader Sudesh Verma said this is yet another proof of human rights violation in Balochistan. "We are very convinced that the Pakistani establishment is not able to give justice to the people of Balochistan. If some people there found that Indian Prime Minister's statement was correct and represented. there is no reason to take action against them. Action should be taken to provide remedy to the situation," Verma told ANI. "Balochistan is suffering and India has rightly raised the issue. What Pakistan is doing now in the name of vendetta is going to further add to the criticism on the issue of human rights violation in Pakistan," he added. Verma said it reflects Pakistan's frustration as the Asian neighbour would never tolerate that someone in Balochistan is supporting the Indian Prime Minister's statement. "This has to be understood that the Indian Prime Minister's statement came because India cannot be silent to what is happening in Balochistan. India aspires to be a member of the UN Security Council and has to live up to its' responsibility and raise the issues of human rights violation in its neighbourhood also," he said. Five cases have been registered against Baloch leaders-in-exile in Balochistan's Khuzdar area for allegedly backing Prime Minister Modi's remarks on the atrocities in Pakistan's Balochistan province. The cases were registered against Baloch Republican Party's (BRP) Brahamdagh Bugti, Baloch liberation leader Harbiyar Marri and Baloch Students Organisation chairperson Karima Baloch. The complaints were filed by Munir Ahmed, Maulana Muhammad Aslam, Muhammad Hussain, Ghulam Yaseen Jatak and Muhammad Rahim at five police stations in Balochistan's Khuzdar area, reports the Dawn. Acting District Police Officer Khuzdar Muhammad Ashraf Jatak said the petitioners claimed that Bugti, Marri and Karima Baloch had 'supported' Prime Minister Modi's August 15 speech. The Baloch leaders-in-exile were booked under Sections 120, 121, 123 and 353 of the Pakistan Penal Code which refer to "concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment", "waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against Pakistan", "concealing with intent to facilitate design to wage war", and "assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty". Prime Minister Modi, in his Independence Day address, had thanked the people of Balochistan, Gilgit and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for the goodwill they have shown towards him. He had in an all-party meeting on Kashmir said the "time has come that Pakistan shall have to answer to the world for the atrocities committed by it against the people in Balochistan and PoK". His statement about atrocities in Balochistan has hit a nerve with Pakistan, which has now voiced that it would raise the Kashmir issue at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Last week, Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri slammed the Indian Premier's remarks days after Baloch leader Bugti appreciated 'support' given to the Baloch people. He also accused Bugti of "getting funds from Indians". (ANI)
Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) has reacted sharply to India's move to deploy cruise missles BrahMos in frontier state Arunchal Pradesh as a strategic deterrent against China.PLA's official mouthpiece, the PLA Daily, has warned India that doing so could attract counter offence from China and could disturb the peace on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) along India-China border.''India deploying supersonic missiles on the border has exceeded its own needs for self-defense and poses a serious threat to China's Tibet and Yunnan provinces,''said the commentary, published this weekend in the PLA's influential official newspaper.The Prime Minister Narendra Modi led-National Democratic Alliance government had given the final go-ahead for the Army to induct and deploy an advanced version of the BrahMos missile for mountain warfare in the Northeast earlier this month.The Cabinet Committee on Security, chaired by PM Narendra Modi, had cleared the fourth BrahMos regiment at a cost of over Rs 4,300 crore.The PLA Daily claimed that India's views of ''counterbalance and confrontation'' were behind the move, noting other steps to bolster the border such as deploying Sukhoi Su-30MKIs and drones in border areas as ''deterrence to China to create a military advantage in the boundary.''India, however, is still playing catch-up after China set up massive infrastructure in Tibet and Xinjiang, including airports, roads, and a rail network that is set to reach the border.UNI ABI RP1658 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0431-898442.Xml
Congress leader Shobha Oza told ANI, "There should be a transparent inquiry into it. And if found guilty, the AISA activist should undergo stringent punishment."

A first-year PhD student of JNU on Sunday accused an All India Students' Association (AISA) activist, identified as Anmol Ratan, of raping her at his university hostel room on Saturday.

Following the complaint by the 28-year-old victim, the Vasant Kunj Police registered a case under Sections 376 (punishment for rape) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The victim claimed that she had earlier in June asked in a Facebook post for a copy of the movie 'Sairat', to which the accused responded that he got a copy, said police.

On August 20, the accused picked up the victim from her hostel on the pretext of providing her a copy of the movie, said police, adding that he took her to his Brahamputra hostel, where he offered her some "laced" drink and allegedly raped her.

The police further said the accused did not allow her to leave the hostel and also threatened her. (ANI)
In a major setback to Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati ahead of the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, former Rajya Sabha MP Brijesh Pathak on Monday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Pathak, who joined the BJP in the presence of party chief Amit Shah here, expressed confidence that the saffron party would form the government in Uttar Pradesh next year. Pathak, who became the second high-profile leader after Swami Prasad Maurya to join the BJP, also lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership. "The elections will be held in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. And we are of the view that if anyone can save UP from corruption and hooliganism then it is only the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP will form the government in UP next year," said Pathak. "Moreover, I am fully confident that our fellow leaders, who were half-heartedly working some other party for UP will now work forcefully for the betterment of the state through the platform of the BJP as it is the only option left to revive our state," he added. Meanwhile, Union Minister Mahesh Sharma welcomed Pathak into the BJP and said that he has been a hardworking politician. "I understand his pain; no person who has self-respect can work under the BSP as their working is not adequate. That is why Brijesh Pathak ji has joined the BJP for the development of the state," he said. Pathak, who joined the BJP after being expelled from the BSP for "anti-party activities", cited corruption and anarchy in Mayawati-led party as the reason for his decision. (ANI)
Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Anupriya Patel today claimed that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in coalition with Apna Dal will form the government with majority after 2017 assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh. At closing ceremony of 'Tiranga Yatra' here, Ms Patel said public has become worried and frustrated due to corruption and crime in UP. "Now public need change from mafia and corruption rule of both Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). BJP is the only option left for the public in UP for good governance." Claiming that the BSP and the SP will be swept off in the assembly elections, Ms Patel said BJP along with Apna Dal will win more than 265 seats. She said initiative of the Tiranga Yatra taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to strengthen the feeling of nationalism, got love and affection across the country. This is first government of the country who has honoured the families of the martyr soldiers.UNI XC-JDM MB SHS SW 2046 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-899193.Xml
"Modi has accepted Haryana's invitation and given assurance to participate in the Golden Jubilee function. Besides, he also congratulated the people of Haryana for holding the International Gita Jayanti Mahotsav in Kurukshetra from December 6 to 10," Khattar said after meeting Narendra Modi.

The Haryana government is planning to organise year-long festivities and activities to mark the 50 years of the state.

"Swaran Jayanti" (Golden Jubilee) gates will be installed at 28 entry points of the state during the year. The main gate would be installed on the Delhi-Gurgaon road.

Haryana was created on November 1, 1966, after bifurcating the erstwhile Punjab. Haryana, which surrounds national capital Delhi from three sides, has seen investment in industry and software sectors since early 1980s.

--IANS js/ahm/vt

( 177 Words)

2016-08-22-21:22:00 (IANS)
The Delhi government and the opposition faced off in the state assembly on Monday after Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia accused the Centre of trying to "destabilise" the AAP-led government. The opposition said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi has chosen "a path of confrontation". "Like Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the central government is consistently trying to run Delhi indirectly like a President-ruled state," Sisodia said during a short duration discussion on the situation arising out of the August 4 judgement by the Delhi High Court. The court had ruled that the national capital "continues to be a Union Territory" under the administrative control of the Lt Governor and "does not acquire the status of a State". Sisodia said Delhiites had chosen the AAP government and its work is being praised around the world. "We might be children in politics but if you (Centre) will obstruct our work and stop us from delivering on our promises, we will not spare you," Sisodia said. Leader of Opposition Vijendra Gupta countered Sisodia, saying "the Delhi government is doing politics of confrontation and wants to continue it". Sisodia also ridiculed Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for being carried by two police officials while inspecting a flood situation in his state. "There are two types of working styles of governments. One (Aam Admi Party government) is working continuously for the benefit of the people while in the other (BJP government in Madhya Pradesh) flood inspections are being conducted by sitting in the lap of security personnel," Sisodia said. He said the AAP government was working very hard on education, health, water, public transport, which has rattled the central government. "Our work is being praised even abroad. We will keep fighting for the people of Delhi. We will form government in Punjab, Goa and Gujarat too," Sisodia added. --IANS am/kb/rn ( 322 Words) 2016-08-22-22:20:01 (IANS)
The leaders of Germany, France and Italy will meet today to discuss how to keep the European project together in the second set of talks between the premiers of the euro zone's three largest economies since Britain's shock vote to leave the bloc.Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi hosts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on an island off the coast of Naples ahead of September's EU summit called to discuss reverberations from the Brexit vote."They will be coming to discuss how to relaunch Europe from the bottom up, there's a big need," Renzi said today."Relaunching Europe is a totally open game but it needs to be played," he said.Officials in Brussels and Berlin fear the June 23 vote could lead to a referendum in the Netherlands - a founding member of the union - on whether to also leave the bloc."Monday aims to show the unity of Europe's three biggest countries, but not to create a specific club," a French diplomatic source said, noting that the aim was to prepare for the groundwork for the forthcoming Bratislava summit.Faced with existential risks, Merkel wants to cement "a better Europe" rather than forge ahead with "more Europe". Renzi wants Italy to have a strong voice in how the bloc's future is shaped after Brexit and, according to the French diplomatic source, Hollande wants an EU-wide investment plan to be doubled.The three leaders differ over how to boost economic growth - which slowed across the 28-nation bloc in the second quarter and stagnated in France and Italy - and cut unemployment.France supports Renzi's push for expansionary measures and against austerity, Germany is likely to oppose any undermining of Europe's deficit and the debt constraints that Italy and France have struggled to comply with.Italy is eager for greater European consolidation in the wake of Brexit, but Merkel is more concerned about preserving the integrity of the eventual 27-member bloc.For her it will be the beginning of a whirlwind week of meetings with other European governments that will see her travel to four countries and receive leaders from another eight."The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27," said one EU diplomat.MORE THREATSRenzi chose to meet on the island of Ventotene because of its symbolic significance as the place where two Italian intellectuals, held there in World War Two, wrote an influential manifesto calling for European political unification.One of the two, Altiero Spinelli, is buried on the island and the three leaders will lay a wreath on his tomb.Lingering threats to the union that emerged long before the Brexit vote are also likely to be on the agenda, including internal and external security after Islamist militant attacks and Europe's migration crisis.Emboldened by the Brexit vote, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called a referendum on October 2 on whether to accept any future EU migrant settlement quotas as his government steps up its fight against the EU's migration policies.In another symbolic choice of venue, the three leaders will hold their closing news conference on the Italian aircraft carrier, the Garibaldi, which is the flagship of the EU's "Sophia" mission in the Mediterranean.The naval operation has a mandate to tackle migrant smugglers, help enforce an arms embargo off Libya, and train the Libyan coast guard.The EU plans to offer incentives to African governments to help slow the flow of migrants who have poured into Europe over the past three years, but disagreements on how to handle the situation have laid bare divisions between member states.Italy, the main entry point for Africans but rarely their planned destination, is struggling to house migrants turned back from neighbouring countries including France, and has disagreed with Germany over how to finance the response.REUTERS DS0105 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-897824.Xml
A top aide to Donald Trump said today the Republican presidential nominee's plans to deport 11 million people who are in the United States illegally were a work in progress and that he was committed to a "fair and humane" approach on immigration.The comments suggested a softening of the hardline immigration policy that Trump has put at the center of his campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton for the November 8 general election."What he supports is to make sure we enforce the law, we are respectful of those Americans who are looking for well-paying jobs and that we are fair and humane to those who live among us in this country," Kellyanne Conway, Trump's newly appointed campaign manager, told CNN.Appearing on the talk show "State of the Union," Conway was pressed on whether Trump's plans would include a "deportation force" that the candidate previously pledged to set up."To be determined," she replied.Conway's comments came after Trump announced last week a major reshuffling of his campaign. Trump promoted Conway, who had been a senior adviser, to the role of campaign manager and hired Stephen Bannon, head of the Breitbart News website, as campaign chief executive.The Trump campaign said on Friday that campaign chairman Paul Manafort was resigning.The campaign's new leadership combines Bannon, a combative conservative, with Conway, a data-driven analyst who has been trying to broaden Trump's appeal to women and independent voters.The campaign has also begun reaching out to black and Hispanic voters, with whom Trump is unpopular, according to opinion polls. Critics have accused him of stoking xenophobia with his call for a wall along the US-Mexico border and a proposal to temporarily ban the entry of Muslims into the United States.He vowed at a campaign rally in Fredericksburg, Virginia, yesterday to return the Republican Party to the values of President Abraham Lincoln, whose Emancipation Proclamation and signing of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution during the US Civil War helped lead to the abolition of slavery in 1865.Earlier on Saturday in New York, Trump met with a group of Hispanic leaders as part of a new National Hispanic Advisory Council to the campaign.REUTERS DS0129 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-897826.Xml
Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip launched a rocket that landed in the Israeli border town of Sderot today and Israeli aircraft and tanks responded by shelling the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the army and police said.The rocket caused no injuries or damage in Sderot, where it landed in a residential area, police said.An Israeli shell during an initial retaliation damaged a Beit Hanoun water tower and there were no casualties, local residents said.Multiple air strikes later in the evening hit at least 30 different sites in the Gaza Strip belonging to Hamas, the smaller Islamic Jihad and other militant groups and two people were lightly hurt, Gaza health officials said.A music festival in Sderot attended by hundreds of Israelis was temporarily disrupted as people sought shelter, television footage showed.The Israeli military said aircraft had attacked targets in the northern Gaza Strip and added that since the beginning of the year, 14 Gaza rockets had hit Israel."When terrorists in Hamas' Gaza Strip, driven by a radical agenda based on hatred, attack people in the middle of the summer vacation, their intentions are clear - to inflict pain, cause fear and to terrorize," Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said in a statement.Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and has observed a de-facto ceasefire with Israel since a 2014 war but some small armed cells of Jihadist Salafis have defied the agreement and have continued to occasionally launch rockets at Israel.Israel has held Hamas responsible for all attacks originating in the coastal enclave.More than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.Despite the ceasefire, Hamas has vowed to continue to dig tunnels intended to infiltrate Israel, and while Hamas leaders stress they do not seek an imminent war, they see tunnels as a strategic weapon in any future armed confrontation.REUTERS DS0311 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-897837.Xml
Hundreds of thousands of Chileans took to the streets throughout the country, seeking to increase pressure on the government to throw out Chile's private pension system in favor of one that would provide better retirement benefits.Under the current system, which was started in the 1980s during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, six private pension funds, known as AFPs, manage some 160 billion dollars in assets.Opponents of Chile's private pension system say it forces workers to give their earnings to for-profit funds that do not ensure a dignified old age for all Chileans."We expect the president and her government to open a dialogue and listen to the citizens of the country, and not just the owners of the AFPs," said Luis Mesina, spokesman for a group called No More AFPs, which organized the march.Organizers of the protest said 350,000 participated in the capital, Santiago, alone. Local police put the number at 80,000.Some marchers carried signs reading: "Chileans Ripped Off".President Michelle Bachelet has offered a plan to hike the pension contribution rate by 5 percentage points. That would cost about 3.8 billion dollars a year, with the state paying 1.5 billion dollars, the government said earlier this month.But the protesters said they wanted the current system dismantled. Any reforms must be passed by Congress, where there is broad support for boosting pensions. REUTERS DS0502 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-897848.Xml
The Philippine is not leaving the United Nations, the foreign minister said today, a day after President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to quit the body after it called for an end to the wave of killings unleashed by his war on drugs.Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay said Duterte's statement "is a statement expressing profound disappointment and frustration"."We are committed to the UN despite our numerous frustrations with this international agency," Yasay told a news conference. REUTERS JW PM1034 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-897939.Xml
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has accused the former Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-Jamaat government of perpetrating a grenade attack on an Awami League rally on August 21, 2014. Speaking at the rally yesterday marking anniversary of the gruesome grenade attack, Hasina said the incident jolted the world's conscience but the conscience of the BNP leader or the party was not stirred. "We were not allowed to utter a single word or discuss the matter in parliament. We were even barred from bringing any motion in Jatiya Sangsad to condemn the attack," the Daily Star quoted Hasina, as saying. In a veiled attack on the BNP leaders, Hasina, who narrowly escaped the attack, said it is clear who were involved in that incident and that there is no need to prove it. "Begum Zia had said I [Hasina] would never be the prime minister or even the leader of the opposition in future, while her elder son [Tarique] stayed at his father-in-law's home in Dhanmondi for eight to 10 months consecutively," she said. "It seemed from the comments of the BNP leader and her party men that they wanted to remove me from this world," Hasina added. She also placed wreaths at a makeshift memorial for martyrs of the gruesome grenade attack which was set up by Awami League in front of its Bangabandhu Avenue central office where militants had lobbed 13 grenades. Twenty-four leaders and workers of party and its associate bodies were killed and over 500 others suffered injuries in the attack. Though Hasina narrowly escaped the attack, she lost her hearing ability.(ANI)
The Philippine government and Maoist-led guerrillas opened peace talks in Oslo today to try and end nearly five decades of conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people.Both sides, who agreed a truce over the weekend, sat facing each other in the Holmenkollen Park Hotel's "Nobel" room, named after the Nobel Peace Prize, with photographs of former winners including the Dalai Lama on the walls."This is a conflict that has been lasting for far too long," Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende told the meeting, saying there now seemed to be a "historic momentum" building to end the conflict."I'm really crossing my fingers," for progress, he told the parties, each represented by six negotiators.Talks brokered by Norway between the government and the Maoist-led rebels' National Democratic Front stalled in 2012 over the government's refusal to free communist leaders who had been in jail for decades.Both sides declared a truce at the weekend to pave the way for the week-long talks in Oslo. Last week, Manila also freed 17 captured communist guerrilla leaders in the Philippines so they could attend the talks in Norway.Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had previously ended a unilateral truce with the communist New People's Army late last month as rebels did not respond to a deadline to reciprocate the government's truce.The 3,000-strong New People's Army, the armed wing of the communist party, operates mainly in the eastern and southern regions of the country.REUTERS JW PM1328 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-898177.Xml
Two French people working for an environmental organisation in Madagascar have been killed, authorities said.The French foreign ministry, in a statement late yesterday, said they were killed "in an odious crime" on the small island of Sainte Marie, off the northeast coast of Madagascar.Radio France International said the bodies of a young man and a young woman, aged 25 and 23, were found early on Sunday about 150 metres from a night club. Both had injuries to the head. They were volunteers for Cetamada, an environmental NGO that works for the protection of marine mammals.French police will arrive today to help the local police investigation, local authorities said.REUTERS JW PM1344 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-898204.Xml
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs Bimalendra Nidhi, who is currently in New Delhi, and Indian officials confirmed the date for Dahal's maiden foreign trip on Monday.

According to the Kathmandu Post, Nidhi held talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday and discussed Prime Minister Dahal's visit to India among others issues. On Friday, Nidhi held talks with Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

One of the main agendas of Nidhi's visit to India has been laying the groundwork for Prime Minister Dahal's visit to India.

Dahal will return from India on September 17 after holding a meeting with his Indian counterpart Modi and some high-level political engagements in New Delhi.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs has said that Prime Minister Dahal has conveyed his desire to speed up development works in Nepal with Indian assistance rather than focusing on political and diplomatic matters and sought help from the Indian side for the same.

It is expected that a major project will be signed between Nepal and India during Dahal's visit.

Apart from that, Dahal has sent a long list of agreements he wants to sign during his visit. Nidhi held discussions with Indian officials regarding the same.

Officials said both sides are preparing to conclude the detailed project report of the much-awaited Pancheshwor Multi-purpose Project, finalise additional Indian assistance for earthquake victims and expedite works of Postal Road and Nepal Police Academy under Indian assistance.

A polytechnic in Chitwan under Indian assistance is also one of projects that PM Dahal will discuss during the visit.

According to a source, Dahal, in his letter sent to Modi, has suggested that works on the long-delayed Pancheshwor Project on Nepal-India border be moved forward at the earliest.

Indian Prime Minister Modi, during his Nepal visit in 2014, had pledged to accord high priority to Pancheshwor Project. (ANI with inputs)
"We can't have the President of the United States acting like the drug dealer in chief. Giving clean packs of money to a ... state sponsor of terror. Those 500-euro notes will pop up across the Middle East. .... We're going to see problems in multiple (countries) because of that money given to them," said Kirk.

He made the comments at a sit-down last week with the editorial board of The State Journal-Register, reports CNN.

The money was part of a previously announced settlement in a case stemming from money owed since 1979, but Washington used the payment as a "leverage" to ensure the prisoners' release.

Kirk has been highly critical of the administration on Iran, including the nuclear deal signed by the two countries last year.

The White House did not comment on Kirk's remark. (ANI)
The Philippine government and communist rebels resumed their peace talks on Monday in Norway's capital city Oslo to end Asia's longest-running insurgency. The talks are scheduled from August 22 to 26 between the negotiating panels of the government and the National Democratic Front, the umbrella organisation of Marxist groups, including the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed group, the New People's Army, Xinhua news agency reported. Norway's Foreign Minister Borge Brende said it was good to see the parties gathered in Oslo on a historic day and having a great responsibility as a facilitator for the talks. "We shall have five very demanding days here," Brende was quoted as saying at an opening ceremony of the talks in the Holmenkollen Park Hotel northwest of Oslo. Presidential Peace Adviser Jesus Dureza said last week that the Oslo talks were expected to tackle "social and economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms, end of hostilities and disposition of forces, a ceasefire, joint security and immunity and the release of political detainees". The administration of President Rodrigo Duterte is trying to forge peace with the communist rebels. Talks between the government and the rebels began in 1986, but failed to lead to a resolution over the years. Norway has facilitated the peace process since 2001. The last formal round of the negotiations took place in 2011. The communist rebellion began in 1969 and reached its peak in 1987 when it boasted 26,000 armed guerrillas. However, the movement has since dwindled due to differences in strategy and tactics and the arrests of many of its top leaders in the late 1980s. The military estimates the current number of communist armed rebels to be around 4,000. --IANS sm/py/dg ( 294 Words) 2016-08-22-16:56:01 (IANS)
Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar, who is on an official visit to Iraq from August 21 to 23, conveyed this while meeting the top Iraqi leadership, according to a statement issued by the ministry.

Among others, Akbar met President Fuad Masum, President of the Council of Representatives Salim al-Jabouri, Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Eshaiqer Al-Jaafari, and National Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayyadh.

During the official meetings, the two sides acknowledged the grave threat posed by international terrorism and its sponsors to international peace and security as also the very architecture of nation state, the statement said.

Both sides conveyed strong support to each other in their common fight against the menace of terrorism.

The minister expressed Indias support for the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq and conveyed Indias abiding commitment to the emergence of a stable, peaceful, united and democratic Iraq, which was in the interest of regional and global peace and security, the statement said.

Akbar also sought Iraqs assistance to trace the whereabouts and safe release of 39 abducted Indians.

The Iraqi leadership assured of full cooperation and support in the matter, the statement said.

The 39 Indians were reportedly abducted by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organisation in Iraq in 2014.

The two sides also discussed the entire gamut of bilateral engagement, including economic, trade, investment, energy security, defence, security and counter-terrorism.

Akbar conveyed Indias willingness to partner in the reconstruction of Iraq as also for continued assistance through the Indian government's well acknowledged capacity-building programmes under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme.

--IANS ab/vt

( 303 Words)

2016-08-22-18:16:01 (IANS)
The Russian military said today that its aircraft operating from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes in Syria had now completed their tasks, but it left open the possibility of using the Hamadan base again if circumstances warranted it.Iran's foreign ministry said Russia had stopped using the base for strikes in Syria, bringing an abrupt halt to an unprecedented deployment that was criticised both by the White House and by some Iranian lawmakers."Russian military aircraft that took part in the operation of conducting air strikes from Iran's Hamadan air base on terrorist targets in Syria have successfully completed all tasks," a Russian defence ministry spokesman, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, said in a statement."Further use of the Hamadan air base in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Russian Aerospace Forces will be carried out on the basis of mutual agreements to fight terrorism and depending on the prevailing circumstances in Syria," Konashenkov said.Last week, long-range Russian Tupolev-22M3 bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers used Nojeh air base, near the city of Hamadan, in north-west Iran to launch air strikes against armed groups in Syria.It was the first time a foreign power had used an Iranian base since World War Two. Russia and Iran are both providing crucial military support to President Bashar al-Assad against rebels and jihadi fighters in Syria's five-year-old conflict.Some Iranian lawmakers called the move a breach of Iran's constitution which forbids "the establishment of any kind of foreign military base in Iran, even for peaceful purposes".Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan dismissed that criticism but also chided Moscow for publicising the move, describing it as showing off and a "betrayal of trust.""We have not given any military base to the Russians and they are not here to stay," Dehghan was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency yesterday.He said there was "no written agreement" between the two countries and the "operational cooperation" was temporary and limited to refuelling.The US State Department last week called the move "unfortunate but not surprising," and said it was looking into whether it violated UN Security Council resolution 2231, which prohibits supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran.ABRUPT ENDToday, Iran's foreign ministry said Russia's use of the base had ended."Russia has no base in Iran and is not stationed here. They did this (operation) and it is finished for now," Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.Iran's defence minister had said last week that Russia would be permitted to use the Nojeh base "for as long as they need".Relations between the two countries, long cordial, appeared to reach a new level last September when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military intervention in Syria in support of Assad.After some delay, Russia supplied Iran with its S-300 missile air defence system, evidence of a growing partnership that is testing US influence in the Middle East.Dehghan said that to make up for the delay, Russia had suggested providing Iran with its advanced S-400, but that Tehran was not interested as it is working to advance its own home-made defence system.Iran unveiled its new missile defence system, Bavar 373, today, a system designed to intercept cruise missiles, drones, combat aircraft and ballistic missiles.Iran's defence minister also said Tehran has shown interest in buying Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets and Moscow's reply "has not been negative so far."The United States has said it would use its veto power in the UN Security Council to block the possible sales of the fighter jets to Iran. REUTERS SHS PR2329 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-899420.Xml
Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusolgu said today he had summoned the Austrian ambassador over a rally held in Austria in support of the PKK Kurdish militant group, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by US, European and Turkish officials. REUTERS SHS PR2332 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0329-899422.Xml
The four US officials were expected to discuss with their Turkish counterparts on Tuesday and Wednesday the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, who is believed to have masterminded the failed July 15 coup attempt, Xinhua news agency reported.

Turkey Justice Ministry officials stated they would share with their US counterparts the extradition demand documents in addition to evidence indicating Gulen's direct involvement in the attempted coup.

Turkey sent a second request to the US for the arrest of Fethullah Gulen earlier in August.

Tensions brewed after Ankara expressed its discontent over lack of support from Washington in the wake of the failed coup.

Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag warned that the relationship between both countries could be negatively affected if Gulen was not extradited.

However, the US insists that the cleric would only be extradited following legal procedures according to relevant legislature and treaties.

--IANS ask/lok

( 183 Words)

2016-08-23-03:21:57 (IANS)
Quorum was formed for a voting session for the first time since January in the eastern Tobruk-based parliament, Xinhua news agency quoted a parliament official as saying.

The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) was appointed based on an UN-sponsored peace deal signed by the country's political rivals in order to end the state of political division.

GNA, however, faced opposition from several members of the parliament.

Monday's voting was considered to be another obstacle to the government that has been trying to get the approval of the parliament.

Meanwhile, GNA's forces fighting the Islamic State Terrorist Group in Sirte were gaining more control of the city in a fight which started in May and has claimed the lives of at least 350 government fighters and has injured 1,000 others.

--IANS ask/lok

( 166 Words)

2016-08-23-03:21:58 (IANS)
The Egyptian, who will be deported after serving his sentence, was found guilty of sending a confidential document on the Saudi army to the Iranian embassy in Lebanon's capital city Beirut, Xinhua news agency reported.

The court believed that the convict received a letter from the embassy asking for additional information on the Arab state.

--IANS ask/lok

( 91 Words)

2016-08-23-03:21:59 (IANS)
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, makes remarks at the 2016 National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) joint convention at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC on Friday, August 5, 2016. Following her prepared remarks, Secretary Clinton took questions from the moderators and from the audience. (Photo Credit: Ron Sachs/CNP/AdMedia)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Nearly four in ten voters believe that the U.S. media is biased for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. election, said a new poll.

According to the Morning Consult poll released on Friday, 38 percent U.S. voters say that news coverage favors the former U.S. secretary of state, while only 12 percent believe that same is true for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

As to the amount of coverage each nominee is getting, the majority of voters approve of the amount of coverage of either nominee, said the poll.

However, voters voiced dissatisfaction with the fairness of the media, with 33 percent saying that the media's fairness to each candidate is "poor".

Another 22 percent voters believe the media coverage of each candidate is "only fair", and those who describe the media coverage as either "excellent" or "good" account for 35 percent in total, according to the poll.

The poll came as Trump doubled down on his accusation against "the crooked media."

"I'm not running against Crooked Hillary. I'm running against the crooked media," said the New Yorker during a rally on Aug. 13.

Though benefitting heavily from the media's wall-to-wall coverage of his campaign during the nomination contests, relations between Trump and the media deteriorated in the past weeks as the bellicose billionaire developer got embroiled in one political firestorm after another.

The media bombardment began late July after Trump derisively answered criticism from Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim American solider killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq.

On the final day of the Democratic National Convention, Khan blasted Trump for his divisive remarks and proposal to temporary ban Muslims entering the country.

The Republican standard-bearer responded by implying that Ms. Khan, who accompanied his husband on stage on the final day of the Democratic National Convention, was forbidden to speak.

Then on Aug. 9, Trump caused another round of media frenzy after suggesting that supporters of gun rights could take action against his Democratic counterpart Clinton if Clinton wins the election.

"Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment," said Trump during a campaign rally in Wilmington, North Carolina. "By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks."

"Though the Second Amendment people, maybe there is," he added.

As he was still scrambling to tackle the backlash after his gun rights comments, Trump on Aug. 10 handed the U.S. media new prime fodder after declaring that U.S. President Barack Obama "is the founder of ISIS," referring to the extremist group Islamic State.

Despite a conservative radio show host's apparent move to help him clarify his position, Trump on Aug.11 stepped up his accusation of Obama, saying that he "meant he (Obama) is the founder of ISIS."

Trump eventually backtracked on his accusation, blaming the media for missing his sarcasm.
An ambulance arrives at a blast site in Sahinbey District of Gaziantep province,Turkey. A blast occurred near a wedding hall here at 22:40 local time (1940 GMT) on Aug. 20, 2016.(Xinhua/Mert Macit)

UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday condemned the deadly blast that hit an outdoor wedding celebration in southeastern Turkey and killed at least 50 people.

The explosion, which also left 94 people injured, happened near a wedding hall in the southeastern Turkish province of Gaziantep on Saturday night.

"The Secretary-General hopes that the perpetrators of this act will be quickly identified and brought to justice," said a statement released by Ban's spokesperson.

"He again stresses the need to intensify regional and international efforts to prevent and combat terrorism and violent extremism," it added.

The brutal terror attack was carried out by a teenager, and initial findings showed it was perpetrated by the Islamic State group.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Sunday condemns "in the strongest possible terms" the terrorist attack in Gaziantep, Turkey that has killed at least 50 people.

The explosion, which also left 94 people injured, happened near a wedding hall in the southeastern Turkish province of Gaziantep on Saturday night.

"The perpetrators of this barbaric act cynically and cowardly targeted a wedding, killing dozens and leaving scores wounded," Ned Price, spokesperson for White House's National Security Council, said in a statement.

The U.S. stands with the people of Turkey as they defend their democracy in the face of all forms of terrorism, Price added.

The brutal terror attack was carried out by a teenager, and initial findings showed it was perpetrated by the Islamic State group.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will visit Ankara on August 24 to reaffirm U.S. commitment to work together with Turkey to confront the scourge of terrorism, Price said.
File photo taken on May 24, 2016 shows an aerial view of expressways linkingHangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport at night in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province. Hangzhou is the host city for the 2016 G20 summit on Sept. 4 and Sept. 5. With one month to go, Hangzhou looks forward to G20. (Xinhua/Huang Zongzhi)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's forthcoming meeting with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama is expected to enhance mutual trust, widen win-win cooperation and deliver guidance for management on differences between China and the United States.

"The upcoming meeting between the two heads of state, just as every strategic talk they have held in recent years, will produce very positive and important influence on China-U.S. bilateral relations," Cui Tiankai, Chinese ambassador to the United States, said in a joint interview with Chinese-language news media here on Saturday.

Xi is scheduled to meet Obama during the G20 summit in east China's Hangzhou City next month.

Under the G20 mechanism, the two leaders have already conducted very much coordination and cooperation for years, Cui said, noting that it is also the world's wide expectation that China and the United States can work together to ensure the G20 Hangzhou Summit to achieve a full success.

As the top two economies in the world, China and the United States have responsibilities to play a larger role in ensuring that the Hangzhou summit can yield constructive results as many as possible, Cui said, adding communication channels between the two countries have always been running well.

More than 40 years ago, Hangzhou witnessed the negotiations for the first ever China-U.S. joint communique, the ambassador recalled, stressing "a return to a place full of historic meaning reveals a lot about the direction we should follow."

"The history of their relationship has fully proven that the two global heavyweights must cooperate with each other and must become cooperative partners," said Cui, referring to the building of a new type of major-country relationship.

The ambassador also revealed that China has kept frequent contacts with the United States on the South China Sea issue, reiterating that the issue should not be allowed to define China-U.S. ties since the two countries have neither disputes over even one inch of territory nor fundamental clash of interests in the South China Sea.

The upcoming meeting between Xi and Obama in Hangzhou is the most important agenda of China-U.S. relations in the next stage, said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in his telephone talk with U.S. Secretary of State John earlier this month.

At the time, Kerry said that the Xi-Obama meeting in Hangzhou is very important, noting the United States is willing to work together with China to ensure a full success of the G20 Hangzhou Summit.

The upcoming G20 summit, with the theme "Toward an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive World Economy", will be held in Hangzhou City on Sept. 4-5.
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Researchers at Stanford University have used modern techniques to study how proteins are directed to various areas within a cell, and with new insight into one of the fundamental mechanisms of protein delivery, are able to revise the understanding of cellular mechanisms.

A protein's journey begins when a piece of messenger RNA delivers instructions and a command to a ribosome, one of the tiny bulbous protein factories within the cell. The ribosome follows the recipe encoded on the mRNA, which itself was translated from the genes within DNA, and manufactures the specific protein.

Research in the early 1970s revealed that the first part of many new proteins is a signal that makes the ribosome pump the product into another cellular structure called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). A "signal recognition particle" (SRP) latches on to the protein signal to help pilot it to the ER; the SRP also momentarily stops protein production, with the ribosome kicking back into action once it reaches the ER and the SRP has moved along.

However, "our data supported the role for SRP, but our experiments did not support this model," said Judith Frydman, a professor of biology and of genetics at Stanford and a co-author of a study published in the recent issue of journal Nature. "This is what is so cool about this study. We found that in fact SRP works through a very different and completely unexpected mechanism."

Using modern techniques and instruments that allowed them to observe the mechanism in higher resolution than previously possible, Frydman and her colleagues found that the mRNA contains a little bit of information that the SRP recognizes before protein production begins, and that the SRP waits at the exit site of the ribosome before the protein even emerges.

"It's almost prescient; it already knows before it comes and just steps right in," Frydman was quoted as saying by a Stanford news release.

The researchers also found that the SRP didn't halt protein production at all, as was previously believed. And the dual discovery is both important and interesting, Frydman said, because how and when proteins reach the membranes within the cell has dire consequences.

Very important processes rely on the fidelity of where proteins have to go, she said, and cells need to secrete proteins faithfully. If a particular protein stays in the cytoplasm, it could aggregate and lead to loss of healthy function or the accidental gain of unhealthy function. These gains or losses are typical of a variety of diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

In addition, as many proteins that are important pharmaceutically are made in large part by targeting them to this secretory pathway, according to Frydman, "they have also been designed relying on this classical model. Having a better understanding of this process could really enhance the process of designing new pharmaceuticals."




Wreckage of a minibus is seen at the accident after a bridge collapsed in Xiushui County, east China's Jiangxi Province, Aug. 22, 2016. An electric motorcycle and a minibus fell into the river after the bridge collapsed Sunday evening, killing three and injuring another two. (Xinhua/Zhou Mi)

NANCHANG, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Two vehicles fell into a river after a bridge in Xiushui County, east China's Jiangxi Province, collapsed Sunday evening, killing three and injuring another two, local authority said.

The collapse happened at around 8:30 p.m. when an electric motorcycle and a minibus was on the bridge. Two people on the motorcycle were rushed to the county's people's hospital by rescuers.

The three passengers trapped in the minibus were confirmed dead.

An investigation is underway.
CANBERRA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The sale of Australia's largest cattle rearing company, S. Kidman & Co, has been put on hold as foreign buyers are becoming hesitant to submit bids amid government rejection of foreign offers for Aussie companies.

Bids for Kidman & Co, the nation's largest private land holding, were expected to have been received last month, however, after two prior bids were rejected by the federal government over national security and national interest concerns, prospective buyers are choosing to wait until the government clarifies its stance on foreign investment.

Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin has already had one bid rejected by federal Treasurer Scott Morrison; the 281 million U.S dollar bid was deemed not in the "national interest" and the bid was withdrawn.

Shanghai Pengxin has indicated it would not submit another bid until the government or S. Kidman & Co could clarify what an acceptable arrangement would be.

A statement from S. Kidman and Co provided to News Corp outlet on Monday said there were "no indicative timelines in place for the transaction," even though the pastoral company had been listed as "for sale" for more than 18 months.

"The vendors are in discussion with a number of potential bidders and there is unlikely to be any outcome for some months," the statement said.

In addition the uncertainty surrounding foreign investment, last week the Chinese Embassy warned the federal government that a lack of clarity surrounding foreign investment bids could have a "serious impact on the enthusiasm" of other prospective Chinese buyers.

Meanwhile, National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Mahar asked the government to quickly provide clarity over the sale of Australian-owned and state-owned assets to foreign buyers, as it could negatively affect the chance for Aussie businesses to sell in the future.

"A market operates effectively when vendors and purchasers know what the criteria are and what they need to do to get a sale or to provide investment," Mahar told News Corp on Monday.

"It appears there is not enough certainty and clarity over the investment regime and the investment landscape."

"We want to make sure that there is the right mechanism in place to monitor (foreign investment), and to make sure that it is good for the industry, but we don't want to send mixed signals about Australia being 'open for business' or not."

The government has previously spruiked that it is "open for business" in terms of foreign investment, however, recent bid rejections have been to the contrary, undermining the stance that Australia welcomes foreign investment.
MELBOURNE, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Australia's largest zinc, lead and silver mine posed a serious danger to the environment and should be shut down, according to a new report.

Up to 760 million U.S. dollars would need to be spent to rectify the McArthur River mine, located in Australia's Northern Territory (NT), which has experienced operational problems since it opened in 1995, report author Gavin Mudd said.

Mudd, a professor at Melbourne's Monash University and member of the Mineral Policy Institute, said a high proportion of the project's waste rock was acid-forming and therefore damaging to the environment.

An environmental impact statement completed before the mine began operations estimated the dangerous, acid-forming rock would make up 11 percent of the waste, but an independent 2015 report found more than 90 percent of the waste was acid-forming.

Mudd's analysis indicated that the high rate of acidic rock dumped next to the pit reacted with the air and gave off toxic fumes.

He said leaving a pile of the dangerous waste rock next to the mine once it finished operations, as is the current plan, would poison the local environment for decades.

The report said spending as much as 760 million U.S. dollars to backfill the pit was the only viable option to rehabilitate the site.

"That's just the cost of doing business," Mudd told the Guardian on Monday.

Traditional owners of the land have previously protested the mine over discoloration of water downstream from the site and contamination of fish eaten by the Indigenous community.

The report called for a public commission into the mine to be set up "immediately" to assess how the site could be made safe.

"Until then, mining should stop," Mudd said.
CANBERRA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- While the wombat, a seemingly "cute" marsupial native to Australia, is considered a cute and cuddly furry creature in children's literature, they are in fact dangerous and should be avoided at all costs, a local wildlife expert said on Monday.

Following the harrowing tale in which a Canberra woman was viciously attacked by one of those seemingly-cute native marsupials, ACT Wildlife's Martin Lind has warned locals that wombats are in fact dangerous animals.

Last week, Canberra native Kerry Evans was walking her dog when a large wombat approached and proceeded to maul her. Evans sustained scratches and more than 20 bites -- one of which required stitches.

On Monday, Lind said despite how they may be portrayed in popular culture, Australians should give wombats a "wide berth" if they come across them in the wild.

"Wombats are portrayed in literature and kid's stories as being these cute, innocuous little critters but they're not, they're just not," Lind told Fairfax Media on Monday.

He said that, in the early stages of their life, wombats may live up to the 'cute and cuddly' tag, however, it quickly ends as they enter "puberty" and mature.

"As babies, they're clingy, they're adorable, they're with mum 24 hours a day, they're in a soft, snugly sleeping bag all the time listening to a heartbeat," Lind said.

"When they start to mature and hit puberty, they just hate everybody and everything. They go from running between your legs and cute as a button to being absolute little shits. They nip you, they wreck, they bite."

He also warned that it's hard to outrun the stocky creatures, adding that they can maintain speeds of up to 40 kilometers per hour -- just slower than renowned sprinter Usain Bolt.

"You can't outrun them, they go like lightning," Lind said. "They're like little bulldozers."
Cambodian high school students take an exam in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Aug. 22, 2016. Approximately 93,752 high school students in Cambodia took the national graduation exam on Monday, which is a prerequisite for the students to pursue their studies at university levels. (Xinhua/Sovannara)

PHNOM PENH, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Approximately 93,752 high school students in Cambodia took the national graduation exam on Monday, which is a prerequisite for the students to pursue their studies at university levels.

Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said some 13,000 invigilators and about 6,000 anti-corruption officials and volunteers have been deployed at all 157 exam centers with 3,781 rooms across the country to monitor the exam process.

"This is the third year that we have launched the (high school exam) reform. This year's exam is better than that of last year," Naron told reporters. "In the first year of our reform, we saw students brought in a lot of cheat sheets and in the second year, cheat sheets were still found, but in the third year here at the Preah Sisowath High School, we have not found any students with crib sheets."

"We notice that students have prepared well for the test, they look self-confident," he said.

According to the exam rule, crib sheets, mobile phones, smart phones, and other electronic devices are not allowed to be taken into the test rooms. Applicants will be automatically failed if he/she is caught cheating.

Over the course of two days, the applicants will sit for the test in the subjects of geography, history, biology, foreign language, Khmer literature, mathematics and moral-civic education, according to an Education Ministry's statement.

The results of the exam will be issued on Sept. 13 and 14.

In last year's test, 46,560 applicants, or 55.8 percent, of the total 83,325 candidates passed the exam.
CANBERRA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua)-- Police are searching for four men who set three crocodiles free in an Australian school at the weekend.

The saltwater crocodiles were released in the administration offices of Taninmin College at Humpty Doo, in the Northern Territory, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Four men broke into the offices after dumping the crocodiles inside through a hatch in the front door and ransacked the offices.

But Luke McLaren, a ranger who helped capture the crocodiles, said the poor health of the reptiles meant they would likely have to be put down.

"Basically skin and bones, not much left of them, they were really quiet and easy to catch," McLaren told the ABC on Monday.

"Really poor skin condition, like they haven't been kept in water for quite a while, haven't been fed, and one of them looked to be blind (as a result of neglect).

"We'll determine what farm they're from and we'll try to take them back to that farm but looking at their condition it's likely they'll have to be destroyed."

The crocodiles dumped at the school ranged in size from 1.5 meters to 2 meters which is on the small end of the scale for saltwater crocodiles which can grow to be six meters long.

People convicted of interfering with a protected species in Australia, such as saltwater crocodiles, face a jail term of up to five years and fines up to 55,000 U.S. dollars.
YANGON, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar military authorities have denied the allegation that there was a recent exchange of gunfire on Myanmar soil between Indian army and a rebellion ethnic group -- the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (khaplang)(NSCN-K), official media reported Monday.

The denial referred to reports by some foreign media that Indian army entered Myanmar territory and fought with the NSCN-K on Aug. 19 and that the fighting lasted for three hours.

Myanmar military's information quoted witnesses as saying that the gun battle between NSCN-K and NSCN-IM occurred inside India on the day, one mile west of the Myanmar-India border, and not inside Myanmar territory.

However, Myanmar military columns on the border were on full alert to ward off foreign troops from entering the country, the military authorities said, adding that Myanmar would neither accept nor encourage any armed group to station on its soil to potentially terrorize the government.

The authorities insisted that Myanmar armed forces is working in tandem with Indian army and rendering cooperation in patrolling the border and exchanging information.

In June 2015, there were also clashes between the Indian army and the Indian rebel group near Myanmar-India border.

Myanmar army then assured India of not tolerating any rebel groups active on its soil.
BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Sunday slammed the Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercise jointly conducted by South Korea and the United States, calling it the "most undisguised physical measure and provocative action."

The DPRK has condemned the annual joint military exercises every year. Following is a look at the DPRK's wording in recent years.

2016 -- "An outrageous provocation for a nuclear war against the North aimed to encroach upon the dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK and infringe on the vital rights of its people."

2015 -- "(The war games) are the root cause of the escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the danger of nuclear war facing the Korean nation."

2014 -- "The most dangerous nuclear war maneuver for invading the North, to which the tailored deterrence strategy aimed to make a preemptive nuclear strike at the DPRK was applied for the first time."

2013 -- "If the enemies fire even a single shell on our inviolable territory and territorial waters, the Korean People's Army should deal prompt deadly blows at them and make an all-out counter-offensive to achieve national reunification."

2012 -- "The war drills ... prove that the U.S. is the harasser of peace and provoker of a war that upsets the stability on the Korean Peninsula."
PYONGYANG, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) warned Monday that its military is "fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike" as South Korea and the Untied States are conducting joint military exercises.

"If they show the slightest sign of aggression on the inviolable land, seas and air where the sovereignty of the DPRK is exercised, it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike," said a statement issued by a spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People's Army.

The statement called the military drill "a clear manifestation of a vicious plot" to inflict misery of colonial rule over the DPRK people.

On Sunday, a spokesman for the DPRK Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country warned that the DPRK will decisively foil all hostile acts and threat of aggression and provocation with the Korean-style nuclear deterrence.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian war games, which kicked off Monday, will run till early September.

Each year, South Korea and the United States conduct a number of joint military drills that they claim to be of defensive nature. But Pyongyang says the annual war games are designed for invasion.
SYDNEY, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- A 102-year-old academician from Western Australia told to work from home is not happy with the decision and believes if he had to pack up his office, he'd been stuck in his flat the whole day.

David William Goodall, an honorary research associate attached with the Center for Ecosystem Management at Perth's Edith Cowan University, said the decision to ask him to leave was to avoid a possible legal action if he was to have an accident on campus.

Goodall whose ecology career goes back 70 years said he will still be allowed into the university campus but not without an assistant by his side.

"I would like to continue in my pattern of work, partly because it's a way of seeing my surroundings more than I would,"Goodall told local media on Monday.

He admits to having some difficulties in walking and does not walk more than a kilometer, but has no troubles with his commute to work which involves two buses and a train. He also described his health as "pretty good."

ECU's vice-chancellor Steven Chapman said the university had identified risks associated with Goodall's travel to the Perth campus and also has concerns about his general wellbeing when on university grounds.

"To minimize these risks, we have consulted with him and his family and reached an agreement to set up a home office at a location of his choosing,"Chapman said.

"David will always be welcomed at ECU and we will make travel arrangements, at no cost to him, to attend pre-arranged meetings and events,"he said.

Chapman added Goodall whose honorary appointment expires this December was renewed for another three years in recognition to the many contributions he has made in the field of ecology in the past.
MANILA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said on Monday that the Philippines is not pulling out of the United Nations, saying his country is committed to the organization despite its "frustrations."

Yasay called a briefing to clarify the statement made by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday that the Philippines will "separate" from the UN after the body criticized his war on illicit drugs.

"We certainly are not leaving the UN," Yasay told a news conference at the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Duterte was angered by statements made by a UN official condemning the increasing number of vigilante-type killings in the country. There are more than 1,000 people killed in the campaign, according to media reports.

"Maybe we just have to separate from the United Nations. If you are that rude, we might just leave the organization," Duterte told a news conference in Davao City on Sunday, referring to the UN critics.

Duterte even said that he might as well form a rival organization with China and other African (nations). Duterte criticized the UN for its failure to stamp out terrorism, world hunger and other conflicts.

Duterte's spokesperson, Ernesto Abella, also told a separate news conference at the Malacalanang presidential palace that the Philippines is not "decoupling" from the UN.

"He is simply reiterating national sovereignty and the fact that he did not welcome interventions or what you would consider meddling. He was stating the fact that the Philippines is a sovereign nation and should not be meddled with," Abella said.

Abella said that the war on drugs "are within the our ambit of national sovereignty, national concerns, and that at this stage there was no call for the UN to make any investigations."

"If there would be serious intentions about investigating these matters they should have made formal presentations and not just made general statements. The UN as a public institutions should have made formal representations because we also are a formal institution," Abella said.

Meantime, a member of the House of Representatives slammed Duterte's threat to withdraw the Philippine membership in the UN, saying the Duterte's action is "impulsive, imprudent, and contrary to the interests of the nation."

"To turn away from such the community over a series of internal affairs would be truly regrettable. Withdrawal from the UN is not something that should be taken lightly for it could bring about disastrous consequences for the country," Rep. Harry Roque said.
File photo taken on Aug. 21, 2012 shows South Korean soldiers stand guard during an anti-terrorism drill as part of a joint US-South Korean military exercise called Ulchi Freedom Guardian at a subway station in Seoul, South Korea. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

SEOUL, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korean and U.S. forces kicked off their joint annual war game on Monday despite strong backlashes from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The annually-held Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) will be conducted from Aug. 22 to Sept. 2, Combined Forces Command said in a press release.

The computer-assisted simulation exercise will mobilize about 25,000 U.S. troops, including 2,500 reinforcements from the U.S. mainland and the U.S. Pacific Command. It was lower than last year's 30,000 U.S. forces.

From the South Korean side, some 50,000 forces will join the military exercise. It was almost the same as last year's.

The combined forces will reportedly apply Operation Plan 5015 to this year's UFG exercise. The OPLAN 5015 is a wartime joint defense scenario signed in June last year between Seoul and Washington to preemptively destroy the DPRK's nuclear and missile bases in times of military conflicts.

The United Nations Command's military armistice commission notified the DPRK at about 9:40 a.m. local time of the drill schedule and its defense nature verbally in Panmunjom, the truce village in the border dividing the two Koreas.

All of military communications lines between South Korea and the DPRK have been shut down after Pyongyang's nuclear detonation in January and its launch of long-range rocket in February that was seen as a disguised test of ballistic missile technology.

Tensions were heightened further as Seoul and Washington agreed in July to deploy one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korean soil by the end of next year.

The U.S. missile shield caused strong backlashes from the DPRK as well as China and Russia as the THAAD's X-band radar can snoop on Chinese and Russian territories.

This year's UFG exercise would not mobilize U.S. strategic weapons, according to local media reports, for fear of escalating the already-heightened tensions further in the region.

The DPRK slammed the UFG exercises, saying the drill is "an outrageous provocation for a nuclear war against the North aimed to encroach upon the dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK and infringe on the vital rights of its people."

The official news agency KCNA carried the statement on Sunday for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country (CPRC) that said it is "the resolute stand of the DPRK to decisively foil all hostile acts and threat of aggression and provocation with the Korean-style nuclear deterrence."

Each year, South Korea and the United States conduct a number of joint military drills including "Key Resolve," "Foal Eagle" and "Ulchi Freedom Guardian" which they claim to be defensive in nature. But the DPRK says the annual war games are designed for northward invasion.

Seoul's unification ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee told a press briefing that it was very regrettable for the DPRK to distort and denounce the "annually-held defensive" exercise, urging Pyongyang to make a right choice by stopping nuclear and missile developments and avoiding provocative acts.




Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn (R) meets with Turkey's Ambassador to Cambodia Ilhan Kemal Tug in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Aug. 22, 2016. The Turkish government on Monday formally requested Cambodia to shut down the Zaman schools in Cambodia, accusing the educational institutions of affiliation with a network that was behind the attempted military coup. (Xinhua/Sovannara)

PHNOM PENH, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Turkish government on Monday formally requested Cambodia to shut down the Zaman schools in Cambodia, accusing the educational institutions of affiliation with a network that was behind the attempted military coup.

Turkey's Ambassador to Cambodia Ilhan Kemal Tug made the request during a meeting with Cambodia's Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn, said Cambodia's Foreign Ministry spokesman Chum Sounry.

"The Turkish ambassador briefed the minister about the latest situation in Turkey and raised with the minister a Turkish government's request which wants Cambodia to shut down the Zaman schools in Phnom Penh," he told reporters after the meeting.

For his part, Prak Sokhonn condemned the bloody coup in Turkey last month, and promised to take the request into consideration, according to the spokesman.

In a press briefing in Phnom Penh on July 18, Ambassador Tug called on Cambodia to close the Zaman schools, claiming that the schools had affiliation with the Gulen Movement, which was founded by cleric Fehullah Gulen, who has been labeled a terrorist by Turkey since 2013 and accused of being behind the coup.

There are three Zaman school campuses in Cambodia, along with a university serving over 2,000 students.
MANILA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Philippine National Police Director General Ronald de la Rosa said on Monday a total of 1,779 people have been killed in the Philippines' war on illicit drugs since July 1.

He told a senate inquiry that 712 were killed in ongoing police operations while 1,067 died in "vigilante-type" killings, meaning "outside of police operations."

De la Rosa said in his opening statement that the Philippine National Police's "stand against extrajudicial killings is uncompromising."

"If any cop is found violating the law of self-defence he will be investigated, prosecuted and accordingly punished," he said.

"On the speculation of vigilante killings, the PNP does not and will never condone vigilante killings," he added. "I have previously mentioned that these killings are perpetrated by various syndicate groups involved in illegal drugs."

De la Rosa vowed to apply the "full force of the law against those responsible for these killings" outside of police operations.

The increasing number of killings in the administration's war against drugs has caught the attention of the United Nations and other international human rights groups.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte however is unfazed by the growing criticisms, repeatedly saying the fight against drugs will be relentless and will be sustained.

"I am willing to answer all (my critics). I assume full responsibility for what happened because I was the one who ordered it," Duterte told a news conference in Davao City at the weekend.

"My instructions at the very first day of my term were that: go out and hunt for these criminals. Arrest them if they surrender peacefully but if they put up a violent stunt then you just have to kill him because I do not want people in government dying needlessly for doing his work when you were then leaving behind a family and children," he said.

The president lamented that the government is also losing an average of two or three police officers in every drug operation launched by the police.

Duterte has singled out a senator, police generals, judges and politicians who were allegedly involved in illicit drugs operations in the country.

He said drug addiction has become a pandemic, saying there are an estimated 3.7 million Filipinos who are hooked into drugs. So far, he said 600,000 drug users and pushers have "surrendered" and took the drug test since his administration launched the campaign when he took over the presidency on June 30.
BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The large-scale joint military drills conducted by South Korea and the United States will jeopardize peace and stability in Northeast Asia, especially after regional tensions have escalated by the planned deployment of a U.S. missile defense system in South Korea.

Tens of thousands of South Korean and U.S. troops on Monday began the two-week Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises, five months after the two countries launched the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises.

Although Seoul and Washington claimed that their drills are defensive, the exercises that simulate an all-out attack by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) will make Pyongyang more aggressive and will worsen the already fragile and unstable situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Calling the South Korea-U.S. exercises the "most undisguised physical measure and provocative action," the DPRK has vowed to "foil all hostile acts and threat of aggression and provocation with the Korean-style nuclear deterrence."

The drills took place at a time when the situation on the peninsula is extremely sensitive and complex, after Washington decided in July to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system in South Korea, which will greatly undermine strategic security in neighboring nations such as China and Russia.

Washington further deployed three bombers in Guam and they took off last week from Guam for their first operation together in the Asia-Pacific, which was viewed by the DPRK as "very unusual military actions."

On Thursday, South Korea carried out large-scale live-fire exercises along the tense inter-Korean border and the DPRK criticized the action for bringing the peninsula into the "worst state of crisis."

The muscle flexing out of the U.S. strategy of rebalancing to Asia and Seoul's resolve to counter its northern neighbor will produce no good results but lead to a vicious circle of violence for violence.

Any improper handling of the drills could turn them into a real war, a scenario that no party is willing to see.

Furthermore, the drills will add uncertainties to a meeting between the foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea, which is an important trilateral mechanism for cooperation and dialogue but has been shadowed by maritime territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas and the THAAD deployment.

The China-proposed "parallel-track approach," namely, working to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and replace the Korean armistice with a peace agreement at the same time, is a reasonable and practical way to resolve the issue.

Besides, efforts are needed to resume at an early date the six-party talks suspended since December 2008.

All in all, safeguarding peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia as well as promoting the denuclearization of the peninsula is in the common interests of concerned parties including the United States and South Korea.

It is advisable that the two countries proceed out of the overall interests of all countries in the region and work to cool down the tensions on the peninsula.

Related:

DPRK warns of preemptive strikes as U.S.-South Korea war games kick off

PYONGYANG, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) warned Monday that its military is "fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike" as South Korea and the Untied States are conducting joint military exercises. Full story

S.Korea, U.S. kick off joint annual war game

SEOUL, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Korean and U.S. forces kicked off their joint annual war game on Monday.
SYDNEY, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Seek's chief executive Andrew Bassat said on Monday that Australia should show more respect to China when doing business.

Bassat said it was important for Australia to provide a "more give and less take in the relationship" for companies like Seek, which has a significant footprint in China.

China's number one job portal Zhaopin, in which Seek has a 67 percent stake, has been identified is one of the company's key growth engines for the future.

"I do think to some extent Australia needs to be more respectful towards China. Australia wants to benefit from the good things China brings but sometimes doesn't want to do anything in return," Bassat said.

"So it can be all take and no give ... They can see it as a one-sided relationship," he said.

Bassat was commenting on the recent refusal by the Australian federal government to block bids from Chinese and Hong Kong firms for Ausgrid, a New South Wales electricity distribution business.

The comments were made to NewsCorp after the company's full-year results to June 30 lifted 27 percent to 357.1 million Australian dollars (270.94 million U.S. dollars) as domestic revenue grew at its strongest pace in five years.

Revenue from Seek Australia and New Zealand reportedly rose 14.6 percent to 313.1 million Australian dollars (237.55 million U.S. dollars) due to a strong take-up by job advertisers on its talent search products.
ISTANBUL, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Five people were detained early Monday morning when they tried to sneak into the Israeli consulate building in Istanbul in protest against Israel's airstrikes on Gaza.

A group of people arrived in front of the consulate at around 2:30 local time (2330 GMT Sunday) to protest against the latest air raids on the Gaza Strip, reports said.

Additional security measures have been taken around the consulate, the Hurriyet daily reported.

The Israeli army fired missiles into two Hamas positions in northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, after a rocket was fired from the Palestinian territory into southern Israel, according to media reports.
File photo taken on May 24, 2016 shows an aerial view of expressways linking Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport at night in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province. Hangzhou is the host city for the 2016 G20 summit on Sept. 4 and Sept. 5. With one month to go, Hangzhou looks forward to G20. (Xinhua/Huang Zongzhi)

BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Amid a sluggish world economy, emerging countries voiced expectation that the upcoming Group of 20 (G20) summit could deliver some changes and help boost growth.

The summit, with the theme "Toward an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive World Economy," will be held in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Sept.4-5.

A record number of developing countries will participate in the summit for the first time in the G20's history, said Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia La Yifan on Friday.

"The G20 summit in Hangzhou will focus on development, especially that of developing countries, including African countries, which makes it different from other G20 summits," he said.

By bringing more interlocutors together, the G20 summit will push for a more inclusive world economy, said the Chinese ambassador.

For the developing world, the gathering is indeed a good opportunity to play a better role and an ideal platform to strengthen cooperation.

A visible symbol of that is the BRICS summit is now routinely held on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

"BRICS countries have always met on the sidelines of summits like the G77+China and G20 to discuss matters regarding the bloc and coordinate their policies," said South African Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Luwellyn Landers.

Landers said that South Africa expected the summit to enhance stable economic growth and address the cause of the weak economic growth affecting some countries, particularly in the developing world.

According to Landers, the summit will take place as the world is facing sluggish global economic growth with some countries like South Africa facing further downgrades by rating agencies.

The summit should be targeting the developmental needs of all countries that currently face a turbulent economic situation, Landers said.

"We need to take into consideration the global politics and the global economic downturn, which are the issues that would inform the outcomes of the G20," said the official

Landers said South Africa also expected the summit to talk about global terrorism, trade and investment.

"We also need to talk about the fact that as countries we need to engage more on bilateral and regional levels with regards to trade and investment. That's my reading of the situation," said Landers.

Senegalese President Macky Sall has said that African governments expect that the upcoming G20 meeting under the chairmanship of China will usher in a new industrial take-off on the continent.

Africa now is ready than ever before for an industrial revolution and awaits the September meeting of the G20 countries, said Sall.

"Our harmonization of country and regional level industrialization policies to ensure synergies with continental policy creates a conducive environment for partnership that is geared at improving lives in Africa," Sall said.

He said that the chairmanship of China is a new opportunity given the partnership between the Asian country and Africa in the development of infrastructure.

"The resolution is expected to propel Africa's industrialization process through capacity enhancement in science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship," he added.

Arjun Prasad Saha, CEO of Linuo Co.'s India branch, said that India could ask other G20 members to bring more investment to the country and make good use of its manpower. He hopes G20 leaders can talk about technology sharing and transfer.

Analysts said the just concluded China-India Financial Dialogue in Beijing last week has sent a clear message that the two economies are starting serious work on official and legal framework buildups for future larger economic partnerships.

The conference was held, incidentally, just ahead of the upcoming G20 summit and BRICS Summit in Goa, which is to be held in October.

Officials from finance ministries and key foreign policy and investment and trade organs attending the conference agreed that it is essential for the two sides to share information and experiences in financial management and macro-economic policy making.

They also agreed to build platforms for such interactions while increasing dialogue within the G20, BRICS and other multilateral frameworks.

Related:

Interview: Xi's upcoming meeting with Obama expected to enhance mutual trust: Chinese ambassador

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's forthcoming meeting with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama is expected to enhance mutual trust, widen win-win cooperation and deliver guidance for management on differences between China and the United States. Full Story

G20 summit in China "couldn't have come at a better time" -- Chilean diplomat
NEW DELHI, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Opposition leaders in Indian-controlled Kashmir led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Monday urged Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to initiate dialogue with all stakeholders to put an end to the ongoing crisis in the restive region.

The leaders submitted a memorandum to Modi seeking immediate ban on pellet guns during crowd control in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Reports said the delegation have conveyed to Modi that continued failure to address the unrest in the region would further alienate Kashmiris.

"The Prime Minister has acknowledged that development alone can't resolve the problem in the state," Abdullah told reporters after the meeting.

The 20-member delegation arrived in Indian capital New Delhi last week to meet important dignitaries pleading for concrete steps to resolve the ongoing unrest in the region.

On Saturday the delegation met with Indian President Pranab Mukherjee to seek his intervention to end the crisis. The delegation on Sunday met with Indian National Congress Party Vice President Rahul Gandhi.

Large-scale protests against New Delhi's rule are going on in the Muslim majority areas of the restive region since July 8.

The protests broke out following the killing of Burhan Muzaffar Wani, a top militant commander of separatist group Hizbul Mujahideen (HM).

Despite prolonged curfew and restrictions to clampdown on protesters, clashes and protests seemed to be intensifying on Monday.

The death toll of civilians in the standoff has gone up to 65, besides injuries of thousands of civilians.

Two policemen were also killed and hundreds of government forces personnel injured in the unrest.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in the psyche of majority of Kashmiris. Irate residents defying curfew and restrictions took to the streets at several places and clashed with police.

The youth threw stones and brickbats on contingents of police and paramilitary, who responded by firing tear smoke shells, pellets and bullets, which often proved fatal.

On Sunday a youth was killed in Srinagar city and more than 70 were injured, most of them in Baramulla district, after government forces fired upon protesters defying restrictions.

India's paramilitary last week informed the High Court in Indian-controlled Kashmir that it used 1.3 million pellets in the first 32 days in to control street protests. The admission came in response to a public interest litigation seeking a ban on pellet guns that has left more than 400 injured in their eyes.

It said 3,000 pellet cartridges, or around 1.3 million pellets, were fired from the pump action guns (shot guns used to fire pellets).

The shutdown and restrictions has affected normal life in the region, with people complaining dearth of essentials and eatables. A shortage of medicines has been reported in the region.

A separatist movement and guerrilla war challenging New Delhi's rule is going on in Indian-controlled Kashmir since 1989.

In 2010, a similar wave of violence hit the region and claimed over 100 lives during clashes.

Kashmir, the Himalayan region divided between India and Pakistan, is claimed by both in full. Since their independence from Britain, the two countries have fought three wars, two exclusively over Kashmir.

The weeks of turbulence in Indian-controlled Kashmir has added a new confrontation in the already strained relations between the two countries.
by Xinhua writer Zhang Zhengfu

BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- China and its role in avoiding the "new mediocre" that threatens the global economy are again in the spotlight as the country prepares to hold the 11th G20 summit in Hangzhou.

Recent news about China's economy has not all been good. Economic growth has slowed, and expansion in retail sales, industrial output and investment have decelerated.

For those who cannot see the forest for the trees, pessimism and worries may persist about the state and future of the Chinese economy. Some have even pointed to China as a potential burden on the global economic recovery.

The anxiety is understandable, given the huge role China plays in the world economy. The slowing Chinese economy contributed over a quarter of global economic growth and added an equivalent of the Swedish economy in 2015. Any faltering of the second-largest economy would ripple throughout the world.

However, if one looks a bit deeper, it is clear the transforming Chinese economy will only improve the lackluster global situation.

Sure, the slowdown may linger, at least for the near future, as it will take time to digest the legacy of a long economic boom. And China, the largest developing and most populous country, has to strike a balance between remaking the economy and securing growth to create jobs.

From slashing industrial overcapacity to shutting down polluting factories, the short-term effects of China's efforts to nurture consumer-driven growth and reduce reliance on investment, low-end exports and energy consumption will be felt acutely.

In addition, new problems, such as high debt levels, industrial overcapacity, environmental degradation and sluggish global demand, mean the economy must be directed along a more sustainable path.

However, global investors are poised to reap gains from a more robust market.

As David Dollar, a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution, put it, China's continued strong growth in recent years, despite slowed investment, was achieved thanks to increasing consumption.

China's economic growth is entering a positive cycle, as domestic consumption grows due to rising wages, leading to the expansion of services, which generate more jobs and higher spending power, said the former official of the World Bank.

For China's massive economy, the transition to a service and consumption-driven economy, accompanied by an improved social security system, will unleash huge demand and business opportunities.

From Uzbek cotton to Chilean wines, from Brazilian soybeans to Ecuadorian seafood, from Japanese robots to American movies, more and more countries are discovering the growing market for their exports as China's 1.3 billion people become more prosperous and start to consume more.

As China transitions from being the world's workshop to an influential global consumer of goods and services, its economy will boost developing and developed countries alike.

The transition is already under way, with the service sector expanding 7.5 percent in the first half of 2016, accounting for 54.1 percent of the overall economy, up 1.8 percentage points from a year earlier.

In 2015, consumption accounted for over 66 percent of China's gross domestic product, up 15.4 percentage points from 2014.

As heavy industry and traditional manufacturing wrestle with slowing demand overseas and overcapacity at home, new engines are humming: social media, cinemas, travel and R&D are driving consumption, services and the high-tech sector.

Growing demand from Chinese consumers is set to continue, bringing more services, imports and new investment opportunities for the world economy.

China's economic transition will continue and will be positive overall for the global economy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a report earlier in August.

"Many countries could only dream of achieving growth rates that China has and is likely to achieve, which also reflects positively on the reforms that Chinese policymakers have undertaken," said James Daniel, the IMF mission chief for China.
BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is to meet counterparts from Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) in Tokyo on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said Monday.

The ministers will review trilateral cooperation, discuss development directions and exchange views on issues of common concern.

Japan will chair the event, the eighth of its kind.

Lu said China expects this meeting to help maintain the momentum of cooperation among the three countries and promote the process of East Asia regional integration.

He called for efforts to bring about an East Asian economic community by 2020 and more contributions to regional peace, development and prosperity.
BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Despite a slowing economy, more Chinese tourists traveled last year, according to a report released by the China Tourism Academy on Monday .

Urban residents made 2.48 billion trips in the country in 2015, while those living in rural areas made 1.13 billion trips.

The largest numbers of tourists came from the five provincial-level regions of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Tourist incomes were highest in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and Sichuan, with combined per capita income exceeded 400 billion yuan (around 60 billion U.S. dollars).

Eastern provinces raked in the biggest tourism revenue last year, accounting for 46.35 percent of the country's total. The northeastern region performed worst, receiving just 6.83 percent of total tourist revenue.
NEW DELHI, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least two people were killed and more than 21 others injured in an explosion at a paper mill in the northern Indian state of Punjab Monday, a police official said.

"The blast took place around 1 p.m. local time (0530 GMT) when the workers were on duty at the paper mill in Malerkotla near Patiala town," the official said on condition of anonymity.

While two workers died on the spot, 21 others sustained burn injuries and rushed to Rajendra Medical College in Patiala, where the condition of some are said to be serious.

Preliminary probe has suggested that the explosion took place due to a glitch in factory machinery, which also led to minor fire in the mill.

Though foul play has been ruled out in the blast, but an investigation has been ordered into the incident, the official added.
PUL-E-KHUMRI, Afghanistan, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Up to 15 militants have been killed and three others detained as clash flared up in Dand-e-Ghori district of Afghanistan's northern Baghlan province on Monday, provincial governor Abdul Sattar Bariz said.

According to the official, three more militants have been captured and a weapon cache of the insurgents destroyed during the fighting which erupted early Monday.

The strategically important Dand-e-Ghori district outside provincial capital Pul-e-Khumri 160 km north of Kabul was overrun by Taliban couple of months ago and the government forces have yet to recapture it.

Taliban fighters would threat the provincial capital Pul-e-Khumri and the highway linking Kabul to the northern provinces if the government fails to dislodge militants from Dand-e-Ghori, observers said.
BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Ministry of Commerce said Monday that it would scrap anti-dumping duties on high-performance stainless steel seamless tubes imported from Japan and the European Union, effective on Monday.

The ministry levied anti-dumping duties on imports of high-performance stainless steel seamless tubes from Japan and EU from Nov. 9, 2012, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

The duties ranged from 9.2 percent to 14.4 percent according to the level of dumping.

On June 20, the ministry notified the domestic steel industry that it would review the anti-dumping measures. During the review period, the domestic industry withdrew its applications for continuing levying anti-dumping duties on Japan and EU imports.

Therefore, the ministry decided to cease the anti-dumping duties, according to the statement.
PARIS, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Two French nationals working for an environmental organization in Madagascar have been killed, France's foreign ministry confirmed on Sunday.

Two nationals were killed "in an odious crime" on the island of Sainte Marie, northeast coast of Madagascar, the Quai d'Orsay said in a statement.

An investigation was underway to identify the cause of the death, it added.

According to local media reports, the bodies of a man and a woman, aged 25 and 23 respectively, were found early on Sunday near a night club. They had injuries to the head.

They were volunteers for Cetamada, an environmental non-governmental organization working for the protection of marine mammals.
BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- China firmly opposes any acts or words supporting "Taiwan independence," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said on Monday in response to Taiwan's possible application for UN membership.

According to reports, Tsai Ming Shian, a senior member of the "Taiwan United Nations Alliance," urged Taiwan's new leader Tsai Ing-Wen to write to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to apply for membership last week. The official in charge of foreign affairs in Taiwan replied on Thursday that the Taiwan authority will not promote efforts to join the United Nations.

Lu said it is known to all that the United Nations is an inter-governmental organization consisting of sovereign states. "Only a sovereign state can apply for a membership," he said.

There is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is a part of China, said Lu.

The Chinese government and people firmly oppose any form of "Taiwan independence" secessionist activities, said Lu.

"Any attempt to challenge the one-China policy or create 'two Chinas' or 'one China, one Taiwan' will not succeed," he said.
SINGAPORE, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday sent his heartfelt thanks to Singaporeans for their concern and good wishes.

Lee wrote on his Facebook that he felt sorry for he did not have the chance to meet Singaporeans all after National Day Rally on Sunday night, as he went straight to Singapore General Hospital for a thorough check-up.

Lee took ill during the English portion of his speech at the Rally on Sunday. The Prime Minister's Office said in a statement on Monday that doctors have confirmed Lee has no cardiac abnormalities and no stroke.

On the advice of doctors, Lee will be on medical leave and will resume his duties on Aug. 29.

"I'm glad to report that the doctors think I am OK, but they have advised me to rest," Lee wrote in his Facebook.

Singapore's President Tony Tan Keng Yam updated his Facebook on Monday, saying he had spoken with Lee Monday afternoon.

"PM Lee was his usual jovial self. Glad that he is well," Tan said. The president pointed out that Lee had a busy schedule recently, and the preparation for National Day Rally took a toll on him.
ANKARA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from a suicide bomb attack at a wedding in the southern Turkish province of Gaziantep on Saturday night has risen to 54, including at least 29 children, local media reported on Monday.

Twenty-nine of the victims of the attack were identified as being under the age of 18, a provincial official was quoted by Hurriyet Daily News as saying.

One of the slain children is reported to be a Syrian, according to the report.

A total of 44 victims have been identified and laid to rest so far, and an autopsy for other bodies are still ongoing, it added.

A total of 66 people are receiving treatment in local hospitals, including 14 people in critical condition.

The bride and the groom were wounded in the attack, the report said.

The Gaziantep Chief Prosecutor's Office said in a written statement on Sunday that police found pieces of a suicide vest in the area where the blast occurred, which indicates that it was a suicide attack.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the attack in a statement, saying it was likely carried out by Islamic State (IS) terrorists.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Sunday that Turkey is determined to uproot terrorism in all its forms.
DAMASCUS, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Syria's state news agency said that Kurdish forces violated a recently reached truce in the northeastern city of Hasakah, attacking several government positions early Monday.

The military wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), known as Assayish, violated "the regime of calm agreement" in the city of Hasakah, just 10 hours of concluding the truce, said SANA.

Assayish members attacked several government positions in the city, in addition to targetting the neighborhoods of Nashwa and Ghwairan and a Syrian army checkpoint.

Meanwhile, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor group said intense battles renewed in the Naswha and Ghwairan areas amid the advance of the Kurdish forces, which were said to have captured large parts in Hasakah.

The U.S.-led anti-Islamic State (IS) coalition also scrambled warplanes in Hasakah on Monday, after bringing in reinforcement to one of its bases near the city, according to the Observatory, which says it relies on a network of activists on the ground inside Syria.

Reports said that the Kurds are determined to capture government-controlled areas in Hasakah and shrink the government presence into a security zone and the airport of the city of Qamishli in Hasakah.

A day earlier, a truce was reached between Syrian forces and Kurdish fighters in Hasakah under Russian mediation.

SANA said the "regime of calm" includes a cessation of battles, evacuation of wounded people, return to the previous lines of both parties, and the start of negotiations.

The cease-fire was supposed to start as of 5 p.m. local time (1400 GMT) on Sunday coupled with transporting the wounded to hospitals in the city of Qamishli in Hasakah.

The military positions should return to their previous state, and negotiations are set to start on Monday at the Qamishli airport between representatives of both sides and Iranian and Russian mediators, according to the agreement.

Tension started to rise last week, when both the National Defense Forces (NDF) and Assayish arrested members of each other, a source told Xinhua.

The NDF is a paramilitary group formed in the early years of the five-year crisis that backs government forces. Its initial task was to fill in the positions recaptured by the Syrian army.

Later on the group, which comprises largely of fighters from the Alawite sect of President Bashar al-Assad, started fighting alongside the army.

In recent months, the NDF, which is mostly referred to as pro-government fighters, have become more organized with headquarters present in most Syrian cities and accepting recruits from local communities in each city.

As the situation in Hasakah got more tense, the Kurdish militias demanded the dissolution of the NDF there, a request rejected by the Syrian army.

Later on, the Assayish started shelling NDF positions inside Hasakah, prompting the Syrian army to respond with airstrikes for the first time, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Assayish and the People's Protection Units (YPG), another Kurdish group, unleashed major offensives against NDF positions inside Hasakah, triggering further shelling and airstrikes by government troops.

The source said 80 percent of the residents of Hasakah have fled to areas in the countryside as a result of the latest confrontation.

In previous bouts of tension between Syrian government forces and the Kurds, both parties had managed to contain the situation and avoid further confrontation.

The YPG and other Kurdish militant groups have been assuming positions in Hasakah since 2012.

At the time, there were reports about a tacit agreement between the Kurds and the Syrian government.

Buoyed by the support of the U.S.-led coalition, the YPG and the allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have made sweeping victories against the IS in key areas in northern Syria.

The Russians were said to have also backed the Kurdish fighters in their push against the IS, but no Kurdish group have admitted receiving such support from Russia.
COLOMBO, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- MEGA Maldives Airlines, an international airlines operating in the Maldives, will launch direct flights between the Maldives and India, a local media report said on Monday.

MEGA Maldives Airlines is the second airline based in the Maldives that has been awarded the permit to operate flights, and follows on from MEGA's success in operating flights between China and the Maldives, where MEGA is the current market leader.

According to the media report, being in such close proximity to the Maldives, the growing Indian market is deemed to be important to the country's tourism.

In 2015, Indian arrivals to the Maldives stood at just over 50,000 and the market itself has already increased 25 percent in 2016.

While there has not been direct connectivity between the capitals of the two countries in the past, MEGA Maldives Airlines said that non-stop flights from Delhi to Male would further contribute to an increase in tourist arrivals, and would also serve the business and diplomatic communities of both countries.

The airline is currently in the process of planning the schedule of flights between the two capitals.
COLOMBO, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan government was upbeat on Monday about the future of a proposed financial city which is to be constructed with Chinese assistance.

State Minister of National Policy and Economic Affairs Niroshan Perera said in a statement that the financial city is expected to offer over 15,000 jobs in the first stage.

He said the government had decided to convert an earlier proposed port city into a financial city in order to help boost the country's economy.

The agreement on the financial city was signed recently between the government and the Chinese company engaged in constructing the new city.

The financial city will initially operate as a hub between Dubai and Singapore and will have some of the top international banks operating from the new city.

Perera said the financial city will look to promote business between India, other Asian countries, the Middle East and Europe.

He said the parliament will be fully briefed on the progress of the project in order to ensure the transparency.

CHEC Port City Colombo (Pvt) Ltd, the Project Company for the Colombo Port City (CPC), signed a tripartite agreement with the Ministry of Megapolis and Western Development and the Urban Development Authority recently.

The agreement formally replaces a previous deal signed in September 2014 between the Sri Lankan government and the Project Company.

The new tripartite pact has been signed following the announcement in March by the government to lift a temporary suspension of work on the project until the Ministry of Megapolis and Western Development completed an environmental impact assessment.

The assessment was completed earlier this year, pursuant to a development permit issued by Sri Lanka's coast conservation department to recommence the project.
ISLAMABAD, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least three militants, including a local commander, were killed when paramilitary troops raided their hideout in Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province on Monday, officials said.

Sarfraz Bugti, the home minister of Balochistan, said the killed militants were involved in an attack on President Momnoon Hussain's son and other terrorist activities in the province.

He said security forces gunned down the militatns in Hub district of the province on an intelligence tip-off, who were members of separatist group Balochistan Liberation army.

Bugti said the paramilitaty forces launched an operation to hunt down the militants, but they opened fire at the troops, engaging them into a gun battle.

The operation is part of the ongoing combing operation in the province, following a bomb explosion inside a hospital in Balochistan's provincial capital of Quetta on Aug. 8, which left 75 lawyers killed, and over 100 injured.
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Malaysia's oil giant Petronas said on Monday that its profits for the second quarter of 2016 posted a 85-percent drop compared with the same period last year, as low oil prices continued to pare back its earnings.

Profits from April to June were down to 1,616 million ringgit (400.8 million U.S. dollars), from last year's 11,067 million ringgit. Its revenue for the period also registered a 21-percent drop, from 61.3 billion ringgit to 48.4 billion ringgit.

Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin, the company's president and chief executive officer, commenced the press conference by describing the first half of 2016 as in a "persistently difficult industry environment," adding the first half remained difficult for the company.

Noting that all oil and gas majors registered a significant drop in financial performances, Wan Zulkifli said Petronas has charted modest growth in Q2 from better overall operational efficiencies, with its Q2 revenue narrowed to a 1-percent drop compared with the first quarter.

Under Wan Zulfiflee, Petronas has taken a series of cost-cutting measures, called "Cost Reduction Alliance 2.0," since oil prices hit the bottom in 2015. He said the state-owned company has realized actual savings amounting to 1.01 billion ringgit as of June 30, bringing the total costs saved since the launch of the initiative to 3.41 billion ringgit.

The company announced layoff of 1,000 jobs early this year. Cuts in capital and expenditures were also exercised in the past two years.

The company may also delay a liquefied-natural gas project in Canada, according to earlier reports. Wan Zulkiflee said the timeframe for the company to make a final decision of the project will be in September or October, when the Canadian government finishes their reviews.
XINING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Developers launched China's first Tibetan-language search engine on Monday in northwest China's Qinghai Province.

The search engine (yongzin.com) will serve as a unified portal for all major Tibetan-language websites in China, said Tselo, director of the Tibetan Language Work Committee of the Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai.

Yongzin means "master" or "teacher" in the Tibetan language.

It will also be a major global source for information in Tibetan online, he said.

The search engine has eight sections for news, websites, images, videos, music, encyclopedia, literature and forums.

"The search engine will meet the growing needs of the Tibetan-speaking population and facilitate the building of Tibetan digital archives and the expansion of databases in the Tibetan language," he said.

The project, which costs 57 million yuan (about 8.7 million U.S. dollars), is supported by the government. Work began on the project in April 2013.

More than 150 people were hired for the project, said Dora, technical director of the search engine and a professor with the Digitization Institute of Tibetan Literature of Northwest University for Nationalities.

People of Tibetan ethnicity make up 80 percent of the team, said Dora.

"Popular search engines such as Yahoo and Google enable searches in Tibetan, but they mainly support searching with single characters," he said.

Yongzin.com enables searches using words and phrases to yield more accurate results, he said.

Yongzin also leads to more web resources than its competitors, said Dora. "For example, the news function leads to more than 200 domestic Tibetan-language websites in China," he said.

It is expected to gain around 1.2 million users in its initial stage, Dora said.

Contents are also categorized according to different local dialects such as Amdo, Kamba and U-Tsang, he added. Enditem
ZHOUSHAN, Zhejiang, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese fleet participating in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) multinational naval exercises returned to a military port in Zhoushan City in east China on Monday.

The Navy had dispatched a missile destroyer, a missile frigate, a supply ship, a hospital ship, a submarine rescue vessel and two helicopters to participate.

The fleet left on June 15 from Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province. A total of 26 nations, 45 ships, five submarines, over 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel participated in the biennial RIMPAC exercise.

The Chinese fleet took part in a series of exercises in cooperation with other navies, including naval blockade, seaborne supply, anti-piracy and submarine rescue.

The Chinese side also held several reception events and exchanges with multi-national counterparts.

It is the second time the Chinese Navy has taken part in RIMPAC. In 2014, the Chinese navy participated in RIMPAC multinational naval exercises for the first time.
by Zhu Feng, Qian Zheng

TOKYO, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The G20 summit to be held in China in early September will facilitate more innovation among its members to solve the world's common problems, a Japanese researcher has said.

Eyeing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted last year by the United Nations (UN), Atsushi Sunami, vice president at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo, said "to facilitate and accelerate innovation to solve problems that are common to the entire world will be on the agenda of the G20 summit and discussed among G20 leaders."

"This could be one of the very important areas for China and Japan to cooperate," he told Xinhua in a recent interview.

In September 2015, a new global agenda to end poverty by 2030 and pursue a sustainable future was unanimously adopted by all 193 UN member states. The ambitious agenda, known as the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development," contains 17 SDGs and 169 targets to be met by all UN member states, including ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education and combating climate change, among others.

According to Li Baodong, Chinese G20 Sherpa and vice foreign minister, this year's G20 summit will for the first time formulate an action plan on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

In order to attain the SDGs, everyone and every country needs to "think in a more innovative way and accelerate innovation," Sunami said.

Sunami believes that the G20 summit will provide a platform for cooperation in innovation between Japan and China, and among G20 members on a larger scale.

"Being the second- and third-largest economies in the world, China and Japan can cooperate to solve these problems together by facilitating innovation," said the Japanese researcher.

He called on G20 members to create an "open innovation" environment, which means to facilitate innovation not only within a single country, but through cooperation with other countries, to solve common problems facing all of humanity.

Amid a climate of global economic stagnation, financial turbulence and trade protectionism, a country would face an uphill battle to solve these issues alone, Sunami said.

"China has already become a big player in the international arena. However, China alone cannot solve all the problems," he said.

Therefore, the expert suggested a "China-Japan joint dialogue" to promote innovation. "I think it will be a good way to establish this bilateral dialogue as an outcome of the G20 summit."

"As an outcome of this summit," he said, China and Japan are likely to "identify some common goals out of the UN's SDGs" through "continuous dialogue on cooperation and innovation," and then find a way to work together regarding the environment, education, energy, clean water and climate change.

Each goal will "need science and technological innovation to solve," he added.

Sunami noted that innovation here is not restricted to technological innovation, but also applies to the use of new ideas and new ways of solving problems.

Referring to innovation communication and cooperation between China and Japan, Sunami said the sense of competition between the two countries is very strong. "Competition is emphasized more than cooperation," he said, adding that neither country would like to lose out to the other in the area of innovation.

In his view, the G20 is "a unique gathering," as it provides a platform not only for members with similar ideas, but also for those with different opinions to gather and debate. "From this point of view, the G20 is becoming a very important platform and there are high expectations for the upcoming summit in China," he said.

The G20 summit, to be held in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Sept. 4-5, is where heads of state and government and central bankers gather to exchange views on macro-economic policy.
by Muhammad Tahir

ISLAMABAD, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani troops are battling militants in a rugged mountainous region to deprive them of one of their remaining few bases and to block a key route they use for cross-border movement, recent army accounts have confirmed.

Hundreds of soldiers, backed by air power, launched the fresh major offensive in the Khyber tribal agency near the Afghan border on Aug. 16, as part of a broader strategy to secure all border regions and dozens of militants have been killed as a result and their hideouts destroyed in the Rajgal Valley since the launch of the operation, army officials said.

Officials believe that militants had been exploiting the difficult terrain to enter Pakistan and Afghanistan to carry out terrorist attacks, after the Pakistani authorities introduced new monitoring systems at official crossing points.

The army said the operation, codenamed "Khyber-3", was necessary to shut down movement through the Rajgal Valley along the Pak-Afghan border and to "reinforce troops' deployment and to effectively check and guard against terrorists' movement along high mountains and all-weather passes in the Khyber Agency."

Previously there were no checks on the movement of the militants as the Rajgal Valley was not in control of local forces until the ground and air operation was launched.

Currently, the ground forces have advanced into the valley and security officials insist the offensive will continue until the area is completely secured and cleared of the militants who are believed to have been using the valley for their hideouts, after they were expelled from other areas, the officials said.

People familiar with the area have also noted that the Rajgal Valley is very close to the Afghan border, and militants would typically use this route to easily cross the border as the mountainous valley is covered by forests and the militants would use the coverage to hide there. After the offensive, however, it will now be difficult for the militants to operate covertly and breach the border, as Pakistani ground troops are moving towards the valley to take back control.

Political and military analysts are of the view that the militants usually use very difficult routes for cross-border movement and they will now be facing serious problems if these routes are choked by the army.

"The militants prefer inaccessible routes to avoid any risks, so if these routes are also blocked their ability to move freely and their subsequent operations will be severely diminished," Ahmadullah Ahmadzai, a political analysts with knowledge of the current situation, told Xinhua. He added that it will not be very easy for the militants to quickly find alternative routes for their nefarious activities.

Militants have previously taken advantage of free cross-border movement and thousands would have entered Pakistan from Afghanistan without passports or visas. Now, however, everyone who enters Pakistan from Afghanistan is required to carry passports and valid visas, Ahmadzai explained.

The current operation in the Rajgal Valley is seen as very significant by military strategists to ensure that the achievements already made as the result of a series of broader operations in the tribal regions are not negated. The government, to this end, has already announced it will wind up operation "Zarb-e-Azab" by the end of 2016, so the security forces can focus on securing all the border regions.

Zarb-e-Azab, launched in 2014, was a wide-reaching, joint military campaign carried out by the Pakistan Armed Forces against a number of different militant groups. The offensive was initially launched in North Waziristan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in response to a terror attack on an international airport in Karachi.

There has been a substantial decrease in terror attacks in Pakistan, military officials have attested, because of the success of such operations in the tribal areas. Now the focus is also on urban areas where security forces have already started "combing operations" against the militants, military sources have said.

On Sunday, the army said that a combing operation was conducted in the Hangu district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and in the northern Gilgit area, where several terrorists were arrested and weapons including explosives were recovered.

These operations were conducted as the militants have now opted for soft targets and killing civilians, as was seen on Aug. 8, when a suicide bomber brutally killed over 70 people, mostly lawyers, at a hospital in the southwestern city of Quetta, where they were gathered to mourn the death of a murdered colleague.
A locomotive is seen at a construction site of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project, near Sultan Halmud, Kenya, on May 28, 2016. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said Saturday China-funded high speed railway which runs from the coastal city of Mombasa to Nairobi will be completed ahead of the schedule. (Xinhua/Pan Siwei)

NAIROBI, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese-funded Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project will speed up economic transformation in Kenya and the larger eastern African region through increased cross-border trade, investments and easy mobility of skilled personnel, experts told Xinhua in recent interviews.

China's Exim Bank has provided 90 percent of financing to support implementation of the 472 kilometer high-speed railway that will link the port city of Mombasa to Nairobi.

Kenyan experts hailed the SGR project built by China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) a critical milestone.

Professor Macharia Munene, a Nairobi-based diplomacy scholar, opined that the railway will promote regional integration and economic progress in an unprecedented way.

"The SGR unites various people in more ways than transport for goods and services," Munene remarked, adding that the railway dovetails with Kenya's ambition to become a regional transport and manufacturing hub.

Photo taken on May 28, 2016 shows a view of track-laying at a construction site of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project, near Sultan Halmud, Kenya. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said Saturday China-funded high speed railway which runs from the coastal city of Mombasa to Nairobi will be completed ahead of the schedule. (Xinhua/Li Baishun)

Munene noted that SGR will boost prosperity in Kenya and the eastern African region through vibrant maritime and land-based trade in goods and services.

"The SGR project has two components; maritime and land-based transport. The maritime links Mombasa to the Middle East and Europe while the land links Mombasa to the interior of Africa. Its purpose is to open up huge areas to create wealth for the people," said Munene.

"The modern railway will reduce operational costs for businesses in Kenya and the region. It will also transform lifestyles," he added.

Kenyan officials, policymakers and industry executives believe that the SGR project will revolutionize transport as well as promote trade and movement of people in the region.

President Uhuru Kenyatta said at an infrastructure summit held in Nairobi last week that Kenya and its east African neighbors expect the SGR to shower huge economic and social benefits upon completion in June 2017.

The SGR project will boost Kenya's GDP by 1.5 percent besides positioning the country as an unrivalled hub for investments and trade.

So far, an estimated 30,000 Kenyans have been employed by CRBC to work at various sections of the railway.

Kenyan youth have also benefited from training in railway technology sponsored by CRBC.

According to Bethwel Kinuthia, an economist at the University of Nairobi, the SGR project will unleash mutual benefits to China and African allies once it is completed.

"An efficient and cheaper transport system will become a reality to ordinary citizens once the SGR project is completed. Both small and large businesses will definitely reap benefits," Kinuthia said.

Gerishon Ikiara, a diplomacy scholar at the University of Nairobi, said the mega infrastructure project will link Kenya to major trading blocs and boost its competitiveness.

"There are high expectations that the opening of SGR will mark the beginning of more competitive Kenyan and regional economies. Our manufactured products will have a competitive edge in the world market," Ikiara said.
SINGAPORE, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Selected visitors from Singapore and U.S. can enjoy free public Wi-Fi when they visit each other as part of a month-long trial, said the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) in a statement on Monday.

Under the city Wi-Fi roaming project, Singapore visitors will be able to roam automatically and securely between over 1,000 free public Wi-Fi hotspots in cities including San Jose, San Francisco and New York from Aug. 22 to Sept. 21. Vice versa, selected U.S. visitors to Singapore can also connect to Wireless@SG, Singapore's free public WiFi hotspots.

This is the first of its kind for foreign visitors, IDA noted, adding that U.S. network T-Mobile subscribers can simply perform a one-time setup on their SIM devices and connect automatically to Wireless@SG around 290 hotspots at the designated test areas. All other U.S. visitors can sign up for a free account and connect to Wi-Fi by following the steps on IDA's website.

The trial is taking place in conjunction with the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) City Wi-Fi Roaming Project. The project is a supporting activity of World Wi-Fi Day initiative, which aims to deliver the vision of connected cities around the world.

"There is strong synergy between IDA and WBA in our drive to continually enhance the wireless connectivity experience for users. Wi-Fi is fast becoming a daily necessity and Wireless@SG as the largest city-wide federated Wi-Fi network will be an important enabler to improve connectivity and liveability in Singapore as we move towards a SmartNation," Mr Khoong Hock Yun, IDA's Assistant Chief Executive said.
RABAT, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) on Monday strongly condemned as "heinous" a suicide bomb attack that killed more than 50 people at a wedding in southern Turkey on Saturday.

In a statement, the Rabat-headquartered organization said the heinous criminal act is contradictory to religious and universal values and principles, and targets in a barbaric fashion innocent people.

It expressed its condolences and sympathy to the families of the victims and to the Turkish government and people, wishing prompt recovery to the wounded.

Turkish media reported on Monday that the death toll from the bomb attack the southern Turkish province of Gaziantep has risen to 54.

Twenty-nine of the victims of the attack were identified as being under the age of 18, a provincial official was quoted by Hurriyet Daily News as saying.
DAR ES SALAAM, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian police said on Monday they have arrested 27 suspects in connection with the burning of six schools in the northern tourist region of Arusha.

Charles Mkumbo, the Arusha regional police commander, told a news conference the arrested suspects included teachers and students of the burnt schools.

"Teachers and students are among the arrested in the wave of a mysterious burning of school," said the regional police boss.

Mkumbo mentioned the latest victim as Winning Spirit Secondary, a private school in Arumeru district in the region.

Mkumbo ruled out sabotage behind the arson, adding they will interrogate the arrested suspects to find out what message they were trying to send through the fires.

Lowassa Secondary School in Monduli distirct was the first school to go up in flames on July 31 followed by a dormitory at Nanja Secondary School in the same district.

Before the dust had settled on the bizarre incidents, Longido Secondary School in Longido district was also torched, followed closely by Olesokoine Secondary School in Monduli district.

According to the headmaster of Nanja Secondary School, Yonah Luka Laizer, the "unfortunate incident" cost his school a loss of close to 11 million Tanzanian shillings (around 5,000 U.S. dollars).

These incidents came when neighboring Kenya was still recovering from the wave of school fires.

Kenya has witnessed more than 120 schools torched by students, with some of the students charged for arson.

The motive of the arsonists in the neighboring country was aimed at forcing the government of Kenya to suspend a slew of education reforms the Minister for Education unveiled in May to curb cheating in national examinations, which forced authorities to nullify more than 7,000 primary and secondary school examination results last year.
Alexander Galushka, Minister for Development of the Russian Far East, speaks during an interview with Xinhua News Agency in Moscow, Russia, Aug. 19, 2016. Russia has created a range of mechanisms to develop its Far Eastern region in the last 12 months and made them work, Galushka said in a recent interview with Xinhua before the upcoming 2nd Eastern Economic Forum, an event aimed at strengthening Russia's business relations with the Asia-Pacific region, to be held in Vladivostok on Sept. 2-3. (Xinhua/Dai Tianfang)

MOSCOW, Aug. 22 (Xinhua ) -- Russia has created a range of mechanisms to develop its Far Eastern region in the last 12 months and made them work, said Alexander Galushka, Minister for Development of the Russian Far East.

"It is a very important achievement," Galushka said in a recent interview with Xinhua before the upcoming 2nd Eastern Economic Forum, an event aimed at strengthening Russia's business relations with the Asia-Pacific region, to be held in Vladivostok on Sept. 2-3.

Even prior to the 1st Eastern Economic Forum, held in Sept. 2015, Galushka said, the Russian government had already introduced stimuli to making the region a territory of priority development.

It has granted Vladivostok the right to become a free port, created the Far East Development Fund, and provided infrastructure subsidies for investors to implement projects in the Russian Far East.

According to the minister, the government has also implemented a number of new measures, including granting land plots for free, extending the free port regime to ports of Vanino in the Khabarovsk region, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Korsakov on Sakhalin island and Pevek on Chukotka Peninsula.

Moscow has also passed a law on cruise shipping, simplifying administrative control and customs procedures and permitting a three-day visa-free travel by tourists, Galushka said.

All investors in the Russian Far East will enjoy preferential tax treatment, having a five-year income tax holiday from 2017, and then paying half of the 20-percent tax for the next five years, he said.

The government has also freed investors from paying the tax for extraction of mineral resources for the first two years, after which the tax will be gradually raised in the following eight years, Galushka said.

Galushka said the Russian government puts emphasis on private investment in its new version of the state program "The Social and Economic Development of the Far East and the Baikal region."

He noted that Chinese investments made up more than 16 percent of all investments attracted to the Far East over the past year with the new development tools.

"We are pleased that from the 100 billion Chinese yuan (15 billion U.S. dollars) invested in the Far East over the past year, more than 16 percent were Chinese investments, but we believe that this is only the beginning and this modest figure can be much higher," he said.

There are many positive examples of Chinese participation in the Far East territories of priority development and the free port of Vladivostok.

He noted the construction of a refinery in the Amur region by Chinese investors and the creation of the Russian-Chinese Fund for Agro-Industrial development among the most important projects.

Besides this, Galushka said, the two parties have been conducting a "fruitful dialogue" on the development of transport corridors between northeast China and the south of the Russian Primorye region.

"We hope this is only the beginning of a long-term, multi-faceted and mutually beneficial cooperation, which will enrich both countries," Galushka concluded.
MOGADISHU, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The East African bloc of IGAD said Monday that terror attacks by Al-Shabaab will not discourage Somalia from holding credible elections slated for September and October.

The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) slammed the terrorist group for being responsible for the twin explosions on Sunday in the northern Somalia city of Galkayo that left at least 20 people dead and over 25 others injured.

"It is our belief that this atrocious terror attack will not discourage the Somali government and the Somali people from preparing themselves for general elections, a very much expected historic and highly significant political exercise," IGAD Executive Secretary Engineer Mahboub Maalim said in a statement received in Mogadishu.

Al-Shabaab militants have claimed responsibility for the attack carried out in two vehicles laden with explosives that targeted a municipal government building near a crowded market.

Maalim said the East African bloc will remain engaged with Somalia government whose exemplary enthusiasm in rebuilding their country "is a ray of hope to all people who face the same challenges all over the world."
BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- China's ride-hailing firm Didi announced Monday that it is launching car leasing business.

Didi launched a car leasing service in Shanghai in July and the service is scheduled to expand to several first and second-tier cities within the year.

Didi is in talks with several car leasing firms, including eHi Car Services which could help them cut operational costs.

Unlike traditional car leasing service, Didi users can book cars online and the cars will then arrive at their doorstep, it said.

Seeing huge market potential, several car leasing firms, including CAR Inc. and Uucars, are increasing their investments.

China's car leasing market is forecast to grow to 54.4 billion yuan (8.2 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016 and then more than double by 2020, according to CIConsulting.

On Aug. 1, Didi announced that it was taking over the China business of rival Uber.
MOSCOW, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Russia has withdrawn its military aircraft from Iran's Hamadan air base for strikes in Syria, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov confirmed on Monday.

"Currently, all aircraft of the Airspace Force involved in the operation are on the territory of the Russian Federation," Konashenkov said in a statement.

Further use of the base by Russian warplanes will be done in accordance with bilateral agreements with Iran and depend on the situation in Syria, he added.

Earlier in the day, the Iranian government said Russia has stopped using the base for military operation in Syria.

Beginning on Aug. 16, Russian bombers took off from the Hamadan base in western Iran for three consecutive days to strike terrorist targets in Syria.
Photo taken on Aug. 22, 2016 shows the West Lake Road in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. Hangzhou has been massively upgrading the city's infrastructure with such improvements as repaving roads, expanding its subway system and dredging waterway for the G20 summit over the last couple of years. (Xinhua/Wang Dingchang)

HANGZHOU, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Leaders of the world's 20 biggest economies will gather for their annual summit next month in the booming city of Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province and home to e-commerce giant Alibaba.

The city, praised by Italian traveler Marco Polo in the 13th century as "the world's most magnificent and noble city," is little-known compared with Beijing and Shanghai, but has much to offer and is a window on new trends in China.

Hangzhou's economy grew by 10.8 percent in H1, outpacing almost all major Chinese cities and well above the 6.7 percent registered by the country as a whole. Alibaba announced revenue growth of 59 percent in H1, the fast growth since raising 25 billion U.S. dollars in its 2014 IPO.

Thousands of other smaller online shopping businesses are clustered in the city. Two years ago there were 470,000 e-commerce businesses there, one seventh of China's total. Last year, China's online retailers made sales of 588 billion dollars, with 115 billion dollars reported in Zhejiang. In Hangzhou alone, cross-border e-commerce rocketed from less than 20 million dollars in 2014 to 3.5 billion dollars in 2015.

E-commerce has become the solution to revamping a sprawling economy once dominated by specialized manufacturers in small towns. They became world-renowned producers of cheap commodities like cigarette lighters, neckties, socks and umbrellas, but were hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis.

These small business clusters making a single product are typical of Zhejiang and a double-edged sword. Resource and labor intensive manufacturers have lost dominance as capital drains into Southeast Asia where costs are lower. There is also government pressure to "empty the cage for new birds" -- shutting down polluters to make room for environment-friendly, high-value added industries.

Wahaha, one of China's largest beverage producers, is using robots in packaging and piling to save manpower and costs, but even small businesses crave technological upgrades and innovation. Inspired by the city's vibrancy, Bostonian Richard Jackson quit his job as an English teacher in 2015 and became communications manager in AI start-up Rokid.

"Hangzhou is establishing itself as a high-tech center. Rokid is a very good example of the new Hangzhou, and it shows the spirit of innovation-driven development," he said.

With the economy on fire and a long tradition of entrepreneurship, local magnates are taking the fight around the globe. Automaker Geely became a global name in 2010 when it bought the ailing Swedish brand Volvo from Ford for 1.8 billion dollars. Today China's listed companies are targeting acquisitions in automobiles, electronics, chemicals and bio-medicine in Europe and North America. From 2012 to 2014, Chinese enterprises made 29 such acquisitions, 10 of which originated in Zhejiang.

"A major motive of overseas acquisitions by leading Zhejiang companies is to get their hands on the technology needed to increase value-added and move up the ladder," said Chen Feiqiong of Zhejiang University.

"The spillover effect will buoy up the local economy, essential for China to transform itself from the world's run-down factory to a modern manufacturing power by 2025, as the government plans," she said.
Demonstrators gather at Plaza Morelos for a march in Caracas, Venezuela, on June 17, 2016. Pro-government demonstrators marched on Friday to denounce the alleged fraudulent use of signatures seeking to activate a recall referendum against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, according to local press. (Xinhua/Str)

CARACAS, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- The gulf between the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) is widening, 10 days ahead of a mass protest to demand a recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro.

On Sunday, the PSUV mayor of Caracas, Jorge Rodriguez, stated that during the march on September 1, the opposition was likely to seek new violent ways to force the "impossibility" of holding the referendum in 2016.

"They are seeking to reach a critical mass that will renew the acts of violence, as I am certain they have a plan B," Rodriguez told the private TV station, Televen.

However, the MUD released a statement on its website Sunday, stating that the protest "will uncover the deception to which we are subjected," referring to the government's unwillingness to hold the referendum this year.

Should Maduro lose a recall referendum before January 10, 2017, new presidential elections would be automatically triggered. However, should this happen after January 10, 2017, he would step down but his vice-president would take over the presidency until the end of the mandate on January 10, 2019.

(File Pic) A venezuelan opposition activist takes part during a peaceful protest held in Caracas, Venezuela, on Aug. 8, 2015. (Xinhua/Boris Vergara)

However, the MUD made it clear that the protest will be "pacific" and added that the government was trying to create "false positives" about the opposition's violence.

On September 1, the MUD and its followers will demand a specific date on which to begin collecting signatures from 20 percent of the electorate, which are needed to trigger the referendum.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) has tentatively stated this could happen in October yet this would likely prevent the referendum happening this year.
ACCRA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Energy policy think tank, the Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP), has said the newly-commissioned oilfield in Ghana has the capacity to support its economic transformation.

In a statement signed by its Executive Director, Mohammed Amin Adam, over the weekend, the center said revenue emanating from the field would benefit Ghanaians if managed efficiently.

President John Dramani Mahama last week turned the valves on the Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel to kick-start oil production on Ghana's second major oil field -- Tweneboa-Enyenra-Ntomme (TEN).

"So far, the oil and gas sector has created in excess of 7,000 jobs, and offered local businesses approximately 1 billion dollars worth of projects," Mahama said during the inauguration.

Starting with 23,000 barrels of oil production daily, which is expected to peak at 80,000 barrels, TEN has the potential to double government petroleum revenue, contribute to economic growth and provide job opportunities, the think tank said.

It noted that the arrival of TEN oil was happening at a time the Ghanaian economy was facing difficulties.

"We must therefore ensure that the resources being extracted from the TEN fields and the revenues from the export of the oil are managed efficiently for the benefit of the people," the statement said.

Despite calling on Ghanaians to moderate their expectations about the promise of oil, ACEP believed that moderating expectations should not be an excuse for the poor management of the limited oil and gas resources.

"We encourage Ghanaians to translate their high expectations into perpetual vigilance on the authorities for the transparent and accountable management of the resources."
BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua)-- Chinese firms have displayed excellence in promoting sustainable growth and can play a bigger role to help other nations achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a senior UN official said Monday.

The ideas and goals outlined in the SDGs are reflected in China's 13th Five-Year Plan and some Chinese firms proved that they are ready to contribute more to the achievement of SDGs, said Lise Kingo, executive director of UN Global Compact.

Kingo has visited China every year since 1995 and has witnessed, firsthand, the nation's remarkable development. "As a country with over one billion people, China's sustainable development will contribute to the fulfillment of the SDGs," she said while addressing the 2016 China Summit on Achieving SDGs.

A series of reports were also released during the summit, which elaborate on the 17 SDGs proposed by the UN in 2015 and how enterprises can play their part.

The reports pointed out that the global goals must be localized, which relies on the participation of local enterprises. The business community should act responsibly and find business opportunities to help solve social problems.

Smart utilization of marine resources and agriculture and other fields offer huge growth potential, according to the reports.

Over 300 Chinese companies have joined the UN Global Compact Network China. Fu Chengyu, rotating president with the network, called for Chinese enterprises to embed sustainable development in the management process and whole industrial chain.
KHARTOUM, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan's newly-appointed First Vice-President Taban Deng Gai reiterated on Monday that his country will not be a "base" for any armed forces against Sudan.

"South Sudan separated from Sudan with the aim to achieve stability in both countries. After today, South Sudan will not be a base for any armed groups that want war in Sudan," said Deng at a press conference after meeting with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum on Monday.

"We, in the South Sudanese government, are ready to contact the Sudanese armed groups and encourage them to reach a peace deal, but if they want the war to continue, South Sudan will not be their starting point," the vice-president said.

"Also, if the South Sudanese rebel groups want continuation of war, Sudan will not be their starting point because the two peoples have suffered from war and they want peace," he added.

The South Sudanese first vice-president also declared his country and Sudan have agreed to settle all the outstanding security issues within 21 days.

"We have agreed that, within only 21 days, the border will be opened and demarcated and all issued be resolved," he said.

Meanwhile, Deng described the current security situations in South Sudan as stable.

"It is true that unfortunate events took place in Juba last July which led to the killing of many people, but now the situations are stable in all areas of the South," the vice-president said.

He said the South Sudanese want peace and his party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement in Opposition, will continue to support the peace deal between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit and the opposition leader Riek Machar.

Deng arrived in Khartoum on Sunday in his first visit to Sudan following his appointment as South Sudan's first vice-president.

He held talks with Sudan's First Vice-President Bakri Hassan Saleh on Sunday and met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Monday.

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir appointed Deng as the country's first vice-president two weeks ago to replace Machar.

Machar disappeared after the recent violent clashes in the South Sudanese capital Juba which left hundreds of people dead.

But the recent summit of the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development in Africa (IGAD) in the Rwandan capital Kigali decided to only recognize the Government of National Unity formed according to the peace deal, which stipulates that Machar be the First Vice-President of South Sudan.

The IGAD rejected Kiir's decision to sack Machar and appoint Deng, saying the move is both unconstitutional and a violation of the deal.
OSLO, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine government said Monday it was possible to sign a peace agreement with communist rebels within a year as the two sides resumed peace talks in Norway's capital city in an attempt to end Asia's longest-running insurgency.

Talks are scheduled from Aug. 22-26 between the negotiating panels of the Philippine government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the umbrella organization of Marxist groups including the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed group, the New People's Army.

Both sides have a common understanding about speeding up the peace process and "we have imposed a timeline of nine to 12 months," Silvestre Bello, the Philippine labor minister and head of the government negotiating team, told a press conference after an opening ceremony of the talks.

His NDFP counterpart Luis Jalandoni also said that the peace process could be accelerated as both sides showed their commitment for peace recently, including the two sides' declarations of a ceasefire and the government's release of about 20 rebel prisoners who are needed in the peace negotiations.

"With the commitment for just and lasting peace, declared by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the leadership of the NDFP, Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army, we are confident we can decisively move forward towards achieving a just and lasting peace," Jalandoni said in his speech at the opening ceremony.

Norway's Foreign Minister Borge Brende said it was good to see the parties gathered in Oslo on a historic day and Norway felt a great responsibility as a facilitator for the talks.

"We shall have five very demanding days here," Brende was quoted as saying by NTB news agency.

Philippine Presidential Peace Adviser Jesus Dureza, who is also in Oslo as a leader of the government delegation, said last week that the talks were expected to tackle "social and economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms, end of hostilities and disposition of forces, a ceasefire, joint security and immunity and the release of political detainees."

The peace talks came after the Philippine government declared after midnight on Sunday an indefinite ceasefire to pave the way for the Oslo talks and the rebels also declared a seven-day ceasefire beginning at the same time.

The rebels said in a statement earlier Monday they are considering to match the indefinite ceasefire declared by Duterte if the government will release five more detained rebel leaders who will act as "consultants" in the talks plus the 520 other "political prisoners" who are still in jails.

But Duterte in a news conference early Sunday said he was not inclined to release more prisoners, saying he had already released 20 including the two highest-ranking rebel leaders who are already in Oslo.

The Duterte administration is trying to forge peace with the communist rebels. Talks between the government and the rebels began in 1986, but failed to lead to a resolution over the years.

Norway has facilitated the peace process since 2001. The last formal round of the negotiations took place in 2011.

The communist rebellion began in 1969 and reached its peak in 1987 when it boasted 26,000 armed guerillas. However, the movement has since dwindled due to differences in strategy and tactics and the arrests of many of its top leaders in the late 1980s. The Philippine military estimates the current number of communist armed rebels to be around 4,000.
DAMASCUS, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Kurdish forces have captured several government positions, following an attack they waged after midnight in Syria's northeastern city of Hasakah, a well-informed source said Monday.

Just hours after Syrian news agency SANA announced that a truce had been reached between the Kurdish forces and the Syrian government forces to defuse the tension in Hasakah on Sunday evening, the Kurdish groups of Assyaish and the People's Protection Units (YPG) attacked several government positions in that area.

The Kurdish fighters captured the eastern part of Ghwairan, a large predominantly Arab district that has been divided between the Kurdish and the government control, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Also, the Kurds captured a government compound, including two institutes, the facilities of economy and engineering, as well as silos and the government-run Sadcop oil company, the source added.

He said the Kurds are trying to reduce the presence of the government forces in the city to a small security zone.

After the advance of the Kurds, the government now is only in control of the western part of the contested district of Ghwairan, as well as the neighborhoods of Meridian, al-Omran, Qudat, Mahatta, Layliyeh and downtown Hasakah.

In the city of Qamishli inside Hasakah, the government is in control of the airport, a security zone, in addition to the al-Zind neighborhood and nearly 50 villages in the countryside, according to the source.

Earlier in the day, Syria's state news agency said that Kurdish forces violated a truce, which was mediated by the Russians.

Assayish members attacked several government positions in the city, in addition to targeting the neighborhoods of Nashwa and Ghwairan and a Syrian army checkpoint, SANA added.

Meanwhile, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor group said intense battles renewed in the Naswha and Ghwairan areas amid the advance of the Kurdish forces.

The U.S.-led anti-Islamic State (IS) coalition also scrambled warplanes in Hasakah on Monday, after bringing in reinforcement to one of its bases near the city, according to the Observatory, which says it relies on a network of activists on the ground inside Syria.

A day earlier, a truce was reached between Syrian forces and Kurdish fighters in Hasakah under Russian mediation.

SANA said the "regime of calm" includes a cessation of battles, evacuation of wounded people, return to the previous lines of both parties, and the start of negotiations.

The cease-fire was supposed to start as of 5 p.m. local time (1400 GMT) on Sunday coupled with transporting the wounded to hospitals in the city of Qamishli in Hasakah.

The military positions should return to their previous state, and negotiations are set to start on Monday at the Qamishli airport between representatives of both sides and Iranian and Russian mediators, according to the agreement.

Tension started to rise last week, when both the National Defense Forces (NDF) and Assayish arrested members of each other, a source told Xinhua.

The NDF is a paramilitary group formed in the early years of the five-year crisis that backs government forces. Its initial task was to fill in the positions recaptured by the Syrian army.

Later on the group, which largely composed of fighters from the Alawite sect of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, started fighting alongside the army.

In recent months, the NDF, which is mostly referred to as pro-government fighters, have become more organized with headquarters present in most Syrian cities and accepting recruits from local communities in each city.

As the situation in Hasakah got more tense, the Kurdish militias demanded the dissolution of the NDF there, a request rejected by the Syrian army.

Later on, the Assayish started shelling NDF positions inside Hasakah, prompting the Syrian army to respond with airstrikes for the first time, according to the source.

The Assayish and the YPG unleashed major offensives against NDF positions inside Hasakah, triggering further shelling and airstrikes by government troops.

The source told Xinhua that 80 percent of the residents of Hasakah have fled to areas in the countryside as a result of the latest confrontation.

In previous bouts of tension between Syrian government forces and the Kurds, both parties had managed to contain the situation and avoid further confrontation.

The YPG and other Kurdish militant groups have been assuming positions in Hasakah since 2012.

At the time, there were reports about a tacit agreement between the Kurds and the Syrian government.

Buoyed by the support of the U.S.-led coalition, the YPG and the allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have made sweeping victories against the IS in key areas in northern Syria.

The Russians were said to have also backed the Kurdish fighters in their push against the IS, but no Kurdish group have admitted receiving such support from Russia.
DHAKA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- A British national who has been shown arrested in connection with the deadly attack at a Spanish cafe in Bangladesh capital Dhaka's diplomatic enclave Gulshan last month was sent to jail Monday on completion of his 16-day remand.

Metropolitan Magistrate Ahsan Habib passed the order after Hasnat Karim, a British-Bangladeshi man and a former North South University teacher, was produced before the court Monday.

Hasnat was arrested on Aug. 3 on suspicion of having links with the Gulshan attackers.

The Briton was the first person to be shown arrested in the Gulshan terror case.

The whereabouts of the Spanish cafe attack survivor, Karim, remained a mystery in the aftermath of Bangladesh's first-ever hostage crisis on July 1 in which 18 foreigners were killed.

Responsibility for the Gulshan attack has been claimed by the Islamic State group, an assertion rejected by the authorities, who blamed "homegrown" terrorists for the incident. Six of the gunmen were killed while one was captured and detained alive, but he later died in hospital.
TBILISI, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Georgian State Security Service said it has thwarted a terrorist act on a gas pipeline running through Georgia and carrying Russian gas to Armenia on Monday.

At a briefing in Tbilisi, the security agency told press that its counter-intelligence unit arrested on Aug. 20 five citizens of Georgia, who allegedly were plotting an explosion of a section of the gas pipeline, located near the village of Saguramo outside Tbilisi.

The Service confirmed that the five men were arrested shortly after they took 4 TNT 200-gram blocks and other parts of explosives from a cache, located in a forest in the vicinity of the Zhinvali-Shatili highway.

Those detained are facing charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives with "the purpose of carrying out a terrorist attack by a group", said the Service.

Two other men, including a patrol police officer, related to the case, were also arrested, said the Service.

While commenting on the alleged "terrorist act", a senior lawmaker from the ruling Georgian Dream party, Irakli Sesiashvili, disclosed the preliminary information showed this group was related neither to the Islamic State, nor to other terrorist groups.

"But investigation shows one of the arrested men often visited Ukraine", said him.

Meanwhile, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili confirmed the government had prevented a planned terror attack in Georgia, but declined to comment on details, citing ongoing investigation.
CAPE TOWN, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's Competition Commission on Monday imposed a 1.5-billion-rand (about 111-million-U.S.-dollar) fine on ArcelorMittal South Africa (AMSA), the country's largest steel maker, for price-fixing and collusion in the steel industry.

This is the largest single fine imposed against a single company thus far by the competition authorities.

AMSA admits to having been involved in the long steel and scrap metal cartel, fixing prices on steel for a period of five years.

Besides agreeing to pay the fine, AMSA will, as part of the settlement with the authorities, limit its EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) margin to a cap of 10 percent for flat steel products sold in South Africa.

Minister of Economic Development, Ebrahim Patel welcomed the announcement of the fine, saying the action by the competition authorities is part of a crackdown against abuse of market power and price-fixing that undermines the performance of the economy.

"South Africa's competitiveness and industrial performance require an efficient basic steel supplier industry. High levels of concentration together with collusion undermine our national goals," the minister said.

Over the past seven years, the competition authorities have focused on collusion and abuse of market dominance involving key input costs in the economy, such as steel-making, fertilizers, construction and telecommunications and well as important basic goods such as bread, poultry and flour.

"Our resolve is clear: we want to promote investment-led economic growth, not collusion-induced economic stagnation. South Africa is open for business, and the message we want to send is that we will act against conduct that damages competition and jobs," Patel said.

The government, he said, will not hesitate to act against any further abuse of market power in the steel industry should this be necessary. Enditem
ABUJA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- A man identified as the "spiritual leader" of Boko Haram in Nigeria's northwestern state of Kano has been arrested, together with other insurgents plotting to carry out attacks in the country, security authorities said Monday.

The man, whose name was given as Mudasiru Jibrin, was arrested on July 17 at a Boko Haram detention center uncovered by the secret police operatives in Kano.

Preliminary investigation had proved that Jibrin hatched the plan of shooting some high school students near Potiskum city of Nigeria's northeastern state of Yobe three years ago, the national Department of Security Services said in a statement.

Prior to the Boko Haram leader's arrest, the secret police had on July 8 arrested a notorious Boko Haram fighter and three of his accomplices while perfecting arrangements for major coordinated attacks on selected locations in the northwestern Kaduna state, the statement added.

Boko Haram has been blamed for some 20,000 deaths and displacing of more than 2.6 million people in Nigeria since 2009. Enditem
File photo taken on May 24, 2016 shows an aerial view of expressways linking Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport at night in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province. Hangzhou is the host city for the 2016 G20 summit on Sept. 4 and Sept. 5. With one month to go, Hangzhou looks forward to G20. (Xinhua/Huang Zongzhi)

by Xinhua writers Zhang Jianhua and Wu Congsi

LONDON, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming G20 summit in China is "very valuable" in enabling major countries in the world to talk about current global issues, said Mark Boleat, policy chairman of the City of London Corporation, one of the most powerful financial institutions in Europe.

In a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua, Boleat also said he expected the summit to give a further push to important international developments, promote international trade and develop green financing and infrastructure investment.

"The world economy is still very fragile, so we look to the governments of major countries to do whatever they can to promote economic growth and international trade, areas like green finance, infrastructure financing and fintech," he said.

ADDRESSING CONCERNS

Boleat, who has been Chairman of the Policy and Resources Committee of the City of London Corporation since 2012, said he hoped G20 leaders would reemphasize the importance of international trade amid rising concerns over trade barriers being re-erected.

"There are concerns about the development of international trade, about trade barriers being erected in some cases rather than being removed; there is a move throughout the world on concerns about the impact of globalization," the policy chief warned.

There's a need to reemphasize the importance of trade and how it benefits people in all countries, he urged.

"It [the world] will be looking to the G20 to make a pretty firm statement that international trade benefits all countries," he added.

The summit, he noted, could only help to improve the economy with concrete actions being taken by national governments.

"So if there can be an agreement on any measures that will help economic growth in individual countries, that will benefit the whole of the world economy," he told Xinhua.

In the interview, he also highlighted the importance of "many informal discussions" that will take place between the world leaders at G20 summit.

CHINA AND G20

On China's role in G20, Boleat said China is the second biggest economy in the world, and as such "it plays a very vital role in the global economy."

"The weight and growth of the Chinese economy will have an impact on other countries in the world, so I think other countries are looking to China to do what it can to maintain its rapid growth, which is way above the western economies," he explained.

He added that the liberalization of the Chinese economy itself "gives more opportunities for institutions in other countries to invest in China and to do business with China."

Speaking of the potential legacy of the G20 Hangzhou summit, the policy chief expected the gathering to push the development which is happening already.

"It's simply about pushing in the same direction and helping initiatives that are already working, giving a further push to important international developments, helping to promote international trade, and developing things like green financing and infrastructure investment," he elaborated.

On international economic governance, Boleat said China "needs to play a very major role in the international agencies."

"The second biggest economy in the world has to play a major role in the international institutions; it can't be a second-tier player when it's such a large economy," he said.

UK-CHINA TIES

In late July, the British government announced it would delay the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant program until autumn to review the proposed project in southwest England.

In a recent article for The Financial Times, Chinese ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming said the China-UK relationship is "at a crucial historical juncture" and Hinkley Point is "a test of mutual trust" between the two countries.

However, Boleat stressed that Hinkley Point is not a political issue and should not hurt the UK-China relationship.

"I don't think it is right to look at one development and say that's the only thing that matters," he said.

"This is innately an investment, and it's got to work as an investment, and quite properly the British government wants to ensure that it is the right sort of investment to make in today's circumstances," he added.

Noting that London is the western hub for offshore RMB trading, Boleat said he expected Britain's new ministers to continue the policies of the previous ministers.

"These are the policies of the government, not the individuals concerned, and the prime minister already emphasized the wish to continue very strong relationship between Britain and China," he said.

"We want to see more bond issues in the London market from Chinese institutions that are denominated in RMB; British institutions are very keen to increase their investment in China, so there is a lot more to be done," he continued.

BREXIT EFFECT

Looking at the ramifications of Brexit, Boleat said he hoped Britain's withdrawal from the European Union (EU) would not adversely affect the relationship between Britain and China.

"From what we've done so far and analyses and talks we've had, we don't see any reduced appetite for strengthening the links between Britain and China," he affirmed.

"Europe is very important market for Britain; there are very strong links already between Britain and Europe," he said. "We wish to maintain those and we'll constantly develop our links with China."

Bilateral relations between Britain and China, for the most part, are not dependent on the EU, he argued.

"I don't think Brexit is going to lead to Britain wanting to develop its relations with China more, because Britain wants to do that anyway, regardless of whether it's in the EU or not," said the City policy chairman.

"We don't see them as being alternatives. Britain needs very strong relations with both the EU and China," he added.

Related:

Spotlight: Emerging economies hope to get economic boost from G20 summit

BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Amid a sluggish world economy, emerging countries voiced expectation that the upcoming Group of 20 (G20) summit could deliver some changes and help boost growth.

The summit, with the theme "Toward an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive World Economy," will be held in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Sept.4-5. Full story

G20 summit in China "couldn't have come at a better time" -- Chilean diplomat
HONG KONG, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Wild speculation that 100,000 transplants were performed per year using organs from executed prisoners is an insult to the intelligence of transplant professionals and to the sacrifice of the donors and their families in China, a Chinese expert said on Monday.

Speaking at a plenary session of the 26th International Congress of the Transplantation Society, Huang Jiefu, director of China's National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee and former vice minister in the Chinese Ministry of Health, said the country performed 10,057 organ transplants last year, around 8.38 percent of the global total.

The number matches China's use of immunosuppressive agents, a must-have drug for patients after their transplant surgeries. China accounted for some 8 percent of the global immunosuppressant market, he said.

Introducing China's decade-long organ donation reform to the audience, Huang said the transition of organ source from death-row inmates to the voluntary community-based organ donation has been realized and an ethical preliminary national organ donation and transplantation system established, adding the country's progress has been recognized by the international society.

In 2015, 2,766 cases of organ donation after the death of citizens were recorded, more than the total number in year 2013 and 2014 combined. In the first seven months of 2016, 2152 cases were recorded, 49.2 percent up from the same period last year, with predictions for the whole year at about 4,000.

Huang reiterated that starting from Jan. 1, 2015, death penalty prisoner's organs are not allowed to be used under any circumstances, and community-based Chinese citizen organ donation has become the only legitimate source of transplantable organs in China.

Since 2007, China has cracked down on 32 unlawful intermediaries, arrested 158 criminal suspects, investigated 17 medical institutions with 44 medical staff involved and their medical licenses revoked, and 13 black-market dens have been eradicated, he said, calling on the international audience to report any illegal activity, in a show of resolve from the Chinese government.

Meanwhile, he admitted that the achievement of China's transplant reform is only preliminary, and is only the first step of a long journey, with formidable tasks ahead.

However, political commitment of China's leadership, public support and dedication of the medical staff, as well as traditional virtues of the Chinese nation, are sources of confidence for promoters of the reform, he said.

Statistics show that China now has the most organ donations per year in Asia and the third highest number globally. In addition, it is performing the second highest number of organ transplants in the world per year after the United States.

The Transplantation Society is a non-governmental organization which serves as an international forum for the world-wide advancement of organ transplantation, with over 6,700 members composed of professionals with an active interest in basic science, clinical research and/or improving clinical practice in the field of transplantation.

A biennial congress of the TTS is held every two years grouping together over 5,000 participants. This year's congress is held in Hong Kong from Aug. 18 to 23, the first time the congress is held in China.
WINDHOEK, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- It's just after 13:00 on Monday, and Helena Iitope from a far-flung village in northern Namibia, had just returned from collecting cow dung which she uses as an energy source to cook.

"In fact, I had to go beyond the village boundaries into another village, hoping to collect enough cow dung to prepare both lunch and dinner for the family," she said.

Rocked by drought, the Namibian government declared a drought emergency two month ago.

It's not only the loss of crops and livestock that has been the immediate effect on farmers, but hidden from view is the energy crisis hard-hitting rural households, who are dependent on firewood and natural resources for energy.

In 2005, for Iitope, the supply of firewood and other energy sources such as cow dung were accessible within a distance of 100-500 metres from her home.

As climate change took its toll on the environment, Iitope this year bemoans of a lack of firewood, let alone sufficient cow dung as an energy source -- all lost to drought.

These days, like many farmers in rural Namibia, as firewood becomes scarce, cow dung is used as substitute for firewood.

However, the search for cow dung, according to Iitope, is synonymous to looking for a needle in a stack of hay as the cattle perished early this year.

"The cattle died, trees vanished, withered, and so even energy source (cow dung) is limited," she said. "Consequentially, drought is crippling the source of energy for me and fellow rural dwellers."

Iitope's is not alone. Many farmers in Namibia's northern region face the same dilemma.

Another villager Selma Ileni said the lack of natural energy sources has also put constraints on household budget.

"We have to spend the little funds left on buying firewood from town. Imagine you have to buy grass for the animals, food for children, cover medical expenses and on top of that still cover for firewood. But we have no other choice," Ileni said.

"We depended on farming for survival but now the perishing of all of our livestock leaves us socially and economically disadvantaged. We have no source of income nor means of production within our reach due to the dry spell," Ileni bemoaned.

As Iitope sets fire with cow dung to prepare lunch, she said she can only hope for better rain, and Namibia's implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially on climate change to sustain her livelihood. Enditem
BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- China will establish several national ecological experimental zones to explore reforms ranging from natural resource balance sheets to ecological performance evaluation of officials, according to an official guideline published on Monday.

The guideline, released by the general offices of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council, aimed at carrying out reforms on "ecological civilization system."

According to targets set in the guideline, major progress shall be achieved by 2017 and fully-fledged ecological civilization systems shall be established by 2020, with best practices replicable across the country.

Main experiments will include establishing a natural resource property right system, compiling natural resource balance sheet, optimizing land and space planning, and incorporating ecological performance into officials' evaluation.

Fujian, Jiangxi and Guizhou provinces, which have "relatively optimal ecological foundation, and relatively strong environmental and resource capacity," were selected as the first batch of experimental zones.

An implementation plan for Fujian province was released together with the guideline on Monday.

According to the implementation plan, Fujian will strive to become a leader in national land and space planning by explicitly reserving land and space for ecological protection, and never overstepping the "red line."

Fujian will also strive to establish a property rights system of natural resource assets as well as systems that reflect market values of ecological products, thereby introducing economic incentives into ecological protection.

The province will also try to improve officials' performance evaluation to reflect their "ecological performance" such as resource depletion or environmental degradation on their watch.

Specific measures will include compiling natural resource balance sheets, and natural resource asset auditing at times when the official in charge concludes his or her term.

Targets were set in the plan, including that water quality of over 90 percent of water systems in the province will reach optimal level, 23 cities will enjoy good air quality on over 90 percent of days, and forest coverage will pass 66 percent by 2020.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- There is not a great deal of enthusiasm among young U.S. Democrats for their party's presidential nominee Hillary Clinton this year, a new poll said on Monday.

Only 38 percent of Democrats and those who lean towards the Democratic Party between the ages of 18 and 39 are pleased that Clinton is the nominee, according to the Gallup poll.

By contrast, one in third of Democrats and Democrat-leaners over the age of 40 are satisfied with the former U.S. secretary of state as the party's standard bearer.

The poll came at a time when Clinton was scrambling to win over support of young voters after a bruised primary season.

While Clinton won overwhelmingly among older voters, her rival in the nomination race Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont dominated her among younger voters.

According to a recent study by Tufts University, more than 2 million young voters cast ballots for Sanders in 21 U.S. states by June 1 while roughly 760,000 young voters voted for Clinton.

Meanwhile, the Gallup poll also found that nonwhite Democrats are more likely than non-Hispanic white Democrats to feel satisfied with Clinton as the nominee, with the latter group exceeding the former one by 20 percent.

Overall, 56 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaners say they are pleased with Clinton as the nominee while 42 percent think otherwise.
TIANJIN, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Audi's first transmission plant in China started operation on Monday in the northern municipality of Tianjin.

The plant, located in the Tianjin Economic and Technological Zone, has a designed annual production capacity of 240,000 units and can create 1,000 jobs. The factory covers an area of 95,000 square meters.

Joachim Wedler, president of Audi China, said the plant will add new core competitiveness to the development of Audi brand in China.

Jochem Heizmann, president and CEO of Volkswagen Group China, said the German carmaker will invest around 4 billion euros (4.5 billion U.S. dollars) in China this year and maintain similar investment in the next few years.

In May, FAW-Volkswagen started construction of its 19.5-billion-yuan north China production base in Tianjin. The base has a designed annual capacity of 300,000 cars.

In the first half of the year, Volkswagen China and its two Chinese joint ventures delivered a record high of 1.86 million cars in the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, up 6.8 percent year on year.
MOGADISHU, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Somalia's security forces on Monday arrested seven suspected Al-Shabaab militants in Beledweyne town in central Somalia's Hiiraan region.

"The police conducted an operation throughout the town of Beledweyne this morning, and arrested seven suspects during the operation. We will do more investigation towards these men," Beledweyne Police Commissioner Ali Dhuh Abdi told reporters.

The Somali army, together with AU forces, is battling the Al-Shabaab Islamist group, which stages periodic attacks in the country. Enditem
A man wears a chicken head with Hillary Clinton stickers prior to the start of Day 2 of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 26, 2016. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

RIYADH, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia said Monday it has lifted a temporary ban on importing chicken from 15 U.S. states after they have succeeded in controlling Avian Influenza (bird flu).

The ban was imposed in 2015, covering eggs and other chicken-related products except cooked food and products that could prove to have had the virus killed, according to a statement by Saudi Food and Drug Authority.

Bird flu H5N1, a highly pathogenic virus, has caused serious outbreaks in domestic poultry in the Middle East and parts of Asia. The first human infection was recorded in Hong Kong in 1997.
KIGALI, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Rwanda seeks to widen business horizons in attempt to become more regionally competitive as the country is re-admitted to the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), eight years after pulling out of the regional bloc.

As founding member of ECCAS in 1983, Rwanda pulled out of the bloc in 2008 to concentrate on its membership to the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).

Last year in May, the ECCAS summit in Chad welcomed Rwanda as an ECCAS member. An agreement was signed confirming the readmission of Rwanda after its application in 2013.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Francois Kanimba, Rwanda minister of trade and industry said that Rwanda will reap big from various regional economic groupings.

"Our country joining ECCAS is a big opportunity for Rwandan traders to sell their goods and services on a bigger platform across the continent. Local producers will benefit from increased market size which is an important factor facilitating innovation and competition," he added.

Kanimba stated that Rwanda has gained a lot from being a member of multiple regional blocs since each bloc has comparative advantages to the other, ultimately strengthening the country's economic institutions.

Last week, Rwanda foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo, presented the instruments of ratification to Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba, the current ECCAS chairperson, that will see the country officially recognized by ECCAS member states.

According to Mushikiwabo, Rwanda will be in position to tap into the potential of the regional bloc in presenting economic resources and investment opportunities to the country.

"Our country returns to ECCAS with commitment to joining other member states in transforming the region for economic development and cooperation," she said.

Mushikiwabo explained that Rwanda's commitment to various regional groupings will enable the country to expand its market base which resonates with the aspirations of a Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA).

Presently ECCAS comprises of eleven member countries, namely, Rwanda, Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, and Sao Tome and Principe.

Other than ECASS, Rwanda is a member of the EAC, COMESA, and Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries (ECGLC) and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR). Enditem
ANKARA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The process to relocate Turkish military bases outside of city centers after the coup attempt has begun at military barracks in Ankara and Istanbul, local NTV reported on Monday.

Six trucks carrying armored military vehicles including tanks left the Bastabya Military Barracks, Istanbul, and headed for Corlu and Besiktepe in the Marmara province of Tekirdag.

Police took security measures during the transport of the vehicles.

The Bastabya Barracks of the army's 66th Mechanized Infantry Brigade Command was the first base to be relocated from Istanbul.

In the capital Ankara, the Etimesgut Barracks for Armored Units was relocated to Sereflikochisar, some 148 kilometers south of the city.

Prime Minister Binali Yidirim announced earlier this month that all military barracks used by coup plotters on July 15 would be moved out of city centers, and Akinci air base, a stronghold for the coup plotters,would be shut down.

Turkish authorities plan to complete the relocation of bases in Ankara and Istanbul by Sept. 11.

During the coup attempt on July 15, coup plotters were quick to mobilize their resources, from tanks and fighter jets to troops, seeking to seize strategic facilities located in city centers.

Defense Minister Fikri Isik said that bases in city centers would be relocated, and would be "opened for public use."

Akinci air base will be converted into a "democracy park," in a tribute to the civilians, military and police officers who were killed while resisting the coup attempt,authorities announced earlier.
LONDON, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The first study of its kind reveals the temperature of the earth dropped during last year's eclipse of the sun, Britain's official weather agency, the Met Office, revealed Monday.

The Met Office said it was the first time that satellites had been used to monitor surface "skin" temperatures during a total solar eclipse.

The research showed the eclipse on March 20, 2015 resulted in a drop in land surface temperatures in parts of Britain and Europe. The satellite results were combined with a study of one-minute observations of near-surface air temperature from meteorological stations across Britain, allowing scientists to build a picture of the factors that influence how the surface temperature changes during a solar eclipse.

A spokesman for the Met Office said: "The results from the satellite analysis show that the amount of sun obscured by the moon, the eclipse duration and the timing, all influence the temperature drop during the event."

"The largest temperature drops occurred where the sun was most obscured, the eclipse was longer, or the timing was earlier in the day," he added.

Two scientific papers, written by Met Office scientists Dr. Elizabeth Good and Matt Clark, are to be published in a special solar eclipse edition of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions.

Good, from the Climate Monitoring and Attribution Team, said; "Local factors, such as vegetation cover, land use and cloud cover has resulted in previous studies struggling to find links between temperature and the obscuration of the sun. However the use of satellite data from across a large area has allowed for this to be investigated using observed data for the first time."

The March 2015 eclipse was total across the North Atlantic, the Faroe Islands and Svalbard, and partial in Europe, Iceland, parts of North Africa and northern Asia. For most of Europe, the eclipse was a morning event.
Military trucks with the Turkish national flag transport tanks as they drive on a highway out of Istanbul on August 22, 2016, after the Turkish government decided to relocate armed vehicled from the city centre to other military bases near Istanbul following the failed July 15 military coup attempt. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

ANKARA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The process to relocate Turkish military bases outside of city centers after the coup attempt has begun at military barracks in Ankara and Istanbul, local NTV reported on Monday.

Six trucks carrying armored military vehicles including tanks left the Bastabya Military Barracks, Istanbul, and headed for Corlu and Besiktepe in the Marmara province of Tekirdag.

Police took security measures during the transport of the vehicles.

The Bastabya Barracks of the army's 66th Mechanized Infantry Brigade Command was the first base to be relocated from Istanbul.

In the capital Ankara, the Etimesgut Barracks for Armored Units was relocated to Sereflikochisar, some 148 kilometers south of the city.

Prime Minister Binali Yidirim announced earlier this month that all military barracks used by coup plotters on July 15 would be moved out of city centers, and Akinci air base, a stronghold for the coup plotters,would be shut down.

Turkish authorities plan to complete the relocation of bases in Ankara and Istanbul by Sept. 11.

During the coup attempt on July 15, coup plotters were quick to mobilize their resources, from tanks and fighter jets to troops, seeking to seize strategic facilities located in city centers.

Defense Minister Fikri Isik said that bases in city centers would be relocated, and would be "opened for public use."

Akinci air base will be converted into a "democracy park," in a tribute to the civilians, military and police officers who were killed while resisting the coup attempt,authorities announced earlier.
by Hassan Rouhvand

TEHRAN, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The words "Experience China in Iran" inscribed in the center of a big banner shaded with a deep azure hue and posted at the yard of Niavaran Cultural Center welcome the visitors to the opening ceremony of a Chinese cultural event in Iran's capital Tehran on Monday.

A further reading of the posters and designs in the interior setting of the cultural center invites us to learn more about the theme of the event, namely, cultural exploration of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The one-week event, titled "2016 Experience China in Iran," is open to public from Aug. 22 until Aug. 28 and features Xinjiang through a photo exhibition, seminars and other cultural activities.

As Iranian and other countries' cultural officials and diplomats, groups of Chinese and Iranian artists, media representatives and other guests stepped into the main hall for official opening, a live music by Xinjiang performers attracts sights and senses of the participants.

The audience are then invited to listen to the remarks and messages of the officials from both countries to the event.

Cui Yuying, deputy director of China's State Council Information Office, said the festival will help the Iranian people know more about Xinjiang and feel the diverse culture in China.

"Iran and China enjoy vast area of cultural commonalities ... and it would be a great success to keep this culture of deep friendship between two countries alive," Ali Moradkhani, Iran's deputy minister of Culture and Islamic Guidence, said.

A photo exhibition, which occupies major space of Niavaran Cultural hall, presents Xinjiang with a long artistic history of singing and dancing, not only as China's cultural treasure but also an important component of the world's music and art.

The images also picture the colorful ethnoscape of Xinjiang where different ethnic groups such as Uygur, Kazak, Kirgiz, Tajik and Mongolians have over time created the splendid music of harmonic life together in peace.

Mohammad, a medical student from Tehran's Shahid Beheshti University who visited the exhibition, told Xinhua that "holding such exhibitions and gatherings will help us get familiar with the Chinese culture. The musical performance is very good, very beautiful."

The event was jointly organized by the State Council Information Office of China, the autonomous regional government of Xinjiang and the Chinese Embassy in Iran.

Festival, which runs through Aug. 28, will showcase Xinjiang's music and dance, traditional costumes and other cultural heritage, in addition to its nature and tourist attractions.
Kenza Drider, a niqab veiled young woman from the southern city of Avignon, is surounded by media in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, April 11, 2011. France's ban on full face veils, a first in Europe, went into force that day. (Xinhua/Gao Jing)

BERLIN, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- After joint consultations in Berlin, the interior ministers of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU/CSU union reached an agreement on Friday to ban the full-face veil in certain areas.

This refers to, for example, the whole public sector, in road traffic or at demonstrations, said Lorenz Caffier, interior minister of state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in a press conference.

According to the so-called "Berlin Declaration",violations against this limited burqa ban will be punished as an administrative offence, said Caffier.

The "Berlin Declaration" is a list of demands for more security in Germany that is now adopted by the interior ministers from the federal government and states after the two-day meeting.

The rejection of the burqa has nothing to do with security, but with social cohesion, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere stressed in the press conference.

although the minister rejects the full-face veil, he considered a general ban as hardly legally enforceable.

"We reject unanimously the burqa. Showing face is constitutive for our society. That is why we urge all to show their faces," said de Maiziere.

Meanwhile, de Maiziere also announced to create 15,000 police jobs in the coming years, adding that this number should be further increased.

The loss of the German citizenship if he has dual citizenship when he fights for a foreign terrorist militia was a matter of principle, said the minister.

It is also very important to use intelligent technology, such as "more video surveillance and more intelligent use of video surveillance", in the fight against criminals, he said.

De Maiziere had already presented his own plans for a security package in the past week, in response to the recent attacks in Bavaria.

He wants to increase the staff with security authorities and upgrade them technically, but also penetrate a tightening of security laws and new hardships for certain foreigners and refugees.
Students from northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region perform Uygur danceduring a college folk dancing activity in Hohhot, capital of north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, July 15, 2016. (Xinhua/Ding Genhou)

TEHRAN, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- The words "Experience China in Iran" inscribed in the center of a big banner shaded with a deep azure hue and posted at the yard of Niavaran Cultural Center welcome the visitors to the opening ceremony of a Chinese cultural event in Iran's capital Tehran on Monday.

A further reading of the posters and designs in the interior setting of the cultural center invites us to learn more about the theme of the event, namely, cultural exploration of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The one-week event, titled "2016 Experience China in Iran," is open to public from Aug. 22 until Aug. 28 and features Xinjiang through a photo exhibition, seminars and other cultural activities.

As Iranian and other countries' cultural officials and diplomats, groups of Chinese and Iranian artists, media representatives and other guests stepped into the main hall for official opening, a live music by Xinjiang performers attracts sights and senses of the participants.

The audience are then invited to listen to the remarks and messages of the officials from both countries to the event.

Cui Yuying, deputy director of China's State Council Information Office, said the festival will help the Iranian people know more about Xinjiang and feel the diverse culture in China.

"Iran and China enjoy vast area of cultural commonalities ... and it would be a great success to keep this culture of deep friendship between two countries alive," Ali Moradkhani, Iran's deputy minister of Culture and Islamic Guidence, said.

A photo exhibition, which occupies major space of Niavaran Cultural hall, presents Xinjiang with a long artistic history of singing and dancing, not only as China's cultural treasure but also an important component of the world's music and art.

The images also picture the colorful ethnoscape of Xinjiang where different ethnic groups such as Uygur, Kazak, Kirgiz, Tajik and Mongolians have over time created the splendid music of harmonic life together in peace.

Mohammad, a medical student from Tehran's Shahid Beheshti University who visited the exhibition, told Xinhua that "holding such exhibitions and gatherings will help us get familiar with the Chinese culture. The musical performance is very good, very beautiful."

The event was jointly organized by the State Council Information Office of China, the autonomous regional government of Xinjiang and the Chinese Embassy in Iran.

Festival, which runs through Aug. 28, will showcase Xinjiang's music and dance, traditional costumes and other cultural heritage, in addition to its nature and tourist attractions.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Like bees and butterflies, certain beetles pollinate plants as well, and new fossil evidence published Monday suggested that they were doing so 20 million years ago.

A new study in the U.S. journal American Entomologist, conducted by George Poinar Jr. of the Oregon State University, described two beetles found in fossilized amber with orchid pollen in their mouthparts.

"My paper points out that beetles may play a more important role in pollinating orchids than originally thought, and that they have been doing so for some 20 million years," Poinar said in a statement.

The first specimen was a hidden-snout beetle found in amber from the Dominican Republic. This Dominican specimen, estimated to be 20 to 45 million years old, had pollinaria from an orchid described as Cylindrocites browni attached to its thorax.

The other specimen was a toe-winged beetle that was found in amber from Mexico. This toe-winged beetle, estimated to be 22 to 26 million years old, had pollinaria from an orchid described as Annulites mexicana attached to its mouthparts.

While other beetles are known to pollinate plants, no current-day hidden-snout or toe-winged beetles have been seen with pollinaria.

Poinar suggested this may be due to the beetles' secretive behavior, which makes it difficult to collect data about them.

"While no present-day cryptorhynchid weevils or ptilodactyline beetles are known to carry pollinaria, past and future collections of these and other beetles should be examined to search for attached pollinaria," Poinar said.

"Orchids may have evolved beneficial associations with a much wider range of beetles and other insects than we thought possible."

Beetles comprise the largest set of pollinating animals, due to sheer numbers. They are responsible for pollinating 88 percent of the 240,000 flowering plants globally, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
ANKARA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- A delegation of U.S. officials from the Justice and State Department arrived in Ankara on Monday to discuss developments following the failed coup, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

The four U.S. officials are expected to discuss with their Turkish counterparts on Tuesday and Wednesday the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, who is believed to have masterminded the failed July 15 coup attempt.

Turkish Justice Ministry officials stated they will share with their U.S. counterparts the extradition demand documents in addition to evidence indicating Gulen's direct involvement in the attempted coup.

Turkey sent a second request to the U.S. for the arrest of Fethullah Gulen earlier this month.

Tensions brewed after Ankara expressed its discontent over lack of support from Washington in the wake of the failed coup.

Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag warned that the relationship between both countries could be negatively affected if Gulen is not extradited.

However, the U.S. insists that the cleric will only be extradited following legal procedures according to relevant legislature and treaties.
TRIPOLI, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Libyan parliament on Monday voted against the UN-backed unity government, with 66 votes to reject it, 12 abstained from voting and one voted for approval.

Quorum has been formed for a voting session for the first time since January in the eastern Tobruk-based parliament, said a parliament spokesman.

The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) was appointed based on an UN-sponsored peace deal signed by the country's political rivals in order to end the state of political division.

However, GNA has faced opposition from several members of the parliament.

Many western officials paid visits to Tripoli over the past few months and met with the government's officials.

Monday's voting is considered to be another obstacle to the government that has been trying to get the approval of the parliament.

Meanwhile, GNA's forces fighting IS in Sirte, some 450 km east of Tripoli, are gaining more control of the city in a fight that started in May and has claimed the lived of more than 350 government fighters and injured more than 1000 others.
Libya's UN-backed prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj (C) chairs a meeting of his Government of National Accord (GNA) on July 11, 2016, held for the first at the official government headquarters in the capital Tripoli. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

TRIPOLI, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Libyan parliament on Monday voted against the UN-backed unity government, with 66 votes to reject it, 12 abstained from voting and one voted for approval.

Quorum has been formed for a voting session for the first time since January in the eastern Tobruk-based parliament, said a parliament spokesman.

The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) was appointed based on an UN-sponsored peace deal signed by the country's political rivals in order to end the state of political division.

However, GNA has faced opposition from several members of the parliament.

Many western officials paid visits to Tripoli over the past few months and met with the government's officials.

Monday's voting is considered to be another obstacle to the government that has been trying to get the approval of the parliament.

Meanwhile, GNA's forces fighting IS in Sirte, some 450 km east of Tripoli, are gaining more control of the city in a fight that started in May and has claimed the lived of more than 350 government fighters and injured more than 1000 others.
CAIRO, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is willing to host Israeli and Palestinian leaders for direct peace talks, state-run Ahram newspaper reported on Monday.

Sisi's comments came during a briefing with the country's three national newspapers late on Sunday.

"President Putin told me he is ready to host the Palestinian president and the Israeli prime minister for direct peace talks in Moscow," Sisi was quoted as saying.

He did not mention when and where Putin expressed his willingness to host negotiations.

Last peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians were sponsored by the United States in 2014, lasted for nine months and ended in April without reaching an agreement to end their conflict that has been going on for decades.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian president said his country supports all efforts meant to push forward the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

"Our relations with both sides enable us to play a vital role to find a way out," he stressed.

Sisi urged rival Palestinian groups to reconcile in efforts to accelerate the building of the long-awaited independent Palestinian state.

Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979. The two countries had since cooperated on security and diplomatic affairs.

In mid-May, Sisi urged both the Palestinians and the Israelis to take historic steps towards peace, saying that if efforts are combined, a solution can be reached "to find hope for the Palestinians and security for the Israelis."

Weeks after his statements, Sisi sent Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to Tel Aviv where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and had lengthy discussions on resuming peace negotiations.

A recent French initiative to bring both sides to negotiations managed to hold an international conference in Paris earlier in June at the level of foreign ministers, but the whole idea was declined by Israel that prefers direct talks with the Palestinians without international pressures.

However, Sisi's mediation seems to appeal more to the Israeli side as Netanyahu did not hesitate to welcome the Egyptian approach to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Pressure to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes after almost one year of ongoing violence which claimed the lives of dozens in both sides.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a news conference after a meeting with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sarkisian (not seen) at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, August 10, 2016. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

CAIRO, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin is willing to host Israeli and Palestinian leaders for direct peace talks, state-run Ahram newspaper reported on Monday.

Sisi's comments came during a briefing with the country's three national newspapers late on Sunday.

"President Putin told me he is ready to host the Palestinian president and the Israeli prime minister for direct peace talks in Moscow," Sisi was quoted as saying.

He did not mention when and where Putin expressed his willingness to host negotiations.

Last peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians were sponsored by the United States in 2014, lasted for nine months and ended in April without reaching an agreement to end their conflict that has been going on for decades.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian president said his country supports all efforts meant to push forward the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

"Our relations with both sides enable us to play a vital role to find a way out," he stressed.

Sisi urged rival Palestinian groups to reconcile in efforts to accelerate the building of the long-awaited independent Palestinian state.

Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979. The two countries had since cooperated on security and diplomatic affairs.

In mid-May, Sisi urged both the Palestinians and the Israelis to take historic steps towards peace, saying that if efforts are combined, a solution can be reached "to find hope for the Palestinians and security for the Israelis."

Weeks after his statements, Sisi sent Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to Tel Aviv where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and had lengthy discussions on resuming peace negotiations.

A recent French initiative to bring both sides to negotiations managed to hold an international conference in Paris earlier in June at the level of foreign ministers, but the whole idea was declined by Israel that prefers direct talks with the Palestinians without international pressures.

However, Sisi's mediation seems to appeal more to the Israeli side as Netanyahu did not hesitate to welcome the Egyptian approach to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Pressure to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes after almost one year of ongoing violence which claimed the lives of dozens in both sides.
ANKARA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Vienna over a rally held there in support of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Cavusoglu said the recall of its ambassador is for "consultations" at a joint news conference with Moldovan Foreign Minister Andrei Galbur in Ankara.

The move comes after Austrian authorities banned an anti-coup meeting in the country by Turkish citizens there, while allowed a pro-PKK march on Saturday, according to the report.

Cavusoglu said that the country cannot "remain insensitive to this attitude supporting terrorism," adding that "the ground on which the bilateral relations and cooperation with Austria can be normally sustained has disappeared."

He claimed that Austria is becoming an anti-Islam center. The PKK group is listed as a terrorist organization by U.S., EU and Turkey.

Ties between Turkey and Austria have been tense for several weeks.

Earlier this month, Turkey summoned Austria's charge d'affaires in Ankara over what it said was an "indecent report" on Vienna airport's news ticker, which falsely claiming that Turkey allows sex with children under the age of 15.

Austrian leaders called for an end to Turkey's European Union membership talks increasing the strains of the relations between the two countries.
Medical entomologist and vector biologist at the department of Zoological Sciences of Addis Ababa University Dr Habte Tekie examines a specimen at his laboratory in Addis Ababa on July 25, 2016.

Ethiopian scientists have discovered mosquitoes are repulsed by the smell of chicken, raising hopes for the development of a novel way to prevent a disease that kills hundreds of thousands every year. A team of insect experts led by Professor Habte Tekie at the University of Addis Ababa began their investigation after noticing that mosquitoes bite humans and other animals but stay away from chickens. ( AFP PHOTO)

UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- All 47 African member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted a new framework on how to deal with malaria on the continent, which still accounts for more than 90 percent of global malaria deaths in 2015, a UN spokesman told reporters here Monday.

"They agreed on specific interventions and actions to reach the goal of a malaria-free Africa," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

Although previous programs have reduced malaria deaths in Africa by 66 percent since the year 2000, the continent still bears the biggest malaria burden, Dujarric said.

The disease struck 190 million people on the continent in 2015 alone, and caused 400,000 deaths, he added.

In addition, more than 800 million people in Africa are still at risk of malaria. In line with the Sustainable Development Goals, WHO reassures a firm commitment to eliminate the epidemic from the African continent by 2030, a target that would require an estimated 66 billion U.S. dollars to achieve.

Some of the main challenges to tackle malaria include gaps in access to available prevention methods, the limited number of interventions available and increasing resistance to medicines and insecticides.

At the same time, weak health systems present a very high risk to malaria control and elimination. During the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, malaria control gains were lost in the severely affected countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
HAVANA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Cuba's state-owned telecommunications company, ETECSA, announced Monday that it had signed agreements with its U.S. counterpart AT&T on roaming and direct interconnection between the two countries.

In a press release published on its website, ETECSA said AT&T customers coming to Cuba will enjoy voice and text services, as well as data roaming on ETECSA's network after an implementation period and technical tests.

"These agreements will allow offering phone calls through direct interconnection between the two countries," it noted.

In its own press release on Monday, AT&T's Executive Vice President Bill Hague said "Cuba is a growing international calling destination for our customers. With this agreement, AT&T customers soon will be able to seamlessly connect with talk, text and data while visiting Cuba."

This is not the first such deal as ETECSA already has agreements with IDT from the U.S., marking the re-establishment of direct telecommunication interconnection after 54 years of political enmity.

In November, Sprint Communications signed up with ETECSA to offer the first roaming service for Americans in Cuba. Since then, Verizon and T-Mobile have also signed similar deals.

Washington has maintained a severe economic and trade blockade on Havana since 1962. However, the packages of measures approved by the administration of President Barack Obama allow for business agreements in various sectors, including telecommunications.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez (R) met with Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif (L), in Havana on Aug. 22, 2016. (Xinhua/Prensa Latina)

HAVANA, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez met with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Havana on Monday with both nations vowing to strengthen economic cooperation and consolidate political ties after years of isolation from Western powers.

Rodriguez received Zarif at Cuba's Foreign Ministry for a discussion about bilateral cooperation and other international issues, particularly the upcoming Non-Aligned Movement summit which will be held in September in Venezuela.

"Iran and Cuba have always maintained unity and bilateral cooperation to reject pressure from Western powers and their intentions to break our relationship apart," said Zarif at the bilateral talks.

The Iranian diplomat is accompanied by a delegation of more than 60 state and private entrepreneurs seeking to boost economic ties between Tehran and Havana.

"Relations between our countries can consolidate and expand in various fields such as industry, nanotechnology, biotechnology, energy and other areas of common interest," said the Iranian minister.

Zarif also expressed Tehran's solidarity against Washington's economic blockade against the island, which remains in place despite a new scenario in Cuba-U.S. relations.

"Our political relations are solid and we always support each other against sanctions and atrocities taken by Western powers against our countries," added Zarif.

Zarif was also quoted as saying by Iran's state-owned Press TV that "the Iranian nation proved that sanctions imposed by big powers cannot drive it away from its policies and viewpoints."

Meanwhile, Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodriguez, welcomed Zarif and agreed with his counterpart to strengthen economic and commercial cooperation.

"We can enhance our ties in areas like biotechnology, culture, education, industries, energy and other economic fields that are vital for our countries to develop and contribute to a closer relationship between us," said the Cuban minister.

Rodriguez said Havana is "content" with Iran's foreign policy achievements, particularly the nuclear deal reached with P5+1 last year that lifted unilateral economic sanctions against Tehran.

"Cuba supports Iran and its legitimate right to develop nuclear energy with peaceful means. We will continue to reject any sanctions against your country," added the Cuban diplomat.

Last month, both nations agreed to create a joint economic committee to deepen economic cooperation as well as exchanges between Cuban doctors and other advisors.

Havana is the first leg of a six-nation Latin American tour for the Iranian foreign minister who seeks to strengthen Tehran's economic cooperation with the region.
Smoke rises from Ramousah as seen from a rebel-held area of Aleppo, Syria, August 22, 2016. (REUTERS/File Photo)

UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- Stephen O'Brien, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, on Monday reiterated his call for a 48-hour ceasefire in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, saying that the United Nations is ready to send humanitarian assistance to the people in the city.

O'Brien, in his briefing to the UN Security Council, stressed that anything shorter than 48 hours would not allow for a meaningful response.

"The UN is ready to move 70 trucks of assistance into eastern Aleppo as soon as we receive the necessary security assurances," said O'Brien, who is also the UN emergency relief coordinator. "Once we have the green light, we can move assistance within 48 to 72 hours."

While noting progress in reaching besieged and hard-to-reach areas since the beginning of the year, O'Brien deplored that we now appear to be in reverse gear.

In August, the United Nations was denied access to more than 50 percent of requested beneficiaries. Moreover, active conflict and insecurity, as well as delays in getting facilitation required to move convoys have been limiting factors. As a result, no inter-agency convoys have moved in August.

Calling Syria "the greatest crisis of our time," O'Brien stressed the Security Council cannot look the other way and called on the 15-nation council to ensure the full implementation of its resolutions.

He said that what is happening in Aleppo and throughout Syria is "an outrage against every moral fibre in our being as human beings" and called on council members to put differences aside and stop this "humanitarian shame."

At least 51 people were killed as a result of rebels' shelling and airstrikes in Aleppo, reports said early this month.

At least 45 civilians were killed in Aleppo and to the west of the city, and another 22 died in neighbouring Idlib province, reports said last week.

Aleppo, Syria's largest province and once a thriving economic metropolis, has witnessed intensified violent battles lately as both the Syrian government troops and the opposition fighters have stepped up their game in the hope of achieving more gains in that key province.
UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 22 (Xinhua) -- A political settlement of the Syria crisis in the ultimate way to solve the country's humanitarian problem and other issues, said a Chinese envoy here on Monday.

Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, made the remarks at a Security Council meeting on the humanitarian crisis in Syria's northern city of Aleppo.

"China is gravely concerned about the civilian casualties and humanitarian crisis in Syria," said Wu. "We welcome Russia's support for the UN proposal for a weekly 48-hour ceasefire in Aleppo."

While commending the effort made by the International Syria Support Group co-chaired by United States and Russia, Wu said China hopes the parties concerned can urge the Syrian government as well as the opposition to facilitate UN's aid effort to ease humanitarian crisis in Aleppo without delay.

Wu also called on the international community including other countries in the region to support UN's leading role in the area of good offices to sustain the momentum for political settlement and ensure the process can come to fruition.

"China has been actively supporting the mitigation of humanitarian situation in Syria," he said, noting that China has provided humanitarian aid including food and supplies for Syria as well as other countries in the region through multiple channels.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city and once a thriving economic metropolis, has witnessed heavy battles lately as both warring parties have stepped up their game in the hope of grabbing more gains in this key province.

UN statistics show that 275,000 people in eastern Aleppo have been almost entirely cut off from food, water and medicine for over a month, while access remains extremely difficult to the estimated 1.5 million people in western parts of the city.


:    9         

         2013 .         9          .    .
$1.9 million excavator destroyed in arson attack

Newsday understands that the company failed to make the payments following which Palco instructed that the excavators be returned. However, on Saturday when Siewnarine went to Vega de Oropouche Sangre Grande, where the excavators were in operation, it was discovered that one of the two excavators was destroyed by fire.

A report was made to the Sangre Grande Police Station and an investigator is to be appointed.

Siewnarine has already been interviewed by police while persons from the other company are also expected to be questioned by police.
Woman police leads hotel raid in central exercise

Police also held two men for questioning in connection with human trafficking offences. The Spanish speaking women found in the hotel have since been handed over to the Immigration Department as investigations continue. During the exercise, six persons were arrested for various offences and seven penalty notices issued while 15 persons were tested for driving under the influence of alcohol.

And in a separate exercise in the south western division, a 34 year old vacationing Venezuelan national was arrested and charged for drunk driving in Point Fortin over the weekend.

A retiree and a second offender were also among the 11 persons who failed breathalyser tests conducted during a two day drunk driving exercise in Point Fortin, Penal and environs. Sgt Gosine of the South Western DUI unit carried out the exercises. The drunk drivers are expected to appear before in court today.
Bandit nabbed wearing stolen sneakers

According to reports, the victim, Kirti Cerrera of Jasper Avenue, Diego Martin, was at home at about 12:30 pm on Saturday when she was accosted by two men, one armed with a gun who announced a hold-up. Cererra was robbed of a television set, cellular phone a quantity of jewellery, cash and a blue Adidas sneakers valued $600.

The two men fled the scene prompting the victim to make a report at the West End Police Station.

Officers from the Western Division Task Force responded to the report and went to First Street, Diego Martin where they saw the 20-year-old man walking along the roadway wearing a pair of sneakers fitting the description of the one stolen. The man was confronted by officers and said that he was going to Port-of-Spain to lime.

When questioned further by police, he admitted to stealing the sneakers from Cerrera however he refused to name his accomplice.

He was taken to the West End Police Station where he was charged with housebreaking and larceny. Police yesterday continued their search for the second suspect.
URP workers plead for outstanding salaries

With this upcoming Friday marking the fifth fortnight that URP workers in the San Fernando area have not been paid, some URP workers turned to Newsday for assistance.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the workers, many of them single mothers, say they have been working for the past few months expecting that they would be paid but to no avail.

Many of them say they lack the required academic qualifications that would enable them to get another job and so depend entirely on the wages from URP.

The majority of these workers are also single parents.

The distressed workers say despite their many complaints to the relevant authorities, they are only being fed lies.

They say they now have to resort to borrowing money to get to and from work and to buy groceries. However, despite not being paid, they are going to work every day.

Look at how the Prime Minister gone and come back healthy, one worker said. Everybody in the government getting paid and look how us poor people suffering.
23 graduate from PTSCS technician programme

This is the view of Lisa Joseph, Manager of Business Development at the National Energy Skills Center (NESC).

Joseph was speaking on Friday at a ceremony for 23 graduates of a Heavy Equipment Technician Programme, a three-year diploma course hosted by NESC, the Ministry of Works and Transport and the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC).

The ceremony was held at the head office of the Ministry of Works and Transport, corner of Richmond and London Streets, Port of Spain. In some ways, we have lost track of career technical education and skilled trades, Joseph said.

That is a big mistake that we are paying a price for today. If we are to continue on the pathway to true developed country status, we must develop the human talent to deliver the day to day needs of the population. Joseph said it is laudable that the graduates chose to pursue their career dreams in an environment that is laced with so many negatives, coupled with a plethora of distractions, to lure the nations youths from the straight and narrow path.

The achievements of this group are exemplary and must be recognised as a road map for other young people to follow. She said PTSC revived its apprenticeship programme in an effort to develop a cadre of young technicians to replace the aging work force that is tasked with the responsibility of repairing and maintaining the Corporations bus fleet.

Minister of Works and Transport, Fitzgerald Hinds, told the graduates that it was up to them to utilise the opportunities society has created.

The 21 men and two women are the first persons to benefit from the training opportunity.

Hinds praised the group for taking the initiative to better themselves, instead of waiting for handouts.

The students spent two years at NESC acquiring theoretical knowledge and then progressed to PTSC where they got hands-on training. The apprentices will now be retained by PTSC as trainee mechanics.
Moonilal: Fire the EBC

Yesterday, in a statement titled Crisis of confidence, Moonilal urged Carmona to remove the EBC heads due to the ruling that they acted illegally in the discharge of their duties, in what he termed, a critical indictment.

The MP said the judge stated that bad weather on Election Day did not give the EBC any right to break the law, saying the Commission itself was created by statute.

Moonilal said the judge ruled that the extension of polls was illegal and a breach of the Elections Rules (section 27) under the Representation of the Peoples Act (section 35), but that the latter Act does not empower the court to annul the election.

By the judges unambiguous ruling, the Elections and Boundaries Commission acted illegally and contrary to its stated powers, Moonilal opined.
St Charles placement an error, Garcia

In response to a question about the students who could not be accepted into the school, Education Minister Anthony Garcia told reporters on Friday that the remaining 25 students have been placed in government schools.

Through an error, a fault of the ministry, 50 students were assigned to St Charles High School, Garcia said.

On learning of the error, Garcia said he spoke with members of the school board and Archbishop Joseph Harris assured him he would Do what he can so that an end to the situation could be achieved. After meeting with the school board, Garcia said board members were adamant that they could not accept more than 25 students.

The argument put forward by the board was that the stipend they receive from the ministry as payment for the children who attend the school was small, said Garcia.

It would be more profitable to them if they have other private students who would fill (the spaces). He added, Government, through the Ministry of Education, pays the school authorities to accommodate students. Chief Education Officer in the Ministry of Education, Harilal Seecharan said that Government pays the school $1,200 per student each term, or, $3,600 a year per student.

Once the decision was made to transfer the 25 students, we looked at the students course, their choices and availability of places, Seecharan said.

The general process applied for the placement of students who wrote the SE A was used. Based on their scores, students who selected St Charles as a first choice were accepted into the school, while the remaining students were placed in Government schools.

We had no choice but to place (them) in other schools, Seecharan said.
Garcia appalled at bastardisation of National Anthem

Garcia expressed his concerns on Friday at a Cuban scholarship winners ceremony, held at the Ministry of Educations Tertiary Education Division in Port-of- Spain, after noting the pride with which Cuba Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, Guillermo Vazquez Moreno, and embassy staff sang their Cuban national anthem at the start of the event.

Noting that far too often the anthem is sung in a way it was not intended, Garcia said he hopes that persons will respect the anthem and ensure it is sung in the proper manner it is supposed to, in the future.

Respect and pride must be shown whenever and wherever the national anthem is sung, he said.
Poorv Sainik Manch Thanks Narender Modi Govt. For One Rank One Pension

New Delhi, Mon, 22 Aug 2016 NI Wire

Those Who Join Army Come With A Motto of Service to the Nation, The Facilities Don't Act as an Inspiration but no Doubt the Respect Which People Give to Armed Forces Definitely Encourage.

New Delhi, 21st August: Delhi BJP President Shri Satish Upadhyay & General Secretary Shri Ashish Sood yesterday addressed a meet of ex-servicemen organised by Poorv Sainik Manch at the Constitution Club of India. The meeting presided by Manch Convenor for Delhi Shri Jai Prakash Sharma was attended amongst others by National Convenor Brig. B.D. Mishra, Co-Convenor Prabodh Kumar, Major General Srivastava, Col. Raghuveer, Brig. Dilbag Singh & Group Capt. Malik along with large numbers of ex-servicemen.

Shri Satish Upadhyay said that One Rank One Pension was a logical demand but Congress Govt.'s tactically kept delaying the decision, whenever the protest pitch was raised by the ex-servicemen the Governments offered bait of interim reliefs but ultimately Prime Minister Shri Narender Modi took it upon himself to decide this sensitive matter and today we find that a widely acceptable solution has been found and OROP has been implemented. He said that PM Modi took the lead in the matter and the Defence Minister Shri Manohar Parrikar and Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley ensured a solution to the satisfaction of the ex-servicemen.

Shri Upadhyay said that today we have a Government whose resolve to give respect to armed forces is commendable but unfortunately we have a section of politicians & media anchors who by questioning the action of armed forces in sensitive states hurt the cause of nation pride with which the armed forces operate.

Shri Ashish Sood said that my political carrier started in 1989 with my election as DUSU President. It was an era when the BOFORS Gun Scam was making headlines. Even at that time there was widespread resentment amongst armed forces who felt that politicians are shaming the nation with scams in arm purchases but give alibi to financial crunch when it comes to granting OROP. Today we feel proud to be a part of a Government which has fulfilled its promise of OROP.

Brigadier B.D. Mishra said that the grant of OROP is no favour for the ex-servicemen, it was their entitlement but the way previous governments kept delaying the matter, it was painful. He said those who join army come with a motto of service to the nation, the facilities don't act as an inspiration but no doubt the respect which people give to armed forces definitely encourages. He said that grant of OROP has given satisfaction but the real happiness which Modi Government has given comes from the freedom which it has given to armed forced to freely act against the cross border terrorism. He said that the way Modi Government made a brigade of army move towards Chinese border when the Chinese army tried to intrude into Indian Territory during President XI JINPING's 2014 visit gave a feel of pride to Indian army. He said people citizens and army men both felt proud when in his 15th August speech Prime Minister Modi as a rebuttal to Pakistan's Kashmir propaganda raised the issue of Baluchistan and made Pakistan's atrocities on Baluch people a matter of worldwide discussion.
National Heart Institute (NHI) celebrates 35th Founder's Day

New Delhi, Mon, 22 Aug 2016 NI Wire

Dr Harsh Vardhan, Hon'ble Minister for Science and Technology grace the occasion

NHI Oration delivered by Padma Vibhushan Awardee Dr PN Tandon, Prof. Emeritus Neurosurgeon, AIIMS

The National Heart Institute (NHI) celebrated its 35th Founder's Day at Hotel Shangri-La today. Dr Harsh Vardhan, Hon'ble Minister for Science and Technology, was the Chief Guest for the event. Padma Vibhushan Awardee Prof. P N Tandon, Prof. Emeritus, Neurosurgeon, AIIMS delivered the National Heart Oration. He spoke about how medical education is in urgent need of a revolution.

Speaking at the event, Dr O P Yadava, CEO & Chief Cardiac Surgeon, National Heart Institute and Dr Vinod Sharma Vice Chief Executive Officer & Head of Cardiology Services, National Heart Institute in a joint statement said, "It is indeed a proud moment for us to have such eminent personalities celebrate our 35th Founders Day with us today. We began our journey in 1981 and this day was specifically chosen by the then Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi because it happened to be her son Rajiv Gandhis birthday. She felt that there couldnt be a more auspicious day for inaugurating NHI, a hospital established with the aim of providing state-of-the-art Modern Cardiac Care to the masses especially those who cannot afford it. Our journey so far has been commendable, and we hope that we continue to make a difference in the lives of others in the years to come.

Commemorating completion of 35 years, a series of health awareness activities were also initiated. These include a yearlong preventive heart health school education programme and Continued Medical Education workshops for family physicians. A total of seven family physicians were recognised for their work and commitment to providing quality healthcare to the masses. A special edition of the NHI Dialogue, NHIs in-house magazine and a Family Physician Guidebook were also released

Congratulating NHI the Chief Guest, Dr Harsh Vardhan said, "NHI's commitment to providing quality medical care to the masses is commendable. I congratulate them on their 35th Founder's Day."

"What started out small has made a huge impact in the lives of many people. As part of AIHF, the NHI has been committed to providing quality care. The programmes being launched will only give more impetus to all the efforts," said Dr S Padmavati in her message.

Speaking on the occasion, Padma Vibhushan Awardee Prof. P N Tandon, Prof. Emeritus, Neurosurgeon, AIIMS said, "I congratulate the NHI on completing 35 years and for the initiatives they are undertaking. Programmes like these will go a long way in educating the young and old alike." He also expressed his gratitude for the honour bestowed on him.

Committed to social service from the very onset, NHI carries out community outreach programmes (heart camps), executive health checks and recruitment checks to detect cardiac problems early and take remedial action. The hospital regularly provides free treatment to such patients at subsidised rates. NHI also runs free OPDs for two hours on all working days. In collaboration NGOs such as Rotary International, Heart Beat International, and Heart Care Foundation of India the hospital provides free cardiac interventions to needy patients.

With India inching towards the title of the heart disease capital of the world, NHI also released 5-year internal data highlighting a 10% increase in the cases of heart disease amongst women and 28% increase in those below 40. Stress was laid on the need to make timely lifestyle modifications and undergo regular health checkups.
Delegation of leaders from J&K Opposition Parties meets PM Modi

New Delhi, Mon, 22 Aug 2016 NI Wire

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, met a delegation of leaders of the Opposition Parties from the State of J&K comprising of Shri Omar Abdullah of J&K National Conference; Shri Ghulam Ahmed Mir, INC; Shri Hakeem Mohammad of People's Democratic Front; Shri M.Y. Tarigami, CPM; Shri Ghulam Hassan Mir of Democratic Party Nationalist; and others, to discuss the prevailing situation in the State of Jammu & Kashmir. The meeting was held in an atmosphere of free and frank discussion.

The Prime Minister expressed deep concern and pain at the prevailing situation in the State. He said that those who lost their lives during recent disturbances are part of us, our nation; whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us. He conveyed that his government and the nation stand with the State of Jammu & Kashmir and suggested that all Political Parties should reach out to the people and convey the same. He expressed his commitment to the development of the State and its people, and appealed for restoration of normalcy.

The Prime Minister appreciated the constructive suggestions made in the meeting and reiterated his Government's commitment to the welfare of citizens of the State.

He emphasized that there has to be dialogue and we need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution. He emphasized on the need for all political parties to work together to find a solution to the problems in the State of Jammu & Kashmir.

Source: PIB
Actor Rohit Pathak learning Martial Arts for his next film

Bollywood, Mon, 22 Aug 2016 NI Wire

B-town stars are always recognized for their fashion and their attracting personalities. Either if we talk about any magazine photo shoot or of any movie or either of any fashion show.

We have noticed them in a beautiful avatar. What makes them perfectly fit?? Yes obviously a gym factor is noticed but apart from this very few of us knows that our Bollywood personalities also prefer Martial Arts in their routine to keep themselves fit.

The list of action heroes can be counted in the Bollywood industry but not complete figure of the actors are experienced in Mixed Martial Art Training. Now one more name in the list of Martial Arts is Rohit Pathak.

The actor who recently signed Phantom Production film has started his training in Martial Art. When we asked him about training he said, Exercise is the only thing that completely change your personality.Body weight workout makes you fit and flexible.

Regular exercise and daily workout in fresh air gives you a lot of energy and enthusiasm and automatically gets you into discipline without even your realizing."
Samsung Galaxy S8: Expected to be next innovative phone

New Delhi, Mon, 22 Aug 2016 NI Wire

After successful release of Samsung Galaxy 7, company is expected to come with next killer phone, Samsung Galaxy S8 with innovative design and technologies. This phone may be released in next year during Mobile World Conference (MWC) in February.

The Mobile World Congress (MWC) is the largest conference for the mobile industry which is organized by the GSMA. Next conference will held between 27 February - 2 March 2017 at Barcelona.

In MWC Samsung is expected to release killer Samsung Galaxy S8.

According to MobiPicker, Galaxy S8 may have Exynos 8895 processor and according to the rumors this processor is faster then Apples's upcoming A10 processor. Latest rumors suggests that this process (Exynos 8895) is also faster then latest Snapdragon 830 processor.

According to the rumors Exynos 8895 processor will run at 4GHz and processor at this speed will surpass the maximum clock speed of upcoming Apple's A10 processor.

This processor is expected to increase the efficiency of the Samsung Galaxy 8 compared to Samsung Galaxy 7. So, the performance Galaxy 8 will be much faster.

According to the rumors Galaxy S8 will be released in February during Mobile World Conference (MWC). This phone is codenamed as 'Project Dream', we will be expecting more rumors and specification leaks in near future.




Never send a cop to do a man's job
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.
"This is my 15th Booster, hopefully this is it."



Les Brummett

was this week's winner.



The winner's name will be put into a drawing for a free month subscription or extension.



Look for a new photo Monday.
Algerias foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra made a volte face saying his country is looking forward to fostering cooperation with Morocco at all levels.

This statement, relayed in Algerian media, came as a surprise to observers who see in Lamamra a staunch advocate of separatism as he spared no effort in lobbying against Moroccos supreme interests since he took office.

The remarks came as Morocco is celebrating the 63rd anniversary of the Revolution of the King and the People which was marked by a Royal speech calling for sincere solidarity between Morocco and Algeria in line with the longstanding ties of fraternity between the two Maghreban peoples.

We hope that the commitment and sincere solidarity which have always bound the Algerian and Moroccan peoples will be rekindled so that we may continue to work together, honestly and in good faith, to serve Arab and Maghreb causes and rise to challenges in Africa, King Mohammed VI said in the speech he delivered on Saturday.

On the same occasion, Algerias President Bouteflika sent a message to king Mohammed VI voicing willingness to strengthen ties. Lamamra said this message shows Algerias readiness to cooperate with Morocco.

This represents a sign of an approaching appeasement in the Moroccan-Algerian diplomatic ties. Yet, on the ground, nothing confirms that. Algeria continues to feed Polisarios separatism militarily, financially and diplomatically, thus blocking efforts towards a negotiated solution to the conflict over the Sahara. The two countries continue to exhaust their respective budgets in an arms race that bodes ill for the region. Worse yet, Algeria persists in its obstinacy not to open borders with Morocco under different pretexts.
Head of the Libyan Government of National Accord (GNA) Faiez Serraj had been targeted by an assassination attempt, Head of his intelligence service says.

The intelligence service has recently arrested the head of a Daesh cell who was planning an operation in the government headquarters when al-Sarraj is inside, the intelligence chief, Mustafa Noah, told Turkish Anadolu Agency on Friday using the Arabic acronym the Islamic State group.

He identified the IS commander as Abu Moaz Al-Ansari who, he added, was assigned with carrying out the operation, but the intelligence service managed to abort it.

Serraj and his Presidency Council appointed in Morocco, in December under the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) established their authority in capital Tripoli in March, after they had operated from Tunisia for security reasons.

Backed by the international community, Serraj is still struggling to impose his rule across the country.

Last week, Head of UN Support Mission in Libya, Martin Kobler said in an interview with Swiss Neue Zurcher Zeitung media that Serraj and the GNA are losing popularity because of mounting social, economic challenges.

Now the GNA has lost support. In April, Tripoli had electricity for 20 hours a day. Now it is 12 hours. In April, people were paying LD 3.5 for a US dollar. Today it is LD 5. This is disastrous in an import-oriented economy. The support is crumbling. Kobler said.

Serraj despite the growing public outrage is winning confidence as GNA forces are on the verge of defeating IS in Sirte; the last stronghold of the terrorist group in the North African country.

Sirte, hometown of former ruler Muammar Gaddafi, is almost cleared of IS last resistances. Pro-GNA forces claimed Sunday they took control of IS police headquarters in Sirte as well as 200 apartments.

The US also indicated its forces launched two airstrikes against IS positions on Sunday, bringing to 67 the number of airstrikes launched since August 1, the day the US entered the campaign at the request of the GNA.
Gunmen Sunday killed an informant and two soldiers in the province of Menoufia, north of capital Cairo, in an attack at a security check-point, reports say.

Security authorities are combing the area -80 km north of the capital, in search of the attackers, who managed to flee, Reuters reports.

Egyptian security forces have been facing insurgency from Islamists in the Sinai province since 2013, year President Fattah al-Sisi toppled Islamist and first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi. Though most of militants attacks occurred in the Sinai Province, they have also spilled into capital Cairo.

No one claimed responsibility for the Sunday attack, but the fingers are directly pointed at the IS group in Sinai. The group came under the spotlight in October after it brought down a Russian passenger jet in the Sinai, killing all the 224 people on board.

Egyptian authorities earlier this month claimed they killed the militant groups leader Abu Doaa al-Ansari in an army-led operation in the provincial capital el-Arish.
A carnival float at the closing ceremony. Photo: Stanislav Krasilnikov/Stanislav Krasilnikov/TASS via Getty Images

Good morning and welcome to Fresh Intelligence, our roundup of the stories, ideas, and memes youll be talking about today. In this special summer (read: shorter) edition, the Olympics comes to a colorful close, Trump rethinks immigration, and Sean Hannity reminds the world that he is not a journalist. Heres the rundown for Monday, August 22.

WEATHER

Rain and flooding will continue in Texas, while in the Northeast, a cool front should reduce the heat in the region. Today will be a beautiful day in New York City with sunny, clear skies and temperatures in the low 80s. [Weather.com]

FRONT PAGE

Brazil Reminds World Why Well Miss the Rio Olympics

Befitting its host city, the Olympics ended last night with a closing ceremony full of color, music, and a heaping dose of Tropicalia. The ceremony was right out of Carnival, with troupes of samba dancers and even a giant macaw float. Less than ideal weather conditions  read: driving torrential rains  couldnt dampen the spirits inside the Maracana Stadium where athletes and performers all danced and partied in tribute to what was, all things considered, a successful Olympic games and a historic first for South America. Then it was all over, with Rio passing the Olympic flag and all the headaches it entails on to Tokyo, whose prime minister made his appearance dressed as Mario (yes, really). [Reuters]

EARLY AND OFTEN

Trump Rethinks His Signature Policy Stance

Signs out of the Trump campaign seem to point to a coming softening on immigration. Donald Trump has defined himself and his presidential run on his hard-line stance against immigration  i.e. threats to deport 11 million people and ban Muslims from entering the country. Yesterday, Trumps new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said that Donald was reviewing the whole mass-deportation thing, and reassured everyone that Trump would be fair and humane to those who live among us in this country. [Reuters]

That Kooky Commenter May Be the Former Mayor of NYC

Never one to shy away from a good conspiracy theory, Rudy Giuliani has jumped on the bandwagon of right-wing talking heads who claim that Hillary Clinton is suffering from some unnamed disease that will make it impossible for her to execute her duties as president, and which she is keeping hidden from the American people. Speaking on Fox News yesterday, he said that the press has failed to point out several signs of illness. Teaching us journalists a thing or two, he explained: All you gotta do is go online. [Politico]

THE STREET, THE VALLEY

A Large Pill to Swallow

Pfizers bid to buy biotech company Medivation will be successful. The details of what is expected to be a $14 billion all-cash deal will be officially announced as early as today. Medivation is a major manufacturer of cancer drugs, pulling in $2 billion a year with its sales of prostate-cancer drug Xtandi. [WSJ]

The Other Shoe Falls on Philippe Dauman

As anticipated, the fallout from Sumner Redstones power consolidation at Viacom has arrived. Chief executive Philippe Dauman is out and will be immediately replaced by his close collaborator chief operating officer Thomas Dooley. Dauman will stay at Viacom as a non-executive chair through September 13, and should walk away with $72 million. [Reuters]

MEDIA BUBBLE

Sean Hannity Embraces Role As Trump Mouthpiece

Fox News figure Sean Hannity has confirmed that he has become something of an unofficial advisor to Donald Trump. When pressed about whether supporting a presidential candidate as a political-news commentator was ethically dubious, Hannity said, I never claimed to be a journalist. [NYT]

PHOTO OP

Olympians Show Skin in Rio

A boo would have sufficed.



Mongolias wrestling coaches took their clothes off to protest a call that left them losing a medal #Rio2016 pic.twitter.com/d0jSGRbFux  BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) August 21, 2016

MORNING MEME

Japan Takes Gold in Closing Ceremonies

The world may seem like a scary place sometimes, but no other time in history could have seen the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, emerge from a green sewer pipe dressed like Mario. So, be grateful for that at least.

OTHER LOCAL NEWS

Mrs. Doubtfire: Vice

For everyone out there who has to ruin Mission: Impossible by saying how unrealistic it is, just look at this. Shaun Shizz Miller, a South Yarmouth, Massachusetts, drug fugitive, nearly evaded capture by wearing this latex mask of an octogenarian man. We know it doesnt sound like much, but look at the picture. [WaPo]

HAPPENING TODAY

Kerry Goes to Kenya

John Kerry is in Kenya today to meet with Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta. According to the State Department, the two will discuss the ongoing battle against extremism in Somalia, as well as the ever-worsening situation in South Sudan. [NYT]
The fall of Baghdad represented the apogee of neoconservative influence within the Republican party. Photo: Olivier Coret/Corbis

On February 29, Max Boot, a neoconservative columnist and then a foreign-policy adviser to Marco Rubio, wrote that if Donald Trump were to win his partys nomination, it would confirm everything bad that Democrats have ever said about the GOP. In May, he pronounced the Republican Party dead and announced that [Hillary] Clinton would be far preferable to Trump. By July, he was admitting in the New York Times that Trump was the most noxious manifestation of the partys anti-intellectual drift. The rise of Trump has provoked similar reactions from other neoconservatives, including David Frum, Dan Senor, James Kirchick, Michael Gerson, Jennifer Rubin, Eliot A. Cohen, John Podhoretz, Bret Stephens, Robert Kagan, and even the Republican operator William Kristol (who has tried, without success, to organize a Republican Partyinexile). Not all these figures have endorsed Clinton, but every one has treated the Republican nominee as something much worse than a suboptimal choice or a surefire loser; Trump is, in their estimation, a threat to democracy itself and a symptom of deep rot within the party.

The fissures that led to the Republican Partys crack-up over its crackpot nominee run along several lines. There is the demographic one, separating the young, Latinos, and college-educated women from the loyal base of older, blue-collar, white men. There is a characterological one, splitting Republicans who recoil from cruel, flamboyantly ignorant bullies and those who find these traits acceptable, even praiseworthy. Among the partys professional class, there are Republicans who are either retired or running in blue states, then those who have a future in red-state politics. Then there is the schism within the partys intellectual vanguard. While social and economic conservatives have remained mostly loyal, the neoconservatives have found themselves outcasts from a party they very recently led.

The original neoconservatives were a small faction of formerly liberal or left-wing intellectuals, disproportionately Jewish, who defected to the GOP in the 1970s. (One of them, Kristols father, Irving, famously quipped that a neoconservative was a liberal who had been mugged by reality.) Their complaints with the left centered on foreign policy, on how the Democratic Party had grown more dovish in the wake of Vietnam. Over time, they adapted themselves to the whole Republican litany, carving out a useful role defending supply-side economics, the conspiratorial ravings of Pat Robertson, and pretty much any lunacy attached to the party. Yet foreign affairs remained the distinctive field in which they largely dictated conservative doctrine. Neocons saw a black-and-white morality as the foundation of the American victory in World War II and then the Cold War; indeed, they believed it could be applied to every foreign conflict and, with the appropriate application of willpower and righteousness, result in the inevitable spread of democracy everywhere. Neoconservatives famously developed the master plan to defeat Al Qaeda via democratic regime change throughout the Middle East.

The fall of Baghdad represented the apogee of neoconservative influence within the party. In April 2003, Frum, who had previously been a speechwriter for the Bush administration, wrote a cover essay for National Review, the conservative movements flagship publication, excommunicating the isolationist paleoconservatives. At the time, it hardly seemed worth the effort, as the objects of Frums banishment consisted mostly of obscure cranks lacking any channels of influence. During the Bush era, neoconservatism was riding so high it had essentially grown synonymous with conservatism. Many liberals learned to read the neo- prefix as a kind of intensifier: A neoconservative seemed to mean an ultraconservative, the most fanatical and dangerous strain.

While Bushs second-term collapse surfaced some challenges to the partys neoconservative identity, the neocons retained their pride of place. The following two Republican presidential nominees embraced the familiar neoconservative style. They laced into Barack Obama for his alleged faintheartedness in promoting American exceptionalism and vowed to push harder against all of Americas rivals on every global front. (Russia, in Mitt Romneys estimation, was Americas No. 1 geopolitical foe.)

It took nearly eight years after Bush left office for his partys voters to depose the neocons. In Trump, the GOP base found a candidate who claimed that he opposed the Iraq War from the outset (not true) and that Bush had ignored pre-9/11 warnings about terrorist threats and then used cooked intelligence to sell the war (true). Trump has praised dictators, threatened to break up American alliances, expressed contempt for democratization, and seemed to invite Vladimir Putin to gobble up more territory. He has embraced the America First! slogan associated with the isolationists and anti-Semites of the 1930s and has attracted an unusually vocal contingent of anti-Semitic fans.

Not all neoconservatives are Jewish  in fact the Gentile ones, like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, William Bennett, and Steve Forbes, still tend to support Trump. But Trump has struck at the heart of Jewish neoconservatism at a level deeper than mere doctrine. The original neocons were influenced by Leo Strauss, a Jewish philosopher who fled Nazi Germany and feared the power of demagogues to manipulate the masses. They were elitists who cultivated an aura of erudition and believed in intellectualism  or at least pseudo-intellectualism.

And while neocons have always joined standard conservatives in downplaying white racism, they never opposed the civil-rights movement like William F. Buckley did, instead arguing that it went offtrack after dismantling legal apartheid in the South. Trumps blunt appeal to white identity politics has pried open this divide. Frums 2003 essay attacking the paleoconservatives denounced the very sort of people now flocking to Trump  white racialists for whom race and ethnicity were from the start essential and defining issues. The whiff of Herrenvolk democracy (a democracy representing only the interests of the dominant race) is an especially frightening phenomenon to those who suspect theyre not included among the Volk. This is how fascism comes to America, Kagan wrote in May.

In July, Kagan appeared at a fund-raiser for Clintons campaign. Should she win, many neocons will likely return to the Republican fold, fighting to restore the party to its pre-Trumpian state. But it is possible that the campaign will leave a permanent mark on their thinking and that the GOP will remain a staunchly nativist and isolationist party. Clinton is no neocon, and any neoconservative influence would set off a nuclear reaction on the left, which already views her with intense suspicion. But she does have more interventionist instincts than Barack Obama, and the Republican opposition to her foreign policy is likely to take on a distinctly isolationist cast. (During the 1990s, most Republicans denounced Bill Clintons successful airstrikes in Serbia and Kosovo, which helped save Kosovars from Serbian attacks.) Some neocons might find in Clinton a president amenable to their influence  indeed, one could imagine the Democratic Party Establishment being swayed by neoconservative thought in some of the same ways the Republican Party was a decade ago. (Kagan, whose wife, Victoria Nuland, works in the State Department, could

possibly have a role in a Clinton administration.)

It is a strange paradox that a candidate as indifferent to ideas as Donald Trump  a television addict who can hardly be bothered to read anything longer than 140 characters  might have a more profound influence on the intellectual landscape of the party system than any nominee since

Ronald Reagan. For more than a generation, the same factions have fought over more or less the same issue terrain. With his European-style alt-right, Trump is adding a new sect to his partys intellectual class while possibly driving out an old one. Neoconservative means new conservative, of course, and perhaps the last-in-first-out principle will hold. They are, for the time being, a sect without a party.

This article appears in the August 22, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images; Alex Wong/Getty Images

The Republican nominee is sharpening his attacks on the legitimacy of our political system. Two weeks ago, Donald Trump told a crowd in Pennsylvania, The only way we can lose, in my opinion, I really mean this, Pennsylvania, is if cheating goes on. Earlier this month, he made a similar suggestion in Ohio, then told a crowd in North Carolina that if the states voter-ID law remains suspended, Clinton voters will go to the polls 15 times each. The first general-election ad of Trumps campaign premiered Friday. This was its opening image:

Trumps disciplined messaging about why voting for him might not matter has driven up the untrustworthy numbers of American democracy. Last week, Pew Research found that only 11 percent of Trump supporters were very confident that Novembers vote will be counted accurately, while 49 percent of Clinton backers said the same. On Monday, a Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Republicans say voter fraud is a major issue in this election; only 26 percent of Democrats agreed.

These developments have produced some pearl-clutching among #NeverTrump Republicans.

Weve never had a presidential candidate who has questioned the legitimacy of an electoral outcome nationally, former Mitt Romney adviser Dan Senor told Politico. This does take us to a whole new world if the actual presidential candidate is questioning the legitimacy of this process, and the damage to our democracy could be substantial.

Longtime Republican operative Steve Schmidt told the news site that Trumps predictions of widespread voter fraud were an assault on some of the pillars that undergird our system, adding, People need to understand just how radical a departure this is from the mean of American politics.

Steve Schmidt was John McCains chief strategist in 2008. Here is something McCain said that year, during a nationally televised general-election debate:

We need to know the full extent of Senator Obamas relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

McCains dire warning was no aberration. The idea that community organizers (who encourage low-income black people to vote) are destroying the fabric of democracy was already a commonplace notion in the GOP of eight years ago. As the Nations Ari Berman wrote back in February:

The GOPs fraud crusade goes back to the George W. Bush administration. The 2000 election in Florida, which was marred by a disastrous voter purge of alleged ex-felons, empowered a new right-wing voter fraud movement, which hyped the threat of fraud in order to restrict access to the ballot for partisan gains. The Justice Department was taken over by ultra-conservatives like Attorney General John Ashcroft who made combating fraud a top priority. US Attorneys in states like New Mexico and Washington were fired for not undertaking new prosecutions, and new voting restrictions, like Georgias voter ID law, were approved by the DOJs Civil Rights Division over objections from career lawyers. Rick Hasen dubbed these people the fraudulent fraud squad.

There are many ways in which Donald Trump is a uniquely irresponsible Republican nominee. Mitt Romney never called Barack Obama the founder of ISIS. John McCain never joked about Second Amendment people taking out his rivals Supreme Court nominees. Neither mocked the disabled, called Mexicans rapists, retweeted white supremacists, or promoted policies of overt religious discrimination.

In her general-election campaign, Hillary Clinton has focused on Trumps unique outrages, disassociating his dangerous qualities from those of his party. As a strategy for winning over those Republicans who are ready to recognize the ugliness of their nominee  but not of the institution that made him its leader  this rhetorical move makes sense. But it also threatens to obscure how many of Trumps most dangerous ideas are extensions  or, in some cases, mere reiterations  of Republican orthodoxy.

When Donald Trump demonizes American Muslims for electoral gain, suggests the United States can violate international law in its fight against terrorism, hypes the threat posed by undocumented immigrants, and suggests that our nations elections are plagued by widespread voter fraud, he is walking a path broken by many Republicans before him.

For over a decade, the GOP has attempted to solve its problem with minority voters by enacting electoral reforms that reduce their presence at the polls. To rationalize such anti-democratic reforms, the party invented a crisis of democratic legitimacy. One year after McCains remarks about ACORN, a Public Policy Polling survey found a majority of Republicans believed the organization had stolen the election for Barack Obama.

Now, as Trump attempts to rationalize his potential loss by hyping that same fictional crisis, principled conservatives are performing their outrage. The least they could do is perform their shame.
Bill Cosby is accused of assaulting more than 35 women, but in many of their cases the statute of limitations has expired. Photo: DOMINICK REUTER/AFP/Getty Images

California is changing the way sexual assault is prosecuted. In the wake of the allegations that Bill Cosby drugged and raped dozens of women, the state assembly passed a bill on Thursday to end the time limit for prosecuting rape and felony sex crimes. The bill passed the assembly unanimously; it will now move on to the Senate where, according to the Los Angeles Times, an earlier version of the bill passed in June.

Under the states current law, rape and felony sex crimes must be tried within 10 years, unless DNA evidence comes to light after that time period. And sex crimes against children younger than 18 must be prosecuted before the victim turns 40. Cosby stands accused of assaulting more than 35 women in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but in several of their cases, the statue of limitations has expired.

There are some crimes that are so heinous that there should never be a statute of limitations, assemblyman Travis Allen told the Times. Assemblyman Mike Gipson agreed, calling the bill long overdue and saying it would ensure that criminals be placed in jail no matter when charges are brought against them.
Derrick Dearman. Photo: Green County Sheriffs Office

The recent mass murder of five individuals, including one pregnant woman, in Alabama is a tragic example of what can happen when perpetrators of domestic violence remain unchecked.

The victims were found in a home in the rural town of Citronelle on Saturday; Derrick Dearman, 27, turned himself over to police the following day. Its believed that his ex-girlfriend, Laneta Lester, 24, took refuge with a relative in the house on August 19 because Dearman abused her.

Dearman initially came to the property early on Saturday morning. The police were called around 1 a.m., but by the time they arrived, he had already left. According to police, he returned shortly afterward and murdered the residents  Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; Chelsea Marie Reed, 22; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; and Robert Lee Brown, 26  in their sleep, using firearms and several other weapons.

He then kidnapped Lester and the 3-month-old baby of one of the victims and drove to his fathers house. He turned himself in to the Greene County Sheriffs Office on Sunday. Because Alabama has a strict fetal homicide law, Dearman will be charged for six counts of murder, as Chelsea Marie Reed was five months pregnant.

Dearmans ex-wife, Crystal Dearman, told Fox10 that Dearman has a history of domestic violence, and recalled the following incident: I woke up to him holding a knife to my throat in bed with my baby in the crib.

Mobile County district attorney Ashley Rich told reporters that shes never come across a crime where there were five people who were brutally and viciously murdered in her entire 20-year career.
An aerial view of Christo and Jeanne Claude, The Floating Piers, Lake Iseo, Italy. Photo: Wolfgang Volz

Remember that winter in New York when bright-orange gates suddenly appeared in Central Park? About a decade ago, The Gates was the culmination of a 26-year-long project by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, a married couple whose inventive installations have popped up around the world for the last 60 years. This summer, their latest project was a giant ecofriendly yellow dock on Lake Iseo in Italy, where visitors walked a two-mile pathway that barely rose above the water, undulating with the waves.

The Floating Piers was their first large-scale project since The Gates in Central Park, funded entirely by Christos own art sales. (Jeanne-Claude passed away in 2009.) After the dock floated for 16 days earlier this summer, all of the materials were recycled.

The book Christo and Jeanne-Claude: The Floating Piers, out August 25 from Taschen, chronicles the installations labor-intensive construction. Featuring photographs of the completed project and sketches from the couples studio, the collection documents both the complex process and simple beauty of the resulting docks.

Click ahead to preview the books Zen aerial shots, including stunning views of Lake Iseo, the surrounding mountains and villages, and hordes of visitors who (almost) walked on water.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Floating Piers, Lake Iseo, Italy, 2014-2016.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Floating Piers, Lake Iseo, Italy, 2014-2016.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Floating Piers, Lake Iseo, Italy, 2014-2016.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Floating Piers, Lake Iseo, Italy, 2014-2016.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Floating Piers, Lake Iseo, Italy, 2014-2016.

Christo rented a 300-meter-by-300-meter area of the lake surface to store the 30 segments of the piers.

A two-part drawing from 2014.

A 2016 two-part drawing.

Christo with project director Vladimir Yavachev and curator-slash-art-historian Germano Celant on Lake Iseo in the summer of 2014.

The Floating Piers will be available August 25.
Photo: NurPhoto/Getty Images

In the world of celebrity nudity, the dong shot has long been the rarest of commodities. The penis  unique in form and uniquely telling about he who possesses it  has long been the white whale of celebrity sightings. That is, until Justin Bieber started flashing his white whale on beaches worldwide. Mere days after Orlando Blooms recent full-frontal paparazzi incident, Justin Bieber appeared in his second full-frontal paparazzi shoot. Were Biebers pictures designed to prompt side-by-side size comparisons with longtime romantic-rival Bloom? How much control does a celebrity have over his dick pics? And how much money do they make? We called our favorite former celebrity publicist, Rob Shuter of Naughty Gossip, for answers.

I want to talk about the rise of the celebrity penis full-frontal. I dont think Ive seen it before.

No, and I think thats because times have changed. God bless Kim Kardashian and sex tapes and the cover of Paper magazine! She really changed the rules for women, and now the men are catching up.

Justin Bieber went full-frontal for the paparazzi recently, just days after Orlando Bloom was photographed naked on an Italian beach with Katy Perry. Do you think that was a coincidence?

I think that those two have beef. They almost had a fight once because of Miranda Kerr.

Right, the beginning of their romantic rivalry.

And I think Justin likes us knowing that he has a big penis. Hes not shy and its not the first time its happened. He wasnt caught in a backyard, he wasnt caught in a changing room or a locker room.

What struck me about Biebers most recent pictures is that hes in a remote jungle in Hawaii. How could a paparazzo follow him and his Instagram-hottie friends there without anyone noticing?

Exactly. I think its really suspicious, too. When I saw those pictures, and the quality of them, they didnt look like they were taken with some supersonic telephoto lens. If I was a betting guy  and I dont have any evidence for this  but if I was betting, I think they wanted those pictures out. Had it been on the Copacabana beach in Rio, sure, someone would take a photograph. But in the jungle? I think its very, very suspicious.

I think Justins look is a bit more staged [than Orlandos]. They were a little bit more, dare I say, romantic. It felt like an Annie Leibovitz shoot. The other thing that made me suspicious of Bieber is that there was only, like, two or three of them. Now if I was a paparazzi, or a photographer in the woods, I would click 400 photographs. With Orlando there was a ton of photographs. Every time he moved to the left or the right there was another photograph. Someone clearly had a lens and just: click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click. Theres a series of photographs. But Bieber? Theres, like, three.

What does that suggest? That he planned it and did photo approvals?

Yeah, that he approved it, and that he probably tipped them off. When I worked with Jessica Simpson, Joe Simpson was the photographer that took the pictures half the time.

Oh my goodness. Did he get photo credits?

Yes, he was that vain. He even wanted photo credits. If you look in the margins of Us Weekly when Jessica was in a bikini anywhere, the photo credit said Joe Simpson. [Edit: Joe recently reinvented himself as a professional photographer. His his first gallery show was in May.]

Okay, so I just googled Justins Hawaii pictures again, and the Daily News lists the photo agency but not the photographer.

See, now thats another thing they can do. Joe Simpson used to give his pictures to WireImage and they would distribute them. You dont have to be a staff photographer for WireImage to distribute through them. Brad and Angie distributed pictures of their baby through Getty, I think, but it wasnt a Getty photographer. I think it was Brad who took them.

Have you ever had a client who wanted the paparazzi to catch them naked?

I have not. I once worked with a client  I cant tell you the name  but he had some, not full-frontal, but certainly racy photos taken by the paparazzi. He ended up buying them himself, to stop them from coming out.

How did that process work?

Before theyre sold to a magazine, the photo agency gets in touch with the publicists, the managers, and then the client. In that case, he can actually buy the pictures himself.

How much do you think Orlando would have paid, if hed wanted to buy his photos himself?

I think theyd want $50,000 or $60,000, because thats probably what theyd make by selling them through a wire.

You know, the same day Orlando Blooms naked pictures were published, August 3, he was photographed playing with Katy Perrys boobs in the ocean. I was trying to calculate the time zones, to see if it was before or after the photos went public. But he probably knew before they went up?

Yes, he would have known. Before any magazine printed them, they would have called for comment, so he definitely would have known.

That makes me like him more! He has a sense of humor. Even the penis pictures are hilarious  he climbed rocks spread-eagle with his dick out.

What I know about Orlando from friends and sources is that hes a pretty hippie, laid-back, sort of nudist type of guy. I think hes very free with nature. Hes comfortable in his own skin. I dont think he was necessarily flashing that thing around to get attention, like Bieber. Orlando is the guy who just doesnt care. Katy is in a bathing suit, but he couldnt care less. His dick is there on her shoulder. And you know, he hasnt threatened any lawsuits. No ones had legal letters telling us to take the photos down. Orlandos like, Fuck, you saw my dick. Who cares?

It seems like every time a paparazzi full-frontal happens, the original uncensored photos end up on Twitter. How does that happen?

Well, when theyre sent to the photo agency, when theyre sent to the publication, you get the original picture. So the original photograph also exists on the server at the Daily News, which Im sure gets emailed to friends and family and everybody else. And the agencies sell photos to different territories, too. If you sell it to someone in France, for instance, the rules may be more liberal than ours. French outlets, I think, can run naked images. All it takes is one person on Twitter in Paris to put that picture up, and boom, its gone.

Do you think Biebers first dick pic, the one in Bora Bora taken by someone on a boat with a telephoto lens, was staged?

No, I think that one wasnt. [The photos] have a grainy quality, and for Justin to have set that up wouldve been so difficult. I think somebody in Bora Bora knew the house he was in and caught him. Those are more like the Kate Middleton pictures that were taken from two miles away. My sources told me that he was going to sue, until they saw what a positive impact the photos had. Then they didnt care. And now Biebers learnt himself a lesson. Celebrities learn very quickly. Once celebrities know how to get attention, they go back to the same well over and over and over again. Kim Kardashian? Its nakedness. Donald Trump? Its saying something outrageous.

So we should expect to see more of Biebers dick?

More and more. Its going to get to the point where were almost bored of Biebers willy. As for other stars out there now  if youre well-endowed or if you even have a decent dick you feel good about and your album is coming out this week and nobody cares? Well, Id get myself to Jones Beach. Its much easier than doing a junket for ten hours to talk about a CD. Why, look at Lenny Kravitz. That was the best thing to happen to Lenny. I hadnt spoken about or thought about him in five years, and suddenly I was watching that video on a loop.

You can even edit them. One of the celebrities I worked with  and I didnt know this until I saw her do it  but she had a password to WireImage. They gave her a password as if she were, like, a member of WireImages staff. They would upload the pictures they took of her, after she tipped them off, and then she would go on with a password and delete ones where she didnt like her cheeks, or her boobs, or her hair. Now someone as powerful as Bieber, he could have passwords to all of the sites. Or his manager, Scooter, probably.

Another interesting thing about those recent pictures of Bieber, is that there are three different sizes on the internet. Ill send you the picture. When I was looking at them to post on Naughty Gossip, I was like, Oh my goodness. He looks much bigger in this picture. Then I put all three next to each and other, and realized: Somebodys Photoshopped two of these and leaked them. I had to go back to the Bora Bora pictures to see which one was the real him.

Wow. Although if youre staging a dick pic, you can also stage how your dick looks.

Yes. Fluff. No cold bathtubs.

I do want to say for the record, and please repeat it to any male celebrities you know: Whenever any of them wants to show his penis, I promise to say nice things about it. There will always be at least one member of the press complimenting that penis, both as a means for encouraging more penises, and because I really do

Im sorry to cut you off, Maureen, but Ive got to take another call.

believe that all penises are special. Good-bye!



This interview has been edited and condensed.
I went quickly behind her and said, 'I love your' Before I could say 'work', she turned and said, 'Get lost!'



This is cracking me up.

Reply

Thread

Link

lol at this click-bait.

As soon as I read this "She was on the phone and she was crying. I went quickly behind her and said, 'I love your' Before I could say 'work', she turned and said, 'Get lost!' "

Srsly dude? You thought that was the moment to run up to her and gush?

Reply

Thread

Link

I didn't intend it as clickbait. It's an honest title.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

No, it's telling the truth



it's not honest

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lol no worries. It was more what the title was implying; I felt like I was going to read something about what an asshole she was but then I read it and I was like oh but that was a perfectly reasonable response.



Edited at 2016-08-22 02:02 am (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

He saw her crying and just went up to her. Like....dude no

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

she looks like a kid who's wearing her grandmother's clothes



Reply

Thread

Link

Dior sucks

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Why would you try to talk to anyone who is (a) on the phone, (b) crying, or (c) both?!



Edited at 2016-08-21 11:52 pm (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

i mean, what did he expect??

Reply

Thread

Link

lol well he deserved that

Reply

Thread

Link

Correct response tbh maybe someone crying on the phone is NOT an invitation to admire them.

Reply

Thread

Link

I want to like her buts the shit she has said makes me feel like she is just beyond out of touch. being in the business from such a young age must be really hard and i know thats all she knows but im just not a fan. I hope she's learned from the criticism she's faced.

Reply

Thread

Link

its always awkward when people cry in public, like you dont know if u should try and comfort/see they're ok or just pretend its not happening.

Reply

Thread

Link

I always pretend like it's not happening lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i do too but then i feel bad lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

My boyfriend and I were on vacation and we got into a little spat while walking around and couldn't find this really good restaurant we wanted. I cry at the drop of the hat and just kept crying because he kept trying to talk to me about it. When we finally found the restaurant and went in, I was still crying (just silent tears, not bawling) but I was so embarrassed and just wanted everyone to ignore me.

So long story short, I always ignore them because I would want to be ignored (unless they are clearly in distress and need help).

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Once when I got on the bus, there was this young lady crying hard while everyone ignored her. So I sat beside her and asked if she was alright, if she needed help etc etc. She thanked and said no. Well, turns out she studied in the same UNI as me, and was also my sister friend. Way, way later my sister said she told her that me showing support to her in that moment helped her a lot. It was such a small thing, but it does bring comfort to some people.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

My mom told me that when I was a baby, she sent me off to live with my aunt for a year so she could continue to work on her PhD. So after my dad and I got on the plane my mom kept crying and crying, and this Scottish guy saw her crying so he went up to her and hugged her and kept saying "it's okay, it's okay."

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Yeah, I remember seeing this woman crying on the subway once and I didn't say anything to her but I feel like I should have asked if she was okay.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i asked an old woman if she was okay bc she was crying loudly on the bus and she pinched me in the rib. so now i;ll just pretend it isn't happening if i come across it again lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I lost my last $50 in town when I was going through hard financial times and a homeless man approached me and comforted me, it was so sweet. Then on the bus ride home I was sobbing pretty hard because that money was supposed to get me through the next week and some woman asked me if I was going to be ok and I was really appreciative that she didn't just ignore me. I guess it depends on the person, I always ask people if they're alright, it doesn't hurt and maybe they're not ok I can help somehow? It's tricky though.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

weren't there rumors of her ending her marriage

Reply

Thread

Link

I feel like I remember that, possibly because she was photographed without her wedding ring? but I don't remember for sure.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lol she was crying, that is not the time to talk to someone



that being said, these snippets are actually kind of nice from her. i also think she looks SO teeny in those photos and the clothes look so big? idk.

Reply

Thread

Link

Why the fuck would you bug someone who was crying in public. It's not even like he asked if she was OK. jfc

Reply

Thread

Link

Oop, I wasn't trying ot make Natalie out to be a bitch or anything, I think her response to that guy was perfect.

Reply

Thread

Link

LMAO Ranbir Kapoor is a douchecanoe so I am not surprised. Know someone who had to hang out with him while he was shooting in NYC and he is the absolute fucking worst.

Reply

Thread

Link

tell us more

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

He was incredibly rude to the hotel staff. Would not talk to them. Everyone had to go through his assistant. My friend is a cousin of one of his costars. He wanted to go clubbing but he made everyone fucking miserable because he had a fight with his gf over something. So everyone had to come back because he didn't feel like hanging out. Just plain rude as fuck to people and in general shit to his fans. Just very immature. Also he has a reputation of being incredibly controlling boyfriend and everything needs to be OK-ed by him.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

yass now I can justify my irrational hatred

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

did you see his latest interview? he looked completely shaken up by his recent flops. it was quite satisfying tbh, he needed a reality check after all that 'best actor of his generation' hype

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

he might not have noticed she was crying until she turned around?

Reply

Thread

Link
his caption said 'people have been asking where we're registered' so i took that as fans were asking, which is insane. she's a billionaire.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Fans were asking.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

he promoted this registry charties on his tv show (@midnight) as well.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Aside from whether or not they actually expect fans to donate on their accord, this is also just publicity for the charities...

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

awesome, happy for them both. i like her dress. granted i would never wear it, but it's pretty. i heard the bethylers were pissed off about these two for some reason. idgi.

Reply

Thread

Link

beth fans from twd.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

i mean, they're mad about everything that's not bethyl, but why this real life couple??

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

iirc they were mad because he and his wife took some photos in the Daryl carrying Beth's body out of the hospital pose and since he doesn't ship Bethyl (like a normal person) they felt they were being made fun of lmao

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

He looks really good for 44.



She looks like a basic white girl...the bar for models are super low i guess.

Reply

Thread

Link

she doesn't need to be super beautiful, she's super fucking rich.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Well her family owns Elle, Cosmo, MarieClaire, Bazaar and a million more magazines so...

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

hmmmm idk i wouldn't call kidnappings and brainwashings and bank robberies your standard basic white girl stuff tbh

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

lol why am I not surprised to see comments calling her basic when he's fug as all hell. Never change ontd.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

lol her mom's Patty Hearst. Nothing basic about this girl.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I actually think Lydia is pretty.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

he's really grown into his looks tbh. he often pokes fun at his younger self on @midnight

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I remember Naomi fighting with her on their reality show. lmao

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

these look like an editorial for Prom

Reply

Thread

Link

I feel like he just started dating her last year.

Reply

Thread

Link

I feel like she was dating Kevin Connelly and then was all of the sudden engaged to this guy but apparently she broke up with the former over two years ago lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Didn't they though? He was in with that one cosplayer and then they broke up and the next week he was with Hearst and they were engaged not long after.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I do like wedding dresses with color. Her's is alright on the color and did look better in black and white, but it looks like it has pretty details and yay for sleeves!

Reply

Thread

Link

im not sure if its the grey that i liked in the black and white or the length. in a photo posted by a ~banned source its flood pant length at the front which threw me off.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

ha I vividly remember in the documentary about Valentino he said something like, 'gowns that show the ankles are the ugliest things on earth. kill me if I ever make a gown like that.'

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

good lord, i had to submit this post four times and when it finally gets posted, the pics are copied three times. life is hard



they weirdly had a cowboy theme and the only photo i could find so far was of Josh McDermitt

Reply

Thread

Link

yikes that dress

Reply

Thread

Link

mte that's terrible

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Wow I had no idea Chris Hardwick was 44.



OP seems kind of bitter tho.

Reply

Thread

Link

....huh? how do i sound bitter?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Bitter Betty

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i remember watching him as a child on SINGLED OUT with jenny mccarthy.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I was kind of shocked to see that age, too - I honestly thought he was in his mid-30s. But then I remembered that he and Wil Wheaton were roommates in college and Wil was on Star Trek:TNG as a teenager 30 years ago, so he must be that old.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Good luck girl.

Reply

Thread

Link

I remember her from a random gossip girl episode.

Reply

Thread

Link

Lol one of chucks conquests

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Good luck with that

Reply

Thread

Link

Why you sound petty tho?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

because marriages between celebrities never work out

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i remember my brain exploding when i connected the girl he dated before her as the same girl who had naked homegrown pictures all over somethingawful years and years ago. i think her username was pilot or something like that.



i think lydia and chris look like an odd couple but whatever, mazel tov!

Reply

Thread

Link

I only remember Chloe Dykstra recently.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Yup, that's her. At the time she was just a model and trying to become an actress. Granted, this was almost 10 years ago now.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Her hair is pretty. I'm not sure if I like her dress but I like the one in the first pic a lot lol. Also if you'd told me she is closer to his age I'd believe it.

Reply

Thread

Link

I thought she was older than 31 but just because she's been around forever

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I think they're so cute together and was following their hashtag for details on the wedding, lmao. I only saw cute hangers. They're adorable, etc, etc. Chris celebrated his bachelor party at Disneyland, and his shows have been pre-recorded for the next two weeks, which is cool.

Reply

Thread

Link

He's got a Haunted Mansion phone case... Totally noticed it on @midnight, not some sort of creeper. Honest.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

didn't he get some legit haunted mansion stuff earlier, too?

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

he has good taste

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link
What a problem to have? !





Reply

Thread

Link

i WISH this was the extent of the troubles people have with my name

Reply

Thread

Link

Why publicly admit this?

Reply

Thread

Link

Yeah my italian last name always gets butchered.





"I called the head of apple..." lol I immediately thought of kanye saying "I called the head of Payless"

Reply

Thread

Link

Same lol. My Italian name isn't very common, but it's (at least to me) decently easy to pronounce and people still fuck it up. I've gotten pronunciations that make NO SENSE with the spelling of it.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Lmao same here. And often times ppl are adding xtra letters too as if needs any more.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

yeah my brother had to change the name on his phone to d no because siri kept pronouncing it like dinosaur

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

where's that one user people always call caroline but is named carolina who lives on carolina street in fucking north?/south? carolina



Edited at 2016-08-22 01:20 am (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

I have a simple name, but one of my best friends is Mexican and her name is too. Siri from 3 years ago butchered that shit. Whenever I was like "call Alicia" or "text Alicia," (think Silverstone) I got nothing. I tried every pronunciation I could think of. She's now "baby shot" in my phone.

Reply

Thread

Link

To have that kind of power. One can only dream.

Reply

Thread

Link

same hahaha and the lack of response everyone just like "..." and her slow, dawning realization that she's lost it

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

people have no chill omg





Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

what the hell was that other vid

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Fucking blanquitos.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

What is the point of the 2nd video on the right??





Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

what @ the other video

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

WHY LMAO

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

She sounds like a Maria Bamford character! LOL

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

That woman seems mentally ill so I dunno how to judge that outburst and that video on the right is so sad :(

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

LOL omg this never fails to make me laugh and then cry because that woman was probably one of the 10 of the same I'd get every damn shift at the Apple Store. I do not miss this at all.





wtf is the right side tho goddammn

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

She must have a lot of free time.

Reply

Thread

Link

I felt so stupid i thought she meant the first s, not the s in sand, lol.

Reply

Thread

Link

Lmao I did too until I read this comment



I was so confused lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

omg me too i was like how else could you say it????

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lol yes



I kept making SSsssSSssss sounds like I'm speaking Parseltongue trying to figure it out

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Yeah, I thought she meant we should pronounce the first s like the s in sand XD

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I actually had to hear siri say it myself before I understood lol.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

omg i did too. i kept saying her name out loud wondering how i was getting it wrong

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

My name gets mispronounced frequently. Also my last name is always flagged as misspelled or incorrect on Microsoft Word.

Reply

Thread

Link

boo microsoft word but you know you can add words to the dictionary on there? just add it in every single computer you have ever/will ever use AND NEVER GIVE UP

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

my first name is Gillian so the story of my life is people fucking up my name

i have a complicated last name too so that's super fun



literally whenever i go to a coffee shop and they ask my name, 90% of the time they write down:

julian

julia

juliette

julie



JULIAN IS A BOY'S NAME FFS.



one time i said 'gill' bc i thought it would be easier and bitch wrote "michelle"

Reply

Thread

Link

Lmao, that sucks.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

My name is an old Scottish spelling of a Disney princess's name so I definitely know what it's like to have my name pronounced wrong.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

are you secretly Merida!?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lmao at Michelle. I once told them my name was Louise and the woman wrote down Luiz.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Im geeking

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

then there's people like gillian jacobs confusing the fuck out of the rest of us with that hard G

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I've given up introducng myself as Gill because peopke always think I said 'Jo'. I say Gillian now cos the extra syllables give them more time to figure out what I'm saying.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i always get called emile if people are reading my name bc they miss the second 'i' (emilie) which is pronounced exactly like emily lol but mum refused to use the spelling w/ a 'y' bc she said it looked angry on paper

Reply

Thread

Link
Cher is so adorable. My favorite legend.

Reply

Thread

Link

She's racist scum.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

mte chad's Cher is the best omg. I love the vid of Cher watching Chad as Cher lmao it's trippy. "I'm a fucking Oscar winner!"

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Do you have a link for the video?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

...it's really only bad because it looks like she got more plastix in her face. I mean...when she was on All Stars it was pretty apparent that it was time for her to stop.... and it looks...like...she...didn't.



But I also really like her Celine Dion too! I love Chad!!!!!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I don't know why I love Cher, but I do. I don't even like her music.



Semi-OT for a second: I commented a month or so ago that I came out as bisexual and my boyfriend's mother was being very difficult about it. Well, it's been two months now and she still won't talk to me or acknowledge me. I talked to my mum about it last night and my mum said "Well, you can understand where she's coming from, can't you? She loves her son and now she's worried you might cheat on him or leave him." I wanted to scream and hang up. Bisexual = greedy cheating bitch who needs one of each, right?



Edited at 2016-08-22 12:37 pm (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

well this is one of the reasons to love her lol



and damn I'm really sorry about that bb :( how does being bisexual = greater risk suddenly for cheating or something omfg. news flash!!!!! ppl cheat. all types of people. it literally does not matter what your sexuality is, jfc. like...



Edited at 2016-08-22 12:47 pm (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Goddamn, that sucks. I feel like that way of thinking is very common in the older generation - I don't know how old your boyfriend's mother is, but my mom is in her 50's and I will probably never come out to her because even though she okay with homosexuality, she thinks bisexuality is literally disgusting and "just an excuse to whore around" =/ I hope things work their way out bb!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

this is most certainly not confined to the older generation as any post on bisexuals on ONTD will let you know with a quickness

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

lmao how are you any more likely to cheat ?! than you were a month ago, when she didn't know, but you were still bisexual!



god people seriously lack logic

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Unfortunately, people are awful, so if you don't want to cut her of your life, you'll need to wait for her to make peace with it (bah) and then act like you were the one in the wrong. Years later (sooner if the woman's more mature), she may admit she was an ass to you.



Otherwise, ignore her and/or let your bf deal with her. It's not your obligation to sweeten up someone that is being plain hateful (imo).



Also, I hope your mum is more supportive than that. :(

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Tbh you should've kept it to yourself.



That is something you must share with your boyfriend but not your in-laws.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

You have always been bisexual, does she think that you were waiting to come out to her so you can start humping everything that moves? Straights are so tiring.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

JFC. I mean, if you're straight there are 3.5 billion people out there for you to cheat with. That's more than enough opportunity if you're inclined to cheat, straight people do it all the time.



Sorry your BF's mom sucks.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

QUEEN CHAD

Reply

Thread

Link

omg im only here for the chad gif tbh

Reply

Thread

Link



Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

Reply

Thread

Link

I can't believe she has an Oscar.

Reply

Thread

Link

Moonstruck is one of my favorite movies so I'm totally on board with it :)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

that's amore...



it makes me so mad when the mom forgives that asshole in the end and doesn't get revenge on him with the pathetic professor. he doesn't deserve a wife like that. they depict the men as such pathetic puppy infantile trash and I LOVE IT!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I love Cher but I just can't get into Moonstruck it's so boring to me. The oscar should of gone to Glenn Close for Fatal Attraction. Cher should of instead gotten nominated and won for Mask.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I LOVE that Chad gif!

Reply

Thread

Link















how old is she? 80?

Reply

Thread

Link

Turned 70 in May.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

no lmao?



it's more like she gets away with it because it's like wow here's someone who has literally dedicated her entire career to being an advocate and ally for the lgbt* community way before it was acceptable to do so and even in to her old age she's using her celebrity as a platform to talk about political and social issues



the emojis are just icing on the cake tbqh

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

oh you're back

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

she's so fucking iconic, i love her

Reply

Thread

Link

Love her crazy ass. Always have, always will.

Reply

Thread

Link

I was watching part of Moonstruck recently and her hair is just amazing in it.

Reply

Thread

Link
ugh these born again nutjobs sound like some of my hs facebook "friends" from back home who are getting knocked up!



Edited at 2016-08-22 08:32 pm (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

Damn, I just remembered my best friend in hs totally turned into one of those people. I usually just ignore those posts of hers.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Omg they're born again?! Those are the worst ones!



Tbh I don't trust Latinos who aren't Catholic.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

as a latina who didn't grow up catholic.











same.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Catholic Latina here...same.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Does that include Sephardic Jews located throughout Latin America and the rest of the world b/c...

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

same

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I'm not even Catholic anymore but same lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Not here for anyone naming their male babies any variation of king. Girl, bye.

Reply

Thread

Link

yikes

Reply

Thread

Link

I know someone named Ocean so this isn't totally weird to me tbh





But also Ocean King? Why not just.... Neptune or Triton or Poseidon



Edited at 2016-08-22 08:34 pm (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

Jupiter Royalty

Tsunami Prince



Edited at 2016-08-22 08:35 pm (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

tsunami prince, LMAO, i just busted out laughing at my desk.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Jupiter Ascending Jones

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Splash Brother

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Lmao

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i actually like the name Ocean even tho its weird lol. Ocean King just sounds fucking ridiculous tho.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

ocean is a kinda cool ~alternative~ bb name imo, i don't mind it (for what it is)



'king' is just unnecessary

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Poseidon would be an intimidating name omg

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Triton is kind of a badass name tbh.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Literally came in just to ask why they didn't want to name him Poseidon.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

They should have just named him Namor and called it a day.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

who and who had a baby named what? who even cares



Reply

Thread

Link

Just call him O.K.



Does that make it seem less awkward? Probably not.

Reply

Thread

Link

Whaaa?? That explanation is ridiculous. As is the name.

Reply

Thread

Link

Ocean King sounds like the off brand version of tuna.

Reply

Thread

Link

"is this chicken or fish? I know it's tuna but it says chicken of the sea.."

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lmaooo

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lol everytime i eat tuna i have to quote this

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

10 years later or whatever and I still don't understand why this is so funny.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Or on a box of fish sticks.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I think King is cute but Ocean? Also it's so sad how little BTR guys have done post-career "hiatus" aka break up.

Reply

Thread

Link

kendall's music is actually awful

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

True shit

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

It really does. James' stuff is no better.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

as someone who's (unwillingly) been to a Heffron Drive show, ia lmao

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

it is SO bad

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

logan's new look is awful and he's been teasing new music for like............. 84 years now. yawn



is he still with alexa's sister?



Edited at 2016-08-22 08:44 pm (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I think it's the other way around, lol.





Ocean is cute(kind of hippydippy sounding but still kind of cool) but King??? Yikes, imagine telling someone your name was king??? They'd think it was just some kind of weird joke and they you were a stuck up asshole. lol

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I miss BTR so much, I LOVE their music. It's a real pick-me-up! Also I loved their show.



I think James and Logan had the best voices. I don't follow their careers now, but I think they should reunite!

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Between that first/middle name and their blended last name... good lord lol

Reply

Thread

Link





I'm gonna name my kid Cattle, because they all died during one of the plagues of Egypt. wait...they're naming him Ocean because god created the ocean? lmao, this fucking reach and half.I'm gonna name my kid Cattle, because they all died during one of the plagues of Egypt. #PraiseBe

Reply

Thread

Link

lmao

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

cackling

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

But why stop there? didn't god create titties too?



LOCUST BOOB.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

CATTLE LOCUST BLOOD RIVER!

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

PainAndSuffering PenaVega tbh

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I'm laughing so hard, I blame the antibiotics

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

like... don't Christians think God created everything?

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Would you like to consider River of Blood instead? Or Death of the First Born?



It's such shitty reasoning. If you really believe God created everything, then you can pick anything to name your kid after. And I've never seen a translation that said ocean instead of sea. They should have just gone with Ocean and not bothered with the explanation.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link
It was just okay.

Brave was better tbqh.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Brave was straight up shit lol

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Omg no. Brave is one of the worst films that have ever existed. They had so much potential and it was the very worst, ugh.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I rewatched Brave and I like it more, it's screenplay is still shit.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Brave is their worst movie. It went absolutely nowhere

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

whatevs i liked brave!

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

It was an awesome concept that went nowhere

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Really? I can't watch the Bing Bong scene without crying.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

thank you!! I didn't understand it either. The only thing I cried over was BingBong. But other than that, nada.



I do love Mindy Kaling and she and Phyllis Smith reuniting for the film, tickled me!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Aww I thought it was so adorable, and an interesting and unique concept. I became an emotional wreck during the BingBong scene.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Same. I really didn't like it :\

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

mte

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Same. It seems almost heretical to give it anything but 1000% glowing praise, but I thought it was just okay.



Good, but just okay.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I feel like it's probably a great movie for little kids to learn to understand and articulate their feelings, but as an adult, it was just okay to me.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I enjoyed it, but it ~spoke to me as someone who moved around a TON growing up. That said, I don't think it's among Pixar's best.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Based on IMDB rankings tho?

Reply

Thread

Link

MTE, lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

the rankings on IMDB are determined pretty much only by nerdy adult white men, so I wouldn't trust it for "best" family movies, tbh

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

MTE, completely unreliable source.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link





I know now that Lion King will forever be one of my favorite films. It's so good.

Reply

Thread

Link

Same, I love it.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I've never seen this movie all the way through...

I've seen the play though...



Edited at 2016-08-22 10:34 pm (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

it really is a lovely watch and the score is fantastic. it's a good Sunday afternoon duvet movie.



I saw the play in London and again in Dublin. was ugly crying by the end of Circle of Life in Dublin lol, it was so good!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

And so beautiful.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Same it really is fantastic.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

This gif is messing me up I'm so homesick rn omg :'(

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i LOVE Spirited Away and i'm happy it's #1, even if some parts were really creepy to me as a child lol

Reply

Thread

Link

I was about to be pissed the Lion King wasn't number one, but I can handle this as number one.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Ive been meaning to watch that movie lately since I haven't watched that movie since I was a kid, but I remember some scenes so vividly that creeped me out lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

same, i watched it when i was younger and liked it, i keep meaning to watch it again

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

actually as a child i thought all of it was great but as an adult a lot of it is super creepy to me now lmao

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I just watched that film again last night. It's such a beautiful movie - especially the train journey scene with the soundtrack in the background, that's one of my favourite parts <3

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

tbh a kids' movie with creepy scenes in it is a good one to me.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

The older I get, the more I like a lot of kids movies over adult movies.

Reply

Thread

Link

i agree with this a lot. I usually leave kids movies feeling really entertained.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Agreed. They have a lot of heart.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i love this comment. that's exactly it.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Me too! Plus I've generally found less sexist bullshit in kids' stuff than adults' stuff. Which isn't to say it doesn't exist, but a lot of Disney princess movies actually gave me some refuge in a world of sausage-fest movies.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

IA they're often a lot more serious and meaningful than 'adult' movies.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Um, where is A Goofy Movie?

Reply

Thread

Link

IA. It's so perfect

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

its still one of my top 5 fave disney movies tbh

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

omg one of the bests

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

and the sequel tbqh

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link



also, this completely changed my perspective on it +1also, this completely changed my perspective on it http://blacknerdproblems.com/20-years-ago-a-goofy-movie-became-the-blackest-most-underrated-nerd-classic-of-all-time/

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

It's animated perfection

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

It's so underrated, I love that movie

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

FR! A Goofy Movie is e v e r y t h i n g



Edited at 2016-08-22 11:19 pm (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

SO underrated.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Off somewhere being underated smh

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

That movie is awesome. I had the soundtrack on cassette when I was a kid. I want it again because the music was so awesome.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Oh man, Inside Out ruined me. I expected harmless fun but got punched in the face by raw emotions instead. Bing Bong forever <3

Reply

Thread

Link

Inside Out is one of the most emotional movies ever! I lose it every time when Riley's friend from her old house made a new friend. I totally had that happen to me at that age and the depicted the emotion so well.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I had low expectations when I went to see it and ended up a crying mess by the end of the movie.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I cried like three times lmao.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Hell, I cried at the Lava short before the film even started.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I was full ugly-sobbing at inside out. i've been dealing with depression and anxiety on a slow build since i was about nine. It started off back then as waking up each morning feeling heavy and just plain sad, crying in class when i felt put on the spot to answer questions, losing sleep, worrying about everything when i was around that age.



watching riley as a tween struggling with her emotions really smacked me in the face. I'd never seen a movie like that before where past!me might have recognised herself a little and maybe not felt so ashamed.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Computer animated movies are so "cold" IMO. I vastly prefer the older ones. My faves are Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, Anastasia and All dogs go to Heaven.

Reply

Thread

Link

That's why I liked Princess and the Frog, or part of why.

Man, they really did that movie dirty.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I would have liked that movie more if it weren't for the stupid frogs.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

It's not to say that a 3D animated movie can't be entertaining or of good quality, but I agree with them feeling cold. There's just something about 2D that can't be replaced or replicated.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I think this is part of why I like Tangled so much more than a lot of other recent (3D) animated movies; the warm colour pallet and upbeat energy overrode the distance and coldness of the computer animation.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I totally agree. I miss 2D and I wish it would make a comeback in popularity. I love the ones you listed, as well as The Lion King, The Great Mouse Detective, Robin Hood, An American Tail and of course The Little Mermaid... I mean I could go on and list all the Disney 2D movies lol. I also really liked Thumbelina as a kid but not as much when I watched it more recently.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Saw Kubo and The Two Strings over the weekend. Loved it. Probably one of the best movies of the year.

Reply

Thread

Link

It's that good?! Damn I may watch it.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I saw very good reviews for it and thought to give it a try.



It was like 95% on RT and 85% on MC.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

It was so good. Laika is the only one making different types of animated movies nowadays

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

It was a really good film, you can tell a lot of effort and heart went into creating it. I'm a little bitter that Laika struggles (comparatively speaking) while shit like 'The Secret Life of Pets' does so well. Silly thing to be bothered by, but dammit, kids deserve quality entertainment to!



Edited at 2016-08-22 09:36 pm (UTC)

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I'm generally not a fan of stop motion, but I really want to see this one.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I can't wait to see this movie. I have a big love for stop-motion films and the trailer looked awesome :D

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

God yes, I got so many chills watching it.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

up and wall-e above toy story????? chill

Reply

Thread

Link

IA, I think Toy Story is still the best Pixar movie

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Yeah, I wasn't fond of Up or Wall-E.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I feel like the only one, but I fucking hated Toy Story & Lion King. I was so bored when I saw them in the theater. Everyone else seems to rave about them and I just don't get it.

Reply

Thread

Link

I think The Lion King is great, but as I've gotten older, I've grown to like Bambi a little more

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Nah, I hated Bambi as well. I've never been a big Disney fan, I'll watch old school Winnie the Pooh any day tho. I think I still have some on VHS.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I think I only grew to appreciate Bambi as an adult after I learned about how much effort went into the film, and I could tell that the animators made such a strong effort to make the animals look and move like actual forest creatures (Lady and the Tramp has that quality to, the characters all seem very 'dog,' not so much in something like Oliver and Company). It's a lovely little film.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I had to rewatch Lion King this year and I like it a lot more. Still not as good as the second one but enjoyable to me.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I only watched The Lion King once when I was a kid and I have no desires of revisiting it.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I think Toy Story is vastly overrated. As with Lion King and Finding Nemo.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

i can't fucking stand toy story. i've never liked it even as a kid.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I watched Finding Dory last week and was so disappointing



Nemo was so poignant, but this was just basic. It was like the difference between an old episode of the simpsons and a new one.

Reply

Thread

Link

This description fits.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Beauty and the Beast will always be my number one fave. Cannot wait for Emma Watson to fuck it all up.

Reply

Thread

Link

LOL, this :/

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

jesus, i forgot that was a thing that is happening. deliver us from evil,tbh.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Beauty and the Beast is so good!



ia agree that Emma's not right for it :[ someone mentioned they'd rather see Emmy Rossum in the role, and now I really wish it had been cast that way *sigh*

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

LMAO! Imagine what that ONTD post will be.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

ditto on everything

like... Emma Watson though? Girl is like cardboard!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I love Beauty and the Beast <3 One of my first midi mp3 ringtones back in the day was tale as old as time :'D

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

it's my go-to movie for when i'm miserable and need to curl up under a blanket and chill out with some beautiful animation

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lmao before i paid attention to the MCU, my friends asked if i wanted to go see guardians of the galaxy and i tagged along bc i was bored and i remember asking if it was a sequel to rise of the guardians and they were just joking and said yes, but i just kind of took it seriously. it took me like half an hour before i was like "i thought rise of the guardians was a cartoon? why is this live action?"

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

Some of that animation literally blew my mind like I couldn't even comprehend what I was seeing, sad there's no sequel :(

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link
some people dont deserve to be rich

Reply

Thread

Link

Lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lol perfect first comment

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Shhhhhh they're helping the economy by spending and giving us some weird shit to look at as a plus.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

And here I am saving every penny to try to buy a townhome someday.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Like the saying goes: If you want to know what God thinks of money, look who He gives it to.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

why wasn't i invited i know all the lines

Reply

Thread

Link

what the hell is this

Reply

Thread

Link

Like Sir Ian would go to some flop's wedding.

Reply

Thread

Link

ngl, I love the look of that wedding, as insanely ott geeky as it is. It's not what I would personally choose to do (even if I had gobs of money), but it would be fun to attend.



Edited at 2016-08-22 09:31 pm (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

yeah when the news of the wedding came out, i'm pretty sure i remember that guests were given costumes for the wedding

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

They actually got the costume designer from Lord of the Rings to do them, too.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

yeah I love it, actually

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

this is me - not my style at all, but would probably really enjoy it lol

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

She's not even full Yuna, she's wearing the standard White Mage robe. What kind of ridiculous mixing.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

LOL SAME

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

nnn squall would never marry yuna. He loves seifer too much. He must be getting married to yuna for political reasons.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Ok it looks tacky but also fun. I would go to a themed wedding in a heartbeat

Reply

Thread

Link

I forgot doesn't Sean Parker look like Justin Timberlake. I also always picture Jesse Eisenberg when I read about Mark Zuckerberg

Reply

Thread

Link

Isn't that the wedding where they destroyed a bunch of redwoods?



Smh

Reply

Thread

Link

Yes, those assholes

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Oh :(

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

where did they marry?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

big sur

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

In Big Sur, CA http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/photos-sean-parker-wedding

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Ew fuck them then.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Yes, I came in to say I remember this wedding >( Should have been fined way more

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

oh lol fuck, then nevermind

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

WTF.



So they should've got Saruman instead of Gandalf then. Assholes.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

F**king rich a**holes.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lmao what the hell, i'm glad he turned it down

i dont even watch those movies but ian mckellen is waaay too good to be some prop at a wedding

Reply

Thread

Link

1 billion for a wedding? They better stay married for eternity

Reply

Thread

Link

They deserve to fail at everything.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I think a good chunk actually went to paying fines to California for destroying the natural environment.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Lmao. I don't blame him. This entire event looked so fucking embarrassing.

Reply

Thread

Link

1.) good, 1m isn't enough money for that buffoonery and degradation

2.) that gif... is that person wearing a SeeD formal uniform? actually, is that supposed to be squall?



Edited at 2016-08-22 09:33 pm (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

he's got lionheart, i think its supposed to be squall.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Didn't that couple's wedding cause irreparable damage to a nature preserve?



I fucking love that gif tho!

Reply

Thread

Link

yup, I actually went there after the wedding (quite a few months after), and I didn't realize until other hikers informed me that the bare patch of forest of where the wedding took place.



It was SUPER obvious, like some big spacecraft had plopped its butt in the middle of the forest.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

That is so shitty.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

fuck them

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

damn wtf :(

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link
A new strategic axis is forming in the Middle East, and this axis could play a transformative role in the region, upsetting the longstanding balance of power. Ankara has apologized to Moscow for the shooting down of a fighter plane last year. Iran and Russia have both condemned the July coup attempt in Turkey. The three countries are now negotiating a joint involvement in Syria. Thats a powerful alliance of two major oil nations, and one country that sees itself as a major energy hub.

Turkeys turn to Moscow in the wake of the 15 July coup attempt by the military was taken by many to be an emotional or at least demonstrative gesture prompted by allegations that the U.S. was involved in the event. Ankara claimed the coup was organized by Fethullah Gulen, an exiled scholar living in the U.S.

Some Turkey experts, however, argue that this thawing of relations between Ankara and Moscow (and Tehran) and the cooling off between Europe and the U.S. is a carefully thought-out strategy.

Turkeys resentment towards the European Union is nothing new. Erdogan has been vocal about his negative reactions to some requirements in Turkeys EU accession process. He is also in a position to pull the strings on much of Europes migrant policy, and is making good use of this position. What Turkeys President has made even better use of is the anti-Western rhetoric and the visions of a great-again Turkey. The former has been instrumental in diverting public attention away from a lawsuit in Italy against his son for money laundering.

Apparently, the Greater Turkey vision cannot be realized with the EU constantly demanding things from Ankara that Ankara does not want to do, such as synchronizing its anti-terrorism policies with the EU, for example. It can, however, be realized if Turkey gets on the anti-West bandwagon driven by Russia and Iran, both survivors from Western sanctions, and both having their own regional ambitions.

Turkey has already made the first step in distancing itself from its current allies, and this step was the purge Erdogan launched following the coup, which, as political scholar A. Kadir Yildirim notes, has led to the removal of almost half of the senior officers in the army, most of them pro-NATO. This is a clear sign that the country, which boasts the second-largest army in the alliance, is on a divergent course. Related: Saudis Allow Foreign Investors to Buy Aramco IPO Shares

The second step is the talks with Moscow and Tehran on a range of topics, including Syria. Back in June, straight after Erdogan apologized for the Russian plane shooting, Russia and Turkey resumed talks about the Turkish stream project, which will transport 63 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually. With Russia and Turkey acting together, Europe will have little left to do but continue to be dependent on energy coming from countries it doesnt really like and cannot really influence in a favorable direction. Russia has the oil and the gas, and Turkey has the pipelines and the Bosphorus, where 3 percent of global oil exports pass every day.

Add to the equation Iran, with its own huge oil and gas reserves, and willingjust like Turkeyto overlook their differences in opinion on Bashar Assad, and a new picture of the Middle East emerges. A picture where Saudi Arabias (and its ally, the U.S.) strategic interests will no longer be the tone-setting ones in the region.

This picture, its worth noting, is not a given. Foreign policy is dynamic, priorities change, so the new three-way partnership is not yet sealed. If it becomes a reality, however, it can cause much headache for geopolitical planners in the West.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The Niger Delta Avengers have agreed to cease their attacks on oil production and transportation infrastructure after prolonged negotiations with the federal government of Nigeria. The ceasefire, however, is conditional, and talks will continue, the group announced.

The condition that the NDA has laid out for the federal government is that it stops harassing innocent citizens, especially members of the Ijaw community in the Delta, which a lot of members of militant groups come from.

Though the news of the ceasefire offers some hope for Nigerias battered economywith daily oil output slashed by between 700,000 and 900,000 bpd, according to different estimatesthe likelihood of it keeping is not great, observers warn. As Deutsche Welle notes, many militants are impoverished, unemployed youths, embittered by their circumstances and blaming the international oil companies and the government in Abudja for them.

Whats more, NDA is just one of the militant groups operating in the Niger Delta, and a ceasefire with it does not guarantee a complete cessation of attacks. Besides, the NDA has been less active in recent months, while other self-proclaimed defendants of the local communities have come to the foreground with attacks on pipelines.

Reuters reports that there isnt much optimism from either the government or the oil companies. The latter, in fact, are tight-lipped about their immediate plans in the country, so there is no way of knowing when major pipelines such as Shells Forcados or Exxons Qua Iboe will be back online, or even if they will be brought back online.



Related: Saudis Allow Foreign Investors to Buy Aramco IPO Shares

Nigerias problems with militant groups are not new. It is currently dealing with the violent Boko Haram organization in the North as well as well as the militants in the Delta. Many of these militants are also members of an older group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

Members of this group were offered amnesty by former president Goodluck Jonathan. A lot of money was spent on training programs for those who chose to give up their militant activities, but the group is still active and has distanced itself from the NDAs latest announcement, pledging to continue carrying out attacks in the region, Nigerian daily Punch notes.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Georgias security services have thwarted an attempt by terrorists to blow up a pipeline that supplies natural gas from Russia to Armenia in an area outside Georgias capital Tbilisi, Russian-language Georgian website Gruzia Online reported on Monday.

Georgias State Security Service have detained seven people, including a police patrol officer, who were trying to blow up the Russia-Armenia pipeline and are now facing charges of having links to terrorist organizations. One of the detainees has often traveled to Ukraine, Gruzia Online reported, citing a security services official.

Local-sources information on the chain of events is scarce, and not entirely impartial, with the region often being the theater of clashes and controversies since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Armenia is landlocked and does not have resources, and as such, relies heavily on imports. The Armenian subsidiary of Russian giant Gazprom operates thousands of miles of gas branches of the gas transmission system and gas pipelines. In the first half of 2016, Gazprom Armenia shipped 818.3 million cubic meters of gas from the Russian Federation to Armenia, which has a population of around three million people.

Armenia has very strained relations with two of its neighboring countries: Turkey and Azerbaijan, over the 1915 killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, and over a two-decade old conflict with oil-and-gas-rich Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabach.

Thats why Armenias natural energy allies in the region are Russia and lately, Iran. A recently proposed energy project in the South Caucasus is aimed at creating a single, common electricity market between Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Iran. Analysts argue, however, that it could further tighten Russias grip on the southern Caucasus.

On the other hand, the lifting of the sanctions against Iran can also bolster energy cooperation between Iran and Armenia.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Iraq has reached an agreement with the Kurdistan Regional Government to resume crude oil exports from three fields in the Kirkuk region, which will add some 150,000 barrels per day to the total exported by OPECs second-largest producer by the end of this week.

Pumping operations started with test pumping at 70,000 barrels a day last Thursday and the Northern Oil Co. aims to boost it to its normal rate at 150,000 barrels a day this week, Fouad Hussein, a member of the oil and energy committee of the Kirkuk provincial council, said on Sunday. This is a good step and significant initiative to strengthen relations between KRG and the federal government.

Oil pumped by Iraqs North Oil Company from the Baba Gorgor, Jambour and Khabbaz fields is exported via a pipeline controlled by the KRG. Baghdad and the KRG ran into a dispute over payments for oil shipped via the pipeline in March, which led to the suspension of shipments. As a result, production at the three fields was suspended.

The agreement was a result of the efforts of Iraqs new oil minister, Jabbar al-Luaibi, and Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi. Iraqs government has been working hard to ramp up crude oil exports, which are a major source of revenue, with July shipments reaching 3.71 million bpd, according to the International Energy Agency.



Related: OPEC Just Triggered The Biggest Crude Oil Short Squeeze In History

Kirkuk is one of the richest oil regions of Iraq and its unofficially controlled by the Kurdish Regional Government. Early in August, ISIS chose the biggest field in the region as a target for an attack but it was neutralized by the KRG armed forces, the Peshmerga.

Control over Kirkuk is extremely important for Kurdistan, as it is overwhelmingly dependent on oil for its livelihood, just like Iraq. Currently, the Kurdistan Regional Government has control over some 45 billion barrels of oil (BP estimates), which is about a third of Iraqs total. Now that KRG has won the right to market its own oil independently of Baghdad, it will likely do everything in its power to get access to more oil and that oil is in Kirkuk.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
A refinery fire on the Nicaraguas Pacific coast that broke out on Wednesday was declared under control on Sunday night, although the effects of the oil spill has contaminated the coastal habitat, according to environmental groups.

The fire was at the Puma Energy facility located 40 miles northwest of Managua. It started after a 144,000-barrel fuel tank exploded. The situation was compounded when a second tank ignited on Thursday. Despite the damage, officials at Puma, a Dutch-Angolan company did not expect there to be any fuel shortages. According to Salvador Gallo, the deputy director of national fire department reported that there were still some small residual flare-ups burning on Sunday.

There were no deaths or injuries associated with the incident, but medical crews were dispatched to the area to deal with any effects of the smoke on the residents.

While there were no human casualties reported, the incident has had an effect on the environment. The Humboldt Center, an environmental group, reports that the blaze created an oil spill that has contaminated the coastal habitat. Victor Campos, director of the Humboldt Center said that approximately one half square mile of the coast was affected by an oil slick related to the fire. Some of the area is considered to be sensitive ecological habitat. Resource specialist Ruth Herrera said that the area is home to people, their livestock, birds and marine life. Herrera is also concerned that some of the wells in the area may have been contaminated as a result of the incident.

Meanwhile, Campos presented photos showing the areas affected by the spill. The beaches near the incident are nesting grounds for several species of turtle, and the Puerto Sandino coast and Miramar Beach provides about 12% of the nations salt.

Environmentalists believe that it could years for the damage to be reversed. Puma Energy said in a press release that the cause of the incident was unknown but that it will investigate the incident.

Lincoln Brown for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
What's in a restaurant? In this series, we ask chefs around the city to describe their restaurants in their own words and recommend three dishes that embody the best of what they offer. In this edition, we talk with Chef Adam Pawlak of Plum Lounge on Jefferson Street.

Plum Lounge

780 N. Jefferson St.

(414) 350-8918

plumlounge.com

"Plum is the sort of place where you can go for a bite before dinner, have a full dinner or grab a bite later in the evening," says Chef Adam Pawlak of Plum Lounge. "We offer people a really different experience in a beautiful space with sophisticated upscale food. Its food that has passion and creativity behind it, while still being accessible and appealing to a lot of different people.

"We really base our menu on the idea of sharing, so our dishes are appropriate for groups or for someone who just wants something to eat along with their cocktail. But at the same time, someone can come in and enjoy a full meal and leave satisfied. Our offerings are far beyond bar food, and the point is really to capture both a restaurant and lounge experience in one.

"Seasonality is really important to my cooking style, so our menu changes every two to three months, and we really put a lot of thought behind the food were offering. I take a lot of pride in the fact that I touch every dish that is served in the restaurant."

1. Charred pork tacos

Smoked pork, roasted chili remoulade, shallot and cilantro blend, queso fresco, crispy corn shell ($13).

"Im Italian, but my favorite food second to Italian is Mexican. And I love to cook what I like to eat. I also love to elevate street food, so tacos were just a given when I created the menu. Ive done a variety of tacos, but this is the first hard shell taco Ive done here. Theres a nice contrast between the crispy hard shell and the soft, tender pork. And theres a beautiful smokiness at the end from the smoked pork and remoulade. The last menu included a soft shell corn taco with chicken, pico de gallo, queso fresco, jalapeno cream and micro cilantro."

2. Lobster black truffle mac & cheese

Cavatappi pasta, Wisconsin cheddar, lobster tail and claw meat, black truffle, crispy pork belly, bread crumbs ($16).

"I feel like this doesnt need much of an explanation. Its over the top, decadent and rich. Its all the styles of what I like to eat in one dish. Cheese is at the forefront. And then theres pork belly, lobster and truffle  probably the three most decadent ingredients that exist. Its that dish that anyone who isnt vegetarian or vegan should want to order. Its also my favorite."

3. Crab cakes

Lump crab cakes, charred corn, chili remoulade, micro herb salad, lemon, green oil ($13).

"Ive always had crab cakes on the menu here. Its tough to find a good crab cake in the Midwest, and I feel as if Ive really mastered the technique. The goal is really to showcase the crab in the dish, and its one of the most popular items on the menu. And its a fun dish to create. If you start with a good crab cake, the variations you can pair with it are endless."
All eyes were on Milwaukee on Saturday night as protesters and rioters took to the streets of the Sherman Park area, a boiling point reached after the police-involved shooting of Sylville Smith earlier that afternoon.

Those eyes, local and national, stayed on Milwaukee and Sherman Park on Sunday to see how the city and its residents would react and respond to the previous night's violence. What they saw was a community  black and white, young and old  come together to clean up their streets, show their support for an area in recovery and voice their thoughts, hopes and prayers for a safer, more peaceful tomorrow.

Here are 16 images of that scene Sunday afternoon:

1. Some of Saturday night's wreckage

(PHOTO: Carolynn Buser)

2. Residents look on at the aftermath

(PHOTO: Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)

3. People gather to clean the debris of Saturday night's riots

(PHOTO: Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)

4. Local leaders discuss Saturday night's events

(PHOTO: Carolynn Buser)

5. Nate Dotson supports the clean-up by providing extra supplies and food

(PHOTO: Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)

6. A family helps pick up trash in the area

(PHOTO: Dontello Get Bands Fifer Facebook)

7. Three men join in thought and prayer

(PHOTO: Stephen Jansen Facebook)

8. People unite to help the community

(PHOTO: Eshi Morris Facebook)

9. A job well done by cleanup volunteers

(PHOTO: Marie Carlson Facebook)

10.

The young man with the braids in the white t-shirt lost his brother yesterday. I told this young man that I love him, WE as a community told him that we love him, and we want the best for him and our community. A photo posted by Sean Lowe (@seanrlowe) on Aug 14, 2016 at 12:33pm PDT

11. A mother and son (looking at camera) attend a Sherman Park gathering

(PHOTO: Jabril Faraj/Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)

12. A community joined in hurt, hope and prayer

(PHOTO: Jabril Faraj/Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)

13. A gathering near West Auer Avenue where Saturday's shooting took place

(PHOTO: Jabril Faraj/Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)

14.

Hundreds and hundreds of people praying, demonstrating in Sherman Park. pic.twitter.com/W2L3Iv06zq  Jabril Faraj (@jabrilfaraj) August 15, 2016

15.

Religious leaders singing hymns with at least 200 in Sherman Park, the site of past mishaps btw cops and community pic.twitter.com/wUhiBLXReu  Tony Briscoe (@_TonyBriscoe) August 15, 2016

16.
Articles Listed By Date List By Popularity

Search Title

Date Between Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 and Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

(5 comments) SHARE

Proposal to Impeach Federal Judge Reaches Federal Judicial Center A petition submitted to James C. Duff, Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, requests an investigation into potentially impeachable offenses committed by the Hon. Helen "Ginger" Berrigan, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, in connection with her adjudication of cases from 1995 to 2001 with Tulane University as Defendant and Carl Bernofsky as Plaintiff. Monday, August 22, 2016A petition submitted to James C. Duff, Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, requests an investigation into potentially impeachable offenses committed by the Hon. Helen "Ginger" Berrigan, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana, in connection with her adjudication of cases from 1995 to 2001 with Tulane University as Defendant and Carl Bernofsky as Plaintiff.

(2 comments) SHARE

Farmed Tallowfuel as a Realistic Alternative to Coal The Chinese tallow tree is destined to become a major source of renewable energy because its energy-producing apparatus is sun-driven, self-replicating and never needs to be repaired. This tree is literally a "power plant" and a clear choice as a replacement for coal, whose finite reserves will ultimately be depleted. Friday, August 21, 2015The Chinese tallow tree is destined to become a major source of renewable energy because its energy-producing apparatus is sun-driven, self-replicating and never needs to be repaired. This tree is literally a "power plant" and a clear choice as a replacement for coal, whose finite reserves will ultimately be depleted.

(1 comments) SHARE

The U.S. Government Should End Its Prosecution of Former New Orleans Attorney Ashton R. O'Dwyer, Jr. Some courts are defending citizens' First Amendment rights to direct offensive language toward government officials. Saturday, July 30, 2011Some courts are defending citizens' First Amendment rights to direct offensive language toward government officials.

SHARE

Stephen Higginson Should Explain the U.S. Government's Motives in the Ashton O'Dwyer Case Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Higginson should be asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain why the government is so determined to imprison Ashton R. O'Dwyer, Jr. on the basis of a meritless charge that has been dismissed by an impartial federal judge. Tuesday, June 14, 2011Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Higginson should be asked by the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain why the government is so determined to imprison Ashton R. O'Dwyer, Jr. on the basis of a meritless charge that has been dismissed by an impartial federal judge.

(1 comments) SHARE

The Malicious Prosecution of Ashton R. O'Dwyer, Jr. New Orleans attorney Ashton R. O'Dwyer Jr. was singled out for harsh treatment ever since he criticized the government for its response to the disaster that befell the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Monday, February 21, 2011New Orleans attorney Ashton R. O'Dwyer Jr. was singled out for harsh treatment ever since he criticized the government for its response to the disaster that befell the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

SHARE

The Misguided Prosecution of Judge Joan S. Benge Federal prosecutors, in their zeal to uncover criminal misconduct at a Louisiana courthouse, used collateral evidence collected during an FBI investigation of one corrupt judge and applied it toward the dubious indictment of another judge who never was a target but whose discipline would help satisfy a racial imbalance created when a string of black judges were removed from the bench on truly serious charges. Saturday, September 26, 2009Federal prosecutors, in their zeal to uncover criminal misconduct at a Louisiana courthouse, used collateral evidence collected during an FBI investigation of one corrupt judge and applied it toward the dubious indictment of another judge who never was a target but whose discipline would help satisfy a racial imbalance created when a string of black judges were removed from the bench on truly serious charges.

(1 comments) SHARE

The New Standard is "The Probability of Bias" On June 8, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-to-4 decision that a state Supreme Court justice should have recused himself from a case because of campaign contributions he received from one of the parties. Wednesday, June 10, 2009On June 8, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-to-4 decision that a state Supreme Court justice should have recused himself from a case because of campaign contributions he received from one of the parties.

SHARE

How the Supreme Court Chooses The apparent purpose of the U.S. Supreme Court in considering the case of Caperton v. Massey Coal Co. is to provide publicity that can be used to undermine confidence in the democratic electoral process and further the goal of the legal establishment to fill judicial vacancies through appointments. Sunday, May 17, 2009The apparent purpose of the U.S. Supreme Court in considering the case of Caperton v. Massey Coal Co. is to provide publicity that can be used to undermine confidence in the democratic electoral process and further the goal of the legal establishment to fill judicial vacancies through appointments.

SHARE

The People of Georgia Should Reject Senator Saxby Chambliss Voters in Georgia should not return Senator Saxby Chambliss to Washington because of his willingness to use despotic tactics in dealing with critics. Sunday, November 16, 2008Voters in Georgia should not return Senator Saxby Chambliss to Washington because of his willingness to use despotic tactics in dealing with critics.
Articles Listed By Date List By Popularity

Search Title

Date Between Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 and Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

Page 1 of 2 First Last Back Next 2 View All

(1 comments) SHARE

Nuclear Brink? We are heading towards a nuclear confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. It is imperative that the Biden administration changes course and pushes for a negotiated agreement to end the war in Ukraine. It is also vital that people pressure their elected representatives in Congress to work for peace. Wednesday, October 12, 2022We are heading towards a nuclear confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. It is imperative that the Biden administration changes course and pushes for a negotiated agreement to end the war in Ukraine. It is also vital that people pressure their elected representatives in Congress to work for peace.

(1 comments) SHARE

Exposing the lie about the Syrian chemical attack Facts are emerging now which show that the claims of a chemical attack by the Syrian government against the people of Douma in Syria 2018 were false. The attack was used to justify the Trump administration's decision to bomb Syria as punishment. Former officials of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and others are now publicly calling out the OPCW for misleading the public on the attack. Wednesday, March 17, 2021Facts are emerging now which show that the claims of a chemical attack by the Syrian government against the people of Douma in Syria 2018 were false. The attack was used to justify the Trump administration's decision to bomb Syria as punishment. Former officials of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and others are now publicly calling out the OPCW for misleading the public on the attack.

(1 comments) SHARE

New York City: Catastrophe Looms A catastrophe may take place in New York City, where city hospitals have inadequate medical supplies to deal with the expected surge of COVID-19 cases. New York Mayor Bill deBlasio criticized President Donald Trump for not invoking the Defense Production Act to deal with the crisis. Tuesday, March 24, 2020A catastrophe may take place in New York City, where city hospitals have inadequate medical supplies to deal with the expected surge of COVID-19 cases. New York Mayor Bill deBlasio criticized President Donald Trump for not invoking the Defense Production Act to deal with the crisis.

(2 comments) SHARE

Cut the military budget, fund social needs! The Democrats frequently criticize Donald Trump for pushing a regressive agenda that hurts ordinary people. They attack him for not addressing domestic needs like education, infrastructure and health care. But they back Trump's request for a record military budget of $738 billion, a budget that siphons money away from funding critical social needs. Democrats must support significant cuts in military spending. Thursday, August 15, 2019The Democrats frequently criticize Donald Trump for pushing a regressive agenda that hurts ordinary people. They attack him for not addressing domestic needs like education, infrastructure and health care. But they back Trump's request for a record military budget of $738 billion, a budget that siphons money away from funding critical social needs. Democrats must support significant cuts in military spending.

(7 comments) SHARE

Russia-gate is over. But what happened? The Mueller report came to the right conclusion in finding there was no conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russians to fix the 2016 election. The Russia-gate scandal is finally over. But while the question of collusion has been settled, many issues related to the Russia probe have not been. Was there a legitimate basis for the Russia probe in the first place? Did the FBI and other officials abuse their power? Wednesday, March 27, 2019The Mueller report came to the right conclusion in finding there was no conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russians to fix the 2016 election. The Russia-gate scandal is finally over. But while the question of collusion has been settled, many issues related to the Russia probe have not been. Was there a legitimate basis for the Russia probe in the first place? Did the FBI and other officials abuse their power?

(1 comments) SHARE

Defending Julian Assange Free-speech activists, journalists and artists around the world are organizing to protect Julian Assange, who is being threatened with prosecution by UK and US authorities. Assange, the founder and editor of WikiLeaks, the organization which has exposed US war crimes in the Middle East,has been living in political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London very soon. But he may be forced to leave soon. Sunday, June 24, 2018Free-speech activists, journalists and artists around the world are organizing to protect Julian Assange, who is being threatened with prosecution by UK and US authorities. Assange, the founder and editor of WikiLeaks, the organization which has exposed US war crimes in the Middle East,has been living in political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London very soon. But he may be forced to leave soon.

(11 comments) SHARE

The UK Poisoning Case: Truth or Fiction? Despite the claims by leaders in the U.S. and UK, the charge that Russia was behind the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury, England has not been verified. This claim is being used to ratchet up tensions between Russia and the West. It is part of a campaign to isolate and undermine the Russian government led by Vladimir Putin. Saturday, March 31, 2018Despite the claims by leaders in the U.S. and UK, the charge that Russia was behind the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury, England has not been verified. This claim is being used to ratchet up tensions between Russia and the West. It is part of a campaign to isolate and undermine the Russian government led by Vladimir Putin.

(2 comments) SHARE

Why did NBC hire John Brennan? NBC showed very questionable judgment recently in deciding to hire former CIA Director John Brennan as an analyst. Brennan has been implicated in the illegal enhanced interrogation practices used on terrorism suspects and in the widely-criticized drone assassination program. Brennan's truthfulness in testimony before Congress has also been questioned. Wednesday, March 28, 2018NBC showed very questionable judgment recently in deciding to hire former CIA Director John Brennan as an analyst. Brennan has been implicated in the illegal enhanced interrogation practices used on terrorism suspects and in the widely-criticized drone assassination program. Brennan's truthfulness in testimony before Congress has also been questioned.

(1 comments) SHARE

Blocking Detente The meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin was a good start towards improving relations between the U.S. and Russia, which are at their lowest point in decades. A new de'tente may be possible, which will reduce the chance of a catastrophic nuclear conflict. But the drive for de'tente may be undermined by Trump's neocon critics, Russia-gate, and media demonization of Putin and Russia. Friday, July 14, 2017The meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin was a good start towards improving relations between the U.S. and Russia, which are at their lowest point in decades. A new de'tente may be possible, which will reduce the chance of a catastrophic nuclear conflict. But the drive for de'tente may be undermined by Trump's neocon critics, Russia-gate, and media demonization of Putin and Russia.

(1 comments) SHARE

American Coup Furious over Donald Trump's statements that he would like to establish better relations with Russia, people in the intelligence community are waging a determined campaign to undermine Trump and block any detente. The recent slew of leaks alleging possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials are part of this effort. Tuesday, February 21, 2017Furious over Donald Trump's statements that he would like to establish better relations with Russia, people in the intelligence community are waging a determined campaign to undermine Trump and block any detente. The recent slew of leaks alleging possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials are part of this effort.

(3 comments) SHARE

Free Leonard Peltier The article describes why Native American activist Leonard Peltier deserves to be granted clemency. Peltier, 72, has been held in federal prison for over 40 years, following a controversial conviction for murdering two FBI agents in a shootout between law enforcement officers and Lakota tribal members. There were numerous problems with the arrest and prosecution of Peltier, justifying clemency. Tuesday, January 10, 2017The article describes why Native American activist Leonard Peltier deserves to be granted clemency. Peltier, 72, has been held in federal prison for over 40 years, following a controversial conviction for murdering two FBI agents in a shootout between law enforcement officers and Lakota tribal members. There were numerous problems with the arrest and prosecution of Peltier, justifying clemency.

(3 comments) SHARE

U.S. Foreign Policy: Relentless War The article describes how wars of intervention have dominated U.S. foreign policy in recent years. The wars have carried an immense toll both for the countries attacked and for the American people. Monday, August 22, 2016The article describes how wars of intervention have dominated U.S. foreign policy in recent years. The wars have carried an immense toll both for the countries attacked and for the American people.

(8 comments) SHARE

John F. Kennedy --- A Martyr for Peace? Article describes the key themes in James. W. Douglass's book, "JFK and the Unspeakable." Douglass contends that John Kennedy's assassination was not the work of one disturbed individual, Lee Harvey Oswald, but rather the product of a conspiracy by military and intelligence officials in the U.S. government. Those people saw Kennedy as a threat, because he was seeking more peaceful relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. Thursday, December 3, 2015Article describes the key themes in James. W. Douglass's book, "JFK and the Unspeakable." Douglass contends that John Kennedy's assassination was not the work of one disturbed individual, Lee Harvey Oswald, but rather the product of a conspiracy by military and intelligence officials in the U.S. government. Those people saw Kennedy as a threat, because he was seeking more peaceful relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba.

(1 comments) SHARE

Journalism and Government Corruption Article describes the critical importance of having strong reporting by newspapers and other media to prevent municipal corruption. Saturday, October 31, 2015Article describes the critical importance of having strong reporting by newspapers and other media to prevent municipal corruption.

(1 comments) SHARE

Putting the heat on Blumenthal Grassroots activists around the country are pushing Democrats in Congress still undecided on the Iran nuclear deal to get off the fence and back the agreement. People rallied outside the offices of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, last week to urge the senator to support the deal. Wednesday, September 2, 2015Grassroots activists around the country are pushing Democrats in Congress still undecided on the Iran nuclear deal to get off the fence and back the agreement. People rallied outside the offices of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, last week to urge the senator to support the deal.

(11 comments) SHARE

Last Chance on Climate? World leaders need to act very soon to avoid climate disaster. A top UN official believes that action has to take place at the Paris climate talks in December, otherwise we are "playing with fire." Friday, August 7, 2015World leaders need to act very soon to avoid climate disaster. A top UN official believes that action has to take place at the Paris climate talks in December, otherwise we are "playing with fire."

(4 comments) SHARE

Urgently Needed: A Public Jobs Program Article talks about the urgent need for a publicly-funded jobs program,to put unemployed people to work and give them real hope. Cities like Bridgeport, CT and others in the Northeast, with little private sector job growth, have high poverty and crime rates. The government must start funding job creation, to get people to work and stabilize our urban environments. Sunday, May 3, 2015Article talks about the urgent need for a publicly-funded jobs program,to put unemployed people to work and give them real hope. Cities like Bridgeport, CT and others in the Northeast, with little private sector job growth, have high poverty and crime rates. The government must start funding job creation, to get people to work and stabilize our urban environments.

(2 comments) SHARE

A Travesty of Reporting The article describes how the nation's "paper of record" --- The New York Times --- is doing a poor job in its reporting on Ukraine. The paper has failed to report critically on the Ukraine civil war and appears to be following closely the version of events put out by the U.S. State Department. Sunday, March 29, 2015The article describes how the nation's "paper of record" --- The New York Times --- is doing a poor job in its reporting on Ukraine. The paper has failed to report critically on the Ukraine civil war and appears to be following closely the version of events put out by the U.S. State Department.

(25 comments) SHARE

Demanding Justice for Michael Brown As people express outrage over the grand jury decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the Michael Brown case, facts are emerging showing the inconsistencies in Wilson's version of what happenend in the fatal shooting incident. Wednesday, December 3, 2014As people express outrage over the grand jury decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson in the Michael Brown case, facts are emerging showing the inconsistencies in Wilson's version of what happenend in the fatal shooting incident.

(3 comments) SHARE

U.S. breaks the law? Who cares? The article goes into the double standard about how U.S. leaders like President Obama view the word "aggression." While the bloodless takeover of Crimea by the Russians following an independence vote is condemned as "aggression," our violent air strikes in Syria, a sovereign nation which has not attacked us, is deemed as appropriate. Major media like 60 Minutes also ignore the hypocrisy. Sunday, October 12, 2014The article goes into the double standard about how U.S. leaders like President Obama view the word "aggression." While the bloodless takeover of Crimea by the Russians following an independence vote is condemned as "aggression," our violent air strikes in Syria, a sovereign nation which has not attacked us, is deemed as appropriate. Major media like 60 Minutes also ignore the hypocrisy.

Page 1 of 2 First Last Back Next 2 View All
By John A. Charles, Jr.

The Portland City Council has approved a plan for the Housing Bureau to lease industrial land in North Portland for $10,000 per month, beginning October 7. The site is to be used for the construction of a large homeless shelter that potentially could serve up to 1,400 people. This idea, pushed by developer Homer Williams, was rushed through with virtually no due diligence.

Before additional money is spent, the City Council should carefully analyze what went wrong in two previous construction projects. First was the $58-million Wapato Jail built by Multnomah County in 2004, but never operated. With 525 beds in pristine condition, one would think there is potential for this site to temporarily house at least a few people now living under bridges.

Second, in 2011 Portland opened the $47 million Bud Clark Commons, which includes 130 studio apartments and extensive social services for low-income individuals. It was a nice idea, but the police have been called so often to the Commons that in December 2013, then-Chief Mike Reese told the Portland City Council that he was considering filing a chronic nuisance property complaint against the shelter.

Both structures were built with good intentions, but things did not go as planned. Lets learn from the past before repeating mistakes in the future.

John A. Charles, Jr. is President and CEO of Cascade Policy Institute, Oregons free market public policy research organization.
Rallies held in Jammu,Kashmir against Indian brutalities

SRINAGAR: Thousands of people on Sunday participated in the rallies held across Indian-occupied Kashmir including Pulwama, Shopian and Islamabad districts to condemn Indian brutalities.



Religious scholars from all school of thoughts and Hurriyat leaders and activists including Ghulam Nabi Sumji, Mir Hafizullah, Mohammad Yousuf Fallahi and Mohammad Yousuf Mir addressed the rallies.



An anti-India rally led by the chairman of Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Freedom League, Muhammad Farooq Rehmani, was also held in Muzaffarabad on Sunday. Participants of the rally urged the United Nations to force India to abandon its illegal occupation over Held Kashmir.



In a latest development, as many as 500 activists belonging to several pro-India political parties have publicly resigned from their positions in south Kashmir and announced to join the ongoing Intifada in Kashmir.



Meanwhile, Indian forces killed three civilians in a gun battle on Sunday, the Indian army said, as the region reels from weeks of deadly violence between protesters and security forces.



Three people were killed in the fight. Three assault rifles were also recovered from the site of the gun battle, army spokesman Colonel N N Joshi told AFP.



Indian authorities continued to impose curfew and other restrictions in the territory for the 44th consecutive day. The authorities sealed all entry and exit points leading to Lal Chowk area of Srinagar. The troops even did not spare journalists and aimed guns at the staff members of Srinagar-based Greater Kashmir and Kashmir Uzma in Srinagar. The journalists were harassed, abused and given life threats. A prayer leader was ruthlessly beaten up by the troops in Kupwara.



Given the gravity of the situation, All Parties Hurriyet Conference (APHC) Secretary General Shabbir Ahmad Shah urged the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to initiate practical steps to stop the loss of human lives in Indian-held Kashmir.



Though UN chiefs statement in response to Pakistans Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs letter is encouraging and a welcome step, but the world body is only making a lip service and not taking practical steps, said a statement quoting the APHC secretary general as saying.



The UN is duty bound to play an effective role in settlement of Kashmir dispute. Despite 18 resolutions passed in the UN Security Council, India has reneged from its promises and has turned this heaven on earth a hell, he said.



Shabbir Ahmad Shah expressed the hope that Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif would vehemently highlight Indian atrocities in Kashmir in upcoming speech in the UN in September and would call for right to self-determination for the people of Kashmir, Kashmir Media Service reported.



Reiterating his appeal to people to join anti-India protests, he said, The world is keenly observing us and we have to continue our peaceful protests.



Separately, a senior Indian minister appeared Sunday to support police in a row over free speech that saw Amnesty slapped with sedition charges for an event about the disputed Kashmir region.



Police in the southern city of Bangalore filed the initial charges last week following complaints that slogans on independence for the disputed region had been chanted at the event organised by the rights group.



Finance Minister Arun Jaitley compared the freedom slogans to those at another event earlier this year at a prestigious New Delhi university that saw a student leader arrested on sedition charges.



During an event in Bangalore, there were slogans for freedom (from India)... it was organised by a group that receives a lot of funding from abroad, Jaitley said at a rally in Kashmir, without directly naming Amnesty.



Amnesty has said the event was focused on human rights violations in Indian-occupied Kashmir. Rights campaigners have long accused Indias governments of using the British-era sedition law to clamp down on dissent.
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
We are a Brazilian manufacturer of briquettes, with two factories in southern Brazil. Our current production capacity reaches 6000 ton/month, and initially we can sell 1000 ton/month to the foreign market. We use raw materials of exotic species, such as Eucalyptus and Pine. Our suppliers have FSC certification, which ensures sustainable management and a friendly environment, besides the high calorific power. We are able to ship the products in plastic bags, raffia bags and/or paperboard boxes, with your company's logo!
Phuket International Hospital, part of BDMS Southern Group, hosts the Grand Opening: Were Family in the concept of Caring for everyone like family members. In the Grand-Opening bandwagon are Childrens Clinic, Phuket International Dermatology Institute (PDI), and Ayuravadhana Geriatric Clinic. This will also coincide with the official launch of Expat Privilege Card, which provides exclusive privileges for all expatriates in Phuket and nearby provinces.

On 20 August 2016, Khun Wassana Tipayapongtada, Chairwoman of the Provincial Red Cross Chapter of Phuket, presided over the Grand Opening: Were Family in the presence of BDMS Southern Group management and staff, Thai and foreign dignitaries, local authorities, local businesses, and members of the press and media. It took place on the main foyer, 3rd floor, Phuket International Building, Phuket International Hospital.

According to Dr. Kongkiat Kespechara, CEO Group 6, Bangkok Dusit Medical Services (PLC) & Managing Director, Phuket International Hospital has been established to serve local people in line with the vision of Maj. Dr. Anuroj Tharasiriroj, its founder. Although the hospital has become part of BDMS Southern Group since late 2014, in addition to Bangkok Hospital Phuket and Dibuk Hospital in Phuket, the management is committed to carrying on with Dr. Anurojs legacies. Phuket International Hospital will continue to be a trustworthy healthcare provider for people in Phuket and nearby provinces, as well as expatriates and tourists.

In order to press ahead with the commitment above and further secure trust from clients, the hospital has managed to retain its old charm and common touch with local residents. It has geared up to cater to all medical needs of all ages: from prenatal care and childbirth, to pediatric care, to elderly care. That is why BDMS Southern Group management found it opportune to hold the Grand Opening: Were Family in the concept of Caring for everyone like family members, throwing the limelight on Childrens Clinic, Phuket International Dermatology Institute (PDI), and Ayuravadhana Geriatric Clinic, along with the Expat Privilege Card launch.

Childrens Clinic has been spruced up to create a colorful and amazing environment inspired by Lego Thailand, which is ideal for childrens learning, imagination and creativity. Phuket International Dermatology Institute (PDI) has, in turn, emerged as a mecca for all types of skin care by internationally qualified dermatologists specializing in both cosmetic skin care and complex skin disease. And human life will round it all up at the Ayuravadhana Geriatric Clinic, which will deliver most professional and comprehensive elderly care, with the Phuket Vaccine Clinic in tandem offering protection against diseases at all ages.

Today, Phuket is not only one the worlds most glamorous holiday destinations boasting millions of tourists each year, but it is also home to a large number of expatriates settling here around the island. Therefore, Phuket International Hospital would like to unveil the Expat Privilege Card in a bid to ensure better healthcare and exclusive privileges for those expatriates living in Phuket and nearby provinces. The card will be in use at all the 3 BDMS Southern Group hospitals (Bangkok Hospital Phuket, Phuket International Hospital and Dibuk Hospital).



Khun Wassana Tipayapongtada, Chairwoman of the Provincial Red Cross Chapter of Phuket, concluded that Phuket International Hospital was the first private hospital in Phuket, and that it had long been frequented by local people in Phuket and nearby provinces, as well as expatriates and tourists. It is heartening to learn that BDMS Southern Group management is committed to delivering the greatest healthcare benefits and convenience on the back of fully fledged medical capabilities. It will be more than reassuring as to comprehensive medical care for all people of all ages. The governor is strongly confident that Phuket International Hospital will stay by the side of Phuket people, those from neighboring provinces, and foreigners in a sustainable and truly reliable manner.
A fossil ptilodactyline beetle found in amber from Mexico. The black arrow points to pollinia attached to the beetle's mouthparts. Credit: Entomological Society of America

When most people hear the word "pollinator," they think of bees and butterflies. However, certain beetles are known to pollinate plants as well, and new fossil evidence indicates that they were doing so 20 million years ago.

A new study in American Entomologist by George Poinar, Jr. (Oregon State University) describes beetles found in fossilized amber with orchid pollen in their mouthparts.

"My paper points out that beetles may play a more important role in pollinating orchids than originally thought, and that they have been doing so for some 20 million years," Poinar said.

Some present-day beetles use orchids for nectar, but no fossil evidence has ever been found showing beetles in the evolutionary past pollinating orchidsuntil now.

The first specimen was a hidden-snout beetle (subfamily Cryptorhynchinae) found in amber from the Dominican Republic. This Dominican specimen had pollinaria from an orchid described as Cylindrocites browni attached to its thorax. The other specimen was a toe-winged beetle (family Ptilodactylidae) that was found in amber from Mexico. This toe-winged beetle had pollinaria from an orchid described as Annulites mexicana attached to its mouthparts.

The beetle in Dominican amber was estimated to be from 20 to 45 million years old, and the beetle in Mexican amber was in strata estimated to be from 22 to 26 million years old.

While other beetles are known to pollinate plants, no current-day hidden-snout beetles have been seen visiting orchid plants, and no current-day toe-winged beetles have been seen with pollinaria.

According to Poinar, the reason may lie in the beetles' secretive behavior, which makes it difficult to collect data about them.

"While no present-day cryptorhynchid weevils or ptilodactyline beetles are known to carry pollinaria, past and future collections of these and other beetles should be examined to search for attached pollinaria," Poinar said. "Orchids may have evolved beneficial associations with a much wider range of beetles and other insects than we thought possible."

Explore further Tracing the ancestry of dung beetles

More information: George Poinar. Beetles with Orchid Pollinaria in Dominican and Mexican Amber, American Entomologist (2016). George Poinar. Beetles with Orchid Pollinaria in Dominican and Mexican Amber,(2016). DOI: 10.1093/ae/tmw055
The nameless new nudibranch species, with its innermost cerata curled up. Credit: Nerida Wilson

A case of mistaken identity that took more than 16 years to detect recently culminated in a new species of vibrant sea creature confirmed in WA's North West.

Nudibranchs are soft-bodied gastropod molluscs, which are commonly confused with sea slugs because they shed their shells early on in life.

An estimated 3000 species occur in oceans across the world, and their colours, body shapes and undulated swimming style has earned them the nickname "butterflies of the sea."

This week, a new species will be added to the list, after a competition by the WA Museum and ABC Radio National's Off Track program as part of National Science Week.

The competition offers the public the chance of a lifetime to contribute to the new species name, in what is believed to be an Australian first.

Previously mistaken as Moridilla brockii, the species was confirmed to be completely new to science after recent scrutiny by WA Museum Aquatic Zoology Senior Research Scientist Dr Nerida Wilson, with help from Spanish nudibranch expert Dr Leila Carmona.

Dr Wilson was first dazzled by the colourful creature while scuba diving the Dampier Archipelago, about 1550kms north of Perth, in 2000.

"I was really impressed by its amazing defence displays," she says.

When threatened, the nudibranch quickly unfurls sausage-like tentacles, called cerata, on its back, in an attempt to appear larger and scare off predators.

"It's quite an interesting way of telling others to get lost," Dr Wilson says.

Despite first attracting her attention 16 years ago, Dr Wilson only started analysing preserved specimens, photographs and DNA samples of M. brockii this year, as part of a new study of the biodiversity of WA's North West coast.

"Nudibranchs are my first love, so I paid particular attention to them," Dr Wilson says.

"It was only a few months ago that we realised it was definitely a different species."

Things that set this nudibranch apart from others include its size, anatomy, colouring and distribution.

An adult can measure up to 10cm, which is larger than the average sea slug size of 1-2cm, and they have been consistently recorded at Ningaloo, Exmouth, off the coast of the Kimberley and Pilbara, up to Darwin.

Dr Wilson says more than 2500 submissions were received.

"I've been so impressed with the entries," she says.

"It's really humbling to realise how many people have sat down and really thought about this and come up with some really cool names."

The name will be announced Saturday, August 20 on Off Track at 10.30am.

The scientists will then submit a scientific paper to a journal for peer review.

If it is accepted, it will become the official name for Moridilla sp.

Explore further Researchers find a new marine invertebrate species in the Weddell Sea, in the Antarctica

This article first appeared on ScienceNetwork Western Australia a science news website based at Scitech.
Scrap tires have been on environmentalists' blacklist for decades. They pile up in landfills, have fed enormous toxic fires, harbor pests and get burned for fuel. Scientists trying to rid us of this scourge have developed a new way to make synthetic rubber. And once this material is discarded, it can be easily degraded back to its chemical building blocks and reused in new tires and other products.

The researchers will present their work today at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

"The basic idea behind this project was to take a byproduct of the petrochemical industry and turn some of it into recyclable value-added chemicals for use in tires and other applications," says Robert Tuba, Ph.D., one of the lead researchers on the project. "We want to make something that is good for the community and the environment."

According to the Rubber Manufacturers Association, nearly 270 million tires were discarded in the U.S. in 2013more than one tire per adult living in the country. Thousands get stockpiled in landfills. And because tires are non-degradable, they could potentially stick around indefinitely. More than half go on to become tire-derived fuelshredded scrap tires that get mixed with coal and other materials to help power cement kilns, pulp and paper mills and other plants. But environmentalists are concerned that the emissions from this practice could be adding harmful pollutants to the air.

One possible solution to the nation's scrap-tire glut would be to make new tires with degradable materials. Since 2012, the research team led by Hassan S. Bazzi, Ph.D., at the Texas A&M University campus in Qatar (TAMU-Qatar) has been working on this option. They started with a basic molecule called cyclopentene. Cyclopentene and its precursor cyclopentadiene are low-value major components of the abundant waste from petrochemical refining, in particular its steam-cracking operation C5 fraction, which contains hydrocarbons with five carbon atoms. With colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, they have been experimenting with catalysts to string cyclopentene molecules together to make polypentenamers, which are similar to natural rubber.

Currently, synthetic-rubber makers use butadiene as their base material, but its cost has recently gone up, opening the door to competition. So Tuba turned to cyclopentene as a potential alternative. Calculations showed that polymerizing cyclopentene and degrading it under relatively mild reaction conditionsand thus requiring minimal energy and expenseshould be possible.

"We did theoretical studies to predict the feasibility of the synthesis and recyclability of polypentenamer-based tire additives using equilibrium ring opening metathesis polymerization," explains Antisar Hlil, also at TAMU-Qatar. "Then we did experimental studies and found that the concept works very well."

Using ruthenium, a transition-metal catalyst, the researchers polymerized cyclopentene at 0 degrees Celsius and decomposed the resulting material at 40 to 50 degrees. For industry, these are low temperatures that do not require a lot of energy. Additionally, in the lab, they could recover 100 percent of their starting material from several polypentenamer-based tire additives they developed.

In progress are new studies that mix the synthetic rubber with other tire materials, which include metals and fillers. The researchers are also scaling up their lab experiments to see whether the tire industry could realistically use their processes.

"If the fundamental studies are very promisingwhich at this point, we believe they arethen our industry partner will come in to continue this project and bring the material to market," Tuba says.

Explore further Toward tires that repair themselves

More information: New strategies for the synthesis of innovative recyclable polymers from raw materials, 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), 2016. New strategies for the synthesis of innovative recyclable polymers from raw materials, 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), 2016. Abstract

There is an urgent need for developing cleaner sustainable concepts in olefin metathesis. The methodology is based on the synthesis of polyolefins with ruthenium based metathesis catalyst via ring opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of cyclopentenes and their derivatives. Cyclopentene (CP) can be found in the C5 fraction of steam cracking operations (4%) or can be produced on an industrial scale from cyclopentadiene (CPD). Which are the main side products (25%) - in form of dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) - in the gasoline C5 fraction.

For examples the trans-polypentenamer has unique relevance among the synthetic rubbers since it has similar physical properties to the natural rubber. The polypentenamer additives have propitious effect on the tire properties made from blends with natural rubber and have been studied extensively for this application.

One of the most exciting new possibilities is the capability of preparing cyclic polypentenamer. New approaches to the synthesis of such materials have been recently developed.

Herein, we describe the synthesis of new cyclic and linear polypentenamers via ROMP using ruthenium catalyst systems. It was found that the cyclopentene conversion does not depend on the catalyst activity and catalyst loading. However, the applied reaction temperature has a significant impact on the polymerization yield. Equilibrium of growing chain and monomer was observed. This unique feature of the equilibrium polymerization opens a way for the synthesis of durable, environmentally friendly elastomers where tires can be not only synthetized by the transition metal catalyst systems but the worn tires can be readily decomposed by the same way and the recovered monomers can be easily recycle.
Kansans who own water wells show more awareness of state water policy issues than those who rely on municipal water supplies, according to a study that could have implications for groundwater management and environmental policies.

Brock Ternes, a University of Kansas doctoral student in sociology, found that well owners prioritized issues related to the depletion of the High Plains Aquiferwhich is the underground reservoir of freshwater beneath much of the western half of the state.

Based on a survey he conducted of 864 Kansans, Ternes discovered that well owners were significantly more aware of water supplies and water-related policies and agencies, including the Kansas Water Office, Groundwater Management Districts, and the Governor's Long-Term Vision for the Future of Water Supply in Kansas.

"The people who use private wells for water are more likely to hear about water-related policy issues and pay attention to them," said Ternes, who will present his study at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

For example, he found that well owners also tended to be more aware of the Kansas Aqueduct proposal, an $18 billion undertaking that would divert water from the Missouri River to western Kansas. Non-well owners were less familiar with this enormous waterworks project.

Like so many regions suffering from recent droughts, rural Kansas has been particularly hard-hit by the scarcity of water. The High Plains Aquifer has been over-pumped for its valuable irrigation water, and researchers estimate that unless pumping is curtailed, the aquifer will no longer support irrigation wells in portions of southwestern Kansas within 25 years, Ternes said.

"Sociological studies are imperative for understanding the mindsets of well owners, who are a distinct group of Kansans who will continue to influence the availability of groundwater," Ternes said.

As part of his survey, Ternes found that private well owners highly prioritize conserving water for the future.

"Most well owners believe securing water is one of the top political challenges facing Kansas, and water policies are more likely to influence their vote in local and state elections than Kansans who don't own wells," said Ternes. In this study, he coins the term "groundwater citizenship," which emphasizes the stewardship of aquifers and deliberate water conservation in order to conserve supplies of groundwater.

"My data suggest that well owners have different political priorities than non-well owners and conserve water with the hopes of extending their supply, which makes them a unique type of citizen," he said.

This research could be valuable for policymakers and water officials in Kansas as they seek to examine possible solutions for protecting the High Plains Aquifer. If they understand the importance of engaging well owners who are passionate about these issues, it can help bring water conservation more to the public forefront.

"Water supply infrastructure is clearly connected to how in-tune people are with their natural resources, which is profoundly important for environmental policymaking and survival in the Anthropocene," Ternes said.

The study has broader implications for environmental stewardship as many states grapple with vulnerability to drought, he added.

"Technologies might grant us access to natural resources and make them seem more readily available when they are in reality much more scarce," Ternes said. "This is why we need to analyze the systems that provide access to finite resources like water."

The paper, "'Groundwater Citizenship' and Water Supply Awareness: Investigating Water-Related Infrastructure, the Kansas Aqueduct, and Well Ownership," will be presented on Monday, Aug. 22, in Seattle at the American Sociological Association's 111th Annual Meeting.

Explore further Researchers investigate environmental movements and neoliberalism
A counter-terrorism strategy will not stop honour-based crimes. Credit: Mansoreh/www.shutterstock.com

On July 20, the death in Pakistan of Samia Shahid, a 28-year-old British woman from Bradford, was reported to Pakistani authorities in what is now believed to have been an "honour killing". Her husband says she was tricked into going to Pakistan by her family.

That same day, Theresa May gave her first prime minister's questions and agreed with Nusrat Ghani MP that so-called "honour-based" violence should be re-categorised as an act of terror in the UK. This has caused consternation among campaigners who fear that certain crimes against women could now be treated as terror-related.

Some feminists do believe that all forms of patriarchal violence should be understood as terrorism, but May's comments move the debate in a different direction. Considering this kind of violence  which mainly affects black and minority ethnic women  as terrorism is another example of the government's damaging conflation of the issue with race, religion and immigration.

"Honour-based" violence is where a person, usually a girl or woman, is attacked by relatives who believe dishonour has been brought to their family. If this kind of violence is treated as a form of terrorism, there will be serious questions about where the authorities draw the line between domestic violence and an "honour-based" crime.

Shift in emphasis

There is no empirical evidence to suggest that "honour-based" violence, or other forms of domestic violence, are linked to the current terrorism threat. While there are examples of individual terrorists with histories of domestic violence, arguing that perpetrators of domestic violence might go on to become terrorists is a very different claim.

Despite this, over the past decade government policy has referred with increasing regularity to certain "illegal cultural practices" as an integral part of the forms of extremism which lead to terrorism. In 2015, when the Prevent counter-terrorism guidance was placed on a statutory legal footing, the then-prime minister David Cameron placed these forms of gender-based violence squarely in the realm of extremism.

They are now enshrined in the Counter Extremism Strategy and anticipated to be included within the Counter Extremism and Safeguarding Bill which was proposed in the 2016 Queen's Speech. In a section on "building cohesive communities", the Prevent strategy implies that more integrated communities which adhere to "British values" and therefore somehow reject gender-based violence will be more resilient to the risk of radicalisation.

May's response is therefore not new, but it clearly underlines the paradigm shift that has taken place over three successive governments. Forms of violence directed mainly at black and minority ethnic women in Britain are no longer viewed as "violence against women"  they are viewed through the lens of threats to national security.

A public health issue

Activists have battled for years to make sure that violence against women and girls, particularly when it occurs in the private sphere and within families, should not be treated solely as a criminal justice issue but as a public health one. Reducing harm is of paramount importance. Yet, intimate partner or familial violence is a complex issue. Women do not necessarily want to criminalise their partners or family members and it is not always safe for them to do so. Women should feel safer in the knowledge that they can seek help at their nearest hospitals and walk-in centres without necessarily involving police, particularly when their most urgent requirement is medical assistance. But treating this violence in the context of counter-extremism means police are involved from the outset.

Most people would agree that perpetrators of violence against women should be brought to justice, but to attempt to do so by incorporating such violence into a counter-terrorism strategy is a blunt instrument. It casts the ordinary, everyday abuse of some black and minority ethnic women  which requires sensitive responses to the complex needs and wishes of victims  as violence that is unusual, exceptional and extraordinary.

This can only serve to further stigmatise and even criminalise vulnerable women and girls. They may already lack the confidence needed to report the violence they are experiencing  now we risk marginalising victims even further. This also makes an association between race, culture and religion in the public imagination about who society is meant to perceive to be potential terrorists. By prioritising counter-extremism over the needs of women and girls, the government is riding roughshod over the needs of victims.

One chance to save a life

On average, women will endure 35 incidents of domestic violence of abuse before contacting police and this is likely to be higher for black and minority ethnic women. It is believed that there are almost 3,000 reported cases of "honour-based" violence each year; but in 2014-15 only 158 cases were successfully prosecuted.

In a December 2015 report on dealing with "honour-based" violence, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary described the first contact a victim has with police as the "one chance rule"  one chance to save a life. By continuing to abandon certain groups of black and minority ethnic women who have suffered violence by subsuming them under the ever-expanding rubric of counter-extremism and counter-terrorism, this becomes the "no chance" rule.

In order to keep all women and girls in the UK safe, we call on the government to urgently review the incorporation of "illegal cultural practices" into the strategy and proposed legislation on counter extremism.

Explore further Major report on honour-based violence

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.


Physicist Dylan Brennan. Credit: Elle Starkman/PPPL Office of Communications

Runaway electrons, a searing, laser-like beam of electric current released by plasma disruptions, could damage the interior walls of future tokamaks the size of ITER, the international fusion experiment under construction in France. To help overcome this challenge, leading experts in the field have launched a multi-institutional center to find ways to prevent or mitigate such events.

"This is like a strike force to solve the problem and we need to get it right," said physicist Dylan Brennan of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University. "It's very clear that runaways will be a problem," said Brennan, who with Xianzhu Tang of Los Alamos National Laboratory is co-lead principal investigator. "The goal is to take different scenarios for runaway electrons and come up with a recipe for solving them."

Causes and solutions for runaway electrons

The project, called "Simulation Center for Runaway Electron Avoidance and Mitigation," will combine simulations and data from worldwide experiments to explore the causes and solutions for runaway electrons. Members are from nine U.S. universities and national laboratories. Participants include the Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley and Los Alamos national laboratories, the universities of Texas, California-San Diego and Columbia University and General Atomics in San Diego. Support totals $3.9 million over two years from the DOE's Office of Science.

Runaway electrons are relativisticthey travel at nearly the speed of light. To control these particles, researchers must utilize equations derived from Einstein's special theory of relativity, which describes the effect of relativistic speeds on moving bodies.

These equations apply to the huge ITER tokamak. "ITER will be operating in a regime of plasma parameters well beyond the reach of any existing tokamak experiment," said Amitava Bhattacharjee, head of the Theory Department at PPPL. "Therefore, one must rely on the predictive power of theory and simulation, which must be validated by comparison with present-day experiments and extrapolated to ITER conditions."

Disruption mitigation system for ITER

Research of the center will contribute to a disruption mitigation system to be incorporated in ITER. The US ITER Project Office, based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), will be responsible for the system.

Tasks of the center will include:

Establishing the physical basis for the generation and evolution of runaway electrons.

Exploring the path for avoiding runaway electrons.

Investigating the leading candidates for mitigating the problem.

A key center tool will be input from scientists supported by DOE's Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program. It will handle the complex mathematics needed to simulate how runaways traveling at relativistic speed interact with the background plasmaa major issue in comprehending the problem. "There is still much that we don't understand," said Brennan.

Cutting-edge simulations

ASCR scientists will facilitate cutting-edge simulations with advanced codes on the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) at ORNL, and on supercomputers at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The center will cross-check the results to verify their accuracy. OLCF and NERSC are DOE Office of Science User Facilities.

Another critical step will be to close the gap between theoretical explanations of runaway electrons and experimental observations, for which wide discrepancies have been found. The center will determine how well its simulations fit the experimental dataa key factor needed to create confidence in the group's predictions for ITER.

Also under study will be the primary methods for mitigating runaway electrons. These methods inject impurities in the form of massive gas or shattered pellets to cool the plasma and shut it down before disruptions can occur. But such techniques could also cause the electrons to accelerate; the center therefore aims to define the best mix of impurities and their injection rates for avoiding the problem.

Explore further Disruption mitigation researchers investigate design options
Former U.S. Rep. Scott Murphy, D-Glens Falls, who lost re-election in 2010, still had $21,209 left in his campaign fund, as of June 30, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission.
With just a few weeks of summer left, its time to check off that sand bucket list of beach reading. If youre between books, dont fear; there are several books with ties to the region from which to choose.

The Hatties Restaurant Cookbook, by Jasper Alexander. $20.68 in hardcover, $14.16 on Kindle.

Hatties owner Jasper Alexander releases his first cookbook, with more than 250 pages of recipes and photographs of appetizers, cocktails, entrees and more, as well as history of Hattie Moseley Austin, and recipe origins. A launch party and cookbook signing will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Aug. 30 at Hatties Restaurant, 45 Phila St. in Saratoga Springs.

An Adirondack Portfolio, 1902-1935, The Hiking Stories and Photographs of Francis Bayle, by Bob Bayle.

Bob Bayles new book features photographs and writings by his father, Francis Bayle, who took hundreds of images of the Adirondacks between 1910 and 1970. A book signing is planned at 7 p.m. Tuesday at The Chapman Historical Museum, 348 Glen St., Glens Falls.

Revolution on the Hudson: New York City and the Hudson River Valley in the War of American Independence, by George C. Daughan. $28.95 in hardcover, $9.18 on Kindle.

George C. Daughan tells the untold story of the fight for control of the Hudson River Valley during the Revolution, a power the Americans and the British thought would determine the outcome of the war.

A Taming Season: A Love at Lake George Novel, by Claire Gem. $13.99 in paperback, $4.99 on Kindle.

Set in Lake George, A Taming Season tells the story of Zoe, a Manhattan-based domestic violence counselor trying to rebuild her life after events that killed her spouse and left her wounded. She returns to what she remembers as an idyllic family lakeside cottage to find a rundown shack, and the owner of the neighboring resort, whose intentions are questionable. The book is the first in a series of loosely related romance novels set around Lake George village. Gem will make an appearance from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 9 on Lake George Steamboat Co.s Lac Du Saint Sacrement dinner cruise.

The Battle of Lake George: Englands First Triumph in the French and Indian War, by William R. Griffith IV. $21.99 in paperback, $9.99 on Kindle, available Sept. 5.

Twenty-four-year-old William R. Griffith IV visited Fort William Henry on a family vacation when he was 5 years old and developed a deep love for the states colonial history. The Battle of Lake George tells the history behind the first major British battlefield victory during the French and Indian War, as British commander William Johnson leads his men through enemy fire to force the French back to Ticonderoga.

The Saratoga Campaign: Uncovering an Embattled Landscape, by William A. Griswold and Donald W. Linebaugh, editors. University Press of New England. $27.95 in paperback, $25.99 in eBook.

Building on the work of scholars and more than 70 years of archaeological projects at Saratoga Battlefield, William Griswold and Donald Linebaugh edit a collection that expands and challenges historical narratives of the battles.

Last Goodbye: A Story of Love, Loss and One Girls Fate, by Laura Ostiguy. $16.99 in paperback, $13.99 for Kindle.

Laurel (Kupillas) Ostiguy was raised in Queensbury. The Boston area-based writer works at a financial firm by day. But along the way, she weaved a tale that examines love, loss, might-have-beens and relationships. Before dying, Jonathan tells his best friend about the girl who should have been his true love. Hundreds of miles away, Abigail suffers from a seizure that leaves her with an overwhelming sense of loss. Starting college the following fall, Abigail meets two men who will forever change her life. Both love and care for her, but one harbors a secret that will split her world into two.

Saratoga 1858: A Novel of Sorts, by Hollis A. Palmer. $18.58 in paperback, $9.29 on Kindle.

In his 12th book, Hollis A. Palmer writes a fictional account of Victorian life in Saratoga Springs, when everyone who was anyone flocked to the Spa City to see and be seen. The book follows five fictional families who summer in Saratoga in a story that touches upon the days biggest issues, including gambling, slavery, class struggles, religion and health.

The Haitian Chronicles: Poetic Reflections on 15 Years of Visiting the Land, by Tom Parsons. $8.99 in paperback.

After more than 15 years of mission work in the poorest of Western nations, the Rev. Tom Parsons shares his poems inspired by lessons learned and inspiration found in the beauty of Haiti and its people.

Leaves Torn Asunder: A Novel of the Adirondacks and the American Civil War, by Glenn L. Pearsall. $12.95 in paperback.

Johnsburg writer Glenn Pearsall has won a few awards for nonfiction about the history of the Adirondacks. But in Leaves Torn Asunder, he tries his hand at a novel inspired by true events. With research done in soldier diaries and letters, town records, regimental histories and Civil War battle sites, Pearsall pieces together the stories of Adirondack soldiers and their families.

Rooster: A Field Trial Fable, by Edward Pontacoloni. $15 in paperback, $4.99 on Kindle.

Lake George fabler Edward Pontacoloni recounts the tale of Rooster, an underdog in the competitive world of bird dog field trials. A classic tale of triumph, Rooster is an inspiring story that takes the reader to places that are warm, friendly and oh so true with a heartwarming style.

The Moose is Loose: The Adventures of an Adirondack Moose and the Wiggletoes Family, by Yvonne Foster Southerland and Alexis Southerland Anekwe; illustrated by Jeff Vernon. $14.95 in paperback, $19.95 in hardcover.

After summering the Adirondacks for more than three decades, mother-and-daughter team Yvonne Foster Southerland and Alexis Southerland Anekwe were inspired to write about the adventures of Big Moose, who lives on the wall at a Pottersville inn. He sneaks down from the wall at night and visits towns and attractions throughout the lower Adirondacks and into the Glens Falls and Saratoga areas  all told in rhymes.
GLENS FALLS  Two women face felony charges after they allegedly attacked and robbed a man who one of them had agreed to meet for a paid sexual encounter, police said.

The victim, a Glens Falls man whose name wasnt released, was bitten on the shoulder by one of the women and dragged by their vehicle as they tried to get away from him after his wallet and cellphone were stolen, according to Glens Falls Police.

The women were identified by police as Tasha M. Savage, 33, and Noel M. Coons, 28, both of Schenectady. Savage faces felony charges of robbery and assault and misdemeanor reckless endangerment, while Coons was charged with felony grand larceny and misdemeanor petit larceny, police said.

The incident happened the night of Feb. 18 in a parking lot off Glen Street, Glens Falls Police Detective Lt. Peter Casertino said. He said the victim had agreed to meet a woman whom he didnt know for sex that would cost him $100. The two met through an unspecified website, he said.

The man got in a vehicle with two women, and decided he did not want to go forward with the sex act. Casertino said he had placed $100 on the dashboard of the car, but tried to retrieve it and a struggle ensued in which Savage allegedly bit him.

The girls advised him there were no refunds, Casertino said.

The man threw his wallet and phone out of the car window to keep it from the women, but one of them grabbed the items and got back in the car. The victim tried to get them back, but Savage drove away with the mans belongings as he tried to get them back.

He was hanging onto the car door as she drove off, Casertino said.

Both women were arraigned and sent to Warren County Jail. Savage has since posted bail, while Coons  who was arrested Monday  remained in jail.

Glens Falls Police Detective Sgt. Joseph Boisclair made the arrests, assisted by State Police.
MOREAU  NatureFest, a fundraiser for The Friends of Moreau Lake, will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 17 at Moreau Lake State Park.

The free day includes interactive nature-related activities, raptors, insects and reptiles. There will be crafts and activities for the kids, such as birdhouse-building, face-painting, pumpkin-painting and more. There will also be nature-related educational booths, representatives from local parks, rescue organizations and wagon rides. Food will be available, as well as a silent auction and tours of the nature center.
LAKE GEORGE  A New Jersey man was charged with reckless operation, a misdemeanor, in conjunction with a crash Saturday afternoon between two rental boats near Canoe Island on Lake George.

A passenger in the other boat was injured.

Aqib Jaweed of Somerset, New Jersey, operating a 17-foot rented SeaRay, was traveling southeast towing a person on a tube when he collided with a rented 19-foot KeyWest that Chad Wilson of Arsley, New Jersey, was operating, according to The Lake George Park Commission Marine Patrol.

Jaweed told marine patrol officers he was watching his tuber and when he looked forward there was a boat directly in his path.

The boat Jaweed was operating struck the other boat and traveled completely over it, causing extensive damage to both vessels.

Brock Wilson, a passenger in the rear of the boat that was struck, was treated at Glens Falls Hospital for head and neck injuries and released.

Bolton EMS transported Wilson to the hospital.

Alcohol was not considered to be a factor in the crash, according to Lake George Park Commission.

Neither operator had taken a boater safety course, which state navigation law requires of anyone born after May 1, 1996 (corrected) to operate a boat in New York.
It will likely be next spring before the states highest court decides whether a White Creek man who was convicted of killing three family members should stand trial again.

The Court of Appeals will not hear oral arguments in the case of Matthew Slocum until early 2017, with a ruling likely a couple of months or so after the hearing.

No specific date has been scheduled, but court spokesman Gary Spencer said the hearing would likely be held in January based on the calendar of cases scheduled ahead of it. Video of Court of Appeals arguments is typically broadcast on the courts website.

Written arguments by both the prosecution and defense were filed earlier this year.

The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court overturned Slocums convictions for murder, arson and lesser charges in connection with the July 13, 2011 deaths of 44-year-old Lisa J. Harrington, 41-year-old Dan A. Harrington and 24-year-old Josh OBrien in their Turnpike Road, White Creek home. Lisa Harrington was Slocums mother and he had lived in the home with his family.

A jury found he shot them to death before setting the home on fire and fleeing to New Hampshire with his then-girlfriend and their young child. The girlfriend later testified against him.

The mid-level appeals court ruled that police should not have questioned Slocum because he had invoked his right to counsel. Also, Slocums lawyer  Washington County Public Defender Michael Mercure  had notified police by letter that he represented Slocum in an unrelated case before he was questioned.

The high court will decide whether to let the Appellate Division ruling remain intact, or reverse it and allow the convictions to stand.

At issue is whether Slocums reply of yeah, probably to a police question about whether he wanted an attorney should have been treated as him invoking his right to counsel. Police kept questioning him despite the utterance, and he later told police he shotgunned his mother.

Mercure, whose office represented Slocum at trial, said both his office and the prosecution had filed their papers in the Court of Appeals as of earlier this summer. But he said he was told a large volume of cases was scheduled for arguments ahead of the Slocum case.

At this point, we are using this time to prepare for a second trial, he said.

There were some plea deal discussions after the Appellate Division ruling, but no agreement could be reached, Mercure said.

Cecilia Walsh, a spokeswoman for the Albany County District Attorneys Office, said her office was waiting for a court date.

We filed everything we needed to file, the defense filed everything they needed to file, she said.

Washington County District Attorney Tony Jordan, who was not in office at the time of the trial, had a conflict of interest because his first assistant district attorney, Christian Morris, worked on the Slocum case for the public defenders office before Jordan was elected.

Slocum, 28, has been held in Washington County Jail since shortly after his conviction was overturned. He had been serving an 88-years-to-life sentence in state prison.
Saseen Doc Joseph, owner of Josephs Diner in Glens Falls, was curious whether national polls in 1975 showing support for a federal bailout of New York City reflected local opinion.

So he put out a ballot box at the diner at 260 Warren St. in Glens Falls and conducted his own weeklong poll.

Of 90 customers that participated, 55 were opposed.

Another 30 customers supported it and five were undecided, according to a Nov. 20, 1975 Post-Star report by Cliff Lee.

According to Joseph, the poll involved a wide cross-section of people ranging from gas station attendants to business executives, Lee reported.

Joseph, who operated the diner from the early 1970s through 1990, died Thursday at age 73, according to a Post-Star obituary.

Joseph served a great breakfast, said Glens Falls Mayor Jack Diamond, who knew Joseph both from the diner and their common interest in harness racing.

Diamond was a trainer in the 1980s, and Joseph raised harness race horses at his farm in Gansevoort.

Truly that was his hobby, but he had a lot of passion, Diamond said. Nice man, nice family.

Joseph was a co-founder of Glens Falls Farmers Market, said EDC Warren County President Edward Bartholomew.

Doc had a great ability to stay on the positive beam, always optimistic, Bartholomew said. He was pro-Glens Falls.

Country concert

Area old-time country music artists will raise funds for Warren County Historical Society at a concert from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday on the grounds of the historical society office at 195 Sunnyside Road in Queensbury.

The lineup includes Donnie Perkins, RGLB West Enders, Bentley Lewis, Wild Country Ramblers, Andrew Aldous and Earl Littan.

Admission is $5. Bring a lawn chair or blanket for seating.

Trail use

An estimated 80,000 people annually use the Feeder Canal Trail walking trail in Glens Falls, Queensbury and Hudson Falls, Supervisor John Strough announced at the Aug. 15 Queensbury Town Board meeting.

Count me in with the 80,000.

Folklife After Hours

The Folklife Center at Crandall Public Library debuted a new Folklife After Hours music video series on the Folklife Center YouTube channel, reference librarian Kevin Rogan announced Monday.

The series features local musicians performing in an intimate setting in the Folklife Center reading room.

The debut video features six songs by Queensbury musician Frank Palangi.

The series is based on the concept of National Public Radios Tiny Desk Concert series.

We thought if we did something similar, it would be a great way to support and showcase talented local musicians, Rogan said.

A Grandfather saying

At the Grandmothers Table farm to table dinner, many people recounted stories of their grandparents.

I recalled a saying from my Grandfather Kline, an immigrant from Hungary.

Whenever my grandfather would sit down to a great meal, he would say, You didnt get that in the old country!

My grandfather had another saying: Dont get old, whatever you do.

However, he never disclosed a formula for avoiding the aging process.
After-school program good idea

Bravos to the churches involved in trying to start an after-school youth program in Lake George. Between 80 to 90 percent of Lake George students in grades six through 11 who completed a survey said they wanted a place to go after school from 3:30 p.m. to dinner time. St. James, Caldwell Presbyterian and Sacred Heart responded with the plan to start a program at the Lake George Senior Center. Its a great idea and a great message to students that adults are listening to them.

Moratorium good idea in Schuylerville

Bravos to the Village Board in Schuylerville for considering a moratorium on development until it passes a zoning ordinance. Earlier this year, there was an enormous amount of community angst over a new Dollar General store. That led to renewed interest in zoning in the community. Unfortunately, that seems to have stalled. Until the board has a good read on what the community actually wants, it is prudent to enact a moratorium.

Fair to add beer, wine tasting event

Bravos to the Washington County Fair for approving a new beer and wine-tasting event at the fair for the first time. Craft breweries and wineries have been popping up all over the region and the County Fair is a perfect spot for them to show off their products. The tasting event will be a one-day event on Aug. 23 from 4 to 8 p.m., but if it goes well, the fair might want to consider expanding it to other days. This event is a perfect fit for the fair.

Rutland mayor is on the right track

Bravos to Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras for his innovative approach to saving his small city. Louras has taken a lot of flak for asking the Vermont resettlement agency to send refugees to Rutland. Mayors of several other communities around the country have also taken this approach with good results. Like many rural communities, including many locally, population declines are making it more and more difficult for communities to function. The mayor argues that new residents will rent apartments, buy goods and be good members of the community. And that is something they desperately need.

Village takes lead to ban Log Bay Day

Bravos to the Lake George Village Board for leading the way in proposing a resolution calling for the end of Log Bay Day on Lake George. While the resolution is mostly symbolic, in its current form it calls on the town of Bolton, the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Lake George Park Commission to take action against the event. If all those agencies worked together, it would be very difficult for Log Bay Day to continue. The Village Board has not yet taken action on the resolution.

Bravos from a reader:

Home Depot takes care of its customers

Bravos to Home Depot in Queensbury for offering up free bottles of cold water at the entrance to its store during the brutal heat of the past couple weeks. It was a significant act of kindness for any of its brave customers willing to brave the heat to shop there.

- Mary Blackhurst
The Act 815 was enacted to provide a framework for the collection, allocation and management of petroleum revenue in a responsible, transparent, accountable and sustainable manner for the benefit of citizens of Ghana in accordance with the 1992 Constitution.

Mr Koney said the sectors fiscal contribution increased from GHC1.24 billion in 2014 to GHC 1.4 billion in 2015, representing 8.8 percent growth. In addition, he said the sector accounted for 15 percent of the domestic revenue generated by the Ghana Revenue Authority.

According to the Bank of Ghana , the sector was the leading source of foreign exchange in 2015, contributing in excess of 31 percent of total merchandise exports .

He made the call at the 2016 Zone two inter-mines First Aid and Safety Competition held at Prestea in the Western Region under the theme, safety our way of Life.

These funds are largely channelled into the national budget to finance development programmes of the state.

It is in this light that we continue to urge the government to pass a law similar to the Petroleum Revenue Management Act for the mining industry.

READ MORE
This was made known by the Head of Information Technology at the Customs Division of the GRA, Albert Akurugu, when a delegation from Nigeria paid a courtesy call the GRAs Technical Support Bureau.

The creation of the E-Zone at the ports is to serve as a one-stop shop for all exporters. This forms part of measures under the GNSW project to synchronise operations at the port, Mr Akurugu said. Today it is easier to export and import from Europe, USA than to do same from neighbouring countries. A harmonised single window project on the continent would transform who we do business among ourselves.

The push for the paperless transaction will also include the implementation of a single and fully integrated risk management system that will result in a significant reduction in the number of consignments inspected by Customs.

At the launch of a strategic action plan for the implementation of the single window project in Accra recently, the Commissioner-General of the GRA, Mr George Blankson said his outfit will simplify, and eliminate cumbersome procedures in a number of areas and we intend to collaborate with our sister agencies to significantly reduce the intrusive inspections and interventions along the trade process in Ghana.
Before endorsing the party, he asked, Why do Ghanaian celebrities suffer setbacks when they endorse a political party?. He endorsed the party saying With all due respect, I want to openly disclose my political affiliation so that when you meet me, you will know where I belong.

He then showed off his NDC T-Shirt and added that This is the original umbrella (referring to the NDC's emblem) and I am showing it publicly.

This is how he endorsed Mahama.
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
The police administration on Friday, August 19, 2016, pulled out officers in the troubled town located in the Eastern Region after irate residents set the police station there on fire in protest over some police officers who fled after being allegedly involved a bullion van attack which led to the death of the driver.

Speaking on Accra FM Monday, the IGP said it is the duty of the chiefs and people of Donkorkrom to give out the suspects since they are common criminals.

READ MORE

Policing is a shared responsibility, excuse me to say, they are not from Jupiter, they are not from the sky or Mars. They are people living in the town who carried out the attacks.

So it behoves on the chiefs and elders there as law abiding citizens, good citizens of this country to give them out because they have perpetrated a crime and must be brought to justice, he said.

Asked what he will do if the suspects are not given out, Mr Kudalor responded saying crime does not expire. We shall get them any day, anytime.

He continued:We the police would also use our resources to smoke them out. So it is not only for the police, all Ghanaians must help to find them. If they are hiding in your town, you have to give them out because they are common criminals.

Meanwhile the Chief of Donkorkrom, Nana Akuamoah Boateng, has sort to justify the actions of the youth, saying the IGP should rather say something to calm them instead of pulling out the police.
The Executive Director of IMANI Ghana Franklin Cudjoe said the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) has made 20 promises so far.

"As we speak, we are still counting, the PPP has made 48 promises, CPP, 38, NDP, 44, PNC, 62, we are tallying that of the NPP but NDC has made 20 so far. They made 541 the last time and only 12 were measurable. The number of quantifiable promises as we count so far: PPP, 4, CPP, 4, NDP, 1, NDC 5, we are still counting that of the NPP, Cudjoe told Citi FM.

Franklin Cudjoe further explained we are going to do a proper presentation on quantifiable, quasi-quantifiable and empty based on the economy of the country and the projection of how the economy will be like, I think those things are very useful.

The NDC launched its campaign last Sunday at the Cape Coast stadium in the Central Region. The party looks forward to launching its manifesto in Sunyani in the Brong Ahafo region in few weeks.

Meanwhile, the New Patriotic Party, has also indicated that it will launch its manifesto by the end of August.
The trio were initially supposed to serve a four month jail term after they were sentenced by the Supreme Court on July 27, 2016.

This means they spent 27 days in jail.

The jailed Montie three, Alistair Nelson, Godwin Ako Gunn and Salifu Maase alias Mugabe were sentenced to four months in prison by the Supreme Court following contempt proceedings against them. The contempt proceedings came after the three threatened the lives of Supreme Court judges who sat on the Abu Ramadan and Gary Nimako versus the Electoral Commission case.

A petition book was subsequently opened by pro-government group Research and Advocacy Platform (RAP) to collect signatures of Ghanaians to implore the president to exercise his prerogative of mercy powers to free the three contemnors.

Those who signed the petition included the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hanna Tetteh, Minister of Children, Gender and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, the Minister of Education, Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang and her deputy, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.
The Tema Regional Police Command has uncovered a shooting range that it suspects to be the training ground for suspected armed robbers.

SIAW AGYEMPONG, DUFFUOR, OTHERS HONOURED

Eight successful African personalities have been honoured for their contributions to development on the continent at this years Lifetime Africa Achievement Prize (LAAP) in Accra.

OBINIM WANTED; POLICE GIVE 24-HOUR ULTIMATUM

Woes of the General Overseer of the International Gods Way Church Bishop Daniel Obinim, appears to have deepened as the Tema Regional police are on the verge of declaring him wanted within the next 24 hours, if he fails to report himself.

ACHIMOTA FOREST NOT FOR SALE

MINISTER FUMES: Over delay of projects at Ho
Hundreds of supporters welcomed the president with chants in Salaga.

The campaign tour comes at a time when some residents led by opposition political parties have taken to the streets in protest over harsh living conditions.

Police in the region have officially written to them to suspend the demonstration due to the presidents visit.

But Saaka Alhassan, the spokesperson for the Northern Regional Secretary of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has told Pulse.com.gh that it is too late to call off the protest.

Read more: Mahama campaigns in Northern Region

The protesters, including, traders, market women, artisans, say they are unhappy with the rising cost of living in the region.

They cite the high electricity bills as one of their major headaches in the region and want the government to quickly reduce the price of electricity.

Their concerns notwithstanding, the NDC is touting what it says to be its major achievements in the Northern Region.
The demonstration dubbed Di Miiya in Dagbani which literally means Times Are Tough is being staged in the Tamale metropolis.

READ ALSO:

Police in the region have officially written to them to suspend the demonstration due to the presidents visit.

But organisers have told Pulse.com.gh that it is too late to call off the protest scheduled for today due to resources already invested into the protest.

Wearing red armbands and attires, with placards with the inscription "JM must go", "Mahama Wahala, wahala Mahama", the protesters have begun marching through the principal streets of Tamale, demanding for a reduction in electricity tariffs to at least 50 percent.

The coalition, including the NPP, CPP, PPP, NDP, and APC have earlier argued that the demonstration is to let the government know that the plight of residents has worsened as a result of high utility tariffs.
According to Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Koku Anyidoho, for Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to submit over 76,000 supposed 'foreign voters' to the Electoral Commission for deletion exposes NPPs hatred for Voltarians.

Dr. Bawumia made a presentation during the election petition where he claimed that Ghanas electoral roll is flawed with names of minors and over 76,000 Togolese.

He also claimed that other African nationals from Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso are also on the roll hence the need for a new one to be compiled before the 2016 general elections but the Electoral Commission rejected the claims describing it as unconvincing.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday in the Volta region, Anyidoho said, "Have we ever sat down to plot evil against the Ashanti region because it is the stronghold of the NPP, certainly not"

"It is now clear as daylight that Dr, Bawumias evil agenda of presenting fake voters register from Togo and making a false claim that thousands of Togolese have their names on Ghanas register (specifically from the Volta region) feeds into the UP traditions sick thinking that the Volta region is not part of Ghana.

He said, "They insult us, they spit on us, they consider us to be Togolese (Not that there is anything wrong to being Togolese) and when we refuse to vote for them, they say we are inward looking. Why shouldnt we look inward when the view outside is not pleasant to the eye?."
The programme seeks to create more jobs in several sectors of the economy, with private sector involvement, and is anchored on value addition and diversification on the back of sustainable power supply.

On his Facebook page that, he wrote that, "The Economic Transformation and Livelihood Empowerment Programme will strengthen existing industries and pay particular attention to the entire agriculture value chain."

"Additionally, the Programme will provide more jobs for the youth and Ghanaians as a whole, improve disposable income and enhance their purchasing power," he said.

His re-election campaign tour in the Northern Region to canvass for votes during the December 2016 polls will begin today, Monday, August 22, 2016.

Some of the areas he will be visiting include Salaga, Kpandai, Bimbilla, Wulensi, Yendi, Gushiegu, Zabzugu, Tatale, Mion, Nanton and Chereponi.
This is because the Electoral Commission is taking steps to replace them with plastic ones for the presidential and parliamentary polls.

READ ALSO: Ghana Election 2016

In a rebranding agenda, the EC, some few months ago, introduced a new logo which many said did not reflect the scope and purpose of the Commission.

The EC Chairperson, Charlotte Osei subsequently unveiled a five-year strategic plan for the Commission.

Mr. Fred Tetteh, an official of the ECs Research, Monitoring and Evaluation Department gave the hint of the change of voting booths during a presentation on the Ghanaian electoral process at a pre-election training programme on Saturday for journalists.

He praised the countrys electoral system, saying it is much better than that of Nigeria and Kenya.

Our electoral process is such that, so far as a persons name is on the register, that person can vote during the election even if he/she did not take along the voter ID card to the polling station. All that is required is for you to mention your name to the officer there, who will verify from the register, he said.
Dear Madam,CONCERNS OVER ONGOING PROCESSES LEADING TO THE 2016 GENERAL ELECTIONSWe wish to bring to the attention of the Commission, some concerns for urgent redress as we prepare towards the 2016 General Election.1. We have observed that the Commission is commencing voter registration in prisons across the country per letters emanating from some District offices. However, there has been no notification to political parties to inform them and have the opportunity to monitor this process as has been the practice.2. We request to know what modalities are in place towards foreign registrations for this year's election as well as particulars of the existing foreign registrations done earlier by the Commission.3. We note a release from the Commission on challenges encountered with the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration on the 19th of August exercise and the decision to extend the registration hours to 8pm on that day and an additional day extension to the 27th of August 2016. We would have wished that much as the C.I. 91 grants this activity of the Commission in consultation with political parties, the parties would have been duly notified/consulted before any such decisions are taken.4. The procedures announced for proxy vote has to be reviewed. The Commission directs that a prospective proxy can go to the Commission and pick up forms for the applicant. This should not be the case because of the inherent abuse.I refer to Regulation 25 (2) of C.I. 94 which states that: "The applicant shall complete a proxy form set out in Form Six of the Schedule". What this means is that nobody can make or complete proxy forms on behalf of an applicant.The Commission has also decided to do this exercise at all district offices and added the headquarters of the Commission. One wonders why the EC headquarters must be part of this as it's not even a registration centre. We want the Commission to engage with the Parties on this exercise to ensure effective monitoring.An early response to the concerns is anticipated. As a stakeholder, we would wish to receive formal correspondence from the commission on activities that we are required to play a part instead of through the media, so as to help in getting our members and the general public to participate fully.As we approach the election, it is expected that the Commission would be more transparent and ensure inclusiveness of stakeholders in its activities.Sincerely,John Boadu General Secretary (Ag.)Cc: All Political Parties The Media
According to him, the Special Prosecutor, to be established by Act of Parliament, will be independent of the Executive, and possess an exclusive remit to investigate and prosecute certain categories of cases and allegations of corruption, including those involving alleged violations of the Public Procurement Act and cases implicating political office holders and politicians.

Prosecutions of such persons, he stressed, will no longer be tainted by perceptions of witch-hunting and selective justice.

He made this known on Monday, August 22, 2016, whilst addressing the 16th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, at Abetifi, Kwahu, in the Eastern Region.

Announcing a raft of measures to deal with the toxic issue of corruption, Nana Akufo-Addo, who was the Special Guest at the General Assembly, explained that a successful Ghana can only be built on the basis of good governance, underpinned by efficient and honest public services. This requires that we succeed in eliminating corruption.

In order to restore Ghanas reputation, which, sadly, over recent years, has become a byword for corruption, the NPP flagbearer stated that, firstly, he, together with his team, will give the requisite leadership, which is lacking under President Mahama.

Public service is for me exactly that  public service. Anyone who joins my team to make money out of public office will not be welcome. Money is made in the private sector, not in public office. I will be strict in my supervision of this principle, he assured.

Nana Akufo-Addo stressed that his government will be scrupulous in enforcing the teachings of the Public Procurement Act (Act 663), which confine sole sourcing of public contracts to exceptional circumstances, and not the norm, as is the case under the Mahama government.

Inflated contracts, which are currently the bane of our public finances, will be things of the past. Competitive bidding is the best protection of value for money in our public transactions, and will be the consistent mechanism for undertaking such transactions. The era of sole sourcing will come to an end, he said.

The NPP flagbearer further added that an efficient and honest reordering and prioritization of the countrys public expenditure will enable us to devote more resources to enhance the capacity of our anti-corruption agencies. It is essential that they have the means to lead the fight against corruption.

He continued, We will support all moves to give Parliament greater oversight capability over the activities of the Executive. This will give true meaning to the principles of separation of powers and accountable government.

He appealed to the Presbyterian Church to give critical support to the next NPP government, God-willing, as it undertakes these crucial steps. Our very future depends on their success.

Add prayers for Gods guidance to members of the Electoral Commission, so they can make transparent and fair arrangements for the electoral contests to enhance the stability of our country. And please pray for the NPP and myself, that I will be given, by Almighty God, wisdom, strength, courage and compassion to enable me carry out my duties as a good leader.
Background

The contempt proceedings came after the three threatened the lives of Supreme Court judges who sat on the Abu Ramadan and Gary Nimako versus the Electoral Commission case.

1. Wise counsel?

According to the president, he consulted the Council of State in arriving at this decision. The Council of State are the presidents wise men and women who advise him on an array of important issues including the appointment of judges.

2. Compassionate grounds

According to the president, he pardoned the contemnors on compassionate grounds. Compassion would usually be given for convicts with serious ill health such as cancer.

3. The petition worked

A petition book was subsequently opened to collect signatures of Ghanaians to implore the president to exercise his prerogative of mercy powers to free the three contemnors. According to the president, he acted based on the petition.

Those who signed the petition included the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hanna Tetteh, Minister of Children, Gender and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, the Minister of Education, Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang and her deputy, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.

A counter petition has also been started by the opposition Progressive Peoples Party to urge the president not to pardon the trio.

4. Lessons learned

The President is hopeful that all will draw lessons from the events leading to the conviction of the three persons and bear in mind the consequences of injudicious utterances.
President John Mahama arrived in Tamale on Monday, to visit some parts of the Northern Region as he begins his four day campaign tour.

Hundreds of supporters welcomed the president with chants.

Opposition parties in the region are embarking on a demonstration, they call, Damiiya meaning times are tough.

Police in the region have officially written to them to suspend the demonstration due to the presidents visit.
This comes at a time when President John Mahama is expected to begin campaign activities in the Northern region.

READ ALSO: Tamale

Police in the region have officially written to them to suspend the demonstration due to the presidents visit.

But Saaka Alhassan, the spokesperson for the Northern Regional Secretary of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has told Pulse.com.gh that it is too late to call off the protest scheduled for Monday.

"Last two weeks, we signed undertaking and everything, and they agreed that it is coming on. We have been demarcated the routes that we were going to use, and they gave us the go-ahead and we went through our organisation. And to our dismay, on Friday, they decided to write to us that we should cancel it and based on our investment and the monies sunk in, we can't cancel it within three days to the programme. We have also written to the police telling them our reasons why we can't cancel it," he explained.

The coalition, including the NPP, CPP, PPP, NDP, and APC have earlier argued that the demonstration is to let the government know that the plight of residents has worsened as a result of high utility tariffs.

We are determined to show to the whole world that President Mahama and his government cannot continue to take us for granted and treat the people of the north as if we are only good for votes, the Northern Regional Secretary of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Sule Salifu said.

He said President Mahama has shown that he simply does not care about the fact that more and more people here in the north are struggling just to put a single meal on the dining table for the family.

The demonstration dubbed Di Miiya in Dagbani which literally means Times Are Tough would be staged in the Tamale metropolis.

Scores of residents are expected to support the demonstration which is expected to begin at 7 am today [Monday, August 22, 2016].
Two years after the incident occurred, Gai Scott, has reportedly been convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

The Hip Hop artist and reality star was shot in the back and chest during his mother's funeral procession in Massachusetts in March of 2014.

Gai was reportedly found guilty on Thursday, August 18, 2016 and is set for sentencing on August 26.

Police authorities have disclosed that Benzino and Gai were in different moving vehicles, on their way to a church in Plymouth for the funeral of Benzino's mother when the shooting occurred.
According to the inmate database of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons, Pearlman died on Friday, August 19, 2016, while serving time following a conviction for fraud.

CNN News reports that the record producer "had been serving a 25-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, for running Ponzi and bank schemes."

The road ended for him in 2008 after being found guilty of ripping investors off in a $300 million scam.

Pearlman gained music prominence in the mid 90's, for his role in fishing out Backstreet Boys and Nsync, which aided the emergence of Nick Carter and Justin Timberlake.

The latter was one of those who mourned the late producer in a Twitter comment he posted on Sunday, August 21, 2016.
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
The maiden edition of the event themed: Made in Nigeria meets Made for Nigeria held from 29th September - 1st October 2015 starting with a tour of the host city on 29th, a Fashion Workshop on the 30th September and a fashion showcase and runway event on October 1st respectively. The 2016 edition themed; Plain And Pattern , will also be a 3-day long event kicking off with the Tour of the host city; Ibadan, on the 28th of September and A fashion Workshop on the 29th. The runway show will take place on the evening of the 3rd day, which is September 30th with the escalator area of the mall serving as runway for the models.

According to the chief coordinator of the event, Adegbite '3llionbuckschic' Adenike ;" the event is beyond the show, the impact the show will have on the entire fashion industry is massive. Our vision is progressing and I am excited about some of the organizations that would be partnering with us towards the execution of this great idea conceived and we are certainly open to having more. The Independence F-Art-shion show will set standard for the Nigeria fashion industry and also open the eyes of fashion entrepreneurs to opportunities that abound in this space; it is massive! Our participation and selection process is open and fair, anyone with good designs can participate. Our workshop is also free to attend though with limited seating space."
This serious child abuse was brought to the fore by a concerned Lagosian, Michael Adesokan, via his Twitter handle, where he narrated how the man has been beating the boy almost on a daily basis, leaving him with serious scars on his body, with no one doing anything about it.
Arrested alongside Olude is a member of his church who is also part of the gang, Rasak Raheem, who were nabbed following a tip-off, just as the police has embarked on a manhunt for the fleeing members of the gang.

It was gathered that the police had received information that Olude and his gang were operating in the Idiroko /Oke Odan area, dispossessing motorists of their valuables, from a businessman who was moving money from Nigeria to the Benin Republic, who put a distress call across to the operatives.

Olude who is a father of five, confessed that he is the founder of the church and was recruited into the gang by Raheem when he (Raheem), went to the church for special prayers with one of his friends, Bidemi, and later began hiding their guns in his church premises.

I have five children. I was arrested when the police found five guns on my premises. It was my church member, Bidemi, who invited Raheem.

Raheem was brought into my church in February 2016, after he was infected with a Sexually Transmitted Disease. He also owed a house rent. So, he came to live in the church. I did not suspect that he was bringing in stolen goods into the churchs premises.

I knew the time when someone came to collect a gun from him. Bidemi usually dressed like a policeman. I did not know that he was a robber. Now, Bidemi has fled.

But Raheem, an indigene of Abeokuta, said Olude knew he and his friends were robbers and were keeping watch over the guns for them.

The pastor and I are friends. I went to his church and a man called Bode from Cotonou brought the guns. I told the pastor that the guns were for safe keeping in the church and he said there was no problem.

About two weeks ago, Bidemi called me that he wanted to use the guns around the border area. I said he should bring N10,000 when coming and he agreed.
Mr Yisua Adeleke was shocked to discover that Mrs Morufa Ajoke Odesanya, 36, was a married woman instead of a widow as she had made him to believe.

Morufa reportedly invited Yisua over to collect the money she owed him on November 25, 2015, gthe aggrieved man and doused her in acid.

The suspect then went into hiding for months until he was finally arrested on August 7, 2016.

Narrating his side of the story, Yisua confessed to pouring acid on Morufa who he referred to as his fiancee, revealed that the victim bore two children for him but he later discovered that she had five other children prior to meeting him.

" I started dating Morufa and she asked me to rent a room, which I did at Idi Arere, Ibadan. She told me she was a widow with two children. She used to bring the two children to Idi Arere. She also took me to where she was living at Elebu area of Ibadan, saying that the house belonged to her aunt. She showed me a man who she claimed to be her brother, but whom I later discovered to be her husband. She took me to her mother and I took her to my aunt who was like my mother to introduce her as my wife-to-be. Morufa used to come and stay with me at the rented apartment and I had to tell my wife that she could leave because I had already got a wife.

"This continued until the day I came in contact with Magun (a charm usually placed diabolically on wayward women as a punishment for their lovers) in the course of our affair. It was as if my navel was twisted and I also had a tongue twist. I started feeling dizzy. This made me raise the alarm and Morufa also started crying. An Islamic cleric came to my rescue by making some incantations. Though I became a bit relieved, the stomach ache continued and the next thing Morufa said was that she believed that the Magun was the handiwork of her mother-in-law.

"I asked whether she went to her mother-in-law and for the reason she would want to harm her daughter-in-laws fiance since her son was dead. To my surprise, Morufa called me same day and asked about my condition. She then added that she had sex with one Baba Bidemi, and it proved that what I experienced was not Magun. Baba Bidemi was the man she called her brother. I was confused and this made me to decide that I was no longer interested in the relationship if she could deceive me for about two years that we were together. She started begging me".

At this point, Morufa reportedly confessed to the fact that the man she had referred to as her brother was in fact, her husband and that they had five children together.

"I probed her further and she confessed that the man was her husband and that she had five children, though she initially told me that three children she did not declare as her own were born by the wife of her brother before they divorced. I stopped going to her husbands house but we were still meeting because I wanted to collect the money I contributed as a member of a group we formed for the purpose of contributing money that we could collect in bulk. I got number six and number 20. She collected the first one and when I was to collect the second one after the discovery of her lies, she told me that she gave it to her brother (husband) to pay FRSC fine. But to my surprise, when I saw the brother (husband), he was riding a brand new motorcycle. This infuriated me so much because I felt used. She continued to plead with me to forgive her, saying that I was the salt of her life. But I was so hurt by her deception and the devil pushed me to an evil act. So I conceived the plan to pour acid on her. On November 25, 2015, she asked me to come and collect my money, and I took the acid jar along with me. We stood at a point not too far from her residence and in the course of our discussion I brought out the jar, opened it and poured the content on her. She screamed and ran off, while a bit of the liquid splashed on me."

Yisua confessed that he had escaped to his village at Omi Adio to lay low for a week, adding that he regrets his actions.

Morufa reportedly requires the sum of N3 million for corrective surgery while her real husband is reported to have forgiven her and is taking care of their kids.
But what many have not gotten around to is the fact that the Nigerians in us hastened her death after the way and manner her issue was handled both by the media and those who had taken up the fight to save her life.

After battling cancer for months, and with doctors allegedly telling her family the case was at the stage IV level and with no hope of survival, her family still had the faith that a miracle, no matter how little it was, could still save her.

Then they came out with an appeal tagged #SaveMayowa, pleading with Nigerians to come to their aid so she could be flown abroad for treatment, in the hope she could still be saved.

Nollywood actress, Toyin Aimakhu, and the Life Stake Foundation, headed by Aramide Kasumu, took up the challenge, to sensitize Nigerians to donate money to the Save Mayowa Funds.

Good intentions, you will say. But in the end, the same people who set out to help raise funds for the lady were the same people who hastened her death in the way they played out later in the day because they were either denied access to the funds or not given some percentage they wanted.

Aimakhu even went as far as reporting the matter to the police and accusing the family of using her to raise the money they never intended to use for the purpose of taking the lady abroad for treatment.

Even a top blogger was also part of those who hastened Mayowa's death by rushing to post that the fund raising was a scam. She followed by reporting she had interviewed top officials at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital and was told they never recommended that the family should take Mayowa out of the country for treatment.

Though she later gave a half-hearted apology when the police came out with their findings that the whole issue was not a scam, she still found a way to exonerate herself, playing the victim in the case.

But all in all, the whole drama must have contributed to the worsening situation Mayowa found herself and must have added to the strain she was going through.

Our medical system too should be blamed for what later became of Mayowa's fate. It was later realized that when she became ill some years ago, doctors did not diagnose the cancer on time and rather attributed her situation to sickle cell anemia. It was after the cancer had eaten deep into her that it was noticed and at that time, it had become a hopeless case.

Now that Mayowa is dead, we are waiting for the crocodile tears to start flowing. Toyin Aimakhu should also take to her now famous Instagram account to shed some tears for Mayowa but she should remember that posterity is waiting in the wings.

The powerful blogger should also release a statement to justify her position in the drama that she helped in fanning its embers.
Tribune reports that Ade narrated that armed with the information he needed, he got himself a knife, went to the girl's house and stabbed her twice in the stomach before slitting her throat.

The suspect, a 100-level student in one of the universities in Nigeria, who is currently being detained at the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Oyo State Police Command, over the murder attempt.

According to the reports, Ade would have succeeded in his attempt on Thursday, August 11, 2016, at the residence of his girlfriends parents at Sango-Alaro area of Ibadan at about 2:30pm but for the presence of a policeman, Sergeant Ayeni Oluwafemi, a neighbour of the girls parent who heard her cries for help and went to investigate what caused her cries.

It was gathered that the policeman met the 19-year-old in a pool of her blood while the assailant was holding a knife and about to escape from the room. The Sergeant tackled him to a standstill, handcuffed his hands and called for assistance to save the girl.

Confessing to the crime, the suspect said the girl had refused to terminate the pregnancy he was responsible for.

"I met my girlfriend about two months ago on Facebook. We had a mutual friend and I added her. She accepted my request and we got to know each other. I proposed a relationship to her and she accepted. We had sex only once on July 4. I did not protect myself.

On August 10, she told me that she was pregnant. The next morning, on Thursday, August 11, she called me that her parents wanted to see me. I went to her parents at Alaro area of Ibadan and they wanted to know what my intention was on the pregnancy.

I suggested that she had an abortion but they said they could not abort for their daughter because it was against their belief. I told them that I would get back to them on Monday, August 15.

I left for home confused, but on the way home, different thoughts went through my mind because I didnt want my parents to know. I didnt want to disappoint them. I was with my phone at home and I picked it and typed; 'What to do if my girlfriend does not want to have an abortion on Google'. It brought out different options that I can deny, which I didnt deny.

Another option was to convince her to have an abortion, which did not work. There were also other options but the last one was that I could kill her. I chose that option because she was the only one who knew my house and I believed that if I killed her, no one would be able to trace my house and I would get away with my action.

To kill, Google gave me an option to use poison, which I knew no pharmacy would sell to me. Other options were to use a gun or a knife. Knife was easy to get, so I went to the market same day to buy a knife and returned to her house."

"I did not meet her at home so I called her and waited for her. When she came in, I attacked her with the knife but she was resisting. I stabbed her on the right and left sides of her stomach and slashed her throat.

Unfortunately for me, her screams got to a neighbour and he came in. Coincidentally, he is a policeman so he handcuffed me and I was arrested. It was the fear of disappointing my parents that made me take the action.
Wabba stated this while fielding questions during the News Agency of Nigeria Forum in Abuja on Sunday.

He said now was the right time to review the present minimum wage of N18,000 and that the congress had made a formal demand for it.

According to him, since the union put a formal demand before government to try and review the minimum wage and the argument has been whether it is the right time to review the minimum wage.

"We have defended that position effectively; in the midst of the recession in U.S. in 2008, the first economic response of the government of Obama was to the effect that workers needed to be empowered.

"Because they must be buying and selling for the economy to be stimulated; if you produce and nobody to buy how can the economy can pick up?

"Therefore, the argument is you have to empower the workers, which will in turn empower the middle and lower stratum of the society; and by so doing, the economy will pick up and that is how the economy picks up.

"There is no way you can address the issue and challenges in the economy without empowering the workers.

"If not, they will continue to be impoverished; so, you have a pool of working poor that cannot meet their needs and productivity will be very low.

"Therefore, anywhere in the world where there is recession, you put it side by side; outside the issue of addressing and putting in place sound macro-economic policies, is also the issue of empowering people.

"These are the issues that we have argued and government has accepted that yes there is a need to actually review the minimum wage, Wabba said.

The president explained that the minimum wage as recognised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), is a wage that a person who had laboured should be paid in order to avoid exploitation from employers.

He said labour was trying to address the issue of exploitation because if you allow everybody to go and pay what they want because of the unemployment situation in Nigeria, some people will go and pay N5,000.

Wabba said that the congress was working hard for the review of an aspect of the Minimum Wage Law, which states that the law would only apply to employers, employing about 50 people.

"Presently, the Pension Law says that even if you are employing five people, you will pay the minimum wage because we are talking of a minimum that will be able to sustain a family of four for a period of 30 days.

"Can N18, 000 truly in the context of the present economy sustain a family of four for 30 days? The obvious answer is no, So, why cant we review it? he asked.
This was disclosed via a statement released by DSS spokesman, Tony Opuiyo on Monday, August 22, 2016.

The statement reads in part:

Following threat messages against some members of the diplomatic corps in Abuja and Lagos, this service responded and subsequently apprehended one Aikhoje Moses, on 19 August 2016, at Azagha by-pass off the Benin-Asaba expressway in Edo state.

Before his arrest, Moses had threatened the diplomatic community in Nigeria, particularly the consular-generals of Switzerland and Denmark and their embassies in Nigeria, warning them to leave the country.

The service also arrested one Mudaisiru Jibrin aka Namakele/Alarama on 17 July, 2016, at Sauna quarters, Yankaba area in Kano. Jibrin was the spiritual leader to a newly uncovered Boko Haram cell in Kano. Preliminary investigation so far conducted revealed that he was also the mastermind of the shooting of some students at Government Secondary School (GSS), Mamudo village near Potiskum, Yobe State, in 2013.

Similarly, on 8 July, 2016, at Kinkinau area in Unguwar Muazu of Kaduna metropolis, the service arrested one Mukhtar Tijani, a notorious Boko Haram fighter and three of his accomplices namely, Isiaku Salihu, Abdullahi Isah and Hindu Isah. The four suspects were apprehended while perfecting arrangements for major coordinated attacks on selected targets and locations in Kaduna state.

ALSO READ: Boko Haram burns down Borno village
A senior military official said the bomber was also killed and that it was possible one of the three victims was also on the bike. Another security source said authorities were convinced this was the work of Boko Haram.

A regional offensive against Boko Haram led by Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger -- the four countries most affected by the militant group -- has chased it out of towns in the Lake Chad region.

In response, the group has launched a guerrilla campaign mostly targeting the civilian population.

Cameroon has been frequently hit by suicide attacks. A suicide bomber killed at least 11 people when he blew himself up close to a mosque in Cameroon near the Nigerian border at the end of June.

Boko Haram pledged its allegiance to Islamic State last year but the group has apparently split, with Islamic State naming Abu Musab al-Barnawi three weeks ago as the group's leader for West Africa in a two-page interview in its weekly magazine.
Kibaku is the native language of Chibok local government, the community where over 200 secondary schoolgirls were abducted by the Boko Haram sect during the administration of former president Goodluck Jonathan in April 2014.

"Let them (federal government) declare us not Nigerians so that the world would rally around us," he said.

"They sit at the gate of help and they did not help. Please give us a chance and allow people who are ready to help us. Give us a chance so that we go back to these girls. If we perish, we perish," he said.

Tsambido while speaking at the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) protest in Abuja on Monday, August 22, 2016 said the Chibok community regret voting the All Progressive Congress (APC) into power.

He added that the President Buhari had failed to fulfill his promise of securing the release of the girls after a year since he took over power on May 29, 2015.

"We voted the current president whole-heartedly under the promise that he would bring back these girls.

"Professor was campaigning that General Buhari would go to Sambisa they promised us that General would go to Sambisa if he comes to power.

"He promised that two weeks was enough to get back our girls. Now it is more than one year, and its just excuses and lies, it is not corruption?"

Addressing Buhari as "Mai Geskia" ( a Hausa phrase meaning'True One'), Maureen Kabir, a member of the BBOG group said the president was yet to fulfill the saying that "he was a man of integrity and unquestionable character."

"President Buhari on the day of his inauguration said the war against Boko Harm would not be said to have been won until the Chibok girls are released.

"Today, the Chief of Air Staff, Sadiq Abubakar is saying they do not know where the Chibok girls are.

"The same federal government has said time without number that Boko Haram has been defeated.

"Mai Geskia (President Buhari) said he would visit Borno during the campaign. Today, all we hear is excuses from the same president who the Chibok community voted for wholeheartedly," she said.

Speaking to the police officers who were ordered to prevent the protesters from entering the Villa, Miss Kabir said: "The same government has failed you. The barracks you live in is nothing to write home about. You cannot compare where you stay to the residence of the president and his ministers.

"We are our own government in Nigeria providing everything for ourselves; from light to food, and even security.

Someday, you all (security officers) will join us," she added.

Esther Yakubu, mother of Dorcas Yakubu (the girl who spoke in the newly released video of the girls) expressed dissatisfaction over the communication gap which between the federal government and parents of the Chibok girls.

"We are ready to receive our daughters in whichever form and shape they would be released. We are ready to reshape them back to what we all would be proud of," she said.

Mrs. Yakubu noted that the recent video released by the insurgents should provoke the government to rescue the remaining 218 girls.

Oby Ezekwesili, convener of the BBOG group assured parents of the abducted girls that the movement would continue in its advocacy.

She stated that the march to the presidential villa would continue every 72 hours until Buhari speaks to them on plans to rescue the 218 abducted Chibok schoolgirls.
The groups co-founder, Oby Ezekwesili earlier announced that they would not hesitate to march to the Presidential Villa everyday if that would lead to the rescue of the abducted Chibok girls.

Ezekwesili said this following a video of the Chibok girls that was recently released by Boko Haram.

According to Leadership, a member of the group, Tunji Olanrewaju said todays march will begin around 9 am.

Olanrewaju also said The March was anchored on three core issues which include the plea for rescue video released by Boko Haram, the worsening humanitarian conditions of IDPs and fellow citizens in the Northeast and the on-going military arms procurement trials.

In April 2016, members of the Bring Back Our Girls group marched to the Presidential Villa in commemoration of the 2nd anniversary of the abduction of the Chibok girls.

Meanwhile, a pro-Buhari group, the Buhari Media Support Group, (BMSG), has urged the Bring Back Our Girls (BBOG) group to stop the proposed march to the Presidential Villa.
The Airforce chief said his men do not have any intelligence to say whether the girls are in Sambisa forest or not.

He said There is no credible intelligence that will specifically tell you that these girls are here.

There is no day that the sun rises and sets that we do not go out hoping to see these girls. From January this year to August 17, we flew 2,600 hours. About 50 per cent of that was Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance.

We are hoping that through the intelligence, we will be able to capture the movement of those girls; we will be able to locate what we consider legitimate targets.

Abubakar also assured Nigerians that his men are working hard to ensure that the Chibok girls are located and rescued.

Speaking on the allegations by Boko Haram that the Airforce killed most of the girls, Abubakar said These guys are just trying to whip up sentiment because they know that every Nigerian is concerned about the girls.
The group, through its spokesman, Eric Omare, said those behind the alleged blackmail, are angry that the former President wants to peacefully resolve the Niger Delta crisis.

Omares statement is in reaction to allegations by the Reformed Niger Delta Avengers (RNDA) that Jonathan is the Grand Patron of the Niger Delta Avengers.

The umbrella group of the Ijaw youths also advised the former President to take legal action to ensure that those peddling such false stories are made to pay.

According to Omare, The characters behind this desperate plan are politicians of Niger Delta extraction who are in the present government and do not want a peaceful resolution of the renewed militancy in the region.

They prefer a military option that would result in the killing of innocent Niger Deltans. The genesis of these frivolous accusations against former President Jonathan started after he visited President Buhari few weeks ago.

And after the meeting and while speaking with the media, Jonathan said that everybody desired peace and that the leaders of the Ijaw nation were working hard to achieve peace in the Niger Delta region including himself."

This did not go down well with these party chieftains and political office holders in the Federal Government from the Niger Delta region because they did not want a peaceful resolution of the crisis.

Secondly, they dont also want Jonathans intervention to resolve the crisis for obvious political reasons. So, this is the reason why they have orchestrated all sorts of lies to drag Jonathan into the formation of the NDA. It is deliberate and we are sure the top hierarchy of government knows this fact," he said.

The RNDA also alleged that the ex-President Jonathan and others should be held responsible for the plan by the Niger Delta Avengers to declare the oil rich region as an independent republic on October 1, 2016.
Prison authorities confirmed that six inmates died during the botched jailbreak.

Dr Emeka Ogar, Chief Medical Director, Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, told newsmen on Sunday, that surgeries were underway to extract bullets lodged in the bodies of the rampaging inmates.

``We are conducting surgeries on them as recommended by doctors and we are optimistic that they would soon regain fitness, he said.

Ogah said that all the affected inmates were at the hospitals Accident and Emergency Unit.

The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Prisons Service, Jafaru Ahmed and Gov. David Umahi, had on Friday visited the inmates at the hospital.

There was tight security at the hospital wards where the wounded jailbreak inmates were receiving treatments.

Ebonyi Controller of the Prisons, Emilia Oputa, had blamed the attempted jailbreak on the ``notorious ring leaders inside the prisons who incited other inmates against the prison officials.
Report said the initial intelligence report was that a teenager, 17-year-old Toba Adedoyin, was chained in the house at Oyinbo Unity Estate, Olamidun Close, Yakoyo, but after a thorough search of the residence, 27 others in chains were discovered.

The state Police Public Relations Officer, Dolapo Badmos, a Superintendent of Police, confirmed the incidence at the weeked.

Badmos said: The command received a report through Area G Command Headquarters, Ogba, that a child was chained in a house at Oyinbo Unity Estate, Olamidun Close, Yakoyo, Oke-Ira, Ojodu.

"Consequently, a team of policemen was mobilized to the location where a teenager named Toba Adedoyin m, aged 17, was found in a room with a chain on his legs.

"The victim was allegedly chained by one Emmanuel Adeyemi m who claimed to be his father, in order to restrain him from going out.

"Further search of the premises led to the discovery of other people chained by the suspect.

"A total number of 28 persons, comprising six adult males, nine adult females, seven female children and six male children were rescued and taken to protective custody.

ALSO READ: Ogun First Lady interested in boy chained by father
The victim, Kudirat Balogun, was said to have been abducted at gunpoint on Sunday, August 22.

The kidnappers arrived the family home of the Baloguns in Abeokuta at about 8.00 p.m and whisked Mrs Balogun away, her son, Kehinde, told the newspaper.

The 13-year-old said the abductors took him and the mother into a waiting Toyota matrix car before he was let go and his mum taken away.

He quoted the kidnappers as saying, Your father is a sure person, your mummy will return soon.

The abductors had not contacted the family as at press time.

Confirming the incident, the Ogun police spokesperson, Abimbola Oyeyemi, said the command said search is ongoing for the victim.

ALSO READ: Gunmen kidnap man for reporting niece's rape by Inspector
Read some of the tributes below.

Popular social media critic, OluKemi Olunloyo however urged Ahmed's family to donate the funds raised through #savemayowa media campaign to research.

"Her family should donate the money they collected for research of vaginal cancers ovarian, cervical and uterine plus pap smears," she tweeted.

She urged women to go for regular medical check up adding that Nigerians should not blame Linda Ikeji or Toyin Aimahkun for Mayowa's death.

ALSO READ: Toyin Aimakhu: Actress pleads to save life of woman with Ovarian Cancer

Mayowa's story went viral after she uploaded an Instagram video soliciting for funds from good spirited Nigerians.

Over N32 million was raised after which an online campaign #savemayowa was launched.

May her soul Rest in Peace.
After the Avengers announced ceasefire over the weekend, another militant group, the Reformed Egbesu Fraternities comprising Egbesu Boys of the Niger Delta, Egbesu Red Water Lions and Egbesu Mightier Fraternity, also announced a 60-day ceasefire.

Another group, the Iduwini Volunteer Force (IVF), today, August 22,also announced that it will give the Federal Government a chance to meet the demands made by the militants. The IVF operates from Bayelsa.

The group headed by Johnson Biboye said: The leadership of the Iduwini Volunteer Force (IVF), rose from a crucial stakeholders meeting with all its unit commanders and zonal commanders to review the security situation in the Niger Delta vis-a-vis the attacks on oil and gas installations in the oil-rich region of the Niger Delta.

The meeting which started early on Sunday evening , 21st August, 2016 lasted till the early hours of Monday 22nd August, 2016 in one of our creek locations.

And we deliberated extensively on the current security situation in the Niger Delta, the efforts of notable leaders to seek peace and dialogue in resolving the crisis.

The meeting resolved as follows: that all freedom fighting groups in the Niger Delta should embrace peace and cease fire as a mark of honour to the concerted efforts of these our notable leaders inenhancing the peace process."

ALSO READ: MEND urges FG to disregard NDA ceasefire announcement
The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) had chosen Clark to head a separate dialogue team.

In a statement released on Monday, August 22, by its spokesman, Jomo Gbomo, MEND said it will only recognise the Peace and Development Initiative inaugurated in June and headed by Odein Ajumogobia.

The group described Avengers' decision as hasty, premature and capable of sending wrong signals to the federal government that the Niger Delta region is polarized and therefore incapable of speaking with a single voice under a single umbrella body.

MEND said it rejects NDA, their patrons, sponsors, supporters and sympathizers until they all publicly renounce all forms hostility against Nigeria.

The group stressed that it will immediately disband the AARON TEAM 2 and pull out of the ongoing talks if government holds a separate dialogue with the NDA team led by Clark.

The statement reads:

"The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) welcomes the recent decision by the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) to ceasefire and dialogue with the Federal Government. It is a move we have repeatedly canvassed since April 2016, given our stance that criminal attacks on oil installations as a strategy to force concessions from Government was no longer fashionable; given also, the fact that MEND has since May 30, 2014 ceased all forms of hostility against Nigerias economic and strategic assets.

"However, the NDA decision to name a separate dialogue team headed by Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark was hasty, premature and capable of sending wrong signals to the Federal Government that the Niger Delta region is polarized and therefore incapable of speaking with a single voice under a single umbrella body.

"We reasonably believe that the NDA, Chief Clark, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa and others who attended the Friday, August 19, 2016 Niger Delta Coastal States stakeholders meeting jointly convened by Chief Clark and Governor Okowa knew full well that the MEND AARON TEAM 2 Dialogue, Peace and Development Initiative headed by His Excellency, Mr. Henry Odein Ajumogobia, SAN was inaugurated by MEND on June 12, 2016.

"We also reasonably believe that these earlier-mentioned persons and stakeholders are aware that the Federal Government of Nigeria has been engaged in preliminary talks with MEND with a view to resolving the current Niger Delta crisis, as duly confirmed by no less a person than President Muhammadu Buhari. As a matter of fact, MEND has so far, been able to secure some very critical concessions from the Federal Government in the ongoing talks.

"The final phase of the talks shall, however, be concluded by the MEND AARON TEAM led by Mr. Ajumogobia.

"In the light of these developments, we want to believe that Chief Edwin Clark shall respect himself as an elder statesman by refraining from accepting to lead a so-called NDA delegation to non-existent talks with the Federal Government. If Chief Clark accepted such an appointment, then Nigerians and the international community shall be left with no option than to believe that truly, he was the mastermind and evil genius of the spate of NDA attacks on oil installations which have greatly contributed to destabilize the current Administration, blighted Nigerias oil production capacity and thereby, CAUSED ECONOMIC HARDSHIP on innocent Nigerians.

"It is imperative to emphasize that the Federal Government of Nigeria MUST NOT SET A PRECEDENT OF DIALOGUE WITH CRIMINALS. If, on the contrary, the Federal Government chooses to hold a separate dialogue with the NDA team led by Chief Clark, MEND shall immediately disband the AARON TEAM 2 and pull out of the ongoing talks. We insist that the NDA, their patrons, sponsors, supporters and sympathizers are criminals and haters of the current Administration (as revealed by the Reformed Niger Delta Avengers  RNDA) who must PUBLICLY RENOUNCE ALL FORMS OF HOSTILITY AGAINST NIGERIA. Once this is done, MEND shall embrace the NDA and their co-travellers.

"At almost 90 years of age, we believe that Chief Edwin Clark cannot reasonably stand the rigours associated with dialogue and negotiation of the Niger Delta question. Chief Clark must not head every civil society initiative in the Niger Delta. Following his appointment by NDA (assuming he decided to accept), we expected Chief Clark to lead his team to pledge allegiance to the MEND AARON TEAM who are patiently waiting on the sidelines to meet President Buhari in the next couple of days to chart a course for the beleaguered region."

ALSO READ: Meet the 7 people chosen by MEND to negotiate with FG
A compelling human story of dedication, sacrifice, resilience and survival, The movie which is directed by Steve Gukas, and produced by Bolanle Austen-Peters, Dotun Olakunri and Steve Gukas, will debut in cinemas on September 16, 2016.

ALSO READ: undefined

The movie demonstrates the bravery of the late undefinedand her colleagues. From their encounter with the late American-Liberian, Patrick Sawyer, who was the index case of the Ebola Virus Disease, to ensuring that the right medical procedures were in place to stop the spread of the disease in the country.

ALSO READ:undefined

Starring undefined, the movie also stars Bimbo Akintola as Nigerian hero, Dr Stella Adadevoh, Gideon Okeke, Somkhele Idhalama, Bimbo Manuel and veteran Hollywood actor, Danny Glover.
He said: Three or four other of us from different part of the country got together and said to ourselves what do we do?

We said what is the problem with us and why are we still not growing. We got talking and knew we needed to do something.

What do we need to deal with for this Nigeria of ours to become what God has created it to be? A land flowing with milk and honey, that is the intention of God for creating Nigeria, the former president added.

Obasanjo maintained that Buhari had not disappointed Nigeria adding that "he will overcome the challenges facing the country."

The ex-president however said Nigeria needed to get its acts right in the area of politics, governance and leadership for the country to develop.
All six of those killed in the offensive in the Khyber region were "terrorists", the military said in a statement late on Sunday. Reuters was unable to independently verify their identities as access to the area is restricted.

The army launched air and ground operations in the Rajgal valley, about 90 km (60 miles) west of the city of Peshawar, last week, the latest leg of an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and its allies that began in 2014.

Pakistan has for years been battling militants who want to impose a strict version of Islamist law in Pakistan, while quietly backing others who are seen as furthering Pakistani objectives against old rival India and in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani offensive has squeezed some groups into small pockets of territory, while others have fled over the border into lawless areas of eastern Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, the militants are still capable of launching deadly attacks across Pakistan.

A bomb attack on a crowd in a hospital courtyard in the city of Quetta on Aug. 8 killed more than 70 people, the deadliest attack in Pakistan since 2014.

The attacks would "effectively check and guard against terrorists movement along high mountains and all-weather passes", the army said.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have accused each other repeatedly of not doing enough to stop the movement of militants across the border.

Pakistan has been battling the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella organisation of hardline Islamist groups, since its inception in 2007.
The forces, mainly brigades from the city of Misrata, say they are close to capturing Sirte after taking most of the city in a three-month campaign and restricting militants to a shrinking residential area in the city centre. Since Aug. 1, they have been supported by U.S. air strikes.

Fighters backed by heavy artillery and tanks advanced early in the day in Bufaraa neighbourhood, seizing a building used by Islamic State's morality police as a prison, said Rida Issa, a spokesman.

Later, forces took Ribat mosque, Sirte's biggest, where senior militants, including leading Islamic State ideologue Turki Ben Ali, had preached, the forces' media office said.

The media office said "dozens" of bodies of Islamic State fighters were found in newly captured areas, although it did not give a specific number and it was not clear when the militants were killed.

As of Thursday, the United States had carried out 65 air strikes over Sirte, according to U.S. Africa Command, most recently against a supply truck, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device and three enemy fighting positions.

The strikes have accelerated the progress of Libyan forces, whose advance had been slowed by suicide bombings, snipers and mines.

Islamic State took control of Sirte last year, setting up a proto-state modelled on its practices in Iraq and Syria and enforcing its ultra-hardline rule on residents.
On Tuesday, he travels to Sokoto, Nigeria, the historic Muslim city in the remote northwest, followed by talks with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja.

"We will ... talk about how we move forward in trying to implement peace in this country," a senior State Department official said of South Sudan.

"The people of South Sudan have suffered for far too long, and the continued instability there has led almost a million refugees and a humanitarian crisis that is far beyond the abilities of even the international community to respond to," the official told a conference call.

The international community has poured billions of aid into supporting the world's youngest nation, which gained independence in 2011. Oil production, by far the biggest source of government revenue, has plummeted.

But worsening violence has raised fears of a return to civil war that erupted in late 2013, which broadly ran along ethnic lines, pitting President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, against his rival and vice president Riek Machar, a Nuer.

Violence flared when Machar withdrew his forces from the capital Juba in July and was sacked by Kiir as vice president.

Machar was picked up by U.N. peacekeepers in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo a week ago with a leg injury and was handed over to authorities in Congo.

Machar led a two-year rebellion against forces loyal to rival Kiir before the two sides reached a peace deal in August 2015. Under the deal, Machar returned to Juba in April to resume his role as vice president.

On Monday, Kerry will meet Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta before joining foreign ministers from Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, Djibouti, Tanzania, Somalia and Ethiopia to discuss South Sudan and Somalia, where there are concerns that delays in the approval of new election rules could dampen its recovery from conflict.

World powers and regional states have struggled to find leverage over the warring factions in South Sudan, despite U.S. and European sanctions on some military leaders and African threats of punitive actions.

Especially of concern to Washington was an attack on a Juba hotel in July by uniformed men who killed a U.S.-funded journalist and raped civilians, including aid workers.

The U.N. has launched an investigation into accusations U.N. peacekeepers in Juba failed to respond properly to the attack.

In Kerry's talks with Kenyatta, he will also discuss Kenya's presidential election set for August 2017, the senior State Department official said.

Opposition protests in Nairobi since April have stoked fears among church leaders and Western diplomats of a repeat of the violence following the 2007 election in which 1,200 people were killed.
Fierce fighting in the capital Juba last month has raised fears that the five-year-old nation could slide back into civil war. It prompted the United Nations to authorise the deployment of 4,000 additional U.N. troops to bolster a U.N. mission there.

"We need to move forward with the deployment of a regional protection force," Kerry told a news conference in Nairobi after talks with foreign ministers from Kenya and other African states that had focused on South Sudan and Somalia's reconstruction.

Kerry said regional states, which have pushed for sending the new troops to help South Sudan's 12,000-strong U.N. mission UNMISS, had agreed on "the immediate implementation process" of meetings and steps to "guarantee some momentum builds up."

About two years of conflict that pitted troops loyal to President Salva Kiir against those of his former deputy Riek Machar was supposed to have ended with a peace deal last year. But fighting persisted and flared again last month in Juba.

After the latest violence, Machar, who had returned to the capital in April to resume his post as vice president, withdrew again to the bush and was picked up this month by U.N. peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo with a leg injury.

Kiir has again sacked him and appointed a new vice president.

Kerry said it was up to South Sudan's leaders, political parties and neighbours to work out "what is best or not best with respect to Machar", but all sides had to stop fighting.

"We urged all the parties to recommit in word and deed to the full implementation of the peace agreement," Kerry said.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed, speaking at the same news conference, said the new U.N. force should be deployed "sooner rather than later" but said it could be sent gradually.

South Sudan's government initially said it would not cooperate with the new U.N. troops which will be under the command of the 12,000-strong UNMISS mission. But since then it has said it was still considering its position.

"We have not rejected it or accepted it. The sovereignty of the people of South Sudan will be decided by the parliament," South Sudan's presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said.

World powers and regional states have struggled to find leverage over South Sudan's warring factions despite U.S. and European sanctions on some military leaders and African threats of punitive actions.

South Sudan secured its independence in 2011, but by December 2013 the longtime political rivalry between Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and Machar, a Nuer, had led to civil conflict that often followed ethnic lines.

The fighting has killed thousands of people and driven more than 2 million people from their homes, with many of them fleeing to neighbouring states.

Kerry, who pledged new humanitarian aid to South Sudan worth $138 million, said the new U.N. troop contingent was "not an intervention force" but would protect civilians and support those working to ensure peace prevailed.

In the latest flare-up in July, Washington was particularly concerned by an attack on a Juba hotel by uniformed men who killed a U.S.-funded journalist and raped civilians, including aid workers.

The U.N. has launched an investigation into accusations U.N. peacekeepers in Juba failed to respond properly to the attack.
Mahdi asked for forgiveness and said he had been swept up in an "evil wave" by Al Qaeda and the Ansar Dine Islamist groups which briefly seized control of Timbuktu during the fighting.

Prosecutors said they hoped the case would help put an end to wrecking of cultural sites reported in wars from Libya in the west to Afghanistan in the east.

"This is the first and last wrongful act I will ever commit," Mahdi told the Hague court in a measured and grave opening address.

"I regret what I have caused to my family, my community in Timbuktu, what I have caused to my home nation Mali," he added.

Mahdi would be the first defendant convicted of Islamist-related charges by the global court that has only secured three other convictions in its 14-year existence.

Court officials said the trial would proceed despite his confession, as the judges still needed to be satisfied he was guilty.

Prosecutors say Mahdi led a group of religious police using pick-axes and crowbars to destroy nine mausoleums and the door of a mosque, and at times took part himself.

Most of the sites dated from Mali's 14th-century golden age as a trading hub and centre of Sufi Islam - a branch of the religion seen as idolatrous by some hardline Muslim groups.

In the build-up to the hearing, prosecutor Fatima Bensouda compared the attacks to Islamic State's smashing of monuments in the Syrian city of Palmyra and the Taliban's 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan.

On Monday, she praised Mahdi's cooperation while setting out the charges against him and saying she hoped his case would help bring an end to destruction of cultural objects by drawing attention to the fact it is a war crime.

"What must it have felt like in that fateful day in 2012 ... to witness the wanton destruction of that cultural heritage, a deliberate assault on one's identity, spiritual beliefs and prized cultural possessions?" she said.

"All of this was reduced to dust by a destruction operation led by the accused," she added.
Laurence Soper, 72, was due to appear at a west London court later on Monday to face charges for crimes he is accused of committing from 1972 to 1986. He was arrested at Luton Airport on Sunday after he flew back to Britain.

Described by police as a monk, Soper had lived in the town of Peja in Kosovo for about five years under the name Andrew Charles Kingston. British media said the former abbot from Ealing, west London, who was a teacher in the 1970s and 80s, had jumped bail in 2011.

Kosovan authorities detained Soper on an international arrest warrant in May but two extradition requests were rejected by courts in the country, the second because the crimes were committed too long ago.
Turning the ship before it hits the iceberg
Lighting the way to McAfee Pass a waning moon led 21 locals the 10.7 miles that climb almost 3,000 feet to the top of the Silver Peak Range on their way from Fish Lake Valley to the Old School Saloon terminus 34 miles away in Silver Peak for the 22nd annual Silver Peak or Bust hike.
iStock/Thinkstock(MIAMI)  The fight to stop an outbreak of locally transmitted Zika was complicated last week after a second transmission site was located in the Miami area. Florida Gov. Rick Scott confirmed on Friday there was a new outbreak of locally transmitted Zika in Miami Beach that has left at least five people infected, bringing the total number of locally transmitted cases to 36.



The site was announced as health officials continue to try and clear a separate site where the virus is being transmitted by mosquitoes.



Here's a look at how the first-ever outbreak of locally transmitted Zika in the continental U.S. has affected people throughout the region.



Students Get Zika Prevention Lessons



Monday marks the first day of school for Florida students in the Miami area and government officials are hoping they can teach students to stop Zika transmission and how to protect themselves.

Our students/parents recognize importance of staying protected. Clothing/repellent distribution event. #Zika pic.twitter.com/QhObEw4WN3  Miami Dade Schools (@MDCPS) August 21, 2016

Schools are getting extra bug spray and teachers are getting training on how to teach students to protect themselves from mosquito bites. Additionally, students are now being allowed to wear long sleeves and pants, even if they don't match their uniform.



NIH Official Warns Gulf States at Risk



Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that many other states, especially "those along the Gulf Coast" could be at risk for an outbreak of locally transmitted Zika.



"I would not be surprised if we see cases in Texas, in Louisiana, particularly now where you have a situation with flooding in Louisiana," Fauci told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on This Week on Sunday.



He explained that Gulf states have a mix of climate and circumstances that could contribute to an increased risk of a Zika outbreak. However, he said did not think there was a big risk of a nationwide outbreak of the disease.



"When you have a sub-tropical, or semi-tropical region with the right mosquitoes, and individuals who have travel-related cases that are in the environment, it would not be surprising that we will see additional cases, not only in Florida, but perhaps in other of the Gulf Coast states," Fauci said.



Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
It was a simple question for Khloe Rangel's mom: "Can I get my backpack now?"

Khloe, 11, of Davenport, lives with her mother, Stephanie Thurman, and siblings in Davenport. She'll be in sixth grade at Smart Intermediate School starting Tuesday, and she was eager to be ready for the "Unpack your Backpack" event at Smart.

The family already had to grapple with a bigger decision than what backpack to buy: How will Khloe get to class at Smart Intermediate?

They live too close for the district to provide a bus, but Thurman worries about her daughter's safety while she walks to school. The district's decision to close J.B. Young K-8 School last May resulted in the mix of students and school destinations that is new for this section of central and west Davenport.

The verdict: Khloe will be driven to school by her mother.

"I prefer she goes to Smart," said Thurman. Khloe has epilepsy and is unable to walk safely to the school that is 1.6 miles west of her home.

Thurman, in fact, won't allow any of her school-age children to walk to school, but she does wish some options were available to transport them on a daily basis.

Some 119 students, in grades 6-8 at Young, are now expected to attend Smart. If they live farther than two miles from the school, they'll get a bus ride, per district policy. Families such as Khloes must find their own way to school.

Or they can walk.

That may be a small portion of students. Just 17 percent of children generally walk or bike to school every day, with higher numbers reported if they live close to the school, according to federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Distance from school is the most common barrier cited by families who allow children to bike or walk to classes.

City, schools talk safety

The Davenport Community School District meets regularly with city officials to discuss traffic and transportation issues, said Superintendent Art Tate.

At the start of the school year  this week  there are hundreds of issues: "Our misunderstandings, their misunderstandings ... it's a scheduling chaos," Tate said.

Davenport will offer bus service, provided by district contractor Durham School Services, to 8,000 families. Not all will choose the bus, but about 5,500 are expected to be transported by bus in 2016-17.

The district's safety group meets to discuss routes and determine if they are too unsafe for children to walk, Tate said. Examples are if young children have to cross a highway to reach school.

Families must make the final determination of how their children get to school, he said.

Happens all over

The situation facing Davenport this year is reflected in districts around the Quad-Cities, Taylor Beswick of the Bi-State Planning Commission said.

Beswick, a planner at Bi-State in Rock Island, works on the Safe Routes to Schools program in the Quad-Cities and points out the health aspects of biking or walking to school. Childhood obesity rates have risen over the years and are particularly high in minority and low-income communities, according to the 2012 Quad-City Health Initiative survey.

Regular exercise in childhood also is shown to help in learning, and side benefits might be improved municipal infrastructure, such as sidewalks and crosswalks in the city, Beswick said.

Planning for safe routes was done, for example, at Lincoln/Irving elementary in Moline, he said. This elementary took more than 100 children who had attended the former Ericsson school, which closed in 2015 in the Floreciente neighborhood of Moline.

"Every district in the area has seen the effects of budget cuts," Beswick said.

A good range for walking is when the home is a half mile to one mile from the school, he said. Many parents just need to be educated on how far their home actually is from their child's school, he said.

It helps in some cities, such as Davenport and Rock Island, where students can ride city buses to reach schools, he said. Health benefits come in walking to the bus stops.

Walking smart to Smart

One route from the former J.B. Young school to Smart likely will be east-to-west along 4th, 6th or 7th streets.

Lt. Shawn Voights, who heads the traffic department for Davenport Police, likes the 4th Street route himself, but he noted that students tend not to pay attention to signs or safety signals.

There is a crossing guard at Smart, and that hasn't changed from last year, Voights said. He encourages the school district to have personnel on the property to help the children.

Speed enforcement and camera vans will be at Davenport schools, Voights said, with a focus on elementary and middle schools.

The speed limit is reduced in Davenport school zones from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Police go by the school calendar to see when students are in class.

"There's no change there," Voights said.

Parents walk, too

A student's parent or guardian might choose to walk with them, at least at first, Alderman Bill Boom said. Boom, 3rd Ward, represents the area of Davenport between J.B. Young and Smart.

The alderman said he's working to marshal the resources of the city and school district to make sure these routes are as safe as possible.

Back in his youth, Boom said he would walk 1.5 miles to get to school.

"That gave me time to wind down," he said.
Illinois Republicans are mounting an unprecedented television ad campaign in the Quad-Cities to try to win the state legislative seat held by Rep. Mike Smiddy, D-Hillsdale.

It's long been known that Smiddy would be a target in the fall elections, but as in some other places across the state, Republicans have gotten out of the gate earlier than ever this year, analysts say. Since last month, Republicans have devoted $547,000 to TV ads in the Quad-City market, according to station records.

Much of the spending has been on ads criticizing Smiddy, who is seeking a third term.

To date, the Democrats have mounted little response on TV.

The amount of the spending, and that it is happening so early in the campaign cycle, is unusual for a state legislative race in the Quad-Cities, according to campaign watchers.

Smiddy isn't the only target. Other Democrats across the state also are facing an early barrage of spending.

"Its really unheard of to spend this kind of money in the summer for Statehouse," said Christopher Mooney, director of the Institute of Governmental and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois.

The House Republican Organization is doing most of the spending in the Quad-Cities so far. It devoted $456,000 to television ads to the race, according to a review of TV station records. The Republican group got a $5 million contribution from the Illinois Republican Party in May, just days after the campaign committee for Gov. Bruce Rauner donated $2 million to the state party.

One of the group's ads rips Smiddy for voting "present" on a Democratic budget bill the GOP says had a $7 billion gap. The ad accuses "squirmy Smiddy" of trying to dodge accountability on the bill. Smiddy, who works for the state Department of Corrections, says he didn't vote on the bill because he had a conflict involving back pay for state employees.

The state GOP says it is "absolutely critical that the 71st District gets to know the real Mike Smiddy." The party says he is too tied to House Speaker Mike Madigan.

The early spending is evidence Rauner and the GOP are devoting unprecedented resources to the 2016 elections, Mooney and other analysts said.

"The strategy is to try to drive up the negatives of the incumbents," said Robin Johnson, a consultant and political science professor at Monmouth College.

A two-term incumbent, Smiddy represents the 71st District, which includes parts of Rock Island, Henry, Carroll and Whiteside counties.

Smiddy won the seat in 2012, when he defeated Cordova Republican Rich Morthland. Smiddy says he is working in Springfield to improve the economy and education, while seeking a solution to the state's budget problems. He dismisses the ads targeting him as false.

"They don't have any issues to talk about," he said in an interview.

Smiddy's opponent in this year's race is Savanna Mayor Tony McCombie.

Smiddy questions McCombie's independence, given the Republican ad spending. But he isn't sitting idly by, either. He isn't spending much on TV yet, but he is targeting McCombie with mail pieces, including one that says she has "repeatedly worked to increase property taxes." The piece says property taxes went up 40 percent in Savanna between 2010 and 2015.

McCombie said the flyer is a distortion. She noted that assessed values, a key part of figuring property taxes, have been declining in Savanna since 2009. Property values across Illinois went down because of the Great Recession.

She also said that before she became mayor but was on the City Council, taxes were raised because of additional state requirements on local contributions to police and fire pensions.

McCombie says the state has seen enough of "career politicians," and she touts a bipartisan record. Her campaign has spent about $93,000 on TV ads and says she's devoted to running a positive campaign. In an interview, she said she can't control how her party spends its money and questioned the idea the anti-Smiddy ads even help her.

"I would say because people are tired of the negative, and if I'm associated with that, it's going to hurt me, it's not going to help me," she said.

The $547,000 in ad spending so far doesn't include a new television buy from the pro-Rauner group Turnaround Illinois, which has been pushing for term limits. McCombie supports term limits, while Smiddy opposes them.

Along with the TV ads, House Republicans also have sent anti-Smiddy flyers to district mailboxes. Smiddy says those, too, distort his record.

Both candidates say they are committed to being independent voices for the district.

Even with the early start, the big spending on the race is likely to get bigger this fall. Smiddy's campaign account had a $419,000 balance at the end of June, and he's been raising even more since then.

Much of the money came from labor unions, including AFSCME Council 31 and the Illinois PAC for Education.

McCombie, who had more than $21,000 at the end of June, also has been raking in the cash since then, including from the House Republican Organization.
Moline police revealed Sunday night for the first time they believe they know who abducted 11-year old Trudy Appleby on Aug. 21, 1996, but officials dont know why or what happened to her.

Moline detective Michael Griffin told Applebys relatives and friends during a remembrance vigil at First Baptist Church of East Moline that police doubt she is alive. He declined to name the suspect.

We know whos responsible, and while hes probably deceased, his family chooses to lock away the secrets that would end (Trudys) familys nightmare," Griffin said.

The detective is disappointed that the suspected abductors family celebrates life frequently but members refuse to honor the Appleby family bond.

How can you boast of your family time with pictures posted on social media, yet keep this secret? he asked.

You have to have the courage to do the right thing.

Griffin added that the family can come forward anonymously, and the Crimestoppers program offers up to a $1,000 reward for case information.

Griffin said that over the years officers have come to the same conclusion that Trudy willingly stepped into a four-door gray sedan with a white male near her home. He said that anytime new evidence turned up, including witness statements, it always led back to the same family.

Moline Capt. Trevor Fisk praised all the detectives who have worked this case over the years, and he agreed it was time to reveal this information. He said Griffin was the man to do it.

Hes been the lead detective for over a year, and he doesnt turn it off  hes focused, an outside-the-box thinker.

Police said they have received tips after every remembrance vigil over the years and have followed every lead. Police are hoping for more today.

Thats how were going to solve this, Griffin said.

Trudys father, Dennis Appleby, remembers his daughter as outgoing, fearless, adventurous and a good kid. But he said he still feels like hell 20 years later, adding how amazed he is by all the people still showing support. When asked what he would say to the suspects family, he answered, Why? Why? Why did he do it? Why has it taken 20 years to say anything?

He then started to cry as he continued by saying, Why do you get to go on with your lives, enjoying things that Trudy didnt? Why is that fair? What did she ever do?"

Trudys mother, Brenda Gordon, was killed by a drunk driver Oct. 10, 2014, while crossing Avenue of the Cities in Moline, near the East Moline border. She was 53.

The Rev. Dan Yeager led prayers and a discussion of the case, urging just one person to step forward and reveal the whereabouts of Trudy.

He went to the Bible, quoting St. John: You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Trudys uncle, Ray Eddleman, then spoke to the crowd of about 80 adults and children. He wondered whether Trudys suspected death was an accident, an unintentional act. He asked the suspect's family to "Make that phone call."

While Eddleman spoke, someone in the crowd sobbed.

He then held up a thick notebook full of old newspaper articles from the past 20 years about the case. This book is Trudy. How can I hug this? Just give us Trudy back so we can lay her to rest.

Yeager ended his talk by paraphrasing St. Luke and St. Mark: When something is done in secret and darkness, it will come to light.

He then echoed everyone elses thoughts that he hopes this is the last vigil for the girl.
Scott County voters are an important part of the upcoming presidential election in November, to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Sunday in Davenport.

Vilsack spoke in support of Hillary Clinton on Sunday afternoon at the Scott County Democrats Picnic in the Park, where about 60 people gathered near Credit Island Park Lodge, 2200 W. River Drive, Davenport.

Scott County voters must ensure every registered voter casts a ballot, he said. None of this will happen without Scott County, which always has been a close county, the former Iowa governor (1999-2007) said. Its a tight race in an election that is the single most important election in my lifetime.

We will be a different country  if we sit on the sidelines, dont vote, and allow this country to elect Donald Trump, Vilsack said.

Sunny skies sprinkled with fluffy clouds and a temperature that reached a high of 75 provided a picture-perfect backdrop for the gathering along the river.

Vilsack drew cheers and applause when he talked about Clintons plan to create an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the very top.

He contrasted Clinton's plans to invest in Iowa families with Trump's plan, which would create a new tax loophole that would benefit the wealthy by cutting a significant portion of their taxes.

Additionally, he criticized Trump for not making his tax returns public.

Every year I was governor, I put out my tax return, Vilsack said. Why doesnt Donald Trump? Part of the reason, he said, is that Trump is not as charitable as hed like you to think.

Vilsack thinks Trump has money parked outside the United States. But the Republican standard-bearer rump could prove him wrong, Vilsack said: All he has to do is show us his tax returns.

He compared Clintons approach to Trumps on several issues:

 Minimum wage: Clinton wants to raise the minimum wage, while Trump has said the minimum wage should be lowered.

 National security: Trump wants to isolate the United States, and to bring torture back, Vilsack said. It wont be any of s that pay the price for that, he said  it will be people in uniform.

 Building relationships: Clinton has built relationships to get things done as secretary of state, Vilsack said. Trump essentially plans to delegate running the country of this vice president, Vilsack said.

 The middle class: The 10 percent of wealthy families have 76 percent of the wealth in the United States, Vilsack said. Trump want to cut the estate tax. Theres not a single person in this audience that will benefit. Clintons economic plan, including making public college tuition-free, will help working families."

Clinton is a loyal, caring person, Vilsack said. In 1998, when he was behind in the gubernatorial election, Clinton supported him. I want you to know how loyal this woman is, Vilsack said.

Among supporters in the crowd was Rep. Cindy Winckler, D-Davenport, who is running unopposed in District 90. She said the November election will set the direction for the county for the next 20 years. She said the United States will not be a healthy nation until it addresses such topics as health care and mental health.

Other supporters included Iowa Sen. Chris Brase, D-Muscatine, who in Senate District 46 will challenge Republican Mark Lofgren, also of Muscatine, a former House member. Brase said Vilsack is doing a wonderful job. He understands whats important to the people of this country. We all are better, the more we work together.

Brase joined Ken Krumwiede, of Davenport, in expressing concern about education funding. Democrat Krumwiede, a former Davenport School Board member, will face District 92 State Rep. Ross Paustian, R-Walcott, in November.

Our kids are not being treated equally, Krumwiede said. He said students in the Davenport district, and other districts I the state, receive $175 less than students in other districts. How long do we have to wait before we get equal funding our kids in the state? Krumwiede asked.

After Vilsacks speech, he stayed for some time to shake hands with well-wishers and have his picture taken with supporters.
The following editorial appeared recently in the state-owned China Daily:

After all the recent hoopla over the disputes in the South China Sea, an obvious priority for the region has been de-escalating tensions and finding ways to prevent or manage potential crises.

So with both Beijing and Manila having taken a step back from the tense standoff that had developed between them and making efforts to try and thaw their frozen ties, it is encouraging that other countries with disputes in the waters seem to be willing to do likewise.

The agreement between China and the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Tuesday on the guidelines for setting up a hotline platform and their pledge to abide by the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea may appear to be a matter of course, but they had been on the agenda at high-level meetings between them for a while without any progress being made.

These agreements may seem more symbolic than substantive, since unplanned encounters at sea do not constitute a prominent concern between China and ASEAN states, even those with the most troubling disputes. And the hotlines may not be as important, or as indispensable, as the one between Beijing and Washington. However, their significance lies in the collective commitment to peace and crisis-prevention they represent; a commitment which is substantial in its own right.

From Beijing to Manila, to ASEAN as a whole, each and every party deserves a pat on the back for displaying such cool-headedness for, no matter how enthusiastic other parties are about trying to drive a wedge between China and ASEAN, it is up to those in the region to sort out the mess.

Agreements between China and ASEAN, like the ones announced on Tuesday, will create a favorable framework, or at least conducive atmosphere for dispute resolution on the state-to-state level. That is why Beijing has insisted on a "dual track" approach to dealing with the South China Sea issue. The historical mutual understanding and rapport between China and ASEAN are surely constructive in that regard.

What has been achieved at the meeting of high-level officials from China and ASEAN on implementing the Declaration on the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea may seem like affirming previously expressed intentions. (In other words, reaching agreement is a slow process, whose results are less than substantial.)

Small as it may be, the outcome of the meeting is an inspiring step toward the ultimate goal of formulating the anticipated Code of Conduct on the South China Sea. A goal that could be unachievable without such incremental progress.
Growing up, I watched a lot of Westerns. In addition to the cowboy hero, the town sheriff was almost always a model of integrity. He stood for law and order against bank robbers, cattle rustlers and horse thieves all trying to disrupt the peace.

A contemporary and real-life version of those fictional characters is Sheriff David Clarke of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

Clarke has been trying to restore law and order after several nights of rioting following the shooting death of 23-year-old Sylville Smith by a Milwaukee police officer. Smith had a lengthy criminal record, longer than some people's resumes. He should have been in prison.

Sheriff Clarke has appeared numerous times on the Fox News Channel, but not so much in other media. On Monday, The Washington Post carried a story about the riots and ignored Clarke, choosing instead to quote Milwaukee's chief of police, Edward Flynn. I suspect that's because Sheriff Clarke speaks some hard truths, which many liberals do not want to hear.

In an appearance Monday on Fox, Sheriff Clarke, who is African-American, offered his explanation for the major cause of riots in Milwaukee and other cities: "You know what encourages this? The growth of the welfare state. These are underclass behaviors. Seventy percent of the kids born in Milwaukee ... are born without an engaged father in their life. So I look at the progressive policies that have marginalized black dads. They push them to the side and say 'you're not needed.' Uncle Sam is going to be the dad, he's going to provide for the kids, he's going to feed the kids ... Uncle Sam has been a horrible father. Uncle Sam does not love these kids. He might keep a little food in their mouths and that is about it. But we all know the importance of an intact family, what it can do to shape the behavior of kids."

Sheriff Clarke called progressive policies "a total disaster," not only in Milwaukee, but in Chicago, Baltimore, New York and elsewhere. "These progressive policies have hit the black community like a nuclear blast and until we reverse this government dependency, that's what creates all of this and it encourages it by the way, along with some questionable lifestyle choices."

His answer? "Until the black community does a self-evaluation and until they begin to self-criticize about some of the lifestyle choices they are making, this stuff is going to continue to fester."

A young African-American man found by a TV camera during the weekend riot said: "The rich people, they got all this money, and they not ... trying to give us none." Really? All of that tax money spent on anti-poverty programs for the last 50 years never trickled-down to him? This poisonous attitude has been promoted by progressives and has not helped the poor rise above their circumstances.

This young man should talk to Sheriff Clarke about changing his attitude. Some self-evaluation and an internal re-adjustment would do more for him than any anti-poverty program the Democrats could dream up.

Why do African-Americans continue to vote for liberal Democrats who have done little to help them and, in fact, often cause more harm than good?

Again, Sheriff Clarke gets it right: "Until we push back against this progressive ideology, this dangerous ideology that has been very destructive to the black community ... and that's what I'm trying to do ... it's job one right now in terms of messaging -- this thing is only going to get worse."
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa  Larry Riley was a Walter Mondale delegate to the Iowa Democratic Party state convention back in 1984. On Monday, he was cheering Donald Trump.

Im for him because hes an outsider and not controlled by big business and the Washington politicians, Riley, of Springville, said at a town-hall meeting with Trumps running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

Pence assured Riley that he and Trump understand that the American people are sick and tired of pay-to-play politics which, he said, characterizes the relationship between Hillary Clinton and donors to the Clinton Foundation.

When Donald Trump become president of the United States were going to bring pay-to-play politics to a crashing halt on Day 1, the vice presidential nominee said in a 25-minute speech.

Pence, who took questions later, described Trump as a man who never quits, who never backs down. He is a fighter and he is a winner  a doer in a game usually reserved for talkers.

And when he talks, Trump doesnt go tiptoeing around those thousands of rules of political correctness that people lay in the path of people who are trying to turn this country around.

But sometimes he says things that he shouldnt, said Ron Meyer, of Solon, Iowa. However, Meyer, who is retired from the Johnson County Sheriffs Department and Iowa Army National Guard, likes Trumps law-and-order positions.

His wife, Becky Meyer, likes Trumps border protection plans. During 34 years at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics she saw too many people who overstayed their visas.

This country welcomes anybody who comes, but we want them to come legally, Becky Meyer said.

Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Andy McGuire questioned whether Trump shares that spirit. She called it ironic that Pence, one half of the ticket that has repeatedly called for a ban to keep Muslims from entering our country, was in Cedar Rapids, home to the nations oldest Islamic mosque.

Immigrants from all over the world continue to make valuable contributions to Cedar Rapids and to our state," McGuire said. The Trump-Pence ticket of exclusion, not inclusion, is not in line with Iowa values.

Unlike Riley and the Meyers, Ross McCutchen wasnt a Trump supporter from the start. He originally backed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Now hes all in for Trump. He drove 4.5 hours from St. Louis to attend the Pence town hall and is the Missouri director of Trump Millennials.

Im looking for the best negotiator, McCutchen said. Hes proven he can work with everyone.

Trump will use his negotiating skills to make sure trade deals work for the American worker, for the American people, and not just the multi-national corporations, Pence said.

However, Donald Trumps promise to run the country like hes run his businesses should scare everyone  because his economic record has left a trail of victims as he has made millions of dollars on the backs of others, said Charlie Wishman, of the Iowa Federation of Labor AFL-CIO.

Wishman, who spoke with reporters on a conference call organized by Hillary for Iowa, said that, in many cases,Trump didnt pay what was owed not because he couldnt pay them but because he could stiff them.

That didnt faze Riley, who is semi-retired from a career in construction and now manages rental property. To be successful in business you have to know how to play the business game," he said.

Not even the historic nature of Clintons candidacy found support among the audience estimated at 300 people.

"Clinton doesn't speak for us," said Kim Reem, of Marion, Iowa, president of the National Federation of Republican Women. Although Reem believes that in her lifetime America will elect a woman to the presidency, "Not that woman. Not this year. Not ever, she said.
DES MOINES  Iowa landowners opposed to an underground oil pipeline being built in Iowa filed an emergency action Monday, asking state regulators to halt construction temporarily after a district judge refused to grant their request .".

The new complaint was filed with the Iowa Utilities Board asking the three-member panel to suspend Dakota Access pipeline construction after Judge Jeffrey Farrell denied an effort to have the court intervene, saying the landowners did not comply with protocol to first exhaust their administrative remedies before bringing legal action.

They cannot skip a step in the process and now claim justification by an emergency," Farrell wrote in his nine-page decision. "Any emergency is of their own making. They must comply with the process established by law."

Farrell said the issue could return to the court at the conclusion of administrative consideration.

We are disappointed in the decision to go back to the IUB, but we are following the direction of the court, said Bill Hanigan, a Des Moines attorney representing owners of 15 parcels in seven counties seeking to keep the pipeline from traversing their property.

Pipeline construction is moving quickly, and our clients hope to have an immediate decision from the board on their emergency motion to prevent construction temporarily of the Dakota Access pipeline across the property of the 15 landowners while a lawsuit remains pending in Polk County District Court. Farrell held that the Utilities Board must rule upon the motion before the court will consider the question further.

Earlier this year, the Iowa Utilities Board granted a permit to Texas-based Dakota Access and ruled the company could use the states power of eminent domain to proceed with its proposed oil pipeline.

Hanigan argued last week that the board acted unconstitutionally and misinterpreted Iowa law designed to protect Iowa farmland, claiming Dakota Access is not a public utility and should not have the ability to use eminent domain to access Iowa landowners property to build a private pipeline.

The lawsuit argued the pipeline developer shouldnt be allowed to force landowners to sell easements by unconstitutionally condemning the land against their will in a way that runs contrary to a 2006 Iowa law.

Bret Dublinske, a Des Moines lawyer for Dakota Access LLC, a unit of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, countered that the landowners claims were without merit and the company should be able to proceed under a state permit and eminent domain authority granted by the Iowa Utilities Board.

Dublinske said the company would suffer significant financial losses if the Iowa leg is delayed as part of a $3.8 billion, 1,168-mile underground pipeline slated to transport up to 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's Bakken region to a distribution hub at Patoka, Illinois. The project will place 346 miles of pipeline in 18 Iowa counties, crossing the state on a diagonal from northwest to southeast.

Dublinske also contended Dakota Access meets the standards set out in Iowa law, that the challengers have failed to exhaust their administrative remedies and purposefully delayed bringing legal action to create a false emergency under bogus claims that landowners constitutional rights are being violated.
Water's low at the Belle Fourche Reservoir at Orman Dam, and that means much of the trash tossed into the lake this past year can be seen along the shoreline where it's washed up during the summer.

The Bureau of Reclamation and South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks are cooperating on a Public Lands Cleanup Day Saturday, Aug. 27, to give everyone who enjoys having the free lakeshores and nicely-developed Rocky Point State Recreation Area available to them year-round.

Volunteer registration for the Clean-Up Belle Fourche Reservoir Lands Event is from 8:30 to 9 a.m. on the day of the event.

All are to meet at the Fruitdale Junction at 8:30. Heading east from Belle Fourche on U.S. Highway 212, the junction is at the junction at a temporary parking area beside a gravel pile.

Signs will direct volunteers to the meeting area.

Following a short safety briefing at 9, volunteers will set out in teams to tackle the lands and lakeshore until noon when volunteers will be treated to a free lunch.

Rocky Point Park Manager Brad Nelson said it's a great time for everyone interested in outdoor recreation and the Orman opportunities to pitch in to help with the cleanup.

Colin Zilverberg, a Highmore native and South Dakota National Guard veteran, is coordinating the event for the Bureau, and is looking for area sportsman's groups to lend a hand to help with the morning's cleanup.

The project is billed as a Take Pride in America Event.

One motto for the day is, "It's your land, lend a hand."

For safety reasons, the bureau recommends volunteers wear work or hiking boots, long pants and long-sleeve shirts, gloves, a hat and extra water.

Zilverberg said this is an ideal time to have the cleanup because dredging and the usual late summer low water levels expose more shoreline.

"It's all public recreational use," he said. "It's all of our land."

He and Nelson said they hope anyone who appreciates the unique lake recreation area will join in the effort to clean up the shorelines and areas around the reservoir.

Since important fossils and prehistoric human artifacts have been uncovered in the cleanup area, Zilverberg said there will be a federal expert on hand to help document any finds.

The Belle Fourche Reservoir is not only the largest body of water in South Dakota west of the Missouri, it's also one of the first Bureau of Reclamation irrigation projects.

Construction began in 1905 and was completed in 1914.

Visitation and use of the area has grown from about 3,000 people per year in the late 1950s to more than 167,000 people per year now taking advantage of the resource.

For more information or to confirm individual or group participation, call Zilverberg, at 605.394.9757 extension 3008.
PIERRE  U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds has announced his office is hosting a Service Academy Day in Rapid City so students and parents can learn more about the academy enrollment process at our nations service academies.

Our nations academies offer an opportunity to serve our nation while receiving a top-notch education, said Rounds. The purpose of Service Academy Day is to provide students a one-stop opportunity to learn more about each of the academies and the application process. I encourage interested students and their families to attend.

The event will be 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 10 at the Surbeck Center on the campus of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.

For more information about Service Academy Day or the academy nominations process, contact Michele Mustain at michele_mustain@rounds.senate.gov or at (605) 336-0486.
CEMENT RIDGE, Wyo. | Barb Peterson is ideally suited to her job as a fire spotter in the Black Hills National Forest.

She likes solitude, which is good, because she spends her days at an elevation of 6,647 feet, pacing a catwalk around a rustic-looking tower and scanning forested hilltops and ridge lines for smoke.

She enjoys company, too, which is also good, because she counted 1,600 public visits in July from curious motorists, ATVers and hikers, despite the relatively remote location of the Cement Ridge fire lookout tower. It's in the northwestern Black Hills, about 20 miles southwest of Spearfish via gravel roads and just across the Wyoming line.

Peterson has been a "lookout," as her position is known, for eight years since retiring from an accounting career, and she loves the simplicity of looking for smoke, talking to visitors and enjoying nature.

To me, its a coveted position, she said. People say, I want this job, and I say, Stand in line. Im not ready to give it up.

The Cement Ridge tower, which turns 75 years old this year, is one of seven fire lookout towers still being used in the Black Hills. There were about 25 active towers in the region, but many were deactivated as advances in technology  including aerial surveillance and automated lightning-strike detection  made forest managers less reliant on human lookouts.

The 25 tower sites in the Black Hills now range from the stone ruins of long-ago deactivated towers to the well-preserved, wood-and-stone or metal structures of active towers. Some of the tower sites are situated along roads, and others require a hike; some are open to the public, and others are restricted. The most well-known Black Hills lookout tower is the stone structure atop Black Elk Peak (formerly Harney Peak), which is no longer used for smoke detection but is visited by thousands of hikers annually.

Towers trending downward

The decline of lookout towers in the Black Hills has paralleled a national trend. The Forest Fire Lookout Association reports that among nearly 9,000 lookout towers that once stood across the nation, fewer than 3,000 are still standing and fewer than 1,000 are staffed.

But the disappearance of the towers may be slowing as people nationwide, and especially in the West, take action to preserve and protect lookout towers for their continued usefulness, unique architecture, history and scenic vistas.

In some places, unused lookout towers have been re-purposed as rental cabins. That has not yet happened in the Black Hills, where forest managers seem more focused on preserving active lookout towers in part by keeping them staffed with human lookouts.

Chris Huhnerkoch, assistant fire management officer for the Bearlodge Ranger District, said the Black Hills National Forest uses surveillance flights and other modern technology to find fires. But technology is expensive and sometimes fails, and it's comforting to know there are people in towers ready to report smoke within minutes of a fire starting.

Additionally, lookouts provide weather reports and serve as human repeaters for Forest Service personnel who might be out of radio range of each other, but within range of a lofty lookout tower.

Its pretty handy having them up here for safety, weather and communication, aside from the primary smoke detection job, Huhnerkoch said, adding that he hopes to have people in lookout towers as long as possible, as long as Im here."

Low-tech, but highly effective

The Cement Ridge tower stands 15 feet tall, with a stone-constructed base. Inside the base is an empty room thats open year-round and is a popular warming spot for snowmobile riders.

Atop the tower is a 14-by-14-foot wooden, window-lined room, or cab, with a wraparound catwalk. A stroll around the catwalk affords a panoramic view of the northern Black Hills and the surrounding area, with visible landmarks including Terry Peak, Custer Peak, Crow Peak, Inyan Kara Mountain, Warren Peak and Sundance Mountain. On crystal-clear days, Peterson said, she can see the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming about 150 miles to the west.

Inside the cab is a mix of old and new technology, all surrounding a device known as an Osborne Firefinder.

The Osborne Firefinder was invented during the winter of 1910-1911 by William B. Osborne, a Forest Service employee in Oregon. The device consists of a circular map mounted on a rotating steel disc atop a pedestal, with brass sighting mechanisms.

When Peterson spots smoke from the Cement Ridge tower, she lines up the smoke in the firefinder sight, and then takes readings from the sights and the map that help determine the approximate location of the smoke. If human lookouts in other towers see the same smoke, they can communicate by radio and help pinpoint the location by means of triangulation with strings and tacks on wall maps.

Lookouts have some modern technology, including radios and cell phones, but some towers are still very rustic. The Cement Ridge tower is powered by solar energy, and Petersons work still revolves around a pair of binoculars and the Osborne Firefinder that is basically the same device, with some updates, that was used by lookouts more than 100 years ago.

It still works today, and thats the most important thing, Peterson said. Its tried and true technology, its been used for decades. My philosophy is if it isn't broke, dont fix it.

Tower uses evolve

The value of fire lookout towers and human lookouts extends beyond smoke-detection, according to Michael Engelhart, North Zone archaeologist for the Black Hills National Forest. Lookout towers are architecturally and historically significant, they offer spectacular views, and the act of getting to a remote tower offers a recreational opportunity.

Its kind of that nexus of utility and history and getting out and seeing the woods, all at the same time, Engelhart said. I think thats why we get a lot of visitors.

Petersons presence in the tower, and the presence of other lookouts in other towers, helps to protect and promote those multiple uses. Her presence deters vandals, and she does some upkeep on the tower during her downtime. And when people come to visit, as long as shes not busy calling in or monitoring a fire, she acts as a kind of docent, telling visitors about her duties and about the history of fire lookouts.

The proliferation of fire lookouts was related to the so-called Big Blowup of 1910, when an estimated 1,736 fires swept across the West and burned 3 million acres while destroying 7.5 billion board feet of timber, wiping out several small towns and killing at least 85 people.

After those fires, lookout towers began popping up around the country as land managers sought to spot and respond to fires before they raged out of control. At Cement Ridge, a log cabin was built in 1911. A crows nest was added in 1921, but it and the cabin were replaced by a tower that was finished in 1941.

People hired as lookouts in the early days had to be adventurous and comfortable with isolation and danger. Some lookouts lived in towers for days on end, and at Cement Ridge there was a horse stable and a rock cellar for provisions. Printed guidebooks advised lookouts how to avoid being electrocuted by a lightning strike.

Cement Ridge was remote enough that no motorized vehicles reached it until 1927, when a ranger named Tom Sawyer drove his car to the top with his wife and young son inside. He reportedly cleared a path as he went, and when he got out of the car to clear rocks or branches out of the way, he stuck a sack of potatoes behind one of the car's wheels to prevent it from rolling downhill.

The tower that was built atop Cement Ridge in 1941 is the one that still stands, and it was added to the National Historic Lookout Register in 1993. The towers 75th anniversary this year coincides with the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act, which has done much to encourage the preservation of lookout towers and other historic structures all over the country.

Keith Argow, chairman of the board of the national Forest Fire Lookout Association, said historic preservation efforts are needed to prevent the disappearance of towers that help tell the history of forestry.

"They are a symbol of forestry in America going back 100 years," Argow said. "They're almost as important a symbol of responsible fire management as Smokey Bear."

'Part of our identity'

Concern about the decline of lookout towers has motivated many people across the country to donate money, volunteer time, or buy lookout towers in order to preserve them, said Gary Weber, the Idaho-based treasurer for the national Forest Fire Lookout Association.

In eastern states, where lookout towers were typically less remote and the job of a lookout was less demanding, there seems to be less nostalgia for the towers, Weber said. But in the West, there is an active community of people committed to preserving the towers, even as remote controlled cameras and other technological replacements for human lookouts continue to cause more towers to be deactivated.

"I think there is more and more recognition that this is something that's fading off the landscape, and it will continue to fade if we don't do something," Weber said.

Peterson is doing her part at Cement Ridge. She drives 17 miles to the tower five or six days a week during the fire season, which typically spans from May to September. Her days range from eight to 12 hours, depending on fire activity.

In keeping with the historic nature of her role and her work site, she drives a 1978 pickup, which is stuffed with extra clothing and food and whatever else she might need in case of an extra long day or unpredictable weather. Atop the tower, between visits from the public, she sometimes thinks about her predecessors and about lookouts in more remote towers across the country, and shes jealous of lookouts then and now who've ventured deeper into the wilderness.

Her longing for the wilderness helps explain the lasting appeal of lookout towers. They are reminiscent of a time when nature was more natural, solitude could still be found and life was uncomplicated by digital technology.

Visiting a place like Cement Ridge is one of the few modern ways to experience that bygone era, or at least something like it.

Its hard to overtly recognize it sometimes in ourselves, but we really seek out connections to the past, and I think thats part of the reason people come up here, Engelhart said. Its part of our identity, really, in the Western forests.
Many visitors to America's national parks experience the grandeur of the preserved sites through the glass windows of a car, pickup or RV, or perhaps during brief pull-offs on roadways or on a quick walk down a path.

Oftentimes, visitors aren't aware of the profusion of green things growing all around  plants both big and small, some of which have properties known only to those who understand the land and all its hidden riches.

Richard Sherman, a former wildlife biologist and member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, sees with those plants with discerning eyes.

On Friday morning, Sherman shared his vision and knowledge with a small group of curious onlookers as he led them on a walking tour through Badlands National Park, pointing as he went to different plants and explaining their traditional uses in Lakota culture.

In a departure from formerly strict rules against removing plants from national parks, Sherman and other Native Americans recently received federal permission to inspect and collect more of the plant life that is critical to their culture.

Tribes can begin entering into agreements with the National Park Service to allow their members to pick plants on protected land under a new federal rule. The rule, announced in June by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, went into effect earlier this month.

Under the rule, tribes must have a culturally significant tie to the land that makes up a national park in order for its members to harvest foliage that grows there. And Native Americans or Alaskan Natives must use the plants for traditional reasons, such as using a root for medicinal purposes, or branches or bark to make a basket.

There are 58 national parks in the U.S., with some covering vast expanses within proximity to some of the nation's largest Native American reservations.

On the walking tour in the Badlands on Friday, Sherman pointed out some of those plants that play a role in Lakota culture and survival.

A cluster of spiky buffaloburs growing along the trail, for instance, Sherman told his eight students, was called by the Lakota the jealous woman plant.

It clings to you, he said, drawing laughs. A type of nightshade, the burrs are poisonous, and should be avoided, he added.

Sherman has had to train his sight to see as his ancestors did in their regular wanderings of the wild plains, gathering herbs for medicine and berries for food. The same shoots and sprouts they knew so well have taken years for him to learn and catalog in his memory. Much of the Lakota knowledge was not written down, so Sherman has had to listen as hard as he looks; that and study in what he refers to as the Western style of education.

Sherman, who was born on the Pine Ridge reservation, worked as a tribal wildlife biologist for 10 years, and another five years as executive director of the Oglala Sioux Parks and Recreation Authority. This is the second year he has guided groups of travelers on his botanical tour of the Badlands, where even in that desolate land's hard and chalky soil, plenty of useful plant life grows.

Theres what the Lakota call the rattling leaf, which is a variety of willow plant that contains salicin, a chemical similar to aspirin. Integral to Sun Dance ceremonies, the rattling leaf makes a good tea that helps relieve pain.

At a bend in the path was a swath of wild licorice plants. When chewed, the orange brushes act as a numbing agent powerful enough to soften the pain of toothaches.

It will numb your whole mouth, Sherman said. I was chewing a piece one day and I got a phone call. They probably thought I was drunk.

Culrycup gumweed, a small yellow flower, soothes rashes and burns, as does scarlet globemallow, whose flowers are scarlet red.

Velvet mullein does wonders for asthma symptoms, and travelers have found other important uses for the velvety leaves: Toilet paper.

Its user friendly and you can go two-ply if you want, Sherman said.

Down the trail a ways, Sherman spotted some yarrow, a tuft of white flowers used to staunch bleeding.

Achillea millefolium, he said. Achillea, Sherman added, being a reference to the Greek warrior Achilles, who is said to have carried the plant with him into battle.

For the hungry hunter and gatherer, theres also plenty to eat growing on the ground, if you know what to look for. Even on the arid plains, an abundance of wild onion, prickly pears, Russian thistle, juniper, and sage grass can be found. Skunk brush leaves have a mustard-like taste, and are sometimes mixed with smoking tobacco. Lambs quarters seeds  which Sherman often collects en masse in paper bags  can be used to make flour.

Sherman sometimes takes groups of children out with him to go hunting for plants. Later, they throw it all in a pot and make a soup.

When I was a kid, what you brought back was what you ate, he said. When I was a kid, I remember how healthy the land was. Now its been so over-utilized. A lot of it has died away.

Foraging for flora is an important part of traditional Native American culture, something the National Park Service recognized this year by changing its rules to allow tribal members to gather plant life from the nations national parks.

Its very important, Sherman said of the rule change. Its something that was taken away from our people, and people have been dreaming of getting it back.

As the tour wrapped up, Peter and Jane Manchester of Massachusetts thanked Sherman for sharing his knowledge with them.

Its great having an expert telling us about whats here, Jane said. To me, it just looks like a green plant.

To tell the difference, Sherman said, it's not enough to idly tap plant names into a keyboard at home.

You have to get outside, touch it and smell it, he said. How else are you going to learn about it?
In South Dakota, we celebrate the great outdoors. Often called the land of Great Faces and Great Places, South Dakotas differing landscapes and abundance of outdoor activities mean there is something for everyone to enjoy any time of year. Spending time outside with our family and friends when the weather cooperates is one of our favorite pastimes.

We go camping and fishing at Lake Oahe and take the grandkids tubing on the Missouri. We love visiting the Black Hills and exploring all that West River has to offer.

This August marks the 100-year anniversary of the National Park Service. South Dakotans are fortunate to have access to six national parks. Among them are the desolate but beautiful Badlands, and one of our countrys oldest national parks  Wind Cave. Jewel Cave in Custer, the Lewis & Clark Trail, the Minuteman Missile Site, and ,of course, Mount Rushmore are all maintained by the National Park Service as well.

The sixth national park may be surprising, but it is actually the Missouri River  a 100-mile stretch of the river that is part of both the National Park System and the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

The worlds first national park, Yellowstone, was established by Congress in 1872 before Montana or Wyoming were official states. Following that, the Organic Act of 1916 created the National Park Service as an agency under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior.

The Organic Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on Aug. 25, 1916. The purpose of the National Park Service was to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. The National Park Service has continued to fulfill this mission for the past 100 years.

To celebrate its 100th birthday, the National Park Service is offering discounted or free admission this year at national parks, monuments and sites all across the country. You can visit them for free from Aug. 25-28. Parks will also be free to visit on National Public Lands Day on Sept. 24 and Veterans Day on Nov. 11. You can visit nps.gov to get directions, find out about special events or learn more about the history of our parks.

There is no better place to spend quality time with friends and family than the great outdoors of South Dakota. If you havent visited our states national parks yet, I highly recommend it. When you go, take a moment to appreciate the unique history of where you are standing and the years of hard work that have gone into preserving it for you and your family and our future generations to enjoy.
Case against Russian Komi Republics ex-head expected to reach court by end of 2016

MOSCOW, August 22 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko)  Investigators are expected to transfer the criminal case against Vyacheslav Gaizer, former head of Russias Komi Republic who stands charged with fraud and organized crime related violations, to court in the fall or by the end of 2016, official representative of the Investigative Committee Vladimir Markin said in interview on Vesti Fm radio station.

Earlier, the Investigative Committee reported terminating the activity of a criminal group led by the head of the Republic of Komi, Vyacheslav Gaizer.

Nineteen people are defendants in the case, including Gaizers deputy Alexei Chernov, Igor Kovzel, Chairman of the Republican State Council, and Konstantin Romadanov, Deputy Chairman of the Komi government.

Gaizer pleads not guilty. Several high-ranking officials have been arrested in the fraud and organized crime case, as well as several business people that the Investigative Committee called finance technologists.

During 80 searches in Komi, St. Petersburg and Moscow, the Investigative Committee and the Federal Security Service confiscated over 60 kg of jewelry, 150 watches worth $30,000 to $1 million each, over 50 stamps and seals from offshore corporations, and financial documents legalizing over 1 billion rubles ($14 mln) in stolen money transferred to the offshore zone.

Investigators have also opened against Gaizer a criminal case on money laundering.

On September 30, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to relieve Gaizer of his duties because of loss of trust.
Ukraine accuses Russia of violating UN Law of the Sea Convention - report

MOSCOW, August 22 (RAPSI)  At a meeting with Ukrainian ambassadors, Pavel Klimkin, the Ukraine Foreign Minister, has stated that the countrys government prepared an appellation to the UN International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea over alleged violation of the UN maritime convention on the part of Russia, Ukrainian Evropeyskaya Pravda newspaper reports on Monday.

In the nearest future we will lodge our case over violation by Russia of its commitments under the Convention on the Law of the Sea for further examination, Klimkin said.

The Ukrainian Foreign Minister refused to provide details about the appellation to the UN Tribunal; however, as it has already been reported earlier, yet in July Ukraine protested against Russias sea exploration activities near the peninsula alleging they violated its exclusive economic zone.

In its turn, on August 18 the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement that on August 11 Russian representatives met with a Ukrainian delegation in Minsk to discuss the Convention; unfortunately, Ukraine used the meeting not for a meaningful conversation, but to gain a formal reason to announce completion of out-of-court consultations with Russia regarding sovereign rights to Crimean waters. According to Maria Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry official spokesperson, it was seen as a liberal interpretation of the Convention. Ukraines refusal to wait for our response indicates that there was no intention to discuss these issues whatsoever. For its part, Russia remains open to a discussion of any questions regarding the convention, Zakharova said.

Alongside lodging an application with the UN International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, according to Klimkin, the Ukrainian government was ready to take other legal actions against Russia, for instance, to prove that Russia financed terrorism and violated the UN International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in Crimea.
It is good to see the government promising a national day of commemoration for the New Zealand Wars, the conflicts that killed thousands of people in these islands between 1843 and 1916.



The New Zealand Wars were intermittent, regional, and very complex . Often they had more than two sides.

When Te Kooti waged his guerrilla war in the central North Island in the late 1860s and early '70s, for example, he found himself fighting not only the colonial army controlled by the Pakeha government in Wellington, but the forces of the Ngati Porou and Te Arawa peoples, who had chosen for their own reasons to make an alliance with the Crown. As the war developed Te Kooti made his own alliances, winning support from the Tuhoe people of the Ureweras and from sections of the Tuwharetoa people of the Taupo region.

Te Kooti even found some Pakeha supporters. A group of Irish Fenians sold him ammunition, and a trade unionist and anarchist named Arthur Desmond was almost lynched after performing a poem in his honour in a Pakeha settlement on the East Coast. Despite the urgings of Wellington, the British government, which had become increasingly critical of New Zealand's colonists, refused to support the struggle against Te Kooti.

The outcomes of the New Zealand Wars were also complex. Many iwi suffered devastating land confiscations in the aftermath of their struggles with the Crown. The Tainui peoples lost more than two million acres in the aftermath of the conquest of the Waikato . Crown land confiscations were justified as punishment for rebellion, but they were motivated by the greed of property speculators. Some iwi that had fought hard against the invasion of the Waikato saw their lands untouched, because they were of little economic value, while iwi that had remained neutral but lived on desirable land, like Ngati Kahukura of Waiuku, suffered confiscations. A few iwi were able to emerge from the New Zealand Wars with their lands relatively intact. After a civil war in which supporters of an alliance with Pakeha were triumphant, Ngati Porou contributed men to the struggle against Te Kooti. After that war had finished the iwi held on to the weapons it had been given to fight Te Kooti, and threatened to use them against any Pakeha who tried to take their lands. The government in Wellington shelved plans to push settlers into Ngati Porou's region.
America must return to conservative principles of less government,reduced taxes, less spending and a balanced budget! Cut,cap and balance!
A Response to Noam Chomsky and John Halle:

We Dont Need Lesser Evil Voting OR Third Party Voting

We Need to Overthrow this Whole System at the Soonest Possible Time!

August 22, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Bob Avakian and Cornel West on: Is there value to voting? Can voting stop fascism?

From a reader:

Bob Avakian (BA) has written that, In a world marked by profound class divisions and social inequality, to talk about democracywithout talking about the class nature of that democracy and which class it servesis meaningless, and worse.

Today, Noam Chomsky and John Halle are providing a powerful example of the worse BA spoke of. In An Eight Point Brief For LEV (Lesser Evil Voting) published on June 15, Chomsky and Halle argue that the extreme dangers of Donald Trump obligate the left to go out and vote for Hillary Clinton.

The problem is not merely that Chomsky and Halle advocate support for someone (Hillary Clinton) who is neck-deep in the genocide of Black people and crimes against humanity stretching from Iraq to Libya and beyond. The deeper problem is they remain locked withinand are objectively fighting to keep others locked withinthe dictates of a system that requires and thrives on genocidal oppression of Black people and crimes against humanity from one corner of the globe to the other.

Lets examine how this is so.

First, Chomsky and Halle build their entire argument for lesser evil voting in opposition to the strategy of supporting third party candidates. But these are NOT our only choices.

In fact, these choices are just different expressions of the same fundamental error of accepting and remaining imprisoned within the capitalist dictatorshipand the choices offered to us by that dictatorshipwith all the horrors this system inflicts on people worldwide. This includes the U.S.s imperialist wars, genocidal mass incarceration, vicious brutality against women, destruction of the environment, and demonization of immigrants. You see, these crimes are not mere policy problems. They are deep fault lines of this society rooted in, and today inextricably woven into, the system of capitalism-imperialism as it has emerged in America. These crimes cannot be ended under this system.

As such, what is needed is neither lesser evil voting nor third party voting under this systemwhich, in effect, amounts to voting for the system.

What is needed is an actual revolution that overthrows this system and replaces it with a radically different system, the New Socialist Republic in North America. Only in this way can we put an end to the horrors this system generates, and will continue to generate, no matter who wins their elections.

Second, in making their argument for lesser evil voting, Chomsky and Halle insist that the dangers of Trump outweigh the dangers posed by Clinton.

But, the problem is far bigger than Trump. Trump and the extreme fascist rhetoric and program he is spewing grows out of this countrys deep white supremacy and jingoistic bigotry as well as the particular needs of a system of global exploitation and oppression as it confronts extreme challenges. This is why all the ruling class media and major politicians have consistently treated Trump as a legitimate candidate. Think, for example, of the hours and hours of reasoned debate that have been granted to his genocidal fantasies and barbaric misogyny.

The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) from the RCP is written with the future in mind. It is intended to set forth a basic model, and fundamental principles and guidelines, for the nature and functioning of a vastly different society and government than now exists: the New Socialist Republic in North America, a socialist state which would embody, institutionalize and promote radically different relations and values among people; a socialist state whose final and fundamental aim would be to achieve, together with the revolutionary struggle throughout the world, the emancipation of humanity as a whole and the opening of a whole new epoch in human historycommunismwith the final abolition of all exploitative and oppressive relations among human beings and the destructive antagonistic conflicts to which these relations give rise. Read the entire Constitution For The New Socialist Republic In North America (Draft Proposal) from the RCP at revcom.us/rcp.

What must be confronted is this: Any system that treats a Nazi like Trump as legitimate is itself completely IL-legitimate. Such a system needs to be overthrown, not voted for.

A key part of preparing for revolution is waging mass independent political resistance. This, in fact, is the ONLY way to beat back this systems crimes and is an essential part of getting ready to bring this system down. The more that fierce political resistance is builtto this countrys wars for empire, its rampant misogyny, its demonization of immigrants, its genocide against Black people, and its destruction of the environment, and the more this resistance is linked to making an actual revolution, the better the situation will be no matter who becomes president.

In contrast, the more that people do as Chomsky and Halle advocate and find their place within the criminal choices being dictated by the criminal system that rules over us, the worse things will be. As Bob Avakian has pointed out in a recent audio, Continually accepting the framework and choices dictatedyes, DICTATEDby this system and its ruling forces and institutions, repeatedly rallying to or acquiescing in the lesser evil, only leads to greater and greater evil. (transcription mine)

This has been true repeatedly, including under Obama. Far too many people rallied to Obama when he first ran for president, in large part because he did not seem as war-mongering or vicious as President Bush. What was the result? Obama has outdone Bush in terms of drone strikes, deportations, legalizing spying, assassinating U.S. citizens,1 torturing and imprisoning whistle-blowers, and much, much more. Meanwhile, people who had protested these things when Bush did them remained silent when Obama did them.

Or what about Hillary Clinton herself? As secretary of state, she was a major part not only of the crimes carried out under Obama, she was also a knowing and active part of Bill Clintons massive escalation of criminalization and incarceration of Black people, the demolition of welfare programs that millions of impoverished women and children depended on, the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, and the vicious sanctions that murdered half a million Iraqi children, and more. In her current campaign audition to be commander in chief, shes pledging not only to continue Obamas war crimes, but to escalate them in the Middle East.

Rallying behind Hillary Clinton, even if you do it in the name of opposing the worse evil, is giving your endorsement to all this. It makes you complicit in these crimes. And it strengthens the system that is the cause of these crimes.

Find out more about the revolution

Find out about BA, the leader of the revolution

Third, and most fundamentally, what underlies all of this is that Chomsky and Halle fall precisely into the error Bob Avakian warns against. They fail to recognize the class nature of U.S. democracy and which class it serves.

In the very first sentence of their brief, they write: Among the elements of the weak form of democracy enshrined in the constitution, presidential elections continue to pose a dilemma for the left in that any form of participation or non participation appears to impose a significant cost on our capacity to develop a serious opposition to the corporate agenda served by establishment politicians. (emphasis mine)

But, the problem is not that the form of democracy enshrined in the constitution of the U.S. is weak. Nor is it that some corporate agenda has corrupted establishment politicians. The problem is that the form of democracy enshrined in the constitution is one thatlike the U.S. Constitution itselfreflects and serves the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class). The capitalist class owns and controls the major means of productionthe land, natural resources, energy, factories, transportation and communications systems, etc.and they amass enormous wealth by viciously exploiting people here and around the world. And they enforce this exploitation through the capitalist statethrough invasions, occupations, torture, coups detat, drone strikes, extra-judicial assassinations, wanton murder by police, and more. Never has their state powerits armies and its police, its courts and its prisonsbeen used for any purpose other than to enforce the interests of the capitalist class, nor could it be.

Bob Avakian, "The 'voting trap' under capitalism"

From: Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About. A film of a talk by Bob Avakian, 2003

All this is what sets the terms for what this system doesNOT their elections.

In fact, one of the most powerful examples of how this is true can be found in the very experience Chomsky and Halle citebut completely misinterpret .

Chomsky and Halle indict what they call an ultra-left faction of the peace movement for having minimized the comparative dangers of the Nixon presidency during the 1968 elections. The result was six years of senseless death and destruction in Southeast Asia and also a predictable fracture of the left setting it up for its ultimate collapse during the backlash decades to follow.

This is simply not true. It is deeply wrong to blame the antiwar movementmost especially those among it who had the good sense to break out of this systems elections and put themselves on the line to wage meaningful resistancefor the murder carried out by the U.S. government!

The REAL lesson of the elections surrounding the Vietnam War is precisely the opposite of the conclusions drawn by Chomsky and Halle. To see how, lets briefly examine the two elections that book-ended the U.S.s major involvement in its war against Vietnam.

In the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson promised to scale back U.S. involvement in Vietnam, while Goldwater advocated that U.S. field commanders in Vietnam should be authorized to launch nuclear weapons without presidential confirmation. Yet Johnson was elected and proceeded to escalate the war dramatically.

Then, in 1972, the war-mongering President Nixon was re-elected in a landslide over the antiwar Democrat George McGovern. Yet, just a few months later, Nixon began withdrawing U.S. troops and abandoning the war.

In neither of these cases did the elections play any role whatsoever in determining what the U.S. rulers did in Vietnam. Their choices were determined by the dictates and the needs of their system. For years, the rulers in both major ruling parties felt their interests lay in expanding their domination of Southeast Asia through genocidal military terror and death. As they suffered greater and greater military and political defeats at the hands of Vietnamese liberation fightersand as increasing numbers of people revolted against them in their own homelandthe rulers came to feel their interests lay in withdrawing from that war. Again, NEVER did voting have a damn thing to do with it!

Finally, let us return to the sentence from Bob Avakian that I began with, and include with it the two sentences that follow it:

In a world marked by profound class divisions and social inequality, to talk about democracywithout talking about the class nature of that democracy and which class it servesis meaningless, and worse. So long as society is divided into classes, there can be no democracy for all: one class or another will rule, and it will uphold and promote that kind of democracy which serves its interests and goals. The question is: which class will rule and whether its rule, and its system of democracy, will serve the continuation, or the eventual abolition, of class divisions and the corresponding relations of exploitation, oppression and inequality.

Bob Avakian gets it right and it is long past time that others dig into what he is saying and learn from it for real. Great harm is done by failingor refusingto recognize the class nature of the democracy that rules over us and which class it serves. As long as the bourgeoisie maintains its monopoly on political power and military might, it will enforce and enshrine a form of democracy that facilitates its ongoing dictatorship overand exploitation and plunder ofpeople here and around the world. There is no way to change that by entering into their electionsnot through lesser evil voting or through third party voting.

But this can be changed through an actual revolution. Get into this here.

For full coverage and the current issue of REVOLUTION click here


Starting on Thursday, August 11, a relentless downpour produced a major flood crisis throughout southern Louisiana. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes. At least 13 people are dead. Above: an aerial photo shows people being rescued from flooded homes along the Tangipahoa River near Amite, Louisiana, August 13. (Photo: Ted Jackson/NOLA.com The Times-Picayune via AP) There has been a stunning lack of assistance from the government during and in the aftermath of the flood. Government services essentially collapsed for days. Above: A resident wades through floodwater at Tiger Manor Apartments by Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, August 13. (Photo: Brianna Paciorka/The Advocate via AP) A woman told Revolution: Everywhere that I went there were large groups of young Black men, some of them in boats for the first time in their livesthey never even been in a boat but they were in them to try to save people out of their homes. Above: Volunteers pull a boat with a woman and young child as people evacuate their homes, Baton Rouge, August 13. (Photo: John Oubre/The Advocate via AP) A woman told Revolution: In Baton Rouge? Nah, havent seen them [the authorities] do anything to help people. But the people in that community were amazing. They didnt have much, but they were focused on helping us....They talk about looting, but I didnt see any of that. I didnt hear any about it either. But I did see a lot of people helping each other out. Above: People evacuating a flooded neighborhood in Baton Rouge, August 13. (Photo: John Oubre/The Advocate via AP) Tens of thousands of homes have been irreparably damaged. In Livingston Parish (county), east of Baton Rouge, 75 percent of the homes are a total loss. Rotting, stinking furniture and belongings have been hauled out to the streets. Above: Men pile up debris outside a flooded auto parts store in Albany, Louisiana, August 17. (AP photo)

The Louisiana Flood: A Natural Disaster, A Disastrous System

August 22, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a Revolution correspondent reporting from Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

On August 11, a wave of torrential rain hit the area in and around Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Day after day of relentless downpours produced a major flood crisis throughout southern Louisiana. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes, over a large area stretching from Lafayette east to Baton Rouge and beyond. At least 13 people are dead. Tens of thousands of homes have been irreparably damaged. One official said that in Livingston Parish (county), east of Baton Rouge, 75 percent of the homes are a "total loss." Many schools, churches, and community centers are shut down; it is uncertain when or if they will reopen. As CNN reported about the rains that soaked Louisiana, "This disaster is the worst to hit the United States since Superstorm Sandy."

Unearthed coffins drifted down the main streets of towns. Snakes and even fish entered people's living rooms. People who took a wrong turn while seeking safety found themselves suddenly engulfed with water that made their cars inoperable, and sometimes were swept away by the deluge. People were stranded without necessary medication for diabetes, cancer, and other life-threatening conditions. Bodies were found washed up on riverbanks, or by roadsides. Shit and waste from sewers backed up and filled people's kitchens and bedrooms.

Everywhere, people told stories of water that engulfed their homes quickly, not a gradually seeping intrusion. One man told the Associated Press that water had reached waist level outside his mobile home Thursday night, and that he had seen an alligator swim by. One woman told us, "I have friends of mine that said they were walking in the water, trying to get out, to escape the water up to their chest and sometimes up to their chins. I am talking men, 6'1"; 6'3", OK? Water was just still and then the current got so strong that they could hardly stand up, like instantly something happened and the water was just coming in from nowhere, coming, coming, coming from nowhere."

Abandoned by the System

There has been a stunning lack of assistance from the government during and in the aftermath of the flood. Government services essentially collapsed for days. The vast majority of people rescued from flooded homes were rescued by volunteers. Conditions in shelters were, and are, appalling. The most vulnerable are not cared for but sleeping on cots left to their own devices to survive. People who were evacuated left life-saving medicine behind, without any access to replacement.

An area that is already one of the poorest in the U.S. has sustained at least $20 billion of residential property damage. Filth and the waterlogged wreckage of people's lives line the streets across the areas of Louisiana known as Acadiana and the Florida Parishes.

Countless people don't know if they have jobs they once held. A woman we spoke to said she had joined a cleanup crew for meager pay because her employer told her that her job was gone "until further notice." Many others have lost the ability to get to jobs that may still be therethousands of cars have been destroyed in an area with virtually no mass transit.

A toxic sludge covered much of a region renowned for its emerald beauty and abundant wildlife. Now, the air in the region is blanketed with a nauseating stench, and no one really knows about the water. One woman told Revolution:  The city stinks.... it literally smells like sewage; you know, like raw sewage ... foul odors everywhere you breathe.

In desperate straits, people are being told to enter into the bureaucracy of applying for federal assistance or to try to collect on flood insurancesomething only a tiny percentage of homeowners can afford. Meanwhile, the governor appeals for charity and donations.

Baton Rouge's "Mason-Dixon Line"

The impact of the flood was determined in part by where the rain came down the hardest. But the impact was also determined by the nature of this system, including the reality that white supremacy is tightly woven into everything about how this system works, and how people live and how people think.

The actual impact of flooding hit hardest in overwhelmingly white areas outside the city of Baton Rouge. These are sprawling communities of small, one-story homes of people who work for some of the lowest wages in the U.S. For many of them, the equity they have in their homes provides what little financial security they have. For the vast majority who couldn't afford flood insurance, the long-term impact of the flood will be devastating. Mainstream news coverage of the impact of flooding in overwhelmingly white areas emphasized and spread unfounded rumors of looting. CNN coverage featured property owners on armed "looter patrols" with the unstated but clear implication that the danger came from Black people from nearby Baton Rouge.

Baton Rouge itself is about half Black, and rigidly segregated. During the Civil War, the Mason-Dixon line separated the slave states that formed the Confederacy from the North. Many people in Baton Rouge refer to Florida Boulevard, a major eastwest street, as the Mason-Dixon line of Baton Rouge. To the south of Florida Boulevard, the population is largely white; north of it, almost all Black people.

The most pervasive property damage took place east of Baton Rouge. But the most severe impact on peoples lives was in the north side of the city. A man in North Baton Rouge said there were no rescue teams sent into his heavily flooded area until "three, maybe four days later." When authorities arrived, it was to enforce curfews and prevent "looting"not to save lives. In a country where for large sections of society, there are almost unlimited ways to shop and buy stuff, the most basic essentials of survival were not accessible to thousands. Based on what people told us, there was very little of what the system calls "looting," and overwhelmingly it was people getting desperately needed food and medicine that was not available any other way.

North Baton Rouge is where police murdered Alton Sterling on July 15 in front of the Triple S store. The store and the immediate area around it were not flooded, but many nearby streets were under water. One woman in that community told Revolution, "They tell people to go to the shelter, when there are literally no cars in the street. People had to get out of their cars because the water rose so rapidly. They have no transportation. They have no vehicle. They have nothing.

The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) from the RCP is written with the future in mind. It is intended to set forth a basic model, and fundamental principles and guidelines, for the nature and functioning of a vastly different society and government than now exists: the New Socialist Republic in North America, a socialist state which would embody, institutionalize and promote radically different relations and values among people; a socialist state whose final and fundamental aim would be to achieve, together with the revolutionary struggle throughout the world, the emancipation of humanity as a whole and the opening of a whole new epoch in human historycommunismwith the final abolition of all exploitative and oppressive relations among human beings and the destructive antagonistic conflicts to which these relations give rise. Read the entire Constitution For The New Socialist Republic In North America (Draft Proposal) from the RCP at revcom.us/rcp.  Download audio  Download PDF  Read message Order from Insight Press:

The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism Knowing What's Real and Why It Matters by Ardea Skybreak "This book will be of tremendous benefit to many..."

 Richard Leakey

"And it was like we were almost trapped here. Roads were closed. We had nowhere to go. My sister and cousins and nieces and nephews and Facebook friends were calling me and like 'where are we going? where can we go? how can we get out? You know, if the water starts rising again, how can we leave?' I had no answers. I don't know."

A man in North Baton Rouge took us into his home. He had returned from work to find two feet of water in his house. He said he wasn't able to save anything except some cooking utensils. The water line in the house showed the flood had risen to about 5  feet. His home, like every other one on the street he lived, was already mildewed, despite his efforts at cleaning it up. He and his family went to the home of some relativesand that night were flooded out again. He had spent two days cleaning up, and told us that not only is all they had ruined, "everything still smells bad, inside and out."

The Real Heroes

While the system abandoned people, people struggled heroically to save each other, to help each other out.

A woman told us, "Everywhere that I went there were large groups of young Black men, some of them in boats for the first time in their livesthey never even been in a boat but they were in them to try to save people out of their homes."

Another young woman stranded on a freeway for 30 hours told us that "I do give much respect to the community out there, because they did come out, and provide water and food to the people stuck on the highway. They made sure the kids had what they needed. They went to they houses and cooked food for us....

"In Baton Rouge? Nah, haven't seen them [the authorities] do anything to help people. But the people in that community were amazing. They didn't have much, but they were focused on helping us. But the police? Nah. They talk about looting, but I didn't see any of that. I didn't hear any about it either. But I did see a lot of people helping each other out."

Unnecessary Suffering

Southern Louisiana is a verdant, lush, semi-tropical landscape. It is ribboned by numerous rivers and bayous; dotted with lakes, ponds, and swamps. Some have overflowed before, causing damage and even loss of life. This is a region where fierce rainstorms are not unusual. And on a global scale, scientists are identifying patterns of more frequent and more extreme weather events, linked to climate change.

Katherine Hayhoe, a climate research scientist at Texas Tech University, said, "Louisiana is always at risk of floods, naturally, but climate change is exacerbating that risk, weighting the dice against us. How long will it be until we finally recognize that the dice are loaded?"

It is obvious that society needs to take a serious and planned approach to anticipate and respond to the danger of flooding in this region, including how to ensure the most basic necessities of life. But that doesn't fit into the "logic" of capitalism. Capitalism is based on and enforces private ownership over the social means of producing wealth and the resources of society. Its logic is NOT human need, but just the opposite: competitive drive for profit that is as relentless and ferocious as the storm that hit Baton Rouge.

People should ask themselveswhy is society organized in such a way that any human's ability and right to live are determined ultimately by how this can contribute to the profits of capitalists? People should ask themselves, is this the world they want to continue living in? And they should dig deeperis this the only kind of world that is possible?

The answer isno, it isn't. Natural disasters will continue to confront humanity, including in a future socialist society. But when something like this flood happensthe need to maximize profit and put that as first and foremost does NOT need to set the terms for how society responds.

To bring about that kind of fundamental change requires an ACTUAL revolution. In a New Year's message delivered at the beginning of 2014, but at least as timely today, Bob Avakian said:

Revolution is not an impossible dream. It is not "unrealistic." Changing all of society, changing the whole world, is not a crazy or dangerous idea. What is crazy, and dangerous, is going along with the way things are, and where things are heading, under this system. Revolutiona radical change in how society works, how we relate as human beings, what our values are, how we understand the world and act to affect itthis is what we, what people all over the world, desperately need. And it is a lot more realistic than trying to "fix" this system.

(From "This is Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, with a New Years messageA Call To REVOLUTION")

Because of Bob Avakian and the work he has done over several decades, there really is a viable vision and strategy for a radically new, and much better, society and world, and there is the crucial leadership that is needed to carry forward the struggle toward that goal. And based on that, there is a Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal). This is a blueprint for a new and totally different state power. It is as serious as it is liberating.

For full coverage and the current issue of REVOLUTION click here
Kathmandu, Nepal: The suggestion of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to amend the constitution of Nepal on the name of bring all agitating forces on board is drawn into controversy in Nepal.

Not only the lawmakers but also the acadamicina and diplomats have criticized the incumbent government for talking the constitution amendment with India.

During the recent meeting with Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Bimalendra Nidhi, Indian Prime Minister Modi had suggested to bring all agitating forces on board by addressing their concerns through constitutional amendment.

The lawmakers representing to the main opposition party CPN UML and the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party criticized alleging the government for handing over a letter to Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a promise to amend Nepals Charter.

The discussion between the bilateral talks between the DPM Nidhi and India Prime Minister Modi regarding the amendment in the constitution is nothing than the matter of national shame, the lawmakers had stated while speaking in the parliamentary session on Sunday.
You must have previous service to the organization, natch. There are four positions open: Directors-at-Large (three openings) and Vice...
India-China relations will be under the spotlight in the coming months. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Hangzhou, China for the G20 Summit on September 4-5, where he and his host, President Xi Jinping, will get an opportunity to discuss bilateral ties in addition to G20 matters. Xi will then travel to India to participate in the BRICS Summit in Goa on October 15-16. The two leaders will also participate in the East Asia Summit in Vientiane, Laos on September 6-7.

Modi and Xi have met on several occasions over the last two years and three months since Modi assumed office. In fact Modi met Xi for the first time during the Indian premiers first international trip, to Fortaleza, Brazil for the BRICS Summit in July 2014. Their last meeting was in Tashkent on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit on June 23, 2016. With the possible exception of U.S. President Barack Obama, Modi has probably met Xi more than any other world leader since taking charge.

However, while relations with the United States have soared, relations with China are mired in tension and distrust despite the frequent meetings. The hopes that surfaced after Modis victory that relations with China would improve have been sorely belied. Modi had embraced China with eagerness after coming to power, seeking to make Beijing an active partner in Indias economic development. This initiative has fallen flat. China has not accorded appropriate importance to Indias concerns as India had hoped. These concerns relate not only to issues bedeviling bilateral ties but equally to Chinas all out support to its iron friend, Pakistan. China has been unmindful of Pakistans funding and support for terrorism, which could adversely impact Chinas own security in the not too distant a future.

India, China, and the South China Sea Dispute

From Indias perspective, some major issues have afflicted bilateral relations in recent months: Chinas blockade of Indias Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) membership bid at Seoul in June 2016 (although China claims that it is unfair to single it out because there were several other countries which were opposed to a non-signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty becoming a member of NSG); China putting a technical hold on designating Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar as a terrorist at theUN Security Council; and Beijings extensive support to Pakistan for the China- Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK), also claimed by India.

On the Chinese side, the raging debate on the verdict by the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) on the South China Sea (SCS) case filed by Philippines is a matter of serious concern. The arbitral tribunals award went went completely and comprehensively against the positions advanced by China, including its nine-dash line and claim to historic rights in the South China Sea. India issued a balanced and mature response after the verdict which, while noting the clear decision, stated: India supports freedom of navigation and over flight, and unimpeded commerce, based on the principles of international law, as reflected notably in the UNCLOS, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The statement further added, Sea lanes of communication passing through the South China Sea are critical for peace, stability, prosperity and development. As a State Party to the UNCLOS, India urges all parties to show utmost respect for the UNCLOS Clearly, the centrality of UNCLOS in resolving the dispute was emphasized in the Indian statement.

The foreign ministers of Russia, India, and China met in the regular RIC (Russia, India, China) format in Moscow in April, a few months prior to announcement of the triubnals award. The joint communique they issued touched on the issue of the SCS, stating, Russia, India and China are committed to maintaining a legal order for the seas and oceans based on the principles of international law, as reflected notably in the UN Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS). All related disputes should be addressed through negotiations and agreements between the parties concerned. In this regard the Ministers called for full respect of all provisions of UNCLOS.

China has sought to use this statement to its advantage by focusing on the formulation that disputes should be addressed through negotiations and agreements between the parties concerned and thereby claiming that India supports its position of resolving the issue through negotiations amongst parties concerned. As is obvious, this is only a partial reading of the text. A complete reading of the statement demonstrates that full respect for all provisions of UNCLOS is the sine qua non for resolving the dispute.

Wang Yis Visit

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited India earlier this month  Goa on August 12 and New Delhi on August 13-14. During his visit, he paid a call on Modi, had discussions with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and familiarized himself with arrangements for the BRICS Summit in Goa.

Wangs principal objective during his India visit, in addition to discussing matters related to G20 and BRICS, seems to have been to try to co-opt India to Chinas side on the South China Sea issue, particularly when the matter is raised at the G20 and East Asia Summits by the United States, Japan and some others.

It is in this context that, even before Wang set foot on Indian soil, Chinas state-run media dangled a carrot in front of India and stated that the door for Indias admission to NSG is not tightly closed and that New Delhi should fully comprehend Beijings concerns over the disputed South China Sea, thus drawing a parallel between Indias NSG membership and the SCS issue. Chinas state-run Xinhua News Agency said that the South China Sea correlates with Chinas vital national interest and (India should) continue to play a constructive role in maintaining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific. Chinas Global Times urged India to avoid unnecessary entanglement with China over the South China Sea debate  if the country wishes to create a good atmosphere for economic cooperation.

Chinese state media pitched in to argue India-China ties should focus on amplifying their economic agenda, which required urgent attention since Indias exports to China have dropped 16.7 percent year-on-year in the first seven months of the year suggesting that Indian enterprises are having a hard time amid simmering tensions between the two countries. Days before Wangs departure for India, the Global Times warned New Delhi that its seemingly inimical posture on the South China Sea (SCS) was potentially damaging for bilateral ties and could create obstacles for Indian businesses in China.

With the United States and some others certain to raise the SCS dispute at the forthcoming summits, China is taking preemptive measures to shore up its support. Beijing hopes that India will not take a strong stand against it at the Summit meetings.

During Wangs visit, detailed discussions took place on a range of issues at the lengthy meeting between delegations led by the two foreign ministers. These topics included Indias NSG membership, Chinas technical hold on designating Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar as terrorists in the UN list, Chinese activities under CPEC in POK, and others. No discussions on the SCS apparently took place in the open meeting. Considering the Chinese sensitivity on this issue, it is quite likely that this matter was taken up between the two ministers in a private tete-a-tete.

Two decisions were adopted by the foreign ministers which have the potential to stabilize bilateral ties and enhance mutual trust. On the contentious issue of Chinas opposition to Indian membership in NSG, both sides agreed to engage in a dedicated dialogue between the Indian joint secretary dealing with disarmament issues and Chinas director general of arms control and disarmament. For other issues impeding the growth of bilateral relations, another dialogue platform was created between the Indian foreign secretary and his Chinese counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui. This would supplement the already functioning annual Strategic Dialogue at the foreign secretary level and the regular special representatives dialogue, which focuses on border talks but at times goes beyond that limited circumference. It would appear that issues of Chinas technical hold on the listing of Masood Azhar and Chinese activities in POK will be covered by this mechanism.

While these decisions do contain seeds of giving an impetus to bilateral partnership, recent attitudes, behavior, and statements from China repudiate any hope that Beijing will relent on issues of serious interest and concern to India. Bilateral ties are hence expected to continue to be stressed and strained and significantly below par for the foreseeable future.

Speaking after Wangs visit, the Chinese foreign office stated that India and China had candid exchange of views on some specific issues and agreed not to let the differences affect their overall ties as they vowed to resolve issues through dialogue and consultation. Use of words like candid and differences in the Chinese foreign ministry statement would imply that hard and tough talks took place between the two sides.

Conclusion

Another significant issue that India will need to contend with in coming days is the proposal of Chinas membership in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which is likely to come up at the forthcoming SAARC Summit in Pakistan in November 2016. Most SAARC members, except India and Bhutan, are actively supportive of Chinas membership. Bhutan does not have diplomatic relations with Beijing and, like India, has an unsettled border with China. India should stand firm against the proposal and if need be, veto the suggestion. As a backup plan, India should persuade Japan to be ready to join SAARC in the future, when it might become impossible to keep China out. Japans presence will help to restore a semblance of balance if and when China manages to join the organization.

Meetings over the next two months provide an opportunity to both India and China to put their ties on an even keel. This can happen only if China pays serious and positive attention to issues of vital concern to India. Going by current trends, this appears less than likely. Both sides however need to continue talking at all levels to sensitize each other about their core concerns and try to find mutually acceptable solutions. Otherwise a new paradigm for managing bilateral relations will have to be constructed, which could fall well short of the inherent potential of the partnership.

Ashok Sajjanhar is a career diplomat who has served as Ambassador of India to Kazakhstan, Sweden and Latvia, as also as Secretary/Principal Executive Officer of the National Foundation for Communal Harmony, an autonomous organization with the Ministry of Home Affairs. He has held several significant positions in Indian embassies in Washington, Moscow, Brussels, Geneva, Bangkok, Tehran and Dhaka.
Blog Archive June (1) May (16) April (23) March (20) February (17) January (13) December (22) November (40) October (57) September (45) August (55) July (52) June (165) May (121) April (141) March (32) February (76) January (141) December (85) November (130) October (146) September (96) August (89) July (82) June (64) May (99) April (41) March (98) February (61) January (64) December (67) November (51) October (70) September (75) August (52) July (66) June (76) May (104) April (93) March (151) February (168) January (107) December (42) November (56) October (69) September (103) August (75) July (191) June (171) May (207) April (302) March (490) February (155) January (138) December (135) November (226) October (146) September (107) August (160) July (292) June (316) May (361) April (460) March (327) February (49) January (2) November (13) October (3) September (37) August (43) July (6) June (12) May (1) April (29) March (30) February (58) January (27) December (11) November (16) October (34) September (81) August (81) July (93) June (12) May (1) February (1) November (3) October (2) September (6) August (1) July (2) June (14) May (10) April (8) March (13) February (1) January (5)
Al-Sammad: SPC formation meets Yemeni people's will

SANA'A, Aug. 20 (Saba) - The President of the Supreme Political Council (SPC) stressed on Saturday that the formation of the Council came to meet the aspirations of the Yemeni people and to take into account Yemen's interests above all other interests.



Saleh al-Samad said the SPC came also to fill the gaps. Yemen's enemies are trying to disperse the People after their inability to achieve any progress on the ground.



Millions of the Yemeni people took to al-Sabeen square in support of the SPC and authorized it to run the next stage in all fields.



" Do not you see the Yemeni people, these crowds which maybe equal the four times of four Arab Gulf States which they are involved in the aggression against Yemen, who are you to attack the Yemeni people, shame on those who see and hear the will of the Yemeni people by a group who cannot secure itself more than running the country, " al-Sammad said.





He went on to say, " Shame on you to plot against the Yemeni people who have never ever been a concern for the region's countries, nor for the International peace and security. When you conspire against our People, you kill yourself because you kill the Cradle of Arabism and the Cradle of Civilization."



The SPC President addressed the governments as he went on saying" governments in various countries across the world which pay lip service to speak on freedom and respect for the right of peoples to self-determination, why you do not respect the Yemeni People, why you do not respect the people's will and its legitimacy and democratic choices."



The SPC President addressed the governments , as he went on saying, "Governments in various countries across the world that pay lip service when speaking on freedom and respect , and for the right of people to self-determination, why do you not respect the Yemeni People, and why do you not respect the people's will and their legitimacy and democratic choices?



He added that the Saudi regime and those who stand behind it of the Americans they could not kneel this People even if it did not remain only families of martyrs and their relatives as they are going to revenge for these Yemen people, referring to the rally, moreover these millions crowds and others across the Yemen will do so.



The President affirmed that the formation of the SPC came to face the political, economic, security and military and social challenges which left by the aggression. The SPC came to meet the Yemeni people' ambitions and to get out of its ordeal.



In the coming days, the government will be formed to unite all efforts to reach a stable situation, if possible, and to hold general elections, al-Sammad said, calling on the chairman of the parliament and Parliament's members to hold the parliament' sessions to participate in addressing these challenges.



HA



Saba

Facebook Facebook

Twitter Twitter

Whatsapp Whatsapp

Telegram Telegram

Email Email

Print Print

[20/August/2016]
As the fall encroaches upon us a new dark Swedish psycho-comedic thriller is on deck to be released.

This unusual back-yard indie treats the ever-so infected subject matter of Atheism versus Christianity.

When our dark anti-hero Harold gets a surprise visit from the door-knocking bible-thumping Christian Godson, there is dislike at first sight. But as Harold learns that Christian, who used to be a carpenter before becoming full-time 24-7 messenger, he realizes that he could use the God-man's help to finish remodeling his home. Harold's wife Eva has left him because the remodel was taking way too long. Harold's only hope stands to Christian helping him. So naturally Harold kidnaps Christian and brutally ties him to a chair in the basement. We get to follow Harold's and Christian's evolving friendship and the inevitable turn for the worse as the beautiful Eva sends Harold twirling in to dark madenning insanity.

The movie originates in the dark amygdala of the Swedish director/writer Marcus Nobreus.

"I couldn't understand how angry and hateful many were in Sweden towards religion. So I thought it'd be interesting to write a movie about this conflict and about the insanity of two men wanting the best for each other, not realizing they end up hurting each other instead, only to prove a point."

The movie is expected to show up at festivals during the winter of 2017 all across our film universe.

"We're already working on our next feature film, a dark gangster movie about a musician who saves a little girl from a bunch of bad men" says Marcus Nobreus.

By we he means the team behind these productions, Nobreus Productions and the emerging studio Red Ocean Pictures. Marcus reports being exhilirated to be teaming up with Kajsa Siegrist Jonsson and his other partners in Red Ocean Pictures.

"Watch out world, here we come!"

Keep your eyes peeled for "Unrighteous Men"!

https://vimeo.com/157790322


A proposal by Governor Jerry Brown to pass sweeping legislation that would speed up residential development across the state by bypassing various local review processes has lost all momentum and appears fully dead, according to the Associated Press. The compromise with legislators which would have freed up $400 million for affordable housing development was set to allow developers to build "as of right," so long as they produced a minimum amount of below-market-rate units, without having to go through the usual design review and public approvals process. The only problem, of course, is that places like San Francisco have a long and strong tradition of community involvement in every stage of development, which may be a hindrance at times but also serves as a check against development that alters the character of neighborhoods against the neighbors' will.

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon told the Sacramento Bee last week that the proposal was dead for at least the coming year, saying, "I dont think theres any support in our caucus for the proposal as the architecture was rendered by the governor."

Housing advocates are calling for the release of the $400 million regardless of Brown's contingency about "by right" development, but that seems unlikely to occur before the legislative session ends on August 31.

Brown's proposal felt like a "nuclear option" to many politicians, tenant advocates, and neighborhood activists, handing developers a blank check to build whatever they liked so long as it fit zoning requirements, and contained 20 percent affordable units, or 10 percent if it was next to transit. As Curbed SF puts it, "While the city would have retained some leverage over developers, this would have been the equivalent of replacing the citys construction pipeline with a firehose."

Also, given that much of the city could be considered transit-adjacent, the proposal could have potentially bypassed local ordinances that have raised affordable housing inclusion well above 20 percent in some cases.

In June, a group of 80 business and tech industry leaders including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, prominent investor Ron Conway, and Lyft CEO Logan Green all signed an open letter in support of Brown's proposal. It said, in part, "This idea respects local control and community values while cutting the 'excess process' that creates lots of controversy but too little housing too late at too high a price."

The move by Brown came five years after he decimated one of California's primary tools for affordable development, known as redevelopment, in which local agencies were able to fund construction bonds on the basis of future tax revenue from the improved properties. As a result, affordable development has slowed statewide.

Rendon now says he will push to get at least $150 million for affordable housing in the state's $122 billion budget, while Brown continues to tighten the belt in preparation for a recession that he promises is coming.

Previously: Gov. Jerry Brown Declares War On NIMBYs And Planning Commissions With New Housing Bill

Tech Titans Voice Support For Gov. Jerry Brown's Controversial Plan To Speed Housing Development


Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, though he served as a local delegate for Donald Trump and spoke in support of him at the Republican National Convention last month, apparently has "no plans to donate to or raise money for Mr. Trump," at least according to a spokesman reached by the Wall Street Journal. It's a bit of a surprising revelation given Thiel's outspoken support for the candidate so far, and given that he previously gave $2 million to a super PAC supporting Carly Fiorina, but maybe not so surprising given the overall chilly reception Trump's been getting from Silicon Valley overall  including the announcement earlier this month that onetime Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has decided to support Hillary.

Back in June, a Trump event in Atherton at the home of Intel CEO Brian Krzanich got called off after an outcry from within Intel's ranks, though Krzanich insists the event was not going to be a fundraiser but more of a private opportunity for Silicon Valley business leaders to discuss issues important to their industry with the candidate. The event was leaked to the New York Times, and subsequently local Republican donor Trevor Traina  founder of IfOnly.com and son of Dede Wilsey  tells the Journal that other potential donors and fundraisers have been scared off, comparing the media scrutiny to a "witch hunt" and saying the Krzanich case "sent a chill down a number of spines."

Thiel always seems to have marched to his own drummer, however, and doesn't have a particular corporation's reputation to protect. So why won't he ponying up any cash to defeat Hillary?

It seems to be part of a larger trend across several industries, according to the Journal, including tech and finance, with Wall Street donors unhappy with Republicans embracing a law that would break up big banks.

Meanwhile, Trump is heading to the Bay Area next week, with a planned fundraiser in the Napa Valley at an undisclosed location on Monday, August 29. As the Napa Valley Register tells us, tickets for that event start at $5,000.

A Trump fundraiser is also planned somewhere in San Francisco, possibly the following day, August 30, though the timing and location of that are so far unconfirmed.

Previously: Nude Trump Statue Removed, May Get New Home At Lefty O'Doul's
UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks is on his way out  of that there is no doubt. The only question that remains is the timing of his departure, but the Chronicle reports that some university staff have found themselves at odds with University of California President Janet Napolitano's stated intention to leave Dirks at the helm for the entire upcoming academic year.

Dirks announced his planned resignation last week following numerous campus-wide sexual harassment scandals involving prominent members of the staff and faculty, as well as questions into his own use of public funds. And while Napolitano wants time to run a nationwide search to find Dirks's replacement, some faculty members think fresh blood should be brought in ASAP.

"Given the critical decisions that need to be made for the campus, I am very worried that having Dirks remain as chancellor for another 10 months is not tenable, Eric Schickler, chair of the political science department, explained to the paper. We need an interim chancellor  from among the Berkeley faculty  who can help provide real, forward-looking leadership for the campus.

Schickler and others who want Dirks gone fear that with several key university positions needing to be filled, allowing the outgoing chancellor to do the hiring could lead to troubling results.

Whos going to fill these critical positions? political science professor Jack Citrin told the Chronicle. Is it even legitimate for someone leaving to make those calls? If not, then who is making those calls?

Only 25 professors are needed to call a special session of the Academic Senate, but whether or not enough opposition to Dirks actually exists to win a no-confidence vote is in doubt.

Napolitano, meanwhile, is not having it. She wants a replacement candidate selected by this March, and told the Chronicle's Matier and Ross that bringing someone in before that time as merely a placeholder is a mistake. I dont see any value in playing musical chairs, she observed.

As so while the timing of Dirks's departure is in doubt, that this issue will continue to dog UC Berkeley throughout the upcoming academic year is almost assured. Regardless of the outcome, Dirks, for his part, will likely remain comfortable with his $532,000 salary behind his $700,000 fence while everyone else fights it out.

Previously: Now A UC Berkeley Chancellor Has Been Accused Of Misusing Public Funds

UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks Announces He Will Resign
At least two photographers had their gear stolen in San Francisco this weekend, victims of thieves who, in one case, didn't even have to get out of their vehicle for the crime.

The first theft of note happened at 6:35 Saturday night, on the 300 block of Texas Street (that's between 18th and 19th Streets) in Potrero Hill.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, a 23-year-old man was "standing in the street talking with friends" when a man in a newer model Audi Q6 with tinted windows "rolled by...and took the camera from [the victim's] shoulder.

The suspect never stopped and never exited the vehicle as he swiped the victim's camera and lens, police say.

Then on Sunday at 4 p.m., a 27-year-old man was "filming his friend" near the corner of Revere Avenue and Griffith Street in Hunters Point, according to the SFPD.

Suddenly, a white, 2008 model year 2 door coupe pulled up, according to the SFPD. A man aged 25-30 hopped out of the passenger seat, pointed a black handgun at the photographer's face, and demanded the camera and backpack.

The victim handed over the Panasonic camera and his backpack, and the suspect jumped back in the vehicle, which an unknown driver then piloted north on Griffith.

In both cases, police say, the suspects remain at large, and no arrests have been made. If you know anything about either theft, police ask that you call SFPD's Anonymous Tip Line at 415-575-4444 or to text a tip to TIP411 with SFPD at the beginning of the message.
Whoa. The ferry building is on fire. pic.twitter.com/muix37NCz9  Miss Bunny Mickley (@bunnyhalberd) August 22, 2016

A one-alarm fire in a Ferry Building vent spread to the structure's roof this morning, sending San Francisco Fire Department crews to the scene to battle the small yet smoky blaze.

According to the San Francisco Fire Department, 911 started receiving calls reporting the rooftop smoke at around 7:25 this morning.

Firefighters quickly realized that the cause of the smoke was a vent fire that extended to the roof, causing the roof area around the vent to burn, the SFFD says. By 7:58, the fire had been controlled.

No injuries were reported, nor was anyone displaced in the incident. According to Chron reporter Evan Sernoffsky, the building was evacuated "while fire crews mop up."

SF Ferry Building evacuated while fire crews mop up early-morning roof fire pic.twitter.com/jtVV6mou16  Evan Sernoffsky (@EvanSernoffsky) August 22, 2016

According to the SFFD, "crews will remain on scene to clean up and do overhaul of burnt material" this morning, which will likely make for delays on the Embarcadero. If you can, it's recommended that you avoid the area.

Some level of fire activity at SF ferry building pic.twitter.com/wNjm123a5s  jeannebee (@jeannebee) August 22, 2016

SFFD contained a fire that broke out at a vent on the roof of the Ferry Building this morning. No cause, no injuries pic.twitter.com/68yQG1lU6B  Teri Rouse (@terirouseKGO810) August 22, 2016

Small fire on the roof of the SF ferry building this morning. pic.twitter.com/bw1hkMeF7D  Matthew Kell (@MathyouKell) August 22, 2016
Low-budget Romanian drama co-written and directed by Cristi Puiu.

Struggling entrepreneur Ovidiu (Alexandru Papadopol) is approached by a local crime boss with a job offer. Tempted by the prospect of earning some quick cash, Ovidiu and his two friends agree to deliver a mysterious package to Bucharest for the mob.



What seems like a straightforward trip soon becomes dangerous, however, when a red car containing four gangsters begins to follow them and refuses to be shaken off...
SIOUX CITY | A Sioux City murder trial likely will be delayed after a judge approved the withdrawal of the defendant's attorney.

District Judge Jeffrey Poulson on Friday approved public defender Peter Tenny's motion to withdraw as the attorney for Rogelio Morales, who is accused of killing his wife.

Tenny, who works in the public defender's Council Bluffs office, had requested the withdrawal after determining he had a conflict of interest and could not ethically continue to represent Morales. Poulson appointed the State Public Defender Special Defense Unit to represent Morales.

Morales is scheduled to stand trial Sept. 20 in Woodbury County District Court. Though Poulson did not continue the trial date, it's unlikely that a new attorney could be ready for trial after being appointed to the case less than one month before trial.

Morales, 29, of Hubbard, Nebraska, is charged with first-degree murder for the April 19, 2015, death of Margarita Morales, 21, of South Sioux City.

According to court documents, Morales told investigators he was talking to his wife in his car in the 2200 block of Floyd Boulevard when he became upset after she told him she no longer wanted to be in a relationship with him and had been seeing another man. Morales told police that he blacked out and that the next thing he remembered was that his wife was not breathing, court documents said.
SIOUX CITY | Former high school seniors jump into the college pond this week at Morningside College and Briar Cliff University. The last couple of days, the colleges have held events so the little fish can swim alongside familiar faces.

This lets us get to know faces, names. Everyone here is new, so this is great, Morningside freshman Adam Cedar, of Cherokee, Iowa, said on Sunday. Its a good way to start the school year. Now, when I walk around campus, I will be able to know people.

Morningside kicks off classes for the fall semester on Wednesday, and since Saturday, the school has had ice-breaker games, introductory classes on college life, an improvisation show, a mini Olympics and a backyard bash.

Briar Cliff launches into the books Monday morning, and the freshman orientation dubbed "Charger Weekend" had a similar effect.

"I have met so many people, that has been my favorite part," said Rachel Knutson, a freshman Charger from Sioux City. "It's so cool meeting all new people from all around the world."

Briar Cliff has been introducing their new students since Friday with speakers, tours, a foam machine party with food and music at Riverside Park. But before the foam, the students partook in service projects around town.

"It gives them a great connection right away," Briar Cliff Director of New Student Programs Erin Small said. "Service is infused into our values, so it is important we start that off from when they get here."

Students from both schools moved into their receptive dorms this weekend, and moving boxes up flights of stairs wasn't as much of a hassle as you would think.

"That was even fun," said Morningside freshman Jon Dahlheimer, of Carter Lake, Iowa. "When I was packing, it felt like I was going on vacation. But instead, I was packing everything, and not just a suitcase."
ORANGE CITY, Iowa | A former Boyden, Iowa, city clerk was placed on probation Monday after pleading guilty to improperly spending the city's money.

Beth Sipma, 54, of Sheldon, Iowa, pleaded guilty in Sioux County District Court to one count of first-degree theft.

As part of a plea agreement, Sipma received a deferred judgment and was placed on probation for two years. She must pay $54,928 in restitution to the city of Boyden to cover the lost money and the city's expenses to review and correct its finances. Sipma also must pay a $1,000 civil penalty.

Sipma was arrested in June after a state audit report released in May showed more than $36,000 in improper spending by Sipma between July 1, 2013, and April 30, 2015. According to the report, investigators found $36,277 of improper and unsupported disbursements of city funds. Of the $34,659 in improper disbursements, $30,735 were payments made to or for Sipma.

Those payments included payroll, reimbursements and purchases made with the city's credit card, including $1,321 for airline tickets from Minneapolis to Scotland, a $506 personal cellphone bill and $428 of personal purchases from IKEA.

The audit reported $1,568 of unsupported disbursements did not have sufficient reporting documentation.
SIOUX CITY | The NAACP on Tuesday named Mercy Medical Center -- Sioux City as a corporate member of the civil rights organization.

The award was presented by NAACP Sioux City chapter president Flora Lee and treasurer Dick Hayes. The distinction goes to corporations that make at least a $5,000 donation to the organization.

The Sioux City chapter had two other corporate sponsors.

"Most of the previous corporations have left, or they've changed it," Lee said.

The Sioux City chapter has not awarded a business the corporate sponsorship in quite some time, she said.

Local officials said Mercy and the NAACP share many values. Just as Mercy's mission is focused on health, the NAACP considers health to be an important issue.

"When you look at the mission statement of the NAACP, it talks about not only fighting racial discrimination, but all other types of discrimination as well," Lee said. "It talks about employment and focuses on health and economic development."

"The NAACP has been a longtime member of our community, and so has Mercy," said Dave Smetter, vice president of communications and community development at Mercy. "And it makes a lot of sense that we have that partnership and not only with the NAACP, but with like-minded organizations in our community - that we all kind of work together for the common good."
SIOUX CENTER, Iowa | A Sioux Center man charged with felony sexual abuse was placed on probation and given deferred judgment Monday.

Daniel Fennig, 23, was placed on probation for two years, according to a release from the Sioux County Attorneys Office.

Police arrested Fennig for having sex with a 15-year-old female at his residence earlier this year, the release said.

Fennig is also required to register as a sex offender for 10 years, is prohibited from having unapproved contact with minors and also was given a no contact order for five years to protect the victim.
SIOUX CITY | The Sioux City Human Rights Commission will host a forum designed to identify and address key issues related to hate crime reporting, investigation, prosecution, and prevention on Aug. 31 at the Public Museum.

The forum is designed to build collaboration among key partners in an effort to prevent and respond to bias incidents in hate crimes. Free and open to the public, the event will run from 6 to 8 p.m.
LONDON  London bills itself as a global city, the world's biggest financial center and a creative hub to rival New York. Until now, though, getting home after midnight meant taking the bus.

Not anymore.

The London Underground is starting its first-ever overnight service, a move city leaders hope will make the British capital a truly 24-hour city and bolster the local economy.

The new service will only run on weekends and initially be available on just two of the most-well-traveled lines. But the initiative reflects London's growing population and cosmopolitan mentality, marking a coming of age for a city that many in the Big Apple regard as quaint and sleepy.

"It's a psychological step because metros and subways and the Underground are always such totemic parts of cites," Tony Travers, an expert on urban issues at the London School of Economics, said. "They are like the circulation system of a city."

Economists like to point out that London is already a 24-hour city, with West End theaters, Michelin-starred restaurants and trendy nightclubs attracting customers from around the world well into the wee hours. Thousands of doctors, cleaners and maintenance workers also work graveyard shifts.

But the expanded Tube service comes at a good time for London, which has been anxious to reassure the world that the city is open for business and ready to welcome tourists despite Britain's recent vote to leave the European Union.

Efforts to keep the city humming around the clock have already produced 40 billion pounds ($52 billion) of economic benefits for the city, and the Night Tube service could be worth another 77 million pounds ($100 million), according to the business group London First.

"At a time of economic uncertainty particularly following the Brexit vote  this is a welcome boost to London's economy," London First said in a statement.

Unlike New York, where a four-track subway system makes it possible to keep lines running while doing repairs at night, London's two-track system previously meant shutting the Tube from just after midnight until the early morning for daily maintenance, and even more limited hours on Sunday.

London Underground managers now believe they can complete all necessary maintenance work on weeknights, allowing them to offer overnight service on weekends.

Until now, the main late-night option for most Londoners was the city's famous double-decker buses. London's iconic black cabs and, more recently, ridesharing services like Uber, also have allowed people to get around after dark.

But the Tube, with its sturdy reliability and uniformity, offers a security blanket for commuters and tourists. Riders never get stuck in traffic, as you might on a bus. The stops never vary, whether you are watching for them or not.

The unionized workers that keep the Tube running were less excited about moving to the world of 24/7. Issues were raised about maintenance, security and quality of life that took three years to sort out.

"The truth is that it is not politicians and their top officials who will deliver a Night Tube for London," National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers General-Secretary Mick Cash said in a statement Friday. "It is the cleaners, station staff, drivers, engineers and all the other grades working anti-social hours who will be transforming London into a 24-hour city."

Some 100 British Transport Police officers will patrol the network on Friday and Saturday nights, offering assurance to revelers, commuters and tourists on the system.

"It can be a middle-aged clubber like me coming home after a late night out with your missus, not being stressed about the time of the last Tube," London Mayor Sadiq Khan said.

Planning for the change was meticulous. To get ready, Transport for London tested the service last weekend.

During the dress rehearsal, cleaning crews sopped up chicken soup flung around the carriages to simulate vomit. Staff members pretended to be loud and obnoxious passengers having a bit too much fun on a night out, a test in the diplomacy skills of station staff.

"We don't want a big bang (with) errors and mistakes," the mayor said.

Some regular riders have reservations. Manolis Zografakis, a digital consultant who runs a website called BrokeinLondon.com, wonders how plausible overnight subway service will be in a culture that often encourages binge drinking.

"They only qualm I have is that when people drink too much, they can be unstable," he said.

Finn Brennan, a district organizer for the driver's union, ASLEF, acknowledges that the new service is a nod to London's emergence as a 24-hour city. Whether or not the Tube runs late, Brennan insisted with a dollop of civic pride, the city has no peers in the night life department.
In the prevailing view of Afghan history, King Habibullah Kalakani was an illiterate highway robber who toppled a reformist monarch in 1929 and spent nine despotic months on the throne, brutally uprooting all traces of modernization, before he was captured by the royal army and hanged in Kabul.





But in Afghanistan, a country with a bloody tradition of tribal warfare, fierce resistance to foreign conquerors, and warlords who reinvent themselves as statesmen, even long-dead bandit kings have fan clubs.





The case made by Kalakanis supporters, mostly activists from his ethnic Tajik minority, is that he was a pious Muslim and social Robin Hood whose horror of rapid modernization  epitomized by photos of the previous kings wife wearing Western clothes on a trip to Europe  was shared by many Afghans at the time.





For 87 years, Kalakanis remains have lain in an unmarked spot below the majestic hilltop mausoleum of the countrys ethnic Pashtun dynasty, including King Nader Shah, who ordered him executed. Now, a group of Tajik leaders and scholars are demanding that he be dug up and moved to a more respectful setting in the capital.





Daoud Kalakani, a member of parliament, heads a group that has asked the government to allow Habibullah Kalakanis final resting place to be upgraded like Daoud Khans. He said the long-dead king, known by the disparaging nickname Bacha-i-Saqao, or water-carriers son, should receive the same degree of respect as Daoud Khan. The group has threatened to stage mass protests if there is no official response within two weeks.





Dr. Abdullah said this was high on his list, said Tahir Qadiry, a spokesman for Attah Mohammed Noor, a powerful Tajik governor whose Jamiat-i-Islami party has been putting pressure on Abdullah to bring its demands to Ghani, including the Kalakani reburial.





On Wednesday, Abdullah met with Ghani to discuss a number of issues that caused a public rupture between them this month. On Thursday, Kalakanis portrait suddenly appeared on a wall in the Defense Ministry, where Ghani presided over a ceremony for Afghanistans independence day, marking a 1919 treaty with Britain. Visitors said it was hung next to a portrait of Daoud Khan.





Kalakanis supporters exulted over this sign of his official rehabilitation, but the issue has added a new source of ethnic vitriol to Afghan social media. Some Tajik websites call Kalakani a hero and juxtapose his images with those of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the iconic Tajik anti-Taliban commander who was assassinated in 2001. Some posts on these sites mock Pashtuns with vulgar slurs.





But posts by some Pashtuns and others denounce Kalakani as a brute. He was a misogynist and a backward criminal, one critic tweeted, noting that he had shut down all girls schools during his brief reign. Others called him a stain on our recent history and compared him to the late Taliban leader Mohammad Omar.





On Friday, on the hilltop crowned by the royal tombs of Nader Shah and his son, King Mohammed Zahir Shah, a guard described

from 1933 to 1973 as a time of peace and stability, and he dismissed the movement to memorialize Kalakani as a ploy by Tajik leaders to advance their own interests. There is no difference between Kalakani and Mohammad Omar, he said.

-

Read More
Snapchat is an increasingly popular app among a wide range of consumers, especially young people. But getting started with Snapchat for your business can be a bit intimidating, especially since many of the features arent clearly outlined.

But if your target customers are using Snapchat, then your business should probably be on it too. Heres a step-by-step guide to getting started with Snapchat for your business.

Download the App

Snapchat is strictly a mobile app, not a web platform. So signing up for an account requires you to have a mobile device with access to the App Store or Google Play. You can download Snapchat for free from either of those sources. Then once you have the app, you can sign up for an account by selecting your username, email and password.

Find People to Follow

After signing up, one of the first things youll probably want to do is add some contacts. On Snapchat, you can add connections in a variety of different ways. You can import the contacts from your phone and add anyone who has Snapchat in your address book. You can also add people by searching usernames. Or you can take a screenshot of someones snap code, which is that little ghost gif that people can add their own photos to. By uploading a screenshot of someones snap code, you can add them automatically.

Make Your Snap Code

After signing up for an account, you also have the opportunity to make your very own snap code. Just press the big Snapchat logo on the main options page within the app and youll get the opportunity to take a series of selfies. Those photos together make up your snap code, which you can then share with others so that they can easily add you on Snapchat.

Take a Photo or Video

Once youve set up all your basic details, its time to start snapping. Snaps consist mainly of photos or videos. To take a photo, you just press the large round button toward the bottom of the screen. And to take a video, you hold that button down to record continuously. Snaps can be up to ten seconds long. And you can specify the amount of time you want your snaps to appear by pressing the number at the bottom left of the screen.

Play with Filters

Snapchat also offers you the ability to turn the camera around so that you can take photos or videos of yourself to share with your audience. You may have also seen that a lot of people on Snapchat use silly filters that go over their faces. There are ones that give users dog ears, silly voices and even promotional filters that go along with things like movie releases or special events. To access those filters, just press the screen on your own face and Snapchat should recognize it and bring up a selection of filters that you can use for that day.

Add Some Embellishments

Even if youre not trying to use any weird voice changers or add animal ears to your snaps, there are other ways you can add some interest to your snaps after youve taken a photo or video. Up in the top right corner, there are buttons that allow you to add text, stickers or even doodles to your snaps. You can also swipe the screen to add different visual filters or special effects like your current speed, temperature or geo filters that show your location.

Send Your Snaps

When youre happy with how your snap looks, its time to send it. Theres a small arrow button on the bottom corner of the screen that you can use to complete your snap. Then youll get to a page where youll see all of your contacts. You can choose which contacts youd like to send your snap to. Theyll get a notification from you and then have 24 hours to view it before it disappears.

Add to Your Story

On that same page, youll also see an option at the top that will let you send the snap to your story. Your Snapchat story is like a collection of snaps from the day that anyone who follows you can view. This is a popular feature for business Snapchat users who want to communicate with more than just a few people at a time. You can view your own story and see how many people have viewed it on the main story page. You can also add snaps to your memories section, which is a collection of your favorite snaps or content that you want actually saved on Snapchat.

Interact with Your Audience

Now that you know how to set up your account and create your own posts, you need to consider exactly what type of content you should create to get the most out of the platform. There are plenty of different ways businesses can use Snapchat. But overall, the most important thing to remember is that people want to use Snapchat to actually interact with people. So consider doing things like asking questions of your audience, giving them a behind the scenes peek at your business, or even hosting a Q&A session. You can also share some of your favorite Snapchat accounts with others in your contact list using the new suggest feature.

Promote Your Account

You also need to work hard to grow your following on Snapchat, since it doesnt naturally integrate with any other platforms. You can promote your Snapchat account by connecting with other users or sharing your username and snap code on your website and other social accounts. You might even try offering some sort of incentive or giving your audience a preview of the kind of content they can expect by saving your snaps and sharing them elsewhere on occasion.
Very few people genuinely dont want to take pride in what they do.

Yet we all know someone (it might be you) who isnt putting their best in. Whether its time pressure from your boss that causes you to focus on quantity over quality, or a project that is causing you nothing but problems, everyone is guilty of just getting something done at the expense of getting it done well.

Understandably, this can be a problem for many businesses, and the last thing you want is to be working in a culture where youre fearful of being honest to the point of submitting below par work. The chances are itll catch up with you and itll cause much more damage than if youd bought the problems up before they affected your output.

When to tell your boss the truth? Of course it depends on the type of manager youre dealing with, but by and large, if you care about what youre doing and you can frame the problem in a way that reflects well on yourself, youre on to a winner.

When to be an Underperforming Employee

When You Need to Make a Point

Some managers, and rarely the best, can be culpable of pushing more and more at their employees indiscriminately. You may be set targets that are met and then increased, without much understanding of what youre expected to do within your time at work.

While productivity is hugely important to any business, this kind of attitude tends to come at the cost of quality work. Its a short term fix that rarely benefits the company in the long run. It can damage your brand. It can damage your reputation. It can damage relationships with key partners, customers and clients.

Your next step comes down to how you read your boss. If you think they will stand staunchly by their targets and come back saying that they think the inability to meet them is down to you, then it sounds like you have a serious micro-manager problem, and its probably time to get out.

On the other hand, if you know that deep down the company is genuinely concerned with the quality and believes in you and the quality you produce, you should let them know. Any good manager would look to resolve the problem, either by reconsidering other tasks or taking a step back from the target-heavy approach.

When You Need Some Advice

Approaching your boss to tell them that youre not producing your best work can actually be a really effective way of receiving constructive feedback. Yes, its daunting to tell your boss that youre not acing it. But isnt that what a manager is there for?

In fact, what youre doing is incredibly brave, whilst showing initiative and serious objectivity in assessing the quality of what youre producing. Instead of submitting some work knowing that its not good enough and waiting for feedback to tell you as much, youre being proactive and making it clear youre not going to go forward with work thats below par.

This way, you can receive advice and feedback about how youre working and what you could be doing better that can help you to resolve whatever problem youre having. Sometimes a piece of advice on how to structure your work day, some resources or even just helping to highlight your knowledge gaps can be hugely beneficial to the company, and your continued development.

To Highlight Areas of Weakness

People often get given tasks that sit nicely outside of their comfort zones. And this is a good thing.

In at the deep-end development can often be the best way of learning. Saying yes to these kinds of new tasks, particularly early on in your career, can be incredibly beneficial for both your personal development and your relationship within the business.

Having said this, sometimes its important to know where youre weaker. If youve been given a task and you can see that its not right based on your understanding, your skills or your experience, be honest.

Provided you have the kind of boss who puts their own ego aside for the good of the business, you will have a situation where your honesty is appreciated. If anything, youve chosen to put the business in front of your personal reputation. Just make sure that you focus on what you do have to offer, and where your skills do lie.

Its a bit of a gamble, because you dont want to be seen as work-shy or unhappy to pick up extra tasks. The chances are that if this particular role is central to what you do, you might need to learn how to do it or find a job that youre better suited to.

But if you have faith in the people above you, youll come out of it looking much better, as youll have cleared up paths of communications. They may reassign that task, or train you how to do it better, but the problem will have been solved.

Republished by permission. Original here.
SOCIEDAD ASIATICA

THE ASIAN SOCIETY

COMISION DIRECTIVA



THE DIRECTIVE BOARD



PRESIDENTE:

Liliana Garcia Daris



Universidad del Salvador.

Argentina

VICEPRESIDENTE:

Won-ho Kim

Universidad de Hankuk de Estudios Extranjeros.

Corea

SECRETARIO:

Luis Diaz Brougton



Universidad de Santiago, Chile



PROSECRETARIO:



Martha Barriga Tello

Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru



VOCALES:



Mauricio Martinez



Universidad de los Andes, Colombia



Juan Uriburu Quintana



Universidad de Chenchi, Taiwan

CONSEJEROS ACADEMICOS

ACADEMIC ADVISERS



ASH NARAIN, Roy,

Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.

India



GARCIA BAZAN, Francisco,



CONICET, Universidad Argentina John F. Kennedy



MATSUSHITA, Hiroshi,



Universidad de Kobe, Japon



MIEMBROS FUNDADORES



FOUNDING MEMBERS



ALBERT, Liliana



Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Argentina



ANTON PACHECO, Jose Antonio



Universidad de Sevilla, Espana



ANTONIJEVIC, Ingrid



Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile



BARRIGA TELLO, Martha



Universidad Nacional de San Marcos, Peru



BERGMAN, Sergio

Melton Institute de Jerusalem, Israel



BERTOLINI, Luis



Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Argentina



CABEZON, Jose



Universidad de Santa Barbara, Estados Unidos



CAGNI, Horacio



Universidad Catolica de La Plata, Argentina



CARRANZA, Francisco



Universidad de Dankook, Corea



CASTLETON, Barbara



Ohio State University of Athens



CASTRO, Jorge

Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Argentina



CHAOUL-REICH, Alejandro



Universidad de Texas, Estados Unidos



CHELMICKI, Hanna I.



Universidad del Salvador, Argentina



DIAZ BROUGHTON, Luis



Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Chile



FRANCO, Raul



Universidad del Salvador, Argentina



GADRE, Vasant



Universidad Jawaharlal Nehru, India



GARCIA DARIS, Liliana

Universidad del Salvador, Argentina

GLUCK, Carol



Universidad de Columbia. Estados Unidos

HOPKINS RODRIGUEZ, Eduardo



Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru



KIM, Wonho



Universidad Hankuk de Estudios Extranjeros, Corea



KO, Heysun



Univesidad de Dankook, Corea



LOPEZ DEL CARRIL, Luis Maria



Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Argentina



LUCO, Enrique



Universidad del Salvador



MARTINEZ, Mauricio



Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia



MASATERU, Ito



Universidad Nacional de Osaka, Japon



MATSUSHITA, Hiroshi



Universidad de Kobe, Japon



MINKOWICZ, Gabriel

Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires

MONETA, Carlos Juan



Universidad del Salvador, Argentina



MORROW, John Andrew



Minot State University, Dakota del Norte, USA



NGUYEN, Thiet Son



Academia de Ciencias Sociales de Vietnam, Vietnam

OVIEDO, Eduardo

CONICET. Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina

PEREIRA, Ronan Alves

Universidad de Brasilia. Brasil

PEREYRA, Violeta



Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina

REMETE, Andrea

Universidad del Salvador, Argentina



RIMOLDI DE LADMAN, Eve



Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Argentina



ROMERO CASTILLA, Alfredo



Universidad Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico

TEDIN URIBURU, Virgilio



Universidad de Harvard, Estados Unidos

UEHARA, Alexander



Universidad de Sao Paulo. Brasil

URIBURU QUINTANA, Juan



Universidad de Chenchi, Taiwan



VITTOR, Luis Alberto



Universidad Argentina John F. Kennedy



XU, Shicheng



Academia China de Ciencias Sociales, Republica Popular China
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.



The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.







By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
Edward Elbert Worth Jr., a resident of Dunkirk, went home to be with God at the age of 88. He spent the early years of his life in Forestville, MD. Here he was raised by his parents Mary and Edward Worth and where he chose to stay to raise his family with his first wife, Bertha Lorraine, who preceded him in death. He provided for his family by working as a meat cutter in Washington, D.C. for 40 years. He loved serving his community as a volunteer firefighter for 35 years. The Forestville V.F.D. has honored him as a lifetime member, where he proudly served.



Upon retirement he moved to Dunkirk, where he cared for his parents. After their passing he could be frequently found working in his yard, conversing with neighbors, shooting pool at the community center, attending church, going for afternoon drives, checking out tractor pulls and traveling across the country and world with his wife Diana. He also always tried to take an annual trip to his favorite destination, Ocean City, MD.



Edward Worth, Jr., had the privilege of being called a husband, father, grandfather and friend to the many people that knew and loved him. He was grateful throughout his life every time family and friends stopped by for a visit. He was never short on words and could easily be found striking up conversation and telling his life's stories with anyone that would listen.



He spent his final months battling against the many effects of a stroke. He was blessed with loving caregivers of family, friends and others that stayed by his side this year as he moved between many different treatment facilities and finally back to his home. On Saturday morning of August 20, 2016, he peacefully passed away at home overlooking his yard that he was so proud of.



Edward Worth, Jr. will be fondly remembered and sadly missed by his family that survived him. They include his wife, Diana Worth, daughter Brenda Ayscue of Orange Beach, AL, son Mark Worth and wife Tammy of Dunkirk, step sons Robert Evans and wife Karen of Bowie, Mark D. Evans and wife Gail of Lutherville, N. Evans and wife Nicole of Ellicott City, and Erik V. Evans of Annapolis. Also surviving are grandson Paul Ayscue, granddaughter Allison Worth, step-grandchildren Robert, Matthew, Katherine, Mark, Abigail and Amelia Evans, and a great-granddaughter Christina Ayscue. Arrangements by Rausch Funeral Home.
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.

(Aug. 22, 2016)The Prince Frederick Barrack of the Maryland State Police (MSP) today released the following incident and arrest reports.BURGLARY: On 8/16/2016 at 5:58 pm, Trooper First Class Lewis responded to the 7400 block of Briscoe Turn Rd. in Owings for a reported burglary. After checking throughout the residence it was determined nothing was missing. There was extensive damage to a cabinet and the door frame indicating forced entry into the residence. Investigation continues.DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY: On 8/16/2016 at 8:18 pm, Trooper Backus responded to the 1400 block of Knight Avenue in Dunkirk for a reported destruction of property. The victim reported finding someone had spray painted his vehicle. Investigation continues.POSSESSION OF BUPRENOPHINE: On 8/18/2016 at 6:43 am, Trooper First Class Warrick stopped a vehicle on Rt. 4 near Main St. in Prince Frederick for traffic violations. Christopher R. Greene, 34, of Waldorf was found to be in possession of Suboxone. He was arrested and incarcerated at the Calvert County Detention Center.POSSESSION OF CONTRABAND IN PLACE OF CONFINEMENT: On 8/21/2016 at 4:14 pm, Trooper First Class Matthews responded to Rt. 4 & Dares Beach Rd. in Prince Frederick for a warrant service. Rhodell Richardson, 30, of Lexington Park, was placed under arrest for an open warrant. When processing Richardson at the Calvert County Detention Center, contraband was located on Richardson's person, and he was charged additionally with Possession of Contraband in Place of Confinement and CDSPossession of Paraphernalia.Mary C. Mowbray, 57, of Falls Church, Va., arrested on 08/16/2016 @ 06:43 pm by TFC S. LewisGrace A. Carroll, 18, of Cape May, N.J., arrested on 08/17/2016 @ 03:01 am by TFC T. NewcomerKaren L. Horstkamp, 56, of Shady Side, arrested on 08/19/2016 @ 12:02 am by TFC B. BrayJuvenile, 16, of Lothian, arrested on 08/21/2016 @ 02:16 am by TFC B. Bray
LEONARDTOWN, 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.

(Aug. 22, 2016)The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office Vice Narcotics Division released the following incident and arrest reports. The Division is an investigative team comprised of detectives from the St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office and Federal Drug Agents (HIDTA Group 34). The Division was established on September 1st, 2007.SMUGGLE DRUGS INTO JAIL: Brandy Ann Panholzer, 38, of Leonardtown, a/k/a Brandy Chiarzia and Brandy Varnell, was indicted on May 6 for Distribution of Buprenorphine (Suboxone), Introducing a Controlled Dangerous Substance into a Detention Facility and a host of additional criminal charges. Suspect Panholzer diluted the controlled substance and then applied the substance to a handwritten letter. The mail was intercepted and detectives worked with jail staff to recover the tainted items. An arrest warrant was issued on May 9. She was arrested and subsequently denied bail on Aug. 9. A jury trial has been set for Nov. 9.OXYCODONE: Detectives identified suspect Christina Ann Dickson, 25, of Lexington Park, as a distributor of Oxycodone. She was indicted on Aug. 5 for both Possession of Oxycodone and Distribution of Oxycodone. An arrest warrant was issued on Aug. 5 and she was ordered held without bond on Aug. 15.SMUGGLE DRUGS INTO JAIL: William Harley Hephner, 33, is currently an inmate in the St. Mary's County Detention Center. Suspect Hephner conspired with outside individual(s) to facilitate the sale of Oxycodone during his incarceration. Suspect Hephner was indicted on Aug. 5 for Conspiracy to Distribute Oxycodone. Suspect Hephner is currently incarcerated for charges in St. Mary's County and several other jurisdictions.OXYCODONE: Detectives observed Karan Angela East, 50, of Mechanicsville, obtain Oxycodone from a local pharmacy, exit into the parking lot of the establishment, and distribute those controlled substances to another individual. As deputies approached, the individual consumed the medication he had obtained. Additional items of evidence recovered confirmed the distribution. Suspect West was subsequently indicted and arrested for distribution of Oxycodone.OXYCODONE: Suspect Catherine Elizabeth Barr, 27, of Mechanicsville, arrived at the Detention Center for a visitation session with co-conspirator William Harley Hephner. Suspect Barr had an open warrant as a result of a St. Mary's County Grand Jury indictment and was placed under arrest. She was charged with Conspiracy to Distribute Oxycodone and placed into the detention center on a no bond status.
Police say Miss Maryland 2016, Hannah Brewer was the target of a stalker. Valencio Fernandes Pires, 51, of Germantown, was arrested on Friday, Aug. 19. (Photo: The official Facebook page of Miss Maryland 2016, Hannah Brewer, @MissAmericaMD)

WESTMINSTER, Md.

(Aug. 22, 2016)Maryland State Police arrested and charged a Montgomery County man for the harassment of Miss Maryland.The accused is identified as Valencio Fernandes Pires, 51, of Germantown, Maryland. Pires was arrested at his home without incident on Friday, August 19, 2016. He is charged with harassment, stalking, and electronic mail harassment. He is currently being held without bond at the Carroll County Detention Center.The victim is identified as Hannah Brewer, 19, of Carroll County. She currently holds the title of Miss Maryland.On August 19, 2016, Brewer filed a report with the Maryland State Police Westminster Barrack. She informed police she had been receiving frightening and unwanted contact from Pires.Police believe Pires initially contacted Brewer in person at a planned Miss Maryland event in Hagerstown on Monday, August 15, 2016. Pires can be seen in two photographs at the Hagerstown event, intently and intensely staring at Brewer. Police believe Pires had also used social media and emails to attempt communication with her multiple times, even after requests were made for him to stop.State police investigators and the Brewer family consulted with the lead Special Victims' Unit Attorney of the Carroll County State's Attorney's Office. A peace order and an ex parte of communication order were requested from and granted by the Carroll County Commissioner's Office. An arrest warrant was also issued.Brewer does not wish to receive media contact on this matter and is instead focused on preparing for the upcoming Miss America pageant.
LA PLATA, Md.

(Aug. 22, 2016)Travel through time with the Board of Education in a three-part educational lecture series exploring the history of the Boardand education in Charles Countyover the past 100 years.The Board is celebrating its 100-year anniversary and has planned three presentations, starting with "Education: Then and Now" from 6-9 p.m., Sept. 1 at the Port Tobacco Courthouse and One-room Schoolhouse. The presentation begins at 6:15 p.m., followed by breakout sessions including a trip to the Port Tobacco one-room school, discussion about the changes in education, a hands-on lesson and more.Segregation and desegregation will be the focus of the second 100th anniversary presentation on Friday, Sept. 16 and Saturday, Sept. 17 at the McConchie one-room school located at the Charles County Fairgrounds. Hear from teachers and students who attended segregated schools or went through desegregationand how it impacted them. Several sessions are planned, and a schedule will be posted outside the one-room school during the Fair.The Board will wrap up its educational series showing how the school system handles disasterstornadoes, hurricanes and morewith a show at the James E. Richmond Science Center. See the special presentation, "When Disaster Strikes, We are Ready," at 6:30 p.m., Oct. 1. The James E. Richmond Science Center is located inside St. Charles High School.The Board of Education of Charles County, along with Boards of Education across Maryland, was legally organized as a Public Body Corporate in 1916. Previously, a Board of School Commissioners governed the county's schools, most of which were one-room schoolhouses. The first Board meeting minutes reflecting the change were taken Oct. 17, 1916, and signed by Superintendent of Schools Thomas M. Carpenter.Between now and October, the Board will host a number of activities, including a three-part educational lecture series, an interactive history and event search, historic displays, and a reception recognizing the contributions of past Board members.The Board is asking the public to share their stories and photos with the Board through email (boardmail@ccboe.com), the Charles County Board of Education Facebook page or its 100-year anniversary website at http://www.ccboe.com/100years/ The public also can follow the Board's centennial celebration news by following @ccps on Twitter and using #ccboe100.
LA PLATA, Md.

(Aug. 22, 2016)Charles County Public Schools (CCPS) is sponsoring a bus hotline for parents to call with questions about school bus routes. Call 301-932-6655 to access the hotline. The hotline is available Aug. 25-26 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Aug. 29-30 from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m.Parents can access bus routes through the School Locator feature available on the CCPS website. School Locator is designed to allow the public to enter an address and see which three schoolselementary, middle and highan address is zoned for. It also indicates if the address is eligible for bus transportation to a particular school, the bus number and the location of the closest bus stop to the address.School Locator can be accessed at www.ccboe.com . Select Transportation from the bottom of the Quick Links section of the home page, and then choose School Locator/Bus Information from the left-side menu. School Locator uses mapping data from the county and filters it by the system's current school zones.Additionally, bus stops within established subdivisions are permanently placed at specific locations to ensure consistency and equity among riders and will not be changed. Buses may run later than normal during the first week of school to adjust for changes in routes and/or established stops.For more information about bus routes, contact your child's school, or the transportation department at ccpstransportation@ccboe.com or 301-934-7262. Bus stop change requests must be submitted online through the school system website at www.ccboe.com/busrequest/
Booking photos via CalCoSO.

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: 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 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 so.md/expungeme.

(Aug. 22, 2016)The Calvert County Sheriff's Office today released the following incident and arrest reports.WEEKLY SUMMARY: During the week of August 15 through August 21, deputies responded to 1,539 calls for service throughout the community.LATEST SCAM ALERT: If you receive a phone call stating you are being sued by the IRS, it is a scam! You can report this incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. Their website is: www.treasury.gov/tigta/contact_report_scam.shtml . For actual recordings of a scam call, visit forums.somd.com/threads/312462-An-IRS-Scam-Captured-on-tape BURGLARY CASE #16-46054: On August 17, at approximately 9:48am, Deputy N. Buckler responded to Prince Frederick Blvd. in Prince Frederick for the report of a burglary. The victim stated that sometime during the last two (2) weeks, someone kicked in a side door to their home and made entry. There are no suspects at this time but it should be pointed out that this home has a history of burglaries and squatters.BURGLARY CASE #16-45827: On August 16, Deputy T. Holt was dispatched to Commanche Road in Lusby for the report of a burglary. The victim reported numerous items missing from several sheds around their property (a Kenwood stereo, Garmin GPS, Makita Skill Saw, 2 Husqvarna chainsaws, Milwaukee tool kit and an Ingersoll-Rand air compressor). Also missing was a set of Corvette c7 rims the victim recalls seeing last December (2015). One of the sheds had signs of a forced entry, with damage to the door.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-46312: On August 18, at approximately 2:00am, Deputy R. Shrawder conducted a traffic stop at the intersection of MD Rt. 4/Ball Road in St. Leonard on a vehicle traveling with a tag light out. As he was issuing, a warning for the tag light violation, the Calvert Control Center informed Deputy Shrawder that Ortiz Velazquez had an outstanding arrest warrant through the Maryland State Police. MSP Trooper Costello arrived on the scene to serve Ortiz Velazquez his warrant and it was discovered he was in possession of two (2) Percocet pills without a prescription. Deputy Shrawder transported Ortiz Velazquez to the Calvert County Detention Center where he was charged for CDS Possession of a Synthetic Narcotic (Percocet).CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-45662: On August 15, at approximately 12:45pm, Deputy D. Naughton conducted a traffic stop at the back gate of the Chesapeake Ranch Estates. He observed a vehicle traveling with an unsecured rear registration plate and the driver was using a cell phone. The driver was issued the appropriate traffic citation and released. The second occupant,, was found to be in possession of a plastic wrapper containing two suspected Alprazolam pills and two Hypodermic Syringes. Bongiorni was transported to the Calvert County Detention Center where she is being charged with Possession of a Controlled Dangerous Substance (Alprazolam), Possession of an opiate without prescription (Alprazolam) and Possession of Paraphernalia (plastic wrapper).DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #16-46913: On August 20, at approximately 7:00pm, Deputy Y. Bortchevsky responded to 3rd Street in North Beach for the report of damaged property. The victim reported that sometime between August 10 - 20th, someone broke two windows on the side of their home. There are no suspects at this time.DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY CASE #16-46485: On August 18, at approximately 5:30pm, Deputy R. Weems responded to Daryl Drive in Lusby for the report of damaged property. The complainant discovered a front window on her home was broken. No debris was located to determine what item was used to cause the break. There are no suspects at this time.DISORDERLY CONDUCT CASE #16-46785: On August 20, at approximately 12:30am, Deputy J. Livingston was approached by an employee while he was working security at the Buckets Bar and Grille in Lusby. He was told an underage citizen placed a liquor bottle next to the front door and entered to use the rest room., was instructed to leave the property but allowed to wait for his ride, which was in-route. Later when Deputy Livingston observed Thompson was still on the premises, he attempted to escort him off the property when Thompson became disorderly. He was arrested and charged with Disorderly Conduct, Resist/Interfere with Arrest, Fail to Obey Reasonable/Lawful Order and Trespass on Private Property.THEFT CASE #16-47035: On August 21, Deputy D. Naughton received a theft complaint from a victim who had items stolen from his boat he left for repairs at the Mill Creek Boating Center. He reported leaving the boat at 9:30am on August 8, and upon returning to the boat today, at 2:30pm, he realized several items were missing. Items include: Garmin Chart Plotter with 12" LCD screen, Lowrance Fish Finder, eleven (11) Penn Rod & Roller Reel Combos and a Plano Tackle Box, containing fishing tackle. This case is suspended pending further suspect information.THEFT CASE #16-47029: On August 21, Deputy Y. Bortchevsky was dispatched to Silver Fox Way in Chesapeake Beach for the report of a theft. The victim reported two (2) front yard LED lights missing from their yard sometime between 8:00pm on August 18 - 12:00 noon on August 19. Due to a lack of investigatory leads, this case will be suspended.THEFT CASE #16-47011: On August 21, Deputy C. Callison was dispatched to Chesapeake Avenue in Prince Frederick for the report of a theft. The victim stated the MD Registration plate belonging to their boat trailer was stolen. On August 19 the boat and trailer were parked in front of their home; at approximately 10:00am on August 21st, the plate was discovered missing.THEFT CASE #16-46990: On August 21, Deputy C. Callison responded to Plum Point Road, in Huntingtown for the report of a theft. The complainant reported that sometime between midnight on August 20 and 8:30am the next morning, someone stole two (2) American Flags from a flag pole in the front yard of the residence. One flag was a traditional American flag and the other was a black and white flag, with a thin blue line.THEFT CASE #16-46855: On August 20, Deputy S. Trotter responded to Sheridan Point Road in Prince Frederick for the report of a stolen mailbox. The theft took place sometime between 6:00am and 11:00am earlier that day.THEFT CASE #16-46507: On August 18, while speaking with a citizen at the Sheriff's Office, Captain T. Fridman was informed that multiple tools stolen were stolen from their vehicle on Beach Drive in Lusby. The unlocked vehicle was parked in the driveway between 8:30pm on August 17 and the tools left on the back seat were discovered missing at 1:30pm on the 18th. Items stolen include: OTC Genisys Diagnostic Tool, TPMS Diagnostic Tool, Fuel Injection Pressure Test Kit, OTC Battery Tester, Numerous Snap On sockets and a Garmin GPS.THEFT CASE #16-45910: On August 16, Deputy R. Kreps responded to the Sheriff's Office in reference to a theft. The complainant advised he was at the Safeway gas pumps at Southern MD Blvd., in Dunkirk, and must have dropped his wallet. His brown wallet contained a Md. driver's license, money and several credit cards. About the same time he realized his wallet was lost, he received a phone call from his bank questioning multiple transactions made to his account.THEFT CASE #16-45708: On August 15, Deputy S. Trotter responded to the lobby of the Sheriff's Office to make contact with a victim wanting to report a theft. The victim reported a license plate was stolen from a vehicle parked in their driveway on Warren Drive in Huntingtown. This theft took place sometime between August 10 - 15th.
LA PLATA, Md.

(Aug. 22, 2016)The 2016-17 school year for Charles County Public Schools (CCPS) officially begins on Monday, Aug. 29 for students in grades kindergarten through 12. The school system expects more than 26,500 students to fill hallways and classrooms next week. These students will join the more than 2,000 teachers who reported back to class today and are busy preparing for another year of teaching and learning.CCPS is still working to fill classroom vacancies for the coming year. As of today, 197 new teachers have been hired for the school year. There are 41 vacancies, mostly in critical shortage areas like science, mathematics and special education.The system's youngest learnersthose enrolled in the prekindergarten and three-year-old programsstart their school year on Tuesday, Sept. 6. CCPS has a special back to school page on the system website at www.ccboe.com/backtoschool2016.php . The following information includes important back to school details.Registration is currently taking place at all schools. Parents will need the following information in order to register their child for school:A physical examination by a physician or a certified practitioner (completed between nine months prior to and six months after entering school).Proof of required immunizationsa list of required immunizations for students is available on the CCPS website at www.ccboe.com/community/parents/health/vrequirments.php Proof that the student has completed the grade prior to the one in which the parent is seeking enrollment, such as a report card marked promoted.Child's birth certificate or other acceptable proof of birth (e.g. passport/visa; physician's certificate; baptismal or church certification; hospital certificate; or birth registration).Two proofs of domicile (address)a list of acceptable proofs is posted on the CCPS website at www.ccboe.com/community/parents/register.php Charles County Public Schools recently launched new websites for all schools. The new sites feature a school specific events calendar, photo slideshow and up-to-date news for parents, students and the school community. The new sites replace all school Edline websites and include a link to the Edline/Grade Book portal where parents and students can log in to view their class assignments and grades.To access your child's new school website, visit ccboe.com and select the Schools tab from the main menu at the top of the home page and click on the name of the school.Maryland law requires students to have minimum immunization levels to attend school. The number of vaccines required depends on the age and grade of the child. Required vaccines include DPT, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis B, Hib, Prevnar, Tdap and meningococcal. Last school year, the Maryland State Health Department added additional requirements for kindergarten students and students entering seventh grade. For the 2016-17 school year, all kindergarten, first- and second-grade students are required to have two doses of the varicella, or chickenpox, vaccine, and all seventh and eighth graders, as well as high school freshmen, must have a Tdap and meningococcal vaccines. Students can receive all required vaccines at their physician's office.Students can be admitted to school without completed immunizations, but have to show proof of an appointment occurring within 20 calendar days. Students without updated immunizations must show proof of an appointment occurring on or before Saturday, Sept. 17, 2016. Questions about vaccines can be directed to the school nurse or to your child's physician.The school system is sponsoring a bus hotline for parents to call with questions about bus routes. The hotline can be reached at 301-932-6655, and is available Aug. 25-26 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Aug. 29-30 from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Parents can access bus route information through the School Locator feature available on the CCPS website at schoollocator.ccboe.com/ Open house events have been scheduled for all schools. Click here for a complete schedule: www.ccboe.com/pr/open-houses-planned-for-schools-centers/ . Contact your child's school with questions.Lunch prices for all students increased by $.10 this school year. There is no change in the cost of breakfast for students this year. For elementary school students, lunch is $2.65 and breakfast is $1.25. For middle and high school students, lunch is $2.90 and breakfast is $1.40. Menus are available at all schools, and on the CCPS website at ccboe.nutrislice.com/ The school system uses a cafeteria prepayment system called MyPaymentsPlus, which is a secure, Internet-based system that allows parents to deposit funds electronically in their child's cafeteria account. Visit mypaymentsplus.com/default.aspx for more information.Students and staff will receive a copy of the 2016-17 Parent Handbook/Calendar during the first week of school. The calendar is available on the Charles County Public Schools website at www.ccboe.com/aboutus/calendar/201617CCPSCalendar.pdf School resource officers at each of Charles County's seven public high schools are helping to launch the "We Care" program on Wednesday, Aug. 31. The program is a safe driving initiative for teens by teens with guidance from the Charles County Sheriff's Office and CCPS. Police officers will be at each high school Aug. 31 to distribute safety flyers to all student drivers. Superintendent of Schools Dr. Kimberly Hill and Sheriff Troy Berry will greet student drivers at La Plata High School on Aug. 31 as they arrive at school.CCPS is launching a new program that will provide hands-on learning for the school system's youngest learners. The new program, a Title I initiative supported by school system funding, will provide each prekindergarten student who attends a Title I elementary school with an iPad for the school year to use at school and home. The goal is to connect students with technology at an early age and to support parental involvement. Schools will also hold hands-on iPad trainings for parents. Program kick-off celebrations are planned for Sept. 2 at systemwide Title I elementary schools.The Board of Education of Charles County is celebrating its 100-year anniversary with special events to highlight the history of the Board and education in Charles County. A three-part educational lecture series is planned for September and October. Follow the celebration on Twitter @CCPS through #ccboe100 or on the Charles County Board of Education Facebook page. Details for the lecture series and other anniversary events are on the 100-year anniversary website at www.ccboe.com/100years/ Help us name the next Charles County Public elementary school! CCPS is seeking community input and suggestions for the name of a new elementary school that will open for the 2018-19 school year. The school is planned on a site off Billingsley Road in White Plains, located near the Greenhaven Run and Worthington neighborhoods. Visit www.ccboe.com/pr/system-committee-seeks-names-for-next-elementary-school/ to learn how you can provide a name to the school naming committee.
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.
(EDGE) Is this the last we'll hear of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis? Let's hope so.

Three lawsuits pending against Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis stemming from her refusal perform her duty to issue marriage licenses in the wake of the United States Supreme Court's decision legalizing same-sex marriage, were dismissed by a federal judge Thursday.



This week, David L. Bunning, the same federal judge who found Kim Davis in contempt of court for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay (and eventually straight) couples, dismissed three lawsuits against the fanatical negligent civil servant.

Related: Mike Huckabee Pays $25,500 for Kim Davis Rally Song



Bunning's rationale for dismissing the suits stemmed from an executive order signed by Kentucky's recently elected Tea Party Gov. Matt Bevin (R) that removed the names of County Clerks from marriage licenses. Since then, the Kentucky legislature passing a law creating new marriage license forms that don't require a signature from County Clerks. In light of this, the Sixth Circuit and the ACLU deemed the issues raised in the lawsuits "moot."



The contempt charge that Bunning slapped Davis with in 2015 put Davis in jail for six days and set off a media circus orchestrated by her attorney Mat Staver, founder of the anti-LGBT hate group Liberty Counsel. Eventually, Bunning lifted the contempt order against Davis, saying he was satisfied that her deputy clerks were fulfilling their duties by issuing marriage licenses while Davis was behind bars. Upon her release, he issued a stern warning to Davis, telling her that any further action on her part to interfere with the issuance of marriage licenses would be considered a violation of the court order, and "appropriate sanctions will be considered."



Predictably, Staver's Liberty Counsel issued a statement taking a victory lap over the decision.

Related: Jennifer Lawrence: Kim Davis Makes Me 'Embarrassed to Be From Kentucky'



"This victory is not just for Kim Davis. It is a victory for everyone who wants to remain true to their deeply-held religious beliefs regarding marriage while faithfully serving the public," Staver wrote.



One person involved in the Kim Davis circus last year who didn't get off so easy is failed GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee.



Taking on Kim Davis' "plight" on as his cause celebre to fuel his faltering bid for the White House, Huckabee orchestrated a "free Kim Davis rally" where he played Survivor's 1980s hit "Eye of the Tiger" without obtaining permission. In June, Huckabee was ordered to pay $25,000 to a company owned by Survivor guitarist Frankie Sullivan.



"What upset me most [about Huckabee's use] was that, once again, my song was being used to further a political agenda -- and no one even bothered to ask for permission," Sullivan said.
(EDGE) It turns out that "Christian" anti-LGBT groups in England are just as vile as they are in America.

Although Great Britain finished second in overall medal wins at the Olympic Games in Rio this month, that figure wasn't enough for one anti-LGBT British "Christian" group, who blames openly gay diver Tom Daley's openness about his sexuality for his failure to qualify for the 10 meter finals.

Taking to Twitter on Saturday, anti-LGBT group Christian Voice wrote: "Turning gay doesn't seem to have done Tom Daley any favours at #Rio2016"

And as though that wasn't enough, the group followed it up with "#Rio2016? And we need to remember that Tom Daley only went gay because he was seduced by an older man."

Related: Daily Beast Outs Closeted Olympians Then Apologizes

None of this was missed by "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling, who took to Twitter to write: "Can't decide which is more offensive in this tweet, the stupidity or the spite."

Christian Voice has long been critical of Daley and his boyfriend Dustin Lance Black since the pair went public with their relationship.

In a piece published by the anti-LGBT group in 2013, they blame Black for "filling the void left by Daley's late father" who died when he was a teen.

"If Daley is having a sort of adolescent crush compensating for his dreadful loss, Dustin Black probably cannot believe his luck," wrote Christian Voice's Stephen Green. "He has been able to initiate a teenage boy into sexual activities he probably would not even have known about this time last year."

Christian Voice describes their organization as "a UK-based prayer and lobby group praying for national repentance and working for godly government."
(AP) Demonstrators gathered in central Istanbul to protest the rape and killing of a transgender woman and LGBT activist.

Hundreds attended the rally on Sunday, holding signs and chanting slogans for 22-year-old Hande Kader, whose body was found last weekend. Media reports say the body was burned beyond recognition. Opposition MPs also attended the demonstration.

Related: German Lawmaker Temporarily Detained at Istanbul Gay Parade



Banu Aslan, 58, told The Associated Press, "We want justice. They should never do this again. They should never murder again."



Last month, Turkish gay rights organization Kaos GL reported that the decapitated body of a gay Syrian refugee, Muhammed Wisam Sankari, had been found in Istanbul.



Homosexuality is legal in Turkey but rights groups say hate crimes against the LGBT community are common.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  US forces conducted nine airstrikes near the Libyan city of Sirte from Friday to Sunday as part of an aerial campaign requested by Libyas Government of National Accord (GNA), the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a press release.

"These airstrikes bring the total number of airstrikes in support of Operation Odyssey Lightning, which began Aug. 1, to 74," the release stated on Monday.

On Friday, US forces hit several Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) targets, including two of the terrorists fighting positions and two supply vehicles, according to the release.
The scandal didn't end there. Speaking to CNN reporter Dana Bash, Clinton Campaign manager Robby Mook could not coherently explain why the Clintons weren't willing to stop accepting donations from foreign 'investors' unless Clinton became president of the United States. Instead, Mook tried to divert the question to Donald Trump, saying the candidate has never revealed his financials, and adding that Mrs. Clinton had taken "unprecedented" steps to being "transparent."

And the plot thickens. On Sunday, conservative US and British media revealed that Huma Abedin, a longtime friend and top aid to Clinton, had worked as an assistant editor for a radical Islamic Saudi journal for over a decade. The publication, called the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, featured everything from pieces opposed to women's rights, to articles blaming the US for the September 11 terror attacks.

In one article in January 1996, Abedin's own mother wrote a piece for the journal, where she complained that Clinton, who was First Lady at the time, was advancing a "very aggressive and radically feminist" agenda which was un-Islamic and dangerous for empowering women.

Abedin has long been accused by independent media in the US and elsewhere of having connections with Islamic organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood, charges which have long been labeled as nothing more than a conspiracy theory. But Sunday's story seems to have ruffled a few feathers in some high places, with a Clinton campaign spokesperson explaining (rather unconvincingly) to the New York Post that Abedin played no formal role in the radical journal. "My understanding is that her name was simply listed on the masthead in that periodical," the spokesman said.
Brisbanes locals gathered in the city center to catch a glimpse of actors Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth, who play Thor and Loki in Marvels epic superhero movies.

This gives you a good idea of what the crowd is like (and there's more around corner) @ABCNewsBrisbane #Thor pic.twitter.com/FXWBOPNMYX  Patrick Williams (@PatrickWilliams) 21  2016 .

On the day, the crew filmed shots of Hiddleston and Hemsworth, as Loki and Thor, simply talking together on the corner of the main street. There were no action scenes noticed.

In the course of filming Thor: Ragnarok, Brisbanes business center was packed with yellow cabs, blue and white police cars and Americanisms to make it look like New York.

The producers announced that Thor: Ragnarok will be released in cinemas in late 2017.
NEW DELHI (Sputnik)  The bus carrying 30 passengers was travelling from Hyderabad to Kakinada when it hit the railing and nose-dived into an irrigation canal, the Hindu newspaper cited its sources as saying.

Local fishermen alerted the police who rushed the injured to the hospital and then used a crane to lift the bus from the canal, the outlet said.

Fears are that some passengers were trapped inside the submerged vehicle and the death toll could rise, according to the paper.


VLADIVOSTOK (Sputnik)On August 19, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) Deputy Director Cmdr. Iskandar Ishak said that the Russian tanker with its 25 crew members had been detained for anchoring in the country's waters without authorization.

"The captain of the ship received a reply to the request for anchorage from the agent in the Port of Singapore; the tanker had stayed in the area multiple times before, in the zone between the strait [of Singapore] and Malaysia's waters. On August 15, the tanker arrived in the recommended area and dropped the anchor," Dmitry Svetlitsky, the deputy director general of the company owning the the ship, said.

According to Svetlitsky, at the moment when MMEA officers visited the ship, it had been turned by the wind and current, and altered its location slightly.


TOKYO (Sputnik)According to Japanese broadcaster NHK, typhoon Mindulle engulfed the Japanese central districts, including Tokyo on Monday afternoon. As a result, around 425 flights were canceled in the country and electricity has been cut off in some residential buildings.

Public transport disruptions affected an estimated 49,000 people around Tokyo and Shizuoka prefecture. The prefecture's city of Izu has been hit by August's record high precipitation, while the wind's speed has reached about 114 miles per hour.

Meteorologists say the Mindulle will reach Hokkaido, the second largest Japanese island on Tuesday and will move towards Russia's island of Sakhalin in the North Pacific Ocean, the media outlet added. The Hokkaido authorities recommend its residents who live near rivers to evacuate.


MOSCOW, (Sputnik)US Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) approved the purchase of Swiss chemical company Syngenta AG by Chinese state-owned chemical company China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina), the two companies said in a joint statement on Monday.

"China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) and Syngenta today announced that the companies have received clearance on their proposed transaction from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)," the statement reads.

In February 2016, ChemChina has made a proposal for the acquisition of Syngenta AG at a price of over $43 billion.


TOKYO (Sputnik)Earlier in the day, the administrative head of the Seongju County asked the ministry to choose another site for the THAAD deployment instead of the one initially picked.

According to the ministry, as cited by the Yonhap news agency, the alternative site will be considered as soon as possible.

The announcement is said to have been made as county residents had formally asked the government to find a different spot for the THAAD within the county.


BEIJING (Sputnik)On July 5, one of the suspects uploaded two 10-seconds video clips containing details about organizing terrorist acts after he received them from the other man on the same day, the Chinese newspaper Global Times said.

Police in Shanxi's county of Wanrong launched an investigation in the videos on July 8 after they were widely spread on the social media, the newspaper said.

Such counter-terrorism charges have been brought for the fist time in the province since the national counter-terrorism law took effect in January. The suspects will be detained for five days in accordance with the law, the bureau said as quoted by the newspaper.


New Delhi (Sputnik)Opposition leaders representing Jammu and Kashmir met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi seeking an immediate ban on the use of pellet guns. A delegation led by former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah submitted a memorandum which read, We are of the firm opinion that the Central Government should waste no further time in initiating a credible and meaningful political dialogue with all stakeholders to address the unrest in the state.

Abdullah said, Continued failure to address the unrest in Kashmir will further deepen the sense of alienation among civilians.

Meanwhile, days after a teenager was killed in clashes with security personnel, the situation has become very tense in Kashmir valley. Police officials have decided to maintain a curfew throughout the entire Kashmir valley to maintain law and order. On Sunday evening, 17-year-old Irfan Ahmad, a resident of Srinagar, was killed after being struck by a tear gas shell which was fired by state police to disperse protesters.
The above proposal will include the cost of upgrading the PAC-3 missile defense system, which would roughly double the missile systems range to more than 30 km (19 miles), according to Reuters.

And also includes the cost of production for the Block IIA version of the Standard Missile-3 system being jointly developed with the US to shoot down missiles at higher altitudes.

The defense ministry will also allocate funds to acquire an upgraded version of the F-35 stealth fighter, made by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Its massive army upgrade will also see a development of a new submarine model with advanced detection capabilities.


TOKYO (Sputnik)The Japanese government is considering building several new ships to patrol areas near the disputed Senkaku (Diaoyu in Chinese) Islands in the East China Sea, local media reported on Monday.

The Japan Coast Guard may acquire about three new vessels, Kyodo News reported, citing government sources.

The cost of the ships is expected to be included in the draft supplementary budget for the 2016 fiscal year.
India's national and state governments, meanwhile, are working diligently to provide rescue and relief operation to people in the affected states. Rescue and relief work is being carried out by 56 National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams, which are operational in various flood-prone areas in different states to assist them in dealing with the emergency. In addition to evacuating people to safer locations, NDRF is also providing medical care to those in need.

Prime Minster Narendra Modi is keeping a close watch on the situation around the clock, NDRF Control Room in Delhi is closely monitoring the situation and remains in touch with other agencies.

Modi has assured the central government's total support in the rescue and relief operations in flood-affected states. The Prime Minister is hopeful that the situation in the affected areas will normalize as early as possible. He has tweeted about the flood situation, telling his Twitter followers that he prays for the safety and well-being of those affected by the floods.

I pray for the safety & wellbeing of those in areas affected by floods in parts UP, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan & MP: PM @narendramodi  PMO India (@PMOIndia) 22  2016 .

The Home Ministry is closely monitoring the situation in the affected states. The Home Minister has spoken to the respective chief Ministers and has taken stock of rescue and relief operations.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)On August 10, The Guardian newspaper published over 2,000 leaked files about the situation in the asylum-seeker center on Nauru, revealing large-scale abuse, with 51.3 percent of cases involving minors.

"We havent solved the refugee problem, and we never will. We are just going to have to deal with itWe dont want to return to a situation where people drown at sea, but we cant detain people for indefinite periods. Its insane," Georganas told The Guardian Australia.

He added that he wanted to introduce the new initiative next week during the next session of the Australian parliament.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  At least 712 individuals have been killed in the Philippines since July 1 during the police anti-drugs operations, ordered by President Rodrigo Duterte in a bid to end drug crimes in the country, media reported Monday.

Ronald dela Rosa, the Philippines police chief, said another 1,067 killings had been committed by vigilante groups in the same period, The Guardian reported.

The official tally in almost two months is higher than the majority of unofficial killings' counts since Duterte was sworn in, the media outlet added.
"Abe's act indicates that he is doing everything possible to promote Japan's image in the international arena, both through tourism and sport. In this sense, Abe in Mario's disguise is another nice step in this direction, which is very clear to the international community, young people in particular. It must mobilize the nation to show the international community the best of Japan," Pavlyatenko explained.

"There is no doubt that Japan will bring its "A" game in preparation for the Olympic Games in Tokyo. At the Rio Olympics, the Japanese athletes were not bad as well and even created quite a sensation: they won medals in those competitions, where no one had planned to see Japan on the podium. It shows the great changes and successes in the Japanese sport. And I think that the Japanese will make every effort to show the best results at their home Olympics in 2020," the expert added.

It is worth noting that the Japanese Prime minister likes to set challenging goals and follow them, despite many obstacles. For example, Abe planned and, indeed, attended the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sochi. It was an achievement, as he arrived to Sochi in spite of the insistent recommendations of Washington not to do so, notes Victor Pavlyatenko:

"Abe came to Sochi not only to attend the Olympics. For the Japanese prime minister, it is important to use every opportunity to establish personal contact with President Putin. And the meeting in Sochi represented a very advantageous situation for him as a politician. Improving their communications could make both leaders trust each other in solving the main problem between the two countries, the territorial one. The stakes were high; Abe placed his bet, and he won."

Owing to the existing personal relationship of trust, Putin and Abe have met 13 times already. It is noteworthy that one of the last meetings in June 2016 was held in Sochi again. Perhaps, their record of personal encounters will only improve.
ALMATY (Sputnik)  Operatives from Kazakhstan's National Security Committee (NSC) have arrested four members of a radical organization, preventing a series of terror attacks in the country, the NSC said on Monday.

"On August 18, 2016, NSC operatives carried out a special operation in the Almaty region to detain four members of a radical group who were planning a series of terrorist attacks in Kazakhstan," the NSC said in a statement.

According to the statement, the detained suspects are Kazakh and Kyrgyz nationals.
It was only a month after they were released that a constable got an inkling of the situation when he was checking files in the court archive.

Constable Sanap told the Press Trust of India:

"I knew the court had issued a bail order for the two accused last month but they could not be released as the verification of the guarantors was pending. But, three days back, when I was going through the case diary I saw a paper which said that both the accused had been released. The document was signed by senior inspector Kaarkar of Srinagar police station and submitted by one constable RS Patil. As I myself am attached to the same police station I know that there is no one called Patil there."

Upon investigation, it was found that the papers, signature of guarantor police officials and rubber stamp of the police station were all fake. The lawyer was also fake and cannot be found, according to the police.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Medivation, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing small molecules for oncology, will be purchased for about $14 billion, the US drug company Pfizer announced in a press release on Monday.

"The proposed acquisition of Medivation is expected to immediately accelerate revenue growth and drive overall earnings growth potential for Pfizer," Pfizer Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ian Read said in the release.
Designed by Northrop in the 1950s, the T-38 was the worlds first supersonic trainer aircraft. Now, after serving for over half a century, the US Air Force is looking for a replacement. Northrops internally-funded T-X prototype is one of four options under consideration.

The defense giant has kept details of the project under wraps. But a photo that surfaced on Friday provides some idea of the new trainer.

 David Kern (@David_Kern) August 19, 2016

The photo, taken during high-speed taxi trials at Mojave Air and Space Port, shows a design that doesnt stray too far from the T-38. The model is a twin-seat aircraft with wings fixed low on the fuselage, but features a single engine, unlike the twin-engine T-38.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Russia's agricultural watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor and the Iraqi Agriculture Ministry's animal health department have agreed on certificates for Russian dairy and finished meat product, beef and poultry exports to Iraq, Rosselkhoznadzor said Monday.

"The above products can be exported to Iraq until January 1 2017 when accompanied by the given documents. In order to continue trade after the given date, enterprises interested in trading with Iraq must go through a registration procedure which involves an evaluation of compliance with Iraqi veterinary standards by their supervisory authority experts. The registration of dairy plants is not required," the watchdog said in a statement.

Iraq also plans to improve its scientific and technical cooperation with Russia after appreciating the scientific potential of Russia's Federal Centre for Animal Health (ARRIAH) and the quality of its foot-and-mouth disease vaccines, the statement added.
"The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27," according to one EU diplomat.

The EU is currently facing risk of another referendum in Netherlands, which may be well followed by other countries.

Germany also opposes any attempts to confront existing deficit and debt constraints, but France and Italy, who have troubles achieving the specified figures, call for expansionary measures and reduced economic austerity.

Others topics for discussion will be EU's current policy on migrants, which is reportedly already opposed by Hungary's PM Viktor Orban, who is going to call for a referendum on whether to accept any future EU migrant settlement quotas.

The leaders will also discuss the naval operation in the Mediterranean, aimed at tackling the migrant smugglers, help enforce an arms embargo off Libya, and train the Libyan coast guard.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)Full-time party members, registered supporters and members of affiliated trade unions will have to rank leadership contenders in order of preference.

The choice is between embattled leader Jeremy Corbyn and his challenger Owen Smith, who quit his post as the shadow work and pensions secretary amid a party "coup" in June.

The Labours National Executive Committee has blocked party members who joined less than six months ago from voting, effectively barring over 100,000 people who came after the June 23 referendum on EU membership.


ROME (Sputnik)Back in July, Renzi announced the meeting that is expected to focus on the EU future after the United Kingdom's decision to withdraw from the bloc.

"All Italians should be proud of the fact that Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Francois Hollande are coming to Italy to restart the European Union. There is a great need in that Europe must stop being just a union of finances, banks, technocratic rules and become the Europe of ideals once again," Renzi said in a public speech in the Italian region of Tuscany.

The three European leaders previously met to discuss the issue of post-Brexit Europe on June 28.


BRUSSELS (Sputnik)Seventeen-year-old Sohaid and his parents were arrested by the federal police on Sunday after they had returned from holiday in Morocco, accordion to the RTL broadcaster.

Sohaid's arrest comes after a video surfaced earlier in August on the Internet which depicted him in the streets of the city of Verviers, threatening to murder Christians.

The family is said to have shown no signs of resistance when apprehended by the police.
The "Jungle" is the nickname of a refugee and migrant encampment in the vicinity of the French city of Calais. The camp gained global attention during the European migration crisis, when the population of the camp grew and French authorities conducted evictions.

"I am one of those who cannot live as if nothing wrong is happening. If you go to Paris, you will see people eating at cafe terraces and others with children sitting on mattresses between these terraces who have nothing to eat. Pardon me, but I cannot live in such a world," he said.

According to him, "discussing the influx of refugees in terms of economic woes, inter-religious problems and terrorism is shameful."

Lamenting the fact that migrants' rights have repeatedly been violated, Dubosc pointed the finger at French politicians.

"Today, there is another problem. People do not want to stay [in France] after such a reception. Unfortunately, it is French politicians who are to blame, not ordinary French. A lot of opinion polls show that the French are ready to accept [refugees]," he concluded.

France's Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in June that his country plans to take in 400 refugees a month under the European Union plan for the distribution of asylum seekers.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)The UK Ministry of Justice revealed new measures to tackle Islamist extremism in UK prisons that would include removing extremists from prayers and holding them in special units, the ministry said on Monday in a statement.

"Governors have also been instructed to ban extremist literature and to remove anyone from Friday prayers who is promoting anti-British beliefs or other dangerous views. The most dangerous Islamist extremists will be removed from the general prison population and held in specialist units in the high security estate. The creation of the units is one of the recommendations in the review, ordered by the government last year and led by Ian Acheson," the statement said.

Along with that, the Ministry of Justice will also create a new directorate for Security, Order and Counter-Terrorism, improve extremism prevention training for police officers and strengthen vetting of chaplains and other positions to make sure that people having access to prisons will counter extremist beliefs.
The Garibaldi  although a military vessel  is being used to support the EU's Operation Sophia  the anti-migrant smuggling project.

Merkel, Hollande and Renzi will be meeting here today on #Brexit pic.twitter.com/wM3YZ6ze4g  Lorena de la Cuesta (@LorenadlaCuesta) August 22, 2016

The EU has struggled to get agreement on relocating migrants from Italy and Greece, with only around 4,000 relocations in a year. There are deep divisions within the EU over relocation, with some countries opposed to a mandatory quota system.

Divided Europe

The EU is also struggling to keep the Eurozone single currency area together, with both Spain and Portugal escaping fines for failing to keep their deficits within EU limits and Italy managing to secure extra budget flexibility from the European Commission over its failure to bring down its debts fast enough.

Following the decision by the UK to exit the EU, the remaining 27 states will have to negotiate a new relationship with the UK, against a backdrop of growing euroskepticism across the whole of Europe. In Italy itself, there is public anger at the harsh treatment Rome has had from Brussels over its domestic fiscal policies and many see the issue as being a north-south divide within the Eurozone.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Some Turkish people living in Europe who have links to supporters of Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of masterminding the July 15 thwarted coup, have receive death threats and feel intimidated, media reported on Monday.

According to Politico newspaper, Turks who live in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland and have links to the co-called Gulenist movement say they are frightened amid Turkey's crackdown on Gulen's followers.

"Many of us received death threats. I have reported six death threats to the police, and I know many people who have done the same. I am in constant touch with the police," the head of one the of the main Gulen think tanks in Europe, based in Berlin, was quoted as saying by the media outlet.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The United Kingdom plans to leave the European Union were supported by the EU leadership as the country presented a major hurdle on the way to creating a pan-European army, Polish member of the European Parliament Janusz Korwin-Mikke told Sputnik on Monday.

He was commenting on Sunday's statement by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who said that the European Union needed its own armed forces to "fulfill" its mission in the world.

"My opinion [is that] Brexit was supported by Mr. Junker and leadership of the EU because Great Britain was an obstacle to greater unification of the EU and to the European army," the non-attached Polish lawmaker said.
Montebourg didn't specify whether he would run for the Socialist party nomination or run as an independent candidate in the May 2017 election, joining an already crowded list of people jockeying to represent the French left against opposition from the Republican party and far-right Front National.

Carefull all, Arnaud Montebourg has announced he will stand for President after 2 yeas en enterprise! Pass the baguette.  'Lottie Epsilon (@BaredJustice) August 21, 2016

"I shouldn't be here proposing an alternative because that's what we promised four years ago," he said.

"But four years later we are left with a feeling of waste. Like for the majority of French people it is impossible to support the current president. I am candidate for the presidency."

Economic Woes

Montebourg's presidential announcement comes amid longstanding dissatisfaction with Hollande's premiership from all sides of the political spectrum in France.

The discontent has seen the rare moment where a ruling leader is being actively challenged by former government colleagues for the presidential nomination  in the form of Montebourg, former ecology minister Cecile Duflot, and Benoit Hamon, the former education ministry chief.

France finally making some headway on unemployment: jobless rate below 10% for the 1st time since 2012. pic.twitter.com/Dss4cvEszy  Michel Rose (@MichelReuters) August 18, 2016

While Hollande pitched his 2013 campaign on boosting France's sluggish economy, a stubborn unemployment rate of around 10 percent has led many to declare Hollande's reforms as failures.

France's economic woes have led the president to make more drastic measures, with Hollande utilizing the little-used Article 49 of the French constitution to bypass parliament and ram through labour reforms to scrap the country's 35-hour working week as well as other measures aimed at creative a more flexible workforce.

Labour reforms in #France are phoney, will make no difference to sclerotic economy.  Jonathan Miller (@lefoudubaron) July 6, 2016

While government officials say the changes are necessary to stimulate job growth and help French businesses, the reforms have infuriated the left of his own Socialist party, who see the changes as an attempt to wash away France's strong workers' rights laws.

Concerns Over Security and Nationalism

Another key issue that has divided the French public is the issue of national security following the series of terrorist attacks that have taken place in France over the past couple of years.

While the government has introduced a series of security and surveillance measures to increase the powers of law enforcement authorities, Hollande has once again been hit from both the right and the left over the changes.

France's anti-terror measures under intense scrutiny! One of the Islamists who attacked a church was wearing an electronic surveillance tag.  Tom Francois (@Tom_Francois) July 28, 2016

Given the repeated attacks, critics from the right say the security crackdown hasn't gone far enough, while some of Hollande's own lawmakers have criticized the moves as being over excessive and counterproductive in the fight against terror.

These security concerns have led to a rise in support for the Euroskeptic far-right Front National (FN), led by Marine Le Pen, while former President Nicolas Sarkozy from the opposition Republican party is also firming as a candidate for next year's election.

France economy made 1bn from hosting #EURO2016  probably just about covers wages for the 90,000 police officers, soldiers & stewards  Kaveh Solhekol (@SkyKaveh) July 11, 2016

While Hollande has not yet made up his mind on whether to run as the Socialist party candidate next May, deeply unpopular polls, economic woes and security concerns have meant the president is facing an open rebellion while still in office.
But radicalization in British jails is no new phenomena. A leaked government report published in April 2016, revealed that some Muslim chaplains appointed by the Ministry of Justice were distributing hate literature and radicalizing inmates.

A copy of a review that had not been cleared for publication was obtained by London newspaper The Times and revealed that extremist pamphlets and CDs were being circulated in ten different jails.

In an interview with Sputnik, following the revelations that prison imams were linked to radicalization, terrorism expert Professor Paul Moorcraft said, "Prisons are considered to be universities of Jihadism."

Professor Moorcraft, author of "The Jihadist Threat: The Reconquest of the West" said: "When you have people involved in crime and looking to repent, it provides fabulous material for jihad.

"The Ministry of Justice is fully aware that the people in charge of selecting the imams are dubious  but there has been so much political correctness that the issue of radicalization in jails has been ignored. It doesn't take much to look into their backgrounds," Professor Moorcraft told Sputnik.

#IslamicState



My new book on the subject out now. Looks at how similar the conditions are now compared with C7th pic.twitter.com/odBS9IsTPt  Professor Paul Moorc (@PMoorc) October 12, 2015

In an article for The Sun, Britain's popular tabloid newspaper, Liz Truss wrote: "I want to send a clear message to our dedicated prison officers who are dealing with this on the front line.

"We take the threat of Islamist extremism in prisons very seriously, and I will back you every step of the way.

"We cannot allow them to become hives of Islamist extremism, where minds are polluted and dangerous ideas allowed to spread," Liz Truss said, in striking resemblance to the words uttered by former PM David Cameron.

The number of Muslim prisoners in jails in England and Wales has dramatically increased in the last decade. There are currently 12,328 Muslim inmates in prison accounting for almost 15 percent of inmates compared with 6,571 in 2004.
In Corbyn, the party faithful saw a left-winger with strong views against capitalism, who was anti-war and particularly angered by Blair's decision to invade Iraq and who was strongly anti-nuclear weapons.

However, he did not enjoy the support of the majority of the Labour members of parliament. They were angered by Corbyn's lackluster support, during the In-Our referendum on the UK's membership of the EU, for remaining in Europe. He is known to be anti-EU, but towed the party's line, which was to remain.

When the result came through that 52 percent backed leaving the EU, his parliamentary colleagues turned on him and held a vote of no confidence in him, which was won by 172 votes to 40. Corbyn has refused to move, however, saying he has a mandate from the 2015 leadership election, with the backing of grassroots party members and the unions.

Got a question for our leadership candidates? Submit yours for an upcoming debate  https://t.co/DlPC1GP681 pic.twitter.com/v6GFwUVXS1  The Labour Party (@UKLabour) August 21, 2016

Split Party

With a standoff between the majority of Labour lawmakers and their leader, there was a further rush to join the party in order to secure a vote. Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) ruled that only those who had held continuous membership for six months could vote. That was challenged in the High Court, which ruled against the NEC only to be overturned by the Court of Appeal.

It is believed Corbyn will gain most from the huge increase in membership since he was elected last time, although a good number of young voters may take against him because of his poor campaigning on Brexit (most young voters wanted to remain in the EU).

Fantastic to have @kezdugdale's support, a brilliant leader and our most senior elected women. Read her piece here: https://t.co/7VAl2PpINJ  Owen Smith (@OwenSmith_MP) August 22, 2016

The stage is now set for a standoff between the parliamentary Labour Party  who say they have an election mandate  and Corbyn  who says he has a popular mandate among the wider membership. There are rumors that if Corbyn gets re-elected, the parliamentary Party may form a party-thin-a-party and call on the speaker of the House of Commons to permit them to the official opposition, instead of the Corbyn set.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)According to The Telegraph newspaper, the lawmakers support the creation of such areas around hospitals in the war-torn country, as well as using the British Navy and Air Force to ensure compliance.

The newspaper added that the lawmakers were expected to back the idea in memory of slain UK Labour lawmaker Jo Cox, who supported measures to protect civilians in Syria.

Syria has been mired in civil war since 2011, with government forces loyal to President Bashar Assad fighting numerous opposition factions and extremist groups. A number of countries have been also conducting airstrikes against terrorists groups occupying vast parts of Syria.
Turkey has taken in nearly 3 million refugees & spent nearly $10 billion. But aid groups say it is not a safe country for refugees @WHSummit  Ceylan Yeginsu (@CeylanWrites) May 23, 2016

The Turkish prime minister also took aim at the EU over its delay in paying aid money pledged to Turkey to assist the country throughout the migration crisis.

"3 billion (US$3.38 billion) of aid was committed to us and we have not heard anything about this. Nor have we heard anything about the visa exemption. This is unfair  it is a one-way road," he said.

Fears Over Visa Issue

The issue of the visa liberalization for Turks within the EU is posing as a key issue that could eventually scupper the migration deal.

Turkey has accused the EU of backtracking on the promise of visa-free travel, warning that if such a measure isn't introduced by October, then the migration agreement could be rescinded.

Turkey has given a deadline of Oct for EU to grant visa free travel or it will end co-operation on helping EU manage refugee crisis.  Tim Marshall (@Itwitius) August 15, 2016

"If our demands our not satisfied then the readmissions will no longer be possible," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier this month.

"There are currently three million refugees in Turkey, and the only concern of EU member states is that those refugees do not reach their territories."

EU stresses importance for the rule of law and fundamental freedoms to prevail in #Turkey after failed coup attempt. https://t.co/sas0jm2scy  Kati Piri (@KatiPiri) July 16, 2016

The EU has rejected the criticism however, saying that visa liberalization for Turkish citizens will be granted once Turkey meets a series of guidelines, which includes the reformation of the country's anti-terror laws.

Following Turkey's failed coup in July, Ankara has refused to review the anti-terror laws, setting up a standoff between Turkey and the EU over the issue.

Despite speculations about #Turkey-EU deal in the aftermath of failed coup, TR Coast Guard continues to stem irregular migration in Aegean  Turkish Deleg. to EU (@AvbirDT) August 12, 2016

While the EU-Turkey migration has largely been credited with helping to stop the flow of refugees and migration across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece, officials have noted an increase in arrivals in recent months.

There are fears that a diplomatic breakdown could scupper the deal, which many believe would be disastrous for the EU as it could unleash a fresh migration crisis for the beleaguered bloc.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A woman and a girl, suspected of trying to travel to Syria to join a proscribed organization, were arrested in London on Monday, the Metropolitan Police Service (Met) said.

"Officers from the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command arrested a 20-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts, namely traveling to Syria to join a proscribed organization," the statement reads.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)On August 15, Kiev failed to meet the deadline of full launch of the online system aimed at the declaration of assets. The launch of the system is one of the requirements of Ukraine's international lenders to continue providing Kiev with economic aid.

"We are working with our international partners not on paper only, it means that we need real quality changes, but not dubious partial solutions. Electronic system is a key element of anti-corruption struggle. It is necessary to make this system work properly. It is crucial both for us and our international partners. Without this move, the disbursement of the third tranche is under the threat," Danyliuk said, as quoted by the Ekonomicheskaya Pravda newspaper.

He added that without the IMF, Ukraine would not be able to receive economic support from either the United States or the European Union.
Unfortunately, Umanets said that the government does not look likely to give the nuclear industry the necessary funding. "If the power units' life span is not extended, by 2020 we will lose 50% of our electricity, and by 2030 Ukraine won't have nuclear power at all. It will simply cease to exist."

Accordingly, the official noted, "we have seven and a half years to solve this problem. Today, in order to put one energy unit into operation, it's necessary to have $3-5 billion. Where are we going to get the money? Even if we extend the life of the units in operation, but do not begin planning to replace the units coming off line, this too will result in the collapse of our electricity generation sector."

As for the possible use of Westinghouse fuel for Ukraine's power plants, Umanets stressed that politics must not be allowed to come before safety. "Nuclear fuel is being placed in Russian reactors without the consent of the chief designerWe have no right to play around when it comes to safety  no way, no matter what political aspects exist. One 'Chernobyl' was enough for us."

The Ukrainian nuclear industry has faced several high-profile incidents in recent months. Last month, a power unit at the Khmelnitsky NPP in western Ukraine was disconnected from the grid due to a leak in its steam generator. In late May, the second block of the South Ukraine NPP in the Mykolaiv region was forced to halt its operations, due to actions by personnel which tripped the station's safety systems. In April, energy production at the Zaporozhye and Rovno plants stopped for troubleshooting. In the spring, all the country's reactors were on the verge of stoppage, after Energoatom's foreign currency accounts were frozen, threatening to stop nuclear fuel from being delivered to the stations.
Iain Duncan Smith and other pro-Brexit ministers have also warned the Prime Minister that they will not accept a watered down deal with the EU.

Mrs. May supported the losing Vote Remain side in the referendum.

Some of her Euroskeptic ministers are said to be concerned that she may prefer a more limited departure from the EU. In particular, Iain Duncan Smith campaigned for the UK to leave the European single market.

"What they didn't vote for was EU-lite, or for their Government to engage in negotiations where we bend the knee to Brussels and beg for some concessions whilst remaining in a customs union all the while subject to European law," he said.

"Being outside [the single market] returns control over laws and borders and frees the UK from EU regulations, its external tariff and allows us, as a service sector economy, to position ourselves globally, set our trade deals and compete internationally, particularly in financial services."

However, government sources have told the British newspaper the Sunday Times, that so unprecedented was the Brexit vote, that the UK does not yet have the necessary infrastructure to handle the transition. May has created a new Brexit department from scratch, but it is reportedly not ready or fully staffed.

London Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan has even urged May to wait until after the German and French 2017 elections, to give civil servants more time to prepare, claiming that it will boost the chances of Berlin and Paris backing a good deal for Britain.

He said: "If we serve notice too quick to quit there's no guarantee jobs won't leave.

"I know for a fact there are people from Paris, Berlin, Dublin courting business leaders as we speak."

@JASEMARKRUTTER It just proves that the EU is all about benefitting political careers, not about benefitting European people. #Brexit  +++Stephen Gash+++ (@Stephen_Gash) August 17, 2016

However, Iain Duncan Smith rejected such calls to wait for the French and Germans as "another attempt to turn this referendum result into a 'neverendum.' "

Mrs. May took power in July promising "to unite our party and our country."

But with such obvious bitter divisions, there is a great deal of uncertainty over how she could go far enough to satisfy the victorious Brexit campaigners in her cabinet, and still reassure the 48% of Brits who voted against leaving the EU at all.
Responding to the review in an article for Detention Forum, McGinley suggests the additional 60 places to Brook House and 40 places to Tinsley House "sits uncomfortably within this [reduction of detention places] and runs counter to the [Home Office] reform agenda.

"It is also another worrying example of the trend towards larger detention facilities," citing Verne and Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centers (IRCs).

Verne, a former military citadel built of stone during 1857-81, is now home to asylum seekers who have had their claim rejected and are awaiting deportation. The IRC is surrounded by a moat with access only by footbridge or tunnel. The recent prison watchdog report said that the former Victorian fort remained "too prison-like in character" with too much fencing and razor wire.

Appalling treatment of people on suicide watch in #detention at the #Verne IRC documented in HMIP inspection report: https://t.co/pLU01Fo7A6  TheDetentionForum (@DetentionForum) August 25, 2015

Harmondsworth near Heathrow airport is the second largest detention center in Europe and holds only men.

However despite submitting an agenda for reform centered on reducing detention numbers in the UK, the Home Office has "quietly expanded bed spaces at Brook House and Tinsley House," McGinley states.

Human rights organization, Right To Remain has documented countless experiences of detainees at centers around the UK. For its "Unlocking Detention" 2014 and 2016 series, the charity collected blog posts from people who had been detained in Brook House. In an account offered by a detainee called Yann, he described it as a "prison."

"Brook House runs like a prison. They open the cell at 8am and then close it at 11:30 am. They open it again at 12om for lunch. Shut again at 4:30om. Open again at 5pm for dinner and then close at 8:30 pm till the following morning," Yann writes.

"There is a window in your cell but you can't open it. Over the period I was at Brook House I had a huge drop in my Vitamin D because there was no access to light.

"I got no fresh air. I felt suffocated."

Brook House is to be extended by 60 places.

#Detention expansion by stealth at hidden sites of injustice: read experts-by-experience on Brook and Tinsley House https://t.co/SJ1VELWw6l  Right to Remain (@Right_to_Remain) August 19, 2016

Initial plans to reduce the number of people detained in England and Wales were expected to be outlined in the Immigration Enforcement's Business Plan for 2016/17. However, this plan remains unpublished.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A woman tried to stab three people in Uccle, a municipality of the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium, with a knife, local media reported Monday.

According to La Derniere Heure newspaper citing sources, police shot at her after she refused to follow their orders, wounding her in the arm.

The incident took place at 16:30 local time [14:30 GMT].
The New Zealand Herald ran a front-page story on Monday (August 22), warning Kiwi citizens to brace themselves for a "British Invasion."

Sociology professor Paul Spoonley, from Massey University in New Zealand, told the New Zealand Herald that the surge in numbers could help fill skill shortages in the country.

"You could up the numbers coming if there's some economic and political uncertainty in the countries themselves. That is the sort of strategic decision that we would need to make as a country."

He suggested that Kiwis could get even more interest from disgruntled immigrants, following the November US Presidential election.

"I anticipate that post Brexit and if [presidential candidate Donald] Trump wins in America, you're going to see a spike in interest from people there about coming to New Zealand. We saw it during the Bush years from Americans, and I think over the next three to five years, you're going to see a significant increase in the numbers of migrants coming from both Britain and the USA."

Since the UK tanked the economy with #brexit, it looks like it's down to Canada, Aussieland or New Zeland when @realDonaldTrump gets elected  Rich Mahogany (@mitchgarvin) 1 July 2016

However, the enthusiasm of so many Brits to become immigrants in another country may seem ironic, considering that fear over immigration was widely believed to have swayed many Brexit voters to choose Vote Leave.

But for those still determined to make the move, it'll be a long way to go: nearly 12,000 miles! So, what exactly is drawing these Brits to New Zealand specifically?

Seems #Brexit means Exit as some escape UK for New Zealand https://t.co/LahWifUQ4o  Angus B MacNeil MP (@AngusMacNeilSNP) August 22, 2016

Well, there's the reassurance of the familiar. There are already plenty of British expats in New Zealand, a country which speaks the same language and shares some of the same cultural heritage. In the past year almost 5,000 Brits were granted residency in the country, which has a population of just under five million.

New Zealand also ranks highly on world "liveabilty" rankings. In February this year, Auckland was rated the third best city in the world to live, with the capital, Wellington, making it to no. 12.

Its landscapes, made famous as the back drop of Middle-earth in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, are renowned for their beauty, boasting fjords, glaciers, mountains and beaches.

Though, it's not just New Zealand bracing itself for a peak in new British arrivals.

Just days after the Brexit vote, the EU Ireland's foreign minister Charlie Flanagan appealed to members of the British public eligible for an Irish passport to stop rushing to apply for one. He claimed that the spike in interest was placing "significant pressure" on the system. Many have since become dual Irish and UK citizens.

But for those nearly 11,000 Brits who've expressed interest to start the next antipodean chapter of their lives, it's unclear how many will be allowed to. New Zealand, like Australia, has a skills-based immigration points system.
Juncker's words reportedly triggered a response from UK Prime Minister Theresa May, who expressed disagreement and said that the people of the United Kingdom consider the control over their country's borders to be important.

The remarks come as the leaders of Italy, Germany and France are meeting on Italian island of Ventotene to discuss the future of the European Union in the light of Britain's vote to the leave the bloc. The meeting is being held in preparation for an informal EU summit, which is to be held without Britain in Bratislava, Slovakia on September 16.

Earlier, a French government spokesman said that one of the main topics of discussion would be ensuring security in the European Union, as well as investments and economic growth, the problems of the European youth, cultural cooperation and the transition to renewable energy sources.
The three leaders are set to discuss ways to boost economic growth and cut unemployment in the EU, as well as measures to tackle migration. They are keen to avoid further damage to the European Union project, in the aftermath of the UK's decision to leave the bloc.

"The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27," one EU diplomat said about the meeting.

However, vice-speaker of the Italian Senate Maurizio Gasparri told Sputnik Italia that the Italian government is making a mistake by staking its future on that of the EU.

He said that Italy must reassert its own foreign policy independent of Brussels and Washington, and that the forced imposition of anti-Russian sanctions is one example of a lack of national sovereignty.

"EU countries have become blind, they are acting contrary to their interests. Italy punished those sectors of its economy which have always exported to the Russian market  textiles, fashion, agricultural products. It is necessary to hold a dialogue regarding the difficult situation in Ukraine, and not try to change Russian politics with sanctions," Gasparri said.

"It is an expression of our government's subordination to the EU, Germany and US. Renzi recently held meetings with Putin, he talked about a change in policy but in reality nothing has changed. There is an absolute lack of courage and initiative."

Gasparri expressed frustration that Italian politics is being dictated from elsewhere, and said that Renzi's administration is less assertive than previous ones.

"Italy does not have a foreign policy, and therefore Renzi is a servant of other governments, while Berlusconi's government was able to play an active political role and engage in dialogue with both Russia and the US."
The annual amount of payouts to veterans, suffering from various types of mental disorders, has increased by 379 percent to 580 in 2015-2016, becoming the highest over the past 11 years, the analysis of the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme statistics carried out by The Independent revealed.

The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) was introduced in 2005 to replace the previous War Pension Scheme.
PRAGUE (Sputnik)  After a series of terrorist attacks in Germany and France, it became clear that it is necessary to be prepared for various threats, and the wave of migration has pointed to the need to protect the EU external borders, he stressed.

"I am convinced that in the long term we won't be able to do without a common European army," Sobotka was quoted as saying by the Ceske Noviny news portal.

The rise of nationalism, as well as the number of collapsing states and international conflicts is currently rapidly increasing, Sobotka added.
The right-wing government of Hungary has faced severe criticism for their stance on refugees. In an effort to keep them away, the countrys administration has constructed a large border fence adorned with scarecrows made of carved sugar beets made to look like rotting human heads.

On Sunday, Hungarian MEP for the Christian Democratic European Peoples Party Gyorgy Schopflin, tweeted, Human images are haram pigs head would deter more effectively.

 Gyorgy Schopflin (@schopflinMEP) August 20, 2016

The tweet came in response to Andrew Stroehlein, European Media Director of Human Rights Watch, who tweeted an article regarding the sugar beet scarecrows, stating, refugees are fleeing war & torture, Hungary. Your root vegetable heads will not deter them."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Republika Srpska plans to hold a referendum on September 25 on the Republika Srpska Day to be celebrated annually on January 9. Republika Srpska does not agree to celebrate the national day of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the March 1 as on that day, in 1992, Bosnian Parliament proclaimed the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina without the presence of Bosnian Serbs. The Republika Srpska believes that Bosnia and Herzegovina could block the decision of the referendum that could be considered a violation of the Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian War.

"This [self-determination referendum] is not excluded neither by them [Bosnia and Herzegovina], nor by us. This is an absolutely legitimate political issue that can be discussed. It is not on the agenda at the moment, although such possibility should not be excluded in the future. It is either a compliance with the Dayton Agreement, or a referendum as the most meaningful way of expression of national will," Dodik said.

The President of Republika Srpska also said that Republika Srpska Day referendum would put an end the humiliation by Bosnian authorities.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Four of Rafale and Mirage 2000 fighters together with one Atlantique 2 aircraft dropped a dozen of SCALP cruise missiles at the facility which, the Ministry said, was at the heart of the Daesh-controlled territory.

"On Sunday, 21 2016, a French air raid struck at the Daesh center for storing and maintaining heavy equipment in Raqqa, Syria," the ministerial statement read.
As for Zeina, she said that she likes creative circles, especially those where she is taught origami, the art of paper folding.

"I want to be a doctor when I grow up. Mom promised me that I would go to school next year"  said Zeina.

In an interview with Sputnik, Syrian psychologist Amna Haj, who works in one of these circles, specifically pointed to the effectiveness of such classes for children from families who've lost their homes, fled the war and survived the death of relatives, among other hardships.

According to her, the use of drawing and other forms of creative activity has long been practiced in the rehabilitation of kids after a psychological trauma.

"In certain cases, we allow the circle's new participants to draw what frightens and disturbs them in order to help a child release the stress from his mind and forget about the tragedy, she said.

The method of visualizing disturbing thoughts using pictures typically brings quick positive results in 90 percent of cases, helping psychologists understand what is bothering the child and how to continue working with him r her.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry has said that the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation at Hmeymim Airbase has registered a total of nine violations of the ceasefire agreement in Syria over the last 24 hours.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said further use of the Hamadan airfield for Russias anti-terrorist mission in Syria would be carried out in line with bilateral agreements with the Islamic republic and events on the ground.

"Russian military aircraft that took part in the operation of conducting airstrikes from Iran's Hamadan air base on terrorist targets in Syria have successfully completed all the tasks. Currently, all the Aerospace Forces aircraft involved in the mission are on Russian territory," he told reporters.

"Continued use of the Hamadan air base in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Russian Aerospace Forces will be carried out on the basis of mutual agreements to combat terrorism and depending on the unfolding situation in Syria," Konashenkov said.
Last week, regular Syrian troops launched a military operation in the eastern areas of al-Nashwa, in what was followed by the army's advance on the district of Geweran. An army source said that the goal is to enter al-Nashwa's western and eastern areas in order to move further towards the center of the city.

For his part, al-Hasakah Mayor Muhammed Zaalan Al-Ali told Sputnik that Kurdish forces had allegedly blocked the al-Hasaka-al-Qamishli road, preventing the advance of the Syrian Army and its allies.

"We appreciate Kurdish forces' help in the fight against terrorists last year, when 500 Kurdish soldiers were killed and 900 more wounded. But we wonder why the PKK [the Kurdistan Workers' Party]has now turned their weapon against the Syrian Army and other government organizations, even though the country's army previously supported the Kurds in their fight against armed terrorists," he said.

The warring sides in al-Hasakah have reportedly not provided any official information about the number of casualties among the armed forces and civilians.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry has said that the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation at Hmeymim Airbase has registered a total of nine violations of the ceasefire agreement in Syria over the last 24 hours.

The Russia-US brokered ceasefire in Syria came into force on February 27. However, Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham, formerly known as the al-Nusra Front, and Daesh terrorist group (ISIL/ISIS), which have been condemned by Russia and throughout the world, are not part of the ceasefire deal. Kurdish forces were not invited to Switzerland to sign the official truce, but had not fought government forces, as both focused their efforts on thwarting Islamic extremists.
ANKARA (Sputnik)  Ankara plans to continue seeking extradition of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Islamic cleric, who has been accused of involvement in the failed coup attempt in the country, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday.

"Me and Justice Minister Bozdag will visit the US for Gulen's extradition," Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by the Daily Sabah newspaper, stressing that tonight, the US delegation on the issue of Gulen extradition would come to Turkey.

According to the Turkish foreign minister, the Turkish side will hold talks with the US delegation during the next two days, as well as will continue to collect additional evidence of Gulen's involvement in the plot, in order to present it during the visit to the United States.
Earlier, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi declared that Russian military aircraft are currently not operating missions from the Hamadan airbase.

Hossein Ruyvaran, Iranian political analyst who teaches at the University of Tehran, explained that the cooperation between Russia and Iran also includes the fight against terrorism, and providing the capabilities of Hamadan airfield to Russian forces is a jointly approved measure and element of this anti-terrorist partnership.

However, this move sparked debates among Iranian politicians as some of them questioned the legitimacy of this move.
Tens of thousands of families who fled their homes in 2015 after Daesh militants captured the city of Ramadi have returned home. The grueling military operation to liberate the city began in December. The army assisted in the evacuation of civilians before launching their assault.

Sputnik offers exclusive photos from on the ground in the ruined city, the capital of Iraq's western Anbar province, which has been turned into a ghost town by the fighting. Its roads, once full of cars, are now clogged with debris from the rubble of nearby buildings. Some roads now feature the rusted remains of burnt out tanks and other heavy military equipment.
More than 40,000 Yazidis were forced to flee to the Sinjar mountains, where they were surrounded by Daesh forces and dependent on helicopter drops of food and water.

Since the massacre and kidnappings at Sinjar, rescue operations have managed to free more than 2,600 hostages, mostly women and children.

Earlier this month the UN reported that two years since the massacre, more than 3,200 women and children are still held by the group and being subjected to almost-unimaginable violence.

Ismail said that the people who were able to flee Daesh from the Sinjar region are still unable to return there, because Daesh are still in control of large parts of the area. He called on the international community to do more to protect the Yazidis.

"More than half the Sinjar region is under control of ISIS (Daesh), how can they return now? The international community said ISIS should be gone by now, but the people on ground have been fighting against ISIS, especially the Yazidis on Mount Sinjar, and they have not received a single weapon from the international community to continue their fight."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The humanitarian cost of the Yemen conflict has resulted in over 3.1 million displaced persons, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a press release on Monday.

A joint report issued by the UNHCR and International Organization for Migration found that 3,154,572 people have been displaced as a result of the conflict in Yemen, which began as a civil war in 2015 and soon became the theater for a Saudi-led military intervention.

The crisis is forcing more and more people to leave their homes in search of safety, UNHCR's Deputy Representative in Yemen Ita Schuette said.
"In our discussions with the Saudi-led coalition, we have pressed the need to minimize civilian casualties."

Western Complicity in Yemen

The decision to scale back American cooperation comes amid ongoing criticism of the continued US and UK support of the Saudi government's airstrike campaign.

Aid agencies estimate that 6,500 people have been killed during the 17-month long conflict, while there are also concerns about the long-term humanitarian affects, with 3 million Yemenis fleeing their homes and an estimated 80 percent of the population in need of aid.

@TAlkabili the US still has same level of full support for Saudi war they say, just moved some advisors, still arms deals, refueling jets  Jane Novak (@JNovak_Yemen) August 20, 2016

Many critics in the West have accused Washington and London of complicity in the death and injury toll due to their continued sale of arms, political and logistical support to Riyadh, which has led to a backlash on both sides of the Atlantic.

US Senators Rand Paul and Chris Murphy have hinted they will work to block Washington's possible sale of $US1.5 billion worth of weapons to the Gulf kingdom amid human rights and humanitarian concerns.

Today @RandPaul and I introduced and amendment to the #NDAA to set conditions on US arms sales to #SaudiArabia  Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 26, 2016

"I will work with a bipartisan coalition to explore forcing a vote on blocking this sale," he said a statement to Foreign Policy magazine earlier this month.

Legal Challenge to Arms Sales

Meanwhile in the UK, the British government is also facing a backlash over its continued support for Saudi Arabia, with the UK High Court to hear a case brought forward by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), who have called for London to halt all arms sales to Saudi Arabia amid concerns over breaches in international law.

The opposition Labour party, under Jeremy Corbyn, has taken a much harder line on the Conservative government for their close relations with the Saudis, with calls for London to publicly criticize Riyadh over its execution rate and military campaign in Yemen.

The political and grassroots pressure to scale back relations with the Gulf kingdom also led Britain to ditch a multimillion dollar bid to provide a training program for the Saudi prisons system last year, sparking a brief diplomatic crisis with Riyadh.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The execution of 36 individuals found guilty of taking part in the massacre of over a thousand of soldiers in 2014 would just perpetuate the vicious cycle of violence in the country, a human rights group said Monday in a statement.

On Sunday, Iraqi Justice Minister Haidar Zamili said that the Iraqi authorities had hung 36 people over the 2014 massacre of as many as 1,700 military recruits at Camp Speicher near the city of Tikrit.

"These mass executions mark a chilling increase in Iraqs use of the death penalty Relying on executions to counter Iraqs security challenges is completely misguided. It does not address the root causes of deadly attacks and will only serve to perpetuate the cycle of violence. The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and there is no credible evidence that shows it serves as more of a deterrent to crime than a prison term," Lynn Maalouf, the deputy director for Research at Amnesty Internationals Middle East and North Africa Regional Office, was quoted as saying in the groups statement.
"Daesh should be completely cleansed from our borders and we are ready to do what it takes for that," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said during a news conference.

A senior rebel official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Turkish-backed Syrian rebels were preparing to seize the border town of Jarablus from Daesh. Ahead of the shelling, roughly 10 Turkish tanks were seen moving toward the border gate near Jarablus.

The suicide attack took place in the southeastern city of Gaziantep on Saturday, and the suspect is believed to have been between the ages of 12 and 14. The deadliest attack in Turkey this year, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said initial evidence points to Daesh.
"The aim is to test and fine-tune Premier avionics on an A-100LL and then move it onto an Il-476. If everything goes as planned, the original A-100 will make the maiden flight in 2018," the source in the Defense Ministry told the Izvestia newspaper.

The airborne system will reportedly provide the military with surveillance, warning, and control capabilities, detecting fighter jets at a distance of more than 324 nautical miles and identifying ships at 216 nautical miles.
VILNIUS (Sputnik)  The second leg of the annual Baltron naval military exercises involving warships from Lithuania, Latvia and Germany is due to commence in the Baltic Sea in Lithuania on Monday, the Lithuanian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

"On August 22-26, BALTRON SQUADEX II-16 exercises will take place in Lithuanian territorial waters They will involve Lithuanian, Latvian and German military units. The exercises will be led by Lieut. Tadas Jablonskis (Lithuania)," the statement reads.

The ministry added that the drills consist of two parts  an offshore portion of the exercises took place from August 18-21 off the coast of the Baltic Sea, while the marine phase will take place on August 22-26.
"In this situation," Tuchkov noted, "the only option is the use of a ramjet engine  in this case a hypersonic scramjet. The use of a rocket engine, either liquid or solid fueled, for cruise missiles, is impossible, since the entire trajectory of the flight must be actively controlled and adjustable."

"The design of the scramjet is very simple, with the number of moving parts reduced to a minimum. Theoretically, these craft can reach speeds of up to Mach 25, although the practical ceiling of operation is about Mach 17-19. However, the scramjet also has a significant drawback  its normal operation begins at speeds exceeding Mach 3. Before this speed, it is necessary to accelerate the missile using a solid booster, or some other method, similar to the kind used to launch a high-speed aircraft."

The analyst recalled that when development of hypersonic missile technology first began in the Soviet period, one of the key problems for engineers was overheating. "It was necessary to create the kind of heat shield through which the onboard flight control equipment would continue to work flawlessly."

In the 1980s, Raduga Design Bureau created several prototypes of a new cruise missile  the Kh-90, NATO codenamed Koala. The cruise missile weighed 15 tons, had a length of 9 meters, and a 7 meter wingspan. With an expected range of up to 3,000 km, the missile had a design speed of Mach 5.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Iran is set to begin the mass production of its Bavar-373 air defense system once the practical tests that are expected to continue until March 2017 have been completed, local media reported, citing the countrys Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan.

The tests include intercepting ballistic missiles, Dehghan was as quoted as saying on Sunday by the Tasnim news agency.

He said that various components of the Iranian Bavar-373 long-range air defense systems had already been tested and the system had been transferred to a launch site for further tests.
The crew of Admiral Kuznetsov, Russias only aircraft-carrying cruiser, is preparing for a deployment to the shores of Syria. A source in the Defense Ministry told RIA Novosti that the carrier is currently undergoing repairs and will be ready for the long-range operation by the end of September.

"The carrier has arrived at the 35th dockyard to undergo a second stage of upgrades and to restore its technical readiness. All works are expected to be completed by the end of September when the ship will be ready for deployment," the source said.
The citys police said that they received a call just before 1:30am and arrived to find 11 men and two women suffered gunshot wounds, Captain Brian Fitzgerald said in an emailed statement. One of those wounded in the attack remains in critical condition after being shot in the face.

It is believed that at least two shooters fired through the hedges from the backyard into the large house party according to the statement. An investigation is ongoing and police have not indicated that the perpetrators have been arrested or what their motive for the attack may have been.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who served the city on the day that 9/11 struck and formerly was Hillarys chief rival in her bid for the US Senate, struck once again about Clintons rumored health issues which have become a major talking point after video footage where it appears the former Secretary of State suffered a seizure in front of a cadre of reporters  the incident went unmentioned by the media until it appeared later on YouTube.

"All youve got to do is go online," Giuliani commented on Fox News. "Go online and put down 'Hillary Clinton illness' and take a look at the videos for yourself."

Giuliani said that despite the former Secretary of States purportedly waning physical condition, which her rival Donald Trump frequently alludes to by questioning her "stamina" to fulfill the duties of the office of US President, he believes that she has a built in political advantage that has masked the severity of her condition.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Up to 23 people reportedly died in two suicide car bombings targeting government and administrative buildings in Galkayo in Puntland. The al-Shabaab militant group claimed responsibility for the assaults.

"Todays cowardly attacks targeting Puntland security forces, government officials, and civilians are another attempt by terrorists to weaken Somalia ahead of its historic scheduled political transition this autumn toward greater representation," White House National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

"We join international expressions of outrage against these brutal terrorist acts," Price said. "We will continue to stand by Somalia in its fight against terrorism and extremism and support Somalis in their quest for a peaceful, inclusive, and prosperous future."
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Pyongyangs routine threat is timed to the start of the annual military exercise, codenamed Ulchi Freedom Guardian, by US and South Korean troops. It brings together tens of thousands of soldiers for two weeks drills that simulate a full-scale invasion by North Korea.

"The nuclear warmongers should bear in mind that if they show the slightest sign of aggression on the inviolable land, seas and air where the sovereignty of the DPRK is exercised, it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike," the KPA said a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

The North Korean military warned Seoul that "the situation on the Korean peninsula is so tense that a nuclear war may break out any moment," and vowed to "hold their bayonets more tightly."
BISHKEK (Sputnik)  Uzbekistan is preparing to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its independence from the Soviet Union on September 1.

"Starting from August 22, Uzbekistan has closed crossings at the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border," a spokeswoman for the Uzbek border service told RIA Novosti.

The new restriction will affect citizens of both countries who will only be allowed to return home, while third-country nationals will be free to pass through the border crossings as usual, the spokeswoman said.
CAIRO (Sputnik)  The president added that US-Russia agreements on Syria, such as their attempts to broker ceasefire between the government and rebels, and more flexibility on the part of regional powers that have leverage over the warring parties could help find a way out to end the Syrian war.

"Egypts stance on the situation in Syria is based on five simple principles  respect of its territorial integrity and the will of the Syrian people, a peaceful political solution [of the crisis], disarming of extremist groups, restoration of Syria, and resetting of its state institutions," Sisi told Egypts three key newspapers.
The former military chief however did not elaborate who, besides him, was among those who regarded Washington as such.

Referring to Trumps strong doubts on the US defense readiness, he cited as an example the recent remarks of Newt Gingrich, a top Donald Trump supporter and former speaker of the US House of Representatives.

In his recent interview on CBS This Morning program Gingrich said that NATO countries ought to worry about the US commitment.

When asked about whether Trump and the US would come to the aid of countries like Estonia in the case of a much feared Russian invasion, Gingrich said he too "would think about it a great deal."

"Estonia is in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. The Russians aren't gonna necessarily come across the border militarily. The Russians are gonna do what they did in Ukraine," he said.

"I'm not sure I would risk a nuclear war over some place which is the suburbs of St. Petersburg. I think we have to think about what does this stuff mean."

Rasmussen called it an outrageous statement, explaining that Estonia currently is one of five out of the 28 NATO member states which meet the requirement to allocate two percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) for defense spending.
Mr. Moore, who was seeking to expose security flaws in the voting system, wrote in the Spectator magazine how he was able to vote once in Sussex and a second time in London, where he spoiled his ballot.

Charles Moore  proving how easy it is to vote twice If you have two homes  Adam Ramsay (@AdamRamsay) 19 August 2016

The editor has two homes, one in Sussex and the other in London. He described how he voted in Sussex during the EU referendum in the normal way. He then went to London, filled out his ballot paper but also spoiled the paper by writing on it that he had already voted and was doing this in protest at how lax the government is when it comes to electoral fraud.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Foreign ministers from nearly 30 countries will discuss the Israeli-Palestinian issue on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September and announce the date of the French-led conference to find a peace settlement to the conflict, Palestinian Ambassador to Russia Abdel Hafiz Nofal told Sputnik.

The meeting in New York will be at the level of foreign ministers where nearly 30 of them are likely to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian peace process on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly as part of the French initiative, Nofal said, adding that the participating states have already initiated preparatory work in subcommittees.

The Palestinian ambassador added that during the meeting in New York, the sides would announce the final date of the French-led international conference on the peaceful settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which may take place as early as October if the participants reach a consensus.
On Monday, a delegation of four US experts, including three representatives of the US Department of Justice and an official from the State Department, arrived in the Turkish capital to discuss the extradition of Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen to Turkey ahead of Biden's Wednesday visit. Ankara has accused the Islamic preacher and billionaire 'philanthropist', who resides in a small community in rural Pennsylvania, of being behind the failed coup attempt which rocked Turkey last month.

Speaking to Sputnik Turkey about the prospects of Washington actually handing Gulen over to Turkish authorities, Dr. Ilhan Uzgel, a political scientist and expert in foreign relations at Ankara University, suggested that the US will not extradite Gulen unless the country's leaders find it in their interest to do so. Specifically, the issue revolves around whether Washington sees any interest in keeping Gulen around in the US any longer or not.

"Right now," Uzgel said, "Gulen is a trump card in Washington's hand. Turkey has demanded the preacher's extradition so forcefully that the US may very well try to use it as a bargaining chip. In other words, even if Gulen, for whatever reason, were to fall from Washington's good graces, America would not extradite him before trying to bargain with Turkey."
"This is not great progress. His new tone, I dont understand what the new tone is," Tyler added.

During the same program, co-host Mika Brzezinski mocked a recent speech given by the Republican candidate.

"He belted like, honestly, like hes had a lot to drink," she said. "His delivery is very 'Blaaaaagh!'"

Never known to take the high road, Trump took to his preferred social media outlet.

 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2016

He then insinuated that Brzezinski and co-host Joe Scarborough were romantically involved.

 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2016

Naturally, Scarborough felt compelled to respond to Trumps response.Neurotic and not very bright?

 Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 22, 2016

And thus began the latest Twitter feud between a presidential candidate representing a formerly-respected US political party, and a simple media personality. Looks like it may be another long week.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The US government warned the last Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in the summer of 1991 that a military plot was developing against him but he did not take the alert seriously, former advisor to the US Agency for International Development Paolo von Schirach told Sputnik.

"President George H.W. Bush did warn Mikhail Gorbachev about an impending coup against him back in the summer of 1991," Schirach said. "However, the Soviet president did not grasp how real the threat was and did not take serious countermeasures."

Schirach, who has also served as a consultant to the European Union, noted that the 1991 coup attempt was one of the very few occasions when the multi-billion dollar US intelligence apparatus had not been taken by surprise by a military coup attempted takeover in a major nation.
Saturday marked the 45th anniversary of the death of Black Panther leader George Jackson at San Quentin Prison. Nearly half a century later, his life and legacy are commemorated by many as part of a month of fasting and resistance called Black August.

The United Nations has admitted its role in causing the outbreak, the worst in recent history that has killed almost 10,000 people to date. But why was a report on the outbreak suppressed for almost a year, and does it only scratch the surface of UN abuses in Haiti? Writer Kim Ives and Sienne Merope-Synge, Be Just Fellow at the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, assess the role played by the United Nations in the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti.

Almost fifteen years after the brutal U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the Taliban are now active in more of the country than they were in 2001. The coalition cobbled together after the disputed 2014 Afghan election may be falling apart as a power struggle deepens between President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah. Joining Becker to talk about the situation is Zafar Bangash, director of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought.
Todays main stories: Today sees the UK Labour Party begin voting in perhaps the most bitter leadership contest in living memory. As both Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith argue that they are fighting for the very soul of their party, we put the question of what happens next to Labours former Scottish First Minister Henry McLeish.

For the first time in history an individual has been tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges of cultural vandalism, for the destruction of sites of holy and historical importance in Timbuktu, Mali. We speak to Dr Mark Kersten, Director of Research at the Wayamo Foundation.

You can find previous editions of World in Focus here.
You don't need a time machine to find out what the fireworks looked like three centuries ago  some events can give you the wonderful opportunity to see them with your own eyes even in modern Moscow.

The "amusing fires," as the fireworks were called at the time, will be displayed at the festival of Slavic art which is being held in Russian capital. Columns of fire springing out from the ground and wheels of fire will be on display, the same way that they were during the rule period of Catherine II, who was a big fan of the fire shows.

  - "" (@tsaritsyno_museum)  23 2015  5:40 PDT

The sparks emitted by the fireworks will reach 10 meters in height and 6 meters in width, the City of Moscow's official website reported. At the same time, a number of Roman candles will be shot into the sky from the water surface of the pond.

The event will take place at one of Moscow's most beautiful parks  the museum-reserve Tsaritsyno, where a palace complex was created as a suburban residence of Empress Catherine II.
"I found him to be a vain, manipulative and grandstanding individual who seeks to persuade me that black is in fact white," Judge Lower said.

Mr. O'Neill, currently said to be living homeless in a wood in York, described the day as thoroughly humiliating.

"I'm homeless, I cannot work, I cannot claim benefits, I need to get back into society somehow," Mr. O'Neill said in a recent interview.

The Judge said that he found Mr. O'Neill to have a "narcissistic streak."

O'Neill was cleared of rape at Teeside Crown Court in November last year, but after the jury had been dismissed the judge called him a "very dangerous individual." North Yorkshire Police (NYP) then applied for the order on the basis of comments he made to health professionals.

During Friday's hearing, the court heard details of confessions to health professionals, which included choking a woman unconscious and thinking "a lot" about killing her.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (R) walks past Japan's Emperor Akihito (L) and Empress Michiko during a ceremony marking the 70st anniversary of Japan's unconditional surrender in World War II at Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Japan August 15, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

Aug 6 and 9 are days of mourning for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On Aug 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, it dropped a second one on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered in World War II on Aug 15.

The atomic bombs incinerated buildings and people, leaving lifelong physical and psychological scars on the survivors and the cities.

Since being re-elected Japan's prime minister in December 2012, Shinzo Abe has attended the two cities' annual observation days every year. At the latest gathering in Hiroshima, he said Japan will "continue to make ... efforts to bring about a world free of nuclear weapons by calling for cooperation from both nuclear weapons and non-nuclear weapons' states".

But his acts belie his words. Along with Britain, France and the Republic of Koreaall the United States alliesJapan has been privately lobbying the White House to not adopt a policy of "no first use" of nuclear weapons that US President Barack Obama is said to be considering.

In fact, Obama could announce the change in US nuclear policy in September when he attends the UN General Assembly for the last time as US president.

The Japanese media reported that Abe personally intimated Admiral Harry Harris Jr., the head of the US Pacific Command, of Japan's concern about US president's nuclear move, arguing that if Obama declares a no first use policy, deterrence against countries such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea will weaken and the risks of conflict will rise.

The Janus-faced Abe has angered Japanese atomic bomb survivors, who say his opposition to Obama's move is counterproductive to global efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons.

The mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have sent a letter to Obama supporting the US' potential nuclear policy change, saying the move would "mark an important step toward realizing a world without nuclear weapons".

In an open letter calling for Japan to support a US no first use policy, 14 US physicists and scholars said the path to a safer world remain blocked as long as the US refuses to make this change.

Putting itself under the US nuclear umbrella, Japan has not supported a no first use policy. Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun criticized the Abe administration for going against the trend of nuclear disarmament. And the Asahi Shimbun called the nuclear deterrence theory "a relic of the Cold War period".

"The government of Japan has not ruled out a possible use of nuclear weapons by the US. That is broadly at odds with the sentiment of the Japanese public, which does not want a repeat of the ravages of a nuclear attack," the Asahi Shimbun said.

This newspaper appealed to the Abe administration to seek a security policy that does not rely on the US nuclear umbrella and begin holding talks with Washington to achieve that goal.

Reading a peace declaration on Aug 9, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue appealed to the Japanese government to play a leading role in the efforts to create a nuclear weapons-free zone, a concept that, in his words, embodies mankind's wisdom.

The Asahi Shimbun's advice to Abe, who stood beside Obama in Hiroshima in May: cooperate actively with the US president in his bid to promote the no first use policy.

Yet Abe has made himself a case study in hypocrisy.

The author is China Daily Tokyo bureau chief. caihong@chinadaily.com.cn
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  An operation to find the Nazi "gold train" in Poland started last Monday, with the small Polish city of Walbrzych being put in the global media spotlight.

"We have so much mud [that] we have to wait for it to dry. We think next Friday we will start again," Christel Focken said, adding that the search area has been hit by heavy rain over the last few days.

Many fortune hunters as well as local residents believe that the 150-meter-long German train, laden with valuable treasures, that disappeared during the Nazi era while en route from the then East Germany city of Breslau, now called Wroclaw and part of Poland, to Walbrzych may be entombed inside one of the clandestine tunnels near Ksiaz Castle, just outside of Walbrzych.
This made CNN reported Dana Bash wonder, why would the Foundation not stop doing it right away?

In her rather fierce interview with Robby Mook, a Clinton Campaign manager, she asked:

"If it's not okay to take this money as a President, why was it okay to take it as a Secretary of State?"

Unfortunately, Robby Mook failed to provide a clear and direct answer to that question. He did say, though, that the Foundation is under "scrutiny" for its "unprecedented" (a word which he repeated some five times during a five-minute interview) move towards being "transparent". Mook attempted to divert the question by saying that presidential Donald Trump, by contrast, has never revealed his financial data.

He also noted that "over ten million people [probably a slip of tongue, as Hillary Clinton told about nine million earlier] around the world get life-saving AIDS medication because of the Foundation."

"We're focused on getting Hillary elected president", Mook said twice during the interview.
Inmates in US prisons are increasingly trading food like noodles instead of cigarettes, according to a new study by Michael Gibson-Light, a researcher at the University of Arizona School of Sociology.

However, Gibson-Light suggests that the change is not a result of smoking bans in US jails, but rather a reaction to state cost-cutting measures which have decreased the quality of prison food.

"Prisoners are so unhappy with the quality and quantity of prison food that they receive that they have begun relying on ramen noodlesa cheap, durable food productas a form of money in the underground economy," he said, Phys.org reported.


TOKYO (Sputnik)According to Kyodo News, high-ranking officials from Japan's defense and foreign ministries visited Iwakuni and informed the city Mayor Yoshihiko Fukuda as well as Yamaguchi Governor Tsugumasa Muraoka of the plans. The news agency noted that the Lockheed Martin's F-35 deployment in Japan would make the first US stealth aircraft stationing overseas.

In 2014, the CNBC news network described the F-35, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, as the most expensive project in the history of the US military amounting to as much as $1.5 trillion over 55 years of service.

The F-35 is the most advanced military aircraft, combining radar-evading and radar-jamming capabilities, supersonic speed, tight maneuvering and a helmet that gives pilots 360-degree vision.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States will allocate some $138 million in additional humanitarian aid to South Sudan, US Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Monday.

"Today, I am also announcing nearly $138 million in new aid from the United States to the people of South Sudan," Kerry said. "The new funds, the $138 million, will be used to provide food, water, and medicine to those in need."

Kerry called on all parties to the conflict in South Sudan to allow an unfettered access of the humanitarian aid deliveries.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Likely voters in the United States want an end to the countrys efforts to establish democracies in the Middle East and elsewhere that are modeled on Western-style governments, considering the policy both ineffective and a waste of taxpayer dollars, a Rasmussen poll revealed on Monday.

"While President George W. Bush was perhaps the most aggressive proponent of nation-building with his administration's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Republicans (62 percent) are even stronger opponents than Democrats (45 percent)," the poll revealed.

Some 53 percent of voters not affiliated with either major political party in the United States oppose continuing the policy of nation building.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  A newly released batch of 725 US State Department emails are fueling speculation that the Clinton Foundation gave big donors special access to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, according to a Monday press release by Judicial Watch.

"These new emails confirm that Hillary Clinton abused her office by selling favors to Clinton Foundation donors," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, further demand a "serious, independent investigation to determine whether Clinton and others broke the law."

According to the watchdog group, the preferential treatment given to many Clinton Foundation donors "was at the specific request" of the Foundations executive Douglas Band.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The nearly 15,000 emails to and from Hillary Clinton when she was US secretary of state uncovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should be released to the American people before the November 8 presidential election, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement on Monday.

"The process for reviewing these emails needs to be expedited, public disclosure should begin before early voting starts and the emails in question should be released in full before Election Day," Preibus stated.

In an investigation over the past year, the FBI discovered the emails that Clinton and her lawyers had never previously acknowledged to exist.
Maloof said that in 2003, the Iraqi government invited US troops to look for weapons of mass destruction there, as well as repeatedly denying US accusations that it was hiding the weapons. The government of neighbouring Syria also agreed to facilitate 5,000 US troops entering Iraq to search for WMD, in return for investment in the reconstruction of infrastructure.

"They also knew that if we invaded Iraq, that it would have a spillover effect in Syria, and look what happened. That has also now engendered greater business for the defence industries as well, so it's a never-ending cycle."

Maloof said that anti-Russian rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is a threat to relations between the two countries, as is her hawkish foreign policy.

"I'm very concerned that if Hillary Clinton gets in, the relationship between the US and Russia is going to be tarnished immediately because of the name-calling she's been doing, of President Putin first of all."

"It's a difference between someone is wedded to the past, in the case of Hillary, and someone like Donald Trump who says let's give peace a chance, if you will, and let's work on common interests rather than going for 'regime change,'" Maloof said.
WASHINGTON (Virginia)  Some 13,000 convicted felons have had their right to vote restored by executive action that was individually applied to each applicant to comply with a recent court decision, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe announced in a press release on Monday.

"Restoring the rights of Virginians who have served their time and live, work and pay taxes in our communities is one of the pressing civil rights issues of our day," McAuliffe told reporters earlier, the release explained.

McAuliffe initially issued a sweeping executive order that would have given the right to vote, serve in juries and other privileges to more than 200,000 felons who had completed their sentences.
Two hearings are scheduled this week in North Dakota federal court. On Wednesday the Standing Rock Sioux Tribes July 27 lawsuit against the USACE will be considered, challenging the Armys refusal to conduct a thorough survey of the pipelines environmental impact.

The suit, filed by the environmental group EarthJustice, says, in part, "The construction and operation of the pipeline, as authorized by the Corps, threatens the tribe's environmental and economic well-being, and would damage and destroy sites of great historic, religious, and cultural significance to the tribe."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Two US Congressional Committees have issued subpoenas to three companies that worked on Hillary Clinton's private email server during her tenure as secretary of state, Republican Congressman Lamar Smith said in a press release.

"Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the US House Science, Space, and Technology Committee issued subpoenas today with the support of US Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, to three companies that provided software and services that played a role in maintaining her private email server," the release stated on Monday.

The subpoenas were issued after Smith and Johnson sent to the companies a request for information on July 12.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The Florida Department of Health will provide Miami-Dade County an additional $5 million in state funds to better control mosquito populations and fight the Zika virus, Governor Rick Scott said in a press release.

"Today, Governor Rick Scott announced that the Florida Department of Health (DOH) will allocate $5 million in additional state funding to Miami-Dade County for Zika preparedness and mosquito control," the release stated on Monday.

Last week Scott announced the discovery of a second area in Miami-Dade County where individuals had contracted the Zika virus from local mosquitos.
The bikers maintain that there is no justification for spraying a blinding weapon at someone operating a motorcycle, and assert that someone could have easily been killed.

On Friday, it was announced that the internal affairs investigation was over, and that the case is now closed.

Sgt. Marcus Povero, a police spokesman, told the local NBC affiliate that the officer will receive internal sanctions, but would not elaborate what those sanctions will be. He did however add that they could range from retraining, to a simple admonishment from a commander.

Povero also added that none of the bikers involved in the incident filed a formal complaint.

Nobody that witnessed or was involved in this situation ever filed a complaint, Povero said. This was an internal investigation started by our own internal affairs unit.
Siebert also recalled that the representatives of the Turkish government and the country's state-run media insist that it was Washington which masterminded the attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Yes, if Gulen's extradition is rejected by US court, that will negatively affect US Turkey relations, but who will be the biggest loser  Sinan (@BeyazitsinanG) 11  2016 .

Turkey's leadership specifically pointed to the fact, Siebert wrote, that Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of orchestrating the coup, now resides in the US, and that a former US State Department member was in attendance at an Istanbul conference when the coup took place.

In this vein, Siebert referred to the results of the latest opinion polls, in which two out of three Turkish respondents said that they believe Washington was involved in instigating the coup. Siebert also quoted Erdogan as saying that America must choose between Gulen and Turkey, a warning that was echoed by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, who said that Washington's choice to give Gulen asylum in the US may "destroy" bilateral relations.

In this connection, Siebert recalled Erdogan's recent visit to Russia, where he met President Vladimir Putin and praised Moscow's "unambiguous" condemnation of the failed coup in Turkey.

Of course, this is not the only reason for the burgeoning dispute between Ankara and Washington, which have closely cooperated since the 1950s, Siebert wrote, referring to Ankara's dissatisfaction with American support for the Kurdish militias in Syria, where the US is fighting Daesh terrorists.

Earlier, CNN quoted the White House as saying that Biden is due to visit Turkey on August 24. He will meet Erdogan and Yildirim "to discuss the US-Turkey relationship and a range of issues of importance to both nations."

Also high on the agenda will be Ankara's request for the extradition of Gulen, who is currently living in exile in the Unites States.
On August 16, Russia used the Iranian base for the first time in its anti-terrorism campaign in Syria. Russian Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and Su-34 strike aircraft carried out airstrikes against the jihadist groups Islamic State and the Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front, in Syria.

"We will under no circumstances provide Russia with the [Hamadan] military base. They [Russians] did not come to stay for good," Dehqan was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency.

On Saturday, Dehqan said that Russia can fly jets from Iran's Hamadan airbase to strike jihadist targets in Syria for as long as needed but Tehran has no plans to give Russian forces access to other Iranian air bases for Moscow's counter-terrorism operation in Syria.

The Tu-22M3 is a long-range bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Such bombers have previously carried out airstrikes against IS (banned in Russia) targets in Syria from Russian airspace. The Su-34 fighter-bomber has been tested in the war against Islamist radicals in Syria, being among the first aircraft to serve in the Russian campaign there in 2015.
Abe posted several photos from her visit to the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. She wrote that she had offered flowers and prayers there.

On May 25, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he had no plans to visit Pearl Harbor in response to US President Barack Obama's visit to Hiroshima.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)The delegations plane headed by Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and US European Command (EURCOM) chief US Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti landed at the capitals Esenboga airport at noon local time (09:00 GMT), according to the Haberturk broadcaster.

Scaparrotti is expected to meet Chief of the Turkish General Staff Hulusi Akar, the outlet added.

Ankara has repeatedly criticized Western leaders for failing to display solidarity with Turkey through paying official visits to the country following the attempted July 15 government overthrow.
Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $600 million to boosting Ukraines defense capabilities, according to the US Defense Department.

The US military assistance to Kiev is currently limited to supplying uniforms and equipment, including counter-battery radars, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and means of secure communication, but it provides no lethal weapons.

Moscow has repeatedly warned against plans to supply arms to Ukraine, as it fears it would only lead to a further escalation of the conflict in Donbas, where Ukraine launched a military operation in April 2014, after local residents refused to recognize the new government in Kiev that they viewed as illegitimate.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)Father Laurence Soper, 72, was arrested when he landed in Luton Airport on Sunday, after being detained in Kosovo under a European Arrest Warrant, the broadcaster Sky News reported.

The priest is accused of assaulting five boys while a teacher at a school in Ealing, in west of London, during the period 1972-1986, the broadcaster added.

Soper was initially arrested in 2010 and released on bail but he subsequently fled abroad, prompting an international search. He was arrested in Kosovo in May and is now due to appear at Ealing Magistrates' Court, the media outlet reported.


MOSCOW (Sputnik)In early August, Russian media reported, citing the Kremlin's response to Yaroshenko's mother request, that Moscow was ready to exchange Russian nationals Konstantin Yaroshenko and Viktor Bout for US prisoners detained in Russia. On August 9, Russian Foreign Ministry Human Rights Ombudsman Konstantin Dolgov said the United States lacked the political will to do it.

"Konstantin is given 300 minutes a month, every day he is allowed to spend a maximum of 15 minutes. There are all sorts of obstacles [in correspondence], because the phones are always tapped," Victoria said.

The pilot's wife also reminded she had not seen her husband for five years and had no possibility to travel from Russia to the United States.
CAIRO (Sputnik)  Egypt is ready to create separate security zones in airports for Russian tourists entering and leaving the country, Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy confirmed Monday.

"This does not concern the countrys sovereignty. We are ready to provide special zones for Russian tourists if their number increases accordingly," the minister told reporters.

According to Fathy, the ministry is ready to introduce any security measures as long as they are not contrary to the countrys sovereignty.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Moscow stands against the deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in South Korea, but looks forward to the diplomatic solution of the issue, media reported Monday.

The Yonhap news agency reported, citing Russian Ambassador to Seoul Alexander Timonin, that despite opposing the THAAD deployment Moscow expected relations with Seoul to enhance in coming years.

In early July, the Russian Foreign Ministry protested the decision on the THAAD deployment in South Korea, claiming that such a step would have a highly negative impact on global strategic stability.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  About 100 troops were sent to the Afghan city of Lashkar Gah, capital of the southern Helmand province to prevent it from being seized by the Taliban terrorist movement, US Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, spokesman of coalition forces in Afghanistan, said on Monday.

Since July, the Taliban Islamists have seized territories across the Helmand province threatening its capital.

Cleveland said that the US reinforcement is a "temporary effort" to advise the Afghan police, The Guardian reported.
Last week, Woodslee, Ontario owner Don Leschied was watching his daughter riding his homebred, representing Canada, and finishing fourth in an Olympic equestrian event in Rio, and Sunday he was back in Ontario in the Leamington winner's circle with another horse, his eight-year-old gelding Blissfull Years ($4.40).

The son of Blissfull Hall-Dont Hit On Me had just won the seventh race in 1:57.4 for trainer Gabby Sasso and driver Mark MacQuarrie.

The post race interview gave Leschied an opportunity to tell the overflowing crowd about the semantics of getting a horse to Rio. First, he had to trailer his horse down to Florida, and then on to a 747 for the seven-hour trip to Rio.

Tiring, exhausting, but most fulfilling! said Leschied, who was beaming over the experience, and the thought that he was doing it from a winner's circle back home.

If that wasnt enough for the Ontario lawyer, he returned in the 10th race with his second winner of the day Spago Hall ($5.80) for Sasso and MacQuarrie.

Mark MacQuarrie had three wins on the day, winning earlier with trainer Gord McDonnells new east coast purchase, Gangnam Style ($3.90), in 2:00.4 for co-owners Vince Orlando and Sherry Murray of Leamington.

Donnie Rankin held on to his lead in the driver standings with three winners on the day.

Next week, the Lakeshore Horse Racing Association will be holding a Derby Hat contest for the ladies, with big prizes. Post time is 1:30 p.m.

To view Sunday's harness racing results, click on the following link: Sunday Results - Leamington Raceway.

(With files from Leamington Raceway)
Rockin Ron and driver Yannick Gingras fought off fan favourite Wiggle It Jiggleit to give trainer Ron Burke his second straight victory in the $200,000 Prix DEte at Hippodrome 3R on a rainy Sunday afternoon (August 21).

With the inside post in a short field of five, reigning U.S. Horse of the Year Wiggle It Jiggleit and driver Montrell Teague were the overwhelming favourites at 1-9, with their rivals dismissed at double-digit odds. However, Quebec native Gingras fired Rockin Ron out from post five to take the lead ahead of Wiggle It Jiggleit through a :27 first quarter. As Gingras backed down the pace to the half in :57.1, Teague made his move with Wiggle It Jiggleit in front of the grandstand and duelled with Rockin Ron into the backstretch. The favourite gained a slight advantage on the outside as they raced past three-quarters in 1:23.4, but Rockin Ron fought back in the final turn and drew clear down the lane to win in 1:52 flat over the 'good' track. Wiggle It Jiggleit settled for the runner-up role while Rockin In Heaven and Jody Jamieson followed in third.

"It was a great race, we made a little excitement out of it," said Gingras. "Obviously, Wiggle It Jiggleit was the best horse in the race -- I knew that, everybody knew that -- but we got a little bit of an advantage there when I made the front and I was able to control the race. I knew the only way I could win the race was if he did pull the two-hole. If he had sat behind me, I think he maybe would have beaten me. But I was going pretty slow, I was forcing his hand. Like I said, I thought that was the only way I could beat him was to have him outside of me the last half."

"Yannick was driving the horse as perfect as he could have done and 'Wiggle It' pulled and tried to go at them and they did their best and put on a hell of a show," said assistant trainer Mickey Burke Jr., who was also at 3R for the stable's victory in the Prix D'Ete last year with All Bets Off. "I was really glad it worked out the way it did. The best thing is that everybody got to compete in a good, solid race. With a five-horse field, I was a little worried about it just being a dominant thing."

Rockin Ron was sent postward at odds of 14-1 as part of the Burke entry -- coupled with Rock N Roll World, who finished fourth -- and returned $30.40 for a $2 Win ticket. Asap Hanover and Louis-Philippe Roy completed the field.

This was the second time that Rockin Ron defeated Wiggle It Jiggleit in a signature Canadian race. His last victory was also against the Teague trainee in the Confederation Cup in May at Flamboro Downs, completing a stretch of 10 straight wins in a 1:50.1 national record mile.

"The horse couldn't have raced any better," said Burke. "And it was probably to our advantage with having the rain and everything; it probably made it a little slower of a race. But he raced great at Flamboro and he raced great [today], and he's been a great horse for us. Everyone loves the horse."

Rockin Ron earned his 11th win of the year from 19 starts and lifted his seasonal earnings to $424,850. The Real Desire gelding, who is a career winner of 20 races and $549,768, is campaigned by Pennsylvania owners Burke Racing Stable LLC, Weaver Bruscemi LLC and Rtc Stables Inc.

While the all-age track record stands at 1:50.3, courtesy of past Prix D'Ete winners Sunfire Blue Chip and All Bets Off, Rockin Ron's 1:52 winning time was new mark for an aged pacing gelding. It lowered Atomic Million AM's record by three-fifths of a second.

TRACK NOTES: The Hippodrome 3R trackman, Sylvain Blais, did a superb job with the racing surface on Sunday as, despite the rain, two tracks records were set early on the program before the downpours, and seven of the winners on the day recorded lifetime marks. Both track records came in the third round of the Future Stars Series for two-year-old pacers.

Gingras scored his first of three wins on the day in the third race Future Stars division for colts. He sent Makasi to the lead by the opening quarter-mile and never looked back, scoring in 1:55.2 in his maiden victory. Trained by Helene Fillion for owner/breeder Hudson Standardbred Stable of Hudson, Que, Makasi is sired by Shanghai Phil and paid $2.40 to win. The previous track divisional track record was set 23 years ago by Canaco Score (1993) and was tied by Hall Bro in 2013. It was one of the longest standing records at 3R.

In the next $7,500 division for pacing fillies, Canadas newest Hall of Famer, Yves Filion, also led from the quarter-mile to the finish with Yaris Bayama in 1:56.4. Her clocking erased the prior divisional record of 1:57.3 held by First Girl (2014) and HP Sissy (2015). The daughter of Sportswriter, trained by Filion and owned and bred by his Bayama Farms, has been razor sharp all season. The win was Yaris Bayamas third in five starts and followed a lifetime-best 1:52.4 victory on August 12 in a $105,000 Ontario Sires Stakes Gold division at Mohawk Racetrack. Yaris Bayama paid just $2.10 to win.

The other colt division was won also won by Filion with Yogi Bayama ($2.10) in 1:59.1 and the other filly division went to Carl Duguays Chaleurs Melodie ($6.70), driven to victory by Daniel Dube in 2:00.

To view Sunday's harness racing results, click on the following link: Sunday Results - Hippodrome 3R.

(With files from QJC)
Have you ever wanted to experience the thrill of harness racing from the drivers seat? Well, here is your chance!

The I Love Canadian Harness Racing Fan Club will be at Georgian Downs this Saturday (August 27) with the Hands On Horses Wanna Drive Team to celebrate the 30th edition of the Honorable Earl Rowe Memorial Trot.

To commemorate this memorable race the Fan Club and the Wanna Drive team have partnered on a contest to give Fan Club members a chance to drive a racehorse, on the track, between races! The winner and a friend will be paired with a professional driver from the Wanna Drive team in a double-seated jog cart to pace or trot around the Georgian Downs' five-eighths mile oval! The winners will also receive a Fan Club swag package.

So what are you waiting for? All you have to do, in 50 words or less, is tell us why you should win the Wanna Drive experience!

Please include your name and contact information with submission.

E-mail submissions to [email protected] by Thursday, August 25 at 9:00 a.m. (EST). The winner will be contacted on Thursday afternoon.
Er is iets heel griezeligs aan de gang in Nederland. Dat wij geleidelijk aan in een totalitaire 'democratie' wegzinken wordt steeds ...
BY OLIVIA ROSE

CABINET has denied yet another request for additional legal aid funds made by the judiciary for the Special Investigation and Prosecution Team (SIPT) corruption trials.





This was revealed on August 3, at a Cabinet meeting chaired by the Governor, Peter Beckingham, at the Hon. N J S Francis Building on Grand Turk.





The SIPT and civil recovery process records indicate that the price tag has amounted to some $36 million to date, half of which was paid by the UK government.





Already nine months into the trial and prosecutors are already of the view that the trial could last way into 2017.





This realization has evoked widespread concern about the cost of the SIPT trials and its impact on the public`s purse.





Earlier this year, Minister of Finance Washington Misick categorically stated that the cost of the Special Investigation and Prosecution Team (SIPT) trial of former Premier Michael Misick and other corruption accused should be footed by the UK government.





He said: "My view is that those costs should be borne by Her Majestys UK Government.





Misick said that the funds being spent on the trial could be used to further develop the country.





"We have a lot of things that we could be spending that money on, but at the end of the day, it says justice must not only be done it must be seen to be done, and sometimes the wheel of justice turns very slowly.





"My opinion and the opinion of the government and, I believe the majority of the people of the Turks and Caicos, is that if whatever purported wrong was done, it was done while we had a British Governor here and they were sleep-walking.





"If they can indeed prove that theres been wrongdoing, they should pay for it.





"That is unfortunate and unfair to the people of the Turks and Caicos who have to foot that bill.





This is not the first time a request was rejected for the SIPT trial; in August 2015 Premier Rufus Ewing rejected a request for $4.3million to provide security for Special Prosecutor Helen Garlick and her team.





The Premier's move was vetoed by the Governor who later approved the money from Government funds.





According to the 2016/2017 budget statements, the SIPT judicial cost was laid at some $5 million under revised statement for 2015 and 2016, while $4 million is slated for 2016/2017.





The Myrtle Rigby Health centre renovation for the SIPT trial was funded to tune of $1 million through a UK grant.





Since 2009, when they were accused of widespread corruption in the Sir Robin Auld report, Michael Misick and others have awaited their time before the judge.





Former Premier Michael Misick and several others are accused of defrauding the Government of millions of dollars.





Former Premier Misick, who is named as the main defendant in the trial, has since the beginning of the proceedings against him stated that he is being persecuted by the British government.





The SIPT trials began on December 18, 2015, after an indepth four-year investigation into widespread Government corruption.





The hearings were expected to last six months, but the trial has seen many delays since it began.




By Daisy Handfield

COMMISSIONER of Police, James Smith, has said that no recent arrests have yet been made in connection with the two recent murders of Dominicans Sonrineida Moreno Arias and Yuneiry Veras.





Mr Smith, in an interview at the Providenciales police headquarters on Thursday, said that a couple of arrests were made during the early stages of the murders, but those suspects have already been cleared and released.





He said: "These two crimes have many similar aspects, but are subject to separate enquiries.





"Of course they link with each other, and now we have to see if the links are real.





"We have to look and see if we are looking for one person or a number of persons.





He said the RTCPF had reached out to other countries for assistance.





"These enquiries are very complex. And yes, we are using experts. "We have referred some stuff to experts in the United Kingdom to determine, for instance, a vehicle type, DNA to establish gender and ethnicity of a potential culprit.





"We are not pushing this off to one side, these are horrific crimes and we are determined to catch the culprit, Smith said.





The police commissioner said that he could not go into details as to what information has been discovered, because it could hinder their investigations.





He said: "I cant give you details on what we are doing, but we have a team of officers on board, who are continuing to make enquiries. In fact, at the end of last week, three officers travelled to the Dominican Republic, as part of an enquiry.





Smith is asking the public to come forward with any information that may be related to these the crimes.





The body of Yuneiry Veras was discovered at about 1.04pm on Saturday, April 23, in Pirates Cove located on Tom Lightbournes Drive, in the north western area of Providenciales.





The area is very secluded and is surrounded by bushes.

Veras was last seen on April 18, at about 2.15am, at her residence in Blue Hills. She was wearing a black top and blue short skirt.





Sonrineida Moreno Arias, a 26-year-old Dominican woman, was found naked in the bushes on July 13, 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.
A WHOPPING 125 people from the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) have already showed interest in joining the British Armed Forces, according to childrens rights activist, Patricia Duff.





Duff held a press conference at the Edward Gartland Youth Centre, Providenciales, a few weeks back to speak on the initiative, and to encourage locals to sign up.





She explained that if more than 50 people showed interest, she would look into bringing down a team from the British Armed Forces to the TCI, to conduct interviews with those who showed interest.





In a recent interview, Duff explained that she was now waiting to hear when representatives from the British Armed Forces were available to pay a visit to the TCI.





She said: "This is new ground for them, so I expect it will take them a little while to co-ordinate their arrival.





The childrens rights activist said that young Turks and Caicos Islanders between the ages of 18 and 32 were welcomed to join.





Duff said that applications were still being accepted, and that a website has been implemented, so that individuals could apply online.





She said as information was relayed to her, she would keep the public informed.





Interested people could log on to: www.Turksandcaicos-islands.net/jobs, and fill out the required form.





Or, call Patricia Duff on 649- 244- 6838, or 649- 941-8499.




OLIVIA ROSE

AS ELECTION jitters spread throughout the country, the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM) is on the move.





The party introduced its Grand Turk constituency candidates at its Headquarters in Grand Turkon Wednesday, August 10, 2016.





According to a release from the party`s leader, Sharlene Cartwright-Robinson ,party members Derek Rolle and Edwin Astwood will carry the banner for the PDM in Electoral District 1 and Electoral District 2 respectively.





Cartwright-Robinson said: "This announcement was met with loud applause from a packed room of excited supporters.





"Party Leader used the opportunity to energize the Party base and to assure them that the Nations Capital will be respected as the Nations Capital and hence the decision to present its candidates in Grand Turk.





Other party officials and hopefuls were also invited to greet those in attendance which included Sean Astwood, Deputy Leader, Derek Taylor, Delroy Williams, Goldray Ewing and Josephine Connolly, All Island hopefuls Karen Malcolm and Robert Been jr. National Chairman and ED7 hopeful Douglas Parnell.





On Friday representatives of the PDM continued on to Middle and North Caicos and had a busy weekend with a Town Hall on Middle Caicos on Friday, August 12, 2016 and a Prayer Breakfast on Saturday morning, August 13, 2016.





Cartwright Robinson said: "The Town Hall Meeting was well attended by residents from Middle Caicos and North Caicos and quickly changed to rally status, a mood set by the attendees.





The Party delegation included Party Leader, National Chairman, Douglas Parnell, National Campaign Chair, All Island hopefuls Karen Malcolm and Robert Been and the PDMs standard bearer for ED 4, Ralph Higgs.





Ralph Higgs informed the members of his vision for these Islands and invited their questions, comments and suggestions.





Cartwright -Robinson also gave an account of her Partys stewardship on issues affecting the people of Middle Caicos all members of the delegation greeted the attendees.





On Saturday, August 13, 2016, members of the PDM attended the Funeral Service for the Late Charles Glinton and witnessed the public announcement of the renaming of the Post Office after the Late Charles Glinton, former Post Man and long serving civil servant.





She added that his service and commitment were exemplary and he is worthy of this recognition. "I extend my sincerest condolences to his wife Esterleen, his children and wider family. This renaming, I hope inspires civil servants to serve with distinction.





"The PDM intends to govern closely with its people as it continues to advance its plans that are "people centered.




"WE HAVE persons in the legislature, female members, who have the testicular fortitude of the combined number of male figures in the House.





These were the words of Lillian Misick, outspoken Governors appointed member to the local legislature and long time advocate for womens rights in the Turks and Caicos Islands.





Misick made that statement during a womens forum held during the commonwealth parliamentary association meeting held last month in Canada. On Monday, at a press conference in the nations capital, Misick recapped some of the high points of her presentation to her female commonwealth counterparts.





She recalled that prior to the constitutional changes in the TCI back in 2011, womens roles in established political organizations were basically of canvassing support for the political parties and fund raising activities.





However, with the constitutional change, women who were not necessarily able to get into these political organisations, were then able to contest the elections and gain a seat in the House of Assembly as large representatives.





She said that the conference was informed that for the first time in history of the Turks an Caicos Islands there are seven women in parliament.





She added that she also outlined some of the challenges female parliamentarians face in the TCI.





"I outlined THAT perhaps the male figures felt that women should be relegated to a position that they ought not be relegated in this 21st century.





"The conference was told that women held their own in the legislature and I shared with them that you have persons in the legislature, female members, who has the testicular fortitude of the combined number of male figures in the House.





"And they were also informed that one of our greatest challenges as women parliamentarians is women themselves.





Misick said that the female delegates were therefore encouraged to support women and not to allow themselves to be confused and thereby appoint, nominate and or vote for men because they are men.





"I ended by saying that we ought to remember what the famed Sojourner Truth (African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist) said.





"She said, if one woman could turn the world upside down then combined they ought to be able to turn it right side up again.





Misick said that she firmly believes in this and that women should remember this every day and continue to serve as they are serving in the house of legislature in Turks and Caicos.





The mandate of the commonwealth parliamentary association is to develop and support parliamentarians and their staff to identify benchmarks and to implement the values of commonwealth when delegates from member countries meet every year.








The fight against the Islamic State may get the headlines. But its the military threats from Russia and China that most worry top Pentagon officials  and are driving a new arms race to deter these great-power rivals.

This question of how to deal with Russian and Chinese military advances has gotten almost no attention in the 2016 presidential campaign. But it deserves a careful look. The programs begun in the waning days of the Obama administration could potentially change the face of warfare, in the United States favor, but they would require political support and new spending by the next president.

A drive to build exotic versions of conventional weapons may sound crazy in a world that already has too much military conflict. But advocates argue that strengthening U.S. conventional forces might be the only way to avoid escalation to nuclear weapons if war with Moscow or Beijing began.

Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work argued for the new deterrence strategy in a presentation this month to the bipartisan Aspen Strategy Group, amplifying comments he made to me in an interview in February. The approach, awkwardly named the third offset strategy, would leverage the United States technological superiority by creating weapons that could complicate attack planning by an adversary.

The premise is that as Russia and China modernize their militaries, the United States must exploit its lead in high-tech warfare. In the world envisioned by Pentagon planners, the United States could field an array of drones in the sky, unmanned submarines beneath the seas and advanced systems on the ground that could overwhelm an adversarys battle-management networks. Like the two previous offsets, battlefield nuclear weapons in the 1950s and precise conventional weapons in the 1970s, this one would seek to restore lost U.S. military dominance.

The concerns prompting the new strategy were previewed by Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at his Senate confirmation hearing in July 2015: If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I would have to point to Russia. And if you look at their behavior, its nothing short of alarming.

China worries some Pentagon officials even more than Russia. A recent study by the Rand Corp., titled War With China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable, warned: Improvements in Chinese military capabilities mean that a war would not necessarily go the way U.S. war planners plan it. Whereas a clear U.S. victory once seemed probable, it is increasingly likely that a conflict could involve inconclusive fighting with steep losses on both sides.

Top Pentagon officials say that because of Russian and Chinese advances, the U.S. militarys overmatch has diminished. Planners can no longer guarantee a president that the United States could prevail in the early days of a conventional conflict; they fear that the United States might lose escalation dominance  meaning, basically, the ability to call the shots  in a future confrontation.

Work urged European allies in a speech in Brussels in April: Its time for another doctrinal and conceptual reawakening. He argued that to cope with an incredibly lethal modern battlefield, the U.S. must maintain a healthy margin of technological superiority, because an erosion . . . might ultimately undermine our conventional deterrence, contribute to crisis instability, and greatly raise the potential cost of any future U.S. military operation.

A glimpse of what could lie ahead, if the next president continues the projects begun by the Obama Pentagon, came in a provocative 2014 study, Toward a New Offset Strategy, by Robert Martinage of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Martinage recommended a dizzying new arsenal that would include a fleet of unmanned subs; an array of undersea sensors; seabed payload pods that could hide drones underwater until they were needed in a conflict; electromagnetic rail guns and directed-energy weapons; high-energy lasers that could blind enemy sensors; and a range of other new technologies.

These initiatives would contribute to an effective offset strategy by affordably restoring U.S. power projection capability and capacity, bolstering conventional deterrence . . . and imposing costs upon prospective adversaries, Martinage wrote.

Pentagon officials say they decided over the past year to reveal some formerly top-secret weapons programs because the disclosure would complicate Russian and Chinese military planning. But they say they have concealed other programs to preserve warfighting effectiveness in any future conflict.

U.S. officials contend that this push to offset Russian and Chinese gains will have a stabilizing effect in great-power relations, rather than a destabilizing one. But in an unsettled world, this issue deserves broader debate during the presidential campaign.
Its high time to throw our masks and pay attention to our safety from pollution. For most people, make is the ultimate savior from air contamination and for some; it is the defensive tool to defend polluted air from reaching the face. But a recently held research is saying something else.

Recently, a group of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has discovered that veils give security against air contamination is a misrepresentation, and there are no inherent truths in this statement. They have recommended that wearing economic covers provide penniless security to confront against air pollution, while a large portion of the people botches it as the best cautious for exceptionally dirtied zones.

The group of scientists suggests that people wearing low-cost cloth masks with the hope to lessen their exposure to polluted air are fruitless. These masks give users only a false sense of protection, while in real they play no crucial role. While in Indian washable masks are highly used, other Asia-specific countries use such masks for lessening the exposure to air.

Researcher Richard Peltier, one of the participants of the group said, Wearing fabric veils decreased the introduction to some degree, but weak fabricated and inexpensive masks perform ineffectively when contrasted with alternative pollution defensive methods available in the market. What turned out to be clear to us is that a large number of individuals presumably wear these veils to feel more secured against contaminated air, but these masks make things worse and gives no protection against the air.

In this research, four types of masks were involved, and they are one pleated surgical type, two cloths and one cone-shaped cloth with exhalation flaps. This study is held in Nepal, and the scientists examine these four masks for discovering their numerous variables and efficiencies. However, the result uttered a surprising fact.
ISRO to lift up Aditya probe to Sun in 2020 and four other satellites in next three months

The Indian space agency ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) is all set to blast four satellites in the coming three months this year, said ISRO Director Mylswamy Annadurai while addressing the crowd of a private college function in Thoothukudi.

ISRO has planned to launch 70 satellites in next three years. Also, the renowned space agency has launched 10 ten satellites between August 2015 and August 2016 and now Indian scientists are planning to lift up four more satellites  INSAT-3DR and SCATSAT-1 on September this year, GSAT-18 in October and ResourceSat-2A in November 2016. All these satellites will help ISRO in achieving its goal of 70 satellite launches in three years.

Seeking the success of Chandrayaan mission, ISRO had planned to launch Chandrayaan-2 (second lunar mission) along with Russia, but now India will the conduct the mission all alone without any foreign help. Chandrayaan-2 mission is scheduled for the launch in early 2018.

The aim of the second lunar mission will be to soft land on the lunar surface and conduct several chemical tests on the Moon itself. Annadurai further revealed that the Indian space agency ISRO is also planning to launch a probe named Aditya-L1 to the Sun bu 2020.

ISRO has gained fame and respect after conducting lunar mission Chandrayaan and mars mission mangalyaan. Mars orbiter mission (MoM) got featured in Time magazine and has also won prestigious Space Pioneer Award 2015. Foreign agencies started seeking help of ISRO for their satellites launches after the successful MoM mission and as of now Indian space agency has launched more than 50 foreign satellites.
hidden

India's information technology hub Bengaluru is host to the largest number of technology-driven start-ups, followed by the National Capital Region (NCR) and Mumbai while Hyderabad and Chennai have also become quite popular among budding entrepreneurs, a study by industry chamber Assocham said. The study, done in association with the Thought Arbitrage Research Institute, found that in the sphere of technology-driven start-ups, India has moved up to third position after the US and Britain.

While the US has more than 47,000 tech start-ups and Britain has over 4,500, the figure for India was around 4,200 by 2015-end. "In terms of total number of start-ups, comprising tech and non-tech areas, India again figured among the five largest hosts in the world along with China," the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India said in a statement here on Sunday.

The number of start-ups in both India and China was 10,000 each. The US is at the No.1 position among the overall list of 83,000 budding entrepreneurs, the statement added. In India, Bengaluru was host to 26 per cent start-ups, followed by Delhi NCR with 23 per cent and Mumbai with 17 per cent. "In the 'catching up' category fell Hyderabad with eight per cent, and Chennai and Pune with six per cent each," Assocham said." The disruptive innovation in technology and process is creating newer Indian start-ups and foreign investors, including some of the well-known Venture Capital Funds, are showing immense interest in these start-ups," Assocham President Sunil Kanoria said in the statement.

According to the chamber, the awareness that a start-up is a vehicle of rapid growth through technological "disruption" and innovation needs to spread across the economy. "Only then, there can be a true start-up revolution; otherwise if any small traditional business is treated as a start-up then the start-up eco-system will never develop properly. "Realisation of this distinction needs to percolate to all strata of the policy-making and economy to ensure that a real support system for the start-ups, in terms of technology, hand-holding, funding and rapid growth, can develop properly in the country," it said.

The report has suggested tax exemptions for research and experimentation to encourage fresh ideas without fear of failure. It has also said courses on creation of small businesses should be encouraged in the learning campuses. Meanwhile, the government on Friday announced that a team would be set up to advise on how to further improve India's ranking in the global index of countries in the sphere of innovations.

Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made the announcement here while releasing the Global Innovation Index 2016 Report, which shows India has improved its index ranking by 15 places over last year to 66th place, following five previous years of decline in position. In his address at the event, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said India is becoming a centre for innovation, and in the last few years over 1,500 multinationals had relocated their R&D centres to places like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune and Gurgaon.

IANS
tech2 News Staff

Media reports have revealed that Oracle is funding a Washington-based anti-Google group. The Google Transparency Project campaigns for accountability on the side of Google and has so far been opaque about the funding of the organisation. The web site hosts data sets and updates on meetings between Google executives and official US government representatives. The organisation tracks issues such as undue influence by Google speakers at policy conferences, unethical meetings between the government and Google, or how Eric Schmidt is Obama's chief corporate ally.

The organisers of the Google Transparency Project have been notoriously tight lipped about who they are funded by. Based on an anonymous tip, a Fortune reporter contacted senior Oracle executives, and received confirmation that the anti-Google group was partially funded by Oracle. Microsoft, which has previously funded anti-Google campaigns, has denied any role in funding The Google Transparency Project.

The revelation comes close on the heels of Oracle losing an intellectual property rights lawsuit against Google, over the inclusion of Java APIs in the Android distribution. Google anticipated retaliation in many forms after Oracle lost the lawsuit. This sponsorship of a research group that exists only to expose and documents links between Google and the US Government seems to be just such a measure.

Clarity on intellectual property rights, and a patenting regime that promotes innovation instead of inhibiting it is the need of the hour when it comes to the messy intellectual property landscape of tech companies. However, another issue here is the shadowy nature of funding of groups that pose as public interest grass root platforms. A large tech corporation is funding a campaign centered around publication of data that reveals the tactics being used by another major tech corporation. In such instances, it is helpful to the consumer, and not misleading, if all the funding information of the campaign is made clear.
tech2 News Staff

Update: IANS reported that 8 stations, instead of the previously mentioned seven will start free Wi-Fi service. The new addition to the list is Kalyan Station in Thane district.

Union railway minister, Suresh Prabhu will inaugurate free Wi-Fi service today for the lakhs of commuters using the Mumbai suburban railway network. The commuters will be able to access free Wi-Fi service on seven stations that include Churchgate, Dadar, Bandra, Bandra Terminus, Khar, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus.

The users can access the internet at full speed for the first 30 minutes after which the speeds will drop. Commuters need to register their mobile number with the private telecom operator. The telecom operator will then send them a one-time-password (OTP) via SMS. The OTP then can be used to login to use the service for 30 minutes. As reported by Hindustan Times, Railway authorities have not worked out a monetary framework or any payment modalities. Instead, they are keeping the service free of charge for the time being.

The railway minister, Suresh Prabhu will also be inaugurating other facilities like the air-conditioned dormitory at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, booking counter at Borivali along with foot-over-bridges at Reay Road, Kurla, Chembur, Karjat, and Shahad. The service may not be much but it marks a significant step forward for the government as well as the Digital India campaign by Prime Minister Modi.

Earlier this year in May, Suresh Prabhu launched free Wi-fi service at the railway stations at Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Kacheguda in Telengana via videoconferencing in New Delhi. The service was commissioned by RailTel, a mini Ratna public sector undertaking, in association with Google for providing high-speed Internet to the commuters at these places.
tech2 News Staff

Samsung is shutting down its music streaming service, Milk Music. Samsung updated the description for the Android App, which now reads "The Samsung Milk Music app will no longer be supported, as of September 22, 2016." Milk Music was available only in the United States, and only on select Samsung Galaxy devices. Supported devices include tablets, mobile phones, televisions and smartwatches. Milk Music was launched in March 2014.

The service was based on Slacker radio, and offered over two hundred curated radio stations. Genres of music were presented in a dial, with sliders for tweaking the number of popular, favorite and new tracks in the mix, allowing users to "tune in" to a custom radio station. The service was available for free on Samsung Galaxy devices, but there was a premium subscription available for $3.99 (around Rs 268) per month. This allowed for offline caching of songs, uninterrupted playback without advertisements, a feature to toggle DJ commentary and the ability to skip an unlimited number of tracks.

Samsung is redirecting current users to the Slacker app. The shutdown follows a strategic decision by Samsung to partner with content providers to seamlessly integrate multiple music streaming service providers in the Samsung Galaxy devices. There are no additional details available at this time, but this hints that Samsung may have alternative services planned for delivering music to the Galaxy range of devices.
Nimish Sawant

Broadband internet speeds in India are among the slowest in the world, with an average of 2.8Mbps as of December 2015. South Korea on the other hand, has an average speed of 29 Mbps. The government of India is in the process of correcting that to an extent by boosting up the minimum broadband speeds from 512 Kbps to 2Mbps.

According to a report in the Times of India, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that he will take up the matter with the Communications ministry. "We will consider laying down a policy for increasing the minimum broadband speed from the current levels," he said.

One of the major reasons for pushing the minimum speed limit, is due to the rise in the startup ecosystem in India. Also delivery of various consumer services through mobile apps, online retail and so on are among the reasons which is prompting the government to consider this move to upgrade the minimum broadband speed on wired as well as wireless networks.

It was in August 2014, when the minimum broadband speed was doubled from 256 Kbps to 512 Kbps. Anyone who has used the internet on a 512 Kbps line in 2016 knows just how slow that speed is and how frustrating it is to access a lot of heavy websites as well as watch buffer-free videos. Even experts and industry analysts are calling 512Kbps an 'abysmally slow' speed.

Not just the government, but Trai had also proposed increasing the broadband speeds. "Speed must be above a certain threshold to enable use of desired applications such as video viewing or gaming. Higher electronic communication speeds are relevant in knowledge-based communities. This is because it spurs productivity, and hence increases competitiveness," said Trai in a report.

What about those dreaded FUP limits?

While it is good to see the government moving in the direction of improving internet speeds, it is pertinent that the regulations for this pass as soon as possible. At a time when India is on the verge of 4G revolution with many players getting on to the 4G bandwagon and offering competitive data plans at speeds close to 10Mbps at least, speeds such as 256Kbps or 512Kbps should not even be considered for broadband internet use.

But apart from slow connectivity, there is another elephant in the room  FUP or Fair Usage Policy. FUP basically limits the internet speeds after a particular bandwidth limit is reached. This means, that my 'Unlimited' 2Mbps plan will switch to 512Kbps after I have exhausted 16GB data within a month. Despite Trai's paper on transparency surrounding FUP limits, a lot of ISPs still continue to offer 'Unlimited Plans', for which the conditions are hidden somewhere in the fine print. Unless, there is a relaxation in the FUP practises, high speed internet is quite pointless to lot of people. It will just be another way for the internet service providers to get richer.

https://twitter.com/prasarbharati/status/747697044530278400

The tweet above shows how wireline connections are a fraction of the wireless connections. It is great that we are accelerating at a glorious rate as fare as mobile internet adoption is concerned, but fixed wireline connection is still a concern. At a time when Google is getting fibre connections to home, there are very few players in the Indian market who are offering such services. Needless to say, these services aren't within everyone's reach. Also they come with their own conditions. For instance, unless you can assure the provider of a bare minimum number of subscribers who want the service in your locality (in case the ISP does not operate in your locality), there is no way you are getting a fibre connection.

According to a Nasscom and Akamai report, India's 330 mn fixed and mobile internet subscriptions are expected to grow by 20 percent to 730 mn by 2020. A faster broadband connection and relaxation of the Fair Usage Policy (FUP) limits will go a long was in getting to that number before 2020.

Rise of streaming

With things such as video and audio streaming becoming mainstream in India, it is pertinent that it reaches to even that part of the population which can afford the basic broadband plans. According to this Deloitte report on the 'Rise of On-demand content', online music users in India are expected to reach 273 mn users by 2020 and video subscription market is estimated to touch Rs 35-40 bn by 2020.

Video streaming sites such as YouTube already have features such as Offline viewing, which is peculiar to India due to our slow connectivity speeds. It is no surprise that video delivery apps such as HotStar, Netflix, Voot, Ozee, Sony LIV as well as audio streaming apps such as Apple Music, Gaana, Saavn and others have suddenly sprung up in the last two years. Apart from this there are so many educational websites such as Coursera, Udemy, edX and so on which are offering free educational video courses.

The only thing that is stopping everyone from enjoying these services to their true potential, apart from entry costs in certain apps and services is the FUP limit. In 2016, there should be no reason for anyone to stop watching their favourite shows or having to cut down on their appetite for free educational courses, just because that sword called 'FUP limit' is hanging over their necks.

Data hungry nation

Google's report on its free Wi-Fi offering at railway stations across India is an important case study of how data hungry citizens are. "Its heartening to note that even though users are in transit catching their trains and moving to their destinations, the average consumption per user on the network is 15 times the data they would consume on a 3G pack in a day, which today is the most dominant means of access to the Internet in the country," said Google in its findings. And no, not everyone is just watching movies or listening to music.

"Bhubaneswar and Pune see lots of students come to the stations to look for up information related to educational courses, exam results , downloading softwares and upgrading their phone apps," said Google.

Reliance Jio's Preview Offer has got over 1.5 million and preliminary findings have shown that average data usage per month has been around 26GB.

While demanding true unlimited internet bandwidth is taking things too far, the least ISPs could do is offer better data caps. Offering a true 4Mbps connection with a 10GB data cap like in this MTNL listing of 'Unlimited Plans' for instance is ridiculous in an age of Netflix and heavy data consuming apps.

So while it is refreshing to hear that the minimum broadband speed will be boosted up four times from 512 Kbps to 2 Mbps, the government also needs to come up with policies for better FUP standards.
tech2 News Staff

Internet users were in for a shock while visiting torrent websites yesterday as they faced a new warning. Department of Telecommunications has asked major ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to start blocking the torrent sites and serve warnings to people visiting them. According to the new warning, you can face three years in prison and a penalty of Rs 3 lakh.

The warning reads "This URL has been blocked under the instructions of the Competent Government Authority or in compliance with the orders of a Court of competent jurisdiction. Viewing, downloading, exhibiting or duplicating an illicit copy of the contents under this URL is punishable as an offence under the laws of India, including but not limited to under Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act, 1957 which prescribe imprisonment for 3 years and also fine of upto Rs. 3,00,000/-. Any person aggrieved by any such blocking of this URL may contact at urlblock@tatacommunications.com who will, within 48 hours, provide you the details of relevant proceedings under which you can approach the relevant High Court or Authority for redressal of your grievance."

The language of the warning is vague at best without any proper guidelines or announcement done by either Department of Telecommunications or the Government of India. According to the warning 'viewing', 'downloading', 'exhibiting' or 'duplicating' 'an illicit copy of content under this URL' is deemed as a punishable offence according to Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act of 1957.

The ironic part about the language is that even visiting as termed as 'viewing' the content is illegal. Though it can be argued that the 'viewing' refers to watching an illicit copy of movies or television shows downloaded from the website. But the main issue is that it outlaws many legal uses of the torrent that are primarily used by independent artists and businesses to distribute and transfer their content.

To put this in perspective, Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distribution used by a lot of users and advocates open source as the driving force. The company uses torrents as on of the alternative source to distribute their operating system. This move will, in theory, make it illegal for you to go the torrent site and search for Ubuntu and download it. This will majorly impact the way internet users use the internet in the country.

At the time of writing the warning had started rolling out on MTNL connections in addition to Airtel and Tata. We did not experience any issue or warning on bypassing it using 'https' method while we did face either the warning or we could not connect to the website while trying to access major torrenting websites. IndiaToday was the first one to report this and there are no official announcements on the issue as of writing.
10 injured as police foil JnU students procession

At least ten students of Jagannath University (JnU) were injured as police fired teargas shells to foil a procession in Baghshal thana intersection area of the city on Monday morning. A group of JnU students brought out the procession demanding construction of residential halls for them on the empty space of recently abandoned Dhaka Central Jail. Students said they arranged the procession with an aim to move towards the Prime Ministers office for submitting a memorandum there. As the procession was passing Bongshal intersection area around 9.30am, police obstructed them by laying a barricade. When the students tried to break the police barricade, police fired tear shells which left at least 10 students injured, added the protesting students. Meanwhile, additional police forces have been deployed in the areas adjacent to the university following the incident. -- Keraniganj, Aug 22 (UNB)
Life-term jail, Tk 1 cr fine for defaming Bangabandhu, 71` war

UNB, Dhaka: The Cabinet on Monday approved in principle the draft of The Digital Security Bill, 2016 with a provision for maximum life term jail and Tk 1 crore fine for carrying out propaganda against the Liberation War and Bangabandhu or patronising propaganda on electronic media.



The approval was given at the regular weekly meeting of the Cabinet held at Bangladesh Secretariat with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.



Briefing reporters after the meeting, Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam said the aim of the new law is to check cyber crimes.



"As per the proposed law, if anybody conducts propaganda against the War of Liberation and its spirit, Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman or the Liberation War issues, which have already been already settled by court, through electronic media, he or she will suffer maximum life-term jail and minimum three years imprisonment and the highest Tk one crore fine or both," he said.



According to the proposed law, Shafiul Alam said, if anybody carries out any attack or hacks important information infrastructure like Biman Cyber Management, he or she will have to serve maximum 14 years and minimum two years jail or Tk one crore fine or both.



As per the proposed law, Alam said, there is a provision of maximum 14 years and minimum two years jail term and the highest Tk one crore fine or both for cyber terrorism.



He said the matters that will affect the unity and solidarity of

Bangladesh and hinder the security of other countries and the issues that are linked to terrorist acts and assist or allure to carry out terrorist activities will be considered as cyber terrorism.



Regarding the crimes carried out using computer, mobile or any digital device, the cabinet secretary said, the offenders will get maximum five years and minimum two years of imprisonment and be fined Tk three lakh or both.



Besides, any one cheating or making forgery through using computer, mobile or any other electronic device will get maximum five years and minimum three years jail and be fined Tk three lakh or both.



Shafiul Alam said the proposed law has a provision for two years jail and Tk two lakh fine or both for violating privacy, highest 10 years and minimum two years imprisonment or Tk 10 lakh as fine for pornography, highest two years and minimum two months jail and Tk two lakh as fine or both for hurting the religious sentiment and maximum 7 years and minimum one years jail and Tk seven lakh as fine or both for creating enmity and deteriorating law and order.



He said the draft law has proposed constituting a 'Digital Security Agency' to be headed by the director general.



About the administrative structure of the agency, Alam said, the director general, who will be appointed by the government, could give directives to any law enforcement agency of the government to stop broadcasting of any information through computer resources if the DG deems it urgent.



"If necessary, the director general could stop any transmission immediately," he said, adding that the DG will have power to give a prohibitive order for possible violation.



The Cabinet meeting also approved in principle the drafts of The Hindu Religion Welfare Trust Bill, 2016, The Buddhist Religion Welfare Trust Bill, 2016 and The Christian Religion Welfare Trust Bill, 2016.



Ministers and state ministers and secretaries concerned were present at the meeting.
Kurdish militia launches assault to evict Syrian army from key city of Hasaka

Kurdish fighters from the People\'s Protection Units (YPG) greet each other in the northeastern city of Hasaka, Syria.

Reuters, Hasaka :

The Kurdish YPG militia launched a major assault on Monday to seize the last government-controlled parts of the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka after calling on pro-government militias to surrender, Kurdish forces and residents said.

They said Kurdish forces began the offensive after midnight to take the southern district of East Nashwa, close to where a security compound is located, near the governor's office.

The fighting this week in Hasaka, divided into zones of Kurdish and Syrian government control, marks the most violent confrontation between the Kurdish YPG militia and Damascus in more than five years of civil war. It forms part of a broader battle for control of the long border area abutting Turkey.

After a morning lull in fighting, fierce clashes broke out again across the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The powerful YPG militia has captured almost all of east Ghwairan, the only major Arab neighborhood still in government hands.

The YPG is at the heart of a U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State militant group in Syria and controls swaths of the north, where Kurdish groups associated with the militia have set up their own government since the Syrian war began in 2011.

NATO member Turkey, facing a Kurdish insurgency of its own, is concerned about attempts to extend Syrian Kurdish control westward along its border. Turkey is currently allowing a rebel Syrian force under the banner of the Free Syrian Army to assemble on its soil for an attack on an Islamic State-held town, seeking to deny control to the YPG.

The Syrian army deployed warplanes against the main armed Kurdish group for the first time during the war last week, prompting a U.S.-led coalition to scramble aircraft to protect American special operations ground forces. War planes were seen in the skies above Hasaka again on Monday, but did not drop bombs, the Observatory said.

Syrian state media accused the YPG-affiliated security force known as the Asayish of violating a ceasefire and said its members had torched government buildings in Hasaka.

It accused the Asayish of igniting the violence through escalating "provocations", including the bombing of army positions in Hasaka, and said the Asayish aimed to take control of the city.
12 BD students get Chevening Scholarships



Twelve Bangladeshi students have got the prestigious Chevening Scholarships for accomplishing higher studies in a university in the United Kingdom (UK).

"This year we are sending 12 scholars from Bangladesh to study for a master's degree at a university in the UK," British High Commissioner Alison Blake said in a statement on Monday.

Chevening Scholarships are awarded to individuals with demonstrable leadership potential who also have strong academic backgrounds, and offers full financial support to study for a master's degree at any UK university.

While congratulating recipients of this year's scholarship, Alison Blake

said the Chevening Scholarship is the UK government's way of ensuring that

those with academic and leadership potential from around the world are able

to study and experience life in the UK.

"Our Chevening scholars are the leaders that shape the future and

strengthen relationships between countries, he said, inviting meritorious

Bangladeshi students to apply for the next year's scholarship.

Interested students can visit www.chevening.org/faqs for detailed

information on the eligibility criteria and award specifications for the

scholarship.




Bangladesh College-University Teachers Association formed a human chain in front of the Jatiya Press Club on Monday in protest against militancy and communalism.
President stresses upon extra-curricular activities in schools

A delegation of Headmistress of Government Secondary Schools called on President Abdul Hamid at Bangabhaban on Monday. Press Wing, Bangabhaban photo



President Abdul Hamid has asked school teachers to attach importance to extra-curricular activities along with the regular academic studies one so that students can face the present competitive era properly.

He said this when a 10-member delegation of the headmistresses of the government secondary schools made a courtesy call on him at Bangabhaban here on Monday afternoon, President's Press Secretary Joynal Abedin told.

During the meeting, President Hamid asked the teachers to consider the extra-curricular activities with importance and said students need to be involved in such activities so that they can go ahead facing the challenge of the learners of other countries in the world.

The President also advised the teachers to give special attention to the students so that they can acquaint themselves with the spirit of Liberation War and country's history and heritage.

The members of the delegation apprised the President of the academic and other activities of the schools concerned.

Secretaries concerned to the President were present.
Fifteen swimmers selected for talent hunt next round

BSS, Gaibandha :

A total of Fifteen swimmers-- 13 boys and two girls -- were selected from Gaibandgha district for the next round as part of countrywide swimming talent hunt programme named "Bangladesh in

search for best swimmers" on Monday.

Some 180 swimmers including 178 boys and two girls took part in the open trial held at Puoro Pukurpar in Gaibandha.

Gaibandha Deputy Commissioner M Abdus Samad was the chief guest in the programme while Gaibandha Police Super Ashraful Alam and Mayor advocate Shaha Masud Jahangir Kobir Milon were present as special guests.

Bangladesh Swimming Federation and Bangladesh Navy are jointly organising the six-month programme, first of its kind in Bangladesh, in search of talented swimmers from upazila level.

In the programme, participating swimmers, split in four age groups, will go through three-phase selection procedure. Finally, 60 swimmers will be selected for the long-term training programme under the direct supervision of the Swimming Federation.

The Bangladesh Swimming Federation will bear the entire expenses, including education for the finally selected 60 swimmers. The talent hunt programme is expected to be concluded on October 2, said a press release.


World Humanitarian Day appears meaningless to many

Dina Dahood :

I learned that although they may be labelled as refugees, they never lose their status as human beings who deserve to live in dignity. This is especially true for children, who might have lost their homes, but should not lose their futures too. Today (19 August), on World Humanitarian Day, let's seize the moment to remind ourselves of our obligations to come together in support of these youngest guests of the world.

Whether from Africa, far-Asia, Latin America or the Middle East; every day thousands of parents and their children are still forced to leave their lives behind and start all over again wherever their feet, cars or boats drop them. Sometimes they find themselves in limbo for years, unable to become self-sufficient to lead productive lives. For children, this can mean missing out on crucial months or years of education. Indeed, it is estimated that last year 3.6 million refugee children were deprived access to education.

Although children have always symbolised hope and the prospect of a bright future, they are also among the most vulnerable members of their communities. Being a refugee child complicates this even more. For them, education is not only a right but can also be a life-saving intervention. Without the protection of an education, refugee children risk ending up as prey to early-marriage deals, human traffickers or sweatshops. This makes the global responsibility to rescue out-of-school refugee children even more pressing.

And yet, policies and programs for educating refugee children are lacking, as is money, with only 2% of all emergency funding allocated to education, reaching only 12% of those in need. To me, this shows that amidst the current global refugee crisis, our leaders are not investing in long term solutions. Exactly one month from today, they will be gathering once again, this time in New York, and I will be looking for action, not words, on refugee education.

After all, investing in refugee-children education has proved to be one the most influential and worthy interventions of all time. UNRWA is an example very familiar to me: this agency gave the world prosperous generations of educated Palestinian refugees who not only contributed to the uplifting of their host countries, but of many countries around the world.

Still, such agencies would have never succeeded without the determination and persistence of the refugee children themselves and their parents. I often look to Malala Yousafzai - her combat to earn her education proved that educated children from conflict zones can even win Nobel prizes.

It is very important to remember the human side of this issue. Forcing children to drop school is never an easy choice for fathers and mothers. Often it is when parents are denied their right to work, that children are forced into labour to earn money for their households, and girls who are at a greater disadvantage are forced into child marriages in order to survive. Accordingly; expanding employment opportunities in addition to guaranteeing the right to education can help refugees be self-sufficient, and are an investment in the long term future of us all.

We have to start somewhere, so at this September's two crucial refugee summits, which are hosted by the UN and the USA, world leaders must deliver a credible plan to provide all refugee children with an education, with at least one million reached by the end of the school year. Yes, we've set expectations high, and that is because education is no favour, it is a right, and to these 3.6 million out-of-school refugee children it could mean salvation.



(Dina Dahood is a 31-year-old Jordanian national who is completing her PhD in Urban planning in refugee camps. She is also a Youth Ambassador with The ONE Campaign in Brussels).


WASA must restore financial discipline





THE disclosure in a media report on Monday said that during the fiscal 2015-16 Dhaka WASA employees cashed overtime allowances twice as much of their regular salary making many to wonder about the billing system in the government organization. Three thousand Dhaka WASA employees drew Tk 56 crore in a single year as overtime allowance as against their regular salary at Tk.27 crore. It appears that WASA employees are misusing budgetary fund using manifold corruptions, but the departmental audit and the government oversight system are not taking any interest to plug the black holes. The employees are taking tax-payers money without any accountability of anybody at any level.

Such huge billing is evidently breaking all government regulations, which stipulated that overtime allowances of employees in any organization can't be more than gross salary. It appears that corruption and irregularities in Dhaka WASA are so rampant that they are going now by their own regulation in total disregard to government regulations at work. Most employees are members of the trade union of the ruling party and they are highly indisciplined and recklessly taking away overtime that the management also has to accept. Otherwise there is hardly any scope for so much overtime in a massive scale. Meanwhile, the city is going with a highly faulty water supply and sewerage system that at many places get together causing big treat to public health.

Dhaka WASA is always blamed for digging city streets round the year and more so during the peak rainy season for installation of pipes and sewerage lines making citizens' life unbearable in many respects. Many believe that such digging could have been carried out more planned way and at certain limited time of the year. It could also reduce people's suffering and government expenditure. But the hefty overtime billing system suggests that WASA management wishfully finds work for the employees round the year at field level that they use for overtime billing.

As per government rule, an employee can claim 175 hours of monthly overtime and transport drivers for upto 250 hours including weekend. But it should not exceed the gross salary of the employee. But pump operators are reported to have regularly drawn 360 hours overtime allowances, in addition to regular duty in a month in many cases and such undue billing is going unchallenged in a highly charged political environment.

We must say why the WASA management is allowing employees to take so much undue allowances and avoiding standard payment procedure just using a voucher. It may be suggestive that they are conceding to the fake billing because they are also taking the benefit in their way. But we must say the country can't go this way and how the government can avoid the accountability is also the big question.
JnU students to continue strike 2 more days: 50 injured

Students of Jagannath University who set fire on the street demanding new residential halls on the empty land of old Dhaka Central Jail, were dispersed as police resorted to teargassing. This photo was taken from Bangshal intersection on Monday.

JnU Correspondent :At least 50 students of Jagannath University (JnU) were injured, 10 of them seriously including three female students, as police fired teargas shells and rubber bullets to foil a procession towards the Prime Minister's Office to submit a memorandum demanding new residential halls on Monday. Being barred, the students announced a fresh all-out strike on the campus for today (Tuesday) and Wednesday in protest against the brutal assault on them by police. Rashedul Islam, on behalf of the agitating students, said, "We want to walk peacefully towards Prime Minister Office to draw her kind attention to our demands, including construction of residential halls on the vacant land of the moved-out Dhaka Central Jail. But the law enforcers have thwarted our movement beating us mercilessly with the collaboration of the university authorities."He also said, "We will observe all-out strike on the campus boycotting classes and examination for Tuesday and Wednesday in protest against the heinous police attack." Rashedul demanded resignation of the university proctor, Dr Noor Mohammad, as he was not able to protect them. "Instead of expressing solidarity with the students, the proctor induced the police to attack on the protesters," he said. In the morning, the demonstrators wanted to march towards PM's Office but police foiled their attempt at Nayabazar area in the city. According to eyewitnesses, several thousand students of JnU gathered in front of the university Shaheed Minar around 9.30am and as per previous decision, they started to march towards PM's Office but they were barred by police when they crossed Roy Shaheb Bazar intersection. The law enforcers dispersed them, using water cannons, firing teargas shells, rubber bullets and charging baton on them. As a result over 50 students were injured; among them ten including three female students received serious injuries. The serious injured students were identified as Afzal, Eqra, Mosina, Bashar, Mithun Roy, Tawfiq, Prosenjit, Animesh, Shafiqul, and Khairunnessa. They were rushed to the Sir Salimullah Medical College and Midford Hospital for treatment. However, Tawfiq and Mithun were sent to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital for better treatment.Later, the students staged a sit-in programme in the area and blazed tires and timbers blocking the Gulistan-Sadarghat road. Holding different banners and festoons, they chanted slogans like "Take blood but give us hall", "Give us hall or kill us". The protestors blocked the road for four hours halting traffic in the old part of the city. Kotwali Thana Senior ASP Shahen Shah Mahmud said, "We are trying to soothe the students and asked them not to march but when they smashed our barricade, we coerced to disband them for the safety of the passersby.""Extra police forces have been deployed in the area to maintain law and order," he said. "Despite the obstacles of the university authorities, we will continue our movement for dormitory until the assurance of the Prime Minister," said Jannat Shah Mitu, a student of Islamic History and Culture Department."The university authorities treat us like step-mothers. Even today, they do not meet our single demand. Rather, they made obstacles on our peaceful programme," she said. Rebuffing the allegation, JnU Proctor Dr Noor Mohammad said, "The university authorities are working heart and soul to keep a sound atmosphere on the campus and to resolve the students' problem." He urged the students to continue their academic activities along with the movement. Meanwhile, JnU Teachers Association (JnUTA), pro-Awami League Teachers Association (Neel Dal), Bangladesh Chhatra League, Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal and Progressive Students Alliances of the university unit protested the police attack on the students and expressed solidarity with the movement. Since August 1, the JnU students have been demonstrating allotment of lands on the abandoned premises of Central Jail in Old Dhaka for residential halls named after Bangabandhu and four National Leaders.
SP Babul's resignation drama continues

Sagar Biswas :

The "resignation drama" of Police Superintendent Babul Aktar is not yet over; rather it is taking a critical turn day by day due to contradictory statements issued by senior police officials, including Inspector General of Police.

Not only that, the role of Home Ministry is also not clear where concerned officials, even the Minister himself could not take any decision over the issue till the date.

And taking this opportunity, a vested quarter has almost managed to suppress the findings of Mahmuda Khanam Mitu murder investigation, whereas several involved persons divulged important information to the police and also gave confessional statements before the court.

There is widespread allegation that the Chittagong Metropolitan Police [CMP] is not proceeding with the sensational case intentionally.

When contacted, CMP Commissioner Iqbal Bahar told The New Nation last night that police have made a "little progress" about the investigation of Mitu killing. "It will take more time to prepare the charge-sheet. The investigation is still going on," he said.

"We're looking for Kamrul Sikder alias Musa, a prime suspect. At the same time, we're also trying to nab another suspect Kalu. If they are caught, we'll be able to know several other things relating to the murder, and it will be known who actually gave order to kill Mitu," the CMP Boss said.

Concerned circle said the 'resignation of SP Babul' cannot be an obstacle to the free and fair investigation to the murder, even if he was forced to resign by any high official. It's a big question, why Babul had tendered his resignation? And why he is now trying to get back his job?

In this backdrop, the CMP Commissioner said: "SP Babul Aktar himself had submitted his resignation letter."

According to confessional statements given by some arrested persons, Musa was directly involved in the killing of Mitu, wife of SP Babul Aktar. But he was a reliable source of SP Babul for a long time. In this situation, the investigators decided to grill SP Babul. Rumour spread fast when police picked SP Babul on June 24 and kept him in custody for more than 15 hours in DB office at Mintoo Road.

Do you think SP Babul was involved in the killing of his wife, the CMP Chief said: "I can't say anything about the matter at this moment."

On the other hand, IGP AKM Shahidul Haque said that SP Babul did not submit his resignation being forced by other officials. "Nobody forced him. The resignation letter was sent to Home Ministry after a long time. It is not possible to force a SP-level police official to resign."

"The matter [about taking decision over resignation] is not under jurisdictions of Police Headquarters," the IGP said.

But SP Babul categorically ruled out the statements of top brass of Police Department. Babul said he was picked up in the name of interrogation and forced to sign on a blank white paper.

"Some police officials present at DB office had created pressure on me to sign the paper. Later, the blank paper was prepared as a resignation letter and it was sent to Senior Secretary to the Home Ministry," Babul said recently.

As per information available, SP Babul on June 24 applied to Senior Secretary of the Home Ministry for resignation, and again applied on August 9 seeking to withdraw it. Besides, he had submitted another application to DIG [Admin] Police Headquarters seeking permission to join service.

"I'm still waiting to get back my job. If I'm deprived of justice, then I'll apply to the government to investigate what had really happened to me on that night," Babul said.

On June 5, three assailants stabbed and shot dead Mitu, daughter of retired police officer Mosharraf Hossain, in front of her child only 100 yards from their house at O.R. Nizam Road in Chittagong.


Fire at Mirpur, Mouchak markets in city, another in Gaibandha: One dead

Staff Reporter :At least two fire incidents took places in the city's Mirpur and Mouchak Markets while another at Railway Gate Market in Gaibandha district town on Monday after the Bashundhara City Shopping Mall fire on Sunday.In city's East Monipur of Mirpur a youth died after inhaling huge smoke caused by fire that engulfed a five-storey building.Police confirmed a 30-year-old youth identified as Mamun Miah, who was first rushed to the Shaheed Suhrawardy Hospital in a critical condition, passed away while he was being taken to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH). "Mamun might have died of suffocation as he inhaled huge smoke during the fire," said Bhuiyan Mahbub Hossain, officer-in-charge of Mirpur Police Station. He said the Mamun was rescued from the third floor of the six-storey building in an unconscious state from inside a carpet and curtain shop that caught fireSix units of fire fighters doused the flames at the shop after their one-hour frantic efforts around 9:50am, Atiqul Islam, an inspector at Fire Service Control Room, said.The Fire Department official could not ascertain the cause of the fire."The fire broke out at a shop named Parda Bilash on the ground floor of the building at East Monipur in Mirpur-10 around 8:19am. On information, six Firefighting units rushed to the spot and doused the flame around 8:50am," Atiqul Islam said. Meanwhile, fire also broke out at Mouchak Market at Malibagh in the city on Monday afternoon.According to the Fire Service Control Room, the fire originated at a shop on the ground floor of the market at Malibagh around 5:55 pm from electrical short circuit.However, shop owners and employees managed to douse the flame before three Firefighting units rushed in.Besides capital Dhaka, at least 10 shops were gutted as a fire broke out at Railway Gate Market area in Gaibandha district town on Monday morning.Azizur Rahman, station officer of Gaibandha Fire Station, said the fire broke out at the market around 7:30am.On information, three Firefighting units from Palashbari and Gobindoganj of the district and Pirganj in Rangpur district rushed to the spot and doused the flame around 9:30am.The fire might have been originated from a burning mosquito coil, the official said.The shops' owners claimed that total estimated loss of the fire was around Tk 30 million.Earlier on Sunday, a fire that broke out at Bashundhara City Shopping Mall in the city's Panthapath gutted 70 percent shops, out of about 100 in the C block of the fifth floor, were either totally or partially gutted in the fire but it did not spread to other blocks of the floor.
DNA samples of 7 family members collected

Staff Reporter :

Police have collected DNA samples of the family members of seven militants out of nine killed in a joint raid at their hideout in the city's Kalyanpur area in July.

The samples were collected at the forensic laboratory of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) that will have handed over to the family after cross-checking as per order of court.

"We've collected samples from relatives of seven out of eight identified militants, said Masudur Rahman, Deputy Commissioner (Media) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP).

The DNA samples will be cross-checked to match with the seven identified militants, said a DMP official, preferring anonymity. In line with the government decision, the bodies would be handed over to the families if the samples matched after cross-check.

The seven militants are: Abdullah from Dinajpur, Abu Hakim Nayeem from Patuakhali, Motiar Rahman from Satkhira, Jubayer Hossain from Noakhali, Taj-ul-Haque Rashiq from city's Dhanmondi, Atiquzzaman Khan from Gulshan and Shazad Rouf Arko from Bashundhara in the capital.

Police have identified the seven after matching their fingerprints with those on their National Identity (NID) cards, the DC said.

Detective Branch (DB) of police disclosed their addresses and photos on their national ID cards alongside the photos of the corpses, he said.

DMP also uploaded the addresses and pictures of the seven on its news portal and also on its official Facebook page, the police official said.

The seven bodies of the militants killed in the Kalyanpur joint raid have been kept at Dhaka Medical College Hospital's mortuary, while bodies of the Gulshan attackers are at the Combined Military Hospital.

The DNA samples of the Gulshan attackers have already been collected earlier, the police official said.


Tk 500 cr suit against Shubid Ali for calling Zia 1st president

Court Correspondent :

Jilani Sarker, a Jubo League activist on Monday filed a Tk 500 crore defamation case

against Comilla Awami League MP Shubid Ali Bhuiyan for calling Ziaur Rahman, the first president of Bangladesh.

The plaintiff who hails from Daudkandi of Comilla district and a resident of Jatrabari in Dhaka, filed the case with the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court of Dhaka in the morning.

Magistrate Satya Broto Sikder of the court asked the Officer-in-Charge of Sher-e-Banglanagar Police Station to submit a report about the incident on October 13 after investigation.

According to the case docket, Shubid Ali called BNP founder Ziaur Rahman the first president of the country at a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Institutions on August 17.

Citing reports published in different newspapers on August 18, the plaintiff said he was shocked at the remark that also hurt the belief of the entire Bengali nation causing a 'loss of Tk 500 crore'.


HuT man surrenders to police in Jessore

Jessore Correspondent :

A member of the banned militant outfit Hizb-ut-Tahrir was surrendered to Jessore police on Sunday noon.

The surrendered man is Fakhrul Alam Tushar, 21 who holds the post of shabab, primary member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and also son of trader Abdur Razzak of Arabpur under Kotwali Police Station and nephew of Alamgir Hossain, General Secretary of Jessore district unit Bangabandhu Smriti Sangsad.

He also completed engineering from Jessore

Polytechnic Institute this year.

Md Monir-uz-Zaman, Deputy Inspector General of Police, Khulna Range disclosed the information at a press briefing held at the office of the Superintendent of Police, Jessore on Sunday noon.

Tushar told journalists in press briefing that he actually was not involved in the militant outfit. 'I attended some meetings of the party, nothing else,' he added.

The DIG told journalists that Tushar will be given legal support so that he could lead normal life.
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong talks with government officials during the Plenary session at the 27th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, November 21, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

SINGAPORE -- Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's tests at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) "were all normal," said Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan in his Facebook on Monday, recounting what happened at the National Day Rally on Sunday.

Vivian Balakrishnan wrote "we then went to SGH for more tests, which were all normal before calling it a night around 1:30 a.m."

PM Lee took ill during the English portion of his speech at National Day Rally on Sunday. The Prime Minister's Office said PM Lee was feeling unsteady because of prolonged standing, heat and dehydration. His heart is fine and he did not have a stroke.

After taking about an hour's rest, PM Lee resumed the rally, speaking for about 15 minutes. Then, PM Lee went to SGH for a check-up.

In his Facebook update, the foreign minister also called on Singaporeans continuing to do their best. "Let us all count our blessings, and continue to do our best. There is still so much more to be done," the minister added.
If you are looking for the new Immoral Minority posts, you should know that they can be found here at our new home Please stop by to get caught up on politics, join the conversations, or simply check out the new digs.
From left: Cassidy, Fleming and Scalise

Louisianas congressional delegation has pressed federal authorities for aid to South Louisiana communities stricken by the historic flooding of last week  as they should. But, as the LA Times and other media have pointed out, three members of the delegation voted against relief and recovery aid in 2012 for the Eastern Seaboard victims of Superstorm Sandy, making the pleas for aid by U.S. Reps. Steve Scalise and John Fleming and U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy (who was also a representative in 2012) a potentially tougher sell to their colleagues on Capitol Hill.

And as The Times notes:

Fleming, Scalise and Cassidy, by the way, are also climate change deniers, a sign that theyre unable to process evidence in front of their own eyes. Fleming has claimed that evidence of climate change is the product of a radical environmental agenda. Scalise has griped that its an effort by radicals to prop up wave after wave of job-killing regulations that are leading to skyrocketing food and energy costs. Cassidy in 2014 claimed that global temperatures had not risen in 15 years, which happened to be untrue. Remarkably, both Fleming and Cassidy are medical doctors.

Read it here.

The Advocate probed a similar theme.
Pre-purchase property inspection is a relatively new thing in the United Kingdom. Its not something that most people have heard about, but it has become increasingly popular over the last few years with the rise in property prices and increased demand for high quality homes.

What are the benefits of pre-purchase building inspection? What can you expect to find out when you pay someone else to inspect your home before you buy it? And what should you look for during an inspection?

Many people want to know if theyre buying a house thats been well maintained or if its had any serious problems. If youve found a place on the market that seems attractive, but then discover some issues after moving in, you may not be as excited about buying it as you thought you were.

Its important to do your due diligence when looking at properties. A lot goes into making a property appealing to potential buyers, from the landscaping to the flooring to the kitchen appliances. The same applies when inspecting a property  there are many things that need checking over to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Here are some of the benefits of performing a pre-purchase inspection:

You get to see exactly what will happen to your money

When you go shopping for a new car, youll probably be shown several different models. You might even be shown one that looks like a great value, but doesnt fit around all of the extra features that you want. When it comes time to actually buy the vehicle, however, you wont have seen how your money will be spent on it once you drive it off the showroom floor.

Likewise, when you shop for a new home, you dont really know what youre getting yourself into until you move in. In order to get a feel for whether the home youre considering is what you want, you normally have to spend quite a bit of time inside it. This allows you to learn more about everything that youre going to be spending your hard-earned cash on.

A pre-purchase building inspection gives you much the same kind of experience without having to spend thousands of dollars. Since youre paying for the service, you can expect to see exactly what youre paying for, instead of just seeing a vague idea of what you might end up with.

You find out about potential major repairs

Some buildings are very expensive to maintain, which means that owners often neglect them for the sake of saving money. While youre paying for a building inspection, youre also paying for a professional who knows how to spot signs of trouble and repair work that needs doing.

If you notice that a particular area of your new home needs fixing right away, you can call in an expert to take care of it quickly. If you find that theres something wrong with your boiler, you wont have to wait weeks for a plumber to come over and fix it. Instead, youll have access to a solution immediately.

You can save hundreds of pounds by finding out about potential problems early on

One of the biggest expenses when you first buy a home is the cost of moving in. Many people dont realize this until its too late. Buying a home involves not only paying for the actual house, but also for moving costs, furniture, and other items that have to be moved along with the home.

Having a good idea ahead of time of what youre likely to encounter can help you avoid these kinds of costs. If you know youll need to replace the plumbing system, for example, youll be able to put together a budget for the expense and plan accordingly.

You can protect your investment by finding out if the homes been well cared for

While there are plenty of people who think that houses always look better when theyre newly built, youd be surprised at how well maintained older residences can still look nice. Sometimes, though, those homes need some additional maintenance to keep them looking their best.

This could involve repairs that arent so noticeable or small improvements that you wouldnt consider otherwise. Even worse, some houses have fallen into disrepair without anyone noticing. This is why having a professional perform a building inspection prior to purchasing a home is such a big benefit.

Not only will it give you insight into the state of the property, but it will also give you peace of mind knowing youre not getting taken advantage of. As long as youre aware of the potential pitfalls, youll have less reason to worry about the state of your new home.

You can use information gathered during a building inspection to negotiate a lower price

If youre worried about buying a home because you suspect that it may need extensive renovation work, you may already have a rough idea of how much work youll need to do to bring it up to scratch. That knowledge can come in handy if you decide to buy the home.

You can use all of the details that you gather during a building inspection to present a realistic picture of what the home is worth to prospective buyers. If a potential buyer thinks that the home is worth more than what you paid for it, you can try negotiating a lower price.

You can sell your home faster and for more money

If you decide to list your home on the market soon after buying it, youll need to price it accurately in order to attract buyers. But if youve already done a thorough building inspection, youll know exactly what work is needed and what the current market conditions are.

In other words, youll be able to make a more accurate estimate of the amount of money youve invested in the home and how much its worth. If you find that youre selling your house for close to its full market value, you can use this information to convince the potential buyer that your home is worth the asking price.

Even if youre planning to stay in the home for a while before you decide to sell, the fact that you did a thorough building inspection will give you more confidence when listing it. Prospective buyers will know exactly what theyre paying for.

Your home will hold its value longer

As mentioned earlier, the value of a home depends heavily upon the condition of the building itself. If your home is in bad shape, potential buyers wont be interested in buying it. On the other hand, if youve performed a thorough building inspection and know what sort of repairs are necessary, you can offer your prospective buyer a compelling reason to invest in your property.

When you buy a home, youre essentially agreeing to have it inspected periodically to ensure that it stays in top shape. Not only does this allow you to avoid expensive repairs down the road, but it can also increase the value of your home.

You can make smart decisions about property investments

Buying real estate isnt as simple as just driving a couple of minutes to pick up a house. There are lots of considerations involved, ranging from location to cost. The same is true when youre investing in property.

If you find a house that meets all of your requirements, youll want to make sure that you have a solid understanding of where it stands with regards to the rest of the market. If you havent spent enough time researching the area, you could inadvertently end up with a bad deal.

There are lots of resources available online that can help you determine the overall level of competition in your area. They can also help you figure out if there are any properties that meet your requirements that you didnt know about.

If you own rental property, you can use the information to identify tenants who might cause damage

If you own rental property and youve noticed that certain tenants consistently cause damage, you can use the results of a building inspection to identify them. You can then contact them directly to let them know that youre watching them closely and that you dont appreciate the problem theyre causing.

They might start taking better care of their homes, which would be good news for everyone. It could also be the case that youll find out that theyre responsible for previous damages that werent caught during a previous visit.

You can make smarter decisions about hiring contractors

If youve hired contractors to build or repair your home, you might want to ask them for references. However, unless you perform a thorough building inspection, you might not know exactly what to look for.

For instance, maybe you only checked the roof for leaks or the walls for cracks. You might not have looked underneath the foundation for anything that could cause a future issue. By performing a building inspection, you can ensure that you hire reputable contractors who will be trustworthy with your money.

You can avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition

Of course, the main benefit of structural inspections perth is that it helps you avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition. Before you make the decision to buy a home, you should do whatever you can to find out about the state of the building.

You can also ask your realtor about what sorts of inspections are typically recommended. Some agents say that its standard practice to check the heating system, the roof, the electrical wiring, and the floors. Others will tell you that they recommend that you check the entire structure.

Either way, if you choose to hire an inspector, youll find out exactly what needs to be fixed and how much it will cost to do so.

As a result, it can be concluded that a pre-purchase building inspection is highly important for the buyers because it provides transparency regarding the current conditions of the structure. Additionally, the building owner is made aware of any upgrades or repairs that are required, which could lead to a fair deal throughout the purchasing and selling process.
President Joe Biden has decided to ban Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia's economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. The United States generally imports about 100,000 barrels a day from Russia, only about 5% of Russia's crude oil exports, according to Rystad Energy. Last year, roughly 8% of U.S. imports of oil and petroleum products came from Russia. Gas prices have been rising for weeks due to the conflict and in anticipation of potential sanctions on the Russian energy sector. The U.S. national average for a gallon of gasoline soared 45 cents a gallon in the past week and topped $4.06 on Monday, according to auto club AAA. Should the US ban Russian oil imports over Ukraine war?

You voted:
SPRINGFIELD  A federal judge will hear arguments Wednesday over whether the Illinois State Board of Elections should be ordered to print David Gills name on the Nov. 8 ballot as an independent candidate in the 13th Congressional District.

Gill, a Bloomington physician and frequent Democratic congressional candidate, failed to gather the 10,754 petition signatures he needed to earn a spot on the ballot, but he sued the State Board of Elections in federal court because he says the requirement is unfairly high for independent congressional candidates.

With a Friday deadline looming for the board to certify the ballot and early voting set to begin next month, Gill is also asking that U.S. District Judge Sue Myerscough order the elections board to print his name on the ballot alongside those of U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, and Democratic challenger Mark Wicklund of Decatur.

Sam Cahnman, the Springfield attorney representing Gill, has argued publicly and in court filings that the signature requirement for independent congressional candidates is out of line with not only the requirements for major party candidates but also for independent candidates for other offices.

As the candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively, Davis and Wicklund each had to collect only about 740 signatures, nearly 15 times fewer than was required of Gill. He ended up collecting 8,593 valid signatures, according to a review by a hearing officer for the elections board.

Meanwhile, independent candidates for U.S. Senate are required to collect 25,000, five times more than major party candidates.

Cahnman has called the states requirement for independent congressional candidates patently absurd, egregious and clearly unconstitutional.

Gill said he "just can't even fathom an argument" for why the bar should be proportionally so much higher for independent candidates for Congress than for Senate.

"Frankly, I think the Legislature made a grave error," he said.

The state has no compelling (reason) to keep off the ballot a candidate who filed 8,593 valid signatures, so that two candidates from the same tired old two major parties  can have the ballot all to themselves, and disenfranchise the multitude of votes who are yearning for another alternative, Gills attorney argues in a court filing.

But Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigans office, arguing on behalf of the elections board, begs to differ.

In response to Gills request for an injunction ordering the board to print his name on the ballot, the attorney generals office calls the signature requirements reasonable, nondiscriminatory regulations designed to protect the integrity of the election process.

Assistant Attorneys General Sarah Newman and Thomas Ioppolo argue in a response filed Monday that the state has an interest in preventing voter confusion and overcrowding of the ballot.

The courts have long recognized that the management of elections necessarily demands considerable and close regulation, they write, noting a number of cases in which similar signature requirements have been upheld.

The attorney generals office also argues that granting Gills request would, in effect, give him the outcome hes seeking in his lawsuit before the case is settled. And if the court order were overturned on appeal, it would create problems for local election authorities, who would have to reprint ballots without Gills name, and could disenfranchise voters who cast ballots for him during early voting.
VERGENNES  To share or not to share? For farmers working in a world of data management, that is the question.

Some are comfortable relaying information about their operation to crop consultants, seed salesmen and other farms. Some are not. And others just arent sure what is best.

Mike Lewis, who farms near Harrisburg, in Saline County, discusses farming practices with his neighbors, as always. But hes a bit more leery when it comes to others in the profit chain.

We verbally talk. Its just something we do, Lewis said of other farmers while attending a combine clinic at an implement dealership here. If its something were thinking about trying and hes done it before us, we might get some useful hints from his education in the school of hard knocks.

Lewis isnt as free with his information when it comes to those he doesnt trust fully.

I dont let anybody else have it, mainly, he said. We have a crop consultant now, and he understands what Im going after. Hes supposed to be keeping it quiet. But everything is used against you anymore.

Jason Bosaw, who farms about 13,000 acres near Junction, in Gallatin County, lives in a sharing community. He regularly compares production notes with his neighbors and believes they all benefit.

Down here, we all share information because we get better results and better crops, Bosaw said. Instead of 12,000 or 14,000 acres, if weve got 36,000 or 40,000 acres sharing information, everybody is going to benefit from it.

That information includes tissue sampling, types of fertilizer used and results they get from various inputs.

Everybodys trying different things, he said. Everyone is crunching numbers, trying to figure out where is the biggest bang for our buck. Were doing lots of yield maps, lots of tissue sampling.

Soil sampling hasnt changed that much, but everything else has. Were trying to figure out exactly how much nitrogen, phosphate or potash to put on.

Ben Harriss, the precision ag specialist at H&R Agri-Power at Vergennes, sees both sides. In general, however, he believes farmers in Southern Illinois are just now getting established with the world of ag data.

Around here, were in an area where theres not as much of it, he said. Were in a slower adapting area. Five years ago we didnt have a precision guy in this store.

Due to close relationships with customers, retailers like Harriss usually know where to draw the line.

Some neighbors can have a rivalry and dont like to share, Harriss said. I know who wouldnt have a problem with it and who would.

Joe Lewis, who also farms near Harrisburg, has some concerns about providing information about his farm to those he doesnt know. He has gotten phone calls from people who identify themselves as USDA officials.

They say theyre with the USDA. Who knows? Usually I hang up on them, he said. I ask them if they get paid for this. They say yeah, so I say you pay me for my information and Ill give it to you.

Precision agriculture often requires collection and sharing of farming data. But knowing who is accessing that data and what theyre doing with it is important, Harriss believes. He said that farmers should familiarize themselves with the technology as much as possible.

I recommend that a farmer be involved in data management, he said. That way, hell be a lot more cautious who he gives his data to.

Say its a seed company or custom tile company and they want yields maps  they want everything. We might give them just one field. Youve got to pick and choose what you want to give somebody.
ST. LOUIS  There is little doubt who owns a farmers tractor, grain bin or planter. But what about all those electronic bits of information about yields, inputs and soil health?

The question of data ownership is an increasingly sticky one. Joan Archer, a Kansas City lawyer who specializes in precision agriculture, said stewardship applies not only to the physical aspect of farming, but also to knowledge.

Folks in this industry are not quite as attuned to issues of data security beyond the question of whether they have a good firewall, Archer said at the annual InfoAg conference here. But the issue of agricultural data is much broader than that.

In an increasingly information-driven industry, retailers and their customers must deal with the very real prospect of electronic theft. Archer pointed to a recent joint report by the FBI and USDA warning about stepped-up efforts to steal data.

Why do we care about this? Because cyber criminals and activists will increasingly target farm data, she said.

Farm data is something everyone is talking about having economic value. And when you start giving something particular economic value, then you start making that data of higher level of import.

Ag retailers of virtually every stripe are responsible for storage, transfer and security of data. In that sense, they share the same cyberspace as non-ag businesses.

Stewardship of data is very, very important because it means if you arent a good steward of data, you put your company at risk not only for governmental regulation, but also at risk in terms of your customer base in terms of a breach, Archer said.

Look at traditional retail space, how damaging the Target data breach was. They didnt prepare to handle their data properly. They werent good stewards.

Farmers are equally vulnerable to data breaches. They range from the annoying to the malevolent.

This is an area where you can envision all kinds of Jason Bourne stuff, such as breaking into the data by foreign governments or something like that, Archer said.

But also, just simple hackers who want to mess around with people, because this is becoming an increasingly public industry.

There is a universal belief that farmers own the data that is generated on their farms. But complexities abound, Archer pointed out.

What happens if you have land thats leased? Who owns the data in that situation? she said.

Then there are companies with historical permissions. You buy a tractor and theres a shrink-wrap agreement with the software that says I get to use your data. Youve got all kinds of layers in the mix in terms of ownership.

Archer advises ag companies to provide protection by having an effective data lease agreement that clarifies who owns what. Even more importantly, she said, businesses should be aware of who is responsible in the event of a breach.

Who has to pay for that? What is the compensation for that? What kinds of systems do I have in place? Do I have responsibility in the chain? I may be just one component part of the precision ag tool that has been developed.

Concern about liability over misuse of data has spawned a whole new industry: cyber insurance. Thats something many companies are taking seriously.

One element often overlooked is destruction of data. Those collecting data rarely consider getting rid of it, but that may be necessary in some cases.

In certain countries you are going to have to if you lose the customer, Archer said. We have clients who are all around the world. We also work with lawyers all over world. We would never draft an agreement ourselves without assistance from, for instance, someone from China.

(Data collection) is placed on high pedestal there, much more so than in this country. Its not a good thing to break the law there.
CARBONDALE  Hundreds of incoming freshman gathered on the steps to the SIU Arena for a class photo Friday after the Chancellors New Student Convocation.

Hes taking like a million of them, one student could be heard saying in a joking tone over the sound of laughter and chatter.

The students were pictured standing still and smiling, as well as dancing and whooping it up with their hands in the air. They also were pictured wearing eclipse glasses, a nod to the central role SIU is playing in planning for an influx of visitors to town for the Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse, the first viewable from the contiguous United States since 1979.

Look at me. Give me some excitement, a man behind a megaphone yelled as the students screamed with delight and threw their hands in the air.

Classes began on the Southern Illinois University Carbondale campus on Monday.

Keimon Hamilton, an 18-year-old freshman from St. Louis studying cinematography, said he was excited to get started with the school year and looking forward to just getting a great college experience.

The New Student Convocation held Friday evening on the Carbondale campus was a welcome for all new students to experience the pride and spirit of SIU, with a focus on student success, scholarship, citizenship, diversity and leadership. Local businesses and churches had booths set up in the concourse offering products and service information to students.

For many of the students, this marks the first time they are out of the house and away from their parents. Libby Edie, 18, of Chatham, said she was excited about meeting new people and new opportunities. Edie said her parents drove her down and helped her move into her dorm at Neely Hall.

Though eager to begin college life, Edie, who is studying dental hygiene, said it was still hard to watch her parents drive away.

Oh, I cried a lot, she said. But she was smiling by Friday evening at the pumped up event that revolved around Saluki pride and the excitement of entering the halls of higher learning  and all that comes with the experience, such as sharing a dorm room with a stranger.

Edie said she chatted with her new roommate a few times before they met this past week for move-in. But that day marked the first time they met in person. But the two were close by at Fridays celebration. Her roommate, Megan Pytlewski, 18, of Lockport, studying radiology, said she also was excited about meeting new people and a different experience.

Jeff McGoy, SIUs assistant dean of students, encouraged the new students who gathered on Friday with their loved ones, to live in the moment and learn as much as possible. He added, Last but not least, get to the finish line. Several years down the road on graduation day, McGoy said all the stress and trials along the way associated with classes and exams will melt away as parents scream Thats my baby! at the awarding of diplomas.

Any time you conquer something, the next task, it doesnt seem as big because youve overcome to be the winner everyone knew you could become, McGoy said.

Chancellor Brad Colwell on Friday basked in the glow of the excitement and optimism that accompanies the start of a new school year. The months leading up to the start of the 2016-17 school year have been stressful for SIU leaders with the budget stalemate in Springfield that stretched into the summer, and racial strife and protests on campus in the closing days of the spring 2016 semester. That stress had melted away by time Fridays event rolled around, or at least was shelved for the time being.

This is going to be a great year, Colwell said. Were very excited. And the opportunities they have, Im excited for them. This is the beginning of something very special.

Colwell said that move-in weekend and the corresponding new student activities were almost flawless. The students wore matching SIU T-shirts for their class photo. Somehow we ran out of T-shirts, which is a good thing, Colwell said.

The much anticipated enrollment numbers for this school year will be released 10 days after the start of the semester, later this month.

Its pretty much what we expected, Colwell said. If anything it looks like its trending upward from what we anticipated. SIU officials have said for months they anticipated enrollment will be down, and that's still likely to be the case, though Colwell indicated it may be up from predictions.

But Colwell also noted that on-campus housing contracts are down, and SIU officials, in part because of that decline, have closed the top three floors of Schneider Hall to save costs.

Schneider Hall is one of the three, 17-story towers located on the east side of campus that university officials hope to eventually renovate or tear down and replace as part of their effort to create a more inviting campus as far as student housing is concerned.

We have to get a plan figured out for east campus housing, for those towers, SIU President Randy Dunn said on a recent interview on WJPF News Radio, in an interview with Tom Miller. Dunn continued, For those who know the campus this is the most obvious statement that anyone would make. For those worried thats not on our radar, it is.
COLUMBIA  Sumter farmer Bonita Clemons snapped a six-inch tender okra pod right off the plant from the Clemson University Sandhill Research and Education Center (REC).

We only grow them this long, Clemons said, holding her fingers about three inches apart, because as they get bigger they just get hard. Now I have a new okra to grow.

Clemons was among the attendees of the Sustainable Tomato Field Demonstration Thursday at the Sandhill REC in Columbia. For the demonstration, Clemson Extension agent Powell Smith planted several tomato varieties at the Sandhill research farm, including grafted tomatoes, under various growing conditions to show farmers what could be the most profitable for them. His work is part of a growing agricultural research program at the Sandhill REC.

The okra variety, which Smith described as the queen of okra varieties, is an heirloom collected decades ago from a Georgetown County plantation. It is referred to as Choppee okra, named for the community from which it came, Smith said.

Choppee okra was one of several heirloom vegetables on display, along with pole beans, peas and tomatoes.

Agricultural research like this is particularly important in the Midlands because of its sandy, nutrient-deficient soils, Smith said.

The South Carolina sand hills have some of the worst soils in the world. We are really right above beach sand, Smith said. You can grow on sandy soil but you really have to work with your county agent on your soil samples and put the pencil to your inputs.

Smith demonstrated tomatoes grown on different mulch treatments and with rolled-and-crimped cover crops. To account for soil nutrient deficiency, he applied six pounds per 100 feet of row with gypsum, a type of calcium sulfate. He applied rock phosphate at a similar rate, as well as three pounds per 100 feet of row with magnesium potassium sulfate. An organic fertilizer containing six percent nitrogen, six percent phosphorus and six percent potassium was also applied.

Smith found that grafting, a process that involves fusing the top of a fruit-producing plant with the more disease-resistant root of another plant, was an unnecessary expense because soil-borne diseases were not an issue at the Sandhill REC.

Tomato spotted wilt virus, which is caused by a virus carried by small insects called thrips, was a major problem, however, he said. The best combatant to spotted wilt is a plant with tested resistance, Smith said.

The Amelia variety is resistant to spotted wilt, Smith told attendees of the demonstration. Celebrity is a good-flavored variety, but you can see down that row that it was decimated by spotted wilt.

The hot, dry climate in the Midlands, as well as the sandy soil, makes irrigation critical as well, Smith said. Smith used drip irrigation on his plots and recommends irrigating only 30 minutes per cycle on these very sandy soils. Exceeding that will just waste water and leach nutrients below the root zone of these sandy soils. For his tomatoes, Smith irrigated four times daily, 30 minutes for each cycle.

Smiths demonstration likely will be the first of many going forward at the Sandhill REC, allowing farmers to see first-hand the techniques that boost yields and profit.

We are working hard to revitalize our agricultural research here at the station, with a particular focus on urban farming, new and beginning farmers, conservation practices and agribusiness, Sandhill REC Director Kathy Coleman said.

That includes Smiths vegetable research plots and a new farm incubator project that will open small plots for startup farmers to begin growing their businesses. Participants will receive instruction in business planning and food safety, as well as farming advice from Extension experts and an on-site coordinator. Theyll also have access to greenhouse space, farming equipment and, in the future, a commercial kitchen to package fresh foods for market.

Clemson for me brings the technology and the business experience. They really help with product marketing, said Clemons, who is among the participants in the incubator.

Clemons founded Diannes Call, a nonprofit that provides nutrition education and works to increase access to healthy foods in underserved communities. At the incubator, Clemons is working with a group of about 20 women to begin growing food to sell affordably in low-income neighborhoods. Diannes Call operates a mobile farmers market.

We are increasing access to healthy foods by bringing the food to people, Clemons said.
Young suicide bomber attacks wedding party

ISTANBUL (AP)  A child suicide bomber killed at least 51 people and wounded nearly 70 others at a Kurdish wedding party near Turkey's border with Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday, decrying the attack as an apparent attempt by Islamic State extremists to destabilize the nation by exploiting ethnic and religious tensions.

The bombing comes amid ongoing struggles between the government and Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, known as the PKK, and as the country is still reeling from the aftermath of last month's failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers.

Later, addressing the nation before Istanbul's city hall, Erdogan said the attacker in Gaziantep was aged between 12 and 14. He said 69 people were wounded, with 17 of them in critical condition.

3 Doors Down's Matt Roberts dies

WEST BEND, Wis. (AP)  Guitarist Matt Roberts, a founding member of the rock band 3 Doors Down, has died in Wisconsin.

The 38-year-old was in West Bend to perform at a benefit. The West Bend Police Department says someone called authorities around 7 a.m. Saturday to report an unconscious man in a hotel hallway. Police and firefighters found Roberts dead.

The police statement says there were no signs of trauma and the cause of death was not immediately known.

Highlights

PHELAN, Calif. (AP)  Authorities have lifted all evacuation orders for residents affected by a Southern California wildfire that drove thousands from their homes.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department made the announcement Sunday afternoon.

Residents must show proof of residency to return, and some may come back to a home without electricity as crews continue to work on restoring utilities.

ATLANTA (AP)  The suspect in the killing of five people at a home in Alabama attacked them while they slept and then abducted his estranged girlfriend and an infant  both of whom were found alive, authorities said Sunday.

It could take investigators days to sort out the grisly murder scene in Citronelle, a small town 30 miles northwest of Mobile.

Derrick Dearman, 27, of Leakesville, Miss., was taken into custody after he walked into the sheriff's office in Greene County, Miss., Mobile County sheriff's Capt. Paul Burch said.

Investigators have determined that Dearman's ex-girlfriend, Laneta Lester, had gone to the home on Aug. 19 to get away from an abusive relationship with Dearman, the sheriff's office said.
The Affordable Care Act's title conveys a false promise. Its predictable failure to fulfill that pledge was re-confirmed by news that Aetna, the nation's third largest health insurer, will withdraw from 11 of the 15 states where it has been offering policies through the ACA.

One of those 11 states is South Carolina, where Aetna has been providing ACA policies in 14 counties.

And according to The Washington Post, Aetna's retreat puts Arizona's Pinal County "at risk of having no insurers offering exchange plans in 2017, a circumstance that would present a major challenge to the basic mechanics of the ACA."

Among those "basic mechanics" is the constitutionally dubious "individual mandate" for most Americans to obtain health insurance. The law also is based on the rosy-scenario assumption that large numbers of relatively healthy young people will buy policies under the ACA.

That illusion has been shattered. So Aetna, like other companies before it and others leaving the ACA soon, has concluded that this is not an "affordable" endeavor for its bottom line. UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Humana Inc., two other insurance giants, had already announced large reductions in their ACA participation.

From the Aug. 16 Wall Street Journal: "The withdrawals come as the biggest insurers continue to roll up losses on their ACA business  all five major national companies now expect to be in the red on that business this year. Aetna said it expected a loss of more than $300 million for the year on its ACA plans amid mounting medical costs among enrollees. The insurer lost about $200 million in the second quarter on the plans."

As for the exchange plans still offered through the ACA: "To remain profitable, insurers say they have no choice but to ask for significant' price increases that most reports say will be in the double-digit percentage range on average."

Does that sound affordable?

You need not be a fan of huge insurance companies to know that they will be strongly motivated to abandon ventures that lose hundreds of millions of their dollars in a single quarter.

Perhaps that doesn't sound like much money to the Obama White House. After all, this administration has added nearly $9 trillion to the national debt in less than eight years. And it counts as its top domestic legislative achievement the ACA, which in effect added another massive federal financial obligation even as Medicare and Social Security keep marching toward fiscal oblivion in the absence of long-overdue reforms.

But $300 million would be a daunting sum for any company, and a growing number of insurance companies want out of what for them has been a losing enterprise.

That latest evidence of the ACA's fallacies recalls this infamous pitch from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before both chambers of Congress approved it without a single Republican vote:

"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."

Six years later, we've found out what was in the bill: It's an unaffordable federal intrusion into the health insurance marketplace.

Now we need to find out what candidates for president, the Senate and the House propose to do about that.

This editorial is from The Post and Courier of Charleston via The Associated Press.
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.
Egypts First Woman Marine Engineer Breaks into a Men-Only Industry

She chose a battle against the constraints of traditions, suspicions and mockery to pursue her dream career in one of many fields still labeled as a men-only zone in Egyptian culture.

This year, Ingy Abdekarim, 24, became the first woman marine engineer to graduate from the Arab Academy of Science and Technology (AAST) in Egypt.

The idea of a girl in this field freaked many people out and they started doubting my abilities, Abdelkarim tells Egyptian Streets, as she recalls how she worked her way into what has been a male dominated industry for quite some time.

Abdelkarim has faced a multitude of obstacles from the moment she articulated her decision.

The common remark was that I was wasting my time and meant to fail, she said. Even her father, a captain himself and aware of the challenge, was not very welcoming of the idea and advised her to go to business school instead.

My dad, today, introduces me to the people with a great sparkle in his eye and tells them this is my daughter, the first [woman] marine engineer, she says proudly. Abdelkarims first step into the marine engineering field was met with an unexplained rejection, for the mere fact that I am an Egyptian girl.

She was denied the right to apply to the school of marine engineering simply because no Egyptian girl has entered this field before and, therefore, no girl can.

The antagonism turned her from a girl who simply wants to pursue something she loves to one who aspires to become a pioneer.

I felt that I was fighting and standing alone and I knew I had to deal with the consequences, she says.

After a two-year struggle, and with the help of the section head at AAST, she was finally given the green light to start pursuing her dream career.

However, Abdelkarims college life was no less of a challenge. While many of her professors would look at her with great pride and happiness, there were still many others who used to mock her and even ignore her presence.

The same went for her colleagues; even though she was able to gain the respect of most of them and to prove she was not the delicate girl who was meant to fail, there were always doubts in her capacities and chances to succeed.

I heard it with my own ears: You are a burden and we want to get rid of you, Abdelkarim recalls.

In addition to coping with her male colleagues, Abdelkarim held herself responsible for paving the way for other girls to follow her lead, if they wish.

She was determined not to let down those whom she had challenged, by putting limits for everyone and not causing any problems that could by any means fall back on the presence of a woman among 30 male classmates.

According to Abdelkarim, she did manage to leave behind an honorable image and to gain the respect of her colleagues who granted her the title of Engineer Ingy when addressing her early on.

Rising up to yet another challenge, Abdelkarim entered the white cage one semester before her graduation. And hereafter, her challenging career in a male dominated industry and her family life as a married woman kicked off all at once, on a mission to prove that an Egyptian woman can indeed do it all.

Luckily, Abdelkarims career kick-off was less tiresome than the onset of her path.

It was very easy because simply I was able to enter a field that no girl has entered before me and I was able to cope, she says, establishing that she was welcomed at any job.

Abdelkarim says she was bluntly told to go peel potatoes in the kitchen, as any girl should do and now manages to balance her household duties with the pursuit of her career  nothing at the expense of the other.

According to Egypts first woman marine engineer, her job is not something impossible for women to do, because the most important in the field is the personality, and not the muscles.

I will continue my masters and I will enter this field and develop it in the country, Abdelkarim pledges, determined to start her own business one day and to keep going despite the obstacles.

As long as I entered a war determined to prove something, I will prove it, whether they accept me or not, she says, maintaining, Any girl in the world has the right to do what she loves.

Abdelkarim urges every Egyptian girl to arm herself with an unbelievable amount of patience and will in order to pursue her dreams and career choices.

Dont give anyone the opportunity to determine your future just because you are a girl  and do not let anyone break you, says Egypts first marine engineer, encouraging every girl to become her own source of support and strength and not to wait for advocacy from anyone.

Raise your girls right  Teach them that they are not a shame and that they are not weak  And empower yourselves, Abdelkarim urges.

www.egyptianstreets.com
By Trend

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has sent a letter to his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in connection with the recent terror attack in Turkeys Gaziantep city.

Fifty-one people were killed, another 69 were injured, 17 of them are in serious condition as a result of Aug. 20 blast in the city of Gaziantep in southern Turkey. The attack occurred during a wedding celebration.

Azerbaijan as a country suffering from terrorism strongly condemns all its forms and manifestations, as well as the terrorist attack in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which resulted in numerous casualties, Mammadyarov said in his letter.

In his message, Mammadyarov expressed deep grief and condolences to the families and friends of the victims, the brotherly people of Turkey in connection with the horrific terrorist attack and wished a speedy recovery to the injured.
Korean business owners have been invited by Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) to venture in the Bahraini market, reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.



To read further, please visit GDNonline.






Seven international firms have submitted final bids for the Phase One development of the bulk liquid terminal at the Port of Duqm in Oman, a report said.



The $1-billion project is a key component of the infrastructure being developed by the Omani government to support the growth of a liquids hub in the Duqm Special Economic Zone (SEZ).



While the names of the seven bidders have not been disclosed, they are among nine international firms that were originally prequalified by Sezad to compete for the project, said the Oman Daily Observer report.



The nine prequalified firms include: Boskalis Westminster Middle East Oman; Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company; Van Oord Oman; Dredging International; Tecnicas Reunidas; Consolidated Contractors Company; China Harbour Engineering Company; Huta Marine Works; and Penta Ocean Construction Company.



The successful bidder will secure a contract to execute Phase One of the project, covering dredging and reclamation works, and the construction of quay walls and berths, among other works, the report said.



Execution of topside infrastructure, which includes the construction of storage tanks, warehouses, pipeline corridors, and loading arms, is covered in the Phase Two package, bidders for which are currently being prequalified, the report added.
Dubai-based Danube Group, a leading materials supplier in the UAE, celebrated the opening of the first aluminium composite panel (ACP) factory in the Middle East, in conjunction with Alucopanel USA.



The facility, part of Alucopanel Middle East and located in Dubais Technopark, is solely dedicated to the production of non-combustible ACPs and related materials, said a statement from the company.



The factory, inaugurated on August 22, has begun the production of A2 composite panels. The facility has an expected capacity of 4 million sq m annually, making it the largest production facility of its kind in the region.



Rizwan Sajan, founder and chairman, Danube Group, said: The opening is a strong testimonial that our company is leading transformation in the building materials industry.



We have been able to successfully set up this facility with the support of the UAE government and are extremely happy to be the first and only company to make available the non-combustible ACP, he said.



The introduction of the new law by the UAE Civil Defence, to use A2 materials, is a new need to ensure customer safety and eliminate loss of life due to fire, he added.



Spanning an area of over 50,000 sq ft, the new manufacturing facility involved an investment of Dh100 million ($27.22 million). The factory will make available over 15 metallic finishes as well as 15 solid/plane finishes in more than 10,000 colours that can be customised to suit the requirements of a wide array of developers across the region.



All products under the Alucopanel Middle East portfolio adhere to the highest standards and have received international certifications including the Exova Warrington fire-UK, Thomas Bell-Wright International Consultants- UAE and BM Trada UK, it said.



Zohaib Rahman, division head of Alucopanel Middle East, said: Being the first organisation in the Middle East to operate a full- fledged non-combustible ACP is a huge achievement for us and I am proud to be part of the team.



Panels produced by our company do not allow the diffusion of flames and restrict smoke, which discourages the spread of fire in an upward motion, he said.



The application of the non-combustible from our company in development projects in and around the region will definitely elevate fire safety in the region, representing a new era in building materials, he added.



Plans to open another facility in the UAE are currently in the pipeline and will be announced early next year. Having been present in the UAE for over 20 years, Danube Group boasts a diverse portfolio of building materials and related supplies. The UAE-based group has offices in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and India, among others, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service


Senaat, a leading industrial investment holding company in the UAE, has reported a 6 per cent increase in net profit and 2 per cent increase in EBITDA for the first half of this year, compared to the second half of 2015.



After a challenging 2015, the groups EBITDA remained steady at Dh946 million ($257.54 million) for H1 2016 (H2 2015: Dh932 million ($253.7 million) and net profit grew to Dh341 million ($92.8 million) (H2 2015: Dh321 million), said a statement from the company.



Additionally, the groups revenues in H1 2016 were Dh6.4 billion ($1.74 billion) in line with management expectations (H2 2015: Dh7.3 billion ($1.99 billion), it said.



A challenging business environment, both in the UAE and globally, affected the groups revenues, including pressures linked to the impact of oil prices, downturn in the global steel industry with overcapacity driving down prices, and a general retrenchment in core economic activity in Abu Dhabi and the UAE, it added.



In spite of these adverse fundamentals, Senaat achieved solid financial results driven by the strong performance of its portfolio companies, prudent financial management including rationalisation of costs and its sound corporate strategy. In comparison to the six months ended June 30, 2015 Senaats profit was slightly down and margin decreased by 1 per cent, said the statement.



Jasim Al Nowais, chairman of Senaat, said: In spite of the challenges faced both domestically and globally, our company remains confident in its financial position.



The strong performance of our portfolio companies, as well our senior managements strategy of implementing internal cost controls have enabled us to remain in a strong position as we enter the second half of the year, he added.



Looking ahead, we will continue to pursue opportunities to optimise its portfolio, maximise value for its shareholder and share wealth with citizens of the nation. This includes realising and re-investing profits, and growing its existing portfolio and creating new industrial leaders. We look forward to what the second half of the year will bring for Senaat as we work to achieve these goals, he concluded.



Jamal Al Dhaheri, CEO of Senaat, said: Our performance during H1 2016 reflects an excellent effort across our portfolio of companies to retain our competitive edge in challenging economic times.



At the heart of this has been our strategy to optimise the strengths of our various portfolio companies to become industrial champions for Abu Dhabi. This close collaboration between our senior management team and the leadership from across portfolio companies has enabled our group to continue to weather this current economic cycle. We are confident that we are well positioned for the future, he added.



Senaats portfolio companies reported strong earnings for H1 2016. Amongst the portfolio are two companies that are publicly listed on the local stock exchange.



ADX-listed food and beverages company Agthia Group was a standout performer, reporting a 16 per cent increase in net profit to Dh145 million ($39.4 million) for H1 2016.



Arkan Building Materials PJSC, also listed on ADX, demonstrated resilient performance in an oversupplied market and recorded a commercial performance below last year due to a weather-related incident that had a negative, but limited impact on operations at one of the companys cement plants.



H1 2016 also saw the progression of major projects for the group, including the April 2016 ground-breaking of the Al Gharbia Pipe Company plant, a joint venture between Senaat and Japanese partners JFE Steel Corporation and Marubeni-Itochu Steel Inc.



The facility will be the first sour service capable, welded steel pipe plant in the UAE, and will have an expected production capacity of 240,000 tonnes annually, it added.  TradeArabia News Service
Image Nation Abu Dhabi, a leading media company, and the Dubai Film Market (DFM), the business arm of Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), will join forces for the fourth year running to support local and regional filmmaking talent.



The association will see Image Nation and the Enjaaz production support programme of DIFF award Dh250,000 ($68,000) to five Gulf filmmakers for their short film projects.



This is another collaboration between Image Nation and the Dubai Film Market to help boost the regional film industry. Past initiatives include the social media campaign #SupportArabCinema and Arab Film Studios (AFS) new scriptwriting competition.



Submissions will be judged by a panel of experts from Image Nation and Enjaaz who will select five talented filmmakers who have submitted compelling storytelling projects that will enrich and entertain audiences both in the region and beyond.



The allocated funds will provide the chosen filmmakers with the resources they need to start or complete production and help eventually present them to worldwide audiences.



Shivani Pandya, DIFFs managing director said: We are delighted to join forces once more with Image Nation, supporting the Arab worlds brightest emerging and established filmmakers is a priority for both of our organizations. The partnership was designed to increase the number of films from the region that can educate, inspire, influence and entertain whilst at the same time offer a window to issues, cultures and destinations unknown to a wider international audience. Film is arguably the most popular and powerful art form today and we look forward to showcasing a new slate of compelling and captivating Gulf films at DIFF this December.



Michael Garin, CEO of Image Nation Abu Dhabi, said: Our partnership with DFM once more underscores Image Nations and DFMs ambitions to help develop a sustainable film industry in the region. Were looking forward to seeing the array of talent from this years festival and uncovering some filmmaking stars of the future.



Launched in 2009, Enjaaz has supported more than 120 Arab feature and short films to date, bringing Arab films to the screen and maximizing their potential for international sales and distribution.



Many of those filmmakers have also gone onto receive industry and international recognition for their projects on the world stage with a significant number of Arab films showcased at the Academy Awards, the BAFTAS and international film festivals including Berlin Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival.



Past recipients of DIFFs Enjaaz support programme for short films that have gone onto achieve international acclaim include; Its About to Rain by Haider Rashid, Baghdad Messi and The Bad Hunter by Sahim Omar Kalifa and Cotton by Luay Fadhil.



The 13th edition of DIFF will take place from December 7  14.  TradeArabia News Service
A suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 carried out the attack on a wedding party in the Turkish city of Gaziantep on Saturday that killed at least 51 people, the president said.



The attack was the deadliest in a series of bombings in Turkey this year, and President Tayyip Erdogan said Islamic State was likely behind it.



"Initial evidence suggests it was a Daesh attack," Erdogan said in Istanbul on Sunday, using an Arabic name for the hardline Sunni Islamist group. He said 69 people were in hospital and 17 were "heavily injured".



A destroyed suicide vest was found at the blast site, officials said.



Islamic State has been blamed for other similar attacks in Turkey, often targeting Kurdish gatherings in an effort to inflame ethnic tensions. The deadliest was last October, when suicide bombers killed more than 100 people at a rally of pro-Kurdish and labour activists in Ankara.



Saturday's attack comes with Turkey still in shock just a month after Erdogan and the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on U.S.-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen. Gulen has denied the charge.



The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said the wedding party was for one of its members. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt.



The bomb went off as guests spilled out into the streets of the city close to the Syrian border after the traditional henna night party, when guests have their hands and feet painted.



Women and children, including a three-month-old baby, were among the dead, witnesses said.



Blood and burn marks stained the walls of the narrow lane where the blast hit. Women in white and checkered scarves wept outside the morgue waiting for word on missing relatives.



"The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing," said 25-year-old Veli Can. "There was blood and body parts everywhere."



"We want to end these massacres," witness Ibrahim Ozdemir said. "We are in pain, especially the women and children."



FUNERALS, FORENSIC TESTS



Hundreds gathered for funerals on Sunday, with coffins draped in the green of Islam. But some ceremonies would have to wait because many victims were blown to pieces and DNA tests would be needed to identify them, security sources said.



"Every type of death is painful. But it is even more painful when it comes with religious slogans. It is even more painful when they mix religion with politics," said Omer Emlik, who said he was an uncle of two of the victims.



"All the people here are suffering."



The United States condemned the attack and said Vice President Joe Biden would discuss the fight against terrorism during a visit to Ankara this coming week.



"The perpetrators of this barbaric act cynically and cowardly targeted a wedding, killing dozens and leaving scores wounded," said Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, in a statement.



Anti-government protests erupted at at least one funeral, where threw plastic bottles and chanted "Murderer Erdogan!"



Some in Turkey feel the government has not done enough to protect its citizens from Islamic State.



NATO member Turkey is a partner in the Western coalition against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, allowing U.S. jets to fly missions against the group from its air bases. It has also supported some rebel groups in Syria.



Syrian rebels backed by Turkey were preparing to launch an operation to capture a town held by Islamic State near the Turkish border, a senior Syrian rebel said on Sunday.



Islamic State is also fighting U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish rebels, who have taken ground from the hardline group. Ankara considers the Syrian Kurdish fighters a terrorist group and worries their advance against Islamic State will encourage Kurdish militants in Turkey.



ETHNIC FAULTLINES



"ISIS has been trying to agitate or exploit already tense ethnic and sectarian faultlines to retaliate for the advancement of Syrian Kurds in the north of Syria and by Turkey's attack on ISIS targets in Syria," said Metin Gurcan, an independent security analyst and retired Turkish military officer who writes a column for Al-Monitor.



"For ISIS it is hitting two birds with one stone."



Three suspected Islamic State suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul's main airport in June.



Violence also flared again this week in the largely Kurdish southeast. Ten people were killed in bomb attacks, mostly police and soldiers, in an escalation that officials blamed on PKK Kurdish militants.



Turkey began air strikes against Islamic State in July 2015. A peace process with the PKK collapsed and it also began targeting PKK targets in northern Iraq.



Just a half an hour away from Gaziantep is the border town of Kilis which has been repeatedly hit by rockets and shells fired from Islamic State territory, sometimes killing civilians.



On Sunday, Erdogan and ruling AK Party lawmakers emphasised they see Islamic State as no different to the Kurdish separatist PKK and the group led by Gulen, all three classified by Turkey as terrorist organisations.  Reuters
Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, plans to discuss energy cooperation agreements with China and Japan, the Saudi cabinet said on Monday.



"The cabinet has approved to delegate a number of ministers to discuss with the Chinese side the following projects: a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to cooperate in the energy sector; an initial cooperation memorandum in the field of crude storage," a cabinet statement on state news agency SPA said.



Discussions with Japan for an MoU for cooperating in the energy sector were also approved by the cabinet, SPA said.



Saudi Arabia has traditionally accounted for most of the crude imports by Asia, the world's biggest oil-consuming region.



But recently Opec's top producer has lost ground in a number of major markets including Russia and China, and faces a further threat from Iran, which is ramping up exports after the removal of Western sanctions.



The kingdom, however, has responded by pumping and shipping more oil, and with knockdown prices in Asia from state oil giant Saudi Aramco.



In 2015, Asia accounted for 65 percent of Saudi Aramco's oil exports; an increase from 62.3 percent a year earlier.



Aramco has been in talks with China's CNPC and Sinopec for investment opportunities in refining, marketing and petrochemicals, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said earlier this year.



Saudi and Japanese officials had discussed in June possible Japanese investments into the planned initial public offering (IPO) of Aramco.



Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled ambitious plans earlier this year aimed at ending the country's "addiction" to oil and transforming it into a global investment power. An IPO of less than 5 percent of state-run Aramco is a centrepiece of that effort.



So big is Aramco given its rights to the crude reserves of Saudi Arabia, that selling even 1 percent of it would create the world's biggest IPO, Prince Mohammed has said. He expects the IPO will value Aramco at least at $2 trillion. -Reuters


Scientists are developing an edible form of packaging which they hope will preserve food more effectively and more sustainably than plastic film, helping to cut both food and plastic waste.



The packaging film is made of a milk protein called casein, scientists from the US Department of

Agriculture said at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.



The milk-based packaging does not currently have much taste, but flavours could be added to it, as could vitamins, probiotics and other nutrients to make it nutritious, they said.



The film looks similar to plastic wrapping, but is up to 500 times better at protecting food from oxygen, as well as being biodegradable and sustainable, the researchers said at the meeting in Pennsylvania, which runs until Thursday.



"The protein-based films are powerful oxygen blockers that help prevent food spoilage. When used in

packaging, they could prevent food waste during distribution along the food chain," research leader Peggy Tomasula said in a statement on Sunday.



Between 30 and 40 percent of food produced around the world is never eaten because it spoils at some time after harvest or during transport, or gets thrown away by shops and consumers.



Yet almost 800 million people worldwide go to bed hungry every night, according to UN figures.



Halving food waste by 2030 was included as a target in global development goals adopted by world leaders in 2015.



The US scientists also want to reduce the amount of plastic that is thrown away.



"We are currently testing applications such as single-serve, edible food wrappers. For instance, individually wrapped cheese sticks use a large proportion of plastic - we would like to fix that," said Laetitia Bonnaillie, co-leader of the study.



Single-serve pouches of cheese would still have to be encased in a larger plastic or cardboard container for sale on store shelves to prevent them from getting wet or dirty.



Edible packaging made of starch is already on the market, but it is relatively porous and does not block oxygen from reaching the food as effectively.



Bonnaillie said she hopes the milk protein packaging will be on store shelves within three years. - Thomson Reuters Foundation
Adrien Piot has joined the Park Hyatt Dubai, a leading five-star hotel in the UAE emirate, as its new food and beverage (F&B) manager.



Reigning from his hometown of South West France, Piot has toured the world; commencing in Greece followed by Ireland, Australia, New Caledonia and finally concluding in Dubai; all the way gaining a world of experience in the hospitality industry.



Although his interest is spiked by new trends, his ability to spot authenticity is stemmed from the French expression LArt de Vivre. The art of living, profiting from the riches that daily life has to offer, which is the direction he will be steering the Food and Beverage efforts at Park Hyatt Dubai, the hotel said in a statement.



Looking into the future, Piot is eager to continue feeding his curiosity for food and beverage and the lifestyle associated with this social habit. He has chosen a boundless time to join Hyatt with the companys recent brand activation and carte blanche to present unique culinary experiences starting with Traiteurs relaunch as a lifestyle destination, it said. - TradeArabia News Service
British Airways is offering students and teachers travelling overseas for the new school term up to 10 per cent discount on advertised fares, one additional piece of checked baggage and flexibility on date changes to ticket bookings.



The benefits are currently available for all students and teachers flying in World Traveller with British Airways from Kuwait to the UK, Europe or North America when they book through a British Airways shop or travel agent, Elite Holidays, in Kuwait.



Studying abroad is a once in a lifetime opportunity and our experience shows that students travelling abroad need to take a lot of extra baggage, particularly if they are on their maiden trip, but the worry of excess baggage can be a concern for them. said Paolo De Renzis, head of Middle East, Africa and Central Asia Sales for British Airways.



If you are a teacher starting a new job, we will help make sure that you have enough allowance so that when you arrive in a new country, you will have everything in your suitcase to get the new academic year off to the best possible start.



When purchasing a ticket and checking-in at the airport, students and teachers need to provide valid identification to take advantage of the travel offers.



All flights from Kuwait arrive at the airlines home at London Heathrow Terminal 5. British Airways customers can enjoy stress-free onward connections to cities in the UK and Europe from Heathrow. - TradeArabia News Service
UAE residents are gearing up for a short getaway this Eid Al Adha with easily accessible destinations the top choice as summer winds down, according to Preferred Hotels & Resorts.



A recent survey of over 1,500 people in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, conducted by YouGov revealed that 43 per cent of Emirates residents are planning to travel during the Eid holiday.



The economic slowdown hasn't seemingly deterred UAE residents from their annual travel plans and with a wealth of cultural, relaxing and city destinations reachable from Dubai in under four hours by air, we are seeing a surge of interest for stays at our member properties in destinations ranging from legendary India and the natural beauty of Georgia to pure relaxation in the Maldives, said Saurabh Rai, executive vice president of Preferred Hotels & Resorts, the worlds largest independent hotel brand.



According to YouGov, four and five-star hotels are the top choice for families with 32 per cent of accommodation requests by UAE residents for four-star options and 48 per cent choosing to go the full luxury route.



Popular destinations winning the public vote include India, just 3.5 hours away which, with the recent introduction of the e-Tourist Visa has seen rising numbers of UAE visitors since 2015.



In India, the growing line-up of Preferred hotels include Chennais stunning The Leela Palace Chennai. This five-star hotel combines Indian tradition and contemporary comfort. Guests can enjoy the Spectra restaurant which boasts seven interactive kitchens and views overlooking the Adyar River and Bay of Bengal.



The Greater Caucasus, with its dramatic mountains and abundance of outdoor activity options is becoming increasingly popular with regional travellers. Just a three hours flight from the UAE is Georgia, which attracted over 17,000 UAE visitors in 2015, up 687 pe cent year-on-year according to Georgian National Tourism Administration.



Home to Georgias historic viticulture community, the five-star Hotel Kabadoni, located in the picturesque cobbled street town of Sighnaghi is one of Georgias most exclusive country hotels. Overlooking a vista of terracotta roofs and colourful balconies, guests can relax in the traditional Georgian interiors style in any of the 21 guestrooms or enjoy a local glass of grape at the rooftop restaurant.



Egypt is another perennial favourite in the under four-hour bracket, and the countrys tourism ministry figures revealed 180,000 MENA region tourists in the first quarter of 2016. UAE visitors topped demand, with 100,000 visitors, boosting the Egyptian economy to the tune of an average US$140 per night.



The ultimate R&R destination, the Maldives may be at the high end of the affordable short break spectrum, but is also a preferred destination for UAE travellers, just 4.25 hours away. Coco Palm Dhuni Kolhu in the Maldives is another Preferred hotel that defines luxury escapism in every sense of the word.



The availability of low cost carriers is also helping boost demand, with Air Arabia and FlyDubais route networks adding new destinations all the time, and opening up a number of new and exciting destinations to intrepid travellers, said Rai.



Data released by global aviation leader Boeing, revealed that in 2015 Asian low cost carriers recorded average annual growth of 24.5 per cent over the previous decade against just 13.4 per cent by European carriers.



Staycations are also a popular alternative, and with 23 per cent of local residents unable to travel due to work commitments, a stay at our partner property Palazzo Versace, could be just the answer for 72 hours of upscale downtime, said Rai.



Newly added to the Preferred portfolio, Palazzo Versace Dubai enjoys a prime waterfront location on the Dubai Creek in the heart of the upcoming Culture Village development. With its architecturally noteworthy exteriors and interiors already attracting a host of local VIPs and international celebrities, guests enter an all-Versace environment complemented by an Olympic-sized pool and collection of on-trend restaurants. - TradeArbaia News Service




The TransGriot is available for speaking engagements, college lectures, panel discussions, media interviews, conferences or Trans 101 education efforts for your school, business or professional organizations.



For local Houston area, Texas or national events, you can e-mail me at transgriot@yahoo.com



For events outside the Houston metro area, I ask that my travel and lodging expenses be covered.



This is separate from my speaking fee.



If you are interested in having me appear as a speaker or panelist, you can e-mail me with the date and details of your proposed event.

Please book as early as possible because my speaking and event calendar slots during the year rapidly fill up.
Many in the coal industry are incensed after federal mining regulators stepped definitively into the self-bonding debate Tuesday.

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement announced that the agency would begin crafting a self-bonding rule in response to a petition from environmental group WildEarth Guardians. The group asked regulators to prevent coal companies with a history of financial insolvency from self-bonding.

Proponents say self-bonding is one practice of many that keeps companies accountable for eventual clean-up. Companies claim their past and future reclamation efforts in the state are consistent and commendable.

Those in opposition maintain the practice is unwise and puts the taxpayer at risk in a worst-case scenario of bust companies walking out on cleanup costs  a scenario they say is ever more likely given the unstable coal market.

The rule, which will go through multiple comment periods, could potentially change eligibility requirements for the practice, incorporate new bonding mechanisms or institute yearly reviews of the financial health of self-bonded companies.

The coal market has changed since self-bonding was introduced and now faces instability, said Joe Pizarchik, director of the federal regulation agency, in a statement.

This is a turbulent time of energy transformation in our country, of declining use of coal and increased use of cheaper natural gas and renewable energy Pizarchik said. These conditions have exposed the limitation of the current self-bonding rule and we have a responsibility to protect the public interest in keeping up with these changes.

Tipping point

Wyoming is one of 10 states where companies are currently using self-bonds for the eventual cleanup of land disturbed by mining operations. After the three largest coal companies operating in-state went bankrupt over the past year, the debate over whether companies should use their assets as collateral against eventual reclamation hit a tipping point.

For some in the industry, arguments against self-bonding fail to recognize the reality of reclamation in Wyomings mines.

In the reclamation process, you are reclaiming the mine as you mine, said Jonathan Downing, director of the Wyoming Mining Association. All coal mines in Wyoming have and continue to meet their reclamation obligations.

However, for environmentalists, and now federal regulators, the landscape of bonding has changed significantly. With a number of too-big-to-fail companies filing for bankruptcy, the practice is insufficient protection, they say.

If you read the history of the self-bonding regulations, the agencies just never envisioned a time when companies would be in financial collapse, in bankruptcy and still be self-bonded, said Shannon Anderson, of the Powder River Basin Resource Council.

The idea was, there were some financial triggers and metrics put into the regulations that would catch the companies in a time when they would still have resources to replace those bond if they needed to, and the triggers arent working right now.

Though companies may never reach the point when the cost of cleanup is completely saddled on the taxpayer, the need for a mechanism to keep that from happening is vital, she said.

We dont know what the future is going to hold and bonding, the very nature of it, is to protect the public against those risks, she said. Bonding is essentially insurance.

Political debate

The debate over self-bonding is also a political one.

Opponents fear the regulations are indicative of federal pressure on an already overburdened coal industry and question how much voice states will have in the eventual rule.

When Alpha Natural Resources emerged from bankruptcy in July, its newly formed company, Contura Energy, agreed to replace the $411 million of unsecured cleanup costs in Wyoming with third-party insurance. The Department of Justice had put pressure on the company to improve its reclamation plan before the department would allow the transfer of federal mining leases to the new company.

Generally, federal input is more subtle in Wyoming, where state regulators are given primacy over mining regulations.

States with rules that are equal or more stringent than federal regulations under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 can allow self-bonds at their discretion.

The states are the experts on this, said Kyle Wendtland, land quality administrator for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. Any individual state that has primacy, clearly is closer to regulation of those industries.

The introduction of self-bonding came in the early 80s, at a time when the insurance market was unstable, he said. It was meant to make bonding more secure, not less.

Our view is that self-bonding is just another instrument out there. It has a place. We are looking to develop a diverse portfolio across those bonding instruments, Wendtland said. Our position on that has not changed.

Meanwhile, the National Mining Association is questioning whether the federal mining authorities have a right to change self-bonding rules under federal law.

OSM is claiming both competence and authority it doesnt have, the National Mining Association said in a statement. It does not have the authority to deny states the discretion they have under current law (SMCRA) to set self-bonding conditions or decide whether to allow self-bonding.

Pizarchik, the federal agency director, appeared to anticipate the argument that federal regulations would bypass state discretion.

Together with state regulatory authorities that allow, or are considering allowing self-bonds as forms of financial assurance, we can write a better rule, he wrote in a statement. Together we can protect the publics interest and the environment.

In Wyoming, regulators are waiting to see if the feds stay true to their promise of dialogue. However, if Wyoming regulators have their way, self-bonding will remain in the toolbox.
A fire burning Monday afternoon in rural Evansville may have been ignited by someone welding during a burn ban, authorities said.

The fire burned dozens of acres of grassland just off Cole Creek Road. Three air tankers dropped fire retardant on the blaze, which officials estimate was 60 percent contained as of 6 p.m.

There are some homes in the area, but the fire appeared to be moving away from them, said Natrona County Fire Marshal Bob Fawcett.

Crews responded to the fire at about 2:30 p.m. and found flames burning about 25 acres of tall grass and brush. The fire continued to grow and move quickly, but firefighters were able to get a good handle on it, Fawcett said. They hoped to have it fully contained Monday evening.

They will keep working on it until theyve got it mopped up and have all the hot spots taken care of, Fawcett said. We will have people out to check it tomorrow.

Officials interviewed the person whom they believe may have started the fire while welding. Natrona County sheriffs deputies cited the man for allegedly violating the countys burn ban, Fawcett said. He will be required to appear before a judge and could face a fine of up to $750.

As fire crews worked, a small group of residents gathered on Cole Creek Road to observe the smoke from a distance.

Karri Reliford stood with her husband in front of her home just off the road. Her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren, who also live off Cole Creek, were there. They were holding an American flag, a sign of support for the firefighters, Reliford said.

We want them to know were thankful for everything they do, she said.

Reliford and her family were watching in case authorities asked them to evacuate. Officials evacuated her and her husband during last Octobers Cole Creek Fire, but the fire stayed about a mile away from their house, Reliford said. They had locked up their horses near the house Monday in case authorities asked them to leave.

Last years Cole Creek Fire destroyed 14 homes, burned 10,000 acres, and displaced over 1,000 residents. It began Oct. 11 after flames from burning wood chips escaped from the Casper landfill.

Though no one was hurt, many families lost pets and farm animals to the blaze.

With the wind last time, we just didnt stand a chance, Fawcett said. (With this fire, crews) got out here really quickly, but they did last time, too. Our best defense is prevention and to just not start fires like this.
Money appears to have bolstered several candidates in last weeks Casper City Council primary election.

Led by Todd Murphy, Chris Walsh and Jesse Morgan, candidates hoping to unseat council members raised a total of $6,142  nearly six times the funds reported by incumbents, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Natrona County Clerks office.

The only incumbents to report campaign contributions before the election were Wayne Heili and Bob Hopkins. Candidates are required to turn in expenditure receipts to the clerks office this week.

Walsh, who raised $1,916, had the primarys most impressive performance, winning 50.3 percent of the vote in Ward 3 to come ahead of Vice Mayor Steve Catheys 23.6 percent. Cathey reported no campaign contributions as of Aug. 12.

Walshs contributions came from himself and a family member, Rita Walsh, who donated $1,000.

Todd Murphy reported the highest contributions, with $2,169.68 as of July 29. Murphy finished ahead of the two incumbents in his Ward 2 race, earning 23.6 percent of the vote to Charlie Powells 20.4 percent and Scott Millers 14.6 percent.

Reached Thursday, Murphy was unaware he raised the most money. He said he used the money to generate visibility and planned to continue doing so through the Nov. 8 general election.

I just had a game plan, and I thought, Well if I can raise some, Ill use less of my own money, Murphy said.

Murphy, a self-described fiscal conservative, gave $1,535 to his own campaign and received 11 contributions of $100 or less from Casperites and one Colorado resident.

Neither Powell nor Miller reported any contributions before the election.

Miller said he had spent some personal money campaigning and would be submitting the receipts to the county clerks office. He said the primary was an opportunity to see where he stood and will continue campaigning through November.

Im shooting for a grassroots campaign, and my focus is going to be getting out talking to people, not on raising money, Miller said.

Heili and Hopkins, the only two incumbents who reported receiving campaign contributions, both came out ahead.

In Ward 1s race for an unexpired two-year term, Heili received a slight edge over challenger Morgan with 30.4 percent to Morgans 29.1. Heili self-funded his campaign with $723.

Morgan loaned his campaign $800 and received two $100 personal contributions from supporters.

Hopkins and Mayor Daniel Sandoval finished first and second in their race for Ward 1s two full-term seats. Hopkins, who donated $375 to his re-election effort, received 23.3 percent of the vote. Sandoval received 19.9 percent.

Challenger Amanda Huckabay came in third with 18.3 percent and will advance to the general election. She reported $496 in contributions, with $246 coming from family. Former council member Keith Goodenough gave $100 to her campaign.

Twelve out of the 15 candidates will advance to the November election, including all the incumbents.
Authorities have not released the name of man who was shot by a Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper Sunday near Casper following a high-speed chase.

Officials have also not said what the mans condition is. He was taken to Wyoming Medical Center and underwent surgery, said Lt. Chris Schell. Authorities believed the mans injuries were not life-threatening.

The patrol said a trooper shot the man after he drove toward officers.

Natrona County District Attorney Mike Blonigen said his offices investigation remains in its earliest stages. He declined to name the trooper who fired the shot.

The shooting followed a pursuit that began around 3:30 p.m. on Interstate 25 near Douglas after authorities received a complaint that a pickup was driving recklessly, the Highway Patrol reported Sunday night. A trooper ran the trucks plates and learned it was stolen, the patrol reported.

The driver of the pickup refused to stop and led two troopers on a pursuit that spanned two counties and more than 40 miles. The truck reached a speed of 100 mph, authorities said.

A few miles east of Casper, a third trooper used a spike strip in an effort to damage the pickups tires. After the truck rolled over the device, it crossed the median and began driving into oncoming traffic for about a mile.

The pickup eventually drove back into the median, where a trooper rammed it with his patrol car.

The suspect was shot by law enforcement as he drove at officers who were out of their patrol cars at the time, the highway patrol reported.

After being shot, the suspect rammed a highway patrol car before driving off the highway and onto the prairie. The man was arrested at 4:16 p.m. between Interstate 25 and U.S. Highway 20/26 near Blackmore Road.

No officers sustained serious injuries during the chase.

The Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation is looking into the incident.
A Casper man pleaded guilty Monday to a felony sexual abuse charge for exposing his genitals to a Park Elementary School student as she walked home in April.

Brenden Nicholes Day, 20, entered a guilty plea to one count of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor. A plea agreement calls for Day to be sentenced to four to six years in prison. Natrona County District Judge Daniel Forgey said Day may be required to register as a sex offender.

Day, who was dressed in green jail scrubs, spoke little during the hearing. He admitted exposing his genitalia in a public place and that his penis was visible to the young girl.

Police responded about 4:25 p.m. on April 18 to Beech and Milton streets after the girl reported that a man had exposed himself, a police report states. She told officers she was walking home from school and passed by an alley. She said she saw a man there with his genitals exposed and that when he saw her, he began shaking his penis at her.

The girl said she ran home and told a parent about what had happened, according to the report. She gave police a description of the man.

Officers immediately spotted a man driving a Subaru who matched the description the girl had given, the report states. Police stopped the man, whom they identified as Day, and told him what the girl had reported.

Day initially denied being the man who had exposed himself, according to the report. However, he then stated he had urges and was going through a rough time. He said the rage he was experiencing caused the impulse to masturbate in public, the report states.

According to the report, Day admitted to recently masturbating in the lobbies of local hotels. He said he was sorry and would not do it again, the report states. He also told officers he had fantasized about abducting a person while masturbating.

After the incident, the girls mother, Amanda Huckabay, told members of the Natrona County School Board that Parks principal knew the man was in the area and failed to alert authorities. Huckabay also asked board members to create a policy addressing similar situations.

Recommendations based on a review of policies were presented to the board of trustees in June. They included monthly meetings with local law enforcement, the revision of an emergency call list, and the implementation of a new anonymous tip line, Safe2Tell.

Following Huckabays accusation, the district investigated the incident and cleared Park Principal Dawn DeWald of any wrongdoing. In a May 11 statement, the district said there had been no specific threat to Park or its students. Despite a public records request from the Star-Tribune, the district refused to release the report.

Six days later, DeWald announced she would step down from her position as principal and take a tutoring job at Summit Elementary in the fall.

Huckabay campaigned for a seat on Caspers City Council and came in third during last weeks primary election. She will advance to the November election.

Judge Forgey will sentence Day at a later date.
Donald Trump  he who likes to fly home at night in the comfort of his own plane to sleep in the comfort of his own bed  is at it again on the question of Hillary Clintons stamina, or alleged lack thereof.

To defeat crime and radical Islamic terrorism in our country, to win trade in our country, you need tremendous physical and mental strength and stamina, he said in Wisconsin. Hillary Clinton doesnt have that strength and stamina.

And a day earlier, in case you missed it, Importantly, she also lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS, and all the many adversaries we face.

Its obvious whats going on here. The strength and stamina combo is a gender-age two-fer, a double whack at Clinton for the price of one. Strength, what men have, and women lack; stamina, with its intimations of go-all-night virility. Clinton, in this depiction, is both a weak girl and a dried-up old crone.

No matter that Trump is a year and four months older  and, for that matter, endures a far less rigorous schedule. In Trump World, what counts is the attack, not the truth.

Trump first began hitting Clinton on strength and stamina during the primaries, a fascinating detour from his usual precision-bombing of opponents. Ordinarily, Trump homes in on an opponents actual deficit, and proceeds to magnify it: low-energy Jeb Bush, Liddle Marco or, more pertinent at present, Crooked Hillary.

But sometimes, under attack, Trump shifts to that trusty playground tactic  I know you are but what am I?  a move intended to jiu-jitsu the conversation away from his own perceived vulnerabilities. Thus, Trump has trotted out unstable Hillary Clinton, a totally unhinged person, and like an unbalanced person. Im rubber, youre glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.

Increasingly, though, the rap on Clinton combines gender, age and health in a smarmy package of unsupported insinuation. Shes a mess, a total mess, Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt. Shell do an event, shell make a short speech off a teleprompter, and then she goes home and goes to sleep.

When Trump uses the teleprompter, it is a supposed token of maturity and professionalism; when Clinton does, she is failing  indeed, possibly brain-damaged. She took a short-circuit in the brain, Trump said in New Hampshire this month, seizing on Clintons explanation of how she flubbed an answer on her emails. Honestly, I dont think shes all there.

Trump is subtle only by comparison to his unhinged allies  and employees. Say-anything, know-nothing spokeswoman Katrina Pierson was on the job on MSNBC Thursday.

Whats new are the other reports of the observations of Hillary Clintons behavior and mannerisms ... as well as her dysphasia, the fact that shes fallen, she has had a concussion, Pierson told Kristen Welker.

It is extremely important to note that Hillary Clinton has taken a lot of time off the campaign trail, Pierson added. It is something that needs to be addressed.

What needs to be addressed, actually, is Piersons own behavior and mannerisms, including her time-travelling assertions that President Obama and Clinton were responsible for the 2004 death of Army Capt. Humayun Khan (It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagement that probably cost his life) and alleging that Obama launched the 2001 war in Afghanistan (Barack Obama went into Afghanistan, creating another problem).

On the topic of Clintons health, Pierson is back-stopped by a cabal of conservative websites and commentators who have peddled out-of-context photos and video snippets to paint Clinton as a weakened, stumbling victim of brain damage.

Fox News Sean Hannity has been in the repulsive lead, citing video of Clintons shaking her head in pretend surprise at being accosted by reporters to suggest neurological injury. It almost seems seizure-esque to me ... violent, out-of-control movements on her part, Hannity said.

Presidential candidates fitness for office, including their medical fitness, matters enormously, especially when Trump would be the oldest president ever elected, Clinton second only to Ronald Reagan. Both could reasonably be called on to disclose more health information; the Trumpian claim by the candidates physician, that he would be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency, is particularly risible.

But the Trump & Co. attack on Clintons health, with its undertones of ageism and sexism, has no basis in reality, and no place in a presidential campaign. It would be tempting to say this is beneath even Trump, except that it isnt.
BILLINGS, MONT.  By the summer of 2014, 17-year-old Timothy Bates had all but given up.

On a steady stream of depression medications since he was 14 and prone to self-harm that included cutting  I loved my razor blades for a while, he said  the Wyoming teen was depressed and suicidal when he was checked into Billings Clinics psychiatric department for a two-week stay, his second such trip in just a few months.

I was pretty much done, said Bates, now 19. I had given up on all of it.

With other methods showing little to no improvement, staff there pitched a experimental but low-risk and low-cost approach involving sleep disruption and specialized light therapy that in limited studies had shown promise in quickly reducing depressive and suicidal tendencies.

Figuring he had little else to do, Bates agreed to be the first youth to undergo the treatment there. To hear him tell it, the results were not only rapid, but also remarkable.

It was a realization that things can get better, he said.

Bates turnaround was so dramatic and it piqued staffs interest so much that the psychiatric department sought and gained approval to undertake what appears to be one of the first studies on the effectiveness of the treatment, called triple chronotherapy, in teenagers.

The open label pilot study is only about halfway through, having been completed on a handful of teenagers so far, but its potential for helping to reduce depression has staff cautiously optimistic.

You can see the differences it makes, but you need to see some more data, some more information, to really know, said Dr. Mariela Herrera, a psychiatrist at the clinic.

Sleep and light

Triple chronotherapy involves three distinct parts, beginning with 36 hours of sleep deprivation for the patient.

That is followed by advancing the patients sleep cycle to a normal bedtime over the next three days. A typical cycle might begin with having the patient sleep from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. on the first day, 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. and finally from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., followed by a regular 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. sleep schedule.

Finally, every morning beginning after the first night of sleep deprivation, the patient undergoes 30 minutes of light therapy at the same time each day using a specialized, but common, light box.

The box is the same type used to help patients suffering from seasonal affective disorder and, for the purposes of the clinics work, is a 10,000-lux light.

The therapy should never be done without supervision from trained medical professionals.

Diane Hurd, a registered nurse, said the therapy is aimed at reducing depressive and suicidal tendencies quickly, while longer-term efforts such as traditional therapy and medication are ongoing. It has been used with adults, and there have been limited studies in that vein, but theres just not much data on its long-term effect in youth.

We started to realize there was a gap in the research, and it was such a great success here, Hurd said, noting that theyd used the therapy with several other youth before the study started in early 2016. We saw a pilot study in the adult population and we looked at that protocol and went on to do more patients.

That study, conducted in 2014 by Dr. Gregory Sahlem at the Medical University of South Carolina, looked at the treatments effect in 10 depressed and suicidal patients.

It found that the therapy is feasible and tolerable in such patients. It showed a significant decrease in depression and suicidal scale scores recorded by both clinicians and patients.

Based up on the results of our small open label pilot study, triple chronotherapy is safe and feasible to administer in acutely depressed and suicidal inpatients, the study concluded.

However, staff at the clinic say theres still a lot of research to be done before its effectiveness can truly be determined, and larger data samples will be necessary in the future. As of early July, the initial study was about half completed and theyre looking at a number of different elements.

Whats the effect on depression outcomes? asked Herrera. Are they suicidal? Is there self-harm or anxiety? We want to see if theres a positive or negative correlation with the quality of sleep.

Ill always remember day 3

Bates said hes struggled with depression almost as long as he can remember.

Late in the spring of 2014, it got to the point where he was on suicide watch at the hospital in Lovell. When that stay ended, he spent time in two other facilities in Montana before coming to Billings for the first of two stays in the youth inpatient psychiatric center.

He said hed use just about anything he could get his hands on to cut himself. Medications hed been on for the previous three years were not only not working, but possibly making him worse, he said.

At that point, I was just done, he said.

Hed been working with Dr. Eric Arzubi, a child psychiatrist and head of the clinics psychiatric department, on finding a solution.

During Bates second stay, Arzubi pitched triple chronotherapy.

They offered up a couple of different ideas, and he said, We have this, but its never been tried here before. Lets give it a shot, Bates said. I thought, Well, Ive got nothing to lose. Im going to be here anyway.

As with Bates case, the therapy and current study is being done with suicidal and moderately to severely depressed patients who are already there for inpatient care and arent sought out outside of the departments confines.

And, like Bates, they must be motivated to complete the entire therapy. Hurd said some patients simply dont want to participate or dont think theyll be able to finish, and thats OK.

For Bates, the prospect of possibly going home to live with his grandmother was motivation enough. During the sleep deprivation phase, staff stayed up with him the entire time, playing games or shooting hoops.

Within a few days, he noticed a change  not only on paper in his depression scale scores, but in how he felt.

Day three, he said. Ill always remember day three. My score sheets, they always had a high depression score. Thats the day where my score was down, it was something better. It was a realization that things can get better.

He felt energized and wasnt drowsy all of the time, actually awake and functioning, he said, and the results were encouraging, both for Bates and the staff.

By the time he went home a few days after the conclusion of the therapy, hed reached an agreement with Arzubi to stay off meds but continue the scheduled bedtime and daily light therapy.

Bates did just that for about three to four months after and now, at the age of 19, says his life has completely turned around, from having a better handle on suicidal thoughts to higher quality sleep, and now hopes others can find hope in his story.

It was just a new outlook, he said. It was almost like a timeout from everything that happened. When you deal with depression, you dont ever get rid of it. You just learn to deal with it. Depression isnt something to be taken lightly, but its definitely workable. I came through it.

Today, Bates works with a Wyoming construction company. Hes married and the couple recently celebrated their one-year anniversary. He hopes to go to college once his wife graduates from her own program in Lovell.

It got everybodys attention

Arzubi said that Bates case led directly to the ongoing study.

The results were good enough that it gave us hope to move forward and study it, he said.

The underlying idea of the study is to look at the impact of depression, suicidality and sleep. Problems with sleep have long been linked with depression, and resetting the circadian rhythm  sort of the bodys internal clock, regulating sleepiness and wakefulness throughout the day  can help some to get more sleep.

In addition, the light boxes, which can be purchased online or at home supply stores, have been shown to help with the depressive symptoms in conditions such as SAD.

Hurd and Herrera both noted that the study, and the therapy itself, is a team effort, with physicians, nurses, mental heath workers, social workers, statisticians and others across the hospital pitching in.

But because of the treatments experimental nature, a lot had to go right for everybody to sign off on the study. They both credit what happened with Bates as a major driver.

To see a patient turn around like that, it got everybodys attention, Herrera said. Theres a lot of reasons why something like this wont go forward, so were happy it did.

Its too early to know what the results of the study will be, staff said, but they plan to continue tracking patients and the effect of triple chronotherapy and hope to be able to conduct a larger and more comprehensive study in the future.

Bates said he still uses the light occasionally on days he thinks he might need it and does his best to get at least eight hours of sleep each night. He knows his depression isnt gone, but also knows he feels better equipped to deal with it, thanks in large part to what he believes started with the therapy.

Things are going to get better and worse, he said. There are ups and downs, but I can say this: More days are better than not any more.
GILLETTE  A Gillette man is facing murder charges in connection to the death of a 3-year-old boy who was injured while under the mans care.

Joseph Nielsen is accused of causing severe brain injuries to that later caused Caiden Fedora to die on Aug. 6. Nielsen was bound over to District Court on Friday.

Caiden died at a hospital in Aurora, Colorado, of a suspected subdural hematoma, or bleeding in the brain.

Police say Caiden was injured in a 25-minute period when Nielsen was watching the boy. Nielsen told police Caiden fell over a plastic dollhouse headfirst and then became unresponsive.
Tombstones can only hint at the story of the person buried there, often vaguely.

They have inscriptions like: He was a kind and loving father; or she was a beloved mother and sister. And a white cross inscribed with only the persons name and the dates of birth and death indicate the resting place of a soldier.

So maybe its not surprising to discover that two marked graves greeting visitors along a popular forest route to the Cloud Peak Wilderness, a short drive west of the community of Buffalo, hint at a larger but inaccurate story.

Pre-Buffalo

Buffalo was founded in 1879 along the base of the southeastern face of the Bighorn Mountains. The community was established next to Fort McKinney, one of several U.S. Army encampments created to protect travelers along the Bozeman Trail as they migrated west in search of riches in Montana gold camps.

Two years earlier, in 1877, a French member of an Army survey crew died along North Clear Creek, a now popular entryway for hikers, horseback and off-trail vehicle riders.

Theres not an awful lot of information, said Sylvia Bruner, director of the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum in Buffalo.

But from a slim folder she pulled information gathered from earlier newspaper articles written based on the memories of some of the first forest workers. Within that folder the story of P. Garde seems somewhat unlikely, maybe an excuse concocted for a more tragic death.

He was cleaning his gun and accidentally shot himself, Bruner said the story of the 28-year-old Garde goes.

Garde was buried along the winding creek that is lush with willow. His grave was placed on a hillside that provides a broad view of the granite bulk of the Bighorn Mountains to the west. A cross must have marked the original gravesite.

Tie hack

Forty-five years later, in 1922, a lumberjack hired to cut, or hack, ties for the railroad  workers known as tie hackers  suffered an apparent heart attack while hiking back from nearby Seven Brothers Lakes after a day of fishing.

Carl Johnson, a Swedish immigrant, wasnt found until May of that year and was buried by his coworkers. His birth date was not printed on the tombstone. Tie hackers would often work in the winter since it was easier to peel the logs and skid them out in the snow, according to information on the Shoshone National Forests website.

Although Buffalo is situated in Johnson County, Bruner said Carl does not appear to have been related to any of the founders of the area.

There are a lot of Johnsons around and, from what I can tell, none of them are related to each other, Bruner joked.

Memorialized

Over the ensuing years the burial sites have been maintained and small, six-sided concrete headstones were added at some point, in addition to wooden crosses and log enclosures. Under P-Garde the stone reads: Soldier.

A 1925-era photo, probably shot by Forest Service regional manager John Spencer, shows three men and their horses standing next to the knee-high log-enclosed graves with large white crosses erected. Bruner provided the photo from the museums collection and noted the black and white shot was lushly hand-tinted.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the nearby large meadow was given the name Soldier Park on maps starting in 1979, although the name likely predated that official recognition in local lore because of the graves. Yet according to Bruners slim file of facts neither one of the men were soldiers.

People just must have though Peter Garde was a soldier, Bruner speculated.

And now people assume the gravesites are two soldiers resting places since the nearby field is named Soldier Park  an odd quirk of history.

Rough route

The road to reach the gravesites is a rutted, rocky and narrow route about three miles from the Hunter trailhead, a popular spot for horsemen and women to park and unload their trailers. Vehicles are allowed along the road in the summer, but only the most brave or ignorant drive the entire way to Soldier Park.

I have seen a LeBaron (sedan) all the way at the top, Bruner said, amazed that the low-clearance vehicle had driven so far. I guess they made it out, but weve found car parts on the way out.

The road cuts the distance to the Solitude Trail, one of Bruners favorite places to ride with her husband and their mules in the Cloud Peak Wilderness. Its also a popular route for hikers following the Clear Creek drainage up to Florence Pass.

The route is one of the most scenic and popular routes in the Cloud Peak Wilderness, according to Erik Molvars book, Hiking Wyomings Cloud Peak Wilderness. Its also a wilderness entryway with a unique, and maybe a bit misleading, history.
CHEYENNE  A new report says Wyoming continues to fall short in adopting state policies to prevent and reduce cancer.

The national study, called How Do You Measure Up?, finds that the Equality State meets only two of 10 progress benchmarks.

To leverage the progress weve made fighting cancer, Wyoming legislators must pass laws and policies proven to save lives and money, Jason Mincer said in a news release.

Mincer, Wyoming government relations director for the American Cancer Societys Cancer Action Network, an advocacy group that released the report.

An estimated 2,920 Wyoming residents will be diagnosed with cancer this year, and more than 1,000 will die from it, according to Mincer. The report provides ways lawmakers can pass laws to help prevent cancer.

Wyoming has consistently earned low marks through the years.

The Wyoming Legislature has a distinct role in the number of cancer cases we have in Wyoming, as well as the affordability of treatment, Mincer said Friday. This report clearly shows that public health in Wyoming has not been a priority for the Legislature in the past.

Wyomings current cigarette tax of 60 cents a pack is one of the lowest in the country. It is below the national average of $1.65 a pack.

The lowest cigarette tax is in Missouri at 17 cents a pack, with the highest in New York at $4.35 a pack.

Steady increases in cigarette taxes are among the best ways to keep young people away from smoking and to curb addiction among adults, the report said.

Mincer and his supporters will try again this year to convince the state Legislature to approve a cigarette tax increase. He supports a hike of $1 a pack.

But Mike Moser, executive director of the Wyoming State Liquor Association, opposes such taxes.

Sin taxes, in general, are regressive, Moser said. Lower-income people pay a higher percentage than higher-income people, even if theyre using the same product.

High taxes on cigarettes in one state only drives smokers to buy cigarettes at nearby states with lower taxes, Moser said. They also can lead to illegal and counterfeit activities, he said. People would go to other states to buy cheaper cigarettes and sell them at home, which is against the law, Moser said.

Instead, what works is to keep cigarettes out of the hands of kids and to have stop-smoking programs, he said.

Supporters of a tax increase say it would generate new state revenue during a budget crisis, in addition to saving lives.

A cigarette tax increase of at least $1.25 per pack would raise roughly $27 million in new annual revenue for the state, Mincer said in a news release.

The state Legislatures Joint Revenue Committee will meet Sept. 22 and 23 in Buffalo to consider a cigarette tax increase.

Rep. Mike Madden, R-Buffalo, is the co-chairman of the committee. The federal trust fund money is running out for programs that help people stop smoking, he said Friday, and the state doesnt have money to pay for such programs. So decisions need to be made about whether to seek a cigarette tax to cover the cost, Madden said.

Wyoming also fell short in the report for efforts to increase access to health care through Medicaid.

Currently, 20,000 low-income Wyoming residents fall in the coverage gap  they dont have enough income to afford to buy health insurance, but they make too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid, Mincer said.

Increasing Medicaid access would save lives and money, Mincer said. The state loses more than $1.4 billion in the next decade by not expanding Medicaid, Mincer said in a news release.

Wyoming also earned low marks for its lack of a statewide, comprehensive smoke-free law.

But it received top grades for its oral chemotherapy insurance fairness program and how it spends federal money to help people stop using tobacco.
ISTANBUL  A child suicide bomber killed at least 51 people and wounded nearly 70 others at a Kurdish wedding party near Turkeys border with Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday, decrying the attack as an apparent attempt by Islamic State extremists to destabilize the nation by exploiting ethnic and religious tensions.

As of now, the preliminary conclusions by our governors office and the police establishment point to an attack by Daesh, Erdogan said, using another common term for IS.

It was clear that Daesh had such an organization in Gaziantep or was attempting to make room for itself in recent times, he said.

The bombing late Saturday in Gaziantep was the deadliest attack in Turkey this year.

It comes amid ongoing struggles between the government and Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, and as the country is still reeling from the aftermath of last months failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers.

Erdogan said immediately after the Gaziantep attack, which he blamed on IS, that any strategy meant to incite the citizens against each other along ethnic and religious lines will not work.

Later, addressing the nation before Istanbuls city hall, Erdogan said the attacker in Gaziantep was aged between 12 and 14. He said 69 people were wounded, with 17 of them in critical condition.

He again blamed the attack on the Islamic State, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The pro-Kurdish political party HDP condemned the attack on the wedding, which it said was attended by many of its party members.

It said in a statement that it was quite significant that the attack, which it also blamed on IS, came hours after the Kurdistan Communities Union, a militant organization that includes the PKK, announced plans to try to negotiate to end a three-decade conflict between Kurdish militants and the Turkish government.

This attack targets those determined and persistent in peace, resolution, and those struggling for democracy, equality, freedom and justice, the HDP said. The attack was planned to disable the spread of peace and success of possible negotiations.

A bus driver who shuttled some of the guests from Siirt to Gaziantep said that he couldnt believe the party was targeted.

This was a wedding party. Just a regular wedding party, Hamdullah Ceyhan told the state-run Anadolu Agency. This attack was deplorable. How did they do such a thing?

The bride and groom werent in life-threatening condition and were undergoing treatment, but the grooms sister and uncle were among the dead, Anadolu reported.

Multiple opposition parties denounced the attack, as did many foreign governments including the U.S., Germany, Austria, Russia, Egypt and Sweden.
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.  More mandatory evacuation orders were lifted Sunday for residents affected by a massive California wildfire that drove thousands from their homes.

Nearly all 82,000 people ordered to leave their properties Tuesday when the fire broke out 60 miles east of Los Angeles have now been permitted to return.

Most of those residents are returning to find their homes intact, though not all. A preliminary damage assessment found 105 homes and 216 outbuildings destroyed across the rural, mountainous terrain where large swaths of open terrain have been turned black.

"This fire did not go through a dense community, like some fires do," fire spokesman Costa Dillon said Sunday. "Almost all of this area is sparsely populated."

Residents in the Lytle Creek area were being allowed back to their homes with proof of residence, though a mandatory evacuation order remained for those near El Cajon Valley further north. Some structures were destroyed in Lytle Creek though the area escaped the heaviest damage.

Dillon said the El Cajon Valley is "still the most active fire spot."

The once-fast moving and erratic blaze that burned nearly 58 square miles was 83 percent contained Sunday morning, up from 73 percent the evening before. Firefighters were going property-to-property in the areas most heavily hit to quell any lingering flames and hot spots.

"You don't want somebody to come back to a neighborhood where a fire could suddenly flare up on the property next door from something still smoldering," Dillon said.

Fire officials briefed residents at an evacuation center Sunday morning at the San Bernardino County Fairgrounds where about 15 residents remained. Dillon said the residents were "very pleased" to know the Lytle Creek area was open and that those still under evacuation orders were being patient.

He said they understand that "the evacuation is still for their safety."

Johanna Santore, 63, her husband and their 10-year-old granddaughter were among those who learned Sunday they are still not being permitted to return home.

The family's home and nearly all their belongings were destroyed in the blaze.

Santores said the family was "holding up," but that Saturday evening when everyone was asleep she'd gone outside and cried thinking of the family's lost pets and mementoes. The Santores were out running an errand when the fire broke out and were unable to return to save anything.

Four dogs, six cats and a hamster left behind are missing.

"I'm hoping is someone is stuck around hiding someplace," Santore said. "And if I start calling, they might recognize our voices."

In the meantime she's begun looking into how to replace birth certificates, their housing deed and other important documents they are unlikely to recover.
OLALLA, Wash. (AP)  Infant Martin Edwin Brooks died in 1942. Since 2012, the baby's headstone sat unclaimed in the Lewis County Sheriff's Office property management department.

On July 25, Martin's short life and unexplained death were commemorated by a small crowd of people  some who'd never met before  at the Fraola Cemetery in Olalla, reported the Kitsap Sun (http://bit.ly/2baharW).

The group included sheriff's office staff, a couple of crack genealogists, a former police chaplain, and a sympathetic cemetery official, all united by the thought, "What if it were my child?"

The headstone was found Feb. 22, 2012, along the west shoulder of the 400 block of Jackson Highway South in Lewis County and turned over to the sheriff's office. The child's name was professionally engraved along with the inscription "1942  1942."

It wasn't much to go on, but the sheriff's office cast a wide net, contacting mortuaries, cemeteries and monument companies from Centralia to Vancouver. The office put it out on Facebook and in the local media. No luck.

Isabelle Williams, the sheriff's office director of property management, would pass the headstone in the property room on her rounds before turning out the lights and locking the doors. The agency has an online tool for helping people reclaim lost or stolen property. Although no one stepped forward to claim the headstone, Williams never gave up.

"It is our goal to get property back to its rightful owner," Williams said on the sheriff's office website. "We get a great deal of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment returning property to its owner  especially those treasured items that are irreplaceable and that they thought were lost forever."

In June, there was a breakthrough in the case. KOMO that month ran a news release about the headstone from the Lewis County Sheriff that caught the attention of Alice Nelson of Long Beach. Nelson has been obsessed with graves and cemeteries since she was a child.

In the south, where Nelson was raised, families commonly visited cemeteries, even bringing picnics, to remember their ancestors and retell their stories. Nelson remembers walking around graveyards reading headstones with her mother. Each one had a story, even people they didn't know.

"That's kind of fallen by the way, as people kind of have more of a dread of death," Nelson said. "In fact people feel it's morbid and creepy to go to cemeteries."

Not Nelson. As an adult she undertook cataloging gravesites for the website findagrave.com. Her specialty is veterans. Her goal, as a former journalist, is to document in photos and words what's known of individuals and their resting places before time and weather erode their monuments.

Nelson teamed up online with another genealogical sleuth, Andrea Hunting of Tacoma, to untangle the history of Baby Brooks. They, like the sheriff's office, hit a number of dead ends. They were thrown off by the misspelling of his mother's maiden name in one document, a common issue with misinterpreted handwritten records.

They also were surprised to find the baby's parents, Clarence and Violet Brooks, interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Seattle, not Lewis County. The cemetery had no record of the baby's burial, although online records confirmed little Martin was their only child.

"Basically it was cross-referencing every which way and coming to a conclusion that Clarence and Violet Brooks were Martin's parents," Hunting said.

During the search, Hunting identified Violet's correct maiden name as Fagerstrom, which led through findagrave.com to the Fraola Cemetery and the final resting place of Emil and Edla Fagerstrom, Martin's maternal grandparents.

When Forest Lawn told Nelson of regulations that prohibited placing the baby's headstone in the Seattle cemetery, she approached Joanne Clark, secretary-treasurer of the all-volunteer Fraola Cemetery Association.

"We were very glad to help," Clark said.

Not only would they make room for the baby's headstone, but Clark, also a genealogist, researched the family's history and found Emil hailed from Jacobstad, Finland, not far from where Clark's own ancestors originally lived.

The Fraola Cemetery, established in 1929 and still used for burials, is run by a board and kept in shape by two work parties a year. Association fees pay for routine upkeep in between. The name is a mashup of Fragaria and Olalla, describing the geographic area served by the cemetery.

The cemetery is hallowed ground to Clark, who has many family members buried there. She had a brother who was stillborn, so Baby Brooks struck a chord in her heart, as with all involved in the quest to find a home for his headstone.

"Just because they didn't get to live a whole life doesn't mean they don't have a life," she said.

Clark praised the persistence of Williams and others in the Lewis County Sheriff's Office.

"It really meant something to them. It wasn't just part of their job," she said. "Their hearts were all there. It's nice to know that people like that are still out there."

Nelson later found that some Fagerstroms, including Martin's aunts and uncles, lived in Lewis County, with some buried in the Greenwood Memorial Cemetery in Centralia.

"My theory: Baby's stone is made but never placed, eventually ending up with Lewis County relatives who kept it for years and years," Nelson said. "Still don't know where baby's remains are located, and we probably never will."

Census records show Martin Brooks died Nov. 4, 1942, but his death certificate was unavailable, so his birth date and cause of death are unknown. Oddly, Martin's father Clarence Brooks died just a few weeks later, on Nov. 30, 1942, at age 38. Violet Brooks died two years later, on Dec. 21, 1944, at age 26.

Nelson and Hunting were happy to help solve the puzzle of Baby Brooks' life, at least enough that his headstone could be placed with family. Much of it was chance, some of that without an explanation.

"It became apparent that a force much greater than ourselves was at work, as many odd details came to light, pretty much colliding at the same time," Nelson said.

When Lewis County Chief Deputy Stacy Brown invited Nelson to the memorial, Nelson asked her brother David Anderson of Lakewood, a former police chaplain, to officiate.

Anderson's has been the knock at the door that no one ever wants to hear. He's held strangers in their deepest moments of grief and on occasion been asked to speak at the burial of their loved ones. It's never gotten easier.

"I just hate goodbyes, even if I didn't know them," he said.

Compounding his feelings was the loss in 2010 of his own twin grandchildren in a difficult pregnancy.

"I felt very ill at ease to tell the truth because of the emotion involved," he said. "But the need was part of the counterbalance. How do you lay a headstone for a baby nobody knew?"

On the day of the memorial, Williams, Brown and another sheriff's office staffer got lost. They were able to call Clark for directions, even though cell service in Olalla is spotty and none of them had any bars. Just another odd coincidence of the whole story, all say.

Brown and Anderson together laid the baby's headstone between those of his grandparents. Someone brought flowers, white and baby blue.

"It was very emotional and very satisfying," Clark said.

Anderson talked about the broken pieces of Martin's life coming together to form a beautiful kaleidoscope.

"Where will this story of Martin Edwin Brooks go? Though a cemetery in one way seems an ending, it is not," he said. "Our presence here is both a symbolic and significant continuing of what we know, a reminder that others would know what we know, and that is that every life matters."

___

Information from: Kitsap Sun, http://www.kitsapsun.com/
The start of the University of Arizona school year always comes with dramatic upticks in traffic on Speedway.

However, the start of school today will coincide with lane closures at the Speedway-Stone Avenue intersection, likely spelling delays during peak traffic hours.

Rather than avoiding the area, plan accordingly on travel time, Tucson Department of Transportation spokesman Michael Graham told the Star on Friday.

Graham also pointed out that the projects contractor, KE&G, has been working around the clock for the past couple weeks, which has cut roughly a week off the project and minimized the overlap of the fall semester and road paving.

On Monday, Speedway will be reduced to one lane in both directions, and North Stone Avenue will be closed in both directions between Helen and First streets. Work should be completed by 5 p.m. That means afternoon commutes should return to normal levels of fall semester-induced congestion.

The work is part of the larger $2.5-million, RTA-funded funded improvement of Stone between Drachman and First streets.
In October 2015, many residents in Tucsons seasonally famous Winterhaven neighborhood were surprised to learn that one of their main thoroughfares, East Kleindale Road, had been blocked by two rows of black and yellow striped posts, or bollards. Many would add the modifier ugly.

At Kleindales intersection with North Christmas Avenue, the latter splits into two and merges with Kleindale in both directions, forming a triangle around a charming, grassy island shaded by a towering pine. With the bollards in place, drivers now have to jog south and then north on Christmas back to Kleindale.

This seemingly small, $3,000 change in the neighborhoods infrastructure has sparked a nearly year-long internecine controversy, pitting neighbor against neighbor in a place better known for its Christmas spirit than contentious community meetings, 911 calls and threats of the nearly unthinkable: a light strike during Winterhavens signature annual event, the Festival of Lights.

How tense has it become? One resident said the whole affair was the straw that broke the camels back and was making plans to move out of the neighborhood.

Potential hazard

So, what happened here? Wading through a number of emails, letters and other documents, as well as speaking with a number of key players, the Road Runner did his best to present a fair summary of the ugly and complicated episode.

It started last April, when several residents approached the Tucson Department of Transportation hoping to find a way to ease traffic on Kleindale. That was followed by a letter dated April 30 from the Winterhaven Water and Development Co. Board of Directors to the city of Tucsons Jesse Soto, who heads the Neighborhood Traffic Mitigation Program. In that letter, a copy of which was provided to the Road Runner, the board asks for object markers ... to redirect traffic to the south of the island.

Winterhaven resident and board attorney James Kaucher said the letter was intended to simply show support for the already active effort, but other residents interviewed by the Road Runner said they suspect the whole thing was board-driven from the beginning.

The letters authors, including Board President Patricia Brescia, who declined to speak to the Road Runner, cite speeding traffic along Kleindale and potential threats to children playing in the area as reasons for the barricades.

In a June letter, TDOT Director Daryl Cole noted that there was a lack of documented crash experience at this location, but Kaucher said waiting for an accident to happen to address a potential hazard is unwise.

In June 2015, supporters started gathering signatures at 29 properties near the intersection identified by the city as those most impacted by the potential project. Once they reached the requisite 60 percent threshold, the city OKd the project. Initially using funds from the nonprofit Winterhaven Public Events to purchase the bollards, money that was eventually recouped from supporters and the donated services of a local contractor, the traffic blockade went up in October, according to Kaucher.

Most Winterhaven residents, including Kaucher himself, did not learn about the project until it was completed, and it didnt take long for a counter petition to take off. By the end of December it had reached the same 60 percent threshold among the same previously canvassed households to approve removing the bollards installed just two months prior.

Bollard confusion

Weve been doing this for almost 30 years, Soto said of the traffic-mitigation program, which allows Tucson neighborhoods to propose resident-funded street modifications to improve safety. Never have we ever run into this.

Interestingly, several signatories inked their names on both petitions, seeming to both support and oppose the bollards.

Shirley Brown, one such signer, said that is certainly not the case. Rather, she said she was misled by the first signature-gatherers into thinking she was simply approving a study of possible measures to cut down on neighborhood speeding, which she does see as a problem. But instead of improving traffic safety, she thinks the bollards have actually worsened it. Another signatory of both said he was similarly misled.

Get them down, Brown said. She and her husband sit in our kitchen and watch the sunset. What I dont want to see is these stupid poles.

Kaucher, the attorney, conceded to the Road Runner that the bollards arent pretty, but said that taking them down would make the intersection less safe and open the neighborhood to legal problems if something were to happen after the fact.

The bollards nearly were taken down in late March when opponents, who were never issued a permit for the work but thought they were approved to proceed, and a contractor took jackhammers and blowtorches to the bollards, prompting Kaucher to call 911. According to an email from Kaucher, Soto asked the contractor to stop the work after speaking with Kaucher and the original petitions coordinator, Steve Pageau, who did not return calls from the Road Runner.

Unfair treatment

A number of residents told the Road Runner that the citys approval of the installation and subsequent denial of a permit to remove the bollards, as well as the citys stated preference to deal with the water district as the point organization, represent an unfair and inconsistent application of traffic mitigation policy.

All of the back-and-forth left Soto and the citys Transportation Department unsure of how to best proceed. Sotos agency had offered to install a traffic circle once the bollards came down on behalf of the neighborhood, but rescinded the offer as the situation became more contentious.

Were just letting the neighborhood take it over, he told the Road Runner. You can just duke it out over there.

A May letter from the Transportation Departments Cole to residents requested that any future comments about traffic mitigation in the Winterhaven neighborhood be sent through a single point of contact, and a June letter laid out Coles views on the best way to move forward: The bollards should stay until an alternative is developed, and the water district should establish a committee to develop proposals that will eventually be put to the whole neighborhood,and pay for whatever plan is chosen.

And thats basically where things stand now. A traffic-safety committee formed by the board has been tasked with coming up with proposals to resolve the situation by Sept. 30, proposals that will eventually be put to residents at the Winterhaven annual meeting.

The process I think now is working far better, far better, than it did last year and its a credit to the people involved in it now, Kaucher said, adding later that the whole ordeal has been a clear lesson in how important it is that neighbors talk to each other, try to compromise on things, and try to work things out as collaboratively.

But James Schaan, a signer of both petitions and former member of the safety committee until he was kicked out in February, is doubtful that the recommendations of the committee will reflect the desires of the neighborhood. His skepticism of the committee and Winterhaven board more broadly echoed the distrust shared with the Road Runner by other residents.

Jill Hawkins, a member of the safety committee opposed to the bollards, certainly hopes things play out as Kaucher described. Her committee sent out a survey over the summer to gauge the whole neighborhoods preferences for four proposals, the results of which she shared with the Road Runner.

The top preference was to simply return the intersection to its pre-October self, and the runner-up was to convert the traffic circle to a park with the bollards still in place.

However, another option that includes speed tables but otherwise returns the intersection to the way it was, was also widely supported, suggesting there is majority support for an end to the bollards. A roundabout proposal had more tepid support.

But whatever the final decision, making sure everyone in Winterhaven has a say this time around is necessary to avoid a blackout in Winterhaven this Christmas. Its a thought, and its more than a thought, Hawkins said of a possible December light strike.

After all, Winterhaven residents all have to pay for the electricity and the lights, she added.

Its very hard work for everybody and we love it. And this has soured it very badly.







Contact: mwoodhouse@tucson.com or 573-4235. On Twitter: @murphywoodhouse
OPINION: "My original thought was, 'Why would anybody vote for Kari Lake, or any other candidate if they had no faith in our election system?' Now I understand. Because nobody wants to be a loser. And, with her or the others they cant lose," writes Oro Valley resident Ray Lindstrom.
Help India!

By Abdul Hameed, TwoCircles.net,

Mumbai: Two persons were killed and four others were injured in a communal clash in Pusad region of Yavatmal district of Maharashtra on Friday evening. Curfew has been imposed in the area.

Support TwoCircles



As per the Urdu media reports the trouble began when a mob of 15 to 20 thousand participants of Ram Navmi procession started playing the controversial CD Mandir Waheen Banayen Ge (We will build the temple {Ram Mandir} at the very place {Ayodhya})loudly before Masjid-e-Muhammadia at Shivaji Chowk and then pelted stones on the mosque. The rioters allegedly burnt a mosque Masjid-e-Umar Farooq in Govind Nagar.

It is said that there was the sword fight and at least two persons identified as Sayed Gani (50) and Raju Hagane (45), were killed. Sabiruz Zaman Khan, Akola general secretary of Jamiat-e-Ulama Hind told TwoCircles.net on phone that nearly 80 shops; 50 of Muslims and 30 of non-Muslims, were set on fire. He added, About 40 persons sustained injuries. Presently, there is curfew and police has been given shoot-at-sight order. 

The PTI reported the police to have stated that it all happened after some anti-social elements allegedly entered into a verbal duel with the police over the traffic jam at the Shivaji Chowk, caused due to the religious procession.

The police reportedly cane charged and fired several rounds in the air to disperse the mob.

Later, curfew was imposed in the communally sensitive area, 100 km away from Yavatmal. The district SP Shivaji Bodkhe, who visited the area, is reported to have told that additional police force has been deployed to prevent violence.

On Saturday morning, the Chief Minister Ashok Chavan visited the riot-affected Pusad and appealed to the people to maintain communal harmony.

Sabiruz Zaman informed TCN that The CM has announced a compensation of one lakh for those killed and Rs 50 thousands for each injured.


Help India!

By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent

Ahmedabad: After setting up an inquiry commission to study the polarisation of population in the state since 1947, Narendra Modi government is going to amend an existing law to make transfer of properties more difficult.

The law has been in existence in the state since 1991 when there was Congress government in power in the state. But it had been introduced and implemented only in old city areas of Ahmedabad with a view to prevent distress sale of houses because the commercial capital of Gujarat witnessed frequent communal riots in those days.

Support TwoCircles



Many people belonging to Hindu and Muslim communities sold out their houses at a throw away price to shift to the areas they considered to be safer. Owing to that particular situation, Muslims with properties in Hindu areas received much less than market price and the same was the case with Hindus in Muslim areas.

However, the Modi government now has decided to extend it all over the state, in every town and village. Besides, it also wants to give sweeping powers to collectors without whose permission no transfer of property can take place.

Though Modis move is apparently intended to stopping ghettoisation but it seems extremely dangerous to the Muslims. Once the law comes into force, it will be tougher for Muslims to buy properties belonging to non-Muslims in Gujarat.

Known as Gujarat Prohibition of Transfer of Immovable Property for Protection of Tenants from Eviction from premises in Disturbed Areas Act, popularly known as Disturbed Areas Act, brought in 1991, was meant to check ghettoisation and ensure that people were not forced to distress sale of their properties.

However, many people outsmarted the law by using power of attorney to sell the properties. According to real estate dealers, about 30,000 properties were transferred through power of attorney so far but the buyers are yet to get proper legal documents of ownership and it creates lot of problems in resale and development of properties.

However, Modi government is going to introduce an amendment into the Act by bringing a bill to this effect in the state assembly on July 28. The bill aims to give more powers to district collectors. Under the amendments prepared, the district collectors will have powers to start inquiry suo motu or on an application from any person, into distress sale of property between two different communities. If the collector feels that the transfer was illegal, he can restore the possession of the property to the seller at any point of time or can take the property into his own custody temporarily and manage such property where transferor fails to take the possession of it and restrain the transferee from making any improvement in the property.

The move is seen by the activists as an instrument to further harass Muslims.

Earlier, whenever there was a riot or disturbances, Muslims had the option to shift to Muslim-dominated areas by buying the Hindu properties in Muslim neighbourhoods because they felt secure in Muslim localities. However, the elements in the Sangh Parivar felt the new trend unfavourable for them and they had been opposing it since 2002 communal riots. In many cases, they got the property deals cancelled through their influence in the administration.

So, this move to amend the Disturbed Areas Act. In the saffronised society of Gujarat, the amendment will restrict Muslims from buying Hindu properties and hence, prevent them from settling in safer areas.

Commenting on the development, senior Gujarat High court lawyer and human rights activist Girish Patel said, it is the most dangerous move intended at harassing the Muslims.

According to him, the new law is most likely to be abused because the administrative machinery in the state has become communalized and there is no guarantee that the district collector will not misuse his/her powers.

Commenting that the proposed legislation will make it more difficult for Muslims to move out of their ghetto areas such as Juhapura in Ahmedabad, Tandalja in Vadodara, noted human rights activist and president of Gujarat unit of Peoples Union for Civil Liberties(PUCL) J. S. Bandukwala said : This will only make ghettoisation worst. It will hurt even the image of Gujarat.

Activist Yusuf Sehikh said that it was the most dangerous move of the Modi government as it would leave no option for the Muslims to shift from one area to another even during normal times in search for livelihood, start a business, setting up a factory, school, college and any institution in non-Muslim areas.

The move is aimed at isolating Muslims and crush them further, commented Munir Khairuwala of All India Milli Council, Gujarat branch.

Catholic human rights activist and director of NGO Prashant Fr. Cedric Prakash said that the move amounted violation of the freedom guaranteed under the constitution to buy properties and settle down at a place of ones choice.

It is really a very dangerous move, commented Fr. Prakash.
Help India!

By Kaleem Kawaja for Twocircles.net

I applaud Bobby Naqvi for a very thought-provoking article published on Twocircles.net. The creation of Pakistan as a result of the confrontation between Muslim League and Congress, and Pakistan adopting a confrontational attitude towards India since 1947 as their national policy are an unending gift to Muslim-hating Hindus in India. After the 1971 Bangladesh war, Pakistan should have realised that the event made a game changing shift in the futility of their policy of confrontation towards India. However successive parties and governments in Pakistan have continued to pursue that policy while they have remained a weak nation.

Support TwoCircles



Every time there is relative peace between the two countries, the hostile attitude of right-wing Hindus towards Muslims cools a little. But then some lumpen elements in Pakistan take some idiotic cross-border violent action against India and the punching bag situation of Indian Muslims goes back to Square One.

Keeping mum helps no one

But there is more to the issue than just Pakistan. The totally unthinking and impotent attitude of Indian Muslim organisations and leaders in the last couple of years alone, when RSS and their goons targeted Muslims with violence on the ruse of cow protection in Dadri and Muzaffarnagar and elsewhere, is shocking. There are several venerable Muslim organizations like Jamiat Ulema, Jamat e Islami, All India Majlis e Mashawarat which could have held conferences and peaceful rallies comprising of secular forces in several cities on the matter to draw attention to the grievous issue, without using any religious or emotional exhortation. But out of their inordinate fear, and having been dissuaded by the Hindu power structure in major political parties whose signal they did not receive, not to mention infighting in their ranks, they did nothing other than lamenting and a few mercy appeals.

The attitude of the Indian Muslim media has been equally pathetic.

Their lack of response is not limited to the issues of the activities of the right wing. In Kashmir, the Indian army has unleashed an unprecedented brutal repression on the unarmed civilians. More than 65 Kashmiris have died at the hands of the army in response to public protests, and the United Nations, the CPI and some other Indian leaders have asked the army to exercise restraint, but not a single Indian Muslim leader or organization has even appealed to the government to restrain the army from using pellet bullets and disproportionate force. So for what purpose these Muslim organizations exist? Is being an MLA or MP such a precious gift that they forget that they were elected from sizeable Muslim population constituencies to represent them?

Why cant Muslim leaders emulate their Dalit counterparts?

In contrast, when Dalits experienced similar violence from the cow vigilantes, they organized a huge rally in Una (Gujarat) where they sought and received support from many upper caste secular Hindus and human rights groups. They also held supporting rallies in other cities. Now this is a golden opportunity for Muslim organizations and leaders to lend full peaceful, democratic support to the Dalits in the name of basic justice, human rights and humanity. Islam tells Muslims to help anyone who is being persecuted, but Muslim leaders and organizations always forget to read this in Islamic texts even though they endlessly quote verses from Quran.

Although in the Una rally I did see some ordinary Muslim faces lending their presence to the cause, their leadership and their media showed total indifference and zero action. Maybe they still think that they cannot mix with the lower caste Dalits. The Muslim leaders and organizations are not only substandard in their thinking and planning, they are always waiting for signals from the Hindu power structure, whether secular or right wing, to take any social or political action. In discussing this with an Indian Muslim leader last week he told me that if Muslims support Dalits on this (Una) issue, will the upper-caste Hindus not take out their anger on Muslims? Such is the state of helplessness of the mindset of the Muslim leadership.

In India Dalits are 33% of the population and Muslims are 14%. With Modi as Prime Minister, RSS is clearly targeting Dalits to try to roll back the recently gained middle-class social status that some of them have gained via reservation and shove them back into their pre-independence servitude. Therefore, it is the time for Muslims to support them in the hour of their need. In fact the RSS is deftly exploiting the OBCs to push down Dalits from gaining any more power. Look at the ministers in various states where BJP is in power and you will find that many of them are OBC folks.

While it is true that with 14% votes Muslim distributed in the country cannot make a change, they should remember that collectively they are a substantial number. The Muslim middleclass still retains significant strength in quite a few places in the country. Together, the Muslim and Dalit vote in the elections in Gujarat, UP and elsewhere next year can send a resounding message to BJP. Just as the deft Muslim alliance with Nitish Kumar and Laloo Yadav routed BJP in Bihar and with Mamta Bannerji they routed BJP in Bengal recently.

The major vision of Muslims leaders in this country remains the membership of the Rajya Sabha or Vidhan Sabha or getting an election ticket from a major party, and they are happy to use their community for the same. Instead, let them become like Dalit leaders and think of how to break the trap of helplessness. Let some new Muslim leaders emerge.

Equally harmful are the small Muslim parties and their leaders who wear beards, skull caps and sherwanis and regale the Muslim audiences in the low income Muslim ghettos with recitations from the scriptures and talk in veiled confrontational rhetoric. Their biggest goal is to give fiery speeches to illiterate and semi-literate Muslims whose three generations have continued to live in the same ghettos for seventy years. But they are happy with empty titles like Naqeeb-e-Millat, whatever that means.

The idea of Muslims supporting BJP is dangerous as it comes with the heavy price of total adaptation of Hindu culture and way of life and for Muslims to remain Muslim in name only. The clear objective of RSS and BJP is to relegate Indian Muslims to the status of a permanently deprived minority community that simply accepts what the majority gives it.

Fortunately a lot of upper-caste Hindus remains secular and very wary of RSS and BJP and their obscurantism. Muslim leaders and organisations need to link up with these secular Hindus and with Dalits. And more importantly, this must not only be at the time of elections, but in the struggles for justice too.

The writer is the Executive Director of the Association of Indian Muslims of America, Washington DC


Help India!

By Mohammed Zakir Riyaz for Twocircles,net

On August 13 2016, Delhi Police attempted to raid the Hall of Boys residence (Boys Hostel) in broad day light. Though they were stopped by the university students, but the police officers in uniform and civil dress allegedly managed to click photographs and videos of the hostel. As the news spread it triggered anger among students who were already unhappy with the university administration and particularly security center because of putting up a circular earlier in January on notice board across the university, terming it as a soft target for militant/separatists.

Support TwoCircles







Photo Courtesy: Indianexpress



This anger turned into an agitation which later became a symbolic win for the university student towards reclaiming their democratic space in the institution. But, success/ win do not come easily. It involves a lot of hardships, battle with obstacle and a strong determination to achieve the end. Students fought tooth and nail and made it a most significant democratic win at Jamia Millia Islamia in recent times. As an alumnus of the university, I observed this agitation very closely and would like a shed a light upon the problems which I observed in this protest.

So what actually was it? Raid or not?

The question remains this: was it a raid, attempt to raid or not a raid? Administration at Jamia Millia Islamia from the very beginning kept on misleading the student fraternity based on their definition of Raid and the technicalities in using the term raid. First attempt in this series came from Dean of Student welfare who started by saying that that no such incident occurred in the campus. However, she contradicted herself in the very second paragraph of her message to the students, stating that four police personnel entered in plain clothes in the Hall of Boys Residence without the permission of proctor. What were they here for in Plain Clothes? Second, according to a statement in Financial Express which quoted a university official, it was a routine checkup. But this statement was termed as bogus saying that it was misquoted. The third was the Chief Proctor of the university who while addressing the agitating students said that he had given permission to the police to stand near gate no. 4 but they mistakenly reached hostel and he was completely unaware of it till students from hostel informed him. And he too emphasised that it wasnt a raid.

This denial mode from the university officials who are considered to be the guardian of the students of university was as similar to the political leader of community who always try to undermine the gravity of the situation when they see themselves getting trapped into it. I didnt get this analogy of them not a raid but attempt to it. Isnt an attempt to murder as heinous as murder itself? Almost all of the student perceived this attack of the security agency as another attempt in the series of attacks ahead of independence day to launch a vilification campaign against the minority in general and Jamia Millia Islamia in particular to term them the soft target for terror organisation to find new recruits. But this analogy of the administration of no raid but an attempt to it was completely rejected by the students.

Unlike JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia Students failed to gather support for themselves from the larger section of the civil society. The only organisations extended solidarity were the student bodies of different university. I got two reasons for this failure in gathering support from the civil society. First, it was a spontaneous agitation started just after the attack from security agency and students failed to explain to the outsiders what actually happened. But this reason didnt stand valid for long because support from civil society wasnt extended to it till the end. Hence the second reason becomes more valid i.e., for a large section of the civil society, Jamia Millia Islamia is not a central university but a Muslim minority institution. They believe that it is the University of Islamists. Student also didnt get the support of their own faculty members. No faculty member extended support to the students but some of them anonymously maintained that students were fighting for the right cause.

Where did the support come from?

The only support agitating students received were from student organisations of other universities who too are facing the wrath of current political regime. Some of the students who expressed solidarity joined the students at protest site as well. This was indirectly countered by administration with the support of the students who often brag about their administrative links and portray themselves as student leaders. They together launched a campaign against the students from other university saying that they are misleading the Jamia students for their own personal gains and Jamia Students can fight for their rights by themselves. They tried their level best by launching social media campaigns to assassinate the character of the JNU students expressing their solidarity. In this, a tussle between different fractions of left student political wings was also observed.

A message about how AISA and radical left are trying to hijack political gain was circulated in WhatsApp and apart from center and right wing student organisation there were some members of a moderate left wing student organisation who openly shared it on their Facebook profile too. Later, outsiders (students from other universities) and even university alumni were not allowed to enter into the campus. An attempt was also made to divide the student on communal grounds. It was said that the agitating students are cadre of communist parties who want to destroy the Islamic Culture of the university. This attempt too was nullified as majority of the agitators were common students who had no affiliation with any political party.

Despite the holidays and ban on the entry of outsider in campus, the agitation continued to grow big and this raised the eyebrows of the people who were against it. We all know that there is a lack of awareness among most of the students of Jamia when it comes to politics.

Administration and opposition to agitation tried to take benefit from it and they framed a new argument that university cares for its students. They have written to the DCP South East about the matter. This issue is only about the security of hostel and it has nothing to do with minority witch hunting but these protesting students will create a trouble out of it for the hostellers. Students are here for study but not for politics. This argument did work in breaking the unity among the student and administration managed to get some students withdraw from the agitation. Student also received indirect threat of punishments like suspension, campus ban etc. Assurance by the proctor later that no action will be taken against the agitating students is a proof to it.

How the media tried to influence the images of Jamia protest

Media agencies had their other plans and ambitions to pursue in this agitation. Those who lost the chance in cashing the opportunity in JNU were trying their level best this time in the case of Jamia Millia Islamia. It has everything for them what they wanted. A Muslim minority university and the Batla House stigma attached to it. So, the calls started coming in from the media agencies. There questions should have been like what actually happened? What were the demands of agitators? But they asked how many Kashmiris are present in protest? A reporter from a leading nation daily which is referred for its unbiased approach most of the time in civil society asked this question. This was the attitude of the so called unbiased national daily, so you may as well forget about the rest.

In the end, after so many allegations, conspiracy campaign and sabotage the administration offered partial acceptance of the demands of students refusing the demand of press conference. They offered to share a written statement instead of press conference. This offer was accepted by the Joint Action Committee of students. However, we must remember that it is not a complete win situation but a strategic win against the administration which had been working on dictatorial mode and wasnt leaving a democratic space for students to disagree with the administration. Jamia was born out of crisis and it was anticipated that it might not survive for long. But it survived. Through this five days long agitation defeating weather, conspiracies and administrative pressure students have ensured that the spirit of fighting back against the oppressor is yet not lost. The legacy of founding fathers of the university is being carried forward. Together student community should defeat all the difficulties which come across and keep the fight against oppression continue. Students also shown a light to the society and Muslim community in particular how to continue the fight against all odd and turn your weakness into a win.

Long Live Student Unity! Inquilab Zindabad!

The author is an independent researcher and activist working on minority rights
Help India!

By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net

Srinagar: After performing retinal surgeries on pellet victims in Ophthalmology Department SMHS Hospital for free earlier this month, Borderlss World Foundation Jammu, Kashmir & Ladakh (BWF-JKL) is once again organising free retinal surgery camp for pellet victims in the Valley.

Support TwoCircles







J&K Police Officer chasing protestors with a pellet gun (Photo By: Raqib Hameed Naik)



Dr Sundaram Natarajan a renowned retinal surgeon and a recipient of Padma Shri award and his team will once again be available at Department of Ophthalmology, Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital from Monday, August 22 for a period of 4-5 days for surgical intervention of pellet victims.

In this regard, all the pellet victims are informed to report at 8:00 AM sharp at Ophthalmology Department SMHS Hospital, Srinagar or contact BWF-JKL on 9419925848, 8715038918, 09999991406 and 08888445666, said BWF- J&K chapter.

The BWF team has further requested all the mohalla committees, masjid committees, welfare committees, youth groups, voluntary organisations and other organisations across the Valley to share this information within their localities so that maximum victims are provided with the specialised treatment.









Due to communication blockade we couldnt get in touch with people in various areas across Kashmir. But, after it was lifted a few days ago, we have received numerous calls from different parts of the Valley and we have directed them to come by 8 am in SMHS hospital. Treating serious cases is our first priority, Haris Abrar, office administrator, Borderless World Foundation, told TwoCircles.net.

When asked about the long-term intervention of BWF in treating pellet victims, Abrar told TCN that Dr Natarajan has promised to come to Kashmir every month to treat and follow up the pellet cases.

The J&K BWF was planning to take serious cases of pellet victims to Mumbai hospital but later cancelled their plans as arranging logistics was becoming a major issue for the organization.

The Borderless World Foundation (BWF) is a non-governmental based in Pune, Maharashtra. Established in March 2002, BWF aims to provide a Humane Touch to the border areas of India and beyond.

Earlier this month, Dr Mahesh Shanmugam, Head Vitreo-Retinal Services and Ocular Oncology Services, Sankara Eye Hospital Bengaluru had also arrived in Valley on the request of BWF and conducted 25 Surgeries on Pellet-Hit victims at SMHS Hospital, Srinagar.
Help India!

By TCN News,

Expressing solidarity with Amnesty International India, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), an advocacy organization dedicated to safeguarding Indias pluralist and tolerant ethos, has condemned the filing of a case of sedition against it over claims that slogans favoring Kashmiri independence were raised at an event organized by the reputed human rights organization in Bengaluru last Monday.

Support TwoCircles



IAMC has demanded the immediate withdrawal of the case and said the police action violate Indias constitutional promise of free speech.

The fact that the Bengaluru Police has registered the case at the behest of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is indicative of the political and ideological motivations behind it, said Umar Malick, President of IAMC.

Clearly, the aim is to silence views and opinions contrary to the shrill nationalist construct of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Malick added.

It is significant to note that Amnestys event had been called to discuss the issue of human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir, a topic by no means anti-national or seditious. The violation of human rights in Jammu and Kashmir over several decades, both by State and non-State actors, is a matter of fact and has been acknowledged even by the Indian judiciary, from time to time. The international community too has been unsparing in its criticism of such violations.

In March the ABVP had leveled a similar allegation of azadi slogans being raised at a public event in New Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) that had led to the arrests of JNU students, including its current students union president. That campaign by the ABVP too was widely condemned and turned out to be nothing more than a brute attempt by show of strength to forestall any discussion of the state of affairs in Jammu and Kashmir.

IAMC also alleged police action against Amnesty as completely characteristic of the regressive attitude of Prime Minister Narendra Modis government which has, since taking power in May 2014, carried out a witch-hunt and vendetta against hundreds of national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Many of these have long worked in India across various social sectors, especially in human rights and civil liberties.
Help India!

By Twocircles.net Staff Reporter

Aligarh: In a week, Aligarh Muslim University is all set to get a new Public Relations Officer (PRO), but this appointment is likely to become controversial, as sources claim that the Vice Chancellor Lt Gen. (Retd) Zameeruddin Shah is adamant about appointing a candidate who does not possess the basic eligibility criterion.

Support TwoCircles



As per the rules, a PRO should have at least five years of experience in any print or electronic media or worked as an assistant PRO for five years. This is a mandatory qualification without which a candidate cannot even be shortlisted for the interview. But, insiders say a new PRO is going to be appointed with not even a single day of experience in the media or public relations.

The violation is not just about the experience. The MBA degree, which the candidate claims to have obtained, is also in question. Sources privy to the documents told this news portal that this candidate got the management degree from a university based in Sikkim. Earlier, former registrar Shahrukh Shamshad got his MBA degree from the same university. One of the reasons for his sacking was also his suspicious degree. A source said: This PRO candidate has also obtained his MBA degree from the same university and in the same year making it suspicious. It is difficult to ascertain what the quid pro quo must have been between the VC and the candidate.

The written test and interview for the post of PRO was conducted on August 12 and 13. The selection committee, according to sources, has given approval for the appointment of the ineligible candidate. The notification will be released within a week.

A senior official in the administration said It is unusual for a Vice Chancellor to show interest in appointments from very small posts to the top.

There seems to be a deliberate attempt to make illegal appointments in AMU in the recent past.

Earlier this month, an applicant with 16 years of experience in the mainstream media wrote a letter to the Vice Chancellor registering his protest. He withdrew himself from the selection process because of the short listing of the ineligible candidate. Twocircles.net is in the possession of this letter. The candidate informed the Vice Chancellor about the illegalities committed in the selection of the PRO.

This did not deter Zameeruddin Shah. He not only allowed the unqualified candidate to appear for the test and interview but also helped him get selected.

Insiders told Twocircles.net that the selection committee was divided on the appointment of this candidate but the Vice Chancellor voted in his favour.

In the past, the appointment of various teaching posts in Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College has been put on hold. Vice Chancellor Shah was forced to stay the appointments after a representation was given to him by some candidates alleging blatant favouritism and violation of norms in the selection procedure.

The interviews to the various posts in medical college were held last month and earlier this month.

This is not the first time that illegalities have been committed in the most blatant manner. Just a week ago, Allahabad high court stayed the appointment of three assistant finance officers. Through an RTI query, it was revealed that those selected for the post had scored much less marks than those who were rejected. While staying the appointment, the high court passed adverse observations on the functioning of the university. Earlier, this month the Kerala High Court quashed the appointment of the director of Mallapuram centre. The court observed that the appointment was made without proper selection committee. The Kerala High Court had also quashed an appointment of Assistant Professor in law at AMU Centre Malappuram. Although the judgment was pronounced on July 7, 2016, she continues to teach there and draw a salary, even though her appeal was dismissed by the division bench on August 16.

The controversy over the appointment of the new PRO comes at a time when AMU is fighting a legal battle of minority character in the Supreme Court.

When contacted by Twocircles.net, the current public relations officer of Aligarh Muslim University, Dr Rahat Abrar, refused to comment on the matter or answer any of our questions.
Help India!

By Bilal A. Malik for Twocircles.net

Since 1947, women participation has been an inalienable element of Kashmirs resistance movement. The courageous women of Kashmir stood upright with men in every phase of the struggle whether it was political or armed. Breaking rigid socio-cultural constructs, they came out of their houses and, eventually, their number rose to thousands. Today, the women resistance has become a full-fledged and well organised social movement. It has made a careful analysis of the disputed political context of Kashmir and has set an agenda based on its diagnosis of the Kashmirs political problem.

Support TwoCircles



To arrange some viable and acceptable solution to Kashmirs political problem, it has formed its own organisations and has developed its own leadership. However, a rapid mobilisation process of women for the cause of resistance, attracting huge number of middle-class urban women, college and university girl students, female academicians and professionals, happened in 2008 when millions of Kashmiri people came out on the streets and peacefully demonstrated against illegal land sell-out known as land-row agitation. The strategy adopted by then administration to curb the volatile situation was nothing inclusive but a clear war-policy against peoples collective demand. Instead of addressing the issue constitutionally, in the light of article -370, unfortunately, the administration believed to work-out through the effect of power mechanics. Consequently, the killings and tortures done unto innocent civilians to suppress a legitimate demand sensitized more young women to stand-up and speak against human rights violations done in Kashmir on the name of law and order.

The 2008 uprising was a landmark in the resistance movement of Kashmir. It created a new discourse in the socio-political landscape of Kashmir. Now, the allegedly claimed voice of marginal elements had turned into a popular movement embodying people from all age groups, genders, religions and social stratifications. It penetrated the sentiment of Azadi (freedom) into the deepest layers of Kashmiri society. The 2008 peoples movement was followed by yet another uprising in 2010. The second uprising begun when a 16 year old student namely Wamiq Farooq was ruthlessly killed while he was returning to home from his school. Wamiqs killing appealed to the motherly sentiments of every older Kashmiri woman and further weakened the sense of attachment towards India. As a result, a huge number of women were seen marching on the streets of Kashmir and demonstrating against injustice and human rights violations. These women were shouting slogans of AZADI (freedom) and holding placards reading Stop Killing Kashmiris, Stop Genocide, We Want Justice, and Go India Go Back. The mass participation of women, an important element of the institution of family, in these protests communicated a sense of alienation into the youngest generation of the Kashmir  a generation which was in making and still learning how to respond to societal demands. It is quite fascinating to know that the impact of 2008 and 2010 uprisings did not remain confined to religious or political circles only; rather it crept even into routine family gatherings. The discussions about Azadi were increasingly replacing the normal family conversations. Such family discussions proved to be a silent medium of transmission of sentiment of Azadi- a new psychological trait- from older Kashmiris to new Kashmiris and mothers in this case played a very vital role.

Role of women separatist leaders

Meanwhile, the women separatist leaders came on forefront and organized separate programmes for women. It was progressively a new trend, much feministic and lesser dependent on men, to mobilize more and more women for the cause of resistance movement. In different protests and programmes, these leaders would deliver passionate and emotional speeches and would explain the legacy and historicity of Kashmir conflict and the potential role of women. To instigate women and use it as a force to strengthen the freedom struggle of Kashmir, these speeches would frequently refer to incidents of killings and rapes like mass rape of Kunan Poshpora where forces gang raped the women of entire village, rape and death of Zahida Akhter of Dooru Islamabad, rape and death of Tabinda Ghani of Batpora Langate, rape and death of Asiya and Nelofar in Shopian. Adding unity to the resistance camp, women leaders, particularly to mention of Asia Andrabi, a notable resistance voice, publically expressed their support and cooperation to Coordination Committee- an amalgam of different separatist organisations, traders association, teachers forum, bar association, doctors association etc. It was a remarkable achievement for separatists and many scholars started to believe that women of Kashmir will play the same role which women of Iran played in 1979 popular revolution.

After Burhan Wanis killing on July 8, 2016, the whole valley of Kashmir, after observing six years of so called normalcy, entered into another vicious cycle of violence. The unrest, which still continues, so far has left 65 people dead, including 3 women and more than 5,000 people, including more than 400 women, badly injured. The news of Burhans killing, a religiously celebrated martyrdom for almost every Kashmiri Muslim, reached every nook and cranny of Kashmir like wild fire. More than 3 lakh people, including thousands of women, gathered at Burhans village to participate in his funeral. It is ironical that even in such an intense volatile situation, the government of India, instead of accepting the ground political reality, started using her old and exhausted war narratives. More troops were called on streets to bring gunpoint normalcy; more innocents tortured and killed; roads blocked; cellular systems ceased; internet facility barred; and local media caged. However, the people of Kashmir challenged Indian establishment and categorically accused it for exercising excessive power to suppress their legitimate demand- a demand which is there in the historical documents of UN resolutions over Kashmir problem. Thousands of women again came out on streets but this time in a much organised and consolidated way. They have been continuously participating in different forms of demonstrations whether it is peaceful sit-in, candle light night protests or writing Azadi slogans on walls and roads. Some women have been using their pen in order to expose the civilian killings and states illegal power manifestation in Kashmir to the world outside.

The women resistance camp, like they did previously, unified their voice with other men led organizations and appealed all women to follow the joint protest calendar issued by Hurriyat- an amalgam of all separatist organizations  all across the valley. Though it was made clear that the women protesters would avoid violent situations but in spite of that the atrocities committed on their brethren forced them to get exposed to violent situations with distressed emotions in certain cases. Consequently, they shared the pain of bullets and injuries like their brethren do. The men in uniform, the otherwise guardians of civilian life, without taking care of their gender sensitivity humiliated them, tortured them, beat them and killed them. There are number of evidences, particularly from South of Kashmir, which mention about how forces hit some of these protesting women, not holding guns or stones, from the point black which amounts to clear murder. The women became equal victims of lethal pallet guns too. Many young girls, who were hit with pallets, lost their sight forever. For example 14 year old Insha Mushtaq, who is struggling for her breath at hospital, from South Kashmir was hit with pallets just outside her home.

It is worthy to note that present CM of Kashmir is also a woman but, so far, instead of ensuring life and honour of Kashmiri women, she has been engaged with New Delhis blame game politics. That is probably why that Kashmiri women dont believe in her in spite of being one among them. Likewise their men, the women are tired of Indias self-styled and sick political approach vis-a-vis Kashmir. To conclude, I feel, if Kashmir issue is not addressed politically, engaging all legitimate stakeholders inclusively, then, sooner or later, women of all ideologies will become a symbol of indestructible resistance. They will fight against India, sitting shoulder to shoulder with men, and will successfully create a new political history of Kashmir.

(The author is a research scholar at Centre for Central Asian Studies, Kashmir) University)
Ziad Qanawi has 14 charges against him, including the reckless driving charge, along with resisting arrest and robbery, all at the age of three. It is hard for anyone to believe this is happening. Each time the child attends court, he has to be carried in his lawyers arms. Mahmoud El Shenawy, who is representing the child, calls the situation an absolute catastrophe. According to the lawyer, all the charges are fabricated and are outside of any other countrys legal confines. He told the International Business Times that he cannot believe they have to go through all this.

Endless court trials continue in Egypt for a toddler

Reportedly young Ziad has been cleared in three cases, but there are still 14 cases outstanding, all basically on the same fabricated charges. Shenawy heads from one Egyptian court to the next with Ziad, gradually convincing the judges involved of the childs innocence. Reportedly his next appearance in court is coming up in late September. Each time they walk into the court and the judge presiding asks for the defendant, only to think Shenawy is joking when he presents the three-year-old boy. Every time they head to court, the lawyer hands over the childs birth certificate to the judge to prove his age.

Shady legal dealings in Cairo, Egypt

The background of the story is that a high-ranking government official involved in quarry administration has been issuing the warrants against the child over a dispute with Ziads father, who works as a construction contractor. Under an Egyptian law dating back to 1978, the official alleges that the three-year-old stole building materials from various construction sites around the city.

Along the way, the same government official has stated that Ziad was driving negligently and was endangering the lives of the public. It turns out the truck the toddler is alleged to have been driving is registered in Ziads name, under his fathers guarantee. The childs father, Hassan Qanawi, only found out about the charges after his son was placed on a no-fly list for his alleged convictions, after they were stopped from traveling to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj in July this year.

Egyptian 3 year old on trial for resisting arrest, reckless driving and robbery https://t.co/143YVMwWB5  IBTimes UK (@IBTimesUK) August 22, 2016

The case of the The Baby Bottle Boy

Calling it a tragic-comic farce situation," Shenawi said the whole thing gets more absurd by the day and that it has been caused by just the latest blunder of a highly-politicized judiciary. Reportedly sinceMohammed Morsi was ousted back in July 2013  the year of Ziads birth  there have been thousands of citizens given the death penalty on what the human rights groups call unfair trials on trumped-up charges. He went on to explain that in February 2016, a four-year-old was convicted of multiple murders in an Egyptian military court.

CNN reported that officials eventually admitted that that was a case of mistaken identity but this is just one of many other similar cases.

Reportedly Egypt has been ranked in the bottom 20 countries by the World Justice Projects Rule of Law Index on how badly the countrys courts function. However, for Qanawis family, other concerns dont matter  they are worried about young Ziad, who has been dubbed The Baby Bottle Boy by the local media. Despite the fact that several judges have thrown the case out of court, Shenawy is worried that Ziads chances in life will be jeopardized, even after his name is cleared in each case. He said they have destroyed his future, while the pacifier is still in his mouth. Shenawy has appeared on several talk shows in Egypt with young Ziad, to show just how crazy the legal system is in that country.
East China bridge collapse kills 3 Updated: 2016-08-22 10:43 (Xinhua)

NANCHANG - Two vehicles fell into a river after a bridge in Xiushui County, East China's Jiangxi Province, collapsed Sunday evening, killing three and injuring another two, local authority said.

The collapse happened at around 8:30 pm when an electric motorcycle and a minibus was on the bridge. Two people on the motorcycle were rushed to the county's people's hospital by rescuers.

The three passengers trapped in the minibus were confirmed dead.

An investigation is underway.
US clears for ChemChinas purchase of Syngenta Updated: 2016-08-22 14:02 (AGENCIES)

A US national security panel has cleared ChemChina's $43 billion takeover of Swiss pesticides and seeds group Syngenta the companies said on Monday, boosting chances that the largest foreign acquisition ever by a Chinese company will go through.

"China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) and Syngenta today announced that the companies have received clearance on their proposed transaction from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)," a joint statement released by Syngenta said.

The statement made no mention of any concessions required to win clearance. The decision removes significant uncertainty over the takeover of the world's largest pesticides maker after the two companies agreed a deal in February.

"We are not disclosing the details of the agreement with CFIUS to respect the confidentiality of the process," a Syngenta spokesman said by email in response to a Reuters query. "Any mitigation measures are not material to Syngenta's business."

It said closing the transaction was subject to "anti-trust review by numerous regulators around the world and other customary closing conditions. Both companies are working closely with the regulatory agencies involved and discussions remain constructive."

Syngenta reiterated that is expected the deal to be finalized by the end of the year.

The CFIUS review was being watched closely by Monsanto Co, the world's largest seed company, which is deliberating whether it should sell itself to Germany's Bayer AG. Syngenta last year turned down offers to be acquired by Monsanto.

Syngenta is a key player in the market for pesticides and seeds. It has facilities in North Carolina, as well a presence in California, Delaware, Iowa and Minnesota among other states.

Syngenta's share price has significantly lagged ChemChina's offer amid concerns that the deal would get through CFIUS. Syngenta derives about a quarter of its sales from North America.

Several US lawmakers wrote to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew this year asking for CFIUS to subject the deal to additional scrutiny over its impact on domestic food security. The US Department of Agriculture also joined the CFIUS review.

Syngenta had said this year that it would make a voluntary filing with CFIUS "even though no obvious national security concerns were identified during due diligence".

With a growing number of Chinese companies looking to acquire US peers, CFIUS has emerged as a significant risk for such deals, particularly those with potential cyber security implications.
ASEF Summer University: connectivity between Asian and Europe Updated: 2016-08-22 09:40 (chinadaily.com.cn)

Connectivity should include not only the construction of hardware, but also the soft part, said a senior official for China of the Asia-Europe Meeting on the sideline of the Asia-Europe Foundation Summer University.

This year's edition kicked off on August 15, 2016 at Beijing Jiaotong University, and also welcomed its 20th anniversary. In coordination with the One Belt One Road Initiative, connectivity became the key word of this year's summer university.

"Connectivity was determined as a priority at this year's Asia-Europe Meeting Summit," Ambassador Xie Bohua from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs commended on this year's theme, which is "Gateways of Asia and Europe: Connectivity by Land, Sea and Air".

"We want to combine the theme with One Belt One Road Initiative. The six cities we will go are all along the path of One Belt One Road, and many of the ASEM member states are also by the side of it. So the summer university will be a great opportunity," Xie continued.

"We also want to provide the participants chances for communication, help them build connection, and probably seek future opportunities of corporation," added Ambassador Zhang Yan, the Executive Director of Asia-Europe Foundation.

Known as One Belt One Road Initiative, The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road is a development strategy and framework proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013. It highlights five areas of connections, including policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration and people-to-people bonds.

Within two weeks, 48 representatives from 47 member states will visit six cities in China, Russia and Mongolia, studying how the connectivity can enhance the cultural exchange, trade and common development.

"Portugal has really great relations with China. As we are connected, there are so many cultural and business exchanges," said Rita Lousa, a 21-year-old designer from Portugal, who also found the summer university as a platform to meet more people in different fields. "It's creating a lot of new jobs in Portugal," she laughed.

Olivier Danenberg, a communication professional from Belgium, said it would be interesting to share experiences with the other participants to see how their own country is dealing with transportation and connectivity. "I will take the experience back home and try to see how we can best implement the solutions locally," he expected.

"We will have a number of presentations, discussions, site visits, and we try to develop policy proposals on how to improve connectivity," Olivier also mentioned.

According to Zhang, participants will be divided into different groups discussing given topics, such as how to make the public transportations more disability-friendly, how to prevent terrors on public transportations, and how to control the spreading of infectious disease through public transportations.

"It's not only the transportation factor, but also the human factor that attracts me," German Nora Reinolsmann agreed that she wished to improve the connectivity between Asia and Europe. "I really would like to do something within Asia-Europe transportation field. So why don't we have an entrepreneur thing. Maybe we can stay in contact, set up some project even for the future."

And this was exactly the expectation the organizers had for the summer university.

"No matter whether it is One Belt One Road or connectivity, the key point is human, the communication," Xie answered regarding the question of future challenge.

Starting from Beijing and then Harbin, these young fellows could see how fast China develops on the infrastructureconstruction in the sea, land and air. "They will know China better," said Liu Jun, vice president of Beijing Jiaotong University. "They will have a better understanding of the One Belt One Road."

"I do hope the experience will inspire them to become the contributor and promoter for both the One Belt One Road Initiative and the connectivity," Xie concluded.
Philippines not leaving UN, says foreign secretary Updated: 2016-08-22 14:24 (Xinhua)

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte attends the 115th Police Service Anniversary at the Philippine National Police (PNP) headquarters in Quezon city, metro Manila, Philippines August 17, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

MANILA -- Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said on Monday that the Philippines is not pulling out of the United Nations, saying his country is committed to the organization despite its "frustrations."

Yasay called a briefing to clarify the statement made by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday that the Philippines will "separate" from the UN after the body criticized his war on illicit drugs.

"We certainly are not leaving the UN," Yasay told a news conference at the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Duterte was angered by statements made by a UN official condemning the increasing number of vigilante-type killings in the country. There are more than 1,000 people killed in the campaign, according to media reports.

"Maybe we just have to separate from the United Nations. If you are that rude, we might just leave the organization," Duterte told a news conference in Davao City on Sunday, referring to the UN critics.

Duterte even said that he might as well form a rival organization with China and other African (nations). Duterte criticized the UN for its failure to stamp out terrorism, world hunger and other conflicts.

Duterte's spokesperson, Ernesto Abella, also told a separate news conference at the Malacalanang presidential palace that the Philippines is not "decoupling" from the UN.

"He is simply reiterating national sovereignty and the fact that he did not welcome interventions or what you would consider meddling. He was stating the fact that the Philippines is a sovereign nation and should not be meddled with," Abella said.
Birthday party of firsts for panda Updated: 2016-08-22 10:49 By Chen Weihua in Washington(China Daily USA)

DC-based Bei Bei gets wishes on 1st birthday from first ladies of China, US

Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai (left) reads a message from China's first lady Peng Liyuan at a ceremony on Aug 20 celebrating the first birthday for giant panda Bei Bei at the Smithsonian National Zoo. Also attending are Dennis Kelly (center), the zoo's director, and David Rubenstein, the American financier and philanthropist who funds the giant panda at the zoo in Washington. Chen Weihua / China Daily

Bei Bei, the giant panda cub at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, had a very special first birthday party on Aug 20.

The first ladies of China and the United States both sent their greetings. China's first lady Peng Liyuan said she was sending greetings from China, the hometown of pandas a world away.

"The giant panda is China's national treasure. Bei Bei's birth was the fruit of collaboration between China and the US and a strong symbol of our friendship," Peng wrote in a message read by Chinese ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai at a birthday celebration in the zoo's panda yard.

In September 2015, Peng and US first lady Michelle Obama visited the zoo and named the new-born panda cub Bei Bei, meaning "precious one" in Chinese.

Peng expressed her appreciation to the staff of the National Zoo for taking such good care of Bei Bei and to all American friends who love and cherish pandas.

Michelle Obama tweeted in the early morning, saying: "Today we celebrate the National Zoo's 'precious treasure' as he turns one year old. Happy birthday, Bei Bei!"

The zoo and the Chinese embassy held a special zhuazhou ceremony, a traditional ritual to honor a baby's first birthday that dates back to the Song Dynasty about 1,000 years ago and involves choices to foretell a child's future.

Three banners, with drawings and calligraphy symbolizing long life, health and habitat, luck and friendship, were placed in Bei Bei's yard. The artworks were created by children of Chinese diplomats in Washington. Panda keepers doused the poles of the banners with honey to get Bei Bei's attention.
Foreign Airlines in Nigeria Shift Operational Base to Ghana

A number of international carriers offering flight services have started relocating their offices to Accra, Ghana from their operational bases in Nigeria.

It was gathered that such airlines which now have their bases in Ghana, only fly in to Nigeria to pick passengers on scheduled flights.

The airlines cited the poor value of the naira, high cost and paucity of aviation fuel as some of the reasons for their relocation, Thisday learned.

One of the major international operators in Nigeria, Emirates, started last Sunday to pick up Nigerian passengers and take them to Accra, where it refuels and before heading back to Dubai, its operational hub.

It was also learned that some other airlines are already opening their Accra offices, while some have started both Accra and Lagos flights.

The Chairman of Airline Operators of Nigeria, AON, Captain Nogie Meggison, who confirmed Emirates latest decision said other foreign airlines may follow suit because of the high cost of aviation fuel, which is hurting air transport business in Nigeria.

Meggison noted that some of the airlines may even begin to attract Nigerian passengers to travel to Ghana to board international flights.

Meggison said that Ghana may also use the price of aviation fuel, known as Jet A1 to attract more foreign airlines operating into Nigeria to move to Accra, a development which he said will hurt hotel and logistics supply businesses in Nigeria.

While aviation fuel is sold at N200 to N250 per litre in Nigeria, the product is sold at N110 per litre in Accra as the West African neighbouring country reduced the price of the product by 20 percent about two weeks ago.

He also noted that domestic airlines would also lose connecting passengers from other destinations to Lagos and Abuja where they board international flights.

Meggison also frowned on what some industry observers described as the cartel of oil marketers that arbitrarily fix price of aviation fuel to boost their profits.

He noted that as they make profits from the aviation fuel they are stifling Nigerias economy because they drive away foreign airlines out of the country.

www.bizwatchnigeria.ng
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.
Hanoi, August 22 (VNA)  An exhibition of folk paintings originating from different regions of the country opened last week in Hanoi.



During the opening ceremony, artisans Nguyen Dang Che, Nguyen Dang Giap and Le Dinh Nghien printed and presented Dong Ho and Hang Trong folk paintings for visitors.



The event, a collaboration between the Hanoi Museum and the Hanoi Ceramics Museum, provides art lovers, history buffs and culture enthusiasts a look at paintings and sculptures that were created when few people had access to institutional learning and were generally self-taught.



The exhibition introduces the quintessence of 12 folk painting genres with various works brought by collector Nguyen Thi Thu Hoa, Director of the Hanoi Ceramics Museum.



Many ancient Buddhist objects of worship, maps, posters and printing tools are on display, illustrating the process of making folk paintings.



Besides showcasing some famous works such as Dong Ho and Hang Trong, the exhibition also shows Do The Nam Bo (spiritual paintings, burned to pray for health), Sinh Village paintings originating from Phu Vang District of Hue City in about the 15th century, Goi Vai (paintings with a silk background and 3D details produced by folding silk) and Thap Vat (spiritual paintings printed from sculpted-wooden planks, only in black and white, which are burned for the dead).



The exhibition will also feature colourful southern glass paintings, which came to Vietnam in the early 20th century when Chinese immigrants opened glass shops in Saigon (the former name of HCM City).



In the 1920s, the art form developed rapidly along with other crafts, spreading throughout six southern provinces. Mass produced products on religious themes, celebrations and interior decorative painting were developed. Some glass paintings were drawn with multi-coloured paints, or with mother of pearl, and combined with coatings of mercury.



Fine folk arts are an integral part of Vietnamese culture, however, many folk painting genres have been lost, according to Nguyen Tien Da, Director of the Hanoi Museum.



We cultural activists and researchers are nervous about the fact that so many folk painting genres now live only in the museum, he said.



We just know about them through rare old paintings and printing tools. But no one knows how to paint and print them. These objects have their own bodies, souls and stories but they have no vitality in contemporary life.



So we have organised this exhibition with the aim of introducing people to these traditional arts. We hope to inspire people to revive folk painting.

VNA/VNP
HCM CITY  Vietnamese cosmetic producers are losing their domestic market share because of not investing in developing brands and improving packaging, a conference heard in HCM City last Friday.

Deputy chairman of the Viet Nam Essential Oils, Aromatherapy and Cosmetics Association, Nguyen Van Minh told Viet Nam News on the sidelines of Essential Oils  Flavours  Cosmetics and Life: Vietnamese cosmetic products have only a 10 per cent market share [though] they can easily compete with foreign ones in terms of quality.

However, the companies have focused on quality but not invested in developing their brands. They do not use eye-catching packaging.

Vietnamese consumers, especially affluent ones, prefer high-quality products but also ones with beautiful packaging, he said.

And, Vietnamese products have failed to do that, he added.

There are only 14 Vietnamese cosmetics manufacturers like Sai Gon, Thorakao, Lana, Biona, Xman and Thai Duong.

A large proportion of their products, of around 60 per cent, are exported to African countries and Laos and Cambodia.

This is also a reason why they do not bother to advertise much in the domestic market.

Low technologies and a shortage of funds are also reasons for their lack of competitiveness.

Many of them are trying to invest in technologies, but, being small or medium-sized companies, cannot catch up with major foreign players.

At the conference, delegates admitted the companies products are mostly face and hand cleansers and targeted at low- and middle-income consumers.

Foreign brands dominate the market, with 90 per cent of domestic cosmetic companies being their distributors.

Korean products have a 30 per cent market share followed by those from the EU (23 per cent), Japan (17 per cent) and Thailand (13 per cent). The US and other countries account for the rest.

But the Vietnamese market has huge potential, the conference said, quoting a report from Nielsen, which said its annual turnover is around VN15 billion (US$700 million).

On average, each Vietnamese spends $4 on cosmetics each year. This is a low ratio in comparison with regional countries like Thailand where it is $20.

However, the spending is increasing across Viet Nam.

To help domestic companies capture a larger share of the market, the association said it would organise overseas trips for them to study and learn from foreign companies experience.  VNS
The Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) has asked Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to consider the participation of Viet Nam in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).  Photo thoibaonganhang.vn

HA NOI  The Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) has asked Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to consider the participation of Viet Nam in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

The EITI was critical for Viet Nam to improve transparency of the mining industry, and its management, as the lack of transparency and accountability were resulting in an alarming waste of resources.

VCCI questioned why mining companies constantly wanted to increase their exploitation while they reported low business results. Are their reports reliable?

VCCI cited its findings which showed that 85 per cent of surveyed mining firms admitted that there were informal expenses which accounted for 10 per cent of their total revenues and 72 per cent said that they must rely on relationship to access information.

This was causing distortions in the mining market, according to the VCCI.

In the Resolution 71/NQ-CP dated on August 5, the Government asked the Ministry of Industry and Trade to report the feasibility of Viet Nam becoming a member of the EITI within this month.

Joining the EITI is beneficial to Viet Nam, VCCI said in its document sent to the prime minister on Tuesday.

The EITI is an international standard in the management towards extraction of the countrys natural resources, in which member countries publish reports that disclose the mining revenues and other related information.

More than 50 countries in the world are implementing the EITI, including developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

Viet Nam has not joined the EITI over worries about the cost burden, and risks of leaking confidential State information.

These worries were groundless, VCCI said, and added that international experiences showed that costs for implementing EITI were not significant. For example, in Mongolia, a country rich in natural resource in Asia, cost for implementing EITI was US$200,000 per year.

The EITI standards were also flexible, allowing member countries to choose types of minerals and extraction phase for EITI implementation which were appropriate to the countries demand and capacity. Thus, Viet Nam can reserve the right to keep State information confidential.

Viet Nam can implement the EITI following a roadmap appropriate to the capacity of the mining firms, VCCI said.

Expert ang Hung Vo said that the State management towards extraction must be enhanced together with transparency to prevent illegal mining.  VNS

---- Box -----

Benefits of EITI (according to VCCI)

- Provides effective input for improving Viet Nams mineral laws

- Helps the Government improve control extraction of minerals, reduce wastes of natural resources, and increase budget revenue

- Enables State management agencies to be more proactive in law enforcement and prevent illegal exports of minerals

- Creates a transparent forum, and mutual trust between Government agencies, businesses and citizens in mining, thereby reducing social conflicts, strengthening security, improves confidence.

- Helps businesses reduce mining risks and unofficial costs, enhances their competitiveness and enables the participation in the global value chain.

- Creates confidence and helps attract investments in mining projects with processing

- Enhances corporate social responsibility
HA NOI  Vietnamese shares yesterday ended down as investors increased selling assets to earn profits after blue chips posted big gains last week.

The benchmark VN Index on the HCM Stock Exchange retreated 0.7 per cent to close at 657.68 points, erasing a three-day gain of 0.6 per cent.

The HNX Index on the Ha Noi Stock Exchange ended down 0.5 per cent at 82.68 points to total a three-day loss of 1.3 per cent.

Blue chips weighed on the major market yesterday as investors sought profits from those stocks recent gains.

Dairy firm Vinamilk (VNM), consumer goods producer Masan Group (MSN), confectionery KIDO Group (KDC) and steel producer (HSG) were among the decliners.

VNM dropped 2.1 per cent after rising 4.5 per cent in the previous five sessions. VNM has surged 13 per cent in the last three trading weeks.

KDC slumped 4.2 per cent after it recorded a seven-day gain of more than 29 per cent. KDC has soared nearly one-third in the last 10 trading days.

HSG dipped 3.9 per cent to fall a total 6 per cent in two sessions after climbing more than 10 per cent during two trading weeks.

MSN pulled back 3.7 per cent from a two-day jump of 13.4 per cent.

Other large-cap shares such as Bank for Investment and Development of Viet Nam (BID) also declined from Fridays closing prices.

BID has disappointed investors in recent weeks as the bank has reported an increase of 31 per cent in its non-performing loan volume.

Concerns over the banking systems bad debt status have undermined the banks performances compared to the growth of the stock market, Bao Viet Securities Co (BVSC) wrote in its daily report.

According to BVSC, the three bank stocks BID, Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) and Vietinbank (CTG) have respectively fallen 19.9 per cent, 11.6 per cent and 8.1 per cent since the beginning of the year while the VN Index has been up 13.6 per cent.

If those banks show no progress to lower their bad debt ratios, the prospect of the banking sector in the rest of year will remain negative, BVSC said.

The central bank yesterday raised its daily reference mid-point rate for local trading between the Vietnamese ong and the US dollar by VN19 to VN21,875 for a dollar.

Nearly 146.5 million shares worth VN2.58 trillion were exchanged yesterday, a decrease of a quarter from last weeks daily trading value.  VNS
Investors follow transactions at Rong Viet stock trading floor in HCM City. Viet Nam's stock market had a second week of gains.  VNA/VNS Photo Pham Hau

HA NOI  Viet Nams stock market had a second week of gains, buoyed by local investor optimism about a further increase, though continuous net selling by foreign investors has posed a threat to the markets growth.

The benchmark VN-Index on the HCM Stock Exchange gained a cumulative 1 per cent last week, closing Fridays session at 662.3 points. It rose 4.5 per cent in the previous week.

On the smaller exchange in Ha Noi, the HNX-Index closed the week marginally unchanged at 83.1 points.

Large-cap stocks maintained the markets driving force. Big gains among shares included in the top 30 stocks by market capitalisation, were seen by dairy firm Vinamilk (VNM), private equity Masan Group (MSN) and confectionery Kinh o Corp (KDC).

Masan, the seventh largest stock on the HCM Stock Exchange, climbed 11.6 per cent for the week. Its shares reached the daily limit increase of 7 per cent in the last two sessions, following information that the company registered to buy back 20 million shares and raised its 2016 profit forecast by 25 per cent, after recording an impressive half-year profit of VN1.5 trillion (US$67 million), a year-on-year increase of 200 per cent.

Also boosted by positive business results, shares of Kinh o Corp soared 26.7 per cent last week. The company is expected to earn VN2 trillion from the sale of another 20-per-cent stake in Kinh o Binh Duong JSC, its arm which specialises in cakes and candies, to Mondelez International. In 2014, Kinh o sold 80 per cent of its shares to Mondelez for $370 million.

Also, Kinh os profits are forecast to reach VN2 trillion by the end of this year.

However, except for some large-cap stocks, overall market conditions were negative, as the number of losing shares often outnumbered those posting gains. Meanwhile, increased selling by foreign investors has put heavy pressure on the development of the market.

Foreigners were also responsible for a net selling value of VN1.1 trillion in the two markets last week. This is the second week they were net sellers, raising the total net selling value to nearly VN1.3 trillion. Their selling focused on blue chips, such as Vinamilk, VinGroup and Masan Group.

A chain of two-week net selling by foreign investors is likely to be a risky factor which could endanger the markets rise, especially when the market faces a lack of support information this month, analysts at Vietcombank Securities Co wrote in a report.

Nguyen Huu Binh, head of analysis at Investment Vietnam Securities Co, suggested that investors focus on individual stocks, instead of the index, as the rise or fall of the index is being heavily influenced by movements of some large stocks.

Binh said, in the first half of 2016 many stocks recorded very high prices, while at the other end of the spectrum, many shares had set new bottom price levels. Also, macroeconomic developments and external factors had different impacts on different sectors and industries.

Money is flowing in those shares promising growth potential in the medium and long term, Binh was quoted as saying on the financial website tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn.

Further, liquidity rose slightly on the HCM Citys market. The daily trading volume reached 129 million shares, worth nearly VN2.9 trillion, and up 8.7 per cent in volume and 31.8 per cent in value, compared with the previous weeks figures.

Similar figures were 39 million shares, with an average value of VN496 billion in the Ha Noi market, down 2.1 per cent in volume and 3.1 per cent in value from the previous weeks levels.  VNS
ZHANGJIAJIE, China  Tourists who suffer from vertigo need not apply. The worlds highest and longest glass-bottomed bridge opened Saturday in Chinas spectacular Zhangjiajie mountains  the inspiration for American blockbuster Avatar.

Some 430 metres (1,400 feet) long and suspended 300 metres above the earth, the bridge spans the canyon between two mountain cliffs in Zhangjiajie park in Chinas central Hunan province.

Six metres wide and made of some 99 panels of clear glass, the bridge can carry up to 800 people at the same time, an official in Zhangjiajie  a popular tourist destination  told the Xinhua news agency.

Tourists can walk across the bridge, designed by Israeli architect Haim Dotan, and the more adventurous will be able to bungee jump or ride a zip line.

"I wanted to feel awe-inspired by this bridge. But Im not afraid  it seems safe!" Wang Min, who was visiting the new structure with her husband and children, said.

Following an alarming glass bridge cracking incident at the Yuntai mountain in northern Henan in 2015, authorities in Zhangjiajie were eager to demonstrate the safety of the structure.

They organised a string of media events, including one where people were encouraged to try and smash the bridges glass panels with a sledge hammer, and another where they drove a car across it.

"Its crowded today and a bit of a mess. But to be suspended 300 metres in the air, its a unique experience," said Lin Chenglu, who had come to see the bridge with his colleagues.

Only 8,000 people each day will be allowed to cross the bridge, Xinhua said, and tourists will have to book their tickets a day in advance, at a cost of 138 yuan (US$20).

People wearing stilettos will be banned, it added.

Local authorities have said that one of the summits in Zhangjiajie Park inspired the floating mountain which appears in the American blockbuster Avatar. A Hollywood photographer visited the area in 2008, taking images which were used for the film, according to media reports. AFP
HA NOI  Amateur artistes representing the Vietnamese community impressed the local audience in Pisek, the Czech Republic, during their first participation at the International Folk Arts Festival held from August 18 to 20.

A dance performed to the song entitled Viet Nam  My Homeland by composer o Nhuan on the opening night of the festival, accompanied by colourful costumes and charming Asian dancing movements, was considered a success.

The 22nd edition of the folk art festival aimed at being a playground of interaction for foreign communities in Pisek.

Pavel Bruzek, an organiser of the festival, expressed his happiness at the Vietnamese communitys participation.

Though many Vietnamese people have lived and worked in the area for a long time, this is the first time the festival has welcomed the Vietnamese community, he said, I am really impressed with Vietnamese dancers, though they are totally amateur when compared with professional dancers from India, Austria, Georgia and Poland, besides Slovakia.

Que Huong (Homeland), the dancing team of the Vietnamese community in the Czech Republic, includes businesswomen working in the country.

They often used their free time at night to practise for the performance.

According to Nguyen Van Bien, director of the Vietnamese Community Association in Pisek, there are about 300 Vietnamese people living in the city and the surrounding areas. Most of them are involved in the clothing trade, food and beauty care services, or work in factories.

The association was established a year ago and has organised various activities for connecting Vietnamese people in Pisek and for doing charity work for the homeland, he said.  VNS
Viet Nam News

The collapse of an old house at 43 Cua Bac Street, central Ha Noi, that claimed two lives and injured three others early this month, has added to the dilemma of old houses and the management of buildings in cities like Ha Noi and HCM City. The accident also raises concerns over the safety of local people living in degraded areas. A city authority official, citizens and experts share their opinions on the issue with Viet Nam News.

ang Ngoc Tien, Deputy Director of the Management Board of Ha Nois Old Quarter

The recent collapse of an old house at Cua Bac Street, which killed two people and injured three others, has raised anxiety amongst residents living in the Old Quarter area as it is home to a large number of old houses and buildings.

The Management Board of Ha Nois Old Quarter, in collaboration with the peoples committees of 10 wards in the Old Quarter, have revised all downgraded construction works in the area and found 180 deteriorated buildings, which might pose a danger for those living in them.

The maintenance and repair work of these deteriorated houses currently depends on their owners and the responsibilities of State management agencies.

For the privately-owned houses and buildings, owners themselves or authority officials who are assigned to manage them, must be active in maintaining or repairing their buildings/houses to ensure the safety of residents.

They have the responsibility of inspecting the construction works and assessing the potential risks when finding signs of deterioration. Based on the results, they must then set up plans to renovate or repair them. For the State-owned houses and buildings, organisations or units which are assigned to manage them must plan for maintenance and repair annually.

The Peoples Committee of Hoan Kiem District has guided its units to review and give preliminary assessment of the downgraded construction works and provide solutions to ensure safety for people, especially during rainy seasons.

The population density of the Old Quarter is about 84,000 persons per square kilometre, ranking as one of the most crowded areas in the world. The high population density of the Old Quarter has led to the narrowing of living spaces for local people.

Due to increasing demand for accommodation, some households have illegally expanded their living area. Houses have been extended with steel frames or temporarily covered by corrugated sheets. However, these materials have caused negative impacts on the structure of the houses and affected the beauty and architecture of the Old Quarter.

Thus, it is necessary to inspect the quality of these construction works and set up an appropriate plan to renovate them.

Currently, the management board is working with local peoples committees of 10 wards in the area to increase dissemination for local residents about the regulations of architectural planning in the Old Quarter and give them training on fire prevention and fighting annually. Most of the buildings and houses are quite old, but have not yet been examined scientifically to have measures put in place to manage them effectively. Moreover, authorised agencies have faced difficulties in managing them as many construction works are owned by many people.

The Governments Decree 46/2015 /ND-CP, which was issued on May 12, stipulates specifically the danger levels of deteriorated buildings and houses. Based on the results of inspections, we can make recommendations to owners, managers or users on plans for renovation and repair of the construction works or require them to relocate to ensure their safety.

Phd Professor Le Van Kieu

Phd Professor Le Van Kieu, senior lecturer at National University of Civil Engineering

The collapse of an old house at 43 Cua Bac Street in Ha Noi was inevitable.

Although no exact construction data was announced, I guess the house might have been built around 40 years ago when materials for the construction industry, specifically concrete, were subsidised and strictly managed by the then State. To build a house at that time, the house owner had to collect materials including bricks and concrete for nearly a year, preserve them in primary conditions against weather and environmental effects. This made it easy for the material to deteriorate in quality.

Moreover, aside from the low quality of materials, many people, 40 years ago just built their houses by themselves or with help from workers or engineers without adequate construction knowledge.

I am sure that the owner of 43 Cua Bac possessed no accurate design plans or documents about the houses construction.

The lifespan of a house depends largely on the materials that were used to build it, as well as on the quality of design and construction.

Houses that meet the first standard of quality will have a lifespan of about 75 years. Houses that are placed at second or third quality levels could stand firmly for about 40 or 50 years while those at the fourth level could have a lifespan of just 25 years.

The collapsed house was definitely among the fourth level and if its owner wanted it to be continuously in use, he or she should have upgraded it more than ten years ago.

The upgrading of old houses in cities, in many cases, is not an easy process as many of them go through generations of owners. That means the houses have been sold to different people most of whom could not preserve original ownership documents or construction plans.

Ironically, I know that Ha Noi and HCM City currently have more than 100 houses or buildings with lifespans lasting more than 100 years.

To manage or deal with such old houses or buildings, construction authorities should focus first on evaluating their remaining endurance capacity. They should also cautiously consider a final plan on whether to demolish or preserve them based on the evaluation.

The City Department of Construction needs to set up a special group responsible for observing and supervising the old houses and buildings, particularly those which are in the process of applying for a construction licences.

Authorities should grant construction licences to old estate properties only after they have conducted careful evaluations on their capacity and duration.

At present, the Government is encouraging education and training on urban construction and management. Many colleges and universities consider it one of the key targets of training. But the Government should also promulgate policies that encourage thousands of students who have been trained in the field, to engage in working with it after graduation.

Doan Minh Khoi

Head of the Institute of Urban and Architecture, Doan Minh Khoi

The case of the house collapse on Cua Bac Street is not the first of its kind. There are many houses that are built next to old ones. These old houses were built long ago and their foundations are simply not good enough. As a result, the construction of new houses or the upgrading of houses next to these old houses will affect them. This is the reason why some old houses have started to subside, crack or even worse, collapse as with the case on Cua Bac Street. Old urban centres often face this problem when building new houses, for not abiding by technical factors and regulations.

We cannot live indefinitely in deteriorated houses, and people have their own ways of improving their living conditions. However, it requires standards and regulations when upgrading or building new houses. It means that people have to build houses following exact designs and regulations while State management agencies need to tighten supervision over construction of these houses. Supervision is every important. We cannot build a house without supervision. So we need specific regulations in repairing and upgrading houses in the future.

When building a house we need to register for a licence from the construction ministry or from authorities at a lower level such as cities or districts, depending on each kind of house. However, in reality, not all people abide by these regulations. In some cases, people try to not follow the construction licence that they are granted. House design is done correctly but the construction process does not follow what is licensed by authorities. Meanwhile, management agencies fail to supervise house construction effectively. These are key reasons. In my opinion, wrongdoings often happen at the construction process, not the construction licensing process.

Many residents are worried that the Cua Bac Street collapse will not be the final one. I share this concern. If house construction is not well supervised and management staff do not have sufficient professional skills and knowledge, such a case can and will happen again.

 Nguyen Thanh Lang



Nguyen Thanh Lang, a resident in an old building, Ha Nois Hoang Mai District

The case of the house collapse that claimed two lives and injured four others at 43 Cua Bac in central Ha Noi is just one of many old houses and buildings which have become seriously degraded in Ha Noi over the years.

I am also living in an old building in Tan Mai Wards Nguyen Chinh Street which is considerd to be the most deteriorated five-storey building in Ha Nois Hoang Mai District. The building was constructed more than 30 years ago.

Residents here are living in fear because the apartment could collapse at any time.

For the cause of the accident at 43 Cua Bac, I think we cannot only blame the citys housing and land management board because sometimes residents still carry out work despite warnings from local authorities. We need join hands from all sides, especially from the citys authorities.

In our case, we have proposed our ideas and opinions several times to the local and citys authorities to find solutions to tackle the serious degradation here.

What are the local and citys authorities doing to deal with the current situation?

The local authorities have carried out some surveys on the level of tilt and subsidence of the residential complex.

And in 2010, the citys house and land management board had put a big iron bar around the buildings stairs from the first to fifth floor to avoid collapse but the tilt of the building continues.

Awareness on implementing measures to hold up against storms has been strengthened and the local authority has also prepared plans to move residents to safe places if needed.

However, specific renovation plans have not been implemented drastically, and not fast enough besides announcing the danger of the building and planning for temporary relocation in urgent cases.

The plan is still on paper. We have already waited for many years. Most people here, including myself, are low income residents so we can not afford to build new houses elsewhere. We hope that the citys authorities will soon have a specific plan to rebuild or relocate all residents here.

In my opinion, to overcome such a situation the city should have priority policies to attract businesses looking to rebuild immediately. Policies should benefit businesses and create conditions to help them get more money from building projects. Investors have to take the responsibility of managing and ensuring the quality of their projects.

Policies should ensure the benefit to enterprises, authorities and particularly residents. I heard about the citys project on upgrading and rebuilding old and damaged buildings over the coming years and I hope that it will be realised sooner rather than later.  VNS
The Peoples Committee of HCM City has approved a plan from now to 2020 to offer extended kindergarten hours for children of workers at industrial parks (IPs) and export processing zones (EPZs) who work overtime.  Photo vnexpress.net

HCM CITY  The Peoples Committee of HCM City has approved a plan from now to 2020 to offer extended kindergarten hours for children of workers at industrial parks (IPs) and export processing zones (EPZs) who work overtime.

The service will help reduce parentscosts of sending children to privately owned kindergartens during their overtime hours, according to the committee.

For the upcoming academic year, kindergartens at IPs and EPZs in Binh Tan and Thu uc districts will offer the overtime service in a pilot programme.

Nguyen Thi Thuy Nga, deputy head of Thu uc Districts educational division, told local newspapers that teachers working hours would be divided into two shifts, from 6am-2pm and 2pm-9 pm, to better accommodate workers schedules.

As part of the pilot programme, two new kindergartens for children aged 3-5 will also be set up at the Linh Trung 1 and 2 Export Processing Zone in wards Linh Xuan and Linh Trung. The teachers will also work on Saturdays as well as during overtime hours of the parents.

In addition, kindergartens at the Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone in District 7 and Tay Bac Industrial Parks in Cu Chi District will offer the overtime service as well in the 2017-2018 year.

In the 2019-2020 term, other districts will also begin to provide services during overtime working hours.

The Department of Finance has asked the Peoples Committee to subsidise all fees for kindergarten services held during workers overtime hours.

If there is not enough money, the committee could provide 50 per cent of the fee and the rest could be paid by parents and sponsored by companies, the department said.

According to the committees figures, the city has 73 kindergartens with a total of 18,741 kids at industrial parks and export processing zones.

As many as 7,121 of them are children of workers at IPs and EPZs.

Many workers at IPs and EPZs prefer not to send their children to public or private kindergartens because the schools working hours do not match their schedules. Many of them work overtime.

Many privately owned kindergartens are set up around IPs and EPZs provide an alternative to illegal nurseries owned by individuals.

Private kindergartens in Tan Phu, Binh Tan and Thu uc districts charge low prices, but the fees are higher than those at public kindergartens.

City authorities are considering issuing policies that would require private kindergartens to charge lower fees during workersovertime hours.  VNS
HCM CITY The implementation of nutritional practices in hospitals is still a neglected issue although it is vital in significantly reducing mortality in critically ill patients, experts have said.

The prevalence of malnutrition among hospitalised patients ranges from 43-50 per cent, said Dr Luu Ngan Tam, head of the HCM City Society of Parenteral Enteral Nutrition.

Malnutrition increases the mortality rate, length of stay and treatment costs, according to Tam.

Nutrition support includes enteral nutrition and parenteral nutrition, she said at a conference on nutrition management to enhance treatment quality held last week in HCM City.

Early enteral nutrition, provided within 24 hours of injury or intensive care unit (ICU) admission, significantly reduces mortality in critically ill patients, said Prof. Remy Meier, hepatology and nutrition specialist from Switzerlands University of Basel.

Enteral nutrition should be started as soon as possible. Excessive and insufficient calorie intakes are deleterious in ICU patients, he said. Energy and protein deficits are associated with morbidity and mortality. It is important for optimal energy and protein homeostasis.

A worldwide survey showed that calorie and protein administration reached only 44-52 per cent of the prescribed amount.

Overall enteral nutrition is more beneficial than parenteral nutrition alone. When enteral nutrition does not meet 60 per cent of nutritional needs, parenteral nutrition should be added.

Dr. Ta Thi Tuyet Mai, head of Gia inh People Hospitals Nutrition Department, said that most hospitals in Viet Nam failed to offer appropriate nutrition support to patients.

Nutrition screening and support meets only 0.5 per cent of the demand among hospitalised patients at Gia inh People Hospital, Mai said.

She blamed the inappropriate nutritional risk screening and nutrition support on a lack of nutritional practice knowledge among doctors and nurses as well as hospital overloading.

The hospital has 1,500 beds, but it serves 3,000 out-patients and 1,500 in-patients every day.

The annual conference organised by the HCM City Society of Parenteral Enteral Nutrition in coordination with Cho Ray Hospital attracted more than 300 domestic and international experts and doctors.

Topics under discussion included mutrition assessment on hospitalised patients, optimal nutritional strategy in critically ill patients, nutrition care in chronic pancreatitis, and nutritional therapy in GI failure. VNS
Authorities and resident in central Quang Binh Province have voiced concerns over serious deforestation to a natural forest area upstream of the Rao Nan River.  Photo enternews.vn

QUANG BINH  Authorities and resident in central Quang Binh Province have voiced concerns over serious deforestation to a natural forest area upstream of the Rao Nan River.

Chairman of Quang Son Commune Peoples Committee, Mai Trung Kien, said that the destroyed areas were important because the Rao Nan River provided water for 50,000 people and farming production to 10 local communes in Tuyen Hoa District.

Deforestation would affect the water supply to these 50,000 people.

Additionally, local authorities struggled to manage the forest because the area was disputed between Quang Son and Van Hoa communes.

Quang Son Peoples Committee Chairman blamed the issue on an incorrect boundary map that land officials had created in the past.

Chairman of Van Hoa Commune Peoples Committee inh Xuan Thuong said those who were felling the trees were not the members of local households, instead they were wood traders who purchased land from residents to destroy natural forest and plant keo trees.

Tien Phong ( Vanguard ) newspaper reporters witnessed a large natural forest in Chay Village of Quang Son Commune destroyed, with all trees with diameter from 20cm-50cm chopped down.

A local resident said the trees were chopped down two months ago; groups of forest rangers carrying modern equipment destroyed the forest quickly.

Hoang Minh e, chairman of Tuyen Hoa District Peoples Committee, said his office received a report from Van Hoa Commune authorities saying the natural forest area, adjacent to Quang Son Commune, was allocated to 40 local households.

But five wood traders have been purchasing land from these households and at present, they grow keo trees on 40ha out of 70ha forest land they purchased.

The real destroyed forest acreage is bigger than local authorities report, according to forest rangers.

Tran Xuan Hao, Director of Quang Binh Provinces Agricultural-Forestry Design & Re-planning Centre said his office would examine the allocation of Van Hoa Commune forest land.

He said the centre had proposed a project to convert the natural forest to a production forest model following Van Hoa Commune authorities requirements.  VNS
MEKONG DELTA  The late arrival of floods in the Mekong Delta provinces this year has been blamed on a major attack by rats on crops there.

Normally, the floods hit the region in late July and early August but in the last few years, they have been either arriving much later or not at all.

Le Quoc Cuong, head of the southern plantation protection centre under the agriculture and rural development ministrys plantation protection department, said thousands of hectares of rice crops in southern provinces such as Bac Lieu, Soc Trang, An Giang and Ben Tre, besides Kien Giang saw a drop in productivity in the last two seasons because of rats.

Dr Le Van Banh, former director of the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta Rice Research Institute, said the Mekong Delta provinces experienced double trouble because of a record drought and saltwater intrusion early this year and the late arrival of floods.

Flood added fertility to the soil, cleaned up the fields and killed germs, he said.

Less water from the upper part of the Mekong Delta River or late floods break the normal schemes of crops and create favourable conditions for the growth of rats and insects, which damage crops, he said.

Cuong from plant protection centre said farmers must take synchronised and regular measures to kill rats and minimise losses.

While using chemicals to kill rats, farmers must collect and remove all dead rats to ensure hygiene, Cuong said, noting that people should not use electrical methods that could harm them.

Fatalities have been reported when people used electricity to track and kill rats in the fields.  VNS
HA NOI  One person was killed and seven seriously injured when a scaffolding collapsed even as workers were pouring concrete for constructing a house in Binh inh Province early today.

Local media reported that a falling concrete block instantly killed ang Thi Ngoc Phuong, 49, a resident of Nguyen Thai Hoc Street in Quy Nhon City.

The accident occurred at the construction site of a house located at No 96, Bach ang Street, Quy Nhon City, at about 7am today. The house belongs to Tran Xuan Ba.

At 6am, a group of 20 workers started pouring concrete. By 6.45am, the work was almost over when the scaffolding unexpectedly collapsed, ang Thi Hong, the elder sister of the victim, said.

At that very moment, Phuong was pushing a cart inside and was buried under a huge concrete block, she told Tuoi tre (Youth).

Those working above and outside luckily escaped death, she said.

The Binh inh firefighting police quickly sent special vehicles and 50 employees to the scene.

They used special devices to cut the concrete block into piles of iron and steel before taking out the victims body after almost an hour.

Quy Nhon Hospital doctors also arrived to provide first aid to the victim, but she was already dead. The injured were immediately rushed to hospital.

Colonel Pham inh Trung said the scaffolding was too weak, causing it to collapse, as it was supporting a heavy load of concrete.  VNS
LONDON  Voting will begin today to decide if veteran leftist Jeremy Corbyn will remain leader of Britains Labour party, with an ill-tempered campaign deepening divisions that threaten the partys future.

Ballots and online voting forms were due to be sent to party members, who will have until September 21 to decide whether to replace Corbyn with MP Owen Smith, previously little known outside Westminster.

The 46-year-old triggered the election by declaring his candidacy last month, warning that Corbyns leadership was making the possibility of a split in the party "dangerously real".

Smith, a former member of Corbyns top team, is also targeting voters to the left of the party, promising a "socialist revolution".

"Not some misty-eyed, romantic notion of a revolution where we are going to overthrow capitalism and return to a socialist nirvana... but a cold-eyed, practical socialist revolution where we build a better Britain," he said last month.

Corbyn, 67, is favourite to stay as leader, retaining the support of most trade unions and many who signed up last year to propel him to a shock win in the leadership election called following the partys thrashing in the general election.

But he has failed to win over many of the partys MPs, 80 percent of whom backed a recent vote of no-confidence in their leader.

Britains vote on June 23 to leave the European Union provided the catalyst for the leadership challenge, with many in the party criticising Corbyns performance during the campaign.

London mayor slams Corbyn

At a recent debate, Smith accused the veteran socialist of "sloganising" rather than holding the Conservative Party to account, and of failing to campaign hard enough to prevent a vote to leave the EU.

Loud boos, cheers and heckling have characterised many of the debates between the two men while local party meetings have been suspended during the contest due to allegations of intimidation levelled against Corbyns supporters, exposing the partys growing rift.

Some commentators have warned the outcome could even split the party, which grew out of Britains trade union movement in the 19th century.

Corbyn has the support of many Labour members, and since February 2015 party membership has surged from 200,000 to 540,000.

He is also backed by Momentum, a mass movement of party members who have turned out in their droves to support him at events around the country in recent days.

However, he received a setback earlier this month when a court ruled that 130,000 new party members who joined in the six months up to July 12 could not vote in the leadership contest.

Labours London Mayor Sadiq Khan also delivered a blow on Sunday by declaring his support for Smith.

"Jeremys personal ratings are the worst of any opposition leader on record and the Labour party is suffering badly as a result," Khan wrote in the Observer, the Sunday version of the centre-left Guardian newspaper.

"Jeremy has already proved that he is unable to organise an effective team and has failed to win the trust and respect of the British people," he added.

Smith appears to be targeting pacifist Corbyns grassroots base, causing controversy by calling for the British government to "get round the table" with the Islamic State group.

The result is to be announced on September 24 during a special congress in Liverpool, northwest England.  AFP
BANGKOK  Most of those behind a string of bombings in Thai tourist towns are Muslims from the kingdoms insurgency-plagued southern provinces, the countrys police chief said today.

It was the first clear indication that police believe a group of southern Muslims played some sort of role in the attacks which killed four and wounded dozens, including European visitors, this month.

Police chief Chakthip Chaijinda told reporters that investigators believe a group of "more than 20 people" were behind the co-ordinated attacks.

"Most of them are from the area of the southern border provinces police operation centre," he said, referencing a policing area that encompasses the Muslim-majority southernmost region.

Asked whether the suspects were Thai nationals he replied: "They are not Buddhists."

He added that investigators had recently searched an Islamic school where he believed some of the suspects had studied or graduated from.

More than 6,500 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in 12 years of violence between the Buddhist-majority state and shadowy ethnic Malay Muslim rebels seeking greater autonomy.

But the violence has largely remained local and foreign visitors are also largely insulated from domestic political clashes that have hit the capital.

That changed on 11-12 August when a string of co-ordinated bomb and arson attacks struck multiple tourist resort towns in Thailands south.

No one has claimed responsibility but authorities quickly ruled out international terrorism, saying the perpetrators were domestic.

One arrest warrant has so far been issued for a named suspect over the attacks, a Muslim man from the southern province of Narathiwat.

Local media have reported that the man, Ahama Lengha, has a history of involvement with insurgents.

At his briefing police chief Chakthip said he was not ruling out any motive, adding that the group "might have been hired" by others to carry out the attacks.

He said he believed the perpetrators were previously unknown to police, not veterans from within the Malay insurgency who might be easier to catch and identify.

"They are almost all new blood which makes the investigation harder, but we do have evidence," he said.  AFP
Virginia Tech President Tim Sands will deliver his first State of the University Address on Friday, Sept. 30, at the Moss Arts Center.

Doors will open at 3 p.m. in the Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre, located within the Moss Arts Centers Street and Davis Performance Hall at 190 Alumni Mall. A student performance will precede the address, and a community reception will follow on the lawn outside the Moss Arts Center.

The event is free and open to the public, and the Virginia Tech community is encouraged to attend. The university will livestream the event so that students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni located outside Blacksburg can participate.

During his address, Sands will reflect on the issues, events, and accomplishments of the previous school year, and share his thoughts, ideas, and vision for the university in the current academic year.

Additional information on the State of the University Address will be shared through Virginia Tech News emails, the event website, and social media channels as the date approaches.

Parking is available in the North End Parking Garage on Turner Street. Virginia Tech faculty and staff possessing a valid Virginia Tech parking permit can enter and exit the garage free of charge. Limited street parking is also available.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Kacy McAllister at 540-231-5300 or email kmcallis@vt.edu during regular business hours at least 10 business days prior to an event.
Unequal Budget funding for the Yes vote wont give Australians equal say If you seek to ensure not all Australians get an equal say in the debate about an enshrined voice, then dont be surprised when millions of them cry foul about the integrity of the result.

Heartbreaking family update after mother-of-six was killed in horror crash Hannah Fraser's father and stepmother are trying to make it from the United Kingdom to Australia in time for their daughter's funeral.

Firefighter unions latest message to Andrews Government More than a hundred fire trucks in Victoria will carry pointed messages about the Andrews Government as part of a union campaign in the lead up to next month's state election.

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.
WATERLOO  Disappointing, but not unexpected.

Thats how one United Auto Workers Local 838 official described John Deeres announcement Monday morning 115 Deere Waterloo workers and another 30 at the Davenport works are being placed on indefinite layoff by the end of September.

The announcement came after company officials announced a 10th consecutive quarter of declining year-over-year earnings Friday and noted a sustained agricultural downturn has been most pronounced in the sale of higher-horsepower models, which are made in Waterloo.

It was pretty much expected, said Tim Niedert, a UAW Local 838 shop chairman who, along with other union representatives, met with company officials and affected employees Monday morning.

It isnt just Deere, Niedert said, noting other ag equipment manufacturers and dealers have a high inventory right now in proportion to product demand.

Niedert said some workers had already been on temporary layoff, as company officials tried to adjust production to meet demand. The Deere-UAW contract allows temporary-layoff inventory adjustment shutdowns under which workers could be idled up to 16 weeks in a production year. The layoffs announced Monday, however, are indefinite.

Its a bad deal, UAW Local 838 President Tom Ralston said. Our hearts go out to the guys and gals getting affected. Well do everything we can to make sure they have all the benefits coming to them. We were hoping we were done with this, and it turned out not to be the case.

Ralston said 663 Deere Waterloo workers are still on indefinite layoff following a pair of major workforce reductions announced in the fall of 2014 and spring of 2015 that initially idled about 1,000 people. Some workers have been called back since then and subsequent layoffs were announced but did not occur.

We had just called back 25 in the foundry, Niedert said, in a move by company and union officials to bring as much outsourced work back into the plant as possible as provided under the contract. That was just two weeks ago.

Workers affected by the current layoff are at other facilities in town, including tractor cab assembly on East Donald Street and drive train operations along Westfield Avenue near downtown, among others. Foundry operations function separately, with a separate seniority list.

Ralston and Niedert said the union will meet with affected workers over the next month.

Well get together with them at the union hall like we did the last time and go through what benefits they have and what theyre entitled to contractually, Niedert said. Well have community agencies out when we meet with the affected workers, try to line them up with what they have available in services.

Its a hard day for the UAW and a hard day for John Deere, Ralston said. But the UAW will do everything it can to ensure workers receive benefits due them.

These are some of the best workers around, Ralston added. We need every employer to give these guys a serious look  and anybody on the layoff list.

The affected Waterloo employees last working day is Sept. 23, company officials said. Affected Davenport workers last day is Sept. 30. Layoffs are determined by seniority, company officials said. Niedert said some of the affected workers were hired as far back as 2011.

Deere continues to adjust the size of the companys production workforce to meet market demand for products manufactured at each of its factories, company officials said in the layoff announcement issued from company headquarters in Moline, Ill. Todays actions are consistent with projections that were communicated when Deere announced its third quarter results on Friday.

In the companys Friday earnings release, Deere officials said the companys worldwide sales of agriculture and turf equipment would decrease by about 8 percent for fiscal-year 2016. Industry sales for agricultural equipment in the U.S. and Canada were forecast to be down 15 to 20 percent for 2016.
WATERLOO  Closing arguments in the Perquondis Holmes murder retrial have been delayed until Tuesday.

Jurors were initially scheduled to hear prosecutors and defense attorneys sum up their cases on Monday, but the arguments were pushed back a day to allow attorneys to put the finishing touches on jury instructions.

Holmes, 25 and of Waterloo, is charged with first-degree murder in the November 2013 shooting death of 18-year-old DaeQuan Campbell. Testimony in the trial began Aug. 9, and evidence concluded on Friday morning.

Prosecutors said Campbell and his friends followed a friend of Holmes to a parking lot behind a Langley Road apartment building with the intention of fighting him. Holmes allegedly walked up to the car containing Campbell and the others and opened fire, killing Campbell, prosecutors said.

The defense alleges the shooter was actually Holmess friend, who wasnt charged. The defense also said the friend had acted in self defense because Campbells car drove at him while he was on foot.
WATERLOO  Waterloo police are investigating two reports of gunfire that happened blocks apart on Sunday night.

No injuries were reported, but one house was struck by a bullet, and officers collected spent shell casings at both scenes.

Neighbors first called police to the 500 block of Elm Street at about 9:24 p.m. Sunday after hearing shots and seeing people running in the area.

Then at 11 p.m., residents heard more gunfire in the 700 block of Elm Street and called police. A bullet hit a home at 401 Courtland St., but police said they dont believe the house was the target and suspect it was hit by a stray bullet.
WATERLOO  One teen has been detained following a morning vehicle chase in a stolen truck.

Another youth in the truck fled after the truck crashed, police said.

The incident started shortly after 6 a.m. Monday when a resident in the 300 block of Randall Street started his Ford pickup to get ready for work and then went back inside his home. When he returned, the truck was gone.

Officers spotted the truck while they were headed to Randall Street to talk with the victim. The truck didnt stop, and ended when the stolen Ford pickup drove through a vegetable garden the corner of East Third and Walnut streets and crashed into a tree on Iowa Street.

The truck had minor damage, and no injuries were reported, according to police.
WATERLOO -- Growth and change have been a constant in Hawkeye Community College's five decades of history.

Started as Hawkeye Institute of Technology in 1966 with a $500 loan, a liberal arts program was added in the early 1990s and the name was changed in 1993.

Programs have multiplied over the years, often housed in new buildings on the main campus along East Orange Road. The college has also branched out to satellite centers across the metro area and region.

A new exhibition at the Grout Museum of History & Science examines the relationship between the community and ever-evolving college. "Hawkeye Community College: 50 Years of Making Connections" begins Tuesday and continues through May 27.

"It's kind of like the celebration/exploration of why the community needs an institution like this, and how far it's come," said Erin Dawson, curator of exhibits for the museum. "We were actually approached by Hawkeye Community College and it's kind of been a joint project of the two organizations."

This is only the second time that such a collaboration has been central to creating an exhibit, the first being the recently ended "365 Days and Counting: Iowans in the Vietnam War." As in the Hawkeye exhibit, Dawson said that involved community members directly contributing relevant artifacts. "It's something that I think you're going to see more for our long-term temporary exhibits," she noted.

The exhibition was "one of many ideas about how to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our college," said Kathy Flynn, Hawkeye's vice president for advancement. "It was a couple years ago and it was something that I had talked to our college president about."

The museum's "outstanding reputation" put the idea of an exhibit "at the top of our list," she explained. "We just saw a great partner in the Grout. Their staff is just incredible to work with."

Flynn added, "We had staff start working almost two years ago. Since then, we've been having ongoing meetings, a lot of research put into this."

The exhibit includes photos, videos, student testimonials and a wide variety of artifacts. Those range from "things you might see in a classroom" to the desk name plate of one college founder, said Dawson. Among the contributions are technical students' class projects, Rwandan and Indonesian English learners' folk art, and family literacy program participants' jointly-made quilt.

"We even have a motorcycle," said Dawson, to highlight the driver training programs offered. "It was just kind of a fun element to add."

A timeline lays out Hawkeye's evolution and the exhibit splits into technical and liberal arts sections, the two program areas now offered.

"It all started, I think it's important to remember, because there was a need in the community for a technical college," Flynn noted, based on "an extensive community study" of the region's businesses and industries. "That's what this college has always done, reacted to community need. At the core, the vision has not changed."

Those needs are central to the connections Hawkeye has always made throughout the community.

"One of the things that the Grout does very well is tell stories," said Flynn. "I think what we're hoping to do is talk about impact, what Hawkeye's impact has been in Northeast Iowa in the last 50 years."
Good morning, Cedar Valley! It's Monday, Aug. 22, 2016.

Today's forecast: Sunny, with a high near 82. Breezy, with a south wind 5 to 10 mph increasing to 11 to 16 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 23 mph.

Tonight: Mostly clear, with a low around 62. South wind 8 to 13 mph.

Today in the Cedar Valley:

--- Beginning today, construction crews will begin removal and reconstruction of the south half of University Avenue between Holiday Road and the Black Hawk Village entrance by shifting traffic head to head on the north half of University Avenue from Grove Street to just west of Black Hawk Village Entrance.

--- IowaWORKS Cedar Valley and Hawkeye Community College welcome the public to experience the construction equipment operation trailer today through Wednesday. The trailer includes heavy equipment simulators for forklift, excavator and backhoe. It provides individuals with an in-cab environment that is safe, risk-free and unintimidating. Events are from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the following locations: Monday and Wednesday, IowaWORKS Cedar Valley, 3420 University Ave., Waterloo; Tuesday, Village Square Shopping Center, 1211 Fourth St SW, Waverly.

--- The Waterloo City Council meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.

--- The Waterloo Board of Education meets at 6 p.m. at the Education Service Center, 1516 Washington St.

--- The Cedar Falls Board of Education meets at 7 p.m. at Cedar Falls City Hall, 220 Clay St.
DES MOINES  State prisons saw about the same number of offenders admitted in fiscal 2016 as were released.

Iowa Department of Corrections officials say the 8,207 male and female offenders held at state prisons in Anamosa, Clarinda, Fort Dodge, Mitchellville, Oakdale, Fort Madison, Mount Pleasant, Newton and Rockwell City at the end of the fiscal 2016 was down 10 from the previous years total.

Were maintaining a stable prison population, said Lettie Prell, the departments director of research.

The prison system admitted 5,561 offenders during the recently completed fiscal year  with 1,933 criminals convicted and sentenced for felony offenses, and 3,034 returning for parole or work release violations as well as probation revocations, according to DOC yearly figures.

New court commitments are hard to predict, said Sarah Johnson of the state Department of Human Rights criminal and juvenile justice planning division, which tracks prison population trends. Those things are kind of out of anyones hands. We cant really control who commits crimes or who gets convicted.

Meanwhile, the state paroled 2,142 inmates in fiscal 2016, a 6.4 percent increase. Another 1,515 offenders were granted work releases  a 13.3 percent increase  while 1,068 inmates saw their sentences expire. That brought total releases to 5,571  the most since fiscal 2009, according to DOC data.

Iowa has seen a slight surge in the prison population since the new fiscal year began July 1, with Fridays institutional count standing at 8,319 inmates  more than 14 percent over the systems capacity of 7,286 beds. Another 30,311 offenders were under the supervision of the DOCs community-based corrections system.

The ethnic makeup of Iowas prison population changed slightly in fiscal 2016 with 5,364 white inmates making up 65.4 percent of the overall count, while 2,076 African-Americans constituted a disproportionate 25.3 percent of inmates. The remaining inmates were 7 percent Hispanic, 1.5 percent American Indian and 0.8 percent Asian.

Iowas prison count is down significantly from the record of 9,009 inmates behind bars on April 9, 2011. Prison overcrowding grew to 122 percent of design capacity that fiscal year.

Prell credited the lower overall prison count in recent years to the departments effort to identify offenders who are at greater risk for committing new violent crimes or victimizing people when released from prison.

Those are the crimes of concern that we want to identify and provide appropriate treatment to target so that when its time for these people to leave prison  and 95 percent of them will leave prison  wed like them to be less of a risk than when we first got them, she said.

Johnson said short-term projections suggest Iowas prison population will remain relatively stable, but the long-range estimates call for the inmate count to grow to about 10,058 by June 2025  or about 23 percent over the 10-year period if no major sentencing or policy changes are enacted.

However, those projections made last December likely will be modified in future years after lawmakers last session passed legislation to address mandatory-minimum sentences and give judges more discretion in granting paroles or releases to offenders convicted of some drug-related crimes.

We do expect that those will have a correctional impact reducing the population but the extent of that decrease, were going to have to wait and see what it does, Johnson said.
DES MOINES  For students, especially young ones, missing too much school increases the likelihood of dropping out down the road, studies suggest.

So educational leaders across Iowa want to minimize the number of young children missing a large number of school days.

Their goal is to reach chronically absent students and get them to school before they fall behind and wind up on a path they can't recover from.

We know when students fall behind early, the problems compound, Ryan Wise, director of the Iowa Department of Education, said at last weeks first meeting of the states Chronic Absenteeism Advisory Council. At the heart of this work is a focus on early identification and intervention.

Dropout risk

One in 10 Iowa kindergarteners was chronically absent in the 2010-11 school year, according to an analysis of state education department data conducted by the Des Moines-based Child and Family Policy Center.

Those students were more than 1 1/2 times less likely than their peers to be reading proficiently by third grade, a benchmark educators have deemed critical for educational success.

Students who cannot read sufficiently by third grade often struggle to keep pace with their peers. According to a 2012 national study by the Maryland-based Annie E. Casey Foundation, they are four times more likely than proficient readers to drop out of high school.

Its so foundational, and its so important, said Linda Fandel, a special assistant for education in Gov. Terry Branstads administration and the councils facilitator.

The state defines chronic absence as missing 10 percent of school days. For schools that use a 180-day calendar, that means at least 18 days, or roughly 3 school weeks.

One council member noted although that may sound like a lot, it averages out to two days per month during the school year.

Root causes

Unlike older students, young school children typically miss school for excused reasons, illness being the most common.

But for students who are chronically absent, other common issues arise, according to the Child and Family Policy Center. They include chronic illnesses, a lack of resources or reliable transportation for the parents and high family mobility.

The report also suggests some schools do not sufficiently warn parents of the dangers of chronic absenteeism. Other outside factors such as neighborhood distress or community violence also can lead to chronic absenteeism, the report says.

Because of those symptoms, children from low-income families are three to four times more likely to be chronically absent, the report says. And in Iowa, that adversely affects minority students.

We have some of the largest disparities by race and ethnicity in the country, said Anne Discher, communications director for the Child and Policy Center. This data very much reflects the broader conversations we should be having.

But chronic absenteeism is not confined to small pockets of the state. Ten percent or more kindergartners were chronically absent in one-third of Iowa districts and nearly 40 percent of elementary schools in the policy centers study.

This is an issue that really is not limited to a given set of school districts or a given set of schools, Discher said. It is a widespread challenge.

Finding solutions

The advisory council, which will meet four times this summer and fall, is charged with developing recommendations to make to the Branstad administration, which can then pass along suggestions to school districts.

The goal is to make at least one high-quality recommendation that helps support the work schools want to do and need to do, Fandel said. This does feel like something we can do something about.

While chronic absenteeism is an issue through all grades K-through-12 and is highest among high schoolers, the council will focus its work on young students  kindergartners through third-graders  because that is where it can make the greatest impact.

Amy Williamson, the state education departments Bureau of School Improvement chief, said the policy centers data shows a need for a really good early warning system that would help educators help kids very early on so they dont have persistent patterns of not attending school or persistent problems with not learning to read.

Everything we can do to intervene as early as possible is the best thing we can do for kids, Williamson said.

Some Iowa districts already are addressing chronic absenteeism.

Waterloos Bell to Bell program stresses to students the importance of being at school on time in the morning and has a staff member dedicated to reaching out to families whose children have had chronic absences.

The United Way of the Quad-Cities Area has used grant money to employ Attendance Works, a national program that, according to its website, partners with families and community agencies to intervene when poor attendance is a problem for students or schools.

The councils goal is not to establish new policy or mandates, but to develop recommendations, such as a list of best practices, to pass on to school districts.

Theres never a one-size-fits-all" solution, Williamson said. What we can do is say, All districts should have the following resources.
CEDAR FALLS  Beginning Monday, construction crews will begin removal and reconstruction of the south half of University Avenue between Holiday Road and the Black Hawk Village entrance by shifting traffic head to head on the north half of University Avenue from Grove Street to just west of Black Hawk Village Entrance.

The lane closures will be in effect for three to four months, depending on the weather. More information about the project maybe obtained on the city of Cedar Falls website or the projects Facebook page.
The Ebola epidemic killed 11,300 people in West Africa, creating a panic last year in the United States and Europe.

Ebola may not be eradicated, but the World Health Organization announced in February transmission had ceased.

Meanwhile, an epidemic in Haiti has failed to make any headlines despite taking more than 10,000 lives since fall 2010 and causing another 800,000 to become acutely ill without an end in sight.

Unlike Ebola or the Zika virus, it is not some mysterious and rare tropical disease.

It is a cholera catastrophe  the unintended byproduct of a U.N. peacekeeping mission gone terribly awry, followed by years of denial of responsibility and relative inaction by U.N. officials.

In January 2010, a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti in the Caribbean. As many as 316,000 people perished, and 1.5 million were left homeless. The world responded with $13.3 billion in aid, including $4 billion from the U.S. government.

In mid-October 2010, the U.N. brought in 454 peacekeepers from Nepal, which was in the midst of a cholera outbreak. They were housed at a base where their waste leaked into the feces-infested Meille River. Residents nearby became violently ill, with dehydration caused by severe diarrhea or vomiting. They began dying in droves.

At the behest of the Haitian government, which became concerned about an epidemic, Doctors Without Borders researchers found deaths had increased threefold, suggesting a substantially higher cholera mortality rate than previously reported.

Evidence regarding the role of the peacekeepers became irrefutable, but the U.N. resisted lawsuits seeking reparations, claiming absolute immunity, and did little to improve sanitary conditions.

That may change, although not soon enough for the Haitians.

Earlier this month, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon received a special report by New York University law professor Philip Alston, who advises the organization on human rights issues, blaming the U.N. for the epidemic.

Alston wrote it would not have broken out but for the actions of the United Nations, that its Haitian cholera policy is morally unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating and entirely unnecessary.

Alston scolded the U.N., stating its refusal to provide reparations upholds a double standard according to which the U.N. insists that member states respect human rights while rejecting any such responsibility for itself.

He added, It provides highly combustible fuel for those who claim that U.N. peacekeeping operations trample on the rights of those being protected, and it undermines both the U.N.s overall credibility and the integrity of the Office of the Secretary-General.

The U.N. ignored a similar 2014 report from Gustavo Gallon, a special envoy for human rights in Haiti, who criticized it for failing to take responsibility for how the disease had spread. He wanted the U.N. to enable damages to be recorded, corresponding benefits or compensation to be paid, the persons responsible to be identified, the epidemic to be stopped and other measures to be implemented.

The New York Times has reported infection rates have been rising every year since 2014. No sanitary systems in Haiti have been built. Two experimental wastewater-processing plants were closed because funds were lacking.

The U.N. estimates $2.27 billion is needed to eradicate the disease, but it has raised only $38 million from member nations for water purification tablets. Less than two-thirds of Haitis population has access to clean water.

Three class-action lawsuits brought by 5,000 Haitian families are pending in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. The families are seeking $40 billion  more than five times the U.N. peacekeeping budget.

The figure of $40 billion should stand as a warning of the consequences that could follow if national courts become convinced that the abdication policy is not just unconscionable but also legally unjustified, Alston wrote. The best way to avoid that happening is for the United Nations to offer an appropriate remedy.

Following Alstons report, the U.N. may take action.

Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the secretary general, told the New York Times, the U.N. has become convinced that it needs to do much more regarding its own involvement in the initial outbreak and the suffering of those affected by cholera.

Its response, he said, may be up for discussion in two months.

While the diplomats dither, an estimated 600,000 Haitians will be at risk of coming down with cholera during the rainy season, November through March. The U.N. needs to pick up the pace.

Relocating the opening of the U.N. General Assembly in September from New York City to the banks of the Meille River would enable the delegates to see firsthand what the U.N. has wrought and most assuredly would hasten an immediate and compassionate response.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 21, 2016 | 07:32 AM | MAYFIELD, KY

Power Truss Inc., a producer of wood roof and floor trusses for the construction industry, will expand its operation in Mayfield with a more than $1.6 million investment projected to create up to eight full-time jobs.

"The growth of Power Truss  and its decision to remain in Mayfield  comes as great news for the people and economy of Graves County," Gov. Matt Bevin said. "For nearly 40 years, this family owned company has literally provided the building blocks for growth in Kentucky. This expansion by Power Truss further strengthens Kentucky's construction industry and I wish the company all the best in the years to come."

Power Truss plans to construct a 26,400-square-foot building to more than double the size of its operation in Graves County. As well, the company plans to purchase new computerized, automated production equipment to decrease labor costs and raw-material use while increasing output.

"Power Truss is excited to announce plans to expand our production facility," said Neal Power, vice president of Power Truss. "A new 26,000-plus-square-foot manufacturing facility will be constructed on site to accommodate the addition of state-of-the-art structural component production equipment, allowing Power Truss to offer the highest quality and value in the structural component industry."

Don and Lynn Power founded Power Truss in 1978. Their sons, Brad and Neal, have since joined the business as corporate officers. Operating under a mission of manufacturing high-quality wood roof and floor trusses, the company also provides engineered wood products and joist hangers. Power Truss supplies customers  primarily lumber dealers and commercial contractors  throughout Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas with trusses specifically designed for residential, commercial and agricultural projects.

Sen. Stan Humphries, of Cadiz, said Power Truss has had a positive impact on the local economy as well as the construction industry.

"I am pleased to hear of Power Truss' expansion in Graves County," Sen. Humphries said. "This company has been a great economic partner in our community and the construction industry, and I look forward to their success in future enterprises."

Mayfield Mayor Teresa Rochetti-Cantrell, described Power Truss as one of "Mayfield's hidden treasures."

"The City of Mayfield is excited about the success of businesses that have helped to create who we are as a city," Mayor Rochetti-Cantrell said. "Power Truss is just that kind of business  years of service, family tradition and a true example of what we like to call 'Mayfield's Hidden Treasures.' Congratulations to the Power Truss family on this incredible continued investment in Mayfield!"

Graves County Judge-Executive Jesse Perry said this expansion is the next step in the community's growth.

"I am proud that Power Truss is expanding in Graves County," Judge Perry said. "This is our next step in seeing Graves County grow and prosper. We have already seen an impact of Power Truss' influence with employment for many years operating in Graves County. We look forward to their continued growth and building strong ties in the community."
Search of Mayfield home snares alleged meth trafficker and two others
past daily news Sep 13 (1) Sep 09 (15) Sep 06 (12) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (10) Aug 31 (17) Aug 29 (14) Aug 26 (13) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (12) Aug 19 (21) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (10) Aug 10 (10) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (10) Aug 06 (10) Aug 05 (8) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (14) Jul 29 (1) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (10) Jul 22 (11) Jul 19 (16) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (10) Jul 15 (13) Jul 12 (7) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (11) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (8) Jun 28 (7) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (8) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (9) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (9) Jun 18 (8) Jun 15 (9) Jun 13 (13) Jun 11 (11) Jun 09 (19) Jun 06 (10) Jun 04 (10) Jun 03 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (5) May 30 (5) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (7) May 26 (6) May 25 (4) May 23 (6) May 22 (6) May 21 (4) May 20 (7) May 19 (9) May 18 (4) May 17 (6) May 16 (5) May 15 (7) May 14 (3) May 13 (3) May 12 (9) May 10 (3) May 09 (7) May 08 (4) May 07 (3) May 06 (5) May 05 (8) May 03 (9) May 02 (1) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (8) Apr 29 (5) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (7) Apr 26 (12) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (8) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (2) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (2) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (10) Apr 04 (2) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (9) Apr 01 (7) Mar 31 (10) Mar 30 (6) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (10) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (10) Mar 22 (6) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (11) Mar 19 (8) Mar 18 (5) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (7) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (8) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (12) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (8) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (8) Feb 28 (7) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (6) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (1) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (2) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (6) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (6) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (2) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (8) Jan 30 (2) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (4) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (2) Jan 20 (2) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (2) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (6) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (1) Dec 31 (5) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (5) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (2) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (2) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (7) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (2) Dec 08 (2) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (5) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (10) Nov 28 (6) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (3) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (6) Nov 19 (2) Nov 18 (5) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (5) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (9) Oct 30 (9) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (6) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (6) Oct 22 (4) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (4) Oct 12 (7) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (10) Oct 07 (1) Oct 06 (10) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (8) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (6) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (6) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (5) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (6) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (8) Sep 05 (6) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (5) Aug 31 (8) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (6) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (7) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (7) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (8) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (8) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (10) Aug 02 (9) Aug 01 (8) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (2) Jul 28 (11) Jul 27 (10) Jul 26 (10) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (2) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (8) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (10) Jul 14 (7) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (11) Jul 11 (7) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (8) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (6) Jul 03 (7) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (2) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (5) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (6) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (8) Jun 18 (2) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (7) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (8) Jun 08 (8) Jun 07 (8) Jun 06 (10) Jun 05 (14) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (6) Jun 02 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (7) May 30 (2) May 29 (7) May 28 (7) May 27 (2) May 26 (4) May 25 (5) May 24 (4) May 23 (5) May 22 (5) May 21 (5) May 20 (3) May 19 (10) May 18 (6) May 17 (3) May 16 (6) May 15 (2) May 14 (3) May 13 (5) May 11 (1) May 10 (5) May 09 (3) May 08 (4) May 07 (2) May 06 (4) May 05 (6) May 04 (5) May 03 (5) May 02 (1) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (7) Apr 28 (8) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (14) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (1) Apr 21 (8) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (8) Apr 14 (1) Apr 13 (7) Apr 12 (10) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (2) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (6) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (9) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (11) Mar 23 (10) Mar 22 (9) Mar 21 (10) Mar 20 (11) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (7) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (9) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (13) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (6) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (9) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (8) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (7) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (9) Feb 08 (8) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (10) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (2) Feb 03 (8) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (5) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (7) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (7) Jan 26 (8) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (6) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (8) Jan 17 (12) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (8) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (6) Jan 10 (7) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (9) Jan 04 (9) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (8) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (1) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (4) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (12) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (7) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (5) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (7) Dec 14 (10) Dec 13 (7) Dec 12 (12) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (6) Dec 08 (7) Dec 07 (12) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (13) Dec 04 (6) Dec 02 (8) Dec 01 (8) Nov 30 (6) Nov 29 (7) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (8) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (11) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (7) Nov 17 (6) Nov 16 (11) Nov 15 (10) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (5) Nov 11 (12) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (14) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (11) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (11) Nov 03 (9) Nov 02 (10) Nov 01 (8) Oct 31 (12) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (11) Oct 26 (13) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (10) Oct 23 (8) Oct 22 (5) Oct 21 (11) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (6) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (9) Oct 13 (10) Oct 12 (11) Oct 11 (9) Oct 10 (10) Oct 09 (7) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (10) Oct 06 (9) Oct 05 (14) Oct 04 (9) Oct 03 (12) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (9) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (7) Sep 28 (13) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (7) Sep 22 (10) Sep 21 (12) Sep 20 (12) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (11) Sep 15 (8) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (8) Sep 12 (8) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (10) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (9) Sep 07 (8) Sep 06 (11) Sep 05 (2) Sep 04 (8) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (9) Aug 31 (9) Aug 30 (7) Aug 29 (9) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (5) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (2) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (6) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (6) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (7) Aug 06 (7) Aug 05 (7) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (11) Aug 02 (6) Aug 01 (9) Jul 31 (11) Jul 28 (7) Jul 27 (11) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (1) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (2) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (8) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (7) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (2) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (10) Jul 11 (11) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (5) Jul 06 (6) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (6) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (3) Jun 30 (8) Jun 29 (5) Jun 28 (6) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (11) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (7) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (6) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (8) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (8) Jun 06 (7) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (7) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (9) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (8) May 30 (7) May 29 (5) May 28 (5) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (3) May 23 (5) May 22 (2) May 21 (3) May 20 (7) May 19 (11) May 18 (1) May 17 (7) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (4) May 11 (11) May 10 (2) May 09 (6) May 08 (6) May 07 (2) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (5) May 03 (8) May 02 (4) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (13) Apr 28 (5) Apr 27 (7) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (2) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (9) Apr 21 (11) Apr 20 (2) Apr 19 (2) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (6) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (2) Apr 12 (9) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (6) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (10) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (7) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (9) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (6) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (8) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (10) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (6) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (6) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (9) Mar 08 (10) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (2) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (8) Feb 26 (9) Feb 24 (11) Feb 23 (8) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (8) Feb 20 (7) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (6) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (11) Feb 13 (2) Feb 12 (5) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (10) Feb 08 (9) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (2) Feb 05 (9) Feb 03 (7) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (7) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (5) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (7) Jan 24 (8) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (14) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (10) Jan 18 (11) Jan 17 (9) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (10) Jan 06 (8) Jan 05 (7) Jan 04 (9) Jan 03 (8) Jan 02 (5) Jan 01 (14) Dec 30 (13) Dec 29 (13) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (5) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (7) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (5) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (9) Dec 16 (8) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (8) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (17) Dec 09 (8) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (10) Dec 06 (12) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (8) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (7) Nov 30 (9) Nov 29 (6) Nov 28 (11) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (15) Nov 24 (7) Nov 23 (15) Nov 22 (9) Nov 21 (6) Nov 20 (11) Nov 18 (11) Nov 17 (13) Nov 16 (8) Nov 15 (13) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (7) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (13) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (6) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (8) Nov 03 (9) Nov 02 (8) Nov 01 (6) Oct 31 (10) Oct 30 (8) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (8) Oct 27 (15) Oct 26 (10) Oct 25 (10) Oct 24 (13) Oct 23 (9) Oct 21 (8) Oct 20 (13) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (8) Oct 16 (14) Oct 14 (9) Oct 13 (11) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (13) Oct 10 (7) Oct 09 (15) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (11) Oct 05 (18) Oct 04 (14) Oct 03 (1) Oct 02 (10) Sep 30 (11) Sep 29 (11) Sep 28 (11) Sep 27 (15) Sep 26 (7) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (11) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (17) Sep 20 (20) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (11) Sep 16 (10) Sep 15 (12) Sep 14 (9) Sep 13 (12) Sep 12 (14) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (8) Sep 09 (9) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (13) Sep 06 (15) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (11) Sep 03 (10) Sep 02 (12) Sep 01 (12) Aug 31 (14) Aug 30 (14) Aug 29 (8) Aug 28 (8) Aug 27 (9) Aug 26 (12) Aug 25 (6) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (12) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (6) Aug 19 (9) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (7) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (12) Aug 12 (15) Aug 11 (11) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (7) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (7) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (5) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (9) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (8) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (6) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (6) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (15) Jul 15 (14) Jul 14 (5) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (12) Jul 11 (8) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (11) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (10) Jul 05 (4) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (10) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (7) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (7) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (11) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (14) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (8) Jun 09 (9) Jun 08 (11) Jun 07 (14) Jun 06 (16) Jun 03 (8) Jun 02 (12) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (7) May 30 (15) May 28 (7) May 27 (5) May 26 (21) May 25 (14) May 24 (10) May 23 (7) May 22 (8) May 21 (11) May 20 (5) May 19 (4) May 18 (10) May 17 (11) May 16 (5) May 15 (6) May 14 (7) May 13 (12) May 12 (10) May 11 (7) May 10 (13) May 09 (4) May 08 (7) May 07 (3) May 06 (6) May 05 (9) May 04 (14) May 03 (7) May 02 (10) May 01 (10) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (9) Apr 28 (5) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (8) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (14) Apr 22 (16) Apr 21 (11) Apr 20 (7) Apr 19 (16) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (10) Apr 15 (8) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (11) Apr 12 (10) Apr 11 (8) Apr 10 (12) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (13) Apr 07 (9) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (15) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (15) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (11) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (10) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (7) Mar 27 (12) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (8) Mar 24 (7) Mar 23 (15) Mar 22 (17) Mar 21 (9) Mar 20 (8) Mar 19 (4) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (19) Mar 15 (13) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (20) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (11) Mar 09 (13) Mar 08 (13) Mar 07 (7) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (16) Mar 02 (16) Mar 01 (13) Feb 29 (8) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (16) Feb 26 (10) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (12) Feb 23 (14) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (8) Feb 19 (12) Feb 18 (12) Feb 17 (11) Feb 16 (8) Feb 15 (9) Feb 14 (7) Feb 13 (10) Feb 12 (11) Feb 11 (13) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (13) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (11) Feb 03 (7) Feb 02 (19) Jan 31 (21) Jan 29 (11) Jan 28 (10) Jan 27 (13) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (2) Jan 23 (8) Jan 22 (13) Jan 21 (11) Jan 20 (9) Jan 19 (13) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (11) Jan 15 (7) Jan 14 (13) Jan 13 (9) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (7) Jan 07 (6) Jan 06 (11) Jan 05 (7) Jan 04 (7) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (8) Jan 01 (5) Dec 31 (10) Dec 30 (9) Dec 29 (7) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (1) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (6) Dec 23 (6) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (6) Dec 20 (7) Dec 19 (13) Dec 18 (16) Dec 17 (10) Dec 16 (13) Dec 15 (11) Dec 14 (8) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (9) Dec 11 (10) Dec 10 (12) Dec 09 (10) Dec 08 (13) Dec 07 (7) Dec 06 (12) Dec 05 (8) Dec 04 (11) Dec 03 (12) Dec 02 (16) Dec 01 (14) Nov 30 (10) Nov 29 (11) Nov 28 (15) Nov 27 (16) Nov 26 (11) Nov 25 (9) Nov 24 (13) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (1) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (11) Nov 17 (11) Nov 16 (10) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (10) Nov 13 (14) Nov 12 (8) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (10) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (11) Nov 06 (12) Nov 05 (17) Nov 04 (12) Nov 03 (11) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (12) Oct 31 (11) Oct 30 (11) Oct 29 (10) Oct 28 (18) Oct 27 (16) Oct 26 (11) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (12) Oct 23 (11) Oct 22 (14) Oct 21 (12) Oct 20 (17) Oct 19 (12) Oct 18 (13) Oct 17 (15) Oct 16 (14) Oct 15 (10) Oct 14 (16) Oct 13 (12) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (8) Oct 10 (12) Oct 09 (21) Oct 08 (22) Oct 07 (19) Oct 06 (18) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (17) Oct 03 (13) Oct 02 (14) Oct 01 (13) Sep 30 (14) Sep 29 (15) Sep 28 (12) Sep 27 (11) Sep 26 (15) Sep 25 (13) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (10) Sep 22 (12) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (12) Sep 18 (12) Sep 17 (16) Sep 16 (21) Sep 15 (14) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (10) Sep 11 (16) Sep 10 (7) Sep 09 (8) Sep 08 (10) Sep 07 (7) Sep 06 (5) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (9) Sep 03 (8) Sep 02 (11) Sep 01 (10) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (10) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (8) Aug 25 (14) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (13) Aug 20 (9) Aug 19 (13) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (8) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (12) Aug 11 (9) Aug 10 (8) Aug 09 (14) Aug 08 (6) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (8) Aug 04 (6) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (2) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (6) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (6) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (5) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (9) Jul 14 (2) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (13) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (7) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (9) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (3) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (7) Jun 17 (7) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (11) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (10) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (2) Jun 05 (9) Jun 04 (8) Jun 03 (9) Jun 02 (6) Jun 01 (4) May 30 (7) May 29 (9) May 28 (13) May 26 (8) May 25 (5) May 24 (2) May 23 (8) May 22 (9) May 21 (7) May 20 (4) May 19 (6) May 18 (7) May 17 (8) May 15 (9) May 14 (5) May 13 (8) May 12 (6) May 11 (6) May 09 (7) May 08 (6) May 07 (11) May 06 (7) May 05 (4) May 04 (11) May 03 (5) May 02 (4) May 01 (9) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (9) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (10) Apr 22 (8) Apr 21 (9) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (4) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (6) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (5) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (2) Apr 05 (2) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (7) Apr 02 (7) Apr 01 (12) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (2) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (2) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (4) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (6) Mar 20 (9) Mar 19 (9) Mar 18 (8) Mar 17 (9) Mar 16 (7) Mar 15 (11) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (12) Mar 11 (9) Mar 10 (12) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (5) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (11) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (8) Feb 27 (9) Feb 26 (9) Feb 25 (8) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (10) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (7) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (2) Feb 14 (8) Feb 13 (12) Feb 12 (8) Feb 11 (10) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (2) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (11) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (8) Jan 29 (12) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (8) Jan 26 (13) Jan 24 (8) Jan 23 (12) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (10) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (11) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (6) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (6) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (5) Dec 18 (8) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (9) Dec 15 (7) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (10) Dec 11 (9) Dec 10 (10) Dec 09 (11) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (9) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (8) Dec 02 (10) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (1) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (9) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (7) Nov 25 (12) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (8) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (6) Nov 18 (10) Nov 17 (12) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (12) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (8) Nov 10 (7) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (6) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (9) Nov 03 (6) Nov 02 (14) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (7) Oct 29 (9) Oct 28 (9) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (8) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (2) Oct 19 (11) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (7) Oct 15 (7) Oct 14 (8) Oct 13 (5) Oct 12 (8) Oct 11 (6) Oct 10 (5) Oct 09 (11) Oct 08 (10) Oct 07 (8) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (8) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (10) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (7) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (8) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (11) Sep 24 (15) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (9) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (9) Sep 18 (10) Sep 17 (10) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (8) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (7) Sep 04 (11) Sep 03 (7) Sep 02 (7) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (10) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (10) Aug 25 (6) Aug 24 (9) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (8) Aug 20 (12) Aug 19 (8) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (8) Aug 11 (7) Aug 10 (12) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (6) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (8) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (4) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (12) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (8) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (8) Jul 20 (6) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (8) Jul 17 (2) Jul 16 (7) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (9) Jul 13 (10) Jul 11 (9) Jul 10 (8) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (7) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (7) Jul 05 (10) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (5) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (15) Jun 26 (10) Jun 25 (9) Jun 24 (16) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (12) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (8) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (6) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (13) Jun 12 (7) Jun 11 (14) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (2) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (7) Jun 06 (16) Jun 05 (7) Jun 04 (18) Jun 03 (12) Jun 02 (8) May 31 (3) May 30 (6) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (6) May 23 (4) May 22 (8) May 21 (5) May 20 (6) May 19 (2) May 18 (9) May 17 (1) May 16 (5) May 15 (5) May 14 (7) May 13 (7) May 12 (7) May 11 (4) May 10 (4) May 09 (5) May 08 (10) May 07 (4) May 06 (13) May 05 (4) May 04 (10) May 02 (2) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (9) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (9) Apr 25 (9) Apr 24 (7) Apr 23 (11) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (10) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (7) Apr 14 (11) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (9) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (6) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (10) Apr 03 (9) Apr 02 (9) Apr 01 (12) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (10) Mar 28 (7) Mar 27 (8) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (15) Mar 24 (11) Mar 23 (8) Mar 22 (7) Mar 21 (14) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (11) Mar 18 (11) Mar 17 (12) Mar 16 (8) Mar 15 (8) Mar 14 (13) Mar 13 (8) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (8) Mar 10 (7) Mar 09 (3) Mar 08 (12) Mar 07 (15) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (12) Mar 02 (20) Feb 28 (11) Feb 27 (8) Feb 26 (11) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (14) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (8) Feb 20 (11) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (8) Feb 16 (11) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (10) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (10) Feb 11 (7) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (6) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (5) Jan 29 (2) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (2) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (7) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (5) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (7) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (4) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (3) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (2) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (1) Dec 29 (5) Dec 27 (1) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (8) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (1) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (4) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (7) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (2) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (10) Dec 04 (9) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (2) Dec 01 (8) Nov 29 (5) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (9) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (5) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (12) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (8) Nov 15 (7) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (12) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (9) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (10) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (11) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (7) Oct 26 (7) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (7) Oct 23 (11) Oct 22 (2) Oct 21 (7) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (7) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (7) Oct 11 (20) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (21) Oct 07 (20) Oct 06 (34) Oct 04 (24) Oct 03 (21) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (7) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (5) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (5) Sep 26 (6) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (2) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (9) Sep 19 (11) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (6) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (8) Sep 12 (11) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (6) Sep 06 (10) Sep 05 (7) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (5) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (8) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (7) Aug 29 (10) Aug 28 (7) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (8) Aug 20 (8) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (2) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (7) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (4) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (6) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (12) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (10) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (6) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (7) Jul 23 (10) Jul 22 (8) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (7) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (10) Jul 16 (11) Jul 15 (5) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (9) Jul 11 (11) Jul 10 (12) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (8) Jul 06 (9) Jul 05 (10) Jul 04 (8) Jul 03 (10) Jul 02 (12) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (5) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (23) Jun 27 (18) Jun 26 (12) Jun 25 (14) Jun 24 (15) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (11) Jun 21 (15) Jun 20 (9) Jun 19 (8) Jun 18 (11) Jun 17 (7) Jun 16 (6) Jun 15 (6) Jun 14 (6) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (9) Jun 10 (10) Jun 09 (9) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (2) Jun 06 (6) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (3) May 30 (5) May 29 (8) May 28 (7) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (8) May 24 (7) May 23 (6) May 22 (9) May 21 (6) May 20 (5) May 19 (6) May 18 (9) May 17 (10) May 16 (11) May 15 (5) May 14 (11) May 13 (6) May 12 (7) May 11 (7) May 10 (5) May 09 (3) May 08 (10) May 07 (8) May 06 (11) May 05 (5) May 04 (9) May 03 (3) May 02 (2) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (5) Apr 29 (8) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (9) Apr 25 (11) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (11) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (7) Apr 19 (10) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (10) Apr 16 (8) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (7) Apr 12 (11) Apr 11 (6) Apr 10 (7) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (9) Apr 05 (10) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (2) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (10) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (6) Mar 21 (9) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (9) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (8) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (10) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (2) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (6) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (6) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (9) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (2) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (7) Feb 11 (2) Feb 10 (2) Feb 09 (5) Feb 08 (5) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (9) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (10) Feb 01 (9) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (8) Jan 29 (5) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (7) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (8) Jan 15 (7) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (2) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (4) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (8) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (4) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (8) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (8) Dec 10 (5) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (4) Dec 07 (7) Dec 06 (7) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (6) Dec 03 (7) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (8) Nov 28 (16) Nov 27 (7) Nov 26 (5) Nov 25 (2) Nov 24 (6) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (15) Nov 19 (8) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (7) Nov 14 (6) Nov 13 (9) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (8) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (5) Nov 08 (8) Nov 07 (9) Nov 06 (9) Nov 05 (1) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (8) Nov 02 (6) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (7) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (8) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (6) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (10) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (15) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (7) Oct 10 (1) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (8) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (7) Oct 02 (6) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (8) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (13) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (8) Sep 25 (8) Sep 24 (8) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (9) Sep 20 (7) Sep 19 (8) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (8) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (7) Sep 12 (7) Sep 11 (9) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (10) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (12) Sep 06 (13) Sep 05 (15) Sep 04 (5) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (9) Aug 31 (7) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (8) Aug 28 (11) Aug 27 (2) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (15) Aug 24 (6) Aug 23 (8) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (7) Aug 19 (2) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (9) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (5) Aug 08 (7) Aug 07 (9) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (9) Aug 01 (10) Jul 31 (11) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (11) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (5) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (6) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (7) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (7) Jul 12 (8) Jul 11 (6) Jul 10 (14) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (9) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (6) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (8) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (14) Jun 22 (11) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (8) Jun 19 (7) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (12) Jun 15 (12) Jun 14 (10) Jun 13 (10) Jun 12 (9) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (12) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (12) Jun 06 (6) Jun 05 (7) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (8) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (8) May 28 (7) May 27 (4) May 26 (3) May 25 (5) May 24 (9) May 23 (16) May 22 (12) May 21 (11) May 20 (7) May 19 (10) May 18 (8) May 17 (8) May 16 (10) May 15 (8) May 14 (5) May 13 (1) May 12 (6) May 11 (9) May 10 (9) May 09 (10) May 08 (9) May 07 (6) May 06 (5) May 05 (7) May 04 (10) May 03 (7) May 02 (9) May 01 (10) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (9) Apr 28 (12) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (9) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (8) Apr 20 (9) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (2) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (10) Apr 14 (7) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (7) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (7) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (7) Apr 07 (10) Apr 06 (8) Apr 05 (8) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (11) Mar 30 (12) Mar 29 (16) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (10) Mar 26 (12) Mar 25 (6) Mar 24 (9) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (12) Mar 20 (14) Mar 19 (8) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (9) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (8) Mar 08 (10) Mar 07 (12) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (2) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (12) Mar 01 (8) Feb 29 (11) Feb 28 (5) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (13) Feb 25 (10) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (10) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (18) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (5) Feb 16 (9) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (8) Feb 09 (5) Feb 08 (8) Feb 07 (10) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (11) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (12) Jan 30 (7) Jan 29 (7) Jan 28 (7) Jan 27 (12) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (11) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (6) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (12) Jan 20 (11) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (6) Jan 17 (11) Jan 16 (9) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (9) Jan 10 (10) Jan 09 (5) Jan 08 (10) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (8) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (8) Jan 02 (7) Jan 01 (7) Dec 31 (10) Dec 30 (11) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (10) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (7) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (9) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (8) Dec 19 (5) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (6) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (13) Dec 13 (8) Dec 12 (7) Dec 11 (9) Dec 10 (12) Dec 09 (7) Dec 08 (11) Dec 07 (9) Dec 06 (11) Dec 05 (10) Dec 04 (6) Dec 03 (8) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (14) Nov 30 (7) Nov 29 (8) Nov 28 (8) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (9) Nov 25 (10) Nov 24 (12) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (10) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (8) Nov 17 (9) Nov 16 (9) Nov 15 (12) Nov 14 (6) Nov 13 (9) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (10) Nov 09 (10) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (8) Nov 06 (10) Nov 05 (8) Nov 04 (7) Nov 03 (10) Nov 02 (11) Nov 01 (10) Oct 31 (5) Oct 30 (8) Oct 29 (8) Oct 28 (8) Oct 27 (11) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (10) Oct 23 (5) Oct 22 (14) Oct 21 (10) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (11) Oct 18 (13) Oct 17 (7) Oct 16 (6) Oct 15 (9) Oct 14 (7) Oct 13 (12) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (9) Oct 10 (8) Oct 09 (9) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (12) Oct 06 (8) Oct 05 (13) Oct 04 (11) Oct 03 (7) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (14) Sep 30 (12) Sep 29 (12) Sep 28 (11) Sep 27 (11) Sep 26 (7) Sep 25 (10) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (7) Sep 22 (8) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (7) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (14) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (11) Sep 14 (13) Sep 13 (11) Sep 12 (9) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (13) Sep 08 (11) Sep 07 (11) Sep 06 (16) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (8) Sep 02 (8) Sep 01 (7) Aug 31 (1) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (8) Aug 25 (5) Aug 24 (5) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (7) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (9) Aug 18 (7) Aug 17 (7) Aug 16 (10) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (10) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (12) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (14) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (13) Jul 28 (10) Jul 27 (6) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (12) Jul 22 (14) Jul 21 (6) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (12) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (6) Jul 15 (8) Jul 14 (15) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (10) Jul 11 (6) Jul 10 (6) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (6) Jul 07 (9) Jul 06 (15) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (10) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (11) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (11) Jun 24 (9) Jun 23 (10) Jun 22 (8) Jun 21 (8) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (5) Jun 18 (15) Jun 17 (8) Jun 16 (13) Jun 15 (15) Jun 14 (11) Jun 13 (6) Jun 12 (15) Jun 11 (7) Jun 10 (7) Jun 09 (18) Jun 08 (20) Jun 07 (17) Jun 06 (9) Jun 05 (9) Jun 04 (12) Jun 03 (13) Jun 02 (14) Jun 01 (8) May 31 (13) May 30 (8) May 29 (6) May 28 (8) May 27 (17) May 26 (8) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (9) May 22 (4) May 21 (4) May 20 (11) May 19 (14) May 18 (6) May 17 (10) May 16 (4) May 15 (5) May 14 (28) May 12 (9) May 11 (17) May 10 (15) May 09 (12) May 08 (5) May 07 (4) May 06 (10) May 05 (8) May 04 (10) May 03 (5) May 02 (6) May 01 (8) Apr 30 (8) Apr 29 (12) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (11) Apr 26 (12) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (5) Apr 22 (10) Apr 21 (19) Apr 20 (13) Apr 19 (11) Apr 18 (11) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (11) Apr 14 (17) Apr 13 (6) Apr 12 (16) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (18) Apr 08 (14) Apr 07 (6) Apr 06 (10) Apr 05 (21) Apr 04 (12) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (13) Apr 01 (8) Mar 31 (10) Mar 30 (11) Mar 29 (10) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (12) Mar 25 (15) Mar 24 (10) Mar 23 (12) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (8) Mar 20 (4) Mar 19 (11) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (9) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (2) Mar 12 (14) Mar 11 (13) Mar 10 (7) Mar 09 (9) Mar 08 (17) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (7) Mar 05 (13) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (14) Mar 02 (12) Mar 01 (18) Feb 28 (8) Feb 27 (2) Feb 26 (9) Feb 25 (13) Feb 24 (17) Feb 23 (13) Feb 22 (12) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (11) Feb 19 (16) Feb 18 (17) Feb 17 (15) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (15) Feb 14 (10) Feb 13 (8) Feb 12 (10) Feb 11 (15) Feb 10 (11) Feb 09 (13) Feb 08 (10) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (15) Feb 04 (15) Feb 03 (11) Feb 02 (14) Feb 01 (15) Jan 31 (11) Jan 30 (9) Jan 29 (19) Jan 28 (9) Jan 27 (9) Jan 26 (16) Jan 25 (19) Jan 24 (17) Jan 23 (8) Jan 22 (15) Jan 21 (9) Jan 20 (11) Jan 19 (7) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (12) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (14) Jan 12 (11) Jan 11 (13) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (20) Jan 07 (11) Jan 06 (11) Jan 05 (8) Jan 04 (14) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (7) Jan 01 (7) Dec 31 (14) Dec 30 (15) Dec 29 (7) Dec 28 (10) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (11) Dec 24 (9) Dec 23 (9) Dec 22 (15) Dec 21 (12) Dec 20 (11) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (16) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (12) Dec 15 (14) Dec 14 (11) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (10) Dec 10 (17) Dec 09 (11) Dec 08 (12) Dec 07 (16) Dec 06 (11) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (12) Dec 03 (15) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (12) Nov 30 (16) Nov 29 (7) Nov 28 (11) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (13) Nov 25 (16) Nov 24 (15) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (8) Nov 19 (9) Nov 18 (16) Nov 17 (11) Nov 16 (11) Nov 15 (10) Nov 14 (9) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (10) Nov 11 (12) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (6) Nov 06 (7) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (14) Nov 03 (10) Nov 02 (13) Nov 01 (9) Oct 31 (9) Oct 30 (11) Oct 29 (18) Oct 28 (13) Oct 27 (23) Oct 26 (12) Oct 25 (14) Oct 24 (20) Oct 22 (18) Oct 21 (18) Oct 20 (19) Oct 19 (12) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (18) Oct 15 (8) Oct 14 (11) Oct 13 (9) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (6) Oct 10 (7) Oct 09 (27) Oct 08 (14) Oct 07 (10) Oct 06 (9) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (10) Oct 03 (6) Oct 02 (9) Oct 01 (13) Sep 30 (12) Sep 29 (13) Sep 28 (8) Sep 27 (9) Sep 26 (8) Sep 25 (14) Sep 24 (4) Sep 23 (14) Sep 22 (20) Sep 21 (11) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (9) Sep 18 (14) Sep 17 (8) Sep 16 (17) Sep 15 (6) Sep 14 (11) Sep 13 (9) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (14) Sep 09 (12) Sep 08 (17) Sep 07 (12) Sep 06 (13) Sep 05 (9) Sep 04 (20) Sep 03 (16) Sep 02 (16) Sep 01 (10) Aug 31 (13) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (9) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (11) Aug 25 (10) Aug 24 (14) Aug 23 (12) Aug 22 (13) Aug 21 (10) Aug 20 (13) Aug 19 (15) Aug 18 (8) Aug 17 (10) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (11) Aug 13 (12) Aug 12 (15) Aug 11 (10) Aug 10 (17) Aug 09 (6) Aug 08 (13) Aug 07 (11) Aug 06 (13) Aug 05 (11) Aug 04 (11) Aug 03 (10) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (10) Jul 30 (21) Jul 29 (14) Jul 28 (13) Jul 27 (16) Jul 26 (10) Jul 25 (15) Jul 24 (17) Jul 23 (15) Jul 22 (15) Jul 21 (19) Jul 20 (17) Jul 19 (9) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (26) Jul 16 (18) Jul 15 (20) Jul 14 (16) Jul 13 (19) Jul 12 (11) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (13) Jul 09 (11) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (12) Jul 06 (16) Jul 05 (9) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (15) Jul 02 (11) Jul 01 (14) Jun 30 (13) Jun 29 (19) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (9) Jun 26 (16) Jun 25 (22) Jun 24 (17) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (15) Jun 21 (14) Jun 20 (8) Jun 19 (17) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (10) Jun 16 (17) Jun 15 (13) Jun 14 (14) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (13) Jun 11 (15) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (10) Jun 08 (23) Jun 07 (14) Jun 06 (20) Jun 05 (10) Jun 04 (11) Jun 03 (12) Jun 02 (21) Jun 01 (14) May 31 (10) May 30 (14) May 29 (8) May 28 (23) May 27 (20) May 26 (16) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (10) May 22 (18) May 21 (14) May 20 (12) May 19 (18) May 18 (14) May 17 (13) May 16 (4) May 15 (7) May 14 (16) May 13 (13) May 12 (8) May 11 (18) May 10 (8) May 09 (7) May 08 (13) May 07 (11) May 06 (15) May 05 (18) May 04 (17) May 03 (7) May 02 (5) May 01 (11) Apr 30 (19) Apr 29 (21) Apr 28 (18) Apr 27 (16) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (11) Apr 24 (9) Apr 23 (20) Apr 22 (23) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (16) Apr 19 (13) Apr 18 (6) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (16) Apr 15 (18) Apr 14 (13) Apr 13 (14) Apr 12 (9) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (14) Apr 08 (12) Apr 07 (18) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (11) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (19) Apr 02 (17) Apr 01 (16) Mar 31 (16) Mar 30 (22) Mar 29 (16) Mar 28 (16) Mar 27 (19) Mar 26 (31) Mar 25 (25) Mar 24 (26) Mar 23 (27) Mar 22 (22) Mar 21 (22) Mar 20 (13) Mar 19 (21) Mar 18 (20) Mar 17 (24) Mar 16 (18) Mar 15 (9) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (29) Mar 12 (15) Mar 11 (11) Mar 10 (11) Mar 09 (20) Mar 08 (12) Mar 07 (6) Mar 06 (21) Mar 05 (22) Mar 04 (19) Mar 03 (9) Mar 02 (20) Mar 01 (11) Feb 28 (11) Feb 27 (27) Feb 26 (15) Feb 25 (18) Feb 24 (17) Feb 23 (19) Feb 22 (24) Feb 21 (10) Feb 20 (14) Feb 19 (25) Feb 18 (16) Feb 17 (19) Feb 16 (23) Feb 15 (8) Feb 14 (11) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (16) Feb 11 (12) Feb 10 (18) Feb 09 (12) Feb 08 (14) Feb 07 (8) Feb 06 (27) Feb 05 (28) Feb 04 (24) Feb 03 (17) Feb 02 (20) Feb 01 (23) Jan 31 (16) Jan 30 (20) Jan 29 (26) Jan 28 (17) Jan 27 (21) Jan 26 (24) Jan 25 (16) Jan 24 (14) Jan 23 (16) Jan 22 (17) Jan 21 (19) Jan 20 (21) Jan 19 (17) Jan 18 (13) Jan 17 (14) Jan 16 (10) Jan 15 (21) Jan 14 (16) Jan 13 (19) Jan 12 (30) Jan 11 (14) Jan 10 (11) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (23) Jan 07 (13) Jan 06 (21) Jan 05 (15) Jan 04 (18) Jan 03 (9) Jan 02 (12) Jan 01 (15) Dec 31 (18) Dec 30 (7) Dec 29 (13) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (6) Dec 25 (8) Dec 24 (28) Dec 23 (12) Dec 22 (12) Dec 21 (17) Dec 20 (19) Dec 19 (19) Dec 18 (22) Dec 17 (24) Dec 16 (17) Dec 15 (29) Dec 14 (22) Dec 13 (12) Dec 12 (22) Dec 11 (24) Dec 10 (25) Dec 09 (18) Dec 08 (15) Dec 07 (21) Dec 06 (24) Dec 05 (30) Dec 04 (28) Dec 03 (26) Dec 02 (22) Dec 01 (33) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (9) Nov 28 (18) Nov 27 (25) Nov 26 (17) Nov 25 (23) Nov 24 (27) Nov 23 (12) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (15) Nov 20 (23) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (24) Nov 17 (21) Nov 16 (20) Nov 15 (13) Nov 14 (15) Nov 13 (27) Nov 12 (23) Nov 11 (19) Nov 10 (21) Nov 09 (13) Nov 08 (16) Nov 07 (16) Nov 06 (32) Nov 05 (24) Nov 04 (20) Nov 03 (29) Nov 02 (12) Nov 01 (15) Oct 31 (20) Oct 30 (22) Oct 29 (27) Oct 28 (20) Oct 27 (23) Oct 26 (21) Oct 25 (15) Oct 24 (23) Oct 23 (26) Oct 22 (27) Oct 21 (28) Oct 20 (24) Oct 19 (13) Oct 18 (9) Oct 17 (30) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (20) Oct 14 (14) Oct 13 (17) Oct 12 (16) Oct 11 (8) Oct 10 (19) Oct 09 (22) Oct 08 (16) Oct 07 (18) Oct 06 (23) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (15) Oct 03 (21) Oct 02 (17) Oct 01 (22) Sep 30 (25) Sep 29 (20) Sep 28 (17) Sep 27 (13) Sep 26 (20) Sep 25 (15) Sep 24 (24) Sep 23 (23) Sep 22 (18) Sep 21 (20) Sep 20 (11) Sep 19 (24) Sep 18 (25) Sep 17 (25) Sep 16 (19) Sep 15 (21) Sep 14 (15) Sep 13 (10) Sep 12 (23) Sep 11 (23) Sep 10 (25) Sep 09 (25) Sep 08 (17) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (17) Sep 05 (14) Sep 04 (24) Sep 03 (16) Sep 02 (11) Sep 01 (19) Aug 31 (20) Aug 30 (11) Aug 29 (24) Aug 28 (24) Aug 27 (16) Aug 26 (26) Aug 25 (21) Aug 24 (15) Aug 23 (19) Aug 22 (15) Aug 21 (25) Aug 20 (27) Aug 19 (19) Aug 18 (24) Aug 17 (14) Aug 16 (10) Aug 15 (15) Aug 14 (16) Aug 13 (21) Aug 12 (30) Aug 11 (19) Aug 10 (8) Aug 09 (12) Aug 08 (17) Aug 07 (21) Aug 06 (26) Aug 05 (23) Aug 04 (21) Aug 03 (12) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (19) Jul 31 (21) Jul 30 (25) Jul 29 (29) Jul 28 (23) Jul 27 (17) Jul 26 (11) Jul 25 (21) Jul 24 (14) Jul 23 (15) Jul 22 (19) Jul 21 (15) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (10) Jul 18 (15) Jul 17 (22) Jul 16 (18) Jul 15 (21) Jul 14 (20) Jul 13 (7) Jul 12 (9) Jul 11 (29) Jul 10 (19) Jul 09 (17) Jul 08 (26) Jul 07 (21) Jul 06 (18) Jul 05 (14) Jul 04 (20) Jul 03 (17) Jul 02 (24) Jul 01 (23) Jun 30 (23) Jun 29 (18) Jun 28 (16) Jun 27 (16) Jun 26 (17) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (32) Jun 23 (29) Jun 22 (8) Jun 21 (17) Jun 20 (25) Jun 19 (28) Jun 18 (19) Jun 17 (25) Jun 16 (23) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (11) Jun 13 (14) Jun 12 (22) Jun 11 (19) Jun 10 (17) Jun 09 (15) Jun 08 (16) Jun 07 (7) Jun 06 (29) Jun 05 (27) Jun 04 (24) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (22) Jun 01 (13) May 31 (9) May 30 (26) May 29 (19) May 28 (15) May 27 (15) May 26 (23) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (24) May 22 (13) May 21 (21) May 20 (18) May 19 (16) May 18 (7) May 17 (12) May 16 (25) May 15 (24) May 14 (23) May 13 (19) May 12 (17) May 11 (8) May 10 (6) May 09 (14) May 08 (21) May 07 (26) May 06 (14) May 05 (14) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (24) May 01 (13) Apr 30 (15) Apr 29 (24) Apr 28 (24) Apr 27 (11) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (13) Apr 24 (27) Apr 23 (15) Apr 22 (21) Apr 21 (19) Apr 20 (17) Apr 19 (8) Apr 18 (20) Apr 17 (27) Apr 16 (27) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (8) Apr 12 (7) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (22) Apr 09 (15) Apr 08 (15) Apr 07 (17) Apr 06 (14) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (12) Apr 03 (19) Apr 02 (17) Apr 01 (19) Mar 31 (25) Mar 30 (13) Mar 29 (9) Mar 28 (16) Mar 27 (23) Mar 26 (22) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (25) Mar 23 (16) Mar 22 (13) Mar 21 (24) Mar 20 (27) Mar 19 (20) Mar 18 (24) Mar 17 (17) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (20) Mar 13 (28) Mar 12 (30) Mar 11 (20) Mar 10 (21) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (8) Mar 07 (17) Mar 06 (20) Mar 05 (19) Mar 04 (15) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (12) Feb 28 (16) Feb 27 (17) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (23) Feb 24 (15) Feb 23 (8) Feb 22 (10) Feb 21 (24) Feb 20 (14) Feb 19 (24) Feb 18 (19) Feb 17 (27) Feb 16 (13) Feb 15 (11) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (13) Feb 12 (13) Feb 11 (21) Feb 10 (16) Feb 09 (15) Feb 08 (10) Feb 07 (17) Feb 06 (21) Feb 05 (17) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (23) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (8) Jan 31 (17) Jan 30 (22) Jan 29 (23) Jan 28 (10) Jan 27 (24) Jan 26 (12) Jan 25 (9) Jan 24 (12) Jan 23 (19) Jan 22 (19) Jan 21 (14) Jan 20 (21) Jan 19 (12) Jan 18 (8) Jan 17 (20) Jan 16 (14) Jan 15 (23) Jan 14 (8) Jan 13 (20) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (18) Jan 09 (11) Jan 08 (18) Jan 07 (13) Jan 06 (12) Jan 05 (12) Jan 04 (11) Jan 03 (10) Jan 02 (9) Jan 01 (9) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (11) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (13) Dec 26 (15) Dec 25 (8) Dec 24 (6) Dec 23 (8) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (6) Dec 20 (14) Dec 19 (17) Dec 18 (14) Dec 17 (14) Dec 16 (13) Dec 15 (9) Dec 14 (9) Dec 13 (11) Dec 12 (16) Dec 11 (18) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (24) Dec 08 (11) Dec 07 (19) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (26) Dec 04 (15) Dec 03 (20) Dec 02 (17) Dec 01 (11) Nov 30 (10) Nov 29 (18) Nov 28 (21) Nov 27 (10) Nov 26 (22) Nov 25 (16) Nov 24 (12) Nov 23 (8) Nov 22 (18) Nov 21 (9) Nov 20 (17) Nov 19 (16) Nov 18 (16) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (9) Nov 15 (21) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (20) Nov 12 (16) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (9) Nov 09 (10) Nov 08 (16) Nov 07 (15) Nov 06 (18) Nov 05 (19) Nov 04 (16) Nov 03 (11) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (17) Oct 31 (17) Oct 30 (21) Oct 29 (9) Oct 28 (16) Oct 27 (6) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (16) Oct 24 (18) Oct 23 (14) Oct 22 (17) Oct 21 (10) Oct 20 (6) Oct 19 (8) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (12) Oct 16 (14) Oct 15 (19) Oct 14 (15) Oct 13 (11) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (10) Oct 10 (23) Oct 09 (13) Oct 08 (15) Oct 07 (20) Oct 06 (13) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (16) Oct 03 (17) Oct 02 (17) Oct 01 (20) Sep 30 (17) Sep 29 (9) Sep 28 (8) Sep 27 (14) Sep 26 (20) Sep 25 (19) Sep 24 (13) Sep 23 (11) Sep 22 (9) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (21) Sep 18 (12) Sep 17 (20) Sep 16 (16) Sep 15 (10) Sep 14 (6) Sep 13 (18) Sep 12 (14) Sep 11 (24) Sep 10 (17) Sep 09 (16) Sep 08 (16) Sep 07 (10) Sep 06 (20) Sep 05 (13) Sep 04 (23) Sep 03 (14) Sep 02 (12) Sep 01 (11) Aug 31 (11) Aug 30 (13) Aug 29 (18) Aug 28 (14) Aug 27 (21) Aug 26 (10) Aug 25 (8) Aug 24 (10) Aug 23 (17) Aug 22 (15) Aug 21 (14) Aug 20 (20) Aug 19 (20) Aug 18 (7) Aug 17 (9) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (12) Aug 14 (14) Aug 13 (19) Aug 12 (14) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (12) Aug 09 (7) Aug 08 (18) Aug 07 (16) Aug 06 (16) Aug 05 (20) Aug 04 (12) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (12) Aug 01 (14) Jul 31 (16) Jul 30 (16) Jul 29 (11) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (9) Jul 26 (17) Jul 25 (20) Jul 24 (17) Jul 23 (11) Jul 22 (18) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (14) Jul 18 (11) Jul 17 (15) Jul 16 (12) Jul 15 (10) Jul 14 (8) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (17) Jul 11 (18) Jul 10 (16) Jul 09 (13) Jul 08 (10) Jul 07 (12) Jul 06 (8) Jul 05 (16) Jul 04 (14) Jul 03 (17) Jul 02 (13) Jul 01 (16) Jun 30 (19) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (19) Jun 27 (21) Jun 26 (27) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (23) Jun 23 (12) Jun 22 (9) Jun 21 (18) Jun 20 (15) Jun 19 (24) Jun 18 (21) Jun 17 (13) Jun 16 (9) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (18) Jun 13 (24) Jun 12 (18) Jun 11 (23) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (24) Jun 08 (27) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (25) Jun 05 (30) Jun 04 (23) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (16) Jun 01 (17) May 31 (18) May 30 (19) May 29 (17) May 28 (23) May 27 (15) May 26 (10) May 25 (19) May 24 (16) May 23 (16) May 22 (27) May 21 (20) May 20 (26) May 19 (6) May 18 (8) May 17 (20) May 16 (8) May 15 (18) May 14 (5) May 13 (21) May 12 (9) May 11 (8) May 10 (12) May 09 (18) May 08 (11) May 07 (27) May 06 (12) May 05 (16) May 04 (19) May 03 (14) May 02 (18) May 01 (18) Apr 30 (25) Apr 29 (27) Apr 28 (11) Apr 27 (10) Apr 26 (18) Apr 25 (10) Apr 24 (29) Apr 23 (29) Apr 22 (14) Apr 21 (15) Apr 20 (20) Apr 19 (22) Apr 18 (16) Apr 17 (32) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (21) Apr 13 (15) Apr 12 (13) Apr 11 (14) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (20) Apr 08 (36) Apr 07 (22) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (28) Apr 04 (20) Apr 03 (29) Apr 02 (32) Apr 01 (18) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (15) Mar 28 (22) Mar 27 (24) Mar 26 (17) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (13) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (15) Mar 20 (18) Mar 19 (19) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (10) Mar 16 (6) Mar 15 (18) Mar 14 (24) Mar 13 (18) Mar 12 (18) Mar 11 (17) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (18) Mar 07 (25) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (16) Mar 04 (22) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (23) Feb 29 (19) Feb 28 (25) Feb 27 (26) Feb 26 (23) Feb 25 (12) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (15) Feb 22 (26) Feb 21 (31) Feb 20 (12) Feb 19 (21) Feb 18 (15) Feb 17 (10) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (19) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (20) Feb 11 (9) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (28) Feb 08 (20) Feb 07 (22) Feb 06 (20) Feb 05 (19) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (16) Feb 02 (28) Feb 01 (37) Jan 31 (27) Jan 30 (31) Jan 29 (18) Jan 28 (14) Jan 27 (10) Jan 26 (18) Jan 25 (26) Jan 24 (34) Jan 23 (21) Jan 22 (21) Jan 21 (18) Jan 20 (18) Jan 19 (18) Jan 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)
By Ron Paul

Is Crimea about to explode? The mainstream media reports that Russia has amassed troops on the border with Ukraine and may be spoiling for a fight. The Russians claim to have stopped a Ukrainian sabotage team that snuck into Crimea to attack key infrastructure. The Russian military is holding exercises in Crimea and Russian President Vladimir Putin made a visit to the peninsula at the end of the week.

The Ukrainians have complained to their western supporters that a full-scale Russian invasion is coming, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he may have to rule by martial law due to the Russian threat.

Though the US media pins the blame exclusively on Russia for these tensions, in reality there is plenty of blame to go around. We do know that the US government has been involved with regime change in Ukraine repeatedly since the break up of the Soviet Union. The US was deeply involved with the Orange Revolution that overthrew elected president Viktor Yanukovych in 2005. And we know that the US government was heavily involved in another coup that overthrew the same elected Yanukovych again in 2014.

How do we know that the US was behind the 2014 coup? For one, we have the intercepted telephone call between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. In the recording, the two US officials are plotting to remove the elected government and discussing which US puppet they will put in place.

You would think such undiplomatic behavior could get diplomats fired, but sadly in todays State Department it can actually get you promoted! Nuland is widely expected to get a big promotion  perhaps to even Secretary of State  in a Hillary Clinton administration, and Geoffrey Pyatt has just moved up to an Ambassadorship in Athens.

Ambassador Pyatt cant seem to control himself: Just as tensions were peaking between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea this month, he published a series of Tweets urging Ukraine to take back Crimea. Is this how our diplomats overseas should be acting? Should they be promoting actions they know will lead to war?

When the mainstream media discusses Crimea they are all lock-step: thats the peninsula Putin annexed. Never do they mention that there was a referendum in which the vast majority of the population (who are mostly ethnic Russians) voted to join Russia. The US media never reports on this referendum because it produced results that Washington doesnt like. How arrogant it must sound to the rest of the world that Washington reserves the right to approve or disapprove elections thousands of miles away  meanwhile we find out from the DNC hacked files that we dont have a lot of room to criticize elections overseas.

What should we do about Ukraine and Russia? We should stop egging Ukraine on, we should stop subsidizing the government in Kiev, we should stop NATO exercises on the Russian border, we should end sanctions, we should return to diplomacy, we should send the policy of regime change to the dustbin of history. The idea that we would be facing the prospect of World War III over which flag flies above a tiny finger of land that most US politicians couldnt find on a map is utterly ridiculous. When are we going to come to our senses?
Artist Andrea Zittel introduces a new range of sleeping outdoor pods with housing amenities in the California desert. Called Wagon Station Encampment, several mobile small-sized camping pods allow artists, writers, thinkers, hikers, campers or those who are engaged in other forms of cultural or personal research.

The Wagon Station Encampment consists of twelve A-Z Wagon Stations, a communal outdoor kitchen, open air showers, and composting toilets. The encampment is an intimate community so Andrea Zittel looks for people who are thoughtful, considerate and contributors. Ideally you will be a kitchen cleaner, a cool chest organizer, and you wont mind sometimes making extra coffee to share with others in the morning.

While you are traveller or not, a refugee or not, you will be staying in a very futuristic sleeping pods with your private space comfortably. Wagon Stations are also rescuer places for many refugees since they present very minimum place to stay, eat and sleep in the secured zone.

The Encampment is open during two open seasons each year: one month in the fall (usually October) and one month in the spring (generally between April 15th and May 15th). Each open season is divided into week-long sessions  visitors ideally stay for 1 or 2 sessions, with arrivals occurring on Sunday and departures on Saturday.

To reserve a spot, the artist requires those interested to submit a completed application, a short bio, and a non-refundable $20 application fee. If your application is accepted, then the artist will require a $100 weekly session fee in order to complete your reservation.

Andrea Zitter announced its open seasons on his website; 2016 Fall Open Season Sessions include October 2-8, October 9-15, October 16-22, October 23-29, October 30-November 5. Deadlines: May 27th: Applications due June 10th: Applicants notified of acceptance or wait list.

The A-Z Wagon Station Encampment is located in A-Z West, which takes place on over fifty acres in the California high desert next to Joshua Tree National Park. Since its inception in fall 2000, A-Z West has been undergoing an ongoing conversion into the artist's testing grounds for A-Z designs for living.

The artists's office also offers touristic tours of A-Z West are offered six times a year as a fundraising activity for High Desert Test Sites. Tours last about two hours and offer a glimpse into Zittels home base, the Wagon Station Encampment, Regenerating Field, Shipping Container Compound, studio, guest cabin and more.

All images courtesy of Andrea Zittel

> via Andrea Zittel
I am not entirely sure whether most birders outside Germany know or realize that Germany still has a decent population of one of Europes most attractive and desired bird species: the Great Bustard Otis tarda. This species, one of the heaviest birds able to fly, was once common through most of southern and central Europe and all the way to Mongolia, but was driven to extinction by hunting and changes in agricultural practises in most of its European range during the 19th and early 20th century. Today, birders wanting to see this avian gem usually venture to the healthy populations of the Iberian peninsular or travel to Hungary. Now, I am fully aware that Germany cant rival the overall birding attractiveness of these countries, but it might not hurt to know that you need not go there in search of Great Bustards should you find yourself in the vicinity of good ol Germanys capital Berlin.

While Great Bustards vanished from their western German haunts during the 19th century, a sizeable population of around 4,000 birds was still to be found in eastern Germany in the 1940s. Sadly, this population too went into a steep decline until only 57 animals were left in Germany in 1997, raising fears about their imminent extinction in the country. Through intensive conservation management however, this downwards trend was halted and the population stabilized at more or less 100 bustards until 2011. Since then, we have seen a marvellous recovery, with an estimate of 123 in 2012, 145 in 2013, 165 in 2014, 197 in 2015 and now in 2016, around 232 Great Bustards roam the wilds of Germany, nearly doubling their number within just a handful of years! Great Bustards are now (still) restricted to three populations in Germany, all west of Berlin in the wider region of the Havelland. Two of these populations, the ones at Belziger Lamndschaftswiesen and Havellandisches Luch, are easily accessible to birders and the bustards are more or less guaranteed during such a visit, without any risk of disturbing them. Without disturbing them of course translates to seen at a distance of usually more than 200 m, explaining why all the following images of the Great Bustards are heavily cropped.









At 21 kilograms, the male Great Bustard is amongst the heaviest animals able to fly, together with Kori Bustard, an African species. And fly they surely can





although they do look suspiciously happy when landing.

Ha!

Never mind the slight over-exposure: look at this bird!

Now that I might have wetted your appetite, heres where and how to find them in Germany:

1. Belziger Landschaftswiesen: This area is situated approximately 55 km SW of Berlins city centre and best reached via the highway A9. From the exit Linthe, follow the rural road L85 towards the village Freienthal. Turn left once youre in Freienthal (only one road towards the left) and park your car at the villages edge. Walk on along a sandy track through some fields for approximately 700 m (a bit less than half a mile) until you reach a narrow strip of pine trees. Follow the track through a gap in the pine tree plantation and immediately turn right. Walk to a small abandoned farm and keep on along the track, crossing a small canal via a small bridge (dont worry about the gate) just after the farm. You will then see an observation tower for viewing the Great Bustards. The walk from the parking area to the tower is a bit more than 1 mile. Once youre on the tower, the bustards are often seen towards the right.

Other interesting species: on the way to the tower, you should see Corn Buntings, Ortolan Buntings (mostly heard), Wood Larks, Yellow Wagtails and Whinchats. The abandonned farm hosts one of the few remaining breeding pairs of Little Owl in Germanys Northeast, so be aware of this possibility but also take good care not to disturb them should you see them (most likely at dusk). Do NOT walk around the empty buildings trying to see/flush them! This is prohibited under German nature conservation laws and a moral no-go. From the tower, there should be a few interesting raptors around, and vagrant raptor species are always a possibility during migration periods. Furthermore, you will likely see or hear Eurasian Curlews. According to the observation book on the tower, even wolves are a  very remote  possibility.

2. Havellandisches Luch: This area is around 52 km west of Berlins City centre and a bit more difficult to reach since it requires longer drives overland. However, you will usually get much better observations of the bustards, and this is the area Id favour if I had to choose between the two. There are two tiny villages within the area, and each has its own observation tower. The first village is Garlitz, which you simply have to enter into you cars sat nav. The other one is Buckow north of Garlitz, but it seems that this village is unknown to most sat navs  for whatever reason.

To reach the first tower, drive north within Garlitz towards Buckow but then go straight when the main road within the village turns 90  to the left. Follow the track towards the east beyond the village limits through some fields until you reach the tower and park your car right there  no walking required. To minimize disturbance, youre actually asked to take the car all the way to the tower, so its okay, youre not being lazy.

To reach the second tower, take the road from Garlitz north towards Buckow. Around halfway through the open landscape between the villages, just over a quarter mile north of Garlitz, is the turn-off to the right. Again, take the car all the way to the tower, which is three quarters of a mile down the track.

Both towers are equally suitable for seeing the bustards, and since you can easily drive from one to the other in 5 minutes, it doesnt really matter which one you choose. In the open landscape, you can actually see from one tower if the other one offers better options and then just re-locate according to your own gusto. Other interesting species: as with the Belziger Landschaftswiesen, the typical open country species will be easy to see, like Corn Bunting, Yellow Wagtail and Whinchat. Ive once seen Grey Partridges there, and the meadows have breeding Montagues Harriers. All other harrier species may also be around, including Pallid Harriers which are recorded each year as (semi-)vagrants. Dont expect to see Pallids, but be aware of the possibility. The hedge rows along the tracks to the towers host all of Germanys Sylvia warblers, and yes  this includes Barred Warblers. I once saw a Hoopoe north of Buckow but am not sure if this obervation pertains to a local population or was just a lucky encounter of a migrant bird.

While it is possible to observe the bustards year-round, most birders visit them during their mating season in April. The summer months are less ideal since even birds matching the size of a roe deer can be difficult to spot in high grass, and more search is needed. But even then, patience will usually pay off. Watching displaying Great Bustards on one of their leks however is one of birdings greatest shows, and therefore a visit between the middle of March and the beginning of May is strongly recommended.

This is a roe deer, not a hare. They did not kid when they put the Great in front of the Bustard.
by Dave Maier

Consider how difficult it has been to get Big Tobacco to admit that cigarette smoking is bad for you at all, let alone that it kills many thousands of people every year. In particular, you might remember that time when all the major executives swore under oath at Congressional hearings that cigarettes are perfectly safe. Consider as well that most tobacco profits come from heavy users of tobacco, not smokers of only the occasional cigarette. So the all-important bottom line  public health be damned  can be preserved only by recruiting new heavy smokers as the older (or not so older) ones die off or quit. For Big Tobacco, this means targeting children, who are not only risk-takers by nature, but very often concerned above all to be cool. If cigarettes are risky and cool, then children will become smokers, and many (some studies say 30%) will become hooked, preserving corporate profits for another generation.

Marijuana prohibitionists hold the analogous establishment of Big Marijuana up as a nightmare scenario. If big money is involved  as of course it is  it is quite natural to worry that Big Marijuana will be just as bad as Big Tobacco: fighting warning labels, putting out deceptive and child-friendly advertising (Joe Camel = Joe Cannabis?) fighting class-action lawsuits with expensive lawyers, and so on. Prohibitionists point to the existence of yummy cannabis edibles (THC-infused gummy bears! Pot Tarts!) and fanciful marijuana strain names (Girl Scout Cookies! Green Crack!) as evidence that even the nascent legal cannabis industry has our defenseless children in its sights.

The most vocal proponent of this line is Kevin Sabet of the anti-legalization organization Project SAM [Smart Approaches to Marijuana]. Sabet represents a new development in prohibitionism, consciously distancing himself from old-school drug-warrior tactics in the hope of reaching a more moderate audience. In terms of actual policy recommendations, in fact, Sabet sounds quite a bit like yesterdays marijuana reform activists. NORML's Roger Roffman, for example, whose book we looked at last time, spent most of his career pushing not for legalization, but for decriminalization, and more generally a reconstrual of marijuana policy not as a matter for law enforcement but instead as a public health issue: not arrest and incarceration, but education and treatment.

Heres Sabet in his own words:

There is no doubt that current policy leaves much to be desired. Todays marijuana policies leave us with a substantial abuse problem, $15-$30 billion in illegal revenues, a product of unknown quality that is accessible to youths, and arrest records for many people (and disproportionally, people of color) whose most serious crime is smoking marijuana. But we dont have to live in an all-or-nothing world. There are smart, sensible solutions that steer clear of policy extremes.

Marijuana may not be as harmful as cocaine or heroinand marijuana legalization is not equivalent to the legalization of harder drugsbut marijuana is also not the harmless herb touted by many legalization advocates. A better marijuana policy would focus on public health strategies and outcomes, mainly prevention, intervention, treatment, and a wise use of enforcement resources. Investments in prevention and early intervention that get healthcare professionals and others involved in kids lives enable us to identify early use before it becomes more harmful chronic use. Some sort of legal sanction should remain in place simply to act as a deterrent and send a social message with the intent of discouraging usefor example, smart criminal penalties grounded in swift, but modest, sanctions. But we cant afford to rely exclusively on the criminal justice system to address a problem of public health. (Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths about Marijuana (2013), p. 164-5)

On the face of it, this is a perfectly reasonable, or at least arguable, position. We can disagree about the extent to which the problems with current policy result from prohibition itself, or instead merely, as Sabet believes, its current overemphasis on law enforcement over education and treatment. So why does this book, and Project SAM generally, annoy me so much? It cant just be the dodgy statistics disingenuously spun, or the snotty, combative tweets  both sides do that. I think the problem rather lies in what, again, looked for all the world to reformers like the right idea forty years ago: a single-minded emphasis on public health.

Naturally it makes good rhetorical sense for Sabet to present his views as a careful, well-considered middle path between two unacceptable extremes. Reefer madness is to be reconstrued not simply as the crude old-school law-enforcement-heavy tactics of the past  as that term is typically used  but instead as the unimaginative dichotomy between that failed policy and, on the other hand, simply throwing up our hands and saying oh well, lets just legalize everything then. This leaves reefer sanity as the moderate middle path. But it soon becomes clear that Reefer Sanity is directed almost entirely at the perceived threat of potential legalization rather than the actual documented harms of current prohibition. It is animated by the same censorious spirit of prohibitionism as that of lock-em-up drug warriors of years past (and present). It is a self-consciously kinder, gentler reefer madness, but in my view a reefer madness all the same.

In practice, this means that once the well of legalization has been well and truly poisoned as resulting from an all or nothing false dichotomy, we may turn instead to forms of coercion which are thus established as ipso facto smart by comparison. It also happens that all of the myths point in the direction of legalization and none of them are held by drug warriors, and the facade of level-headed sanity quickly drops away to reveal the doctrinaire prohibitionism beneath.

Here are the seven great myths of Reefer Sanitys subtitle:

1. Marijuana is harmless and nonaddictive

2. Smoked or eaten marijuana is medicine

3. Countless people are behind bars simply for smoking marijuana

4. The legality of alcohol and tobacco strengthens the case for legal marijuana

5. Legal marijuana will solve the governments budgetary problems

6. Portugal and Holland provide successful models of legalization

7. Prevention, intervention, and treatment are doomed to fail  so why try?

Myth 1 gets the idea across immediately. That marijuana is harmless no one believes, or at least none of the major voices calling for legalization. But whether it is nonaddictive will depend on what we mean by that, and may very well be maintained by reformers unimpressed, in the context of technically addictive substances like opiates and tobacco, by the oft-repeated stat that 9% of regular marijuana users eventually become dependent. So the straw man is carefully set off by the equivocation.

Still, Sabet is right that there is plenty of loose talk from the pro-cannabis side. I really dont want to hear any of the following ever again:

a) Its just a plant. Yes, and so is belladonna.

b) a quotation from the book of Genesis giving man dominion over the plant world (so cannabis is God-given and thus no-one has the right to take it away)

c) DEA administrative judge Francis Young's 1988 finding that marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. This refers generally to the fact that there is no documented lethal dose for marijuana and thus that fatal overdoses are virtually impossible. Thats a point for the pro-cannabis side, but in no way means that marijuana is safe in the sense we are talking about.

d) a list of various substances and the number of deaths caused each year (= lots by alcohol and tobacco; none by marijuana). Here too this refers to overdoses in the case of marijuana and every possible manner of decease (including accident and illness) in the other cases. This is clearly question-begging and totally unnecessary, as even the real numbers, whatever they are, speak for themselves.

Myth 2 is similarly carefully qualified in order to come out right. At a minimum, in my view, we should distinguish between certified as safe and effective medicine by the FDA and thus eligible to be prescribed by doctors and available at pharmacies and not so certified, yet appropriate, at the very least while we wait for the FDA to do its thing (which at the moment it seems not to be doing at all, given marijuanas Schedule 1 status) for doctors to recommend and patients to use if they so desire. Sabets primly by-the-books attitude here echoes the scornful sneers of drug czars at the very idea of medical marijuana, prompting speculation among his opponents about Sabets possible ties to Big Pharma (none of which I have seen documented, I have to say, so this may just be more loose talk). Interestingly, the DEA just last week rejected yet another petition requesting rescheduling of marijuana from Schedule 1 (reserved for the most dangerous drugs, with high potential for abuse and no legitimate medical uses). This is a more complicated issue which we will have to get back to later.

Myth 3 smells like straw as well: note the qualifications (countless, solely). However, it is indeed true that, thanks to the dogged efforts over the years of reformers like Roffman, many states and localities have decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. Gone (forever, one imagines) are the days when a Hollywood star like Robert Mitchum could be incarcerated for possession of 13 reefers (quotation marks in original 1948 newspaper article). Sabet is quite right to suggest that progress of this sort makes legalization less immediately necessary. Yet even as he is officially committed to the public-health model of prohibition, he still seems to regard decriminalization more as a fall-back position or bargaining chip than as an actual desideratum. Youd think that to the extent he regards legalization as a threat, hed be pushing states to decriminalize in order to relieve that pressure. Hmmm.

Sabets discussion of Myth 4 struck me as one of the odder chapters in Reefer Sanity. The myth Sabet is combating here is the following inference: Alcohol and tobacco are worse for you, and they are legal, goes the reasoning, so pot should be legal too. [p. 105] This reasoning is indeed fallacious, or at least incomplete. (A not entirely successful elaboration of that reasoning can be found in Steve Fox et al, Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?, which we may get to later.) Most attacks on this reasoning dispute the premise that alcohol and tobacco are worse, because, well, um, theyre, you know, normal, and pot is an Illicit Drug that you take to, you know, get high on drugs [segue to talk of gateways to heroin and suchlike]. But Sabet allows that the former are indeed worse, and the numbers of course back this up. The reason they kill so many people, however, according to Sabet, is not that they are inherently worse for you, but instead that they are legal. Here is where the main argument about the dangers of Big Marijuana comes in. If marijuana is legalized, then just as in the cases of the other two drugs, unscrupulous corporations will sacrifice the health of our citizens, especially our children, to their bottom line. (There follows a detailed condemnation  of the tobacco and alcohol industries.)

As noted above, this argument has some plausibility to it, at least to those of us sufficiently skeptical about the morality of large corporations and our limited ability to restrain their misdeeds. While it does seem there has been some small progress on the tobacco front in recent years, the idea that we might avoid that battle by keeping the marijuana genie in the bottle will certainly be attractive from this point of view. Still, to my ear Sabet comes off sounding something like this (in my somewhat hostile, but not thereby inaccurate, paraphrase):

Prohibition of dangerous substances like alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs like marijuana and heroin saves lives, and would therefore be the clearly best option in normal circumstances. The lesson of Prohibition is not that prohibition necessarily fails  after all, alcohol use, and cirrhosis cases, declined during that time [see Myth 7]  but that due to a mere cultural accident [p. 116], alcohol use in particular [and, we may assume, tobacco use as well] is too widely accepted for us to get away with prohibiting it. But thanks to the pioneering efforts of a long line of marijuana demonizers from Harry Anslinger through Richard Nixon, Nancy Reagan, and William Bennett, marijuana users remain the despised minority that alcohol users are not, so we can safely impose our views on them by force (for their own good, of course).

Here we see the blinkered nature of the doctrinaire public-health approach, perhaps surprisingly visible only now, after a few decades of similarly insufferable nanny-state paternalism. Even so, I find I cant condemn Roffmans rejection of legalization as a goal in the 70s, when things looked very different.

Myth 5 is once again overly strongly formulated, leaving us with another straw man to line up with the others. Still, at least this one cuts both ways. Id put it like this: two distinct arguments for legalization point in different directions. One reason is to undercut the black market for marijuana, the profits of which go to criminal gangs. Another is to get sin-tax revenue from marijuana sales, as we do from alcohol and tobacco. But the first tells us to keep prices low, and the second pushes prices up  not an insuperable obstacle perhaps, but the tension should be noted.

As for Myth 6, it seems more like a red herring than anything else (so, a wash). Holland has indeed legalized marijuana in certain limited ways, without the sky falling; but the USA is a very different country with a very different history, so it's hard to tell what this means. Same with Portugal, and anyway the main concern of Portugals drug policy is not the legalization of marijuana but instead the decriminalization of harder drugs. I call this issue a wash because while Sabet is right to suggest that legalizers cannot point to either of these countries and say see, it works there!, thats about it. Sabet throws a few numbers at us to suggest that its not working there anyway, but his heart doesnt seem to be in it. For a good discussion of Portugal, see Johann Haris book I discussed last time (Chasing the Scream). Hari is generally positive, but remember also that he is ambivalent about marijuana legalization in particular.

Sabets discussion of Myth 7 (almost done!), like Myth 4, concerns the very idea of prohibition and again defends the kinder, gentler public-health version of same. This Myth isnt a straw man, exactly, but here again we see the nanny state furrowing its brow in earnest concern for our benefit. That drug use is inherently bad and should be discouraged by all appropriate measures, including legal, is prohibitionist ground zero. If they try really hard, as Sabet sometimes does, prohibitionists may grudgingly concede that some users may suffer no ill effects of their illicit drug abuse  they experiment, but do not get sucked into the spiral of addiction that traps too many of our youth  and even that this is the more likely outcome. (Even if we accept the idea that one in eleven (9%) users ends up in some way dependent, that leaves ten out of eleven who do not.)

But what you will never hear is that users experiences could possibly be in any important way valuable or beneficial. Cannabis cannot have changed your life for the better or in any way enriched it. It either ruined your life (or may still), or, thank goodness, after some ill-advised youthful experimentation, you gave it up in time. To admit that valuable drug experience is even conceptually possible threatens the fundamental premise that all drug use is necessarily equivalent to abuse and that we are thus justified in preventing it by force. And that is intolerable.



If the education part of the new prohibitionist turn to education and treatment is anything like reading Reefer Sanity, then by comparison legalization is actually looking like the saner option at this point. But stay tuned!
by Bill Benzon

These songs of mine have to be played. They mustnt be lost, they have to be out there.Theyre Byzantine and their roads, their tunes are ancient.

Markos Vamvakaris

To read this book, this as-told-to autobiography of Markos Vamvakaris, is to confront how strange is this thing we call writing, the child of this strange thing in which we live, called civilization. It is not that Markos, as he came to be known, is uncivilized. It is not that. Living at the time and place that he did, Greece during the early and middle twentieth century, he couldnt avoid it, this civilization.

But he could resist it. And that he did, with wine, women, and song. Hashish too, more than the wine, and the bouzouki, along with the song and more than the women. Civilization didnt win, neither did Markos. But I wouldnt call it a draw either. It was a dance.

* * * * *

I knew almost nothing about rebetiko  Greek urban folk music with Asian influence  when I began reading this book, this circle dance between Markos the road warrior, Angeliki Vellou-Keil, scholar and scribe who published the material in Greek in 1972, and Noonie Minogue, who translated and edited this English edition (2015). Yet the story herein set forth, Markos Vamvakaris: The Man and the Bouzouki, that story is a familiar one: poverty, social marginalization, drugs, rubbing shoulder with criminals, womanizing, dedication to craft, and the transformation of a nations musical culture. Rebetiko has been likened to the blues, and the stories of major blues musicians have all those elements. It is a story of resistance, survival, and transformation.

Markos Vamvakaris was born in 1905 on the island of Syra in the Cyclades in the South Aegean Sea. That puts it on one of the major crossroads of world travel and trade for three millennia, between mainland Greece to the West and Turkey to the East. Its largest city, Ermopouli, was the major Greek port in the second half of the 19th Century, and a center for commerce and industry. Many different peoples have lived in and passed through Syra, as they do today in these days of destruction and despair in the Middle East. The dance of snivilization, as James Joyce called it, power and domination, freedom and music, pomp and circumcision, the bouzouki vs. bullets. Markos snubbed the law and the songs won. For awhile.

* * * * *

His father was an unskilled laborer, a coal hauler, who played the bagpipes. His mother made jokes, sang nicely, and was full of life (2). As a boy Markos liked to dance to the organ grinders, and he was good too. When his father took to weaving baskets and hampers, Markos would help haul the reeds, 50 pounds per load and not yet 10 years old. Then with his mother in the cotton factory packaging thread and threading looms. And then odd jobs with his uncle, more hauling. All day, vegetables, hauling. Next, the cloth mill. More child than man.

Then a break, selling newspapers in Ermoupoli, a port town. And you know what happens in ports, dont you? People from all walks of life meet and conduct their business. Markos met them all. Now hes in the fruit business, delivering it, selling it. Then back to the newspaper business, and when he was done for the day, hed read papers and magzines. Education.

In 1917 he left Syros for Piraeus, a port near Athens on the mainland. He began hauling coal and smoking hashish. Then hauling whatever, as long as it was heavy; Markos was big and strong. In the early 1920s he went to work in a slaughterhouse and worked one job or another until he was 35. Howd you like to dilate a carcas? Put a hole through the skin in a leg, insert a bellows and pump until the hide separated from the muscle. You get the picture. Markos was on intimate terms with physical labor.

* * * * *

And he was on intimate terms with physical joy as well. For thats what music is. Joy in the flesh. Not only music of course, but yes, music, really. Markos in his own words (as translated into English, p. 94):

In Tabouria I was broken in to the hard life of the Piraeus docker, I fell in love, got married for the first time and got hooked on hashish. But the most important thing by far was that I went crazy over this instrument, the bouzouki. Just before my stint in the army late in 1924 I happened to hear barba Nikos from Aivali playing his bouzouki. I loved it so much I made a vow, if I didnt learn bouzouki Id chop my hand off with a meat cleaver, the bone chopper they us in the shop. I considered my oath sacred and binding. Its such a great thing, such a great instrument this bouzouki. I said to myself, and that was the beginning of misery for my family, my father and mother. I stopped working altogether after that. I had a job as a skinner in the Piraeus slaughterhouse but I didnt work. No. My work as only bouzouki and hashish. From then on this instrument held me in chains.

For the longest time he played music on the side. Slaughterhouse by day, bouzouki and hashish the rest of the time. For awhile he had a sympathetic boss: Markos, you play bouzouki, well do the work (75). He was, after all, a proper wild beast of a musician. When he played the hash dens he got paid in drugs. And then there were the cliff-side caves, climb down, go in, get stoned.

It wasnt until the 1934-35 that he began playing for money, enough so he could make a living. Hed begun recording for Columbia a year or two before that. Columbia, and other American companies, wanted to record rebetiko for expatriate Greeks in America. He was good at it: There were people who spent ten hours just to record one song. Id get it done in one or two takes (130). The way of the beast.

* * * * *

Frankly, I dont understand his relations with women. And I dont mean in any deep metaphysical sense, as though women were anymore problematic than (us) men. He had two wives, I think; and how many other other women, mistresses and more casual? I wouldnt expect a thorough telling of all, as its none of my business, but when he does tell, its hard to keep them straight.

Let me give you some pointers:

Page 53: Zingoala the tigress, he eventually marries her, but not on page 53. Page 58: Irini, prostitute, who gave him money and clothes. Even after my marriage, newlywed and all, we used to go with the floozies. There were so many everywhere at that time in Vourla. This was before the tigress. Page 76: At that time I loved a gypsy girl. A beauty, but theyre filthy women. She was married with four children. Called her the Sultry Spaniard. Page 87: I hadnt had any children so far and that was my wifes fault. But his bouzouki above all else. Musicians! What beasts! At this time Markos and his wife were being supported by his father. Page 132: But my wife, the bitch was having orgies with that wretched friend of mine I told you about, who took advantage of me being out all night for my work.

I could go on like this, finding bits and pieces, stitching them together, and eventually figuring out what happened. I think. Im also wondering what kind of raw material our scribe, Angelika Vellou Keil, and our editor and translator, Noonie Minogue, had to work from. In Markos we have an intelligent man whos read a lot and lived more, whos not really broken to the discipline of the written word  but then, dear reader, are you? Have you ever tried to make sense of your life, your whole life, one thing after another, in tidy chronological order?

Im thinking that Markos was talking from deep within himself, from within a place where emotional resonance overrides chronology, even where one person dissolves into another, and events interpenetrate in promiscuous polymorphic perversity. That is a virtue of this story, this life of Markos the beast, to bring us into the lair of the lizard within.

Zingoala, that tigress he met when he was working as a stevedore, is haunting him on pages 161 and after. On page 176 he meets Vangelio, and marries her on page 178, in 1942. She was his wife at the time he told his story, and they had children.

Then theres Yorgia (181) and Rita (194). Ten years with Rita, and still married to Vangelio. His kids: All three of them are great kids. I just pray to God and the Holy Virgin about the women theyre going to marry (225). The oldest is a sailor; the other two are musicians, one follows the loads of laika, like his dad, the others going for the big guns. Hes going to be a pianist (224). And maybe hell even be invited to play the bouzouki in Vienna with the big maestros, the big names. Such are the ambitions of this proud father, this Markos Vamvakaris, that his son should conquer the concert halls of the people who occupied his country during the Second World War. Bygones.

* * * * *

You get the idea. A life richly lived, but not neat and tidy. Does anyone live such a life, neat and tidy, no matter how much they may try? Markos lived through two world wars, and the desert between them. He served in the military in the first one and managed to survive the German occupation during the second one. All the time trying to preserve his dignity as a man, as a mangas. From the appendix by Angeliki Vellou-Keil (278-79):

From amongst the workers emerges a group that perhaps is made up from the most intelligent, most seeking, most irrepressible and maybe most stubborn; include here those individuals with special abilities already developed within traditional styles who refuse to give up these practices. This group in the cities create a style of life that represents an opposition and resistance to the bourgeois way of life. In the history of Greece the manghes were such a group, and maybe before them the koutsavakidhes (with their fashions, worry-beads, canes, and a special walk). This is not exclusively a Greek phenomenon. [] The mangas, choosing the beautiful things, rejects any compulsive chasing after money. Work is necessary for his own individual independence and sustenance for his family  an obligation he accepts.

And, yes, Markos Vamvakaris accepted the obligation and supported his family.

Im reminded of a scene in Hayao Miyazakis Princess Mononoke, set in 14th century Japan. A rural peasant woman is told that one of the characters, a monk, has a charter from the Emperor. The Emperor, she asks, whos that? And theres Terence Malicks very different The Thin Red Line, about a campaign in the Battle of Guadalcanal in World War Two. Malick is at pains to show us both the animal life on the island and the life of aborigines native to the island. For them the wars just a noisy and somewhat dangerous part of the weather. Its there, they have to deal with it, but it is not intrinsic to their lives. Sooner or later these foreigners go.

And so it is with Markos, the mangas. The world of the bourgeoisie is not his world. Hed deliver groceries to them, slaughter their meat, sell them newspapers, even serve in the army while theyre fighting over whos going to run Europe. But theyre not his people. Theyre furniture, weather, the socio-cultural landscape in which he traveled his roads, the dhromoi or scales and modes, on which the music is based.

It is on those roads that he was able to build a reasonably prosperous middle age. Not wealth, but he could support his family, and he became well-known and respected for his music. A man of existential substance, but also a haunted man.

* * * * *

In his own words (p. 1):

I am driven to tell the story of my life. I want to see it written and to read it from the beginning to end as if it were someone elses. [] The kind lady whos acting as my scribe says the first Christians used to confess their sings aloud and then everybody forgave them. Thats how they got if off their chests. But now the worlds a rotten place and I know plenty of people will think I should be ashamed to own up to the things Im about to tell you. But Ill find the courage and take no notice of those people. [] The wrongs Ive suffered and the wrongs Ive committed are the same.

Think about it. In the fullness of youth he was driven to make music. Now in the fullness of life hes driven to tell his lifes story. Think about that. What does it mean to be driven? Its a real question, but you need not answer it now.

And so, in the late 1960s he began to write down his life. Thats when Angeliki Vellou-Keil met him (xxv):

It gave him particular pleasure that we were from America and that in the few days we had in Greece wed found time to come and see him. He fondly remembered his glory days when he was the great Markos and the whole of America wanted to see him. And yet they didnt let me go and earn money with my bouzouki because my name had a black mark on it from the times when I used to get busted for smoking hashish.

He feared that censorship would keep his story from being pubished in Greece but hoped it could be published in America. And now it has been.

I learnt all these things bit by bit from the old guys in the tekedhes, because I had a great passion and my life was all bouzouki. Like I said, I sacrificed everything for the bouzouki. It took me over  but it also took me up in the world, way up.

Markos Vamvakaris
by Michael Liss

In every country there must be a just and equal balance of powers in the government, an equal distribution of the national forces. Each section and each interest must exercise its due share of influence and control. It is always more or less difficult to preserve their just equipoise, and the larger the country, and the more varied its great interests, the more difficult does the task become, and the greater the shock and disturbance caused by an attempt to adjust it when once disturbed. Henry J. Raymond, Editor of the New York Times, January, 1860 (as quoted by Allan Nevins).

We dont win anymore. But we are going to start winning again. Donald J. Trump, just about any and every day, 2015-16.

The monster is loose.

Donald Trump is done with keeping quiet. Its possible you might not have noticed the buttoned-up, reserved Trump (Ive heard it compared to the Higgs boson), but worry not; its no longer relevant, and you wont be seeing it in the future.

Trump wants to be Trump, and hes tired of people telling him he needs to appear more substantive, more Presidential. So he shook up his campaign, demoted the controversial Paul Manafort (who subsequently resigned), elevated the pollster Kellyanne Conway to campaign manager, and made Stephen Bannon the campaigns chief executive. Conway is an operative who previously worked for Ted Cruz and has good contacts with the conservative base. But Bannon is the real prize, and the one who raised eyebrows, and a little fear, even amongst Republicans. Bannon runs the influential and persistently inflammatory conservative outlet Breitbart News, which has recently closely coordinated with Trumps messaging. And Breitbart takes no prisoners. Wild speculation, innuendo, and hyperbole are its stock in trade, and if you are in its sightline, expect to lose.

Trump has made a decisive choice. He will do what got him the nomination. Back to his fastball: an unscripted (but obviously deliberate) stream-of consciousness melange of pugnacity, promises, patriotism, law-and order, and a firm, unkindly hand towards those who are undesirable because of their origins or political beliefs. He will occasionally throw in a kinder, gentler Donald because hes retained slash-and-burn types to act as surrogates, but the core Trump message will remain intense and in your face. Thats who he is, a hammer in search of a nail.

This is actually a very smart move, a businessmans move, and the freak-out from his fellow Republicans misses the mark. Trump isnt like other politicians. He doesnt do pivot.

Will it work? Will the country turn towards the Trump message, recognizing, as it should, that it represents a major departure from every modern President, all of whom at least articulated a broader vision? Pat Buchanan tried a very similar approach to Trump in the 1992 GOP primaries, and while it got some traction, it fell way short, even amongst Republicans. Worse, Buchanans burn-the-house-down speech at the convention was thought to have damaged George H.W. Bushs chances for reelection.

Of course, that was 1992, well before even the introduction of the iPhone, and the country has changed. Winning, taking it all, has become far more important. Confrontation is both esteemed, and enforced by a proliferation of scorekeepersspecial interest groups, think tanks, talk radio, websites.

The paradox, and the beauty, of the Trump candidacy is that it is the apotheosis of this extended show of anger and disdainbut remains detached from the GOP that nurtured and fertilized it. The Donald is not really a Republican. Hes a Party of One, campaigning as himself for himself.

It has been fascinating to watch the party professionals and the conservative intelligentsia go through a grieving and adaptation process. Clearly, there is first an emotional component to thiscan they really embrace this much Trumpiness in all its enraged peacock glory? The columnist Michael Gerson, who was George W. Bushs chief speechwriter and a senior policy advisor, has written that Trump has a humanity problem and that his intemperate language and approach are not violations of political correctness. They are violations of human decency, revealing serious moral impairment. His harder-edged colleague, Marc Thiessen, agrees that Trump lacks characterbut he says Hillary is worse, so it is irrelevant. The difference between the two is revealing. A Trump-dominated GOP would be difficult for Gerson to bearhe would feel exiled from his natural home. Thiessen, on the other, has a flexible morality depending on the identity of the sinner.

There is also an intellectual/policy debate occurring. Trump isnt really consistent with conservative values on a host of issuesbut the most relevant to Reagan Republicans are his views on trade and foreign policy. His rejection of the American approach to the post-WWII order of security treaties like NATO, foreign aid, and measured expression of military power has alarmed so many that more than 50 (Republican) members of the foreign policy establishment have said they are supporting Clinton. And Trump isnt getting consistent support from the ordinarily pro-GOP business community. Businesses love favorable legislationbut they prize open markets and a stable environment even more.

In truth, its questionable how much, at least for this election, these defections actually matter, because most of the GOP Establishment is going along with it and providing the infrastructure Trump needs. Even Gerson had to frame his ethical concerns in political termsTrumps humanity problem was causing the GOP to lose the under-35 voting cohort by a huge margin, perhaps permanentlyand thats why it needs to be addressed. Not just because its wrong.

Gerson is tilting at windmills, and unless Trump goes absolutely nuclear (metaphorically, we hope), its doubtful that GOP will be altering course over the next ten weeks. What they are planning to do is be agileembrace Trump where his message resonates, while allowing endangered incumbents to distance themselves when necessary. They have to be figuring that Trump is considered such an outlier that, win, lose, or mixed, he wont define or guide the future of the partythey will. Trump is just going to be that white-knuckled trip on the roller-coaster that your girlfriend insisted on taking you onscary, but in the end, harmless.

This may be wishful thinking. If he wins, Trump will still hate being handled. He will be rough on his opponents, regardless of what jersey they wear. If he loses, his insistence that defeat can only be the result of fraud and a rigged system will poison politics.

But that still doesnt answer a seminal questionis Trump a symptom of something that has already occurred, a broad failure of leadership that might be corrected, or a harbinger of a greater electoral realignment that will involve both parties, since neither seems to have satisfactory answers to the questions that divide us?

There is a historical analogy, but it isnt a comfortable one. The election of 1860.

What Henry Raymond saw in January, 1800, before the election of Lincoln, was a persistent failure of vision and political courage. In the ten years preceding, from the last great attempt at statesmanship, the Compromise of 1850, the country lurched from one wrenching crisis to another. We had Bloody Kansas and the Lecompton Constitution, John Brown, the Dred Scott Decision, Sewards Irrepressible Conflict speech and Preston Brooks near fatal caning of Abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner (and subsequent canonization in the South). The Whigs ceased to be an effective political force early in the decade, and the Democratic Party was factionalizing by region. The balance of power between the states still tilted Southin both 1852 and 1856, the Democrats nominated pro-slavery Northerners, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, but the South was reaching a point of no return.

Demography was a tide that was running against the South in a way that the Founders never anticipated. Every metric demonstrated much faster growth in the Northeast and Northwestareas in which there were no or few slaves. The 1860 Census showed a one-third increase in population in just ten years, but only 2 million of the 8.5 million new citizens were in states that would ultimately constitute the Confederacy. The increase in the Northwest was startlingWisconsin and Illinois doubling, Iowa trebling. And of the territories that would later become states, the fastest growing areas were those geographically less disposed to support slave labor. People were moving to places with land and opportunity, and away from the Souths agrarian ideal. Cold electoral calculation meant the South must inevitably lose representation in Congress in the next redistricting, and their leadership was growing ever leerier of any democracy they couldnt control.

Economically, the South was also falling behind. Labor-intensive farming was taking its toll in the older statesVirginia and North Carolina, in particular, had soil fertility issues. Moreover, the South had not taken steps to diversify. Manufacturing output, represented in dollars, nearly doubled during the decade, with almost all of that going to free states. Business opportunities drew people to cities, and away from the South. Trade from the Northwest was shifting away from the Southshipments of corn, wheat, and pork grew exponentially to the North, all the while shrinking in the South.

What is peculiar about our thinking about the 1860 Election is that it is an inversion of what actually occurred. It was the Democrats who were more obsessed about slavery, because they had the disadvantage of trying to appease all regions. The Republicans were reasonably unified on that point, and were able to broaden their appeal. Their pitch spoke to more than race and slavery. In an eerie foreshadowing, they campaigned on three other ideas that have a remarkably contemporary feel: First, economic planks to suit each regionprotective tariffs, agricultural colleges, and internal improvements. Second, both Democratic corruption and the manifest inadequacy of the Buchanan Administration. Third, assurances to emigrants from other countries that the Republicans would protect them from adverse legislation. Trade, infrastructure, immigrants, and race. Amazing that a century and a half later, we are still arguing vociferously about the same issues, just moving the chess pieces a bit.

The rest, as they say, is history, a sad history. The South made it clear before the election that it would not accept Lincoln. In effect, they no longer trusted democracy. Perhaps they implicitly took heed of an observation Nevins made in The Emergence of Lincoln: If you added the Lincoln and Douglas popular votes, you had a decisive public expression against the expansion of slavery beyond the states it was already in. And Nevins quotes an illuminating point by Supreme Court Justice John A. Campbell, a Southerner, who noted that the grievances that the South most acutely felt were either not material or not remediable. On the one thing the South desperately wantedan end to discussion about the slavery issue and resistance to its spreadthe North could not yield. Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address, summed up the result Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

The great, mythical monster, the Kraken, was looselured, as it always is, by the arrogance and foolishness of men.

Of that, we always seem to have an abundant supply. History has an uncomfortable way of repeating itself.
Emily Underwood in Science:

In 2010, neurobiologist Beth Stevens had completed a remarkable rise from laboratory technician to star researcher. Then 40, she was in her second year as a principal investigator at Boston Childrens Hospital with a joint faculty position at Harvard Medical School. She had a sleek, newly built lab and a team of eager postdoctoral investigators. Her credentials were impeccable, with high-profile collaborators and her name on an impressive number of papers in well-respected journals.

But like many young researchers, Stevens feared she was on the brink of scientific failure. Rather than choosing a small, manageable project, she had set her sights on tackling an ambitious, unifying hypothesis linking the brain and the immune system to explain both normal brain development and disease. Although the preliminary data shed gathered as a postdoc at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, were promising, their implications were still murky. I thought, What if my model is just a model, and I let all these people down? she says.

Stevens, along with her mentor at Stanford, Ben Barres, had proposed that brain cells called microglia prune neuronal connections during embryonic and later development in response to a signal from a branch of the immune system known as the classical complement pathway. If a glitch in the complement system causes microglia to prune too many or too few connections, called synapses, theyd hypothesized, it could lead to both developmental and degenerative disorders.

Since then, finding after finding has shored up and extended this picture.

More here.
Kenya to host ministerial conference on innovation

As interest in integrating ICT in education grows, Kenya is set to play host to a ministerial conference that will discuss innovation.

The event, Innovation Africa Summit, is organized by AfricanBrains, a division of the international Brains Network Group who are dedicated to attracting investment into education and technology in Africa through building public-private partnerships.

The summit will be under the patronage of the Ministry if Education, Science and Technology.

AfricanBrains Managing Director John Glassey said in an interview that the summit is expected to bring together Education and ICT sectors government officials from more than 40 countries on the continent.

During last years summit in Kampala, Uganda, more than 220 government officials were in attendance. Nairobis conference is hence expected to bring in more people, he said.

The conference is being supported by companies such as Microsoft  who are the main event partners  Samsung, Lenovo, Huawei, and Canon among others.

The summit will be riding on the successes of previous summits that have been hosted in Nairobi during the last 12 months.

Such include the just concluded UNCTAD 14 Ministerial Conference and the World Trade Organization ministerial conference in December last year among others. It also comes at a time when Kenya is preparing to host the 6th Tokyo International Conference of Africas Development (TICAD VI).

We are encouraged to be working with African Brains who have established this powerful meetings-based format whereby such engagement produces genuine output and purpose, Matiangi said in the statement.

The summits aim is, among others, meant to promote greater investment into education in Africa and stimulate key sectors for information, communications, technology, innovation, scientific research and e-business.

This means that we shall be focusing on ICT for education, e-skills, developing the knowledge economy and African digital content among others.

The summit comes at a time when public primary schools in the country have started receiving laptops as part of the Governments 2013 Manifesto.

www.africanbrains.net
SAI Global Limited (ASX:SAI) (PINK:SGLOF) today announced a record net profit after tax of A$33.7M, an increase of 29.2% on last year's result. Continued organic growth plus contributions from recent acquisitions combined to produce revenue growth of 21.1% to A$392.2 million despite the impact of the stronger Australian dollar relative to the prior period. EBITDA increased to A$76.1M, up 18.4% on FY09. Operating cash inflows were strong, up 34.3% to A$51.5M.
The Australian shares were stronger after an unexpectedly improved employment data. The market was also helped by a rise in Rio Tinto shares on expectation that it would follow its BHP Billiton in reporting upbeat earnings. At the close, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index closed 40.9 points, or 0.91 per cent higher, at 4554.3 points while the broader All Ordinaries index rose 42.8 points, or 0.94 per cent, to 4575.8 points.
The Australian sharemarket posted a sharp loss for second straight day to a one-month closing low on Friday. The market pressured by worries about a slowdown in China and concerns over U.S. President Barack Obama's proposed stricter regulations on banks. At the close, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index and the broader All Ordinaries index both tumbled 1.6 per cent. For the week, the ASX 200 fell 3.2 per cent, its worst weekly return in 12 weeks.
Sojitz Corporation is a Japan-based holding company engaged in the trading and distribution of goods. The Company operates in six core business segments. The Machinery and Space Aeronautics segment offers automobiles and automobile parts, construction and industrial machinery, power-generating equipment, bearings, marine vessels and airplanes. The Energy and Metal Resources segment provides petroleum and gas, petroleum products, aluminum, coal, iron, zinc, bronze and tin. The Chemicals and Synthetic Resins segment offers organic and inorganic chemicals, fine chemicals, chemical fertilizers, cosmetics, industrial salt and plastic molding machines. The Construction and Timber segment is engaged in purchase, sale, leasing, brokerage and management of real estate. The Lifestyle segment offers cover textiles, non-woven fabrics, marine products, foodstuffs and bedding products. The Overseas Corporation Segment has operating locations worldwide that deal with various products and services.
Asian Activities Report for May 5, 2011 includes: Cape Alumina Limited (ASX:CBX) has finalised access agreements with western Cape York Aboriginal land owners in the Company's Bauxite Hills mine and port project area; Aphrodite Gold Limited (ASX:AQQ) announced further significant results from its flagship Aphrodite Gold Project in Western Australia; Mozambi Coal Limited (ASX:MOZ) has commenced an initial coal drilling programme on the Tete West project in Mozambique; Kibaran Nickel Limited (ASX:KNL) has commenced drilling at the Kagera Nickel project in Tanzania.
The folks at WESST never stop thinking of new ways to help small businesses succeed and thus strengthen New Mexicos economy.

The 27-year-old nonprofits newest partnership is with New Mexico Angels  a 501(c)6 organization that, besides its educational and promotional mission, acts as an intermediary between its members and early-stage businesses that present promising investment opportunities.

NMA (www.NMAngels.com) has been around since 1999. Just this year the organization began hosting office hours from 3 to 5 p.m. on the first Monday of each month at the WESST Enterprise Center in Albuquerque so entrepreneurs can seek information and advice about financing and angel investing.

On a mission

New Mexico Angels are affluent individuals and groups of individuals that invest their own money into growing businesses in expectation of sharing the prosperity when that company attains market leadership and goes public or is sold. In return for taking that risk, angel investors seek outstanding returns within a short period.

The companies that typically benefit from angel investment are startups or companies poised for rapid growth. Such companies lack the track record to qualify for traditional loans, and this makes angel investors an important resource for entrepreneurs looking for sufficient capital to take a business to the next stage.

Angel investors are not as risk-averse as institutional lenders, but they attempt to minimize their losses by doing a substantial amount of due diligence before investing. And, because they have a stake in the enterprise, angel investors expect to assist the business by serving on its board, offering contacts and sharing their business and investment expertise.

NMA is not a venture fund and doesnt make direct investments. Rather, its an intermediary between the entrepreneur and the angel investors in its network, negotiating terms and brokering deals. But the organization collaborates with many national venture-capital firms; if additional financing is necessary after the initial capital infusion, NMA will help the company connect with potential later-stage investors.

NMA has invested more than $11.5 million in New Mexico businesses in the 17 years since its formation.

A good match

NMAs entrepreneurial advocacy is compatible with the goals of WESST, and the new collaboration makes sense for both organizations.

WESST has nurtured and financed small businesses since its formation, offering loans and advice to aspiring entrepreneurs in six sites around the state and providing a space for emerging businesses at its mixed-use incubation facility in Downtown Albuquerque. Some of the money available for WESST loans comes from the New Mexico Small Business Investment Corp., the organization that manages a self-sustaining fund designed to promote economic development by providing equity and debt capital to small businesses around the state.

The NMA office hours at the Enterprise Center  with WESST employees also available to answer basic questions about starting or growing a business  allow entrepreneurs one-stop shopping for a full range of services. No reservation is needed, as the service is first come, first served.

For more information about the New Mexico Angels office hours, visit www.wesst.org/event/nm-angels-office-hours-at-wesst/.

Finance New Mexico assists individuals and businesses with obtaining skills and funding resources for their business or idea. To learn more, go to www.FinanceNewMexico.org.
Two years ago, a teenager named Ruby Scott ordered a chicken korma from a restaurant in the north of England. She asked the server if the dish contained peanuts and received assurances it did not. She took a bite.

My throat started to swell and I started getting very panicky, she later told the BBC. Fortunately, paramedics arrived in time to administer a lifesaving shot. Still, when her mother saw her in the hospital, she didnt recognize me at first because I was covered in hives and purple by this point.

Shortly after Scotts harrowing experience, the restaurant received a visit from an officer of the local Trading Standards office, the English agency tasked with policing retail sales. The officer ordered a dish, requesting that it be peanut-free, and was served a dish containing peanuts, according to a story in The Telegraph. That was enough to trigger an official warning to the restaurant that customers must be clearly informed whenever a dish contained peanuts.

That particular restaurant was one of six owned by Mohammed Zaman. A week after Zaman received the official warning, Paul Wilson ordered a take-out chicken tikka masala from another of Zamans restaurants. Wilson, who had a lifelong severe allergy to peanuts, specifically requested no nuts. The restaurant staff dutifully wrote no nuts on his order and again on the outside of his take-out container. Despite Wilsons precautions and the restaurants reassurances, the dish contained ground peanuts. Wilsons body reacted as violently as Scotts had done, but he was eating alone in his flat. No one called an ambulance.

After Wilsons death, another Trading Standards officer went to one of Zamans restaurants and once again ordered a meal without nuts. Laboratory testing established that, after everything that had happened, the no nuts dish still contained ground peanuts.

As the Journal reported last May, Zaman created English legal history by becoming the first restaurant owner ever prosecuted for killing a customer. A jury convicted him of manslaughter and he was sentenced to six years in prison. (Given the novelty of the prosecution and severity of the sentence, its reasonable to expect an appeal, and so Zamans case is probably not over yet.)

What would happen if the same sequence of events occurred in New Mexico? If a restaurant owner who exhibited Zaman-like levels of unconcern about his customers well-being even after repeated warnings could plausibly be charged with involuntary manslaughter. Thats the lowest degree of criminal homicide recognized in New Mexico, reserved for unintentional killings.

As occurs with surprising frequency in this state, the statute enacted by the Legislature and the jury instruction approved by the Supreme Court disagree as to the essential elements of the crime. Because the judiciary always has the last word in criminal cases, the courts version of involuntary manslaughter is the only one that counts.

To establish involuntary manslaughter, the Supreme Court requires proof that the killer should have known of the danger involved and acted with a willful disregard for the safety of others. Both standards seem easily met in Zamans case, always assuming he was informed and gave the orders. After a medical emergency in one of his restaurants followed by an explicit warning from a government official, his staff continued to misrepresent the contents of the dishes they served. Its difficult to exhibit disregard for the safety of customers more willfully than that.

Most food allergies and sensitivities dont kill, thankfully. The autoimmune condition known as celiac disease produces a long list of symptoms ranging in severity from unpleasant to chronic, but sudden death upon exposure to gluten is not one of them. Even when a customer survives the ingestion of misrepresented food, however, criminal charges remain a theoretical possibility under New Mexicos Food Act, which makes it a special penalty misdemeanor to sell adulterated or misbranded foods. A creative prosecutor might even figure out a way to classify the act as battery.

Realistically, though, a restaurant owner who falsely represents dishes as nut-free or gluten-free or anything else-free probably has more to worry about from regulatory agencies. State regulations and Albuquerque ordinances prohibit the sale of adulterated and mislabeled food, and the citys Environmental Health Department provides an online complaint form.

A civil lawsuit is also a possibility. A person who runs up medical charges as a result of eating a misrepresented restaurant dish may have a good legal claim under any number of legal theories, ranging from products liability to breach of warranty to the Unfair Trade Practices Act, with plain old negligence always available as a backup. If the worst comes to pass, the persons survivors can sue for wrongful death. But if medical costs havent been incurred, a civil claim is unlikely to be economically viable unless it can be combined with others in a class action.

Luckily, its easy for restaurants to avoid all such risk. All they need to do is make sure their menu descriptions match reality and their servers answer patrons questions fully and honestly. As long as restaurants meet those undemanding standards, the rest of us can count ourselves lucky to be living in an era of informative menus. It makes life so much easier for patrons when frequently troublesome ingredients such as peanuts are clearly identified.

The existence of Yelp listings for best gluten-friendly restaurants in Albuquerque and the like suggests honest labeling is also good for business, bringing in customers who might otherwise never learn of a restaurants existence. Printing little letters such as V and GF next to the description of a dish is an easy way for a restaurant to earn customers goodwill. Just so long as theyre accurate.
SANTA TERESA  Beneath the growing industrial development, under the homes sprouting at the urban edge of West Texas, below the often-dry Rio Grande, sits an immense hydrogeologic bowl that water experts say contains more water than the region may ever need  a seductive claim in the desert.

Now read the fine print: Only the top skim across much of the resource known as the Mesilla Bolson is fresh water, and experts say that the good water could be gone in a decade or so.

The rest is brackish, according to John Hawley, an independent hydrogeologist who has been studying the region since the 1960s, an incredible amount of old water that dates back to the Ice Age that is optimum for desalination.

The demands on this interconnected system of surface water and groundwater in the Mesilla Bolson are growing year by year from the three jurisdictions atop it: New Mexico, Texas and Mexico.

Regional water experts say the freshwater cap could turn increasingly salty within 10 to 15 years and, at a minimum, that amount of time would be needed to plan and build a desalination plant that could turn the brackish resource into potable water.

But Santa Teresa business leaders say those estimates may be based on inaccurate, inflated growth projections and that there is enough fresh water to fuel plans for slow-but-steady growth over the next two decades. A desalination plant  which could cost tens of millions of dollars  will only be financially feasible when there are enough customers to pay for it, they say.

It looks like to me that the problem is a 10-year to 12-year problem, not a 30-year problem because its an aquifer that is being utilized both by Texas and by Mexico, said Mike Hightower, a Sandia National Laboratories civil engineer who studies water as a national-security and environmental-sustainability issue. Without the agreements in place to manage that, youre going to end up with somebody inappropriately withdrawing all the fresh water. These current wells that may not be projected to become brackish for 30 years down the road could become brackish in half the time.

The urgency, experts say, could be exacerbated by a Special Masters recommendation that the U.S. Supreme Court side with Texas and the U.S. in their claim that groundwater pumping in southern New Mexico is depleting the Rio Grande of water that belongs to Texas. If the court accepts the recommendation, the case will proceed.

Water is of supreme concern to everybody because we live in a desert, said Jerry Pacheco, president of the Santa Teresa-based Border Industrial Association. Given the projections we have created for the next 20 years, if the growth projections are correct, we have enough water rights to be able to service that. As to what the Supreme Court case does to everybody, its really up in the air.

The Camino Real Regional Utility Authority, which delivers water to municipal and industrial customers in Santa Teresa and Sunland Park, is primarily focused on day-to-day operations, said Executive Director Brent Westmoreland, who added that with regard to desalination, There will be a time when CRUUA will be faced with that issue.

Elephant Butte Irrigation District groundwater resource manager Erek Fuchs summed up local irrigators concerns about growth in Santa Teresa and Sunland Park.

When they drill new wells, and as additional industry, residential and related actvity occurs down there, he said, then the groundwater pumping to service that demand is going to affect the river.

Agricultural interests  the chile and onion fields of Hatch and sprawling pecan orchards of the Mesilla Valley  are the largest users of river water, drawing 100 percent of the total Rio Grande water consumed in southern New Mexico, according to Phil King, a professor of civil engineering at New Mexico State University.

EBID favors a desalination plant in southern Dona Ana County but doesnt want to take the lead, Fuchs said. But is there enough water for all the new development?

Not without impairing somebody else, he said.

The competing interests for surface water and groundwater dont just pit New Mexico against Texas and Mexico; its farmers versus industrial and municipal expansion, with the export hub of Santa Teresa at the heart of it.

Water delivery system

Where the wide Rio Grande bends over the state line, the river is essentially a highway: a conduit for delivering water from New Mexico to Texas, and eventually Mexico.

The water only runs in this riverbed for an appointed number of days each summer  down to 75 days from flows that lasted eight months before 2003  during which time water is diverted by southern New Mexico farmers and what remains moves southeast.

The Rio Grande Project reservoir at Elephant Butte is at less than 10 percent capacity; the Bureau of Reclamation controls the release of water.

A 2016 Bureau of Reclamation report, Managing Water in the West, affirmed that the growing imbalance between supply and demand is expected to lead to a greater reliance on nonrenewable groundwater resources. Increased reliance on groundwater resources will lead to greater losses from the river into the groundwater system.

Santa Teresa businesses depend on fresh water from the Mesilla Bolson. So do the fast-expanding neighborhoods of Sunland Park and El Pasos west side. So do industrial and municipal users in the booming factory town of Ciudad Juarez across the border in Mexico. And so does New Mexicos $182.5 million pecan industry and other irrigators during the long months when the river is dry.

Every drop that CRRUA slurps out of the Bolson to service Santa Teresa and Sunland Park must be paid back to the river in offsets, some of which come from treated wastewater being put back in the Rio Grande  a practice that King says is a Ponzi scheme that will be unsustainable in the long run.

You can pump out 15,000 acre feet but you are putting 7,500 acre feet (of treated wastewater) back in the river, so you can pump another 7,500 acre feet and so on, King said. Its a shell game.

Santa Teresa and Sunland Park are essentially engaged in a water-mining operation that is masking the effect of drought, King said. Before they run out of water, (the wells) will salt up.

El Paso relies on desalination

Nearby El Paso boasts the nations largest inland desalination plant, with capacity to treat more than 27 million gallons per day. Ed Archuleta, the former chief executive of El Paso Water Utilities, spearheaded the citys desalination effort.

At one time we were pumping a lot of water from the Hueco Bolson east of the city, about 80,000 acre feet per year in the 1980s, he said in a 2009 presentation at NMSU that was published in the Journal of Transboundary Water Resources. It was our principal source of water in El Paso.

With conservation efforts and the desalination plant, groundwater pumping dropped to below 30,000 acre feet per year and the bolson, which was dropping at the rate of a foot or two per year, stabilized, he said.

Hightower estimates the capital costs of building a desalination plant could run $3 to $4 gallon, meaning a 20 million gallon-a-day facility could cost between $60 million and $80 million. But operating costs would run closer to $3 to $4 per thousand gallons  not much different than what a lot of people are beginning to pay for new sources of water, he said. Its consistent with what municipalities in the Southwest are paying for new, supplemental sources of water.

King notes that technological advances are bringing the costs down.

Hightower envisions for a smaller-scale approach that would see two or three facilities desalinating 5 million or 10 million gallons a day in lieu of a single huge plant. Alternatively, he said, there are modular technologies that are commercially available and offer even smaller scale.

EBID Manager Gary Esslinger recommends a similar approach: drilling a test well and placing a skid-mounted mini-desalination plant of the kind tested at a Bureau of Reclamation facility in Alamogordo.

All they need to do is verify that its there, he said of the brackish water. Just see if its doable. If growth comes, then they have something to go on. It would let the Rio Grande heal. We have all these straws in the valley. But if we have a brackish supply, and we can reduce the pumping, then it sustains it for awhile.

Taking the lead

But who could or should spearhead such an effort?

Water managers and experts point to the Border Industrial Association, the trade group that represents more than 100 industry members in Santa Teresa; or the CRRUA water utility. They also say it is unlikely that any desalination effort could be accomplished without vision and backing from the Legislature or Governors Office.

Pacheco agrees that the industrial base may one day consider taking on such a project but reiterates the slow pace of growth. The need just isnt there yet, he said.

We are growing the industrial base by a net 200 to 500 jobs per year, he said. Are more people than that moving over here into the valley? I would assume yes. But were not in the business of going to recruit water-intensive users.

Most of the companies locating in Santa Teresa are components manufacturers, as well as warehousing and logistics services providers tied to the maquila industry in Ciudad Juarez and the new Union Pacific intermodal rail hub.

Chris Lyons, the major landowner in Santa Teresa who is developing the new Westpark industrial park and has plans for future residential development, said, We want to be the model for water conservation in whatever we do out here.

I think Santa Teresa is going to grow, but I think its going to grow within reason and logic  maybe 50,000 people in 30 or 40 years, Pacheco said.

Hightower offers a caveat.

You better think about it 10 years before you want to start it, he said, and you want to start it 10 years before you really need it. If you need it all of a sudden, then its too late.
ATLANTA  The suspect in the killing of five people at a home in Alabama attacked them while they slept and then abducted his estranged girlfriend and an infant  both of whom were found alive, authorities said Sunday.

It could take investigators days to sort out the grisly murder scene in Citronelle, a small town 30 miles northwest of Mobile. Authorities said the dead included a pregnant woman and were found Saturday afternoon inside the home.

The crime was of a magnitude rarely if ever seen in this corner of rural, southern Alabama, Mobile County sheriffs Capt. Paul Burch said.

Its unprecedented here, Burch told The Associated Press.

Earlier, Burch told reporters at the scene that investigators expect to be at the scene for a couple days. Its obviously a horrific scene, he said.

Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich told reporters near the scene that in her 20-year career as a prosecutor, shes never encountered a crime where there were five people who were brutally and viciously murdered, and thats what we have here.

She said multiple weapons were used.

Derrick Dearman, 27, of Leakesville, Mississippi, was taken into custody after he walked into the sheriffs office in Greene County, Mississippi, about 20 miles west of Citronelle, Burch said. Dearman was accompanied by his father when he showed up at the sheriffs department and surrendered Saturday afternoon, the Alabama sheriffs office said in a statement.

Dearman has confessed to the crimes, Burch told the news site Al.com.

Hes been cooperative, Burch told the AP on Sunday.

Dearman will be charged with six counts of capital murder, Mobile County sheriffs spokeswoman Lori Myles said Sunday. Five counts stem from the killing of the adults, and the additional count is because one of the slaying victims, 22-year-old Chelsea Marie Reed, was 5 months pregnant, Myles said.

The other four killed were identified by sheriffs officials as Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; and Robert Lee Brown, also 26.

Prosecutors have already begun the process of trying to extradite Dearman from Mississippi to Alabama, Burch said on Sunday. The sheriff of Greene County, Stanley McLeod, could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Though connections between Dearman and the five people killed were not immediately clear, investigators have determined that his ex-girlfriend, Laneta Lester, had gone to the home on Aug. 19 to get away from an abusive relationship with Dearman, the sheriffs office said in a statement. Lester was staying with a relative there.

Around 1 a.m. Saturday, someone inside the residence called 911 and reported that Dearman was on the property, the statement said. Citronelle police came to the house, but Dearman had left before the officers arrived, sheriffs officials said.

Later, sometime between 1:15 a.m. and daylight Saturday, Dearman returned to the home and attacked the victims while they were sleeping, the statement said. After the killings, Dearman forced Lester and the 3-month-old infant  the child of the one of the murder victims  into a vehicle at the residence. The three drove to the Mississippi home of Dearmans father.

After they arrived there, Dearman released Lester and the infant and then turned himself in at the Mississippi sheriffs department, Burch said.

Dearman has some criminal history, including an active warrant for a burglary charge, Burch said.

The killings happened about 150 miles southwest of Rutledge, Alabama, another town in the southern part of the state where six family members were found shot to death at their rural home on Aug. 26, 2002.

In that case, Westley Devon Harris was given a death sentence after being convicted of slaughtering his girlfriends relatives. Prosecutors said he was angry because he thought they were trying to keep him away from her.

After the killings, he fled with his girlfriend and child. The girlfriend, who was 16 at the time, ended up testifying against Harris.
ATLANTA  Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson insists he wont be a volunteer apologist for Donald Trump or anyone else who utters something stupid, but that defiant independence is being sorely tested by the GOP presidential nominees sinking support and Democrat Hillary Clintons push into surprisingly competitive Georgia.

The down-ballot Senate race involving the affable, two-term Isakson wasnt ranked as poachable for Democrats despite the changing demographics in the southern state and the higher, diverse turnout of a presidential election year. After all, reliably Republican Georgia has only voted for a Democratic presidential candidate once since 1980.

That was Bill Clinton in 1992.

Recent polls show Trump and Hillary Clinton locked in a tight race as the Democrat opens a campaign office in the state and invests in a field organization. Isakson holds a single-digit lead over first-time candidate Jim Barksdale, a wealthy investment manager whose opposition to trade deals and calls for a higher minimum wage has attracted backers of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate.

The 71-year-old Isakson, who disclosed he has Parkinsons disease, sought to shore up his support with Republicans while appealing to independents and Democrats. He made a two-day trip around the state in late July to highlight the Georgia Chamber of Congress endorsement with low-key stops at large companies in five cities to tour factory floors and talk with employees.

In metro Atlanta recently, Isakson talked about his Senate work to members of a Rotary club, a business group and a Realtors association.

Questions about Trumps more divisive comments proved inevitable. Isakson says hell support the GOP ticket but wont answer for the nominee.

If Donald Trump or anybody else makes a stupid statement, Im not going to be their apologist and let the press beat up on me, Isakson said in an interview with The Associated Press. Theyll have to go to the person who made the stupid statement. Ill apologize when I do something stupid because I should. But Im not going to be the volunteer apologist for anybody else.

He says he doesnt expect a lot of coattails from either partys presidential ticket.

Isaksons supporters, including some still struggling to wholeheartedly support Trump, said they believe the incumbent can go it alone. Ben Hinson, a retired business owner from Macon, said he plans to support Trump because Clinton is the alternative, but he does worry that independents will be driven away from the overall GOP ticket.

I think Johnnys stronger in Georgia than any presidential candidate this year, Hinson, 64, said. I dont see any upside to him getting close to Mr. Trump. I think Sen. Isakson can run his race quite on his own.

With a $4 million cash advantage, his first ad of the general election made a direct pitch to Democrats, focusing on Isaksons response to the 2009 murder of Georgian Kate Puzey while volunteering in the west African country of Benin for the Peace Corps.

Puzeys mother, Lois, says at the end of the ad: Im a lifelong Democrat. I am so grateful that he was my senator.

Jason Anavitarte, a 38-year-old health care executive from northwest Paulding County, said Isakson has support across party lines and pointed to Democratic Rep. David Scotts plans to vote for Isakson. Scott, who is African-American, and Isakson have worked together for decades since serving in the state legislature. Anavitarte, a Republican, said that relationship is representative of Isaksons personal appeal.

It comes back to the idea that all politics is local, he said.

The race could go into overtime with Isakson, Barksdale and libertarian Allen Buckley. Georgia law requires the top vote-getter to win more than 50 percent of the vote in November. If no one reaches that threshold, Barksdale and Isakson likely will wind up in a nine-week runoff.

In 2008, Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss survived a three-week runoff after falling just short of 50 percent in a three-person general election. Republican Paul Coverdell narrowly defeated sitting senator Wyche Fowler Jr. in 1992.

With a personal investment of $3 million, Barksdales ads show the 63-year-old Republican-turned-Democrat wearing a flat-brim cap and declaring it proof hes not a politician.

Hes pretty much the main reason Im going to vote this November, said Scott Brown, a 31-year-old Sanders delegate from Duluth. At this point, Im trying not to pay attention at all to the presidential election. Im hoping to work for a new Congress and get Bernie-crats like Jim Barksdale elected.

Barksdale said in an interview that hes focused on building his profile statewide against a well-known incumbent. His campaign sees an opportunity to woo unaffiliated voters turned off by Trumps style, but so far hasnt made it their focus.

Polling has gotten within single digits  for somebody whos relatively unknown, Barksdale said. If we get the name identity up, and people have a chance to see me, I think theyre going to see that Im a good choice.

Paige Hunter, a 26-year-old who works in human resources for a school district, met Barksdale for the first time at a young voters group meeting this month. She was happy to hear him talk about reducing health care costs and maintaining the Affordable Care Act.

I think people forget just two governors ago, we were still a blue state, Hunter said.

___

Follow Kathleen Foody at http://twitter.com/katiefoody. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/kathleen-foody.
MINNEAPOLIS  In a story Aug. 21 about pills found at Princes estate after his death, The Associated Press misidentified a synthetic drug found in some pills. It was U-47700, not U-4770.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Official: Pills found at Princes estate contained fentanyl

An official close to the investigation says some pills taken from Princes estate in Paisley Park after his death were counterfeit drugs that actually contained the powerful opioid fentanyl

By AMY FORLITI

Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS  Some of the pills taken from Princes estate in Paisley Park after his death were counterfeit drugs that actually contained fentanyl  a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin, an official close to the investigation said Sunday.

The official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, said nearly two dozen pills found in one Aleve bottle were falsely labeled as Watson 385. According to Drugs.com, that stamp is used to identify pills containing a mix of acetaminophen and hydrocodone, but the official said at least one of the pills tested positive for fentanyl.

Autopsy results released in June show Prince died April 21 of an accidental fentanyl overdose. The official who spoke to the AP said records show the 57-year-old Prince had no prescription for any controlled substances in the state of Minnesota in the 12 months before he died.

Authorities are still investigating how Prince obtained the drugs.

Fentanyl has been responsible for a surge in overdose deaths in some parts of the country. When made into counterfeit pills, users dont always know theyre taking fentanyl, increasing the risk of fatal overdose.

The Star Tribune first reported about the mislabeled pills in a story published on its website late Saturday.

Some of the dozens of pills seized from Paisley Park were found to have other drugs in them, some were oxycodone or codeine, and some were not controlled substances.

About a dozen tablets were found in a dressing room at Paisley Park, but the vast majority was in bottles of aspirin and Vitamin C that had been tucked inside a suitcase and bags  including one Prince often carried with him. Some pills were also found loose in the bag, the official said.

One pill with the Watson 385 stamp tested positive for fentanyl, lidocaine and another drug. Officials found nearly two dozen pills similar to the one that was tested, the official said.

Another aspirin bottle had more than 60 counterfeit tablets in it.

Some pills that were analyzed contained fentanyl, lidocaine and U-47700  a synthetic drug that is eight times more powerful than morphine.

Authorities also found a prescription bottle in someone elses name that contained 10 oxycodone pills, the official said, without revealing who was listed on the prescription.

The official said Prince had many of these pills with him on April 15 when the airplane he was on made an emergency stop in Moline, Illinois, after he fell ill from a suspected drug overdose as he was heading home from a performance in Atlanta. Prince was given two doses of Narcan, an antidote used to reverse suspected opioid overdoses, the official said.

U-47700 can be tested for in toxicology screens, but is not done routinely because it is a relatively new chemical. Presence of the drug was not tested in Princes case, but the levels of fentanyl in his system were more than enough to be toxic, the official said.

Tests on Prince prior to his death did not show fentanyl in his system, which means he wasnt a long-time abuser of that drug, but likely took the fatal dose sometime in the 24 hours before he died, the official said.

The official did not elaborate on those tests. But at least one doctor, Michael Todd Schulenberg, saw Prince on April 7 and again on April 20, the day before he died. According to a search warrant, he told a detective he had ordered tests for Prince and prescribed medications. Schulenbergs attorney, Amy Conners, has said patient-privacy laws do not allow her to say what the prescriptions were.

The autopsy report also shows Prince had diazepam, lidocaine and hydrocodone acids in his body, the official said. Diazepam is an anti-anxiety pill sold as Valium. Its a sedative and can also be used to control seizures, which Prince suffered from as a child. Lidocaine is a local anesthetic.

___

Follow Amy Forliti on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/amyforliti. More of her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/amy-forliti
ISTANBUL  A child suicide bomber killed at least 51 people and wounded nearly 70 others at a Kurdish wedding party near Turkeys border with Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday, decrying the attack as an apparent attempt by Islamic State extremists to destabilize the nation by exploiting ethnic and religious tensions.

As of now, the preliminary conclusions by our governors office and the police establishment point to an attack by Daesh, Erdogan said, using another common term for IS.

It was clear that Daesh had such an organization in Gaziantep or was attempting to make room for itself in recent times, he said.

The bombing late Saturday in Gaziantep was the deadliest attack in Turkey this year.

It comes amid ongoing struggles between the government and Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, and as the country is still reeling from the aftermath of last months failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers.

Erdogan said immediately after the Gaziantep attack, which he blamed on IS, that any strategy meant to incite the citizens against each other along ethnic and religious lines will not work.

Later, addressing the nation before Istanbuls city hall, Erdogan said the attacker in Gaziantep was aged between 12 and 14. He said 69 people were wounded, with 17 of them in critical condition.

He again blamed the attack on the Islamic State, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The pro-Kurdish political party HDP condemned the attack on the wedding, which it said was attended by many of its party members.

It said in a statement that it was quite significant that the attack, which it also blamed on IS, came hours after the Kurdistan Communities Union, a militant organization that includes the PKK, announced plans to try to negotiate to end a three-decade conflict between Kurdish militants and the Turkish government.

This attack targets those determined and persistent in peace, resolution, and those struggling for democracy, equality, freedom and justice, the HDP said. The attack was planned to disable the spread of peace and success of possible negotiations.

A bus driver who shuttled some of the guests from Siirt to Gaziantep said that he couldnt believe the party was targeted.

This was a wedding party. Just a regular wedding party, Hamdullah Ceyhan told the state-run Anadolu Agency. This attack was deplorable. How did they do such a thing?

The bride and groom werent in life-threatening condition and were undergoing treatment, but the grooms sister and uncle were among the dead, Anadolu reported.

Multiple opposition parties denounced the attack, as did many foreign governments including the U.S., Germany, Austria, Russia, Egypt, Sweden, Greece, France, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan and global institutions including the United Nations, the European Union and NATO.

We stand by our ally Turkey and pledge to continue to work closely together to defeat the common threat of terrorism, said U.S. Ambassador to Turkey John Bass.

In the Vatican, Pope Francis led hundreds of people in silent prayer for the victims of the attack, concluding by asking for the gift of peace for everyone.

Security expert Metin Gurcan, a former Turkish military officer and columnist for the online newspaper Al-Monitor, said that IS view the attack as hitting two birds with one stone  as retaliation for Syrian Kurdish advances on their forces in Syria, and for Turkeys attacks on IS targets.

Gurcan said in an email to The Associated Press that IS has been trying to agitate or exploit ethnic and religious tensions in Turkey, and we know very well to what extent wedding attacks can sow disorder in nations social fabric from the Afghanistan experience.

The suicide bombing follows a June attack on Istanbuls main airport where IS suspects killed 44 people. A dual suicide bombing blamed on IS at a peace rally in Turkeys capital, Ankara, in October killed 103 people.

Meantime, there have also been ongoing attacks claimed by the PKK or linked to the militant group, as well as the coup attempt blamed on Gulens movement. Gulen has denied any involvement.

Earlier this week, a string of bombings blamed on the PKK that targeted police and soldiers killed at least a dozen people. A fragile, 2 year peace process between the PKK and the government collapsed last year, leading to a resumption of the three-decade-long conflict.

In the immediate aftermath of the Gaziantep bombing, Erdogan said there was absolutely no difference between IS, Kurdish rebels and Gulens movement, calling them terrorist groups.

Gurcan said, however, that it was a grave mistake to lump the three together.

Putting these three organizations with different political objectives, tactics and techniques into the same basket  causes the failure of tailoring specific counter strategies, he said.

Following the attack, police sealed off the site of the explosion and forensic teams moved in. Outside the perimeter, hundreds of residents gathered chanting Allah is great as well as slogans denouncing attacks.

Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek and the countrys health minister traveled to the scene, visiting the wounded and inspecting the site.

This is a massacre of unprecedented cruelty and barbarism, Simsek told reporters. We  are united against all terror organizations. They will not yield.

In Istanbul, HDP supporters organized a rally attended by hundreds Sunday evening to protest the bombing. One participant, shop owner Ercan Yilmaz, 36, told the AP it was always those kinds of people being targeted  a Kurdish wedding party, opposition groups or people calling for peace in Ankara, referring to the peace rally attacked in October.

On the other hand, the AKP (Turkeys ruling Justice and Development Party) has gatherings and rallies everywhere but theyre never bombed, he added.

___

David Rising in Berlin and Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed to this report.
Space junk is getting worse. Could the answer be smart plastic wrap?

That concept, being investigated by Aerospace Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., involves blasting thousands of tiny, flat spacecraft into orbit. There they would find and hug the bits and pieces of failed satellites and rockets, dragging them into the atmosphere to burn up.

There are more than 7,000 metric tons of material in the near-Earth space environment, said J.C. Liou, NASA chief scientist for orbital debris. It can slam into a operating satellite or spacecraft at 6 miles per second  faster than a speeding bullet  which means that even debris the size of a grain of sand could be catastrophic.

That was shown in 2009, when an operational Iridium satellite collided with an inactive Russian satellite, creating more than 2,000 large pieces of orbital debris and many smaller pieces.

The problem is growing as more nations and private companies get into the launch business. And it has spurred a number of creative solutions, including a giant net that would scoop up space junk and setting off a bomb to knock it out of orbit.

Most havent gotten past the development stage for a simple reason: No one wants to pay for them.

A Rand study on orbital debris published in 2010 found that although the space community agreed that space junk posed a risk, the lack of government and private industry funding to remove it suggested the perception of risk had not yet crossed a critical threshold that would prompt demands for remediation.

In other words, its going to take some expensive space disasters to make it worth investing in a fix.

Although NASA has funded some smaller technology development projects, it has yet to support demonstrations or operational missions, said Bill Ostrove, aerospace and defense analyst at market research firm Forecast International.

It doesnt really neatly fall under one particular organizations jurisdiction, he said. Its almost like a hot potato problem.

The technological challenges are daunting enough.

Aaron Ridley, professor of space physics at the University of Michigan, encountered this in 2010 during his collaboration with Raytheon BBN Technologies on a NASA grant.

The idea at the time was to fly a high-altitude balloon into the upper atmosphere and release a substantial amount of energy  basically detonating a bomb.

That energy would be channeled upward to increase the density of the atmosphere in a small, specific region where a piece of debris might travel. That was expected to result in giving the junk more drag and forcing it to drop to where it would burn up  thus removing the debris without launching a costly rocket.

But the idea proved infeasible. The amount of energy needed to increase the density in that very small area of the atmosphere was much greater than anticipated. Research also showed there was no way to keep the energy directed completely upward, rather than diffusing to the sides, Ridley said. NASA did not fund further investigations.

This was definitely outside the box, Ridley said.

Tethers Unlimited, a 40-employee aerospace and defense tech company based in Bothell, Wash., took a different approach, addressing the source of the debris.

It developed a tether and a tape that are attached to a satellite before launch and deployed at the end of a satellites life. That should increase its drag and pull it back into the atmosphere. The company also came up with a giant net that would capture objects already in space.

The tether was created in the late 1990s and early 2000s, around the time that large satellite constellations were proposed by companies such as Iridium and Teledesic. When many of those ambitious plans collapsed, Tethers Unlimited had to shelve its technology.

They were interested in the device, but when they all went bust, our market evaporated, company CEO Robert Hoyt said.

A new market could emerge with recent interest in launching small satellites and new constellations. Two of Tethers Unlimiteds Terminator Tape products have already launched on small satellites, with a few more set to launch this year, he said.

Debris removal technology is only about 5 percent of the companys business today. But if everything worked out with the new small-satellite boom, it could very easily be 10- or 100-fold bigger, Hoyt said.

Aerospace Corp.s plastic-wrap idea, called the Brane Craft, is being funded with an early stage grant from NASA. Though only in early theoretical stages, it could be a reasonably inexpensive way of taking out the trash, said Siegfried Janson, a senior scientist in Aerospaces micro-satellite systems department.

The Brane Craft would be a square, 1 meter wide and 1 meter high. Orbit data for documented debris would be uploaded to the craft, which would then navigate to the correct location through GPS. Once within about 650 feet of the target, on-board optical and radio-frequency sensors would lock on and help the craft get close enough for a hug.

Janson is researching nonfreezing propellants for the crafts many tiny ion engines to keep it active once it passes out of sunlight. When it finds an object, the spacecraft would fire those thrusters to drag the debris down to a lower orbit before dropping it.

Janson said he wants to apply for a phase-two NASA grant  which would involve building and testing of parts  after his current funding ends.

Establishing a junk-removal market also would require stricter enforcement of debris removal. Various regulations have been enacted by NASA, the U.S. government and other international agencies; one U.S. rule states that a spacecraft must be removed from orbit within 25 years of its missions end.

A 2009 paper on the risk and responsibility of space debris by Stanford University researchers Lawrence Wein and Andrew Bradley suggested that stricter enforcement of those regulations, as well as adding penalty fees, could deter future junk generation.

For these de-orbit technology and debris removal services to really have a market, the laws and regulations are still going to have to evolve where theres some teeth behind the regulations, said Hoyt of Tethers Unlimited.
CHICAGO  The perverse thing about ideologues is that theyre easy to dismiss when they say something blatantly outlandish.

About a week ago, Donald Trump said that President Obama was the founder of the Islamic State terrorist group, also known as ISIS. When a conservative radio host subsequently gave the GOP nominee a chance to back down, Trump doubled down, saying, No, I meant hes the founder of ISIS  I do  I dont care.  He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, OK?

Ridiculous. And few people took it seriously. And, in fact, the very next day Trump said he was being sarcastic.

Its far more frightening when Trump says things that contain a kernel of truth  and are worthy of careful consideration  like his comments about the manner in which we should screen people coming into the U.S.

During a speech in which he outlined his foreign policy platform, Trump suggested that our country should have an extreme vetting process for foreign nationals who attempt to enter the U.S., so we can ban terrorists and their sympathizers, those who believe in Shariah law, those who dont believe in the U.S. Constitution and those who support bigotry and hatred.

Lets get the obvious out of the way: With his polling numbers in the dumps, its safe to say that plenty of people believe that Trump is a prime example of someone who supports bigotry and hatred. Hatred toward Mexicans, Muslims, women, disabled people and the media, just to list a few.

But should such a vetting process be considered? Would it work?

Actually, the United States already does have a process for allowing a president to limit entry of any noncitizen deemed detrimental to the interests of the United States.

According to a Cornell University press tip sheet, Historically, presidents have suspended the entry into the United States, whether as immigrants or nonimmigrants, of noncitizens who advocate anti-democratic policies. Government officials from several African countries, the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Nicaragua, Nigeria and Panama have been affected by this provision. In fiscal year 2015, 46 nonimmigrants and one immigrant were declared inadmissible under this provision.

Would we really want to expand such powers?

How would such a test be designed? And how could it possibly be administered in a timely manner to each of the millions of people from all over the world who flow in and out of the country for legitimate business or pleasure? Would we be willing to pay the untold billions to significantly broaden these rules in exchange for a safer nation?

Scariest of all is the idea that a president who would take such extreme measures in the name of homeland security would impose those same ideological tests on legally present immigrants and refugees.

Its a problem to think about trying to vet every person for their commitment to some amorphous ideals that I think very few Americans would be able to agree on, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School. He told me that even if it didnt come to that, even just musing about ideological screening hurts immigrants. Mr. Trump only continues to hurt any prospects for comprehensive immigration. It will take a bipartisan consensus to fix our broken immigration system, and his rhetoric only makes the issue more partisan and therefore makes it harder to enact any meaningful reforms.

Yale-Loehr also wondered what would stop such tests from being expanded to U.S.-born citizens, but as it is, studies have shown that when Americans attempt the civics portion of the current immigrant naturalization test, one out of three U.S. citizens fails. A full 85 percent of 1,000 voting-age Americans could not define even simple terms such as the rule of law and 71 percent were unable to identify the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Wed have to expel untold millions of Americans who wouldnt be able to credibly support the U.S. Constitution because they dont really know what it is!

Its not wrong to want to keep out those who would do us harm  we should absolutely be thinking about better screening. But restricting entry to only those who can traverse (or fake) an ideological purity quiz doesnt even pass the smell test.
Cheap electricity sounds great. Free sounds even better. As someone once said, Such a deal!

From that perspective, the recommended decision by a Public Regulation Commission hearing officer on Public Service Company of New Mexicos rate-hike request sounds great, until you delve into the reasoning, precedent and policy.

Then it short circuits.

Hearing examiner Carolyn Glick recommended on Aug. 4 that PNM recover none  as in zero  of the money it has agreed to pay for leases already signed, at a lower cost than it paid before, to continue to procure 114 megawatts of power from the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona over the next eight years. That total will be about $160 million.

She also completely disallowed any recovery for the purchase of 64 megawatts of new power from Palo Verde to make up for capacity lost as PNM shuts down two units of the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station, part of an air-cleanup deal praised by both state and federal officials. Whether the purchase should be taken at market value as PNM suggests, or some lower figure such as book value, is a fair consideration. Zero is not.

Glick, a former Sierra Club member, also disallowed $52 million for pollution controls at San Juan that are required by the states air quality permit. In effect, she ruled they werent needed, as if a hearing officer can somehow trump what in effect is state law.

In all, she slashed PNMs rate hike request from an increase of $123.5 million to $41.3 million.

Glick said PNM didnt prove the nuclear power was the lowest-cost alternative. The problem with that is Palo Verde  in addition to being a zero-carbon source  is part of the Integrated Resource Plan the utility is required to work from. And even if recovery of the cost of the new power via the new transactions is disallowed, there is still nuclear in the portfolio  as there should be.

In addition to telling the commission the recommended decision will lead to layoffs and possibly a lower credit rating, PNM has objected to this decision via the filing of exceptions, and two of the major intervenors  an industrial consumer and an environmental group no less  agree in their exceptions that some reasonable value be set for the new Palo Verde purchase and/or leases. During the evidentiary portions of the lengthy rate case, there were no objections even raised to the half-price lease extensions.

PNM is likely not entitled to the full amount it has asked for. But Glicks recommended decision is so extreme that on its face it appears to be an unconstitutional taking.

The commission needs to do what it is charged to do: balance the interests of ratepayers and shareholders in an equitable way supported by precedent and evidence.

It should reject this decision and do that  and save itself a likely embarrassing result if PNM appeals to the state Supreme Court.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
The state Court of Appeals has reversed a 2014 court decision that would have forced the city of Albuquerque to pay $4.2 million to a fuel supplier.

The case centered on whether the city had improperly terminated a contract with MB Oil Ltd. Co.

City attorneys argued that the company wasnt always able to deliver the kinds of fuel the city wanted.

The company, in turn, argued that the city had grossly misestimated how much fuel it would need when soliciting bids, and the bad estimate caused problems for MB Oil.

In December 2014, state District Judge Carl Butkus sided with MB Oil. He found that the city of Albuquerque had negligently and recklessly overestimated how much fuel it would need  telling potential bidders, for example, that the city uses more than 10 million gallons a year, even though it never had used that much.

But the state Appeals Court reversed that decision last month. The contract termination was proper, the court said, especially given that the agreement included a clause allowing the city to end the contract at any time for its own convenience.

In a 16-page order, Appeals Court Judge Linda Vanzi said the convenience clause in the contract allowed termination without cause, though she noted that the city probably could have shown that termination was appropriate because MB Oil wasnt always able to meet the citys demand for unleaded fuel.

And it doesnt matter whether MB Oil deliberately refused to provide fuel or simply was unable to do so, Vanzi wrote.

The citys trucks cannot run on plaintiffs good intentions and, certainly from the citys perspective, there is little appreciable difference between plaintiffs willful refusal to deliver fuel and its frequent inability to timely deliver it, she said.

Judges James Wechsler and Roderick Kennedy concurred with the opinion.

Gilbert Montano, chief of staff for Mayor Richard Berry, said the city is pleased with the decision.

It makes clear that governments have the flexibility to manage public contracts in a way that best protects taxpayer funds, he said.
Jose Ismael Chavez was the perfect example of the ultimate success story in life, Hatch Police Chief James Trey Gilmer wrote in a letter read aloud at Chavezs funeral on Sunday.

He never let bumps in the road defeat him or deflate him, according to Gilmers letter.

Chavez, who was shot dead in the line of duty Aug. 12, was born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States about a decade ago. He wanted to serve in law enforcement and was told by the Dona Ana County Sheriffs Office that he needed a GED and U.S. citizenship, according to sheriffs spokeswoman Kelly Jameson.

He achieved both. He attended Dona Ana Community College and completed the sheriffs academy in July 2013. Soon after, he interviewed in Hatch.

Gilmers letter, which Jameson read aloud with Gilmer by her side, described Chavezs infectious smile that was unshakeable. He loved animals and gladly took on animal control duties in addition to his regular patrols.

He had a knack for catching dogs and cats without stressing the animals or getting bit, the letter said. He had an affinity for animals that ran deep.

Hatch Mayor Andy Nunez said, practically everyone in Hatch knew him because he was that kind of officer.

In a moment of humor, the letter read aloud described a man so physically fit and careful with his appearance that when his police unit got a flat tire he drove the vehicle all the way back to the department because he didnt want to get dirty changing a tire on the side of the road. His fellow officers used to joke that Chavez wasnt that muscular; it was only that he wore his shirts two sizes too small.

Chavez was described during the funeral service by officiant Nick Miller as having two goals in life: to make something of himself and serve his community. Miller added: Jose Chavez has done his duty.

He was a man committed to love, Las Cruces Diocese Bishop Oscar Cantu said.

The final actions of Officer Jose Ismael Chavez were actions of love, Cantu said. His last words were, Tell my mother that I love her. Tell my family that I love them. In his final moments, he was thinking of love.
BOWMAN, N.D.  Three people are in custody after a man was found dead in a motel in Bowman over the weekend.

Housekeeping staff at the El-Vu Motel found the body of a man in his early 20s from rural Bowman about midday Saturday. Authorities said there was a sizeable amount of blood in the room, and they have ruled the death a homicide.

It was obvious by the condition of the room that foul play was suspected, Police Chief Charles Headley said.

He did not immediately identify the victim, who authorities believe was killed sometime after midnight Friday. The body was taken to the State Laboratory in Bismarck for an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

A man and woman from Bowman and a man from Minnesota were taken into custody Saturday evening in Colorado and were awaiting extradition to North Dakota. They also were not immediately identified.

Bowman is a small town in the southwestern corner of North Dakota. About 1,650 people live there, according to the 2010 Census.

(Its) an extremely trying time for our community, Headley said.
LINCOLN, Neb.  Authorities say a former Broken Bow man has been imprisoned for lying about a sex assault conviction to housing officials.

The office of U.S. Attorney Deborah Gilg (gihlg) says in a news release that Robert Tipton Jr. was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Lincoln to two years in prison.

The release says Tipton and his girlfriend applied for public housing in Broken Bow in February 2014. The application was checked no to a question of whether anyone in the household had ever been convicted of a crime. He signed the application and attested to its accuracy.

The prosecutors release says Tipton was convicted in 2001 in Garfield County, Colorado, of felony sexual assault of a child. Federal regulations bar sex offenders from living in public housing.
DENVER  The Colorado State Patrol says one person was killed and two others were injured in a street racing crash north of Denver.

The crash happened Saturday in Adams County.

The state patrol says one car smashed into a light pole and the street-racing vehicles were running red lights.

Two people were taken to a hospital, and another refused treatment.

The names of the victims and their ages were not available.
FARMINGTON  Local public health officials are fighting a growing opiate epidemic as lawmakers in Congress debate how to fund the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act, a bipartisan bill passed in July that would strengthen prevention, treatment and recovery efforts nationwide.

The U.S. saw a four-fold increase in heroin-related overdose deaths between 2002 and 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New Mexico has the second-highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the country, second only to West Virginia, the CDC states, and 61 percent of those deaths resulted from an opiate, which includes heroin.

A rise in heroin use has paralleled an increase in the prescribing of opiate medication to treat chronic pain, which the CDC says is contributing to the current epidemic.

Though the number of heroin-related arrests in San Juan County has grown in the past three years, methamphetamine remains the drug of choice in northwest New Mexico. And the meth problem appears to have significantly worsened in the past three years. Officials say opioid treatment efforts can be expanded to deal with other substance addictions.

Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-New Mexico, spoke with reporters Tuesday in a media conference call about the need for federal funding to address opiate addiction, a serious issue that is tearing apart the fabric of our communities.

In May, Lujan introduced the Opioid and Heroin Abuse Crisis Investment Act, which would authorize the expenditure of $1.2 billion over the next two years to combat heroin and prescription pill abuse.

The bill was co-sponsored by 90 Democratic House members, but it died in a subcommittee not long after it was introduced.

Lujan said Tuesday that congressional Republicans have stymied efforts to secure funding for the issue. Republicans have said funding should be addressed in the appropriations process.

Rep. Steve Pearce, R-New Mexico, said in an emailed statement that signing the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act, or CARA, into law was significant for states such as New Mexico.

For too long, drug abuse has plagued our communities, and it is time to put forward solutions that can help people affected by addiction, Pearce said. The bill passed by the House, Senate, and signed into law ensures Americans struggling with drug abuse have access to important resources in their local communities.

Pearce did not answer questions on how Congress would fund the bill.

San Juan County reported 111 overdose deaths from 2010 to 2014, a rate of about 18.2 deaths per 100,000 residents. New Mexico reported 2,464 overdose deaths in that same period, a rate of 24.3 deaths per 100,000 residents.

Sgt. Kevin Burns of the Region II Narcotics Task Force provided statistics that indicate the number of meth arrests more than doubled between 2013 to 2015, from 143 cases to 310 cases in 2015.

So far, there have been 157 meth arrests in 2016.

Meanwhile, the agency has reported only 110 heroin cases in the past three years.

Dr. Michael Botticelli, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, joined Lujan in Tuesdays media conference call.

Botticelli said that although funding from CARA would be focused on opiate treatment, the funding would expand the nations rehabilitation infrastructure and improve awareness of the need for treatment, which would also help in meth treatment.

I have been doing this work for a very long time, and I want to make sure that we are treating the spectrum of drug issues, Botticelli said.

Burns said the sharp increase in meth arrests was due in part to a significant drop in the price of the illicit stimulant, which is increasingly manufactured in Mexico and smuggled into the United States.

Right now, you can get a pound for $3,000 to $5,000, Burns said. Five years ago, it was nearly double that.

Burns cautioned that the arrest numbers reflect only the individuals who are caught, and heroin use is a growing problem.

Dr. Eric Ketcham of the San Juan Regional Medical Center has said he became aware of the opiate epidemic in 2009 when the hospitals emergency room began to see an increase in the number of opiate-dependent patients requesting narcotics.

In March, he became the medical director of New Mexico Treatment Services, a Farmington-based methadone and buprenorphine clinic.

Ketcham said the clinic currently treats 75 patients, about three-fourths of whom primarily used heroin before treatment. He said the majority of patients first used opiate medication, but then developed a habit and turned to heroin, which is cheaper and more easily accessible.

Many of our patients have been dependent on opiates for years, he said. Some started right away with heroin. Many started very young, when they were teenagers, and it was provided by friends and family members.

Ketcham said several people admitted into the clinic since it opened two years ago have managed to quit opiates, and many more have managed to maintain stable home environments and find work while in rehabilitation.

Once our patients are in treatment, they are back in school, they are back to work, they are not committing crimes, and they are healing with their families, Ketcham said. It really is amazing.

Brian Goodlett is program director of the treatment center, which also has offices in Albuquerque, Espanola and Santa Fe.

He said he sees more patients in San Juan County who use meth in combination with heroin, but otherwise addiction affects the community in the same way.

The thing that I always point out to people: we have this preconceived notion of what an opiate addict looks like, but the truth is the disease of addiction does not discriminate, Goodlett said. I have seen people from all walks of life, all incomes.

Both men said meth addiction was more difficult to treat than heroin. Unlike heroin, there is no drug replacement, like methadone or bupenorphine, that patients can receive while in treatment.

Goodlett and Ketcham both said they supported federal funding for CARA. Ketcham said the cost of treatment medication is high, and many patients do not have access to adequate care.

New Mexico Treatment Services is the only methadone clinic in San Juan County, and buprenorphine must be administered by a trained physician.

For every one dollar you invest in effective addiction treatment, it pays itself back seven times in the savings to society, in reduced health care costs and the cost of repeated incarceration, Ketcham said.

New Mexico Treatment Services is located at 607 E. Apache St. Individuals seeking treatment can contact the clinics hotline 24 hours a day at 505-360-6032.

Steve Garrison covers crime and courts for The Daily Times. He can be reached at 505-564-4644.



2016 The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.)

Visit The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) at www.daily-times.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

_____
Ruidoso police officers fatally shot an intoxicated Brownfield, Texas, man late Thursday night in a house on Carrizo Canyon Road, after what they called a domestic violence dispute in which he threatened some residents with a rifle.

A state Department of Public Safety news release said officers rescued approximately 15 other people from the house before they shot David Klassen, 29, after he ignored repeated orders to drop his .308 caliber rifle.

Klassen was taken to Lincoln County Medical Center and then to the University Medical Center in El Paso, where he died of his wounds early Friday morning.

The DPS release said at least one officer fired at Klassen, but it said DPS would not name any of the officers involved until interviews have been conducted.

The incident began at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday, when police responded to a 911 call from the residence.

Occupants in the residence recounted the male suspect . . . was intoxicated and had become violent and began threatening some residents with a rifle in his possession, the release said.

New Mexico State Police immediately took control of the investigation as required in officer involved shootings. They blocked off Carrizo Canyon Road from the area of the residence about a quarter mile west of the intersection with Sudderth Drive to South Hickory Drive.

By dawn on Friday, a dozen or more law enforcement vehicles surrounded the scene, including a crime scene investigation truck and a mobile command center.

Investigators in blue evidence gloves went in and out of the building on the south side of the road with equipment and tool kits.

The DPS release said that when the State Police Investigations Bureau completes its work, the case will be referred to a District Attorneys office for review.



2016 the Ruidoso News (Ruidoso, N.M.)

Visit the Ruidoso News (Ruidoso, N.M.) at www.ruidosonews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

_____
SAN ANTONIO  The president of a Texas university insists hes healthy and is threatening to sue after the universitys governing board placed him on medical leave because of uncharacteristic behavior and comments.

University of Incarnate Word President Louis Agnese Jr. told the San Antonio Express-News (http://bit.ly/2btxKoC ) that he received a brain scan at the request of school officials and has been medically cleared.

Board Chairman Charles Lutz issued a statement to the UIW community Thursday announcing the medical leave and said Agneses interactions with staff and others provoked considerable concern for his well-being.

Lutz says a three-month leave was approved at Agneses suggestion. But the president says it was never his idea and he wants the claims retracted.

Agnese said the boards action likely stems from a discrimination complaint filed against him.

___

Information from: San Antonio Express-News, http://www.mysanantonio.com
CAIRO  For five years fighting has raged in Syria, a globally resonant nightmare kept going in part by the insistence of Bashar Assads opponents that he must go despite their battlefield failures to force him from power. Now an inflection point may be at hand, with powerful opposition backer Turkey suggesting Assad, despite his brutality in the war, could play a role in an unspecified transition period.

The statement Saturday by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was nuanced: On one hand, Assad does not appear to be someone who can bring (Syrians) together  but on the other, there may be talks (with Assad) for the transition.

Until now, Syrias neighbor to the north was determined to see him out of power  providing refuge and supply lines for a variety of Syrian rebel groups and turning something of a blind eye to the use of its territory by Islamic State jihadis waging their own fight with Assad as well.

Turkey had several reasons for offering critical support to the rebellion. Though not an Arab state, Turkey is predominantly Sunni, like most of the rebels, and it naturally chafes at the domination of Syria by Assads Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam and part of a regional axis that includes Lebanons Hezbollah group and Iran. The government of President Recep Teyyip Erdogan is Islamist-rooted while Assad is avowedly secularist. And Turkey is a NATO member which until now has supported the Wests efforts to end the repressive authoritarian system in Damascus.

Erdogan is not naturally given to back down, but he is operating in perilously shifting ground.

The Syrian Kurds have emerged as the main force fighting the Islamic State group, affording them a great deal of autonomy in their enclave in the north of the country, bordering Turkey. The strengthening of the Syrian Kurds has in turn emboldened Turkeys own minority Kurds; thats a worrying development for Ankara, which has long tried to keep down Kurdish power and ambitions.

Nonetheless, after suffering a series of attacks on civilians which were blamed on IS, Ankara is now promising to more actively fight the jihadis as well. That would create a supremely awkward implicit alliance of Turkey and the Kurds  as well as Iran, Syria and the U.S.-led coalition. Its a situation many would be eager to keep brief.

Ankara is also tired of taking in Syria refugees; they now number over two million.

Perhaps most important: Erdogans strikingly repressive crackdown after the failed July military coup has been widely criticized by the West, prompting him to move closer to Russia; a friendly meeting two weeks ago with Vladimir Putin, Assads determined patron, commenced a rapprochement and seemed to hint at more to come.

Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst with the Eurasia Group consultancy, said Turkeys position on Assad is becoming significantly more flexible as Russia plays a more active role, and that the Syrian governments recent and unprecedented bombing of U.S.-backed Kurdish positions sought to show Ankara that Assad is the only serious partner who can guarantee that Syrias Kurds remain contained.

I think this is the beginning of a dance where both parties signal not only their willingness but ability as well to find areas of common interests in terms of containing the Kurds, Kamel said. We are in the process of bargaining and trying to find a settlement in which all parties have a win.

With so many Arab nations unravelling or sidelined by insurgencies, Turkey is poised for greater influence in the region despite the lingering resentments of heavy-handed colonial rule by its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. Yet for its new openness to Assad to prevail, it would need to be adopted by other players, primarily the mainstream Syrian rebels and the key powers of the West.

For the West, the notion of a determined shift to democracy held great appeal back in 2011, when the Arab Spring was in its infancy and idealistic hopes ran high. But that has changed with the serial failures across the region  a failed state in Libya, the rise of IS in multiple countries, never-ending wars in Yemen and Syria, the election of Islamists in Egypt followed by misrule and their ouster by the military.

Iraqs sectarian miseries have even lent some currency in the region to the notion that Saddam Hussein, brutal despot though he was, at least held together a unified state.

The Syrian war in particular has had disastrous consequences across a wide area: a half million killed, half the countrys population displaced, and millions of refugees flooding not only Turkey and other neighboring countries but also Europe, fueling xenophobia and economic difficulties. And it created bedfellows to discomfit Washington: Iran, astoundingly given its history, even recently allowed Russia to launch airstrikes from its territory in support of Assad.

The Syrian government, for its part, has unleashed all kinds of indiscriminate weapons against civilian areas in its quest for survival, using warplanes, so-called barrel bombs and siege-and-starvation methods that have resulted in the death of tens of thousands.

Yet the West, fearing another Middle Eastern quagmire, has wavered  stopping short of announcing a no-fly zone in northern Syria, not attacking Assads forces after blaming him for the use of chemical weapons, and hesitating to forcefully back and heavily arm the rebels. That landscape has proven a boon for Putin, whose support of Assad appears determined, strategic and successful when compared to the Western powers prevarications.

Viewed from that perspective, Western leaders may quietly come to the conclusion that the need to end the war could trump the need to be immediately rid of Assad. Nudging them in that direction is Assads central argument: that the most powerful of his opponents, the jihadi radicals of the Islamic State group, are, amazingly perhaps, the greater of the evils.

___

Karam reported from Beirut.
PORT HURON, Mich.  Canadian authorities stopped an invasion: 1,500 people on inflatable rafts and boats that drifted across the border from Michigan during high winds on the St. Clair River.

The 7.5-mile Port Huron Float Down is an annual event on the river that divides Michigan from Ontario, Canada. But the winds turned it into an international incident Sunday.

The event has no official organizer and poses significant and unusual hazards given the fast-moving current, large number of participants, lack of life jackets, and as was the case this year, challenging weather conditions, the Sarnia, Ontario, Police Service said on its website.

Police said it took hours for a bus service, Sarnia Transit, to transport approximately 1,500 U.S. citizens back to Michigan.

They were unprepared to be stranded anywhere, Staff Sgt. Scott Clarke told the Times Herald (http://bwne.ws/2bc8L3L ).

It was a bit of a nightmare, but we got through it, he said. There were long waits and long lines. They were cold and wet, but they all made it home.

The event started at Port Hurons Lighthouse Beach and was supposed to end at Chrysler Beach in Marysville.

Sarnia city workers spent several hours Monday picking up beer cans, coolers, rafts  even picnic tables  that washed up on the Canadian shore, said spokeswoman Katarina Ovens.

I guess they were on the rafts, she said of the picnic tables.

___

Information from: Times Herald, http://www.thetimesherald.com
Special To The Washington Post.

U.S. presidential election years can feel like lost years for people who are interested in science. And the election-year summer Olympics only make it worse. Science doesnt operate on four-year cycles  it just marches on, with discoveries, incremental advances, improved techniques, retractions, revisions, and an occasional scandal or Eureka! moment. But these days almost nobody is paying attention.

The only time science regularly gets worldwide notice is in October, when the Nobel Prizes are announced  the best week of the year. But thats just a blip compared to the sustained and passionate attention people pay to presidential elections, this year more than ever.

Presidential candidates rarely talk about science. For the third election cycle in a row, major science organizations are urging the candidates, unsuccessfully, to have a debate about science policy. When candidates do talk about science, its often to question evolution, vaccines or climate change  questions science has thoroughly answered.

Now that the Olympics are over and theres a relative lull in the campaigns, its a good time to talk about something else for a change. Here are some of our most interesting science, health and environment stories from this year that you might have missed in all the din.

 Two sick workers were evacuated from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station during the coldest, darkest, most dangerous time of the year.

 Organs being shipped from one hospital to another for transplant are usually kept as cold as possible. But it looks like keeping the organs alive  warm and perfused with blood  may lead to better transplant success.

 Black-footed ferrets were close to extinction  with a population of just 18 in 1987  but theyve made a great comeback thanks to captive breeding, reintroduction programs and protection for their main prey: prairie dogs. Prairie dogs are susceptible to a flea-borne plague, so now U.S. Fish & Wildlife is trying to protect them by using a drone to drop peanut-butter-flavored pellets containing plague vaccine. The prairie dogs eat the pellets, are protected from the plague, and serve as ferret fodder instead.

 Scientists created a cell with the minimum number of genes necessary for life.

 A lot of people are confused and concerned about genetically modified food. The National Academies of Sciences, Medicine and Engineering  the people you go to when you need a big question answered  analyzed the data exhaustively and concluded that there is nothing inherently dangerous about GMOs.

 Using a combination of improved imaging techniques, scientists doubled the number of distinct regions they can identify in the human brain. Its part of an intensive recent effort to understand how the parts of the brain are interconnected, which could help diagnose neurological problems more precisely and potentially lead to new treatments.

 Cancer doctors are criticizing pediatricians and family doctors for not encouraging their patients to get the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. HPV causes several kinds of cancer, and the vaccine protects people from being infected. Because the virus is sexually transmitted, doctors who treat kids may be squeamish about discussing the life-saving vaccine  and cancer doctors say thats a dereliction of duty.

 July was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth.

 Robots are being developed that will you follow you around and blast you with heating or air conditioning.

 A luxury cruise ship is sailing through the once-impassable Northwest Passage.

 Babies born with microcephaly from Zika virus infections are going to need intensive, life-long support. Child development specialists are trying to figure out how to help these kids and their families.

 The teenage birth rate in the United States hit an all-time low.

 Schools across the country have dangerous levels of lead in their drinking water. Their plumbing is old and water sits in pipes over the weekends and vacations, giving lead plenty of time to leach out.

 Four billionaires are in a race to take people to outer space.

 If you do go into space, the lack of gravity may distort the shape of your eye and harm your vision.

 There may be a ninth planet lurking at the edge of our solar system.

science-icymi

_____

Keywords: best science stories, science 2016, cancer research, organ transplant temperature. south pole rescue, interesting health stories, new health discoveries, science best of the year, politicans science policies, trump science, clinton science, jill stein science, al gore science
The Washington Post.

White Lives Matter staged a rally outside the NAACPs Houston headquarters on Sunday, sparking controversy and counter-protests in a city where racial tensions remain high after a string of recent incidents.

Clutching Confederate flags, white supremacist signs and, in several cases, assault rifles, roughly 20 White Lives Matter members stood on the sidewalk of a historically black neighborhood to denounce the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

We came out here specifically today to protest against the NAACP and their failure in speaking out against the atrocities that organizations like Black Lives Matter and other pro-black organizations have caused the attack and killing of white police officers, the burning down of cities and things of that nature, organizer Ken Reed told the Houston Chronicle. If theyre going to be a civil rights organization and defend their people, they also need to hold their people accountable.

Reed, who was wearing a Donald Trump 16 hat and a White Lives Matter shirt with white supremacist symbols, said protesters were not out here to instigate or start any problems, despite the weaponry and body armor on display.

Obviously we are exercising our Second Amendment rights but thats because we have to defend ourselves, he told the Chronicle. Their organizations and their people are shooting people based on the color of their skin. Were not.

Reed appeared to be referring to attacks targeting white police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge last month, which were carried out by lone gunmen espousing black nationalist beliefs. (In Dallas, a Latino officer was killed and in Baton Rouge, an African American officer was killed). Both Black Lives Matter and the NAACP denounced the attacks.

Sundays demonstration in Houstons predominantly black Third Ward quickly spurred a counter-protest, which soon dwarfed the White Lives Matter gathering.

As police arrived and set up barricades around the White Lives Matter protesters, locals stood across the street. Some shouted, while others shook their heads in disbelief that Confederate flags were flying in front of an NAACP office in a black neighborhood.

Its a physical manifestation of white supremacy, white privilege and racism being protected by this country, a black female counter-protester told KPRC2.

The White Lives Matter protest comes at a tense time for Houston and the country. On July 9, Houston police fatally shot a black man who they said pointed a gun at officers. The shooting, which came the same week as fatal police shootings of two other black men, one in Baton Rouge and another in Falcon Heights, Minn., prompted criticism from Black Lives Matter activists. The shooting also came just two days after that attack on Dallas police.

Several other incidents have raised racial tensions even further. At the University of Houston, the vice president of the Student Government Association was sanctioned after she wrote Forget #BlackLivesMatter . . . More like AllLivesMatter on Facebook shortly after the Dallas attack.

Earlier this month, authorities released video showing an African American woman calling 911 and saying she was really afraid of a white cop who had pulled her over. The woman was then violently arrested, although the officer was cleared of wrongdoing.

In May, city officials voted to rename seven schools named after people with ties to the Confederacy, including Robert E. Lee, Thomas Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.

And last year, the University of Texas announced it was removing a statue of Davis from its campus in Austin, about 160 miles west of Houston.

Sundays rally was not the nations first White Lives Matter protest. Others have drawn similarly small crowds, such as a July 30 protest in Buffalo that was organized by neo-Nazis and also was dwarfed by counter-protests.

Comments by the White Lives Matter protesters Sunday also seemed to echo opposition to the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina capitol last summer. The flag was taken down after avowed white supremacist Dylann Roof allegedly killed nine African Americans at a church in Charleston.

It has nothing to do with racism on our part, Reed told the Chronicle in reference to the Confederate flags on display at Sundays protest. Were proud to be Southern. It has all to do about heritage, nothing to do with hate.

In videos posted online by local news outlets, bystanders and counter-protesters, Reed appeared to be the leader of the demonstration.

He had appeared on television the day before to promote the rally.

Attacks on white officers, the calling for the murder of white officers, the burning down of cities, the stopping of traffic in streets, Reed told Fox26. A cop or ambulance could be trying to take someone to the hospital where a matter of minutes matters, and [Black Lives Matter protesters] are stopping them from going. The NAACP is not speaking out against this and if you arent speaking out against it you are, in our eyes, condoning it.

Whites were under attack, he claimed.

Were being told that its bad to be white, he told the television station. Every other race is encouraged to promote their heritage and culture, but as soon as a white person does it they are labeled as evil or racist.

On Sunday, he stood out front of the NAACP office on Wheeler Avenue with a bullhorn.

White Lives Matter refuses to feel any white guilt, he shouted, according to a KPRC2 video.

I ask Black Lives Matter and I ask the New Black Panther Party why, we ask why Black Lives Matter is not being labeled a hate group or domestic terrorist group, he said into the bullhorn, according to Chronicle footage.

Reed said he thought whites were receiving unequal treatment, and had been drowned out by Black Lives Matter.

Were out here just to show White Lives Matter has the right to support our rights and our heritage and culture, just as they do, he told the Chronicle. But they do not have the right to kill, they do not have the right to assault, they do not have the right to threat[en] and they do not have the right to damage personal property.

Other protesters were even more blunt.

We came here because the NAACP headquarters is here and thats one of the most racist  supposedly civil rights  groups in America, said Scott Lacy, who could be seen waving a Confederate flag.

It seems like in the country today that its wrong to be white, fellow protester Billy Gaston told KPRC2.

One sign simply read 14 words, a reference to the white supremacist motto: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.

The protest struck many in the neighborhood as nonsensical and offensive.

Quintana Richardson, who is black, said Reeds demand for equal rights for whites didnt fit with historical fact.

When he says equal rights, thats what we are trying to say. Lets have equal rights. Weve been saying that for years as black people, she told the Chronicle.

And whatever message White Lives Matter might have had, it was obscured by the offensive symbols on display, Richardson said.

The Confederate flag throws me off, she said. Youre saying Black Lives Matter is a racist organization but when youre throwing the Confederate flag up and youre saying White Lives Matter, are you saying youre racist as well?

Adding to the tension were the assault-style rifles, which could be seen slung over the shoulders of at least two women and one man during the protest. Several protesters also wore body armor.

Some locals said they felt like the White Lives Matter crowd had descended on Houston with no intention of holding a dialogue.

They didnt even want to talk, Trevor Clark, who is black, told KPRC2. Things like this are going to continue to happen, tragedies are going to continue to happen if we dont have an open dialogue.

Brandon Walker, a reporter for the TV station, also said that there was little communication between groups literally on either side of the street.

Organizers of the White Lives Matter movement say they held this protest and were here to spark dialogue on both sides of the street, he said. Also, people who were here in response to the rally said they hoped to have some dialogue too. Neither side, though, said they were able to accomplish that. The rally ended before any conversation on either end of the street was slated to take place.

It was much the same online, where there was lots of heated comments but little exchange of ideas.

By Sunday night, White Lives Matter was trending nationwide on Twitter.

Many poked fun at the protest.

Jerry Ford, Jr., a Black Lives Matter activist who appeared alongside Reed on TV the day before, linked the protest to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, tweeting: Trump got these folks bold as hell holding a White Lives Matter protest outside of Houston NAACP

Some White Lives Matter supporters, however, suggested the movement was a tit-for-tat response.

Very few blacks were on board with All Lives Matter, so we are doing our own thing now, wrote one on Twitter. White Lives Matter.

We expect every race to be proud of who they are, Reed said on Fox26. Were out there fighting for our rights just like everyone should.

Many portrayed White Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter as equivalents.

Black Lives Matter is allowed. Why not White Lives Matter? wrote one. Its either both of them or none of them. Pick one.

I dont want to hear White lives matter. I dont want to hear Black lives matter,' wrote former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, who has his own controversial history involving BLM. Only All lives matter. Got it? Good. Now grow up.

Critics, however, said equating the two movements was absurd as it ignored centuries of slavery and institutionalized racism in America.

One person tweeted: The fact that White Lives Matter is even a thing just proves that too many white people dont understand what Black Lives Matter means.

An additional tweeted: White Lives Matter has a silent only, whereas Black Lives Matter has a silent also. One is racism, the other a call for equality.

Perhaps the most powerful response came from Andre Smith, a young black man and the son of NAACP Houstons executive director, Yolanda Smith.

So this is what the Houston branch of the NAACP looked liked today, he wrote under a photo of the protest posted on Instagram. White supremacist protested with Confederate flags and banners that read White lives matter.

Little did they know the executive director of this particular branch birthday was today, which so happens to be my mom. So we spent the day celebrating a black life that did matter and will continue to do great work at this place you protest! Thank you and try again! #blacklivesmatter #NAACP

houston-rally

_____

Keywords: White Lives Matter, #WhiteLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter, #BlackLivesMatter, race, racism, unrest, violence, police, cops, Houston, Texas, Baton Rouge, Dallas, Falcon Heights, white supremacist
The Washington Post.

Republican commentators have been saying for months that Donald Trumps rise could signal the fall of their party as they know it.

After Trumps terrible first few weeks of the general election, actual Republican elected officials got in on the doom and gloom action. That doesnt mean theyre not voting for their partys presidential nominee. Theyre just saying that his campaign could mean the end of Republican congressional dominance  or even the party itself.

Most of the predictions fall into a few simple categories:

 The Republican Party could definitely lose (and probably will)

If youre speaker of the House, its your job to worry about the Republican majority, no matter what the circumstances are.  House Speaker Paul Ryan, Wis., to The Washington Posts Bob Costa earlier this month about Republicans historically large House majority potentially in play this November, which, if youre Paul Ryan, could be apocalyptic in its own right.

I think it will be Hillary [Clinton].  A Northeastern House GOP lawmaker who is publicly backing Trump to The Hill.

I think thats my presumption today.  Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in response to a question in May from TV reporter Mike Gousha about whether Trump will be disastrous and lose to Clinton.

 Sure, things are bad for the GOP. But theyll probably get even worse.

Im not feeling great about the immediate future of the conservative movement right now. As a conservative who believes our ideas are good for America, it is pretty gloomy these days.  an unnamed Southern GOP lawmaker and Trump backer quoted in The Hill earlier this month.

If Mr. Trump is the nominee, he becomes the standard-bearer for a party thats on the verge of breaking apart.  a longtime Iowa state senator, David Johnson, who suspended his party registration in June over concerns about Trump.

 The Republican Party is on its last legs

As a party, we are basically working ourselves toward extinction.  Georgia state Rep. Allen Peake, a Republican leader in the state, in a manifesto shared this week with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Peake said the party has alienated Hispanics, African Americans and members of the gay community.

Im worried that I will be the last Republican president.  President George W. Bush to a reunion of staffers in April, reports Politicos Shane Goldmacher. (Okay, President Bush not a current elected official. But we included him because hes the former president, and this is a pretty shocking thing for a former president to say.)

 Maybe the sabotage is coming from inside the party

I have no hard proof for my theory, but I think the relevant question is do people actually think that Donald Trump is trying to win?  Rep. Carlos Curbelo, Fla., to a Miami radio station recently.

There are probably a few things going on here. One of the biggest: positioning. Republicans who have to share the ballot with Trump are increasingly fretting about how the nominees struggles in swing and even red states could bring down their campaigns. Saying Trump is bad for the party is a way to distance themselves from him.

Lawmakers may not be happy with the campaign. But many of the rank-and-file are: eight in 10 Republican voters say theyre pretty happy with their party right now.

gop

_____

Keywords: Donald Trump, Republicans
The Washington Post.

Evan McAllister was 23 years old when he fought in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in 2006. He killed men and buried friends. Eight years later, he watched the same city fall to the Islamic State.

To McAllister, a former Marine staff sergeant and scout sniper instructor, the war he fought was a harebrained mission planned by Republicans, rubber-stamped by Democrats and, in the end, lost to al-Qaidas brutal successor. The foreign policy establishment of both parties got his friends killed for no reason, he said, so come Election Day, he is voting for the man he believes answers to neither Democrats nor Republicans: Donald Trump.

Most veterans . . . they see their country lost to the corrupt, he said. And Trump comes along all of a sudden and calls out the corrupt on both sides of the aisle.

Trump can seem an unlikely candidate to be embraced by veterans. He received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War. Last summer, he attacked Sen. John McCain, saying the Arizona Republican was not a war hero because he had been captured in Vietnam. More recently, Trump attacked the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, a U.S. soldier and Muslim who was killed in Iraq, after Khans father spoke at the Democratic National Convention with his wife standing by his side.

And he has drawn almost universal condemnation from national security experts who have served under Republican and Democratic administrations and who say Trump is unfit to be commander in chief of U.S. armed forces.

But among many of the people who have actually fought in this countrys wars, particularly on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan, Trump offers a refreshing alternative to 15 years of seemingly endless conflict marked by uncertain goals, fleeting victories and constant personal sacrifice, according to interviews with dozens of veterans who remain unfazed by the Republican candidates recent behavior or falling poll numbers.

On Monday, Trump vowed in a speech to end our current strategy of nation-building and regime change, a reference to policies pursued by the Bush and Obama administrations in the Middle East.

I think theres a pretty sour taste in a lot of guys mouths about Iraq and about what happened there, said Jim Webb Jr., a Marine veteran, Trump supporter, son of former U.S. senator Jim Webb, D-Va., and one of McAllisters platoon mates. You pour time and effort and blood into something, and you see it p away, and you think, How did I spend my twenties? 

Theres a mentality that they dont want to see more of that, he said, adding that he worried that a Hillary Clinton presidency would result in continued adventurism, given her record supporting interventions in Iraq and Libya.

Two recent national polls since the Democratic convention show Trump leading Clinton among military veterans  by 14 points in a Fox News poll and 11 points in a McClatchy-Marist poll. By comparison, Clinton shows a 10-point to 15-point margin among all registered voters in both surveys. The demographics of veterans align closely with Trumps strongest sources of support: More than 9 in 10 are men, and about 8 in 10 are white.

His fans in the military community could prove critical in November in swing states with large military populations, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. In these three states, veterans represented at least 8 percent of the population in 2014, according to data collected by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Trumps foreign policy ideas can be difficult to pin down. He insists that he opposed the war in Iraq, but audio clips from interviews show that he supported the invasion. He has questioned U.S. participation in NATO but on Monday pledged to support the alliance because it had recently formed a counterterrorism division. He has vowed to work with anyone to defeat the Islamic State, stating that the United States would have to fight aggressively to win. At the same time, he has rejected the idea of nation-building, a hallmark of past strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At a recent Trump rally in Wilmington, N.C., just 30 minutes from the back gate of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, David Buzzard, a 26-year-old former Army specialist, said the Republican real estate magnate was not his ideal candidate.

But he is also wary of Clinton, who he says too readily backs military intervention as a solution in the Middle East and seems untrustworthy, based on her handling of emails while she was secretary of state and possible conflicts of interest between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department.

Id rather have an a in the office who doesnt have a filter than a pandering, corrupt hawk who has special interests in mind rather than the American public, said Buzzard, who has the light outline of a scar under his left eye, the faint evidence of a roadside bomb that hit his patrol in 2011 in Afghanistans Wardak province.

Earlier this month, Trump made a quip about how he had always wanted to get a Purple Heart after an Army veteran offered him his. With two of those medals to his name, Buzzard shrugged off Trumps comments, sayings his words had been taken out of context.

Former Marine Andrew Delrossi said he recoiled when he heard that Trump always wanted the Purple Heart.

There was probably some Marine sitting there in Walter Reed missing his legs and his testicles watching that on the news, Delrossi said. And thats the first time I got mad at Donald Trump. For him to say a comment like that put a bad taste in my mouth.

A former infantryman with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Delrossi started a wounded-veterans nonprofit called New Englands Wounded Veterans, which received $75,000 from the candidate this year but only after some delay.

In lieu of participating in one of the Republican primary debates this year, Trump opted to raise money for veterans organizations and claimed that he had contributed $1 million of $6 million he said was raised. The majority of Trumps personal donations to the fundraiser were not distributed until he was pressured by reporters.

Still, Delrossi said, he is voting for Trump and sees him as the average Joe.

Donald Trump is the father at the end of the table. He is the guy at the Christmas party saying we gotta do more for our vets and screw ISIS, said Delrossi, who now works as a Boston-area police officer. Hes like our own dad almost.

Delrossi admits that his affection for Trump is not entirely rational. Its almost one of those things where its like where your heart says Donald Trump and your brain says Hillary Clinton, he said.

Trumps frequent calls to fix the Department of Veterans Affairs have resonated with veterans, although several said they are waiting to hear more specifics. The candidate in July released a 10-point plan to improve the department, calling for changes that include firing corrupt and incompetent VA executives who let our veterans down, boosting funding for job-placement services and improving mental health-care services, but details are slim.

Vets arent being taken care of like they should be no matter which way you try to twist it, said Kaylea Schneider, a former Marine staff sergeant, who said she does not agree with everything Trump says but appreciates his views on the military and foreign policy.

Trumps perceived patriotism and calls for a fiercer response to the Islamic State and other insurgent groups have drawn support from veterans frustrated with the rules of engagement under which the U.S. military operates, several veterans said. The specifics of those rules are classified but are broadly understood to outline circumstances under which U.S. troops can attack enemy fighters in an effort to prevent civilian casualties.

When you send our guys  my brothers-in-arms, my sisters-in-arms  into a combat zone, we need to go to win, not to play nice with the populace, said former Army Pfc. Chris Richardson, who drove convoys in Iraqs Diyala province in 2008 and 2009 and attended Trumps recent rally in Fayetteville, N.C., in a leather vest adorned with an Iraq War veteran patch. If they shoot at us, we need to be able to shoot back and trust that were not going to be charged with a crime when we get back stateside.

But Trumps rhetoric has not won over everyone. Brandon Friedman, a former Army captain who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and later served in the Obama administration, pointed to a litany of remarks made by the Republican presidential candidate that disparaged the military and veterans. He also pointed to Trumps lack of support for the post-9/11 GI Bill, a piece of legislation that has helped thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan receive a higher education, and Trumps claims that the U.S. military doesnt win anymore.

When I see veterans saying things like, Hes proud of the military, I dont think theyre paying attention to the words coming out of his mouth, said Friedman, who plans to vote for Clinton. Its amazing to me that hes been actively hostile to the veterans community and still retains so much support.

Some veterans have decided that neither candidate suits them.

Former Marine Gunnery Sgt. Emir Hadzic said he used to back Trump, but his support waned after he heard the candidates comments about Mexicans and Muslims. Hadzic, who just left the Marines after spending eight deployments overseas, said he plans to write in a name or vote for a third-party candidate in November.

My friends say, You gotta pick Hillary or Trump, man; you need to pick the lesser of two evils,' Hadzic said. And I say, Im not voting for either, because I dont vote for evil. 

For Webb, writing in a candidate or voting out of protest, is not an option. For all of Trumps perceived flaws, Webb said, he thinks he is the strongest candidate.

He is bringing a comprehensive re-examination of how we conduct business, Webb said. Whether its on taxes or its how were involved in the world, its very sorely needed.



The Washington Posts Scott Clement contributed to this report.



Video: The Washington Post spoke to veterans in the battleground state of North Carolina about the upcoming election and their choice for the next commander-in-chief. (Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post)

URL:

http://wapo.st/2bcbw5v

Embed code:

trump-military

_____

Keywords:
The Washington Post.

The man accused of killing nine black parishioners in a historic Charleston, South Carolina, church last year self-radicalized online, absorbing violent white supremacist beliefs from the Internet, according to federal prosecutors.

Rather than adopting such convictions through his personal associations or experiences with white supremacist groups or individuals or others, prosecutors said these viewpoints were self-taught from material found online and elsewhere.

Dylann Roof, 22, could face a death sentence in the federal case against him as well as in the states parallel case stemming from the shooting. In the states case, he has been charged with nine counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder for the June 2015 massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Roof, who is white, was also indicted on federal hate crime charges not long afterward for attacking people because of their race and in order to interfere with their exercise of their religion, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said.

In a court document filed Monday, authorities said they intended to call experts to outline how Roofs comments, writing and the media he consumed are consistent with the adoption of a white supremacy extremist ideology, including a belief in the need to use violence to achieve white supremacy.

Prosecutors said Roofs self-learning process led him to adopt the thinking that violent action is necessary to fight for white people and achieve white supremacy . . . and that the choice of targets and execution of violent action should be conducted in a manner that promotes these objectives, to include publicizing the reasons for those actions to inspire others to engage in violent action to further white supremacy.

Attorneys for Roof declined to comment on the new filing.

The Southern Poverty Law Center said in a report earlier this year that the Internet is an ideal venue for lone wolves like Roof. White supremacists are increasingly opting to operate mainly online, where the danger of public exposure and embarrassment is far lower, where younger people tend to gather, and where it requires virtually no effort or cost to join in the conversation, the report stated.

After the church attack, officials found a manifesto online belonging to Roof that was filled with racist characterizations of black people and others. On this site, which one official said was modified hours before the shooting, there were also images of Roof holding a Confederate battle flag, burning an American flag and standing in front of a Confederate history museum.

In the filing, prosecutors also said that evidence suggests that Roofs sentiments magnified in the months before the attacks. During this period, Roof traveled to the Emanuel AME Church, as well as areas connected to the Confederacy, according to the filing, submitted by the office of Beth Drake, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina.

Prosecutors seeking a federal death sentence have said that the shooting was carefully planned and racially motivated. They said that Roof targeted the churchs Bible study group to magnify the societal impact of the rampage and that his animosity towards African Americans played a role in the murders.

Earlier this month, attorneys for Roof filed a motion to challenge the death penalty, arguing that capital punishment constitutes an unconstitutional punishment. In this motion, Roofs attorneys said that if the Justice Department changed its mind about seeking a death sentence, their client would plead guilty to the federal charges and agree to be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

charleston

_____

Keywords: dylann roof, charleston church, charleston church shooting, dylann roof death penalty, charleston church ame
A Santa Fe-based company marketing technology to rapidly test for bacterial lung infections is headed to Washington, D.C. after winning a spot on an elite national listing of top university startups.

Avisa Pharma Inc., which licensed its breath-test technology from the University of New Mexico, is one of 35 companies nationwide that will earn the title of Best University Startups for 2016, compiled by the National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer, or NCET2. A total of 200 startups are competing, and Avisa is one of 18 included in the first round of winners who will present their technologies to potential investors and Fortune 500 representatives at a University Startups Demo Day on September 20 in the U.S. capitol.

A second round of 17 startups will be announced next week, and five more UNM startups are on the short list of 80 companies still in the running to win a spot at Demo Day. Thats more than any other university nationwide, said Lisa Kuuttila, UNMs chief economic development officer and head of the Science and Technology Corp., UNMs tech transfer office.

Its great validation of our efforts to support startups working to commercialize UNM technology, Kuuttila said. It shows that our technologies and the companies licensing them are capable of attracting the attention of some of the worlds largest corporations.

The finalists in this years competition are being selected by a committee of 25 Fortune 500 corporate representatives. The 35 startup winners will each receive a six-minute slot to present to Global 1000 and Fortune 500 companies, venture capitalists, and angel investors. They will also show their technologies to congressional representatives and officials during a trade show in Congress, said NCET2 associate director Ria Ancheta.

Theyll get to show major corporations what theyre doing, Ancheta said. Thats good for universities and startups around the country, because these corporate representatives usually wouldnt go searching for technologies outside of hubs in places like California or Boston. Its also a way to show Congress how universities are spending research and development money to create new, cutting-edge technologies and jobs.

For Avisa Pharma, it could generate more corporate and investor interest in its breath-test technology, said President and CEO David Joseph, who launched the company in 2010.

The technology, which can rapidly measure bacteria in the lungs to determine if a patient has an infection such as tuberculosis, was originally developed by Graham Timmins, a UNM professor of medical chemistry and toxicology, and Vojo Deretic, chair of the Molecular Genetics and Microbiology Department.

The company is now focusing on potential use of its technology in emergency rooms and intensive care units to rapidly determine if patients have bacterial pneumonia, and to monitor whether antibiotics are working.

This is recognition that we have novel technology, Joseph said.

The company has raised about $8 million in private equity to date. It expects to begin raising a larger $15 million round of funding this fall.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands  Expressing deep regret for his actions, an Islamic extremist pleaded guilty Monday to orchestrating the destruction of historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu.

Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, wearing a dark suit and striped tie, stood and calmly told judges he was entering the guilty plea with deep regret and great pain and advised Muslims around the world not to commit similar acts, saying they are not going to lead to any good for humanity.

The guilty plea was a landmark for the court, which has struggled to bring suspects to justice since its establishment in 2002. It was the first guilty plea and the first time prosecutors have launched a trial for the crime of deliberately attacking buildings of religious or cultural significance.

Our cultural heritage is not a luxury good, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the three-judge panel. She said Al Mahdis guilty plea will set a clear precedent, sending an important and positive message to the entire world.

She compared the case to the destruction last year of historic ruins in the Syrian city of Palmyra by Islamic State extremists.

The court cant bring charges in that case because Syria is not a member of the court and the U.N. Security Council hasnt called for an ICC investigation, court spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said.

Al Mahdi led a group of radicals that destroyed 14 of Timbuktus 16 mausoleums in 2012 because they considered them totems of idolatry. The one-room structures that house the tombs of the citys great thinkers were on the World Heritage list.

Al Mahdi faces a maximum sentence of 30 years imprisonment, but prosecutors say they will seek a sentence of nine to 11 years. Judges will issue a verdict and pass sentence at a later hearing.

Prosecutors showed judges photos and videos of rebels wielding pick axes, sticks and axes to attack a mosques door and small, brick-built mausoleums in the city. Among them were images of Al Mahdi, at times with a Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder, directing the attacks, which reduced the historic structures to piles of rubble.

Prosecutors say Al Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, an Islamic extremist group with links to al-Qaida that held power in northern Mali in 2012. The militants were driven out after nearly a year by French forces, which arrested Al Mahdi in 2014 in neighboring Niger.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commended the court for bringing the case against Al Mahdi, saying it draws our attention to an increasingly worrying trend of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in situations of armed conflict, according to a statement released by his spokesman.

Human rights activists have also welcomed the case, but criticized prosecutors for failing to file more charges against Al Mahdi.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said its member organizations have documented a litany of crimes and filed a criminal complaint on behalf of 33 victims in Malian courts accusing Al Mahdi and 14 others of crimes including rape and sexual slavery.

We  deeply regret that the charges against Al Mahdi were not widened to include crimes against the civilian population, including sexual and gender-based crimes, whose victims are far too often ignored during accountability processes, FIDH member organizations said in a statement ahead of the trial.

Speaking after Mondays hearing, Bensouda said further charges could follow in her Mali probe.

We are also investigating other crimes, she said. So this is the first case weve brought and we will see with respect to other crimes that have been committed within the context in Mali.

On the eve of the hearing, Timbuktus mayor, Halle Ousmane, welcomed the prosecution.

Justice has been done, Ousmane said. We thank almighty God and all our partners, all those who have helped with his arrest so that today justice can be done.

____

Baba Ahmed in Timbuktu contributed to this report.
The Washington Post.

By suggesting that the Republican National Committee yank resources from Donald Trumps presidential campaign, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., is pulling at one of the most important threads holding Trumps campaign chances together. And thats independent of the fact that a linchpin of Trumps efforts in a key swing state is a kid who isnt yet a teenager.

We know that Trumps most fervent base of support is among white men without a college degree. We know too that this is a group of voters that is less committed to turning out than other groups. This isnt some abstract assessment based on past results that can be waved away by declaring This Year to be Different. This is what those voters themselves told The Washington Post in our most recent poll with ABC News.

In every election since 1996, the Republican candidate has won white women. This year, Trump is trailing with white women, thanks in part to opposition from white women who have college degrees. Thats a group that turns out heavily, which makes turning out white working class men even more important  especially since they favor Trump more heavily than they did Mitt Romney four years ago.

Turning those voters out requires having a get-out-the-vote operation, which, in the past, Trump has pooh-poohed. In his most recent campaign filing, Trump still hasnt made a big investment in the sort of operation on the ground that can drag voters to the polls. Trump has reportedly called for the Republican party to put a big investment in a turnout operation, and The Posts Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy report that the operation is underway:

RNC officials have said that their ground operations are far ahead of where they were in the 2012 race, with 504 field organizers now deployed in 16 states, up from 461 in June. The responsibility for identifying voters, registering them, tracking absentee ballots and getting supporters to the polls on Nov. 8 largely falls on those party staff members.

Its worth noting that Republican turnout operations have not historically been praised for their excellence. Since Republicans turn out more heavily than Democrats, they often havent needed a big push in that regard. In 2012, Mitt Romney put together a turnout operation of his own, only to watch it collapse on Election Day due to technical glitches.

Even if the party is running a flawless operation, theres a risk for Trump. If the RNC discovers that he is dragging down their candidates for the Senate and the House, that could shift where and how they focus on turning people out to the polls. Should the RNC put a heavy emphasis in Georgia where their Senate seat is relatively safe just to bolster Donald Trumps chances? If a candidate in a competitive Senate seat is struggling with working class white men for some reason, why would the RNC want to turn them out?

The point is that Trump handing over his turnout operation to the party means he gives up control over how and where it invests resources. And thats what Flake is encouraging the party to do.

At the same time, the turnout operation that Trump has is a mess. Jefferson County, Colorado, voted Republican from 1968 to 2004, picking Barack Obama in 2008 and (by a lesser margin) 2012. Trumps operation in the county is heavily dependent on someone for whom that 2004 election was important, but not memorable  because it happened the year he was born. Thats right, Weston Imer is taking on the job of running the candidates operation in the county, after spending the primary campaign helping Trump by berating delegates over the phone.

At least Jefferson County has someone. As we reported earlier this month, a critical county in southwest Ohio was left to its own devices so long that volunteers started up their own field office outside of the auspices of the campaign.

The Associated Press dug into the background of some of Trumps field staffers, finding a number of instances in which those staff posted racially and religiously offensive content on social media. For example:

Some posts fixated on stories of black-on-white violence with claims that news about such crimes was being suppressed.

One staffer that recently moved to the battleground state of Florida, Phillip Dann, defended his online comments by suggesting that Trumps team was mostly made up of people who were new to politics. While he has been politically active for decades  originally as a leftist, he said  he described the field staff Trump acquired in the primary as unfamiliar with traditional campaign rules, the APs Jeff Horwitz reported. We get hired because there was no one left,' Dann said.

Meanwhile, a former Trump campaign staffer told an interviewer over the weekend that hed seen attrition from within the existing staff. I got some unfortunate news yesterday, where I found out that some of the operatives are actually leaving, Michael Caputo told WBEN. One in particular that I helped put in place is leaving and gone on to other employment. So there are some resignations happening farther down, beneath the skim of this campaign, that are a little bit troublesome.

If the RNC shifts resources away from Trump, its this inexperienced, ragtag group that will be responsible for getting his base of support to the polls. Flakes efforts are more an expression of discontent with the candidate than something thats likely to immediately change minds within the GOP, but if Trump isnt able to close the gap with Clinton in battleground states quickly, the idea of moving resources away from him and to other races  which the party did in 1996 when it became apparent that Bill Clinton would win re-election  will gain traction. And that could mean that Donald Trumps success or failure will depend on some volunteers near Cincinnati, a 12-year-old in Colorado, a social-media enthusiast in Florida and whatever handful of staffers are left everywhere else.

Of course, if the party pulls out, there probably wasnt much that could be done to save Trump anyway.

trump-gop-analysis

_____

Keywords: RNC, Donald Trump, Reince Priebus, field, ground
The Washington Post.

Sometimes a presidential visit following a disaster is intended as a call to action. Other times it amounts to a kind of apology, aimed at rebutting the impression that the federal government has failed in its response.

These days it has become a standard part of just about every natural calamity to befall the United States. President Barack Obama in recent years has visited the sites of hurricanes, tornadoes and a devastating mudslide in Washington state. On Tuesday, Air Force One will touch down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where epic flooding caused the countrys worst natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

Why has a presidential visit become such a standard part of the federal governments response? The main benefit is to rally support and bring in donations at a time when media attention can be fleeting.

A visit from the president shines a light on the situation, said Andrew Card, a top official in both Bush administrations. He brings the national media. He brings attention. Americans are great at responding to a tragedy if they know about it.

Just about every presidential trip carries with it an element of politics. Obamas visit to Louisiana follows a stopover by Republican nominee Donald Trump, who slammed the president last week for not cutting short his Marthas Vineyard vacation to deal with the damage. The White House announced Tuesdays visit as Trump was touring the flood-damaged area Friday.

Obamas trips to disaster areas, though, have tended to focus on the business of drumming up donations and managing the dynamics of the federal response.

If Ive got one message for folks here today, it is go online and donate, Obama said in 2013 after tornadoes blew through Moore, Oklahoma.

On Staten Island, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, he called for federal, state and local officials to work together. Were going to have to put some of the turf battles aside, he warned.

American presidents have for decades turned up at the sites of the biggest natural disasters. President Richard M. Nixon visited Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Camille. President George H.W. Bush surveyed the damage from Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and was on-site just days after Hurricane Andrew swept through South Florida, killing dozens and causing more than $25 billion in damage. Federal assets were also set aside so that Bill Clinton, then the Democratic nominee, could make the trip, Card said.

Until recently, though, smaller natural disasters typically fell to vice presidents and their staffs. We would joke we would go to funerals and disasters, said Joseph Hagin, who worked as then-Vice President George H.W. Bushs personal aide in the Reagan administration.

Compared with the president, the vice president brings a relatively light logistical footprint  a smaller plane, motorcade and traveling press contingent  all of which place fewer demands on locals when resources are stretched thin. Vice President Joe Biden, for example, visited Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Colorado when those areas were hit by flooding; Obama did not. And it was Biden, not Obama, who attended a memorial service for the 19 firefighters who died battling the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona.

Increasingly, though, Americans expect their president to visit. Some of that change can be traced to George W. Bushs decision not to visit New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At the time, Bush was returning to the White House from a vacation in Texas, and White House officials decided to fly low over the flood-ravaged city. A photograph of the president looking out the window of his jet became a symbol of his administrations neglect.

People asked, Why didnt he stop? The reason was that it would have diverted critical resources from the search-and-rescue effort, said Card, who served as White House chief of staff.

Other Bush administration officials said that a presidential stopover would have required assistance from Coast Guard rescue helicopters and likely would have cost lives. Those same helicopters  would have been pulling people off rooftops, said Steve Atkiss, a special assistant for operations in the Bush administration.

The Katrina aftermath unquestionably made it harder for presidents to stay away from natural disasters, but demands for executive attention date back as far as the Calvin Coolidge administration.

Your coming would center the eyes of the nation and the consequent publicity would result in securing millions of dollars of additional aid for sufferers, the governor of Mississippi wired after the historic floods of 1927.

Instead, Coolidge dispatched Herbert Hoover, his commerce secretary, to lead the relief effort. To reassure an anxious public, Hoover was heard regularly on radio broadcasts, said David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers University. He made sure that people could hear a raging river in the background, Greenberg said.

presidents-disasters

_____

Keywords:
IMGCAP(1)]I attend Management of Accounting Practice (MAP) CPE programs. In many instances these do not qualify toward the mandatory CPE requirements. Who cares?

I go because I want to make more money, work more effectively, service clients better, excite and retain staff, and have more fun doing what I love to do and have to do anyway.

I speak to hundreds of accountants a year who call me primarily with practice management problems, and I am pleased to assist them. However, when I ask them if they have taken at least one MAP program in the last five years, they reply that they dont because they usually get enough CPE with the technical programs. Boy, are they stupid!!! Anyway I wrote about this here on April 4, 2014 so will not belabor this. However, I want to share some of the specifics of what I learned and how I benefited from attending these programs.

1. Actually the first two ideas I want to write about were from Peter Weitsen. He attended a program by David Cottle while I was on a vacation and he took two ideas that we immediately implemented. The first one was to have staff prepare daily time sheets. At that time we were getting monthly time sheets and were a little lax in reviewing and analyzing them. Davids suggestion of having them prepared daily captured much of the type of time that usually would have fallen through the cracks and not be recorded. This included many 15- and 20-minute interruptions that werent remembered at the end of the month so they werent recorded. Sometimes there were three or four such interruptions a day for some of the staff. Also, the daily entries were easier for Peter and me to review so we had a better handle on what the staff was working on and we became better aware of where value was being transferred to clients. Even though most of our clients were on a fixed fee basis (today it is called value pricing) we used the time sheets more as a management tool than for billing. Also, for effectiveness they were a lagging indicator and werent much help in billing clients for added work, but did help somewhat. The daily time sheets enabled us to generate fees for services we were not aware were being done and werent getting paid for. If Peter got nothing else from that days program, it was well worth the cost and his time.

2. The second idea Peter had us adopt was to raise every clients fee every year. At that time we hadnt increased fees for a few yearsin some cases five or six years. We increased every fixed fee 10 percent and had no complaints. We repeated this two more years when we started getting some complaints and then reduced the fees at a minimum 5 percent every year. There were some exceptions based on circumstances, but these increases eventually added more than $100,000 a year to our bottom line. Again, a very profitable day spent by Peter.

3. We kept in touch with Dave, read all his books and listened to every audio program he marketed. One of the best books on pricing and billing is Bill What Youre Worth, Third Edition, published and sold by the AICPA. I highly recommend it.

4. We heard Chris Frederiksen, probably around 1990, who told us to get the general ledger! He said when you go on a lead you really do not have the client unless you walk out with the general ledger. Today it is the QuickBooks backup, and that is why I always carry an extra memory stick. He also sold us a WordPerfect file of his New Business Kit that we used to publish a NJ New Business Kit for about a dozen years. At some point almost every library in New Jersey had the book. Most bought them, but for those that did not, we donated it to them. It was a great marketing tool. You can still get the book and rights from him. Here is a link: https://2020groupusa.com/product/new-business-kit/

5. One of the most imaginative thinkers for new services we heard was KC Truby, and we never missed an opportunity to hear him speak. We even took our entire staff to his programs. His ideas led us to think outside the box and be bold enough to present a plethora of value- added services to our clients. He was the first person who I learned about CRM from. While I never bought the software he was hawking, the principles he taught were quickly adopted.

6. I could go on and on through memory lane. At some point Peter, Frank Boutillette and I heard almost every accounting firm practice management consultant and many business advisors, adopted multiple ideas from all of them, and idea by idea used them to grow our practice. Today I still attend MAP programs and make it a point to meet the speakers and exchange ideas with them. Some have even become friends. When I speak and there are opportunities to sit in and hear the MAP speakers, I always do.

A simple recommendation is to attend at least eight hours of MAP programs or webinars a year and to try to adopt one idea from each hourso you will make eight changes a year. Not too onerous and I could assure you very profitable.

Edward Mendlowitz, CPA, is partner at WithumSmith+Brown, PC, CPAs. He is on the Accounting Today Top 100 Influential People List. He is the author of 24 books, including How to Review Tax Returns, co-written with Andrew D. Mendlowitz, published by www.CPATrendlines.com and Managing Your Tax Season, Third Edition, published by the AICPA. Ed also writes a twice-a-week blog addressing issues that clients have at www.partners-network.com. Art of Accounting is a continuing series where Ed shares autobiographical experiences with tips that he hopes can be adopted by his colleagues. Ed welcomes practice management questions and can be reached at (732) 964-9329 or emendlowitz@withum.com.
A roundup of recent expansions, additions, new services and other news from firms across the country.

ALABAMA

Carr, Riggs & Ingram LLC, Enterprise, has been designated a HITRUST CSF Assessor by the Health Information Trust Alliance.

CALIFORNIA

BlackLine, Los Angeles, has been named one of the Best Places to Work in Los Angeles for the fourth year in a row by the Los Angeles Business Journal and Best Companies Group.

ILLINOIS

Sikich LLP has been named to the Crain's Chicago Business list of Chicago's Largest Privately Held Companies, climbing one spot from 2015 to No. 249.

NEW YORK

The New York State Society of CPAs and the New York Council of Nonprofits Inc. are looking for nominees for the 13th annual Michael H. Urbach CPA Community Builders Award, which recognizes CPAs who have demonstrated exemplary leadership to community-based charities. Nominations are due by August 26; for more information, visit NYCON at www.nycon.org or call (800) 515-5012.

OHIO

Hall, Kistler & Co., Canton, was honored at the inaugural Smart Business Longevity Awards, which recognized 49 Northeast Ohio for their long presence in the community -- in Hall Kistler's case, 75 years.

TENNESSEE

The Tennessee Society of CPAs has awarded scholarships totaling $250,000 to 97 top accounting students. (See the story.)

UNITED KINGDOM

International accounting firm association Morison KSi was shortlisted for the Association of the Year 2016 award by International Accounting Bulletin and The Accountant. The winner will be announced in October.

Send your firm announcements to AcToday@SourceMedia.com.
Wipfli LLP is expanding its presence in the Chicago area by adding Weltman Bernfield LLC, a firm based in the suburb of Buffalo Grove, Ill., effective September 1.

The deal is the latest in a string of M&A activity for Wipfli. Earlier this month, the Milwaukee-based firm merged in the health care consulting firm, HFS Consultants, in Oakland, Calif. (see Wipfli Merges in HFS Consultants). In May, it merged in Brittenford Systems, a technology-oriented firm based in Reston, Va. (see Wipfli Merges in Brittenford Systems). In January, it merged in Steinberg Advisors, another Chicago-area firm based in Northbrook, Ill. (see Wipfli Adds Steinberg Advisors).

As part of the latest deal, approximately 45 people from Weltman Bernfield, including nine partners, will join Wipflis more than 1,600 professionals. Wipfli ranked 19th on Accounting Todays 2016 list of the Top 100 Firms, with $227 million in annual revenue.

We are pleased to welcome Weltman Bernfields highly skilled professionals to the firm, said Wipfli managing partner Rick Dreher in a statement. The services that Weltman Bernfield provides to their clients complement Wipflis core services, so this combination will deepen our resources and further strengthen Wipflis geographic presence in the Chicago market. Joining forces with Weltman Bernfield represents another significant step in positioning us as a major player in a strategically key market for Wipfli.

Weltman Bernfield dates back to 1920 and offers accounting, audit, tax and business consulting services to individuals and private companies in a wide range of industries.

Our firms share very similar cultures and commitments to exceptional client service, said Weltman Bernfield managing member Glenn Mikell. Joining with Wipfli will provide our firm with new and enhanced services and capabilities beyond traditional services to help our clients address their challenges and leverage opportunities. This combination will also be beneficial to our employees by opening up new opportunities to grow professionally.

Wipfli has been in the accounting profession for over 86 years and is a member of the Allinial Global association of accounting firms. With the addition of Weltman Bernfield, the combined firm will have more than 1,700 associates, including over 200 partners, and 39 office locations across the U.S. and India, including four offices in the Chicago area.

This merger is huge for Wipfli as it really solidifies their position in Chicago as a major player amongst CPA firms, said Allan D. Koltin, CEO of Koltin Consulting Group, who advised both firms on the merger. This deal, when combined with the Steinberg Advisors deal announced earlier this year, makes Wipfli one of the largest CPA firms in Chicago.

Koltin anticipates another M&A deal for Wipfli in the Chicago area soon. I wouldnt be surprised to still see Wipfli do another merger in downtown Chicago in the next year or two to round out their strategy, he said. Wipfli is unique amongst most Top 20 national CPA firms in that they have significant consulting and advisory services for clients and that is truly a differentiator for them in the marketplace. Weltman Bernfield is a known and respected name in the Chicago business, financial, and legal community having been around for almost 100 years.

He saw a potential match between the two firms when their leaders originally met a year ago. At their first meeting with Wipfli last August you could see the chemistry and cultures lining up right from the beginning, said Koltin. Over the past couple of years Weltman Bernfield had been approached by a couple of other national firms but felt Wipfli would be a great fit for their clients especially with so many of Wipflis resources in nearby Wisconsin and the Midwest. It also was a benefit that the Steinberg group was already part of Wipfli as these two firms (Steinberg and Weltman Bernfield) could just as easily have merged together at some point in the future."

"What also really moved Weltman Bernfield forward was the tremendous growth opportunities for their people," Koltin added. "At a time where every CPA firm claims to be the best place to work or an employer of choice, it was really refreshing to see a firm like Weltman Bernfield as they truly embrace their people and care about their professional growth and well-being.
Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting, Col. Rajyavardhan Rathore, has said that citizen engagement and two-way communication were the critical inputs for the Government communication approach in the current media scenario dominated by instant communication and multimedia platforms. In this context, social media as a communication platform emerged as a cost effective and powerful tool in the Government, which focussed on maximum Governance. Regarding its power and influence, Col. Rathore said that today deliberations and debates in the countries across the world were shaped by the responses and reactions on social media. The emerging perspective dominated other media platforms also.

The Minister stated this while inaugurating the Workshop on Effective Use of Facebook for Government Communication at the National Media Centre on Friday, August 19, 2016. Secretary I&B Ajay Mittal; Director General PIB Frank Noronha; officers from Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and other Ministries/ Departments; Ankhi Das, Policy Director for India, South & Central Asia; and Katie Harbath, Global Director for Politics and Government from Facebook, were also present on the occasion.

The Minister further stated that the challenge before the Government was to reorient and recalibrate its approach and strategy in communicating with the citizens with the right content and knowledge so as to empower them. This was important in view of the rising demand for quality and precise information and social media being a dynamic medium of communication where views were instantly formed with regard to critical issues. In this context, the capacity building initiatives taken by the Press information Bureau would not only strengthen institutional capacity of the Government but would also enable the Government to mainstream a 360 degree communication strategy across social media platforms.

Citing the example of the communication approach undertaken for the Budget, the Minister said that there was a need to communicate with the citizens in a timely, sustained, personalized, creative and interesting way. For this purpose, infographics and creative graphics were designed to simplify budget provisions so that people could understand them in a simple manner and could take benefits from the schemes and initiatives of the Government.

Speaking on the occasion, the I&B Secretary said that it was important for the Government to learn to make communication interesting and engaging. In the communication space there is a need for creative and innovative ways of delivering messages and reach out to diverse target audience. Speaking about the need for new tools during crisis situations he said that Facebook Live could play a critical role during disaster situations to reach out to people.

The Director General, Press Information Bureau, added here that social media had increased the capacity to communicate instantly with the people. Underlying the social media focus, he said that it is the philosophy of the Government that rather than expecting citizens to knock at our door, we go and engage with them where they are. He also said that there is a need to study and learn from best practices in communication across the world and to improve our capacities as communicators.

The Workshop was a joint endeavour of Press Information Bureau, New Media Cell and Facebook. Over 250 officers from various Ministries and Departments of the Government participated in the workshop.
Titan has expanded its smartwatch offering with the launch of Juxt Pro. The launch is supported by a TVC, conceptualised by Ogilvy & Mather, that highlights the suite of smart features available in the smartwatch.

With an objective to showcase the array of features inculcated in the latest offering from Titan, a user-related context was used to narrate the story of Juxt Pro.

The film is set inside an architects office, where a team of young architects and their boss are in a meeting. As the protagonist is presenting to the team, his boss notices the Juxt Pro watch on his wrist and pauses his spiel to pay him a compliment: Hey, nice watch. The orderly colleague with him agrees with the boss and responds with the same remark. Upon this, the protagonist appears to have stopped mid-presentation, being credulously miffed at the fact that someone; anyone thinks that its a watch. With enthusiasm and swagger, he shows the team what this watch can do. He animatedly pulls out feature on feature throughout the film, as the unsuspecting boss and colleague look increasingly stumped. Satisfied that he has sufficiently proved his point he goes back to his presentation, when another colleague walks in and offers him the same compliment on the watch. The boss and colleague exchange a glance, while he seems mildly resigned to explaining the watch features again.

Elaborating on the concept behind the Juxt TVC, Sirish Chandrashekar, Marketing Head, Titan Watches, said, Todays young Indian is obsessive about his technology. Titan Juxt Pro is the smartwatch that does it all  helps him manage his calls, messages, appointments, while also enabling his creative side through the unique features of controlling camera, storing and playing music, etc. This film is single-minded in showcasing how loaded the watch is, in an endearing manner.

Titan Juxt Pro is not just a product, its an idea. So all we tried to do is present that idea in the simplest, yet insightful way. And we thought of the insight of how tech-lovers get offended when others do not know the value of their techy possessions. We kept the storytelling simple because we wanted to celebrate the Titan Juxt Pro  a product which is an idea and not just a watch, explained Azazul Haque, Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather.

Designed for the modern multi-faceted man, Titan Juxt Pro offers an array of features to keep him connected, informed and in-touch with his interests. The ad film communicates these stunning attributes of the product and presents Juxt Pro as the smarter smartwatch. Titan Juxt Pro is available in two variants  Matte Black and Steel Black, which are both priced at Rs 22,995.

Campaign Credits:

Created by: Ogilvy & Mather, Bangalore

National Creative Director: Rajiv Rao

Executive Creative Director: Azazul Haque, Mahesh Gharat

Senior Creative Director: Mukesh Kumar

Senior Vice President and Head of Advertising  South: Tithi Ghosh

Account Management: Sindhu Menon, Akshatha Poojari, Shivani Agarwal

Planning: Sreenesh Bhat, Easo John

Agency Producer: Rajib Baruah

PR Agency: Rediffusion/ Edelman India

Production:

Production House: Good Morning

Director: Shashanka Chaturvedi

Executive Producer: Vikram Kalra

Producer: Robin DCruz

Director of Photography: Jason West

Music: Subhajit Mukherjee

Cast: Tanmay, Denzil, Vishrut

Post Production Head: Bharat Arote

Watch the Juxt Pro TVC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtz2mdX0aEE
Pass Pass Pulse, from Dharampal Satyapal Group, launched in April 2015 in Kachcha Aam flavour, crossed the Rs 100-crore mark within eight months of its launch. The brand created a rage in the stagnant hard boiled candy market, which was in dire need of innovation. The category maker in the hard-boiled candy segment has now become the Pulse of the nation.

DS Group started the test marketing of Pulse Kachcha Aam Flavour in Rajasthan in January 2015. The test marketing was received with a phenomenal response. In April 2015, the product was officially launched in Gujarat, Rajasthan and select areas of Delhi NCR.

They understood that regular flavours and products in this category would not work, and therefore, focused on innovation. During their research, they realised that Kachcha Aam (raw mango) is a flavour that is eaten by people across India in some or the other form, and is a flavour that is most popular across all age-groups. They also got the insight that Kachcha Aam is eaten with a mixture of salt and spices to add more flavour to it. Pulling together these insights, they started working on creating a product out of it and came up with Pulse Kachcha Aam.

In conversation with AdGully, Shashank Surana, VP - New Product Development, DS Group, traces the growth of the Pulse candy and shares the factors that have made it such a success. Excerpts:

AdGully (AG): How big is the hard-boiled candy market in India and what is its year-on-year growth rate? What is Pass Pass Pulse Candys share of this market?

Shashank Surana (SS): The hard-boiled candy segment is about Rs 2,300 crore now. And Pulse is the new launch. So, right now we are about 7-8 per cent of the market.

AG: What have been the growth drivers for the hard-boiled candy segment vis-a-vis the soft toffee and eclair segment?

SS: The hard-boiled candy segment has evolved over the years. As far as the soft-chew and toffee segment is concerned, they have not evolved so much and far as Indian consumers are concerned, they are more habitual to hard-boiled candy segment. With the launch of Pulse there has been a lot of excitement in the category and the category has moved from single-digit numbers to double digit numbers in terms of growth. I think that innovation is a certain thing that is required for any category, so that is actually one of the drivers for the category to grow. Another factor is understanding what your consumers want. Thats very critical for every category. The industry growth rate in 2014-15 was around 12 per cent and before that it was about 9-12 per cent, whereas this year the industry has showed very good numbers with 23 per cent growth; some of that actually was also contributed by Pulse.

AG: What are the factors that have contributed to Pulse Candy reaching Rs 100 crore within eight months of its launch?

SS: If I were to talk about the success, about the parameters, I would start with the 4Ps of marketing. I would start with the Product  the product has to be something which consumers want, something which can be differentiated, which can be value-added, that is what was there with Pulse. The market was stagnant. There were only two flavours coming in. There was something new that could be added to the market. So I think the product differentiation was very critical at this point of time and in fact, the Kaccha Aam flavours contribution would be about 26 per cent of the total industry, while Mango flavour contributes around 24 per cent. So together, Mango as a category contributes about 50 per cent and thats a huge number. While raw mango is seldom eaten on its own owing to its sour flavour, in candy form with its sweet and tangy flavour, it was very well received. That was actually one of the insights that we took and we tried to capture that insight into the candy format. Thats what the differentiation was.

Now coming to the Price of candies, most were priced at 50 paisa. Only 14 per cent of the industry was priced at Re 1. So it was a major decision for us to take for the Pulses price point, because ultimately you have to go for Re 1 in the long term. At 50 paisa, the companies are providing the 2.5 gm candy; you know to experience this product you need a basic mass to it, you need a basic grammage to it and that is 4 gm. And for that you need a price point of Re 1 because you are giving a value-added product. Consumers are value conscious and cost conscious. Thus, they were getting both value and cost in the Pulse candy. Another thing was that the packaging stood out as well, in terms of the old segment, the colour combination was very much liked by the consumer and it was easy to identify this product.

Moving on to the Placement, at DS Group, we reach more than a million outlets directly. That is one of our strengths and piggy backing on that strength we made available the Pulse candy, along with the Paan Plus and all retail outlets. So that is the entire distribution channel.

When it comes to Promotion, the question that everybody asks us is how we made this brand without marketing and promotion. And I would always say the same thing  that promotion doesnt mean only a TV commercial. It is a much wider perspective than a TVC. We did a lot of outdoor promotions. The main objective for us was to deal with the consumer and get them to like the product. If you just go back two steps, how does word-of-mouth happen? It happens only when you try the product, like the product and recommend that product to your friends. So that only happens when you do the trail. So we did that and the consumers liked the product and started to do word-of-mouth. That, in todays day and age, is very difficult to achieve. And all the word-of-mouth marketing for Pulse happened from the digital space, along with the offline spaces. But digital was one of the major platforms for word-of-mouth, where celebrities tweeted about the product, about the experience of the product, etc. So a lot of material content on Pulse is there on digital to the extent that people have made their own advertisement on it.

AG: Parles Mango Bite has been a strong player in this segment. How are you competing on the mango flavour front?

SS: We not competing with anyone, everybody is competing with their own product. We need to get the right product at the right time to the right audience, there is no competition there. Whatever competition there is, it is healthy competition. We created this category, and now there are big companies getting into this category, so the category is expanding. Whenever any new player enters the category, the category only expands.

AG: Who is your creative agency for the brand?

SS: Right now we are working on getting an agency on board. We have initiated a pitch process and are in discussions with a lot of agencies. We are evaluating different combinations with different agencies and their communications.

AG: Going forward, what is your strategy to grow Pulse Candy  in terms of market share, variants, distribution, price points?

SS: As I have mentioned, the strategy was very clear  listen to what your consumer want and deliver what you do the best. There has to be an amalgamation between the both  what you do the best and what your consumers want. And that is what our strategy has been from Day 1. In terms of market share, yes we have reached the numbers very fast and we would like to grow this number at the same rate next year as well. Hopefully, we are looking at double digit numbers soon. In terms of distribution, we would be growing the distribution market, of course. And as far as price point is concerned, we would like to be at Re 1 as of now.

AG: What is the revenue and volume growth that you are looking at for this fiscal?

SS: As I mentioned, the industry has grown by 23 per cent in this financial year, and we would like to grow in this industry  I would say at more than 23 per cent. In terms of volume growth, we are currently at 1,500 tonnes a month.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Inc. magazine today ranked Daytona Beach, FL, company Synergy Billing No. 767 on its 35th annual Inc. 5000, an exclusive ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economy's most dynamic segment its independent small businesses. Companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Domino's Pizza, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees of the Inc. 5000.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160819/399723

This places Synergy Billing on the prestigious list for the second year in a row. In 2015, the company ranked Number 1071.

"To learn that we are among the top 1000 of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. is very gratifying," said M. Jayson Meyer, the CEO and founder of Synergy Billing. "This validates that we are meeting the needs of our clients and providing a great workplace for our employees. They are the 'secret sauce' in our success and they share my commitment to assuring that the most vulnerable people in the nation have access to health care."

Meyer has announced plans to develop The Fountainhead at Holly Hill, a 25-acre corporate campus in Holly Hill, FL, that will incorporate the company's headquarters, the Synergy Billing Academy, day care, fitness, and dining facilities, a housing component, and a community health center. "Our campus will help us better serve our clients, our employees, and our community," says Meyer. "Each employee should have the opportunity to maximize her or his potential, both at work and in their personal lives."

Meyer is a founder of Innovate Daytona, a movement to create an "entrepreneurial ecosystem" in Volusia County, FL. He and fellow entrepreneur Corrine Heck are also the cofounders of FailForwardFL, a movement designed to "celebrate failure" and encourage risk-taking. The lively kickoff will take place at Daytona Beach's Ocean Center on Thursday, September 29, 2016. For more information, those who are interested can visit www.failforwardfl.org.

The 2016 Inc. 5000, unveiled online at Inc.com and with the top 500 companies featured in the September issue of Inc. is the most competitive crop in the list's history. The average company on the list achieved a mind-boggling three-year growth of 490%. The Inc. 5000's aggregate revenue is $205 billion, generating 647,000 jobs over the past three years. Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at www.inc.com/inc5000.

"The Inc. 5000 list stands out where it really counts," says Inc. President and Editor-In-Chief Eric Schurenberg. "It honors real achievement by a founder or a team of them. No one makes the Inc. 5000 without building something great usually from scratch. That's one of the hardest things to do in business, as every company founder knows. But without it, free enterprise fails."

Synergy Billing provides revenue cycle management to a special niche in health care known as Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). These community health centers act as a safety net for the nation's most vulnerable populations. Services provided to these clients including medical billing, credentialing, and extensive training on a variety of critical topics. Synergy Billing was founded by entrepreneur M. Jayson Meyer, who is nationally recognized as an expert in maximizing revenue in health care. Most FQHCs report collection rates of less than 75 percent, while Synergy Billing clients report collection rates of more than 90 percent.

Media Contact: Jeannette Duerr, Synergy Billing, LLC, 386-256-1992, jduerr@synergybilling.com

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

SOURCE Synergy Billing, LLC
Nickel Market in South Africa: 2016-2020 Review - Research and Markets

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Nickel Market in South Africa: 2016-2020 Review" report to their offering.

The report brings together facts and figures about nickel market in South Africa covering period of 2010-2020. Statistics, experts' opinions and estimations are given.

The report about nickel market in South Africa covers:

- reserves, mines, production

- manufacturers

- demand structure, trends

- consumers

- prices

- market forecast

Buying the report means:

- availability of key statistics about nickel market in South Africa (historical and forecast)

- allocation of country market players, their role in the market

- provision of data on demand characteristics

- identification of market potential

Key Topics Covered:

1. OVERVIEW OF NICKEL MARKET IN SOUTH AFRICA

2. RESERVES IN SOUTH AFRICA

2.1. Deposits

3. NICKEL SUPPLY IN SOUTH AFRICA

3.1. South Africa output in 2010-2015

3.2. South Africa production shares in global market and in regional market (2010-2015)

4. NICKEL DEMAND IN SOUTH AFRICA

5.1. Demand structure, 2015

5.2. South Africa consumption in 2010-2015

5. NICKEL TRADE IN SOUTH AFRICA

5.1. Export (recent years)

6.2. Import (recent years)

6.3. Annual prices (recent years)

6. FUTURE TRENDS IN NICKEL MARKET TO 2020

6.1. General market forecast

6.2. Nickel output forecast to 2020

6.3. Nickel consumption forecast to 2020

7. NICKEL END-USERS IN SOUTH AFRICA

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lvb3cf/nickel_market_in

Related Topics: Nickel

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160822005308/en/

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716


The Air Force has approved 1,688 fiscal year 2017 retraining quotas in 74 Air Force specialty codes for eligible active-duty, first-term Airmen.The first-term Airman retraining program allows first-term Airmen, including staff sergeants who are in their first enlistment, to retrain in conjunction with a re-enlistment, said Master Sgt. Kris Reece, the training policy and procedures superintendent at the Air Force Personnel Center. This is a great opportunity for Airmen to pursue a different career field while enabling the Air Force to maintain a healthy balance in all enlisted career fields.New this year for Airmen interested in retraining is the Air Force Work Interest Navigator tool. The tool, available on the retraining page on myPers, helps Airmen identify potential career fields by answering a series of questions about functional communities, job context and work activities.The AF-WIN tool creates a customized job-interest report from your responses and compares your interests to all entry-level AFSCs, Reece said. Youll still want to visit the enlisted retraining advisory, however, because AF-WIN doesnt tell you if that career field is available or if youre eligible.Retraining opportunities are available in a variety of career fields including cyber, intelligence, pararescue, flight engineer, missile and space facilities and more. Most are open to all eligible Airmen, but some, such as the Aerospace Medical Service career field, require prior qualifications.The enlisted retraining advisory on myPers is updated in real time, Reece said, and helps Airmen identify careers fields with retraining in quotas for their grade (or projected grade if selected). Standard retraining eligibility and AFSC entry requirements apply for all retraining applicants.NCO retraining quotas will be announced when they become available.Retraining information is available and continuously updated on myPers . Click Retraining from the active-duty enlisted landing page. The online training advisory is listed under the Tools section. In addition, a live chat feature is available for Airmen on the First Term Airmen Retraining page. To chat live with a Total Force Service Center representative, go to the page and allow 30 to 60 seconds to enable a representative to come online.For more information about Air Force personnel programs, go to the myPers website . Individuals who do not have a myPers account can request one by following the instructions on the Air Force Retirees Services website
Charleston Airman earns Navy training distinction

A few miles from the bustling runways full of cargo planes at Joint Base Charleston, one Airman is acquiring his sea legs.



Senior Airman Austin Walworth, assigned to the 628th Security Forces Squadron, recently earned the Navy's small craft insignia. The coxswain pin, as it is commonly called, originated in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. The pin recognizes elite Sailors who are specially trained to operate small boats in combat.



"This pin signifies that Airman Walworth has achieved the highest levels of qualification in small boat operations and tactics," said Navy Lt. Charles Gatewood, the Naval Support Activity Charleston waterfront operations officer.



To become eligible, Walworth completed several personnel qualification system watch stations, two small boat coxswain courses, and planned and led a small team in completing a mission. Level I, or Shore Installation Management Small Boat Coxswain, introduces small boat terminology and equipment, basic concepts of navigation and maritime law. The Level II Coxswain course builds on that knowledge and teaches operators how to tactically employ the boats.



"Weapons is a big part of the course," said Navy Master-at-Arms 1st Class Brian Cobb, a harbor security training supervisor and lead instructor of the Level II course, "but mostly we discuss high-value asset security and how we maneuver the boats to prevent attacks, as well as conducting insertion/extraction and search and rescue."



After building on the fundamentals in the classroom, students put what they learn into action through live combat scenarios in the water.



"At the end, we got to actually execute the mission we planned," Walworth said. "Seeing everything come full circle and putting all of our training together to get the job done was pretty rewarding."



Because the Air Force and Navy have historically different missions and roles in protecting the U.S., there are some challenges when training between branches. Walworth said this aspect of the qualification process was the most difficult, but it gave him a newfound appreciation for what the Navy does.



"In the Air Force we are used to operating on land, and this type of navigation in the water is completely different," Walworth said. "All I know is air base defense, but once I got onto the boats here, I wanted to be the best I could be at it."



The story of Walworth's climb up the ladder from Airman, to small boat crewmember, to coxswain is beneficial for both branches of service.



"This opens a new avenue for security forces Airmen to see how the Navy does waterborne security," Gatewood said. "After completing the course and earning their pin, it allows multiple services to speak one language on the water to help minimize miscommunications. It also helps planning because the Airmen have a better grasp on factors to be considered when performing a maritime security mission."



Walworth's achievement also shines as an example to other service members assigned to JB Charleston.



"He sets the new standard for all the Airmen following in his footsteps," Cobb said. "After earning his pin, he is considered a subject matter expert on everything related to small boats."



Walworth said he welcomes the expectations that come with breaking down barriers.



"In today's world, anything can happen and we have to be ready to react to any threat out there," he said. "I look forward to seeing and being a mentor to new Airmen coming into the program, and I hope they catch as much of an interest as I did."
Approximately 50 Air Force Reserve Airmen from the 943rd Rescue Group deployed for training to the East Coast for joint operations July 31 to Aug 12.

The group included three HH-60s and their accompanying maintenance crews; air crew members, including pilots and special mission aviators; aviation resource management specialists; intelligence analysts; 306th Rescue Squadron Survive, Evade, Resist, Escape (SERE) specialists; logistics and plans personnel; aircrew flight equipment; and other support functions.

While there, they flew 17 sorties in upstate New York and Vermont, including Lake Champlain, and worked with fellow Airmen and Soldiers from the Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard and U.S. Armys 10th Mountain Division.

It went extremely well, said Lt. Col. Paul Anderson, 943rd Rescue Group chief of standardization and evaluations, a seasoned rescue pilot of 21 years. We got some good combat search and rescue training using the Situational Awareness Data Link radio and integrating with sister services.

Flying and operating out of terrain completely different from the open desert of Arizona, where the group is headquartered at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, this training allowed those new to the unit and those who have been flying rescue missions for decades to experience new environments that prepare them for real-world operations.

I got to do live hoists for the first time, said Staff Sgt. Jesse Roberts, a brand-new flight engineer who has been at the 305th RQS for only a month and is in upgrade training. Daytime water ops were really cool  I havent actually hoisted someone before. It felt good, like youre actually doing your job.

During two of the combat search and rescue training flights, the team worked a complex, joint scenario in which one helicopter imbedded an F-16 pilot from the 158th Fighter Wing, Vermont Air National Guard, with two 306th RQS SERE specialists. They also imbedded U.S. Army "opposing forces" from 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, NY, with military police and a military working dog; and an Air Force joint terminal attack controller and air liaison officer from the 20th Air Support Operations Squadron. The pilot, who was role playing as a crash survivor, had to evade the opposing forces and their working dog while two other HH-60s flew the rescue mission accompanied by four Michigan National Guard A-10s from the 107th Fighter Squadron, 127th Wing. The A-10s communicated with the "survivor" and provided (simulated) close air support to the helicopters, while the flight engineers extracted the pilot using a forest penetrator.

Any time you can train with the Army or other services makes it easier for the times you have to do it real-world, said Chief Master Sgt. Michael Flake, a veteran 305th RQS flight engineer with 26 years of experience and 14 real-world combat deployments. The A-10s out of Michigan dont have a chance to fly with helicopters often, so coming out to train with people who dont have rescue assets close to them is really helpful.

The 305th RQS and two SERE specialists spent another day of the trip training with military K-9 handlers from the 8th Military Police Detachment, 91st Military Police Battalion, out of Fort Drum, NY, hoisting six military working dogs and their handlers into and out of an HH-60.

Dog hoisting was my favorite part [of the week], said Tech. Sgt. Trevor Stevens, a 943rd Rescue Group standardizations and evaluation NCO. When were deployed, we might have to do something like that. If we or they arent familiar, [real world] is not the best time to have to do it for the first time.

All of these flying training missions would not have been possible without the dedicated work of the behind-the-scenes support personnel who coordinated airlift; ensured orders were correctly written; planned the missions; and launched and recovered the aircraft and accompanying personnel, ensuring they had the correct gear to be safe and effective.

The magnitude of this kind of training mission is far greater than what most people see, which is these amazing aircraft flying over land and water accomplishing a search and rescue mission, said Lt. Col. Sherard Dorroh, 943rd Mission Support Flight commander. It requires a full complement of specialties and people in critical support roles, and the fact that we can pull it off shows that the men and women of the 943rd Rescue Group are absolutely the best at what they do.
Impossible dream becomes reality for one South American country

In an age of high-visibility drones and cyber security, there is a side of the Air Force some dont see: its humanitarian missions.



On Aug. 12, members of the Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard, and active-duty components came together to transport 47.8 tons of cargo to South America for a humanitarian mission.



The cargo, one Pierce Pumper truck, two Pierce Lyons Trucks, and one Mack fire truck made their way from Wisconsin and New Jersey all the way down to volunteer firefighters in Nicaragua.



Master Sgt. Jorge Narvaez, a New Jersey Air National Guardsman with the 108th Security Forces Squadron, started the process to get the trucks sent to Nicaragua.



Ive always felt compelled to help; it fulfills me as a human being, trying to make a difference, Narvaez said.



Narvaez, who is originally from Nicaragua, joined the Air National Guard in New Jersey in 1992 and is a member of the security forces commanders support staff.



In 2014, Narvaez traveled to Nicaragua, and while there, visited a group of volunteer firefighters, the Bomberos de Nicaragua, located in Managua, Nicaragua.



I saw that they were in dire need of serviceable fire trucks and equipment, Narvaez said. He told the Nicaraguan firefighters that he would work hard to get them the equipment.



When he returned home, Narvaez talked to Ray Wadsworth, the former fire chief in Princeton, N.J., and was able to send firefighters coats, boots and hoses to Nicaragua. Although the Nicaraguan firefighters were grateful for the donated gear, they still needed new trucks.



In 2015, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration informed the Princeton firefighters that they would have to replace two of their fire trucks.



According to Narvaez, Wadsworth felt that one of the trucks could be donated. We began to work together in doing all that was required to get the truck from the city.



Narvaez sent a letter to Robert Gregory, Princetons director of emergency services, explaining how the retired truck could be put to good use in Latin America. Gregory agreed.



Then came the 17-ton question: how would they deliver the truck to Nicaragua? The answer involved the Air Force Reserve and the Denton Program.



Former U.S. Sen. Jeremiah Denton created the program as an amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. More than 5.6 million pounds of humanitarian supplies have been sent to more than 50 countries since 1998, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.



The program is administered by the U.S. AID, the Department of State and the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. It allows U.S. citizens and organizations to use military cargo aircraft to transport humanitarian goods to countries in need.



Narvaez made contact with officials at the U.S. Embassy in Managua and Air Force officials who would make the arrangements to transport the truck 3,700 miles.



The next step was to weigh and measure the truck with all its hoses and nozzles attached, and provide the Princeton Fire Dept. with instructions on how to prepare it for shipment. We drained the water from the tank and drove the truck around until the gas tank was at least half empty, said Kyle Rendall, Deputy Chief, Princeton Fire Dept.



In order for the flight to take place, Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega also had to sign off. After his approval, the only thing left was the airlift certification letter, which served as the approval letter.



The letter arrived on June 3rd and assigned the 439th Airlift Wing with airlifting the fire truck.



On Aug. 12, the truck from Princeton was loaded onto a Westover C-5 Galaxy at joint base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. It then flew down to Charleston AFB, S.C., where it picked up three more trucks which had been donated from the Wisconsin/Nicaraguan Partners of the Americas, Inc.



The aircraft made one stop at MacDill AFB, Fla., to go through a customs inspection and get fuel for the rest of the journey to South America.



The mission was successful, said Maj. Matthew Podkowka, the mission commander and member of the 337th Airlift Squadron at Westover. We had a positive experience meeting the local representatives who were very impressed by the C-5 and its capabilities.



In an effort to help improve U.S. relations with the Nicaraguan government, the United States Ambassador in Nicaragua, Laura Dogu, requested the pilots and air crew give a tour of the C-5 to the local representatives as a gesture of openness.



Master Sgt. Manual Reyes, a Westover loadmaster on the flight, served as the unofficial translator between the crew and Nicaraguans. He was even able to provide interviews for their local news, said Podkowka.



Although Narvaez was unable to join the flight to Nicaragua, he says that there is one thing he hopes fellow Airmen take away from this.



I want Airmen to see this and know that they can do this as well, Narvaez said. There are many countries in the world that can use our help, and there are always things you can do to help people.


Top chaplain addresses Reserve deployers

On a twist of jazz vocalist Bobby McFerrins 1988 hit song, the Air Force chief of chaplains told reservists and their loved ones, Dont worry, be hopey, during a Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program training event here Saturday.



You know they say that 92 percent of what we worry about makes no difference in our lives, because the things we worry about most are things we cant control anyway, Chaplain (Maj. Gen.) Dondi E. Costin told an audience of nearly 450 adult participants at a weekend event aimed at pre- and post-deployment reservists and those closest to them.



That additional 8 percent is what we can control, so be disciplined and be diligent with the other 8 percent, said Costin. Dont waste your energy on the 92 percent. Because if youre worried, you diminish the strength you have to deal with the 8 percent you can do something about.



Yellow Ribbon was designed to assist reservists and National Guard members in maintaining resiliency as they transition between their military and civilian roles.



I want you to think for a moment about what resiliency really is, because its simple, said Costin, the senior pastor for more than half a million active-duty, Guard, Reserve, and civilian forces. I like to think of it as the old Timex (wristwatch) commercial, A Timex can take a lickin and keep on tickin. Thats what resiliency is.



Costin is a member of the special staff of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein, establishing guidance and providing advice on all matters pertaining to the religious and moral welfare of Air Force personnel.



He is responsible for establishing effective programs to meet the religious needs of Airmen and their loved ones. One such person is Sarah Thorpe, a former North Carolina National Guard member who attended the event with her husband, Staff Sgt. Steve Thorpe, a civil engineer with the 567th Red Horse Squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, who is preparing for an upcoming deployment, his first. Sarah Thorpe recalled her frustration with the lack of support programs and resources following her 2005 deployment to Iraq.



It was the first deployment for my unit, so everything was new to everyone, she said. We struggled. It was difficult, I didnt know the resources, and I didnt know how to contact the resources because Im suddenly back to my regular life.



The Air Force Reserve Yellow Ribbon Program began in 2008 following a congressional mandate for the Department of Defense to facilitate this type of post-deployment transition experience.



Now that they finally have the Yellow Ribbon Program, I am getting the information as a spouse and my husband is getting the information so we can work together as a team, said Thorpe. Im hopeful because now I know what to expect, because I have the resources and because I can be in control of the situation at home when his mission is overseas."



The program promotes the well-being of reservists and their loved ones by connecting them with resources before and after deployments. Each year, the Air Force Reserve program trains 7,000 reservists and those closest to them in education benefits, health care, retirement information and more. The South Carolina event was the first Reserve one attended by Costin, who has been the services top chaplain for a year.



Youve got other people around you who can help you. You dont have to go through whatever this is by yourself, said Costin. Thats what your squadron is there for. Thats what your flight is therefore. Thats what your base community and your family and your neighborhood is there for  to help you.


Nearly 10 passengers of a bus died after the bus plunged into Sagar Project left bank canal near Kusumanchi in Khamam district of Telangana on the wee hours of Monday. Rescue operations are still going on and police are suspecting three more bodies might still be trapped inside the water-filled bus.



The bus was on its way to Hyderabad to Kakinada with 29 passengers. Around 3 am when the bus reached Kusumanchi, the driver lost control over the vehicle and the vehicle fell into 30 feet NSP canal.

The driver of the private bus was apparently driving the vehicle at a very high speed. He lost control over the wheels, as a result the bus on its way to Kakinada from Hyderabad, fell into the canal under Kusumanchi mandal, police said.

Andhra Pradesh government announced an ex-gratia of Rs. 3 lakh each to the kin of the 10 deceased.

Some of the victims belonged to East Godavari and some were from West Godavari district of the AP.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed grief over the accident and spoke to East Godavari district Collector Arun Kumar over phone to enquire about the incident.

According to Khammam superintendent of police Shah Nawaz Khan, the bus belonging to private operator Yatra Genie, started its journey from Hyderabad at 11.30 pm on Sunday.

Other travellers on the highway quickly informed the police, who rushed to the spot and began rescue operations. Rescuers recovered seven bodies and shifted around 21 others to the Khammam hospital. Of them, three passengers succumbed to injuries. The condition of at least five passengers is said to be critical.

The death toll is likely to increase as a few other passengers are believed trapped inside the bus. The police called for a crane to retrieve the bus from the canal.

Collector DS Lokesh Kumar and other senior officials reached the spot to supervise the rescue operations.
South Korea and the United States kicked off large-scale military exercises on Monday, triggering condemnation and threats of a preemptive nuclear strike from North Korea.



The two-week annual Ulchi Freedom drill, which plays out a scenario of full-scale invasion by the nuclear-armed North, is largely computer-simulated but still involves around 50,000 Korean and 25,000 US soldiers.

The exercise always triggers a rise in tensions on the divided Korean peninsula, and this year it coincides with particularly volatile cross-border relations following a series of high-profile defections.

Seoul and Washington insist the joint military drills are purely defensive in nature, but Pyongyang views them as willfully provocative.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry on Monday condemned Ulchi Freedom as an unpardonable criminal act that could bring the peninsula to the brink of war.

The Korean Peoples Army (KPA), meanwhile, threatened a military response to what it described as a rehearsal for a surprise nuclear attack and invasion of the North.

North Koreas frontline units were fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved, said a spokesman for the KPA General Staff.

Nuclear strike

The slightest violation of North Koreas territorial sovereignty would result in the source of the provocation being turned into a heap of ashes through Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike, the spokesman said.

Pyongyang has made similar threats in the past, and actual retaliation for South Korea-US military drills has largely been restricted to firing ballistic missiles into the sea.

The Norths main ally China voiced its opposition to Ulchi Freedom, with a commentary published by the local media, saying it would only make Pyongyang more aggressive at an already sensitive time.

As the drill began, South Korean President Park Geun-Hye said a recent spate of headline-grabbing defections from North Korea signalled political turmoil in Pyongyang that could cause the leadership there to lash out against the South.

It is increasingly possible that North Korea may undertake various terror attacks and provocations to block internal unrest, prevent further defections and create confusion in our society, Park told a meeting of her National Security Council.

On Sunday the Unification Ministry in Seoul urged all citizens to be on guard against possible North Korean assassination attempts on defectors and anti-Pyongyang activists in the South.

Park said the Souths military was on high alert and would vigorously strike back in the event of any hostile action.
Irans defence minister criticised Russia on Monday for having kind of show-off and ungentlemanly attitude for publicising that it used an Iranian air base to launch airstrikes on Syria, the first sign of government dissent over the unprecedented stationing of foreign troops in the Islamic Republic. The comments by General Hossein Dehghan come after he chastised parliament this weekend for asking questions about Russia using the Shahid Nojeh Air Base to refuel its bombers striking Syria.



His remarks on Monday, reported by state television, signal officials beginning to recognise how unpopular the decision could be with the public. There was no immediate response from Moscow. Last week, Russia announced it used the airfield some 50 kilometres north of the Iranian city of Hamedan. Iranian officials only confirmed Russias presence a day later.

On Monday, state TV quoted Dehghan as saying that Russia will use the base for a very short and fixed span, corresponding (to) operation in Syria. So far, Russia has carried out three days worth of strikes from the base. Responding to a question about why Iran didnt initially announce Russias presence at the airfield, Dehghan appeared prickly on the state TV broadcast.

Russians are interested to show they are a superpower to guarantee their share in political future of Syria and, of course, there has been a kind of show-off and ungentlemanly (attitude) in this field, he said. His remarks also suggest Russia and Iran initially agreed to keep Moscows use of the air base quiet. Its announcement likely will force a response from Irans Sunni-ruled Mideast neighbours, which host American military personnel.

For Iran, allowing Russia to launch strikes from inside the country is likely to prove unpopular. Many still remember how Russia, alongside Britain, invaded and occupied Iran during World War II to secure oil fields and Allied supply lines. But while Britain withdrew, Russia refused to leave, sparking the first international rebuke by the nascent United Nations Security Council in 1946.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, at a meeting with a delegation led by former J-K chief minister Omar Abdullah, expressed deep concern and pain over the prevailing situation in Kashmir. The delegation called on the Prime Minister to apprise him of the situation in the Kashmir valley.



PM said, We need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution. He also said all political parties must work together to find that solution.

He told a delegation of opposition leaders of Jammu and Kashmir that those who lost their lives during the recent disturbances are a part of us and it is a matter of distress whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, official sources said.

The Prime Minister said his government stands with the state of Jammu and Kashmir and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same.

During the meeting with the delegation led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, the Prime Minister expressed deep concern and pain at the prevailing situation in the state and appealed for restoration of normalcy in the Valley which has been witnessing unrest for the last 44 days.

Sources said that the government is willing to engage all mainstream stake holders to bring peace back to the Valley. What you saw today was also a dialogue to find a solution, said minister of state in the PMO, Jitendra Singh, referring to the meeting with opposition leaders.

Leaders of opposition parties led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah urged the Prime Minister for a political initiative to deal with the situation in the state.

Abdullah told media persons later that they told Modi that Kashmir was not an issue related to development or the lack of it.

It is a political issue and we told the Prime Minister that we need a political approach to deal with the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, said Abdullah after the meeting.

If we dont find a political solution to this, then every time well repeat the same mistake, he said.
Congress MLA Nitesh Rane warned of launching an agitation if the Maharashtra government fails to provide toll exemption to commuters visiting Konkan region via Mumbai-Pune Expressway for the upcoming Ganesh festival.



Rane had recently written to the Maharashtra PWD ministry seeking the toll exemption.

It has been almost three weeks since I wrote the letter to the Maharashtra PWD Ministry seeking the toll exemption, Nitesh, son of former Maharashtra chief minister Narayan Rane, told reporters here.

But, unfortunately, no response has been given to me yet. This forces me to assume that the government is not willing to provide toll relief to people of the Konkan region, he said.

If the demands are not met, especially in the backdrop of the bridge collapse at Mahad, I will come out with my supporters at the toll plazas (on the E-way) and oppose levying of the toll, said the MLA, who represents Kankawali Assembly Constituency in Sindhudurg district.

Rane also asked bus drivers to display a banner with Konkan written on it at the the front side of windscreen.

After the bridge collapse at Mahad, people are forced to take the E-way to reach Konkan, which has already compounded their problems, he claimed.

As per the MLA, people are using the E-way also because of the inefficiency of the Maharashtra government in properly maintaining and improving the Mumbai-Goa Highway.

During the (recently-concluded) Assembly session, the government had told the Legislature that the condition of Mumbai-Goa highway, currently riddled with huge potholes, will be improved before the Ganeshotsav season. But, the government failed to live up to its promise, he alleged.

Why should the people pay toll at the Mumbai-Pune Expressway because of the inefficiency of the government? The Mahad tragedy on the Mumbai-Goa highway has only worsened the condition of travellers, who will now be forced to use the Mumbai-Pune expressway in large numbers, he said.

A large number of people, mainly those hailing from Konkan and employed in Mumbai, head to their villages in the coastal districts to celebrate the 10-day festival.
[dropcap]D[/dropcap]eeply pained, all those who died in Kashmir are ours, these are words of our PM Narendra Modi. After 45 days of riots, 70 lives lost and hundreds of Kashmiris blinded with the pellet guns, now government is thinking over a dialogue to resolve Kashmirs problem? On Monday, a delegation led by former Chief Minister of the state Omar Abdullah submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister, expressing its anguish, grief and sorrow over the loss of lives in the Valley. Finally, they sought Modis intervention in immediately banning the pellet guns and ending the unrest in the State. Kashmiris have been agitating for something or other for the last sixty five years. What are their grievances? Let them spell out the problem. It cannot be freedom from India. No Government can allow that. In the absence of clear list of grievances, this can only be called proxy war encouraged by Pakistan agencies. This charade has been going for too long. A delegation has not taken even one positive step that will help to restore peace in Kashmir.

On the contrary, Omar Abdullah tweets almost every day, all irresponsible statements that adds fuel to the fire, for example, Grave of Burhan Wani comment shows his malafide intentions towards India. He seems repeating anti-India rhetoric like his grandfather Sheikh Mohd. Abdullah who did the same in 1953 for which Senior Abdullah was jailed by Pandit Nehru for more than a decade.

Now the question is that, what has Omar Abdullah and his father Farooq Abdullah, done as Chief Ministers of the state for the youth of J&K? If they would have credibly educated the Kashmiri youths then they would have not fallen prey to the terrorists or Pakistanis propaganda. Fourteen per cent of pellet gun victims in Kashmir are below 15 years of age. Moreover 90-95 per cent of all stone-pelters are youngsters. Dont question the use of pellet gun rather think of those protesters who were below the age of 14 years. Were they aware of their act and use of pellet gun? Who provoked them to protest? Identify them and punish them? First of all, why should the children be in a place where they are not supposed to be? Why are they on the frontline of the agitations? The innocent children are being used by the separatists as human shield and attacking the police/armed forces from behind. Where are the children/wards of the separatists leaders? Why they are not coming out for protesting? This is a ploy by the separatist leaders to attract attention of human right activists and others. Nobody is seeing the condition of the personnel from armed forces that are grievously injured in the stone pelting by the agitators.

Rest of India has sensible and patriotic Muslims who are Islamic in true sense. Who love our country, then why is Kashmir not at peace? While asking government to stop using pellet guns, the parents in Kashmir should stop sending their children for stone pelting and killing Army and police.

Meanwhile, father-son duo should answer what they have done with the murder of almost 3000 Kashmiri Pandits and 500000 deserted Hindus from their homes in these 25 years. Why they have to migrate away from Kashmir? Nehruvian Congress leaders should also be asked the same questions. Why should they not be arrested and prosecuted for negligence on Human Rights of Kashmiri Hindus? I strongly believe Omar and Farooq are not qualified to talk on Kashmir, because they could not take care of the states residents. Omar should suggest alternative to guns. Kashmir doesnt need politics but solution for the situation. It would be much better if these youngsters go to schools instead of squatting on road sides. Im sure, it wont happen if they are at school. These youths are being misled along with most of the adults. Its really painful to see that another generation is ready, which we had seen in 90s, of Kashmiri terrorists.

After 1989, we know that what happened between Kashmiris and Indian Army. It was a master move from ISI and Indian Government was not able to counter it properly. When you have an enemy like Pakistan, you need to have plans to counter them. Why nobody in India was able to anticipate that after Afghanistan, ISI will direct these fighters to India? Where was the strategy to counter it? Sudden actions from both sides created more mistrust. Now, army does not trust them and they dont trust army. Pakistan dont have any legal claim in the issue of Kashmir. Their only claim is that as majority of Valley is Muslim, so they should belong to Pakistan. Their proxy war is not a hidden fact. They are fighting with their own identity then how will they provide identity to any other state, is a big issue. Their support for separatist and terrorism is well known. Any adverse action by Indian army on an innocent citizen acts as a fuel for them and their supporters. Most educated Kashmiris do not wish to be part of Pakistan. A very small and rapidly decreasing number of people do want the merger with Pakistan though. About 65 per cent of these want an independent Kashmir and the remaining want to be part of India minus the suppression from Indian authorities.

Kashmiris (Hindu and Muslim) have suffered both at the hands of Pakistan as well as India. It was Pakistan that started ordeal with Kabailis and later on with armed insurgency in late 1980s. Practically, its not possible for Kashmir to be an independent state. Especially with China, Pakistan and India bordering it, an independent Kashmir would be like fresh bait to hungry wolves.

(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2016  Agriculture and construction equipment giant John Deere today announced layoffs at two Iowa manufacturing plants. The news comes days after the company reported profit for its fiscal third quarter fell from the year-earlier period.

In all, 145 workers will lose their jobs: 115 in the city of Waterloo, and 30 in Davenport. The layoffs will be effective by the end of September. Company spokesman Ken Golden said employees were informed of the news on Monday.

Deere continues to adjust the size of the companys production workforce to meet market demand for products manufactured at each of its factories, Golden said in a statement. Todays actions are consistent with projections that were communicated when Deere announced its third quarter results on Friday.

Deere & Company has announced third quarter net income of $489 million, a drop of almost $23 million from the year-earlier quarter. Worldwide net sales and revenues were down 11 percent in the quarter and 9 percent for the first nine months of the fiscal year.

John Deere's performance in the third quarter reflected the continuing impact of the global farm recession as well as difficult conditions in construction equipment markets, Samuel Allen, the company chairman and CEO, said in a statement. He added that all Deere businesses remained profitable, a result of sound execution of our operating plans, the impact of a broad product portfolio, and our success keeping a tight rein on costs and assets.

Equipment sales in the company are expected to drop about 10 percent in fiscal 2016. The companys agriculture and turf division actually saw year over year increases in third quarter profit, but sales in that category are still expected to drop 8 percent this fiscal year.

In March, a similar announcement led to layoffs of 125 employees at two other Iowa plants, and two years ago, 460 Waterloo employees were placed on indefinite layoff.

Learn about the benefits of subscribing to Agri-Pulse. Sign up for your four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.





Layoffs are never easy because we understand the significant impact this action has on our employees, their families, and the community, Dave DeVault, factory manager, said in a statement following the Waterloo layoffs in 2014. We very carefully assess our workforce requirements to ensure we make the best possible decision to respond to various market conditions.

The decline in revenues is in line with declining farm incomes across the country. In January, at the USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum, the departments Chief Economist Rob Johansson projected $1.6 billion drop in net farm income, about 3 percent below 2015. Commodity prices in all major markets are all forecast to take substantial drops, giving producers less disposable income to upgrade their machinery.

#30

For more news, go to www.Agri-Pulse.com
By Michael R. Hein

As the agricultural economy enters a down period in which low commodity prices have strained farm incomes and concerns about liquidity have reached an all-time high, agricultural bankers are ready and willing to help Americas farmers and ranchers.

After many years of prudent management, agricultural banks have strong balance sheets that allow them to help those in distress. Through the prudent use of techniques like loan restructuring, collateral enhancements, USDA loan guarantees and frequent visits to our customers, bankers can assist most of our clients in weathering a downturn. Agricultural banks are important sources of funding for many business and farmers, and are part of the fabric of their communities. They provide good jobs, are active in civic and charitable causes and are integral to the success of rural areas. Even in times of financial downturn, banks continue to provide the fuel that drives every local economy.

The cycle of agriculture is one fraught with swings that test even the best of farmers and ranchers. Those who have prepared by preserving their cash and paying down debt in the good years will be able to survive and even prosper during tough years. Those that over-borrowed or over-expanded beyond their capacity to manage can get into trouble.

As a farmer or rancher, if you are in a situation where you foresee a problem, don't procrastinate -- start to take action proactively, now. Make a budget and take a critical look at your expenses, both business and personal. Use a sharp knife to cut anything that is not needed to survive both personally and in the business. Consider whether your marketing plan will allow you to meet at least a break-even point as harvest approaches. Ask whether your insurance and hedging plans are in place and whether any adjustments should be made. Consider whether you have any assets that you can sell to generate cash if needed.

Its also critical that you take your new budget and expense plan, along with your insurance/hedging and production plan, to your banker and explain your strategy. You may need to restructure your debt, provide additional collateral, utilize USDA loan guarantees, or do a combination of these to have some cash-flow breathing room. Finally, provide some time for you and your family to de-stress. Being a farmer or rancher is hard, challenging work. Don't let the stress cloud your mind and judgement.

The agricultural banking industry stands ready to help the farmers and ranchers of America in challenging times. Be proactive in reaching out to your lender after preparing your plan and budget to discuss your strategy for weathering the downturn, and we will work to assist as many farmers and ranchers as possible.

The good news is that down cycles lead to up cycles. The survivors are those that prepare for the next good times that eventually will come.

Michael R. Hein is vice president of Liberty Trust & Savings Bank in Durant, Iowa. He is also chairman of ABAs Agricultural and Rural Bankers Committee.

#30
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2016  China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) announced that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. cleared its proposed $43 billion takeover of Syngenta  removing one of the biggest potential obstacles to the deal.

The transaction is advancing as the global seed and pesticide industry undergoes a wave of consolidation.

ChemChina agreed to aquire Syngenta in February, after the company rejected a takeover bid by Monsanto. Now, German chemical giant Bayer is pursuing Monsanto, but the St. Louis-based company rejected a $64 billion offer last month and talks are continuing. And last December, Dow Chemical and DuPont agreed to combine.

Do you find the information on Agri-Pulse helpful? See even more ag, rural policy and energy news when you sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription.





ChemChinas purchase of the Swiss company, one of the worlds largest producers of crop protection products and seeds, is expected to close by the end of the year, the companies said in a joint release. However, the transaction is still subject to antitrust review by other regulatory bodies and closing conditions.

Both companies are working closely with the regulatory agencies involved and discussions remain constructive, the companies said.

#30

For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com
Bangladesh-based freight forwarders are calling for the government to speed up the approval of cargo charter flights as they face an airfreight capacity shortage.

In written comments seen by Air Cargo News, the Bangladesh Freight Forwarders Association (BAFFA) wrote to one of the Bangladeshs leading newspapers calling on the government to make it easier for charter operators to launch ad-hoc flights to the country to help ease an airfreight capacity shortage.

In his comments, BAFFA director of public relations Nurul Amin, who is also managing director of Tower Freight Logistics, said that while some airlines were trying to operate ad-hoc charters, there was not enough capacity to cater for demand.

He added that there are delays in getting permission and flights are operating with one-way traffic, making the cost of transport expensive.

Bangladesh needs additional airfreight capacity to confine airfreight cost and remain competitive with neighbouring countries to meet [government] export targets, he said.

To that end Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh need to ease permission process to allow the operation of ad-hoc freighters at short notice.

Amin said the capacity shortage started in mid-July as a capacity surge coincided with a reduction in airfreight capacity.

He explained that cargo delivered to Chittagong Port in the run up to Eid  when there is a rush ahead of the closure of factories for the holiday  was left stuck at the port for days because of congestion at the port.

Shippers then turned to airfreight in order to meet deadlines.

Export containers could not be loaded on feeder vessels for almost 10 days because of vast pile of import containers, he said.

As a result many shipments had to be converted to air to meet buyers arrival deadline.

As well as congestion at Chittagong, airfreight capacity from Bangladesh has been reduced because of bans on direct exports to the UK, Germany and Australia as a result of security concerns from those countries.

This prompted Lufthansa Cargo to cancel its freight flights to Bangladesh.

In the run up to the current congestion, other airlines also reduced, re-routed, changed aircraft or reduced frequencies from Dhaka because of low yields.

As a result almost 300-400 tons of capacity per week has gone out of the market, having a cumulative impact on present situation, Amin said.

At the same time, increases in demand for airfreight from China because of their capability to pay high freight charges, as they are shipping high end products, means airlines give priority to those shipments from their hubs.

Normally, shortages of capacity can be of benefit to freight forwarders as it enables them to charge higher prices.

However, Amin said this isnt the case: Most freight rates are pre-sold and the cost of handling at Shah Jalal International Airport has increased many fold in recent days due to enhanced security measures.

He added that the present capacity shortage was expected to last until mid-October, but there could be another peak in November ahead of the Christmas holiday.

Share this story
Uganda starts campaign to encourage local consumption of coffee

The Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) and Usaid Feed the Future have launched a campaign to encourage local consumption of coffee among Ugandans with a target of 20 percent in five years up from the current three percent.

Coffee being the second most traded commodity in the world market after oil, an increase in local consumption to only 20 per cent will drastically bump up the economy, Mr Nelson Tugume, the chief executive officer Inspire Africa another partner in the campaign said.

He said through increased consumption will accrue quality production, create jobs, and value addition will fetch higher prices and boost incomes in the pockets of the people.

Uganda currently produces about 3.5 million 60 kg bags of coffee which earn the country $450 million per annum. Coffee export contributions to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stands at 1.8 per cent, while the 3 per cent domestic coffee consumption contributes 1.35 per cent to the GDP but earn the country about $340 million annually if a cup is put at half a dollar.

An increase to 10 per cent will grow the contribution of the domestic coffee consumption, earn the country $2.3 billion and this will translate into about 11.4 per cent to our GDP, Mr Tugume said.

He said the campaign is intended to draw the attention of Ugandans to the numerous benefits of consuming coffee, both health and the financial benefits to farmers and companies involved in coffee as well as to the entire nation.

State minister for Agriculture, Mr Christopher Kibanzanga, said: Most farmers fear to engage in coffee farming because of its long gestation period and forget about the lifetime benefits.

He said Ugandas coffee exports should be increased to at least 20 million 60 kg bags in the next five years and this is going to be boosted by the massive growing engineered by the UPDF and National Agricultural Advisory Services.



Mr Tugume further explained that one of the major reasons for the low consumption locally is the long time Ugandans have been led to believe that coffee is simply a cash crop.

We need to wake up and know what makes business sense as ordinary people and as a country. So we have always known that we only grow coffee for export, he noted.

In line with this vision, Inspire Africa is looking forward to creating a behavioural change in Ugandans by highlighting the various opportunities through the entire value chain, as well as offer training and mobilise logistical support to help interested youths start up business in the sector.

Mr Mathias Kasamba, a prominent coffee farmer commenting about this campaign, said: Coffee is the next big thing for Uganda.

During this campaign, a motor vehicle will be serving 20,000 cups of coffee around Kampala for a week and later the drive will go to the rest of the country, meeting with farmers and testing their coffee.

www.ugandacoffee.go.ug
August 22, 2016

Russias use of an air base in western Iran to launch attacks inside Syria has come to an end for now, according to Iranian officials.

Russia became the first foreign military since World War II to use Iranian soil to launch a military attack last week when long-range Tupolev-22M and Sukhoi Su-34 bombers took off from Hamedan air base. The news, which was first revealed by Russian officials, led to a great deal of commentary both internationally and domestically. A number of Iranian parliamentarians had raised objections, arguing the military influences of superpowers in Iran have had a damaging impact on the country and that the establishment of a foreign military base is against Irans constitution.

In an Aug. 22 news conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi tried to allay those fears. Regarding the situation with Russia, what was done was a temporary act and coordinated, said Ghasemi. I must emphasize that Russia neither has a base in Iran nor is it stationed here. It was temporary, and it has ended for the time being.

In response to a reporters question about why the news was first announced by the Russians, Ghasemi said both Iran and Russia had agreed they would announce the operation at the same time but added that possibly due to the time difference Russia announced it first. However, he said that Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Irans National Security Council, immediately confirmed the news shortly after. He added that the announcement was nearly simultaneous.

In an interview earlier, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan criticized the Russian announcement regarding the use of the Hamedan air base. Dehghan believes the Russians did this because they wanted to show they are a military superpower and they wanted to use it as leverage in negotiations with the United States in order to secure their influence over the political future of Syria.

Dehghan also rejected any type of Russian military base in Iran, adding that the use of Hamedan was for a very short, clear period and linked to operations in Syria.

During the press conference, Ghasemi also addressed Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarifs recent trip to Turkey. He said that Iran and Turkey have difference of views over Syria and that they do not expect a few meetings to resolve the differences. He said that both countries are influential in the region and share a border and it is better for them to cooperate. However, he added that neither country is interested in dictating its positions to the other country.

Ghasemi said that Iran welcomes the improved relationship between Turkey and Russia. On the possibility of a Turkish, Russian and Iranian axis in Syria, Ghasemi said it is too early to discuss such a formation. He added that Russia and Turkey are still trying to restore their ties to what they were before the downing of a Russian jet at the Syrian-Turkish border last fall. He also said that Iran, Turkey and Russia have different concerns and points of views on various issues in the region. For example, he said, the Russians do not share a border with the Kurds and therefore have different considerations. He added that while the three countries are holding consultations and meetings, it is not possible to predict where they will end.
August 22, 2016

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarifs surprise Aug. 12 visit to Turkey may always be remembered in Ankara, as well as in Tehran, for having opened a new chapter in regional cooperation between the two neighbors. The visit was the first by an Iranian official since the failed July 15 coup to overthrow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As such, it was part of Tehran's show of solidarity that began during the coup attempt, with phone calls from Zarif, Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Irans Supreme National Security Council, and Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) external operations wing, the Quds Force.

Zarif went to Ankara to discuss bilateral relations and Syria, a senior Iranian official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, without providing specifics. To get an idea of what transpired in Zarifs three-hour meeting with Erdogan and his talks with Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Al-Monitor had to dig deeper, in several places.

Its an overstatement to say that Iran and Turkey have agreed on what to do on Syria, an Iranian diplomatic source told Al-Monitor. The good thing is that now there is solid ground to stand on, and goodwill, and its obvious that Turkey showed readiness to go further in discussing serious options to draft, along with Iran and Russia, a serious exit strategy that would put an end to the bloodshed in Syria.

As for Tehran, it is clear that there is no chance of a solution in Syria without a serious regional partner, and that partner has to be either Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Given that Tehrans relations with Riyadh grow worse by the day  amid a war of words, the conflicts in Yemen and Syria plus tensions over Bahrain and Lebanon  a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement is a dream unlikely to come true anytime in the near future.

In contrast, Turkey and Iran have preserved good relations despite sharp differences over the crisis in Syria. Indeed, one striking example is how, as the battle for Aleppo raged, Zarif and Erdogan were worshipping together at Friday prayers at the presidential mosque in Ankara.

Turkey and Iran both feel the Syrian heat, but they also believe that surrender is not an option. Turkey is ready to talk, perhaps about many things, among them the future of Syrias defiant president, Bashar al-Assad, including how many months he might stay on or if he can run in the countrys next election. This is all on the agenda, but that doesnt mean Turkey is relinquishing its objectives in war-torn Syria.

Iran is also ready to talk, and Assads future is part of the conversation that Tehran is willing to have. This is not, however, the same as Iran being willing to walk away from the sacrifices made by IRGC members killed in action in Syria or the many Hezbollah, Iraqi and Afghan fighters who lost their lives after having joined forces under the banner of the resistance axis. Both Iran and Turkey are trying to preserve their interests as they discuss a potential compromise. Thus, the best approach for the two countries is to focus on common interests or common threats while at the negotiating table.

One of the main threats both countries, as well as Syria, face is the prospect of the emergence of an independent Kurdish state, despite the differences among the Kurds, who are spread over the territories of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The Kurdish challenge in Iran may not be identical to that in Turkey, but the danger of a domino effect in the region is so strong that no party wants to take any chances. In this equation, Russia also has a role to play in thwarting any attempt to carve out an independent Kurdish state in Syria.

The shared interest in preventing the emergence of a Kurdish state puts Iran and Turkey on the same page when it comes to exerting all possible efforts to keep Syria united and under centralized rule. In other words, Iran and Turkey may be on the path to once again being able to reach compromises. In this vein, another Iranian official who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said that in addition to the public high-level meetings that have taken place or are slated to take place between Iranian and Turkish political officials, there are military and security meetings ongoing behind the scenes.

The Iranian official added, We will probably not hear whether Haj Qasem [Soleimani] has visited Istanbul or Ankara, or whether a high-level Turkish security official has come to Tabriz or Tehran. In practical terms, these men are the ones who can help craft the road map [for how to jump-start Iranian-Turkish cooperation].

On Aug. 19, Irans Foreign Ministry announced that Cavusoglu had made an unannounced visit to Tehran the day before, meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Zarif, for five hours. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said the top Turkish diplomat made a short visit to Tehran to follow up on the agreements and consultations held between the two countries during Zarifs visit to Ankara last week. Qassemi noted that during Zarifs visit, the two sides had agreed to hold intensive talks at various levels and that senior officials would hold several meetings at various levels in the near future.

One Iranian official said on condition of anonymity, The [Cavusoglu] visit was to provide answers [to Iranian queries] on several issues raised in the last [Aug. 12] meetings, but the important issue here is that it comes as Erdogans visit to Tehran is being prepared.
August 21, 2016

BAGHDAD  The official website of the League of the Righteous movement (Asaib Ahl al-Haq) reported Aug. 14 a visit by the Italian ambassador to Baghdad, Marco Carnelos, to league Secretary-General Qais al-Khazali. The article stated that Khazali received Carnelos in his office in Baghdad and discussed with him the ongoing preparations for the liberation of the city of Mosul. For his part, Carnelos published a photo of his meeting with Khazali on his embassy Twitter account with the caption The ambassador acknowledges the significant role of the PMU in fighting IS.

According to the movements website, Carnelos praised the positions of the Popular Mobilization Units [PMU] and stressed that without the PMU, Iraq would have been in a bad situation. He emphasized the unity of the Iraqi territory.

This is not the first time that Khazali has received an ambassador of an important state. On April 15, he received Russian Ambassador to Baghdad Elijah Morgunov to discuss the latest political developments. However, this was the first official visit paid by a European Union ambassador to a prominent leader of the PMU.

The Iraqi media did not focus on the visit and the points that might have been discussed; it only focused on Carnelos tribute to the PMU and the importance of these units taking part in the battle of Mosul. The two parties settled for a brief statement issued by the information league's office.

Italy, which was part of the coalition that overthrew the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in 2003, is now taking part in the protection of the Mosul Dam; it has deployed its troops there as part of efforts by the US-led international coalition to eliminate the Islamic State (IS).

Also, the war on IS has seen the beefing up of the presence of Italian forces in Iraq. Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti paid a sudden visit to the country May 10 to discuss the deployment of a new batch of Italian forces in Iraq. Italy had deployed 750 soldiers in Iraq before Pinottis visit, but this figure increased after 450 more soldiers were deployed to protect the Mosul Dam.

The statement issued by the League of the Righteous movement following the meeting between Khazali and Carnelos on Aug. 14 made no mention of the Italian military presence in Iraq, and whether or not this matter was discussed.

Mahmoud al-Rubaie, the spokesman for the political bureau of the movement, told Al-Monitor, This is not the first visit by a diplomat from an important country to Khazali, as Russian Ambassador to Baghdad Elijah Morgunov and the representative of the UN secretary-general in Iraq, Jan Kubis, had previously visited Khazali. These visits come within the framework of strengthening Iraq's relations with the countries of the world.

He said, We are trying to show and convey a message to the whole world whereby we only carry arms to combat terrorism because we are an Islamic nationalist movement. In this context, the Italian ambassadors visit to the secretary-general of the League of the Righteous movement confirms our desire to establish positive and strong relations with the countries of the world."

Rubaie added, This visit came in response to an earlier visit by members of the political bureau of the League of the Righteous movement to the Italian Embassy. This shows that we are a movement that looks for peaceful coexistence, which neither threatens embassies nor companies and does not assault the interests of any country that does not harm Iraq and the Iraqis. The Italian ambassador to Baghdad tackled during the meeting the Italian military presence in northern Iraq and said that the Italian forces in Mosul are defensive.  The Italian ambassador spoke highly of the role of the PMU and stressed the need for all of the parties to cooperate in order to eliminate IS and all kinds of terrorism.

While Rubaie stated that the meeting came in response to an earlier visit by the political bureau members to the Italian Embassy, Carnelos said, The date of the meeting was set upon the request of the League of the Righteous. We believe that a serious reconciliation must take place in Iraq and that there should be efforts to convince the actors on the ground to be committed to and promote such reconciliation.

The PMU troops incorporated into the Iraqi security forces following a governmental decision and therefore declared legitimate by the Iraqi authorities. Also, the PMU was established based on a fatwa from Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and participated in combatting IS terrorism.

Based on that, Rubaie said, If this force commits violations, then the government should open an investigation to reveal the truth and prosecute those responsible for the crimes as in a normal democracy.

The aspects of the meeting that took place between the pro-Iranian League of the Righteous movement leader and the Italian ambassador to Baghdad reveal Western efforts to safeguard Western interests in Iraq in the post-IS period and protect Western troops that would be stationed in Mosul.
August 22, 2016

RAMALLAH, West Bank  In public, Palestinian officials seem to agree that freedom of the press is essential. Yet journalists continue to be harassed, imprisoned and subjected to violence by Palestinian security services.

On Aug. 2, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was the first Arab leader to sign the Declaration on Media Freedom in the Arab World. He declared Aug. 1 of each year Freedom of Opinion and Expression Day in Palestine.

The declaration, presented by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), had already been signed by representatives of more than 500 news agencies, human rights organizations, political leaders and civil society organizations. The declaration includes a clear commitment to the principles of the freedom of the press, the right to freedom of access to information and the safety of journalists, as well as a commitment to reform regulations.

In addition, the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) and PJS are preparing an official memorandum urging Abbas to approve legislative changes designed to protect journalists' acting in their professional capacities. The memorandum, which will be submitted to the president in the coming weeks, includes demands that [Abbas] issue a quick legislative amendment stipulating that journalists should not be arrested by security services for their journalistic activity, but rather be referred to the judiciary if a complaint is filed against them, Ammar Dweik, ICHR director general, told Al-Monitor.

The Aug. 2 declaration signing revived debate about the contradiction between public statements and actual practices.

There are currently no laws regarding the media's right to access information. Moreover, Article 19 of the Palestinian Basic Law is being violated. It stipulates, Every person shall have the right to express his opinion and to circulate it orally, in writing or in any form of expression or art, with due consideration to the provisions of the law. Yet security services abuses against journalists continue.

There were 27 violations by security services in June in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, that number decreased to seven in July, according to the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA). One violation that stands out was the July 26 arrest of journalist Mohammed Khabisah, economic correspondent for Anadolu Agency. The Palestinian preventive security in Ramallah raided Khabisah's house after he posted on his Facebook page figures related to the budget and expenditures of the Palestine News and Information Agency, which he copied from the official page of the Palestinian Ministry of Finance.

Violations include taking journalists into custody for investigation, detaining them and using excessive force against them during arrests. For instance, Jamil Muammar, a journalist for the Voice of Palestine in Gaza, was arrested and detained for 13 days for publishing an article.

Abbas signature on the declaration will test the Palestinian Authoritys (PA) ability to abide by the statement's principles and will shine a light on the results.

Abbas gave all executive agencies strict instructions to respect the freedom of opinion and expression. [PJS] is monitoring to what extent the executive bodies will abide by those commitments, and in case violations are made, we will be standing against that," PJS head Nasser Abu Bakr told Al-Monitor.

The union will also keep track of various draft laws designed to support freedom of the press. The proposals soon will start reaching Abbas' desk for his signature, including one guaranteeing the right of access to information, which is on the Cabinets agenda, Abu Bakr said.

Abbas and Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah have always said that freedom of expression and opinion in Palestine is absolute and that freedom of the press is sacred. Yet security services practices have sometimes contradicted these statements. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Mousa Rimawi, general director of MADA, warned, We welcome Abbas signing the declaration. Yet the signature must be accompanied by measures on the ground, which requires that executive agencies halt their violations in this regard.

Abu Bakr said, There cannot be talk of freedom of opinion and expression unless the laws guaranteeing these freedoms are modernized, such as the [proposed] law on the access to information, and the publications law, which needs many amendments for it to go in line with the developments of new media.

ICHR's Dweik agreed and said, If the political will regarding the freedom of opinion and expression is not reflected in the enactment of laws and practices on the ground, they will remain mere declarations and useless good gestures.

Naela Khalil, who heads the West Bank operations of London-based media group Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, told Al-Monitor the PA could wind up embarrassing itself on the world stage.

In October, the PA closed the group's newspaper offices in Ramallah for weeks under the pretext of license violations, and on June 8 it called for correspondent Mohammed Abed Rabbo to be interrogated for an investigative article published in the newspaper.

We do not need the president to sign [new laws]," Khalil said. "Rather, we want the executive agencies to halt their violations of public freedoms."
August 22, 2016

Mohammed al-Emadi, Qatar's ambassador to the Palestinian territories and head of the National Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza, arrived in the Gaza Strip July 28 and left three weeks later, on Aug. 17. This visit to Gaza was his longest since he became head of the committee when it was established in late 2012 to rebuild what was destroyed by the first Israeli war on Gaza (December 2008-January 2009).

During his stay in Gaza, Emadi visited the Islamic University on Aug. 7. He attended the graduation of the first class of deaf students and offered them a grant of $500 each. The Islamic University is one of Hamas most important institutions. On the same day, Emadi toured the University College of Applied Sciences and praised its academic efforts.

On Aug. 12, Emadi visited Al-Azhar University where he also attended the graduation ceremony and made donations worth $2,000 for those who graduated with distinction. Al-Azhar University is affiliated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and is one of Fatahs institutions in Gaza. On the same day, he met with a delegation of Palestinian businessmen at the Palestinian Businessmen Associations headquarters.

Meanwhile, on Aug. 14, Emadi visited the Saint John Eye Hospital, where he inspected the facilities and offered a donation as well. The next day, he signed contracts with Palestinian contracting companies for a number of projects worth $40 million, including housing, roads, infrastructure and restoration of houses, farms, schools and playgrounds.

Usually, when Arab and foreign ambassadors visit the Gaza Strip, they rarely have a schedule similar to that of Emadi. His visits and banquets raised many questions among Palestinians about the true nature of Emadis humanitarian and political role in the Palestinian territories.

Omar Shaban, the head of PalThink for Strategic Studies in Gaza, told Al-Monitor, Qatar and Emadi are making generous donations to Palestinians  for political purposes. Qatar has a close relationship with Hamas; its ties with the Palestinian Authority [PA] aren't that close, but aren't hostile either. This is because the PA has financial interests with Qatar and seeks to stay on its good side, in light of the Israeli-Qatari coordination regarding [Qatars] work in the Palestinian territories  especially in Gaza as Israel is still in charge of the Gaza Strip in terms of controlling the crossings and deciding who or which goods can enter or leave Gaza.

During the past four years, Emadi visited the Palestinian territories intermittently, especially the Gaza Strip, to monitor Qatari projects. However, his latest visit was different as it included meetings with several officials from different Palestinian sectors. In addition to visiting academic institutions, he hosted separate lunch and dinner banquets for political and economic elites.

On Aug. 7, Emadi hosted the first banquet for dozens of government officials, current and former Palestinian ministers, and former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. He held another banquet Aug. 9 hosting 150 figures, including representatives of national and Islamic forces and deputies and reformists; on Aug. 14, he hosted a third banquet for heads of Palestinian universities and academic figures in Gaza.

Remarkably, the factions of the Palestinian left, namely the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian Peoples Party, refused Emadis invitations, as they believe he was playing a suspicious role.

Walid al-Awad, a member of the political bureau of the Palestinian People's Party, told Al-Monitor, The leftists refused Emadis invitations because they were limited to lunch and dinner banquets. Although we highly appreciate those supporting our country, Emadis role goes beyond the humanitarian aspect and reaches the point of entrenching Qatars influence in Palestine. In addition, he showed normalization with Israel by meeting with Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the Israeli coordinator for the Palestinian territories, during his visits to Tel Aviv, last of which was in April. Although Qatars influence will remain in Gaza as long as the Palestinian division persists  and the PA is well-aware of this  it is [the PAs] financial interests with Qatar that push it to show pragmatism toward the Qatari role in Gaza.

Perhaps some Palestinians believe that Qatar, through Emadi  who often visits the Palestinian territories, and Gaza in particular, and personally oversees the implementation of Qatari projects in Gaza  has an important say in many issues that affect the lives of Palestinians.

On Aug. 16, the Palestinian media published a picture of Emadi overseeing the payment of the salaries for the employees of Hamas government from the Qatari grant, which amounted to $31 million. This confirmed the speculations of some Palestinians who are concerned about Emadis increased influence in Gaza, but who still want his humanitarian aid.

For his part, Ahmed Youssef, the former undersecretary of the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Gaza, who attended one of the banquets, told Al-Monitor, Emadi hosted government, partisan and academic figures to listen to them and learn about the Palestinian situation, to relieve the suffering of Gaza and exert all possible efforts to lift the blockade. He has high morals, and he is distinctively diplomatic. He tries to have a balanced relationship with everyone.

Interestingly enough and despite the constant disputes between Hamas and the PA on most issues, they both agreed to thank Emadi personally and praised the role of Qatar in general in the Palestinian territories.

On Aug. 15, Palestinian Minister of Works and Public Housing Moufid al-Hasayneh praised the Qatari efforts for the reconstruction of Gaza, describing Emadi as a Palestinian man par excellence, who travels between Gaza, Ramallah, Jerusalem and Qatar to serve the Palestinian people.

Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem told Al-Monitor, Hamas maintains its relationship with Qatar to support the steadfastness of our people  both politically and financially  and Qatar is actively doing so. Ambassador Emadi is highly appreciated by the Palestinian people for his support. He communicates with all Palestinian forces with no exception and supports all civil and service institutions with no discrimination. Hamas does not fear Qatars increased influence in the Palestinian territories, because the movements political positions are not influenced by anyone and Hamas perceives the Qatari support as part of the Arab countries duty toward the Palestinian people in supporting their steadfastness in resisting the Israeli occupation, and Qatar is greatly diligent in this regard.

Emadi is significantly celebrated by the Palestinians, much like their own political leaders, perhaps because his name is associated with financial support, which is what the Palestinians need at this stage instead of political slogans.

The Qatari ambassador has the ability to establish a strong network of relations between Hamas, the PA and Israel. Thus, Emadis duties go beyond humanitarian support and can be reflected in political mediations between these hostile parties, which is why some Palestinians praise him and others object to his role.
August 22, 2016

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  Islamic Jihad's armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, has revealed having in their possession the North Korean-made, shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, other offensive missiles and the Malyutka anti-tank missile.

The announcement came during the Bond of Blood rally, during which Islamic Jihad displayed the various new weapons in Rafah, in the southern Gaza strip, on July 28, without disclosing the quantities that they currently have in their possession.

Al-Monitor tried to obtain a statement from Abu Ahmed, the official spokesman for the al-Quds Brigades, or any military source of Islamic Jihad, but they refused to comment about information on missiles or the nature of the upcoming period.

Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a political author and analyst at the Center for Future Research, told Al-Monitor, The Palestinian resistance factions are seeking to buy weapons from anywhere in the world and prefer to obtain sophisticated weapons, given their inability to manufacture them locally. The global black market is filled with the various weapons. The Arab Spring has facilitated the purchase and entry of weapons to the Gaza Strip. Yet in light of the Egyptian destruction of the tunnels and restrictions on the Egyptian-Gazan border today, things have become more complicated.

He said that the objective behind the purchase of modern weapons is to neutralize and resist the Israeli air force in any future confrontation with the Israeli occupation in Gaza. This is the most important objective for the Palestinian resistance factions. For this reason, the factions are seeking to buy sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons. I do not think that such new weapons have entered so far.

On the message that Islamic Jihad has delivered to internal parties and the outside world, Madhoun said, What al-Quds Brigades have done has no field, military or political dimension. It is part of propaganda and mobilization, particularly since the Palestinian people like the military shows of force.

The al-Quds Brigades revealed at the rally July 28 having in their possession the locally made S-350 offensive missile, which accurately hits the target and has a huge explosive force.

On the delivery of weapons to Palestinian factions in Gaza, Youssef Hijazi, a former researcher with the Palestinian Planning Center, which focuses on military affairs, told Al-Monitor, Following the Arab Spring, Palestinian factions have been able to obtain rockets and anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons from Libya and the Sinai Peninsula. The Palestinian factions have been trying to obtain different Russian-made weapons and other weapons made in North Korea and China, in addition to the arms from Iran.

In regard to the quality of weapons used by the Palestinian factions in the 2014 war, Hijazi said, Many of the rockets used by the Palestinian factions in the 2014 war are missiles developed along the lines of the Iranian Fajr Artillery Rockets or obtained from Iran. By virtue of the strong Iranian ties with Russia, China and North Korea, some modern rockets will certainly reach the Gaza Strip through the tunnels between Rafah and Egypt.

Following the war on Gaza in July 2014, the Palestinian resistance factions thanked in the media Iran for the provision of the rockets. The factions fired the Iranian-made Fajr-5 Artillery Rockets on Israel, which has a range of 75 kilometers (roughly 47 miles), after they brought into Gaza different Iranian weapons through the tunnels between Sinai and the Gaza Strip.

Eid Mosleh, a specialist of the Israeli media and researcher at Akka for Israeli Affairs, told Al-Monitor, By showing the missiles and new technologies that they have obtained, the al-Quds Brigades objective is to prove that weapons are still entering Gaza  through the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza.

Mosleh said, The Palestinian resistance is seeking to neutralize the Israeli air force in any future war. Yet the new North Korean shoulder-launched missiles cannot counter the Israeli F-16 warplanes. They can, however, bring down the Israeli reconnaissance aircraft.

On the Palestinian factions attempts to buy new weapons, Wasef Erekat, a retired Palestinian Authority major general and military researcher, told Al-Monitor, The Palestinian resistance factions  as national liberation movement  have the right to obtain arms from anywhere in the world to confront the Israeli aggression. I believe that the resistance factions are hiding many weapons to use them as a surprise element in any future confrontation with Israel.

Erekat added, It is very easy to buy arms from abroad; the black market is full of weapons. Yet it is difficult to bring them into Gaza, given the strong Israeli and Egyptian control under the rule of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi over the southern Gaza border. Despite the restrictions, the vulnerable security situation in Sinai has allowed the constant access of rockets to Palestinian factions via the tunnels  albeit at a slower pace.

Maariv reported Aug. 4 on the resistance factions obtaining the North Korean HT-16PGJ anti-aircraft missiles, saying that these missiles are purchased from the black market, transported from the ports in Sudan and Somalia, before they enter into Gaza by land through Egypt.

The biggest problem that the Palestinian resistance factions continue to face is their inability to confront the Israeli air force and aircraft. Thus, the resistance factions are seeking to conclude arms deals with North Korea, China and Russia to promote their military capabilities through the black market. In the 2014 war, Hamas used the Russian anti-tank guided missiles Kornet, surface-to-air missiles and the Iranian Fajr Artillery Rockets.

While Iran is officially supporting the Palestinian resistance factions, these factions have managed to obtain Russian, North Korean and Chinese-made weapons from the black market and brought them into Gaza through unofficial routes  via the Red Sea or by land through the tunnels between Gaza and Sinai.
August 22, 2016

BAGHDAD  On July 26, the Iraqi government announced that the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) will be converted into an independent military formation affiliated with the armed forces commander-in-chief. The Shiite force was formed in June 2014 in response to religious calls to take up arms against the Islamic State (IS).

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadis decision sparked an uproar among Iraqs Kurds and Sunnis. On Aug. 14, the Kurdish news site Rudaw collected the opinions of analysts and ordinary citizens, all of whom criticized the move as a step toward forming a parallel military force.

Other reports claimed that the governments decision to take control of the PMU, which participated in the liberation of Salahuddin, Ramadi and Fallujah and are planning to join the battle for Mosul, reflects a plan to establish a guard similar to Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Qasim Mozan, a reporter for the Iraqi Media Network, told Al-Monitor the governments decision will turn the PMU into a security force that follows the orders of the prime minister, [which would allow him] to fix any security gap [within the PMU] in a swift and efficient manner.

Journalist Hassan al-Shanoun told Al-Monitor, This project will distance the PMU from partisan and sectarian influence and will strengthen the governments power [over the PMU] while weakening the political blocs that are part of the PMU factions.

PMU leader Ahmed al-Assadi supported Abadis decision. He told Al-Monitor, The PMU will turn into a government force that is independent from the political parties control, as it will report directly to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Abadi.

The PMU are currently associated with known political forces such as the Peace Brigades led by the Sadrist movement, the Ashura Brigades affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Asaib Ahl al-Haq headed by Mahdi Army defector Sheikh Qais al-Khazali, the Hezbollah Brigades with their ties to Lebanese Hezbollah and the Badr organization led by parliament member Hadi al-Amiri.

Many factions part of the PMU today will probably wish for the organization to remain in its current form and serve as a legal cover for them to exercise their influence in a role similar to that of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Nevertheless, Assadi commented, The factions that refuse to turn [the PMU] into an independent government force will be considered outlaws.

Assadi added, The decision has already been implemented, and government offices have been established in Iraqs provinces. These offices are managed by civil and military figures who register the members of the armed factions willing to be part of the project to turn the PMU into a security force affiliated with the prime minister.

The reluctance of some parties is not the only challenge for this project. Majid al-Gharawi, a member of the Iraqi parliament's Security and Defense Committee, told Al-Monitor, There are [other] obstacles hindering the restructuring process of the PMU, namely the financial allocations and the inclusion of its budget into the state budget. Also, the exclusion of political figures from PMU operations will be hard.

In either case  whether the PMU remain associated with partisan leaders or become a government force  the PMU are likely to remain after IS is defeated. On July 4, the Badr parliamentary bloc stressed the importance of the PMU continuing to protect civilians even after IS is completely defeated across the country.

However, some oppose the idea of the PMU remaining after IS elimination from Iraqi territories, which is expected to happen this year. They believe it is necessary to dissolve the fighting force. On the regional level, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubair said July 2, The PMU are sectarian, and they should be dissolved as they exacerbate sectarian tension. Other local parties, such as Liqaa al-Wardi, a parliament member for the Union of Nationalist Forces, agreed, calling for the dissolution of the PMU in a press statement June 26.

According to the Sunni Union of Nationalist Forces, the alternative is to turn the PMU into a local force, with each province having its own army made up of its own residents. This National Guard idea is mentioned in the political reconciliation document adopted by the government.

Political activist Hadi Wali al-Zalimi told Al-Monitor, The loyalty of the armed factions will remain limited to the leaders of parties, groups and regions. Naming those armed factions the Popular Mobilization Units will not change the fact that they will remain loyal to the political or religious leaders that represent them and support them.

It seems clear that positions toward the PMU depend on each party's political interests and relations with regional countries. Iran, for instance, backs the PMU and provides them with arms and financial support. Saudi Arabia is calling for the dissolution of the PMU, while the UAE classified some of the PMU factions as terrorist groups in 2014.

In any case, what is important for Iraq is that the strengths of the PMU are put to work for the country's interests. Should the PMU be dissolved, the fate of their members should not be neglected. Job opportunities should be offered to them, and the unemployed should receive welfare or retirement pensions. Their fighting experience could also benefit the security forces, and individuals could be recruited to work for them.
August 22, 2016

The aftermath of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans Aug. 9 meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, has seen a flurry of Turkish-Iranian and Russian-Iranian contacts centered on the Syrian crisis. Expectations have grown that the bilateral contacts will turn into a trilateral mechanism. Statements from Moscow and Tehran have fed optimism that a common understanding is close, with officials highlighting the preservation of Syrias territorial integrity, the Syrian peoples right to decide their future and the fight against terrorism.

As Ankara scrambles to make a foreign policy pivot, a series of important developments around the Syrian crisis have gone largely unnoticed. On June 9, the defense ministers of Iran, Syria and Russia came together in Tehran for the first time since the Syrian crisis broke out more than five years ago. According to Iranian state television, the meeting indicated that the Syrian war had entered its "final stage."

The July 15 failed coup attempt in Turkey led to a telephone call between Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in which the two discussed regional issues. Then, on Aug. 8, the leaders of Iran, Russia and Azerbaijan met in Baku and signaled that Turkey was welcome to join. Neither Arab nor Western countries could give Erdogan the support that Vladimir Putin and Hassan Rouhani can give, said Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ibrahim Rahimpour, as Erdogan made no secret of his displeasure with the level of Western support he received after the putsch.

Erdogans meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg the following day resulted in a decision to establish a strong bilateral mechanism to try to resolve the Syrian crisis involving intelligence, Foreign Ministry and military officials.

Three days later, on Aug. 12, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was in Ankara for critical talks on cooperation modalities in resolving regional issues, with the spotlight on the prospect of trilateral cooperation between Turkey, Iran and Russia.

On Aug. 15, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Jaberi Ansari hosted Putins special Middle East envoy Mikhail Bogdanov, and their agenda again focused on Syria. According to Ansari, who briefed Bogdanov on Zarifs talks in Ankara, Turkey and Iran have agreed on fundamental principles for a settlement in Syria, including the protection of Syrias territorial integrity and national unity and the establishment of a national government by the vote of the Syrian people. Asked whether an Iran-Russia-Turkey coalition was emerging, Ansari said Tehran did not seek alliances to inflame regional sensitivities, but to bring regional countries closer around the principle that no foreign force would impose decisions from outside.

So Tehran refrains from calling the crisscross diplomacy a trilateral mechanism. Any alliance between the three former imperial powers would be a historic development in any case, no matter if it were the result of pressure in Syria. Yet such an alliance requires much more than just cooperation on Syria.

No doubt, Turkish-Iranian rapprochement means a Turkey moving away from the US-Saudi-Jordan-Israel axis, especially with respect to the Syrian issue. But how far is this possible, given the two countries diametrically opposed stances on the Syrian crisis? Since Iran has stayed firm on its position, it would require much zigzagging on Turkeys part.

Iran has long pressed a four-point proposal for a settlement in Syria, including a cease-fire; the establishment of a national unity government; a new constitution addressing the sensitivities of all ethnic and religious groups; and elections under international supervision.

The plan aims to enlist the support of the Syrian Kurds as well. Turkey, for its part, has come to a point where it advocates the departure of President Bashar al-Assad if possible, and if not, a political settlement that would undo the de facto Kurdish self-rule in northern Syria. In other words, Ankara is now more concerned with the Kurds than Assad.

So how are the two sides going to build on the fundamental principles said to be agreed on in Ankara? Lets go point by point.

For Turkey, the sub-meaning of Syrias territorial integrity is an end to Kurdish self-rule in northern Syria. Yet, Iran and Russia have a different approach on the issue.

This is not to say that Turkey and Iran disagree on any Kurdish moves toward independence  they both say that borders must not change. In its efforts to find common ground with Ankara on both Syria and Iraq, Tehran has long used the argument that the West is conspiring to redraw the regions map, a fear that lies at the core of Turkeys confrontation with the West today. Also, Iran is equally wary of the link between the main Syrian Kurdish actors  the Democratic Union party (PYD) and its armed wing, the Peoples Protection Units (YPG)  and the Kurdistan Workers Party.

Yet unlike Turkey, Iran has never branded the PYD and YPG as terrorist organizations. On the contrary, it has lauded their struggle against the Islamic State.

Tehrans approach on the Syrian Kurds has been largely defined by the policy Damascus has followed or will follow. In this context, Irans  and for that matter, Russias  sensitivities are displayed in two red lines: preserving Syrias territorial integrity and making no more room for a US military role in northern Syria.

Given this delicate equilibrium, Ankaras expectations regarding the Kurds could be counterproductive.

The second point Ankara and Tehran are said to have agreed on is the right of the Syrian people to the establishment of a national unity government and to determine their future without any external fiats. How this agreement could be advanced is equally unclear. Turkey has yet to make any explicit statement endorsing a process involving Assad, while Irans stance in favor of the Syrian leader is clear. Most recently, Ali Akbar Velayati, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneis foreign policy adviser, reiterated that Iran remains firm on its position.

And when it comes to fighting extremism and terrorism, everyone describes their own elephant. Iran speaks of uprooting groups directly or indirectly supported by Turkey, including Jabhat al-Nusra  or Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, as it calls itself now. Turkey, for its part, continues its game with those groups, though it has reached the end of the road. Last week, it reportedly allowed some 1,000 Aleppo-bound fighters to cross into Syria.

The Iranians believe the crisis will be largely resolved if Turkey seals its border. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovs statement last week is important in this regard. Lavrov said an understanding has been reached with Turkey for international monitoring at two key border crossings in line with Resolution 2165 of the UN Security Council. The resolution calls for UN supervision at the Bab al-Salameh and Bab al-Hawa crossings, which are used to transport humanitarian relief supplies. Yet Turkeys acceptance of UN supervision, as advocated by Lavrov, would mean also an end to the flow of militants and logistical supplies for armed groups in Syria. Ankara remains silent on the issue.

With its prompt and unequivocal support for Erdogan during and after the coup attempt, Iran grasped an opportunity to draw Turkey closer. What Iran is offering is not just a long-sought partnership to resolve the Syrian crisis, but a new axis that requires broader partnership on regional and global issues. The conservative Turkish foreign policy, meanwhile, tells Ankara to stay on good terms with Iran, refrain from antagonizing Russia, lean on the East and turn its face to the West. And history does teach that Persians and Turks can overcome regional conflicts when they are on good terms, while their issues are amplified when they are not.
August 19, 2016

During the landmark St. Petersburg summit between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Aug. 9, the two leaders expressed desire to boost their volume of trade to $100 billion annually.

But bearing in mind the highest level of trade volume between the two countries was $38 billion in 2008, achieving the new goal will not be easy.

Reviewing the past 20 years of trade volume, we see that in 1997 the volume was $4.230 billion. Until the end of 2002, the highest level reached was about $5 billion. In 2003, it was $6.8 billion; in 2004, $10.8 billion; in 2005, $15.2 billion; in 2006, $21 billion; and in 2007, $28.2 billion. The upward trend peaked at $37.847 billion in 2008.

Because of the global economic crisis, the volume regressed to $22.6 billion in 2009, and it hasnt reached the 2008 level since. The trade volume was $26.2 billion in 2010, $29.9 billion in 2011 and $33.3 billion in 2012.

Numbers reveal that the downward trend in Russia-Turkey volume of trade began before the shooting down of the Russian fighter jet in November 2015. The volume declined to $32 billion in 2013 and to $31.2 in 2014. In 2015  because of the economic crisis in Russia and excessive parity loss of the ruble  the volume of trade fell to $23.9 billion.

Following the November 2015 crisis between the two countries, trade hit bottom in 2016. In the first six months of the year it sunk to $8.5 billion. Worse for Turkey, of that $8.5 billion, $7.7 was our imports from Russia, mostly natural gas. Turkeys exports to Russia in that period were a meager $737 million.

The first six months of 2016 were the worst in terms of export performance for Turkey on record since 2004. The most striking aspect of the trade with Russia is that from the outset it has been in Russias favor  that is, Russia sells us more than we sell to them. Of course our dependence on Russian natural gas is one main factor of this imbalance. If the volume never exceeds $100 billion, that could mean Turkey is selling more to Russia than before because our natural gas purchases are not likely to increase in the coming years.

Turkeys list of main exports to Russia include fruits and vegetables, fish, chicken, nuts, automobiles, factory-made clothing, leather, fur, carpets, chemical products, machinery, textiles, iron, steel, jewelry, water heaters, soap, salt, spice, wires, cement, refrigerators, furniture and tobacco.

In return, Turkey buys from Russia natural gas, barley, wheat, rice, metal goods and oil products.

But how to hike up the volume of trade? From contacts between the two capitals, it is understood that there will be concerted efforts to boost cooperation in energy, contracting, defense industry and tourism.

Turkeys anger with the West because of its apathetic attitude toward the failed coup suggests relations with Russia can develop faster and be more diversified. This was very important to establish at Russian-Turk Joint Investment Council for joint investments in third countries. Also in sight is the potential reconstruction of Syria.

Turkeys Ministry of Economy says Turkish companies have about $10 billion of investments in Russia. On their part, Russians focus on tourism, and oil and gas production storage opportunities in Turkey. The Akkuyu nuclear power station is the biggest Russian investment, worth $25 billion.

Turkish contractors until now have contracted projects in Russia totaling $64 billion. Only in 2015, Turkish contractors were awarded contracts totaling $4.3 billion.

A Turkish Exporters Assembly poll of 487 companies indicate that Russia is now No. 2 in desired markets by companies going into the export business. Russia was previoulsy not even cited among the first five countries desired as a market. The priority target market for exports at all times is the United States.

Tuncay Ozilhan, the chairman of the Turkey-Russia Business Council, is optimistic about the $100 billion goal. He said, Very key decisions were made. There are new inter-ministerial committees. We can reach the $100 billion goal in 2019 or 2020. When mega projects get going, it wont be a dream to reach that level.

Referring to the importance of the formation of the Turkish-Russian Joint investment Fund, Ozilhan said, Major projects in energy and the defense industry will be supported by that fund.

The Turkish-Russian trade volume could enter an upward trend in the coming years. But we have to watch carefully whether Turkeys increasingly booming ties with Russia in political, military and economic fields will have negative effects on our relations with the West. We cant forget that Turkeys biggest trade and investment partners are European countries.
August 19, 2016

The Yemeni conflict is back at square one almost two years after the September 2014 Houthi rebel takeover of the Yemeni capital, 500 days into the Saudi-led war that began in March 2015 and after three rounds of failed peace talks. This time, however, the situation is even more complicated.

On July 28, one day after the exiled, internationally recognized and Saudi-backed government of Yemen, led by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, announced it had sold 3 million barrels of crude oil, the Houthis and their allies in the General Peoples Congress, led by ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh, signed an agreement to form a political council to run the country. The council's formation is likely in response to the Houthi/Saleh camp being excluded from reaping benefits from selling the countrys natural resources.

The agreement was followed by an announcement of the council's 10 members shortly after the exiled governments prime minister, Ahmed Bin Daghr, requested that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international financial institutions halt all transactions with the Central Bank of Yemen (CBY). The CBY has been relentlessly criticized by the exiled government in Saudi Arabia for the past three months for allegedly succumbing to control by the Houthi rebel group.

These recent developments reflect the chaos dominating Yemen and the complete disregard for the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country not only by the Houthi/Saleh camp, but also by the recognized government.

Bin Daghrs government justified its request to freeze CBY funds overseas  and thereby not deposit the revenues of the oil deal in the governments account at the bank  by claiming that the bank's governor, Mohammed Awad Bin Humam, is unable to fulfill his duties impartially. Bin Daghrs government believes that the depletion of the countrys foreign reserves in Yemen was caused by large withdrawals by the Houthis, de facto rulers of the capital, where CBY headquarters is located. Bin Humam explicitly rejected this accusation in a letter sent to President Hadi and seen by Al-Monitor. He claimed that the depletion of foreign reserves was a result of financing the import of basic commodities, including wheat, sugar and rice.

The request by Bin Daghr, regardless of whether it is heeded by the IMF and other institutions, will certainly have negative consequences on trust in the CBY and eventually on food prices in a country that is already suffering from high levels of food insecurity and child malnutrition. The CBYs potential inability to provide commercial banks with guarantees to import food and medicine and with hard currency will also lead to a hike in prices and further devalue the local currency.

Bin Daghrs government overlooks that, for the past year and a half, the CBY has had the not-so-easy task of saving the countrys already extremely fragile economy from a complete meltdown, and that the depletion of foreign reserves has been expected since the first day of the war, especially since the bank continued making debt service payments after the inflow of US dollars stopped with the halt of oil exports. In fact, it is remarkable that the bank has survived given the little foreign reserves it had.

Bin Daghrs request raises a number of questions about both warring parties using ordinary Yemenis as human shields, so to speak. The Houthi rebels refuse to fully implement UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which requires that they withdraw from all captured areas and relinquish all seized arms, to spare Yemenis further Saudi-led coalition airstrikes and destruction, while the exiled government, if it manages to isolate the CBY, risks a famine in the country.

Meanwhile, the alliance between the Houthi rebels and Saleh, once old foes, became official with their political council, and after members of parliament convene for a vote of confidence, it will take the conflict into uncharted territory. The return to the Yemeni constitution by having parliament approve the council and abandoning the Houthis notoriously unconstitutional constitutional declaration of February 2015 reflects the desire of the Houthi/Saleh alliance to gain constitutional legitimacy, and thereby start seeking international recognition. Although it is unlikely this will happen, the council remains a dangerous tool in the hands of the Houthi/Saleh alliance, and if it is presented with a nomination for a new CBY governor  either or both of the warring parties is expected to seek a new appointment  that could signal potential secession by the Houthi/Saleh-controlled north, leaving the south, as it is, to the exiled government.

This scenario is worthy of consideration in a country where the political elite is infamously corrupt and has a distorted perception of governance, which primarily involves controlling as much of the countrys natural resources as possible, that is, oil and gas, to guarantee a source of income for itself. A political council, even if it wins a vote of confidence in the parliament  whose constitutional legitimacy is itself questioned since its term expired in 2009 and has been extended ever since  will not be able to operate or deliver anything to Yemenis without recognition by the international community. Moreover, the recognized government has been unable to provide basic services to areas under its control and has shown a lack of responsibility in its handling of the CBY dispute, raising frustrations among its supporters.

While international stakeholders and institutions are planning post-conflict projects  among them the World Bank Groups Yemen: Towards a Post-Conflict Recovery, examining critical policy and institutional steps to restore public institutions and service delivery  Yemeni politicians show no genuine interest in ending the ongoing conflict. This leaves Yemenis in a bind, with mistrust dominating their relations with the Houthi rebels, the de facto power in the country, and with the internationally recognized, but exiled, government. Meanwhile, the influence of radical Islamist groups continues to grow in areas of fighting, and young, desperately poor Yemenis feel they have no other choice but to join them.
Certain packages of frozen cut corn sold in Alabama and 14 other states are under recall because they may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

Cambridge Farms is recalling bags of Laura Lynn, Key Food and Better Valu brand corn after discovering through a routine sampling program by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture that the products may contain the bacteria.

"In an abundance of caution, the company has included all cut corn products which may have been produced using the same lot of cut corn," the Pennsylvania company said. "Cambridge Farms, LLC has ceased the production and distribution of the product and continues their investigation as to what caused the problem."

Young children, frail or elderly people, those with weak immune systems and pregnant women are most at risk of infection. Common symptoms include severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea.

The recall list includes the following items and production numbers:

Laura Lynn Frozen Cut Corn in a 16-ounce polybag - UPC 8685401734

Code SWFF/R10312, Best by 4/11/18

Code SWFFR/10452, Best by 5/09/18

Code SWFF/R10609, Best by 6/6/18

Laura Lynn Frozen Cut Corn in a 32-ounce polybag - UPC 8685401717

Code SWFF/R 10482, Best by 5/10/18

Key Food Frozen Cut Corn in a 16-ounce polybag - UPC 7329607091

Code SWFF/R10320, Best by 4/11/18

Code SWFF/R10405, Best by 5/2/18

Better Valu Frozen Cut Corn in a 14-ounce polybag - UPC 7980124561

Code SWFF/R10308, Best by 4/11/18

________________

In addition to Alabama, the products were sold through retailers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland and Florida. No illnesses have been reported.

Refunds are available to customers who have purchased the products. To ask questions, call the company at 1-717-945-5178 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. EDT Monday through Friday.
A lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims Wayne Farms illegally discriminated against two employees for their disabilities.

EEOC said Monday that Wayne Farms' inflexible attendance policy violated the rights of certain workers at its poultry processing facilities on on Plugs Drive in Decatur.

The lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, acknowledges employee Latonya Hodges, who was fired from her job after reaching her maximum number of absences despite providing medical excuses related to her asthma.

Salvadora Roman, another worker who suffered severe wrist and hand pain, was told she would be terminated if she continued to miss work after accumulating eight occurrences under the company's attendance policy. The lawsuit said she was denied the opportunity to transfer from the plant's deboning line.

Delner-Franklin Thomas, district director of EEOC's Birmingham District Office, said the alleged conduct infringes on the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"The ADA requires that employers provide reasonable accommodations, including time off, to workers with disabilities," she said in a statement. "Attendance policies that categorically limit an employee's absences, without consideration of the individual circumstances of disabled employees, can run afoul of federal law."

EEOC, which said it attempted to reach a pre-litigation settlement with Wayne Farms, is now seeking "a court order requiring Wayne Farms to comply with the ADA and barring the company from applying its attendance policy to disabled employees who require additional medical leave as a reasonable accommodation."

"In addition, EEOC seeks lost wages and benefits, compensatory and punitive damages, and other relief for victims and the public," the organization said.

Wayne Farms plans to actively dispute the EEOC class action lawsuit, saying the case stems from 2011 allegations investigated by the federal agency relating to employee absenteeism and termination following repeated, unexcused absences.

"While we have not seen the EEOC's reported disability discrimination suit, it appears it was based on the extensive investigations conducted five years ago," said Wayne Farms Vice President and General Counsel Jeremy Kilburn. "Wayne Farms is completely confident that management met all legal and contract obligations to the two Decatur, Alabama employees who filed the underlying EEOC charges, neither of whom raised any issue through the agreed union contract processes. Given the facts we presented in response to the investigation, and given the EEOC's inexplicable delay in pursuing this matter, we will vigorously defend the action when received."

Wayne Farms by Anonymous bDIQS59dsr on Scribd
One person was killed and two others injured in a Sunday-afternoon crash in Cullman County.

Alabama State Troopers identified the fatality victim as Anthony David Henry. He was 41, and lived in Arab.

Trooper Curtis Summerville said Henry was a passenger in a Lincoln Town Car that was traveling on Cullman County 1763 just two miles south of Arab when the vehicle left the roadway, hit a tree and overturned.

Henry, who was not wearing a seat belt, was pronounced dead on the scene of the 4:50 p.m. accident. The driver, 26-year-old Justin Blake Sanford, of Attalla, and another passenger were taken to a hospital with injuries.

Troopers didn't identify that passenger, or release the extent of their injuries. The crash remains under investigation.
A 54-year-old Montgomery man was arrested after authorities say he fired shots at another man on Interstate 85 on Sunday afternoon.

Alabama Law Enforcement Agency Sgt. Steve Jarrett today identified the suspect as Morris Albert Lottinger III.

ALEA 911 received a call at 3:43 p.m. from a motorist who said that a man in a white Chevrolet Suburban, armed with a handgun, fired shots at him on I-85 in Macon County.

The victim followed the man - later identified as Lottinger - until troopers made contact with Lottinger in Montgomery County. Lottinger was charged with DUI and locked up in the Montgomery County Jail. His bond is set at $1,000.

Jarrett said the facts of the shooting incident will be presented to the Macon County District Attorney's Office for review and consideration of additional charges. No other information was immediately available.
Jim McClendon special session on lottery.JPG

Sen. Jim McClendon, R-Springville, speaks on the Senate floor during the debate over a lottery bill on Aug. 17, 2016.

(Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

The lottery bill that passed the Alabama Senate on Friday does not match the intent of senators who approved it, the sponsor of the bill said today.

The apparent discrepancies are important, including how money raised by the lottery would be spent.

Sen. Jim McClendon, R-Springville, said there were problems with the bill after it was adjusted to reflect the nine amendments that senators approved on Friday before they voted to pass the bill 21-12.

McClendon initially said the legislative staff made some mistakes in compiling the amendments.

However, Senate Secretary Pat Harris said no mistakes were made, and the amendments were inserted correctly.

McClendon said it was Harris' job to know that, so he did not dispute it.

The bill is now in the House, where it can be changed again. If the House does make any changes, the bill would have to return to the Senate for another vote.

The bill, Gov. Robert Bentley's lottery proposal, originally designated all lottery proceeds, after prizes and expenses are paid, to the state General Fund.

On Friday, senators approved an amendment to designate 10 percent of proceeds to education.

Senators later approved another amendment designating the first $100 million of proceeds to the Alabama Medicaid Agency. That amendment deleted some other references to how the proceeds would be used.

The bill sent to the House shows the $100 million designation for Medicaid but not the 10 percent for education, which was first reported by the Montgomery Advertiser.

Another section of the legislation, outlining the seven-member commission that would be appointed to run the lottery, appears twice in the bill, although it is not repeated exactly.

Harris said the Senate staff cannot try to interpret senators' intent in submitting amendments. He said they can fix minor mistakes like a misspelled word, but otherwise accept amendments as written.

He said it's not unusual for senators to want to change a bill after it goes to the House.

"If they see it as a problem, there is a fix," Harris said. "Adopt a substitute in the House and send it back up here."

The House Economic Development and Tourism Committee is scheduled to consider the bill on Tuesday.

Rep. Alan Harper, R-Northport, the committee chairman and the House sponsor of Bentley's lottery bill, could not immediately be reached for comment.

If the committee approves the bill on Tuesday, it could be considered by the House on Wednesday.

That's the last day to pass the bill in order to get it on the ballot for voters in the Nov. 8 general election.

If it passes later than Wednesday, it would require a special election.
When it comes to public education, no state spends more than New York.

A recent analysis by Governing shows New York spends more than $20,000 per student each year, factoring in things such as teacher salaries, support services and other costs associated with public education. That spending is more than twice that of Utah - which came in last in per pupil funding - at $6,300 per student.

Governing's analysis shows Alabama spends an average of $9,028 per pupil each year. While that spending can vary widely by district depending on local dollars devoted to education, the analysis shows us a general breakdown of how that money is spent.

Here's how that $9,028 pupil breaks down:

$3,359 for instructional employee salaries

$1,234 for instructional employee benefits

$560 for school administration

$526 for pupil support

$387 for instructional staff support

$235 for general administration

$2,727 for "other" including capital outlay and transportation

The national spending average per student is $11,009.

Here's how that breaks down:

$4,378 for instructional employee salaries

$1,691 for instructional employee benefits

$607 for school administration

$619 for pupil support

$535 for instructional staff support

$183 for general administration

$2995 for "other" including capital outlay and transportation

You can see Governing's complete analysis here.

Welcome to Monday's Wake Up Call. Let's see what's going on:

Congressman's 83-year-old father going to prison

The 83-year old father of a California Congressman is headed to jail for violating campaign finance laws.

Babulal Bera, father of Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., was sentenced to one year and one day in jail. Bera was convicted as part of a scheme to have donors from across the country contribute more than $200,000 to the 2010 and 2012 campaigns of his son and then be reimbursed by the father.

The donations violated the law that was then in place that limits donors from giving more than $2,400 to a campaign. Prosecutors said the son was unaware of his father's dealings.

Ami Bera is currently seeking reelection to the represent the Sacramento area.

T Rex scull found in Montana

U.S. paleontologists have unearthed a 66 million year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex skull in the rocky hills of Montana.

The skull is believed to have come from a creature about 20 feet tall and up to 40 feet long. The boulder with the bone weighs some 2,500 pounds and is currently at the University of Washington's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

The T. Rex is now nicknamed the "Tufts-Love Rex" for Luke Tufts and Jason Love, the two paleontologists who discovered the skull.

Army deserter fakes war wounds, receives benefits

A North Carolina man is facing federal charges for allegedly faking war wounds in order to receive tens of thousands of dollars in benefits.

Roy Lee Ross, 64, is accused of using the name of another veteran to defraud the Department of Defense. Prosecutors said Ross claimed he had served in the Special Forces and was wounded in combat. He was later diagnosed with PTSD and began receiving health benefits and disability payments in 2007.

Later investigation showed Ross did not serve in Korea or Vietnam and was not in the Special Forces.

40 knives removed from man's stomach

Surgeons in India recently removed 20 knives from a man's stomach.

The man had swallowed the knives over the process of the last two months after he said he had a wild urge to consume metal. The operation to remove the knives - some as long as 7 inches - took more than five hours.

Until tomorrow.
Alabama lawmakers are grappling - again - with question of a state lottery.

The State Senate passed a lottery bill Friday and the measure is now headed to the House of Representatives. The Senate's version would earmark the first $100 million in profits to Medicaid with the rest going towards the general fund. Gov. Robert Bentley estimates the lottery would bring in about $225 million a year.

If approved by the House, the measure could go before voters in November.

If the measure does pass the Legislature - and that's a big if - it will be up to Alabama voters to decide if they want a lottery in their state. We want to know what you think: Should Alabama have a state lottery? Vote now and leave your comments below.
Bobby Singleton and Billy Beasley at lottery special session.JPG

Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, left, speaks on the Senate floor during a special session on Aug. 17, 2016. Sen. Bill Beasley, D-Clayton, is on the right.

(Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

Alabama lawmakers have no days to waste to get a proposed constitutional amendment for a state lottery on the ballot for voters for the Nov. 8 general election.

The Senate on Friday passed Gov. Robert Bentley's lottery proposal after making some changes, sending it to the House.

The House Economic Development and Tourism Committee is scheduled to consider the bill on Tuesday.

If the committee approves it, the House could pass it on Wednesday.

That's the deadline to get it on the ballot for voters on Nov. 8. If passed after Wednesday, a special election would be required.

If the House changes the bill, it would have to return to the Senate for another vote.

It will take 63 votes in the 103-member House to pass the legislation, the three-fifths required of all constitutional amendments.

It barely cleared that margin in the Senate, passing 21-12.

Fourteen Republicans joined seven Democrats in voting for it.

Ten Republicans, one Democrat and the Senate's lone independent, Sen. Harri Anne Smith of Slocomb, voted no.

Rep. John Knight, D-Montogmery, chairman of the House Black Caucus, said today he thought the vote in the House would be close.

Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, said she thought the bill had a good chance of passing.

"I'm in favor of it. I believe the people have a right to vote on it. It's not perfect, but I think it's a good bill," Todd said.

Bentley proposed the lottery to boost funding for state programs, especially the Alabama Medicaid Agency, which says it needs $85 million more from the state General Fund than the Legislature appropriated for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

Medicaid has already cut payments to doctors because of the shortfall.

The governor estimated the lottery would raise $225 million a year for the state budget after prizes and expenses are paid.
Jeff Sessions

Sen. Jeff Sessions (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

(Jeff Sessions)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has still not decided how he would deport the country's 11 million illegal immigrants if he's elected, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said Sunday.

Appearing on "Face the Nation" on CBS, Sessions, who serves as chairman of the Trump campaign's national security advisory committee, also defended using an ideological test for prospective immigrants.

Sessions said Trump "is wrestling" with how to remove illegal immigrants. Deporting all 11.6 million illegal immigrants is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

"People that are here unlawfully, that came into the country against our laws are subject to being removed. That's just plain fact," the senator said.

Alabama's junior senator also said the Trump campaign hasn't discussed an ideological test for prospective citizens, but he added that the country should only take in immigrants that share American values.

"[T]he idea that you ask people about their understanding of what a good government is -- if you have two people, one that wants to -- believes in the democratic republic, like we have, one that has an ideology that wants to impose a narrow view of how the government should be run, a theocracy, then why would you not choose one who is most harmonious with our values?" Sessions said. "I think we can ask some of those questions. We have to be careful. We should talk to our lawyers and think it through carefully, but there's no doubted that we can ask certain questions, as we have for decades, of people before they are admitted to our country."
A federal judge has blocked the Obama administration's directive that schools allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity.

U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled Sunday on the side of Alabama and 12 other states that filed suit arguing that the president's directive overstepped federal authority and threatened student safety and privacy. The ruling allows schools in Alabama and nationwide to keep their current gender-based restroom and locker room policies in place.

"The court decision is a victory for parents and children all across Alabama," Alabama Attorney Gen. Luther Strange said. "I joined the multi-state lawsuit against the Obama administration in May to prevent Alabama schools from being forced to surrender their restroom access policies to social experimenters in Washington. I am pleased the federal court has agreed to our request to stay the controversial order while our lawsuit challenging the legality of the transgender order continues."

However, David Dinielli, deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, classified the ruling as an "attack on transgender people."

"This case reflects an overreaction by many states, including Alabama, to federal guidance about transgender schoolchildren," Dinielli said. "We are disappointed that this particular court has failed to understand what it means to be transgender. But we are confident that, over time, our courts will recognize that transgender children, like all children, feel safe and thrive when they are given equal opportunity to succeed. We are committed to this fight and will not stop until all of our kids enjoy safety and dignity in their schools and communities."

In May, the Obama administration issued a letter to public schools around the country advising them to allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity as opposed to their sex at birth. The order also directed schools to require personnel to use pronouns and names consistent with a student's gender identity and prohibited discipline for student's appearance that "does not conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity."

Schools that fail to abide by the guidance could face loss of federal funding or possible civil rights lawsuits.

O'Connor's ruling did not address the issues raised by the suit but rather said the Obama administration failed to follow rule-making procedure in issuing the directive.

"This case presents the difficult issue of balancing the protection of students' rights and that of personal privacy when using school bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and other intimate facilities, while ensuring that no student is unnecessarily marginalized while attending school," O'Connor said. "The resolution of this difficult policy issue is not, however, the subject of this order."

The suit was led by Texas with Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin joining in.

Updated Aug. 22 at 11:59 a.m. to includes comments from Southern Poverty Law Center.
state house mug by julie.JPG

(Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

A plan to allocate most of Alabama's $1 billion oil spill settlement with BP is among the bills in line for debate on Tuesday in the state Senate.

The bill would set up an authority to sell bonds that would be paid off by BP payments to the state that will total $850 million over 16 years.

Rep. Steve Clouse, R-Ozark, the sponsor of the bill, estimates the bond issue would be about $639 million.

His plan would apply $448 million to repay the Alabama Trust Fund for withdrawals made to support the state budget since 2009.

The other $191 million would go to highway projects in Mobile and Baldwin counties because they caught the brunt of the 2010 oil spill.

The state owes $584 million to the Alabama Trust Fund, which was created in the 1980s to save money the state receives from gas wells in the Gulf.

That includes $162 million taken in 2009 and 2010 that under the state constitution must be repaid by 2020.

"We're going into year seven and haven't repaid one dime," Clouse said.

The state took another $437 million from the AFT in 2013 through 2015 and has repaid only $15 million.

Clouse, who chairs the House General Fund committee, said the repayments of the ATF debts would also help make available $70 million for the Alabama Medicaid Agency, which says it faces an $85 million shortfall.

Lawmakers resume the special session of the Legislature on Tuesday.

Gov. Robert Bentley called the session mainly to consider a lottery to support the General Fund, but also said he expected lawmakers to debate the BP issue.

Legislators considered plans for using the BP money in the regular session this year but could not reach an agreement.

The state received the first $100 million of the BP settlement in July and is scheduled to receive the next $50 million in July 2017.

The Senate passed a lottery bill on Friday and it is scheduled for a public hearing in a House committee on Tuesday.
The murder of five people and an unborn baby has left the small city of Citronelle in a sense of "shock," the mayor said Monday.

"The enormity of this tragedy has really failed to fully register with everybody," said Citronelle Mayor Albert "Al" McDonald. "It's a terrible tragedy to have happen near the city where we know most of the people who live here."

Citronelle Mayor Albert "Al" McDonald

McDonald's comments come as authorities look to extradite 27-year-old Derrick Dearman to Mobile County to face six capital murder charges. He is accused of murdering five people while they were asleep during the early morning hours on Saturday at a home located in a rural area west of Citronelle.

The Sheriff's Department named the victims on Sunday: Robert Lee Brown, Chelsea Marie Reed, Justin Kaleb Reed, Joseph Adam Turner and Shannon Melissa Randall and Chelsea Marie Reed, who was five months pregnant. Dearman was alleged to have killed the victims in multiple ways, including the use of a gun.

"They were known in town," McDonald said. "And of course, they have friends here."

After the killings, Dearman kidnapped his estranged girlfriend - Lanetta Lester - and a surviving baby. Lester and the baby had been at the home, staying with relatives so she could end what was described as an abusive relationship.

He drove them across the Mississippi state line to his father's home near Leakesville, where Lester and the baby were let go. Dearman and his father drove to the Green County Sheriff's Department where Dearman surrendered.

Questions have been raised about why two Citronelle police officers were unable to locate Dearman after someone at the residence called police early Saturday and reported that he was on the property. Dearman reportedly left before police arrived, according to the Sheriff's Department.

Sheriff's Capt. Paul Burch said on Sunday he felt that it was easy to lose someone in an area that is heavily wooded and secluded.

McDonald denied that that the two officers might have gotten lost while patrolling in the area. "I don't know about getting lost. The city isn't that big. Frankly, I haven't talked to any of the police officers involved."

Acting Police Chief Matt Dyass has not returned calls for comment.

Meanwhile, pastors in Citronelle are attempting to provide counseling services to those in need.

Among them is Mark Hobbs, pastor of Living Word Church in Citronelle. "Anything we can do to be available, that's what we're going to do now. I've talked with several of the officers today and try to stay in contact and make sure their needs are met to see where I can help them. I've been working with the Police Department for the last 20 years or so when they need something like this and they'll give me a call."

Hobbs said he's also seeking to assist anyone who knows the victims, and might need support. "I'm making myself available to talk to any many members of the family and anyone who may need counseling for close friends. We're trying to be available for help. At times like these , there is not anything like man can say to fix it. But we have connection through prayer."

Hobbs said the murder is the worst thing he's experienced in Citronelle, a city of about 4,000 people about 35 miles northwest of Mobile.

"It's a horrific, unbelievable event that's caused a lot of people heartache and pain," Hobbs said.
A killing early Saturday morning in Citronelle left five people dead -- one of them five months pregnant -- and one man charged with six counts of capital murder.

Police said Derrick Dearman, 27, was in a relationship with Laneta Lester. Lester, who said the relationship was abusive, went to a relative's house on Jim Platt Road to escape Dearman on Friday afternoon.

Dearman came to the residence around 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning, but disappeared when police arrived on a trespassing call.

The suspect came back to the Citronelle home sometime before daylight and killed the five victims while they were sleeping.

Dearman then drove Lester and a three-month-old infant, who was the child of one of the murder victims, to his father's home in Mississippi.

When the group arrived in Mississippi, Dearman let Lester and the infant go and turned himself into Greene County Sheriff's Office.

Justin and Chelsea Reed, who were expecting a child they had named Aiden (Courtesy of GoFundMe)

Lester returned to Alabama and went to the Citronelle Police Department, where she told officers that her boyfriend had killed five people at 17160 Jim Platt Road.

Police and the sheriff's office responded to the scene and discovered the victims.

The victims are Robert Lee Brown, 26; Chelsea Marie Reed, 22; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Shannon Melissa Randall, 35.

Chelsea Reed was five months pregnant when she was killed.

A GoFundMe has been set up for funeral expenses for Chelsea Marie Reed and Justin Kaleb Reed, who were married and were expecting a child named Aiden.

The fund has raised over $1,200 in one day.

Mobile County Sheriff's Capt. Paul Burch said that Dearman had an extensive criminal history in Mississippi and was wanted on an outstanding burglary warrant.

Shannon Randall (Courtesy of Facebook)

Ashely Rich, the Mobile County District Attorney, said the extradition process to bring Dearman to Alabama has already began. Over the weekend, she said investigators from Mobile traveled to Greene County to question the suspect.

"Given the way the scene looks, we're going to be here a couple of days," Burch said.

"It's obviously a horrific scene."

Dearman confessed to the killings over the weekend.

"He's been cooperative," Burch told the Associated Press on Sunday.

Dearman "always had a temper, especially when he doesn't get his way," his ex-wife, Crystal Dearman, told WALA-TV.

"I woke up to him holding a knife to my throat in bed with my baby in the crib," said Dearman, who said the two divorced in 2010. "He's made threats the entire time we were together and after we separated."

The killings happened about 150 miles southwest of Rutledge, Alabama, another south Alabama town where six family members were found shot to death at their rural home on Aug. 26, 2002.

In that case, Westley Devon Harris was given a death sentence after being convicted of slaughtering his girlfriend's relatives. Prosecutors said he was angry because he thought they were trying to keep him away from her.

After the killings, Harris fled with his girlfriend and child. The girlfriend, who was 16 at the time, ended up testifying against him.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Judy Johnson quote.jpg

Judy Johnson (Courtesy photo)

By Judy Johnson, a retired clinical social worker. She lives in New York and Florida and is a native of Bessemer.

What are black people like? What does their skin feel like? Their hair? Will the sun tan them? Do the women wear make-up? Why do they drink out of different water fountains or use different restrooms? Are they dirty or contagious? What causes a person to have black skin? These are the questions a young white child might ask. These are the questions I asked.

Growing up in the 1950s in the countryside outside Birmingham, Alabama, my world was a small one--the school teachers went to my church, the kids I knew at church went to my school. Jim Crow, separate but equal, poll taxes and segregation at every level of society were the law and the practice of the southland.

In the first 18 years of my life, I met and talked to one black person. Her name was Mary. I asked my parents what her last name was because I had been taught to address adults as Mr. or Mrs. out of respect. My mother told me it was just Mary. Mary ironed for our family on one occasion. I went with my father to take the clothes to her house. When she brought the ironed clothes to our house, she went to the back door and she did not actually come inside our house. Again, I asked, why, why did she go to the back door? None of our white friends did that. My parents did not explain; that is just the way it is done, they said.

I was raised a Southern Baptist. Biblical passages about God's love for everyone, even me, washed over us every Sunday. The church and the school were the focus of my life. I believed all those things my adults told me. Actually, I rarely questioned anything. Then three black adults came to my church one Sunday morning. The ushers turned them away. Not long after, during a Wednesday night business meeting, the church voted not to seat black people in our church. Why would they come except to stir trouble?

For me, this marked a turning point. I knew instinctively that the white Christians had it wrong. From that point onward, I knew that I must commit to rooting out the racist teachings of my childhood--that they were totally at odds with what God wanted me to be. In 1965 I left home for college at Duke University, where I became part of a student population where at least 50 percent were from outside the South or from other countries. After college I taught public school for three years in North Carolina before going back to school to become a clinical social worker, a field I would work in for three decades.

During my 20s, I also came to see that I too existed outside the conventional norms of the world where I'd grown up. Not until then did I recognize, name or act upon my attraction to other women. As a lesbian, I quickly learned what it means to be feared, hated and discriminated against simply because of who I am. Unlike black Americans, I move in a world where my difference is largely hidden, no small privilege. Still, I suspect that my experiences as a lesbian have contributed to my commitment to combating racism, both within myself and in the larger world. I know the experience of being rejected based on who I am.

But I must be honest here. Much as I want to, much as I've worked to, I cannot erase my past, the years of indoctrination. It is a painful thing to observe my own inner conflicts over the issue of racial equality. My head and my heart have it right. But the training of my youth will not totally go away. Unless I pay careful attention to all that is going on inside me, my fears and discomfort seep through. I pull away from that which is different from me. My head always has the task of reminding my little child inside that racist attitudes and fears stem from ignorance and inexperience, not from truth and reality. I don't know the antidote for all those early childhood messages that we may want to change. I just know I have to keep working at it.

Today I categorically reject the world view with which I grew up. I find it painful to reflect on my own ongoing limitations.

So why did I decide to share these words? I write this so that I don't have to keep it a secret anymore. I write hoping this secret will lose some of its power over me. I write because I continue to hope to one day say I have left racist feelings behind. I write too so that people who grew up after the civil rights era can better understand the powerful roots of racism in the United States. Perhaps most importantly, I write for those who sense latent racist feelings and perhaps don't understand how that can be true of them. I say to you, "You are not alone."

We are not to blame for how we were raised. We are responsible for what we do now.
Former Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard is an audacious man. That's not news.

He and his Republican Party came to dominate Alabama two years after the election of Barack Obama - who is not popular in this state, if you haven't noticed. He put together his push for power at a time when white Democrats were fleeing their party like rats on an imploding boat.

So Hubbard wrote a book claiming credit for it all. It's the kind of guy he is.

He took credit for much of Alabama's ethics reform, too. At the same time he begged for money and jobs from those who had business before his legislature. Which, as a jury of Hubbard's Lee County peers found, was in direct violation of that ethics law.

That jury convicted him of a dozen felonies, and Judge Jacob Walker sentenced him to prison.

But Hubbard can't stop being ... audacious.

Hubbard's lawyers this month filed a motion asking for a new trial, claiming the verdict is contrary to law and to the evidence. That's not the audacious part. That's just the way defense works.

The audacious part came days later, when Hubbard sent a letter to "business leaders" begging them to read his motion.

Because the verdict, he wrote, is not only bad for Mike Hubbard. It's bad for business.

Former Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard looks toward his family after he was sentenced to to four years in prison and another eight on probation for breaking the state ethics law, Friday, July 8, 2016, in Opelika, Ala. (Todd Van Emst/Opelika-Auburn News via AP, Pool)

The magic words.

"I believe you will benefit from reading it as it very clearly lays out multiple reasons a new trial should be held, explains why the verdict on each charge was incorrect and how it negatively impacts business moving forward," he wrote.

"It also helps explain just how ridiculous the interpretation of the ethics law are that resulted from the trial," he went on, suggesting that if they stand still while he goes down, they just might be next.

It "creates very serious issues with businesses and associations who employ lobbyists as, for the first time, the claim was made that every member of a board is now a principal and that the normal conduct of business - even asking for advice - is a 'thing of value' and therefore a crime."

He doesn't get it. The stormer of the statehouse and the emissary of ethics still argues that it's fine as wine for lawmakers to solicit contracts from people who have interest before the Legislature, to vote on issues in which they have contracts, and the plead for help from those who want something in return.

Hubbard's motion warned of dangers that "officials might be prosecuted when their actions are perfectly routine."

But if Hubbard's actions were "perfectly routine," the democratic process is broken and the republic is not worth saving. His was a hands-out style of governance, a banana-republic kind of corruption that is an affront the people and the office.

It would be easy to leave it at that, to write it off as a desperate ploy by a desperate and audacious man.

But it is more than that.

It's a warning and a preview of what is to come. There will be a campaign and a struggle over the nature of right and wrong. And the ethics law has a target on its back. You can hear the politicians the operatives whispering it already.

They'll say the ethics law is hard to define and is being interpreted too broadly. They'll say it was rushed through in the first place, that it needs reflection. They'll say it is too harsh on politicians, and on the business people who really want what is good for the state.

They are scared. The givers and the getters.

And they are audacious enough to try to change it.
Album by refugees living in a camp in Calais and British cellist Vanessa Lucas-Smith is a hit on iTunes.

Calais, France  In a wooden shack at the edge of scrubland, just a few miles from the Channel Tunnel, Kasper raps about life in Baghdad.

In my music I talk about my home, he says. I talk about the blood, the constant explosions, the poverty and the death.

Its been a long road to France from Iraq. Kasper fled his home a year ago and has spent the last few months in a refugee camp in Calais known as The Jungle.

He left Baghdad after he appeared in a music video rapping about the dangers of daily life. In it, he also accused the government of corruption.

Calais refugees: We wont give up despite Brexit

After the video was uploaded to YouTube, he received anonymous death threats by text message. He knew he couldnt stay.

Kaspers just one of the talented musicians that British cellist Vanessa Lucas-Smith met when she began to visit the camp last year.

The Jungle camp was always in the news and you only saw one side of the people here, she says.

So we went over with one aim: we wanted to try and meet musicians here. And if there were musicians, then wed like to give them a chance to get their music out at a time when it would be impossible for them to make music or have a platform to perform.

Lucas-Smith and her friends found so many musicians among the refugees living in the camp, that they began to record what they heard. After 11 months they had enough music to release a full album, which theyve called The Calais Sessions.

Lifes impossible

The album features 20 refugee performers, supported by professional musicians from Europe, who spent weeks at a time volunteering in the camp. They brought equipment and instruments with them that were familiar to the residents.

When we bring a Kurdish Daf or a Darbuka drum, its like food, Lucas-Smith explains. Its the most valuable resource you can ever have and thats just a small part that we can do. Its really easy for us, but here its impossible. Lifes impossible.





The albums musicians, performers and engineers found ways to make do in difficult conditions. They painstakingly edited out the constant buzz of the generator that brings electricity to their improvised studio. They even kept recording as bulldozers drove past in February, tearing down half of the camps makeshift homes and facilities.

Despite the challenges, the album has been a huge success.

At the time of writing its No 12 on theiTunes world music charts, and is also a bestseller on independent music website Bandcamp.

Money raised from record sales will be shared among the refugee musicians and Citizens UK, an NGO currently working to reunite unaccompanied refugee children with relatives in the UK.

For Iraqi rapper Kasper, working on new music is now a priority.

I want to make something really professional. I dont just want to write any old thing, he says.

He doesnt rap about his experiences in the Jungle, and would rather not be filmed among its tents and tarpaulins, preferring to speak to us in the long grasses and flowers that grow at the edge of the camp.

Rapping and collaborating with The Calais Sessions has given him a focus during days that can otherwise feel endless.

Im always thinking about my home, my mum, my friends. Ive been away from home for a year, and I have nothing. My minds very busy.
Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi to plead guilty to destroying sacred sites in Mali. Will other sledgehammer-wielders take note?

When the Roman Emperor Jovian ordered the burning of the Library of Antioch in the 4th century AD, there was nobody around to make him answer for what ancient Syrian culture buffs deemed a barbaric act, according to records.

Modern history is littered with cases of wartime razing, from the levelling of Dresden to the Talibans Buddha demolition at Bamiyan.

Politicians have been slow to crack down on ruinous acts, but experts hope that this month the curve will bend in the right direction.

Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi is expected to plead guilty to war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague after allegedly destroying holy and historic sites in Timbuktu as his al-Qaeda-linked group swept across Mali in 2012.





For heritage lovers, it is a watershed moment.

The first ICC prosecution (PDF) solely for tearing down monuments will deter other wreckers, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, they say.

The case sets an important precedent by demonstrating, once again, that these attacks on heritage are really attacks on people, said Tess Davis, a director of The Antiquities Coalition, which seeks to end ISIL-style racketeering.

Weve seen it before, from the Nazis to the Khmer Rouge and the Taliban, and we must end impunity for these crimes.

The ICC has probed the events in Mali since 2012, when Tuareg rebels seized chunks of the countrys northern deserts and desecrated mosques, shrines and monuments in Timbuktu, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

French and Malian troops pushed them back in 2013.

According to prosecutors, al-Mahdi, a former teacher in his 40s, led an anti-vice squad called al-Hesbah, which acted for the Islamic court of Timbuktu, while he was a member of Ansar Dine, a Tuareg rebel group allied with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

He is accused of directing attacks on nine mausoleums and the Sidi Yahia mosque in Timbuktu, a trade hub that became Islams intellectual and spiritual capital in Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries, according to UNESCO.

In broad daylight, pickaxe-wielding men tore down mud-brick walls in front of television cameras.

Mahdi himself spoke on screen, using the alias Abu Tourab, to declare the structures forbidden under Islam.

Some 4,000 ancient manuscripts were lost, stolen or torched during the groups reign.

Fatou Bensouda, ICC prosecutor, decried an irreplaceable loss of history felt by the whole of humanity, and at the expense of future generations.

READ MORE: ICC hearing to decide on destroyer of Timbuktu sites

Losing the cradle of civilisation

Al-Mahdi, from Agoune, 100km west of Timbuktu, the so-called City of 333 Saints, was later detained by officials in neighbouring Niger and handed over to the court in the Netherlands, where he is in custody.

He is expected to plead guilty at the start of a week-long trial, which can be seen online. It will hear from lawyers, expert and character witnesses and a representative of nine victims before its three judges retire to consider the outcome.

If convicted, al-Mahdi faces jail, a fine and reparation payments to victims. Lawyers contacted by Al Jazeera estimated sentences of between four to 10 years, but said it was hard to predict how the ICC would balance the needs of justice in its first plea bargain.

According to heritage buffs, the case is needed now more than ever.

The Middle East hosts many ancient and valued sites.

In a matter of days, weeks and months weve lost entire chapters of history and sites and objects that had survived for millennia. Were losing so much from the cradle of civilisation on our watch, said Davis.

ISIL famously destroyed The Temple of Bel and other sites among the 2,000-year-old ruins of Palmyra, in Syria, and smashed up many statues from the ancient Assyrian era after seizing the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2015.

But less well-known strikes on buildings belonging to Shia Muslims and Yazidis  groups that ISIL views as heretics  are more worrying to Davis, who sees heritage-trashing as a red flag of an impending genocide.

According to Lisa Ackerman, an official of the World Monuments Fund charity, heritage destruction in the modern-day Middle East compares to Europes intra-Christian violence of the 16th and 17th centuries.

READ MORE: ISIL blows up Arch of Triumph in Syrias Palmyra

Back then, an incalculable number of sculptures was destroyed for being the wrong expression of Christianity, Ackerman told Al Jazeera. In both periods, religious puritanism led to blood and toppled towers, she added.

Protecting heritage?

The ICCs Bensouda has spoken of prosecuting atrocities in Iraq and Syria but is hamstrung by the courts limited jurisdiction. Ackerman and Davis both said that global rules on preserving heritage lack teeth.

The ICC builds on national and international laws that mention protecting valued sites in wartime, such as the Lieber Code, signed by then US President Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War, and The Hague Conventions.

Laws accompany practical steps. In World War II, conservators removed statues from plazas and stained-glass windows from churches across Europe to save them from aerial bombing raids, said Ackerman.

Similarly, many relics were shipped from Mosuls museum to Baghdad before ISIL rolled into town.

Not every effort has worked. In the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, blue shield markers on historic sites, used to discourage attacks, were instead used by commanders to target buildings that were valued by an enemy ethnic group.





They were used for the exact opposite purpose for which they were intended, said Ackerman.

The ICC treaty outlaws hits on buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments and hospitals. But, in a crucial caveat, it permits acts that advance military objectives.

This is problematic. In World War II, Allied officials said bombing Dresden and other cities helped shatter German morale, slow the Nazi war machine and end the conflict. The same justifications are available to modern-day generals.

Meanwhile, historic sites are targets for other aims. The thick walls and high ground of Crac des Chevaliers, a fortress in western Syria, were as useful to rebel fighters in 2012 as they were to the Crusader force that built them 800 years earlier.

Syrian army generals knew this too, and bombed the castles chapel to dust.

The so-called military necessity waiver is among the toughest legal aspects of wartime conservation. Some examples of destruction are clear-cut  neither al-Mahdis mosque-trashing nor Nazi Germanys Kristallnacht served a military purpose.

But other examples are trickier. Did US troops err by toppling Saddam Husseins statue at the end of the Iraq War? Was Al-Qaedas Pentagon hit on 9/11 a reasonable target, given the groups military goals?

And, hypothetically, if ISIL chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi were holed up in a historic citadel, would US warplanes be correct to bomb the building  killing the leader but destroying a prized landmark in the process?

Experts are divided on such tough questions.

Tim Slade, the director of The Destruction of Memory, a movie on the topic, said he wanted generals to think twice before pulling the trigger, but acknowledged that they are weighing up various factors in split-second decisions.

Others take a tougher line. For Nada Hosking, a director at the Global Heritage Fund, a conservation group, there are no exceptions and buildings deserve similar protections to people. It has to be a law across the board, Hosking told Al Jazeera.

For Ackerman, the key is keeping better inventories of valued sites and objects, especially in poorer countries, and protecting them when fighting starts. For Davis, the ICC needs to be able to flex its muscles more easily.

According to Harvard Law School scholar Alex Whiting, progress is slow, but gains are palpable.

When the US invaded Iraq, there was chaos, looting and the destruction of art and culture. No one had prepared for it at all, Whiting told Al Jazeera.

This process is about drawing attention to the importance of those things. Hopefully, more care will be paid in the future.

Follow James Reinl on Twitter: @jamesreinl
Turkish authorities have identified 44 of the 51 people killed on Saturday after a child suicide bomber targeted a Kurdish wedding ceremony in the Turkish city of Gaziantep along the Syrian border.



All of the identified victims were laid to rest in Gazinantep on Sunday.

Every type of death is painful. But it is even more painful when it comes with religious slogans. It is even more painful when they mix religion with politics, said Omer Emlik, who said he was an uncle of two of the victims.

At least 29 of the blasts 44 identified victims were under the age of 18, with 22 of them under 14, a Turkish official said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) was suspected of orchestrating the attack.
Putin is able to think strategically, using all hard and soft power tools to promote Russian foreign policy interests.

Luke Coffey is a research fellow specialising in transatlantic and Eurasian security at a Washington DC based think tank. He previously served as a special adviser to the British defence secretary and was a commissioned officer in the United States army.

As Moscow continues its aggressive behaviour towards Eastern Europe and expands its air campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, its ability to use its status as a Eurasian power to advance its foreign policy goals in these regions has gone virtually unnoticed by Western policymakers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has leveraged Russian influence in one region to advance its interests in another. Three recent actions best demonstrate this.

Cruise missiles and the Caspian

The first demonstrator of such leverage is Russias use of the Caspian Sea for its operations in Syria. The Caspian Sea sits on a crucial crossroads located at the heart of the Eurasian continent and throughout history has had an important geopolitical significance for Russia.

Over the past several months Russian ships forming part of the Caspian Flotilla have fired dozens of cruise missiles hitting targets 1,500km away in Syria. Moscow chose the Caspian for these launches even though alternative sites much closer to Syria are available.

So why would Russia go through the extra trouble of launching from the Caspian? In reality, Russias use of the Caspian had very little to do with Syria itself and a lot to do with Russias role in the region.

These strikes proved to the other countries around the Caspian  a sea whose legal status and ownership of resources is disputed  that Russia is the dominant military power.

Also it allowed Russia to test both the cruise missiles and the corvette from which they were fired in a real-life combat setting.

Russia knows that it is easier to export combat-tested equipment and Moscow is eager to export both to boost its defence industry.

Iranian airbase

Second demonstrator was the recent announcement that Russia is using bases in Iran to carry out air strikes in Syria.

From strictly a military point of view this makes perfect sense. In the past, Russian bombers made the journey to Syria all the way from bases in the North Caucasus.

The extra fuel needed to make the long return trip meant that the planes carried fewer bombs. Using the Iranian airbase at Hamadan allows Russian bombers to be significantly closer to targets in Syria. This means more sorties and more bombs that can be dropped.

To the average Western observer, Russia's recent actions in the Caspian, Iran or its CSTO military exercise are viewed as three different and unrelated things. For Putin, Russia's actions in these three regions are parts of an interconnected and deliberate grand strategy. by

But more than that, Moscow and Tehran are sending a strong signal to Washington and the Arab Sunni world about their place in the ongoing competition for power and influence in the Middle East.

While the Russian use of the airbase may be temporary, it should be recognised as part of a long-term effort to promote a Moscow-Tehran-Damascus agenda in the Middle East.

Central Asia on NATOs doorstep

Finally, last week Russia held the first ever Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) training exercises along the border of NATO.

The CSTO is a Moscow-led collective security organisation that includes Kazakhstan, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

The fact that the CSTO held a major military exercise is nothing new. What is noteworthy, however, is that the exercise took place in Russias Pskov oblast, which borders NATO members Estonia and Latvia.



OPINION: Russias emerging naval presence in the Mediterranean

This is the first time that a CSTO training exercise has taken place so close to a NATO border. Unsurprisingly this training exercise has raised eyebrows across European capitals when considering some of the bellicose rhetoric coming from the Kremlin towards the Baltic states.

This CSTO training exercise indicates a number of things about Moscows influence in the former Soviet Union.

It is telling that Russia was able to get troops from Kazakhstan, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan to participate in war games so close to NATOs border. Especially for a country like Kazakhstan which itself has concerns about Moscow meddling in the northern part of the country where many ethnic Russians live.

Strategic thinking

What do these three recent events tell us about Russian foreign policy?

Putin is able to think strategically, using all hard and soft power tools to promote Russian foreign policy interests.

To the average Western observer, Russias recent actions in the Caspian, Iran or its CSTO military exercise are viewed as three different and unrelated things. For Putin, Russias actions in these three regions are parts of an interconnected and deliberate grand strategy.

Notwithstanding the possible violation of UN Security Council 2231 over Russias use of bases in Iran, there is nothing to suggest that any of these three actions were wrong.

Indeed, the United States and NATO do similar things. The US and its allies use air bases in the region to strike targets in Syria. And NATO holds exercises not far from Russias borders. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

It is when you place Russias recent activities into a larger context of regional aggression  such as in Ukraine  that there is cause for concern.

Luke Coffey is a research fellow specialising in transatlantic and Eurasian security at a Washington DC-based think-tank. He previously served as a special adviser to the British defence secretary and was a commissioned officer in the United States Army.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policies.
Wedding bombing highlights need to find a political settlement to the Syrian crisis and Turkeys Kurdish issue.

Galip Dalay is an IPC-Mercator Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).

On August 20, a suicide bomber, reportedly aged between 12 and 14, carried out a deadly attack at a wedding party in the southeast city of Gaziantep in Turkey.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) remains the prime suspect, though it hasnt formally claimed responsibility. Nor, however, has it yet claimed responsibility for any of the attacks it has carried out in Turkey. The incident left carnage in its wake, with 54 dead and 94 injured.

Two types of attacks

In recent years, Turkey has been one of the primary targets of ISIL attacks. But these attacks can be divided into two categories: The first category consists of attacks that target mostly non-Turkish groups, or at least arent exclusively aimed at Turkish targets.

The Sultanahmet, Istiklal Street, and Ataturk Airport incidents all fall under this first category of attacks. German tourists, a largely Israeli group and other international targets, and by extension the Turkish citizens around them as well, were the victims of these attacks.

The rationale for these attacks vary and may include Turkeys overall Syria policy, its support for the Syrian opposition, its cooperation with the United States within the framework of the anti-ISILcoalition, and potential cooperation with Russia against the group after the recent mending of ties between the two countries.

IN PICTURES: Mourning in Gaziantep

Moreover, as ISIL is squeezed in Syria and Iraq, it seeks more desperately to establish a presence elsewhere.

Paradoxically, the more ISIL is squeezed at home, the greater the level of security threat that it poses for Turkey, as some displaced militants will seek a presence elsewhere, while the group as a whole will aim to assert that they are still a force to be reckoned with through engaging in deadly terrorist activities.

These types of attacks dovetail with the present ISIL strategy of going after enemies worldwide instead of confining itself to certain territories in Iraq and Syria, which are shrinking at present.

Targeting Turkeys faultlines

The second category is composed of attacks focused more on Turkey, aiming at causing an earthquake by hitting Turkeys ethnic and sectarian faultlines.

Fomenting ethnic tension seems to be one of ISILs main goals in Turkey. Examples of this type of attacks include the Suruc, Diyarbakir and Ankara train station bombings. The recent Gaziantep attacks also fit into the framework of this second category of ISIL attacks.

In this type of attacks, ISIL has often targeted Kurds within the sphere of the Kurdish nationalist movement.

These attacks are directly related to ISILs fight with Kurdish groups in Syria and Iraq. The Syrian Civil War and the fight between ISIL and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and it Syrian offshoot YPG, have been major radicalising factors in Turkey.

The derailment of the Kurdish peace process in July 2015 and ensuing low-intensity warfare has further added dynamism to this process of radicalisation.

This is an alarming trend that needs to be reversed. Compared with the first category, the attacks in the second show more signs of durability, leading to long-term consequences.

With these attacks and related political calculations, ISIL appears to be aiming to change from being a foreign terrorist threat to becoming a domestic one, with far-reaching and frightening implications.

Intra-Kurdish dynamics

Inside Turkey, ISIL has moved from its previous pattern of random and sporadic attacks to a more systematic one.

While attempting to settle its accounts with the PKK in Turkey  arising from the conflict in Syria and Iraq  it also tries to capitalise on anti-PKK resentment in certain Kurdish quarters.

A significant number of the ISIL suicide bombers who attacked Kurdish gatherings are also ethnic Kurds.

The priority should now be to contain and reduce the level of threat that ISIL is able to pose, in the hope that this will pave the way to reducing its capacity to cause harm in the medium to long term. by

This intra-Kurdish rivalry isnt new. In the 1990s, a group called Kurdish Hezbollah, which is widely believed to have been encouraged by elements within the deep Turkish state, engaged in a bloody conflict with the PKK.

After the capture of the PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999 and the PKKs subsequent declaration of an indefinite ceasefire, Turkey heavily cracked down on Kurdish Hezbollah and killed its leader in 2000.

Remnants of this group later entered civilian politics through the creation of Huda-Par, in fierce opposition to the PKK and its political affiliates.

Since Huda-Par also champions Kurdish national rights, the nature of its disagreement with the PKK has acquired more of an ideological colour than a national one.

INTERACTIVE: Timeline of attacks in Turkey

The PKKs dominance of the Kurdish political scene, its heavy-handed and authoritarian style coupled with its top-down project of secularisation has created further grievances among Kurdish political Islamists.

These grievances are ripe for radicalisation, and ISIL is aware of this potential and is actively trying to exploit it.

In a sense, ISIL is attempting to position itself within existing intra-Kurdish feuds. Hence, its activities in Turkey are now becoming more systematic and focused on certain groups.

No quick fix

There is no quick fix for dealing with the ISIL threat in Turkey. The country will remain vulnerable and exposed to ISIL attacks, given its proximity to the birthplace of the armed group and its main bases in Iraq and Syria.

This threat is generational and requires a multifaceted approach. In this respect, the priority should now be to contain and reduce the level of threat that the group is able to pose, in the hope that this will pave the way to reducing its capacity to cause harm in the medium to long term.

In the meantime, besides law-enforcement operations and de-radicalisation initiatives, the political class and society at large should demonstrate resilience and unity.

In the knowledge that these attacks are aimed at creating opposing political and societal blocs, the government and opposition should maintain their unity and cohesion that they have displayed in the face of the failed July 15 coup attempt  but the government should also bring in the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party as well.

Instead of being a mere tragic sideshow, this attack should act as a further reminder of how important it is to seek a political settlement of the Syrian crisis and the Kurdish issue in Turkey.

Galip Dalay is a senior associate fellow on Turkey and Kurdish Affairs at the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, and research director at Al Sharq Forum.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Aid workers have warned of deadly consequences for tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who have been forced to leave Pakistan for their war-torn country.

Very few of the returnees have received any form of support from local, state or international organisations, Kate ORourke, of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said in a statement on Sunday.

These people are falling between the cracks. Theres an urgent need for assistance, or the consequences may be fatal, she said.

ORourke called on the international community to urgently provide funds.

Many of the hundreds of returnee families now have no roof over their heads, children are visibly malnourished, and there is little to no drinking water, families told Al Jazeera.

Mohammed Hakim Yousafi returned to Afghanistan last week after living in Pakistan for almost a decade.

In the refugee camp to which he has been relocated, Yousafi said that he lacks many of the most basic needs.

I dont have food, water or shelter at the moment. And I am back to a conflict zone. My life is back to zero after years of making a living in Pakistan and working hard, he told Al Jazeera.

Saroop Ijaz, a lawyer and Pakistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera that the situation is getting worse as the Pakistan government has vowed to force Afghans out of Pakistan after the 2014 attack on an army-run school in Peshawar that killed 140 people, including more than 100 children.

READ MORE: Afghan returnees from Pakistan endure dire conditions

The government has started taking necessary steps to push Afghans out of the the country and, because of that, we have come across concrete cases of impunity regarding torture and ill-treatment of Afghan refugees, Ijaz said.

Afghan refugees in Pakistan with legitimate refugee documents cannot be sent back, especially if Afghanistan is in the middle of a conflict. It is a clear human right violation if they are being exposed to harm.

The Pakistani government announced an anti-terrorism plan last year based on a 20-point agenda that included the Registration and Repatriation of Afghan Refugees in Pakistan.

Rising abuse cases

Since then, incidents of flagrant police abuses against Afghans have prompted many to return to Afghanistan of their own accord.

Others were refused extensions for their Proof of Registration cards in Pakistan, according to Human Rights Watch.

The card recognises their status as Afghan citizen temporarily residing in Pakistan.

Most of the returning Afghan refugees do so through the Torkham border crossing, arriving in overloaded pick-up trucks and buses.

READ MORE: Afghanistans internal refugee crisis For decades, Pakistan has been home to 1.5 million United Nations-registered Afghan refugees and about one million unregistered Afghans. Many arrived after fleeing the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s. In June, the UN refugee agency chief urged Pakistanis not to blame Afghan refugees for terrorism in their country.

Forgotten crisis

Warning that the roughly 2.5 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan risked becoming a forgotten crisis, Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, called on the international community to invest more funds to help them.

My appeal is that, not only to the authorities but also to the local population: refugees as you know are not terrorists, Grandi said during a visit to a repatriation centre outside the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar in June this year.

Experts say that the ministry responsible for refugees on the Afghan side, the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, is poorly equipped and under-financed.

The failure is from both sides [Pakistan and Afghanistan], Ijaz, the Pakistani lawyer, told Al Jazeera.

READ MORE  An Afghan refugee in Europe: All I can do is pray

According to figures published on Sunday, 67,224 Afghans have returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan since mid-July.

Since January, more than 101,000 have been forcibly returned by Pakistan, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which tracks only those Afghan refugees who have not officially registered with the UN in Pakistan.

Unregistered refugees are not entitled to support in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

We are providing Afghan returnees with basic healthcare, education, food and shelter, Nasir Haidarzai, communications officer at IOM Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera.

However, with that being said, we are in the middle of a conflict zone, and they are indeed exposed to any kind of harm because of it, even we are.

With reporting by Shereena Qazi, follow her on Twitter: @shereenaqazi.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign denies it has been defeated by Israel following claims by PM Netanyahu.

An international campaign to exert economic pressure on Israel to end its violation of Palestinian rights has not been defeated, one of its founders has said, despite claims made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

We are winning the global battle for hearts and minds, said Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian activist who co-founded the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in 2005.

Since its launch, BDS has aspired to campaigns such as those seen during the anti-apartheid era, when people were called on to boycott goods from South Africa and divest from the country.

Netanyahus recent claims that BDS is in retreat are laughable, Barghouti told Al Jazeera.

This [was] Netanyahus desperate attempt to deflect internal condemnation of his failure to stop BDS, he added.

Hits on many fronts

Addressing Israels Knesset State Control Committee meeting in July, Netanyahu said that BDS was on the defensive.

They are taking hits on many fronts. We have beaten them, Netanyahu said, according to media reports.

But several Israeli politicians at the meeting criticised Netanyahus administration for not doing more to defeat BDS.

OPINION: BDS is a war Israel cant win

Participants also wanted to discuss two reports by Yosef Shapira, Israels state comptroller, which listed Israeli failures against BDS movement.

As the committees chairwoman Karin Elharra said: Israel is facing a strong de-legitimisation campaign.

Build bridges, not boycotts

Launched over a decade ago as a global, nonviolent campaign seeking to exert pressure on Israel through boycotts on its goods, deterring investment and calling for sanctions, BDS has been accused by its critics of anti-Semitism.

Addressing the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in February, US presidential nominee Hillary Clinton described the BDS movement as alarming, particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise.

In May, Israels mission to the United Nations and the World Jewish Congress held a day-long conference at the UNs headquarters in New York titled Build Bridges, Not Boycotts to denounce the efforts of BDS.

A month later, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order blacklisting organisations and businesses that supported BDS.

That order led to a backlash and protests by those who accused Cuomo of limiting basic rights.

BDS founder Barghouti says the movement has nothing to do with religion and never targeted Jews, or Israelis as Jews.

This is a movement that calls for the equal rights for all people, irrespective of identity, he said.

Fundamental rights

Cuomos executive order blacklisting BDS supporters violates fundamental constitutional rights, said Rahul Saksena, a lawyer at Palestine Legal, which is dedicated to protecting the rights of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom.

The government cannot create blacklists based on First Amendment-protected speech, and the government may not condition the receipt of government benefits on the requirement that we forgo constitutional rights, Saksena told Al Jazeera.

Despite the renewed focus on BDS by Israel, the movement has recently enjoyed an increase in support, particularly at the grassroots level, and among trade unions, academic associations, artists, church groups and some governments, Barghouti said.

READ MORE: The BDS question at US universities

Although the movement continues to gain attention, it is yet to have a significant economic effect on Israel, said Marwan Hanania, a scholar of Middle East history and politics.

BDS should focus strictly on Israeli activities inside the West Bank and Gaza, which could even draw support from left-wing Israelis, Hanania said.

It is important for activists to broaden their horizons and attempt to be more inclusive, he said

Their message has to resonate with people who are not particularly knowledgeable or interested in the Palestinian cause on its own terms.

It is a view shared by US academic and political theorist Noam Chomsky, who described BDS as too broad, in an interview with Al Jazeera in February.

I support the aspects of BDS aimed at the occupied territories. Those are the ones that have been successful; they are principled and correct, Chomsky said, explaining that he opposed actions being taken against Israel itself.

That would be like boycotting the US for the policies of its government.

I do not suggest boycotting Harvard University and my own university, even though the United States is involved in horrific acts  You might as well boycott the United States, Chomksy said.

Boycotting Israeli businesses and products outside the occupied territories would be ineffective, he added.
More than 575,000 Iraqi children are estimated to be at work instead of school, double the number from 1990.

I have friends, eight-year-old Abdul Karim says from his soft-drink stand inside Iraqs Ameriat al-Fallujah camp, but I cant play with them because I have to work to support my family.

He is just one of more than half a million Iraqi children being forced to leave school and work as their country remains embroiled in crisis, according to UNICEF, the United Nations childrens agency.

Abdul Karim had to flee his hometown of Fallujah after Iraqi forces launched military operations to retake the strategic city from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group last May. The bombing campaign killed his father, forcing Abdul Karim to begin his job hunt. He now sells soft drinks and water in the Ameriat al-Fallujah camp for displaced Iraqis.

I wish I could go back to school, but now we have nothing. We have lost everything, and I have to be here to provide for my family, he told Al Jazeera.

In a report published in June, UNICEF noted that violence and loss of income are forcing more families to send their children to work. The report estimated that more than 575,000 Iraqi children have been put to work, double the number from 1990.

Today, Iraq is one of the most dangerous places for children to live  not exactly the country where you wish to be a child, Maulid Warfa, a regional officer for UNICEF, told Al Jazeera.

The effects of the conflict in Iraq on children are clear: Nearly one in five schools have closed, while more than three million children are at risk of death, sexual violence, abduction and recruitment into armed groups  an increase of more than one million over the past 18 months, according to the UN agency.

Iraqi children are exposed to danger from a very early age  as early as seven or eight years old, Warfa said. They work in chemical factories or in garbage collection sites without any kind of protection. They work for long hours, and you can see them exhausted  [This] is destroying their future, and  as all they want is to play, go to school, and be loved and protected by their families  we still cant imagine what will happen to them.

Um Chehab, an Iraqi mother of three, says she has been in despair ever since her husband went missing in Fallujah a year ago. I do not know if he was killed  I do not have any explanation, she told Al Jazeera. All I know is that he left me with three children.

Her eldest son, Chehab, is 11 and sells vegetables on the street. His daily income varies from 2,000 to 3,000 Iraqi dinars ($1.70 to $2.50) and is their only source of living, according to his mother.

We, as a family, lost everything in Fallujah. We lost our house, our land, we lost everything  My child has to work now to support us.

Child labour in Iraq is extremely difficult to manage in the absence of collaboration between communities, governmental authorities and humanitarian organisations, observers say.

We are trying to raise awareness among the families about the importance of getting the children back to school, but at the same time we have to work with the authorities in order to support them, Warfa said. It is extremely challenging, because the resources are few, but the priorities are many.

Raad Aldahlaki, a member of the parliamentary committee on human rights in Iraq, noted that the central government bears great responsibility.

Politicians and state institutions are doing nothing when it comes to dealing with social problems caused by the conflict, and the people are left with no clear strategy from the government on how it will help them, Aldahlaki told Al Jazeera.

The significant deficits in education and other assistance could contribute to the growth of extremism, which could lead to a point of no return, he added.

Iraqs labour minister, Mohammed Shayaa al-Sudani, acknowledged the dramatic increase in child labour amid the countrys ongoing conflict, noting that the government has been working closely with international organisations in an effort to reintegrate working children into school. The government also passed a law restricting the age at which children can legally work, he told Al Jazeera.

But Bushra Amine, an aid worker with the Erbil-based NGO Bo-Peshawa (Go Forward), said more must be done: A whole generation [of Iraqis] has been abandoned. Many of them have already been recruited as killers and thieves by armed groups.

Amine, however, was firm in defending their innocence.

We created these criminals, she said. We cannot blame them. This is the result of leaving them on the streets without any aid, forcing them to [choose between] collecting garbage or involving themselves in the endless cycle of violence.
Social enterprise in Sydney capitalises on demand for indigenous art to provide employment to community youth.

Sydney, Australia  As a single mother, Ash Little had a lot going against her in terms of finding a job.

With no qualification or experience by her side, the 24-year-old is also an Aborigine living in Australia, which made her five times more likely to be unemployed.

But a social enterprise in Sydney helped Little beat the odds when it hired her.

Blak Markets in Bare Island is an indigenous outfit that sells the works of aboriginal artists from across the country, both online and at events.

I think it wouldve been difficult for me to find employment anywhere else, Little told Al Jazeera.

Im not very good with speaking, so it wouldve been all the interview skills, then the resume, all the steps you have to go through to get another job. Yeah, it wouldve been difficult.

READ MORE: Robot serves as art guide at Australian gallery

Besides capitalising on the lucrative indigenous art market, providing employment to the communitys youth is one of Blak Markets main priorities.

Teaching young Aborigines about their traditions is another objective.

I have a passion around trying to do the best for our people, Peter Cooley, chief executive of Blak Markets, told Al Jazeera.

We run cultural reconnection camps for older kids where we take them into the on country, into the bush or by the ocean and we teach them how to make artefacts or collect stuff from the ocean and prepare it, cook it on an open fire.

After two years in operation, the company is able to fund a fifth of its community programmes through its art sale profits.

The enterprises aim is to convert that number to a 100 percent and Cooley insists things seem be to looking up for them despite the general downturn in the indigeonous art market.

From initially selling coffee to now in training for event management, Little has come a long way.

Im starting to grow and Im starting to become more confident, she said.

With working with people, Ive never worked in retail, so I have to deal with customers now so its made me a little bit more confident.
As relatives mourn the 54 people killed at a wedding party in Gaziantep, officials investigate the ISIL-linked attack.

Turkish authorities are seeking to ascertain the identity of a child suicide bomber, acting on the orders of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, who killed 54 people at a crowded Kurdish wedding.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the bomber at the street wedding late on Saturday in the city of Gaziantep, close to Syria, was aged between 12 and 14 and that initial findings showed it had been perpetrated by Daesh.

Daesh is another name for ISIL, also known as ISIS.

All 44 victims identified so far were laid to rest in ceremonies in Gazinantep on Sunday with relatives throwing themselves on the coffins in grief, an AFP correspondent said.

The hillside graveyard was pockmarked before the ceremony with the holes of dozens of freshly dug graves for the victims.

READ MORE: Suicide bomber kills more than 50 at wedding

Media reports said the majority of those dead were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18.

At least 22 victims were under 14, a Turkish official said.

There were no further details on the bombers identity, but Erdogan said ISIL had been trying to position itself in Gaziantep which lies just 60km north of Syria and is a major centre for refugees from the over five-year civil war.

The Hurriyet daily said that DNA tests were under way to ascertain the identity, nationality and gender of the bomber.

It is possible that the bomber had come over the border from Syria but ISIL is also known to have built homegrown cells inside Turkey, in Gaziantep and even Istanbul, according to Abdulkadir Selvi, a well-connected columnist.

He said that Turkish security forces believed the attack had been timed as retaliation by fighters for offensives both by Kurdish groups and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition forces against ISIL in Syria.

Theres a fight against ISIL but we are paying the price, he wrote.

Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), said in a statement that all of those killed were Kurds.

INTERACTIVE: Timeline of attacks in Turkey

The bride and groom  a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast  were admitted to hospital although their wounds were not serious.

The attack followed a string of strikes blamed on ISIL and Kurdish fighters in thepast months but was the deadliest so far this year and first significant action in Turkey since the failed July 15 coup.

Hurriyet said the type of bomb used  stuffed with scraps of metal  was similar to explosives used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on ISIL in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station last year.
A large slice of Western Europe looks set to experience heatwave conditions in the coming days. Temperatures from Portugal to Poland are expected to reach the 30C mark.

A large area of high pressure is becoming established across much of the region. Weather fronts, and the attendant cool Atlantic breezes, are being increasingly confined to northwestern parts of the UK. [So if you are reading this in Edinburgh or Glasgow, sorry, you will probably see temperatures no higher than 16C in the coming days.]

The warmer air is coming from the south or southeast, meaning that very warm air from the Mediterranean and Africa is making northward progress.

Many areas are expected to see a steady increase in temperatures towards the weekend.

Temperatures in London and Paris are expected to reach 32 and 35C respectively, by Friday.

Across the Iberian Peninsula, there will be little change to the persistent warm weather that has been ongoing since early July.

The Spanish capital, Madrid, has only failed to record a maximum temperature of at least 30C on one occasion this month. Temperatures have generally reached 34 to 35C on most days.

Throughout July and August, temperatures in southern parts of both Spain and Portugal have exceeded 40C, prompting the issue of heatwave warnings.

Further east, Berlin is expected to see weekend temperatures reach 31C. Warsaw, Poland will come close to 30C by Sunday, and Kiev, Ukraine will also feel the 30C heat, although people here may have to wait until Sunday or Monday for that to happen.

It is often the case that hot summer weather is brought to an abrupt end by severe thunderstorms. Currently, there is a high risk of severe storms in Southern Italy and across the Adriatic Sea, into the Dalmatian coast. In the coming days, the risk of thunderstorms will increase more widely across the continent.

A return to more typical late August weather conditions is expected later next week.
No group has claimed responsibility for a rocket that was fired into the southern Israeli city of Sderot.

The Israeli army has fired missiles into the northern Gaza Strip. A rocket was fired from the Palestinian territory into southern Israel, causing no injuries or damage.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian health ministry said in a social media post that a 17-year-old Palestinian youth suffered a minor shrapnel injury in his foot during Sunday nights attacks on several areas in the north of the strip.

Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner said Israeli forces retaliated to the rocket attack by hitting targets of the Hamas movement, which governs the besieged Gaza Strip.

In response to the rocket attack from the Gaza Strip, the IAF (Israeli Air Force) and tanks targeted two Hamas posts in the northern Gaza Strip, Lerner said in a statement, according the the AFP news agency.

No group claimed responsibility for the rocket that was fired into the southern Israeli city of Sderot.

On July 2, Israeli air raids hit four sites in Gaza after a rocket struck a building in Sderot.

There were no casualties reported in either incident.

Israel ended its permanent military presence in the Gaza Strip in 2005 in what it called the Gaza disengagement.

However, the area remains effectively occupied as Israel retains control of its airspace, seafront and all vehicle access, blocking trade and free movement for the territorys two million residents.
Tropical storm Mindulle hits Greater Tokyo leaving one dead, while Typhoon Kompasu causes one man to drown in Hokkaido.

A powerful typhoon has battered the Greater Tokyo area in Japan, leaving at least one person dead and dozens injured, according to media reports.

Typhoon Mindulle made landfall at noon on Monday, moving upwards from the Japanese capital to the northern Tohoku region, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Bringing winds of up to 180km an hour, the storm was heading north at a speed of 25km an hour from Miyake Island in early morning, the agency said.

In Kanagawa prefecture, a 58-year-old police was swept away by flood waters and later died in hospital, according to Kyodo.

READ MORE: Japan sees three tropical cyclones at once

Dozens of people were injured, many of them in falls caused by the strong wind, the DPA news agency said.

Hundreds of thousands were urged to leave their homes in the Greater Tokyo area and the north-east, broadcaster NHK reported.

As Mindulle was heading off to the northeast and the island of Hokkaido, weather authorities were warning of mudslides, flooding, swollen rivers and high waves in those regions and eastern Japan.

The storm forced airlines across the country to cancel more than 500 flights, while runways of the Narita International Airport were temporarily closed.

Japan Airlines said it had cancelled 145 domestic flights through mid-afternoon, affecting 26,910 customers, while All Nippon Airways cancelled 96 domestic flights, affecting 21,300 passengers.

There were reported delays and cancellation of train services, including the super-fast bullet trains.

Rainfall of up to 200mm was predicted for Hokkaido by Tuesday evening, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

READ MORE: A warming world  July marks hottest month on record

Separately, Typhoon Kompasu, which hit Japans northern main island of Hokkaido on Sunday, had been downgraded to a temperate depression by early on Monday and moved away into the Sea of Okhotsk, according to the weather agency.

A man was found dead on Monday on an inundated street in the city of Kitami on Hokkaido, where Kompasu caused flooding the previous day, DPA reported.

A third tropical storm called Lionrock was south of the island of Shikoku, but is not expected to hit Japan directly.
Vote by parliament in Tobruk is major setback for Government of National Accord in Tripoli.

Libyas UN-backed government in the capital, Tripoli, has suffered a major setback following a vote of no confidence by the countrys eastern parliament.

The vote on Monday by members of the House of Representatives, which is based in the eastern city of Tobruk, rejected the Tripoli administrations proposed line-up for a government of national unity.

The majority of lawmakers present at the parliament session voted no confidence in the government, Adam Boussakhra, parliament spokesman, told the AFP news agency.

A Government of National Accord (GNA)  led by prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj  was the result of a UN-brokered power-sharing deal struck in December.

Mondays vote was the first since January, when the parliament rejected an initial list of ministers put forward by the GNAs leadership, and the first since the UN-backed government began installing itself in Tripoli in March.

But the GNA, which had been seeking the Tobruk parliaments endorsement for months, has struggled to unite the country and assert its authority beyond the capital city.

A rival government in the countrys east has refused to cede power until the House of Representatives passes a vote of confidence.

READ MORE: Libya factions agree to sign national unity deal

A total of 101 deputies attended Mondays session, with 61 voting against the GNA, 39 abstaining, and only one voting in favour, according to officials.

Parliamentary sessions in Tobruk have been repeatedly delayed or blocked as opposition to the GNA has hardened.

GNA supporters, many of whom did not attend Mondays vote, have previously complained that opponents of the UN-backed government have used physical force and threats to prevent voting from taking place.

Western powers have been counting on the GNA to tackle Libyas security vacuum, revive oil production, and stem the flow of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

While forces aligned with the GNA have largely recaptured the coastal city of Sirte from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, it has struggled to assert control in other areas, losing support because of its inability to resolve a liquidity crisis, widespread power cuts and other problems.

The conflict has turned the country into a nexus for people-smuggling to Europe and has enabled ISIL, also known as ISIS, to gain a foothold on the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
A Malian fighter has admitted guilt at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the first ever case of a suspect charged with war crimes against a World Heritage site.

Ahmas al-Faqi al-Mahdi pleaded guilty on Monday at the ICC in The Hague where he is accused of intentionally attacking nine mausoleums and the Sidi Yahi mosque within the city of Timbuktu in Mali.

Mahdi asked for forgiveness and said he had been swept up in an evil wave by al-Qaeda and the Ansar Dine groups, which briefly seized control of the northern city in 2012.

This is the first and last wrongful act I will ever commit, Mahdi told the court in a measured and grave opening address.

I regret what I have caused to my family, my community in Timbuktu, what I have caused to my home nation Mali, he added.

I would like to seek the pardon of all the whole people of Timbuktu.

Al Jazeeras Paul Brennan, reporting from The Hague, described Mahdis ICC trial as genuinely groundbreaking for several reasons.

Its the first case arising from the 2012 conflict in Mali and the first time that destruction of religious and historical sites has been made a priority charge as a war crime, he said.

Finally, its the first time that an ICC war crimes defendant has pleaded guilty.

READ MORE: On trial: the destruction of history during conflict

Court officials said Mahdis trial would proceed despite his confession, as the judges still needed to be satisfied he was guilty. Mahdi faces up to 30 years in prison.

Prosecutors from the ICC accuse Mahdi of being a member of Ansar Dine, a predominantly Tuareg armed group that occupied the region roughly 1,000km northeast of the capital, Bamako, alongside al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) four years ago.

As the head of the Hisbah, or the Manners Brigade, he is alleged to have ordered the attacks on the shrines with pickaxes, chisels and pick-up trucks.

Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries and a designated UNESCO world heritage site.

Mausoleums destroyed

Despite its reverence as the epicentre of Islamic learning during its golden age, armed fighters condemned the land as idolatrous.

And so, during the 10-month occupation, they managed to destroy 14 ancient mausoleums and part of a mosque before French and Malian troops advanced on the city.

Fatou Bensouda, the ICC chief prosecutor, told the AFP news agency that such cultural destruction is tantamount to an assault on peoples history and robs future generations of their landmarks and their heritage.

No one who destroys that which embodies the very soul and the roots of a people through such crimes should be allowed to escape justice, Bensouda said.

READ MORE: Timbuktu heritage under threat

The ICCs chief prosecutor compared the Timbuktu case with the destruction of historic ruins in the Syrian city of Palmyra by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who have also turned artefacts from the Mosul Museum, Iraqs second largest museum, into rubble.

Archaeologists hope, in light of the prevalent war on art, that the trial will send a hard-hitting message to groups that wrecking culturally cherished artefacts will not go unpunished.
PM Yildirim backs away from earlier assertion by President Erdogan that child was responsible for deadly wedding blast.

Turkeys Prime Minister Binali Yildirim says authorities are in no position to verify whether a child suicide bomber was responsible for a blast that killed at least 54 people on Saturday, reversing an earlier assertion by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

We are not in a position to verify anything about who the perpetrator was  if it was a child, an adult, or for which organisation, Yildrim told reporters in Ankara on Monday, referring to the suicide attack at a wedding in the city of Gaziantep.

We do not have a clue about who the perpetrators behind the attack were, he added. Early information on who did the attack, in what organisations name, is unfortunately not right, he said.

Erdogan had said on Sunday that a child suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 was responsible for the attack, and that the bombing in Gaziantep had been perpetrated by Daesh.

Daesh is another name for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group.

It was not immediately known what new evidence had prompted Yildrim to backtrack so completely on the presidents earlier assertions.

OPINION: From sporadic to systematic ISIL attacks in Turkey

Earlier on Monday, the Turkish daily Hurriyet, citing security officials who examined CCTV footage from the area of the attack, said the suspected child suicide bomber was accompanied to the scene of the attack by two adults.

The two adults fled in a vehicle just before the blast, Hurriyet reported.

A Turkish security official told the Reuters news agency on Monday that they were investigating the possibility that adult fighters could have placed the explosives on the child without his or her knowledge, and detonated the device remotely, or that a mentally disabled child was duped into carrying the device, a tactic seen elsewhere in the region.





It could be that someone was loaded with explosives without even being aware of it and it may have been detonated remotely, the official said, adding that a search was under way for suspects who may have played a reconnaissance role.

The Hurriyet daily said that DNA tests were under way to ascertain the identity and nationality of the bomber.

Same device

The device used in Saturdays bombing, which contained scraps of metal, was the same type used in 2015 attacks on a peace rally in Ankara and on the border district of Suruc, Turkish media also reported on Monday, citing security sources.

Both the Ankara and Suruc attacks were blamed on ISIL, reinforcing the suspicion that the armed group was also behind the Gaziantep bombing, the official said.

The group has targeted Kurdish gatherings in Turkey for more than a year. The Ankara bombing was the deadliest of its kind in Turkey, killing more than 100 people.

INTERACTIVE: Timeline of attacks in Turkey

Meanwhile, three more people receiving treatment at hospitals after the attack in Gaziantep died from their wounds in the early hours of Monday.

A total of 66 wounded are still receiving treatment at hospitals in the province, with 14 in a critical condition.

Daesh should be completely cleansed from our borders and we are ready to do what it takes for that, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference in Ankara.

Cavusoglu said Turkey, a member of NATO and the US-led coalition against ISIL, had become the No.1 target for ISIL fighters because of its work to stop recruits travelling through Turkey across its over 800km border into Syria to join the armed group.
US says it is unsure whether Russias use of the base has definitively stopped.

Iran has said Russia is no longer using one of its air bases to launch strikes on targets in Syria, but the US said it is unclear whether Russias use of the base has actually stopped.

It was a specific, authorised mission and its over for now, Bahram Ghasemi, spokesman for Irans foreign ministry, told reporters in Tehran on Monday.





Ghasemi left open the possibility of Russia utilising the Hamedan base in the future, saying it would depend on the situation in the region, and according to our permission.

Levan Dzhagaryan, Russias ambassador to Tehran, said that all Russian planes had left Hamedan, but added that Russia might use the base again in the future.

There are no reasons to worry. If the leaders of our two countries consider it necessary and reach the relevant agreements, what sort of problems can there be? Dzhagaryan told Russias Interfax news agency on Monday.

For the time being, there are no [Russians] remaining in Hamedan airbase, he added.

READ MORE: Russia defends using Iran base for Syria air raids

Iran and Russia are key backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war.

Al Jazeeras Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said signs of the deal souring emerged late on Sunday when Hossein Dehghan, Irans defence minister, said that Russia should have kept things quieter and criticised Moscow of showing off in making the operation public.

Challands also said a political split in Iranian leadership could be the real reason behind the end of the operations.

There were certainly voices in Tehran that were saying that this might be anti-constitutional; that Iran should never have allowed a foreign power to use its airbases.

Later on Monday, US officials said it was not clear whether Russia had actually stopped using the base.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner reporters that Washington was closely monitoring the cooperation between Russia and Iran and that its not clear  whether their (Moscows) use of this air base has definitively stopped.

Shorter flight times

The flights from Iranian territory started on August 16, significantly shortening flight-times for Russian warplanes and allowing them to carry increased firepower.

Russia said it had struck targets linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, previously known as the al-Nusra Front rebel group, in Aleppo, Deir Az Zor and Idlib.

Tehran oversees thousands of troops fighting for Assad on the ground, while Russia provides air power.

Activists in Syria, however, accuse Russia and Iran of aiding the Assad regime in targeting civilian neighbourhoods and infrastructure.

READ MORE: Civilian deaths mount after Syrian regime loses ground

The two countries oppose calls for Assad to step down as a way of resolving the conflict, which began as a mostly unarmed uprising against Assad in March 2011, but quickly escalated into a full-blown civil war involving opposition groups and the regime as well as several foreign governments backing opposite sides.

Monitoring groups estimate that more than 280,000 Syrians have been killed and millions having been displaced.
Kurdish group surrounds government buildings in Hasaka after Russian mediators fail to mend rift between the two sides.

Soldiers from the Kurdish YPG have launched a major assault to seize the last government-controlled areas of the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka, after a Russian mediation team failed to mend the rift between the two sides.

The YPG began the offensive after midnight to take the southeastern district of Nashwa, close to where a security compound is located near the governors office close to the heart of the city, according to YPG sources and residents.

The YPG, or the Peoples Protection Units, has ties to Turkeys outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

It had earlier captured Ghwairan, the only major Arab neighbourhood in Hasaka still in government hands.

Mondays offensive comes just hours after Syrian state media said a truce had been reached between Kurdish and government forces to evacuate the wounded from Hasaka.

Kurdish sources said on Sunday that no deal had been finalised.

Violent confrontation

The fighting in Hasaka, which is divided into zones of Kurdish and Syrian government control, marks the most violent confrontation between the Kurdish YPG and the Syrian army in more than five years of civil war.

Goverment fighter jets last week bombed the YPG for the first time during the war, prompting a US-led coalition to scramble aircraft to protect American special operations forces on the ground in the area.

This is quite a significant development because the Kurds now seem to be determined to drive government troops out of the city and control it, said Al Jazeeras Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep, near the Turkey-Syria border.





The Kurds are saying that theyre not going to sign any agreement in the future with [President] Bashar al-Assad, and that its just going to be a matter of hours or days before Hasaka is under their control.

The YPG is at the heart of a US-led campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Syria.

It controls swaths of territory along the northeastern border with Turkey  from Hasaka to Afrin  which its political wing has claimed as an autonomous region now called Rojava.

Our correspondent said: [Kurdish] fighters, as we speak, are surrounding government buildings in Hasaka, giving soldiers an ultimatum: Either you surrender, or you will be killed.

Syrian state media accused the YPG-affiliated security force known as the Asayish of violating a ceasefire and said its members had torched government buildings in Hasaka.

It accused the Asayish of igniting the violence through escalating provocations, including the bombing of army positions in Hasaka, and said the Asayish aimed to take control of the city.

We will not retreat

Late on Sunday night, Kurdish forces distributed leaflets across Hasaka and used mosque loudspeakers to call on army personnel and pro-government militias to hand over their weapons or face death.

To all the elements of the regime and its militias who are besieged in the city you are targeted by our units, leaflets distributed by the YPG said.

This battle is decided and we will not retreat  We call on you to give up your weapons or count yourselves dead.

READ MORE: Turkey vows active role in Syria, better regional ties

The YPG appeared intent on leaving a nominal Syrian government presence confined to within a security zone in the heart of the city, where several key government buildings are located, Kurdish sources said.

Clashes in Hasaka erupted last week after Kurdish forces demanded the dismantlement of a pro-government group, the National Defence Forces, in the area.

Russian mediation

In an attempt to calm tensions, a delegation of Russian officials arrived in Qamishli on Saturday from the coastal Hmeimim military airport for talks with the two sides.

After two days of negotiations mediated by Russia, a Syrian military source told AFP that a deal was struck between government forces and Kurdish fighters  a claim Kurdish sources denied.

The three-point agreement calls for a halt to all hostilities and the return to regime forces of any positions seized by Kurdish fighters since Wednesday, according to the military source.

The deal also stipulated that casualties would be transferred north to Qamishli.

A Kurdish military source in Hasaka told AFP that an agreement had not been established on any of the three points.

The pro-government Al Masdar news website reported on Sunday that Russian mediation efforts had failed to halt fighting after the Syrian government refused Kurdish demands that it withdraw its forces from Hasaka and Qamishli.

Additional negotiations were set to take place on Monday.

Thousands of civilians in the ethnically mixed city have fled to villages in the countryside as the fighting intensified, residents said.

Tacit understandings

The confrontation appears to have undone tacit understandings between the YPG and the Syrian army that had kept Hasaka relatively calm.

Critics and residents say the YPG was handed weapons and territory by the Syrian army at the start of the conflict, as Assad sought to focus on crushing the mainly Sunni Arab rebels who sought to topple him.

After the clashes began last week, Hasakas governor told state media the military had armed the YPG with weapons and tanks to fight jihadist elements and had not expected them to turn against the state.

Hasakas population has been swelled by displaced Syrians fleeing areas that fell under the control of ISIL, also known as ISIS.

It is broadly divided along ethnic lines, with Kurds mainly in the citys eastern neighbourhoods and Arabs in the southern parts.
Turkish army shells ISIL targets in Syrias Jarablus for second day after mortar bombs hit town in southeastern Turkey.

The Turkish military has shelled Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) positions in northern Syria for a second day, in response to what it said was mortar fire from across the border.





At least seven mortar bombs, believed to had been launched from the ISIL-controled Syrian border town of Jarablus, landed on Tuesday on residential areas in the town of Karkamis in Turkeys southeastern province of Gaziantep.

No casulties were reported as a result of the incident.

Turkey later retaliated with cross-border artillery, a security source told Turkeys state run Anadolu agency.

Speaking on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media, the source told Anadolu that four ISIL targets were hit, but did not specify the targets.

Meanwhile, security forces blocked access to the town of Karkamis, which lies only one kilometre across the frontier from Jarablus, and the authorities asked locals to leave the town, according to Turkish media.

Separately, three rockets fired from ISIL-controlled territory in Syria landed in neighbouring Kilis on Tuesday.

There were also no reports of casualties.

OPINION: From sporadic to systematic ISIL attacks in Turkey

Turkey first launched separate artillery strikes on Kurdish and ISIL positions in northern Syria on Monday.

The Turkish army first shelled ISIL targets near Jarablus on Monday, following Ankaras vow to push the armed group, also known as ISIS, from its border with Syria.

Also on Monday, Turkey launched separate artillery strikes on Kurdish YPG positions north of the nearby city of Manbij.

The YPG targets were hit 20 times, a Turkish official told the Reuters news agency.

Ankara has spoken out against the advance of US-backed Syrian-Kurdish YPG fighters, seeing them as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since the 1980s.

READ MORE: YPG launches assault to take all of Hasaka





The YPG, or the Peoples Protection Units, currently controls swaths of territory along the northeastern border with Turkey  from the towns of Hasaka to Afrin  while its political wing, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), claims an autonomous region now called Rojava.

The Kurdish group makes up a significant portion of the US-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish and Arab alliance fighting ISIL in Syria. The US and EU considers the YPG as one of their most effective allies in the fight against ISIL.

Earlier this month, YPG forces backed by air raids from a US-led anti-ISIL coalition, ousted ISIL fighters from Manbij.

But Turkey views the Kurdish presence in northern Syria as an unacceptable red line and wants the Free Syrian Army (FSA), another opposition group, to take over areas once controlled by ISIL in the border regions.

Al Jazeeras Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border, said advances by the Kurds raised concerns within the political and military establishment within Turkey.

They are concerned about the growing territorial gains of Kurdish factions.

READ MORE: Meet the female Kurdish fighters battling ISIL

On Sunday, it was reported that the FSA was planning to attack the ISIL-controlled region of Jarablus from inside Turkey to prevent any Kurdish efforts to control the area.

A rebel official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters that hundreds of FSA and opposition fighters were expected to launch an assault on Jarablus from inside Turkey in the next few days.

On Monday, a Turkish official also told Reuters that the fundamental aim in the latest operation [of the strikes on Jarablus and Manbij] is to open a corridor for moderate rebels.

Al Jazeeras Ahelbarra said the FSA had not been as successful as the YPG forces in taking over territory from ISIL up to now, but this may soon change.

Particularly in Jarablus and Manbij, they [FSA fighters] were outgunned and outnumbered by Kurdish factions, he said.

But it seems Turkey is now willing to put an end to the growing influence of Kurdish factions in Syria and at least have their own allies, particularly the FSA, take over he said.

It remains to be seen whether this will be a period of an aggressive Turkish role in northern Syria or just pave the way for the FSA to be able to advance.

Turkey also shelled YPG positions in northern Syria in February, demanding that the group withdrew from areas it had captured.
Wayne Hay

"Wayne Hay has been covering the Asia/Pacific region since 2001, first with Television New Zealand before joining Al Jazeera English in 2006. In his ... more role at Al Jazeera, he has travelled the region extensively, reporting on everything from elections and natural disasters to surfing in Bali. More recently he covered the flooding caused by Typhoons in the Philippines and the earthquake in Padang, Indonesia in 2009. He was also given the rare opportunity to report from North Korea."
The case against Assange is as political as it is legal; where does it go from here? Plus, Kenyas election influencers.
On the ground floor of Jennings Hall, UFs president lived with more than 500 students.

President Kent Fuchs and his wife, Linda, stayed in room 2026 from Aug. 15 to Saturday to help new and returning students move in and to experience on-campus life. After learning about a university president who lived in a residence hall, he said he wanted to try it.

Fuchs knew he wouldnt be able to meet all 7,000 new students, but he thought if he stayed on campus, he could meet more.

It would send a message to all the students and their families that the university cares about them enough where the president will be there when they arrive, he said.

Though he lived in a private apartment with a private bathroom, Fuchs took some of his meals at the Broward Dining Center. His only luxury from the Presidents House was his little espresso machine.

While meeting new students, Fuchs helped lug boxes and bins to students rooms.

Micaela Di Vico, an 18-year-old UF communication sciences and disorders freshman, was one of the many students who met him during Fuchs stay in the hall.

Di Vico said she hadnt seen the president before the Orlando Pulse shooting vigil at Century Tower. She met him Wednesday while unloading the car with her roommate, Brooklynn.

We were unloading her car with a bunch of food items in a box, and he came up to us super friendly, and he was like Oh, are you stocking up on food or are you moving in? Di Vico said. And I told him Both  a little bit of both.

Fuchs also learned more about the campus itself by taking tours of all the residence halls and learning their histories. But he said one of his most memorable experiences was the shaving-cream fight in Yulee Pit, even though the students won.

Adam Tamargo, a UF computer science freshman, moved into Jennings Hall from Tampa on Thursday.

I think that its pretty cool to have him come down and live here with us, and it shows that he is pretty involved and cares about kids, the 18-year-old said. Thats why Ive always admired the president.

Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now

At the end of the week, Fuchs said he didnt mind the residence hall beds and was impressed at how great the residence staff performed.

But he isnt sure if hell be doing it again soon.

I asked my wife if shell do it with me again, and she said it was a lot of fun but she wants to think about it, he said. So I hope we get to do it!
Two people arrested with nearly 80 grams of meth oil inside their car, deputies say

Two people were arrested Wednesday after police said they were in possession of nearly 80 grams of methamphetamine oil and meth-making materials.

Stacy Blackwelder, of Palatka, and Kenneth Keene, of Satsuma, sat in the car at Earl P. Powers Park in the 5900 block of Hawthorne Road after park hours, according to a police report, when two Alachua County Sheriffs deputies on patrol approached the car.

Inside the car, deputies found multiple syringes and what appeared to be two grams of powdered meth inside, according to a statement issued by the sheriffs office.

When one person in the car told deputies there was an active one-pot meth cook in a toolbox in the car, the Gainesville-Alachua County Drug Task Forces Clandestine Lab Response Team was called to the scene, according to the statement.

The team found an active one-pot meth cook, two hydrogen chloride gas generators, chemicals to make meth and 78.8 grams of meth oil, according to the statement.

Both Blackwelder and Keene were taken to the Alachua County Jail. Blackwelder was charged with possession of a controlled substance and drug equipment. She is currently being held in lieu of a $20,000 bail.

Keene was charged with trafficking in amphetamine, possessing drug equipment, possessing methamphetamine with intent to sell and possessing a controlled substance. He is currently being held in lieu of a $275,000 bond.

This incident was the latest in a growing number of meth cases ASO has seen, said Lt. Brandon Kutner, a spokesman for the sheriffs office.

In 2015, there were about 30 meth-related cases, he said. This year, theyre on track for the same number, if not more.

Unfortunately, its becoming too commonplace for us, Kutner said. Weve seen a dramatic increase in the amount of meth over the past five years.

Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now

One dead, four seriously injured in Gainesville crash

An Alachua man died and two infants were seriously injured Friday night in a two-car crash in Gainesville.

Minutes before midnight, Chase Pinner, 18, of Middleburg, Florida, drove his 2002 Nissan pickup south on County Road 1475 toward the intersection of County Road 225 when he collided with a westbound vehicle, according to a Florida Highway Patrol report.

The front of Pinners truck smashed into the right portion of a 2015 Hyundai Sonata. Both cars came to a stop in the southwest corner of the intersection, according to the report.

Christopher Thomashunis, 30, of Alachua, was a passenger in the Sonata and died of his injuries at the scene, according to the report.

Chandler Thomashunis and Canden Thomashunis, both 1 year old, sat in the back seat of the Sonata during the crash and sustained serious injuries, according to the report.

They were taken to UF Health Shands Hospitals Pediatric Emergency Room, according to the report.

Luisa Adams, 31, of Alachua, drove the Sonata during the crash. Both she and Pinner were seriously injured, according to the report.

Both drivers were taken to Shands Emergency Room, according to the report. No charges have been made, pending an investigation.

Man arrested after threatening to arrest 11-year-old boy

A Gainesville man was arrested Thursday after police said he threatened to arrest an 11-year-old boy with autism last month.

At about 2 p.m. on July 29, John Mobley, 32, saw the young boy driving a go-cart in the street when he instructed him to go home, according to the report.

Mobley was wearing a police badge on a black polo shirt, tan tactical-style pants, black boots and a police-style belt holding a handgun and a pair of handcuffs, according to the report.

After sending the boy home, Mobley went up to his home and spoke with the boys mother, father and grandmother, identifying himself as a Gainesville Police officer, according to the report.

At one point, Mobley allegedly pulled out his handcuffs and threatened to arrest the 11-year-old because he wasnt paying attention while driving his go-cart, according to the report.

Mobley denied any knowledge of the incident but was later identified using a Department of Justice photo, according to the report.

He was charged with impersonating a law enforcement officer and possessing a weapon as a convicted felon. Authorities took him to the Alachua County Jail, where he remains on a $65,000 bail.
On Saturday First Magnitude Brewing Company celebrated its second anniversary  with a 12-hour birthday party.

Several local bands and specialty beers greeted the crowd, which at times grew to 400 people in size.

For Meg The Losen, her husband Wells and their two close friends, who started the brewery two years ago, the party was long overdue and well deserved.

Since the brewery first opened its doors, the company has doubled its staff, expanded its distribution reach and increased its production, she said.

We are really grateful to the community, she said.

Lane Abraben, the event and project coordinator at the brewery, said the company started out as a 15-barrel brewery, but it has since expanded to 250 barrels.

Two weeks after the brewery opened, it began selling its beer in Gainesville. Within two months, it added distributors in St. Augustine, Tallahassee, Ocala and The Villages to its list of customers, she said. This May, it began reaching Orlando.

Plans for the future of the brewery include the possibility of a second location, as well as bottled beers by the company and further distribution of the beers to other cities in Florida.

According to The Losen, she believes the brewery has done so well because of, well, the beer.

I think and hope that its the quality of the beer, she said. We also have a great team of brewers that are obsessed with quality.

Tina Nguyen, 26, a third-year UF pharmacy graduate student, said she was excited to go the party. Two years ago she went to its grand opening.

We start classes on Monday so its a way to hang out and have some fun before classes start, Nguyen said.

Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now

Head Brewer John Denny draws a sample of fermenting beer in order to test its density. Testing for density, also known as specific gravity, is used to determine how much sugar the yeast has consumed.
A Florida judge sided with college students in a lawsuit between a public university and a student newspaper earlier this month.

After listening to attorneys from the University of Central Florida and Knight News, Inc., circuit judge John E. Jordan ordered the university to hand over UCF Student Government Association files with the names of members who spent the schools Activity and Service budget.

Justin Hemlepp, an attorney for the non-profit student newspaper in Orlando and UF alumnus, said the judges decision was a victory for the students. It was the third lawsuit between the student paper and UCF.

This order is about the records, he said. It was exactly what weve been arguing for three years now. Student government records arent education records, because theyre not maintained by the university.

Chad Binette, the assistant vice president of UCF News and Information, wrote in an email that UCF, while disappointed with the ruling, is evaluating options.

Our goal has always been to comply with both public records laws and federal laws protecting the privacy of student information, he said.

The trial began in May after the student paper requested to see their student governments budget, but after a month passed with no response from the university, the paper sued, Hemlepp said.

UCF eventually handed over the documents, in which they redacted the names of students who allocated, oversaw and spent money.

Attorneys for UCF argued the names of students were redacted because the university could lose funding from the Department of Education for violating the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which gives money to public institutions for protecting students educational records.

Because if we dont, under FERPA, the university can lose its eligibility for federal funding, said Richard Mitchell, an attorney for UCF. This is a big deal, and we take it seriously.

Student Press Law Center Executive Director Frank LoMonte said that argument was false.

Thats a total nonsense argument, he said. They know they cant lose federal money because no school in the 43-year history of FERPA has ever lost their funding, and they know that other colleges around the country have produced student government documents.

Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now

After the judges order, UCF asked Jordan for a rehearing, which he denied.

LoMonte, who has been following the case since it started, said UCFs treatment toward Knight News, Inc. is like nothing hes ever seen.

Ive never seen a university go after its own students with this level of voracity, where theyre literally trying to bankrupt their own students, he said. Ive just never seen a university go out of its way to try and inflict harm on its own students the way that UCF is. And you really have to wonder whos calling the shots there.
The beginning of the new school year is an opportunity for all students to help curb the spread of the Zika virus by practicing good habits, which include using mosquito repellent, spilling standing water to prevent mosquitoes from breeding and taking measures to reduce the chances of sexual transmission.

In fact, as you walk around your campus, you may notice references to the Zika Aware: Spill it, Spray it campaign, meant to remind students how to stay safe.

Floridas 12 public universities are leaders in the conversation about Zika, conducting important research, creating task forces to track the virus and serving as a resource to the community.

But as university students, you also have a unique opportunity to make a difference.

Just as Governor Rick Scott challenged Floridas educational institutions to be proactive in preventing new Zika cases, I am urging you, our students, to get creative and help us spread the word.

By working together, we have a real opportunity to make a difference.

Marshall Criser III is chancellor of the State University System of Florida.
The UAE Government is a globally-recognized advocate for sustainable development, with the country playing host to participants from over 50 countries at one of the world's largest annual Water, Energy, Technology and Environment exhibitions, WETEX, which is organized by DEWA (Dubai Electricity & Water Authority).

Now in its 18th year, WETEX attracts the world's most renowned energy sector professionals and organizations. The event has therefore developed over the years to become a global platform for presenting scientific, management, engineering and technology solutions in the water, energy conservation and sustainability fields. Attending this year's Solar Show, which is part of WETEX, was for Grundfos a natural choice. Grundfos, a global leader in advanced pump solutions and trendsetter in water technology, last year received the United Nations Climate Change Award during COP21 in Paris, for its approach to sustainable water supply in Kenya and Uganda. ...



Source : http://me-newswire.net//news/18501/en...
All the best data analytics technology in the world isn't helpful if bankers don't know how to use it.

Analytics tools that mine through data have become essential as banks look to give customers personalized, relevant communications and offers. But simply buying technology solutions isn't enough; banks need to have the right people and processes in place and know what they want the data to do for them, some experts say.

"Banks of all sizes will need to use predictive analytics going forward," said Paul Schaus, president and chief executive of the consulting firm CCG Catalyst. "But there's so much data they have access to, though, so they first need to define what data they are looking for and why. Without a clear data strategy, you can get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of it. It's like trying to take a sip of water from a fire hose."

What's clear is that banks are investing in analytics to enhance customer experience. According to a recent Capgemini report, while banks have traditionally invested in analytics solely for regulatory reporting, nearly a quarter of analytics initiatives were earmarked for customer experience initiatives in 2015. Additionally, chief information officers said data analytics trailed only security in where they expected to see increased spending this year, according to a 2015 report by SourceMedia Research.

This means banks need to have a definite plan for what they want the data to do for them, such as trying to assist growth in a particular market or sell more of a particular financial product. Further, Schaus said, banks will need to employ more data scientists to help them use data more effectively.

Most large banks are already doing this, but it is something smaller banks will need to do, too. For banks that don't have the budget for full-time data scientists, employing consultants or short-term analysts on a per-project basis will be necessary, Schaus said.

The good news is that finding data scientists is becoming easier. Data science is an increasing focus of colleges and university course offerings, said Ambreesh Khanna, group vice president and general manager of Oracle Financial Services' Analytical Applications group.

"All universities are offering courses in data science now," he said. "Lots of people are showing up in the market with data science degrees, which means the price of hiring a data scientist is dropping. It was very expensive five or six years ago; not so much now."

Like Schaus, Khanna said banks must have a strategy around data, in particular to deepen the relationships with existing customers.

"In mature markets like the U.S., [financial] products are largely commoditized and there aren't many unbanked," Khanna said. "So the focus on banks needs to be more and more on retention. That means appropriately identifying customers that are profitable and who might become profitable based on the data."

The banks that are successful in the future will be those that are able to create lifelong customer relationships that are advisory based, said Emmett Cox, senior vice president of customer intelligence at BBVA Compass.

"There's a huge, tremendous push from consumers to have relationship with their banks today," he said. "They want their banks to help them with the future and for different life stages plan."

Cox comes to banking from the retail industry. He was previously a senior group manager of consumer insights and analytics at Walmart. Cox said banks have an advantage over retailers because consumers have a "deeper relationship" with their banks than any individual retailer.

At Compass, which largely uses analytics tools from SAS, Cox said the bank triess to use data to offer helpful advisory services to customers rather than simply sending out product offers.

"Consumers are constantly hit with a barrage of marketing messages all day," he said. "What we try and strive for is different: to offer help based on their life and financial situations. So things like asking if they are thinking of planning for retirement, or if they are prepared for certain household changes."

Ultimately, data analytics tools combined with in-house expertise will enable banks to offer a much more personalized relationship with customers, Cox said.

"It's not just about a technology, but understanding the information behind the technology and analyzing it," he said. "Today, consumers are fairly specific in what they want, so we're not simply trying to find a single 'aha' moment, but helping them throughout the relationship."


The Bancorp in Wilmington, Del., disclosed the identities of directors nominated to its board by two investor groups.

John Eggemeyer, founder and managing principal of Castle Creek Capital Partners in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., and Shivan Govindan, a managing member at Pilgrims & Indians Capital in Austin, Texas, were appointed directors of the $4.4 billion-asset company on Aug. 17. Eggemeyer and Govindan were also named directors of the company's subsidiary, The Bancorp Bank. The appointments require regulatory approval.

The two investment groups recently participated in a $74 million capital raise for The Bancorp. Each was given the right to appoint a director, provided each owns at least 4% of The Bancorp's outstanding common stock.

In the private placement, Pilgrims & Indians acquired about $11.9 million of common and mandatorily convertible preferred securities, according to a regulatory filing. The amount of Pilgrims & Indians' investment had not been previously disclosed. The Bancorp has not disclosed the amount of Castle Creek's investment.

The terms of the investments require shareholder approval and The Bancorp has scheduled a Sept. 29 special meeting to tally shareholder votes for the capital raise, according to a regulatory filing.
Chicago is often favorably described as the city of neighborhoods, and in banking circles it has a similar reputation for multiplicity  except that's not necessarily a compliment in banking.

Unit banking laws that remained intact into the1960s fostered scads of single-branch community banks. The Windy City landscape is still littered with small, privately held banks as a result. It has always been assumed that many of them could not survive and would have to sell themselves, and to be sure the Chicagoland area has seen its share of M&A in recent years.

But the more obvious deals, the ones that follow the traditional pattern of big fish buys small, have been done, and that reality raises several questions about the nature of M&A in Chicago and other oversupplied markets around the country.

Are there enough classic buyers and sellers left?

The answer is no, not exactly. The number of big fish is shrinking, and so is the size (and appeal) of the targets.

Since 2010, there have been more than 90 deals announced in Illinois, and recently some of the larger community banks in the Chicago area have announced plans to sell.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce recently agreed to buy PrivateBancorp for $3.8 billion, and that deal would leave the city with fewer large players based in the area.

"Every night before I go to bed, I pray for more buyers," said William Burgess, a principal in investment banking at Sandler O'Neill. "Right now it remains a buyer's market because there is just an insufficient number of buyers. I don't think that will change anytime soon."

Besides the CIBC-PrivateBancorp deal, First Midwest Bancorp has agreed to buy the $2.5 billion-asset Standard Bancshares for $365 million, and MB Financial said it would buy the $2.8 billion-asset American Chartered Bank for $449 million.

Once those deals close, there will not be any banks based in the Chicago area with between roughly $3.5 billion of assets and $14 billion of assets, Burgess said.

"A big bank deal in Chicago usually involves a seller with $1 billion of assets," said Christopher McGratty, an analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. "But there's not too many of them left. The majority of consolidation is under the radar with these smaller banks being rolled up."

Who will drive the deals then?

A few classic candidates remain: the $23.7 billion-asset Wintrust Financial, the $10.6 billion-asset First Midwest and the $15.2 billion-asset MB Financial.

The challenge for prospective sellers is that these banks can afford to be choosy, erring on the side of larger banks that are worth the integration costs that come with any deal.

Wintrust in Rosemont, Ill., is one exception to this and has shown a willingness to buy smaller banks. That trend is likely to continue. It has never purchased a bank that was larger than $1 billion and three of its last four bank deals involved sellers that had less than $200 million of assets.

"They are very good at buying things below value," Burgess said.

Wintrust's chief executive and president, Ed Wehmer, did not return a call seeking comment.

First Midwest in Itasca, Ill., has done a combination of larger and smaller deals. It is interested in doing further deals in Chicago and in adjacent markets, such as northwest Indiana, southwest Michigan and the Quad Cities region in Iowa, said Michael Scudder, First Midwest's president and CEO. The bank does not necessarily have an asset size range when looking for potential deals and instead focuses on the strategic value a seller could add to the organization, he said.

MB Financial in Chicago has shown a preference for doing larger deals, including buying Taylor Capital Group in 2014. MB declined to comment for this story.

So where else can struggling bank turn?

Smaller banks could seek more mergers of equals: in other words, pair off with banks of similar size.

However, such deals typically face roadblocks of their own. For one, investors in privately held banks may be looking for liquidity, and merging with another small nonpublic company won't provide that, Burgess said.

Regulators may also be wary of a small, inexperienced acquirer becoming involved in a deal, said Michael Iannaccone, a senior adviser at Tangent Capital Partners. Buyers need to show that they have the right people, platforms and processes in place to ensure that the transaction goes smoothly.

"The regulatory environment could slow the small side of the market," Iannaccone said. "It's really all based on experience and most small banks, just based on size, don't have that experience."

Investors in some small privately held banks may also see no reason to sell, said Jon Winick, CEO of Clark Street Capital. Some shareholders are fine with their investment having mediocre returns simply because they enjoy owning a bank.

"Every investor isn't a hedge fund manager that is analyzing their investment coldly compared with other alternatives," Winick added. "Maybe they own a small community bank and it does OK but it isn't killing it. There's often no motivation to sell. On some level, it's fun to own a bank."

What impact does the rise of digital banking have on M&A?

That's where some good news lies.

Consumers often complain about their banks but are less inclined to bolt than many think, and some electronic services make it easier for them to stick around even if their bank is sold.

"If you do an acquisition correctly, people are creatures of habit, whether a business or a retail customer," Iannaccone said. "With electronic banking, people get used to all of their bill payments being set up and the bank's other systems and they really don't want to switch. They don't care whether the name on the bank has changed."

If true, that trend could minimize runoff and make smaller acquisitions just a little more attractive than they might have been in the past.

What will happen to all the bank employees?

Regardless of what further Chicago merger activity takes place, there could be a shake-up of talent from the pending deals alone. Competitors may lure talented lenders away.

Banks are especially keen to recruit employees with strong ties to customers in commercial lending and treasury services, said Robert Voth, a leader in the consumer and commercial financial services practice at Russell Reynolds Associates.

However, bankers are often loyal to their current employers, so a competitor looking to pick up talent needs to show it can provide a better opportunity with its platform, products and services or reputation, Voth said.

"Bankers tend to be parochial by nature," Voth added. "They don't want to move but may if their current bank lacks products or there is a truly golden opportunity on the other side."


The New York State Department of Financial Services has fined Mega International Commercial Bank in Taiwan $180 million in connection with allegations that it violated New York's anti-money-laundering laws.

The department said that it will also install an independent monitor to ensure problems found in a recent exam are fixed.

The bank's top management was "indifferent" to risks associated with transactions involving Panama, recognized as a high-risk jurisdiction for money laundering, the department said in a news release late last week.

Mega International, which has a branch in Panama City and another in Panama's Colon Free Trade Zone, failed to identify a number of suspicious transactions running between its New York and Panama branches, the department said.

Mega International has approximately $103 billion in assets, including $9 billion at its New York branch.

The exam also found that "a substantial number of customer entities, which have or had accounts at several other Mega Bank branches," were apparently formed with the assistance of the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama, the department said. Mossack Fonseca has been at the center of controversy since the publication of the so-called Panama Papers earlier this year, which alleged the firm helped its clients hide money in various tax havens.


In the case of King v. Burwell, decided by the Supreme Court in June of 2015, President Obama won the day by convincing six justices that Obamacare would collapse if he lost. The case involved the so-called "individual mandate," which imposes a financial penalty on those who neglect to buy health insurance. To many observers, the wording of Affordable Care Act seemed to impose the financial penalty only in states where a state exchange had been set up, not in states where the federal exchange operated by default.

At that time, only 16 states (and the District of Columbia) had set up state exchanges; the federal exchange covered the remaining 34 states. Thus, the specter was presented of no financial penalty for not buying health insurance in the 34 states covered only by the federal exchange. The president argued forcefully that, absent the penalty, healthy individuals in those 34 states might well choose not to buy insurance. Instead, only the sick would buy insurance, which would send the health insurance system into a death spiral and destroy Obamacare.

Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Roberts agreed with the president's argument that, despite doubts about the text of Obamacare, the financial penalty is vitally necessary to avoid a death spiral. Roberts therefore opined that the financial penalty applies not only in states that established state exchanges (as the statute says), but also in states where individuals are covered only by the federal exchange. To many observers, the decision seemed to be purely result-oriented  rescuing Obamacare from a death spiral  rather than drawn from the text of the law.

Fast-forward to today, just a little over one year later. Insurers are announcing on practically a weekly basis that they are trimming or even eliminating their Obamacare coverage in more and more states. They give as the reason that healthy individuals are not buying insurance under Obamacare as expected, thus triggering a death spiral. Wait! What? Didn't the Supreme Court protect Obamacare against a death spiral by deciding, as the president argued, that the individual mandate applies in every state, regardless of whether it has a state exchange or the federal exchange? What is happening?

That's easy. The ACA exempted from the individual mandate a modest number of individuals in several categories. But the ACA left the barn door wide open with the last category: "[a]ny applicable individual who for any month is determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services ... to have suffered a hardship with respect to capability to obtain coverage under a qualified health plan." That is the so-called "hardship" exemption.

The Obama administration then took it upon themselves to issue regulations defining "hardship" in such expansive terms that huge swathes of the population are exempt from the individual mandate. You heard that right: after pleading with the Supreme Court to make sure that the individual mandate applies nationwide, so as to avoid a death spiral, the administration has itself triggered a death spiral by issuing regulations exempting tens of millions from the individual mandate.

For 2015, the list of exemptions invented by the bureaucrats and said to represent "hardship" relieving the individual from the individual mandate includes:

- homelessness,

- eviction within the past six months,

- facing eviction or foreclosure (even if not evicted yet),

- received a shutoff notice from a utility company,

- experienced domestic violence,

- death of a close family member,

- fire or flood or other disaster that caused substantial damage to your property whether natural or man-made,

- filed for bankruptcy within the past six months,

- medical expenses within the last 24 months that you couldn't afford to pay,

- unexpected increases in expenses due to caring for a family member who was ill or disabled or just aging,

- a child has no medical coverage because some other person is responsible (by court order) but has not paid,

- ineligibility for Medicaid because your state did not expand eligibility under Obamacare, or

- your individual insurance plan was cancelled and you believe other marketplace plans are unaffordable.

Those who are uninsured who can't find a way to fit into one of those categories just aren't trying. But just in case they can't, the regulations let them make up their own category: any other hardship that prevented them from obtaining health insurance.

The effect of the hardship exemption has been to eliminate any financial pressure on millions of individuals to buy health insurance under Obamacare. The Congressional Budget Office issued a report in June of 2014 that said, "[A]bout 30 million nonelderly residents will be uninsured in 2016 but ... 23 million uninsured people in 2016 will qualify for one or more of those exemptions. Of the remaining 7 million uninsured people, CBO and JCT estimate that some will be granted exemptions from the penalty because of hardship or other reasons[.] ... All told, CBO and JCT estimate that [only] about 4 million people [out of the 30 million uninsured] will pay a penalty because they are uninsured in 2016." The Wall Street Journal summed it up on August 6, 2014: "[a]lmost 90% of the national's 30 million uninsured won't pay a penalty under the Affordable Care Act in 2016 because of a growing batch of exemptions to the health-coverage requirements."

Well played, Mr. President. You got the decision you wanted from the Supreme Court by frightening them with the specter of a death spiral, and then you directed the issuance of regulations shielding almost all of the uninsured from the individual mandate, thus guaranteeing the very death spiral that you warned against so vigorously in the Supreme Court. And now, as insurers are announcing their departure from Obamacare due to lack of participation by healthy individuals, you're leaving the White House, so it's someone else's problem. As Charlie Sheen might have said, "Winning!"
I.

The backlash against Donald Trump from a lot of groups is predictable, but one of the more interesting cases of this reaction is from the conservative intelligentsia.

Trump's sins against conservatism are, they tell us, that he is not pro-liberty enough. His proposals, from the infamous wall to a potential tax on imported goods, all smack of statism, rather than the crystalline purity of the free market and all its attendant liberties.

But what this criticism conceals is the fact that, broadly speaking, there are two major strains, or streams, of tradition within what is commonly called "conservatism." One may be called the "capitalist" strain, which extols liberty as the highest good in and of itself. The other may perhaps be called the "localist" tradition, which views liberty as a means rather than an end, and not always a good in itself. The localist tradition extols the family, the community, and, by extension, the nation as the highest social good, with liberty as its handmaid.

In this article, I will not defend either of these two traditions. Nevertheless, I will argue that, for better or for worse, the localist tradition is the more "original" conservatism, and the Trump phenomenon represents a kind of conservatism within conservatism.

Ironically, the thinker who best explains this kind of American First-ism, I think, is actually a Canadian.

II

In 1965, George Parkin Grant published Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism. For this, Grant was considered the father of Canadian nationalism, but arguably his principles can be used to explain the intellectual underpinnings of the American nationalism of Trump and his supporters.

Grant, a Platonist philosopher of religion, believed that a form of political loyalty is necessary for the good life; it is an allegiance that draws the individual out of himself toward a higher good. But Canada was in danger, as were all other nations, of being absorbed into a homogenizing super-state. This homogenization was being achieved by the proliferation of technology: because technology encourages the achievement of desires, it trained the mind to value will over anything else, including any political or moral boundaries, which Grant called the essence of "liberalism": a belief that individual liberty is the highest good. Thus, a liberal cosmopolitanism was eroding all sense of national loyalty in favor of a globalism that would necessarily be a Huxleyan tyranny and would make the good life impossible.

The only way to arrest this technological homogenization, Grant believed, was through a level of government control of the economy to stop the effects of global capitalism, and this was something the Conservative Party of Canada had once held to. When Canada first came into existence, the Conservatives implemented a protectionist National Policy, applying high tariffs on imported goods in order to protect Canadian industry. This policy was gutted by the Liberals, and eventually, much to Grant's chagrin, "conservatives" began to adapt free-market dogma (which was really right-wing liberalism) instead of historic Toryism.

III.

We will come back to the National Policy, but for now it is worth stressing that Grant did indeed represent an older conservatism. Ralph Nader has chronicled the anti-capitalism of the early American conservative movement, such as the Southern Agrarians. Notably, Nader has also said some approving things about Trump for standing athwart the capitalist establishment.

Mainstream conservatism ended up rejecting this kind of Luddite nostalgia. William F. Buckley, Jr. himself, quoting Whittaker Chambers, remarked that a conservatism that rejects industrialism in the age of the machine is little more than "literary whimsy." Moreover, this kind of localist, anti-capitalist rhetoric was admittedly used as justification for fascism and anti-Semitism. But identifying Trump as a fascist is approaching him from the wrong angle. There is a precedent for his thinking much closer to home.

The National Policy of Canada took its influence from the "National System" or the "American System," or what used to be called the American School of Economics, since it was the economic program that dominated the country until the 1970s. To summarize this system, America's strength and independence should be assured by a strong, well equipped standing army, by protective tariffs, and by subsidies into roads and canals. All of this was inspired by the German economist Friedrich List, who rejected Adam Smith's economic philosophy of individual interest in favor of a philosophy of national or communal interest.

Now, this is almost exactly Trump's platform, and it is exactly why he is denounced as a bad conservative: because of all the spending he is proposing, for following List rather than Smith. Obviously, strengthening the military is a prominent aspect of his platform, but less well-reported on are his suggestion of tariffs to protect American industry and his intention to increase spending on infrastructure. Moreover, he wishes to subsidize American industries such as ethanol, completely counter to the ruthless logic of the free market, simply because it is American. This is how Trump's now iconic slogan must be understood; this is the perceived one-time greatness of America he wishes to restore.

V.

It must be said frankly that the instincts behind Trump's policies and the instincts behind the Trump phenomenon have to be distinguished. Timothy Cardinal Dolan is certainly correct when he recognizes aspects of the old anti-Catholic American nativism flaring up amongst the fervor of Trump's supporters.

But they must be distinguished from Trump himself, who, it should be noted, has appointed two Catholics, Steven K. Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, to run his campaign. Moreover, not only is Trump in favor of legal immigration, but beneath his smouldering rhetoric against all the criminality illegal immigration ushers in (understandable when one considers MS-13), he has advocated a plan whereby undocumented immigrants, upon being deported, would have a fast-tracked reapplication process. Trump thus defends a "path to citizenship" not dissimilar to the policy of "earned legalization" advocated by the U.S. Catholic bishops, who, in their words, "accept the legitimate role of the U.S. government in intercepting unauthorized migrants who attempt to travel to the United States."

VI.

None of this is an endorsement of Trump; none of this is a defense of any of these policies. But it is important for self-identified conservatives, especially those who are baffled by conservative support for Trump, to understand the intellectual and philosophical heritage that gave rise to his campaign and his candidacy.

It may be surprising that in this time of fierce social conflict, the Republicans did not gravitate toward a conventional culture warrior like Ted Cruz, and many are flabbergasted that Evangelicals seem to be flocking to a crude, multiply divorced media mogul like Trump (forgetting, perhaps, that the Bible is full of examples of morally compromised leaders who nevertheless accomplish great things). But someone like George Grant gives us an insight into a sentiment that holds that traditional morality cannot be preserved if the tradition-bearing community is not. It is clear that, to many, the appeal of Trump is that they think he will protect that community.

Say what you will about that belief, but it is certainly conservative.
The two major party nominees are the most unpopular in modern American political history. The Libertarian Party has been around a long time, and its nominee, former governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico, has a pleasant and reasonable demeanor as well as positions on issues that are consistent and clear (whether one agrees with the Libertarian position or not).

Johnson and his running mate, former Massachusetts governor William Weld, have both shown the ability to win twice in gubernatorial elections as Republicans in blue states. Although the positions these two men have on some issues, like legalizing drugs, is unpalatable to many social conservatives, both are honest about their positions, and both have reputations as honorable men.

One of the principal objections Libertarians have had to face in past elections is that voting for the Libertarian nominee is effectively voting for the Democrat, because the Libertarian cannot win. If it begins to look impossible for Trump to win, however, Gary Johnson, a likeable, honest, intelligent former Republican, may look better and better. But Johnson has to get his message out to the voters on an equal stage with Hillary and Trump, which requires reaching that magic threshold of 15% of the average in presidential polling before the first debate.

Through mid-August, Johnson is averaging 8.4%, which would seem to be far below that threshold. But there is something different about the two major party nominees this election cycle: the vast majority of the voters don't much like either one, and the percentage of voters who decline to support either one is very high.

The RCP average as of August 16 shows that the combined percentage of respondent support for Hillary and Trump is 80.2% in those polls. Most August polls showed the combined percentage of support for both of the two major party candidates in the seventies  Reuters (74% and 75%), The Economist (76% and 78%), Breitbart (79%), IBD (74%), Marist (76%), and The Wall Street Journal (77%)  which is particularly dreadful for two candidates already nominated and who have been in the public eye forever.

That suggests that between 20% and 25% of Americans reject both Hillary and Trump, and although 3% consistently support the Green Party, the remaining 17% to 22% is more than enough to get Johnson into the debates. What might happen then? The debates might make Johnson a viable candidate.

It is impossible to portray Johnson as an "insider" or an "Establishment Republican." Gary Johnson is, instead, the former governor of a middle-sized state far from the Beltway. Johnson left the Republican Party but declined to join the Democratic Party because these he sees Democrats as at least as bad as Republicans.

Gary Johnson might well flop in the debates  he is hardly a dynamic speaker  but he might also seriously present himself as the only real alternative to that two-party Washington-centered system that today revolts and repels so many Americans, especially those in Flyover Country. If in the first debate Johnson were able to present that image credibly, then anything might happen.

This election ought to be clear evidence that the old rules don't apply any more, as Trump and Sanders showed.

Could Johnson win? That rather depends upon what happens to the Trump campaign. Hillary is the ultimate Washington insider and the heir to Barry's mess. Trump ought to have been able to put her away by being a credible alternative to the dismal prospect of a Hillary White House, but Trump seems a much worse general election candidate than Republican nomination candidate.

If Trump recovers from his missteps and becomes competitive, then Johnson will have a bar to his maximum support of around 20%, rather like Ross Perot in 1992. But if the Trump campaign continues to unravel, then all of those Americans who loathe Hillary, which is to say a strong majority of Americans, may see this Gary Johnson, who is calm and good-natured and who has actually run a state and stood up for his principles as a governor, as the best choice to beat Hillary.

The vast and disillusioned Republican base across America that distrusts Trump may see Johnson as a credible candidate for the White House. Stranger things have happened. Indeed, stranger things have happened this election season.
It's become very fashionable to ask us to walk a mile in a man's moccasins without wondering what it's like to be chased by someone with a tomahawk. Nearly everyone feels comfortable condemning Andrew Jackson for how he treated the Indians  and condemning him at least partially rightly. What they have not felt comfortable doing is asking themselves how it would feel to be born in a country you didn't found and have a strange-looking group of illiterate, jobless, pagan wild-en show up at your neighbor's house and scalp all your best friends. Whether or not this is Jackson's experience is irrelevant if this was the experience of many American settlers. To have a savage at your doorstep, ready to strike at night and oftentimes beyond the reach of the law, would eventually affect your psychology in ways a modern man would consider unfavorable.

The only good Indian is a dead Indian is a cruel thing to say. But we wonder how many cruelties a man had to witness or hear about (I'm speaking of the unmentionable tortures practiced by many of the Indian tribes on their enemies) before he was capable of saying it.

With our view of the Southerners we find almost exactly the same problem. Alexis de Tocqueville notes in Democracy in America that the majority of the Southerners he spoke to, who were not even in favor of the slave trade or happy about its results, were terrified of the dangers of emancipation. In a South where blacks constituted at least half of the populace in many places, the Southerners lived in constant terror of both spur-of-the-moment riots and well planned revolts, and they felt forced, by a mixture of not only self-interest, but self-protection of their friends and family, to propagate systems of social policy and government that shielded them from an almost ubiquitous danger.

Nobody good, at this point in history, can argue that the slaveholders were right for holding slaves. Tocqueville's impression was that many of the slaveholders wouldn't argue that they were right in holding slaves. But at the same time nobody is considering that the terrors of an emancipated and rightfully angry populace might make you less guilty for not letting go of the slaves you inherited and never wanted to have.

We oftentimes say it's wrong to paint an entire people with an unfavorable (but general) characteristic. To my knowledge, a leftist has never applied this popular rule, so oftentimes used in defense of blacks and Muslims, to Southerners in general.

When we judge the settlers or the Southerners or even go as far back as the Romans, we oftentimes forget that of all the people in existence, a people from another world are the people we should judge the most carefully. Inconsiderate of an infinite slew of circumstances, invisible to the eye and shrouded in the impenetrable darkness of unrecorded history, we forget our ignorance while pretending our superiority, and we condescend to censure things we may not ever properly understand. The overwhelming majority of history, comprising glances between lovers and stories shared at fireplaces and little hatreds of horrible things, has been lost to us forever, and the few things we retain are not a picture of the way things entirely were, but a representation of a people for a certain moral and spiritual purpose. Even a good historian never gives us history as it entirely was. He paints a picture for us with the imagination he has, highlighting the few and almost isolated things that he knows.

What our leftists have proved to us is that even our sympathy, which is worshiped at the expense of all reason and goodness, is selective. And the people we choose to sympathize with tell us almost as much about ourselves as our hypocrisy about our sympathy. With some men we'll dig through centuries of history, trying to find them a reason for doing what they did so we can say who they are. With others we say that they did what they did because they are who they are. The truth is that men are almost always responsible while almost always having an excuse. We simply choose to regard them as responsible one day and excuse them another. We most likely do it according to the more fashionable morals of the day, and even then according to the morals that highlight the morals we're best at  oftentimes because we have nothing at stake. We would have lived in peace with the Indians. We would have set all the slaves free. If we were King David, we would have easily killed our son Amnon after he raped his sister Tamar. If we were Peter, we would have never denied Christ. If we were smart, we would keep our mouths shut.

We often hear that history is written by the winners and that we ought to hear the perspective of the unheard. What they have forgotten is that the Southerners were (and in many ways are) the losers. They've forgotten that the children of Andrew Jackson and the successors of his own party are terrified of being associated with him. We forget that Rome was destroyed centuries ago, and that the Romans' successful enemies weren't necessarily any more kind than they were.

In many cases, we are not more kind. The difference is that we had the advantage (if it can be called such) of being taught, by incessant indoctrination and an innumerable series of emotional impressions and without any of the incentives to think otherwise, to think the way we do  which in many instances is less helpful and less moral and more murderous than the ways men used to think. We say judge not, lest ye be judged. And then taking Jesus in the worst and most literal and most non-contextual way possible, to that short and brutal sentence we added an asterisk that filled a book and included almost the whole of our dead and mysterious white ancestry.

Jeremy Egerer is the editor of the troublesome philosophical website known as Letters to Hannah, and he welcomes followers on Twitter and Facebook.
Throughout the Republican primary season this past year, Donald Trump enjoyed near rock star status after being left largely alone by the mainstream media. Their coordinated goal was to tolerate the positive media attention given to Trump so that he could succeed in winning the Republican Party nomination. According to this logic, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio would have been much more formidable candidates for Clinton to overcome, so let Trump win. Endless stories branded Trump as the voice of the angry silent majority tired of big government and political correctness and, most of all, tired of Obama and the Democratic Party.

All this ended abruptly the day Trump clinched the Republican nomination.

It's as if the dams burst, filling the airwaves, newspapers, blogs, websites, social media, and news shows on all the TV stations (controlled by the Democrat-oriented media) with vile, irrational hatred of Donald Trump the candidate. All you could hear was a systematic process of demonization, an unabashed, uncalled for fanning of flames of hatred for Trump.

What had Donald Trump done that can explain this lynch mob mentality? What was it that ushered in this wild, impassioned "kill the beast" atmosphere? How can one explain or even comprehend that politicians and citizens who normally exhibit sensitivity and civility in the public discourse becoming so brazen in stating lies, baseless accusations, and general nastiness as they bare their teeth in a frenzy of violent self-righteousness?

So begins the re-branding of Donald Trump, with the mainstream media running an intense, coordinated media campaign turning the huge tide of public support Trump had garnered against him and depriving him of the unbiased media exposure he needs to convince the American people to vote for Trump on Election Day.

Trump has been transformed into the naysayer. The heretic. Roaming the countryside much like Johnny Appleseed, from town to town, and from state to state, going against the grain by repeating fearlessly that Obama and the Democratic Party are running America into the ground. Trump explained, for those willing to listen and to packed audiences, his tremendously popular messages of law and order, immigration enforcement, border security, and pro-growth economic policies. Trump repeated again and again that the threat of Islamic terror is real. Despite Obama's efforts to deny and refuse to confront Islamic terror; Fort Hood, San Bernardino, Orlando, and Dallas have all proven that Trump is right and that the Democratic Party, led by Hillary Clinton, is sweeping under the rug what every American knows is true about the clear and present danger Islamic terror is for Americans.

In the meantime  as crowds pour into Trump rallies throughout the country, waiting in long lines for a chance to be part of the "shake-up" Americans are hoping and praying for, to hear and cheer for Trump. Hillary Clinton is forced to make a rare appearance before unquestioning Hispanic and black news reporters who at the end of the staged press conference give her an unprofessional round of applause. It was at this event that she claimed that she had "short-circuited" in response to the FBI report that questioned the truthfulness of her claims. Clinton will continue to keep herself at a safe distance and appear before small, sympathetic audiences and interviewers, while Donald Trump will continue to hold rallies with tens of thousands who want the wall, who want illegal immigration stopped, who want to keep hostile Muslims far from America, and who want America to be great again.

So as the press manufactures one phony article after another re-branding Donald Trump as an unelectable candidate, it is essential that we be aware that what we are observing is the collapse of the old media and the rise of the new social media. Donald Trump has harnessed social media to spread his agenda and policies. Trump is attacked by the old media for his Twitter observations, yet by the time the old media attacks him, Trump has moved on to tweet another thought-provoking response for the public to ponder and to which the old media must respond. In so doing, Trump has kept the old and democratically controlled media off balance, focusing on him and his message. Donald Trump tweets away effortlessly, making the lies and the rebranding efforts of the old media meaningless.

In so doing, not only has Trump become the news, but he creates a focus on Trump the candidate. Donald Trump dominates social media, reaching out directly to the American public avoiding the minefields of the biased and largely unsupportive old media, leaving them in the dust. As a result, the old media is perceived as a Democratic-slanted propaganda machine unable to free itself from the shackles of political correctness and presenting viewpoints that are the antithesis of what Americans actually believe in. This past year, major media events culminating in reports on Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, Dallas, and San Francisco have all contributed to mainstream media losing the trust and truthfulness associated with them in the past. They, the mainstream old media outlets, are even willing to sacrifice their "Temple of Truth" because they are acutely aware that if Trump can somehow penetrate the massive Democratic-inspired propaganda erected against his campaign, the election is over, and Donald Trump will be president.

The good news is that on Election Day, the American people have to leave their homes and get in line to vote. In most elections, it's hard to get even 50% to turn out to vote. And therein lies the Trump advantage in 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 committed supporters? Whose election-day activists are going to be up at 5 AM on Election Day, volunteering all day long, all the way until the last polling place has closed, making sure every Tom, Dick, and Harry and Shirley has cast his or her ballot? That's right. That's why the rebranding of Donald Trump will fail, and he will go on and win the election on November 8.

The writer, a 25-year veteran of the IDF, served as a field mental health officer and commander of the Central Psychiatric Military Clinic for Reserve Soldiers at Tel-Hashomer. Since retiring from active duty, he provides consultancy services to NGOs implementing psycho-trauma and psych education programs to communities in the North and South of Israel and is a strategic adviser to the chief foreign envoy of Judea and Samaria. Contact: medconf@netvision.net.il
In early August, the great Thomas Sowell presented an analogy describing the choice facing conservative readers of National Review, in a piece titled Two Awful Candidates Heading to a Close Election. Whats a Good Citizen to Do?

Voting for an out of control egomaniac like Donald Trump, Sowell writes, would be like playing Russian roulette with the future of this country. Voting for someone with a track record like Hillary Clintons is like putting a shotgun to your head and pulling the trigger. And not voting at all is just giving up.

Nobody said that being a good citizen would be easy, he concludes.

The tremendous respect I have for Dr. Sowell notwithstanding, there would appear to be a huge flaw in his analogys formulation. He presents not voting at all and giving up as if it were to potentially yield an alternative outcome to a Hillary victory, i.e., willfully committing suicide.

It wont.

Sowell correctly describes Novembers election as an event that can only yield one winner between the two awful candidates weve been offered. This is the simplest of logical calculations, and no amount of barking for a third-party rival among conservatives changes that reality in the slightest. (More on this in a moment.) So clearly, a good citizens choice to simply refuse any role in the process actually advances the prospects of a Hillary victory in November, which he describes as an act of suicide for a good citizen.

By good citizen, one can infer that Sowell means a citizen who prizes his role as an actor in our political process to preserve the protections of individual liberty and the guarantees of limited government as determined by our Constitution. Given that a vote for Hillary and a refusal to vote are both tantamount to a suicidal act for that citizen, and that a vote for Trump at least presents a chance at survival, I began to wonder whether Sowells piece is intended to be a soft endorsement of Trump.

Then, I realized that Sowells intent is inconsequential. A soft endorsement of Trump is precisely what it is. And a soft endorsement is all that is needed, given the circumstances of this election.

It is not required that good citizens shout huzzahs as they march to the polls for Trump. What is required is that good citizens understand what is at stake.

There will be at least one Supreme Court appointment in which our next president will take part, and there may be as many as four vacancies. Which candidate, Trump or Clinton, is more likely to appoint a gun grabber to the position? Which candidate is most likely to nominate a justice who will respect individual states rights in matters of religious protections and civil law within the states? Which candidate is more likely to nominate a justice that will take the expansionist view of federal authority and create rationales based upon phantom clauses in the Constitution or specious reasoning to create rights to a living wage, healthcare, or a home, just as justices created the federally protected right for a pregnant woman to kill her unborn child in 1973?

Which of these two candidates is more likely to support a continuation of regulatory burdens on American businesses, tax hikes, or the promotion of a single-payer healthcare system? Which of them is more likely to support our military, or support our allies in Israel, or our nations law enforcement officers as they are targeted by militant agitators disguised as legitimate civil rights advocates?

These are not trick questions, nor are they difficult ones. True, we may not know how Donald Trump will act in regard to these issues apart from his campaign promises, but we know exactly how Hillary Clinton will attack each of these issues. Hence, a vote for Donald Trump may indeed be a bit like Russian roulette for a good citizen, and a vote for Hillary or a refusal to vote, the latter of which still bolsters Clintons election chances, is suicide.

So from what place stems this good citizens indecision? Where could the conflict possibly lie, given the choices between a chance at success and outright suicide?

Weve read it all, and heard it all across the spectrum. A writer that I read and respect at American Thinker, C. Edmund Wright, invoked Hamilton. If we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible. Erick Erickson, former editor of RedState, said last year that he would support Trump against Hillary, but earlier this year revised his position to the now-popular #NeverTrump stance, largely due to Trumps waffling on federal funding for abortion. Most often, it boils down to ideological conviction and a refusal to sacrifice on matters pertaining to particular beliefs, in the vein of that old wisdom of Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world.

But while such wisdom may be true and be valuable in many aspects of life, a presidential election in America is a zero-sum game.

A rudimentary analogy, if you will. If Erick Erickson and Glenn Beck and their respective followers in the #NeverTrump camp choose not to claim a seat at the table where the election will be decided simply because Donald Trump happens to be sitting at that table, or they choose to sit at another table altogether, there is more of the election cake left to be gobbled by Hillary and her supporters, and she will win. Only one candidate and his/her supporters will walk away with the bulk of the cake, and in this case, a mandate to decide what will be done with that cake. In Hillarys case, she and her supporters will demand that you divvy the slices you took during the election and divide it among her other supporters. She would have the mandate, after all, and because you have less of the electoral cake, you should have less say in how the cake is distributed.

Thats not right. Its just the reality in which we exist.

What is most curious to me that the same conservatives who are entreating other conservatives to either stay home or vote for doomed-to-failure third party candidates seemed to recognize this reality just last year. Does anyone else remember the pledge at the beginning of the first Republican primary debate? I grant you, it was a farce of the highest order to demand that all candidates pledge allegiance to the Party and to support whomever should win the primary. How dare Trump not immediately promise his support to the winner who would go on to represent the Party! He later did promise to do so, thus outwardly proving his Party credentials.

Of course, few anticipated at that time that Trump would win the primary. It was merely a staged event to ensure that Trump would promise not to muck up the whole affair by taking his considerable following on a Ross Perot 92-style venture which could allow another Clinton victory.

As we know, Trump defied the odds by means of a crowded field, a wildly popular candor on serious issues like illegal immigration, his complete disavowal of political correctness, and an unparalleled media presence. But still, it is curious that so many conservatives hold fast to their conviction that #NeverTrump means Never Trump! when it wasnt so long ago that they understood that presidential elections are a zero-sum game.

Imagine, what if Ted Cruz had won the primary? (I supported him and voted for him.) What if the devout Trump supporters now came out and suggested that the only way to save our country and our souls is to vote for Donald Trump or any other third party candidate with no reasonable path to victory? Or that they simply not vote, and grant Hillary an easier path to victory? There would be no logic in it, and conservative Cruz supporters would unabashedly say so! Either path leads to a Hillary victory, which, for members of either the Cruz camp or the Trump camp, is the worst of possible outcomes.

There are many smart, dedicatedly patriotic, good citizens among the #NeverTrumps. This is not meant to be an insult to them or their convictions, but a simple appeal to reason:

A vote for Hillary is, in the context of your beliefs and fundamental American principles, suicide. The choice to not vote, or to vote for a candidacy which is doomed to fail with a single digit or even low-teens popular vote, empowers Hillarys campaign and is therefore suicide. The only choice with the potential for a positive outcome is a vote for Donald Trump.

You may not like this description of our current circumstances. I dont necessarily like it. But that does not change the nature of our circumstances.

Trump 2016.

William Sullivan can be followed on Twitter.
I just returned from vacation on the Delaware beach coast and in Washington, D.C. During this week, the press focused on Donald Trump's changes in his campaign, while limiting the information in his speeches. While Manafort helped him secure the delegates needed for nomination, he was unable to get Trump to stay on message. This is the Achilles heel of the campaign  whether Trump can stay on message and not provide ammunition for the anti-Republican press.

I found that those talking about the election were embarrassed by Trumps public pronouncements but were not enthusiastic about Hillary; they disliked both candidates but were willing to vote for the devil they knew rather than risk an unknown. Despite being in strong Democrat country, few people expressed any loyalty to Clinton. At the breakfast tables, few people turned to watch anything Hillary said, but many did pay attention to Trumps speeches replayed the following day. They were intrigued, if not uncomfortable. This means the message catches their ear. Can Conway focus the message so Trump can reach those uncomfortable persons?

Trump is the populist against the establishment. But this time he is the conservative populist. He will modify his nomination period proposals: he will build a wall, but deport only illegal aliens who have criminal records. He has altered his tax reform proposals to more align with the congressional Republicans. He will offer a replacement for Obamacare, unlike Hillary, that allows the private sector more autonomy and reduced federal regulation. He will reform the trade agreements so they are less damaging for American industries. He will alter the Middle East globalism so that we fight meaningful wars and conclude them quickly, rather than getting caught in quagmires. He will value American citizenship above internationalism. He will reduce the growth of the federal government compared to Hillary. He intends to honor pledges made to our taxpayers and not destroy Social Security, instead expanding our national wealth through improved job markets.

This week he asked minorities to support him while asking, can they do any worse? The Democratic Party has taken the minority vote and offered mere morsels rather than solutions to their economic plight. As Dinesh DSouza has shown in his movie Hillarys America, the Democrats have helped create the urban plantation slum to maintain a pliant base. Trumps outreach to these underserved persons might affect the small percentage necessary to swing states. More important, it might make those uncomfortable voters feel that he is the unifier they seek. They sought that in Obama and have been unfulfilled. This fight is over the 10-15% of those undecided voters. Will they vote for Trump or the third-party nominees and throw the vote to Hillary?

Perhaps the most important job for Conway is to get the unconvinced Republican voters to come out for Trump. In 2012, Mitt Romney could not make the sale to these citizens, and for now Trump has failed. He has time, but it is running out. This new message of unity might convince John Kasich to stop his obstruction. Maybe he is too petty to change his position and help in Ohio. The main obstacle to Trumps success is the division in the Republican Party. Despite the fight, Hillary was able to unify her party.

Can Conway get Trump to heal the Republican Party divisions? If she and the Trump staff are successful, it would be a great comeback for Trump. His advantage is that Hillary is an undesirable candidate, but that is his problem, too. Can Conway help the Donald keep the campaign on the issues and Hillary instead of on himself?
File this in your "non sequitur" file.

Climate change activists want to save the planet by cutting the birthrate. According to their logic, more people are bad because it means more CO2 emissions.

The way to achieve this goal is by changing the tax code  a "carbon tax on kids."

Washington Times:

Travis Rieder, assistant director of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, told NPR that bringing down global fertility by half a child per woman could be the thing that saves us. Heres a provocative thought: Maybe we should protect our kids by not having them, said Mr. Rieder, who has one child. He proposed procreation disincentives such as government tax breaks for poor people and tax penalties for rich people, a kind of carbon tax on kids. Poor nations would be cut slack because theyre still developing, and because their per capita emissions are a sliver of the developed worlds. Plus, it just doesnt look good for rich, Western nations to tell people in poor ones not to have kids, NPR said. His paper, Population Engineering and the Fight Against Climate Change, written with two Georgetown University professors, is scheduled to be published in October. Their work coincides with that of Conceivable Future, a New Hampshire-based nonprofit founded on the premise that the climate crisis is a reproductive crisis. The activists insist that they are not advocating a coercive, government-imposed solution such as Chinas much-decried one-child policy, but Climate Depots Marc Morano said thats the logical extension. U.S. environmentalists are taking a page from Chinas mandatory one-child policy even as China abandons the policy, Mr. Morano said in a Friday statement. He noted that climate-change groups have also touted the argument that people may have sex less often on a warmer planet, which would presumably lower the birthrate. The warmists have now graduated from regulating our light bulbs, coal plants and SUVs to regulating our family size, Mr. Morano said. Lets keep global warming out of the bedroom!

We've been hearing this crap for more than 40 years: reduce the population, or we're doomed. Paul Erlich's The Population Bomb reads as comedy today. Published in 1968, Erlich predicted mass global starvation by 1980, including in the U.S. Needless to say, Erlich's descendants are equally ignorant.

The problem with these Malthusians is that that they utterly fail to take into account technological change and innovation. If global warming is the problem they say it is, humans won't stand around waiting to fry or drown. We've already seen a big drop in emissions as a result of the fracking revolution bringing far more cleaner burning natural gas to the market. If sea levels are going to rise, do these Luddites think we're going to remain frozen while water rises from our ankles to our necks? You would think we'd find innovative and effective ways to keep the water at bay. The Dutch have been doing it for 700 years.

Marc Morano is right. This is a slippery slope with not far to travel from "discouraging" people having babies to government ordering the size of families.
On Sunday, CNN propagandist Dana Bash interviewed John Bel Edwards, the governor of Louisiana. Addressing Trumps recent visit to Baton Rouge, she opened with this:

So, um, Donald Trump and Mike Pence came down to Baton Rouge on Friday. You dismissed the visit as a photo op and you said you wished that Donald Trump would make a donation to a relief organization instead. We did, by the way, check with the campaign and they said Trump made a $100,000 donation to the Greenwell Springs Baptist Church where he visited. But, uh, heres what your fellow Democrat, former Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu said about the visit.

Hold on! (Ill get to Landrieus comments in a second.)

I heard what the governor said, and Bashs portrayal of his words was completely inaccurate. Some might say Bash engaged in sloppy reporting. But it wasnt. Were well past sloppy reporting in America (though sloppy reporting would be bad enough). I have no choice but to assume that it was an intentional misrepresentation of the governors statement.

After Bashs distortion of the governors message prior to Trumps visit, CNN cut to a clip of Landrieu expressing thanks to Trump for coming to the state and drawing attention to the dire situation from massive flooding. After the clip, Bash asked Edwards the following:

So, governor, why is she wrong?

Hold on! (Ill get to Edwardss reply in a second.)

Why was Landrieus appreciation for Trumps visit wrong?! Edwards never suggested that it was. Bashs determination to put a particular spin on Trumps visit to Louisiana was utterly transparent. Do these leftists have no shame? Do they not know how idiotic they look?

(Probably not. Probably not. And they probably wouldnt care, anyway.)

Edwards replied:

Shes not. But you mischaracterized what I said. I didnt dismiss his trip as a photo op. Before he came down, I said we welcome him here and we want him to be helpful and we hope it didnt turn into a mere photo op. So you got the story backwards.

I think the governor of Louisiana just expressed what should be the sound bite of the century: You got the story backwards.

If you imagine all the situations when the media reported on domestic and international matters of great importance where the you-got-the-story-backwards truth would apply, you would likely be occupied for the rest of your life and still not have identified every situation.

Backwards Bash then asked Edwards if Trumps visit was helpful. Edwards stated that it was, as was his lengthy phone call with Governor Pence where Pence expressed sincere and genuine interest and a desire to be of service.

Like the rest of her colleagues at CNN, Dana Bash is a clueless useful idiot leftist non-thinking tool. How these fools live with themselves is anyones guess.

And as long as were on the subject of CNN, during a Trump rally in Virginia this weekend, when CNN reporters came into the room, the crowd shouted: Do your job! over and over again. They didnt surround the reporters, scream obscenities at them, try to block their passage, spit on them, throw things at them, punch them, beat them, kick them, or otherwise threaten their well-being. As compared to leftists who have been attacking Trump supporters across the country (here, here, and here).

Grown-ups vs children in the bodies of adults.

Watch the whole thing for yourself:

Hat tip: Gateway Pundit, The Blaze
In a dramatic snub, President and Mrs. Obama stayed away from multiple Hillary Clinton fundraisers yesterday on 87.5-square-mile Marthas Vineyard, where they were wrapping up their family vacation. A lot of people noticed, including the U.K. Daily Mails Alana Goodman.

President Obama was a no-show at a flurry of fundraisers hosted by Hillary Clinton just a few miles from where he was staying at a beachfront vacation rental in Martha's Vineyard over the weekend. Clinton arrived at Martha's Vineyard with her husband, Bill, over the weekend  purportedly to celebrate Bill's 70th birthday, but also to attend a series of high-dollar fundraisers for her presidential campaign. But Obama, who has been vacationing on the posh island with his wife and kids for the past two weeks, skipped the Hillary events to relax at the beach, take in a fireworks show, and enjoy a meal with his wife.

One of the events skipped was hosted by a Hillary supporter who is all but Obamas sworn enemy:

One of the Clinton fundraisers took place at the home of Obama nemesis Lady [Lynn] de Rothschild, who owns a stunning estate on the island. Rothschild, who is married to French-British banking heir Sir Evelyn de Rosthchild, has previously denounced Obama as a 'loser' who was 'going to bankrupt America.' She has also disparaged Obama by suggesting that he had no qualifications and was elected based on his race. 'The fact of [Obama's] personal story of being half black and all that is a wonderful, inspiriting story,' said Rothschild in 2011, while supporting Republican John Huntsman's 2012 presidential bid. 'But it doesn't qualify him to be president.'

There may be a bit of Obama-Clinton bad blood on display here. President Obama needs her to win in order to preserve his legacy. But it is not a posture that fits his actual feelings toward her. That inner conflict is capable of producing some interesting or amusing words and actions by Obama. Snubbing Hillary enabled him to do something (snub her) without actually taking any overt action. Doing nothing, of course, is what Obama does best.
According to intelligence reports from the U.S. Southern Command, Sunni extremists are infiltrating our borders using smugglers to evade apprehension.

Washington Free Beacon:

The Commands J-2 intelligence directorate reported recently in internal channels that special interest aliens are working with a known alien smuggling network in Latin America to reach the United States. The smuggling network was not identified.

Army Col. Lisa A. Garcia, a Southcom spokeswoman, did not address the intelligence report directly but said Sunni terrorist infiltration is a security concern.

Networks that specialize in smuggling individuals from regions of terrorist concern, mainly from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Middle East, and East Africa, are indeed a concern for Southcom and other interagency security partners who support our countrys national security, Garcia told theWashington Free Beacon.

There are major hubs that serve as entry points into the region for migrants from those areas of concern attempting to enter the U.S. along our border with Mexico, she said.

The infiltrators from terrorist states and unstable regions exploit vulnerabilities in commercial transportation systems and immigration enforcement agencies in some of the countries used for transit, Garcia said.

In 2015, we saw a total of 331,000 migrants enter the southwestern border between the U.S. and Mexico, of that we estimate more than 30,000 of those were from countries of terrorist concern, she said.

Another problem in dealing with migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia is a lack of information among the governments of the countries used by potential terrorists for transit.

The exploitation of alien smuggling networks by terrorists until recently had been dismissed by both American security officials and private security experts as largely an urban myth.

However, the Southcom intelligence report revealed that the threat of Islamist terror infiltration is no longer theoretical. This makes the case for Trumps wall, said one American security official of the Southcom report. These guys are doing whatever they want to get in the country.
Indeed, the babies are dying in Aleppo, as Robin Wright posted today:

Last month, four newborns in incubators fought for their lives in a small hospital in Aleppo, the besieged Syrian city. Then a bomb hit the hospital and cut off power -- and oxygen to the incubators. The babies suffocated. In a joint letter to President Obama this month, fifteen doctors described the infants deaths: Gasping for air, their lives ended before they had really begun.

The doctors are among the last few in the eastern part of Aleppo, the historic former commercial center where a hundred thousand children are now trapped.

The photo of the bloody five-year-old boy is one of the ugliest ones I've ever seen. We learned more about him later:

More than a third of all casualties in Aleppo are now kids, according to Save the Children. Among them is Omran Daqneesh, the toddler with the moppish Beatles haircut whose picture captivated the world this week. He was shown covered with blood and dust after being dug from the debris of a bombing in Syria on Thursday. Rescuers placed him, alone, on an orange seat in an ambulance. His stunned, dazed expression mirrored the trauma of a war-ravaged generation. (On Saturday, we learned that Omrans older brother Ali, who was ten, had died from wounds sustained in the attack.)

I understand that war is hell, as any veteran will tell you. However, this picture is more than the byproduct of bombs. It is the consequence of a foreign policy that has made the world a heck of lot unsafer than it was in 2009.

It started with a reckless withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. It was followed by tough talk about "red lines" that was never followed up. It did not take long for the bad guys in the region to find that President Obama was all about getting re-elected in 2012 rather than U.S. national security.

As Charles Krauthammer wrote:

Two terms later, we see the result. Ukraine dismembered. Eastern Europe on edge. Syria a charnel house. Iran subsuming Iraq. Russia and Iran on the march across the entire northern Middle East.

And two terms later, we know that Mr. Obama's successor will have to clean this up. The next one, he or she, won't have the luxury of "hope and change" and a media willing to overlook President Obama's pathetic performance. He or she will have to face the facts and make extremely painful decisions, such as sending ground troops.

And worst of all, one of the authors of this mess is leading in the polls to inherit the problems.

P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
At West Virginia University, if you use anything but a "gender neutral" pronoun, you could be in violation of federal law, according to guidelines issued by the school's Title IX office.

Instead of using "he or she," students and faculty will be forced to use "ve, ver, or vis."

Ve, ver, vis?

Vooey!

Daily Caller:

WVUs Title IX office informs students that federal law  as interpreted by WVU  guarantees students the right to be called by the name and pronouns consistent with your gender identity. More generally, WVU says, all students have the right to be treated according to the gender you identify with. The school offers a handy guide on Proper prounoun usage that explains how to swap out pronouns such as he, him and his for gender neutral prounouns such as ve, ver and vis. The guide offers a plethora of pronoun choices for WVU students and employees to use, including the Spivak pronoun Ey. The sentence His eyes gleam, the guide explains, becomes eir eyes gleam when using Spivak pronouns. Some people may not want a lot of public attention to their pronouns, while others will appreciate you standing up for them. If someone uses the wrong pronoun for a person who isnt present, try a brief correction, the guide advises. WVUs Office of Equity Assurance investigates any Title IX related incidents reported to the University, the university website promises. James Goins, the universitys Title IX coordinator, has not yet returned an email seeking comment. In May, the Obama administration released a Dear Colleague letter informing public schools at the K-12 level that Under Title IX, a school must treat students consistent with their gender identity even if their education records or identification documents indicate a different sex. The letter warns,  The Departments have resolved Title IX investigations with agreements committing that school staff and contractors will use pronouns and names consistent with a transgender students gender identity.

Again, you will be forced to care.

Beyond the rank idiocy if these guidelines, we get a glimpse of the how the war on language is being conducted.

For us normal people, language is used to communicate and illuminate ideas and concepts so that everyone understands what everyone else is saying.

Not so with the gender warriors. Since they have absolutely no rational case for their cockamamie ideas about "gender fluidity," they must use language to obscure intent, stifle communication, and sow confusion. And, of course, use the authority of the Title IX office to bully anyone who dares disagree.

These made up pronouns are not part of the English language. They are an artificial construct created to set transgender, multi-gender, and others who are gender-confused apart from the rest of us, giving the lie to the notion that transgenders want to be treated as anyone else. They have their own codes, their own signals to which the rest of us will be forced to adopt.

They've already succeeded at West Virginia University.
Americas second largest carrier, AT&T, announced today that they are going to introduce roaming for customers of their network traveling to Cuba. The company has formed a roaming and interconnection deal with telecom operator, Empresa De Telecomunicaciones De Cuba, typically known as ETECSA. ETECSA is a government-owned, full telecoms business for Cuba, which covers cellular and fixed line services. Americas other three national carriers, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, have already arranged similar roaming agreements for the island of Cuba after American President Barack Obama made improvements to the relationship with Cuba in 2015.

At this time, details of the roaming arrangement are unavailable  AT&T state that they will provide availability and pricing details at a later, undisclosed, date. In such cases, customers can expect AT&Ts agreement to not only allow customers access to the ETECSAs network for calling, texting and data services whilst still using their AT&T SIM cards and devices, but also to reduce the costs of calling the country from an AT&T fixed line and cellular phone. AT&Ts Bill Hague, executive vice president of global connection management, explained in a press release: Cuba is a growing international calling destination for our customers. With this agreement, AT&T customers soon will be able to seamlessly connect with talk, text and data while visiting Cuba. The ETECSAs website explains that the two businesses still need to complete interconnection tests before the service is enabled.

The costs of making and receiving calls in Cuba are expensive, even for tourists. Between the hours of 0700 to 2259 hours, it costs 0.35 CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso) a minute to make or receive a call, which drops to 0.10 CUC during off peak hours. The only Cuban mobile network is the ETECSA, which operates a 2G and 3G network at the 900 MHz frequency and 2G only at the 850 MHz point. Although AT&T use the 850 MHz frequency for 2G calls and text messages, the company has announced plans that it is to shut down this part of the network by the start of 2017. It is unclear how many AT&T-sold devices will be able to connect to Cubas cellular network. Nevertheless, although AT&T are the last of Americas national carriers to organize a roaming arrangement with Cuba, this is a welcomed development.
For a while now, the Android Pay team has been saying that loyalty cards were going to be integrated with the service. And now it officially has. Today, Walgreens announced via a press release that their loyalty card is now available through Android Pay. Meaning you can head to your local Walgreens, pick up a few items and pay with your phone, as well as using your loyalty card through your phone. Making it a much simpler process for everyone. According to their press release, Walgreens Balance Rewards members can now seamlessly apply their loyalty account at checkout through Android Pay, furthering the convenience of earning and redeeming points and expanding the companys portfolio of unified mobile payments solutions.

Walgreens says that they have more than 85 million active Balance Rewards members, many of whom use Android devices. They are also touting the fact that this gives users another easy, secure and private way to earn and use loyalty points in the store. It also eliminates needing to bring and scan their Balance Rewards card or enter the number at checkout. To get started, users simply need to download the Android Pay app from Google Play and add their Walgreens Balance Rewards card to their account. If the user hasnt already set up Android Pay, there will be a few other steps needed to get started. Walgreens is the first retailer to introduce loyalty cards to be integrated with Android Pay, Coke also has their own already with Android Pay and the service already allowed you to store your loyalty cards in the app for the cashier to scan at the register.

Android Pay relaunched last year, as Googles second attempt at mobile payments, after Google Wallet failed (mostly due to it being well ahead of its time). Android Pay still isnt as popular as Samsung Pay or Apple Pay, but that should change soon. Samsung Pay is mostly a success because of their LoopPay purchase. Which allows Samsung users to go ahead and use their phone to pay for items at just about any place that accepts credit or debit cards. Seeing as merchants dont need a new system, like they do with Android Pay and Apple Pay, since they use NFC. To use Android Pay, all you need is a smartphone running Android 5.0 or higher, along with NFC. NFC is needed since that is how the smartphone connects with the terminal to start the payment process.
Its back to school season right now, so retailers are looking to offload a number of products before the holiday season ramps up in the next couple of months. Weve already seen Google knock a bunch of prices down in the Google Store, and now the Pixel C has joined the party. The Google Pixel C was announced last year, along with the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P. It was originally meant to be a Pixel tablet running Chrome OS, but those plans were scraped and instead it became a Pixel tablet running Android. It had a bit of a rocky start, with plenty of issues, but it appears that Google has fixed most of those issues now.

The Google Pixel C is still sitting at $499 for the 32GB model, however the 64GB model is seeing a $75 price drop from $599 to $524. Now you wont see this price drop on the listing in the store, youll get the $75 off once you put the tablet into your cart and are proceeding to checkout. The Pixel C isnt the only thing thats on sale right now, through the Google Store either. Chromebooks are also seeing up to $30 off, on select models of course. The ASUS Chromebook Flip, for example, is seeing $20 off of the 2GB RAM model and $30 off of the 4GB RAM model. With the Chromebook Flip being the only 2-in-1 Chromebook and one of the first to get Google Play Store support, its definitely worth checking out at these prices.

Finally, the Chromecast is also on sale. But this appears to only be in the UK. Those of you in the UK, can pick one up for just 30 instead of the usual 35. Not a huge drop, but then again the Chromecast isnt all that expensive in the first place. Chromebook and Pixel C sales are available in the US and the UK, as well as some other European countries. Youll need to check your Google Store to see if the sale is available in your country. With new Nexus devices on the way, it makes sense that the Pixel C sees such a huge price drop. Surprisingly though, the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P arent seeing any price drops on the Google Store just yet.
Chinese Internet business and handset manufacturer, Xiaomi, is preparing for an imminent launch of the devices into the American market. Company vice president, Hugo Barra, has recently been interviewed and has explained that the company can no longer ignore the United States of America, which is the worlds largest smartphone market by revenue. This is not the first time Xiaomi has explained that it is set to launch its smartphones, tablets and now laptops, into the American market but the second half of 2016, the Chinese business is in a better position to do so. This is in part due to it having acquired 1,500 technology patents from Microsoft in June, which it may use to help avoid legal entanglements with competitors as it attempts to break into the North American market. Xiaomi has already started selling goods into the American market such as headphones and battery chargers, which has helped established the brand name.

Xiaomi is planning on using a combination of social media and online direct sales in order to appeal to the younger generation, which is where Xiaomi are targeting their products. The company believes that the younger generations enthusiasm for new technology should provide them with an opening. On the subject of timing, Hugo explained that the company does not have a timetable other than in the near future but instead it will need to time things very carefully. Xiaomi is presumably hoping to repeat the success it is enjoying in India, where after a number of false starts the company is reputed to be selling well. However, India is a very different market to America: it has low levels of smartphone penetration, smartphone prices are low and the countrys carriers are still investing and rolling out their 2G, 3G as well as 4G LTE networks. The American market is very different because the majority of consumers are already on their second or subsequent smartphone. The established market leaders of Apple and Samsung have considerable marketing budgets and expertise at dealing with the American carriers as a way of selling their devices to customers.

Xiaomi is facing intense competition in its domestic (Chinese) market through competitors such as Huawei, Vivo and ZTE. Huawei, in particular, have enjoyed a very successful eighteen months. The company manufacturers the 2015 premium Nexus 6P handset along with the Huawei Watch, a premium Android Wear device. Huawei and ZTE have both managed to sell some of their products through Americas carrier network, which is an area Xiaomi may need to break into if it is to enjoy a commercial success. To date, Xiaomis smartphone business has been managed and run on a very slender margin (reputed to be under 2% for 2013 although as Xiaomi is a private company, information is sketchy) as the company earns more money through add-on services. This is one reason why Xiaomis smartphones are very competitively priced and often offer more for the money compared with alternative handsets. Xiaomis privately owned business operates in a different way to many other smartphone manufacturers.

Advertisement

Nevertheless, the American market is changing: almost all consumers now buy their devices via a regular monthly contribution based on the handset cost, rather than bundling in the cost of the device as part of the monthly plan sum. This means that there are cost advantages associated with buying a less expensive device and carriers are seeing more mid-range devices being sold as a result. Xiaomi have a successful range of mid-range devices. We may see Xiaomi innovate in ways to sell smartphones to customers to take advantage of the changes in the current smartphone market.
Flo and Hammerhead users, the day you knew was coming is here. Your devices are no longer on the official support list for new major Android updates, and you wont be seeing an update to Android 7.0 Nougat. The original Nexus 7 tablet was the first device to ship out with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, while the Nexus 5 brought Android 4.4 KitKat to the masses, a version which many older or budget devices are still on to this day. With both devices having shipped in 2013, they are both a bit long in the tooth, hardware-wise. The original Nexus 7s quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro and 2GB of RAM are outshone by the average budget phone these days, while the Nexus 5s Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 paired up with 2GB of RAM is on par with modern mid-rangers and gets blown out of the water compared to current flagships.

Both of these phones reached their official end-of-life in 2015, but the two aging Nexus did at least manage to get their hands on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. With Google dropping support for the two older devices in Android 7.0 Nougat, thats as far as they will officially go. Those who like to keep their device stock will likely find security updates floating their way for a while longer, and those who are deep in the custom ROM world already have access to a wide range of great Marshmallow ROMs, and will likely be getting some Nougat love in the future.

As of this writing, the factory images for Android 7.0 Nougat are not up quite yet, but given the similarities in hardware between the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 family, its not entirely unlikely that development for the Nexus 5 will begin a bit early, based on the official OTA that stock Nexus 6 users are beginning to see. Once the factory images hit Googles website, of course, its off to the races. Likewise, the code repositories in the Android Open Source Project either have all of the code available already or should have it soon, which means that especially knowledgeable developers can simply build from the Google source to create custom ROMs. In any case, both devices were great for their time and are certainly far from dead, but dont expect any more Android upgrades from Google for them.
Verizon Wireless is Americas largest cellular carrier but is facing rising criticism from industry experts and consumers alike for not offering an unlimited data plan. This is something that Verizon have continuously said over the last year  they have no plans to introduce an unlimited data offering on their network. The Chief Financial Officer, Fran Shammo, has explained he believes unlimited data is unsustainable for todays carriers. As the market leader, Verizon has the most customers and one might think it has the most to lose through not following the industry upstart, T-Mobile (and to a point, Sprint). However, Verizon Wireless is deliberately positioning themselves away from the competition between T-Mobile, Sprint and to a lesser degree, AT&T. Verizon is aiming for quality customers; those able and willing to pay premium prices for a premium service. Verizon Wireless language and quarterly updates remind the industry that they have a responsibility to shareholders. It does not see the value to be gained for shareholders by chasing what it believes are short term games  that is, scrambling to offer customers the promise of unlimited data plans. Instead, it is possible that Verizon are deliberately pricing themselves away from the competition between AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile in order to preserve its network for the existing cache of high quality customers.

There is certainly evidence within the industry to support this line of thinking. Walter Piecyk of BTIG Research has just published a research document and to paraphrase, one core belief is that Verizon Wireless network would simply crumble under the datapocalypse (a term used by BlackBerrys executives when championing their devices relative efficiency with data) brought about by customers taking advantage of unlimited data. Verizons fear is that should they offer customers unlimited data, many would take advantage of this and the network experience for all customers would quickly deteriorate. Those customers currently happy with Verizons service could be less happy when their smartphones are unable to connect to the Internet and would not be willing to pay a premium price for a network that has not delivered on its premium promise.

Verizon has been repurposing 3G spectrum for 4G LTE, which greatly increases the capacity of the network as the newer networking technologies can handle many more data connections at much higher speeds. Walters research paper highlights that Verizons network planners and engineers are rapidly running out of spectrum where they can replace 3G with LTE: the company has promised to keep their 3G spectrum in service until 2020. Furthermore Verizons old fashioned CDMA networks still carry a large number of voice calls. Older generation networks are less efficient than newer generation networks. Although Fran has denied that Verizon is facing a shortage of spectrum, perhaps the carrier is unable to effectively deploy it? Verizon has also been building out their network through a densification project  that is, saturating urban areas with large numbers of small sites so as to keep data speeds up and minimize the so-called not-spots where customers are unable to connect. Sprint, Americas smallest national carrier, is following a similar network densification plan but has explained (as have cell tower businesses) that it is meeting resistance from town and city planners not keen on the cellular operator using many more cell sites. It seems likely that Verizon Wireless will be experiencing the same reluctance from city planners to mount more and more small sites onto buildings and street furniture. These barriers mean it could be difficult for Verizon to materially expand its network capacity in the short to medium term.

Advertisement

Verizon even recently increased their service charges  although they have also increased data allowances at the same time. Raising prices for a service can be a risky, as the more price sensitive customers will leave. However, those loyal customers who value Verizons network quality will absorb these price hikes. Verizon increased its data bundles, which suggests the company is still encouraging customers to use more mobile data. And its recently bought Yahoo giving it access to the core digital media business as a great way to encourage customers to use more data. These changes to the business appear to appeal more to existing customers rather than new ones. Verizon is concentrating on keeping existing customers happy rather than chasing new customers, as we see Sprint and T-Mobile doing. Of course, Sprint and T-Mobile are stealing their new customers from the two larger carriers, AT&T and Verizon.

Verizons behavior does seem to fit the profile of a business wishing to keep existing customers happy, rather than diluting its premium network with a rush of new, high-data using customers. Yes: as the market leader, Verizon has more to lose than the competition, but their take appears to be shareholder confidence rather than new customers. It will likely take a small number of years before it is understood if T-Mobiles ONE plan will change the industry again, and if we are moving full circle from unmetered Internet in the early days of smartphones, to capped and metered Internet data packages, and back to unmetered Internet plans. Either way, it does seem that Verizon might not be prepared to gamble their existing happy customers on this.
Samsung releases all sorts of Android smartphones under the companys Galaxy brand. The Galaxy S and Galaxy Note lineups are the best-known series of smartphones Samsung releases, no doubt about it, but these are flagship lineups, and the company also releases various entry-level and mid-range smartphones. The company had debuted the Galaxy C lineup back in May with the Galaxy C5 smartphone. The Galaxy C5 is actually quite a capable smartphone which ships with really nice specs, including the fullHD Super AMOLED display, Snapdragon 617 SoC and 4GB of RAM. That being said, the Galaxy C lineup of smartphones is meant to be sold in China only, at least for now.

Speaking of the Galaxy C smartphones, the Galaxy C9 surfaced quite recently. According to SamMobiles recent report, Samsung is working on a Galaxy C9 handset which is supposed to be announced soon. Now, this will presumably be Samsungs phablet smartphone, and an alternative to the Galaxy C5 smartphone. SamMobile did not exactly confirm this will be a phablet, but it makes sense considering that the Galaxy A9 is a phablet device, and the fact that theyve already introduced a smartphone in the form of the Galaxy C5. In any case, the first Galaxy C9 listing has just surfaced, it popped up on Zauba, an Indian import-export website. Now, according to the listing, the Galaxy C9s model number will be SM-C9000, and the phone will ship with a 5.5  5.7 display, which is quite interesting considering Zauba usually lists an exact display size, so this info is a bit confusing. Do keep in mind that the chances are it will be a 5.7-inch fullHD panel, not a 5.5-inch one. Zauba reveals that eight Galaxy C9 handsets were imported for test purposes into the country, and each unit is priced at Rs. 17,107 ($255). This price does not reflect the phones final pricing though, these are test units and the final product will be more expensive, for sure.

The Galaxy C9 will, most probably, sport a 5.7-inch fullHD (1920 x 1080) Super AMOLED display, 4GB of RAM, and will be made out of metal. This phone will be fueled by one of Qualcomms Snapdragon mid-range SoCs, and if we had to guess, wed say that the company will include the Snapdragon 652 64-bit octa-core chip inside of this phone. The 3,000+mAh battery will probably be a part of this offering as well, and the phones physical home button will most probably double as a fingerprint scanner.
PLEASE NOTE!

Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!

All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!

(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
ROMA - Egypt's relationship with other ountries is based on partnership not dependency, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi said in an interview with the chief editors of national newspapers "Al Ahram", "Al Akhbar" and "Al Gomhuria", MENA news agency reports.



Egypt's partnership relations are based on openness, exchange of interests, opinion and political dialogue and mutual respect, the president said.



Speaking about the Palestinian cause, the president reiterated Egypt's firm stance on the peace process and support for all efforts aiming to solve this extremely complicated issue. The continuation of the conflict has a very bad impact on the region, he said. Egypt has been supportive of US efforts over the past few years and the Arab peace initiative, Sisi said, adding that Egypt also backs the French initiative on the issue. Egypt's relationship with both the Palestinians and the Israelis has enabled it to play a vital role in finding a solution to the conflict, he said. The Palestinian schism has to end in order to set the internal Palestinian stage for starting political negotiations between the Palestinian leadership and Israel to achieve a fair peace that restores the rights of the Palestinian people, Sisi said.



The interview also touched on the Syrian crisis, the situation in Yemen and Libya and Egyptian efforts to retain peace and security to the peoples of Arab countries.



Asked about Egypt's stance on participating in the Arab coalition to support legitimacy in Yemen, El Sisi said Egypt had dispatched Navy elements to Bab el Mandeb Strait to secure the arrival of vessels to the Suez Canal. Egyptian Air Force elements are also present in Saudi Arabia but Egypt has no ground forces in any Arab country, Sisi said. Other than that, Egypt's forces abroad are working under the umbrella of the United Nations peacekeeping forces, he added.



Talking about the issue of the Egyptian-Saudi maritime demarcation and the two islands of Tiran and Sanafir, which stirred controversy among the public, President Abdel Fattah El Sisi said he respects the judiciary and the law, pointing out that the country has a parliament that represents the people's will. The parliament will have full opportunity to study the agreement thoroughly, the president said, adding that Saudi Arabia understands the issue and the constitutional procedures in Egypt. The maritime demarcation will give the country a real opportunity to search for resources present in regional waters, which was the case in the agreement with Cyprus, allowing Egypt to discover "Zuhr" gas field, Sisi explained. Asked about the progress achieved in maritime demarcation talks with Greece, he said Egypt was going forward with them.



As for three-way cooperation between Egypt, Cyprus and Greece, he said Egypt will host the third summit of the three countries in October to discuss the projects agreed upon during the past two summits in Cyprus and Greece.



Turning to Egyptian-US relations and whether Egypt contacts representatives of the US presidential campaigns, he said meetings were held with all US political segments, whether the Congress, the US administration or the Pentagon.



The president said the Egyptian-Russian relations are steadfast and historical. The plane crash incident has not affected these relations. We are well aware that the Russian tourism to Egypt will certainly return. Asked about any signs of the return of the Russian tourism soon, the president said "God willing". It is important that the Russian tourism returns to Egypt as a reflection of strong ties, he said, adding that he feels optimistic about its return soon.
Support Taliban, reject ISIS, Al Zawahiri says Message from Al Qaeda leader contained in new video

(ANSAmed) - ROME, AUGUST 22 - The leader of Al Qaeda Ayman al Zawahiri has called on combatants to support the Taliban in Afghanistan and to reject Islamic State, SITE Intelligence Group reports.



The message is contained in a new video.



This is not the first time Osama Bin Laden's successor has criticised the caliphate led by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. (ANSAmed)
RABAT - King Mohammed VI of Morocco on Saturday called on Moroccans living abroad to defend the values of Islam, tolerance and peace. In a speech to the nation Mohammed VI urged the five million members of the diaspora to show a united front against jihadist fanaticism. He also called on Muslims, Christians and Jews to close ranks against extremism and hatred "in all its forms".



The king invited Moroccans living abroad to remain committed to their religious values and time-honored culture, which has "nothing to do with terrorism". "I  urge them to maintain their good reputation, to show forbearance in these trying circumstances, to close ranks and to be, as always, staunch advocates of peace, concord and co-existence in their country of residence," Mohammed VI said in reference to the recent spate of Islamist terrorist attacks in Europe. Terrorists who act in the name of Islam "are not Muslims", he continued. "Their only link to Islam is the pretexts they use to justify their crimes and their folly. They have strayed from the right path, and their fate is to dwell forever in hell," the sovereign said.



They take advantage of young Muslims especially in Europe and of their ignorance of the Arabic language and of true Islam, to spread their distorted messages and misleading promises, Mohammed VI added.



Some 1,350 Moroccans have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside ISIS, according to interior ministry figures.



Of these, 286 have allegedly died, while 156 have returned home and been arrested.
ROME - There were 29 children and adolescents among the 51 victims of Saturday's suicide attack during a wedding ceremony in Turkey, Kurdish media and the Turkish secular opposition paper Cumhuriyet reported Monday.



So far 44 victims have been identified.



The attack was carried out by a suicide bomber aged 12 in the southeastern city of Gaziantep near the border with Syria. So far, no-one has claimed responsibility for the attack. Any strategy "meant to incite the citizens against each other along ethnic and religious lines will not work," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after the attack.



There is no difference between the Kurdish separatist PKK, the group led by self-exiled imam Fethullah Gulen, who the government claims was behind the failed coup in July, and Islamic State, he added. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has expressed her solidarity with the city of Gaziantep and Turkish government in light of the attack. (ANSAmed)
Serbian: Byzantine heritage endangered in Kosovo, Nikolic

(ANSAmed) - BELGRADE, 22 AUGUST - President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolic on Monday opened the 23rd International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Belgrade with a message that the Serbian-Byzantine heritage in Kosovo is endangered today by untruths and attempts of forging historical facts, as well as by physical destruction. Nikolic said, opening the congress, that changes in the world occur all the time, but that they are not always to the benefit of humanity, and that neither is "an attempt of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo to become a member of Unesco and to ascribe Serbian heritage in Kosovo to a nation that does not exist".



It is not only Serbian but European culture, the world's memory and an important part of the Byzantine heritage that is kept in Kosovo, he said. (ANSAmed).




ROME - The leader of Al Qaeda Ayman al Zawahiri has called on combatants to support the Taliban in Afghanistan and to reject Islamic State, SITE Intelligence Group reports.



The message is contained in a new video.



This is not the first time Osama Bin Laden's successor has criticised the caliphate led by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.
RIMINI - Education is the key to avoiding Islamic extremism, the head of the Islamic Community in Croatia, Mufti Aziz Hasanovic, said on Monday.



"Ignorance is the most dangerous enemy for the world," Hasanovic said in an interview with 'Il sussidiario.net'.



"The imams who go into schools need to educate the students in the true Islamic faith, in tolerance and peace, and they must do so before the entire population, in Croatian," he continued. "We are the only Balkan country that has not given any terrorist to ISIS as a result of this very close dialogue," Hasanovic said. The main difference between Croatia and Italy lies in the fact that "Italy has not recognised Islam as an official religion and there is no pact between the government and the Islamic community," the Mufti added. In Croatia, Islam is taught in schools, Muslim marriage is equated to civil marriage and the Islamic community is covered by state TV, he said. In addition, all imams receive a government salary and have an identity card. Italy and France need help in "understanding the key to bringing Muslims close to the country and government", Hasanovic said. "Unfortunately many do not consider France to be their homeland, this is the problem," he concluded.
Mohammed VI urges diaspora to 'unite against terror' Jihadists are not Muslims, king tells Moroccans li

(ANSAmed) - RABAT, AUGUST 22 - King Mohammed VI of Morocco on Saturday called on Moroccans living abroad to defend the values of Islam, tolerance and peace. In a speech to the nation Mohammed VI urged the five million members of the diaspora to show a united front against jihadist fanaticism. He also called on Muslims, Christians and Jews to close ranks against extremism and hatred "in all its forms".



The king invited Moroccans living abroad to remain committed to their religious values and time-honored culture, which has "nothing to do with terrorism". "I  urge them to maintain their good reputation, to show forbearance in these trying circumstances, to close ranks and to be, as always, staunch advocates of peace, concord and co-existence in their country of residence," Mohammed VI said in reference to the recent spate of Islamist terrorist attacks in Europe. Terrorists who act in the name of Islam "are not Muslims", he continued. "Their only link to Islam is the pretexts they use to justify their crimes and their folly. They have strayed from the right path, and their fate is to dwell forever in hell," the sovereign said.



They take advantage of young Muslims especially in Europe and of their ignorance of the Arabic language and of true Islam, to spread their distorted messages and misleading promises, Mohammed VI added.



Some 1,350 Moroccans have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside ISIS, according to interior ministry figures.



Of these, 286 have allegedly died, while 156 have returned home and been arrested. (ANSAmed).




Serbia returns almost 3,000 migrants to Macedonia Over 600 accommodated in reception centres along border

(ANSAmed) - BELGRADE, AUGUST 22 - Serbian joint police and army patrols have prevented nearly 3,000 refugees and asylum seekers from entering the country illegally from Macedonia since mid-July, General Zelimir Glisovic said Monday. In the last month over 600 migrants have been accommodated in reception centres along the border. "We are doing everything possible, we will certainly not build walls, Serbia is an open country, but we intend to use all means to counter those representing a threat to us and to Europe," Defence Minister Zoran Djordjevic added. (ANSAmed).




Tobruk HoR votes against Libyan unity govt First gathering with quorum present since February

(ANSAmed) - ROME, AUGUST 22 - The Tobruk House of Representatives (HoR) has rejected a vote of confidence in the Libyan unity government led by Fayez al Sarraj, local media sources reported Monday.



The vote was rejected with 64 out of 98 representatives against. It was the first valid gathering of the chamber with a quorum present since February. (ANSAmed).




Anti-corruption, law enforcement and resource management officials from APEC member economies are racing to counter an alarming rise in environmental crime that is imperiling communities and significantly undermining growth potential across the Asia-Pacific.

Closing governance loopholes that enable illegal logging, land development, mining and fishing was the focus of policy measures taken forward by officials over the past week in Lima, in collaboration with representatives from business and civil society. It comes amid illicit activities that are devastating increasingly large swaths of the Amazon and other biodiverse forest and marine hotspots in the region.

Illegal extractive industries are growing which is a serious concern, acknowledged the Honorable Pablo Sanchez, Attorney General of Peru and Chair of the APEC Anti-Corruption and Transparency Working Group. The complex, cross-border dynamics and consequences of natural resource exploitation are prompting greater cooperation in APEC to stem corruption that underpins it.

The expansion of the illegal economy illustrates the dark side of globalization, added David Luna, a Senior Director under the Anti-Crime Program at the United States Department of State and coordinator of APEC project work to tackle environmental crime. This scourge is severely affecting licit trade that livelihoods and environmental sustainability depend on.

APEC economies, home to around 3 billion people, are the worlds largest producers and consumers of land and marine resourcesranging from rosewood furniture to abalone, energy supplies and gold jewelry. Higher demand as income levels rise is fueling illegal industries which collectively account for an estimated 8 to 15 per cent of global GDP and make it difficult for honest businesses to compete.

These practices additionally funnel tens of billions of dollars to organized crime annually and contribute to lost tax revenue and forced labor and sex trafficking where they are undertaken. Critically, they are also endangering much of the regions rich wildlife and ecosystems. Preventative actions being advanced in APEC include technical support for licensing and procurement reform, supply chain tracking mechanisms, and improvements in investigative and enforcement capacity.

APEC is fostering public-private sector intelligence exchanges in mining planning, approval and regulation, including governance arrangements, to support legal and sustainable industry development, explained Rodrigo Urquiza Caroca, Chair of the APEC Mining Task Force and Director of Research and Public Policy at the Chilean Copper Commission.

Finding a mineral deposit and establishing a mine is very costly, he noted. We are working to ensure that when a company wants to set up a mining project, information to reduce the risk of corruption and adhere to safe, legal operating practices, like halting dangerous mercury use, is readily available to them.

Bolstering clean supply chains via anti-money laundering and mitigation of transfer pricing used by companies to dodge taxes is a further point of emphasis. Secure but fair import controls are also on the table.

An industry practice that is legal in one economy may be seen as illegal in another economy, said Dr Ruth Turia, Chair of the APEC Experts Group on Illegal Logging and Associated Trade, and Director of Policy and Planning at Papua New Guineas Forest Authority.

Initiatives like the newly agreed timber legality guidance template in APEC will help to harmonize governance conditions in the region, Dr Turia continued. Building more equitable relationships between stakeholders, public accountability and collaborative policy decision-making constitute the next step towards solving the industrys integrity challenges, she concluded.

# # #

For additional information, or to arrange possible media interviews, please contact:

David Hendrickson (in Lima) +65 9137 3886 at [email protected]

Michael Chapnick (in Lima) +65 9647 4847 at [email protected]

More on APEC meetings, events, projects and publications can be found on. You can also follow APEC onand join us onand
The benefits are currently available for all students and teachers flying in World Traveller with British Airways from the United Arab Emirates to the UK, Europe or North America when they book through a British Airways shop or selected travel agent. Travel agents who are eligible to sell British Airways student fares in the UAE are Etihad National Travel & Tourism, Nirvana Travel & Tourism LLC, Bin Moosa Travel LLC, Al Masaood Travel & Services, Asrar Travel & Tourism and Dunya Travel LLC in Abu Dhabi. In Dubai, FCM Travel, Airlink Travel, Dnata and SNTTA.

Studying abroad is a once in a lifetime opportunity and our experience shows that students travelling abroad need to take a lot of extra baggage, particularly if they are on their maiden trip, but the worry of excess baggage can be a concern for them. says Paolo De Renzis, Head of Middle East, Africa and Central Asia Sales for British Airways.

If you are a teacher starting a new job, we will help make sure that you have enough allowance so that when you arrive in a new country, you will have everything in your suitcase to get the new academic year off to the best possible start.

When purchasing a ticket and checking-in at the airport, students and teachers need to provide valid identification to take advantage of the travel offers.*

All flights from the UAE arrive at the airlines home at London Heathrow Terminal 5. British Airways customers can enjoy stress-free onward connections to cities in the UK and Europe from Heathrow.

A full timetable of British Airways' flights to London and beyond is available online at ba.com, where students and teachers can find the lowest fares and book, pay and check-in online for their flights
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. The leaders of Germany, France and Italy will meet on August 22 to discuss how to keep the European project together in the second set of talks between the premiers of the euro zone's three largest economies since Britain's shock vote to leave the bloc, Reuters reported.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi hosts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on an island off the coast of Naples ahead of September's EU summit called to discuss reverberations from the Brexit vote.

"They will be coming to discuss how to relaunch Europe from the bottom up, there's a big need," Renzi said on Sunday.

"Relaunching Europe is a totally open game but it needs to be played," he said.

Officials in Brussels and Berlin fear the June 23 vote could lead to a referendum in the Netherlands - a founding member of the union - on whether to also leave the bloc.

"Monday aims to show the unity of Europe's three biggest countries, but not to create a specific club," a French diplomatic source said, noting that the aim was to prepare for the groundwork for the forthcoming Bratislava summit.

Faced with existential risks, Merkel wants to cement "a better Europe" rather than forge ahead with "more Europe". Renzi wants Italy to have a strong voice in how the bloc's future is shaped after Brexit and, according to the French diplomatic source, Hollande wants an EU-wide investment plan to be doubled.

The three leaders differ over how to boost economic growth - which slowed across the 28-nation bloc in the second quarter and stagnated in France and Italy - and cut unemployment.

France supports Renzi's push for expansionary measures and against austerity, Germany is likely to oppose any undermining of Europe's deficit and the debt constraints that Italy and France have struggled to comply with.

Italy is eager for greater European consolidation in the wake of Brexit, but Merkel is more concerned about preserving the integrity of the eventual 27-member bloc.

For her it will be the beginning of a whirlwind week of meetings with other European governments that will see her travel to four countries and receive leaders from another eight.

"The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27," said one EU diplomat.

Renzi chose to meet on the island of Ventotene because of its symbolic significance as the place where two Italian intellectuals, held there in World War Two, wrote an influential manifesto calling for European political unification.

One of the two, Altiero Spinelli, is buried on the island and the three leaders will lay a wreath on his tomb.

Lingering threats to the union that emerged long before the Brexit vote are also likely to be on the agenda, including internal and external security after Islamist militant attacks and Europe's migration crisis.

Emboldened by the Brexit vote, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called a referendum on Oct. 2 on whether to accept any future EU migrant settlement quotas as his government steps up its fight against the EU's migration policies.

In another symbolic choice of venue, the three leaders will hold their closing news conference on the Italian aircraft carrier, the Garibaldi, which is the flagship of the EU's "Sophia" mission in the Mediterranean.

The naval operation has a mandate to tackle migrant smugglers, help enforce an arms embargo off Libya, and train the Libyan coast guard.

The EU plans to offer incentives to African governments to help slow the flow of migrants who have poured into Europe over the past three years, but disagreements on how to handle the situation have laid bare divisions between member states.

Italy, the main entry point for Africans but rarely their planned destination, is struggling to house migrants turned back from neighboring countries including France, and has disagreed with Germany over how to finance the response.

Photo by AP
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. Donald Trump's election campaign doubled its spending last month but still lagged far behind US presidential rival Hillary Clinton, figures show, BBC reported.

The Trump campaign spent $18.5m (14.1m) in July, compared to his Democratic rival's $38m.

Trump spent more than $420,000 on hats, but only started major TV adverts this month.

Separately, the New York Times said an investigation had revealed Trump's firms were at least $650m in debt.

Trump's campaign spending remains remarkably low at this point compared to previous campaigns, including those of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012.

The Trump campaign's $18.5m in July was up from $7.8m in June, according to a Federal Election Commission report released on Saturday.

In terms of fundraising, the Trump campaign brought in $37m for the month, compared to the $52m raised by Clinton.

August will see a spike in Trump spending, however, as last week $5m was spent on the first TV adverts. The Clinton campaign began TV advertising two months ago and has spent more than $60m so far.

Her campaign staff is around 700, about 10 times more than those on Trump's payroll.

The latest figures show a large sum of the Trump July spending, about 45% of the total, went to the web design and digital marketing firm Giles-Parscale, while millions also went on air travel.

They also show Trump is still paying the firm of sacked campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. The company received $20,000.

Trump has financed much of his own campaign - putting in about $50m.

Meanwhile, the New York Times said its investigation had shown that the $650m of debt among Trump companies was twice the figure in public filings made as part of his White House bid.

It also said that some of the lenders backing his ventures, such as the Bank of China and Goldman Sachs, were institutions he had criticized during his campaign.

The Times also said its examination "underscored how much of Trump's business remains shrouded in mystery. He has declined to disclose his tax returns or allow an independent valuation of his assets."

Separately, Trump again reached out to African-American voters, one of the groups he is lagging behind in significantly in opinion polls.

He cited Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, who issued the proclamation freeing slaves.

"I want our party to be a home of the African-American voter once again," he said.

Trump's audience in Fredericksburg, Virginia, was overwhelmingly white.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. A man in India spent two months swallowing knives and had 40 of them surgically removed from his stomach, according to the doctor who led the operation, CNN reported.

"He had a wild urge to consume metal. Even for us, the experienced surgeons, it was frightening," Dr. Jatinder Malhotra told CNN.

"We were so nervous... a small mistake could have taken the patient's life. In my 20 years of practice, I have never seen anything like it."

Malhotra said it took his team about two days to form a diagnosis and surgery plan.

The five-hour operation took place Friday in the northern Indian city of Amritsar, a Sikh holy city in the state of Punjab.

Malhotra said they found foldable knives, which when fully extended were about seven inches long.

"He [the patient] says he swallowed some knives folded, and some unfolded. When we took out the knives -- some were found folded, some were open, and some had even started rusting and were broken," Malhotra said.

The patient, a 42-year-old father of two, told CNN he's feeling much better.

"I'm sorry I let my family down. I'll be forever thankful to doctors and hospital staff for saving my life," he said.

Malhotra says the patient is now "out of danger" and is set to be discharged in a couple of days.

He won't be discharged until he's cleared by psychiatrists, which is set to happen in a couple of days, two doctors at the hospital told CNN.

But the big question remains -- why did he start eating knives?

"I don't know why I used to swallow knives," the patient told CNN. "I just enjoyed its taste and I was addicted ... how people get addicted to alcohol and other things, my situation was similar."

Malhotra believes the patient has a very rare mental disorder that most likely has not been published in any international medical journal.

The patient is currently under the continuous supervision of the hospital's in-house psychiatric team and will soon be visited by independent mental health experts, doctors said.

The patient told doctors that he has no idea why he started eating knives but that he "developed a taste for metal" and "loved the way blades tasted."

The patient even managed to keep his habit secret from his family, according to Malhotra.

Now, Malhotra says, the patient claims he won't even touch a knife anymore.

"I will never do such acts ever again," the patient said. "I'm a new person now."

If the urge does strike, Malhotra and his team gave him some advice -- "we told him if you ever feel like you need more iron in your body, try spinach."
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. The Ijevan Police Department received a call on August 20 at 12:55 on ammunition being found in the village of Ditavan.

The Press Department of the Police told ARMENPRESS police units were dispatched to the scene and discovered the casing of a F-1 grenade without explosive.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. Pakistani security forces have killed six people in a remote northwestern valley near the Afghan border in a new offensive against Islamist militants in the area, the military said, Reuters reported.

All six of those killed in the offensive in the Khyber region were "terrorists", the military said in a statement late on Sunday. Reuters was unable to independently verify their identities as access to the area is restricted.

The army launched air and ground operations in the Rajgal valley, about 90 km (60 miles) west of the city of Peshawar, last week, the latest leg of an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and its allies that began in 2014.

Pakistan has for years been battling militants who want to impose a strict version of Islamist law in Pakistan, while quietly backing others who are seen as furthering Pakistani objectives against old rival India and in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani offensive has squeezed some groups into small pockets of territory, while others have fled over the border into lawless areas of eastern Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, the militants are still capable of launching deadly attacks across Pakistan.

A bomb attack on a crowd in a hospital courtyard in the city of Quetta on Aug. 8 killed more than 70 people, the deadliest attack in Pakistan since 2014.

The military says it has killed at least 31 people in coordinated ground and air strikes in the Rajgal area since Aug. 16.

The attacks would "effectively check and guard against terrorists movement along high mountains and all-weather passes", the army said.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have accused each other repeatedly of not doing enough to stop the movement of militants across the border.

Pakistan has been battling the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella organization of hardline Islamist groups, since its inception in 2007.

The Pakistani Taliban are allied with but separate from the Afghan Taliban.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. The attraction of major investments is an effective way to develop the Armenian economy, Armenian PM Hovik Abrahamyan told the participants of Baze-2016 pan-Armenian youth camp, referring to the prospects of economic development of Armenia. The PM ensured that in case of correct and effective measures, the country has a serious development potential. The Armenian economy is rather sensitive. We have no oil, gas, natural resources. The effective way to develop our economy is attracting major investments. We take active measures in that direction, Armenpress reports the PM saying.

He highlighted the launch of the construction of Amulsar mine, ensuring that the exploitation of that mine will significantly activate the countrys economy. This is really an important project for us. 1200 people will work there and I am convinced the exploitation of Amulsar mine will activate our economy creating g new jobs, the PM noted.

Abrahamyan also added that Armenia and China have an agreement of establishing a joint Copper Smelter. Besides, we have an agreement with Chine over establishing a joint Armenian-Chinese brandy factory in China. This means that we will export brandy raw to China where Armenian brandy will be produced. Imagine the importance of this project, considering the enormous Chinese market. We will finally solve the problems with grape purveyance, the PM said, adding that a number of other investment and other projects are discussed at the Government.
Weve never known exactly the details of the deal that the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art made in 2009 with the Fisher family to get its collection (better described, actually, as access to the familys collectionat first for 25 years and later changed to 100 years). And we still dont. But an article by Charles Desmarais in todays San Francisco Chronicle, Unraveling SFMoMAs Deal for the Fisher Collection, bares more about it than Ive ever seen before. What he reports is troubling, very troubling.

I urge you to read it. But because it is behind a paywalland you may not have access to itlet me post some key elements here, counting down to the worst part, in my opinion:

A grouping of Fisher collection works must hang together in the galleries once every 10 years.

The museums partnership is with an entity called the Fisher Art Foundation, but Doris Fisher actually owns most of the works. Like any lender, she can recall a work on loan to the museum any time she wants. Only those owned by the Foundation cant have private use.

Of about 1,100 works in the Fisher collection, about 260 are on loan now to the museumand only five of them are owned by Doris Fisher. But how many others in the whole collection does she own? We dont know.

The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection Galleriesoccupying the museums fourth, fifth and sixth floorsare required to contain primarily Fisher works at all times . No more than 25 percent of what is on view may come from other lenders or donors.

The final bullet point is critical. As Desmarais wrote:

It means that something like 60 percent of SFMOMAs indoor galleries (not counting free-admission areas that serve as combination lobby and exhibition spaces) must always adhere  or, at least, respond  to a narrative of art history constructed by just two astute but obdurately private collectors [Thus] for the next 100 years, [museum curators] job will be limited in those galleries to a kind of scholarly embroidery, filling in around the edges of a predetermined scenario with works by other artists, such as women, artists of color or California artists.

Devoting that much space, 60 percent, to the Fisher collection is way too large a proportion of the museum. The Lehman wing at the Metropolitan Museum* is most analogous; the collection must stay together as it was at the time of the gift. But, while I dont know what proportion of the Mets total space the wing occupies, but it must be paltry by comparison with the Fisher dealand yet it was controversial.

And at SFMoMA, the provision lasts for 100 years, no lesswhich creates another problem. The Lehman collection was older art; it had weathered centuries of exposure and criticism and emerged as museum-worthy. The Fisher Collection is contemporary art: who knows how it will be viewed in 100 years? Take a look at the list of artists written about by Vasari. Where are some now? And whom did he leave out?

Desmarais didnt mention the financial part of the deal in his story, but at the Met, the Robert Lehman Foundation provides a substantial annual payment to help defray the cost of the wing.

I understand the pressure that SFMoMA director Neal Benezra must have been under to cut a deal with the Fishers. But it seems to me that he and the museums board were out-negotiated. Iand, I think, otherswill have to look at the museum differently, knowing these details. I hope other museums do not emulate Benezra and the museums trustees.

I commend Charles, a friend, on his digging. We need more of it.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of SF MoMA
All the latest Ashbourne news. Ashbourne is an historic market town in Derbyshire. Situated on the southern edge of the Peak District, it is known as the 'Gateway to Dovedale' and the 'Gateway to the Peak District'. Ashbourne is famous for the annual Royal Shrovetide Football Match, which has been played since at least 1667, although its origins may date back centuries earlier. Ashbourne became a Fairtrade town in March 2005. The popular Tissington Trail, which follows the route of the former Ashbourne to Buxton railway, starts on the edge of town. Keep up to date with the latest news from the town by signing up for our newsletter.
The Myanmar Interfaith for Children platform issued an appeal to participants to focus on the children who are the countrys future. War between the central government and various ethnic minorities has lasted 70 years, harming children and the countrys development.

Yangon (AsiaNews)  The Myanmar Interfaith for Children platform has launched an appeal ahead of a peace conference set for 31 August. The latter has been organised by the government in cooperation with Myanmars military and the armed wings of ethnic groups fighting for autonomy.

In its appeal, the platform said that the 21st Century Panglong Conference is an opportunity "to reach an agreement for the good of the country, especially its children, who are the ones who suffer the most because of the war that has been going on now for 70 years.

The message came after 200 representatives of all religions, members of the government, parliamentarians and UN officials met yesterday at the Chatrium Hotel in Yangon.

The Myanmar Interfaith for Children platform was established in 2014 by an NGO, the Ratana Metta Organization, and UNICEF.

"Children represent around one third of the countrys population, and therefore, we must end conflict now in order to protect childrens futures. Conflict prevents children from developing to their full potential and hence, hinders the countrys growth, religious leaders said.

"Much of Myanmars future depends on what Myanmar society is able to do for children now. The future of our children will have a smooth path only if decisions are made decorously by the adults of today," they added.

The Myanmar Interfaith for Children includes Buddhist, Christian, Islam and Hindu communities. It calls on all parties to focus on two main objectives: end the fighting and start peace as well as safeguard the needs and rights of children.

For Sitagu Sayardaw Ashin Nyanaissara, a Buddhist leader, Conflicts and violence are caused by selfish thoughts. By avoiding the two extremes and coming to a compromise, as per the Buddha's saying, we can all reduce conflicts.

The conference on 31 August is the most important assembly of peace since that of 12 February 1947 that gave birth to Myanmar.

The goal is to reduce tensions among the more than 135 ethnic groups who have always struggled to live together in a peaceful way and are still fighting the central government and its Burmese majority.
Philippine President responds to criticism of the international community on the killing of alleged drug dealers in the Asian country: "You can not say one bad thing about me, but I can say it ten about you. You have failed in everything from terrorism yto the emergency against hunger". Manila "will ask for Beijing and the African nations to create a new trans-national body". The Foreign Minister cautions: "There are no plans to quit the UN".

Manila (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The United Nations "is a stupid and useless body. The Philippines could leave early. With China and Africa we could create a new, efficient trans-national reality"said Filippino President, Rodrigo Duterte, during a speech focused on the anti-drug campaign underway in the nation.

Since his election, in May 2016, about 900 alleged Filipino drug dealers have been killed. The authors of the massacre are mostly members of the police, who speak of killings "that occurred during gun battles." But they have also involved private "vigilantes" who have carried out killings to collect unofficial bounties - under the table - from the various local authorities. The model is that of "death squads" from the time of Marcos, that Duterte applied in Davao City during his 20 years as mayor there.

Two United Nations experts, engaged in the field of human rights, have openly criticized the president for what is happening in the country. The Glass Palace also summoned the representative of Manila to demand "explanations" on extra-judicial killings. Finally, Ban Ki-moon Secretary-called Duterte's appeals against drug dealing"incitement to murder, and then international crime".

Responding to allegations, the Filipino leader attacked: "Take us out of your organisation. You have done nothing. Where were you here the last time? Never. Except to criticise," he said."You now, United Nations, if you can say one bad thing about me, I can give 10 [about you]. I tell you, you are [useless]. Because if you are really true to your mandate, you could have stopped all these wars and killings".

Manila, he concluded, "might ask the funds paid in recent years to the UN. This done, we'll go and ask China and the African countries to study a new trans-national body that is truly effective and efficient. This morning the Philippine foreign minister has intervened on the matter, throwing water on the fire: "The president's statements highlight the frustration we feel towards the UN headquarters, but there are no plans to quit the UN".
by Sebastian Vazhakala, MC

As a student he was destined for a banking career, but was always dominated by the desire to be a missionary to the poor of India. His encounter with Calcutta and Mother Teresa changed his life. We speak to the first missionary of charity, co-founder along with the future saint of Calcutta, of the contemplative branch of the Missionaries. First in a series.

Rome (AsiaNews) - With the upcoming canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Sept. 4 at the Vatican, and the AsiaNews international symposium on the figure of the saint on September 2, we want to offer our readers first hand accounts of the influence that Mother Teresa had - and continues to have on the Church and the whole world.

Today we begin to present the story Fr. Sebastian Vazhakala, who is considered the co-founder of the contemplative branch of the Missionaries of Charity, the priestly branch of the Mother's congregation. Born September 2, 1942 in Vayala (Kerala) from a Catholic family of the Syro-Malabar rite, Fr. Sebastian kindly sat down for a lengthy interview at the Casa Serena, where he and his brothers offer hospitality to homeless people. His life, destined for a banking career, was overturned by his encounter with Calcutta and Mother Teresa. Our interview with the priest will be also available soon on video. Below part 1 of his story as told to AsiaNews operator Gian Luca Lulli.

My vocation began before I was born! According to the Bible our vocation begins when God creates us. I did not begin my vocation, I simply discovered it at a certain time.

God says to the prophet Jeremiah, who found so many excuses not to go on a mission for God ( "I'm young; I can not speak; ..."),: "I knew you even before you were formed in the womb" (cfr. Jeremiah 1.4 to 10). This means that our vocation is from before the foundation of the world!

I began to discover my personal vocation through my father's experience. He was very involved in helping others. Then there was the religious formation in catechism. When I was 19-20 years old, I found a job in a bank, but I always had the desire to go on a mission ... That was back in 1962. In that year I went to attend a vocational retreat for the priesthood. But my father did not want me to enter the seminary. I needed the help of the bishop, and so in July 1962 I went to study at the seminary.

After two years, I moved to the mission in North India, in Ranchi (Bihar) and continued my studies there. And It was there, in Ranchi, that I met Mother Teresa. Not really personally: she had come there for a conference and I heard her speak. It was in March 1966.

Mother Teresa was not popular then as she is now, but I was struck by what she and how she lived the Gospel, such as how she worked as assisting the poor. The day after hearing her speak, I went to my spiritual father and told him: Father, I have found my final vocation. But he did not want to believe me and advised me to continue my studies for another three years. However, he granted me permission to go to Calcutta to have at least a little practicle experience.

The plunge into Calcutta was a shock. Although I'm Indian, I was not prepared for a vision of such a special city. After India's independence and the division between India and Pakistan (1948) and after the division between East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and West Pakistan (now Pakistan), in 1971, millions of people had come to India from Pakistan and were concentrated in Calcutta. This former capital of the British empire had become a "city of poverty" (the one that later was defined by an author "the city of joy). And there I met Mother Teresa in person: it was November 30, 1966.

I said: Mother, I really like helping the poor, to serve them, have this social commitment.

She told me: We do not do this kind of social work; we work for God. I did not understand the difference. She explained to me: We do this for a person: Jesus. For He said, "I was hungry and you gave me food ... Every time you do this to the least of my brothers, you do it to me "(cfr. Matthew 25).

This explanation entered my heart. In fact, there is a difference between one who works with the poor as a profession, for a job, or to an assistance program and one that does it for Jesus. Maybe those who do it for a living will do even better, but we do it for Jesus. In our rule there is a fourth vow, that of the "gratuitous service with all your heart" for the poorest of the poor. Not just a service, but a gratuitous one with all my heart and for the poorest of the poor.

The explanations that Mother Teresa gave me were enough: I had decided that this would be my way of life.

I finished my studies, but during the holidays I spent some time in Calcutta and on April 7, 1967 I moved to Calcutta. From that day on I was together with Mother Teresa until her death, September 4, 1997.

From 1967 onwards I studied four more years in Pune, then I was transferred to Los Angeles for two years; then to New York, where Mother came to visit me.

On June 2, 1978 I arrived in Rome and March 8, 1979 I went to Borghetto Prenestino. It was then that we started the night apostolate: we went around to different districts to bring food, clothes, covers, blankets, especially in winter. There were about 40 volunteers; we would divide into three groups each night and did rounds to three times a week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The apostolate carried us to many neighborhoods: Forlanini, Trastevere, Colle Oppio, Ponte Casilino, Tiburtina station, Termini, Piazza Vittorio ...

Because there were so many who continued to sleep in the street, we decided to build a shelter. We applied for a construction permit in 1989, but due to bureaucracy, we were passed from office to office, and only received permission on March, 10, 1992. Meanwhile, we met an architect who asked us: What can I do for you? We saw it as a sign of Providence. This happens often among us: when we need something, Providence intercedes. I told him about our project and he agreed to do the work for us. He managed the entire project and has never asked for a penny or euro!

This is how we built Casa Serena. Mother Teresa came for the inauguration on May 29, 1993. Since that day Casa Serena has offered overnight accommodation for the poorest of the poor of Rome. We have 72 beds and we would like to expand the center, but we lack the permits and the material means. Every day we have about thirty people come to our gates and we give them sandwiches or clothing. Every month, on the last Saturday of the month, we distribute food. There are about 100-120 people with a minimum pension who can not survive. They come from Laurentina, Ostia Lido, Tor Bella Monaca, Maura Torre, Casal Bruciato, Torpignattara. Once they were only old people. Now there are also many foreign migrants among them.

On the first of September, all those who come to take our packages, have been invited to the celebration for the poor, which will be held at the Santa Cecilia auditorium in Rome: we have already given out the tickets!
The execution took place by hanging. The militiamen are members of the Islamic State, who attacked the military training base in 2014. A massacre published online by Daesh which had provoked anger and outrage in the country. Criticism of activists and pro-human rights NGOs that denounce summary trials.

Baghdad (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Iraqi authorities hanged 36 men sentenced to death for the 2014 " Camp Speicher massacre which killed about 1,700 army recruits at the former US military base. The the base, located near Tikrit - about 140 km north-west of Baghdad  was attacked by the Islamic State militiamen (IS) during the initial phase of their ascent in northern Iraq.

At the time the massacre - which killed a large group of mainly young Shiites - had sparked indignation and anger in the country and contributed to mobilizing Shiite militias in the fight against the jihadists.

Later Daesh militiamen[Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, IS] released photos and videos of the massacre; after one year, after the reconquest of the city, the Iraqi authorities have also found mass graves in which the soldiers were buried and made dozens of arrests.

A government spokesman in Dhiqar confirms that "the execution of 36 defendants" authors of the "crime" was "carried out this morning in Nassiriya prison", in the south of the country, by "hanging." Of the recruits massacred by jihadists, at least 400 were from the province of Dhiqar.

The executions - criticized by activists and pro-human rights organizations because the result of summary trials - were carried out yesterday in the presence of the Iraqi Minister of Justice Haidar al-Zamili.

For months Tikrit, hometown of Saddam Hussein, had been under the control of the Caliphate. The day after its re-conquest by the Iraqi troops, the atrocities committed by militant jihadists in the course of employment emerged.

Saddam's nephew, Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan, who had become an IS commander, was killed in the city.

Those executed yesterday were all of Iraqi nationality and were sentenced last February.

At the time of the assault at Camp Speicher jihadist militants had imprisoned thousands of people. Later members of the Shiite community were isolated and loaded onto trucks. They were transported to a distant place, made to lie face down and executed (in the photo) with a single shot to the neck. The bodies were then thrown into mass graves that had been dug previously.

Along with the call to arms of the Iraqi Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the massacre at Camp Speicher was one of the key factors that led to the mass recruitment of thousands of members of the Shiite community in the fight against Daesh.
by Nirmala Carvalho

An Evangelical Christian is kicked and punched in Kerala. He was saved by friends, attracted by his shouts. Stones are thrown at a Pentecostal church in Karnataka. The faithful are living in fear, victims of violence perpetrated by Hindu ultra-nationalists.

Mumbai (AsiaNews)  Two new episodes of anti-Christian violence have been recently reported in southern India.

The first, on 18 August, involved an Evangelical Christian in Karnataka. The second occurred just two days later when Hindu extremists attacked a Pentecostal church in Kerala, damaging its roof, and causing panic among the faithful.

Speaking to AsiaNews, Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), condemned the "growing intolerance and aggressions suffered by the small Pentecostal community. Christians are doing what is allowed them under the Constitution. "

These acts of violence in two Indian states are just the latest cases in a series against the Christian minority.

Evan Mamang Kipgen, a 26-year-old Evangelical, was attacked in Bangalore as he left the home of a friend, where he had gone to pray.

A member of the Thadou Christian Fellowship Church, he filed a complaint reporting that he was beaten and kicked by strangers.

The attackers spoke a language he did not understand, perhaps Kannada, which is widely spoken in southern India, and fled when, attracted by his shouts, the victims Christian friends came to see what was happening.

On 20 August, the Sharon Fellowship Town Church in Kodungallur, Thrissur District (Kerala), led by Rev Roy Shepherd, was attacked, most likely by members of the Hindu ultra-nationalist paramilitary group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The pastor said that in the last five years, extremists have shown signs of impatience over Sunday prayers.

This morning he and his wife were summoned to the police station, where they filed their case. Rev Roy noted that members of his congregations now live in fear and insecurity.

Sajan K George complains that "In India pastors do not do anything illegal and do not create law and order problems. By contrast, anti-Christian leaders commit acts of violence without any provocation."

For the Christian leader, the administration itself "hounds the tiny and innocent Christian minority. All this is very worrying."
by Lucia Leung

The diocese celebrates the ordination of Fr. Ignatius Lo and Fr. Paul Nguyen: With 384 thousand faithful, there are only 68 consecrated from the diocese. The life of a priest "has to be interesting. We must put aside ourselves and draw near to others, especially to young people.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - The life of a priest "has to be interesting. A good priest is someone who puts aside himself and approaches others. To revive vocations, this approach needs to be done with the youth". This is the "recipe" shared with AsiaNews by Fr. Ignatius Lo ( ), who on August 20 was ordained a priest along with Fr. Paul Nguyen for the Diocese of Hong Kong.

The former British colony has a Catholic population of 384 thousand faithful. Of these, 160 thousand are Filipinos working here permanently, while non-residents of other nationalities are about 37 thousand.

To care for this flock, there are only 68 diocesan priests while those that come from missionary institutes number 223. According to these numbers - taken from diocesan statistics up to August 31, 2015 - every consecrated person has to care for 1,320 faithful. The ordination of two new priests was understandably greeted with joy: for some time the diocese has been carrying out different vocational programs, but the results are still minimal.

Fr. Ignatius' story is even more significant, because in some ways it reflects the spirit of the times of the Territory: Religious education in the family is declining in Hong Kong, as well as the attendance of churches and places of worship.

Despite this, a rampant materialism has failed to hold back the search for religious meaning: "I started to get interested in faith in college in 1997. I joined an Anglican congregation and was baptized in 1999, but for some time I also felt attracted by Catholicism.

After reading a book on the life and mission of Mother Teresa, Ignatius began to feel a kind of call: "Someone told me that I should become a priest, but I thought that the message must be wrong. I talked to my pastor and asked him to pray for me".

Thanks to a Catholic friend Ignatius began to attend some liturgical celebrations of the local Church and, in 2003, decided to enter the Catholic catechumenate. In 2004 he started the path that led him to officially enter the Catholic Church during the Easter of 2005. This change "has not affected my vocation. I went to mass every day, and religious who cared for the church began to ask me if I were looking for something ... ".

The sisters presented Ignatius to the rector of the diocesan seminary, the Holy Spirit: "One year after my entrance into the Catholic Church I entered the seminary. At first I thought I wanted to follow the Dominican or Franciscan charism, but God has chosen the diocesan path for me".

His family did not take his decision well: "My parents and my two twin brothers, who are younger, are not Catholic. Especially my mother and father could not accpt my becoming a priest, they believed that they would lose a son".

With time, things changed: "They inability to understand my choices gradually passed to acceptance, and today my father is proud of me and appreciates the missionaries, who left everything for the good of Hong Kong. I will try to always study, continuing the work with young people and trying to make them understand that God has a calling for everyone".
Demography has always played a critical role in shaping the destiny of countries across regions. We have detailed in Demographic Warfare how the population can be used as a tool by countries against other nations strategically. The demography of a region is also influenced by sociological and cultural factors that significantly influence the foreign policy of countries in terms of nationalist pride and their civilizational ties to a region. Thus, the Russian claims of their sphere of influence from Eastern Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia are based on the Czarist rule during the glory of the Russian Empire while the Chinese claims are based on the ancient maps of the Qing dynasty; claiming the entire South China Sea, Aksai Chin, Arunachal Pradesh (Tawang), parts of Russias Far East and extending all the way to the West Pacific island chains.

Even today, an important factor contributing to Russias revisionism is its claim that ethnic Russians dominated Eastern Ukraine and the strategic Crimean Peninsula which has changed hands many times over the last few centuries in various wars like the Crimean War of 1853. After the 2014 Euromaidan Coup in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin used this domination to annex Crimea in a referendum, to stake Russias claim over Eastern Ukraine which has an ethnic Russian-dominated population citing the protection of the ethnic Russians along with Russias strategic interests. Undoubtedly, the Chinese have been one of the best exponents of using civilizational heritage and history to validate their claims through an aggressive foreign policy along with instilling strong nationalism in their citizens about the ancient glory of China. Whether it is the Chinese occupation of Tibet, the demographic invasion of Xinjiang by Hans or the Patriot Education Program; the Chinese have long used their ancient culture and teachings (like Sun Tzu) to define their foreign policy and military doctrines. Initiatives like OBOR that use the Old Silk Route should also be seen in this light.

While Russia and China have been successful in raising the pitch of nationalism to reclaim their glorious past, India has been rather apologetic about its ancient glory that transcends any other civilization on the planet. Post-Independence, Indias adoption of NAM and other pacifist doctrines has made it passive in asserting its civilizational heritage in the projection of its foreign policy. The ancient Indian glory has the hallmarks of astronomy, medical science; and the doctrines of statecraft, diplomacy and espionage (penned in Arthashastra) during the Mauryan Era centuries before the European States brought in the concept of sovereign states, diplomacy, etc. Despite this rich heritage for nearly half a century, India practiced NAM and a defensive policy of credible minimum deterrence except for the brief period of 1971 during the Bangladesh Liberation War when India managed a resounding victory over Pakistan by creating Bangladesh out of East Pakistan.

While these doctrines are slowly being unshackled through multilateralism and military defence agreements with the US, the pursuit of military exercise in far-off waters like South China Sea and Pacific Ocean with the US and Japan etc., it is time that India also sheds its apologetic mindset and develops pride for its ancient past and contributions to the world. It is time for India to develop a unique identity about what an Indian model of partnership means and what is the message it would like to send to the world. It is only the adoption of a proud Indian identity by the establishment and its syncing with the domestic and foreign policy that will lead to strong nationalist values in its citizens. The above will be an uphill task as Indias ecosystem is dominated by leftists who propagate the myth of the Aryan invasion theory.

While the above by no means suggests that India should also embark on a path of revisionism like Russia and China, it simply means that India should strongly stake its claims over what is rightfully its and that means no room for accommodation on Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. Simultaneously, India should also focus on leveraging its civilizational ties across Asia-Pacific with the message of peace and prosperity as a developmental partner across the region that respects the diversity of culture, language and religion of other countries, unlike China who is an aggressor undermining the sovereignty of nations through neo-colonization and ideological subversion.

The Indian establishment and the people of South Asia must remember the civilizational ties that bind the region and take pride in them. This should be the starting point of Indias identity in the region. The Indus Valley and Saraswati Civilization once formed the cradle of the Indian cultural heritage spreading across South Asia from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Sri Lanka to Nepal and Bangladesh and Bhutan. The regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan were once a part of the ancient Hindu culture that extended from the Balkh region in Afghanistan to Swat Valley, Multan, and Gilgit-Baltistan in Jammu & Kashmir. The Swat Valley in Pakistan (named after the Swat River) is derived from the Sanskrit Word Suvasthu while Multan got its name from the Sanskrit word Mulsthana and was once known as the city of Lord Surya (Sun). The city housed a glorious temple and held an annual fair and festival for Lord Surya till the Tughlaqs demolished it in the 12th century AD. Similarly, Gilgit-Baltistan in POK houses the Sharda Peeth, a religious centre in learning, Takshila in Pakistan has the famous Buddhist centre of learning and Balochistan has the famous Hinglaj temple, a Shakti Peeth in reverence of Goddess Sati the consort of Lord Shiva.

Moreover, the Indian empires from the Mauryas to the Guptas have ruled from Afghanistan to Myanmar, the gateway to Southeast Asia. Beautiful Hindu temples are found in Bali, Indonesia while the Sri Lankan Tamils and Sinhala clans herald from Indian descent with cultural ties dating back to the historical age of Ramayana. India has been responsible for the spread of Buddhism under the Maurya dynasty, and this includes the Sinhala, the Sri Lankan ruling class, the Naga Tribes in Myanmar and countries like Bhutan, China, the Far East and Southeast Asia.

The Indian civilizational ties run deep with Nepal that was once a Hindu Rashtra and a majority Hindu-dominated country. Though with the rise of communists in Nepal after the fall of the monarchy, the Indian influence has waned yet India must continue to leverage all the tools it has from civilizational ties to the cultural centres to demographic changes to maintain its sphere of influence over Nepal. Like Nepal, even Bangladesh (earlier East Pakistan) was a part of India before 1947. Bangladesh, a majority Muslim-dominated country has a vast imprint of Indian civilizational ties in the form of Hindu temples and a good number of Bengali Hindus continue to live there. India has as much right to care for its Civilizational Brothers in South Asia as it has the right to advocate for regions that still hold the Indian cultural heritage. India should thus also stand up for Balochistan that is directly or indirectly intertwined with it.

Thus it is evident that Indias civilizational ties extend beyond its man-made borders, and it must assert these civilizational ties and extend communication lines with people of these regions whose destinies are intertwined with each other. For this India mush shed its pacifist doctrines and reinvigorate it ancient glory and project it through its foreign policy across the region and the world through study groups, contacts between political leaders and movements, cultural centres, media, people forums highlighting ties with its civilizational brothers. India must break away from its ostrich syndrome and rise upto its role as the leader in Asia-Pacific and not accept any spiel that it has no interests in the internal affairs of Balochistan as for India to emerge as the leader in the region and a challenger to China, it needs regional peace, security and development in its neighbourhood to be able to facilitate a strong South Asia and later Asia-Pacific.

India must take a leaf out of strategies of Russia and China who have asserted their civilizational ties and used demography to their advantage in Ukraine or Xinjiang. India must encourage and give platforms to Baloch Human Rights activists to expose Pakistans duplicity on the State-Sponsoring of terrorism and human rights violations. It is also in Indias interests to bring to the limelight how rigged democracy is being supplanted on the people of POK who have for long vociferously protested against the suppression of basic human rights. It is time for India to show Pakistan a mirror and send a global message that just like Bangladesh in 1971, India will stand for the people in Balochistan and all other regions of South Asia that have civilizational ties with it.

The Indian PM Narendra Modis Independence Day address to the nation on 15th August 2016 was historic as he thanked the people of Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) for the support and faith they have reposed in him was a step in the right direction. The invocation of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Balochistan in the Independence Day Speech was a first ever by an Indian PM and sent political shockwaves across the region and the world. While Pakistan has for long accused Indian intelligence R&AW for fomenting terror in Balochistan (its largest province accounting for nearly 44 percent area of Pakistan); it has miserably failed to substantiate these outlandish claims and even the EU Parliament has recently asked Islamabad to be held accountable for human rights violations in Balochistan.

Pakistan also conveniently forgets that unlike Jammu & Kashmir that signed an instrument of accession with India at the time of Independence in 1947, the Pakistani army bombed the residence of the Baloch Leader Mir Ahmadyar Khan and used force to occupy Balochistan illegally. It is worth noting that the international media on 11th August 1947 had acclaimed Balochistan to be an independent country. Pakistan attempted a repeat of the above through its guerrillas in Kashmir. Thus, Balochistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir have been forcefully and illegally occupied by Pakistan, and the above are clear examples of Pakistans psyche at inception which the entire world is now acknowledging.

While there are certain quarters of intellectuals in Pakistan and India that state that India has no right to interfere in Balochistan which is an internal matter of Pakistan; on account of their gravy train; the statement by the PM Modi invoking Balochistan has now established that India is finally willing to be aggressive in its role as the leader in South Asia and beyond leading its civilizational brothers. This message has already been welcomed by Bangladesh and Hamid Karzai, the former President of Afghanistan.

The invocation of Balochistan and POK though primarily aimed at Pakistan has big ramifications on the other big player in the region i.e. China and its proposed CPEC running from POK to Gwadar in Balochistan. India has already raised the matter of CPEC in POK with the Chinese, as it is Indian Territory illegally occupied by Pakistan. Moreover, even the Balochis have long protested the Chinese CPEC and targeted the Chinese officers, and installations in and around Gwadar Port. Thus Indias upping the ante on POK and Balochistan is bound to have a serious impact on CPEC, and the Chinese-state media Global Times recently called it Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) instead of the usual Pakistani Administered Kashmir. The people in POK also recently called for a total shutdown as a protest against the CPEC which was successful and China has now also opened the communication lines with India on regional and global issues given the stakes that are involved. Moreover, the independence of Balochistan will also have great implications for the region. It is the duty of India to fight for the struggle of the suppressed Balochis as a responsible power in Asia-Pacific following its motto of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam or the welfare of all the people in the world.

While it is true that civilizational ties can be the foundation of alliances or partnerships, in todays era, it is equally important that these ties should be leveraged to create strong economic partnerships that will help the developmental goals of all the countries in the region. It is only by promoting an alternate model of sustainable development for all the nations that India will be able to create its order that will be welcomed by its neighbours against the aggressive expansionist Chinese agenda. Others initiatives such as Indias pronounced foreign policy goals of Neighbourhood First and Act East are also important for India to emerge as the regional giant. Indias setting up of a SAARC satellite for the benefit of other SAARC nations, the Indian Ocean Rim Association, the BBIN initiative and the International Solar Alliance for the sharing of solar technology are crucial steps in cementing these civilizational ties.

Going ahead, India will need to de-hyphenate Pakistan from SAARC and make the cost of abetting terror unsustainable for it and reduce it to a pariah nation. At the same time, India should aim for creating an economic union in Asia-Pacific by setting up a comprehensive trade agreement that could include FTAs and preferential trade and tariffs for nations. The above may also include sharing the advantages of the Chabahar Port, NSTC, and Sagarmala Project with other countries that need access to facilitate their movement of goods. India can position itself as the centre for both Indian Ocean trade as well as access to Central Asia. Apart from this, more military cooperation, joint drills and information sharing can be done which can act as a buffer for countries against the powerful Chinese military. The exchange of students and professionals for mutual benefit can be carried out between the nations in the region which could also strengthen the civilizational ties. India can also set up wellness centres in the nations that focus on Ayurveda and Yoga to promote physical and mental wellbeing based on the ancient holistic principles and also position itself as a centre for medical and religious tourism at preferential prices for the region.

An important component here will be the citizens of the neighbouring countries who are of Indian origin. They can be effective brand ambassadors of India and prove a useful link in connecting the people of their countries with Indians and the Indian way of life. Friendship and cultural forums that celebrate the diversity of festivals, music, language, poetry and literature can also be created which can also serve as a common platform for people to engage and build professional and economic partnerships. Indias population is the second highest in the world after China, and it is high time that it starts using this demographic dividend strategically. It is also in the interests of India and the people in South Asia to assert their common civilizational heritage to maintain peace and stability in the region to stall the Talibanization of parts of South Asia.

Hence while it is true that India believes in the values of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam; yet it also must invoke the doctrines of Kautilya in Arthashastra that heralded the Golden Age across the region, and assert its role as a civilizational brother leading the way for countries in the region and the world. As Hu Shih, the former Ambassador of China to the USA once aptly remarked, India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border. They say history always repeats, and the time is ripe for India to ensure that it happens to create a powerful Asia-Pacific that can be a role model for the world to emulate.
While running errands recently, I parked my car and was in the process of heading into the store. As I did so, I noticed that I had parked next to a car that had both a Jesus fish and one of the symbols you see here on its trunk. I paused for a moment and considered moving my car. Had it been newer and less scratched up than it is, I might have done so. In the end, laziness won out, and I decided not to bother.As I walked on, it occurred to me that I probably would have moved my car if I had a Darwin fish or any other pro-reality messages affixed to it. I don't think I would have had enough confidence that the owner of the car parked here would not have messed with my car in this case. This seems like reminder of Christian privilege here in Mississippi. The evangelical fundamentalist Christians who live here do not have to worry about the consequences for displaying pro-Christian messages; we atheists cannot say the same The Christian whose car I parked next to can put all sorts of pro-Christian and even anti-reality messages on his or her car without worrying about vandalism. This Christian has probably never stopped to consider the possible consequences of being pulled over by a secular law enforcement officer who might not appreciate these symbols and might even treat him or her differently on this basis. This Christian probably does not have to worry about what his or her employer would think if he or she were to notice these symbols in the parking lot.I could easily convince myself that this is no big deal. While I sometimes think that I'd like to have a Darwin fish on my car, not being able to do so is a fairly minor issue. Besides, I am free to do so. I could slap a Darwin fish on my car as soon as I could reasonably obtain one. I don't do so, however, because I fear that I'd be subject to vandalism by evangelical fundamentalist Christians here in Mississippi and additional scrutiny by evangelical fundamentalist Christian law enforcement officers and employers. Being free to do something does not mean that one is free to do it without experiencing adverse consequences.Small, isolated instances like the one I describe here often sound trivial. And really, many of them are trivial when we consider them individually. The problem is that there are so many of them that their cumulative impact begins to be a bit less trivial. It should be of concern that there are all sorts of ways secular Mississippians have to think twice about how they express themselves. We deserve to have as much freedom as our Christian neighbors. And yet, this often seems like an unrealistic goal when we are surrounded by reminders that this is evangelical fundamentalist Christian turf.
An all-female law firm in the Sydney suburb of Mt Druitt is getting attention.



After all, its not often that a law firm like Western Sydney Legal comes along in a male-dominated profession.



In a feature on The Daily Telegraph, the law firm composed of solicitors Beverly Boyle, Anjli Chowdhary and assistant Sandra Wade discussed how its like to operate a small firm given their unique makeup.



According to Chowdhary, who bought the law firm after being away from the workforce for two decades, it wasnt at all intentional that the firm is all-female.



Its the way it happened with our staff, but we are very happy with how its turned out, she told The Telegraph.



It is a very male-dominated profession especially out in Western Sydney, and in the older age group its unusual, she added.



The law firm which provides services from family law to wills to immigration says its very hands-on. They also provide a non-threatening environment, Chowdhary said.



This may be why the community has welcomed the law firm; something that Chowdhary noted makes a big difference from working in BigLaw.



I love the community  it is what is great about the job, Chowdhary said. I was working in a big law firm in the city and it was impersonal  working here, it is more rewarding as you are really making a difference in peoples lives.


Baker & McKenzies global revenues increased 8 per cent for the fiscal year ended 30 June 2016. In constant currency terms there was a 16 per cent rise.The global law firm brought in U$2.62 billion with net profit of $904 million, a rise of 14 per cent (22 per cent in constant currency terms). Profit per equity partner was $1.3 million, up 13 per cent (21 per cent in constant currency terms).Asia Pacific accounted for 26 per cent of Bakers global revenues while EMEA made up 37 per cent and the Americas 37 per cent. Revenue in each region grew by at least 10 per cent.The firm hired 65 lateral partners during the year and promoted 85. Women made up 40 per cent of the firms new promotions during the year and 24 per cent of the 1,580 partners in total.The firms total headcount at fiscal year-end included 6,045 fee earners (full-time equivalent) while the actual headcount of all staff was 13,157.Clifford Chance will replace its standalone office in Saudi Arabia with an association in the kingdom.The international law firms office was licensed in 2013 and although the firm says it was a successful operation, it believes that an association with newly-established local firm Abuhimed Alsheikh Alhagbani Law Firm (AS&H) is a better way forward.The new local firm is headed by Dr. Fahad Abuhimed and Clifford Chances senior Saudi partner Khalid Al-Abdulkareem will contribute alongside his role with the international firm.The regional managing partner of Herbert Smith Freehills has been announced as an Australian Workplace Gender Equality Agency pay equity ambassador. Sue Gilchrist s new role reflects her career-long commitment to improving gender diversity within the legal profession and means that she pledges to take action to ensure equal pay at HSF.The law firm has already committed to improving equality and diversity with a target for women to make up 30 per cent of its global partnership and leadership roles by 2019.
A US City Court judge has agreed to forever leave the bench after allegations of improper judicial conduct.



Albany City Court Judge Thomas K. Keefe will step down from the bench on September 30 and agreed he will never seek a judicial position again, a report from local public radio network WAMC noted.



According to the broadcast network, court documents say Keefe had on several occasions lashed out at prosecutors over proposed plea bargains, using discourteous and undignified language to express his anger.



According to Above the Law, among the most colourful allegations against the judge was that he told an assistant district attorney: If you dont f****** like the way things are going in this f****** courtroom, then dont come back.



In his retirement letter sent to Albany City Mayor Kathy Sheehan, Keefe said that his decision to retire is due in large part to his mandatory transfer from Albany Criminal Court to Albany Civil and Traffic Courts because of complaints filed by the District Attorneys Office with the Judicial Conduct commission.



He said he has had to devote substantial time, energy and resources to defend himself against the complaints.



I have missed the good work I was able to do in Albany Criminal Court helping many defendants get their lives back on track while also, where appropriate, holding them accountable for their behaviour, the judge said.



Keefe was supposed to serve until 2022, the Times Union noted. A referee with the commission sustained 10 of 13 charges made against the judge.



Its important to note, however, that these are allegations, the judges lawyer, Mark Mishler, stressed in multiple reports.



The judge said that though his stipulation with the commission does not require him to admit any misconduct, he acknowledged misconduct in four of the charges, including my exceedingly poor handling of a matter involving a veteran in 2013.



Iraq War veteran Joseph Hayner was in court saying he tested positive for marijuana. According to the Times Union, Keefe asked the veteran if he had killed anyone in Iraq or Albany.



Hayner said no.



Okay, good, the judge told Hayner. So, if you had killed somebody, that would be really bad. If, in fact, you smoked marijuana in the last week, who the hell cares, right? Who the hell cares?



Keefe considers this the worst thing I have done in my 14 years as a judge, and for which I apologized. My intent was good; my execution was horrible.


By Rob Brooks, Scientia Professor of Evolutionary Ecology; Director, Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, UNSW Australia

Daily Telegraph

Sydneys Daily Telegraph is suffering one of their frequent relapses into frothy-mouthed panic about government wastage on research grants. Poking at layabout academics for wasting tax dollars on seemingly frivolous projects reminds me of nothing more than the schoolyard bully who secretly knows he peaked in year 9. Today, the Tele flattered me by holding up one of my own projects for ridicule, ironically illustrating their point that rusted-on ideology, and patronage provide the most direct route possible to mediocrity.

In an Exclusive Natasha Bita goes beyond the tried-and-true formula of simply spouting big school words culled from the titles and summaries of grant proposals, and giggling what does that even mean?. She pits a handful of phrases from grant summaries against more urgent priorities, quoting Michael Potter of the Centre for Independent Studies:

Would it not be a better investment to fund research into cures for disease, major social problems, and ways to boost the Australian economy?

Quite. Presumably we can leave it to the Tele and the CIS to decide on which research is most beneficial? Without the need for all that grant writing and peer review?

Trying to isolate researchers by painting some research as valuable and the rest as claptrap is a clever strategy. But devoutly as we all may wish for an end to cancer, even cancer researchers, hell even some cancer patients think there are other priorities too.

Sexual conflict and the taxpayer

The Australian Research Council no longer publishes the titles of grants in its funding announcements. Im not sure what the official line is, but the impression among my colleagues is they seek to present a small target to exactly this kind of pillory, which becomes annual sport when the likes of Andrew Bolt tire of their regular targets of faux-outrage.

Now the ARC publish only summaries of the projects or their likely benefits. Never mind, those can be cherry-picked too. Thats how I found my project mentioned in todays paper. A NewsCorp blogger named Tim Blair picked up on a project of mine, in which I collaborate with economists Pauline Grosjean and Paul Seabright, that was funded in last years round.

Surely a government that genuinely believes we have serious debt and deficit issues wouldnt give more than $500,000 to the University of NSW for a project that intends to address how the evolutionary phenomena of intra-sexual competition and intersexual conflict interact with economic circumstances to shape gendered behaviour and attitudes.

And heres the bit that convinces me Tim Blair isnt just a poorly programmed bot:

Its difficult to tell whats meant by intersexual conflict interacting with economic circumstances but its probably something to do with taxpayers getting screwed.

See what he did there? If it doesnt snare the Walkley, itll definitely have the boys down the pub chuckling into their schooners.

The bit that Mr Blair quoted selectively was from the description of our project On the origins and persistence of gender: Combining evolutionary and economic approaches to study sex differences and cultural variation. You wont find that title on the ARC website, but you will find the full project description.

This project intends to address how the evolutionary phenomena of intra-sexual competition and inter-sexual conflict interact with economic circumstances to shape gendered behaviour and attitudes. These phenomena are important in evolution, economics, psychology and sociology, with implications for the economy and for the welfare of women and men. The project predicts that gender-related culture arises, partially, out of mating market dynamics. The research crosses traditional boundaries between biology and economics to investigate the forces giving rise to gendered behaviour and resulting patterns of marriages, violence, political preferences and occupational choices. The project may provide new insights into the links between gender and violence, within-family conflicts, and gender roles in the home and workplace.

In 18 years of applying for research support, I have never yet proposed a project with more pressing or important consequences. It contains so many of the things that conservatives fulminate over: declining marriage rates, rising violent and non-violent crime, and changing gender roles. If our project can provide new insights into intimate partner violence, or why young men take risks with their lives, or the reasons behind declining marriage rates, I would expect the likes of Bita, Potter and Blair to show at least the minimum humane curiosity.

Curiosity, it seems, is a limited commodity at Telegraph HQ. As is the capacity to do even the most cursory research. Shonkily researched assertions are okay if you enjoy the safe patronage of a major news organisation. You would never get away with such abject laziness, or such contempt for professional disinterest, in a grant proposal to a federal funding body.

#PubTest

Ray Hadley picked up the Telegraphs baton in an interview with the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, demanding that the ARC justify its funding decision in the front bar of a Western Sydney or North Brisbane pub.

Yes, after the forlorn cries for better funding of research rang through Science Week last week, and as the ARC sits in Canberra to decide the outcomes of this years biggest schemes, the pro-ignorance side of the culture wars has decided to play their favourite game. Their attempts to paint researchers as out-of-touch layabouts draining the public purse are, if you read the comments on Blairs blog, playing well with the patrons of those very pubs.

Our ideas are already well pub-tested, Mr Treasurer. Many a research project is hatched in a bar-room conversation. Many of us still have the scrawled-on beer coasters to prove it (#putoutyourcoasters?), and receipts to show we spent our own money to buy the booze. And there seems no end of Research in the Pub evenings in which academics explain their research and discuss ideas with members of the curious - drinking - public.

And the fewer than 20 percent of projects that succeed in gaining funding have passed a trial by fire more intense than any front-bar witch hunt Messers Hadley or Morrison could confect. Indeed the real scandal here is how much of Australias top-notch intellectual effort is wasted by only funding a small proportion of the many deserving projects. If the treasurer is as worried about waste as he professes, then perhaps he should find the money to fund universities and research in line with the kinds of country Australia should hope one day to become.

Research shows that it would be an economically sound investment.









Disclosure

Rob Brooks receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Which is how this whole column came about, actually.

Originally published in The Conversation.
Moving abroad to study can be daunting and exciting and in Australia there are laws that protect the rights of international students.The Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) Act covers everything from financial protections through to work rights, student welfare and complaints. 'The Australian Government wants international students to have a rewarding and enjoyable experience when they come to Australia to study,' said a department of education spokesman.International students have rights to information about their course and the institution they wish to study with before and during enrolment. International students do not have to use an education agent and can enrol directly with an Australian education institution.Anyone wanting to use an education agent are advised to pick one used by the institution they are applying to and a list of education agents can usually be found online. Agents must give you accurate advice about the courses on offer, including entry requirements and information about living in Australia.Under Australian law an education institution must have a written agreement with the overseas student that outlines the services they will provide, all the fees a student is required to pay, and conditions for refunds of money if necessary.Since December 2015, changes to Australian law give international students more choice about how they pay their fees. Previously you could not pay more than 50% of fees before starting a course. Now you can choose to pay more than 50% of tuition fees before the course starts. For example, paying more may avoid fluctuations in currency rates.Australia is becoming more popular with overseas students and now for the first time six Australian universities have made the top 100 worldwide in the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities.Some 23 Australian universities made the top 500 ranking, many improving on their best ever result. The University of Melbourne is the highest ranking Australian university at 40 while the University of Queensland moved from 77 to 55 in the overall rankings.Monash University moved into the top 100 for the first time while the Australian National University, the University of Sydney and the University of Western Australia are also in the top 100.Since 2009 the ARWU rankings have been published independently by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. The rankings are based on six objective indicators with a focus on published and awarded research.It is also possible to get funding to study at universities in Australia. For example, there is some $20 million of Australian government funding annually to Australian universities for over 300 International Postgraduate Research Scholarships (IPRS).
Hi guys!



I applied for a subclass 600 visa and asked for 6 months, today it got accepted and it says Stay Period 12 month(s) from the date of each arrival and Visa Conditions 8101 - NO WORK



8201 - MAXIMUM 3 MONTHS STUDY



I know in most cases people who apply for this visa get 3 months stay for a 12 month period, but no where does it say I have to leave within 3 months.



I called my immigration office in Ottawa and she said if it doesn't state you need to leave after 3 months then I can buy a return ticket a year later from the date of purchase.....



Has anyone else had this happen before!? If this is true that's amazing!!! I'm actually quite shocked because I didn't even know there was an option to stay one full year on a tourist visa. I thought I was going to have to go through the struggle of making short trips to NZ haha
MQB

Frankly, we're surprised it took them so long, considering Audi is the first German automaker to built a stronghold in China with its A8 and A6 models . The Tianjin factory will put together 240,000 twin-clutch gearboxes per year, but capacity can be doubled rapidly if needed.The automatic gearbox in question is the 7-speed S tronic unit that will be matched to a 2.0 TFSI turbocharged engine and used by the A4 L . The new generation of the premium mid-size sedan will be launched in China in September and features the lowest CO2 of the segment partly due to the gearbox.Volkswagen Automatic Transmission Tianjin creates synergies between the Group brands, further strengthening them. With efficient use of resources we live up to our promise of sustainability at every step along the way, says Dr. Jochem Heizmann, President of Volkswagen Group China.The Volkswagen Group has been making gearboxes in China since 2014, but they were only for the modular transverse platform () so they wouldn't match the longitudinally mounted engine of the A4. The DL382 also differs from its Volkswagen sisters through its durability, being able to handle around 500 Nm of torque.Audi has been selling cars in China since 1988. Its business is split into two broad parts, the FAW-Volkswagen one that produces the A6 L, A4 L, Q5 and Q3 in Changchun and the Foshan factory in the south of the country that puts together the less popular A3 in sedan and hatchback configurations.This new Tianjin facility is modular, so it can run more shifts. The project, involving 576.6 million euros of investment, has seen its civil engineering works completed, and the installation, testing and adjustment of electricity equipment will be completed before the Spring Festival (February 18-24).
Youtuber Marchettino traveled from Italy to see the show and film the latest supercars. But when the Vision Gran Turismo tried to leave, he shot more than he expected.First, the car was running out of gas immediately after being cold-started. So someone at Bugatti had to run and get a canister of gas to put in there just in case. With tens of people watching that proved to be more embarrassing than expected.Even though the body is sculpted with more attention to detail than Chiron itself. However, the powertrain isn't built to consumer levels of quality. After being driven very slooooowly around the fields, the Vision GT had to load onto one of those transparent trailers. However, a slight incline of the ramp proved too much for it.We think it's a combination of the grabbing point from the gearbox with the lack of hill start assist. The driver tries revving the engine, but when you have 1,500 horsepower, it's only natural that the clutch doesn't want to cooperate.We've seen similar incidents with other supercar concepts and the solution is almost always towing or having two or three big guys to push.Something else we found interesting is the fact that the GT concept actually has license plates from the Middle East. But that's because it's been bought by the Saudi Arabia Prince Badr bin Saud , together with the world premiere Bugatti Chiron. We are talking about the very unit that drove onto the stage at this year's Geneva Motor Show. But what's a few million when Forges says you're worth $21 billion?
According to an LA Times report , Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation by Assemblyman Bill Quirk (D-Hayward) that defines lane splitting and also authorizes the California Highway Patrol (CHP) to define some rules for motorcyclists to obey regarding the practice."I am thrilled to see that California is once again at the forefront of common-sense road safety legislation, Quirk told the publication. "Signing of this bill will bring legitimacy to this practice and help to keep our roads safer and our drivers  both motorcyclists and motorists  better educated.The law now defines lane splitting as driving a motorcycle that has two wheels in contact with the ground, between rows of stopped or moving vehicles in the same lane, including on both divided and undivided streets, roads, or highways.As for the official CHP lane splitting guidelines, that remains to be disclosed soon. The previous rules were allowing motorcyclists to split lanes as long as their speed was not exceeding 15 mph above the traffic speed and was forbidding the maneuver above 50 mph.This original set of guidelines turned riders against the CHP, saying the advised speeds are too low and that they shouldnt be making up rules as its not in their jurisdiction.Well, guess what, the law passed and the Californian state officially designated the CHP to establish such guides. Kinda funny how the law works, right?Personally, I think its a good thing the Highway Patrol will handle the rules. Even before the new law, there was a tacit agreement between bikers and the cops that let them lane split as long as they werent being lunatics. Plus, the motorcycle policemen do it too, so they know better how it should be done compared to someone sitting in a chair all day inventing new laws.
SUV

The South Korean brand will use the platform of the Tucsonfor the new pickup truck, instead of choosing a body-on-frame solution. With the unibody design, Hyundais first pickup truck will be more like a conventional car or SUV instead of what you might expect from a vehicle with a truck bed behind its passenger compartment Hyundai is not the first automaker to choose a unibody design for a pickup truck, and the decision makes sense when you consider what most users do with these vehicles.Meanwhile, clients who want more from a pickup truck than a drive to the mall and the drive-in can still go for body-on-frame models, but other automakers build these.Instead of making a cumbersome vehicle, which might not feel at home on paved roads, Hyundai preferred to build a workhorse that should drive just like a regular automobile.Thus, while not being able to two massive weights or to carry them in its bed, the Santa Cruzs production version will provide the functionality of a pickup truck without the hassle and the driving experience of one.At this point, Dave Zuchowski, the President and CEO of Hyundai Motor America, has confirmed that the brand has made a decision regarding the design of the Santa Cruz s production version. Hyundai is expected to show it at the Los Angeles Auto Show or at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show.According to Motor Trend , the production version of the Hyundai Santa Cruz will come to market as a 2018 or 2019 model. The latter variant is less likely, considering that the platform for this model is already on the market. Hyundai s internal estimates believe that the brand could sell anything between 50,000 and 70,000 pickup trucks a year, and the companys CEO stated that those results would make sense." A consistent number of customers would come from the lines of those that have bought a truck in the past and discovered it was more than what they needed.
Photo of 2017 Mazda6 courtesy of Mazda.

Mazda has set pricing for its 2017 Mazda6, which will retail for at least $22,780  a $450 increase from the 2016 model, the automaker has announced.

Mazda will again offer the Mazda6 in three trim grades, including the Sport, Touring, and Grand Touring with an available 6-speed manual transmission on the Sport and Touring. The SkyActive-G 2.5L four powers the entire lineup.

The 2017 Mazda6 Sport with the manual kicks thing off at $22,780. The Sport with a 6-speed automatic transmission starts at $23,830. The manual-equipped Touring retails for $25,030, while the automatic Touring retails for $26,080. The Grand Touring with the automatic retails for $31,530. Shipments to Alaska add $45.

Mazda began building the 2017 Mazda6 in June. Mazda assembles the vehicle at a plant in Hofu, Japan.

Fleets can begin ordering the vehicle this month. The first retail units will begin arriving at dealer lots toward the end of August and into early September, according to Mazda.

Mazda has added several new features to the 2017 Mazda6 including G-Vectoring Control, as well as redesigned exterior mirrors, steering wheel and seat back pockets. The Grand Touring trim adds traffic sign recognition, radar cruise control, lane keep assist, high-beam control, and forward automatic braking with a collision warning.
Leonardo DiCaprio and his girlfriend, Nina Agdal got involved in a car accident in the Hamptons, the Bahamas last Saturday. Luckily, no one sustained a major injury.

The couple has been spending their time in the Bahamas when the incident happened. According to the reports, their vehicle had a minor bump with a Mini Cooper.

Page Six reported that an ambulance was at the scene as a precaution. Fortunately, it was just a minor car accident.

The report stated that the couple as traveling east on Montauk Highway in Wainscott in a Range Rover at about 4:30 p.m. Saturday when they were struck by a woman driving a Mini Cooper.

A source close to the "Wolf of Wall Street" stated that "[Leo and Nina] got rear-ended, but everyone is doing fine. It was [Leo's] friend's car." He allegedly checked the car and the people involved to make sure that all is fine.

"She was shaken up. Leo was nice about it. He motioned for her to come with him, and he helped her over to the guardrail so she could rest," the witness stated.

The car accident left a minor dent on the Range Rover. However, the Mini Cooper obtained a huge damage on the front-end which required towing. The report is uncertain if there were charges.

Leonardo DiCaprio and his 24-year old Danish girlfriend allegedly started dating in June. They were spotted in Malibu and Ibiza as well prior to the Hamptons car accident.

Prior to that, Just Jared reported that the lovey-dovey couple was seen leaving a dinner date in NYC on Thursday.

DiCaprio is the latest celebrity to got involved in a car accident. A couple of weeks ago, momager Kris Jenner also encountered a vehicular crash while driving her brand new Rolls Royce.
Chinese airlines are reportedly offering experienced airline pilots more than $300,000 a year, tax-free, to work for them and that might be just the beginning of a bidding war for cockpit crew. Chinas domestic airline industry is expanding far faster than its airlines can train their own pilots so the carriers are hiring headhunting companies to lure Western pilots to their cockpits. Some estimates place the demand for pilots in China at 100 a week for the next 20 years. When we ask an airline, How many pilots do you need?, they say, Oh, we can take as many as you bring, Dave Ross, president of Las Vegas-based recruiting company Wasinc International, told Bloomberg. Its almost unlimited. Passenger traffic in China increased 11 percent last year and there are twice as many domestic airlines (55) now compared to five years ago.

The best packages go to pilots willing to move to China but those who want to continue to live in their home countries can get free flights home in exchange for slightly smaller paychecks. There are also add-ons including signing bonuses, contract completion payouts and overtime. The carriers generally fly A320s and Boeing 737s but many are so new that their safety and performance records are unknown. Lacking any of the traditional leverage points that airlines use to recruit pilots, the Chinese carriers can offer only one incentive, New Zealand recruiter Liz Loveridge told Bloomberg. They cant attract people through any other means, Loveridge said. They think moneys the only answer.


22 August 2016 15:26 (UTC+04:00)

By Eric K. Fanning

This month, I completed a two-week, six-stop tour of the Pacific, beginning with a visit to the United States Armys 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii. It was a fitting way to start the trip, a reminder that the US Army is critical to forming the foundation for security in the Pacific.

The 25th Infantry Division, which in its early years earned the nickname Tropic Lightning, marks its 75th anniversary this autumn. The men and women stationed there  and, indeed, all US soldiers in the Asia-Pacific region  have been working to secure regional stability for much of the last century. Since US President Barack Obamas strategic rebalance to Asia, they have been doing even more.

Today, the US Army has a lot on its plate outside the region. It is at the forefront of the US-led coalitions campaign against the so-called Islamic State, as well as efforts to support the people of Afghanistan.

Yet we also continue to play a critical role in maintaining peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region. Though security in the Pacific is often associated with the efforts of the US Air Force and Navy, the Army is assuming an increasingly important role in strengthening regional partnerships. At a time when six of the worlds ten largest armies are located in the Pacific theater of operations, and 22 of the regions 27 countries have army officers as their defense chiefs, the need to invest in the US Armys mission in the region is clear.

A key component of that mission is the Pacific Pathways program, which involves joining multinational partners to conduct a series of military exercises intended to increase Army readiness through additional training and strengthened partner-force relationships. Engaging with US soldiers participating in Pacific Pathways exercises in Hawaii, Malaysia, and Alaska, I saw firsthand how these efforts advance regional security.

In Hawaii, American and Singaporean soldiers participated in their 36th year of joint exercises. From the newest privates to the most experienced generals, US soldiers have developed strong ties with their counterparts and deep pride in their shared security mission. In this sense, these soldiers are also serving as important ambassadors in the region.

The US Armys partnership with Malaysia is more recent. But during an annual joint exercise, I witnessed our forces improving familiarity and interoperability, and noted growing satisfaction with the strengthening of ties. In the event of, say, a natural disaster in the Pacific, the bonds that the US and Malaysia have fostered could help save thousands of lives during a combined crisis response.

We know that we must continue working to sustain and strengthen our engagement in the Pacific, even as US soldiers continue to carry out diverse and demanding missions in other parts of the world. One way we can help to meet this need is through the use of rotational brigades.

At Camp Casey in South Korea, I had lunch with soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division, who had trained for nine months at Fort Hood, Texas, before embarking on a nine-month rotation to the peninsula. Over the course of the deployment, the readiness of these forces actually increases, because of the quality and rigor of the training they undertake with partners from the Republic of Koreas Army.

Another way the US Army is maintaining flexibility, resiliency, and depth in the Asia-Pacific region is by placing pre-positioned stocks  strategic stockpiles of critical combat equipment  on allies territory. In Japan, for example, the US Army stores more than 100 watercraft that can be used to deliver supplies quickly in the event of a natural disaster or other contingency.

Beyond storing the equipment, we train with our partners to use it, and we develop our logistical capabilities to distribute it effectively. In effect, the US Army provides rapid response capabilities to the US Joint Force (the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines acting in tandem) and our allies and partners.

The US Army is also pursuing tactical innovation in the Pacific. While our budget for modernization is below that of the other US armed services, we must continue to develop capabilities rapidly and equip our people with the latest technology. That is why, for example, soldiers have been learning to fight in formation with robots in Hawaii, and we have engaged in bilateral training with unmanned aerial systems in Malaysia.

A final element of our involvement in the Asia-Pacific region is the effort to improve our capabilities in difficult tactical environments. We engage in exercises in Alaska that develop our capabilities in extreme climates  capabilities that will help us to ensure that the Arctic does not become a contested region. And, through our training in Hawaii and Malaysia, we have strengthened our capacity to fight in a jungle environment.

The US Army has a broad array of missions and responsibilities. From Hawaii through Guam, to Northeast Asia and the Alaskan frontier, it is pursuing a crucial one: providing a foundation for security in a dynamic region  and for Americas future there.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: The Foundations of Pacific Stability

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 11:34 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Azerbaijans Financial Market Supervisory Body is ready to discuss tactical plans of the banks operating in the country, and in case of need render its assistance to avoid possible problems that may occur, said Zakir Nuriyev, President of the Azerbaijan Banks Association.

He said the fact that the FMSB management wants to be aware of tactical plans does not mean that banks of the country will not be able to adopt them without approval of the regulator.

If any bank pursues open monetary policy or possesses a large volume of overdue loans, FMSB is interested in the measures that banks plan to take in order to eliminate associated problems. The regulator is ready to render consulting or any other support in case of need, he said.

He also mentioned that all banks are obliged to reflect their approaches of problem tackling in the activity plans. Each stage of banking activity should possess its tactical plan, which may vary depending on a number of situations. Nevertheless, the planning should be worked out within the framework of different scenarios of banks development, he said.

Nuriyev reminded that FMSB, which regulates the activities in the financial sector of the country, should control observance of the legislature, but is not eligible to interfere in activities of banks.

Therefore, FMSB may not demand banks to discuss tactical plans with the authority in a mandatory manner, he said.

FMSB aims to license, regulate and control the securities market, investment funds, insurance, credit organizations (banks, non-banking credit organizations and operator of postal communication) and payment systems.

Currently, 33 banks possess licenses for the implementation of banking activity in the country.

---

Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNew
22 August 2016 15:04 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Azerbaijan, with its favorable location at the crossroads of East and West and wide range of promising investment opportunities and planned projects, is considered as very attractive for foreign investments.

The volume of foreign investments made in the fixed capital of Azerbaijan in January-July 2016 stood at 4.92 billion manats ($ 3.03 billion) recording an increase by 27.1 percent as compared to the same index of 2015, the State Statistics Committee reported.

Some 87.9 percent (4.33 billion manats ($ 2.67)) of investments made by foreign countries and international organizations to the economy of Azerbaijan in the reported period fell to a share of investors from Great Britain, Turkey, Malaysia, Switzerland, Russia, USA, and Japan.

The biggest portion of foreign investments in the fixed capital of the country, which was made in April, amounted to 935.1 million manats ($ 576.9), while minimal volume was made in May and totaled 544.1 million manats ($ 335.6 million)

The country is currently engaged in the implementation of different projects that cover many regions of the country and envisage development of such spheres as agriculture, heavy and light industry, alternative energy, tourism, information technologies, construction, which are considered to be priority areas of the national economy and are able to catch interest of investors.

The country plans to minimize its oil dependence, which requires ensuring growth of non-oil sector of economy and increasing the volume of foreign investment in this field. Azerbaijan has already took certain steps to improve conditions for attraction of foreign investors by creating new industrial, chemical, and high-tech parks. Investors wishing to work in these parks are granted with tax and customs privileges, allowing them to reduce their production costs. All foreign investment is adequately protected in the country, enhancing investor confidence in Azerbaijan.

Agriculture and food industry of the country, which offers appealing prospects, is considered to be attractive for investors. The fertile lands, abundance of water and climatic diversity create favorable conditions for a strong agricultural sector in the country. Experts state that within three years, this sector will bring significant revenues to the state budget due to increased demand for processed agricultural products.

Priority investment areas in the sphere of tourism are construction of hotels, tourism complexes, recreation zones, as well as development of touristic sites.

Favorable geographic location promises expansion of transport routes, which will further increase the countrys attractiveness to investors in terms of easy delivery of products made in Azerbaijan to other markets.

Azerbaijan currently ranks 63 out of 189 countries in the World Banks ease of doing business index.

--

Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 16:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Seventy-three more state facilities were put up for privatization in Azerbaijan, the State Committee for Property Affairs reported.

Some 30 percent of stakes in 25 joint stock companies operating in various sectors of the economy were put on sale.

In addition 16 vehicles and 32 small state enterprises and facilities also were offered for privatization.

Total value of the companies put up for sale with a 50-percent discount exceeds 1.76 million manats ($1.07 million). These companies operate in different sectors of the economy, including the agriculture, industry, construction, transport and services sectors.



A complete list of state facilities put up for sale can be found at http://privatization.az/index.php/az/sas-s-hif/2016-05-24-10-18-36/mue-ssis-l-r/uemumi-siyah portal.

Most part of mall state enterprises and objects to be privatized are located in Sabunchu, Garadagh and Khazar districts of Baku, as well as in Absheron, Sumgayit, Mingachevir and Sheki regions of the country.

Follow the link for more detailed http://privatization.az/index.php/az/sas-s-hif/2016-05-24-10-18-36/kidzhik-doevlaet-muaessisae-vae-obyektlaeri

The portal was designed in two languages - Azerbaijani and English, which allows foreign investors to actively participate in the privatization process. In addition, the portal has a special section called Why Azerbaijan? that explains foreign investors why they should invest in the country.

Recently, seventy-one state facilities were put up for privatization in Azerbaijan.

Last year more than 1,000 different public facilities were privatized in Azerbaijan. Some 685 small state enterprises and objects, unfinished buildings, vehicles, 456 land plots, and 20 joint stock companies were privatized. Moreover, 464 non-residential area and 298 plots of land were leased and five state-owned enterprises were privatized through investment competitions.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 17:20 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijans State Civil Aviation Administration gave Turkish Airlines (THY) a permission to operate flights to the Azerbaijani city of Lankan, the Administration told Trend on August 22.

Turkish Airlines repeatedly turned to the aviation authorities of Azerbaijan with such a request, and the last appeal was received in early summer, the Administration reported.

As for the date of launch of the flights en route Istanbul -Lankaran, THY will itself determine that.

Turkish Airlines performs flights to Azerbaijan starting from 1991, and today the company carries out flights to Baku, Ganja and Nakhchivan.

Earlier, Vice-President of CJSC Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL), Eldar Hajiyev informed that currently, the number of flights-per-day operated from the Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku to Istanbul rank first. In general, AZAL and Turkish Airlines, carry out nine flights on this route during a day.

Hajiyev also noted that the growth of passenger traffic to Turkish cities of Bodrum, Izmir and Dalaman has been recorded. The most noteworthy fact is that in July and August the number of daily flights from Baku to Antalya has increased fourfold, and every aircraft fills up with passengers, Hajiyev said.

Over seven months of 2016, the Baku Airport provided services to 1.69 million passengers in total. The Heydar Aliyev International Airport serviced some 391,000 passengers in July this year, which is 27 percent higher than in the same period of 2015, while the passenger traffic to the popular Turkish resorts Antalya, Bodrum, Izmir and Dalaman amounted to 56,500 passengers.

Turkish Airlines is a 4-star airline with a fleet of 264 (passenger and cargo) aircrafts flying to 263 destinations worldwide with 220 being international and 43 domestic.

The airline is considered to be a global player and has a primary role in making Istanbul a major global hub linking North America, Asia, Europe and Africa.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 14:20 (UTC+04:00)

Gunay Hasanova

August 22 is the last day for submission of documents for registration of agitation groups for the upcoming referendum.

Under the calendar plan approved by the Central Election Commission (CEC), the necessary documents for registration of agitation groups should be submitted to the relevant election commission before 18:00 August 22, 2016.

September 26, 2016 was set as the date for referendum on proposed changes to the constitution of Azerbaijan.

In a bill recently sent to the Constitutional Court, President Ilham Aliyev proposed 29 amendments to Azerbaijans current constitution. The changes envisage extension of the presidential term from five to seven years, establishment of the first vice-president and vice-president positions in the country as well as abolishment of minimum age limit for presidential candidates, dissolution of parliament by the president.

The Constitutional Court gave the go ahead for the proposed changes on July 27.

In addition, August 22 is the deadline for the approval of the requirements regarding additional refinements in the voters lists submitted for familiarization of the voters, rules, texts, shapes, numbers and preparation of ballots for voting in the referendum.

The CEC registered two more initiative groups on August 20 Municipality and Civil society for their participation as campaign groups in the upcoming referendum.

Municipality campaign group was created by municipalities, which expressed interest in campaigning for the referendum, while Civil society group has been created by Azerbaijans Trade Unions Confederation and civil society organizations.

Previously, the CEC registered an initiative group of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party.

Final results of the Referendum will be announced till October 21.

The last time changes to the Constitution were made seven years ago, following Constitutional referendum held in 2009.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 18:14 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The Azerbaijani Navy started the command and staff exercises on August 22, Trend reported.

The exercises are held on the instruction of Azerbaijani President, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ilham Aliyev and in accordance with the approved plan of the combat readiness, the Defense Ministry reported.

Defense Minister, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov visited the base of Naval Forces for the stationing of warships of the Navy, inspected the level of combat readiness of ships and military personnel.

The minister also visited the command post, where he was informed about the readiness of ships participating in the exercises, the operational situation in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea and the management of Naval Forces.

The main purpose of the exercises, which involve forces and means of the Navy, the Air Force and the Missile Forces and Artillery, is a planning of joint actions for the protection of energy infrastructure in the operational zone of the Caspian Sea.

The exercise consisting of several phases will end on August 25.

Recently, the Azerbaijani Naval Forces has successfully performed at the Caspian Sea Cup-2016 in the framework of the International Army Games-2016 running from July 30 to August 13 in Russia. The Azerbaijani Navy became the leaders of various stages of the competitions and represented the country at the highest level.

The Azerbaijani Navy is regarded as one of the strongest and most equipped in the Caspian Sea region.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 15:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli



Some 5.4 billion cubic meters of gas and 1.3 million tons of condensate (nearly 10 million Barrels) were produced at Azerbaijans Shah Deniz gas and condensate field in the first quarter of 2016, as compared to 5.2 billion cubic meters of gas and 1.2 million tons of condensate in the same period of 2015, said BP report on the results of the companys activity in 1H2016 in Azerbaijan, issued on August 22.

The report says that currently, the average daily volume of gas output at the field is 29.5 million cubic meters (about 10.8 billion cubic meters per year).

In 1H2016, Shah Deniz fields operating expenditures totaled $225 million and capital expenditures  about $1.87 billion, the majority of which was associated with the Shah Deniz Stage 2 project.

The contract for development of the Shah Deniz offshore field was signed on June 4, 1996.

The shareholders in the contract are BP (operator - 28.8 percent), AzSD (10 percent), SGC Upstream (6.7 percent), Petronas (15.5 percent), Lukoil (10 percent), NIOC (10 percent) and TPAO (19 percent).

As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

The second stage of Shah Deniz field development started in December 2013. The total amount of investments provided by the operating consortium will be approximately $28 billion, excluding the construction of the export pipeline systems.

In the first half of 2016, BP delivered an average of 7.2 million cubic meters per day (or 1.31 billion cubic meters in total) of associated gas to the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR).

BP, which is the operator of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of oil and gas fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, delivered 3.2 billion cubic meters of associated gas to SOCAR in 2015. Fifteen oil wells and two water-injection wells were drilled at the Azeri-Chirag- Guneshli field last year.



The contract for developing the ACG field was signed in 1994. The proven oil reserve of the block nears 1 billion tons.



The shareholders of the project are BP - 35.8 percent, Chevron - 11.3 percent, Inpex - 11 percent, AzACG - 11.6 percent, Statoil - 8.6 percent, Exxon - 8 percent, TPAO - 6.8 percent, Itocu - 4.3 percent and ONGC - 2.7 percent.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 10:39 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

One soldier was killed and three others were injured in a PKK bomb attack on an armored military vehicle in the Viranshehir district of southern Shanlurfa province on Sunday evening, Daily Sabah reported.

PKK terrorists detonated mines planted on the Viransehir-Sanlurfa highway when the military vehicle was passing by.

Police and ambulances were immediately dispatched to the scene.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and EU, resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015.

Since then, more than 600 security personnel have been martyred and more than 7,000 PKK terrorists have been killed.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 10:27 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has sent a letter to his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in connection with the recent terror attack in Turkeys Gaziantep city.

Fifty-one people were killed, another 69 were injured, 17 of them are in serious condition as a result of August 20 blast in the city of Gaziantep in southern Turkey. The attack occurred during a wedding celebration.

Azerbaijan as a country suffering from terrorism strongly condemns all its forms and manifestations, as well as the terrorist attack in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which resulted in numerous casualties, Mammadyarov said in his letter.

In his message, Mammadyarov expressed deep grief and condolences to the families and friends of the victims, the brotherly people of Turkey in connection with the horrific terrorist attack and wished a speedy recovery to the injured.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 11:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

A group of people who tried to break into the Israeli Consulate General has been detained in Istanbul, Turkey, the Hurriyet newspaper reported on August 22.

Five people tried to break into the Israeli Consulate General Aug. 22 at 02:30 (GMT + 2 hours). All the detainees are citizens of Turkey.

It is reported that the purpose of the detainees was a protest against the recent military operations of the Israeli Air Force in the Gaza Strip.

The Israel Defense Forces on Aug. 21 inflicted a strike upon a number of facilities of Hamas (a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization) in the Gaza Strip in response to a rocket launched earlier from this area into the Israeli city of Sderot.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 13:33 (UTC+04:00)

By Gunay Hasanova

Turkey has built a 239-km wall in Hatay province on the border with Syria for enhancing its security, Anadolu Agency reported on August 22.

The newly built wall is three meters high and two meters wide, according to the agency.

The Turkish side is expected to build a new wall in other provinces bordering with Syria.

This decision was made within the framework of strengthening the fight against terrorism, because members of terrorist organizations from Syria regularly try to cross into the territory of Turkey.

Turkey recently announced its intention to work with Iran and Russia to fight terrorism in Syria.

Moscow and Tehran have joint positions in the Syria conflict, with Turkey deeply opposed to Bashar al-Assads regime, of which Russia is a major backer.

Previously, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the Syrian crisis can be resolved only by sincere cooperation at the international level, stressing on the role of Russia to achieve a permanent solution to the problem.

Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people.

Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The "Islamic State" (aka IS, ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist groups are the most active ones in Syria.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 14:51 (UTC+04:00)

By Gunay Hasanova

The issue of Fethullah Gulens extradition will be discussed on August 22, during a visit of the delegation of the U.S. Department of Justice to Turkey, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, TRT Haber TV channel reported.

He also said that this issue will be discussed during the visit of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to Turkey.

Turkish media outlets earlier reported that Joe Bidens visit to Turkey is expected before September 2016.

Gulen is accused of leading a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police and judiciary, forming what is commonly known as the parallel state.

Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that sooner or later the U.S. will have to choose between Turkey and Fethullah Gulen.

The July 15 coup attempt occurred when rogue elements in the Turkish military tried to overthrow the country's democratically elected government.

Turkey's government has repeatedly said the deadly plot, which martyred at least 246 people and injured more than 2,000 others, was organized by followers of U.S.-based preacher Fetullah Gulen.

The General Staff of Turkish Armed Forces has said that 8,651 servicemen of the armed forces participated in the military coup attempt in the country. The rebels used 35 planes, 37 helicopters, 246 tanks and three vessels during the military coup attempt in Turkey.

Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey on July 20.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 16:30 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

China, the worlds second largest economy, is interested in the increase of gas import from Turkmenistan, which holds the world's sixth largest natural gas reserves. The supply of natural gas from Turkmenistan to China is considered to be the solid foundation of the long-term and strategic economic and trade cooperation between the two countries.

China, which is the largest foreign trade partner of Turkmenistan, intends to increase the daily volume of Turkmen gas import up to 65 billion cubic meters.

Most of Turkmenistan's proven gas reserves are located in the Amu Darya basin in the south-east and in the Murgab South Caspian basins in the western part of the country.

China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which is the largest integrated energy company in China, is considered to be the only foreign company directly operating in Turkmenistan with its involvement in Bagtyiarlyk project near the Amu Darya River. The company has been operating in Turkmenistan since 2002 and now has oil and gas assets in the country and provides oilfield services.

Central Asia-China gas pipeline is yet another project implemented by the two countries. Some 10.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas was supplied via the pipeline, which starts in Turkmenistan, in January-March 2016. The figure is by 33 percent more than in the same period of 2015, Chinese Xinhua news agency reported earlier.

The pipeline runs through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and crosses the Chinese-Kazakh border in Chinese city of Khorgas. The pipeline's length is 1,830 kilometers and its total capacity is to reach 55 billion cubic meters a year. The project, which is the first transnational gas pipeline in China is expected to be completed until 2020.

Meanwhile, the 4th session of the Turkmenistan-China intergovernmental committee on cooperation, which is scheduled for August 22-24 will be held in Chinas Tianjin city, the Turkmen government said in a message on August 22.

China also intensively cooperates with Turkmenistan in the supply of equipment and services for transportation and communications. The two countries have great potential to increase economic ties.

China expressed its interest in increasing the supplies of cotton fiber, vegetable products, fruit and berry crops and certain raw materials produced by poultry and livestock complexes of Turkmenistan.

Moreover, cooperation in such spheres of the economy as the transportation, electricity, chemical and textile industry, construction materials, agriculture and urban development are also considered as promising areas of cooperation between the two countries.

--

Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 17:53 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

Kazakhstan and Israel have agreed on joint manufacture of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the course of the official visit of Kazakh Defense Minister Imangali Tasmagambetov to Israel, Ria Novosti reported.

The manufacturing of high-tech armament was one of the issues on the highest agenda during the meeting of Tasmagambetov with his Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman.

The sides have reached an agreement on the joint manufacture of unmanned aircrafts in Kazakhstan, which will be implemented on the basis of Israeli technology. World experience in the use of UAVs for both military and civil purposes shows necessity to implement assembling and technical support of tactical unmanned aircrafts, a message from the Kazakh defense ministry reads.

The project will be carried out in aviation-technical centre in Astana, which possesses all necessary production facilities and staff potential to implement operations. Moreover, the sides have also reached an agreement on the training of Kazakh militaries at the Israel staff training center.

Diplomatic relations between Kazakhstan and Israel were established on April 10, 1992. Exchange of the information in the security sphere is considered to be one of the main directions of cooperation between the two countries.

Israel and Kazakhstan have developed a security partnership involving exchanges of military technology, counterterrorism cooperation, and intelligence sharing since the early 1990's.

Kazakhstan Aviation Industry and Air Defense Forces of Kazakhstan have recently established the first multi-functional enterprise on assembly, repair and technical maintenance of aircrafts and aviation equipment.

Main objective of the centre is formation of high-technological production base for aviation equipment maintenance. The Centre will maintain SU-30 battle planes and S-295, AN-26 and AN-72 military-transport aircrafts.

--

Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
22 August 2016 18:02 (UTC+04:00)

By Gunay Hasanova

Turkey seeks to strengthen cooperation with the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO RATS) after the military coup of July 15, the organization told RIA Novosti on August 22.

"The events of July 15-16 in Turkey were discussed at the meeting of Zhou Qing, Deputy Director of the Executive Committee of the SCO RATS, and Ercan Ozten, Deputy Head of the Turkish embassy in Uzbekistan last week upon the initiative of the Turkish side," the RATS reported.

In particular, the Turkish diplomat informed about the situation emerged in Turkey after the coup, as well as the Turkish leaderships activities.

The July 15 coup attempt occurred when rogue elements in the Turkish military tried to overthrow the country's democratically elected government.

Turkey's government has repeatedly said the deadly plot, which martyred at least 246 people and injured more than 2,000 others, was organized by followers of U.S.-based preacher Fetullah Gulen.

The General Staff of Turkish Armed Forces has said that 8,651 servicemen of the armed forces participated in the military coup attempt in the country. The rebels used 35 planes, 37 helicopters, 246 tanks and three vessels during the military coup attempt in Turkey.

Erdogan declared a three-month state of emergency in Turkey on July 20.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
The Cedar Fire damaged several structures Monday in the Spear Creek area of Tulare County as it continued to consume acreage almost a week aft
Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
A private company contracted to run facilities management at Saint Leo University has overstated the number of jobs threatened by layoffs.

Sodexo gives St. Leo staff notice of layoffs



Saint Leo negotiating with Sodexo about contract

If no new contract reached, employees can reapply to Saint Leo

Sodexo, an international company that runs plant operations at Saint Leo, recently notified the state and its Saint Leo staff that it would be laying off 201 employees by the end of September.

But Bay News 9 discovered that number is actually much lower  its 76 employees.

After cross-referencing with Saint Leo University administration and Sodexo, it turns out 201 was the number of employees who have ever worked at Saint Leo for Sodexo. That figure doesn't accurately reflect the number of those currently working there for Sodexo. The company says it will re-file its notice with the state.

Sodexo spokesperson Greg Yost told Bay News 9 in an emailed statement:

The administration recently informed Sodexo that our services were no longer needed because it wanted to go in a new direction with the facilities management program on campus. This prompted Sodexo to give our staff a 60-day notice, as required by the WARN Act.

The WARN Act is a federal labor law that requires larger companies to notify their workers at least 60 days in advance of layoffs.

Saint Leo University Vice President Denny Moller told Bay News 9 in an emailed statement that the university is in negotiation with Sodexo about continuing our contract with the company for our plant operations.

Yost clarified that the Sodexo continues to have an open dialog with the university to continue the relationship, but that we are also preparing for our exit.

Moller said the university is extremely pleased with the work of the plant operations employees. If no new agreement is reached, the university would likely hire those same people.

Those individuals would have to reapply for their jobs. Sodexo told its staff and the state the layoffs would happen September 29.

Below are both statements, in full, from Sodexo and Saint Leo University:

"Sodexo has enjoyed a successful partnership with Saint Leo University and we are proud of the positive impact we've made on the quality of life on campus during that time. The administration recently informed Sodexo that our services were no longer needed because it wanted to go in a new direction with the facilities management program on campus. This prompted Sodexo to give our staff a 60-day notice, as required by the WARN Act. Although we continue to have an open dialog with the University in an effort to find an alternative solution that would allow us to stay, we are also preparing for our exit."

We are in negotiation with Sodexo about continuing our contract with the company for our plant operations, said Denny Moller, Saint Leo University vice president of advancement and communications. The university administration is extremely pleased with the work of the plant operations employees. If no new agreement is reached, the university likely would hire those same people.
Florida's newest member of the state university system begins its third academic year Monday in record fashion.

Florida Polytechnic University opened in 2012

University starting third academic year with record enrollment

New facilities on-campus include new residence hall, expanded cafeteria

The university is reporting record high enrollment, with around 1,350 students attending this fall, according to Vice Provost for Student Affairs Dr. Steve Warner.



Thats more than double the universitys enrollment when it opened three years ago.



Harold Rivera, a new student from Puerto Rico, said hes impressed with the university so far.



"The labs and dorm was not something any university is going to give you. Basically, the building is different, said Rivera. And housing, basically everything is a different experience for the student.

This academic year, the university opened its second residence hall and an expanded cafeteria. The residence hall is modern, with kitchens on each floor, washers and dryers in each suite, and several common areas.



"It's really exciting to see how students and parents are taking to Florida Poly. The excitement they have and the academics that we have to offer and the student life we have to offer our students, said Warner. The word is really getting out about this university.



The university also welcomes new faculty this term. It has 63 full-time faculty members currently, and hopes to have at least 70 by 2017.



Finally, this fall, design work is scheduled to begin on the universitys new Applied Research Center. The Florida Legislature approved $5 million during the last legislative session to fund the planning and architectural work on the center, and the university is contributing a matching $5 million.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The number of Texans who exempt their children from vaccination for non-medical reasons rose nearly 9 percent last school year, continuing a now 12-year-long trend that public health officials worry could eventually leave communities vulnerable to outbreaks of preventable diseases.

The new numbers represent a 19-fold increase statewide since 2003, the first year that Texas law allowed parents to decline state immunization requirements for "reasons of conscience." The number of such exemptions is still small, a little under 45,000 of the state's roughly 5.5 million schoolchildren, but it has spiked from fewer than 3,000 that first year, according to the new state data.

In Southeast Texas, almost 500 exemptions were granted in the 2015-2016 academic year to students attending local public schools.

Rates have climbed and nearly doubled in recent years in several area counties, according to information from the Texas Department of State Health Services. Newton County had the highest rate of exemptions in the area last year, with 1.35 percent of students' vaccine requirements waived.

"The trend is going in the wrong direction," said Anna C. Dragsbaek, president and CEO of The Immunization Partnership, a pro-vaccine group. "It's time for the community to step up and take action on this very troubling trend."

Concern has picked up in recent years amid the re-emergence of diseases such as measles and whooping cough. A large measles outbreak last year, linked to an initial exposure at Disneyland in California, sparked particular distress.

Texas is one of 18 states that permits waivers of school vaccine requirements based on parents' conscience or personal beliefs. Only two states - Mississippi and West Virginia - don't grant exemptions from immunization requirements on religious grounds.

All states allow exemptions for medical conditions, such as compromised immune system. Those exemptions are calculated separately from the conscientious ones.

9 million lives saved

Opponents say they are simply doing what they think is best for their child by avoiding vaccines. They argue that the assortment of shots - Texas children are required to receive 11 immunizations to attend school - are dangerous to developing bodies.

Public health officials emphasize that vaccines are safe, that a widespread theory they cause autism has been discredited. They credit vaccines with bringing seven major infectious conditions under some degree of control - smallpox, tetanus, diphtheria, yellow fever, whooping cough, polio and measles - and saving an estimated 9 million lives worldwide each year.

The overall number of conscientious objectors isn't yet high enough to threaten herd immunity, the idea that vaccination of a significant portion of a population provides a measure of protection for those individuals without immunity to a contagious disease, such as those who are too young or are medically unable to be vaccinated.

According to DSHS press officer Christine Mann, there isn't a determined threshold at which point that herd immunity is threatened, because "it might be different for different diseases."

"Year after year we have seen a steady increase in the number of conscientious exemptions but overall, the number is very small," she said.

The exemption rate in the local Region 5, which has approximately 87,000 students, was about half a percent in 2015-16. The highest rates in the region were in Colmesneil ISD, with 2.21 percent of the district's student population, and Newton ISD, 1.91 percent. Although those rates might be the largest, both are relatively small districts, with only 10 and 18 exemptions each, respectively.

Port Neches-Groves ISD had the highest number of exemptions locally last year with 82, 1.65 percent of the district's student body.

Exemption rates have increased since 2010 in all counties in the region except for Orange County, which had a rate of .66 percent last year. That rate is slightly lower than it was six years ago, according to state data going back to 2010.

In Lumberton, where just over 1 percent of students have exemptions, the numbers have increased in recent years, but it's "not a horrible problem" yet, according to Lumberton Primary School Nurse Amy Morgan.

"We still don't have a ton, I have probably 15 (exemptions) out of 900 (students). It used to be that there were none, and now there's more," she said.

People looking for information on exemptions need to find it themselves through the Texas Department of State Health Services and not through the school district, because "we do not encourage it," said Morgan.

Amber Comeaux, school nurse at PN-G Middle School, said that she generally has more medical exemptions, with only "a couple" of conscientious waivers each year.

"It's not really been a concern, hopefully it won't ever be," she said.

The DSHS currently only posts exemption numbers by school district and county on its website.

While private schools are required to report annually as well, "not all of them do and we do not have any enforcement authority to require them to," Mann said.

A 2015 state bill would have required the DSHS to post those numbers by school, but it failed to pass in the Senate. Dragsbaek, impressed at the traction the legislation got, said the partnership will push hard on behalf of any such bill again in 2017.

The bill to require school-specific information called for the inclusion of delinquency numbers, also a big problem.

School nurses are responsible for ensuring compliance with vaccination requirements, Comeaux said, which PN-G ISD monitors by mandating that students can't pick up their schedules without complete vaccination records. On Wednesday, she said that between 90 and 100 middle school students still needed immunizations before they could receive their schedules on Thursday. Fall classes begin in the PN-G ISD on Tuesday.

School clinics

PN-G ISD held clinics at the district's middle schools on Wednesday and Thursday for students needing vaccinations. The district's clinics offered the shots at more affordable prices than local alternatives, said Comeaux. Costs ranged from $20 for one shot to $40 for three or more, compared to pharmacies and clinics where prices can reach hundreds of dollars, depending on insurance coverage, Comeaux said.

In Lumberton, Morgan said the district directs parents to pharmacies, or to the Hardin County Health Department if they are uninsured.

Tara Kimball, whose daughter Makayla will start at PN-G High School this fall, came to the PN-G clinic after the school informed her that Makayla was missing a required immunization. The same shot Makayla got at the school clinic would have been $150 at pharmacies, she said.

Texas public schools require more immunizations than those in Tennessee, where the family previously lived, she said.

Despite the rising trend, parents at the clinic Wednesday weren't worried about unvaccinated students.

Michael Ray said he doesn't worry about other students because his son has been immunized. Liz Barbosa said that while her children have been vaccinated, other parents feel that they're making informed choices by exempting theirs. Barbosa said she doesn't have a problem with her children being around peers who were not vaccinated.

'Danger to children'

Increasing exemptions are occurring nationally as well as in Texas. Following last year's measles outbreak, which began at Disneyland, California, took action, barring religious and other personal-belief exemptions. The Disneyland outbreak was thought to account for much of 2015's 189 measles cases in 24 states, which was actually down from 2014's 667 cases in 27 states. Measles had been considered eradicated in 2000.

A 2015 Texas bill to eliminate the state's conscientious exemption never got a hearing.

Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the pro-exemption National Vaccine Information Center, expresses skepticism about links between those not vaccinated and recent cases of measles and whooping cough. She said Texas has one of the highest student vaccination rates of all states and said its vaccine laws "strike an appropriate balance between achieving public health goals and protecting both vaccine vulnerable individuals and basic human rights."

Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital, responded that Texas' vaccination rates among preschool-aged children, 19-35 months, rank 48th in the nation. He said that Fisher's group "promotes policies that represent a danger to children."

"The bottom line that is that children in the state of Texas are now at great risk for measles and other killer childhood infections," Hotez said. "This is happening because parents are choosing not to vaccinate their kids and are doing so because of erroneous beliefs."

Todd.Ackerman@chron.com

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

In the Dunn gallery at the Museum of the Gulf Coast, 30 riddles can be found inside frames, each clue directing people to 30 historical sites throughout the county.

The clues are part of a city-wide scavenger hunt the Port Arthur museum and the Jefferson County Historic Commission will launch on Monday. The hunt, which was created to encourage residents and visitors to get to know the county's history better, will continue through Oct. 1.

For those who want to participate in the free scavenger hunt, the first step is to pick up a list of landmarks at the Museum of the Gulf Coast. From there, participants will need to solve riddles to know which 30 of 100 historical sites to visit next.

Every participant is required to sign a waiver acknowledging that he or she will not trespass in areas that are off-limits, and children must participate with parents, said Sarah Bellian, curator at the Museum of the Gulf Coast.

Once participants receive their packets, they will be off to discover the county's history of prohibition, mercantilism and explore places many likely never knew existed.

To win the scavenger hunt, participants are going to need to present photo evidence back at the Port Arthur museum showing that all 30 sites have been visited.

Some of those completing the hunt the fastest will receive a prize basket containing items like gift certificates, T-shirts and other donated goods, according to Bellian.

Three other prize baskets will be awarded to:

n "The Hunt Historian," who provides the most interesting additional information about the listed sites;

n "The Shutterbug," who takes the best photos;

n and "The Social Media Superstar," who generates the most Facebook likes or shares by sharing photos and tagging the Museum of the Gulf Coast.

The month-long hunt will end with a reception on Oct. 1 for winners.

SFlores@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/_saraeflores
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

SOUTHEAST TEXAS TALES

Beaumont's newest and most exclusive apartment house was nearing completion in 1931, with tenants expected to move in around Nov. 1.

It was called "Bar Harbor," with more than a touch of irony.

Located within a block of the Port of Beaumont, the apartment house's windows, stretching from the eighth floor all the way to the top, or 13th, floor, guaranteed a sweeping view of downtown and beyond, the landlord assures.

The height of the apartments, towering over the squat landscape, was sure to catch cool breezes from the Neches River and ensure tenants would seldom suffer from the stifling heat of summer.

The apartments themselves perched above one of the busiest office buildings in all of Jefferson County, which was built for the once-princely sum of $1 million.

The address was 1149 Pearl St., the building was the Jefferson County Courthouse, and the top six floors housed the county jail.

The only tenants who lived there didn't much want to and they paid "rent" with their liberty until they were acquitted at trial or were sent along to the big "Graybar Hotel" at Huntsville.

Here is The Enterprise's description of the jail in 1931:

"Every conceivable convenience has been provided. Electric refrigeration is not only provided in the kitchen, but ice water is available in each room. Many windows give plenty of light and ventilation. Steam heat warms the building in winter and hot water is on tap at all times. Elevator service is offered 24 hours a day (but not for unaccompanied tenants) and caretakers are on hand at times to look after the needs of the tenants.

"Home cooking is not essential for the lucky tenants, as a table d'hote restaurant service is provided by the management for those who wish their meals sent in," The Enterprise reported.

"The apartment house, because of the many luxuries and advantages it offers, is unique in Beaumont.

"Apartments will be let by lease only and there is a clause in the contract which absolutely prohibits lease-breaking. No children or pets will be allowed in the building. Persons interested in taking an apartment in Bar Harbor are advised to get in touch with the custodian, W.W. Covington, at the sheriff's office.

"But what a glorified jail it is! No dark, dingy, buggy and unsanitary hole, but six stories of airy, well-lighted cells, adequately barred it is true, but also provided with clean, light-painted walls; hot, cold, and ice water at all times; shower baths; snowy white toilets and wash basins. The furniture is built in and indestructible," the description said.

And what furniture it was. Built to last.

"Steel bunks built in. Steel dining benches and benches with the tables so built that they make a comfortable backrest when the prisoner wishes to turn around and lean back. Those are furnishings provided for the guests of the county.

The jail was so good, it lasted for 50 years until the county built its new three-story addition around a central atrium featuring new courtrooms, new county and district clerks' offices, a new district attorney's office and a large auditorium for juries to assemble.

At the northern edge of the courthouse property, new justices of the peace and constables' offices stood opposite from a much more modern jail, which only lasted as a county lockup until the mid-1990s, a paltry 15 years.

The Jefferson County Correctional Facility replaced it around 1996.

The county leased its courthouse jail to Correctional Services Corp. to manage in 1998. Geo Group acquired the company in 2005 and departed in November 2009.

Lasalle Corrections currently manages the downtown jail, starting in 2011, housing inmates from other counties and states, including some federal prisoners in town to see the sights at the Jack Brooks federal building.

And what of Bar Harbor?

The current occupants are box after box of district clerk records, some of which might contain the case files of former tenants of the exclusive high-rise aerie above the Neches River.

Southeast Texas tales is a weekly feature that revisits regional history.

DWallach@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/dwallach
More than half of the incoming freshmen attending Lamar's new student convocation on Monday probably won't graduate from the four-year university by 2022.

That's according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Education, which calculated that just 34 percent of the school's full-time students entering college for the first time will graduate within six years.

That statistic, along with the school's percentage of students receiving federal financial aid and graduates' post-college earnings, earned Lamar a low rating on a report compiled this month by Third Way, a Washington, D.C., think tank.

In the report titled, "What Free Won't Fix: Too Many Public Colleges are Dropout Factories," Lamar was ranked in the bottom 100 of public four-year institutions in the country.

The report identified more than 450 schools nationwide as "dropout factories." The term, coined by Johns Hopkins University researchers, is most commonly used to refer to high schools where the senior class is made up of less than 60 percent of the freshman class that started four years earlier. High schools in that category are required to demonstrate plans for improvement. No such regulations exist for colleges.

Lamar University's Senior Associate Provost Kevin Smith said the label doesn't fit LU, because Third Way's methodology fails to account for students who aren't full-time students starting college for the first time.

"It eliminates immediately any student who is not full-time, and we have quite a few of those at Lamar. It eliminates kids who can't take full course loads because they have family or employment commitments," Smith said. "It doesn't count students who leave Lamar and graduate from another university, nor does it include students who leave and return to complete their degrees later in life. We have quite a few of those."

Lamar's overall enrollment is about 15,000 students. Of the 9,175 undergraduate students, 28 percent are part-time, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The school doesn't track what percentage of students transfer to or from the school, Smith said, but the national data show that only 53 percent of freshmen return to Lamar for their sophomore year.

In 2010, the most recent data available, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board reported that one-third of the 973 undergraduate students who graduated from Lamar that year started at other schools, while another 148 graduated from other Texas public universities after starting at Lamar.

The report also considered the earnings of students six years after entering college and their ability to pay back loans three years after graduating, which Smith said neglects graduates' long-term earning potential.

Smith also cited information from the 2016 National Survey of Student Engagement that reported that the school's freshmen and seniors spend more time working or "providing care for dependents" than those at peer institutions, which makes them more likely to be part-time students or to take time off.

"Would we like to have a 60 percent six-year graduation rate? Probably, but it's not going to happen," he said.

The university is trying to raise that number by improving financial aid and student support services, he said. Currently, 54 percent of students have federal student loans and 46 percent receive Federal Pell Grants.

"We award financial aid to students, we counsel students on aid, we help students find part-time jobs, we provide tutoring and mentoring," Smith said. "We do a lot of guidance and counseling, we talk to them about return on investment."

Some students feel like those resources are hard to find.

"I feel like it's there if you look for it, but you have to ask around," said Amparo Herrarte, a fourth-year chemical engineering student. Additionally, academic advising is more helpful for upperclassmen than for students just starting, she said.

Her sister, Narda Herrarte, a first-year nursing student, said that without Herrarte's help, she would have been lost, and that many of her friends didn't know where to find scholarship information and applications. That information should be publicized more, Herrarte said.

"I feel like people wouldn't get as discouraged if they feel like they don't have the means to pay for their college," she said. "If they knew that there was help around, they would be more encouraged, to know 'I can get through this, I don't have to take a whole semester off.'"

Lamar's average number of semesters was 10.78 for 2015 graduates, with individual programs ranging from 9.95 to 14 semesters. Statewide, the University of Texas at Austin had the lowest average, 9.01 semesters, and University of North Texas at Dallas the highest, 14.68, according to THECB data.

While financial aid can defray tuition costs, Lamar was also hurt in Third Way's report by the annual cost of tuition for students from families earning under $48,000, which was $14,717. That was the third-highest among Texas public colleges - a number Smith said is driven by the amenities and programs the school offers.

Lamar's engineering college is "hugely expensive," he said, and across degree programs, "today's students want more than yesterday's students," including living and recreational facilities. "There's more to a university than just a desk and instructor."

Those are some of the factors in students' college choices, though several waiting in line at Lamar's cashier's office on Thursday said their decision to attend Lamar came down to simpler reasons: proximity and affordability.

"I wanted to stay home and so far, I have no student loans," said Jennifer Rye, a junior studying education. "I know a lot of people with hundreds of thousands of dollars of loans, and that was not what I wanted."

Finishing his degree quickly was a priority for sophomore Payton Brown, who transferred from Lamar State College-Orange because LU offered more classes each semester.

Incoming freshman Veronica Hobbs chose Lamar because of its chemical engineering program. She said that information specific to that degree plan had helped her decision. She and her mom, Sherrill, said they hadn't focused on the school's overall graduation rates or post-graduate earnings but instead paid attention to the outcomes of the program.

That's something else Smith takes issue with in the national data, because "there's a world of difference between someone who gets a chemical engineering degree versus a more generic degree," he said. "What it comes down to is, you want to look at lifetime earning."Then there are the intangibles of a college experience, which he said make Lamar's price tag worth it.

"There's the non-economic value of a university education," he said. "It opens your eyes to a world that's often closed to those who don't have an education."

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/LizTeitz
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

San Antonio firefighters found a decapitated body inside of a dumpster last night.

According to multiple news reports, officials responded to a dumpster fire in the 2300 block of Goliad Road around midnight Sunday and then made the gruesome discovery.

Reports from from KENS and KSAT say that after the fire was extinguished firefighters found the remains of a decapitated body with no head or hands.

Arson investigators and homicide detectives from the San Antonio Police Department are investigating.

The SAFD and SAPD were not available for comment this morning.

imcgarrell@express-news.net

@ImaniMcg
Charlotte, N.C.-based Pamlico Capital sold Physicians Endoscopy to Kelso & Company in a recapitalization transaction with management, according to Yahoo! Finance.

Here are five key takeaways:

1. Through the deal, Pamlico will exit its investment in Physicians Endoscopy, an ambulatory surgery center management company specializing in GI services. Pamlico acquired Physicians Endoscopy in August 2013 and worked to bolster the company's acquisitive growth strategy.

2. Throughout the nation, Physicians Endoscopy owns and manages 42 facilities and is in partnership with more than 300 gastroenterologists and 18 health systems.

3. Alston & Bird advised Physicians Endoscopy and Pamlico in the deal. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Jefferies advised Kelso in the acquisition agreement.

4. The parties did not disclose the transaction's terms.

5. For more than 35 years, Kelso & Company, headquartered in New York City, has invested in North American private equity.

"We are very grateful to the Pamlico team for all that they have done to help us grow. They have allowed us to stay focused on helping physicians deliver high-quality care in the most patient friendly and cost effective setting. Our partnership with Pamlico has been absolutely wonderful. We look forward to continued growth with our new partners at Kelso," said Barry Tanner, Physicians Endoscopy CEO.

More articles on surgery centers:

Tenet shares drop 3.34%  4 quick facts

SCA partners with Surgery Center of Chevy Chase; expands presence in Maryland  4 things to know

YWCA names AmSurg CFO Claire Gulmi to 2016 Academy for Women of Achievement: 4 key takeaways
Here are seven updates:

Anesthesiologist blamed for causing blindness in 5 cataract patients at Massachusetts clinic

A cataract eye surgery center in Massachusetts is the subject of controversy after five patients receiving cataract surgery in May 2014 went blind from the procedure. The surgeries were all performed at Cataract and Laser Center West, in West Springfield, Mass. Specialists who examined the patients alleged that anesthesiologist Tzay Chiu, MD, is responsible for the injuries. The specialists believe Dr. Chiu possibly pierced the patient's eyeballs or retinas with his needles while he was performing an eye block.

E-prescribing gaining traction in healthcare

Electronic prescriptions are trending upwards in healthcare. In 2015, 77 percent of all drug prescriptions were written in a digital format, according to the 2015 National Progress Report of Surescripts. Digital prescriptions only accounted for 67 percent of all prescriptions in 2014 and 58 percent in 2013.

Physicians are concerned about the pending insurance megamegers

The healthcare industry is undergoing consolidation and the insurance industry is no exception. However, as competition dwindles in the market, physicians are concerned how the payer consolidation will detract from quality care, Joseph Valenti, MD, claims.

Healthcare Associates to build 60k-sq-ft ASC, medical building

Irving, Texas-based Healthcare Associates is building a new medical office building, equipped with an ambulatory surgery center. The project will be done in two phases and is expected to begin in the Fall.

Brigham strike, Epic implementation drag Partners' earnings

Partners HealthCare saw revenue increase 7 percent year over year to nearly $3.2 billion in the second quarter of 2016, but the Boston-based system ended the quarter with an operating loss. Partners reported an operating loss of $33 million in the second quarter of 2016, a dramatic drop from the operating gain of nearly $30 million the system recorded in the same period of 2015.

The system took an $8 million hit from spending on strike preparations earlier this summer at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

SCA partners with Surgery Center of Chevy Chase; expands presence in Maryland

Surgical Care Affiliates partnered with Surgery Center of Chevy Chase (Md.). The partnership expands SCA's presence in the state to six locations and 24 additional physicians.

New Hampshire ranks as #1 free state in freedom analyzing project

The Cato Institute's "2016 Freedom in the 50 States project" analyzed the 50 states' policies impact on fiscal, regulatory and personal freedom. New Hampshire was named the freest state.

More healthcare news:

Texas Free Market Surgery launches price transparency, bundled payment platform for Texas ASC: 6 key notes

E-prescribing gaining traction in healthcare: 7 takeaways

New Hampshire ranks as #1 free state  Which states intervene in your life the most?




Louisville, Ky.-based Kindred Healthcare will close its transitional care hospital Medical Center Holocombe in Houston, making it Kindred's second Texas hospital to close within a month.

Kindred also plans to close Kindred Hospital Baytown (Texas). Kindred said it has decided to close both hospitals to consolidate services between its other Houston-area facilities, including Kindred Hospital Bay Area in Pasadena, Texas.

According to a statement on the hospital's website, Medical Center Holocombe has stopped accepting new admissions. Kindred expects to close the hospital by Oct. 14, but that date could change.

Kindred told the Texas Workforce Commission the hospital closure will affect 204 positions, according to Houston Business Journal.
The 2016 presidential campaigns are underway, pitting Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton against Republican candidate Donald Trump. Both have spoken on what their presidencies would bring to the U.S. healthcare system.

Here are eight healthcare quotes from Ms. Clinton:

1. After a woman spoke about her daughter receiving cancer treatment due to the ACA during a speaking engagement at Grand View University, as reported by CBS News, Ms. Clinton said, "I want you to understand why I am fighting so hard for the Affordable Care ActI don't want it repealed, I don't want us to be thrown back into a terrible, terrible national debate. I don't want us to end up in gridlock. People can't wait!"

2. In a statement reported in The Hill, Ms. Clinton doubled down on her promise to crack down on health insurance companies, saying, "As we see more consolidation in healthcare, among both providers and insurers, I'm worried that the balance of power is moving too far away from consumers."

She also wrote, "These mergers should be scrutinized very closely with an eye to preventing the undue concentration that they appear to createThe evidence from careful studies shows that too often the companies end up pocketing profits rather than passing savings to consumers."

3. When asked about whether undocumented workers should have access to healthcare insurance in an interview withCNN's Anderson Cooper, Ms. Clinton responded, "If they can afford it, they should be able to go into the marketplace and buy it. But it is not going to apply to people who are in need of subsidies in order to afford that because the subsidies question has to be worked out in comprehensive immigration reform. And what I do want to see is that we have more options for undocumented people to be able to get the healthcare they need."

4. "What we have to do, I think, is defend the Affordable Care Act and fix it," Ms. Clinton said in a campaign video as reported by The Street, "And [Valeant Pharmaceuticals] is one of these companies that is absolutely gouging American consumers and patientsI'm going after them; we are going to stop this. This is predatory pricing."

5. "More than 20 percent of all American women have used Planned Parenthood. Make no mistake, it is under brutal attack everywhere that Republicans are in charge," said Ms. Clinton on a campaign stop at the University of Nevada earlier this year before the state's democratic caucus, according to KOLOTV.

6. "Yes, we've cut the maternal mortality rate in half, but far too many women are still denied critical access to reproductive healthcare and safe childbirth, and laws don't count for much if they're not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice  not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed," Ms. Clinton said at the sixth annual Women in The World Summit in New York City and reported in The Christian Post.

7. At a Democratic Town Hall in 2016 hosted by CNN, Ms. Clinton spoke on end-of-life care: "We need to have a conversation in our country. There are states that are moving to open up the opportunity without criminal liability for people to make this decision, in consultation with their families, even with medical professionals. It is a crucial issue that people deserve to understand from their own ethical, religious, faith-based perspective. I want, as president, to try to catalyze that debate because this is going to become an issue more and more often. I don't have any easy or glib answer for you. I would want to really immerse myself in the ethical writings, the health writings, the scientific writings, the religious writings. We have to be sure that nobody is coerced, nobody is under duress. And that is a difficult line to draw."

8. "The science is clear: The earth is round, the sky is blue, and vaccines work," Ms. Clinton Tweeted, as reported inUSA Today.

Here are eight memorable healthcare quotes Mr. Trump has said over the years:

1. At an American Airlines Center in Dallas last year, Mr. Trump said, "Obamacare. We're going to repeal it, we're going to replace it, get something great. Repeal it, replace it, get something great!"

2. During his June 2015 presidential announcement speech, Mr. Trump said, "But Obamacare kicks in in 2016. Really big league. It is going to be amazingly destructive. Doctors are quitting. I have a friend who's a doctor, and he said to me the other day, 'Donald, I never saw anything like it. I have more accountants than I have nurses.' It's a disaster. My patients are beside themselves. They had a plan that was good. They have no plan now."

3. In September 2014, Mr. Trump tweeted, "I'm not against vaccinations for your children, I'm against them in one massive dose. Spread them out over a period of time & autism will drop!"

4. Mr. Trump told The Hill the federal government should not play a huge role in healthcare regulation. He said, "The only way the government should be involved, they have to make sure those companies are financially strong, so that if they have catastrophic events or they have a miscalculation, they have plenty of money. Other than that, it's private."

5. In a 1999 interview with Larry King Live, Mr. Trump took a different stance, saying, "If you can't take care of your sick in the country, forget it, it's all over. I mean, it's no good. So I'm very liberal when it comes to healthcare. I believe in universal healthcare. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better."

6. In an interview on "60 Minutes," Scott Pelley asked Mr. Trump about his plans to fix the healthcare system.

"There's many different ways, by the way. Everybody's got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, 'No, no, the lower 25 percent that can't afford private' I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now."

7. When Mr. Pelley asked Mr. Trump how his health law would care for the uninsured, Mr. Trump said, "the government's gonna pay for it. But we're going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most it's going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything."

8. At a Republican rally in New Hampshire in February, Mr. Trump said negotiating with pharmaceutical companies could reap huge savings, according to Fortune.

The candidate said, "Because the drug companies have an unbelievable lobby. And these guys that run for office, that are on my left and right and plenty of others, they're all taken care of by the drug companies. And they're never going to put out competitive bidding. So I said to myself wow, let me do some numbers. If we competitively bid, drugs in the United States, we can save as much as $300 billion a year."

For comments and/or questions, please contact Laura Dyrda at ldyrda@beckershealthcare.com or Mary Rechtoris atmrechtoris@beckershealthcare.com.

More articles on leadership and management:

Lean program delivers at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center

5 tips for better delegation

6 thoughts on the state of healthcare from Scripps' Chris Van Gorder
My research colleagues at Advisory Board asked 55,000 physicians, "What drivers correlate most with physician engagement?"

Top levels of engagement came down to two main factors: autonomy in practice and input in organizational decision-making.

But as important as these elements are to physicians, many administrators (often inadvertently) have created quite the opposite culture  making demands of physicians and decisions on behalf of them, rather than treating physicians like strategic partners. So it's really no surprise that in conversations I have with hospitals and medical groups around the country, it's often a deep-seated culture of disengaged physicians that is the culprit behind hindered system strategies, subpar clinical outcomes and medical staff attrition.

Since poor engagement harms not just physicians but the entire system, administrators must think outside the "cost-benefit" box and invest in a culture of engaged physician employees and leaders.

Hand over the car keys

Some administrators still confuse engagement with compliance, and they focus more on tactics to achieve short-term results than sustaining a culture of engagement. But a compliance-driven relationship with physicians does little for building a strong, committed culture over the long-term.

Imagine senior executives at a health system want to make a certain change, so they pull in a group of physician leaders to oversee implementation. Those executives have already created the agenda and are simply asking for it to be followed  leaving minimal decision-making power for the physicians. At best, administration will get only what is asked for and nothing more. At worst, they will struggle to see any improvements at all.

It reminds me of something my previous CEO at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital once said: "You need to fill up the car with gas and give physicians the keys." While it might sound frightening for some administrators to follow the lead of their physicians, with proper guardrails in place and clear accountability for outcomes, they can create a breeding ground for innovation.

At Piedmont, for example, I had first-row seats when a cardiologist came up with a new way to get patients from the ED to the cardiac cath lab, significantly dropping door-to-balloon time. It was a stunning improvement for patients who required emergency cardiac care. And as an executive leader, I personally wouldn't have been able to drive that sort of clinical change, or inspire the level of clinician engagement required to see it through.

Pay attention to the disruptors

The bottom line: Health system executives can't simply communicate their plans unilaterally, or rely on " transparency" to sustain physician engagement. Here are some questions I ask administrators to know whether or not they have truly committed to a partnership with their clinicians:

Do you involve physicians in determining whether changes need to occur?

Do physicians provide input when designing a new model or process?

Have you ever drafted a hospital-physician compact or a set of guiding principles to memorialize commitments on both sides?

Reality is sinking in for some employers who haven't made this cultural investment. I recently connected with a physician who was employed by a prestigious community health system in the South. Over his tenure there, he helped develop innovative clinical models in the primary care group. He was a highly-valued leader, but never had true ownership of strategy or autonomy in execution  and became quite disengaged.

To make a long story short, he moved to Privia Medical Group, a less traditional employer known for giving physicians more autonomy in management. Administrators need to take stories like this to heart and learn a thing or two from Privia and other emerging industry disruptors. Otherwise, top-tier talent might slip away.

Michele Molden, MBA, FACHE is senior vice president of consulting at Advisory Board, Washington, D.C.

More articles on integration and physician issues:

How to diagnose, intervene and succeed in combating physician burnout

Wayne State may lose 37 medical school faculty members

Competitive residencies make for higher physician salaries
The following healthcare mergers, acquisitions and general partnerships took place or were announced in the past week.

1. Mercy Hospital reaches agreement to manage Oklahoma hospital's operations

The city of Blackwell, Okla., entered into an agreement with Salt Lake City-based Alliance Health, Oklahoma City-based Mercy Health and the Blackwell Hospital Trust Authority. The agreement will allow Mercy Health to act as a consultant and manage the city's hospital, which will be renamed BlackwellRegionalHospital

2. Next Life Medical acquires Emergent Respiratory

Carlsbad, Calif.-based medical device company Next Life Medical acquired Carlsbad, Calif.-based Emergent Respiratory.

3. MEDNAX acquires 10th physician practice of 2016

National medical group MEDNAX acquired Maternal Fetal Medicine of Southwest Florida, a private physician group practice based in Fort Myers.

4. Kennedy Health, Jefferson Health sign definitive agreement to merge

Voorhees, N.J.-based Kennedy Health will merge with Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health pending regulatory approval.

5. Piedmont, Athens Regional partnership clears final regulatory hurdle

The Georgia Attorney General ruled in favor of a partnership agreement between Athens (Ga.) Regional Health System and Atlanta-based Piedmont Healthcare.

6. Porter Medical Center may partner with UVM Health Network

Porter Medical Center in Middlebury, Vt., chose Burlington-based University of Vermont Health Network as a potential partner.

7. UHS acquires Nevada hospital

King of Prussia, Pa.-based Universal Health Services acquired Desert View Regional Medical Center, a 25-bed hospital in Pahrump, Nev.

8. Banner Health acquires 32 urgent care centers in Ariz.

Phoenix-based Banner Health purchased 32 urgent care facilities in Arizona from retail chain Urgent Care Extra.

9. Mercy partners with Anderson Hospital to provide cancer care

St. Louis-based Mercy partnered with Maryville, Ill.-based Anderson Hospital to expand cancer care.

10. OHSU, Moda Health eye potential partnership

Officials from OregonHealth & ScienceUniversity and Moda Health, both based in Portland, are reportedly in talks to pursue a merger.

11. Mayo Clinic-funded firm sells for $225M

An Ohio biotechnology firm funded by the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Clinic Ventures in Rochester, Minn., was purchased by Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics for nearly $225 million.
The following healthcare organizations have shared plans in the past month to hire workers, starting with the most recent.

1. Modernizing Medicine seeks to hire 20 medical billing analysts in California

Modernizing Medicine, a health IT company based in Boca Raton, Fla., planned a job-recruiting event last weekend at its Roseville, Calif., offices, The Sacramento Bee reported. The company told the publication it was seeking to add 20 medical billing analysts to its West Coast revenue cycle services team in Roseville.

2. McKesson distribution center to hire 100 in Iowa

McKesson is planning to expand employee numbers at its 340,000-square-foot distribution center in Clear Lake, Iowa, according to the Globe Gazette. The distribution center, which opened in May 2016, has 120 employees, but it plans to increase that number to 220 over the course of the next few months.

3. Northern Hospital of Surry County to add 85 jobs after scrapping Aramark contract

New maintenance, food and nutrition services jobs are expected at Northern Hospital of Surry County in Mount Airy, N.C., after the organization decided not to renew its three-year contract with Philadelphia-based Aramark Healthcare Support Services, according to a Triad Business Journal report. The hospital plans to provide its own maintenance, food and nutrition services by adding 85 jobs.

4. 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.

More articles on human capital and risk:

Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital nurses to strike

Queen of the Valley nurses win first union contract

In California, nursing graduates remain in licensing limbo
Cleveland-based Sisters of Charity Health System, the former owner of Providence Hospitals in Columbia, S.C., filed a $50 million lawsuit against Palmetto Health last week, alleging the system is responsible for the demise of Providence's orthopedic practice. Columbia-based Palmetto says the suit is "meritless."

Sisters of Charity began affiliation discussions with other systems, including Palmetto, in 2013. According to the lawsuit, it was during these discussions that Palmetto became aware that orthopedic services provided at Moore Center for Orthopedics were Providence Hospital's most profitable service line. With that information, Palmetto allegedly secretly tried to steal Providence's orthopedic business.

In April 2015, the Moore Center of Orthopedics announced plans to join Palmetto. Sisters of Charity alleges this action damaged negotiations with Brentwood, Tenn.-based LifePoint Health, which purchased Providence in February.

Commenting on the lawsuit Friday, Palmetto said, "We were extremely disappointed when we learned that the Sisters of Charity, who chose to stop providing healthcare services to the people in our community and sold Providence Hospitals to an out-of-state corporation, have decided to waste valuable resources on a meritless and unfounded legal matter."

Palmetto said it will "vigorously defend" itself against the suit.

More articles on healthcare industry lawsuits:

11 latest healthcare industry lawsuits, settlements

Fight over Advocate-NorthShore merger gets underway in appellate court

Class-action suit against ex-operator of shuttered NC hospital moves forward
Becker's Hospital Review is pleased to release the 2016 edition of its list of 100 Hospitals and Health Systems With Great Oncology Programs.

The hospitals and health systems selected for this list are leading the way in clinical expertise, patient outcomes and influential cancer research.

All of the following hospitals have received recognition for excellence in cancer care. Hospitals were selected for inclusion on this list based on rankings, designations and outstanding achievement awards determined and distributed by U.S. News & World Report cancer care rankings, CareChex cancer care rankings, BlueCrossBlueShield Association Blue Distinction Center designation, National Cancer Institute designations and AmericanCollege of Surgeons Commission on Cancer accreditations and awards.

Note: This list is not an endorsement of included hospitals or associated healthcare providers, and organizations cannot pay for inclusion on this list. Hospitals are presented in alphabetical order.

Editor's Note: This list has been expanded to include Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.

Abbott Northwestern Hospital (Minneapolis). Abbott Northwestern's Virginia Piper Cancer Institute was founded by the hospital in 1990 and has since spread to provide services at other hospitals in Minnesota and western Wisconsin. [READ MORE]

Abington (Pa.) Memorial Hospital. This 665-bed hospital, part of Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health, was established more than 100 years ago and now serves as a major regional referral center for many specialties, including cancer care. [READ MORE]

Advocate Christ Medical Center (Oak Lawn, Ill.). This 749-bed teaching hospital has more than 1,300 affiliated physicians. [READ MORE]

Advocate Lutheran General Hospital (Park Ridge, Ill.). This Magnet-recognized hospital was ranked No. 37 in the nation for medical excellence in cancer care by CareChex this year. [READ MORE]

Allegheny General Hospital (Pittsburgh). Allegheny General Hospital opened its doors in 1885 and has honed excellence in several specialties, including oncology, over its 100-plus year history. [READ MORE]

Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center (Milwaukee). Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center has received national recognition for cancer care, attaining a "high performing" rating in lung cancer surgery and colon cancer surgery from U.S. News & World Report for 2016-17. [READ MORE]

Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University (St. Louis). Barnes-Jewish Hospital has been home to the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center, the only cancer center in the state with a Comprehensive Cancer Center designation from the National Cancer Institute and membership in the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, since 2001. [READ MORE]

Beaumont Hospital (Royal Oak, Mich.). The Beaumont Hospital Royal Oak campus includes not only a 1,070-bed hospital but also the The Beaumont Cancer Center, where more than 3,000 clinicians specialize in more than 100 types of cancer treatment. [READ MORE]

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston). The BIDMC Cancer Center has more than 160 faculty; receives more than $70 million in annual research funds; and offers 20 specialty programs. [READ MORE]

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles). A Magnet-designated hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center offers cancer care through the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, which houses more than 20 cancer centers, programs and specialized services. [READ MORE]

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The Cancer Center at CHOP staffs more than 70 pediatric oncologists and oncologic surgeons who have expertise in every type of pediatric cancer. [READ MORE]

Christiana Care Health System (Wilmington, Del.). Christiana Care's Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute participated in the National Cancer Institute's National Community Cancer Centers Program from 2007 to 2014. [READ MORE]

City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.). City of Hope's history dates back to 1913 when it was founded as a tuberculosis hospital. In the last 100-plus years, it grew into what it is today, a Comprehensive Cancer Center as designated by the National Cancer Institute and a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.[READ MORE]

Cleveland Clinic. Cleveland Clinic is home to the Taussig Cancer Institute, which boasts more than 250 physicians and other clinicians who treat more than 14,000 patients annually. [READ MORE]

Cone Health (Greensboro, N.C.). Cone Health Cancer Center has six locations, all accredited by the Commission on Cancer. [READ MORE]

Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. This renowned joint center has been ranked No. 1 in the nation for pediatric cancer care by U.S. News & World Report three years running, most recently in 2016-17. [READ MORE]

Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center (Boston). Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center is a collaboration of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital created to provide comprehensive, specialized cancer care. [READ MORE]

Duke University Hospital (Durham, N.C.). This 938-bed hospital was ranked as the No. 40 hospital in the nation for cancer care by U.S. News & World Report for 2016-17. [READ MORE]

Emory Winship Cancer Institute (Atlanta). Emory provides cancer care and conducts oncology research at Emory Winship Cancer Institute, the only National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center in Georgia. [READ MORE]

Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center (Winston-Salem, N.C.). This hospital plays host to the Novant Health Derrick L. Davis Cancer Center and the Novant Health Maya Angelou Women's Health & Wellness Center. [READ MORE]

Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center (Knoxville, Tenn.). Part of Knoxville-based Covenant Health, Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center houses the Thompson Cancer Survival Center. [READ MORE]

Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia). Fox Chase Cancer Center was founded in 1904 and one of the first cancer hospitals in the nation, and it became part of the Philadelphia-based Temple University Health System in 2012. [READ MORE]

Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Wis.). The Clinical Cancer Center at Froedtert Hospital boasts disease-specific cancer programs, including the blood and marrow transplant program, where clinicians have performed more transplants than any other center in Wisconsin since 1980. [READ MORE]

Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center (Washington, D.C.). The Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center (as designated by the National Cancer Institute) is part of the Georgetown University Medical Center and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. [READ MORE]

Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center. The John Theurer Cancer Center, part of HackensackUMC, boasts a team of more than 1,200 clinicians and 14 different subspecialty and research divisions, including the Breast Oncology Division, the largest breast oncology program in the state. [READ MORE]

Hartford (Conn.) Hospital. The Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute at Hartford Hospital, also known as the Hartford Helen & Harry Gray Cancer Center, sees more than 50,000 patients annually. [READ MORE]

Houston Methodist Hospital. One of Houston Methodist's six centers of excellence, Houston Methodist Cancer Center has catapulted the hospital to be nationally ranked (No. 44) for cancer care by U.S. News & World Report for 2016-17. [READ MORE]

Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia). The Abramson Cancer Center, part of Penn Medicine, has been a Comprehensive Cancer Center as designated by the National Cancer Institute since 1973, the year it was established. [READ MORE]

HSHS St. Vincent Hospital Regional Cancer Center (Green Bay, Wis.). The cancer center at St. Vincent Hospital has collaborated with the National Cancer Institute since 2002 to deliver access to the newest, leading edge cancer clinical trials, drugs and prevention studies to local residents. [READ MORE]

Indiana University Health (Indianapolis). IU Health Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center in Indiana providing patient care. [READ MORE]

Jackson Memorial Hospital (Miami). Jackson Memorial Hospital, part of Jackson Health System, boasts a multidisciplinary cancer care team that treats breast, colon, ovarian, heredity and bone cancers as well as sarcoma. [READ MORE]

Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore). The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital was established in 1973 and boasts 34 specialty centers and clinics within it. [READ MORE]

Lafayette (La.) General Medical Center. This hospital that staffs 477 beds on two campuses is home to the Cancer Center of Acadiana, which boasts a support team including a patient navigator, oncologists, nutritionists, clinical social workers and a psychologist as well as other patient-centered touches like valet parking. [READ MORE]

Lakeland (Fla.) Regional Medical Center. This health system has a dedicated oncology unit with 46 beds at its Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center and provides accredited care at Lakeland Regional Health Hollis Cancer Center. [READ MORE]

Lehigh Valley Hospital (Allentown, Pa.). The Lehigh Valley Health Network Cancer Institute officially joined the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Alliance Member this year, allowing LVHN teams to learn and adopt MSK standards of care, thus LVHN patients benefit from MSK physicians' expertise. [READ MORE]

Loyola University Medical Center (Maywood, Ill.). The Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center sits on the east side of the Loyola University Medical Center campus and is named after the late Archbishop of Chicago Joseph Cardinal Bernardin. [READ MORE]

Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston). The Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center has more than 37 treatment programs with 29 disease centers. [READ MORE]

Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.). The Mayo Clinic Cancer Center in Rochester is one of the best in the nation  according to U.S. News & World Report's 2016-17 rankings, Mayo Clinic is the No. 3 hospital in the nation for cancer care. [READ MORE]

Mayo Clinic (Phoenix, Ariz.). Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix is the first hospital planned, designed and built by Mayo Clinic and has 268 licensed beds. [READ MORE]

Mayo Clinic Jacksonville (Fla.). The Mayo Clinic Hospital in Jacksonville opened in April 2008 and has 302 beds and 22 operating rooms. [READ MORE]

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York City). Founded in 1884, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is the world's oldest and largest private cancer centers. It boasts 471 inpatient beds. [READ MORE]

Mercy Hospital Springfield (Mo.). This 886-bed hospital was founded in 1891 and is home to a dedicated cancer center, the C.H. Chub O'Reilly Cancer Center, which boasts the region's only TomoTherapy and Cyberknife treatments. [READ MORE]

Miriam Hospital (Providence, R.I.). The Miriam Hospital is home to the Leonard and Adele R. Decof Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, which has three-year accreditation with commendation from the Commission on Cancer. [READ MORE]

Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute (Tampa, Fla.). Moffitt Cancer Center opened its doors in 1986 and earned Comprehensive Cancer Center status from the National Cancer Institute in 2001. [READ MORE]

Mount Sinai Hospital (New York City). The Mount Sinai Hospital was founded in 1852 and offers cancer care through the Tisch Cancer Institute, which was established in 2008 and became designated as a Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute in 2015. [READ MORE]

Nebraska Medicine (Omaha). Nebraska Medicine is the only Blue Distinction Center for Complex & Rare Cancers in the state. [READ MORE]

NewYork-Presbyterian University Hospital. NewYork-Presbyterian includes the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (as designated by the National Cancer Institute) at the Columbia University Medical Center and the NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Ronald P. Stanton Clinical Cancer Program and the Weill Cornell Medicine Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center. [READ MORE]

NorthShore University HealthSystem (Evanston, Ill.). The NorthShore Kellogg Cancer Center has care sites in the system's Evanston, Glenbrook and Highland Park hospitals. [READ MORE]

Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Chicago). The Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University was established in 1974 and became a Comprehensive Cancer Center, as designated by the National Cancer Institute, in 1997. [READ MORE]

NYU Langone Medical Center (New York City). NYU Langone's Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center is designated as a Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute, and the hospital is Magnet-recognized for nursing excellence. [READ MORE]

Ochsner Medical Center (New Orleans). Ochsner Medical Center, a 473-bed hospital, features the Gayle and Tom Benson Cancer Center. [READ MORE]

The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center-Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (Columbus). OSUCCC-James has a vision to create a cancer-free world one person and one discovery at a time. [READ MORE]

Oregon Health and Science University Hospital (Portland). Operating under the maxim "ending cancer as we know it," the Knight Cancer Institute at OHSU is internationally renowned for its cancer research and personalized cancer treatment. [READ MORE]

Penn State Milton S. Hershey (Pa.) Medical Center. The Penn State Cancer Institute provides care to the cancer patients of Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. [READ MORE]

Presence Resurrection Medical Center (Chicago). This 360-bed teaching hospital operates on the northwest side of Chicago offers cancer patients a multidisciplinary approach to care. [READ MORE]

Princeton Baptist Medical Center (Birmingham, Ala.). Princeton Baptist Medical Center is a part of Birmingham, Ala.-based Baptist Health System, which collectively boasts more than 1,700 beds and nearly 7,300 employees. [READ MORE]

Providence Portland (Ore.) Medical Center. This 483-bed nonprofit hospital employees more than 3,000 people and opened its doors in 1941. [READ MORE]

Rhode Island Hospital (Providence). Rhode Island Hospital has served its community since the 1800s and is a founding partner of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, which provides cancer care to residents across three community hospitals. [READ MORE]

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (New Brunswick, N.J.). The Cancer Hospital of New Jersey at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital is the flagship hospital of Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and designated as a Blue Distinction Center for Complex & Rare Cancers. [READ MORE]

Roswell Park Cancer Institute (Buffalo, N.Y.). Founded in 1898,Roswell Park Cancer Institute was the first institution in the world to focus exclusively on cancer research. Dr. Roswell Park  the institute's founder  accurately predicted that cancer would become a leading cause of death in the United States and across the world. [READ MORE]

Rush University Medical Center (Chicago). In 2014, the cancer center at Rush University Medical Center received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer. [READ MORE]

Scott & White Memorial Hospital (Temple, Texas). This Texas hospital is one of just three in the state to earn recognition as a Blue Distinction Center for Complex & Rare Cancers by Blue Cross Blue Shield. [READ MORE]

Seattle Cancer Care Alliance at University of Washington Medical Center. Seattle Cancer Care Alliance brings unites research teams and oncologists from Fred Hutch, Seattle Children's and UW Medicine. [READ MORE]

Seidman Cancer Center at University Hospitals Case Medical (Cleveland). This designated Blue Distinction Center for Complex & Rare Cancers is also the first hospital in Ohio to offer cancer patients proton therapy  a major advance in radiation treatment for many types of cancer. [READ MORE]

Stanford Health Care-Stanford (Calif.) Hospital. Stanford Health has earned designation as a Blue Distinction Center for Complex & Rare Cancers and is ranked among the 50 best cancer programs in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. [READ MORE]

St. Dominic-Jackson (Miss.) Memorial Hospital. St. Dominic's is one of the most comprehensive hospitals in Mississippi, boasting 535 beds and 500 leading physicians and specialists. [READ MORE]

St. Joseph's Hospital (Marshfield, Wis.). St. Joseph's Hospital is equipped with more than 500 beds and is the only rural referral medical center in Wisconsin and is recognized as a national leader in patient care. [READ MORE]

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (Memphis, Tenn.). This lauded pediatric treatment and research facility is one of 69 cancer research institutions to earn official designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center from the National Cancer Institute and the first of such centers devoted entirely to children. [READ MORE]

St. Luke's Boise (Idaho) Medical Center. St. Luke's has served its community for more than 100 years. [READ MORE]

St. Mary Medical Center (Langhorne, Pa.). The cancer center at St. Mary offers patients access to advanced cancer treatment technologies and leading edge oncological medicine. [READ MORE]

St. Vincent Hospital and Health Services (Indianapolis). Ninety cancer specialists lead treatment at St. Vincent, which is accredited by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer and ranked among the top 50 organizations for cancer care excellence for 2016 by CareChex. [READ MORE]

Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (Philadelphia). The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital includes 32 hospital and practice member institutions, which are collectively staffed by hundreds of oncology researchers and physicians. [READ MORE]

TriStar Centennial Medical Center (Nashville, Tenn.). Centennial Medical Center has served the Nashville community for 45 years. [READ MORE]

UAB Hospital (Birmingham, Ala.). The National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital is home to more than 330 physicians and researchers who together treat an estimated 5,000 new cancer patients annually. [READ MORE]

UC Irvine (Calif.) Health Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. The Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer at UC Irvine Medical Center is a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, accredited by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer and recognized as a Blue Distinction Center for Complex & Rare Cancers. [READ MORE]

UC San Diego Medical Center-UC San Diego Health. U.S News & World Report ranked UC San Diego Health among the top 50 hospitals for cancer care in the nation for 2016-17. UC San Diego Health's Moores Cancer Institute in La Jolla, Calif., is a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. [READ MORE]

UCLA Medical Center (Los Angeles). UCLA Medical Center is consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as having the top cancer center in California and one of the top 10 cancer centers in the nation. [READ MORE]

UCSF Medical Center (San Francisco). UCSF's Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center is the only facility in the Bay Area designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center by the National Cancer Institute. [READ MORE]

UF Health Shands Hospital (Gainesville, Fla.). UF Health Shands currently ranks among the top 50 cancer hospitals in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. [READ MORE]

University of California, Davis Medical Center (Sacramento). The cancer center at University of California, Davis Medical Center has earned designation as a Blue Distinction Center for the treatment of Complex & Rare Cancers from BlueCross BlueShield. [READ MORE]

University of Chicago Medical Center. The National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Chicago Medical Center has been named a top 50 hospital for cancer care by U.S. News & World Report for 2016-17. [READ MORE]

University of Colorado Cancer Center (Aurora). The University of Colorado is home to the state's only Comprehensive Cancer Center as designated by the National Cancer Institute. The center is a consortium of three universities  University of Colorado-Boulder, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Colorado State University  and three healthcare institutions: University of Colorado Health, Children's Hospital Colorado and Denver VA Medical Center. [READ MORE]

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (Iowa City). The Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center is the only center in the state to hold that distinction from the National Cancer Institute. [READ MORE]

University of Kansas Hospital (Kansas City). The University of Kansas Hospital is equipped with 713 beds and the hospital's cancer center is accredited by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer. [READ MORE]

University of Kentucky Albert B. Chandler Hospital (Lexington). UK's Albert B. Chandler Hospital is home to the Markey Cancer Center, a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center since 2013. [READ MORE]

University of Maryland Medical Center (Baltimore). The University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center received Cancer Center designation from the National Cancer Institute in 2008 and earned Comprehensive Cancer Center status in May. [READ MORE]

University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers (Ann Arbor). Since the opening of its medical school in 1850, the University of Michigan has been at the forefront of medicine and is now home to one of the largest healthcare complexes in the world. [READ MORE]

University of Minnesota Medical Center (Minneapolis). For 2016-17, U.S. News & World Report ranked the University of Minnesota Medical Center among the top 50 hospitals in the nation for cancer care. [READ MORE]

University of North Carolina Hospitals (Chapel Hill). UNC Hospitals includes UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of just 47 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the country. [READ MORE]

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston). Since U.S. News & World Report began ranking cancer care at U.S. hospitals in 1990, MD Anderson Cancer Center has held the No. 1 or 2 spot on the list every year. [READ MORE]

University of Utah Health (Salt Lake City). The Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah is a National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Center and Blue Distinction Center for Complex & Rare Cancers. [READ MORE]

University of Virginia Medical Center (Charlottesville). The cancer program at UVA Medical Center ranks among the top 20 cancer programs in the nation by CareChex for 2016. [READ MORE]

University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (Madison). The UW Carbone Cancer Center is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in the state of Wisconsin. [READ MORE]

UPMC (Pittsburgh). UPMC CancerCenter has ranked among the top 25 institutions in the nation for cancer care by U.S. News & World Report. [READ MORE]

USC Norris Cancer Hospital-Keck Medical Center of USC (Los Angeles). USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center is one of just 47 cancer centers in the nation to be designated by the National Cancer Institute as a Comprehensive Cancer Center. [READ MORE]

UT Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas). UT Southwestern Medical Center's Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center  as designated by the National Cancer Institute  was established in 1991. [READ MORE]

Valley Hospital (Ridgewood, N.J.). The Valley Hospital is a 451-bed, nonprofit healthcare facility that serves more than 440,000 people across 32 different New Jersey towns. [READ MORE]

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tenn.). Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center is a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, just one of two in Tennessee and the only such center in the state that offers care to adults and children. [READ MORE]

Via Christi Health, Wichita (Kan.), a member of Ascension. Via Christi Health is the largest provider of healthcare services in Kansas and employs more 10,000 people. [READ MORE]

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (Winston-Salem, N.C.). For 2016-17, U.S. News & World Report ranked Wake Forest Baptist's Comprehensive Cancer Center  as designated by the National Cancer Institute  among the top 50 hospitals in the country for cancer care. [READ MORE]

Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Hospital. The Yale Cancer Center was established in 1974, the same year it received its National Institute of Cancer designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of 47 in the country. [READ MORE]
Greenville, S.C.-based Agfa Healthcare, a medical imaging company, signed a contract with the U.S. government worth nearly $768 million, according to Mass Device.

The five-year deal states that Agfa will provide digital imaging network and picture archiving and communication system services to federal healthcare providers, including the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and federal civilian agencies.

The Department of Defense said in a statement there were six other bidders for the contract.

The deal also includes a five-year extension option, according to the article.
To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below
Iain Duncan Smith has urged Prime Minister Theresa May not to delay negotiations on leaving the European Union

Iain Duncan Smith has urged Prime Minister Theresa May not to delay negotiations on leaving the European Union

Leading Brexit campaigner Iain Duncan Smith has urged Theresa May to get on and begin formal negotiations for the UK to leave the European Union "as soon as possible".

The former cabinet minister accused Remain supporters of trying to delay the triggering of Article 50 - marking the start of the formal two-year leaving negotiations - in the hope it can be put off indefinitely.

Writing in The Sun On Sunday, Mr Duncan Smith also insisted that the UK did not need a deal which allowed it to remain part of the European single market, arguing there was a "strong case" in economic terms for leaving.

His intervention follows reports the Government may wait until the end of next year before invoking Article 50, meaning Brexit may not actually happen until late 2019.

The Prime Minister has said only that she will not make the Article 50 notification before the end of this year, but Mr Duncan Smith insists that the Prime Minister must get on with it "early" in 2017, rather than wait for forthcoming elections in Germany and France.

"That suggestion is yet another attempt to turn this referendum result into a 'neverendum'," he said.

"For too long, membership of the EU sapped our sense of self-worth and our self-confidence.

"Now we have the chance to believe in Britain again. Let us leave as soon as possible, so that we can get on and make the most of our new found independence."

Mr Duncan Smith warned ministers not to try to negotiate some form of "EU-lite" agreement which would see Britain remain subject to European law, saying that would be to ignore the clear message delivered by the millions of citizens who voted for Leave.

"Tired of handing over billions of their hard earned money to the wasteful EU bureaucrats, it (the referendum result) was an order from the British people to Britain's ruling elite - an order to 'take back control'.

"That, simply put, means control of our borders, our trade arrangements, our money and our laws," he said.

"What they didn't vote for was EU-lite, or for their Government to engage in negotiations where we bend the knee to Brussels and beg for some concessions whilst remaining in a customs union all the while subject to European law."

He said that Britain did not need to be a member of the single market to trade with it, and may well be better off outside.

His comments reflect the deep suspicion among many Leave supporters that opponents of Brexit will try to thwart the referendum result.
Debenhams was prepared to close as many as five of its 11 outlets in the Republic unless it secured adequate rent reductions as part of a deal for its Irish arm to exit examinership.

The Irish unit of the UK chain was placed in examinership in May amid spiralling losses, as it blamed high rents and staff costs for its predicament. The examinership also exposed a fractious relationship between Debenhams and the Roche family, which is among the retailer's landlords in Ireland, controlling two prime premises in Dublin and Cork.

The Roche family sold their eponymous department store chain to Debenhams in 2006 for 29m (25m). Debenhams also owns six department stores in Northern Ireland - run as part of its United Kingdom business.

Debenhams group treasurer Mike Hazell had told the High Court that the retailer's Irish unit has paid the 94m (81m) on the two prime leases in Dublin and Cork to the Roche family since 2006, but also "substantial rent" on five other outlets which have now been sold by the Roches.

And while three outlets were at particular risk of being closed, it's understood that Debenhams was prepared to shut as many as five stores unless it could secure the rent reductions it needed.Debenhams employs 1,400 people directly in the Republic, 500 of them full-time. Another 800 work at the stores at concessions and make-up counters.

It said on Friday that 98 of its workers will take voluntary redundancy .

Debenhams Retail (Ireland) had sales of 166m last year, but has lost 22.6m over the last three years.
A "hard Brexit" by the UK from the European Union would pose an "existential threat" to Gibraltar's economy, the territory's chief minister has warned.

Fabian Picardo said an agreement which saw a complete exit from the single market and no arrangements for the continued free movement of labour would have huge consequences for the British overseas territory.

"A hard Brexit would be really an existential threat to the Gibraltar economic model," Mr Picardo told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

"What might be a disastrous exit for the United Kingdom would be an existential threat to Gibraltar's current economic model."

Gibraltar, which relies upon thousands of Spanish workers crossing into the territory every day, voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU in the June 23 referendum.

The Gibraltar government is already in discussions with Scotland - which also voted strongly for Remain - about what kind of arrangements they could have with the EU once the UK finally leaves.

Mr Picardo said one possibility could be to do a "reverse Greenland" - a self-governing territory which is part of Denmark but which left the EU in 1985 following a referendum vote.

"We have been talking about this possibility of what has been described as a 'reverse Greenland' which envisages one part of a member state leaving the European Union because it chooses to do so and other parts of the member state remaining, with access to the single market and freedom of movement being the things that matter most to us," he said.

"What Gibraltar is looking at is what type of participation we can have in the European Union or with the European Union, once the United Kingdom has decided what its Brexit looks like."

Mr Picardo strongly rejected suggestions that it would have to concede some form of joint sovereignty to Spain - something it has long opposed - if it was to continue to enjoy unfettered access to EU markets and labour.

"We are not worried because we have seen this sort of bloody-minded attitude before," he said.
The Government said it was taking steps to manage the bill

Private landlords received 9.3bn in housing benefit last year - almost double the amount they did a decade ago, according to a new report.

The increased number of private renters receiving the benefit and the higher costs of private rentals have contributed to the rise, the National Housing Federation (NHF) said.

David Orr, chief executive of the NHF, said it was "madness" that the money was being spent on the private sector and not being invested in affordable homes.

But the Government said it was taking steps to manage the bill.

In 2006, 4.6bn was paid out in housing benefit to private landlords, but since 2008 there has been a 42% rise in the number of private renters receiving housing benefit, according to the NHF analysis.

An additional 1,000 is spent every year on each family renting privately and claiming housing benefit - a 5,705 cost compared with 4,638 for those in the social rented sector, the report said.

In London, 3,300 more is spent every year on each family claiming in the private sector, it added.

The organisation said the Government could save 1.5bn a year if all those housed in the private rented sector lived in affordable housing.

"It is madness to spend 9 billion of taxpayers' money lining the pockets of private landlords, rather than investing in affordable homes," Mr Orr said.

"Housing associations want to build the homes the nation needs. By loosening restrictions on existing funding, the Government can free up housing associations to build more affordable housing at better value to the taxpayer and directly address the housing crisis."

A Government spokesman said it had taken action to reduce the private rental sector housing benefit bill.

"The reality is we have taken action to bring the housing benefit bill under control, and since 2012 the amount going to private sector landlords has actually been falling - something which the National Housing Federation fails to recognise," he said.

"We are also committed to building the homes this country needs and investing 8 billion to build 400,000 more affordable homes."
Loose Women star Denise Welch has revealed that her relationship with her artist husband has helped her in her battle with alcohol to focus on healthier living.

Welch, who married Lincoln Townley in 2013 after a 24-year marriage to Benidorm star Tim Healy, said he has been her "anchor".

She told Hello! magazine: "We were party animals, two people in a mess, when we first met.

"My marriage was in freefall and I was drinking too much. Being with Lincoln could have been the most explosive disaster, but it went the opposite way. We've been each other's anchor."

Townley, 43, added: "We encouraged one another to pursue what matters most. As a couple we have positive energy constantly flowing through us."

Welch, 58, said she was not concerned by their 15-year age gap, adding: "Lincoln keeps me young and his enthusiasm rubs off into my world. Some people joke that I've married my carer. But who knows what the future holds. Lincoln has always preferred older women anyway."

Townley agreed, saying: "I've never met or loved anyone as much as I love Denise."

Townley has recently embarked on a career as an artist for Hollywood stars including Sir Michael Caine and Al Pacino.

His work commands six-figure sums and his clientele also includes Mickey Rourke, Nick Nolte, Gary Oldman, and Charlie and Martin Sheen.

The former Coronation Street star told the magazine the couple were invited to tea at Sir Michael's London flat after her husband painted a portrait of Sir Michael's wife Shakira.

She said: " The portrait of Michael was already on the wall, but Shakira wanted to place her picture next to his above the fireplace. Watching Lincoln and Michael hanging the two pictures was surreal."

Read the full interview in Hello! out now.
Television presenter Natalie Pinkham has revealed that losing her newborn daughter's twin in pregnancy and suffering a string of medical complications after her birth has made her reconsider having more children.

After giving birth to Willow Mirela eight weeks ago at West Middlesex Hospital, Pinkham went into shock after contracting post-operative ileus and pre-eclampsia.

Pinkham, who had already had a difficult birth with her son Wilf, 18 months, told Hello! magazine: "We always thought we'd have three or four kids as we both have big families and loads of cousins.

"But the first time things went wrong with Wilf I thought, 'That's weird'. The second time, 'Okay, there's a pattern here'. The third, you're asking for trouble, aren't you?

"I feel lucky to have two children, a boy and a girl. I would be pushing that luck if I went for a third."

The Formula One presenter and her husband Owain Walbyoff said Willow's birth via a pioneering natural caesarean was "unbelievable", with Pinkham saying of their daughter: " She's a little miracle and her coming into our lives has made our family complete."

The couple gave the baby the middle name Mirela after the Romanian orphan who inspired Pinkham's campaign to end the institutionalisation of orphans with Hope and Homes for Children and who died in 2014.

She said: "We were always sure that our daughter's middle name would be Mirela. I wanted Mirela's legacy to live on and I wanted Willow and Wilf to grow up knowing the concept of how lucky they are. It's luck where you're born and unfortunately it can determine what your future holds."

Read the full interview in this week's Hello! magazine.
The Ulster Orchestra has taken centre stage at the BBC Proms in Londons Royal Albert Hall in a prestigious engagement on the eve of its 50th anniversary season, which starts next month.

Under principal conductor Rafael Payare, the young maestro from Venezuela, the popular programme included Tchaikovskys Fifth Symphony, and a Haydn cello concerto with the award-winning soloist Narek Hakhnazary.

The ensemble also gave the world premiere of a new work by Ulster composer Piers Hellawell, entitled Wild Flow, which was commissioned by the BBC.

The Ulster Orchestras appearance at one of the most important musical festivals in the world is welcome news after the prolonged crisis over its financial survival following severe cutbacks in arts funding by Stormont.

On Friday the orchestra played its Proms programme in advance to a packed Ulster Hall in a free concert for supporters who had backed it during the survival campaign.

In a pre-concert speech, the new managing director Richard Wigley thanked the audience for their support.

Without your help the orchestra and I would not be here on this platform this afternoon, he said.

He added that the new seasons programme was booking up rapidly, and urged people to snap up the remaining seats to avoid disappointment.

This years special anniversary programme features some of the worlds top soloists, including Payares wife Alisa Weiletrstein, a world-class cellist, and Barry Douglas, the Ulster-born pianist who won the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow in 1986. He was the first non-Russian pianist to do so since the American Van Cliburn in 1958, and to mark the 40th anniversary of his triumph, Douglas will play all three of Tchaikovskys Piano Concertos with the Ulster Orchestra in the 2016-2017 season.

The ensembles future is yet to be assured, but there is justified optimism about its long-term future after a spirited campaign led by outgoing chairman Professor Sir George Bain, and the Ulster Orchestra Board.

The campaign was widely supported by people from all backgrounds in Northern Ireland and by leading musicians and supporters from the UK and further afield.
The executive head chef at the Lough Erne Resort is in his 40s and lives in Fintona.

My best moment

It was at the Special Olympics when they were held in Dublin. I have two disabled brothers and I was able to share the moment with one, Owen, when I wheeled him onto the pitch during the opening ceremony. I loved being part of the whole thing with Owen and the team from the centre he attends.

My best song

Aria by Yanni as this song just sums me up. It became famous a few years ago when it featured in a British Airways advert. I also really like just about anything by James Taylor.

My best way to relax

Swimming - I would love to say I brave the open water, but instead I go to the local pool. I also love reading.

My best job

Here at the Lough Erne Resort where I have worked for over eight years - and it's been a real labour of love. We have been part of trying to turn Northern Ireland into a good food destination. My team and I know who grows the food and raises the animals here so we have some fantastic produce. Working at the resort has given me the chance to meet Barack Obama in the White House and cook fantastic meals all over the world.

My best movie

I have two - Ghost and Pretty Woman. I was working in Paris when they were both out so I went to see them at a cinema on the Champs Elysees. I'm a bit of a softie at heart so I like a good romantic story and both of those two blew me away.

My best advice

Love all, trust few, always paddle your own canoe. That was given to me by my mother. It's been quite amazing advice and I've used it in everything I've ever done.

My best gift

My mother gave me a leather bag for my 30th birthday and I take it with me absolutely everywhere now. There are some really wonderful memories attached to it.

My best achievement

Getting a good education which has lead me to my career and enabled me to study all over the world. I started off at Ballymena Technical College and went on to the Northern Ireland Hotel and Catering College and Belfast Institute. After that I studied at Boston College as well as in Paris and Rhode Island in New England. I even did my teaching qualification and taught for a year at Magee College.

I'm so glad that I had such wonderful opportunities. In life, it's not what you don't have, it's learning to appreciate what you do have every single day.

My best buy

As I am 6ft 3in tall my best buys are Ecco shoes. They're the best shoes you can put on your feet and also if you're walking all day long like I do. Good posture is very important.

My best book

The one that I've just written, Noel's Irish Pantry. Apart from that I love the cook book Chez Panisse by Alice Waters and my favourite fictional book is Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom.
There is overwhelming backing for the redevelopment of Casement Park in west Belfast, those behind the multi-million project have claimed. File image

There is overwhelming backing for the redevelopment of Casement Park in west Belfast, those behind the multi-million project have claimed.

The plan to revamp the site of the famous GAA ground on the Andersonstown Road has been mired in controversy, with number people living nearby concerned about their homes being eclipsed by a massive new stand.

The project was at the centre of a Stormont row after a safety expert raised concerns about the emergency exits.

Now, the Casement Park Project Board claims the proposed redevelopment has received a "surge in support" after the first stage of a consultation.

Chairman Tom Daly said: "There have been excellent ideas and proposals emanating from the local community of how to make Casement Park a community asset, which the design team are now reviewing.

"These ideas will help ensure Casement Park will be a facility everyone in west Belfast, Co Antrim, Ulster and throughout Ireland will be immensely proud of and a stadium that the next generation of young people can aspire to play in."

The GAA's efforts to develop the old stadium site have been plagued by problems, with initial planning approval for a 38,000-capacity venue quashed by the High Court in 2014 following a challenge by nearby residents.

The consultation to allay fears is extending into a second stage beyond the 12-week process required. Of the 1,989 responses collected so far, 162 (8%) were opposed to the project with 1% not commenting. But 1,810 (91%) support the redevelopment.

Of those, 67 people (4%) clarified that their support was subject to an appropriate design and capacity.

Similarly, of the 8% who oppose the redevelopment, 5% clarified that they don't disagree with the redevelopment in principle but would oppose an inappropriate design, the project board said.

Commenting on the findings, project director Rory Miskelly said: "The feedback also highlighted areas of legitimate concern that we will look to clarify during the consultation's second stage; whether concerns about capacity, transportation or the scale and design of the new stadium, we have tasked our highly experienced team to address these matters in the emerging design."

But People Before Profit Alliance councillor Matt Collins suggested that the questions being asked were flawed. He said: "I'm not surprised by the feedback - everybody and their dog knows that the community in west Belfast wants a stadium. That was never in any doubt, despite the mud flung at residents.

"The problem is, if you held a consultation in west Belfast on whether people wanted a stadium design that could potentially cause another Hillsborough, I'm sure that the figures would be completely reversed.

"This has never been about whether a stadium would be built, but whether the stadium that is built will be safe and suitable for the area in which it is erected."
Rescue services search the River Bann on Sunday evening after clothes were found at the Barmouth

The sister of a man who has been reported as missing on the north coast last night said she is praying he is found soon after clothes were found near a river.

John Thompson (56), who has links to the Ballyclare area, was last seen in Portstewart on Saturday and yesterday police put out an appeal for information about his whereabouts.

It emerged last night a sea search was taking place after clothing was found near the entrance of the River Bann between Portstewart and Castlerock.

Last night, as dozens of people took to Facebook to express their hopes that Mr Thompson is found safe and well, the missing man's sister, Sharon Rao, said on social media: "Thank you all so very much for sharing your thoughtful concerns and caring for my brother John. I pray he is found soon. Much appreciated from all the family."

Read more

Read More

A police spokesman said: "John was last seen around midday on Saturday, August 20 in the Portstewart area.

"He is described as 5ft 10ins tall, with dark brown hair and when last seen he was wearing blue 3/4 length shorts and a red raincoat. It is believed that John may have had a bicycle with him at the time he went missing."

Yesterday civilian boats, RNLI jet skis, HM Coastguard, PSNI and Community Rescue Service were involved in a search.

A Coastguard spokesman told the Belfast Telegraph last night a search from Portstewart to Magilligan got under way around 10.45am yesterday and was stood down last night to resume this morning.
The funeral of the "Lady Diana" of the Gypsy world - who is on her deathbed - will be held in Northern Ireland.

Thousands of Travellers have descended on Durdham Downs in Bristol to pay respects to terminally ill Violet Crumlish, who is being treated in a Bristol hospital for bowel cancer.

The 59-year-old mother-of-11, who is known as the "Traveller Queen" by her people, will be laid to rest in the province when she dies, according to her son Alex.

He said that the community had made the pilgrimage to the Bristol area because his mother was so highly respected in Travelling circles.

"She is a queen and a princess, she is like Lady Diana to the Travellers," he said.

"She is good to the poor and the sick - she is highly respected.

"She is like a mother to many in the Travelling community, which is why thousands are coming to see her.

"She is a lovely woman through and through and we are very proud that so many people are coming to see her.

"We will take her back to Northern Ireland for her funeral."

To date, thousands of people from across Europe have made the trip to say their goodbyes to Mrs Crumlish, with more set to arrive.

Cars and caravans with Belgian, Swiss and Slovenian number plates, as well as British and Irish registrations, have parked up in Sneyd Park, while other makeshift sites have sprung up elsewhere in the city.

The Travellers have, however, caused a stir with locals, who claim they have spotted some of them using the bushes as toilets and of littering.

One local, John Michaels, who lives close to where the caravans are parked on The Downs, said the visitors were "absolutely filthy" and had been seen "drying out sleeping bags, reclining in deck chairs and making fires at the spot".

"I have always been of 'the live and let live' mentality, however I have genuinely been shocked by the behaviour of these Travellers - defecating in the bushes, rubbish everywhere, small fires, noise, swearing," said Mr Michaels.

Another resident, Neive Laing, said she was "disgusted" by what she saw.

Police say they are powerless to move them on unless "aggravating factors" are reported such as disorder, anti-social behaviour or crime.

Bristol City Council said its legal team would apply for an order to evict the Travellers from the land as soon as possible.

A spokesman said: "A welfare assessment has been completed and the paperwork has been sent to our legal team to apply for a possession order to recover the site as swiftly as possible. We are also working closely with the local police to monitor the situation."

Mrs Crumlish recently triggered a review of a council's housing register rules after being told she and her partner could not apply for a place on an official Travellers' site.

North Somerset Council confirmed the couple made the request around a year ago, saying they were homeless, and were rejected for not having a strong enough local connection.

A High Court challenge was launched against this decision but the case was settled before going to court when the couple were put on the register.

A spokesman said: "As it stands, you have to have a three-year connection to the local area, and that is the part under review and what we are going to consult on."
Mairtin O Muilleoir says he knew nothing of a party colleague's contact with a witness to the inquiry

Stormont's Finance Minister has insisted he knew nothing of a party colleague's controversial contact with a witness to an inquiry into Northern Ireland's largest ever property deal.

Mairtin O Muilleoir said those seeking to link him to the controversy that forced the resignation of Daithi McKay, the former Sinn Fein chairman of the Assembly's Finance committee, were indulging in "petty party politicking".

Mr McKay apologised and quit as an Assembly member last week after private Twitter messages published in the press showed him communicating with loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson ahead of his appearance before the committee's inquiry into the Nama loans deal.

The former North Antrim MLA has been suspended by Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein worker Thomas O'Hara has also been suspended by the party.

He was also accused of communicating with Mr Bryson about his evidence before he made explosive claims to the finance committee about the efforts of Ireland's bank for bad loans to dispose of its Northern Ireland portfolio to US investors.

Mr Bryson went before the committee to name former Democratic Unionist leader Peter Robinson in connection with the case.

The then first minister has strongly denied seeking to benefit from the agreement involving US investors and the National Asset Management Agency (Nama).

Mr O Muilleoir was a Sinn Fein member of the committee at the time and political rivals have called for him to stand aside while a Stormont watchdog examines the episode.

The now Finance Minister issued a statement on Monday making clear he had "absolutely no knowledge" of the Twitter communications.

"The attempts to link me to the contacts between Daithi McKay, Thomas O'Hara and Jamie Bryson are no more than petty party politicking," he said.

"They have absolutely no basis in truth or fact. I had no part in or knowledge of these inappropriate communications.

"I will co-operate readily and fully with any investigation. I am absolutely confident the outcome of any such investigation will confirm that I was totally unaware of these contacts until they were publicised this week.

"My political opponents will also have their chance to contribute to the investigation but if they do they will be required to present evidence rather than speculation or innuendo. I am confident in predicting that they will fail to do so."

Mr McKay's fall from grace was precipitated by claims in Belfast newspaper the Irish News about his contact with Mr Bryson.

The Sinn Fein leadership has denied knowing anything of the back channel contacts.

The deal two years ago between Nama and US investment giant Cerberus, involving the 1.2 billion sale of a Northern Ireland property loan portfolio, has been dogged by controversy after 7 million linked to it was found in an Isle of Man bank account.

Critics have claimed the arrangement included multimillion-pound fixer fees.

Nama was established in Ireland at the height of the financial crisis to take property-linked loans off the books of bailed-out banks.

It sold 800 property loans to Cerberus, a multibillion-pound fund.

All parties involved in the 2014 transaction have denied wrongdoing.
A family photo of Rudy and Lisinda Bruynius. Rudy died after being swept out to sea at Fistral Beach in Cornwall on Saturday

Coastguards from Ballycastle rescue a father and son who were cut off on a rock while fishing at Portbradden on the north coast of Co Antrim

Coastguards from Ballycastle rescue a father and son who were cut off on a rock while fishing at Portbradden on the north coast of Co Antrim

Three men, two women and a young child have died in separate incidents off the UK coast amid strong winds and stormy conditions.

And in Northern Ireland the Coastguard had to rescue a boy and his father who became stranded on rocks after they were caught out by the tide.

In Scotland a mother and son - named by police as Julie Walker (37) and Lucas Walker (6) - died in hospital after a rescue operation at Aberdeen beach on Saturday afternoon.

A total of five people were pulled from the water and taken to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.

Lucas's brother Samuel, who bravely entered the sea in an attempt to save his mother and brother, is making a "steady recovery" in hospital, police said.

Four others also died along the UK coastline this weekend.

A man who got into trouble outside the safe swim area at Sandbanks beach in Poole, Dorset, at around 3.30pm on Saturday died. The victim, who was seen having difficulties in the rip current, was recovered from the water by lifeguards who performed CPR, Dorset Police said.

An air ambulance and paramedics attended, but the man, believed to be in his 50s, was pronounced dead at the scene.

He is believed to have had a cardiac arrest.

A woman in her 30s died in hospital after getting into difficulties while swimming with a man near Green Island in Jersey on Saturday at around 8.30pm.

The man was helped to safety by members of the public, while a lifeboat managed to locate the woman who had been swept along the coast by the current, said RNLI St Helier. She was taken to hospital but later died. And South African Rudy Bruynius, who was named online, was with wife Lisinda and their daughter McKayla when they were caught up by a large wave at Fistral Beach on the Cornwall coast on Saturday.

Mr Bruynius, who lived in London, was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead .

A windsurfer in his 60s also died. The man, who was rescued off the Essex coast at around midday on Saturday, died later in hospital.

On the north Antrim coast, the father and son were fishing on Saturday evening at Portbraddan when they became cut off by the tide at around 7.30pm.

Belfast Coastguard officer Dawn Petrie said: "Ballycastle and Coleraine Coastguard teams located the two people and brought them ashore with Portrush Lifeboat in attendance.

"They were fishing. It appeared they walked out on to the rocks and the tide came in round them."

Ms Petrie urged the public to get in touch with it if they are unsure of tides. She said: "We have no objection to people phoning in to the ops room and asking for tide times and advice in that way. But yes, certainly check the tides and be aware the tides do obviously come in and out."

An eyewitness said: "The tide can rise six or seven feet at Portbradden, so if you don't know the area it is possible to get caught out quickly without realising it.

"Thankfully the alarm was raised and this ended without incident. Rescuers used a special kayak to take them from the rocks. The boy at least was quickly wrapped up to keep him warm when rescued."
Northern Ireland celebrity hairdresser and businessman Jason Shankey has made an appeal for help to track down those responsible for an audacious theft from one of his salons.

On Sunday night two people broke in and robbed the businessman's Ballyhackamore store at around 11.20pm

They took two ghd hairdryers valued at around 200 and a load of tanning sachets, Mr Shankey said were near worthless.

He posted a video of the incident on his Facebook page which thousands have viewed online. Some have even volunteered the names of those they think may be responsible.

The CCTV footage shows one man attempting to cover his face with the collar of his light-coloured top. He then reveals himself in front of the camera as he lifts down the hairdryers.

Another person, with a hood covering their head, then comes into shot to examine the till before making a quick exit. It's here that Mr Shankey believes the alarm startled the thieves.

Jason himself was at the shop on Sunday night responding to the alarm. But it wasn't until staff opened up on Monday morning that the true extent of the break-in was discovered.

The thieves had broken down the back door and another door to gain access to the shop. In total Mr Shankey estimates the damage caused, along with the loss of stock, to be around 600.

With five businesses across Belfast, he has been the victim of numerous break-ins but says he doesn't let it get to him anymore.

The entrepreneur was more astounded at what the pair took.

Expand Expand Previous Next Close The thief reaches for the hairdryers. Jason Shankey / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp The thief reaches for the hairdryers.

He said: "They took tanning sachets which are worthless and even the hairdryers are not that much. ghd are not well-known for their hairdryers, it's more the straighteners so they might have difficulty getting them shifted.

"But we've been robbed maybe 15 times over the years - it's not something I have an emotional attachment to anymore.

"I just make sure the staff are ok, get what's needed fixed and get on with it."

Since sharing the video of the incident on his Facebook page there were over 40,000 views in the first two hours.

"The reaction has been incredible," added Mr Shankey.

"It was such a good clear shot I thought why not put it up. It's my business, my shop, my footage and someone is bound to know him."

After a period in London, self-styled male grooming expert Shankey (46) has worked in Belfast for the past 20 years.

Over the years he has worked with the Honda Formula 1 team, and industry giants such as Gillette and Boots.

The former Grosvenor Grammar pupil describes his organisation as the "company of choice for the majority of celebrities, pop stars, actors and comedians who tour Belfast".

Police are appealing for information. Sergeant David White has asked anyone who may have noticed any suspicious activity in and around the area between 11.00pm and 11.30pm to contact Police at Strandtown PSNI Station on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference number 223 22/08/16.

Alternatively, if someone would prefer to provide information without giving their details they can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers and speak to them anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Chief Constable George Hamilton later apologised on Twitter and the internal PSNI intranet for his frank conversation on the social media site

Chief Constable George Hamilton later apologised on Twitter and the internal PSNI intranet for his frank conversation on the social media site

Chief Constable George Hamilton later apologised on Twitter and the internal PSNI intranet for his frank conversation on the social media site

A third generation police officer has spoken of how he has been left "broken" by serving in the PSNI and how he sits in caves "to be away from people".

Over the weekend Chief Constable George Hamilton apologised after he told one of his officers to "dry your eyes" during a public, late night spat on Twitter.

The row erupted in the early hours of Sunday morning when an officer tweeted concern about the increasing pressures of the job.

Mr Hamilton also told the cop to stop "wallowing in self pity" or "seek another job".

Read More

The Police Federation for Northern Ireland - the body that represents rank-and-file officers - described Mr Hamilton's outburst as "offensive" and a "great insult".

On Monday morning a police officer - described as having served for decades - outlined how he had been left broken by his time in the PSNI.

Speaking on the BBC's Stephen Noland radio show, he said he was in his final month of service with the force as he was unable to work after having suffered what he described as a serious central nervous system injury while trying to help a colleague who "was getting a bad kicking".

"To be a police officer is a very honourable job," he said, "it's a job that you find great satisfaction and incredible results.

"To engage with people to be there to help to keep them safe and to be able to assure them that they are getting a service, that is deserving."

The man said his father and his grandfather had both served with the police.

Caves

He continued: "To be a police officer you don't get paid for what you should do - this must be understood - you get paid for what's expected, to do as I do.

"You are expected to see things unannounced, invasive, distracting, disturbing, destroying, images, smells, tastes, sounds. Children crying.

"I go and I sit in caves to be away from people. I can't walk at the moment as I am too injured, but I have to be away from people. Because I did what was expected from me.

"I'm decorated for valiantry. I'm a third generation police officer and now because I got injured I'm told I have to leave.

"I can accept and this is something you must do, I can accept that the job that I did and valued so dearly to me has put me in a position where I no longer can do it.

"PTSD is a catchall phrase. It doesn't mention anxiety, depression, it doesn't mention disruption of family, alcoholism, recovery. It doesn't mention pressure you carry from work into the home.

"You don't go home and hang your hat on the back of the door and not see what you've dealt with.

My response to last night's Twitter conversation. pic.twitter.com/oypulCHNRi  George Hamilton (@ChiefConPSNI) August 21, 2016

"Policing is a difficult job it's not something you go into lightly. I knew what I was going into."

Flashbacks

The police officer spoke of how sights, sounds, smells or even the weather gave him flashbacks to what he had experienced on the beat in Northern Ireland.

"It could be anybody walking down the street," he went on, "but because I am a police officer it calls upon me, to do, to act, to serve to respond - to do what's expected.

"An elderly gentleman collapsed in front of me. First aid, first response you go into automatic mode. He was sick into my mouth, he'd had chicken soup. I can't eat chicken soup I can't eat chicken.

"If I smell chicken, it takes me back."

The officer talked about how he would recall a fellow officer - "a mate" lying dead "his blood oozing from his body" or a child dying, "or someone taking their last breath in your arms".

"This is what's expected of a police officer," he said.

"To deal with every fundamental policing is like every service for the public. It has to have management. It's difficult to manage police, because it's an evolving creature. Society dictates what we do and therefore management responds.

"My colleagues work very hard, their duty is never ending because today will go into tomorrow and into next week."

Family

The police officer spoke of how his work had taken its toll on his family and home life

He said: "My family and I live in a void of emotional darkness darkness because of what I see and what I hear what I think.

"My wife and children say I am a cardboard cut out - I go into zones of distance.

"But am I sadden by it? No because I did what I had to do."

Support

The police officer said he had eight session of therapy through the police and his doctor had prescribed further treatment. He had also paid for private consultations "to find out what was wrong with me".

He told Stephen Nolan: "I need to be fixed. Of all the things I lost, I miss my mind the most. I don't have the clarity of thoughts, the ability to function. Am I a danger? No.

"I have an ability to do my job - you go to work you put on a different hat, you take on a different facade.

"I had therapy. You go into a room with someone half your age about and incident that happened three, five, 10, 15, 30 years ago. And that doesn't fix it.

"I was told by a professional I had made sufficient recovery and if I practice what I was taught, things would recover in time.

"I had a temporary fix for five months.

"You don't fix mental injury - it's not a sticking plaster.

"I have many injuries - 38 to 39 injuries on my record. If I fall and break my ankle I get it fixed, if I get my toe stubbed I laugh. I can't take my brain out of my head and put delete in for what I carry."

Resignation

The officer said, because of his injury, he was unable to do his job and was forced to resign.

He continued: "Because of my service, because of my injury I am not sustainable in my job.

"I'm a realist. I can't expect a colleague to look after me.

"But I do not get immediately an injured in duty pension and I have to resign.

"Because I was injured for what is my life - which is as a police officer serving.

"I am not sustainable in my job I've no option.

"I did what all those front line - front line officers do on a daily basis.

"They did what's expected, they served with honour and distinction."

The officer added: "My father did 38 years, his father did 36 and I wanted to beat the pair of them. I had no intention of leaving.

"It is easy to say you get institutionalised in such a great organisation as the police. You meet people who you question why you joined - but you get that everywhere.

"But my answer is that I did this because I wanted to help, I wanted to keep people safe, I wanted to make the difference.

"I want my children not to have what I had as a culture growing up.

"We have a brilliant police service - it is under pressure. The people at the coalface are under pressure.

"I am broken because of what I had to do but it's a brilliant job - policing is an education in life."
The car of a Turkish barber has been smashed along with the windows of his shop in Ballynahinch.

It happened at Ibo's Turkish Barbers in the Main Street area on Sunday August 21 just after 10.10pm.

It was reported to police that the windows of a barber shop and a car were damaged by two men.

Officers are not treating it as a hate crime at this time.

The barber's shop has only been open for around seven months.

The owner has lived in Northern Ireland for the past two-and-a-half-years.

Maria Anfin, the partner of Ibo's worker colleague said he had just popped out to get food when it happened.

She said: "He's still opening at the minute and is allowing customers to come in.

"Everything inside is absolutely fine, it was just the windows and his car."

Anyone with any information about this is asked to contact Downpatrick Police Station on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference number 1281 of 21/08/16.

Or if someone would prefer to provide information without giving their details, they can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers and speak to them anonymously on 0800 555 111.
The replica Spitfire put on show at the Ballymac Centre in east Belfast

The newly refurbished Ballymac Centre in east Belfast played host to a replica Spitfire as part of the annual EastSide Arts Festival.

The Ulster Aviation Society was invited to bring along the famous World War II fighter on Saturday afternoon where festival-goers enjoyed a picnic, bouncy castle, face painting and live music.

There were performances by the Shankill Road Defenders Flute Band, Katy Carr, Konrad Pawlaszek, Polflok and a cultural performance by the young people from Ballymac.

There was even an opportunity to have photographs taken while sitting inside the replica aircraft at the Side by Side event.
A two-year-old boy died after choking on a piece of toast in Donegal.

Ricky Devine-McGinley (2) died after a freak accident at the home of a close relative on Saturday August 20 at around 1pm, gardai confirmed.

He was rushed to Letterkenny University Hospital where he passed away a short time later.

Ricky, of Moyle Hill in Milford, was the only son of Gerard McGinley and Ceara Devine.

It is believed a post-mortem was carried out yesterday at LUH and his remains will be removed from there later today.

Ricky will be laid to rest on Wednesday at 11am in Milford.
The Metropolitan Police's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command had appealed for help in tracing Father Laurence Soper

A Catholic monk has been charged with a string of historical sex offences against teenage boys after he returned to Britain from Kosovo following a five-year police hunt.

Father Laurence Soper is accused of assaulting five boys, one under 14 at the time, over a period from 1972 to 1986.

The nine charges include offences of buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault.

The 72-year-old was arrested as he arrived at Luton Airport on Sunday by officers from Scotland Yard's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command.

Soper, who was detained under a European Arrest Warrant in Kosovo in May, will appear at Ealing Magistrates' Court on Monday.

Four of the charges, including buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault, relate to a single alleged victim and date from February 17, 1972 to February 18, 1976.

The boy was aged under 14 when Soper carried out an act of gross indecency against him, it is alleged.

Two charges of indecent assault relate to a second boy aged under 16 alleged to have occurred between 22 August 1979 and 23 August 1984.

Soper faces charges of indecent assault against two further boys under 16, alleged to have taken place between 4 December 1979 and 23 December 1984, and 10 November 1979 and 11 November 1984.

A fifth boy aged under 16 was assaulted on a day between 14 May 1982 and 15 May 1986, it is alleged.
The comment was made on This Morning.

An English TV presenter has made an apology after she made a "joke" about the Irish famine.

Alice Beer was presenting a segment on ITV's This Morning where she was showing the correct foods to store in a fridge.

This Morning host Eamonn Holmes was questioning her on the storage of potatoes when she made the gaffe live on air.

The presenter of the segment, 'The Great Fridge Debate', suggested people should store their potatoes in the fridge.

Im from Ireland, Eamonn Holmes protested.

"You dont put potatoes in the fridge.

Beer responded: "You want to preserve the life of your potatoes.

"You Irish should know that.

There was a bit of a shortage once upon a time," she added.

A quick camera shot of Eamonn Holmes' face showed his disdain as the presenters continued the discussion.

Angry viewers took to the social media platform Twitter to complain about the quip.

One person wrote; "Nothing like a bit of casual racism & making light of a million people's deaths but its only the Irish so it doesn't matter."

Another tweeted: Shortage of potatoes comment was a bit of a low blow.

Beer took to her own Twitter account to apologise, writing: "I apologise for the insensitivity of my comment which of course was never intended to offend. It was stupid.

Source Irish Independent
Tory backbenchers have urged Theresa May not to abandon plans to scrap the Human Rights Act

Conservative plans to replace the Human Rights Act with a so-called British Bill of Rights will go ahead, the Justice Secretary has said.

Liz Truss dismissed reports that that the Government was abandoning the policy, which was included in the Tories 2015 manifesto, to avoid a fight with the Scottish Government.

We are committed to that. That is a manifesto commitment, she told BBC Radio 4s Today programme on Monday morning.

Im looking very closely at the details but we have a manifesto commitment to deliver that.

The Times newspaper reported earlier this month that the draft bill for the act had been junked.

I think the priority for the justice department will be prison reform and she wont want another fight with the Scottish government [which is opposed to the policy, and already fighting Brexit], a source told the newspaper.

I just dont think the will is there to drive it through.

The report was a surprise because Theresa May has previously expressed strong support for controversial constitutional change.

Read more

Read More

This is Great Britain, the country of Magna Carta, parliamentary democracy and the fairest courts in the world, she said in a speech in April this year.

And we can protect human rights ourselves in a way that doesnt jeopardise national security or bind the hands of parliament.

A true British bill of rights, decided by parliament and amended by parliament, would protect not only the rights set out in the convention, but could include traditional British rights not protected by the ECHR such as the right to trial by jury.

She had also however conceded that there would be no parliamentary majority for pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights, of which the Human Rights Act is the current British implementation.

Independent

Good Friday Agreement

Amnesty warned last year that the planned repeal by the UK government of the Human Rights Act 1998 could have serious implications for Northern Ireland's peace settlement and could undermine public confidence in the new political and policing arrangements which followed the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

The agreement obliged the UK to incorporate the European Convention of Human Rights into law in Northern Ireland, which was subsequently done through the Human Rights Act.

The Northern Ireland Assembly can only make laws which are compatible with the Human Rights Act, a key safeguard in the region.

New policing arrangements, introduced after the Good Friday Agreement, are also heavily reliant on adherence to the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights.

Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK, said last year: The Good Friday Agreement is the cornerstone of a more peaceful Northern Ireland. The Human Rights Act not only fulfils one of the UKs key obligations in the Agreement, but is crucial to ensuring public confidence in the new political and policing arrangements.

Given the history of political discrimination and mistrust in policing in Northern Ireland, binding human rights obligations have been crucial in building and bolstering public confidence in these key structures post-Troubles.

But public confidence can be eroded and undermined just as surely as it can be built.

Any scrapping of human rights commitments could have serious implications for Northern Ireland's peace settlement.

Meanwhile DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson welcomed the Justice Secretarys commitment.

Mr Donaldson said: "I welcome that there is a clear commitment from the Justice Secretary, Liz Truss to look at the Human Rights Act, which was a pledge made in the Conservative manifesto. The Human Rights Act in principle was a good thing, however it has been abused by criminals and terrorists and it has failed to protect the rights of innocent victims adequately.

"The DUP has been critical of the Human Rights Act and the way in which it has been interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights, who have used it as a rather spurious way to undermine states on issues like deportation.

"My party believes that the United Kingdom should have a Bill of Rights that recognises and respects the diversity of the devolved arrangements across the country. As always the DUP is fully committed to creating a society in which people are safe, secure and protected and this will be our focus."

The other main Northern Ireland parties have not yet responded to a request for comment.
Northern Ireland-born MP Conor McGinn who said Jeremy Corbyn considered calling his father over comments made in an interview in a bid to silence him has claimed the Labour leader was attempting to "ostracise" him from his family and the south Armagh community.

Early this year Labour whip Conor McGinn, originally from Camlough, claimed that the party leader had considered using his father - the former Sinn Fein Mayor of Armagh Pat McGinn - in an attempt to "apply pressure" on him following public criticism of Mr Corbyn.

Mr Corbyn's office dismissed the claims as "untrue".

Speaking to the BBC on Monday, the St Helens MP told said: "The modus operandi that [Jeremy Corbyn] and the people around him were trying to do, involving my family, was to isolate and ostracise me from them and from the community I am very proud to come from - which is an Irish, nationalist community in south Armagh."

Read More

Earlier Mr McGinn said the leader had contemplated the action against him after a critical interview in May when he suggested that Mr Corbyn needed to understand that his Islington constituency in north London - often seen as a bastion of support for radical causes like unilateral nuclear disarmament - was "not like the rest of the country".

McGinn accused his party leader of hypocrisy for talking about a "kinder, gentler politics" when "he had proposed using my family against me".

He said: "The leader of the Labour Party was proposing to address an issue with one of his own MPs by ringing his dad."

He suggested that Mr Corbyn considered calling his father because he is a Sinn Fein representative and thought they may "share a political affinity".
An Islamic State suicide bomber as young as 12 has attacked an outdoor Kurdish wedding party in Turkey, killing at least 51 people and wounding dozens of others, the countrys president has said

An Islamic State suicide bomber as young as 12 has attacked an outdoor Kurdish wedding party in Turkey, killing at least 51 people and wounding dozens of others, the countrys president has said.

The bombing late on Saturday in Gaziantep, near Turkeys border with Syria, was the deadliest attack in Turkey this year.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking live on national television in front of Istanbuls city hall, said the attacker was aged between 12 and 14. He said 69 people were wounded, 17 of them in a critical condition.

The bride and groom were not in a life-threatening condition and were undergoing treatment, it was reported, but the grooms sister and uncle were among the dead.

It was clear that Daesh had such an organisation in Gaziantep or was attempting to make room for itself in recent times, Mr Erdogan said, using an alternative name for Islamic State (IS).

A bus driver who shuttled some of the guests from Siirt to Gaziantep said that he could not believe the party was targeted.

This was a wedding party. Just a regular wedding party, Hamdullah Ceyhan said. This attack was deplorable. How did they do such a thing?

Turkey has been rocked by a wave of attacks in the past year that have either been claimed by Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party  known by its acronym PKK  or were blamed on IS.

In June, suspected IS militants attacked Istanbuls main airport with guns and bombs, killing 44 people. A dual suicide bombing blamed on IS at a peace rally in Turkeys capital, Ankara, in October killed 103.

The attack comes as the country is still reeling from last months failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers. Gulen denies any involvement.

Earlier, Mr Erdogan said there was absolutely no difference between IS, Kurdish rebels and Gulens movement, calling them terrorist groups. These bloodthirsty organisations and the powers behind them have neither the will nor power to silence the calls to prayer, lower the flag, divide our motherland and break up our nation, he added.
Convicted drug smuggler Michaella McCollum on television after her release from a Peruvian jail

Drug smuggler Michaella McCollum has revealed details of her life in prison for the first time, after she arrived back in Northern Ireland last week.

The 23-year-old told Sunday newspapers that she was earning up to 200 a week giving beauty treatments to other prisoners.

The Co Tyrone woman was initially placed in the Virgen de Fatima prison with Scot Melissa Reid after they were caught with 24lb of cocaine worth 1.5m at Lima's international airport.

She told the Sunday Mirror that conditions there were awful - with cockroaches crawling from the bunk beds and maggots in the food.

She added that the general co-ordinator "took against" her and Reid as they "were the only white girls".

But after 10 months, they were moved to the infamous Ancon 2 prison.

She was forced to sleep on a concrete shelf in a mosquito-filled room that she shared with eight other people and use an overflowing hole in the floor for a toilet.

But McCollum said she was able to rise to the top of the prison pecking order in just six months.

Her family sent her money and she was able to buy a massage table, hair straighteners and a hairdryer.

She charged about 25 Peruvian Sol (about 5) for a blow dry, 120 for highlights, 15 for nails and 20 for a cut."

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of her club hostess outfits Michaella McCollum Connolly with Brad Houston from England Michaella McCollum Connolly Michaella McCollum Connolly Michaella McCollum cradling her newborn twins Michaella McCollum Connolly pictured during an interview with RTE in 2016 after being released on parole from a Peruvian prison Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing, in Lima, Peru (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing in Lima, Peru, clutching the book 'Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment' (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum Connolly arrives to court for her sentencing in Callao, Peru (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) AP Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum, both handcuffed, arrive for a court hearing in Lima, Peru (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum Connolly, handcuffed, arrives for a court hearing, in Lima, Peru (AP Photo/Karel Navarro) AP Michaella McCollum, left, and Melissa Reid listen to a translator during a hearing at court in Callao, Peru (AP) AP Police escort Melissa Reid, front, and Michaella McCollum to a hearing in Lima, Peru (AP) Police escort Michaella McCollum Connolly and Melissa Reid from the National Police anti-drug headquarters in Peru (AP) Michaella McCollum Connolly (left) and friend Melissa Reid in the airport after they were arrested Michaella McCollum Connolly with rugby star Tommy Bowe while doing promotional work at an official Ulster Rugby event Santa Monica female prison in Peru AP SECRET STASH: The drugs found in food packs in the girls luggage CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Michaella and Melissa caught on CCTV loading bags into a car in Peru Michaella McCollum, centre, and Melissa Reid leave the court after being sentenced in Peru. Lawyer Peter Madden, who represents Michaella McCollum, has claimed his client has suffered from a lack of food. Belfast solicitor Peter Madden said Michaella McCollum and co-accused Melissa Reid have been well treated by the authorities PA Michaella McCollum, right, and Melissa Reid, left, were jailed in Peru last year after they admitted trying to smuggle cocaine worth 1.5 million pounds from Peru to Spain (AP) Michaella McCollum's mother Norah McCollum and sister Samantha McCollum vist the Peru prison Michaella McCollum Connolly with reality TV star Mark Wright at a promotional night hosted by Belfast's M Club / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Michaella McCollum Connolly in one of the Ibiza clubs where she worked as a dancer

She used the money earned to pay another prisoner to clean her cell and to pay prison officers to turn a blind eye when she got a mobile phone to call her family at home in Dungannon.

As well as running her business, she used her time in prison to learn Spanish, do yoga and take part in dance competitions, according to the Mail on Sunday.

She told the Sunday Mirror: "I take complete responsibility for what happened, but I made the most of my time inside.

"You could cry and mope or try to do something with the time and have what fun you could."

She said she now plans to start a course in psychology and sociology, but wants to make sure that her time in prison serves to prevents other from following the same path.

"What I went through was completely my fault - and I lost three years of my life. You get an adrenaline high because you know you are doing something you know you shouldn't be doing. No-one put a gun to my head.

"Now I have to prove to the people I love that I'm responsible and that I'm sorry for what I put them through. I hope it makes people think twice about doing anything as stupid", she told the Sunday Mirror.
Regarding the recent reports of a riot on a Corsican beach, apparently triggered by a tourist taking a photograph of women in 'burkinis', when you take a photograph of someone without their consent, the image of that person is taken out of their control.

Therefore, this behaviour is a violation of the right to privacy.

It follows from the foregoing that the photographed women in burkinis were the victims. So, when they opposed the photographing, they acted in self-defence.

Apparently, the situation got out of control and resulted in a fight. And what is the reaction of the local French authorities? They prohibit burkinis and thus punish the victims.

A proper action would have been to prohibit the photographing of strangers on the beach without their consent.

When a woman wears a burkini she does not do harm to any other person. So, the burkini bans are wrong and should be repealed immediately.

MICHAEL PFEIFFER

Germany
Pedro Donnell who has bought The American Bar at Clarendon docks.; Picture Mark McCormick 18/08/16

The American Bar in Belfast is set to be reopened

Pedro Donnell who has bought The American Bar at Clarendon docks. Picture Mark McCormick 18/08/16

The man behind one of Belfasts most acclaimed bars is about to work his magic on a long forgotten pub in one of the citys historic quarters.

Pedro Donald, owner of the award winning Sunflower Public House, is preparing to breath life back into the American Bar in Sailortown.

The working mans boozer called last orders for the final time in 2013 after 140 years of whetting the whistles of generations of sailors and dockers from the nearby port.

But the American is now set to get a new lease of life from the publican and staff that has made the Sunflower a run away success story.

The Sunflower has worked, so the staff and myself were keen to do something else, Pedro told Sunday Life.

I fancied a new challenge and Ive always liked that part of town. I would have drank in Pats and the Rotterdam going back to the 80s, they were both great pubs.

None of us wanted to do something in the Cathedral Quarter because its saturated so we looked at a couple of different places similar to the Tavern, which is what the Sunflower was.

Just an ordinary wee pub. We didnt want it to be a fancy bar or nightclub or a venue. Just a wee pub.

The American still retains the traditional layout of a downstairs public bar with an upstairs lounge accessed via different doors.

Its not an American diner, its a Belfast pub called the American Bar. It probably will lean towards Americana but the whole lot, from the bottom of Argentina to Alaska, not just the United States of America.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close The seafront hotel back in 1897 Steam Locomotives (Trains). The steam- hauled passenger train that chugged away from No.1 platform in Bangor last night marked the end of an era. It was the last train to travel along the Belfast Central line, linking the Belfast-Bangor track and the one to Portadown. The train was given a civic send-off from Bangor by Alderman Charles Milligan (THIRD FROM RIGHT) who waved the guard's flag. Driver of the train was Mr Eamonn O'Hara, of Finaghy Road North, Belfast. Bangor from Pickie Pool 19 March 1959 Bangor, 6 October 1959 "I've got a lovely bunch of carrots", Dora Povey, Bangor market, October 1974, To purchase this photograph as large format canvas or acrylic visit Belfast Telegraph page on www.niphotocanvas.co.uk The good weather attracted many holidaymakers to the popular Co. Down resort of Bangor. Here John Austin (left) and Michael Coey, play onj the deach at Ballybolme. 30/3/1965 http://photosales.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/media/ZQX6xTzF-zmtjuDlgZ-WNA..a http://photosales.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/media/nB1xfkYQzwyBbdW8MoLVlw..a Bangor - 6 October 1959 The Queen, Elizabeth 11. 1961 visit.The Queen casts a sharp shadow as she steps out in brilliant subshine at Bangor. August 1961 Five-year-old Sarah Darrah from Jordanstown selects a flag while visiting Bangor Market with her mother. 23/7/1983 Bangor seafront - date unknown http://photosales.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/media/mGc_biYwnH9-4WgQYI-jQg..a Queens university students kidnapp light heavyweight boxer Gerry Hassett from a training session at Ballyholme Bangor. They are hoping his promoter B. J. Eastwood will hand over a cheque for the Rag funds. 9th March 1965. Bangor - from ladies bathing place, date unknown http://photosales.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/media/EN3_OovenWkqO5V1LkgkTQ..a Among the many attractions for visitors to Bangor during the United Services Week is the landing craft Audemer, of the 72 Landiding Craft Tank Squadron, Royal Corps of Transport. Milk strike at Bangor Dairies. Pickets on duty outside Bangor Dairies at Belast Road, Bangor, talk to the driver of a lorry returning empty milk bottles. 14/1/1975 Bangor - 6 October 1959 An eye for a bargain - this customer check out the goods at Bangor Market. 20/7/1983 Bangor - Royal Ulster Yacht Club, 1920 Bangor - 6 October 1959 Bangor - Princeton Road, date unknown http://photosales.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/media/HlUCOX-IzWkwE2AgVyF4lA..a Bangor Grammar celebrate winning the Ulster bank School's Cup at Ravenhill, after a powerful display over Coleraine A.I. 17/3/1988 We've won the cup! Jubilant Bangor players surround their skipper David Morrow in the Upritchard Park dressing room following their Bass Boston Cup triumph over Instonians last night. Bangor, who host the tournament, have now won the trophy five times since the competition was inaugurated in 1974. Bangor are the current holders of the senior league title and are now lining up a possible Ulster "Grand Slam." 21/12/1983 Bangor - Pickie Pool, date unknown Bangor Grammar- School Choir, 1994. The boys of Bangor Grammar School have swept all before them this season. Four major trophy wins, in fact- in the Ulster Section of the Aer Lingus Schools' championship (in which they were third-best in the all-Ireland finals), and in the Ulster Schools' League and Froggart Shield championships, and Irish Schools' championship, 1978. Bangor - date unknown Bangor Grammar- golfers, 1974. Mr. Jim Claney (right), outgoing, chairman of Bangor Grammar School Parents' Association, hands over an original painting of the school to Mr. Brian Thompson, chairman of the Board of Governors and launches the sale of limited edition prints for old boys and parents. Included (from left) are: Mr. Tom Patton, headmaster; Ms. Phyllis Arnold, the artist; and Mr. Michael Curry, chairman of the Parents' Association, 1985. Bangor Grammar- 1994 Taking off: Paddy Ashdown doing the high jump at Garth House School, Bangor in 1950 http://photosales.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/media/29wWVL3q9d6fJjRm40MSnQ..a Pupils, who refused to obey the short back and sides ruling on their way home from school, 1973. Bangor Grammar- 1993 Jubilant Bangor Grammar Grammar School supporters show their delight as their team score their third try during the Schools' Cup Final at Ravenhill against RBAI. 17/3/1986 Bangor Grammar, 1993 Bangor Grammar School players and supporters begin their celebrations as the famous shield and cup is handed over at Ravenhill after their 17-9 victory over Annadale. 18/3/1978 The successful madrigal group from Bangor Grammar School are put through their paces by their director of music Ian Hunter, 1975. Bangor captain, Michael Webb, collects the Schools' Cup. 17/3/1985 Bangor Grammar- Haircuts, 1973 School's Cup final hockey team for New Blaris next Wednesday afternoon: Front row (from left)- James Foote, Lindsay Holmes, Deryck Rothwell (captain), Rory McCrystal and Robin Hudson. Back row - Philip Skelly, Mark Hamilton, Jonny McNaught, Chris Wilkinson, Paul Wylie, Micael McLellan and Robert Stone, 1988. Bangor - date unknown The jubiliant Bangor Grammar School rugby team pictured after beating Campbell College 6-3 in the Schools' Cup final at Ravenhill, 1969. A group of sixth-formers will be helping to look after 100 handicapped children this summer- nearly 2,000 miles away in the steamy heat of Morocco. The boys from Bangor Grammar School have been invited by the Save The Children Fund to the northern tip of Africa, 1978. The Bangor rugby team who last night defeated Instonians in the final of the Bass Boston Cup at Upritchard Park, Bangor. Included in the group are Billy Lavery, president of the Ulster Branch IRFU, Turlough O'Hare of Bass Ireland and team officials. 18/12/1985 Bangor Grammar School won the traditional St. Patrick's Day Cup rugby final at Ravenhill, coming from behind in thrilling style to beat Annadale Grammar. 18/3/1978 The milk bottling plant at Bangor Dairies in full swing this morning producing milk for the Bangor and Ards areas. 14/1/1975 Mr. John Simms (Bass Ireland) presenting the trophy to Bangor captain, Ashley Armstrong, after beating Ballymena 11-6 in the final of the Bass boston Floodlit Cup at Upritchard Park, Bangor, last night. 17/12/1986 Boston party: Bangor captain Don Whittle celebrates with the rest of his team at winning the Smithwick's Boston Floodlit Cup earlier this week. Bangor beat Malone 20-6 at Upritchard Park to earn the trophy for the 11th time in its history, and now go on to meet Old Belvedere in the All-Ireland Floodlit Challenge on February 19. Included is Smithwick's marketing manager Les Fryer (right). 02/01/1993 / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp The seafront hotel back in 1897

There will be no Stars and Stripes.

Music wise it will be similar to the Sunflower where we do a lot of sessions but with a touch of Americana about it.

Although it has been sitting unused since the last guvnor left, the building is sound and the interior completely intact with beer mats from the bars last punters still on the tables.

Sailortown has been through a period of decline but the once shabby district is being revamped with apartments and businesses popping up year on year.

Pedro is adamant that with new housing and the Ulster University due to open nearby there is plenty of trade in the area.

There are apartments and businesses down there, the Sunday Life and Belfast Telegraph have just moved there, he said.

In peoples minds it seems quite far away but its not, in days gone by the Rotterdam and Pats Bar had no trouble attracting people.

Turning a long forgotten watering hole into a prize pub is also something Pedro and his team have a talent for.

The Sunflower, previously known as the Avenue Bar and the Tavern, was a spit and sawdust place tucked away on Union Street behind the Central Library with pillbox style windows and a security cage.

Just over three years after Pedro bought it  and fought to keep the now famous sanger cage  it was named City Pub of the Year at the 2015 Pub of the Year Awards.

The bar already occupies a special place in the hearts of Belfast pub goers who rallied round to save the Sunflower after the shock news that it was under threat of demolition.

But the veteran barman is keen to emphasise that his new tap house wont just be a carbon copy of what he has done before.

The American wont just be a Sunflower II. It will very much have its own identity and do its own thing, explained Pedro.

It will of course have the same ethos as Sunflower though: welcoming to anyone and everyone no matter what colour, class or creed they come from and a strong supporter of the arts and of live music.

However, he admits that the American will probably feel quite familiar to Sunflower regulars.

The similarities to the Sunflower are uncanny. The ground floor is about the same size, the middle floor has a bar at one end with space to put on events and the top floor is empty, just like the Sunflower, said Pedro.

And they are both number 65 - the Sunflower is 65 Union Street and the American is 65 Dock Street.

It will be a very similar ethos to what we have at the Sunflower. A decent pub with good music and good beer.

One thing Pedro has ruled out is changing the name of the American, which was something of an institution to those who grew up in the area.

We changed the name to the Sunflower when we moved in and we had that debate about the American but it has been called that since around 1860 so it would be wrong to change it. We are quite happy with it, he said.

If youre already gasping for a sip you wont have long to wait as Pedro and his team aim to be pulling their first pints by October.

We set ourself the target of getting open by Halloween but it looks like we will be open before that, we just want to get in, get the mops and buckets out and give it a good scrub, he said.

I swore blind I would never do a second one but the staff was the deciding factor, theyre great.

I can tell you now I am not doing a third, theres only so far I can go on my bicycle everyday.
Ask any discerning dater and they'll tell you, Bumble is where it's at. The app, which was created by one of the founders of Tinder, requires women to send the first message, thereby discouraging the kind of creepy guys who make Tinder an increasingly depressing place to try and find a date.

And Bumble's not the only app putting women's needs first. Ciao (www.ciaodate.com) is a new dating platform - with one crucial difference to the likes of Happn (which uses GPS to show exactly how many metres you are from other users and how many times you've crossed paths): it removes the geolocation aspect, allowing users to zoom into areas on a map to find potential matches.

"When it comes to dating apps and, indeed, modern technology, personal safety is the public's number one concern - and rightly so," explains Ciao founder Alex Ziff.

"Many dating apps have the ability to reveal the individual's location to other users on that app. We're keen to reassure people however that Ciao Date does not track, or locate, people in any way through their phone."

The focus, instead, is on the date itself, so users specify the location and kind of activity; be it sushi, cocktails, or something outdoorsy, and you can even decide before you meet how you're going to split the bill, because gone are the days when the person who instigated the date was automatically expected to pay for everything.

Away from dating, Zipskee (zipskee.com) connects globetrotters with locals who can show you around and help you discover the tastiest tapas in Barcelona or the coolest clubs in Berlin.

The idea came about after CEO Evan Hung had a chance encounter with an Austrian in Denver who was doing a medical placement.

The two ended up hanging out, then a year later, Hung visited his friend in Innsbruck and found himself alone during the day.

"I explored the city by myself since he had to attend classes - and experienced the similar challenge of not knowing anyone local. I have always loved learning about new cultures through the lens of local people and desired the ability to easily connect with them. It was these circumstances that led to the birth of Zipskee."

The site matches users by language and interests and, because it has a star rating and review system, lone female travellers can feel safe connecting with people all over the world.

Whether you're looking for romance, friendship, or just advice that you won't find in guide books, it's never been easier to link up with people, near or far, but sexism and abuse are still all too common.

It's encouraging to see, though, with the arrival of Ciao and Zipskee, that the tech world is wising up to the challenges women face online.
Seven weeks have passed since terrorists killed 20 hostages in cold blood at a Dhaka cafe, but an ongoing police investigation has netted only two minor suspects, while the alleged masterminds remain at-large, authorities acknowledge.

Seventeen foreigners were among the slain hostages, and five men suspected of carrying out the attack were killed as security forces moved in to break the overnight siege at the Holey Artisan Bakery, which lasted into the morning of July 2 in Dhakas diplomatic quarter.

Although the Islamic State (IS) claimed its supporters in Bangladesh attacked the cafe, Bangladeshi officials have maintained that the Mideast extremist group was in no way linked to it, and they have repeated earlier denials that IS has no presence in the country. They insist that home-grown militants were behind the slaughter.

Apart from two accused lesser suspects in custody, police have identified two men as among 10 people who allegedly masterminded the cafe attack.

We have identified Canadian national Tamim Chowdhury, Marjan and eight others as the masterminds of the Gulshan attack, Masudur Rahman, the spokesman for the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), told BenarNews on Monday. Police did not release the names of the other suspects.

Chowdhury and Marjan are believed to be at-large in the Dhaka area, officials told BenarNews.

Chowdhury is the head of the groups Bangladeshi network, according to a recent edition of Dabiq, a propaganda magazine publish by IS, but authorities have rejected that assertion, claiming a faction of home-grown militant group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (JMB) plotted and executed the attack.

Under suspicion

So far, authorities said they have taken into custody two people who were inside the cafe as the attack unfolded. British citizen Hasnat Karim and Tahmid Hasib Khan, a student at the University of Toronto in Canada, played some kind of role in the attack, according to police.

Their lawyers and relatives said they are innocent but were caught up in a tragic chain of events at the restaurant. The two initially were identified among those hostages who emerged from the siege unhurt. That night, Karim, a businessman working in Dhaka, was at the restaurant celebrating his daughters birthday with his wife and two children when gunmen burst in and took hostages, according to reports.

A third man, Zakir Hossain Shaon, whom police sources identified as another potential suspect, worked as a pizza maker at the cafe. He died in a Dhaka hospital on July 8 of injuries reportedly sustained when security forces broke the siege.

Both Karim and Hasib are in a Dhaka jail, but only Karim has been arrested officially. Officials at the British and Canadian embassies in Dhaka did not respond to detailed requests for comment from BenarNews.

Lawyer Shah Mohammad Shahbuddin, who represents Karim, said his client will appear in court for a bail hearing on Wednesday.

IS ideology very much present

After the siege was broken, police began to focus on Karim and Khan during post-rescue interviews with surviving hostages. Alleged discrepancies emerged in their accounts of when the siege was taking place, said Rahman of the DMP.

Karim had acted suspiciously by downloading an app on his phone 10 minutes after the attack began, according to police who claim the phone was used to transmit photos of the bodies of hacked-up hostages, which were later posted on social media.

Local media published photos that showed Karim and Khan talking to a militant on the roof of the cafe before commandoes launched their operation on July 2.

Karims lawyer told BenarNews that his client was innocent, saying that the militants had confiscated his clients Smartphone and used the app to transmit the gory photos.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal said the attackers were not linked to IS or any other international terrorist group.

They [IS] could have gotten the photos from Facebook. This is an age of communication. They are JMB, not IS or al-Qaeda, he told BenarNews.

Commenting on the investigation into the attack, a security analyst told BenarNews that no matter whether the home minister or other officials kept denying the presence of IS in their country, The IS ideology is very much present in Bangladesh.

The Holey Artisan attack has proved that the JMB has connections with the international terrorist organizations, retired Brig. Sakhawat Hossain said.
Police Gen. Chakthip Chaijinda tells reporters that as many as 20 people are suspected of having roles in a series of bombing and arson attacks earlier this month, Aug. 22, 2016.

As many as 20 people suspected of involvement in bomb and arson attacks at tourist hotspots across southern Thailand on Aug. 11 and 12 come from its insurgency-wracked Deep South, the national police chief said Monday.

The revelation by Police Gen. Chakthip Chaijinda at a news conference in Bangkok was the first time that Thai authorities established a broader link between the restive region and 11 bomb attacks in seven provinces in the countrys upper south that killed four and injured dozens. Last week, Thai authorities issued an arrest warrant for a man from the Deep South, who is wanted in connection with those attacks.

However, in addition to not ruling out the possibility that southern separatists could be trying to expand their armed rebellion north of the confines of the predominantly Muslim Deep South, Chakthip said investigators were still looking at other possible motives for the bombings and arson attacks farther north.

Those responsible for them could also include people belonging to a movement opposed to this months constitutional referendum, in which a majority of Thais voted for a junta-backed draft charter, the police chief said. A majority of at least 60 percent in the three provinces that make up most of the Deep South voted against the charter.

The 20 suspects represent a mix of old hands from the Deep South and people from the region who have no criminal background, Chaktip said.

Officials can identify some perpetrators in many attack scenes because some of them are on arrest warrants in the Deep South. But many of them are newbies without criminal records, he told reporters.

But whether the old hands led the attacks or not, and which group carried out the attacks, we cannot disclose now. No one claimed responsibilities, be they BRN or Wadah, he said, referring to Barisan Revolusi Nasional, the main rebel group in the Deep South, and Wadah, a group aligned with political parties linked to former prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra.

Chakthip did not identify the 20 suspects.

The assailants must have been trained in Pondok [Islamic high schools] and from abroad. They have behaved differently than general Muslims and dressed up like tourists when they carried out the attacks, Chakthip said.

Manhunt

Meanwhile in the Deep South, authorities launched a manhunt for Ahama Lengha, a native of Narathiwat province, who was the subject of an arrest warrant last week. At the time, Deputy National Police Chief Gen. Srivara Ransibrahmanakul said that evidence from the scene of an attempted bombing in Phuket on Aug. 10 matched DNA from the suspect.

A bomb planted at Patong Beach in Phuket did not go off, but police believe that Ahama also participated in the wider plot that resulted in the 11 bomb attacks and five arson attacks over the next two days.

On Monday, a security source in Narathiwat told BenarNews that Ahama, who has a criminal record dating to 2008, worked at a fertilizer factory in Malaysia, about 15 km (9 miles) from Thailands southern border.

Two days earlier, security forces in the Deep South cited martial law and an emergency decree as they searched Natohdul Islahiyah Pondok, an Islamic high school in Pattani provinces Sai Buri district, looking for 24-year-old Madsaifudin Lomang, police said.

A security force official, who asked not to be named, told BenarNews that residents from the Pattani and Narathiwat had been linked to the attacks, but that some had fled to Malaysia.
ein Google-Unternehmen

Google-Dienste anzubieten und zu betreiben

Ausfalle zu prufen und Manahmen gegen Spam, Betrug und Missbrauch zu ergreifen

Daten zu Zielgruppeninteraktionen und Websitestatistiken zu erheben. Mit den gewonnenen Informationen mochten wir verstehen, wie unsere Dienste verwendet werden, und die Qualitat dieser Dienste verbessern.

neue Dienste zu entwickeln und zu verbessern

Werbung auszuliefern und ihre Wirkung zu messen

personalisierte Inhalte anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen

personalisierte Werbung anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen

Wenn Sie Alle ablehnen auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies nicht fur diese zusatzlichen Zwecke.

Nicht personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung werden u. a. von Inhalten, die Sie sich gerade ansehen, und Ihrem Standort beeinflusst (welche Werbung Sie sehen, basiert auf Ihrem ungefahren Standort). Personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung konnen auch Videoempfehlungen, eine individuelle YouTube-Startseite und individuelle Werbung enthalten, die auf fruheren Aktivitaten wie auf YouTube angesehenen Videos und Suchanfragen auf YouTube beruhen. Sofern relevant, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auerdem, um Inhalte und Werbung altersgerecht zu gestalten.

Wir verwenden Cookies und Daten, umWenn Sie Alle akzeptieren auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auch, umWahlen Sie Weitere Optionen aus, um sich zusatzliche Informationen anzusehen, einschlielich Details zum Verwalten Ihrer Datenschutzeinstellungen. Sie konnen auch jederzeit g.co/privacytools besuchen.
By Marie Dunn-Harris

Ten BGSU film students didnt have to travel far to get their first experience working on a major motion picture. Three undergraduates and seven alumni were involved in the production of Fast and Furious 8 in Cleveland.

The opportunity came for most of them through alumna Allie Toman 07. Toman, a film major, has worked with the Fast and Furious crew several times, and was asked to make a list of production assistants. Toman immediately contacted telecommunications professor Jose Cardenas about the opportunity.

I wanted to make sure they were aware of the project coming to Cleveland and provide them an opportunity for their resumes, Toman said. It's almost impossible to get your foot into this industry without already knowing someone, and I eagerly accept the opportunities to be that someone and pay it forward.

The filming of Fast and Furious 8 in Cleveland was called second unit because it did not involve actors. Instead, filming focused on stunt work such as car explosions.

Third-year film production major David Bratnick worked on the set as a production assistant. His main job was crowd control.

I had to make sure people on the streets wouldnt be walking onto our set, because a lot of people didnt realize that we were making a film, he said.

Bratnick worked on the film for six days. It was his first time working on a major Hollywood movie.

Walking onto the set that first day seeing how massive it was, how many crew members there were, seeing how they all worked together to make one huge film, it was incredible, he said.

Telecommunications major Brittany Shank 16 also heard about the opportunity through Cardenas. She worked with Bratnick on crowd control.

Our primary job was to explain to people on our assigned street what was going on and try and keep them away during filming for their safety, Shank said.

Alumna Emily Dick 16 worked with Shank and Bratnick on crowd control. She enjoyed the laid back atmosphere with the stunt crew.

This film was completely different than some other films Ive worked on. Ive worked on first unit crews before with actors and sound, but with second units, you dont have sound or actors to deal with, she said. I was shocked how relaxed it was. For example, if a stunt went really well, youd hear cheering from the crew.

Dick learned about the opportunity through networking with previous connections. The timing also worked out because filming started just after graduation and right before she planned on moving to Atlanta.

It was reassuring, knowing that I had something right away that was going to be on my resume before I got to Atlanta. So it was very comforting, Dick said.

While most of the BGSU crew worked as production assistants, senior film production major Jacob Peake had the chance to work on the visual effects side.

I had to do some grunt work like fetching food for everyone, he said. But I also got to help take notes and create diagrams of cars, buildings, anything that needed to be computer generated.

The experience was a first for Peake.

I loved it. There was a lot of movement and communication and always something interesting going on, he said.

Peake also made valuable connections. While he learned a lot about visual effects, his specialty is sound.

I have no background with visual effects but the people I worked with said they could put me in contact with sound people, he said. They encouraged me to keep in touch with them so they dont forget about me.

Peake, Shank, Bratnick and Dick all knew each other as fellow film production majors. But they didnt realize they would be working with six other Falcons.

It was so cool. We were all hanging out and we said, 'Lets take a group BG picture, and a few more said, Wait, we graduated from there (too), Dick said.

It made it a lot easier because we at least knew someone, especially being our first time on a set, Peake said. It definitely helped put BGSUs film production name out there.

It was awesome getting to work with so many people I knew from school, Bratnick said. I think we had the biggest presence on set than any other university.

Bratnick and Shank each has a goal of someday becoming a cinematographer. Peake would like to work in a recording studio for either a music or film company. Dick is now freelancing in Atlanta, where she hopes to build her networking base and gain more experience before eventually moving to Los Angeles.

For all four of them, this experience was the perfect chance for them to get their foot in the door.

The first industry production that you can claim on your resume, the knowledge, contacts and experience that comes with that are priceless, Toman said.

Toman has worked in the industry since she graduated in 2007. She credits her success to her BGSU education, and has heard nothing but positive things about BGSU students during the Fast and Furious 8 production.

They already had an idea what to expect, how to conduct themselves, and the confidence needed to walk onto that set and rock their job each and every day, she said. They made me even more proud to call myself a Falcon!

The six other Falcons involved on the film were alumni Kevin Taylor, Chrissy Butcher, Drew Jackson and Rob Stephans, current student Conor Mutter and former student Trevor ONeal.

Fast and Furious 8 opens in theatres April 14, 2017.
bigtrial.net

For the past five years, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams has been given two complimentary all-access sideline passes to Philadelphia Eagles games.This is the same District Attorney who last month decided that Eagles wide receiver Nelson Agholor wouldn't be prosecuted for the alleged sexual assault of a dancer at the Cheerleaders Gentlemen's Club.Anyone see a problem?For the past six years, D.A. Williams has accepted $160,000 in unreported gifts, including $45,000 in free roof repairs, and more than $20,000 in free airfare and lodging for vacations in Key West, Las Vegas and the Dominican Republic.This is the same District Attorney who prosecuted Thomasine Tynes, a 71-year-old former Traffic Court judge, on a bribery charge for accepting the unreported gift of a Tiffany bracelet from a lobbyist worth $2,000. [She got up to 23 months in prison.]Anyone see a problem?It's great that a federal grand jury and The Philadelphia Inquirer are investigating the finances of Seth Williams. As bad as how the D.A. has flouted campaign finance laws, however, what he has done to Lady Justice is far worse.As a grand jury report in this town once said, it's like comparing inappropriate touching with rape. And the rapist, a large bald man who wears bow ties, is still at large. While the federal grand jury and the Inquirer are hot on the trail of Seth, it's a great time to look into his prosecution of the Catholic Church.This is a district attorney who decided back in 2011 to prosecute Msgr. William J. Lynn for endangering the welfare of a child. Even though Williams knew that his predecessor, former District Attorney Lynne Abraham and a 2005 grand jury, had already decided -- and put it in writing -- that the state's original 1972 child endangerment law didn't apply to the monsignor.The original child endangerment law, D.A. Abraham and the 2005 grand jury stipulated, only applied to people who had direct contact with children -- parents, teachers and guardians -- and not supervisors like Lynn, who had no direct contact with children.And then Abraham led a successful state-wide campaign to get the state Legislature in 2007 to amend that child endangerment law so it did apply to supervisors like Lynn.So why did D.A. Williams, with no public explanation, go after Msgr. Lynn under the original 1972 state law that a previous D.A. and a previous grand jury had already decided didn't apply to him? As did the state legislature, which went ahead and amended the law retroactively so that it would apply to supervisors?Pure politics.Seth Williams was planning to stage a state-sponsored witch hunt aimed at putting Catholic priests in jail, because he knew it would be raw meat for the media, so-called victims advocates, and the rest of the Catholic-hating rabble.A grand jury and the city's paper of record should investigate how Seth Williams went about staging his state-sponsored witch hunt. By rounding up two drug addicted criminals who were transparent, non-credible liars and frauds, and passing them off as victims solely because their fables fell under the statute of limitations.Star Witness No. 1 was Danny Gallagher, AKA "Billy Doe," alias the "lying, scheming altar boy," as described by Newsweek.Gallagher was a drug addict who'd been in and out of 28 different hospitals, clinics and drug rehabs, and had been arrested six times, including one bust for possession with intent to distribute 56 bags of heroin.This is the guy who told doctors and numerous drug counselors that he was a paramedic and a professional surfer. And that he'd been sexually assaulted five times between the ages of 6 and 9 by suspects that included a couple of friends, a neighbor, a teacher, and an older boy.And then he admitted all of it was lies.This is the same guy who told one set of fantastic rape stories to a couple of archdiocese social workers. And then he told a completely different set of fantastic rape stories to the police and a grand jury. And when questioned in a civil deposition about all the staggering factual discrepancies in his twisted tales, he solved the problem by stating that he didn't remember MORE THAN 130 times.Star Witness No. 2, Mark Bukowski, was another drug-addicted criminal who went AWOL as a Marine, and who had pleaded guilty to charges that included filing a false report, furnishing authorities with false information, forgery, identity theft, two counts of filing a false statement, and possession of a controlled substance.His own mother accused of him stealing from her and her husband, and she told police she was suspicious of her son's claim to authorities that he had been the victim of a violent home invasion.How did Seth Williams pass off these two drug-addicted criminal frauds as victims? By rewriting sworn grand jury testimony so it would conform with story lines the D.A. cooked up in his fraudulent 2011 grand jury report.Danny Gallagher's mother, Sheila Gallagher, a registered nurse, told a grand jury she noticed a behavior change in her son's personality at age 14, when he entered high school as a freshman, and got busted for having pot and brass knuckles.But that didn't fit the official story line. So the D.A. rewrote the mother's testimony to say she noticed a "dramatic change in her son's personality that coincided with the abuse," back when he was a 10 and a 11-year-old parochial school student and altar boy at St. Jerome's parish.Mark Bukowski told the grand jury that he had his boxer shorts on when he was 14-years-old and got into bed with Father James J. Brennan. And then he felt the priest's erect penis pressed between his buttocks.But as bad as that incident was, it didn't fit the D.A.'s even more outrageous story line. So the D.A. wrote in the 2011 grand jury reportthat the priest anally raped Bukowski.To pour more gasoline on the situation, the grand jury report stated that Bukowski cried himself to sleep that night asking himself over and over again, 'Why is this happening?' as Father Brennan anally raped him."Even though at Father Brennan's first trial, which ended in a hung jury, Bukowski admitted on the stand that there was no anal rape, and that he and the priest were wearing T-shirts and boxer shorts the night they shared a bed.While the grand jury is still hearing testimony, why not call in Lynne Abraham's former top prosecutors? Then ask if Danny Gallagher was actually raped in separate savage attacks by two priests and a Catholic school teacher, as he had claimed, why did they let that spectacular victim's report of alleged sexual abuse sit for a year and do absolutely nothing about it?Was it because they knew Gallagher's claims were transparently ridiculous and that he had no credibility?While we've got a grand jury investigation going, why not bring in Detective Joseph Walsh? He's the retired detective who led the D.A.'s investigation into Danny Gallagher's claims.In a civil deposition, Walsh testified that he repeatedly questioned Gallagher about nine different factual discrepancies in his testimony. And that Gallagher's response was to either sit there and say nothing, say he was high on drugs, or tell a different story.Why did Detective Walsh keep questioning Danny Gallagher years after the D.A. had already run with Gallagher's lies in that 2011 grand jury report?Was it because Detective Walsh knew that Gallagher's story didn't check out with every witness he had interviewed? Was it because Detective Walsh came to believe that Danny Gallagher was a complete liar? And that the D.A.'s office shouldn't be in the business of putting innocent men in jail?Another big question: Why didn't the D.A.'s office turn the record of Detective Walsh's continued questioning of Danny Gallagher over to defense lawyers in two previous criminal trials? As they were required to, according to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland?But hey, we're just getting started here.While the grand jury is in session, why not dredge Danny Gallagher out of the sewer and ask him who in the D.A.'s office hooked him up with a civil lawyer, as Gallagher has previously stated in court. This is the same civil lawyer who was able to procure a $5 million civil settlement from the Catholic Church, a subject the archbishop of Philadelphia, "Checkbook Charlie" Chaput, refuses to talk about.None of these subjects are dead topics. The D.A. has already announced that he will retry the Father Brennan case, starring Mark Bukowski, on Oct. 24th, as well as the Msgr. Lynn case, starring Danny Gallagher, on May 1st.How many more taxpayer dollars have to be wasted on these two fraudulent cases? Four men innocent of an imaginary crime spree have already been sent to jail, one of whom died there. Isn't it finally time to call off the witch hunt? And put the witch hunter out of business?By the way, if the grand jury does investigate these topics, wouldn't it be great if somebody leaked all that information to the Inquirer? So they can pursue it as relentlessly as they've pursued Seth Williams' undisclosed campaign gifts?


For Immediate Release, August 22, 2016 Contact: Diana Dascalu-Joffe, (720) 925-2521, ddascalujoffe@biologicaldiversity.org Legal Protest Filed Against Fossil Fuel Auction of Public Lands in Montana BLM Fails to Weigh Climate Impact, Raises Risk for Threatened Species Such As Rare Pallid Sturgeon BILLINGS, Mont. Conservation groups filed a formal administrative protest Friday challenging a Bureau of Land Management plan to auction off nearly 20,000 acres of publicly owned fossil fuels in northeast Montana. The protest cites concerns over air and water pollution, fracking and potential harm to threatened species  including the rare pallid sturgeon and greater sage grouse  and the BLMs failure to consider the auctions impact on climate change. Pallid sturgeon photo courtesy USFWS. This photo is available for media use. Groups protesting the lease auction include the Center for Biological Diversity, Great Old Broads for the Wilderness, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Montana chapter of the Sierra Club. This lease sale of public fossil fuels on 19,790 acres in Glacier, Toole, Choteau, Liberty, Hill, Phillips and Valley counties carries the potential to produce 714,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Besides the numerous shortcomings in its environmental assessment, BLM failed to take into account the damaging effects that burning these fossil fuels would have on the climate crisis, said Diana Dascalu-Joffe of the Center for Biological Diversity. If were going to honor our commitments in the Paris climate agreement, President Obama needs to halt new federal fossil fuel auctions now. In addition to the pollution threat posed by fracking and other extraction processes, the lands to be auctioned also provide critical habitat for listed, rare and imperiled species such as the pallid sturgeon, least tern, piping plover, whooping crane, red knot, black-footed ferret, Spragues pipit and greater sage grouse. The pallid sturgeon is an amazing creature that has survived more or less unchanged since the age of the dinosaurs, but now its on the verge of extinction due to dams and habitat loss. The BLM must not allow oil and gas drilling  and potential spills  on the banks of the sturgeons habitat in the Milk River without full consideration of the risks, said Matt Skoglund, director of NRDCs Northern Rockies office in Bozeman, Mont. The groups protest also cites BLMs failure to provide accurate and consistent mapping data for the lease parcels, in violation of the Agencys public participation requirements. The legal protest is part of a rapidly growing national movement calling on President Obama to expand his climate legacy by halting new federal fossil fuel leases on public lands and oceans  a step that would keep up to 450 billion tons of potential carbon pollution in the ground. Keep It in the Ground rallies opposed to federal fossil fuel auctions have been growing across the country  in Alaska, Colorado, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming and Nevada  and have caused some auctions to be canceled or postponed. The Keep It in the Ground movement will continue to call out the hypocrisy of the administrations stated goal of fighting climate change while at the same time selling off fossil fuels on our public lands, Dascalu-Joffe said. Background

The American public owns nearly 650 million acres of federal public land and more than 1.7 billion acres of Outer Continental Shelf  and the fossil fuels beneath them. This includes federal public land, which makes up about a third of the U.S. land area, and oceans like Alaskas Chukchi Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Eastern Seaboard. These places and the fossil fuels beneath them are held in trust for the public by the federal government; federal fossil fuel leasing is administered by the Department of the Interior. Over the past decade, the combustion of federal fossil fuels has resulted in nearly a quarter of all U.S. energy-related emissions. An 2015 report by EcoShift Consulting, commissioned by the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, found that remaining federal oil, gas, coal, oil shale and tar sands that have not been leased to industry contain up to 450 billion tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution. As of earlier this year, 67 million acres of federal fossil fuel were already leased to industry, an area more than 55 times larger than Grand Canyon National Park containing up to 43 billion tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution. Last year Sens. Merkley (D-Ore.), Sanders (I-Vt.) and others introduced the Keep It in the Ground Act (Senate Bill 2238) legislation to end new federal fossil fuel leases and cancel non-producing federal fossil fuel leases. Days later President Obama canceled the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, saying, Because ultimately, if were going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, were going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky. Download the September Keep It in the Ground letter to President Obama. Download Grounded: The Presidents Power to Fight Climate Change, Protect Public Lands by Keeping Publicly Owned Fossil Fuels in the Ground (this report details the legal authorities with which a president can halt new federal fossil fuel leases). Download The Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions of U.S. Federal Fossil Fuels (this report quantifies the volume and potential greenhouse gas emissions of remaining federal fossil fuels) and The Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions fact sheet. Download Over-leased: How Production Horizons of Already Leased Federal Fossil Fuels Outlast Global Carbon Budgets. Download Public Lands, Private Profits, a report about the corporations that are profiting from climate-destroying fossil fuel extraction on public lands. Download the Center for Biological Diversitys formal petition calling on the Obama administration to halt all new offshore fossil fuel leasing. Download the Center for Biological Diversitys legal petition with 264 other groups calling for a halt to all new onshore fossil fuel leasing. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.


For Immediate Release, August 22, 2016 Contact: Ileene Anderson, Center for Biological Diversity, (323) 490-0223, ianderson@biologicaldiversity.org

Kim Floyd, Sierra Club, San Gorgonio Chapter, (760) 680-9479 Lawsuit Launched Over California Cities' Killing of Threatened Santa Ana Suckers Colton, San Bernardino Halted Water Releases Imperiling Rare Fish SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. Three conservation groups filed a notice of intent today to sue the cities of Colton and San Bernardino and their regional wastewater reclamation authority for illegally killing federally protected Santa Ana sucker fish. By halting water releases critical to maintaining surface flows of the Santa Ana River, the Rapid Infiltration and Extraction (RIX) treatment plant is stranding and killing threatened fish, violating the Endangered Species Act and driving the fish closer to extinction, according to the suit. Its outrageous that these cities are killing and injuring Santa Ana suckers without any attempt to comply with the Endangered Species Act, said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, which has been working to protect the rare fish for more than a decade. So once again were having to take legal action to protect these fish from going extinct in their namesake river. Since at least 2014, more than 100 Santa Ana sucker deaths have been documented in three instances when the Colton/San Bernardino Regional Tertiary Treatment and Water Reclamation Authority halted water releases into the river. Each shutdown caused the Santa Ana River to go dry, stranding and killing the endangered fish as well as other native fish. In addition, during the shutdowns more than 1,200 Santa Ana sucker fish have been salvaged in buckets, then re-released once the water starts flowing, likely causing harm to the surviving fish. Records show that at least 60 shutdowns have occurred since 2014, but very few were monitored to document what happened to the fish. The sucker fish is struggling to survive in the Santa Ana River as it is. Repeatedly shutting off the water that the fish rely on without even seeking the necessary federal permits is decimating this population and making recovery impossible, said Kim Floyd, conservation chair for the San Gorgonio Sierra Club. We are stepping in to enforce the Endangered Species Act because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service  the federal agency tasked with protecting our public-trust resources  has so far refused to act to protect the Santa Ana sucker, said Drew Feldmann, conservation chair for the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society. 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. Yet the Santa Ana sucker possesses adaptations that enable it to repopulate its birth streams rapidly after such unpredictable events. The fish primarily eats 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, but is now relegated to only a few stream stretches. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

www.biologicaldiversity.org The San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society is the local chapter of the National Audubon Society for almost all of Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, and has about two thousand members in that area. Its missions are the protection of natural habitat for birds and other wildlife, and public education about the environment. The Sierra Club is Americas largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with more than 2.4 million members and supporters nationwide. In addition to creating opportunities for people of all ages, levels and locations to have meaningful outdoor experiences, the Sierra Club works to safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and litigation.


For Immediate Release, August 22, 2016 Contact: Craig Tucker, Karuk Tribe, (916) 207-8294

Jonathan Evans, Center for Biological Diversity, (213) 598-1466

Bob Wright, Friends of the River, (916) 442-3155 x 207 California Supreme Court Upholds Moratorium on Suction Dredge Mining for Gold SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. The California Supreme Court today upheld a statewide moratorium on recreational suction dredge mining for gold and said regulations protecting water supplies, fisheries, wildlife and cultural resources from the practice are valid. Suction dredge miners had asked the court to prevent the California Department of Fish and Wildlife from enforcing the current moratorium on the destructive practice. The moratorium, in place since 2009, is designed to prevent mercury pollution and damage to wildlife, waterways and cultural resources caused by suction dredge mining until protective rules are adopted. Suction dredging is a continuation of the genocidal legacy of goldminers that started over 150 years ago, said Leaf Hillman, the Karuk tribes director of natural resources. We will continue the fight to protect our cultural and natural resources from this reckless form of river mining. Suction dredge mining uses machines to vacuum up gravel and sand from streams and river bottoms in search of gold. It threatens important cultural resources and sensitive wildlife species, and the California Native American Heritage Commission has condemned its impacts on priceless tribal and archeological resources. It pollutes waterways with mercury and sediment and destroys sensitive habitat for important and imperiled wildlife, including salmon and steelhead trout, California red-legged frogs and sensitive migratory songbirds. Suction dredging is a reckless form of hobby mining that tears up rivers and threatens our waterways, imperiled salmon and other wildlife, said Jonathan Evans, environmental health legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. In this time of drought and climate change, we cant afford to have Californias waterways trashed by a small but vocal group of gold miners. The suction dredge mining decision results from the case of The People of the State of California v. Brandon Lance Rinehart, in which a suction dredge miner was convicted of mining without a permit in 2012 in the Plumas National Forest, north of Lake Tahoe. California law prohibits in-stream suction dredge mining until the state develops regulations that will pay for the program and protect water quality, wildlife and cultural resources, and until Clean Water Act permits are issued for the polluting hobby. California agencies have not yet developed those regulations or permits. The harm done by suction dredging is well documented by scientists and government agencies. It harms state water supplies by re-suspending toxic mercury, sediment and heavy metals. The Environmental Protection Agency and State Water Resources Control Board urged a complete ban on suction dredge mining because of its significant impacts on water quality and wildlife from mercury pollution. The unanimous decision handed down by the California Supreme Court this morning correctly holds that state regulations protecting our riverbeds from being vacuumed up by suction dredge gold mining has not been preempted by federal law, said Friends of the River Senior Counsel Bob Wright. This is a victory for sanity and common sense as well as the effort to protect our crashing fish populations. A coalition of tribal, conservation and fisheries groups have been seeking to uphold Californias laws regulating suction dredge mining. This coalition includes the Center for Biological Diversity, the Karuk tribe, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermens Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Friends of the River, The Sierra Fund, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, Foothills Anglers Association, North Fork American River Alliance, Upper American River Foundation, Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, Environmental Law Foundation and Klamath Riverkeeper. Members of the coalition are represented by Lynne Saxton of Saxton & Associates, a water-quality and toxics-enforcement law firm. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.1 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

www.biologicaldiversity.org The Karuk Tribe is the third-largest federally recognized Indian Tribe in California. The Karuk have been in conflict with gold miners since 1850. Karuk territory is along the middle Klamath and Salmon Rivers.

www.karuk.us
Mewing is a TikTok trend that has blown up in the last few months. It is claimed that it can help shape your jawline as well as cure other ailments by actively pressing your tongue to the roof
NEW YORK, USA - The Nigerian military should cease threatening freelance journalist Ahmad Salkida with prosecution for not acting as an informer, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said last week. The military has said the journalist could face terrorism charges if he does not provide it with information he gained in the course of his reporting on the militant group Boko Haram.

In a statement carried by Nigerian news websites on 14 August 2016, military spokesman Colonel Sani Kukasheka Usman declared Salkida and two civil-society workers, Aisha Wakil and Ahmed Bolori, were "wanted for interrogation" regarding the location of over two hundred school girls Boko Haram abducted in April 2014.

In the statement, Usman invoked the 2011 Terrorism Prevention Act, under which, "Nigerians could be punished for failure to disclose information about terrorists or terrorists' activities. He said, "We are also liaising with other security agencies for their arrest if they [fail] to turn up." Salkida has lived in the United Arab Emirates since August 2013.

"Journalists must sometimes rely on the trust of dangerous people. Coercing them to become informants risks putting all journalists under suspicion and in danger," CPJ West Africa representative, Peter Nkanga, said. "Nigeria's military should not threaten Ahmad Salkida and instead ensure that he is free to work."

On 16 August, Nigerian director of Defence Information, Brigadier General Rabe Abubakar said that the military was only inviting Salkida and the two civil-society workers for questioning. "We are only inviting them to shed light on pending issues that will support current military efforts, and not to arrest them," Abubakar said, in remarks quoted by the broadcaster Channels Television.

Salkida told CPJ that he believed the military was trying to punish him for his persistent reporting on Boko Haram since 2006. He said that he had returned to Nigeria three times since May 2015 at the invitation of various federal government agencies.

Salkida told CPJ that he feared for his life, and that anonymous callers had threatened him about his articles and posts to social media websites and his contacts with Boko Haram. Salkida has received similar threats in the past, CPJ reported at the time.

Salkida has been covering Boko Haram since mid-2006. Police detained him in 2009 over his reports on the activities of the militant group when he was a reporter for the independent Daily Trust newspaper. He fled his home in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri in July 2011 after callers identifying themselves as Boko Haram members threatened him with death, following the publication of his profile of Boko Haram's first suicide bomber.

Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for attacks that have killed thousands of people, including Nigerian television journalist Zakariya Isa, who the organisation claimed was a spy for the government.
Just Design helps to re-affirm this iconic brand

All Gold Tomato Sauce is a familiar favourite in every South African home. But how many of us are aware of the fact that All Gold also produces tinned tomato products, jams, pasta sauces and other condiments? Tiger Brands approached specialist packaging design agency Just Design to help them create portfolio awareness and brand recognition, so as to visually reaffirm All Golds position as market leader and to create a solid platform for future innovation.

With acute awareness of the heritage and visual equity in the brand, Just Design drew on their strategic understanding and creative skills to respectfully unpack the brand. Identifying the iconic All Gold Tomato Sauce as the brands cornerstone, Just Design looked to leverage upon the elements embedded in the brand; accentuating the red and gold, whilst using the shield device within the label to create a strong ownable architecture. This allowed All Gold to unite its product portfolio and build-on the additional layers of communication required.

A fresh new approach to the on-pack photography that heroes the quality of both the ingredients and product, allowed Just Design to bring the brands payoff line Tastes Real Good to life, - making the new All Gold stand out on shelf as the market leader it is.

Jenny Wise, Category Marketing Manager: Condiments & Ingredients, Tiger Brands, says: We are incredibly excited to see the new All Gold packaging on shelf and Im sure we will be seeing the results in our volumes, brand shares and brand health. She went on to thank Just Design for all the time, effort, passion and patience that went into making this happen.

The new packs have started appearing in store and form part of the new All Gold brand world.

About Just Design

For over 15 years, Just Design has proven time and again that good thinking leads to great creative. With a national footprint and accounts across Africa, Middle East and Europe, they are the strategic design partners for many blue-chip clients and global brands, and are one of the top packaging design agencies in South Africa.

About All Gold

All Gold is a heritage South African brand that is part of the Tiger Brands stable. It has been around since 1908, with All Gold Tomato Sauce firmly cemented in the lives of all SA consumers. All Gold Tomato Sauce is the undisputed market leader, and the brand as a whole offers sauces, tinned tomato products, jams and pasta sauces.

For further information, please contact:

Vanessa Bosman

az.oc.ngisedtsuj@assenav

+27 (0)11 234 4249




NEW YORK, USA: US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is nearing a deal to buy US biotech firm Medivation, which specializes in cancer treatments, for nearly $14-billion, US media reported.

Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal said the deal could be made public as early as Monday, 22 August 2016. The Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said it could be an all-cash transaction.

Pfizer's offer for the San Francisco, California-based Medivation goes far beyond the company's market value of $11.1 billion. Medivation shares closed at $67.16 in Friday trading.

By purchasing Medivation, Pfizer would add to its portfolio the drug Xtandi, a promising treatment against prostate cancer that analysts estimate will generate some $1.33 billion in annual sales by 2020.

The purchase would be Pfizer's biggest buy since it bought the medical device company Hospira last year for $17 billion.

The transaction is a snub to the French pharmaceutical group Sanofi, which earlier offered $58 a share, which Medivation rejected in July.

Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge
Atmosphere Communications, part of the King James Group, will be hosting auditions for talented students to enter its annual #Launchpad 2017 internship programme.

Entering its fourth year, it kicks off in October with events in Johannesburg and Cape Town where young graduates pitch their talents to agency staff in the hope of securing one of the four positions available in 2017.

Nicola Nel, MD of Atmosphere Communications, explains that the agency aims to attract recruits that are focused on learning and have heaps of curiosity. We hire for attitude and train for skills, but good grades and proactivity gets your foot in the door. It is an exciting time to be in our industry, and we are committed to give our interns one of the best learning experiences around. Interesting clients, diverse projects and a creative working environment is the ideal launch pad for a future career in the communications/marketing /media environment. Successful applicants embark on a 12-month internship programme with the possibility of permanent employment.

Application requirements

Send short error-free CV (no longer than two pages)

Submit a 200 word written motivation or a 1-minute video on why they want to work at Atmosphere or alternatively post the video on Facebook and tag the Atmosphere #Launchpad page.

Supply a copy of their matric results and latest varsity/college results

Hold a degree/diploma (need to be newly graduated) or be studying part-time for final year towards a degree/diploma or graduating this year

Johannesburg applications to be sent to az.oc.erehpsomta@bhjdaphcnual and Cape Town applications to az.oc.erehpsomta@tpcdaphcnual.

Applications close on 30 September 2016 and applicants should meet the following requirements:

Candidates will be notified by 7 October 2016 whether they have been selected for the full-day workshop on 21 October 2016. The new interns will be selected before end November 2016.
R60m has been earmarked for the next phase of the City of Cape Town's ceiling retrofit project. The project aims to warm up old state-subsidised houses which were previously constructed without ceilings.

To date, some 4,500 ceilings have been installed across the metro at a cost of approximately R83m. This has also included the fixing of roof leaks and the installation of safer ceiling lighting.

General Vrygrond project archive photo: a ceiling being retrofitted.

"Earlier this week, I went to visit some of our beneficiaries in Vrygrond where weve spent about R26,2m on the completion of 1,250 ceilings. One of our aims with this project was to warm up these homes and, from the feedback, it seems that this has been accomplished," said the Citys Mayoral Committee Member for Human Settlements, Councillor Benedicta van Minnen.

"We are starting with public participation for the next phase of this project shortly and weve earmarked a further R60m in areas across the metro.

"It is hoped that we can continue to alleviate some of the discomfort that the beneficiaries of old state-subsidised houses  commonly referred to as RDP houses  have had to endure over the years. Our contractors and staff have performed exceptionally well and have mostly been markedly ahead of schedule," she said.

Poor thermal performance

Having to live without a ceiling has caused much discomfort for residents who have been affected by the poor thermal performance of the homes, as well as condensation which gives rise to damp conditions and inferior internal air quality.

Councillor Van Minnen inspects the ceiling of Mrs Jennifer Jonas in Vrygrond.

In Cape Town alone, it is estimated that there are approximately 40,000 state-subsidised homes, built between 1994 and 2005, that do not have ceilings. Ceiling retrofitting has been completed in Eureka, Kalkfontein, Broadlands (Strand) and Lwandle, Vrygrond and Wesbank.

Phase two includes the areas of Chris Nissen Park, Gordons Bay, Heinz Park, Macassar, Phumlani, Silver City and Sir Lowrys Pass Village. The public participation process for these areas are commencing soon as buy-in and support from the beneficiaries are vital.

Public participation dates are as follows:
In order to stay relevant and competitive in a fast-moving connected world, companies are having to digitally transform their businesses. Claude Schuck, regional manager for Africa at Veeam, examines this era of organisational evolution more closely.

Claude Schuck - regional manager for Africa at Veeam

Digital transformation entails making a change to the mechanisms of a business to embrace new technologies that will result in a more efficient organisation. The 'always-on' enterprise environment drives more services from the data centre that are coupled with a growing amount of data. There is simply no patience for downtime or data loss, he says.

Meeting the digital demand

Recent Veeam research shows that application downtime costs businesses $16 million per year in lost revenue and productivity globally. The digital transformation is putting further strain on data centres as it involves updating legacy systems and investing time and money. However, having a modern data centre anchored with key technologies provided by virtualisation, modern storage systems, and cloud technologies can pave the way to meet this digital demand.

Given predictions that there will be almost 21-billion connected devices by the end of 2020, this transformation push could not have come at a better time. The growth in terms of devices delivers a clear need to provide round-the-clock access to data and applications. Veeam research shows that more than two-thirds of respondents have invested significantly in data centre modernisation specifically to increase their levels of availability.

Many business applications provide rich data options, such as photos and video. This drastically increases demand for storage in the data centre. However, another challenge is making the data and applications available at all times, just in case something goes amiss, he adds.

Schuck believes that missing out on the digital transformation can lead to loss of business revenue and even reputation.

It used to be that a first impression was made on a good handshake. But today with the demands on uptime being what they are, this could change to whether a company website is available or not.

Complex standards

Despite the pressure to change, Schuck feels that it is not the standards that are evolving but rather the delivery and implementation that are becoming more complex. This brings with it heightened expectations around the availability of critical services, often resulting in more processes to navigate through.

Organisations have to strengthen controls and deliver complete visibility in a new way to address this always-on availability requirement of business. Fortunately, there is opportunity for innovation in the data centre and beyond. But for this to happen, the back-end IT infrastructure must change. The digital transformation and the ability to become always-on will depend on this.

Questions that need to be addressed include whether the data centre is virtualised and investments have been made in modern storage systems? Of critical importance is whether the data centre is capable of extending functionality to cloud and service providers. Once the company is able to provide answers to these, the path to the modern data centre and an always-on environment can be confidently embarked on, concludes Schuck.
On Sunday 6 November, the Spier Secret Festival moves to Johannesburg for its 2016 edition after four years of being hosted at Spier wine farm in Stellenbosch.

The food and wine event  a day of workshops, talks, eating and drinking  focuses on ethical production, sustainable practices and trends.

We really enjoyed the warm welcome given in 2014 to our pop-up Spier Secret Courtyard bar on Juta Street and couldn't wait to get back to the Joburg energy, says Cellar Master Frans Smit.

The speakers include:

Mpho Tshukudu: A South African dietician whose food philosophy is reflected in her brand new book, Eat Ting: cook like your granny; embrace traditional dishes; and look after your health.



De Melksalon (Netherlands): Dutch food designers focusing on agriculture and sustainability.



Cateringa & Kompanen (Netherlands): A conceptual catering collective that provides interactive eating-experiences featuring algae, the super food of the future.



Freddie Janssen (UK): Author of Pickled and founder of F.A.T, a pop-up cafe and supper club and purveyor of pickles, kimchi, and sauces.

Tickets can be purchased via Webtickets

Follow #spiersecret on Twitter and Instagram for updates on Spier Secret speakers, or visit www.spier.co.za, www.spiersecret.co.za and The Spier Secret Festival on Facebook for more info.
Renault has extended its popular Captur range with the addition of a funky Sunset Limited Edition turbo diesel model of which only 100 will be sold in South Africa.

The new Sunset is powered by Renaults dynamic 1.5 dCi 66kW Turbo Diesel, the brands most-sold engine which is renowned worldwide for its cheeky performance, frugal fuel consumption, and low emissions. Although only 100 Sunset versions will be sold locally the diesel engine will become a permanent feature of the range and a diesel-powered Dynamique model joins its three petrol-powered siblings, the 1.2 88kW Dynamique EDC, the Dynamique 66kW Turbo and the Expression 66kW Turbo.

The funky, easy-to-drive and practical crossover range already has a strong grip on the local market as the second biggest seller in the tightly-contested B-segment SUV crossover category. Locally this market segment has been dominated by petrol models with diesel engines only making up about 28% of sales, but with the Captur joining the ranks of those who already have diesel power, including the Kia Soul, VW Cross Polo, Ford EcoSport and Nissan Juke, the popularity of diesel is set to grow.

The 1.5dCi turbo diesel that now also powers the Captur is already doing duty in Renaults Duster SUV so it certainly is no stranger to these shores. I drove the oil-burning Captur at the local media introduction and enjoyed its pairing of a slick 5-speed manual transmission and chirpy engine, which is happily free of turbo lag. With 220Nm of torque on call from as low as 1,750r/min, the Captur feels keen to trot from the start and jogs on quickly through the gears.

Another impressive feature of the newcomer is its sip fuel consumption of just 3.6litres/100km in the combined cycle. For once, this consumption is not for an artificial laboratory-like achievement because the cars on our media drive were being monitored (unbeknown to us) where the best consumption figure was just 3.3 litres.

Stand-out, off-beat looks

Captur has captured the local market with its rather charming passenger car ride while also offering much of the practicality of a larger SUV and even traces of the nippy spirit of a hatch. Its stand-out, off-beat looks also have a lot to do with its popularity and the Sunset version is going to attract even more attention with its striking black body paint and distinctive Sunset Orange trim.

Inside the cabin splashes of bright orange also brighten the vent, the MediaNav console, door speaker surrounds and parts of the steering wheel. Carbon black and Sunset Orange even decorate the seat covers. As if the bright colour combinations are not already strong enough eye-magnets, the Sunset also has LED daytime running lights and fancy alloy rims.

Feathers in Captur's cap

Other crowd-pleasers include Bluetooth connectivity, hands-free telephony, and music streaming from external devices, as well as the integrated onboard multimedia system with 7 touchscreen. Satellite navigation and radio control are on tap via steering wheel controls.

The diesel powered Captur has an ECO mode setting which reduces fuel usage to the minimum plus electric side mirrors and electric windows, automatic climate control, rear parking sensors with rear camera, automatic headlights and rain sensitive front wipers.

The final feather in the Frenchies cap is a 5-Star Euro NCAP safety rating thanks to features such as ABS with EBA and ESP, front airbags, head/chest side bags, seat belts with pre-tensioners and force limiters (front seats), anti-submarining front seats, anti-whiplash headrests and force limiter function (rear side seats). Three ISOFIX 3-point child seat anchor seat attachments are fitted to the front passenger and rear side seats.

The Captur Sunset is on the pricey side but for the price, buyers get a generous French serving of eye-catching design, practicality, driving fun, excellent occupant protection, quirky looks and the bragging rights that go with a limited edition vehicle. The entire Captur range comes with a price-inclusive five-year/150,000km mechanical warranty and a three-year/45,000km service plan.

The models and prices are:

Renault Captur 1.5 dCi SUNSET Ltd Edition - R292,400

Renault Captur 1.5 dCi Dynamique - R 289,900

Renault Captur Turbo Dynamique EDC - R 243,900

Renault Captur Turbo Dynamique - R 264,900

Renault Captur Turbo Expression - R 304,900
LUBUMBASHI: "In this stream, the fish vanished long ago, killed by acids and waste from the mines," says Lubumbashi resident Heritier Maloba, staring into the murky waters of his childhood fishing hole.

Pollution caused by copper and cobalt mining has not only poisoned the Katapula, a tributary of the mighty Congo River and one of the main waterways in this second city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but has also induced widespread illness.

"High concentrations of toxic metals ... cause respiratory disorders and birth defects," particularly in people living near the mines, said toxicologist Celestin Banza of the University of Lubumbashi.

The damage has spread through acids in untreated waste released into nature, polluting the air, the water, and much of Lubumbashi, a city of more than two million residents in the country's southeast.

Until recently, Lubumbashi was the capital of Katanga province whose fabulous copper wealth was first tapped by Belgian colonists early in the 20th century.

Last year, Katanga was divided into four new provinces. Mining is prevalent in the two southern ones.

Hindered by neglect during the regime of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko (1965-1997) and in the second Congolese war (1998-2003), the mining industry rose from the ashes of devastating conflict.

Between 2010 and 2014, mineral production led strong economic growth and lifted the country up to the rank of the world's fifth copper producer and top producer of cobalt.

With demand for cobalt driven by its use in mobile phones and electric car batteries, the trade has come at a dire environmental and health cost for DR Congo.

"Mining pollution in Katanga is an undeniable reality," admits member of parliament Davon N'Sa Mputu Elima, who served as environment minister in 2012-14.

He says that mining firms put up considerable resistance to a 2009 amendment in the country's environmental code, which imposed stringent new health and safety requirements.

Such protective measures are often not enforced because of what the MP calls "a lack of expertise" among administrative officials responsible for seeing that mining firms comply.

The public health risks listed by Banza, the toxicologist, also include metabolic disorders, certain tumours, burning sensations in the eyes and the throat, and even "short-term sterility".

"You get the feeling you're suffocating as you breathe," says Viviane Kibwe, a mother of four in a city where mining installations can be located hard by people's homes, schools and fields.

Plumes of smoke and clouds of dust rise into the air carrying dangerous particles, while used water containing cleaning chemicals and mineral alloys runs off untreated into streams.

A 2012 toxicology study by the Carter Center found that many ailments in the area are indeed the result of prolonged exposure to harmful chemicals.

The foundation set up by US former president Jimmy Carter in 1982 also criticised "several flaws" and "ambiguity" with regard to the treatment of waste in DR Congo's mining code of 2002.

Eric Monga, chairman of the Katanga branch of the Business Federation of the Congo, counters that sustainable and safe mining practices have become "an ethical rule" observed by companies.

"An approved study on the environmental impact is a requirement before any operations," he says.

Yet Belgian and Congolese experts carrying out health studies since 2008 find that concentrations of cobalt, copper, lead and even uranium in urine samples "largely exceeded the reference values accepted by the World Health Organization," Banza says.

This is particularly true among children, according to the professor.

At the Shinkolobwe mine some 150km (95-miles) northwest of Lubumbashi - the source of the uranium used in the Hiroshima atomic bomb - thousands of people worked for many years without the slightest protection.

Banza said that he plans to publish a new public health report demonstrating that people in the south of the former Katanga are far worse affected by breathing difficulties than people in the north, mainly farmland.

"My colleagues and I have recorded a comeback of cardiac and respiratory diseases, (particularly) among children and women," says Jean-Marie Kazadi, senior medical expert for the new Haut-Katanga and Lualaba provinces.

Yet many thousands of people work arduous shifts in the mines, desperate to make a living in conditions worsened by a global tumble in copper prices.

The high price of mining is also evident at Kipushi, about 30km (18-miles) south of Lubumbashi, where savannah abruptly gives way to a broad strip of scorched, barren land where the state mining firm Gecamines used to dump acidic waste.

"For more than 30 years, nothing has grown in this place," says Mwalimu Kasongo, a retired teacher of 76.

Former minister N'Sa Mputu says several bird species that once thrived in the area have now "disappeared".

For Lubumbashi resident Maloba, now an unemployed man in his 30s, the childhood fishing expeditions remain a distant memory, with little hope of ever catching anything more in his beloved river.

Source: AFP
The second night of the Loeries Awards provided accolades for the big categories such as TV and Radio, with FoxP2, Ogilvy & Mather and Network BBDO featuring strongly.

But the biggest award of the night was the new Creative Hall of Fame inductee, and it was a proud moment for transformation in the industry as head of Facebook Africa's Nunu Ntshingila's name was announced.

I am humbled by this award, thank you for recognising that creativity does not exist in a vacuum, and for recognising the people who create the environment where creativity thrives.

Gallo Images

Ntshingila is the first woman to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, a huge achievement for the advertising veteran and for the industry. This award is for all the women in the industry, the gender diversification discussion is nowhere near finished, its only just starting.

She thanked her former family at Ogilvy who allowed her to dream and play and always believed in her. She gave thanks to her new family, Facebook, who she says makes sure that her tomorrows are even better than her yesterdays. We believe we bring the technology where great creativity thrives, she says.

On young women entering the industry she said open your minds to opportunities, because when you open your minds the world will rise to meet you. To all the young girls from Soweto to Seshego, this award is yours, not mine.

Read Ann Nurocks interview with the newest Loeries Hall of Fame member.

Grand Prix winners

Big winners of the night were:

Radio Station Commercial: Ogilvy & Mather Johannesburg for KFCs Everyman Meal Branded Video Content: J. Walter Thompson KSA for 1st Branded Online Entertainment Hub  Saudi Telecom Company STC

TV & Cinema Commercials over 90 Seconds: NetworkBBDO for Chicken Lickens Kung Fu Integrated Campaign: FoxP2 for Ster-Kinekors #OpenEye

View all the winners from both nights.
The Adams & Adams Young Creatives Award, for the exceptional achievement of individuals aged 27 or younger, has been awarded to Katie Mylrea, art director at Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town and Amori Brits, head of design at Shift Joe Public.

Adams & Adams Young Creatives: Amori Brits and Katie Mylrea

Each of the young creatives received a Gold Loerie and R60,000, sponsored by Adams & Adams Attorneys, at the final awards ceremony of the Loeries on Sunday, August 21, at the Durban International Convention Centre. This year, thanks to South African Airways, each Young Creative also receives a trip to New York City.

It is wonderful to see such recognition being given to young creatives. And we congratulate Katie and Amori on winning their awards. Art Direction and Design are skills that are informed by a razor sharp mind, and a lot of lateral thinking, says Mariette du Plessis, senior partner at leading intellectual property law firm, Adams & Adams. As a nurturer and protector of the intellectual property of local creative works for over 100 years, the firm is a perfect fit with the world of the creative. Apart from celebrating their work, it imperative that young creatives are also empowered by providing them with the necessary tools to prevent the devaluation of, and under-appreciation of, the commercial and intellectual value of their work. That is why Adams & Adams, legal advisers to the Loeries, is totally committed to protecting and growing local creative talent, and to educating those in the industry on their intellectual property rights.

Katie Mylrea joined Ogilvy & Mather in 2011 after graduating from Cape Towns Vega Brand Communications School and has worked on a number of Volkswagen campaigns as well as District Sixs Travelling Suitcases. She has won numerous awards including Cannes, D&AD, One Show, Eagle and Loeries as well as being awarded the prestigious Lurzers Archive Print Ad of the Year in 2014.

Says Tseliso Rangaka, Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy & Mather South Africa: I came across Kate Mylreas work while judging the Young Creatives awards some time back and was completely blown away by the calibre of ideas as well as the meticulous craft that went into each element. A few years later I got to work with her when I joined Ogilvy Cape Town and experiencing her boundless dedication and passion for great ideas first hand has confirmed just how talented she is.

Amori Brits worked as an art director at Geometry Global where her clients included South African Airways, Miller, Castle, Sun International, Carousel and Unilever before joining Shift Joe Public in 2012 becoming head of design this year. She has worked on campaigns for Clover, Cobra, Visa, Brandhouse, Online.nl, One School at a Time, Paragon Interiors, SuperDirect.com, National Planning Commission, Anglo American, SAB Miller, Crawford Schools and Jet and been honoured with a number of Loeries.

Simone Rossum, creative director at Shift Joe Public, says: In the four years that Amori has been part of Shift Joe Public, she has been integral to several awarded brand communication campaigns  including the awarded OSAAT Fonts for the Future and the Antalis Start Your Day with Paper campaigns. Her drive, passion and commitment to creative excellence have been a great source of inspiration and have made her an invaluable asset to the Shift Joe Public team.

Nurturing new talent lies at the heart of the Loeries and is something I am passionate about. Developing and supporting these young creatives ensures an exciting, inspired future for an industry thats reliant on fresh, creative ideas and the Adams & Adams Young Creatives Award is key in achieving this, says Loeries CEO Andrew Human.

The annual Loeries Creative Week took place in Durban from August 15 until August 21. First staged in 1978 to support South Africa's television advertising industry, the Loeries have since expanded to encompass all areas of brand communication throughout Africa and the Middle East.

All the 2016 Loeries winners will be listed on the Loeries website (www.loeries.com) from Monday, 22 August.

Follow the Loeries on:

Twitter: @loeries #Loeries2016

Instagram: Loerieawards

Facebook: The Loeries

Major Partners of the Loeries 2016

Tourism KwaZulu-Natal (TKZN), the Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, KwaZulu-Natal Province (EDTEA), EThekwini Municipality  Durban Tourism, DStv Media Sales, Gearhouse South Africa.

Category Partners

Accenture, Adams & Adams, ADreach, Channel O, Facebook, Film & Publication Board, Google, JCDecaux, Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA), The Times, Unilever South Africa, Woolworths, YFM.

Additional Partners and Official Suppliers

AAA School of Advertising, Antalis South Africa, Aon South Africa, Arcade Content, Association of Practitioners in Advertising, Backsberg, BEE Online, Castle Lite, Clive Stewart Photography, Circus Circus Beach Cafe, Egg Films, First Source, Fresh RSVP Guest Logistics, Funk Productions, Gallo Images, Graphica, Grid Worldwide, HelloCrowd, Hetzner, Independent Agency Search and Selection Company, Locomute, Multiprint Litho, Newsclip, Paygate, Red Hot Ops, Rocketseed, Scan Display, South African Airways, Telkom SA SOC Ltd, Tiekie Barnard Consultancy, Total Exposure, Tsogo Sun, Universal Music Group, Vega School of Brand Leadership.

Official Media Partners

Between 10and5, Bizcommunity.com, CliffCentral.com, Coloribus Advertising Archive, Design Times, Film & Event Media, Goliath and Goliath, iDidTht.com, Marketing Edge Nigeria, Music in Africa, The Redzone, YouTube.






Suhana Gordhan, creative director at FCB Africa, has been named the Loeries' newest chairperson. She takes over the reins from Neo Mashigo who completes his two-year tenure this year.

Suhana Gordhan

The announcement was made during the annual Loeries Awards on Saturday, 20 August, at the Durban International Convention Centre.

I am honoured to take on this role as chairperson and look forward to serving the Loeries. The Loeries has always been about shining a light on creative excellence, and I hope to play a part in continuing to uphold the iconic creativity that comes out of this continent. As a woman, I consider it a privilege to be able to use my own experiences and that of my esteemed peers to invest in, and to inspire other young women coming up in the industry to unleash their own power of creativity and to aim for those Golds and Grand Prix awards, says Suhana Gordhan.

The current creative lead on Wimpy and Coca-Cola South Africa, Gordhan started in the advertising industry in 2001 and has worked on some of the countrys most loved brands at agencies such as Ogilvy, Black River FC and Net#work BBDO.

Some of her award wins include a Loerie Grand Prix, Black Eagle, Gold Pendoring, Creative Circle Ad of the Year, a Silver Pixel at The Bookmarks and a Cannes Silver Lion.

Shes passionate about the art of copywriting, building client relationships and working together to make iconic South African work.

Gordhan has a strong commitment to South African creativity and was previously nominated to join both the Loeries Board and the Creative Circle Exco. She writes an opinion column about advertising and marketing for Business Day. Furthermore Gordhan was invited to be a judge at the international festival of creativity, the Cannes Lions in France this year.

Says Brett Morris, Group CEO FCB Africa: Suhana is a highly respected and seasoned creative director who leads with an uncompromising focus on creative excellence but never at the expense of the bigger picture. I think she will bring a fantastic perspective to the leadership of the Loeries in all that it aims to achieve.

First staged in 1978 to support South Africa's television advertising industry, the Loeries have since expanded to encompass all areas of brand communication throughout Africa and the Middle East.

All the 2016 Loeries winners will be listed on the Loeries website (www.loeries.com) from Monday, 22 August.

Twitter: @loeries



Official Hashtag for Loeries: #Loeries2016



Instagram: Loerieawards



Facebook: The Loeries

Major Partners of the Loeries 2016

Tourism KwaZulu-Natal (TKZN), the Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, KwaZulu-Natal Province (EDTEA), EThekwini Municipality  Durban Tourism, DStv Media Sales, Gearhouse South Africa

Category Partners

Accenture, Adams & Adams, ADreach, Channel O, Facebook, Film & Publication Board, Google, JCDecaux, Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA), The Times, Unilever South Africa, Woolworths, YFM

Additional Partners and Official Suppliers

AAA School of Advertising, Antalis South Africa, Aon South Africa, Arcade Content, Association of Practitioners in Advertising, Backsberg, BEE Online, Castle Lite, Clive Stewart Photography, Circus Circus Beach Cafe, Egg Films, First Source, Fresh RSVP Guest Logistics, Funk Productions, Gallo Images, Graphica, Grid Worldwide, HelloCrowd, Hetzner, Independent Agency Search and Selection Company, Locomute, Multiprint Litho, Newsclip, Paygate, Red Hot Ops, Rocketseed, Scan Display, South African Airways, Telkom SA SOC Ltd, Tiekie Barnard Consultancy, Total Exposure, Tsogo Sun, Universal Music Group, Vega School of Brand Leadership

Official Media Partners

Between 10and5, Bizcommunity.com, CliffCentral.com, Coloribus Advertising Archive, Design Times, Film & Event Media, Goliath and Goliath, iDidTht.com, Marketing Edge Nigeria, Music in Africa, The Redzone, YouTube




Facebook on Friday took direct aim at video-loving adolescents, and Snapchat, with the release of a new iPhone app that allows teens to watch clips about the lives of their classmates.

SAN FRANCISCO - The app, called Lifestage, was released with no fanfare, and is available for anyone to download on iPhone, although seeing profiles of other users is reserved for those 21 years of age or younger.

The social network allows users to make video clips to describe likes, peeves, dance styles, and other aspects of their character.

Those clips are woven together to serve as public profiles that can be viewed by other Lifestage members, provided they are young enough.

A tool in the app lets users block and report older folks.

"Lifestage makes it easy and fun to share a visual profile of who you are with your school network," the app's iTunes store description says.

Once enough students at any given school are on the app, it becomes "unlocked."

"Once your school is unlocked, you can access the profiles of others in your school community (and all over!) so you can get to know people better in your school and nearby schools," the description said.

Lifestage users are invited to share video snippets whenever they wish.

The app comes as a challenge to Snapchat, the vanishing message service that became a hit with teenagers and which lets members share pictures and video clips.

Lifestage was seen by some as an effort by Facebook to stay connected to young internet users disinclined to take part in the leading social network.

Facebook did not return an AFP request for comment.

Earlier this month, Instagram put its own spin on a key Snapchat feature by letting users post "Stories" that eventually vanish from the Facebook-owned photo-and video-sharing app.

Instagram Stories encourages people to share ephemeral collages of everyday moments on the app which has built a reputation for allowing people to post highlights from their lives or artistic works.

Source: AFP
#WomensMonth Newsmaker: Abongile Kolisi from Pernod Ricard

Abongile Kolisi has been appointed as the brand ambassador for Chivas Regal at Pernod Ricard. Prior to her new role, she spent three years at SA Breweries in sales; two years at BrandSmith in activations for Glenfiddich, Remy Martin and Grant Whisky; and two years as Brand Ambassador for SKYY Vodka.

Briefly tell us about your role as brand ambassador for Chivas Regal? Briefly tell us about your role as brand ambassador for Chivas Regal?

Kolisi: I am the Chivas Regal brand ambassador at Pernod Ricard. I consistently network with influencers, adopters, celebrities and many other awesome people. I engage with our consumers at festivals, events, whisky tastings, and food pairings as well as at artisanal crafted experiences.

What will your first order of business be? What will your first order of business be?

Kolisi: My first order of business is to start hosting tastings for consumers and share everything that I'm learning here in the UK. There is an upcoming festival, Whisky Live, consumers should make a turn at the Chivas Regal area for informative and light-hearted conversations, and of course a Chivas Regal.

What is your core strategy? What is your core strategy?

Kolisi: My strategy is to host tastings and interactive activations using the Chivas Regal core range. I want consumers to rediscover the Chivas Regal of Scotch. I want people to experience the rich and generous taste of Chivas 12 year old, the intense flavours of the Chivas Regal Extra & also the luxury of Chivas Regal 18 year old.

What is your main business challenge? What is your main business challenge?

Kolisi: I wouldn't say it's a challenge but rather an opportunity to remind people that Chivas Regal is an iconic luxury whisky and that it is the world's third selling Scotch whisky.

Most important attribute needed to do your job? Most important attribute needed to do your job?

Kolisi: One needs to be a people's person, be able to network and have knowledgeable and credible conversations with consumers. A curious and hungry mind is also vital because it's an ever changing industry and one needs to be well informed at all times, not only on whisky but on current affairs which interest our diverse consumers. Passion, you live the brand and this is true if you are really passionate and believe in your brand.

As it's Women's Month, do you think it's important having a month dedicated to women? As it's Women's Month, do you think it's important having a month dedicated to women?

Kolisi: Yes, women play a big part in everyone's lives, they give birth to nations. It is particularly important in South Africa for the instrumental part they played in our history. We appreciate the support and appreciation shown to us everyday but to dedicate a month to just acknowledge and appreciate us gives us a sense of pride and motivates us to strive for better.

What advice would you give to women pursuing a career in your field? What advice would you give to women pursuing a career in your field?

Kolisi: Run your own race, go for what you want, believe in yourself and be willing to work hard.

What's at the top of your bucket list? What's at the top of your bucket list?

Kolisi: I have done the longest bungee in the world, maybe I should be more daring and attempt "pipeline" (and I don't surf)...
Got a question or tip? Contact us at bizmojoidaho@gmail.com.
Krishna Janmashtami 2021: Khoya Peda Sweet Recipe Indian Sweets oi-Boldsky Desk

Krishna Janmashtami is celebrated across various states in India and it marks the birth anniversary of Lord Krishna, who is considered as one of the incarnations of Lord Vishnu. Lord Krishna is the most loved deity in Hinduism. Various recipes are prepared on the occasion of Krishna Janmashtami. This year, Krishna Janmashtami marks the 5248th birth anniversary of Lord Krishna, who is dearly loved by most Hindu devotees. The festival will be celebrated on 30 August 2021.

Some devotees observe this day by fasting for the whole day and they break their fast on the next day. Few other devotees prepare recipes that Lord Krishna was mostly fond of to spread the joy of the festivity even more.

So, if you are wondering of the recipes you can prepare for Janmashtami, here is a Khoya (mawa) peda recipe that Lord Krishna was highly fond of.

Have a look at the simple khoya peda recipe to offer and please Lord Krishna on the occasion of Krishna Janmashtami.

Serves - 7

Cooking time - 60 min (depending on the time it takes to thicken)

Preparation time - 15 min

Ingredients:

Khoya (Mawa) - 1 cup (fresh, grated)

Milk - 3 tbsp

Saffron - 6 to 7 strands

Ghee - One and a half tbsp

Sugar - 1/4th cup (depending on the sweetness you want)

Cardamom powder - th tsp

Pistachios - 7 to 8

Milk powder - 2 tbsp (optional)

Procedure:

Take some fresh khoya and grate it well.

Then, add saffron strands to the warm milk and set it aside.

Heat ghee in a wide shallow non-stick pan.

Once the ghee turns hot, add the crumbled khoya (mawa) and saute the mixture for 10-15 minutes on low flame, stirring it continuously.

Add in the saffron milk and sugar. It will get liquefied (Optional: You can add 2 tbsp of milk powder).

Then, keep stirring the mixture on low flame.

Add cardamom powder and mix everything well.

Wait until the khoya (mawa) thickens and leaves the sides of the pan. It should form a large lumpy mixture.

Turn off the flame and allow the mixture to cool at room temperature.

Then, grease the hands and make small balls with the thickened mixture.

Place a pistachio at the centre and serve it.

Prepare this delicious khoya (mawa) peda recipe for the occasion of Krishna Janmashtami and give us your feedback.
10 Sabudana Recipes For Janmashtami Fasting Maincourse oi-Sanchita

Janmashtami is just around the corner. It is the day when Hindus celebrate the birth of Lord Krishna. Most people observe fast on the day of Janmashtami from morning till night. During the time they consume only a few items which are considered to be the fasting foods according to the norms of Hinduism.

Sabudana forms an integral part of the vrat ka khana in Hinduism. Sabudana is used to prepare vadas, cutlet, khichdi and even sweet dishes. It is a vegetarian processed food that is why sabudana is a fasting food in Hindu culture.

Sabudana which is also known as sago or chowwary, is made from the starch extracted from tapioca tuber. Sabudana is small white round shaped pearl like balls which are soaked in water first and then used for cooking.

ALSO SEE: DAHI RECIPES FOR JANMASHTAMI

People often are in a fix on how to prepare sabudana recipes during fast. Usually khichdi is the only dish which most of us end up making with sabudana. But did you know there are other delectable fasting recipes which you can prepare with sabudana?

Check out these 10 amazing sabudana recipes that you can try for Janmashtami fasting.

Sabudana Khichdi The best part about Sabudana Khichdi is that it is very easy to digest and light on your stomach. That is what makes it a perfect recipe for Janmashtami fasting. Sabudana Kheer Sabudana Kheer is also an interesting Indian dessert recipe. If you have a sweet tooth that gives you craving for that elusive 'something sweet' when you are on a your ritual Janmashtami fast then this will be your saving grace. This Janmashtami fast recipe can also be fed to kids and old people because it is relatively easy to digest. Sabudana Cutlet As the sabudana recipe is uncomplicated, the success of this dish depends on skill. That is why step-by-step recipes always help. You may know how sabudana cutlets are made in theory but until and unless you get a practical demonstration, it might look difficult to execute. Moreover, if you are trying to make sabudana cutlets as a fasting recipe, you need to be quick. Sabudana Thalipeeth Sabudana thalipeeth is a very common recipe for fasting in northern part of India and Maharashtra. The dough is similar to that of sabudana vada but the end result is very different. This can be made with very less oil on a non stick pan. Here is the recipe. Sabudana Vada Sabudana vada is a healthy snack recipe that can taste best with a hot cup of tea or coffee. Sabudana helps in cooling the body temperature and keeps you nourished during the fast. Mashed Sabudana Mashed sabudana is both delicious and filling. After fasting for the whole day, this recipe will give you the energy and nutrition you need. Mashed sabudana is a fast recipe from Bengal. Sabudana Poha Sabudana happens to be the most preferred item for thiose who observe fast. You can make this item into various dishes for Janmashtami fast. Take a look at how to go about the preparation of the tasty Sabudana poha recipe. Sabudana Raita Tasty raita is best as it has curd as the main ingredients which is the best dairy product for digestion and cooling the heat in the body. Particularly the sabudana raita is a perfect recipe for Janmashtami fasting. Sabudana Upma Did you know that Sabudana can also be made into quick and tasty upma? Check out the recipe. Sabudana Pakora You can make the bland sabudana taste amazing by frying it up as sabudana pakora. Take a look.
Barloworld, which this week became only the ninth company to be listed on the JSE for 75 years or longer, believes that many opportunities still exist to grow the array of the various businesses in the group into new territories and adjacent markets.

Clive Thomson, the chief executive of Barloworld, said that the group was represented in 24 countries globally, but there were many opportunities for further geographical growth, particularly into east and west Africa and to expand its presence in Russia and Europe.

Thomson said there would also be opportunities to grow Barloworlds businesses into adjacent markets, where it could leverage its core competencies and capabilities.The groups operations are largely focused on equipment through its long-standing Caterpillar distributorship, automotive, logistics and handling.

Thomson was speaking exclusively to Business Report after a function to celebrate Barloworld 75th anniversary as a listed company on the JSE. Nicky Newton-King, the chief executive of the JSE, congratulated Barloworld on the anniversary of its listing in 1941.

Newton-King said this made Barloworld today one of only nine companies of the more than 400 JSE listed companies to be listed for 75 years or longer.Thomson said examples of opportunities for Barloworld to grow into adjacent markets included its Caterpillar power systems business.





He said they largely distributed diesel generator sets, but gas would be one of the big growth markets in the future, following the gas discoveries off the coast of Mozambique. So we are evolving the business model there to make sure we position ourselves as leaders in gas engines, he said.Thomson said that there was also an evolution away from fossil fuel into renewable energy and the company was looking at opportunities in micro grids and distributed generation, because the big thing in power was going to be moving off-grid.

He said this would also take advantage of partnership between Caterpillar and First Solar, the leading photovoltaic manufacturer in the world.Thomson said the group had piloted one of these systems at its facility in Isando in Johannesburg and the payback on the capital cost was now about five years compared to 10 to 12 years five years ago, which made it economically unfeasable.We are looking at rolling that out, so its a shift or evolution of our business model from diesel generators into gas generators and micro grids incorporating a solar solution, he said.

Thomson said technology would also play an important part in evolving the business model of the groups Caterpillar business, with telematic devices, sensors and technology that was pre-installed on machines sending reams of data to a central location that allowed machines to be monitored that were 2 500km away.You will be able to tell anything from whether the operator is speeding and therefore is a safety risk, whether the machine is being overloaded with earth at the bottom of a mine pit, whether the engine is overheating, the fuel consumption and whether there are any stress fractures on the truck body.

That can lead to a work order and a technician being dispatched to the customer site with the right part before the customer even knows they have a problem, he said.Thomson said Caterpillar today also had autonomous drills and autonomous mining trucks, where there would not be an operator in the cab, leading to major safety benefits.All of these things can bring about radical efficiencies and customer productivity, machine availability and machine uptime. We are investing quite heavily in those types of technological solutions, which will significantly evolve our business model over time, he said.



Business Report
Barclays Bank Botswana is expecting interim consolidated profits to June 2016 to be higher than the previous period. The latest notice on improved results comes amid tough trading environment that domestic banks have been subjected to such as lower rates and sluggish economic growth.

The company which is publicly listed has however not disclosed to its shareholders how much profit to expect, save to tell shareholders and the regulator, that the results will be higher than that reported for the period ended June 2015.

The lender which is under the care of South African-born Reinette van der Merwe hinted on the profits a day after the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) cut key lending rate from 6 percent to 5,5 percent. Bank of Botswana said a rate slash is necessary to inspire growth in the domestic market.

It is not clear what could have contributed to the rise in Barclays banks profits for the period under review. However, writing in the banks annual report for 2015, Merwe acknowledged that the sector has been under pressure in the past two years, and they are not immune to challenges which include tight regulatory changes. However, Merwe was upbeat about the year ahead(2016), saying they expect strong revenue from the retail sector. The banks digital platforms will also come in handy for the bank. In the last couple of months, the bank launched various digital platforms which allow customers to do banking outside banking halls using their mobile gadgets.





Barclays has also been rigorously advertising their business banking services while some of its peers developed cold feet regarding lending to capital intensive projects in the face of market turbulences. Speaking to BG Business on Wednesday, Head of Research at Motswedi Securities, Garry Juma said the banks restricting exercise is starting to pay off. Since Merwe was appointed to head the bank three years ago, the lender undertook a restructuring exercise both in terms of human capital and delivery channel platforms.The bank is also coming from a lower base, said the analyst referring to the banks half year results to June 2015.

During the period, the banks profit was P86, 9 million, compared to P123, 6million. The company has also managed to shrug off negative perception which has made the round ever since Barclays plc announced it was pulling out of Africa operations. In the just-ended period, the bank clinched a $100 million deal to fund BCL copper mine. The loan to the struggling miner has been backed by government in case the mine fails to pay up.

It is some of these corporate deals that will also keep Barclays at the top in the coming months, said Juma. Last month, the bank signed a $125 million credit guarantee scheme with Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). Under the historic arrangement, the United States government will use 75 percent of the credit risk to fund the countrys diamond beneficiation initiatives. The funding could not have come at a better time for the countrys downstream diamond cutting business, which is struggling to receive rough diamonds to process on the backdrop of reduced diamond demand globally.

Last month, minister responsible for minerals, Kitso Mokaila told lawmakers that the industry dropped by nearly half from the US$936.36 million recorded in 2014 to US$502.16 million in 2015.Two out of 21 companies that were operating in Gaborone at the beginning of 2015 had closed shop by year-end due to viability problems, stated Mokaila. Therefore, there are only 19 operational diamonds cutting and polishing companies operating in Botswana at the moment and they employ around 2,000 people, said Mokaila.

Barclays Bank which has upped the ante on marketing and promotional activities for its products and services has cautioned its shareholders when dealing with its securities until the results are formally released.
Competition Authority has conditionally approved the acquisition of electronic company, Wabler Holdings by Blue Hearts Holdings which is owned by Choppies Chief Executive Ramachandra Ottapathu.

This follows a heated debate by retail giants against the acquisition. In a statement released this week, Competition Authority Acting Chief Executive, Tebelelo Pule said the proposed transaction is not likely to result in the prevention or substantial lessening of competition or endanger the continuity of the services offered in the distribution of branded consumer electronics to resellers.

The market structure in the distribution of branded consumer electronics to resellers will not be altered as the acquiring entity will be inheriting the position of the target enterprise, stated Pule.Wabler Holdings is a holding company for IT4Africa (Pty) Ltd, Goldtech (Pty) Ltd, Healthwest Africa (Pty) Ltd and Solid Logistics (Pty) Ltd. It is registered in Botswana. Last month major retailers raised their concerns to the Competition Authority that the proposed acquisition should not be allowed as it will result in harm to the retail industry because the buyer who is the director of the largest retail shop, Choppies might influence the affairs of Wabler Holdings and its dealings with its customers which include Sefalana.





Currently Sefalana procures a wide range of products from the targets. The brands include Samsung and Hisense. Sefalana also has a Samsung store in two of its stores where a large range of Samsung products are sold in its flagship store and is supplied by Wabler Holdings.

Pule stated that Bluehearts will continue to supply the same retailers that were previously supplied by Wabler Holdings on terms not less favourable to those offered by Wabler Holdings to the retailers before the merger. Bluehearts is also ordered to annually, for a period of five years from the implementation date, submit a detailed report to the Authority indicating a list of its new and old customers and the trading terms referred to in (a) above. The report is to be compiled by an Independent Consultant approved by the Authority and Bluehearts (Pty) Ltd shall bear the costs of engaging such a Consultant. Warbler Holdings shall in two weeks after the decision date, submit a detailed list of Warbler Holdings current customers and trading terms to the Authority.

However, Ottapathu has been asked to divest his interests in other six companies which include Montrose Investments t/a RiteFurn; Callao Ltd t/a RiteFurn; Peardale (Pty) Ltd t/a RiteFurn; Decolite (Pty) Ltd t/a RiteFurn; and Mont Catering and Refrigeration.In addition, for a period of five (5) years from the implementation date, Mr. Ottapathu should not either as a principal, agent, partner, representative, shareholder, director, employee, consultant, advisor, financier, or in other like or similar capacity, directly or indirectly be associated with, interested or engaged in any firm, business, company or other association of persons which carries on a business activity similar to the business carried on by the companies listed above, states Pule.
Pragmatic leaders are what the country needs post-independence celebrations that will mark the countrys five decade of self-rule in the coming weeks.

This is because the country will be dealing with an economy that is faltering, operating minus diamonds, the main commodity that has single-handedly transformed Botswana from a poor country to a developed country since 1966. However, the glory days are over as leaders will have to come face to face with a number of challenges, from social to economic that will need men and women of steel to overcome. The main commodity, diamond, is facing challenges, from poor demand to deep underground mining; the challenges are just too many to bear. This is the clear message that is coming from a review paper authored by former Bank of Botswana deputy Governor, Dr Keith Jefferies and his assistant, Sethunya Sejoe. The expected fall in diamonds revenue and dominance in the semi-arid nation will test the market campaign A diamond is for ever, which was coined by a young copywriter, Frances Gerety in 1947.

For Botswana, business will no longer be as usual, soon after a highly-sought after independence celebration billed for 30th September, as reality will show that diamonds which transformed the economy from one of the poorest countries in the world to a developing state in the last five decades can no longer be trusted with growth. It will be a mistake to assume that business as usual is a viable approach to the future growth of Botswana economy, opined Jefferies and Sejoe in the report which was released recently. Currently, Botswanas economy is at sixes and sevens, partly because of a slowdown in the economy and the commodity crash that has affected demand for metals, including diamonds, the countrys main export. Respected diamond market analysts such as Des Kilalea of RBC Capital Markets and Rapaport founder, Martin Rapaport have predicted a recovery for diamonds in the foreseeable future.





However, Botswana cannot raise Champaign glasses to celebrate, since the recovery will not translate into improved fortunes for the country from the diamond sector as it has been the case in the past five decades. There are problems on the ground which cannot be ignored. First even if diamond production continues at current levels for many years, this represents an output plateau, which by definition entails zero growth. So diamond mining is unlikely to lead future growth (of the countrys economy), said the report. In the past year, diamond exports stood at P53, 6 billion. Most of Botswanas diamonds are mined in conjunction with mining major, De Beers. There are other independent mines such as Ghaghoo, owned by London listed Gem Diamonds which this Wednesday reported it has made $4,8 million in sales for the first six months of the year.

Lucara Diamonds is another company operating in Botswana, owning Karowe mine, which is famed for producing Lesedi La Botswana. Both companies have experienced mixed fortunes in sales this year. Econsult analysts are also wary that the President Ian Khama-ruled country will experience serious challenges in the next five decades as compared to the past period. The challenges will demand that the former army Commander employ tact to identify sectors that can lead the economy going forward. However, at this point in time, options are limited and the countrys economic diversification initiatives are faltering.

There are also more challenges coming from the mining sector itself, which depicts a sorry picture ahead. Secondly, as mines get deeper and more difficult to exploit, costs of production go up and hence profits-and the sectors contribution to GDP and government revenue will gradually decline, said Jefferies and Sejoe. Jwaneng diamond mine is one of the countrys oldest mine and its cost of operation will go up in the coming years. It is the biggest revenue generator for Debswana, a diamond company owned by Botswana and De Beers. A few years ago, the two shareholders pumped P24 billion to expand its lifespan under Cut 8 project. BCL mine, although not a diamond mine, but owned by the state, is also experiencing high operational expenditure as a result of aging mining machines and the fact that miners have to dig deeper to extract copper underground.

It appears government has no choice but to continue investing in the mine to save jobs. Even though government has proposed to invest in new projects, the budgetary constraints have forced the country to defer others. According to the 2016/17-budget paper, total revenues and grants are estimated at P48, 40 billion, a drop of P3, 36 billion when compared to the year before. The reduction in proposed revenue is mainly because of fall in mining revenue. The countrys over two-million population is growing amid ills such as HIV/AIDS which has claimed, and continues to claim hundreds of lives annually. The population is growing, so constant diamond production actually entails declining production (in income) per capita, said the economists, who have painted a gloomy picture for the country in the face of declining diamond revenue.

Government is also mindful that minerals, especially diamonds are not forever. Delivering a policy key paper for National Development Plan (11), finance minister Matambo acknowledged that there is need to look at priority areas that can diversify the countrys revenue base. There are several strategies that have been devised to pick up the economy in the countrys NDP 11. For example, under infrastructure, government will continue to maintain and refurbish worn out facilities and assets. Infrastructure is considered the backbone of Botswanas economy as it is essential for productive processes and trade facilitation. NDP 11 will also provide for the construction of new facilities that have the potential to improve and stimulate economic growth, said the minister. Information Communication Technology remains a critical part of the economy and will be so, even under the NDP 11.

Access to information through modern technology is critical. There is need to develop effective ICT platforms such as e-services, broadband and postal network. The ease of doing business is also part of government multi-pronged strategy of increasing growth rates away from mining. Government will intensify the implementation of the reform roadmap and the action plan for doing business in Botswana during NDP 11, stated Matambo. Botswana will also in the coming years contend with high unemployment rates and rising poverty levels. Last week, police officers were forced to use force to disperse a picket from Parliament buildings after unemployed youths staged a peaceful protest over lack of jobs. The next fifty years will also see the country being forced to come with initiatives of how to deal with rising levels of inequality. Some families cannot afford decent housing, said the Econsult report. Too many people are dependent upon government for their monthly incomes, mostly through social safety net schemes, said the two economists.
Observers say that by disqualifying requests for a special congress, the national executive committee of Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD), is setting a precedent which may come back some day to haunt it.

At its meeting of August 13 the NEC rejected calls for a special congress on the basis that the letters from the constituencies did not comply with the constitutional requirements of the five-year old splinter party of the Botswana Democratic Party. In fact, the more cynical observers say that the party's NEC is being downright hypocritical. The BMD constitution stipulates that a special congress can be called either by the party leadership or by a third of the constituencies. In this case, 19 constituencies have applied satisfying the constitutional requirement of the party, but the NEC rejected the letters saying they were not the outcome of branch congresses and further that the letters had no minutes attached to them.

In as much as nobody wants a situation where a constitution is breached willy-nilly at the risk of bringing anarchy into the organisation, it is hypocritical of the party leadership to suddenly require such high standards from its members who may be genuinely in support of a special congress. The reality on the ground is that, structures at the lower levels of any organisation, especially in our local politics where resources are always in short supply, may not be able to satisfy some of the demands such as the ones being made by the BMD leadership, said political commentator, Anthony Morima.





He believes that in politics, political solutions should sometimes take precedence over legal and technical ones. The leadership should have acknowledged the fact that the party is experiencing a serious problem which needs instant solution. By rejecting the application letters as they did, the BMD NEC is only postponing the problem. They should have found a solution, noted Morima. You cannot demand such high standards from wards and branches when you know you have done very little if anything to capacitate them regarding all the requirements and processes involved in applying for a special congress. Matters are not helped by the fact that the party does not supply them with stationery let alone office space. If the branches are not able to produce proper minutes, that is an indictment on the NEC as that shows that it has failed to give the structures the needed training, added Morima in an interview.

He wondered whether the party leadership is being consistent. It is doubtful if all the BMD gatherings such as congresses and conferences held in the past have been held strictly according to the law, said Morima who suspects that those who dont want a special congress have ulterior motives. They find themselves having to clutch at all straws, he said.For his part, political science lecturer at the University of Botswana (UB), Professor Zibani Maundeni believes that, people tend to look for loopholes and pay more attention to detail when there is an issue in which their own interests are at stake. Those who draft constitutions would do well to look at the environment in which the constitution is going to be applied, said Professor Maundeni who, like Morima, doubts the fairness of expecting cadres at the lower branches to meet certain requirements especially when they have not been trained.

Under the circumstances, the two factions should come together and discuss their problems or invite a mediator. It is clear that there are people who will find every excuse to stop the holding of a special congress, noted Maundeni. Contacted for comment, the vice president of BMD, Wynter Mmolotsi confirmed that the party has agreed to go back to the drawing boards on the matter. There were two interpretations of the constitution. One interpretation says that the branches, through their committees may call a national special congress without having held a congress themselves at branch level. The other interpretation is that, the branches must hold a special congress from which minutes and list of those who attended are attached to the letters applying for the special congress, said Mmolotsi.

As far as he can remember, the BMD has held three congresses in its five years of existence. These congresses elected our leadership without the requirement of minutes from branches. Does that make our NEC illegitimate? he wondered. Nehemiah Modubule, who opposes the calling of a special congress, however differs with Mmolotsi. Those were ordinary congresses which are normally handled by the secretary general. In the case of a special congress, there has to be evidence of who is calling it hence the minutes and other records are required to verify that indeed there are people who want a congress, said Modubule who maintains that the lower party structures of the BMD are capacitated enough to apply for a special congress as per party guidelines.

Mmolotsi however disagrees. There is no need for a branch congress. The branch committees are the ones empowered by the constitution to initiate a special congress. The committee can facilitate the selection of the delegates and the constitution does not require any minutes, he said.
Ahead of the SADC Heads of State summit billed for Swaziland on August 30, a Roman Catholic clergy - Cardinal Wilfred Napier of Durban, South Africa  has slammed SADC leaders for not showing any commitment to regional integration.

Napier was attending the Southern African Conference Bishop Conference (SACBC) composed of 33 Bishops from Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland in Gaborone which ended this week Wednesday. Speaking to Botswana Guardian, Napier said: If there is a common vision, then one has to ask a question about the commitment to that vision. President Ian Khama has stood out as an exception. I hope he continues in that vein. He said many of the presidents in the region seem to be looking at their own interests rather than that of their own countries and by extension of the region as well.

Church fails South Africa

Napier said that unlike during the apartheid era when the church was vocal, currently it has lost an opportunity to guide our governments. I would say after 1994, the churches in general, made the mistake of believing that the people we have been negotiating with and accompanying along towards independence, that we knew these people, we could trust them and therefore we could step back and not be as quite sharp and incisive in our analysis when things went wrong, as a result I think we have lost an opportunity to guide our government.





On Zuma and ANC

Napier dominated the debates at the beginning of the Nkandla and Gupta-gate scandals in his twitter page. He reiterated his position to Botswana Guardian: I do not think anyone not President Jacob Zuma nor the leadership of the ANC has actually seen anything wrong with spending that amount of public money on a private individuals property. They do not see anything wrong and that amazes and worries me. It means then that they seem to identify the individual and the party with the state so much so that the people do not matter.

He said the results of the recent local government elections were a very good lesson for the ANC. As for Zuma and ANCs refusal to have him step down after the ruling by South African Constitutional court that he failed to uphold and protect the constitution, Napier reacted: They both lost their moral compass; they do not understand the seriousness of the trust that the country has entrusted them with its future. They do not seem to understand that they have a responsibility to answer and to be accountable to what is going on.

On Mugabe

Napier criticised Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe for staying for too long in power. He said although he is democratically elected, it is worrisome when a president changes the constitution for his own purpose  he has lost the idea of being the servant of his nation. When I look back at Mugabes history at one time I would have said, apart from the time of the Matabeleland Massacre, the Fifth Brigade if you take out that for 15 years Mugabe led his country very well. But then came that point when he started fiddling with the constitution, from there Zimbabwe started going on a downward trend.

On mushrooming of charismatic churches

I think they come under the umbrella of promoting the kingdom of Lord Jesus, but in many ways they do not know what the kingdom of Jesus is. For instance, their whole emphasis on wealth and prosperity really cuts across what we understand as Jesus kingdom
It has been four years since Debswana Diamond company financed a project to build a shelter for Barolong Tribal Administration in Goodhope but to date no structure is in place, Botswana Guardian can reveal.

The Barolong Tribal Administration which had approached the diamond company in 2012 seeking funding to upgrade the existing infrastructure in Goodhope Main Kgotla, later went back to Debswana for more but was rejected. Some close sources allege that authorities have misappropriated the money hence the failure of the project to take off. In an inquiry by this publication on the matter, Debswanas Corporate Affairs Manager, Matshidiso Kamona confirmed that indeed in 2012, Debswana received a proposal from Barolong Tribal Administration to upgrade the existing infrastructure at the Main Kgotla. Debswana disclosed that the cost of the proposal was P400 000 which was approved and the funds remitted to the Tribal Administration.

Two years later, in February 2014, Debswana received yet another letter from the Barolong tribal administration office indicating a delay in the project due to their inability to fundraise for the project from Barolong across Botswana as they had hoped. Kamonas response to the inquiry explains that, The letter was requesting for an additional P1 million, which request Debswana declined due to unavailability of resources. The feedback we are getting from the beneficiary is that the project has not started yet because of insufficient funds. However, they have embarked on efforts to escalate fundraising efforts in cities and towns.





Debswana has been making follow-ups on the project and has been assured that the Barolong Tribal Administration is still committed to the project and is still hoping to raise funds for it. We have also been assured that our funds are secure, she said, adding that the diamond company is in constant engagement with the project steering committee from the beneficiarys side to encourage them to kick-start the project with the available funds.

Botswana Guardian established that, the project was to have started in 2013 subject to contributions from Barolong across Botswana and financial contributions from other potential funders. Some of the members of the project steering committee are Kgosi Motshegare (Ex-officio member), Mr Dithuso Phetlhu, Ms Bosilong (Good Hope Branch Chairman), Dr Patrick Molutsi (Gaborone Branch Chairman), Dr Mothusi, Mr Motang, Dr Ntseane, Ms Beauty Selabe and Mr Duncan Marumolwa.

Botswana Guardian visited Goodhope to engage Kgosi Botiki Motshegare on the matter. Kgosi Motshegare rubbished claims that the money has been misappropriated, Ga re a ja madi.the money is still in the bank account and is still far from reaching what we want. I will not disclose the name of the bank. It has not been spent like what people allege. He said the reason they went back to Debswana was to ask for more money. He conceded that they had underestimated the total cost of the project when they embarked on it. However, we have since decided that we will refurbish the existing structure with the budget (P400 000.00) that we currently have. Our current structure has a capacity of 200 and we are looking to extend to at least 300-400 people, Kgosi Motshegare said.

He said they had benchmarked from other main kgotlas such as the Batlokwa Tribal Admin and the Ngwaketse Tribal Admin, which motivated them to work on similar structures. At the time of this interview in July, Kgosi Motshegare said that they were shopping for quotations and remained hopeful that the project would be completed before end of the year 2016.

Botswana Guardian has learnt that, the structure for the Ngwaketse Tribal Administration in Kanye cost around P1.4million covering roofing, public address system, refurbishment of heritage house, conference room and new ablution block. The project is also a beneficiary of Debswana. Meanwhile, when asked on other projects funded by the company that could have proved unsuccessful at the end, Kamona said, we are not in a position to share information on partnerships we have with our beneficiaries whose projects are still pending. She however indicated that they continuously work with their beneficiaries to ensure that projects funded by Debswana are concluded and are of benefit to the communities.
The long-awaited tender for the construction of the P85 million all-weather Platjan bridge over the troubled Limpopo River, which joins Botswana and South Africa was awarded last Friday with construction billed to start early October

Botswana Guardian has it on good authority that the final evaluation meetings of the awarding of the tender process started last week Friday. The bridge, originally a long concrete slab supported by railings and mounted on pillars, over the crocodile-infested Limpopo River can no longer carry the heavy trucks that use it. During rainy seasons the bridge becomes dysfunctional as it gets completely submerged in water. In fact, recently the concrete slab was torn out by the pressure of the waters and was only restored thanks to the goodwill of the area business community.Speaking to Botswana Guardian, Assistant Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Sadique Kebonang confirmed that the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPADB) awarded the tender last Friday. Kebonang said Cabinet had also decided to move the project from the ministry of Transport and Communications to SPEDU which falls under the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry.

In terms of what is happening with the progress of the construction of the Platjan Bridge, SPEDU has advertised the tender, the ITT is going through the evaluation. The brief that we have is that by Friday (last week) the board should be deciding on the award having gone through the adjudication process. The budget was originally P100m; it is now P85m. We are hoping that the 11 kilometre gravel road will be done alongside the construction of the Bridge.In an interview with SPEDUs Chief Executive Officer Dr Mokubung Mokubung said the contractor awarded the tender would be expected to sign the contract, mobilise to the site and start construction in early October 2016.





This infrastructural development project will have overlapping second phase that involves construction of the 30 kilometre road from the bridge to the village of Mathathane which is a shorter route. In that case we expect tourists that come from Kruger National Park to come straight through the Platjan bridge through Bobirwa constituency to Selibe Phikwe. SPEDU and Botswana Tourism Organisation (BTO) are on course to develop the dam based tourism surrounding Thune, Letsibogo and Dikgathong dams, he said.The bridge is of strategic importance to the Bobirwa area which is rich in both wildlife and tourism sites amongst them being the newly constructed Thune dam- which will partially be used for irrigation purposes, Molema Trust  a wildlife trust composed of the villages of Mothabaneng, Lentswe- le- Moriti and Mathathane. Others are Mathathane Basket Weaving project and two of the countrys top tourism sites  Mashatu Game Reserve and the Thuli Block Belt. Most importantly, once the bridge and road are completed it will allow residents of Bobirwa, Selebi Phikwe and Mmadinare constituency to also participate in tourism ventures.

The bridge was first mooted in 2007 after Botswana and South Africa agreed on the Regional Action Agenda to identify gaps and prioritise projects that can promote regional integration and development such as upgrading bridges and river crossings connecting the neighbouring nations. The two countries then agreed to start with Ramotswa and Platjan bridges. South Africa was allocated construction of the Ramosweu bridge while Botswana got Platjan bridge. Ramotswa bridge is about to complete while Botswana has been dogged by delays allegedly caused by officials of Roads Department.With the ball now thrown on SPEDUs court, it remains to be seen how it will affect the completion of the bridge and 25 kilometre road between Mathathane and Platjan. The road had been tarred up to Mashatu and Platjan junction about 11 kilometres from the bridge. The Bobonong  Mathathane road which joins Sefophe-Selibe- Phikwe is currently being refurbished.
Botswana will join other African countries at the six Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) to be held in Kenya on 27-28 August. Botswana Investment and Trade Centre chief executive officer Letsebe Sejoe confirmed this in an interview with Botswana Guardian.

TICAD was launched by the Japanese government in 1993. All previous five conferences were held in Japan aimed at planning means to offer infrastructure development based on superlative quality that taps into the country's technology. The conference is planned to feature high-level policy dialogue between Japan and African leaders which will cover issues of economic development and investment, as well as those of trade and sustainable development.

The gathering will also identify common priorities for accelerating sustainable development, including the growing role of the private sector in driving progress on the continent. According to Sejoe, minister of Trade and Industry Vincent Seretse will lead the Botswana delegation, which includes among others, a number of representatives from BITC, representatives from other ministries and Business Botswana  the former Botswana Confederation of Commerce, Industry and Manpower.





He said that by coming to Africa, TICAD is showing that the Japanese government wants to play a major role in African economies. Sejoe stated that Botswana and Japan have longstanding relations, explaining that they have engaged a business delegation to come to Botswana. He said attendance will also affirm openness of Botswana to foreign investors. Our dialogue with Japanese is an ongoing process, he said.

The event is co-organised by the Government of Japan, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank, the Africa Union Commission and the UN Office of the Special Advisor on Africa. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to attend the conference. A sizeable Japanese business delegation will be in attendance with the aim of boosting corporate investment in infrastructural projects in Africa.



More than 6,000 participants are expected at the Nairobi conference to discuss implementation of the recently-adopted Sustainable Development Goals and Africas Agenda 2063 that is focused on a peaceful, integrated and prosperous continent; economic growth, trade and investment; human security, peace and stability. The Nairobi summit kicks off a new arrangement where the high-level meeting will alternate between an African country and Japan every three years.

One of the core concepts of the TICAD process is ownership of the ideas by African countries, said deputy chief of mission, Embassy of Japan in Kenya Mikio Mori in a press statement. Over the years, this ownership has seen us develop great policies. We envision even better outcomes this year, he added.

At the conclusion of the two-day conference, a declaration on the region's ongoing potential for economic growth and issues of counter-terrorism will be signed. Japan previously pledged $32 billion over five years for infrastructural and human resource development, with the funds available on the principle of Africa ownership and international partnership.

Japan has also given some $3.5 billion in official development assistance, which is equivalent to about 25 percent of the $14 billion pledged at similar conference held in Yokohama three years ago.
President of Botswana Movement for Democracy Youth League, Phenyo Segokgo is intending to leave the movement to join Botswana National Front, Botswana Guardian has learnt.Segokgo, who has been a member of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) breakaway party since its formation, has been approached by some BNF councillors within the Tlokweng Constituency.

The councillors are said to have tapped on Segokgos unhappiness with the proposed special congress by his party. Sources within the BNF told this publication that the councillors believe this would be beneficial to the BNF, as Segokgo would be pursued to challenge the current area Member of Parliament Same Bathobakae. The councillors believe that BNF under Bathobakae would not be able to retain the constituency due to her inactiveness in the area and in parliament. BNF in the 2014 general election won four wards; BMD four wards while the Botswana Congress Party got one. BNF and BMD are contracting partners for Democratic Change (UDC). Segokgo is believed to be against Advocate Sidney Pilane being admitted back into the BMD but reckons that a Special Congress should not be used as the solution. This is one of the reasons why he is not active like he used to be these days. The leadership of the BMD has for long been sidelining him. I would not be surprised if he would jump ship. This not so good relationship started long back during the days when the movement was led by the late Gomolemo Motswaledi because he was one of the people who advocated that the BNF should be given the presidency of the UDC, said a source. His belief was that the BNF has sacrificed so much for the umbrella coalition after the collapse of the Umbrella 1 negotiations.

Segokgo only managed to mend his relationship with our leader just a few weeks before he passed away, said a BMD MP who is close to Segokgo. It is also alleged that the youth leader who is also the South East District Council Chairman does not have a good relationship with Party President Ndaba Gaolathe. This is said to have been witnessed through various platforms where Segokgo was never featured in any party activity at which Gaolathe was officiating let alone to show support for the youthful council leader when he was sworn in as council chair. A BNF councillor who spoke on condition of anonymity revealed that the plan is not to sabotage Bathobakae but to retain the constituency.





Things are said to have worsened when Segokgos team won the BMD youth elections last year whose outcome Gaolathe protested. The councillors from the BNF are said to have promised Segokgo their full support should he make up his mind. Our MP seems to have distanced herself from the electorate. This is one of the constituencies that the Botswana Democratic Party is dying to snatch from us. In our assessment Segokgo is the only candidate we can sell to the electorate because come 2019 BDP would use all it has to win the constituency. We have nothing against comrade Bathobakae it is only that she is not visible enough even at branch level. Segokgo was unopposed even for the council chairmanship, which shows the confidence that we all have in him. Despite the attacks that Batlokwa unleashed on our MP and some councillors, Segokgo managed to save us through some developments in the area, said the councillor who attended one of the meetings with Segokgo.

Segokgo is said to have agreed in principle with the councillors. Anticipation is that he will defect to BNF after the completion of his term as BMD Youth leader next year April. Contacted for comment, Segokgo laughed off the matter. He said as far as he is concerned his relationship with the past and current BMD leadership is solid. He dismissed claims that he is not active. Look I have a healthy relationship with party president. We might have not shared a stage due to other commitments, as you know I am a council chairman and member of Botswana Association of Local Authorities (BALA). I have close ties with BNF councillors and hold meetings either as a collective or individuals because we belong to the same movement being UDC. We share a lot in terms of bringing developments to our constituency. As for Bathobakae I treat her as my political mother and have a good relationship. All I know is that she is capable and could still represent the UDC come 2019, he said.

Bathobakae could not be reached for comment. In 2014 she got 6442 votes against Olebile Gaborone of BDPs 3867. Segokgo won Tlokwengs Sefoke ward by 964 against Tiego Lekokos 325 votes. Fears are that with the new approach by BDP to have shadow MPs in opposition held constituencies Tlokweng is on slippery ground. BDP has stationed MP for Tati East Guma Moyo to take care of the constituency.


The DF-21D missile of China.

BEIJING (PTI): China will develop its next-generation cruise missiles using artificial intelligence (AI) technology that will allow the weapons to be tailor-made for specific combat situations, a senior missile designer said.



"We plan to adopt a 'plug and play' approach in the development of new cruise missiles, which will enable our military commanders to tailor-make missiles in accordance with combat conditions and their specific requirements," Wang Changqing, director of the General Design Department of the Third Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, said.



"Moreover, our future cruise missiles will have a very high level of AI and automation," Wang was quoted as saying by the state-run China Daily.



"They will allow commanders to control them in a real-time manner, or to use a fire-and-forget mode, or even to add more tasks to in-flight missiles," he said.



The future combat will require weapons to be cost-efficient and flexible. Therefore, the modular design will be a good solution, he said.



China last year for the first time displayed its Dongfeng-21D missile, the anti-ship ballistic missile described as the "carrier killer" which caused concern among US defence officials as it could blow up aircraft carriers from a distance of about 1,500 km to 1,700 kms.



Dongfeng-21D along with long and short range missiles were displayed at the country's biggest military parade last year held to mark 70th anniversary of victory against Japan in WW-II.



Wang Ya'nan, editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, said a modular missile will be capable of changing its destructive capacity, flight mode and range, and so is suitable for striking targets on the ground or at sea.






TEHRAN (AFP): Iran released images of its first domestically built long-range missile defence system on Sunday, a project started when the country was under international sanctions.



Images on multiple state news agencies showed President Hassan Rouhani and Minister of Defence Hossein Dehghan standing in front of the new Bavar 373 missile defence system.



The system was designed to intercept cruise missiles, drones, combat aircraft and ballistic missiles, according to earlier statements by Dehghan.



The project was launched as an alternative to the Russian S-300 system, the delivery of which was suspended in 2010 due to sanctions imposed over Iran's nuclear programme.



"We did not intend to make an Iranian version of the S-300 -- we wanted to build an Iranian system, and we built it," Dehghan told the IRNA news agency over the weekend.



In an earlier speech at Friday prayers, he said: "Our missile power is at such a level that we are able to destroy all our targets at any operational range."



Rouhani said in a televised speech on Sunday that Iran's military budget had more than doubled compared with last year.



"If we are able to discuss with world powers around the negotiating table, it is because of our national strength, because of our national unity," he said.



Rouhani also unveiled the first Iranian-made turbo-jet engine, saying it was capable of flight at 50,000 feet.



"The Islamic republic is one of eight countries in the world who have mastered the technology to build these engines," the president said.



Dehghan added that Iran was now looking to develop seaborne cruise missiles capable of supersonic speed.



In 2015, shortly before the conclusion of an international agreement on Iran's nuclear programme, Moscow re-authorised the delivery of the S-300 system in a move criticised by the United States and Israel.



Iran's army said in May that it was now equipped with the S-300 system, though further parts are due over the coming months.



The new Bavar 373 has Iran's first vertical launcher, using Sayad 3 missiles that were first tested in September 2014.






VIJAYAWADA (PTI): A weapons integration facility to manufacture Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), said to be the first-of-its-kind in the country in the private sector, will be set up in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh at a total cost of Rs 2,135 crore.



Wem Technologies Private Limited is partnering with Lockheed Martin, the largest defence equipment manufacturer in the US, to set up this facility, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has said.



"We have decided to allot 350 acres of land for this facility spread over Vatluru and Bhogapuram villages near Eluru in West Godavari district. In the first phase, they will invest Rs 635 crore and provide employment to 650 persons. In all, 2510 jobs will be created when the facility becomes fully operational," Chandrababu told a press conference in Vijayawada on Aug. 18.



Wem currently has orders worth Rs 560 crore on hand, he said.



Other details about the project or its Indian promoters are awaited.




The new fleet tanker of Pak Navy. An ISPR photo

KARACHI (PTI): Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said Pakistan is committed to protect its maritime assets and achieve self-reliance in defence production as he has launched a 17,000-tonne naval tanker, the country's largest.



Speaking on the occasion, Sharif expressed happiness over the launch of the largest warship constituted at the country by Karachi Shipyard.



"The project will further strengthen cooperation between Pakistan and Turkey. The tanker was a gift to Pakistan on its 70th Independence Day," he said.



Pakistan Navy's fleet tanker will play an important role in catering to its logistic needs.



He said the successful construction of the fleet tanker would play a vital role towards achieving self-reliance in defence production and the government would continue to support the policy of indigenization in all technological spheres.



The fleet was designed by a Turkish firm under the Ministry of Defence Production and Pakistan Navy and was constructed by Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works (KS&EW) with Turkish collaboration.



"It is an example of Pakistan-Turkey cooperation and the construction of the fleet tanker will help achieve self-reliance in defence production," Sharif said.



"I congratulate the navy and the Karachi Shipyard for launching the tanker ahead of schedule," Sharif said while announcing a Rs 100 million bonus for Karachi Shipyard employees.



"The ongoing development programs of the government including China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) stipulate the aim to achieve maximum output in terms of regional trade and trans-shipment with Gwadar as the focal point," he said.



Sharif said that Pakistan was blessed with long coastline and was strategically located at the mouth of the Gulf.



He said there were extensive trade and maritime activities being undertaken at two major seaports of Karachi.



These would increase manifold with growth in the country's financial and industrial base.



Additional capacity has to be created to support expansion in these activities, he added.



He said the government was committed to consolidate maritime infrastructure along the coast from Karachi to Gwadar.



Sharif said he has the vision of strong, democratic and economically viable Pakistan, adding that Pakistan would not compromise on its strategic interests.



He said that Pakistan has immense power potential and resources for economic development, and this must be harnessed effectively for the country's development.


Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/08/2016 (2259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One man was taken to hospital after a SUV crashed into a home on Victoria Avenue Saturday afternoon.

At approximately 4 p.m., emergency responders received a call that a black SUV had crashed through a fence and was resting against a homes veranda on the northwest corner of 13th Street and Victoria Avenue.

Bystanders at the scene, who were following the vehicle, described the event after it unfolded right before them.

Charles Tweed/The Brandon Sun Brandon police work to secure a yard at the corner of 13th Street and Victoria Avenue after a vehicle jumped the median and plowed through a fence before being stopped by a deck. The collision took place Saturday afternoon. One man was taken to hospital.

He was driving (east) in the outside lane, and then he slowly veered into the other lane and cut someone off, said the bystander, who wished to remain anonymous. To be honest, were thinking thats a jerk thing to do, but then he didnt stop. His vehicle jumped the meridian, smashed through the fence and hit the house. It all happened really fast.

Resting against the deck just metres from the front door of the large brick home, the vehicles front windshield was smashed after the SUV hit a sign prior to crashing through the fence.

One of the first bystanders on scene was a nurse.

It is believed the man suffered a medical emergency prior to crashing into the home.

It was the second time in as many days that a vehicle crashed into a home in the city.

On Friday, a woman rammed into a four-plex on Stickney Avenue. The woman then fled the scene and crashed into another vehicle.

The driver of that incident faces impaired charges after being located a short time later.

 ctweed@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @CharlesTweed
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/08/2016 (2259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An 18-year-old Brandon man who was held at knifepoint in his familys home said it was a harrowing experience.

The man, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was rudely awoken shortly after 6 a.m. on Saturday by four men banging on his garage door.

I opened the door to see who was out there and they attacked me. They started punching me, he said. They were beating me up and then they pulled a knife on me and asked me where my brother was.

After taking a few swings, one of the perpetrators pulled a knife out.

They put a knife to my neck and told me that they were going to kill me if I talked to the police, he said.

Then, three of the perpetrators led the homeowner through the house in search of his brother, while the fourth stayed out front as a lookout for police. When they got to his bedroom door, it was locked.

They kicked in my bedroom door and shattered the door, he said. My girlfriend was in there scared.

The men quickly left the room, but not before the victim mouthed call the police to his girlfriend.

The victim told the men that his brother hadnt lived at the home for close to six months before leading them to his brothers former room, where there were still a few of his belongings. The men demanded garbage bags to pack up his brothers stuff, which was mainly some old clothes, according to the victim.

At one point, the men threw white powder on the victim, he said, believing it to be drugs.

Five minutes after busting down the door where his girlfriend was, Brandon police arrived.

I couldnt believe what happened, and the whole time theyre beating me up, theyre telling me: Listen, we like you, he said.

According to police, three men face charges following the melee on Waterloo Crescent.

Officers nabbed three of the perpetrators while they were exiting the house, while a fourth man fled the scene, running away on 34th Street.

The Brandon Police Service Dog Unit tracked the fourth subject, locating and securing him a short time later.

As a result of a BPS investigation, three men  a 27-year-old from Portage la Prairie, and a 19-year-old and 26-year-old from Brandon  face charges including break and enter, committing a robbery while armed with a weapon, assault with a weapon, threat to cause death and mischief to property.

The fourth man, an 18-year-old from Cranberry Portage, played no role in the incident and wasnt charged.

The victim isnt sure why the fourth man wasnt charged with anything and intends on following up with police.

As far as Im concerned hes as guilty as the rest, he said. He came by to get his cut of whatever they stole.

Outside of a couple of bruised ribs, the victim said hes in relatively good health.

The cops showed up pretty quick, he said. It could have gone a lot of ways.

 ctweed@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @CharlesTweed
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/08/2016 (2259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Its hard to adequately encapsulate all of the memories that were conjured up and emotions that coursed through me Saturday night as The Tragically Hip played a nations soundtrack from their hometown of Kingston, Ont.

Over the last few weeks, Ive read countless recollections from journalists, celebrities and ordinary Canadians that in some way or another touched on how the band  our band  spoke to so many people on one level or another.

On Friday, in anticipation of penning this piece, I put a call out to fans to share their most treasured memories of The Hip.

File Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip smiles during a pause in a song during the Canadian rockers tour stop in Brandon in January 2013 in support of their album, Now For Plan A.

The first person to respond was Stacey Shule Krueger, who lives in Winnipeg.

Her story seems to be a microcosm of the relationship we, as Canadians, have with The Hip.

Five years ago at a concert in Winnipeg, possibly during one of Gord Downies epic on-stage rants, Krueger bumped into an old high school friend.

The two bantered while The Hip played songs such as Drip Drip, Gift Shop and Ahead by a Century  I checked as the set lists from all their shows are available at TheHip.com.

Following the final song, the two made a plan to meet up after and go for coffee. Fast forward to today, and Krueger is married to that same man while the couple never miss a concert that it is within driving distance of Winnipeg.

I always say The Hip brought us together, Shule said. We havent missed a concert together since reuniting.

Its those moments  moments we all seem to have  that set The Hip apart. While all great bands have an ability to connect with their fans, The Hip seemed to have an inherent knack of connecting all of us to each other.

Sara Hanson, formerly of Brandon, said the first time she saw the Kingston quintet during the Another Roadside Attraction tour in Winnipeg, she was mesmerized.

Hanson said her favourite song is Wheat Kings, the story of David Milgaard, who was wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of a Saskatchewan nurse.

Even though I know its about David Milgaard, and not our local WHL team, it always reminds me that no matter where I live in the country, I have a connection with the prairies thatll last a lifetime.

Hanson, who also lived in Kingston, said the song 38 Years Old resonates with her because she used to drive past the Millhaven Institution.

That song, which starts with the lyrics: Twelve men broke loose in 73; From Millhaven maximum security, is just one of the lyrical landmarks in the bands Canadian road map repertoire.

Better than anyone else, The Hip told our stories.

Joe Bryksa/Winnipeg Free Press Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip performs at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg on Aug. 5.

Deloraines Trevor Dickie has seen the band several times, but one concert that stood out is seeing them play in a small venue in Las Vegas.

(There were) 1,500 Canadians huddled in this hole-in-the-wall place, screaming our lungs out with Gord and the boys, while the rest of the city was oblivious to the greatness they were missing, Dickie said.

Despite their iconic status in Canada, The Hip never really swam in the mainstream. While other bands covet the spotlight like an alcoholic to drink, The Hip relished their sometime anonymity, which provided them far more freedom to push their sound and lyrics. Success can often shackle musicians, but not Gord and the boys.

Even in my workplace, The Hip had the power to galvanize.

Jillian Austins fiance, Erik, is huge fan of the band and the soon-to-be wed couple was gutted when they heard the final concert in Winnipeg sold out in minutes.

When more tickets were released a few weeks before the show, Austin pounced.

I surprised Erik with this for his 30th birthday and he was floored, she said. Needless to say, its a concert we will never forget. The atmosphere was electric in the MTS Centre, and we were blown away by Gord Downies performance  most of the concert had everyone in our section on their feet. Seeing his passion and talent come through while facing such adversity was so inspiring.

In May, Downie revealed that he has terminal brain cancer. This tour is widely believed to be the bands swan song, although they said its not the end.

At times we couldnt help but shed a few tears when we thought about the significance of this tour, and the heart-breaking reality, Austin said. Gord and The Hip are Canadian legends and it meant a lot to us to see one final show.

My journey with our band started in 1999 when I, along with my friend Mark Magwood, convinced our parents that we were going to Rome, N.Y., for Woodstock 99.

On the second-last day of the festival, I remember being swept up in a sea of red and white as every Canadian in the 200,000-plus fans in attendance sashayed to the main stage for an afternoon performance.

En route, Americans asked us why we were all going to see "The Tragically Hip." We even managed to convince a few of them to tag along.

What I hold onto from that concert the most isnt the music, but a feeling. It was, in many ways, a weird jingoism  us against the world, and, whatever it was we were fighting for, we were right. I felt connected to thousands of Canadians that I had never met before as Gord shifted awkwardly on stage, like he always does, singing his songs like youve never quite heard them before.

Submitted Shanna Phillipot and Kristen Moslenko flank rhythm guitarist Paul Langlois of The Tragically Hip. Moslenko said The Hip holds a special place in her heart.

On Saturday, those awkward shuffles were a little more pronounced. I cant say for sure what it was, but maybe the drugs designed to combat his awful disease were affecting him.

At times, he lost his way. Ive seen him lose his spot in songs before or launch into a seemingly crazy yet subtly nuanced diatribe, but not like this. The cancer was clearly affecting him, but it didnt change the feeling.

The performance was raw, emotional and powerful.

An entire nation paused.

The songs really have become a soundtrack for so many.

Ive driven through the Assiniboine Valley listening to Blow at High Dough.

Ive laid on the streets in Vienna listening to Springtime in Vienna.

In some of my darkest times, Fiddlers Green impacted me in a way that is indescribable.

The whole time, however, as I listened to the music I thought about the people who were with me in those moments.

Partway through the concert, I found myself getting emotional. I told the friends I was watching the concert with that this is one of those Where were you when moments? And I was glad to be sharing it with them.

At the same time, an old friend  one that I dont see nearly enough  sent me a message.

It read: During the show I watched the last 20 years go by. Everything that we knew was right when we were young, everything we forgot. Our friendships. How time is precious. It is haunting how all of his songs took on a deeper meaning. Its like it was all wrote for this. And I was thinking the only man that could write a song, and do justice to a man like Gord is Gord.

I wrote back that the lyrics hit me hard that night.

Submitted Kristen Moslenko under the now iconic scrawl of The Tragically Hip following the bands most recent and likely last performance in Winnipeg.

He said: Yup. Love you.

It might be the first time a friend has ever said those words to me without half-joking.

Its those moments, not the songs, but the moments that screamed by while the songs were playing in the background that Ill remember forever.

I thank The Hip for that.

At times I think we pervert Canadiana.

As the punchy little country from the north, were often the first to jump up and take ownership of celebrities, making sure to claim that he or she is one of ours.

I never felt that way about The Hip, or Gord, I always just felt like they were one of us.

When the end does come, as it does for all of us, well be sure to get Ry Cooder to sing Gords eulogy  as were his wishes.

 Twitter: @CharlesTweed
Debenhams stores in Ireland are set to remain open following the approval of a survival plan allowing the department store chain to exit examinership.

Under the terms of the plan, which has been approved by the High Court, the retailers 11 stores are to remain open and the vast majority of the companys 1,400 directly employed staff, some 500 concession staff, and 300 cosmetic staff are to be retained.

There will be 98 voluntary redundancies, but no compulsory ones. The company operates four stores in Dublin, two in Cork and others in Galway, Limerick, Newbridge, Tralee, and Waterford.

The scheme, put together by the retailers examiner Kieran Wallace of KPMG and agreed by the majority of Debenhams creditors, was formally approved by Ms Justice Caroline Costello at the High Court on Friday.

Last May, Debenhams Retail (Ireland) Ltd (DRIL) sought examinership because of consistent losses sustained since the recession in 2007, high rents, and after the withdrawal of support of its UK parent company, Debenhams Retail Plc.

The company said it owed its parent 46m, which DRIL said was unsustainable.

The company will exit the examinership process on Thursday.

The only objection to the scheme in court was brought on behalf of a woman who had brought a personal injuries claim against Debenhams. Under the terms of the scheme, she would get 5% of any payment due.

Neil Steen, counsel for Mr Wallace, said the scheme had been approved by the vast majority of creditors and classes of creditors. Only one class of creditors had rejected the scheme, he said.

While certain classes of creditors, including unsecured creditors, would only receive some 5% of what they are owed, counsel said the only alternative was that the company go into liquidation.

In that scenario, those classes of creditors would get nothing, counsel added.

He said the company had under the scheme secured significant cost savings that would allow the company to continue to trade. The examiner reached an arrangement concerning rent agreement Debenhams had with landlords of seven of its stores.

The parent firm Debenhams Retail Plc had also agreed to invest in the company by way of a loan. Historic debts owed by the company had been written off.

In addition, counsel said proposals put to the employees unions, Mandate and Siptu, had been accepted.

In all, 83% of the workforce had voted in favour of cost-saving proposals, he said. It had also been agreed that there would, for a period, be a reduction in the price charged on goods sold to Debenhams Irish companies from interconnected firms.

Supporting the application to approve the scheme, counsel Rossa Fanning said the company had not entered the examinership process lightly. It did so after incurring losses of 22.6m in the last three years.

Ms Justice Costello, in approving the scheme, noted that under the scheme, that a number of cost-saving measures had been agreed that would allow the company to continue to trade as a going concern.
A six-month-old Staffordshire Bull-Terrier named Lexi had an incredible close call recently when she swallowed a steak knife.

Staff at Sydneys Animal Referral Hospital say the pup 'came within millimetres of death' after swallowing the 20cm serrated knife.

Her owner brought her to their local vet, thinking she had an upset stomach that was causing her to vomit but when the x-rays came back, they were in for a shock.

I thought she was going to die. Our vet said to rush her straight to the Animal Referral Hospital and they were amazing, she said.

ARH medical specialist Dr Jody Braddock and her team immediately began to operate on Lexi and spent 45 minutes carefully inching the knife back up Lexis oesophagus.

Ive never seen anything like it. Dr Braddock said. We knew that Lexis best chance for survival would be to remove the knife as soon as possible before it could cause more damage".

The dog spent three days in intensive care and will be monitored for the next ten days but, amazingly, is expected to make a full recovery.

As to why and how Lexi swallowed the knife, her owner isn't sure.

"Lexis always grabbing things to hide under the couch and play with them when were not looking  so thats the only thing we can think of, she said

Dr Christine Hawke, ARHs veterinary dentist thinks there may be another reason, however:

I noticed from the vision immediately that Lexi had a mal-occlusion, which is a common condition in some breeds where the dog has a sore mouth because their teeth push into their gumand to stop the pain theyll often bite on something hard, although on this occasion Lexi definitely bit off more than she could chew.

Either way, we're just glad she's ok!
A new campaign is being launched to help migrants integrate into the community.

The Immigrant Council of Ireland and the Irish Immigrant Support Centre are organising a number of one-stop-shops across the country to encourage their participation in civic and political events.
A man who was shot in Dublin yesterday remains in a critical condition in hospital.

The man in his 30 was shot several times at a house on Stannaway road in Crumlin in the early hours of yesterday morning.

The scene has been preserved for a technical examination and is being investigated by gardai at Sundrive Road.

Gardai are appealing for anyone with information to come forward.
The opening of broader entry routes to third-level courses instead of expecting Leaving Certificate students to decide on specialisations appears to be having some moderate effects on the points race, writes Niall Murray of the Irish Examiner.

Since a 2011 drive to ease the points race that helps define how students prepare for exams and learn at second-level, one long-standing recommendation has been to eliminate the high numbers of specialised CAO courses.

In some colleges, most notably University College Dublin (UCD) and now also at Maynooth University, several courses in some disciplines have been merged for first-year entrants.

Engineering at UCD, for example, is now a single undenominated CAO code, unlike in the past or at other colleges where students must choose on their CAO forms whether they want to do electronic, mechanical, civil, or another category.

While this should ease the pressure on 17- and 18-year-olds to make crucial decisions without clear understanding of the distinctions between them all, only those with at least 515 of a maximum 625 CAO points are offered places on UCDs engineering programmes this morning.

There will still be relatively limited places on many of these broad-entry CAO routes, so points might not necessarily drop significantly in those subjects areas. If, on the other hand, colleges respond to the apparent demand for these broader entry method, then cut-off points may fall as more students on lower CAO scores gain admission.

By contrast, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) this morning has a dozen humanities courses for which applicants must have at least 575 points to guarantee a place, meaning an average of all Leaving Certificate As or very high B grades.

This is unusual when other universities admit well over 1,000 students to their general arts programmes. Many will have those high results anyway, but lowest-scoring entrants on larger BA programmes are in the 300-350 CAO points range.

The labyrinthine range of choices for prospective humanities students at Trinity means its 230-odd courses open to school leavers account for nearly 40% of around 600 level 8 CAO courses at all seven universities.

Last week, Maynooth University president Philip Nolan told the Irish Examiner there was an obligation on all universities to meet a collective commitment to significantly reduce CAO course choices.

Similar sentiments are expressed today by UCD deputy president Mark Rogers, highlighting gradual reductions in CAO-listed degrees there in recent years.

Reducing the number of entry routes actually gives students more choice and more opportunities as they are free to specialise at a later stage in their degrees when they have more experience and more knowledge of subjects, he said.

At UCD and elsewhere, a swing in demand towards business and administration degrees was met in many cases by increased provision of places. But at UCC, points are higher than this time in 2015 for most business programmes, in some cases by as much as 30 points.

Dublin City University has increased the places being offered to students in a range of courses, particularly in education and arts.

As long as third-level colleges can still increase capacity to meet demand, the CAO points race may slow a little. But as funding cuts and Government restrictions on staffing continue to dictate how colleges money is spent facilitating students interests might not be able to continue much longer.

While numbers with a science degree as their first CAO preference are barely higher than in 2015, many colleges had to increase points for these courses. This suggests high-performing Leaving Certificate students are pursuing study and careers in this area.

The 400 people being admitted to UCDs broad-entry science degree all have at least 515 points, five more than a year ago.

With fewer students than in 2015 achieving this level of CAO points, and with one in ten of the rising numbers who study Leaving Certificate physics and chemistry failing these subjects, questions also need to be asked about government and industry campaigns to have students take them.

In a more general call to review entry to universities, Mr Rogers argues for the removal of subject requirements that are not essential for student success in a particular degree. Educationally, it is better for students to take subjects that interest them at school rather than forcing them to take subjects purely to matriculate for university, he said.
An early favourite has emerged to win this year's Rose of Tralee, according to Irish bookmaker BoyleSports.

Kilkenny Rose Sarah Kearns has emerged as the favourite with one bookmaker for this year's Rose of Tralee crown.

The competition begins this evening with the first half of the 32 hopefuls taking to the stage with Daithi O Se.

A flurry of bets with BoyleSports has seen Kearns become the 3/1 after initial odds of 12/1 last Friday.

Her key rival in the betting is Roscommon Rose Aisling McNeill who is the new second favourite after an influx of bets on Monday morning forced traders to slash her price from 14/1 to 10/3.

Galway Rose Rosie Burke and Chicago Rose Maggie Rose McEldowney are both priced at 13/2.

Offlay Rose Emma Kirwan could be the dark horse in the race for the crown after her odds were cut from 40/1 on Friday to 8/1 after a string of large bets.

Early favourite to win, Cork Rose Denise Collins is now priced at 12/1 to don the crown having initially been the front runner.

Aoife Heffron, PR Executive for BoyleSports said: Just hours before the Roses take to the stage the betting has been sent into upheaval as punters rush to get behind their pick for the crown.

Kilkenny and Roscommon are head-to-head for the title of Rose of Tralee with Kilkenny the narrow favourite at 3/1.

The Offlay Rose is most certainly one to watch after numerous large bets came in over the weekend and Monday morning that saw her shorten right in from 40/1 to 8/1, placing her within the top five in the betting.

Outright Betting

Kilkenny Rose - Sarah Kearns 3/1

Roscommon Rose - Aisling McNeill 10/3

Galway Rose - Rosie Burke 13/2

Chicago Rose - Maggie Rose McEldowney 13/2

Offaly Rose - Emma Kirwan 8/1

South Carolina Rose - Erin Moran 10/1

Ottawa Rose - Sarah Griffin 12/1

Cork Rose - Denise Collins 12/1

Melbourne Rose - Meghan Griffin 16/1

London Rose - Emma Murphy-O'Connor 16/1

Louth Rose - Megan Ferguson 18/1

Newcastle/Gateshead Rose - Aisling Murray 20/1

Cavan Rose - Lisa Reilly 20/1

Abu Dhabi Rose - Dearbhladh Walsh 22/1

Monaghan Rose - Pamela Allen 28/1

Kildare Rose - Meabhdh O'Sullivan 50/1

North Caroline Rose - Maigan Kennedy 50/1

Wicklow Rose - Jane Harrison 66/1

Newfoundland & Labrador Rose - Anna Murphy 66/1

Kerry Rose - Danielle O'Sullivan 66/1

Queensland Rose - Jess Logan 66/1

Longford Rose - Caroline Doyle 66/1

Philadelphia Rose - Brigid Gallagher 80/1

Ohio Rose - Kathleen O'Donnell 100/1

Texas Rose - Katherine O'Sullivan 100/1

Germany Rose - Kari Foss 100/1

South Australia Rose - Rochelle Melino 100/1

New Zealand Rose - Hannah Greally 100/1

Kentucky Rose - Morgan Loy 100/1

Sydney Rose - Brianna Parkins 100/1

New Orleans Rose - Shannon Burke 100/1

Scotland Rose - Blathnaid Loughran 100/1
A Catholic monk has been charged with a string of historical sex offences against teenage boys after he returned to Britain from Kosovo following a five-year police hunt.

Father Laurence Soper is accused of assaulting five boys, one under 14 at the time, over a period from 1972 to 1986.

The nine charges include offences of buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault.

The 72-year-old was arrested as he arrived at Luton Airport on Sunday by officers from Scotland Yard's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command.

Soper, who was detained under a European Arrest Warrant in Kosovo in May, will appear at Ealing Magistrates' Court on Monday.

Four of the charges, including buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault, relate to a single alleged victim and date from February 17, 1972 to February 18, 1976.

The boy was aged under 14 when Soper carried out an act of gross indecency against him, it is alleged.

Two charges of indecent assault relate to a second boy aged under 16 alleged to have occurred between 22 August 1979 and 23 August 1984.

Soper faces charges of indecent assault against two further boys under 16, alleged to have taken place between 4 December 1979 and 23 December 1984, and 10 November 1979 and 11 November 1984.

A fifth boy aged under 16 was assaulted on a day between 14 May 1982 and 15 May 1986, it is alleged.
A German court has fined a woman 20,000 after finding her guilty of making false rape accusations in a high-profile trial that has added to calls for tougher rape laws.

The trial involved a 2012 incident in which Gina-Lisa Lohfink, a model and former contestant on a German television model casting show, had sex with two men.

A video in which she could be heard saying "no, no, no" ended up online.

A court initially convicted the men for offences in relation to the video, but cleared them of rape.

It ordered Lohfink to pay 24,000 for making false accusations but she refused to pay - which, under German law, meant that aspect of the case went to a new trial.

A Berlin court ruled today that Lohfink knowingly made false statements, that the sex was consensual, and that her objections were to it being filmed, news agency dpa reported.

Lohfink, who has given regular interviews to German media about the case, had said she may have been drugged, but a court-appointed expert testified he found no evidence of that.

Defence lawyer Burkhard Benecken said "the verdict is a scandal", and he will be discussing a possible appeal with Lohfink.

Last month, German politicians passed a Bill that will make it easier for victims of sex crimes to file criminal complaints if they rejected their attacker's advances with a clear "no".

Until now, German law required victims to show that they physically resisted attack before charges for rape and other sexual assaults could be brought.

The move was partly spurred by a nationwide outcry over sexual assaults blamed largely on foreigners in Cologne on New Year's Eve.

But some cited the Lohfink case in noting that Germany lagged behind most Western nations in its definition of rape and that sexual assaults were a feature of German society before the New Year's Eve incidents.
Disgraced Radio 1 DJ Chris Denning has pleaded guilty to 21 historical child sex offences as part of a police investigation into a youth disco.

The prolific paedophile, 75, admitted abusing 11 children, some as young as eight, between 1969 and 1986.

On @BBCNews at 1, former Radio 1 DJ Chris Denning admits another 21 counts of abusing boys young as 8 in 70s & 80s pic.twitter.com/sXc2nRjYp1  Dan Johnson (@DanJohnsonNews) August 22, 2016

He pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court in London to 21 sexual offences, including indecent assault of men and boys and inciting boys under 16 and 14 to commit acts of gross indecency.

He denied another three counts of indecent assault.

The offences relate to an investigation by Surrey Police, named Operation Ravine, into alleged sexual offences connected to the Walton Hop Disco, a teenage disco which ran from 1958 until 2001.

Denning, one of the founding presenters on the flagship station, appeared in the dock today wearing a faded red T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms.

He donned a pair of glasses and followed a written copy of the charges as they were read to him in full.

He will be sentenced at the same court on October 6 by Judge Alistair McCreath.

Denning, from London, has a string of previous convictions for abusing young boys.

He is currently serving a 13-year jail sentence for a catalogue of sexual assaults against 24 victims, including one allegedly at Jimmy Savile's house, from the 1960s to 1980s.

Judge Peter Testar said: "Judge McCreath sentenced this defendant in November 2014.

"It must make sense, Judge McCreath having passed that sentence, for him to sentence this man for these offences because the question which must arise is the relationship between any sentence passed today and any sentence passed then."

The three charges he pleaded not guilty to were ordered to lie on the file.

Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay said: "He has a very long record of offences against young boys.

"Given the very long indictment he has pleaded guilty to, we take the view that these counts would not make a difference to sentence."
A three-year-old boy had both his legs and most of his fingers amputated after doctors in the UK wrongly diagnosed a life-threatening infection as common childhood condition tonsillitis.

Reuben Harvey-Smith was taken to A&E at Ipswich Hospital after accidentally burning himself.

When his mum Lou took him back two days later with a fever and sore throat she was given antibiotics and told that her son had tonsillitis.

The following day he was fighting for his life.

He was later diagnosed with toxic shock syndrome, a life-threatening infection caused by bacteria entering the wound and releasing poisonous toxins into his blood.

Reuben had to have both legs amputated below the knee and also lost seven fingers after the infection took hold in July last year.

The hospital trust has admitted liability, and that amputation could have been avoided if the condition were diagnosed correctly and treated earlier.

But Ms Harvey-Smith, from Chelmondiston, near Ipswich in Suffolk, said her little "Mr Positive" refused to let it get him down.

"He came round from the operation and the first thing he did was ask for 'mummy cuddles' and his dinner," she said.

"He looked at his amputated legs and said 'poorly feet gone, get new ones.'

"He just accepts it and gets on with things. He never gets frustrated.

"I try not to waste energy getting angry because at the end of the day I've still got my son, but what I have got to do now is make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else."

Reuben's sore throat and fever had been misdiagnosed despite a recognised link between burns and toxic shock syndrome.

Ms Harvey-Smith called the burns unit at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for a second opinion when she suspected things were still not right, and doctors immediately suspected toxic shock.

Reuben survived, but medics at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London were forced to amputate.

Ms Harvey-Smith, 41, later launched legal action against Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust which admitted toxic shock was a 'significant possibility' based on his symptoms at the time, and amputation could have been avoided with earlier diagnosis and treatment.

The mother, who is assistant director at the Home Office, is now raising awareness of the link between burns and toxic shock.

"It is extremely rare, but it can be life-threatening and it's just getting people to think because it's something that can progress so quickly, but if caught early can lead to a full recovery," she said.

Her lawyer, Tim Deeming, a clinical negligence specialist from Slater and Gordon, said: "Reuben has life changing injuries as the team made the wrong diagnosis in suspecting a throat infection.

"It is extremely concerning they were aware of the link between burns and toxic shock, yet didn't consider this for Reuben's case."

Ms Harvey-Smith, who has two older sons, William, 22, and Harry, 12, is now fundraising for better prosthetic legs so Reuben can get around more easily.

She said each pair cost around 6,000 and they needed to be replaced twice per year.

The NHS trust has made an interim payment of 50,000 while legal proceedings continue over a final settlement.

A spokesman for Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust said: "In an ongoing legal case the trust has admitted full liability for shortcomings in the A&E care provided to Reuben in July 2015 and have offered an unreserved apology to Reuben and his family.

"We are now working with the family to ensure that lessons are learnt from Reuben's case and further training has been provided to A&E staff on recognising the warning signs of septic shock syndrome.

"The trust is committed to ensuring that Reuben is appropriately compensated so that he has the care, prostheses and equipment that he needs throughout his life.

"Some funds have already been allocated for Reuben's immediate needs while the parties work towards settlement of the claim."
Republicans stepped up their attacks on Monday on former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server and pointed to newly released messages to allege that foreign donors to the Democratic presidential nominee's family charity got preferential treatment from her department.

Congressional Republicans issued subpoenas to three technology companies that either made or serviced the private email server located in the basement of Mrs Clinton's New York home.

The subpoenas were issued on Monday by Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and House Science, Space and Technology chairman Lamar Smith of Texas.

They said the move was necessary after the three companies - Platte River Networks, Datto Inc and Secnap Network Security Corp - declined to voluntarily answer questions to determine whether Mrs Clinton's private server met government standards for record-keeping and security.

The subpoenas were among several developments on Monday that showed a new Republican emphasis on Mrs Clinton's emails after the FBI recently closed its year-long probe into whether she and her aides mishandled sensitive government information that flowed through her server, without recommending criminal charges.

The State Department is now reviewing nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed emails recovered as part of the FBI investigation. Lawyers for the department told US District Court Judge James E.

Boasberg on Monday that they anticipate processing and releasing the first batch of these new emails in mid-October, raising the prospect that new messages sent or received by Mrs Clinton could become public just before November's election.

Mr Boasberg is overseeing production of the emails as part of a federal public-records lawsuit filed by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch. Representing the State Department, Justice Department lawyer Lisa Olson told the judge that officials do not yet know what portion of the emails is work-related, rather than personal.

One wrong move can be the difference between life and death when you're president.https://t.co/Tpo3Spps9z  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 22, 2016

Mrs Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, had claimed that she deleted only personal emails prior to returning more than 55,000 pages of her work-related messages to the State Department last year. The department has publicly released most of those emails, although some have been withheld because they contain information considered sensitive to national security.

The thousands of previously undisclosed Mrs Clinton emails obtained by the FBI came from the accounts of other people she communicated with or were recovered through the bureau's forensic examination of her old server.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon reiterated on Monday that Mrs Clinton provided all the work-related emails she had "in her possession" when the State Department asked for copies in 2014.

He said "if the State Department determines any of them to be work-related, then obviously we support those documents being released publicly as well."

Ms Olson said the department earlier this month received seven discs containing "tens of thousands" of emails Mrs Clinton sent or received during her tenure as the nation's top diplomat.

The first disc, labelled by the FBI as containing non-classified emails not previously disclosed by Mrs Clinton, contains about 14,900 documents, she said. The second is labelled as emails containing classified information.

She said it was "extremely ambitious" for the agency to complete its review and begin releasing the first batches of emails to Judicial Watch by October 14, given the volume of messages.

Judicial Watch lawyer Lauren Burke called that schedule too slow and pressed for faster release of the emails from the first disc. The judge ordered the department to report back to him by September 22.

Also on Monday, Judicial Watch released 20 previously undisclosed email exchanges involving Mrs Clinton that were turned over by her former deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin.

Among them is a June 23 2009, message to Ms Abedin from Doug Band, a long-time aide to former President Bill Clinton who then was an official at the Clinton family's charitable foundation.

Republicans charge that donors to the foundation, including foreign governments and corporations, got preferential treatment from the State Department while Mrs Clinton was secretary of state.

Mr Band sought to arrange for the crown prince of Bahrain to meet with Mrs Clinton while the prince was visiting Washington.

"Good friend of ours," Mr Band wrote to Ms Abedin, one of Mrs Clinton's closest aides.

Crown Prince Salman had in 2005 made a 32 million dollar commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, a programme run by the foundation.

In later emails Ms Abedin confirmed that Mrs Clinton would meet with the prince. Copies of Mrs Clinton's calendar obtained by AP confirm the meeting occurred in her State Department office on June 26 2009.
KARACHI: Gold prices on Friday continued to gain more value on the local market, traders said. Gold went up by Rs...
SAN FRANCISCO: US tech titans looking to the future are seeing growth take a beating in the face of foreign...
BERLIN: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday rebuilding Ukraine was a generational task that must start...
Low-cost airfares to Melbourne will again be available for Canberrans, after Tigerair confirmed it is reinstating its daily route between the two cities.

Speculation about the potential return of a budget air link between Canberra and Melbourne has been rife in the past month, after reports emerged that Chief Minister Andrew Barr had met with his Victorian counterpart Daniel Andrews to discuss the issue.

Tigerair Australia chief executive Rob Sharp, left, Chief Minister Andrew Barr and Capital Airport Group managing director Stephen Byron announce the return of?Tigerair flights between Melbourne and Canberra. Credit:File picture

Tigerair Australia chief executive Rob Sharp formally announced the re-establishment of the route on Monday, flanked by Mr Barr and Capital Airport Group managing director Stephen Byron at Canberra Airport.

Details on fares and schedules have not yet been released, although tickets are expected to go on sale later this week for flights starting on December 9.
Mr Bohm, who has a knack of publicity, wants each Canberran to be forgiven on free parking ticket each year in recognition that "nobody is perfect and sometimes things happen out of your control".

This year, the party will stand two candidates in each of the five electorates, among them artists, uni students, and a tradie. The party has released a suite of policies which appear to place it left of centre, but co-founder Tim Bohm says the party is neither left nor right, and is focused instead on common sense and transparency.

Like Canberra, formerly the Bullet Train for Canberra Party, has stood in ACT and Senate elections since 2012 , when it stood six candidates in the ACT election and on four per cent of the vote, a few hundred votes behind the Australian Motorist Party.

Like Canberra has become the first minor party to announce a team of candidates for the October ACT election, with 10 candidates contesting the five seats in an election rife with minor parties and independents.

On Tuesday, the party unveils its candidates, who Mr Bohm says will dress in chemical suits or lab coats in a visual symbol of the need for an ACT corruption commission. On hand will be "ICAC spray and wipe" and mascot "Kambah the corruption watchdog".

Most of the minor parties and independents are pushing for an ICAC, with the ACT the only jurisdiction other than the Northern Territory without such a body. In the Northern Territory, it is among Labor's promises for this weekend's election, but in Canberra both Labor and Liberal are resisting the move.

Mr Bohm said if elected, any big decisions would be taken to the party membership, with numbers at about 120 and growing. That would include whether to support Labor or Liberal to form government. Mr Bohm acknowledged that could result in people joining so they could vote on particular issues, given the party has no membership fee and no minimum membership time before someone can vote. But the scenario did not concern him.

"If we get the balance of power and 1000 people sign up and they're all Canberrans it's great, it would be a good problem to have," he said. "Obviously we know it's going to be tough to win a seat, but we want to highlight the lack of common sense out of our political parties at the moment. We want to being a few things into the spotlight."

He cited the self-interest of the major parties. His party would seek to reverse the 2014 decision to increase public funding to parties from $2 a vote to $8 a vote, an amount many times other jurisdictions.
Bluescope Steel has warned it needs to continue to squeeze costs to justify committing to necessary upgrades at its Port Kembla steelworks.

The company continues to battle with low-priced steel imports. In the year to June, its net profit surged 160 per cent to $353.8 million as it benefited from a heavy round of cost reductions at the steelworks which included axing 200 jobs along with a big lift in profit margins in the US.

BlueScope reported an annual net profit of $353.8 million in 2015-16, its biggest since 2008. Credit:Peter Braig

"At the beginning of fiscal 2016, macro conditions were very difficult and margins deteriorated to levels of 2002," the chief executive Paul O'Malley said. In response, the group slashed costs, enabling it to ride the wave of improving margins which emerged late last year.

"The macro environment is better than six months ago, but steel over-supply remains a global issue."
Chinese communities in Sydney and Melbourne are scratching their collective heads at the prospect of public ceremonies planned for the heart of Sydney and Melbourne to mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong on September 9, 1976. Two Mao memorial concerts are scheduled to take place, one in the Sydney Town Hall on September 6 and the other in Melbourne Town Hall on September 9.

This is not something that would be taken lightly in China. When Mao loyalists staged a concert to commemorate the songs and dances of the Cultural Revolution in Beijing's Great Hall of the People in May this year, city authorities distanced themselves from the event and the responsible hall manager is said to have been reprimanded for allowing the commemoration to proceed.

An image of Sydney Town Hall mocked up by those opposed to the Mao commemoration event.

The events are organised by the International Cultural Exchange Association of Australia and a cluster of companies and community organisations closely connected with Beijing and with the Chinese consulates in Sydney and Melbourne.

What is driving the organisers is not clear. The death of a man responsible for tens of millions of deaths is not something community organisers have thought fit to commemorate in Australia before.
Since a marriage equality plebiscite was proposed by Tony Abbott a year ago the idea has been plagued by lack of detail, procrastination, vocal opposition and declining support.

In the lead up to the election Malcolm Turnbull could give no details about it, promising only that it would be before the end of 2016.

In the absence of critical details it is difficult for the government to claim a mandate.Now, even the promise about holding the plebiscite by year's end looks set to be broken. It may be pushed to February, meaning it will clash with the Western Australian election. I can see it being pushed out even further, given right-wing resistance to prioritising it. It appears Abbott's plebiscite plan is fulfilling its original goal of frustrating progress.

The only other detail flagged so far is the question: "Do you approve of a law to permit people of the same sex to marry?"
It's important to remember that the whole idea for the plebiscite was designed with one important goal in mind: to ensure that legislating marriage equality didn't happen under previous prime minister Tony Abbott. After all, barely any referendums or plebiscites have passed since federation, so unwieldy public votes have a well-deserved record as excellent methods of preventing change.

So here's a new question: with February firming up as the likely new date for the plebiscite, will Turnbull face a leadership challenge just before then, or shortly thereafter?

Sure, there are plenty of worthwhile things to say about the plebiscite - that it's not legislatively necessary, that it's hideously expensive at a time we're supposedly worried about government budgets, that many parliamentarians have already pledged to ignore the result, that an opinion poll is a lousy way to determine civil rights, and many more. But assuming you've paid the slightest attention to the issue, you'd already be well aware of all those objections.

The nation's supply of shock and surprise was in no way diminished over the weekend as Australians discovered that the $160 million plebiscite to decide whether Australia should ratify same sex marriage now or put it off a bit longer would not be happening in 2016 .

And while there's no obvious Turnbull-style challenger to the throne just yet, Abbott is clearly trying to set himself up as the sensible, firm-but-fair alternative to the man that can currently do no right. He's been calling for greater transparency and democracy in the NSW Liberals (which, conveniently, would also weaken Turnbull's local support base while bolstering his own) and apologising for not supporting the Malaysian Solution proposed by the Gillard government when he was leader of the opposition. And hey, who doesn't love a good redemption story?

Abbott's not popular enough to be reinstated as yet, but after six months of Turnbull failing to get anything through the impossible new Parliament created by his double dissolution there are going to be even more backbenchers eager to buy into the delusional belief that they would have romped into a greater majority victory if only they'd kept good old Tony at the helm. So the plebiscite will be perfect timing.

The majority of the Coalition - or, more accurately, less than half of the Liberals but almost all of the Nationals - oppose same sex marriage. And that group of Liberals are overwhelming folks that a) supported Abbott and b) do not much care for Turnbull. Indeed, among their number are those who have been perfectly happy to indicate that they have no intention of respecting the result of the plebiscite.

And, since plebiscites are non-binding, MPs and senators are under no obligation to even acknowledge the result of the vote, beyond out of respect for the leadership of their party.

Those same people, however, are also among the the folks who've been most outspokenly critical of their leader in recent times. Abbott loyalist Eric Abetz has been outspoken about the government's terrible election result, while Cory Bernardi is planning to reintroduce doomed legislation to water down the Racial Discrimination Act, despite the Prime Minister insisting that it won't get up.
Later this week, I will be speaking at the Feminist Writers' Festival on a panel called 'Tearing Each Other Apart', along with Clem Bastow and Monica Dux. The purpose of the panel is to explore what goes wrong in feminist writing and debate and how we might do it better on the Internet. Into that lion's den we go.

It would be fair to say I am a little nervous about the topic and the many ways it could go wrong. Anyone who has tried to find resolution with a partner by revisiting an old argument knows best intentions can easily skitter off into reoffending. Still, it is an important discussion to have at a festival with the express purpose of connecting diverse communities and facilitating critical feminist engagement.

"Some of my blog posts received upwards of 600 comments. It was a hell of an education in feminism." Credit:Stocksy

Naturally, I have been thinking a lot about what goes wrong in online feminism; and I have come to wonder if some of the same forces that led to the revival in feminism over the last decade and a half may have also contributed to some of the less than wonderful features.

And where did I see those forces? Blogging.
Tens of thousands of federal public servants are set to walk off the job early next month with no end in sight to their three-year dispute over wages and conditions.

Officials from Medicare, Centrelink, Child Support, the Tax Office, Defence, Agriculture and Water Resources, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet will strike for 24 hours on September 9, according to their main union, the CPSU.

CPSU National Secretary Nadine Flood has welcomed the breakthrough. Credit:Jamila Toderas

Border Force on-water units began rolling stoppages on Monday but no repeat is planned of the recent airport disruption, caused by striking Border Force, Immigration and Agriculture officials.

The union concedes that disruption to frontline services is likely during the September action, but has appealed for support from the public in what it calls a "fight for a fair deal" for frontline public servants.
The Facebook account of a Sydney woman was accessed more than 100 times in the year after she was killed, and photos of her were deleted from her social media account, an inquest has heard.

But the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has knocked back a request from NSW Police to access Facebook records that may point to who was logging in to Cheryl Ardler's account, and possibly shed light on who killed her.

Cheryl Ardler's Facebook account was accessed more than 100 times in 2013. Credit:NSW Police

Deputy State Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan handed down her report on Friday following the inquest into the disappearance and suspected death of the 44-year-old from Cranebrook in Sydney's west.

The report found that Ms Ardler died between December 5 and 25, 2012, and the manner of her death was most likely to have been homicide. But it remains a mystery as to who killed her and where her body lies.
Former NRL star Anthony Watts has been charged with assault after an incident at a Gold Coast wedding over the weekend.

The former Cowboys hooker, 29, handed himself in to Queensland police on Monday morning.

He is due to appear in Southport Magistrates Court later in the day.

EARLIER
Microsoft's big Anniversary Update for Windows 10 went live earlier this month. With it came improved pen performance, new Cortana features and an all around better Windows. Two weeks later, it's become clear that the Anniversary update has some big problems. First, some users were plagued with a system-wide freeze after logging into Windows, and now tech blog Thurrott reports that the OS is killing certain webcams.

Specifically, there's a piece of the update that is affecting cams that work with two particular compression formats  H.264 and MJPEG. Without getting into too much technical mumbo jumbo, the problem popped up because Microsoft was actually trying to add new ways for applications to access webcams. Here's how a Microsoft rep from the camera team describes it in the Windows Dev Center forum:

"With the Anniversary Update to Windows 10, it is now possible for multiple applications to access the camera in ways that weren't possible before. It was important for us to enable concurrent camera access, so Windows Hello, Microsoft Hololens and other products and features could reliably assume that the camera would be available at any given time, regardless of what other applications may be accessing it."

But Microsoft didn't want multiple applications to decode the same stream  thus degrading PC performance  so it made the seemingly drastic decision to blacklist codecs. So when USB webcams try to access a stream, they end up stalling out and freezing because the cameras can't enable these blacklisted compression formats. It's even breaking Skype, software owned by Microsoft.
A Melbourne principal has denied claims his school suggested it was acceptable for girls to be harassed or abused because of what they wear.

Kambrya College triggered a social media storm last week after it allegedly asked students to stop wearing short skirts to "protect their integrity".

Kambrya College, which was accused of 'slut-shaming' after it asked girls to stop wearing short skirts, says there's been a misunderstanding. Credit:Gabriele Charotte

Girls received the warning at an assembly aimed at addressing cyber safety issues in the wake of the school being named on a pornographic website.

Principal Michael Muscat wrote to parents on Monday and said that there had been "misunderstandings" about the assembly.
More haikus! Reader Damean Posner nails the beguiling quality of sharing a small communal transport pod with a few hundred of your fellow humans in his poem 'A commuter's lament':

Armpit in my face

Ginger beard in my ear hole

When will this train stop?

Pure poetry. Thanks, Damean.

Keep the haikus coming, folks, but be quick - I'll be wrapping up over here pretty soon.
Jerusalem: Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip have launched a rocket that landed in the Israeli border town of Sderot, and Israeli aircraft and tanks have responded by shelling the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the Israeli army and police said.

Sunday's rocket caused no injuries or damage in Sderot after it landed in a residential area, police said.

Palestinian masked members from the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades parade with a rocket launcher during a rally in Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Sunday. Credit:AP

The initial retaliatory Israeli shell damaged a Beit Hanoun water tower with no casualties reported, local residents say.

Multiple air strikes later in the evening hit at least 30 different sites in the Gaza Strip belonging to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militant groups and two people were lightly hurt, Gaza health officials said.
Bali: Denpasar's police chief says the claim Byron Bay woman Sara Connor had been attacked by a "bad cop" was a "false statement" and she had promised to confess the "honest truth" about what she did on Monday.

Ms Connor and her British boyfriend David Taylor have been declared suspects in the alleged murder of Wayan Sudarsa on August 17. They face up to 15 years' jail.

On Sunday, Mr Taylor's lawyer, Haposan Sihombing, indicated that he believed his client was hiding something and would also reveal the "whole truth" soon.

Mr Haposan had also claimed that Ms Connor had told his client she had been pushed into the sand by a "bad cop", who then lay on top of her.
According to David Taylor's lawyer, Ms Connor told Mr Taylor she was pushed into the sand by a "bad cop", who lay on top of her. She screamed for help and managed to escape after several people pulled the officer off her.

On Friday, police said Ms Connor had told them she was too drunk to remember what happened the night Balinese police officer Wayan Sudarsa was killed. But the following day her lawyer suggested only a few beers had been consumed at a restaurant and then on Kuta beach.

1. Was Sara Connor too drunk to remember what happened?

Sara Connor is escorted by police from a hospital where she was examined. Credit:Amilia Rosa

Who were these good samaritans? Where was Mr Taylor at the time? The Denpasar police chief says there was no indecent act and this was just an "alibi".

3. Why didn't Ms Connor report her missing handbag and the alleged attack to authorities?

Ms Connor lost her handbag on Kuta beach, containing a Visa card and her driver's licence. She also claimed she was attacked by the "bad cop". Yet the couple went to Jimbaran the following day without reporting anything.

4. Why does Ms Connor have a bite on her inner thigh?
Activists protested at the Republican convention in Cleveland over Donald Trump's plans for a wall along the US-Mexican border. Credit:AP Univision, meanwhile, reported that three attendees said Mr Trump "plans to present an immigration plan in Colorado [on] Thursday that will include finding a way to legalise millions of undocumented immigrants". Top Trump advisers were asked on Sunday to respond to the reports, and they did not exactly reject them. Trump's hardline stand on migrants has been a cornerstone of his campaign Credit:Laura McDermott Asked twice whether he was sticking with his plan for a deportation force, newly installed Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway deflected and then told CNN that it was "to be determined".

Republican Senator Jeff Sessions said Mr Trump was "wrestling" with how to handle illegal immigrants already in the US. "What I'm certain about is that he did not make a firm commitment yesterday, or the meeting the other day, about what he will do with that," Mr Sessions said on CBS News when asked whether Mr Trump still supports deporting all 11 million. "But he did listen, and he's talking about it." Mr Trump's campaign is playing down the reports and says nothing has really changed. But it clearly has.

Even in equivocating and saying it's "to be determined", the campaign is striking a far different tone than Mr Trump has before. Ms Conway was twice given the chance to reiterate that Mr Trump will deport all illegal immigrants, and she didn't. And, to be clear, that has been Mr Trump's position. Anything else would present a major change from a guy whose primary victory and 2016 campaign writ large have been defined by his hard-line immigration stance. In August 2015, when asked on NBC's Meet the Press whether he would deport all illegal immigrants, Mr Trump repeatedly responded, "They have to go." In September, he confirmed to 60 Minutes that was his position, saying they could apply for legalisation after being deported.

Mr Trump repeated his promise of a deportation force in November, even pointing to "Operation Wetback" - a large-scale removal of illegal immigrants under Dwight Eisenhower in 1954 that is now seen as inhumane - though not by name. And Mr Trump was crystal-clear in a February debate. "We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally," he said. "They will go out. They will come back - some will come back, the best, through a process. They have to come back legally." This weekend, though, is not the first time that Mr Trump has signalled that he might soften that position.

In a February interview with The New York Times editorial board, Mr Trump reportedly said that his plan was negotiable (he later denied that). In June, Mr Trump said he would not describe his plan as "mass deportation". We don't know what Mr Trump will propose in the days and weeks ahead, but the fact that he's even thinking about it is notable, because his existing plan was clear and unequivocal, presented over and over again. Mr Trump's positions on the issues have changed before. He is not a model of consistency, to put it mildly. Loading
Latest News Lendi Group settles $33.6 billion in FY22 Ambitious target of a deal a day for brokers

APRA announces new appointments The prudential regulator has a new chair, deputy chair, and members

Global credit agency, Moodys, has downgraded its rating outlook for Australias big four banks from stable to negative, claiming margin pressure will erode profitability.The ratings agency maintained the sectors Aa2 rating, however, it said the banks face weaker profit growth due to declining interest margins and a greater vulnerability to internal and external shocks.There is an expectation of a more challenging operating environment for banks in Australia for the remainder of 2016 and beyond, Moodys said, which could lead to a deterioration in their profit growth and asset quality, as well as an increase in their sensitivity to external shocks.In response to Moodys action, Commonwealth Bank Chief Financial Officer, David Craig, said it reminds us that at times of global economic volatility, Australia's major banks are under intense scrutiny from ratings agencies and global funding providers. However, Craig said it also confirms that the Australian banking system remains among the strongest in the worldMoody's emphasis on profitability highlights the importance of profit growth in maintaining banks' strength and the confidence of global funding providers. It is this strength and confidence which enable the Bank to access and provide low cost funding for our customers, he said.
Latest News Lendi Group settles $33.6 billion in FY22 Ambitious target of a deal a day for brokers

APRA announces new appointments The prudential regulator has a new chair, deputy chair, and members

The Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia ( MFAA ) is urging mortgage brokers to update or implement their two-year business plans ahead of the release of the next broker benchmarking report.The second edition of the Industry Intelligence Report, set to be released in the coming weeks, will reveal the industry data on broker benchmarks and performance. The MFAA says the data can be used by brokers to better plan their business growth.We have offered an exclusive service only available to MFAA members with free marketing consults that have been taken up by hundreds and hundreds of broker businesses. One of the key factors missing in these discussions has been a formalised business plan to help guide decisions, an MFAA spokesperson said.The MFAA said it is already currently running sessions for new-to-industry and existing members, offering a free business plan template.We were first with free website content, free marketing consults for members, $99 digital loan calculators, industry data, and young professional reports and now an up to date digital business planner. We will continue to offer real value to our members, the MFAA spokesperson said.
Latest News Lendi Group settles $33.6 billion in FY22 Ambitious target of a deal a day for brokers

APRA announces new appointments The prudential regulator has a new chair, deputy chair, and members

Australians might be better off looking for a needle in haystack rather than sub-$400,000 property, with new analysis showing there has been a fall in the number of properties transacted at the more affordable end of the price range.The analysis by CoreLogic shows that just 33.1% of all houses and 40.6% of all units sold across Australia in the year to June 30 were transacted at less than $400,000, down from 34.8% and 44.1% respectively in the year to June 2015.Nationally, the proportion of houses that sold for less than $400,000 over the 12 months to June was the lowest on record."These figures highlight the decline in sales across more affordable price points, particularly across the capital city housing markets," CoreLogic research analyst Cameron Kusher said."With values continuing to rise it is a fairly safe bet that there will continue to be a decline in the number of homes selling for less than $400,000," Kusher said.Looking at the capital city markets, sub-$400,000 homes are even harder to find.In the 12 months to June, just 19.1% of capital city houses sold for less than $400,000, down from 21.3% over the previous 12 months.In the unit market, 31.0% of capital city dwellings sold for less than $400,000 in the 12 months to June, down from 31.9% over the previous year.Across the regional areas, buyers do stand a much better chance of finding a house or unit for $400,000 or less.In the 12 months to June, 54.6% of houses and 65.4% of units sold across regional markets carried a price tag of less than $400,000.In regional New South Wales, at least, the increased availability of affordable properties has been noticed by investors.Matthew Ward, director of Orange-based Aspect Buyers Agency, told Australian Broker's ssiter publication Your Investment Property that an increasing number of buyers have been ventured out from their usual environments recently.Theres a big influx coming from the eastern seaboard capital cities. The price point is good, the yields are good and the markets are really looking good to them, Ward said.Particularly in the larger regional centres like Dubbo, Tamworth, Wagga and Bathurst things have been kicking on quite well.Ward said a combination of the low price of entry plus rental yields of 4%-7% on offer have made the regional markets attractive to a range of different buyer types.Were seeing people who have lost trust in places like Sydney and see it as being overheated and want to spread their money and risk around, he told Your Investment Property.If youve got a million bucks to spend and you cant get into Sydney you can head out to those areas and pick one or two properties.Were also seeing the rentvestors or those with maybe one or two properties who cant get into the city markets because of the prices.While regional centres are likely to remain more affordable than there capital city counterparts, Ward said the gap between the two is likely to contract in the near future.My prediction is that the regional cities are set to go. If you looked at what happened in the late 90s and early 2000s it took two or three years to flow into the regional markets when Sydney had a boom.It went up the coast to Newcastle and then over the hill and thats about to happen again.Newcastle and Central Coast prices are rising off the back of Sydneys pressure and were starting to see some price movement out this way.
Phillies complete comeback with 10th inning HR to win Game 1 of World Series

Philadelphias catcher hit a go-ahead solo home run in the top of the 10th after his team had rallied out of an early 5-0 deficit.
has sounded the alarm for stalled growth in India's e-commerce market while for the first time admitting that it has missed its own growth target. The sluggish growth in the sector comes soon after the government's move to restrict discounts on e-commerce marketplaces as part of the new foreign direct investment (FDI) norms.
M P Birla Group's flagship company, on Monday said it has completed the acquisition of the cement business of Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (RIL) in a stake sell agreement it concluded with RIL in February, this year.

In a regulatory filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange, (Birla Corp) said that it has acquired 100% equity shares of Reliance Cement Company Private Ltd (RCCPL) which has made the latter a wholly owned subsidiary of .
While the Indian aquaculture industry has benefitted from the slowdown in production in countries like China, Vietnam and Thailand, the major global suppliers of shrimp, high demand has also induced a rise in farmgate prices. At the same time the average international prices are more or less stable as most importers tend to hold few months inventory; and this has put the margins of Indian exporters under pressure.
Refiner Essar Oil Ltd wants to enter the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) distribution business in the country, said an Essar Oil official on Monday.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) is preparing draft regulations that may extend its purview to water supplied by municipalities and food cooked in places of worship.
State-run Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) has posted a 30 per cent increase in its net profit for the first quarter (Q1) of the current financial year (FY) to Rs. 2,098.38 crore, against Rs. 1,614.13 crore during the same period of the last FY.
BBC Worldwide, BBC's over 1-billion commercial arm, is the biggest distributor of TV content outside of the US studios. Sherlock, Top Gear and Dr Who among its other shows and its natural history programming are bought by hundreds of broadcasters and over-the-top (OTT) platforms across the world. Helen Jackson, the chief content officer for BBC Worldwide spoke to Vanita Kohli-Khandekar on a recent visit to India. Edited excerpts:



How is the India market for you?



India is a very active market for us; we sell a lot here (syndicated content). For example to Colors Infinity (It has bought and aired The Musketeers and Citizen Khan, among others). But, somehow the perception is that US shows are more popular. [In the year ended March 2016, BBC Worldwide India produced 270 hours of content and syndicated approximately 1,000 hours, all for the India market. Syndication brings in roughly one-third of BBC Worldwide's India revenue]



Globally what trends do you see in programming? Is high-end drama still profitable?



There is still an incredible appetite for drama. War & Peace has done huge business for us (sold to 184 countries, including Australia, China, Denmark and India). A lot more high-budget dramas are coming up. And, we are getting into a lot of co-production. We are doing a fair amount with Netflix and Amazon. (In December 2015, BBC Worldwide and Amazon Prime Video greenlit period fashion drama, The Collection, an eight-part series set in the world of French haute couture, just after the second World War.)



Within drama, though, there is greater interest in stories around true crime and miscarriages of justice, (Netflix's) Making of a Murderer, for instance. Fifty per cent of our revenues come from drama now, against 25-30 per cent five years back, so it has grown. It is profitable because it sells across the world. And, also because drama lends itself to co-production, so you are sharing the costs. Budgets have increased more than 50 per cent in the past few years. But earlier, there was no tax-break, now there is. So far, there is value in drama sales.
on Monday said it has laid off "a few" people on grounds of non-performance and disciplinary issues but denied reports of 500 jobs being cut by the country's second largest software services company.

"We would like to clarify that there are no layoffs at . There have been a few separations that are in response to performance and disciplinary issues, which take place on an ongoing basis and this is no different from previous years," an spokesperson said.

She added that the number of 500 people being laid off is "incorrect and the number is far below".

There were reports that Infosys had laid off 500 people in the aftermath of losing its multi-million pound deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland.

RBS had announced that it will not pursue its plan to separate and list a new UK standalone bank, Williams & Glyn (W&G), for which Infosys was a key technology partner. The move led to ramp down of about 3,000 jobs at the Bengaluru- based company.

At the end of first quarter of FY2017, Infosys had 1.97 lakh employees with an attrition rate of 21 per cent during April-June, 2016.

Infosys said it offers counselling to employees not meeting the expected standards of performance.

"After adequate counselling, those found consistently deviating from expectations are asked to find alternate employment. This applies to employees across levels and is not connected with any business situation that is not in the control of the employee. The numbers are very low and this is no different from what we have done in the past," it said.
The information technology (IT) services sector is increasingly looking at stricter performance evaluation.



This comes in the background of growth being impacted due to macro economic conditions and the increasing use of automation and technologies such as artificial intelligence.



According to a recent report, Infosys, the countrys second largest service provider, dismissed 500 employees. The story said some of them could not complete the required 9.15 hours of daily work.





THE NORM IN THE SECTOR Infosys dismissed 500 employees, according to a recent report

Nasscom, the body representing the industry, has also hinted at a lower hiring trend

Analysts say pink slips have become a norm as growth tapers and processes get automated, though not en masse

are moving away from a bell curve appraisal system to a process that tracks staff performance regularly

Infosys says the reason for these exits are no different from what they'd been following in the past.We have a progressive policy for the rare instances where some of our employees do not meet expected standards of performance or commitments. After adequate counselling, those found consistently deviating from expectations are asked to find alternative employment. This applies to employees across levels and is not connected with any business situation that is not in the control of the employee. The numbers are very low and this is no different from what we have done in the past, said the company.Indian is the largest employer of engineers in the country. The total employee base of the sector touched 3.7 million in 2015-16. Nasscom, the body representing the industry, has also hinted at a lower hiring trend. The sector added 200,000 employees in FY16, compared with 230,000 in FY15. For FY17, the expected employee addition is around 200,000.Analysts say 'pink slips' have become a norm as growth tapers and processes get automated, though not en masse.Pink slips made a comeback a year before. One reason is growth in demand coming down and, two, there is no linear relation between growth and headcount. A lot of processes are also getting automated, said Kris Lakshmikanth, founder and managing director, Head Hunters India, an executive search firm.He says employees on the bench (the sector's term for those not assigned to any project) are more vulnerable. If you are on the bench for three months, send those employees for a performance improvement programme. If you are not billable for six months, you will be asked to go. This has been a common practice at multinational corporations such as IBM. Lately Indian firms are also following this, he added.A M Naik, chairman of Larsen & Toubro and non-executive vice-chairman of L&T Infotech, had said the latter's Initial Public Offer that its 18.5 per cent staff attrition rate wasn't voluntary.Over the years, we have continuously become more efficient by use of technology and various tools, and as we hire talent that caters to new technology. Some people cannot cope with such changes. So, the 18.5 per cent attrition does not represent voluntary retirement or voluntary resignation. Less than 12 per cent of people normally leave voluntarily. The rest become obsolete, either due to inefficiency or lack of technological knowledge, he said.are also moving away from a bell curve appraisal system to a process that tracks employee performance regularly. Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys, as also global players IBM and Accenture, have moved away from the former system to one of regular feedback, not simple once or twice a year.IBM has done away with annual appraisals, for a new system called Checkpoint. This considers different dimensions of an employee's performance  business results, impact on client success, innovation, personal responsibility to others, skills.The sector is also trying to upgrade the skill levels of its employees as it faces the challenge of digital disruption, with newer technologies assuming far more importance at clients' business environment. For instance, TCS, the country's largest IT services provider, is training 100,000 employees on digital technology. Infosys had announced it would train 40 per cent of its workforce in design thinking.Pravin Rao, operations head at Infosys, in an earlier interview, said they wanted to leverage the benefits of automation, particularly at a lateral level. And, figure out how to do more of just-in-time hiring at fresher level. "On an average last year, we did lateral hiring of 2,500-3,000 every quarter but with more and more fulltime employee equivalents being released through automation, and automation benefits kicking in, we would expect to see some reduction in the hiring numbers," he said.Says Lakshmikanth: Recently, one of the top four IT services firms sacked an employee who was with them for six years. The reason given was performance. The employee approached the labour court because for the last 15 years, his performance evaluation was above average and suddenly in the 16th year, it was low. He challenged this decision and the company had to reinstate him. Companies will look at the mid-manager level, especially employees in the 35-45 age group, more closely. They have the option to promote a younger person with a lower salary to that position.
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.
French auto major on Monday launched a new version of its small car Kwid in India powered by 1.0 litre petrol engine priced up to Rs 3.95 lakh (introductory price ex-showroom Delhi).

The company currently sells the Kwid with an 800cc (0.8L) engine priced between Rs 2.64 lakh and Rs 3.73 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

The new 1.0 litre variant comes in two variants priced at Rs 3.82 lakh and Rs 3.95 lakh, respectively.

Buyers, thus will have to shell out Rs 22,000 more for the new 1,000 cc litre variant.

"With this launch, we look forward to welcoming more customers into the family as we endeavour to aggressively build our presence in India," India Country CEO & Managing Director Sumit Sawhney told reporters here.

Kwid has been a success in the country with the company having already retailed over 1.65 lakh units of the model since its launch last year.

The new variant of the hatchback comes with a brand new 1.0 litre SCe engine which is optimally designed for better performance.

It also comes with various features like sport designer graphics on the doors, pro-sense seat belt pre-tensioners with load limiters among others.

Commenting on the company's future plans, Sawhney said: "Our roadmap for India is very clear, with an immediate goal of achieving a market share of over 5 per cent by the end of this year."

The company will continue with its product offencive strategy in India, as is reinforced by the Kwid 1.0L SCe launch, to substantially grow the Renault brand in India, he added.

"Together with our product portfolio expansion strategy, we are also significantly increasing our sales and network reach in India," Sawhney said.

These efforts are matched by a clear strategy to enhance the customer brand experience, he added.

The company also plans to increase its sales network to 270 outlets by the end of this year.

In order to offer servicing at the customer's doorstep, Renault also plans to have 25 mobile workshops across the country by the end of the year.

The company currently offers the service in Kerala.

Sawhney said the company has already started selling the Kwid in Sri Lanka and plans to launch it in Nepal later this month.

"Early next year manufacturing of the model would begin at other markets as well," Sawhney said.

(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.)
State-owned of India (SCI) has earmarked Rs 900 crore capex for the current financial year even as business climate remains grim for the industry across globe mainly because of availability of low-priced assets in the market.
Tube Investments, part of Murugappa Group, is planning to expand its capacity for manufacturing of tubes under its engineering business, in order to meet its expectations to grow at 20-25% a year in this business.

The company will be investing around Rs 40-50 crore this year for which they would help it to meet the demands for a year, but will look at fresh investment in the segment later. Plans for a larger capex would be ready by the beginning of 2017, according to senior management officials.
Banwarilal Purohit on Monday was sworn in as the governor of .

Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court Ajit Singh administered the oath of office and secracy to Purohit at the Raj Bhavan here.

Purohit succeeded Padmanabha Balakrishna Acharya, Governor of Nagaland who was governor in-charge of .

The oath of office was administered at the Durbar Hall of the Raj Bhavan and the function was attended by Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and some of his cabinet colleagues.

An public personality inseparably involved in social, political, educational and industrial fields of Vidarbha in Maharashtra, Purohit had plunged into active politics in 1977.

He had won election to Maharashtra Assembly for the first time in 1978 from Nagpur east seat, was re-elected in 1980 from Nagpur south and became a minister in 1982.

In 1984 and 1989, Purohit was elected to the Lok Sabha from Nagpur-Kamptee seat and was a member of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of Defence Ministry.

He was re-elected from the Lok Sabha seat in 1996 and served as a member of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Home Affairs, Member of Standing Committee on Defence and Member of Public Sector Undertaking Committee.

Purohit is also credited with revival of 'The Hitavada', an English daily founded by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the mentor of Mahatma Gandhi.

Under him 'The Hitavada' became a leading newspaper of central India and apart from its headquarters edition at Nagpur the daily also launched editions from Jabalpur, Raipur, and Bhopal.
Three workers were today killed while 21 others sustained injuries after a in the dryer of a paper mill in Malerkotla in Sangrur district of Punjab, police said.

The in the dryer, which is used to dry paper, took place at around 11 AM in Malerkotla, Sangrur, DSP (Amargarh) Gurmit Singh said.

Two workers died on the spot while one succumbed to injuries in a hospital, he said.

Out of 21, six injured persons were admitted to Rajendra Hospital in Patiala and ESIC Hospital in Ludhiana. Rest of the injured, who have been admitted to civil hospital in Malerkotla, are out of danger, DSP said.

With the blast, the roof of the mill and machinery also got damaged, police said, adding investigations are underway to ascertain the reason behind the .
Monday held demonstrations across Bihar, expressing anger and impatience over the quality and quantity of government aid that has so far been provided to them.

With over one million people affected by floods and the situation remaining grim, district officials, particularly block development officers and circle officers, are facing the fury of victims complaining about inadequate relief supplies.

Hundreds of flood victims protested against the circle officer of Raghopur in Vaishali district, demanding adequate relief and compensation. Raghopur is not far from Patna and is represented by Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Prasad Yadav in the state assembly.

Raghopur is considered stronghold of Tejaswi's father and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad. Earlier, former chief minister and wife of Lalu Prasad, Rabri Devi, also represented Raghopur in the state assembly.

Angry over lack of relief, the flood-hit people in Nathnagar in Bhagalpur district staged a protest demanding adequate relief and compensation. In Begusarai district, flood victims blocked roads for hours demanding adequate relief.

Similar reports are coming from other flood-affected districts like Patna, Samastipur, Bhojpur, Khagaria and Aurangabad.

"At some places, flood victims blocked roads to protest against inadequate relief," an official of disaster management department said.

Hungry and homeless, the people also expressed anger over not being provided fodder for their cattle.

Ganga and other major rivers have submerged vast swathes of the state, forcing thousands from their homes.

The disaster has so far claimed 14 lives, including nine in Bhojpur district alone.

An official of the disaster management department said: "Rivers flowing above the danger mark are posing threat to the low-lying areas."

Over a dozen teams of the Disaster Response Force and the State Disaster Response Force have been deployed in the flood-hit districts.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has ordered cancellation of leave of police, administrative officials and engineers.

Nitish Kumar also directed officials to speed up rescue and relief operations in the flood-affected areas. He asked the health department to arrange for medicines and DDT sprays to check outbreak of diseases once the flood waters receded.

Officials said standing crops worth crores of rupees have been damaged and road communications at several places have been flooded.
A joint delegation of opposition parties led by former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Monday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and apprised him of the ground situation with an appeal to adopt a political approach in dealing with the unrest in the Valley.

The situation in the Valley, which continues to remain under curfew for last 45 days, prompted all the opposition parties in the state, cutting across party lines, to join hands and request the Centre for initiating a political dialogue with all stake holders in the state.

Besides Omar, the delegation, comprising a seven-member team of state Congress led by its PCC Chief G A Mir, CPM MLA M Y Tarigami, eight-member team of main opposition Conference including its provincial Chiefs Nasir Wani and Davinder Rana, has been camping in the capital and meeting political leaders from the government and opposition.

The delegation submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister, expressing its anguish, grief and sorrow over the painful loss of lives in the Valley and to express "dismay at the lack of a political approach to deal with the situation."



The delegation apprised the Prime Minister that the tried and tested formulations of dealing with the political issue in Kashmir administratively rather than politically has further exasperated the situation and "created an unprecedented sense of disaffection and disenchantment", especially among the youth.

"We are of the firm opinion that the Central Government should waste no further time in initiating a credible and meaningful political dialogue with all stakeholders to address the unrest in the state," the memorandum said.

The delegation said, "continued failure to address the unrest in Kashmir will further deepen the sense of alienation" and hoped that the Prime Minister "will take immediate measures to address this grave situation."



Flagging the issue of continued protests in which many youths have fallen victim to the ongoing protest including a young teenager named Irfan who was killed last night when a teargas shell burst on his chest in downtown, the memorandum requested the Prime Minister to announce "an immediate ban on pellet guns that have caused grievous injuries in the current unrest and maimed and blinded many young boys and girls".

"We also request you to advise relevant quarters against the policy of mass harassment, raids and arrests as this has worsened an already volatile situation in the state and goes against the values and principles of our democratic fabric and ethos," the memorandum said.

The delegation started the political initiative on Saturday when it met President Pranab Mukherjee and submitted a memorandum, requesting him to use his office to influence the Centre for initiating a political dialogue with all stakeholders in the state.

On Sunday, the delegation from the state met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and apprised him about the situation in the state.
A 28-year-old Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student has filed a rape case against an All India Students' Association (AISA) activist accusing him of raping her in a hostel room on the university campus, police said on Sunday.

The woman is a first-year PhD student and she has alleged that Anmol Ratan, a JNU student and AISA activist, raped her on Saturday, police said.

According to the complaint filed by her at the Vasant Kunj (North) police station, she had posted on her Facebook profile that she wanted to watch 'Sairat', a movie, and asked if anyone had a CD of it.

The complaint said that Ratan apparently messaged her saying that he had a copy. Thereafter, he picked her up on Saturday on the pretext of giving her a CD of the film and took her to the Brahamputra Hostel, where he stays.

She said in the complaint that he offered her a spiked drink and allegedly raped her. He also threatened her and asked her to not report the matter.

However, the woman approached the police on Sunday and a case of rape was registered and further investigation is underway.

When contacted, AISA said that it has taken strong note of the allegations and has expelled Ratan.

"AISA takes serious note of the fact that Anmol Ratan, a leading activist of AISA, is facing a criminal complaint of sexual assault. He is, henceforth, expelled from the primary membership of AISA," Ashutosh Kumar, AISA Delhi state secretary, said

"AISA will reflect on and deal with this issue with all the firmness it deserves. AISA will be unflinching for the principles of gender justice even if it involves a leading member of the organisation. We stand by the complainant in her fight for justice," added Kumar.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi telephoned the chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh (UP), Bihar and Madhya Pradesh (MP) on Monday to review the flood situation in these states.



This had taken a grave turn over the past few days, due to relentless rain, endangering lives and crops.
India should find a way to get back Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and the part of the state under Chinese occupation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief said on Sunday, according to a Times of India report.
The Federation of All India Farmer Associations (FAIFA), which represents farmers in the country, has demanded that it be included in the upcoming Framework Convection on Control(FCTC) Conference of Parties(COP 7) meeting scheduled to be held in India from November 7-12.



The farmers' lobbying body claimed the decisions on tobacco control at this conference will affect the livelihoods of millions of tobacco farmers and farm labour connected to tobacco cultivation in the country.
government on Monday issued draft notification on new districts that would be would be created by dividing nine of the existing 10 districts excluding Hyderabad.
The Finance Ministry is considering a proposal to advance the budget presentation date to January from the current norm of end-February. The idea behind this move is to ensure that the Finance Bill is passed before the start of the fiscal year on April 1 so that all central government departments get their full allocations to work with right from the first day.

It should be kept in mind that this proposal is different from that of whether the financial year of April 1-March 31 needs to be changed or not. A government appointed committee is looking into that matter.

The proposal for a change in the budget presentation date was first mooted by some of the government's senior most bureaucrats as part of a 'Transforming India' initiative in January 2016.

Presenting the budget earlier comes with both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

In the existing system, the Lok Sabha passes a vote on account for the April-June quarter, under which departments are provided a sixth of their total allocation for the year. This is done by March. The Finance Bill is not passed before late April or early May. If the Budget is read in January and passed by February-March, it would enable the government to do away with a vote on account for the first three months of a financial year

Retired and serving officials say the biggest plus would be that the Finance Bill, incorporating the Budget proposals, could be passed by February or March. So, government departments, agencies and state-owned companies would know their allocations right from April 1, when the financial year begins.

It would also help the private sector to anticipate government procurement trends and evolve their business plans. And, civil society could deliberate on and give feedback in time for the parliamentary discussions.

Disadvantages



However, one big disadvantage of advancing the Budget preparations is lack of comprehensive revenue and expenditure data. Currently, work on the Budget begins in earnest by December. By the time it is finalised in mid-February, data on revenue collections and expenditure trends is available for the first nine months of the financial year, i.e April-December. Based on which, projections for the full year can be made.

To read the Budget in January, the centre will have to start preparing it by early October. To go by less than six months of data and making projections for the full year and the next year, based on such an incomplete picture, will be an impossible task.

Advancing the Budget dates would be fraught with practical difficulties. Effective Budget planning also depends on the monsoon forecasts for the coming year, making the advancing the whole exercise even more difficult.
Electrification of village in Uttar Pradeshs Hathras district, mentioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech, is still being contested by the Centre and state governments.
The Gujarat government under its new Chief Minister Vijay Rupani has put in place a plan to reinvigorate the next Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit, scheduled from January 10 to 13, 2017, by branding it around the eventual rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime.
PM assures total support in rescue and relief operations in various flood affected States

.

The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has assured total support in the rescue and relief operations in the flood affected States of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Praying for the safety and wellbeing of those affected by floods, the Prime Minister hoped that the situation in the affected areas would normalise at the earliest. .

.

I pray for the safety and wellbeing of those in areas affected by floods in parts UP, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan & MP. .

.

Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh ji is closely monitoring the situation. He has spoken to the CMs and taken stock of rescue and relief operations. .

.

Centre assures total support in the rescue and relief operations. I hope the situation in the affected areas normalises at the earliest.", the Prime Minister said. .

.
At least 15 militants were killed and three arrested as a clash flared up between them and the security forces in Baghlan province of on Monday, officials said.

According to the officials, three militants have been arrested and a stock of arms and ammunitions was destroyed during the fighting, Xinhua news agency reported.

The strategically important Dand-e-Ghori district outside provincial capital Pul-e-Khumri, 160 km north of Kabul, was overrun by Taliban a few months ago and the government forces are trying to recapture it.
The airstrike that destroyed the home of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh who was photographed after being pulled from the rubble has claimed the life of his brother.

Ali, 10, died from his injuries in hospital on Saturday. The boys' father received mourners at his temporary home after news broke of the death, the Guardian reported.

Ali was not with his younger brother at home but playing with friends out in the street when the bomb fell on Wednesday. While his family sustained minor injuries when their home collapsed he was more seriously hurt in the blast.

Kenan Rahmani, a Syrian activist wrote online: "Omran became the 'global symbol of Aleppo's suffering' but to most people he is just that -- a symbol. Ali is the reality: that no story in has a happy ending."

There is growing frustration in rebel-held Aleppo that grief at the plight of Omran has not been accompanied by rage at those who dropped the bomb.

The image brought renewed global focus to the suffering of civilians in the eastern part of Syria's largest city, living under near-siege conditions.

"All Syrians, and me, thank the world for their feelings of sorrow, but why don't you help us to find peace," asked Aisha, a mother of two who fled the city after barrel bombings intensified but who still lives in the countryside near Aleppo. "The cause of this is Bashar al-Assad," the Guardian quoted her as saying.
A group of Chinese investors said it's acquiring ad-tech start-up Media.net for about $900 million in cash, with plans to eventually sell the company to an obscure telecommunications firm whose shares have been suspended from trading since last year. Media.net, which is based in Dubai and New York, is touting this as the third-largest ad-tech acquisition in history. However, the complex deal more closely resembles a reverse merger, where a private company takes over a public one and bypasses the formalities of an initial public offering. Technology entrepreneur Divyank Turakhia started ...
The Clinton Foundation's work in India could be affected by the controversy it has been recently embroiled in, the Times of India reported on Monday.
Pfizer is close to an agreement to buy Medivation for about $14 billion, people familiar with the situation said, the latest in a long run of blockbuster deals in the drug and biotechnology industries. The deal may be announced as early as Monday, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is still private. The biotech companys shares closed at $67.16 on Friday, giving it a market value of $11.1 billion. By acquiring Medivation, Pfizer would gain a blockbuster prostate-cancer treatment, Xtandi, thats already approved for sale in the US and elsewhere, ...
Turkish authorities were on Monday scrambling to ascertain the identity of a child suicide bomber acting on the orders of Islamic State (IS) jihadists who killed 51 people at a crowded Kurdish wedding.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the bomber at the street wedding late Saturday in the city of Gaziantep close to Syria was aged "between 12 and 14" and that initial findings showed it had been "perpetrated by Daesh (IS)".

Media said the majority of those dead were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18. At least 22 victims were under 14, a Turkish official added.

There were no further details on the bomber's identity, but Erdogan said IS had been trying to "position itself" in Gaziantep which lies just 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Syria and is a major hub for refugees from the over five-year civil war.

The Hurriyet daily said that DNA tests were under way to ascertain the identity, nationality and gender of the bomber.

It is possible that the bomber had come over the border from Syria but IS is also known to have built homegrown cells inside Turkey in Gaziantep and even Istanbul, wrote its well-connected columnist Abdulkadir Selvi.

He said Turkish security forces believed that attack had been timed as retaliation by jihadists for offensives both by Kurdish militias and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition forces against IS in Syria.

"There's a fight against IS but we are paying the price," he wrote.

The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas said in a statement that "all of those killed were Kurds".

The bride and groom, a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast, were rushed to hospital but not seriously wounded.

The attack followed a string of strikes blamed on IS and Kurdish militants in the last months but was the deadliest so far this year and first significant jihadist action in Turkey since the failed July 15 coup.

Hurriyet said the type of bomb used, stuffed with scraps of metal, was similar to the explosives used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on IS in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station last year.

All 44 victims identified so far were laid to rest in harrowing ceremonies in Gazinantep on Sunday with relatives throwing themselves on the coffins in desperation, an AFP correspondent said.
The rest of the world might have found it absurd, but China thought it could turn the tables on steel-importing countries in the West by raising complaints that iron ore industry leaders were in cahoots in selling the steel-making ingredient in its market at manipulated low prices. A group of 20 Chinese miners says in an angry statement: "A huge volume of low-priced imported iron ore has had a severe impact on the domestic mining industry."



This is also posing "a big challenge for the security" of the country's steel production. Naming directly Anglo-Australian mining groups Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton and Brazilian Vale for unsettling the Chinese ore market, the group has urged Beijing to initiate an "anti-dumping investigation" into the mineral imported from the big three.
International are on a boil since beginning of the current financial year and most are up be that metals, crude oil or agri . While so far US has refrained from raising rate after last December hike which has attracted global financial investors to commodities again, the decision will continue to be a biggest headwind for commodity rally to continue. Bloomberg all commodity index is up 9.4 per cent from April while LME metal index (up 6.3 per cent) and Bloomberg agri index (4.6 per cent) has followed.
India Incs earnings growth has disappointed investors over the past few quarters, as well as the past couple of years. However, the March quarter was relatively better. Revenue growth came ahead of Street expectations, as well as over the preceding few quarters. The trend in the June quarter numbers so far is mixed. Slowing economic growth, high debt and a virtual freeze on greenfield capex by private companies are among the factors that have hurt India Incs results. Hence, it is no surprise a large part of the companies in BSE 100 stocks universe have witnessed earnings downgrades for many quarters now.
was locked in 20% upper circuit at Rs 68.50 on the BSE after its parent Fortis Healthcares board of directors on August 19, approved demerger of its diagnostics business, which will include its majority owned subsidiaries SRL and Fortis Malar Hospitals, into a separate listed company through a composite scheme of arrangement and amalgamation.
has fallen to its 52-week low of Rs 1,009, down 1% on the BSE in intra-day trade, extending its 4% decline past four trading sessions, after the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) shelved plans to set up a separate bank in the United Kingdom (UK), for which IT major was a key technology partner. LINK On August 13, in a media statement said the Royal Bank of Scotland announced that it will no longer pursue its plan to separate and list a new UK standalone bank, Williams & Glyn (W&G), and instead will pursue other options for the divestment of this business.
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have seen their stocks performing way better and giving better returns to investors after they migrated to the main board from platform of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE). As on date, 19 companies have shifted to BSE and NSE main board. Many of these companies have given better returns of 3-200% to the investors as compared to 1-131% while listed on platform.
Welspun India shares fell 20 per cent, the most in a decade, after Target Corp said it's terminating business with the Indian manufacturer over cheaper cotton sheets being passed off as premium Egyptian cotton. The company said it will review its supply chain and expects an audit to be completed within six to eight weeks. "There has been a failure on our part, without an ambiguity," said Welspun managing director Rajesh Mandawewala on a conference call Monday. "The error is on our side so we have to take responsibility for it." Target on Friday said it discovered ...
Balochistan, the resource-rich province of Pakistan, remains deprived, as per the country's first ever official report on multi-dimensional poverty.

The report tabled last month by the Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform is compiled with technical support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Pakistan and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford.

As per the report, over two-third of the people in Balochistan, i.e., 71 percent of the population lives in multi-dimensional poverty.

Out of 32 districts in Balochistan, only Quetta has Incidence of Poverty (IOP) of around 50 percent, while the remaining districts have IOP over 70 percent.

The people in Balochistan, which has natural gas fields, coal and other minerals, have been facing the worst crisis.

"There are a lot of problems. No electricity, no gas. We have to use firewood. We are also not treated well," said one of the residents.

"There is no electricity, no gas, no schools and no hospitals here. What crime have we done? There is no ground for sports. There is proper gas availability and electricity only beyond four kilometers. We don't have any facility, why are we lacking in facilities," added another resident in Balochistan.

The report points out differences between several districts in Pakistan. Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi have less than 10 percent multi-dimensional poverty, while Qila Abdullah, Harnai and Barkhan (all in Balochistan) have more than 90 percent poverty.

Deprivation in education contributes the largest share of 43 percent to Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) followed by living standards, which contributes nearly 32 percent, and health contributing 26 percent.

These findings confirm that social indicators are very weak in Pakistan, even where economic indicators appear to be healthy.

The report also found that decrease in multi-dimensional poverty was slowest in Balochistan, while the poverty-level had actually increased in several districts in Balochistan and Sindh during the past decade.

The MPI uses a broader concept of poverty than income and wealth alone. It reflects the deprivations the people experience with respect to health, education and standard of living, and is thus a more detailed way of understanding and alleviating poverty.

The level and composition of multi-dimensional poverty for each of Pakistan's 114 districts are also covered in this report.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang on Monday said that Foreign Minister Wang Yi will be joining his counterparts from Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) in a ministerial meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday.

Apart from reviewing the progress of trilateral cooperation, Lu said that the foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea will discuss the development direction of trilateral cooperation in the future and exchange views on regional and international issues of common concern, reports Xinhua.

He added that under a rotation system, Japan will chair and host the 8th trilateral foreign ministers meeting.

Relations between the three big Asian economies have been shaky over territorial issues.

Apart from the South China Sea dispute, ties between China and Japan strained after Chinese coastguard sailed near the disputed islets in the East China Sea.

Japan also has territorial dispute with South Korea over small islands about half way between their mainlands.

Tension between South Korea and China has also escalated over joint decision by Seoul and Washington to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Accusing the Centre of being rife with contradictions over their policy regarding Jammu and Kashmir, the Congress on Monday said that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's recent tough stand on the Valley was on a whole different tangent from that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was batting for a dialogue to find a lasting solution to the unrest in the state.

Addressing a press conference here, Congress leader Manish Tewari said that even after 44 days, the situation in has not abated and that there has been no respite.

"The Finance Minister went to Jammu and and his comments implied that he felt there was no need for dialogue. He also said that the solution for the situation in Jammu and is development. Mr. Jaitley, probably because BJP won seats from Jammu, said that this region was its priority," Tewari said.

Listing the contradictions within the Centre regarding the Valley, he further said that instead of saying that it will treat Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh equally, the partner in the State Government is saying one region is a priority.

The Congress leader added that the Prime Minister said that in JK, his policies would be based on "insaniyat, jamhooriyat and Kashmiriyat".

"The Prime Minister, when he met Opposition members from JK, spoke of dialogue, apparently contradicting his Finance Minister. What is PM Modi's definition of insaniyat? Is insaniyat used as a balm on for those harmed in this sensitive time? What does he mean by jamhooriyat? Parties have been contesting election for decades in JK. What does Kashmiriyat mean to the PM? How does he include it in his policies? Are there, indeed, any policies on these?," Tewari said.

Stating that the 'essence' of Jaitley's statement was that there is not political problem in JK but a developmental one, he added that Prime Minister Modi on the other hand has been using 'insaniyat, jamhooriyat and Kashmiriyat' for three years without understanding the essence of the three concepts.

"And in an apparent contradiction of his own Finance Minister, the Prime Minister talks of a dialogue. If he is talking of a dialogue, it is going to be a dialogue with whom? All the mainstream parties are part of the democratic process. In essence, it seems that the Finance Minister is not on the same page," Tewari said.

The strong reaction from the grand old party comes in the wake of the Prime Minister emphasising on the need for dialogue to find a lasting solution within the framework of the Constitution to the unrest in the Valley.

Prime Minister Modi conveyed that his government and the nation stand with the state of Jammu and Kashmir and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same.

Earlier, Jaitley had lashed out at Pakistan, accusing them of having a direct hand in the Kashmir unrest, adding that there will be absolutely no compromise on the security and the unity of the nation and those instigating violence will also not be spared.

Speaking at a Tiranga Yatra rally Sunday in Samailpur in JK, Jaitley said there will be "no compromise" with separatists and those indulging in violence.

"Once again, they have attacked India's integrity in a new way. it's a big challenge for the country. we cannot compromise with the security and integrity of the nation. The policy should be clear that in this fight against separatists, people of both Jammu and Kashmir will stand with the country to once again defeat this new phase of Pakistan-sponsored war being fought by its stooges." Jaitley said.

The Jammu and Kashmir opposition submitted a memorandum to President Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday over the unrest in the Valley stating that it needed a 'political' solution and asserted that Pakistan was not solely responsible for the state of violence.

Asserting that both the State and the Central government have failed in finding a solution to the soaring violence in the Valley, NC chief Omar Abdullah said that the problem in the state is a political one and cannot be handled administratively.
New Delhi, Aug 22 (ANI): Young lad Tiger Shroff has expressed his love for geeky and clumsy superhero Spider-Man on several occasions.

In fact, the 26-year-old actor is such a huge fan of Spidey that he would love to play that character on some golden day.

This prompted us to ask the 'Baaghi' actor which Hollywood superhero would suit our young Bollywood actors according to their personalities.

Talking about Varun Dhawan, Tiger decided to stick with Captain America since the former had recently dubbed for Hindi version of the superhero movie.

When we asked about Ranveer Singh, he told ANI, "Ranveer Singh has an electrifying energy and he is a live wire, so if Mask is a superhero then, Ranveer would be perfect for the role."

He further continued about Sidharth Malhotra and decided to give him the Superman tag as the role would suit him perfectly according to his personality.

How could we for forget the svelte and dashing Pakistani actor Fawad Khan.

Without any second thought, Tiger Shroff said he would love to see Fawad in the role of a Batman because of his cool and composed personality.

Tiger, who was recently in the national capital to promote his new film, also revealed that he became more serious in life after taking up acting.

The young actor is all set to show his action skills in his new superhero film 'A Flying Jatt' which also stars actress Jacqueline Fernandez in a prominent role.

Directed by Remo D' Souza, the film is all set to fly near your theatres on August 25.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Expressing deep concern over the loss of lives in the recent turmoil in Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today assured the delegation of opposition parties led by former chief minister Omar Abdullah that his government accords highest priority to the safety and well-being of the people particularly the children.

Briefing the media here post the meeting, Minister of State in Prime Minister's Office (PMO) Jitendra Singh said Prime Minister Modi urged all to come together and help in defusing the situation.

"The Prime Minister expressed his deep concern about the loss of lives in the recent turmoil whether it is the loss of lives of the emotional people, security persons and he also wished to assure them and through them," Singh said.

"He also assured the common people of Kashmir and the common masses of Kashmir that the government accords highest priority to the safety, to the well-being of the innocent people particularly the children," he added.

Prime Minister Modi assured his government's commitment to development of Jammu and Kashmir to a joint delegation of opposition parties led by former chief minister Omar Abdullah.

"Those who have lost their lives during the recent unrest are part of us, our nation. The loss of innocent lives, including that of the security or police personnel, distresses us," Prime Minister Modi added.

Prime Minister Modi also conveyed that his government and the nation stand with the state of Jammu and Kashmir and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same.

Emphasizing on dialogue, he said there is a need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problems within the framework of the Constitution.

The joint delegation apprised Prime Minister Modi of the ground situation with an appeal to adopt a political approach in dealing with the present unrest in the Valley.

The delegation requested the Prime Minister to initiate dialogue with all stakeholders in the Kashmir valley immediately.

The delegation also submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Modi seeking immediate ban on pellet guns in the state.

"We also request you to advise relevant quarters against the policy of mass harassment, raids and arrests as this has worsened an already volatile situation in the state and goes against the values and principles of our democratic fabric and ethos," the memorandum said.

Pointing out that continued failure to address the unrest in Kashmir will further deepen the sense of alienation, the delegation hoped that the Prime Minister would take immediate measures to address this grave situation.

Earlier on Saturday, the delegation met President Pranab Mukherjee and apprised him of the situation prevailing in the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Himachal Pradesh Assembly on Monday passed the Good and Services Tax (GST) Constitutional Amendment Bill.

With this, Himachal has become the fourth state after Assam, Bihar and Jharkhand to have ratified the bill.

Meanwhile, the state assemblies of Gujarat and Chhattisgarh today convened special sessions to ratify the Bill that was passed by Parliament earlier this month.

The Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill for the rollout of the GST was passed by the Lok Sabha earlier in August, with 443 members present in the House voting in favour of the legislation.

The GST bill, seen as single biggest tax reform in a long time, needs to be ratified by at least 15 state legislatures before the President can notify the GST council which will decide the new tax rate and other issues.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The joint delegation of opposition parties from Jammu and Kashmir will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday to apprise him of the situation on ground in the restive Kashmir Valley.

Led by former state chief minister Omar Abdullah of the Conference, the delegation will apprise Prime Minister Modi of the prevailing situation in the state following the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani in an encounter with security forces on July 8.

CPM MLA Mohammed Yusuf Tarigami, state Congress president G. A. Mir, senior leaders of Conference and some Independent MLAs are the other members of the delegation.

As per reports, the delegation would request the Prime Minister to impress upon the PDP-BJP state government of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti to stop dealing with the situation administratively, as it was their contention that this is causing disaffection, especially among the youth.

The delegation would also underscore the need to initiate a dialogue with all stakeholders to bring an end to the unrest.

The delegation met President Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday and sought a political solution. They also submitted a memorandum to the President.

They also met Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and apprised him of the restive situation in the valley.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Condemning Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's criticism of the Nehruvian model of development, the Party on Monday alleged that the former was trying to please 'narcissist' Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who neither understands India nor has much knowledge.

spokesperson Sandeep Dikshit told ANI it is sad when a person like Jaitley makes such statement.

"And it's very clearly a part of the process of the Prime Minister trying to project himself as a demigod and that is what Mr Jaitley is doing. Jaitley knows what happened in India, I know he is an admirer of Nehru and people know very clearly what he really believes," Dikshit said.

"And when he tries to make statements that are not part of his believe system obviously it is a part of trying to keep the Prime Minister happy who is neither somebody who understands India nor he has much of knowledge and has now become seeped in self-praise. If there is narcissism today, it is the Prime Minister," he added.

The leader also lashed out at Minister of State in Prime Minister's Office (PMO) Jitendra Singh for terming Jammu and Kashmir a glaring example of the 'failure' of India's first prime minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's political model, saying he really pities him as he has no understanding of Kashmir and India.

"I don't think Jitendra Singh even understands what happened in Kashmir, what happened in India, what is the kind of India Nehru built, what was the situation in the 40s and 50s, how is it that thousands of colleges and institutions, the establishment of democracy, the way Indian Army was made a secular institution, putting up of courts, putting India together," said Dikshit.

"All this was done during the regime of Nehru how various industries, dams, irrigation, canals came up," he added.

Addressing a "Yaad Karo Kurbani" rally on the outskirts of Jammu yesterday, Singh said Jammu and Kashmir is a glaring example of the "failed" of the country's first prime minister.

"Yesterday, Union Finance Minister spoke about the failed Nehruvian model of economy and today I say that if you want to see the failed political model of Nehru, then Jammu and Kashmir is the best example," he said.

The Union Finance Minister had earlier lambasted the Nehruvian model.

Jaitley dubbed former prime minister Narasimha Rao as 'not a great reformer' or a 'big liberaliser' and said that he initiated reforms out of 'compulsion' due to failure of Nehruvian economics which held India back while its Southeast Asian neighbours marched ahead.
Karnataka Home Minister G. Parameshwara on Monday said that he was misinterpreted on the issue of the Amnesty International sedition case by vested interests.

"I have been misinterpreted, that is why I did not want to react to it unnecessarily. The government of India has all the facilities to find that what Amnesty India is doing. If they are doing an anti- activity, let them find it out and take an action. Nobody stops the centre, agencies or home ministry from taking any action. Why do they think that Karnataka is trying to protect them or give them a clean chit?" Parameshwara told ANI.

Parameshwara said that he has not given the Indian chapter of Amnesty a clean chit and added that the investigation is still going on.

"I am not a fool to say that everything is being well and everything is going good. All I said is that I have not heard Amnesty International involved in any anti- activity as per my knowledge. If there is anything else, that is fine, the law will take the appropriate course of action. That's all I have said, and I am standing by my statement," he added.

He said, "We make statements but not in response to other's statements. In this case, I have told that I have not come across this and they are trying to say that the state home minister is giving a clean chit, yet I have not given them a clean chit, investigation is on and how can they interpret to their own advantage. I had never interfered in any case, and I do not want to do it now also."

He added that if the (Police) commissioner has made a statement, let it be on record and the FIR, as to how they are handling it and take action accordingly, whether to close the case, or take it forward. The investigation officer is to decide and we are not to interfere in that.

On Saturday, Parameshwara reportedly said Amnesty International did not do anything seditious by organising an event in support of Kashmiris.

At an event organized by the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee to mark the birth anniversary of late Rajiv Gandhi and D Devaraj Urs, he had said: "I do not believe Amnesty International has conducted any seditious activity. Shouting slogans does not constitute anti- activity."

Last week Karnataka Police had filed a case after anti-India slogans were allegedly raised during a debate on Kashmir organized by Amnesty in Bengaluru.

The debate became muddled after some people from Kashmir, exchanged heated words with Kashmiri Pandit leader and former journalist RK Mattoo when he said, "The army is present everywhere in the North-East, Kashmir and other sundry places. I can tell you proudly that the Indian Army is one of the most disciplined armies in the world."

"Pro-freedom" Kashmiris at the debate shouted slogans and policemen posted for the event eventually managed to pacify the two groups.

Amnesty India said it had organised the event as part of a campaign to seek justice for "victims of human rights violations" in Jammu and Kashmir.

It, however, said "it considers the right to freedom of expression under international human rights law protects the right to calmly advocate political solutions that do not involve incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Criticizing U.S. President Barack Obama over reports suggesting that the government paid USD 400 million to Iran in January for the release of Americans held as prisoners there, Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk said he is "acting like the drug dealer in chief."

"We can't have the President of the United States acting like the drug dealer in chief. Giving clean packs of money to a ... state sponsor of terror. Those 500-euro notes will pop up across the Middle East. .... We're going to see problems in multiple (countries) because of that money given to them," said Kirk.

He made the comments at a sit-down last week with the editorial board of The State Journal-Register, reports CNN.

The money was part of a previously announced settlement in a case stemming from money owed since 1979, but Washington used the payment as a "leverage" to ensure the prisoners' release.

Kirk has been highly critical of the administration on Iran, including the nuclear deal signed by the two countries last year.

The White House did not comment on Kirk's remark.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Monday jointly inaugurated the renovated Stor Palace in Kabul through video conferencing.

During the video conference, Prime Minister Modi assured that India's 1.25 billion citizens would always be on Afghanistan's side in its quest to establish regional peace, security and stability.

Prime Minister Modi said that India and Afghanistan have always been close friends, and added that the restored Stor Palace is reminder of the glory of Afghanistan's rich traditions, and also a reminder to all those who can't see beyond shadow of violence.

"The Stor palace has been the setting for many momentous historical events. To those who cannot see beyond shadows of violence in Afghanistan, the restored Stor palace is a reminder of the glory of Afghanistan's rich traditions. And for our Afghan brothers and sisters, it revives the beauty, the richness and splendor of lost memories of Afghan society.



True to the foundations of our ties, it links the present of our friendship to the historical bonds of our linkages. I must commend all the artists, experts and consultants who worked day and night to accomplish this delicate task," he said.

"Afghanistan is India's immediate neighbour. And, in our hearts and minds, Indians and Afghans have always been close friends. Today, we once again come together to celebrate yet another achievement of our friendship and take another step in the fruitful journey of our cooperation," he added.

"Fewer things bring greater joy than getting together with good friends to celebrate successful completion of joint efforts," he said while thanking President Ghani.

"The India, Afghanistan and Iran Transit Corridor that we sighed this year was another landmark in our partnership. It manifested our clear and common determination to build new pathways for Afghanistan's economic progress and prosperity.

The Salma Dam will renew not just economy and agriculture of Afghan's Heart region, but will build strong pillar of support for Afghanistan's overall growth," he added.

The Prime Minister further insisted that the pledge of our partnership and strength of our friendship with Afghanistan is unwavering.

"Today's event is a testimony to the resolve and range of our cooperative endeavours. We want each Afghan to flourish and your society to be benefited from fruits of economic growth. Whatever may be the odds, India will work with you for a bright future for all Afghans," he said.

Meanwhile, President Ghani expressed 'sincere appreciation' to the Indian Government and its people, and insisted that the roots of friendship between both the countries have gone to depth of history.

"We are ready to spare no effort in protecting peace, overcome terror and extremism and work for prosperity of our nations. We, Afghanistan and India, both have decided to use our history for the advancement of our nations," he said.

India has played a significant role in the reconstruction and rehabilitation process in Afghanistan over the past few years.

A tripartite agreement was signed in between the Aga Khan Development Network, the Afghanistan and India for the comprehensive restoration of the Stor Palace, located on the grounds of the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Initially built as a one-story pavilion during the reign of Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, the Stor Palace, also known as Qasr-e-Stor, was expanded on at least two occasions in the 20th century.

In 1919, one of the rooms in the palace was used for the signing of the Rawalpindi agreement, which led to Afghanistan being declared an independent sovereign state.

It housed the offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until 1965, when most functions were then relocated to a new building located on the eastern side of the Afghan capital.
President Pranab Mukherjee will be on a three-day visit to West Bengal from Monday.

On August 22, the President will inaugurate a CII-IIEST Conference on the theme 'Enabling Make in India through Industry Academia Innovation Platform' in Kolkata.

He will also attend a function 'The Legacy to Humanity: Celebrating 150 years of Homeopathy' organised by the Dr. Prasanta Banerji Homeopathic Research Foundation in Kolkata as the Chief Guest on the same day.

On August 23, the President will launch Akashvani's Moitree Service in Bangla for listeners in Bangladesh in Kolkata.

He will also attend the 125th Anniversary Celebrations of Bangiya Sahitya Parisad, inaugurate a new building of Bharat Chamber of Commerce and address the first foundation day of Bandhan Bank in Kolkata on the same day.

On August 24, the President will inaugurate a Mega Food Park at Jangipur, Murshidabad.

He will also grace the convocation of Management Development Institute-Murshidabad at Jangipur before returning to New Delhi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Accusing the Centre of inaction in pacifying situation in the violence-hit Kashmir, the Janata Dal (United) on Monday said President Pranab Mukherjee is the only ray of hope in the nation, as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has given up as far as the Valley's situation is concerned.

"Even as 45 days have passed on, the situation in Kashmir is still restive, and the Centre is doing nothing to pacify it," JD(U) leader Ajay Alok told ANI.

"The President is the last ray of hope left in the nation. Only he can give a warning to the Centre. Because, the Centre has given up, they are just talking, but nothing is being done on the ground. Kashmir its under fire for the past 45 days," said Alok.

"I would like to ask the BJP government that it made a lot of promises at the time of general elections, and now what is it doing? You forget Kashmir and speak of Balochistan. The nation is now in strange condition," he added.

The Union Home Minister, while referring to the recent violence in the Kashmir Valley, urged the youth to pick up books and not stones.

"Some people in order to serve their selfish motives are forcing the innocent children and youth of Kashmir to pick up stones... Is this not playing with their future? I want to tell those having such nefarious intentions not to encourage the innocents to pick up stones," said Singh at a function in Lucknow on Sunday.

"These children are innocent and citizens of India...If there is a problem or difficulty, it cannot be solved through demonstrations, it can be resolved only through mutual dialogue," he added.

Singh also lashed out at Pakistan and accused it of involvement in nefarious activities against India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) today said Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's visit to Myanmar will help forge stronger ties between the two sides.

"This visit by External Affairs Minister to Myanmar which was really the first high-level engagement between India and Myanmar after the new government came to power will serve as a very strong foundation for the further development and diversification of the India-Myanmar ties which are set for a very bright future," MEA official spokesperson Vikas Swarup told ANI.

Swaraj, presently on a day-long visit to Myanmar for bilateral engagements, met Myanmar President Htin Kyaw as well as State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in Naypyitaw earlier today.

"In both these meetings, the External Affairs Minister conveyed the warm greetings and good wishes of the Indian leadership and the people of India to the new government of Myanmar. She conveyed her felicitation on the tremendous victory of the National League for Democracy during election in Myanmar last year," said Swarup.

He further said that the two countries discussed about India's role in assisting with Myanmar's developmental efforts as well as collaboration in areas such as power, renewable energy, agriculture, transport, health, education and social development.

"They also discussed the strong possibility of cooperation in the area of agriculture, particularly pulses where there is a possibility of importing large volume of pulses from Myanmar," said Swarup.

He added that the two countries also discussed possibilities of further strengthening democracy in Myanmar.

"In this context, the recent training which 20 Parliamentarians from Myanmar underwent at the Bureau of Parliamentary Studies and Training in New Delhi was very positively assist. The President of Myanmar in fact remarked that India is the country that Myanmar can learn from in terms of what democracy really means," he said.

He disclosed that both Myanmar leaders were looking forward to their visit to India as invitations have already been extended to them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Leading provider of cyber-security solutions to corporate clients TAC Security Solutions announced closing of pre-Series A funding from renowned leader Vijay Kedia.

The veteran investor in the Indian Stock Market will also join this company's Board of Directors soon. Keeping its funding cycle on track, TAC Security plans to close its Series A funding of USD 10million within this Financial Year.

TAC Security is a friendly hacker that helps corporate giants, identify weaknesses within their systems before fraudulent hackers can highjack them.

It provides network, application and web security to corporate giants, Government, and Law enforcement agencies.

The company's latest service TAC-CERT (Cyber Emergency Response Team) was launched this January by Industry and Commerce Minister of Punjab.

"We are very excited in bringing such amazing and premier investor on board who has shown a lot of interest and confidence in our . Kedia has built various big brands and his advice and mentoring will help us grow the company to the next level," said Founder TAC Security Solutions, Trishneet Arora.

Adding his bit, Vijay Kedia M.D. at Kedia Securities Pvt. Ltd. commented, "As we all know, cyber-crime is a bigger threat to than terrorism. It is estimated that every minute, half a million attack attempts are happening in cyber space. World is facing an arms race in terms of security. I believe the opportunities available in this space would possibly beat the estimations of USD 170 billion by 2020 and grow further."

TAC Security Solutions was founded in 2013 by Trishneet Arora, a renowned cyber-security expert and ethical hacker. He has been recognized and felicitated with a State award by the Chief Minister of Punjab.

The ambitious venture already works for prominent clients like Reliance Industries Limited, Gujarat Police, Punjab Police, International Tractors Limited (Sonalika), AMUL, Avon Cycles, RALSON, and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) among others.

Kedia will join the board as a Non-Executive Independent Director in the company and will guide TAC to expand the business globally.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Chinese ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, has said that Chinese President Xi Jinping's forthcoming meeting with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama during the G-20 summit is expected to enhance mutual trust, widen win-win cooperation and deliver guidance for management on differences between both countries.

"The upcoming meeting between the two heads of state, just as every strategic talk they have held in recent years, will produce very positive and important influence on China-U.S. bilateral relations," Xinhua quoted Tiankai as saying.

Both the leaders are scheduled to meet during the G-20 summit in China's Hangzhou city next month.

Cui asserted that under the G-20 mechanism, the duo has already conducted very much coordination and cooperation for years.

He was of the opinion that as top two economies in the world, China and the United States have responsibilities to play a larger role in ensuring that the Hangzhou summit yield constructive results.

Recalling that more than 40 years ago, Hangzhou witnessed the negotiations for the first ever China-U.S. joint communique, the ambassador said, "The history of their relationship has fully proven that the two global heavyweights must cooperate with each other and must become cooperative partners."

He also revealed that Beijing has kept frequent contacts with the Washington on the South China Sea issue and said that the matter should not be allowed to define ties between the two, since neither have disputes over even one inch of territory nor fundamental clash of interests.

Earlier this month Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in his telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that upcoming meeting between Xi and Obama is the most important agenda of China-U.S. relations in the next stage.

Kerry also noted that United States is willing to work together with China to ensure a full success of the G-20 Hangzhou Summit.

Titled "Toward an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive Economy", the upcoming G-20 summit will be held in Hangzhou City from September 4-5.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With effect from 19 August 2016

Bharat Electronics announced that P R Acharya, has resigned as the Director (Finance) & CFO (KMP) w.e.f. 19 August 2016 from the Board of Directors of the Company for his personal reasons.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The rescue and relief operations by National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) in the flood affected various districts of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh are in full swing. 56 flood rescue teams of NDRF are operational in various flood prone areas of the different states to assist the respective state administration in rescue and relief work. NDRF rescuers are delivering their best to evacuate the trapped people to safer places. Besides NDRF teams are also providing medical care to the needy persons.

16 flood rescue teams of NDRF are deployed in Bihar in connection with flood like situation. On 21.08.16 NDRF teams evacuated 3400 persons at Didarganj, 580 persons at Bakhtiyarpur, 545 at Danapur, 380 at Chhapra, 355 at Vaishali and 15 persons at Maner Dist. Patna. Sh.

S. S Guleria DIG, NDRF and other NDRF officials are also present there to supervise the flood rescue and relief operations.

11 flood rescue teams of NDRF are deployed in various flood prone areas of Uttar Pradesh. on 21 August 16, NDRF teams conducted rescue and relief operation and evacuated 275 at Ballia, 275 at Varanasi and 325 at Chitrakoot, In addition to rescue work NDRF teams also distributed relief materials and provided medical care to the needy people. Shri Randeep Kumar Rana, DIG NDRF is present in Varanasi to supervise the ongoing rescue operation.

07 flood rescue teams of NDRF are pre-positioned in M. P. The teams evacuated 147 marooned persons to safer places at District Rewa on 21 August16.

In addition 01 team of NDRF prepositioned in Sikkim in connection with monsoon season conducted rescue and relief operation at Village Tingbung and Lingdang in East Sikkim and evacuated more than 450 persons to the safer places on 21.08.16.

So far NDRF teams have evacuated more than 26,400 people in various flood prone areas of the country during this monsoon season. In addition to rescue work, NDRF teams have provided medical care to more than 9100 people in various states.

A 24x7, NDRF Control Room in Delhi is closely monitoring the situation and remains in touch with other agencies.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Fortis Healthcare fell 2.21% to Rs 183.65 at 13:00 IST on BSE after the company's board of directors announced demerger of its diagnostics business into Fortis Malar Hospitals through a composite scheme of arrangement.

The separate announcements were made by Fortis Healthcare and its subsidiary, Fortis Malar Hospitals after market hours on Friday, 19 August 2016.

Shares of Fortis Malar Hospitals were locked at 20% upper circuit at Rs 68.50, so far during the day.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 143.23 points, or 0.51%, to 27,933.77.

High volumes were witnessed on the counter of Fortis Healthcare. On BSE, so far 5.06 lakh shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 1.78 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 194.40 and a low of Rs 183.20 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 199 on 16 August 2016. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 141.10 on 12 February 2016. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 19 August 2016, rising 8.43% compared with 1.04% gains in the Sensex. The scrip had also outperformed the market in past one quarter, gaining 11.55% as against the Sensex's 10.54% rise.

The mid-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 463.29 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.

The board of directors of Fortis Healthcare at a meeting held on Friday, 19 August 2016 approved a proposal to demerge its diagnostics business, including that housed in its majority owned subsidiary SRL Limited (SRL) into another majority owned listed subsidiary, Fortis Malar Hospitals (Fortis Malar) pursuant to a composite scheme of arrangement and amalgamation. The total turnover of the demerged entity for FY 2016 was Rs 555 crore. The demerger shall be followed by SRL being merged with Fortis Malar as an integral part of the same composite scheme.

The composite scheme will also provide for the sale of its hospital business by Fortis Malar to Fortis Healthcare by way of a slump sale for a lump sum cash consideration, and the same shall precede the merger. Upon the composite scheme becoming effective, and subject to receipt of requisite regulatory and statutory approvals, the diagnostics business of Fortis Healthcare, including that housed in SRL would be vested in Fortis Malar. The name of Fortis Malar will subsequently be changed to SRL Limited and this company is proposed to be listed on the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (the NSE), in addition to its current listing on the BSE.

Upon the effectiveness of the composite scheme and as consideration towards the demerger of the diagnostics business undertaking of Fortis Healthcare, Fortis Malar would issue and allot to the equity shareholders of Fortis Healthcare, as on record date, 0.98 fully paid up equity shares of Rs 10 each of Fortis Malar for every 1 equity share of Rs 10 each held by them in Fortis Healthcare. The equity shareholders of SRL, except for Fortis Malar, who will acquire shares of SRL pursuant to the demerger will, as a consideration towards the merger of SRL into Fortis Malar, be issued and allotted 10.8 equity shares of Rs 10 each of Fortis Malar for every 1 equity share of Rs 10 each held by them in SRL as on record date. Further, Fortis Healthcare shall pay an amount of Rs 43 crore as lump sum consideration to Fortis Malar towards acquisition of the hospital business of Fortis Malar.

Appointed date for the slump sale, demerger and merger under the composite scheme is 1 January, 2017. The composite scheme of arrangement and amalgamation will be subject to the various statutory and regulatory approvals including those from the stock exchanges, and shareholders, and creditors of the respective entities, and the sanction of the jurisdictional High Court.

Fortis Healthcare's rationale for the proposed transaction is that hospitals and the diagnostics businesses have distinct operating models and given the macro-fundamentals of the healthcare industry, each of these provide a strong growth opportunity in the foreseeable future. As both businesses approach their next phase of growth, it would be strategically apt to have them restructured under separate entities to enable them to move forward independently, with greater focus and specialization; leveraging further on their respective capabilities and their strong brand presence. Additionally, the proposed restructuring, would lead to a simplified organization structure assisting shareholders and investors to better understand and evaluate both businesses independently as investment options and potentially lead to a higher value illumination of each of these businesses

On a consolidated basis, Fortis Healthcare's net profit fell 74.1% to Rs 25.26 crore on 7.6% rise in net sales to Rs 1103.22 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015.

Fortis Malar's net profit fell 62.7% to Rs 0.60 crore on 9.8% rise in net sales to Rs 33.01 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015.

Fortis Healthcare is the leading healthcare delivery chains in the country currently encompassing both the hospitals and the diagnostics businesses. The promoters of Fortis Healthcare currently own a fully diluted stake of 63.1% in the company with the rest being held by public shareholders. Post transaction, the promoters' stake in Fortis Healthcare will remain unchanged.

SRL, a subsidiary of Fortis Healthcare is primarily involved in providing diagnostics services and is amongst the leading diagnostics chains in India with a significant market share in the organized diagnostics segment. It comprises infrastructure of more than 329 laboratories, 7,300 collection points and an offering of close to 3,800 tests; cumulatively performing more than 33 million tests annually. Fortis Healthcare owns a fully diluted stake of 56.4% in SRL and promoters hold 5.3% stake.

Fortis Malar is a listed entity comprising of a multi-specialty facility in Chennai. Fortis Healthcare currently owns an indirect fully diluted equity stake of 62.4% in Fortis Malar with the rest being held by public shareholders. Post transaction, promoters will hold 40.6% stake in Fortis Malar to be renamed SRL and Fortis Healthcare will hold 1.3% stake. Erstwhile, public shareholders of SRL and Malar taken together will hold 37.3% in the new entity.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NIIT rose 5.03% to Rs 95 at 15:20 IST on BSE after the company announced the inauguration of its European delivery centre in Dublin, Ireland.

The announcement was made after marker hours on Friday, 19 August 2016.

Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was down 102.67 points, or 0.37%, to 27,974.33.

High volumes were witnessed on the counter. On BSE, so far 9.98 lakh shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 3.06 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 97.65 and a low of Rs 90.50 so far during the day.

The mid-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 33.12 crore. Face value per share is Rs 2.

NIIT had earlier announced the setting up of its Dublin centre in September 2015, when the Prime Minister of India had visited Ireland. The centre will be at the heart of NIIT's Europe operations and will provide managed training services to leading companies in Europe and North America. The centre was initially set up with local new hires and NIIT will continue to invest in hiring over 100 local employees in the coming months, it said in a statement.

NIIT, a global leader in skills and talent development, offers multi-disciplinary learning management and training delivery solutions to corporations, institutions, and individuals in over 40 countries. NIIT has three main lines of business across the globe-corporate learning group, skills and careers group, and school learning group.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sun TV Network lost 4.88% to Rs 458.75 at 12:13 IST on BSE after the company's EBITDA margin declined 166 basis points in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015.

The result was announced after market hours on Friday, 19 August 2016.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 146.96 points, or 0.52%, to 27,930.04

On BSE, so far 1.44 lakh shares were traded in the counter, compared with average daily volume of 1.11 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 473.55 and a low of Rs 448.50 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 491.05 on 19 August 2016. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 292.75 on 24 August 2015. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 19 August 2016, rising 18.4% compared with 1.32% rise in the Sensex. The scrip also outperformed the market in past one quarter, gaining 28.92% as against Sensex's 10.97% rise.

The large-cap company has an equity capital of Rs 197.04 crore. Face value per share is Rs 5.

Sun TV Network's net profit rose 19.02% to Rs 233.06 crore on 9.89% growth in total income to Rs 782.38 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The company's earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 7.25% to Rs 436.43 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. The company's EBITDA margin declined 166 basis points to 57.36% in Q1 June 2016 from 59.02% in Q1 June 2015.

Subscription revenue grew about 22% to Rs 232.13 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015. Cable TV Subscription revenue rose about 37% and DTH subscription revenue rose about 16% in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015, Sun TV Network said.

Sun TV Network is one of the largest television broadcasters in India, operating satellite television channels across four languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. It also operates FM radio stations across India.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting is organizing a Short Films Competition on the theme Swachh Bharat that showcases inspiring stories and helps generate awareness among citizens about sanitation and its linkages with public health. The winning entries will be announced in a special felicitation programme to be held in New Delhi on October 2, 2016. National Film Development Corporation of India has invited entries for the Short Films Competition.

The last date for submission of entries is September 10, 2016.

Awareness generation is an important objective of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan to bring about behavioral change in people regarding healthy sanitation practices. The competition aims to generate such awareness by involving people from different backgrounds, different regions and from different age groups.

About the Short Films Competition

The short films competition is open to all age groups with its central theme revolving around the Swachh Bharat Mission.

Short films with duration of not more than 3 minutes and shot in HD Format will be considered for the competition.

The film can be made in Hindi, English or any of the listed official languages of India.

The Best Film will be awarded a cash prize of Rupees 10 lakhs and a certificate. Three Second Best Films will be awarded Rupees 5 lakhs each and six Third Best Films will be awarded Rupees 2 lakhs each.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Welspun India was locked at 20% lower circuit at Rs 82.30 at 11:20 IST on BSE after US based retailer, Target Corporation said that it is in the process of terminating its contract with the company over a cotton supply dispute.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 123.60 points or 0.44% at 27,953.40.

On BSE, so far 61,269 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 1.34 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 66.80 on 8 September 2015. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 119.90 on 14 June 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 19 August 2016, falling 4.33% compared with 1.04% gains in the Sensex. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, gaining 2.75% as against the Sensex's 10.54% rise.

The mid-cap company has equity capital of Rs 100.47 crore. Face value per share is Rs 1.

Target Corporation in a statement issued on 19 August 2016 said that its vendor, Welspun Global Brands (Welspun), was one of the producers of Egyptian Cotton 500-thread count sheets under the Fieldcrest label for Target. After an extensive investigation, Target recently confirmed that Welspun substituted another type of non-Egyptian cotton when producing these sheets between August 2014 and July 2016 without Target having any knowledge of this substitution. These sheets were produced by a number of vendors and only Welspun was substituting product. Target said it was a clear violation of both Target's Code of Conduct and Standards of Vendor Engagement, and was contrary to the high ethical standards to which the company hold itself, and its vendors.

As soon as Target's investigation confirmed the substitution, it pulled all remaining product from Target stores and Target.com. On 19 August 2016, the company began reaching out to all REDcard and Target.com customers who purchased the sheets between August 2014 and July 2016 and offered them a full refund. The company is reassuring its customers that this is not an issue of safety and there is no risk in continuing to use this product.

Welspun India in a statement on Saturday, 20 August 2016 confirmed that it encountered a product specification issue with one client program of its subsidiary, Welspun Global Brands. Welspun India said that it has initiated immediate actions to investigate the root cause of the issue. The company is appointing one of the Big Four external audit firms to audit its supply systems and processes. This is an issue of highest priority for the company and the company will take all necessary steps to address it, Welspun said in a statement. Welspun added that it has an impeccable record of supplying quality products to customers globally for over two decades and reiterated its commitment to the highest standards of customer service and compliance.

Welspun India's consolidated net profit rose 10.3% to Rs 201.85 crore on 11.3% rise in net sales to Rs 1386.46 crore in Q1 June 2016 over Q1 June 2015.

Welspun India is the leading home fashions supplier in the USA and amongst the top 3 global manufacturers of bed and bath linen.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least three militants, including a local commander, were killed on Monday when paramilitary troops raided their hideout in Pakistan's Balochistan province, officials said.

Home Minister of Balochistan Sarfraz Bugti said the militants were involved in an attack on President Momnoon Hussain's son and other terrorist activities in the province, Xinhua news agency reported.

Bugti said security forces gunned down the militatns in Hub district of the province on an intelligence tip-off, who were members of separatist group Balochistan Liberation army.

The paramilitary forces launched an operation to hunt down the militants, but they opened fire at the troops, engaging them into a gun battle, he added.

The operation is part of the ongoing combing operation in the province, following a bomb explosion inside a hospital in Balochistan's Quetta on August 8, in which at least 75 lawyers were killed, and over 100 injured.

--IANS

ask/lok

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A month since it went off radar enroute Port Blair, the search for the missing AN-32 aircraft of Indian Air Force continues without any concrete evidence about the fate of the aircraft.

Meanwhile, as Geological Survey of India ship Samudra Ratnakar found some leads at a depth of around 3,000 meters, officials said it was not clear if it was the debris of the aircraft.

"The ship has tracked some echoes from the seabed but it will be a long process to verify if there is any debris belonging to the AN-32," IAF spokesperson Wing Commander Anupam Banerjee told IANS.

According to the Geological Survey of India, the Samudra Ratnakar, which was part of the search operation, had detected some linear pieces.

A GSI official told IANS that the objects, around 200 to 300 nautical miles from Chennai, could even be rocks on the sea bed.

Indian Navy Spokesperson Captain D.K. Sharma said: "The search for AN-32 is in progress in right earnest."

Sharma added that there were no concrete leads.

A month on, the search is being carried on with two Indian Navy and one Coast Guard ship for scanning the surface of the sea.

National Institute of Ocean Technology's vessel, Sagar Nidhi, and Samudra Ratnakar are carrying on the sub-surface search while aerial survey is being carried out by surveillance aircraft P8I , transport aircraft C130J Super Hercules and Coast Guard's Dorniers.

The plane with 29 people on board went missing shortly after taking off from Chennai for Port Blair on July 22.

The recorded transcript of air traffic radar showed the last pick up of the aircraft was 151 nautical miles east of Chennai when it took a left turn with rapid loss of height from 23,000 feet.

A flotilla of Naval and Coast Guard ships and aircraft were deployed on the search operations hours after the aircraft went off radar.

Data from Indian satellites was scanned and help was also sought from other countries to locate the missing aircraft.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, in a detailed statement made in parliament, also clarified that the aircraft, an upgraded version of IAF's workhorse, had "adequate lifetime" and had undergone just one overhaul.

--IANS

ao/py/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday hit back at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for attacking the Centre on the issue of centrally sponsored schemes (CSSs), and alleged that the Trinamool Congress was opposed to transparency.

"The central government is funding the schemes and has all the rights to ensure that they are effectively implemented and also prevent misuse of the funds. The Chief Minister is opposing this, because the Trinamool is opposed to transparency," West Bengal state BJP President Dilip Ghosh said.

Dubbing the Modi government "dictatorial", Banerjee on Saturday lambasted it for restructuring the centrally sponsored schemes and expressed strong reservation over the Centre's bid to "monitor the state treasury".

"If the Chief Minister is so aggrieved, why isn't she taking legal recourse, the matter can be raised in parliament. Why is she politicising the issue by publicly attacking the Prime Minister," asked Ghosh.

"Whoever raises his voice against her, our Chief Minister brands him a Maoist, I am thankful that she hasn't done that to the Prime Minister," he said.

The BJP leader also attacked Banerjee for ridiculing the Centre's foreign and Kashmir policies.

"Banerjee says India is no more free under Modi, but we want to ask is Bengal free under the Trinamool? It's the terrorists and criminals who are calling the shots and the administration has been rendered a mute spectator."

"Under Trinamool, Bengal is heading towards a law and order situation," said Ghosh.

--IANS

and/in/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
If you thought that only the victims of cyber-bullying are prone to suffer from depression and anxiety, think again. Psychologists have warned that the bullies themselves could be covertly depressed and anxious.

"Most of them experience an inferiority complex and demean themselves or may even be covertly depressed or anxious," city-based psychologist Ripan Sippy told IANS.

Take the case of 18-year-old Vikram Mahajan (name changed). Now in his first year of college, he used to cyber-bully his school friends as his family environment was not cordial. He never had the chance of expressing the emotional turmoil that he went through and finally took shelter in cyberspace to give vent to his stress.

In another instance, 15-year-old Anjali Chauhan (name changed), a social introvert, became emotionally disturbed after she was teased and bullied on the social media for expressing her liking for a particular actress, who was considered "lame" by the persons bullying her.

Sadly, social media is turning out to be an easy platform for cyber-bullying.

"On social media, people develop inflated self-concepts as they compensate their inferiorities with 'intellectual' reasoning and views on a uniform platform with the e-world," Sippy said.

With young adults and teenagers spending more time in the virtual world, becoming a victim of cyber-bullying has become increasingly common.

"The cyber world is now a prominent and common social milieu for communication and social interactions; so bullying finds its place here as well. Sometimes, the anonymity it provides - like in trolling - adds more to the armoury of the bully," Samir Parikh, Director, Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences, Fortis Healthcare, told IANS.

What then is cyber-bullying? Intimidating, dominating or purposefully irritating for pleasure; bossing, directing or criticising others or their views, lifestyle or personal preferences in the virtual world; and Twitter trolling are some examples.

The practice revolves around one who bullies and the one who is being bullied.

Bullies are generally unable to express their views in a real-life scenario. They are generally considered insignificant and weak by their peers or others around. Therefore, they feel elated and try to live a fantasy ideal utopian life through cyber-bullying.

"They end up bullying because on social media platforms, they are able to act anonymously where others generally are unaware of their inferiorities, shortcomings or hidden emotional problems," Sippy said.

The victim, on the other hand, fears social ridicule and being exposed as a weak person in front of everyone.

"The fear of negative social evaluation grows in them and may even lead to clinical depression or anxiety disorder. They may gradually withdraw or limit self-expression for fear of being shamed again or facing similar unpleasant experiences as in the past," Sippy suggested.

Suicides have considerably increased in the past few years owing to cyber-bullying as the victims are unable to cope with the public shame and depression.

"The victims, at times, feel socially shamed or fearful when unable to defend themselves on an open public platform. They feel that they are incapable of self defence and hence feel anxious and inferior, often forcing them to commit suicide," Sippy added.

Cyber-bullying can even bring behavorial and psychological changes in both the perpetrator and the victim.

"One who bullies may become aggressive, become less concerned for others' feelings, remain secretive about online activities and spend long hours online. They may even become upset if he/she cannot use the computer (temporarily)," said Ashima Srivastava, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Max Super Speciality Hospital, Patpargunj.

For victims, it is the suicidal thoughts and attempts that appear first.

"The victim shows unwillingness to share information about online activity and appears nervous when receiving a text message, email, or Instant Message. One could abruptly shut off the computer/laptop or walk away mid-use and withdraw from friends and family in real life. Sleepless nights and unexpected weight loss or gain are some other symptoms," Srivastava said.

All the health experts suggested that creating awareness about cyber-bullying is the first step to reduce its growth and effects, followed by counselling.

"Facebook, Twitter, etc., should also be made accountable by making them keep a check on bullying material once they are reported as objectionable to them," Sippy suggested.

(Somrita Ghosh can be contacted at somrita.g@ians.in)

--IANS

som/gb/vm/sac

ky

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
French, German and Italian leaders on Monday gathered on the Italian island of Ventotene for a preliminary meeting ahead of the European Union (EU) summit in September to discuss counter-terrorism operations, immigration levels as well as Britains's future exit from the EU.

French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi were scheduled to meet later on Monday for the meeting, Efe news reported.

The last such meeting came following the British electorate's decision to leave the bloc following a membership referendum on June 23.

The meeting is to foreshadow the September 16th EU summit in Bratislava.

Security measures are set to be high on the agenda in light of the recent terrorist attacks in France and Germany with proposals of deployable European military units or the creation of a European border guards corps is likely to be brought to the discussion table.

It is expected that the leaders will deliberate EU High Representative Federica Mogherini's draft "Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy for the European Union."

Renzi is also due to discuss his paper "Migration Compact", which calls for aid programmes in African countries with a large migrant flow to Europe.

--IANS

ss/dg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Family members of three Dalit boys who died in a controversial police firing in 2012, have demanded that the case be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as they have lost faith in the police.

The family, which has been demanding justice for the boys, reiterated this after the Gujarat government ordered constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the case.

They had staged demonstrations at the Gh-3 circle in Gandhinagar, under the banner of the Gujarat Anusuchit Jati Atyachar Sangharsh Samiti, though the government appointed the SIT on Saturday evening. The family has threatened to stage demonstrations again on August 30 if the case was not handed over to the CBI.

Three dalit boys - Pankaj Sumra, 16, Mehul Rathod, 17, and Prakash Parmar, 26, were killed during police firing at a clash between Dalit and Bhadwad communities in Thangadh, Surendranagar district, in September 2012. Investigations had later revealed that the police even used AK-47 rifles on the victims.

Mehul's father Valji Rathod, his wife Chandrikaben and daughter Parul, along with Prakash's mother Manjuben and his wife Geetaben have begun their fast for justice at Gh-3 circle at Gandhinagar.

Addressing the gathering, Rathod said: "We have no trust in Gujarat Police as they were involved in the firing. The government should hand over the probe to CBI if they really want to conduct a fair investigation."

"I will again sit on a dharna from August 30 if our demand is not considered," added Rathod.

The state government on Saturday formed the SIT comprising Rajkot city Police Commissioner Anupamsinh Gehlot, Surat city DCP Parikshita Rathod and Porbandar SP Tarunkumar Duggal to probe the case.
India has sought the release of 39 Indians abducted in Iraq while expressing support for "unity and territorial integrity of Iraq", the External Affairs Ministry said on Monday.

Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar, who is on an official visit to Iraq from August 21 to 23, conveyed this while meeting the top Iraqi leadership, according to a statement issued by the ministry.

Among others, Akbar met President Fuad Masum, President of the Council of Representatives Salim al-Jabouri, Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Eshaiqer Al-Jaafari, and National Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayyadh.

"During the official meetings, the two sides acknowledged the grave threat posed by international terrorism and its sponsors to international peace and security as also the very architecture of nation state," the statement said.

Both sides conveyed strong support to each other in their common fight against the menace of terrorism.

"The minister expressed India's support for the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq and conveyed India's abiding commitment to the emergence of a stable, peaceful, united and democratic Iraq, which was in the interest of regional and global peace and security," the statement said.

Akbar also sought Iraq's assistance "to trace the whereabouts and safe release" of 39 abducted Indians.

"The Iraqi leadership assured of full cooperation and support in the matter," the statement said.

The 39 Indians were reportedly abducted by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organisation in Iraq in 2014.

The two sides also discussed the entire gamut of bilateral engagement, including economic, trade, investment, energy security, defence, security and counter-terrorism.

Akbar conveyed India's willingness to partner in the reconstruction of Iraq as also for continued assistance through the Indian government's well acknowledged capacity-building programmes under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme.

--IANS

ab/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Indian equity markets were suppressed by negative global cues and a weak rupee during the mid-afternoon session on Monday.

Consequently, both the key equity indices provisionally closed the day's trade in the red, as heavy selling pressure was witnessed in information technology (IT), technology, media and entertainment (TECK) and automobile stocks.

The wider 51-scrip Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) edged down 37.75 points or 0.44 per cent to 8,629.15 points.

The barometer 30-scrip sensitive index (Sensex) of the BSE, which opened at 28,088.07 points, provisionally closed at 27,985.54 points (at 3.30 p.m.) -- down 91.46 points or 0.33 per cent from the previous close at 28,077 points.

The Sensex touched a high of 28,143.28 points and a low of 27,918.05 points during the intra-day trade.

The BSE market breadth was slightly tilted in favour of the bears -- with 1,401 declines and 1,287 advances.

On Friday, the benchmark indices had closed flat -- marginally in the red -- due to profit booking and negative global cues.

The barometer index had receded by 46.44 points or 0.17 per cent, while the NSE Nifty slipped by 6.35 points or 0.07 per cent.

--IANS

ppg/vt

(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.)
An Islamist militant has admitted and apologised for destroying cultural sites in Mali's Timbuktu in a trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), a media report said.

Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi said he was "really sorry" for his actions and asked for forgiveness, BBC reported on Monday.

Mahdi was accused of leading rebel forces who destroyed historic shrines at the world heritage site in 2012. It was the first time that the court in The Hague tried a case of cultural destruction.

It was also the first time a suspected Islamist militant has stood trial at the ICC and the first time a suspect has pleaded guilty.

Prosecutors said Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, an Islamist terrorist group that occupied Timbuktu.

Islamists regard the shrines and the city's ancient manuscripts, covering everything from history to astronomy, as idolatrous.

Court documents describe Mahdi as a religious scholar who directed fighters to wreck several sites with pickaxes and chisels after failing to deter locals from praying at them.

He was charged with war crimes over the destruction of nine mausoleums and a mosque.

Pleading guilty, he said: "I am really sorry, I am really remorseful, and I regret all the damage that my actions have caused."

"I would like to give a piece of advice to all Muslims in the world, not to get involved in the same acts I got involved in, because they are not going to lead to any good for humanity," the BBC quoted him as saying.

Given his guilty plea the trial will probably be over by the end of this week. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in jail. Nine victims were later due to share their experiences in court.

Ansar Dine, an extremist militia with roots in the nomadic Tuareg people, has ties to al-Qaeda. It was eventually driven out of Mali in a French-led intervention.

The court has previously heard that Mahdi, a former teacher aged about 40, was a "zealous member" of the militia. He was alleged to have been the head of the section that enforced strict Islamic law in Timbuktu.

--IANS

ask/lok

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi, Aug 23 ( IANS) "My writings will be never the same. A censor is seated inside me and he is testing every word that is born within me. His constant caution that a word may be misunderstood and I'm unable to shake him off," said acclaimed Tamil author Perumal Murugan here on Monday.

This was Murugan's first public speech after announcing his "death" over social media after a controversy broke out in 2015 over his book "Madhorubagan" (One part woman). The book earned the wrath of some Hindu groups and castes and copies of his books were burned at the town of Tiruchengode, where the novel is set.

However, in July 2016, the Madras High Court quashed all criminal cases filed against the author.

In a moving statement read out after the release of his news book, a collection of 200 poems titled "Kozhayin Paadalkal" (Songs of a Coward), at the Nehru Memorial Museum And Library, Murugan said that it was the court verdict that propelled him to resume writing.

"The question of whether a word or a sentence in a judicial verdict should determine if I write or not remains in my mind. If a faceless force can put a full stop to writing, can't a line in a judicial verdict bolster writing? Moreover, the imperative 'write' suits my present state of mind and is a cause for happiness," he said, adding that thus he resolved to resume writing and start publishing.

"The publication of this book marks this beginning," he said.

Talking about the self-imposed exile, the author said that it was poetry that saved him from despair.

"Between December 2014 and June 2016 I couldn't so much as scratch a line in the first three months. As though the fingers of my heart had become numb. I couldn't read a thing. Even when I turned the newspaper my eyes would scan the print but my mind would not absorb a word," he reminisced.

"I wallowed in a dark hole without the urge to see or talk to anybody. But as I ruminated over my existence, there came a certain instant when the sluice gates were breached. I began to write. I chronicled the moment when I felt like a rat, dazzled by the light, burrowing itself into its hole," he added.

Invoking Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar, Murugan said that though the court asked him not to live in fear, he finds it tough. "The learned judges have said that 'I should not live under fear'. But my old teacher, the great Thiruvalluvar has said, 'Folly meets fearful ills with fearless heart; To fear where cause of fear exists is wisdom's part',"

Murugan, who prefers to stay away from sensationalism also said that he accepted the invitation of the publishers to express his gratitude to those who lent support to him.

"During the nightmarish time...writers -- from Tamilnadu, from other parts of India and from across the world -- stood by me, extending their support in various ways. Across the country voices were raised in support of freedom of expression and against intolerance...I accepted this invitation to speak here only to express my gratitude to those voices," he said.

Stressing that his written words will speak more now, Murugan also requested the media to allow him privacy.

"It is silence that gives me strength now. I'll write to gain further strength. My request therefore to the media and organisers of lit fests is this: Please do not ask me to speak. Let me be quiet. And write. I shall speak to you through my written words," he added..

Later, in a discussion with author Nilanjana Roy, Murugan noted that his writings have always dealt with the issue of castes. "In my writings, I have dealt with relationship between castes and conflicts between various castes. I believe no writer can write single word in defence of castes," he said.

--IANS

pn/lok

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least one soldier was killed and three others were injured in a bomb attack on an armoured military vehicle in Turkey's Sanliurfa province on Sunday, the local media reported.

The roadside bomb planted by the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) was detonated as the military vehicle passed through a highway in Viransehir district of southern Sanliurfa, Xinhua news agency reported.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by the US, the European Union and Turkey.

--IANS

ask/lok

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 1,779 persons have been killed in the Philippine's war on illicit drugs since July 1 this year, authorities said on Monday.

A total of 712 were killed in ongoing police operations while 1,067 died in "vigilante-type" killings, Xinhua news agency quoted police as saying.

The police's "stand against extrajudicial killings is uncompromising", a police official said in a statement.

"If any cop is found violating the law of self-defence, he will be investigated, prosecuted and accordingly punished," he said.

"On the speculation of vigilante killings, the police does not and will never condone vigilante killings," he added.

"I have previously mentioned that these killings are perpetrated by various syndicate groups involved in illegal drugs."

The official vowed to apply the "full force of the law against those responsible for these killings outside of police operations".

The increasing number of killings in the administration's war against drugs has caught the attention of the UN and other international human rights groups.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, however, remains unfazed by the growing criticism and repeatedly says that the fight against drugs will be relentless and will be sustained.

"I am willing to answer all (my critics). I assume full responsibility for what happened because I was the one who ordered it," Duterte told the media in Davao City on Sunday.

"My instructions at the very first day of my term were that: go out and hunt for these criminals. Arrest them if they surrender peacefully but if they put up a violent stunt then you just have to kill them because I do not want people in government dying needlessly for doing his work when you were then leaving behind a family and children," he said.

So far, Duterte said 600,000 drug users and pushers have "surrendered" and taken the drug test since his administration launched the campaign after he took over the presidency on June 30 this year.

--IANS

sm/py/dg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay on Monday said his country was not pulling out of the UN.

He said his country was committed to the organisation despite its "frustrations", Xinhua news agency reported.

Yasay, in a briefing to clarify a statement made earlier by President Rodrigo Duterte, said: "We certainly are not leaving the UN."

Duterte on Sunday said that the will "separate" from the UN after the body criticised his war on illicit drugs.

The President was angered by statements made by a UN official condemning the increasing number of vigilante-type killings in the country.

There were more than 1,000 persons killed in the campaign, according to media reports.

"Maybe we just have to separate from the UN. If you are that rude, we might just leave the organisation," Duterte said in a news conference in Davao City on Sunday, referring to the UN critics.

Duterte said he might as well form a rival organisation with China and other African nations and criticised UN for its failure to stamp out terrorism, world hunger and other conflicts.
Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal on Monday suggested that the West Bengal government form a five-member committee to look at the high 25 per cent cess being imposed on coal by the state.

"The committee will do a profit-loss analysis of state's revenue as West Bengal government imposes 25 per cent cess on coal as against 14 per cent royalty levied by other coal-producing states," Goyal said after a meeting with the state's Power Minister Shobandeb Chattopadhyay and Advisor (Power) Manish Gupta.

Goyal said he believes West Bengal would be better off imposing 14 per cent royalty rather than the 25 per cent cess.

That would increase coal production as well as total revenue, and also foster ancillary industries and expand job opportunities, said the central minister who also holds the portfolios of Coal, New and Renewable Energy, and Mines.

The committee to be chaired by state power secretary and Coal India director (marketing) and director (finance) as members has been requested to submit a report in four weeks' time.

"Let the committee study and we will put our point of view on this subject," Chattopadhyay said.

Advisor (Power) Manish Gupta said: "Setting up a committee is a suggestion. But, we see this as a kind of encroachment into state's domain. The state coal cess revenue is linked to development like primary education and others. It will hurt our revenues."

Gupta also pointed out that the Centre had raised the coal cess by Rs 200 to Rs 400 per tonne recently. "In total, they raised the cess by 300 per cent in short period of time."

If the Centre is advocating reducing coal prices, it should reduce coal cess and freight cost of railway transportation instead of touching state's revenue, Gupta said.

The state imposes cess and royalty on coal. Earning from coal cess is Rs 700-900 crore a year while royalty charge is at about Rs 7 per tonne.

--IANS

bdc/kb/sac

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday stressed upon a dialogue to find a "lasting solution" to the problems in Jammu and but "within the framework of the Constitution".

At a meeting with a delegation of leaders of opposition parties from Jammu and Kashmir, Modi said the loss of lives in more than five weeks of unrest in had distressed him.

"Those who lost their lives during recent disturbances are part of us, our nation. Whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us," Modi said, according to an official statement issued after the meeting.

The Prime Minister expressed "deep concern and pain at the prevailing situation in the state".

"There has to be a dialogue and we need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution."

The statement said that Modi conveyed to the delegation, led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, that "his government and the nation stand with the people of Jammu and and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same" to them.

He expressed his commitment to the development of the state and its people, and appealed for restoration of normalcy.

The Prime Minister "appreciated the constructive suggestions" the leaders of opposition parties made in the meeting.

The meeting comes as the Kashmir Valley remains under strict curfew for the 45th day in a row. The valley has been on the boil amid violent clashes between stone-throwing pro-freedom protestors and security forces since the July 8 killing of a rebel commander, Burhan Wani.

At least 68 people have been killed in firing by security forces in the weeks of unrest. Thousands have been injured, mostly by pellet firing.

--IANS

sar/dg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday told Jammu and Kashmir opposition parties that "there has to be a dialogue" to end the weeks-long unrest in the valley but any solution to the problem will be "within the Constitution" of India.

The Prime Minister's statement indicates that the government may be considering some political initiative on Kashmir where the over-five weeks long agitation has left nearly 70 people dead in clashes between pro-freedom protesters and security forces. Opposition parties in Delhi as well as in Kashmir have been pressing for political solution to the unrest.

At a meeting with a delegation of opposition parties from the state, Modi expressed "deep concern and pain" over the violence in Kashmir and the loss of lives in the unrest.

"Those who lost their lives during recent disturbances are part of us, our nation. Whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us," Modi said, according to an official statement from the Prime Minister's Office.

"There has to be a dialogue and we need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution," he said.

Leaders of Kashmir opposition parties led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah urged the Prime Minister for a political initiative to deal with the unrest, complaining that the state and central governments had shown no political will to respond to the crisis -- the deadliest Kashmir has seen in six years.

Abdullah said they told Modi that Kashmir was not an issue related to the development or the lack of it. "It is a political issue and we told the Prime Minister that we need a political approach to deal with the situation in Jammu and Kashmir," Abdullah told IANS.

"If we don't find a political solution to this, then every time we'll repeat the same mistake."

The National Conference working president said the they handed over a memorandum to the Prime Minister warning him against the "tried and tested formulations of dealing with the issue in Kashmir administratively rather than politically".

"We are of the firm opinion that the central government should waste no further time in initiating a credible and meaningful dialogue with all stakeholders to address the unrest."

State Congress chief G.A. Mir said the meeting with Modi may augur well for Kashmir. "The Prime Minister agreed that development isn't the only way out, indicating a thinking that a dialogue over Kashmir is being considered. We are hopeful that it will happen soon."

But Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari said the government had an incoherent policy over Kashmir with Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley "not on the same page". He was referring to Jaitley's remarks in Jammu on Sunday, ruling out any dialogue and warning that those indulging in violence would be dealt sternly.

The Prime Minister's meeting with the Kashmir politicians comes as the valley remained under strict curfew for the 45th day in a row. The valley has been on the boil amid violent clashes between stone-throwing protesters and security forces since the July 8 killing of rebel commander Burhan Wani.

The clashes have also left thousands of people, including children, injured, mostly in pellet firing. Hundreds of the injured have partially or fully lost their eyesight after being hit by pellet guns -- a dangerous mob control weapons used in Kashmir.

The Kashmir delegation sought an "immediate ban on pellet guns" and also urged the Prime Minister "to advice relevant quarters against the policy of mass harassment, raids, and arrests" in the valley.

"This has worsened an already volatile situation and also goes against the values and principles of democracy."

The opposition leaders, including Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Yusuf Tarigami, have been in the capital for the last three days.

They met President Pranab Mukherjee and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, seeking their intervention in bringing about an end to the unrest that has crippled life in the restive valley.

--IANS

sar/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rome, Aug 22 (IANS/AKI) The release of an Indian migrant accused of trying to abduct a small girl from a Sicilian beach resort has riled conservative Italian politicians and sparked calls for his deportation.

Ram Lubhay should be "immediately expelled" for his attempted abduction of a five-year-old girl last week as she played in the sea at Vittoria, the town's centre-right mayor Giovanni Moscato told Adnkronos.

"This is a very serious incident that has caused alarm in the town and elsewhere," Moscato said.

"I am confident in the investigation being spear-headed by magistrates but call on Italy's authorities to immediately deport Lubhay, who is an illegal immigrant," Moscato added.

Lubhay was held last Tuesday and released on Sunday by a judge in Ragusa on the grounds that under Italy's penal code a person cannot be arrested for attempted kidnapping, even if they are under investigation.

The girl's parents and witnesses have testified that Lubhay picked up the girl and began to walk away, releasing her and running off when they gave chase.

Italy's Justice Minister Andrea Orlando has ordered an enquiry into the release of Lubhya, a homeless henna tattoo artist lacking legal residency who has a prior criminal record. Lubhay claims he did not try to abduct the child.

--IANS/AKI

ahm/dg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
South Korean and US forces kicked off their joint annual war game on Monday despite strong a backlash from North Korea.

Operation Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) will run till September 2, Xinhua news agency quoted Combined Forces Command as saying.

The computer-assisted simulation exercise will mobilise about 25,000 US troops, including 2,500 reinforcements from the US mainland and the US Pacific Command, while some 50,000 forces from South Korean will join the military exercise.

The combined forces will apply Operation Plan 5015 (Oplan) to this year's UFG exercise.

The Oplan 5015 is a wartime joint defence scenario signed in June last year between Seoul and Washington to preemptively destroy the Pyonyang's nuclear and missile bases in times of military conflicts.

All military communications lines between Seoul and Pyongyang have been shut after North Korea's nuclear detonation in January and its launch of long-range rocket in February which was seen as a disguised test of ballistic missile technology.

North Korea slammed the UFG exercises, saying that the drill was "an outrageous provocation for a nuclear war against the North aimed to encroach upon the dignity and sovereignty of the country and infringe on the vital rights of its people".

Seoul's unification ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said it was very regrettable for North Korea to distort and denounce the "annually-held defensive" exercise, urging Pyongyang to make a right choice by stopping nuclear and missile developments and avoiding provocative acts.

--IANS

sm/py/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actor Sonu Sood's upcoming home production "2 in 1" is all set to release on October 7.

Sonu on Monday took to Twitter, where he shared a photograph of himself along with actress Tamannaah Bhatia and Prabhudheva.

"All set for my first home production '2 in 1'. Releasing on October 7... Tamannaah, Prabhudheva. Need your wishes," Sonu captioned the image.

The "Dabangg" star will also be seen sharing screen space with legendary martial arts star Jackie Chan in the Sino-Indian project "Kung Fu Yoga".

"Kung Fu Yoga" is part of the three-film agreement signed between the two countries during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to India. The film also stars actress Amyra Dastur. It is reported that the Hindi film stars have performed some adrenalin-pumping action sequences for the movie.

Directed by Stanley Tong, the action comedy film has been shot in Jaipur and Iceland.

--IANS

dc/rb/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Taliban destroyed an important bridge connecting Afghanistan and Tajikistan amid intense fighting in the northern Kunduz province, in which 16 Taliban rebels died in the last 24 hours, the Afghan Defence Ministry said on Monday in a statement.

The entire province, especially Kunduz and Takhar, and a part of Kabul, was also left without electricity, said a spokesperson of the nation's power regulatory authority body, Wahidullah Tawhidi.

Around 100,000 houses in the capital are currently without power and repair work was delayed as fighting continues in the region, Tawhidi added, Efe news reported.

The bridge was among one of the major transit and trade points between Afghanistan and Tajikistan and an important line of communication.

"The destruction of the bridge affects trade between the countries as hundreds of trucks and vehicles passed through it every day," said Kunduz police spokesperson Hijratullah Akbari.

Last weekend, the Taliban took control of the Khan Abad district for 24-hours, before they were repelled by a joint operation by the Afghan police and military forces, while the fighting supposedly threw the entire province in darkness.

According to unofficial figures, the Taliban control large parts in six of the seven districts of Kunduz province.

The rebels have been gaining ground since the NATO formally ended its combat mission on January 1, 2015, in Afghanistan, where it still has 12,000 troops for training and assistance of Afghan armed forces.

In September 2015, the Taliban managed to temporarily mount a siege of the provincial capital of Kunduz.

--IANS

ss/sac

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Turkish government on Monday requested Cambodia to shut down the Zaman schools, accusing the educational institutions for having affiliation with Fethullah Gulen whom Ankara accuses for the June 15 coup attempt.

Turkey's Ambassador to Cambodia Ilhan Kemal Tug made the request during a meeting with the country's Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn, Xinhua news agency quoted an official as saying.

"The Turkish ambassador briefed the minister about the latest situation in Turkey and raised the government's request to shut down the Zaman schools in Phnom Penh," the official said.

According to the spokesman, Cambodia condemned the Turkey coup last month, and promised to take the request into consideration.

There are three Zaman school campuses in Cambodia, along with a university serving over 2,000 students.

--IANS

sm/py/dg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It might sound depressing but villages in our country might continue to remain in dark, probably longer than the NDA government has envisaged electrifying them. Power supply in India is a peculiar business, especially now, when the current government claims that we are power surplus.
On Monday, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi made it clear that the road from New Delhi to Srinagar will not run through Islamabad.
Ten passengers, including two women, were killed and 18 others injured when a private bus they were travelling in fell into a canal at Nayakangudem in Telangana's Khammam district in wee hours today, police said.

Besides, in another accident, three persons died in Andhra Pradesh when their car met with an accident in Chittoor district early this morning when they were returning from the Krishna Pushkaram festival, they said.

The bus accident occurred at around 3 AM when the vehicle, proceeding to Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh from Hyderabad, hit a road railing of a bridge and fell into the canal under Kusumanchi Mandal of Kammam district resulting in the death of 10 passengers and injuries to 18 others, a senior police officer said.

"Around 30 passengers, besides two drivers and two attendants, were travelling in the ill-fated bus when the mishap occurred. After the accident, both the drivers and the attendants are not to be seen," DIG (Warangal Range) T Prabhakar Rao told PTI over phone.

As per preliminary information, the bus was on high speed and the driver seems to have lost control over the wheels resulting in the accident, the DIG said.

The injured were rushed to Government General Hospital in Khammam, he said adding that police were in the process of registering a case.

Earlier, Khammam Collector Lokesh Kumar and senior police officials visited the spot and monitored the rescue operation.

The Andhra Pradesh government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 3 lakh each to the kin of the 10 deceased.

Some of the victims belonged to East Godavari and some were from West Godavari district of the AP.

Meanwhile, three persons were killed in a separate road accident in the AP's Chittoor district early today.

The car they were travelling in rammed into a stationary lorry on the highway at Srimallavaram village, killing three persons belonging to Madanapalle.

The victims were returning to their town after taking part in the Krishna Pushkaram.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed grief over the accidents and spoke to the Collectors of East Godavari and Chittoor districts over phone to enquire about the incidents, a communication from the CMO here said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ten persons were killed and 19 others injured when their bus fell into a canal at Nayakangudem in Khammam district of Telangana in the wee hours today, police said.

Besides, three persons died in Andhra Pradesh when their car met with an accident in Chittoor district early this morning when they were returning from the Krishna Pushkaram festival, they said.

The driver of the private bus was apparently driving the vehicle at a very high speed. He lost control over the wheels, as a result the bus on its way to Kakinada from Hyderabad, fell into the canal under Kusumanchi mandal, police said.

Andhra Pradesh government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 3 lakh each to the kin of the 10 deceased.

Some of the victims belonged to East Godavari and some were from West Godavari district of the AP.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed grief over the accident and spoke to East Godavari district Collector Arun Kumar over phone to enquire about the incident.

The 19 injured persons were admitted to the Government General Hospital for treatment, Kumar said.

Meanwhile, three persons were killed in a separate road accident in the Chittoor district early this morning.

The car they were travelling in rammed into a stationary lorry on the highway at Srimallavaram village, killing three persons belonging to Madanapalle.

The victims were returning to their town after taking part in the Krishna Pushkaram.

Naidu also spoke to Chittoor district Collector Siddharth Jain over phone and enquired about the incident, a communication from the CMO here said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two fishing boats carrying 15 fishermen sank 70 nautical miles off Mumbai, prompting the Coast Guard to launch a search operation today.

All the 15 were later rescued by other fishermen.

"At about midnight of August 21/22, two fishing boats Himsagar and Krishna Sagar were reportedly sunk at sea 7 NM from Umargam. Reported location is about 70 NM north of Mumbai," a defence spokesperson said today.

"A Sea King 42B, all weather helicopter was launched to search for survivors. Indian Naval Ship Ganga and Indian Coast Guard Ship Agrim were also diverted to the area," the spokesperson said.

All the 15 fishermen were picked up by other fishermen in the area and have landed ashore early this morning, he said, adding that the ships then returned to their respective tasks.

The fishermen had set out in two fishing boats from Zai and Gholwad villages yesterday evening, according to Palghar district's Talasari taluka tehsildar Vishal Daundkar.

Late in the night, the district authorities received a message of them being in trouble following which the authorities asked the Coast Guard and Navy for help, he said.

In the meantime, the 15 fishermen jumped out of the sinking boats and swam to the shore at Vrindavan in Umbargaon village at around 4 AM today, he said, adding that they had to swim around eight nautical miles before they reached to safety.

The local fishermen also rushed into the sea in a bid to save their community members, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Scientists have discovered three 16th-century Spanish shipwrecks off the coast of the US, containing looted French artefacts that may now be worth millions of dollars.

The finds include three ornate bronze cannons - two that are three meters long and one that is two metres long - and a marble monument, engraved with the coat of arms of the king of France, which has been identified from the manifest of a 1562 expedition to Florida by the French navigator Jean Ribault.

Records showed that the bronze cannons and monument from the expedition were installed at Fort Caroline, an early French Huguenot colony on the St Johns River, in what is now Jacksonville, Florida.

In 1565, the cannons and monument were seized in a Spanish raid, said Robert Pritchett, chief executive of the US-based Global Marine Exploration, the company which explored the wrecks.

These items were being carried away from Florida as booty on Spanish ships, bound for Havana, Cuba, when they were struck by a storm that banished them to the seafloor, Pritchett was quoted as saying by the 'Live Science'.

The cannons are now worth over a million dollars apiece, and marble monument may be worth many times that amount, as "the only one of its kind," he said.

In addition to the three bronze cannons and the marble monument, the divers found 19 iron cannons, 12 anchors, a stone grinding wheel, and scattered ballast and ammunition from the ships, Pritchett said.

The markings on one of the bronze cannons indicate that it was cast in the 1540s, during the reign of King Henry II of France, he added.

The marble monument is probably the most significant piece of maritime history that has ever been found on the entire East Coast of the US, Pritchett said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The alleged financier of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, who supplied nearly Rs 4 million to the LeT men, has been sent to judicial remand after the Pakistani anti-terrorism court hearing the case did not allow the FIA to have his custody for more days.

Sufayan Zafar has joined the other six suspects - Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Mohammad Younis Anjum - in the high-security Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, where they are lodged since 2009.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operations commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the Mumbai attack, is living at an undisclosed location after being released from jail on bail over a year ago.

The anti-terrorism court sent Zafar on the judicial remand on Saturday noting that the Federal Investigation Agency had been given enough time to probe the suspect, a source in the FIA told PTI today.

He is accused of providing Rs 3.98 million to co-accused Riaz through account no. 2338-2 of the Muslim Commercial Bank's Drigh Road branch in Karachi and account no. 2464-0 of the Allied Bank's Drigh Colony branch in Karachi prior to the Mumbai terror attack.

During interrogation by the FIA, he was quizzed over providing millions of rupees to the suspected terrorists of the Mumbai attack case, his relations with them and other absconding suspects, the source said.

"The FIA has interrogated Zafar for providing financial assistance to the co-accused in the Mumbai case besides his connection with the terrorists and the LeT. He was also interrogated for the channel/source from which he got the huge sum of money to provide it to the co-accused," he said.

Zafar was absconding after being declared proclaimed offender in the Mumbai case. He was arrested early this month (on August 3 or 4) fromhis hideout in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. A resident of Gujrawala district of Punjab - some 80 kms from Lahore, Zafar is among 21 other absconding suspects wanted in this high-profile case.

According to court documents, the othersuspects who allegedly arranged funds for the attacks include undertrial Ahmed and Anjum and proclaimed offenders Mohammad Usman Zia, Mukhtar Ahmed, Abbas Nasir and Javed Iqbal.

The FIA wanted more time to investigate him further, the source said, adding that the agency would indict him along with the seven other suspects of the case in the trial court after completing his challan.

The trial court will resume the hearing of the case on September 7 after over a month-long court summer vacation.

Defence lawyers are of the view that indicting Zafar along with the seven accused may further delay the conclusion of the case, which has been pending in an anti-terrorism court (ATC) since 2009, due to repeating the exercise of cross- examining witnesses in the light of the new arrest.

"Since the trial is being conducted under Section 21-M of



the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, Zafar may be tried along with seven suspects for an offence they are alleged to have committed in connivance with each other," Raja Rizwan Abbasi, counsel for Lakhvi, told the Dawn.

"The Mumbai attack case has returned to 2009 when the trial against the seven suspects began," Abbasi said.

He further said that seven years after its commencement, the case was still at zero point and the prosecution would take another seven to eight years to repeat the exercise.

"The interned accused cannot wait for such a long period and have the right to move the court for post-arrest bail," he said, adding the prosecution had no option but to seek a joint trial of Zafar along with the seven suspects.

The prosecution has concluded evidence of all 68 Pakistani witnesses and requested the court to summon 24 Indian witnesses.

The trial proceedings have come to a halt as India is yet to send 24 witnesses to Pakistan for recording of their statements in the trial court.

Pakistan says the trial cannot be concluded unless India sends its nationals for recording their statements in the case.

As many as 166 people were killed and over 250 injured in the attack carried out by 10 LeT men.

Nine assailants were killed while the lone survivor, Ajmal Kasab, was captured and later executed.
Three people were killed when two vehicles fell into a river after a bridge collapsed in east China's Jiangxi Province.

The bridge in Xiushui County collapsed last night when an electric motorcycle and a minibus were passing over it.

Two people on the motorcycle were rushed to the county's hospital by rescuers, state-run Xinhua agency reported.

The three passengers trapped in the minibus died.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bombay High Court today directed the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) to initiate action against all illegal 'Shiv Vada Pav' stalls across the city within three months.

A division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice M S Sonak was hearing a public interest litigation filed by NGO Janseva Mandal.

The petitioner alleged that there are over 250 'Shiv Vada Pav' stalls across the megapolis, which are operating without license and cooking food in the open.

The petition pointed out that a recent High Court order had banned cooking in illegal stalls and carts in the city, as it was not permissible under the Food Safety rules.

The bench directed the civic body to take action against all those stalls which are operating without license from the concerned authority and submit a compliance report after 12 weeks.

As per the plea, in 1995, the Maharashtra government launched a scheme named 'Zunkha Bhakar Kendra', to provide wholesome food at subsidised rates to the people.

The scheme was dropped in 2000 due to blatant misuse by stall operators. The same year, a new scheme titled 'Shiv Vadapav' was floated, but was not approved. Even then, the stalls and carts mushroomed across the city, the PIL claimed.

The petition sought directions to MCGM to remove all such illegal 'Shiv Vada Pav' stalls.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A foreign airline and a tour company have been directed by the apex consumer commission to pay Rs 6.5 lakh to a passenger for deficiency in quality of services rendered and not informing him about the cancellation of a flight.

The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) held Air Arabia and Thomas Cook (India) Ltd guilty of deficiency in the quality of services rendered to their customer and directed them pay Rs two lakh as compensation along with refund of Rs 4.5 lakh towards the tour package.

"The petitioners, Air Arabia and Thomas Cook (India) Ltd, can be held guilty of deficiency in service in the quality of service rendered to the complainants," an NCDRC bench, comprising members Rekha Gupta and Anup K Thakur, said.

The bench dismissed the revision petitions filed by airline and the tour company challenging the order of the Chhattisgarh state commission.

According to the complaint, Chhattisgarh-resident Pagdalu Prashant Naidu had booked a tour package to Kenya through Thomas Cook (India) Ltd, which was supposed to start on May 21, 2014 from Mumbai airport.

From Mumbai airport, the complainant and his family were to be given a connecting flight from Sharjah to Nairobi, the complaint said.

It further said when the family reached Mumbai airport, the airline officials informed them that the connecting flight from Sharjah has been cancelled and they would have to wait till the next day for the rescheduled flight.

The complaint alleged that the arrangements in Kenya were also bad and as a result, they had to spend one day in Nairobi doing nothing.

The vehicle provided to the complainant in Kenya was also in a bad shape and broke down causing delay in the sightseeing trip. They had to ask for a lift to reach the airport, it alleged.

The district forum had directed the airlines and tour company to pay Rs five lakh to the complainant as compensation, besides refunding the package amount.

This was challenged before Chhattisgarh state commission which had partially allowed the tour company's revision petition and reduced the compensation to Rs two lakh from Rs five lakh.

The counsel for Thomas Cook argued that they were not responsible for the cancellation of the flight.

However, the NCDRC held that it was an admitted fact that the hotel and other services provided in Kenya were below standards. It also upheld the forum's decision to award Rs 10,000 towards the cost of litigation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A farmer's body today asked the Centre to allow them to participate in the crucial World Health Organisation (WHO) convention on tobacco control, saying it will help millions of tobacco farmers to understand the impact of measures proposed during the meet.

Terming it as "unfortunate", Federation of All India Farmer Associations (FAIFA) alleged that WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has become an instrument in the hands of anti-tobacco NGOs and activists who are funded by vested interests.

India is hosting the 7th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP7) to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO-FCTC) in Noida to eliminate the illicit trade of tobacco products.

"As representatives of the tobacco farmers in India and in view of the fact that the COP7 is being hosted by India, we wish to make an urgent appeal that farmers should be allowed to participate in the deliberations of the Conference.

"Our participation will help us understand the future course of actions being proposed by the WHO on tobacco control and the impact of these measures on the tobacco crop cultivated by us and the livelihood of millions that are dependent on tobacco in the country," said BV Javare Gowda, President FAIFA.

FAIFA has written to the government to include representatives of tobacco farmers in the official Indian delegation to COP7.

"Allowing tobacco farmers, access to the COP 7 to take part in the deliberations will underline the principle of transparency which is required in any public policy-making process...

"...And underscore the inclusiveness and fairness of the global health body," said Murali Babu, General Secretary, FAIFA, which is a representative body of farmers and farmer associations.

FAIFA said that inclusion of farmers will also be



consistent with the Constitution of India, principles of transparency as adopted by the United Nations and in consonance with a statement made by DG WHO Margaret Chan earlier this year.

"It is a matter of great concern for us that FCTC decisions in the past are made behind closed doors. It is clear that the interests of tobacco growers are not represented in the debates especially when the decisions have direct bearing on the lives of tobacco growers.

"It is unfortunate that the FCTC has become an instrument in the hands of anti-tobacco NGOs and activists who are funded by vested interests and have no knowledge of tobacco growing or any concern for the livelihood of farmers and many others dependent on tobacco for their livelihood," the body said.

It expressed its confidence that the government will ensure that the representatives of the tobacco farmers are able to attend the COP7 deliberations and uphold India's high democratic principles.

The summit is scheduled from November 7-12 at the Indian Exposition Mart in Noida will aim "to eliminate illicit trade of tobacco products.

About 1,000-1,500 delegates from 180 countries along with observers in official relations with the WHO FCTC are expected to participate in the summit.
Attorneys for Army Sgt Bowe Bergdahl will try to convince a judge this week that the US military has mishandled its prosecution of the soldier on charges that he deserted his post in Afghanistan.

Among the issues being considered during pretrial hearings is whether Gen Robert B Abrams faced improper conflicts when he referred Bergdahl for a general court-martial rather than a lower-level prosecution.

Defence attorneys argue that Abrams, the commanding general of US Army Forces Command in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, should be disqualified from the case because of a prior role advising former Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel during efforts to return Bergdahl from captivity.

In a separate motion, the defence contends Abrams was influenced by negative comments about Bergdahl by Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In September 2015, an officer who oversaw a preliminary hearing recommended the case be heard by a misdemeanour-level tribunal and said imprisonment wasn't warranted.

However, the following month, McCain told a reporter his Senate committee would itself hold a hearing if Bergdahl weren't punished. In December, Abrams sent Bergdahl's case to a general court-martial, rejecting the hearing officer's recommendation.

The defence argues the chain of events shows "impermissible meddling" by McCain and says either the charges should be thrown out, or Bergdahl should face no punishment if convicted. In their motion to disqualify Abrams, they argue for a reset in the case that would allow another commander to decide whether it warrants a general court-martial.

Bergdahl, who is from Hailey, Idaho, walked off his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and wound up as a captive of the Taliban and its allies until 2014. The Obama administration won his release by swapping him for Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Bergdahl faces a court-martial on charges of desertion and misbehaviour before the enemy. The latter charge carries up to a life sentence.

Prosecutors claimed in a legal filing this month that Bergdahl told a fellow soldier shortly before he disappeared that he wanted to hike through India and Pakistan to join the Russian mob.

In a sworn statement from 2014, Shane Cross said that "leading up to his disappearance our conversations became focused on his fantasy of being in the Russian mob as a Hitman or Assassin.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
For those who wish to escape the maddening crowd while on vacation, a new travel study has revealed alternative destinations to the most popular tourist spots across the world.

The study undertaken by 'Skyscanner' has crunched the data from 50 million unique monthly users across their website and mobile app to suggest alternative destinations to holiday hotspots popular among Indians.

"We understand the frustration of arriving at your destination only to find a sea of selfie sticks. Avoid the push and shove this year with our top pick of alternative holiday destinations," the search engine said.

According to their data, Mongolia is a "rustic beautiful" alternative to the massively populated China, which is believed to be home to an incredible combination of cultures, languages and cuisines.

"So far in 2016 there are 32 times less travellers searching for flights to Mongolia than China," the study reveals.

With one of the lowest population densities in the world, Mongolia is best known for its Nadaam festival, an annual affair that blends the place's "sporting tradition with its ornamental aspects."



A trip across the Gobi Desert on reindeers and camels as well as tasting the fermented mare's milk are among the most recommended activities.

To avoid the bustling streets of Italy, Skyscanner suggests one takes a 90 minute-drive from Milan to Lake Como.

Often considered to be one of the most luxurious destinations in the Mediterranean country, Lake Como's shores are lined with exorbitant villas and hotels.

Set against the rugged, forested foothills of the Alps, a boat ride across the lake is the best way to soak in the green lush mountains, the study said.

Thailand is perhaps the most popular foreign destination among Indian travellers, which explains the overwhelming Indian crowd populating the South East Asian country.

Known for its tropical beaches, opulent royal palaces, ancient ruins and ornate temples, the country witnesses the maximum number of visitors in Bangkok for shopping, Pattaya for nightlife and Koh Samui for the sea.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bangladesh's Cabinet today approved a draft law with a provision of life imprisonment and Tk 1 crore compensation for defaming the 1971 Liberation War against Pakistan and the country's founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

"The proposed law suggests that if anybody conducts propaganda against the War of Liberation and its spirit, Father of the Nation 'Bangabandhu' Sheikh Mujibur Rahman or the Liberation War issues, which are resolved by the court, through electronic media, he or she will suffer maximum life imprisonment and the minimum three-year imprisonment and the highest Taka 1 crore (about USD 1.27 lakh) fine or both the punishment," Cabinet Secretary Shafiul Alam told reporters.

Coming out of the Cabinet meeting, Alam said the proposed Digital Security Act-2016 prescribed punitive action of 14-year imprisonment for attacking or hacking into important information infrastructure like state-run airline Biman Airline's Cyber Management, using digital devices.

Officials earlier said the proposed law sought to replace sections of the existing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) (Amendment) Act, 2013 - meant to deal with cybercrimes that could cause financial and administrative damage to the country.

They said the draft law would not replace the ICT Act but scrap provisions which were incorporated in the new proposal.

The new law has been proposed while Bangladesh already has Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Act-2006 in effect and it recently drafted Liberation War Crimes Denial Act-2016 to check distortion and denial of established historical facts related to the 1971 war against Pakistan.

The 1971 war was a revolution and armed conflict sparked by the rise of the Bengali nationalist and self-determination movement in then-East Pakistan.

It resulted in the independence of Bangladesh.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
V P Singh Badnore today took oath as the new Punjab Governor and also as Administrator of Chandigarh Administration here.

Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice S J Vazifdar administered the oath of office and secrecy to Badnore at Punjab Raj Bhawan here.

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal congratulated Badnore for becoming Punjab Governor and Administrator of UT Chandigarh.

Badnore, 69, replaces Kaptan Singh Solanki, who is the Governor of Haryana and was holding additional charge of Punjab Governor and Administrator of Chandigarh Administration since January 2015.

Badnore, who belongs to Bhilwara, was a four-time BJP legislator in the Rajasthan assembly. He was an MLA from 1977-80, 1985-90, 1993-98 and 1998-99. During his last term as MLA, he was the state Irrigation minister.

He was a member of the 13th and 14th Lok Sabha from 1999-2004 and from 2004-09.

In July 2010, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha.

A graduate in business management, he studied at Mayo College, Ajmer, and Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad.

Rajya Sabha records describe Badnore as an agriculturist, environmentalist, social worker, and sportsman.

He was the chairman of the special task force to rehabilitate tigers in Sariska (Rajasthan) from 2005-09 and a member of the empowered committee of forests and wildlife management in Rajasthan.

He is a widely travelled parliamentarian. He was a part of the Indian delegations to Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, Canada, in 1994 and in 2004 besides the Indian delegation of South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) to Pakistan.

A keen swimmer, he participated in national school-level swimming competitions.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bar Council of India has withdrawn the suspension of 126 Tamil Nadu lawyers, including leaders of various bar associations, who faced the action over their protest against amendments to the Advocates Act.

The decision was taken considering a letter written by Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (BCTP) to BCI Chairman Mannan Kumar Mishra about resumption of work by the lawyers subsequent to temporary withdrawal of their more than three-month-long protest.

This was stated in a communication sent by the BCI Chairman and Joint Secretary Ashok Kumar Pandey to BCTP Chairman D Selvam, BTCP sources said today.

The BCI had on July 24 suspended the lawyers and prohibited them from practising in any court or tribunal in the country for spearheading the protest against amendments to the disciplinary rules under the Advocates Act.

However, later it had stayed till today the suspension after the agitating lawyers announced temporary withdrawal of their stir on August 14. BCI had then directed BCTP to file a report with regard to attendance of lawyers in the courts.

In this backdrop, BCTP wrote to the Chairman of BCI informing him about resumption of work by the lawyers.

The BCI made it clear that the suspension would not be treated as misconduct on the part of suspended lawyers for any performance in future and it shall not adversely affect their career in anyway.

The lawyers have been opposing a notification issued by the Madras High Court in May last making amendments to existing rules under the Advocates Act with a view to ensure peaceful conduct of court proceedings and suggesting disciplinary action to be taken against erring advocates.

The court later constituted a judges' committee to look into the grievances of the lawyers and repeatedly urged the lawyers to give up their agitation and approach the panel.

It had also made it clear that practically the rules were already in abeyance for the time being in view of a Full Court's assurance that no action would be taken under the rules till they were reviewed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Belgian expatriate was sentenced to five years' jail in Singapore today for killing his five-year-old son last year while suffering from severe depression during a child custody battle.

Philippe Graffart, 42, was sentenced on a reduced charge of culpable homicide instead of murder, after psychiatric findings showed he had "diminished responsibility" for suffocating his son Keryan with a pillow in their apartment.

Murder is punishable by hanging in Singapore.

Judicial Commissioner Hoo Sheau Peng said she took into consideration the grievous nature of the offence, the fact that it had been committed against a vulnerable child, and the fact that the offender was the child's own parent.

"This sentence is necessary to show that the accused's actions are not to be condoned," Hoo said.

For culpable homicide without the intention of causing death, Graffart could have been jailed up to 10 years, caned and fined -- or any combination of the three penalties.

Graffart looked impassive when his sentence was read out, staring straight ahead at the judge.

Representatives from the French and Belgian embassies were present during the High Court hearing, as well as two of Graffart's former colleagues who briefly spoke to him before he was taken away to serve his sentence.

His Singaporean lawyer Ramesh Tiwary told AFP after the session that Keryan's death is something Graffart "will have to live with for the rest of his life."



Court documents showed Graffart was locked in a bitter custody battle over Keryan with his estranged French wife Gwendoline when he smothered the boy with a cushion after giving him a sedative on October 5, 2015.

After the killing he unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide by crashing his car before giving himself up to police.

The family had moved to Singapore from Luxembourg in September 2013 after Graffart, a financial executive, was transferred by his employer, European firm Nordea Investment Management.

Their marriage broke down early the following year.

At about lunchtime on October 5, 2015, Graffart was told about a development in his custody suit which left him distraught, court documents said.

That evening Graffart put Keryan to bed and prepared two sleeping pills for himself, but gave them to his son instead.

When the boy was asleep, Graffart placed a cushion over his son's head until he stopped moving.

After kissing his son goodbye, Graffart went on a drive and crashed his car on purpose on a highway after unbuckling his seatbelt. But the safety airbags saved his life.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NIA today filed a supplementary charge sheet in a special court here against a South Africa- based aide of fugitive mobster Dawood Ibrahim in last year's murder of two BJP leaders in Gujarat's Bharuch district which it said was part of a "larger conspiracy to target persons belonging to a particular section of society".

The document was submitted in the Court of Special NIA Judge P B Desai against Zahidmiyan Saikh, an absconding accused who originally hails from Bharuch. He is currently settled in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and is allegedly an associate of Dawood.

Zahidmiyan has been charged under sections 16, 18, 18 (B), 20 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder) and 153A (promoting enmity between different groups) of IPC.

NIA had on May 7 this year submitted charge sheet against 10 out of the 14 accused in the case. The anti-terror agency had then said charge sheets against two absconding accused -- Zahidmiyan and Javed Patel-- will be filed at a later date as probe against them was still continuing.

The Central agency has said its investigation revealed Zahidmiyan, a member of the "D-gang", as referred to by an arrested accused, Mohmad Yunus, had asked the latter to "kill Hindus involved in the 2002 Gujarat riots".

Zahidmiyan had contacted local modules in Bharuch as part of a "larger conspiracy to target persons belonging to a particular section of society, especially those with RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal or BJP background", the agency said.

He instigated others "to kill Hindus in the name of Islam" and to "extort money for the D-gang". Zahidmiyan also allegedly asked them "to identify some local churches as target for arson."



In its May 7 charge sheet, NIA said the murder of BJP's Shirish Bangali and Pragnesh Mistry "was part of a larger conspiracy in which the co-accused based in foreign countries conspired to kill and strike terror in the minds of people belonging to a particular section of society."



The central agency is yet to file a charge sheet against Javed, and two arrested accused, Abdul Samad and Nasir Khan Pathan, who are on bail.

Bangali, former President of Bharuch district BJP and a senior RSS member, and Mistry, General Secretary of the party's youth wing, Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha in the district, were shot dead by two unidentified gunmen on November 2, 2015.

Besides UAPA and IPC, some of the accused have also been booked under Arms Act and Gujarat Police Act.

Initially, Bharuch police and Gujarat ATS conducted the probe and termed the murders as an "act of terror". Following a request by the Gujarat Government, Union Home Ministry handed over the probe to NIA in December last.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The leaders of France, Germany and Italy insisted that Britain's decision to quit the European Union would not kill the bloc.

Speaking aboard an aircraft carrier anchored off the Italian island of Ventotene, one of the cradles of the dream of a united, integrated Europe, the leaders vowed to relaunch the European project in the wake of the shock.

"Many thought the EU was finished after but that is not how it is," Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said.

"We want to write a better page (in European history).

"It is easy to complain and find scapegoats and Europe is the perfect scapegoat. But it is also about peace, prosperity and freedom."

French President Francois Hollande said Europe was faced with a risk of "fragmentation and division" and needed a "new impulse" on three fronts: the economy, defence and security, including ensuring jobs and education opportunities for young people.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel recalled that the EU had been born from some of the "darkest moments" of European history and stressed the need to deliver "growth to ensure people have jobs and hope in the future."

The three leaders were speaking ahead of a working dinner aboard the Italian navy's Guiseppe Garibaldi aircraft carrier.

Renzi called the meeting in a bid to forge a common position on the way forward ahead of a summit of the 27 remaining EU states in Bratislava next month.

Europe's economic outlook, jihadist attacks, the refugee and migrant drama, the Syrian conflict, and relations with Russia and Turkey were also expected to be covered.

The vote has raised fears of similar referendums in other countries, particularly the Netherlands, which opposes changes to the EU to achieve closer integration.

Coming up with a road map acceptable to all will not be easy, with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia vowing after Britain's vote to draw up their own plans for a less centralised EU.

Renzi had earlier taken his guests to the grave of Altiero Spinelli, one of the founding fathers of the ideal of European integration.

Imprisoned on the island by the fascist government during World War II, Spinelli and fellow captive Ernesto Rossi co-wrote the "Ventotene manifesto" calling for a federation of European states.

The choice of the Garibaldi for the working dinner and press conference was also highly symbolic. The carrier is the flagship of the EU's "Sophia" mission against people trafficking in the Mediterranean.
Government bonds (G-Secs) slipped on selling pressure from banks and corporates, while the overnight call money rates turned higher following good demand from borrowing banks amid adequate liquidity in the banking system.

The 7.59 per cent government security maturing in 2026 declined to Rs 102.92 from Rs 103.3050 previously, while its yield rose to 7.16 per cent from 7.10 per cent.

The 7.59 per cent government security maturing in 2029 dipped to Rs 103.0125 from Rs 103.53, while its yield gained to 7.22 per cent from 7.16 per cent.

The 7.88 per cent government security maturing in 2030 fell to Rs 105.80 from Rs 106.2275, while its yield moved up to 7.20 per cent from 7.15 per cent.

The 7.61 per cent government security maturing in 2030, the 7.68 per cent government security maturing in 2023 and the 7.72 per cent government security maturing in 2025 also quoted lower to Rs 103.84, Rs 102.92 and Rs 103.25, respectively.

The overnight call money rates finished higher at 6.35 per cent from last weekends closing level of 6.00 per cent. It resumed higher at 6.55 per cent and moved in a range of 6.55 per cent and 6.30 per cent.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF), purchased securities worth Rs 33.53 billion in 7-bids at the overnight repo auction at a fixed rate of 6.50 per cent as on today.

Its sold securities worth Rs 12.76 billion from 14-bids at the 2-days reverse repo auction at a fixed rate of 6.00 per cent as on August 20.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pop star Britney Spears' forthcoming album "Glory" has surfaced online ahead of its August 26 release.

The record was stocked in a music store in Mexico nearly an entire week before its official release date and fans who got the copies spread them online, reported Ace Showbiz.

A fan shared on Twitter photos of "Glory" which showed collaborators on the set including Justin Tranter, Julia Michaels, Young Fyre, Sterling Fox, Oak, Phoebe Ryan, Burns, Nick Monson, Mattman & Robin, Cashmere Cat, Robopop and more.

"Glory" contains previously released songs "Private Show", "Do You Wanna Come Over?" and "Clumsy", and has the party theme.

"What You Need" is described as a blast of horns and southern flavor, "If I'm Dancing" channels Major Lazer's music while "Just Luv Me" channels Justin Bieber's latest hits.

"Coupure Electrique" reportedly features Spears, 34, singing in French throughout.

Spears' ninth studio album is expected to make its debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart next week.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance has introduced a new unit-linked insurance product Secure Bhavishya to protect and meet an individual's future financial needs.

It will help customers build-up a retirement fund which can be used to provide a steady post retirement income, a company statement said.

It offers capital protection by way of minimum guarantee of 101 per cent of all premiums paid as the maturity value, it said.

* * * * * *



Mahindra AMC launches new scheme



* Mahindra Asset Management Company today launched an open ended scheme, which will generate long-term capital appreciation through a diversified portfolio of equity and equity related securities.

Mahindra Mutual Fund Kar Bachat Yojana -- an open ended ELSS Scheme -- with a three year lock-in period. The New Fund Offer would close on October 7, this year and will reopen for continuous sale and repurchase from October 19, 2016.

"This Yojana is for those people who not only want to save tax but also wish to create a tax-free corpus through their long term investments," Mahindra AMC Chief Executive Ashutosh Bishnoi said in a statement.

Mahindra AMC, wholly-owned subsidiary of Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services, received markets regulator Sebi's approval in February to set up mutual fund business.

* * * * * *



JK Tyre rolls out 10 millionth truck/bus radial tyre * Tyre maker JK Tyre and Industries has crossed 1 crore cumulative production milestone for truck/bus radial tyres, becoming the first Indian tyre company to achieve such feat.

The company today rolled out the 10 millionth truck radial tyre from its Vikrant plant in Mysuru.

JK Tyre had taken over this plant from the Karnataka government in the late 1990s and turned it around into a modern plant with an investment of over Rs 1,200 crore.

"Starting in 1977, when we set up our first tyre plant in Rajasthan with 5 lakh per annum capacity, we have come a long way and today JK Tyre has grown multifold," JK Tyre CMD Raghupati Singhania said in a statement.

Over the years the company has set up new plants, expanded capacities at regular intervals and even acquired plants across continents like the ones in Mexico, and recently the plants of Cavendish Industries in Uttarakhand, back home to keep pace with the increase in demand of tyres in the domestic as well as global markets, he added.

Huawei in pact with Honeywell for smart building offerings



* Huawei today announced a collaboration with Honeywell to bring to market smart building offerings that take advantage of the latest Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to make buildings secure and energy efficient.

"Through the collaboration, the two companies will jointly pursue large-scale smart city projects globally to help city administrators build intelligent urban infrastructures that enable them to control costs while making their cities desirable and livable for their residents," a Huawei statement said.

*** *** ***



Ceat board approves re-appointment of Anant Goenka as MD * Tyre maker Ceat Ltd today re-appointed Anant Goenka as Managing Director for another five years.

The Board of directors of the company at its meeting approved Goenka's reappointment from April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2022, Ceat Ltd said in a BSE filing.

The re-appointment, however, is subject to shareholders' approval at the ensuing general meeting of the company, it added.
The NDA-led Central government or BJP should not be blamed for various incidents of atrocities on Dalits in the states, Union Minister Hansraj Ahir said today.

"It is unfortunate that during last two and half years of the Modi government's rule, the Opposition could not find anything. It was unfortunate that an incident against Dalits occurred in Gujarat," the Minister of State for Home Affairs told reporters here.

"But is the Union government responsible for it (Dalit atrocities)? Is the party (BJP) responsible for it?," he asked.

Ahir said it was unfortunate that the Opposition tried to "make it (Dalit atrocities) a big issue against the Centre".

"BJP has already made it clear that they do not support such actions against Dalits. Even Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) made the statement from an open platform on the issue," said the minister.

Ahir said the Centre was working towards "reducing atrocities on Dalits."



Speaking about the demand for beef ban, the Union minister said, "Beef eating practise has been going on since long. It did not start during our tenure. We still consider cow as 'Gaumata'. When there was a ban on beef in Maharashtra, we supported it."



He said the issue of transporting cows or buffaloes by vehicles for slaughtering has to be handled by the respective state governments.

"There are enough laws which can be invoked to stop such transportation," Ahir added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China today opposed Taiwan's reported plans to join the UN saying only "sovereign states" can apply for a membership of the top world body and the communist-nation is firmly opposed to any attempts by Taipei to seek independence.

China firmly opposes any acts or words supporting "Taiwan independence," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in response to a question about Taiwan's possible application for UN membership.

He was reacting to reports from Taipei that Tsai Ming Shian, a senior member of the "Taiwan United Nations Alliance," asked Taiwan's new President Tsai Ing-Wen to write to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to apply for membership last week.

It is known to all that the UN is an inter-governmental organisation consisting of sovereign states.

"Only a sovereign state can apply for a membership," Lu told a media briefing here.

There is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is a part of China,Lu said.

The Chinese government and people firmly oppose any form of "Taiwan independence" secessionist activities, Lu said.

"Any attempt to challenge the 'one-China policy' or create 'two Chinas' or 'one China, one Taiwan' will not succeed," he said.

China claims Taiwan as part of the mainland never recognised Taiwan's estrangement in 1949.

Taiwan, which enjoys close ties with US has been carrying out military buildup to deter any threat from China. Relations between the two sides which showed significant improvement in recent years took a hit after election of Tsai defeating Ma Ying-Jeou who promoted normalisation of ties between the two sides in recent election.

China has scaled down the normalisation process since then.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Chhattisgarh Assembly on Monday witnessed uproar over statements of some BJP MLAs who blamed Jawaharlal Nehru for the Kashmir problem.

The special day-long session had been called to ratify the Constitution Amendment Bill on GST.

While senior BJP MLA Devjibhai Patel was speaking on the uniformity in taxation system from "Kashmir to Kanyakumari" which GST would bring, a Congress member mentioned the ongoing turmoil in Kashmir.

Patel said the country's first Prime Minister was responsible for the problems in Kashmir, to which the Congress MLAs objected.

Another ruling party MLA, Shivratan Sharma, said the country is still suffering consequences of Nehru's decisions on Kashmir and he was solely responsible for Kashmir problem.

State Congress chief Bhupesh Baghel said such comments were highly objectionable. Echoing him, the leader of opposition T S Singhdeo referred to a book by a former IAS officer to state that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had argued that Kashmir, being a Muslim-majority area, should go to Pakistan.

It was Nehru who sent troops when the Pakistani tribesmen advanced in the valley, he pointed out.

Singhdeo also said his party was ready for discussion on the issue, to which Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ajay Chandrakar said BJP too was ready for the same. But the Speaker pacified both of them.

Later, during his reply to the discussion on GST, Chief Minister Raman Singh stressed that Sardar Patel had never said that Kashmir should have been a part of Pakistan.

Patel merged the princely states with Union of India, and credit for the present shape of India goes to him, he said.

Singh also made a comment about rulers of the princely states, to which Singhdeo took objection.

Raman Singh said he was ready to hold a discussion on Kashmir issue in the Assembly. However, the issue was not further discussed and the GST bill was ratified unanimously.
Congress MLA Nitesh Rane today warned of launching an agitation if the Maharashtra government fails to provide toll exemption to commuters visiting Konkan region via Mumbai-Pune Expressway for the upcoming Ganesh festival.

Rane had recently written to the Maharashtra PWD ministry seeking the toll exemption.

"It has been almost three weeks since I wrote the letter to the Maharashtra PWD Ministry seeking the toll exemption," Nitesh, son of former Maharashtra chief minister Narayan Rane, told reporters here.

"But, unfortunately, no response has been given to me yet. This forces me to assume that the government is not willing to provide toll relief to people of the Konkan region," he said.

"If the demands are not met, especially in the backdrop of the bridge collapse at Mahad, I will come out with my supporters at the toll plazas (on the E-way) and oppose levying of the toll," said the MLA, who represents Kankawali Assembly Constituency in Sindhudurg district.

Rane also asked bus drivers to display a banner with Konkan written on it at the the front side of windscreen.

"After the bridge collapse at Mahad, people are forced to take the E-way to reach Konkan, which has already compounded their problems," he claimed.

As per the MLA, people are using the E-way also because of the "inefficiency" of the Maharashtra government in properly maintaining and improving the Mumbai-Goa Highway.

"During the (recently-concluded) Assembly session, the government had told the Legislature that the condition of Mumbai-Goa highway, currently riddled with huge potholes, will be improved before the Ganeshotsav season. But, the government failed to live up to its promise," he alleged.

"Why should the people pay toll at the Mumbai-Pune Expressway because of the inefficiency of the government? The Mahad tragedy on the Mumbai-Goa highway has only worsened the condition of travellers, who will now be forced to use the Mumbai-Pune expressway in large numbers," he said.

A large number of people, mainly those hailing from Konkan and employed in Mumbai, head to their villages in the coastal districts to celebrate the 10-day festival.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Deadly clashes raged today between pro-Iran rebels and Yemeni government forces battling to secure an entrance to the besieged city of Taez, military sources said.

Backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition, Yemeni troops launched an offensive last week to break the rebel siege on Yemen's flashpoint third city, in the country's southwest.

The heaviest fighting today was near its western entrance where air strikes by the Arab coalition and ground battles left 11 dead among Huthi rebels and their allies, loyalist military sources said.

An air raid killed two more rebels at the northern entrance to Taez, which has been encircled for more than year, the sources said.

AFP could not confirm the toll from independent sources and the Iran-backed rebels rarely acknowledge their losses.

"The blockade of Taez is almost broken after the retaking of Jabal al-Dhabab mountain" by loyalist forces, Colonel Abdulaziz al-Majidi, a spokesman of pro-government forces in the area, told AFP.

"The road is now open between the west of Taez and southern provinces," he said, adding however that he was referring to a "rugged" route and not the main road.

The main road linking Taez to the south is still under rebel control.

Southern provinces are held by loyalist forces, while the rebels control the capital Sanaa, as well as the north and much of western Yemen.

Tens of thousands of civilians are said to be caught in the fierce and protracted battle for Taez.

Despite the latest loyalist advances, mines planted by the rebels around the city are so far hampering the delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid to Taez, according to military sources.

But dozens of residents have been using the sole open road, even before demining operations have been completed, to reach villages along the western outskirts, the sources added.

Yemen has been hit by unrest since the Huthi rebels and allied forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh overran Sanaa in September 2014.

Violence escalated after the Saudi-led coalition launched a military campaign in March last year to shore up the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

The UN says more than 6,600 people, mostly civilians, have since been killed and more than 80 percent of the population left in need of humanitarian aid.

The official sabanew.Net website reported today that local charities have distributed around 40 tonnes of food supplies funded by Qatari businessmen to some 1,000 families across Taez province.

In Saudi Arabia, where rebel attacks on the kingdom's side of the border intensified this month, civil defence authorities said three foreign residents were wounded today in shelling from Yemen on the city of Najran.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his Russian counterpart and close ally Vladimir Putin wants to host an Israeli-Palestinian summit to revive peace talks, in an interview published today.

Sisi told state newspaper editors that he believed Israel was increasingly convinced of the need for a peace deal, saying it was a "positive sign."



But Palestinian infighting between the Islamist Hamas rulers of Gaza and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah in the West Bank remained an obstacle, he said in the interview.

Talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas have been suspended since 2014, despite a push by Washington and France to resume the peace process.

Sisi, who is seen as having good ties with both Israel and Abbas's Palestinian Authority, has also been pushing for a resumption of negotiations.

"Putin has told me that he is ready to receive both (Abbas) and Netanyahu in Moscow to carry out direct talks to find a solution and solve the issue," Sisi said.

"I see that the conviction of the importance of peace is rising among the Israeli side, and the conviction about finding an exit to the issue is a positive sign.

"At the same time, it is important to end the Palestinian-Palestinian rift... And to have national reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas so that the climate be ready for real efforts to establish a state," he said.

Sisi said last month that his country was making serious efforts to break the deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians.

His remarks followed a trip by Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to Israel, the first in nine years.

Egypt became in 1979 the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, after four wars.

Netanyahu has called on Palestinians to engage in direct negotiations with Israel, but Palestinian leaders say years of talks have not ended Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

Abbas has instead tried to put pressure on Israel through diplomacy at the UN.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Top economist and RBI's former deputy governor Rakesh Mohan has been named senior fellow at the prestigious Yale University's institute for global affairs.

Mohan will join the 2016-2017 class of 15 Senior Fellows at The Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Senior Fellows are leading practitioners in various fields of international affairs who spend a year or semester at Yale teaching courses and mentoring students.

At Jackson, Mohan will teach courses on central banking and the Indian economy, the institute said in a statement.

The institute described Mohan as one of India's "senior-most economic policymakers" and an expert on central banking, monetary policy, infrastructure and urban affairs.

Most recently he was executive director at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, representing India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan, and chairman of the Indian government's National Transport Development Policy Committee.

Reserve Bank of India's deputy governor Urjit Patel has been appointed as the next Governor of the central bank after Rajan demits office on September 4. However, Mohan was reportedly among the front-runners to bag the coveted job.

Mohan has previously taught at Yale as Professor in the Practice of International Economics of Finance at its School of Management. He has also been a past Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute.

As deputy governor of India's central bank from September 2002 to October 2004 and July 2005 to June 2009, he was in charge of monetary policy, financial markets, economic research and statistics.

In addition to serving in various posts for the Indian government, including representing India at a variety of international forums such G20, Mohan has worked for the World Bank and headed prestigious research institutes. He is also a Non Resident Senior Research Fellow of Stanford Centre for International Development, Stanford University, and Distinguished Fellow of Brookings India.

Mohan holds a B Sc in Electrical Engineering from Imperial



College, University of London, a B.A. From Yale University and a Ph.D in Economics from Princeton.

During the period October 31, 2004, to July 2, 2005, he was Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs. He has held several positions in the Indian government and was Chief Economic Advisor in 2001-02.

The other senior fellows include Blair Miller, who leads impact investing for the office of Ray Chambers, the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Malaria, where they are developing a large scale impact investment fund for emerging markets and Ambassador Dennis Ross, former special assistant to President Barack Obama and National Security Council senior director for the Central Region.

The new fellows will be joining returning fellows -- Director of the Financial Stability Department at the Central Bank of Iceland Sigridur Benediktsdottir, former CEO of the Clinton Foundation Eric Braverman, New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks, former US Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo, former Ambassador to Syria Ambassador Robert Ford, former International President of Doctors Without Borders Unni Karunakara and former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia Steve Roach.

The Jackson Institute for Global Affairs promotes education and scholarship on global affairs at Yale.

It serves the entire university through courses and core teaching programmes in global affairs, career counselling, and public lectures, according to the institute's website.
A man in Sheikhpura village here was attacked allegedly by his daughter's in-laws after he pressed that the girl, who had eloped and married, return to her paternal home, police said today.

The victim's daughter Imrana (25) had eloped with Abdullah (28) on July 26. Trouble started after they returned to the village as a couple yesterday, police said.

Police said on hearing of their return, the victim rushed to Abdullah's house and accused him of keeping his daughter captive.

Furious with the allegations, Abdullah's family pelted stones on him, police said.

Cases have been lodged by both parties against each other. No arrests have been made as yet, police said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Supreme Court today asked a lawyer, who has filed a PIL for the release of about 300 persons from mental hospitals alleging they were still languishing despite being cured, to file a fresh plea to make all such hospitals in the country as parties to the ongoing suit.

"You file an impleadment application, then we will hear it (PIL)," a bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said.

The court had earlier issued notices to six states on the PIL, filed by lawyer Gaurav Kumar Bansal, seeking release of nearly 300 persons, who are still languishing in mental hospitals in Uttar Pradesh despite being cured of their ailments.

Today, the lawyer showed some "horrible photographs of mentally ill patients staying in a pathetic conditions in Behrampore Mental Hospital" and sought a direction that all mental hospitals be made parties to the ongoing petition.

The apex court had earlier sought responses from Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir and Meghalaya on the PIL seeking release of people, now fit for discharge from mental hospitals, and steps to ensure their social security post-discharge.

The PIL has alleged that many underprivileged persons were still languishing in mental hospitals despite being cured and that there was no policy in place to ensure their well- being after release.

The plea also referred to responses received under RTI with regard to the release of persons languishing in mental hospitals at Bareilly, Varanasi and Agra in Uttar Pradesh even after being cured.

The queries, which were posed under transparency law to Mental Health Hospital, Bareilly, Institute of Mental Health and Hospital, Agra and Mental Hospital, Varanasi, pertained to names, residential address and age of the patients who are now normal and waiting for discharge from hospitals.

Bansal had also sought information about the year in which the patients were declared fit for the discharge.

The plea has sought issuance of directions to states and others to "forthwith make arrangements to shift the patients, who are absolutely normal and are fit for discharge, from the mental hospitals to any other secure place like Old Age Homes etc.

The apex court also asked the government to place before



it the guidelines or scheme for its consideration and posted the matter for hearing after eight weeks.

The court was hearing a PIL filed by advocate G K Bansal who has raised the issue of release of about 300 persons from various mental hospitals in Uttar Pradesh, alleging they were still languishing there despite being cured of their ailments and most of them belonged to poorer sections.

The apex court had earlier favoured framing of a uniform national policy to deal with those suffering from mental illness and their release from hospitals after being cured.

It had issued notice to the Union Health Ministry, saying the issue figured in the concurrent list of the Constitution and hence the Centre also has the authority to frame norms.

The PIL has alleged that many underprivileged persons were still languishing in mental hospitals despite being cured and there was no policy in place to ensure their well-being after release.

The plea has also referred to responses received under the RTI with regard to the release of persons living in mental hospitals at Bareilly, Varanasi and Agra in Uttar Pradesh even after being cured.

The queries, which were posed under transparency law to Mental Health Hospital, Bareilly, Institute of Mental Health and Hospital, Agra and Mental Hospital, Varanasi, pertained to names, residential address and age of the patients who were now normal and waiting for discharge from these hospitals.

Bansal had also sought information about the year in which the patients were declared fit for discharge.

The plea has sought issuance of directions to states and others to "forthwith make arrangements to shift the patients, who are absolutely normal and are fit for discharge, from the mental hospitals to any other secure place like Old Age Homes etc.
The Centre tonight rushed 10 NDRF teams to flood-hit areas of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in order to launch massive relief and rescue operations to help those marooned in these states.

NDRF Director General O P Singh told PTI that while five teams are being airlifted for immediate deployment from its base in Odisha to Uttar Pradesh, the rest five are being picked by choppers from Bathinda in Punjab and will be sent to Bihar.

"These fresh teams will be launched into operation by early tomorrow," the DG said, adding they would be equipped with boats and essential items like medicines.

Singh said the teams will be in addition to the 56 such contingents which are undertaking flood combat operations in these two states, besides Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The DG also briefed Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh with full updates of the flood situation in these states late in the night.

In order to launch massive operations in the two worst-affected states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the NDRF has created on-ground control rooms in these two states and deputed two senior Deputy Inspectors General (DIGs) S S Guleria (Patna) and R K Rana (Varanasi) to take control of the situation.

Earlier in the day, the NDRF said it had rescued more than 26,000 people from the flood-ravaged areas of these states.

"So far, the NDRF teams have evacuated more than 26,400 people from various flood-prone areas in the country this monsoon season. Besides the rescue work, these teams have provided medical care to the more than 9,100 people in these States," the NDRF said.

In Bihar yesterday, NDRF teams evacuated 3,400 people from Didarganj, 580 from Bakhtiyarpur, 545 from Danapur, 380 from Chhapra, 355 from Vaishali and 15 from Maner in Patna.

The NDRF said 11 flood rescue teams rescued 275 people from Ballia, 275 from Varanasi and 325 from Chitrakoot in UP on yesterday.

Nearly 150 marooned people were shifted to safer places from Rewa district in Madhya Pradesh on Sunday.

"An NDRF team pre-positioned in Sikkim conducted similar operations in Tingbung and Lingdang villages and evacuated more than 450 people on Sunday," it said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised full support to these flood-hit states in the conduct of rescue and relief operations.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh is closely monitoring the situation and had telephonic conversation with Chief Ministers Akhilesh Yadav (UP), Harish Rawat (Uttarakhand), Nitish Kumar (Bihar) and Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan) and took stock of the flood situation in the states.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Former Mumbai Mayor Hareshwar Patil, who had left Shiv Sena for Congress a few years ago, joined on Monday.

BJP's Mumbai chief Ashish Shelar was present to welcome Patil to the party fold. As a member of Shiv Sena, Patil had served as the Mayor and Chairman of Standing committee of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, a statement by here said.

"I decided to join as the schemes undertaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi are of immense benefit to the common man. I will work hard to fulfil his commitments to the people," the release quoted Patil as saying.
Shares of Fortis Malar Hospitals surged almost 20 per cent today following Fortis Healthcare board's approving demerger of its diagnostics business into the group firm.

The scrip advanced by 19.96 per cent to settle at Rs 68.50 - its upper circuit limit - on BSE.

Shares of Fortis Healthcare however, fell by 3.12 per cent to close the day at Rs 181.95.

Fortis Healthcare on Friday said its board has approved demerger of its diagnostics business into another group firm Fortis Malar Hospitals, a move aimed at ensuring independent growth of hospital as well as diagnostics business verticals.

Company's board approved a proposal to demerge its diagnostics business, including that housed in its subsidiary SRL Ltd into another majority-owned subsidiary, Fortis Malar Hospitals pursuant to a composite scheme of arrangement and amalgamation, Fortis Healthcare had said in a regulatory filing.

As part of the process, Fortis Malar will sell its hospital business to Fortis Healthcare by way of a slump sale for a lump sum cash consideration of Rs 43 crore.

"Upon the composite scheme becoming effective, and subject to receipt of requisite regulatory and statutory approvals, the diagnostics business of Fortis Healthcare, including that housed in SRL would be vested in Fortis Malar," it said.

The name of Fortis Malar will subsequently be changed to SRL, the company which is proposed to be listed on NSE in addition to its current listing on BSE, it added. Fortis Malar operates a hospital in Chennai.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two fresh petitions were filed on Monday in the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court order upholding the ban on beef imposed by Maharashtra government through an enactment.

The pleas filed by All India Jamiatul Quresh of Maharashtra and Delhi respectively alleged that politics was being played on the issue of slaughtering cows.

They also said the petitioner organisations respected cows and calves but the members of Qureshi community be allowed to slaughter bulls and bullocks who have crossed the age of 16 years as they are of no use to farmers.

The Bombay High Court had upheld the imposed by the state government after the enactment of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act banning the slaughter of bulls and bullocks, besides cows.

The high court, however, had said that mere possession of the meat cannot invite criminal action while striking down the relevant sections of the Act.

Earlier, Supreme Court had issued notice to Maharashtra government on a separate plea challenging the High Court verdict which held that mere possession of beef of animals slaughtered outside the state cannot invite criminal action.

The plea was filed by 'Akhil Bharat Krishi Goseva Sangh' which had told the apex court that they were challenging part of the May 6 verdict of the High Court which had said provisions of the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act was an infringement on the right to privacy of citizens and unconstitutional.

The high court order had come on a bunch of petitions challenging the provision of the law which had said that mere possession of beef in any place in the state is a crime.

According to the Act, slaughter attracts a five-year jail term and Rs 10,000 fine and possession of meat of bull or bullock leads to one-year jail and Rs 2,000 fine.
State-run lender Bank of Baroda Managing Director and CEO P S Jayakumar today said the onus of recovery is on the government and not Reserve Bank.

He said the government needs to pay vendors on time for services, ensure the projects perform and improve the legal system by upgrading enforcement processes.

"I think a lot of onus on the recovery is also on the government... Expecting the Governor of RBI to solve the problems is (not correct)... The real issue is elsewhere," he said, speaking at annual conference of the Indo American Chamber of Commerce here.

The chief of Bank of Baroda, which reported record losses in two immediate quarters after Jayakumar took over, complained that the government is the largest litigator in the country and most cases keep getting escalated.

Apart from this, there is a need for the government to look into asset resolution platforms like upgrading the Debt Recovery Tribunals and implementing the Bankruptcy Code at the earliest, he said.

Project delays was one of the most important pain points for banking system, which is facing a huge spike in NPAs (non performing assets), which has hurt profitability because of higher provisioning requirements.

Even Jayakumar alluded to the pain point by mentioning the National Highways Authority whose works getting stuck has led to NPAs.

State Bank of India Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya seemed to support Jayakumar, stating that a bulk of macroeconomic challenges have been settled and it is asset resolution which needs our attention now.

There should also be some focus on employment generation, she said, when asked for a reaction on the announcement of Urjit Patel as the next Governor of RBI.

She said the Government has started campaigns like the 'Make in India' and 'Digital India', and our focus now should be on what more needs to be done to ensure their success.

American brokerage Citi India chief economist Samiran Chakraborty said the focus should be to make it an investment demand-led recovery rather than a consumption-led one.

It will need up to five years for the credit growth to recover fully, he said.

Bhattacharya, however, said it will not take so long and estimated a time period of 2-3 years for the same.

She added the credit growth in FY17 will be better than that in FY16.

The country's largest lender is also mulling to upwardly revise its FY17 credit growth guidance to go over the initially estimated 12 per cent.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi High Court today refrained from passing any interim direction to allow BJP MLA O P Sharma to attend the Delhi assembly session which commenced today.

Sharma was suspended from the assembly on March 31 for two sessions for allegedly making derogatory remarks against AAP legislator Alka Lamba.

"Let me sit in the assembly during the session. I will not even open my mouth," Sharma's lawyer told Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva who replied "cannot do that".

The court, thereafter, told the lawyer for Delhi government to take instructions on who would represent the Legislative Assembly and listed the matter for hearing tomorrow.

The direction came as no one till date has appeared before the court on behalf of the assembly.

It has been argued by Sharma's counsel that the assembly cannot be represented by Delhi government, which has in turn contended that the assembly cannot be made a party.

Today, the bench observed that the assembly can be made a party and can be represented by the Delhi government.

However, the lawyer for the government said he has not received any instructions regarding this.

The request on behalf of Sharma to be allowed to attend the session came during the brief hearing of his plea challenging his suspension. His lawyer contended that Sharma has apologised and so has his party.

The Delhi government on the last date had alleged that Sharma in the past too had engaged in "immoral, violent and appalling behaviour", while opposing the maintainability of Sharma's plea challenging his suspension.

The AAP government's response had come in the backdrop of



a court notice issued to it in June this year after the parties failed to settle the matter amicably.

Denying the charge, Sharma's lawyer had said the decision of the Delhi assembly to suspend him was "patently illegal" as it infringed upon his freedom of speech privilege.

The AAP government had earlier told the court that Sharma has not "regretted" what he had said about Lamba.

Referring to a report of an Ethics Committee of the Delhi assembly on the issue, the government had said that Sharma was given chances to express regret on his remarks but had refused.

The Ethics Committee had "unanimously" recommended stripping Sharma of his assembly membership for his remarks against Lamba and being "unrepentant" about it.

Sharma had earlier said "my intention was not to hurt Lamba as she is like my sister, but if she felt offended I express regret over it".
A Hungarian state honour given to a prominent journalist close to Prime Minister Viktor Orban but seen by his critics as "racist" has prompted several dozen recipients of the same award to return theirs in protest.

The journalist Zsolt Bayer was one of several Hungarian citizens handed an Order of Merit of the Knight's Cross by President Janos Ader on Thursday, to mark one of Hungary's national days.

By late yesterday, according to Hungarian media, some 44 previous recipients of the decoration including scientists, artists and academics, had declared they were returning their own awards in protest.

An occasional columnist for the right-wing Magyar Hirlap daily, Bayer has often been photographed in Orban's company, and co-founded a civil group that has organised massive pro-government street demonstrations.

He has in the past compared the Roma people, Hungary's 600,000- to 700,000-strong largest minority group, to "animals", and written remarks deemed anti-Semitic in a country with a Jewish community estimated at over 100,000.

The head of Hungary's largest Jewish organisation Mazsihisz, Andras Heisler, said he too was handing back his award given to him in 2011 as he did not want to belong to the same "group of people" as Bayer.

The journalist "is a racist, an anti-Semite, who pollutes Hungary with his incandescent Gypsy-hatred and nation-destroying ideas," Heisler wrote in a Facebook message yesterday.

In 2013 the Magyar Hirlap newspaper was fined around USD 1,000 by Hungary's media regulator for publishing Bayer's anti-Roma comments.

"They are not suitable for being among people. Most are animals, and behave like animals," the journalist wrote at the time.

Bayer's award was given for his work with a body representing victims of Communism, Orban's office said in a weekend statement, adding that there were no plans to withdraw the honour.

Bayer was also decorated however for his "exemplary journalistic activity," according to the government's official legal gazette Magyar Kozlony published late yesterday.

Bayer himself said he didn't understand why other recipients were giving up their awards and that his quotes were misinterpreted and taken out of context.

"I don't really get how people can be so shut off in their own closed, narrow, sad worlds," he told a television programme in reaction to the protests.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bollywood actress Jacqueline Fernandez says she was initially scared of 7-feet high Australian actor and retired professional wrestler Nathan Jones, but later bonded well while working on "A Flying Jatt".

Jones, who was seen in Hollywood movies like "Mad Max: Fury Road", "Troy", "The Condemned" and a Tamil film last year, has forayed into Bollywood with "A Flying Jatt".

"First time when I saw Nathan, he looked scary. I used to talk to Nathan about Hollywood, I would ask him about how it is working with this or that actor or actress. We used to gossip about Hollywood. It was cool. I enjoyed his company," Jacqueline told PTI.

The "Kick" actress reveals both her co stars from "A Flying Jatt" - Nathan and Tiger Shroff are introverts.

"Both Tiger and Nathan are introverts. But when you put them in front of camera Nathan would scream, shout and Tiger would become a superhero so he did action and stuff. It is just amazing to work with people like that. They are nice and calm people," the 31-year-old actress said.

In Remo D'Souza directed superhero film " A Flying Jatt", Jacqueline will be seen romancing Tiger.

"Romance can look sparkling even if the actors have not spoken to each other. Sparks can happen on screen even if you don't know the opposite person well. Even though Tiger is an introvert, we had some common things between us like fitness and we both are driven by our work," she said.

Jacqueline said the "Heropanti" actor is someone who gives you space and respect.

"Once the camera is on, we got into our character so easily and we were also comfortably while romancing with each other on screen. Tiger is funny and thoughtful and dreams a lot," Jacqueline said.

"I found the idea amusing. I felt it was a creative and different idea. When he (Remo) narrated the role to me I found the character (of Tiger) cute and adorable. It (superhero film) was something I had not done," she said.

"Superhero films are not made often and considering they are family entertainers I was excited to be part of the film," Jacqueline added.

The "Housefull 3" actress says she was never apprehensive



about playing a superhero's love interest in the film.

"I have grown up watching superhero and fairy tale stories. Superhero has a love interest. It's a rare thing to play characters like that.

"Especially now as lot of different parts are written. It is all fantasy as you get to romance a superhero and fly. I wanted to do a film like this," Jacqueline said.
"Whiplash" star Miles Teller says he prepares extensively for each role he signs on despite having the reputation for being effortless on-screen.

The 29-year-old actor's 'War Dogs' director Todd Phillips recently said Teller looks like "almost as if he doesn't have to try" but the actor seems to disagree with him.

"It's frustrating when people say that because an actor's greatest tool is his preparation and I've always felt like I do as much prep as anybody," Teller told The Observer Magazine when asked about Phillips' comments.

Teller and Jonah Hill, 32, star in the real-life inspired drama about two stoners who won a USD 300 million contract with the Pentagon to supply US allies with arms in Afghanistan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Twice a year, a normally deserted border checkpoint high on the Tibetan plateau throngs with activity as traders from Nepal flock to do business with their giant northern neighbour .

A biannual trade fair in Tibet offers a rare opportunity for those living in the remote former Buddhist kingdom of Upper Mustang in Nepal to cross the usually closed border into China, which is cultivating closer ties with the Himalayan nation.

"This trade is very important for us because we live in such an isolated area," said trucker Pasang Gurung, who was driving to for the fair.

"Access to Chinese customers and products makes our lives much easier... I wish the border were open all the time."

The border is usually closed for security reasons as Upper Mustang has history as a base for the Tibetan resistance.

But authorities in Nepal are increasingly looked to strengthen economic ties with and reduce its dependence on its other giant neighbour India.

But it will have a long way to go in order to accomplish that. Bilateral trade with India between July 2014 and June 2015 amounted to nearly $4.5 billion, dwarfing China's $882 million.

An energy agreement between Kathmandu and Beijing in March ended India's monopoly over fuel supplies to Nepal, although it remains the biggest supplier by far.

That deal was prompted by a months-long blockade at the border with India to protest the terms of a new national constitution that led New Delhi to halt supplies, leading to crippling shortages.

Kathmandu accused New Delhi of imposing an "unofficial blockade" in support of the protesters, an ethnic community that shares close family links with Indians across the border  a claim India denied.

Sujeev Shakya, chairman of the Nepal Economic Forum think tank, says that even before the blockade India had a reputation in Nepal for being slow to deliver.

A number of Indian hydropower projects have stalled due to disagreements over the terms of the deal, while China has pressed ahead.

One 60-megawatt power plant is under construction and a 750-megawatt joint venture worth $1.6 billion is due for completion by December 2019.

"The perception here is that the Chinese tend to deliver while India keeps talking," Shakya told AFP.

"Over the years, China has gained more credibility in Nepal because of the pace at which they have put up infrastructure projects.
Russia has stopped using an Iranian air base for launching airstrikes on Syria for the time being, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said today, just hours after the Iranian defense minister criticized Moscow for having "kind of show-off and ungentlemanly" attitude by publicizing their actions.

There was no immediate response from Moscow, which had used the Shahid Nojeh Air Base to refuel its bombers striking Syria at least three times last week.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told reporters in Tehran that the Russian airstrikes on militants in Syria were "temporary, based on a Russian request."



"It is finished, for now," Ghasemi said, without elaborating.

Last week, Russia announced it used the airfield, located some 50 kilometers north of the Iranian city of Hamedan. Iranian officials only confirmed Russia's presence a day later.

Earlier Monday, state TV quoted Iran's defense minister as saying that Russia "will use the base for a very short and fixed span." The comments by Gen. Hossein Dehghan came after he chastised parliament this weekend for asking questions about Russia using the base.

Responding to a question about why Iran didn't initially announce Russia's presence at the airfield, Dehghan appeared prickly on the state TV broadcast.

"Russians are interested to show they are a superpower to guarantee their share in political future of Syria and, of course, there has been a kind of show-off and ungentlemanly (attitude) in this field," he said.

Dehghan's remarks also suggest Russia and Iran initially agreed to keep Moscow's use of the air base quiet. Its announcement likely worried Iran's Sunni-ruled Mideast neighbors, which host American military personnel.

The Interfax agency on Monday also quoted Russia's ambassador to Tehran, Levan Dzhagaryan, as confirming that all of Moscow's warplanes have been withdrawn from Iran.

Dzhagaryan said, however, that he does "not see any reason" why the Russians can't use the Iranian base again.

For Iran, allowing Russia to launch strikes from inside the country is likely to prove unpopular. Many still remember how Russia, alongside Britain, invaded and occupied Iran during World War II to secure oil fields and Allied supply lines. But while Britain withdrew, Russia refused to leave, sparking the first international rebuke by the nascent United Nations Security Council in 1946.

Analysts have suggested Russia potentially leveraged Iran into allowing it to use the airfield over either economic or military interests, such as Tehran wanting to purchase Sukhoi-30 fighter jets or its deployment of Russian S-300 air defense missile systems. Russia initially held off on supplying the missile system to Tehran amid negotiations over Iran's contested nuclear program.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Israel targeted Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip by air and with tank fire, injuring four people, after a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave crashed into the Israeli city of Sderot.

Police said the rocket hit "between two buildings on a road" in Sderot, which is less than four kilometres from Gaza, causing no casualties.

Army spokesman Peter Lerner said Israeli forces yesterday retaliated by hitting targets of the Palestinian Islamist movement in northern Gaza.

"In response to the rocket attack from the Gaza Strip, the IAF (Israeli air force) and tanks targeted two Hamas posts in the northern Gaza Strip," Lerner said in a statement.

Palestinian health and security sources said two people were lightly wounded by the Israeli fire.

"One of them is a 20-year-old (young man) who was hit by shrapnel in the face," said Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the Palestinian health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Later yesterday, two more Palestinians were wounded by further Israeli strikes in the area, Qudra added.

Security sources in the territory said several targets in northen Gaza were struck by Israeli fire, and that a reservoir in Beit Hanun was destroyed.

Witnesses said a base of Hamas's military wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, in nearby Beit Lahya, was also hit.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack on Sderot.

Israeli media said it was the first time downtown Sderot had been hit by a rocket from Gaza since the last war with Palestinian militants in the territory in 2014.

On July 2, Israeli air raids hit four sites in Gaza after a rocket struck a building in Sderot. There were no casualties in either incident.
A 43-year-old Indian migrant's release from police custody after he tried to abduct a small girl from a beach resort in Italy has sparked calls for his deportation.

Justice Minister Andrea Orlando has sent inspectors to the Ragusa city prosecutor's office after Ram Lubhaya was caught in the act of trying to abduct a 5-year-old girl off the beach near the Sicilian city of Ragusabut immediately released, because attempted kidnapping is a non-carcerable offence under Italian law.

The parents chased him down, and had to fight with him to get him to let go of their child. The man fled, but was arrested an hour later based on eyewitness descriptions, Ansa agency reported.

Prosecutor Giulia Bisello ordered the man - who has a criminal record, no residency permit, and currently makes a living giving henna tattoos on the beach where he also sometimes spends the night - released without questioning.

Her decision sparked an outcry on social media and a wave of calls from concerned beachgoers to police emergency services.

So Bisello had the suspect tracked down and rearrested.

However after questioning him for several hours, she ordered him released again, based on the legal code.

"This law makes me vomit," said the child's mother. "We were told the suspect did not conclude the crime - we were supposed to lose sight of him in order to say he kidnapped our little girl".

The suspect, she said, only stopped "because we tackled him. He was holding her very tight, with her face almost in his armpit. We were hoping this person would be deported from Italy at least".

While prosecutors' decisions can't be challenged, Orlando's inspectors are tasked with assessing whether there were any "abnormalities or violations of the law that could be subject to disciplinary action", the ministry said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today appealed to youth in turbulent Kashmir to shun violence and at the same time said security forces will have to act in self-defence if they are attacked.

Stating that a political solution to the problem in Jammu and Kashmir will have to be fond soon within the Constitutional parameters, Jaitley said security forces need not use force if the protests are peaceful.

"But if they bring weapons, explosives (and) attack security forces... Come in thousands and pelt stones on security forces, this constitutes an attack and security forces will have to act in self-defence," he told 'Aaj Tak' channel.

At an event in Jammu yesterday, Jaitley while acknowledging that the situation in Kashmir is "serious" asserted that there can be no compromise with those indulging in violence and described stone-pelters as "not satyagrahis but aggressors" who target police and security forces.

"I want to appeal to the youth of this country who have strayed on wrong path, that they should leave the wrong path as they will otherwise be a loser in the end," he said.

Jaitley also blamed Pakistan for not just training and funding terrorists but also for instigating the youth in Kashmir Valley.

"Security forces cannot lower their guard (against terrorists)," he said, adding, "Those who live by the gun, (will) perish (by the gun)."



On possible solution to the problem, he said separatists and terrorists will have to be isolated while needs of the common citizens in the Valley addressed compassionately.

"We have to take along the common citizen of Kashmir Valley. There cannot be any scope for any injustice to the public at large but at the same time there is also no room for any compassion for terrorists," he said.

On talks with Pakistan, he said the present government as well as the previous ones were of the view that dialogue with the neighbour has to continue but the issues to be discussed will be decided by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Jaitley said armed separatists receive "weapons, training as well as funding from Pakistan with a view to destabilise the country... There is evidence to this effect.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The wife of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has visited Pearl Harbor, bombed by Japanese planes nearly 75 years ago in an attack that brought the United States into World War II.

It was not clear exactly when Akie Abe made the visit. But she posted 11 pictures on her official Facebook page, apparently early today.

"I offered flowers and my prayers at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor," she wrote.

Her visit to the Hawaii memorial came just months after President Barack Obama journeyed to Hiroshima, the Japanese city where a US plane dropped the world's first atom bomb in the closing days of World War II.

Obama's trip to Hiroshima sparked speculation that Shinzo Abe could visit Pearl Harbor in response.

But top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga today denied that, while confirming the first lady was in Hawaii for a "private trip".

"There is no such plan for the prime minister to visit Hawaii," Suga said.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes swept low over the US naval base, killing more than 2,400 American troops and civilians, a date which then-president Franklin Roosevelt declared would live in "infamy".

The two-hour bombardment of the US Pacific Fleet at anchor sank or damaged some 20 ships and destroyed 164 planes.

Akie Abe is seen in one of the Facebook photos bowing before a wall on which the names of victims are inscribed.

"Many people must have given fresh thought to the bombed city of Hiroshima and the war after President Obama visited the city," she told the Gendai Business web magazine, which apparently accompanied her to Pearl Harbor.

"I am aware that there are various debates and views about Pearl Harbor, but I believe we must go beyond hatred and anger, and pass down these memories to following generations."



Abe is seen in Japan as playing a political role that complements her husband, sometimes by softening his hawkish image and at others by soothing his nationalist supporters.

She has visited Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honours millions of Japan's war dead as well as several senior figures convicted of war crimes after World War II.

Her husband has been forced to stay away from the shrine after making a visit there in December 2013.

The visit set off a firestorm of criticism in China and South Korea, and also earned a rare rebuke from top ally the United States.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A local court today awarded life sentence to suspended BJP leader Jitendra Swamy in connection with a case of abduction and murder of a man 16 years ago.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Awadhesh Kumar Dubey also slapped a fine of Rs 20,000 on Swamy, failing which he would have to serve another six months in jail.

The court had on August 11 convicted Swamy after finding him guilty for abduction and murder of Bharat Singh, brother of Damodar Singh who was the JD(U) candidate from Maharajganj assembly seat in 2000.

Bharat Singh was abducted on February 15, 2000 and his body recovered two days later following which the victim's kin had lodged an FIR against Swamy charging him with the murder of the former.

Swamy had been acquitted by a lower court in 2012, but the victim's kin then challenged the order in the Patna High Court which ordered re-trial of the case.

He had unsuccessfully contested the bypoll held for Maharajganj Lok Sabha seat on Congress ticket in 2013 following the death of his father Uma Shankar Singh, who was a sitting RJD MP from the parliamentary constituency.

He later joined the BJP and again unsuccessfully contested from Daraunda assembly seat in 2015.

Swamy was suspended by the party the day he was convicted in the case, Bihar BJP's chief spokesman Vinod Narayan Jha told PTI.

Jha said that party would take further action in view of Swamy being awarded life sentence in a murder case.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actress Lindsay Lohan is allegedly demanding 500,000 pounds and a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in exchange for doing an interview about her tumultuous romance with Egor Tarabasov on Russian TV.

The 30-year-old actress was invited to appear as a guest on Russia's most popular talk show, "Pust govoryat", which airs on state-owned station Channel 1, but will only agree if they meet her outrageous demands, according to TMZ.

Lohan wants "a private jet, security, a one-year Russian visa with extension, 500,000 British pounds, hair, makeup and manicurist on-board the jet, Ritz-Carlton penthouse suite" and a meeting with Putin.

Surprisingly, some of the demands have been agreed on and both parties are still in negotiations.

The show wants to do an interview with Lohan about her turbulent relationship with the 22-year-old Russian heir.

Lohan revealed she called off their engagement after a series of recent fights, including a violent altercation on a beach on Mykonos and a row at their London flat.

The dramatic scuffle in Greece, which was caught on camera, occurred following an argument in a car, during which Lohan hurled Egor's phone out of the window.

The flame-haired actress was reluctant to go into detail about the incident but suggested Tarabasov's judgement was clouded by alcohol.

The duo had another fight on the balcony of the flat they shared in Knightsbridge, London, which was also caught on camera.

During that incident, Lohan accused Tarabasov of assaulting her, shouting: "Please, please. He just strangled me. He almost killed me."



The police were subsequently called to the scene but no-one was charged.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Drug firm has received approval from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) for Acotiamide 100 mg tablets used for treatment of indigestion.

It said the company will shortly start promoting the product in India.

"Acotiamide is a first-in-class novel drug to be introduced into the Indian pharmaceutical market which could benefit millions of patients suffering from dyspepsia or indigestion, among the most common stomach complaints encountered in clinical practice," said in a BSE filing.

Acotiamide is approved by Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency Japan and is actively marketed in Japan, it added.

President Naresh Gupta said: "I am sure that the approval of Acotiamide would go a long way in addressing an otherwise common but unmet medical need for a safe and effective drug for the management of dyspepsia."

Acotiamide is approved for the treatment of post meal fullness, bloating and early satiety in functional dyspepsia by the CDSCO, the company said.

Shares of Lupin were trading 1.67 per cent down at Rs 1,550.95 on BSE.
Mizoram Governor Lt. General (Retd) Nirbhay Sharma today visited the only surviving member of Subash Chandra Bose's Indian National Army (INA) among the Mizos - Darthawma - living in south Mizoram's Lunglei town.

Sharma gave a memento to the 96-year-old freedom fighter and paid his respects.

In a felicitation function held at the Cultural Heritage Centre at Lunglei, the Governor said India attained Independence due to the sacrifices made by people like Darthawma.

Born on May 15 in 1920 at Pukpui Village near Lunglei, Darthawma was enrolled in the Indian Army Medical Corps during World War-II and was sent to Penang Island in Malaysia to fight against the Japanese Army.

He found himself on the losing side and among the Prisoners of War in Singapore taken by the Japanese Army.

When Bose visited their prison, he, among other soldiers, joined the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army - INA) to fight for India's Independence.

He fought against the British Army along with his INA comrades and Japanese soldiers in Burma before they surrendered to the British with the Japanese Army due to bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

He was tried for sedition and convicted for "waging war against the British".

After spending two months in Chittagong's jail and another year in Lucknow Jail, he was released due to intervention of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in 1945.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Anette Mattsson had bid 200,000 euros (USD 226,500) for a prized gray Arabian mare but soon stopped.

With the price rising rapidly and no sign of other bidders, she sensed that something strange was going on at the annual Pride of Poland sale on August 14.

Mattsson, a Swedish breeder with 27 years of auction experience, was not alone in suspecting something was off in the bidding for a purebred Arabian named Emira. In the week since, the sale has become a political scandal, making Emira a household name and prompting calls for a criminal investigation.

Whatever truly happened, the suspicions have dealt a blow to the reputation of an Arabian horse breeding program considered among the best in the world and which many Poles cherish as a national treasure.

Many people suspect that someone made fake bids to drive prices higher at the auction on the famed Janow Podlaski stud farm, a state-run enterprise in eastern Poland, an allegation the authorities strongly deny.

Those who suspect wrongdoing believe that state officials would have acted to ensure a successful auction, which was considered a major test of new management.

After Mattsson pulled out, Emira's price kept rising, finally declared as sold for 550,000 euros. Unlike the other sales that evening, no buyer was identified. At the end of the auction, Emira was brought back and put up for sale again. Mattsson said she saw that coming. Following her first, failed bid, a bid taker asked her how much she would pay for the mare.

"I said, 'well, you sold her.' He said again, 'how much are you willing to pay for Emira?'" Mattsson recalled.

Eventually she and another Polish official agreed on 200,000 euros and shook hands, only for him to back out a short while later. The mare was put up for auction again.

Mattson then placed the top bid, 225,000 euros, for a client in Qatar.

"Now people are saying that Polish sales are fake," said George Zbyszewski, the manager of Hennessey Arabians in Ocala, Florida. "This sale lost the stud's reputation. It was destroyed in one evening."



The program was fighting for its reputation after a political purge of three top breeders in February by the country's new right-wing government. Power shifts in Poland typically bring management changes in state enterprises, but the firing of the breeders was extremely controversial because it hit three respected professionals Marek Trela, Jerzy Bialobok and Anna Stojanowska who had worked for many years on the farms and produced world-class horses sought out by celebrities, Arab sheikhs and other millionaires.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NASA is planning to hand over the control of the International Space Station (ISS) to a commercial company around the mid 2020s, the US space agency has said.

"NASA's trying to develop economic development in low-earth orbit," said Bill Hill, NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development.

"Ultimately, our desire is to hand the space station over to either a commercial entity or some other commercial capability so that research can continue in low-Earth orbit," said Hill, speaking on a panel of NASA staff assembled to discuss the upcoming Mars mission.

The timing fits with the end of the US government's current funding of the ISS programme, which was extended by Obama administration from its original deorbiting date of 2016 through 2020, 'Tech Crunch' reported.

Operations were prolonged through 2024 to help give NASA a platform from which to run its near-Earth preparatory missions leading up to the ultimate manned mission to Mars.

However, NASA did not specify any potential buyer.

A new docking adapter is being put in place to support crew shuttle missions from Boeing and SpaceX, both of which are set to start shuttling personnel to the ISS in 2017.

SpaceX has been running resupply missions for the space station and NASA since 2012, and has completed nine such missions to date.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The search for habitable, alien worlds needs to make room for a second "Goldilocks," according to a new study which suggests that simply being in the habitable zone is not sufficient for planets to support life.

For decades, it has been thought that the key factor in determining whether a planet can support life was its distance from its sun.

In our solar system, for instance, Venus is too close to the Sun and Mars is too far, but Earth is just right. That distance is what scientists refer to as the "habitable zone," or the "Goldilocks zone."



It also was thought that planets were able to self-regulate their internal temperature via mantle convection - the underground shifting of rocks caused by internal heating and cooling.

A planet might start out too cold or too hot, but it would eventually settle into the right temperature.

The new study by researchers at Yale University in the US suggests that simply being in the habitable zone is not sufficient to support life. A planet also must start with an internal temperature that is just right.

"If you assemble all kinds of scientific data on how Earth has evolved in the past few billion years and try to make sense out of them, you eventually realise that mantle convection is rather indifferent to the internal temperature," said Jun Korenaga, professor of geology and geophysics at Yale.

Korenaga's general theoretical framework explains the degree of self-regulation expected for mantle convection and suggests that self-regulation is unlikely for Earth-like planets.

"The lack of the self-regulating mechanism has enormous implications for planetary habitability," Korenaga said.

"Studies on planetary formation suggest that planets like Earth form by multiple giant impacts, and the outcome of this highly random process is known to be very diverse," said Korenaga.

Such diversity of size and internal temperature would not hamper planetary evolution if there was self-regulating mantle convection, Korenaga said.

"What we take for granted on this planet, such as oceans and continents, would not exist if the internal temperature of Earth had not been in a certain range, and this means that the beginning of Earth's history cannot be too hot or too cold," Korenaga added.

The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The All Oil Tankers Association on Monday called off their strike after the government accepted their demands, and would resume the supply for the Jammu region from Monday.

"The government has agreed to accept our two demands of providing compensation to the injured truck drivers and for the damaged tankers, hence we have decided to call off our indefinite strike from Monday," President of the association, Anan Sharma said.

He said the services have been resumed for Jammu region only and "the decision to restore services for Kashmir and Ladakh would be taken only after the government assures us to provide security to our drivers and vehicles."



"Large number of our vehicles were damaged and drivers and cleaners were injured by stone pelting mob in various parts of the Kashmir Valley when they were transporting fuel. Though we faced no problems in Ladakh, the vehicles going to Ladakh have to travel from Kashmir Valley," Sharma said.

After several rounds of meetings with the government representatives which failed on Sunday, it accepted their demand on Monday.

"On Sunday, the government agreed toprovide compensation to the injured drivers and the damaged trucks but there was nothing in writing, today they have agreed to give it in writing so we have called off the strike," he said.

Deputy Commissioner Jammu, Simrandeep Singh said, the tankers' strike has been called off in Jammu and the petrol pumps will start getting supply in next two hours.

Regarding restoration of supplies to Kashmir and Ladakh, he said it too will follow within next 24 hours as some demands are being worked upon.

The life across Jammu region was crippled after the petrol pumps ran dry when the supply was stopped following the strike by the Oil Tankers Association on Saturday.

Long queues were seen outside petrol pumps on Sunday as people were desperate to get their vehicles refilled.
Opposition parties from Jammu and led by Omar Abdullah Monday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and appealed that a political approach needs to be adopted for resolving the present crisis in the Valley and to ensure that the "mistakes" of the past are not repeated.

Emerging after a 75-minute-long meeting, Omar, former Chief Minister of the state, told reporters that the Prime Minister listened to "us with patience and accepted our memorandum."



The 46-year-old Working President of Conference said they requested the Prime Minister for finding a political solution to the issue so that a lasting peace is ensured in the state as well as the country.

"We talked about the same thing that we have been talking with other leaders ever since we arrived in Delhi that the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, especially in light of the present crisis, needs to be understood correctly after which a solution is required."



"We emphasised that the issue of Jammu and is more of political in nature. Time and again such situations do arise but if we are unable to find a political solution to it, we will be repeating our mistakes again and again," Omar told reporters after the meeting.

He said the Prime Minister agreed with the delegation that development alone is not an answer to the crisis.

"The Prime Minister told us in categorical terms that development alone will not resolve this problem," he said and refused to draw any conclusion from that.

"I am not going to put words into the Prime Minister's mouth nor am I going to draw further meaning from what he said," Omar said.

The delegation apprised the Prime Minister of the ground situation in the Valley which continues to remain under curfew for last 45 days.

Besides Omar, the delegation -- comprising a seven-member team of state Congress led by its PCC chief G A Mir, CPM MLA M Y Tarigami, eight-member team of main opposition Conference including its provincial chiefs Nasir Wani and Davinder Rana -- has been camping in the capital and meeting political leaders from the government and opposition.

Asked about the statement made by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Jammu yesterday that stone-pelters were no "satyagrahis but aggressors", Omar said "I do not wish to say anything on this as the Prime Minister told us nothing like this.

"And more importantly, let's not play over Jammu and Kashmir. We will get ample time to play political games later.

Omar said he was not in the national capital to score any



political points. "I am not heartless that when my people are getting killed daily, I will play . Our motive is to break the cycle of death and find a long term solution to the problem."



The delegation submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister, expressing "its anguish, grief and sorrow over the painful loss of lives in the Valley" and to express "dismay at the lack of a political approach to deal with the situation."



The delegation apprised the Prime Minister that the tried and tested formulations of dealing with the issue in Kashmir administratively rather than politically have further exacerbated the situation and "created an unprecedented sense of disaffection and disenchantment - especially among the youth.

"We are of the firm opinion that the central government should waste no further time in initiating a credible and meaningful political dialogue with all stakeholders to address the unrest in the state," the memorandum said.

The delegation said, "continued failure to address the unrest in Kashmir will further deepen the sense of alienation" and hoped that the Prime Minister "will take immediate measures to address this grave situation."



"We hope that our efforts will bear some fruits. We are not here to complain about anyone but have come with a request that if our suggestions are heeded to, it will have a positive impact not only on Jammu and Kashmir but in the entire country," he said.

Omar said "we all should learn from our mistakes. I learnt it in 2010 (agitation) and so should others. The problem is that we tend to believe that we have learnt from our past mistakes and then, more or less, become complacent."



The memorandum requested the Prime Minister to announce "an immediate ban on pellet guns that have caused grievous injuries in the current unrest and maimed and blinded many young boys and girls".

The leaders flagged the issue of youths falling victim to the continued protests, including a young teenager named Irfan who was killed last night when a teargas shell hit him on his chest.

"We also implore you to announce an immediate ban on pellet guns and advise relevant quarters against the policy of mass harassment, raids and arrests as this has worsened an already volatile situation in the State and also goes against the values and principles of democracy," the memorandum said.

Asked about the Centre's position on Pakistan-occupied- Kashmir, Omar said, "This question should be put to the PMO or Ministry of External Affairs. I am here to talk about my people in the state."



The delegation started the political initiative on Saturday when it met President Pranab Mukherjee and submitted a memorandum, requesting him to use his office to influence the Centre for initiating a political dialogue with all stakeholders in the state.

Yesterday, the delegation met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and apprised him about the situation in the state.
Five cases, including that of sedition, have been registered against three top Baloch nationalist leaders in Pakistan for allegedly backing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's supportive words on Balochistan in his Independence Day speech.

Brahamdagh Bugti, Harbiyar Marri and Banuk Karima Baloch were booked under sections 120, 121, 123 and 353 of the Pakistan Penal Code at five police stations in Khuzdar area in the restive province following complaints, a senior police official said today.

The sections relate to "concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment", "waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against Pakistan", "concealing with intent to facilitate design to wage war", and "assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty".

The complainants have alleged that Bugti, Marri and Baloch had 'supported' Modi's speech, Acting District Police Officer Khuzdar Muhammad Ashraf Jatak said.

On August 15 from the historic Red Fort, Modi said that people from Balochistan had thanked him for highlighting the atrocities by the Pakistani state on the people of Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

Pakistan has said Modi crossed the "red line" by talking about Balochistan and asserted it will "forcefully" raise the Kashmir issue at next month's the UN General Assembly session.

India and Pakistan have been engaged in a war of words over Pakistan and its Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's statements on the situation in Kashmir, which has been witnessing unrest following the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani on July 8.

Following Modi's supportive words for the people of Balochistan, protests against him were held in Balochistan, with large numbers of tribesmen coming out on the streets in Dera Bugti, Khuzdar, Quetta, Chaman and other parts of the province.

In retaliation, Afghan protesters also held rallies at the friendship gate at the Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the gate has been closed indefinitely by Pakistani authorities after the angry Afghan protesters burnt a Pakistan flag and pelted stones at the gate.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri in a speech last week alleged that the Indian government "fully supports the ongoing insurgency in Balochistan".

Zehri's speech came days after a video showing exiled Baloch leader Brahamdagh Bugti appreciating 'support' given to the Baloch people by Modi began circulating on social media.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Eminent photojournalist Sudharak Olwe was felicitated for his work at a function here.

He was presented a citation, shawl and 'srifal' by district Collector Dr Mahendra Kalyankar here last night.

Olwe is a Mumbai-based documentary photographer, whose work has been featured in national publications and exhibited in Mumbai, Delhi, Malmo, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Washington and Dhaka. He was awarded the Padma Shri for his social work in 2016.

The function was organised by Thane Shahar Dainik Patrakar Sangh in view of the International Photography Day on August 19.

The Sangh organised a three-day photography exhibition of the pictures taken by Thane photojournalists in which more than 200 photos clicked by around 20 scribes were displayed at the Kala Bhavan here.

On the occasion, Olwe said earlier it was difficult to meet the expectations and risking one's life, but now due to technological development everything has become instant and easy.

The Collector asked the journalists to do a constructive job for the society and educate in the best possible manner.

He suggested that the pictures exhibited at the event should be brought out in the form of a book for which he offered Rs 50,000 from the CSR funds.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a bid to reach out to people of Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today expressed his "deep concern and pain" over the situation there and asked all political parties to work together to find a "permanent and lasting" solution to problems in Jammu and Kashmir.

Making an appeal for restoration of normalcy in the Valley where the unrest entered the 45th day, Modi emphasised that there has to be a dialogue.

An official statement issued after his 75-minute-long meeting with a joint opposition delegation led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the Prime Minister appreciated the "constructive suggestions" made by them during the talks and reiterated his government's commitment to the welfare of people.

The 20-member delegation comprising Omar and seven of his National Conference MLAs, Congress legislators led by PCC Chief G A Mir and CPI-M MLA M Y Tarigami had called on the Prime Minister this morning and made an appeal for a political approach for resolving the crisis in the Valley and to ensure that the "mistakes" of the past are not repeated.

Immediately after the statement was released , Omar tweeted, "we welcome the statement of the Hon PM @narendramodi ji and look forward to working together to find a lasting solution to problems of J&K."



The 46-year-old Working President of National Conference Omar told reporters after the meeting that they requested the Prime Minister for finding a political solution to the Kashmir issue so that a lasting peace is ensured in the state as well as in the country.

The Prime Minister emphasised on the need for dialogue to find a "permanent and lasting solution" within the framework of the Constitution and also asked all political parties to work together to find a solution to the problems in Jammu and Kashmir.

Expressing his "deep concern and pain" at the prevailing situation, the Prime Minister said "those who lost their lives during recent disturbances are part of us, our nation; whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us."



"Government and the nation stand with the state of Jammu and Kashmir," the Prime Minister said, and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same.

He expressed his commitment to the development of the state and its people, and appealed for restoration of normalcy in the state.

Kashmir has been witnessing unrest since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8 and so far over 60 people have been killed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Pranab Mukherjee today called for greater collaboration between academia and industry for converting the country's demographic dividend into an opportunity.

"India has a big demographic dividend. But that dividend will be of no use if we cannot transform it into an opportunity by making it industry-ready. Then it will become a huge liability," he said at an interaction organised by CII here.

Mukherjee said there is need to impart skill so that the employability increases in the world job market.

"This is only possible when we build a truly knowledge economy. We must emphasise on innovation and that is not possible without the partnership of the industry and academia," he said.

The President said India's expected growth rate in the next two calendar years is 7.5 per cent and there is also a possibility of revival of the manufacturing and industrial sectors.

"For this there is not only a need for a conducive policy environment, but also creation and infrastructure like industrial and freight corridors following which FDI flow will rise," he said.

The four things which wild aid in such an effort were the ease of doing business, creation of infrastructure and industrial corridors, increased FDI flow and openness to the IPR regime, he said.

"Only opening up more sectors to FDI is not sufficient", Mukherjee said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
French auto major Renault today launched a new version of small car Kwid in India powered by 1.0 litre petrol engine and priced up to Rs 3.95 lakh (introductory price, ex-showroom Delhi), as it aims to take on the market leader Alto K10 from Maruti Suzuki.

Renault currently sells Kwid with an 800cc (0.8L) engine priced between Rs 2.64 lakh and Rs 3.73 lakh.

The new 1.0 litre variant comes in two variants priced at Rs 3.82 lakh and Rs 3.95 lakh, respectively. Buyers, will now have to shell out Rs 22,000 more for the top model of the 1,000cc variant.

Maruti Alto K10 is priced between Rs 3.25 lakh and Rs 3.82 lakh for manual variants (all prices ex-showroom Delhi). It also comes with CNG and auto gear shift options.

"With this launch, we look forward to welcoming more customers into Renault family as we endeavour to aggressively build our presence in India," Renault India Country CEO & Managing Director Sumit Sawhney told reporters here.

The company is enhancing production capacity of the model as it wants to reduce the waiting period from 2-3 months to 1-2 months, he added.

"We are producing 10,000 units of Kwid every month. We can ramp up further if required upon launch of the newer versions," Sawhney said.

When asked if the company is also looking to bring the model with an auto gear shift transmission, Sawhney said, "We are still working on it."



He added the company is in the process of building up its product portfolio in the country and would launch one model each year over the next few years.

Kwid has been a success in the country with the company having already retailed over 1.65 lakh units of the model since its launch last year.

The variant comes with a brand new 1.0 litre SCe engine which is optimally designed for better performance.

It also comes with various features like sport designer graphics on the doors, pro-sense seat belt pre-tensioners with load limiters, among others.

On the company's future plans, Sawhney said, "Our roadmap for India is very clear with an immediate goal of achieving a market share of over 5 per cent by the end of this year."



The company will continue with its product offensive strategy, reinforced by the Kwid 1.0L SCe launch, and substantially grow the Renault brand in India, he added.

"Together with our product portfolio expansion strategy, we are also significantly increasing our sales and network reach in India," Sawhney said.

The company also plans to increase sales network to 270



outlets by the end of this year.

In order to offer servicing at the customer's doorstep, Renault also plans to have 25 mobile workshops across the country by the end of the year.

The company offers the service in Kerala.

Sawhney said the company has already started selling Kwid in Sri Lanka and plans to launch it in Nepal later this month.

"Early next year, manufacturing of the model would begin at other markets as well," Sawhney said.
The American epidemiologist whose unwavering leadership resulted in the eradication nearly 40 years ago of smallpox, one of the world's most feared contagious diseases, has died.

Dr. Donald "DA" Henderson was 87 when he died on Friday at a hospice care facility in Towson, Maryland, from complications following a hip fracture, Johns Hopkins University said in a statement. Henderson was a former dean of the school's Bloomberg School of Public Health.

He was most recently employed as a distinguished scholar at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Centre for Health Security in Baltimore.

"D.A. Henderson truly changed the world for the better," the centre's director, Tom Inglesby, said in a statement. Henderson was working on eradication at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in 1966 when the World Health Organisation chose him to lead the global eradication effort.

In a 1988 interview with the WHO Bulletin, Henderson said he accepted the challenge reluctantly, knowing that he and the United States would be blamed if the project failed. The battle was essentially won during a 10-year period, 1967-77, by medical workers using a surveillance-and-containment strategy rather than the mass-vaccination approach used in the past.

Much like the Ebola containment strategy recently employed in West Africa, the project focused on cases and outbreaks, progressively eliminating the disease from where it still existed in South America, West and Central Africa, Asia and finally East Africa.

The last naturally occurring case of was diagnosed in Somalia in 1977. The World Health Assembly declared the deadly disease eradicated in 1980.

Former CDC director Dr. William Foege, 80, who was among the first to apply the surveillance-containment strategy, remembered Henderson as having the vision to plan a campaign he knew would take a decade.

"One of his characteristics was absolute certainty about things, and people like to follow someone that is certain about what they're doing," Foege said in a telephone interview.
Iran's defence minister said had been "inconsiderate" and was "showing off" by revealing its use of an Iranian airbase for bombing missions into Syria, in a televised interview.

The apparent criticism of a close ally came after announced last week that it was using Iran's Hamedan base in western Iran for aerial strikes against insurgent groups in Syria.

"Naturally, the Russians are keen to show that they are a superpower and an influential country and that they are active in security issues in the region and the world," said defence minister Hossein Dehghan in an interview with Iran's Channel 2 television yesterday.

"There has been a kind of showing-off and inconsiderate attitude behind the announcement of this news," he said.

Iran and are key backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but Tehran has remained relatively guarded about its precise involvement in the conflict.

The Islamic republic is also highly sensitive to any suggestion that it would allow foreign militaries to be based in its territory, which is outlawed under its constitution.

"We have collaborated and will continue to collaborate with Syria and Russia. Russia decided to bring in more planes and boost its speed and accuracy in operations," Dehghan said.

"Therefore, it needed to refuel in an area closer to the operation. That's why they used the Nojeh base (in Hamedan) but we have definitely not given them a military base.
Amid concerns over growing presence of terror groups in South-East Asian region, the Indonesian Tourism today said safety of the tourists visiting the island nation would be of prime importance and security has been heightened to avert terror attacks.

A series of explosions has rocked the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, with gun battles on the streets in January this year.

Six Indonesian militants, including an ISIS fighter, were arrested by Indonesian Police few days back for plotting a missile attack at Singapore's Marina Bay.

"Safety and Security is of prime concern for the tourists visiting our country. Few months back there was an explosion in Jakarta. The security now has been increased. And we can assure that tourists are totally safe in the country," Dody Prianto, assistant deputy director, ministry of tourism told reporters.

Prianto, who was in the city to promote Indonesian tourism, said the country has received 2,67,082 Indian tourists in 2014.

The number of Indian tourist arrivals to Indonesia from January to June 2016 was recorded at 1,85,911 with a growth rate of 28.25 per cent amid negative growth of foreign tourists from other countries due to global economic slowdown, he said.

"We expect the growth in the number of Indian tourists to 350,000 by the next financial year," Prianto said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Supreme Court judge Justice Ashok Bhushan today recused himself from hearing the bail plea of former chief secretary Neera Yadav, convicted in the Noida plot scam.

A bench of Justices S A Bobde and Ashok Bhushan took up the matter and directed that it be listed before another bench.

Counsel appearing for Yadav said her bail plea should be decided expeditiously as she has been in jail for past four months. He said this was the third time that a judge has recused himself.

Earlier, Supreme Court judges R K Agrawal and U U Lalit had recused themselves from hearing the matter.

Yadav had surrendered on March 14 before a CBI court in Ghaziabad after her appeal was dismissed and conviction upheld by the Allahabad high court. She had moved the apex court challenging the High Court order and also sought bail.

A CBI court in Ghaziabad had convicted Yadav and senior IAS officer Rajeev Kumar in 2012 in a Noida plot scam that took place between 1994 and 1995 and sentenced them to three years imprisonment. Yadav was the CEO of Noida Authority at the time of scam and Kumar was her deputy.

The 1971 batch IAS officer, Yadav, who became Uttar Pradesh's first woman chief secretary during the Samajwadi Party government in 2005, took voluntary retirement in 2008.

A CBI probe was ordered by the Supreme Court on a petition filed by one Noida Entrepreneurs Association in 1997.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Supreme Court today rapped Delhi government for its response that it would mull over suggestions to install radio-frequency identification device (RFID) to levy entry cess, along with toll tax, on commercial vehicles entering the national capital.

"We don't understand why you are not inclined to implement it. The whole world has the RFID system...Please tell them that they should be progressive and forward-looking and not be an obstructionist," a bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur said while entrusting the execution of the project to South Delhi Municipal Corporation.

The apex court said green cess collected from commercial vehicles entering Delhi would be used for RFID installation at 13 entry points.

It asked the counsel appearing for the Delhi government to persuade his client to adopt the technology for levying the entry cess through installation of RFID.

"Let the system progress and change. We are in 21st century. Many countries have adopted the technology several years ago. In London, metro train is there for the last 100 years," the bench also comprising Justices A K Sikri and R Banumathi observed.

When the bench inquired why RFID was not installed, the Delhi government said the transport department wanted to rethink about it.

The court then slammed the government for dragging its feet on the issue and asked whether it was advised by the toll contractors to rethink on RFID.

The remarks were made while accepting the August 10 report of the Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) which examined the feasibility of the RFID system for effective and credible levy and collection of the Environment Compensation Charge (ECC).

The bench allowed the ECC amount to be used for putting RFID at 13 places in Delhi and adjoining places.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae in the matter, said Rs 125 crore would be spread over five years for implementing the project and Rs 432 crore would be collected per annum.

The bench also directed the Delhi government to release within six weeks Rs 93 lakhs as fees to RITES for vetting the contract or tender documents for the project.

The apex court had last year imposed ECC on commercial



vehicles entering Delhi in a bid to check high pollution levels in the city.

It had also directed the toll collectors to put in place RFID system at their own cost at nine main entry points "failing which the contractors will be treated as being in breach of their obligation.

"The RFID data will be supplied to the MCD and Transport Department of the Government of NCT Delhi. The NCT Government will install its own CCTV cameras at nine entry points and also organise surprise visits to oversee the collection of ECC and other necessary arrangements," the bench had said.
Her passion for telling stories compelled her to self publish her novel, which incidentally topped charts at Amazon and prompted leading Indian publisher to line up to print the fiction.

Author Savi Sharma's book 'Everyone has a Story' first launched as an ebook sold over 5000 copies when launched last year. She was her own publisher as well as distributor. The sales of the ebook resulted in a multi-publisher bid for the print run, which was finally bagged by Westland in early 2016.

'Everyone has a story' tells the tale of Meera, a fledgling writer in search of a story that can touch millions of lives and Vivaan who dreams of travelling the world but gets trapped in the corporate world. The story unwinds when Kabir, a cafe manager and Nisha, the despondent cafe customer joins the crew.

As American author Nicholas Sparks said, 'Every great love starts with a great story...', the romance between Meera and Vivaan starts with a story affair.

According to Savi, in a way the story is autobiographical. All characters of 'Everyone Has A Story' are fragments of her own personality, imagination and thoughts. They have been sketched based on her experiences and feelings.

"Meera is a carbon copy of mine. Her search for story, her thoughts about life and love, her struggles and weaknesses, her lifestyle, almost everything is a reflection of mine" says Savi.

"The success of her first novel was so significant that it has gone back into reprint and even the second print is an Amazon bestseller," publishers said.

The book, detailing a story of friendship, dreams and love has been Amazon's No. 1 bestseller in the Contemporary Fiction category, the Indian writing category and No 2 in the Romance category.

The book also got among the highest number of reviews on Amazon. It has 112 reviews, 80 of which gave her 5 out of 5 stars. Her average was 4.5/5.

Her publishers put it into perspective.

"Author Anuradha Roy's Booker short-listed 'Sleeping on Jupiter' has 11 reviews and the same average rating as Savi Sharma. Salman Rushdie's latest book, 'Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days', has 21 reviews and an average rating of 4.0," they said.

This is not Savi's first book but the first that has been



published.

After "Silent Love" a debut novel which was never published she decided to write something more personal, 'from the heart'.

"Vivaan, the bank manager and traveller, is that part of mine who doesn't't just want to live but feel lively. It's not about escaping what we are doing but exploring so much more in this one lifetime. I love to explore new places and people as they inspire me to write stories", she says



"I guessed having stories stuck in my own soul was the reason and the need to hear other people's stories. But I didn't just want to hear stories; my heart was aching to tell a beautiful story which would change people's lives or at least mine," says Savi.

The author says she wanted to discover herself yet live different lives in one life-time, which could be attained only through stories. She aims to enter deep into reader's heart, heal them and inspire them.

Last year, Savi self published her book as she had decided to opt out of the conventional publishing route for a faster output.

She approached Thompson Press with her manuscript. And so 'Everyone has a Story', was out in the open. Soon it became Amazon's bestseller. Less than a year later the fiction found a new publisher, Westland Books.

"If I had gone the traditional way, I would have had to wait for months to get it published. I didn't want to wait; I knew I had a good story to show the world. I simply believed in the power of social media and Internet to promote my book myself.

"The way social or virtual media has shaped our lives in last few years has been surprising and shocking. The time spent on virtual lives is more than on our real lives. When it comes to publishing, you very well know where your readers are. You just needed to be in front of them. Sell yourself. That's what I did. With smart marketing and creative content, I was able to reach out to my audience and the response was overwhelming", the author says.

Savi who seriously considers writing scripts and screenplays for films in the future is currently working on her next novel to be launched by the end of this year.

Meera from the book says "Everyone has a story to tell, everyone is a writer. Some are written in the books and some are confined to hearts", but Savi has put her heart into the book.
Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong fainted while addressing a National Day Rally, shocking a live television audience, but officials today said all his tests during a precautionary checkup were "normal".

The 64-year-old leader, son of the city-state's late founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, suddenly stopped speaking an hour into his speech and had to be assisted off the stage by cabinet ministers.

Lee took ill during yesterday's Rally - a traditional address to the nation on economics, policies and politics - after he had a "brief fainting spell", Channel Asia said in its report.

He returned to conclude his speech - part of celebrations for Singapore's 51st anniversary as a republic on August 9 - an hour later, receiving a standing ovation from the audience.

"Thank you for waiting for me. I gave everybody a scare," he said with a smile. "The last time I did this was on a parade square at SAFTI; I fainted."



"I think that's what happened. I've never had so many doctors look at me at once. I think I'm alright but I'm going to have a full checkup after this. Before that, I'd like to finish up my speech," said Lee, who has been in power since 2004.

He later headed to Singapore General Hospital (SGH) for the check-up.

Lee, who survived a bout of lymphoma - a form of cancer - in 1992, underwent surgery for prostate cancer last year and has received the all-clear from doctors.

Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan today said the tests "were all normal".

"PM was feeling unsteady because of prolonged standing, heat and dehydration. His heart is fine and he did not have a stroke," Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said in a statement.

During the break in proceedings, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said Lee has had a gruelling schedule recently, and was "just feeling faint" after standing for a prolonged period of time. "I wouldn't worry too much. This was a little blip."



President Tony Tan Keng Yam posted on Facebook after speaking to Lee.

"Spoke with PM this afternoon, after his brief fainting spell last evening during his National Day Rally speech. PM was his usual jovial self," he wrote.

He added that PM had a busy schedule recently, and that the preparation for the National Day Rally "took a toll on him". "On behalf of all Singaporeans, I wish PM well."



Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak also tweeted: "Heard that you're not feeling well. I hope you're all right. Get well soon."



Lee replied later: "Thanks for your good wishes. My doctors tell me I should be OK.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Local volunteers helped 22 families to evacuate their houses and shift to safer places due to sinking of land at Hunthar locality of Mizoram's capital city here, state Disaster Management and Rehabilitation Director C Lalpeksanga today said.

Lalpeksanga, who visited the place this morning told PTI seven houses have been dismantled by the volunteers since yesterday as another spell of rain was most likely to sweep away the houses.

He said many displaced families were living with relatives while temporary accommodation arrangements were made for others in government buildings constructed for urban poor and the proposed office of Legal Metrology.

The landslide and sinking of land occurred after heavy downpour in the city for days which also severely affected the road linking the lone Lengpui Airport as the road itself had been sinking, he said.

Lalpeksanga said experts from the Geological Survey of India (GSI) in Shillong would be arriving here today to conduct a detailed study of the area from Tuesday.

A detailed project report (DPR) would be submitted to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) for prevention of the area from sinking further and reclamation of the area in accordance with the GSI report, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The third Sino-Indian Literature Forum was held today at Sahitya Akademi here to foster literary exchanges between the two neighbouring countries.

In its third year, the forum seeks to connect publishing houses and writers from both the countries to facilitate cultural exchanges and get more and more literary material translated into each other's languages.

"The Sino-Indian Literature Forum is an attempt to take the literary relationships between the two countries forward for better results," K Sreenivasarao, Secretary, Sahitya Akademi said.

Every year a delegation from either country visits the other alternatively, to enhance the ties, he said. The forum today saw litterateurs from both India and China present papers on different aspects of literature.

While Indian writers talked about, "Non-Fiction: Recording History and Reality," their Chinese counterparts deliberated on "The City and Countryside in Literature."



"Between the first and the third meeting, I am proud to say that our coordination and friendship has attempted to carry the diverse culture and literary traditions of our great countries to the other land, reaching crescendo in our mutual visits," Rao said.

Pointing out the progress made on the literary front between India and China, he said, "The Chinese side have already translated Indian classics such as works of poet Surdas and Indians are also catching up fast."



The Akademi is also looking forward to Chinese publishers taking up translating of newer Indian classics into Chinese, while their Indian counterparts translate modern Chinese classics into several Indian languages beginning with Hindi.

"All through history we have been sharing knowledge with each other and have been in an uninterrupted cultural and literary exchange with the Chinese since the past three decades," he said.

Speaking on similar lines, He Jianming of Chinese Writers' Association also noted the importance of such a forum in the betterment of both Indian and Chinese literature.

"This forum is significant not only for both Chinese and Indian writers but will also be better and significant for literary exchanges and friendships between the two nations," Jianming said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two-and-a-half centuries after their military ancestors fought and died in two 18th century North American wars, members of the British army's Scottish regiment will embark on a 340-mile canoe trip that will trace the water route many of their forbearers traveled.

Sixteen soldiers in the Royal Regiment of Scotland are scheduled to leave Montreal on Aug. 30 and travel south via Quebec's Richelieu River, Lake Champlain, Lake George and the Hudson River. They plan to arrive in Manhattan on September 10, in time for ceremonies marking the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Along the way they'll camp at New York historic sites where Scottish soldiers serving alongside the British fought during the American Revolution and the French and Indian War, part of the Seven Years' War.

Maj. Scotty Menzies, the officer leading the expedition, told The Associated Press the 340-mile journey will be part training exercise, part history lesson.

"It's a way we can take a soldier from a known environment and expose him to the unknown, take them out of their comfort zone, and educate them on the history of the regiment," said Menzies, a member of the regiment's Glasgow-based battalion.

British units conduct similar exercises elsewhere, but it will be the first held in North America, Menzies said. Unlike the redcoats who had to haul canoes and boats over rugged terrain between waterways, the Scots will use vehicles to portage their canoes and gear.

The soldiers will be covering water and ground that weren't welcoming to Scotsmen in the 1700s.

At Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain's southern end, the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment, known as the Black Watch, suffered more than 500 killed and wounded while assaulting enemy positions on July 6, 1758, during the French and Indian War.

At Stillwater, on the upper Hudson, a Scottish regiment was among the British force that surrendered to the Americans after the Battles at Saratoga in 1777, during the Revolutionary War.

The expedition will end at the USS Intrepid, a World War II aircraft carrier that serves as a floating museum in Manhattan.

After the September 11 ceremony, the soldiers, most of them veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will head to Brooklyn, scene of the Battle of Brooklyn, fought on Aug. 27, 1776. The two Highland regiments fared much better there, with the Revolutionary War's largest battle ending in a victory for British forces.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bollywood actor Sonu Sood's maiden production "2 In 1", which has been directed by Prabhudheva, will hit theatres on October 7.

Sonu, 43, who also stars in the film alongside Tamannaah Bhatia, shared the on Twitter, writing, "All set for my 1st home production "2in 1". Releasing on 7th October @tamannaahspeaks @PDdancing. Need your wishes."



Sonu's film company Shakti Sagar Productions has been named after his father, who passed away this February.

The poster of the movie was launched by Chinese action star Jackie Chan, who is Sonu's co-star in upcoming film "Kung Fu Yoga".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 55 girl students of Government Polytechnic College here were hospitalised following complaints of nausea and diarrhoea after they had food from the hostel, police said.

Some 25 students, staying in the college hostel, had consumed rice yesterday and they complained of nausea and diarrhoea and were immediately taken to government hospital late last night.

Another 30 students were taken to hospital with similar symptoms this morning and all the students were undergoing treatment, they said.

The hospital dean Edwin Joe said the students were admitted after they complained of nausea and diarrhoea and their condition was out of danger.

The samples of the food and drinking water the students had consumed were sent for testing, the official said.

District Collector T N Hariharan visited the students at the hospital and inquired about their health condition with the authorities.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
External Affairs Minister arrived here on Monday to hold talks with the top Myanmarese leadership, including State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, in pursuance of India's 'Act East Policy'.

The one-day trip by Swaraj, accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior Ministry of External Affairs officials, is the first high profile Indian visit after Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won a historic landslide election last year that finally brought an end to five decades of military rule.

She will call on President U Htin Kyaw, apart from meeting Nobel laureate and democracy icon Suu Kyi, who is the de facto leader.

Banned from becoming president by a junta-era Constitution, Suu Kyi has a strong control over the country's first civilian-led government.

The Constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president  Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.

The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 per cent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.

Incidentally, Swaraj's visit comes just days after Suu Kyi made a high-profile trip to China.

The discussions between Swaraj and Suu Kyi are expected to focus on New Delhi's bilateral relations with Nay Pyi Daw, as well as plans for the upcoming BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit scheduled to be held in Goa.

Security issues concerning certain Myanmar-based militant groups operating in India's North East could also come up for discussion.

India and Myanmar share close relations with a robust development cooperation programme in areas such as agriculture, IT, human resource development, infrastructure development, culture among .

The visit reaffirms India's commitment to heighten partnership with Myanmar in the areas of priority by the new government of Myanmar, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.
Turkey said today the Syrian border region must be "completely cleansed" from the Islamic State group, after a weekend suicide bombing in Gaziantep blamed on the jihadists left at least 54 dead.

In a sign of a key battle to come, Syrian rebel fighters have amassed on the Turkish side of the border in preparation for an offensive on the town of Jarablus, IS's last major transit point on the Syrian side of the border.

"Our border must be completely cleansed from Daesh," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in televised remarks, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

"It is our most natural right to fight at home and abroad against such a terrorist organisation."



A child suicide bomber, aged "between 12 and 14", is suspected of having carried out the attack late Saturday in the southeastern city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border on the orders of the IS jihadist group, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Cavusoglu said Turkey has already taken an "active" role in the fight against IS, allowing coalition forces to use a key air base in the south of the country for strikes on the extremist group.

Quoting security sources, some Turkish media reported earlier that the Gaziantep attack could have been retaliation by IS for an operation carried out by Ankara-backed Syrian rebels against the jihadists in Jarablus, northern Syria.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, "hundreds of rebel fighters are inside Turkish territory, preparing to launch an offensive on Jarablus against IS".

"There is already daily artillery fire from Turkey on the edges of the town," said the Britain-based monitoring group's head, Rami Abdel Rahman.

The Dogan agency reported that Turkish artillery fired 65 mortar shells at IS targets around Jarablus on Saturday.

A rebel source confirmed that opposition fighters were "preparing for a large offensive against Daesh in Jarablus which will be launched from Turkey".

"Yesterday we liberated Al-Rai, and tomorrow, Jarablus," said Ahmad Othman, a commander in the Sultan Murad rebel group.

Al-Rai was also used by IS as a smaller transit point along the border, but was it seized by rebels on Friday after changing hands several times.

Jarablus has been held by IS for more than three years.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Three persons accused of murdering a youth in Bhiwandi taluka here have been acquitted by the district court which gave them benefit of doubt following a six-year trial in the case.

District Judge V V Bambarde observed that the prosecution failed to prove the charges under IPC sections 302 (murder) read with 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) and section 27 of the Arms Act against the three persons - Kalidas Balaram Thale (26), Kaluram Sudam Pawar (39) and Indrajeet Yashwant Masane (21).

District government pleader Sangita E Phad, appearing for the prosecution, told the court that the three men, from Lonad in Bhiwandi, had on February 25, 2010, brutally killed Shivaji Kumbhar and dumped his body at village Goyanka in Padgha under Bhiwandi taluka.

The prosecutor also submitted that the deceased and the accused had previous enmity over which they killed the youth, whose body bore multiple stab wounds.

However, defence counsels Gajanan Chavan and Munir Ahmed challenged the prosecution version and told the court that the arrested persons were innocent and they had been roped in the case merely on suspicion, and hence they need to be acquitted.

Besides citing several court rulings, the defence also said that the evidence of investigation officer shows that he had to drop names of two other suspects, mentioned by the deceased's father, from the case.

It also come to light that the accused Kalidas is physically challenged and not able to run fast. The deceased was strong and well built and could have overpowered one or two persons. It has also come in the evidence that the family of deceased had dispute with several villagers and they suspected involvement of some of them in the murder, the defence counsels further told the court.

The judge observed that the case is totally based on circumstantial evidence.Cardinal principles regarding the appreciation of circumstantial evidence have been postulated.

He noted that the prosecution failed to show that the accused were near the spot of the murder. The prosecution also failed to establish that there was any voluntary contention by accused Kalidas Thale. Simply enmity will not drag the accused in the killing.

Similarly, it seems that the accused are implicated on mere suspicion. So, the prosecution failed to establish chain of circumstances leading to the guilt of accused, the judge observed while acquitting the three recently.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Turkey has proposed to India commencement of talks for a "Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement" (CEPA), asserting that such a pact will enhance bilateral economic and commercial ties.

Observing that India was Turkey's second largest trading partner in the Asia-Pacific region after China, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also said, "We encourage and invite Indian companies to invest more in Turkey and make use of our investment promotion arrangements which were introduced under Turkey's new investment incentive system."



The bilateral trade volume, which has grown more than six-fold between 2003 and 2014 from USD 1.2 billion to USD 7 billion, experienced a slight decrease in 2015. While Turkish firms' investment in India has risen to USD 212 million in 2015, India's direct investment in Turkey stands at USD 110 million.

The Minister noted that a Joint Study Group was set up in 2010 in order to explore the feasibility and possibility of concluding a CEPA to further improve business ties through liberalisation and facilitation of trade and investment and it had recommended the Agreement.

"The report is pending approval by the relevant Indian authorities since February 2011. Turkey has reiterated its willingness to start negotiations. We are looking forward to a positive reply from the Indian authorities," Cavusoglu told PTI. He was here to hold talks with Indian leadership including his counterpart Sushma Swaraj on Friday.

"We believe that concluding such an agreement between Turkey and India will enhance our economic and commercial ties by forging mutually beneficial economic partnership. Turkey will continue its efforts to deepen the economic relationship, improve investor confidence, and support economic growth," the minister added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Turkish armed forces today launched artillery strikes on separate targets of the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Kurdish militia in northern Syria, television reports said.

Turkish army howitzers stationed inside Turkey fired on targets in the town of Jarablus and PYD targets around the area of Manbij, the CNN-Turk and NTV channels reported.

Turkey was deploying tanks and heavy weaponry on the border for the strikes, the reports added.

The reports came after activists said hundreds of Ankara-backed rebels were preparing an offensive against the group in Syria.

This offensive coincides with a similar move by Syrian Kurdish militia, potentially putting them on a collision course in the fight for ISIS-held Jarablus.
The United Kingdom will continue to strengthen trade, business and tourism relations with India even during post Brexit period, British Deputy High Commissioner in Chennai Bharat Joshi said here today.

"We are the largest investor in India and we want to continue to strengthen the trade and industrial relationship with the country," Joshi told reporters here while detailing the various scholarship programmes offered by Britain.

"India is the second largest investor in London and India is on the top of the list for the partnership with UK. Our relation with India is already firm and we will continue to strengthen it," he said.

Asked whether there would be any problem for Indians working in UK during post Brexit, He said "They do not have anything to worry about."



Joshi said the UK wants to encourage more British tourists to visit India.

"A large number of British tourists visit India every year and many of them come to Kerala also," he said adding "we want more British tourists to visit the Gods Own country."



On the Scholarship programme, Joshi said the UK offers largest scholarship programme anywhere in the world. Among them, flagship programme is Chevening, the UK's International Award Scheme aimed at developing global leaders, he said.

"The Chevening India programme is the largest in the world offering up to 65 fully paid scholarship and 65 fully paid fellowships every year", he said.

"Chevening Fellowships are awarded to talented professionals who are potential future leaders, decision-makers, and opinion formers", he said.

"The fellowships offer financial support to mid-career professionals already in positions of leadership and influence", he said.

Joshi also said there were only few persons applying for the scholarship from Kerala. He wanted more people from the state to utilise the schemes offered by UK.

"Many Scholarship has already opened and others would open in the coming days," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The United Nations' top aid official voiced anger today at world powers' inability to agree on a truce to allow aid into Aleppo, warning of an "unparalleled" humanitarian catastrophe in the battleground Syrian city.

Stephen O'Brien told the Security Council that plans were in place to quickly send 70 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid to eastern Aleppo if all sides agreed on a truce.

"I'm not going to pretend. I'm angry, very angry," O'Brien told council members holding their third meeting on the crisis in Aleppo this month.

"As the UN's humanitarian chief, this callous carnage that is Syria has long since moved from the cynical to the sinful."



O'Brien renewed his call for a 48-hour pause in fighting in Aleppo, where the violence escalated sharply in July when regime forces surrounded the rebel-held east.

Up to 275,000 people in eastern Aleppo have been almost entirely cut off from food, water, medicine and electricity for over a month, while 1.5 million people living in the west of the city also face severe shortages.

"In Aleppo, we risk seeing a humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled in the over five years of bloodshed and carnage in the Syrian conflict," said O'Brien.

The war-torn nation's second city "has become the apex of horror" for suffering Syrians, he said.

O'Brien welcomed the announcement from Russia, Syria's key ally, that it supports the call for the 48-hour ceasefire, but said all sides must sign on.

Once the needed security assurances are received, UN aid workers are ready to move 50 trucks of aid from western Aleppo to the east, and an additional 20 trucks from Turkey into eastern Aleppo, he said.

O'Brien urged all countries with influence, in particular the United States and Russia, which co-chair the international group backing the peace process in Syria, to rapidly reach agreement on a ceasefire deal.

Not a single aid convoy has reached Syria's besieged areas in August while air strikes have hit hospitals and schools.

In July alone, there were 44 attacks on medical and health facilities throughout Syria, including attacks against five out of the nine hospitals in eastern Aleppo, according to the UN.

More than 290,000 people have been killed in the Syrian war that erupted in March 2011 and international efforts to end the conflict have faltered.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Swedish luxury carmaker Volvo Auto has appointed Nalin Jain as Chief Financial Officer and Jyoti Malhotra as Director, Sales, Marketing and PR for India operations.

Besides, the carmaker has also roped in Rajeev Chauhan as Network Director.

The new appointments further intensifies the highly experienced management team at Volvo Auto India and will play a key role in steering the growth trajectory of Volvo Cars in the country, Volvo Auto India said in a statement.

"The new robust team brings in industry, market and cultural experience with proven track record from different functions and markets. This team will lead our accelerating plans for India," Volvo Auto India Managing Director Tom von Bonsdorff said.

This year has been a promising year for Volvo and the company has an aggressive plan to grow further by launching many exciting new models, some of which will be game changers for Volvo in India, he added.

"We have an on-track for a 20 per cent year-on-year growth this year. As a part of our expansion plan we are looking at expanding our dealer network aggressively with Pune, Lucknow and Jaipur planned for this calendar year," Bonsdorff said.

The company seeks to increase sales volume and secure a 10 per cent market share in the luxury car segment by 2020, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ballot papers were posted out as voting opened today to decide if veteran leftist Jeremy Corbyn will remain the head of UK's Opposition Labour party, amid deep divisions within the 116-year-old organisation over the leadership challenge triggered by the 'Brexit' vote in June.

Nearly 650,000 Labour members are eligible to vote in the election, which has pitted current leader Corbyn against challenger Owen Smith after Corbyn lost a no-confidence vote moved by his party's MPs in June.

The deadline for the ballot papers to be returned is September 21 and the winner of the battle will be declared on September 24 at special conference in Liverpool.

The Labour party said its voters are made up of around 350,000 members, 129,000 people who paid 25 pounds each to be registered supporters, and 168,000 from unions and other organisations.

Britain's vote on June 23 to leave the EU provided the catalyst for the leadership challenge, with a series of Corbyn's shadow cabinet team resigning in criticism of his failure to convince Labour supporters to vote against Brexit.

Corbyn, however, remains the favourite as the 67-year-old retains the backing of most trade unions and many grassroots supporters who signed up last year to ensure his victory.

He has released a list of four key pledges, including replacing the House of Lords with an elected upper chamber of Parliament and introducing mandatory collective bargaining for companies with over 250 employees.

"Labour under my leadership will listen to ideas from the bottom up - and take radical action to transform and rebuild our country so that no-one and no community is left behind," Corbyn said in a statement.

His challenger Smith, a 46-year-old former member of Corbyn's shadow cabinet, is also targeting voters to the left of the party.

"Not some misty-eyed, romantic notion of a revolution where we are going to overthrow capitalism and return to a socialist nirvana... But a cold-eyed, practical socialist revolution where we build a better Britain," he said in a speech recently.

The campaign so far has thrown up deep divisions within the party, with London mayor Sadiq Khan becoming the latest high-profile Labour leader to come out in support of Smith.

"Jeremy's personal ratings are the worst of any Opposition leader on record and the Labour Party is suffering badly as a result. He has lost the confidence of more than 80 per cent of Labour MPs in Parliament and I am afraid we simply cannot afford to go on like this," Khan wrote in an article in 'The Observer' on Sunday.

"With the Tories wreaking havoc on our country, the first and last consideration must be which of the candidates is most likely to lead the next Labour government that will invest in our public services and give everyone a fair chance in life," the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Kezia Dugdale worte in the 'Daily Record'.

A spokesperson for Corbyn said a "majority" of Scottish Labour members would be backing him in the ballot.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Shares of textiles manufacturer Welspun India dived 20 per cent, wiping-out Rs 2,064 crore from its market valuation today, amid reports that Target Corp is in the process of terminating business ties with the firm.

Reacting to this, the scrip tanked 19.98 per cent to settle at Rs 82.30 -- its lower circuit limit -- on BSE.

At NSE, shares of the company dipped 19.96 per cent to end at Rs 82.60.

Led by the sharp fall in the stock, the company's market valuation plummeted by Rs 2,064.11 crore to Rs 8,268.89 crore.

As per the reports, US-based Target is Welspun's second- biggest customer.

Target said that Welspun substituted Egyptian cotton with a cheaper variant of cotton while supplying it bedsheets, the reports noted.

Meanwhile, in a BSE filing on Saturday, Welspun India had said, "We refer to a product specification issue with one client program of our subsidiary WGBL. We have initiated immediate actions to investigate the root cause. We are appointing an external auditor (one of the Big Four) to audit our supply systems and processes."



This is an issue of highest priority for us and we will take all necessary steps to address it. We have an impeccable record of supplying quality products to our customers globally tor over two decades. We reiterate our commitment to the highest standards of customer service and compliance, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Workers at a bakery in Pune were made to do sit-ups allegedly by members of a local Ganesh Mandal for refusing to pay them donation for the upcoming festival, police said on Tuesday.

A purported video of the incident, which occurred at a bakery in Bhosari area on August 15, has gone viral, while the three accused have been arrested, police said.

According to an official of Bhosari police station, the accused went to the bakery and demanded 'vargani' (donation) of Rs 151 from the workers for the Ganesh festival. The workers, who are non-Maharashtrians, said the owner of the shop was not there and hence they did not give the donation, the official said.

Following the denial for donation, the accused, identified as Prakash Landage (30), Ganesh Landage (30) and Mahesh Mare (31), abused the workers and later made them to do sit-ups, the official said.

A complaint was filed by one of the workers, Irshad Mommammed Ayub Khan, and a case under IPC sections 294 (obscene act or words in public), 341 (wrongful confinement), 385 (extortion) and 506 (criminal intimidation) was registered, the official said, adding investigations are underway.
Chinese tech major Xiaomi today said its smartphone sales in India has grown by 72 per cent in the last two years.

The company, which entered the Indian market in 2014, gets a lion's share of its sales from online platform.

"We entered India in July 2014 and disrupted the smartphone industry with high-quality devices. We have since then seen an incredible growth rate of 72 per cent year-on-year (July 2014 to July 2016) in terms of smartphone sales," Xiaomi India Head Manu Jain told PTI.

He, however, declined to comment on the total number of handsets sold by the company in India.

The company also sells other products and accessories like tablets, power banks and bluetooth speakers in India.

Jain said Xiaomi India sold 1.75 million units of the Redmi Note 3 in five months of the handset's launch in March.

"Redmi Note 3 is the single highest-shipped smartphone ever in the history of India's online market in any given quarter," Jain citing data by research firm IDC.

Also, Xiaomi shipped 880,000 units of the Redmi Note 3 in the online channel in the April-June quarter of 2016.

"This is almost twice the volume of the second highest-shipped smartphone in the online channel in India... We are among the top three players online with about 11-15 per cent share of the handsets bought online," Jain said.

About 28 per cent of handsets shipped in India are through the online channel. As per IDC data, 27.5 million units of smartphones were shipped in the second quarter of 2016.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Flipkart has sounded the alarm for stalled growth in Indias e-commerce market while for the first time admitting that it has missed its own growth target.
The central government is putting the onus of downloading and viewing of copyrighted content from sites it has blocked (with the help of internet service providers) on users.


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
The government has asked online retailers to strictly comply with e-commerce guidelines following complaints by brickand-mortar rivals that they were offering hefty discounts in violation of foreign direct investment (FDI) guidelines.

ALSO READ: What are the roadblocks for e-pharmas in India ?





A senior official of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) confirmed that the issue came up for discussion with online retailers during a recent meeting following the complaints. It has been made clear to online companies that, as marketing platforms, they cannot extend sale discounts on their own and in the case of media ads, it should be clearly mentioned that these discounts are being offered by vendors and brand owners.





ALSO READ: 'Walmart keen to enter India's food processing sector'



The Confederation of All India Traders (Cait) had filed a complaint with DIPP alleging that leading e-tailers Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal were blatantly violating FDI norms by offering huge discounts in media ads on the sale of goods such as smartphones TVs, apparel and shoes.

The meeting was attended by DIPP secretary Ramesh Abhishek, the consumer affairs secretary and top honchos from leading online retail companies. Cait had in its compliant on August 10 said that during the past three days, these companies have given big advertisements in the media announcing sale on their platforms, which is a violation of FDI guidelines on ecommerce.

These companies are allowed to do business-tobusiness but they are doing business-to-consumer for which they are not authorised, the complaint had alleged. In March, the government had allowed 100 per cent FDI through automatic route in the marketplace format of ecommerce retailing. As per the guidelines issued by the DIPP, FDI has not been permitted in inventory-based model of e-commerce.

The guidelines also state that such entities will not directly or indirectly influence the sale price of goods and services and shall maintain a level playing field. Ciat asked the ministry to "take immediate action against these companies".

"The policy seeks to provide a level playing field. In defining the marketplace-based model of ecommerce, it states that a marketplace should be a technology platform. Based on this, marketplaces cannot anymore claim to be retailers or online stores," a senior official said.

The policy also lays down the condition that an e-commerce firm will not be permitted to sell more than 25 per cent of total sales from one vendor or its Group companies in order to prevent marketplaces from behaving like pseudo retailers and ensure that they stay true to their claim of being technology platforms.

In association with Mail Today Bureau


Nestle is giving its instant coffee brand Nescafe and its Nespresso single-serve coffee a shot in the arm as fast-growing rivals with lean cost structures chip away at its global dominance.

It was thanks to innovation that Nestle became the world's biggest coffee seller, by introducing the first instant coffee in 1938 and launching the first capsule machines in 1986.

While its two megabrands still control nearly 23 per cent of the $77 billion retail coffee market, the breakneck rise of JAB Holdings, which has bought nine rivals in four years to grab a 16 percent share, is pushing Nestle to innovate once more.

At the higher end of the market, Nespresso VertuoLine is now being rolled out in France with other countries to follow in due course. The single-serve machine was launched in North America in 2014 to make cups of coffee bigger than the original Nespresso machines.

At the lower end, Nestle's instant coffee is getting a boost from a high-profile global campaign to promote its Nescafe Dolce Gusto single-serve system. In a new advertisement, American hip-hop artist will.i.am remakes a classic Otis Redding hit to convey how Dolce Gusto remakes classic instant coffee.

The steps Nestle is taking to revamp its business are designed to boost sales and profits in emerging and developed markets alike and reflect the struggles of large packaged food producers in general to improve performance. This will be a priority for Nestle's incoming CEO Ulf Mark Schneider, who joins next month before taking the full reins at the start of 2017.

Sales have slowed as economic growth worldwide has slowed, putting the spotlight on cutting costs to drive profits. What's more the executives behind JAB are known to keep a close eye on costs, giving them a reputation for earnings growth.

Nestle, which has missed its long-term annual sales growth target three years running, will report first-half results on Thursday. It will be the first financial report since Nestle announced a cost saving programme in May that helped ease concern about its plan to improve profitability that had been unclear to investors up until then.

Analysts are expecting 3.8 percent like-for-like first-half sales growth, according to a Reuters poll, taking into account a slowdown in the most recent quarter because low dairy prices and deflation in Europe made it hard to raise prices.

Nescafe, popular in emerging markets, and Nespresso, more concentrated in developed markets, both grew in the first quarter and are expected to show continued growth in the second.

But Nestle executives acknowledge that being the biggest is no longer enough to ensure success, because a new generation of consumers want healthier fresh foods and unique experiences, and because growing rivals can use economies of scale to boost their own brands.

Besides the global ad campaign fronted by will.i.am, Nescafe is also introducing more premium and local products to appeal to increasingly demanding consumers, as well as opening trendy shops in cities such as Tokyo and Seoul.

MOUNTING COMPETITION

The world's biggest food company faces growing competition on all fronts, but perhaps has the most to lose in coffee due to the rise of JAB.

Backed by the billionaire Reimann family, JAB now controls a host of brands including Jacobs, Douwe Egberts, Caribou and Keurig. Its swift expansion has earned it comparisons with private equity firm 3G Capital, which made AB InBev into a megabrewer that is now pursuing the biggest acquisition in consumer goods history by taking over SABMiller.

3G, which Nestle's chairman once accused of "pulverising" the food industry, also recently formed Kraft Heinz, giving it control of U.S. coffee brands such as Maxwell House and Gevalia.

Putting a brave face on the rivalry, Nestle CEO Paul Bulcke told Reuters in June that he welcomed it, since it created value for consumers by forcing companies to be extra thoughtful.

"It is always challenging yourself on doing the right things and putting the resources behind the right ideas," Bulcke said.

Nestle's coffee revenue was over $15 billion last year, due largely to the global popularity of Nescafe, which it says is the third most-valuable drinks brand in the world behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

"All of this is fine, but this is the past," Patrice Bula, the Nestle executive vice president in charge of coffee, told investors in May. "Big doesn't mean you're fast, big doesn't mean you're going to be relevant to the consumer of the future."

NO RESTING

Following its purchase of U.S. single-serve coffee company Keurig Green Mountain, JAB now has the largest share of the capsule market, which is the fastest-growing part of the coffee business - and the most profitable.

Nespresso's industry-leading profit margins have been protected by a closed retail system in which Nespresso capsules can only be purchased in Nespresso boutiques or online.

But with 210 rivals producing capsules of other brands compatible with Nespresso machines, and Starbucks due to launch its own pods this autumn, Nespresso margins could come under pressure.

"The challenge for Nespresso will be to maintain their exceptionally high profitability because they have to invest more in marketing, promotions and new stores," Vontobel analyst Jean-Philippe Bertschy said.

Nestle's Bula said Nespresso was planning 50 new boutique openings per year through 2020 in more than 20 new markets, adding that a large number of them would be in North America. It also recently launched digital and fully automated kiosks that can process capsule orders in seconds.

Its Nescafe Dolce Gusto brand has built a new factory in Brazil, its first outside Europe, to support its growth, and Nescafe is introducing a range of new milky, barista-style drinks and rare coffee origins that are harder to copy and command higher prices.

Nestle is also tailoring its drinks to new international markets, such as Coffee Viet made with fish sauce popular in Vietnam or Nescafe Arabiana with cardamom in the Middle East.


Shares in Welspun India, one of the world's largest textile manufacturers, fell by their maximum daily limit of 20 per cent on Monday after Target Corp said it was severing ties with the company over a cotton supply dispute.

Target Corp said that after an extensive investigation it had confirmed that Welspun, which uses Egyptian cotton to make bedsheets and pillowcases sold by the retailer, substituted another type, of non-Egyptian cotton, to make these sheets between August 2014 and July 2016.

ALSO READ: Banking stocks trade lower after Urjit Patel picked as new RBI governor

Target has pulled all the remaining products from its stores and on its website target.com, the company said in a release on Friday.

"We have informed Welspun that, due to this conduct, we are in the process of terminating our relationship with them," it said in the release.

Shares in Welspun India dropped 20 per cent before trading was halted.

Welspun India said in a release to the BSE on Saturday that it was investigating a product specification issue with one client program, without specifically naming Target Corp.

"We have initiated immediate actions to investigate the root cause. We are appointing an external auditor (one of the Big Four) to audit our supply systems and processes," Welspun said.

"This is an issue of highest priority for us and we will take all necessary steps to address it," the company added.
The lieutenant RBI governor has finally been elevated to governor's post to succeed Raghuram Rajan. Marketmen are relieved as this signals a continuity of polices at RBI. Central Bank in US on Sunday said it is close to hitting its targets hinting rate hike in 2016 is well on cards, while in Japan, companies are unenthused over stimulus in the economy.

ALSO READ: All you must know about Urjit Patel, successor to Raghuram Rajan
Reports that 4,000 jobs have been lost in the aftermath of the implosion at local search engine Askme is only the latest in the saga of layoffs happening in the start-up sector in the country. Earlier Ola had sacked 700 employees after consolidating its TaxiForSure acquisition. Flipkart had also been reported to having dismissed 700 employees to cut costs, though the company clarified that it had done so to weed out underperformers.

Whatever the reason, as the once go-go funding scene experiences a winter chill, layoffs are becoming pretty common. Though it sounds cruel, layoffs are healthy as they help companies survive. It makes them focus on trimming costs driven by market forces. When entire companies shut as in the case of Askme or GoJavas, it allows more competitive, healthy and nimble rivals to survive. The process of creative destruction, while painful to those impacted, is the bedrock of a healthy economy.



Even globally established companies like Cisco and Microsoft routinely lay off people to respond to changing market dynamics.



However, start-ups in India need to handle layoffs and restructuring better. More so than other cultures, in India the job one holds (unfortunately) defines the individual. So, to begin with, companies need to have a culture where it communicates on a continuous basis to employees on what is happening in the market. They may do that to investors but they need to be more transparent with other stakeholders like employees and media.



Second, they need to provide as much handholding to employees being made redundant, as possible. Things like outplacement services, which are commonplace in the West, are still in their infancy in India. Absence of social safety nets means that employers sacking workforce, should try and provide as much cushion as possible. Where possible, pay and other benefits of a few months ought to be given so that a worker has time to land on his or her feet.

Layoffs and redundancies in a modern economy are facts of life. There is no escaping it. Companies who handle this with grace and tact will attract the best talent through ups and downs.
Reliance Industries, India's largest conglomerate, has asked its 40,000-plus employees to stop using phones connections of existing operators, like Airtel and Vodafone, and instead switch to its own high-speed 4G Jio.

RIL has asked employees to port their existing phone numbers to Jio, a move that may open another front with the existing operators, who have been up in arms against the Mukesh Ambani-led firm's prolonged beta testing.

"We are excited to announce yet another milestone towards greater excellence, where we will be switching our existing corporate connections to Jio," RIL's HR department wrote to all its employees.

It asked employees to use MNP to port their existing numbers to Jio and explained to them the step-by-step process.

Mobile number portability (MNP) enables telephone users to retain their number when changing from one carrier to other.

"Once you have submitted the required information, we will initiate the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) process with the existing operator. This will take around seven working days to complete," the company HR said in the email.

So far, the company subscribed to corporate plans of all major operators including Airtel and Vodafone for the employees.

Reliance Jio test launched its services last December, but no dates for commercial launch has yet been announced.

Initially, Jio SIM was available only to its employees, and later bundled with Reliance's own Lyf-branded smartphones.

Now, all Samsung and LG smartphones users could walk-in to a Reliance Digital store and procure a Jio SIM.

It now has over 1.5 million users.

The company says it has created the world's largest end- to-end all IP network and invested over Rs 1.34 lakh crore.

Once launched, the services will cover over 18,000 towns and over 2 lakh villages across all the 22 service areas of the country.
Global performance management company, Nielsen Holdings, have today released their latest retail performance figures.

The figures show that in the second quarter of 2016, the volume of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) purchased in Ireland rose 1.3% year-on-year, whilst the average prices paid for these goods also rose 1.3%.

Consequently, grocery retailers saw a 2.6% rise in takings at the tills  the fourth highest figure since Nielsen started measuring this nearly eight years ago.

Across the 21 European countries, Turkey had the highest growth in takings at the tills (+8.9%), whilst Greece had the biggest decline (-7.2%). Of the big five western European markets, Spain (+2.1%) had the highest growth.

The Irish market had the fifth highest figures among the 21 European countries measured, hugely outperforming Europe as a whole (0.8% rise) and the UK (-1.6% decline)  the latters worst performance in nearly two years.

Managing Director for Nielsen Ireland, Matt Clark says, "The recent upturn in FMCG sales in Ireland continues, in terms of both volumes purchased and prices paid. This is being driven by positive consumer confidence which is good news for retailers in the Republic, who are witnessing some of the best growth numbers in Europe today."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School has today launched the 10th Annual Business Journalist Awards, in association with open eir, to recognise excellence in Irish business journalism.

Broadcast, print and online business journalists are invited to submit entries via www.smurfitschool.ie/bja, before the closing date of Wednesday, 14th September, 2016.

Entries can be submitted by nominees themselves or on behalf of journalists by editors or peers. The winner of each category will be honoured at an awards ceremony on Monday, 5th December and will receive a 1,000 prize.

Since its launch in 2007, the Business Journalist Awards has received over 1,000 entries from business journalists across broadcast, print and online media outlets in Ireland. The awards are run in conjunction with the Business Journalist Association of Ireland (BJAI).



Each entry is scrutinised by an independent panel of judges, comprising business, journalistic, economic and academic leaders. This years judging panel is comprised of:

 Emer Gilvarry; Partner, Mason Hayes & Curran (Chair)

 Professor Ciaran O hOgartaigh, Dean, UCD Business

 Miriam Hughes, CEO DDFH&B Communications Group

 Jon Ihle, Head of Communications at Goodbody

 Professor Donncha Kavanagh, UCD Smurfit School

 Carolan Lennon, Managing Director open eir

 Simon McKeever, CEO of Irish Exporters Association

 Joan Mulvihill, CEO at Irish Internet Association

 Rodney Rice, retired broadcaster

 Christopher McKevitt, RTE.



This years categories are Business News Story of the Year, Economic Commentator of the Year/Business Analyst of the Year, Specialist Business Reporter of the Year, Business Interview of the Year, Upcoming Journalist of the Year, Technology Reporter of the Year and Business Feature of the Year.



Speaking at the launch of the Business Journalist Awards this morning, Professor Ciaran O hOgartaigh, Dean, UCD Business and a member of the judging panel said, "This year marks the tenth anniversary of UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business Schools awards scheme which recognises the very best of business journalism in Ireland. It has, undoubtedly, been a decade which has seen contrasting fortunes in our economy."

He added, "In that time business journalists have been crucial in helping society gain a real understanding of the major financial and economic issues which have shaped all our lives. It is important to recognise their individual and collective contributions again this year and, as Irelands leading business school, we are proud to honour those who have demonstrated true excellence in business reporting."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
It was announced today that the Enterprise Ireland International Business Womens Conference has opened its doors in the Brandon Hotel in Tralee to celebrate successful women in business.

The conference addressed the under-representation of women in business and the importance of female role models in encouraging more women to consider and enter into entrepreneurship.

A highlight of the day was the discussion on the untapped potential of women with panel experts including Eleanor McEvoy from Dragons Den and CEO of Budget Energy and Enterprise Ireland CEO, Julie Sinnamon, providing information on their own insights and experiences.

The conference also focused on social entrepreneurship, including the keynote speaker and social activist, Madi Sharma who spoke on the challenges faced by many women and her own journey from victim to changemaker

A line-up of 29 expert speakers took part in the daylong event, kicking off with a focus on how advances in social and digital media are driving business for entrepreneurs forward. Successful female business leaders, setting their mark in the digital space including Iseult Ward, CEO and co-founder of FoodCloud and Pamela Newenham, Co-Founder of Girl Crew discussed their own digital business models and the opportunity that digital disruption creates to bring about new business and customer engagement.

Sponsored by AIB, the Department of the Taoiseach and the Local Diaspora Engagement Fund and media partner, Tatler, conference delegates also heard from the Rose of Tralee, Elysha Brennan, as well as previous Roses including Dr. Clare Kambamettu, Dr. Arlene ONeill and 2005 Rose of Tralee, Dr. Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain.

Speaking at the conference, Enterprise Ireland CEO, Julie Sinnamon said, "Over the last number of years we have seen a threefold increase in the number of female-led high potential start-ups supported by Enterprise Ireland, from 7% in 2011 to a record 22% in 2015. Todays event is part of our commitment to support women to embrace entrepreneurial opportunities and realise their full potential."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
British Prime Minister Theresa May's ambitious plans to curb excessive pay for top company executives could prove unpopular with some big investors and may in the end have little impact.

BP and WPP were among major companies to face high-profile revolts at shareholders' meetings this year, reflecting broader anger at inequality that helped persuade Britons to vote to leave the European Union in June.

As a result, May has promised to overhaul corporate governance to try and close a wealth gap that sees bosses being paid more than 140 times what their staff receive.

She has pledged to force companies to publish figures showing the difference between the average worker's salary and that of the chief executive. She also wants employees to sit on the committee that oversees how much bosses are paid.

But her key proposal - giving shareholders the annual power of veto over boardroom pay - may not have the desired effect, some industry analysts say.

"Fund managers will be too afraid that the transparency torch they shine on boardroom pay would then be shone on their excessive pay packages," said Gina Miller, a partner at boutique investment manager SCM Direct, and a long-time campaigner for better value for money in UK fund management.

Investors already have the right to block longer-term pay policies, typically put to a vote every three years, but experience shows that having the power to act does not necessarily lead more votes against a company.

London-based ISS Corporate Solutions, a unit of Institutional Shareholder Services, which tracks the votes, said that of the 134 binding votes put to shareholders in FTSE 100 firms over the last five years, all went in favor of the company's pay policies.

Of those votes, ISS had recommended investors oppose the company on eight occasions and abstain on three. Across the FTSE All-Share index over the same period, 766 votes were completed, with just one failing to gain approval - suggesting fund managers were broadly untroubled by the issue of executive pay.

But for Stefan Stern, head of the High Pay Centre, an independent think-tank which reported a 10 percent rise in chief executives' pay to 5.5 million pounds last year, an annual vote would nevertheless keep the issue on the agenda.

"We're still in the realm of symbolism, in a sense, but it's a much more meaningful one because it's happening every year ... it is a propitious moment to try something ambitious."

Among the highest paid bosses in 2015 were WPP's Martin Sorrell, with 70.4 million pounds, Berkeley Group's Tony Pidgeley, with 23.3 million pounds, and Reckitt Benckiser's Rakesh Kapoor, with 23.2 million pounds, the report said.

Part of the problem is that many asset managers do not have big enough governance teams to vote on pay at all the companies they invest in.

Many managers outsource the duty, preferring to focus on their largest holdings or other environmental and social issues they feel more directly affect investment returns.

World leader BlackRock has a relatively large team of just over 20 corporate governance and stewardship staff globally, but most rivals have far fewer.

And if fund managers are required to assess pay policies every year instead of every three, they could be forced to invest in bigger governance teams at a time when costs are soaring and investors want lower fund fees.

"The thing I hear time and time again is 'we're stretched'," said Oliver Parry, head of corporate governance at the Institute of Directors. Asset managers would need to add more resources to make a success of any changes brought in by May, he said.

Lawyers say giving fund managers a binding vote on pay could lead to possible infringement of contract or employment law, making it tough for a company to renege on salaries and bonuses already promised or paid.

"If a bonus or salary is set out in a contract, and the employer for whatever reason doesn't honor that, they are in breach of contract and that could lead to a number of claims - the most serious being constructive dismissal," Paula Rome, an employment partner at law firm Shoosmiths, told Reuters.

May's plans to disclose the pay ratio between bosses and their employees and bring staff on board mirror actions elsewhere.

U.S. authorities say firms based there must disclose the gap from next year, while employee representation rules borrow heavily from Germany, where works councils can wield real power over a company's strategic direction.

May has yet to flesh out her plans to give employees or consumers representation on the board, but the IoD's Parry said it was not clear how effective it would be.

There was no evidence to suggest workers actually have much direct impact, he said, but it might make directors think twice about the boardroom pay packages they put forward. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
Dancing with the (political) stars

Published on August 22, 2016

Story by Katharina Kramer

en

pl

fr

es

it

de

Britain's former Justice Secretary Michael Gove famously said that people are "sick of experts", and political campaigns across the world are being dominated by figures whose personalities are valued over their policies. Are we facing a crisis of democracy? [OPINION]

When following recent political campaigns such as the Brexit referendum or the American presidential election, one question springs to mind: what has happened to democracy?

Besides offering a bleak glimpse into the current world order, it seems the usually celebrated practice of democracy is at a crossroads. Instead of focusing on facts, rhetoric and real solutions, campaigns now resemble a popularity contest based on who wore what, who shook whose hand and, most importantly, who gave the most ridiculous statement. Voters are engaging in a highly choreographed dance with the political stars.

Next to the meaning of democracy being undermined by a political reality show, it seems as though there is also a veritable shift from necessity of democracy to the necessity of the correct democracy. In other words, liberally minded people fear that voters are electing the wrong political actors. Are we facing a crisis of democracy?

According to the Belgian author David Van Reybrouk, elections are bad for democracy. In his recent article for the Guardian, he claims that in the past 10 years, around the world, there has been a considerable increase in calls for a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections  and that trust in governments and political parties has reached a historical low.

The need for a strong leader but less democracy goes a long way to explaining the appeal of Brexit campaigners like Nigel Farage or the rise of Donald Trump, but nuances of it can also be found in south-eastern Europe. Last year, Greece held a referendum in light of a new financial memorandum with the Troika. The OXI campaign became a synonym for overall disappointment with European so-called solidarity, finding empathy from similar groups in other European countries. Trust in the former as well as current government was exhausted, and a tougher stance towards involvement from Brussels was demanded from all sides of the political spectrum.

Mistrust of the EU is growing across Europe too; particularly in Serbia. In a recent study conducted by the Belgrade-based Institute for European Affairs, it became clear that much of the EU integration process does not reflect cohesion: 51% of young Serbs think their country should stop EU integration.

This shift in political ideology poses a conundrum to the Balkans. When watching perceived successful countries such as the United Kingdom scramble for the leftovers of the old liberal order, it sends a signal to new and hopeful member states that the EU is not, in fact, functioning the way it should be. How can the EU still claim to be the political non-plus ultra when their democratic process has morphed into a Keeping Up with Brussels? Elections cannot be merely elections, but an actual debate with arguments that incorporate the concerns and demands of voters across the spectrum. Sounds simple? It is. In fact, its a reality show without the show.

Story by Katharina Kramer
Phyllis Yochem Bird Watch SHARE Joyce Jarmon, longtime friend of bird columnist Phyllis Yochem, celebrated her centennial birthday recently.

The term "old friend" took on extra significance this weekend when I participated in a singular celebration. The children of my dear (and old) friend Joyce Jarmon organized a wonderful gathering in honor of Joyce's 100th birthday.

I have known Joyce since I married my husband, Johnny. He and Joyce's husband, Jake, grew up on the same block in San Antonio. Both men moved to Corpus Christi after World War II. Our families spent many weekends hunting or fishing together when our children were growing up.

Those outdoor adventures encouraged a curiosity about nature that most of our children have sustained into their adult lives. They are people who notice birds, bugs, rocks, stars, plants and animals. They pay attention to behaviors and patterns. They consult field guides; they ask questions.

Jarmon is a source of inspiration to all who know her. She can be counted on to volunteer in support of environmental and political causes she believes are important. She is a life member of the Audubon Outdoor Club and an active member of the local Sierra Club chapter.

When we were both slightly more agile, Jarmon was a frequent attendee of Gene Blacklock's field trips. She has taken several trips in Mexico that featured birding, as well as one to Michoacan to observe the annual monarch butterfly migration.

Many birders were among the crowd assembled to wish Jarmon well in her second century. Jo and Bob Creglow sometimes drive Jarmon to evening meetings. Mary Mauel touches base regularly with Jarmon by telephone. Her neighbor Lynette Ferber compares notes with Jarmon on the numerous birds that visit their adjoining yards.

Making new and interesting friends is one of the pleasures that can always be counted on when members of the large Jarmon family congregate. Offspring, extended family, boyfriends and girlfriends, recent acquaintances: all are made to feel welcome. Few leave without revealing some special talent or passion.

Bryant "Jake" Jarmon, Joyce's oldest son, traveled from Terlingua with Laird Considine, a ranger at Big Bend Ranch State Park, to attend the festivities. Although not as well-known as the adjacent national park, the state park, situated along the Rio Grande between Presidio and Lajitas, is Texas' largest. Jake thought Considine and I might enjoy talking about the contrasts between Gulf Coast birding and Chihuahuan desert birding.

I gave Considine a few recommendations for birding excursions in the area, and we discussed the Holy Grail of Big Bend area birding, the Colima warbler. Every spring, birders visit Big Bend National Park with hopes of seeing this Mexican species in its only United States habitat. Some fairly strenuous hiking is required to reach the bird's favored environs.

According to Jake Jarmon, the park ranger is a hiker of formidable speed and endurance. Joyce Jarmon and I might not be able to keep up with Considine on the trail at this point in our lives, but bird-watching is keeping both of us on our toes. I was honored to celebrate my friend's milestone birthday with her.

Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds in Texas since 1960.
| BY Lynchy |

Publicis Communications Greater China has appointed Oliver Xu as Chief Executive Officer of Publicis Worldwide, Publicis Vivid, MSLGROUP, and TEAM ONE in Beijing. In a separate announcement, Nuno Wu was named to the role of Executive Creative Director, becoming Xus creative partner in Beijing.

In their new roles, Xu (pictured left) and Wu (right) will not only lead the growth of each agency and inspire them to create excellent work, but both will provide access to a wider range of capabilities  from digital to PR and commerce  to each agencys individual clients. Under the new arrangement, each agency brand will retain its own identity and culture, continuing to grow and expand while also benefitting from immediate access to new capabilities at scale, across a group of more than 200 professionals.

Xu belongs to the first generation of Chinese ad men, having about 25 years of experience in Beijing and working in senior leadership roles at several prestigious agencies, including J Walter Thompson, Saatchi & Saatchi, and BBDO. Most recently, he served as MD and Chief Integration Officer at Grey.

Wu has been in the ad industry for more than 25 years. His extensive portfolio includes BMW, Mercedes Benz, General Motors, Unilever, Heineken, COFCO, among others. Most recently, he was Executive Creative Director at both VML and Jung Von Matt. Wus strong experience in all channels is a perfect fit with our model, strengthening the creative departments and ensuring the right balance of integrated skills to support both local and international clients.

Xu said, It is great to come back to Publicis Groupe and I am very excited about this new role, which will enable us to bring the best of the Groupes capabilities together and do great work for our clients by providing an effective, one-stop communications solution.
| BY Lynchy |

The worlds largest marketer of Kiwifruits, Zespri, has just launched a content offensive aimed at changing the perception of its flagship Green Kiwifruits.

Green kiwifruits are often misunderstood, especially when compared to their SunGold Kiwifruit

counterpart. The challenge was educating consumers about the ripening process of Green Kiwifruits in a way that is fun and memorable. said Mavis Neo, Creative Director at The Secret Little Agency (TSLA), Singapore.

For years, Green Kiwifruits have chalked up a reputation for being sour, and this has proved to be one of the top purchase barriers globally. This is largely due to most retailers preference to stock firmer fruits on their shelves to ensure minimal fruit loss, coupled with the lack of education on the handling and ripening of Green Kiwifruits.

The socially native campaign was created by TSLA and launched today with a music video  featuring a trio of heavily tattooed tough guys who suddenly break into song and dance midway to elaborate the plight they share with kiwifruits. Kiwis are abit like me, you cant tell much by what you see, they bemoan. They depict a picture of misunderstood, sweet-natured tough guys who are more than meets the eye, if one would really get to know them.

A central website educates with bite-sized pieces of advice in the form of light-hearted videos, and is supported with print, radio, social media and on-ground sampling of ready-to-eat Zespri Green Kiwifruits, all in a bid to drive this message forward.

We are immensely excited about this new campaign. There is such a rich, sweet story behind every Zespri Green Kiwifruit, and we want households across Asia to take notice and change their perceptions of this tiny superfruit, which has so much to offer. Boasting more than 20 essential nutrients and minerals, a ripe Zespri Green Kiwifruit tastes sweeter than you think when handled and enjoyed in the right manner! said Carol Ward, Zespri Global General Manager for Marketing and Innovation.
Monday, August 22, 2016 at 2:59PM

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Toronto, ON - LinuxCon and ContainerCon opened earlier today in downtown Toronto and the conference was kicked off by notable keynotes from various luminaries in the Open Source community as well as key players in the industry.

The show floor at the Westin Harbour Castle Toronto's conference centre showed how far the world has come. Linux, which celebrates 25 years on August 25, has certainly come a long way. While various version of open Source Linux operating systems haven't been as widely adopted, it has made a huge impact on enterprise, cloud computing as well as on backend system implementation.

Hundreds of developers, system administrators and attendees flocked to hear the latest Linux news as well as check out products and software being demoed during the conference.

Microsoft, whose former CEO Steve Ballmer once said "Linux is a Cancer," has done a complete 180' turn under current CEO Satya Nadella. Microsoft has been collaborating with Linux since 2009, the company is clearly putting its future in the cloud and enterprise and these are domains that are heavily impacted by Linux.

Developers can now use even use Microsoft's PowerShell on Linux, and run PowerShell scripts on Linux servers. Microsoft provides its own Linux servers through the Azure cloud computing service.

Microsoft's Azure booth is one of the first to greet you on the show floor and in a reality-latering display of 'openess' had giant versions of Tux the Penguin (the Linux mascot) flanking their display.

There were also giveaway stickers that proclaimed "Microsoft Loves Linux," a new day, indeed.

Other interesting booths at the trade show floor include Ubuntu maker Canonical who demoed Juju which allows the ability to odel, configure and manage services with Juju and deploy to all major public and private clouds with only a few commands. Hundreds of preconfigured services available in the Juju store. Their system saves hundreds of lines of code and makes attributing commands as easy as drag and drop.

Even after 25 years, Linux still serves as an example of how collaborative development can work, which can be applied to other open source projects, said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation.

Organizations sponsoring Linux kernel development, many who are represented at the show include Intel, Red Hat, Linaro, Samsung, SUSE, IBM, Renesas, Google, AMD, Texas Instruments and ARM.

LinuxCon and ContainerCon run simultaneously until August 24. Linux Creator Linus Torvalds will take the stage on Wednesday at 9:00 a.m.
Monday, August 22, 2016 at 6:11AM

A new report from Reuters claims Samsung is looking to keep the momentum of posting its best profits for two years with a new program. Samsung is being rumoured to be starting a re-sale program for refurbished, used version of its higher-end devices. The smartphones will supposedly be handsets returned from upgrade programs in the markets like the US and South Korea. These will then be sold at a lower price. It wasnt specified in the report how much of a discount will be given and which countries the program will be available in.

If there is any truth to this, consumers will probably find the deal tempting, especially with the good reviews the new Samsung devices have been getting. For those who cant afford the extremely high price tags of the likes of the Galaxy S7and Note7.

Source: The Verge
[Your Business Name]

<Your business address>

Contact Info

Phone: <Your business phone number>

Fax: <Your business fax number>

Email: <Your business e-mail address>

Web: CAPITOLHILLCUBANS.COM

<Your Business Headline>

Business Overview

<Your business description>

Geographic Area

<Your service area>

Line of Business

<The type of business you are in>

Brands We Carry

<Your list of brands>

Products and Services

<Products and/or services you provide>

Discounts Offered

<Coupons and other discount information you offer>

Additional Information

<Any other information about your business>

Business Hours

<Your hours of operation>

Timezone

<Your timezone>

We Accept

<Methods of payment you accept>
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
Nowadays, to be a successful MBA, one needs to be an accomplished problem-solver. Problem solving is the key skill MBA students require on a day to day basis. They are continuously exposed to new and unexpected challenges which they have to overcome. Looking at this scenario, management education too has incorporated some radical changes in its pedagogy to prepare the students for the corporate world.

What Is Problem-Based Learning (PBL)?

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of solving an open-ended problem. Students learn both thinking strategies and domain knowledge. PBL is an approach that challenges students to learn through engagement in a real problem. PBL makes a fundamental shift from focus on teaching to focus on learning.

There are several unique aspects that define the PBL approach:

Learning takes place within the contexts of authentic tasks, issues and problems that are aligned with real-world concerns

In a PBL course, students and the instructor become co-learners, co-planners, co-producers and co-evaluators as they design, implement and continually refine their curricula.

PBL is unique as it fosters collaboration among students, stresses the development of problem solving skills within the context of professional practice, promotes effective reasoning and self-directed learning, and is aimed at increasing motivation for life-long learning.

Origin of PBL and its use:

PBL originated from a curriculum reform by medical faculty at Case Western Reserve University in the late 1950s. Innovative medical and health science programs continued to evolve the practice of PBL, particularly the specific small group learning and tutorial process that was developed by medical faculty at McMaster University in Canada.

PBL has spread to over 50 medical schools, and has diffused into many other professional fields including law, economics, architecture, mechanical and civil engineering, as well as in K-12 curricula. And the entire MBA program at Ohio University has been designed as an integrated curriculum using the PBL approach.

Why PBL?

Traditional education practices, starting from kindergarten through college, tend to produce students who are often bored with their education. They are faced with a vast amount of information to memorize, much of which seems irrelevant to the world as it exists outside of school. Traditional classrooms also do not prepare students to work with others in collaborative team situations. One of the greatest advantages of PBL is that students genuinely enjoy the process of learning through PBL.

How Does PBL Work?

The problem-solving process can be summarized in three broad steps:

Phase 1. "What do we already know? The learners will discuss the current situation surrounding the problem as it has been presented. For example - A case study or situation in a company is provided.

Phase 2. "What do we need to know (to solve this problem)?" It is in this phase that the learners will analyze the problem into components, discussing implications, entertaining possible explanations or solutions, and developing working hypotheses. For example - The management concepts or theories are applied wherever applicable to solve the problems.

Phase 3. "What should we do?" It is in this phase that the learners identify and allocate learning tasks, develop study plans to discover needed information. For example - Solutions to the problems in the case are outlined.

Though a very effective learning method, it too comes with its challenges. The major limitation is that it is time consuming and lack of competent instructors to conduct the session well. And in this era of information overload, it is very difficult to filter the right information.

In spite of the aforementioned limitations, the beneficial effects of problem-based learning should not be underestimated. It can make students' learning experience very interesting and give students a very fascinating or enthralling learning experience.
The Joint Admission Board (JAB) of IITs has brought a good news for the foreign students, who wish to study at the IITs in India. The board has decided to allow the students from the nine countries namely - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Singapore, the UAE and Ethiopia to skip the JEE (Main) exams and directly appear for the JEE (Advanced) exams. The foreign students need not write JEE Main exam in order to be eligible to write JEE Advanced, whereas Indian students have to appear for JEE main in order to qualify for JEE advanced.

"The idea has been approved in-principle. Each IIT will also ratify it and the IIT council will approve it next week," an official told Times of India. He further mentioned that this was being done to reflect India's soft power and this would in no way disturb the seats meant for Indians.

What is the reason for allowing students of 9 countries to write JEE Advanced?

Allowing the students of the nine countries mentioned above to study at the IITs in India has a purpose, which is to place the IITs among the top international educational institutions. Another official was quoted saying that the key parameters taken into account during all international rankings are international students. The IITs could not make it to the top even though they score well on other parameters.

The official also revealed that seats will be given to the foreign students under the supernumerary category. IIT-Bombay will implement the programme.

Where will the examination centres be set?

Exam centres will be set up in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Singapore, the UAE and Ethiopia. Due to the objection of home ministry, Pakistan has not been included. Justifying the decision to include Ethiopia, Gautam Biswas, director of IIT-Guwahati, told that the institute has been receiving more number of students from Ethiopia for PG courses and IITs are popular among Ethiopian students.

The reason behind choosing students from the UAE is that people of different countries live in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. These students from the above mentioned nine countries have to bear the cost of their admissions and the government will not bear any cost. The students coming from foreign lands would enjoy the same facilities enjoyed by the Indian students.
On Friday, A.M. Best announced that it upped the financial strength rating of Transatlantic Reinsurance Company and its subsidiaries (collectively referred to as TransRe) to A+ (superior) from the previous level of A (excellent).

Explaining the upgrade, the Oldwick, N.J.-based rating agency pointed to TransRes strong risk-adjusted capitalization, robust enterprise risk management and consistent operating performance. In addition, Best also flagged two key agreements struck by TransReone with Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary General Re to underwrite brokered business for Gen Re, and the other with Berkshires National Indemnity and American International Group removing some long-tailed liabilities from TransRes books.

Under the terms of the July 2016 agreement between TransRe and General Re, TransRe serves as the exclusive underwriter for U.S. and Canadian broker-sourced treaty business on behalf of General Re.

While the tangible benefits of the agreement have not yet been realized, the additional capacity is expected to enhance TransRes overall competitive position, A.M. Best said in the ratings announcement, after noting that the upgrade considers TransRes well-regarded business profile and its highly diversified book of business.

Also factoring into the upgrade is a deal with AIG, and with Berkshires National Indemnity Company and Resolute Management, Inc., commuting historical asbestos and environmental exposures. The A&E exposures have been a longstanding, albeit modest, drag on overall earnings, A.M. Best said, referencing the deal announced in December 2015, under which TransRe said it would pay $400 million to eliminate roughly 90 percent of its liabilities for A&E losses occurring in 1986 and prior years.

Although A.M. Best analysts dont expect TransRes return measures to be at the high end of the companies peer group going forward, they do expect the reinsurer to continue produce favorable results, supportive of the rating and with lower volatility relative to peers over the course of the full cycle.

Transatlantic Holdings Inc. was at one time a publicly traded reinsurer that was majority owned by AIG. Alleghany Corp. ultimately acquired TransRe, taking it private in March 2012

In addition to taking action on the financial strength ratings of the reinsurance operations, A.M. Best upgraded TransRes issuer credit ratings to a- from bbb+ along with the issue ratings of Alleghany Corporation and Transatlantic Holdings Inc.

A.M. Best also affirmed the FSRs and ICRs of other Alleghany insurance operations:

RSUI Indemnity Company and its reinsured subsidiaries (RSUI), FSR affirmed at A+ and the ICRs at aa-

Capitol Indemnity Corporation and two subsidiaries, FSR affirmed at A and the ICRs at a

Pacific Compensation Company, FSR affirmed at A- and the ICR at a-

The outlook of each rating is stable.

Source: A.M. Best
Keanu Reeves, apart from an A-list actor, is also a true rev-head with a thriving passion for both cars and motorcycles  and he gone one better than just buying and driving them.



With his longtime friend Gard Hollinger, Reeves is the brain behind a company based out of California dubbed Arch Motorcycles. The firm produces the KRGT-1 that has a 2,032 cc engine and a starting price of $93,000.

Reeves first thought about starting a motorcycle company when he and Hollinger planned to customize his Harley Davidson in 2007. Ideas flowed and the two decided against modifying the Harley and instead made an entirely new bike designed to thrill, be perfect for cruising and with road presence unlike anything else.

After years of hard work, the duo now run a successful business and since 2014, have sold a handful of KRGT-1s. In the coming years, they plan on producing around 30 bikes annually, keen to meet demand while still maintaining the exclusivity of their creations.

The bikes are made from hand, use over 200 individual parts and can be completely customized to suit the owner, just like the finest exotic cars. Generally, the 2.0-liter engine delivers a touch over 120 hp and is mated to a six-speed transmission. Exotic materials like carbon fiber make up the wheels while the entire body is handcrafted from aluminum.

VIDEO

PHOTO GALLERY
Kia might cancel its planned hybrid diesel powertrain as VWs Dieselgate scandal continues to unfold.



Although the project is still officially under development, Albert Biermann, Kias performance vehicle development boss admitted to Autocar that its becoming hard to justify the development of more expensive diesel engines with the emission standards becoming increasingly more stringent.

The research project is still going on, he said, but the cost of electric motors and batteries in a hybrid is already significant. The question is whether it is really necessary to throw in a more expensive diesel engine.

If Kia decides to scrap the plan for a hybrid diesel powertrain, the research done so far will not be wasted. Biermann suggested that in this case the hybrid system will be adapted to work with a petrol engine instead. We also have a very efficient Atkinson-cycle gasoline engine, so I think that is the good choice here, he added.

The idea for a hybrid diesel powertrain was revealed with the Optima T-Hybrid that was shown at the 2014 Paris Auto Show. The concept featured the companys 1.7-litre CRDi diesel engine which was aided by a 48v electric supercharger, a concept similar to what Audi uses in the Audi SQ7.

Back then, Kia estimated that a production version of that powertrain would cut emissions and fuel consumption of a model fitted with it by 15 to 20 per cent.

Note: 2014 Kia Optima T Hybrid Concept pictured

PHOTO GALLERY
See this guy, in the orange and black? His name is Kris Singh. And hes sitting behind the wheel of his brand new Koenigsegg Agera RS.



Agera XS, we should say, because thats how he had Koenigsegg badge his hypercar.

Its the first of its kind certified for use on American roads, fitted with an oversized rear wing to keep those 1,160 horses from taking flight. But as you might have guessed, the Agera isnt the only super-rare seven-figure exotic in his collection.

Said to be worth some $200 million, Singh was one of three customers who ponied up over $4 million apiece to take home the incredible exclusive Lamborghini Veneno back in 2013.

Also in the garage of the Florida-based investment banker is the one-off Pagani Huayra La Monza Lisa edition and a Lamborghini Aventador 50th Anniversary Roadster in a special shade of neon green, created just for him, called Verde Singh.

Koenigsegg flew the Agera XS, along with the Regera, straight from its base in Angelholm, Sweden out to Monterey, California. There Singh took delivery of his latest toy and several other owners joined in on the action to make the most impressive assembly of Koenigseggs since a bakers dozen gathered in Scandinavia for the first owners tour.

*Update: While Koenigsegg said on its blog that the XS has the same (1,160hp) engine as the Agera RS, in an Instagram posting, the cars owner, Kris Singh, claims it comes with the upgraded power of the One:1 engine specification, which is advertised at 1341 HP.

PHOTO GALLERY
Volvo could be the next manufacturer to field an entry in Formula E. Motorsport reports that the Swedish manufacturer and its performance arm Polestar are closely evaluating increasing their involvement in the electric racing series. They just havent figured out exactly what form that will take.



The automaker currently participates in the Formula E Manufacturers Advisory Group, alongside BMW and Hondas performance division Mugen. Stepping up its involvement would likely take the form of supplying powertrain components to one of the existing teams or even fielding its own.

Major manufacturers currently participating include Renault (with the e.dams team), Peugeot-Citroens DS division (with Virgin Racing), and Audi (with the Abt team). Mahindra and Jaguar will both be on the grid next season with their own teams, while electric vehicle manufacturers Venturi and Faraday Future support teams of their own.

BMW and Rimac provide support vehicles as well, but getting Volvo more involved would be a big coup for the series now gearing up for its third season.

Photo Gallery
Contributed Kal Siewert

A man was airlifted from the Glenrosa area of West Kelowna after suffering injuries after an ATV incident.

No details of the incident have been revealed, but the man had suffered upper-body injuries.

That led the Central Okanagan Search and Rescue team to call in Penticton Search and Rescue to help airlift the man to Kelowna General Hospital to avoid any further injuries.

COSAR had been called to the scene at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, and responded with six members, who were then helped by three members of PENSAR.
UPDATE: 7:15 a.m.

After Monday's favourable conditions, fire crews from multiple jurisdictions were able to make good progress on the Bear Creek wildfire, holding the blaze at 60 per cent containment.

Fire crews from West Kelowna, Peachland, Joe Rich and the North Westside fire departments, along with the BC Wildfire Service, spent Monday night extinguishing hot spots and monitoring the fire.

Central Okanagan Emergency Operations says there may be a considerable amount of smoke coming from the fire area today, as crews continue to put out hot spots.

Despite the progress that's been made, 105 properties remain evacuated in Traders Cove and Bear Creek Provincial Park.

RCMP officers continue to patrol the evacuated areas.

An evacuation alert remains in place for 51 properties along Bear Creek Road, north of Parkinson Road, and 14 properties in the Pine Point subdivision. Those under an evacuation alert must be prepared to leave their homes immediately.

Westside Road remains closed between Bear Creek Provincial Park and Traders Cove.

Campers who were evacuated from Bear Creek Provincial Park will be allowed back into the campgrounds temporarily to retrieve their possessions and vehicles, beginning at 8 a.m. Tuesday.

UPDATE: 6:15 a.m.

With no new information from Central Okanagan Emergency Operations overnight, the Bear Creek wildfire appears to be holding at 60 per cent containment.

As of 7 p.m., Monday, the fire was estimated at 52.5 hectares in size.

Castanet has made contact with the BC Wildfire Service, and will update this morning's conditions as soon as information becomes available.

As of 6:15 a.m., current weather conditions were calm and clear, with a temperature of 12 C. Today's high is forecast at 25 C under mostly sunny skies.

UPDATE 7:15 p.m.

Information received from the Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre indicates the Bear Creek wildfire is now 60 per cent contained.

There has been no change in the size of the fire. It remains at 52.5 hectares in size.

It is the second largest fire in the Kamloops Fire District this year.

Only the Pike Mountain Road fire Northwest of Princeton, at 92.5 hectares, was larger.

UPDATE: 4:20 p.m.

Central Okanagan Emergency Operations says the Bear Creek wildfire is now 30 per cent contained.

The burned area is holding at an estimated 52.5 hectares.

UPDATE: 1:15 p.m.

The Bear Creek wildfire is now estimated at 52.5 hectares in size.

The BC Wildfire Service says there has only be minimal growth on the fire this morning and afternoon and the increase in size is due to crews getting a better estimation of the size of the fire itself.

Four skimmer aircraft, one helicopter and 46 personnel are fighting the blaze today.

Fire information officer Melissa Klassen says the weather has helped crews battle the blaze and keep it from spreading.

It is still primarily a Rank 1, some spots of Rank 2 where there is open flame, but primarily the benefits of today's weather is that we've had some precipitation this morning and this afternoon, and with that some cloud cover, explains Klassen.

Westside Road remains closed between Bear Creek Road and Pine Point subdivision, with no estimated time of reopening.

Boaters on Okanagan Lake are asked to stay away from the fire area in and around Bear Creek as air support may be used on this fire.

The Canadian Disaster Animal Response Team (CDART) is the Emergency Support for Bear Creek evacuees' animals. They are set up at the Reception Centre at 2466 Main Street in West Kelowna.

Evacuees can register with them to maintain their animals and livestock. They are also equipped to take in small animals.

Rose Valley Veterinary Hospital in West Kelowna has also volunteered their space for evacuees' animals. Dr. Oz, at the hospital, asks evacuees to call him at 250-769-9109 if they need a place for their pets.

UPDATE: 11 a.m.

The Bear Creek wildfire has grown to an estimated 25 hectares in size.

Low overnight temperatures and precipitation aided crews in monitoring and patrolling the fire.

Air support form BC Wildfire service is on site. Boaters on Okanagan Lake are asked to stay away from the fire area in and around Bear Creek.



The evacuation order remains in place and affects approximately 156 properties including the Bear Creek Provincial Park campground, Traders Cove subdivision, and properties along Bear Creek Road north of the Parkinson Road intersection including Dougmac, Rose Valley and Petterson Roads.



Another 14 properties in the Pine Point subdivision off Westside Road, north of Traders Cove remain on Evacuation Alert. Those residents should be prepared to leave on short notice should conditions change.



The Emergency Support Services Centre is open at the Lions Hall, 2466 Main St. in West Kelowna. Evacuees are asked to register there.



Those without power along Westside Road are asked to conserve water.

ORIGINAL: 8 a.m.

The Bear Creek fire is sitting at about 10 hectares this morning as fire crews converge on the scene and evaluate the situation.

More than 46 BC Wildfire Service personnel will be working on the Bear Creek fire this morning, says fire information officer Max Birkner.

The fire is approximately 10 hectares in size, but it is still very early in the incident, so this estimate could change.

Birkner says the weather has been favourable this morning for fighting the blaze and crews are on scene now to assess whether they will call in air support.

The fire behaviour has gone down to a Rank 1, but it depends on weather and that behaviour can change.

At this point, no dwellings have been lost to the fire although some outbuildings like sheds may be damaged.

Structural fire crews from West Kelowna, Peachland, Wilsons Landing and firefighters from the BC Wildfire Service have spent the overnight hours putting out hotspots along the perimeter of the fire.

An Evacuation Order and alert remain in effect.

Westside Road remains closed between Bear Creek Road and Pine Point subdivision, with no estimated time of reopening.

Boaters on Okanagan Lake are asked to stay away from the fire area in and around Bear Creek as air support may be used on this fire.

The Canadian Disaster Animal Response Team (CDART) is the Emergency Support for Bear Creek evacuees' animals. They are set up at the Reception Centre at 2466 Main Street in West Kelowna.

Evacuees can register with them to maintain their animals and livestock. They are also equipped to take in small animals.

Rose Valley Veterinary Hospital in West Kelowna has also volunteered their space for evacuees' animals. Dr. Oz, at the hospital, asks evacuees to call him at 250-769-9109 if they need a place for their pets.
Photo: NASA

Strong winds from a typhoon forced air traffic controllers to temporarily abandon the control tower at Narita International Airport on Monday, shutting down one of Tokyo's two main airports for about an hour. Hundreds of domestic flights were cancelled at the city's other major airport.

Narita was closed at 2:20 p.m. after the controllers left the tower when wind speeds reached 126 km/h, said a Transport Ministry official at the airport who would give only his surname, Matsumoto. The airport reopened around an hour later.

It was the first time the tower had been closed because of a typhoon. It closed once before, because of shaking during the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that triggered a massive tsunami in March 2011.

Typhoon Mindulle, which made landfall south of Tokyo early Monday afternoon, brought heavy rain and strong winds to Tokyo and surrounding areas.

Eleven people were injured, three seriously, said Japan's Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

South of Tokyo in Kanagawa prefecture, a woman was unconscious after being washed away on a flooded road, and another woman, in her 80s, was blown over by strong winds and seriously injured. Further southwest on the Izu Peninsula, a man in his 30s was knocked over by winds and broke a rib bone.

Narita, which is located outside of Tokyo, said that 88 international and 34 domestic departures and arrivals had been cancelled. More than 400 domestic flights were cancelled to and from Tokyo's other major airport, Haneda.

Mindulle had sustained winds of 108 km/h Monday evening, down from 126 km/h when it made landfall, and gusts of up to 162 km/h. It was forecast to move north over the Tohoku region and reach Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido on Tuesday.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Searchers on Monday found the last five victims of a tourist boat sinking in Indonesia that killed 15 people.

The search was ended with all the victims found, said Agustiawarman, the head of Tanjung Pinang Disaster Management Agency.

Only two of the 17 people on board the small wooden boat were rescued after it capsized in rough seas Sunday off Indonesia's Bintan island, south of Singapore.

The search and rescue effort involving about 20 ships and 50 fishing boats had been hampered by high waves and strong currents, disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said on Sunday.

He said the people on the boat were local tourists travelling to Penyengat island, about six kilometres from the city of Tanjung Pinang on Bintan.

Nugroho said some of the passengers tried to swim but were overcome by 3-meter (10-foot) waves. Two children were among those who died. The boat operator and a female passenger survived.

Boat sinkings are common in Indonesia, an archipelago of some 17,000 islands.
Photo: The Canadian Press

At least 40 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been evacuated as floods hit vast swathes of central and eastern India in recent days, officials said Monday.

Days of heavy rain have caused the Ganges River and its tributaries to rise above the danger level during the past 48 hours in about 20 districts of the states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Officials said at least 17 people have died in Madhya Pradesh, 14 in Bihar and nine in Uttar Pradesh over the weekend because of drowning, electrocution or injuries from collapsed houses.

In the city of Allahabad, water from the Ganges entered many residential areas, forcing people to move to safer areas. About 12,000 people were evacuated from low-lying surrounding villages, a government statement said.

In the Hindu holy town of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, flooding forced a halt to cremations at a main riverfront area, District Magistrate Vijay Karan Anand said. Devout Hindus bring dead family members to Varanasi in the belief that being cremated there frees their soul from the cycle of death and rebirth.

In Bihar, 600,000 people were evacuated and the army and air force are on standby because more rain is forecast in the next two days, said disaster management official Vyasji, who uses one name.

Floods occur in many parts of India during the monsoon season, which runs from June through September.
Photo: Jennifer Zielinski - Castanet

The sign pointing you to The Bluffs on the Westside was a victim of Sunday night's wind storm.

The sign and stage were both blown over by winds gusting as high as 48 km/h.

The private, Westbank First Nation locatee land was the host of a few rock concerts in the early 2000s featuring America, Evanescence and ZZ Top.

There was even talk of a rodeo on the property four years ago, but that went nowhere.

There have been reports of significant damage up and down the valley from the storm.

Damage runs from uprooted trees and busted rooftops to damaged boats and planes.
Photo: Jon Manchester

RCMP have determined the death of a man found in a creek is not suspicious.

The Vernon North Okanagan RCMP has confirmed that the death of the 47-year-old man, whose body was recovered from the Vernon Creek this past Saturday, does not involve criminality, said Cpl. Dan Moskaluk.

The Vernon North Okanagan RCMP is continuing to assist the BC Coroners Services with their investigation.

No further details were released.

The unidentified man's body was was discovered in the creek near 34th Street and 23rd Avenue Saturday morning, according to the RCMP.
Photo: RCMP

Charges have been laid in a death six years ago in Mission, B.C.

RCMP Insp. Donna Richardson told a press conference on Monday that first-degree murder charges have been laid in the death of Joshua Bowe.

Two men have been charged with first-degree murder and one with being an accessory to murder after the fact.

The accused were youths at the time, so can't be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Bowe was 21 when he disappeared in November 2010.

Police say the victim and accused knew each other.

The manner of Bowe's death or where his remains were found were not released by the RCMP.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Press Release For Immediate Release: Monday, August 22, 2016

Contact: Media Relations

(404) 639-3286

In the United States, more than 8 in 10 mothers (81.1 percent) begin breastfeeding their babies at birth  but many stop earlier than is recommended, according to the 2016 Breastfeeding Report Card released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Good nutrition and optimal health starts with breastfeeding exclusively for about the first six months of life, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. But only about half of babies (51.8 percent) are still breastfeeding at 6 months of age.

We are pleased by the large number of mothers who start out breastfeeding their infants, said Ruth Petersen, M.D., M.P.H., director of CDCs Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity. Mothers can better achieve their breastfeeding goals with active support from their families, friends, communities, clinicians, health care leaders, employers, and policymakers.

Highlights from the 2016 Breastfeeding Report Card show:

Among infants born in 2013, 4 of 5 (81.1 percent) started out breastfeeding. This high percentage of babies who start out breastfeeding shows that most mothers want to breastfeed and are trying to do so.

More than half (51.8 percent) of infants were breastfeeding at 6 months.

Less than a third (30.7 percent) of infants were breastfeeding at 12 months.

CDC researchers analyzed data on breastfeeding practices and support from 50 states, the District of Columbia (D.C.), and Puerto Rico. Data show that 29 states, including D.C. and Puerto Rico, met the Healthy People 2020 goal of 81.9 percent of infants ever-breastfed (infants that started out breastfeeding). Twelve states met the HP2020 breastfeeding goal for six months breastfeeding duration (60.6 percent) and 19 states met the goal for 12 months breastfeeding duration (34.1 percent).

Mothers and families need breastfeeding support

Many mothers begin breastfeeding but need community support to help them overcome challenges they may face in the hospital, when they go home, or after they return to work. This support might include breastfeeding education programs, improved maternity care practices in hospitals, peer and professional support for moms; and adequate space and equipment to breastfeed or express breast milk in workplaces and childcare centers.

The CDC Breastfeeding Report Card provides state-by-state data to help public health practitioners, health professionals, community members, childcare providers, and family members work together to protect, promote, and support breastfeeding.

For more information on CDCs work on nutrition and breastfeeding, please visit www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding.

###

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICESexternal icon
Uganda: residents decry lack of consultation over mining licence award

ICR Newsroom By 22 August 2016

Residents of Moroto district have accused Ugandas Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development of acting illegally in awarding a mining licence to Tororo Cement without first consulting local communities, the Daily Monitor reports.

Local people have protested against Tororos limestone mining operations in Kosiroi by blocking trucks from entering or leaving the site. They accuse the company of having operated for 15 years without signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with their community.

A spokesperson for Tororo said that the company had invited residents to draw up an MoU, but that one had not been forthcoming. This was disputed by locals, who said that they had produced a draft but were awaiting Tororos help in facilitating the process.

Published under
Fujairah Cement approves Sohar Cement venture

ICR Newsroom By 22 August 2016

The Board of Directors of Fujairah Cement Industries has given the go-ahead to establish Sohar Cement Co in Oman.



The new company investment cost amounts to OMR1.42m (US$3.69m), representing 20 per cent of the paid-up capital.

Published under
(TNS)  The Williston-Elko School District may not be prepared to provide state testing online for students beginning next year, despite a state law passed on June 22 by the General Assembly that all state schools must do so.In a School Board meeting Tuesday, Don Wical, director of technology, said that on a scale of one to five for readiness to conduct online testing, the District only rated a 2.5.That information was provided by the "Online Testing Technology Readiness Assessment," conducted by the state Department of Education.Wical said the rating boils down to the District not having enough computer labs.Two ways to fix the problem, he said, is either build more classrooms and computer labs, or put laptop carts in each of Williston's three schools.Originally, Wical said the school would need more than $1 million to tackle the problem.But, Wical said he found a company in California that would supply a "full 30-station cart," with a type of Dell laptop for only $12,000. Wical said he has asked the state for eight carts.With all eight carts, Wical said testing would be focused only on one grade level at a time.A main concern of Board Vice Chairwoman Ferlicia Cuthberson is that even with eight carts, it still wouldn't be enough to test enough students before lunchtime.When the district would receive the laptops also was a concern for Cuthberson..Debra McCord, director of curriculum, instruction and accountability, said because the District hasn't experimented with complete online testing, it may opt to do some testing online and others the traditional way.McCord added schools also are able to submit a waiver to the Education Department if they feel the school is still not prepared for online testing.The state assessment wasn't all bad, Wical said, adding, "We are doing some things right. ... They were very impressed."
FSG Bank, a division of Atlantic Capital Bank, NA announced a partnership with the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy (CGLA). In an effort to invest in the long term future of our local communities, FSG Bank is making a $10,000 donation to CGLAs efforts in ongoing teacher training, a commitment that Dr. Elaine Swafford, Executive Director of the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy, believes is crucial to the continued success of the school.

FSG Bank is committed to serving the communities in which we live and work. We believe in partnering for impact by directing meaningful resources to help local organizations with a laser focus on one or more of our pillars of giving: education, job creation and affordable housing. We also look for opportunities to actively engage our employees as volunteers. CGLA offers us that opportunity, said Jeff Olingy, Director of Community Outreach at FSG Bank.

We are thrilled to partner with FSG Bank on this very important effort in making an educational impact in Chattanooga. The importance of ongoing teacher training is at the forefront of our strategy, said Dr. Swafford. Its critical that our girls observe our teachers committed to ongoing instruction and in the educational success of our school. This we believe is a perfect scenario in which everyone wins.
From 5,000 feet up, it's difficult to make out where Louisiana's coastline used to be. But follow the skeletal remains of decades-old oil canals, and you get an idea. Once, these lanes sliced through thick marshland, clearing a path for pipelines or ships. Now they're surrounded by open water, green borders still visible as the sea swallows up the shore.

The canals tell a story about the industry's ubiquity in Louisiana history, but they also signal a grave future: $100 billion of energy infrastructure threatened by rising sea levels and erosion. As the coastline recedes, tangles of pipeline are exposed to corrosive seawater; refineries, tank farms and ports are at risk.

"All of the pipelines, all of the things put in place in the '50s and '60s and '70s were designed to be protected by marsh," said Ted Falgout, an energy consultant and former director of Port Fourchon.

Louisiana has an ambitious  and expensive  plan to protect both its backbone industry and its citizens from this threat but, with a $2 billion deficit looming next year, the cash-poor state can do only so much to shore up its sinking coasts. That means the oil and gas industry is facing new pressures to bankroll critical environmental projects  whether by choice or by force.

"The industry down there has relied on the natural environment to protect its infrastructure, and that environment is now unraveling," said Kai Midboe, the director of policy research at the Water Institute of the Gulf. "They need to step up."

Every year in Louisiana, more than 20 square miles of land is swallowed by the Gulf. At Port Fourchon, which services 90 percent of deepwater oil production, the shoreline recedes by three feet every month. Statewide, more than 610 miles of pipeline could be exposed over the next 25 years, according to one study by Louisiana State University and the Rand Corporation. Private industry owns more than 80 percent of Louisiana's coast.

The land loss exacerbates another natural threat: storm-related flooding, like that affecting Baton Rouge now. As days of heavy rainfall caused water to overrun levees along several tributaries this week, Exxon Mobil Corp. began shutting units at its Baton Rouge refinery, the fourth-largest in the U.S. About 40,000 homes in southeastern Louisiana have been affected by the devastating flooding, and at least 11 people have died.

In Louisiana, marshes, swamps and barrier islands can mitigate flooding, soaking up rainfall like a sponge and reducing storm surge. But as the land erodes, storms advance without a buffer, and Louisiana's flood protection systems become less effective. The state estimates that damage from flooding could increase by $20 billion in coming years, if the coastline isn't reinforced.

Midboe, with the Water Institute and the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development, is leading an effort to get companies to invest in restoration projects that directly affect their infrastructure. This month, over a lunch of fresh Gulf shrimp at Port Fourchon's headquarters in Galliano, Midboe made his pitch to a group of about 20 industry representatives.

"The problems are real. We need to deal with them now," Midboe told the executives. "The public funding needed to protect this infrastructure is going to fall far short."

The task force, Midboe explained, would identify restoration projects that could protect the industry's hard assets. Member dues would cover operational costs, and companies that would benefit from projects would share the cost of construction.

The oil and gas sector is already losing an average of $14 billion a year to environmental threats to its infrastructure, according to a study by America's Wetlands Foundation and Entergy Corp. By 2030, those losses could exceed $350 billion.

The America's Wetlands Foundation has already partnered with ConocoPhillips, Chevron Corp. and CITGO Petroleum Corp. to build a one-mile, $1 million pilot project mitigating erosion along the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, a shipping route used by oil and gas companies.

"I would think that the larger investors in Louisiana would be willing to look at this as part of their long-term business plan," Val Marmillion, managing director of America's Wetlands, said. "We can figure out a way to do these projects."

But so far there is little sign that companies are clamoring to spend the millions -- or billions -- of dollars needed. BP Plc., Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. declined to comment on the extent of their investments in environmental projects.

ConocoPhillips, the largest private wetlands owner in the state, said a combination of public and private funding was used to pay for 77 restoration projects enhancing 177,000 acres of its own wetlands. An additional 18 are underway, spokesperson Andrea Urbanek said.

There's another model for getting a company to pay up.

On the southern tip of Louisiana, state contractors are working 24 hours a day on a narrow strip of beach island along the Gulf of Mexico that will shield nearby Port Fourchon  and its more than $1 billion of infrastructure  from storms and flooding.

The project is being paid for out of the nearly $9 billion Louisiana is receiving from BP Plc and others for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The state has earmarked the bulk of those funds for rebuilding its coastline. While other Gulf states affected by the oil spill must use their settlement money on projects that directly remedy harm caused by the disaster, Louisiana fought to spend its share on unrelated coastal restoration projects.

"Louisiana asked for very specific language in the plea agreement," said Tanner Johnson, director of the Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund responsible for dispensing $2.5 billion of the BP payout.

That decision has jump-started Louisiana's efforts, but even those billions won't be enough. Saving Louisiana's coastline could cost between $50 billion and $100 billion, according to the state's Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. That has prompted some state and local officials to press other oil and gas companies for even more cash.

"Those responsible for the Deepwater Horizon spill are paying, but we are still tens of billions short" in paying for the coastal restoration plan, New Orleans Mayor Mitchell Landrieu said at a conference in June. "It's time for a new covenant, between the leaders of the oil industry and the people of Louisiana: We want you to drill and explore, but only if we repair what you have broken."

Landrieu's remarks touch on a sensitive issue for Louisianans: The BP settlements are funding a good deal of the state's coastal restoration plans. To what extent should the rest of the oil and gas industry do the same? It's not just a theoretical question.

Four parishes  Jefferson, Plaquemines, Cameron and Vermilion  are suing dozens of oil companies for money to fund coastal restoration projects in their vicinity. The suits allege that, over decades, the companies violated their coastal land use permits by not remediating the areas in which they operated.

The industry has been contending with similar "legacy suits" for at least 15 years. New this time around is the establishment support this effort has received from politicians as high as Gov. John Bel Edwards. In April, Edwards, a Democrat, moved to make the state of Louisiana a plaintiff in the litigation.

"If there are any financial proceeds that come out of this, we want to make sure they are appropriately used to restore the coast," said Patrick Courreges, a spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources, which intervened in the litigation on the governor's behalf.

BP's payments should not be a model, others in the industry argue.

"That's a situation where money was obtained because a company's conduct caused a problem. That's not a license to sue all oil companies," Bobby Meadows, an attorney representing Chevron, said about the lawsuits.

Industry representatives argue that oil and gas companies are already paying for coastal restoration through offshore oil and gas royalties. However, low oil prices and related production cuts have dramatically reduced the revenues that Louisiana's receiving from offshore royalties. In 2015, the state pulled in just $816,728.

That could change within a few years. If production increases, Louisiana could receive a maximum of $176 million in 2018.

"That's a lot of money that's going to be going into the coastal program," said Don Briggs, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association. Those revenues, he argues, are a "sufficient" contribution from the industry. As such, "There is absolutely no talk among industry of any settlement" to the lawsuits, Briggs said.

Settling would be tantamount to shouldering responsibility for a crisis that has many causes.

From the passenger seat of a Cessna 185 sea plane, some of the thousands of miles of canals cut through the delta are still visible as straight lines of green jutting out into the murky Gulf waters. The canals played a role in today's coastal crisis, enabling salt water from the Gulf to infiltrate the freshwater wetlands, deteriorating them, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

While many Louisianans are frank about the damage that oil production has done to coastal lands, they hesitate to lay the blame on industry alone.

"Unquestionably, oil and gas activity has impacts," said energy consultant Falgout, who owns large swaths of marshland affected by erosion and subsidence. "But oil and gas did what government let it do, like everyone else."

Another culprit is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which made the fateful decision to levee the Mississippi River after the Great Flood of 1927, thus preventing the river from naturally depositing its sediment across the delta. Also, shipping lanes were dredged over decades, and agriculture played a role.

Chris Dalbomb of the Tulane University Water Institute says, "I don't think any of us can say we are not responsible to some extent."
Sprint will pay $2.3 million to settle a court case involving uncashed rebate checks for tens of thousands of Illinois consumers, a state official said Monday.

The provider of telephone and data services will also turn over the names of 32,000 Illinoisans who were eligible for, but who didn't cash, rebate checks sent to them between 2003 and 2011, according to a news release issued by Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs.

Advertisement

The out-of-court settlement, which found no wrongdoing on the part of Sprint, resolves a lawsuit filed earlier this year in Cook County Circuit Court. The lawsuit claimed that Sprint and one of its vendors wrongfully kept the rebate money.

Frerichs' office will try to locate individuals so that they can claim their checks. The rebates typically were used as an incentive to buy a data plan, product or service.

Advertisement

"Too many times, however, that hook becomes a dizzying maze that seems to shield a payment rather than fulfill a promise," Frerichs said in a news release.

The treasurer's office said rebates are considered unclaimed property if not paid within five years and must be reported and paid to the state treasury so they can be returned to their owner.

Sprint had available to it the names of individuals who qualified for, but did not cash, the rebate checks. The settlement calls for Sprint to provide those names to the treasurer's office. The names will be included in the state treasurer's unclaimed property database, which can be searched at the treasurer's office or www.illinoistreasurer.gov/ICASH.

The initial lawsuit covered the years between 2003 and 2008, but Sprint later agreed to extend the period to 2011, Frerichs said.

The original lawsuit sought $2.7 million.

byerak@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @beckyyerak
At Friaco's, the diverse menu features family recipes that have been passed down for generations, including the carnitas, which are seasoned pork tips served with all the fixings. (Jane Donahue / The Beacon-News)

Those looking for the taste of Mexico will find it close to home at Friaco's Mexican Restaurant, a family-owned and operated restaurant in Aurora. Since 2004, the eatery has been serving up authentic south-of-the-border cuisine and drinks in a fun and festive setting.

"I love Aurora and Naperville," said owner Carlos Arechiga. "Our customers have been so loyal to us here."

Advertisement

A variety of menu options is what keeps people coming back, along with the excellent service and family-friendly atmosphere. Here's the dish on this local favorite.

What's on the menu? Expect all the standard Mexican classics. From classic nachos, tamales and burritos to grilled cactus, fish tacos and tamales, you will find it at Friaco's. And don't forget the margaritas  like kiwi, peach or strawberry  frozen or on the rocks, which are a tasty complement to a meal.

Advertisement

About the owners: Plainfield residents and brothers Carlos and Abel Arechiga own Friaco's, which is named after their father. Friaco was his nickname. The brothers have locations in Aurora and Shorewood, as well as Fishers, Ind., and Jalisco, Mexico.

A mission statement or philosophy: Friaco's serves fresh, authentic Mexican food in a friendly atmosphere at reasonable prices. Great service and consistency are key components to their mission.

What's the decor like? Hand-carved tables and chairs imported from Mexico set the stage for the restaurant, which has bright colors and interesting accent pieces throughout. Friaco's has a casual and comfortable atmosphere with plenty of seating for large crowds or for dining solo.

Food specialties: Diners keep coming back for Friaco's pork carnitas, seasoned pork tips that are deep fried until crispy on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside. They're served with lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, onions, bell peppers, rice, refried beans and steaming tortillas. And the nopales fajitas  grilled cactus  are also a favorite as are the many varieties of tacos, burritos and quesadillas.

Extras: Friaco's Mexican Restaurant provides complete Mexican food catering services for two to more than 700 people. There are a variety of gluten-free options and a kids' menu as well.

Price range: They say the chips and salsa are priceless  but actually free  at Friaco's. Appetizers range from around $3 for guacamole and cheese dip to the classic nachos platter for $6.49. Choose the pork carnitas or create your own special by choosing from three items for $11.99. The Friaco's dip is a must have, a blend of cheeses, ground beef and pico de gallo for $6.49.

Logistics: Friaco's Mexican Restaurant is located at 4405 Fox Valley Center Drive in Aurora, adjacent to the Fox Valley Mall. It is open Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 11 p.m. For more information, visit www.friacosrestaurant.com.

Jane Donahue is a freelance writer.
There was violence in the music, at one point so sudden and sharp that it startled even some of the diehards, and a moment so quiet that Jeff Tweedy sang in a near whisper. There also was a banjo sighting.

Wilco played Millennium Park in its hometown on a beautiful Sunday night, and treated it like not just another rock concert. The sextet packed 31 songs  two so new they won't appear on an album for another two weeks  into 2  hours, and demonstrated the sort of versatility and assuredness with a wide assortment of material that one would expect of a veteran band that is entering its third decade together. But there was something more  a sense of surprise.

Advertisement

It countered the nagging notion that in recent years Wilco had become a little too predictable, a little too tasteful, to the point where some of its albums and shows had started to blend into the background of its most acclaimed accomplishments.

But the band sounded renewed on last year's surprise album, "Star Wars," its first studio release in four years and its best in a decade. And now it has another album, "Schmilco" (yes, that's really its title), ready to go Sept. 6. That energy translated to the stage, and the "Star Wars" songs set the tone: three-part wordless harmonies by Tweedy, John Stirratt and Pat Sansone on "More " with Nels Cline pinning a counterpoint guitar melody against the chorus; Glenn Kotche's piston-like drumming on "Random Name Generator"; the escalating fury of "Pickled Ginger."

Advertisement

Kotche bridged melody and rhythm on "I am Trying to Break Your Heart" with his work on the chiming crotales as the song surged into cacophony. Mikael Jorgensen framed "Art of Almost" in sci-fi keyboards and Stirratt's bass gave it a club-ready dance vibe, only to be overtaken by a bonkers guitar-fest. Cline channeled the spastic electro-shock solos of the Voidoids' Robert Quine on "Handshake Drugs."

The first half of the show built to an unsettling "Via Chicago." Tweedy had once lamented that he pulled his punches when the band recorded the song for its 1999 "Summerteeth" album, prettying up a song with brutally self-incriminating lyrics. But the version presented Sunday broke up the lilting melody with shattering bursts of noise. The first of these intrusions physically jarred the audience  the rock equivalent of the shower curtain ripping open in "Psycho."

There were a few slack moments. "Impossible Germany" glided along on many well-played notes, and only one of the two "Schmilco" tracks (the country-tinged "If I Ever Was a Child") felt of a piece with the heavyweight set list. Otherwise, the spirit of the distortion-drenched early songs carried over into the encore, albeit in unlikely fashion. Wilco typically finishes its concerts with raucous renditions of its most bar-band-friendly early tracks. But lately, the finale finds the band cutting the volume to go full-on bluegrass.

Tweedy and Stirratt shared a microphone while their seated bandmates fanned out next to and behind them with acoustic instruments. Sansone even plucked out a few credible banjo leads. Some tunes readily lent themselves to the stripped-down setting  Stirratt's "It's Just that Simple," the redoubtable "California Stars"  and some were a stretch. On "Misunderstood," Tweedy turned the closing purge  "I want to thank you all for nothing, nothing at all"  into something far gentler and creepier. Similarly, "A Shot in the Arm" became oddly disconcerting with the "bloodier than blood" rage turned down to barely a whisper. These once-disquieting songs were in danger of becoming almost over-familiar crowd-pleasers, but Wilco's acoustic reinterpretations made them sound more disturbing than they had in years.

greg@gregkot.com

Wilco set list at Millennium Park:



More ... Random Name Generator The Joke Explained I Am Trying to Break Your Heart Art of Almost Pickled Ginger Hummingbird Handshake Drugs Cold Slope King of You Via Chicago Spiders (Kidsmoke) If I Ever Was a Child Jesus, Etc. Locator Box Full of Letters Heavy Metal Drummer I'm the Man Who Loves You Impossible Germany The Late Greats

Encore:

21. Red Eyed and Blue

Advertisement

22. I Got You (at the end of the Century)

23. Outassitte (Outta Mind)

Encore 2:

24. Misunderstood (acoustic)

25. It's Just That Simple (acoustic)

26. War on War (acoustic)

Advertisement

27. What Light (acoustic)

28. Passenger Side (acousti)

29. I'm Always in Love (acoustic)

30. California Stars (acoustic)

31. A Shot in the Arm (acoustic)

RELATED STORIES:

Advertisement

Wilco says new album due out in September, releases two tracks

Jeff Tweedy, other Chicago musicians to honor Carl Sandburg's 'Chicago Poems'

Replacements: The breakup that shook Grant Park







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)
Diagnoses of early prostate cancer continue to decline in the United States, following the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation against routine screening for the disease, researchers report.

The screening involves a blood test that identifies levels of PSA (prostate specific antigen), a protein produced by the prostate gland. That test can determine when cancer exists, but it often wrongly identifies nonexistent cancer.

Advertisement

These "false positive" results can cause anxiety and lead to unnecessary follow-up tests. Because of this, the task force issued a draft recommendation against routine screening in 2011 and a final guideline in 2012.

Since then, diagnoses of early prostate cancer in American men age 50 and older dropped by 19 percent between 2011 and 2012 and by another 6 percent the following year, said lead researcher Dr. Ahmedin Jemal. He is vice president of the American Cancer Society's surveillance and health services research program.

Advertisement

But while many men may have been spared unnecessary anguish, less frequent screening may have a downside. Some experts worry more men will develop potentially fatal prostate cancer as a result.

"Prostate cancer is a slow-growing tumor, so it takes time. We may see it over the next three to five years," Jemal said.

There is a balance in the task force recommendation, said Dr. Anthony D'Amico, chief of radiation oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

"Some men who should not be treated are not being diagnosed, but that also means some men who should be treated are either losing the chance for cure or presenting later and needing to undergo more treatment and more side effects for a possible cure," he said.

"The answer to this dilemma will come with personalized medicine based on risk-based screening  screening men preferentially in good health and at high risk," D'Amico added.

The decrease in diagnoses of early-stage prostate cancer may be partly due to a misreading of the task force's recommendation, added Dr. Otis Brawley, the cancer society's chief medical officer.

"I believe the task force guideline is being misunderstood," he said.

"The key word that is missed is 'routine'  the task force does not recommend routine screening. This, in my mind, means they are not against all screening. Also, they do call for informed decision-making regarding potential risks and potential benefits," Brawley said.

Advertisement

Using the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database, Jemal and colleagues looked at cases of prostate cancer diagnosed between 2005 and 2013 in men aged 50 and older.

They found that from 2012 to 2013, early prostate cancer diagnosis rates per 100,000 men dropped from 356.5 to 335 in men ages 50 to 74. In men older than that, early cancer diagnoses fell from 379 to almost 354 per 100,000 men.

Meanwhile, cases of advanced prostate cancer remained stable in both age groups.

The findings leave some room for interpretation. Other factors leading to the decline could include improved preventive measures and changes in the incidence of unknown risk factors, Jemal said.

But D'Amico believes fewer screenings explain the statistics. The drop in the diagnosis of early prostate cancer "is consistent with the drop in PSA screening," he said.

The main issue is whether this is an early sign that more high-risk disease, more disease that has spread and more deaths from prostate cancer will happen, he added.

Advertisement

"My opinion is that we are probably heading for more high-risk and metastatic (cancer that has spread) disease in the next year or two, followed by more deaths from prostate cancer if the decline in screening is maintained," D'Amico said.

He added that the only hope for a boost in screening lies with the results of a British trial. If those findings, expected next year, show a benefit for PSA testing, perhaps testing rates will rebound, D'Amico said.

The latest study was published online in August in the journal JAMA Oncology.

The American Cancer Society recommends that men "make an informed decision with their health care provider about whether to be screened for prostate cancer." The decision should be made "after getting information about the uncertainties, risks and potential benefits of prostate cancer screening." The discussion about screening should take place at:

Age 50 for men at average risk of prostate cancer who are expected to live at least 10 more years.

Age 45 for men at high risk of developing prostate cancer. This includes blacks and men who have a first-degree relative (father, brother or son) diagnosed with prostate cancer at an early age (younger than 65).

Advertisement

Age 40 for men at even higher risk (those with more than one first-degree relative who had prostate cancer at an early age).

After these discussions, men who still want to be screened should get the PSA blood test. The digital rectal exam may also be used as a part of the screening, the cancer society says.

RELATED STORIES:

The benefits of jogging slowly

How do I stop snoring?

Peanut allergy treatment: The earlier in childhood, the better, study finds






A woman points at a statue of a naked Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016 in New York's Union Square. The statue was removed by New York City Department of Parks & Recreation employees. (Mary Altaffer / AP)

I call foul on the naked Donald Trump statues.

I'm not the first person to register my discontent, but I'm chiming in because we have three more months until the presidential election, and we can all do better.

Advertisement

Anarchist art collective Indecline placed life-size monuments of the Republican presidential candidate in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Seattle last week, showing Trump with no clothes, a bulging belly and in want of certain anatomy. The installation was titled The Emperor Has No Balls.

Ha ha ha, right? Let's laugh at the gross body, where the parts we like big are small and the parts we like flat are bloated. Let's focus on his reproductive organs and mock him accordingly. And let's do all this in the name of dissent.

Advertisement

Better yet, let's not.

The easy taste test, of course, is to imagine a far-right group doing similar statues of Hillary Clinton. Many feminists and progressives  starting with me  would be outraged at the attempt to reduce a political candidate to her body parts and then mock those parts for failing to adhere to cookie-cutter norms of attractiveness. As though that has any bearing on a person's ability to lead. (Or on attractiveness, frankly.)

We're already getting a dose of that at the Trump rallies that sell buttons touting a "KFC Hillary Special: 2 Fat Thighs, 2 Small Breasts ... Left Wing." They're tacky and cheap and add nothing of value to our political discourse.

The Trump statues are worse.

City officials removed the statues quickly (Cleveland, the most quickly), but not before people gathered around them, snapping selfies and declaring their genius. "It's horrendously, tragically beautiful," one woman told The Guardian.

I disagree.

We don't get to be the movement that preaches inclusiveness  particularly around gender  if we embrace this type of mockery. We can't, in good conscience, advocate for civil rights protections for transgender folks  to safely use public restrooms, for example  if we point and laugh at reproductive organs. We can't push for women to fill more offices  political and glass  and then indicate that lacking testicles is a liability.

"Nothing is being said by the piece that is difficult for one in the current political climate to say  that Trump is a joke, or that fat people must be shamed, or that male bodies that don't conform to masculine notions of genitalia deserve scorn," Meghna Sridhar writes in a Feministing essay. "Indeed, the real naked emperors seem to be the installation's smug audience instead, parading around in seeming robes of progressive politics, which actually, upon closer inspection, are their own naked delusions of open-minded, non-oppressive grandeur."

Advertisement

More simply, she asks: "Are we really turning the tables on the oppressor, or are we continuing to stomp on the oppressed?"

The latter, I would say, under the guise of the former.

We can spend the next 70-odd days making our voices heard, agitating passionately and thoughtfully for whatever candidate we choose. And we can leave anatomy out of it.

hstevens@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @heidistevens13

RELATED STORIES:

Advertisement

Naked Donald Trump statues pop up in cities across the U.S.

NY Post's nude Melania Trump cover is morally bankrupt

What Trump's marriages may have in common with ours






Donald Trump is right. The Democratic Party has failed African-Americans.

Ever since blacks forcefully abandoned the party of Lincoln in 1964 and turned out 94 percent of their vote for President Lyndon B. Johnson, Democrats have enjoyed a cozy relationship with a dedicated constituency that has demanded very little in return.

Advertisement

Blacks have repeatedly given the Democratic Party a blank check to do whatever it chooses and still guarantee voter turnout of an average of 88 percent. Thus far, blacks have seen minimal economic return on their investment.

Yes, Trump spoke the truth. Too many African-Americans are living in poverty. Too many of our schools are no good. We have too few jobs. And large numbers of our youth are unemployed.

Advertisement

So what the hell do we have to lose by voting for him, he asks? But the question most African-Americans have for Trump is what the hell would they gain?

African-Americans have no idea because Trump has been too much of a coward to look them in the eye and tell them. He turned down several opportunities to speak directly to African-Americans, declining invitations from the NAACP, the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Urban League.

Blacks are left to assume that he has no workable solutions to the unique problems that plague African-American communities.

In effect, this man whose campaign thus far has reeked of bigotry and racism is asking blacks to just trust that he will do right by them.

Does he really think African-Americans are that stupid?

What he apparently doesn't get is that many blacks don't give a hoot about either political party. It's the individual candidate that draws them to the polls.

Contrary to what Trump might think, black voters care about the same things as other Americans. They want a thriving national economy. They want to go to work without fearing that terrorists are going to fly a plane through the window of their high-rise. Some blacks also want America to treat its immigrants with dignity and be a safe haven for refugees fleeing their war-torn homelands.

So like other voters, blacks listen to the message and decide if it's in their best interest. And like everyone else, they cast their vote for the candidate who convinces them that he or she is best suited to lead the country. In recent years, that candidate has happened to be the Democrat.

Advertisement

From the Civil War to the early 20th century, the Republican Party used its relationship with President Abraham Lincoln to bolster black support. But when Johnson took up the baton for voting rights when his Republican challenger Barry Goldwater would not, blacks switched sides en masse.

Certainly, there are issues that have more impact on African-Americans than other groups. Poverty, education, unemployment and crime are among them.

But why would blacks place those important issues in the hands of a man who refuses to stand among them and talk about solutions?

One of Trump's half-hearted appeals for black votes came last week in front of a mostly white audience in a town outside Milwaukee, a city where many residents are African-American and poor.

Trump knew that a black audience likely would have booed him off the stage. So he entered a safety zone where he could play on the emotions of white Americans who feel that African-Americans are their own worst enemy.

He didn't say anything that most people don't already know. But with that audience, he didn't have to. No one demanded any specifics.

Advertisement

Trump's underlying message was that blacks are complacent about unemployment, poverty, education and crime. If they weren't, they'd do something about it. No one in that audience stood up to challenge him.

Trump talks about bringing law and order in a way that implies his plan is to put more blacks behind bars. If he has another idea, he needs to reveal it. Otherwise, blacks are going to remember that full-page ad he took out in New York newspapers in 1989 calling for the execution of the five black and Hispanic teens accused of raping a jogger in Central Park. The defendants, known as the Central Park Five, were later exonerated.

He casually mentions bringing jobs to black communities, but his track record on minority hiring is dismal. According to a review by The Associated Press, there are few, if any, black executives in the upper ranks of the Trump Organization.

Now, he wants African-Americans to vote for him. Yet he supports voter identification laws that serve to systematically repress black voters in the South.

Perhaps Trump's lackluster outreach to African-Americans is part of a new campaign strategy to be more inclusive. But just as eating a burrito bowl on Cinco de Mayo wasn't enough to win over Hispanics, shaming blacks into voting for him won't work either.

If blacks would just trust him in November, he said, they would turn out 95 percent to re-elect him after four years. He appears to be giving African-Americans a wink that he has no intentions of following the Republican platform, if elected.

Advertisement

That should make the Republican Party nervous. And if his own party can't trust him, it's hard to see why African-Americans would.

So far, what the Democratic Party has done for blacks has been mostly symbolic. Maybe when the Republican Party figures out a way to put another Barack Obama at the head of its presidential ticket, rather than someone who fueled the birther movement, blacks would happily flock over to the other side.

In the meantime, it's certainly going to take a better candidate than Donald Trump to make that happen.

dglanton@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @dahleeng
After 14 days, a Gary man reported missing returned home Sunday night safe and sound, his cousin said.

Alexis Harris spent the past two weeks going through abandoned homes in Gary with flashlights with friends and family looking for her 36-year-old cousin, Willie Battle, when she couldn't find any other leads of Battle's whereabouts.

Advertisement

"It was scary," Harris said. "We were going through abandoned buildings, houses, parks. I went to parts of Gary I've never been to."

Harris reported Battle missing Aug. 15 to Gary Police. As she continued her search, she made daily Facebook posts asking for help in finding Battle.

Advertisement

"I knew he was out there somewhere," Harris said.

Her stress and worry were relieved Sunday night when she hard a knock on her mother's home's door. Harris said she dropped her pop she was drinking when she realized who it was and yelled, "Willie!"

"We heard a knock on the door and it was him," Harris said. "It was a big sigh of relief.

Harris and her family asked Battle where he'd been. Battle told them he had been in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a job helping a food vendor, Harris said.

While the family celebrated Battle's return, Harris said she told her cousin, "Don't you ever do that again."

As emotional as the past two weeks were, Harris said she is thankful for the help of friends, family, the community and Gary Police in looking for Battle.

"I just want to thank everybody that sent out prayers, everybody that gave us blessings and just gave us the best for Willie's return," Harris said. "I'm glad he's back home with us.

But from now on, Harris said she's going to keep a close eye on him.

Advertisement

rejacobs@post-trib.com

Twitter @ruthyjacobs
Charges are pending for two people who allegedly made off with several designer handbags from Nordstrom and apparently caused a car crash that sent one person to a hospital.

It happened about 10:40 a.m. at Nordstrom, 55 E. Grand Ave., on the Near North Side, police said.

Advertisement

A staffer who called 911 reported seeing four men in their late teens holding more than a dozen Louis Vuitton bags sprinting down an escalator towards the Wabash and Grand avenue exit, according to authorities.

Just minutes after the robbers fled, a car crash occurred about two blocks away. Two ambulances responded and took one person to Northwestern Memorial Hospital with injuries that were not life threating, according to the Chicago Fire Department.

Advertisement

Police officers were nearby and placed two people in custody. Charges are pending.
Ashake Banks, whose young daughter was shot and killed four years ago, came to the aid of another young victim of gun violence on Aug. 21, 2016. Jamia Barnes, who Banks rushed to the hospital after she was was shot in the wrist on the West Side, has been treated and released. (WGN-TV) (WGN-TV/Chicago Tribune)

Ashake Banks has lost count of all the vigils she's attended for gun victims since her 7-year-old daughter was shot and killed while selling candy four years ago.



She was headed for yet another one Sunday evening, for a 14-year-old son of a friend, when it all came back: Gunfire and people screaming that a young child had been shot.



A girl lay bleeding in front of Banks, around the same age as her daughter, shot in the wrist as she stood near the vigil in Austin for 14-year-old Malik Causey, killed over the weekend. "I had to relive that all over again," Banks said.



She had heard the gunfire as she pulled up to the 1600 block of North Major Avenue around 7:50 p.m. She asked one of her friends if anyone was hurt.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 23 Family of Heaven Sutton, including mother Ashake Banks, center, and uncles Tavares and Richard Harrington, leave the Leighton Criminal Court Building on Thursday, April 18, 2019 minutes after a guilty verdict was announced in the 2012 killing of the 7-year-old girl. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)





"I say, 'Is the kids OK?' " said Banks, 43. "And she said, 'No, she's shot.' "



She recognized the girl as Jamia Barnes, the daughter of a longtime friend. She scooped her up, put her inside her truck and drove to the West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park.



"She was crying, asking for her mother," Banks said, standing outside the hospital's emergency entrance. "We're telling her just hold on. 'We got you, we got you.' "



Banks said she couldn't stop thinking of her own daughter, Heaven Sutton, who was gunned down in the same neighborhood in summer 2012. Heaven had been selling candy with her mother near their home when a bullet hit her in the back.



"I just couldn't see another baby losing their life," she said. "And I'm so sick of it. I'm sick of the community not saying nothing, not standing up. I'm sick of the shooters. I'm sick of it."

Advertisement





While Jamia was being treated, a 40-year-old woman wounded in the same shooting showed up at the hospital with a gunshot wound to her left hand, police said. Both were treated and released. Family said the girl is 7, but police gave her age as 8.



Police had few details about the shooting and reported no one in custody. At the scene, officers shined flashlights into cars parked on the left side of the street. A bullet hole appeared to have gone through the window of a hair braiding salon on North Avenue.



Several families had been gathered at a home near the corner of North and Major avenues when the shots were fired. Family members ran out to the front lawn where their young children had been playing and hurried them into the house, said the granddaughter of the home's owner, who did not want to be named.



"It was a baby who was shot," she said.



She covered her mouth with her left hand and squeezed her eyes shut. "We were just running, trying to get all the kids in my grandmother's house. The only thing we tried to do is shelter all the kids."



Andrew Holmes, a community activist, urged people on the block to step up and help police find the shooter. He said his organization was offering $1,000 for information leading to an arrest.



"People in the community know who it is," Holmes said. "And if a mother can stand up and grab these kids, get them to the hospital as fast as she can, the community can come get together and do the same damn thing. Turn these individuals in."



He stood next to Banks as he spoke. Banks said she moved to west suburban Bellwood after her daughter died because she wanted to protect her three sons.

Police investigate scene of a shooting in the 1600 block of North Major Avenue that wounded a 7-year-old girl in the wrist Sunday evening. (Alexandra Chachkevitch / Chicago Tribune)





Banks said she attends vigils for gun victims to deal with her own grief. She buys balloons, makes posters and takes photos. She said she has been to hundreds of vigils since her daughter died.



"I'm just trying to give back," Banks said. "That's how I grieve. I go to help other mothers."
One person is in custody after shots were fired at Chicago police officers who returned fire Monday afternoon in the Fernwood neighborhood on city's Far South Side.

The suspect fired a gun at police about 2:15 p.m. in the 300 block of West 105th Place, said Officer Thomas Sweeney, a spokesman for the Chicago police.

Advertisement

Officers returned fire but no one was injured, Sweeney said.

With a description of the gunman, police searched the area using police dogs and a helicopter. The suspect was found and taken into custody about 3 p.m.

Advertisement

No charges have been filed yet.
The family of Abner Garcia, from left, brother Indel Garcia, 12; his mother, Elizabeth Juarez; his father, Indel Garcia; and sister Lalia Garcia, 14, march on Aug. 21, 2016, with more than 200 people from Curie Metropolitan High School in Chicago to the place where Garcia was shot and killed. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

Abner Garcia taught Miguel Areola some lessons that probably saved his life, without ever resorting to lectures or scoldings.

Areola, 19, said when he was a gangbanger, it was Garcia who asked him whether he wanted to treat violence as a career or as an enemy. When Areola got kicked out of his mother's house after a fight, Garcia talked with him until the teenager realized that he wanted to apologize to her for being wrong all along.

Advertisement

"I never seen that in myself: I never knew I had so much potential," Areola said. "At some point, I didn't have anyone showing me love like Abner. I never had that much love in my life."

On Sunday, Areola helped lead a short procession  a half-mile trek winding along empty concrete lots, strip malls and litter-strewn train tracks  to the stoplight where Garcia was shot and killed last weekend.

Advertisement

Garcia, a 23-year-old U.S. Army veteran, returned from duty last year and turned his attention to tackling Chicago's relentless violence. He started mentoring at-risk youth through a YMCA program and was studying criminology at the University of Illinois at Chicago to become a police officer.

More than 200 family members, veterans, former gang members, youth advocates, college students and other loved ones gathered Sunday outside Garcia's alma mater, Curie Metropolitan High School. They expressed bitterness that not only had they lost someone special  but that Garcia's death was not unusual for Chicago.

"The same forces that he was combating every day ultimately were responsible for taking his life," said Carlos Luna, an organizer for Chicago Veterans.

Garcia was shot in the head on Aug. 13 as he drove south in the 5200 block of South Pulaski Road in the West Elsdon neighborhood. At about 1:40 a.m., a van pulled alongside his car and the people inside began flashing gang signs, police said. Someone inside the van opened a door and fired one shot. Garcia died a few hours later at Mount Sinai Hospital.

According to law enforcement sources, Garcia had no known gang affiliation.

"The shooter is someone we'd work with  he needs our help," said William Schranz, program coordinator for Urban Warriors, the veteran mentorship program Garcia belonged to. "Whoever that was is a person Abner was reaching out to."

And Garcia was particularly good at it, Schranz said, adding that he was confident and young people were drawn by his authenticity.

"He took people in if they needed a place to sleep at night," Luna said, "and he'd feed them in the morning."

Advertisement

Garcia, who lived in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood, joined the military soon after graduating from high school. When he told his mother he had decided to enlist, Elizabeth Juarez told the Tribune that she was relieved he might escape the city's violence. He served at a military base in Anchorage while attending the University of Alaska.

At Garcia's vigil, many veterans pointed out the similarities between their military experience and that of children who are pulled into Chicago gangs or trapped in the ensuing violence.

Both groups form tight bonds. They wear uniforms and share salutes. They face frequent unsupervised boredom. And both veterans and gangbangers suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as hypervigilance, nightmares, impulsive emotions and substance abuse.

"But they're not post-traumatic," Samuel Corona, a Marine Corps veteran, said of the at-risk youth he mentors through Urban Warriors. "There's no distance between their pain and their future."

Still, loved ones said Garcia, who lost an uncle to gun violence in May, knew how to connect with those who were suffering.

Angelica Varela, 23, graduated with Garcia from Curie, where she said he was known for being both humble and charismatic. She said he was a diligent honors student who was never without his inseparable crew.

Advertisement

"Everyone knew him," she said. "He was never alone."

Rod Gonzalez, 24, a lifelong neighbor, said even at a young age Garcia had a positive effect on those around him.

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

"Imagine at 30 what he could've done," Gonzalez said, pointing out the number and variety of people at Sunday's vigil.

In his honor, the crowd sported camouflage, American flags and black and yellow Batman T-shirts (Garcia was so obsessed with Batman that the entire inside of his car  down to the stick shift  was decorated with paraphernalia). Countless strollers rolled along with the procession, led by a group of motorcyclists.

A woman circulating a petition to get an honorary plaque at the intersection where Garcia was shot said the signature count had surpassed 500.

Some of those who signed the petition had never met Garcia, like Starr Flores, 44, who also mentors at-risk youth and takes in teenagers who knock on her window at all times of the night. When a community member like Garcia dies, she said, it can seem hopeless at first.

Advertisement

"It can feel like it all falls apart," she said, "or it can gather us, like we are here now."

mrenault@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @MarionRenault
Chicago Public Schools officials are looking for a credit line of more than $1.5 billion to raise the cash needed to pay bills coming due, though they haven't lined up the loan yet.

In recent years, the school district has financed its operations by using a costly form of short-term borrowing after burning through reserves during regular rounds of fiscal turbulence. The money is borrowed as CPS awaits semi-regular bursts of property tax income to repay the loan.

Advertisement

The money doesn't come cheap. CPS has set aside $35 million for interest payments, on top of the money needed to repay the short-term debt. During its last budget, the district borrowed $1.065 billion in so-called tax anticipation notes, and this year's amount is nearly $500 million higher.

Additional details on the latest borrowing were unavailable Monday, a district spokeswoman said. The Chicago Board of Education is expected to sign off on the borrowing at its Wednesday meeting.

Advertisement

"The district continues to negotiate with lenders to finalize its lines of credit," CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner said.

District CEO Forrest Claypool has acknowledged the district's proposed $5.4 billion operating budget relies on short-term borrowing, though he has cast the budget plan as balanced.

"I have zero doubt that we will be able to establish that line of credit," Claypool recently told the Tribune's Editorial Board.

"That cash flow borrowing will be with us for some time. But the bottom line is, though, that we have now established a balanced budget, and we have a path forward to continue financial solvency and balanced budgets."

The school board also will vote on the budget Wednesday, as well as a plan to borrow up to $945 million in long-term debt for infrastructure projects.

jjperez@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @PerezJr
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

A group advocating on behalf of Chicago landlords is pushing for a change in how penalties are meted out by judges when full security deposits  plus interest  are not properly returned to tenants when they move out.

Advertisement

As it now stands, judges have no discretion on the penalties: They must be two times the security deposit plus interest.

That, according to Chicago Association of Realtors lobbyist Brian Bernardoni, has resulted in some draconian payouts for minor mistakes, like being off by as little as a penny in calculating the amount owed to tenants.

Advertisement

On top of that, landlords must pay the tenant's legal fees if they lose the case, in some cases adding tens of thousands of dollars, Bernardoni said.

So, the Realtors are pushing to make the penalties discretionary rather than mandatory under the city's Resident Tenant Landlord Ordinance by changing two mentions of the word "shall" to "may." That, they believe, would reduce the number of cases in which lawyers get a payday for minor infractions.

"We're going after the tenants' lawyers," Bernardoni said. "We think this is really an abuse of this ordinance, and the tenants don't benefit from this."

The ordinance was proposed by downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, and is supported by at least a dozen of his colleagues.

Even if tenants' rights groups agree the change is warranted, they may want something in return, as has been the case when changes to the ordinance have been made in the past, said Ald. Joe Moore, 49th, chairman of the City Council Housing Committee that will hold a hearing on the issue in the fall.

Moore said the change "seems reasonable," but he wants to hear from the tenants' rights folks. The alderman added that he'd rather consider just this proposal by itself than entertain other changes tenants' rights groups might seek in exchange. (Hal Dardick)

What's on tap

*Mayor Rahm Emanuel's public schedule was not available.

*Gov. Bruce Rauner will sign criminal justice bills in North Lawndale.

Advertisement

What we're writing

*Kirk's latest controversy: Likens Obama to "drug dealer in chief" for Iran payment.

*Rauner vetoes bill to abolish room-and-board prisoner lawsuits.

*Governor signs measure to end state sales tax on feminine hygiene products.

*Illinois Supreme Court rejects property division for umarried couples.

What we're reading

*Segregation, the neighbor that won't leave.

*More of Kremlin's opponents ending up dead.

Advertisement

*Photos from this year's Air and Water Show.

From the notebook

*Rauner talks campaign contributions: While Gov. Bruce Rauner repeatedly has vowed to use his personal wealth to prop up Republican legislative candidates in the November election, he offered a bit of a mixed message on the subject Friday.

During a morning stop in Mount Vernon, reporters asked him how involved he planned to be in Republican races in southern Illinois. He responded that he's "not really very involved," saying his focus is on running state government.

But the governor has given millions of dollars to the Illinois Republican Party in recent months to help fund races. Pressed at a later stop at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield about why he's so reluctant to talk about his campaign spending, Rauner said people have a "duty" to participate in the political process.

"Well, the political process is about choices, and competition and certainly donations or contributions in the political process is part of our free speech and part of the political process. And I certainly, in my role, I certainly participate in that. And I always have as a private citizen," Rauner said. "Frankly, we all have a duty to participate in whatever we can to help democracy work. And democracy is a function of a good political process with integrity and competition and real choices, and that's what I am trying to generate in Illinois."

Advertisement

Rauner also was asked to weigh in on the conservative Liberty Principles PAC, a group headed by former governor candidate and radio talk show host Dan Proft.

The campaign fund has produced several newspaper-style campaign brochures, prompting warnings from the Illinois Press Association, which says the publications are not eligible for membership. The press group issued a statement saying readers should "try to determine the source behind the news and information they receive and to question the legitimacy, integrity and intent of both the source and the message."

The governor said he couldn't comment on the matter.

"That particular issue and that PAC, I really don't now much about," said Rauner, though he personally gave Liberty Principles $2.5 million in June, according to state election records. (Monique Garcia)

*And the cable hits keep coming: Republicans keep pouring money into state legislative races to try to erode Democratic supermajorities in the House and Senate, this week with more than $570,000 in cable TV advertising, reports showed.



Democrats spent more than $182,000 on cable TV buys. Most of it, $158,919, is for a pre-election push for state Sen. Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant of Shorewood, who is facing Republican Michelle Smith of Plainfield.



Democrats also put in $19,462 for a late September buy for state Sen. Tom Cullerton of Villa Park, who is being challenged by Republican Seth Lewis of Bartlett. But Republicans pumped more than $70,000 into ads for Lewis to run this week.



Among Republican candidates, the biggest cash support for cable TV buys went to Rod Drobinski of Wauconda, who is challenging Democratic state Rep. Sam Yingling of Grayslake. Republicans put nearly $152,000 into ads backing Drobinski.



Another $67,750 went into Republican Mike Amrozowicz's challenge of Democratic state Sen. Melinda Bush of Grayslake. A total of $64,140 went toward protecting Rep. Sheri Jesiel of Winthrop Harbor against a Democratic challenge from Nick Cico of Lindenhurst.



All told, the House Republican Organization, the campaign arm of the chamber's minority, spent $390,901 on ads, while the Republican State Senate Campaign Committee spent $182,250. (Rick Pearson)

*Duckworth ad: Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Tammy Duckworth is up with a new ad, as we noted in the Kirk story on Obama and Iran. You can watch it here.

Advertisement

*Electoral College recruiting: After spending their day at the state fair urging Democrats not to be complacent over Hillary Clinton winning the White House, the state party will select its 20 Illinois members of the electoral college on Monday.



The meeting will be held in Springfield among the 36 members of the Democratic State Central Committee, one man and one woman for each of the state's 18 congressional districts. In selecting the electoral college members, each member casts a weighted vote equal to the number of Democratic primary ballots cast in the March primary.



The electors of the winning presidential candidate formally meet at the State Capitol after the Nov. 8 election to cast their ballots for the electoral college in what is largely a ceremonial affair. Illinois has 20 electoral votes  one for each congressional district and two representing Illinois' pair of Senate seats. (Rick Pearson)

*City Colleges credit knock: The City Colleges of Chicago has been hit with a two-notch downgrade of its creditworthiness by a Wall Street ratings agency.

Standard & Poor's downgraded the city's community college system's debt rating to A+ from AA, reflecting a reduction in state funding and the financial pressure of the pension debt of the city, Chicago Public Schools and other local governments. That's three notches above junk status.

Specifically, S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Blake Yocom put some blame on the state, referring to the "use of combined general fund reserves after reduced state revenue in fiscal 2016, coupled with the potential risks should the state fail to adopt a fiscal 2017 state budget and no additional funds are appropriated for" community college districts.

Yocom went on to note "the combined pension liabilities and debt of the overlapping governmental entities." And his notice said there could be a further downgrade in the next year if the state doesn't resolve its financial gridlock. (Hal Dardick)

*The Sunday Spin: On this week's show, Chicago Tribune political reporter Rick Pearson's guests were Democratic state Rep. Robert Martwick of Chicago on insurance issues; Marc Poulos, executive director of the Indiana-Illinois-Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting and a leader of the drive for a constitutional lockbox on transportation spending; and state Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno of Lemont on immigration.

Advertisement

Beyond Chicago

*Trying to sort out Trump's finances, debt.

*In North Carolina, audience shrinking for Trump's message.

*Foundation donors present obstacles for Clinton candidacy.

*Young suicide bomber attacks Turkey wedding party, dozens dead.
Senior citizens would get a break on Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposed water and sewer service tax, administration officials said Monday as they tried to appease aldermen unhappy with a plan to shore up the municipal workers pension fund.

The 66,000 or so Chicago residents 65 or older who live in single-family homes would be exempt from the new tax, city spokeswoman Molly Poppe said. They already don't pay for sewer service, which accounts for half of the bimonthly bill.

Advertisement

Seniors who don't get separate water and sewer bills, as is often the case in condominiums and town homes, will continue to be eligible for a $50 annual rebate on their water and sewer bill, but they would not get a break on the new tax, she added.

The new water and sewer tax, designed to raise revenue for increased city worker pension contributions, would be phased in until it tops 30 percent after four years. The average homeowner's water and sewer bills would increase by $53 next year, or $8.86 on the bills sent out every two months. By the end of the four-year phase-in, that same homeowner would pay an additional $226 per year in water and sewer taxes, or $37.65 on each bill.

Advertisement

The Emanuel administration's clarification of the senior break came as some aldermen are balking at the proposal.

"The majority of aldermen don't like it," said Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, chairman of the Black Caucus. "We're looking at alternatives."

Those alternatives include a city income tax or another property tax increase, but Sawyer concedes those alternatives would be more difficult to enact. An income tax would require state authorization, posing political difficulties for legislators. And Emanuel has ruled out another property tax increase after a record City Hall increase last year and yet another property tax increase at Chicago Public Schools.

City officials expect the water and sewer tax to eventually raise $239 million a year, money that would be used to increase contributions to the municipal pension fund. The city also would pump tens of millions of additional dollars into the fund from other sources, with the goal of paying off all but 10 percent of the city's $18.6 billion debt to the fund over 40 years.

While the Emanuel administration has spelled out the impact on taxpayers, aldermen are still waiting for details on how the water tax hike would fix the pension fund.

The 11-member Progressive Reform Caucus had asked the administration for the schedule of contributions to the city municipal worker pension system over the next 40 years. Sawyer, who's a member of that group, said his colleagues want to be sure that the new water and sewer tax would cover the tab before they vote on it next month.

"If that works, I think we can live with it," Sawyer said. "We haven't seen the numbers, so we're not sold on it yet."

But Budget Director Alexandra Holt said the city has yet to run those numbers. And it's still doing calculations on Emanuel's plan to beef up contributions to the city laborer's plan with revenue from the already increased emergency communications fees on all landlines and cellphones billed to city addresses.

Advertisement

"We do not yet have the actuarial studies for the new (pension) proposals," Holt wrote in a letter sent last week to a representative of the Progressive Caucus. But she assured the aldermen that the new proposal would "bring financial stability to these funds and provide retirement security for retirees and employees."

Without fixes, both funds would go bust within 12 years, and the city would then be forced into a pay-as-you-go plan that would stick taxpayers with a $1 billion-plus tab each year, Holt wrote.

hdardick@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ReporterHal
Crime scene tape marks the home on Jim Platt Road near Citronelle, Ala., Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016, where authorities said five people were killed on Saturday. Police said that Derrick Dearman, 27, of Leakesville, Miss., has been taken into custody in connection with the murders. (John Sharp AL.com / AP)

ATLANTA  A Mississippi man arrested after five people were found dead in a rural Alabama home blamed the gruesome rampage on drugs, telling reporters Monday there weren't words to express his regret for what had happened.

Wearing shackles and escorted by law enforcement officers as he arrived in Mobile, Alabama, from Mississippi, where he surrendered to authorities, Derrick Dearman said he was on methamphetamine when he went to the house the night of the killing.

Advertisement

Dearman, 27, said he turned himself in after sobering up.

"I came down and realized what was really going on," said Dearman, who didn't describe exactly what happened inside the home but apologized for his actions.

Advertisement

Earlier, a Mississippi sheriff said Dearman had admitted killing at least one of the five adults slain at a rural home where his estranged girlfriend had sought shelter amid allegations of abuse.

Hours after the slayings, Dearman walked into the sheriff's office in Leakesville, Mississippi, "stating that he had killed someone or more than one person in Citronelle, Alabama," Greene County Sheriff Stanley McLeod said in a statement.

The slayings, which happened at the end of a dirt road outside Citronelle, left three men and two women dead. The victims included a pregnant woman and her unborn child.

Derrick Dearman, a suspect in the massacre of five adults in Citronelle Ala. Dearman, of Leakesville, Mississippi, will be charged with six counts of capital murder, Mobile County sheriff's spokeswoman Lori Myles said Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. (AP/George County Sheriff's Department)

Authorities said Dearman abducted estranged girlfriend Laneta Lester and a child from the house after the slayings, but both were later released unharmed. The home belonged to Lester's brother, who was among the victims and had let his sister stay there because she was afraid of Dearman, friends and relatives of the victims said.

Dearman, in comments recorded on video, apologized to Lester by name and described the victims as his friends.

A teenager who said she was related to all five victims by marriage or blood shook her head and fought back tears as she described her anguish over the slayings.

"They were really good people. They'd call and check on you, ask if you want to come down and eat," said Madison McDaniel, 17, who lives near the scene of the horrific violence.

Relatives of the victims started an online fundraiser to help cover funeral expenses, and clerk Dawn Sullivan collected donations in a plastic jug on the counter at D&B Quick Stop, where the victims often stopped for snacks and drinks.

Advertisement

"It's a sad situation. It never should have gotten to that point," said Sullivan, whose husband was related to one of the victims.

Dearman, of Leakesville, will be charged with six counts of capital murder, including one charge for the unborn child, Mobile County sheriff's spokeswoman Lori Myles said.

Alabama court records don't indicate whether Dearman has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

The slain were identified as Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; Chelsea Marie Reed, 22; and Robert Lee Brown, 26, Myles said.

Turner was Lester's brother and had let her stay at the house, which all the victims shared, McDaniel and Sullivan said. Turner and Randall were married.

"I'd always get on my horse and ride down there bareback," McDaniel said. Her step-aunt Randall would say, "'Be careful because you're already got a hurt knee.' I'd say, 'OK, Shan-Shan.' That's what I called her."

Advertisement

Brown was Randall's brother, McDaniel said, and Chelsea Reed was Randall's niece. Chelsea Reed was pregnant with the child of her husband, Justin Reed, said McDaniel.

About 1 a.m. Saturday, someone inside the home called 911 and reported that Dearman was on the property, authorities said in a statement. Citronelle police came to the house, but Dearman had left before officers arrived, sheriff's officials said.

Before daylight Saturday, Dearman returned to the home and attacked the victims while they were sleeping, the sheriff's department said. Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich said "multiple weapons" were used.

After the killings, Dearman forced Lester and a 3-month-old identified by relatives as the child of Randall and Turner into a vehicle, and they drove to Dearman's father's house in Mississippi. Dearman released Lester and the infant and turned himself in, authorities said.

Dearman's ex-wife, Crystal Dearman, told WALA-TV the man "always had a temper, especially when he doesn't get his way."

"I woke up to him holding a knife to my throat in bed with my baby in the crib," said Dearman, who said the two divorced in 2010. "He's made threats the entire time we were together and after we separated."

Advertisement

Associated Press
PALMER, Mass.  An 18-year-old Massachusetts man accused of raping and sexually assaulting two unconscious classmates in April will serve two years of probation.

The case against David Becker was continued without a finding in Palmer District Court last week. The case will be dismissed if Becker complies with probation.

Becker's lawyer says his client can now "look forward to a productive life without being burdened with the stigma of having to register as a sex offender." Beckercan serve the two years of probation in Ohio, where he plans to attend college.

Becker was charged with two counts of rape and one count of indecent assault. Prosecutors allege the former East Longmeadow High student assaulted two classmates at an April 2 house party.

Prosecutors had recommended Becker serve two years behind bars.

Associated Press
Donald Trump went to a lily-white Dimondale, Mich., (nearly 93 percent white) on Friday to lecture African-Americans on why they should be voting for him:

"To those hurting, I say: What do you have to lose by trying something new? I say it again, what do you have to lose? Look, what do you have to lose? You're living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs. 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose? ...

Advertisement

"By contrast, the one thing every item in Hillary Clinton's agenda has in common is that it takes jobs and opportunities from African-American workers. Her support for open borders. Her fierce opposition to school choice. Her plan to massively raise taxes on small businesses. Her opposition to American energy. And her record of giving our jobs away to other countries."

Clinton, of course, is not for open borders nor for "giving our jobs away."

Advertisement

He continued with his anti-immigrant spiel: "Hillary Clinton would rather provide a job to a refugee from overseas than to give that job to unemployed African-American youth in cities like Detroit who have become refugees in their own country."

Where to begin? The 58 percent figure has been debunked previously (the real number is too high but about one-third of what he claims). In July, the unemployment rate for all African-Americans was 8.4 percent. So, contrary to Trump's cockeyed view, more than 91 percent of African-Americans looking for work do have jobs. Moreover, not all African-Americans live in poverty or go to schools that "are no good." This does not mean all liberal policies have worked or that policy innovations are not needed, but the real world bears only a slight resemblance to Trump's dystopia. In making exaggerated and downright false accusations, Trump distracts from solid conservative arguments against liberal policies (e.g., opposition to school choice, Obamacare's high marginal tax rate on the working poor) that do adversely impact African-Americans.

The Clinton campaign put out a statement castigating Trump's remarks: "Trump painting the entire community as living in poverty with no jobs continues to show he is completely out of touch with the African-American community."

Trump doesn't say, for example, if he'd be willing to spend more on worker training, education and other targeted programs that might address youth unemployment; he does, however, favor a tax plan that hugely benefits the rich. Until Friday, he hadn't talked much about his plans to fight poverty and discrimination and we still don't know what he would do, for example, to increase the success rate of African-Americans in college or increase access to capital for African-American entrepreneurs. In the past, he's said he wants to eliminate the Education Department. Does that mean dispensing with Title I support for schools serving impoverished students? (African-American children make up about 28 percent of Title I recipients.)

Let's, however, return to the question he posed: What do African-Americans have to lose by electing Trump? Let's count the ways.

Trump has championed a strict law-and-order agenda that rejects the suggestion there are legitimate complaints in the African-American community about policing. He is a lightning rod for racial animus and tension, falsely accusing cities with large African-American populations to be crime havens. With Trump, we'd lack a president who had any conception that there is a problem with policing in minority communities or any desire to bring communities and police together.

This is someone who declines to speak at African-American gatherings (e.g., the NAACP). He's someone who just brought on to lead his campaign the former head of a website pandering to the alt-right  that means white supremacy. Only after prodding and a growing controversy did he figure out that he should denounce David Duke and the KKK. And, of course, this was a man heavily invested in birtherism, asserting the president was born in Africa, not in the United States. It's ironic that in the very speech asking what minorities have to lose, he pits African-Americans against immigrants. And let's not forget his shout-out at a California rally: "Look at my African-American."

There is a reason Trump is getting in some polls 1 percent of the African-American vote. (A number of African-American and other minority employees of the Republican National Committee quit rather than work on his campaign, by the way.)

Advertisement

In addition, he may not realize it, but his Muslim ban, support for racial profiling and lies about Muslim-Americans' complicity in terrorism have a particular resonance with African-Americans. A 2011 Pew study found: "Among the roughly one-in-five Muslim-Americans whose parents also were born in the U.S., 59% are African-Americans, including a sizable majority who have converted to Islam (69%). Overall, 13% of U.S. Muslims are African-Americans whose parents were born in the United States." So when Trump demonizes all Muslims, he's demonizing many African-Americans.

Aside from his repugnant rhetoric, Trump's "solutions" for the country will make life harder for the poorest Americans, of which African-Americans are a disproportionate share. In May, CNN reported:

"The tariffs would cost the average household $2,200 a year, or 4% of their after-tax income, according to a new study from the non-profit National Foundation for American Policy conducted by David Tuerck, Paul Bachman and Frank Conte, all of Suffolk University. This is largely because imports under Trump's policy would become more expensive, raising the price of competing American-made goods by 11%. That would effectively levy a consumption tax on purchases and cut into the incomes of shoppers.

"'All of the benefits for producers would be extracted from consumers,' said Tuerck, who heads the economics department at Suffolk. 'It's using a blunt sword to do brain surgery. It would cost consumers an awful lot for rather small benefits for U.S. producers.'"

Moreover, all voters, African-Americans included, stand to lose with a president who fawns over dictators, demonstrates abject ignorance about our nuclear arsenal and undermines NATO. All Americans lose when the president declares he is going to order the military to commit war crimes or clamp down on a free press (banning reporters, threatening revision of labor laws). And all Americans lose when the president plans to add billions to the debt.

As a final note, at first glance it might seem odd for Trump to go to a nearly all-white community to declare how much he cares for African-Americans. Well, it is doubtful that he or his advisers think they are going to do much better with African-Americans than they are now. But, plainly, his divisiveness and association with racial bigots bother a lot of white voters. They view him as intolerant and hostile to nonwhite Americans. Many are embarrassed to support him for precisely this reason. This is Trump's way of telling white voters, Look! I'm not so bad! I love African-Americans!

Advertisement

In other words, in a campaign built around playing into the fears and resentments of whites, Trump is now trying to assure more sensitive voters that, hey, he's not a racist after all. African-Americans are props for him as he seeks to repair his rotten standing in the polls. It's far from clear many Americans are going to fall for this.

Washington Post

Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective.
Judge Valarie Turner, of the Circuit Court of Cook County, is a very smart person who appears to have done a very dumb thing. While presiding over her call in a Markham courtroom, she allegedly turned her robe and gavel over to a lawyer, who then took the bench and adjudicated a couple of traffic tickets.

That was not quite as crazy as it sounds. The lawyer, whose name is Rhonda Crawford, won the recent Democratic primary in her judicial subcircuit, and she is running unopposed in November for a seat on the court. She was apparently "shadowing" Turner on the fateful day in order to learn more about the job of judging. It would not have been out of line for Crawford to try on Turner's robe, or even to sit on the bench for a bit. But ruling on cases, even if they were only minor traffic offenses, turned the situation into a fiasco.

Advertisement

The story of the faux judge eventually reached the office of Chief Judge Timothy Evans, who issued an order temporarily removing Turner from all judicial duties, pending further investigation. He also suspended Crawford from her current job as a staff attorney for the court.

Evans did the right thing by taking quick action on Turner and Crawford, but the real question is what will happen next.

Advertisement

Assuming that the allegations are true  neither Turner nor Crawford has issued a denial  the two of them violated a slew of ethics provisions that govern both lawyers and judges. They engaged in "conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice" that involved "dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation." The defendants on the two tickets were denied the "right to be heard according to law," and might now have to return to court to have their cases reheard by a real judge.

There are separate disciplinary bodies for lawyers and judges in Illinois. Lawyers are governed by the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission while judges are subject to the Judicial Inquiry Board. I believe it is safe to assume that both organizations already have initiated official investigations, and that some penalty is all but certain to follow. The potential range of sanctions runs from formal reprimands to disbarment of Crawford and removal of Turner from the judiciary. Which one should it be?

There is no defense for a judge who turned her bench over to a lawyer, and no excuse for a lawyer who pretended to be a judge, even if only briefly. Nonetheless, I do not think that these offenses should be career killers. Neither Turner nor Crawford acted for personal gain, manifested bias, demeaned litigants or witnesses or otherwise intended to hurt anyone. Although they do appear to have inconvenienced two traffic defendants, they did not commit a grave injustice.

Even thoughtful, hardworking people can make boneheaded mistakes on the spur of the moment, but that does not make them unqualified ever to do their jobs again. If disbarment and removal from the bench were imposed in this case, what would be left for the judicial miscreants  whom we have seen all too often in Illinois  who take bribes, abuse defendants, commit perjury or exploit and harass court staff? There needs to be some calibration in meting out lawyer and judicial discipline, and that means imposing penalties that fit the harmfulness of the offense, even if that does not correspond to the outrageousness or novelty factor.

Judge Turner has served honorably since 2002, without any previous hint of misconduct. Her reassignment from judicial duties  sometimes called commitment to "judge jail"  has already humiliated her. I believe a reprimand, or at most a short formal suspension, would be more than enough to get the point across and to make sure that nothing similar will ever happen again.

Attorney Crawford's position is trickier, as she will be subject to attorney discipline (currently) and judicial discipline (if she wins in November). Unlike Turner, she does not have an extended record of public service, so there is no good way to evaluate her long-term sensibility. Was the recent episode an aberration, or does it tell us something important about her judgment? Her ultimate discipline probably ought to correspond to Turner's  meaning at most a short suspension from the bar, during which time she could not serve as a judge, even if elected  but the voters can also have their say by getting behind someone for a write-in campaign.

What Turner and Crawford did was head-shakingly wrong; it cannot be ignored or excused. But this is not a case that demands an end to their legal careers.

Steven Lubet is a law professor at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
It was a beautiful Monday on the farm in Red Bud, Ill., where Kirk Liefer was putting in a new grain bin and waiting for the harvest. The corn crop looks "pretty good," the fourth-generation farmer reports. Funny, the U.S. Agriculture Department predicts record production of corn and soybeans this year, but farmers are worriers, we suppose.

What else is on Liefer's mind as the corn grows? Trade with Japan  believe it or not.

Advertisement

Liefer leads a quintessential American life, benefiting from what he calls one of God's greatest gifts: the land. Yet nearly his entire corn harvest and 80 percent of his soybeans will go down the Mississippi by barge and on to Japan. That makes Liefer's family farm more export-dependent than Caterpillar Inc. is.

A regional trade deal between the United States and 11 Pacific Rim nations, including Japan, Mexico and Malaysia, but not China, would give a big boost to Illinois agriculture. Or, if you prefer to think like a worry-prone farmer: The failure of Congress to ratify the deal, known as TPP  the Trans-Pacific Partnership  would leave Illinois farmers and other exporters vulnerable, because trade's a competitive game and market share is always in flux.

Advertisement

"If TPP happens, we have all these partners we collaborate with and hopefully trade grows," Liefer says. "If for some reason all the parties get together and the U.S. doesn't, what says they don't go somewhere else?"

Exactly. This deal is about both boosting and protecting exports. The Illinois Farm Bureau says the state already sends $1.4 billion of soybeans annually to the 11 TPP countries, plus $1 billion of corn and other feed and $1.5 billion of pork, dairy, beef and other products. If the trade agreement is approved by the U.S., the Illinois Farm Bureau says state ag exports would increase by $127 million, not to mention broader benefits to the state. That translates into $9,000 more a year for the average family grain farm.

But if the United States decides to sit out TPP? The country faces the prospect of losing out to other ag exporters.

The agreement would knock down tariffs and quotas, eliminate burdensome red tape and set rules for a variety of issues such as intellectual property for a group of countries that makes up 40 percent of the global economy. The 11 other TPP countries are Japan, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, Chile, Peru, New Zealand, Vietnam and Brunei.

One specific opportunity for the U.S. is increased beef and pork exports to Japan, which long has tried to keep a lid on American meat imports. If those barriers are erased, Japan will take in more American beef and pork, which also would trigger increased demand for corn and soybean feed for those animals. "We see significant expansion, maybe 5 cents a bushel for feed to cattle and hogs," says Tamara Nelsen of the Illinois Farm Bureau.

These same dynamics are at play in many categories of U.S. exports, ranging from machinery and auto parts to flour. As the standard of living rises in TPP countries such as Vietnam, demand for imported goods will increase. The only question is whether the United States gets the chance to make those sales, or is sidelined.

President Barack Obama plans to push hard for TPP this fall, angling for a congressional vote during the abbreviated session after Election Day. Unfortunately he's got an uphill battle. Trade has gotten a dirty name this election cycle, blamed for gutting American factories when the fact is that nearly every American manufacturing job that disappears is a victim of productivity gains, not foreign competition.

The reality is that trade is a healthy form of competition. American companies make great products and should be allowed to sell to the broadest market. American consumers, meanwhile, are better off because some foreign-made products (like toys and shoes) are cheaper, while others (like cars and airplanes) are good enough to entice shoppers, a fact that spurs U.S. firms to improve their quality.

Advertisement

Congress: Pass this bill. The political furor amounts to a populist boondoggle. Opponents of TPP act as if America is only now debating whether to open the doors to doing business with other countries. Kirk Liefer and a lot of other people will tell you differently. Global trade is the reality, and should be promoted.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
Does Donald Trump need an interpreter?

When his staff members explain what Trump meant to say on a controversial subject, their responses seem miles apart from what the Trumpster actually did say.

Advertisement

Perhaps comedian Bill Dana's famous Bolivian character Jose Jimenez is still available. For example, who better to interpret the difference between the "Dutch" and the "Dodge" people than Jose.

Impossible though it may seem, Jimenez might provide not only a high degree of lucidity to Trump's ramblings, but a lot more humor, wit and, who knows, more wisdom than the GOP nominee could ever imagine.

Advertisement

 Dean Dranias, Plainfield
A high pressure system moved into the mid-Mississippi Valley Sunday evening spreading cool, dry air across much of the continental U.S. Thunderstorm-bearing tropical air was restricted to the East Coast and Gulf states, and will remain there through Monday. Sunday's average temperature of 67 degrees at O'Hare International Airport was the city's first subnormal reading this month. Though the warmth has not been extreme, it has been persistent. Despite the weekend cooldown, August remains this summer's warmest month, averaging 76.6 degrees, which is 3.5 degrees above normal. Dry, comfortable air will transition to above-normal readings again on Tuesday, but humidity levels are expected to stay in the moderate range. Storms are likely midweek, fueled by a brief influx of muggier, tropical air.
The Silver Plate Building, 6 E. Downer Place, Aurora, could be the home of the Salon Forever mural. (Steve Lord / The Beacon-News)

If the Aurora City Council this week approves installation of a mural downtown, history will be served in more ways than one.

The mural itself is an homage and commemoration of the history of blues music and Aurora's role in that history.

Advertisement

It also was created at a historic moment in Aurora's life, when the city hosted an international art event.

And the installation itself would be on the historic Silver Plate Building, 6 E. Downer Place, built before 1900 and housing one of the city's first industries.

Advertisement

Aldermen will vote on installing the mural at the City Council meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the council chambers, City Hall, 44 E. Downer Place.

The mural was commissioned by the city in 2008 during the Salon Forever event that took place at the Painters and Allied Trade Council 30 union hall in Aurora.

Salon Forever takes place each year at locations throughout the world, and features an international selection of artists. It has been held in France, Denmark, Italy and Russia.

"It's something that all agree was quite a thing to have in Aurora," said Dan Barreiro, Aurora's chief community services officer, at a recent Committee of the Whole meeting.

At the 2008 event, more than 100 artists attended from 13 different countries.

At each day of the event, a different style of music was featured.

On the blues music day, artists participated in the blues mural for Aurora. Patrick Kirwin, of Alexandria, Va., directed the work on the 12-foot by 30-foot mural.

The mural includes the city's seal, the Paramount Arts Centre, a picture of founder Andrew McCarty and the New York Street Bridge, among other images of the city.

Advertisement

It has been stored at the union hall since 2008 and is in good shape, Barreiro said.

Aurora is scheduled to vote on whether to permit the mural dedicated to Auroras role in the history of blues music. (Aurora Downtown / Handout)

The building owner is allowing the mural to be on his building for free, but it will cost the city between $3,000 and $5,000 to have it mounted.

Interest in installing the mural surfaced recently when the City Council passed an amendment to the FoxWalk Overlay District, as part of the Riverwalk ordinance, to spell out guidelines for downtown murals.

Barreiro said the city also has two other, student-painted murals, one of which is on the western wall of the David L. Pierce Art and History Center downtown, near the Silver Plate building.

"This is not the first mural, and this is not the last mural that will be downtown," Barreiro said.

He said the city is developing a request for proposals to have another mural done and installed during the summer of 2017.

Advertisement

"So this is not the end," he said.

Once the City Council approves the mural's installation, the city still needs a certificate of appropriateness from the Public Art Commission.

slord@tribpub.com
Oak Lawn Fire Lt. Vince Griffin said he disagrees with a recent Illinois Appellate Court ruling that the village needn't pay $3.2 million in back pay to firefighters, but does not expect the union to contest the ruling. (Steve Metsch / Daily Southtown)

Oak Lawn is hailing a recent Illinois Appellate Court decision in its longstanding litigation over staffing with the village's firefighters union as a significant victory for taxpayers.

On Aug. 12, the appellate court upheld a 2015 Illinois Labor Relations Board's ruling that found Oak Lawn not liable for $3.2 million in back pay and accrued interest the union argued firefighters were owed because of the village's alleged failure to comply with minimum staffing provisions in the contract.

Advertisement

"We are, of course, thrilled that the appellate court ruled in favor of the taxpayers and rejected the union's efforts to win more than $3 million for work never performed," Village Manager Larry Deetjen said in a statement.

The ruling marks the fourth time in the past 18 months the village has prevailed in its case with the firefighters union over minimum staffing, village officials said.

Advertisement

While the union is legally entitled to ask the Illinois Supreme Court to take up the case, it does not appear likely to do so.

Oak Lawn Fire Department Lt. Vince Griffin, who heads the union, said Friday that he doesn't believe the union will challenge the appellate court's decision.

"We abide by the court's ruling," he said by phone. "We don't agree with it, but we abide by it."

Griffin also said it was "absolutely possible" that in the wake of its most recent legal setback, the union would drop a separate appeal of a grievance arbitrator's decision about the same staffing issue.

If that occurs, it would effectively mark the end of the years-long legal battle over minimum manning grievances that the village and its firefighters have been waging since 2008.

In that year, the firefighters union filed a grievance against Oak Lawn after the village, as a belt-tightening measure, began staffing engines with three people, rather than four, as is stipulated in the contract.

A grievance arbitrator sided with the union and ordered the village to maintain a minimum manning level of 21 people per shift and provide $286,000 in back pay for the nine-plus months the it had reduced staffing below that number, village officials said.

As a result, the village returned minimum staffing to 21 per shift and, after losing an appeal of the arbitrator's decision, paid out the allotted sum.

Advertisement

The union later filed a compliance petition, arguing that the village had not complied with the minimum staffing provisions in the contract, and should actually be staffing 22 people per shift. The Illinois Labor Relations Board initially found in favor of the union and last year awarded it more than $3 million in back pay and accrued interest, but that decision was later reversed on appeal.

This month's appellate court decision was an affirmation of that reversal, and solidifies the minimum manning status quo at 21 per shift.

"I'm sure the village manager will tout it as a terrific victory and a great savings of money," Griffin said of the court decision. "But if we continue on a downward trajectory of shift staffing, that is going to lead to a less safe work environment for the firefighters.

"And that can only equate to a not safe environment for the public."

While the grievance aspect of the longstanding feud may have reached its conclusion, the battle over minimum manning requirements continues to impede contract negotiations between the village and its firefighters.

Oak Lawn has argued, thus far unsuccessfully, that minimum staffing levels at the Fire Department should be a management prerogative not subject to collective bargaining.

Advertisement

The village contends that it should be able to set minimum staffing levels at 19 firefighters per shift, down two from the 21-per-shift staffing minimum that an independent arbitrator in 2008 ruled the village must abide by, Oak Lawn officials said.

"It's our contention that that is an inherent right in Illinois and that the decision on how to staff, and what level to staff, and how to deploy, is a right of management, the governing body," said Deetjen. He, along with Fire Chief George Sheets, Mayor Sandra Bury and all but one member of the Village Board, argue that the Fire Department can operate safely and effectively with fewer members working per shift, and in so doing, save the village in overtime costs.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

Griffin disagrees, and called the proposed reduction in daily staffing "a real scary scenario."

"If staffing is going down, down, down, which call is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back," he said. "Is it a week from now? A month from now? At some point, that straw is going to break the camel's back and I pray that our firefighters can overcome the situation. I pray that there's not something terrible that happens because of a village manager that wants to decrease staffing."

With neither side willing to budge on the minimum staffing issue, recent labor contracts have been adjudicated through an arbitration process.

In 2014, the first time the parties' collective bargaining dispute went to an interest arbitrator, the arbitrator decided to leave staffing stipulations contained in the contract as is, maintaining the 21-per-shift status quo. When that contract expired at the end of 2014, the village brought the issue back to arbitration, where in the coming months a new arbitrator will rule on it.

Advertisement

If Oak Lawn prevails in the arbitration  a decision isn't expected until November  it stands to save an additional $937,000 in overtime costs annually going forward, officials said.

zkoeske@tronc.com

Twitter: @ZakKoeske
Well, the liberal media is at it again. A story breaks about Hillary Clinton from when she was a public defender back in 1975. She's giving an interview about a rape case where she got a 41-year-old guy off by a technicality in the case. The sad part is, the victim in the rape case was only 12 years old. The victim came forward to let people know what Hillary has done to her life and the liberal media doesn't cover it? This lady champions herself as being the candidate that helps woman and children. Really? I can only imagine the other cases where someone was wronged by Hillary on her big climb to the top. Wake up people and realize she is out for herself.

Joe, Tinley Park

Advertisement

Can you believe Moraine Valley Community College had a class "for blacks only?" A class they should have now is, "Highly paid college administrators who need a psychiatric Evaluation."

Why does the media think they have to report every stupid thing that comes out of Trump's mouth? This is not news, its just a stupid story. Walter Cronkite must be spinning in his grave.

Advertisement

Eileen C., Palos Heights

I don't have much sympathy for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Some have tried to compare Blagojevich to other convicted politicians in an attempt to prove that his 14-year sentence is harsh, excessive, and cruel. Compared to others, Blago had a lot of charges against him. He was convicted on multiple counts of extortion, conspiracy and wire fraud. He also made false statements to the FBI. No, Rod Blagojevich didn't take any money. But he did commit multiple crimes, he violated the public's trust and he showed no remorse or regret during his trial. I think that his punishment fits his crimes.

Just because you fixate on one thing you believe, it is no reason to burden the rest of us with your cockamamie opinions. If you love Clinton, you are not going to convince anyone to vote for her by cutting Trump. Likewise if you love Trump, you are not going to convince anyone to vote for him by cutting Clinton. We have heard all the chatter and have mostly made up our minds, so cut it out ye minions of one-track minds.

Gary

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

For years, Obama blamed all his woes on George Bush. Now Hillary Clinton is claiming that Colin Powell told her use a private email account. What's wrong with this picture?

You watch the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games and you actually consider that there is true hope for mankind.

I saw in the paper recently where parents in a town had to be encouraged to participate in the opening of the coming school year. Your kids come first. You should not need encouragement. Get your priorities straight.

Oak Forest

Advertisement

If Notre Dame has only 10 players available or less (those that aren't in prison) for the first game, can they still play, or is it a forfeit?

What's Speak Out?

Speak Out allows readers to comment on the issues of the day. Email Speak Out at speakout@southtownstar.com or call 312-222-2427. Please limit comments to 30 seconds or about 120 words and give your first name and your hometown.
The Deerfield Police Departments dispatch center also handles calls for the Bannockburn Police Department, the Riverwoods Police Department and the Deerfield Bannockburn Fire Protection District. (Steve Sadin / Pioneer Press)

Population growth from two new apartment projects may provide the necessary numbers for the Deerfield Police Department to continue offering dispatch services.

The village has applied for a waiver from the State of Illinois from a law that went into effect January 1 that requires communities with a population less than 25,000 to consolidate emergency dispatch services with a larger community.

Advertisement

The Deerfield Police Department currently provides dispatch services not only to the village, but also to the Bannockburn Police Department, the Riverwoods Police Department and the Deerfield Bannockburn Fire Protection District. The three communities share the 60015 zip code.

Deerfield officials presented their case for the waiver to an administrative law judge before the Illinois Commerce Commission on Aug. 4 in Springfield. They are awaiting the recommendation, according to Deerfield Police Chief John Sliozis.

Advertisement

Once the recommendation is made, a second hearing will be held Sept. 19 in front of the 911 Advisory Board before a final written decision is made by the state's 911 administrator, according to Sliozis.

The village must explain to the state's appropriate administrative officials why consolidation is a threat to public safety in the towns served by the dispatch center and why it is economically or technically unfeasible, according to the waiver request application contained on the Illinois State Police website.

Sliozis said the situation could get a solution in the form of the two new Deerfield apartment projects totaling 488 units. They are currently being leased. The village will start taking a special census in October to measure the population growth attributed to those complexes.

"The law says if your population is under 25,000 you must consolidate," Sliozis said. "When (the apartment buildings) are full that gets 700 more people into our jurisdiction and the population will be 25,031. The law no longer applies to us."

Deerfield's dispatch center currently has the latest technology enabling it to receive a 911 call by text or even get a picture that way, according to Sliozis. He said his department should be the model for consolidation since it is already performing services for three villages.

"Our dispatchers know our streets and our people," Sliozis said. "In some of these centers they need a (precise) address and the caller may not have that. If someone here says they're at the point, our dispatchers know where that is. They don't need the address. We are the model the state should follow."

Deerfield Mayor Harriet Rosenthal said as far as she is concerned Deerfield complied with the law before it was ever enacted by providing services to Riverwoods and Bannockburn. She said the dispatch center also handles calls from local businesses, which in Deerfield is significant since the village is home to several corporate headquarters.

"What the legislation doesn't take into account is our population doubles during the day," Rosenthal said in a March 28 Deerfield Review article. "That's a very big group we're dispatching for. It's our officers who go there and answer the calls."

Advertisement

Rosenthal is referring to employers like the corporate headquarters of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Mondelez International, Inc., Takeda Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. and others who make their home in Deerfield as well as Discover Financial Services in Riverwoods.

Bannockburn Police Chief Ron Price said his village has used Deerfield's services for 40 years and hopes it stays that way.

"We don't want to lose the quality of service," Price said. "Deerfield is our neighbor. We don't want to go to Glenview, Vernon Hills or Lake Zurich. If someone calls in and says they're at the Duffy Bridge, the dispatchers know where it is."

Support also comes from Riverwoods Mayor John Norris. He said his village has been using Deerfield's dispatch services for its police department for three years. He said the dispatchers spend time riding with Riverwoods police officers to learn the particularities of the area.

"They know our streets, our officers and what's happening in our village," Norris said of the Deerfield dispatchers. "Our kids go to the same schools. They are our neighbors."

Steve Sadin is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
With the scope and penalties of Chinas social credit system being further clarified in 2021, legal and regulatory compliance has become more important than...
You are here: Home

Do you know Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing? And do you believe it can change the world? Maybe someone will tell you: why not!

United States-based Fortune magazine published a '2016 Change the World' list of the top 50 global companies on August 18, in a move to highlight those who address major social problems as a core part of their business strategy.

A screenshot shows the top 10 companies on Fortune magazine's '2016 Change the World' list. [Photo/CRIENGLISH.com]

Among the list, British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline ranked in the top position, followed by Israeli water desalination firm IDE Technologies in second, as well as American multinational conglomerate General Electric in third.

As the only Chinese mainland company on the list, ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing ranked 30th, while Hong Kong-based apparel manufacturer Crystal Group was listed 17th.

A screenshot shows Didi Chuxing in 30th position on Fortune magazine's '2016 Change the World' list. [Photo/CRIENGLISH.com]

A total of 22 US companies were included in the list, including Coca-Cola, Nike, Intel, Walmart, and Bank of America. Surprisingly, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are absent.

Fortune magazine published its first 'Change the World' list in August last year which included 51 companies. China's e-commerce giant Alibaba and domestic automaker BYD were featured on that list.
You are here: Home

The Ministry of Commerce said Monday that it would scrap anti-dumping duties on high-performance stainless steel seamless tubes imported from Japan and the European Union, effective on Monday.

The ministry levied anti-dumping duties on imports of high-performance stainless steel seamless tubes from Japan and EU from Nov. 9, 2012, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

The duties ranged from 9.2 percent to 14.4 percent according to the level of dumping.

On June 20, the ministry notified the domestic steel industry that it would review the anti-dumping measures. During the review period, the domestic industry withdrew its applications for continuing levying anti-dumping duties on Japan and EU imports.

Therefore, the ministry decided to cease the anti-dumping duties, according to the statement.
You are here: Home

A 21-year-old university student from eastern China's Jiangxi Province has twice donated her stem cells to save a patient in Belgium.

A 21-year-old university student from eastern China's Jiangxi Province has twice donated her stem cells to save a patient in Belgium.

In February, Jiang Minlin, a student in Shangrao Normal Institute of Jiangxi, donated 227 millimeters of hemopoietic stem cells to a patient with a blood disease in Belgium, whose human leukocyte antigen type matched Jiang's. On August 8, Jiang donated another 65 millimeters of lymphocyte cells to the same patient to help her fight rejection of the initial cells.

Both donations were made at a hospital in Beijing.

Jiang signed up to be a stem cell donor with the China Marrow Donor Program in 2014. Her stem cells were found to match the Belgian patients last December.

The likelihood of stem cells matching is extremely low  somewhere between 0.01 percent and 0.25 percent .

"The donation staff told me that the recipient is about the age of my mother. I'm really happy to help save a life," she said.
About 70 percent of water used in Beijing comes from the Yangtze River through a massive diversion program, according to officials.

Over 1.5 billion cubic meters of water were diverted from the Danjiangkou Reservoir conjoining central Chinas Henan and Hubei provinces, as of August 10, accounting for 70 percent of Beijings water supply.

Water from the Danjiangkou Reservoir began flowing to Beijing in December 2014, as one of the three branches of Chinas south-to-north water diversion program, channeling water from the Yangtze River valley in southern China to address water shortages in the countrys northern and western regions.

To ensure the water is of a good quality, Henan has established a 1,595-square kilometer water protection zone near the reservoir and removed nearby factories and companies along the water diversion route to make room for forestry. The province has also put 181 water treatment and soil conservation projects in place to protect water sources.

In exchange for clean water from the south, Beijing has funded water protection and related programs in Henan with 250 million yuan (US$37.69 million) per year since 2014.

Over the past five years, Beijing has signed combined investment deals with Henan worth 1.08 trillion yuan, with 431.9 billion already invested. Henan is also slated to sign a number of deals with Beijing today, officials said.
Traditional cupping therapy gained more popularity among Chinese during this summer's Olympics, with images of the red-stamped back of US swimmer Michael Phelps circulating on the internet.

Taoists at the Jinding Temple of Luoyang, Henan province, offer free cupping services to local residents on Aug 14. [Photo/China Daily]

Sales of cupping devices at tmall.com, an e-commerce platform, began to rise on Aug 8, and by Aug 16 daily sales of the devices had doubled, according to Alibaba, which owns the platform.

Niu Niu, a saleswoman at an online shop that sells cupping devices on Taobao.com, said inquiries about cupping devices have increased recently, with an average about 600 customers inquiring about the products online every day.

"More people are interested in cupping. Even Olympic gold medalists are using cupping," she said.

Summer is usually the peak season for cupping device sales, as many Chinese believe they should treat diseases acquired in winter during summer, she said.

Duan Qingjie, a shop owner on Taobao, said in the past few days that the sales volume of the devices was about the same as before, but he is optimistic that the exposure of the therapy during the Olympics will result in more recognition of the therapy and increased sales in the future.

The cupping devices Duan sells use a glass cup connected to a simple vacuum pump. Users can place the device on their bodies and draw air out of the cup by themselves. A complete set of the self-assist devices, which includes 24 cups of various sizes, sells for 58 yuan ($8.70) online, he said.

Evolving practice

Although it's an ancient therapy that has been applied in China for more than 2,300 years, cupping has been evolving, based on new science and technology. At the same time, devices suitable for use by consumers have been promoted in the market, making the technique more accessible, said Zhao Jiping, a senior acupuncturist at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine's Dongzhimen Hospital.

However, users should acquire basic knowledge and skills before using such devices themselves to avoid injury, she said.

Cupping has also been accepted by people in many other countries, Zhao said.

"I have received patients from the United States, Germany, Spain, Japan and South Korea," she said. "They seek the therapy for various diseases, including waist pain, arthritis, neck bone pain, hypertension and asthma."

Cupping therapy can be used on a wide range of body areas, especially to alleviate pain in the neck, arms, waist, back and legs, Zhao said.

Although a traditional technique, modern science shows that it works, she said. For example, the negative pressure caused by cupping can cause some tiny blood vessels to break, resulting in a bruise on the cupping area. This is actually a positive stimulation, as the malfunctioning area can then return to normal.

Also, the heat applied during the therapy can promote blood circulation and improve metabolism on the problem area, which can contribute to healing, she said.

Normally, cupping is applied in muscle areas, such as the back, neck and waist, and it can work differently on different parts of body. It can even be applied to the face in case of facial paralysis, Zhao said.

Zhou Guoping, an acupuncturist in Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, said cupping is not for everyone, and people with certain conditions should not rely on cupping, such as those with skin injuries and those with blood diseases, as the technique may worsen such syndromes, he said.
 Flash

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong went back on stage again on Sunday and the National Day Rally resumed.

A screen shot taken on Aug. 21, 2016 shows Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during his speech at the National Day Rally in Singapore. [Photo/Xinhua]

"I gave everybody a scare. The last time I did this I was on the parade square in Safti, I fainted. I've never had so many doctors look at me all at once. They think I'm all right but I'm going to have a full check-up after this, " said Lee.

Lee suddenly took ill earlier while speaking at the rally. A medical team assessed that the prime minister's condition is not serious.

He was feeling unsteady because of prolonged standing, heat and dehydration and his heart is fine and he did not have a stroke, said the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in an updated statement.

Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies Tharman Shanmugaratnam blamed the tough schedule for his taking unwell.

"He's been having a very tough schedule,he's been standing for some time so he's just feeling a little faint," Tharman said.
You are here: Home

 Flash

Afghan security forces during operations against militants in the eastern Parwan province have captured a Taliban shadowy judge, said a statement of interior ministry released here on Sunday.

"Taliban shadowy judge Mohammad Nadir was arrested in Shinwari district on Sunday," the statement asserted.

The arrested Nadir who had served as judge for the Taliban terrorist group was notorious for arbitrary killing and extra-judicial murdering of people, the statement said, adding his arrest could be a major setback for the militants in Parwan and adjoining areas.

Taliban outfit has yet to make comment on the report.
 Flash

The Islamic State (IS) militants executed 40 people in the group's last major stonghold of Mosul on Sunday, a security source said.

Members of the "Golden Brigade", the special forces of the Iraqi counter-terrorism forces take part in a training under the command of international military instructors at Baghdad airport on March 20, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

The victims were executed over charges of conspiring against the group's rule in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, or helping people to flee the city, or being former Iraqi security members, according to Mohammed al-Baiyati, head of the security committee of Nineveh's provincial council.

"The IS terrorist group delivered the bodies of 40 men and a list of their names to the morgue of the main hospital in Mosul," said Baiyati. He said all the bodies were shot in the head.

The executions came as the Iraqi army and the Kurdish security forces, known as Peshmerga, are now fighting to seize back positions around Mosul amid a major offensive to liberate the whole city.

Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, has been under IS control since June 2014, when the Iraqi government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, giving opportunities for IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions.
 Flash

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Sunday slammed the upcoming Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercise by South Korea and the United States, calling it the "most undisguised physical measure and provocative action."

The drill is "an outrageous provocation for a nuclear war against the north aimed to encroach upon the dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK and infringe on the vital rights of its people," said a statement given by a spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country (CPRC), which was carried by the official news agency KCNA.

"It is the resolute stand of the DPRK to decisively foil all hostile acts and threat of aggression and provocation with the Korean-style nuclear deterrence," the statement said.

The DPRK also urged the United States to roll back the hostile policy against it and stop such dangerous muscle flexing.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint military drill to be carried out by Washington and Seoul next week is reportedly to kick off on Monday.

Each year, South Korea and the United States conduct a number of joint military drills including "Key Resolve," "Foal Eagle" and "Ulchi Freedom Guardian" which they claim to be of defensive nature. But Pyongyang says the annual war games are designed for northward invasion.
You are here: Home

 Flash

A boat carrying 17 people sank in western Indonesia on Sunday, leaving 10 people dead, two wounded and five others missing, navy spokesman said.

A boat carrying 17 people sank in western Indonesia on Sunday, leaving 10 people dead, two wounded and five others missing. [Photo/Xinhua]

The incident took place after the vessel departed from a port in Tanjung Pinang of Riau province, said Navy Spokesman Admiral Edi Sucipto, adding that bad weather was blamed for the disaster.

Navy command in western Indonesia undertook the evacuation just after the incident, Sucipto told Xinhua by phone.

Two passengers are in critical condition and have been shifted to the navy hospital in the province, Sucipto added.

Search and rescue operation for the missing passengers is underway now, led by the navy command, he said.

Indonesia's 255 million people are spread across more than 17,000 islands and are heavily dependent on boats for transport, but the country has a poor maritime safety record.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
 Flash

Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said on Monday that the Philippines is not pulling out of the United Nations, saying his country is committed to the organization despite its "frustrations."

Yasay called a briefing to clarify the statement made by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Sunday that the Philippines will "separate" from the UN after the body criticized his war on illicit drugs.

"We certainly are not leaving the UN," Yasay told a news conference at the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Duterte was angered by statements made by a UN official condemning the increasing number of vigilante-type killings in the country. There are more than 1,000 people killed in the campaign, according to media reports.

"Maybe we just have to separate from the United Nations. If you are that rude, we might just leave the organization," Duterte told a news conference in Davao City on Sunday, referring to the UN critics.

Duterte even said that he might as well form a rival organization with China and other African (nations). Duterte criticized the UN for its failure to stamp out terrorism, world hunger and other conflicts.

Duterte's spokesperson, Ernesto Abella, also told a separate news conference at the Malacalanang presidential palace that the Philippines is not "decoupling" from the UN.

"He is simply reiterating national sovereignty and the fact that he did not welcome interventions or what you would consider meddling. He was stating the fact that the Philippines is a sovereign nation and should not be meddled with," Abella said.

Abella said that the war on drugs "are within the our ambit of national sovereignty, national concerns, and that at this stage there was no call for the UN to make any investigations."

"If there would be serious intentions about investigating these matters they should have made formal presentations and not just made general statements. The UN as a public institutions should have made formal representations because we also are a formal institution," Abella said.

Meantime, a member of the House of Representatives slammed Duterte's threat to withdraw the Philippine membership in the UN, saying the Duterte's action is "impulsive, imprudent, and contrary to the interests of the nation."

"To turn away from such the community over a series of internal affairs would be truly regrettable. Withdrawal from the UN is not something that should be taken lightly for it could bring about disastrous consequences for the country," Rep. Harry Roque said.
You are here: Home

 Flash

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is to join his counterparts from Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) in a ministerial meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday,Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said Monday.

According to Lu, the foreign ministers of China, Japan and the ROK will review the progress of trilateral cooperation, discuss the development direction of trilateral cooperation in the future and exchange views on regional and international issues of common concern.

Under a rotation system, Japan will chair and host the 8th trilateral foreign ministers meeting, Lu said.
 Flash

The North Kivu military court over the weekend opened a case against six suspected members of a Ugandan rebel group, accused of carrying out the recent massacre of civilians in Beni, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo).

The suspected members of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), were equally being sought by the military for participating in an insurgency and committing crimes against humanity through killings, terrorism, rape and looting.

The suspects include one Tanzanian Kaiyagi Djuma, Congolese Kasereka Djuma as well as Ugandans Sempela Muswabo Toyota, Jackson Muhindo Kababo, Saka Muhindo Kitswamba and Jean-Baptiste Kasereka.

During their identification, suspect Muswabo is said to have been recruited in Uganda and enrolled in ADF about five months ago. He was charged with mounting and dismantling weapons for this Ugandan rebel group.

On the request of lawyers of the suspects, the North Kivu military court postponed the hearing of the cases to Monday. They said they had made the request to prepare for the defense of their clients.

The case began just a week after suspected members of ADF massacred about 50 civilians in Beni town.

Immediately after the massacre by these rebels in Beni, DR Congo President Joseph Kabila termed the attack as "pure terrorism" and urged DR Congo's partners across the world to help end the ongoing terrorism in the east of the country.

The United Nations and humanitarian organizations have accused ADF rebel group of killing over 600 people in Beni territory, North Kivu province, since October 2014.
 Flash

Up to 15 militants have been killed and three others detained as clash flared up in Dand-e-Ghori district of Afghanistan's northern Baghlan province on Monday, provincial governor Abdul Sattar Bariz said.

According to the official, three more militants have been captured and a weapon cache of the insurgents destroyed during the fighting which erupted early Monday.

The strategically important Dand-e-Ghori district outside provincial capital Pul-e-Khumri 160 km north of Kabul was overrun by Taliban couple of months ago and the government forces have yet to recapture it.

Taliban fighters would threat the provincial capital Pul-e-Khumri and the highway linking Kabul to the northern provinces if the government fails to dislodge militants from Dand-e-Ghori, observers said.
 Flash

At least three militants, including a local commander, were killed when paramilitary troops raided their hideout in Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province on Monday, officials said.

Sarfraz Bugti, the home minister of Balochistan, said the killed militants were involved in an attack on President Momnoon Hussain's son and other terrorist activities in the province.

He said security forces gunned down the militatns in Hub district of the province on an intelligence tip-off, who were members of separatist group Balochistan Liberation army.

Bugti said the paramilitaty forces launched an operation to hunt down the militants, but they opened fire at the troops, engaging them into a gun battle.

The operation is part of the ongoing combing operation in the province, following a bomb explosion inside a hospital in Balochistan's provincial capital of Quetta on Aug. 8, which left 75 lawyers killed, and over 100 injured.
 Flash

Myanmar former ruling party the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) on Monday vowed to adopt a new strategy in accordance with the desire of the people without altering its original objective.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the second Nationwide Party Conference of the USDP in Nay Pyi Taw, Chairman U Thein Sein, who was former president of the country, called for re-assessment of the 2015 general election results and reformation of the party at each level from the bottom up to the central level.

U Thein Sein stressed inter-party consolidation, revival of democracy within the party and working hand-in-hand with new generation party members.

Meanwhile, the USDP revealed at a recent workshop that it is preparing to submit its peace policy to the new government-led 21st Century Panglong Ethnic Conference slated for the end of this month.

The USDP made a major reshuffle of its leadership in August 2015 ahead of the general election, reforming its 47-member central executive committee and retaining then President U Thein Sein as the party's chairman.

In the inter-party reshuffle, 17 senior members were removed, including U Shwe Mann, former speaker of the parliament and now chairman of the new parliament's Legal Affairs and Special Cases Assessment Commission.

The USDP lost to then opposition party, the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, in the 2015 general election, holding only 10 percent of the total of the parliamentary seats.
CNA | Aug. 22, 2016

China Airlines (CAL), Taiwan's largest air carrier, said Sunday that seven flights between Taiwan and Japan could be delayed or cancelled the following day to the effect of a tropical storm.

The airline said flight CI017 from Tokyo Narita International Airport (NRT) to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (TPE), and flights CI100/CI101 from TPE to NRT and vice versa could be affected.

It said flights CI220/CI221 from Taipei Songshan Airport (TSA) to Tokyo Haneda International Airport (HND) and vice versa could be affected.

In southern Taiwan, the airline said flights CI102/CI103 from Kaohsiung International Airport (KHH) to NRT and vice versa could also be affected.

As of 5:00 p.m. Sunday, Tropical Storm Mindulle, the ninth to form in the Pacific this year, was centered some 260 kilometers south of Japan's Hachijo-jima Island, moving north-northwest at a speed of 40 kilomters per hour, according to data from the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).

It will probably make a landfall on Japan's Honshu Island somewhere southwest of Tokyo around Monday noon, according to the JMA forecast.

Related News:

Hundreds of Flights Grounded As Typhoon Nears Japan
China Aviation Daily | Aug. 22, 2016

Air China is dispatching a Boeing 777-300ER aircraft to take Chinese athletes back from the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The 777-300ER, Registration B-2045, is flying from Madrid, Germany to Rio to take our honorable Olympic athletes home as flight CA622.

The flag carrier confirmed the matter via Sina Weibo, saying "Air China will bring our heroes home tomorrow! Meanwhile, our Golden Phoenix crew will serve on the aircraft."

According to flightradar24, flight CA622 took off from Madrid at 5:24 a.m. on Aug. 22 and is expected to arrive in Rio at 9:44 a.m.

The 777-300ER will fly with Olympic athlets back from Rio to Beijing as flight CA604 on Monday noon. The flight will leave Rio at 11:45 a.m. and reach Beijing Capital International Airport at 7:40 p.m. next day, with a stopover in Madrid (all local time).

The phoenix is the symbol of Air China and the Golden Phoenix crew represents its cabin service.
China's Shanghai is the most economically vibrant city in the world, topping UK-based asset management firm Schroder's Global Cities 30 Index for 2016.

The firm said the cities in the ranking shared common factors, including an increasing working population, high levels of disposable income, top universities and excellent transport infrastructure.

Here are the top 10 most economically vibrant cities in the world.

No 10 London
China's internet cafes in the 1990s were where socially awkward young men would shut themselves off the real world and get immersed for long hours on end in video games.

However, now, the majority of Chinese people can afford to play such games on their own computers at home. As the number of visitors drops, internet cafes in China are reinventing themselves.

They have made gaming a social activity. No more is the pastime - indulgence, if you will - a solo act, thanks to the rise of e-sports.

Zhan Bar, an e-sports bar chain, which was recently launched by the Shenzhen-listed Hubei Century Network Technology Co Ltd, is dedicated to helping high-end internet bars in China's major cities boost their attendance by attracting more and more players.

Internet bars can join Zhan Bar as associates and become part of a network. They will receive a full package of support services from Hubei Century Network Technology, a major gaming service provider in China.

Customers of such internet cafes could easily meet and know fellow e-sports fans at the same cafe and agree to do e-battle online. Else, they are free to pick the brains of expert players and receive tips to improve their gaming skills.

"The commercial potential of the e-sports industry lies not in the few professional gamers but in the massive number of ordinary players," said Zhang Pan, marketing director of Hubei Century Network Technology.

"With our strategy, we hope internet bars can become the venue for the 127 million e-sports fans in China to find suitable partners to team up, do battle and enjoy e-sports," he said.

According to Zhang, with the company's support in technology, event-planning and marketing, city- or province-wise patrons of internet bars will be able to team up and battle in national e-sports tournaments organized by Zhan Bar. They can even gather at local internet bars to watch live webcasts of e-sports competitions together.

About 100 internet bars across China have already signed up to join the Zhan Bar network. The company said it plans to enroll 500 internet bars in all by the end of this year.

China is the biggest e-sports market worldwide by the number of players, according to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of China.

"With the boom, e-sports bars now meet users' need to meet offline. Creating e-sports themes can help internet bars get core resources and withstand competition," said Teng Hua, president of CNG Games Research Center, a leading gaming industry research institution in Beijing.

Located in the premises of the Liudaokou subway station in Beijing, White Night Internet Cafe has reformatted itself as an e-sports destination, thanks to support from Hubei Century Network Technology since mid-2015. White Night is keen to test e-sports waters as part of the Zhan Bar network.

Spread over an area of 1,000 square meters, White Night has 235 top-end personal computers, including a business and leisure zone composed of all-in-one iMacs, a high-end e-sports battling zone and an area dedicated to couples.

"Zhan Bar's support in marketing and event-planning has increased our popularity and promoted our business. Now, the average daily traffic has reached 2,000 visits with the highest daily turnover hitting 30,000 yuan ($4,545)," said Li Jin, planning director of White Night.

Since his junior years, before he graduated from Beijing City University this summer, Xuan Haoran, 24, has been a frequent visitor to White Night. "E-sport competitions need a teamwork. Internet cafes enable me to have face-to-face interaction with my friends so that we can better play games together. It is a great place to have a social life offline," he said.
A view of the building of the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Asia News Photo

As many as 58 of China's 95 brokerages have been downgraded by the China Securities Regulatory Commission in its annual classification.

The main reasons for the downgrades are brokerages' non-compliance with regulations, flouting of rules and below-par risk management capacity, according to Dong Dengxin, a researcher at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology and a financial analyst.

Researchers said the downgrades will help make the market more transparent and cleaner.

But, the downgrades are also expected to further squeeze brokerages' already shrinking net profit due to market fluctuations.

The previous annual review led to XX downgrades last year.

The CSRC classification system accords ranks or ratings to brokerages based on their record or performance. A set of criteria determines a brokerage's rank. Key factors are risk management capacity, profitability and compliance.

Eleven ranks are distributed over five classes. The top-rated A Class has three ranks: AAA, AA and A. Ditto for the B class (BBB, BB, B) and the C class (CCC, CC, C), followed by the D class (D) and the bottom-of-the-pile E class (E).

Currently, no brokerage has the highest AAA rating. Only eight brokerages are rated AA.

According to the CSRC regulations, a downgraded brokerage is required to increase its allocation to its investor-protection fund.

Else, it would attract fresh restrictions that would stop it from starting a new line of business as well as expanding current businesses, said analysts.

Founder Securities Ltd, which was classified as A last year, was downgraded to C this year for several instances of flouting the CSRC rules.

According to Founder Securities, it has been probed and punished for breaking disclosure rules and for not meeting the 'know your customer' or KYC norms in some transactions.

Following the downgrade, Founder Securities now needs to augment its investor protection fund from 1 percent of revenue to 3 percent.

Shenwan Hongyuan Securities said in a note that brokerages can compete fairly only when they all operate based on the rules and law. The downgrades, it said, suggest the market regulator is strengthening compliance and risk management - and cracking down on misbehavior, dishonest and illegal practices.

A downgrade may affect a brokerage's business activities such as investment banking. Bond issuers generally do not prefer to hire low-ranked brokerages as underwriters, particularly when other higher-rated ones bid for the same role, said Yin Jianjun, a researcher with Shanghai-based Shenda Asset Management.

Stricter compliance requirements and fluctuating market conditions will likely hurt the profitability of brokerages in the second half of 2016, according to a research note from China Merchant Securities.

"Equity market is going to be more active in the second half of 2016 with more channels anticipated to open to investors, such as Shenzhen-Hong Kong stock connection, and more initial public offerings to be seen. New issuance of stocks and bond issuance will certainly benefit larger players in the sector," China Merchant said in the note.
A Chinese mobile phone user uses the taxi-hailing and car-service app Didi Chuxing on his Apple iPhone smartphone in Jinan city, east China's Shandong province, Feb 22, 2015. [Photo/IC]

Do you know Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing? And do you believe it can change the world? Maybe someone will tell you: why not!

United States-based Fortune magazine published a '2016 Change the World' list of the top 50 global companies on August 18, in a move to highlight those who address major social problems as a core part of their business strategy.

A screenshot shows the top 10 companies on Fortune magazine's '2016 Change the World' list. [Photo/CRIENGLISH.com]

Among the list, British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline ranked in the top position, followed by Israeli water desalination firm IDE Technologies in second, as well as American multinational conglomerate General Electric in third.

As the only Chinese mainland company on the list, ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing ranked 30th, while Hong Kong-based apparel manufacturer Crystal Group was listed 17th.

A screenshot shows Didi Chuxing in 30th position on Fortune magazine's '2016 Change the World' list. [Photo/CRIENGLISH.com]

A total of 22 US companies were included in the list, including Coca-Cola, Nike, Intel, Walmart, and Bank of America. Surprisingly, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are absent.

Fortune magazine published its first 'Change the World' list in August last year which included 51 companies. China's e-commerce giant Alibaba and domestic automaker BYD were featured on that list.
SYDNEY - Seek's chief executive Andrew Bassat said on Monday that Australia should show more respect to China when doing business.

Bassat said it was important for Australia to provide a "more give and less take in the relationship" for companies like Seek, which has a significant footprint in China.

China's number one job portal Zhaopin, in which Seek has a 67 percent stake, has been identified is one of the company's key growth engines for the future.

"I do think to some extent Australia needs to be more respectful towards China. Australia wants to benefit from the good things China brings but sometimes doesn't want to do anything in return," Bassat said.

"So it can be all take and no give ... They can see it as a one-sided relationship," he said.

Bassat was commenting on the recent refusal by the Australian federal government to block bids from Chinese and Hong Kong firms for Ausgrid, a New South Wales electricity distribution business.

The comments were made to NewsCorp after the company's full-year results to June 30 lifted 27 percent to A$357.1 million ($270.94 million) as domestic revenue grew at its strongest pace in five years.

Revenue from Seek Australia and New Zealand reportedly rose 14.6 percent to A$313.1 million ($237.55 million) due to a strong take-up by job advertisers on its talent search products.
Working teams have been established to coordinate and implement potential action plans

Action, inclusiveness and foresight are all stressed by China's current leadership in domestic governance, and those qualities are poised to influence next month's G20 summit in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, making it a milestone event for global growth, development and reform.

China hopes to transform the G20 meeting from a case-by-case, solution-seeking summit into an institutional long-term mechanism for ongoing debate.

On Monday, the Foreign Ministry for the first time revealed the detailed agenda for the upcoming summit, and also President Xi Jinping's busy schedule during the two-day event, when he will preside over more than 10 major activities.

It will be the first time China has hosted the event, and Xi's to-do list is indicative of its significance.

Since 2013, Xi has attended three G20 meetings - in the Russian city of St Petersburg, Brisbane in Australia and Antalya, Turkey - but the Hangzhou meeting will undoubtedly be the most important for him.

Under the theme "Building an Innovative, Invigorated, Interconnected and Inclusive World Economy", the Hangzhou summit will focus on critical issues in global growth and developmental reform.

Innovation, the new industrial revolution and the digital economy will appear on the agenda for the first time. More important, following a proposal by China, a number of special working teams have been established on these specific topics to supervise and coordinate the implementation of possible action plans and proposals.

Since the G20 first met in Washington in 2008, leaders attending the summits have passed many proposals and adopted a number of action plans. Still, problems remain for the global economy.

It takes time for some remedies, such as the reform of global governance, to take effect, but some previous prescriptions, although temporarily effective in boosting growth, have proved to be of little use in maintaining sustainable development.

For example, leaders of a number of developed economies have constantly pledged to strengthen coordination in formulating and implementing macroeconomic and financial policies, and have also resisted growing calls for protectionism in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

However, sometimes the pledges have resulted in little concrete action.

The globalization of the world economy means decisive growth factors are more concentrated in the developed economies, and development appears more exclusive than inclusive; about 12.5 percent of the global population still lives in poverty.

To address these problems, China last month hosted the first G20 trade ministers' conference in Shanghai, and established a foundation for institutional platforms for meetings of trade ministers.

China pushed the G20 to make global investment a guiding principle this year, which will evolve into the first multilateral investment regulation framework. Those efforts should facilitate global investment and trade.

These endeavors, and others, will help to turn the G20 into a long-term mechanism for the solution of global issues. The G20 is by no means just a club of 20 world powers strutting their resolutions, but the premier global forum for action and solutions.
LONDON - As leaders of the world's major economies prepare to head to China for next month's crucial G20 summit, some leading British economists said leaders' talks at the forum will be more important than ever in addressing pressing global issues.

Dr. Paola Subacchi, director of the International Economics Department at Chatham House, the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs, spoke to Xinhua in an exclusive interview about the critical part the summit in Hangzhou will play.

Wide Menu

Subacchi, an expert on the functioning and governance of international financial and monetary systems, said the summit gathering will cover a wide menu of issues ahead of a final communique being issued in what will be a wrap-up of discussions that started at the end of last year as part of the G20 process.

The communique will express commitments looking at issues such as green finance and energy sustainability as well as the economy and security, the expert said.

"Importantly, the G20 in China in September will see the leaders of the world's leading economies getting together. They will have the opportunity to speak around the table, talking for two days on pressing issues. It is an important forum to discuss the items that have been on the G20 agenda," she said.

World leaders are also expected to talk about Brexit and the impact of the decision by Britain to leave the EU, the US presidential election, according to Subacchi.

"There will also be many geo-political tensions to discuss, such as immigration and migration, the refugee crisis and the tensions in Europe. There is going to be a very wide menu," she noted.

"What I think will be interesting to see is whether there will be a more decisive steer on the need to embrace active fiscal policies and whether seeds will be established in the approach to economic policy-making," said the scholar.

New chapter for globalization

In a recent commentary, Alan Wheatley, associate fellow in International Economics at Chatham House, said the G20 should pursue a new charter for globalization.

"Too many people are rebelling against the free flow of goods, capital and people because they have not benefited from them. The G20 can stop the rot at its summit in Hangzhou by pledging vigorous efforts to share the fruits of globalization more equitable," he said.

On trade, Wheatley warned that public opinion in many countries has turned against free trade.

"The G20 must prevent the sour mood from spawning outright protectionism. Governments should pledge not to erect trade barriers, beyond accepted remedies, or discriminate against foreign direct investment," he commented.

No Substitute for G20

Prof. Gary Cook, who heads the Department of Economics at the University of Liverpool, agreed that leaders being able to talk freely away from the microphones is an important element of the G20 in China.

"The G20 does have a useful role to play, particularly its case for economic co-operation and in maintaining confidence.

"With Brexit there is still a lot of uncertainty and nervousness. The summit will give a strategic view of how that is viewed."

"There is no substitute for world leaders to meet face-to-face as they will in China. The economic situation has wobbled and there is fragility in the financial situation in some parts of the world," he said.

The economist expressed the hope to see the G20 promoting the idea that "free trade is in everybody's interest."

"Maintaining global peace and helping to foster a sensible deal on Brexit arrangements are important. The UK is important globally in the economic situation, and it is in everybody's interest to reach a satisfactory conclusion on the future relationship," he explained.

"The important legacies of the China summit should be firstly economic security and secondly political security. We are in what are perceived as difficult times, and what is needed at the G20 are frank discussions," said the professor.
Leaders of the US and Canada will participate in the G20  to be hosted by China for the first time  in early September.

US President Barack Obama will travel to China to attend the G20 and Laos from Sept 2-9, the White House announced on Thursday.

In China, Obama will participate in his final G20 Leaders' Summit, where he will emphasize the need to continue building on the progress made since 2009 in advancing strong, sustainable and balanced global economic growth.

He will underscore the importance of G20 cooperation in promoting a level-playing field and broad-based economic opportunity.

Obama will also conduct in-depth meetings with President Xi Jinping in Hangzhou, eastern China's Zhejiang province, where the G20 will be held. The two leaders will discuss a wide-range of global, regional and bilateral issues, according to the White House.

This trip will highlight Obama's ongoing commitment to the G20 as the premier forum for international economic cooperation as well as the US rebalance to Asia and the Pacific, said the White House.

This is the president's 11th trip to Asia since taking office in 2009. Obama will be the first US president to visit Laos, where he will participate in the US-ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Thursday that he will travel to China for an official visit from Aug 30 to Sept 6 at the invitation of Premier Li Keqiang.

During the official visit, Trudeau will also participate in the G20 Leaders' Summit on Sept 4 and 5 in Hangzhou.

At the Hangzhou Summit, G20 leaders will consider measures to lift global economic growth and investment, create jobs, strengthen the middle class, reinforce the resilience of the global financial system and increase trade and investment.

Canada welcomes the agenda brought forward by China as this year's G20 host, which encourages members to work together towards an innovative, interconnected and inclusive world economy.

"Canada firmly believes in the work of the G20 and its ability to promote strong, sustainable, and inclusive global growth and prosperity," Trudeau said. "We place great importance on working with our G20 partners to help address some of the world's most pressing challenges, like climate change, migration and sustainable development."

This official visit, which includes stops in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hong Kong, will provide an opportunity for the Prime Minister to connect with Chinese leaders in government, business and the public.

"Strengthening our relationship with China is essential to growing our middle class, and creating new opportunities for Canadian businesses," Trudeau said. "On this trip, I will strive for a closer, more balanced relationship between Canada and China."

Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on US-China Relations, said in an interview with Xinhua that as the host G20, China has the opportunity to set the tone and agenda for the meeting and help all participants reach important consensus.

It is "very much up to China" whether the G20 Summit can produce some really encouraging outcome, said Orlins. "I think China is going to need to lead. I think China in a lot of ways can lead," he said.

"I think China being the host of the G20 is very much kind of a statement that China is now one of the most important economies in the world, and it is terrific that it is being able to do it," said Orlins.

Orlins said that he believes the world needs to seek new growth engines from innovation and clean industries.

"We need to see more innovation that can be shared globally, and we need to see more movement towards industries which emit less carbon. I hope that's what comes out of the G20," he said. "With China as the host, it has the opportunity to set the tone and the agenda." Orlins said the G20 summit could help deepen mutual understanding between China and the US and boost bilateral ties.

Xinhua contributed to this story.
File photo shows US President Barack Obama holds a news conference at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, US, August 4, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON - The White House announced Thursday that US President Barack Obama is to travel to China and Laos in early September, during which he will attend the G20 summit and conduct his first visit to Laos.

Obama's September 2-9 trip will "highlight the President's ongoing commitment to the G20 as the premier forum for international economic cooperation as well as the US Rebalance to Asia and the Pacific," the White House said in a statement.

In China, Obama will participate in his final G20 summit, "where he will emphasize the need to continue building on the progress made since 2009 in advancing strong, sustainable, and balanced global economic growth," the statement said.

"He will underscore the importance of G20 cooperation in promoting a level playing field and broad-based economic opportunity," it said.

Obama "will also conduct in-depth meetings with President Xi Jinping of China in Hangzhou, where the two leaders will discuss a wide-range of global, regional, and bilateral issues," it added.

While in Laos, Obama will participate in the US-ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit, the statement said.

"Additionally, he will have bilateral meetings with President Bounnhang Vorachith and other key officials to advance US-Lao cooperation on economic, development, and people-to-people ties, among other areas," it said.

Obama also will participate in the Young Southeast Asian Leadership Initiative Summit, where he will hold a town hall meeting.

During the ASEAN Summit, Obama will discuss ways to strengthen the US economic cooperation with the countries of Southeast Asia, which collectively represent America's fourth largest trading partner, and further enhance the collaboration on regional and global challenges.

"This visit also will support the President's efforts to expand opportunities for American businesses and workers to sell their products in some of the world's fastest-growing markets. Central to this effort is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the high-standards trade agreement that will unlock key markets to American exports and cement America's economic leadership in the Asia-Pacific," the statement added.

This will be Obama's 11th trip to Asia since taking office in 2009.
Beijing ready to offer its ideas on global economy, puts green financing on agenda

When hosting the forthcoming 11th G20 Leaders Summit, China will offer its ideas on how to tackle the world's lingering economic problems and rising protectionism, experts say.

President Xi Jinping will deliver the keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the summit, to be held on Sept 4 and 5 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang confirmed on Aug 15.

Since the last summit, in November in Antalya, Turkey, new uncertainties about the world economy have emerged, including Britain's decision to exit the European Union.

In its most recent forecast, the International Monetary Fund lowered this year's global economic growth target to 2.9 percent from 3.1 percent, and this could be the second year in a row with global growth of less than 3 percent, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Li Baodong says it is hoped that the G20, which evolved into a premier leaders' forum in 2008 amid a major global financial crisis, will shift from a focus on addressing crises to "a governance mechanism with long-lasting effect".

When asked if China will avoid highlighting the South China Sea issue, Li says the top concern of the summit will be the growth of global trade and investment and that all parties should "stay concentrated and focus on the economy".

Although many leaders have proposed bilateral meetings with China on the summit sidelines, the schedule will be packed and Beijing is communicating with relevant parties regarding such meetings, Li adds.

Jia Jinjing, an expert on macroeconomic studies at Renmin University of China's Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, says the Hangzhou summit could be a turning point during which the G20 mission will shift to long-lasting governance, as more minister-level meetings have been included to expand the G20's role in navigating global growth.

"The summit will see China offering solutions in addition to its contributions made to the global economy," Jia adds.

Xu Hongcai, an economist with the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, says G20 members should boost their coordination on monetary policies, as "there is a serious differentiation among the policies of the major economies in the world".

Yi Gang, a vice-governor of the People's Bank of China, also told a news conference that China has introduced "green finance" as a G20 agenda topic for Hangzhou, with a study group established to report on green financing at the summit.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, green financing and investment involve "technologies, infrastructure and companies that will be critical in the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient and resource-efficient economy".

Zhu Jiejin, an associate professor of global governance at Fudan University in Shanghai, says China is becoming "a front-runner in boosting green finance", as the country states in its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) that it will establish a green finance system.

The G20 members' support for lowering financing costs for the growth of a green economy shows the increasing recognition of green financing and puts a high priority on environmental sustainability, Zhu says.

Lu, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, also says the annual informal leaders' meeting of the BRICS nations - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - will be held on the sidelines of the summit.

zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn
The G20 summit in Hangzhou will give leaders of advanced and emerging economies the chance to discuss global problems

The leaders of G20 countries and chiefs of international institutions are almost certainly comparing notes ahead of the G20 Leaders' Summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, next month.

For example, when I approached an international chief's office seeking his views on the summit, his staff members said it was still too early to comment because many factors would influence its outcome.

The summit will give leaders of advanced and emerging economies the chance to discuss problems facing the world since the global financial crisis and how to solve them.

It's understandable that the person I approached would need more time to work out how to deal with the complicated, multifaceted challenges facing the world. But it's disturbing to see the cooperative spirit of Western powers dissipating in these difficult times.

Many developments, some of which directly target China, are telling. For instance, the Western powers are blaming China for industrial overcapacity, when in fact it is a global phenomenon. And although 81 countries have recognized China as a market economy, the traditional industrial powers are still reluctant to do so, which they should because that was a condition of China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001.

In addition, some countries are challenging China's maritime claims, with a few considering shutting the door on Chinese investment, which ironically their economies need to create jobs and boost growth.

Perhaps these are part of the "many factors" referred to by the office of the international institution's chief.

But the Western powers pressuring China to include issues closely related to its national interests will be disappointed, as China's claims and interests are protected by law and history. These powers have to change their mindsets and use the Hangzhou summit to "re-recognize and understand China better" to minimize the number of wrong decisions that could be taken when dealing with a country that believes in a win-win philosophy.

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, which was closely followed by the European Union sovereignty debt crisis, China has accounted for nearly half of global economic growth. It has helped establish the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the BRICS New Development Bank, and its currency has been added to the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights basket, providing new financial tools for the world and making global economic governance fairer.

While China is contributing with global growth and governance reform, it's evident that, mainly because of US intervention, conflicts and wars are continuing in North Africa and the Middle East since the "Arab Spring".

Within the EU, the decision by Britain to exit has given rise to uncertainty. Many countries are on high alert because of the increasing terrorism attacks and threats, which in turn are affecting investment and tourism. And for the EU, the refugee crisis and economic stagnation are among its longer-term concerns.

The main trends since the first G20 summit in Washington in 2008, when the global leaders vowed to cooperate, coordinate and abandon protectionism, clearly show the roles each of the powers has played in this changing world.

China could help resolve many of the global challenges, especially because its economic power and international influence are increasing.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 signaled an economic crisis. The current global challenges are no less critical. So when the Western leaders meet with counterparts from other countries in Hangzhou, they must not forget the original mission of the G20 summit: cooperation and coordination to help find global solutions.

And they should remember that a zero-sum mindset, which many of them suffer from, will not help the G20 to achieve that.

The author is deputy chief of China Daily European Bureau. Contact the writer at fujing@chinadaily.com.cn.
The two will likely strive to reach consensus despite disagreement on key issues, experts say

US President Barack Obama will hold "in-depth meetings" with President Xi Jinping next month during his 11th and probably final trip as president to Asia, the core region of his administration's foreign policy, the White House said.

Experts said that disagreements will remain between China and the United States on key issues, such as the South China Sea and the planned deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system in the Republic of Korea, but the two leaders will likely strive to reach a consensus.

During the eight-day trip, starting on Sept 2, Obama will attend his final G20 summit in Hangzhou, the White House said in a statement on Thursday.

After the summit, he will visit Laos  the first visit to the country by a US president  where he will attend the US-ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit before winding up his Asian trip.

This trip will highlight Obama's ongoing commitment to the G20 as the main forum for international economic cooperation as well as the "US rebalance to Asia and the Pacific" strategy, the White House said.

Tao Wenzhao, a researcher in Sino-US relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the talks between Xi and Obama will be "of great importance" to bilateral relations. However, the relationship will continue to experience "ups and downs" with unresolved disputes on issues including the South China Sea and THAAD, he said.

"It will be the 'new normal' (a term usually used to describe China's ongoing economic structural adjustment) of the Sino-US relationship, with fluctuations from time to time," he said, adding that such ups and downs are likely to continue during the next US administration.

Obama's presidential term will end in January.

Zuo Xiying, a researcher of US foreign policy at Renmin University of China, said the possibility could not be ruled out that Obama might "point fingers at China" on the South China Sea issue during multilateral meetings in Laos.

"China will definitely not accept accusations by the US," he said.

Obama's visit to Laos will send a signal to Southeast Asian countries that the US will maintain its presence in the region, he added.

Stephen Orlins, president of the New York-based National Committee on US-China Relations, said in an interview with Xinhua that as the G20 host, China has an opportunity to set the tone and agenda for the meeting and help participants reach consensus.

Orlins also expressed confidence that the G20 summit could help deepen mutual understanding between China and the US and boost bilateral ties.

"Every time that an American president visits China, it is a benefit to US-China relations. Every time that a Chinese president and an American president meet, it is a benefit to US-China relations," Orlins was quoted as saying.

Obama previously visited China in 2009 and 2014.

Contact the writers at anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn
A number of world leaders have announced that they will come to China to attend the 11th G20 Leaders Summit in early September.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will make an official visit to China at the end of August aimed at boosting trade ties, his office announced on Thursday.

The Aug 30-Sept 6 trip will include stops in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, where Trudeau will meet with political and business leaders.

Trudeau will also travel to Hangzhou for the summit of leaders of the Group of 20 economic powers on Sept 4 and 5.

Republic of Korea President Park Geun-hye will also attend the G20 summit, Park's office said on Thursday, according to the ROK newspaper Dong-A Ilbo.

She also will participate in forums with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and attend the East Asia Summit in Vientiane, Laos, and meet with her Laotian counterpart on Sept 7-9.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has confirmed that she will travel to China next month to boost trade relations. In a letter to President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, May said she supported China's hosting of the G20 summit and wanted to build a stronger trade relationship.

China Daily - Agencies
There are two miracles in classical China - the Great Wall and the Grand Canal  with the canal, known as the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, always being seen as the pride of the Chinese people and a symbol of its cultural achievement for its size and grandeur. It has historical and cultural importance and is the longest artificial river in the world.

[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

History

The Grand Canal goes back 1,300 years and a part of its dates back to the 5th century BC. It starts in Beijing and ends in Hangzhou, passing through the city of Tianjin and Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. It links Chinas two longest rivers, the Yellow and the Yangtze, and has a total length of 1,794 kilometers.

In olden days, traffic on land depended on men and animals and was costly, slow, and small in scale, so large cargo was usually moved by water. The Grand Canal was originally intended for grain and luxuries, then later, merchants began using it for commodities, turning the corridor into a prosperous economic belt.

[Photo from en.gotohz.com]

[Photo from en.gotohz.com]

Some foreign visitors called it the Emperors River because of its importance for Chinese emperors throughout history and many from different dynasties in the north used the Grand Canal to ship goods to Southern China. In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors made 12 trips to the south of the Yangtze River via the Grand Canal .

The Hangzhou section starts at the town of Tangqi, in the Yuhang district to the north and ends in the Qiantang River in the south, crossing four urban districts -- Yuhang, Gongshu, Xiacheng and Jianggan.

In 2002, the Hangzhou government began a renovation and development project based on the canal for the overall improvement of water quality, bridges, old streets and buildings along it and now, there is a scenic belt along its banks in Hangzhou, with a natural landscape and cultural attractions such as historical streets, cultural parks, museums and temples.

[Photo from en.gotohz.com]
Thousand-island (Qiandao) Lake, also named Xin'an River Reservoir, is located in Chun'an county near the city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. It is a man-made lake backed up by a hydropower dam on the Xin'an River that offers a quiet place for respite with its verdant mountains, crystal-clear waters and islands.

When the reservoir filled up, the remaining hilltops formed many islands, hence the "Thousand-island Lake". It has an average depth of 34 meters and clear water with a visibility of around 10 meter and has a national first-class lake rating and many well-known bottled water brands, such as Nongfu Spring.

Work on the reservoir began on Aug 20, 1956 and it began impounding water in September 1959, inundating parts of Chun'an and Sui'an. The hydropower plant was established on April 22, 1960 and began generating electricity with its 72,500 KW electric generator.

The Lake scenic spot covers 95,000 hectares, with 41,700 hectares of hilly land, 53,300 hectares of water surface, and 17.8 billion cubic meters of water storage. The lake and its islands are the perfect integration of beautiful scenery, mountains, water, and forests.

A thorough study of the area has shown 1,830 species of plants, including 810 species of woody plants, 498 species of wild flowers, and 18 species of national protected plants. The forests are the result of natural forests and forestation and the abundant plants provide scenery and habitat for various wild animals.

The county was a thoroughfare and prosperous and populated in ancient times and even after the inundation by the reservoir in 1959, Chun'an and Sui'an merged to better preserve themselves. The scenic spot boasts Blossom Mountain, Stone Forest, Longshan Island, Peacock Island,Yule Island, getting 5A national scenic spot designation in 1982.
Li Hejun, chairman of Hanergy Holdings, presents a concept solar-powered vehicle in Beijing on July 2. Fan Song / For China Daily

Electric car making in China appears to have turned into a battle of the entrepreneurs, with a number of eco-inexperienced companies vowing to develop and mass-produce large-sized premium electric cars to rival or beat Tesla's offerings in the sector.

The individuals that helm these companies have come out with a range of confident and often grandiose statements that make it seem as if they fully expect to leave US-based Tesla firmly in their rearview mirror, and soon.

First-time audiences have been understandably excited by such sentiments, although many have wondered if it can really be so easy, especially since the traditional auto giants have thus far failed to challenge Tesla, despite their undoubted advantages in capital and staff.

It is clear that the new pretenders to Tesla's crown have much in common besides their perceived common rival.

Whether by accident or design, they hold press conferences to which they invite legions of reporters. Their CEOs dress casually, in the style of Mark Zuckerberg or the late Steve Jobs, and gesticulate to an unnatural degree while repeating punchy adjectives such as "revolutionary" and "transformative".

According to their narratives, auto making is a wonderfully straightforward endeavor, even though it is common knowledge in the industry that it takes even an established car maker at least three or four years to produce a new model.

Youxia Motors is an excellent example of how some of the new players are attempting to rewrite the auto industry's generally accepted rulebook.

The company, which was established in 2014, claimed late last year that its 40-member team, with a meager budget of less than 20 million yuan ($3.02 million), had miraculously developed a car in less than 500 days that would be a serious rival to Tesla. Interestingly, Youxia's design bears a striking resemblance to the Tesla Model S and earlier this month, the company claimed that its new car would hit the market next year.

Many people have also been surprised by the fact that many of those leading the new clutch of companies have either limited or no auto industry experience. For example, Youxia's founder Huang Xiuyuan has done many different jobs since he graduated in 2008 with a degree in mass communication, ranging from selling shoes online to making videos for Baidu Inc, according to Chinese media reports.

In July, Chinese power giant Hanergy vowed to roll out solar-powered cars within three years, but when he was asked about the company's plans to secure investment for the project, boss Li Hejun sidestepped the specifics and said that it would succeed thanks to "its virtues, wisdom, will and luck". One can only imagine what potential investors made of such a vague prognostication.

LeEco has gone even further. As one of the first internet companies to make public its car-making ambitions, which it has repeated ad nauseam, it announced on Aug 10 plans to build a plant in Zhejiang province after showcasing a mule car in October.

While some have applauded the move, many have asked if the company will be able to raise the 20 billion yuan that will be needed in order to finish the plant.

Others have questioned whether LeEco has overstretched itself by attempting to build a plant capable of producing 400,000 large-sized premium electric cars annually when it has no idea at what point the first car will roll off the assembly line.

This could, however, be a cunning ploy on LeEco's part, proving that it is the most seasoned of the new pretenders. By not setting out a definite schedule, though, it has given itself more leeway, but by doing so has raised the possibility that it has sold a beautiful mirage to reporters and potential customers alike.

Everyone loves an exciting story, and we respect those that endeavor to turn fiction into reality. But many people are becoming exasperated by the propensity of these entrepreneurs to talk big and deliver very little. At some point, they must walk the walk and not just talk the talk, especially when their words seem so fantastical that one wonders if their plans and dreams can ever be realized.

It might be impetuous to reject out of hand their blueprints for the future. After all, development can happen rapidly in this industry, and it requires visionaries and dreamers to push things forward apace.

However, if I had to give them one piece of advice, it would be this: Put up, or shut up. We in the industry are tired of all the grand promises that, so far, have not been kept.
A person passes by a Gree outlet in Yichang, Hubei province. Zhou Jianping / For China Daily

China's largest air conditioner manufacturer is jumping on the electric vehicle bandwagon having agreed to pay 13 billion yuan ($2 billion) to acquire an automaker in Guangdong province.

Gree Electric Appliances Inc will fund the takeover of Zhuhai Yinlong New Energy Co by selling 834.9 million new shares at 15.57 yuan apiece, about 19 percent lower than the stock's last traded price, according to its filing to the Shenzhen stock exchange on Aug 18.

Gree shares have been halted from trading since Feb 22 "because of a possible important takeover". Its shares will remain suspended until after the Shenzhen stock exchange and other government agencies review and approve the acquisition, the appliance maker said in a statement on Aug 18.

Established in 2004, Yinlong started making inroads into the new energy sector in 2009. The company sold 3,189 electric buses in 2015, seizing a 3.6 percent market share in China.

It has a lineup of seven electric passenger cars and 18 electric buses, according to its website, and also manufactures lithium-ion batteries as well as controller systems for electric vehicles.

Gree's President Dong Mingzhu has long made public that the company plans to produce electric cars as part of its strategy to diversify its business interests.

She told China Daily earlier this year that Gree's business activities will range from its core air conditioners and white goods to smartphones, new energy vehicles and intelligent equipment.

The company launched its second generation of smartphones in June, after an almost year-long trial operation of its first batch, which were only sold to employees for testing purposes.

Auto industry analysts believe Gree's foray into the electric car making sector is mainly a result of the favorable policies, including subsidies, that have been introduced to promote and develop the sector.

China, already the largest new energy vehicle market in the world, plans to put 5 million such vehicles on its road by 2020.

Some reports, however, have suggested that Gree's takeover is aimed more at Yinlong's battery technology than its cars.

Dong revealed in March that Gree is developing new products that would serve air conditioners and generate electricity for home appliances under the same roof, reported the Automotive Business Review magazine.

The report said such products would require electricity generation and storage technologies, which Yinlong has specialized in.

Gree also released its mid-year financial report on Thursday. Its net profit rose 12 percent to 6.4 billion yuan in the first half of the year while its revenue slipped 1.85 percent to 49.2 billion yuan.

Its revenue slumped nearly a third to 99.8 billion yuan in 2015, the company's first annual sales decline on record.
Two rental cars outside a Homeinns hotel in Beijing. Beijing Shouqi Group and Homeinns Co Ltd entered strategic partnership on Aug 11 in Beijing to increase the number of car pickup and return outlets in the hotel chain's network. Hao Yan / China Daily

With cities across China putting restrictions on new car purchases, hire sector is expecting a bright future

Chinese car rental companies are accelerating expansion of their fleets in tier-two and tier-three cities, in expectation of gaining a larger share of the rapidly evolving mobility market over the next five years.

Beijing Shouqi Group and Homeinns Co Ltd entered a strategic partnership on Aug 11 in Beijing to increase the number of car pickup and return outlets in the hotel chain's network, as the two companies' combined network would cover not only tier-one cities but also tier-two and tier-three cities, according to the companies' news release.

Shouqi Car Rental covers 66 cities with a network of nearly 500 locations, while Homeinns operates nearly 3,000 hotels in 355 Chinese cities.

Wei Dong, chief operating officer of Shouqi Car Rental and CEO of Shouqi Limousine and Chauffeur, said: "Shouqi Limousine and Chauffeur will expand to 40 cities by the end of this year, from its current 22 cities."

Both Beijing Shouqi and Homeinns are controled by the Beijing Tourism Group, after its Shanghai Stock Exchange-listed hotel arm BTG Hotel (Group) Co Ltd took over the hotel company for 11 billion yuan ($1.66 billion) in December.

Zhang Junyi, a partner with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants Greater China, told China Daily that car rental companies are seeking higher profitability through varied approaches including network expansion.

"A car rental company may benefit from a larger network which attracts more customers," he said. "Some could make more money from larger fleets, while some may save costs through close cooperation with car manufacturers and a lower procurement price."

Roland Berger Strategy Consultants foresee stronger growth in Chinese customers' spending on car hiring. It expects car rental revenue growth to accelerate in the 0next five years to 65.7 billion yuan from 50.7 billion yuan in 2015, a 29.7 percent increase, owing to an expected surge in business rentals.

Car Inc, China's largest car rental company by fleet scale, said in a written reply that as of March it had expanded its network to 74 major cities covering all provinces with 739 directly operated service locations.

The company believes the Chinese car hiring market is in an early stage where it is developing slowly and with limited penetration. But it said a 27 percent compound average growth rate would be possible by 2018.

Car Inc's net profit more than tripled to 1.4 billion yuan last year from 436 million yuan in 2014.

Fleet expansion

Zhang sees the size of the fleets as one of the critical factors, together with fleet management and operations.

"New car registration is restricted in many large cities," he said. "The car rental or hailing service companies are eager to take more bites out of the registered vehicles, because of the limited supplies.

"The players who fall behind may not be able to catch up to the leaders, so the large companies are trying to take in as many cars as they can."

Car Inc had enlarged its fleet from 63,522 units in 2014 to 88,853 by March, and has been buying new vehicles in cities that restrict car purchases and in places that might take similar actions.

The company believes the cars bought in advance have secured the supply of core resources - registration plates - and resulted in its dominant position.

The New York-listed eHi Car Services Ltd claimed the No 2 spot as largest by revenue and reported its average available fleet size for car rentals had increased by 62.8 percent year-on-year to 32,007 vehicles for the first quarter of 2016, up from 19,659 vehicles for the first quarter of 2015.

Beijing Shouqi is also planning fleet expansion this year, with more than 10,000 new cars to be added for both its chauffeured car hailing and car sharing business nationwide. The transportation service provider's affiliate mobility service providers - Shouqi Car Rental, Shouqi Limousine and Chauffeur, and GoFun new energy car sharing - are operating China's third largest fleet of 29,500 vehicles.

Flexible fleets

Experiencing the disruption brought to the mobility market by on-demand chauffeured car hailing services, car rental companies are progressively making changes to fit customers' demands to seize more market share.

Beijing Shouqi is making dynamic adjustments between the businesses of rental and on-line hailing, but mainly in fleets outside Beijing, according to Wei.

"The car fleets outside Beijing are shared between Shouqi Car Rental and Shouqi Limousine and Chauffeur," he said. "The sharing mode generates synergy and boosts growth in both rental and on-line hailing businesses. We are bullish about the future of the mobility market, and we are getting well prepared."

Car Inc provided its affiliate, Shenzhou Zhuanche, with 19,883 units of long-term leasing vehicles for online chauffeured car hailing services, together with short-term leasing cars for peak-time operations.

Sharing the fleets between the rental and chauffeured businesses boosted the fleet's utilization rate to 64.2 percent in the first three months of this year. The more flexible management also generated significant synergy and locked in long-term stable revenue, according to the company.

The Roland Berger research report released in April said the annual revenue of the mobility market may reach 1.1 trillion yuan by 2020, about double last year's 563 billion yuan. The majority of that growth would be contributed by online chauffeured car hailing services, the report said.

Compared with the projected 127 percent annual revenue growth rate of online chauffeured car hailing services, the car hiring's 29.7 percent revenue increase will not surprise the market, nor will the possible 34.5 percent decrease in daily orders expected in 2020, according to Roland Berger.
SYDNEY - China's technology hub Silicon Dragon is slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with as some of its tech companies are delivering revenue growth that could give Google and Facebook a run for its money, a columnist said.

Fairfax Media columnist Michael Smith said on Saturday the hub based in Shenzhen near Hong Kong was its version of Silicon Valley, adding that Australia was "dinosaurs in comparison" to the Chinese progress in technology.

This is evident as five of the world's 14 privately-owned tech companies valued at more than $10 billion were now based in China, Smith said quoting figures released by PwC.

"There is a real hunger here (in China) that Australia does not have. The Chinese look at Australians and think you are fat and lazy by comparison," an anonymous Australian working in the Chinese tech sector was quoted as saying.

A Huawei executive James Peng said the Chinese government's willingness to give incentives such as tax breaks coupled with its western-style market economy were the other reasons behind Shenzhen's success.

"You will see government efforts to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. What a lot of business people here like is that Shenzhen is a city where there is a recognition that businesses will do well but that some will fail. Failure is okay here, whereas Chinese provincial governments can't have companies failing," an unnamed Australian government official said.

Simon Lance, managing director of the China operations for global recruitment agency Hays, said Chinese tech firms like their counterparts in Silicon Valley, also find it challenging to recruit the right talent and have to offer pay rises of up to 25 percent and a career progression plan to get new employees on board.

"The thing that really strikes me about China is that it makes long-term plans ... 10-year plans ... you can set up an industrial park working on virtual reality or artificial intelligence almost overnight. Australians touring here are surprised at how high-tech the facilities are becoming," said Lance, an Australian who moved to China 15 years ago.

Drone maker DJI executive said the ability of Chinese companies being able to move fast and adapt was another reason for its success.

"Chinese tech companies used to copy what western firms were producing but then they started improving on it and now they are breaking new ground on their own," the unnamed executive was quoted as saying.

Even local banks in China were cashing in on the innovation fun.

Recently HSBC, one of the few foreign banks in China, launched a WeChat banking app which will let its customers transfer money to each other in two seconds.

In conclusion, Smith in his column titled "China's tech sector leaves Australia in its wake" believed that it was almost impossible for Australia to compete with China progress in the tech space.

"While there will be opportunities to utilise Australian talent and skills in China, the decision by Uber to pull out of China last month shows how difficult it is for foreign multi-nationals to get a slice of the action," Smith concluded.

Smith recently travel to China as a guest of the Australia-China Relations Institute.
A visually impaired man calls his parents on mobile phone in Kunming, Southwest China's Yunnan province. [Photo/VCG]

BEIJING - It was a frustrating day for Sun Tao. He was having difficulty using Alipay, an online payment system created by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. What should have been a straightforward task was proving difficult.

Most people with such difficulties, simply turn to cash instead, but it was not so easy for Sun. He is blind and cannot even tell the difference between denominations of bank notes.

After upgrading the Alipay app on his Android cellphone, he found the screen reader, a software that converts text into synthesized speech, was no longer available.

Sun called customer services, only to get a puzzled response.

"Blind people can use cellphones? Really? How?"

Sun didn't take offence. By now he is used to ignorance about blind people's way of life, not to mention ignorance of his smartphone use.

Smartphones have transformed Sun's way of life.

China has about 13 million visually impaired people, and about 6 million of them have smartphones, according to the China Information Accessibility Product Alliance (CAPA).

With the help of screen readers such as VoiceOver on iOS and TalkBack on Android, they are able to chat with friends, order food and shop online by listening rather than looking.

Wearing sunglasses and waiting for the 603 Bus in downtown Beijing, Li Chongyang plays with his smartphone while he waits for the bus like everybody else. Unlike everybody else, the 25-year-old has never had a chance to see the world as he was born blind. However, unlike everybody else, he knows exactly when the bus is coming, as an app tells him it will be exactly five minutes. When it arrives, the app even sends him an alert telling him to board.

Without his smartphone, riding a bus or taking a cab is a near impossible mission.

"I don't know which car the taxi is. Sometimes they pull over right in front of me, but I am still waving my hand. They think I am a nutter," he said.

"Since installing car-hailing apps like DiDi on my phone, I can tell the driver where I am, what clothes I am wearing, and the driver can help me get in the car."

Li has installed 120 apps on his phone. With a screen reader, he invests in stocks and shares, and tracks his daily exercises to keep fit.

"Smartphones have opened the gates of the world to me," he said.

More accessibility

But the gates are not yet wide enough. Since his news app was upgraded, Li can no longer "read" news articles, just as Sun struggles with Alipay.

Sun was not able to make an online payment for nearly three months, but finally managed to contact Alipay's technology department.

The engineers said they had removed the screen reader for fear that hackers would hijack it and get access to users' passwords and other information.

"I felt frustrated when I received Sun's complaint because I think technology should remove barriers for the disabled rather than create new ones," said Li Jiajia, senior technician for Ant Financial Service Group, Alibaba's financial services platform, which owns Alipay.

Alipay formed an emergency response team to solve the problem. Later they also invited Sun and two other visually impaired users to become beta testers for the new version of the wallet on Android.

Blind users of QQ, Tencent's popular online instant messaging app, reported similar problems.

"We will never give up on our visually impaired users just because we fear a few risks," said Xian Yecheng, general manager of Tencent's Instant Messaging Product Department. The department spent six months improving their defenses against the hacking of the screen reader.

Emojis were also unreadable to blind people when they were chatting with others online. However, thanks to engineers' efforts, the screen reader can now tell Sun, "your friend Ming sends you a grin." The possibilities are endless.

"Internet firms are always surprised when they receive complaints from blind users. They don't know that the blind also use the Internet. Nor do they know how to make their products accessible to this group," said Liang Zhenyu, secretary of CAPA.

CAPA was co-established in 2013 by top Internet firms, such as Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and Microsoft, and China's Information Accessibility Research Association, to call for more information accessibility for the disabled.

"What disabled people need most is to be treated as equals," said Liang. "Information accessibility is essential for them to fit in to society. Without access to information they will be shut out."

Sun is glad that he can pay for food and daily necessities online again, while Li Chongyang is expecting a new pair of eyes -- a new app Baidu app for the visually impaired, which can read almost any object it scans with a camera.

"I hope the app can tell me, 'a 30-year-old man is standing in front of you,' or 'this a 10 yuan note.' In this way, the mobile Internet can really open my eyes and help me see the world," he said.
Giant panda Bei Bei plays at National Zoological Park in Washington, DC, after celebrations of his first birthday. Bao Dandan / Xinhua

Bei Bei, the giant panda cub at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, DC, had an unusual one-year birthday celebration on Saturday.

The first ladies of China and the United States both sent their greetings. China's Peng Liyuan sent her greeting from China, the home country of pandas a world away.

"The giant panda is China's national treasure. Bei Bei's birth is the fruit of collaboration between China and the US and a strong symbol of our friendship," Peng said in a message read by Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai on Saturday morning at a birthday celebration in the zoo's panda yard.

US first lady Michelle Obama tweeted in the early morning: "Today we celebrate the National Zoo's 'precious treasure' as he turns one year old. Happy birthday, Bei Bei!"

In September, Peng and Obama visited the zoo and named the newborn panda cub Bei Bei, meaning "precious" in Chinese.

Peng expressed her appreciation for the staff at the National Zoo for taking good care of Bei Bei and for all US friends who love and cherish pandas.

The zoo and the Chinese embassy held a special zhuazhou ceremony, a tradition honoring a baby's first birthday that dates back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279) about 1,000 year ago. Whatever the baby chooses foretells its future.

Three banners - with drawings and words in Chinese symbolizing long life, health, habitat, good luck and friendship - were placed in Bei Bei's yard. The art was created by children of Chinese diplomats in Washington. Panda keepers sprinkled the signposts with honey to attract Bei Bei.

Bei Bei appeared to be in good spirits, but he strolled in the yard area far from the banners and climbed a tree for awhile, despite efforts by panda keepers to get him close to the banners. Laurie Thompson, a panda keeper and zoo biologist, said Bei Bei seems to feel most comfortable when his mother is in the yard.

Finally, it was Mei Xiang who performed zhuazhou for Bei Bei. She picked the one signifying "luck and friendship", then moved on to the next for "health and habitat."

Hundreds of people lined up along the Asia Trail on Saturday morning to have a look at the birthday boy.

Suzy Johnson, wearing a red T-shirt proclaiming, "Happy Birthday, Bei Bei," said she tweeted about the birthday in the morning. Like many visitors on Saturday, Johnson has been a panda fan for a long time. She said her mother took her to see Hsing Hsing and Ling Ling back in the 1970s - the first pair of pandas arriving in the US immediately following the historic trip to China by then-president Richard Nixon in 1972.

Johnson said she was devastated when Mei Xiang lost her baby in 2012. But the next year Bao Bao was born.

"We love the pandas, they are very peaceful," Johnson said. "It's all about peace and friendship and love. The world can use a lot more of that."
Environmental inspection teams found more than 10,000 violations in 8 provinces, regions

More than 2,000 officials have been punished following an inspection of environmental matters in eight provinces and regions.

The State Council, China's cabinet, sent teams to conduct the inspections in mid-July, launching a large scale "accountability storm".

The monthlong inspection also provoked some provinces to initiate or renew efforts against pollution.

Over 10,870 offenses were exposed, and up to 2,000 officials received punishments, including suspensions, public criticism and lost promotions.

The first inspection teams went to Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Henan and Yunnan provinces, and the Inner Mongolia, Guangxi Zhuang and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions. A total of 14 provinces are expected to receive the central-level inspection this year, according to the National Environmental Protection Inspection Office.

Fines were also levied on polluters. Companies in two provinces - Jiangxi and Jiangsu - have so far been fined 100 million yuan ($15 million).

In addition to inspecting companies, governments from county to provincial levels were also put under the lens.

For example, inspectors found a metal-production plant was illegally discharging dust. The government of Yongning county in Ningxia, where the plant is located, had reported that the plant had been shut down since August 2015.

But inspectors found the plant was still operating, so the government head was summoned for poor performance and other officials responsible were suspended from leading positions.

Du Junfeng, deputy head of the environmental protection bureau of Inner Mongolia, said there would be several rounds of reviews in areas where problems had been exposed.

"The central-level inspections have worked well as a check on policymakers with tough punishments," said Ma Yong, an environmental researcher at a Supreme People's Court Law Center. "It also deterred the companies and government officials in other provinces with the tough punishments."

Though the central-level inspection has ended in eight provinces, some provinces, such as Henan, have set up their own investigation system to extend the effective control of pollution.

Zhengzhou, Henan province, has formed a number of teams to inspect its counties, an effort that will last until December 2017, making environmental inspections routine, Henan Business Daily reported.

Zhang Yu, a 28-year-old working in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, was excited to see the swift improvement in the environment,

"A small restaurant whose fumes stained the area near the chimney has stopped," Zhang said. "I heard some people reported it to the inspection team."

"I hope our province and cities will continue the inspections to create a better environment," she said.
After prolonging people's lives, and slashing infant and maternal mortality rates, China is poised to become healthier as it builds a moderately prosperous society across the board.

The goal was crystallized as the Healthy China strategy in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). Enlisting the backing of the central leadership, the goal of Healthy China looks achievable.

Nothing is more telling of the country's progress in the health sector than the improvement in three main public health indicators.

Average life expectancy in China surged from 35 during the early years of the People's Republic of China, founded in 1949, to over 76 in 2015.

The infant mortality rate dropped from 20 percent immediately after the PRC was founded to 0.81 percent last year, while the maternal mortality rate dropped from 1,500 of every 100,000 in 1949 to about 20 of every 100,000 in 2015, according to statistics released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

Li Bin, head of the commission, attributed the success to government commitment and leadership in protecting and promoting the health of the general public.

President Xi Jinping under-scored the significance of Healthy China on different occasions in recent years, from saying that there would be no all-around well-being without health for all the people, and urging food-producing enterprises to produce high quality products to ensure safety.

While meeting the World Health Organization director-general Margaret Chan in July, Xi said enabling all Chinese people to access quality healthcare services is a significant part of China's Two Centennial Goals - to build an all-around moderately prosperous society by 2020 and to build a modern socialist country by the middle of the 21st century.

The country continues to be held back by structural problems in its medical system, such as lack of affordability and other issues that put stress on its public hospitals. It launched a new round of medical reforms in 2009.

In April 2015, the 11th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform endorsed new guidelines on public hospital reform.

In December 2015, the 19th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform adopted a document to merge China's two medical insurance schemes for urban and rural residents in a bid to guarantee equal access to basic healthcare.
Two Chinese tourists make a scene on an Air Asia flight from Bangkok to Nanjing last November. [File photo from Sina Weibo]

Chinese tourists blacklisted by the country's tourism authority for behaving poorly while travelling are likely to be banned from travelling abroad as part of the country's efforts to promote civilized tourism.

In a draft industry standard issued by the China National Tourism Administration (NTA), the behavior of travel agencies and tourists will be placed under stricter standards. For example, heavier punishments will be given to travel agencies which force tourists to make purchases, while tourists who are blacklisted will be banned from traveling for a period of time.

China started to blacklist poorly-behaved tourists in November last year. A total of 20 tourists have been placed on the blacklist out of 19 uncivilized incidents. In one case, a plane flying from Bangkok to Nanjing had to return halfway following a quarrel between the flight attendants and two Chinese tourists. In another case, a man tried to stop a plane from taking off by forcing open the plane's emergency hatch.

To prevent these kinds of incidents, the draft industry standard also plans to publicize the people on the blacklist and their uncivilized behavior. Experts say they believe the new industry standard will act as a strong coercive force.

The details of the draft industry standard will be publicized by the end of August in a move to solicit public opinion.
A 21-year-old university student from eastern China's Jiangxi Province has twice donated her stem cells to save a patient in Belgium.

A 21-year-old university student from East China's Jiangxi Province has twice donated her stem cells to save a patient in Belgium.

In February, Jiang Minlin, a student in Shangrao Normal Institute of Jiangxi, donated 227 millimeters of hemopoietic stem cells to a patient with a blood disease in Belgium, whose human leukocyte antigen type matched Jiang's.

On August 8, Jiang donated another 65 millimeters of lymphocyte cells to the same patient to help her fight rejection of the initial cells.

Both donations were made at a hospital in Beijing.

Jiang signed up to be a stem cell donor with the China Marrow Donor Program in 2014. Her stem cells were found to match the Belgian patient's last December.

The likelihood of stem cells matching is extremely low  somewhere between 0.01 percent and 0.25 percent .

"The donation staff told me that the recipient is about the age of my mother. I'm really happy to help save a life," she said.
In-service civil servants who head foundations or social service organizations should either resign from nongovernment organizations or from public service within six months, according to a guideline issued on social organizations on Sunday.

The General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the new rules to encourage social organizations to play their role in the country's development.

The guideline said that social organizations have contributed to society's development, but problems such as an unclear management system and lack of government guidance remain. The guideline aims to foster better management.

In-service civil servants are not allowed to head foundations and social service organizations, and the retired civil servants can only head one, according to the latest rule.

The central government will continue to arrange special funds to support social organizations in providing social services, improving their capabilities and making plans to support a batch of social organizations to set up brands.

The guideline encourages social organizations in academic research and nonprofit charity organizations in various fields, such as poverty relief and elderly nursing, to register with the civil affairs authorities directly.

Authorities will strictly scrutinize the nationwide social organizations in some aspects, such as the necessity, the representation and the inclusiveness of the membership. The nationwide social organizations are not allowed to set branches in regions.

Industry associations and chambers of commerce are encouraged to play a role in serving companies, setting group standards, standardizing market orders, safeguarding members' rights and interests and mediating trade disputes.

Fewer registry standards will be set for community organizations engaged in offering various social services for residents to improve harmonious society, such as elderly nursing and rural production technology service.

Federations of community organizations are encouraged at the township level to play a role in the coordination and management of these groups.
Premier Li Keqiang checks out a rice paddy during an inspection tour to Ruijin city, East China's Jiangxi province, Aug 22, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Premier Li Keqiang vowed on Monday to further improve infrastructure such as highways and internet connections in impoverished regions of southern Jiangxi province, where the Long March started nearly 82 years ago.

The premier said the government will invest more in highways, power grids and irrigation facilities for the region, during a visit to the Aobeigang Production Base for navel oranges in the city of Ruijin in Ganzhou, Jiangxi.

The Communist Party of China established its first national government in Ruijin in 1931 and started the Long March in 1934 to establish new revolutionary bases in Northwest Chinas Shaanxi province.

Li's visit to the city follows the State Councils development plan for the region, released in 2012, which aimed to cultivate industries suitable for local conditions and improve rural infrastructure and farmers living conditions by 2015.

Premier Li Keqiang goes to a villager's house during a visit to Ganzhou city in East China's Jiangxi province, Aug 22, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Ganzhou produces 1.28 million metric tons of navel oranges each year, Chinas largest yield of the crop and accounting for 13.4 percent of the global production. Local official Chen Baofu said the production base was opened in 1994 and now covers over 1,000 hectares that have helped lift about 3,300 locals from poverty.

Li was pleased to hear that each hectare of these oranges can produce 120,000 yuan in income ($18,000) per year. Farmer Deng Zhuping earns more than 120,000 yuan net income annually with oranges from 1.2 hectares of rented land.

"The price of navel oranges has increased by more than 10 percent over the past few years," Deng said.

Some farmers said they have started to sell the fruit online, and the premier said more investments will be made to install faster internet connections in villages to support the farmers commerce.

Premier Li Keqiang talks to villagers during an inspection tour to Ruijin city in East China's Jiangxi province, Aug 22, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"I hope the internet will help you (farmers) sell oranges, and you should adopt delicacy management processes to produce high-quality goods that lead market demand and in turn create more profits," Li said.

The plan also encompasses providing safe drinking water, new houses, new schools and upgraded power grids in rural areas.

Premier Li Keqiang talks to an assembly line worker in Ganzhou city in East China's Jiangxi province, Aug 22, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Li visited the village of Huawu, where 102 families moved into new homes built next to their shabby old houses with subsidies from the central government in 2014. Now farmers rent rooms to visiting tourists in their new homes.

"The areas economy lags behind that of the neighboring provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, due to disadvantages in transportation, talent and way of thinking. But it has great growth potential, considering the huge demand from neighboring provinces if the infrastructure improves," said Li Minghui, who researches economics in rural areas at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Premier Li Keqiang goes to a villager's house during a visit to Ruijin city in East China's Jiangxi province, Aug 22, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Premier Li Keqiang vowed on Monday to further improve infrastructure such as highways and internet connections in impoverished regions of southern Jiangxi province, where the Long March started nearly 82 years ago.

The premier said the government will invest more in highways, power grids and irrigation facilities for the region, during a visit to the Aobeigang Production Base for navel oranges in the city of Ruijin in Ganzhou, Jiangxi.

The Communist Party of China established its first national government in Ruijin in 1931 and started the Long March in 1934 to establish new revolutionary bases in Northwest China's Shaanxi province.

Li's visit to the city follows the State Council's development plan for the region, released in 2012, which aimed to cultivate industries suitable for local conditions and improve rural infrastructure and farmers' living conditions by 2015.

Ganzhou produces 1.28 million metric tons of navel oranges each year, China's largest yield of the crop and accounting for 13.4 percent of the global production. Local official Chen Baofu said the production base was opened in 1994 and now covers over 1,000 hectares that have helped lift about 3,300 locals from poverty.

Li was pleased to hear that each hectare of these oranges can produce 120,000 yuan in income ($18,000) per year. Farmer Deng Zhuping earns more than 120,000 yuan net income annually with oranges from 1.2 hectares of rented land.

"The price of navel oranges has increased by more than 10 percent over the past few years," Deng said.

Some farmers said they have started to sell the fruit online, and the premier said more investments will be made to install faster internet connections in villages to support the farmers' commerce.

"I hope the internet will help you (farmers) sell oranges, and you should adopt delicacy management processes to produce high-quality goods that lead market demand and in turn create more profits," Li said.

The plan also encompasses providing safe drinking water, new houses, new schools and upgraded power grids in rural areas.

Li visited the village of Huawu, where 102 families moved into new homes built next to their shabby old houses with subsidies from the central government in 2014. Now farmers rent rooms to visiting tourists in their new homes.

"The area's economy lags behind that of the neighboring provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, due to disadvantages in transportation, talent and way of thinking. But it has great growth potential if the infrastructure improves," said Li Minghui, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

huyongqi@chinadaily.com.cn
The US military has slashed the number of intelligence advisers directly supporting the Saudi-led coalition's air war in Yemen, the US Navy said on Saturday, following concerns over civilian casualties.

The reassignment of personnel, around June, came because "there was not the same sort of requests coming in for assistance", said Fifth Fleet spokesman Lieutenant Ian McConnaughey from its base in Bahrain.

Saudi Arabia has faced repeated criticism from rights groups over civilian casualties in its 17-month campaign against rebels in Yemen.
At the old train station in Benin's economic capital Cotonou, a rundown locomotive imported from France in the 1960s arduously roars to life, ready to haul 600 tonnes of goods to an inland city.

"If it doesn't break down, it will get there in 12 hours," says Marcel Agon, who has been stationmaster since 1985, about the 430 kilometre trip to Parakou.

Only 20 good trains leave the small terminus each month, yet a fine new regional express passenger train with blue seats and bright paintwork, also from France, has never rolled out of Cotonou.
When travelling to places such as Yunnan province and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China, tourists often want to listen to local folk songs.

So, to give visitors a wider choice of music when they visit Zhejiang province, a songwriting competition was launched in Beijing on August 18 by the Tourism Bureau of Zhejiang Province and Zhejiang Radio & TV Group.

According to Zhang Hui, the deputy director of Zhejiang Radio & TV Group, the event aims at providing a musical way to showcase Zhejiang's history and culture, which includes its its scenic areas and local cuisine.

One of the most famous folk songs from Zhejiang province is called the Tea-Picking Dance Song, which was written by Zhou Dafeng(1923-2015) in 1958.

Speaking of what Zhejiang can offer visitors, Zhang says: "While Zhejiang is progressing very fast economically, we also want to promote the local culture via music."

Some of the country's most well known musicians including Meng Weidong, the vice-president of the Chinese Musicians' Association, and pop songwriter Lao Zai will judge the contest.

The competition, which opened on August 18 will run until October 18. The top 50 entries will be announced on November 19.

The second round of competition will be held over November 20-December 19 before the final round over December 20-January 20, 2017.

Meanwhile, besides calling for music entries online, the Zhejiang Radio & TV Group is also collaborating with music conservatories to discover young talents.

Expressing his hopes that the contest will draw good participation, Zhang says: "I hope that songwriters will come to Zhejiang province and observe local life, which can inspire their songwriting."

Related:

10th China International Folk Art Festival held in Xining

Mosuo people celebrate folk festival
"The First Year and Light-year of Chinese Sci-fi Movies", a summit forum was held in the Sichuan Provincial Museum during the "2016 Chengdu International Sci-fi Film Week".

Celebrities like Wu Yan, professor of Beijing Normal University, and the chairman of World Chinese Science Fiction Association, together with director Lu Chuan, reviewed the development of sci-fi films, and explored ways for innovation.

Wu, devoted to his research on sci-fi movie production from non-western countries like South Korea, Japan and India, advocated the "innovative narration" approach.

China was able to realize a catch-up with well-established science film giants in the years to come, he said.

Li Geng talked about the bottleneck of current Chinese science fiction movies, which was a result of a combined deficiency in technology, market and experience. Instead of technology, Li pointed out that the process of film production, in particular, the color process, was where the choke point lay.

Lu Chuan, the director of the science fiction movie Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe, shared his shooting experience, as well as his insights regarding the operation mode of Chinese science fiction movie.

The reason why Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe made a hit was a perfect integration of Hollywood mode and China's real situation, which helped strike a balance between budget and quality.

"2016 Chengdu International Science Fiction Film Week" will serve as a platform, in which all sides concerned in the chain of Chinese science fiction industry are provided with opportunities to communicate and give useful suggestions for the development of China's genre films.

Related:

Chinese version of 'My Best Friend's Wedding' appeals to local viwers
Bamboo Dance performed in Suva, Fiji, Aug 13, 2016. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]

The traditional Fiji Hibiscus opened in the capital Suva on Aug 13. It is a platform to showcase Fiji's unique ethnic flavor and communicate with the outside world.

This year, China Cultural Centre (CCC) in Fiji participated in the opening parade and also helped the Song and Dance Troupe of Lianshan Zhuang-Yao Autonomous County to perform at the Asian Night show. They added a touch of Chinese characteristics and were well-received by locals there.

At the opening parade, the brass band led the way playing cheerful music, followed by a squad of contestants of "Fijian Teen", "Miss Fiji" and "Mr. Fiji". They dressed up and were in high spirits, waving at people along the way. For CCC, the fluttering national flag of China carried by a man was at the front of the line. A meticulously decorated float was close behind. Singing performers in folk outfits were riveting, with spectators calling out "Hello, China", clapping, cheering or taking photos.

At the Asian Night show, Chinese performers' exquisite costumes, vigorous dance moves and beautiful voices impressed spectators big time, especially the interactive programs such as Bamboo Dance and Zhuang People's Wedding.

Chinese performers visited the Fiji Museum with kids around Suva during their stay. The happy kids sang songs to thank CCC and Chinese performers.

During the festival, CCC also invited inheritors of embroidered balls to make them on the spot. The ball has been listed as the intangible cultural heritage. It used to be a token of love given by young Chinese women in ancient times. Locals were amazed at its function.

Hibiscus is Fiji's most important festival, just like China's Spring Festival. The annual festival has been held 60 times. The festival boasts amusement park, food stalls, commodity fair, image publicity site for government sectors, beauty pageants and brilliant performances. The seven-day feast attracted and entertained people of all ages, all around the country.
Tian Liming gives a lecture of the Chinese Culture Talk series, the appreciation of Chinese paintings in Philippines, Aug 10, 2016. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]

A new lecture of the Chinese Culture Talk series, "The Unity of Self and Nature-Appreciation of Chinese Paintings", was held twice, separately at the KL & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall and Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT) in Malaysia on Aug 16-17.

The lecture was given by celebrated painter Tian Liming, director of the Chinese Painting Institute of Chinese National Academy of Arts. Organized by the Bureau for External Cultural Relations of the Ministry of Culture of China and the Chinese Embassy to Malaysia, it was the first of the Chinese Culture Talk series in Malaysia.

Zhou Bin, director of the culture department of the Chinese Embassy to Malaysia, Datuk Ong, president of the KL & Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall, Lin Ronghua, LUCT's creative director, Tannaz Naseri, assistant to the LUCT's president, and some 300 institute representatives, local artists, collectors and students attended the lecture.

Tian introduced the origins, history and development of Chinese paintings through about 40 pieces of works. He gave a special note on the impact of Chinese painting on the earthly and spiritual life of Chinese people. After the lecture, attendees lined up to ask Tian to sign the postcards of his paintings.

Ong said ink painting is the symbol of the Chinese people, and a carrier of Chinese culture. It is an inheritance of culture and beauty and we need to pass the art down to the next generation. Tian's lecture let the locals in Malaysia get to know the beauty of traditional Chinese ink painting and Chinese ancestors' wisdom.

As the event was wrapped up in Malaysia, Tian's lecture tour in three countries, Philippines on Aug 10-11, Singapore on Aug 13, was finished.

Tian expressed his thanks for the invitation from the Bureau for External Cultural Relations of the Ministry of Culture to give the Chinese Culture Talk series in three countries. He found many Chinese calligraphy and paintings lovers during the tour.

Launched in 2015 by the Ministry of Culture, the Chinese Culture Talks are a series of high-level cultural and academic lectures. More than 40 lectures have been held in the US, France, Italy, Cambodia and Indonesia. The content varies from philosophy, religion, cultural heritage, literature and art, costume, cooking and Chinese medicine.
Most Chinese first encounter populus euphratica trees in their textbooks, in which the trees are praised for their strength and toughness, which enable them to survive any kinds of difficulties, setting an example for human beings when they face obstacles.

In the Uigur language, the name of populus euphratica means the most beautiful trees in the world. Most of the populus euphratica originate in China, while 90% of them survive along the northern Tarim basin. Luntai county rests in the Northern part of this region: Groves of these trees protect this desert area.

Even the toughest trees need Man's care: currently, 19 management stations have been built in Luntai County, and over 200 forest rangers take responsibility for the trees.

In recent years, these rangers put in a lot of effort to convince herdsmen who live in the populus euphratica forests to leave land to the forest. The record of their progress is remarkable: less forest fires, more scientific management and planting. Generation after generation will continue to promote environmental protection, and preserve this area for the future.
Across Loula media tour made its third stop in Qiemo county in south eastern margin of Tarim Basin on August 14. A special concert was held for the first time ever in the desert: Konghou concert. According to public information, no such concert using this instrument and on this site has been held before. Cyberspace Administration Office of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Party publicity department of Bayingolin Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture hosted this event together.

Konghou, an ancient plucked stringed instrument called cank in Persian and cagry in Sogdian language that has more than 2000 years of history, is said to have been brought into ancient China in around Han Dynasty. Residents living in Qiemo county have long been connected with konghou. Even before the Silk Road took shape, konghou was already an important part of their daily life.

Promoting this ancient instrument to the world means a lot both for strengthening local economys core competitiveness in tourism industry and protecting this important musical instrument.

Its also an active and innovative response from local authority to the nations One Belt One Road strategy and to revitalization of the cultural industry strategy.

In 2015, Lu Lu, vice-president of Konghou institute under the Chinese Musicians Association, guided a group of professionals to Qiemo and build long-term cooperation with local authority, a nonprofit teaching base of konghou where public can participate was built under this background. Many children have benefited by training there.

Xuxiaohua, director of Party Publicity Department of Qiemo county, said as more people get familiar with konghou and admire its beauty, they hope Konghou could be a symbol of Qiemo county. By precisely positioning the key industry we can further realize the potential of the countys economy, Xu said.

Participants rest after taking part in the concert. [Photo by Wu Zheyu/chinadaily.com.cn]

A view of konghou concert held in desert on August 14. [Photo by Wu Zheyu/chinadaily.com.cn]
Chinese 100 yuan banknotes are seen on a counter of a branch of a commercial bank in Beijing, March 30, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

SOME FISHERMEN in North China's Shanxi province fished out from a river the body of a woman who had apparently drowned in an upstream county in neighboring Shaanxi province. But they refused to hand over the body to the family members unless they were paid 100,000 yuan ($15,000). Gmw.com commented on Friday:

Holding a body to ransom is a cold-blooded act. And hiding the body under a bridge until the dead woman's family paid the greedy fishermen the amount they demanded is a brazen act of inhumanity.

The poor family offered the fishermen 60,000 yuan as "collection fee" but they refused.

That the fishermen refused to negotiate the price they had "fixed" even after local officials intervened highlights the need to bring such blatant offenders to book.

The law says anyone seeking to exploit and/or damage a dead person's body should be booked for causing mental damage to the family members and relatives of the deceased.

In Shanxi's case, the woman's family members have enough reason to sue the fishermen for their inhuman act.

Local police and other public service providers are obliged to collect the bodies of those who die in accidents. But it should also be made clear how much, if at all, people who fish out a body can and should be paid.

These points should be incorporated in the law as soon as possible. The law should also specify the punishments for those who hold bodies to ransom.
Patients wait in line for the registration windows to open at the Beijing Stomatological Hospital on Wednesday. The windows open at 7 am to sell tickets for treatment, and it is a common practice for people to use stools or other objects to reserve a place in the line.[Photos by Zou Hong / China Daily]

A 32-YEAR-OLD COLLEGE LECTURER in Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China's Gansu province, who died of ovarian cancer recently, had been fired while she was away for medical treatment. Gmw.com commented on Saturday:

Accusing the lecturer of "chronic absenteeism", her college sacked her even though her mother had explained in advance the cause of her absence to the college management. The abrupt decision cost the lecturer her job, salary, medical insurance and eventually her life, giving rise to a heated public debate over the protection of employees' legal rights and interests.

Many who sympathize with her find it hard to believe that even a college lecturer could fall victim to a heartless management, and say her dismissal should be seen as a serious violation of the legal rights of lecturers.

Although the lecturer filed a lawsuit against the college last year and won the casea local court nullified the dismissal decision twice and urged the college to reinstate herthe college management did not abide by the ruling. After her death, the management only extended condolences to her family and promised to deal with the "relevant issues".

Such a brazen disregard for the rule of law, though not rare nowadays, must be taken seriously. Or else, other employees will live in fear of being fired simply for being sick. It is also necessary to find out why the college in Lanzhou was audacious enough to challenge the local court's ruling which it should have abided by more than a year ago.

More importantly, extra efforts have to be made to hold rule-breaking employers accountable, especially those with a bad record of personnel management. True, companies do not have the obligation to hire someone who contributes little or nothing at all to their organizations. But they are not allowed to use that as an excuse to fire anyone they want, especially if the person is seriously ill, because by doing so they would be overstepping the boundaries of labor and social security laws.
The upcoming summit between President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Barack Obama is expected to inject strong momentum into the bilateral relationship, according to China's top diplomat in Washington.

The White House announced on Aug 18 that Obama will attend his final G20 summit in Hangzhou (Sept 4-5) and also will conduct in-depth meetings with Xi covering a wide range of global, regional and bilateral issues.

Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, said on Aug 20 that the two leaders have held several strategic summits in past years and each has produced a positive and important impact.

"The summits have provided very powerful guidance in developing the bilateral relationship between the two countries, expanding cooperation and managing their differences," Cui told the media. "I believe it will be the same this time."

He noted that Hangzhou, the venue for the upcoming summit, is special because it was the city where the historic Shanghai Communique was produced four decades ago.

The communique, officially signed in Shanghai during President Richard Nixon's historic trip to China in February 1972, set the course for the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries. But much of the intense discussion for the document took place in scenic Hangzhou, about 110 miles from Shanghai.

Cui believes that the past predicts the future. He said the last 40 years have shown that China and the US should continue to cooperate to build the partnership.

"It is what we often refer to as building a new type of major country relationship," he said.

The new type of major country relationship was proposed by Xi in February 2012, when he toured the US as China's vice-president.

Cui said China and the US have had much coordination and cooperation since the G20 mechanism was established and have had good communications this time.

"I think the world expects China and the US to continue to play a leadership and constructive role this year to make the G20 summit a complete success," he said.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
Connectivity should include not only the construction of hardware, but also the soft part, said a senior official for China of the Asia-Europe Meeting on the sideline of the Asia-Europe Foundation Summer University.

This year's edition kicked off on August 15, 2016 at Beijing Jiaotong University, and also welcomed its 20th anniversary. In coordination with the One Belt One Road Initiative, connectivity became the key word of this year's summer university.

"Connectivity was determined as a priority at this year's Asia-Europe Meeting Summit," Ambassador Xie Bohua from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs commended on this year's theme, which is "Gateways of Asia and Europe: Connectivity by Land, Sea and Air".

"We want to combine the theme with One Belt One Road Initiative. The six cities we will go are all along the path of One Belt One Road, and many of the ASEM member states are also by the side of it. So the summer university will be a great opportunity," Xie continued.

"We also want to provide the participants chances for communication, help them build connection, and probably seek future opportunities of corporation," added Ambassador Zhang Yan, the Executive Director of Asia-Europe Foundation.

Known as One Belt One Road Initiative, The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road is a development strategy and framework proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013. It highlights five areas of connections, including policy coordination, facilities connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration and people-to-people bonds.

Within two weeks, 48 representatives from 47 member states will visit six cities in China, Russia and Mongolia, studying how the connectivity can enhance the cultural exchange, trade and common development.

"Portugal has really great relations with China. As we are connected, there are so many cultural and business exchanges," said Rita Lousa, a 21-year-old designer from Portugal, who also found the summer university as a platform to meet more people in different fields. "It's creating a lot of new jobs in Portugal," she laughed.

Olivier Danenberg, a communication professional from Belgium, said it would be interesting to share experiences with the other participants to see how their own country is dealing with transportation and connectivity. "I will take the experience back home and try to see how we can best implement the solutions locally," he expected.

"We will have a number of presentations, discussions, site visits, and we try to develop policy proposals on how to improve connectivity," Olivier also mentioned.

According to Zhang, participants will be divided into different groups discussing given topics, such as how to make the public transportations more disability-friendly, how to prevent terrors on public transportations, and how to control the spreading of infectious disease through public transportations.

"It's not only the transportation factor, but also the human factor that attracts me," German Nora Reinolsmann agreed that she wished to improve the connectivity between Asia and Europe. "I really would like to do something within Asia-Europe transportation field. So why don't we have an entrepreneur thing. Maybe we can stay in contact, set up some project even for the future."

And this was exactly the expectation the organizers had for the summer university.

"No matter whether it is One Belt One Road or connectivity, the key point is human, the communication," Xie answered regarding the question of future challenge.

Starting from Beijing and then Harbin, these young fellows could see how fast China develops on the infrastructureconstruction in the sea, land and air. "They will know China better," said Liu Jun, vice president of Beijing Jiaotong University. "They will have a better understanding of the One Belt One Road."

"I do hope the experience will inspire them to become the contributor and promoter for both the One Belt One Road Initiative and the connectivity," Xie concluded.
SEOUL -- The Republic of Korea (ROK) and US forces kicked off their joint annual war game on Monday despite strong backlashes from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The annually-held Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) will be conducted from Aug 22 to Sept 2, Combined Forces Command said in a press release.

The computer-assisted simulation exercise will mobilize about 25,000 US troops, including 2,500 reinforcements from the US mainland and the US Pacific Command. It was lower than last year's 30,000 US forces.

From the South Korean side, some 50,000 forces will join the military exercise. It was almost the same as last year's.

The combined forces will reportedly apply Operation Plan 5015 to this year's UFG exercise. The OPLAN 5015 is a wartime joint defense scenario signed in June last year between Seoul and Washington to preemptively destroy the DPRK's nuclear and missile bases in times of military conflicts.

The United Nations Command's military armistice commission notified the DPRK at about 9:40 a.m. local time of the drill schedule and its defense nature verbally in Panmunjom, the truce village in the border dividing the two Koreas.

All of military communications lines between South Korea and the DPRK have been shut down after Pyongyang's nuclear detonation in January and its launch of long-range rocket in February that was seen as a disguised test of ballistic missile technology.

Tensions were heightened further as Seoul and Washington agreed in July to deploy one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korean soil by the end of next year.
PYONGYANG - The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) warned Monday that its military is "fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike" as the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Untied States are conducting joint military exercises.

"If they show the slightest sign of aggression on the inviolable land, seas and air where the sovereignty of the DPRK is exercised, it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike," said a statement issued by a spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People's Army.

The statement called the military drill "a clear manifestation of a vicious plot" to inflict misery of colonial rule over the DPRK people.

On Sunday, a spokesman for the DPRK Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country warned that the DPRK will decisively foil all hostile acts and threat of aggression and provocation with the Korean-style nuclear deterrence.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian war games, which kicked off Monday, will run till early September.

Each year, the ROK and the US conduct a number of joint military drills that they claim to be of defensive nature. But Pyongyang says the annual war games are designed for invasion.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks on stage during a campaign rally in Fredericksburg, Virginia, US, Aug 20, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

After a tumultuous stretch of gaffes and falling poll numbers for Donald Trump, top GOP campaign and party officials insisted Sunday that their presidential nominee is getting back on track and will catch up with Democrat Hillary Clinton by around Labor Day.

Clinton campaign officials dismissed the idea of a changed Trump as nonsense.

"Donald Trump has been disciplined and mature. And I think he's going to get this thing back on track," said Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman.

Polls now mostly show Trump lagging Clinton by 5 percentage points or more nationally, but Priebus predicted they will tighten up and Trump will be "ahead as we move through September."

Trump's new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, echoed Priebus' optimism, contending that the candidate just had the best week of his campaign, "mostly because he's able to be himself, the authentic Donald Trump" and "the pivot that he's made is on substance."

Conway, who supported Trump rival Ted Cruz during the primaries, was named to her post this past week in a shake-up in which the campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, resigned and conservative media firebrand Stephen Bannon, who led Breitbart News, took over as campaign chief executive.

A new style was immediately evident as Trump, in a first, offered regrets for any remarks that had caused offense, stuck with his teleprompter at a series of events, and paid a visit to flood-ravaged Louisiana, where he briefly helped unload a truck of supplies.

That type of one-on-one interaction with voters is a staple of most political campaigning, yet something Trump had mostly avoided in favor of large rallies.

Trump also announced his first ad buys of the campaign  more evidence of an acceptance of the traditional campaign elements most experts believe he will need in order to have a shot at winning.

He made a direct appeal to African-American voters, who strongly support Clinton, and insisted he wants the GOP to become their political home as it was in the era of Abraham Lincoln.

Trump also met on Saturday with Hispanic supporters, representatives of a community that has been wary of the billionaire businessman's proposals to build a giant wall on the US-Mexico border. Questioned on whether Trump still intends to deploy a "deportation force" to carry that out, Conway said Sunday: "To be determined."

Conway, whose background is as a pollster, said the campaign wants to get away from a focus on Trump's personality and onto the Obama administration's record, and Clinton as a continuation of what it describes as unpopular policies such as the Obama's health care law.

"The Hillary people want this to all be about tone and temperament. We also want to it be about facts and figures," Conway said.
MOSCOW - The United States and Ukraine are carrying out observation flights over Russian territory using a US observation plane under monitoring by Russian experts on Aug 22-27, the Russian news agency Sputnik reported on Monday.

The flights will be conducted in accordance with the Treaty on Open Skies signed in March 1992, the news agency reported, citing Sergei Zabello, the acting head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Nuclear Risk Reduction Center.

Russian experts aboard the OS-135B US aircraft will monitor the flights and ensure that the aircraft and the survey equipment used are in compliance with the treaty, he added.

The Treaty on Open Skies, which entered into force on Jan 1, 2002, was one of the confidence-building measures after the end of the Cold War and currently has 34 states parties.
European Union (EU) flags fly in front of the European Central Bank (ECB) headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, December 3, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

NAPLES, Italy - The leaders of Germany, France and Italy will meet on Monday to discuss how to keep the European project together in the second set of talks between the premiers of the euro zone's three largest economies since Britain's shock vote to leave the bloc.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi hosts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on an island off the coast of Naples ahead of September's EU summit called to discuss reverberations from the Brexit vote.

Officials in Brussels and Berlin fear the June 23 vote could lead to a referendum in the Netherlands - a founding member of the union - on whether to also leave the bloc.

"Monday aims to show the unity of Europe's three biggest countries, but not to create a specific club," a French diplomatic source said, noting that the aim was to prepare for the groundwork for the forthcoming Bratislava summit.

Faced with existential risks, Merkel wants to cement "a better Europe" rather than forge ahead with "more Europe". Renzi wants Italy to have a strong voice in how the bloc's future is shaped after Brexit and, according to the French diplomatic source, Hollande wants an EU-wide investment plan to be doubled.

The three leaders differ over how to boost economic growth - which slowed across the 28-nation bloc in the second quarter and stagnated in France and Italy - and cut unemployment.

France supports Renzi's push for expansionary measures and against austerity, Germany is likely to oppose any undermining of Europe's deficit and the debt constraints that Italy and France have struggled to comply with.

Italy is eager for greater European consolidation in the wake of Brexit, but Merkel is more concerned about preserving the integrity of the eventual 27-member bloc.

For her it will be the beginning of a whirlwind week of meetings with other European governments that will see her travel to four countries and receive leaders from another eight.

"The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27," said one EU diplomat.

MORE THREATS

Renzi chose to meet on the island of Ventotene because of its symbolic significance as the place where two Italian intellectuals, held there in World War Two, wrote an influential manifesto calling for European political unification.

One of the two, Altiero Spinelli, is buried on the island and the three leaders will lay a wreath on his tomb.

Lingering threats to the union that emerged long before the Brexit vote are also likely to be on the agenda, including internal and external security after Islamist militant attacks and Europe's migration crisis.

Emboldened by the Brexit vote, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has called a referendum on Oct. 2 on whether to accept any future EU migrant settlement quotas as his government steps up its fight against the EU's migration policies.

In another symbolic choice of venue, the three leaders will hold their closing news conference on the Italian aircraft carrier, the Garibaldi, which is the flagship of the EU's "Sophia" mission in the Mediterranean.

The naval operation has a mandate to tackle migrant smugglers, help enforce an arms embargo off Libya, and train the Libyan coast guard.

The EU plans to offer incentives to African governments to help slow the flow of migrants who have poured into Europe over the past three years, but disagreements on how to handle the situation have laid bare divisions between member states.

Italy, the main entry point for Africans but rarely their planned destination, is struggling to house migrants turned back from neighbouring countries including France, and has disagreed with Germany over how to finance the response.
ANKARA/ISTANBUL - Turkey vowed on Monday to "completely cleanse" Islamic State militants from its border region, after a suspected suicide bomber with links to the group killed 54 people, including 22 children, at a Kurdish wedding.

Saturday's attack in the southeastern city of Gaziantep is the deadliest in Turkey this year. It was carried out by a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, adding that initial evidence pointed to Islamic State.

A senior security official told Reuters the device used was the same type as those employed in the July 2015 suicide attack in the border town of Suruc and the October 2015 suicide bombing of a rally of pro-Kurdish activists in Ankara.

Both of those attacks were blamed on Islamic State. The group has targeted Kurdish gatherings in an apparent effort to further inflame ethnic tensions already strained by a long Kurdish insurgency. The Ankara bombing was the deadliest of its kind in Turkey, killing more than 100 people.

"Daesh should be completely cleansed from our borders and we are ready to do what it takes for that," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference in Ankara, using an Arabic name for the group.

A senior rebel official said Turkish-backed Syrian rebels were preparing to launch an attack to seize the Syrian town of Jarablus from Islamic State on the border with Turkey, a move that would deny control to advancing Syrian Kurdish fighters.

The rebels, groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, were expected to assault Jarablus from inside Turkey in the next few days.

Cavusoglu said Turkey, a member of NATO and the US-led coalition against Islamic State, had become the "no.1 target" for the militants because of its work to stop recruits traveling through Turkey across its over 800 km (500 mile) border into Syria to join the Sunni hardline group.

For Ankara, Islamic State is not the only threat lurking across its frontier. Turkey is also concerned that attempts by Syrian Kurds to extend their control along the common border could add momentum to an insurgency by Kurds on its own territory.

SUICIDE VEST

Dogan news agency said the death toll in the Gaziantep bombing had risen on Monday to 54 after three more people died. Sixty-six were being treated in hospital, 14 in serious condition.

The attack comes with Turkey still shaken just a month after the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on US-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen. Gulen denies the charge.

Turkish authorities have said a destroyed suicide vest was found at the scene of the bombing.

A second security official told Reuters that they were investigating the possibility militants could have placed the explosives on the child without his or her knowledge and detonated them remotely, or that a mentally disabled child was duped into carrying the device, a tactic seen elsewhere in the region.

"It could be that someone was loaded with explosives without even being aware of it and it may have been detonated remotely," the official said, adding a search was underway for suspected militants who may have played a reconnaissance role.

In the latest southeast violence, two Turkish security force members and five PKK militants were killed in clashes and attacks in three areas of eastern Turkey over the last 24 hours, officials said.

Some in Turkey, particularly in the Kurdish southeast, feel the government has not done enough to protect its citizens from Islamic State.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said the wedding party was for one of its members. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt.
(Photo : Getty Images/Chien-min Chung ) Technicians work at the Lenovo headquarters in Beijing, China.

Advertisement

A columnist recently described China's technology hub called Silicon Dragon as a major force in the international tech industry. Silicon Dragon is slowly turning into a massive technological force that could easily rival giants like Facebook and Google.



The comment was made by Fairfax Media columnist Michael Smith. According to Financial Review, the columnist said that the Silicon Dragon tech hub, which is based in Shenzhen, is China's own Silicon Valley. Smith claimed that China's tech industry is significantly bigger compared to that of Australia.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

Evidence to this growing tech hub in China is the presence of 14 privately owned companies, all of which are individually valued at more than $10 billion. Just like many growing tech industries, China is looking to boost its domestic market and at the same time make major investments into international firms.



Huawei executive James Ping said that the boom in Shenzhen's tech growth can be traced back to the Chinese government's willingness to give corporations incentives such as tax breaks, an incentive that has so far attracted many international firms.



In a statement, an unnamed Australian government official said, "You will see government efforts to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. What a lot of business people here like is that Shenzhen is a city where there is a recognition that businesses will do well but that some will fail."



Not only tech companies are cashing in on the success of the Silicon Dragon hub, major banks are also investing in the lucrative tech market. Recently, major banking firm HSBC launched a WeChat banking app that allows its customers to transfer money in just a matter of seconds.



Advertisement

Tagschina, China Tech, China tech industry, Silicon Valley, Silicon Dragon
(Photo : Getty Images ) China has cautioned India over its plan to deploy BraMos missiles to Arunachal Pradesh.

Advertisement

China's state media has issued a warning to India over New Delhi's plan to deploy BraMos cruise missiles to the border state of Arunachal Pradesh.



The PLA Daily, an official mouthpiece of People's Liberation Army (PLA), over the weekend published an editorial sternly warning the Indian government against its decision to deploy supersonic cruise missiles to the Himalayan state along the India-China border.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

The PLA Daily warned that the deployment could invite countermeasures from Beijing. The military newspaper said that the proposed deployment poses a serious threat to Chinese provinces of Tibet and Yunnan. It also added the move might negatively affect the stability of the border regions along the Sino-India border.



"Deploying BrahMos missiles is bound to increase competitiveness and confrontation in Sino-Indian relations and bring a negative influence to the stability of the region," the editorial said, according to India Today. "India deploying supersonic missiles on the border has exceeded its own needs for self-defense and poses a serious threat to China's Tibet and Yunnan provinces."



Earlier this month, the Narendra Modi government approved the deployment of the fourth BrahMos regiment to Arunachal Pradesh. The regiment includes around 100 missiles, five mobile launchers, and a mobile command post.



The move comes amid growing tension between two countries. India and China have been engaged in a bitter dispute over their shared Himalayan border. Sino-India bilateral ties have further soured after China blocked India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in June.



Advertisement

Tagschina, India, India China Border, Arunachal Pradesh, BrahMos
(Photo : Getty Images) Alibaba's mobile payment service would be available in Europe in a few months, thanks to the company's deal with Ingenico.

Advertisement

Alibaba and Ingenico are collaborating to allow Chinese consumers use Alipay in Europe.



The agreement marks an opportunity for Alipay, a unit of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, to establish its mobile-payment service in Europe. Alipay would be embedded into Ingenicos in-store payment gateway so the Chinese mobile payment app will work in European stores featuring the terminals, according to Fortune.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

The French payments processing group said that the deal would offer both online and in-store payment solutions to Europe-wide acquirers and merchants. Ingenico also stated that European acquirers would be able to implement the Chinese online payment app via the Ingenico payment gateway, enhancing the customer travel experience for Chinese tourists visiting Europe.



Payment becomes a friction for business so we are removing this friction by allowing the retailers to capture sales to the Chinese tourist population, said Jacques Behr, Ingenicos executive vice-president for Europe and Africa.



According to Ingenico Groups CEO Philippe, the companys huge rate of success and its ability to meet the requirements of some of the most demanding customers are part of the reason why Alibaba was interested in the partnership.



In addition, the companys mobile commerce division Ingenico Payments will also offer payment processing services for Chinese merchants. This is not the first deal between the two giants. Ingenico's mobile division already carries out online processing for Alipays cross-border transactions for international firms such as Etihad and Air France.



Moreover, the Paris-based payments software and terminals producer said the deal would benefit Chinese merchants as they would now be provided with full-service payment processing solutions. This would help Alipay to optimize the processing of payments. Additionally, it will allow Alipay to accept payments from European customers with MasterCard, Visa and other cards who buy goods through various online marketplaces it runs, such as AliExpress.



Alipay must negotiate with banks and other acquiring agents before the app can be used in-store but both companies estimate that Alipay will be available in Europe within a few months, Financial Times reported.



Advertisement

TagsAlibaba, Alipay, Ingenico, Alibaba payment deal Europe, china, Ingenico Payments, Chinese Tourists, Europe
(Photo : Getty Images) Beijing has said it would stage more military drills in the South China Sea to equip its troops with the necessary skills to respond to threats in the region

Advertisement

Chinese military forces conducted live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, raising tensions anew among claimant countries to the disputed South China Sea.



The live-fire exercise is the latest in a series of military drills Beijing plans to conduct in the coming months in the South China Sea to equip its troops with skills to respond to threats in the region.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

According to China's maritime safety administration, ships and other naval vessels were barred from entering the area during the duration of the drills. The drills will be carried out from Monday to Wednesday.



The Gulf of Tonkin is a body of water located off the coast of northern Vietnam and southern China. It is the northern arm of the South China Sea.



Routine



Chinese authorities said the military drills were part of routine drills by the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in the disputed sea and was not aimed to target any country.



China's armed forces have held a series of military drills in the surrounding waters of the region since a ruling by an international arbitral court dismissed Beijing's massive claims in the strategic waterway.



Following the release of the verdict, Beijing said it would step up its air patrols over the disputed sea and would continue to build military facilities such as air strips and outposts on the islands under its control in the disputed Spratly.



Hangars



Last week, an international think-tank released satellite images showing that China is constructing hangars in the disputed Spratly capable of accommodating around 70 aircraft, including fighter jets.



The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei have overlapping claims to the Spratly Islands besides China



On Sunday, Chinese troops conducted military drills in the Sea of Japan involving the country's latest ships and frigates



Military analysts said that Beijing has increasingly stepped up its presence in the uninhabited islands in the Sea of Japan controlled by Tokyo.



Japan has recently lodged a diplomatic protest with the Chinese ambassador after 7 Chinese Coast Guard ships and more than 200 fishing vessels entered Japanese waters and surrounded the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands.



China and Russia are scheduled to hold joint military exercises in the South China Sea next month.



Advertisement

TagsChinese military drills, South China Sea, Gulf of Tonkin, PLAN, china
(Photo : Getty Images.) China has released new guidelines making it compulsory for NGOs to have representatives of the Communist Party within their organization

Advertisement

China on Sunday issued new guidelines making it mandatory for non-government organizations to accommodate Communist Party panels within their organization, Reuters reported.



The new guidelines issued by the general office of the party's central committee reads: "Strengthen political thought education for responsible people at social groups, and guide them to actively support party building. Promote the place of party building in the social group's charters."



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

The new rules state that the supervision of NGOs must be considered a high-priority task by local party committees. The committee's performance will be duly judged on how well they manage the group or organization.



The guidelines said that party committees could appoint representatives in case NGOs are too large to manage. The civil affairs ministry has been given the authority to penalize illegal behavior and also ban a NGO if need be.



China's Crackdown on Foreign NGO's



The new guidelines issued on Sunday is the government's latest crackdown on foreign NGO's in China, or NGO's that receive substantial funding from abroad. Earlier this year, China passed a controversial foreign NGO law to better regulate the sector.



The Chinese government claims that better regulation of the sector is needed in the wake of recent scandals, including the embezzlement of huge funds from several social organizations.



However, many activists allege that recent crackdown is meant to target NGOs and social groups that are critical of the Chinese government. Many experts see the recent curb on social groups as the government's effort to quash organizations encouraging dissent in China.



Advertisement

TagsNGO's in China, china, Non Govt Bodies in China
(Photo : Weibo/CCTV News) The wrong Chinese national flag at the women's volleyball award ceremony, Aug 21.

Advertisement

Rio officials have sparked the ire of Chinese citizens after they used the wrong Chinese national flag again during the women's volleyball awarding ceremony at the Olympic Games on Saturday.



China's flag with incorrectly aligned stars was displayed at the ceremony as the Chinese women's volleyball team was honored with the gold medal on the podium, CCTV News posted on its official Weibo account, according to the Global Times.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

Song Yang, the Chinese consul in Rio de Janeiro, has filed a formal complaint with Rio authorities and expressed strong dissatisfaction over the matter, saying that Beijing would not accept such a huge mistake.



The Olympic committee said that it would hold a meeting to discuss the second-time blunder and issue an official apology to China.



"Another wrong flag? Can we not just compete in a good mood?" Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming shared with his 49 million followers on Weibo.



Zhao Dongming, who was part of the Olympic committee at the Beijing Games in 2008, also criticized the Rio officials over the gaffe.



"Apparently there is no supervision and checking system at the Rio Olympics, even after the incident sparked wide criticism and reached the level of a diplomatic incident more than ten days ago," Zhao said. "Rio seems to be missing the importance of Olympic awards ceremonies, which represent respect for the athletes and where they are from."



The Olympic committee apologized to Beijing after using a flag with the four smaller stars parallel to each other instead of pointing towards the center of the large star during the the women's 10m air rifle medal ceremony earlier this month, according to TIME.



After the incident, new Chinese national flags with properly oriented stars were manufactured and delivered to each and every Olympic venue on Aug. 11 following complaints from the Chinese team as well as the Chinese consulate in Rio de Janeiro.



Advertisement

Tagschina, Olympics, Rio Olympics, Rio, chinese, Chinese flag, China flag
(Photo : Getty Images) Syrian Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Fahd Jasem al-Freij (second right) with a Chinese delegation that visited Damascus last week.

Advertisement

China has told the Syrian government of its willingness to strengthen military cooperation between both countries in the fight against the many Islamic alliances fighting to topple the regime of President Bashar Al Assad.



Chinese media said Rear Admiral Guan Youfei, Director of the Office for International Military Cooperation of China's Central Military Commission, told Syrian Defense Minister Lt. General Fahd Jassem al-Frejj the Chinese military will also provide humanitarian aid to the Assad government.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

"They reached consensus on improving personnel training, and the Chinese military offering humanitarian aid to Syria," according to Chinese media reports.



China sent military advisers to Syria in September 2015, the same month Russia entered the war on Assad's side, to help in the fight against the Islamic State or ISIS. These Chinese advisers joined Russian advisers also training regime forces.



In December 2014, China offered to help Iraq in fighting Islamic State terrorists by launching air strikes. China, however, said it would not join the U.S.-led coalition battling ISIS.



Communist Party of China sources confirmed Chinese advisers are already on the ground in Syria training Assad's military in the use of Chinese weapons such as sniper rifles, rocket launchers and machine guns. China has been selling weapons to Syria for decades.



Both China and Russia have repeatedly blocked resolutions critical of the Assad regime at the United Nations Security Council.



Military analysts believe China's deepening involvement in the Syrian quagmire has the strategic aim of protecting its oil supplies that come mostly from Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. China, however, is unlikely to commit combat troops to fight on Assad's side since this will infuriate Saudi Arabia and Iraq.



China's heightened involvement in the intractable and horrific Syrian civil war further complicates a conflict that might ignite a wider war between the United States and Russia and their respective allies on the ground.



Advertisement

Tagschina, Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, Rear Admiral Guan Youfe, Lt. General Fahd Jassem al-Frejj, military advisers, Islamic State
(Photo : Getty Images) China's popular budget smartphone maker Xiaomi will enter the US smartphone market "in the near future,"

Advertisement

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi will make its debut in the U.S. smartphone market "in the near future," the company's vice prevident Hugo Barra told Bloomberg.



"The U.S. is a market that we definitely have our sights," Xiaomi's Vice President Hugo Barra told Bloomberg. "We will lead with social media, with the channels that allow us to get in touch with the young generation that are enthusiastic about new technology. We are definitely going there."



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

Barra added that the Beijing-headquartered company will be introducing a new product in the U.S. in October but did not reveal any other details about the device.



In June, acquired more than 1,500 patents from Microsoft, which was a clear indication that the Chinese smartphone maker had plans to tap into the North American market as it tried to avoid any legal complications that may arise from its entry into the U.S.



Xiaomi has a reputation for offering consumers a wide range of good quality smartphones at an affordable price. The company already has a presence in the U.S. market but with non-smartphone products like wearables, headphones and other accessories.



The company will competing with the likes of Apple and Samsung in the U.S. as they two tech behemoths have been dominating the smartphone market over the last few years, according to International Business Times.



If Xiaomi wants to survive in the North American market, it would have to partner up with mobile network carriers such as Verizon and AT&T to sell its products, which is something the company has zero experience in.



Xiaomi is taking baby steps before it dives into the North American market and it might take some time before it actually happens.



"The U.S. is a very important market for any consumer electronics and lifestyle brand, certainly for us as well. Obviously we've got to time things carefully," Barra said.



Advertisement

TagsUS, Xiaomi, Xiaomi US debut, china, Smartphones, United States, smartphone market, Xiaomi US
(Photo : USAF) A B-52H, B-1B and B-2 bomber stand ready at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam.

Advertisement

The United States has sent a powerful aerial patrol consisting of a B-52H Stratofortress, a B-1B Lancer supersonic bomber and B-2 Spirit stealth bomber on a joint mission over the South China Sea in a dramatic message targeting both China and North Korea.



The unusual patrol of all three of the U.S.' strategic bombers took off from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. U.S. military sources refused to confirm if the bombers were armed.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

The U.S. Department of Defense said the patrol was the first coordinated operation in Asia under the United States Pacific Command (USPACOM). The Pentagon deployed the strategic bombers to conduct "Continuous Bomber Presence" patrols.



"These bomber deployments visibly demonstrate our readiness and commitment to the Indo-Asia-Pacific region," said US Air Force Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, commander of the Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), which is part of USPACOM.



"Bomber aircraft provide the USPACOM area of responsibility with an effective deterrent capability, ensuring the regional security and stability of the US and our allies and partners."



The B-52s have been stationed on Guam since 2006. An undetermined number of B-1Bs were deployed to Guam last Aug. 6 with a number of B-2s following on Aug. 9. The bombers are there to provide deterrence to maintain stability in the India-Asia-Pacific region in the face of China's militarization of the South China Sea and North Korea's string of missile tests.



Analysts believe the unusual joint mission of the three major bombers targets China and North Korea and can be seen as an armed protest to warn Beijing not to act irresponsibly in the South China Sea.



The newly arrived B-2s join the B-1B long-range strategic bombers and B-52H bombers currently based on the island, which has been transformed into the major staging base for the Air Force should a conflict against China arise over the South China Sea.



The arrival of the B-2s at Andersen Air Force Base was a surprise since the Pentagon previously announced B-1Bs were to be deployed to Guam to replace the B-52Hs currently patrolling Asian airspace. This is one of the very rare instances when all three U.S. strategic bombers have been based at one base at one time.



An undetermined number of B-1B Lancers of the U.S. Air Force have also arrived in Guam even as tensions at the South China Sea flared with news China is hardening its military aircraft hangars on the Spratly Island islets it seized from the Philippines against U.S. air attack.



As part of the Continuous Bomber Presence mission in the Pacific, the US has regularly kept bombers stationed at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The U.S. has, however, replaced its old B-52 bombers with the newer B-1 and B-2 Spirit stealth bombers.



The planes were positioned in the Pacific by U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which commands fleets of bombers, many of which are nuclear-capable, to maintain stability and deter potential threats.



Advertisement

TagsUnited States, B-52H Stratofortress, B-1B Lancer, B-2 Spirit, china, North Korea, Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, South China Sea
(Photo : Getty Images.) President Xi has given special honors to a PLA battalion in the Tibetan region.

Advertisement

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday conferred special honors on a PLA battalion in the Tibetan region located closely to the disputed state of Arunachal Pradesh, Times of India reported.



According to Xinhua, Xi bestowed the honor on the PLA battalion for their outstanding performance in safeguarding the border areas and showing unflinching commitment during disaster relief efforts.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

Chinese state media has not identified the battalion. However, Indian defense officials claim the battalion is the Gangba 2nd Independent Battalion. The Battalion is located in Shigatse City, Gangba County in Tibet. The place is very close to the disputed state of Arunachal Pradesh in India.



The Chinese government claims that Arunachal Pradesh is part of Southern Tibet and does not recognize as part of the Indian union. The border dividing Arunachal Pradesh and Tibet is called Line of Actual Control (LAC), which has never been recognized as an official border by Beijing.



The presence of President Xi near the Arunachal Pradesh border comes at a time that New Delhi is beefing up its military presence in the region. Last week, India inaugurated a new airfield at Pasighat town in south-east Arunachal Pradesh, located barely 100 kms from Indo-China border.



India is reportedly planning to deploy the BrahMos cruise missile to the Arunachal Pradesh border. The news has already raised eye brows in Beijing, with the PLA's official mouthpiece warning that India's latest move poses a serious security threat to China's Tibet and Yunnan provinces.



India claims that its recent military buildup near Arunachal Pradesh is in response to China's increased military concentration across the border. China reportedly has 15 small to medium airfields and six battalions in Tibet.



Advertisement

Tagschina, Arunachal Pradesh, Xi Jinping, China and India
(Photo : YouTube Screenshot) Chinas BAIC Motor Group plans to create new models out of an old Mercedes-Benz E-class platform.

Advertisement

China's BAIC Motor Group has gained approval from partner Daimler to develop new models using an old Mercedes-Benz E-class platform.



BAIC's first model would likely be the production version of the midsize sedan D80, which is set to hit the market in 2018, Automotive News reported citing Beijing-based website Internet Info Agency. An SUV and multipurpose vehicle (MPV) models are also in the pipeline.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

The new Mercedes-Benz models will feature powertrains made by Daimler thanks to its passenger vehicle joint venture with BAIC in Beijing, Car Scoops reported. It will also include a 1.8-liter turbocharged gasoline engine, a 3.0-liter naturally aspirated gasoline engine, and a six-speed automatic transmission.



BAIC's old Mercedes-Benz models will be offered under Senova brand, while the MPVs will be marketed under the Weiwang brand.



BAIC sold 232,000 light vehicles in the first seven months of the year, up 43 percent from the same period in 2015.



Furthermore, last month, BAIC also established a sales division in Mexico and started selling cars imported from China. The Beijing-based firm targets to sell at least 5,000 vehicles per year by 2018.



With the initiative, BAIC has joined a slate of foreign mobile makers who have started operating in Northern America's southernmost nation to enter the United States and Latin America. It also plans to produce gasoline-powered cars and electric vehicles in the country.



So far, there will only be three models available in the Mexican market including the D20 (both hatchback and sedan models) and the X25, which is a small crossover based on the D20. Three other models are set to be launched by the end of this year.



Advertisement

TagsBAIC, BAIC Motor, Daimler, mercedes benz, Mercedes Benz E-class, Senova, Weiwang
(Photo : Getty Images) Former Foxconn senior manager is facing charges for allegedly stealing and selling more than 5,000 iPhones worth $1.56 million,

Advertisement

The world's largest contract electronics manufacturer, Foxconn Ltd, on Monday confirmed the death of two workers at its Zhengzhou factory, which is primarily used to make parts for Apple devices, Reuters reported.



Foxconn said that the deceased are a male and a female employee. The male employee was found dead outside Zhengzhou factory, while the female employee died in a train accident on her way to work. The company has not revealed the names of the two employees.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

According to reports, the dead worker found outside the Zhengzhou factory had died by suicide. The worker reportedly jumped off the top floor Zhengzhou plant. The exact reason behind the suicide is still not known. Foxconn has stated that it is cooperating with investigative agencies.



A year ago, another employee working in Zhengzhou plant died. A labor rights group had claimed that it was a case of suicide.



The condition of Foxconn workers has been under the spotlight ever since a spat of suicide cases were reported from its Shenzhen manufacturing plant. The Taiwan-based multinational company has often been accused of subjecting its workers to harsh working condition, including working hours for 14-15 hours on a measly salary.



Foxconn has maintained that it is taking constructive steps to improve the working condition at its factories. Experts claim that it is a huge challenge for Foxconn to create and sustain acceptable working condition for its millions of employees.



Foxconn employs nearly 1.3 million people during peak season, making it one of the largest private employers in the world.



Advertisement

TagsFoxconn, Foxconn New Smartphone Facility China, Foxconn Zhengzhou Plant, china
Is Michael Phelps a Muslim? Islamic fundamentalists say 'cupping' marks are proof 22 August, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

CAIRO (Christian Examiner)  More than one time during the Rio Olympics, champion swimmer Michael Phelps was photographed diving into the pool with large purple spots across his back and shoulders  evidence of the ancient Chinese medicinal technique called "cupping."

However, fundamentalist followers of Islam in the Middle East are claiming that Phelps's obsession with the treatment is indication  oddly enough  that he has accepted Islam and the "Prophet's medicine," according the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which monitors Arab-language news and social media networks.

In the technique, which is supposed to relieve muscle soreness and stiffness, much like ancient bloodletting or leeching, small jars are heated with a wick and then the cup is affixed to the skin, creating a vacuum that pulls the skin and the capillaries up to improve blood flow. There is no scientific evidence that the treatment works and it can lead to severe injuries because large bruises form where capillaries burst. If the cups are left on too long, the skin and underlying soft tissue can die.

This is not 'the Prophet's medicine,' but rather medicine that was practiced during the time of the Prophet. Had he lived today, he would have adopted modern medicine, getting ultrasounds, MRIs, etc. Anyone asking nowadays for treatment by cauterization or bloodletting is like [one] asking for anesthesia by being hit on the head with a hammer. As for those who preach and trade in 'the Prophet's medicine,' which has nothing to do with the Prophet  why don't they implement the Prophet's transportation and ride a she-camel instead of driving a Mercedes?

But to Salafists  fundamentalists Muslims who believe in restoring Islam to its former glory under the first three successors to Muhammad  cupping (or hijama) confirms the Quran to be true. One Arab-language website included some of Muhammad's sayings praising cupping and said the new interest in the science of cupping "proves [the sayings of Muhammad] accurate every day."

Another website said cupping is "a practice known in Islamic societies for centuries" with roots in medicinal remedies offered by Muhammad, MEMRI reported.

Muslims also teach that even angels use the technique and they believe that certain days of the month are ideal for achieving the best result.

Salafist praise for cupping, however, has drawn the ire of a columnist in the Egyptian daily Al-Watan. Khaled Montasser said modern Muslims should reject the practice because, if Muhammad was alive, he would have accepted modern medicine by now.

"This is not 'the Prophet's medicine,' but rather medicine that was practiced during the time of the Prophet. Had he lived today, he would have adopted modern medicine, getting ultrasounds, MRIs, etc. Anyone asking nowadays for treatment by cauterization or bloodletting is like [one] asking for anesthesia by being hit on the head with a hammer. As for those who preach and trade in 'the Prophet's medicine,' which has nothing to do with the Prophet  why don't they implement the Prophet's transportation and ride a she-camel instead of driving a Mercedes?" Montasser wrote.

Worse, Montasser wrote, are those who claim Phelps's use of cupping is somehow a victory for Islam over the West. Many Muslims, "particularly Salafis," saw the swimmer using the technique and believed he "had become convinced of the principles of Islam and had converted to Islam, and that this was proof that Islam is right."

The columnist then said Islam looks particularly weak when Muslims make "ridiculous" claims that Islam is confirmed as victorious by the use of a practice such as cupping. It makes Muslims look ignorant and desperate, he wrote.

"My Salafi brothers, [modern] culture is a package deal, and you are welcome to the whole thing at no charge. But this culture is not a vegetable stand where you can pick and choose. ... We must adopt [modern] means, which are brains and knowledge. ... So I am saddened when I see you [Salafis] begging a swimmer who underwent cupping for acknowledgement of your religion," Montasser said.
Secretly-married gay preachers plan revolt 22 August, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

LONDON (Christian Examiner)  A group of clergy in the Church of England have announced they will soon go public with declarations that they are gay and married in defiance of the church's stance on same-sex marriage, The Guardian has reported.

According to the paper, around one dozen clergy will put their aspirations for change in the church into an open letter. In particular, they want the church to develop a blessing for same-sex weddings and to stop referring to homosexual marriage as sinful.

The group is being led by Andrew Foreshew-Cain, who was dismissed from his post as vicar of his church when he announced his marriage to his partner, who is an atheist, in 2014  just after same-sex marriage was legalized in England and Wales.

Still, Foreshew-Cain was elected to the church's General Synod last October over the objection of conservatives in the church.

He told the paper that an increasing number of clergy in the church are involved in same-sex marriages which are "legal, celebrated and widely accepted in society."

"Yet the Church of England behaves as if they are somehow dirty and imposes penalties on clergy and refuses to acknowledge the marriages of those who wish to make lifelong faithful commitments," he said. "This has to stop and the element of fear and hypocrisy around our marriages has to end."

The Church of England, as well as the Worldwide Anglican Communion, has been gripped by controversy over the past several years as the movement to create room for same-sex marriage in the church has grown in England. Most Anglican churches, especially those in Africa, still soundly reject the practice.

The church has, however, engaged in "shared conversations" for the past two years, in which churchmen listen to the reasons members of the homosexual community believe it should change its doctrinal standards. Those conversations, the church's spokesman said, were helpful, but he provided no indication of the possibility of a forthcoming change.

According to canon law, the Church of England cannot carry out or bless homosexual marriages.

Foreshew-Cain said he and his group are not asking the church to change its doctrinal stance, but merely to demonstrate openness and acceptance of members of the LGBT community.
Target has said it plans to spend $20 million to expand its bathroom facilities months after it announced transgender restroom policy.

In April the company said that it will allow people to use bathroom according to their gender identity. This policy was objected by many, as an online petition started by the American Family Association (AFA) to boycott Target received over 1.4 million signatures.

Target will now add single-toilet restrooms which can be used by those people who want privacy or those with small children, a spokesman said on August 17.

The AFA met with Target top officials and recommended the company to provide for unisex bathrooms for transgender people, in addition to male and female restrooms already being provided. But Target did not agree with the AFA's suggestion.

Cathy Smith, Chief Financial Officer at Target, told reporters at a press conference: "It's clear that some of our guests like and some dislike our inclusive bathroom policy."

"Some of our guests clearly are uncomfortable with our policy," she added.

The company said that its main aim is to create an environment at Target which is perceived as safe by its customers.

"At the end of the day, Target is all about inclusion," Smith said.

However, Target is not changing its earlier bathroom policy permitting the use of restrooms in accordance with gender identity.

Target has about 1,800 stores around the country, out of which some 1,500 already have single-stall restrooms. By the end of this year most will have such separate facilities, and the remaining will be re-equipped by early 2017.

In July, a man who identifies as a woman was arrested for taking pictures of a woman changing in an adjacent stall in one of Idaho's Target malls. He was charged with felony and faces up to 5 years in prison.

Protesters in San Antonio, Texas, demonstrated outside Target last week, holding placards such as, "Men don't belong in the Ladies room," and "Don't Target our daughters," according to local news reports.

One protester Norma Reyna said: "I've got nieces and nephews, and, nieces especially, and I'd be appalled if a man was ever in a restroom with them.. I would be afraid to let them go in there by themselves, so I'm walking away from Target altogether."

Another protester Craig Cihak said that he is not against transgender people, but against the bathroom policy.

"I love transgenders; I love all people, but I think it's not fair to put them in this situation, and we want also the other reason is to keep our boys and girls safe," he said.
Chinese authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang have banned all religious and prayer-related activities in hospitals, according to a report from Radio Free Asia. The pastors will no longer be allowed to visit hospitals to pray for sick and preach in hospitals.

A notice to stop conducting religious activities and praying was put up last week in Central Hospital at Wenzhou, the Radio Free Asia report says. The city is also referred to as the "Jerusalem of China" because of its high concentration of churches. It has been the focal point of evangelism in China over the last few decades.

The hospital where the rule was implemented was established as a Protestant hospital.

"Religious activities in hospitals have never been encouraged ... but some people have been doing it on the quiet, which is understandable, seeing that we are all here to support patients," a hospital employee told Radio Free Asia.

"Some people were really giving it their all, praying aloud and reading out the Bible," the employee said. "That's not allowed."

"The order is shown to patients when they are admitted to hospital telling them that no religious activities are permitted in the hospital," she continued. "If they do that here, then the nurses and doctors will have a word with them."

According to Bob Fu, the founder of China Aid, the Zhejiang rule will be extended to the northern part of Inner Mongolia and the province of Anhui.

"The Chinese government is taking its persecution of religious believers to another level," he told RFA.

Recently, the state government in Pingyang county near Wenzhou implemented a new law requiring churches to hand over all their tithes and income to the authorities.

The measures were seen as an effort by the government to rein in Christianity.

In April, Chinese president Xi Jinping held a conference on religious freedom to express his views on religions and how they must be practiced in China.

He said that the groups shall "dig deep into doctrines and canons that are in line with social harmony and progress, and favorable for the building of a healthy and civilized society, and interpret religious doctrines in a way that is conducive to modern China's progress and in line with our excellent traditional culture."

He added that the authorities must unite religious and non-religious people, and "guide those religious to love their country, protect the unification of their motherland and serve the overall interests of the Chinese nation."
A federal judge dismissed a discrimination claim by a transgender employee formerly working at a funeral home in Detroit, Michigan.

District Judge Sean Cox said that the funeral home was exempt from a law which forbids discrimination in hiring and firing based on sex, because of the company's sincerely-held religious beliefs.

The employee Anthony Stevens, whose name is now Aimee Australia Stephens, worked at the funeral home between 2007 and 2013. The employee notified the owner of R.G. &. G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Thomas Rost, that he would be going on a vacation for sex reassignment surgery, after which he would come back dressed in women's suit.

About two weeks later, Rost told him that it would be difficult for them to carry on together.

"It was right before he was going to go on vacation and I just - I said - I just said 'Anthony, this is not going to work out,'" Rost testified according to The Washington Post.

The employee complained with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which sued the funeral homes.

However, the judge said that according to 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, religious accommodation must be denied only where compelling government interests are advanced in the least restrictive way.

"Rost is a devout Christian who believes that God has called him to minister to these grieving families, and his faith informs the way he operates his business and how he presents his business to the public," his lawyers said in court documents.

Cox wrote in his opinion: "If the EEOC truly has a compelling governmental interest in ensuring that Stephens is not subject to gender stereotypes in the workplace in terms of required clothing at the Funeral Home, couldn't the EEOC propose a gender-neutral dress code (dark-colored suit, consisting of a matching business jacket and pants, but without a neck tie) as a reasonable accommodation that would be a less restrictive means of furthering that goal under the facts presented here?"

Furthermore, the judge said that EEOC appeared to promote contradictory values of eliminating gender-specific dressing codes and wanting the employee to wear skirts at the funeral home.

"The court finds that the funeral home has met its initial burden of showing that enforcement of Title VII [law on discrimination], and the body of sex-stereotyping case law that has developed under it, would impose a substantial burden on its ability to conduct business in accordance with its sincerely held religious beliefs," Cox wrote.
Anti-Christian hostility is on the minds of many American Christians these days. Each new legal challenge to religious liberty at the state and federal levels raises the issue afresh. It seems that today, Christians must think through their cultural position more carefully than at any other point in US history.

Still, given the terrible persecution of Christians overseas, I wonder whether its accurate to say that American Christians are under persecution. When I discuss the rise in anti-Christian hostility in the States, I avoid the p word, and I dont make comparisons to other parts of the world.

But listen to a Middle Eastern underground house church leader: Persecution is easier to understand when its physical: torture, death, imprisonment....American persecution is like an advanced stage of cancer; it eats away at you, yet you cannot feel it. This is the worst kind of persecution.

A Syrian remaining in the region to assist Christians and Muslims cautions, It wasnt only ISIS who laid waste to the church; our cultural compromises with the government and our divisions against each other brewed for a long time. We are Damascus, the seat of Christianity; what happened to us can happen to you. Be careful.

When persecuted Christian leaders overseas warn about how seriously US Christians are marginalized, its time to listen.

Of course, persecution in countries like India and China looks different than it does in Vietnam or Nigeria; the methods of oppressors and survivors vary dramatically. Often, other religious minorities suffer as well. In some regions, the disdain is cultural; elsewhere, hostility manifests itself in legislation. In places ...

1

You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
Faysal stands amid the rolling fields of the Bekaa Valley. Just down the road are award-winning, decadent vineyardsa product of the fertile agricultural regions 5,000-year head start on Napa Valley. The Romans even chose to build their temple to Bacchus here. Above loom the snow-covered slopes of Mt. Hermon, where many today place Jesus transfiguration.

Surveying the sea of green plants rustling in a pleasant breeze, the 43-year-old describes what he feels: A knife in my heart.

For Faysal, a Syrian refugee, the scene is not one of grandeur but of guilt; in the field before him are three of his childrenhis 15-year-old son and 13- and 11-year-old daughtersbent in half as they weed potatoes instead of attending school.

I have no choice, says the father of six. In Aleppo, one of Syrias most war-torn cities, his job as a truck driver once provided a four-room house and a middle-class, urban life. Now, having injured his back in his own efforts at day labor, he cant pay the rent for their cobbled-together shelter on a farmers property. So he just stands and watches his children. And cries.

As a father, what is the purpose of my life if I cant provide for my children? he says. Im ashamed of the present and the future.

On the shores of the Mediterranean Sea just north of Israel, Lebanon once enjoyed a reputation as the Switzerland of the Middle East, a land of milk and honey. On the eve of Ramadan, Christianity Today visited with World Vision to witness how the Bekaa Valley now recalls John Steinbecks Great Depressionera description of the Dust Bowl and California. In the Bekaa, many refugees struggle ...

1

You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
Two blocks from the North Carolina Capitol, a dozen women are sitting on couches in a circle. Unmarked, with dark windows and fluorescent lights overhead, the upstairs room of Raleighs First Presbyterian Church smells musty and damp. Alice Noells Job Start program is in session, and the women are here to make sense of their lives.

The women currently live in the Raleigh Correctional Center for Women, which they leave five days a week to attend Noells 15-week course. Noellan energetic and passionate teacherisnt speaking right now. Instead, shes invited one of her former students to address a captive audience.

All of the women, equal numbers black and white, lean in as Miea Walker walks in, waves, and finds the recliner in the center of the circle. Walker, 45, was released from prison in March 2012, a date still fresh enough for her to drop the names of wardens and guards.

I know what it feels like, she says. You feel like you cant breathe. Youre in a box all day long.

During her own nine-year sentence for embezzlement, Walker received her bachelors degree and two associates degrees. Beyond the course load, the hardest work was moving past the depression she believes was brought on by strained family relationships and a missing relationship with God.

She scans the room, makes eye contact with each woman, takes a breath, and begins: Broken people cant serve broken people.

Immediately, the women reach for their pens and begin transcribing her words in their notebooks.

An Atypical Story

Walkers story has many elements in common with the stories of the 600,000 Americans who are imprisoned annually. Shes ...

1

You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
There was a time in our nations history when village atheist was a term of endearment. It introduced a note of affection for the vocal unbelievers in our midst. In 1943, Time magazine referred to the journalist H. L. Mencken, of Scopes Monkey Trial fame, as Americas outstanding village atheist.

Still, the term quietly conceded that flat-out unbelievers have historically been a rare breed in the United Statesso rare that you were likely to find only one in any given community. In America, it takes a village to raise just one atheist. Even today, just 3.1 percent of Americans identify as such, according to Pew Research Centers 2014 Religious Landscape Study.

When a village did manage to raise an atheist, it was almost always a boy. In his lively, informative study, Village Atheists: How Americas Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation (Princeton University Press), historian Leigh Eric Schmidt includes a chapter on Elmina Drake Slenker, a 19th-century woman from Upstate New York. Many readers today disapprove of books solely about men, but organized atheism hasnt always been terribly concerned with gender parity. Slenker confessed that every place she went, she was the first woman atheist anyone there had ever seen. When the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism (4As) surveyed its membership in 1930, it was 93 percent male.

Churches, by contrast, have been a model of balance, with women even outnumbering men in terms of membership. So it is ironic that one of the traditional ways that atheists attacked Christianity was for allegedly being anti-women. When 4As founder Charles Lee Smith debated evangelist and Foursquare Church founder Aimee ...

1

You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
A few weeks ago, I sat down for coffee with a family from Syria. I was teaching an English class in our apartment complex and afterward the mother of this family invited me into her home. They arrived in the US very recently. If youve paid attention to the news, then you might have a dim view of this familys background: They faced suffering and the threat of violence; they most likely fled their country in an arduous journey; they had to wade through camps and bureaucracies to make it all the way here, to the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, where they are the first of their community to be resettled. You might have images of boats and tents and mothers clutching their children. But I have in mind a more immediate, more personal image: I was sitting in a sparsely decorated living room drinking coffee that was served thick and dark and sugary in tiny red cups. I drank it, even though it was late in the evening and I knew I would pay for it later. I drank it because that coffee contained a part of this family's life and heart and culture, and to reject it would be to reject it all.

I came to this realization with a start as I watched the most recent season of The Great British Baking Show. If you are not familiar with this series, a few caveats are in order: Yes, it is a reality show from England centered on baking, and yes, it is the best thing to ever air in the history of television. This might sound hyperbolic, but I am addicted to the show in a way that is hard to explain. When Im having a hard daywhich truth be told, is oftenI play an episode and get absorbed into its gentle perfection.

The concept is simple: 12 bakers are faced with various challenges related to baking, and each week ...

1
Should Christians Support Free Market Ideas? New IFWE Booklet Explores the Biblical View of Freedom

Contact: Kristin Brown, Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, 703-962-7877, kbrown@tifwe.org



McLEAN, Va., Aug. 22, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- In a new Institute for Faith, Work & Economics (IFWE) booklet, Free Indeed: Living Life in Light of the Biblical View of Freedom, IFWE theologian Art Lindsley makes the case that free market ideas, such as private property, limited government, innovation and creativity, are consistent with biblical values and must be sustained.



In his booklet, Lindsley explains that while biblical freedom is different from the worldly concept of freedom, biblical freedom must inherently have an impact in this world. He calls Christians to action in promoting all biblically-grounded freedoms  religious, economic, and political. He writes:

"Christ has set us free, and we need to live accordingly because God is working good things through us  including the freedom and flourishing of others. Our inner freedom should lead us to outer freedom. For this reason, political, economic, and religious freedom should not be taken for granted."

Sample Interview Questions for Art Lindsley:

Why did you write this booklet? What is most important about it?



How does the biblical concept of freedom differ from the worldly concept of freedom?



Christian freedom, described as becoming a "servant of Christ," seems like a paradox. How is that really freedom?



If people are fallen, shouldn't there be a larger role for government to protect the weak and vulnerable?



Does the Bible support any form of socialism/Marxism?

Credentials: Art Lindsley is IFWE's vice president of theological initiatives and served as both co-editor and contributor to For the Least of These: A Biblical Answer to Poverty. He is the author of numerous other books, including C.S. Lewis' Case for Christ, True Truth, and Love, the Ultimate Apologetic. (Full bio here.)



Availability: Washington, D.C. and via telephone (email kbrown@tifwe.org)



Media Copies: A complimentary digital copy of Free Indeed: Living Life in Light of the Biblical View of Freedom is available for download here.



Special Audience Offer: One free audience give-away copy available for radio interviews. Email kbrown@tifwe.org. Plus, for a limited time, the booklet can be purchased online for just $3.99. Use code: FREEINDEEDNEWS. Offer expires 9/16/16.



The Institute for Faith, Work & Economics (IFWE) is a Christian organization committed to advancing biblical and economic principles that help individuals find fulfillment in their work and contribute to a free and flourishing society.
Delegates from 86 Countries at Evangelism Explosion Congress of Nations in Indonesia



MALANG, Indonesia, Aug. 22, 2016 /



The assembly of Evangelism Explosion leaders from every continent is "very important to the worldwide ministry of EE and, more importantly, to fulfilling Christ's mandate to take the Gospel message to every tribe and every nation," said Dr. John B. Sorensen, President of Evangelism Explosion International.



More than 10 million people worldwide professed faith in Jesus Christ through Evangelism Explosion in 2015 and the Congress gives delegates the opportunity to strategize on how to reach even more people with the Gospel. Nation delegates shared methodologies and approved a series of resolutions that were included in a formal Declaration issued at the conclusion of the strategic conclave.



The gathering in Malang comes six years after delegates from 30 nations participated in the first Congress of Nations in 2010 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That inaugural Congress launched a new approach to the global work of EEI in which indigenous EE organizations partner to strategize and work together for the effective spread of the Gospel.



Founded in 1962 by the late D. James Kennedy, Ph.D., EE was planted in every nation by 1996. It is now intentionally focusing operational strategy of the evangelism equipping outreach to include a growing international covenanted network of indigenous EE partnerships.



Each national EE group at the Congress of Nations has met a rigorous set of 12 standards necessary to participate and to be designated as an Evangelism Explosion "Multiplying Nation." Qualifying national groups must be self-supporting and have a board of directors, a national director, paid field staff, and an annual action plan. They must also be actively implementing EE in churches nationwide.



"By the 2019 Congress, our goal is to have more than 100 nations reach Multiplying status. We're on our way to meeting and possibly exceeding that goal," said Sorensen.



EEI's ultimate goal is to see every person on earth have the opportunity to hear the good news about Jesus, and believes a key strategy for that to happen includes equipping Christians through an EE movement in every country.



The Congress of Nations includes pageantry with a ceremony in which delegates march into the assembly hall, each carrying their nation's flag.



"It's not just a ceremony," says Sorensen. "Each of these participating nations represents ministries that are having a profound impact on the world through training people to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the ultimate goalreaching every tribe, every nation and every people group with the good news of salvation through Christ alone!"

Share Tweet Contact: Debbie Revitzer, Evangelism Explosion International , 828-214-5686, drevitzer@eeworks.org MALANG, Indonesia, Aug. 22, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Delegates from 86 nations gathered in Malang, Indonesia, in August, for the third triennial Congress of Nations sponsored by Evangelism Explosion International, a global outreach that trains people to share their faith in Jesus Christ.The assembly of Evangelism Explosion leaders from every continent is "very important to the worldwide ministry of EE and, more importantly, to fulfilling Christ's mandate to take the Gospel message to every tribe and every nation," said Dr. John B. Sorensen, President of Evangelism Explosion International.More than 10 million people worldwide professed faith in Jesus Christ through Evangelism Explosion in 2015 and the Congress gives delegates the opportunity to strategize on how to reach even more people with the Gospel. Nation delegates shared methodologies and approved a series of resolutions that were included in a formal Declaration issued at the conclusion of the strategic conclave.The gathering in Malang comes six years after delegates from 30 nations participated in the first Congress of Nations in 2010 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That inaugural Congress launched a new approach to the global work of EEI in which indigenous EE organizations partner to strategize and work together for the effective spread of the Gospel.Founded in 1962 by the late D. James Kennedy, Ph.D., EE was planted in every nation by 1996. It is now intentionally focusing operational strategy of the evangelism equipping outreach to include a growing international covenanted network of indigenous EE partnerships.Each national EE group at the Congress of Nations has met a rigorous set of 12 standards necessary to participate and to be designated as an Evangelism Explosion "Multiplying Nation." Qualifying national groups must be self-supporting and have a board of directors, a national director, paid field staff, and an annual action plan. They must also be actively implementing EE in churches nationwide."By the 2019 Congress, our goal is to have more than 100 nations reach Multiplying status. We're on our way to meeting and possibly exceeding that goal," said Sorensen.EEI's ultimate goal is to see every person on earth have the opportunity to hear the good news about Jesus, and believes a key strategy for that to happen includes equipping Christians through an EE movement in every country.The Congress of Nations includes pageantry with a ceremony in which delegates march into the assembly hall, each carrying their nation's flag."It's not just a ceremony," says Sorensen. "Each of these participating nations represents ministries that are having a profound impact on the world through training people to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the ultimate goalreaching every tribe, every nation and every people group with the good news of salvation through Christ alone!"
home US American Lutherans pass resolution calling for an end to U.S. support to Israel

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) voted on Aug. 12 in favor of a resolution that calls for the U.S. government to withhold financial and military support from Israel unless it stops constructing settlements on Palestinian territories. The church body also voted to screen investments against companies that aggravate the conflict between Palestine and Israel at their triennial Churchwide Assembly in New Orleans.

The first resolution also asks for the cooperation of the U.S. government and the U.N. Security Council to "launch a more determined effort for a negotiated agreement that ends the occupation, achieves an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and provides security and peace for both Israelis and Palestinians."

The second resolution (C2) named Caterpillar Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company, Motorola Solutions and Group 4 Securicor (G4S) as companies that contributed to the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Palestine and the violation of human rights of Palestinians.

The main sponsor of the two resolutions was Isaiah 58, a Lutheran group that focuses on the conflict at the West Bank. The leader of the group, Jan Miller, stated in a press release, "By adopting this investment screen, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is taking an important step to ensure that we are not profiting from, or complicit in, injustice in the Holy Land and elsewhere."

Other denominations voted on similar resolutions earlier this year with mixed results. In May, the United Methodists voted to withdraw from the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation at their General Assembly citing that the campaign overlooks anti-Israeli aggression.

In June, the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), Southern Baptists and the Unitarian Universalists voted on resolutions dealing with the PalestinianaIsraeli conflict. The Presbyterians passed a resolution to pressure Israel to leave territories that were occupied during the 1967 war while the Unitarian Universalists voted against a campaign to divest investments to corporations involved in the conflict. Southern Baptists made a commitment to "support the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign state and reject any activities that attack that right by promoting economic, cultural, and academic boycotts against Israel."
home Faith Billy Graham on 'Is it a sin to worry about the future?'

Renowned preacher Billy Graham lays to rest a particular concern among perpetual worriers and offers a solution on what they can do to finally stop worrying.

The Evangelical leader and founder of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association answered Thursday a question raised by a self-proclaimed worrier on whether worrying about the future and the things that might happen in the future should be considered as a sin.

Graham avoided a categorical answer as he reminded the worrier that giving a thought for the future can also be taken as a sign of wisdom. He said that it's also necessary to think of and prepare for one's future. Yet, taking this to the extremes when one's constantly beleaguered by worries and of the bad things that could go wrong should be avoided.

Aside from the fact that the latter leads to stress, emotional paralysis, and physically illnesses, Graham stressed that this would only be a futile effort.

He quoted Jesus as saying in Matthew 6:27, "Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

"But the real reason we shouldn't let worry overcome us is because it keeps us from trusting God," Graham added.

He offered that the cure to one's incessant and futile worrying would simply be placing one's trust in Jesus.

"God loves us, and the proof is Jesus Christ, who gave His life for our salvation. If we can trust God for our eternal salvation, can't we also trust Him for our daily needs?"

Graham lifted another passage from the Bible to remind Christians of what Jesus taught.

Matthew 6:34 read, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself."

Megachurch pastor Joel Osteen also revealed that trusting God more would be what he'd do differently if given another chance in life. He shared that he used to worry about a lot of things until he realized that worrying didn't help him "move one inch forward."

"When I look back over my life, most of the things I worried about never came to pass. I wasted a lot of time and energy being uptight," wrote the senior pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas.
home World Catholics afraid to attend mass due to extremist threats in Philippines

Fr. Sebastiano D'Ambra, an Italian missionary in Mindanao, Philippines, says that Catholics are afraid to attend mass because of constant extremist threats. Aside from terrorism,

D'Ambra shared such to Aid to Church in Need (ACN), and added that there are "geopolitical and military interests" that are making the situation in the region more complex. "Before, the Philippines was a dream place for interreligious dialogue; there was complete harmony. But now the situation has changed completely," D'Ambra told ACN.

D'Ambra founded the Sisilah Forum 30 years ago in Zamboanga City to build up dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

"The threats from the Islamists are constant in the south of the country, above all on the island of Jolo," said D'Ambra. The priest had a firsthand experience of violence from the extremist when the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) attacked Zamboanga City in 2013. D'Ambra also noted that Christians are living in fear despite the presence of the army.

Aside from the MNLF, other groups are also committing acts of terror and threatening in the region. In April, Al Jazeera reported that the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf beheaded one of the tourists they kidnapped in September 2015. A plastic bag containing the head of the tourist was thrown on the streets of Samal Island. In June, the Islamic State released a video declaring the Philippines a caliphate, as reported by The Star Malaysia.

Despite D'Ambra's observations, the International Crisis Group (ICC) reported in July that peace in Mindanao is closer than ever. "The southern Philippines is potentially closer to peace than at any time in the four decades since Muslim insurgents started fighting for independence, but the substantial progress over the past six years is also fragile," read the introduction to the report.

The ICC report was released a few weeks after Rodrigo Duterte took office. Duterte is the first president to be elected from Mindanao and the report mentioned that he was the most vocal supporter for a peace deal during the campaign season.

The report also made recommendations to the parties involved in the conflict including the Philippine government, MNLF, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and international donors and partners to maintain the momentum of the peace process the parties.
home World Christian woman's story of being an ISIS captive, sold as a sex slave and forced to convert to Islam

An Eritrean Christian woman described her life as an Islamic State captive sold into sex slavery, and how she converted to Islam just to save her life.

Ruta Fisehaye, 24, dreamed of a better life, and so she planned her escape from Eritrea to Europe. However, her plans took a backseat the night of June 2, 2015 when a group of armed men stopped a truck full of migrants bound for Europe. The captors turned out to be the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS or Daesh) terrorist group.

"No one stopped us in the Sahara ... and the smugglers told us we shouldn't worry about Daesh," Fisehaye told Reuters in an interview. "I never expected to see an organized state like theirs in Libya," she added.

ISIS abducted the migrant women and promised them survival should they convert to Islam. Fisehaye became the first to convert after three months of captivity.

"I could see no other way out," she said.

A guard the women befriended encouraged their conversion and sprinkled their hope.

This hope shattered when ISIS' leadership changed in December, and the guard told the kidnapped women they've become slaves a turned as sex slaves, given away as gifts, sold to other militant fighters or be set free.

"Do not worry about what will happen to you in the hands of men," the guard reportedly told one of the kidnapped women and added, "Concern yourself only with where you stand with Allah,"

An Eritrean militant purchased Fisehaye in February, raped her for weeks and then lent her to another fighter.

"No one ever showed us which part of the Koran says they could turn us into slaves," said Fisehaye. "They wanted to destroy us...so much evil in their hearts."

Fisehaye managed to escape after 10 months of captivity along with several other kidnapped women just like her. She's reached Germany, where she hopes to be granted asylum.

Several other captives who managed to escape ISIS also lived to tell the harrowing tales they've suffered. One Yazidi woman and mother of four said ISIS physically and psychologically abused, tortured and treated their captives like livestock.

Yazidi girls also reportedly claim young boys as their sons or dirty their faces just to avoid being raped.

"Once you leave Eritrea, there is no going back. I did what any woman would do," Fisehaye said.
home Faith Christians save church from demolition in China

Christians in China succeeded in saving a church, one which possesses legal papers, from getting demolished.

According to China Aid, members of Mengen Church launched a petition to prevent the demolition of their church that resulted from a land battle between the Christians and authorities who wanted to build a Buddhist temple on their church land.

The petition garnered 147 signatures and succeeded in halting the demolition attempt.

The church members also managed to convince on July 28 an electrician hired by a local official named Pan Dingqun from cutting off their church building's power and electricity supply.

"[On July 28] several Christians went into town to report this matter, because our church has all the legal documents," Wei, head of Mengen Church, told China Aid. "The town's government personnel replied that they would conducted an investigation into this matter, but I am afraid they have collaborated [with the people who instigated the case]. The result will not likely be good."

Another Christian, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, also accused authorities of using local gangs in the ongoing persecution and harassment against Christians.

"The government is currently preoccupied with the 'big tigers'and the 'little tigers' [continue to] unreasonably bully people, using means such as burying people alive and thinking they can occupy other people's land," said the Christian.

Such an incident happened back in April when church pastor, Li Jiangong, and his wife, Ding Cuimei, opposed a local developer who wanted to demolish Beitou Church in Zhumadian, Henan province in order to possess the land.

The couple stood their ground against the demolition team, which then resorted to burying the couple alive. Li managed to dig his way out while his wife died from suffocation.

While reports of church demolitions appear to have waned in the recent month, the Communities state ramped up its persecution of Christians and their churches detaining church leaders and members, sealing off churches, and even forcing them to join a state-run Protestant church.
home World Church of England experiences huge growth spike...in Finland

The Church of England's thrust to aid in the resettlement of refugees spikes a 20 percent church growth, not in England, but in Finland.

An article published in Eurobishop by Bishop David Hamid of the Church of England Diocese said that the Anglican numbers started small in comparison to other churches like the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. However, the striking percentage increase means the church is heading in the right direction.

The main concern of the parish, however, is that the growth is a result of refugees coming in from Sudan and South Sudan. These new arrivals are mostly Anglican. Together with the United Nations, the Finnish government continues to offer Sudanese and South Sudanese refuge against the upsurge of fighting in their country. International agencies reported that the crisis affecting countless civilians continues to rise.

The Church of England in Britain, on the other hand, is providing assistance to refugees as well. In its resettlement fact sheet, its goal of assisting 1,000 Syrian refugees has been met at the end of 2015. This comprised the first phase of their resettlement program. For the second phase, which was planned for April 2016 onwards, they intend to speed up the process and assist at least 5,000 a year.

A group called Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) said on their website that churches, church leaders and groups across Britain and Ireland have responded to the refugee crisis and are asking governments to lend a hand and take action. The group said that governments can ask for donations from church-going citizens and provide services and support if they can. This can also be done through partnering with aid organizations.

The group's site said, "There are many different Christian churches and denominations, but all have the same basic calling a to worship God, to share the good news about Jesus Christ and to work for the good of all people. Churches Together in Britain and Ireland is the umbrella organization helping to bring these Christian churches together under Christian unity."
home Tech Franklin Graham decries America's handing over of internet's naming system

Evangelical leader Franklin Graham rejected the United States' plan of handing over government control on the Internet's naming system to a private organization as another wrong move.

Graham considered it a "shame," not "smart," and "dangerous" that President Barack Obama decided to give over the Domain Naming System (DNS) to the non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

"This could potentially weaken our country and allow others access that could bring us harm," wrote Graham in a Facebook post last Friday.

The president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association asked the Congress why they allowed this decision and urged Republicans and Democrats alike to stop this transition from taking place on Oct. 1, 2016. Graham also asked the concerned Americans to make an appeal to their state representatives.

According to BBC News, an unnamed expert viewed the transition as ICANN getting "keys to the kingdom."

Other U.S. politicians also expressed fears that the transition would pave the way for intervention from the likes of China and Russia.

"The proposal will significantly increase the power of foreign governments over the Internet," wrote a letter from several Republican senators, including Sen. Ted Cruz.

National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the government's agency that controlled the DNS and would soon relinquish its control, said such foreign intervention would be "extremely remote."

"The community's new powers to challenge board decisions and enforce decisions in court protect against any one party or group of interests from inappropriately influencing Icann," said NTIA.

Prof. Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey considered this control shift as a "big change" but noted that the changes included "nothing to do with laws on the internet."

"This is more about who officially controls the foundations of the Internet/web addresses and domain names, without which the network wouldn't function," BBC News quoted Prof. Woodward as saying.
home World Jesus wants us to share His compassion, Pope Francis says

Pope Francis urged Christians to follow Jesus Christ's example by sharing compassion with other people.

The 79-year-old Argentine pope discussed last Wednesday during his weekly general audience what it meant when Jesus performed the miraculous feeding of thousands of people with just five loaves of bread and three pieces of fish.

"The Lord goes out to meet the needs of men and women and wants to make each one of us concretely share in his compassion," Pope Francis told a crowd of thousands at the Paul VI audience hall, as reported by the Catholic News Service (CNS).

In order to follow Christ's example, the pope taught the crowd to take on Christ's example of mercy and attention for other people. The story of the miracle of the loaves and pieces of fish then meant an invitation for Christians to serve or to "feed the people and keep them united."

"We believers who receive this bread are compelled by Jesus to bring this service to others with the same compassion of Jesus. This is the path," said the pope.

A world-renowned Italian master chef, who owns Osteria Francescana in Modena, recently proclaimed as the best restaurant in the world, said Pope Francis renewed his Christian faith and inspired him to feed the homeless and the poor as the pope famously uttered "Buon pranzo!" ("Good lunch!").

"Introducing himself with those words reminds everyone to start each day with humility, and humility is the most important thing," Massimo Bottura told The New York Times "because from there others are going to follow you."

Bottura ventured on a project last year on which he restored a run-down theater into Refettorio Ambrosiano, where he transformed food waste from last summer's Expo Milano into feasts for the refugees and working poor in Milan's Greco neighborhood.

The highly acclaimed restaurateur repeated his project with a gourmet soup kitchen in Rio de Janeiro, RefettoRio Gastromotiva, where Bottura served three-course meals to the homeless using the food waste and surplus from the Olympic village.
home World Pope Francis: 'Shameful silence' perpetuates attacks on Congolese people

Pope Francis lamented the recent and one of the worst massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), whose people suffered the indifference of the world.

The Pope brought attention to a highly neglected part of the world during his Angelus for the feast of the Assumption on Monday and condemned the massacre of at least 36 Christians on the night of Aug. 13.

"My thoughts go to the people of North Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have been recently hit with fresh massacres, which have for some time been perpetrated in shameful silence, without attracting even as much as our attention. Unfortunately, they are part of the too many innocent people who have no weight on world opinion," said the pontiff, as reported by the Catholic Herald.

According to World Watch Monitor, a rising yet-unknown militia group might be responsible for the massacre which is considered to be the deadliest since the sectarian attack in November 2014. This new rebel group tied up their victims and hacked them to death.

Congo's military suspected the jihadist group Allied Democratic Forces-National Association for the Liberation of Uganda (ADF-NALU) for retaliating the recent military operations in the area. Also known as Muslim Defense International (MDI), the infamous militia started in Uganda 20 years ago and infiltrated Congo after being pushed back by the Uganda government.

ADF massacred more than 500 civilians in Congo since 2014. The country is home to a predominantly Christian population.

They're also believed to be behind the killings of nine Christians last month.

"We do not understand why this is happening to us," a local pastor named Jean told an aid worker for Open Doors International (ODI).

The local pastor added that the rebels take the people into the bush in order to kill or kidnap them.

"They attack one place for a while and cause people to run away. Then they strike the places people run to," he said.
home Entertainment Miracle witnessed on Ben Hur movie set during filming, testifies actor Toby Kebbell

Accidents are not new to any action film and the past two versions of "Ben-Hur" were not spared. 10 lives were lost during the 1925 filming and one died in the 1959 remake. Actor Toby Kebbell said a miracle happened that prevented a similar death in the 2016 film.

"Ben-Hur" is about the life of Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston), a first century Jewish prince, who was betrayed by his brother Messala (Toby Kebbell), a Roman officer in the army. Ben-Hur was sent to toil in slavery but returned after being trained as a charioteer by Ilderim (Morgan Freeman) to win a deadly race against his brother and exact his revenge. Throughout Ben-Hur's journey, he came across Jesus Christ, whose life and example greatly influenced Ben-Hur's choices in the end.

In all three versions of the film, the highlight was the deadly race between Ben-Hur and Messala. According to the The Christian Post, filming for the epic scene of this latest offering lasted three months. It was during this time that a miracle happened.

"I'm not sure that the studio would be happy about it but a stuntman was thrown. Four horses carrying a chariot leapt clean over the fallen stuntman," the 34-year-old Kebbell said to The Christian Post.

He explained that while filming, the chariot rig became unbalanced and the stuntman was hurled. "That threw him clean off," Kebbell said. "He falls onto the track and all four horses jump and he is left clean," he added.

Kebbell believed that divine intervention prevented a disaster. He described the incident as a "miracle."

In a separate report from The Christian Post, actress Nazanin Boniadi, who plays Esther, the love of Judah Ben-Hur's life, said that the overarching theme of the film is forgiveness. She shared that it is a very timely message with the events happening in America right now.

Boniadi said, "It's not something that is new but I think the way that the story is told, it is also highly entertaining so it's not pounding anyone over the head with a message. We all know in our hearts that forgiveness is the right thing, it's just a matter of being inspired to reach that place. I can't wait for young people to go out there and watch it."
home World U.S. State Dept. admits payment of $400 million to Iran during release of Pastor Saeed Abedini and other prisoners

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted on Thursday that the U.S. government released $400 million in cash to Iran for the release of four American prisoners including Pastor Saeed Abedini. Kirby said that they delayed releasing the money for several hours for leverage to make sure that the U.S. citizens were released the same day.

At a press conference held on Aug. 4, U.S. President Barack Obama denied paying ransom for the hostages. "We do not pay ransom. We didn't here, and we won't in the future," he declared at the conference. The State Department's announcement came after a report by the Wall Street Journal on Aug. 3 revealed that the Justice Department objected to the cash payment as the four Americans were released.

In another report from the Wall Street Journal, U.S. officials revealed that the Iranian government was demanding the return of the $400 million that was deposited by the Shah into a Pentagon trust fund in 1979 to buy U.S. fighter jets. Lawmakers believe that the payment could be used to fund Iran's allies which includes Assad's regime and Hezbollah.

Senator Tom Cotton is concerned that payment sends a dangerous message to terrorists around the world. "It doesn't really matter though what President Obama says. It matters what the Iranians think and it matters what dictators and terrorists and gangsters all around the world think. And they clearly think that this was a ransom payment ... That's why it's so dangerous," Cotton told Fox News.

The United States had been negotiating with Iran since November 2014 before the prisoners were released. The four released prisoners a Abedini, Washington Post Tehran Bureau Chief Jason Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati and businessman Nosratollah Khosrawi-Roodsari a were all born in Iran and held dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship.

While he was still in prison, Abedini wrote a public letter revealing that he was psychologically and physically tortured. Abedini's wife, Naghmeh, worked relentlessly for his release. However, Abedini revealed in an April interview with Christianity Today that his wife had filed for legal separation and a restraining order against him.
The air cargo markets deceleration this year had a greater impact on third-quarter cargo revenues at American Airlines than its primary rivals, Delta and United Airlines. But the best revenue quarter in company history and a $483 million profit painted a positive financial picture that could be replicated in the final quarter thanks to resilient []
Atheists file lawsuit against cross in Pennsylvania county seal and flag

Four residents and a group of atheists have filed a lawsuit over a cross depicted in the seal and flag of a county in Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

The lawsuit was filed on Aug. 16 before the U.S. District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania against Lehigh County, claiming that the cross violated the Establishment Clause.

In March last year, Lehigh County commissioners unanimously voted to oppose the removal of the cross from the seal and flag after the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) sent a letter.

"It is the position of Lehigh County that the presence of the cross on the seal among all the other items of historical significance has the secular purpose of recognizing the history of the county," the letter stated, according to Lehigh Valley Live.

FFRF is the plaintiff in the lawsuit along with Lehigh residents Stephen Meholic, David Simpson, John Berry and Candace Winkler

They are asking the court to rule that the cross on the seal and flag violate the U.S. Constitution and issue a permanent injunction against the county.

"It is well settled law that government entities may not include religious images on their official seals," said the foundation's staff attorney, Patrick Elliott, via email. "Lehigh County is a pluralistic community that includes persons of minority faiths and of no religion. We look forward to the county redesigning the seal to come into compliance with the First Amendment."

FFRF sent letters to the county in November 2014 and January last year about the cross.

The Board of Commissioners, in its reply, told FRFF that "the cross, one of more than a dozen elements, was included to honor the original settlers of Lehigh County, who were Christian."

In 1944, the board adopted the imagery that appears on the seal.

The plaintiffs said that "Lehigh County had a religious purpose, rather than a secular purpose, in adopting a seal and flag that prominently feature a Latin cross."

They said the cross "has the primary effect of both advancing religion and expressing Defendant's preference for Christianity above all other religions and nonreligion."
Bishops were urged not to apologise fully for child sex abuse to minimise liability risk

Bishops in the Church of England were instructed to give partial apologies to victims of clergy child sex abuse to help minimise the cost of being sued, it has been disclosed.

Confidential legal advice to bishops seen by The Telegraph said the furthest the bishops should go was to "express regret". It warns bishops to be careful before meeting victims, and not to do so without first talking to a lawyer.

It warns of the "unintended effect of accepting legal liability" for sex abuse and the danger of "inadvertently" conceding guilt.

The advice, issued in 2007 and replaced last year, indicates that any apology to a victim of clergy sex abuse should be drafted in a way that would avoid making the Church liable for compensation.

The latest revelation comes after a review earlier this year found at least three clergy, subsequently made bishops in the Church of England, failed to act over "credible" claims of sadistic sexual abuse disclosed repeatedly by a survivor over 40 years. The office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was criticised for failing to make a meaningful response as the survivor, "Joe", tried repeatedly through 2015 to get some action taken against his abuser.

The report mentioned how the Church's then head of safeguarding cut contact with Joe on advice from insurers after he began legal action and Lambeth Palace brushed off around 17 requests for a meeting with the Archbishop.

Joe told the Telegraph that the legal advice exposed the prevailing culture.

"The approach to survivors is often a corporate model and this document supports that - it shows a church led by lawyers and insurers, you get the impression that these people are really their masters. A diocese is deferential to their bishop and the bishop is deferential to a bunch of lawyers," he said.

"The Church will say 'our hands are tied' but they are paying the people who are tying their hands. They should say we need to stop this nonsense but they wash their hands like Pontius Pilate."

A Church of England spokesman said: "The Church of England published new guidance in 2015 emphasising that: 'The pastoral response to alleged victims and survivors is of top priority, and needs to be separated as far as possible from the management processes for the situation, and from legal and insurance responses.'

"That superseded all previous advice and ensures that the pastoral needs of survivors must never be neglected and pastoral contact can continue whatever legal issues exist."
Charity Commission investigates ministry of 'olive oil cure' pastor Gilbert Deya

The Charity Commission has launched an inquiry into Gilbert Deya Ministries, the Peckham-based church and charity whose founder Gilbert Deya won notoriety over his claim to be able to cure cancer through "anointed" olive oil.

In a statement, the Charity Commission said it had "concerns regarding the safeguarding policies, practices and procedures at the charity which arose following the arrest of one of its trustees in 2014".

It said it had been trying to address concerns with the trustees but that they had failed to report "serious incidents" to the commission and to answer its questions adequately.

The statement said: "The regulator also has concerns that the charity may have been selling olive oil to which it attributed healing qualities. The regulator is concerned that such activity may be in breach of relevant regulations and law."

Deya, who uses the title of Archbishop, was arrested and tried for sexual assault charges in 2014 but was acquitted.

He was exposed by The Sun newspaper in January as selling olive oil from Aldi at inflated prices as a cure for cancer and infertility.

Deya has been in a battle to avoid extradition to Kenya for the last 10 years, where he is accused of having been involved in a baby-smuggling operation centred on a Nairobi slum hospital. He says he faces torture if he is sent back to Kenya.

Gilbert Deya Ministries has been asked to comment on this story.
Christian Arab man killed by alleged Muslim hater gets 'important' funeral

Christian man Khalid Jabara, a 37-year-old Lebanese-American, was killed earlier this month in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.A. by a man who might have mistaken him for a Muslim. His fellow faithful in his Church were determined to remember him as a firm believer in God's teachings as they bid him final farewell.

The Huffington Post reported that hundreds attended Jabara's funeral, where they were told "to never forget God  no matter what."

According to a separate report by Religion News, Rev. George Eber of St. Antony Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church, where Jabara belonged, said the slain member of his flock was remembered in a traditional Christian funeral.

The funeral, which featured chanting and Holy Scripture readings, both celebrated Jabara's life and answered essential questions that may be in the minds of other faithful in the Church.

"The funeral is important," Rev. Eber said, "to address, 'Where was God?' and 'Where does evil come from?'"

While Jabara's death may have attracted attention in the political front because of it being described as an alleged hate crime, the priest said the Christian funeral was apolitical.

"We will avoid all politics," Eber maintained. "We will keep demonstrators off of our property."

He added that off-duty police officers were hired by the congregation to keep away the protesters and to make the Christian funeral for Jabara as solemn as possible.

Rev. Eber also expressed hopes that Jabara's death would raise awareness on the significant minority of Arabs in the Middle East, the U.S. and elsewhere who are Orthodox Christians.

Prosecutors identified the key suspect in Jabara's death as Stanley Vernon Majors, a man who is already facing charges for attempting to run over the Christian man's mother with a car last year  just one of the many instances of harassment on Jabara and his family allegedly perpetrated by the suspect.

The suspect was earlier reported to have taunted his neighbours by calling them "Aye-rab" and "Mooslem," as well as other racially and religiously charged terms.
Could Tutu's daughter return to ministry after Church same-sex vote?

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) is to debate a proposal allowing clergy in same-sex civil unions to minister in its parishes  and Archbishop Desmond Tutu's daughter Rev Mpho Tutu-Van Furth has said she would be glad to return to Anglican ministry if the Church's rules permitted her to do so.

Tutu-Van Furth resigned her licence to minister when she married her partner Marceline last year. However, next month ACSA is to debate a motion proposed by the Diocese of Saldanha Bay that would extend the role of LGBTI people in the Church.

Announcing the proposal, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town said: "This proposal affirms the assurance already given by our bishops that church members who identify as LGBTI are loved by God and share in full membership of our Church as baptised members of the Body of Christ.

"More controversially, the motion also proposes that clergy who identify as LGBTI and are in legal same-sex civil unions should be licensed to minister in our parishes.

"It also suggests that 'prayers of blessing' should be able to be offered for those in same-sex civil unions. However, it specifically rules out the possibility of marriage under church law.

"It also accepts that any cleric unwilling to take part in providing pastoral care to people who identify as LGBTI shall not be obliged to do so."

If the proposal is passed it may not affect Tutu-Van Furth as she is married rather than in a civil partnership. However, she told the Independent Online: "If licensed [as a minister] I will be delighted to serve again."

She added she welcomed the open conversation the motion has invited.

"There are many people in South Africa who are challenged to choose between their God-given priestly vocation and their God-given love relationship. The choice is a torment that no one should ever have to endure."

She said of the Synod proposal: "This motion brings us closer to the end of the discrimination perpetrated by the church and the prejudice, stigma and violence it has engendered. It brings into the open a conversation that has been characterised by sly jokes, harmful rumour and innuendo. We can only change what we dare to address. My hope is that this conversation leads us to open conversations about human sexuality; an honest assessment of the harm the current stance has done to God's people; and a commitment to fight homophobia with the same energy with which we fought racism."

The issue of same-sex marriage has bitterly divided the Anglican Communion, with conservatives adamant that it is not possible to compromise on what they see as a question of faithfulness to Scripture.
Former Catholic priest on the run for five years arrested over sex abuse

A former Catholic priest accused of abusing five boys in the 1970s and 1980s has been returned to the UK and arrested after skipping bail in 2011.

Father Laurence Soper, 72, was arrested on suspicion of nine charges including indecent assault, gross indecency and buggery.

He was arrested in Kosovo in May under a European Arrest Warrant but a Kosovan judge blocked his return to the UK because Soper's alleged crimes had occurred too long ago.

However, UK police announced on Sunday that the priest had been arrested at Luton Airport "on suspicion of nine offences of sexual assault committed over a period from 1972 to 1986".

Soper allegedly committed the offences at St Benedict's School in Ealing, west London, where he was a teacher. He went on to become abbot of Ealing Abbey and then treasurer of a Catholic order in Rome.

He was first arrested in 2010 when a man in his 40s came forward with an allegation of sexual assault at the school, which was also attended by actor Andy Serkis and comedian Julian Clary. Soper was bailed but did not return to a London police station in March 2011.

He has since reportedly been living in the city of Pec in Kosovo, where local news reports say he assumed the name Andrew.

A Pec resident told Kosovan news outlet Insajderi: "'He lived in a house of a friend of mine. I have spoken and met with him several times. He said he was writing a book."

Soper will appear at Ealing Magistrates' Court today.
Gay clergy to appeal to Anglican bishops for 'full equality in the Church'

A Church of England clergyman who married his gay partner is to publish an open letter signed by at least 12 married clergy couples calling on bishops to relax the rules against gay marriage.

The Rev Andrew Foreshew-Cain, who married his partner Stephen last year and who was also elected to the General Synod, the Church's governing body, on a liberal pro-gay ticket, is still finalising the text of the letter which he hopes will ultimately help the Church move towards full equality for LGBT people.

He told Christian Today that about half the signatories are happy to be named because they have already gone public about their marriages. There will be a second category of "anonymous" signatories from gay clergy who might have told their bishops they are married but whose bishops are keeping this information private.

He also said that there are believed to be many more clergy who have converted civil partnerships to gay marriages.

The Church's leaders have stated that gay clergy should not marry.

Foreshew-Cain is drawing up the letter in response to two years of "shared conversations" in the Church, where groups have been meeting from across dioceses to discuss the issue and how to resolve the Church's deep divisions. The bishops are expected to publish a document suggesting ways forward after their meeting later this autumn.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is also expected to call another primates' meeting next year to follow-up on the meeting at Canterbury earlier this year when "consequences" were imposed on The Episcopal Church in the US for moving forward on gay marriage.

Foreshew-Cain told Christian Today: "We want to support the bishops in coming up with a proposal that will move the Church on in its response to gay and lesbian people and their marriages. Clearly the Church needs to respond. There is a wide consensus that the Church cannot continue its current behaviour towards the gay and lesbian community. I would suggest that most of the Church's attitude about homosexuality is ill-informed, cruel and hypocritical. I would suggest that the bishops themselves know it needs to change.

"Long term, the goal is full equality in the Church. At the moment, we recognise some people find that difficult. We would look for a more mixed economy so that parishes that wish to honour and celebrate gay and lesbian marriages can continue to do so."
If India's Prime Minister Modi wants economic reform, he must first address the Dalit plight

For more than a month now the swell of the Dalit (sometimes called "untouchables") uprising has grown across India. Riots stir main streets and town centers, protesters clash with police, and a war of words has begun. India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is locked in everyone's bull's eye.

"What right do these gau rakshaks [cow protectors] have to treat the Dalits and poor in this manner? If they want they can shoot me, but please don't target my Dalit brothers," said Modi on August 8, referring to an incident in July where four Dalits were publicly beaten for skinning a cow.

Following his remarks, several Hindu right-wing groups, who represent the so-called 'cow vigilantes', threatened Modi, saying he would pay a price for his remarks in the next general election. This threat comes as a personal blow to the Prime Minister, whose political roots reach all the way into these groups.

Yet he is not only under fire from the groups he spoke against.

The Dalits who are revolting across India are also attacking Modi because they see his statements as weak and coming too late. They are seeking a much deeper reform that consists of more than words. They want land  which is their right under government provisions  so they can seek alternate professions and employment and leave the degrading jobs of discarding animal carcasses and cleaning sewers.

So what will Modi do as he is attacked on both sides?

He must stand by his statements and implement the laws that penalise the discrimination of Dalits. I also believe he needs to remain true to his vision of an India for all, not just for one religious community. With full respect to all those who want to worship the cow, the Prime Minister must be able to defend the hundreds of millions who hold another faith view.

Modi's ascension to power in 2014 was a historic and revolutionary event. He used social media and even holographic projections to appeal to India's youth, and he became one of the world's most followed leaders on Twitter. In the end, he won the vote of right-wing Hindus, progressive Muslims, Dalits, Christians, and Sikhs because he promised to bring massive economic development and tackle corruption. His victory upturned the political majority ruling the Indian parliament.

If one thing was clear about Modi's election it is this: both India's tech-savvy youth and the traditional forbearers of the nation were ready for change.

Today, we are all still hoping for that change. But it's clear that India needs social reform before achieving the economic prosperity Modi has worked to achieve.

The late Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore, spoke about this in his book One Man's View of the World: "It is with sadness that I make these observations about India... India is trapped by the almost unchangeable realities of its internal composition and the persistent grip of the caste system."

Modi needs to grasp this fundamental fact from Yew's comment: economic development goes hand in hand with social development. In fact, social equality and religious freedom breed economic empowerment and growth.

If Modi is concerned that taking a definite stand on the Dalit issue will have a negative effect in the next elections, he mustn't be.

He will find that the majority of India will continue to support him electorally if he fights for freedom and equality. India knows it cannot be divided anymore and that development is the key to her livelihood and future. As India's Nobel laureate, professor Amartya Sen, recently said: "Caste is anti-national because it divides the nation. We want to be national, not anti-national, for which it is important to eliminate all divisions."

The dam of the caste system has finally cracked. This is the time for our nation to be reborn as the world leader she was truly intended to be.

Dr. Joseph D'Souza is the Moderating Bishop of the Good Shepherd Church and Associated Ministries of India. He also serves as the President of the All India Christian Council and is the founder and International President of the Dalit Freedom Network.
Islamist extremists in prisons to be contained in separate units

Muslim extremists who "present a particular and enduring risk to national security" in prison are to be contained in special units and put through "deradicalisation" programmes.

A Government review into Islamist extremism in Britain's prisons recommends that a subersive "subset" of extremists in the nation's prisons is removed from the general prison population and held separately. Currently, they are dispersed widely through the general prison population.

Justice secretary Liz Truss also announced that extremist books are to be stripped from prison libraries and prison chaplains are to be vetted more effectively.

The report also recommends an independent advisor on counter-terrorism in prisons be appointed and that all incidents of extremism and violent threats to prison staff are recorded, along with tougher penalties for those responsible.

Prison staff are to be trained in how to tell the difference between religious and cultural traditions. There is to be greater focus on the "safe management" of Friday prayers, with sanctions for abuse or misuse of all acts of worship.

The review was led by Ian Acheson, a Home Office official who was previously a prison governor.

The full report, finished in March, remains classified because of the contents, but the summary published today shows clearly the severity of the threat presented by Islamist extremism in prisons.

"Islamist ideology can present itself in prisons as a struggle for power and dominance in which perceived weaknesses are exploited by a gang culture which threatens or undermines legitimate authority and security," the report says.

Acheson found evidence of a "growing problem" within prisons.

Some prisoners "aspire to acts of extreme violence", the report says.

In addition, both Muslim and non-Muslim prisoners serving sentences for crimes unrelated to terrorism are nevertheless "vulnerable to radicalisation by Islamist Extremists", it says, warning that the number of prisoners guilty of offences relating to terrorism and extremism is likely to increase.

The report cites the reported figures of at least 800 Britons who have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight, while others have travelled to Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen.

"A significant number of these have returned to the UK, of whom a portion will enter the criminal justice system." This will have "knock-on consequences" for radicalisation in prisons.

Among the tactics used by the extremists are "aggressive" attempts to persuade others to convert to Islam, attempts to prevent staff searches by claiming dress is religious, extremist books in chaplaincy libraries and exploitation of staff fearful of being labelled racist

There are currently around 69 full time, 65 part-time and 110 other Muslim prison chaplains. About two-thirds are from the conservative Deobandi grouping.
London Muslims go to church in solidarity with Christians: 'We will not let hatred win'

Leading members of Britain's Muslim community have attended a London church service to show solidarity with their Christian neighbours.

The Muslim men and women joined the congregation of St John on Bethnal Green for Sunday eucharist yesterday to demonstrate friendship and community in the wake of the brutal murder of Father Jacques Hamel in France.

The London diocese said the service was organised by Faith Matters, an integration campaign group, and the Rector of St John's, the Rev Alan Green, "to confirm the importance of life within both faiths and to come together in the spirit of solidarity, empathy and care for the dignity and lives of each other."

Among the Muslim guests were Dr Mamadou Bocoum, an imam, a lecturer in Islamic Studies and board member of the Muslim Law Council, Rabina Khan, a Tower Hamlets councillor, and Mohammed Amin, the first Muslim to become a partner with accountants Price Waterhouse in the UK.

St John's has a long history of interfaith work in east London.

Father Green, chair of Tower Hamlets Interfaith Forum, said: "Joining together today with respect for both Christianity and Islam, we encourage all  with or without a religious faith  to respond to violent provocation by actively proclaiming our values of hospitality, openness and freedom by our words and actions. We must not allow terrorists and criminals to undermine those values nor our commitment to them."

Fiyaz Mughal of Faith Matters said: "It is essential that communities come together at times of national and international crisis. Muslims and Christians standing together at mass in France to commemorate those who have been targeted for their faith like Father Jacques, mean that we must make the effort to reach out. British Muslims today stand in solidarity at St John's with their Christian brothers and sisters and the messages is clear, we will not let hatred win."

Worshipper Debbie Frame said: "Our differences are not something to ignore but neither should they be feared. We are happy and willing to celebrate together, to learn about and from each other, and we will continue to live and work together today in this community as we did yesterday, and will do tomorrow."

Mohammed Amin, who attended the service, said: "I was away from the UK visiting my son in America when Father Jacques Hamel was murdered by two young French Muslims. I believe that when faced by such barbarism all people of goodwill need to stand together. Today was my first chance to show my solidarity by attending a church service.

As a Muslim, I am outraged by the way bloodthirsty savages like the people in ISIS have hijacked my religion, and used it to justify hate and murder. All Muslims have a duty to resist them."
President of Ireland calls for 'outrages' against Protestants to be remembered

The President of Ireland has called on the population to remember the "outrages" perpetrated on Protestants during the long fight for independence, and the "ruthlessness" of many executions performed by the IRA.

In a speech yesterday Michael Higgins recalled the "embittered sectarian violence" and how some Protestants were attacked regardless of their actual attitude towards the struggles underway.

"It is also important to recognise that the cover of the civil war was used by some for the settling of vendettas, some local, some ancient, some based on land hunger and greed," he said.

Higgins was delivering the annual Beal na mBlath tribute to the Irish republican leader Michael Collins in an oration published in full on his website.

He was speaking at the invitation of the Collins family and the commemoration committee.

This year's event was particularly significant because this year is the centenary of the Easter Rising, the pivotal six-day armed rebellion against British rule in 1916. Higgins described the rising as the "foundational event" in Ireland's struggle for independence.

Higgins said: "In this year of 2016 it is important to recognise that while a great deal had been achieved in Ireland before 1916, particularly in relation to land tenure, through the parliamentary process driven by the Irish Parliamentary Party, the independence we have today was achieved through a War of Independence that was conducted across Ireland".

Describing Collins' early adulthood when he left his home in Ireland to work as a junior civil servant in London, Higgins said this was "a London that regarded his people as inferior, his Irish culture as worthless, and his language as an object for replacement by erosion or coercion. It was not as an equal citizen he stood in London."

It was in England that Collins became a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and became convinced of the need to capitalise on the weakness of the British Empire and make a strike for freedom as British soldiers were engaged in fighting World War One.

After the Easter Rising, Collins and 1,800 other Irish men were interned in North Wales where he formed his concept of a guerrilla campaign against British rule.

Higgins said: "The memory of Michael Collins will forever be enmeshed with that of the tragic and bloody Civil War which raged on this island throughout the years 1922-1923.

"This was a dreadful human tragedy for so many Irish families. And while we should never underestimate the challenge that it was to build the foundations of a stable democratic state in the midst of turmoil and in the shadow of a great power, we must never forget what a terrible price was paid in divided families and divided communities, leaving a legacy that was felt for generations.

"When the time comes, very soon, to commemorate those events of the early 1920s, we will need to display courage and honesty as we seek to speak the truth of the period, and in recognising that, during the War of Independence, and particularly during the Civil War, no single side had the monopoly of either atrocity or virtue.

"We will remember from the earlier War of Independence and the response to it, the devastation spread throughout the land by the Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans. The arbitrary killings, the ruthless raids on civilians' homes, the torturing of prisoners, the looting of shops, the burning down of creameries and farmhouses."
Salvation Army reports massive growth in victims of modern slavery

The number of modern slavery victims is growing exponentially in the UK, with a four-fold increase in four years of people needing help, according to a new report.

The Salvation Army, which is the official support agency for victims of modern slavery, reports today that in the last four years, it has helped nearly 4,500 victims of modern slavery.

The report records that 1,331 people entered the care of the Salvation Army between April 2015 and March 2016. This contrasts sharply with the first year that the Salvation Army offered this service in 2011, when it helped 378 people.

Victims are often found working in car washes, nail bars and working on farms. They are forced to pave driveways, work as nannies and often face sexual exploitation.

Of those helped, nearly two-thirds were women. Six were transgender.

More than four in ten of those helped were victims of sexual exploitation. A slightly smaller number of people were exploited for labour. More than one in ten were forced into domestic servitude.

The largest number of victims were from Albania. Many people were also trafficked for exploitation from Poland, Nigeria and Vietnam. Many British people were trafficked within the UK.

Anne Read, director of anti-trafficking and modern slavery for The Salvation Army said: "The Salvation Army's commitment to fight the scourge of slavery and human trafficking is as strong today as it was more than 150 years ago when our work started in the East End of London. The fight against slavery continues today in each of the 127 countries in which we work as the need and resources allow.

"In the past year in the UK, demand for support for victims of modern slavery has continued to increase. Through the modern slavery victimc care and coordination contract, we and our partner organisations have adapted our service to support the ever-growing number of people being referred to The Salvation Army from England and Wales.

"To combat modern slavery will require a continuing concerted effort from across society. We need people to keep their eyes and ears open to suspicious activity they encounter in everyday life such as the nailbar or the car wash with unbelievably cheap prices. Everyone from official agencies, frontline workers, Government, NGOs and, importantly, the general public has a part to play in defeating the perpetrators of these crimes and securing the safety and the best outcome for people currently trapped in slave-like conditions  unable to escape and forced to do things against their will."
The Story of Christ: Feature film shot in virtual reality to be released this Christmas

A new film about the life of Christ is being released as the world's first feature-length virtual reality movie.

A 40-minute preview of the film, which uses the latest technologies such as 360 degree footage, which gives the viewer the illusion of being in the movie, is to be screened at the Venice Film Festival early next month.

Producers Autumn VR, who are making the film with the virtual reality production company VRWERX, say in a press release that Jesus VR  The Story of Christ is to be released this Christmas.

The 90-minute film will be available on platforms including Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR.

The executive producer is Enzo Sisti, whose credits include Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The film's religious adviser is Father William Fulco, who worked with Sisti on the Gibson film.

The film has already been shot on location in Matera, Italy, in 360-degree 4K video.

"Producers promise a you-are-there VR experience for the entirety of Jesus's life and death, from his baptism to the Sermon on the Mount, and from the Last Supper to his crucifixion," says the press release.

Director and producer David Hansen said: "The viewers truly feel they are there with Jesus and his disciples. This is the most powerful story of all time and virtual reality is the perfect way to tell it."

Sisti said: "I am beyond thrilled to be a part of this groundbreaking project. It's as exciting a take on the story of Christ as I've ever seen and its production values will absolutely set a new benchmark for virtual reality."

Jesus is played by Tim Fellingham with Mish Boyko as Peter, Christian Serritiello as Andrew, Rhys Howells as Judas and Matteo Carlomagno as John. The script is by Andre van Heerden.

The screening will be held in a new VR Theatre at Venice's Casino, which will be equipped with 50 VR headsets for individual viewing on seats that pivot 360.
Is the Texas power grid ready for winter? Federal report says no.

An analysis by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission indicates that the grid would not hold up well under extreme winter weather conditions.
Marriott Marquis Houston

Among U.S. cities, the Houston area has the most hotel projects scheduled to start construction next year with 87 total projects totaling 9,770 rooms, according to Lodging Econometrics, a hotel industry consulting partner.

The InterContinental Hotels Group is set to expand the most among Houstons brands, with 29 scheduled projects. Marriott International and Hilton Worldwide are tied for second with 16 projects each slated to begin work.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., the parent company of the Circle K chain of gas stations, has agreed to buy San Antonio-based convenience store operator CST Brands for about $4.4 billion in an all-cash transaction.

Investors will receive $48.53 a share for CST  a price that is 42 percent higher than CSTs closing price on March 3, shortly before the company announced it was considering a sale, Couche-Tard said Monday. Couche-Tard also agreed to assume all of CSTs debt.

The $48.53 offering price also is 3 percent above CSTs closing price as of last Monday, hours before the Wall Street Journal reported that Couche-Tard was the likely winning bidder for the San Antonio company.

The boards of both companies unanimously agreed to the sale. Couche-Tard plans to rebrand CSTs stores under the Circle K logo and to establish a business unit in San Antonio with shared service operations after the acquisition closes.

CSTs stock-price reaction in light of the news was somewhat unusual. Instead of rising toward Couche-Tards offer price as expected, CST dropped slightly Monday, closing at $47.45 a share. And in another curiosity, Couche-Tards shares soared by more then 7 percent.

The bid falls well short of what many analysts were expecting. Just last week, with a deal looking imminent, Wells Fargo said any takeout offer would at least be above $50 a share, with the potential for bids as high as $56. When activist investor Engine Capital first started publicly pushing for a sale back in December, it estimated a price tag of between $50 and $55 based on recent industry transactions.

CST shareholders are still making out pretty well in this deal, considering the run up in shares since CST announced it was exploring a sale. Couche-Tard is topping the stocks highest stand-alone price since its 2013 spinoff from Valero and paying a 26 percent premium to analysts average price target before the sale speculation picked up in the spring.

The merger constitutes a significant coup for Couche-Tard in its bid to become the dominant convenience store operator in North America. CST Brands operates 2,019 stores in the United States and Canada, a network attained by the San Antonios aggressive acquisitions strategy since it spun from Valero Energy Corp. in 2013  though the approach saddled the company with billions in debt. The acquisition brings Couche-Tards North American convenience store network to 10,180 stores.

Executives for both companies view the sale as a major in-road for Couche-Tard to establish a larger footprint for its Circle K chain in the Southeast, especially in Texas where CST runs 648 stores.

Its a great fit geographically, Couche-Tard CEO Brian Hannasch said on a conference call with reporters Monday. Our strength is in the U.S. Southeast, the West Coast and the Midwest. Texas is one of the fastest growth markets in the U.S.

CST Brands CEO and president Kim Lubel echoed Hannasch, This really gives us a nice scale for Circle K in Texas and fits almost like a jigsaw puzzle when you layer the two together, on the U.S. footprint in particular.

As part of the merger, Couche-Tard will sell off some of CSTs Canadian operations to Parkland Fuel Corp. for $750 million after the merger is complete. Couche-Tard expects to finance it with its available cash and new and existing loans.

Couche-Tard believes the purchase will boost its earnings per share by up to 50 cents and yield up to $200 million in pretax cost savings within three years, according to a presentation on its website.

Its unclear how exactly CSTs corporate presence in San Antonio and executive team will be affected by the sale. The San Antonio-based company, which operates the Corner Store brand of convenience stores, currently leases about 83,000 square feet of office space at 100 Valero Way , for its corporate headquarters. CST plans to move into its new 559,258-square-foot headquarters at 19500 Bulverde Road, which it paid $43 million to acquire in 2014, within the next three weeks, Lubel said.

The agreement from Couche-Tard to open up their Circle K division with a shared service center will give our employees opportunities as we move to our new campus as well, Lubel said.

A CST spokesperson did not immediately respond to follow-up requests for comment.

CST sought the sale after two activist investors  Engine Capital LP in New York and Houston-based JCP Investment Management  muscled their way onto the board in March and pushed the company to seek strategic alternatives to boost its stockholder value.

The merger is expected to close in early 2017, according to the release. It is subject to the approval of CSTs shareholders and regulators in the U.S. and Canada.

CST had been on a shopping spree since its spinoff, issuing new debt to finance its ambitious growth plans. The convenience store operator acquired $300 million of fresh debt with the February purchase of Flash Foods, a Georgia-based convenience store chain with 165 stores. That month, a CST subsidiary snatched up Wisconsin-based Erickson Oil Products and its 64 stores in the upper Midwest. Last year, CST bought New York-based Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppess 77 stores and CrossAmerica Partners bought 22 convenience stores in San Antonio and Austin from Houston-based Landmark Industries in early 2015.

That strategy weighed down CSTs stock and prompted S&P Global Ratings to warn the company earlier this year of a possible downgrade in its credit rating. S&P revised its CreditWatch implications to positive from developing on news of the sale.

The purchase of CST is Couche-Tards largest acquisition to date, surpassing the Canadian companys $2.8 billion purchase of Norway-based Statoil Fuel & Retail in 2012. Couche-Tard added more than 1,500 stores to its U.S. network in March 2014 when it bought The Pantry, a North Carolina-based convenience store chain, for $1.7 billion.

In recent months, CST had been reshaping itself to emphasize sales of groceries and fresh food over fuel through its Corner Store Market concept, a move intended to insulate the company from volatility in the oil and gas industry and declining cigarette sales.

CSTs gross profit from sales of merchandise and services in the U.S. and Canada jumped 24 percent to $182 million during the second quarter, compared to $147 million during the same period in 2015. Gross profit for fuel sales, including sales made by CSTs subsidiary CrossAmerica Partners LP, rose to $134 million during the second quarter  or 14 percent more than the $118 million last year.

Bloomberg News contributed to this article.

jfechter@express-news.net

Twitter: @JFreports
Police are searching for a man who brought a little girl to an attempted burglary last month at a perfume store in southeast Houston.

The incident happened about 9 p.m. July 25 at 9889 Harwin near South Gessner, according to the Houston Police Department.
Police and school officials remind drivers to be aware of students walking along roadways and crossing streets Monday, the first day of classes for Houston Independent School District and other districts in the Houston area.

Motorists are reminded they are not to talk or text on cellular phones when in school zones, said Henry Lara, an officer with the Houston Police Department.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Houston denounced a Sunday protest held by the White Lives Matter group.

Dr. James Douglas, president of the NAACP Houston Branch, told media Monday that they respect the White Lives Matter's right to protest but do disagree with the group's message.

READ MORE: White Lives Matter group protests outside NAACP in Houston's Third Ward

"And while we support their right to express themselves, we adamantly disagree with their position, which is based on white privilege and lack of information that is totally flawed," Douglas said in front of the NAACP's Houston headquarters. "Under the auspice of protecting their Southern heritage they were flanked by Confederate flags and semi-automatic assault weapons at a time where our country is trying to heal from gun violence."

On Sunday, White Lives Matter members protested in front of the NAACP's Houston headquarters at 2002 Wheeler with Confederate flags and firearms. White Lives Matter member Ken Reed told the Chronicle that the Confederate flag represents Southern heritage and was not meant to be seen as racist.

Ken Reed said protesters believe the NAACP should denounce Black Lives Matter and other pro-black organizations. According to Reed, Black Lives Matter caused "the attack and killing of white police officers, the burning down of cities and things of that nature."

READ MORE: Black Lives Mater Houston: We don't condone violence

U.S. Rep. Al Green cited slavery, lawful segregation and ongoing discrimination as reasons to support Black Lives Matter.

"There has never been a question about white lives," Green said. "We don't always support all of the things that happen in these movements but we do support the notion that black lives matter... we want that taken to the four corners of the Earth."

Ashton P. Woods, an activist with Black Lives Matter in Houston, said the White Lives Matter protesters have misinterpreted his movement.

READ MORE: UH Student body VP under fire for 'All Lives Matter' gets punished by peers

"Black Lives Matter is not just about police brutality, it is an affirmation for those who look like me, who are black and brown. An affirmation that we matter to each other," Ashton said. "It's not about going to white supremacists and telling them to accept and respect us. It's about us teaching ourselves that we matter to each other."

Douglas said the Houston Police Department contacted him Saturday and told him about the White Lives Matter demonstration. The NAACP leader said he doesn't believe extra police protection will be needed.

READ MORE: Black Lives Matter protest draws attention to police contract

Douglas and other speakers encouraged people to vote this November, noting that one of the White Lives Matter protesters wore a Donald Trump campaign shirt.

"That ought to tell you who to vote for in November," Douglas said.

Green told media and the public that he plans to contact the U.S. Department of Justice about the incident.
A teacher's aide in the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District is accused of possessing child pornography, the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office said.

Joe Cephas Ross, 51, was on arrested Friday at his Richmond apartment as part of an investigation by multi-agency Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

During a search of his apartment, investigators uncovered what they characterized as a "significant amount of child pornography." Ross may have been accumulating child porn for an extended period of time in different communities. Sheriff's officials said he had lived in Rosenberg and Austin before moving to Richmond.

Ross was employed as a teacher's aide at Pink Elementary School in the Lamar school district and last year had been a substitute teacher in the district. He has been working with children in the area for more than 10 years, Fort Bend County officials said.

Detectives are investigating allegations that Ross had "inappropriate" contact last year with three students at Pink Elementary.

Parents are asked to question their children who had contact with Ross in the past. If there are any concerns, contact Fort Bend County sheriff's deputies at 281-341-4665.

Ross remains in custody at the Fort Bend County Jail with bail set at $40,000.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Joseph "Joey" Norman Spears, 17, ran away from a Mississippi youth detention center on July 31, 1973.

Three weeks later he had somehow made his way to Galveston County, where his life ended. He was hit by a car Aug. 23, 1973, along the Gulf Freeway in Texas City.

Officials at the time had no idea who he was, and efforts to identify him were fruitless.

Sometime this spring, Spears' mother, Mary Raskin of California, made the official identification, using photos taken at the time of his death, said Kristi Johnson, a crime scene investigator with the Harrison County (Miss.) Sheriff's Department.

Reaching the conclusion that Spears was the teenager who lay unidentified in a Hitchcock cemetery for 43 years took a combination of persistence, compassion and use of online databases.

STILL MISSING: Man who disappeared from stage coach in 1920 is oldest active missing-person case

A notice that ran in the Galveston Daily News in August 1973 included an artist's sketch, based upon autopsy photos, and this description: "He is between 17 and 19 years old, 5 feet, 9 inches tall, 150 pounds, with dark blue eyes, a deep suntan, shoulder-length dark brown hair and virtually perfect teeth with no dental work."

That clipping and a few others went into the unidentified teen's file at Hayes Grace Memorial Park in Hitchcock, where it caught the attention of Chelsea Davidson, a family counselor at the cemetery, who started working there in 2011.

"It sort of played on my mind," said Davidson, who lives in Hitchcock.

She said she began searching the Doe Network: The International Center for Unidentified & Missing Persons, which in turn led her to NamUs: National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, launched by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2007. NamUs (pronounced "Name Us") is managed by the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth.

"I started looking at the description and sketch we had, comparing the height, weight, race, tattoos - no tattoos, hair color, weeding out the ones that didn't fit," Davidson said in a telephone interview.

READ MORE: Question baffles: Why do so many people go missing from Montgomery and Liberty Counties?

Davidson said she was struck by similarities between the unidentified Hitchcock teen and a missing 17-year-old from Mississippi, who was listed in the NamUs database.

Johnson, the Mississippi crime scene investigator who had provided the information to the website and listed herself as the contact, said she got a call from Davidson in December.

Davidson told her she had been somewhat hesitant to make the call, given the remote chance of having a match, but then she noticed that both the NamUs entry and the Hitchcock file mentioned a scar from a cigarette burn on the wrist.

"That made her go, 'Wow, I've got to get this information to her," Johnson said of Davidson. "I stopped everything I was doing and said, 'Send me everything you have.' "

Johnson said she contacted the Galveston County Medical Examiner's Office, which was able to retrieve the original autopsy report. The investigation quickly proceeded from there, leading to an order to exhume the body in February.

TEXAS CONNECTION: University of North Texas DNA lab helps solve 42-year-old mystery

The hope, Johnson said, was to obtain a DNA sample that would allow conclusive identification. The age of the remains, however, and the effect of embalming fluid made DNA analysis impossible, she said.

Before learning that the DNA was unusable, authorities decided to go ahead and ask Spears' mother to look at autopsy photos, and she had agreed to do so, Johnson said.

The mother's positive identification, added to the extensive investigation of the Harrison County Sheriff's Department and the work of the Galveston medical examiner, allowed authorities to close the case, she said.

Johnson had submitted Spears' information to NamUs in July 2013, when his sister, one of several siblings, contacted the sheriff's office to inquire about the case. "Joey's sister always wanted the answers found for her mom," Johnson said.

In 2013, the sheriff's department was working on other cold cases but was unaware of Spears, since personnel had changed over time.

"When she called us, we ended up finding a lot of records from our youth court system, so we said, 'OK, let's get him into NamUs,' " Johnson said.

If Johnson had not submitted Spears' information to the database, and if Davidson had not spent hours poring over missing-persons websites, the match might never have happened.

READ MORE: Remains confirmed to be those of Jessica Cain, who vanished in 1997

"I want to emphasize how incredibly important it is for (cemetery) personnel to take information that we have and to put it on the internet," Davidson said.

As for being part of solving this case, Davidson said it was bittersweet.

"It is gratifying to know his mother will have him back, but I know it's not the outcome she wanted," Davidson said.

Johnson said the family had expressed appreciation to everyone involved, both at the time of Spears' death and as efforts to identify him stretched on for years.

"I find it amazing that the people in Galveston County showed such compassion for this child," Johnson said.

"The local grandmothers' club raised money for a headstone, there was a group from the high school who served as pall bearers, and flowers were donated," she said. "They took great care of him. After they were not able to identify him, they gave him a proper burial."

Spears' remains were cremated Aug. 12 in Hitchcock and were to be sent to California, Johnson said.
CINCINNATI (AP)  A homeless advocacy organization and a Black Lives Matter group are challenging the fatal police shooting of a man with a history of mental illness.

The Hamilton County prosecutor on Monday called the shooting justified, and the police chief said the officer was under "vicious, violent attack" by a knife-wielding robbery suspect.

The Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition and Black Lives Matter Cincinnati issued a joint statement saying Jawari Porter's death was avoidable. It said the officer, who was white, had his gun drawn as he opened his vehicle door, escalating the situation. They said police could have tried to interact with and subdue the 25-year-old Porter, who was black.

Video released Monday shows Porter lunging at the officer in the driver's seat of a police vehicle. Authorities said Porter was trying to stab him with a knife he had used some 20 minutes earlier Sunday morning to hold a security guard as he robbed a grocery store.

Police Chief Eliot Isaac and Mayor John Cranley said officer Anthony Brucato, a 25-year veteran, had no choice but to open fire. Prosecutor Joe Deters said video showed Porter was clearly trying "to cause serious physical harm" to the officer, who fired six shots.

Court records show a judge last year found that Porter was mentally ill and incompetent to stand trial on assault charges. He was ordered into treatment. A July 2015 police affidavit in the case stated Porter continued to try to attack an assault victim while and after police used a stun gun on him.

A judge also found him incompetent to stand trial in 2011 on charges including public indecency and ordered him into treatment.

The homeless coalition said Porter had been homeless for some time.

"As we know, there are not nearly enough resources and proper treatment for people with mental illness," the coalition said. "Our society and our system in general failed Jawari Porter."

___

Follow Dan Sewell at http://twitter.com/dansewell

For some of his other recent stories: http://bigstory.ap.org/content/dan-sewell
As'ad's Bio

As'ad AbuKhalil, born March 16, 1960. From Tyre, Lebanon, grew up in Beirut. Received his BA and MA from American University of Beirut in pol sc. Came to US in 1983 and received his PhD in comparative government from Georgetown University. Taught at Tufts University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Colorado College, and Randolph-Macon Woman's College. Served as a Scholar-in-Residence at Middle East Institute in Washington DC. He served as free-lance Middle East consultant for NBC News and ABC News, an experience that only served to increase his disdain for maintream US media. He is now professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. His favorite food is fried eggplants.
Dan Crawford | August 22, 2016 4:04 am



by Mike Kimel

Explaining Trumps Appeal, Part 3

In a recent post, I showed that since 1950

a. foreign born population correlates to slower job creation

b. it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to find a job in the US

I want to try to tie both those facts, and explain them. But first, I need more facts, which, oddly tie somewhat Trumps rhetoric. Im going to rely a lot (but not entirely) on a set of slides prepared by the Census. That presentation looks at figures relating to the foreign born population. For purposes of the Census, and this post for that matter, foreign born simply means not a native born American. Native born Americans include people born in US territories, and the children of American citizens born abroad. Thus, neither group is included among the foreign born population.

The Census presentation includes the following graph:

Figure 1

Figure 1 above shows that in 2010, there were 11.7 million Mexican-born people in the US making up 29% of the foreign born population. Thats easily the largest group of foreign born individuals, followed by China, India, and the Philippines, which make up 5%, 4% and 4% of the foreign born US population.

As the next graph from the same presentation shows, it wasnt always that way:

Figure 2

As Figure 2 shows, as recently as 1960, the bulk of the foreign born population came from Europe, but now European born residents are dwarfed by those from Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia.

Heres a bit more detail on Mexican and Central American immigration, again from the same set of slides:

Figure 3

The graph shows that Mexican and Central American born people made up 6% of the US foreign born population in 1960 and 37% of the US foreign born population in 2010.

Now, say you are playing the role of Donald Trump in a theater off-off-Broadway. And lets say the playwright got confused and created a Donald Trump that was an amalgam of Trump and Ross Perot. Such a character would keep Trumps umbrage at the presence of Mexicans and Central Americans, and combine it with Perots inimitable style and fondness for pointing at charts. If you played that role, your lines might look like the following:

1. On average, Mexican and Central American born people have less education than native born Americans

According to this Rand report,

[O]ut of every 100 students entering the first grade of primary school in Mexico, around 68 of them will complete all nine years of basic education. Thirty-five of these will go on to graduate from upper secondary. And only slightly more than 8 percent of the population aged 18 and older in Mexico holds a bachelors degree.

In the US, just shy of 30% of the population 18 and over has a Bachelors degree or more advanced degree, so a significant percentage of the immigrants are less educated than the existing population.

Additionally, Trump might argue that the same combination of circumstances that lead many Latinos abroad to not get an education may be transmitted through the generations once here. To argue that, Trump might highlight the figure below from the Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine:

Figure 4

2. On average, Mexican and Central American born people are disproportionately poor and use up disproportionate amounts of government assistance

Trump might start this argument by posting this graph from the Census slides:

Figure 5

So we see that foreign born people, in general, earn less than the native born, but that the largest group of foreign born people, those from Mexico, have very low earnings.

Not that those earnings will necessarily remain in the country. In 2015, remittances, at $24.8 billion, were the largest source of foreign income for Mexico.

In any case, the poverty rate of low earning groups is also, not surprisingly, high:

Figure 6

Now, these days low income and high poverty means government transfers & subsidies, as Mr. Trump would be quick to tell us. Estimates Ive found of the government transfers & subsidies going to the foreign born vary quite a bit, and tend to be characterized by opponents as ideological.

To avoid getting caught up in that debate we can ballpark this ourselves, and focus entirely on the region Trump is likely targeting when he discusses the Great Wall of Trump. Mexico and Central American, in 2010, accounted for over 13.7M people (Figure 1  just Mexico, El Salvador & Guatemala) with 29% in poverty (Figure 6  assuming El Salvador & Guatemala born people have the same poverty rate in the US as Mexico born people). That means about 4 million Mexican & Central American born people eligible for programs related to poverty alleviation. Now, in the US as a whole, about 46.7 million live in poverty. So about 8.5% of the poor people in the US come from the 4.4% of the population that were born in Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Federal outlays for transfer payments that probably included foreign born poor people include Childrens health insurance, Medicaid, Total, Assistance to students, housing assistance, Total, Food and nutrition assistance and Total, Public assistance and related programs. If I didnt screw anything up, in 2010, that amounted to $672 billion and change. 8.5% of that is $57 billion.

On the other hand, tax revenues would necessarily be a much smaller number. Im not tax accountant, but I do believe that once exemptions, deductions, and credits are take into account, the average person making $23,810 is probably paying very little in taxes. (For what its worth, according to this, a single filer with no dependents pays $948, and a married filer with two children pays nothing.) But if $23,810 is the average income of the working person in that group, even assuming very, very generously that the employment to population ratio for the group is 75% (relative to US figures of 60% now), it is easier to come up with a scenario where total tax revenues are less than $57 billion than it is to come up with a scenario where total tax revenues exceed $57 billion. So from the perspective of Trumps bean counter, that portion of the foreign born population is, on net, a fiscal drag on the public purse.

Which brings us to the Great Wall of Trump. How much would that cost? According to the Washington Post, Trump estimated that Trumps Wall would cost $8 billion. The newspaper put the figure closer to $25 billion.

Now, Trump would argue theres another reason for the Great Wall of Trump, and that is crime, which brings us to the third argument you would utter in your role of Trump in the off-off-Broadway theater:

3. On average, Mexican and Central American born people are disproportionately likely to end up committing crimes

At this point, I suspect Mr. Trump would pivot away from the Census graphs. He would probably show us this graph from the Federal Bureau of Prisons:

Figure 7

It goes without saying that Mexican citizens do not make up 14.8% of the US population.

Your Trump character would probably also trot this graph:

Figure 8

Note that according to Census figures for 2015, Hispanics constituted 17 percent of the nations total population.

At this point, your Trump character would overtake his Perotian tendencies and drone on, stream of consciousness style, for an indeterminate period. Eventually, the curtains would come down.

A few notes. First, in full disclosure, I am Hispanic (Argentine heritage on my fathers side). I would imagine that Mr. Trumps Wall would be equally intended to deal with South Americans as Mexicans and Central Americans. As a result, I would have preferred to look at a broader group that includes me. However, South Americans are a much smaller share of the immigrant population to the US, so statistics are hard to find. For this post, I took the drunk-looking-for-his-keys-under-the-lamppost approach.

Second note  in fairness to Trump, he generally makes a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants, at least when it comes to those from the Western Hemisphere.

Third note  I had intended to explain some findings from my previous post on Trump but this post has already gotten too long. I will get to that explanation.
A former school teacher in Hopkins County has been sent to prison after he was convicted in a scheme using social media to obtain sexually explicit images of underage girls in northeast Texas.

Lucas Hill, 39, was sentenced to 33 years and nine months in federal prison for coercion or enticement of a minor, according to U.S. Attorney John M. Bales of the Eastern District of Texas. He pleaded guilty to the charge in February.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Police have identified a 19-year-old Texas A&M student who died Saturday morning during a party at a fraternity house in College Station.

Officers were called to the party about 4:40 a.m. at the Sigma Nu fraternity house at 550 Fraternity Row, according to the College Station Police Department.

Police said when officers arrived, party-goers showed them a fraternity member, later identified as Anton Gridnev, who was unconscious and not breathing.

Gridnev, of Frisco, was rushed to College Station Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

In a preliminary investigation, police said they believe Gridnev died of a drug overdose, but they have not yet determined the substance that caused the student's death. An autopsy has been ordered to determine how he died.

After finding illegal substances in the house, police arrested Samuel Patterson, 21, for possession of LSD and MDMA, known as ecstasy; Michael Frymire, 20, for possession of cannabis hash oil; and Ty Robertson, 21, and Christian Sandford, 18, for possession of marijuana. It is not known if those arrested are A&M students.

Maxwell Gollomp, 19, a College Station resident from Bellaire; John Cain, 19, a College Station resident from Houston; and Zachary Farmer, 20, a College Station resident from Denton were all cited for drug paraphernalia, a Class C misdemeanor.

Texas A&M University and the Sigma Nu fraternity, one of 58 Greek organizations on campus, are cooperating with the police investigation, and the university said it has counseling services prepared for students, including those dealing with substance abuse. The fall semester begins Aug. 29, and students were moving into dorms over the weekend.

"We are deeply saddened by this news and offer our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of the deceased student," Texas A&M spokeswoman Amy Smith said in a written statement.

Police are investigating the case.

Police urge anyone with information about the case to contact the College Station Police Criminal Investigation Division at 979-764-3601.
Not just known for their photos of funny baboons acting like people or eerily-optimistic office workers, stock photo agency Getty Images, Inc. also actively curates a large selection of editorial imagery.

Each week, Getty compiles a "best-of" list of 50 news images taken by photographers around the world. The several days prior to Aug. 22 saw more than just the Rio Olympics wrapping up.
A Fort Worth federal judge temporarily has blocked the implementation of President Obama's directive ordering public schools across the country to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.

In a 38-page ruling issued late Sunday, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor said he was blocking the directive because it contradicted other regulations and because the federal government had not complied with rules regarding public comment and notice.

"This case presents the difficult issue of balancing the protection of students' rights and that of personal privacy when using school bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and other intimate facilities, while ensuring that no student is unnecessarily marginalized while attending school...," O'Connor wrote. "The resolution of this difficult policy issue is not, however, the subject of this Order."

The Obama administration issued the directive in May, in the middle of a still-ongoing fight over a North Carolina law that requires people to use public bathrooms of the gender of which they were born. The directive implied that public schools could lose federal funding for not accommodating transgender students.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who led a coalition of 13 states who sued over the directive in May, said he was "pleased" with Sunday's injunction.

"This President is attempting to rewrite the laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people, and is threatening to take away federal funding from schools to force them to conform," Paxton said in a statement. "That cannot be allowed to continue."

Civil rights advocates expressed disappointment with the ruling. The Human Rights Campaign said it would "thousands at risk as they return to school."

"Judge O'Connor's decision to bar the Department of Justice from enforcing this important guidance puts thousands of transgender students at even greater risk of marginalization, harassment, and discrimination as they return to school this fall," said Sarah Warbelow, the organization's legal director, in a statement. "All students, regardless of their gender identity, deserve to be able to learn in an environment free from discrimination."
-- Obamas Transgender Bathroom Policy Blocked by Federal Judge

The Obama administration was barred by a judge from enforcing a directive that U.S. public schools allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender identity. A federal judge in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sunday sided with Texas and 12 other states that argued the administrations policy usurps local control and threatens students safety and privacy. (Bloomberg)

-- Big bucks flowing to Hurd-Gallego race, by the San Antonio Express-News. The National Republican Congressional Committee says it has reserved $2.1 million in advertising time on Hurds behalf starting in late September, in addition to the $1.6 million ads planned by the Hurd campaign.

Likewise, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reports reserving $1.16 million in air time, on top of ad time valued at $852,000 that a Democratic-aligned super PAC reported in May having lined up in the San Antonio media market.

Even before the stretch run, Hurd and Gallegos receipts - with Hurd outraising Gallego 2-1 - nearly exceed what the two candidates raised for the entire 2014 campaign. Hurd unseated Gallego by 2,422 votes.

With the Hurd-Gallego race rated among fewer than 20 toss-up races nationally, the flood of outside cash seems certain to surpass the $5.3 million spent in 2014, when the 23d District received 85 percent of all national and super PAC money landing in Texas House races.

-- Read the latest from the Chrons James Drew: Across bright-red Texas, where many politicians tout small government and low taxes, MUDs and other so-called special purpose districts are proliferating - and selling bonds - at a rate many experts inside and outside government find increasingly problematic. They cite high indebtedness, insufficient state oversight, cozy relationships with developers, a lack of responsiveness to citizens and potential conflicts of interest. MUDs can be created either by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality or the Legislature.

Their spread throughout the prairies that once surrounded Houston and other municipalities has helped fuel "growing unrest" about the property tax burden in Texas, said John Kennedy, senior analyst for the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, a nonprofit group based in Austin. Many taxpayers like Gay find it hard to track all the property tax bills they receive from counties, school districts, MUDs and other special purpose districts, Kennedy said.

>>> DALLAS  Phillip Huffines, the newly elected chairman of the Dallas County GOP, said donors are already replenishing the partys drained back account as he plans to go on the attack against long-time Democratic incumbents in the county.

There are a lot of Democrats who are most vulnerable, said Huffines, while refusing to name anyone specifically during an appearance on WFAA-TVs Inside Texas Politics Sunday morning. I dont want to give away our strategic strategy on how were going after and whom but right now, but we will be on the attack. (WFAA)

-- MUST READ: Texas scrambling to train poll workers on voter ID changes, by the Express-News David Rauf. With roughly two months before early voting starts, Texas election officials are facing the difficult task of training thousands of poll workers and educating the public about court-ordered changes to a voter ID law - all while under an intense microscope.

That process is expected to be exacerbated by the sheer size of Texas, the volume of county election offices - 254 in all - an extreme time crunch and a politically-charged environment. The heavy lifting starts now.

The Texas Secretary of State's office late this week circulated final instructions to county officials about identification requirements for the Nov. 8 election - materials that will serve as guidance for local election administrators doing training.

-- Ahead for #txlege: Why a texting-while-driving ban remains an uphill climb in Texas, by the Austin American-Statesmans Chuck Lindell. It wont get easier in 2017. Zaffirini lost one Republican supporter with the retirement of Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler. Rep. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, who is running for Eltifes seat and has no Democratic opponent, voted against texting bans in 2013 and 2015.

Another soon-to-be senator also voted against a texting ban in 2015  state Rep. Borris Miles, D-Houston, who has no Republican opponent in his bid to replace Sen. Rodney Ellis, a texting-ban supporter who will soon become a Harris County commissioner. Hughes and Miles didnt return calls seeking comment.

-- Trump and Clinton in Texas this week, per the San Antonio Express-News Peggy Fikac. Trump  announced Friday he is adding an Austin rally to previously scheduled fundraisers Tuesday in the state capital and Fort Worth.

Bill Clinton  will appear at Thursday fundraising receptions in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio to raise money for the Democratic effort.

-- TODAYS NEWSCYCLE: Donald Trump's immigration policy is not changing, his campaign insisted Monday, as the Republican nominee embarks on a week intended to explain and expand upon his proposals, which up until this point have largely centered around building a wall between the United States and Mexico at the latter party's expense. 

BuzzFeed News reported on a meeting Saturday between Trump and Hispanic leaders in which the Manhattan businessman was said to have indicated an openness to legalization for undocumented immigrants. The Trump campaign subsequently disputed that account, emphasizing that Trump had said nothing different, per Politicos Nick Gass.

>> RNC Hispanic outreach director retweets fake Trump account, Politico

>> Texas officials pushing new abortion policies in wake of SCOTUS ruling, Houston Chronicle

>> How Breitbart turned on Ted Cruz, The Hill

CAPITOL DAYBOOK

HOUSE

10:30 a.m., Land and Resource Management  E2.016

SPEED READ

State to assist inmates gender transition, Associated Press

Pension leadership shake-ups seen as good sign for reform, Houston Chronicle

Houston doctor rallied a global force for children with AIDS, Houston Chronicle

Texas officials warn budget cuts could lead to prison closures, Houston Chronicle

Regulators emails show it ignored oil spills, El Paso Times

Fast start for UTs new leader, Austin American-Statesman

Garcia: Remembering when Trump wasnt reviled, Houston Chronicle

Trump pumps up Democrats, Express-News

Divided America: Diverse millennials are no voting monolith, Associated Press

League City attorney files ethnics complain against mayor, Houston Chroncile

Judge finds convictions in 1992 slayings should be reversed, Associated Press

Flooding in South puts a damper on US rice harvest, Associated Press

RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE

-- Super PAC launches $10M effort to protect House GOP, by Politicos Rachael Bade. The Congressional Leadership Fund is entering the general election fray earlier than it has in the past, and with more cash in its war chest to defend the GOPs historically large House majority. The spending includes $7.4 million for TV ads in nine districts. About $3.4 million of the $10 million total will go toward efforts to pick up seats currently held by Democrats, and $1.5 million will be used to initiate GOP ground games in California and New York.

-- Trump, with bare-bones campaign, relies on GOP for vital tasks, by NYTs Nicholas Confessore and Rachel Shorey.Despite an influx of campaign cash from small donors in July, Mr. Trumps operation still largely resembles the bare-bones outfit that he rode to victory during the primary season, more concert tour than presidential campaign, according to interviews and documents filed with the Federal Election Commission through Saturday night. And some Republicans believe he is effectively out of time to invest in the kind of large-scale infrastructure that the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton , will bring to the polls in November.

-- The latest Trump reset, per CNN  After a campaign reboot that his new campaign manager calls his "best week" to date, Donald Trump could have a shot at reversing weeks of negative headlines and sliding poll numbers -- if he can stay out of his own way. This week, with Democrat Hillary Clinton mostly on the fundraising circuit on the West Coast, Trump will have a chance to show whether his headline-grabbing speech Thursday was a fluke or the start of a more sustained reset. He will begin to answer a dominant question heading into the fall: Can the Trump reset last?
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.
The bedrock attribute of a successful city district is that a person must feel personally safe and secure on the street among all these strangers, wrote Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jacobs is revered as an urban prophet, but key facets of her prescription for how to keep streets safe and maintain thriving urban neighborhoods are increasingly being ignored in New York today.

Key to safe and thriving sidewalks is what Jacobs called eyes on the street: people taking an active interest in whats happening around them. Citizen vigilance, she believed, was even more important than the police. Public peace, she wrote, was kept primarily by an intricate, almost unconscious network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves. Some eyes on the street were more important than othersespecially those belonging to local business owners. Storekeepers and other small businessmen are typically strong proponents of peace and order themselves, Jacobs observed. They hate broken windows and holdups; they hate having customers made nervous about safety.

As sensible as this sounds, were not practicing it today with anywhere near the breadth and consistency that we should. Instead of policing the sidewalk in front of their establishments, shopkeepers have been reduced to hapless bystanders, begging for someone to help them deal with aggressive, mentally ill vagrants, who accost their customers, camp out in front of their establishments, and urinate in the street. Families visit New York and take their kids to Times Square, where naked ladiesand at least one naked cowboyhit them up for cash. Young boys have eyes on that street, Im sure.

The New York Times recently profiled an Upper West Side street vendor who puts out as many as ten tables of books to sell on the sidewalk. He even leaves his books out overnight, covering them in plastic. Neighbors have complained about him for more than a decade at local police precinct council meetings. He has received up to 200 summonses from the police, frequently getting them dismissedand even collecting $80,000 from countersuits that he filed about improper summonses. His real business appears to be trolling for reasons to sue the city.

How can these people operate without any sort of permit? Were solemnly told that all this is constitutionally protected behavior. Naked ladies, the mentally ill panhandlers cursing at women on the sidewalk, and street vendors without permits taking up over a block of sidewalk frontage have their rights. There is nothing to be done.

Its not that social control over antisocial public behavior has broken down. Nor is it purely a legal matter. Rather, social control over anti-social behavior is becoming delegitimized. Many urban boosters, in fact, cheer this development. Some even support decriminalization of certain illegal behavior, such as fare-jumping. Its a strange inversion. Today, its aggressive panhandlers and touts who have become what Jacobs called the natural proprietors of the street. And they act like it. Other citizens, along with tourists and businesses, are forced to adapt to and comply with the standards that they set.

No wonder that, in New York as in other cities, a perception grows that disorder and unease are increasing on the streets. High-profile incidentsranging from a mentally ill man hacking at a woman with a machete in Bryant Park to a knife-wielding man killed by the police in Midtownincrease the anxiety. No, New York is not going back to 1975. But its clear nonetheless that antisocial behavior is seeping into the mainstream. For example, theres an epidemic of box blockingstopping in intersectionsincluding by the citys own bus drivers, often directly in full view of traffic control agents. Ive often seen it happen myself.

Being homeless, or even panhandling, isnt a crime. Some of the homeless have even become what Jacobs approvingly referred to as neighborhood characters. We certainly need to spend more money on treatment for the mentally ill. People must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other, Jacobs said, but she knew that this was a two-way street that included complying with and enforcing neighborhood standards of public behavior. Tacitly supporting the forces of disorder over the rights of ordinary citizens is a prescription for what Jacobs described as mountain on mountain of trouble. New York is still a strong, thriving city. But thats no excuse for not taking forceful action against antisocial behavior on its streets.

Photo by NYCstocker/iStock
In early June, a bipartisan bill to increase oversight and ensure the safety of children at state-licensed daycare providers sailed through New Yorks state senate. Then, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio launched a behind-the-scenes campaign in the state assembly to kill it in committee. It would appear counterintuitive that de Blasio would want to stomp on such an effort, wrote Daily News reporter Greg Smith. Except for one crucial factit had been proposed by Gov. Cuomo, his political nemesis. The mayor and the governor, both Democrats, have been engaged in a sometimes-petty feud since shortly after de Blasio took office in January 2014.

Cuomo sponsored the bill in response to Smiths investigative reports, which revealed a pattern of rampant overcrowding and disregard for safety in the citys day-care facilities. Smith told disturbing stories of children who died or were severely injured due to caregiver neglect. He chronicled the inaction of city regulators in the face of repeated complaints. The ill-fated bill would have required providers to post safety report cards at their entrances and make it easier to shut down repeat offenders. But de Blasios lobbyist in Albany successfully made the case to assembly members that day-care providers in minority neighborhoods would have more trouble meeting the safety requirements; shutting them down would leave minority families in the lurch. Smith concluded that the episode was a case study in the Machiavellian ways of Albany politics, where protecting turf is sometimes more important than protecting children. Maybe Smith is right. But if de Blasio was concerned that the city couldnt afford the added cost of safety regulations for vulnerable infants and toddlers after launching a massive new pre-K program, it reflects poorly on his progressive priorities.

As one of the first acts of his mayoralty, de Blasio made a big political bet on early-childhood education (Cuomo stymied the mayors quest to finance the universal pre-K program with a tax on New York Citys wealthy). The initiative garnered national headlines and positioned the mayor as a progressive leader. He wanted the program up and running quickly. Expanding and ensuring access to pre-K for all took priority over daycare safety for the disadvantaged.

For decades, pre-K advocates have peddled a seductively simple argument: disadvantaged kids are way behind academically when they enter kindergarten, so pre-K is essential. But the most disadvantaged kids are already well behind when they reach pre-K age. Given social dysfunction at home, and the dangerous neglect at daycare that many poor children face in their first three years, its far from clear that pre-K will make a big difference.

Some early-education experts, such as the American Enterprise Institutes Katharine Stevens, argue that the emphasis on universal pre-K expansion is misplaced and that we should focus instead on policies that target the poorest children earlier. But many progressive early-education advocates arent even willing to debate the issue. Bellwether Education Partners Sara Mead contends that the notion that there is a simple trade-off between investments in pre-k and infants and toddlers is overly simplistic. They tend to dismiss argumentsand tradeoffsthat get in the way of across-the-board funding increases for early-childhood education, especially pre-K.

Time may prove this to be a politically smart strategy, but de Blasios actions in Albany suggest that its naive. Even the most spendthrift politicians must eventually make tough choices. New York has proved itself willing to make massive investments in early-childhood education. Yet the same mayor who advocated for $400 million a year in new spending on universal pre-K was reportedly unwilling to bear the costs of a few more regulations designed to keep poor infants and toddlers safe.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Achizitie de Servicii Tehnice de creare a plantatiilor forestiere de protectie din cadrul primariei Andrusul de Jos si a primariei Vadul lui Isac, r. Cahul
Restaurant Owner Gets Prison Time for Torching Business

A Leominster, Mass., man who set fire to his own restaurant to collect the insurance money has been sentenced to four years in prison.

Jeffrey Cordio, who owned the West End Diner, was also sentenced Wednesday in federal court to three years of probation.

Cordio pleaded guilty in March to a charge of conspiracy to use fire to commit mail fraud for filing the fraudulent insurance claim.

Cordio and a former restaurant employee were seen on surveillance video from a nearby business driving to the diner in Cordios truck in November 2013, going in and out several times, before driving away as smoke poured from the building.

Prosecutors say Cordio needed the insurance money due to significant financial distress and a desire to relocate to Florida.

He apologized in court.

Missouri Farmer Gets 2 Years for Crop Insurance Fraud

A southeast Missouri farmer has been ordered to spend two years in prison for crop insurance fraud of more than $200,000.

The Southeast Missourian reports that 48-year-old Bobby David Lowrey, of Parma, was sentenced Tuesday for making false statements about crop-insurance benefits, theft of government property and wire fraud. Lowrey pleaded guilty to the charges in May.

Court documents say Lowrey placed farms in other peoples names to obtain payments he was not eligible to receive under the federal governments crop-insurance program. The documents say Lowrey and his wife had maxed out the benefits they could receive.

Lowrey obtained about $240,000 worth of crop-insurance indemnities and subsidies from 2007 through 2012. Court documents say the payments are considered government property.

22 From Irish Traveler Community Indicted for Racketeering, Insurance Fraud

A federal grand jury has indicted 22 people from a so-called Irish traveler community in western South Carolina for racketeering, alleging various violations ranging from food-stamp and tax fraud to money laundering and insurance fraud.

Acting South Carolina U.S. Attorney Beth Drake announced that the 48-count indictment alleging the operation of a criminal organization was returned on Tuesday.

The indictment says the defendants are residents of a community near North Augusta. It says travelers are itinerant laborers and salesmen who go door to door and speak a dialect of English and Gaelic called Cant, in addition to American English.

It said many of the defendants reside in Murphy Village where they own large homes, luxury cars and expensive jewelry and clothes which are often acquired through fraud schemes or acquired with the proceeds of fraud schemes.

The indictment says those charged are either travelers or their associates.

The government says the defendants committed fraud to obtain things such as life insurance benefits, food stamps, Medicaid funds and automobile financing.

It also alleges some of the defendants participated in money laundering to conceal the source or ownership of their assets. It alleges they structured bank deposits and withdrawals in amounts of $10,000 or less to avoid bank reporting requirements.

The specific counts include conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, and interstate transportation of stolen items. Each carries a maximum sentence of 20 years and a $250,000 fine. The indictment also includes counts of structuring financial transactions to avoid reporting requirements, each of which carries a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The indictment says that, if the defendants are convicted, assets owned by the defendants are subject to forfeiture to the federal government.

The indictment lists five homes and 25 mostly high-end vehicles including BMWs, Lincolns, Audis and Lexus vehicles that the government says are subject to forfeiture.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A Texas man said the Autopilot mode on his Tesla Model S sent him off the road and into a guardrail, bloodying his nose and shaking his confidence in the technology. He doesnt plan to sue the electric-car maker, but his insurance company might.

Mark Molthan, the driver, readily admits that he was not paying full attention. Trusting that Autopilot could handle the route as it had done before, he reached into the glove box to get a cloth and was cleaning the dashboard seconds before the collision, he said. The car failed to navigate a bend on Highway 175 in rural Kaufman, Texas, and struck a cable guardrail multiple times, according to the police report of the Aug. 7 crash.

I used Autopilot all the time on that stretch of the highway, Molthan, 44, said in a phone interview. But now I feel like this is extremely dangerous. It gives you a false sense of security. Im not ready to be a test pilot. It missed the curve and drove straight into the guardrail. The car didnt stop  it actually continued to accelerate after the first impact into the guardrail.

Molthans experience  while not as serious as a fatal crash that federal regulators are investigating  still highlights the challenges ahead in determining who is to blame when semi-autonomous vehicles are involved in accidents. Insurance claims involving Teslas Autopilot are largely uncharted territory, in part because driver behavior is still a contributing factor.

Cozen OConnor, the law firm that represents Molthans auto-insurance carrier, a unit of Chubb Ltd., said it sent Tesla Motors Inc. a notice letter requesting joint inspection of the vehicle, which has been deemed a total loss. Tesla said its looking into the Texas crash. Tesla stresses that Autopilot is only an assist feature  that drivers need to keep their hands on the wheel and be prepared to take over at any time.

Fresh Focus

Teslas driver-assistance features, which the company calls Autopilot, have been in the spotlight in the wake of a fatal crash in Florida on May 7. Probes by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board of the Florida crash are ongoing. After non-fatal accidents in Montana and Pennsylvania, Consumer Reports called on Tesla to require drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and to change the features name to avoid confusion.

Scrutiny around Autopilot is heightened in part because the federal government is drafting guidelines, expected to be released this summer, for automakers racing to bring fully self-driving cars to market. Ford Motor Co., while announcing plans to produce a fully autonomous vehicle for use by ride-hailing services this week, said it would avoid adding incremental technologies because they leave the driver too detached  in no-mans land  to take over in a dangerous situation.

While Ford and Alphabet Inc.s Google espouse an all-or-nothing approach, Tesla has introduced driver-assist technology in beta form for continuous improvement and frequent over-the-air software updates. Teslas website stresses that active sensors, GPS and high-resolution digital maps help the vehicle to stay within lanes, and that real time feedback from the Tesla fleet ensures the system is continually learning and improving upon itself.

Automakers including General Motors Co., Honda Motor Co. and Daimler AG have also pushed to add features that take over some of the work but require the driver to remain responsible.

Safety First

About 35,200 people were killed in U.S. auto accidents in 2015, according to NHTSA. The overwhelming majority of vehicle accidents  94 percent  are due to human error. Safety regulators want to improve human behavior while promoting technology that will protect people in crashes and help prevent them from occurring.

Fans of Teslas Autopilot bemoan that theres no database of lives saved or accidents avoided by the technology.

Im disgusted that the only time Autopilot is in the news is when there are crashes, said Diana Becker, 55, of Los Angeles, in a phone interview. Nobody hears about the accidents that dont happen.

Becker recently completed a 27-day road trip throughout the West with her two children. She credits the Autopilot in her Model X with saving her family from colliding with a driver who crossed suddenly in front of them.

I drove 400 miles a day on our road trip, and Autopilot was my second pair of eyes, said Becker. I depend on it.

A Missouri man who suffered a pulmonary embolism last month relied on Teslas Autopilot to help him drive at least 20 miles to the nearest hospital, Slate reported.

Molthan, the Texas driver, also owns a Model X sport utility vehicle. He said hes a big fan of Palo Alto, California-based Tesla and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, but his next car wont be another Model S.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
In a decision filed August 5, 2016, the United Stated District Court for the Northern District of California, applying California law, held that a wine dealers commercial general liability insurance policy excludes coverage for the dealers misappropriation of a third partys, name and likeness, often referred to as a right of publicity. The decision is reported as Mendocino Wine Group, LLC v. QBE Americas, Inc., published at 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103615

The facts were simple and mostly not in dispute. Paul Dolan, a fourth generation wine maker located in the Mendocino region of California, had a long and well-respected history in the wine industry. In 2004 he joined forces with the Thornhill family to form the Mendocino Wine Group (MWG), with Dolan serving as its president. As part of the transaction, Dolan permitted MWG to develop and sell wine using his name as a trademark, provided he controlled the nature and quality of the wine sold bearing his name. MWG began selling wine under the Paul Dolan trademark, but about eight years later, in January 2012, the parties had a falling out, and Dolan was ousted from MWG. In October 2012, Dolan revoked his consent for MWG to use his name and likeness in the sale of wine, but MWG continued to do so.

Dolan sued MWG on January 25, 2013, claiming MWGs continued use of Dolans trademark violated his right of publicity and caused him damage, because MWGs use directly conflicted with his own and falsely suggested that the wine sold by MWG continued to be connected with Dolan.

MWG timely tendered the case to MWGs commercial general liability insurance policy issuer and administrator, Uniguard and QBE Americas, Inc., respectively, seeking a defense to Dolans lawsuit. When Uniguard and QBE refused MWG sued them for breach of contract and bad faith. Uniguard and QBE moved to dismiss the coverage lawsuit, and the effect of the decision summarized here was to grant that motion. MWG asserted that two of the claims in the Dolan lawsuit against MWG triggered Unigards duty to defend: (1) Dolans claim for MWGs misappropriation of his name and likeness, and (2) Dolans claim for defamation. After closely analyzing Dolans factual allegations, the court held that neither claim required a defense under the Unigard policy.

In arguing for coverage, MWG pointed to following grant of insurance coverage in the CGL policy, found in Coverage B, entitled Personal and Advertising Injury Liability, reading:

We will pay those sums that the insured becomes legally obligated to pay as damages because of personal and advertising injury to which this insurance applies. We will have the right and duty to defend the insured against any suit seeking those damages. However, we will have no duty to defend the insured against any suit seeking damages for personal and advertising injury to which this insurance does not apply. . ..

The CGL policy specifically defined personal and advertising injury as [o]ral or written publication, in any manner, of material that slanders or libels a person or organization or disparages a persons or organizations goods, products, or services and [o]ral or written publication, in any manner, of material that violates a persons right of privacy.

The other part of the policy that was pivotal was entitled Coverage B Exclusions, and provided that the insurance does not apply to . . . Infringement of Copyright, Patent, Trademark or Trade secret defined as:

Personal and advertising injury arising out of the infringement of copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret or other intellectual property rights. Under this exclusion, such other intellectual property rights do not include the use of anothers advertising idea in your advertisement.

However, the exclusion does not apply to infringement, in your advertisement, of copyright, trade dress, or slogan.

The court first considered whether the claim by Dolan against MWG for its misappropriation of his name and likeness triggered Unigards obligation to defend MWG. MWGs contention was that the misappropriation claim invoked the policys coverage for violation of Dolans right of privacy. California courts, like courts nationwide, have long recognized that one who appropriates to his own use or benefit the name or likeness of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy. California differentiates two types of appropriation claims, distinguished by the nature of the plaintiffs right and the nature of the resulting injury. The first type of appropriation, often associated with a right of publicity, is based upon the reaction of the public to the claimants name and likeness, which may be fortuitous or which may be managed or planned, and endows the name and likeness of the claimant with commercially exploitable opportunities.

The second type of appropriation brings injury to the feelings and concerns the claimants peace of mind. It is mental and subjective. Unlike the mental and subjective type of appropriation that brings injury to feelings, the right of publicity protects a form of intellectual property that society deems to have social utility. In short, the right of publicity is an intellectual property right.

In its analysis of the question of coverage, the court noted that MWG contended that Dolans misappropriation claim triggered the duty to defend because the policy covered personal and advertising injury which is defined in the policy to include the violation of a claimants right of privacy. However, the court noted, in the underlying action brought by Dolan, Dolan alleged that MWGs continued use of the Dolan trademark violated the right of publicity and caused him damage because it directly diluted his rights by conflicting with his ability to use his own name in connection with the sale of wine and wine-related products and services, because it falsely suggested that the goods distributed in MWG were connected with Dolan even after he withdrew MWGs right to utilize his name.

Completely absent from Dolans allegations was any suggestion that he sought damages for a misappropriation that injured his feelings. Instead, the focus of Dolans claim was that MWGs use of his name and likeness diminished the marketability and publicity value of his name an likeness, thereby depriving him of his right of publicity. Since Dolans right of publicity is an intellectual property right, the plain language of the intellectual property exclusion outlawed coverage for his intellectual property claims against MWC. There was no coverage.

MWG attempted to overcome this analysis by emphasizing Dolans allegations that MWG harmed his reputation, business and good will, pointing out that allegations of reputational damage are sufficient to raise a potential of an award of mental anguish or emotional distress damages. However, the court rejected this contention based upon a case involving a famous band, The Doors, which began planning and advertising national and international tours without its former drummer or its former vocalist. The former drummer brought an action alleging that the band had damaged his reputation and stature by causing people to believe that he was not an integral and respected member of The Doors, or was one band member who could easily be replaced by another drummer. The federal appeals court in that case  which would hear any appeal by MWG from the subject decision  found the nature of the drummers alleged reputational injury was sufficient to raise the potential of mental anguish or emotional distress damages, and therefore found coverage.

Unlike that case, however, the court found that Dolans claims did not contain any allegations plausibly suggesting that MWGs conduct caused him mental anguish by, for example, implying that Dolan was not a distinguished leader in the wine community.

While Dolan theoretically could have added allegations of such mental anguish, the court held that insurers need not infer the existence of additional allegations not actually included in the operative complaint merely because it is aware those additional claims might have been plausibly included.

MWG next argued that Dolans complaint triggered Unigards duty to defend by alleging every element legally required to plead a defamation claim Again, the court rejected MWGs contention, noting that a claim of defamation requires a plaintiff to allege a defendants false or misleading statement that specifically refers to the plaintiffs product or business and clearly denigrates (the court said derogates) that product or business. The damage by defamation typically takes the form of injury to the claimants reputation.

The allegations in the case brought by Dolan against MWG made out a claim, although excluded from coverage, for violation of Dolans right of publicity, but nothing about the advertisement by MWG could plausibly be interpreted as disparaging Dolan  which would trigger coverage. Indeed, the court noted, MWGs alleged attempt to falsely sell its wine under Dolans name amounts to its flattery of Dolan, the opposite of the reputational injury required for defamation coverage. Accordingly, the court found that Dolans allegations in his suit against MWG failed to plausibly articulate a defamation claim and did not trigger any duty to defend on the part of Unigard.

In summary, because Dolans claims against MWG are either excluded under the intellectual property exclusion or insufficient to trigger the defendants duty to defend under the defamation coverage, the court granted the motions to dismiss the coverage case breach of contract claim.

With regard to the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, the court held that it is established that, without a breach of the insurance contract there can be no violation of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. The court, therefore, granted the entire motion to dismiss. The only loose end left by the court was to permit MWG an opportunity to amend its complaint within 21 days of the date of the order  August 26, 2016.
President Barack Obama (R) signs the Affordable Health Care for America Act as Marcelas Owens looks on during a ceremony with fellow Democrats in the East Room of the White House March 23, 2010 in Washington, DC.

When asked in 1951 why he robbed banks, prolific thief Willie Sutton is said to have replied matter-of-factly, "Because that's where the money is." That's the same philosophy behind Medicare and Medicaid fraud. The federal budget for the health care entitlements is more than $900 billion this year. There's nothing like that kind of money to bring out the fraudsters. And sweeping anti-fraud provisions in the Affordable Care Act can only do so much to slow them down. Even before the law was passed in 2010, the Obama administration began cracking down on health care fraud with a series of strike forces set up across the country. Since the federal crackdown began in 2009, authorities have charged more than 2,500 defendants, recovering $1.9 billion in fraudulent payments last year alone, according to a joint report by the U.S. Justice and Health and Human Services departments. While $1.9 billion may sound impressive, the Office of Management and Budget estimates Medicare and Medicaid related programs made nearly $89 billion in improper payments last year, largely due to fraud. Among the early takedowns in the enhanced effort under Obamacare were Irina Shelikhova and her crew at Bay Medical in Brooklyn, New York, a scam operation that recruited patients among her fellow Russian immigrants in exchange for kickbacks. The patient would walk into the clinic reporting some imaginary ailment, but rather than having to pay the clinic, say, $35 to see the doctor, the clinic would pay the patient $35a kickback for the ability to bill Medicare under his or her name. It was a small price to pay for Bay Medical, which billed the taxpayers for some $50 million in nonexistent medical procedures between 2005 and 2010. Shelikhova is serving a 15-year prison sentence for money laundering. The Affordable Care Act includes much tougher sentences for health care fraud, and enhanced screening for doctors and other providers who bill the government programs. It authorizes new technology to help investigators detect fraud, and $350 million in new funding for anti-fraud efforts over the next ten years. Officials say every dollar spent on enforcement yields $6 returned to the taxpayers. Yet the crime wave continues across the country. Here are some of the more brazen scams broken up in the past couple of years, according to that DOJ and HHS report.

Fraud Storm Ahaoma Ohia, who owned a medical device business with offices in Texas and Louisiana, already had a thriving scam going when Mother Nature and the federal government came together to really move things along. Taking advantage of relaxed rules designed to help victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008, Ohia's companyAll Star Medicalwas able to bill the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars for wheelchairs he falsely claimed were destroyed by the storms. Ohia continued his scam even after the federal crackdown began, submitting hundreds of other fraudulent claims, according to a federal indictment. They include prosthetics and other expensive accessories for amputees, ordered for patients with no amputations. The feds caught on when Ohia repeatedly billed Medicare for arm and leg braces in pairsleft and rightrather than wasting time billing for one brace at a time. Ohia blamed the mess on "administrative errors," but a federal jury in Baton Rouge didn't buy it. After a four-day trial in 2014, he was convicted on seven fraud counts and ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution. He is serving a 13-year sentence at a federal prison in Texas.

Photo: Image source | Getty Images

Unending Patients Pulling off a large scale Medicare fraud requires patience, as well as lots of patients on whose behalf you can bill the government. For Dr. Kenneth Johnson and his crew at Manor Medical Imaging in Glendale, California, that meant recruiting homeless people on L.A.'s Skid Row, veterans in drug treatment programs, and elderly Vietnamese immigrants, according to a federal indictment. Johnson would write prescriptions for his "patients," and he and his cronies could cash in big time. "Dr. Johnson essentially sold his prescription pad when he became part of the conspiracy that defrauded the government out of millions of dollars," said United States Attorney Eileen Decker. The fraud ring was able to obtain more than $9 million in fraudulent payments from Medicare and California's Medicaid program, as well as millions of dollars worth of anti-psychotic drugs that could then be resold on the black market. The feds say the case is the first large-scale bust involving the expensive and potentially dangerous drugs. A federal jury last year convicted Johnson on four felony counts. He is serving a nine-year prison sentence.

Show Me the Love Philadelphia is known as the City of Brotherly Love, but Feda Kuran took the concept a little too far. Her company, Brotherly Love Ambulance, didn't just transport people who were sick or injured. It gave rides to people who were healthysometimes in employees' personal vehiclesthen sent the bills to Medicare, to the tune of more than $2 million. The scheme began to unravel when the supposedly incapacitated patients were seen walking from Brotherly Love vehicles. Medicare regulations say that only patients who are bedridden or unable to be transported by other means can get ambulance rides at the taxpayers' expense. Prosecutors alleged that even after she got caught, Kuran kept the fraud going by trying to obtain Social Security benefits for her son while trying to hide the fact that he also worked at Brotherly Love. Kuran pleaded guilty to two felony health care charges. She is serving a five-year federal prison sentence.
watch now

Taj Pabari's love for Lego took him from a typical high school student to CEO of his own technology start-up by the age of 16. The Australian teenager started Fiftysix Creations in 2014, selling build-it-yourself tablet and coding kits for kids aged six to 16. The company also runs workshops and training programs in schools and promotes information technology education among children in disadvantaged and remote communities.

"As a child, I loved Lego and I love information communication technology," Pabari told CNBC's "The Rundown" on Monday. "And I thought, you know what, let me create the Lego for the 21st century."

Fiftysix tablet kits contain parts of a tablet that the children put together using step-by-step instructions, much like assembling Lego blocks. There are two varieties of tablet - the One kit for beginners, which costs 199 Australian dollars ($151), and the more advanced Classic for A$299, which has slightly better specifications.

Specifications for the One kit include: 7-inch IPS LCD screen, with a better viewing angle

Screen resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels

1.2GHz quad core processor with 512 MB RAM

Android 5.1 operating software

Rear- and front-facing cameras, speakers, built-in microphone, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth While the tablet lacks the some of the computing power packed into premium models such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Apple iPad, which offer as much as 4GB RAM, Pabari said the tablets were appropriate for their target audience. "They're rugged, they're drop-proof and they're for the kids," he said.

In addition to selling its tablet kits, Fiftysix it had provided free IT education to more than 42,000 people in Africa and the Asia Pacific. But being profitable is also an important goal for the young tech company, which is backed by Steve Macdonald, the Sydney-based co-founder of Infinitas Asset Management. Macdonald is also a non-executive director at Fiftysix. "We have shareholders, so obviously making money is a big part of what we do. However, we are really proud of the social side, which is going into rural communities, Aboriginal communities in Australia, going into places like India, Nepal ... orphanages and giving them our tablet computers," Pabari said.

Children play with digital tablets at an expo in Paris, France on October 19, 2013. Engaging children and introducing them to technology early on has been the focus of many companies around the world. Eric Feferberg | AFP | Getty Images
Two years ago, Xiaomi had stormed on to the smartphone scene, overtaking Samsung as the biggest smartphone vendor in China and becoming one of the top five players in the world.

Fast forward 24 months, and major shifts have taken place. Xiaomi, the world's second-most valuable private tech start-up which made its name by selling online through flash sales and creating social media buzz, is getting attacked by upstarts using traditional bricks and mortar stores to sell smartphones. Meanwhile, Apple, which had been doing steady business in China, is facing intense competition from nimbler players.

Oppo and Vivo  two Chinese handset makers owned by BBK Electronics Corporation  are making a big impact, attracting young buyers wanting low-cost but high-spec smartphones, the audience that Xiaomi once had a hold on.

Xiaomi had a 13.3 percent market share in China in the second quarter of 2014. That now stands at 11.2 percent, according to data from Counterpoint Research. Meanwhile, Oppo's market share grew from 2.7 percent to 18 percent in the same period, while Vivo's increased from 2.2 percent to 14.9 percent.

"We tried the online thing, but it wasn't getting the traction we wanted, so we had to look back at strategy and we took a chance and we invested into point of sales presence. We localized everything and from there it really helped us build a stronger brand presence," Michael Tran, director of global strategy at Oppo, told CNBC in a phone interview last week.

"Consumers want to touch and play with the device, they want to know there will be someone there if there are issues."

Both Oppo and Vivo focus their products around high-performance cameras and audio. Oppo's flagship R9 smartphone is marketed as the "selfie expert" with a 16 megapixel front facing camera, fingerprint sensor, and a design very similar to Apple's iPhone 6. But the handset retails at 2,799 yuan ($420), much more cheaper than the $800-plus price tag for Apple's flagship device.

Tran explains that Oppo has over 320,000 physical points of sale in the markets it operates in which includes China, Australia, India and a number of other South-East Asian countries. Oppo and Vivo have both stepped up their marketing efforts. The brands have partnered with major fashion companies, celebrities and sporting tournaments to help boost their name among millennials.
Marking Wall Street's latest turn in favor of emerging markets, BlackRock said Monday it upgraded EM equities to overweight as the firm expects a stable U.S. dollar, low rates and a better outlook for growth.

"The most important part and what drives our [view on] the EM performance over the long term is the fundamentals, but you need to be aware of the sentiment around EM. Now both of them have aligned," said Gerardo Rodriguez, portfolio manager of the BlackRock Total Emerging Markets Fund.

He said BlackRock was encouraged in three areas where there had been concerns. For one, there are signs of stability after a sharp slowdown in China's economy. Commodities prices are no longer falling, and the U.S. has not edged closer to recession. Improving current account balances, appreciating currencies and attractive valuations provide fundamental support for investing in EM, Rodriguez said.
Donald Trump still has an uphill battle in this election. But when it comes to controlling the news cycle in this election, he's running unopposed.

Consider the recent pivot in the Trump campaign. It began with a speech expressing his regrets for his past hurtful comments, followed by a visit to flood ravaged Louisiana. And it continued this weekend with a meeting with Latino supporters where he signaled a desire to temper his immigration policies and shift away from his previous support for mass deportations.

If this were any other candidate in any other election year, it would hardly be newsworthy and certainly not electorally beneficial for a candidate to move to be less offensive in his comments and join the mainstream position of his own party on immigration. But this is the year of Trump and Trump has spent most of this year setting the bar so low for his own candidacy that these kinds of shifts are both newsworthy and politically beneficial. Some polls have already shown a favorable Trump trend, and you can expect that to continue in the coming days.

And all of this is the result of a dangerous mistake by the Clinton campaign. It's fallen into a trap that's allowed Trump and his behavior to dominate the news coverage and the direction of the polls. Long ago, the Clinton campaign clearly decided to put all its work into attacking Trump and thus abdicating any serious efforts to promote their candidate and her policies. It's almost like the Clinton campaign would like us to forget about them entirely, as evidence by the forgettable choice of Tim Kaine as Hillary Clinton's running mate and her decision to basically take a few weekends off over the summer.

And Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook doubled down on that strategy over the weekend during an interview on CNN by spending far more time talking about Trump than his own boss. Even the mostly Clinton-supportive news media has long abandoned any effort to trumpet her candidacy in favor of an almost religiously fervent barrage of anti-Trump material day after day. And Clinton herself has seemed so relatively absent and quiet that perhaps the real question her campaign should be focusing on is not who they'll find to play Trump in the debate preparations but who they're going to find to play Hillary Clinton.

Trump's recent pivots won't convince any of his most ardent detractors and Clinton's biggest fans to change their minds, but there are still a good number of undecided voters out there who might. And then there's the traditional Republican voters who have been a little embarrassed by Trump, who will now be able to point to the plausible excuse of Trump's "maturing process" to vote for and more publicly support him.
Former Comverse Technology Chairman and CEO Jacob "Kobi" Alexander, who refused to return from Africa after being indicted in a wide-ranging stock option scandal a decade ago, has agreed to return to the U.S. to face charges, CNBC has learned.

Alexander will plead guilty Wednesday to a one-count superseding indictment, according to his New York-based criminal attorney, Benjamin Brafman, bringing to a close one of the last remaining cases of the dot-com era.

The agreement is the product of more than two years of sensitive negotiations among the Justice Department, Alexander's attorneys, and government authorities in Namibia, where Alexander, 64, has been living since 2006 while fighting extradition to the U.S. He was scheduled to appear before a Namibian judge on Monday morning to end the proceedings there and clear the way for his return to New York.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's office in Brooklyn, which brought the original indictment, declined to comment.



A federal grand jury indicted Alexander in 2006 on 35 counts for allegedly masterminding a 15-year scheme to manipulate the value of millions of dollars worth of Comverse options.

He is also accused of money laundering after moving millions of dollars to personal accounts in his native Israel, as well as bribery and witness tampering for attempting to persuade the company's chief financial officer to take the fall for the scandal.

Comverse, a darling of Wall Street during the tech boom, pioneered the development of voicemail. But after the bubble burst, the company was among the first to be targeted in a sweeping federal investigation of options fraud. Two top executives pleaded guilty.

Comverse Technology survived until 2013, when it was bought out by a former subsidiary, Verint Systems .



Escape to Africa

With his own indictment looming in 2006, Alexander moved to Namibia, which had no extradition treaty with the United States. CNBC tracked him there in 2007, and found him living in a gated community on the grounds of the Windhoek Country Club. His luxury townhouse was adjacent to a private airstrip, even though a Namibian judge had restricted his travel and Alexander theoretically faced certain arrest if he left the country.

By then, Alexander had pledged millions of dollars  lavish by Namibian standards  in aid to Namibian schoolchildren and new housing for the nation's impoverished townships. Alexander and his wife also set up a pair of soup kitchens in the country, credited by local media with feeding hundreds of children every day.

Attorneys in the U.S. accused Alexander of using Comverse shareholder money to buy off the Namibian government, which his Namibian attorney flatly denied.

"He is entitled to be here, he is entitled to participate in the economy, and I think anybody who has that sort of idea, it is a machination of their own means and making," Richard Metcalfe told CNBC in 2007.

Nonetheless, extradition proceedings in Namibian courts dragged on for years, with most hearings postponed or canceled. Alexander has remained in Namibia long after his fellow former executives got out of prison, reportedly flying in 200 guests for his son's bar mitzvah in 2008.

Coming to Terms

But Alexander did not ignore his looming legal problems in the U.S. He eventually settled multiple lawsuits brought by Comverse shareholders. He also agreed to pay $60 million to the company he founded, and dropped his countersuit for $72 million in severance.

In 2010, he settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission for more than $53 million, in what the agency billed as one of the largest settlements ever in an options back-dating case.

But the criminal case against him remained the final loose end, complicated by the notoriously slow wheels of justice in Namibia, and the fact that dot-com era options backdating cases brought by the previous administration were not exactly a top priority in the U.S. Justice Department.

"Notwithstanding his departure from Namibia, Mr. Alexander and his family will continue their charitable work in Namibia," Brafman said in a statement. "Specifically, since 2007, the Alexander family has financed and operated soup kitchens in Namibia that have served more than 750,000 nutritious meals to children in Katutura and Kuisebmond. These soup kitchens will continue to operate, employing seven people and feeding 700 children each day."

Correction: This story was revised to correct that Alexander lived in Africa after being indicted. He moved there before he was indicted in the U.S.
In the same week that the Department of Justice announced its plans to end the use of private prisons, after finding that they were less safe and less effective than government facilities, the Washington Post reported the details of a $1 billion contract awarded to Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) to build a detention center to house women and children who are seeking asylum in the U.S.

While the DOJ's decision is a victory for advocates who want to see reform in the criminal-justice system, it is merely a dint in abolishing the industry that profits from the incarceration of men, women and children. Nearly two-thirds of immigration detention beds today are operated by for-profit prison corporations, according to the Center for American Progress. By contrast, less than 10 percent of federal and state prisoners are being held in for-profit prisons.

Subpar care at detention centers has led to in-custody deaths, according to a report by a coalition of advocacy groups earlier this year. Most recently, graphic photos of Arizona Border Patrol detention facilities were released by the federal district court in Arizona, which show overcrowded, filthy facilities, and one still image shows a mother changing her baby's diaper on a concrete floor.

The purpose of detention centers is to hold and process immigrants for possible deportation. Some of these facilities are meant to hold immigrants for hours, not several days, or even months. However, with Homeland Security Appropriations Act, there are mandated quotas for these facilities to "maintain a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds," so there is an incentive to detain.

It is difficult to reconcile the country's urgency to reform the criminal-justice system, including the end of private prisons, with the record profits posted by private prison companies due to the increased revenue from detention centers. In 2015, CCA made 14 percent of its profit from a single detention center, the Washington Post reported.

The government awarding CCA a $1 billion contract even as the country is starting to move away from private prisons is evidence that immigrants continue to be casualties of the policy negotiation and of powerful lobbying by private prison companies to stay in business and to stay profitable.

If the country is serious about abolishing the private prison industry, then the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and state governments must follow the Department of Justice in ending the use of for-profit facilities. We cannot take a victory lap just yet.
Martin Shkreli, former chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals and KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc, arrives at a U.S. Federal Court in New York, June 6, 2016.

A growing chorus is calling on the Mylan pharmaceutical company to justify its price hikes on EpiPens, a potentially life-saving medication for children and others facing fatal allergies that has little real competition.

In 2007, a two-pack of the epinephrine-filled devices went for $56.64 wholesale, according to data gathered by Connecture, a health insurance technology and data analytics company. Now it's jumped to $365.16, an increase of 544.77 percent. Since the end of 2013, the price has gone up by 15 percent every other quarter.

Doctors, parents, patients, and a former presidential candidate are speaking out on social media  and negative comments are filling up Mylan's Facebook page following an NBCNEWS.com story Wednesday.

More from NBC News:

When it comes to fun, Democrats play stealth games, Republicans go for sports

How to win at life: Prepare financially for each milestone

Speedo drops sponsorship of Ryan Lochte, citing questionable values



And now, the Senator who allowed pushed for emergency epinephrine to be stocked in public schools has pledged to investigate the price increases.

At least one in 50 Americans has experienced anaphylaxis, a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction, according to a 2014 study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

"You are forcing many families to gamble with their children's lives, when your costs haven't gone up," wrote one Facebook post. Others questioned why the prices in the U.S. were higher than other countries for the same medicine.

"Amazing that Epipen prices in CA & EU with prescription are about $85. No govt negotiated buy in US," said another tweet.

Even Martin Shkreli, the disgraced former chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC, has weighed in.

"These guys are really vultures. What drives this company's moral compass?" he told NBC News in a phone interview.

In 2015, Shkreli famously jacked up the price of Turing's malaria and HIV medicine Darapim overnight, from $13.50 to $750, a move that earned him a grilling by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in February  and the nickname "Pharma Bro" for his seemingly carefree attitude toward affordable medication.

But Shkreli told NBC News he had originally considered gradually raising the price of Darapim, as Mylan did with the EpiPen. Ultimately, "the math, we felt, was a little silly; so we decided to come out and say 'This is our desired price.'"

The House committee doesn't currently have an open investigation into the price of EpiPens, MJ Henshaw, a spokesperson for the committee chair Representative Jason Chaffetz, said in an email.

In response to NBC's story earlier this week, Senator Bernie Sanders sent out a tweet questioning the price increase.

Tweet 1

There's a lawsuit in the works as well. Ari Kresch, CEO of 1-800-LAW-FIRM, said his firm was finalizing a filing against Mylan in the next couple of weeks.

"I've been looking at EpiPen for years," said Kresch. "It's a very cheap drug but I haven't been successful in getting any experts to tell me why the price has gone up as much as it has."

Mylan did not respond to phone or email messages seeking comment on the backlash.

In an earlier emailed statement, Mylan said its prices have "changed over time to better reflect important product features and the value the product provides," and that "we've made a significant investment to support the device over the past years."

The statement noted that commercially insured patients have successfully used its $100 coupon program, with nearly 80 percent of the My EpiPen Savings Card getting their auto-injectors for $0.
Sales at high-end car auctions in Pebble Beach and Monterey, California, fell 14 percent from last year, marking a further slowdown in the classic car market.

In sales at last week's Monterey Car Week, the California auctions pulled in $339.7 million. That's below the $370 million many had expected, and well under last year's $396 million, according to Hagerty, the car insurance and valuation firm.

The auctions, which stretched over four days, are held in conjunction with the Concours d'Elegance  considered the Super Bowl of high-end collectible cars.



While sales of super-rare, top-quality "masterpiece" cars were strong, younger, more commonplace cars came in below expectations. Collectors and experts said buyers, nervous about the elections and slowing global economic growth, have become more discerning and sensitive to high prices after years of rapid run-ups.



Only 56 percent of the cars being offered for auction actually sold, according to Hagerty. That's down from last year's 58 percent and 63 percent in 2014. Some experts say the lower sales rate is a positive sign, since it shows sellers aren't anxious to unload their cars until they get the right price.

"The fact that some sellers are holding out for strong prices means we are not seeing any signs of people desperate to leave the market," said McKeel Hagerty, CEO of Hagerty.

The average sale price of $479,643 was higher than last year's $456,067. It was boosted by several record-breaking cars at the very top, including a 1955 Jaguar D-Type Roadster that sold for $21.8 million. That price earned it the title of the most expensive British car ever sold at auction. The first Shelby Cobra ever built sold for $13.8 million, and became the most expensive American car ever auctioned.

Seven cars sold for more than $10 million, marking the best year ever for eight-digit sales. Meanwhile, Gooding & Company had its biggest one-day sale ever on Saturday, pulling in $76.7 million.

Yet overall, Hagerty said that "outside that narrow, 'best of the best'" slice, bidding was slow and sell-through percentages were the lowest in Monterey since at least 2000. Especially weak were sales of cars from the 1990s and later.

Here are the 10 most expensive cars sold at Monterey Car Week, according to Hagerty. The numbers include buyer's premiums.

Update: Hagerty has updated its sales total for the auctions to $339.7 million. The previous total of $345 million included transactions that were not completed and other sales that have been clarified.

1. 1955 Jaguar D-Type Roadster (RM Sotheby's ): $21.8 million


Ron Losby, CEO of Steinway & Sons and company's owner, John Paulson Amanda Gordon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

"C" you later. The head of iconic piano maker Steinway & Sons is out at the New York-based company, three years after he helped entice billionaire hedge-fund manager John Paulson into buying the firm for more than $500 million. Steinway CEO Michael Sweeney's departure last week came four months after the 163-year-old company opened a lavish, and expensive, new Steinway Hall retail and performance space in Midtown Manhattan, which was designed by renowned high-end architect Annabelle Selldorf. In addition to that 19,000-square-foot space Steinway also said this past spring it was leasing an additional 20,000 square-feet of space in the same building on Sixth Avenue to serve as the company's global headquarters.

A Steinway spokesman would not say if Sweeney, 58, resigned or was forced out of the company, or reveal what led to him leaving.

Michael Sweeney Source: Steinway Pianos

"Correct," said the spokesman, Stephen Millikin, when asked if Sweeney was no longer CEO at Steinway. "That was last week." "That is, unfortunately, all I can say on the matter," Millikin said. He did say, however, that Steinway's president, Ron Losby, had taken over as CEO from Sweeney. Losby, 61, has been Steinway president since 2008, having joined the company as Midwest district manager in 1998. A spokesman for Paulson, who took Steinway private after he bought it, said he had no comment on Sweeney or any other executive moves at the company. Sweeney, who had previously been president of Starbucks Coffee UK and chairman of the Star Tribune Media Company, did not respond to requests for comment.

Amy T. Zielinski | Redferns | Getty Images

Steinway pianos are coveted by piano-cognoscenti and command prices of tens of thousands of dollars. The company's pianos, which can take nearly a year to make by hand, have been the preferred choice of composers and performers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Gustav Mahler, Vladimir Horowitz, Billy Joel, Lang Lang and Harry Connick Jr.

In 2013, Paulson told CNBC that "I grew up in a family of piano players," including his two sisters, who "asked my dad to buy a Steinway." "My father did his shopping and at the end of the day it was not something we could afford," said Paulson. He added that one of his sister's wept when their dad brought home a baby grand piano and she realized it wasn't a Steinway.

But Paulson, who made billions of dollars shorting the U.S. housing market in 2008, could more than afford a Steinway, and also could afford the entire company by 2013. Paulson emerged as Steinway's buyer in September of that year after the then-publicly traded company negotiated a tentative sale agreement to buyout firm Kohlberg & Co. for $35 per share, or $438 million. Steinway's bankers, on the heels of that agreement, conducted a go-shop period that allowed other would-be suitors a chance at topping Kohlberg's offer. Paulson & Co. did just that, with a final offer of $40 per share, or $512 million.
While the recent rapid rise in crude oil prices has led some to forecast $60 oil, I think it is more like Deja vu all over again. I think over the next several months the oil market will act more like the movie "Groundhog Day" where the star, and now the oil market, is caught in a time loop.



In late May 23, sweet crude oil futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange traded at about $48 per barrel. On Friday August 19, crude oil futures closed at $48.52. In between, there has been an OPEC meeting in June and talk of a meeting in Algeria next month to freeze production and crude has traded over $51 and under $40.

OPEC has expanded its membership to 14 with the recent addition of Indonesia and Gabon. With the Energy Information Administration reporting U.S. exports hit a record 662,000 barrels per day in May 2016, perhaps the U.S. should apply for number 15. However the high level of exports is symptomatic of a world oversupplied with oil and that continues to be the case.



The actions of oil producers speak far louder than words. Saudi Arabia is producing record amounts of oil and Iraq just announced that it will boost exports by resuming flows form Kirkuk. Now that Iran has increased production to near pre sanction levels, they may well be inclined to agree to a production freeze. But what good is a freeze if the target level is set equal to the maximum production levels of all the participants?



I like to follow the flow of crude oil to see if the market is cleaning up. It isn't. While the U.S. was exporting its light sweet crude oil off the Gulf Coast To Europe, Asia and South America, it was actually importing light sweet crude oil from Nigeria and Angola. Exports of Alaskan North Slope Crude oil are going to Asia at the same time Russian crude oil is coming into the West Coast. In Europe, Iranian crude oil is being sold into Poland at the same time that Russian crude oil heads to Asia. Ships passing in the night are a sign of an oversupplied market.



The increased oil production from the Middle East is not OPEC's only worry. It has two members, Libya and Nigeria where supply disruptions have kept a significant supply of oil off the market. Should things get better there, it only gets worse for an eventual oil price recovery. The price recovery will eventually happen as world oil demand continues to grow but I continue to look for only $50 by January 2017.



There is a lot of oil out there and it still is being moved around and stored which means that the midstream companies in this business will benefit. I like Plains All American Pipeline LP (PAA) a large midstream company focusing on crude oil. Magellan Midstream Partners (MMP) continues to build out crude oil infrastructure in the Houston area while Sunoco Logistics (SXL) has been adding more pipeline capacity out of the Permian Basin.



Even though prices for oil field services have come down, the recent increase in the rig count means more demand for frac sand (used in fracking) and that will continue to benefit Hi Crush Partners (HCLP). As aproduction companies have squeezed out more costs and improved drilling efficiency, those with large holdings in the Permian Basin stand to benefit: Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Apache (APA), Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) and Concho Resources(CXO).



But it's going to take some time to see oil prices rise. $60 oil? Maybe 2018.
watch now

For new parents, putting their baby down to sleep can be a scary thing. Sudden infant death syndrome is the leading cause of death in infants 1 to 12 months old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so it's no surprise that parents of newborns are often ridden with anxiety.

Video monitors can help, but a new generation of technology goes one step further. Owlet Baby Monitors uses pulse oximetry  a technology used in hospitals to measure an infant's heart rate and blood oxygen levels  and then streams the information to the parent's smartphone. The miniature, wireless sensor goes into a baby sock that can be worn up to 18 months. The sock sets off an alarm on a base station and flashes a red light if the baby's vital signs are in dangerously territory.

Amy Bongard, a mother of four, is certain the Owlet has saved her newborn's life. Her youngest son, Grayson, was born three weeks early and one day when he had just finished breast-feeding, she looked down and noticed that he wasn't breathing.



Grayson Bongards mother says the Owlet has been a lifesaver. Jeniece Pettitt | CNBC

"I picked him up just to see if a startle reflex would kick in, which it usually would, but his head was kind of cocked to the side and his arms and legs were really limp and he wouldn't move," Bongard said. "Finally after pushing on his chest about 20-25 times I got him to open his eyes and become alert again. I had to watch him the rest of the night." She knew that she wouldn't sleep for months unless she got some help, and after doing some research on other monitors, she ended up purchasing an Owlet for $250. While some parents never see the red alert, for Bongard, the alarm has already gone off four times.

"I was sleeping when the first alarm went off," Bongard said. "I had to shake him a little bit to get him to open his eyes and to get that startle reflex to sink in. I was really grateful that it went off and I was able to make sure he was OK."

Breathing issues for premature babies are fairly common. Preterm birth affects about 1 of every 10 infants born in the United States, according to the CDC and preterm birth is the greatest contributor to infant death. This was one of the reasons why Kurt Workman co-founded the company when he was 25 years old. He had witnessed his exhausted aunt staying up through the night to watch her premature twins. He knew of the $2,000 pulse oximeters that were used in hospital intensive care units on babies.



The smart sock streams data about the babys vitals right to your smartphone. Source: Owlet

"Our goal was let's make this home appropriate and let's make it really easy for parents to use so it actually gives reassurance at an affordable price point," said Workman, who is also Owlet's CEO. After years of research and development, the Provo, Utah-based company launched the product last October. Workman says the company has sold 40,000 monitors since then.

He said 80 percent of their customers are first-time parents with healthy children who just want that extra peace of mind.

"We've had 26 families now where the Owlet has been able to actually alert parents in life-threatening situations," Workman said.


Lofty predictions for sizable hedge fund industry support for the Donald Trump presidential campaign have fallen short, as public filings indicated a relatively modest showing from that group for July.

Filings made with the Federal Election Commission suggest that the Trump effort took in little more than $2 million in hedge fund money last month  and that the bulk of it came largely from a single donor, Renaissance Technologies co-chief Robert Mercer.

Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign donations and spending, said that while the absolute amounts of money hedge funds are giving to Trump may appear low, the trend for him is positive. "We can see that it has gone from a pittance  a mere thousands of dollars  to millions, but it's impossible for us to say at this point what the final figure is for July," said Krumholz. "It's possible we'll see, if not a sea change, then a big leap forward for Trump."

Spokespeople for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.

The pro-Trump Great America PAC, the pro-Hillary Clinton Priorities USA PAC and other monthly filers were supposed to log their latest fundraising and spending records no later than midnight on Sunday morning. [However, even by Monday afternoon, the picture remained incomplete: other important filers, including the Trump Victory PAC, are on a quarterly schedule, and because some entities may have made paper filings not yet updated online, additional details have yet to surface.]



In an interview with Fortune a few weeks ago, Anthony Scaramucci, the fund-of-funds manager who is also an outspoken Trump supporter, predicted that some 20 percent of the estimated $70 million the Trump campaign had taken in in July was from hedge funds  a haul that would have amounted to about $14 million.

Scaramucci himself recently donated $100,000 to the PAC Trump Victory and at least an additional $90,200 to the Republican National Committee, as well as to the Trump campaign and Paul Ryan's congressional campaign, among other entities, according to FEC records. He doesn't appear to have given additional donations in July, and declined to elaborate on his comments to Fortune.

But the participation of other hedge fund executives has been muted.
Oil is back on the market's radar, after recent chatter from OPEC representatives fueled new speculation over possible actions from the cartel if prices remained low.

OPEC said earlier this month that it would meet at the sidelines of an energy conference in September. Last week, the biggest OPEC producer, Saudi Arabia, said it was on board with the possibility of discussing actions if prices remained low due to oversupply.



U.S crude futures rallied 9 percent last week, while Brent futures added 6.7 percent.



But experts said they see little chance of an agreement among OPEC members to freeze production. Indeed, earlier this year, OPEC and non-OPEC producers failed to reach an agreement on freezing output levels.



In this week's Trader Poll, tell us how you are trading oil, if at all.
Paul Joslyn (left) will succeed Prudence York as executive director of AccessCNY, an organization that serves people with disabilities. Its located at 1603 Court St. in Syracuse. In the photo, Joslyn and York are pictured outside the AccessCNY office. Photo credit: AccessCNY

SYRACUSE, N.Y.  Prudence York, executive director of AccessCNY, plans to retire from the nonprofit on Aug. 31.

The organization announced it has named Paul Joslyn as Yorks replacement.

Joslyn began his time with the agency on Aug. 11, sharing leadership duties with York until her departure at the end of the month.

AccessCNY, an organization that serves people with disabilities, operates at 1603 Court St. in Syracuse.

Prior to joining AccessCNY, Joslyn worked for Unity House of Cayuga County in Auburn. He served as deputy executive director of administration from 2009 to 2014 and as COO since April 2014.

Like AccessCNY, Unity House offers services to individuals with developmental disabilities and mental-health issues, the Syracuse organization said.

Prior to joining Unity House, Joslyn was employed in the financial-services sector.

He holds a masters degree in business administration and masters of science degree for teachers from Le Moyne College.

Joslyn completed his undergraduate work at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, AccessCNY said.

We are delighted to introduce Paul Joslyn as the new executive director of AccessCNY, Ricky Ryder, president of the agencys board of directors, said in a news release. Prudence helped the agency grow to new heights and we are confident that Paul will build on these successes and achieve milestones of his own.

Joslyn said in the release he is excited to join the organization.

I have the utmost respect for the agency, its staff and leadership and look forward to seeing what we can accomplish together. The greatest achievements will always be those created by the people we serve. Their hard work will inspire and motivate me each day, Joslyn added.

AccessCNY was born in January 2015, the result of the merger of Enable and Transitional Living Services (TLS), two agencies that serve individuals with disabilities.

AccessCNY serves over 3,000 people with developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, mental-health issues and/or acquired brain injuries annually.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
Louis Golino has been a collector of American and world coins since childhood and has written about coins since 2009. He writes about modern coins and other numismatic issues for Coin World. He is a founding member of the Modern Coin Forum.

A cool new coin is coming in September from the MCI Mint on behalf of African nation Burkina Faso that uses a meteorite that landed in France 175 years ago. The meteorite fell at Chateau-Renard in Montargis, which is near the Loiret Valley in France on June 12, 1841.

Meteorites mostly come from comets and asteroids, and since the majority of them are used by scientific labs to study the origins of the universe, those remaining pieces of meteorites that make their way into the marketplace are very rare and expensive. Meteorites are also millions of years old.

The current price of 1 gram of the Chateau-Renard chondrite meteorite runs around $300, so even a small fragment is worth a lot.

Connect with Coin World:

This 1000 Franc denomination coin that is struck from 1 oz. of silver with an antique finish uses the fragment of the Chateau-Renard meteorite as part of its stunningly reverse attractive design that uses what is called photorealistic coloring. The meteorite is shown against a blue sky as it is about to land in Montargis with gorgeous architectural details of the surrounding buildings included.

The obverse features the national coat of arms of Burkina Faso.

Only 750 of these coins are being made, which is a small number for a coin of this type.

As readers of this column know, I am a big fan of coins about space and astronomy-related issues.

And as I have written here and in my bi-monthly feature in the magazine on world coins, these coins continue to have a loyal base of collectors, which is why they have tended to hold their value better than coins about many other subjects that may not have as wide appeal.

The coin comes with two certificates of authenticity, one for the coin and one for the meteorite fragment, and is housed in a wooden display box.

The coins authenticity and allure is enhanced by the fact that we know the story of how the meteorite was discovered.

The meteorites fall was published in the American Journal of Science and Arts, Volume 42, as reported in the New York Observer on August 14, 1841: Galignanis Messenger mentions that at a late session of the French Academy, a communication was received from M. Delavaux, stating that on the 12th of June, (1841,) between one and two oclock in the afternoon, the sky being without a cloud, an explosion was heard at Chateau-Renard, in the department of Loiret, louder than several pieces of artillery firing together. He suspected that this must have proceeded from an aerolite; and ongoing to the spot where the noise had been loudest, found there the marks where the aerolite had struck the earth, as well as several fragments of such a body, lying about. Most of these fragments were small, but one weighed thirty pounds, and another six pounds.

Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa surrounded by Benin, Togo, and four other countries. As a former French colony, its uses the CFA franc, which is the Central African Franc, a currency used by six countries in Africa that is guaranteed by the French Treasury.

In 2015 a 3-oz. silver coin was issued for Burkina Faso that depicted a solar eclipse.

The issue price of $159.90 for the new piece is certainly not cheap, but one must consider the cost of the meteorite as well as production and other costs. And dont be surprised to see the price increase.

The coin is available from California dealer First Coin Company (www.FirstCoinCompany.com), The Coin Shoppe in Canada (www.TheCoinShoppe.ca), and Powercoin (www.PowerCoin.it) in Italy
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
How a district loss won't diminish Tolton's Lee brothers' legacy - or determination

Lee joined seven other seniors in playing their final game Friday, saying it was a motivating factor for him to stay on the field and make plays.
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.
January 25, 2016 - Robert Gates who works on the maintenence team at 100 North Main knocks some of the loose concrete facing off the tallest building in Memphis. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal)



SHARE

By Wayne Risher of The Commercial Appeal

Owners of 100 North Main expect to begin ridding the building of fire hazards by Sept. 15, their attorney said Monday.

"I'm happy to say there's some movement," Larry Weissman, attorney for IMH Memphis LLC, told Shelby County Environmental Court referee John Cameron.

Weissman said he was confident the owners would get started before a city-sponsored sweep of the building can be organized.

Faced with inaction by the owner, the court asked earlier this month for a city plan to remove flammable materials and other debris left behind when the building was vacated in 2014.

Anti-blight lawyer Brittany Williams told Cameron the city will have to put the cleanup out for bids.

IMH Memphis has fended off charges of building and fire code violations while the company pursues $60 million to $70 million in financing to convert the empty tower into apartments and commercial space. The company faces fines of about $41,000 so far for a portion of the code violations.
On Tuesday, travelers board a Southern Airways Express flight to Atlanta. The Memphis carrier announced an expansion into the Mid-Atlantic region with the acquisition of Sun Air Express. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal)



SHARE

By Wayne Risher of The Commercial Appeal

Southern Airways will begin nonstop flights from Memphis to Nashville and Jackson, Mississippi on Sept. 26.

The Nashville flights, with fares starting at $99, are the first between Memphis and Nashville since 2013. They will operate Sunday-Friday.

Memphis International Airport scheduled a news conference at the Signature Flight Support executive terminal Monday to announce the new service, which brings the airport's total nonstop destinations to 38. Southern operates out of the Signature facility using 10-seat Cessna Caravans turboprop airplanes.

This Nashville route is something that weve been working toward for many years, said Stan Little, chairman of Southaven-based Southern. The two largest cities in America that were not connected with nonstop air service to their state capitals were Memphis and Pittsburgh. In the past month, we at Southern Airways have changed that, announcing Pittsburgh-Harrisburg service on August 2, and Memphis-Nashville service today. As Jackson and Memphis continue to prosper, traffic between the two cities continues to increase. What once was a 3-5 hour drive is now a one-hour flight. This is a proud day for all of us at here at Memphis hometown airline.

Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority board chairman Pace Cooper said, We believe that many business travelers will rejoice at the return of nonstop service to Nashville. Its essential that the reinvention of MEM includes service to both large metro markets and key regional airports. Adding Nashville and Jackson to our lineup helps to achieve that latter goal.

Passenger typically don't have to go through TSA screening at Signature and may arrive at the terminal as little as 25 minutes before departure. Airport officials said passengers undergo an electronic background check when they buy tickets, and random security checks are possible before boarding.

Southern's website is www.iflysouthern.com.
The old 19th Century Club building on Union soon will be home to Izakaya restaurant. (Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal)

On Friday afternoon, our real estate reporter, Tom Bailey, and I took a tour of Izakaya, the restaurant that will open this fall in the old 19th Century Club. While Tom talked to folks about the building, I visited with executive chef Minh Nguyen about the menus.

I came away impressed and don't think it's any exaggeration to say that we've never had a place like this in Memphis. Obviously, the grand building has known no rival  but the menu and level of service also promise to be special. Here's what it comes down to:

When you enter the building through the main doors, the sushi bar is just to your left. "We're going to be heavy on sashimi," Nguyen said. Fish will be flown in from Honolulu because he can get a good selection of high-quality items from a purveyor there, including Tasmanian salmon ("very orange, very fatty," he said), toro tuna and Chilean sea bass, all available as sushi and some as entrees.

The main menu will feature appetizers such as ceviche, calamari, scallops in coconut foam, and beef carpaccio.

"We're going to be a steakhouse, but with an Asian influence and a lot of seafood," Nguyen said.

Upstairs, a large horseshoe bar extends from the north wall. A band will play there Thursday through Saturday nights, and the bar will remain open until 3 a.m. Friday and Saturday nights. There's a bar menu that will feature items in $15-$18 range, small plates such as short ribs and Kobe beef sliders. The wine list is extensive and includes both reasonably priced items and bottles upwards of $400. There will be a specialty cocktail list, not yet available, but Nguyen said to expect "high-end martini bar" drinks. But happy hour during the week will include $5 cocktails and $4 house wine.

There will be seating for 70 on the bar floor, a combination of tables and soft seating, and 100 on the ground floor. There are also about two dozen wine lockers going in for customers who wish to store wine, and private party space for about 100 on the third floor.

There's no set opening date yet, and there's plenty of work to be finished, but we'll let you know as soon as we know.

CA Friday lunch

Let's head over to Summer Avenue and eat Mexican food for our next Friday lunch on Sept. 2. We'll meet at noon at La Guadalupana, 4818 Summer. There's a menu online at laguadmemphis.com, though I don't believe it's complete. If you want to join us, email me at biggs@commercialappeal.com by noon Aug. 31, but the sooner the better. We limit the lunches to about 30, and they fill up quickly.

Restaurant news

The big news is that Ann Barnes and the entire staff of Just For Lunch are back, though they're in a new place. You can find them at Bistro 33, the space atop Clark Tower that was The Summitt Club for many years. Wade Hartsfield, the owner of Chameleon Resource Group, runs the space and has hired everyone for lunch; he'll continue to operate his 4-7 p.m. happy hour Monday through Friday in the same space and run private events. But at lunch, it's Barnes' menu, and her sweet face is what you'll see when you go eat. They'll serve lunch 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Cupcake Cutie, a build-your-own cupcake shop, has opened at 109 S. Court. You start with the cake  white, chocolate, etc.- pick your frosting, then pick your toppings. It's like a frozen yogurt shop except it's cake. Call 901-249-6996 for more information.

Look for Indian Pass Raw Bar, a seafood restaurant around Port St. Joe, Florida, to open its second location at 2059 Madison, in the space formerly occupied by Chiwawa and, way back when, the Chicago Pizza Factory.

Saltine in Jackson, Mississippi, has been named one of The South's Best New Restaurants by Southern Living. What does that have to do with us? It's co-owned by Memphian Ben Brock, who owns Amerigo and the soon-to-open Char. Also on the list? Josephine Estelle, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman's new place in New Orleans.

Recipe of the week

Last week, I gave you some recipes for favorite old Memphis salad dressings, and reader Philip Cruzen thanked me for the Honey French salad dressing and said I'd really make him happy if I could find a recipe for Seessel's butter pie. Well, what I have is not officially the Seessel's recipe, but we've run these for years, and folks say they taste the same. I'm running both the chocolate and the lemon.

CHOCOLATE BUTTER PIE Makes 1 pie. Ingredients 1/2 cup melted butter 1/3 cup cocoa 4 eggs 1 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 (9-inch) unbaked pastry shell Directions 1 Mix all ingredients. Pour into unbaked pie shell and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Do not overbake. ************************************ LEMON BUTTER PIE Makes 1 pie. Ingredients 1 cup sugar 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon cornmeal 3 large eggs 3 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted 3 tablespoons milk 1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon rind 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice 1 (9-inch) unbaked pastry shell  Whipped cream, fresh mint leaves, optional for garnish Directions 1 Combine sugar, flour, cornmeal and eggs in large bowl, stirring well. Stir in melted butter, milk, lemon rind and lemon juice. Pour mixture into unbaked pastry shell. 2 Bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes or until filling is set, shielding edges of pastry shell with strips of aluminum foil after 25 minutes to prevent excessive browning. Cool on a wire rack. Garnish, if desired. Source: Files of The Commercial Appeal
Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal Habitat For Humanity homeowner Deven Rucker gets a kiss from former President Jimmy Carter as she and Memphis Habitat President and CEO Dwayne Spencer (left) thank Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter (right) during a launch party for volunteers and community leaders at The Peabody.

By Jody Callahan of The Commercial Appeal

This fall promises big things for Victor Shirley and Tavia Macklin.

On Sept. 24, the twenty-somethings are scheduled to be married. And at some point later this fall, likely by the end of November, the pair will do something they've never done before. They will own their own house, thanks to Habitat for Humanity.

"It feels amazing," said Macklin, 24. "Being so young and having ownership."

This young family was joined at The Peabody hotel Sunday afternoon by several other future homeowners as well as hundreds of Habitat participants, all gathered to officially kick off the weeklong Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project.

The project promises to build 19 new homes at a 10-acre spot in North Memphis known as Bearwater Park. Work begins in earnest at 7 a.m. Monday and will continue through Friday.

(If youre viewing this on a mobile device, click here)

Hundreds of volunteers from Memphis and around the country  including country music superstars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood  will spend those days working on the new homes. The week also includes six repairs for elderly homeowners and 10 beautification projects.

On Sunday afternoon, former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn welcomed the crowd to the project, first asking those who had been with Habitat for years to stand and be applauded.

"This is one of the best places, the best times, the best opportunities in life to break down the barrier between a lot of us in this room who have a lot of blessings ... and we're working side by side with a lot of people who haven't had those things," the former president said.

Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat International, also thanked those who had come to take part in the 33rd annual Work Project.

"This is going to be a great week," he said. "Your heart is going to be filled and your muscles are going to be tired."

As many as six of those new homes are expected to be substantially completed by the end of the week, with the others hopefully finished in time for families to move in before the holidays, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis representative Jessica Hord said.

Shirley, 25, isn't sure when his home will be finished, but there's one thing he's already looking forward to.

"(Right now), we're playing close to $1,000 a month (with rent) and bills in our apartment," he said. "Going down to $600 or $700 a month (with the new house), that makes a difference."

Carter also reminded the crowd that he had a history with Memphis and The Peabody that goes beyond Habitat. His daughter Amy attended the Memphis College of Art, and in 1994 she was supposed to get married at the National Ornamental Metal Museum. The Carters had booked several rooms at The Peabody for guests.

But when the wedding plans fell through, Carter joked Sunday, he was the one who had to tell the prospective groom.

"I almost got beat up by the man that she was going to marry," Carter said. "If it hadn't been for the Secret Service, I'd have had a bloody nose. I want to thank The Peabody hotel people for giving us all our money back."

Following his talk, Carter introduced his wife, who got perhaps the loudest applause of the day when she looked at the crowd and asked:

"Who's ready to go to work?"

(If youre viewing this on a mobile device, click here)
A frame grab from a video shows State Rep. Curry Todd removing competitor Mark Lovell's campaign signs from the side of the road. Todd has acknowledged that he removed the signs and said he had the right to do so. (Courtesy Mark Lovell Campaign)

SHARE

By Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal

An October 11 trial date was set Monday morning in the case of suburban state legislator Curry Todd, charged earlier this month with stealing opponent Mark Lovell's yard signs.

Lawyers discussed the case Monday before General Sessions Court Judge Louis J. Montesi Jr. in hushed tones impossible to hear.

Afterward, both Todd, R-Collierville, and his attorney Ted Hansom declined to comment. Prosecutor Byron Winsett confirmed the October 11 trial date.

Winsett is the top-level local prosecutor for public corruption and economic crimes. He said he's handling the case because it involves a public official.

Todd  charged with theft of property under $500, a misdemeanor  was arrested two days before the August 4 primary election, which he went on to lose to Lovell. The arrest came after two instances where a Lovell backer photographed the state legislator removing the challenger's signs. Lovell told Sheriff's deputies hundreds of his sign were missing.

On July 17, the campaign supporter recorded a video of Todd taking three of Lovell's signs from Winchester and Shea in Collierville.

The video was shaky but clear. Todd acknowledged taking the signs, but contended the landowner gave him exclusive rights to place signs at the property. He identified the owners as the Porters.

An arrest affidavit written by Detective Sgt. B. Clark says he interviewed Joel Porter, who said Todd did not contact him, and no one had specific authorization to put signs on the property.

Todd was arrested at his apartment in Collierville less than 48 hours before polls opened for the Republican primary.

The victim, Lovell, bailed Todd out of jail.

Two days later, Lovell, a businessman and carnival promoter, defeated Todd and two other opponents to win the Republican primary. With no opponent in the general election, Lovell became the presumptive winner of the suburban state District 95 House seat Todd has held 17 years.
Memphis City Hall

SHARE

The Memphis City Council buzz this week is almost all about the committee meetings Tuesday.

- Council members will in committees discuss everything from the options for a Mid-South Coliseum redevelopment to an ordinance to decriminalize marijuana possession and a new contracts disparity study. In the regular meeting at 3:30 p.m., the council will also likely vote on a residency requirements referendum ordinance.

All council committee meetings are public and will be held in the fifth floor conference room of City Hall, 125 N. Main. Click here to see the full committee schedule and click here to see the agenda for the councils regular meeting at 3:30 p.m. in the council chamber on the first floor of City Hall.

- Perhaps the most interesting item on the agenda is council member Berlin Boyds ordinance to give Memphis police officers the option to issue a $50 fine for possession of less than half an ounce of marijuana, as opposed to charging someone under the states more stringent criminal law.

The chances the ordinance will pass were always iffy, but werent helped by Police Director Michael Rallings last week. Rallings told a crowd at Heartsong Church to rally against the ordinance because were devastating peoples lives. As council chairman Kemp Conrad put it, Rallings opposition is obviously something you have to pay attention to, although he said hell wait to hear the arguments before choosing a side.

Others around the city  including criminal justice reform advocates at Just City  are just as vocal in their support of the ordinance, which they say will help Shelby County reduce an uncomfortably high rate of marijuana-related arrests that disproportionately affect African-Americans.

We urge its passage as a way to save money, refocus vital resources, and begin to repair the breach between communities of color and law enforcement, Just City said in an open letter Thursday to council members.

The Public Safety & Homeland Security Committee will discuss the marijuana ordinance at 10 a.m.

- In the executive committee meeting at 2 p.m., council members are slated to discuss lease terms for the Mid-South Coliseum. So far, there are two competing ideas for the vacant building: To turn it into a mixed-use building anchored by Wiseacre Brewing or to use it to host small events and concerts.

Conrad said he and council member Jamita Swearengen are sponsoring the resolution, which will set out the terms of Wiseacres agreement with the city. But, he said, the resolution will approve the concept, not the lease, and he expects more discussion about other ideas, including the idea to make the Coliseum an events venue.

- Also, on the executive committees agenda: a status update on the citys wastewater system consent decree and a discussion of false alarms.

- A 2012 consent decree is spurring $120 million in improvements to two city wastewater treatment plants, as reported in July.

The city is currently working behind the scenes at City Hall to reconfigure its metro alarms office, which Conrad said is part of a bigger effort to reduce the number of false alarms for police officers and firefighters.

- Earlier in the day, at 8:45 a.m. in the Economic Development & Tourism Committee, the public will get their first glimpse of the citys 2016 contracts disparity study. Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, who pledged to improve the rate of minority- and women-owned business participation in city contracts, has said recently that his administration has increased the rate by 17 percent over last year. The administration declined to release the study Friday, saying it would be made available to the public Tuesday.

- Also in committee meetings, watch for discussions of the controversial ShotSpotter software at 10 a.m., and details about a new marketing campaign to educate people about when to call 911, 311 and 211 at 1:30 p.m.

- In the regular meeting at 3:30 p.m., council member Martavius Jones controversial ordinance to create a Nov. 8 referendum to require new city employees to live inside the city limits is slated for a vote. The ordinance was delayed last council meeting.

Strickland and his administration have come out strongly against Jones ordinance, instead favoring incentives like down payment assistance to attract employees to live in the city limits. The city is facing a shortage of about 400 police officers.
State Rep. Jeremy Durham awaits the start of a House Republican Caucus meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn. Durham announced that he would withdraw from the GOP caucus to avoid distractions amid a sexual harassment investigation. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)

SHARE

By Dave Boucher And Joel Ebert, USA TODAY NETWORK  Tennessee

The actions of powerful men in the workplace, whether it's lawmakers in the Tennessee state legislature, the chancellor of the University of California-Berkeley or former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, are putting sexual harassment back into the national spotlight.

Powerful institutions and harassment at times go hand-in-hand. State capitols are sometimes hotbeds of sexual harassment themselves. Most legislatures are largely male, part-time and require members to travel away from home, creating a fraternity atmosphere.

In 2007, a state senator in South Dakota was censured by the legislature after he was accused of fondling a legislative intern.

In 2015, Sen. Norm McAllister was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting three women, including one who was his intern. In June, prosecutors dropped some charges against the 64-year-old Vermont state senator, who has pleaded not guilty, but another trial on similar charges is slated for the fall.

The same year, the Missouri speaker of the House resigned after exchanging sexually charged text messages with a 19-year-old intern, and a state senator resigned amid sexual harassment allegations by at least two former interns.

The most recent case involves Rep. Jeremy Durham, a married Tennessee state lawmaker who was found by state Attorney General Herbert Slatery to have preyed on 22 women over his four years in office.

The investigation, spurred by a Tennessean newspaper report that he'd sent late-night text messages to three women, found allegations of rampant harassment and sexual conduct by the 32-year-old Durham, including sex in his legislative office with a 20-year-old female college student after drinking beer with her.

His nickname among some female staffers at the legislative offices: Pants Candy.

When a legislative clerk told Durham that his requests for drinks with her in 2013 were inappropriate because he was married and she was engaged, she said his response was, "Welcome to Capitol Hill," according to the attorney general's report.

In examining his behavior with staff, interns, lobbyists and other lawmakers, the attorney general's report goes on to state: "The lobbyists' perception that they could not complain about Rep. Durham's inappropriate behavior is not without support. For example, a senior male lobbyist expressed his view during an interview that enduring a legislator's sexual advances is merely part of a female lobbyists' job."

Nationally, women make up less than a quarter of all state lawmakers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That puts many female lobbyists, staffers and interns at the professional and political mercy of mainly male lawmakers.

"Women make good lobbyists because they get a man's attention and hold it," said Douglas Henry, a Nashville Democrat who served in the Tennessee legislature from 1954-56 and again from 1970-2014.

In Tennessee  where 22 out of 132 lawmakers are women and 85 percent are white  the political culture is steeped in the same history and booze that make the Nashville honky tonks that lie less than a mile from the state capitol a popular tourist attraction for millions. At Legislative Plaza, historically, that culture has included limited policies and safeguards, leaving women with few options. Even with a new policy, women are skeptical.

Tennessee's capitol hill culture dates back more than 200 years, when wives and children were sent away from Nashville during the annual legislative session, said state Sen. Frank Niceley. The longtime Republican lawmaker said there was little ethical oversight when he first started serving at the legislature in the 1980s.

"The lobbyists were handing out credit cards and staying out all night," he said.

At the time, the political elite would meet at "the Kremlin," the nickname for a few hotel rooms across the street from the statehouse, said longtime former House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh. The west Tennessee Democrat said the hotel hotspot across the street from the capitol allowed for "free-flowing conversations" among lawmakers, lobbyists and others.

"The liquor lobbyists brought the liquor and the beer lobbyists brought the beer. The grocery people brought the bologna and cheese," said Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains.

The Kremlin wasn't the only option. Lawmakers could attend "Choir Practice," a Monday-night ritual where lobbyists would treat lawmakers to food and drinks. There also was the "Capitol Hill Club," a regular gathering at another nearby hotel where lobbyists, journalists and elected officials would drink.

Such social activities were remnants of a legislative culture that once featured Tom "Golden Goose" Hensley, a liquor lobbyist, who handed out free bottles of whiskey to any member of the General Assembly.

Tom Humphrey, a retired longtime capitol hill reporter, said a colleague told him that as recently as the mid-1970s, Tennessee lawmakers were able to drive their car up to a liquor store on the ground floor of a prominent hotel across the street from the legislature to pick up a case of Jack Daniels that was paid for by liquor lobbyists.

Although Rep. Bill Dunn said such types of outlandish activities are no longer commonplace at the state capitol, the teetotaler Republican from Knoxville said if he were giving advice to new lawmakers, he would tell them to avoid drinking while they're in Nashville.

"If you look throughout the history of where legislators have gotten themselves in trouble, in almost every case if not every single one, alcohol was involved," Dunn, a lawmaker for 22 years, said. "People don't make good decisions when they've taken things that alter their perception of reality."

The attorney general found Durham relied on alcohol as a way to ingratiate himself with many of his victims.

Durham was dogged by controversy before he was elected in 2012. During his first campaign, he called his arrest for burglary and vandalism while attending the University of Tennessee "college shenanigans." As Durham's political star quickly began to rise, more problems surfaced. In 2013, Durham was investigated for prescription drug fraud, though the grand jury did not indict him. Then, he admitted to writing a reference letter in 2014 for a former youth pastor who was convicted on statutory rape and child pornography charges. On official legislative letterhead, Durham noted his own collegiate "grave error in judgment" in his note to a federal judge on behalf of the pastor.

Even with those controversies, no one took action against Durham, who gained power and leadership as the Republican House Whip, until a Tennessean investigation early this year detailed inappropriate, late-night text messages to women asking for pictures. The three women told The Tennessean they didn't feel comfortable telling anyone about the harassment for fear it could ruin their careers.

"I go tell someone in HR, oh, this representative did this to me, you know," one woman said. "I mean, I know those things are supposed to be anonymous, and no one's supposed to know who it was. But someone would have known."

After The Tennessean published its investigation, Durham resigned from his leadership position and left the House GOP caucus, but refused to resign amid calls to do so from Gov. Bill Haslam, House Speaker Beth Harwell and state Republican Party Chairman Ryan Haynes.

Some lawmakers stood by him when Slatery labeled Durham a "continuing risk to unsuspecting women" in an April report, which was released by the attorney general midway through his investigation. That prompted the speaker to banish his office to an entirely different building. Even after the report, some of Durham's Republican colleagues called Slatery's investigation a witch hunt or unwarranted.

But in June, after Slatery released information from a source who said Durham used campaign funds for his personal business, his staunchest allies including Rep. Glen Casada, R-Franklin, finally spoke out against him.

Recently state campaign finance investigators found a $191,000 discrepancy in Durham's bank and campaign accounts, leading one official to say there could be "serious violations" of state campaign law.

By the time the attorney general's final report came out in July, detailing Durham's repeated sexual misdeeds during the past four years, former supporters were silent.

Durham denied the sexual allegations in the report but acknowledged some information in the report was true. He suspended his re-election campaign, while refusing to give up his seat. By remaining a legislator until the end of his term in office, he'll be eligible for an annual $4,100 pension and health benefits for the rest of his life.

But when lawmakers tried to muster a push to expel Durham, they could only get 27 of the 66 signatures needed to call a special session of the legislature to oust him. They got more than twice as many signatures for a special session to discuss which bathrooms school children could use during a transgender debate. He did not win re-election and will leave office before the legislative session reconvenes in January.

Tennessee has expelled only one lawmaker since the civil war, but has had numerous scandals.

Since 2005, when five lawmakers were arrested in the statehouse by the FBI in an operation known as Tennessee Waltz, several elected leaders have resigned or left office in disgrace. A state senator left office in 2009 after admitting to an affair with an intern. The lawmaker had to ask for the FBI's help because the intern's boyfriend tried to blackmail him. In 2011, a lawmaker who once worked as a police officer was arrested on DUI and gun charges. The same lawmaker lost in the GOP primary this year, days after he was arrested for stealing the campaign signs of his opponent.

Environments lacking in gender diversity and more tolerant of inappropriate behavior create an atmosphere where sexual harassment is more likely to happen, said Laura Palumbo, communications director at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. Specifically in the case of state lawmakers or someone in a position like Roger Ailes, Palumbo noted the role power can play in harassment.

Former Fox News chairman Ailes created a culture of harassment and intimidation, according to a lawsuit and reports from several women who worked for the network. Investigators hired by Fox, according to the New York Times, say they have focused only on the alleged improper behavior by Ailes, who has denied wrongdoing.

But the Times reported that the investigation may include people who knew about the behavior and did nothing to stop it. The AG's report on the Durham case detailed how numerous people knew about his inappropriate behavior but did not speak up or do enough to stop it.

"When it comes to sexual violence in general we know that very often people are using positions of power and authority to give license to their actions and this is why we see people with high levels of celebrity or social standing as being individuals who are accused of sexual assault or in many cases connected to cases of harassment," Palumbo said.

Tennessee lawmakers have adopted a new sexual harassment policy. But a policy may not have the same pull among lawmakers as the beers and bright lights of Nashville. Whether it's at a state capitol or Fox News headquarters, Palumbo said, it will take more than a policy to change a culture.
Barney Sellers/The Commercial Appeal files There is little about Minnesota Fats that is small. The pool shark from Illinois does everything in a big way. He tells tall tales, wild jokes and long stories about himself. He works his magic at Peoples Pool Hall at 8 North Second Street on Aug. 22, 1978.

SHARE

Aug. 22

25 years ago: 1991

WASHINGTON  Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.) said Wednesday he will not run for president in 1992 because spending time with his wife and four young children is "more important than politics and personal ambition." For the Democratic Party it leaves another embarrassing hole in the ranks of potential challengers to President Bush. Of the Democrats who ran for the nomination in 1988, only Jesse Jackson is still considering a race in 1992.

50 years ago: 1966

CHICAGO  White youths, many goaded by harangues of Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen, bombarded Negroes with bricks, stones and bottles Sunday as Dr. Martin Luther King led civil rights marchers through rain-swept streets. King himself escaped the worst of the violence in his march through a driving rain in the tense South Deering neighborhood on Chicago's far South Side. But in the suburb of Evergreen Park, where marchers lacked the protection of massed Chicago policemen, white mobs attacked another band of King's demonstrators almost at will. They hurled anything they could lay their hands on at the 300 to 400 marchers.

75 years ago: 1941

The William R. Moore School of Technology will begin the third term Sept. 2, offering approximately 220 students in both day and night practical training free of tuition charges.

100 years ago: 1916

More than 1,000 Northern merchants, the advance guard of from 4,000 to 5,000 who are expected to attend the Southern Cotton States Merchants Convention, thronged Memphis' hotels last night.

125 years ago: 1891

Army officers are proposing that all State militia organizations shall be enrolled in the National Guard of the United States, the organizations to be controlled strictly and solely by the States in time of peace, but to be instantly available for national defense in case of war.
How long does someone need to live in Memphis to be mayor? It's complicated
SHARE

By Jennifer Pignolet of The Commercial Appeal

Shelby County Schools administrators will recommend on Tuesday the approval of five new charter schools, including Crosstown High, and the rejection of three others.

The board has a special called meeting at 7:30 p.m. to vote on the applications.

According to the meeting agenda, the administration will recommend the board approve new schools for Crosstown High School Inc., Gateway University Schools of Applied Sciences Inc., Legacy Leadership Academy, Kaleidoscope Schools and Artesian Schools.

Recommended for denial are new schools for Green Dot Public Schools Tennessee, Pathways in Education and The LeFlore Foundation.

All eight charter operators were denied approval during the first round of voting in June. At that time, the school board voted to approve two new schools, both run by Memphis Business Academy. The eight that were denied had 30 days to revise their applications and resubmit for the final vote.

If the board denies them again, the operators have 10 days to appeal to the Tennessee State Board of Education, state board Director of Charter Schools Tess Stovall said. The state would then have 60 days to complete a review and make a recommendation to the board, which would vote whether to overturn the local decision.

Crosstown High plans are for a 500-student high school in the Crosstown Concourse building, which is undergoing renovations. The school would partner with Christian Brothers University  President John Smarrelli is chairman of the Crosstown board  along with numerous other tenants in the 1 million-square-foot Crosstown building.

Artesian Schools is seeking a similar setup with Southwest Tennessee Community College. The school would be an early college high school located on the college's Gill Center campus in Frayser. Early college high schools offer students the chance for a combination high school and college experience to earn college credit while still in high school. Some students could earn an entire associate degree before graduating.

Each of the three charters recommended for denial come with different rationales, according to the documents.

For Pathways in Education, the district cited an audit showing "over 9 litigations, some of which threaten to cause insolvency" for the nationwide network. Pathways Tennessee currently operates campuses in Whitehaven and Frayser.

For The LeFlore Foundation, the administration cited several problems with the amended application, including missing or misstated budget estimates. The foundation had applied to open The Gentlemen and Ladies Academy Stem Charter School. The foundation already operates The Gentleman and Ladies Academy serving preschool and kindergarten students at 1690 Bonnie Lane in Cordova.

Green Dot already operates four schools in Memphis, but all four are under the state-run Achievement School District. The recommendation for denial from SCS cites portions of the original application that were not revised from one draft to the next, including a lack of "critical detail as to how the organization will monitor and evaluate the academic progress of individual students, student cohorts and the network as whole."
SHARE

Dwayne Spencer, president and chief executive officer for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis, and the organization's director of marketing and communications, visited The Commercial Appeal's editorial board last week and promptly made these points:

Habitat for Humanity does not give away houses and former President Jimmy Carter did not found Habitat, although he and his wife, Rosalynn, were good friends with fellow Georgians and Habitat for Humanity International founders Millard and Linda Fuller.

But Carter, through his volunteering with Habitat, has become the international face of the organization. He has has garnered worldwide respect for his voluntarism and human rights advocacy.

The Carters bring that prestige to Memphis this week for the weeklong Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, which starts today. During the week, volunteers will build 19 new Habitat homes in the Bearwater neighborhood of North Memphis on lots donated by Hope Presbyterian Church's Oasis of Hope ministry. Two more homes will be built at a later date.

The volunteers also will complete six repairs for elderly homeowners, and 10 beautification projects.

In a city with an abundance of low-wage earners who are unable to qualify for a traditional mortgage, Habitat plays an important role in giving those residents a chance to grab a piece of the American dream. Homeownership is an important segment of that dream.

"We give people a hand up so that they can determine their own destiny," Spencer told the editorial board.

Habitat uses donated or low-cost land and materials, and volunteer labor, to build homes for low-income families. The homes are sold without profit. Buyers pay no interest, and their mortgage payments are used to build more homes. Just as important, the homeowners are expected to help in the construction. Habitat calls it sweat equity.

That is an important concept because Habitat encourages self-sufficiency for those who buy Habitat homes. For example, homeowners receive counseling about the financial and other responsibilities that come with homeownership.

In most cases, the financial and quality-of-life situations of the purchasers improve because they no longer are paying a disproportionate percentage of their incomes on rental housing. Many see a significant drop in energy costs because the homes and appliances are energy efficient. As a result, Habitat's foreclosure rate is only 1 percent.

On a broader mission, Habitat has been bitten by the collaboration bug that has private, government, education and philanthropic sectors working together to mitigate some of the city's seemingly intractable social ills, including homelessness, failing schools, poverty, blight and an untrained workforce.

Habitat, for example, is collaborating with community development corporations on neighborhood revitalization projects. What it is doing in Bearwater is part of that effort. It also is working with the Plough Foundation to help senior citizens age in place, including making much-needed repairs on homes the elderly owners cannot afford to make.

No, Habitat does not give away homes. It gives the working poor a chance for homeownership and the quality-of-life benefits that come with owning a home. It helps revive residential vitality in blighted neighborhoods. It gives residents, who want to make a difference, a chance to help a family move into their own home.

With all of this in mind, welcome to Memphis Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.
SHARE

By Ed Rogers

This year's headline from The New York Times: "If Hillary Clinton Wins, Foundation Will Stop Accepting Foreign Donations." Next year's headline: "Clinton Foundation Accepts $250 Million in Foreign Donations."

Call me a cynic, but I think this is totally possible. I can even imagine how the reconciliation between these two seemingly conflicting headlines would go. We can imagine the usual Clinton apologists saying something like this:

"Well, $75 million was donated after the election in November but before the inauguration in January, and we always meant that the new rules would take effect after the inauguration. Another $100 million contributed from foreign countries and corporations was donated to the Clinton Foundation affiliate in Canada, so there is obviously no conflict. Hillary is not president of Canada. The fact that the money spent three hours in the Canadian bank before it was transferred to the United States or that Chelsea and Bill and whoever just live with a Canadian bank's checking account and credit cards doesn't matter. If the right-wing conspirators want to complain about accounting practices, the Clintons can't be expected to stoop to that petty level. Of course, as promised, Bill Clinton has refrained from giving paid speeches. The $25 million that was received was in no part speaking fees, but only 'appearance fees' and a travel expense reimbursement from donors who had already made their contribution. He just stopped by to say thanks."

They'll continue: "Of course, another $25 million or so came to Chelsea, but no reasonable person can dispute that she is worth every penny. She has become, in effect, a strategic adviser for various international entities, and her expertise is very much in demand. And she has done innumerable selfless good works for which people felt inclined to give her a gratuity. Next, the $25 million that came in from the rulers of Moneystan all came from their New York real-estate company, so that's not 'foreign' at all. Besides, everyone knows the Clintons thought about honeymooning in Moneystan. So there you have it: The foundation has not accepted any money from a foreign government or corporation. The Clintons have gone beyond what other First Families have had to report and endure, but there is just no way to satisfy some of their bitter, partisan critics."

You read it here first, folks. There will be about 10 minutes of outrage, and then everyone will shrug and move on.

Ed Rogers is a political consultant and a veteran of the White House and several national campaigns. He is the chairman of the lobbying and communications firm BGR Group, which he founded with former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, in 1991. He wrote this for the Washington Post.
Want a shiny Samsung Galaxy S7 but don't feel like shelling out big bucks?

By next year, you won't have to. Samsung is reportedly going to start refurbishing old smartphones to sell at a discounted rate to customers who want high-end products, but not at high-end prices. So what are the high-end details?

In IT Blogwatch we place a preorder.

What exactly is a refurbished smartphone? Se Young Lee and Miyoung Kim break the news:

Samsung...plans to launch a program to sell refurbished used versions of its premium smartphones as early as next year...The...smartphone maker will refurbish high-end phones returned...by users who signed up for one-year upgrade programs in...South Korea and the United States.

...

Samsung would...re-sell these phones at a lower price...refurbished phones typically are fitted with parts such as a new casing or battery...Selling used phones could help Samsung fend off lower-cost Chinese rivals.

Unfortunately, there is still a lot we don't know about the program. Alan F. reveals the lack of details:

The amount of the discount...was not revealed. Also unknown is the number of...handsets Sammy might offer, and the countries where such a program will be run. Typically, a used Samsung phone sells for 51% of its original price in the U.S...A used iPhone...will normally be priced at 69% of its original cost. That pricing might give Samsung a competitive advantage in the market for refurbished high-end phones.

Overall, does this strategy sound familiar? Turns out, Samsung wouldn't be the first high-end smartphone maker to embark on a program like this. Tyler Lee fills in the blanks:

Apple...has a refurbished program where customers can buy...products...officially refurbished by the company...Apples refurbished program has been pretty well-received.

...

[Samsung's] idea wouldnt be too different from what Apple is offering...These smartphones will come from customers who have signed up for Samsungs one-year upgrade program, meaning...the phones wont be wasted and sitting somewhere collecting dust, which would also be great for the environment.

What is Samsung's goal here? Charlie Osborne reads between the lines:

While Samsung is enjoying the rewards of launching...premium devices, a refurbishment program could assist Samsung in tackling markets where cheaper devices are...popular -- or...the only ones which are affordable.

...

Samsung could, for example, focus on...emerging markets, such as China, India and Brazil. By offering discounted handsets in these countries -- where...often...premium smartphones are too expensive for the average consumer -- Samsung could boost sales and take on rival companies which offer local, cheap handsets.

So what do users think about this? Teomor cracks himself up:

But... Samsung phones ARE refurbished. LOL
Dr. Vesselin Bontchev, an assistant professor at the National Laboratory of Computer Virology, which is part of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, found 3,277 malicious files on WikiLeaks after he scanned the email dump from Turkeys ruling political party (AKP).

Although Bontchev called it run-of-the-mill spam, scams and phishing, he noted that in the future lots of journos will get pwned if a really interesting document is released with malware embedded in it.

On GitHub, the malware pro said the list of malware hosted by WikiLeaks is by no means exhaustive. But if he listed it, then it is definitely malware indexed by VirusTotal. Incidentally, he is still not done scanning.

When attempting to verify the 300+ malware instances reported by The Register, it was a shocker to count thousands of links to malware  more than 3,000  in Bontchevs report. So I asked him if he was done scanning and to confirm the total.

Bontchev explained to me that when he first discovered the malware in the AKP dump posted on WikiLeaks, he did not check for malicious attachments in duplicate or spam emails. Additionally, if the same malicious file was attached to multiple emails, he only counted it once for his first report. What he found was 323 malicious files.

He previously told WikiLeaks to run a virus scanner on those leaked emails! Distributing malware is not journalism by any definition of the term!

Indeed, WikiLeaks quietly neutered the malware which was listed in Bontchevs first report. He calls it neutered instead of deleted because the malware is still there; its just more difficult to download and get infected by mistake.

After again searching the AKP dump, including spam and duplicates, Bontchevs second report has 3,277 entries. So it those plus the 323 malware instances which he listed in his first report.

In his report, he used three columns for each piece of malware he found; the first links to the email on WikiLeaks which contains malware. The e-mail itself is safe to view (although the text is usually spam/scam/phish/whatever), he wrote.

The second column has the link to the actual malicious email attachment; since it is a direct link and clicking on it would download the malware, Bontchev replaced https with hxxxx and added brackets as well to the URL.

Its unknown why WikiLeaks didnt give him at least a hat tip of recognition, nevertheless a thank you, before neutering those links to malicious attachments. The malware is still there, but now it is base64-encoded. It would require decoding it manually before the malware could be executed, he explained.

The third column links to VirusTotal where the malware has been given various names by different antivirus vendors. That page also lists how many antivirus solutions can detect the malware. Bontchev has been a malware researcher for 28 years, so he said he didnt need VirusTotal to tell him if something was malware. In fact, some of the files werent known to VirusTotal until he uploaded them; at that point, various scanners would detect the malware inside.

This is not the first time that WikiLeaks has been accused of hosting malware or endangering individuals by not redacting sensitive personal information included in the leaks. Even Edward Snowden called WikiLeaks reluctance to even a modest curation to be a mistake.

Fox News previously reported that Google had been warning users about dangerous downloads from WikiLeaks right after WikiLeaks posted the Democratic National Committee email leak. For a time, Facebook had even blocked WikiLeaks. However, Bontchev said he did not find any malware in the DNC dump.

In March 2015, security researcher Josh Wieder warned that the Global Intelligence Files published by WikiLeaks were loaded with malicious software. Wieder warned there could also be malware included in other leaks. He told Hacked that WikiLeaks could be used as a deliberate distribution mechanism. He suggested, Someone who wants to identify not just members of WikiLeaks, but their readers, this would absolutely be the way to do it.

That brings us to another possibility. What if some of the emails were just part of a long-range plan and advanced persistent threat (APT)? It wouldnt be unheard of for a zero-day exploit to be aimed at an especially juicy target, meaning not all browsers or antivirus solutions will block all threats. They cant block it if the vulnerability is not yet publicly known.

Bontchev told Computerworld:

We kinda got lucky this time. But the next time a government targeting journalists might leak some interesting-looking documents that are booby-trapped to install spyware or RATs (remote administration tools) on the computers of the journalists who download and open them. That's why journalists must be always very suspicious of such sources and open the documents only in safe environments (e.g., a Chromebook not connected to the Internet, which is wiped clean after the text of the documents has been inspected).

You might want to keep that one in mind and use caution when browsing dumps on WikiLeaks, which for example, said it already has the archive of NSA-linked cyber weapons that are being auctioned by Shadow Brokers; WikiLeaks intends to release a pristine copy in due course.

Although Bontchev doesnt have anything against WikiLeaks, he said:

It seems that Wikileaks' concept of journalism is finding an interesting-looking document in a garbage container and dumping the contents of the entire container at your front door. Please understand me correctly  I have great respect for the idea WikiLeaks is based on. The world needs an independent journalist organization that reveals the shady dealings of governments and corporations. However, dumping everything without any kind of curation is simply irresponsible! There is no reason to distribute malware or personal information. A responsible investigative journalist researches the subject, verifies the claims made by his sources, synthesizes the information and presents it to the reader. A responsible journalist doesn't dump raw garbage on their readers. I understand that WikiLeaks has very limited resources  but at the very least they could run a virus scanner on those e-mails!

WikiLeaks, come on, please run a virus scan before releasing a dump. I personally dont want infected and I dont know anyone who does. That also doesnt imply we wont read and possibly report on the leaks. As Bontchev said of running a scan before dumping the dirt, At least this will filter out the run-of-the-mill known malware. It's simply something they owe to their readers.
Owen Smith, the incompetent competence candidate, has struck again today.

Heres his latest campaign slogan:

Yes, thats right  his unifying statement is based on a declaration that he isnt currently proud of Britain.

Thats Britain 2016, which just won second place in the Olympics. Britain 2016, with the highest employment rate on record. Britain 2016, a beacon of democracy  an open, free and tolerant society of a type which is all too rare in the modern world. Britain 2016, which continues to contribute remarkable innovations in science and art to the annals of human achievement, just as it always has. Thats the nation Smith claims to want to lead  and yet he isnt proud of it.

Whats worse is this isnt some one-off slip of the tongue, it appears to be a pet saying of his. Here he is back in 2012 declaring that the Cardiff South and Penarth by-election proved that voters want a country we can be proud of once more (in reality that contest turned out to be a poor predictor of the 2015 General Election).

Perhaps he wagers that this line of miserablism will appeal to the Labour membership, at least some of whom have form for believing that patriotism is unpleasant or even racist. If so, then he is bringing a pea-shooter to an artillery duel: Corbyn has spent decades demonstrating his lack of pride not only in this country but in the entirety of Western civilisation.

Even if Smith did win, how does he imagine this message would come across to the wider electorate? Unsurprisingly, people dont take kindly to being told by politicians that their country is rubbish.
Nadhim Zahawi is a member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee and MP for Stratford On Avon.

We live in an age of hyperbole of which politics is only one of many victims, but our political discourse in particular has become increasingly adversarial, aggressive and exaggerated. Tiny differences become inflamed into moral battles, small variations in opinion are evidence of treachery. This has left us not just with an inability to find strong enough words, but a credibility gap when identifying the scale of an opponents error on an issue of real seriousness. Perhaps we describe politicians and parties as increasing the danger to our country too readily, but such a description is terrifyingly apt for the current direction of the Labour Party, and its naive current and potential leadership.

We first saw hints of this on the issue of renewing Trident. In reality there is the potential for a reasonable economic argument about other alternative options for our nuclear deterrent, and whether we have achieved best value for money, as there always is with any public expenditure. There are also reasonable moral arguments against holding nuclear weapons, the most terrible manifestation of mankinds overwhelming ability to kill itself.

But nuclear weapons exist, and you cannot just hope theyll disappear. To make an argument that if we removed our nuclear deterrent unilaterally that this would in any way change the world is utterly naive. Does anyone seriously believe that taking the moral high ground and preaching to Russia and the Americans would convince them to disarm faster? Instead our voice would be silenced and Putin would feel even more comfortable meddling in European affairs, either militarily in the Baltic Region, economically through switching off gas to Eastern Europe, or politically with his propaganda stations already based in the UK. Our nuclear deterrent maintains an equilibrium, a status quo. Any sudden change in that balance would be dangerous. It would signal an increasing disinterest in protecting ourselves or our European allies, just as the USA is discussing drawing back its protection on our behalf. We would sacrifice so much to gain nothing but a feeling of being morally right and virtuous.

But the most immediate danger is the comments their candidates have made in the current leadership contest about ISIL and NATO. When Jeremy Corbyn was asked what his response would be if Russia attacked a NATO ally, he refused to confirm he would come to their aid. Instead he prefers to achieve a world in which we dont need to go to war. That is all very well and good, but once again we must expect our leaders to do slightly more than just wish bad things away.

One of the many inherent flaws in Corbyns thinking, is his lack of understanding that no one ever hopes for war. He genuinely seems to believe that every problem in the world is caused by Britain and America desiring war, going out of our way to find it. In short he thinks we are the bad guys, that if he was in charge we could just stop meddling and everything would be sunshine and rainbows. In reality we go to war when it is deemed necessary to protect our country and our allies. It is painstakingly debated by everyone involved, the security services, the military, the Government and Parliament. Each person that has a voice in the process knows the grave nature of their decision. Each person knows the impact it would have on so many lives, both in our military and among local civilians. But each must also balance this against the evil that has forced us to act. It is difficult but worse things often happen when we step away. Corbyn hopes that if we ignore that evil it will disappear. I hope we will not see the added danger that policy would place us in.

Reasonable Labour supporters hope for change from this catastrophic leader, and have placed their faith in the moderate Owen Smith. However he only has a slightly different form of naivety to offer to the British people. Instead of ignoring problems like ISIL, he would like to have a chat with them, and bring them into negotiations. His clarification that this would only be if they gave up violence merely displays more stunning ignorance about the organisation. ISIL are not the IRA. We cannot wait for them to give up armed struggle, and then negotiate a political solution with them, because it will not happen. They are not going to end their ardent wish to purge apostates, ethnic minorities and gay people in order to negotiate with Owen Smith. There is no negotiation, there is no give and take. When they believe God has commanded everything they do, to negotiate with us would be betrayal of their ideology. Syria requires a political solution, that is undeniable, but it cannot involve a group such as ISIL.

I know such warnings will be ignored by those in the Labour Party because they come from the voice of, evil of all evils, an actual Tory  and not even a red one, a legitimate blue one. But we cannot allow the fundamental safety of the British people and our role in increasing global security to be voluntarily compromised in this way. Labour has gone too far. We cannot have political leaders who proudly proclaim that if they become leader their foreign policy will be to just hope for a nuclear free, war free, ISIL free world. These are terrible and difficult problems and threats to our nation, but they only become graver if we ignore them. If Labour wants to survive it must quickly reassess, but if it does not it doesnt deserve to.
Sussex News

Story Saved

You can find this story in My Bookmarks.

Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right.
Channel programs News

Lenovo Exec: Were 'Staying On The Forefront' With Better Solutions For Partners

Lindsey O'Donnell

Share this

Lenovo is staying on the forefront of a dynamic technology marketplace through acquisitions, new products and better solutions, a U.S. channel executive for the vendor said Sunday.

Chun Lee, director of the company's U.S. Tier 2 VAR channel, spoke at the XChange 2016 Conference in San Antonio  hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company. He called Lenovo is a channel-first organization.

The way we look at the market right now, we are in an inflection point, said Lee. Things are changing all the time and being dynamic. The PC as it started out was a single device  now you have all kind of multi-mode devices. Lenovos really focused on how to stay on the upper end of that  to reach new heights so that [channel partners] dont turn into a dinosaur.

[Related: Fortinet Channel Chief: Integrated Security Creates 'New Opportunity' For Solution Providers]

The company, which has $45 billion in sales, is split into four groups  PCs and smart devices, mobility, the data center, and the innovator group  to invest in new technology.

Lenovo has made a series of acquisitions to bolster each of these segments over the past few years, including PC company NEC, security solution cloud interface Stoneware, server segment IBM System X and the Motorola brand.

However, channel partners make a big difference with sales and solutions, particularly in the hardware platform, said Lee. In fact, $700 million in incremental revenue for the hardware platform went through the channel last year in North America, he noted.

Through channel sales, Lenovo has seen its SMB partners grow 96 percent over the past year, said Lee.

For channel partners, Lenovo is trying to improve the sales motion so partners can talk about the different form factors  the company is providing a sales toolkit for partners to take to their customers so they can decipher between different mobile devices, including 2-in-1s, tablets, slates and detachables  and figure out what the right devices are for clients.

Lee stressed that Lenovo is hoping to follow this type of revenue on the server side for channel partners, so the companys recipe is following what Lenovo did with the PCs, continuing with strong value in the server space, and being open and scalable.

The company, for example, is expanding its enterprise workload partnerships, said Lee. For example, Lenovo partnered with VMware Horizon View and EMC View Labs so its Flex system x240 M5 could become a VDI solution for up to 3,500 desktops.

Michael Lomonaco, director of marketing and communications at Open Systems Technology, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based systems integrator and a Lenovo partner for several years, said he's impressed by Lenovos strategic investments so far.

Lenovo has been on a smart acquisition streak  we thought the Motorola acquisition was very strategic, he said. Lenovo has been saying it is investing in new cutting-edge solutions, but acquisitions like this show that they are really trying to make their products smarter and more nimble by digging deeper into the mobile market.
Channel programs News

Microsoft Touts Efforts To Get Partners 'Quickly Up To Speed' On New Technologies

Kyle Alspach

Share this

Microsoft foresees major opportunities for partners in deploying products such as Windows 10 Enterprise and Microsoft Dynamics and is investing in more resources to help them develop practices in those and other new areas, Microsoft executive Joel Borellis said during his keynote at XChange 2016 Monday.

In his keynote at the XChange conference, hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company and being held this week in San Antonio, Microsoft's general manager for U.S. partner enablement told an audience of solution providers that the company is working to "really help you quickly get up to speed on our new technologies, new workloads, new opportunities."

[Related: Microsoft Unveils Plan To Sell Subscription-Based Windows 10 Enterprise, Surface Devices Through Channel Partners]

Whereas Microsoft previously would designate many people as "generalist technical folks," the company now dedicates those staff members to focus on specific areas, Borellis said. For instance, with partner technology strategist Nick Johnson, Microsoft has effectively told him, "We need you to help our partners understand how to drive security solutions into the market," Borellis said.

Borellis also provided details on where partners can go online to find resources for specific practice areas in which they're interested.

Ben Klopfer, vice president of sales at Indianapolis-based Microsoft partner eimagine, said his takeaway from the keynote is that "it sounds like theres going to be a renewed focus on partners" at Microsoft. Klopfer said he's particularly "excited to see a continued focus on the cloud and Dynamics."

Microsoft Dynamics -- which includes ERP and CRM business solutions -- will be a major focus going forward, Borellis said.

"Were going to be doing a lot in terms of our enablement and activation of our partners in that area," he said.

Meanwhile, Windows 10 Enterprise, which some partners will be able to begin selling as a subscription this fall, is another area where Microsoft is focused in terms of enabling partners, Borellis said.

Partners in Microsoft's Cloud Solution Provider program will be able to provide their customers with a subscription to Windows 10 Enterprise as part of a managed service offering -- at a price point thats intended to make it more attractive to smaller organizations, the company said in July.

"We want to help work with you and enable more deployment partners" for Windows 10 Enterprise, Borellis said. "This is an opportunity not just for Microsoft to continue to deploy [Windows 10], but to have partners get involved with that and help us with that."

Overall, as partners are determining the big bets that you want to make on new practices, Microsoft is looking to send the message that its committed to providing technical and go-to-market resources to support partners, he said.

Michael Goldstein, president and CEO of LAN Infotech, a Microsoft partner in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said that the message of commitment to the channel from Microsoft is compelling.

"As a partner we have choices. I think when people look at Google, Microsoft and other companies along that line, you want to feel youre needed as a partner and have the resources there," Goldstein said. The message from Borellis helps demonstrate "their investment back into the channel," he said.
Cloud News

CRN Exclusive: Rodney Foreman, Formerly IBM's VP Of Cloud Channel Sales, Tapped To Lead Informatica's Channel Efforts

Joseph Tsidulko

Share this

Rodney Foreman, a 20-year IBM veteran who ran a number of Big Blue's channel sales divisions over the years, has left the technology giant, he told CRN, to take the helm of Informaticas channel.

Foreman, who started working last week as Informatica's channel chief, last held the position of IBM's vice president of cloud channel sales, the Armonk, N.Y.-based company's largest software channel.

As Informatica's senior vice president for partner ecosystems, Foreman said he will refocus the data integration powerhouse, based in Redwood City, Calif., on an emerging channel strategy designed to expand the number of VARs in the program and drive more business through indirect partners.

[Related: Here Are The 5 Leaders In Gartners 2016 Magic Quadrant For Integration Platform-As-A-Service]

"The challenge [Informatica] had from a channel perspective is they just really havent put anything behind their programs, incentives, marketing, etcetera, to grow their channel business," Foreman told CRN. "Its just their culture has been a direct sales culture."

But Informaticas new CEO, Anil Chakravarthy, elevated to the top position in January, understands that the company needs at least 40 percent of its business going through the channel to achieve the growth he's hoping to see, Foreman told CRN.

"My role is to grow the channel business, both from existing partners and to recruit new partners," Foreman said. "And weve got a good channel business with the [systems integrators], all the global systems integrators love their products. But from a reseller perspective, we need a stronger network of partners that we dont have."

Foreman held several senior positions at IBM over the last two decades, most of which, in recent years, focused on supporting Big Blue's channel. In those roles he's made a strong impression on a number of large IBM partners.

Darrin Nelson, vice president of software sales at Sirius Computer Solutions, based in San Antonio, Tex., told CRN that Foreman was a channel leader who embraced innovation and transformation.

Nelson, who turned Sirius into one of IBM's largest software resellers, and before that substantially grew the practice of another IBM-aligned systems integrator, said of Foreman: "Rodney was one of those guys that had a vision and believed in my business and what I needed to accomplish, and frankly helped me break down barriers both within IBM and my company."

"We were able to structure new programs and new offerings to accelerate the transformation at Sirius, build solution areas and extend practices that Sirius didnt have as a legacy," Nelson told CRN.

Foreman was always willing to be an advocate for program changes the channel wanted to see, according to Nelson.

"Hes a vision guy. Hes not afraid to help lead a transformation," Nelson said. "If theres a good business case, or a clear path from where we are to where we collectively want to go, hes willing to help fight and help lead the transformation."

Nelson said that, based on his experiences working with IBM over the years, he essentially breaks down IBM's channel leaders into two fundamental camps.

Some he associates with the status quo, Nelson said. They "do a great job of executing what has been done previously." Then there are others, like Foreman, "willing to embrace change and innovate."

"Rodney was a leader who enabled us to drive change within our own company," Nelson said.

Foreman told CRN he believes Informatica doesnt have enough partners to represent the portfolio of products the company offers and the markets it reaches.

"So Im looking forward to growing the partner network, improving the channel program, putting incentives in place so that when partners reach certain tiers, certain levels of revenue, they accelerate revenue growth," Foreman said.

Another recent defection from IBM to Informatica generated some controversy.

Lou Attanasio headed global sales for IBMs hybrid cloud division until April, when he accepted the position of Informatica's executive vice president and chief revenue officer.

IBM sued Attanasio, who had worked there for more than 25 years, claiming he stole proprietary IP and violated a non-compete agreement. The matter has been resolved, according to people familiar with the case.

Informatica was, in many ways, the original big data company, providing data ETL (extract, transform and load) software that businesses used to move huge volumes of data between systems, such as data in transactional systems to data warehouses for analysis.

Informatica was taken private in August 2015 in a $5.3 billion deal in which the company was acquired by the Permira Funds and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, with Microsoft and Salesforce.com also buying minority stakes in the company.
Mobility News

Dell Exec: We Can Help Partners Build A Future-Ready Workplace For Customers

Lindsey O'Donnell

Share this

As technology in such areas as mobility and the data center evolve rapidly, the state of the workplace is transforming as well, and Dell can help partners tap into opportunities from these changes, a Dell executive said Monday.

Speaking at the XChange 2016 conference in San Antonio hosted by CRN's parent, The Channel Company, Moe Klan, director of customer solution centers for Dell, told solution providers that the tech world is changing, creating a need for information.

Our world is changing  we want information now. Everything is at risk, and were drowning in data, said Klan. Dell has solutions across the spectrum for the enterprise as companies begin to look at a future-ready workplace.

[Related: DevOps Opens Door To Helping Customers Transform Their Business, Not Just Run It]

That mobile workplace transformation is apparent in a survey conducted by Dell and Intel of business end users. The survey found that 59 percent of respondents need less office space per employee than 10 years ago, and 52 percent of respondents said they believe employees working from home are just as or more productive than those coming into the office.

As part of this transforming workplace, Dell is offering a host of solutions to keep partners up to date with the most cutting-edge products and services for enterprises.

Klan listed three big areas where customers are evolving  workplace devices, endpoint security suites, and cloud-client computing. For device lifecycles, the company offers provisioning and management services; while for cloud-client computing, Dell customers have access to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), application and profile virtualization, and thin clients.

Meanwhile, for security, Dell offers a Security Suite that includes a collaboration with Cylance for further protection against malware.

On the channel side of the spectrum, Klan said partners are evolving as well to address these workplace transformations. For example, in a survey Dell gave to channel partners this year, most said that private and public cloud, backup services, app development and BI are what keep them up at night  a big change from a similar survey in 2014, when partners instead listed security and disaster recovery.

Robert Serna, director at San Antonio-based Dell partner Realtime Managed Services Company, said the biggest trend he can relate to with clients is lifecycle upgrades and the mobile transformation that clients are seeing.

On the Dell side, one of the interesting things were seeing is ... the cycles of replacing the hardware and how often customers are replacing their devices, he said. Everythings going to the phone now its a good illustration of how customers went from desktop to laptop to now the mobile device.

Dell also offers an array of mobile devices to keep up with the mobility transformation in the workplace, including the XPS 13 or Latitude 13; and also offers new technology like a charging stand and wireless display for the evolving workplace, said Klan.
Security News

Managed Services: The Opportunity (And Pitfalls) In Building Out A Security Operations Center

Sarah Kuranda

Share this

With Cybersecurity challenges in the news every day, clients are starting to pay attention and are looking to outsource their security needs. That presents a huge opportunity for MSSPs like Phalanx Secure Solutions who have invested in building security operations centers (SOCs) to meet those needs, CEO Matt Johnson said.

"The need really exists for expert, reliable support. Clients are starting to see the value of having outside security working for them," Johnson said Sunday during a presentation at the 2016 XChange University: IT Security event, part of the XChange 2016 conference running this week in San Antonio, Texas. XChange 2016 is hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company.

However, expanding managed security offerings by building a SOC can be as much of a risk for an MSP as it is an opportunity. Johnson said there are careful considerations an MSP or solution provider must go through when building a SOC, including making sure it is set up effectively and that they are prepared to handle the costs involved.

[Related: 25 New Solution Providers That Are Making Their Mark]

Baltimore, Md.-based Phalanx Secure Solutions launched earlier this year as a result of the merger of Raven Data Technologies and Secure Systems Solutions with a dedicated focus on security. Since then, the company has been working to build out its SOC, which Johnson defined as an organized, skills team using technology and processes to constantly and continuously monitor, correlate, create alerts and respond to threats from client data.

Building this type of SOC was critical to the company's establishment as an MSSP, he said, as it opened new streams of revenue, allowed for more services and transformed it into a "complete IT solutions organization." However, with that evolution comes the challenge of new layers of management, huge additional costs and complexity, as well as the need to add new, expensive talent.

"A SOC to us, it's an all-or-nothing deal. There's no such thing as a half-SOC," Johnson said. "While it can be very lucrative, you have to think carefully about what you want to do and how you want to do it."

From his experience building out Phalanx's SOC, Johnson said there are four areas that a solution provider should pay attention to when building out their own center: people, processes, technology and money.

People, in particular, are the critical piece of a SOC, Johnson said. "You're only as good as your people who run your process and technology. If you don't have very good people, the processes and technology don't matter," Johnson said.

He said solution providers should carefully consider how many people they need to run their SOC effectively, including Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 analysts, as well as managers. Johnson said Phalanx's SOC is staffed 24 hours a day with seven analysts, and it is looking to add two more. From there, continuous training is key, both to keep up with the changing security industry as well as for employee retention, he said.

Processes are also key to having a consistent and effective workflow in a SOC, Johnson said. Those procedures should include -- at minimum -- monitoring, alerting, escalation, investigation, incident logging, compliance monitoring and reporting, he said.

The technology running behind the scenes in the SOC is also important, Johnson said. The technology needed includes a solution for generating, storing and analyzing log data, as well as a scalable analytics engine, a consolidated warehouse for security data, a centralized management dashboard, pattern-based threat monitoring techniques, a ticketing system, rich correlation of incident information, full network packet capture, data and identity classification and access management, he said.

Finally, Johnson said solution providers should expect a SOC investment to be very expensive, costing up to double what they might anticipate. Those costs stem from expensive security talent, pricey technology, training, infrastructure and more, he said. Partners can expect to spend between half a million and more than a million dollars on building their own SOC, he said.

While the cost and risk involved might be high, Johnson said the opportunity is only growing around security for companies like Phalanx, as customers look to adopt more security solutions in the months and years to come.

"The good thing for us, as practitioners, is there is definitely an increase in security budgets ... and more boards [of directors] are finally getting involved in security and starting to realize they have to do something," Johnson said.
Security News

Dell Exec: SonicWall Will Be 'All About The Channel' After Sale To Private Equity

Sarah Kuranda

Share this

Dell SonicWall's sale to private equity will allow the network security division to be more channel-friendly than ever before, said a company executive Sunday to solution providers attending 2016 XChange University IT Security.

"As we separate from Dell, you will see some amazing things because it's all about the channel," said Chris Auger, executive director, North America network security, at Dell during a presentation at the conference, being held this week in San Antonio. XChange is hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company.

Dell announced in June that it would sell its software division to private equity firm Francisco Partners and the private equity arm of activist hedge fund Elliott Management, reportedly for more than $2 billion. The separation had been in the works for more than 17 months, Auger said, and will allow Dell Software, including Dell SonicWall, to increase its focus on partners and drive a channel strategy focused on simplicity and partner profitability.

[Related: Partners Not Worried About Dell Deal To Resell SonicWall After Private Equity Sale]

"When the separation occurs, we are a 100 percent channel organization. We don't have the ability to actually book things directly ... We become a channel-centric organization in everything we do," Auger said.

That includes leveraging Dell as a large reseller partner, Auger said, similar to how it might leverage companies such as CDW or Insight. Dell SonicWall has already established an OEM agreement with Dell to sell and support its network security solutions as a VAR.

This is exactly the approach that partners hoped the vendor would take when the sale was announced in June. Partners at that time told CRN SonicWall's "best years" and "most aggressive" market presence were as a private company. They said the sale should allow SonicWall to be more "nimble," work better with partners and be more strategic.

Auger said the Americas channel strategy for SonicWall going forward will focus on "getting back to basics" with partners. That will involve a focus on three key areas: solution completeness, operational efficiency and competitive differentiation, he said.

For solution completeness, Auger said SonicWall will look to spread the word about the products it offers beyond SMB-focused firewalls, the technology it is best known for. That includes its high-end firewalls, advanced threat protection, secure email, and more, he said. For partners, that breadth of offerings is key because it translates to increased profitability, differentiation and services, he said.

"It's all about helping the channel community drive greater profitability and growth in all we do," Auger said.

Auger said SonicWall will also focus on driving operational efficiency. That includes a focus on security-as-a-service solutions, which is the fastest growing part of the company's North American business at 400 percent. The company is also rolling out a hosted Global Management System in winter 2016 for cloud management of SonicWall firewalls. That rollout will eliminate the barrier to entry of on-premise firewall management, he said.

Dell will also roll out a new partner portal, expected in fall 2016, with revamped deal registration, onboarding process, and tiers, Auger said. SonicWall distribution has also been moved under its North American sales division, instead of through the overall Dell organization, he said. These changes are designed to speed up the company's operations with partners and drive operational efficiencies, he said.

Finally, Auger said SonicWall will focus on building its competitive differentiation and vertical targeting. That includes building out its advanced threat protection subscription service, its Swarm application risk management offering and content filtering, he said.
Daily in Christ, with Neil Anderson Discovering freedom through Jesus

Every Day Light, with Selwyn Hughes Helping you see the light of Jesus in your life

Heartlight Daily Verse, with Phil Ware A thought and prayer to start your day

Wisdom from the Psalms Meditating on the teachings of the Hebrew songbook

Daily in Your Presence, with Rebecca Barlow Jordan Conversations with a loving Father based on the qualities of God

Living Free Every Day Life-changing biblical principles address life-controlling problems

Daily Disciples Devotional Scripturally based readings with practical life applications.

The Crosswalk Devotional Truths observed at the intersection of faith and life.

Praying the Names of God, with Ann Spangler Gain a more intimate knowledge of God and His absolute faithfulness.

Time With God, with John North The most important part of your day is your time with God

Daily New Life with Steve Arterburn Daily inspiration to help on your healing journey

Cross the Bridge Daily Evotionals with David McGee Experience daily inspiration in your inbox with Gods Word, encouraging thoughts and life lessons from pastor David McGee

Insights from Bill Bright Daily reflections from the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ

Answers for Church Members Common questions from church members answered by 9Marks ministries

Somebody Loves You Radio w/ Raul Ries God's principles for daily living

Your Daily Prayer A devotional prayer and inspirational image delivered to you every weekday morning to start your day in conversation with God.

Joy of My Heart with Anne Graham Lotz Read thought-provoking insights from Anne on how to live out God's Word!

First15 Devotional First15 is a one year, 365 day, daily devotional created to help you meet with your heavenly Father. Through worship, a devotional thought, and guided prayer, you can experience Gods loving presence every morning.

Your Daily Bible Verse Dive deeper into Scripture with thoughts about the Bible verse of the day, with encouraging and helpful thoughts from our writers in the Your Daily Bible Verse podcast and devotional
Carnival Cruise Line has announced a new voyage on the Carnival Spirit, making first-time calls in Vietnam and Thailand. The ship heads to China in 2018.

The Carnival Spirits 19-night cruise sails from Sydney on May 3, 2018 and will include five ports, including Airlie Beach and Darwin in Australia, Bali in Indonesia, as well as the ships maiden calls to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam for an overnight stay, and Ko Samui in Thailand. The ship will end its cruise in Singapore on May 22.

Carnival Cruise Line Vice President Jennifer Vandekreeke said Carnival Spirits Singapore cruise would open up a world of opportunities for holidaymakers, enabling them to discover exotic destinations in Asia while having more fun than ever onboard the popular superliner.

Were excited to be taking our guests on such a special cruise, with Carnival Cruise Lines first-ever visits to Ho Chi Minh City and Ko Samui and a fun-filled itinerary packed with new experiences both on and off the ship, Vandekreeke said.

The Carnival Spirit will enter drydock when she reaches Singapore in May 2018.

She will then sail on a series of voyages around Asia from Shanghai during the local summer season before returning to Australia in late 2018.
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.
STRATFORD  Members of the Connecticut delegation have penned a letter to the secretary of the U.S. Navy urging him to rethink the decision to relocate maintenance work on the presidents Marine One helicopter fleet from Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford to a facility in Florida.

Standing in the Teamsters Local Union 1150 headquarters on Garfield Avenue alongside leaders of the union that represents Sikorsky workers, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., on Monday announced the delegations decision to request a thorough review of all direct and indirect costs of any relocation in a letter to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus.

Any monetary differential in contracts should be weighed against enduring timely, accurate and experts repairs  a feat that can only be accomplished by continuing to employ those currently ready to perform the work at Sikorsky, the letter states.

Besides Blumenthal, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and U.S. Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, and Jim Himes, D-4, also signed the letter.

Sikorsky last week said it would no longer be repairing the current fleet of Marine One helicopters after negotiations fell through with Lockheed Martin, Sikorskys parent company. About 85 employees who now work on the fleet will be affected by the contract loss.

Blumenthal said, of the 85 jobs, 51 will be realigned within the company, while another 34 jobs may be lost for good.

Moving this work may seem, on paper, to gain savings but these savings are a mirage, Blumenthal said on Monday. Our hope is Secretary Mabus will heed our call to him and that negotiations will continue between Lockheed and the Navy.

This work is among the most important done on any of our aircraft in the U.S. he added. These helicopters carry the president and his family, as well as top officials. There is no room for error. None.

Rick Rollinson, vice president and business agent for the union, cautioned that work on the Marine One helicopters is not easy and isnt predictable.

Not just anybody can touch this helicopter, he said. This is a situation where you dont know what the aircraft is going to need until its taken apart.

Because of this, Rollinson said, it is hard to really estimate the cost savings of moving the work to Florida.

Blumenthal noted eight of the Marine One helicopters are now over 40 years old, while another 11 are nearly 30 years old.

When asked how close the Navy and Lockheed came to reaching a deal, Blumenthal said, They are close enough on cost that it is doable. There is no reason the Navy and Lockheed cant come together.

If Mabus does not agree to keep the work in Stratford, Blumenthal said the delegation can then appeal to someone higher in the command chain. I really hope it wont come to that, he said.

A contract between Sikorsky and the Navy for the design and maintainance of a new fleet of Marine One helicopters is separate from the contract on the existing fleet.

ktorres@hearstmediact.com; 203-330-6227
Section of GAP closed during bridge work

"The last time the bridges were re-decked was in 1995. They have become almost unsafe to be used," said Lindsay Baer.
Check it out: Fun things to do this weekend in Lake County
Going to the hairdresser can be fraught with difficulties - you go in asking for bouncing waves and a chic side fringe, then come out looking like Cousin It.

For men it can be even harder, with a mind-boggling array of lengths and styles to choose from.

But if you've ever fallen victim to a dodgy trim, take heart that it wasn't as bad as any of these - the styles that have made fully-grown men into international laughing stocks after finding their way online.

Gino became so famous as a result of his hair that he even made it onto the Jay Leno show, and publicly hit back on Facebook against trolls who had mocked his barnet

First up is dentist Gino DiGiannantonio from Cleveland, Ohio, whose photograph swept the web after someone spotted his poster and shared it on Twitter.

Gino became a meme virtually overnight as people professed themselves baffled by his distinctive, two-toned hair which appeared to have been slathered in copious amounts of gel to keep it upright.

The dentist became so famous as a result, that he even made it onto the Jay Leno show - and was forced to publicly hit back on Facebook against trolls who had mocked his look.

But his tresses were nothing compared to one customer, who took the close-shave to brave new levels with a 'do resembling a winding mountain road working its way up his head - topped off with one solitary plait on each side.

Circle of life: One man incorporated his thin strip of hair with his beard and mutton chops. Imgur users speculated that he'd asked his barber to 'f*** my whole life up fam'

This customer took the close-shave to brave new levels with a 'do resembling a winding mountain road working its way up his head - topped off with one solitary plait on each side

Forgetting something? A fellow hair enthusiast ended up with what looked like curtains - but with half of his hair missing

It is unclear whether one gent took Johnny Bravo as his inspiration fom a solid-looking quiff that one Twitter user likened to the graphics from Dreamcast - a games console

Taking the visual trend to the extreme, one man went for the pineapple look, complete with yellow 'skin' and a tuft of green 'leaves' on top - a style that one person compared to the 'Spongebob house'.

One man incorporated his thin strip of hair with his beard and mutton chops, giving the impression of a circle drawn onto his head. Imgur users speculated that he'd asked his barber to 'f*** my whole life up fam'.

Meanwhile, another adventurous customer had his sides shaved into a grid of wavy squares; one Twitter user compared the look to the 'Windows XP startup logo'.

One elderly gent had his sparse locks stuck down onto his forehead in the shape of lovehearts - perhaps taking inspiration from Kendall Jenner's famous pose

When one moustache just isn't enough: One chap opted for facial hair on his head, getting an impressive handlebar moustache styled on his otherwise bald scalp

Taking the visual trend to the extreme, one man went for the pineapple look, complete with yellow 'skin' and a tuft of green 'leaves' on top - compared to the 'Spongebob house'

One hair-raising look that wouldn't have looked out of place in a 1990s teenage soap came in the form of heavy, sweeping curtains - paired with jam jar spectacles and a brooding gaze.

It is unclear whether one gent took Johnny Bravo as his inspiration, with a rock-hard quiff that one Twitter user likened to the graphics from Dreamcast - an early Sega games console.

Meanwhile, one man ended up with what looked like curtains - but with half of his hair missing - while one elderly gent had his sparse locks stuck down onto his forehead in the shape of love hearts, perhaps taking inspiration from Kendall Jenner's famous Instagram pose.

One customer meanwhile was compared to a grilled panini due to his hair which had been shaved into a series of straight lines going down from his hairline to his chin

One plucky customer had a mohawk on top, with his sides shaved into a grid of wavy squares; one Twitter user compared the look to the 'Windows XP startup logo

Toilet humour: Unsurprisingly, this man's hair was compared to a pile of human excrement

Inventive: One man had a face, complete with sunglasses and moustache, shaved into the back of a blonde barnet

While one chap opted for facial hair on his head, getting an impressive handlebar moustache shaved onto his otherwise bald scalp.

One customer, meanwhile, was compared to a grilled panini on Twitter due to his hair which had been shaved into a series of straight lines going down to his chin.

And one man had a face complete with sunglasses and moustache shaved into the back of his blonde barnet.

One man sported an afro which faded from brown to beige, with wispy sideburns. Twitter commentators said was inspired by 'that moment when you pour the milk into your tea'

Not what he was going for: This man's dyed red hair was dubbed the 'ground beef fade'

This man's hair was likened to ramen noodles - before the hot water is added in

Competing for the crown for worst hair was one man sporting an afro which faded from dark brown to beige, with wispy sideburns.

Poking fun at the eyebrow-raising style, one Twitter commentator said it must have been inspired by 'that moment when you pour the milk into your tea'.

But he surely can't have been left as red-faced as the man whose dyed red hair was dubbed the 'ground beef fade' - or indeed the man with the 'ramen noodles' lid.

Rather cruelly, another man's blonde-dyed style was compared to 'the back of an air conditioner'.

This man's blonde-dyed style was compared to 'the back of an air conditioner'

Feeling hungry: Twitter users joked that this man asked for a 'Cheetos puff'

Other hairstyles were likened to bar codes, Cheeto puffs and even the Mozilla Firefox logo - while one poor teen with a shaved head, save for a few green braids, was likened to a prison inmate.

Ethan E went viral in 2015 with his shocker of a bowl cut which he posted on Twitter, writing: 'Worst haircut ever @GreatClips never going back there employees who were to busy trying to finish quick and clockout.'

He became an overnight celebrity after his tweet was shared more than 69,000 times and liked 88,000 times.

One blonde man was left with what looked like a stick-on beard after he shaved his head, leaving just a long, thin strip running from ear to ear. However he seemed nonplussed by the result, posing happily for a photograph.

Ethan E went viral with his shocker of a bowl cut, writing: 'Worst haircut ever @GreatClips never going back there employees who were to busy trying to finish quick and clockout'

This man's impressive comb-over was compared to a supermarket barcode

'I wanna feel like I'm in jail': Twitter users compared this young man to a prison inmate

Was that his inspiration? People joked that this man's head looked like the Firefox logo
Dame Joan Collins never let multiple divorces put her off tying the knot  and now her daughter Tara Newley has married for a second time.

The 52-year-old wed publisher Nick Arkle this weekend in a London ceremony held by the Jewish sect Kabbalah, whose followers include Madonna. Congratulations on a beautiful Kabbalistic spiritual wedding ceremony, said Joan, 83, whose father was Jewish.

When Dame Joan married her fifth husband Percy Gibson, 32 years her junior, friends worried she wouldnt last the pace. She quipped: If he dies, if he dies.

Tara Newley, 52, wed publisher Nick Arkle this weekend (pictured) in a London ceremony held by the Jewish sect Kabbalah, whose followers include Madonna

A-lister starstruck by Funny Girl Sheridan

Cilla star Sheridan Smith has won a dashing new admirer.

Hollywood heart-throb Gerard Butler watched her in West End musical Funny Girl on Saturday and led a standing ovation for Sheridan, who had returned from a two-month absence due to stress and exhaustion. So impressed was Butler, whose films include 300 and P.S. I Love You, that he asked to go backstage.

Cilla star Sheridan Smith (pictured) has won a dashing new admirer called Gerard Butler

The Scottish actor was, though, less keen to talk to his own fans.

When one man said, Would it be really corny if I asked you for a selfie?, Butler replied, Yeah, and stomped off.

Green-fingered television presenter Alan Titchmarsh is a favourite of the Royal Family. Indeed, as he bowed to collect his MBE the Queen told him: You give a lot of ladies a lot of pleasure. Titch says some of his TV rivals are rather less well-mannered than he is: I look at the behaviour of other people in the business  no names mentioned  and think: Oh, come on  you want a good smack. Stop it! 

Baroness Bra boasts of buying 160k Bentley

When it comes to the sycophants and cronies David Cameron elevated to the House of Lords, theres stiff competition for the title of most undeserving.

But lingerie seller Michelle Mone, right, could be the most boastful. This weekend Baroness Mone of Mayfair announced shed bought a Bentley Bentayga. Prices start at 160,000.

Lingerie seller Michelle Mone, right, could be the most boastful out of all the cronies David Cameron elevated to the House of Lords

Baroness Mone of Mayfair announced shed bought a Bentley Bentayga, pictured above

Picking him up tomorrow, bragged Baroness Bra next to a photo of the 187mph motor, which Bentley describes as the fastest, most powerful, most luxurious SUV in the world. And Brash Mone has form: after Cameron appointed her as a Government business tsar, she tweeted a photo of herself using the departments chauffeur-driven ministerial car.
In the past, the blogger has been similarly candid throughout pregnancy

The blogger from Melbourne is 20 weeks into her second pregnancy

Sophie Cachia, also known as The Young Mummy,posed topless

So far, she has been unflinchingly honest about her second pregnancy on social media.

From filming her husband's reaction when she told him she was pregnant, to crowd-sourcing a name via her Instagram page, Sophie Cachia, better known as The Young Mummy, doesn't hold back.

But nothing she has posted on her blog or Instagram profile quite matches what she shared on Saturday.

The 25-year-old mum of one from Melbourne shared a revealing topless pregnant shot on her page, encouraging herself and other mothers to love themselves.

Scroll down for video

Baring all: Mummy blogger, Sophie Cachia, 25, better known as The Young Mummy, shared this candid snap 20 weeks into her pregnancy encouraging women to love themselves

No holds barred: In general, the 25-year-old doesn't refrain from sharing the intimate details of her pregnancy with her followers - recently, she asked people to help her to find a name

'And just like that (and thanks to a changed due date), we've hit the half way mark!' Ms Cachia captioned her intimate post.

'Embracing it all second time around. Love your body, you're creating miracles!

'So thankful & so blessed. #20WEEKS,' she concluded the update.

Words of wisdom: In her post uploaded on Saturday, the mum of one wrote: ''Embracing it all second time around. Love your body, you're creating miracles!'

Self love: The mummy blogger's followers were quick to praise Ms Cachia's honesty, congratulating her for her 'authenticity'

The accompanying photo shows Ms Cachia in black and white, wearing black underwear and covering her topless chest.

Her followers have been quick to congratulate the Melbourne-based blogger for her honesty:

'Amazing woman... beautiful... that's a real photo shot... congrats on your authenticity xox [sic],' one person posted.

Sharing all: Sophie Cachia has made headlines in the past for sharing raw updates about being a mother

Documenting life: She famously filmed the reactions of her husband and friends, when she announced her second pregnancy

Big fan base: The 25-year-old has 136,000 followers on Instagram, who follow her for this honest perspective

'Gorgeous Soph! Totally agree! Embrace what we have! Xx,' another commenter added.

Sophie Cachia has made headlines in the past - firstly, when she uploaded videos of her announcing the exciting news of her pregnancy to both her husband and friends and family.
FEMAIL rounds up the top tips to ensure you get your eight hours

Experts also advocate keeping a sleep diary and talking to yourself

However, a stream of new tips offer more attainable advice

Most sleep tips of the past recommend yoga, baths and avoiding booze

Whether it's a spot of late-night yoga or an evening bath accompanied by an hour of reading, everyone knows the best ways to switch off after a hectic day at work include relaxation, a lack of electronic devices and no booze.

But what if we told you that in fact the best ways to ensure you get your eight hours of sleep were snacking on some cottage cheese, enjoying a sleep sandwich and detailing your thoughts and feelings in a sleep journal?

FEMAIL reveals some of the most unusual ways to stop you from turning into a zombie during the day, consulting Brisbane-based sleep expert and founder and director of The Good Night Co, Shea Morrison, for her advice.

Shut eye: Sleep tips of the past advocate things like yoga, baths and avoiding booze - however, newer tips such as snacking, talking to yourself and napping all work, too

WHAT TO SNACK ON AT NIGHT, SAYS THE EXPERTS * Porridge * Cottage cheese * Ham and cheese roll * A mixture of carbs and protein * A mixture of protein and fat * A banana cut up into pieces * A 'sleep sandwich' of lettuce, Marmite and banana Advertisement

HAVE A LATE-NIGHT SNACK

For as long as anyone can remember, the general advice has been to avoid snacking within two hours of hitting the hay.

As well as making you too full to sleep, there has been much research done that links late-night eating with weight gain, while others say that we're more likely to 'stress eat' when we're tired, which leads to overindulging in high-fat comfort calories.

But there are things that people who don't work the normal 9-5 pattern can eat before heading to bed late at night that will ensure you avoid the midnight stomach grumbles.

Sleep expert, Shea Morrison, recommends slow-releasing foods like porridge, cottage cheese or a ham and cheese roll when needing something to eat late at night:

Incorporating a bit of a carbohydrate into your snack can also aid sleep

'While eating a heavy meal before bed does interfere with sleep and digestion, there are definitely snacks you can eat and still get the right amount of sleep,' she tells Daily Mail Australia.

'Cottage cheese, porridge, a ham and cheese roll or a banana cut up can all work well, while incorporating a bit of a carbohydrate such as bread into your snack can also aid sleep.'

As well as filling a hole in your stomach, some of these foods have been reported to aid the body's recovery process overnight, ensuring that your body is full of energy to attack the next day.

Sleepy foods: According to sleep expert, Shea Morrison, porridge, ham and cheese rolls, cottage cheese, 'sleep sandwiches' and fibre are all good things to eat before bedtime

TRY A SLEEP SANDWICH

UNUSUAL WAYS TO HELP YOU GET TO SLEEP * Eat a good late-night snack, such as porridge, cottage cheese or a ham and cheese roll. * Up your fibre intake to promote melatonin. * Try a sleep sandwich, which includes banana, Marmite and lettuce in bread. * Talk out your problems to yourself in order to empty your mind - or keep a sleep journal to document lists and thoughts. * Have a nap during the day to boost productivity later on - make sure you don't have it later than 4pm. Advertisement

The Sleep Council's website has some unusual sleep tips for exhausted, over-worked shift workers.

From consuming milky drinks to filling your bedroom with lavender, camomile, and orange blossom, perhaps their wackiest of all is recommending people eat a 'sleep sandwich' in order to get the most from their zzzs:

'The Romans thought that lettuce was good for sleep, but the creme-de-la-creme sleep sandwich has to be a banana, Marmite and lettuce buttie [sic],' the website reads.

'The banana and Marmite contain natural substances that help induce sleep.'

Sleep expert, Ms Morrison, agrees:

'Banana is an excellent source of magnesium and potassium,' she says.

'In addition, Marmite is rich in vitamin B, which helps with melatonin. Bread isn't always great right before bed, but it is true that if you mix a little bit of carbs in with your snack, it can help you to rest and feel full.

'Just make sure you stay away from heavy meals, protein, alcohol and meat before sleep. All of these will sit in your stomach longer than you need them to.'

New views: Expert Shea Morrison, from The Good Night Co, says that a 'sleep sandwich' of bananas, Marmite, lettuce and bread can aid sleep, which other experts also recommend

UP YOUR FIBRE GAME

Recent research has found fibre to be the king of good sleep, as it leads to deeper, more restorative rest.

Whether you take it in the form of tart, melatonin-boosting cherries, or whole grains such as bulgur or barley, the food group is great for getting rid of that light, uneasy sleep so many of us suffer from, and instead promoting slow-wave, satisfying rest:

'Fibre is a good thing to incorporate throughout your day,' advises Ms Morrison.

'Obviously, the amount varies from person to person, but a serving of fibre can up your melatonin and increase your ability to pack in good sleep.'

Anyone for a dinner of baked beans?

Up your fibre game: Fibre can be a good thing to aid rest, while many experts advocate a daily nap of between 20 and 40 minutes, as well as keeping a sleep diary

HAVE A NAP

Napping has been extolled in recent times for boosting workers' productivity, happiness and effectiveness in the office.

And Ms Morrison is a huge believer in the power of the nap:

Lots of doctors and health professionals I know swear by the power of the nap

'Lots of doctors and health professionals that I know swear by them,' she says.

'And increasingly, offices around the world are introducing sleep pods and the like for their workers.'

There are a couple of things to bear in mind before you head off to the land of nod in the middle of the day, however:

'Make sure your nap is between 20 and 40 minutes,' Ms Morrison says.

'Also, don't have one too late in the day. Don't have a nap later than 4pm as you won't end up feeling re-energised. Instead, it might stop you from sleeping later on at night.'

TALK TO YOURSELF

Last but not least, lots of sleep experts recommend physically talking to yourself before you try to sleep.

According to those in the know, having a conversation with your thoughts can be a great way of emptying your brain before you drift off.

According to sleep expert, Shea Morrison, a good way to do this without feeling like you're going crazy is to keep a sleep journal:

'I swear by mine,' she says.

'For me, it serves as a "brain dump", where I can detail any thoughts, whether it's what I need to do the next day or how I feel that day that I'm writing about.

'It really helps with emptying your mind.
A woman, who made the decision to terminate her pregnancy at 24 weeks, has spoken of the heartbreaking moment her son was born and called for more options for women considering abortion.

Kylie Gunn, 37, from Thames, New Zealand, spoke candidly to Daily Mail Australia about her decision, describing it as 'very difficult'.

Mrs Gunn said she made the choice after she and her husband were told their unborn baby had a raft of medical conditions - including the deletion of chromosome 22 and major heart problems.

Mother's heartache: Kylie Gunn, pictured with her youngest son, described her decision to abort baby Travis as 'very difficult'

Mrs Gunn, a practice nurse, said the conditions meant her son would be born brain-damaged and would not survive.

'Rather than bring him to term and allow invasive procedures to take over his short lifespan - a life that would have limited contact with me and those who loved him, and a life incapable of ever knowing that love, I chose to abort his life,' Mrs Gunn wrote in an open letter, published on stuff.co.nz, to highlight the issue.

'One surgeon said he would support us keeping our baby, but that the heart surgeries would be only for their education, without much hope of ever allowing Travis to breathe alone,' she went on.

Mrs Gunn, a practice nurse, was overjoyed to be expecting a boy

She said she and her husband had happily named their baby Travis after discovering he was a little boy. 'I desperately wanted a boy,' Mrs Gunn explained. 'I was in such joy.'

But just moments later, her world was shattered when doctors revealed the extent of his severe medical conditions.

'It was so difficult to make the decision to take Travis' life at such a young age,' Mrs Gunn said. 'But it seemed like the right thing.' She said she is 'at peace' with her decision.

Mr and Mrs Gunn were already parents to three children when Mrs Gunn fell pregnant with Travis, and the couple went on to have three more.

Part of the reason for Mrs Gunn having a large family was getting over her grief (stock image)

'The reason I ended up having a big family was partly me getting over the grieving and wanting more children to hold,' Mrs Gunn said, revealing the first two weeks following her son's death were 'really, really difficult.'

'I tried once to go up town and I just could not because I could not reconcile my mind. I've just had this baby and life is ticking on.'

Mrs Gunn opened up about the grieving process, explaining that it was hard sharing her experience with others.

Mrs Gunn did not discover anything was wrong until late in her pregnancy (stock image)

Mrs Gunn said she 'cried uncontrollably' for her lost son (stock image)

She said an initial feeling of shock turned to anger and that there were times when grief came back to her 'in the middle of nowhere', particularly in the first year.

'I was grieving as much as if I had lost a child I already knew. We wanted Travis. It's different from having an abortion because a baby is destroying your hopes and dreams.'

Mrs Gunn's termination was conducted at 24 weeks because she didn't discover anything was wrong until late into her pregnancy.

WHAT IS THE LAW ON ABORTION? Legislation surrounding abortion varies from state to state across Australia and in New Zealand. In Queensland and NSW, abortion is legal as long as a doctor believes a womans physical and/or mental health is in serious danger by continuing. Abortions performed in the ACT must be provided by a medical doctor. In Victoria, terminations can be performed up to 24 weeks and are allowed after that with two doctors approval. Likewise, in SA, two doctors must agree that a womans physical and/or mental health is in danger if the pregnancy continues or if the baby would be seriously disabled. In Tasmania, abortion is legal up to 16 weeks and after that with the approval of two doctors. WA has laws restricting abortions performed over 20 weeks and in the Northern Territory terminations are legal to 14 weeks if two doctors agree that the woman or child is in danger and up to 23 weeks in an emergency. In New Zealand, two doctors must agree that the pregnancy will result in serious danger to a womans mental or physical health. Advertisement

'It was very late on because I had my anatomy scan very late. I was 21 weeks and it's usually 18 weeks. It was hard. I should've known earlier and we could've made a decision earlier instead of me being so big and him kicking around inside me.'

She and her husband then had three weeks to make a decision.

'They induce you. I went through a full and very painful labour,' Mrs Gunn said, talking about the termination procedure. 'It took quite some time. My body did not want to let him go.'

Her lifeless baby was delivered, still inside the amniotic sac, then the medical staff took him out and placed him in Mrs Gunn's arms.

She said she then 'cried uncontrollably' for her lost son.

Mrs Gunn called on health educators to make women aware of the alternatives to abortion - such as adoption - and explained there's a lack of information those alternatives, which can lead to women experiencing depression, anxiety and regret.

In her open letter, Mrs Gunn wrote: 'To all those mums who have ever been faced with the option of abortion. It is not easy any way you choose, but there is support and understanding. And for my Travis. You would be 12 years old next Wednesday. I have loved you so much.'
A lost camera that washed ashore on a Gold Coast beach has been reunited with its owners more than 5,000km away in Indonesia.

The camera washed up on Queensland's Broadbeach in July and was found to contain holiday snaps of an adventurous, travelling couple.

The pictures were posted online in the hope of finding the couple, sparking a worldwide hunt which finally traced them to Bali, Indonesia.

Lost: The lost camera of Alex Malone (left) and Thijs Van Gerwen (right) washed up on Queensland's Broadbeach. It contained this picture of the couple in Peru

Holiday snaps: The couple were on holiday in Indonesia when they heard their camera had been found - more than two months after they lost it

Alex Malone and her partner Thijs Van Gerwen were in Bali when a friend from Peru approached them with news of the camera they thought lost forever.

Speaking from Bali, Alex described the uncanny chain of events that reunited them with the camera more than two months after it was lost.

She said: 'I got a message from a guy that we met in Lima, Peru. We hadn't spoken to him for half a year.

'He asked me, ''Alex, did you by any chance lose your GoPro during your travels. Do you want to know how I know this?''

'I said ''Yes. I wouldn't know how in earth's name you would know.

'I lost it in the sea, so it either washed up in Asia [where he lives] or you went diving in Australia and found it on the bottom of the sea.

'Then he sent me this article from the Daily Mail''.'

Online hunt: A friend found Alex Malone after reading this article by the Daily Mail

Washed away: The couple lost the GoPro while they were swimming at Surfers Paradise. It washed up on Broadbeach, more than 6 kilometres away

Found: Alex was surprised when her friend, Huy Nguyen, contacted her out of the blue asking whether she had lost her camera

Alex lost the camera while she and Thijs were swimming in heavy waves at Surfers Paradise.

Alex said: 'I was playing around in the waves of Surfers Paradise when one wave picked me up and threw me down on the sand. The camera slipped from my hand.

'On top of that we arrived too late at our car because, in a useless search through the waves, we got two parking tickets because we got too late to our car.

'That day to the beach cost us around $800 and our footage.'

Holidays: The GoPro contained photos of the couple's travels through Europe, South America and Australia

Surprised: Alex Malone (pictured in Fiji) was contacted out of the blue by a friend who recognised her in the photos found on the lost camera

The camera was found by Tamara Johansen two months later, when it washed ashore at Broadbeach, more than 6km north of Surfers Paradise.

Tamara pulled the sand-encrusted memory card out of the camera and was astonished to find it still worked on her computer.

She posted the photos online in the hope of tracking down its owners.

Alex said she could not be more grateful that Tamara made such an effort to track her and Thijs down.

She said: 'Really this just made our day. Not only the fact that our GoPro was found, but mainly because Tamara really took the time and effort to find us.

'I would never have thought our travels would make the news!'

Well-travelled: Alex said: 'We were contacted out of the blue by a guy that we met in Lima, Peru'. This picture of the couple in the Peruvian mountains was posted on Facebook

Recognisable: After the camera was found on the beach, photos such as the one above were posted online to see if anyone recognised the owners

The German couple had been travelling for eight months prior to losing the camera and it contained photos of their jaunts through Europe, South America and Australia.

'We are amazed by the fact that someone took the time and effort to find us,' Alex said.

'It's such a great story to share with others to remind them how many nice people there are in the world.'

Alex and Tamara were now looking to meet up in Melbourne in September, where Tamara would hand over the camera.

Globetrotters: The couple had been travelling the world for eight months prior to losing the camera

Newsworthy: Alex said she was enormously grateful Tamara took the time to track her down. She said: 'We never thought we would make the news'

Tamara Johansen told Daily Mail Australia it was an amazing feeling to find Alex so far away from Australia.

She said: 'When we looked at the photos on the camera they were actually amazing.

'I figured that I would've hated to have lost them. That was the inspiration for returning it really.

'We shared it on Facebook and it all snowballed from there. And then it got picked up by the Daily Mail.
One said: 'It made my skin feel very smooth and was definitely worth it'

Commenters have been divided, but most say it works on their skin, too

The 22-year-old vlogger says this gives glowing skin and stops wrinkles

In her new video, she rubs cayenne pepper and chilli onto her face

In recent times, we've seen beauty bloggers rub everything, from turmeric to live snails, on their faces in pursuit of glowing skin.

But this latest 'natural face mask' might be the strangest yet.

Beauty vlogger, Rochelle Wickramasuriya, from Sri Lanka, made a chill face mask, with her friend, Habiba, which involved rubbing actual chilli and cayenne pepper onto her skin, in order to tighten it, brighten it and stimulate the blood flow.

The 22-year-old shared this most unusual of treatments on her Instagram page, via a video that has been viewed more than 120,000 times in five days.

'GET THE JLO GLOW USING ALL NATURAL PRODUCTS [sic],' she headlined her recent post.

Scroll down for video

Get the J Lo glow: 22-year-old beauty blogger, Rochelle Wickramasuriya, recommends putting chilli and cayenne pepper in a mix on your face for glowing skin (pictured)

Good advice: The Sri Lankan blogger is known for her treatments and beauty advice, and she has 30,000 Instagram followers who regularly tune in, like and comment

'I was doing some research on ancient beauty secrets using natural ingredients and came across chilli,' Ms Wickramasuriya told Daily Mail Australia, when explaining her inspiration for the bonkers treatment.

'We [she and her friend] came up with a mask using milk fat, which we both used many times in the past.

'We tested it out a few times and it gave us amazing results.'

Ancient beauty: The blogger says she came up with the idea when researching ancient rituals - she discovered that chilli was a regularly used natural ingredient for the skin

Tighten and brighten: Testing it out with her friend, Ms Wickramasuriya found the treatment to have 'amazing results' - she therefore shared an Instagram video with her followers

CHILLI TREATMENT INGREDIENTS AND METHOD INGREDIENTS * 1 1/2 Cups of whole milk * 1 tbsp of lemon juice * Pinch of cayenne pepper * 1/4 tsp of cinnamon powder * 1/2 tsp of honey METHOD 1. 'Add lemon juice to milk just before it reaches boiling point.' 2. 'Once curdled, separate the milk fat and whip it until it becomes smooth.' 3. 'Leave in fridge to chill.' 4. 'Mix cayenne pepper, cinnamon, and honey with the milk fat.' 5. 'Apply all over face avoiding the eyes and other sensitive areas.  6. 'Leave it on for 30-45 mins until it dries. Wash it off.' Advertisement

For those who might want to try the treatment at home, Ms Wickramasuriya recommends mixing whole milk with lemon juice, cayenne pepper, cinnamon powder and honey.

The blogger's un-appetising-looking paste is then to be applied to the entire face 'avoiding the eyes and other sensitive areas'.

It should then be left on for '30-45 minutes until it dries', Ms Wickramasuriya says on Instagram.

'Wash it off and VOILA! Glowing skin!,' the vlogger captioned her recent Instagram post.

According to Ms Wickramasuriya, the unusual beauty treatment 'instantly adds a glow to the skin, brightens skin, tightens skin, [and] stimulates blood flow.

'The main ingredient, cayenne pepper, is enriched in vitamins and antioxidants, which increases collagen production and also helps reduce/prevent wrinkles, acne scars and pigmentation, [sic]' the blogger wrote.

'Its anti inflammatory properties also helps tackle acne and scarring.'

Recipe for success: Mixing milk with lemon juice, cayenne pepper, cinnamon powder and honey, the blogger's treatment is to be applied to the entire face avoiding sensitive parts

Hidden benefits: According to Ms Wickramasuriya, the unusual beauty treatment 'instantly adds a glow to the skin, brightens skin, tightens skin, [and] stimulates blood flow'

If all of this sounds like a bit of a tall order for a bit of pepper and chilli, then consider the Instagram comments, which seem to be swaying towards positive after a trial:

'I tried it still haven't washed it off waiting 20 more minutes it's currently burning [sic],' one person wrote, to which Ms Wickramasuriya replied that if it was burning a little bit it was fine, but if it was unbearable, it should be washed off:

'Thank you I just took it off it made my skin feel very smooth definitely got the "glow" totally worth it [sic],' the same commenter wrote underneath Ms Wickramasuriya's response.

So what do you think? Would you rub chilli on your face for glowing skin?

Anti inflammatory: She also believes that it can help to reduce and prevent wrinkles, as well as tackling acne and scarring

Disbelief: While commenters have been quick to say that the treatment is controversial, many seem won over by its benefits upon trial
Misdiagnosis meant he lost both his legs and seven fingers

Ben Shephard turned children's entertainer today as he amused a brave toddler appearing on Good Morning Britain.

Reuben Harvey-Smith, aged three, from Suffolk, appeared on the ITV breakfast show with his mother Louise, 41, to raise awareness of toxic shock syndrome after he lost both his legs and seven of his fingers to the condition.

While his mother spoke of their ordeal, Ben kept the adorable toddler entertained by playing with him and his Spider-Man toy.

Reuben Harvey-Smith, aged three, from Suffolk, appeared on the ITV breakfast show with his mother Louise, 41, to raise awareness of toxic shock syndrome

Ben Shephard joined in a game with Reuben and his Spider-Man action figure

The little boy, who has lost both his legs and seven of his fingers, bounced his toy on the Good Morning Britain sofa

Father-of-two Ben decided to join in the game leaving his co-host Kate Garraway to ask the questions

Ben's co-host Kate Garraway was left to take over the questioning as the father, who has two sons of his own aged nine and ten, caused the little boy to giggle with delight.

The presenter bought the Spider-Man action figure to life for the toddler making playful noises impersonating the comic book character as Kate tried to carry on interviewing her mother over their fun.

While Ben and the little boy played, Louise explained to Kate how Reuben's suffering may have been lessened if he had been diagnosed earlier.

His potentially deadly toxic shock syndrome was originally mistaken for tonsillitis and Louise said it is important for families and GPS to 'rule sepsis in' rather than 'rule it out' when children present symptoms.

Louise and Reuben were on the show to raise awareness of toxic shock syndrome

Ben and Reuben kept themselves amused while Kate ploughed on with the interview with Louise

Ben and the little boy looked to be having great fun as Kate spoke to Reuben's mother

Reuben and Ben also amused viewers who Tweeted to say how cute their exchange was

Reuben giggled with delight as Ben joined in his game with his toy

She said they were sharing their story as she wanted other parents to be aware so they could get the correct treatment before it is too late.

Her son now has prosthetic legs and is missing seven figures due to his condition being misdiagnosed.

Despite all he has been through, Reuben was in high spirits today as he played with Ben on the show, making his Spider-Man figure move around on the Good Morning Britain sofa.

Reuben plays with his Spider-Man with Ben as his mother talks about their ordeal

Louise said she wanted other parents to be aware of the symptoms as earlier treatment could have saved her son's legs and fingers

Reuben was in good spirits today as he played with Ben oblivious to the cameras

The pair carried on with their game as the interview took place around them

Viewers Tweeted the show to share their admiration for the little boy with Sophie-Jane Stead @SophieeJane writing: 'Reuben on #GMB is the cutest!'

Belinda @belinda_bel43 said watching him playing with the presenter melted her heart as she wrote: 'Watching @benshephard play with Ruben and Spider-Man is too cute! #GMB'.

BuzzVans Movers @BuzzVansMovers agreed Tweeting: '@benshephard @GMB loved the way Ben interacted with the young disabled boy & his Spider-Man he really is a lovely kind man.'

Good Morning Britain viewers Tweeted the show to say how cute they thought Reuben was

As previously reported in the Mail On Sunday, Reuben is lucky to be here at all, after nearly losing his life when doctors failed to identify he had toxic shock syndrome, a rare but life-threatening bacterial infection.

Medics his mother describes as 'arrogant' refused to listen to her concerns, she says. More important, they ignored the advice they had been given from some of the countrys leading experts and instead sent seriously ill Reuben home with a diagnosis of nothing more than tonsillitis.

Ipswich Hospital has already admitted liability, has issued an unreserved apology to the family and has made an interim payment of 50,000 for prosthetics. Now Louise is suing, with a final award likely to reach 4 million.

My Mr Positive: Louise Harvey-Smith, 41, with Reuben by the sea last week

Lucky to be alive: Reuben recovering in hospital after surgery to remove his legs

It is a story that began with a simple domestic mishap. Little more than a year ago, in July 2015, Reuben had burnt his chest in an accident.

He had been tumbling on the floor with his older brother Harry when  with Louise momentarily distracted  they knocked over the iron she had been using earlier.

Extraordinary love of life: Little Rueben

Louise, 41, a senior civil servant at the Home Office, rushed her son to A&E at Ipswich Hospital. There, Reuben was given morphine and had his burn dressed.

She continues: Once he had the medication, Reuben seemed fine. They had given him a little bottle of bubbles and he was blowing them at the doctors and generally racing around. I was upset about the burn but didnt think it was overly bad.

Doctors told Louise there could be a possibility of third-degree burns affecting the deeper tissue on one patch of the wound. In normal circumstances, they would have referred Reuben to Chelmsford specialist burns unit, but it was closed because of an infection.

Instead, they told Louise to take her son to the burns unit at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, some 80 miles away, the following morning. There, Reubens burn was redressed and he was given an appointment at the Chelmsford unit four days later.

At this stage there was no need for worry, Louise recalls, although I was given a list of symptoms to look out for, such as a rash, vomiting and fever that could indicate sepsis [blood poisoning].

Playful: Reuben plays on his toy tractor before the hospital blunder that changed his life

Moment of comfort: Reuben clutches a soft toy as he recovers in hospital after surgery

There was certainly no way she could have foreseen what would come next. On the journey home, Reuben was bright and lively, she recalls, and Louise put him to bed early. But in the morning, there were worrying signs that Reuben, now cold and shivering, was quite unwell.

He had developed a rash and Louise thought he seemed lethargic and drowsy. Since Chelsea and Westminster had told her to contact them if he showed such symptoms, she phoned immediately. Doctors there were concerned an infection had set in at the site of the burn and told her to take him immediately to Ipswich A&E.

The doctors had stressed several times that I should tell doctors there to phone them and that was at the forefront of my mind as I drove to hospital.

Determined: Reuben has learned to walk with his prosthetic legs

Reuben was vomiting on the way and it was the first thing I told the staff when I got there. Yet in the four hours we were there, they just monitored his temperature and gave him Calpol.

They told me they thought it was tonsillitis. I kept asking if they had called the doctors at Chelsea and Westminster but I was just dismissed as a nuisance. All because staff at Ipswich were too arrogant to accept that sepsis was a distinct possibility. One doctor told me 36 hours wasnt long enough for toxic shock syndrome to set in. Even when Reubens heart rate rose to 190 beats per minute, they said it was because he was scared of the doctors.

Despite Louises dogged persistence that something was terribly wrong, doctors at the hospital then made a fateful decision: disastrously, they sent Reuben home. As a high-flying director at the Home Office, Louise rarely takes time off work, but this time she did, so concerned was she about Reubens condition.

Louise has two elder sons, Will, 22, and Harry, 12, from her relationship with her ex-husband. When Reubens father  who no longer lives with the family  paid a visit the day after the youngster had been sent home, the two adults were shocked to see Reuben was unsteady on his feet.

Louise immediately called Chelsea and Westminster, where doctors urged her to take him back to Ipswich Hospital as he was showing all the signs of toxic shock syndrome. Reuben was taken straight into the resuscitation unit. When they warned me that I had a very, very sick little boy, I was terrified, Louise says. When I got to see him, he was on fluid and drug drips and his hands and feet were freezing  yet he had had the same symptoms when I had brought him in the day before.

What started with a burn from a household iron was now a desperate race to save Reubens life. He was taken by ambulance to the intensive care unit at St Marys Hospital in Paddington, a journey Louise describes as three hours of pure hell.

All I could think of was that Reuben could die. When we arrived, they told me the next 24 hours were crucial. I think I prayed all the way through every one of them.

Positive: Often Reuben is happier without his prosthetic legs, shuffling along on the ground

By the next morning, Reuben was beginning to respond to antibiotics but his limbs were swollen and discoloured and the sepsis that set in after the burn had reduced the blood supply to his vital organs.

In a dramatic moment that Louise says she will never forget, a hospital consultants eyes filled with tears as she placed a comforting arm around Louises shoulders and told her: Im so, so sorry. Reuben will recover. But we are going to have to amputate both his legs and he will lose a lot of his fingers too.

In that instant, I was smiling almost hysterically, says Louise. I kept saying, But youve saved his life, my baby isnt going to die. Thats all that matters. 

[Reuben] is still enjoying himself in the playground  it doesnt stop him  but it is heartbreaking to see his knees getting red raw Mother Louise Harvey-Smith

More than a year on, Louise still feels the same. Compared to the thought of losing Reuben, I knew he  and I  would overcome the disabilities he would have, Louise says.

Doctors were still concerned that vital organs such as his kidneys or brain could be affected so all I could do was wait. As he slowly came round from the drugs, I could see immediately that the old Reuben was there and within days he was transferred back to Chelmsford.

By now, Reubens burn had reached third-degree status and he needed to have skin from his inner thigh grafted on to his chest. With no option now but to amputate, surgeons did not know how much of Reubens legs they could save until he was on the operating table. Soon, however, it became clear that he would lose both below the knee and seven of his fingers, as well as the tips of his thumbs.

I was apprehensive about Reuben seeing his legs after the operation but he was very good about it, says Louise. It has taken time for him to become accustomed and he still cant walk for longer than ten minutes on the prosthetic limbs. Often he is happier without them at all, shuffling along on the ground, but he knows he has to learn to use them as much as possible.

And he wasnt at all concerned about how he looked. These days he laughs and says, Look at my stumps.

The future is bright: Louise, pictured with Reuben, is raising greater awareness of the symptoms of toxic shock syndrome and to call for better funding for childrens prosthetics

Reuben has learned to walk on his prosthetic legs and, although his motor skills are poor and he finds many everyday tasks, such as dressing himself, difficult, he can grip a pen between the stumps of his fingers and hold and carry objects.

They have said funding for childrens prosthetics is limited, says Louise. Reuben only has fixed ankle prosthetics for walking but he cant use them in the playground to run around so he plays without them.

He is still enjoying himself in the playground  it doesnt stop him  but it is heartbreaking to see his knees getting red raw.

In spite of everything, however, the family are optimistic about the future. Louise is also channelling her energies into a dual campaign to raise greater awareness of the symptoms of toxic shock syndrome and to call for better funding for childrens prosthetics.

Mischievous: Reuben sticks out his tongue

But every day, Im so grateful he survived, she says. Reuben is my Mr Positive. I just have to look at him and I smile. He is such a trooper. Her joy is tinged with sadness that all this could have been avoided.

As her solicitor, Tim Deeming, a clinical negligence specialist with Slater and Gordon, explains: Reuben has life-changing injuries as the team made the wrong diagnosis in suspecting a throat infection. It is extremely concerning that they were aware of the link between burns and toxic shock, yet didnt consider this for Reubens case.

With toxic shock syndrome, early diagnosis is vital as the potential outcome can be catastrophic, as occurred here.

That is why it is imperative that lessons are learned to ensure this doesnt happen again.

Determined to raise awareness about toxic shock syndrome, Louise is hoping her Reuben Bear campaign will help more people recognise the symptoms. We chose the name Bear because it highlights the four simple steps to look out for, she says.

B for burn: has the patient suffered recent burns or injuries? E for examine: are there signs of infection such as fever, sore throat, vomiting and dizziness.

A for advice: toxic shock syndrome and sepsis can be life-threatening so if you suspect it, seek medical advice immediately.

R for referral: ask for a referral to a burns unit if you are concerned about toxic shock syndrome.

A spokeswoman for Ipswich Hospital Trust confirmed the hospital had admitted full liability for shortcomings for the care Reuben received. She added: The Trust are committed to ensuring Reuben is appropriately compensated so that he has the care, prostheses and equipment that he needs throughout his life.
Many of the best inventions offer a straightforward solution to a tricky problem but one product on this week's Dragons' Den left viewers unimpressed by its simplicity.

UK based Tom Bell and American Craig Bailey appeared on the latest episode of the BBC show to ask the Dragons to invest 80,000 for a 15 per cent stake in their business FoamAroma.

Inventor Craig explained how he had come up with the idea for a lid to fit a takeaway coffee cup that he said allows the drinker to better taste and smell their hot drink.

Scroll down for video

Tom Bell, left, and Craig Bailey present their FoamAroma coffee cup lid on Dragons' Den

The FoamAroma lid, pictured in black and white versions, has a larger drinking hole than the current version popular in coffee shop chains and an extra large hole in the middle. They said this means the drinker can better smell and taste their coffee

Businessman Tom said their invention is an improvement on the standard lid, pictured in his hand, as the drinking hole is too small and there is only a pinhole in the middle so the aroma can't be smelt

He said the current lid popular in coffee shop chains is not up to the job because the hole for drinking is too small which impairs the flavour.

It also only has a pinhole in the middle so it is difficult to smell the aroma of the coffee.

Craig said this prompted him to invent a version with a larger hole for drinking and a big hole in the middle to allow the smell to escape.

Explaining his Eureka moment he told the Dragons: ' In 2007 I had my first cappuccino in an open ceramic cup, it was an amazing experience for me.

Inventor Craig, right, said he came up with the idea in 2007 after a disappointing experience when he had a takeaway coffee but it tasted terrible thanks to the lid in comparison to having the same drink the day before from a mug

Craig made a prototype and joined forces with Tom after meeting him at a trade show. They have had some success already selling millions of the lids but asked the Dragons for their help to take them to the next level in their pitch, pictured

'The next day I wanted to do the same thing so I went back to the same shop for the same drink but this time I had to go so I needed a paper cup with a lid - it was terrible.

'That disappointment inspired me to create a lid that still gives the sensory experience.'

The pair then invited the Dragons to try a coffee using their lid but viewers at home unable to test it for themselves were baffled about what made it such a great invention.

They took to Twitter to share their confusion over how the lid differs from the standard version and why an investment is called for, with Chrisy @chrisisfake writing: 'Did someone really just pitch a coffee lid with an extra hole in it on dragons den ... #dragonsden'

Many viewers took to Twitter to say they were baffled by the product and didn't see the need

Joe Orton @joesef said he wouldn't back the product Tweeting: 'Dragons den, is actually funny. Coffee lid with a pen hole in it, for an investment of 54,000. If I was a dragon I'd say "there's the door".'

Simon Zohhadi MCIOB @Simon_Zohhadi agreed writing: 'Watching the excellent Dragons' Den. Got to say, the "smell the coffee lid" concept is the silliest idea & pitch I've ever seen on the show.'

Liam Martial Fearon @MeBeLiam pointed out: 'If you want to smell the coffee take off the lid #dragonsden' while Richard @richardm2624 said: '#dragonsden it's just a lid with an extra hole.'

Ben Cheetham @BMCheetham also didn't think it was an ingenious idea writing: 'He's an inventor....alright mate you've put another hole in a coffee lid #dragonsden' and a baffled Jack Mendel @Mendelpol wrote: 'First people on selling a larger hole in a coffee lid. Are they for real? Is this some kind of practical joke? #Coffee #dragonsden'

Dragon Touker Suleyman said he liked the idea of the coffee lids but he didn't want to invest in the company as he didn't think it was big enough

Dragon Sarah Willingham said she was out as she didn't think the product would take off in the UK where the majority of coffee drinkers add milk, taking the aroma of the coffee away regardless of the lid

Peter H Todd was among those pointing out that a bigger hole will make a hot drink 'get cold quicker' while others like Ben @HashBrownButty spotted another flaw.

'Bigger holes may create more problems as there's more room for spillage when you're walking along #DragonsDen,' Ben Tweeted.

However, Craig has received plenty of praise for his idea too from coffee lovers keen to be able to smell their drink better.

He was passionate about making this possible so he sought a patent for his idea and started making prototypes that he presented at coffee trade shows.

It was there that he met businessman Tom and the pair joined forces to get the product out to the masses.

Tom said they have had some success so far but need the Dragons help to take them to the next level.

Tom, left, said since he started selling Craig's lid through his company in 2013, they have sold 3.5m, with 2.4m sold in the in last year

The business partners prepared a coffee for the Dragons to try using their lids but none of them were persuaded to invest

He said of the need for their product: 'For many of us the old design is poor as the drink hole and the vent hole is too small stopping you from smelling your coffee, reducing the flavour and the flow.

'Our lid in comparison is designed to give you a better on the go experience. People love to taste their coffee like they do in store.'

He said since 2013 through his company they have sold 3.5m lids, with 2.4m sold in the in last year.

However Sarah Willingham, who has worked with PizzaExpress and Planet Hollywood, said she felt the idea wouldn't take off with UK coffee drinkers as the majority prefer to add milk.

She said: 'Fundamentally this is about smelling coffee as you drink it but the majority in UK have milk and that makes the smell disappear as that smell comes from the coffee being ground.'

She added after trying a coffee using the FoamAroma lid: 'This doesn't actually improve my coffee drinking experience.'

Tom, left, and Craig were still smiling despite not getting an investment on Dragons' Den and tweeted after the show to say they were 'pushing on' with their plans

Deborah Meaden said she didn't think the idea was original enough - which could easily led to similar versions.

The other Dragons also declined to invest saying they couldn't see themselves making a profit.

Touker Suleyman did say he liked the idea but not enough to make an offer.

He said: 'I do like the lid but the business is too small for it to be investable for me.'

Despite their disappointment on the show, the FoamAroma Twitter account Tweeted yesterday to say 'we are pushing on with our plans in UK and rest of Europe. Foam-On!'
Usain Bolt is well known for his love of making physical signs, with his lightning bolt now a symbol of triumph recognised the world over.

However, some of the Jamaican athlete's other hand gestures have prompted speculation that the 'triple triple' Olympic gold winning star may well have fallen in with the Masons or the Illuminati.

One eagle-eyed conspiracy theorist is suggesting that Bolt, 30, may have been offering up secret signals during his latest outing at the Olympic Games in Rio.

Scroll down for video

All seeing eye: Usain Bolt (pictured covering his eye ahead of race in 2011) has found his performance in Rio - including everything from the hand gestures he makes to his lane number - analysed by conspiracy theorists

Usain Occult? The 30-year-old track star, who completed the triple triple in Rio, regularly makes the shush symbol before he starts, which YouTube user What is Real is suggesting might have a double meaning

Silencing the crowd could be about more than just pre-race quiet suggests the imaginative YouTube user

The gestures, including shushing the crowd before he races and putting his hand over one eye, could mean that he's a member of secretive societies including the Freemasons and the Illuminati, say some.

While the fingers on the lips may be just Bolt quieting an overenthusiastic crowd, YouTuber What is Real is speculating that the track star could actually be letting secret societies know that he's in the loop with them.

The sight of Bolt putting his palm over one of his eyes adds further evidence, What is Real suggests, saying that the action could be the 'all-seeing eye', a symbol favoured by the elusive organisations that some believe pull the strings when it comes to world order.

And even his track number has been analysed with the commentator in the video pointing to the fact that Bolt has now won three Olympic titles while running in lane number six, which makes 666.

And an image of the running star crossing his arms and connecting his thumb and forefingers on both hands has been construed to suggest that Bolt could be making the 'sign of the beast', another occult symbol.

Sign of the beast: Curling the thumb to meet the index finger might be construed as a cryptic message, say some of those analysing Bolt's moves

He can't stand still: Bolt makes a boxing pose after clinching gold at the 2012 Olympics in London

What can it all mean? The all-conquering track star touches his temple with the tips of his index fingers

Lane six is his lucky number - and a triple 6 has deeper meanings, say theorists (Pictured, Bolt running the men's 4x100-meter relay final on Saturday)

Elsewhere on the web, others have linked the star to Beelzebub because of his nickname: 'the lightening bolt', which they say is noted in the bible to represent Satan.

In the past, Bolt has also been spotted wearing a signet ring that appeared to bear the all seeing eye symbol, a design often worn by members of the Freemasons.

The maker of the What is Real video says he's merely observed things that some people might find strange: 'Im simply identifying whats right before us, right to our faces in pictures, in videos.

'This is not theory, Im not speculating and saying Usain Bolt is Illuminati.

'But for whatever reason, for some weird, odd reason, he is displaying all the typical gestures of Masonry.'
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge - along with Prince George and Princess Charlotte - will spend a week bear spotting and visiting rainforests in Canada next month.

Kensington Palace has released the family-of-four's itinerary, which runs from Saturday 24th September until Saturday 1st October 2016, and will see the royals visiting various family-friendly landmarks.

The family will touch down in Victoria, British Columbia, on September 24th and journey to Vancouver the following day.

Kensington Palace has released the family-of-four's itinerary, which runs from Saturday 24th September until Saturday 1st October 2016, and will see the family bear spotting and visiting rainforests across Canada

According to the itinerary, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be visiting Bella Bella in Heiltsuk, which describes itself as an Indian Reserve, on their forthcoming  and highly anticipated - tour to Canada.

William and Kate, who are expected to bring along their children, Prince George, three, and one-year-old Princess Charlotte, will travel to Bella Bella in British Columbia  home to the Heiltsuk people  as part of the week-long tour to the British realm.

The couple will be basing themselves in Victoria or Vancouver, along with the childrens nanny, Maria Borrallo, before travelling off to a number of locations in Canada including Victoria, Great Bear Rainforest, Kelowna and Haida Gwaii in British Columbia, and Whitehorse and Carcross in Yukon.

The Great Bear Rainforest has been dubbed 'the planet's last large expanse of coastal temperate rain forest' and is home to waterfalls, coastal gray wolves, grizzly bears, sea lions, and humpback whales.

The rare, cream-colored Kermode bear, which is deemed to be sacred by the T'simshian people, also resides there.

Princess Charlotte is to make her overseas debut alongside her brother Prince George when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge tour Canada in a few weeks time (the family pictured here on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the Trooping of the Colour Queen's 90th birthday parade in London in June)

The family will no doubt enjoy some relaxing downtime in Kelowna, which lies in the heart of British Columbias Okanagan Valley, and is the largest city on Okanagan Lake.

'Whether youre looking for a family-friendly holiday, a romantic getaway, a weekend with friends, or all three, youve come to the right place,' reads the official website.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge during a visit earlier to Canada in 2011

The family will be able to take in some of Canada's breathtaking scenery at Haida Gwaii, which was chosen as one of National Geographic's 20 Best Trips 2015 thanks to its serenity and cultural richness.

They will also stop by Whitehorse and Carcross, Yukon, which features a carving shed, the Carcross Visitor Information Centre, bakery/coffee shop, a restaurant and art gallery.

A Kensington Palace spokesman said the couple were hugely excited about the trip.

It is an opportunity for them to see British Columbia and Yukon in more detail and get to know the territory and people on the west side of the country, they said.

The western side of Canada is famed for its rugged wilderness and William and Kate are keen to spend as much time outdoors as possible.

They will focus their engagements on young people  particularly those with success stories to tell  as well as the issue of mental health.

The royal couple will also meet with First Nations communities in order to highlight conservation and cultural issues as well as undertake engagements in the fields of agriculture, education and the emergency services.

The countrys Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a father-of-three, will meet the family during the trip. He apparently has been taking a keen interest in the official agenda. Our prime minister loves this part of Canada and hes keen for the Cambridges to see it, a source told the Mail on Sunday recently.

They added: He spent some of his early life in British Columbia, and he and his own family holiday in Tofino. Hes taken a keen interest in the itinerary, which is being finalised at the moment.

The Cambridges left Prince George and Princess Charlotte at home earlier this year when they carried out a whirlwind tour of India and Bhutan, but said they had missed their children.

Canada will be welcoming the Duke and Duchess as the country prepares to celebrate its 150th anniversary of independence.

The Royal couple were hugely popular when they visited the Commonwealth country weeks after their wedding in 2011.
We've all been put on hold for what seems like forever during an apparently routine phone call.

But one man decided to put his call to Virgin Media to good use and live-tweeted the entire episode on Twitter.

In the four-hour call, a social media manager from Walthamstow with the Twitter handle 'John Bull' gave the internet a hilarious story of his and his wife's struggles to cancel their Internet contract.

So, how did it all start?

At 10.37am, John's wife attempted what they thought would be a simple task when they picked up the phone to ring Virgin Media on Saturday.

Things quickly went wrong however when Virgin declared that they had signed up for a new contract.

When they asked to speak to a manager at Virgin, they were told that the manager was in a meeting. Until Wednesday.

After being denied access to the manager, the customers claimed Virgin Media told them that they could resolve the issue and cancel their contract if they paid 160.

John tweeted: ' Watching my wife cancel our @virginmedia contract. Think this is the happiest I've seen her since our wedding.

Before he realised, 'Apparently the only manager at @virginmedia can't talk to us. He's in a meeting. Until Wednesday. Long meeting that.

'Apparently there is LITERALLY no one in the building who can talk to us. Who is RUNNING this call centre? @virginmedia is it communism?'

Finally they learned about cancellation fee: But for JUST 160 the'll release us from it. I mean JESUS at least the MAFIA provided a service when extorting'

After refusing the offer, the Bulls waited to see if they would eventually be able to speak to a manager after all.

They kept getting their hopes up with hints of a supervisor being present and somebody else who MIGHT be able to help.

'They're currently trying to decide whether the manager is "too busy" or "not there",' he wrote.

'OH HELL WAIT. APPARENTLY A SUPERVISOR JUST APPEARED! It's like call centre pokemon.'

None of it followed through.

They did, however, make light of the irony of the situation: that this was, in fact, the LONGEST they had been connected to the provider.

He then mused: 'Ironically this phone call is perhaps the longest we've been stably connected to @virginmedia.'

The company then started playing Justin Bieber to try and diffuse the situation but John tweeted amusingly about how he and his wife were on to them and their plans, tweeting: 'You can play as much Bieber as you want at us. We're still not hanging up.'

After it seemed to them that Virgin was teasing them again about the opportunity to speak with a manager, they began to doubt Virgin's authenticity.

Was there really a manager present or was the whole thing one big ruse to stop them from cancelling their contract?

Eventually, the dissatisfied customer reported that Virgin Media appeared to hang up on them.

So they got a glass of OJ and prepared themselves for round 2.

They were welcomed back with the 'good hold music' again. 'They clearly don't know it's us yet,' he said.

'It's quite good and poppy actually. We're shazamming it

'It's Olly Murs! Oh Olly. Dont' let @virginmedia use you for their complaints hold music. Make them stick to Bieber.'

But the Canadian pop star was soon back. 'Oh. The Bieber is back. Do they know it's us now?

'David Guetta now. Maybe they should spend less on music licensing and hire some more managers.'

Finally, they got put through to Ally.

But it turns out, Ally was no help at all.

John wrote: 'Who is managing Ally. It's anarchy on the floor of Virgin Media.'

Once again pointing out the irony of the situation: John says of Ally, 'It's not her job to cancel contracts. YOU'RE THE CANCELLATION LINE.'

It seemed that after two hours, the Bulls were beginning to get distracted and thought that they had more hope playing Pokemon than they did of catching a manager.

A representative at Virgin Media then asked the couple to hang up AGAIN.

He updated: 'They're asking us to hang up. "No YOU hang up". We've reached that point in our relationship.'

John stressed that it wasn't Ally's fault and that they appreciated her honesty.

They were then put back on hold for the umpteenth time.

They then even heard voices in the back appearing to chime in on the situation.

After another hang up and a tea break, the couple resumed for round three.

This is when the Virgin Media Twitter account joined in and declared that they were 'confident' that they could sort out the situation.

Fortunately, and finally, they got through to Clare: The 'fragile flower of hope in the no-mans land of our @virginmedia battlefield,' according to John.

Clare then put them on hold AGAIN but soon came back with news.

And then finally the couple were left jubilant.

'Clare did it. Clare cancelled our contract. We're free! We won!' wrote John.

'Can't believe it. Feel like we've won an Olympic gold.'

Clare did it and saved the Bulls' day.

So how did they celebrate? They went off to the pub with their newfound freedom from Virgin Media.
British scientists are launching a 7million study to help develop vital early treatment for Alzheimers.

They aim to diagnose the disease in its initial stages when there are no clear symptoms.

Success could herald a revolution in the treatment of Alzheimers, and lead to drugs to halt its progress before irreparable damage is done to the brain.

Scientists are launching a study to help develop early treatment for Alzheimers. Pictured, brain scans of sufferers of the disease

Currently, 99 per cent of clinical trials testing new dementia therapies fail  thought to be because they use participants whose brains are already too impaired.

Clear symptoms of Alzheimers, such as severe memory loss, confusion and mood changes, appear only after it has progressed for many years, experts believe.

Some 250 people will undergo up to 50 tests to detect early signs of dementia for the Deep and Frequent Phenotyping study, backed by the Medical Research Council (MRC).

Wearable devices will measure changes in their gait while eye imaging will spot subtle changes affecting vision. Blood and urine will also be analysed to spot indicators of Alzheimers, known as biomarkers.

Some 250 people will undergo up to 50 tests to detect early signs of dementia for the Deep and Frequent Phenotyping study, backed by the Medical Research Council

Some volunteers will be considered at risk of developing Alzheimers due to their age, genes, and performance in memory tests, but others will not be thought to be at risk.

Lead scientist Professor Simon Lovestone, of Oxford University, said: We know that Alzheimers disease starts long before it is noticed by those with the disease or their doctor.

Previous studies have shown changes to the brain as early as ten to 20 years before symptoms arise. If we can identify the biomarkers present in this very early stage, we have the chance of treating the disease earlier, which is vital if we are to prevent damage to peoples memory and thinking.

Dr Rob Buckle, director of science programmes at the MRC, said: The results could be game-changing for dementia research. Our goal is to find treatments that can slow down or even stop the progression of Alzheimers disease.

The number of dementia patients is predicted to reach a million within a decade. The disease already costs the economy more than 26billion per year.
A baby was born with a huge swollen head to a rare brain condition - after his auntie suffered from the same disability.

Reuben Disley, 11 weeks old, was born with alobar holoprosencephaly (HPE) - a life limiting disorder in which the brain does not develop properly.

It is estimated that only one in 7,500 babies are born with the condition in the UK every year - and experts say most sufferers do not live past six months.

But Reuben's auntie Lydia Rankin was also born with the condition - and has lived to the age of five.

Both youngsters also suffer from hydrocephalus - a build up of fluid on the brain which makes the head expand - and doctors say neither will ever learn to walk or talk.

Reuben Disley, 11 weeks old, was born with a head nearly as big as an adult's due to a rare brain condition

Reuben has alobar holoprosencephaly (HPE) - a life limiting disorder in which the brain does not develop properly - and hydrocephalus - which cause the skull to swell. He is pictured (left) with mother Ellysse Healey, 20, and (left) with father Dylan Disley, 21

Reuben's mother Ellysse Healey, 20, said: 'We thought Lydia's condition was so rare that even though it's genetic, we didn't even consider Reuben would have it.

'If you look at their MRI scans, their brain shape is pretty much the same.

'Seeing how amazingly Lydia has done so far gave us hope that Reuben would follow in her footsteps - and so far, he has done.'

Five years ago Lydia was born with HPE - which came as a huge shock to the family.

When Ms Healey and partner Dylan Disley, 21, from Bolton, became pregnant in October 2015, they didn't even discuss the possibility of Reuben having HPE, believing it to be too rare to strike the same family twice.

However, during a 16-week scan at Royal Bolton Hospital, with the same consultant that cares for Lydia, they were given the shock news that Reuben would in fact be born with the same birth defect.

HPE was already known to the family as Reuben's auntie Lydia, now five, was born with the condition. Ms Healey and Ms Disley had no idea

Reuben underwent two operations to drain the excess fluid from his brain - the first at three weeks old (left) and the second at nine weeks old (right)

Neither Reuben or Lydia will ever learn to walk or talk, doctors say. The family are fundraising for a sensory area for Reuben, as this is a comfort to Lydia

WHAT IS ALOBAR HOLOPROSENCEPHALY? Alobar holoprosencephaly (HPE) is a birth abnormality that occurs during the very early stages of the babys developing in the womb. The front part of the babys brain fails to develop into clearly separate right and left halves. This severely affects the function of the brain. Babies diagnosed with this condition usually have a small head, excessive fluid in the brain, cleft lip, varying degrees of learning difficulties, epilepsy, hormonal problems, or problems with the heart, bones, bowel or bladder. Lydia and Reuben also had hydrocephalus - a build up of fluid on the brain which made their heads swell. The cause of HPE is unknown an d diagnosis is usually made during the 18  20 weeks scan. Unfortunately there is no treatment for this condition. HPE is a severe condition and treatment is based on improving symptoms and appropriate support to improve all aspects of the babys quality of life. However, due to the severity of the condition, some women choose to not continue with the pregnancy after discussing their options fully with a specialist doctor, midwife and their families. Sadly, current studies indicate that only 3 per cent of all babies diagnosed with this condition in pregnancy survive to birth. Those that do survive until birth usually do not survive past the first six months of life. Survival rates depend on how severe the brain abnormality is, as well as other health complications that may be present. Source: NHS Screening Programmes Advertisement

Ellysse and Dylan, a customer assistant and agency worker, were then transferred to St Mary's Hospital, Manchester, for an ultrasound, where the HPE diagnosis was confirmed.

'I was angry and upset,' Ms Healey said. 'I didn't know what to say, as there was nothing I could do.

'We were offered a termination at the Royal Bolton Hospital but straight away we knew that wasn't an option.

'Throughout the pregnancy, we were offered an abortion another three times, but we couldn't do it.'

Ms Healey continued to have monthly scans and, at 24 weeks, also discovered her unborn child had hydrocephalus and would struggle with movement.

Doctors monitored Reuben's head size carefully, and between 32 and 34 weeks the circumference grew by 7cm.

In pain because of the weight of his head, Ms Healey gave birth via a Caesarean section on June 3 2016, at 34 weeks.

When he was born, the circumference of Reuben's head was 44cm - about 10cm bigger than the average.

Lydia's skull had been 57cm at birth.

A study found the average skull circumference for adult women is 55 cm and 57cm for men.

Speaking of the birth, Ms Healey said: 'It was lovely to see him, we still experienced that nice side of bringing a child into the world.

'It was only when we saw him hooked up to a ventilator with an oxygen mask on that he looked so poorly and it kicked in.

'You couldn't see his face under the mask, it was heartbreaking.'

Ms Healey and Mr Disley only got to see their baby for a few seconds before he was rushed to intensive care.

After a few days, he was moved to a special care ward, where he was monitored and given fluids.

The family stayed at the Royal Bolton for about three weeks, before spending a week at St Mary's so Reuben could have an operation to drain some of the liquid that was building up in his brain.

Now, Reuben continues to have weekly head measurements.

As with Lydia, doctors have said he won't walk or talk, and his development and understanding will be very slow.

'I don't struggle with the fact I have a disabled child, what I struggle with is not having control over when he gets poorly,' Ms Healey said

'They are so alike,' Ms Healey said. 'I think they'll have a special bond.'

'Lydia gets really excited when she sees Reuben. She definitely recognises him, I can see it in her eyes.

'I don't struggle with the fact I have a disabled child, what I struggle with is not having control over when he gets poorly.'

The family are now fundraising for a specialist home sensory area for Reuben, which they found helped Lydia.
Charlie Sheen has spoken exclusively to Daily Mail Online to celebrate the news that doctors now believe HIV medication can virtually stunt spread of the infection.

The HIV-positive actor made the same claim when he revealed he had the disease in November - to a fierce wave of backlash.

But this month an international coalition of doctors and health policymakers signed the first consensus statement to say that studies show anti-retroviral (ART) drugs make the risk of transmission 'negligible'.

It is the first time a US health leader has publicly supported the idea - in this case New York City's Assistant Health Commissioner.

As he nears the end of a ground-breaking human trial into a new non-toxic drug, Sheen has told Daily Mail Online what he feels this means for the community.

Scroll down for video

Charlie Sheen has spoken to Daily Mail Online to celebrate the news that doctors believe medication can stunt spread of HIV (pictured in February at Elton John's Oscar's party)

WHAT WAS THE DOCTORS' CONSENSUS ON HIV The HIV/AIDS chief of New York City's health department joined ranks with scientists across the world. It is the first time a US health official has publicly supported the idea. The group signed a statement to establish that studies are increasingly proving people with an 'undetectable load' carry a 'negligible risk' of transmission. WHAT IS AN UNDETECTABLE LOAD? A person with HIV becomes 'undetectable' when ART suppresses the virus to a level so low in their blood that it cannot be detected by measurements. DOES THAT ELIMINATE RISK? No study can prove zero risk of transmission. But no study has ever shown transmission of HIV from someone with an undetectable load. It means they have almost no chance of passing HIV to a partner. Advertisement

'It was really exciting not just personally but great news for the entire HIV community,' he said.

'At those levels with a condom the chances of contracting anything would be like being struck by lightening twice the same day.

'It's nice to have a scientific confirmation, locating some way not just to suppress but to eradicate the virus completely at some point in time.'

The consensus was signed by New York City's HIV/AIDS chief Dr Demetre Daskalakis and leading medics in the field from Denmark, Australia and Switzerland.

Though controversial, it was nothing new; doctors have been exploring and confirming this idea for years.

Many medical professionals remain cautious about suggesting low risk to patients, for fear that people will become apathetic about safe sex.

But in the last 18 months there has been a surge in studies using much broader numbers and more homosexual men in the clinical trials.

With this consensus, Dr Daskalakis and his co-signers hope to dispel the idea of HIV-positive patients as contagious vectors of disease, and to broaden detailed awareness about the virus.

Sheen first mentioned the idea that a person with an 'undetectable load' of the virus carries 'negligible risk' in November.

A person with HIV becomes 'undetectable' when ART suppresses the virus to a level so low in their blood that it cannot be detected by measurements.

Despite the growing swell of scientific studies supporting this view, Sheen had his critics - and still does.

'I'm still dealing with a couple of stragglers that are hanging on by a thread,' he admits.

He's hopeful that this consensus will accelerate research into the field and stoke interest in safe sex and STD medication among the general public.

'It completely usurps whatever stand that they [his critics] believe that they have.'

News of the consensus came just a week after the 50-year-old father-of-five called on other HIV-positive celebrities to come forward to widen the discussion about drugs, safe-sex, and transmission.

He insists that despite the storm of backlash and media attention, he is glad he opened up.

'It's been as liberating as it's been frustrating. I think the good karma in my life has gone up.'

The HIV-positive actor revealed he had the disease in November on NBC (pictured)

WHAT IS THE TRIAL DRUG CHARLIE SHEEN IS TESTING? PRO-140 is an 'entry and fusion inhibitor' that is injected weekly. It is made from an antibody, rather than synthetic chemicals. Entry and fusion inhibitors protect cells in the immune system from HIV infection. To do so, the drug attaches to a protein receptor on the surface of the immune cell. Normally, HIV would use that protein as a gateway to enter and infect a cell. Studies show that when this gateway is blocked, HIV has no other way of entering that cell. If possible, this process would block the virus from multiplying. It could also reduce that amount of HIV in the body. Charlie Sheen will reach Week 18 of his test group on Tuesday. It is a Phase III trial - the last batch to try it before it can be released. There are a couple of months left before the results will be studied by the FDA to see if it can be publicly released. CytoDyn Inc, the firm behind the pill, is eyeing up an early 2017 release. Advertisement

Indeed, in February, a study by San Diego State University found that, in the wake of Sheen's disclosure, there were record levels of Google searches for information about HIV and HIV prevention.

Since then, he has become heavily involved in promoting the cause.

One move has been to front the campaign for a new 'unbreakable' condom by LELO HEX which clings to the user.

'We must transcend the stigma as well as the disappointment associated with condom use,' he said.

'We can point to dubious constructions like poor fit and an absence of sensitivity.'

He added: 'I don't adore my HIV. I've accepted it as part of my journey in this great big, crazy life that I've created and continue to embrace and yes, there are plenty of times in my most private moments that I ask myself 'what if?'

'What if just that one time I would've chosen differently?

'Let's face it as we gather here tonight, condom use is down and STIs are on the rise.

'It's a dangerous combination when you're trying to take care of yourself and your loved ones.'

Sheen has spent the last four months taking part in a human test of an experimental drug, PRO-140, by the pharmaceutical company CytoDyn.

It's a non-toxic, non-shock injection that works differently to the commonly-used cocktail.

The drug is an 'entry and fusion inhibitor', which protect cells in the immune system from HIV infection.

To do so, the drug attaches to a protein receptor on the surface of the immune cell.

Normally, the HIV infection would use that protein as a gateway to enter and infect a cell.

Studies show that when this gateway is blocked, HIV has no other way of entering that cell.

If possible, this process would block the virus from multiplying. It could also reduce that amount of HIV in the body.

Sheen will reach Week 18 of his test group on Tuesday. It is a Phase III trial - the last batch to try it before it can be released.

There are a couple of months left before the results will be studied by the FDA to see if it can be publicly released.

CytoDyn Inc, the firm behind the pill, is eyeing up an early 2017 release.

Currently, Sheen takes one injection per week. Eventually it may be as few as one per month.

'I think this test group is the best thing to come out of this, of me coming out,' Sheen told Daily Mail Online.

The Two And A Half Men star (pictured on the show) drove a spike in Google searches about the disease after he announced his HIV status in November

'This drug is the closest thing we have to a cure.

'I'm so grateful that those cocktail drugs exist and did when I came down with the virus.

'But living on that cocktail it affects your health, your body, it psychologically affects you.

'What these scientists have developed [PRO-140] is just mind-blowing.

'We are looking at approval by early next year.
Breast cancer patients who fear the worst end up suffering more severe side effects from treatment, a new study has found.

But those who have a positive outlook tend to experience fewer and less severe hot flushes and vomiting bouts.

The intensity and frequency of side effects from taking hormone therapy drugs such as tamoxifen and exemestane for two years was influenced by patients expectations, researchers found.

When patients expected to suffer before treatment began, they ended up feeling worse.

Breast cancer patients with a pessimistic outlook experienced more frequent and severe side effects from hormone therapy drugs (file image)

They also experienced nearly twice the number of side-effects than women who were positive or who thought the effects would not be too bad.

Medics recommend pre-menopausal breast cancer patients take drugs like tamoxifen for at least five years after surgery to prevent the cancer returning.

But many women stop treatment because they feel it is affecting their quality of life, even though this affects their chances of survival.

Side effects of tamoxifen include tiredness, changes to periods, nausea and vomiting, hot flushes, aching joints, headaches and weight gain.

While exemestane can cause hot flushes and sweats, loss of libido, nausea and vomiting, tiredness, aching joints and bone pain, headaches and skin rashes.

The authors of the latest research, carried out in Germany, said those with a pessimistic outlook could be offered counselling to help them through the treatment.

Medics recommend pre-menopausal breast cancer patients take drugs like tamoxifen for at least five years after surgery to prevent the cancer returning. The drug can cause nausea and vomiting, hot flushes, aching joints, headaches and weight gain

Professor Yvonne Nestoriuc, of the University Medical Centre, Hamburg said: Our results show that expectations constitute a clinically relevant factor that influences the long-term outcome of hormone therapy.

Expectations can be modified so as to decrease the burden of long-term side-effects and optimise adherence to preventive anti-cancer treatments in breast cancer survivors.

Researchers followed 111 women who had had surgery for a treatable type of breast cancer and were scheduled to start taking hormone therapy.

COMMON SIDE EFFECTS OF BREAST CANCER DRUGS Medics recommend pre-menopausal breast cancer patients take drugs like tamoxifen for at least five years after surgery to prevent the cancer returning. But many women stop treatment because they feel it is affecting their quality of life, even though this affects their chances of survival. Side effects of tamoxifen include tiredness, changes to periods, nausea and vomiting, hot flushes, aching joints, headaches and weight gain. While exemestane can cause hot flushes and sweats, loss of libido, nausea and vomiting, tiredness, aching joints and bone pain, headaches and skin rashes. Advertisement

The women were questioned about their expectations of the effects of the therapy at the start of the trial, and then 107 of the women were assessed at three months and 88 were reassessed at two years.

There were 19 patients who dropped out of the study, including two who died.

At the start, nine patients - eight per cent - said they expected no side-effects from the drugs.

But 70 patients - 63 per cent - expected mild side-effects, and 32 patients - 29 per cent - expected moderate to severe side-effects.

After three months, the patients who would go on to drop out reported significantly more side-effects than the other 88 patients.

Women who remained on the medication for two years were more likely to have had low expectations of side effects before treatment started.

Nearly nine in 10 of those who did not expect severe side effects before treatment began stuck to the therapy for the full two years.

This was compared to just 60 per cent of those who had been worried about side effects beforehand.

The most commonly reported side effect was joint pain, followed by weight gain and hot flushes.

But women also reported symptoms that could not be directly attributable to their medication, including breathing problems and dizziness.

Experts say the findings could lead to women with a pessimistic outlook being offered counselling to help them get through their treatment

Professor Nestoriuc said: This substantiates the conclusion that psychological mechanisms such as negative expectations about the treatment play a significant role in the side-effects breast cancer patients experience.

Higher negative expectations, formed by patients before the start of their therapy, seem to have a pronounced influence on long-term tolerability, especially once they are confirmed by initially high side-effects after three months.

A limitation of the study was nearly two fifths of patients who were eligible to join the trial did not take part and their decision might have been affected by the fact that they already had negative expectations about the therapy.
After a heavy downpour flooded her home, Jenny Ellingford had hoped that once she had mopped up that would be that.

But once the foot of water had receded, the smell of damp lingered and, worse, a white gloopy type of fungus which looked like mayonnaise appeared on the floorboards.

I was constantly scrubbing it off, says Jenny, 65, a former driving teacher who lives near Hickstead, Sussex with her husband Ed, 70, a retired engineer.

Their home was left permanently damp, says Jenny, with a stench of mould as the couple battled with their insurance company over the cost of the repairs.

Jenny Ellingford, 65, developedthe fungal lung disease aspergillosis from fungus growing on her floorboards after they rotted after a flood

And then Jenny noticed something else. The well-controlled asthma shed suffered from for over 50 years suddenly got dramatically worse.

I struggled to breathe on an almost daily basis and the inhalers Id taken since childhood werent controlling it anymore, says Jenny.

I must have had eight hospital admissions in one year and was almost continually on antibiotics and steroids because of chest infections.

Every four hours she had to use a nebuliser, a device for inhaling liquid medicine via a mask.

Her doctors could not explain this sudden downturn in her health and she continued to deteriorate. I became increasingly breathless and tired, says Jenny.

She dropped a stone, her weight going down to 7 st (shes 5 ft 3 in) in the space of six months.

I looked gaunt and felt my health was wrecked, she says.

I went to see my GP countless times and on one occasion I just burst into tears as no one could work out what was wrong.

Then, in 2012, a few days after she broke down in tears at the surgery Jenny began choking, unable to clear mucus from her lungs and throat. As she started to turn blue, her husband called an ambulance.

Once the foot of water had receded from Jenny's house, the smell of damp lingered and a white gloopy type of fungus which looked like mayonnaise appeared on the floorboards

I thought I was going to die, it was terrifying, says Jenny.

Luckily, an emergency doctor arrived within minutes and blasted my airways with oxygen which cleared the blockage from my throat.

Jenny was taken to hospital and blood samples sent off to a specialist lung centre finally revealed the cause of her breathing problems.

Jenny had a fungal infection, aspergillosis, that had damaged her lungs.

Aspergillosis is caused by inhaling spores of the Aspergillus mould, which are found in moist environments such as compost heaps, in piles of rotting leaves, heating and air conditioning systems, and even in pillows.

Jenny's health deteriorated following the fungal infection, and he dropped a stone in the space of six months

The spores are normally harmless as the white cells of the immune system destroy them before they do any damage.

But for some people with asthma, or any other lung disease, or those who have a compromised immune system as a result of chemotherapy or surgery, for example, the Aspergillus spores may pose a threat.

Thats because the spores can then multiply in the lungs, causing a number of different symptoms including allergic irritation, inflammation or scarring, which can make breathing difficult and in some rare cases it can prove fatal.

It causes many thousands of deaths a year, however the majority are undiagnosed, says Professor David Denning of the National Aspergillosis Centre at the University of Manchester.

He says one form of aspergillosis is the most commonly missed infection in intensive care patients in the UK who die.

Last August Jenny found herself in intensive care with a collapsed lung after a worsening of her aspergillosis and asthma. She was not expected to pull through.

And while the couples home has been repaired and no longer smells of mould, the damage to Jennys lungs has left her with greatly reduced lung capacity.

No one has ever heard of aspergillosis  I certainly hadnt, she says.

I just wish it had been diagnosed before the fungus had caused so much damage.

FUNGI CAN CAUSE FATAL INFECTIONS

Fungal infections are often seen as something trivial  and certainly infections such as athletes foot and dandruff are not life-threatening.

But there are other far more serious fungal infections and these kill more people worldwide than malaria or breast cancer, according to Neil Gow, a professor of microbiology at the University of Aberdeen and president of the Microbiology Society.

He helped to organise a conference at the Royal Society, the UKs national academy of science, earlier this year to highlight the growing threat that fungi pose to animals, crops and humans.

Illustration of the aspergillus fungus, a toxic fungus which can cause diseases in humans

There are 600 types of fungi that cause diseases in humans, leading to 1.5 million deaths worldwide each year.

Ninety per cent of deaths caused by fungal illnesses are caused by four types of fungi: Candida (bloodstream infections), Aspergillus, Cryptococcus (a fungus that can cause a specific type of meningitis), and Pneumocystis, which can cause lung infections, allergy and pneumonia in people with weak immune systems, he told Good Health.

One common form of aspergillosis, allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA), affects one in 40 people with severe asthma, according to estimates.

Another fungus, Pneumocystis, causes lung infections and a form of pneumonia, and is highly dangerous for people with weak immune systems, including those undergoing chemotherapy for cancer  it causes 600 deaths a year in the UK.

WHAT ARE FUNGI EXACTLY?

Fungi are organisms that live by decomposing and absorbing organic matter in which they grow  they include mushrooms, moulds, mildews and yeasts.

Aspergillus spores are particularly common and like other types of mould, thrive in warm, damp environments both outdoors and indoors  including compost heaps, rotting leaves and damp houses.

For this reason it can be found in bathrooms and kitchens.

Fungi spread by releasing spores  microscopic biological particles that allow them to reproduce. Many contain allergens which can trigger a range of allergic respiratory symptoms.

Fungi are organisms that live by decomposing and absorbing organic matter in which they grow  they include mushrooms, moulds, mildews and yeasts

For example, Stachybotrys, the black spots of fungal mould commonly found in bathrooms, can trigger allergies and respiratory problems.

The majority of those with severe asthma symptoms are allergic to some form of fungus.

Professor Gow says fungal spores are extremely tough and resilient and can survive extremes of temperature and remain undetected within our bodies by the immune system until they emerge from their tough coating when they germinate.

They have many strategies for survival and are very adept at evolving rapidly, says Professor Gow.

One theory is that fungal infections indirectly led to the extinction of dinosaur  that after a meteor hit the earth, the world was dark for several years and this wiped out a lot of plant life which led to more compost on which fungus thrive.

SOME TREATMENTS NO LONGER WORKING

Now there is a new problem.

Just as antibiotics have become less effective as bacteria have become more resistant to them, the same is happening with anti-fungal drugs  albeit to a lesser extent.

The difference, says Professor Gow, is that there is much less awareness of the problem. Were beginning to see more cases of drug-resistant strains of Aspergillus, he says.

The same is true of Candida, the fungus responsible for the thrush infection countless women suffer every year.

Usually it can be treated with antifungal drugs  but resistance is growing to the two most commonly used anti-fungal drugs, fluconazole (brand names include Diflucan and Celozol) and the newer echinocandins group of drugs (Cancidas, Eraxis, Mycamine).

Usually, a fungal infection can be treated with drugs, but resistance is growing to the two most commonly used anti-fungal drugs

For a woman affected with thrush, it means the first drug they try might not work.

Another newly identified form of candida (Candida auris) causes wound, bloodstream and ear infections and is resistant to most anti-fungal treatments.

Earlier this year Public Health England issued a warning to hospitals urging them to be vigilant for the new strain.

Sporadic cases of C. auris have been identified throughout England since 2013 and more than 40 cases seen so far have been identified in an adult critical care unit which is monitoring an outbreak of C. auris.

Drug-resistant fungi are not nearly as big a problem yet as drug-resistant bacteria, but they are just as worrying as there are fewer fungal treatments to begin with.

There are only four classes of anti-fungal drugs, compared with 23 classes of antibiotics, says Professor Gow.

Drug-resistant fungi are not nearly as big a problem yet as drug-resistant bacteria, but they are just as worrying as there are fewer fungal treatments to begin with

Most of these drugs cant eradicate fungi completely and can just reduce their numbers and stop them from growing, rather than killing them outright.

The drug-resistant forms are partly the result of chemicals used to spray crops creating resistant strains. These resistant spores are floating around in the air, explains Professor Gow.

The result is people can acquire an infection from a fungus that is resistant to anti-fungal drugs just by breathing in these spores.

There are also more people living long-term with chronic conditions and some of them have to be on anti-fungal drugs long-term which makes encountering resistance more likely.

EXPERTS WORRIED BY LACK OF RESEARCH

Scientists are concerned that not enough is being invested in research into fungal illnesses in the UK, despite them contributing to thousands of deaths a year and despite the fact that there are limited drugs available.

Fungal infections need to be taken more seriously, says Gordon Ramage, a professor at the University of Glasgow and secretary of the British Society for Medical Mycology.

Theres this perception that fungal diseases are just trivial infections such as athletes foot, but the reality is that people die from fungal diseases such as aspergillosis and Candida bloodstream infections every day.

People seem amazed by the idea that fungi could kill them.

Scientists are concerned that not enough is being invested in research into fungal illnesses

One positive step is the Wellcome Trust investing 5.1 million in a research collaboration led by the Aberdeen Fungal Group at Aberdeen University, the largest fungal research group in Britain, to train a new generation of fungal scientists. The group also want to increase public understanding of the importance of fungal diseases.

Five years since she was diagnosed with aspergillosis, Jenny Ellingford is living proof of the need for more research and the damage fungi can do to health.

She still has to use a nebuliser twice a day and has to avoid compost heaps and anywhere aspergillus fungal spores may be prevalent.

Doctors cant get the fungus out of my lungs completely and its always there, she says.

I will have to live it with for the rest of my life. Its daunting and quite depressing, as each time I get a chest infection I get progressively worse.

Visit the British Lung Foundation online at www.blf.org.uk
Take a deep breath. Its familiar advice but we seldom take it literally. But Im giving it a great deal of attention as I stretch out on a mat with ten others in a room in Farnham, Surrey.

My head rests on a small pillow, a thin blanket covering my body.

Next to me is Suzie Poyser, a 38-year-old psychotherapist, who has driven from Manchester to attend a workshop run jointly by Anthony Dunkley, founder of the Alchemy of Breath, and Amy Rachelle, an American naturopath.

The workshops aim is to help people understand what happens if they breathe fully and richly, says Anthony, who describes it as the most effective way to de-stress.

The Alchemy of Breath aims to demonstrate the health benefits of breathing fully and richly

Some are here because they are prone to panic attacks or have emotional issues; others, like me, are curious to learn more about the act of breathing, something we take for granted.

Though it may sound a little out there, the fact is that many of us arent actually breathing properly, with consequences for our health, mental function and even how we speak.

Dr James Hull, a consultant respiratory physician from Royal Brompton Hospital in London, explains that poor breathing  or dysfunctional breathing  can lead to nausea, headaches, discomfort in the chest and loss of concentration.

On average we breathe in and out 14 times per minute. Mostly, without any conscious effort, but in moments of stress we can develop what Dr Hull calls a breathing pattern disorder.

Sometimes this manifests as breathing too fast or feeling as if you are choking. In turn, this can lead to the narrowing of the voice box, which can affect how we sound and bring on a sense of panic.

Its a defence mechanism  a stress response  and can be immediately rectified, says Dr Hull. But it needs some instruction.

Dr Hull, who runs the Bromptons unexplained breathlessness service, believes the number of people suffering from dysfunctional breathing is increasing.

In many cases, people with breathing difficulties are misdiagnosed as suffering from asthma. In part, this is because when the voice box narrows, we tend to wheeze, he says.

Dr Hull, who runs the Bromptons unexplained breathlessness service, believes many people with breathing difficulties are misdiagnosed as suffering from asthma

Often there is no need for medication, but rather some sessions with a respiratory therapist who will go through breathing exercises.

One key step is breathing through the nose rather than mouth because sniffing makes the diaphragm work harder, activating muscles that operate like bellows, which helps produce deeper breaths.

The nose also acts as a filter and humidifier, warming the air that enters the lungs. Cold air can irritate nerve fibres in the lungs, bringing on coughing.

And if you breathe through the nose it acts as a brake, slowing our breathing down.

Breathing through your mouth  at night at least  could also raise the risk of tooth decay.

According to a New Zealand study published in February in the Journal of Oral Rehabilitation, it may evaporate the protective alkaline saliva so it cannot neutralise the acids produced by bacteria in the mouth.

Most NHS hospitals will offer the kind of respiratory therapy Dr Hull describes. Anthony Dunkley, 62, set up the Alchemy of Breath in Bali three years ago.

Breath expansion exercises involve breathing fully into the abdomen and rib cage, before adding an extra short breath inwards at the end

In his workshops, which fall into the New Age spectrum of therapies, he recommends breathing through the mouth.

At the start of our session, he asks us to close our eyes and concentrate on our breath, beginning the inhale immediately after the exhale  he calls this connected breath.

He wants us to breathe into any feelings we have, whether positive or negative.

Later, soothing music is played before Anthony and Amy waft the room with aromatherapy scents to induce a sense of calm. Then they gently beat a drum and play other percussion instruments to support our breathing.

On the exhale, I find it relaxing to let out a long, low sound not unlike snoring. I feel my hands are getting tingly and my chest a little numb. I am slightly dizzy, but peaceful.

Curiosity piqued, I seek further instruction with a session of mindful breathing at the ESPA Life at Corinthia spa in London.

We begin with breath expansion exercises  these involve breathing fully into the abdomen and rib cage, before adding an extra short breath inwards at the end.

The therapist, Michelle Matthews, explains how one nostril is more dominant and so we do an exercise called alternate nostril breathing.

In his workshops, which fall into the New Age spectrum of therapies, breathing therapist Dr Anthony Dunkley recommends breathing through the mouth

After our session, I feel deeply relaxed  reason enough to think about your breathing.

As Dr Anindo Banerjee, a respiratory expert at Southampton General Hospital, explains, breathing incorrectly can affect levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the blood.

Breathing too fast means you get rid of too much carbon dioxide, which, in turn, will make your whole system too alkaline, he says.

He adds that stress invariably changes the way we breathe, making us take short, sharp breaths.

Prolonged periods of stress mean we constantly breathe like this, only ever using the top third of our lungs  a precursor to hyperventilating.

Dr Banerjee sees the merits of breathing workshops such as Anthonys  concentrating so much on the breath blots out other things and can bring a real sense of calm.

I cant claim my sessions have made me calmer, but I have noticed that when sitting idly on a train I begin to practise more conscious breathing  and feel better for it.
But applying ice to the skin could lead to worse damage or even scarring

Most people think cooling down a fresh sunburn is the easiest solution

Whats the best way to treat sunburn?

Here, Anton Alexandroff, a consultant dermatologist at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, explains what you should do.

GET IN THE SHOWER

As soon as you feel pain or see redness, get your skin under cool water in a bath or apply a flannel soaked in cold water.

Cooling the skin helps to turn down the inflammatory mechanisms to reduce damage that may result in scarring. Do this until the area feels cool to the touch.

As soon as you feel pain or see redness, get your skin under cool water in a bath or apply a flannel soaked in cold water

If you think applying a bag of frozen peas might help, think twice.

Putting ice straight onto sunburnt skin may lead to burns because its so sensitive. Instead, wrap ice in a cloth before applying it to your skin.

If the burn is particularly severe, add a product such as Dermol 600 Bath Emollient (available at Lloyds Pharmacies) to the bath, this contains an antiseptic ingredient.

TAKE A PAINKILLER

Taking ibuprofen, diclofenac or aspirin pills will help reduce pain and swelling  these are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and are available in most chemists.

If the pain persists, you can also take paracetamol  although this alone is not enough because it has no anti-inflammatory action, so wont reduce swelling.

Taking ibuprofen, diclofenac or aspirin pills will help reduce pain and swelling  these are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and are available in most chemists

APPLY MOISTURISER

Inflamed skin will lose water as the skin barrier is disrupted, so apply moisturiser. This acts as a barrier against water loss which is important for the healing process.

You dont necessarily need an aftersun product, but do use a lotion and cream that you have used before to stop any unwanted reactions, as sunburnt skin is more prone to these.

Go for an un-perfumed mosituriser, from pharmacies, with ingredients such as glycerine, camomile or aloe vera, which can reduce inflammation.

Try E45 lotion, Diprobase creams or Oilatum cream (all available from Boots).

Make sure you also drink plenty of cold water, to prevent dehydration.

nflamed skin will lose water as the skin barrier is disrupted, so apply moisturiser. This acts as a barrier against water loss which is important for the healing process

EAT BERRIES

One of the worries of sunburn is the release of harmful molecules (free radicals) into the skin, which increase the chance of cells mutating and cancer.

Antioxidants are chemicals that target free radicals, so in theory eating foods that are rich in these chemicals may reduce some of this cell damage.

Animal studies have shown that blackberries and pomegranates are particularly beneficial and help reduce sunburn.

Early research suggests green tea could help as it is also rich in antioxidants.

Blackberries contain antioxidants, which are chemicals that target free radicals, so in theory eating foods that are rich in these chemicals may reduce some of this cell damage

SEE YOUR GP

Symptoms should start to improve after three days, but if they dont, see your GP.

You may need to be prescribed steroid pills or creams with powerful anti-inflammatory effects.

Any blistering or open skin should also be seen by a doctor as these can lead to infection.

GET OUT OF THE SUN

It may sound obvious, but the best ways to minimise the effects of sun damage and prevent long-term scarring is to get out of the sun.
Miami schools are giving long-sleeved shirts and pants to children to protect them from the Zika virus.

Classes started for fall on Monday in the city, the only place in mainland America with a local outbreak of the mosquito-borne infection.

During the first day, another two non-travel-related infections were reported by the state health department, bringing the total number to 37.

Throughout summer families have been warned to protect themselves and their children with bug spray and clothing.

But now the onus falls on teachers to protect the 7,600 students attending school in the two outbreak zones.

Classes started for fall on Monday in the city (pictured being sprayed this month), the only place in mainland America with a local outbreak of the mosquito-borne infection

One mosquito bite could rapidly fuel the spread.

Whenever a mosquito bites someone with Zika, they pick up the virus. As they bite someone, that person likely gets it.

This is most likely the way the virus has spread out of the original outbreak zone - Wynwood - to Miami Beach.

A spokesman for the National Health Institute warned on Sunday that the virus will probably stay floating around the US for another couple of years.

'It would not be surprising we would see additional cases perhaps in other Gulf Coast states,' Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the allergy and infectious diseases unit of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said in an interview on Sunday morning with ABC News.

The possibility of transmission in Gulf States such as Louisiana and Texas will likely fuel concerns that the virus could spread across the continental United States, even though officials have played down such an outcome.

On Monday, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine (pictured with Rep Debbie Wasserman Schultz) asked for more federal resources to combat the spread of Zika in South Florida

Scientists are still learning about the impacts of the virus on adults and healthy children.

The most severe effect of the disease that we know of currently is its impact on unborn babies, causing severe birth defects including microcephaly.

On Monday, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine asked for more federal resources to combat the spread of the Zika virus in South Florida.

The mayor said 'we need the federal government to step up' at a news conference Monday.

President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion in emergency funds in February to develop a vaccine and control the mosquitoes that carry the virus.

But Republicans tied the funding to a dispute over abortion, and lawmakers left Washington for a seven-week recess without approving the money.
With the National Green Tribunal (NGT) directing Delhi University to hold paper-free students union polls this year, the student political parties are going to take the war online.

The Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) polls, which are scheduled for September 9, will see major political parties contesting for the four seats in the student union body.

The Congresss youth wing - the National Students Union of India (NSUI) - released its womens manifesto on Monday.

The National Green Tribunal directed Delhi University to hold paper-free polls for the students' union this year

During the launch, the political party showed a documentary based on the life of Indira Gandhi, and then conducted a quiz on the same.

It is extremely important to be active on social media nowadays. These platforms make it easier to reach out to every student. We have college-wise groups of WhatsApp and Facebook, where we are regularly posting updates on college activities, said Amrita Dhawan, National president, NSUI.

Back in July the NGT had directed Delhi University to ensure that no paper in the form of posters or pamphlets is used for campaigning on campuses.

The order of July 18 came up for hearing after a petition was moved last year during the DU Students Union polls for paperless canvassing and environment-friendly modes of campaigning.

For the first time, Delhi University has decided to introduce the NOTA option in the student union polls, for cases where a voter does not support any of the candidates

We have a dedicated team of 50 volunteers who are looking after the entire campaign. As the date of the elections will approach, we will have more volunteers who will be campaigning in the other parts of the country too, added Dhawan.

The BJPs student wing - Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) - also started a pre-election campaign on Monday with its 15 probable candidates.

The candidates visited various colleges for informal meetings.

Before planning any of our activities, we sent the schedule to everyone through Whatsapp and Facebook. We all are connected through that medium. The campaigning will become more rigorous in the coming days, said Saket Bahuguna, National Media Convener, ABVP.

For the first time, Delhi University has decided to introduce the NOTA option in the student union polls scheduled on September 9.

The decision to introduce the option in the EVMs for polls was taken at a meeting of the election advisory committee.

DU was the first university to use Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in the student union polls and from this year we have decided to introduce None of The Above (NOTA) as well, to give the students a right to reject if they do not find any candidate worthy of the post, DUSU Chief Election Commissioner DS Rawat said.

Last week the varsity appointed a team of officials including a Chief Election Officer, Chief Returning Officer, and Returning Officer to make the election run smoothly.

DUSU is the representative body for the students from most colleges and faculties.
Changing political loyalties has become the norm ahead of the crucial poll battle in Utter Pradesh.

The latest case is two-term BSP MP Brajesh Pathak, who joined the BJP expressing faith in its developmental agenda for poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

Surprisingly Pathak, who is known to be a close aide of Mayawati, was seen attending her first big rally in Agra on Sunday.

Two-term BSP MP Brajesh Pathak (right) with BJP president Amit Shah

The BSP expelled him from the party while he was at the BJP headquarters fulfilling his joining formalities, apparently after learning of his plans.

Pathak is the third prominent leader from the BSP to join the saffron brigade in the run-up to the UP polls.

Earlier, BSP heavyweights Swamy Prasad Maurya and R K Chaudhary joined the BJP.

Pathak joined the saffron organisation in the presence of its president Amit Shah and Union minister Mahesh Sharma, and was described as a pillar in the Hardoi-Unnao region of the state.

Sharma said Pathak joining the BJP will help the party consolidate Brahmin votes.

Unlike some BSP leaders, including Swami Prasad Maurya, who tore into BSP supremo Mayawati as they joined BJP, Pathak did not attack her. However, he said nepotism, corruption, and goondaism ruled the roost in the state.

I thought any delay will be harmful. Only Prime Minister Narendra Modi's developmental agenda and Amit Shah's efforts can rescue UP, he told reporters.

Asked why attended the BSP rally on Sunday and joined the BJP less than 24 hours later, he said he was doing his job for the BSP as long as he was there.

Pathak said that the state is infested with criminals who also wield power in the legislative set-up.

Lamenting the "goonda raj" in the state, Pathak said that a BJP government was necessary to purge anti-social elements from the state and improve the law and order situation.

Pathak said he had played a role in swinging Brahmin voters to the BSP during the 2007 Assembly polls, but Brahmins were disappointed by the party.
Celestin was convicted on the sexual assault charge and sentenced to six months in prison - but

The Hollywood director who was accused of raping a drunk, unconscious 18-year-old student harassed her and left her 'fearing for her safety' after she went to police, she told a judge.

Court papers seen by DailyMail.com disclose how the alleged victim said that Nate Parker - now tipped for Oscar success with his movie The Birth of a Nation - breached his bail conditions to conduct 'a campaign of harassment' against her.

The alleged victim said she felt so 'desperate' and fearful that, just one month after making her official complaint, she attempted suicide, twice.

These are just some of the allegations made by the woman in a 2002 civil case brought against Penn State University  where both she and Parker were students at the time of the alleged assault.

Parker is the writer, director and will be the star of the movie, which is released later this year.

Now 36, he was accused of raping the woman in August 1999 in his college dorm, along with college friend Jean Celestin, who co-wrote the film.

Birth of a Nation star Nate Parker, 36, was accused of raping an 18-year-old Penn State University student in 1999

Parker (pictured righin his younger years with friend Jean Celestin, left, who was also accused of rape, and their college wrestling coach) allegedly ran an orchestrated campaign of harassment in the months following

His friend and fellow student, Jean Celestin, 36, was also accused on four counts: rape, sexual assault, indecent assault and involuntary deviate sexual encounter.

Parker was cleared in a 2001 trial while his co-defendant, now co-writer, Celestin was convicted on the sexual assault charge and sentenced to six months in prison.

He appealed the verdict and there was no second trial, as the alleged victim refused to testify.

The alleged victim went on to commit suicide in 2012 at the age of just 30  swallowing hundreds of sleeping pills.

In a brief interview with Variety earlier this week her brother said of the alleged rape: 'If I were to look back at her very short life and point to one moment where I think she changed as a person it was obviously that point.'

Now, details of her 2002 civil suit, seen by Daily Mail Online, cast light on the 'desperate situation' in which the alleged victim - known only as Jane Doe in the suit - found herself following the events of the night of August 21, 1999.

The case was brought on behalf of 'Jane Doe' against Penn State University by the Women's Law Project and alleged that the university had failed to protect her safety in the aftermath of the alleged assault.

It was brought, according to the original complaint, 'to challenge Penn State's patently inadequate response to the sexual harassment Jane Doe experienced as a result of being raped by two male Penn State students in August 1999.'

Parker (left, accepting the Breakthrough Director of the Year award during the CinemaCon Big Screen Achievement Awards in April) was cleared of rape while Celestin (right) was sentenced to six months in prison. His conviction was later overturned

The rape allegations surfaced when Parker, Celestin, and their alleged victim were all students at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania

Parker and Celestin were arrested on 21 October, 1999. A condition of Parker's bail - set at $25,000 - was that 'absolutely no contact is to be made with the victim in this case', court papers said.

Yet on October 27, 1999, the day on which Parker and Celestin were bound over for trial at a preliminary hearing, the complaint reads: 'That night, Parker appeared in the common area of Jan Doe's dorm, making her fear for her safety.'

If true the director's presence would put him in direct violation of his condition of bail.

Indeed, 'commencing at the time of Jane Doe's report to the police', the complaint alleges, 'Parker began an organized campaign to harass Jane Doe and make her fear for her safety'.

Parker and Celestin allegedly hired a private detective to investigate their accuser.

He showed a picture of her to students on campus, revealing her identity that had, to that point, been kept confidential.

'After her name was made known to those with whom the investigator talked, Jane Doe was harassed on campus and was no longer able to eat or socialize in public areas,' the complaint says.

The alleged victim reported the harassment to Penn State campus police and two days later the university's Director of Judicial Affairs, Joseph Puzycki sent a notice to Jane Doe, Parker and Celestin 'stating that there was to be no unsolicited contact, either physical or verbal, direct or indirect, between them'.

Parker (pictured left, in the poster for the film, and right, with his Sundance Institute Vanguard Award on Thursday) spoke about a rape charge he faced 17 years ago last week. It has now emerged that the woman who accused him killed herself in 2012

Parker (above in the film) is the writer, director, producer and star of The Birth of a Nation  a film that is considered a frontrunner for an Academy Award

But, according to the alleged victim, Parker did not relent and, 'on one occasionstationed himself outside Jane Doe's dormitory, preventing her from leaving the building out of fear for her safety'.

The alleged attackers and their friends, she stated, 'constantly hurled sexual epithets' at her, 'while shadowing her as she moved throughout campus and frequently made harassing phone calls to Jane Doe's dorm room'.

She was left, the case asserted, with 'severe depression, sleeplessness, and anxiety attacksunable to attend classes or leave her room'.

Indeed her 'desperate situation' had seen her attempt suicide twice - first on November 17, 1999, and then, six days later on November 23.

The alleged victim - a scholarship student who earned a 4.0 grade point average in her first semester - dropped out of university entirely in January 2000 and take a job at the local mall.

In court papers she blamed the impact of the alleged attack.

Yet, she said, her departure did not bring to an end the harassment. In May 2000, her apartment was broken into 'with only her files regarding the attack disturbed'.

Today Parker (left) and Celestin (right) still are friends and worked together on Birth of a Nation

Parker wrote a lengthy Facebook post maintaining his innocence, while expressing sorrow for her passing and acknowledging his shortcomings.

And while the alleged victim struggled to cope with her mental anguish, Parker and Celestin remained at university, attending classes and, after a brief suspension from the wrestling team, were both reinstated in October 2000.

Parker, however, eventually transferred to the University of Oklahoma, while Celestin stayed at Penn State.

Penn State vigorously defended itself against all the allegations made in the case and, in November 2002 an out of court settlement was reached with the alleged victim accepting a $17,500 pay out.

It was Parker himself who brought this dark period in his history to light, addressing it in a two hour interview with Variety last week in a bid to 'get ahead' of the story that has cast a shadow over his forthcoming movie's release and Oscar campaign.

But if he had hoped to simply put the matter to bed when he referred to it as 'his ordeal' one of 'the most painful moments' of his own life he has been disappointed.

On learning that his alleged victim had taken her own life some four years ago Parker issued a further statement expressing 'profound sorrow' but his words seem to have done little to assure her family of his sincerity.

His alleged victim's family told Daily Mail Online: 'We appreciate that after all this time, these men are being held accountable for their actions.

'However, we are dubious of the underlying motivations that bring this to present light after 17 years.'
Authorities lifted all evacuation orders on Sunday to allow thousands of wildfire evacuees to return to their homes in Southern California.

About 82,000 people had to leave their properties Tuesday when the fire broke out 60 miles east of Los Angeles.

Not all of them will find their homes intact upon their return. A preliminary damage assessment found 105 homes and 216 outbuildings destroyed.

Large swaths of open land have been turned black across the rural, mountainous terrain.

Authorities lifted all evacuation orders on Sunday to allow thousands of wildfire evacuees to return to their homes in Southern California. Pictured, a scorched street in Phelan on Friday

'This fire did not go through a dense community, like some fires do,' fire spokesman Costa Dillon said Sunday. 'Almost all of this area is sparsely populated.'

The once-fast moving and erratic blaze that burned nearly 58 square miles was 85 per cent contained. Firefighters were going property-to-property in the areas most heavily hit to put out any lingering flames and hot spots.

'You don't want somebody to come back to a neighborhood where a fire could suddenly flare up on the property next door from something still smoldering,' Dillon said.

Fire officials briefed residents at an evacuation center Sunday morning at the San Bernardino County Fairgrounds where about 15 residents remained.

About 82,000 people had to leave their properties Tuesday when the fire broke out 60 miles east of Los Angeles. Pictured, a scorched residential street in Phelan on Friday

A preliminary damage assessment found 105 homes and 216 outbuildings destroyed. Pictured, firetruck passes scorched cars and trailers in Phelan on Friday

Johanna Santore, 63, her husband and their 10-year-old granddaughter were among those who learned Sunday they are still not being permitted to return home.

The family's home and nearly all their belongings were destroyed in the blaze.

Santore said the family was 'holding up,' but that Saturday evening when everyone was asleep she'd gone outside and cried thinking of the family's lost pets and mementoes. The Santores were out running an errand when the fire broke out and were unable to return to save anything.

Four dogs, six cats and a hamster left behind are missing.

'I'm hoping someone is stuck around hiding someplace,' Santore said. 'And if I start calling, they might recognize our voices.'

In the meantime she has begun looking into how to replace birth certificates, their housing deed and other important documents they are unlikely to recover.

A prolonged drought has transformed swaths of California into tinderboxes, ready to ignite. Six other wildfires were burning in the state, including one in San Luis Obispo County that forced the closure of the historic Hearst Castle on Saturday. It remained closed Sunday.

A prolonged drought has transformed swaths of California into tinderboxes, ready to ignite. Pictured, firefighters water down scorched compost material near Phelan on Friday

The wildfire began on a semi-rural landscape dotted with small ranches and homes in Cajon Pass and on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Pictured, firefighters in Phelan Friday

After a wildfire, somebody has to figure out exactly what burned. Pictured, Fire Marshal Mike Horton manages the damage assessment operations in San Bernardino on Friday

Assessing the damage helps evacuated residents know if they lost everything or have something waiting for them when they return home. Horton is pictured on Friday

That fire has destroyed 34 homes and burned 43 square miles since it began August 13. It remained 35 per cent contained. Fire spokeswoman Jaime Garrett said the fire was growing in the opposite direction of the Hearst Castle. The castle is a popular tourist attraction and houses a large art collection that belonged to media magnate William Randolph Hearst.

In rural Santa Barbara County, a 33-square-mile wildfire that forced the evacuation of two campgrounds was 20 per cent contained.

In the southern Sierra Nevada, another blaze feeding on dense timber in Sequoia National Forest forced the evacuation of several tiny hamlets.

In Northern California, fire crews were gaining control Sunday on an arson fire that destroyed 189 homes. Officials said the 6-square-mile fire in Lower Lake was 95 per cent contained.

A nearly month-long blaze burning near California's scene Big Sur is not expected to be fully contained until the end of September. The fire has destroyed 57 homes and charred 133 square miles, Cal Fire said. It is 60 per cent contained.

Firefighters kept a blaze in Lebec to 10 acres. Pictured on Friday, an air tanker makes a fire retardant drop on the Lebec Fire off Interstate 5

Six other wildfires were burning in the state, including one in San Luis Obispo County. Pictured, smoke billowing from a wildfire near Lake Nacimiento in the county Saturday
Twenty-five years after race riots scarred a New York City neighborhood, residents of Crown Heights gathered on Sunday to mark the quarter-century anniversary.

While organizers said a memorial service, march and street festival showed how far the community had come, critics condemned the events as insensitive.

About three dozen people gathered for a series of commemorative events, held as part of 'One Crown Heights.'

Organizers said it was a way to bring children of different backgrounds together and acknowledge years of efforts to foster better communication and relations between ethnic groups in the Brooklyn neighborhood.

Members of the community attend a 'One Crown Heights' street fair in the Brooklyn borough on Sunday, 25 years after race riots scarred the New York City neighborhood

Crown Heights residents attend service memorial service on Eastern Parkway to mark the anniversary of the riots that linked the Brooklyn neighborhood with images of racial unrest

This August 1991 photo shows New York City Police Department officers, in riot gear, walking past a police car that was overturned by rioters in Crown Heights

In August 1991, a riot broke out in the Brooklyn area after seven-year-old Gavin Cato was struck and killed by a car in a rabbi's motorcade.

Hours later, a Jewish doctoral student, Yankel Rosenbaum, was stabbed to death.

Four days of violence followed.

Days of rioting by black Crown Heights residents followed in what a 1993 state report called 'the most extensive racial unrest in New York City in over 20 years.'

Nearly 200 people were injured.

'We will not allow ourselves to be defined by what happened 25 years ago,' Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said to the predominantly white crowd at a memorial service on Sunday morning to remember Cato and Rosenbaum.

Elected officials joined Cato's father and African-American and Jewish community leaders for the service.

As he held a candle lit in his son's memory, Cato's father, Carmel Cato, told reporters that the service 'showed the love and that the community is back together.'

Carmel Cato speaks to reporters after a memorial service. In August 1991, a riot broke out in the area after his seven-year-old Gavin was struck and killed by a car in a rabbi's motorcade

Rabbi Shea Hecht, left, and Norman Rosenbaum, center, hold a press conference after reciting memorial prayers on Friday at the site where Rosenbaum's brother Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed by a gang of black youth during the 1991 Crown Heights riots

An iron fence surrounds the front of an apartment building at 1681 President Street in Crown Heights on Thursday, marking the site where in 1991 a prominent rabbi's motorcade fatally Cato

'We cannot rewrite history,' Rabbi Joseph Potasnik said.

'A young man was killed for who he was  because he was a Jew.'

Rosenbaum's brother, Norman, did not attend the anniversary events on Sunday.

He has said a street fair is 'insensitive' and a 'trivialization of a very, very serious period of time, of a series of incidents culminating in my brother's murder.'

Devorah Halberstam, who helped coordinate the events, said she realized 'there are deep and painful memories and on this day they resurface.'

But, she said, it is important to commemorate how the community has come together in the past two decades.

'Twenty five years ago I watched as my community was attacked by a mob chanting 'Kill the Jews!'' said Halberstam, who identified herself as an Orthodox Jew.

The casket of Gavin Cato passes a crowd of mourners outside St. Anthony's Baptist Church in Brooklyn on August 27, 1991

The casket of Yankel Rosenbaum, a rabbinical student visiting from Australia, is carried through the streets of Crown Heights on August 21, 1991

New York City Police officers scuffle with a protester during a march through Crown Heights on August 21, 1991

In this August 1991 photo, an employee cleans up a sneaker store vandalized during the riots. Four days of violence followed Cato and Rosenbaum's deaths

After the memorial service, the group marched about four blocks to a local park, where the street festival was held.

About 50 people  mainly African-American families  had their faces painted, jumped in inflatable bounce houses and created unity quilts that will be displayed at a local museum.

Colin Karl Cohen, who owned a hardware store just feet from where Cato was fatally struck in 1991, recalled the 'chaos' in the days of rioting that followed Cato's and Rosenbaum's deaths.

Carmel Cato, center, reaches out to embrace Norman Rosenbaum, right, in a August 2002 photo, as they walk together in a show of unity into a New York restaurant on the 11th anniversary of the 1991 Crown Heights riots

In this January 1995 photo, Devorah Halberstam, left, gestures as she and her husband, David Halberstam, meet with reporters outside the State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Devorah Halberstam is among the organizers of 'One Crown Heights'

'We had young guys who wanted to take the laws in their own hands, and they did,' he said.

'It's been a rift between the community, mainly between blacks and Jews for years.

'But we know two wrongs don't make a right and we have to eliminate the hatred and the dissatisfaction that some might have on both sides.'

'Today you find a more peaceful, respectful and understanding community of Crown Heights,' he said.

'Anything that happens that brings Jews and blacks and the police together is for the betterment of the community.'

Riders board a bus next to vendors along Utica Avenue in Crown Heights on Thursday. Crown Heights is now a gentrifying area where rising housing costs and an influx of newcomers stir some gripes of their own
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the German government plans to tell citizens to stockpile food and water in case of an attack or catastrophe, it has been reported.

The new Civil Defence Plan comes as Germany is currently on high alert after two Islamist attacks and a shooting rampage by a mentally unstable teenager in Munich this year.

The plan, which makes civilian backing of troops a priority while boosting the resilience of buildings and increasing capacity in the healthcare system, is due to be adopted by the government on Wednesday.

Germans will be told to stockpile food and water in their homes in case of a catastrophe under a new civil defence strategy to be released this week

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been under pressure on national security issues after the series of terrorist attacks on her country this year

People would be required to stockpile enough drinking water to last for five days under the plan, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily newspaper.

'The population will be obliged to hold an individual supply of food for ten days,' the newspaper quoted the government's 'Concept for Civil Defence' as saying.

However, citizens would also require a sufficient supply of energy, money and medicine to wait out a period until the state would be able to initiate a response to a catastrophe or attack, according to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Berlin announced measures earlier this month to spend considerably more on its police and security forces and to create a special unit to counter cyber crime and terrorism.

The Frankfurter paper said a parliamentary committee had originally commissioned the civil defence strategy in 2012.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which is preparing the strategy, said the plan would be discussed by the cabinet on Wednesday and presented by the minister that afternoon.

He declined to give any details on the content.

The home stockpiling will also include ensuring money and medicine supplies were enough to last for several days in the event of an attack

The 69-page report does not see an attack on Germany's territory, which would require a conventional style of national defence, as likely.

However, the precautionary measures demand that people 'prepare appropriately for a development that could threaten our existence and cannot be categorically ruled out in the future,' the paper cited the report as saying.

It also mentions the necessity of a reliable alarm system, better structural protection of buildings and more capacity in the health system, the paper said.

A further priority should be more support of the armed forces by civilians, it added.

The plan is Germany's first civil defence strategy since the end of the Cold War when the country found itself at the centre of tensions between the superpowers of the US and the USSR following the end of World War II.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ended decades of tensions in Germany during the Cold War

The Berlin Wall divided the country into east and west before it eventually fell in 1989 during as several decades of communism in the USSR ended.

During the Cold War period, the country suffered food shortages while citizens were forced to live in harsh conditions.

Haunted by its Nazi past, Europe's most populous country has for decades been particularly cautious about defence issues.

This year Germany set out a new military road map outlining Germany's ambition to assume a bigger defence role abroad, within the frameworks of NATO and the European Union.

But a string of attacks at home in July - including two claimed by the Islamic State group - has also sparked a fierce debate about internal security.

In one attack in which ISIS claimed responsibility, Riaz Khan Ahmadzai, 17, attacked tourists from Hong Kong while traveling on a commuter train near the Bavarian town of Wuerzburg on July 18, wounding four on board and a local German dog walker outside as he fled.

Germany's Defence Minister said earlier this month the country lay in the 'crosshairs of terrorism' and pressed for plans for the military to train more closely with police in preparing for potential large-scale militant attacks.

Munich maniac Ali Sonboly, who killed nine people in Munich during a rampage in July

Sonboly killed himself after shooting nine people to death in the shopping centre precinct

On July 22, another attack occurred at a Munich shopping mall when teen Ali Sonboly shot nine people and then killed himself.

The defence ministry is looking at training the military to respond to major terror assaults.
The Zika virus could extend its reach across the US Gulf Coast after officials last week confirmed it as active in the popular tourist destination of Miami Beach.

The possibility of transmission in Gulf States such as Louisiana and Texas will likely fuel concerns that the virus, which has been shown to cause the severe birth defect known as microcephaly, could spread across the continental United States, even though officials have played down such an outcome.

Concern has mounted since confirmation that Zika has expanded into a second region of the tourist hub of Miami-Dade County in Florida.

A Miami-Dade County mosquito control worker sprays around a school in the Wynwood area of Miami - health officials now warn the virus could spread through the Gulf states

Miami's Wynwood arts neighborhood last month became the site of the first locally transmitted cases of Zika in the continental United States.

'It would not be surprising we would see additional cases perhaps in other Gulf Coast states,' Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the allergy and infectious diseases unit of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said in an interview on Sunday morning with ABC News.

A Miami-Dade mosquito control worker dumping a barrel of standing water that can incubate the Aedes aegypti mosquito larvae at a home in Miami - five new Zika cases were identified in Miami Beach this month

Municipal City of Miami workers clean the streets in Miami Beach in August as a method to control the spread of mosquitoes

Fauci noted that record flooding this month in Louisiana - which has killed at least 13 people and damaged some 60,000 homes damaged - has boosted the likelihood Zika will spread into that state.

'There's going to be a lot of problems getting rid of standing water' that could stymie the mosquito control efforts that are the best way to control Zika's spread, he said.

A City of Miami Beach Sanitation worker gets ready to clean the alleyways of South Beach, sucking up still waters and debris with a mobile vacuum

Five new cases of Zika were confirmed in the Miami Beach area this month, pregnant women are being warned if they wish to be super careful to avoid Miami-Dade county

US 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 1,835 cases of microcephaly that it considers to be related to Zika infections in the mothers.

On Friday, Florida Governor Rick Scott confirmed that state health officials had identified five new cases of Zika believed to be contracted in Miami Beach, bringing the total to 36 locally transmitted cases, excluding those brought in from other countries.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told pregnant women they should avoid the trendy area and suggested those especially worried about exposure might consider avoiding all of Miami-Dade County.

NIH's Fauci on Sunday said the conditions of most of the country make it unlikely there would be a 'diffuse, broad outbreak,' even though officials need to prepare for that possibility.

Adult female mosquitos are seen uder a microscope at the Sun Yat-Sen University-Michigan University Joint Center of Vector Control for Tropical Disease - the laboratory raises millions of male mosquitos for research that could prove key to the race to prevent the spread of Zika virus

The flooding in Louisiana may raise the possibility of the Zika virus being spread there as it is spread through mosquitoes which breed in still water

He compared it with diseases such as Dengue, which is endemic in certain tropical and subtropical regions of the world but rarely occurs in the continental United States.

In Miami's Wynwood area, experts have seen 'substantial' knockdowns of mosquito populations.

Still, its containment is more complicated because Zika can be sexually transmitted, Fauci said.

'This is something that could hang around for a year or two,' he said.
Academics at a prestigious university have been labelled 'biased' after comparing Australia's conservative politicians to Nazis.

A University of Sydney student said he was told the way gays were treated by Nazis was 'something out of [Liberal conservative Cory Bernardi's] handbook' in a lecture.

The 22-year-old student also told The Daily Telegraph lecturers equated Australia's offshore processing policy to the slaughter of people with a mental illness in Germany during the 1940s.

Scroll down for video

A University of Sydney student said he was told the way gays were treated by Nazis was 'something out of [Liberal conservative Cory Bernardi's] handbook' in a lecture

Eventually the unnamed student decided to ditch the unit called 'The Holocaust, History and Aftermath' after he was silenced during a presentation about anti-Semitism.

He said his lecturer had told him to avoid associating anti-Israel views with anti-Semitism and made it clear he was 'not allowed to discuss this'.

'I was halfway through my slides when the tutor told me to skip the rest of the presentation, saying, "We don't want people to get the wrong idea about you",' the student said.

But a University of Sydney spokesperson denied any academic bias.

'The University does not seek to avoid politics in lectures, but rather to engage students in constructive, informed debate that presents any issue, including political issues, from a variety of perspectives,' she said.

The spokeswoman added the university had not received a complaint about academic bias.

The 22-year-old student also said lecturers equated Australia's offshore processing policy to the slaughter of people with a mental illness in Nazi Germany (pictured is stock image)

The student, who is in his second year of study, also claims he was marked down after he left the subject.

In response to this allegation, the spokeswoman said students were permitted to appeal their grades.

'Any student with a complaint about a low mark has a variety of avenues for appeal including being entitled to contact the Student Affairs Unit to appeal a decision,' she said.

After taking power of Germany in 1933, Nazis sought to disband homosexual groups and imprisoned gays in concentration camps.

In their pursuit of an 'Aryan master race', the Nazis also forcibly sterilised people who had a mental illness and a physical disability.

They were also targeted by a 'euthanasia' program established by the Nazis during the Second World War.
A man will be extradited to the US after he allegedly asked his online girlfriend to take lewd images of her daughters.

The Perth man allegedly encouraged his American online girlfriend to post images on the internet of her teen daughters being whipped and spanked.

Christopher Lobban was arrested and detained in Perth in July 2011 on child abuse charges.

Perth man Christopher Lobban (pictured) will be extradited to the US after he allegedly asked his online American girlfriend to take lewd images of her daughters being spanked and whipped, and upload them online

His arrest came after Robin Pagoria, who he met on the website www.spankfinders.com, was sentenced for aggravated child abuse, lewd or lascivious battery and using a child in a sexual performance.

Pagoria, who had worked as a detention deputy within the prison system in Polk County, Florida, was handed 20 years behind bars after a plea bargain.

Authorities allege Lobban gave detailed instructions to Pagoria on how to build a 'spanking bench' and use a leather paddle to beat the girls, aged 14 and 15, to fulfil his and Pagoria's sexual desires, reported the Sydney Morning Herald.

Pagoria allegedly videotaped the abuse and uploaded the videos to a website.

Lobban lost his bid to have his extradition overturned in a judgement in the Federal Court in Perth on Monday (pictured)

Lobban could receive a life sentence with no possibility of parole as it was abolished in Florida in 1983.

He is accused of advising her how to 'discipline' her 14 and 15-year-old daughters in 2008.
A 16-year-old boy is being held in custody over the death of an 18-year-old high school graduate whose body was found in the Michigan woods.

A man walking his dog uncovered the body McKenna Elizabeth Hilton, 18, of Grand Rapids, in the brush on Thursday, WOOD TV reported.

Her body, which was fully clothed, had injuries near the neck suggesting strangulation, investigators said.

The teenager's loved-ones gathered for a candlelit vigil Sunday night to 'celebrate the life of a beautiful, intelligent girl'.

Scroll down for video

McKenna Elizabeth Hilton (pictured), 18, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, was found dead on Thursday in a wooded area by a man walking his dog

Loved ones attended a vigil to remember McKenna Elizabeth Hilton, 18, Sunday

McKenna Elizabeth Hilton's loved ones gathered to remember a 'beautiful, intelligent girl'

Authorities have taken an unnamed 16-year-old boy in custody in connection to the case and have yet to charge him - but could settle for an open murder charge.

Hilton, a recent graduate of East Kentwood High School, and the 16-year-old boy knew each other, investigators told Fox 17.

Authorities were awaiting autopsy results to determine the exact cause of death.

They believe Hilton was killed elsewhere before her body was brought into the wooded area, near a trail, WOOD TV wrote.

The 16-year-old boy appeared in court Friday in connection to her death. Prosecutors have five more days to charge him.

The assistant prosecutor said she was considering an open murder charge. In Michigan, an open murder charge enables a prosecutor to charge a suspect without deciding between first or second-degree murder - and leaving the call up to a jury.

A court referee ordered the 16-year-old remain in custody during the five days.

He appeared in court Friday in handcuffs and sat next to his mother.

Hilton had graduated high school during the spring. She was wearing a bracelet with a charm referencing her graduation at the time of her death.

An unidentified 16-year-old boy has been taken into custody in connection to the death of Hilton (pictured). Investigators said they knew each other

Hilton was fully clothed when her body was found in the woods (pictured) and had injuries near her neck suggesting strangulation, authorities said

She also had on black running pants and a white tank top with stripes, the Grand Rapids Press reported.

'I can't believe this just happened because three months ago I was just in a class with her,' her former classmate Cam Spicer told Fox 17.
Married couples who watch pornography almost double their risk of divorce, researchers said yesterday.

While it was once seen as the preserve of husbands, it now seems that wives are almost as keen on watching it as men.

But viewing adult films or images comes at a price, with the researchers saying that women who start looking at porn while married are almost three times more likely to want a divorce.

Scroll down for video

Married couples who watch pornography almost double their risk of divorce, researchers said yesterday

Their report comes after statistics last year showed that as many as one in three women watches adult content at least once a week, with the majority viewing it on their mobile phones.

In the latest research, sociologists from the University of Oklahoma interviewed thousands of married adults regularly over several years.

They found that porn negatively affects those in a happy marriage, the newly married or those from a non-religious home.

But there was no increase in the probability of divorce among weekly church-goers because the social stigma of divorce was greater, showing religion has a protective effect on marriage, even in the face of pornography use.

Assistant professor Dr Samuel Perry, who collected the data as part of the General Social Survey, said: Beginning pornography use between survey waves nearly doubled ones likelihood of being divorced by the next survey period, from 6 per cent to 11 per cent, and nearly tripled it for women, from 6 per cent to 16 per cent.

Our results suggest that viewing pornography, under certain social conditions, may have negative effects on marital stability.

Those who were very happy in their marriage were associated with a noteworthy increase  from 3 per cent to 12 per cent  in the likelihood of getting divorced by the time of the next survey.

But viewing pornography had no effect on unhappier marriages, according to the study.

While it was once seen as the preserve of husbands, it now seems that wives are almost as keen on watching it as men. File photo

Dr Perry added: We took this to mean that pornography use  perhaps if its discovered by ones spouse unexpectedly  could rock an otherwise happy marriage to the point of divorce, but it doesnt seem to make an unhappy marriage any worse than it already is.

Men whose wives watch porn may be encouraged by the news that if she stops watching it, the probability of getting divorced dropped to 6 per cent among the couples interviewed. But if she decides to continue, the risk of divorce remains at 18 per cent.

And there was no effect on divorce rates among men who stopped watching porn. Dr Perry said that despite the findings, presented at the American Sociological Association, he was not trying to make people stop watching adult material.

We have no desire to push a ban pornography agenda on the grounds that it can be harmful to marriages, he said.

We think information is helpful, and [people] should be aware of the potential consequences of pornography under certain circumstances.

Last week, a psychosexual therapist at Nottingham University Hospital said that online pornography is damaging the sexual health of young men.
This weekend has turned out to be a forgettable one for the city of Chicago.

Four people have died and at least 35 more were wounded in shootings throughout the city since Friday evening, the Chicago Police Department said.

In one 14-hour span beginning Saturday afternoon, 25 people were shot  which police said is the equivalent of one person being shot every 33 minutes, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The Sun-Times and ABC7 reported that a 25-year-old man was fatally shot early Sunday in Marquette Park in the Southwest Side section of the city.

The victim was identified as Darius Brownlee. Authorities said that Brownlee was involved in an argument with another male at a party late Saturday night.

Fire Department personnel wash down the scene after a fatal shooting in the 7000 block of South Artesian Avenue on Aug. 21, 2016

Gunshots ensued and Brownlee was found with a wound to his head in front of the house where the party took place.

"He had a heart, his sister, Iesha Brownlee, told the Chicago Tribune. He was respectful. A very respectful young man. He would help anybody."

Just after midnight on Friday, a 24-year-old man was found on the porch of a home in the Homan Square section of the city with a gunshot wound to his chest.

The man was shot in another location, walked home nursing the wound, and told his family of what happened. Soon afterward, he was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital and pronounced dead.

A few hours before that shooting, a 25-year-old man, Christopher Kent, was shot multiple times as he was walking near his home on South Lafayette Avenue. The medical examiners office pronounced him dead at 6:33 p.m.

At 8:12 p.m. on Saturday, a 20-year-old man was shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in Logan Square.

A 16-year-old boy was listed in critical condition on Saturday after he was shot by two men as he was walking along North Hermitage Avenue in Edgewater

Chicago police told the DNAinfo.com website that the victim was standing on the sidewalk along North Harding Avenue when someone shot him from a passing car.

The victim, who law enforcement says was involved in gang-related activity, suffered a gunshot wound to the head and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Many of the gunshot victims from this weekend are young.

A 16-year-old boy was listed in critical condition on Saturday after he was shot by two men as he was walking along North Hermitage Avenue in Edgewater, according to DNAinfo.com.

The boy was rushed to St. Francis Hospital. No arrests were made.

Another man, 19, was in critical condition after he and another man were shot on South Bishop Street in Englewood.

The 19-year-old suffered multiple gunshot wounds. The other suffered a gunshot wound to his leg and was listed in stable condition at Holy Cross Hospital.

Police believe the shooting to be gang-related.

Around the same time on Saturday evening, an 18-year-old man was shot in the back after exchanging gunfire with another man in the North Lawndale section of the city.

The man suffered gunshot wounds to his back. He is listed in serious condition at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Police believe the shooting is also gang-related.

Just a few hours earlier, a 17-year-old man was shot by gunmen traveling in two cars as they pulled up to the corner of 70th Street and Morgan Street in Englewood.

Police say the victim is in stable condition at Stroger Hospital.

Of all major US cities, Chicago has seen the largest increase in homicides this year. The city is on pace to surpass its 2015 total of homicides by the end of this year
UK shares are set to outstrip the performance of those in Europe in the wake of the Brexit vote, a leading proponent of Project Fear has admitted.

US investment bank JP Morgan, a major donor to the Remain campaign, had warned before the referendum that British share prices would fall in the event of Brexit.

Chief executive Jamie Dimon claimed leaving the EU could cost 4,000 jobs at the bank.

Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JP Morgan Chase and Co, had claimed Brexit would have dire economic consequences. But the firm now tells investors British shares are a good investment compared to those on the continent

But in a remarkable U-turn, the firm has told investors that British shares look a good bet.

In a research note, JP Morgan equity strategist Mislav Matejka said rising commodity prices, falling bond yields and an export boom fuelled by the fall in the pound had made the UK attractive to international investors.

He said UK shares were bullish and set to outperform those of other EU countries.

We are not suggesting Brexit negotiations will be all smooth sailing, he added.

Still, if political uncertainty spikes again, our view remains that continental equities stand to lose more than UK ones.

He said the fall in the pound was a big positive for UK equities, as they derive most of their profits from abroad.

The FTSE 100 index plummeted in the days after the Leave vote but recovered  and is approaching record levels.

The change of heart by the prominent Remain supporter is the latest in a series of developments to defy the doom-laden predictions about the fallout from leaving the EU.

Economists have been cheered by unexpectedly positive performance figures since the referendum  helping to lift a cloud of gloom which settled soon after the vote.

Before the poll, then Chancellor George Osborne claimed Brexit would plunge Britain into a DIY recession, which would require an emergency budget of tax rises and spending cuts.

He published Treasury analysis which claimed leaving the EU would spark a recession lasting at least a year and cost every family 4,300 each in the longer term.

Former chancellor George Osborne's predictions have also been questioned by Treasury

But the latest Treasury analysis of forecasts by City economists suggests they expect the economy to grow by 1.6 per cent this year and 0.7 per cent in 2017  up from 1.5 per cent and 0.5 per cent predicted last month.

Barclays increased its 2016 forecast from 1.1 per cent, while Citigroup raised its prediction from 1.3 per cent to 1.7. Commerzbank hiked its estimate from 1.2 per cent to 1.6.

Official figures last week showed unemployment remained at just 4.9 per cent in July, while the Government managed to generate a 1billion surplus after a strong month for tax receipts. Retail sales jumped 1.4 per cent, smashing expectations.

A study by top accountancy firm EY suggested City businesses were also more positive about their prospects.

It analysed what bosses had said in public about the effects of Brexit, finding only 16 per cent of insurance firms expect a negative effect on their business, compared with 40 per cent that think it will make no difference and 10 per cent that believe it could be positive.

Even investment banks  which protested loudly about the risks before the vote  have changed their tune.

Only 21 per cent have voiced concerns since the result, and 15 per cent are expecting business as usual. EYs Omar Ali said: Companies across the sector seem broadly confident in the ability of their business to weather the initial storm.

The industry has responded with the pragmatism, ingenuity and day-to-day focus on serving its customers that has underpinned the UKs long-standing success in financial services  some are beginning to highlight areas of opportunity.

Mandelson firm advising on Brexit

Peter Mandelsons secretive firm is advising the City on Brexit, it emerged yesterday.

Lord Mandelson, an outspoken Remain supporter, had warned that leaving the EU would torpedo the economy.

But the ex-business secretarys consultancy Global Counsel is reported to be drawing up a Brexit blueprint for the British Bankers Association, to be submitted to ministers.
As a result radicalisation in British jails is not being dealt with correctly

Staff too scared of breaching human rights or looking racist to intervene

Political correctness in Britains jails has allowed Islamic extremism to flourish behind bars, a report warns today.

Terrorists and extremists have been able to spread their poison in prison because staff are too frightened of breaching human rights or being branded racists to intervene, the study for the Ministry of Justice reveals.

Author Ian Acheson, a former prison governor, says Britain has fallen behind countries such as the Netherlands, Spain and France in dealing with radicalisation in jail  with ordinary Muslims facing aggressive encouragement to become jihadis.

Terrorists and extremists have been able to spread their poison in prison because staff are too frightened of breaching human rights to intervene, the study found (file image)

In a withering verdict, he says: The review recorded a lack of confidence and consistency in challenging unacceptable extremist behaviour and views.

It concluded that cultural sensitivity among staff towards Muslim prisoners has extended beyond the basic requirements of faith observance and could inhibit the effective confrontation of extremist views.

The six-month study found:

Muslim inmates can be left unsupervised at Friday prayers amid pressure on supervising staff to leave the prayer room;

Extremists sometimes avoid body searches by claiming they are wearing religious dress;

Books promoting extremism were made available in prison libraries and allowed in cells;

Some inmates exploit staff fear of being labelled racist;

Charismatic Islamist extremists act as self-styled emirs  a controlling and radicalising influence on the wider Muslim prison population  and fanatics have tried to engineer segregation in prisons so they can radicalise fellow inmates.

Tory MP Philip Hollobone said: This timely report has hit the nail on the head. It is imperative prisons do not serve as a breeding ground for more Islamic extremism. Too many of our public institutions have fallen under the spell of political correctness  the public will be shocked that extremist elements are able to exploit traditional British tolerance  to promote violent extremism. Justice Secretary Elizabeth Truss will today announce measures designed to toughen the approach to extremism in jail.

Islamist fanatics will be given their own security category, with the worst offenders locked up in so-called jihadi wings.

The Ministry of Justice said a crackdown on extremist literature had begun, with five titles removed from prison libraries and more likely to follow.

Warders and governors will be given training, skills and authority to tackle the lack of confidence identified in the report.

Prison imams will face new vetting procedures and governors will be given powers to remove extremists from Friday prayers if they are promoting anti-British beliefs or other dangerous views.

But ministers stopped short of forcing Muslim prisoners to take Friday prayers by video-link from their cells, as some European countries do.

CRACKDOWN ON ANJEM CHOUDARY'S TERROR CIRCLE Up to five associates of hate preacher Anjem Choudary have been placed under anti-terror orders in a crackdown on his extremist network. The Islamist fanatics have been hit with Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPims)  the toughest tool security services have to restrict activities of terror plotters and sympathisers. At least four orders have been imposed since June 1  around the time Choudary was being tried for terror offences. The 49-year-old was convicted last week of drumming up support for Islamic State and faces ten years in jail. Up to five associates of hate preacher Anjem Choudary have been placed under anti-terror orders in a crackdown on his extremist network Last month, the Government revealed only one extremist in Britain was subject to a TPim despite there being at least 2,000 fanatics at large in the UK. But the number of orders has increased to at least six, the Mail understands. TPims are supposed to ensure the security services can protect the public from British-based extremists who cannot yet be prosecuted or deported, by placing curbs on movements and activities. The crackdown is aimed at watering down Choudarys network. One convicted terrorist, a father of two, has been moved from London to the north of England and is banned from Twitter and Facebook to stop him radicalising other people. A second acolyte, who once worked on Londons transport network, is barred from using social media. A third man, who lives on benefits and has called for sharia law in the UK, has been moved outside the capital. None of the men can be named for legal reasons. TPims replaced Control Orders, which were axed in 2011 at the behest of then Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg. Advertisement

Miss Truss said: Islamist extremism is a danger to society and a threat to public safety  I am committed to confronting and countering the spread of this poisonous ideology behind bars.

Bob Neill, chairman of the justice select committee, welcomed the crackdown, adding: It is very clear we should not allow any question of political correctness  to get in the way of the fact these people are deliberately targeting vulnerable individuals with their extremism.

Figures show there are 12,633 Muslims in English and Welsh jails. There are 147 terrorist inmates  of whom 137 identify as Muslim.

Fanatics to be kept in own prison wing

Hate preachers and Islamic terrorists are to be locked up in dedicated jihadi wings in British jails to prevent them radicalising moderate Muslim prisoners.

Justice Secretary Elizabeth Truss will today announce plans for specialist units in some maximum security prisons for extremists who try to convert other inmates to their views.

Until now Islamist terrorists have been dispersed around the prison system in the same way as IRA terrorists convicted on the mainland were in the past.

Choudary, who faces up to ten years in jail, is thought to have inspired more than 100 British Muslims to join the terror group

But a review by former prison governor Ian Acheson has called for the most dangerous and charismatic offenders to be isolated from the general prison population to prevent them spreading their poison.

Government sources were tight-lipped about how many extremists could be segregated in this way, but it is thought the regime will initially apply to a modest number.

Sources suggested the units would each house only a small number of prisoners, making it easier to monitor the inmates and reduce the risk of them plotting atrocities from behind bars.

The move follows the conviction of hate preacher Anjem Choudary for inciting support for Islamic State.

Choudary, who faces up to ten years in jail, is thought to have inspired more than 100 British Muslims to join the terror group.

Bob Neill, chairman of the Commons justice committee, backed the measure, adding: It is important that we keep these evil people out of circulation so they cannot influence or radicalise others who we are trying to rehabilitate. It is good the Government is moving swiftly on this because it was the most important of Ian Achesons recommendations.

A review by Mr Acheson found that Spain, the Netherlands and France had all introduced isolation units for Islamic extremists in recent years to try to counter the problem of radicalisation behind bars.

The report concluded: In all three countries the review noted that separation of terrorist and Islamic extremist prisoners had organisational and public support, despite opposition from some pressure groups, and was delivering benefits in terms of prison safety and order.
Advertisement

President Barack Obama's love for his oldest daughter Malia has always been apparent - whether it was serenading her on her 18th birthday, or choking up during her high school graduation.

But as the first family left Martha's Vineyard on Sunday, the president kept his distance from the 18-year-old, who appears to be enjoying her gap year before she heads to Harvard in 2017.

At one point Obama turned to address Malia, who responded with a smirk, before he tended to 15-year-old Sasha instead.

Malia seemed to steer clear of her father and walked along with Michelle, exchanging smiles with her mom while the two sported matching shirt dresses and similar sneakers.

Scroll down for video

President Barack Obama's love for his oldest daughter Malia has always been apparent - but he appeared to be giving her the cold shoulder when they departed Martha's Vineyard

As the first family boarded Air Force One at Cape Cod Air Force Station on Sunday, Obama turned and addressed Malia, who appeared to give her father a smirk

Despite the 16 days of rest and relaxation, the president may have a lot on his mind in between the catastrophic floods in Louisiana and 18-year-old Malia, who appears to be taking advantage of her gap year

The president then turned and put his arm around younger daughter Sasha instead, who lived up to her style icon status in platform sandals and a boho-chic dress

The first family returned to Washington DC, concluding their last jaunt to Martha's Vineyard before the end of Barack Obama's presidency.

Despite the 16 days of rest and relaxation, the president may have a lot on his mind in between Malia's gap-year shenanigans and the catastrophic floods in Louisiana.

Obama is readying himself to visit Louisiana, where 13 people have already died in the catastrophic floods that damaged about 40,000 homes and displaced 4,000 people.

Despite the devastation, Obama refused to cut his vacation short as political opponents and the Louisiana press pressured him to acknowledge and confront the disaster.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump filled the void, touring the ravaged area of Baton Rouge on Friday with running mate Mike Pence to help unload a supply truck.

Obama refused to cut his vacation short despite pressure to visit Louisiana, where 13 people have already died in the deadly floods that have damaged about 40,000 homes across the state

Malia seemed to steer clear of her father and walked along with Michelle, exchanging smiles while sporting matching shirt dresses and similar sneakers with her mom

Their 16-day vacation to Martha's Vineyard is their last before Obama leaves the White House

Obama indulged in several rounds of golf during his vacation, before he gears up for a packed schedule in the fall, which will include numerous appearances gunning for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton

Other than 2012, when Obama was in the middle of his re-election campaign, the first family vacationed at Martha's Vineyard every year of his presidency

Michelle has spoken about her eagerness to return to 'normalcy', sharing with Oprah that she wants to shop at Target and 'sit in a yard that is not a national park'

Unlike most presidents, Obama will stay in Washington DC after the end of his term so Sasha can finish high school

The Obamas will lease an incredible nine-bedroom house two miles away from the White House after he leaves office in January. In the meantime, he is preparing for a week-long trip to Asia, his 11th and likely final visit to the region as president (pictured, the first family arriving back on the South Lawn)

Malia, who was wearing a white shirt dress from Everlane, continued to stick by her mother even after they arrived back at the White House, with Sasha and Barack trailing behind

Obama's eldest daughter, who is taking time off before she attends Harvard University in 2017, was reportedly caught at a raucous party on the island just one week after a video appeared to show her smoking marijuana at Lollapalooza earlier this summer.

The Secret Service reportedly escorted Malia from a party on Martha's Vineyard last week that was broken up by police over a noise complaint, the Boston Herald reported.

She was later seen taking a stroll with her dad near their luxurious vacation home.

With just five months left before Obama leaves the White House, the president may have given Malia some harsh words on keeping her partying in check.

Malia has faced a string of scandals after she let loose and playfully lifted up her skirt while dancing to rapper Mac Miller's set at Lollapolooza at the end of July.

In one video, Malia appeared to smoke from a suspicious looking cigarette - just days after her mother stood in front of the Democratic National Convention and recounted how her daughter entered the White House as an innocent little girl.

In one video, Malia appeared to smoke from a suspicious looking cigarette - just days after her mother stood in front of the Democratic National Convention and recounted how her daughter entered the White House as an innocent little girl

Malia was also pictured playfully lifted up her skirt while dancing to rapper Mac Miller's set at Lollapolooza

The president may have given Malia some harsh words on keeping her gap-year shenanigans in check after she was reportedly escorted from a party on Martha's Vineyard that was broken up by the police

Barack shared how emotional it was to watch Malia graduate from high school, and famously serenaded her on her 18th birthday, saying it was the job of all fathers to embarrass their daughters

At the United States of Women Summit in June, Obama also shared how difficult it was to watch his beloved daughter graduate from high school.

'I sat in the back and wore dark glasses,' said Obama. 'And I only cried once, but it was, I made this weird sound because I was choking back, and people looked at me.

'People sitting in front of us turned back, and then I suppressed it.'

The president also famously serenaded Malia on her 18th birthday - taking the stage with Kendrick Lamar, who was invited to the White House on July 4.
If you want to live for a long time, it might be wise to end any family feuds now.

Perhaps proving, blood is thicker than water, people with close family ties live longer than people with a network of close friends.

It seems for older adults, having more or closer family members in ones social network - particularly a husband or wife - decreases their likelihood of death.

Perhaps proving, blood is thicker than water, people with close family ties live longer than people with a network of close friends

Having a larger or closer group of friends did not have that effect.

The findings surprised researchers, who thought that as we choose our friends, we might think our friendships would cater to our individual needs better than our kin, who we do not choose.

Study lead author Doctor James Iveniuk, of the University of Toronto in Canada, said: We found that older individuals who had more family in their network, as well as older people who were closer with their family were less likely to die.

No such associations were observed for number of or closeness to friends.

The study used nationally representative figures to investigate which aspects of social networks are most important for postponing mortality for people aged 57 up to 85.

The participants were asked to list up to five of their closest confidants, describe in detail the nature of each relationship, and indicate how close they felt to each person.

Excluding partners, the average number of close confidants named was 2.91, and most older adults perceived high levels of support from their social contacts.

Most of the people taking part were married, in good physical health, and reported not being very lonely.

The researchers found that older adults who said they felt extremely close on average to family members they listed as among their closest confidants had about a six percent risk of mortality within the next five years, compared to a 14 per cent risk among those who said they were not very close to the family members they listed.

The study also found that those who listed more family members in their network - irrespective of closeness - had lower odds of dying, compared to those who listed fewer family members.

It seems for older adults, having more or closer family members in ones social network decreases their likelihood of death. Having a larger or closer group of friends did not have that effect

Dr Iveniuk said: Regardless of the emotional content of a connection, simply having a social relationship with another person may have benefits for longevity.

He said he was surprised that feeling closer to family members and having more relatives as confidants decreased the risk of death for older adults, but that the same was not true of relationships with friends.

Dr Iveniuk added: Because you can choose your friends, you might, therefore, expect that relationships with friends would be more important for mortality, since you might be better able to customise your friend network to meet your specific needs.

But that account isnt supported by the data - it is the people who in some sense you cannot choose, and who also have little choice about choosing you, who seem to provide the greatest benefit to longevity.

The four factors most consistently associated with reduced mortality risk were being married, larger network size, greater participation in social organisations, and feeling closer to confidants, which all mattered to about the same degree.

Factors found to be less important included time with confidants, access to social support, and feelings of loneliness.

Marriage was found to have positive effects on longevity, regardless of marital quality.

Dr Iveniuk said that the findings back up the substantial importance of family relationships for longevity.

He added: Going back to the very first sociological theorists, many different thinkers have noted that there is some kind of special significance that people attribute to family ties, leading people to stay close to and support people who wouldnt necessarily be individuals that they would associate with if they had the choice.
A British DJ accused of murdering a policeman on Indonesia's Bali island hit the victim in the head with binoculars during a struggle on a beach, his lawyer said Monday.

David Taylor claims he was pushed by the Balinese traffic policeman, Wayan Sudarsa, which led to the struggle, and he hit him after his Australian girlfriend pulled at the officer in a bid to break up the fight, the lawyer said.

Sudarsa's battered body was found in the early hours last Wednesday on Kuta beach, a popular tourist spot in southern Bali.

Scroll down for video

Australian woman Sara Connor, 45, who is suspected of murdering a Bali policeman looks tired and dishevelled as she's interrogated by police over the incident

The head of Denpasar police Hadi Purnomo has said that Ms Connor told them she will 'admit to everything' after reportedly initially making 'false statements' about the incident. However, Ms Conor's lawyer has continued to maintain that she is 'innocent'

Briton David Taylor (pictured), the boyfriend of Ms Connor, is detained by Bali police over the bashing death of an officer on Kuta Beach last Wednesday. His lawyer has reportedly claimed that 'I saw something he was hiding' in his statements

Mr Taylor - who like Australian girlfriend Sara Connor is facing 15 years in jail if convicted - is escorted by Denpasar police out of his holding cell

Taylor and the Australian woman Sara Connor were arrested two days later.

An Australian woman suspected of murdering a Bali police officer has promised to 'admit everything' after making 'false statements' about the incident.

Mother-of-two Sara Connor, 45, and her British boyfriend David Taylor were arrested on Friday over the death of Inspector Wayan Sudarsa, believed to have been hit with a beer bottle.

However the head of Denpasar police has refuted Ms Connor's claims the the deceased officer was a 'bad cop', saying she fabricated the idea of him committing an indecent act against her in an attempt to appear innocent.

The pair could face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty of murder.

The couple have so far given often contradictory and confusing accounts about last week's events, but before police questioning Monday Taylor's legal team promised he would tell 'the honest story'.

After the interrogation in the Balinese capital Denpasar, Taylor's lawyer Haposan Sihombing said his client had become involved in a late-night confrontation with Sudarsa.

He and Connor had headed to the beach late Tuesday. But Sihombing said Connor lost her bag, and Taylor approached Sudarsa on the beach to ask if he had seen it.

The lawyer said: 'After that, the police officer pushed him, kept pushing him.'

As the fight played out, Connor pulled at the policeman from behind in an attempt to separate them and Taylor spotted binoculars around Sudarsa's neck, said Sihombing.

'He saw a pair of binoculars on the victim's neck -- those were the binoculars that David used to hit the head of the victim twice,' the lawyer said.

During separate questioning earlier Monday, Connor claimed she saw Sudarsa lying face-down on the beach and when she approached to ask whether he had seen her bag, the victim bit her on the leg, according to lawyer Erwin Siregar.

He said that she maintained her innocence.

Bali, a pocket of Hinduism in Muslim-majority Indonesia, is a popular tourist destination known for its tropical climate and palm-fringed beaches.

Petty crime is common but murders are rare.

Denpasar District Police Chief Hadi Purnomo confirmed that blood samples had been analysed and there was a match with a suspect - but wouldn't say whether it was Ms Connor or Mr Taylor's blood.

Ms Connor claims a 'bad cop' tried to sexually assault her on the same beach where the body of a Bali cop she allegedly murdered was found

Ms Connor is escorted by police officers as she was arrested over the alleged murder of a police officer in Bali. The Australian woman and her British boyfriend David Taylor have been charged

The funeral for murdered Bali policeman Wayan Sudarsa was held on Sunday - Indonesian policemen (pictured) prepare to fire their guns during the cremation ceremony

Indonesia policemen carry the coffin containing the body of police officer Wayan Sudarsa after his death on Kura Beach last Wednesday - Australian mother of two Sara Connor and British man David Taylor were arrested over the murder

Security guards discovered the body of Insp Sudarsa (pictured), 53, who it's believed was hit in the head with a pair of binoculars

'From the forensic lab result we found two types of blood on the crime scene: the suspect's and the victim's,' he told the ABC.

Police are expected to question the couple again today.

They allege that blood found at the crime scene is 'identical' to that discovered at the Kubu Kauh Beach Inn in Kuta where the pair were staying.

The night the officer was killed the couple had gone to a restaurant and had been drinking beer before going to the beach where they began 'kissing'.

During that time, Ms Connor said she lost her purse and wounded her arm and leg, but it remains unclear how those injuries occurred.

Hours later, Mr Sudarsa's sand-covered body was found. He had significant wounds to his head and leg, and his shirt was unbuttoned and bloodied with smashed Bintang beer bottle was found nearby.

The victim's bloodied body was found on the sand with 17 head wounds, it was reported.

Mr Taylor's (pictured) lawyer has reportedly claimed that 'I saw something he was hiding' in his statements

British national David Taylor is escorted by police after his arrest in Bali

Ms Connor's lawyer Erwin Siregar claimed her client has a bite mark on her inner thigh

Tourists walk past the site where an officer was murdered last Wednesday. Bali Police have confirmed that blood samples found at the crime scene on Kuta Beach match one of the suspects in their investigation

Ms Connor, pictured, and her British boyfriend David Taylor were arrested over the death of police officer Wayan Sudarsa on 17 August

Police said a 'struggle' seems to have occurred between the victim and Ms Connor, who appeared to have substantial bite marks around her finger.

Ms Connor's lawyer Erwin Siregar revealed her client also has a bite mark on her inner thigh.

The Australian woman's boyfriend is set to reveal the 'complete story' about what happened on the night, according to his lawyer.

David Taylor is also a suspect over the death of the Bali officer in the early hours of Wednesday.

Mr Taylor's lawyer Haposan Sihombing said he met with his client on Sunday afternoon and explained to him 'Indonesian laws'.

On Friday, Mr Taylor was hauled away in Bali by police investigating the murder

Indonesian police detained David Taylor, pictured, over the brutal murder of a policeman on a popular Bali beach. His lawyer claims the British national will 'reveal the complete story' on Monday

David Taylor, the British suspect in the murder of a Bali police officer on Kuta Beach last Wednesday, is 'hiding something' according to his lawyer

Sara Connor (pictured), from Byron Bay on the NSW north coast, and British man David Taylor were taken into custody in Denpasar on Friday

'Incriminating factor is when the suspect not co-operative, beating around the bush, not admitting his mistake and it will cause harsher punishment. I told him so that he could think about it tonight because tomorrow, you will be examined again,' Mr Sihombing told reporters.

According to Mr Sihombing, Mr Taylor has previously said that Ms Connor had complained to him that she had been attacked by a 'bad cop' at Kuta Beach on the night Mr Sudarsa was found dead.

'She told him that she was pushed and he lay on top of her on the sand,' Mr Sihombing said.

'She screamed and there were some people helping her. And then the police officer left.'

Ms Connor and British man David Taylor (pictured) were taken back to the beach where a police officer was murdered in Bali during the early investigations

Mr Taylor's lawyer said the couple had separated to look for Ms Connor's lost bag on the beach when she was allegedly attacked.

It is not clear as yet who the 'bad cop' allegedly was.

Mr Sihombing said his client Mr Taylor would 'tell the whole truth tomorrow'.

'What will he say? Let's wait.'

Mr Sihombing said he told Mr Taylor that he had defended Bali Nine member Renae Lawrence, adding 'she got 20 years while others got death and life in jail. He knows that'.

It is understood Mr Taylor left Britain a few years ago before moving to New Zealand and then Australia.

Ms Connor's lawyer Erwin Siregar said his client has yet to fully explain to police what happened that night as she had been too tired after her arrest on Friday.

It is not clear where Mr Taylor was during the alleged struggle.

According to Mr Siregar, Ms Connor and Mr Taylor had known each other for a few years but had only begun dating three months ago.

That night Mr Taylor had picked her up from the airport and they had gone to a restaurant before heading to the beach.

She had been drinking, he added, but was not drunk.

Briton David Taylor is escorted by Indonesian police officers in Denpasar with a black mask covering his face

Mr Taylor and Ms Connor, who are being detained separately, are expected to face further interrogations on Monday.

According to the lawyer, the couple moved to another hotel after the alleged incident, where a friend called from Australia and told them according to news reports they were wanted by police.

She advised they go to the Australian Consulate-General in Denpasar, where they were arrested on Friday afternoon after police put out an immigration alert to stop them leaving the island.

Mr Sihombing said his client had been interrogated by police from 2pm to 7pm on Saturday, during which he was asked 35 questions, but had not confessed to the murder.

Sara Connor is pictured being taken to a police station in Denpasar on Indonesia's resort island of Bali after her arrest on Friday

On Sunday Mr Sudarsa's body was carried through the streets from his family home in Kelan, south of Kuta, to a nearby cemetery where he had a military ceremony.

Denpasar Police chief Hadi Purnomo said the couple admitted they had clashed with Mr Wayan shortly before he was found dead.

The altercation reportedly began when Ms Connor asked for help over her missing handbag.

'Sara (Connor) said that she clashed with the victim at the beach gate. They had pulled each other,' Mr Purnomo told The Daily Telegraph.

'Sara said because her bag was gone she asked for help from the victim but then they pulled each other.'

The hotel room Ms Connor (pictured) was staying in allegedly had bloodstained walls and floors

It is believed Mr Taylor, pictured, had been living with Ms Connor in Byron Bay

Mr Taylor told police the victim had bitten him on his finger during an altercation, and that he had later tried to help the dying man.

Mr Siregar, who also represented convicted drug trafficker Schapelle Corby, said Ms Conner will face three alternate charges of murder, manslaughter and assault causing death.

Mr Taylor is understood to be facing the same charges. If convicted of murder the pair could face a maximum sentence of 15 years.

Mr Siregar said Ms Connor was exhausted and missed her two children, aged 9 and 11.

'She's sad, of course, that's normal. She's tired,' he said.

Despite reports Ms Connor said she was too drunk to remember the incident, her lawyer insisted she was not intoxicated.

Insp Sudarsa had wounds to his forehead and leg, while his shirt was unbuttoned and bloodied (pictured)

David Taylor, pictured, was taken into custody on Friday over the murder of a police officer

Ms Connor's black leather purse, her driver's license and a credit card were also found near the body.

Police searched what is believed to be Ms Connor's hotel room on Thursday and claimed to have found blood on the bed, doors, walls and floor.

This picture shows a police cordon at the Kuta Beach site where a policeman was killed

Police searched what is believed to be the couple's hotel room (pictured) on Thursday after the couple had checked out

Officers claim to have found blood on the bed, doors, walls and floor (pictured)

A towel was also found in the hotel with a blood stain on it, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

After spending their first night in custody in Bali, the pair were taken to Kuta Beach at dawn where they were asked to carry out a re-enactment.

'We wanted to find out the suspects' position during the incident and the suspects admitted that they were there,' Police Chief Purnomo said.

Insp Sudarsa's motorcycle was parked in the Pullman Hotel car park and his walkie talkie and hat were found 20 metres away

This picture shows an entry gate cordoned off by police line where the policeman was killed

A security officer at the Pullman Hotel told police he heard screaming at about 1.15am on the Wednesday and went down to the beach (pictured)

A security guard allegedly saw five people, including a woman on the beach with the policeman

They were also taken to the nearby Kubu Kau Beach Inn - the hotel where Mr Taylor was staying before heading to Trijata Hospital in Denpasar.

Mr Taylor is believed to have entered Bali on July 29 while Ms Connor came on August 16.

The victim's brother Putu Yudi Krisna said the victim had been a policeman for 35 years.

'He's a kind person, loving his family and living modestly. He had two children and so far, he had no enemies whatsoever. We're very shocked,' he said.

Ms Connor's black leather purse, her driver's licence and a credit card were allegedly found at the crime scene (pictured)
Thousands of hospital operations and appointments will be cancelled this winter in order to free up beds, under plans by the Government and senior health officials.

To tackle the worst bed-blocking crisis in NHS history, senior practitioners will be drawn away from operating theatres and into wards and A&E departments this winter.

Winter is the busiest time of year for the NHS as the cold weather and rise of illnesses such as flu mean hospitals see a rise in vulnerable patients.

Doctors will be asked to concentrate on discharging patients who can safely be sent home in a desperate effort to make beds available.

The NHS is facing a shortage of doctors - especially in emergency departments - and last night a senior A&E doctor warned the situation is so severe an outbreak of flu would be enough poleaxe the NHS.

Scroll down for video

Bed-blocking crisis: Thousands of hospital operations and appointments will be cancelled this winter in order to free up beds, under plans by the Government and health officials

In evidence given to the House of Commons health select committee, officials described the measures they had planned.

This included cancelling thousands of operations and appointments in the run up to Christmas so doctors would be free to treat patients in hospital.

Each trust has also been ordered to convey how they will cope once winter sets in, establishing 'A&E delivery boards' to oversee their plans.

The move comes as junior doctors have threatened to go on strike later in the year in further protest at their new contracts.

And this month hospital bosses warned many trusts are in financial crisis and cannot recruit enough medics to provide safe healthcare.

With a growing and ageing population and after years of efficiency savings, the NHS now faces its biggest deficit in history.

Experts said there needs to be a national discussion about whether the NHS can continue to offer all services for free within the same budget - or whether some services will have to close.

In a bid to tackle the worst bed-blocking crisis in NHS history, senior practitioners will be drawn away from operating theatres and into wards and A&E departments this winter

This week, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) warned that numbers of doctors and beds are falling far short of what is required.

Dr Cliff Mann, RCEM president, told the Daily Telegraph: What is really worrying is that when you look at last winter, the NHS came under very heavy pressures despite mild weather and little flu.

UK'S NEW EYE SURGERY SHAME Cataract sufferers in Britain are much less likely to have vital surgery than patients in most other Western countries. The NHS performs fewer of the life-changing operations per head than Slovenia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Portugal. The Mail has already revealed that three in four hospitals are rationing the procedures, despite them costing as little as 800. Desperate patients have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to prove they need the operation. Others are encouraged by hospitals to go private  paying around 3,000. Patients say they have been told to eat more green veg or to wear dark glasses by doctors who have refused them surgery. And yesterday it emerged that one NHS trust is threatening to suspend all cataract operations for four months to save money. Advertisement

All it would take is a bad flu outbreak this winter and we would be poleaxed.

The RCEM also revealed the UK now has the lowest number of beds per capita in Europe.

Each consultant sees 11,000 attendances, the highest of any developed country.

There are also said to be 6,000 more daily A&E attendances than six years ago, in part due to an ageing population.

Last year, more than 100,000 operations were cancelled on the day, according to the Patients Association.

In evidence to the same inquiry, the Royal College of Nursing said hospitals were buckling under the strain of rising demand, while warning of a drastic shortfall of nurses in A&E.

Last night a spokesman for NHS England said: The NHS again proved resilient this winter despite further increase in demand, with fewer trusts reporting serious operational issues and a significant reduction in trolley waits.
Dominic Chappell used a 1.5million loan from BHS to save his family home from repossession

Serial bankrupt Dominic Chappell used a 1.5million loan from BHS to save his family home from repossession, it has emerged.

The controversial businessman bought the department store chain from billionaire tycoon Sir Philip Green for 1 in March last year, just thirteen months before it collapsed.

The former racing driver was accused by one former BHS executive of using the 88-year-old chain as his personal piggy bank after extracting millions of pounds from the firm as it teetered on the brink.

This included a controversial 1.5million loan from Arcadia Group, the parent company of Sir Philips retail empire which used to own BHS and currently owns Topshop and Dorothy Perkins. The interest-free loan has not been repaid.

Last night it also emerged that London-based lender Amicus had begun legal proceedings against the Chappell family to repossess the house unless their debts were cleared.

The mortgage on the family home, where Mr Chappells mother and father still live, was provided by Amicus. The debt was only settled by using the loan from BHS.

The Labour MP who published a damning parliamentary report into BHS last month said the revelation raised fresh questions over Sir Philip Greens decision to sell BHS to Mr Chappell in the first place.

Frank Field said it is likely to be taken into consideration by the Serious Fraud Office, which is considering whether to launch its own probe.

The failure of BHS is already being investigated by the Insolvency Service, the Financial Reporting Council and the Pensions Regulator.

In total Retail Acquisitions, the investment vehicle fronted by Mr Chappell, banked at least 17million from BHS in just 13 months.

Extraordinary details have since surfaced about how he tried to put a family holiday to Barbados on expenses, and asked for a 90,000 loan from BHS to pay a personal tax bill.

Chappell bought the department store chain from billionaire tycoon Sir Philip Green (pictured) for 1 in March last year, just thirteen months before it collapsed

Mr Chappell has denied accusations from former BHS chief executive Darren Topp that he threatened to kill him after being confronted about the 1.5million loan.

The development is likely to cause further angst among BHS staff, with the last of the 164 stores set to be closed by the end of the month.

Mr Chappell was unavailable for comment last night.

But he told the Guardian when asked about the loan: I have absolutely no idea what is going on there, nor do I want to know.

That is as far as I am prepared to make a statement. I dont discuss finances with my father on these matters, so that is where we are.

Amicus declined to comment on the grounds of client confidentiality.
One child was killed and a second hospitalized in rural Oregon Friday after a tree fell on a family who were out camping.

The family - who are not being named by police - were camping by Fall Creek when the tree broke and fell at around 6:20pm, KVLA reported.

A nine-year-old child died at the scene, while an eight-year-old was helicoptered to hospital. No others were injured in the accident.

Tragic: One child was killed and another injured when a tree collapsed on them near Fall Creek on Friday. Pictured: First responders arriving near the scene of the incident

The family were underneath the tree on a beach next to Fall Creek by when it snapped around 30 feet up its trunk, a spokesman for The Lane County Sheriffs Office said.

He added that an investigation was underway but foul play is not suspected - it's believed the tree broke naturally, and had been burned in a forest fire long before.

The status of the hospitalized child could not be confirmed.

The Sheriff's office responded to the accident at 6:30pm, but witnesses had only been able to get a phone signal after driving for ten minutes.

Officers located the family after being given a GPS signas.

'It's the first time I've seen it since I've been working in patrol,' Sgt Scott Denham told VLA.

'It's very difficult for everybody involved, law enforcement, fire personnel, everyone.'

The area around the site has signs warning travelers of falling trees and limbs.

No further details are being given out by the sheriff's office at this time.
More than one in three teenage girls now suffer from anxiety or depression.

A study of 30,000 pupils found the number of girls with poor mental health rose by 10 per cent in the past decade  and they were twice as likely as boys to report symptoms.

The research also found teenagers from more affluent backgrounds were more likely to suffer from anxiety or depression than the less well-off.

The study, undertaken by the Department for Education, involved in-depth interviews with thousands of teenagers aged 14 and 15

Experts called for action to help pupils, saying the figures were strong evidence of a slow-growing epidemic of mental health issues in schools.

Some suggested global recession could be making youngsters more stressed.

Many pupils said that pressure to achieve was hitting their self-confidence, and that they did not feel in control of their own futures.

Other experts pointed to social media for the rise in depression and anxiety, saying it stopped children switching off after school.

The study, undertaken by the Department for Education and reported in The Times, involved in-depth interviews with thousands of teenagers aged 14 and 15.

It was based on a similar study carried out in 2005, allowing researchers to spot trends over time.

They found that 37 per cent of girls had three or more symptoms of psychological distress, for example feeling worthless or unable to concentrate. This compared to 15 per cent of boys. Depression and anxiety in boys had actually fallen since 2005, the study said.

Pupils with parents educated to degree level were found to be 5 per cent more likely to experience mental distress than those without.

Some experts pointed to social media for the rise in depression and anxiety, saying it stopped children switching off after school

The researchers suggested some teenage girls problems may be down to pushy parents or peer pressure, but that there were likely to be many other reasons for the rise.

They also found a decline in risky behaviour exhibited by teenagers, with only 12 per cent saying they drank alcohol  compared to 30 per cent in 2005.

Drug-taking was also found to have halved, while truancy reports fell 21 per cent to 11 per cent. The researchers wrote: While girls were already displaying greater levels of psychological distress than boys in 2005 it is striking that their situation worsened between 2005-14.

Regarding the class divide, the study said: There may be some ways in which having lower social status may be associated with lower levels of expectation for school success and lower levels of associated pressure.

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, said she had been contacted by headteachers worried about their pupils, adding: There definitely does seem to be something happening  its a slow growing epidemic. She said that over the period covered by the report, the number of under-16s being admitted to hospital for self-harm had risen by 52 per cent.
The traditional Sunday roast dinner is falling out of favour with Britain's families as it increasingly becomes a midweek treat instead, according to a new report yesterday.

For the latest research shows that roast dinners with all the family sat around the table are no longer just for Sunday any more with more than half now eaten during the week or on Saturday.

Data from analysts Kantar Worldpanel showed that while Britons tucked into eight million more roast dinners over the past year - a 0.6 per cent increase to a staggering total of 1.4 billion - Sunday's share slipped below half, accounting for 49 per cent of all occasions.

The traditional Sunday roast dinner is falling out of favour with Britain's families as it increasingly becomes a midweek treat

The increasing versatility of the meal is highlighted by the fact that while weekday and Saturday roasts soared by 23 million occasions, the growth was driven at the expense of Sunday which plummeted by 15 million occasions.

Trade magazine The Grocer said that although there had been a decline in the Sunday roast, mini joints and roast-in-the-bag options have helped the surge in the popularity of midweek mealtime occasions.

Kantar analyst Tom Campion said: ' Sunday has long been the core roast occasion but there are signs that the roast is becoming more versatile with weekday and Saturday versions driving recent growth of 23 million occasions. '

The Grocer said that mini joints and roast-in-the-bag options have helped boost the midweek occasion as consumers look for quicker cooking times for traditional dishes.

Matthew Southam, senior multiple retail manager at the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board told the magazine: ' Sunday sit around the table occasions are definitely on the wane. We have had to find other opportunities and occasions so that roasting joints do not disappear as a cut.

'Mini joints are something consumers can cook when they get in from work. It's a 21st century roast dinner. A mini joint cooks in half an hour to 40 minutes which is perfect as consumers increasingly demand a cook and preparation time that fits that timescale.'

Last November the board relaunched its successful Midweek Mini Roast advertising campaign to boost sales. Beef roast dinners saw some uplift over the past year, gaining 13 million occasions while lamb suffered a loss of the same amount.

Research shows that chicken still dominates the roast dinner, accounting for 41per cent of all occasions

But the research shows that chicken still dominates the roast dinner, accounting for 41per cent of all occasions.

The Waitrose Food and Drink Report shows that a third of Brits say pausable TVs and services such as Netflix and iPlayer mean more TV dinners in our homes.

A spokeswoman for Waitrose told the magazine: ' That provides the perfect opportunity to sit down for a more sociable mealtime. '
The mother of a baby boy who vanished after he was kidnapped by his father who died in a car crash still holds out hope the child is alive 44 years later.

Darren Jason Shannon was 11 months old when he was taken from his grandparents' house, north of Adelaide, by his father, John, on June 9, 1973.

Just hours after the kidnapping, John, 25, was killed in a head-on collision nearby but Darren - who was dressed in a long white nightdress, a blue cardigan and a nappy - was not found in the wreckage.

Darren Jason Shannon was 11 months old when he was taken from his grandparents' house, north of Adelaide, by his father, John, on June 9, 1973

Darren was taken from his grandparents' home at Elizabeth West, which is now known as Davoren Park. His father died in a car crash near Roseworthy (pictured)

John had a history of mental illness.

An extensive search of surrounding hotels, motels and petrol stations by police failed to find any trace of the baby boy.

His mother, Michelle, has never given up hope on finding her missing child.

She remarried and now lives in the UK but she has never stopped wondering what happened to her son.

Police recently renewed their appeal for information about the missing baby.

At the time investigators feared he had been murdered on the night of his disappearance and his body dumped.

His mother, Michelle (pictured with Darren's photos), has never given up hope on finding her missing child

An extensive search of surrounding hotels, motels and petrol stations by police failed to find any trace of the baby boy after the crash. Pictured is the crash scene

But they hope Darren had been left with friends.

'He would be 44 now and his mother, Michelle, who has remarried and now lives in the UK, has never stopped wondering what happened to her son,' Major Crimes Detective Sergeant Cameron Georg said.

'John Shannon's parents and brother are deceased now, but if a friend of the family knows of a "secret" baby, or helped raise this child, we would appeal for them to come forward to lay this mystery to rest.'

Darren was taken from his grandparents' home on Blackwood Street at Elizabeth West, which is now known as Davoren Park.

John and Michelle Shannon with their baby son, John

His father died in a car crash near Roseworthy.

Darren's disappearance is one of the cases being reviewed by investigators as part of a long-term cold case campaign dubbed 'Operation Persist'.

Police have been reviewing cases, re-tested forensic material and released playing cards into South Australian prisons highlighting cold case matters.

They are also looking at exhibits, and seeking DNA and fingerprints from people convicted in the past of murder or manslaughter.
The chief executive of the Marie Stopes International chain of abortion clinics should resign over the huge failure that has led to them suspending abortion services, according to medical experts.

The Care Quality Commission revealed it had serious concerns over MSI on Friday which led to the clinic suspending surgical terminations across the country.

Simon Cooke, whose background is in marketing personal care products has been chief executive of MSI since 2013.

The chief executive of the Marie Stopes International chain of abortion clinics should resign over the huge failure that has led to them suspending abortion services, according to medical experts. File photo of logo

His last job was head of Super Max, a Dubai-based shaving cream and razor blade manufacturer.

On Friday, he said the suspension of services was to resolve areas of concern in its training and governance procedures.

Now Ann Furedi, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, one of the largest private provider of abortions in the UK has called on MSIs chief executive to resign.

Mrs Furedi told the Daily Mail if she was in the same situation as Mr Cooke her board of governors would be calling on me to resign.

She said: If we were in a situation like this I would say it is a resigning matter.

I actually believe my board chair, and chairman of our clinical governance committee would be looking at this in this way.

Its a huge failure.

MSI, which provides 70,000 abortions a year, suspended surgical abortions for girls under 18 and vulnerable women over safety concerns raised by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

It also suspended all terminations under general anaesthetic or conscious sedation, as well as all surgical terminations at the Marie Stopes clinic in Norwich. The suspension meant 250 women will be sent to other providers.

The CQC did not inspect MSI in 2014/2015.

But in March this year, it announced it was reviewing abortion care in the UK, and the result was is its latest report.

Mrs Furedi said that BPAS and NHS hospitals had taken on the 250 patients who could not be treated by MSI.

She said details of exactly the concerns uncovered by the CQC had not emerged - the full report is expected to be published in the autumn.

The Care Quality Commission revealed it had serious concerns over MSI on Friday which led to the clinic suspending surgical terminations across the country. File photo

But she said: We do know there are issues relating to clinical governance and corporate governance - which they clearly organise in different to the way we organise it.

What I can say that from my point of view, as a chief executive, Im accountable directly to my board of trustees.

So Ive 11 board members I have to meet with three times a year to provide a comprehensive report to them on everything about the way the organisation works, that covers everything from clinical complications to getting the books to balance. Its my job to ensure everything runs properly.

In this situation, I think they would be calling on me to resign.

Mark Bhagwandin, media officer for Life, the anti-abortion group, said that the matter was serious as MSI receives millions of pounds of public money.

He said: This is not the first time that Marie Stopes clinics have been in the news. If in the United Kingdom a regulatory body has to step in to save patients, we must rightly wonder about the safety of millions of women who go to this organisations clinics worldwide where there may not be regulatory bodies like the CQC.

It will be interesting to see what the full conclusions of the report are as after all they do receive a lot of tax payers money, and if women are not being treated safely it will be a matter of huge public concern.

Mr Bhagwandin drew attention to two high-profile deaths at MSI clinics following abortions carried out on vulnerable women in recent years.

Aisha Chithira, 32, died after travelling to England from Ireland to have a termination at a Marie Stopes clinic in Ealing, west London on January 21, 2012.

In June, a doctor and two nurses were initially accused of manslaughter by gross negligence over the case, but a judge at the Old Bailey ordered that the case should be dropped after days of legal argument.

In a further case, MSI was criticised in 2009 by The West Yorkshire coroner, Roger Whittaker, for failings that meant a 15-year-old girl, Alesha Thomas, was discharged before she was given a prescription for antibiotics to prevent infection at a Marie Stopes Clinic in Leeds two years earlier.
A New Mexico police officer who was fatally shot during a traffic stop was honored by thousands, including Governor Susana Martinez, at his funeral on Sunday.

Officer Jose Chavez was remembered as a man who worked tirelessly to get a job in law enforcement, who had a soft spot for catching strays, and whose last words were to tell his mother and family that he loved them.

Chavez was shot and killed by an Ohio fugitive in southern New Mexico.

His packed funeral took place at the Pan American Center in Las Cruces.

Pallbearers carry the flag-draped casket of Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez, known for his

Jose Chavez at his graduation ceremony from our Law Enforcement Academy in Las Cruces, in 2013

Chavez's flag-draped coffin arrived in a Navy blue hearse.

Officers from across the region and residents lined the nine-mile procession route that began in Hatch, a small village that normally would be celebrating its famous green chile harvest.

A 33-year-old father of two daughters, Chavez was a two-year veteran of the Hatch police force.

He was shot August 12 and died at an El Paso, Texas, hospital.

Bishop Oscar Cantu told the crowd that Chavez's final words were a request to tell his mother and his entire family that he loved them.

Vietnam War Veteran John Pummell carries a flag while the hearse carrying Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez approaches the Pan American Center for a public funeral in Las Cruces, on Sunday

Relatives of Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez enter the Pan American Center for a public funeral for him in Las Cruces

'When his voice should not have been audible, he spoke clear and audible words of love,' Cantu said. 'In his final moments, he was thinking of love.'

Jesse Denver Hanes, of Columbus, Ohio, faces a first-degree murder charge in Chavez's death. He also is a suspect in the death of a 62-year-old man in Ohio, authorities said.

In a letter from Hatch police read aloud at the service, department officials recalled how Chavez interviewed to be an officer in 2014 and later exceeded all expectations.

Gov. Susana Martinez presents a New Mexico Flag to the family of Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez

He had an infectious smile that made him stand out from the five other patrol officers. Chavez also had a soft spot for animals and a knack for catching stray dogs and cats.

Born in Juarez, Mexico, Chavez was a student at New Mexico State University. School officials say he was 16 credits short of his bachelor's degree in criminal justice.

He became a US citizen in 2011, which was a steppingstone to his real passion: law enforcement.

Jesse D. Hanes (left) is charged with first degree murder in the death of Officer Jose Chavez; (right) James D. Nelson was arrested in connection with the murder of Chavez, he was a passenger in the car

'Jose worked hard to earn his American citizenship. But for him, that wasn't enough,' Martinez said. 'He insisted on giving back, on serving the community and country that he loved.'

Chavez, a father of two who joined the force two years ago, was killed when he pulled over Jesse Hanes and James Nelson last Friday around 4pm. It's unclear why he pulled them over and if he knew they were wanted.

Chavez was standing outside the passenger's door when Hanes reached through the window and shot him, police said.

A third man in the car who police said had been hitchhiking is being treated as a witness and won't face charges.

Pallbearers carry the flag-draped casket of Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez at the Pan American Center

Hanes, 38, along with Nelson, was wanted in Ohio in the July 25 shooting death of a 62-year-old man just outside Chillicothe, about 60 miles south of Columbus.

Ohio authorities had said that Hanes and Nelson, 36, were believed to have fled the state and were armed and extremely dangerous, warning that the two men have a violent criminal history.

A fellow officer who arrived to assist just as Chavez was shot reported seeing him with paperwork and appearing to draw his service weapon before smoke filled the air and Chavez fell to the ground.

Chavez was shot in the neck and airlifted to University Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, where he later died.

Officers salute the hearse carrying Hatch, N.M., Police Officer Jose Chavez, while it backs up a ramp at the Pan American Center

Hanes then fled on Interstate 25 at speeds up to 100 miles per hour before stopping at a rest area, authorities said.

He carjacked a 36-year-old man, shooting him in the stomach after the man refused to accompany him, police said.

That man has not been identified but is in stable condition at an El Paso, Texas, hospital and could be released Saturday, Jameson said.

Hanes fled on his own after shooting the man, but sheriff's deputies were able to stop him by using a tire-deflating device.

The suspect crashed the vehicle into a pile of wood and briefly barricaded himself in the car before surrendering to deputies, Jameson said.

Nelson and the hitchhiker were found about seven miles away near Rincon.

Police arrested Nelson and were waiting for Hanes to be released from the hospital to book him on state charges, sheriff's spokeswoman Kelly Jameson said.

Hanes was treated for a gunshot wound to the right thigh which appeared to be self-inflicted, she said.

Officers from all over the country, including from Colorado and New York, made their way to New Mexico to honor Jose Chavez

Dona Ana County Sheriff's deputies have taken over public safety duties in Hatch while the small police department mourns Chavez's death.

'There's a total of eight (officers) out there. Today there's seven,' Vigil said.

Governor Susana Martinez said the killing of Chavez is heart-breaking. 'Our hearts break for the loss of a brave law enforcement officer senselessly killed while doing his job--protecting us. As the wife and daughter of law enforcement officers, I know the law enforcement community will pull together to support one another and Officer Chavez's family,' Martinez said in a statement Saturday afternoon.

Hanes was 16 and living in Columbus when he pleaded guilty in 1995 to involuntary manslaughter and other charges. He was sentenced to prison and released at 32.

He went to prison again in 2014 after pleading guilty to robbery and was released in April 2015.

Nelson, who also goes by 'JD,' has a string of drug-related convictions in central Ohio dating back to the mid-1990s.

Governor Martinez ordered flags to fly at half-staff earlier this week in honor of the officer, calling his killing a senseless act and tragic reminder of the dangers law enforcement officers face daily.

Martinez pointed to Chavez's death and other recent events, saying lawmakers should reconsider reviving the death penalty when they return to Santa Fe for the next legislative session.
Said it would mean MPs would avoid making

A former high court justice has said a plebiscite on same sex marriage in Australia will create a dangerous political precedent in Australia.

Michael Kirby spoke to ABC Radio National's Fran Kelly on Monday morning and expressed grave concerns about the constitutional basis of the plebiscite, saying MPs would avoid making decisions on controversial issues and opt for unnecessary and expensive popular votes.

Justice Kirby, who served on the High Court from 1996 to 2009, outlined a 10-point take down of the proposed vote, reported the Sydney Morning Herald.

Former high court justice Michael Kirby (pictured) has said a plebiscite on same sex marriage in Australia will create a dangerous political precedent in Australia

'I don't think its a good idea and I think it's a bad precedent,' Justice Kirby said.

'It will mean that any time that there is something that is controversial that is difficult for parliamentarians to address, or they don't want to address, they'll send it out to a plebiscite.

Justice Kirby said cited the recent Brexit vote in Britain as an example.

'The fact we haven't had a plebiscite in 100 years is an indication that it's just alien to our constitutional tradition and when the British tried it recently on the Brexit vote it was an unnecessary vote to have, and result was that everyone's expectation was shattered and trillions was lost from the economy,' he said.

'Apart from national anthem and the two plebiscites in First World War, both of which were lost, it hasn't been a feature of our constitutionalism.

Justice Kirby, who served on the High Court from 1996 to 2009, outlined a 10-point take down of the proposed vote on same-sex marriage in Australia. Pictured is a same-sex rally in Sydney in August 2015

He argued that plebiscites haven't been a feature of the Australian constitution, apart from one on the national anthem and two for the First World War. Pictured is an August 2015 same-sex marriage rally in Sydney

'It's time parliament did address itself to the issue of marriage equality and giving it out to a plebiscite is simply an endeavour to delay or defeat the measure,' he said.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced last week the plebiscite would be pushed back until February 2017, after initially saying he wanted the vote held this year.

A timeline for the vote will be announced on September 13 and the question expected to be asked is: 'Do you approve of a law to permit people of the same sex to marry?'

Communications minister Mitch Fifield said the government hadn't broken its promise and was simply acting on the advice of the Australian Electoral Commission

Justice Kirby said the parliamentary institutions in Australia were 'not working well at the moment' and we should be focusing on strengthening the parliament and ensuring it does its job.

Justice Kirby has lived with his partner Johan van Vloten for 47 years.
The RSPCA has been slammed for selling a dog chew toy in the likeness of the country's first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

Named 'Droolia Julia', the toy has bright red hair, wears a blue suit and has an exaggerated nose, breasts and buttocks and was up for sale for $20 at the RSPCA World for Pets store in Wacol, a suburb of Brisbane.

It infuriated members of women's rights groups, who berated the RSPCA and asked for an apology from the store and the removal of the toy from sale, The Courier Mail reported.

A picture of the dog chew toy created in the image of former Prime Minister Julia Gillard

Womens Electoral Lobby convener Jozefa Sobski said the toys were disrespectful to Julia Gillard (pictured)

Womens Electoral Lobby convener Jozefa Sobski said the toys were 'repugnant' and inconsistent with RSPCA ethics.

'It is disrespectful to the former prime minister, and I believe it is designed and sold to be disrespectful.'

National co-ordinator for Emilys List - a financial political support network for Labor women - Lisa Carey said the chew toy was inappropriate and 'extremely offensive'.

'We are continually fighting against misogyny in this country and its so difficult to combat but we will not stop.'

Emilys List national co-ordinator Lisa Carey said the chew toy was inappropriate and 'extremely offensive'

It's not the first time the toy has caused controversy.

It drew the ire of women's rights activists in 2013 while being sold in an Adelaide pet store, Adelaide Now reported at the time.

The Queensland pet store removed the chew toy from shelves after being flooded with complaints, it was reported on Monday.

RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty said the toys had been mistakenly taken out of storage by a volunteer at the Wacol store.

'About six years ago we had Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard toys which we sold,' he said.

The Abbott dolls - named Boney Abbott - sold out, but there were a number of Gillard toys left over, which were packed away in storage, he said.

When the Droolia Julia toys came out, another called 'Boney Abbott' was also produced

RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty said the toys were initially sold about six years ago
A British man on holiday with his family on the Costa del Sol has drowned after trying to save his ten-year-old daughter from the water after she got into difficulties.

The victim, who has been named locally as father-of-two Reece Bryan Morris from London, was on holiday with his wife Carly and two daughters when he drowned.

Witnesses say the 40-year-old was in the water while the red warning flag was flying.

Tragedy: Reece Morris, from London drowned while trying to save save his 10-year-old daughter in in Torrox, Malaga

Mr Morris, 40, is pictured above with his wife and his two young daughters

Police said two other people - including who is believed to be his ten-year-old daughter and a 50-year-old man - were also rescued from the sea at the same time.

Sharing a photograph of Reece on Facebook, one friend wrote: 'Today is not a good day. My best friend Reece Morris sadly passed away as a hero!

'Saving his own daughter from drowning in the sea, whilst holidaying in Spain. I'm going to miss you so much Reece.'

The tragedy happened on the beach of El Penoncillo in Torrox in the province of Malaga.

Samuel Pozo, 35, from Malaga, who helped save the British holidaymakers daughter, told a local paper: 'I didnt think twice about jumping into the water when I saw it was a young girl. The current was very strong and pushed us towards the rocks.

Reece Morris (pictured with his wife Carly), died in Spain after getting into difficulties with his daughter while swimming

'If it hadnt been for me and the other people who helped by jumping into the sea or helping out from the rocks, the child would have died as well. Its the first time Ive done something like this and dived into the water to save someone.'

Reports say Mr Morris was swimming in the area known as Cuartos Catalandrownes when the red flag was being shown because of the rough conditions.

Other swimmers noticed he was having difficulty leaving the water and an emergency call was made at 2.20pm on Sunday afternoon.

Police, the Civil Guard and Civil Protection were called in but there was nothing they could do to save his life.

He had already been pulled out of the water by an officer and other sunbathers who tried to revive him but without success.

Mr Morris was on holiday with his family on the Costa del Sol when he drowned when the red warning flag was flying at the El Penoncillo beach in Torrox, Malaga

Reports say Mr Morris drowned while swimming in an area known as Cuartos Catalandrownes when the red flag was being shown because of the rough conditions

A heart defib was used to try and restart his heart but he was declared dead at the scene.

The other man, aged 50, and girl were saved at the same spot and did not need hospital treatment.

A post mortem is being carried out to determine the British man's cause of death and heart exhaustion is thought to be the most likely cause.
A prison officer who allegedly poisoned prisoners' milk has been stood down.

The female employee allegedly put disinfectant into the inmates' milk at the maximum security Port Phillip Prison in Truganina, Victoria.

But G4S, the security company which operates the prison, have refuted allegations that any prisoners were poisoned or required inpatient care.

A female prison officer allegedly put disinfectant into prisoners' milk at the maximum security Port Phillip Prison in Truganina, Victoria

'No poisoning of prisoners as alleged occurred,' a G4S spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

'A G4S officer was subjected to internal discipline action and no longer works with the company.

'No prisoners were taken to hospital as alleged.'

It is the latest in a string of incidents at the prison.

A 21-year-old Port Phillip Prison inmate died in hospital early July after allegedly smuggling and ingesting drugs, The Age reported.

Corrections Victoria told 3AW that G4S is currently investigating the matter without its assistance.
Having blue, green or grey eyes and fair skin put you at greater risk of eye cancer, a new study found.

The increased risk is linked to pigmentation genes that dictate eye colour.

Eye cancer is very rare in the UK, with only around 530 cases diagnosed each year affecting men and women equally.

Having blue, green or grey eyes and fair skin put you at greater risk of eye cancer, a new study found

But until now possible risk factors was unclear.

It more common in the over 50s, in white people and those with blue, grey or green eyes than people with brown eyes.

Over exposure to sunlight is a definite risk factor for skin cancer and there is a weak possible link to eye cancer too.

Those with a mutation to the BAP1 gene are also thought to be at increased risk of skin, eye and other cancers.

The US study is the first to find evidence of a strong association between genes linked to eye colour and the development of uveal melanoma.

It suggested inherited genetic factors associated with eye and skin pigmentation could increase a person's risk for uveal melanoma.

Assistant Professor Dr Mohamed Abdel-Rahman at Ohio State University said: 'This is a very important discovery that will guide future research efforts to explore the interactions of these pigmentary genes with other genetic and environmental risk factors in cancers not linked to sun exposure, such as eye melanoma.

'This could provide a paradigm shift in the field.

'Our study suggests that in eye melanoma the pigmentation difference may play a direct cancer-driving role, not related to sunlight protection.'

Research into eye cancer has been limited because of its rarity so the study analysed samples from more than 270 patients with uveal melanoma, most of whom were treated at Ohio State.

Because there is a known clinical connection between eye melanoma and skin cancer, the scientists sought to determine whether there were commonly shared genetic factors between both diseases.

The inherited genetic risk of skin melanoma has been more extensively explored in previous medical literature.

The team analysed 29 inherited genetic mutations previously linked with skin cancer to determine if there was an associated risk of eye cancer.

The US study is the first to find evidence of a strong association between genes linked to eye colour and the development of uveal melanoma

This analysis revealed that five genetic mutations were significantly associated with eye cancer risk.

The three most significant genetic associations occurred in a genetic region that determines eye colour.

Co-author Assistant Professor Dr Tomas Kirchhoff of NYU School of Medicine said: 'Genetic susceptibility to uveal melanoma has been traditionally thought to be restricted only to a small groups of patients with family history.

'Now our strong data shows the presence of novel genetic risk factors associated with this disease in a general population of uveal melanoma patients.

'But this data is also important because it indicates - for the first time- that there is a shared genetic susceptibility to both skin and uveal melanoma mediated by genetic determination of eye colour.

'This knowledge may have direct implications in the deeper molecular understanding of both diseases.'

The scientists hope other teams will explore this link to build a bigger cohort of eye cancer patients.

Prof Kirchhoff said: 'This type of collaboration is critically needed to dissect additional modifying genetic risk factors that may be uveal melanoma specific.

'This has important consequences not only for the prevention or early diagnosis of the disease but potentially for more improved therapies for at-risk patients.'
to 'brink of war' and described it as an 'unpardonable criminal act'

North said it could bring the

North Korea has threatened to turn Washington and Seoul into a 'heap of ashes' with a 'nuclear strike' as the two nations stage joint military exercises.

The annual two-week Ulchi Freedom drill - which plays out a scenario of full scale invasion by the North - comes at a time of particularly volatile cross-border relations.

It follows a series of high-profile defections including North Korea's deputy ambassador to Britain, Thae Yong-Ho.

Scroll down for video

The two-week annual Ulchi Freedom exercise is largely computer-simulated, but still involves 50,000 South Korean and 30,000 US soldiers

South Korea and the United States kicked off large-scale military exercises today, triggering condemnation and threats of a pre-emptive nuclear strike from North Korea

The US and South Korea insist the drills - which involves around 50,000 Korean and 25,000 US soldiers - are purely defensive in nature, but Pyongyang views them as being wilfully provocative.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry condemned Ulchi Freedom as an 'unpardonable criminal act' that could bring the peninsula to 'the brink of war'.

The Korean People's Army (KPA), meanwhile, threatened a military response to what it described as a rehearsal for a surprise nuclear attack and invasion of the North.

A spokesman for the KPA General Staff said they were 'fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved'.

The slightest violation of North Korea's territorial sovereignty would result in Washington and Seoul being turned 'into a heap of ashes through Korean-style pre-emptive nuclear strike', the spokesman added.

Pyongyang has made similar threats in the past, and actual retaliation for South Korea-US military drills has largely been restricted to firing ballistic missiles into the sea.

Activists hold placards reading 'Stop war exercise' during a rally denouncing the Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint US-South Korea military exercise, near the US embassy in Seoul

The North's main ally, China, voiced its opposition to the drills saying it would only make Pyongyang 'more aggressive' at an already sensitive time.

Last week the country's deputy ambassador to Britain, Yong-Ho, defected to the South which caused huge embarrassment to the North.

The North's official KCNA news agency described Thae as 'human scum' and said he had fled to avoid criminal charges including embezzling funds and raping a minor.

His defection came after 13 workers at a North Korean-run restaurant in China fled the country for South Korea.

North Korea then publicly 'executed' six officials in front of their families after they were blamed for allowing workers to reach the South.

North Korean authorities claimed the South forced the workers to defect, blaming it on a 'hideous abduction', something Seoul vehemently denies.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye (second left) said: ''It is increasingly possible North Korea may undertake various terror attacks and provocations... to block internal unrest, prevent further defections and create confusion in our society'

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye warned the military drill - coinciding with the defections - could cause the North Korean leadership to retaliate.

She said: 'It is increasingly possible North Korea may undertake various terror attacks and provocations... to block internal unrest, prevent further defections and create confusion in our society.'

Park said the South's military was on high alert and would 'vigorously strike back' in the event of any hostile action.

North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

The two countries bar ordinary citizens from exchanging phone calls, letters and emails without special permission.

About 30,000 people have fled North Korea and arrived in the South, including 1,276 last year.
he was going

His victims were given no

A paedophile who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing three young boys has been released after just four years behind bars.

The victims of James Cameron Wood are furious he was set free without any warning given to them.

Wood confessed in 2011 to sexually assaulting three males under the age of 16.

The victims of James Cameron Wood (pictured) are furious he was set free without any warning given to them

Mothers of two of the victims revealed their husbands had been childhood friends with Wood, and he became a trusted part of their family lives, the Illawarra Mercury reported.

During his sentencing the court heard Wood had snuck into one of the boy's bedrooms and started touching him while he was asleep - the boy was 12 at the time.

There was another incident involving a boy at a caravan park in Merry Beach, south of Sydney.

That victim, now aged 25, said he felt like he had a disease eating away at him from the inside since the abuse.

Corrective Services New South Wales confirmed Wood was released 'under standard NSW parole conditions' on August 12, the Illawarra mercury reported.

But parents of the victims weren't notified until Tuesday afternoon- four days after Wood walked free.

On the same day one of the victim's mothers had written to Minister for Corrections David Elliot and Corrective Service Commissioner Peter Severin.

She inquired about Wood's public parole hearing she was told was scheduled for September 1.

When she heard he was released she was furious.

Wood confessed in 2011 to sexually assaulting three males under the age of 16 (stock image)

In her letter the mother expressed her concern for Wood's pending release.

'Can you give the victims and the community 100 per cent assurance that he will never do this again?

'If this assurance cannot be given, which we all know it can't, why do you consider even allowing this vile predator back into the community and risk innocent children and their families by having them live quietly next door unaware?' she wrote.

A spokesman for Corrective Services said Wood was released and additional conditions were imposed including that he undertake psychological assessment and counselling and not contact or communicate with victims or their families.

Woods served a three-year, nine month non-parole period for offences in the Illawarra region.

Even though his most serious charges carried a maximum of 20 years jail time, his sentences were combined.
Police in Maine are warning residents of a possible snake on the loose after a large snake skin was found near a river just east of Portland.

According to the Bangor Daily News, a local reported seeing a shed snake skin in mid-afternoon on Saturday along the banks of the Presumpscot River.

Police in Westbrook received the complaint and photographed the skin, which was taken for lab tests in order to determine the species of the snake.

Investigators want to ascertain whether the animal will pose a threat to humans in the vicinity.

Police in Westbrook took the snake skin for tests in order to determine the species, an important piece of information that is needed to ensure the public's safety

Authorities in Maine are warning the public to stay alert and report any sightings of the snake to police.
A young waitress at a Virginia diner was left 'rattled' after one customer left her a hateful message rather than a tip.

Sadie Karina, 18, was working at Jess' Quick Lunch in downtown Harrisburg Monday when a man scrawled the message 'We only tip citizens' on his receipt.

Karina - who was born in America - was shocked by the note, but it was her granddad who took it public to shame the nasty customer, WHSV reported.

Hateful: Waitress Sadie Karina was left this hateful message instead of a tip after serving a pair of customers Monday. She was born in the US and has Mexican and Honduran heritage

Rattled: Karina, who has encountered only a little racism in her life, was left rattled by the note, which was left at the Harrisburg, Virginia diner where she works

Karina is an American of mixed Mexican and Honduran descent, and has rarely encountered direct racism in Harrisburg.

Still, she said, the couple gave off an odd vibe when she served them their gyros and drinks.

'They wouldn't talk to me,' she said. 'They would just nod their heads.'

But it wasn't until she read the note at the bottom of the $26.11 receipt that she realized how hostile they were.

'It shouldn't even matter, I just feel like it's rude and disrespectful,' she said. 'I've never met, I've never done anything to them.'

But her reaction was nothing compared to the fury her grandfather John Elledge, who is white, felt.

On Monday Elledge posted on Facebook that he'd 'happily do the jail time' if he 'could get just one solid punch in to the face of the son of a b***h' who left the receipt.

Angry: Karina's granddad, John Elledge (pictured with wife Iris), posted the receipt on Facebook to shame the couple who left it - and succeeded, as they complained to the diner

He later posted a photograph of the receipt itself - along with the message, the last few digits of the card used to pay for it, and the signature.

Good person: Karina said that she would still serve the couple as she is a 'good person' - but her boss has banned the pair from eating in his diner

Elledge, a lawyer, has friends who are professional investigators: They soon turned up the woman who paid for the meal - who turned out to be friends with Karina's mom.

She probably didn't write the note, he said, given the difference in handwriting between the signature and the message - 'it was probably the toad that the surveillance cameras showed was with her.'

The woman later said that it was indeed her companion who left the note.

Karina told WHSV that she would still serve the customers again: 'It makes me the stronger person to not let these things bother me because I know I'm a good person.'

But her boss says the pair are banned until they show remorse.

The pair later visited the diner to complain, and they ran into Elledge, whose reaction was far less relaxed than his granddaughter's.

'We didnt talk much,' Elledge told The Washington Post. 'She was mad that I posted it  the guy, he was being really belligerent. '

He continued: 'She was asking me why I posted it. I said "Obviously, it was an insult - your signature against my granddaughter - darn right Im going to post it. And no apologies."'
Advertisement

Andrew Shen, 26, has only been in Australia for six years but on Saturday he was one of dozens of bidders for a four bedroom house in Epping that sold for $1.835 million.

He was narrowly beaten by another Chinese bidder for the family home in Sydney's northern suburbs, in a crowd almost entirely made up of other Chinese immigrants and investors.

Mr Shen is just one of many Chinese buyers who are increasingly dominating home auctions as they race to get on the property ladder soon after arriving in Australia.

Andrew Shen (centre) only arrived in Australia six years ago but was one of dozens of bidders for a four bedroom house in Epping, Sydney, that sold for $1.8 million on Saturday

Such is their enthusiasm that in some suburbs it is rare to find house hunters of other nationalities bidding on family homes, even in crowds of 50 or more.

All but one of seven auctions Daily Mail Australia visited in Sydneys northern suburbs this weekend was won by a Chinese bidder, with one home only contested by Chinese buyers.

The two-storey red brick house next door to West Epping Park wouldn't even have been the first property he owned as he was looking to move his new family out of their cramped flat in Epping Park he bought in 2014, with help from his parents.

The 26-year-old, who moved from Jiujiang, near Shanghai, in 2010 and is now an Australian citizen, was looking to move his new family out of their cramped flat

The recently naturalised Australian citizen said he had been house hunting in the area for more than two months and had his heart set on the property, but would keep trying.

'I think this price was a bit too high for the market. It was incredible, crazy. I hope I can find another one, he said.

'I've worked so hard to get money and buy a home for my family.

Mr Shen first came to Australia to study at Western Sydney University, graduating in 2014, and now runs his own business as a restaurant supplies wholesaler, importing goods from overseas for sale in Australia.

He followed his older sister who moved years before, and was soon joined by his parents.

He was narrowly beaten by another Chinese bidder for the family home in Sydney's northern suburbs, in a crowd almost entirely made up of other Chinese immigrants and investors.

Mr Shen is asked if he wants to place another bid as he has been outbid by a fellow Chinese buyer

Like many young Chinese homebuyers, he got help from his parents to buy his first property  a flat nearby he acquired in 2014

Mr Shen is now married with a five-month-old daughter and his parents and sister (standing behind him) also own property in Sydney, and came to the auction to support him

Mr Shen is now married with a five-month-old daughter and his parents and sister also own property in Sydney, and came to the auction to support him.

Like many young Chinese homebuyers, he got help from his parents to buy his first property, but said he had to finance the new house himself.

'I have to work very hard to hopefully get a big house, that's my dream. I hope it comes true, he said, adding that he also planned to keep the flat as an investment.

Though Chinese property foreign investment has quadrupled from $5.9 billion in 2013 to $24.3 billion last year, about half of which is residential, resident buyers like Mr Shen are also helping to drive Australias housing boom.

Real estate companies say Chinese-origin buyers who are Australia citizens or permanent residents are among the biggest groups visiting their open homes and attending auctions.

AUCTIONS DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA VISITED Suburb Sale price Size Chinese buyer? North Ryde $1.59 million 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms No North Ryde $1.505 million 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom Yes Ryde $1.1 million 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom Yes Eastwood Not sold 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms Yes but bid rejected Epping $1.835 million 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms Yes Lindfield $1.98 million 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms Yes Eastwood $1.77 million 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms Yes

A mostly Chinese crowd contest for a house in Epping

Chinese buyers are increasingly dominating home auctions as they race to get on the property ladder soon after arriving in Australia

Buyers assemble for an auction in Eastwood

Bidding gets underway in the all-Chinese auction

A property in North Ryde goes under the hammer, and was won by a Chinese bidder over some local competition

In nearby North Ryde, the changing face of many suburbs was apparent as the only people of European descent present were the auctioneers and the family selling the house.

The modest three bedroom house was owned since 1961 by well-known jazz musician Ken Flannery, who died in June aged 89.

Patrick and Sue, who declined to give their last name, snapped up the 1950s property for $1.505 million after a three-year hunt for the perfect home.

The couple had attended more than a dozen auctions and displayed many of the bidding skills that have allowed increasingly savvy Chinese buyers to beat local competition.

Chinese-origin buyers who are Australia citizens or permanent residents are among the biggest groups visiting their open homes and attending auctions

Chinese property foreign investment has quadrupled from $5.9 billion in 2013 to $24.3 billion last year, about half of which is residential

This five bedroom house in Eastwood sold for $1.77 million

The crowd as entirely made up of Chinese bidders

'It comes down to how ready you are and how much homework you do but you also have to go with your heart, he said.

Like many successful Chinese auction winners, Patrick deliberately joined the bidding late as 'you don't want to start a horse race that you're not going to win'.

'The ones that are keen to bid will go early but you'll find out who you're really up against close to the finish line, he said.

'If you start from the beginning you'll just waste a lot of breath.'

Patrick (left) and Sue (right, placing a bid) snapped up the 1950s property for $1.505 million after a three-year hunt for the perfect home

A rival Chinese bidder competes for the home in North Ryde

Bidders look on as this three bedroom North Ryde property sold for $15.9 million
An Australian woman living in South Africa lost her property after fraudsters successfully sold it on the market in an elaborate scam.

The four-bedroom Canberra home was sold for a cool $430,000 in 2014 without the owner's knowledge, the ACT Supreme Court heard last week.

Court documents reveal the brazen thieves, believed to be from overseas, had gone to extreme lengths to swindle real estate agents, lawyers and a bank into selling the property, The Canberra Times reported.

An Australian woman living in South Africa lost her Macgregor property (pictured) after fraudsters successfully sold it on the market in an elaborate scam

The woman lived in South Africa when her Canberra home was sold without her knowledge. The court heard the money was then transferred into an Indonesian bank account

'I have never given instructions to anyone to sell the property on my behalf. I never had any intention of selling the property as I wanted to keep it for as long as I could and then pass it on to my children,' the victim said in an affidavit.

The victim is now taking legal actions against the ACT government for statutory compensation to seek damages after her home was sold without her permission.

The state government has accepted the woman had become the victim of fraud but did not agree she was entitled to reclaim damages from the government.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted ACT government.

The money from the sale was found to have transferred into an Indonesian bank account after the fraudster impersonated the woman via email and phone.

Court documents reveal the brazen thieves, believed to be from overseas, had gone to extreme lengths to sell the property on the market in 2014

The Macgregor property was sold in February 2014 but the owner was only made aware after she contacted her agent about maintenance on the home in July 2014

The scam started when the fraudster used a fake email to contact her property manager and even sought lawyers in Canberra to act on their behalf for the sale.

It's not clear how the fraudster knew details of the owner's property manager.

The victim's signature was forged on the transfer - and scammers managed to impersonate the owner over the phone with her real estate agent.

The Macgregor property was sold in February 2014 but the owner was only made aware after she contacted her agent about maintenance on the home in July 2014.

The four-bedroom Canberra home was sold for a cool $430,000 in 2014 without the owner's knowledge, the ACT Supreme Court (pictured) heard last week

The scam started when the fraudster used a fake email to contact her property manager and even sought lawyers in Canberra to act on their behalf for the sale (stock image)

Police consulting with South African authorities have closed their investigation after failing to track down the fraudsters.

An ACT police spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia: 'Police established the offence originated offshore and as such that police jurisdiction assisted us with our inquiries.
Private and public messages were sent after her suspected death

The Facebook account of a missing woman whose 'dangerous' partner beat and stabbed her with a fork has been accessed more than 100 times since police believe she was murdered.

An eerie message saying 'sucks 2 b u' was posted to the account of missing woman Cheryl Ardler on January 16, 2013 - three weeks after Deputy NSW Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan believes the 44-year-old was killed.

A coronial inquest heard Ms Ardler was last seen with a black eye and 'busted lip' at a bus stop in Sydney's west with her 'dangerous' partner Dennis French in December 2012.

An eerie message saying was posted to the Facebook account of missing woman Cheryl Ardler on January 16, 2013 - around three weeks after the coroner believes she was killed

The post gave her friends and family hope that she was alive and well but she was not heard from again

Magistrate O'Sullivan found the couple's relationship to be 'extremely violent one' after hearing several 'detailed, credible and chilling' accounts from witnesses who said Mr French physically abused his girlfriend after she moved in to his Cranebrook home six months before her disappearance.

A woman told the inquest that she had seen Mr French punching Ms Ardler in November and witnessed him beating her with a stick and stabbing her in the mouth with a fork three days before she vanished.

'The descriptions of the violent incidents they witnessed painted a pictured of Dennis French as an extremely violent and dangerous man,' she said in her findings, which were handed down on Friday.

The inquest heard Mr French had complete access to Ms Ardler's Facebook account on his mobile phone and would fly into a fit of rage if she received messages or friend request from other men.

The inquest heard Mr French punched Ms Ardler in November and witnessed him beating her with a stick and stabbing her in the mouth with a fork three days before she vanished

'He wanted to know any messages or posts that came through, and if it was from a male, that didn't go down very well,' neighbour Sean Carpenter told the inquest.

When Ms Ardler disappeared, her friends and family started to observe unusual activity on her account.

Her photographs were deleted, she used different language and made contact with people she would not typically via Facebook.

Her friend Helen Wickings said she received a message from the account that said 'I'll be back, lol', which was uncharacteristic as she had never communicated with Ms Ardler on social media before.

Police searched for any signs Ms Ardler was alive but found no trace of the 44-year-old after December 2012, aside from her Facebook account activity.

Her account was accessed more than 100 times from a mobile device after December 2012, the inquest heard.

Police had been searching for any signs Ms Ardler was alive but found no signs of life after December 2012, aside from her Facebook account activity

When Ms Ardler's nieces, Kayla Shaw and Latoya Ardler, saw the Facebook messages - which were sent to Ms Wickings between January and February 2013 - they instantly disputed that their aunt was the author.

They said she would often type in capital letters, with Magistrate O'Sullivan agreeing the use of her account was not consistent with her 'previous practice'.

'This inconsistent use of her Facebook account lends considerable weight to the proposition that she was not the person accessing the account,' she said.

The inquest also heard Ms Adler's niece had been approached by a man at Central Railway Station, in Sydney's CBD, following Ms Ardler's disappearance who told her: 'My cousin killed your Aunty Cheryl'.

The man's ex-wife was a cousin of Mr French and he had previously been an acquaintance but he denied having any knowledge of the encounter when questioned at the inquiry.

Ms Ardler's case was referred to the Unsolved Homicide Squad and Magistrate O'Sullivan apologised to her family (pictured) that the inquest could not give them 'closure'

Mr French was questioned by police at the time of Ms Ardler's disappearance and was the only person identified as a person of interest in her suspected death.

But he denied assaulting Ms Ardler and no traces of blood or DNA evidence was found when police searched his home and car in May 2014.

After hearing the 'harrowing' accounts of violence in the months prior to Ms Ardler's disappearance, Magistrate O'Sullivan found she was likely killed sometime between December 5 and Christmas Day 2012.
She hasn't yet been arrested but may still face charges

The 'devastated' driver was treated on the scene and released

Six people were hospitalized, two with serious injuries

She hit the gas rather than the brake and smashed into eight people

An elderly woman was trying to leave early when she got confused

The accident occurred at 7pm Sunday, while the concert was ongoing

Several elderly concertgoers were 'sent flying' after a 74-year-old woman drove into a crowd at an outdoor music event in Parma Heights, Ohio, Sunday.

The driver was leaving a Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin tribute concert at Greenbriar Commons when the accident happened, leaving two seriously injured.

She was pulling out of a parking space next to the dance floor when she got confused and pushed down on the gas rather than the brake, plowing into the crowd, Cleveland.com reported.

Accident: Nine elderly people were hurt when a woman, 74, drove into a crowd at Greenbriar Commons (shown after accident) in Parma Heights at 7pm Sunday. No one has been named

The accident occurred about 7pm, while the concert was still in full swing. Police are not yet naming any of those involved.

The driver had been put off by another car that was waiting on the right to enter her parking space, police said.

Her car lurched backwards in a circular direction, striking eight concertgoers, some of whom were sent flying into the air. All were aged in their 60s or 70s.

The driver then tried to maneuver the car forward, but crashed into a telephone pole and then a parked car.

Two of the concertgoers were seriously injured, with one left drifting in and out of consciousness and another suffering what appeared to be a compound fracture.

In total five people were sent to MetroHealth Medical Center and one to University Hospitals Parma, while three - including the driver - were treated at the scene.

She was released after being treated for minor injuries. A police spokesman told Dailymail.com that she was 'devastated' at the carnage.

Police did not arrest her, but said charges may apply once its investigation is complete.

Greenbriar Commons shares its parking lot with the Parma Heights Police Department; an officer on duty in the station heard the screams and called for help.

Emergency services from three other cities helped deal with the aftermath of the accident.
The report suggests 28.9 per cent of the paper had plagiarised content

He claims that the President Pena plagiarised his law thesis 25 years ago

A report has been published by one of Mexico's investigative

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto plagiarised almost a third of his 1991 undergraduate law thesis, according to a new report.

The report, published by one of the country's leading investigative journalists, suggests 197 paragraphs of the 682 paragraphs in the 200-page thesis were stolen.

His paper, titled 'Mexican Presidentialism and Alvaro Obrego', was found to contain 28.9 per cent of plagiarised content.

The article and accompanying video were published on the website of journalist Carmen Aristegui, whose investigative team revealed in 2014 that Pena Nieto's wife was in the process of acquiring a luxury home from a government contractor.

Enrique Pena Nieto (L) next to his wife actress Angelina Rivera greets his supporters in his first speech after exit polls showed him in first place in Mexico City, Mexico

The Casa Blanca scandal, as it came to be known, dealt a major blow to the reputation of Pena Nieto.

His poll numbers have recently hit all-time lows over perceptions he and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have failed to stamp out rampant crime and corruption.

In a statement, government spokesman Eduardo Sanchez sought to play down the accusation of plagiarism, instead calling the omissions 'style errors.'

He added that Pena Nieto met all the requirements needed to graduate as a lawyer from Panamerican University.

In 2015, Aristegui was dismissed by her employer, MVS Radio, after it accused her and her team of offering, without prior authorization, the broadcaster's name and funding for a new platform for investigative journalism called Mexicoleaks.
Six officers at Illinois' maximum-security Pontiac Correctional Facility were injured by prisoners Sunday.

The correctional officers were being treated for non-life-threatening injuries after the incident, which occurred in the afternoon.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Nicole Wilson told the Chicago Tribune that the officers were assaulted by five inmates.

Six officers were non-fatally injured after being attacked by five prisoners in Illinois' maximum security Pontiac Correctional Facility at 2:30pm Sunday

She declined to say what kind of injuries they suffered or give further details about the incident.

Wilson couldn't immediately be reached for further comment.
President Obama was a no-show at a flurry of fundraisers hosted by Hillary Clinton just a few miles from where he was staying at a beachfront vacation rental in Martha's Vineyard over the weekend.

Clinton arrived at Martha's Vineyard with her husband, Bill, over the weekend  purportedly to celebrate Bill's 70th birthday, but also to attend a series of high-dollar fundraisers for her presidential campaign.

But Obama, who has been vacationing on the posh island with his wife and kids for the past two weeks, skipped the Hillary events to relax at the beach, take in a fireworks show, and enjoy a meal with his wife.

Scroll down for video

Too tired: Barack Obama (pictured on Saturday) failed to attend any of Hillary Clinton's fundraisers on Martha's Vineyard this weekend - despite vacationing on the tiny Cape Cod island at the same time as the Democratic nominee was campaigning

Here for the money: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton walks to her motorcade vehicle as she arrives on her campaign plane at Nantucket Memorial Airport in Nantucket on Saturday - before she arrived on Martha's Vineyard

Donors and Democrats: Guests arrive for a Hillary Clinton fundraiser on Martha's Vineyard on Saturday

One of the Clinton fundraisers took place at the home of Obama nemesis Lady [Lynn] de Rothschild, who owns a stunning estate on the island.

Rothschild, who is married to French-British banking heir Sir Evelyn de Rosthchild, has previously denounced Obama as a 'loser' who was 'going to bankrupt America.'

She has also disparaged Obama by suggesting that he had no qualifications and was elected based on his race.

'The fact of [Obama's] personal story of being half black and all that is a wonderful, inspiriting story,' said Rothschild in 2011, while supporting Republican John Huntsman's 2012 presidential bid. 'But it doesn't qualify him to be president.'

Busy: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets people as she arrives at Provincetown Municipal Airport in Provincetown, Massachusetts - back on the mainland

She's with her: Singer and actress Cher stops to talk to media as she leaves a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum in Provincetown

Many happy returns: Bill Clinton celebrated his 70th birthday over the weekend - but President Obama did not celebrate with him in person

Clinton arrived in the Vineyard late Friday to celebrate Bill's birthday.

The Obamas, meanwhile, were watching the island's annual end-of-summer fireworks show  reportedly from a prime perch at the Oak Bluff rental home of close advisor Valerie Jarret.

Their paths didn't cross the next day, when the Obamas enjoyed a day at the beach near their secluded vacation home in the island's exclusive Chilmark area.

Hillary Clinton spent her afternoon at a 600-person cocktail fundraiser at the home of former Viacom CEO Frank Biondi and his wife, Carol.

Turnout was strong for the fundraiser on the heavily-Democratic island.

Happy: President Barack Obama smiles after putting on the first green during a round of golf at Farm Neck Golf Course in Oak Bluffs, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard, last Sunday

Parked cars lined the streets for half a mile down the road from the Biondi compound, as passer-by's honked and shouted 'go Hillary!'

Tickets ranged from $1,000 to $27,000  but even some who couldn't pony up the money dropped by to show their support.

A small group of women sat on a blanket down the street with pro-Clinton signs, waiting for a glimpse of the candidate when she left the fundraiser.

Inside the event, which was closed to the press, Clinton spoke about early education and addressing the country's infrastructure problems, and criticized her opponent Donald Trump for running a campaign that she claimed was based on fear-mongering.

Dinner plans: President Obama and Michelle Obama dined at Chesca's Restaurant in Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard on Saturday - their last night on the island

Closely guarded: A Secret Service agent stands outside at the balcony of Chesca's Restaurant in downtown Edgartown

Notable attendees included fashion designer Kenneth Cole, whose wife Maria Cuomo Cole, the daughter of the late New York Governor Mario Cuomo and brother of current governor Andrew.

Also in attendance was Harvard professor and Obama 'beer-summit' buddy Henry Louis Gates, Jr., whose Finding Your Roots series was suspended by PBS after DailyMail.com revealed he had agreed to cover up Ben Affleck's slave-owning ancestors and wrongly claimed Affleck's mother was a Freedom Rider.

After the event, Clinton dashed over to the Rothschilds' oceanfront mansion for a $50,000-per-plate fundraising dinner with 30 guests. The event helped rake another $1.5 million for Clinton's presidential campaign.

Obama hasn't been able to completely avoid presidential politics during his Vineyard trip.

He took a brief break from his vacation last Monday to host a Clinton campaign fundraiser on the island  just a few days before Hillary showed up in person.

Although Obama has said he will do everything he can to support his former secretary of state's presidential campaign, he and Clinton have had a notoriously uneasy relationship ever since they ran against each other during the 2008 Democratic primary.

High profile: The motorcade of US President Barack Obama makes its way through West Tisbury as he goes to play golf on the last day of his summer vacation on Sunday

Thanks: People wave at the motorcade of US President Barack Obama in West Tisbury, Massachusetts

As Clinton fundraised on Saturday, Obama stepped out with Michelle to eat at Chesca's, an elegant American and Italian restaurant just down the road from the Clinton events in historic Edgartown.

Police and Secret Service blocked off the road outside the eatery, as islanders waited over 30 minutes to catch a photo of the president as he arrived in his motorcade.

But gawkers were disappointed when Obama  who has been making fewer and fewer public appearances on Martha's Vineyard as his presidency winds down  exited the car and dashed into the restaurant without even a wave at the crowd.

'Barry you're rude!' cried one supporter who was holding a box of takeout pizza. 'We've been waiting here with cold pizza.'

Saturday was the First Family's last night on the island, where they had been vacationing for two weeks.

Home time: President Barack Obama with first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters Maliaand Sasha Obama walk on the tarmac to board Air Force One at Air Station Cape Cod as they prepare to return to the White House

The Obama daughters Malia, 18, and Sasha, 15, did not join their parents for dinner.

But the two first daughters have both made news during the family's vacation  Malia by attending a rowdy party that was reportedly broken up by police, and Sasha by getting a summer job waiting tables at a local fried fish eatery.

The West Tisbury Police told DailyMail.com that they did receive a noise complaint from a house party after midnight, and people dispersed when the police showed up.

The Obamas' elder daughter was well-behaved despite the nature of the rest of the party.

'She was just chillin [because] she was afraid to do anything [because] people was filming her and stuff,' said one college aged female on Twitter, whose sister hosted a party that Malia attended in early August.

The girl also said that Malia was 'chill af.' [as f***]
Federal police have raided a home in Sydney's west as part of a counter-terrorism investigation.

Officers showed up to the property on Monday morning.

A neighbour told 9News a woman, her young children and her mother live at the Heckenberg home.

The neighbour added the woman's husband had not lived at the Tantangara Street address for months now.

Scroll down for video

Federal police have raided a home in Sydney's west as part of a counter-terrorism investigation

A woman wearing a hijab was seen walking into the home as police continued their search

There is no immediate threat to the public, police say.

Investigators wearing surgical masks over their faces were seen going in and out of the home with a number of items in their hands, including a fold-up chair.

During the raid, a woman wearing a hijab was seen walking towards the home.

An AFP spokesperson confirmed members of the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team were 'conducting operational activity at a residence in Heckenberg'.

'This activity is not related to any threat to the community,' the spokesman said.

'As this relates to an ongoing investigation, no further comment can be made.'

An AFP spokesperson confirmed members of the NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team (pictured left and right) were 'conducting operational activity at a residence in Heckenberg'

Investigators wearing surgical masks over their faces were seen going in and out of the home
Speaking out: Roxy Jacenko was candid about her life in an interview with 60 Minutes

From breast cancer to her husband's criminal conviction - it's no secret 2016 has been a rough innings for celebrity publicist Roxy Jacenko.

The public relations mogul was candid at the weekend, mounting a prime-time defence of her reputation in an interview with 60 Minutes.

'Yes, I'm tough, but I'm also probably broken into a million pieces of glass on the inside,' said Ms Jacenko.

Following the jailing of partner Oliver Peter Curtis and her recent surgery, Ms Jacenko spoke about the close support of her mother and two children.

But those troubles are a world away for Ms Jacenko's sometimes estranged younger sister, Ruby Davis - who lives in Los Angeles, California, and this week frolicked in the sunshine on an apparent European holiday.

Scroll down for video

Half a world away: Ruby Davis in a happy snap above a pool at Hollywood Hills home

Recent pictures show Ms Davis has been holidaying in Saint Tropez, a French port

'New friends and a lot of adventure': Ms Davis is pictured in Saint Tropez this week

In the past week, Ms Davis has posted pictures of herself hitting the beach and exploring the alleyways of the French holiday hotspot of Saint Tropez.

'Europe I love you...' she captioned one picture, cracking a carefree smile for the camera.

It followed a trip to the United Kingdom, where she posed with the London Bridge.

The blonde bombshell has much in common with her elder sister - both being successful entrepreneurs.

But they share a famously rocky relationship and have long been said to be estranged.

In 2008, a police report contained claims Ms Davis had punched her sister in the face at a Kings Cross nightclub.

Both women are blonde bombshell entrepreneurs - but have a famously rocky relationship

Ms Davis runs a car website for U.S. women, Chickdriven, and has also worked in marketing

Police took out an interim Apprehended Violence Order against Ms Davis. It was later revoked and dismissed.

Ms Davis attended her sister's wedding in 2012 and left Sydney for LA a few years ago.

She started a car website for U.S. women, Chickdriven, in November 2015.

Ms Davis was embracing a love of automobiles she has had since she discovered her family accountant's 66 Chevy Impala.

According to her LinkedIn profile, she has also worked in media - as the Director for Celebrity Content for Newzulu, a news app - while overseas.

Much like her sister, Ms Davis has cultivated a considerable Instagram following - of 20,000 people.

Ms Davis struck a glum note posting this last week: 'Attention - s*** could be worse. You're not dead'

She regularly shares happy pictures of herself with cars, ice cream and her dog, Murci.

And similar to Ms Jacenko - who represents the start-up Doughnut Time - she has even used the baked goods in her marketing campaigns.

She uploaded a YouTube video of herself handing out donuts to the homeless earlier this year.

Daily Mail Australia asked Ms Jacenko and Ms Davis if they had been in contact recently, but neither responded.
An Islamic extremist pleaded guilty on Monday at the International Criminal Court and expressed 'deep regret' for destroying historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu.

Wearing a dark suit and striped tie, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi - who faces 30 years in jail - stood and calmly told judges he was entering the guilty plea 'with deep regret and great pain' and advised Muslims around the world not to commit similar acts, saying 'they are not going to lead to any good for humanity'.

Al-Mahdi, 40, is the first Islamic extremist charged by the International Criminal Court and the first person to face a solo charge of cultural destruction.

He was head of the 'morality police' in Al-Qaeda-linked militant Islamist group Ansar Dine and on his orders in 2012 revered sites were attacked with pickaxes, chisels and pick-up trucks.

Mahdi's rebel group - driven out in a French-led operation in 2013 - destroyed nine mausoleums and the door of a mosque.

Scroll down for video

Wearing a dark suit and striped tie, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi (pictured on Monday) stood and calmly told judges he was entering a guilty plea for destroying shrines in Timbuktu 'with deep regret and great pain'

Al-Mahdi is the first Islamic extremist charged by the International Criminal Court and the first person to face a solo charge of cultural destruction

Islamist militants are pictured destroying an ancient shrine in Timbuktu in July 2012, on Al-Mahdi's orders

Al-Madhi ordered the attacks - in which pickaxes and chisels were used - in frustration when local people refused to stop worshipping at the ancient shrines, with such rites as praying for rain, or a good marriage

Founded between the 5th and the 12th centuries, Timbuktu's very name evokes centuries of history and has been dubbed 'the city of 333 saints' for the number of Muslim sages buried there.

Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries, the site also known as the 'Pearl of the Desert' was however condemned as idolatrous by the jihadists.

Archaeologists hope the trial will send a stern warning that the plundering and pillaging of the planet's ancient artifacts and sites will not go unpunished.

'I would like to seek the pardon of all the whole people of Timbuktu,' Al Mahdi said, adding he also begged forgiveness from 'the ancestors of the mausoleums I have destroyed'.

He added: 'I would like to make you a solemn promise that this was the first and the last wrongful act I will ever commit.'

The prosecutors revealed at the start of trial that they had made a deal with the defence team to ask for a jail term of nine to 11 years. In return, Mahdi said he would not appeal.

The judges recognised this, but also warned Mahdi that they were not necessarily bound by the deal and he faced a maximum term of 30 years.

Mahdi also distanced himself from the jihadists, describing their acts as 'evil.'

Plucked from the edges of the Sahara to a courtroom in The Hague, the bespectacled Mahdi is accused of 'intentionally directing attacks' against nine of Timbuktu's famous mausoleums as well as the Sidi Yahia mosque between June 30 and July 11, 2012.

ICC prosecutors allege that Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly Tuareg movement that in 2012 took control of Timbuktu some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) northeast of Bamako, along with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

As the head of the 'Hisbah', or the 'Manners Brigade', he ordered the attacks on the shrines, ICC prosecutors say.

Such cultural destruction 'is tantamount to an assault on people's history. It robs future generations of their landmarks and their heritage,' ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told AFP.

'No one who destroys that which embodies the very soul and the roots of a people through such crimes should be allowed to escape justice.'

FIVE FACTS ABOUT THE HOLY SITES AND THE AL-MAHDI TRIAL The trial of a Malian jihadist charged with war crimes for orchestrating the 2012 destruction of nine Timbuktu mausoleums and a section of a famous mosque, opened Monday at the International Criminal Court (ICC). How did the monuments come to be considered important and why were they destroyed? The mausoleums of Muslim saints located in Timbuktu's cemeteries and mosques date back to the ancient caravan city's golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries as an economic, intellectual and spiritual centre. Some date back as far as the 14th century. The construction of the original tombs of Muslim saints was undertaken by anonymous groups of family members or disciples of the saints, according to experts. The earthen mausoleums around them were erected after the tombs were desecrated by those who believed they could gain power from being close to the remains. In the centuries that followed, their maintenance and upkeep was taken on by descendants, local residents and patrons of the sites. Thirteen of the city's most revered sites became UNESCO-protected in 1988. Why are they revered? Known as the 'City of 333 saints', or the 'Pearl of the Desert', Muslims from across the world visited the tombs of saints as holy places where those in difficulty could ask for divine intervention. The city's inhabitants have long believed the tombs protect them from danger and they appeal to the saints for help. Throughout the years, residents have asked the saints to intervene in anything from securing a woman's hand in marriage to making the rains come. UNESCO describes them as 'pilgrimage sites for Malians and neighbouring west African countries.' Why were they destroyed? Islamist fighters desecrated the centuries-old shrines using pickaxes and chisels after seizing the city in April 2012. The jihadists considered the shrines, as well as priceless ancient manuscripts from Timbuktu's golden age, to be idolatrous. On trial Monday for his alleged role in spearheading the destruction was Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly Tuareg group which at the time held sway over Mali's desert north. Ansar Dine allied with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and a third group to occupy the city, until being routed in a French-led intervention in January 2013. Court prosecutors say the jihadists' first attempted to dissuade Timbuktu's residents from their long-held practice of worshipping the shrines, but after failing set upon their wholesale destruction. The Islamists also implemented a version of Islamic law which forced women to wear veils and set whipping and stoning as punishment for transgressions. Why is the ICC case important? The case is the first to be brought by the world's only permanent war crimes court over the extremist violence that rocked Mali in 2012 and 2013. It is also the first time that a jihadist has appeared before the court in The Hague and the first ICC case investigating the destruction of religious buildings and historical monuments. The defendant pleaded guilty - another first for the court - to a single charge of jointly ordering or carrying out the destruction. What happened to the mausoleums? The reconstruction of the shrines began in March 2014, relying heavily on traditional methods and employing local masons. To make sure the rebuilt shrines matched the old ones as closely as possible, work was checked against old photos and local elders were consulted throughout the process - an important step in a city where culture has traditionally been passed on by word of mouth. Several countries and organisations financed the reconstruction, including UNESCO. Work finished on the site in July 2015, and a ceremony marking the completion was held on February 4, 2016. Five head of cattle were ritually sacrificed just after dawn, ahead of a reading of the entire Muslim holy book, the Koran, and the handing of the keys to the families in charge of their care. Advertisement

Historically significant: The mausoleums of Timbuktu form a revered site

THE RICH HISTORY OF TIMBUKTU Founded between the 5th and the 12th centuries, Timbuktu's very name evokes centuries of history and has been dubbed 'the city of 333 saints' for the number of Muslim sages buried there. No one is quite sure whether the city has been home to precisely 333 saints, but local scholars have been able to pinpoint the burial places and tombs of around 20 of them, some of whom were great scholars. Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries, the site also known as the 'Pearl of the Desert'. Founded between the 5th and the 12th centuries, Timbuktu's very name evokes centuries of history and has been dubbed 'the city of 333 saints' for the number of Muslim sages buried there. Pictured is Sankore Mosque Over the past few hundred years around 700,000 manuscripts were collected in Timbuktu. They are now stored in eight libraries, but many used to be hidden, inside mosque walls and in cellars. It was acknowledged by the World Heritage Committee as having holy places crucial to the spread of Islam in Africa, historically important traditionally built mosques and the cultural golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries was also deemed significant. In the 19th century Mali - and so Timbuktu - became part of the colony of French Sudan, but was declared an independent republic in 1960. Located on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, it's still inhabited and has a population of around 54,000. It began life as a simple camp, but grew in size and importance because of its position between the Niger and the Sahara desert to the north. It became a staging post for caravan traders and people bringing goods up the river, including gold and slaves. As its wealth grew, so did the myths and legends surrounding it. Advertisement

The defence and the legal team for the victims will address the three-judge bench during the five days set aside for the trial. A verdict and judgement will follow later.

Handed over to the ICC by Niger in late 2015, Mahdi planned to plead guilty, as he is 'a Muslim who believes in justice,' defence lawyer Mohamed Aouini told a June hearing.

'He wants to be truthful to himself and he wants to admit the acts that he has committed,' Aouini said, adding he also sought 'pardon' for his acts.

Mahdi has been described as a quiet Koranic scholar who turned ruthless jihadist enforcer, fiercely imposing the strictest interpretation of Sharia law.

Frustrated when local people refused to stop worshipping at the ancient shrines, with such rites as praying for rain, or a good marriage, Mahdi ordered the attacks.

This photo taken on January 31, 2013, shows a French soldier standing guard in front of the Djingareyber mosque in Timbuktu. The French led an operation that drove the militants out

A girl walks past the surrounding wall of the Djingareyber Mosque in Timbuktu, a Unesco world heritage site that has attracted pilgrims from across Africa and the Middle East

Unesco chief Irina Bokova said recently the case was close to her heart and that she 'would never forget' the scenes of ransacked and damaged shrines she saw on a visit to Timbuktu in January 2013 shortly after the jihadists had been removed.

But Malian rights activists who have travelled to The Hague for the trial called on the ICC to continue its investigations into other crimes committed in the Mali conflict.

'The women of the north have suffered forced marriages and rape perpetrated by the jihadists,' Bakary Camara, an official with the Malian association for human rights, told AFP.
A mother's frantic pleas were answered after her 23-month-old daughter was found floating in an air pocket nearly an hour after a boat overturned in Florida.

A 25-foot recreational boat crashed in the Indian River in Cocoa around 10.40pm on Friday, throwing mother Tammy Bossard and her family into the water.

While Tammy, her husband and their nine-month-old daughter Charlotte were rescued shortly after, it took another 45 minutes before toddler Kennedy pulled from under the boat, WFTV reported.

A woman's 23-month-old daughter Kennedy was found floating in an air pocket nearly an hour after a boat overturned in Florida. Pictured, a police sergeant's wife Dora Dellatorre, a nurse who was on a date with her husband when they both rushed to the scene to help

After nearly an hour, Officers Matt Rush and and Corporal Alan Worth found the girl staying afloat in the water with her life jacket on in a small pocket of air under the boat, police said

Mother Tammy Bossard was sleeping with nine-month-old Charlotte in her arms, when she suddenly woke up in the water and tried to climb to the top of the boat (pictured)

Authorities quickly rescued Tammy, her husband, and baby Charlotte, but it took another 45 minutes before toddler Kennedy was pulled from the water

Tammy called 911 after the boat crashed in the Indian River near the Hubert Humphrey Bridge.

She was sleeping with Charlotte in her arms, when she suddenly woke up in the water and tried to climb to the top of the boat, FloridaToday.com reported.

Tammy pleaded for help, telling the dispatcher: 'Im in the river. My boat crashed and I have a baby still in the water. Please, God, send someone now.'

Sergeant Mike Dellatorre and his wife, Dora, were out on a date when the rushed to the scene to help.

Four patrol officers jumped in the water, and with the help of another civilian who was on a nearby boat, both parents and the baby were rescued.

Tammy later told reporters: 'We heard Kennedy crying. We couldn't find her. We couldn't tell where the crying was coming from.'

After nearly an hour, Officers Matt Rush and and Corporal Alan Worthy found the girl staying afloat in the water with her life jacket on in a small pocket of air under the boat, police said.

Worthy later explained they were fighting against the clock since visibility was low and diving into the water from different areas surrounding the boat was a time consuming process, Floriday Today reported.

Tammy, who said they could hear Kennedy crying throughout the rescue, broke down when she later said: 'Thank you for saving my baby. Saving our world, I can't imagine'

Police officer Alan Worthy later explained they were fighting against the clock since visibility was low and diving into the water from different areas surrounding the boat was a time consuming process

She was finally pulled from the hull, and the sergeant's wife Dora Dellatorre said: 'I just made sure she was breathing. She was awake crying, coughing.

'I just wrapped her up as much as I could with the life vest and my body heat just kept her awake and comforted her until we got to the shore.'

Tammy later teared up and toldWESH: 'Thank you for saving my baby. Saving our world, I can't imagine. I just can't imagine.'

Worthy recounted the rescue at a press conference, saying: 'Ill probably never forget that image of her holding her child out there. It was a pretty cool experience.'

Rush said the situation 'could have been a lot worse' and attributed the life jacket to saving the toddler's life.

Kennedy, along with the rest of her family were taken to the hospital, but all four are expected to be fine.

The Brevard County Sheriffs Office, Cocoa Fire Rescue, US Coast Guard and The Florida Wildlife Commission assisted with the rescue, according to the Cocoa police.

The wildlife commission is investigating the crash, police said.
The man was rushed to hospital where he remains in a critical condition

Paramedics said the man sustained serious head injuries in the incident

A man in his 50s is fighting for his life after being struck by a tram in Melbourne.

The pedestrian was knocked unconscious when he was hit by the 109 Box Hill tram as he crossed Victoria Parade in Fitzroy, a north-eastern suburb of Melbourne, on Monday just before 11.40am.

A Victoria Ambulance spokesperson said the man sustained severe head injuries and paramedics rushed him to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a critical condition.

A man in his 50s is fighting for his life after being struck by a tram in Melbourne

The pedestrian was knocked unconscious when he was hit by the 109 Box Hill tram as he crossed Victoria Parade in Fitzroy (pictured)

Police also attended the scene but a spokesperson was unable to confirm if the man was using a pedestrian crossing at the time of the incident.

The man's age has not been confirmed but he is believed to be in his 50s.

A Royal Melbourne Hospital spokes person told Daily Mail Australia that the man's condition had been upgraded to serious in the hours after he was admitted, but were unable to provide further comment.

The pedestrian was rushed to the the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a critical condition after the incident

Police attended the scene but a spokesperson was unable to confirm if the man was using a pedestrian crossing at the time
62% of men and 66% of women reported they were bullied in last 5 years

in AFP are almost double the national average

A major review of the Australian Federal Police has found sexual harassment and bullying is rife and dozens of members may have been the victims of rape and attempted rape by colleagues.

Nearly half of female members of the AFP say they have been sexually harassed at work in the last five years, while two-thirds of all members said they had been bullied.

The six-month review by former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick titled Cultural Change: Gender Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace, was carried out with more than 1,000 members of the force.

Former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick (pictured) conducted the review over a six-month period and found bullying and sexual harassment was 'pervasive' in the Australia Federal Police

Federal police commissioner Andrew Colvin has vowed to stamp out his organisation's 'boys' club' after the review.

He has also flagged the potential of criminal investigations into serious allegations of assault if people come forward.

Former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, who undertook six months of work and 1,000 interviews, said there is an urgent need for action inside the Australian Federal Police.

Releasing the report publicly on Monday, Mr Colvin also highlighted the finding that two per cent of those surveyed said they had been subjected to actual or attempted sexual assault in the past five years.

'All of this ends today,' he told reporters in Canberra, unreservedly apologising for past behaviour.

He urged members who told their stories to Ms Broderick anonymously to consider coming forward.

Police commissioner Mark Colvin (pictured) has vowed to stamp out the AFP's 'boys club' after the review findings

WHAT WERE THE REPORT FINDINGS? 46 per cent of women and 20 per cent of men reported being sexually harassed in the workplace in the last five years - more than double the national average

62 per cent of men and 66 per cent of women reported they were bullied in the workplace in the past five years

Members don't trust the reporting system, with many believing a complaint can have a negative impact on their career or leave them being ostracised Advertisement

'The processes that we have put in place from today will be different,' he said, vowing to take action.

A disappointed Mr Colvin admitted the report makes it clear there is a 'boys' club' and conceded on reflection he's seen evidence of bullying first-hand.

He agreed to all 24 'challenging and uncomfortable' recommendations from the report.

PLAN TO CLEAN UP AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE CULTURE Key recommendations from former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick include: Set up a cultural reform board to help assist with cultural change

Set up a specialised, independent office to investigate sexual harassment and abuse and support victims

Advise all employees there will be a zero tolerance approach to sexual harassment and all incidents will be treated as serious matters

Adopt a 'flex by default approach, which would see refusal for flexible work reviewed by senior leadership

Advertisement

Assistant commissioner Ray Johnson will head up a new division to lead the reform process.

Many women reported to Ms Broderick's team they had rewarding and worthwhile careers in the AFP, but a large proportion of others said they experience a range of challenges.

CHALLENGES REPORTED BY WOMEN IN THE AFP Difficulties of having to 'fit in' in a male-dominated culture

Having to 'prove themselves'

In some cases, work in a sexualised environment

Others spoke of the struggle to choose between a career and family and a stigma attached to maternity leave Advertisement

Despite the challenges female members of the force reported, Ms Broderick commended the AFP for trying to create a more flexible workplace, through trials of split shifts and other rostering initiatives.

She proposed a 'flex by default' policy, under which senior staff would review refusal for flexible hours.

The report also found women are under-represented across the AFP.

Mr Colvin also highlighted the report finding that two per cent of those surveyed said they had been subjected to actual or attempted sexual assault in the past five years

As of April 2016, women made up 35 per cent of all personnel - including 22 per cent of police.

Despite the findings, Ms Broderick says they are not a reason for the community to in any way have reduced confidence in the AFP.

'Quite the contrary,' she said.
Advertisement

Olympics legend Michael Phelps splashed a whopping $2.5million on a sprawling Arizona mansion he purchased late last year.

The U.S. swimmer - who in Rio underlined his status as the King of the Olympic Games, winning five more gold medals to bring his total to 23 - purchased the home right after construction was completed on it, according to TMZ.

The 6,010-square-foot Scottsdale home, that of course comes complete with a resort-style pool, also boasts views of Camelback Mountain from the backyard.

Scroll down for video

Olympics legend Michael Phelps splashed a whopping $2.5million on a sprawling Arizona mansion (pictured) he purchased late last year

The U.S. swimmer purchased the home, which comes complete with a resort-style pool, right after construction was completed on it

In the bright kitchen, features include imported hardwood floors and top-of-the-line appliances

Phelps, 31, and his fiancee Nicole Johnson moved into the very private home located in the ritzy suburb of Paradise Valley two days before the new year.

At the time, the couple was expecting their son Boomer, who was born in May.

The property boasts five bedrooms and six-and-a-half bathrooms, along with four fireplaces, a back outdoor living area and a hot tub.

Among its features include European stone and imported hardwood floors, custom lighting and top-of-the-line appliances, according to the listing.

The patio is handset with imported Concha Stone quarried from an ancient seabed and is finished off with lush landscaping that includes fruit trees.

The sleek yet simple kitchen also features custom lighting and views of the resort-style pool

One of the sitting areas features one of the home's four fireplaces, hardwood floors and light-colored decor

In a room that appears to be an office, a chevron print carpet covers hardwood floors and is complimented by grey-colored seating embellished with studded trim

The 6,010-square-foot Scottsdale home features an open layout between the dining area and living room, with a fireplace making a large statement in between the two. The dining room features a large farm table and chairs with stud detailing

On the other side of the fire place, the living room comes in full view featuring light-colored decor and a chandelier

The 2015 home is the mastermind of Henry Mohrschladt, the award-winning builder of world-class sailboats and yachts, and Craig Banner of American Tradition Builders.

Phelps has previously owned residences before, including one in Baltimore that he reportedly sold.

'Our backyard looks right at Camelback Mountain,' said in an interview back in January right after he purchased the Arizona mansion.

'You go outside in our backyard and we have orange and tangerine and lemon and lime and peach and apple  all these different fruit trees growing in our backyard.'

At the time, he was excited to talk about decorating the nursery for his son.

'We have kind of a grayish theme,' Phelps said of the decor inside the home.

'We may do like a global theme, like a world map, something like that.

'Or we want to do a water theme. We have a couple of things in mind.'

The master bedroom features doors on either side leading to the outdoor area. It also includes hardwood floors, a fireplace and is accentuated with exposed beams

Another view of the master bedroom shows an entrance to an outdoor area and the fireplace

In the master bathroom, marble tile covers the floor and countertops on two separate vanities. The bathroom also includes a chandelier, a shower and a free-standing bathtub

The 2015 home is the mastermind of Henry Mohrschladt, the award-winning builder of world-class sailboats and yachts, and Craig Banner of American Tradition Builders

Last Monday, Phelps made it official, announcing that he was packing away his Speedos and saying goodbye to the world of competitive swimming.

'Done, done, done - and this time I mean it,' Phelps told host Matt Lauer on Today.

'I wanted to come back and finish my career how I wanted and this was the cherry on top of the cake.'

Phelps went on to say he will still be involved in the sport, but for now wants to focus on his fiance and newborn baby Boomer, who he was seen carrying as he arrived for his live segment on Monday.

'This is the part of my life where I get to start a whole new chapter, which is getting to build a family with Nicole,' explained Phelps.

The 31-year-old swimming great spoke with Matt Lauer after finishing up the Rio Games with yet another impressive haul of medals, taking home five golds and one silver to bring his total medal count to 28 over the course of four Olympics.

Phelps has competed in five Olympic Games but did not medal back in 2000 while swimming in Sydney.

Of the 28 medals Phelps has won, 23 are gold. Only 37 countries have taken home more medals.

Phelps, 31, (left) and his fiancee Nicole Johnson moved into the very private home located in the ritzy suburb of Paradise Valley two days before the new year. At the time, the couple was expecting their son Boomer, who was born in May (pictured with his mother, right)

Phelps' mother Deborah (center) and his fiancee Johnson (left, holding their son Boomer) pictured at the Rio Olympics. Phelps announced on Monday he is saying goodbye to the world of competitive swimming
The woman kidnapped by her abusive ex-boyfriend after he murdered her five friends in their beds escaped his clutches when he momentarily left the vehicle, Mobile County District Attorney has revealed.

Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com, DA Ashley Rich said Laneta Lester broke free from Derrick Dearman when he left her and a three-month-old baby alone in the car and went into his father's house.

It had previously been reported that Dearman released Laneta and the child from his father's house before turning himself in to the Greene County Sheriff's Office.

'She managed to escape in the kidnap vehicle with the baby when he (Dearman) got out', DA Riche said.

Dearman is accused of murdering five people in the rural Alabama house as they slept in their beds, before kidnapping ex-girlfriend Laneta Lester (pictured left) and a three-month-old infant

Lester then drove to the police station and raised the alarm.

'She arrived visibly distressed', added Rich.

Dearman, 27, of Leakesville, Mississippi, has been charged with six counts of capital murder in what Mobile County police officers described as the worst case they had ever come across.

On Saturday afternoon inside a house in Citronelle, a small town 30 miles northwest of Mobile, officers discovered the bodies of Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; and Robert Lee Brown, 26 and five-months pregnant Chelsea Marie Reed, 22.

DA Ashley Rich believed the motive for the murders was that Dearman was furious at Lester's friends for harboring her and keeping her away from him in the rural Citronelle home.

It has since been revealed that police were called to the home on Jim Platt Road, Citronelle, at 1am Saturday after someone in the home reported Derrick Dearman, 27, lurking outside.

But cops couldn't find Dearman when they arrived and left shortly after.

Dearman then returned to the house at some point between 1:15am and dawn, murdering his victims in their sleep with multiple instruments, including a gun, before kidnapping Lester along with one of his alleged victims' children - a baby of three-months.

Police had been called out to the home on Jim Platt Road, near Citronelle, at around 1am after residents said the spotted Dearman. Cops left after failing to locate him

A four-month-old infant was found alive in the home.

Lester had gone to the house to stay with her sister in an attempt to escape their 'abusive relationship,' the Mobile County Sheriff's Office said. It did not say which victim was her sister.

A teenager who said she was related to all five victims by marriage or blood shook her head and fought away tears as she described her anguish over the slayings.

'They were really good people. They'd call and check on you, ask if you want to come down and eat,' said Madison McDaniel, 17, who lives nearby.

Robert F Brown, father of victim Robert Lee Brown, told AI.com how his mother was also murdered in 1974.

He said: 'I was with her in the ambulance when she died. To have to go through this again...

'If I could get my hands on (the killer), I'd kill him myself.'

One of the residents called 911 shortly after midnight to report Dearman was trespassing on the property. He fled before officers arrived and could not be found.

Later that night, police said, Dearman returned to the house and attacked the occupants while they were sleeping, using multiple weapons, including guns.

One of the victims in the gruesome killing was named as 26-year-old Joseph Adam Turner (right). It's believed he and the others were helping Lester flee her 'abusive relationship'

Dearman was charged with six counts of murder for killing five people including Justin Reed (right), Chelsea Reed (left) and her unborn baby

Dearman - who also killed Robert Lee Brown (pictured) - later released Lester and the infant

Even veteran officers were shocked at the bloody scene they found inside the home (pictured, one of the victims, Shannon Randall)

Even veteran officers were shocked at the scene they found inside the home.

Local police chief Shane Stringer said: 'It's a very, very gruesome scene. It's awful,' according to BNO News.

He has been arrested for the crime, which the FBI is investigating due to its horrific nature.

The Mobile County district attorney Ashley Rich added: 'I've never seen a scene where there were 5 people that were brutally and viciously murdered, and that's what we have here.'

A woman believed to be Dearman's ex-wife later took to Facebook to let her friends and family know she was safe.

Crystal Leann Dearman wrote: 'According to a news report earlier this afternoon my ex husband is in custody for the murder of five people in Citronelle.

Dearman (left and right) turned himself in to police across the state in Greene County, Mississippi. Police say Dearmon knew at least one of the victims

Awful: Authorities investigate the murder scene where five people, including a pregnant woman, were found dead on Saturday in Citronelle

'I am writing this post to let everyone that me and my children were not involved and prayers for those involved whoever they are and their friends and family are in order.'

The home where the victims were found is located about several hundred yards from Jim Platt Road in a wooded area.

Authorities have not disclosed how the victims were killed, but said that at least one gun was used.

Authorities said they would be at the scene of the murder for at least a few days and a press conference will be held sometime on Sunday.

A woman first reported the crime by walking into the Citronelle police station to report a body at the property on Saturday afternoon.

Neighbors say that a brother and sister and their two families, including children, lived in the home.

The gruesome scene happened in Citronelle, which is located in the south-east part of Alabama, about 245 miles away from Birmingham

Horrific: Police say the five people were murdered with 'multiple instruments' including a gun

Mobile County sheriff confirmed Dearman, of Leakesville, Mississippi, has a criminal record and is wanted for a burglary in south Alabama.

He has been charged with six counts of capital murder - five for each of his victims, plus one for the five-month-old fetus Chelsea Reed was carrying.

The massacre Dearman is accused of is one of the worst in the state's history.
A security guard blamed for the death of an elderly patient he tackled to the ground in a Brisbane hospital will return to work after being released from custody.

Shane Kilgariff, 50, was granted bail when he faced the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Monday, charged with manslaughter over the 81-year-old patient's death.

The case dates back to April 30 when the patient allegedly became aggressive and grabbed a fire hose and began spraying it around his ward at the Prince Charles Hospital, prompting security to intervene.

Security guard Shane Kilgariff (left) leaves after being granted bail at the Brisbane Magistrates Court

'In doing so, it is alleged he was tackled to the ground and the injuries that were inflicted by that have subsequently resulted in his loss of life,' police prosecutor Sergeant Tony White told the court.

The elderly man was moved to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, but died about two weeks after the incident.

Sgt White said Kilgariff was still employed at the hospital, but in an administrative role.

'So there's no opposition to him being allowed back at the hospital,' Sgt White said.

Magistrate Robert Walker granted Kilgariff bail on the condition that he report weekly to police and not travel overseas.

Kilgariff, who left the court in a black hoodie, did not speak to waiting media.

He will return to court on September 5.

Meanwhile, Queensland Health have launched an internal investigation into the incident.

'We offer our sincere condolences to the family for the loss of their loved one,' a spokeswoman said.
Japan's First Lady has visited Pearl Harbor to pay tribute to the victims of the Japanese attack 75 years ago.

The surprise attack in 1941 killed more than 2,400 Americans and damaged eight of the Hawaiian naval base's battleships.

Akie Abe said in her Facebook entry on Monday that she offered flowers and a prayer at the USS Arizona Memorial in Honolulu.

She did not elaborate on her visit that comes amid looming speculation about a similar visit by her husband, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Last night Japan's PM popped out of a giant green pipe dressed as video game character Super Mario during the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games - as Rio passed the baton onto Tokyo.

Paying her respects: This photo, posted on Akie Abe's Facebook account, shows her at the USS Arizona Memorial in Honolulu

Akie Abe said in her Facebook entry on Monday that she offered flowers and a prayer at the Arizona Memorial (she is pictured, right, in 2006, in Seoul)

The Pearl Harbor base was attacked by 353 Japanese fighters, bombers and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers

Japanese fighter pilots attacked the US base on Oahu, killing more than 2,400 Americans

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga acknowledged the first lady was in Hawaii to attend an environmental conference, but did not elaborate on that - saying she was making a private visit.

Speculation for Abe's possible visit to Pearl Harbor has grown since President Barack Obama paid tribute in May to the victims of the US atomic bombing in Hiroshima.

No serving Japanese prime minister has ever visited Pearl Harbor.
In the dock: Father Laurence Soper is accused of abusing five boys as young as 14 between 1972 to 1986

A Catholic monk has been returned to Britain from Kosovo following a five-year police manhunt and appeared in court today accused of a string of historical sex offences.

Father Laurence Soper is accused of abusing five boys as young as 14 between 1972 to 1986.

The nine charges include offences of buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault.

The 72-year-old was arrested as he arrived at Luton Airport on Sunday by officers from Scotland Yard's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command.

Soper, who was detained under a European Arrest Warrant in Kosovo in May, appeared at Ealing Magistrates' Court today and gave his name as Andrew Charles Kingston Soper - Laurence being the name he took when he was formally ordained as a priest.

Four of the charges, including buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault, relate to a single alleged victim and date from February 17, 1972 to February 18, 1976.

The boy was aged under 14 when Soper carried out an act of gross indecency against him, it is alleged.

Laurence Soper went into hiding after teaching at St Benedict's and then abbot of Ealing Abbey, pictured

Two charges of indecent assault relate to a second boy aged under 16 alleged to have occurred between 22 August 1979 and 23 August 1984.

Soper faces charges of indecent assault against two further boys under 16, alleged to have taken place between 4 December 1979 and 23 December 1984, and 10 November 1979 and 11 November 1984.

In hiding: According to Kosovan news outlet Insajderi, Soper lived in Pec for years under the name Andrew

A fifth boy aged under 16 was assaulted on a day between 14 May 1982 and 15 May 1986, it is alleged.

Wearing a black bomber jacket, the bespectacled former abbot of Ealing Abbey, strained to hear proceedings, but nodded in understanding as his case was sent to Isleworth Crown Court.

The ex-headmaster of St Benedict's School is due to appear in that court on September 19.

A Met spokesman said: 'Soper was arrested by officers as he arrived back in the UK at Luton Airport from Kosovo.

'He is currently in custody at a west London police station.'

According to Kosovan news outlet Insajderi, Soper lived in Pec for years under the name Andrew.

'He lived in a house of a friend of mine. I have spoken and met with him several times. He said he was writing a book,' a resident told the outlet.

Having worked for nearly 30 years at St Benedict's, a 12,000-a-year private school attached to the Abbey, now-expelled monk Soper quit Britain in 2001 for Rome to become treasurer at the Benedictine Order's headquarters at St Anselmo.
A 21-year-old man is to go on trial accused of the murder of a Bangladeshi religious leader found beaten to death in a children's playground in Rochadale.

Jalal Uddin, 64, was found with serious head injuries in Wardleworth, Greater Manchester, and taken to hospital after being attacked in February.

But Mr Uddin, who is believed to have been returning from the local mosque for prayers, sadly died a short time later.

Jalal Uddin was found in a children's play area (Greater Manchester Police/PA)

He was on his way to meet a friend when he was attacked.

Mohammed Hussain Syeedy, also from Rochdale, denies the murder and will stand trial today.

He has also pleaded not guilty to conspiring with others between August 1 2015 and February 19 this year to murder Mr Uddin.
The right-wing politician said it would 'deter'

Gyorgy Schopflin, 76, suggested on Twitter that pigs' heads should be placed on the border to prevent refugees from entering

A Hungarian politician has sparked outrage for suggesting placing pigs' heads on fences at the border will deter refugees from entering the country.

Gyorgy Schopflin, 76 - part of the country's right wing party - made the comment when responding to criticism about their attitude towards refugees.

The MEP posted on Twitter that by placing the head of a pig on fences at the border it would 'deter' people try to enter 'more effectively'.

Schopflin, of the Fidesz Party, was replying to Human Rights Watch director Andrew Stroehlein.

The argument on Twitter came after Hungarian officials placed masks made from vegetables on their border fences in a bid to prevent refugees trying to enter the country.

Mr Stroehlein tweeted: 'Refugees are fleeing war & torture, Hungary.

'Your root vegetable heads will not deter them.'

Mr Schopflin quickly replied: 'Might do so. Human images are haram.

'But agree, pig's head would deter more effectively.'

But the politician's response has sparked outrage and Mr Stroehlein has described him as an 'embarrassment to humanity'.

He also said that Schopflin's suggestion was 'disgusting' and accused him of spouting 'xenophobic filth'.

The MEP posted on his comments on Twitter. Migrants were photographed in front of barrier at the border with Hungary and Serbia in 2015

A Hungarian soldier installs a wire fence at the border between Hungary and Serbia in 2015

Speaking directly to the MEP, Mr Stroehlein said: 'Your words are disgusting.

'I would expect that from anonymous neo-Nazi trolls but you're an MEP. Act like one.'

He continued: 'You are an embarrassment to Hungary, to Europe & to humanity.'

The Hungarian politician wrote on Twitter that a way to deter refugees from entering the country would be to place pigs' heads on the border

Andrew Stroehlein replied and said that the politician's words were 'disgusting'

The Human Rights Watch director added that Mr Schopflin was an 'embarrassment to humanity'

Of 177,135 asylum applicants to Hungary in 2015, just 146 were approved, according to government statistics.

In March 2015, the Hungarian government declared a state of emergency in the country due to Europe's refugee crisis.
Hillary Clinton has banned journalists from her fundraisers, keeping the public in the dark about what she tells her richest and most powerful supporters.

In Provincetown, Massachusetts yesterday, five reporters crowded into the corner of a parking lot, clinging to a chain link fence as they tried to catch her speech to a crowd of about 1,000 supporters.

Over the weekend the candidate has wined and dined in the summer playground of the East Coast's moneyed elite.

She has spoken to more than 2,200 campaign donors but what she told her supporters remains a mystery.

In the dark: Reporters gather at chain link fence corner of a parking trying to hear Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's remarks to a crowd of about 1,000 supporters

Clinton's approach reverses nearly a decade of greater transparency in presidential campaigns and differs from the Democratic president she hopes to succeed.

While reporters are escorted out of Obama's events before the start of the juicier Q&A, the President's approach offers at least a limited measure of accountability that some fear may disappear when Clinton or Republican nominee Donald Trump move into the White House.

'Unfortunately these things have a tendency to ratchet down,' said Larry Noble, the general counsel of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. 'As the bar gets lower, it's hard to raise it again.'

Clinton's campaign does release limited details about her events, naming the hosts, how many people attended and how much they gave.

That's more than Donald Trump, whose far fewer fundraisers are held entirely away from the media, with no details provided.

Clinton held all of her fundraisers behind closed doors, leaving voters in the dark about what she's telling some of her most influential supporters

Even some Democrats privately acknowledge that Clinton's penchant for secrecy is a liability, given voters continued doubts about her honesty.

While Clinton will occasionally take questions from reporters at campaign stops, she has not held a full-fledged news conference in more than 260 days whereas Trump has held several.

She refuses to release the transcripts of dozens of closed-door speeches she delivered to companies and business associations after leaving the State Department, despite significant bipartisan criticism.

And since announcing her presidential bid in April 2015, Clinton has held around 300 fundraising events  only around five have been open to any kind of news coverage.

'It does feed this rap about being secretive and being suspicious,' said GOP strategist Whit Ayers.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton greets people as she arrives at Provincetown Municipal Airport in Provincetown

Clinton's aides have promised for weeks that greater access to her events will be coming soon. But Trump's lack of disclosure has given her political cover to keep the doors closed, particularly as she conducts a period of intense fundraising before the final sprint to Election Day.

While Clinton is expected to make only two public appearances before the end of August, she and her top backers will mingle with donors at no fewer than 54 events according to a fundraising schedule.

Reporters covering these events wait outside, in vans, parking lots and vacant guesthouses  even at homes they've entered with Obama at previous events.

During a Saturday fundraiser at a stately Martha's Vineyard estate, faint cheers could be heard as Clinton addressed 700 donors on a green lawn overlooking the water. Staffers instructed drivers to roll up the windows of the vans where reporters waited before being ushered into a nearby guesthouse.

Singer and actress Cher stops to talk to media as she leaves a fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum

What a candidate tells his or her rich donors has long been a subject of intense speculation in American politics, in part because the message can be different than what they offer to voters.

Obama is still haunted by a comment he made at a 2008 fundraiser in San Francisco, calling voters in small town Pennsylvania 'bitter' and saying they cling to 'guns or religion.' He learned a lesson: At events during his 2012 campaign, staffers set up a table where guests were expected to check their cellphones before entering. Clinton has tried to ban tweeting, Instagram and other forms of social media at some of her events.

Four years ago, a waiter recorded and leaked remarks GOP nominee Mitt Romney made about the '47 percent' of voters who are 'dependent on government and would vote for Obama 'no matter what' at a closed Florida fundraiser. After his convention, Romney started opening his fundraisers to the media to grab headlines, especially on days when he had no other public appearances.

His former aides say that's not a problem for Clinton.
Firefighters battled fast-moving wildfires in eastern Washington that have destroyed homes and forced hundreds of residents to flee.

Three blazes in the Spokane region erupted on Sunday afternoon, sending families rushing to pile pets and keepsakes into vehicles and hit the road.

Homes burned in the Beacon Hill area of Spokane, in wheat country near Spangle and north of Davenport in nearby Lincoln County,The Spokesman-Review reported.

Scroll down for video

Flames erupt in a stand of trees north of Walla Walla, Washington, during a large wildfire that broke out on Sunday

A fire truck moves along Highway 125 past a blazing stack of hay bales north of Walla Walla

But the extent of the losses and number of evacuees was unclear as firefighters worked through the night and into Monday morning.

However, no injuries have been reported.

Together, the three blazes scorched nearly seven square miles (or 4480 acres) of terrain and sent plumes of smoke billowing high over the region.

Residents evacuating from the Beacon Hill-area fire on Spokane's northeast end, where a blaze had scorched 250 acres by Sunday evening, met other homeowners trying to get into their properties, only to be met with roadblocks.

Many were left wondering if their homes would be spared, the Spokane newspaper said.

Together, the three blazes scorched nearly seven square miles (or 4480 acres) of terrain

Firefighters sent a back up burn to get rid of fuels on the ground after a fire started by a downed power line in Spangle

In the aftermath of a fire that started from a downed power line, JJ Anderson uses a rake to put out hot spots on the property of his brother, PJ Anderson northeast of Spangle

Brittany Paris shared an image of a burned down garage after blazes in Washington

A plane drops a load of fire retardant on the north side of Beacon Hill on Sunday

The largest of the fires began when a power line came down in a field near Spangle, south of Spokane.

The blaze chewed through almost four square miles as it raced across the parched landscape, consuming wheat stubble, brush and trees  and a few homes.

In Lincoln County, about 35 miles east of Spokane, a 2.5-square-mile wildfire - dubbed the Hart Fire - north of Davenport jumped the Spokane River and threatened dozens of homes, engulfing several of them, the paper reported.

In the early hours of Monday, Lincoln County Sheriff Wade Magers warned residents that the fire is still 'out of control.'

Firefighters battled fast-moving wildfires in eastern Washington that have destroyed homes and forced hundreds of residents to flee

Firefighters are battling a huge fire in wheat country near Spangle (pictured above)

Three blazes in the Spokane region erupted on Sunday afternoon, in the Beacon Hill area of Spokane, in wheat country near Spangle and north of Davenport in nearby Lincoln County

'The Hart Fire is still burning out of control. It has crossed the river and Wellpinit is being evacuated,' he wrote on Facebook.

'We ask the public to be aware of your situation and be prepared to leave at a moments notice. Do not count on emergency personnel to be able to notify you at all times of the current fire status.'

He added: 'The night has brought significant challenges and much of the fire is in very rough terrain.'

An evacuation center was set up at the Lincoln County Fair Grounds with Red Cross personnel are present.

The flames sent families rushing to pile pets and keepsakes into vehicles and hit the road

A 2.5-square-mile wildfire is raging in Lincoln County, about 35 miles east of Spokane
A 65-year-old mother was mauled to death by a group of 100 stray dogs who ripped parts of her arms and legs off while she visited her local beach.

According to witnesses the tragic woman, named as Siluvamma, was walking on the beach in Pulluvila in Kerala, south India, when the dogs set upon her.

The huge pack of animals attacked the helpless woman and her son Selvan tried to rescue his mother but was forced to escape by jumping in the sea.

He was unable to save his mother after some of the pack chased after him and told reporters: 'My mother went to the beach at night.

The tragic woman, named as Siluvamma (pictured) was walking on the beach in Pulluvila in Kerala, south India, when the dogs set upon her

The huge pack of stray dogs (stock photo) attacked the helpless woman and her son Selvan tried to rescue her but she died of her injuries

'As she did not return, I went out searching for her.

'What I saw was shocking. She was being attacked by over 100 stray dogs. She was bleeding all over the body.'

By the time her son and others eventually forced to dogs to retreat, his mother had already been bitten numerous of times and witnesses claimed parts of her arms and legs had been bitten off.

The woman was rushed to a local hospital but died on the way, reports The Hindu newspaper.

An angry resident told Indian broadcasting station NDTV: 'We have lost all our patience as the authorities are hanging on to some obscure law which says dogs cannot be eliminated. Are we inferior to these dogs.'

Meanwhile, just minutes after the tragic incident, a 52-year-old woman called Daisy was also attacked by stray dogs on the same seafront.

The feral dogs live close to beach because they feed on raw meat which is left there.

The woman, 65, had been visiting her local beach in Kerala (pictured, stock photograph)

The state of Kerala has a high population of stray dogs and at least 100,000 people have been attacked by them.

In 2015, the state government allowed for the mass slaughter of stray dogs, leading to the culling of close to 50,000 of the animals.
DNA tests require them to trace the female descendants of the sailors

Experts will test whether locks of hair belonged to these mutineers

Some evaded British justice on Pitcairn island in the south Pacific

Seven locks of hair found stuffed in a rusty tobacco tin could belong to the sailors behind the most infamous mutiny in British history, experts believe.

The severed pigtails could have been taken from the traitorous crew of the HMS Bounty, who joined with first mate Fletcher Christian to overthrow Captain William Bligh on April 28, 1789.

Christian and 17 crew members seized the ship, casting Bligh and 18 loyal shipmates adrift in the Pacific before heading for Tahiti.

Mystery: The pigtails could have been taken from the crew of the HMS Bounty, who joined with first mate Fletcher Christian to overthrow Captain William Bligh on April 28, 1789

Mutiny: First mate Fletcher Christian and 17 crew members seized the HMS Bounty, pictured right, and cast Bligh and 18 loyal shipmates adrift in the Pacific, left, before sailing to Tahiti

Settled: A group of mutineers then hid from the Royal Navy with their Polynesian wives on Pitcairn island in the south Pacific, pictured, which their descendants still inhabit today

A group of mutineers then hid from the Royal Navy with their Polynesian wives on Pitcairn island in the south Pacific, which their descendants still inhabit today.

Ten locks of hair will be tested. It is believed seven belong to mutineers while the other three belonged to their Tahitian wives who sailed with them to Pictairn.

Experts from King's College London will now carry out DNA tests to try and establish the origin of the pigtails.

Herbert Ford, director of the Pitcairn Islands Study Center, told The Times: 'We need to know the truth - as much as humanly possible - about these locks of hair.

'If the tests and genealogical studies of this hair authenticates that it is of seven of the nine mutineers who hid out from British justice on Pitcairn Island in 1790, it will be the only tangible physical evidence of their having existed.'

Denise Syndercombe-Court, reader in forensic genetics at Kings College, said the team will first try to establish whether the hairs are from Europeans or Polynesians.

At loggerheads: Captain Bligh, left, was dragged from his cabin in the middle of the night by first mate Fletcher Christian, right, and his band of mutineers

She told MailOnline: 'This would go some way to verifying this story that they belong to mutineers.'

After that, the research becomes much more challenging as scientists would have to trace back through the female line of each suspected mutineer to try and find a living relative to test against.

'It would be painstaking research,' Dr Syndercombe-Court said.

She added: 'We have no idea about how much viable DNA we are going to get from 250 year old hair.We will try and clean off any contaminating DNA.

'If they have been sitting in a tin for all this time then that might help.'
Disruptive boys at an approved school in Britain were given an experimental anti-epilepsy drug without parental consent in the 1960s, it was revealed today.

Irritable, restless and aggressive teenagers at Richmond Hill Approved School in North Yorkshire received the drug after Home Office doctors gave their consent.

They also backed a request to give a sedative to girls at Springhead Park Approved School in Rothwell, West Yorkshire, but managers at that school blocked it.

Irritable restless and aggressive boys at Richmond Hill Approved School (pictured as it is today) in North Yorkshire received the drug after Home Office doctors gave their consent

The revelations have emerged in a BBC report on National Archives files about the use of drugs at the schools, which were between a children's home and borstal.

Dr JR Hawkings, a psychiatrist attached to Richmond Hill, wanted to conduct a drug trial on impulsive, explosive, irritable, restless and aggressive boys in 1967.

Dr Hawkings wrote to the Home Office asking if he could give some of them the anticonvulsant drug Beclamide, a sedative which was prescribed for epilepsy.

He said it would be a perfectly normal and legitimate therapy for certain types of disturbed adolescent but admitted it had not been widely tested on such boys.

But there is no suggestion the trial was explained to the children - or even any indication that their consent was sought, reported the BBC's Sanchia Berg.

However Home Office psychiatrist Dr Pamela Mason welcomed his plan, saying in writing that she would recommend maximum support for this project.

Home Office doctors also backed a request to give a sedative to girls at Springhead Park Approved School (seen as it is today) in Rothwell, West Yorkshire, but managers blocked it

Notes on the file suggest the trial happened in 1968 over a six-month period, but there is no record of the outcome in the papers or in any medical journals.

The headmaster said assurances from the school doctor, the manufactures doctor and Dr Hawkings meant managers had decided not to consult the parents.

But Bob Hammal, who taught at the school from 1968 and 1972, told the BBC he was shocked to hear of the trial and was not aware of it at the time.

He said: What really did shock me more than anything was that parental consent was not sought and was not thought to be necessary by the powers that be.

Meanwhile another trial was proposed at Springhead Park Approved School, where the school psychiatrist wanted to allay the anxiety of the girls chemically.

A Home Office psychiatrist welcomed the plan, saying in writing that she would recommend maximum support for this project. Pictured: The Home Office on Marsham Street in London

The plan was again backed by Dr Mason, but the headmistress did not support it and the managers blocked the trial over concerns about what parents might think.

Legal expert Alan Collins, partner at Hugh James solicitors, told MailOnline: 'Quite clearly from the evidence obtained by the BBC, some of those involved in leading this experiment believed that consent for these drugs to be used on children was not required, either from the children themselves or their parents.

'However, given the state of knowledge on the issue of consent in around 1967, as set out by the Declaration of Helsinki in 1964, there is no doubt that from an ethical and legal perspective, informed consent should have been a requirement.

'Indeed, even by the standards of the day, it would have been necessary to explain to the parents what was proposed and why, and what the risks were. The children or their parents could then have declined to participate.
Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale became the latest senior party figure to urge members to ditch Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

She threw her support behind leadership challenger Owen Smith in the contest as ballot papers began to be sent out today.

Ms Dugdale accused Mr Corbyn of speaking 'only to the converted' and said Mr Smith could unite the Labour party and win the next General Election.

She follows Labour's London Mayor Sadiq Khan in calling on Labour members to oust Mr Corbyn as leader.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale became the latest senior party figure to urge members to ditch Jeremy Corbyn (pictured at a rally in Kilburn, London last night) as leader

Today the first ballot papers were sent out to the estimated 640,000 members and supporters who will decide whether Mr Corbyn carries on as leader or is replaced by his challenger Mr Smith.

With many expected to cast their votes in the coming days, it could be a vital week in the contest - even though polling does not close until September 21.

The result of the leadership election will be announced on the eve of the Labour party conference on September 24.

Ms Dugdale's intervention today is significant as many Corbyn allies believed his leadership could win back key voters in Scotland.

But the Scottish Labour leader said that having slipped to an embarrassing third place in May's Scottish Parliamentary elections, she had seen first-hand what happens to a party that 'repeatedly refuses to listen to the message the electorate is saying'.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale (pictured right with her partner Louise Riddell in May) said that having slipped to an embarrassing third place in May's Scottish Parliamentary elections, she had seen first-hand what happens to a party that 'repeatedly refuses to listen to the message the electorate is saying'

Kezia Dugdale follows Labour's London Mayor Sadiq Khan (pictured during the launch of the night tube last week) in calling on Labour members to oust Mr Corbyn as leader

'I actually think because we came third in Scotland is actually why people should listen to me,' Ms Dugdale told the Today programme.

'First and foremost, I know what it takes to run a campaign. I know what the demands of the job are, I know the skills required, I know the discipline that is required.

'That leads me to the conclusion that I think Owen is better placed than Jeremy.

'Reason number two. I know what happens when a party repeatedly refuses to listen to the message that the electorate is saying - when repeatedly it seems out of touch and that is the consequence of what has happened in Scotland, which has led Labour to come third in the most recent Scottish parliamentary elections.'

Ms Dugdale said she felt she had a 'responsibility' to speak out because she was the most senior female elected leader in the party across the UK.

Kezia Dugdale accused Jeremy Corbyn (pictured at a rally in Kilburn, London last night) of speaking 'only to the converted' and said Mr Smith could unite the Labour party and win the next General Election

Throwing her support behind Mr Smith, she wrote in today's Daily Record that he could unite the deeply divided Labour party.

'Owen Smith gets my vote. I believe he can unite our party and move us on from the divisions that exist under the current leadership of Jeremy Corbyn,' she wrote.

'Owen understands that to have a chance of implementing Labour values, we need to win over some of those who didn't vote for us at the last election.

'We can't pin our hopes on a leadership who speak only to the converted, rather than speaking to the country as a whole.'

Sadiq Khan (pictured luanching the night tube last week) was booed by Corbyn supporters last night after he urged Labour members to ditch the left-wing leader

In a damning indictment of Mr Corbyn's leadership, Ms Dugdale added: 'My only public comment on Jeremy's leadership before this contest was to say he had lost the confidence of his parliamentary colleagues. That's a fact.

'More than 80 per cent of Labour MPs expressed a lack of confidence in Jeremy's leadership.

'If 80 per cent of my colleagues in the Scottish Parliament didn't support me, I wouldn't be able to do the job - even though I received 72 per cent of the votes when party members and trade unionists in Scotland elected me to be their leader.

'I don't think Jeremy can unite our party and lead us into government. He cannot appeal to a broad enough section of voters to win an election. 'I believe Owen can.'

As the first ballot papers go out to the estimated 640,000 party members with a vote in the contest, Mr Corbyn and Mr Smith are due in Scotland later this week for a hustings debate.

Writing in the Observer yesterday, Mr Khan said Mr Corbyn  whom he nominated for the Labour leadership just a year ago  was a principled man whose campaign last summer drew many new members to the party.

But he said Mr Corbyn had 'failed to win the trust and respect of the British people' and was incapable of becoming Prime Minister.

He went on: Our new members, like all of us, are desperate for a Labour Government to make Britain fairer.

And that is why I have decided to vote for Owen Smith  because Labour Party members, and the British people, need Labour to win the next General Election.

But Mr Khan - who made the comments just hours after insisting he would remain neutral in the leadership election - was booed by supporters of the Labour leader at a rally in London last night.

Union barons in strike plot to topple the Tories: Junior doctors, rail guards and teachers co-ordinate walkouts to increase chaos

Militant trades unions are plotting a wave of strikes this autumn in a bid to topple the Government.

Leaders of strikes by junior doctors, rail guards and teachers have joined the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) for talks over co-ordinating walkouts to increase chaos.

The National Union of Teachers and the British Medical Association (BMA) have already held discussions about simultaneous autumn strikes, it has emerged.

Yannis Gourtsoyannis, a member of the British Medical Association's Junior Doctors' Committee, has issued a call for arms against the Tories

At an NSSN union meeting in London last month, Yannis Gourtsoyannis, a hard-Left member of the BMA junior doctors committee, spoke under a banner saying: Link up the strikes. Organise to take on the Tories. Get all the Tories out.

Dr Gourtsoyannis, a Jeremy Corbyn supporter who works at University College London Hospital, said: Building links between our unions is vital. Now is the time to ramp things up. We need to defend Corbyn and show the Government the door.

The call to arms was echoed by Sean Hoyle, president of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, which has inflicted misery on Southern rail commuters.

He told the gathering: We need co-ordinated action. We will take action regardless of what the law says.

Mr Hoyle came under fire this month after he and colleague Steve Hedley posted a picture online of themselves on holiday during the rail strike.

Linda Taaffe, secretary of the NSSN, said: This Government needs to be changed. The first step is action which links up all the disputes in as big and strong way as possible  then the whole thing could go up.

National Union of Teachers (NUT) activist Mrs Taaffe  married to Socialist Party leader Peter Taaffe  revealed there had already been discussions between junior doctors and teachers.

Tory MP and Commons Health Select Committee chair Sarah Wollaston said recent strikes had damaged the government

She told The Sunday Times: The NUT has said we will have a day of action as soon as possible in the new term. If we understood that the doctors were going to take action at, say, the end of September, or the beginning of October, I think it would be right in thinking that the teachers would delay and co-ordinate with the doctors. And the RMT wouldnt need much persuading about joining in.

Strikes this autumn are already likely. Representatives of junior doctors have called on the BMA to authorise industrial action from early next month in their contract dispute.

Walkouts on Southern rail, Eurostar and Virgin East Coast are also possible.

Last night Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, chairman of the Commons health committee, said: It is really regrettable and damaging if strikes are being launched for political purposes.

Tory MP Will Quince, who sits on the Commons transport committee, said there was no question some recent strikes had been to damage the Government.
A single mother-of-four has pleaded guilty to stealing $2.7 million dollars from lonely older men she met via online dating sites.

Sanaa Derbas, from Sydney, ran a systematic scheme to defraud six men - all aged between 43 and 69 - out of millions of dollars during the period of 2008 and 2014.

So ruthless was the woman in conning the men out of money that she left one man with just $20 to his name - making him unable to pay school fees for his children.

The 41-year-old also swindled close to $1.7 million from just one man, 69, in the space of little more than a year, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Sanaa Derbas, 41, (pictured) has pleaded guilty to systematically swindling six men out of a combined $2.7 million

The single mother-of-four from Sydney met the men through mobile and online dating forums and told them she was looking for love, before stealing their money

Derbas even used aliases as part of her money making campaign, calling herself Sarina Lopez, Sarrina and Marrisa.

She allegedly trawled lonely hearts messages online and in newspapers to find her next victim.

Appearing in the Downing Centre District Court on Monday, Derbas pleaded guilty to two counts of dishonestly obtaining money.

The court heard that Derbas had three diaries at her home in Miller, in Sydney's Western suburbs, containing the names of almost 350 men.

She also kept 15 phones there which were used to talk with the men she intended to lure into her trap.

After meeting her victims through online and mobile casual dating websites, Derbas would ask for money to be transferred to her so she could book a hotel room.

She stole $1.7 million from just one 69-year-old man in the space of a little more than a year over the six year scam. She is pictured here being arrested in 2014

The game was finally up for Derbas in 2014 (pictured) after she was reported to police by some of the men who she had never paid money back to

She would then cancel the date - often pocketing up to $600 - using excuses including that her mother had died, but promising to pay the men back with help from a wealthy grandfather in Egypt.

Some victims had to dig into their pension or even ask bosses for advanced pay to cover the expenses.

Derbas was finally caught by fraud police in May 2014 after she was reported by some of the men for failing to pay the money back.

She was granted bail, but must report to police every Monday and Friday.

She will reappear in court on February 9 next year.
A family claim a 'meet and greet' parking firm lost their car before it turned up later in a 'crammed and dirty yard' miles from the airport without any key.

Teacher Cavan Simmonds, his partner Teresa Trenell and daughter Kiara Tomoye, nine, returned home to Manchester Airport from Crete to find their one-year-old Kia Picanto had gone missing last month.

The family claim they waited for four hours after landing at 2am because of A Meet and Greet's blunders before giving up and paying for a cab home to Oldham.

Ms Trenell later went to their yard, around 10 minutes from Manchester Airport, and found the car parked among 250 others but its key has never been found.

She claims that staff even asked her to go through a 'pile' of keys looking for hers and said other vehicles including Audis, Mercedes and Range Rovers had their keys left on the roof, in the ignition or even on the floor next to them.

Row: Teacher Cavan Simmonds, his partner Teresa Trenell and daughter Kiara Tomoye, nine, returned home from Crete to find their Kia had gone missing - they found it a day later in this yard

Ms Trenell also claims that the member of staff who moved her Kia with her spare key then scraped the bumper of an expensive Range Rover next to it before they left.

Teresa, 29, a school administrator from Oldham, said: 'They told me they had lost my car so I called the police to report it stolen. The officer I spoke to said he knew it wouldn't be because they had had 80 cases like this in the past month involving meet and greet parking companies. They called me back later that day to say it had been found.

'This firm needs to be stopped, it's abysmal. I thought this was an official firm because of its name but it's not'.

Having paid 45 for a Wowcher deal, the family flew out to Crete on July 15.

But after a fortnight away, and landing at 2am, they waited at Terminal One for their car.

Around 30 minutes later, Teresa called them again to be told they were looking for the key. Next they said a driver was on their way.

But another ten minutes turned into an hour  which turned into two, and then four.

Ms Trenell added: 'They were just fobbing us off. We kept ringing back and they started getting really rude, swearing, they wouldn't answer the phone.

'We were cold, tired and had a child with us. And they didn't care. My daughter was sleeping on the concrete. I was in tears.'

Missing: The family say they found the car in this crammed car park but had to look for the keys themselves - and said that one Audi had its car key just left on its roof, left

Eventually, the firm found a manager by the name of Marcus who admitted he couldn't find their car  and accused them of dropping it off with the wrong firm.

After calling the police, they gave up, forking out 35 a taxi to take them home.

The next day, they received a call from Manchester Airport's police team, who said their car had been tracked down. But then the firm admitted they couldn't find the key.

The family had no choice but to drive to the lot on Altrincham Road, Wilmslow, described by Teresa as a 'dirty yard' with cars 'crammed in'.

The couple were invited to look for their key in an office strewn with keys - and told by a worker to move all the cars to get their own out.

She added: 'When we refused he did it  and scratched ours on an electric blue Range Rover. There was a complete lack of professionalism.'

Scandal: Companies have been using residential streets, fields and pub car parks (pictured) in Wythenshawe close to the airport to store vehicles

Teresa, who will have to pay 220 to have her car key re-coded, is yet to receive any compensation and has complained to them, Trading Standards and Manchester City Council.

Marcus O'Hara, who introduced himself as the boss of A Meet and Greet, denied losing the car.

He added: 'The car was not lost or misplaced, it was in the yard, it's a load of tosh. Only the key was lost and we tried to help the family.

'We offered to get a locksmith out to them and to pay for their taxi.

'They system for how we store keys is none of your business. We already apologised to the family.

'I had offered to help him but he started being obnoxious. Due to his attitude and behaviour we weren't as helpful as we could have been.

'The family manipulated us and mentally abused our staff.'

Last week a family was left stranded at the airport in similar circumstances  in which Perfect Air Parking, booked through Wowcher, temporarily lost their car and then their key.

Several others who have used meet and greet firms have also suffered their own horror stories.
Kristopher Meredith, left, and his partner Paul Hales, right, were left furious after a dream holiday to Florida was cancelled

A family say they have been left devastated after a 'bargain' holiday to Florida was cancelled by a travel operator over a 'pricing error'.

Kristopher Meredith, 29, and his partner Paul Hales booked a 15-day dream break to the US for a group of six at a Thomson shop in Manchester.

The couple, who were also due to travel with four members of Mr Hales's family, were quoted a price of about 200 each for the holiday.

But two days later, they were shocked to receive an email saying their booking had been cancelled, with a refund being offered.

The email read: 'We are sorry it has been necessary to cancel your booking with us at this time.

'You may be able to make a claim against your travel insurance.'

But after they made further inquiries, the family were told that the holiday was cancelled because of a pricing error.

A further email read: 'Unfortunately it is part of our terms and conditions in regards to errors in pricing, however if you wish to cancel the holiday we are able to waiver the cancellation charges and offer you a free cancellation.'

But Mr Meredith, who works as a TV presenter on shopping channels, says this does not remove the disappointment of not being able to enjoy their once-in-a-lifetime break.

Scroll down for video

Mr Meredith, pictured, and his partner had booked the trip for six through Thomson and had been quoted a price of around 200 each

The couple, pictured, said they were 'delighted' with the deal and 'devastated' when they were told it had been cancelled

Among the travelling party would have been five-year-old Honey Hales, Mr Meredith's niece, who was looking forward to one of her first-ever holidays.

He said: 'We just thought it was a good deal. We weren't sure how much it should have cost but we were delighted.

'In the shop we said, "Are you sure", and the lady said, "That's the price".'

The party of six had put down a deposit of 750 and thought they had secured their dream break.

Mr Meredith, who lives in Castlefield, said: 'When we got the email saying it had been cancelled we were devastated.

'We have been offered a refund but that's not what we want. We booked the holiday and they should honour it.'

But Thomson emailed the pair saying the holiday was cancelled due to a 'pricing error'

According to Trading Standards rules, a holiday operator can cancel a booking in advance so long as it provides either a full refund or a substitute package of equal value, or lesser value plus compensation for the price difference.

A spokesman for Thomson and First Choice said: 'We would like to apologise to Mr Meredith for his booking experience and the inconvenience caused.

'While we always offer exceptional value for money, unfortunately a rare system error last weekend resulted in a small number of holidays being sold for prices that were simply too good to be true.
The leaders of the EU's three biggest countries met for crisis talks in Lazio today as they scramble to save the Brussels project from unravelling after Brexit.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi invited German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande to Ventotene, a tiny island off the coast of Naples, to discuss their strategy ahead of next month's crucial summit of all 28 leaders.

The three leaders, who are all facing vital elections over the next year in their own countries, will also address Europe's response to the refugee crisis, the continent's ongoing economic woes and security on the continent in the wake of a string of terror attacks in French and German cities last month.

The aim of the summit on Ventotene today is to demonstrate the unity of Europe's three biggest countries and three of the founding nations of the EU, but it is likely to attract questions over the elitist nature of the meeting.

As attention turns to the intense preparations for Britain's departure from Brussels in the coming weeks and months, the Swedish prime minister warned Britain not to cut corporation tax or it will face tougher negotiations with the EU.

Matteo Renzi is pictured alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel as they arrived on the tiny island of Ventotene today to kick-start informal talks over their approach to the upcoming Brexit negotiations

French President Francois Hollande (left) is greeted by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (right) for a crucial meeting on the tiny Ventotene island off the coast from Naples today

The location of the exclusive meeting is hugely symbolic; Ventotene (pictured) was seen as playing a part in the formation of the EU. One of the EU's founding fathers, Altiero Spinelli, wrote a manifesto for a federal Europe while he was imprisoned on the island off the coast of Naples during the second world war

Stefan Loefven said suggestions Britain could offset any economic costs of leaving the EU by cutting business rates to attract investment would make Brexit talks 'more difficult' and will harm relations with the bloc.

He also urged British PM Theresa May to get on with triggering Article 50 - the formal process for starting the two-year process of leaving the EU - telling Bloomberg that Brexit 'shouldn't take longer than necessary'.

'But if the UK wants some time to think about the situation, this will also give EU countries some time,' Mr Loefven added.

'On the other hand, you hear about plans in the U.K. to, for example, lower corporate taxes considerably.

'If they, during this time, begin that kind of race, that will of course make discussions more difficult.'

Italian PM Matteo Renzi (left) and French President Francois Hollande (right) arrive for their meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the Italian island of Ventotene today

Ventotene (pictured) was chosen because of its symbolic meaning to the EU - one of the EU's founding fathers, Altiero Spinelli, wrote a manifesto for a federal Europe while he was imprisoned on the island off the coast of Naples during the second world war

The leaders met for a mini summit on Ventotene, pictured, situated in the Tyrrhenian Sea

Francois Hollande (left), Angela Merkel (middle) and Matteo Renzi (right) were pictured today as they met for crisis talks in Lazio to plot a way forward for the European Union

Today's summit in Ventotene is the first in a number of intense meetings of talks between European leaders, who are returning from their summer holidays to forge a new way forward after Britain's dramatic decision to quit the EU in June.

KEY POINTS DISCUSSED AT LAZIO SUMMIT Brexit will be top on the list as Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi welcomes German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande to the tiny island of Ventotene today. A common approach to the negotiations will be crucial in securing the future of the EU and with 27 leaders and many difference approaches, the leaders of the three biggest countries will want to be on the same page in order to control the way forward. They will join their European counterparts at an EU-wide summit in Bratislava, Slovakia, next month, where leaders will start to set out their views on what the EU's post-Brexit relationship with Britain should look like. But other EU crises will be on the table at today's mini-summit, with the refugee crisis continuing to pose problems for each of Italy, France and Germany. The latter two nations have suffered horrific terror attacks in recent weeks and security will also be discussed by Mr Renzi, Mr Hollande and Mrs Merkel. Member states' contributions to border security and common law enforcement agencies will be on the agenda today, while closer military co-operation is also expected to be considered. Advertisement

The location of the exclusive meeting is hugely symbolic; Ventotene was seen as playing a part in the formation of the EU.

One of the EU's founding fathers, Altiero Spinelli, wrote a manifesto for a federal Europe while he was imprisoned on the island off the coast of Naples during the second world war along with fellow intellectual Ernesto Rossi.

A French diplomatic source told the Guardian the summit aims 'to show the unity of Europe's three biggest countries, but not to create a specific club'.

The leaders travelled to the island on the Giuseppe Garibaldi aircraft carrier that has taken part in key rescue missions during the refugee crisis, saving desperate migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.

As the UK Government prepares for Brexit negotiations, which are not due to officially start until 2017, leading Leave campaigner Iain Duncan Smith urged Theresa May to speed up with plans to quit the bloc.

He said the Prime Minister should get on and begin formal negotiations 'as soon as possible' and accused Remain supporters of trying to delay the triggering of Article 50 in the hope it can be put off indefinitely.

Writing in The Sun On Sunday yesterday, Mr Duncan Smith also insisted Britain did not need a deal which allowed it to remain part of the European single market, arguing there was a 'strong case' in economic terms for leaving.

His intervention follows reports the Government may wait until the end of next year before invoking Article 50, meaning Brexit may not actually happen until late 2019.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured left) and French President Francois Hollande (right) are travelling to the tiny Italian island of Ventotene today to discuss Europe's future

The Prime Minister has said only that she will not make the Article 50 notification before the end of this year, but Mr Duncan Smith said she must get on with it 'early' in 2017, rather than wait for forthcoming elections in Germany and France.

'That suggestion is yet another attempt to turn this referendum result into a 'neverendum',' he said.

TINY VENTOTENE CHOSEN DUE TO ITS SYMBOLIC PLACE IN EU HISTORY The tiny Ventotene island (pictured) is highly symbolic The tiny island of Ventotene - situated in the Italian province of Lazio but 46 kilometres off the eastern coast - was chosen by Matteo Renzi due to its part in the history of the EU. One of the EU's founding fathers, Altiero Spinelli, wrote the influential 'Ventone manifesto' calling for a federation of European states while he was imprisoned on the island during the second world war along with fellow intellectual Ernesto Rossi. The Italian government said Mr Renzi, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande will lay a wreath on the Spinelli's tomb on the island as part of their visit today. Advertisement

'For too long membership of the EU sapped our sense of self worth and our self confidence. Now we have the chance to believe in Britain again.

'Let us leave as soon as possible, so that we can get on and make the most of our new found independence.'

Mr Duncan Smith warned ministers not to try to negotiate some form of 'EU-lite' agreement which would see Britain remain subject to European law, saying that would be to ignore the clear message delivered by the millions of citizens who voted for Leave.

'Tired of handing over billions of their hard earned money to the wasteful EU bureaucrats, it (the referendum result) was an order from the British people to Britain's ruling elite - an order to 'take back control'. That, simply put, means control of our borders, our trade arrangements, our money and our laws,' he said.

'What they didn't vote for was EU-lite, or for their Government to engage in negotiations where we bend the knee to Brussels and beg for some concessions whilst remaining in a customs union all the while subject to European law.'

He said that Britain did not need to be a member of the single market to trade with it, and may well be better off outside.

'After all in economic terms there is a strong case to leave the single market,' he said.

'Being outside returns control over laws and borders and frees the UK from EU regulations, its external tariff and allows us, as a service sector economy, to position ourselves globally, set our trade deals and compete internationally, particularly in financial services.'

His comments reflect the deep suspicion among many Leave supporters that opponents of Brexit will try to thwart the referendum result.

The leaders of the EU's three biggest countries - French President Francois Hollande (left), German Chancellor Angela Merkel (middle) and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (left), pictured meeting in June after the Brexit vote - met on the Italian island of Ventotene today to discuss the future of Europe without Britain
Advertisement

They're one of the most ferocious and deadly animals in the world, whose ancestry dates back to before the time of dinosaurs.

And so it comes as no surprise that even when steel-clad modern technology is on the menu, crocodiles are ready to eat.

That was the case for a five-metre long 'monster' crocodile in Australia's remote outback, who was recently captured on video leaping out of shallow water in an attempt to snatch a drone out of the sky.

Footage of the amazing moment, taken by a fisherman in the Kununurra region of Western Australia, shows the sheer power possessed by a man-eater of that size.

Scroll down for video

A 'monster' five-metre crocodile has been captured on video attempting to pull a drone out of the sky in the Australian outback

The powerful animal leapt from shallow water in the Kununurra region of Western Australia as it tried to claim the modern technology for its dinner

Lying among reeds in shallow water, the massive animal is careful not to move, seemingly hoping to remain hidden from the drone it has sensed hovering overhead.

After capturing a few seconds of footage of the reptile, the drone begins to fly off to see more of the stunning Australian landscape.

But then, without any warning, the crocodile strikes.

Leaping out of the water, the powerful reptile attempts to use its jaws to snatch the drone from the sky.

'He was a monster, probably five metres long and one metre wide,' the drone's owner Sean Scott said.

Fortunately, the drone narrowly escaped the attack, thanks largely to the timely maneuvering by Mr Scott.

The animal could evidently sense the drone above its head and attempted to pretend that it was sleeping in the reeds

However the animal then suddenly went on the attack, leaping out of the shallow water in an attempt to grab the drone

Even though it made a close escape, he said he was concern that his prized possession was about to be become the croc's dinner.

'There's lots of crocodiles and prey for them in the river, he was close to cow carcass floating nearby,' Mr Scott said

'I was only over him for about 30 seconds, I was half expecting he would jump, but when he did I was worried I'd lost the drone, he was super close, like one inch away.'
Officers say the designer drugs were sent abroad to Europe and the US

Police seized 8,700 LSD tablets and 10 kilos of amphetamines in Leioa

Two British nationals have been arrested in Spain following drugs bust

Police in Spain have arrested two Brits after dismantling a 'Breaking Bad' style laboratory.

Officers seized 8,700 LSD tablets and 10 kilos of amphetamines as well as 17,000 calming benzodiazepines known as 'benzos' which are traditionally used to treat insomnia and have been linked to a string of rave deaths.

The arrests and seizure were made on an industrial estate in Leioa in the northern Basque province of Bizkaia in a Civil Guard operation dubbed Operation Postal Kit.

Officers say the designer drugs were sent by post from the clandestine lab to Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and the States.

Scroll down for video

Police in Spain have arrested two Brits after dismantling a 'Breaking Bad' style lab on an industrial estate

The two British nationals were arrested by the Spanish Civil Guard (pictured) after the seized 8,700 LSD tablets

Officers also seized 10 kilos of amphetamines as well as 17,000 calming benzodiazepines

A spokesman confirmed: 'The Civil Guard, within the framework of Operation Postal Kit developed in Bizkaia, has arrested two British nationals who were trafficking new psychoactive substances.'

Detailing the amounts of the drugs seized, he added: 'During the investigation Civil Guard officers located a warehouse on an industrial estate in Leioa.

'It was used as a clandestine lab for the handling and international distribution via post, of these types of substances, to countries in Europe, Australia and New Zealand and predominantly the States.

'After the interception of several envelopes left in a post box close to the industrial estate, it was confirmed they contained psychoactive substances.

'The warehouse was raided and thousands of drugs seized along with other material including invoices, weighing scales, masks and other equipment needed for the handling of the illegal substances.'

The two British nationals, who have not been named, are expected to be remanded in custody after appearing before a judge in a private court hearing.

Actor Bryan Cranston leaves a job as a chemistry teacher in the TV series Breaking Bad to start manufacturing methamphetamine and drug dealing.

He makes the move to ensure his family's financial security after his death when he is diagnosed with lung cancer.

In April police arrested six people suspected of selling drugs bound for the UK named after Heisenberg, the character portrayed by Cranston, after a raid on a warehouse near Benidorm.

Officers released footage showing them opening packets of the drug with the face of meths maker Heisenberg, the street name he uses in the series, on them.

Actor Bryan Cranston (pictured) leaves a job as a chemistry teacher in Breaking Bad to start manufacturing methamphetamine and drug dealing

Officers say the designer drugs were sent by post from the clandestine lab to Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and the States

A Civil Guard spokesman confirmed: 'The Civil Guard has arrested two British nationals who were trafficking new psychoactive substances'

The drugs were branded as Ice N Berg, a clever play on words on White's clandestine alias Heisenberg.

The picture they used was one that features on a lot of the merchandise sold off the back of the American crime drama.

Benzodiazepines, among the drugs confiscated during the latest drugs raid, are one of the most common prescription drugs usually recreationally.

They are used as a 'chill out' drug on the club scene or as a downer.

The drug comes in tablet form, although it can be injected.
Around 335,000 personalised plates were sold in the UK last year

Some view them as trendy ways to stand out from the crowd, while others consider them tacky attempts to show off.

But it seems the majority of Britain sides with the former as sales of personalised numberplates have spiked in the country.

A record 102million was raised for the Treasury last year through around 335,000 specialised registration plates sold by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).

The DVLA began selling personalised plates in 1990, with the amount sold rising steadily each year from around 70,000 in 1995 to the huge total today.

Scroll down for video

The sale of personalised number plates brought in 102m to the Treasury last year (file picture)

They are sold by the DVLA and prices start at 250 online, but rare plates can fetch thousands of pounds at auction (file picture)

Prices start from 250 online, including VAT and an 80 DVLA charge, but can rise into the thousands depending on whether the plate resembles a famous names or car models.

Plates are also sold at auction, starting at a reserve price of 130. The highest total ever paid was 400,000 for a '25 O' plate in November 2015, a popular design because of its affiliation with the rare Ferarri 250 GTO.

Eric Craggs, chairman of the Cherished Numbers Dealers Association, told The Times that people saw the plates as a 'status symbol'.

He said: 'They have got the money to buy them and they want to show off a bit. It's a bit of an ego thing.'

Mr Craggs added rare plates - often those with one number and two letters - were a 'surefire investment' as their value was rising to an average of 60,000.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, told the paper: 'Cars rank amongst many people's most valuable and cherished possessions. It is no surprise there is demand to personalise them.'

Around 335,000 specialised plates were sold last year with experts claiming drivers want to 'show off a bit' (file picture)

It is thought between 10 and 20 per cent of cars now have personalised plates, with the 102million generated last year an increase of 15million on the previous year.

The DVLA has more than 47million plates available to purchase and said all the money raised went to the Treasury.

A spokesman said: 'Many people enjoy displaying a personalised registration number and the general sale and auctions remain extremely popular with the public.

'Since we began selling personalised registrations we have raised around 2.3billion.'
A blind cancer survivor claims she was turfed out of a 'disgraceful' convenience store because of her guide dog - despite the shop displaying a sign saying they were welcome.

Grandmother-of-11 Elaine Mitchell visited Variety Food Stores in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, last Tuesday with daughter Laura but claims a male employee told her to leave because of her guide dog Natalie.

The 60-year-old, who is in remission from stage three breast cancer, said the incident came just after she had regained the confidence to go outside due to her vision problems.

Elaine Mitchell, pictured with guide dog Natalie, was ordered to leave Variety Food Stores in Rochdale, also pictured, over the animal

The grandmother was told no dogs were allowed in the shop despite a sing in the window clearly stating guide dogs were accepted (pictured)

Ms Mitchell, 60, who is registered blind, said she felt 'humiliated and sick' over the incident

The Guide Dogs charity has branded the incident 'appalling' but the store has apologised and claimed it was a misunderstanding because of the employee's poor English.

Registered blind Ms Mitchell, from Rochdale, said: 'I felt humiliated and sick when it happened.

'He came over and said 'get out with the dog' and even though my daughter repeatedly told him that Natalie was my guide dog he wouldn't have it.

'He said 'yes I know, out'.

'I went outside and burst into tears. I'm not normally like that but it really embarrassed me - I felt two inches tall. I'll never use that shop again.'

Ms Mitchell, who has congenital myelitis with an astigmatism, said she had only recently gained the confidence to go out alone with the two-year-old black labrador after her sight deteriorated.

The grandmother, who also underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy in December last year, has reported the incident to Rochdale Council and the Guide Dogs charity.

Ms Mitchell said: 'My vision's got worse over the years. I can see light and dark but if someone isn't very close to me I can't see them.

'Until I got Natalie I didn't go anywhere unless someone took me - I lost my independence.

'My daughter helps when she can but she's a mum and she studies and volunteers so she has a lot on.

She was with daughter Laura, right, who said she was 'disgusted' at her mother's treatment

Ms Mitchell has had the two-year-old labrador, left and right, for eight months and that her confidence to go outside has been boosted as a result

'Natalie is absolutely beautiful and so well behaved, I've been out for meals with her in pubs and we've had no problems.

'My confidence was rock bottom until I got her eight months ago, having her has really boosted it.

'Since then I've been out every single day, but after what happened at the shop I've been nervous but I have to take Natalie out for her walks.

'I want to stand up for guide dogs, it's just not right.'

Ms Mitchell's furious daughter Laura, 26, said she was told she could stay in the shop and purchase the items her mother had picked out providing Natalie stayed outside.

The mother-of-four said: 'I think it's disgusting - it's never happened before.

'I told him she was a guide dog as I pointed at the sticker and said it was against the law to not allow her into the shop, but he just kept saying that dogs weren't allowed.

'It's discriminating against the blind. I could understand if it was someone with a pet but it's Natalie's job to help my mum.

Ms Mitchell said she has made a complaint to Rochdale Council because she wants to 'stand up for guide dogs'

The grandmother-of-11, left and right, said she would never return to the shop

'As soon as my mum holds her harness she's in working mode - she's really well trained and such a good dog.

'Mum can say 'take me to Laura's' or 'find me a seat' and she's able to do it - she's so clever.'

Cllr Janet Emsley, cabinet member for culture, health and wellbeing at Rochdale Council, said: 'No one should face discrimination because of a disability.

'Should we receive a complaint we will assist the resident in reporting the issue to the Equality Advisory and Support Service.

'We will also be following up with the owner of the premises to ensure they are in full compliance with their responsibilities.'

James White, senior campaigns manager for charity Guide Dogs, said: 'People with sight loss rely on their guide dogs to live with freedom and confidence, and it's extremely distressing for them to be asked to leave like this.

'Despite legal protection, our research shows that around half of all guide dog owners have faced an access refusal and as a charity, Guide Dogs is campaigning to change this.

Variety Food Stores has apologised for the incident and a spokesman said the problem arose because the member of staff who told Ms Mitchell to leave 'only speaks broken English'

'We were appalled to hear about what happened to Elaine, especially as she has only recently become a guide dog owner.'

A Variety Food Stores spokesman said: 'We are truly sorry for what has happened.

'The member of staff in question can only speak broken English, he speaks Urdu at home, so he probably didn't understand when he was told it was a guide dog and thought it was just a dog.

'As soon as we heard about what happened we contacted the lady via Facebook to apologise and hopefully sort it out.
A man has pleaded not guilty to the murder of an 'active and cheeky' two-year-old girl after it was claimed she was assaulted after wetting herself, a court has heard.

The Melbourne toddler died from 'catastrophic internal injuries' allegedly caused by blunt force trauma in May 13 2005, the Victorian Supreme Court has heard.

The accused, 37, told police the toddler sustained the fatal injuries as a result of falling off a couch.

Man accused of killing an 'active and cheeky' two-year-old girl told police she sustained the fatal injuries as a result of falling off a couch, a Victorian court has heard

Prosecutor Sally Flynn on Monday told the jury that the accused was allegedly seen kicking, head-butting and stomping on the two-year-old and using a plastic bag to cover her mouth when she was crying.

The prosecution told the jury the toddler's brother had witnessed the alleged assault, he was four-years-old at the time.

The boy, now a teenager, has emerged as a key witness in the trial of the accused killer, the Herald Sun reports.

The girl's brother had told police that her alleged killer was dating their mother and claims he had attacked the little girl after she urinated on the couch.

The mother and her three children had been staying at the accused killer's home when a baby-sitter came over and noticed the toddler was slumped across the coffee table with her feet on the ground.

Later that day the toddler became unresponsive so her mother rushed her to a medical centre where she was pronounced dead a short time later.

During a series of interviews with police, the boy said his sister had been naughty and said the accused 'bad man' stomped on his sister.

Prosecutor Sally Flynn on Monday told the jury that the accused was allegedly seen kicking, head-butting and stomping on the two-year-old (stock image)

Defence barrister Dermott Dann said the crown case relied on the evidence of the victim's brother which had issues of reliability, credibility, accuracy and consistency (stock image)

Defence barrister Dermott Dann said the crown case relied on the evidence of the victim's brother which had issues of reliability, credibility, accuracy and consistency.

The alleged attacker said he heard 'a bump' during the night and saw that the girl had fallen off his couch, where she'd been sleeping.

'The accused man did not assault her at any time in any way,' Mr Dann said.

'He did not cause the death, he had no intention of causing death.'
Gabriel Nevarez, 28, was wanted for the drive-by murder of Kyle Grinnell in Tacoma in February 2007

A Washington murder suspect captured in Mexico has been brought back to the US after nine years on the run.

Gabriel Nevarez, 28, was wanted for the drive-by murder of Kyle Grinnell in Tacoma, Washington, in February 2007.

Investigators said Grinnell was hit by mistake as Nevarez tried to shoot Juan Ruiz, a rival gang member.

Prosecuting attorney Mark Lindquist said: 'As often happens with gang violence an innocent, unintended victim was shot and killed.'

Nevarez was arrested in the central Mexican state of Michoacan in February and transferred to FBI custody in Mexico City on Thursday, the agency and Tacoma police said in a statement.

The FBI flew him late on Thursday to Washington state, where he was booked into the Pierce County Jail.

Nevarez was scheduled to make an initial court appearance on Friday afternoon.

Grinnell was cleaning a sidewalk when he was shot and killed.

The victim's father, Kyle Grinnell Sr., said he hopes Nevarez is convicted and locked up in prison.

'Nothing's going to bring my son back, but this guy is a bad guy,' he said.

Nevarez has been charged in Pierce County Superior Court with first-degree murder, assault and unlawful possession of a firearm.

A spokesman for the county prosecutor's office said the office did not know whether Nevarez had a lawyer.

Court documents identified Nevarez as a methamphetamine dealer who had a rivalry with Ruiz.

One of Nevarez's customers  a woman who was also friends with Grinnell  told investigators she knew he had been looking for Ruiz, the charging papers said.

When she saw Ruiz at a home where she had just visited Grinnell, she told Nevarez about it and then led him there, the documents said.

'Ruiz was outside, at the top of some stairs, with victim Grinnell below him, less than 20 feet away,' according to court documents filed by then-deputy prosecutor Gerald Costello, who is now a Pierce County Superior Court judge.
Disgraced DJ: Chris Denning has admitted abusing 11 children, some as young as eight

A disgraced former Radio 1 DJ today pleaded guilty to 21 historical sexual offences as part of a police investigation into a youth disco.

Chris Denning admitted at Southwark Crown Court in London that he had abused 11 children, some as young as eight, between 1969 and 1986.

The prolific paedophile pleaded guilty to 21 sexual offences, including indecent assault of men and boys and inciting boys under 16 and 14 to commit acts of gross indecency.

Denning, 75, denied another three counts of indecent assault.

The offences relate to an investigation by Surrey Police, named Operation Ravine, into alleged sexual offences connected to the Walton Hop Disco, a teenage disco which ran from 1958 until 2001.

Denning, one of the founding presenters on the flagship station, appeared in the dock on Monday wearing a faded red T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms.

The prolific paedophile pleaded guilty to 21 sexual offences, including indecent assault of men and boys and inciting boys under 16 and 14 to commit acts of gross indecency

He donned a pair of glasses and followed a written copy of the charges as they were read to him. He will be sentenced on October 6 by Judge Alistair McCreath.

Denning has a string of previous convictions for abusing young boys.

Denning is serving a 13-year jail sentence for sexual assaults against 24 victims, including one allegedly at the house of Jimmy Savile

He is currently serving a 13-year jail sentence for a catalogue of sexual assaults against 24 victims, including one allegedly at Jimmy Savile's house, from the 1960s to 1980s.

Judge Peter Testar said: 'Judge McCreath sentenced this defendant in November 2014.

'It must make sense, Judge McCreath having passed that sentence, for him to sentence this man for these offences because the question which must arise is the relationship between any sentence passed today and any sentence passed then.'

The three charges he pleaded not guilty to were ordered to lie on file. Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay said: 'He has a very long record of offences against young boys.

'Given the very long indictment he has pleaded guilty to, we take the view that these counts would not make a difference to sentence.'

An NSPCC spokesman said today: The damning list of charges against Denning underline the dark depths to which he sank. He has shown himself to be a prolific offender, who has abused his young victims over almost two decades.

The damning list of charges against Denning underline the dark depths to which he sank NSPCC spokesman

Justice is finally catching up with him, but this will be of little comfort to his victims who are living with their own life sentence.

The effects of abuse can last a lifetime and his victims have been incredibly brave in coming forward.
Chinese state media has praised the nation's Rio Olympic efforts as a 'complete success', insisting that they came second in the medal rankings over Team GB.

The nation also 'charmed the world' by putting 'greater emphasis on human spirit, respect and friendship than simply winning titles', according to a report released by state-run Xinhua news agency.

'For China, the past fortnight has been filled with triumphs of human endeavour and spirit,' it reads.

'A total of 70 medals  26 gold, 18 silver and 26 bronze  put China second in the overall standings.'

Scroll down for video

'Human spirit': The marriage proposal of swimmer He Zi (pictured) was held up as 'one of the most moving moments of the Rio Olympics' by a report released by Chinese state media

Rankings: State-run agency Xinhua praised the nation's Rio Olympic efforts as a 'complete success' insisting that they came second in the medal rankings over Team GB

But the agency failed to mention the official rankings, which put Team GB in second place and China in third.

While Team GB won fewer medals - with 67 in total - the 27 gold medals meant the team finished second overall.

It came after the Xinhua news agency tweeted its disbelief at the results of the Olympic Games, which ended on Sunday night.

'You're kidding me? The country which has never finished above China is about to,' it wrote on Twitter, in a post that has since been deleted.

While China topped the medal table in Beijing with 51 gold medals, it has since seen a rapid decline - falling to second place in London 2012 with 38 and third in Rio with 26.

But the report released today, entitled 'Rio Olympics: How China charmed the world', expressed a very different sentiment.

Upset: The report came after the Xinhua news agency tweeted its disbelief at the results of the Olympic Games, in a post that has since been deleted

Winner: Bronze medalist Yuanhui Fu of China on the podium during the medal ceremony for the Women's 100m Backstroke Final

Success: According to the Xinhua agency's report, Chinese athletes went to Rio to 'show their fighting spirit... and show the best side of the Chinese people'

Gao Zhidan, a vice president of the Chinese Olympic Committee, is quoted as saying the country considered the Rio Games an unqualified success.

'Chinese athletes came here to show their fighting spirit, be a bridge of friendship and show the best side of the Chinese people.

'People will remember these Games for more than just what has happened on the sporting arena. Chinese athletes have been responsible for several moments of heart-warming humanity.

'And they have expressed their emotions in a way that they might not have previously done, endearing them to other athletes and fans.'

The marriage proposal of swimmer He Zi was held up as 'one of the most moving moments of the Rio Olympics'.

The report read: 'Overcome with emotion and with tears streaming down her face, she paused, and said yes, as cheers rang around the Maria Lenk Aquatics Center',

Emotion: Chinese badminton player Chen Long cried tears of joy after winning a gold medal at the Rio Olympics on Saturday

Celebration: Long, 27, fell to the ground after winning gold and needed to be helped up by his coach. The gold medal was Long's first and followed on from Bronze at London 2012

It also referred to the scandal over the swimmers from Team USA, which finished first in the medal rankings, who falsely claimed they had been robbed.

'The United States has also been guilty of criminal and ethical breaching in the case involving swimmers Ryan Lochte, Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and Jimmy Feigen,' it read.

'Instead of lying and running away from authorities, China offered a prompt and sincere response when news emerged of swimmer Chen Xinyi's failed doping test.'

Meanwhile, Chinese media cited the UK's financial investment in the Olympic efforts as being responsible for the success.

The Beijing News newspaper read: 'Simply speaking, the theory of "high investment produces high output" also applies to the Olympic Games.'

It cited 'media reports' as saying the UK invested some 387million in the Olympics.
A skydiver has plummeted to his death after failing to release his parachute in time.

The unidentified thrill-seeker, 47, died in the tragic accident at Ohio's Middletown Airport on Sunday morning.

He was a very experienced skydiver with more than 95 jumps under his belt but released his parachute 1,000ft below the 3,500ft limit.

The unidentified thrill-seeker (not pictured), 47, died in the tragic accident at Ohio's Middletown Airport on Sunday morning (stock image)

He died on impact with the ground half a mile from the airport.

John Hart, the co-owner of Start Skydiving in Middletown, said that the tragedy was not caused by an equipment malfunction.

'This wasn't because of a problem. Maybe he lost altitude awareness. He did use his reserve chute but it deployed too late,' Hart told Journal-News.

'It's unfortunate but is was completely avoidable. This was not a reflection of a safety problem but a reflection on not making good decisions,' said Hart.
Advertisement

Ethiopian salt miners brave 140 degree Fahrenheit temperatures while working on the hottest place in earth earning on average 5-a-day.

The salt mines, situated in the Afar triangle, stretch across 60,000 square miles and at their lowest point are more than 300 feet below sea level.

Professional travel photographer and videographer Joel Santos travelled to the area to capture the dry beauty of this brutal expanse of land.

Ethiopian salt miners earn approximately 5-a-day for working in 140 Fahrenheit temperatures 300 feet below sea level

The miners cut out the lumps of salt with hand tools before loading them onto camels to export out of the area

The miners take the salt out of the Afar triangle and have to pay a special tax for each camel and block of salt exported

He said: 'I felt the urge to tell the story of the salt miners. They work on the hottest place on earth and earn not much more than 100 to 200 Euros per month.

'The locals live a harsh life, probably one of the toughest there is in the world.'

The Danakil Depression - specifically the area surrounding Lake Afdera - is where almost 100 per cent of salt production in Ethiopia comes from.

Every day approximately 2,000 dromedaries and 1,000 donkeys pass through to transport salt tiles to Berahile about 50 miles away.

The Danakil Depression surrounding lake Afdera, picutred, is where almost 100 per cent of all Ethiopian salt comes from

Temperatures in the region rarely fall below 122 degrees Fahrenheit making it one of the hottest places on earth

There are 750 officially registered salt miners in the region who remove approximately 1.3 million tonnes of salt by hand

In the past, salt was used as a form of currency in the region, but now the miners use 'regular cash' to conduct transactions

Most of the salt miners are unaware that their workplace is in a massive depression some 300 metres below sea level

Stunning drone footage shows the inhospitable nature of the landscape with absolutely no vegetation or shelter

Workers often mine in temperatures that rarely drop below 122 Fahrenheit and start work early in the morning to avoid the extreme heat as the sun reaches its peak.

Joel said: 'The air is so dry that the desert does not emanate a particular aroma.

'Nevertheless, near some flooded areas you can feel a salty aroma when you lie close to the ground.

'Most people don't know that there's a depression in Ethiopia. The harshness has a rare beauty to it and it's amazing how the aerial footage unveils it in never before seen perspective, adding an even bigger dimension to what the miners face every day.'

About 1.3 million tons of salt are removed annually and 750 officially registered salt miners work in the area.

Workers start early in the morning so they can be finished before the sun and temperatures reach their peak

The salt miners have to pay a special tax on each block they remove and load onto a camel to take to market

In areas without water there is no smell because of the arid desert air, but near water you can smell salt and sulphur

The harsh landscapes boast active volcanoes, malodorous sulphur-caked hot springs, black lava flows and salt-encrusted basins.

Blocks of salt once acted as currency in the region but it has now been replaced by regular cash.

The local Afar people have a strict monopoly over the Danakil depression and guard the salt fiercely - every merchant has to stop at a salt-tax collector's hut before they leave to pay a fee for each dromedary, mule and donkey in his caravan.

'Whilst filming it, I learnt a lot,' Joel added.

'Especially when I had the privilege of meeting special people who live in such a hostile environment. I get the chance to grow as a person and value things differently.'

Some 1.3 million tonnes of salt are removed from the region each year by the 750 officially registered miners

Joel Santos travelled to the remote region in order to document the ancient lifestyles of the Ethiopian salt miners

After digging the salt from the ground, the miners have to load the blocks onto camels and drive them 50 miles to market

Temperatures in the region rarely fall below 122 degrees Fahrenheit making working conditions incredibly difficult
An Australian woman, 24, has died in flash flooding while travelling in Cambodia, according to local media.

Loved ones are remembering Kristy Blackney as a 'gorgeous soul' after her body was found in a river in the Kampot region of southern Victoria on Sunday.

She left for Thailand in late July before heading to Cambodia, and planned to travel south-east Asia for months until her money ran dry.

The 24-year-old worked in beauty therapy, as well as hospitality. She was based in Perth after moving from Inverloch in South Gippsland in Victoria, according to her Facebook.

Kristy Blackney, 24, has drowned in flash flooding in southern Cambodia while travelling in south-east Asia

Loved ones are remembering the 'gorgeous soul' with an 'infectious smile' on social media after her body was discovered on Sunday

Local media reported her body was found floating in the river at Arcadia Backpackers, where she was staying, after flash flooding.

Family and friends have taken to social media to farewell Ms Blackney.

'Being woken up this morning to the news that one of your best friends has died whilst travelling has been obviously devastating and still doesn't feel real,' one friend wrote on Facebook.

'Whether or not you knew this free spirited girl, no one was prepared to lose such a beautiful person.

'I'm so blessed to have had a best friend like you for over a decade, missing you is an understatement.'

Another friend described her as a 'beautiful girl with an infectious smile that touched so many people's lives'.

'Absolutely devastated,' another wrote on Facebook. 'You put smiles on faces in every room you entered. You definitely deserved more time on this earth to enjoy the sunlight.'

One friend said she brought 'nothing but love and laughter'.

Local media reported her body was found floating in the river at Arcadia Backpackers (pictured), where she was staying, after flash flooding

A crowdfunding appeal to help bring her home and to pay for the funeral costs has raised about $20,000 in just 12 hours online

'The hardest part of any friendship is when it's time to say goodbye. Thank you for the endless memories and for bringing nothing but love and laughter everywhere you went. Rest in peace to the most kind hearted, free-spirited, beautiful girl,' the friend wrote.

'You've taken a part of each of our hearts with you. I'll miss and love you forever.'

A crowdfunding appeal to help bring her home and to pay for the funeral costs has raised about $20,000 in just 12 hours online.

Ms Blackney's friend Kiara Mcnally launched the GoFundMe page on Monday morning, shortly after the tragic news reached Australia.

'As you may have heard our beautiful girl Kristy Blackney has passed away while travelling in Cambodia,' the website reads. 'Her family and friends are devastated and completely heartbroken.

'As you can imagine the cost to bring Kristy here are great as well as the costs of a funeral. So if you are able to help her family with these expenses in any way please do.

'We love you Kristy and will miss you so much.'

A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson confirmed the department 'is providing consular assistance to the family of an Australian woman who died in Cambodia, in accordance with the Consular Services Charter'.
Police are hunting the rapist of a British au pair at a popular surfer beach in northern Spain.

The victim, thought to be in her early 20s, told police she was sexually attacked by a man who took her to a car park at beautiful Arrietara Beach - 11 miles from Bilbao - before abandoning her there.

A passer-by stopped to help her and called police after discovering her walking around disorientated.

She told officers she had been raped after being taken to hospital. The alleged attack happened around 8am on Sunday.

Police are hunting the rapist of a British au pair at Arrietara Beach (pictured) in northern Spain

The woman claims she was taken to a car park near the beach (pictured) and attacked

The victim, who was described as a British au pair by a local paper, is thought to been targeted after going out partying.

Bilbao, which is currently celebrating its annual nine-day festival called the Big Week or Semana Grande, is swamped by revellers from the area around it at this time of year.

A spokesman for the regional Ertzaintza police force confirmed: 'We are investigating reports of a sexual assault in a car park at Arrietara Beach.

'We were alerted by a call to the emergency services around 8am on Sunday.

'The caller had seen the woman wandering around the car park and felt something wasn't right and decided to call police.

'No arrests have been made so far.'

He was not able to confirm local reports saying the victim had been raped or that she was a British au pair, saying that he could only give out minimal information to protect her identify and make sure nothing was published that could hamper the investigation.

The victim told police she was sexually attacked by a man who took her to a car park at Arrietara Beach (pictured) - 11 miles from Bilbao

Police are understood to have taken statements from surfers who use the beach early in the morning as well as a Belgian family who were sleeping in a camper van nearby and told detectives they had heard nothing.

Two men who raised the alarm at a local bar after seeing the British woman, reported to have had a bottle in her hand, are also thought to have been questioned as witnesses.

Bilbao is currently celebrating its annual nine-day festival called the Big Week or Semana Grande (stock photo)

Arrietara Beach, a 20 minute walk from Larrabasterra tube station which is on Line 1 of the Bilbao Metro network, is regarded as one of the most stunning beaches in the area.

The 800-metre beach is regarded as ideal for surfing.

The neighbouring beach - called Wild Beach in English - is a nudist beach and is separated from Arrietara by a rocky cove called La Triangu.

The annual Bilbao festival began the day before the sex attack on the Brit.

It is not known if she was at the festival but it is normal for revellers from neighbouring municipalities to enjoy the festivities in Bilbao while it lasts.

A woman was gang raped during the famous San Fermin festival last July in Pamplona an hour and a half's drive from Bilbao.
A German charged with being in Islamic State and filming body parts being cut off an enemy's corpse entered court smirking and wearing sunglasses.

Abdelkarim El B, 30, allegedly fought with the terrorist group in Syria in 2013.

He's alleged to have filmed on his cellphone as he and others cut the ears and nose off the corpse of an enemy fighter near Aleppo, and fired shots into the head.

Abdelkarim El B (pictured), 30, allegedly fought with the Islamic State group in Syria in 2013

Abdelkarim is alleged to have filmed on his cellphone as he and others cut the ears and nose off the corpse of an enemy fighter near Aleppo, and fired shots into the head

The head is then said to have been severed and kicked around.

Abdelkarim was arrested in February 2014 after he left Syria for Turkey.

After his release nearly a year later he returned to Germany where he was arrested in February 2015.

He is charged with membership in a terrorist organization along with breaches of humanitarian and weapons laws.

At his trial at the Oberlandgericht courthouse on Monday, despite the seriousness of the charges, Abdelkarim opted for a casual look, wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses, a chequered shirt and cardigan.

He was photographed grinning as he walked into the courtroom.

Abdelkarim greets friends with a victory sign on the first day of his trial at the Oberlandgericht courthouse

It comes as Britain announced plans to house imprisoned Islamist extremists in separate units from other inmates, after a review found that some charismatic convicts were radicalizing the wider Muslim population in prisons.

The government-ordered study concluded that 'cultural sensitivity' among National Offender Management Service staff toward Muslim prisoners went too far and 'could inhibit the effective confrontation of extremist views.'
YouTuber Viva Frei got the idea from others using drones to

An amateur fisherman tackled a new challenge when he decided to catch a fish from a lake... using a drone.

An amazing video from Canada shows YouTuber Viva Frei challenging himself to catch a fish in a 'real body of water' after seeing people using drones to catch fish in small ponds.

Filmed on Lake Champlain near Montreal on Friday, footage shows him attaching a jitterbug to his drone and sending it hovering above the lake as he wants on the shore.

An amazing video from Canada shows YouTuber Viva Frei challenging himself to catch a fish in a 'real body of water' after seeing people using drones to catch fish in small ponds

Filmed on Lake Champlain near Montreal on Friday, footage shows him attaching a jitterbug to his drone and sending it hovering above the lake as he wants on the shore

Shortly afterwards, to Frei's astonishment a fish can be seen leaping out of the water as it catches on the lure.

'I got a fish!,' he cries excitedly,' Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Holy crab apples!'

The video ends with Frei - breathless with excitement - bringing the fish to shore.

He later wrote online: 'I had seen a couple of guys "catching" fish with their drones, using worms on a hook in some small pond, but where is the challenge in that?

'So I decided to try and catch a fish the real way - by trolling a lure [drawing a baited fishing line through water] on a real body of water.'

Shortly afterwards, to Frei's astonishment a fish can be seen leaping out of the water as it catches on the lure

'I got a fish!,' he cries excitedly,' Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. Holy crab apples!'

The video ends with Frei - breathless with excitement - bringing the fish to shore

'I tied some fishing line to my drone, attached a jitterbug (a topwater lure), and set out to try and make internet history,' he continued.

'Truthfully, I did not expect anything to happen because I had tried a few times before, and just sputtered around until my battery went dead, but this time, on Lake Champlain, not only did I succeed, but I hooked the biggest smallmouth bass of my life.

'After I hooked it and managed to land it, I ran it to my wife for a quick photo op, and then ran it back to the water to release it.
A man who allegedly took part in the gang rape of a teenage girl vowed he would 'track (her) down' and 'strangle the s**t' once he was released from custody.

The revelations came to light as Christian Dickens, from Hazelbrook, west of Sydney, was denied bail by the New South Wales Supreme Court on Monday.

The 21-year-old and two other men are charged with aggravated sexual assault in company over the alleged rape of a girl, then 15 years old, at a party at Dickens' home in the Blue Mountains in 2012.

Christian Dickens (pictured) was refused bail on Monday over the alleged gang rape of a 15-year-old girl at a party in the Blue Mountains in 2012

It is alleged Mr Dickens, 21, vowed to 'track down' the girl and 'strangle the s**t' if he was ever released from custody

Secretly recorded conversations had by Dickens at the Katoomba police station reportedly capture him threatening to get retribution against the girl he is alleged to have raped.

'As soon as the judge goes "Not guilty", I'm going to get up and strangle the s**t and get done for murder,' Dickens allegedly said.

'F**k it, I'm going to jail, I've been preparing myself for this for a couple of weeks.'

It is also alleged that Dickens boasted of being involved in a 'gang bang' before apologising to the girl for taking advantage of her 'while she was drunk'.

Prosecutors claim that in the recordings, Dickens also makes threats against police officers in the case and even told his mother he would get a 'copper in a noose' tattooed on his back.

His mother is said to have replied with: 'Oh, you can be more creative than that. You dont want a copper on your back the rest of your life'.

The court heard how he had secretly been recorded making the threats at the Katoomba police station. He is also alleged to have told his mother he would get a tattoo of a 'copper in a noose' on his back

The incident is alleged to have occurred in 2012 during a party at Dickens' home in Hazelbrook, west of Sydney. Police raided the property in December last year

The defence claimed Dickens was simply 'talking big' as a result of the stress of being held in custody for the first time.

The application for bail was thrown out by Justice Geoffrey Bellew over concern about the threats allegedly made by Dickens.

Dickens will reappear in court on August 26 where he is expected to enter a plea.
Mounds of tents and rubbish left behind as clean-up operation begins

There were 27 drugs-related arrests while 130 people were ejected

It comes as police launched crackdown on drugs at the event in Essex

Extensive evidence of the large-scale use of 'hippy crack' at the V-Festival could be seen today as the massive clear-up operation got underway.

More than 90,000 revellers enjoyed at spectacular event at Chelmsford's Hylands Park which saw superstars Justin Bieber and Rihanna headlining.

Revellers were spotted soaking up the sun as they slowly made their way home, with temperatures set to soar over the next few days for much of the south of England.

But hundreds of balloons and discarded metal canisters were strewn across the site this morning - likely once containing nitrous oxide, aka Hippy Crack or 'laughing gas', a once legal high which was banned under the Psychoactive Substances Act earlier this year.

Canisters believed to contain legal high nitrous oxide, pictured, were found dumped in huge numbers at the V Festival site in Essex

Revellers were enjoying the sunshine as they slowly made their way home from the event

The event saw 90,000 people pack out the park in Essex for two days of live music

Meanwhile tonnes of rubbish and hundreds of discarded tents are being collected by kind-hearted volunteers.

The gas - usually carried in balloons - is inhaled and is said to leave users feeling euphoric and relaxed with some people experiencing hallucinations.

A risk of death comes due to lack of oxygen, especially if used in confined spaces or large amounts are rapidly taken in.

New scientific research has even linked the substance to blindness, although it appears to have had little impact on its use.

One festival goer said: 'I saw a lot of people carrying the balloons of laughing gas round with them.

'It seems to be as common here as drinking lager and smoking cigarettes.

Some festival goers claimed they saw people carrying balloons of 'Hippy Crack' and that it was 'as common as drinking lager' (there is no suggestion anyone in the picture used it)

Mounds of rubbish were discarded by campers as the clean-up operation began today

The event was headlined by Justin Bieber and Rihanna, although both faced criticism from fans over their performances

'V has changed a lot down the years - when I started going back in '96, laughing gas wasn't something you would see here.'

More than 130 people were evicted from the Chelmsford venue by police bidding to crack down on anti-social behaviour and the use of psychoactive substances.

A total of 43 arrests were made - 27 of them for drug related offences.

Others include five collared on suspicion of assault, four for handling stolen goods, two for conspiracy to defraud, one for fraud, three for theft and one for failing to comply with direction to leave.

Many revellers looked under strain as they hoisted and dragged their camping gear away

Essex Police assistant chief constable Carl O'Malley, said: 'This year we introduced Project Servator to the event and I'm really pleased with the overall success of the policing operation.

'The innovative tactics made the festival an uncomfortable environment for criminals to operate in and it's something we'll definitely adopt next year.

'This was the second year where a Public Space Protection Order was enforced to combat anti-social behaviour and use of psychoactive substances.

'As a result, 133 people were ejected from the festival sending out a clear message that these drugs are not tolerated.

Essex Police said new tactics to crack down on drugs made the festival a safer event

More than 130 people were evicted from the festival while 43 people were arrested, including 27 for drug-related offences

'I want to thank all officers who worked extremely hard over the weekend and liaised closely with the organisers, security team and retailers to ensure festival-goers enjoyed a safe event.

'We look forward to V-Festival 2017.'

Canadian superstar Bieber left many fans disappointed with a lacklustre performance on Saturday after revealing he was hungover while Rihanna was slated by some fans after she arrived late for her performance last night.

The sun is set to stay shining over much of Britain until mid-week, with temperatures hitting highs of 29C in some parts.
Donald Trump lashed out at MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' program Monday morning, calling it 'unwatchable' and saying 'neurotic' Mika Brzezinski is her co-host Joe Scarborough's 'very insecure long-time girlfriend.'

The Republican presidential nominee has waged a months-long war against the liberal cable network's morning show, beginning with his June declaration that it had 'lost its way' in criticizing him relentlessly.

Trump tweeted Monday that he had '[t]ried watching low-rated @Morning_Joe this morning, unwatchable! @morningmika is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!'

Scroll down for video

'EVERYTHING IS AWESOME': Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough deadpanned a line from 'The LEGO Movie' on Monday as they mocked the Republican National Committee's reassuring words about Donald Trump's candidacy

THREAT: Trump tweeted a brushback pitch against the morning-show duo on Monday, saying that someday he would 'tell the story' of the romantically linked hosts

Minutes later, he took a second chunk out of the show's co-hosts.

'Some day, when things calm down, I'll tell the real story of @JoeNBC and his very insecure long-time girlfriend, @morningmika. Two clowns!' Trump tweeted.

Scarborough shot back on Twitter: 'Neurotic and not very bright? Look in the mirror.'

'Thanks for watching,' he wrote in a second tweet. 'Morning Joe is enjoying it's [sic] best ratings ever thanks to obsessed fans like you.'

The New York Post reported in late June that Brzezinski and Scarborough have been romantically linked for years.

'Morning Joe' featured a parade of anti-Trump segments on Monday, including former Ted Cruz operative Rick Tyler mocking the Republican National Committee's chairman for his observations about Trump maturing in his role as a first-time candidate.

'He sorta talked about his candidate as if he graduated from diapers to big-boy pants,' snarked Tyler.

BLAST: The Republican presidential nominee used his popular Twitter feed on Monday to threaten the hosts of an MSNBC show that turned against him this summer

MORNING SMIRK: Fired Ted Cruz operative Rick Tyler clobbered Trump on 'Morning Joe' as he deconstructed RNC chairman Reince Priebus's weekend praise for the candidate

Tyler was fired from Cruz's presidential primary campaign in February for circulating a false story about Sen. Marco Rubio insulting the Bible. He later apologized.

'Morning Joe' also highlighted opinion pieces from Monday's New York Times, including a masthead editorial asking how America would 'recover' from a Trump candidacy and a column poking fun at the Republican's highly publicized apology last week for his past campaign stump language.

One commercial break wrapped up with 'Everything is Awesome'  the theme song from 'The LEGO Movie'  playing over video of Priebus on Sunday's ABC 'This Week' program insisting that the billionaire businessman is 'getting into a groove' after 'a great week.'

'Everything's awesome,' Brzezinski deadpanned.

'Everything's awesome,' Scarborough mocked.

'This is the part I don't understand,' Brzezinski added. 'You just have to look at this as an opportunity, right? You can't pretend this is okay.'

This year's Trump-Scarborough feud surprised political observers who considered the two power players to be allies throughout the Republican primary season.

PUSHBACK: Scarborough jabbed at Trump on Twitter, saying his show is enjoying high ratings and tossing Trump's insult back in his face

Trump received a hero's welcome on 'Morning Joe' through early May. But things turned ugly when Scarborough  a former Florida GOP congressman himself  said on the air that despite his early willingness to take the billionaire seriously as a political candidate, he would never actually vote for him.

'There is not a better time for someone to run as an independent candidate,' Scarborough said on May 6.

He had himself tested the presidential waters in March 2014, speaking at a Republican cattle-call event in New Hampshire.

Afterward, DailyMail.com surveyed a group of 25 GOP stalwarts who heard his talk. None said they would consider voting for him.

Brzezinski added in May that the Republican Party was perfectly positioned to recruit an independent candidate to upset Trump during its summer nominating convention.

'I just can't believe there isn't another candidate, at this point, that they would say, "You know what, I'd rather go down behind the right person than sell out America, my principles and everything I've worked for all my life to get behind somebody who I don't believe in",' she said.

What followed was a summer of acrimony between the candidate and the MSNBC morning headliners.

By early June Scarborough was voicing what he said were the night-sweats of Republican bigwigs, staring down the barrel of a TV camera and lecturing Trump about his swipes at a Hispanic federal judge.

'You're acting like a bush-league loser, you're acting like a racist, you're acting like a bigot,' Scarborough said. 'Prove to me that you're not a bigot and prove to me that you're not going to take my party down in the ditch, [or] you don't have my endorsement.'

Scarborough said this month that 'several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump, and three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times, he asked, at one point, "If we have them, we can't we use them?" Three times, in an hour briefing, "Why can't we use nuclear weapons?"'

But the deepest cut  which led to days of Trump tweets about Scarborough as a subpar political voice  came when Scarborough wrote in a Washington Post op-ed this month that it was time for the Republican Party to toss its nominee overboard.
Insists a stronger EU is best way to

Under-fire EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured) risked widening divisions with European leaders today by saying borders were the 'worst invention ever'

Under-fire EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker risked widening divisions with European leaders today by saying borders were the 'worst invention ever'.

He called for all borders across Europe to be opened, despite the chaos caused over the last year from the flood in refugees fleeing Syria and the wave of terror attacks hitting various continent's cities.

The remarkable comments will further undermine Mr Juncker's precarious position as European Commission President.

He has faced repeated calls to quit after his failure to keep Britain in the EU and the refugee and Greek debt crises.

Today he accepted the Commission 'deserves criticism' but insisted national government's 'have to share the blame'.

Speaking at the Alpbach Media Academy this morning, Mr Juncker said: 'Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians.'

The contentious remarks from the Brussels chief are the polar opposite of moves by elected leaders of EU member states who have tighten their borders over recent months after more than a million entered the bloc from Syria in less than a year.

Mr Juncker also said a stronger EU was the best way of beating the rising trend of nationalism cross Europe.

In another extraordinary remark, he appeared to warn of war on the continent if the EU disintegrates as he echoed the warning from the former French president Francois Mitterrand, who said nationalism added to nationalism would end in war.

'This is still true so we have to fight against nationalism,' Mr Juncker said.

Jean-Claude Juncker called for all borders across Europe to be opened, despite the chaos caused over the last year from the flood in refugees fleeing Syria (hundreds of migrants pictured at the Hungarian and Austrian border last year)

'We have to fight against nationalism, we have the duty not to follow populists but to block the avenue of populists.'

The embattled EU Commission president described Brexit as an 'unheard-of political crisis' for the EU but told EU member states that the only way of overcoming the challenge of Britain leaving would be to remain as one.

'In the concentration of globalisation and European problems, we must not lose our way,' he said.

Downing Street said Mr Juncker's views on borders were 'not something that the Prime Minister would agree with'.

The Prime Minister's spokeswoman added: 'Indeed, you've heard the Prime Minister talk about the views that the British people expressed in the referendum and that the British people think that borders are important, having more control of our borders is important and that's an issue we need to address.'

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (pictured left) will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel (right) and French President Francois Hollande on the island of Ventotene, off the coast of Naples, for crucial talks about post-Brexit Europe today

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured left) and French President Francois Hollande (right) are travelling to the tiny Italian island of Ventotene today to discuss Europe's future

Mr Juncker was speaking as the leaders of Germany, France and Italy met for crisis talks today as they plot to save the EU in the wake of Brexit.

The aim of the summit - held on the Italian island of Ventotene - is to demonstrate the unity of Europe's three biggest countries but it is likely to attract questions over the elitist nature of the meeting.

It is the first in a number of intense summits of talks between European leaders, who are returning from their summer holidays to forge a new way forward after Britain's dramatic decision to quit the EU.

The meeting will also tackle the ongoing refugee crisis, Europe's economic woes and security in the wake of the string of terror attacks that hit French and German cities last month.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is hosting the meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.

The location of the exclusive meeting is hugely symbolic; Ventotene was seen as playing a part in the formation of the EU.

One of the EU's founding fathers, Altiero Spinelli, wrote a manifesto for a federal Europe while he was imprisoned on the island off the coast of Naples during the second world war.

A French diplomatic source told the Guardian the summit aims 'to show the unity of Europe's three biggest countries, but not to create a specific club'.




Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity is wading so much into the presidential race  to boost his friend, Republican nominee Donald Trump  that the New York Times is classifying him as a campaign adviser.

Hannity sat down with the Times' Jim Rutenberg and talked about his role in the campaign.

While sources told the newspaper that they thought Hannity was angling for a position inside the Trump administration.

Scroll down for video

Donald Trump and Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity are friends, but the television host has basically stepped into the role of campaign adviser, the New York Times reports

Hannity denied wanting to someway work in a theoretical Trump White House, calling it laughable and contractually prohibitive.

But he didn't deny giving the Republican nominee, who's struggled in the polls the past few weeks, an assist.

'Do I talk to my friend who I've known for years and speak my mind? I can't not speak my mind,' Hannity told the paper.

He added that, 'I don't say anything privately that I don't say publicly.'

And he noted that he's not sure Trump even listens as, 'nobody controls him.'

'I'm not hiding the fact that I want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States,' he continued.

'I never claimed to be a journalist,' he added.

Back in March, Sean Hannity (right) held a town hall program and interviewed Donald Trump's primary campaign rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (left)

While Hannity's show gives off the aura of 'news,' he's an opinion host at the channel. He's the op-ed page to Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier's front page news, so to speak.

And he's now the third brand-name media personality to have some sort of role with the Trump campaign.

The person with the most defined role is Stephen Bannon, the newly-hired CEO of the campaign, who was also whispering in Trump's ear before the billionaire snatched him away from the right-wing website Breitbart News.

Ousted Fox News head Roger Ailes was reportedly advising Trump on the nominee's debate strategy, as the first general election debate is about a month away.

The Trump campaign denied that Ailes was working with the campaign 'officially' or 'unofficially,' though noted on several occasions that Ailes and Trump are good friends.

Ailes had to leave Fox News Channel over sexual harassment allegations.

Before leaving Fox, Ailes had to deal with the fallout from Hannity providing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with a private plane to travel in to meet Trump and talk about potentially becoming his veep.

Hannity was aiming for Gingrich  who would bring with him congressional experience and Republican ties  to get the spot on the GOP ticket.

Trump ended up selecting Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

Ailes decided against forcing Hannity to charge Gingrich for the plane ride.

And since Ailes' departure, Fox News executives haven't forced his hand either, not have they  according to the Times  warned him against giving advice to Trump and his campaign.
The gender pay gap in Australia has widened over the last decade with men earning 20 per cent more than women.

Women are paid less even when working in the same role as men in top accounting firms across the country, workforce diversity special Conrad Liveris told ABC.

He said PriceWaterHouse Coopers, EY and Deloiette pay women between 1 and 5 per cent less than men for the same jobs.

Scroll down for video

Men earn an average of 20 per cent more than women in Australia in some sectors of the workforce (stock image)

'Even at their highest level, at the partnership level, they were finding about a 5 per cent gender pay gap in a like-for-like basis,' Mr Liveris told ABC.

Deloitte said the reason for the pay disparity in its most senior job is due to the range of experience of staff 'and the greater prevalence of males at the upper end of this range'.

'We have eliminated any gender pay gaps at this level on a like for like experience basis,' the accounting firm told ABC.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted the firm.

Mr Liveris said the big accounting firms were 'using their influence in a really positive way'.

Mr Liveris said the gender wage gap for total full-time earnings was an average of about 20 per cent.

He said the healthcare sector was among the worst offenders with a gender pay gap of almost $500 per week.

Official weekly earnings figures show the gender pay gap has risen over the last 10 years from about 15 per cent in 2004.

It reached a record high in 2015 before falling slightly this year.

Some women are even paid less than men in the same roles at the same companies (stock image)

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) said the wage gap remained 'stubbornly high' despite being the focus of increasing public interest.

ACTU said the average weekly ordinary time earnings (AWOTE) was 16.1 per cent less than men, or $260 a week.

Average earnings are lowest in the retail and food sectors, ACTU said, 'demonstrating yet again the critical importance of penalty rates for workers in these industries, many of whom are women'.

Average superannuation balances for women at retirement are 52.8 per cent less than those for men, government figures recently released through the Workplace Gender Equality Agency said.

ACTU said Australia had dropped from being 15th on the Global Gender Gap Index in 2006 to 36th in 2015.
A British national who was tasked with clearing explosive devices and booby-traps in Iraq was today killed when he tried to defuse a bomb, officials have said.

The British Embassy confirmed that they had just been made aware of the incident in Ramadi, 75 miles west of the capital Baghdad.

The man was in the country working for a US company which was tasked with clearing thousands of devices the jihadists left behind in Ramadi.

American security and risk management firm Janus had the contract to dispose of the improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

A British national was killed on Monday after they tried to defuse an improvised explosive devices (p

But the worker was killed as they attempted to defuse an IED in the Malaab neighbourhood.

A British Embassy spokesman said: 'We've just been made aware that there has been a British national killed in Ramadi.'

The mayor of Ramadi, which is the capital of the western Anbar province and was retaken by Iraqi forces from the Islamic State group earlier this year, confirmed the incident.

Ibrahim al-Osej said: 'A contractor of British origin was killed and another wounded as they attempted to defuse an IED in the Malaab neighbourhood.'

He did not specify the nationality of the wounded contractor.

Two members of the Iraqi forces search an area for improvised explosive devices (IED)

A senior Anbar police official also confirmed the incident but Janus would not immediately comment.

Rigging homes and planting bombs on roads was a key component of the system IS set up to defend the city.

Iraqi forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes eventually retook Ramadi six months ago after a battle that completely emptied the city of its population and left it in ruins.
Two friends of a Penn State professor have been charged with his murder after allegedly pushing him 80 feet off a cliff into a quarry because they thought they were named in his will.

Danelle Geier, 32, and George Ishler, 39, told police that they believed media studies professor, Ronald Bettig, named them in a new version of his will, according to the New York Daily News.

Rockview State Police found the 56-year-old's body in a quarry on Wednesday.

Bettig, who a colleague said would be referred to as the 'nutty professor' by those who did not know him well, had been friends with suspected killers, Geier and Ishler.

The pair, who police said 'were known drug users' are accused of killing Bettig for the benefits, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Daily News.

Scroll down for video

Penn State professor, Ronald Bettig (pictured), 56, was allegedly pushed 80 feet off a cliff into a quarry because two of his friends thought they were named in his will

Danelle Geier (right), 32, and George Ishler (left), 39, persuaded Bettig to travel to the quarry by telling him they could harvest marijuana there, according to court documents

Authorities said Ishler and the professor were friends and Geier was living with him, according to the Centre Daily Times.

The two originally plotted to have Ishler drown Bettig in the ocean during a trip to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, and later came up with the plot to kill him at Centre County quarry, located just off Rimmey Road in Potter Township, court documents said.

During the trip to Rehoboth Beach, authorities allege, Geier texted Ishler, 'So ready I am pissed off', which police believe was a reference to being ready to kill Bettig because she was angry that he had criticized how she was raising her son.

Court documents say that the pair persuaded Bettig to travel to the quarry by telling him they could harvest marijuana there.

Death scene: Centre County quarry, located just off Rimmey Road in Potter Township. Bettig was allegedly 'pushed' to his death from the cliff into the quarry

Close up of the quarry where Bettig fell to his death. Court documents say that the pair persuaded Bettig to travel to the quarry by telling him they could harvest marijuana there

Danelle Geier, 32, was living with Bettig. She is seen above as she was arrested

Ishler allegedly pushed Bettig, who fell 80 feet to his death, police said.

Geier told police that she and Ishler also agreed to stage the scene with items such as Bettig's car to make it appear as if he was alone, and they agreed to report him missing three days later, according to court documents.

They put Bettig's water bottles, flashlight, hand rake and a bag near the quarry in an attempt to stage the scene.

Bettig disappeared on August 12 and the two waited until August 15 to tell police the scholar was missing.

Geier, pictured above, texted Ishler, 'So ready I am pissed off', which police believe was a reference to being ready to kill Bettig because she was angry that he had criticized how she was raising her son

They told police that Bettig and his vehicle had been missing for three days and suggested that he may have gone to California, authorities said in court documents.

Bettig (pictured) taught courses on the political economy of communications and wrote at least two books on the subject

The two were found out after officers noticed inconsistencies with their stories.

According to Penn State's website, Bettig joined the College of Communications in 1988 and was an associate professor of media studies.

He taught courses on the political economy of communications and wrote at least two books on the subject.

In a statement from the university Dean Marie Hardin of the College of Communications said: 'We are deeply saddened by the loss. He was a part of the fabric of this College for many years.

'All except our very newest faculty and staff members very likely knew Ron, who was one of our longest-tenured faculty members.

'Ron was the kind of teacher who connected powerfully with students, who found his classes in political economy - at both the undergraduate and graduate levels - transformative.'

According to Penn State's website, Bettig joined the College of Communications in 1988 and was an associate professor of media studies

Anthony Olorunnisola, head of the department of film-video and media studies, said Bettig was intensely private and kept in touch with a handful of close friends that he had had since high school.

He said Bettig fought for the underdog and, as an example, would not hesitate to help those struggling with unemployment.

'Across the domains of teaching, research and service, the common factor that characterized him was his nonconformist ways,' Olorunnisola said.

'Over 22 years of working together in varied capacities, I came to know him as a man with tons of healthy skepticism and courage of conviction who readily questioned the status quo and led others, especially his students, to interrogate received knowledge.

'In his classes, where he adopted the Socratic method, that included re-examining assumptions about the 'innately good values' of capitalism.

'Those who didn't know him well enough considered him a "nutty professor" or a "communist" who bucked the trend.

'He was well-aware of the reputation and remained comfortable with who he was.'

Geier faces charges for murder, aggravated assault, evidence-tampering and conspiracy.

Ishler had already been charged with first-and third-degree murder on Friday.
Stench of dead man was made even worse by the city's recent heatwave

Officials say the man, who has not been identified, died of natural causes

who was in his 40s, was found dead amidst piles of trash in an apartment upstairs

Residents living above a New York restaurant who thought they were going to be waking up to smell the coffee were in for a far ruder awakening after the stench of a dead body filled the air.

Not only that, the dead man who was found in an East Village apartment was a hoarder, meaning the stink was even stronger than usual.

The smell was so bad that patrons to the Spiegel Cafe at the corner of First Avenue and 2nd Street called cops to report the stench.

The stench appeared to be coming from an apartment in the East Village

The foul odor was made worse by the city's recent heatwave which allowed the corpse to decompose and fester in the 90-degree heat.

'It smelled like an infestation of dead rats,' Spiegel Cafe regular Rebecca Weber told the Daily News.

'I think someone from the building called police because they just couldn't take it anymore.'

Patrons to the nearby Speigel Cafe couldn't take the overpowering odor any longer and called the cops to investigate

Officials said it appears that the man,who was in his 40s, died of natural causes, although he was not immediately identified.

By Sunday night, at least a dozen bags of trash had been piled up outside the building.
Sen. Mark Kirk joined fellow Republicans in criticizing President Obama for shipping $400 million in cash to the Iranians, and withholding that payment until American prisoners were freed.

'We can't have the president of the United States acting like the drug-dealer-in-chief,' Kirk told the editorial board of the State Journal-Register on Tuesday. The story was then published over the weekend.

Kirk objected to the United States giving Iran 'clean packs of money.' Calling the Islamic republic a 'state sponsor of terror.'

Scroll down for video

Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk (left), a Republican, called President Obama (right) a 'drug-dealer-in-chief' for sending foreign cash to Iran, suggesting it would lead to terrorism

'Those 500-euro notes will pop up across the Middle East,' Kirk warned. 'We're going to see problems in multiple [countries] because of that money given to them.'

A chorus of Republicans, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, have torn into the administration over the January 17 swap in recent days.

Republicans contend that the money, which the U.S. owed the Iranian government over an arms deal that fell apart in the 1970s, was 'ransom' because the Americans didn't fork it over until four American hostages were freed, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian.

The administration pointed to the fact that the two negotiations were held separately and with separate teams, even though the delivery of the money and the release of the Americans happened on the same day.

Four Iranian hostages were released on January 17, including a journalist, a pastor and a U.S. Marine, in a cash deal that Republicans are describing as 'ransom'

On Thursday, State Department spokesman John Kirby connected those two dealings saying that the delivery of the $400 million cash payment  made up of euros, Swiss francs and other currencies because U.S. law bans transacting American dollars to Iran  was contingent on the prisoners physical release.

It marked the first time the U.S. linked the two events on-the-record.

Kirby then went on CNN to push back again at 'ransom' claims.

'First of all this is Iran's money,' he said. 'No. 1, I think the way ransom works is you have to pay first and then you get your hostages back, and that's not what happened here.'

But Kirk's campaign, who is guiding him through a tough re-election fight against Democrat Tammy Duckworth, stood by the Republican's claims.

Iranian state television broadcast this image of a shipping pallet stacked with cash in February, which could potentially be the cash that Kirk is upset about

'Senator Kirk was referring to the Administration's decision to send pallets of cash, not even U.S. dollars but euros and Swiss francs, in a clear ransom payment to Iran, world's leading state sponsor of terrorism,' Kevin Artl, Kirk's campaign manager, said in a statement to the Guardian.

'The decision sets an awful and dangerous international standard that should be investigated and the lack of transparency from the Administration clearly indicated that they knew their actions were not above board,' Artl added.

President Obama has pushed back on these 'ransom' allegations by noting that the payment, which is part of a larger $1.7 billion settlement, was announced to the public along with the Americans' release.

In a statement from her spokesman Matt McGrath, Duckworth, the Democrat vying for Kirk's seat, slapped back at his statements to the State Journal-Register.

'Senator Kirks comments are misguided and deeply offensive, and beneath the dignity of the office he holds. He should apologize,' McGrath told Dailymail.com.




A 10-year-old boy on his way to his own birthday party and a former aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo were among five people killed in a multi-vehicle crash in Long Island.

The crash happened on the Long Island Expressway, near Manorville, on Sunday morning.

Among those killed was 29-year-old Scott Martella, a communications director for Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and a former aide to Cuomo.

Carmelo Pinales, 26, of Hicksville, was driving an eastbound Subaru Outback when he apparently lost control of his vehicle, which crossed over the grassy median, went airborne and struck two westbound vehicles, a BMW and a Honda.

Pinales, his 27-year-old sister, Patricia Pinales, and his 10-year-old son, Christopher, all died. The family had been on the way to the Splish Splash Waterpark to celebrate Christopher's birthday.

Scroll down for video

Carmelo Pinales (center) and his sister, Patricia (left) and his son Christopher (right) were killed Sunday in the horrific pile-up, with paramedics saying it was the worst they'd seen

A passenger in the BMW, 81-year-old Isidore Adelson, also was killed.

Martella was driving the Honda.

He worked for Cuomo until he became communications director for Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone in June.

Martella was pronounced dead on the scene in Shirley, Suffolk County, New York on Sunday morning.

Christopher was critically injured and transported to the hospital in a helicopter, but hours later died of his injuries.

Former Gov. Cuomo aide Scott Martella, 29, was killed while traveling with his fiancee on the Long Island Expressway in Manorville when an out of control vehicle traveling in the opposite direction flew over the median and crashed into his car as well as another person's

Martella's fiancee, Shelbi Thurau, 29, was reportedly taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries - according to her Facebook page, Thurau was a dietitian at ShopRite

Also in there car were Carmelo's aunt and Patricia's three-year-old daughter, both of whom were treated for non-life-threatening injuries, according to WBTV.

Carmelo's aunt reportedly took a SnapChat video of the scene right before the crash, according to NBC New York.

Four other people were injured, including Martella's fiancee, Shelbi Thurau, 29, of Northport, who was transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, reports Newsday.

Four others were injured in a separate car: Marvin Tenzer, 73, and his three passengers, Sandra Tenzer, 69, Helen Adelson, and Isidore Adelson, 81, all of Westhampton.

Isidore Adelson died late Sunday night, according to NBC New York. His wife, Helen, is still in critical condition.

Police said that it appeared that Carmelo Pinales lost control of his vehicle and smashed into two others, they are investigating whether high rate of speed played a role in the deadly crash - above, Martella's Honda

Doctors in Long Island say paramedics who attended the gut-wrenching scene said it was the worst they'd ever seen, reports the outlet.

The accident reportedly was sparked when Carmelo Pinales lost control of his gray Subaru Outback which was going eastbound on the LIE when he careened across a grass center divider near exits 68 and 69 then went airborne before slamming into westbound traffic.

He struck the two other vehicles, a BMW and Martella's Honda, at 9:35am, according to the outlet.

Police are looking into a witness report that Pinales was speeding.

Cops also said several victims were ejected and may not have been wearing seatbelts.

Carmelo Pinales, 26 (above) died in the crash, as did his 10-year-old son and his sister, Patrica, 27 - Police are investigating whether Pinales, who lost control of his car, was speeding

Cops said several victims were ejecting from their cars leading them to investigate if some weren't wearing seatbelts

Andrew Cuomo tweeted three times about Martella, saying he was a 'dedicated, beloved public servant who worked day in and day out to improve the lives of his fellow New Yorkers.'

Steven Bellone paid tribute to his communications director Sunday night on Facebook, writing, 'Scott Martella dedicated his all too brief life to public service and to helping others. He is known across Long Island as a leader and a great man.

'The hundreds of people Scott has worked with over the years and the thousands of people whose lives he has positively impacted would describe him as nothing short of an amazing person.'

Martella and Thurau got engaged last year and she wrote on Facebook: 'I've never loved anyone more and I am so lucky I get to spend the rest of my life smiling alongside him.'
A teenager from Toronto ended up calling the cops after her parents took her on vacation to a rental cottage she did not approve of.

Instead of happy memories, the 15-year-old received a caution from the Ontario Provincial Police.

During a 911 call, she told law enforcement that her parents 'forced her' to go on a trip with them to a rental cottage in the Trent Hills, about 100 miles away from northeast of the city.

The teen ended up calling the cops from the remote Trent Hills, 100 miles from Toronto

'This appeared to be a case of a teenager being a teenager,' Northumberland OPP Constable Steve Bates told CBC News.

'Although she perceived this as a real issue, it was not an appropriate use of 911.'

Despite the unusual nature of the call, officers still went to the rental cottage on the Trent River to ensure that the family was safe and that there was no 'real'emergency.

The teen has since been cautioned for misusing the emergency number.
Advertisement

St Louis has topped the FBI's list of most dangerous cities across the Unites States.

More than 88 violent crimes took place for every 10,000 residents in the Missouri city during the first half of 2015 - compared to an average rate of 36.6 across the US in 2014, FBI data reveals.

Those crimes can include robbery, aggravated assault, rape and even murder.

The top ten most dangerous cities across the Unites States: St Louis is number one, followed by Memphis is second and Detroit in third

The South and West of the country have higher violent crime rates and property crime rates than the North and East

The listing places St Louis above the notoriously dangerous Detroit which has topped the list in previous years thanks to the city's high gun crime rate.

Detroit is now listed as third after Memphis, Tennessee which had 84.2 violent crimes per 10,000 residents.

Birmingham, Alabama comes in fourth place with 82.8 violent crimes per 10,000 residents while Rockford, Illinois was fifth with a rate of 76.3.

TOP TEN MOST VIOLENT AMERICAN CITIES 1. St. Louis, Missouri: 88.1 2. Memphis, Tennessee: 84.2 3. Detroit, Michigan: 83.4 4. Birmingham, Alabama: 82.8 5. Rockford, Illinois: 76.3 6. Baltimore, Maryland: 67.7 7. Stockton, California: 67.4 8. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: 65.3 9. Cleveland, Ohio: 61.5 10. Hartford, Connecticut: 55.8 Advertisement

The FBI had compiled data on the most violent cities in each state in the first six months of 2015.

A city is classed as an urban center with a minimum population of 100,000.

The sparsely populated states of Delaware, Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming were not included as they do not have cities of significant enough size.

The FBI data also failed to include Little Rock, Arkansas, which has just under 200,000 people, and the state of Minnesota, where cities Minneapolis, St Paul, and Rochester all register above the 100,000 population threshold.

Joining St Louis in the top ten most violent cities in America are Baltimore in Maryland, Stockton in California, Milwaukee in Wisconsin, Cleveland in Ohio and Hartford, Connecticut.

The top five slots of the list largely follow similar patterns in reports published in previous years, although Oakland, California, which previously ranked as the third most dangerous city in the country, was excluded from this year's list.

1. St. Louis, Missouri: 88.1 violent crimes per 10,000 people

Number 1: St. Louis, Missouri: 88.1 violent crimes per 10,000 people: St Louis's violent crime rate soared between 2014 and 2015, jumping by more than 300 crimes to 2,806 incidents last year -pushing it to the top of the list

St Louis's violent crime rate soared between 2014 and 2015, jumping by more than 300 crimes to 2,806 incidents pushing it to the top of the list. The murder rate also climbed significantly from 58 to 92 people killed last year.

FBI Director James B. Comey suggested that the increase in crime may be down to the 'Ferguson effect'.

He said that crime rates may have been influenced by the turmoil after a white police officer shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in August 2014.

The Missouri shooting sparked mass riots and unrest, increasing the likelihood of violent crime, and may also deter police from acting to stop suspects in case it sparks another incident.

However, Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St Louis debunked the idea.

He told Forbes: 'Homicides were going up in 2014 quite a bit before Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. So it's hard to attribute it to a so-called Ferguson effect because we began to see those increases before August 9.'

Rosenfeld also pointed out that the figures do not track drug use or the crimes committed in subsequent turf wars.

2. Memphis, Tennessee: 84.2 violent crimes per 10,000 people

2. Memphis, Tennessee: 84.2: Memphis moved up from third worst for violent crime last year into second behind St Louis,

Memphis moved up from third worst for violent crime last year into second behind St Louis, mostly thanks to Oakland, California being cut from this year's dangerous cities list.

The city had almost a third of residents living under the poverty line in 2015, 29.8 per cent, while the city's murder rate has been rising so fast that it overtook Chicago this year with 64 per cent more homicide cases.

Between 2014 and 2015, reports of violent crime went up from 10,888 to 10,969.

3. Detroit, Michigan: 83.4 violent crimes per 10,000 people

3. Detroit, Michigan: 83.4 violent crimes per 10,000 people: Detroit has come in third after two consecutive years as the nation's most dangerous city in 2013 and 2014

Detroit has come in third after two consecutive years as the nation's most dangerous city in 2013 and 2014, according to a study of FBI crime statistics.

Falling crime rates in the city have seen the city murder rate drop from 135 to 107 people between 2014 and 2015.

Meanwhile the overall violent crime rate also decreased from 6,292 to 5,711 last year.

Detroit, once nicknamed 'Murder City' after 714 homicides were committed in 1974 still has among one of the highest crime rates in the country.

The falling crime rate comes after Mayor Mike Duggan's promises to attack crime as Detroit works to regrow its population, which at around 680,000 is barely a third of what it was in the 1950s.

Last year's 295 homicides were four fewer than in 2014 and down 37 from two years ago. Both numbers were the city's lowest since 1967, when 281 homicides were committed.

Most other violent crime and property offenses also decreased last year.

Duggan told the AP earlier this year that the city still has 'a lot of work to do' to reduce crime. 'The work has only started,' he said. 'This city remains much too violent. This isn't a feeling we're satisfied with what we've accomplished.'

4. Birmingham, Alabama: 82.8 violent crimes per 10,000 people

4. Birmingham, Alabama: 82.8 violent crimes per 10,000 people: The city shoots straight into the top five after not even hitting the top ten last year

Birmingham, Alabama shoots straight into number four after not even hitting the top five last year following a steady increase in violent crime, from 1,619 to 1,756.

The city had previously prided itself on its declining murder rate and revitalization after fatal stabbings in 2007 and 2009 led to calls for nightclubs to be shut down, while the notorious murder and sexual mutilation of a waitress in 1987 which had heralded an exodus from the city.

But it appears the murder rate is on the rise again, climbing to 23 in 2014 and again in 2015 to 30.

5. Rockford, Illinois: 76.3 violent crimes per 10,000 people

5. Rockford, Illinois: 76.3 violent crimes per 10,000 people: The murder rate dropped slightly in Rockford last year, from ten in 2014 to nine. Sadly the number of other serious violent crimes soared from 927 to 1142

The murder rate dropped slightly in Rockford last year, from ten in 2014 to nine. Sadly the number of other serious violent crimes soared from 927 to 1142.

Rape reports in particular increased from 69 to 78, while assault and property crime has also climbed.

Rockford, which has a relatively small population of 150,000, has an average homicide rate of 19 per year.

The 2015 figure represents the first dip below double digits since 2004 when just eight people were killed, as the mid-90's gang related violence finally appeared to be subsiding.

But it had risen again slowly, securing Rockford's place on the country's most dangerous lists for years.

6. Baltimore, Maryland: 67.7 violent crimes per 10,000 people

6. Baltimore, Maryland: 67.7 violent crimes per 10,000 people

Baltimore saw its deadliest year ever with an unprecedented number of young, black men shot to death.

The year's total tally of 344 homicides was second only to the record 353 in 1993, when Baltimore had about 100,000 more residents.

The killing skyrocketed after the unrest and rioting of late April, hitting 30 or 40 homicides a month for the rest of the year.

The overwhelming majority of victims were young black men - 90 per cent - with most being killed by guns.

Shootings overall were also up, with 75 per cent more than 2014 and a total of 900 people shot.

7. Stockton, California: 67.4 violent crimes per 10,000 people

8. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: 65.3 violent crimes per 10,000 people

9. Cleveland, Ohio: 61.5 violent crimes per 10,000 people

10. Hartford, Connecticut: 55.8 violent crimes per 10,000 people

11. Atlanta, Georgia had 55.7 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

11. Atlanta, Georgia had 55.7 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

12. Springfield, Massachusetts had 54.4 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

13. Anchorage, Alaska had 53.6 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

14. Tallahassee, Florida had 52.8 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

15. Odessa, Texas had 51.8 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

16. Newark, New Jersey had 50.2 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

16. Newark, New Jersey had 50.2 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

17. Buffalo, New York had 50.2 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

18. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania had 49.1 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

19. Albuquerque, New Mexico had 48.2 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

20. Wichita, Kansas had 45.5 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

21. North Las Vegas, Nevada had 43.4 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

21. North Las Vegas, Nevada had 43.4 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

22. Jackson, Mississippi had 43.2 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

23. Durham, North Carolina had 42.8 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

24. New Orleans, Louisiana had 42.7 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

25. Tulsa, Oklahoma had 41.5 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

26. Pueblo, Colorado had 41.6 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

26. Pueblo, Colorado had 41.6 violent crimes per 10,000 residents.

27. Des Moines, Iowa had 38.7 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

28. Salt Lake City, Utah had 38.2 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

29. Tacoma, Washington had 36.6 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

30. North Charleston, South Carolina had 34.8 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

31. Tucson, Arizona had 32.4 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

31. Tucson, Arizona had 32.4 violent crimes per 10,000 residents (pictured is the Tuscon skyline)

32. South Bend, Indiana had 32.2 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

33. Louisville, Kentucky had 30.2 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

34. Manchester, New Hampshire had 28.9 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

35. Providence, Rhode Island had 26.6 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

36. Norfolk, Virginia had 24.5 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

36. Norfolk, Virginia had 24.5 violent crimes per 10,000 residents (pictured is the Norfolk, Virginia skyline)

37. Billings, Montana had 21.1 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

38. Sioux Falls, South Dakota had 20.6 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

39. Lincoln, Nebraska had 17.4 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

40. Eugene, Oregon had 15.3 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

41. Fargo, North Dakota had 14.6 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

42. Boise, Idaho had 13.5 violent crimes per 10,000 residents

43. Honolulu, Hawaii had 11.6 violent crimes per 10,000 residents
A woman from Queens, New York, has been charged with murdering her 9-year-old stepdaughter by strangling her to death with her bare hands over the weekend.

Shamdai Arjun, 55, was arrested and charged Sunday with second-degree murder in the killing of Ashdeep Kaur, whose naked, lifeless body was discovered in an empty bathtub at her family's Richmond Hill apartment on Friday.

Prosecutors said in court that Arjun killed her stepdaughter by manual strangulation and then went to a doctor's appointment with her husband and two young grandchildren in tow.

Scroll down for video

Stemother charged: Shamdai Arjun, 55 (left), was charged Sunday with second-degree murder in her stedather's death. Ashdeep Kaur, 9 (right), was strangled to death Friday

In custody: A somber Arjun is seen in this photo from Saturday being led out of the 102nd Precinct in a Tyvek suit and handcuffs

Assistant District Attorney Michael Curtis stated that Arjun had threatened to kill the 9-year-old girl on numerous occasions.

'On Friday she made good on that threat,' he said in Queens Criminal Court.

The womans attorney told a judge that his client has maintained her innocence.

She denied ever hurting the child, defense lawyer Judah Maltz said. Theres no confession. No one saw her. (The prosecution is) assuming she may have done this, but they have no proof.

Arjun appeared somber on Saturday as she was led out of the 102nd Precinct with her hands restrained behind her back and dressed in a white Tyvek suit.

During her arraignment Sunday, she was ordered held without bail. She is due back in court next month. If convicted of the charge against her, Arjun could face up to 25 years in prison, reported WABC-TV.

The woman's ex-husband, 65-year-old Raymond Narayan, was charged with obstructing governmental administration for allegedly refusing to let police officers enter his apartment so they could to take Arjun into custody, reported the New York Post.

After an hour-long standoff, Narayan opened the door, and both he and his ex-wife were arrested.

Threats: The 55-year-old woman allegedly had threatened to kill her stepdaughter on multiple occasions in the months leading up to the fatal incident

Calm and collected: After allegedly strangling Ashdeep, Arjun left the apartment to go to the doctor with her two grandchildren

Arjun could face up to 25 years in prison if found guilty of second-degree murder

Ashdeep Kaur, who lived in South Richmond Hill with her father, Sukhjinder Singh and her stepmother, was pronounced dead at around 6pm Friday by emergency responders who were called to the family's ground-floor unit.

Witnesses told the New York Daily News that Arjun was the last person to see Ashdeep alive.

Police located the woman at her ex-husband's home early Saturday.

Relatives told the newspaper that a woman who shares part of Arjun's house told Ashdeeps father that the stepmother and his daughter had gone into the bathroom together Friday.

The girl's father rushed home from work when authorities contacted him. He passed out on the sidewalk (pictured) outside the home

Emergency responders aided Ashedeep's father (pictured) in front of their Richmond Hill home

The woman said Arjun came out of the bathroom alone and told the woman the child was still inside washing her hair, before she left the home with her two grandchildren, ages 3 and 5, at around 3pm.

For the past three days, Ashdeep had stayed with her cousin's family and didn't want to go home to her stepmother, her family told NBC.

The neighbor later noticed that the light in the bathroom had been on for three hours and contacted Ashdeep's father, who instructed her to enter the bathroom door.

The woman had the building's super unlock the door and discovered his 9-year-old dead in the tub.

Singh rushed home and upon arrival learned of his daughter's death. He was later seen passed out on the sidewalk and was aided by first responders.

Ashdeep's uncle Mankh Singh told the New York Daily News that the child told him 'she didnt want to come here because her stepmother beat her'.

He added: 'I see some scratching on her hand.'

Dozens of relatives and neighbors (pictured) flooded the street in despair outside of the home Friday night as the child's body was removed from the home

Authorities said there was no sign of trauma and a medical examiner will determine the cause of death. The investigation is ongoing

Ashdeep arrived from India three months ago and settled in Queens with her father and his wife, who is from Guyana, reported the New York Times.
Donald Trump has cranked up his outrage meter on the Clinton Foundation, demanding on Monday that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton disband her family charity 'immediately.'

'Hillary Clinton is the defender of the corrupt and rigged status quo,' the Republican candidate said in a statement on Monday.

'The Clintons have spent decades as insiders lining their own pockets and taking care of donors instead of the American people. It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history.'

'What they were doing during Crooked Hillary's time as Secretary of State was wrong then, and it is wrong now,' he said. 'It must be shut down immediately.'

ON OFFENSE: Donald Trump (shown at a Virginia rally on Saturday) demanded the immediate shuttering of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation on Monday

SCANDAL: Hillary Clinton (pictured arriving in Cape Cod for a fundraiser on Sunday) is facing new pressure to shut down her financially conflicted family foundation

That demand goes a step further than what the editorial board of The Boston Globe asked for last Tuesday.

'The foundation should remove a political  and actual  distraction and stop accepting funding. If Clinton is elected, the foundation should be shut down,' the Globe opined.

Trump called in to 'Fox & Friends' on Monday morning, saying: 'Number one, they should shut it down. Number two, they should give the money back to a lot of countries that we shouldn't be taking, and they shouldn't be taking, money from  countries that influenced her totally. And also countries that discriminate against women and gays and everybody else.'

'That money ... should be given back. They should not take that money,' he said, calling the Clintons 'very greedy people.'

'These are people that have skirted the law for a long time. Hard to believe that, you know, somebody like this has a good chance  you know, a fairly good chance  of being president. ... But it's hard to believe she can even be running. To be honest with you, with the emails and the crimes she's committed, she shouldn't be allowed to run for president.'

The Clinton Foundation has come under fire for creating the appearance of what Trump has called a 'pay for play' system, offering favors from a Hillary Clinton-led U.S. State Department in exchange for multimillion-dollar charitable contributions.

Clinton and her husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, have denied any impropriety, even as federal prosecutors are reportedly investigating the foundation.

But the New York-based organization said Thursday that if Mrs. Clinton were to win the White House, it would stop accepting cash from overseas.

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook conceded Sunday on CNN that the Clinton Foundation would not be able to flip a switch and change its funding model overnight.

'The foundation is doing an enormous amount of work, and it takes time when you're in a number of countries around the world to retool, refocus the mission and adapt,' he said.

'They receive a great deal of funding through these streams. And it will just take some time for them to readjust.'

More than half of the foundation's donors would find themselves ineligible to contribute under new guidelines that bar foreign money, according to a Washington Post analysis published Friday.

'VERY GREEDY PEOPLE': Trump phoned in to 'Fox& Friends' and blasted the Clintons for taking cash from nations that oppress women and gays

Perhaps because of that threat to the foundation's operating budget during a second Clinton administration, one of its largest projects may choose to declare itself a loophole.

The Clinton Health Access Initiative, a large foundation-backed project with its own incorporation and board of directors, 'will be meeting soon to determine its next steps,' a spokeswoman said Friday.

And a second foundation arm, the Canada-based Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, declared that it was prepared to spin itself off into a separate nonprofit in order to continue collecting foreign donations.

The Trump campaign began the week with a broadside against the foundation, distributing a research memo titled 'Clinton Corruption: Ten Inconvenient Truths about the Clinton Foundation.'

The dossier, which bears telltale signs that the Republican National Committee's opposition research division compiled it, focuses on tens of millions of dollars the foundation accepted from foreign sources while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state.

But the campaign led its attack with the observation of 'major overlaps' between Clinton's campaign donors and her foundation's benefactors, something that may give those contributors the opportunity for more political sway with her than election laws permit.

A campaign aide told NBC News that 'it's clear that Hillary Clinton and her campaign have no idea how to defend' the foundation's financial patterns.
Donald Trump added a new wrinkle to his evolving immigration plan: relying on the status quo immigration laws to get rid of gang members and other bad actors  and even acknowledging President Obama's enforcement efforts.

'We are going to obey the existing laws. Now the existing laws are very strong. The existing laws, the first thing we are going to do if and when I win, is we are going to get rid of all the bad ones,' Trump told host Bill O'Reilly on the 'O'Reilly Factor' on Fox News Monday evening

'We have gang members, we have killers. We have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country,' Trump continued. 'We are going to get them out.

Then Trump invoked President Obama, who has been mocked by some immigration activists as 'deporter-in-chief' for the record deportations under his administration, even as he tried to change immigration laws through executive orders that the Supreme Court have stayed.

'What people dont know is that Obama got tremendous numbers of people out of the country. Bush, the same thing. Lots of people were brought out of the country with the existing laws. Well, Im going to do the same thing and I just said that,' Trump said.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump held a Hispanic advisory roundtable meeting in New York on Saturday (pictured with Jovita Carranza, former Small Business Administration Deputy Administrator)

Even as he said he'd rely on existing laws, Trump complained that, 'We dont do anything, they go around killing people and hurting people. And they are going to be out of this country so fast your head will spin.'

As for non-violent immigrants, 'We're going to go through the process,' Trump said.

Trump's latest language came after he insisted Monday morning that he's not flip-flopping when it comes to his proposal to deport the estimated 11 million people living in the United States illegally  even though his new campaign manager now says his stance is 'to be determined.'

Trump said in an interview Monday on 'Fox & Friends' that he's 'not flip-flopping,' but wants to come up with 'a really fair, but firm' solution.

'We have to be very firm. We have to be very, very strong when people come in illegally,' Trump said. 'We have a lot of people that want to come in through the legal process and it's not fair for them.'

'And we're working with a lot of people in the Hispanic community to try and come up with an answer. ... No, I'm not flip flopping. We want to come up with a really fair, but firm answer. It has to be very firm. But we want something fair.'

Scroll down for video

Trump appeared on 'Fox & Friends' Monday morning and insisted that he hasn't flip-flopped on his firm policy dealing with illegal immigrants

Trump had previously proposed using a 'deportation force' to remove the 11 million people living in the United States illegally, a proposal that excited many of his core supporters, but alienated Hispanic voters who could be pivotal in key states.

Republican leaders fear that Trump can't win  and could drag down GOP congressional candidates  if he doesn't increase his support beyond his white, male base.

Trump met Saturday with Hispanic supporters, representatives of a community that has been wary of the billionaire businessman's deportation proposals and his plans to build a giant wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Within hours the Buzzfeed website reported that Trump had expressed 'openness to legalization' for illegal immigrants.

Trump trashed the website on Monday.

'Just to tell you about Buzzfeed, they guaranteed that I wasn't going to run,' he mocked. 'And the writer that wrote the article said he will take a year's salary off if I run. And I ran.'

'So, you know, Buzzfeed, they're about as accurate on this.'

Trump arrived to a hero's welcome at a campaign rally Saturday in Fredericksburg, Virginia

On Sunday his newly minted campaign manager Kellyanne Conway was asked a separate but related question about whether Trump still intends to deploy a deportation force.

'To be determined.' Conway answered.

There have been previous signs that Trump might be moderating his stance on deportations. At last month's GOP convention, the Republican National Committee's director of Hispanic communications, Helen Aguirre Ferre, told reporters at a Spanish-language briefing that Trump has said he will not do massive deportations.

Hispanic and religious leaders who met privately with Trump ahead of the convention said he signaled that he is open to embracing a less punitive immigration policy that focuses on 'compassion' along with the rule of law.

Trump's comments Monday come as Republican officials insist the GOP nominee is finally hitting his stride and will catch up with Democrat Hillary Clinton by early September, following a major shake-up to his campaign. Polls now mostly show Trump lagging Clinton by 5 percentage points or more nationally.

'Donald Trump has been disciplined and mature. And I think he's going to get this thing back on track,' Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, said Sunday.

Conway echoed Priebus' optimism, contending that the candidate just had the best week of his campaign, 'mostly because he's able to be himself, the authentic Donald Trump.'

Conway was named to her post last week in a shake-up in which the campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, resigned and conservative media firebrand Stephen Bannon, who led Breitbart News, took over as campaign chief executive.

Kellyanne Conway, left, is the new Trump campaign manager (pictured with Rick Figueroa, first vice president for FINC Firm of Houston)

Stephen Bannon, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign chairman, attended Trump's Hispanic advisory roundtable meeting

A new style was immediately evident as Trump, in a first, offered regrets for any remarks that had caused offense, stuck with his teleprompter at a series of events, and paid a visit to flood-ravaged Louisiana.

Trump also announced his first ad buys of the campaign, more evidence of an acceptance of the traditional campaign elements most experts believe he will need in order to have a shot at winning. He made a direct appeal to African-American voters, insisting he wants the Republican Party to become their political home.

Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, disputed claims of a turnaround in Trump's candidacy. 'We're not seeing a pivot. Donald Trump himself said this was not a pivot. He wants to double down on letting Donald Trump be Donald Trump,' Mook said.

Indeed, Trump was back to his old self on Twitter Monday morning. He went after MSNBC's 'Morning Joe,' tweeting that the show is 'unwatchable!' and said its host, Mika Brzezinski, 'is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!'
There will also be a section on Nixon's

The Richard Nixon Museum is set to open its doors to the public in October after a $15million refurbishment.

The presidential library and Nixon's final resting place in Yorba Linda, California, will boast more than 70 new exhibits including the bedroom where he was born.

The museum, founded in 1990, will now provide a more rounded portrayal of the former president's life after being deemed too critical.

It will unconventionally start in the middle of Nixon's career with the turbulent events before the 1968 election when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated.

The Richard Nixon Museum is set to open its doors to the public in October after a $15million refurbishment

The museum will now provide a more rounded portrayal of the former president's (pictured) life after being deemed too critical

The company behind the redesign, Thinkwell Group, wanted to 'start where the action is'.

As they move through the events of the 1960s, visitors will see an exact replica of the Oval Office, including a copy of Nixon's desk, where they can take photos and look at artefacts.

The Vietnam War exhibit will be expanded and will include a replica of the safe where a troop report was stored when handed over from Nixon's predecessor Lyndon Johnson.

The museum will feature a gallery of Nixon's top achievements in both domestic and foreign policy such as his role in desegregation schools in the south and his environmental ideas.

The presidential library and Nixon's final resting place in Yorba Linda, California, will boast more than 70 new exhibits including the bedroom where he was born (pictured)

The museum, founded in 1990, will unconventionally start in the middle of the former president's life with the turbulent events before the 1968 election

There will also be a nod to Nixon's famous 1972 visit to China on the famous 'ping pong diplomacy' mission where he shook the hand Premier Chou En-lai.

And of course there is a section of the museum dedicated to Nixon's impeachment after the Watergate scandal in which his administration was involved in a break-in of the Democratic National Convention.

It will feature 131 recorded interviews with people involved in the scandal and a full recording of the so-called smoking-gun tape.

As they move through the 1960s events, visitors will get to an exact replica of the Oval Office, including a copy of Nixon's desk, where they can take photos and look at artefacts

The Vietnam War exhibit will be expanded and will include a replica of the safe where a troop report was stored when handed over from Nixon's predecessor Lyndon Johnson

Museum director Michael Ellzey said it was essential for the museum to present the negatives and the positives of Nixon's presidency.

'Anybody and everybody who's taken a critical look at this is going to look at it through the lens of a failed presidency, ultimately, a president who resigned.

'The intellectual honesty and integrity of this was very important to us. We wanted to be beyond reproach,' he told the Los Angeles Times.

The museum then returns to the origin of Richard Nixon by tracing his childhood.

Visitors can look around his family home, just feet away from the main museum, and see the bedroom where he was born as well as his gravestone.

The museum will feature a gallery of Nixon's top achievements in both domestic and foreign policy such as his role in desegregation schools in the south and his environmental ideas

Grandson Christopher Nixon Cox told the paper that he was overall excited by the museum.

'It's a very candid look at my grandfather's presidency and his life, and I think in many ways, you really see the man,' Cox said.
Two hotel guests unwittingly spent the night on a hotel bed that had a corpse under the mattress.

The guests checked into a hotel in the Thai seaside resort of Pattaya and complained about a smell, but stayed the night anyway.

The next day a cleaner also noticed the stench and found blood near the bed. A search revealed that the body of a transgender woman had been stuffed inside the bed frame.

Two hotel guests unwittingly spent the night on a hotel bed that had a corpse under the mattress (pictured)

'The hotel's cleaner found a very strong smell in the room and tried to find the source. Then the hotel staff searched the room and found the body under the mattress,' Pattaya police chief Col Apichai Kropphet told the BBC.

'But it wasn't until after a Thai couple had checked in and slept on the bed.'

Two teenage boys, aged 17 and 14, have been arrested for allegedly killing the woman, identified as 28-year-old Amphon Kongsong, according to the Bangkok Post.

Police said that the two boys have admitted to murdering her, the paper reported.

Guests checked into a hotel in the Thai seaside resort of Pattaya (pictured) and complained about a smell. They stayed the night - but the next day the corpse of 28-year-old transgender woman Amphon Kongsong was found under their mattress

Kropphet said that the 17-year-old got to know Amphon on Facebook, was persuaded by her to look for a job in Pattaya and then let her check him and his 14-year-old friend into the hotel.

She spent a few nights with the boys but a fight broke out when the 17-year-old rejected her advances, Kropphet said.
Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel says footage from two police body cameras won't be released until the end of an investigation into the shooting

Wisconsin's attorney general said a fatal police shooting in Milwaukee that sparked two nights of violence was recorded by two body cameras.

But the state's top prosecutor Brad Schimel added the videos won't be released until after the county prosecutor decides whether to charge the officer who killed Sylville Smith.

Authorities have said Smith, 23, was fleeing police and that footage from the officer's body camera clearly shows Smith holding a handgun and turning toward an officer when he was shot on August 23.

Scroll down for video

Sylville Smith, 23, was fatally shot by a Milwaukee police officer on August 23, sparking a riots in the city

Police have not identified the officer who shot Smith. But he is reportedly Dominique Heaggan-Brown (pictured), 24, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Police have not said why they stopped Smith's car, only that it was 'behaving suspiciously'.

Milwaukee police Chief Edward Flynn said the 24-year-old officer feared for his life before shooting the 23-year-old man. Both the officer and Smith are black.

Police have not identified the officer. One media report by the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel says the officer is Dominique Heaggan-Brown, a two-year member of the department.

'The body camera video is just one piece of information among many sources of information,' Schimel told reporters.

'They give only a narrow and incomplete glimpse of the overall picture.'

The attorney general said releasing the video 'would compromise the integrity of the investigation.'

'I can tell you now: viewing the body camera videos will not answers all of your questions,' Schimel said.

'Your questions will be better answered when the videos are viewed in the context of all of the information that is gathered in the investigation.'

Protests erupted and turned violent in Milwaukee after the shooting of Sylville Smith, 23, leaving burnt out buildings and gutted vehicles in a gas station

Police in riot gear were called in to respond as a a crowd of protesters threw rocks at them

The remains of an auto parts store are seen after violent protests broke out in MIlwaukee

Schimel says authorities are reviewing that as well as a second video recorded by another officer's body camera. He says the vantage points are similar.

Investigators are also reviewing audio from a dispatch recording from the incident, according to NBC News.

Smith's shooting sparked two nights of rioting in Milwaukee, with some buildings burned to the ground, although authorities imposed a curfew imposed on the second night and the rioting subsided.

Some 17 people were arrested on the first night alone, charged with crimes including disorderly conduct and burglary.

People pray during a commemoration ceremony, held for Sylville Smith, who was shot and killed by a police officer

Friends and family light candles during a commemoration ceremony for Smith, 23

The crowd of protesters marched through the neighborhood where Smith was killed by the 24-year-old officer, who has not been named.

Some two dozen officers in riot gear confronted the protesters as they blocked an intersection near where Smith was fatally shot.

Police moved in to try to disperse the crowd and warned of arrests after protesters threw bottles and rocks at police.
A father died after walking into the sea with his new lover and drowning, an inquest heard today.

B Vega, 51, formerly known as Mark Stephen Dale, had driven to the beach at St Osyth, Essex, with a 40-year-old woman he was 'head over heels in love with'.

He was pulled from the water by a retired soldier who spotted him in difficulty while out for a walk, but died shortly afterwards.

Mark Dale died after he was pulled from the sea in St Osyth, Essex on Friday following a reported suicide pact

A hearing at Essex Coroners' Court in Chelmsford, Essex, heard how his partner was arrested for assisting suicide after his death on May 13.

A police investigation into the circumstances of Mr Vega's death is ongoing and they are still deciding if they will charge the partner, who has not been named.

Detective Sergeant Tim Coyles who conducted the investigation told the court 'My belief is that there is no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.

'The officers who attended the scene, the evidence from the gentleman who tried to save Mr Dale led us to to the decision it was not suspicious.

'The officers who initially attended considered an offence of attempted murder and then murder but once the dust settled the evidence that was there meant an offence of assisted suicide was considered, and is still considered.'

The inquest heard that the couple had been living together in a rented property in Ipswich, Suffolk, and both were tragically estranged from their respective children.

Senior coroner for Essex Caroline Beasley-Murray told the court Mr Vega, an unemployed structural engineer and his new partner had been disrupted by a farmer in a previous suicide attempt in Citroen on April 29.

In the inquest heard both had previously had dealings with mental health services.

Mr Vega's mother, Teresa Dale was at the hearing with his brother Phil and dad, Paul.

When asked by Mrs Beasely-Murray if they thought Mr Vega intended to kill himself she said 'It is difficult to say because he had stayed with us for nine months prior.

An ex-soldier walking on the beach spotted a woman in the water before pulling Mr Dale from the sea

'Although his family situation had been very distressing he became very positive.

'But then he met this young lady, it then transpired that they were both in similar situations, both were estranged from their children.'

Mrs Dale told the court the pair seemed 'head over heels in love with each other'.

She said when the family visited them in Ipswich they seemed happy and positive.

She added: 'You can't tell what was going on in there heads, you just go to accept it.'

You can't tell what was going on in there heads, you just go to accept it Mr Vega's mother, Teresa Dale

Mrs Dale blasted the mental health services for not helping the couple at the time of their first attempt.

She said the family had been inundated with leaflets offering support since Mr Vega's death but he received very little when he needed it most.

Mrs Dale added: 'He was under the mental health people, you go to a GP they just give you drugs, they never offered him support when they found them two weeks before (the fatal incident).

'I can't believe two people that were obviously so vulnerable could have been left in that state.'

The inquest heard that a post-mortem carried out the day after Mr Vega's death at Colchester Hospital found the cause of death to be 1a drowning and 2a heroin and cocaine intoxication.

Mrs Beasley-Murray said: 'I have considered a conclusion of suicide not least because of what she (his partner) was saying afterwards and the chequered history they both had.

'To record suicide I would have to be sure first that he formed the intention and took deliberate action, and I'm not sure.

The tragedy happened Near St Oysth. Police appealed for anyone who saw anything suspicious in the Spring Road (labelled) to come forward

'With regard to the quite bizarre circumstances and to the heroin and cocaine in his system and having regarding with what you said Mrs Dale, we don't quite know what was going through his mind as entered the sea I'm going to record an open conclusion.

'There are little bits of the jigsaw we will never quite know was going through his mind, he seemed a very intelligent gentleman, what a tragedy.'

The hearing heard how Mr Vega had changed his name after the breakdown of his marriage.

He is survived by his mum and dad, Paul and Teresa, brother Phil, sisters Julia, Katie and Lucy and his three daughters Alice, Yvie and Phoebe.

Following the inquest, Mr Vega's family were too distraught to comment.

The 40-year-old woman arrested on suspicion of assisting a suicide is due to answer police bail on September 7.
A teenage girl who was considered at 'high risk' died of a drug overdose while in state care after she was allegedly groomed by a recently released prisoner who deliberately gave her hepatitis C.

The girl, 16, died of a heroin and ice overdose in September 2013 while living at a residential unit run by the Salvation Army's Westcare on behalf of the Department of Human Services.

No ambulance was called the night before she died, even though she was 'severely' drug affected at the unit in Melbourne's west, coroner Audrey Jamieson heard at an inquest into the girl's death, ABC reported.

She left the care unit to visit a 26-year-old man named Angelo, and overdosed that night, according to Herald Sun.

The girl was considered to be at 'high risk' because of her history of sexual assault, drug abuse, and mental health issues.

An inquest into the teenager's death is being heard by coroner Audrey Jamieson at the Coroner's Court of Victoria (stock image)

She had previously allegedly been groomed and sexually assaulted by a prisoner, who she also took drugs with, after he was released.

The man allegedly deliberately infected her with Hepatitis C through a shared needle so they would 'be together forever'.

She had also allegedly been sexually assaulted by a carer at her unit.

On the night of her death, neither of the staff on duty had qualifications related to caring for high-risk children. Both had only been working in the field for a short period of time.

One of the caseworkers told the inquest the girl left the residential care unit 'severely' drug-affected to visit Angelo, a known drug user.

The girl was considered high risk because of her history of sexual abuse, drug abuse and mental health issues (stock image)

No ambulance was called for her before she left, and no police check on the man nor emergency recovery warrant for the girl was sought.

She was found dead by her girlfriend at the man's home in the early hours of the next morning.

A spokesperson for the DHS in Victoria said the department was cooperating with the inquest and described the girl's death as a 'tragedy'.

Both Westcare and the State Government have reportedly introduced further measures to strengthen the care for children at the units since the girl's death.

The inquest continues.
Body-shamed: Robert Cabana, 37, was arrested after allegedly pulling a knife on his older brother for calling him 'fat'

An insensitive remark about his physical appearance led a Florida man to pull a knife on his own brother, according to authorities.

Robert Cabana, 37, was arrested on Thursday in West Palm Beach on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after he allegedly threatened his older sibling with a knife for calling him 'fat'.

In his booking photo, the suspect appears to be heavyset, with plump cheeks, a double chin and a thick neck.

According to the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, Cabana was spending time with his relatives at his apartment on North Congress Avenue at around 11pm when the siblings got into a heated argument.

The mans 40-year-old brother labeled Robert Cabana 'fat', and he responded to the insult by throwing food and other items around, according to an arrest report cited by The Palm Beach Post.

The two brothers then grabbed each other's shirts and Robert allegedly reached for a knife, prompting a third brother to call police.

When a deputy responded to the scene, Cabana walked out of the apartment saying: 'I got angry and pulled a knife on my brother.'

Crime scene: The incident took place inside Cabana's apartment at 2000 North Congress Avenue in West Palm Beach, Florida (pictured)

The responding officer noted in his report that neither brother appeared injured, but the older sibling's shirt had several small holes in it.

The alleged victim initially told sheriff's officials that Robert Cabana held the knife to his throat, but later he refused to include this detail in his taped statement.
A lecturer stabbed his wife to death in a 'stabbing frenzy' because he wrongly believed he was not the father of their children, a court heard.

Robert Kerr, 39, attacked Xin Xin Liu, 39, at their home in the upmarket suburb of Newton Mearns, near Glasgow, in April as their two sons slept upstairs.

He stabbed his wife more than 70 times before making himself a hot drink as she lay dead on the floor, it was heard.

'Stabbing frenzy': Lecturer Robert Kerr, 39, attacked Xin Xin Liu, 39, at their home in the upmarket suburb of Newton Mearns, near Glasgow, in April as their two sons slept upstairs

Prosecutor Jane Farquharson said Kerr had 'suspicions' that a friend was the father of his children when he attacked his wife at their home, pictured at the time of the killing

He later phoned 999 and said: 'I have just killed my wife. I murdered her in a stabbing frenzy,' adding, 'there is blood all over the place'.

Kerr later told officers: 'I found out tonight they were not mine.'

The lecturer faced a murder allegation as he appeared at the High Court in Glasgow today but prosecutors instead accepted his guilty plea to the reduced charge of culpable homicide on the grounds of his diminished responsibility.

It had been concluded that Kerr was suffering from 'an abnormality of the mind' at the time of the attack.

A group of Xin Xin's relatives were in court yesterday, with some weeping as the horrific details of her death were revealed.

Ms Liu moved to Scotland from China 15 years ago to study law at Aberdeen University, where she met Kerr. The couple married in 2003.

Kerr later became a lecturer at West College Scotland, in Paisley, while his wife was training to become a translator.

The couple were described as 'quiet and private' and family said they were not aware of any problems in their relationship.

Kerr stabbed his wife more than 70 times before making himself a hot drink as she lay dead on the floor of their home. Pictured, forensics at the house following the killing

The court heard that weeks before the killing Kerr had contacted his GP complaining of stress caused by 'work and personal issues'.

He said he was suffering from anxiety, insomnia, and spoke about 'paranoid feelings'.

Prosecutor Jane Farquharson said Kerr had 'suspicions' that a friend was the father of his children when he attacked his wife.

A paternity test recently carried out has confirmed that he is the father, she said.

A post mortem later revealed Xin Xin had suffered approximately 76 wounds.

The court heard that Kerr has since been receiving treatment at the State Hospital at Carstairs.

One doctor concluded that his 'ability to control his conduct' that night was 'substantially impaired by reason of abnormality of mind'.

He was said to be suffering from a 'delusional disorder' including his belief about the paternity of his children.
A boyfriend has appeared in court charged with the murder of his Chinese girlfriend.

Jordan Matthews, 23, was arrested on suspicion of killing Xixi Bi, 24, after police found her dead at the couple's home in Llandaff, Cardiff.

Officers had gone to the property after receiving reports of 'a woman suffering breathing difficulties'.

Jordan Matthews, 23, is accused of murdering his 24-year-old Chinese girlfriend Xixi Bi (right, and with whom he is pictured left)

Matthews was quizzed by detectives over the weekend and later charged with murder.

He appeared at Cardiff Magistrates' Court this morning but spoke only to confirm his name and address.

He was remanded in custody and will appear at Cardiff Crown Court tomorrow.

Xixi grew up in Nanjing, China but came to Oxford to study as a teenager. She later went to Cardiff University.

Xixi grew up in Nanjing, China but came to Oxford to study as a teenager. She later went to Cardiff University

She has been in a relationship with Matthews for more than a year. Her family live in China

She has been in a relationship with Matthews for more than a year. Her family live in China.
A hacker grieving about the death of gorilla Harambe took control of the Cincinnati zoo director's Twitter account and posted expletives.

The 400lb Harambe was shot dead by zoo authorities in May when a toddler wandered into his enclosure.

A hacker, still upset about the controversial shooting, broke into director Thane Maynard's account on Saturday.

A hacker grieving about the death of gorilla Harambe (pictured) took control of the Cincinnati zoo director's Twitter account and posted expletives

Using the handle @prom, the hacker posted a series of tweets about Harambe which have now been deleted.

They wrote: '#AnimalRights #JusticeForHarambe' and 'I was planning this for a while, so sorry it took so long brother! Have a good time in Heaven. #Harambe'

The hacker also posted the famous slogan #D***ksOutForHarambe before giving up.

The hacker said: 'Okay. If @CincinnatiZoo want their directors twitter back, they can dm me on @prom. I've had my fun.'

The hacker admitted that the online attack was calculated.

Using the handle @prom, the hacker posted a series of tweets about Harambe which have now been deleted. Pictured: Harambe before he was killed

'At the time when it actually happened I was kinda angry at the dude who shot him,' they told Daily News.

'Been sorta planning it here and there.'

A spokeswoman for the zoo said that authorities there were working with Twitter to get the account back under control on Sunday.

Video footage has emerged revealing some of the chilling moments of the time the boy was inside the moat as a panicked crowd looking on can be heard screaming as the ordeal unfolded
Lori Clayton, pictured, avoided jail after hitting a policeman with a bottle, leaving him with a scarred head and ear

A pregnant woman who left a police officer scarred after attacking him with a bottle outside a bar has been spared jail.

Lori Clayton, 23, attacked PC Sean Clapham with a bottle as he tried to break up a brawl outside Chambers Bar in Middlesbrough.

Teesside Crown Court heard she was drunk and claimed she did not realise the plain clothes officer, who was holding a baton, was a policeman.

CCTV footage played to the court showed Clayton running across the road 'as fast as her footwear would allow' to attack the officer before striking him on the head.

Prosecutor Richard Herrmann told Teesside Crown Court yesterday: 'He said was hit with such a significant blow that he thought he had been struck with a metal bar.'

The officer, who had served as a policeman for 24 years, was left with a one and a half inch visible scar to the back of his head.

He also suffered scarring to his ear which is still painful and caused him sleeping problems, said Mr Herrmann.

Having been subjected to various assaults throughout his career, the officer said the attack by Clayton on February 22 this year was 'by far the worst'.

'It left him feeling wary and shocked,' added Mr Herrmann.

Clayton, of Billingham, near Middlesbrough, had drunk two bottles of rose wine while socialising with friends that night, the court heard.

Defending, Eric Watson said she immediately told officers that she had not realised the man she attacked was a policeman.

Clayton, left and right during the court case, who is three months pregnant, was given a 15-month suspended sentence after a judge said prison 'may do her more harm than good'

Now three months pregnant, the 23-year-old was no longer drinking, said Mr Watson, adding: 'She is a lady of positive good character.

'She's not the typical defendant who comes before these courts.'

Judge Howard Crowson accepted Clayton may not have realised her victim was a police officer because she was drunk when she inflicted the blow.

And he concluded she was 'unlikely' to commit a similar offence, stating a prison sentence for a relatively short time 'may do more harm than good'.

'This all happened because you were drunk and people often act in ways they regret when they are drunk,' he told her.

He gave the mother-to-be a 15-month prison sentence which was suspended for 18 months, after she admitted unlawful wounding.

She must also complete 120 hours of unpaid work and pay court costs of 500.

Two men - Adam Fearn, 27, of Queens Terrace, and Steven Pickard, 29, of Samphire Street, both Port Clarence - admitted two separate assaults outside Chambers bar that night and were fined by magistrates in March.

In a statement, the Cleveland Police Federation, which represents serving Cleveland Police officers up to the rank of superintendent, said the sentence was 'very disappointing'

Chairman Andrea Breeze said: 'This is a very disappointing sentence for a police officer who was merely doing his job.

'We should not be subject to such physical unprovoked attacks.

'The judicial system needs to start supporting police officers in the execution of their duty and recognising the risks they are subject to every day by imposing custodial sentences.'

Clayton admitted unlawful wounding after the attack which took place outside Chambers Bar in Middlesbrough, pictured

She said the sentence would not serve as a deterrent.

'This sentence will not prevent unprovoked assaults on police officers which on this occasion has left PC Clapham with a permanent scar,' she continued.

'Like any other victim of an assault, the impact should be taken seriously when determination of sentence is being made.

'Every year thousands of police officers are assaulted and yet we continue to be criticised when we use personal protective equipment to protect ourselves, and the public.'

Chief Superintendent Glenn Gudgeon, head of operations at Cleveland Police, added: 'Police officers serve to protect communities and often put themselves in harm's way on behalf of the public but, all too often, officers are the victims of assaults themselves as they carry out their duties.
British traveller David Taylor, who is under investigation over the death of a Bali policeman, has reportedly admitted to striking the officer on the head with binoculars, a beer bottle and mobile phone, according to his lawyer.

Mr Taylor, 33, from London, is being questioned along with his Australian girlfriend Sara Connor over the death of Inspector Wayan Sudarsa on Kuta Beach.

Lawyer Haposan Sihombing said his client 'was sorry for that incident' which saw the policeman struck multiple times with different objects, according to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

'According to our client this is when the victim stopped struggling,' Mr Haposan said. "Our client regrets what he did on the incident of the 17th.'

Scroll down for video

Briton David Taylor (pictured) has reportedly admitted to hitting a Bali policeman over the head with a pair of binoculars and other items including a beer bottle and sharp object, says his lawyer. Mr Taylor and his Australian girlfriend Sara Connor are being detained by Bali police over the bashing death of an officer on Kuta Beach last week

Mr Taylor - who like Australian girlfriend Sara Connor is facing 15 years in jail if convicted - is escorted by Denpasar police out of his holding cell. His lawyer earlier claimed that 'he was hiding' in his statements and later added that his client admitted striking the policeman with binoculars, a beer bottle, a mobile phone and a sharp object

Australian woman Sara Connor, 45, who is suspected of murdering a Bali policeman looks tired and dishevelled as she's interrogated by police over the incident. It is claimed she tried to break up the fight between Mr Taylor and the policeman

The head of Denpasar police Hadi Purnomo has said that Ms Connor told them she would 'admit to everything' after reportedly initially making 'false statements' about the incident. However, Ms Connor's lawyer has continued to maintain that she is 'innocent'

It is claimed Mr Taylor has told police he struck the policeman during a fight on the sand and that his girlfriend from Byron Bay, in far-north NSW, tried to break up the fight.

The dramatic breakthrough in the investigation came last night after the pair had been questioned for hours by police.

The incident reportedly began with the search for a missing purse with $A300 inside, Australian woman Sara Connor says.

When her boyfriend then confronted a man on the beach about the wallet, a scuffle broke out, his lawyers claim.

During the questioning and interviews with their lawyers, the couple's stories changed, with each giving different accounts of what had happened in the early hours of last Wednesday.

Mr Taylor's lawyer, Haposan Sihombing, told reporters that Ms Connor's handbag had been missing when the pair were on the beach and it was then that Mr Taylor had seen a man - who turned out to be the police officer - near the area.

'There was a struggle between David and the victim on the beach,' Mr Sihombing said.

'When they were fighting, David saw Sara behind the victim. Sara tried to break up the fight.

'David saw binoculars on the victim's neck. He then used the binoculars to hit the victim's head twice.'

The revelation came after a Bali police chief earlier said Ms Connor had promised to 'admit everything' after making 'false statements' about the incident.

The mother-of-two and her British boyfriend were arrested on Friday over the death of the officer.

Ms Connor claims a 'bad cop' tried to sexually assault her on the same beach where the body of a Bali cop she allegedly murdered was found

However the head of Denpasar police has refuted Ms Connor's claims the the deceased officer was a 'bad cop', saying she fabricated the idea of him committing an indecent act against her in an attempt to appear innocent.

'She will admit everything, she promised she will admit that what was said yesterday, that was a false statement,' Hadi Purnomo told the Brisbane Times.

'Today she will confess the honest truth what she did.'

But the lawyer for the Australian woman has said she had 'no involvement' in the officer's death, maintaining that she is 'innocent'.

Security guards discovered the body of Insp Sudarsa (pictured), 53, who it's believed was hit in the head with a pair of binoculars and a beer bottle

Ms Connor is escorted by police officers as she was arrested over the alleged murder of a police officer in Bali. The Australian woman and her British boyfriend David Taylor have been charged

British national David Taylor is escorted by police after his arrest in Bali

Mr Taylor's (pictured) lawyer has reportedly claimed that his client admitted to striking local policeman Wayan Sudarsa several times with different objects including binoculars and a beer bottle

'(She was) not involved in this case, not at all. She's innocent,' Ms Connor's lawyer Erwin Siregar told reporters outside a Denpasar Police Station, Channel Nine reports.

Police earlier said a 'struggle' seems to have occurred between the victim and Ms Connor, who appeared to have substantial bite marks around her finger and leg.

However Mr Siregar told media that Ms Connor first found the officer when he was lying on his stomach on the sand, shaking him and saying: 'Where's my bag, where's my bag?', the ABC reports.

'The victim bit her leg. (But) not only the leg, but also the hand.'

Mr Siregar told media that the accused couldn't shed any light on how the officer came to be lying on his stomach on the sand.

'She didn't know how the victim got to that position of lying on his stomach. That was just how she found him,' he said.

Both Ms Connor and Mr Taylor are facing up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

The claims come after Mr Taylor's lawyer earlier admitted that he was 'hiding something' about the incident.

Indonesia policemen carry the coffin containing the body of police officer Wayan Sudarsa after his death on Kura Beach last Wednesday - Australian mother of two Sara Connor and British man David Taylor were arrested over the murder

The funeral for murdered Bali policeman Wayan Sudarsa was held on Sunday - Indonesian policemen (pictured) prepare to fire their guns during the cremation ceremony

'Reading his statement ... there were unsynchronised statements, I saw something he was hiding. I tried to move his conscience to say it as it is, what he knows, what he felt, what he saw,' Mr Haposan said in a report by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Police earlier confirmed that the blood of one of the suspects in the bashing murder had been found at the crime scene.

Denpasar District Police Chief Hadi Purnomo confirmed that blood samples had been analysed and there was a match with a suspect - but wouldn't say whether it was Ms Connor or Mr Taylor's blood.

'From the forensic lab result we found two types of blood on the crime scene: the suspect's and the victim's,' he told the ABC.

Police allege that blood found at the crime scene is 'identical' to that discovered at the Kubu Kauh Beach Inn in Kuta where the pair were staying.

The night the officer was killed the couple had gone to a restaurant and had been drinking beer before going to the beach where they began 'kissing'.

During that time, Ms Connor said she lost her purse and wounded her arm and leg, but it remains unclear how those injuries occurred.

Ms Connor's lawyer Erwin Siregar claimed her client has a bite mark on her inner thigh

Tourists walk past the site where an officer was murdered last Wednesday. Bali Police have confirmed that blood samples found at the crime scene on Kuta Beach match one of the suspects in their investigation

Ms Connor, pictured, and her British boyfriend David Taylor were arrested over the death of police officer Wayan Sudarsa on 17 August

Hours later, Mr Sudarsa's sand-covered body was found. He had significant wounds to his head and leg, and his shirt was unbuttoned and bloodied with a smashed Bintang beer bottle was found nearby.

The victim's bloodied body was found on the sand with 17 head wounds, it was reported.

On Sunday Mr Taylor's lawyer Haposan Sihombing said he met with his client and explained to him 'Indonesian laws'.

On Friday, Mr Taylor was hauled away in Bali by police investigating the murder

Indonesian police detained David Taylor, pictured, over the brutal murder of a policeman on a popular Bali beach. His lawyer claims the British national will 'reveal the complete story' on Monday

David Taylor, the British suspect in the murder of a Bali police officer on Kuta Beach last Wednesday, is 'hiding something' according to his lawyer

Sara Connor (pictured), from Byron Bay on the NSW north coast, and British man David Taylor were taken into custody in Denpasar on Friday

'Incriminating factor is when the suspect not co-operative, beating around the bush, not admitting his mistake and it will cause harsher punishment. I told him so that he could think about it tonight because tomorrow, you will be examined again,' Mr Sihombing told reporters.

According to Mr Sihombing, Mr Taylor has previously said that Ms Connor had complained to him that she had been attacked by a 'bad cop' at Kuta Beach on the night Mr Sudarsa was found dead.

'She told him that she was pushed and he lay on top of her on the sand,' Mr Sihombing said.

'She screamed and there were some people helping her. And then the police officer left.'

Ms Connor and British man David Taylor (pictured) were taken back to the beach where a police officer was murdered in Bali during the early investigations

It is believed Mr Taylor, pictured, had been living with Ms Connor in Byron Bay

Mr Sihombing said he told Mr Taylor that he had defended Bali Nine member Renae Lawrence, adding 'she got 20 years while others got death and life in jail. He knows that'.

It is understood Mr Taylor left Britain a few years ago before moving to New Zealand and then Australia.

According to Mr Siregar, Ms Connor and Mr Taylor had known each other for a few years but had only begun dating three months ago.

That night Mr Taylor had picked her up from the airport and they had gone to a restaurant before heading to the beach.

She had been drinking, he added, but was not drunk.

Briton David Taylor is escorted by Indonesian police officers in Denpasar with a black mask covering his face

According to the lawyer, the couple moved to another hotel after the alleged incident, where a friend called from Australia and told them according to news reports they were wanted by police.

She advised they go to the Australian Consulate-General in Denpasar, where they were arrested on Friday afternoon after police put out an immigration alert to stop them leaving the island.

Mr Sihombing said his client had been interrogated by police from 2pm to 7pm on Saturday, during which he was asked 35 questions, but had not confessed to the murder.

Sara Connor is pictured being taken to a police station in Denpasar on Indonesia's resort island of Bali after her arrest on Friday

On Sunday Mr Sudarsa's body was carried through the streets from his family home in Kelan, south of Kuta, to a nearby cemetery where he had a military ceremony.

Denpasar Police chief Hadi Purnomo said the couple admitted they had clashed with Mr Wayan shortly before he was found dead.

The altercation reportedly began when Ms Connor asked for help over her missing handbag.

'Sara (Connor) said that she clashed with the victim at the beach gate. They had pulled each other,' Mr Purnomo told The Daily Telegraph.

'Sara said because her bag was gone she asked for help from the victim but then they pulled each other.'

The hotel room Ms Connor (pictured) was staying in allegedly had bloodstained walls and floors

Mr Siregar, who also represented convicted drug trafficker Schapelle Corby, said Ms Connor will face three alternate charges of murder, manslaughter and assault causing death.

Mr Taylor is understood to be facing the same charges.

Mr Siregar said Ms Connor was exhausted and missed her two children, aged 9 and 11.

'She's sad, of course, that's normal. She's tired,' he said.

Despite reports Ms Connor said she was too drunk to remember the incident, her lawyer insisted she was not intoxicated.

Ms Connor's black leather purse, her driver's license and a credit card were also found near the body.

Insp Sudarsa had wounds to his forehead and leg, while his shirt was unbuttoned and bloodied (pictured)

David Taylor, pictured, was taken into custody on Friday over the murder of a police officer

This picture shows a police cordon at the Kuta Beach site where a policeman was killed

Police searched what is believed to be the couple's hotel room (pictured) on Thursday after the couple had checked out

Officers claim to have found blood on the bed, doors, walls and floor (pictured)

Police searched what is believed to be Ms Connor's hotel room on Thursday and claimed to have found blood on the bed, doors, walls and floor.

A towel was also found in the hotel with a blood stain on it, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

After spending their first night in custody in Bali, the pair were taken to Kuta Beach at dawn where they were asked to carry out a re-enactment.

'We wanted to find out the suspects' position during the incident and the suspects admitted that they were there,' Police Chief Purnomo said.

Insp Sudarsa's motorcycle was parked in the Pullman Hotel car park and his walkie talkie and hat were found 20 metres away

This picture shows an entry gate cordoned off by police line where the policeman was killed

A security officer at the Pullman Hotel told police he heard screaming at about 1.15am on the Wednesday and went down to the beach (pictured)

A security guard allegedly saw five people, including a woman on the beach with the policeman

They were also taken to the nearby Kubu Kau Beach Inn - the hotel where Mr Taylor was staying before heading to Trijata Hospital in Denpasar.

Mr Taylor is believed to have entered Bali on July 29 while Ms Connor came on August 16.

The victim's brother Putu Yudi Krisna said the victim had been a policeman for 35 years.

'He's a kind person, loving his family and living modestly. He had two children and so far, he had no enemies whatsoever. We're very shocked,' he said.

Ms Connor's black leather purse, her driver's licence and a credit card were allegedly found at the crime scene (pictured)
Canadian authorities stopped an invasion of 1,500 Americans on inflatable rafts and boats that were blown off course and ended up across the border.

The 7.5-mile Port Huron Float Down is an annual event on the St. Clair River  which divides Michigan from Ontario, Canada  but high winds turned it into an international incident on Sunday.

Police in Sarnia, Ontario, said only minor injuries had been reported after the events participants veered off course and many were separated from their groups.

But it took hours for a bus service to transport around 1,500 US citizens back home to Michigan, they added.

Scroll down for video

Around 1,500 people on inflatable rafts were returned to Michigan after being blown off-course and ending up across the border in Canada

The event started in Port Hurons Lighthouse Beach at around 1pm and was supposed to end at Chrysler Beach in Marysville.

But the predicted warm weather took a turn and led to heavy rain and strong winds.

Port Huron Sgt Jason Barna said it was hectic, the Detroit Free Press reports.

He said authorities were swamped with medical calls, reports of possible drownings, people falling off their rafts or getting out of the river and trespassing on private land.

The Canadian Coast Guard rescues Americans who drifted across the border on Sunday

Thousands of people gathered for the annual event and floated down the St. Clair River

Barna added that so many people had ended up in Canada that officials there set up a refugee camp to screen them before sending them back.

Police in Sarnia added that those taking part were not prepared to be stranded.

It was a bit of a nightmare, but we got through it, Sarnia Staff Sgt Scott Clarke told the Times Herald.

There were long waits and long lines. They were cold and wet, but they all made it home.

In an update posted on their website shortly after 8pm, Sarnia Police said they had wrapped up efforts to help people who had been blown ashore.

The 7-5-mile event is supposed to start at Port Hurons Lighthouse Beach and was supposed to end at Chrysler Beach in Marysville but thousands ended up across the border in Sarnia

Floaters travel down the St. Clair River during Float Down at Lighthouse Beach in Port Huron

Sarnia police added: 'The event has no official organizer and poses significant and unusual hazards given the fast-moving current, large number of participants, lack of life jackets, and as was the case this year, challenging weather conditions.

Sarnia city workers spent several hours on Monday picking up beer cans, coolers, rafts and even picnic tables that washed up on the Canadian shore, spokeswoman Katarina Ovens said.

'I guess they were on the rafts,' she said of the picnic tables.

Harrison Plain, of Sarnia, waits to put his inflatable into the water for the Port Huron Float Down at Lighthouse Beach

And one participant said that last year, her float ended up in Canada as well.

Last year during the Float Down, we drifted to Canada because we used a kiddie pool and couldnt control it, Tricia Frost, 26, told the Free Press.
The Human Rights Act will be scrapped and replaced with a British Bill of Rights, Justice Secretary Liz Truss (picture) promised today as she rubbished reports the move had been axed

The Human Rights Act will be scrapped and replaced with a British Bill of Rights, Justice Secretary Liz Truss promised today as she rubbished reports the move had been axed.

She said she was working on the details of the policy but refused to give any indication when it would be introduced.

It will allay fears among Tory MPs that the party's 2015 manifesto commitment had been put under review by the new Prime Minister following June's Brexit vote.

Reports earlier this month quoted sources close to Theresa May saying the idea of a British Bill of Rights had been 'junked'.

But Ms Truss, who made history last month after Mrs May appointed her as Britain's first ever female Justice Secretary, insisted the Government will introduce the Bill.

She told the BBC: 'We are committed to that. It is a manifesto pledge. We are looking very closely at the details but we have a manifesto pledge to deliver that.'

The Human Rights Act was brought in by Tony Blair and incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into UK law.

But any move by Mrs May's government to ditch the Act would not mean withdrawing from the ECHR

Mrs May ruled out withdrawing from the ECHR during the Conservative party leadership election, saying there was insufficient support for the move in the current Parliament.

Replacing the Act with a British Bill of Rights would aim to reiterate the supremacy of UK law and enable UK authorities to deport foreign criminals without being blocked by Strasbourg.

Theresa May (pictured left with her husband Philip on holiday in Switzerland earlier this month) is said to have been unhappy with some of the details of the move to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, including a concession that Britain would remain signed up to the ECHR

Mr Cameron first pledged to introduce a Bill of Rights before the 2010 general election, arguing that replacing the Human Rights Act was the best way of curbing abuses.

He said the legislation would limit the ability of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to interfere in domestic decisions such as whether criminals could be deported.

The Liberal Democrats did not agree to the overhaul during the coalition years, but it was revived after the Tories won an overall majority last year.

The Bill would have provided explicit protections for 'freedom of expression' and the armed forces serving abroad.

However, Mrs May is said to have been unhappy with some of the details, including a concession that Britain would remain signed up to the ECHR.

The fine print of the policy had been largely drawn up by former Justice Secretary Michael Gove - who was summarily axed by Mrs May when she took over in Downing Street.

The PM's chief of staff, Nick Timothy, has previously suggested that a Bill of Rights would be pointless unless the UK leaves the jurisdiction of the ECHR.
Three people have been injured by a machete-wielding woman who went on the rampage in Brussels before being shot by police, it has emerged.

The attacker lunged at passengers, stabbing one in the back and one in the stomach as they were getting off a bus in the Uccle area of the Belgian capital this afternoon.

She is said to have fled to a nearby gallery before armed police descended on the scene.

They warned her several times before shooting her in the arm and arresting her when she failed to back down.

Three people have been injured by a machete-wielding woman who went on the rampage in Brussels before being shot by police, it has emerged

The attacker lunged at passengers as they were getting off a bus in the Uccle area of the Belgian capital this afternoon. Pictures from a nearby building show police at the scene of the attack

Sources close to the investigation say police do not believe the incident was terrorism or politically motivated and the assailant is said to have had mental health problems

Local media have reported that two people have been taken to hospital, one with serious and one with minor injuries.

Sources close to the investigation say police do not believe the incident was terrorism or politically motivated and the assailant is said to have had mental health problems.

Pictures from the scene show how police have sealed off the street as an as an investigation gets underway.

Police warned the woman several times before shooting her in the arm when she failed to back down. Police later sealed off the area to investigate (pictured)

Mayor Armand de Decker reportedly told local media: 'When police arrived the person threatened an old lady with a knife wickedly. The police ordered her to drop the knife, she did not.

'They shot her in the arm, and that was it done.'

Brussels has been on high alert since local ISIS militants carried out the attacks in Paris last November and suicide bombings in Brussels itself in March.
A welsh woman who was 'locked up' by her father in Saudi Arabia for kissing a man is yet to return home to the UK - despite a judge's ruling.

Amina Al-Jeffery, 21, has found herself at the centre of a High Court battle after complaining that her father had kept her in his flat in Jeddah.

Mr Justice Holman ordered Saudi academic Mohammed Al-Jeffery to return Amina to Britain on August 3 after analysing the case at a public hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

'Prisoner': UK citizen Amina Al-Jeffery in her father's house in Saudi Arabia, in a photo she sent to a friend - a judge has ruled she is in 'peril' and should be allowed to leave the country

The judge said Mr Al-Jeffery had to 'permit and facilitate' Miss Al-Jeffery's return to England or Wales by 4pm on September 11.

However, solicitor Anne-Marie Hutchinson, who represents Miss Al-Jeffery and is a said on Monday that her client had yet to return.

Miss Al-Jeffery - who grew up in Swansea and has dual British and Saudi Arabian nationality - described herself as being 'locked in a cage'.

But her father disputed her allegations and said he was trying to protect her.

Mr Justice Holman concluded that Miss Al-Jeffery's freedom of movement had been severely constrained.

He said she could be described as 'caged' - although she was not literally 'in a cage'.

Miss Al-Jeffery, pictured in a school photo, was born and raised in Swansea until her father took her to the Middle East when she was 16. She must now return by September 11

The judge said she was a British citizen abroad who was in peril and who needed protection.

He concluded he had the power to make protective orders and said doing nothing would be a 'dereliction'.
Advertisement

A rare condition is turning a seven-year-old boy's hands and feet into trees.

Ripon Sarker from Thakurgaon, Bangladesh suffers from the condition epidermodysplasia verruciformis, which causes abnormal susceptibility to human papillomavirus - causing the growth of scaly warts.

The young boy was admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital on August 20 for treatment for the first time, as his family couldn't afford it.

Ripon Sarker, 7, shows his hands suffering from a rare skin disease disorder caused by human papillomaviruses

The scaly warts are also covering the feet of Ripon after they began to develop when he was only three months old

Doctors in Dhaka have said they are hopeful that Ripon's hands and feet are operable as his fingers and toes and can still be identified unlike other cases

His father Mahendra Das said: 'They haven't carried out tests on him. Physicians say they will look into this matter before treatment.'

Poor Ripon cannot walk or eat by himself because of his tree-like hands and feet.

Thankfully, doctors have said they are hopeful that his hands and feet are operable as his fingers and toes and can still be identified.

Ripon's symptoms match the ones of 26-year-old Abul Bajandar - dubbed 'tree man', who also has the same condition and was recently operated at the Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Ripon is a class II student of Ketgaon Government Primary School, was affected when he was only three months old, his father said.

Warts began to develop on his palm and foot, which are getting larger, Mohendra said.

Ripon was affected when he was only three months old, said his father. Warts began to develop on his palm and feet

The scaly warts on Ripon's feet make it difficult for him to walk without help

Burn and plastic surgery unit coordinator Samanta Lal Sen said: 'We are hopeful about the child's situation. In Abul's case, we couldn't distinguish the warts from his fingers'

Ripon was affected when he was only three months old said Mohendra, his father, while visiting the hospital

Burn and plastic surgery unit coordinator Samanta Lal Sen said: 'We are hopeful about the child's situation. In Abul's case, we couldn't distinguish the warts from his fingers.

'Ripon's warts have not expanded to that extent yet.

'He can indentify his fingers and toes. We might be able to treat him with fewer operations.'

The boy was admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital for treatment for the first time as his family couldn't afford it

Ripon can not walk or eat himself because of his tree-like hands. Doctors have said they are hopeful that operating on Riponis will treat his hands and feet as his fingers and toes and can still be identified

The physician went on to explain that the child's family is extremely poor.

He said: 'That's why he lacks proper nutrition.

'His physical development has been hampered as well.

'We need to give him proper nutrition before the operations begin.

'He might require blood as well.'
Hillary Clinton hasn't seen the last of her email scandal, and the public hasn't seen the last of her emails, with the State Department set to release up to 15,000 of them as the election approaches.

The FBI's analysis of the trove of unreleased emails came Monday in a lawsuit by watchdog group Judicial Watch.

'We're talking about tens of thousands of documents,' attorney Lisa A. Olson, an attorney representing the Justice Department said, according to the Washington Times.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said State has had the documents for a month without publishing them. 'That's simply not acceptable,' he said.

DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT: State Department bureaucrats are set to begin releasing an additional 15,000 emails from Hillary Clinton's private email server. They were uncovered during an FBI investigation

The drip of emails dogged Clinton throughout her primary campaign and the start of the general election.

Opposing lawyers are negotiating for a schedule of release. A release is planned for mid-October, just weeks before the November 8 elections, although plaintiffs want documents out sooner.

Clinton has already turned over some 30,000 emails to the State Department, but she has come under fire for using her own attorney to determine which emails were work related.

Although Clinton has said her team went through every email, she told the FBI her attorneys relied on search terms into order to cull the messages.

Two Republican House committee chairman have written the Justice Department seeking a perjury investigation because of what they say are discrepancies between her testimony before Congress and what she told the FBI

Many of the 30,000 emails so far reveal back and forth between Clinton and her long time aide Huma Abedin

The State Department continues to release emails, including some from longtime friend and advisor Sidney Blumenthal, and some showing contacts with Declan Kelly of Teneo, a Bill Clinton linked company

DIRTY LAUNDRY: The emails show Clinton engaging in a classic Washington parlor game: guessing who leaked a story

Clinton has said she wants her emails out, but Justice Department lawyers have stressed the difficulty in releasing them over months of litigation

The latest batch of emails could reveal any manner of things about how Clinton did business while running the State Department.

Just Monday, newly released emails showed longtime aide Huma Abedin working to get Clinton face time with the crown prince of Bahrain, a major donor to the Clinton Foundation.

'Cp of Bahrain in tomorrow to Friday. Asking to see her,' longtime Bill Clinton aide Doug Band wrote Abedin in June 2009, in an email obtained by Judicial Watch referencing Crown Prince Salman of the oil rich country.

Abedin responded that she had gone through 'normal channels.' But the outside intervention may have done the trick. Two days after the initial message from Band, Abedin replied: 'Offering Bahrain cp 10 tomorrow for meeting woith [sic] hrc,' meaning Clinton.

'We're trying to work with the State Department here, but let's be clear: They have slow-walked and stonewalled the release of these records,' Fitton said Monday, the Washington Post reported. 'They've had many of them since July 25 ... and not one record has yet been released, and we don't understand why that's the case.'
A North Carolina state trooper shot dead a deaf father who was apparently trying to communicate using sign language after he was pulled over for a speeding violation.

Daniel Kevin Harris, 29, who has a four-year-old son, was killed just feet from his home in Charlotte by trooper Jermaine Saunders on Thursday evening.

Police say Saunders tried to pull Harris over for a speeding violation on Interstate 485 at around 6.15pm, but the driver led authorities on a brief pursuit before stopping.

Officials said that's when the driver got out of his car and an encounter took place between the driver and the trooper, causing a shot to be fired. Harris died at the scene.

But witnesses said Harris  who was unarmed  was shot almost immediately after he exited his vehicle, WCNC reports.

Scroll down for video

A North Carolina state trooper shot dead Daniel Harris (pictured), a deaf man who was apparently trying to communicate using sign language after he was pulled over

They also say he appeared to be trying to communicate with the trooper using sign language.

However, Saunders has said he shot Harris because he was advancing and not following commands, WCCB reports.

But Harris' immediate family, who are also hearing impaired, think he was 'just afraid' and not understanding the situation.

Jay Harris, who spoke to the local station through a sign language interpreter, believes his brother was not aware that troopers were trying to pull him over.

'He was unarmed - and he is a deaf individual, and I think that he was just afraid,' he said.

'He could not hear their warnings. He could not hear their commands to stop or to stay away from them.'

He added that his mother has been in the hospital with a heart issue since the shooting. 'He was shot, and now were left with nothing,' Jay said.

Neighbors blasted the decision to shoot first, ask questions later.

Youre pulling someone over who is deaf, they are handicapped. To me, what happened is totally unacceptable, neighbor Mark Barringer told the local station.

They should have de-escalated and been trained to realize that this is an entirely different situation.

Harris (pictured feeding his son)  who was unarmed  was shot almost immediately after he exited his vehicle, witnesses say

A Charlotte-Mecklenburg police report identified Harris as hearing and speech impaired, but did not give further details about his impairments.

Saunders was placed on administrative leave, which is standard procedure after an officer-involved shooting.

State Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Audria Bridges said agents will interview Saunders this week.

However, the SBI report doesn't mention that Harris is impaired.

The police report identifies Harris as white. Bridges said she was uncertain of the trooper's race.

Harris family have set up a fundraising page since his death, which has raised almost $5,000 so far, for his memorial and cremation costs.

In a post on the page, they say: He was unarmed when shot and killed by a state trooper.

His tragic death could have been prevented. Police brutality ends NOW.

They also plan to set up a foundation in his name to educate and provide law enforcement [with] proper training on how to confront deaf people.

Police say Saunders tried to pull Harris over for a speeding violation on Interstate 485 at around 6.15pm. Above, the scene after the shooting

Harris led authorities on a brief pursuit before stopping on the Interstate, officials said

The family also hope to change the DMV registration system to require states to set up a DEAF alert to appear when a cars license plate is looked up.

With this change, Daniel will be a hero in our deaf community, they add.

Activist Shaun King notes that its not clear if Harris understood what was happened in the moments before his death since he could not have heard the sirens in his New York Daily News column.

He adds that while some cases of police shootings pose genuine threats to law enforcement, this case is hard to justify.

Beyond being unarmed, deaf and mute, Daniel Harris appears to have been a rather small, thin man, he wrote in his column.

Harris' family (above, with Harris second from left) plan to set up a foundation in his name to educate and provide police with proper training on how to confront deaf people

His family also hope to change the DMV registration system to require states to set up a DEAF alert to appear when a cars license plate is looked up

King insists opening fire could not have been the troopers only option.

What threat did Harris pose? Was a Taser or pepper spray used? Could the officer truly not subdue Harris on his own?

If reports from neighbors are accurate, it doesn't appear the officer even tried, but pretty much shot and killed Harris mere seconds after he got out of the car.

He added: Virtually any other option the officer could've considered was better than what he chose in this case, but here we are with another avoidable casualty of police violence.
A dramatic rescue was caught on video Sunday showing firefighters pulling a young mother and her 6-year-old son from a car dangling precariously from a Florida overpass.

Lucilinda Quiles, 27, of Altamonte Springs, was driving westbound along State Road 408 in Orange County at around 11am Sunday when for some reason she veered off into a grassy median and slammed into a barrier wall.

The impact of the collision caused Quiles' whlte Mazda to flip over onto an embankment at the Kehoe Boulevard overpass, where the vehicle was left hanging over the abyss.

Scroll down for video

Precarious position: Traffic cameras along SR 408 in Florida caught the moment Lucilinda Quiles' car flipped over and was left dangling from an overpass

Quiles, 27, was driving westbound when she veered off into a grassy median and struck a barrier wall

Rescue: This blurry screenshot shows the moment firefighters rushed to pull the woman and her 6-year-old son to safety

Rescuers used cables to secure the vehicle and removed Mazda's occupants from the rear of the vehicle

Quiles, pictured here in a mugshot from 2011, was cited for careless driving

Traffic cameras captured the moment first responders from Orange County Fire and Rescue rushed to the scene to pull the occupants of the car to safety.

The video shows firefighters using steel cables to secure the totaled vehicle and removing the female driver and her son, 6-year-old Ayden Williams, from the back of the Mazda.

Quiles was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center to be treated for minor injuries. Her son was treated at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.

Quiles' mother told the station WFTV her daughter suffered a broken nose and other non life-threatening injuries, while her grandson had his arm in a sling and may have hurt his hand.

Firefighters say if it were not for the barrier wall, the Mazda would have plummeted off the Kehoe Boulevard overpass

Silver lining: The mother and son suffered minor injuries in the one-vehicle crash

The totaled white Mazda was pulled out and taken away by tow truck

Investigators say they do not know what caused Quiles to swerve into the median, but they do not believe alcohol played a role in the accident.

Jose Vasquez, an engineer with Orange County Fire and Rescue, told ClickOrlando that had it not been for the barrier wall, Quiles Mazda would have plummeted from the overpass.

Quiles was cited for careless driving as the Florida Highway Patrol continued investigating the crash.
Age is nothing but a number to one young person who is 'running' Donald Trump's campaign office in Colorado.

Weston Imer, who is probably the youngest person ever to 'run' a campaign office for the presidential election, is only 12 years old, according to KMOV.

He is in charge of the operation where volunteers will gather and help get out the vote.

Scroll down for video

Weston Imer, 12, (pictured) is helping his mother run Donald Trump's campaign office in Colorado

Weston is in charge of the operation where volunteers will gather and help get out the vote

Weston (right), who has even met The Donald (left), works alongside his mother, Laurel Imer, who is the official field coordinator

Weston, who has even met The Donald, works alongside his mother, Laurel Imer, who is the official field coordinator.

She said she wants to give her son most of the responsibility and help show other parents how to get their kids involved with the election, according to KMOV.

'You have a responsibility to your children to teach them,' Imer told the station.

Imer and Weston run Trump's campaign in Jefferson County, one of the most important counties in swing state Colorado.

Laurel Imer (right) said she wants to give her son most of the responsibility and help show other parents how to get their kids involved with the election

Weston told KMOV that he hopes to use the position to inspire others.

'Get involved,' Imer said. 'That's what I'm going to say. Get involved. Kids need to be educated.'

He hopes to lead the field office until school starts in September.

Weston said he wants to continue recruiting friends and making Trump proud.

'Watch for me - 2040,' Imer told the station.

'And Barron Trump, if you are watching, in 2040 I'll take you as my running mate.'

Imer and Weston run Trump's campaign in Jefferson County, one of the most important counties in swing state Colorado

In 2040 Weston will be 35 years old as the Constitution requires for the president, but Donald Trump's 10-year-old son Barron would be a few months too long to claim the vice president role.

But Weston is not the only one 'assisting' Trump's campaign.

It was recently reported that Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity is wading so much into the presidential race  to boost his friend Trump  that the New York Times is classifying him as a campaign adviser.

Hannity sat down with the Times' Jim Rutenberg and talked about his role in the campaign.

While sources told the newspaper that they thought Hannity was angling for a position inside the Trump administration.

Hannity denied wanting to someway work in a theoretical Trump White House, calling it laughable and contractually prohibitive.

Since the Democratic National Convention (DNC) where Hillary Clinton moved into a clear polling lead over Trump, the Republican presidential nominee has gotten some slightly better results

National polls suggest that the race is tightening with more of a five to six point lead for Clinton instead of the seven to eight point lead she had after the DNC

But he didn't deny giving the Republican nominee, who's struggled in the polls the past few weeks, an assist.

'I'm not hiding the fact that I want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States,' he continued.

'I never claimed to be a journalist,' he added.

Since the Democratic National Convention (DNC) where Hillary Clinton moved into a clear polling lead over Trump, the Republican presidential nominee has gotten some slightly better results.

National polls suggest that the race is tightening with more of a five to six point lead for Clinton instead of the seven to eight point lead she had after the DNC.

A poll conducted by by NBC News, The Wall Street Journal and Marist on August 12 showed Trump behind Clinton by 14 points in Colorado.

Colorado voted for President Barack Obama in the past two presidential elections, but also voted for George W. Bush twice.

The state had been solidly Republican, voting for the GOP in every election between 1968 and 2008.
While Prime Minister Theresa May enjoys her summer holiday in the Alps, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is holding down the fort at home.

As a result he hosted his New Zealand counterpart Murray McCully in London today - and it appears he gave him a warm welcome as Mr Johnson was spotted walking into his offices with an aide carrying a crate of wine scurrying behind him.

The aide was carrying a box of Three Choirs English wine - presumably a gift for Mr McCully - which is made in Gloucestershire.

Boris Johnson hosted his New Zealand counterpart Murray McCully in London today - and it appears he gave him a warm welcome as he and his aide were spotted walking into his offices with a crate of wine (pictured)

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and New Zealand Foreign Secretary Murray McCully

Mr Johnson is in charge of the country until Wednesday, when Mrs May returns from her holiday.

Today's meeting was about collaboration with New Zealand on aviation security, including proposals to hold a UN security Council meeting during the UN General Assembly in September.

Both Ministers discussed current international security threats, including the evolving threat from ISIS and the situation in Ukraine.

The Foreign Secretary also welcomed New Zealand's troop deployments to Afghanistan and highlighted the need for ongoing international support for the government in Kabul.

The aide was carrying a box of Three Choirs English wine - presumably a gift for Mr McCully - which is made in Gloucestershire

Mr Johnson said: 'It was a great pleasure to host Foreign Minister McCully in London. The UK and New Zealand are not only longstanding friends but we are like-minded global partners across the full range of challenges facing the world today.

'With New Zealand on the UN Security Council, we are working even more closely to promote global peace and stability. As partners in the Commonwealth, we share values, history, language and systems of law and order.

'We discussed the dynamic trading relationship between our two countries and I emphasised that the UK remains firmly open for business. We are the same outward-looking, globally-minded, big-thinking country we always have been.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani continued to peddle rumors that Hillary Clinton was unwell during a 'Fox & Friends' appearance this morning.

'I think Hillary's tired,' Giuliani said, pointing to a meeting the Democrat held with police chiefs from around the country on Thursday in New York City, where she was seated throughout the discussion.

Giuliani called the meeting 'pathetic,' adding, 'She looked sick.'

The former mayor, a surrogate for Donald Trump, was parroting the Republican nominee who has suggested that Clinton hasn't been campaigning as tirelessly as he has, hinting to voters that something could be wrong with her health.

Clinton's schedule through August isn't helping her case, as she's only speaking publicly twice.

Scroll down for video

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani continued his attacks on Hillary Clinton's health Monday morning during an appearance on 'Fox & Friends'

Rudy Giuliani, a Donald Trump surrogate, said, 'I think Hillary's tired.' He also said that she 'looked sick' when she met with police chiefs in New York City on Thursday

"I think Hillary's tired...she looks sick." -Rudy Giulianihttps://t.co/MlEnJ3hPJL  FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) August 22, 2016

She'll be in Reno, Nevada, campaigning on Thursday.

And then the following week she'll be in Cincinnati, Ohio to deliver a speech before The American Legion.

This is day No. 2 that Giuliani spread rumors that something is wrong with Clinton's health.

Talking to Shannon Bream on 'Fox News Sunday,' Giuliani suggested that the media was covering up 'several signs of illness' that he believed the former secretary of state was displaying.

'All you have to do is go online,' Giuliani said yesterday. 'Go online and put down "Hillary Clinton's illness." Take a look at the videos for yourself.'

Giuliani was referring to a number of right-wing conspiratorial videos that suggest the 68-year-old Clinton is plagued by a number of health problems.

Last week, Clinton's campaign began vehemently pushing back against online rumors that she is ill, using comments made by Trump to get on the topic.

On 'Fox News Sunday' former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani renewed rumors that something is wrong with Hillary Clinton's health

Trump had said during a national security speech that Clinton lacked the 'mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS.'

Then, during a town hall with Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity, Trump said Clinton 'doesn't really do that much. She'll give a speech on a teleprompter, and then she'll disappear.'

'I don't know if she goes home,' he said before sounding more assertive. 'She goes home and goes to sleep. I think she sleeps.'

Trump also suggested that Clinton 'takes a lot of weekends off.'

Clinton's campaign interpreted Trump's words to mean that he was peddling some of the right-wing conspiracy theories going around the internet including that Clinton had suffered a seizure on camera and that she was showing signs of dementia.

'While it is dismaying to see the Republican nominee for president push deranged conspiracy theories in a foreign policy speech, it's no longer surprising,' Clinton's communications director Jennifer Palmieri said in a statement.

The cough that she had through part of the early primary season wasn't a symptom of allergies, which she does suffer from, or talking too much, but rather a sign that the 68-year-old former secretary of state is seriously ill, the rumors go

Hillary Clinton, pictured left, had a coughing fit while giving a speech in New York in February. Pictured right, Right-wing groups claim this footage shows her 'having a seizure'

'Donald Trump is simply parroting lies based on fabricated documents promoted by Roger Stone and his right wing allies,' Palmieri continued.

She then pivoted for a moment to blast Trump for not releasing any of his tax returns to the American public.

'Hillary Clinton has released a detailed medical record showing her to be in excellent health plus her personal tax returns since 1977, while Trump has failed to provide the public with the most basic financial information disclosed by every major candidate in the last 40 years,' she acknowledged.

'It's time for him to stop using shameful distractions to hide his own record,' Palmieri added.

The Clinton campaign also pointed out in the email that 'Trump and his allies have donned tin foil hats when things weren't going his way,' pointing to the billionaire's propensity to hint that he believes a number of right-wing theories are true.

In the past, Trump gave credibility to the 'birther' movement, in which people tried to dig up proof that President Obama wasn't born in the United States.

Clinton slips as she walks up the stairs into the non-profit SC Strong, a two year residential facility that helps former felons, substance abusers, and homeless

During the Republican primary Trump tried to connect the dots between Sen. Ted Cruz's father and John F. Kennedy's assassination.

He also hinted that he believed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had been murdered, rather than dying because of poor health.

A number of right-wing websites have been pushing stories about Clinton's health.

'Leaked' medical documents portend to show that the former secretary of state is showing signs of dementia.

A video being passed around suggests she had a seizure when talking to supporters in a muffin shop in Washington, D.C. on June 10.

The cough that she had through part of the early primary season wasn't a symptom of allergies, which she does suffer from, or talking too much, but rather a sign that the 68-year-old former secretary of state is seriously ill, the rumors go.

She was also seen slipping as she walked up the stairs into the non-profit SC Strong, a two year residential facility that helps former felons, substance abusers, and homeless move into self-sufficiency on February 24 this year in North Charleston.

Clinton's people included a new statement from her physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, who signed off on the Democrat's health in the beginning months of her campaign last year.

'As Secretary Clinton's long time physician, I released a medical statement during the campaign indicating that she is in excellent health,' Bardack said in a statement last night.

'I have recently been made aware of allegedly "leaked" medical documents regarding Secretary Clinton with my name on them. These documents are false, were not written by me and are not based on any medical facts,' she continued.

'To reiterate what I said in my previous statement, Secretary Clinton is in excellent health and fit to serve as President of the United States,' Bardack said.

There's polling data that indicates a bigger portion of Americans believe candidates should release their medical records to put to bed some of these issues, and that number has gone up since Karl Rove made comments that may have been the genesis of these persistent rumors.

Rove, a Republican strategist known best for his work for President George W. Bush, floated the idea in May 2014 that Clinton may have suffered a traumatic brain injury when she fainted in 2012 due to a stomach flu, got a concussion and later developed a blood clot.

'Thirty days in the hospital,' Rove said. 'And when she reappears, she's wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury?' We need to know what's up with that.'

Politifact rated Rove's claims as patently false, while Clinton's spokesman Nick Merrill pushed back on them as well, but the insinuation was now out there.
A guest at a Disney resort warned staff of an alligator near the shore just 45 minutes before a toddler was killed by the predator, a new report reveals.

Lane Graves died after he was grabbed by the seven-foot reptile in the lagoon of Disney's Grand Floridian Resort on June 14.

The two-year-old's father Matt desperately tried to free his son from the crushing jaws by reaching into the animal's mouth, a report by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission found. But he was unable to save him and the boy's official cause of death was given as crushing injuries and drowning.

Barely an hour before the attack, staff at the resort had been warned that the alligator was in the vicinity.

Scroll down for video

Lane Graves (pictured) died after he was grabbed by the seven-foot reptile in the lagoon of Disney's Grand Floridian Resort on June 14

The two-year-old's father Matt (pictured with his wife Melissa and their two children) desperately tried to free his son from the crushing jaws by reaching into the animal's mouth

Shawna Giacomini, a old North Carolina tourist, reported that he had seen the creature close to the shore at around 8.15pm, a separate Orange County Sheriff's Office report revealed.

His daughter told a Disney employee about it and the Giacominis went to a nearby store.

By the time they returned at 9pm, the boy had already been attacked.

Other witnesses told of their horror at hearing the screams of the young boy during the attack.

A 16-year-old tourist, said he was walking with his younger siblings on a beach-area walkway when he saw the alligator dragging the boy away.

A warning was installed on the beach after Disney World Resort in the wake of the tragedy

'The alligator came in head first, toward the beach, but turned around once it had the child in its mouth and crawled back into the water headfirst,' Peter Courakos told deputies.

Several guests at the resort also reported seeing the alligator swimming in the lagoon shortly before the attack.

Amateur photographer Alfred Smith snapped the reptile swimming in the lagoon at about 7.30pm on the evening of the attack.

When he returned to his balcony an hour-and-a-half later he saw children playing in the water and had rushed out to warn them when he heard Lane's mother screaming, the wildlife agency report said.

The report found Lane did nothing to provoke the alligator and that the death is classified as a predatory attack.

Lane, whose body was found 15 hours after he was pulled underwater, hadn't even been swimming at the time - he had just been wading near the edge of the lagoon.

The alligator may have had a diminished fear of people by being in an area with lots of humans, and wildlife officials are still investigating if alligator feeding took place.

Lane's parents have said publicly they don't plan to sue Walt Disney World over the death.

A vigil was held on June 20 for Lane Thomas Graves at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in west Omaha

Lane's father Matt Graves (pictured with his son, right) have said publicly they don't plan to sue Walt Disney World over the death

After Lane's death, Disney World made changes to limit possible visitor contact with alligators on the property.

A stone wall was built around the lagoon and 'No Fishing' signs were installed around waterfront areas. Fishing at Disney World was changed to be limited only to excursions.

The boy's parents, who were on vacation from Nebraska when their son was dragged from the water's edge by the alligator, said they have been 'overwhelmed with the support and love' that have poured in since the tragedy captured national attention.

'Melissa and I continue to deal with the loss of our beloved boy, Lane, and are overwhelmed with the support and love we have received from family and friends in our community as well as from around the country,' father Matt Graves said.

A number of wooden posts were installed on the water's edge to act as barriers after the attack

These barriers have been put up next to the water at the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa in Orlando where the toddler was pulled under by the alligator in June

The company faced growing questions as to why there was nothing warning guests about the deadly predators. There was a sign that read: 'No Swimming' (pictured), but many thought that wasn't enough

Days after the boy's death, Disney fenced off the area and unveiled a new sign warning of alligators.

There was previously a sign on the beach saying: 'No Swimming', but many thought that wasn't enough.

The dangerous reptiles had even been spotted lurking in the water days before the horrific incident.

Following the attack, Florida wildlife officials captured and euthanized the alligator responsible for Lane's death.

Officials said they have based their conclusions on expert analyses and observations by staff with extensive experience in investigating fatal alligator bites.

Other close encounters with the dangerous animals had also been reported in other parts of the park.

TMZ reported that an alligator had been spotted clambering onto a raft on the Tom Sawyer Island on the Rivers of America at the Disney World resort in Orlando days before the attack.

One guest filmed the horrific incident on their cell phone.

The Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress, which neighbors the Walt Disney Resort already has a sign which clearly reads: 'Please be aware of alligators in the lake.'

Walt Disney Company chairman and CEO Bob Iger had issued a statement offering his condolences after the tragedy.

'As a parent and a grandparent, my heart goes out to the Graves family during this time of devastating loss,' he said.
A major explosion at a radioactive waste dump in New Mexico could become one of the costliest nuclear accidents in US history, according to a new report.

The February 2014 explosion at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant happened when a drum of nuclear waste burst open because workers filled it with the wrong brand of cat litter.

Now is is revealed that it could cost as much as $2 billion to clean up the accident, which severely limited the United States' ability to get rid of nuclear waste, the Los Angeles Times reported.

A February 2014 explosion at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant happened when a drum of nuclear waste (pictured) burst open because workers filled it with the wrong brand of cat litter

Now it is revealed that the accident in New Mexico could cost as much as $2 billion, becoming the costliest nuclear accident in US history

'There is no question the Energy Department has downplayed the significance of the accident,' said Don Hancock, of the group Southwest Research and Information Center, to the Times.

Federal officials have not been forthcoming in admitting that the explosion has caused long-term damage to the facility, which was designed to be a dumping ground for waste from World War II-era nuclear weapons, the newspaper reported.

The underground facility, which is constructed like a mine, was to receive some 277,000 drums of radioactive waste, federal documents show.

It had operated for 15 years when the explosion happened.

A year after the accident, the US Department of Energy released a 277-page report that concluded workers switched from inorganic clay litter to organic litter  which caused a 55-gallon drum to burst, releasing radioactive materials throughout the underground facility.

Cat litter is used in nuclear laboratories to soak up liquid nuclear waste because of its highly absorbent qualities.

Federal officials have been cagey about explosion's long-term damage to the facility, which was designed to be a dumping ground for waste from World War II-era nuclear weapons

Fixing the problem could cost more than the hefty sum paid for the 12-year cleanup after the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.

The accident has also caused major delays in cleanup efforts at a dozen current and former weapons sites.

Radioactive waste that was supposed to be dumped by the thousands of tons have been backed up in Washington state, Idaho and others, the Times reported.

'The federal government has an obligation to clean up the nuclear waste at Hanford,' Washington Gov. Jay Inslee told the Times in a statement.

'I will continue to press them to honor their commitments to protect Washingtonians' public health and our natural resources.'

The underground facility, which is constructed like a mine, was to receive some 277,000 drums of radioactive waste (pictured)

The US Department of Energy released a 277-page report concluding workers switched from inorganic clay litter to organic litter  which caused a 55-gallon drum to burst

Idaho, for example, is supposed to send some 200,000 drums of waste to the facility by 2018.

'Our expectation is that they will continue to meet the settlement agreement,' said Susan Burke, of the state's Department of Environmental Quality, to the Times.

The error was blamed on Los Alamos National Laboratory, but federal regulators found that there were a number of safety issues at the waste facility.

The system supposed to prevent radioactive releases malfunctioned  and at least 21 workers received low doses of radiation.

Federal officials later argued that they were exposed to safe limits of radioactivity, the Times reported.

Fixing the problem could cost more than the hefty sum paid for the 12-year cleanup after the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania (pictured)

The government wanted to reopen the facility by the end of 2016, although full operations won't be possible until a new ventilation system is complete in seven years, the Times reported.

It costs about $200 million per year to keep the facility open, according to the newspaper.

And it is possible the problem might never be fixed.

'The facility was never designed to operate in a contaminated state,' Hancock told the Times. 'It was supposed to open clean and stay clean, but now it will have to operate dirty.
Sir Nils Olav was promoted to Brigadier by his Majesty the King of Norway's Guard

The world's most decorated penguin received another gong to add to his glittering collection when he was promoted in rank by the Norwegian military.

King penguin Sir Nils Olav was promoted to Brigadier by his Majesty the King of Norway's Guard, who paid him a visit for a special ceremony at Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland.

Sir Nils wore a gold military pin as he proudly paraded his way up the zoo's Penguin Walk, whilst the soldiers of the guard stood to attention.

Barbara Smith, from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said: 'We are honoured to host His Majesty the King of Norway's Guard as they bestow a prestigious new title upon our king penguin, Sir Nils Olav.

'It is a very proud moment and represents the close collaboration between our two countries, Scotland and Norway.'

Over 50 soldiers were in attendance to watch their favourite penguin get rewarded for his years of dedicated service.

The Guardsmen were in Scotland as they are taking part in The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, a grand concert featuring military bands, later this month.

Sir Nils is visited by the Guardsmen every few years and it is said that he recognises them each time they stop by to say hello

Crowds gather to watch Sir Nils receive his prestigious promotion at Edinburgh Zoo

Brigadier David Allfrey, Producer and Chief Executive of The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, added: 'This is just a simply fantastic example of the great relations between our two countries, and it couldn't be a more charming tradition.

'At the Tattoo we of course have many inspecting officers but this is by far my favourite. Congratulations, Brigadier Olav!'

Since his adoption Sir Nils has worked his way up the ranks going from Mascot to Brigadier

The Guardsmen visit Sir Nils every few years and his keepers say that 'Nils always recognises the Norwegian Guardsmen when they visit.'
Bombs are being hidden inside copies of the Koran in the latest sick tactic by terrorist group ISIS, it has been reported.

US military officials are said to have confirmed the sneaky booby trap strategy involving leaving Islam's holy book on the streets of Ramadi, Iraq, and waiting for locals to pick them up.

Locals who pick up the books, which are said to be hidden in bushes or long grass near the side of the road, could then be blown up.

An image posted to Twitter purportedly of a Koran with a bomb hidden inside it

The tactic has emerged after ISIS fighters have also left bombs in refrigerators.

At a press conference at the Foreign Office in London, US Army Colonel Steve Warren reportedly confirmed the strategy was being used by ISIS fanatics.

The use of the religious book was a shock given the terrorist group's normally strict implementation of Sharia law, The Sun reported.

'These guys are disgusting, they have left bombs in refrigerators,' Col. Warren reportedly said.

'They have put bombs inside the Holy Koran  we found that on several occasions in Ramadi.'

The paper reported that while ISIS fighters had been pushed out of the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces have had to deal with hundreds of booby-trapped buildings in the cities.
Ivanka Trump has hit back at the Italian shoemaker who accused her of stealing its designs and producing cheaper knock-off versions.

Donald's daughter has filed court documents rebutting the claims of Aquazzura, which had pointed out similarities between several of its own designs and the Ivanka Trump brand.

In the documents obtained by DailyMail.com, Ivanka denies she engaged in any 'unfair competition or deceptive trade' and is demanding the entire lawsuit be tossed out of court.

Scroll down for video

Donald Trump's daughter denies Aquazzura's claims that she copied their designs

Look familiar? Ivanka's designs, above, and Aquazzura's below

Aquazzura's Wild Thing pump has been worn by Kendall Jenner and Solange Knowles

Aquazzura Italia SRL was founded by Colombian Edgardo Osorio in 2011. Osorio previously worked for designers Salvatore Ferragamo and Roberto Cavalli.

In June the fashion designer's business filed a federal lawsuit against Ivanka and her licensing company.

It claimed Ivanka's Hettie stiletto was identical to their Wild Thing pump, which has found a following among celebrities including Kendall Jenner and Solange Knowles.

The Italian shoe company pointed out in their complaint that the color, silhouette and fringing design of Ivanka's closely matched their own.

Style maven Olivia Palermo poses in 375 Aquazzura sandals. The brand has found a celebrity following since it began in 2011

According to the lawsuit, Ivanka is also accused of ripping off two other shoes: its Belgravia shoe, rebranded under the name Necila, and Aquazzura's Forever Marilyn shoe, labelled as a Teagin Pointy Toe Pump with Tassel.

The company filed a federal lawsuit demanding an injunction from Donald's daughter, as well as accounting for all profits made from the shoes they believe were ripped off.

Matthew Burris, the CFO of Ivanka's licensing company, released a statement after the lawsuit was filed claiming,

'This is a baseless lawsuit aimed at generating publicity. The shoe in question is representative of a trending fashion style, is not subject to intellectual property law protection and there are similar styles made by several major brands.'

Ivanka is now demanding that the court dismiss Aquazzura's case and pay for her legal costs.

Documents filed by Ivanka on August 19 denying Aquazzura's allegations
This is the shocking moment ISIS assassins murdered a military chief in Yemen in a gangland-style drive-by shooting.

Pictures show a fanatic pointing a gun with a silencer attachment out of the window of a car before shooting a man in the back of the head in the war-torn city of Aden, Yemen.

The victim, dressed in white, falls to the ground before the gunman fires another shot.

Shocking pictures capture the moment ISIS assassins murdered a military chief in Yemen in a gangland-style drive-by shooting

Pictures show a fanatic pointing a gun with a silencer attachment out of the window of a car before shooting a man in the back of the head in the war-torn city of Aden, Yemen

ISIS militants claim the images show the assassination of a colonel - though this has not yet been verified.

Yemen has for two years been gripped by a war pitting the internationally recognised government against Shi'ite rebels who control the capital, Sanaa, and are allied with forces loyal to a former president.

The country is also home to active Al Qaeda and Islamic State group affiliates.

In May, an ISIS suicide car bomber killed at least 20 people after targeting a queue outside an army recruitment centre in the city.

The attack was one of two bombings that rocked Aden on the same day.

A second bomber on foot killed at least 25 people when he detonated his explosives vest among a group of recruits waiting outside the home of an army commander.

At the time, the blasts underlined the precarious security situation in Aden, the country's main port on the Arabian Sea, several months after government forces and allied militiamen backed by a Saudi-led coalition retook the city from the Shi'ite rebels, also known as the Houthis.

The victim, dressed in white, falls to the ground before the gunman fires another shot

The city has in recent months seen a series of suicide bombings and assassinations mainly targeting army and security forces.

Contributing further to the instability in Aden was the recent eviction of northern Yemenis, the work of suspected separatists who seek an independent south.

Today, deadly clashes raged between pro-Iran rebels and Yemeni government forces battling to secure an entrance to the nearby besieged city of Taez.

Backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition, Yemeni troops launched an offensive last week to break the rebel siege on Yemen's flashpoint third city, in the country's southwest.

The heaviest fighting Monday was near its western entrance where air strikes by the Arab coalition and ground battles left 11 dead among Houthi rebels and their allies, loyalist military sources said.
Police in Florida have arrested four suspects in connection to a robbery and killing of a young father who was shot dead a day after he went out with an 18-year-old woman he had met online.

Adam Hilarie, 27, was discovered dead inside his Auburndale apartment at around 6.45pm on Friday.

According to investigators, Hilarie had connected with Hailey Bustos on a dating site called Plenty Of Fish and took her out Thursday night.

Honey trap: Adam Hilarie, 27, pictured left with his daughter, was shot dead a day after taking 18-year-old Hailey Bustos (right) out on a date

Online connection: Hilarie reportedly met Bustos on the dating site PlentyOfFish

After the date, Hilarie dropped the young woman off and returned home. Police say the teen then met up with three other men and hatched a plot to rob Hilarie.

The foursome arrived at the victims apartment Friday evening and carried out the robbery, which ended with the 27-year-old getting shot, police said.

The suspects, identified as Andre Warner and Joshua Ellington, both 26, and 31-year-old Gary Gray, allegedly stole valuables from Hilaries home, including jewelry and electronics.

The three men and Ms Bustos were later arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit robbery, robbery with a firearm and first-degree murder.

Bustos, Ellington and Gray were also charged with violation of probation.

According to an arrest report cited by the Orlando Sentinel, during the robbery Hilarie 'was begging for his life' and made no attempt to resist his assailants. He also told them he had a child in an apparent bid to convince them to spare his life.

Accomplices: Bustos' suspected co-conspirators in the robbery and killing of Adam Hilarie have been identified as Joshua Ellington (left), Andre Warner (center) and Gary Gray (right)

More legal trouble: Ms Bustos was picked up by police in connection to an unrelated burglary

Daddy's girl: Hilarie is survived by his 5-year-old daughter, Lajaya (seen right), whom he called his 'princess'

The young woman was reportedly picked up by Winter Heaven police in connection to a separate burglary, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Hilarie leaves behind his 5-year-old daughter, Lajaya, whom he had referred to in Facebook posts as his 'princess.'

Friends and family paid tribute to the single dad during an emotional candlelight vigil that was held Saturday outside his home.

I miss my daddy because he's with Jesus,' Hilaries heartbroken daughter told ABC Action News.

The victim's brother, Angel Cruz, said that Adam brought out the good in everyone.

A friend has launched a GoFundMe page to help with Hilaries funeral expenses.

On Monday, Bustos' mother, Christina, clashed with a friend of Hilaries on Facebook after posting a status update in which she asked people to pray for her family.

Your daughter is just a little s*** that's going to rot in prison for setting Adam up to get robbed and murdered, the friend wrote in the comments section. She may have not pulled the trigger but if it wasn't for her none of this woulda [sic] happen. Even if she gets out the streets will get justice so it's better for her to stay in jail , if you want her alive.

War of words: Hailey Bustos' mother clashed with a friend of Hilarie's on Facebook after posting this status update

Friend's fury: Hilarie's friend called Hailey Bustos (pictured left and right) 'a s***' and accused her of setting up the 27-year-old single dad

Christina Bustos replied by telling the friend to leave her alone and let the f***ing courts do there [sic] job. She added that she never claimed her daughter did not deserve to be punished, but noted that she, too, lost a child.

To which Hilaries furious friend said that unlike Ms Bustos, who can go visit Hailey in prison, Adams loved ones, including his daughter, will never get to see him again.

Adam was a good man. So there is no sympathy for you or your family, the friend concluded.
Tabatha Graczyk (pictured) was jailed after police said she left her three children under the age of four at a hotel for up to three days

A Pittsburgh woman was jailed after police said she left her three children under the age of four at a hotel for up to three days.

Tabatha Graczyk, 32, was jailed Monday on charges of endangering the children, who range in age from 8 months to three years old, CBS Pittsburgh.

Police said the children were left in the care of the woman's friends at the Days Inn on Banksville Road.

The friends told police that Graczyk asked them to watch the children for a few hours Friday night but by Sunday the mother hadn't returned to get her children, according to CBS.

They tried to reaching Graczyk numerous times and twice she told them she would come back in a few hours, but never showed.

The couple also said they told her the children were running out of food, clothing and diapers, CBS reported.

When they couldnt reach her on Sunday, they called police.

Authorities say the children were found alone in a room at the Days Inn.

When officers arrived, they found one child had open burn marks on their hands.

A second child had previous burn marks and a third had no more formula, CBS reported.

The children were taken to a hospital as a precaution before being put in the care of Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth and Families (CYF).

The agency told CBS they had been looking for the children for about a month because of previous neglect complaints.

Police said the children were left in the care of the woman's friends at the Days Inn (pictured) on Banksville Road. They said they called police when she didn't show up to get her children on Sunday. Police found the children alone in the hotel room

When Graczyk came to the hospital to get her children, she was arrested.

She told police she was looking for apartments and stayed with friends for two nights, according to the station.

Graczyk said she would fail a drug test because she had been taking Percocet for an aching tooth, but she didn't have a prescription.

She told authorities she didn't go to get her children because she fell asleep from taking the pills.

Graczyk also told authorities that she was on probation for another neglect incident from 2014.

In that case, she said she was on methadone and one of the children overdosed, CBS reported.

Online court records don't list an attorney for Graczyk, who was unable to post bond.
Chi Onwurah, a Labour MP and shadow minister, has criticised Jeremy Corbyn's leadership over his treatment of two black female MPs

Jeremy Corbyn is embroiled in a racism row after one of his own frontbenchers suggested he should have faced legal action for the way he had treated black female MPs.

Chi Onwurah, the shadow minister for culture and the digital economy, said the Labour leader would have been taken to a tribunal for constructive dismissal and discrimination 'in any other job'.

In an excoriating attack, she said Mr Corbyn had 'picked on' the two Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) MPs and had made it 'impossible' for them to do their jobs properly.

Miss Onwurah said the leader had 'undermined' her after Mr Corbyn gave Thangam Debbonaire, a fellow Labour MP, the culture half of her portfolio without informing either of the women.

When he realised his mistake he then took the role back off Mrs Debboanire, who was suffering from cancer at the time, she explained.

In farcical scenes, Mr Corbyn then failed to inform Miss Onwurah she had her original job back  and refused to meet with either MPs for two months.

Jeremy Corbyn met volunteers tonight at a phone bank at Ghousia community centre in Walthamstow, east London

Miss Onwurah said the leader had 'undermined' her after Mr Corbyn gave Thangam Debbonaire (pictured) the culture half of her portfolio without informing either of the women

In an article for the New Statesman, Miss Onwurah said: 'If this had been any of my previous employers in the public and private sectors Jeremy might well have found himself before an industrial tribunal for constructive dismissal, probably with racial discrimination thrown in  given that only five per cent of MPs are black and female, picking on us two is statistically interesting to say the least.'

In scathing remarks, she said as Mrs Debbonaire was undergoing treatment for cancer at the time, Mr Corbyn could also have faced disability action too.

She said: 'In any other job I would have called on my union for support in confronting an all-white management which prevented two of its few black employees from doing their jobs.

'I would have expected the Leader of the Labour Party to condemn such ineffectual management which allowed such abuse.'

She added: 'Jeremy made it impossible for two of the very few BME women MPs to do their jobs properly, undermining both us and Labour's role as the voice of opposition to the government.'

The shadow minister said the behaviour fitted into a pattern, stating: 'But Jeremy dismissed criticism that he was undermining his shadow ministers - just as he had earlier dismissed criticism that not appointing a woman to any of the great offices of state showed a lack of commitment to gender equality.

'He would decide what the great offices of state were. As I have said previously, being a white man comes with many privileges. Deciding what constitutes gender or ethnic equality isn't one of them.'

In his defence, a spokesman for Mr Corbyn told The Guardian: 'Chi Onwurah's comments relate to a discussion about the delineation of shadow cabinet roles last January, as is not uncommon in both shadow cabinets and cabinets. Chi was appointed by Jeremy Corbyn to be shadow minister for culture and the digital economy last September.

'When Thangam Debbonaire was appointed as a dedicated shadow minister for the arts in January, there was a negotiation about the division of responsibilities with Chi and Thangam, but at no point was anyone sacked. We regret that Chi feels she was singled out, but this was clearly not the case.'

Miss Onwurah, the Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, has kept her frontbench post but nominated Owen Smith for the Labour leadership.

Mr Corbyn enjoyed a baking creation at the event at the Ghousia community centre

Some supporters wanted selfies with Mr Corbyn during the event in east London tonight

Meanwhile Labour MP Conor McGinn claimed Mr Corbyn was threatened by 'robust working-class voices' and 'strong women'.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Westminster Hour on Sunday night, Mr McGinn referred to earlier claims that Mr Corbyn had threatened to call his father to 'bully me into submission'.

He accused Mr Corbyn and his team of 'telling lies' after they denied the allegations.

The row came as the first ballot papers were sent out to an estimated 640,000 party members and supporters yesterday.

In a blow to Corbyn, Kezia Dugdale backed Mr Smith in the Labour leadership contest while admitting the party is 'ripping itself apart'.

Supporters were making the case for the Labour leader to remain in his post at the Walthamstow community centre

The Scottish Labour leader accused Mr Corbyn of speaking 'only to the converted' and said Mr Smith could unite the party and win the next general election.

And London Mayor Sadiq Khan urged Mr Corbyn's supporters to conduct a 'civilised' campaign after he was booed at a campaign rally after backing Mr Smith.

At the rally in Kilburn on Sunday night, large parts of the 4,000-strong audience jeered and booed when a speaker mentioned Mr Khan's name.

It also emerged that both candidates have promised to change party rules to ensure that in future there will be at least one woman in post as the leader or a deputy leader of the party.

In response to a Labour Women's Network questionnaire, both Corbyn and Smith said they would support a rule change to ensure Labour has at least one woman in the leadership team - defined by the network as the leader or a deputy leader of the party.
A woman who was high on alcohol and drugs climbed 120ft up the side of a building and promptly fell asleep on scaffolding.

The unnamed brunette was spotted lying motionless by stunned local residents on the 11th floor of the tower block in the city of Krakow, southern Poland.

After failing to wake the woman up by shouting at her, dumbfounded locals called the police.

The unnamed brunette was spotted lying motionless on some scaffolding by stunned local residents on the 11th floor of the tower block in the city of Krakow, southern Poland

Police and the fire service launched a rescue operation to get the woman down

Police spokesman Marcin Warszawski told local media: 'At first we thought it was a stupid joke.

'A resident reported there was a woman lying on the scaffolding and that she seemed unconscious.

'It was an unusual call but we went there anyway and there she was, on the 11th floor, passed out.'

He added: 'She was lying on the very edge and it's lucky she didn't roll off.'

She was high on alcohol and drugs when she climbed 120ft up the side of a building

Police spokesman Marcin Warszawski told local media: 'At first we thought it was a joke'

'We have no idea how she got there.'

As officers clambered onto the scaffolding in the Nowa Huta district of the city to prevent her plummeting to the ground, others scoured the scaffolding around the building to make sure there were no other dozing drunks.

Warszawski said: 'We have no idea how the woman got there but we needed to establish there weren't more like her on other floors so we had an officer on the ground checking to make sure.'

When the fire brigade arrived they managed to lower the still unconscious woman to the ground where she was then taken to a nearby hospital.

As officers clambered onto the scaffolding in the Nowa Huta district of the city to prevent her plummeting to the ground, others scoured the scaffolding around the building to make sure there were no other dozing drunks

Krakow police spokesman Grzegorz Gubala said: 'According to preliminary tests, the woman was under the influence of alcohol and other drugs.

'She is from another part of the city and we are trying to establish what she was doing in Nowa Huta.

'So far we do not know how or why she ended up on the scaffolding.'
The man charged with killing an imam and his assistant in New York claims he is innocent because a police sketch of the suspect shows a man wearing glasses  which he says he hasn't worn in years.

Oscar Morel, 36, is charged with killing Imam Maulama Akonjee, 55, and Thara Uddin, 64, in a brazen daylight attack in South Ozone Park on August 13 that horrified the Queens neighborhood's Bangladeshi community.

But Morels attorney Michael Schwed argued in court that his client and the man in the sketch are not the same person.

There was a photo drawing done of the guy that did the shooting, and in that photo the guy is wearing glasses, Schwed said, according to the New York Post.

Scroll down for video

Oscar Morel (right) the man charged with killing an imam and his assistant in New York claims he is innocent because a police sketch of the suspect shows a man wearing glasses

[Morel] says he doesnt own a pair of glasses. He wears contacts, but he hasnt worn glasses for years.

Morel has been indicted on five counts of first and second-degree murder in the killings.

He did not appear in court but was represented by his lawyer.

Schwed said Morel had been taking his friend to the doctor when he was caught on camera leaving the scene of the murder in South Ozone Park.

He said police had wrongly identified his client as the killer because one witnesses asked to take part in a police lineup did not identify him.

Morel has been indicted on five counts of first and second-degree murder in the killings. Above, Morel at his arraignment last Thursday

Morel is charged with killing Imam Maulama Akonjee (right) and Thara Uddin (left)

Schwed says if the witness is David Hunter, a cyclist who did pick Morel out of a photo array, his testimony would not be worth much in court.

Assistant District Attorney Peter McCormack said during a court appearance last week that the potential witness identified a "filler" from the lineup.

It was not clear if the result of the lineup would affect prosecutors' case against Morel.

Authorities have said the suspected gunman's motive remained unclear, and the possibility it was a hate crime was one theory being explored.

A staircase leads down to a basement apartment where investigators said the .38-caliber revolver, used in the slayings, was stashed in a wall of the apartment where Morel lived

New York Police Department detectives searched Morel's basement apartment in the borough of Brooklyn and found a revolver hidden in a wall that authorities believe he used in the execution-style killings, reports have said.

Police also found clothes in his apartment that matched what the gunman had been wearing, according to the media reports.

Morel faces up to life in prison without parole if he is convicted.
NSW Premier Mike Baird has fractured his vertebrae after he slipped down the stairs at his home in the middle of the night.

Mr Baird said he fell down stairs wearing socks with the lights out to get a glass of water late on Monday night when he slipped.

'Note to self: when fetching a glass of water late at night, don't walk down the stairs in your socks with the lights out,' Mr Baird wrote on Facebook.

NSW Premier Mike Baird has fractured his vertebrate falling down the stairs

'Diagnosis: fractured vertebrae,' he wrote alongside an X-ray of his back.

Surgery wasn't needed, but his recovery is expected to be a slow, he posted on Tuesday morning.

The premier however can see the funny side of a politician breaking his back, telling people to bring on the puns.

'Yeah, I know... The punchlines for this pretty much write themselves... Knock yourselves out (I almost did!)', he wrote.

Mr Baird said he fell down stairs wearing socks with the lights out

Some Facebook users have already done that, with several joking the accident at least disproves accusations Mr Baird is spineless.

Others have wished Mr Baird a speedy recovery.

'Hope you get well soon Mike!,' wrote one man.
Also renews pitch to African Americans in inner cities: 'Now, you walk down the street, you get shot'

Says they 'cannot be trusted' to investigate Clinton

Donald Trump called for a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's emails 'immediately' as he referenced Arkansas political scandals of the 1990s and accused his Democratic rival of 'pay for play' politics.

He said the FBI and the Justice Department 'whitewashed Hillary Clintons email crimes' and said neither agency could credibly conduct an investigation, saying they 'cannot be trusted.'

Appearing in Akron at a rally before a few thousand cheering fans, Trump charged that Clinton 'made the State Department into the same kind of pay for play operation as the Arkansas government was.'

'Think about what happened back then,' Trump added, in a reference to the 1990s scandals that intruded into Bill Clinton's tenure in the White House.

He said Clinton's conduct requires 'an expedited investigation by a special prosecutor immediately, immediately, immediately.'

Donald Trump called for a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton 'immediately, immediately, immediately'

Surrounded by thousands of cheering fans in Akron, Trump charged that Clinton 'made the State Department into the same kind of pay for play operation'

Trump accused the Obama Justice Department and the FBI of participating in a 'whitewash'.

'After the FBI and the Department of Justice whitewashed Hillary Clintons email crimes, they certainly cannot be trusted to quickly or impartially investigate Hillary Clintons new crimes, which happen all the time,' he said.

Drawing as he has in the past from the 'Clinton Cash' book, Trump referenced donations to the Clinton Foundation from Middle Eastern governments.

'The Clinton foundation accepted as much as $60 million from Middle Eastern countries that oppressed women, gays and people of different faiths,' Trump told the crowd.

'Either Hillary Clinton herself or her closest aides took action favorable to these donors. Her actions corrupted and disgraced one of the most important departments of government  indeed one of the only four established by the United States Constitution itself,' he said.

Trump accused the Obama Justice Department and the FBI of participating in a 'whitewash'

Trump said he started his speech early 'because the place is packed'

'The Clintons made the State Department into the same kind of pay for play operation as the Arkansas government was. Now, think about what happened back then. And I love the state of Arkansas. Were winning it big. But Ill tell you, they know what went on.'

'Pay the Clinton Foundation huge sums of money and throw in some big speaking fees for Bill Clinton and youve got the play  youve got the do what you want them to do,' Trump said.

'I've become increasingly shocked by the vast scope of Hillary Clinton's criminality  it's criminality. Everybody knows it,' Trump charged.

FBI director James Comey declined to seek prosecution of Clinton after a lengthy investigation where he nevertheless faulted her for extreme 'carelessness' in her private email system.

Trump didn't get specific about which Arkansas scandals he was referring to, but he has previously invoked Whitewater and other investigations that ultimately led to the appointment of a special prosecutor during the Clinton administration and the ultimate impeachment of the president and trial in the Senate.

'Her [Clinton's] actions corrupted and disgraced one of the most important departments of government,' said Trump

'A Trump administration will end the government corruption  no one will be above the law,' Trump pledged

'The amounts involved, the favors done and the significant number of times it was done require an expedited investigation by a special prosecutor immediately, immediately, immediately,' he said.

His comments came just days after Bill Clinton announced major changes to the Clinton Foundation, including eliminating the annual gab best for big shots known as the Clinton Global Initiative after next month.

'Some former prosecutors have even suggested that the coordination between the pay for play State Department and the Clinton Foundation constitute a clear example of RICO racketeering influenced corrupt organization enterprises,' Trump said  referencing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is traveling with Trump and introduced him at the rally.

Grabbing a term from the architects of the second Iraq War, Trump said, 'We're fighting for peaceful regime change in our own country,' using a term put to use when the U.S. talked about taking out the government in Iraq.

Trump called for a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton's conduct and referenced Arkansas scandals, remarks that that are a reminder of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of Bill Clinton

Trump has also brought up Monica Lewinsky, who testified before Kenneth Starr's grand jury as part of his investigation

He said the Justice Department has become 'really sadly a political arm of the White House, referencing Attorney General Loretta Lynch's decision to accept the FBI's recommendation not to prosecute Clinton for her email scandal.

He said DOJ 'has acted very unethically.'

'Nobody has ever seen anything like this before,' said Trump. He referenced Lynch's private meeting with Bill Clinton aboard a jet at an airport in Phoenix shortly before the announcement that Hillary Clinton wouldn't be prosecuted in July.

Trump said two of the nation's most historic agencies 'have been corrupted.'

'A Trump administration will end the government corruption  no one will be above the law,' Trump pledged.

Trump sounded an optimistic tone about his chances. 'We're going to win Ohio, we're going to win the White House, and we're going to bring back your jobs that have been taken from your state and every other state in the union.'

'Were going to win Ohio, were going to win the White House and were going to bring back your jobs,' Trump told a crowd in Akron

Trump said the Justice Department and the FBI 'certainly cannot be trusted to quickly investigate Hillary Clintons new crimes, which happen all the time'

Trump said the Justice Department has become a 'really sadly a political arm of the White House', referencing Attorney General Loretta Lynch's (pictured) decision to accept the FBI's recommendation not to prosecute Clinton for her email scandal

He predicted a big win as the crowd cheered. 'I just get the feeling were going to win in a landslide,' he said.

'It's going to be America first  it's not boing to be am last American seventh, America fifth, because we want to take care of some country,' Trump said.

Trump also renewed his pitch to African Americans, who he described as living in dangerous inner city neighborhoods. 'Youll be able to walk down the street without getting shot. Now, you walk down the street, you get shot.'

'You can go to war zones in countries that we're fighting and it's safer than living in some of our inner cities,' Trump said.

Trump said he employs 'so many' African Americans and asked: 'What the hell do you have to lose? Give me a chance!'

Hillary Clinton's campaign released a statement from director of political engagement Marlon Marshall, who is black, regarding Trump's 'doubling down on his insulting of African Americans.'

'It could not be clearer how much African Americans have to lose under Donald Trump. He is doubling down on insults, fear and stereotypes that set our community back and further divide our country,' Marshall said in the statement, calling Trump 'unfit and unqualified to be President.'

Trump, in his remarks, also blasted the latest jobs report as the 'legacy of Barack Hussein Obama.'

Earlier Monday, Trump met with local law enforcement in Akron, where he said rising crime was caused by a lack of cops on the street and said he would provide more military equipment to cops.

It was Trump's first meeting with law enforcement since he went target shooting at a Fraternal Order of Police lodge outside Charlotte on Thursday.

Asked at the event whether rising crime was attributable to few police, Trump said, ''Yeah, I would certainly say so.'

Earlier Monday, Trump met with local law enforcement members in Akron, one of several recent meetings with current and retired cops

Then a questioner asked if he would return 'military equipment' to law enforcement  a topic that got attention following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014.

'Yes I would,' Trump said, calling the situation 'ridiculous.'

On Monday morning, Trump pushed back against the idea that he was 'flip-flopping' on immigration, after reports that he told Hispanic leaders over the weekend that he wouldn't have a deportation force to deal with the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

'We have to be very firm. We have to be very, very strong when people come in illegally, Trump said on 'Fox & Friends.'

'We have a lot of people that want to come in through the legal process and it's not fair for them. And we're working with a lot of people in the Hispanic community to try and come up with an answer.'
Europe's three most powerful leaders yesterday vowed the EU will not end after Brexit as they launched a desperate bid to bring the project back to life.

In a highly symbolic meeting on the Italian island seen as the birthplace of European federalism, the leaders of Germany, France and Italy attempted to show the EU was not dead.

But they risked further inflaming Euroscepticism across the continent as they attempted to plough on without learning lessons from angry Brexit voters in Britain.

French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi during a press conference at the end of their meeting on the Italian military ship 'Garibaldi' near Ventotene Island, Tirreno sea, Italy, on Monday

The leaders of what will be the EUs three biggest economies once Britain leaves aimed to present a united front as they met on Ventotene to discuss their gameplan for Brexit negotiations.

The volcanic island off Naples is where the dream of a united Europe was born. In the 1940s dissidents Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi, imprisoned there by Mussolinis regime, wrote a manifesto for a free and united Europe on sheets of cigarette paper.

It called for the definitive abolition of the division of Europe into national, sovereign states. It was smuggled out and later published.

But instead of such lofty idealism, yesterday the leaders of Germany, France and Italy faced the grim reality of a growing backlash to their handling of the migration crisis and terrorism  and disagreements over how to proceed.

The trio also risk hostility from the other remaining EU member states, with Eastern European countries making clear they will oppose any further integration.

French president Francois Hollande yesterday admitted the EU faces the risk of fragmentation and division but said it needs a new impulse on three fronts  the economy, defence and security.

Mr Renzi, Mrs Merkel and Mr Hollande arrive for a meeting on a ship near Ventotene island

Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi said: Many thought the EU was finished after Brexit but that is not how it is.

'We respect the choice of Britains citizens, but we want to write a page for the future.

It is easy to complain and find scapegoats and Europe is the perfect scapegoat. But it is also about peace, prosperity and freedom.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel recalled that the EU had been born from some of the darkest moments of European history and stressed the need to deliver growth to ensure people have jobs and hope in the future.

She called for more information sharing between European intelligence agencies, saying: We feel that faced with Islamist terrorism and in light of the civil war in Syria, that we need to do more for our internal and external security.

FOX POWER GRAB International Trade Secretary Liam Fox Liam Fox has boasted he is taking over a wing of the Foreign Office from Cabinet rival Boris Johnson. The International Trade Secretary has been involved in a turf war with Mr Johnson over their role in Brexit negotiations, and was accused of a land grab earlier this month after trying to seize part of his Foreign Office portfolio. Now he has boasted of the importance of his own post and claimed he has already taken part of the Foreign Secretarys empire. Speaking to American radio host Hugh Hewitt, Dr Fox was asked about his new responsibilities and the task of creating a new department from scratch. He replied: We are taking over a wing of what is at the moment the Foreign Office. Well be based between Downing Street and the Foreign Office, and thats going to send an important signal about how important Britain thinks trade is in our relationship with the wider world. He also suggested he was taking portfolios from other senior ministers such as business and defence. Advertisement

Mr Hollande said he wanted greater co-operation on defence with plans for an EU army more likely to go ahead without British opposition.

Europe must ensure its own defence, and France is certainly playing its role, he said.

The three leaders spoke ahead of a working dinner aboard the Italian navys Guiseppe Garibaldi aircraft carrier, which was anchored off the island.

The vessel is another symbolic location because it is co-ordinating the EUs migrant rescue operation in the Mediterranean.

Mr Renzi called the meeting in an effort to forge a common position on the way forward ahead of a summit of the 27 remaining EU states in Bratislava next month.

The Brexit vote has raised fears of similar referendums in other countries, particularly the Netherlands, which opposes changes to the EU to achieve closer integr ation.

Coming up with a road map acceptable to all will not be easy, with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia vowing to draw up their own plans for a less centralised EU.

Mrs Merkel is holding a string of meetings with other EU leaders to discuss the post-Brexit EU, with visits to Estonia, the Czech Republic and Poland in the coming days and meetings with the leaders of Slovakia and Hungary in Warsaw.

The German Chancellor has also invited leaders from the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Austria and other eastern European nations for informal meetings at a government guest house in Germany.

The three leaders did not elaborate publicly on how they planned to proceed with Brexit negotiations, but a French minister yesterday said they wanted the UK to get on with the process of leaving.

Axelle Lemaire, a French finance minister said: We want to know what Britain wants.

It was good to have that clarification from Theresa May that Brexit means Brexit, but now were just wondering, what does Brexit mean actually?

'Its not about [other European countries] having a hard line or soft line [with Britain], its clear to everyone its not in anyones interest to slow down the process.

For example, theres the European budget that needs to be discussed next year and its a seven-year budget, if we dont know whether Britain is going to be a key player in that budget how are we meant to make decisions.
At least 14 people were hospitalized in downtown Los Angeles Friday in what is believed to be the second mass synthetic marijuana overdose in a week.

The victims were all located on the 400 block of East 5th Street, in LA's Skid Row area, and found by emergency crews who arrived at the location around 10:30am, ABC 7 reported.

The scenes recalled an even more disturbing sight on Friday, when 18 people from the area were hospitalized due to a bad batch of Spice, a brand of synthetic marijuana.

Skid Row: LA's Skid Row area (pictured Friday) suffered two mass overdoses in four days, with 14 people hospitalized Monday morning. It's believed they smoked synthetic marijuana

Overdoses: On Friday Skid Row suffered another 18 overdoses due to Spice. And a third mass overdose in Skid Row occurred in April, affecting 14 people

Plague: The drug - known on the street as 'Spice' - is smoked by homeless people in the area because it can cost less than $1 a joint. It's made up of a chemical sprayed on dried plants

All of those checked at the scene Monday exhibited the same symptoms: combative behavior, altered mental states and sometimes seizures.

Other symptoms of synthetic marijuana use can include accelerated heart rates, excessive sweating, poor coordination, slurred speech and vomiting.

'We don't have toxicological confirmation, but it's presumably Spice, which is a synthetic type of cannabis or marijuana,' Dr Marc Eckstein, the Los Angeles Fire Department medical director and EMS bureau commander, told ABC.

'And of course, because it's synthetic, nobody for sure knows what active ingredients are in there, the strength is variable.'

He also noted that use of Spice was endemic among homeless groups in Skid Row.

A Spice joint can cost less than a dollar, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

Hospitalized: The mass overdoses have seen people hospitalized, and have been attributed to bad batches

WHAT IS SPICE? Spice is a street name for synthetic marijuana - also known as K-2 and Black Mamba, among other names. It's made by producing artificial cannabinoids - which act much like THC, the psychoactive chemical in traditional marijuana. They can be sold in liquid form, for vaporizers. But often they are sprayed on dry plant matter. Those dried plants - which are not cannabis - can then be rolled and smoked in joints. Spice can cost less than $1 a joint, making it the drug of choice for many homeless people in LA. But it can also cause seizures and vomiting. Advertisement

The mass overdose follows similar scenes on Friday, when 38 people on Skid Row were hospitalized due to Spice use.

That was attributed to a bad batch by Pam Walls, who works at the Downtown Womens Center in Skid Row.

She told the Daily News that Friday's batch was '100 times more potent' than normal.

And in April Skid Row was subject to another mass overdose when 14 people fell foul of a new ingredient that had been added to Spice.

An LAPD officer was also sent to hospital during that incident after suffering second-hand Spice inhalation.

Los Angeles isn't the only city to have suffered from mass overdoses.

In July, 33 people were hospitalized on the same morning after a bad batch of K-2 synthetic marijuana left victims sprawled in the street.

Side-effects: Synthetic marijuana is created in labs as a liquid and then sprayed on plant matter that can be smoked like ordinary marijuana. But it can cause vomiting and seizures

Some were passed out in the area near Broadway and Myrtle Ave in Brooklyn; others were vomiting, urinating and twitching.

'People just kept showing up and then quickly dropping to the ground, flopping over hoods of cars, or crumpling onto the sidewalk,' said Lindsay Foehrenbach, who lives in the area.

'They all seemed oblivious to their surroundings and just couldn't stay on their feet.'
Locking up extremist prisoners in special jihadi wings will be akin to opening up a British Guantanamo Bay, ministers have been warned.

Isolating hate preachers and Islamist terror offenders in jails would also give them credibility and place prison officers at greater risk of being maimed or murdered.

Steve Gillan, general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, issued the warning after Justice Secretary Liz Truss yesterday unveiled plans for specialist units in some maximum security prisons.

It is understood that hate preacher Anjem Choudary will be held in the first special isolation wing for Muslim extremists at top-security HMP Frankland in Durham

The aim is to prevent extremists from converting other prisoners to their warped views.

A report by former prison governor Ian Acheson said terrorists and extremists have been able to spread their poison behind bars for too long without intervention. He said political correctness meant staff were too frightened to step in for fear of being branded racist.

But the shift towards terrorist-only units could raise fears of extremists being able to run entire blocks or wings  a problem at the notorious Maze prison in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Mr Gillan said: We are totally opposed to this. We know the H blocks in Northern Ireland didnt work and this will be the same.

There is a real danger that you further politicise people and give them credibility they do not deserve. Before you know it you have got a British Guantanamo Bay.

People will see these special units as giving them status and credibility  they will be doing things to get into them. We are a big enough country to have a proper dispersal system.

He also called for Friday prayers for Muslims to be carried out in their cells instead of communally. He said: Friday prayers are putting immense pressure on the already pressed prison service.

In France and Germany they do Friday prayers from their cells. This report says we should do the same and there is no reason for the Government not to accept this recommendation.

It is understood that hate preacher Anjem Choudary will be held in the first special isolation wing for Muslim extremists at top-security HMP Frankland in Durham.

Choudary, 49, was convicted of terror offences last week. He will be one of up to ten Islamists held in a pilot scheme to stop them radicalising other inmates, the Mail has been told. The firebrand cleric, who was found guilty of supporting Islamic State, will be sentenced next month.

HMP Frankland has been chosen because it has experience of dealing with the most dangerous terrorists.

Kamel Bourgass, who murdered Detective Constable Stephen Oake in 2003, was kept in segregation at the prison amid concerns he was bullying other Muslim inmates and was a bad influence on other prisoners.

The scale of the problem is underlined by the increasing number of Muslim prisoners in the system. The figure has soared from 3,681 in 1997 to a record high of 12,662 last September.

Last year there were also 1,229 Muslim inmates in the eight maximum security prisons in England and Wales  almost a quarter of their 5,314 capacity.

David Wilson a former prison governor who is now professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, said: The prison service will have to limit opportunities for radicalisation to take place but it can be done.
Papers warned Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt that the NHS has too few staff to follow through with a seven-day pledge

Jeremy Hunt was warned that the health service had too few staff and not enough money to deliver plans for a seven-day NHS, leaked documents reveal.

Confidential papers drawn up for Mr Hunt and other ministers by mandarins in the Department of Health uncovered 13 major 'risks' to the Tory pledge to enable all patients to see their GP seven days a week by 2020.

They also said that patients may not notice any difference even if it happens.

Last night doctors said it was 'alarming' that the Government had ignored its own warnings.

But senior Whitehall sources insisted the plan was still on track and said that the problems, which outline the worst case scenario, would fail to materialise.

Previously the Health Secretary has specifically rejected a concern that the policy might 'spread resources too thinly'.

But in July documents, obtained by the Guardian and Channel 4 News, civil servants listed a string of dangers in implementing the plan, summarised in a secret 'risk register'.

Officials said the biggest danger was 'workforce overload'  referring to a lack of available GPs, hospital consultants and other health professionals. This meant 'the full service cannot be delivered'.

The risk register and other documents also showed the department saw the NHS's 1.5million staff, especially doctors, as a 'barrier ... because they do not believe in the case for change'.

It feared the seven-day plan might fail to deliver its aims, including improving hospital weekend care and reducing death rates.

Officials said the biggest danger to the seven-day pledge was 'workforce overload'  referring to a lack of available GPs, hospital consultants and other health professionals

One document states: 'It is possible that the programme delivers the planned outputs, but this does not result in the desired change (delivering against the plan but missing the point).'

Officials raised concerns of a risk that, even if weekend and out-of-hours services were successfully improved, 'patients do not report any difference/improvement in their experience'.

They were also worried that the Brexit vote could adversely impact delivery, as the NHS employs 55,000 EU staff.

Several of the risks identified also reveal damaging internal disagreements among those taking the seven-day drive forward  including over what the plan's purpose is.

Mr Hunt has sparked furore among hospital consultants and junior doctors by ordering them to work more at weekends in order to achieve the seven-day goal.

In April, he told MPs of 'the Government's determination to be the first country in the world to offer a proper patient-focused seven-day health service'  and rejected 'the concern that a seven-day NHS might spread resources too thinly'.

The papers also expressed concerns that doctors would act as 'barriers' who did not see the need for change in the NHS

Last night Dr Mark Porter, leader of the British Medical Association, said the papers proved the Government had ignored warnings about a lack of extra staff and funding.

He said the fact the Government 'disregarded its own risk assessment's warnings about the lack of staffing and funding needed to deliver further seven-day services, is both alarming and incredibly disappointing'.

A Department of Health spokesman said: 'Over the past six years eight independent studies have set out the evidence for a 'weekend effect'  unacceptable variation in care across the week.
A firefighter had a massive shock when trying to pull what he thought was a body out of a river in China.

The man was startled to find that the man in the river was actually sleeping, reports the People's Daily Online.

Firefighters were called to the scene after being informed of a man seen floating on the river.

Casual day at work: The firefighter wades in to retrieve the body in the middle of the lake

Unsuspecting fireman: He goes to grab the 'body' and retrieve it from the river

What a surprise! The firefighter jumps back from the man in complete shock

Firefighters attended the scene thinking they would be pulling a dead body from out of the water.

However one firefighter was shocked to find that the man was just sleeping in the middle of the river.

In the footage, the firefighter can be seen wading over to the man before moving around him to assess the situation.

He then goes to pick up the man when he suddenly moves causing the firefighter to jump away.

It's been reported that the man was cooling himself off in the river after hot weather had hit the area.

He fell asleep and was later spotted by villagers who thought he was dead.

Now that's a surprise: Suddenly the man in the river begins to move startling the fireman
Samsung is planing to give your old smartphone a new lease of life.

The South Korean tech giant plans to launch a programme to sell refurbished used versions of its premium smartphones as early as next year, according to reports from Reuters.

Reports indicate Samsung is looking for ways to sustain earnings after reviving its mobile profits with a shake up to its product line-up.

Scroll down for video

Samsung plans to launch a programme to sell refurbished used models of its premium smartphones as early as next year. Pictured is the Galaxy Note 7, which launched earlier this month in the US

SAMSUNG'S REFURB PROGRAMME Samsung could launch its refurbishment programme as early as next year. It would see the South Korean firm selling used top end models of its smartphones which have been refurbished. According to reports, the move would extend Samsung's reach into markets where new handsets are priced well beyond the means of most people. However, it remains unclear as to what level of discount refurbished phones would achieve, but resale values of Galaxy phones were at more than 50 per cent. Samsung has refused to comment on speculation. Advertisement

As growth in the global smartphone market hits a plateau, Samsung wants to maximise its cost efficiency and keep operating margins above 10 per cent.

Citing a source with 'direct knowledge of the matter', Reuters said the world's top smartphone maker will refurbish high-end phones returned to the company by users who signed up for one-year upgrade programmes in markets such as South Korea and the United States.

Samsung would then re-sell these phones at a lower price, the person said, declining to be identified as the plan was not yet public.

The person declined to say how big a discount the refurbished phones would be sold at, which markets the phones would be sold in or how many refurbished devices Samsung could sell.

MailOnline contacted Samsung for comment. But a spokeswoman for the firm told Reuters the company does not comment on speculation.

It was not clear to what extent the phones would be altered, but refurbished phones typically are fitted with parts such as a new casing or battery.

Rival Apple's iPhone has a re-sale value of around 69 per cent of its original price after about one year from launch, while Samsung's flagship Galaxy sells for 51 per cent of the original price in the US market, according to BNP Paribas.

Refurbished phones could help vendors such as Samsung boost their presence in emerging markets such as India, where high-end devices costing $800 (600) or so are beyond most buyers.

Apple sells refurbished iPhones in a number of markets including the United States, but does not disclose sales figures. It is trying to sell such iPhones in India, where the average smartphone sells for less than $90 (70).

The refurbishment programme could extend the South Korean tech firm's into emerging markets, where a brand new Samsung may be too expensive for most consumers

Selling used phones could help Samsung fend off lower-cost Chinese rivals that have been eating into its market share, and free up some capital to invest elsewhere or boost marketing expenditure.

Deloitte says the used smartphone market will be worth more than $17 billion (13bn) this year, with 120 million devices sold or traded in to manufacturers or carriers - around 8 per cent of total smartphone sales. Some market experts expect the used market to grow fast as there are fewer technology breakthroughs.

'Some consumers may prefer to buy refurbished, used premium models in lieu of new budget brands, possibly cannibalizing sales of new devices from those budget manufacturers,' Deloitte said in a report.

Samsung's refurbishment programme, details of which the person said could be finalised as early as 2017, could help the firm generate revenue from dated high-end smartphones returned by users upgrading to newer versions.

It was not clear to what extent the phones would be altered, but refurbished phones typically are fitted with parts such as a new casing or battery. Pictured are the S6 Edge and Edge Plus models, launched in 2015

The company's latest premium phones, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note 7, have received favourable reviews, suggesting cheaper, refurbished versions could be popular.

At US carrier Verizon Communications, the Galaxy S7 edge with 32-gigabyte storage retails for $792 without subsidies, while the Note 7 costs $864 (670).

The programme could help Samsung defend market share in emerging countries by bolstering mid-tier sales.

Refurbished phones could also appeal to enterprise clients who want certain security or software products pre-installed on phones to give to their employees, the source said.
It is a centuries-old manuscript written in an coded language that no one - not even the best cryptographers - has cracked.

Scholars have spent their lives puzzling over the Voynich manuscript, whose intriguing mix of elegant writing and drawings of strange plants and naked women has some believing it holds magical powers.

Now after a ten-year quest for access, Siloe, a small publishing house nestled deep in northern Spain, has secured the right to clone the document.

It's one of the world's most mysterious books; a centuries-old manuscript written in an unknown or coded language that no one has cracked. Now after a ten-year quest for access, Siloe, a small publishing house has secured the right to clone the Voynich manuscript

THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT The 15th century cryptic work has baffled scholars, cryptographers and codebreakers. So far, no one has been able to read a single letter of the script or any word of the text. Over time it has attained an infamous reputation. It has even featured in the latest hit computer game Assassins Creed, as well as in the Indiana Jones novels, when Indiana decoded the Voynich and used it to find the Philosopher's Stone. However in reality no one has come close to revealing the Voynichs true messages. Many grand theories have been proposed. Some suggest it was the work of Leonardo da Vinci as a boy, or secret Cathars, or the lost tribe of Israel, or most recently Aztecs. Some have even proclaimed it was done by aliens. Advertisement

The weathered book is locked away in a vault at Yale University's Beinecke Library, emerging only occasionally.

'Touching the Voynich is an experience,' said Juan Jose Garcia, director of Siloe, which is based in Burgos, in the north of Spain.

'It's a book that has such an aura of mystery that when you see it for the first time... it fills you with an emotion that is very hard to describe.'

Siloe, which specialises in making facsimiles of old manuscripts, has bought the rights to make 898 exact replicas of the Voynich.

The copies will be so faithful that every stain, hole, sewn-up tear in the parchment will be reproduced.

The company always publishes 898 replicas of each work it clones - a number which is a palindrome, or a figure that reads the same backwards or forwards.

The publishing house plans to sell the clones, also known as facsimiles, for 7,000 to 8,000 euros (6,030 to 6,891 or $7,800 to $8,900) apiece once completed - and close to 300 people have already put in pre-orders.

Raymond Clemens, curator at the Beinecke Library, said Yale decided to have facsimiles done because of the many people who want to consult the fragile manuscript.

It will take Siloe around 18 months to make the first clones, in a painstaking process that started in April when a photographer took detailed snaps of the original in Yale. The copies will be so faithful that every stain, hole, sewn-up tear in the parchment will be reproduced

The publishing house plans to sell the clones for 7,000 to 8,000 euros ($7,800 to $8,900) apiece once completed - and close to 300 people have already put in pre-orders. Yale decided to have it done because of the many people who want to consult the manuscript

Workers at Siloe are currently making mock-ups before they finally set about printing out the pages in a way that makes the script and drawings look like the real deal. All the imperfections are re-created using special tools in a process kept firmly secret

HOW IT BE WILL CLONED Only slightly bigger than a paperback, the book contains over 200 pages including several large fold-outs. It will take Siloe around 18 months to make the first clones, in a painstaking process that started in April when a photographer took detailed snaps of the original in Yale. Workers at Siloe are currently making mock-ups before they finally set about printing out the pages in a way that makes the script and drawings look like the real deal. The paper they use - made from a paste developed by the company - has been given a special treatment so it feels like the stiff parchment used to write the Voynich. Once printed, the pages are put together and made to look older. All the imperfections are re-created using special tools in a process kept firmly secret by Garcia, who in his spare time has also tried his hand at cryptology. Advertisement

'We thought that the facsimile would provide the look and feel of the original for those who were interested,' he said.

'It also enables libraries and museums to have a copy for instructional purposes and we will use the facsimile ourselves to show the manuscript outside of the library to students or others who might be interested.'

The manuscript is named after antiquarian Wilfrid Voynich who bought it around 1912 from a collection of books belonging to the Jesuits in Italy, and eventually propelled it into the public eye.

Theories abound about who wrote it and what it means.

For a long time, it was believed to be the work of 13th century English Franciscan friar Roger Bacon whose interest in alchemy and magic landed him in jail.

But that theory was discarded when the manuscript was carbon dated and found to have originated between 1404 and 1438.

Others point to a young Leonardo da Vinci, someone who wrote in code to escape the Inquisition, an elaborate joke or even an alien who left the book behind when leaving Earth.

Raymond Clemens, curator at the Beinecke Library, said Yale decided to have facsimiles done because of the many people who want to consult the fragile manuscript. The facsimile will provide the look and feel of the original for those who were interested

It will also enable libraries and museums to have a copy for instructional purposes and the publishers will use it to show the manuscript outside of the library to students or others who might be interested

The paper they use - made from a paste developed by the company - has been given a special treatment so it feels like the stiff parchment used to write the Voynich. Once printed, the pages will be put together and made to look older

THE MYSTERY SURROUNDING THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT The Voynich manuscript was discovered in an Italian monastery in 1912 by book dealer Wilfred Voynich. Carbon dating suggests the manuscript was created in the early 15th century, between approximately 1404 and 1438, during the Italian Renaissance. The 240 pages of the book are made from a type of parchment produced using calf skin, known as vellum. Each page is decorated with illustrations, diagrams and a mysterious text written from left to right. Due to its mysterious nature, the text has been studied by cryptographers around the world, yet no-one has succeeded in deciphering the reams of written passages. This has led to many people claim the book is hoax, or that the writing is nonsense. Due to the manuscripts discovery in Italy, many researchers believe the book to have originated in Europe, however, the latest research from Dr. Tucker suggests it may have been written by the Aztecs in what is now modern-day Mexico. Advertisement

Its content is even more mysterious.

The plants drawn have never been identified, the astronomical charts don't reveal much and neither do the women.

Does the book hold the key to eternal youth? Or is it a mere collection of herbal medicine and recipes?

Scores have tried to decode the Voynich, including top cryptologists such as William Friedman who helped break Japan's 'Purple' cipher during World War II.

But the only person to have made any headway is Indiana Jones, who manages to crack it in a novel featuring the fictitious archaeologist.

For a long time, it was believed to be the work of 13th century English Franciscan friar Roger Bacon whose interest in alchemy and magic landed him in jail. But that was discarded when the manuscript was carbon dated and found to have originated between 1404 and 1438

Scholars have spent their lives puzzling over the Voynich manuscript, whose intriguing mix of elegant writing and drawings of strange plants and naked women has some believing it holds magical powers

The weathered book is locked away in a vault at Yale University's Beinecke Library, emerging only occasionally. Siloe, which specialises in making facsimiles of old manuscripts, has bought the rights to make 898 exact replicas of the Voynich

Fiction aside, the Beinecke Library gets thousands of emails every month from people claiming to have decoded it, says Rene Zandbergen, a space engineer who runs a recognised blog on the manuscript, which he has consulted several times.

'More than 90 per cent of all the access to their digital library is only for the Voynich Manuscript,' he added.

Only slightly bigger than a paperback, the book contains over 200 pages including several large fold-outs.

The 240 pages of the book are made from a type of parchment produced using calf skin, known as vellum, and are decorated with illustrations, diagrams and a mysterious text written from left to right

It will take Siloe around 18 months to make the first clones when a photographer took detailed snaps of the original in Yale.

Workers at Siloe are currently making mock-ups before they finally set about printing out the pages in a way that makes the script and drawings look like the real deal.

The paper they use - made from a paste developed by the company - has been given a special treatment so it feels like the stiff parchment used to write the Voynich.

Once printed, the pages are put together and made to look older.

All the imperfections are re-created using special tools in a process kept firmly secret by Garcia, who in his spare time has also tried his hand at cryptology.

'We call it the Voynich Challenge,' he said.

'My business partner... says the author of the Voynich could also have been a sadist, as he has us all wrapped up in this mystery.'
What would a day be like on Mars? Could there be life on Titan? If you went into space, what would happen to your hair follicles?

Although these might not be questions you have ever asked yourself, you can now find out the answer.

The questions are just some addressed by thousands of Nasa-funded research papers the space agency has now made available online for free.

Nasa has set up a new public web portal called Pubspace , where the public can find research articles funded by the agency, and download them for free. This move is part of the agency's commitment to providing broad public access to science data

SOME OF THE TOPICS COVERED IN THE RESEARCH How to survive a day on Mars. How planets form. Whether going into space is bad for your heart. How Mars was plagued with mega tsunamis. What happens to hair follicles when people go into space. Whether carbon-based life could be living in Titan's liquids. Advertisement

The space agency has set up a new public web portal called Pubspace, where the public can find Nasa-funded research articles.

In 2013 the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy requested science-funding agencies to develop plans to increase access to the results of federally-funded research.

Now any article in peer-reviewed journals and papers that has been funded by Nasa will be available through the portal, instead of being kept behind a paywall.

The data will be available to download, read and analyse within one year of publication.

This move is part of the agency's commitment to providing broad public access to science data, it says.

As Nasa continues to look towards sending manned missions to Mars, it is increasingly researching what the environment would be like for humans. One of the research papers available through the new portal looks at how to survive a day on Mars

WHAT IS PUBSPACE? The space agency has set up a new public web portal called Pubspace, where the public can find Nasa-funded research articles. In 2013 the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy requested science-funding agencies to develop plans to increase access to the results of federally-funded research. Now any article in peer-reviewed journals and papers that has been funded by Nasa will be available through the portal, instead of being kept behind a paywall. The data will be available to download, read and analyse within one year of publication. Advertisement

'At Nasa, we are celebrating this opportunity to extend access to our extensive portfolio of scientific and technical publications,' said Nasa Deputy Administrator Dava Newman.

'Through open access and innovation we invite the global community to join us in exploring Earth, air and space.'

'Making our research data easier to access will greatly magnify the impact of our research,' said Nasa Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan.

'As scientists and engineers, we work by building upon a foundation laid by others.'

While the agency always has made access to its research a high priority, the focus now is to make Nasa science data more easily accessible via 'one-stop shopping.'

The move towards open access journals is not just happening in the US.

In May, EU member states agreed on an initiative to try to make all European scientific papers freely available by 2020.
The lively and sometimes entertaining Presidential race has left Americans and even the entire world questioning both candidates mental state.

Between Donald Trumps unorthodox behavior and Hillary Clintons blatant disregard for State Department laws, experts wonder if these White House competitors exhibit similar traits of other historical leaders.

A new study into psychopathic traits reveals that Trump ranks above Adolf Hitler and below Saddam Hussein, whereas Clinton is lodged between Napoleon and Emperor Nero - but some of these traits can make them a more successful leader.

Scroll down for video

A new study into psychopathic traits reveals that Trump ranks above Adolf Hitler and below Saddam Hussein, whereas Clinton is lodged between Napoleon and Nero - but some of these traits can make them a more successful leader

WHERE DO TRUMP AND HILLARY RANK? Although Trump and Clinton both scored high on the test, Trump is deemed to be the higher scorer. The Republican nominee was found to be on par with Hitler, the German leader of the Nazi Party who was blamed for the genocide of millions of Jews, and Idi Amin, president of Uganda who racially persecuted and executed his people without hesitation. Trump, however, was found to outscore Clinton altogether, but the most was in Fearless Dominance, which is associated with successful presidencies. However, The Donald also ranked high in self-centered impulsivity, the set of traits considered negative. Clinton falls into the category Self-Centered Impulsivity and scored the highest for Machiavellian Egocentricity, which means she has a lack of empathy and sense of detachment from others for the sake of achieving her own goals. The Democratic nominee sits between Napoleon Bonaparte, who is known for his ruthlessness and policies which were directly responsible for millions of deaths, and Emperor Nero, who murdered his mother and wife and confiscated senators' property and severely taxed the people to build his own golden home. Advertisement

Oxford Universitys Dr, Kevin Dutton has been exploring the psychopathic traits of the candidates and other historical figures using a standard psychometric tool, the Psychopathic Personality Inventory  Revised (PPI-R), reports Scientific American Mind.

While learning about these traits, Dutton also looked at which ones can be beneficial and which will lead to destruction.

He explains that being a psychopath is not an all-or-nothing affair, but is on a spectrum along which each of us has our place.

There also seems to be a range of positions that attract individuals on the high end of the psychopathic scale such as business, surgery, the law military and of course, politics.

Previous to this recent study, Dutton contacted the official biographers of many historical leads and asked them to fill out an abbreviated version of the PPI-R in order to create a table showing which traits these figures had.

The table shows each subjects scores for psychopathys eight component traits.

The first three being, social influence(SI), fearlessness (F) and stress immunity(STI), which are collectively known as Fearless Dominance traits  these leaders tend to be more successful.

However, the next four traits that are known as Self-Centered Impulsivity can be destructive.

This group includes Machiavellian Egocentricity (ME), Rebellious Nonconformity (RN), Blame Externalization (BE) and Carefree Nonplanfulness (CN).

And the final trait is Coldheartedness (C), which is helpful for making tough decisions such as sending troops off to war.

The league table implies that a majority of these well-known individuals are high scorers, such as Winston Churchill.

Previous to this recent study, Dutton contacted the official biographers of many historical leads and asked them to fill out an abbreviated version of the PPI-R in order to create a table showing which traits these figures had. The table (pictured) shows each subjects scores for psychopathys eight component traits

Clinton falls into the category Self-Centered Impulsivity and scored the highest for Machiavellian Egocentricity, which means she has a lack of empathy and sense of detachment from others for the sake of achieving her own goals

These scores were especially high on the positive aspects like social influence, fearlessness and coolness under pressure.

Although the test analyzed these leaders for positive traits that help them shine in their position, there are also negative ones, like self-centeredness, impulsivity and a lack of empathy, which can lead to their demise.

The PPI-R does not say that someone is or is not a psychopath. It scores them on eight traits that contribute to a psychopathic character, said Dutton.

Some of those traits, such as fearlessness or stress immunity, can be positive.

Others, such as blame externalization or being unconcerned about the future, are more likely to be negative.

One, cold-heartedness, can contribute to good and bad leadership.

Both great and terrible leaders score higher than the general population for psychopathic traits, but it is the mix of those traits that determines success.

Dutton also gives an examples that someone who scores high for being influential, fearless and cold-hearted could be a decisive leader who can make dispassionate decisions.

MOST PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES SPEAK AT 6-8 GRADE LEVEL The Boston Globe used the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, which analyses the average length of a sentence and average number of syllables per word, to produce a separate analysis. This test proved Trump is speaking at a fourth grade level, which is two grades below the rest of the candidates. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University used a readability model called REAP to examine how often words and grammatical constructs are used at each grade level and if they correspond better to the analysis of spoken language. The team chose campaign speeches from Lincoln, Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama, which were all found to be no less than an eighth grade level. But none of the presidents or current nominees can hold a candle to Lincoln's Gettysburg address, says researchers. Analysis found the speech was written and presented with grammar well above the 10th grade level. The current nominees scored between sixth and seventh grades, with Trump hanging in the sixth grade level. And George W. Bush scored at a fifth grade level. Advertisement

Trump was found to be on par with Hitler (pictured), the German leader of the Nazi Party who was blamed for the genocide of millions of Jews, and Idi Amin, president of Uganda who racially persecuted and executed his people without hesitation

And if these traits are followed by a high score on blaming others, they might be a genocidal demagogue, he added.

Although Trump and Clinton both scored high on the test, Trump is deemed to be the higher scorer.

The Republican nominee was found to be on par with Hitler, the German leader of the Nazi Party who was blamed for the genocide of millions of Jews, and Idi Amin, president of Uganda who racially persecuted and executed his people without hesitation.

Trump outscored Clinton altogether, but the most was in Fearless Dominance, which is associated with successful presidencies.

However, The Donald also ranked high in self-centered impulsivity, the set of traits considered negative.

Clinton falls into the category Self-Centered Impulsivity and scored the highest for Machiavellian Egocentricity, which means she has a lack of empathy and sense of detachment from others for the sake of achieving her own goals.

Clinton sits between Napoleon Bonaparte (pictured), who is known for his ruthlessness and policies which were directly responsible for millions of deaths, and Emperor Nero, who murdered his mother and wife and confiscated senators' property and severely taxed the people to build his own golden home

The Democratic nominee sits between Napoleon Bonaparte, who is known for his ruthlessness and policies which were directly responsible for millions of deaths, and Emperor Nero, who murdered his mother and wife and confiscated senators' property and severely taxed the people to build his own golden home.

It is interesting that these scores reflect both the praise and the criticism that Trump and Clinton receive, Dutton said.
A fleet of tiny satellites could one day be used to detonate plasma bombs in Earths upper atmosphere to improve the range of radio communications.

The US Air Force has granted contracts to three research teams to develop the technology needed to do this, with hopes that CubeSats could carry massive amounts of ionized gas to the ionosphere to create radio-reflecting plasma.

The ionosphere begins roughly 40 miles above the surface and becomes denser with charged particles at night, allowing signals to travel much farther.

Scroll down for video

The US Air Force has granted contracts to three research teams, with hopes that CubeSats could carry massive amounts of ionized gas to the ionosphere to create radio-reflecting plasma. An artist's impression of a CubeSat is pictured above

A PLAN TO IMPROVE RADIO Three research teams are working develop technology to allow CubeSats to carry massive amounts of ionized gas to the ionosphere. This would allow them to to create radio-reflecting plasma, improving the range of radio communications. But, the work does not come without challenges. For the plans to work, researchers must develop a plasma generator small enough to fit on a CubeSat, and they must find a way to control how the plasma disperse once its been released. Advertisement

Ground-based radio signals are limited by the curvature of Earths surface, and those travelling more than about 44 miles are typically stopped if they arent given a boost, according to New Scientist.

These communications can be improved by bouncing the radio signals between the ionosphere and the ground, allowing them to zigzag over greater distances.

In one of the USAF-backed projects, researchers with General Science and Drexel University in Pennsylvania are working to develop a way to vaporize metal by heating it beyond its boiling point.

This would allow it to react with atmospheric oxygen to produce radio-reflecting plasma.

Another project from a team at Enig Associates and the University of Maryland plans to heat metal by detonating a small bomb, and converting the blast into electrical energy.

And, the shapes of the plasma clouds could be fine-tuned by altering the form of the initial explosion, New Scientist explains.

In the past, researchers with the High Frequency Active Research Program in Alaska have attempted to create plasma using radiation from ground-based antennas to stimulate the ionosphere.

The new plan from the USAF aims to find a more efficient way.

The ionosphere begins roughly 40 miles above the surface and becomes denser with charged particles at night, allowing signals to travel much farther. The Northern Lights, pictured above, occur in this region of the atmosphere

Once the proposals have been reviewed, the best one will move on to the second phase of the project, where the plasma generators will be tested in vacuum chambers and exploratory space flights.

But, the work does not come without challenges.

For the plans to work, researchers must develop a plasma generator small enough to fit on a CubeSat, and they must find a way to control how the plasma disperse once its been released.

With these challenges considered, researchers say it's still too early to know if the plan is feasible.

These are really early-stage projects, representing the boundaries of plasma research into ionosphere modification, John Kline, who leads the Plasma Engineering group at Research Support Instruments in Hopewell, New Jersey, told New Scientist.
Apple has bought a health startup that aims to put the medical records of every American online in an easy to share format.

Called Gliimpse, the firm has created software to take medical records and put them into an easy to understand format.

Apple has had a growing interest in health, from the monitoring capabilities of the Apple Watch to its software to allow clinical trials to be easily carried out using apps.

Scroll down for video

The move comes amid growing interest in health from Apple. Called Gliimpse, the firm has created software to take medical records and put them into an easy to understand format.

APPLE'S HEALTH PROJECTS In 2014, Apple announced HealthKit, which aggregates data from both fitness apps like Nike+ and the iPhone's own sesnors, and health care providers like the Mayo Clinic. A year later, it revealed up with ResearchKit, which lets researchers run clinical studies and even recruit participants via iOS apps. A third program, CareKit, helps developers create apps to manage conditions like diabetes and depression. Advertisement

Apple did not comment in its plans, simply saying 'Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.'

According to the firm's site, 'A Gliimpse is your health story.

'We help you collect your medical data from web portals, then help organize it into an easily shared and understood health story.

'Your personal story adds color to your health data, like hey doc, that migraine med makes me feel dizzy.

'You control your Gliimpse by using your portal username and password, and we download and organize your personal health data from over 1500+ US health systems, pharmacies and labs on your behalf. '

The move comes amid growing interest in health from Apple.

In 2014, Apple announced HealthKit, which aggregates data from both fitness apps like Nike+ and the iPhone's own sensors, and health care providers like the Mayo Clinic.

A year later, it revealed up with ResearchKit, which lets researchers run clinical studies and even recruit participants via iOS apps.

A third program, CareKit, helps developers create apps to manage conditions like diabetes and depression.

HOW GLIIMPSE WORKS Called Gliimpse, the firm has created software to take medical records and put them into an easy to understand format. 'Our vision is personalized and shareable medical records for all 317,000,000 Americans,' the Gliimpse website proclaims. The system is able to take medical records and put them into an easy to understand format. Called Gliimpse, the firm has created software to take medical records and put them into an easy to understand format. 'We've built a magical machine,' the site claims. 'It takes incomprehensible electronic medical records and turns them into understandable, standardized, coded elements (LOINC, RxNorm, CPT, ICD and SNOMED), and terminology that both humans and machines can easily understand and use. The Rosetta Stone meets machine learning.' Advertisement

'Our vision is personalized and shareable medical records for all 317,000,000 Americans,' the Gliimpse website proclaims.

The system is able to take medical records and put them into an easy to understand format.

'We've built a magical machine,' the site claims.

'It takes incomprehensible electronic medical records and turns them into understandable, standardized, coded elements (LOINC, RxNorm, CPT, ICD and SNOMED), and terminology that both humans and machines can easily understand and use. The Rosetta Stone meets machine learning.'

Earlier this year Apple revealed it wants to encourage millions of iPhone owners to register as organ donors through a software update that will add an easy sign-up button to the health information app that comes installed on every smartphone the company makes.

CEO Tim Cook says he hopes the new software, set for limited release this month, will help ease a critical and longstanding donor shortage.

He said the problem hit home when his friend and former boss, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, endured an 'excruciating' wait for a liver transplant in 2009.

Apple's Tim Cook, left, and Steve Jobs, right, during a meeting at Apple in Cupertino, Calif. Apple wants to encourage millions of iPhone owners to register as organ donors through a software update.

'Watching and seeing him every day, waiting and not knowing  it stuck with me and left an impression that I'll never forget,' Cook told The Associated Press.

Cook was so concerned that he offered to donate part of his own liver, although Jobs refused.

Jobs died of complications from pancreatic cancer in 2011, two years after receiving a liver transplant in Tennessee that was credited with extending his life.

He enrolled in that state's registry after doctors advised him the lengthy waiting list in California meant he wouldn't live long enough to get one in his home state.
With its cartoonish yellow body and black-tipped 'ears,' its no wonder that one adorable sea slug has gained a legion of new fans among Pokemon Go players in Japan.

The brightly-coloured slug bears a striking resemblance to Pikachu, and many claim it is the real-life inspiration for the beloved character.

Though its formally called thecacera pacifica, this marine creature has now become more commonly known by its nickname  the Pikachu sea slug.

Scroll down for video

The brightly-coloured slug bears a striking resemblance to Pikachu, and many claim it is the real-life inspiration for the beloved character. Fans have taken to social media to express their excitement through emojis and side-by-side comparisons

THE 'REAL' PIKACHU Pikachu is the most well-known Pokemon, dating back to the early games and anime series in the 1990s. The character is a bright yellow electric rodent with black-tipped ears, red cheeks, and a lightning bolt shaped tail. Pikachu is now among the many creatures that can be caught in the new augmented reality game, Pokemon Go. Advertisement

Scientists have long known about the existence of thecacera pacifica, but the sea slugs popularity has been reignited after it was featured on a television segment by Japanese teacher-celebrity Osamu Hayashi, according to RocketNews24.

Fans have taken to social media to express their excitement through emojis and side-by-side comparisons of the real-life and fictional creatures.

Just like Pikachu, the slug has a bright yellow body thats accented with black markings, including at the tip of its ear-like rhinophores.

Along with this, it also has patches of blue at the end of its tail and along other areas of the body.

This sea slug typically inhabits the Indian and Pacific oceans, and can be found along coastal regions in Japan, including the Izu Peninsula, Bonin Islands, and Yakushima.

And, the Pikachu sea slug isn't the only creature in the ocean that looks as though it belongs in a cartoon.

With its cartoonish yellow body and black-tipped 'ears,' its no wonder why one adorable sea slug has gained a legion of new fans among Pokemon Go players in Japan. Just like Pikachu, the slug has a bright yellow body thats accented with black markings

VIRTUAL POKEMON INTERACT WITH REAL ENVIRONMENTS Engineers from MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) have shown off a new technology that lets objects such as Pokemon interact with their environments in specific, realistic ways, such bouncing off the leaves of a nearby bush. The simulation system could also reduce the need for CGI green-screens when making movies. The technology, called Interactive Dynamic Video (IDV), lets users reach in and touch objects in videos by using traditional cameras and algorithms to pay attention to the tiny, almost invisible vibrations of an object and create simulations that users can virtually interact with. To simulate objects, the engineers analysed video clips to find vibration modes at different frequencies that each represent the different ways an object can move. By identifying these shapes, the researchers could begin to predict how these objects would move in new situations. They used IDV on videos showing different of objects, including a bridge, a jungle gym and a ukulele, showing they can push and pull and image to make it wobble and bend and move it in different directions. In this way, Pikachu can land on a real bush and make it rustle. Advertisement

Just last week, researchers revealed a big-eyed purple squid spotted by the E/V Nautilus that left even scientists amazed by its appearance.

The team determined the cephalopod was a Stubby squid  also known as Rossia pacifica  which is closely related to cuttlefish, according to a description of the video posted by the team that captured the footage.

In footage of the discovery, the team can be heard dissolving into laughter while watching the animal.

The amazing video of the googly-eyed squid has gone viral after it was spotted off the coast of California by a research vessel. Stubby squid live in the Northern Pacific between Japan and Southern California, and are usually spotted at a depth of about 300 meters.

'They look like googly eyes  It looks so fake!' one woman exclaims in the video.

'It's like some little kid dropped their toy.'

It was spotted in Trask Knoll, a NW-SE elongated hill located south of Santa Rosa Island, in the outer California borderland.

This feature is about 20 km-long and ~400 m-high, and little is known about it, except that it appears to be bounded to the west by a fault, the Trask Knoll fault.
It will be the first total eclipse visible only in the USA since the country was founded in 1776.

Billed as 'the biggest and best solar eclipse in American history', it will not arrive for a year - but organisers say already thousands of places have been reserved to watch the 'Great American Eclipse'.

On Aug. 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will be visible from coast to coast.

Scroll down for video

Where to watch: On Aug. 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will be visible from coast to coast. It will be the first total eclipse visible only in the USA since the country was founded in 1776.

Organizers of the Oregon SolarFest are calling it 'a rare, mind-blowing cosmic experience,' while Nashville promises visitors 'a once-in-a-lifetime celestial event.'

Not since 1970 has there been an opportunity to see a total solar eclipse in such easily accessible and widespread areas, as it passes through 12 states.

The eclipse will start on the West Coast in Oregon and trace a 67-mile wide path east across the country, finally exiting the East Coast in South Carolina.

At any given location, the total eclipse will last for around 2 or 3 minutes.

It will pass directly over cities such as Salem, Ore., Idaho Falls, Lincoln, Neb., Kansas City, Nashville, and Columbia and Charleston, S.C. Places within a one- or two-hour drive of the eclipse include Portland, Ore., Boise, Cheyenne, Rapid City, Omaha, Neb., Topeka, St. Louis, Louisville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Atlanta and Charlotte.

HOW THE ECLIPSE WILL HAPPEN The shadow will make its first landfall along the coast of Oregon at Yaquina Head, a headland extending into the Pacific Ocean north of Newport. The total eclipse will be visible within a path of darkness stretching from Oregon through Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and finally South Carolina. The path will average 67 miles (108 km) in width, but it will widen to a maximum of 71 miles (114 km) while moving through western Kentucky, about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of the town of Hopkinsville (population 3,000). Not since 1970 has there been an opportunity to see a total solar eclipse in such easily accessible and widespread areas, as it passes through 12 states. The eclipse will start on the West Coast in Oregon and trace a 67-mile wide path east across the country, finally exiting the East Coast in South Carolina. Because the moon's shadow will be moving at a tremendous speed, totality will not last very long in any one place. At the Oregon coastline, totality lasts less than 2 minutes, as the shadow will be traveling at more than three times the speed of sound (2,400 mph, or 3,860 km/h). Moons shadow landfalls Oregon, crosses USA at 1800mph, exits SCarolina. Behold Muuuricas Eclipse. pic.twitter.com/fIMCnEyyQy  Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) August 21, 2016 Neil DeGrasse Tyson took to Twitter to warn users of the eclipse a year in advance Heading southeast along the center line, the totality time slowly lengthens, reaching a maximum of 2 minutes and 40.2 seconds at a spot in southern Illinois about 12 miles (19 km) southeast of the city of Carbondale. The shadow will slow to 1,450 mph (2,330 km/h) as it moves through the Tennessee Valley, and then speed up; subsequently, the duration of totality will begin to diminish. When the eclipse arrives at the South Carolina coastline, the duration of totality will have dropped to 2 minutes and 34 seconds. The shadow then exits out to sea, finally leaving Earth 75 minutes later at local sunset in the North Atlantic Ocean, 390 miles (628 km) southwest of the island nation of Cape Verde. Advertisement

An estimated 12 million people live within the path of totality, according to Space.com.

The number of people within just one day's drive of the totality zone is around 200 million.

A partial eclipse will be visible from all of North America, parts of South America, western Europe and Africa.

Officials in Wyoming's Teton County are already setting up management plans to prepare for a crush of 40,000 tourists, including people camping illegally, who are expected to swarm Jackson Hole next summer to see a total solar eclipse.

Next year's eclipse will happen during the busy summer tourist season in Jackson Hole, which borders Grand Teton National Park and is a gateway to neighboring Yellowstone National Park.

'Illegal camping is going to be a huge issue with this,' Teton County Emergency Management Coordinator Rich Ochs told the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

A total solar eclipse occurs over Svalbard on March 20, 2015.A partial eclipse was visible on Friday, the first day of northern spring, across parts of Africa, Europe and Asia.

'Hotels are already full, the ones that book this far out. People are coming here because it's a once-in-a-lifetime event.

'Not getting a hotel room is not going to stop them. So we're going to have issues  a lot of nuisance issues.'

While Teton County isn't promoting the event like some other Wyoming cities, local officials know how attractive Jackson Hole during the summer even without an international event.

'It's like running advertisements for a time when you're going to completely sell out,' Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jeff Golightly said. 'We've heard of hotels that sold out two years ago. There will be no bargains at that time.'

In contrast, officials in the eastern Wyoming city of Casper are promoting it as 'the best place to view the 2017 total solar eclipse.'

The total eclipse will be visible within a path of darkness stretching from Oregon through Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and finally South Carolina.

Ochs said communities in and around Jackson Hole are already reserving anticipated extra needs, like portable toilets.

'We already realized when we're looking at getting resources for this event, we really can't look to our mutual aid partners to the east and the west because they're having the same issue we are,' Ochs said. 'We've got to look north and south.'

Grocery stores have also been advised to stock up on bottled water and gas stations alerted to keep their tanks full.

Nashville, the largest city directly in the eclipse path, is gearing up with special programs and activities.

The city's convention and visitors bureau launched a slick website devoted to the eclipse, which they're calling the 'Music City Solar Eclipse.'
They may have both been rejected by The Bachelor Richie Strahan.

But reality TV starlets Keira Maguire and Sasha Zhuralyova proved that they didn't need a man to have fun on Friday night when the pair hit the town for a girl's night out in Melbourne.

Taking to Instagram to share a clip of the pair's antics, Sasha uploaded a Boomerang video of herself and Keira putting on a leggy display as they wiggled in a pair of dangerously high mini-skirts.

Thigh's the limit! Keira Maguire and Sasha Zhuralyova proved that they didn't need a man to have fun on Friday night when the pair hit the town for a girl's night out in Melbourne, sharing this leggy Boomerang video to Instagram

'B****** be like', wrote Sasha in the caption before tagging Keira and adding the hashtags: '#bachie #winkmodels #realitytv #studio #life #love #picoftheday #moi #photography #body.'

The girls' fellow contestant Rachael Gouvignon was quick to comment on the sassy post, writing: 'Legs legs legs loving the snaps chickas.'

It comes after Keira revealed that she used to fantasise about having a lesbian affair during her time in the Bachelor mansion.

Close connection: It comes after Keira admitted that she would 'hook up' with fellow contestant Sasha if she had to choose one of the bachelorettes

Appearing on KIIS 106.5 FM's Kyle and Jackie O show, the 29-year-old account manager revealed she hasn't had sex since March, and that there were times during her stay in the mansion where she felt she needed 'some sort of action'.

The outspoken blonde also admitted fellow contestant Sasha Zhuralyova would be her pick, if she were to pursue any intimate relations with one of the bachelorettes.

Shock jock Kyle Sandilands didn't hold back when asking Keira the question: ' Did you want to hook up with any of the chicks in the house?'.

'She's so hot': 'Out of the girls, Sasha... I love her!' Keira revealed her chosen lady

Cosy: The pair were very close in the mansion - pictured with contestant Rachael (L)

And it looks like Keira was very sure of her intentions, as she responded without much hesitation.

'Look there was a moment where I was like "Okay, I need some sort of action going on",' she laughed.

'Out of the girls, Sasha... I love her!' Keira revealed her chosen lady, and the gushing didn't stop there.

Romantic: Sasha made a name for herself on the show after she was seen eating roses during the first cocktail party

'She's sot hot. I love her!' she reiterated.

Meanwhile radio presenter Jackie O was slightly surprised by Keira's choice, admitting she had forgotten who Sasha was.

'Sasha's the rose-eating one,' Keira clarified, which instantly jogged Jackie's memory back on track.

Bored in the mansion? 'Look there was a moment where I was like "Okay, I need some sort of action going on",' she laughed

In regards to any intimate behaviour with any males out of the Bachelor mansion, Kyle enquired: ' Have you had any penis since you got out of the show?'.

'You know what, I haven't,' she giggled.

'I haven't had any action since March. Just because I don't know,' she continued, before adding, 'I can't believe I told you that'.

Maintaining her strong stance of being honest, she also confessed: I feel like I've forgot what it's like'.

Sassy personality: Keira was quickly labelled the 'villain' of the series due to her jealousy, frequent clashes with other contestants and arrogant manner

It looks like Sasha also holds a great level of respect for Keira, telling Nova 100's Chrissie, Sam & Browny earlier this month: 'I absolutely love the chick'.

The 31-year-old continued: 'Shes crazy, shes outgoing, shes very loud but at the same times shes a great chick, I absolutely love her.'

Keira was sent home during Wednesday night's episode, after Richie Strahan realised he couldn't see a future with the blonde beauty following their yoga-themed single date.
They're a playful couple, and Lydia Hearst and TV host Chris Hardwick made sure that their wedding was as lighthearted as it was elegant.

The ceremony took place in front of around 450 guests at The Langham Huntington in Pasadena, California and saw Lydia wear a custom pink Christian Siriano gown while Chris wore a custom-made Prada tuxedo, according to ET.

And there were plenty of references to their love of sci-fi and horror throughout the day - including Doctor Who cake and a Walking Dead save the date.

Chris shared a snapshot which showed him cuddling Lydia as she showed off her graduated white to pink gown, and revealed some of the quirky items that featured in their big day.

'Wedding day w/ @lydiahearst! Dress by @csiriano, tux by @prada. Photo by @laraporzak. More to come!!!' he shared on Sunday. 'We had Jawas, astromech droids, zombies and a TARDIS cake. Also an incredible 1st dance performance by Clay Walker.

'We were also surrounded by the most wonderful collection of good humans and it was an honor to share this a day with them. More pics to come when we get them!!! Btw @amctalkingdead was pretaped the next two weeks and @atmidnightcc is on hiatus so I can go on honeymoon! Byeeeeeeeeeeeee.'

Lydia, 32, started the countdown to their big day on Thursday with a fun post of her lying in the grass holding a partially eaten apple.

Truly happy: Lydia Hearst and @Midnight host Chris Hardwick made sure that their wedding was as lighthearted as it was elegant

'The Wedding Date': The nuptials included plenty of references to the couple's love of sci-fi and horror

Her caption revealed that the setup was an allusion to the Snow White fairy tale: 'I'm so lucky to have found my Prince Charming.'

On Friday, she kept things cheery with a post of the couple as cartoon zombies, which was no doubt a reference to fiance Chris' hosting gig of The Talking Dead.

She got quite clever with the caption, which read 'my love for you will never die @hardwick.'

Clever: Her caption revealed that the setup was an allusion to the Snow White fairy tale: 'I'm so lucky to have found my Prince Charming'

Till death: On Friday, she kept things cheery with a post of the couple as cartoon zombies, which was no doubt a reference to fiance Chris' hosting gig of The Talking Dead

Interestingly, groom Chris seemed to be the sentimental one, posting an adorable photo of the couple sharing a kiss during the rehearsal along with the description 'Wedding rehearsal! #AllTheEmoji.'

He did also post a picture of the official water for the wedding, which was bottled and labelled with the couple's initials shaped into the form of the Tardis from the famous Dr. Who television series.

It seemed the couple was in perfect sync throughout the engagement process.

Back in July, Lydia posted an artistic black and white photo of Chris standing against a glass wall during his tuxedo fitting.

Geek heaven: He did also post a picture of the official water for the wedding, which was bottled and labelled with the couple's initials shaped into the form of the Tardis from the famous Dr. Who television series

They match! Back in July, Lydia posted an artistic black and white photo of Chris standing against a glass wall during his tuxedo fitting, while she took a similar photo for her fitting

Among many other praises, she gushed 'I just love EVERYTHING about you, and cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you!'

Then, only a week ago, she took her own matching black and white photo for her wedding dress fitting.

She also couldn't help but express her love in that caption, admitting 'I am truly blessed to have you in my life @hardwick. I love you, and I will never stop loving you.'
Roxy Jacenko has revealed she puts $100-a-week into her jailed husband Oliver Curtis' prison buy-up so he can get a doona to protect from the cold.

The PR queen said the disgraced investment banker is now working as a clerk at Parklea Correctional Centre - two months after being jailed for insider trading.

Roxy, who was diagnosed with breast cancer weeks after Curtis' sentencing, also discussed the possibility of conjugal visits, but said it was not her priority.

Support: Roxy Jacenko has revealed she puts $100-a-week into her jailed husband Oliver Curtis' prison buy-up, pictured is the couple during the investment banker's trial

'I've visited twice. It's not a nice place. It's sad. It's not somewhere where you'd choose to be,' she told The Kyle and Jackie O show.

'I have to put $100 in his buy-up every week. You can't go over the amount. He's buying a doona next because it's cold.

'He has a job, he works as a clerk in an administrative role. They go to the gym a lot.

Battle: Roxy, who was diagnosed with breast cancer weeks after Curtis' sentencing, said she has visited him twice at the Sydney jail

'He's said everyone is really nice. He has settled in as well as he can. He likes his job, it's good to have a job.'

When Kyle Sandilands asked whether she would consider going for a conjugal visit during the two-year jail-term, she said: 'It's not something that even crossed my mind.'

The mother-of-two revealed that her five-year-old daughter Pixie and two-year-old Hunter believe their father is working is China.

She said she made the 'rookie error' of putting Pixie on the phone to Curtis and that the youngster spent the rest of the day in tears.

Getting back to work: The disgraced investment banker is now working as a clerk at Parklea Correctional Centre - two months after being jailed for insider trading

'She spent the day in tears': Roxy said she made the 'rookie error' of putting Pixie on the phone to Curtis

'It was the worst thing. He phoned on a Saturday she cried for the whole day after. Her first words were: 'When are you coming home?''

'The older you are the worst separation is. I put her on the phone on her birthday and I regretted it.

'I've said I don't want to speak when I'm around the children.'

The founder of Sweaty Betty PR, 36, said she panicked and told the children that their father would be back in time for Christmas.

'I think I was asked on the spot when dad was coming home and I said Christmas. I will have to say he's still in China,' she said.

'Your husband is a criminal': Roxy faced tough questions from reporter Allison Langdon in a 60 Minutes special on Sunday

Roxy believes her children are both too young to be exposed to the truth of why their father is not at home.

But she told the KIIS 106.5 show she is constantly worried that they might find out and get teased in the playground.

'It's a constant concern. But at the moment they're five and two, I'm not going to expose them.

'I don't think it's something I need to address now. I'm very very careful.

'But when I think it's appropriate they'll have their lines for response when asked about their dad 'the one who went to jail'.

Tense relationship? The 36-year-old previously snapped at Allison in another preview clip after the reporter suggested there was 'cynicism' over the 'timing' of her cancer diagnosis

Battle: In another 60 Minutes promo, Roxy was seen being pushed through a hospital ward before going into surgery to remove a tumour on her breast

The PR maven revealed that her children were also in the dark about the explosive 60 Minutes special on Sunday.

During the interview, she faced tough questions from reporter Allison Langdon who stated bluntly: 'Your husband is a criminal.'

Roxy, 36, did not seem happy with the journalist's choice of words to describe Oliver's conviction for conspiracy to commit insider trading.

'He was accused of stealing 1.43 million dollars,' she continued.

Looking quietly frustrated, Roxy responded: 'I don't know that we should use the word 'steal''.

Treatment: Roxy revealed the news of her breast cancer diagnosis last month and has since confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that she will undergo radiation therapy

Challenging: She also revealed how her Oliver's jail term for insider trading has left her as a single mother to their two young children, Pixie, five, and two-year-old Hunter

She also slammed the critics who have questioned why the announcement of her breast cancer diagnosis came weeks after Oliver Curtis' incarceration.

'I don't really give a f**k what they think on my timing,' she said.

And when Allison said that 'normal' people were cynical about the timing, Roxy snapped back, saying: 'Well they're not normal Alison, change your friends.

'You've got too much time on your hands if you say that. They can say that, the reality is, it's not something that I ever thought I would face.'

During the interview, the 36-year-old revealed she chose not to have a mastectomy, despite doctors recommending the surgery for her 10mm tumour.

Speaking of her choice to have a lumpectomy instead, Roxy noted: 'I wasn't in the headspace to make rash decisions.

'I suppose, unlike everything else in my life where I'll go full pelt, I wanted to do this one thing in a phased approach'.
She was sent home from The Bachelor mansion following a disastrous one-on-one date with Richie Strahan on Thursday.

But New Weekly is claiming that Keira Maguire has now been getting close to former Bachelorette star and Richie's best friend, Dave Billsborrow.

A source reportedly told the publication: 'Dave couldn't believe his luck when he discovered Keira had the hots for him'.

Scroll down for video

Still ruffling feathers: New Weekly is claiming Keira Maguire has been getting close to former Bachelorette star Dave Billsborrow, who is believed to be dating Cortnee Spessot

Keira and Dave have been chatting on the sly,' the insider added.

'With all the negative publicity, she's kept a relatively low profile and Dave's been a great shoulder for her to lean on during this time - they make a cute couple'.

Earlier this month, Dave, who is said to be dating Cortnee Spessot, spoke to Daily Mail Australia and gushed about how wonderfully things are going with his girlfriend of six months.

'Its going great. Shes a beautiful person and I'm really happy,' he said.

Controversial: A source reportedly told the publication: 'Dave couldn't believe his luck when he discovered Keira had the hots for him'.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to both Keira and Dave for comment.

During last Thursday night's episode of The Bachelor Keira finally landed a one-on-one date with Richie, but it was a total disaster.

He sent the blonde beauty home at the end of the date rather than dragging it out into a rose ceremony.

Meanwhile, it was recently revealed that Keira grew up in a cult in Victoria which was controlled by self-styled messiah Laishkochav - who had 64 children with nine wives.

Socialite: Since leaving the show Keira has been a regular face on the social scene and appears to be enjoying spending time with other women from the show

Disaster date: On Thursday night's episode of The Bachelor Keira finally landed a one-on-one date with Richie Strahan but it was a total disaster

But her mother, Michelle, fled the group with her six children in 1993 when Keira was just five-years-old.

During an interview with The Project, she said she was forced to confront her past - after Woman's Day published a story about how her cult leader father has sexually abused four young girls outside of her immediate family.

The outspoken star said she always knew she was 'different', but was too scared to open up about her past.
She came back with a bang after being signed off work with exhaustion half way through her world tour in July.

And Ellie Goulding proved she was back on top form, as she posed for the September issue of Remix magazine.

Posing topless for the New Zealand fashion magazine, the 29-year-old Burn hitmaker put on a sizzling display.

Scroll down for video

Back with a bang! Ellie Goulding proved she was back in top shape, as she posed for the September issue of Remix magazine

Wearing her shoulder-length blonde hair tousled and blow-dried, the beauty went for bold eyebrows, highlighting her plump lips.

And posing for the front cover, Ellie can be seen in nothing but a blue sequin skirt, as she holds a blazer in front of her bare chest to maintain her modesty.

In another shot she shows off her intricate rib tattoo as her windswept hair blows around her face.

Hot stuff! Posing topless for the New Zealand fashion magazine, the 29-year-old Burn hitmaker put on a sizzling display

Raunchy! Posing for the front cover, Ellie can be seen in nothing but a blue sequin skirt, as she holds a blazer in front of her bare chest to maintain her modesty

And in the other black and white shots, Ellie models a range of New Zealand fashion.

Showing off her toned midriff she dons a bustier and silk wide-leg trousers as she lays on the floor with her legs sprawled apart.

Another shot sees her in a racy silk miniskirt adorned with metal hardware, matched with a plunging silk kimono top, accentuating her curves.

Chic: Showing off her toned midriff she dons a bustier and silk wide-leg trousers as she lays on the floor with her legs sprawled apart

Stylish: Another shot sees her in a racy silk miniskirt adorned with metal hardware, matched with a plunging silk kimono top, accentuating her curves

The photoshoot comes ahead of the final leg of her Delirium world tour, which ends in Australia in October.

Starting out in January, the tour consists of 4 legs, European, North American, Summer Festivals and Oceanic- including 89 dates, 88 cities.

Last month the blonde beauty was signed off her Delerium World Tour with exhaustion and has been taking it easy since.

At the time she promised her fans she'd be back in good health soon as she tweeted: 'Am sorry that I had to cancel this weekends festivals. Because of ill-health I've been advised to not travel or perform. Il bounce back [sic].'

According to The Sun, Ellie had been suffering with sleep condition insomnia, which is what caused her to abandon her recent stage performances.

However the songstress appeared delighted with her comeback show at the end of July, tweeting afterwards: 'I know people use this world for so many differed reasons... But I am BLESS-ED. What a night @lolapalooza'.
Over the years it has been widely reported that Nicole Kidman has suffered a turbulent relationship with her adopted children, Bella and Connor Cruise.

But despite the persistent rumours, it seems the Hollywood actress and her 23-year-old daughter are ready to put any alleged differences to one side.

It has been claimed the pair recently enjoyed an emotional reunion in the UK, with Bella introducing her husband to the Australian starlet for the very first time.

Scroll down for video

'It was emotional': Nicole Kidman has reportedly reunited with estranged daughter Bella Cruise after several years

According to Womans Day, the spontaneous meet-up comes almost one year after Bella tied the knot with IT consultant Max Parker in London, last September.

It was a very emotional moment for all of them, especially Nicole, a source told the publication. It didnt take long for her to burst into tears, and Bella soon followed.

Nicole and her now ex-husband Tom Cruise adopted Bella in 1992, followed by son Connor in 1995 before they divorced in 2001.

Both children went to live with their father following the breakup of the marriage and followed him into Scientology.

Special time: It has been claimed the pair recently enjoyed an emotional reunion in the UK, with Bella introducing her husband Max Parker (pictured) to the actress for the first time

Putting the past behind them: The spontaneous meet-up is said to have come almost one year after Bella tied the knot with the IT consultant in London, last September

Nic has been trying to build bridges with Bella since the start of the year, the insider confessed, before adding: Nicole took an instant liking to Max and could see that he and Bella get on really well.

Daily Mail has contacted representatives for the star to comment.

Earlier this year, Bella - who is Nicole and Toms second adopted child - insisted that all was well between her and her parents.

She told New Idea magazine: 'Of course we talk, they're my parents', adding, anyone who says otherwise is 'full of s**t.'

Her loves: Nicole and her now ex-husband Tom Cruise adopted Bella in 1992, followed by son Connor in 1995 before they divorced in 2001

Standing on her own two feet: Meanwhile, Bella has been intent on carving out her own path in life, opting to live in the working class suburb of Croydon

Meanwhile, Bella has been intent on carving out her own path in life, opting to live in the working class suburb of Croydon.

Actress Nicole, 49, was in London at the time of Bella's wedding rehearsing for a role in a West End play, while 53-year-old Top Gun Tom's schedule was cited for his absence from the ceremony.

After shunning the glitz and glamour of her formative years, Bella says she dreams in the future of starting a family of her own, telling the magazine: 'I'm 23, so we'll see...I'm still a baby myself.
She always dreamed of a big family.

But TV presenter Natalie Pinkham has revealed she's unlikely to have more children - after losing her newborn daughter's twin in pregnancy and suffering a string of medical complications after her birth.

The brunette beauty, 37, made the admission in an exclusive new interview with Hello! Magazine.

Scroll down for video

She's here! Proud new mother Natalie Pinkham shows off newborn baby Willow in Hello!

Her decision comes after giving birth to Willow Mirela eight weeks ago at West Middlesex Hospital left her contracting post-operative ileus and pre-eclampsia.

Pinkham, who had already had a difficult birth with her son Wilf, 18 months, told Hello! magazine: 'We always thought we'd have three or four kids as we both have big families and loads of cousins.

'But the first time things went wrong with Wilf I thought, 'That's weird'. The second time, 'Okay, there's a pattern here'. The third, you're asking for trouble, aren't you?

New parents: Natalie and husband Owain Walbyoff pictured together at the Tamara Ecclestone Fundraising Dinner in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, 2015

'I feel lucky to have two children, a boy and a girl. I would be pushing that luck if I went for a third.'

Out now: Read the full interview in this week's Hello! magazine

The Formula One presenter and her husband, Owain Walbyoff, said Willow's birth via a pioneering natural caesarean was 'unbelievable', with Pinkham saying of their daughter: 'She's a little miracle and her coming into our lives has made our family complete.'

The couple gave the baby the middle name Mirela after the Romanian orphan who inspired Pinkham's campaign to end the institutionalisation of orphans with Hope and Homes for Children and who died in 2014.

She said: 'We were always sure that our daughter's middle name would be Mirela. I wanted Mirela's legacy to live on and I wanted Willow and Wilf to grow up knowing the concept of how lucky they are.

'It's luck where you're born and unfortunately it can determine what your future holds.'
Bikini-clad Kourtney Kardashian enjoyed poolside cocktails in the backyard of her $7.5M Hidden Hills mansion on Sunday.

The 37-year-old reality star - who relies on fitness trainer Don Brooks - showcased her phenomenal 5ft figure in a skimpy grey swimsuit.

'Just call me the dog whisperer,' the Calabasas socialite - who boasts 80.9M followers - captioned one snap.

Scroll down for video

Cheers! Bikini-clad Kourtney Kardashian enjoyed poolside cocktails in the backyard of her $7.5M Hidden Hills mansion on Sunday

Strolling with Reign: The 37-year-old reality star - who relies on fitness trainer Don Brooks - showcased her phenomenal 5ft figure in a skimpy grey swimsuit

Swanning about: Kardashian - who relies on stylist Monica Rose - paired her two-piece with a high ponytail, mirrored aviator sunglasses, and a barely-there body chain

Kardashian - who relies on stylist Monica Rose - paired her two-piece with a high ponytail, mirrored aviator sunglasses, and a barely-there body chain.

It's hard to believe that the half-Armenian beauty is mother to three children - Mason, 6, Penelope, 4, and son Reign, 20 months - with babydaddy Scott Disick.

The on/off couple of nine years split for good shortly after 33-year-old Scott was pictured canoodling with stylist Chloe Bartoli in Monte Carlo on July 2 of last year.

On this Sunday's episode of KUWTK, Kourtney gets mad at her brother Rob for allowing his fiancee Blac Chyna to make a 'Chymoji' of half-sister Kylie Jenner getting slapped.

The Calabasas socialite - who boasts 80.9M followers - captioned one snap: 'Just call me the dog whisperer'

Seen here on August 14: It's hard to believe that the half-Armenian beauty is mother to three children - Mason, 6, Penelope, 4, and son Reign, 20 months - with babydaddy Scott Disick

Finally @robkardashian A photo posted by Scott Disick (@letthelordbewithyou) on Aug 20, 2016 at 9:48am PDT

'It's too crazy to call Chyna. I don't want to yell at a pregnant person,' the University of Arizona alum explained in a preview.

'[So] I yelled at him.'

The 28-year-old Lashed salon owner has a three-year-old son King with ex-fiance Tyga, who's been dating the artificially plump-lipped 19-year-old since 2014.

Blac (born Angela White) and the 29-year-old Arthur George sock designer - who began their romance six months ago - will star in their very own six-episode spin-off Rob & Chyna, which premieres September 11 on E!

Outraged: On this Sunday's KUWTK, Kourtney gets mad at her brother Rob for allowing his fiancee Blac Chyna to make a 'Chymoji' of half-sister Kylie Jenner getting slapped

The University of Arizona alum explained in a preview: 'It's too crazy to call Chyna. I don't want to yell at a pregnant person, [so] I yelled at him'

Bitter? The 28-year-old Lashed salon owner has a three-year-old son King with ex-fiance Tyga (R), who's been dating the artificially plump-lipped 19-year-old (L) since 2014
She's been in the headlines after her highly anticipated 60 Minutes interview went to air on Sunday night.

And on Monday morning Roxy Jacenko arrived at the KIIS FM radio studios in Sydney for yet another Q&A.

The 36-year-old PR queen looked stylish in a pair of skin tight leather leggings paired with a smart black blazer as she made her way into the building.

She means business: Roxy Jacenko looked stylish as she arrived at the KIIS FM studio in Sydney on Monday morning dressed in leather trousers

Roxy has become known for her lavish designer wardrobe and wore a black blazer by Balmain (with prices starting at $2,500) layered over a simple black top.

She added to her look with a pair of leather trousers that clung tight to her toned legs and featured gold zippers at the ankles.

A pair of towering black stiletto heels finished her look and she wore her blonde locks loosely curled around her shoulders.

Stylish: The 36-year-old PR queen, who has become known for her lavish designer wardrobe, also wore a black blazer by Balmain layered over a simple black top

Roxy was diagnosed with breast cancer just weeks after her husband Oliver Curtis was sentenced to two years in jail for insider trading.

During her interview with Kyle and Jackie O, the mother-of-two revealed to the that her five-year-old daughter Pixie and two-year-old son Hunter believe their father is working is China.

She said she made the 'rookie error' of putting Pixie on the phone to Curtis and that the youngster spent the rest of the day in tears.

'It was the worst thing. He phoned on a Saturday she cried for the whole day after. Her first words were: 'When are you coming home?''

Putting on a brave face: Roxy was at the radio station to talk more about her breast cancer diagnosis and husband Oliver Curtis's incarceration for insider trading

'The older you are the worst separation is. I put her on the phone on her birthday and I regretted it.

'I've said I don't want to speak when I'm around the children.'

The founder of Sweaty Betty PR said she panicked and told the children that their father would be back in time for Christmas.

Family: The mother-of-two believes her children are both too young to be exposed to the truth of why their father is not at home and has told them he is in China for work

Roxy believes her children are both too young to be exposed to the truth of why their father is not at home.

As the PR maven arrived at the Sweaty Betty Office after the interview she posted one of her signature lift selfies to Instagram.

She wore a pair of black aviator sunglasses and draped a black Hermes Birkin and Goyard tote bag over her wrist and captioned the shot: 'Monday's'.

Signature look: As the PR maven arrived at the Sweaty Betty Office after the interview she posted one of her signature lift selfies to Instagram

The businesswoman has been taking the turbulent events of this year in her stride and during the interview with 60 Minutes slammed critics who doubted the timing of her cancer diagnosis.

And when Allison Langdon said that 'normal' people were cynical about the timing, Roxy snapped back, saying: 'Well they're not normal Alison, change your friends.

'You've got too much time on your hands if you say that. They can say that, the reality is, it's not something that I ever thought I would face.'
She's been busy filming Home And Away during the week.

But Pia Miller made sure to spend quality time with her new beau Tyson Mullane and her two children, Isaiah and Lennox, on Sunday.

The 32-year-old glamazon enjoyed a healthy salad as she took the family out in Sydney for lunch.

We are family: Pia Miller stepped out with her new beau Tyson Mullane and her two sons from other relationships, Isaiah and Lennox, on Sunday

Relaxed: Dressed down in a pair of figure-hugging black jeans, a white T-shirt and denim jacket, the Chilean-born beauty cut a relaxed figure with her family

Dressed down in a pair of figure-hugging black jeans, a white T-shirt and denim jacket, the Chilean-born beauty cut a relaxed figure with her family.

She appeared to share a joke with her older son Isaiah as the pair looked to be in hysterics.

At one point the 13-year-old threw his head back and laughed out loud while Pia covered her mouth with her hand as she contained her laughter.

Lunch time: The 32-year-old glamazon enjoyed a healthy salad as she took the family out in Sydney for lunch on Sunday afternoon

Lettuce have fun! While Pia enjoyed a salad, she appeared to share a joke with her older son Isaiah as the pair looked to be in hysterics

Joking around: At one point the 13-year-old threw his head back and laughed out loud while Pia covered her mouth with her hand as she contained her laughter

Wearing her shiny chestnut mane down, the actress kept her makeup simple and low-key with a pink lip and she donned her usual Ray-Ban sunglasses.

As she broke into a smile, her signature dimples popped up on the sides of her mouth.

She accesorised her look with a gold Cartier bangle and matching ring.

Dimple girl: As she broke into a smile, her signature dimples popped up on the sides of her mouth

Golden girl: Pia accesorised her look with a gold Cartier bangle and matching ring

Easy Sunday: Wearing her shiny chestnut mane down, the actress kept her makeup simple and low-key with a pink lip and she donned her usual Ray-Ban sunglasses

Last week Pia took to Instagram and posted a snap of her children captionning the image 'Sleepy heads' and adding a heart-shaped emoticon.

Flaunting her flawless makeup-free complexion, Pia was seen sporting a case of bedhead as she wrapped her arms around Isaiah and Lennox.

The doting mother-of-two proved she's just like any other typical mother when it comes to showing off their kids on social media.

Signature dimples: Pia's famous dimples appear even when she's in character on set in Home And Away

Isaiah is from one of Pia's earlier relationships, while Lennox's father is former AFL player Brad Miller.

The actress married the ex-sportsman in 2007 and the couple announced their split in October last year.

Pia opened up about the breakdown of her marriage, saying it was due to her struggle to balance family life with her filming commitments for the Channel Seven soap.

Loved up: The Chilean-born beauty is currently dating 27-year-old film producer Tyson

'I'd shoot all day, jump on a plane, race home and make dinner - it was like I was working full-time in both places,' she told Marie Claire in May.

'I was trying to do everything and it took a toll on me physically, I think it took its toll on everything.'

Meanwhile, the former model has moved on with film producer Tyson, whom she was first pictured with last November.

The actress confirmed the romance after months of speculation with an Instagram post on Valentine's Day.
Looks like Amy Schumer has some knock out new material.

The comedienne posted a selfie in bed with boyfriend Ben Hanisch on Sunday.

The grainy shot shows the 35-year-old wide awake while her 29-year-old squeeze is fast asleep cuddled up beside her.

Beside Amy Schumer: The comedienne posted a selfie in bed with her sleepy beau Ben Hanisch on Sunday

'Super interested in hearing my new material,' she joked in the caption.

Amy confirmed she was in a relationship with the Chicago furniture designer back in January.

The 'new material' she speaks of is likely for her stand-up rather than her hit show Inside Amy Schumer, as she recently revealed the show is on hiatus.

The revelation came amid a social media storm involving one of the writers of her show, Kurt Metzger.

Taking a break: The 'new material' she speaks of is likely for her stand-up rather than her hit show Inside Amy Schumer, as she recently revealed the show is on hiatus

The comedian published a number of posts slamming women who claim to be victims of sexual assault but who do not go to the police.

On Wednesday, after being criticized by fans for remaining quiet about Metzger's tirade, Schumer finally took to Twitter to state she 'couldn't be more against his recent actions.'

She followed the first tweet by sharing: 'Kurt does not work for me. He is not a writer on my show. Please stop asking me about it.'

Dragged into it: The revelation came amid a social media storm involving one of the writers of her show, Kurt Metzger. Amy clarified her position to Charlie Rose on Thursday

His words, not mine: She said that while she doesn't condone Metzger's comments, his tirade has nothing whatsoever to do with her

Victim blaming: Metzger, 39, a comedian and writer, sparked an online firestorm after ranting about women who claim to be victims of rape but don't report it to the police

Fans then panicked the show might have been cancelled when she then tweeted: 'I didn't fire Kurt. He isn't a writer for my show because we aren't making the show anymore. There are no writers for it.'

She then clarified that there will be a fifth season, just not for the foreseeable future as she was focusing on touring, and her new book - The Girl With The Lower Back Tattoo - which was just released.

On Thursday, Amy Schumer explained to veteran journalist Charlie Rose that while she doesn't condone Metzger's comments, his tirade has nothing whatsoever to do with her.

Time off: Amy clarified clarified that there will be a fifth season of Inside Amy Schumer, just not for the foreseeable future as she was focusing on touring

'Because he writes for the show, its a bigger story because of our connection and so whatever tangent hes gone off on I have not agreed with,' she said. 'And its been really upsetting to me seeing someone that I care about hurt themselves like this.'

Schumer told Rose that while she and Metzger have very different views, that kind of diversity is vital for a concept like Inside Amy Schumer.

'One of the reasons hes such a great writer and such a great contributor to our television show is because his views are so different from that of mine and most of the other writers in the room,' the Trainwreck star explained.
Roxy Jacenko has revealed even more details about her husband Oliver Curtis's incarceration during an interview on The Kyle and Jackie O show on Monday morning.

When asked by Kyle Sandilands about her husband taking a lover in prison, the PR maven said: 'I dont think hes that way inclined'.

In usual Kyle style, the shock jock didn't hold back during the Q&A, questioning the 36-year-old whether she and Oliver made 'love' the morning of his sentencing.

Scroll down for video

Difficult times: Roxy Jacenko revealed even more intimate details about her husband Oliver Curtis's incarceration during an interview on The Kyle and Jackie O show, on Monday morning.

'Oh my god, can you not!' she replied.

'You wouldnt want him to take a lover in there though,' Kyle said, to which she replied: 'I dont think hes really that way inclined.'

During the interview, Roxy also revealed she puts $100-a-week into her jailed husband prison buy-up so he can get a doona to protect from the cold.

Hardly appropriate: In usual Kyle style, the shock jock didn't hold back during the Q&A, questioning the 36-year-old whether she and Oliver made love the morning of his sentencing

Support: Roxy was by her husband's side throughout his entire trial

She said the former investment banker is now working as a clerk at Parklea Correctional Centre - two months after being jailed for insider trading.

Roxy, who was diagnosed with breast cancer weeks after Curtis' sentencing, also discussed the possibility of conjugal visits, but said it was not her priority.

I've visited twice. It's not a nice place. It's sad. It's not somewhere where you'd choose to be,' she told The Kyle and Jackie O show.

Revelations: Roxy, who was diagnosed with breast cancer weeks after Curtis' sentencing, also discussed the possibility of conjugal visits, but said it was not her priority

'I have to put $100 in his buy-up every week. You can't go over the amount. He's buying a doona next because it's cold.

'He has a job, he works as a clerk in an administrative role. They go to the gym a lot.

'He's said everyone is really nice. He has settled in as well as he can. He likes his job, it's good to have a job.'

New job: During the interview Roxy said the former investment banker is now working as a clerk at Parklea Correctional Centre - two months after being jailed for insider trading

When Kyle asked whether she would consider going for a conjugal visit during the two-year jail-term, she said: 'It's not something that even crossed my mind.'

The mother-of-two revealed that her five-year-old daughter Pixie and two-year-old Hunter believe their father is working is China.

She said she made the 'rookie error' of putting Pixie on the phone to Curtis and that the youngster spent the rest of the day in tears.

She revealed that her children were also in the dark about the explosive 60 Minutes special on Sunday.

During the interview, she faced tough questions from reporter Allison Langdon who stated bluntly: 'Your husband is a criminal.'

Roxy did not seem happy with the journalist's choice of words to describe Curtis's conviction for conspiracy to commit insider trading.

'He was accused of stealing 1.43 million dollars,' she continued.

Story: The mother-of-two revealed that her five-year-old daughter Pixie and two-year-old Hunter believe their father is working is China

Looking quietly frustrated, Roxy responded: 'I don't know that we should use the word 'steal''.

She also slammed the critics who have questioned why the announcement of her breast cancer diagnosis came weeks after Curtis' incarceration.

'I don't really give a f**k what they think on my timing,' she said.

And when Allison said that 'normal' people were cynical about the timing, Roxy snapped back, saying: 'Well they're not normal Alison, change your friends.

'You've got too much time on your hands if you say that. They can say that, the reality is, it's not something that I ever thought I would face.'

During the interview, Roxy also revealed she chose not to have a mastectomy, despite doctors recommending the surgery for her 10mm tumour.

Missing daddy: She said she made the 'rookie error' of putting Pixie on the phone to Curtis and that the youngster spent the rest of the day in tears

Speaking of her choice to have a lumpectomy instead, Roxy noted: 'I wasn't in the headspace to make rash decisions.

'I suppose, unlike everything else in my life where I'll go full pelt, I wanted to do this one thing in a phased approach'.

She underwent the breast cancer surgery two weeks ago and a tumour was successfully removed.
With her immaculately curled tresses, pearl earrings and stylish choice of hat, Georgia Love could have been mistaken for Kate Middleton earlier this month.

The new Bachelorette looked as though she was trying to keep a low profile as she made her way through Gold Coast Airport.

But her oversize sunglasses only served to highlight the similarities between the stunning pair.

Scroll down for video

Is that you Kate? New Bachelorette could easily have been mistaken for the Duchess of Cambridge when she made her way through Gold Coast Airport earlier this month

Georgia, who will soon have an entire nation fascinated by her love life, would do well to seek advice from her royal doppelganger.

The whole world has fallen in love with the Duchess of Cambridge thanks to her beauty, poise and easy charm.

Kate could also put Georgia in touch with her future brother-in-law, playboy Spencer Matthews, who starred as The Bachelor in the UK 2012 series.

Casual: The former reporter for WIN News in Tasmania was pictured wearing denim jeans and a black and white striped top as she walked through the airport

Love affair: Kate Middleton tied the knot with Prince William in 2011 (pictured together)

But Georgia may not want to take too many pointers from the former Made in Chelsea star as his turn in the mansion was a resounding flop.

Spencer's older brother, hedge fund manager James, is now engaged to Kate's sister Pippa.

Georgia looked effortlessly stylish when she stepped out in Australia's Gold Coast on August 10.

The former reporter for WIN News in Tasmania was pictured wearing denim jeans and a black and white striped top as she walked through the airport.

Stylish: She completed her look with a wide-brimmed brown felt hat

Popular: The whole world has fallen in love with the Duchess of Cambridge thanks to her beauty, poise and easy charm

She paired her casual outfit with a black leather jacket and donned white trainers.

With her brunette locks curled in loose waves, Georgia looked confident and relaxed as she strolled with a friend.

She completed her look with a wide-brimmed brown felt hat.

The beauty is serious about her search for love and has quit her job as a journalist in Tasmania to follow her search for love based in Sydney.
She famously piled on the pounds to play beloved heroine Bridget Jones in the first two films.

But Renee Zellweger showcased a much more slender figure as she greeted fans during a press call in Sydney for the third installment, Bridget Jones's Baby, on Monday.

The Hollywood star flaunted her enviable physique in a chic burgundy polka-dot dress as she attended the event at Sydney Harbour with co-star Patrick Dempsey.

Scroll down for video

Slender: Renee Zellweger showcased a much more slender figure as she greeted fans during a press call for Bridget Jones's Baby in Sydney on Monday

With her long blonde locks curled in loose waves, Renee smiled as she waved to her fans at the venue with overlooked the Sydney Opera House.

Renee displayed a much more natural look compared to other appearances she had made at red carpet events over the past few years.

Her trip to Australia to promote the latest film in the Bridget Jones franchise comes two years after speculation mounted that she had undergone an eye lift.

Popular: With her long blonde locks curled in loose waves, Renee smiled as she waved to her fans at the venue with overlooked the Sydney Opera House

Flattering: The Hollywood star flaunted her enviable physique in a chic burgundy polka-dot dress

Hollywood stars: She attended the event with her co-star Patrick Dempsey on Monday

The 47-year-old actress has repeatedly denied having surgery to alter her face.

Renee's long-sleeved dress flattered her frame as it drew her in at the waist and highlighted her curves for the press call on Monday.

She admitted she's had moments in real life that would make her alter ego blush.

Beauty: Renee displayed a much more natural look compared to other appearances over the past two years

Stunning: Renee's long-sleeved dress flattered her frame as it drew her in at the waist

Adamant: The 47-year-old actress has repeatedly denied having surgery to alter her face

During a Q&A at the Sydney preview screening of the new Bridge Jones film, she admitted she has had moments in real life that would make her alter ego blush.

'We are all just normal after all,' she said.

The starlet said her mishaps occurred 'regularly - more than I'd like to admit', according to the Daily Telegraph.

'I think that's why folks love Bridget - because she makes being imperfect OK.'

Stylish: The actress is never one to disappoint in the fashion department

Doing it for the fans: Renee and Patrick were seen happily signing autographs

Gentleman: Patrick looked as dapper as ever in a black suit and crisp white shirt
She's still in the running for Richie Strahan's heart on The Bachelor.

But there was no sign of the handsome hunk as the blonde bombshell arrived in Bali, Indonesia, solo for a holiday on Sunday.

The 28-year-old former lads' mag model went bra-less for her flight in a sheer white top.

Nipping out for a holiday! The Bachelor's Kiralee 'Kiki' Morris went bra-less in a sheer white top as she touched down in Bali for a holiday on Sunday

She wore the V-neck attire under a pair of khaki overalls that hugged her hips and thighs.

The buxom babe teamed the casual attire with a pair of camouflage lace-up sneakers and a Mad Hueys baseball cap.

Makeup free, she had a pair of Aviator sunglasses at the ready to shield her face.

Staying for a while? At the airport, Kiki was met by a man who helped her with her mountains of luggage

At the airport, Kiki was met by a man who helped her with her mountains of luggage.

It is not known why she is visiting the Indonesian island, but she arrived at her destination by herself.

Kiki recently made headlines, with Woman's Day reporting cricketer Shane Warne had been 'persistent in sending messages' to her since her debut on the reality TV show.

'Shane has been persistent in sending messages to Kiki, trying to court her with his charm and repeatedly offering the opportunity for the pair to meet up,' a source told the magazine.

The unnamed source added the model has decided to keep her distance from the former Australian cricketer for the sake of her reputation.

Kiki also confirmed a friendship between herself and Shane to the magazine, explaining they first met in 2011 after she modelled at an awards show and that they hadn't hooked up in the past.

The busty babe told Daily Mail Australia the pair were nothing more than 'friends' and said the reports were false.

Already tanned: Despite leaving a wintry Sydney, Kiki arrived sporting a deep tan

Shane meanwhile tweeted: 'Morning followers, just saw some more ridiculous & rubbish reporting online, the reports are laughable actually!'

'Have a great day/night,' he added.

Last week on The Bachelor Kiki had her first single date with the show's leading man Richie Strahan.

Still in with a chance: On The Bachelor Kiki had her first single date with the show's leading man Richie Strahan last week and is in the Top Ten vying for his affections

They appeared to get on well and despite not kissing, they spoke about their emotions.

Richie explained to her: 'To be honest with you, Kiki, I am lonely,' before adding: 'As much as I love everything about my life, I am.'
She's had a series of public fights with fiance Egor Tarabasov.

But while she's apparently pushed 'pause' on her engagement, Lindsay Lohan is still wearing the dazzling emerald ring presented to her by Egor in April.

The star shared an Instagram photo on Monday where she shows off the sparkler, but in perhaps a sign of her relationship troubles, she wears the ring on her right hand.

Scroll down for video

Mixed signals: Lindsay Lohan showed off her emerald engagement ring in a new Instagram photo on Monday, but wore the sparkler on her right hand, a month after 'pausing' her engagement to Egor Tarabasov

Lindsay poses for the camera, looking glam with a slick of red lippie while showing off a glittering watch and two sparkling rings.

While her engagement ring sits on her right hand, another diamond dazzler takes its place on her left hand.

Lindsay made no mention of her ring - gifted to her by Russian heir Egor in April when he proposed after seven months of dating - in the photo's caption, simply adding three heart emojis.

Split: Lindsay was gifted the ring by Russian heir Egor in April when he proposed after seven months of dating but the couple have had a series of public fights over the past month

Three weeks ago the star was pictured taking off the 5-carat sparkler in front of BFF Hofit Golan, who recently addressed Lindsay's split and shot down speculation that the star is pregnant with Egor's child.

Lindsay, 30, was then seen making purchases in fine Swiss jewellers Chopard in Porto Cervo, Italy where she cupped the old emerald ring and slipped the new diamond piece on her engagement finger.

It was Hofit who was the first to officially address comments made by Lindsay's own father that suggested she was pregnant and finally confirm that the engagement is merely on pause.

'Maybe things can be fixed': At the end of July Lindsay shared an update with her fans, writing: 'Dear friends. I'm good and well. #ATM I am taking time for myself with good friends'

'This vacation is amazing, its not a single girls' getaway or a post-breakup vacation. Lindsay is taking a pause in her relationship and joined my friends and I on holiday,' Golan Us Weekly.

Lindsay and Egor were said to have been together for a year before calling it quits, with the star posting to Snapchat in July: '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.'

Lindsay then accused Egor of cheating on her with a hooker, as she posted a video of the star partying, according to E!

At the end of the month, following the couple's public fights, she posted an update on Instagram, writing: 'Dear friends. I'm good and well. #ATM I am taking time for myself with good friends. Maybe things can be fixed... Maybe not.. I hope they can.'
She's been enjoying California life for the past few weeks.

And Tamara Ecclestone looked right at home as she hit the beach in Santa Monica at the weekend with her daughter Sophia, two.

The Formula One heiress, 32, dressed to impress for a dip in the ocean in a barely-there pink swimsuit.

Scroll down for video

California girl: Tamara Ecclestone hit the beach in Santa Monica at the weekend with her daughter Sophia, two

Her one-piece highlighted the mum-of-one's toned and tanned curves, with racy cut-out detail on the hips and a plunging neckline.

The crochet number just about managed to keep Tamara's curves in place as she splashed about in the surf.

The brunette beauty added a pair of designer shades and tied her glossy locks back into an effortless ponytail for her fun in the sun.

Turning heads: The Formula One heiress dressed to impressed for a dip in the ocean in a barely-there pink swimsuit

Little Sophia was never far away from her doting mum, holding Tamara's hand as they cooled down in the ocean.

The tot matched her stylish mum in pink, sporting frilly bikini bottoms, a matching hair accessory and her favourite pair of shades.

Sophia also made sure to keep a tight hold of her blonde-haired mermaid toy as she dipped her toes in the ocean with her mum.

Splashing around: Little Sophia was never far away from her doting mum, holding Tamara's hand as they cooled down in the ocean

Tamara and Sophia, who live in London, arrived in California earlier this month for one of their regular visits to sister Petra Stunt, who is also a mum to daughter Lavinia, three, and twin sons Andrew and James, one.

It's also been a typically jet-set summer for Tamara, who only days before jetting to LA had been taking in the sights of Croatia after soaking up the sun in Mykonos.

Tamara's husband Jay Rutland has also been back and forth to LA to holiday with his wife and her family.
She's been enjoying an idyllic summer break with her family in Italy.

And Lydia Bright was clearly feeling cheeky on Sunday as she shared a revealing snap while posing on a pebble beach in a little black bikini.

Channelling her inner mermaid, the TOWIE star, 26, was captured from behind, showing off her killer figure in a skimpy black two-piece.

Scroll down for video

Isn't life peachy? Lydia Bright was clearly feeling cheeky on Sunday as she shared a revealing snap while posing on a pebble beach in a little black bikini

With her arms thrust towards the sky in joy, the reality star wrote next to the shot: 'Sunshine, shining down on me #Italy #FamilyVacay #Beach #Mermaid' (sic).

With Mediterranean summer tan glowing, the tie of her bikini top was loosely knotted in a bow as she worked her magic in front of the lens.

Looking fresh out of the water, Lydia's usually tousled blonde locks tumbled down her back in tight curls, helped by the salty sea water.

Cheers! Last week, the TOWIE star, 26, took to Instagram to share her beautiful backdrop as she enjoyed a fruity cocktail in front of a picturesque mountain scape.

Last week, the slender star took to Instagram to share her beautiful backdrop as she enjoyed a fruity cocktail in front of a picturesque mountain scape.

Captioning the shot, she wrote: Happy Wednesday, Apersol spritz and mountain views.

The TV personality is currently enjoying a European jaunt with her family after completing her filming commitments with The Only Way Is Essex  which returns for a fourteenth series later this year.

A second shot finds Lydia in a jubilant mood as she takes a bicycle ride through a modest Italian street alongside her father Dave.

Good times: Another shot showed Lydia in a jubilant mood as she took a bicycle ride through a modest Italian street alongside her father Dave

'Afternoon bike ride with my one and only paps. Moments like these  #familyvacay #BrightsOnTour #Italy,' she captioned the snap.

Lydia also revealed that the Bright family holiday started favourably with her brother Freddie discovering he'd been offered a promising job.

Sharing a shot of the pair eating ice-lollies on the beach, she wrote: 'What a way to start our family vacay. My special one @f_bright got offered the job he wanted. Congratulations baby bro celebrating over tropical ice lollies.'

Celebration: Lydia also revealed that the Bright family holiday started favourably with her brother Freddie, 18, discovering he'd been offered a promising job

Lydia is single after ending her tumultuous on-off romance with James 'Arg' Argent in May.

The pair dated on and off for years until 2012, before Lydia went on to date TOWIE co-star Tom Kilbey for a year.
Casualty is poised to celebrate its milestone 30th anniversary with an explosive feature length episode that will leave the lives of its central characters hanging in the balance.

A new trailer for the forthcoming episode find a host of show favourites surprising staff nurse Charlie Fairhead's with a party to celebrate his three decades at Holby City Hospital.

The character, played by actor Derek Thompson, is presented with an anniversary cake to much applause and cheering in recognition of his position as the hospital's longest serving staff member.

Scroll down for video

Devastation: Casualty is poised to celebrate its milestone 30th anniversary with an explosive feature length episode that will leave the lives of its central characters hanging in the balance

But an auspicious start soon turns awry when an air ambulance crashes through the roof of the hospitals A&E department after being struck by a drone  leaving destruction in its wake.

While the death toll is unclear, the special episode will see the return of old characters Duffy, played by Cathy Shipton, and Josh, played by Ian Bleasdale.

Reflecting on the forthcoming episode, producer Erika Hossington the Radio Times that cast and crew worked with the Association of Air Ambulances for several months to make the storyline dramatically accurate.

Auspicious start: A new trailer for the forthcoming episode find a host of show favourites surprising staff nurse Charlie Fairhead's with a party to celebrate his three decades at Holby City Hospital

It's all for you: The character, played by actor Derek Thompson, is presented with an anniversary cake to much applause and cheering in recognition of his position as the hospital's longest serving staff member

Make a wish: Charlie is the centre of attention on Saturday evening

'Every accident we feature in the show has always happened for real  so we have to apply huge sensitivity to that,' she said.

'They came in to meet with us and we had various ideas about how the helicopter could crash and the drone suggestion came from them.

'It's not happened in the UK before but it has happened elsewhere, and it is something the service is incredibly worried about.'

Do you hear that? Charlie looks troubled despite being gifted with an anniversary cake

Something's coming: An auspicious start soon turns awry when an air ambulance crashes through the roof of the hospitals A&E department after being struck by a drone

Far in their eyes: While the death toll is unclear, the special episode will feature numerous characters from past and present

Looking up: Hospital staff members are in the firing line as an air ambulance plummets through the roof

Devastation: A huge explosion rips through A&E in scenes to be aired on Saturday evening

Executive producer Oliver Kent added that the feature length episode will be a an opportunity for Casualty show new viewers what it does best.

He said: 'Because we do stunts. Its not wildly out of the ballpark of what we normally do, its just much more concentrated. Its for 110 minutes and its got a score.

'And I think that if people watch it and then watch the next episode, theyre not going to be disappointed.'

Casualty will air on Saturday August 27, BBC1 at 8pm.
She created enemies during her time on The Bachelor due to her outspoken personality.

And on Monday, evicted contestant Keira Maguire took a swipe at her fellow hopefuls as she appeared on Network 10's quiz show, Have You Been Paying Attention.

The 29-year-old revealed the females have contacted her since she left the house but admits she feels like they are using her for publicity.

Scroll down for video

Outspoken: Evicted Bachelor contestant Keira Maguire took a swipe at her fellow hopefuls on Monday as she appeared on Network 10's quiz show, Have You Been Paying Attention

'Yeah, they all did [gotten in touch]. They just want to be friends with me now because I'm getting the most attention,' she said, adding: 'Let's face it'.

The candid remark left the panel of comedians and media personalities shocked as they broke into laughter.

Funnyman and guest Dilruk Jayasinha later asked Keira: 'Do you have anything to get off your chest?'

No holding back: While revealing the females have contacted her since she left the house, she said: 'They just want to be friends with me now because I'm getting the most attention'

Tension: Keira concluded her hurtful comment with: 'Let's face it'

Earlier in the night, the blonde beauty took another sneaky swipe at fellow contestant Olena Khamula after the show aired footage of her plane ride with Richie Strahan followed by a promo of a plane crash from Home And Away.

After watching the edited clip, Keira commented: 'I was going to say I wish... but I like Olena.'

Radio host and actor Ed Kavalee laughed, adding: 'I don't think I have ever seen Keira have so much fun.'

Another dig? Earlier, she took a swipe at Olena Khamula, after the show aired footage of her plane ride with Richie followed by a crash from Home & Away, which she followed with 'I was going to say I wish, but I like Olena,'

The former reality TV star's comments comes after she spent the weekend partying with co-star Sasha Zhuravlyova.

Over the last two weeks, Keira has also been seen enjoying dinner with Georgia Tripos, Laura Williams and Tolyna Baan as the girls provided her with support after her cult childhood upbringing was made public.

After being sent home by Richie, the outspoken blonde did not refrain from slamming the other ladies.

Fun and games: Radio host and actor Ed Kavalee laughed, adding: 'I don't think I have ever seen Keira so much fun'

'I do not give a f*** about those b******. I'm so glad to get out of there. They're all nasty. Like, ugh, pieces of work,' she said in the car as she left the show.

'Like, I can't even deal. I hope Richie gets to know these girls properly before he makes his decision. If I was a guy, I wouldn't date half of those girls.
He's an Australian television icon who has graced the small screens for the last 30 years.

Now, TV legend Frankie J Holden has opened up about his new low-key life with wife Michelle Pettigrove.

During an interview with Woman's Day, the 63-year-old revealed he and his partner gave up the city life in Melbourne and moved into a caravan park on the New South Wales south coast.

Scroll down for video

The relaxed life: TV legend Frankie J Holden has opened up about his new low-key life with wife Michelle Pettigrove

He explained the couple live in the portable home along the beachside with their 14-year-old daughter, Georgia.

'Our sea change is the best move we have ever made,' the A Place To Call Home actor gushed.

'I immediately fell in love with it and realised I felt like travelling back in time.'

From city to beachside: The 63-year-old revealed he and his partner gave up the city life in Melbourne and moved into a caravan park on the New South Wales south coast

Excited: He said: 'Our sea change is the best move we have ever made. I immediately fell in love with it and realised I felt like travelling back in time'

Tree change: Frankie says doesn't regret leaving behind the busy city life and enjoys getting to know the regular holiday goers who stay at the park

He continued: 'There were no fast food franchises or traffic lights, great beaches and fishing and an airport up the road at Merimbula.'

Frankie added he doesn't regret leaving behind the busy city life and enjoys getting to know the regular holiday goers who stay at the park.

'We do pizza nights, hot spuds, gigs, karaoke, trivia nights and morning teas,' he told with excitement.

The couple bought the caravan park, Tathra Beachside some three years ago and can often be seen mingling with the guests, serving up spuds and cranking out a few tunes with his band.

The beginning: Frankie rose to fame in the early 1970s as the frontman for the Australian retro-rock band Ol' 55 before appearing in Prisoner in the 80s

Happily ever after: He went on to feature in The Big Steal and A Country Practice before marrying his co-star and now wife Michelle in 1999

Frankie rose to fame in the early 1970s as the frontman for the Australian retro-rock band Ol' 55 before appearing in Prisoner in the 80s.

He went on to feature in The Big Steal and A Country Practice before marrying his co-star and now wife Michelle in 1999.

The pair share one daughter, Georgia, 14 while Frankie also has three daughters from a previous marriage as well as four grandchildren.
They became parents for the first time together in March 2015 after welcoming their son, Valentino.

And over the weekend, Asher Keddie and Vincent Fantauzzo took some time out from parenting and enjoyed a day out at the Audi Race Week in Hamilton Island.

The actress stunned at the event as she slipped her slender frame into a black flowing dress which featured a V-neckline and short sleeves.

Scroll down for video

Alone time: Asher Keddie and Vincent Fantauzzo took some time out from parenting and enjoyed a day out at the Audi Race Week in Hamilton Island over the weekend

The garment fell loosely over her figure and finished inches below her knee.

Asher accessorised her attire with a pair of peep-toed boot heels.

While wearing her blonde hair out with a natural wave, she opted for a nude-base makeup which included a glossy pink lipstick.

Stunner: The actress (second from left) stunned at the event as she slipped her slender frame into a black flowing dress which featured a V-neckline and short sleeves

Vincent cut a casual look at the function as he dressed in a pair of denim trousers, which he rolled at the bottom, and a black T-shirt.

He added a striped long-sleeves shirt to his attire which he opted to leave unbottoned.

As he wrapped his arm around his wife, the artist displayed a slight smirk for the camera.

Out and about: Days earlier, the pair attended the Audi Hamilton Island Race Week together

Last month, the Offspring star revealed she would not rule out having a second baby, saying she would prefer to leave it down to fate.

The actress admitted she has found raising her one-year-old son 'challenging'.

'I like surprises and Valentino was a surprise. I don't close doors very often so we'll just see,' she told InStyle.

Family: Last month, the Offspring revealed she would not rule out having a second baby, saying she would prefer to leave it down to fate

'I do have an Italian husband who loves children, but with work at the moment I'm just so focused on jumping back into it.'

Asher, who is also a step-mother to her husband's son Luca, said the past year has been a 'roller coaster' both emotionally and physically.

'It was challenging, but it was also the most full of love any time has ever felt for me  I wasn't expecting it to give me so much purpose,' she said.
On Sunday Jordana Brewster resembled a movie icon.

While walking at an LA Farmers Market, the 36-year-old Fast And Furious star looked eerily similar to 53-year-old Demi Moore.

Brewster, who welcomed her second son Rowan Brewster-Form by surrogate in June, was with her first son Julian as well as husband Andrew Form as they picked up fresh produce and flowers.

She looks like someone else! Jordana Brewster was a dead ringer for Demi Moore when she took her family to a Farmers Market in LA on Sunday

The icon: The 53-year-old Moore is one of the most striking actresses to ever work in Hollywood; here she is seen in 2011 in NYC

Brewster showcased her slender figure in a billowing white blouse that was uniquely decorated with a dark orange sleeve.

She paired it with a form-fitting denim skirt and camel-colored moccasin-style shoes for comfort as she pushed her son's stroller through the market.

The mom-of-two wore her long brunette locks down, parted in the middle, and had on movie star sunglasses.

Picture perfect: The Fast and Furious star had a sun-kissed glow, matching the highlights of her wavy brunette hair

Jordana kept her accessories to a minimum donning a gold watch on her left wrist and her diamond wedding ring.

Her film producer husband - who married the pretty brunette in 2007 after meeting on set of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning - dressed in a casual T-shirt, grey cargo shorts and a green cap.

The couple are parents to two sons via surrogate; welcoming Julian two years ago and Rowan on June 9th.

Doting parents! Jordana and producer husband Andrew Form married in 2007 and welcomed their son Julian and two-month-old boy Rowan via surrogate

Family outing: The looker seems to be nicely settled with her husband and two children

On top of taking care of her two boys, the Fast and Furious actress is in the middle of filming her new series, FOX's Lethal Weapon, as well as promoting ABC's Secrets and Lies.

Jordana will play Maureen Cahill in the upcoming FOX series and offered fans an insight to the show.

'I feel like enough time has passed that we'll be introducing it to a whole new generation,' she told Romper.

Precious: Julian looked comfortable in his stroller seat as he donned a white t-shirt, dark blue cargo shorts with matching color sneakers

'There are still a lot of people who have really, really fond memories of seeing [the original] back in the day,' the star added.

The show will air alongside Empire on Wednesday nights this fall.

She is currently in production for Fast 8 alongside Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Vin Diesel, Nathalie Emmanuel and Charlize Theron, although it is unclear how big her role will be in the latest of the franchise.

'Chillin:' The proud mum posted a precious photo of her two-month-old son donning a fresh pair of blue sunglasses and matching onesie
Kaya Scodelario has confirmed the sex of her unborn baby in a new Instagram post, weeks after using the same social media platform to announce her first pregnancy.

The actress, 24, revealed that she is expecting a boy after posting pictures from a baby shower thrown for Kaya and husband Benjamin Walker Davis on Monday afternoon.

In a snap shared with her one million followers, the heavily pregnant star is joined by her husband while showing off one of her gifts  a large blue balloon spelling the word BOY.

Scroll down for video

It's a boy! Kaya Scoladario has confirmed the sex of her unborn baby in a new Instagram post, weeks after using the same social media platform to announce her first pregnancy.

'Captioning the shot Kaya thanked her pals for putting together the baby shower, writing: I have the most wonderful friends in the world. Thank you@paige167h @hanshan_x @xleahx4 for throwing us an amazing surprise baby shower. We love you, and so will your future nephew!!'

The actress later posed alongside a handful of said friends in a second snap which finds her sporting a silver sash bearing the words Mummy To Be.

Kaya previously revealed she had started to develop unusual hunger cravings in a post shared shortly after she confirmed her pregnancy.

With friends like these: The actress sported a silver sash bearing the words Mummy To Be after revealing her pals had thrown her and husband Benjamin Walker Davis a surprise baby shower

'Is it wrong to eat pizza at 8.30am? Asking for a pregnant friend...' she wrote on Twitter in June.

Kaya - who rose to fame playing Effy Stonem in E4's gritty teen drama Skins in 2007 - made her pregnancy announcement earlier that month by sharing a picture of herself and Benjamin walking along the beach with their pet dog, as they clutched her growing tummy.

With a love heart drawn in the sand, the married couple made their revelation in the caption of the Instagram post.

'I love our little family': Kaya announced she is pregnant with her first child with husband Benjamin with this cute Instagram post in June

She captioned the picture with the words: 'I love you @findthewalker I love our little family,' alongside some baby emojis.

Weeks later the actress showed off her gorgeous maternity figure during a 'babymoon' getaway in Santorini, Greece with her husband.

Looking stunning and visibly glowing while sitting on the edge of a pool, Kaya commanded attention against the azure blue ocean behind her.

The Maze Runner star donned a skimpy strapless bikini top and matching purple printed briefs, showcasing her blossoming figure and smiling broadly, her raven tresses slicked back away from her face.

Bump in a bikini! Kaya Scodelario glowed while showing off her gorgeous baby bump during her idyllic holiday with husband Benjamin Walker in Santorini in July

Mwah: Kaya, 24, and her handsome spouse Benjamin, 34, puckered up for a sweet snap as she gushed over their 'perfect Babymoon'

The happiest of couples: Throughout the idyllic Greek island getaway, Kaya and her man Benjamin - to whom she tied the knot in December - made sure to keep their fans involved with their antics

Throughout the idyllic Greek island getaway, Kaya and her man Benjamin - with whom she tied the knot in December - made sure to keep their fans involved with their antics.

One of the twosome's shots saw them sharing a passionate kiss in front of yet another impressive vista.

Wearing a pretty little orange lace dress, Kaya's bump just visible, the duo appeared happier than ever as they enjoyed their vacations months before becoming first-time parents.

Along with the sweet snap, Kaya wrote: 'The perfect Babymoon.'

Taking it in: The Maze Runner actress bared her back while looking over the sea, her husband no doubt behind the camera

Hunk: Benjamin - an actor and comedian - revealed his hunky frame as he went shirtless to catch the sun's rays

The pair originally met in April 2014 when they were cast in The Moon And The Sun, but within two months had become an item.

The actress, who appears opposite Johnny Depp in the forthcoming Pirates Of The Caribbean film, has proved her devotion to Ben by getting his name tattooed on her engagement finger.

Kaya originally found fame as Tony Stonem's younger rebellious younger sister Effy in E4's British teen series Skins.

She's expecting: Kaya's baby bump was well in evidence at the Valentino Menswear fashion show in Paris

Loved-up: The pair originally met in April 2014 when they were cast in The Moon And The Sun, but within two months had become an item

She went on to find fame in Hollywood, being cast The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials on the big screen.

Prior to dating Ben, the star was in a long-term romance with Shameless actor Eliott Tittensor, before splitting in late 2013.

Meanwhile, Ben's two year marriage to Mamie Gummer - daughter of Meryl Streep - ended in early 2013.

The blushing bride: Benjamin popped the question after six months of dating in December 2014, and they tied the knot in 2015

The couple married in a 2015 winter wedding after Ben popped the question within six months of dating.

Kaya announced in low-key fashion in January 2016 that she was a married woman in an image of bride and a groom wedding cake toppers.
Closing billions of dollars in real estate pays off when an anniversary rolls round.

And Fredrik Eklund spent the past few days enjoying the benefits in Mykonos with David Kaplan, whom he married in 2013.

The Million Dollar Listing New York star celebrated a six-year romance with his husband, documenting their holiday on Instagram in a series of photos that frequently bared the high-kicker's sculpted torso.

Scroll down for video

The look of love: Over the past few days, Fredrik Eklund (right) and Derek Kaplan (left) have holidaying in Mykonos to celebrate six years together

In one photo from the ritzy Cavo Tagoo hotel, the 39-year-old stood in a swimming pool wearing nothing but trunks and holding a plate of orange slices. His cut-glass abs stole the scene from a breathtaking view of the Aegean Sea.

'Good morning!' he captioned the Sunday upload. 'Oranges, anyone?'

Another post that day showed only his dashing better half in a T-shirt and shorts that hinted at his own well-built figure. He stood beside a Jeep on a cobblestone path as the sun set over the sea behind him.

'I'm a lucky guy. #6 years,' the Stockholm native wrote.

What ocean view? In a photo uploaded yesterday, the Million Dollar Listing New York star's abs stole focus from the glittering Aegean Sea behind him

Earlier that day, he'd elaborated on their relationship in his caption to a photo from Mykonos Town's charmingly rustic Little Venice neighbourhood, near the famous windmills.

The former porn star sunned himself on a waterfront terrace, showing off the arrow-pierced heart tattooed on his arm.'This is where I knocked on Derek's shoulder six years ago today,' he reminisced, 'and so much has changed since then.'

In a blog post Bravo published in April, Eklund described in detail when they met in Mykonos in 2010. After, as the song says, seeing a stranger across a crowded room, 'All I said was "why are you so handsome?" over and over again, probably with a strong Swedish accent which I get when I'm nervous.'

The next morning, 'We woke up together and spent the rest of the week together, drove around the island in my little rented car and exchanged dreams of the future. We drank wine, ate tsatsiki, swam in the ocean, talked, talked, talked.'

Some enchanted evening: The pair met in the summer of 2010 when they caught sight of each other across a crowded room in Mykonos

He felt so close to his new paramour, 'When Derek had to leave back to London, I cried in front of him which was so embarrassing because who does that after just a few days together?' They had to surmount living across the pond from one another to make the relationship last.

The pair, who appeared in another Instagram photo in which Eklund wrapped his arms about a smiling Kaplan from behind, married three years after meeting.

Though they've raised no children together, their 2015 attempt at surrogacy having ended in a miscarriage, Kaplan has a son.

Kai is the result of the painter's sperm donation to a lesbian couple in London, though the Harare native and his husband consider themselves parental figures to him as well. Six weeks ago, Eklund wrote alongside an Instagram photo of himself and Kai together, 'Kai now has two fathers. '

'So much has changed since then': The 39-year-old and 41-year-old married in 2013

The profusion of Instagram posts of his current holiday, however, were not only about family. On Saturday, he announced, 'Arrived,' next to a photo of himself relaxing shirtless at Cavo Tagoo. Rose chilled in a bucket of ice beside him.

He rhapsodised about the wine in another post that day. A photo showed a glass of it and a glass of what appeared to be whisky accompanying a plate of Greek salad.

The reality star effervesced at great length, detailing for instance how the wine 'almost jumps in joy and then splashes flat,' and how the crackling ice 'whispers welcome to Greece, you little Swedish meatball.'

'Arrived': The pair (Kaplan not pictured) reached Mykonos on Saturday

He did eventually redirect the post toward his marriage, 'I dip my finger in the tzatziki, suck on it for a second and let the cold garlic spread on my tongue, and I think I can't wait to kiss Big D with this breath of love.'

Garlicky kisses aside, the man who's sold property to John Legend and Daniel Craig set aside time for work as well.

On Monday, though he posted a photo of his and his husband's colourful drinks at their hotel, he did caption it, 'Writing, writing, writing... And this is my view right now. ' The Aegean stretched out before him.

'Welcome to Greece': The Stockholm native posted a photo of his meal and drinks and spent a lengthy caption heaping praise upon them
She's been photographed flaunting her hard-earned new figure while on vacation at friend Joe Francis' estate in Punta Mita, Mexico.

But by Saturday it seemed Kim Kardashian was finished showing off, and ready for a bit of alone time.

The clever 35-year-old reportedly used a lookalike friend, sporting a bathing suit similar to one she had worn earlier that week, to trick paparazzi, as reported by TMZ.

Scroll down for video

Lookalike: Kim Kardashian escaped the cameras for a day as one of her friends hung around the Punta Mita resort on Saturday sporting a similar bikini, fooling paparazzi

Just like Kim! The raven-haired beauty also showed off her ample assets in the revealing swimsuit on Saturday

Kim's lookalike had long, raven tresses, wet from enjoying the surf, and she wore a nude bikini not unlike one Kim had sported earlier that week.

It's not hard to understand how she was mistaken for the E! star from afar, as she, too, showed off her ample assets in the tiny bikini.

The plunging string bikini top could barely contain the woman's curves, and it was teamed with similarly revealing bottoms.

Keeping busy: Kim's 'twin' was spotted pulling her hair back before hopping back onto her phone

In good company: The doppelganger was spotted relaxing beside a dark-haired bikini beauty who looked to be Kim's assistant Steph Shep

Fueling up: The lookalike and Steph looked to be enjoying a break to eat as they relaxed in the lounge chairs

Though her suit was not textured like Kim's, the reality star's lookalike friend did sport a similar, nude string bikini for the day.

Her long, dark locks were also longer than the Keeping Up with the Kardashian star's, cascading down her back, while Kim's fell around her shoulders while pulled up in a ponytail on Thursday.

The doppelganger accessorized with a pair of over-sized sunglasses as she was spotted relaxing by the pool alongside Kim's friends.

Her girls: Kim had posed alongside Steph and another friend for a sexy selfie taken that weekend

Chatting: The Kimoji app creator's crafty friends helped keep her secret as they interacted with the lookalike as they would have with Kim

Bundled up: Both Kim (R, on Thursday) and her doppelganger (L, on Saturday) wrapped up in a cozy, white towel after taking a dip

And much like the social media queen, the raven-haired mystery woman was spotted clinging to her phone as she strutted around the Casa Aramara resort.

She was also spotted hanging out on a lounge chair by a woman with similarly dark locks, who looked to be Kim's assistant Steph Shep.

Steph had been seen cozying up to Kim earlier in the week as the pair - along with a third friend - showed off their revealing swimsuits.

Enjoying the resort: The lookalike was reportedly a pal of Kim's, who was seen mimicking the star's behavior, in addition to her style, as she kept busy on her phone amid dips in the water

Center of attention: The raven-haired woman was spotted chatting with a friend as she read something off of her cell phone
She's a rising star in Hollywood thanks to her role as Trish Walker on Netflix's Jessica Jones.

And Rachael Taylor has certainly come a long way since her humble beginnings as a beauty pageant princess in her home state of Tasmania.

During an appearance on Nova's Fitzy & Wippa this week, the 32-year-old received an unwelcome blast from the past when Fitzy reminded the former Miss Teen Tasmania 1998 just where her showbiz career started.

Cringe: Rachael Taylor was embarrassed to revisit her past as a former Miss Teen Tasmania 1998 during an appearance on Fitzy & Wippa this week

'I really want to scrub this from whatever Internet hole it's in,' said the blonde beauty as she visibly cringed at the mention of her pageant past.

She added: 'It's the humiliation of my life. It's really embarrassing.'

The Australian star turned Hollywood bigwig is back Down Under to launch a local campaign for skincare brand Neutrogena.

'I really want to scrub this from whatever Internet hole it's in,' said the blonde beauty as she visibly cringed.

'It's the humiliation of my life. It's really embarrassing, continued the 32-year-old

With the success of Jessica Jones, Rachael is busier than ever.

The blonde currently has three movies in the pipeline, including the star-studded Gold.

The dramatic thriller stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Matthew McConaughey, and was directed by Academy Award winner Stephen Gaghan.

She's also rumoured to be appear in Marvel's next Netflix series, The Defenders, which already stars Jessica Jones' Krysten Ritter.
She's back in one of the TOWIE cast's favourite holiday destinations.

And Gemma Collins didn't waste any time after touching down in Dubai, heading to the pool to top up her tan and share a sizzling Instagram shot with her fans.

The bubbly blonde posted a selfie on her social media, where she appeared to be topless as she enjoyed the balmy heat.

Scroll down for video

Sizzling: Gemma Collins didn't waste any time after touching down in Dubai, heading to the pool to top up her tan before sharing a topless Instagram shot with her fans

Gemma, 35, laid on her front for the shot, with her ample assets glimpsed as she stretched out on her towel.

With damp locks and a hint of makeup, the ex TOWIE star was ready to soak up some rays.

She captioned the shot with a cheery: 'Morning all happy Dubai vibes it's holiday time.'

Gemma has been keeping busy this summer working in her Brentwood, Essex store and spending time with her family.

Holiday time! Gemma has been keeping busy this summer working in her Brentwood, Essex store and spending time with her family

And things could be looking up for the star's love life too as she was recently seen enjoying a late night rendezvous with TOWIE co-star Jon Clark, 26.

After admitting she'd developed a crush on the former Love Island star, it seems her plan was coming together as she invited him into her home

The couple were seen hugging before he followed her inside, but a representative for Gemma told MailOnline: 'They're not dating - they were filming for Towie. Gemma cooked him dinner and they enjoyed a night in.'

Jon famously attempted to find romance on the 2015 series of Love Island - where he finished the series by proposing to Playboy bunny Hannah Elizabeth - but split just three months later.

Romance? Things could be looking up for the star's love life too as she was recently seen enjoying a late night rendezvous with TOWIE co-star Jon Clark, 26

Meanwhile, Gemma famously dated James 'Arg' Argent, was engaged to Rami Hawash, and discovered her most recent beau Stephen Mortimer, had been sent back to prison whilst she was inside the Celebrity Big Brother house this January.

Last month, the star revealed exclusively to MailOnline that she was dating mixologist to the stars JJ Goodman, 28.

The pair met on MailOnline's Seriously Popular yacht at Cannes Lions festival in June, immediately hitting it off when they shared a panel discussion.

He's a proper gentleman,' she gushed. 'Any man who can take treat me like a princess and then share a Club Sandwich with me is definitely "The One" in my books.'
She never fails to impress in the style stakes, both on and off the red carpet.

And Georgia May-Foote didn't let her style streak end when she stepped out for a visit to the BBC Radio 2 studios on Monday.

Arriving at the studios in Marylebone, London in a nutmeg mini dress, the 25-year-old former Coronation Street star cut a chic and trendy figure.

Scroll down for video

Chic and stylish: Georgia May-Foote didn't let her style streak end when she stepped out for a visit to the BBC Radio 2 studios on Monday

Georgia, who was a runner-up in last year's Strictly Come Dancing, looked the epitome of laid-back summer style.

Opting for an off-the-shoulder knitted number, the actress showed a tantalizing amount of skin whilst retaining a demure air.

She teamed the thigh-length number with a pair of knee-high black boots, which drew attention to the star's lithe and tan legs.

No sequins here: Arriving at the studios in Marylebone, London in a nutmeg mini dress, the 25-year-old former Coronation Street star cut a chic and trendy figure

Keeping things simple yet stylish, Georgia accessorised her look with a black choker, hooped earrings and black quilted leather handbag.

The star - who is now dating her former Strictly dance partner, Giovanni Pernice -wore her long brown locks scraped back off of her face into a topknot ponytail.

Georgia complement her pretty featured by highlight her eyes with a Kohl eye, whilst she plumped up her lips with a coral lipstick.

A hint of skin: Opting for an off-the-shoulder knitted number, the actress showed a tantalizing amount of skin whilst retaining a demure air

Best foot forward: She teamed the thigh-length number with a pair of knee-high black boots, which drew attention to the star's lithe and tan legs

Simple style: Keeping things simple yet stylish, Georgia accessorised her look with a black choker, hooped earrings and black quilted leather handbag.

Clasping a folder and coffee in one hand as she entered the building, the star looked well prepared for her outing at the BBC.

And it seems that Georgia ran into some familiar faces while she was out, as the former Strictly runner-up had a catch-up with one of this year's stars hoping to bag the glitterball trophy.

Beaming brightly as she stood between Daisey Lowe and Portia Freeman, the Northern actress certainly seemed pleased to see the models.

'She is amazing and will smash @bbcstrictly this year!!!': The former Strictly runner-up had a catch-up with one of this year's stars, Daisy Lowe, and tipped her to be a success

And, it would seem that Georgia is keen for Daisy to win this year's show, as she captioned the image:

'Loving quick catch up with @daisylowe @kirstyreilly13 @portiaportiaaaa she is amazing and will smash @bbcstrictly this year!!!'

Daisy was one of the first stars to be announced for this year's show, and is currently lined-up against: Anastacia, BBC Breakfast's Naga Munchetty, Louise Redknapp, Laura Whitmore and Claudia Fragapane.

The male contestants for this year's competition are: former shadow chancellor Ed Balls, Hollyoaks' Danny Mac, Will Young, Kiss FM DJ Melvin Odoom, Ore Oduba and Judge Rinder.
Chris Hemsworth is currently filming Thor: Ragnarok in Brisbane.

And it looks like fans are in for a treat from the next Marvel blockbuster, after a photo from the set revealed a juicy plot detail.

In the photo, Chris can be seen holding a piece of paper with 177a Bleecker St, New York City written on it - i.e. the Sanctum Sanctorum.

How exciting: A clue from the Brisbane set of Thor: Ragnarok hints that Chris Hemsworth's iconic character will meet Dr. Stephen Vincent Strange

According to the Gold Coast Bulletin, this means that Thor will likely meet Dr. Stephen Vincent Strange in the film.

Dr. Strange is played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who is a newcomer to the popular superhero franchise.

Cumberbatch will also star in his own standalone film, Doctor Strange, which is due out in November.

Good spirits: Chris Hemsworth looked happy as he filmed the blockbuster movie

In good hands: Acclaimed New Zealand director Taika Waititi is behind the next Thor movie

Meanwhile, Chris has also been seen on the Brisbane Thor: Ragnarok set with his friend and co-star Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki in the films.

The duo play brothers in the blockbuster, alongside fellow stars Cate Blanchett, Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Hopkins.

Taika Waititi is directing the latest Thor entry, which is due for release next year.

Friends: Chris was also spotted filming with his friend and co-star Tom Hiddleston

Other Marvel movies on the horizon include Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Avengers: Infinity War and many more.

There's also a string of new Marvel Netflix shows coming up, including the highly-anticipated The Defenders and The Punisher.

While most of the shows have done well, ABC's Agent Carter unfortunately saw declining ratings after its first season, and was eventually canceled after completing its second season.
Last month she got engaged to Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel.

And Miranda Kerr looked glowing with happiness as she posed for cameras on Malibu beach - while ex- husband Orlando Bloom played with their son Flynn nearby.

The 33-year-old Victoria's Secret Model put on a sizzling display in a gold bikini as she posed up a storm.

Making a splash! Miranda Kerr looked glowing with happiness as she posed for cameras on Malibu beach - while ex- husband Orlando Bloom played with their son Flynn nearby

Wearing a peach silk wraparound dress with delicate straps, she looked every inch the supermodel.

The delicate strappy piece was tied together at her waist, accentuating her toned midriff.

Letting the elegant wraparound blow open in the breeze, she flashed a hint of her gold bikini.

Hot stuff! The 33-year-old Victoria's Secret Model put on a sizzling display in a gold bikini as she posed up a storm

Turning heads! Wearing a peach silk wraparound dress with delicate straps, she looked every inch the supermodel

The glittery two-piece fitted her long lithe figure perfectly, showcasing her toned pins.

And looking every inch the bronzed goddess, the mother-of-one left her brunette locks loose.

Beaming at the cameras, the Australian-born model went for minimal make-up.

Windswept: Letting the elegant wraparound blow open in the breeze, she flashed a hint of her gold bikini

And Miranda even brought her adorable pooch, who looked a natural poser as he relaxed on the beach with the model.

In July DailyMail.com broke the news that Miranda accepted a proposal from 26-year-old tech superstar Evan, who she has been dating for one year.

'They are extremely happy,' a spokesperson for the Snapchat CEO told DailyMail.com exclusively.

Golden delight! The glittery two-piece fitted her long lithe figure perfectly, showcasing her toned pins

Miranda later shared an image of her stunning sparkler to Instagram confirming that Evan had indeed asked her to be his wife, with the beaming message: 'I said yes!!!'

Forbes has valued Spiegel - who founded Snapchat while he was still at Stanford - at $2.1billion, making him one of the youngest self-made billionaires in the world.

Miranda and Evan stepped out in public together as a couple in June 2015 after first meeting at a Louis Vuitton dinner in New York City in 2014.

Natural beauty! Beaming at the cameras, the Australian-born model went for minimal make-up

The 33-year-old former Victoria's Secret model said that even though they hit it off together almost immediately, they began their relationship as friends.

'We were really good friends for a long time before we started dating,' said Miranda to a newspaper in Australia when she was asked how her and Evan came together.

The supermodel has also said in the past that she waited six months before she introduced Evan to her five-year-old son Flynn.

Taken woman: In July DailyMail.com broke the news that Miranda accepted a proposal from 26-year-old tech superstar Evan, who she has been dating for one year

She said: '[My ex and I decided] that we had to know the person for six months and feel good about them [before introducing them to Flynn].

'Evan met Flynn, so yeah, things are going well. Orlando thinks he's great. We're just a modern family now!'

Meanwhile her ex Orlando is reportedly keen to marry girlfriend Katy Perry.

An insider told People on Wednesday: 'He would love to settle down with Katy and have more kids.'

The source added they are 'not engaged yet but things do seem to be heading that way.'

News! Miranda later shared an image of her stunning sparkler to Instagram confirming that Evan had indeed asked her to be his wife, with the beaming message: 'I said yes!!!'
Earlier on Monday morning, he set tongues wagging when he tweeted that he'd opted for 'no numbing cream or pain killer' ahead of a mystery procedure.

And by the afternoon, Geordie Shore hunk Gary 'Gaz' Beadle finally revealed that he'd spent three hours getting a blue rose etched on the back of his hand as a tribute to his mother Shirley.

Flaunting his new art on Twitter, the reality TV star uploaded a photograph of it along with the caption: 'Ok so today this happened... Thank you @Mattwebbtattoo mam's favourite flower, some amazing colour, hand piece!! (sic).'

Devotion: On Monday Geordie Shore hunk Gary 'Gaz' Beadle revealed that he'd spent three hours getting a blue rose etched on the back of his hand as a tribute to his mother Shirley

The tattoo - Gaz's first - may come as a surprise to his 2.9 million Instagram followers, who have long admired his blemish-free, gym-honed form.

In recent days he has posted a series of shirtless pics that showed off his taut, tattoo-free body.

His decision to get a tattoo comes just hours before he's planning to head off to Zante in Greece to visit his bar Pure Beach Club and staff ahead of Rudimental's performance.

He's got it: The arrival of Gaz's first tattoo may surprise many of his 2.9million Instagram followers, who have long admired his smooth, gym-honed body, as seen in this snap he uploaded last week

Tease: On Monday morning Gaz revealed that he 'went for no numbing cream or pain killer' before revealing that he'd just had his first tattooed inked on his left hand

He teased: 'ZANTE tomorrow !!!! @PureZante (sic).'

Meanwhile, Gaz hasn't had the best of luck when it comes to travelling over the past few weeks as he was forced to spend 36 hours on a military base in Australia, when he was refused entry in New Zealand over his 'battered' passport.

The lothario was eventually released and sent back to the UK but he has admitted he's planning to move Down Under permanently once he's finished on the MTV reality show.

So hot right now: Gaz has been living up to his lothario reputation so far on the new series of Ex On The Beach

Gaz has been living up to his womanizing reputation so far on the new series of Ex On The Beach.

On the second episode of the new series, which airs on Tuesday, Gaz shares a threesome with Charlotte Dawson and Olivia Walsh.

He is seen heading up to the famous Penthouse with Les Dawson's daughter Charlotte, soon after she arrives on the beach.

Despite yet another argument breaking out in the villa, Gaz tells the camera he's keen to end the night on a high.

He said: 'Even thought World War Three is kicking off I still think I'm gonna get Charlotte in my bed and have a little cuddle. I mean at the end of the day someone's got to make her feel welcome.'.
Onscreen couple Aidan Turner and Eleanor Tomlinson were reunited on Monday evening as the highly anticipated second series of Poldark received a preview screening in London.

The pair, husband and wife Ross and Demelza Poldark in the popular historical drama, were on hand to celebrate its imminent return at the BFI ahead of an official BBC launch in September.

Eleanor, 24, looked typically elegant in a pleated floral print dress as she posed for photo portraits alongside her leading man.

Scroll down for video

Back together: Onscreen couple Aidan Turner and Eleanor Tomlinson were reunited on Monday evening as the highly anticipated second series of Poldark received a preview screening in London

Sleeveless, thigh-length and featuring a demurely cut neckline, the Erdem dress ensured its owner stood out on a night dedicated to their increasingly popular show.

Resembling a large pair of lips, her Perspex clutch-bag added a fun twist to a stylishly subdued look, while sassy red stiletto heels rounded things off.

Standing alongside his screen wife, Aidan looked comparatively casual in a polo shirt and blazer over loose fitting Wrangler jeans.

Stunning: Eleanor, 24, looked typically elegant in a pleated floral print Erdem dress as she posed for photo portraits alongside her leading man.

Three's company: The pair were joined by actress Heida Reed - better known as Poldark's old sweetheart Elizabeth

A vision in black: The Icelandic star was hard to miss in a pair of Milly culottes and heavily embellished heels

The actor, 33, ensured the features that have made female viewers swoon were tied away from his face he posed for photographers ahead of the screening.

Aidan and Eleanor were also joined by co-stars Jack Farthing, who plays George Warleggan, and Heida Reed - Ross's sweetheart Elizabeth.

The Icelandic star was hard to miss in a pair of Milly culottes and heavily embellished heels.

Hello handsome: Aidan, 33, ensured the features that have made female viewers swoon were tied away from his face he posed for photographers ahead of the screening

Kiss me quick: Resembling a large pair of lips, Eleanor's Perspex clutch-bag added a fun twist to a stylishly subdued look, while sassy red stiletto heels rounded things off

A steamy new trailer suggests there more love triangle drama between Ross, Demelza and Elizabeth during the show's second instalment.

Shots of a sweaty and shirtless Ross mining underground and dancing with Demelza and Elizabeth are cut with scenes of Elizabeth asking, 'Cannot a woman love two men? Cannot a man love two women?'

The scenes may come as a surprise to some, as the show's writer previously hinted there would be no shirtless scenes in the upcoming series.

'Unfortunately autumn is very chilly in Cornwall, so he wont' be doing any in that,' writer Debbie Horsfield told The Guardian in April.

Plenty to smile about: Heidi will one again take a starring role in the second series of Poldark

In attendance: Jack Farthing, who plays George Warleggan in the show, joined co-star Aidan Turner at the event

Casual: Aidan opted to complete his look with a pair of baggy jeans for his appearance alongside Eleanor

With Irish lead Aidan Turner stripping off in the very first episode, the series became the most talked about show on TV.

However Turner himself revealed this week that his character's baring of skin was not intentional, and was actually his own idea for practicality.

Speaking to The Mirror, the star, 33, admitted: 'It was probably a huge mistake. But Poldark's out in the fields, it's a really hot day, there's a lot of work, and it wouldn't have made sense with a top on.'

'It was never supposed to be sexually provocative.'

Coming soon: Poldark makes its anticipated return to BBC One on September 4th

'So when the show came out and it all kicked off, I was a bit surprised. But it kind of put the show on the map.'

The topless scene drew in a whopping nine million viewers, while images of his physique were quick to go viral online.

The successful series, directed by Edward Bazalgette and Will McGregor, follows soldier Ross Poldark, who returns home from the American War of Independence to his father dead, estate ruined and former lover married to his cousin.

He then sets out to regain his village and control of the mines lost during his time in battle, with the help of his newly enlisted housemaid Demelza.

Poldark makes its anticipated return to BBC One on September 4th.

Heartthrob: With Irish lead Aidan Turner stripping off in the very first episode, the series became the most talked about show on TV
North West just returned from a trip to Punta Mita, Mexico, with mom Kim Kardashian on Saturday.

And the three-year-old looked to be spending some time with dad Kanye West on Monday.

On Twitter the 39-year-old rapper shared a photo of the child sitting in a bathtub filled with glow sticks. His caption read 'Glow.'

Scroll down for video

Pretty as a (Twitter) picture: North West looked mesmerized in this image shared by Kanye West on Monday

Her parents: Mom is Kim Kardashian (left in early August) and dad is Kanye (right on Sunday)

He loves the look: Kanye seems to have a fascination with neon as he uses the light in his concerts (here he is pictured in 2013) and neon was present on his Glow In The Dark poster

Glow sticks are a short-term light source that appears neon and are enclosed in a translucent plastic tube. They were invented by the military but in the 1970's were patented and made into toys for children. Because they are waterproof their chemicals will not leak when submerged.

Kanye seems to have a fascination with neon as he uses the light in his concerts and neon was present on his Glow In The Dark poster. Kim also likes neon. She wore an orange neon dress while on a boat in Mexico last week.

North was in a white bathtub and seemed to have wet hair already. There were glow sticks on the surface of the water and on the floor of the tub. There was even one pink one in her ear. It looks as if the child, aged three, had bent one of the sticks into a hoop earring.

Vacation: North has just returned from a trip to Punta Mita, Mexico, where she stayed with mom Kim and brother Saint at Joe Francis' home in Casa Aramara

She glows too! The cover girl in bright orange in Mexico with her friend Jasmine Sanders

It is not known if she was at home in Bel-Air or perhaps at grandma Kris Jenner's house in Hidden Hills.

Kanye was last seen in Los Angeles on Sunday.

North has just returned from a trip to Mexico, where she stayed with mom Kim at Joe Francis' home in Casa Aramara.

North was seen wearing a bikini as she helped mom water the lawn. Also there was her brother Saint, who is only nine months old.

Starting early: Kim and Kanye's daughter made a splash on social media last week when she tried on a pair of mom's silver thigh high shiny silver boots

Kim and Kanye's daughter made a splash on social media last week when she tried on a pair of mom's silver thigh high shiny silver boots.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashian star's outfit consisted of a white tank top and worn-in cut off denim jeans.

Kim captioned the shot: 'Didn't think it would happen this soon...my baby girl stealing my shoes. At least she has good taste #Balenciaga.'

She's a fashion plate: North, seen here in July with Kim, often wears pink dresses; Kardashian said she could be a fashion designer one day

Flashback: Kanye shared a throwback photo to Twitter earlier in the day, captioning it: 'Class of 95'

Later the 35-year-old Selfish author was seen on Snapchat modeling the exact same boots.

Earlier this year Kim told the Evening Standard that her little girl will have to get a job some day.

'I was saying that earlier to my friends, "I wonder what [North's] first job is gonna be." And they were like, "What? She's gonna have a job?" and I was like, "Are you kidding me? Of course she is."'

The pinup - who worked as an assistant before she became famous - then added: 'She will have to work for what she wants. Maybe she'll be a designer. Who knows? It's too early to tell.'
They've been married for three years.

But Jennifer Hawkins, 32, admits that she still gets nervous when her husband Jake Wall watches her on the runway.

The Myer ambassador will strut down the catwalk in Sydney on Tuesday for Myer's Spring/Summer 2016 runway show and entrepreneur Jake will be front and centre to showcase his support at the fashion event.

Scroll down for video

Jitters: Jennifer Hawkins, 32,says she still gets nervous when her husband Jake Wall watches her on the runway

'I'm super pumped, he's coming along and is going to be front row which is exciting. But it gives me different feelings. It brings on the nerves!' she told The Daily Telegraph.

Tuesday's show will mark 32-year-old Jake's first attendance in recent years, which makes it that much more special for the former Miss Universe.

'... He'll probably be backstage and then watching out there so that will be fun,' she told Yahoo7 Be.

Exciting: Tuesday's show will mark Jake's first attendance in recent years, which makes it that much more special for the former Miss Universe

Success: The blonde beauty will soon mark 10 years as the face of the high-end department store and last week, she signed on for another two years

Her pre-show excitement is a complete contrast to the overwhelming sadness she felt this time last year, ahead of Myer's annual Spring/Summer show.

Her mother Gail was diagnosed with kidney cancer right before her show and while she is now healthy, Jennifer recalled it being difficult at the time.

"I went back to Newcastle on the weekend and it was literally that time last year that she found out ... Thats probably why its so exciting because last year I felt so heavy and upset and I was trying to get through it,' she said.

Elated: 'It's such an amazing feeling that you represent that brand and you embody it in your every day life. So that was an amazing feeling to actually hit 10 years and then to sign up for another two,' she told Yahoo7 Be

The blonde beauty will soon mark 10 years as the face of the high-end department store and last week, she signed on for another two years.

'It's such an amazing feeling that you represent that brand and you embody it in your every day life. So that was an amazing feeling to actually hit 10 years and then to sign up for another two,' she said.

In addition to her career success, Jennifer and Jake, who wed in Bali in 2013, launched their own brand of tequila, Sesion, which was four years in the making, earlier this year.

They're also in the process of building a $6 million home in Newport although the Australia's Next Top Model host confirmed they have no immediate plans to start a family.

Happy: In addition to her career success, Jennifer and Jake, who wed in Bali in 2013, launched their own brand of tequila, Sesion, which was four years in the making, earlier this year
'Un-Islamic' cultural heritage in jihadists' crosshairs

From Mali to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, Islamist fighters have regularly turned their sights on the priceless vestiges of peoples' cultural heritage -- for being un-Islamic.

The International Criminal Court on Monday opens the war crimes trial of a jihadist charged with orchestrating the destruction of shrines at the World Heritage site of Timbuktu in Mali.

The following are examples of world cultural heritage destroyed or damaged during recent conflicts.

The remains of the Temple of Bel in the historical city of Palmyra after it was blown up by Islamic State group jihadists

- Mali -

The fabled desert city of Timbuktu, named as the "City of 333 saints" and listed by UNESCO, was for months attacked by jihadists bent on imposing a brutal version of Islamic law.

In June 2012, Al-Qaeda-linked militants destroyed 14 of the northern city's mausoleums, important buildings that date back to Timbuktu's golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries as an economic, intellectual and spiritual hub.

The reconstruction of the shrines began in March 2014, relying heavily on traditional methods and employing local masons. Several countries and organisations financed the reconstruction, including UNESCO.

Work finished on the site in July 2015, and a ceremony marking the completion was held on February 4, 2016.

- Syria -

More than 900 monuments or archeological sites have been looted, damaged or destroyed by the regime, rebels or jihadists in Syria, where a devastating war has raged since 2011, according to APSA, the association charged with protecting Syrian architecture.

In September 2015, Islamic State (IS) fighters destroyed two of the most important temples in the UNESCO-listed Syrian city of Palmyra as they pressed a campaign to wipe out some of the Middle East's most important heritage sites.

They include the ancient city's most famed shrine, the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel, blown up a week after the destruction of the temple of Baal Shamin.

Other notable sites damaged or looted include Dura-Europos in eastern Syria, once known as the "Pompeii of the desert", Apamea, Ebla and Tal Ajaja.

However, the IS group is not the only one responsible for ravaging Syria's heritage, with all sides in the fighting looting and destroying ancient sites.

"Two thirds of the ancient city of Aleppo have been bombarded and set on fire," according to UNESCO.

- Iraq -

IS has carried out a campaign of "cultural cleansing", razing part of ancient Mesopotamia's relics and looting others to sell valued artefacts on the black market.

In a video released by IS on February 26, 2015 militants were shown using sledgehammers to smash pre-Islamic treasures in the museum in the country's second city Mosul, sparking global outrage.

Thousands of books and rare manuscripts were also burned in February in Mosul's library.

According to the Iraqi government, IS militants on March 5, 2015 bulldozed and blew up Nimrud, an ancient Assyrian city south of Mosul.

They also attacked Hatra, a Roman-period site, in the northern Niniveh province.

- Libya -

Several mausoleums have been destroyed by Islamist extremists since the overthrow of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.

In August 2012, Islamist hardliners bulldozed part of the mausoleum of Al-Shaab Al-Dahman, close to the centre of the Libyan capital.

The demolition came a day after hardliners blew up the mausoleum of Sheikh Abdessalem al-Asmar in the western city of Zliten.

In 2013 suspected Islamic extremists destroyed the centuries-old mausoleum of Murad Agha in Tripoli, but the tomb inside withstood the attack.

- Afghanistan -

In March 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of two 1,500-year-old Buddha statues in the eastern town of Bamiyan, because they were judged to be anti-Islamic.

Hundreds of members of the Taliban from across the country spent more than three weeks demolishing the gigantic statues carved into the side of a cliff.

In 2003 the cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley were put on UNESCO'S world heritage list.

- Algeria -

Armed Islamic groups in the 1990s destroyed several sanctuaries which dotted Algerian soil.

Cultural sites destroyed by jihadists Alain BOMMENEL, Sabrina BLANCHARD (AFP)

United Nations peacekeepers stand guard next to the mausoleum of Alpha Moya in Timbuktu to protect it from Malian jihadists Sebastien Rieussec (AFP/File)

The mausoleums of Timbuktu Alain BOMMENEL, Jean-Michel CORNU (AFP)
Five things to know about Mali's holy sites

The trial of a Malian jihadist charged with war crimes for orchestrating the 2012 destruction of nine Timbuktu mausoleums and a section of a famous mosque, opens Monday at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

How did the monuments come to be considered important and why were they destroyed?

Who built the mausoleums?

A man stands in front of the Djingareyber mosque in Timbuktu, central Mali Sebastien Rieussec (AFP/File)

The mausoleums of Muslim saints located in Timbuktu's cemeteries and mosques date back to the ancient caravan city's golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries as an economic, intellectual and spiritual centre. Some date back as far as the 14th century.

The construction of the original tombs of Muslim saints was undertaken by anonymous groups of family members or disciples of the saints, according to experts.

The earthen mausoleums around them were erected after the tombs were desecrated by those who believed they could gain power from being close to the remains.

In the centuries that followed, their maintenance and upkeep was taken on by descendants, local residents and patrons of the sites.

Thirteen of the city's most revered sites became UNESCO-protected in 1988.

Why are they revered?

Known as the "City of 333 saints", or the "Pearl of the Desert", Muslims from across the world visited the tombs of saints as holy places where those in difficulty could ask for divine intervention.

The city's inhabitants have long believed the tombs protect them from danger and they appeal to the saints for help.

Throughout the years, residents have asked the saints to intervene in anything from securing a woman's hand in marriage to making the rains come.

UNESCO describes them as "pilgrimage sites for Malians and neighbouring west African countries."

Why were they destroyed?

Islamist fighters desecrated the centuries-old shrines using pickaxes and chisels after seizing the city in April 2012.

The jihadists considered the shrines, as well as priceless ancient manuscripts from Timbuktu's golden age, to be idolatrous.

On trial next week for his alleged role in spearheading the destruction is Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly Tuareg group which at the time held sway over Mali's desert north.

Ansar Dine allied with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and a third group to occupy the city, until being routed in a French-led intervention in January 2013.

Court prosecutors say the jihadists' first attempted to dissuade Timbuktu's residents from their long-held practice of worshipping the shrines, but after failing set upon their wholesale destruction.

The Islamists also implemented a version of Islamic law which forced women to wear veils and set whipping and stoning as punishment for transgressions.

Why is the ICC case important?

The case is the first to be brought by the world's only permanent war crimes court over the extremist violence that rocked Mali in 2012 and 2013.

It is also the first time that a jihadist has appeared before the court in The Hague and the first ICC case investigating the destruction of religious buildings and historical monuments.

The defendant has made clear he will plead guilty -- another first for the court -- to a single charge of jointly ordering or carrying out the destruction.

What happened to the mausoleums?

The reconstruction of the shrines began in March 2014, relying heavily on traditional methods and employing local masons.

To make sure the rebuilt shrines matched the old ones as closely as possible, work was checked against old photos and local elders were consulted throughout the process -- an important step in a city where culture has traditionally been passed on by word of mouth.

Several countries and organisations financed the reconstruction, including UNESCO.

Work finished on the site in July 2015, and a ceremony marking the completion was held on February 4, 2016.

Five head of cattle were ritually sacrificed just after dawn, ahead of a reading of the entire Muslim holy book, the Koran, and the handing of the keys to the families in charge of their care.
In Nepal's Himalayas, hopes of closer China ties

Twice a year, a normally deserted border checkpoint high on the Tibetan plateau throngs with activity as traders from Nepal flock to do business with their giant northern neighbour China.

A biannual trade fair in Tibet offers a rare opportunity for those living in the remote former Buddhist kingdom of Upper Mustang in Nepal to cross the usually closed border into China, which is cultivating closer ties with the Himalayan nation.

"This trade is very important for us because we live in such an isolated area," said trucker Pasang Gurung, who was driving to China for the fair.

A Nepalese herder with several horses and mules makes his way through the mountains in Upper Mustang, north-west of Kathmandu Prakash Mathema (AFP)

"Access to Chinese customers and products makes our lives much easier... I wish the border were open all the time."

The border is usually closed for security reasons as Upper Mustang has history as a base for the Tibetan resistance.

But authorities in Nepal are increasingly looked to strengthen economic ties with China and reduce its dependence on its other giant neighbour India.

But it will have a long way to go in order to accomplish that. Bilateral trade with India between July 2014 and June 2015 amounted to nearly $4.5 billion, dwarfing China's $882 million.

An energy agreement between Kathmandu and Beijing in March ended India's monopoly over fuel supplies to Nepal, although it remains the biggest supplier by far.

That deal was prompted by a months-long blockade at the border with India to protest the terms of a new national constitution that led New Delhi to halt supplies, leading to crippling shortages.

Kathmandu accused New Delhi of imposing an "unofficial blockade" in support of the protesters, an ethnic community that shares close family links with Indians across the border -- a claim India denied.

Sujeev Shakya, chairman of the Nepal Economic Forum think tank, says that even before the blockade India had a reputation in Nepal for being slow to deliver.

A number of Indian hydropower projects have stalled due to disagreements over the terms of the deal, while China has pressed ahead.

One 60-megawatt power plant is under construction and a 750-megawatt joint venture worth $1.6 billion is due for completion by December 2019.

"The perception here is that the Chinese tend to deliver while India keeps talking," Shakya told AFP.

"Over the years, China has gained more credibility in Nepal because of the pace at which they have put up infrastructure projects."

- Thriving trade -

In Upper Mustang's medieval walled capital of Lo Manthang, construction of a Chinese-funded 70-kilowatt solar power station last year has allowed residents to access electricity even during the months-long dry season, when hydropower supplies fall short.

Locals have welcomed the investment and are clamouring for deeper economic ties.

"If the border opens up, Lo Manthang can be a centre for trade, religious activities, tourism," said shopkeeper Kunga Dorje Gurung.

Around 1,000 visitors a day use the Korala checkpoint during the fair, trading in everything from carpets and clothing to tea and biscuits.

The journey has been made easier by a new road to the border that opened this year, and which locals hope will put pressure on Beijing to open the checkpoint more often.

"The road has made transportation of goods much easier," said Nepali businessman Tshering Phuntsok Gurung, travelling to the border with friends.

"Earlier, everything had to be carried on horses and the costs involved in hiring and feeding animals meant that the prices of the goods would also go up."

The thriving cross-border trade in Upper Mustang is particularly remarkable because the region was once the base for a CIA-funded guerrilla campaign to oust Chinese forces from Tibet after a failed uprising in 1959.

Thutop Dadhul, a Tibetan refugee, was just 17 when he and his family of nomadic herders fled Chinese troops and crossed over into Upper Mustang.

He threw himself into the Tibetan resistance movement, making daring trips across the border to gather intelligence.

"We had to win back Tibet... I am proud of the fact that I tried to do something for my country," the 75-year-old told AFP in the resort town of Pokhara, where tourist shopfronts display signs in Mandarin.

Outgunned on every front, the revolutionaries continued their fight even after the US government withdrew support in 1968 and only surrendered when the Dalai Lama asked them to lay down arms.

"I know the Chinese are being very generous to Nepal now, but that will change," he said.

"Eventually they will seek more control... and things will get worse for refugees like us."

A Buddhist monk walks past children in Ghemi Village in Upper Mustang, north-west of Kathmandu Prakash Mathema (AFP)

A Nepalese woman works outside her home in Ghemi Village in Upper Mustang, north-west of Kathmandu Prakash Mathema (AFP)
Pfizer to acquire Medivation for $14 billion

US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced Monday that it will acquire Medivation for about $14 billion, besting Sanofi and other large drug companies that had sought the biotech firm's lucrative cancer treatments.

The all-cash deal brings Pfizer the hit medication Xtandi, which generated $2.2 billion in revenues over the last year in treating advanced metastatic prostate cancer.

The transaction, agreed by both companyies' boards, will also bring to Pfizer other late-stage drugs under development at San Francisco-based Medivation.

By purchasing Medivation, Pfizer would add to its portfolio the drug Xtandi, a promising treatment against prostate cancer Don Emmert (AFP/File)

Medivation has been working with Japanese company Astellas to develop other applications for Xtandi, including for breast cancer and the common liver cancer hepatocellular carcinoma.

"The proposed acquisition of Medivation is expected to immediately accelerate revenue growth and drive overall earnings growth potential for Pfizer," said Ian Read, Pfizer chairman and chief executive.

Medivation founder and chief executive David Hugh called Pfizer "the ideal partner to extend the reach of our blockbuster Xtandi franchise and take our promising, late-stage assets - talazoparib and pidiluzimab - to their next stages of development."

Shares of Medivation surged 19.8 percent to $80.48 a share in mid-morning trade, compared to the $81.50 per-share valuation in the deal. Pfizer rose 0.8 percent to $35.26.

The transaction appeared to end a contest for Medivation among the world's top drugmakers. France's Sanofi launched the frenzy with a $9.3 billion bid in April, which was turned down.

Sanofi raised its offer to $10 billion, and threatened a hostile takeover campaign, but was again turned down by Medivation in July, which called the a deal "not in the best interests" of its shareholders.

But Sanofi remained in the game at that point, when Medivation agreed to share confidential data with the French company, indicating it thought that would demonstrate it was worth significantly more.

At least one other potential suitor, Amgen, also had an agreement to review Medivation's data. Others reportedly eying the company included Gilead and Celgene.

- Sanofi bows out -

On Monday Sanofi suggested it would not boost its bid to challenge Pfizer.

"While we recognized the potential strategic benefits of a combination with Medivation, we are first and foremost a disciplined acquirer and remain committed to acting in the best interests of Sanofi shareholders," it said.

Sanofi said it remained determined to "reshape our portfolio, strengthen our position in oncology, deliver outstanding launches and sustain innovation in R&D."

The purchase comes on the heels of Pfizer's $5.2 billion acquisition in May of California biotech company Anacor Pharmaceuticals, a specialist in eczema treatment.

Pharma has been a hot sector as far as merger activity and many analysts expect that trend to continue. Drivers include expiring patents of bestselling drugs and the need of some smaller biotech companies for financing to maintain research programs.

BMO Capital Markets listed seven candidates as potential takeover targets, including BioMarin Pharmaceutical and Intercept Pharmaceuticals.

"Given the scarcity of mid-cap biotech, we believe the remaining companies could see increasing interest, as large biopharma continues to look towards biotech as a source of growth," said BMO.

Pfizer has been an aggressive and not always successful architect of large deals over the last couple of years. AstraZeneca in 2014 rejected a Pfizer bid of about $116 billion after a lengthy unsolicited courtship.

Pfizer in April terminated a proposed $160 billion merger with Allergan after the US Treasury set new rules designed to block cross-border deals that are structured to avoid US taxes.
DR Congo's second city poisoned by years of mining

"In this stream, the fish vanished long ago, killed by acids and waste from the mines," says Lubumbashi resident Heritier Maloba, staring into the murky waters of his childhood fishing hole.

Pollution caused by copper and cobalt mining has not only poisoned the Katapula, a tributary of the mighty Congo River and one of the main waterways in this second city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but has also induced widespread illness.

"High concentrations of toxic metals ... cause respiratory disorders and birth defects," particularly in people living near the mines, said toxicologist Celestin Banza of the University of Lubumbashi.

A woman and child break rocks extracted from a cobalt mine in Lubumbashi, the second city of the Democratic Republic of Congo Junior Kannah (AFP/File)

The damage has spread through acids in untreated waste released into nature, polluting the air, the water, and much of Lubumbashi, a city of more than two million residents in the country's southeast.

Until recently, Lubumbashi was the capital of Katanga province whose fabulous copper wealth was first tapped by Belgian colonists early in the 20th century.

Last year, Katanga was divided into four new provinces. Mining is prevalent in the two southern ones.

Hindered by neglect during the regime of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko (1965-1997) and in the second Congolese war (1998-2003), the mining industry rose from the ashes of devastating conflict.

Between 2010 and 2014, mineral production led strong economic growth and lifted the country up to the rank of the world's fifth copper producer and top producer of cobalt.

With demand for cobalt driven by its use in mobile phones and electric car batteries, the trade has come at a dire environmental and health cost for DR Congo.

- 'Lack of expertise' -

"Mining pollution in Katanga is an undeniable reality," admits member of parliament Davon N'Sa Mputu Elima, who served as environment minister in 2012-14.

He says that mining firms put up considerable resistance to a 2009 amendment in the country's environmental code, which imposed stringent new health and safety requirements.

Such protective measures are often not enforced because of what the MP calls "a lack of expertise" among administrative officials responsible for seeing that mining firms comply.

The public health risks listed by Banza, the toxicologist, also include metabolic disorders, certain tumours, burning sensations in the eyes and the throat, and even "short-term sterility".

"You get the feeling you're suffocating as you breathe," says Viviane Kibwe, a mother of four in a city where mining installations can be located hard by people's homes, schools and fields.

Plumes of smoke and clouds of dust rise into the air carrying dangerous particles, while used water containing cleaning chemicals and mineral alloys runs off untreated into streams.

A 2012 toxicology study by the Carter Center found that many ailments in the area are indeed the result of prolonged exposure to harmful chemicals.

The foundation set up by US former president Jimmy Carter in 1982 also criticised "several flaws" and "ambiguity" with regard to the treatment of waste in DR Congo's mining code of 2002.

Eric Monga, chairman of the Katanga branch of the Business Federation of the Congo, counters that sustainable and safe mining practices have become "an ethical rule" observed by companies.

"An approved study on the environmental impact is a requirement before any operations," he says.

Yet Belgian and Congolese experts carrying out health studies since 2008 find that concentrations of cobalt, copper, lead and even uranium in urine samples "largely exceeded the reference values accepted by the World Health Organization," Banza says.

This is particularly true among children, according to the professor.

- 'Nothing has grown' -

At the Shinkolobwe mine some 150 kilometres (95 miles) northwest of Lubumbashi -- the source of the uranium used in the Hiroshima atomic bomb -- thousands of people worked for many years without the slightest protection.

Banza told AFP that he plans to publish a new public health report demonstrating that people in the south of the former Katanga are far worse affected by breathing difficulties than people in the north, mainly farmland.

"My colleagues and I have recorded a comeback of cardiac and respiratory diseases, (particularly) among children and women," says Jean-Marie Kazadi, senior medical expert for the new Haut-Katanga and Lualaba provinces.

Yet many thousands of people work arduous shifts in the mines, desperate to make a living in conditions worsened by a global tumble in copper prices.

The high price of mining is also evident at Kipushi, about 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Lubumbashi, where savannah abruptly gives way to a broad strip of scorched, barren land where the state mining firm Gecamines used to dump acidic waste.

"For more than 30 years, nothing has grown in this place," says Mwalimu Kasongo, a retired teacher of 76.

Former minister N'Sa Mputu says several bird species that once thrived in the area have now "disappeared".

For Lubumbashi resident Maloba, now an unemployed man in his 30s, the childhood fishing expeditions remain a distant memory, with little hope of ever catching anything more in his beloved river.

Pollution caused by copper and cobalt mining has not only poisoned the Katapula, a tributary of the mighty Congo River and one of the main waterways in Lubumbashi, but has also induced widespread illness Junior Kannah (AFP/File)

A ravine in the desert area close to Kaputula in the province of Upper Katanga, which has been polluted by waste discharged from the mining of copper and cobalt Junior Kannah (AFP/File)
Mother in Japan questioned after 4 children found dead

A mother in Japan is under investigation for murder after her four children, including a girl as young as three, were found dead at home, Japanese media reports and police said Monday.

Local media reported the victims were killed by their mother before she tried to take her own life.

A 10-year-old boy, two six-year-old girls, and a three-year-old girl were found dead early Monday, according to police in the southern Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka.

Murder-suicide cases are not uncommon in Japan and usually involve a mother killing her child or children Jiji Press (Jiji Press/AFP/File)

"Their father found them dead and reported it to police," a police spokesman told AFP, without providing further details.

Police are questioning the children's 41-year-old mother as a suspect in a possible murder-suicide attempt, according to Jiji Press and public broadcaster NHK.

The mother confessed to police she had killed the children, according to TV Asahi.

Police reportedly told media that at least one child had a mark indicating strangulation.

The mother was sent to hospital as her wrist was bleeding, the Asahi Shimbun daily said. She told police she cut herself with a kitchen knife but her injury was mild.

Murder-suicide cases are not uncommon in Japan and usually involve a mother killing her child or children.

Some parent-child murder-suicides have been attributed to poverty. In 2014, a single mother in Chiba prefecture killed her teenage daughter and tried to kill herself apparently because she could no longer afford to pay the rent.

On Monday, a mother and her two sons aged six and one, went missing in Gunma prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, and her car was found near a river.

Police suspect that the mother and her sons jumped into the river in a murder-suicide, the Sankei Shimbun daily reported.
Sex harassment widespread in Australian police: survey

Almost half of the women working for Australia's national police force say they have been sexually harassed on the job, according to a report released Monday calling for urgent change.

The review of the workplace culture of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) also found that more than 60 percent of staff -- men and women -- reported being bullied.

"In the areas of sexual harassment and bullying, urgent action is required," the report's author, former sex discrimination commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick said.

A review of the workplace culture of the Australian Federal Police has found that 46% of women and 20% of men said they had been sexually harassed in the last five years Patrick Hamilton (AFP/File)

A survey carried out for the report found that 46 percent of women and 20 percent of men said they had been sexually harassed in the workplace in the last five years.

"These percentages are almost double the national average," it noted.

"Sixty-two percent of men and 66 percent of women reported that they have been bullied in the workplace in the last five years."

The document, "Cultural Change: Gender Diversity and Inclusion in the Australian Federal Police", also criticised the reporting process for complaints.

Some police workers felt that if they reported harassment it would hurt their careers or result in them being ostracised or victimised while others said complaints could take too long to resolve and questioned their confidentiality.

Women across the AFP, which is separate to state police forces, also reported difficulties in having to "fit in" to a male-dominated culture, including having to "prove themselves".

"We have certainly made progress but I still think there is a culture of sexual harassment and bullying," one female participant told the survey.

Releasing the report, AFP Commissioner, Andrew Colvin admitted that "things must change" and apologised to staff past and present who had been subjected to unacceptable behaviour.

"These practices will not be tolerated," he said, adding that a new division would be established to lead cultural reform.
Japan protests to Russia over man detained on disputed island

Japan on Monday lodged a diplomatic protest with Russia over the detention of a Japanese citizen visiting an island disputed by the two countries.

Tokyo and Moscow are working to resolve decades of tensions over four islands occupied by the Soviet Union in the closing days of World War II and now controlled by Russia.

The man, who has not been identified, was visiting one of the islands as a member of a visa-free visit programme that started in 1992, and was detained following baggage checks conducted ahead of his scheduled departure, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

General view of Russian town of Kunashir, part of the Kuril islands chain in the Pacific, between Kamchatka and Japan's northern Hokkaido island Junji Kurokawa (AFP/File)

Tokyo "strongly protested through diplomatic channels" and demanded he be allowed to return home, said Suga, the government's chief spokesman.

Ties have been strained for decades over the islands, known in Japan as the Northern Territories and in Russia as part of the Kuril Islands.

The dispute has prevented the two countries from signing a peace treaty to formally end wartime hostilities.

The Russian government had no immediate public reaction to Japan's protest but its customs service said Monday on its website that "money was found" during a customs check of a Japanese citizen's luggage.

It said the amount came to four million Japanese yen, which is about $40,000.

"The said amount of money had not been declared to the customs agency as required by law," it said, adding that customs officials are looking into the "illegal action".

Under Russian law, a total of $10,000 can be taken out of the country undeclared.

The detention comes as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in May to rekindle talks aimed at resolving the territorial dispute.

On Friday in Moscow, Chikahito Harada, Japan's special envoy for Japan-Russia relations, and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov will hold their second round of talks on the issue since the May bilateral summit.

Japanese media have reported recently that Abe and Putin will hold talks early next month in the Russian city of Vladivostok, though Tokyo has made no formal announcement.
Protests as China official visits Taiwan

Taiwanese shouting anti-communist slogans staged protests at an airport and a school on Monday against a visit by a top Shanghai official which they see as intended to promote China's unification with Taiwan.

Sha Hailin, a standing committee member of the Communist Party in the city and head of the United Front Work Department there, is the highest-level mainlander to visit since cross-strait ties worsened under Taiwan's new government.

He arrived in Taipei for an annual forum on municipal exchanges as protesters shouted "Sha Hailin, go back to China!" at the capital's Songshan airport.

Pro-independence protesters from the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) rally outside the Songshan airport in Taipei on August 22, 2016 Sam Yeh (AFP)

Dozens of demonstrators waved placards reading "Expel propaganda communist, defend Taiwan's sovereignty" and "(Taipei mayor) Ko Wen-je sells out Taiwan". Some supporters also rallied outside the airport with welcome signs.

While most demonstrators were cordoned off, one man holding a poster got into the airport arrivals hall and shouted "Sha Hailin, get out!" as Sha walked by.

The protester scuffled briefly with policemen before being taken away.

Scores of protesters rallied again when Sha visited a high school to open a sports festival and played table tennis with Taiwanese students.

Relations with China have grown increasing frosty since Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency in January. Beijing is highly suspicious of Tsai because her party is traditionally pro-independence, and has warned her against any attempt at a breakaway.

China's Taiwan Affairs Office announced it had suspended official contact with Taipei after Tsai's government, which took office in May, failed publicly to accept the "one China" principle which governed relations under her predecessor.

Sha stressed that the basis for peaceful cross-strait relations was the recognition of "one China".

"If we want to maintain peaceful developments in cross-strait ties, I believe the political basis cannot be avoided... We will continue to work hard to build and solidify this political basis," Sha, who heads the visiting delegation in place of Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong, told reporters.

Asked about the protests, he said: "There were also many people who welcomed me. Their voices were small but their number was bigger."

Taiwan has been self-ruling since splitting with the mainland in 1949 following a civil war but has never formally declared independence. Beijing still sees it as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

Critics claim Sha, as Shanghai's propoganda chief, intends to push during his visit for reunification and accuse Taipei mayor Ko of "selling out" to Beijing.

"We are very angry and we refuse China's propoganda to reunify Taiwan. Taiwan is an independent country. We must maintain our sovereignty and dignity," said protester Sherry Huang from the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) party.

"China has long wanted to annex Taiwan and we don't need to continue exchanges with it," said protester Hsu Ya-chi.

The TSU said it planned another demonstration Monday night at a welcome dinner for the Shanghai delegation in Taipei city hall, and vowed to protest throughout Sha's stay.

Sha Hailin (C), Shanghai Municipal Committee United Front Work Department Director, is surrounded by security guards as he arrives at Songshan airport near Taipei, on August 22, 2016 Sam Yeh (AFP)

A protester from the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) is dragged away by police as a top Chinese official arrives at Songshan airport near Taipei, on August 22, 2016 Sam Yeh (AFP)
Twitter users mock Indian politician carried through floods

A senior Indian politician was widely mocked on Monday after photos showed policemen carrying him through ankle-deep muddy water while inspecting deadly floods in the country's centre.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh state, was shown wearing crisp white trousers and white shoes and being carried aloft through the water in a field, trailed by his entourage.

The photo of a smiling Chouhan with his arms wrapped around the two officers made newspaper front pages and sparked an outpouring of ridicule on Twitter.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Chief Minister of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh - (AFP/File)

Most comments were lighthearted in a country where politicians are almost always flanked by a legion of fawning officials and security guards.

"Shame on #Shivrajsinghchouhan. So embarrassing #wetyourfeet my man," Twitter user Jennifer Fernandes wrote.

"#Shivraj training Indian athletes for 400M Relay 2020 Olympics," read another.

But Chouhan was also accused of abusing his position, with comparisons drawn to the treatment of British officials during colonial times.

A top government public relations officer defended Chouhan, saying it would have been dangerous for him to wade through the waters himself.

"Nobody knew if the water level would rise suddenly or if the ground below was slippery," S.K. Mishra told AFP.

"There was also the danger of a snake or scorpion bite. He was desperate to meet the flood-affected people and the security guys could not have taken any chance."

Floods triggered by monsoon rains have claimed hundreds of lives across India. In Madhya Pradesh at least 15 people have died after rivers burst and flooded villages, the Press Trust of India news agency said.

Chouhan himself posted several pictures of his flood visit on Twittter but skipped the controversial one, while his office denied on Monday releasing the image.

An Indian TV journalist was sacked in 2013 after he filed a report about deadly floods while perched on a survivor's shoulders.
Russian raids from Iran airbase 'over for now'

Iran said Monday that Russian raids on jihadists in Syria from one of its airbases had ended for now, after accusing Moscow of "showing off" when it revealed the bombing runs.

"It was a specific, authorised mission and it's over for now. They conducted it and they are gone now," foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told reporters in Tehran.

He left open the possibility of future Russian combat flights from the Islamic republic, saying it would depend on "the situation in the region, and according to our permission".

This image taken from footage released by the Russian Defence Ministry's official website reportedly shows a Russian bomber Tupolev Tu-22M3 conducting airstrikes

A Russian military spokesman, Igor Konachenkov, quoted by his defence ministry, said the planes had "carried out all their tasks with success" and were back on home territory.

Any further use of Hamedan base by Russian aircraft would take place "in line with mutual accords on the fight against terrorism and taking into account the situation in Syria", he said in a statement.

The Russian ambassador to Tehran, Levan Dzhagaryan, said nothing prevented a renewed use of Hamedan.

"If the leaders of our two countries consider it necessary and reach the relevant agreements, what sort of problems can there be?" he told Russia's Interfax news agency.

"For the time being, there are no (Russians) remaining in Hamedan" airbase, he added.

Ghasemi's comments came a few hours after Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan made a rare public criticism of Russia for revealing that its warplanes were using Hamedan to attack insurgents in Syria.

"Naturally, the Russians are keen to show that they are a superpower and an influential country and that they are active in security issues in the region and the world," Dehghan told Iran's Channel 2 television.

"There has been a kind of showing-off and inconsiderate attitude behind the announcement of this news," he said.

- Iran guarded on Syria role -

Iran and Russia are key backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but Tehran has remained relatively guarded about its precise involvement in the conflict.

The Islamic republic is highly sensitive to any suggestion that it would allow foreign militaries to be based in its territory, which is outlawed under its constitution, and has emphasised that Russian planes were only refuelling in Iran.

"(Russia) needed to refuel in an area closer to the operation... But we have definitely not given them a military base," said Dehghan.

The flights from Iranian territory started on August 16, a day after a visit to Tehran by a Russian deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov.

The use of Hamedan significantly shortened flight-times for Russian warplanes, allowing them to carry increased firepower.

Russia said it struck targets linked to the jihadist Islamic State group and Al-Nusra Front, now known as Fateh al-Sham Front, in Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and Idlib.

Moscow had previously used short-range craft stationed at its Hmeimim airbase outside the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, as well as ships in the Caspian Sea and a submarine in the Mediterranean, to bombard rebels in Syria.

Russia last week dismissed US criticism of the use of Iranian base as a possible violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denied that Moscow could be in breach of a ban on supply or transfer of warplanes to Iran without prior approval of the UN Security Council.

"There are no grounds to suspect Russia of breaching the resolution," he said.

Tehran, for its part, oversees thousands of troops fighting for Assad on the ground, while Russia provides airpower.

Both oppose calls for Assad to step down as a way of resolving the conflict that has killed more than 290,000 people since it erupted in March 2011.

Russia said it struck targets linked to the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra jihadist groups in Aleppo, Deir Ezzor and Idlib
Turkey seeks to identify child suicide bomber

Turkish authorities were on Monday scrambling to identify a child suicide bomber acting on the orders of Islamic State (IS) jihadists who killed 54 people at a crowded Kurdish wedding close to the Syrian border.

The attack late Saturday on a street wedding in the city of Gaziantep was latest in a devastating series of bombings in Turkey at a time when the country is riven by internal upheaval and shaken by the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the bomber was aged "between 12 and 14" and that initial findings showed it had been "perpetrated by Daesh (IS)".

Women kneel by a grave at a cemetery during the funeral on August 21, 2016 for the victims of the suicide attack on a wedding party in Gaziantep, southeastern Turkey Ilyas Akengin (AFP)

Media said the majority of those dead were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18. At least 22 victims were under 14, a Turkish official added.

There were no further details on the bomber, but Erdogan said IS had been trying to "position itself" in Gaziantep, which lies just 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Syria and is a major hub for refugees from the over five-year civil war.

The death toll rose to 54 after three of those in the most critical condition died in hospital in the early morning, the Dogan news agency reported.

Sixty-six people were still in hospital, 14 of them in a serious condition.

The Hurriyet daily said that DNA tests were under way to ascertain the identity, nationality and gender of the bomber.

It is possible that the bomber had come over the border from Syria but IS is also known to have built homegrown cells inside Turkey in Gaziantep and even Istanbul, wrote its well-connected columnist Abdulkadir Selvi.

He said Turkish security forces believed that attack had been timed as retaliation by jihadists for offensives both by Kurdish militias and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition forces against IS in Syria.

"There's a fight against IS but we are paying the price," he wrote.

- 'All the dead Kurds' -

The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas said in a statement that "all of those killed were Kurds".

The bride and groom -- a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast -- were rushed to hospital but not seriously wounded.

The attack followed a string of strikes blamed on IS and Kurdish militants in the last months but was the deadliest so far this year and first significant jihadist action in Turkey since the failed July 15 coup.

Erdogan said that in his view all "terror" groups are the same, be it the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, the supporters of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen who he blames for the coup or IS.

Despite the gravity of the attack, pro-government Turkish TV channels had returned to a normal agenda Monday focusing as much on the defeat of the coup over a month ago as the Gaziantep attack.

Hurriyet said the type of bomb used -- stuffed with scraps of metal -- was similar to the explosives used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on IS in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station last year.

A suicide vest was also found at the scene, according to prosecutors.

The authorities were also looking for two individuals said to have accompanied the suspected suicide bomber into the wedding party but who then left the scene.

All 44 victims identified so far were laid to rest in harrowing ceremonies in Gaziantep on Sunday with relatives throwing themselves on the coffins in desperation, an AFP correspondent said.

The hillside graveyard was pock-marked before the ceremony with the holes of dozens of freshly dug graves for the victims.

One mother, Emine Ayhan, lost four of her five children in the bombing while her husband is in intensive care, the Yeni Safak daily said.

According to the list of victims in Turkish media, the youngest -- named as Gurbet Akcan and Muhammet Yagiz -- were both aged four. There was one Syrian among the dead, Husam Cuma, aged 7.

Bombing kills dozens wedding Nicolas Ramallo (AFP)

Turkish police work near the explosion scene following a late night attack on a wedding party that left at least 51 dead in Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border on August 21, 2016 Ahmed Deep (AFP)
Japan's first lady visits Pearl Harbor

The wife of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has visited Pearl Harbor, bombed by Japanese planes nearly 75 years ago in an attack that brought the United States into World War II.

It was not clear exactly when Akie Abe made the visit. But she posted 11 pictures on her official Facebook page, apparently early Monday.

"I offered flowers and my prayers at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor," she wrote.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie wave as they depart Tokyo, in 2015 Jiji Press (Jiji Press/AFP)

Her visit to the Hawaii memorial came just months after President Barack Obama journeyed to Hiroshima, the Japanese city where a US plane dropped the world's first atom bomb in the closing days of World War II.

Obama's trip to Hiroshima sparked speculation that Shinzo Abe could visit Pearl Harbor in response.

But top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga on Monday denied that, while confirming the first lady was in Hawaii for a "private trip".

"There is no such plan for the prime minister to visit Hawaii," Suga said.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes swept low over the US naval base, killing more than 2,400 American troops and civilians, a date which then-president Franklin Roosevelt declared would live in "infamy".

The two-hour bombardment of the US Pacific Fleet at anchor sank or damaged some 20 ships and destroyed 164 planes.

Akie Abe is seen in one of the Facebook photos bowing before a wall on which the names of victims are inscribed.

"Many people must have given fresh thought to the bombed city of Hiroshima and the war after President Obama visited the city," she told the Gendai Business web magazine, which apparently accompanied her to Pearl Harbor.

"I am aware that there are various debates and views about Pearl Harbor, but I believe we must go beyond hatred and anger, and pass down these memories to following generations."

Abe is seen in Japan as playing a political role that complements her husband, sometimes by softening his hawkish image and at others by soothing his nationalist supporters.

She has visited Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honours millions of Japan's war dead as well as several senior figures convicted of war crimes after World War II.

Her husband has been forced to stay away from the shrine after making a visit there in December 2013.

The visit set off a firestorm of criticism in China and South Korea, and also earned a rare rebuke from top ally the United States.
Thai tourist attacks probe points to Muslim south: police

Most of those behind a string of bombings in Thai tourist towns are Muslims from the kingdom's insurgency-plagued southern provinces, the country's police chief said Monday.

It was the first clear indication that police believe a group of southern Muslims played some sort of role in the attacks which killed four and wounded dozens, including European visitors, this month.

Police chief Chakthip Chaijinda told reporters investigators believe a group of "more than 20 people" were behind the coordinated attacks.

Soldiers watch as a forensic unit inspect the scene of an attack following two roadside bomb blasts at four separate locations by suspected separatist militants, in the southern Thailand's restive province of Narathiwat, on August 15, 2016 Madaree Tohlala (AFP/File)

"Most of them are from the area of the southern border provinces police operation centre," he said, referencing a policing area that encompasses the Muslim-majority southernmost region.

Asked whether the suspects were Thai nationals he replied: "They are not Buddhists."

He added that investigators had recently searched an Islamic school where he believed some of the suspects had studied or graduated from.

More than 6,500 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in 12 years of violence between the Buddhist-majority state and shadowy ethnic Malay Muslim rebels seeking greater autonomy.

But the violence has largely remained local and foreign visitors are also largely insulated from domestic political clashes that have hit the capital.

That changed on 11-12 August when a string of coordinated bomb and arson attacks struck multiple tourist resort towns in Thailand's south.

No one has claimed responsibility but authorities quickly ruled out international terrorism, saying the perpetrators were domestic.

The junta which seized power in 2014 has been reluctant to finger insurgents in the deep south, suggesting disgruntled domestic opponents instead.

Analysts say the leadership fears any admission that southern insurgents were behind the attack might harm tourism and raise questions over the military's ability to ensure security.

However in recent days the police investigation has increasingly pointed southwards.

One arrest warrant has so far been issued for a named suspect over the attacks, a Muslim man from the southern province of Narathiwat.

Local media have reported that the man, Ahama Lengha, has a history of involvement with insurgents.

At his briefing police chief Chakthip said he was not ruling out any motive, adding that the group "might have been hired" by others to carry out the attacks.

He said he believed the perpetrators were previously unknown to police, not veterans from within the Malay insurgency who might be easier to catch and identify.

"They are almost all new blood which makes the investigation harder, but we do have evidence," he said.
Malian jihadist says sorry for destroying Timbuktu

A Malian jihadist pleaded guilty Monday to attacking the fabled city of Timbuktu and begged forgiveness as the world was shown sickening videos of him tearing down centuries-old Muslim shrines with a pick-axe.

At the opening of his unprecedented war crimes trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC), Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi also urged other Muslims not to follow such "evil" ways.

Mahdi, a former teacher and Islamic scholar, is the first person to plead guilty before the ICC and the first to face a lone charge for the war crime of directing an attack on a historic or religious monument.

Alleged Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist leader Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi pleaded guilty to a single charge of cultural destruction at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on August 22, 2016 Patrick Post (ANP/AFP)

"I plead guilty," Mahdi said, after being read the charge arising from the 2012 attack on the UNESCO world heritage site when a group of Islamist jihadists swept across Mali's remote north.

Armed with videos, graphics and 360 degree landscapes, ICC prosecutors minutely catalogued before the three judges the destruction in the west African city, dubbed "The Pearl of the Desert."

The first of three prosecution witness also described the detailed methods, including satellite imagery, used to investigate the destruction.

Aged about 40, Mahdi is also the first Islamist extremist to appear before the tribunal launched in The Hague in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes, and the first facing allegations stemming from the conflict in Mali.

He is accused of "intentionally directing attacks" against nine of Timbuktu's famous mausoleums as well as the Sidi Yahia mosque between June 30 and July 11, 2012.

- City of saints -

Founded between the fifth and the 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktu's very name evokes centuries of history and has also been called "the city of 333 saints" for the number of Muslim sages buried there.

Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries and a designated UNESCO world heritage site, Timbuktu was considered idolatrous by the jihadists.

Prosecutors on Monday showed shocking images of jihadists smashing down the tombs, pushing down earthen walls that had stood for hundreds of years and hacking at them with pick-axes while their assault rifles lay nearby.

In one video, Mahdi and others were seen ripping open the door of the Sidi Yahia mosque, which had been kept closed for hundreds of years.

ICC prosecutors allege Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly ethnic Tuareg movement that in 2012 took control of Timbuktu, some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) northeast of Bamako, along with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Mahdi, who was then head of the "Hisbah" or the "Manners Brigade", said he regretted the damage he had caused and was "really sorry".

"I would like to seek the pardon of all the whole people of Timbuktu," he said.

Transferred to the ICC by Niger in 2015, Mahdi was seen as a ruthless jihadist enforcer, fiercely imposing the strictest interpretation of Sharia law.

But vowing that was all in the past, he sought to distance himself from the jihadists describing their acts as "evil."

Dressed in a Western suit with a blue-and-white striped tie instead of his earlier white collarless shirt, he said he hoped "the years I will spend in prison will be a source of purging the evil spirits that had overtaken me".

- Mankind's heritage -

Amid scenes of similar destruction in Iraq and Syria, the ICC prosecutors have said the case is about much more than just stones and walls.

Such "deliberate attacks on cultural property have become actual weapons of war," ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the court.

"The heritage of mankind was ransacked," she said, adding that the jihadists "wanted to destroy these monuments and simply wipe them off the map".

The judgement will follow later, but it was revealed that the defence and prosecution have struck a deal under which Mahdi would not appeal a jail term of between nine to 11 years.

The judges warned however the court is not bound by the deal, and he could face up to 30 years imprisonment.

Critics have also urged the court to investigate allegations of other crimes committed during the Mali conflict, including rape and other sexual violence.

The mausoleums of Timbuktu Alain BOMMENEL, Jean-Michel CORNU (AFP)

Islamist militants destroy an ancient shrine in Timbuktu in July 2012
Japan, China, S.Korea foreign ministers to meet

The foreign ministers of Japan, China and South Korea will meet this week in Tokyo, with their countries at odds over territorial disputes and a US missile defence system.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, China's Wang Yi and South Korea's Yun Byung-Se will have dinner Tuesday before formal talks on Wednesday, Japan's foreign ministry said in a statement Monday.

They "will discuss trilateral cooperation as well as regional and global issues", it said.

Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will meet with China's Wang Yi and South Korea's Yun Byung-Se Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP/File)

Among those issues are likely to be North Korea.

Japan and South Korea regularly condemn Pyongyang for its nuclear and missile development, but feel frustrated by what they see as a lack of pressure on the country by China, its longtime ally and economic lifeline.

The talks also come as Sino-Japanese tensions over a territorial dispute in the East China Sea rose this month, while China and South Korea have sparred over the planned deployment in the latter country of a US anti-missile system.

Japan and China are locked in a long-running dispute over uninhabited islets in the East China Sea, with tensions over them a frequent hindrance to closer ties.

Tokyo has lodged more than 30 protests through diplomatic channels since August 5, saying there have been about 30 intrusions by Chinese vessels into its territorial waters.

Separately, China has complained about the planned deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea, arguing the missile shield goes against its own national security interests and warning it will heighten regional tension.

South Korea, wary of offending key trade partner China, had wavered on its introduction, but went ahead in the face of North Korea's continued missile development.

The Japan-South Korea relationship is also prone to periodic tension.

A maritime dispute resurfaced on Monday last week when 10 South Korean lawmakers visited islets controlled by Seoul but claimed by Japan.

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on the same day, however, called for a "future-oriented" relationship with Tokyo.

Bilateral meetings between Kishida and his Chinese and South Korean counterparts are being arranged, though nothing is set, a Japanese foreign ministry official told AFP.

The foreign ministerial meeting is expected to be followed later this year by a trilateral summit. The leaders of the three countries met in November last year in South Korea.

The China coast guard ship 33103 sails near the waters of disputed East China Sea islands in August 2016 JAPAN COAST GUARD (JAPAN COAST GUARD/AFP/File)
US watchdog clears ChemChina's Syngenta acquisition

A US national security regulator has approved a state-owned China National Chemical Corp.'s planned $43-billion (38 billion-euro) takeover of Swiss pesticide and seed giant Syngenta, the two companies said Monday.

ChemChina and Syngenta said in a joint statement that they had "received clearance on their proposed transaction from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)."

They said a number of anti-trust regulators around the world still need to approve what would be by far the biggest-ever overseas acquisition by a Chinese firm.

Syngenta rebuffed US-rival Monsanto three times last year before accepting ChemChina's offer Michael Buholzer (AFP/File)

They said the transaction was expected to close by the end of the year.

ChemChina announced the blockbuster deal in early February, vowing to dish out $465 for each Syngenta share, plus a special dividend.

Initially, the companies had expected to wrap up the first part of the transaction by May 23, but the period has been prolonged twice as the companies wait for the verdict of various competition authorities, which is now set for September 13.

There have been few hurdles to the planned deal in Switzerland, but it raised more than a few eyebrows in the United States, where much of Syngenta's business is based.

At the end of March, four members of the US Senate agriculture committee wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew voicing their concerns.

The senators, from both the Republican and Democratic parties, asked that the planned deal be scrutinised for "any potential ramifications the purchase may have for American national security, with a specific focus on the potential effects on food security and the safety of our food system."

This led to the review by CFIUS, an inter-agency committee that assesses the national security implications of foreign investments in US companies.

Syngenta rebuffed US-rival Monsanto three times last year before accepting ChemChina's offer.

The proposed merger is not the only mega takeover planned in the sector as low crop prices push demand down for many agricultural products.

German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer is intent on snapping up Monsanto, last month saying it would raise its initial $62-billion offer for the company.

And last December, two of the oldest US companies, Dow Chemical and DuPont, announced a tie-up to create the world's biggest chemical and materials group, valued at $180 billion.

Following Monday's announcement, Syngenta saw its share price soar 11.58 percent in mid-morning trading to 424.90 Swiss francs a piece, as the Swiss stock exchange's main SMI index swelled just 0.69 percent.
Anti-IS forces seize more ground in Libya's Sirte

Fighters of Libya's unity government, backed by US air strikes, have recaptured more ground from jihadists holed up in the centre of the coastal city of Sirte, loyalist forces said Monday.

"Our forces have retaken the internal security building used as a prison by the Islamic State (IS)" group, as well as a courthouse, the Al-Naga district and Dubai Street, the operations centre for fighters loyal to the Government of National Accord (GNA) said.

A statement said "the new victory" was achieved in clashes which raged throughout Sunday in the face of "desperate resistance by the jihadists".

A member of forces loyal to the Libyan government aims his weapon in Sirte as pro-government forces fight with the Islamic State group on August 14, 2016 Mahmud Turkia (AFP/File)

IS sniper positions were "neutralised" in two US air strikes and "our forces destroyed two booby-trapped cars... without loss in our ranks," it said.

However, 12 fighters were killed and 85 wounded in Sunday's clashes, the hospital in Misrata, 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of Tripoli where the pro-GNA military command is based, said on its Facebook page.

Pro-GNA forces, backed since the start of August by US air strikes, began an assault in mid-May to expel IS from what had been its Sirte stronghold.

The jihadists seized control of the city, which had been the hometown of Libya's slain dictator Moamer Kadhafi, in June 2015.

They fought their way into Sirte on June 9 and have since faced a barrage of sniper fire, suicide bombings and booby traps, pinning down the jihadists in a downtown area near the sea.

More than 350 pro-GNA fighters have been killed and nearly 2,000 wounded in the battle, according to medical sources. IS casualties figures are unavailable.

Sirte itself has been emptied of its residents, apart from families of IS militants, according to the pro-GNA forces.

American warplanes had carried out 65 strikes on IS positions in Sirte up until August 19, according to US Africa Command (AFRICOM).
Kerry urges deployment of South Sudan 'protection force'

US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Monday for the deployment of a 4,000-strong "protection force" to bolster the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.

"There is absolutely no question that we need to move forward with the deployment of the regional protection force authorised by the UN Security Council," Kerry said after meeting with five regional foreign ministers in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed also urged a speedy deployment. "When should it be there? Sooner rather than later," she said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry met foreign ministers of Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda for talks focusing on a faltering peace agreement in South Sudan Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP/File)

In the wake of fresh fighting in the South Sudanese capital Juba last month, Kenya offered to provide troops for a new force, approved by the Security Council on August 12, alongside Ethiopia and Rwanda.

The 4,000 new troops will join 12,000 already deployed as part of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) which has been widely criticised for its serial failure to protect civilians.

- Not an 'intervention force' -

Mohamed said a "gradual deployment" would allow troops to reach Juba more quickly.

"Any number of soldiers that goes in in the name of a protection force would be welcome and would open the door to everything else," she said.

Kerry said the new force would only seek to improve security in Juba and allow for the implementation of a peace deal signed a year ago.

"This is not an intervention force, it is a protection force, with a very clear mandate to protect people, to ensure access, freedom of movement and to be free from ambush or attack of any sort," he said.

No timeline has been given for the deployment but South Sudan's government has expressed strong reservations over the plan and called for further discussions.

"We want to know the mandate of this protection force," said South Sudan Vice President Taban Deng Gai during a visit to the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Monday. "We want to sit with them in Juba, not in New York."

Deng is strengthening his position after seizing the vice presidency from his old friend and ally Riek Machar who was forced to flee Juba during last month's fighting.

Kerry signalled that Machar's ouster did not undermine the August 2015 peace agreement of which he was a key signatory. "Legally, under the agreement, there is an allowance for the replacement of personnel and that has been effected with the appointment of a new vice president," he said.

- Regional threat -

Kerry also announced an additional $138 million (122 million euros) in aid for South Sudan where 2.5 million people have been uprooted by war since December 2013 and close to half the population is in need of emergency food aid.

During his meetings in Nairobi Kerry also addressed the threat of terrorism emanating from Somalia where a new government is due to be chosen next month.

"Al-Shabaab may have had its start in Somalia but it doesn't care about national borders," Kerry said. "The terrorists are a regional threat and demand a regional response."

He pledged continuing support for the internationally-backed government in Mogadishu and the cash-strapped African Union force fighting the Shabaab in Somalia.

South Sudan AFP (AFP)
Turkey backtracks on 'IS child bomber' claims

Turkey went back on claims that a child bomber linked to Islamic State (IS) jihadists carried out a deadly suicide bombing close to Syria, saying it had no clue who was behind the attack.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Ankara could not confirm who was the perpetrator of the attack on a Kurdish wedding in the city of Gaziantep which left 54 dead, apparently contradicting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who had said it was a child bomber acting on IS orders.

"We do not have a clue about who the perpetrators behind the attack were. Early information on who did the attack, in what organisation's name, is unfortunately not right," Yildirim told reporters in Ankara.

Mourners carry a coffin during the August 21, 2016 funeral for victims of the attack on a wedding party that left 50 dead in Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey Ahmed Deeb (AFP)

His comments were in stark contrast with those by Erdogan who said on Sunday that the bomber was a child aged between 12-14 acting on orders of IS jihadists.

Yildirim described as "rumours" whether the attack was conducted by a child or an adult, while insisting security agencies would continue their work to find out who was responsible.

"Those who were behind the attack will be revealed, there is no doubt about this."

The Hurriyet daily said DNA tests were under way to ascertain the bomber's identity, nationality and gender.

- 'Strikes on IS, PYD' -

Security forces believed jihadists had timed the attack as retaliation for offensives both by Kurdish militias and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition forces against IS in Syria, according to earlier Turkish press reports.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, hundreds of rebel fighters were preparing inside Turkish territory to launch an offensive on the IS-held Syrian town of Jarablus.

Without explicitly confirming the rebel offensive, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey backed anyone fighting against IS and would itself fight the group "to the end".

"Our border must be completely cleansed from Daesh," he said in televised remarks, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.

CNN-Turk and NTV channels later reported that Turkish armed forces launched artillery strikes on separate targets of IS jihadists and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Kurdish militia in northern Syria.

Turkish army howitzers stationed inside Turkey fired on IS targets in the town of Jarablus and PYD targets around the area of Manbij, the reports said.

- Dead mainly under 18 -

The majority of those killed in the wedding blast were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18, media said.

The death toll rose to 54 after three more died in hospital in the early morning, the Dogan news agency reported.

Sixty-six people were still in hospital, 14 of them in a serious condition. Television pictures showed fire brigade workers hosing down the area of the attack with water in a clean-up.

The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas said in a statement that "all of those killed were Kurds".

The bride and groom -- a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast -- were rushed to hospital but not seriously wounded.

The attack followed a string of strikes blamed on IS and Kurdish militants in recent months but if IS launched the attack, it would be the first significant jihadist action in Turkey since a failed July 15 coup.

Hurriyet said the type of bomb used -- stuffed with 2-3 centimetre shards of iron and detonated with C-4 explosives -- was similar to that used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on IS in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station last year.

The authorities were also looking for two individuals said to have accompanied the suspected suicide bomber into the wedding party but who then left the scene.

All 44 victims identified so far were laid to rest in harrowing ceremonies in Gaziantep on Sunday, with relatives throwing themselves on the coffins in grief, an AFP correspondent said.

The hillside graveyard was pock-marked before the ceremony with the holes of dozens of freshly dug graves for the victims.

One mother, Emine Ayhan, lost four of her five children in the bombing while her husband is in intensive care, the Yeni Safak daily said.

According to the list of victims in Turkish media, the youngest -- named as Gurbet Akcan and Muhammet Yagiz -- were both aged four.

The UN Security Council on Monday condemned what it described as a "heinous and cowardly terrorist attack".

Bombing kills dozens at Kurdish wedding

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warns that Turkey is a "prime target" for the Islamic State group Adem Altan (AFP/File)

The attack late Saturday on a crowded street wedding in the city of Gaziantep was the latest in a devastating series of bombings in Turkey Ilyas Akengin (AFP)
Kurds make major inroads in Syria's Hasakeh

Kurdish fighters on Monday captured the central prison in Hasakeh after fierce clashes with Syrian regime forces and are in control of 90 percent of the northern city, a monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighting escalated after heavy overnight clashes that saw the Kurds make advances mostly in the south of the flashpoint city.

Hasakeh, capital of the northeastern province of the same name, is already mostly controlled by Kurdish forces although the majority of its residents are Arabs.

Pro-regime drive a tank in the Syrian northeastern city of Hasakeh, where Kurdish forces are advancing, on August 21, 2016

Regime and Kurdish forces share a common enemy in the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group, but tensions have been growing between the two sides in Hasakeh leading to the latest clashes.

After hours of calm late Sunday, clashes broke out after midnight in the southern district of Ghweiran and around the buildings of Al-Masaken, which the Kurds later captured, said the monitor.

They also routed regime forces from the eastern part of Ghweiran, the largest neighbourhood in Hasakeh, and overran the An-Nashwa area in the south of the city.

The Kurdish forces also seized control of the central prison located in Ghweiran, said the Observatory.

"The Kurds now control 90 percent of the city," said the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

A Kurdish official in the city had earlier said that Kurdish police known as the Asayesh were in control of 85 percent of Hasakeh.

"The areas that have been captured will not be returned to the regime. They will remain under Asayesh control," Meskin Ahmed said in an online conference call with reporters.

The Observatory said the fighting came as Russian officials pressed mediation efforts amid conflicting reports on whether a truce had been agreed.

Syrian military source and state media had said a ceasefire deal had been reached but the Kurds denied this.

A journalist working with AFP confirmed that clashes were heard in southern and central Hasakeh and that pro-government fighters could be seen retreating from parts of Ghweiran.

- Russian mediation -

Clashes erupted last week between the Asayesh and the pro-government National Defence Forces militia (NDF). It escalated Thursday when regime warplanes bombarded Kurdish-held positions in the city for the first time.

That action came close to sparking the intervention of US warplanes when Washington warned against strikes that might endanger its military advisers with the Kurds on the ground.

The fighting in Hasakeh has also drawn in the Syrian army and the powerful Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

Kurds, who run autonomous institutions across much of northeast Syria, have often called for the dissolution of the NDF.

In an attempt to end the violence, Russian officials based at Hmeimim military airport on the coast flew to the nearby city of Qamishli to hold mediation talks.

A Syrian military source told AFP late Sunday that a ceasefire deal had been reached to end hostilities, hand back any new positions seized during the clashes and evacuate the wounded to Qamishli.

On Monday, a Syrian military source accused the YPG of "violating the agreement by refusing to allow safe passage for the dead and wounded to reach Qamishli".

But Kurdish sources have insisted that no agreement was reached at all.

One official in the Kurdish autonomous administration said talks "via indirect mediation" were still discussing "the dissolution of the NDF in Hasakeh".

He said Kurdish forces "have no plans as of now to seize control of all of Hasakeh".

The battle for Hasakeh Jean Michel Cornu (AFP)
Egypt's Sisi says Putin ready to host Mideast peace talks

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his Russian counterpart and close ally Vladimir Putin wants to host an Israeli-Palestinian summit to revive peace talks, in an interview published Monday.

Sisi told state newspaper editors that he believed Israel was increasingly convinced of the need for a peace deal, saying it was a "positive sign."

But Palestinian infighting between the Islamist Hamas rulers of Gaza and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah in the West Bank remained an obstacle, he said in the interview.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is said to be ready to receive both Abbas and Netabyahu in Moscow for direct peace talks Vasily Maximov (POOL/AFP)

Talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas have been suspended since 2014, despite a push by Washington and France to resume the peace process.

Sisi, who is seen as having good ties with both Israel and Abbas's Palestinian Authority, has also been pushing for a resumption of negotiations.

"Putin has told me that he is ready to receive both (Abbas) and Netanyahu in Moscow to carry out direct talks to find a solution and solve the issue," Sisi said.

"I see that the conviction of the importance of peace is rising among the Israeli side, and the conviction about finding an exit to the issue is a positive sign.

"At the same time, it is important to end the Palestinian-Palestinian rift... and to have national reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas so that the climate be ready for real efforts to establish a state," he said.

Sisi said last month that his country was making serious efforts to break the deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians.

His remarks followed a trip by Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to Israel, the first in nine years.

Egypt became in 1979 the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, after four wars.

Netanyahu has called on Palestinians to engage in direct negotiations with Israel, but Palestinian leaders say years of talks have not ended Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

Abbas has instead tried to put pressure on Israel through diplomacy at the UN.
Cut weapons sales to Saudi over Yemen, arms watchdog says

An arms watchdog on Monday urged major weapons exporters, including the United States and France, to cut sales to Saudi Arabia over its actions in Yemen, as a conference on global arms trade opened in Geneva.

The World Trade Organization is hosting the second conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which came into force in 2014 laying out new rules governing the international arms market.

By continuing to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, which has led a 17-month-long campaign against rebels in Yemen, major weapons exporters that signed the ATT are guilty of "the worst kind of hypocrisy," said Anna Macdonald, director of the watchdog Control Arms.

Saudi Arabia has led a 17-month-long campaign against rebels in Yemen, facing fierce criticism over air strikes on civilian targets Fayez Nureldine, Fayez Nureldine (AFP/File)

"The ATT has been in force for nearly two years but some States Parties are violating it with impunity," Macdonald added in a statement.

"Every day, we are seeing the devastating impact of the sale of arms and ammunition for use on civilians in Yemen."

The ATT requires states to block any arms deal if they have knowledge at the time of the sale that the weapons will be used against civilians.

Saudi Arabia has faced fierce criticism over its Yemen offensive in support of the internationally recognised government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

There have been repeated strikes on civilian targets. Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has described the Saudi-led coalition bombings as "indiscriminate."

France authorised $18 billion (16 billion euros) in weapons sales to Saudi Arabi last year, Control Arms said in a report this month.

The United States approved arms deals with Riyadh worth $5.9 billion in 2015, while for Britain the figure was $4.0 billion.

France and Britain have ratified the ATT. The US has signed the deal, but Congress has not approved it.

Control Arms accused those countries of "flouting international law in plain sight by continuing to sell billions of dollars worth of deadly weapons to Saudi Arabia."
Philippines backtracks on threat to pull out of UN

Aides to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte sought to backtrack Monday on his threat to leave the United Nations, saying he only meant to express frustration at UN criticism of his deadly war on crime.

"It was a way of stating that the nation is sovereign. Okay? It was not a statement of fact that we are leaving," presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella told reporters.

In a press conference that began just after 1:00am on Sunday, Duterte launched a profanity-laced tirade against the UN after two of its rapporteurs expressed alarm at his war on crime, which has claimed more than 1,700 lives in less than two months.

"Maybe well just have to decide to separate from the United Nations," said Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte at a press conference on August 21, 2016 Karl Alonzo (PPD/AFP)

"Maybe well just have to decide to separate from the United Nations. If you are that disrespectful, son of a whore, then I will just leave you," Duterte, who frequently uses swear words to insult his critics and others, said in the press conference.

The UN's special rapporteur on summary executions, Agnes Callamard, said Duterte's promise of immunity and bounties to security forces who killed drug suspects violated international law.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in June also strongly criticised Duterte, who during the election campaign promised to kill 100,000 people and dump so many bodies in Manila Bay that the fish would grow fat from feeding on them.

With Duterte's threats making global headlines, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay held a brief news conference specifically on the issue on Monday.

"The statement of the president is a statement expressing profound disappointment and frustrations and it is not any statement that should indicate a threat to leave the United Nations," Yasay said.

Yasay also sought to lay blame on the reporter who asked Duterte a question about the issue.

"He already ended up the press conference, as I observed, but the press was still needling him with a lot of questions so it was in this context that he made these statements," Yasay said.

"And if you're especially tired, disappointed and frustrated and angry, and under the circumstances, we must give a leeway on the part of the president for this kind of reaction. Like us, he is also human."

Nevertheless, Yasay said the final word rested with Duterte.
India's Modi comes under pressure over Kashmir violence

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi came under pressure on Monday over weeks of deadly violence in Kashmir, with the region's opposition leaders calling on him to rein in troops and police.

Modi stressed the need for dialogue to end the unrest in the disputed Himalayan region, after meeting the opposition leaders in New Delhi at their request.

"He (Modi) emphasised on the need for all political parties to work together to find a solution to the problems in the state of Jammu and Kashmir," his office said in a statement after talks with the delegation.

Much of Indian-administered Kashmir has been under curfew since protests broke out over the death on July 8 of a popular young rebel leader in a gunfight with security forces Tauseef Mustafa (AFP/File)

Much of Indian-administered Kashmir has been under curfew since protests broke out over the death on July 8 of a popular young rebel leader in a gunfight with security forces.

More than 60 civilians have been killed in clashes between protesters and police and troops and thousands more injured in the worst violence to hit the restive region since 2010.

Opposition delegates led by former Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah singled out security forces' firing of shotguns to disperse the protesters.

Hospitals have reported hundreds of young men and boys suffering serious eye and other injuries from the pellets.

"We also implore you to announce an immediate ban on pellet guns," said a memorandum handed to Modi. Use of the guns, along with harassment, raids and arrest of residents, "has worsened an already volatile situation in the state".

The meeting comes a day after Modi's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley warned that ongoing violence in the region would not be tolerated and described stone-throwers as among the aggressors.

Many of the young men who have come onto the streets since the rebel's death are throwing stones at security forces, an increasingly common form of protest in the area.

Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is part of an uneasy coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.

The Kashmir region is divided between India and Pakistan but both claim the territory in full.
Philippine police chief hails crime war 'momentum'

The Philippines' police chief Monday hailed the "momentum" in a war on crime that has claimed more than 1,700 lives, as a Senate inquiry heard allegations that security forces committed murder and torture.

President Rodrigo Duterte won presidential elections by a landslide after promising that tens of thousands of people would be killed in an unprecedented law-and-order crackdown. Security forces have relentlessly followed his orders since he took office on June 30.

"I admit many are dying but our campaign, now, we have the momentum," national police chief Ronald dela Rosa told the opening on Monday of a Senate inquiry into the killings.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is waging a drug war, resulting in the killing of hundreds of suspected drug dealers and the arrest of thousands more, packing overcrowded jails Noel Celis (AFP/File)

Dela Rosa said police had killed 712 people in anti-drug operations since Duterte came to power, and there were another 1,067 deaths at the hands of unknown attackers.

Human rights groups, the Catholic Church and the United Nations have expressed alarm at the bloodshed, warning of mass extrajudicial killings.

Duterte and Dela Rosa have insisted the security forces are only acting in self-defence, while claiming that the unsolved deaths are due to drug gangs killing people who could implicate them.

However two officers have been charged with murder over the death in custody of a father and son in Manila on July 7, the local district police chief told the inquiry.

Dela Rosa described such abuses as "very rare".

"Any policeman found violating the law against self-defence will be punished," Dela Rosa said.

Harra Kazou, the partner of the son killed on July 7, gave tearful testimony at the inquiry alleging that he reported being beaten at the police station after being arrested the previous night.

"I saw how he held the jail bars. He couldn't even stand up," Kazou said of her partner, Jaypee Bertes.

Kazou said her partner was a small-time drug trafficker but her father-in-law was not.

The two policemen claimed in an affidavit they killed the men at the police station because the father had tried to grab one of the officer's guns.

But the Philippines' Commission on Human Rights, which carried out an autopsy on both victims, said they had been beaten up so badly they suffered broken limbs, and each was shot three times.

"There was torture," commission regional chair Gilbert Boiser told the inquiry.

Senator Leila de Lima, who initiated the inquiry, warned there were likely more similar cases.
Israel launches 'dozens' of Gaza strikes, draws Turkish ire

Israel said Monday it staged dozens of strikes on Gaza in response to rocket fire from the strip, causing limited casualties but sparking a war of words with Turkey.

"We conducted strikes against several dozen targets in the Gaza Strip" on Sunday, an army spokeswoman told AFP.

Palestinian medical officials said four people were wounded by Israeli aircraft and tank fire after a rocket fired from Gaza hit the southern Israeli town of Sderot, without causing any casualties.

Palestinian militants of the Islamic Jihad movement inspect a crater on August 22, 2016 in the northern Gaza Strip, following an Israeli airstrike the day before Mahmud Hams (AFP)

Security sources in the coastal strip said several targets in northern Gaza were hit by Israeli fire, and that a reservoir in the town of Beit Hanun was destroyed.

Bases of Hamas's military wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, as well as of two smaller militant groups were hit, the sources said.

Turkey, whose parliament on Friday night ratified normalisation of ties with Israel after a six-year rift, slammed the Israeli strikes.

"We strongly condemn these disproportionate attacks," its foreign ministry said in a statement.

"These attacks, which caused injury to innocent Palestinian civilians, are unacceptable whatever prompted them."

Turkey's ruling Islamic-rooted AKP party has friendly ties with Gaza's Hamas rulers, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause.

"The normalisation of our country's relations with Israel does not mean we will stay silent in the face of such attacks against the Palestinian people," the Turkish statement added.

Israel was quick to respond in kind.

"The normalisation of our relations with Turkey does not mean that we will remain silent in the face of its baseless condemnations," said its foreign ministry.

"Israel will continue to defend its civilians from all rocket fire on our territory, in accordance with international law and our conscience.

"Turkey should think twice before criticising the military actions of others," the Israeli statement added, without elaborating.

- 'Aggression will not succeed' -

Turkish troops last month staged a failed coup attempt against Erdogan.

It was followed by a massive government crackdown on alleged coup sympathisers which has drawn EU criticism that it may violate human rights.

There was no immediate Palestinian claim of responsibility for Sunday's attack on Sderot.

A spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, said Israel "carries responsibility for the escalation in the Gaza Strip and this new aggression will not succeed" in weakening the movement.

Since January, 14 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israeli territory, the military said.

On July 2, Israeli air raids hit four sites in Gaza after a rocket struck a building in Sderot. There were no casualties in either attack.

Palestinian militants in Gaza and Israel have fought three wars since 2008, including the most recent conflict in the summer of 2014 that killed 2,251 Palestinians and 73 Israelis.

Turkey and Israel were formerly close regional allies, but fell out in 2010 when Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists in a raid on a flotilla seeking to run the blockade.

A 10th died after years in a coma.

Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador and suspended all defence ties in 2011.

The following year, Erdogan -- then prime minister -- denounced Israel as a "terrorist state", accusing it of "ethnic cleansing" in Gaza.

In June 2016 the two countries reached agreement on restoring ties and Israel's security cabinet approved the deal.

The Turkish parliament formally ratified it late on Friday, after a delay caused by the attempted coup.

A Palestinian man inspects the rubble of a makeshift dwelling on August 22, 2016 in Beit Lahia following an Israeli airstrike the day before Mahmud Hams (AFP)
Briton hit murdered Bali policeman during fight: lawyer

A British man accused of murdering a policeman on Indonesia's Bali island hit the victim in the head with binoculars during a struggle on a beach, his lawyer said Monday.

David Taylor claims he was pushed by the Balinese traffic policeman, Wayan Sudarsa, which led to the struggle, and he hit him after his Australian girlfriend pulled at the officer in a bid to break up the fight, the lawyer said.

Sudarsa's battered body was found in the early hours last Wednesday on Kuta beach, a popular tourist spot in southern Bali. Taylor and the Australian woman Sara Connor were arrested two days later.

Briton David Taylor (C/black mask) is escorted by Indonesian police at a police station in Denpasar on the island of Bali on August 19, 2016 Sonny Tumbelaka (AFP/File)

They were named suspects over the weekend, a step in the Indonesian legal system that means authorities believe they have enough evidence to consider filing charges, and could face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty of murder.

The couple have so far given often contradictory and confusing accounts about last week's events, but before police questioning Monday Taylor's legal team promised he would tell "the honest story".

After the interrogation in the Balinese capital Denpasar, Taylor's lawyer Haposan Sihombing said his client had become involved in a late-night confrontation with Sudarsa.

He and Connor had headed to the beach late Tuesday. But Sihombing said Connor lost her bag, and Taylor approached Sudarsa on the beach to ask if he had seen it.

"After that, the police officer pushed him, kept pushing him," the lawyer said, adding that they then began wrestling on the beach.

As the fight played out, Connor pulled at the policeman from behind in an attempt to separate them and Taylor spotted binoculars around Sudarsa's neck, said Sihombing.

"He saw a pair of binoculars on the victim's neck -- those were the binoculars that David used to hit the head of the victim twice," the lawyer said.

During separate questioning earlier Monday, Connor claimed she saw Sudarsa lying face-down on the beach and when she approached to ask whether he had seen her bag, the victim bit her on the leg, according to lawyer Erwin Siregar.

He said that she maintained her innocence.

Bali, a pocket of Hinduism in Muslim-majority Indonesia, is a popular tourist destination known for its tropical climate and palm-fringed beaches.

Petty crime is common but murders are rare.
Tunisia parliament sets date for unity government vote

Tunisia's parliament will meet on Friday to hold a vote of confidence on a new unity government announced over the weekend by premier-designate Youssef Chahed.

A parliamentary session will be held before the vote, parliament's official website announced on Monday, adding that the meeting could last at least a day.

Parliament spokesman Hassen Fathalli said Chahed would present his proposed new cabinet to lawmakers at the session before they discussed the line-up.

Youssef Chahed was appointed prime minister earlier this month after lawmakers passed a vote of no confidence in premier Habib Essid's government Fethi Belaid (AFP/File)

If his cabinet is confirmed by parliament, Chahed, 40, would become Tunisia's youngest prime minister since the North African country won independence from France in 1956.

He was appointed by President Beji Caid Essebsi early this month after lawmakers passed a vote of no confidence in premier Habib Essid's government after just 18 months in office.

On Saturday, Chahed -- a member of Essebsi's Nidaa Tounes party -- said he would head a 27-member cabinet which will also include 14 ministers of state, eight women "in important" positions and "14 young" ministers.

On Sunday, the Islamist Ennahda party, the largest in parliament, said it has "some reservations" about the line-up.

Two Ennahda ministers figure in the proposed cabinet, as opposed to one previously.

If approved, the new government will have to tackle the economic and social crises gripping the North African country since the 2011 revolution that toppled longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Iraq forces foil attack by would-be teenage bomber

Iraqi security forces apprehended a teenager wearing a suicide belt before he was able to detonate it in the city of Kirkuk, security officials said on Monday.

The foiled attack late Sunday was one of a series of security incidents in Kirkuk and came a day after a child suicide bomber killed more than 50 people in Turkey.

"Police forces managed to stop a bomber who was wearing a suicide belt. He was born in 2001," Kirkuk police chief Brigadier General Khattab Omar Aref told reporters.

The teenager, born in 2001, likely intended to blow himself up at a Shiite place of worship in Kirkuk, northen Iraq Ali Al-Saadi (AFP/File)

He said the boy likely intended to blow himself up at a Shiite place of worship in Kirkuk, an ethnically and religiously mixed city that lies 240 kilometres (150 miles) north of Baghdad.

Nighttime TV footage showed a boy holding his hands in the air as security forces removed the explosives belt from around his waist.

The thwarted attack was one of four separate security incidents in Kirkuk over a few hours, including one in which a policeman shot a suicide bomber who tried to enter a Shiite prayer hall.

"The police forces have managed to foil a terrorist operation that could have caused victims and led to a catastrophe for the province," Kirkuk Governor Najmeddin Karim told AFP.

The security situation has been tense lately in Kirkuk, which is under Kurdish security control but is also home to Turkmens, as well as Sunni and Shiite Arabs.

Aref said the attackers involved in the latest string of incidents entered Kirkuk recently and came from Mosul, the last remaining major bastion of the Islamic State group.

Iraqi forces are currently conducting shaping operations on several fronts to tighten the noose on Mosul -- Iraq's second city -- and set the stage for an offensive.

The IS group, the most extreme organisation in modern jihad, has routinely used children to perpetrate crimes.

It provides young boys in its self-proclaimed caliphate military training from a very young age.

According to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the bomber who killed at least 54 people at a Kurdish wedding in the city of Gaziantep was aged 12 to 14.

Military officials, including from the US-led coalition fighting IS, have said the group was increasingly resorting to under-age fighters because a string of defeats and setbacks was stretching its ranks thinner than ever.
Counterfeit pills 'may have killed Prince'

Investigators looking into pop legend Prince's death believe that counterfeit pills may have killed him, a report said Monday.

The Star Tribune, the daily newspaper in Prince's hometown of Minneapolis, said that authorities turned to the theory after seizing pills from Prince's Paisley Park estate.

The confiscated pills were marked as hydrocodone, a commonly prescribed drug for moderate pain relief, but in fact contained fentanyl, an intensely powerful painkiller for which Prince had no prescription.

An earlier autopsy found that Prince died on April 21 from an accidental overdose of fentanyl but did not address how he obtained the drug Bertrand Guay (AFP/File)

An autopsy earlier found that Prince died on April 21 from an accidental overdose of fentanyl but did not address how he obtained the drug.

The Star Tribune, which quoted an anonymous source, said that investigators were "leaning toward the theory that he took the pills not knowing they contained the drug."

Prince was found dead in his Paisley Park estate just as he prepared to discuss treatment with a California expert in painkiller addiction.

The 57-year-old "Purple Rain" star was outwardly a model of health who was known to be conscientious in his food choices and critical of musicians who abused drugs.

But Prince was private about his personal life and was believed to be quietly in pain from a hip operation after years of awe-inspiring stage moves.

One of the most influential artists of his generation, the sprightly rocker was just five-foot-two (1.6-meter) and 112 pounds (51 kilograms).

In his death, Prince became the highest-profile victim of a US epidemic of painkiller addiction.

The US Drug Enforcement Administration in a report last month said that fentanyl was more widely available and killing more people than at any point since the drug's creation in 1959.

The federal agency said that hundreds of thousands of counterfeit painkiller pills were on the US market, many containing fentanyl that was mass-produced in labs in China.
Libya parliament rejects UN-backed unity government

Libya's internationally recognised parliament on Monday voted no confidence in a UN-backed unity government, in a blow to efforts to end the country's political chaos.

But lawmakers gave prime minister-designate Fayez al-Sarraj a 10-day deadline to come up with a new unity government line-up, they said in a statement issued later.

The Government of National Accord led by Sarraj is struggling to assert its authority in Libya, which has been riven by turmoil since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Libya descended into chaos after the 2011 revolution that toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi Abdullah Doma (AFP/File)

National support for the GNA is seen as crucial to restoring stability and to tackling the Libyan branch of the Islamic State group, which pro-GNA forces are battling in the jihadists' coastal stronghold of Sirte.

But at a session on Monday, the House of Representatives, Libya's recognised legislature based in the far east, refused to give its support to the GNA.

"The majority of lawmakers present at the parliament session voted no confidence in the government," said parliament spokesman Adam Boussakhra.

Parliament speaker Aguila Saleh as well as 101 lawmakers attended Monday's vote, the assembly said on its website.

Sixty-one parliamentarians rejected the GNA, it said, 39 abstained from voting and a lone parliamentarian voted confidence in the government.

The unity government was the result of a UN-brokered power-sharing deal struck in December, but has struggled to unite the North African country and fully assert its authority.

A rival government in the east has refused to cede power until the House of Representatives passes a vote of confidence, which has been repeatedly delayed including over a lack of quorum.

Monday's vote was "the first time quorum has been reached in five months," Boussakhra said.

After one such vote postponement in February, 100 lawmakers in the 198-member legislature said they supported the GNA but had faced intimidation.

- 'Last chance' -

The parliament, in a statement approved by lawmakers who attended Monday's session, gave Sarraj a "last chance" to present a new line-up for a unity government within 10 days.

It called for "a consensus between members of the presidential council" of the GNA headed by Sarraj to select no more than eight to 12 candidates for the new cabinet.

Sarraj named a cabinet of 18 ministers in February, and four of them were dismissed last month because they never took office.

Mattia Toaldo, a Libya expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, warned Monday's vote could lead to "a new institutional crisis" in the war-wracked country and called for "immediate international mediation".

"We will have to see if Sarraj and the members of the (House of Representatives) who support him will accept the legitimacy of the vote," he said.

The GNA last month moved into its official Tripoli offices, more than 100 days after starting to work from a naval base in the capital.

Since the prime minister-designate arrived in Tripoli on March 30, the GNA has won the loyalty of the central bank and national oil corporation -- depositors of the country's wealth -- as well as cities and armed groups in western Libya.

And Sarraj's government has managed to gather forces who since May 12 have been battling to kick IS out of Sirte east of the capital.

Pro-GNA fighters, backed by US air strikes, have recaptured more ground from jihadists holed up in the centre of Sirte in recent days.

The jihadists seized control of Sirte, Kadhafi's hometown, in June 2015, raising fears they would use the city as a springboard for attacks across the Mediterranean in Europe.

Libya descended into chaos after the 2011 revolution that toppled and killed Kadhafi, with rival authorities vying for control of the country.

The House of Representatives has been based in the eastern city of Tobruk since a militia alliance including Islamists seized the capital in mid-2014.

More than 2.4 million people in Libya are in need of humanitarian assistance, the UN said on Friday.

Forces loyal to Libya's UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) stand in Sirte, east of the capital Tripoli, as they comb through some residential neighbourhoods that were previously controlled by Islamic State group on August 22, 2016 Mahmud Turkia (AFP)
Deadly battles as Yemen army seeks to break Taez siege

Deadly clashes raged on Monday between pro-Iran rebels and Yemeni government forces battling to secure an entrance to the besieged city of Taez, military sources said.

Backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition, Yemeni troops launched an offensive last week to break the rebel siege on Yemen's flashpoint third city, in the country's southwest.

The heaviest fighting Monday was near its western entrance where air strikes by the Arab coalition and ground battles left 11 dead among Huthi rebels and their allies, loyalist military sources said.

A tribesman from the Popular Resistance Committees, supporting forces loyal to Yemen's President, holds a position in the city of Taez, on August 9, 2016 Ahmad Al-Basha (AFP/File)

An air raid killed two more rebels at the northern entrance to Taez, which has been encircled for more than year, the sources said.

AFP could not confirm the toll from independent sources and the Iran-backed rebels rarely acknowledge their losses.

"The blockade of Taez is almost broken after the retaking of Jabal al-Dhabab mountain" by loyalist forces, Colonel Abdulaziz al-Majidi, a spokesman of pro-government forces in the area, told AFP.

"The road is now open between the west of Taez and southern provinces," he said, adding however that he was referring to a "rugged" route and not the main road.

The main road linking Taez to the south is still under rebel control.

Southern provinces are held by loyalist forces, while the rebels control the capital Sanaa, as well as the north and much of western Yemen.

Tens of thousands of civilians are said to be caught in the fierce and protracted battle for Taez.

Despite the latest loyalist advances, mines planted by the rebels around the city are so far hampering the delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid to Taez, according to military sources.

But dozens of residents have been using the sole open road, even before demining operations have been completed, to reach villages along the western outskirts, the sources added.

Yemen has been hit by unrest since the Huthi rebels and allied forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh overran Sanaa in September 2014.

Violence escalated after the Saudi-led coalition launched a military campaign in March last year to shore up the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

The UN says more than 6,600 people, mostly civilians, have since been killed and more than 80 percent of the population left in need of humanitarian aid.

The official sabanew.net website reported Monday that local charities have distributed around 40 tonnes of food supplies funded by Qatari businessmen to some 1,000 families across Taez province.

In Saudi Arabia, where rebel attacks on the kingdom's side of the border intensified this month, civil defence authorities said three foreign residents were wounded Monday in shelling from Yemen on the city of Najran.

More than 100 civilians and soldiers have been killed in southern Saudi Arabia by retaliatory rocket strikes or skirmishes since the coalition operations began.

Yemen has been hit by unrest since the Huthi rebels and allied forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh overran Sanaa in September 2014 Ahmad Al-Basha (AFP/File)
Fraught DR Congo faces national strike over election row

The tense DR Congo faces a nationwide shutdown Tuesday after the country's main opposition alliance refused to join talks with President Joseph Kabila's government in a stormy row over delayed presidential elections.

The fractured opposition recently came together in a new coalition -- "Rassemblement" (Gathering) -- headed by veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi to demand Kabila end his 15-year rule and step down when his mandate expires on December 20.

The coalition this weekend rejected an offer of all-party talks on the election that had been scheduled for Tuesday by Togo's former premier Edem Kodjo, who was asked to step in by the African Union (AU) to avoid a crisis.

The fractured opposition recently came together in a new coalition headed by veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi to demand Kabila end his 15-year rule Thierry Charlier (AFP/File)

In a statement it also called on "the people to mobilise as one to stop this umpteenth abuse of authority by observing a dead city strike this Tuesday August 23."

The opposition has signalled agreement to join the AU-run talks but only on condition Kodjo, seen as biased towards Kabila, be booted, and that the government release all political prisoners.

In an apparent sign of compromise, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo last week promised to free some two dozen prisoners of conscience to "ease political tensions" ahead of "inclusive national dialogue" -- the all-party talks.

But the coalition says 112 political prisoners remain behind bars, with only four facing release.

And in the latest sign of a delay of the election, the electoral commission said this weekend that a voter registration drive launched in March would not be complete by December as it would need around a year of work.

The country's highest court earlier this year ruled that Kabila could stay in office beyond December if no election were held.

- Warnings of 'high treason' -

Tension has been building for months in the vast mineral-rich nation of 71 million over fears Kabila will follow in the footsteps of neighbouring heads of state and change the constitution to extend his rule with a third term.

When Tshisekedi, who is 83 and frail, returned to DR Congo last month after a two-year absence he was welcomed by hundreds of thousands of supporters.

In a fiery speech in Kinshasa, Tshisekedi warned Kabila not to extend his rule, saying it would be "high treason" if the electoral process were not launched on schedule on September 19.

He told a rally that date was the "first red line which must not be crossed".

"The electoral body must be convened (by that date) for the presidential election. If it is not, high treason will be proved in the person of Mr Kabila, who will take responsibility for the misery of the Congolese people," Tshisekedi said.

"From that moment, his three-month notice period on the presidential palace begins. On December 19 the notice expires and on the 20th the house must be free," he added, to rousing cheers.

An immensely popular figure who emerged as a leading dissenting voice as far back as the 1980s, when he was a critic of strongman Mobutu Sese Seko, Tshisekedi in June in Brussels accomplished the rare feat of uniting the opposition.

Also in June, another leading light of the opposition, Moise Katumbi, was sentenced in absentia to three years in jail for property fraud.

The presiding judge in the case has since claimed she was pressured by the authorities into signing off on a guilty verdict, to ensure Katumbi would be ineligible to run for office, according to a letter seen by AFP.

The country's highest court earlier this year ruled that President Joseph Kabila could stay in office beyond December if no election were held Junior Kannah (AFP/File)
Jordan to educate more Syrian refugee children

Jordan has taken measures to allow more Syrian refugee children access to education, winning praise on Monday from Human Rights Watch ahead of the new academic year.

The government has instructed state schools to allow Syrian children to enrol for the new year starting in September even if their paperwork is not in order, government spokesman Mohamed Momani said.

"The children can get their situation sorted out during the school year," he told AFP.

Young Syrian refugees attend a UNICEF-run school at the al-Zaatari refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq Khalil Mazraawi (AFP/File)

"Carrying out this and other announced policy changes could help thousands more children attend school this semester," HRW said in a statement.

The education ministry has also set up double-shifts in 102 state schools, allowing 50,000 Syrian children to enrol, Momani said.

On Monday, the government also announced plans to create special classes for some 25,000 children aged 8 to 12 who had been deprived of schooling for the past three years or more.

These will allow refugee children to catch up and have been funded in part by donations from the United States, Britain, Norway and Switzerland to the tune of around $100 million.

Bill Van Esveld, senior children's rights researcher at HRW, described the measures -- announced after the watchdog had urged Jordan to educate more Syrian children -- as "important".

"Jordan's education ministry has taken an important step by ordering schools to accept Syrian children this fall even if they don't have their papers in order," he said in the statement.

In a report issued on Tuesday, the New York-based watchdog said more than 80,000 school-aged Syrian children in Jordan had received no formal education in the past school year.

HRW said Syrian refugees in Jordan are required to have so-called interior ministry-issued "service cards" which are also needed for children to enrol in public schools.

Jordan says it currently hosts nearly 1.4 million refugees -- including 630,000 registered with the United Nations -- and has repeatedly called for more international help to cope.
Sponsors drop Lochte after Rio scandal

Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte lost four sponsorship deals Monday -- a major financial hit for the embattled gold medalist stemming from his spurious claim of being robbed at gunpoint in Rio, a story later discredited by Brazilian police.

Global swimwear brand Speedo and US fashion label Ralph Lauren topped the list of companies that ended their relationships with the 32-year-old Lochte, with the former noting his actions had not reflected the "values" it wished to promote.

Mattress company Airweave and Syneron Candela, the parent company for a laser hair removal system that Lochte promoted, quickly followed suit.

"Speedo USA today announces the decision to end its sponsorship of Ryan Lochte," the company said in a statement Martin Bureau (AFP/File)

Lochte claimed he and three of his teammates -- all of them gold medal winners in Rio -- were mugged by robbers pretending to be police after a night out, but the story quickly unraveled as new witness testimony and surveillance video surfaced.

Police said the group had been detained over the vandalization of a gas station bathroom, apparently led by a drunken Lochte -- a major embarrassment for Team USA, an Olympic swimming powerhouse.

"Speedo USA today announces the decision to end its sponsorship of Ryan Lochte," the company said in a statement, noting that the company will donate $50,000 of Lochte's fees to Save the Children, to go towards helping Brazilian youths.

"While we have enjoyed a winning relationship with Ryan for over a decade and he has been an important member of the Speedo team, we cannot condone behavior that is counter to the values this brand has long stood for," it said.

"We appreciate his many achievements and hope he moves forward and learns from this experience," Speedo USA said of Lochte, who has won a total of 12 medals in Olympic competition during his career, six of them gold.

In a statement to E! News, Lochte said he was "grateful for the opportunities" afforded to him by his ties with Speedo -- a 10-year deal that was due to end this year, according to ESPN.

Ralph Lauren, which outfitted Team USA for the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies in Rio, said it too was finished with Lochte, noting that their agreement was specific to the Rio Games and his contract would not be renewed.

"Ralph Lauren continues to proudly sponsor the US Olympic and Paralympic Team and the values that its athletes embody," it added in a statement.

Airweave said on Twitter it was ending its partnership with Lochte, which was also limited to the Rio Olympics.

And Syneron Candela said in a statement to ESPN: "We hold our employees to high standards, and we expect the same of our business partners. We wish Ryan well on his future endeavors and thank him for the time he spent supporting our brand."

- 'Overexaggerated' -

After issuing a written apology that was widely ridiculed online as half-hearted, Lochte admitted in an interview with NBC aired Saturday that he had "left details out" and "overexaggerated some parts of the story."

He also admitted he was still intoxicated when he gave his initial account of the incident, adding: "I let my team down."

Following the incident, Lochte flew back to the United States, while the other three -- Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and Jimmy Feigen -- stayed in Brazil.

On Thursday, police released closed-circuit TV footage and other evidence about the events at the gas station.

The athletes, who appeared intoxicated, stopped in a taxi at the gas station to use the bathroom during the early hours of the morning.

Lochte and the others then vandalized the area near the bathroom and, according to the manager, urinated on the walls.

Confronted by a security guard, they tried to leave. When the confrontation escalated, the security guard took out his pistol and made them sit on the ground.

After paying about $50 in compensation for the damage to the station, they left unharmed and returned to the athletes' village.

"There was no robbery of the kind reported by the athletes," the head of Rio's civil police, Fernando Veloso, told a press conference.

Lochte's claims caused the Olympic authorities huge embarrassment, highlighting security worries at a Games where Brazil deployed 85,000 police and soldiers -- double the number used in the 2012 London Games.

He could yet face disciplinary action over the incident -- both USA Swimming and the International Olympic Committee could sanction him.

Speedo says it will donate $50,000 of Ryan Lochte's fees to Save the Children, to go towards helping Brazilian children Don Emmert (AFP/File)
IS roadside bomb kills civilians fleeing Iraq town

Six Iraqi civilians were killed on Monday when a bomb planted by the Islamic State group went off as they tried to flee the Hawijah area, security officials said.

Thousands of people have been fleeing IS rule in Hawijah, which lies about 220 kilometres (140 miles) north of Baghdad, in recent weeks.

"Six civilians were killed and five wounded by an IED (improvised explosive device)," a colonel in the Kurdish peshmerga forces told AFP.

Iraqi displaced families step down from a truck upon their arrival in an area controlled by the Peshmerga forces, some 55 kilometres west of Iraqi city of Kirkuk, on August 21, 2016 Marwan Ibrahim (AFP)

"It happened during an attempt by families to flee areas southeast of Kirkuk and reach peshmerga positions," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Among them were women and children," he added.

Other local officials confirmed the information.

Much of the area is littered by bombs and booby traps rigged by IS to prevent movements by Iraqi security forces.

The jihadists have repeatedly tried to prevent an exodus of the population before a government military operation to retake their areas.

In June this year, IS fighters opened fire on families trying to slip out of the city of Fallujah as Iraqi security forces prepared to move in.

A provincial official in charge of displaced people, Ammar Sabah, said 650 people who had successfully escaped IS areas were taken to camps east of Kirkuk on Sunday.

Peshmerga fighters and allied forces have been tightening the noose around Hawijah and neighbouring villages that IS has controlled since June 2014.

More and more civilians have fled Hawijah and its surroundings lately, with Sabah putting the number at 3,000 over the past week alone.
Protesters attack Pakistan TV station, one dead

Activists of a key Pakistani political party clashed with police and ransacked a private television station in the southern port city of Karachi on Monday, leaving at least one man dead and seven others injured.

The violence erupted soon after the powerful exiled leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), Altaf Hussain, gave a telephone address to his supporters in which he castigated the media for not giving due coverage of his workers.

Hussain's activists, who had just ended a week-long hunger strike over a government crackdown against them, attacked the ARY station after his address from self-imposed exile in London.

A Pakistani policeman walks past a torched police vehicle following a clash with activists of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement political party in Karachi on August 22, 2016 Rizwan Tabassum (AFP)

MQM workers also clashed with police on the streets, sparking volleys of gunshots and tear gas in several places across the city, police and witnesses said.

"We have carried out teargas shelling to disperse the mob, who were trying to attack a television office," senior police officer Saqib Ismail said.

One unidentified man was killed and seven others injured, two with gunshot wounds, according to hospital officials.

"One was brought (to the hospital) dead, who was shot with a gun," doctor Seemi Jamali, the director at a state-run hospital, told AFP.

Three of the injured belonged to media organisations, she said.

Television footage showed dozens of men and women barging into ARY's office, smashing doors, windows and equipment with rods and batons and setting fire to several vehicles.

Paramilitary Rangers arrested the MQM's top leader in Pakistan, Farooq Sattar, as he arrived to address a press conference at Karachi Press Club late Monday, an AFP reporter witnessed.Officials said Sattar had been arrested in connection with the unrest.

The MQM, run by Hussain from London -- and accused of using extortion and murder to cement its grip on power -- has long been blamed for ethnic violence in Karachi.

It has clashed repeatedly with authorities who, according to rights groups, have resorted to hundreds of extra-judicial killings during a "clean-up" operation that began in 2013 in a city already plagued by violence.
UN aid chief warns of 'unparalleled' catastrophe in Aleppo

The United Nations' top aid official voiced anger on Monday at world powers' inability to agree on a truce to allow aid into Aleppo, warning of an "unparalleled" humanitarian catastrophe in the battleground Syrian city.

Stephen O'Brien told the Security Council that plans were in place to quickly send 70 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid to eastern Aleppo if all sides agreed on a truce.

"I'm not going to pretend. I'm angry, very angry," O'Brien told council members holding their third meeting on the crisis in Aleppo this month.

Syrian civil defence volunteers, known as the White Helmets, dig through the debris following an airstrike earlier in the day on August 20, 2016, the Jallum neighbourhood in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Thaer Mohammed (AFP/File)

"As the UN's humanitarian chief, this callous carnage that is Syria has long since moved from the cynical to the sinful."

O'Brien renewed his call for a 48-hour pause in fighting in Aleppo, where the violence escalated sharply in July when regime forces surrounded the rebel-held east.

Up to 275,000 people in eastern Aleppo have been almost entirely cut off from food, water, medicine and electricity for over a month, while 1.5 million people living in the west of the city also face severe shortages.

"In Aleppo, we risk seeing a humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled in the over five years of bloodshed and carnage in the Syrian conflict," said O'Brien.

The war-torn nation's second city "has become the apex of horror" for suffering Syrians, he said.

O'Brien welcomed the announcement from Russia, Syria's key ally, that it supports the call for the 48-hour ceasefire, but said all sides must sign on.

Once the needed security assurances are received, UN aid workers are ready to move 50 trucks of aid from western Aleppo to the east, and an additional 20 trucks from Turkey into eastern Aleppo, he said.

O'Brien urged all countries with influence, in particular the United States and Russia, which co-chair the international group backing the peace process in Syria, to rapidly reach agreement on a ceasefire deal.

Not a single aid convoy has reached Syria's besieged areas in August while air strikes have hit hospitals and schools.

In July alone, there were 44 attacks on medical and health facilities throughout Syria, including attacks against five out of the nine hospitals in eastern Aleppo, according to the UN.
Turkey PM urges world powers to turn 'new page' on Syria

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Monday urged world powers including Iran, Russia and the United States to join together to rapidly open a "new page" in the Syria crisis.

"It is vital that without losing more time a new page is opened in Syria, based on a model involving particularly Turkey, Iran... Russia, the United States and even some Gulf states and Saudi Arabia," he told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

He said Turkey's stance was "very clear -- not allowing Syria to be divided, maintaining its territorial integrity and not allowing any formation that will bring advantages to any group."

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim (L) welcoming Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli (R) for a meeting at Cankaya Palace in Ankara on August 22, 2016 Handout (Turkish Primne Minister Press Office/AFP)

"Syria's territorial integrity must be protected and an inclusive government ... where all groups are represented must be formed, so that all the animosity is removed," he added.

The comments were the latest signal from Ankara it is now prepared to work actively with world powers who have so far shared radically different viewpoints on the Syria conflict.

Russia and Iran are the major backers of President Bashar al-Assad, whose ouster Ankara has always said is essential for ending the over five-year civil war.

But Yildirim had on Saturday said, for the first time, that Assad is "one of the actors" in Syria and could remain temporarily in a transition period.

He said Monday: "It is essential that all the parties come together to stop the bloodshed in Syria and form a model of governance where all Syrians are represented."

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu last week made a surprise visit to Iran while earlier this month Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for the first time since a crisis in ties.

Yildirim's comments also came after as activists said hundreds of Ankara-backed rebels were preparing an offensive against the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria.

This offensive coincides with a similar move by Syrian Kurdish militia, potentially putting them on a collision course in the fight for the IS-held Syrian town of Jarablus.

Yildirim added that it was "absolutely unacceptable" for any Kurdish entity to be established in northern Syria, or any other region.

"In fact this is something that Syrians themselves would find unacceptable," he said.

Yildirim refused to be drawn about movement on the Turkish-Syrian border for a possible Jarablus operation.
Briton killed in Iraq ordnance-clearing accident

A British national working for a US company clearing ordnance in the Iraqi city of Ramadi was killed Monday as he tried to defuse a bomb, his company and officials said.

"We've just been made aware that there has been a British national killed in Ramadi," a British embassy spokesperson told AFP.

The mayor of Ramadi, which is the capital of the western Anbar province and was retaken by Iraqi forces from the Islamic State group earlier this year, confirmed the incident.

Members of the Iraqi forces search for improvised explosive devices (IED) Ahmad Al-Rubaye (AFP/File)

"A contractor of British origin was killed and another wounded as they attempted to defuse an IED (improvised explosive device) in the Malaab neighbourhood," Ibrahim al-Osej told AFP.

The contract for clearing the thousands of improvised explosive devices and booby-traps the jihadists left behind in Ramadi was awarded to US company Janus.

"The incident is under investigation, but what we can confirm is that, sadly, there was one fatality, a national of the United Kingdom. Another national of the United Kingdom suffered minor injuries," the firm said in a statement.

Rigging homes and planting bombs on roads was a key component of the system IS set up to defend the city, which lies about 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Baghdad.

Iraqi forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes eventually retook Ramadi six months ago after a battle that completely emptied the city of its population and left it in ruins.
Turkey launches artillery strikes on IS, Kurdish PYD in north Syria: TV

Turkish armed forces on Monday launched artillery strikes on separate targets of Islamic State (IS) jihadists and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Kurdish militia in northern Syria, television reports said.

Turkish army howitzers stationed inside Turkey fired on IS targets in the town of Jarablus and PYD targets around the area of Manbij, the CNN-Turk and NTV channels reported.

Turkey was deploying tanks and heavy weaponry on the border for the strikes, the reports added.

A Syrian man pushes a wheelbarrow past collapsed buildings in the northern Syrian town of Manbij as civilians go back to their homes on August 14, 2016 Delil Souleiman (AFP/File)

The reports came after as activists said hundreds of Ankara-backed rebels were preparing an offensive against the IS group in Syria.
Turkey, Israel trade jibes after Gaza strikes

Israel and Turkey traded fierce recriminations Monday over Israeli actions in Gaza, less than 72 hours after the Ankara parliament ratified renewed ties with the Jewish state following a six-year rift.

Israel on Sunday carried out dozens of air and tank strikes in Gaza in response to a rocket fired from the Palestinian territory into a southern Israeli town.

Palestinian medical officials said four people were wounded in the strikes, launched after a rocket was fired from Gaza into the town of Sderot without causing any casualties.

A Palestinian militant of the Islamic Jihad movement inspects the rubble of a makeshift dwelling on August 22, 2016 in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, following an Israeli airstrike the day before that targeted Hamas positions Mahmud Hams (AFP)

Turkey issued a blistering condemnation.

"We strongly condemn these disproportionate attacks," its foreign ministry said in a statement.

"These attacks, which caused injury to innocent Palestinian civilians, are unacceptable whatever prompted them.

"The normalisation of our country's relations with Israel does not mean we will stay silent in the face of such attacks against the Palestinian people," it added.

Israel responded in kind.

"The normalisation of our relations with Turkey does not mean that we will remain silent in the face of its baseless condemnations," said its foreign ministry.

"Israel will continue to defend its civilians from all rocket fire on our territory, in accordance with international law and our conscience.

"Turkey should think twice before criticising the military actions of others," the Israeli statement added, without elaborating.

Turkish troops last month staged a failed coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

It was followed by a massive government crackdown on alleged coup sympathisers which has drawn EU criticism that it may violate human rights.

Turkey and Israel were formerly close regional allies, but fell out in 2010 when Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists in a raid on a flotilla seeking to run the blockade.

A 10th died after years in a coma.

Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador and suspended all defence ties in 2011.

The following year, Erdogan -- then prime minister -- denounced Israel as a "terrorist state", accusing it of "ethnic cleansing" in Gaza.

In June 2016 the two countries reached agreement on restoring ties and Israel's security cabinet approved the deal.
'Troubled Man' Alice Cooper launches White House bid

With US presidential front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both suffering high disapproval rates, a new outside candidate sees an opening -- Alice Cooper.

The veteran shock rocker announced Monday that he is running for president with the slogan, "A Troubled Man for Troubled Times."

While the 68-year-old has enjoyed a fan base for decades, his platform, unveiled on a campaign website, revealed that he is not overly serious about his ambitions.

Alice Cooper, pictured on May 27, 2016, announced that he is running for US president with the slogan, "A Troubled Man for Troubled Times" Patricia De Melo Moreira (AFP/File)

Cooper calls for late Motorhead frontman Lemmy's likeness to be added to Mount Rushmore, the massive mountain sculpture that honors four US presidents, and for comedian Groucho Marx to grace the $50 bill.

Leaving aside sovereignty concerns in Britain, which recently voted to leave the European Union, Cooper's platform also calls for Britain -- where the rocker has long been popular -- to put comic Peter Sellers on the 20-pound note.

Cooper's campaign so far consists of selling merchandise and reissuing his band's 1972 song "Elected." The song, a hit during Richard Nixon's successful re-election campaign, ends with a politician promising, "Everybody has problems / And personally, I don't care."

Even if Cooper's campaign is a longshot, another musician -- rap superstar Kanye West -- has vowed to run for president in 2020.

Trump, a real estate tycoon and former host of a reality television game show, himself shocked the political establishment by winning the Republican nomination.

Cooper -- the voice behind youth anthems such as "I'm Eighteen," "School's Out" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy" -- has in the past described himself as apolitical.
Israel hits Syria targets after stray fire on Golan

The Israeli air force struck a Syrian army target Monday in response to what the military said was stray fire into its zone of control on the Golan Heights.

"Earlier, stray fire from Syrian conflict breached Israeli territory in the Golan Heights," army spokesman Peter Lerner wrote on Twitter.

"Israel Air Force targeted Syrian Army launcher in Syrian Golan Heights, in response," he added.

Israeli soldiers direct a Merkava tank stationed in the Israeli annexed Golan Heights near the Quneitra crossing with Syria on July 26, 2016 Jalaa Marey (AFP/File)

A separate army statement said no injuries were reported on the Israeli side.

No further details were given.

Israel has sought to avoid being drawn into neighbouring 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.
Chimps prefer to cooperate over compete: study

Cooperation is often hailed as a key trait that separates humans from animals, but researchers said Monday that our closest relative, the chimpanzee, can learn to work as a team.

In fact, chimps prefer cooperation by a ratio of five to one over competition, and find ways to discourage peers from freeloading, said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal.

"Given the ratio of conflict to cooperation is quite similar in humans and chimpanzees, our study shows striking similarities across species and gives another insight into human evolution," said lead author Malini Suchak, who was a graduate student at the Yerkes Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time of the study.

A picture taken on July 14, 2016 shows rescued male chimpanzees eating in an enclosure at the Sweetwaters sactuary, Kenya's only great-ape sanctuary, within Ol-pejeta conservancy, near Nanyuki, in Laikipia county Tony Karumba (AFP/File)

She is now an assistant professor of animal behavior, ecology and conservation at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York.

Previous studies that found chimps were unlikely to cooperate took place in strictly controlled lab settings.

So researchers at Yerkes National Primate Research Center tried instead to mimic the chimps' natural environment for this study, placing 11 of them in a grassy outdoor area near a rope-like apparatus they could tug to get treats and rewards.

But they had to work together to get the goods, either in groups of two or three.

Chimps were allowed to choose their own partners.

Though they started out primarily competing against each other, they soon figured out that it was more advantageous to help each other.

Across 94 hour-long test sessions, researchers tallied 3,656 successful cooperative acts.

On the flip side, there were more than 600 competitive interactions, when chimps stole -- or tried to steal -- rewards without working to get them, pushed others out of the way or started fights.

Chimps sometimes overcame these forms of competition by "directly protesting against others," said the study.

Or, they refused to work in the presence of a freeloader, a strategy known as "avoidance," and which humans use, too.

Other times, more dominant chimpanzees intervened to fend off the freeloaders, displaying what researchers called third-party punishment -- also a human strategy.

"We gave them the freedom to employ their own enforcement strategies," said Suchak.

"And it turns out, they are really quite good at preventing competition and favoring cooperation."

According to co-author Frans de Waal, a primate expert and professor of psychology at Emory University, the study should prompt scientists to reconsider the extent to which cooperation aids survival in the animal world.

"It has become a popular claim in the literature that human cooperation is unique. This is especially curious because the best ideas we have about the evolution of cooperation come straight from animal studies," he said.

"The natural world is full of cooperation, from ants to killer whales. Our study is the first to show that our closest relatives know very well how to discourage competition and freeloading. Cooperation wins!"
Iran seeks closer ties with Cuba

Iran wants to forge a "new path" in its relations with Cuba by tightening ties, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Monday at the start of a Latin American tour.

"It's a very opportune moment to extend our relations," he told journalists at the start of a meeting with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.

"We have always been on the side of the great Cuban people in the face of the atrocities and unjust sanctions they have faced, and vice versa," he said, in an apparent reference to Cuba's long history of enmity with the United States.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (L) shakes hands with his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez upon his arrival at the Foreign Ministry in Havana, on August 22, 2016 Yamil Lage (AFP)

Cuba re-established diplomatic ties with the United States last year, but their historic rapprochement has not yet brought an end to the US embargo imposed on the communist island since 1962.

Zarif praised Cuba's "resistance" to the United States, with which Iran has not had formal diplomatic relations since 1980.

"We are going to forge a new path in our bilateral relations with Cuba," he said, mentioning the energy, industrial and technology sectors as possible areas for cooperation.

Rodriguez for his part reiterated Cuba's support for Iran in its dispute with the United States and other world powers over its nuclear program.

Iran sealed a deal last year with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US to limit the program in return for the lifting of international sanctions.

But although the deal took effect in January, Iran says it is still largely cut off from the international financial system.

"We continue to oppose all sanctions and unilateral coercive measures, especially in the financial domain," said Rodriguez.
Crisis-linked case against Fannie Mae CEO resolved

A five-year-old securities fraud case rooted in the financial crisis against the former chief executive of mortgage giant Fannie Mae ended Monday in stalemate, court filings showed.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the CEO, Daniel Mudd, decided to resolve the case being tried in civil court with no finding of guilt or innocence.

The two sides "agree that no party is the prevailing party in this case," they said.

Former President and Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae, Daniel Mudd, pictured in 2010, will "contribute" $100,000 to the US Treasury, with no explanation given as to what that represented Alex Wong (Getty/AFP/File)

The agreed "that it is not in the interest of justice to continue to litigate this matter."

After the massive 2008 bailout of Fannie Mae and sister mortgage firm Freddie Mac in the financial collapse, in 2011 the SEC filed securities fraud charges against six former executives of the companies.

The SEC said the executives approved misleading statements that claimed the companies held low levels of risky sub-prime mortgage loans.

The statements were made in 2007-2008, as the housing market crashed and US financial institutions were rocked by losses tied to millions of bad home loans and the securities they underpinned.

The SEC had argued that Fannie and Freddie executives had defrauded shareholders -- including the government -- by vastly understating the weakness of their own loan holdings.

Mudd's case was the last of the six, which likewise were inconclusive.

The agreement to conclude the case included a stipulation that Mudd will "contribute" $100,000 to the US Treasury, with no explanation given as to what that represented.
US warns Syrian regime not to fly near coalition troops

The Pentagon warned the Syrian regime Monday it is prepared to shoot down planes threatening US-led coalition forces in northern Syria, but stopped short of declaring a no-fly zone.

US military officials reacted furiously last week after jets from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad targeted Kurdish forces and coalition advisers fighting Islamic State jihadists around the northeastern city of Hasakeh.

The US military scrambled fighters on at least two occasions to ward off the Syrian planes, but neither incident resulted in air-to-air contact.

A member of the Kurdish police known as the Asayesh, observes enemy positions from a lookout point in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakeh during ongoing fighting with regime forces on August 22, 2016 Delil Souleiman (AFP/File)

It was apparently the first time the coalition scrambled jets in response to regime action, and possibly the closest call yet in terms of Syrian forces wounding coalition advisers.

"We would continue to advise the Syrian regime to steer clear of those areas," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters.

"We are going to defend our people on the ground, and do what we need to defend them."

Despite the warning, Cook avoided using the politically charged term "no-fly zone."

Secretary of State John Kerry and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton have both said they support no-fly zones, but President Barack Obama is reluctant to commit resources and troops to enforce such a measure.

"It's not a no-fly zone," Cook said.

"But... the Syrian regime would be wise to avoid areas where coalition forces have been operating."

The United States has passed warnings to Syria via Russia, with which the US military has an established line of communication.

When pressed, Cook said the warning also extended to jets from Russia, which has been bombing in support of Assad since last year.

"If they threaten US forces, we always have the right to defend our forces," he said.

The United States would protect not only coalition advisers, but also partner forces on the ground -- in this case Kurdish fighters.

America has for two years led an international coalition against the IS group, conducting daily strikes and working with local forces on the ground to help them fight the jihadists.

Russia started bombing in Syria last year, but most of its strikes have been in support of the regime.

In June, Russian aircraft conducted a series of air strikes near al-Tanf in southern Syria targeting US-backed counter-IS forces.

In that incident, the United States did not scramble jets, but the attack frayed an already tense relationship between the coalition and Russia.

Washington and Moscow have been in contact for weeks over establishing military cooperation to fight IS in Syria.

But Cook said such an agreement was far from a done deal.

"We are not there yet, and the regime and Russia's recent actions only make it harder to consider any potential coordination," he said.
Divided America: Diverse millennials are no voting monolith

The oldest millennials  nearing 20 when airplanes slammed into New York City's Twin Towers  are old enough to remember the relative economic prosperity of the 1990s, and when a different Clinton was running for president. The nation's youngest adults  now nearing 20 themselves  find it hard to recall a reality without terrorism and economic worry.

Now millennials have edged out baby boomers as the largest living generation in U.S. history, and more than 75 million of them have come of age. How they vote on Nov. 8 will shape the political landscape for years to come. Yet with less than three months to go before Election Day, the values of young Americans whose coming-of-age was bookended by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Great Recession are emerging as an unpredictable grab bag of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism.

What they share is a palpable sense of disillusionment.

Diana Downard, 26, a Bernie Sanders supporter who now says she will vote for Hillary Clinton, has drinks with friends at a pub in Denver on July 6, 2016. "Millennials have been described as apathetic, but they're absolutely not," says Downard "Millennials have a very nuanced understanding of the political world." (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

As part of its Divided America series, The Associated Press spent time with seven millennial voters in five states where the oldest and largest swath of this generation  ages 18 to 35, as defined by the Pew Research Center  could have an outsized influence in November. They are a uniquely American mosaic, from a black teen in Nevada voting for the first time to a Florida-born son of Latino immigrants to a white Christian couple in Ohio.

Taken individually, these voters illustrate how millennials are challenging pollsters' expectations based on race, class and background in surprising ways, reacting to what they see as the loss of the American Dream. They are intent on shaping something new and important that reflects their reality  on their own terms.

"Millennials have been described as apathetic, but they're absolutely not. I think you can see from this election year that they're not, and that millennials have a very nuanced understanding of the political world," said Diana Downard, a 26-year-old Bernie Sanders supporter who will vote for Hillary Clinton. "So yeah, I'm proud to be a millennial."

Just 5 percent of young adults say that America is "greater than it has ever been," while 52 percent feel the nation is "falling behind" and 24 percent believe the U.S. is "failing," according to a GenForward poll released last month. The first-of-its kind survey of young people between the ages of 18 and 30 was conducted by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Fifty-four percent believe only a few people at the top can get ahead in today's America, and 74 percent say income and wealth distribution are uneven, according to the poll.

Briana Lawrence, a 21-year-old videographer and eyelash artist from Durham, North Carolina, identifies with those numbers.

She was just 7 on Sept. 11 and the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks is the only time she can remember the nation feeling united, even if only by grief. With $40,000 in student debt, she's working hard to establish her own cosmetic business after graduating from North Carolina Central University. She plans to vote for Hillary Clinton, but feels America has lost its way.

"My biggest hope for this country is for us to come back together as a community. As a United States of America, to unite together again," she said.

But millennials know that getting to that place won't be easy. Many, like Lawrence, are saddled with college debt and have struggled to find jobs.

In Denver, 1,600 miles to the west, Downard also has almost $40,000 in student debt that's already changed her path. A dual U.S. and Mexican citizen, she feels she can't afford to work for an overseas organization  one of her dreams  and plans to delay having a family at least 10 years.

"We went to college in pursuit of a better life and really, now, we're kind of just paralyzed by our student debt," said Downard, who works for a nonpartisan organization that works to improve youth voter registration. "You can't even think about those sorts of alternative options."

In part because of these economic pressures, a 2014 Pew Research Center poll found that  for the first time in more than 130 years  adults ages 18 to 34 were slightly more likely to be living with their parents than with a spouse or partner in their own residence. And one in four millennials say they might not ever marry, a Pew survey found.

Only 8 percent of young adults feel their household's financial situation is "very good," and education and economic growth ranked No. 1 and No. 2 as the issues that will most influence their vote, according to the GenForward poll.

"We might be in a 'good-ish' finance situation right now as a country, but I was always taught there's ups and downs in the finance world and with every up, there's a down. So we should be preparing for that down to come," said Brien Tillett, who graduated this spring from a high school just miles from the Las Vegas Strip.

Tillett, who turned 18 in July, was 10 when the recession hit and sucked the wind out of his family. His mother, a single parent, was in a car accident that hospitalized her for three months and, with no safety net, the family struggled.

"It was to the point where I would not ask my mother to go hang out with my friends because I didn't want her to worry about money," said Tillett, whose brush with insolvency has deeply influenced his views.

The national debt is his No. 1 concern.

As a young black man, he's turned off by remarks by Donald Trump that he finds racist and xenophobic, but likes Trump's aggressive stance on the economy. "We're trillions of dollars in debt and that should not be happening," said Tillett, who started running track at a two-year college this month.

He strongly considered voting for Trump, but will now vote for Clinton because Trump has become "a loose cannon" in recent weeks. Still, he's angry about Clinton's use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State. "We have to basically question if we can truly trust her with all of our nation's secrets," he said.

Anibal David Cabrera was in high school when Tillett was just a small boy  but he's part of the same generation.

The son of a Honduran mother and Dominican father, he graduated from college in 2008 as the recession was picking up steam. A finance major, he wanted to work for a hedge fund or bank, but the economic collapse meant jobs had dried up. Eventually Cabrera, now 31 and living in Tampa, Florida, got an accounting job at a small tech firm.

He feels he's entering the prime of his life a few steps behind where he could have been, through no fault of his own.

A Jeb Bush die-hard in the primaries, he's now supporting Trump and hopes the business mogul can make good on his promises.

"My biggest hope for the country would be a prosperous economy. That is something my generation has kind of never seen," Cabrera said. "We never got to experience the rapid growth of the '80s or the '90s, and I think my generation would love to see that."

Shared pain does not lead to shared views among his generation.

Millennial voters' disdain for traditional party affiliation have made them particularly unpredictable. Half describe themselves as political independents, according to a 2014 Pew Research report  a near-record level of political disaffiliation. As a generation, they tend to be extremely liberal on social questions such as gay marriage, abortion and marijuana legalization. Yet they skew slightly conservative on fiscal policy and are more in line with other generations on gun control and foreign affairs.

Trip Nistico, a recent graduate of the University of Colorado, Boulder's law school, is an avid supporter of gun rights who goes to shooting ranges but also supports same-sex marriage. The 26-year-old Texas native voted for President Barack Obama in 2008  his first presidential election  and Mitt Romney in 2012.

"I'm pretty liberal on social issues. I don't really think that  on a national level  they're really as important as some of these other issues we've been discussing," he said.

He's supporting Trump because his preferred candidate, the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson, isn't likely to crack the polls.

Trump remains wildly unpopular among young adults, however, and nearly two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 believe the Republican nominee is racist, according to the GenForward poll. Views of Hillary Clinton also were unfavorable, though not nearly to the same extent.

Many millennials are angry that Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders has withdrawn and are disillusioned with the electoral process.

Forty-two percent of voters under 30 have "hardly any confidence" that the Republican presidential nomination process is fair and 38 percent feel the same about the Democratic process, according to the GenForward poll. The survey was taken before the leak of Democratic National Committee emails that roiled the Democratic Party.

Bill and Kristi Clay, young parents and devout Christians from rural Ohio, offer a portrait of millennials struggling to choose a candidate who matches their values.

They have two sons, 4 and 6, and are adopting a child from the Philippines. They serve meals with their church at inner-city soup kitchens in nearby Columbus and have a mix of political views that, Bill Clay says, comes from following "the lamb, not the donkey or elephant."

Kristi Clay opposes same-sex marriage and abortion and names those as her top issues this election. Yet the 32-year-old school librarian is still reluctantly leaning toward voting for Clinton. "You have to look at the big picture," she says.

Bill Clay, meanwhile, shares his wife's views on the more conservative issues, but they hold what some would consider more liberal views on matters such as immigration.

"If we're going to try to be Christian-like, and embrace people, I don't think you can shut the borders to an entire group of people just because of the fear that some of them don't like us," said Clay, 33, who voted for Barack Obama in the last two elections but supported Republican Marco Rubio this time.

Yet that strong faith has not helped him find much inspiration in the current candidates, both of whom he sees as self-serving and unwilling to budge on important issues.

"I'm feeling a little pessimistic this year," he said.

The Clays say they will vote no matter what, but whether their millennial brothers and sisters do the same is an open question.

The millennial vote rose steadily beginning in 2002 and peaked in 2008, with excitement over Obama's first campaign. In 2012, however, just 45 percent of millennials cast ballots and participation has leveled off or dropped ever since, said John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard University's Institute of Politics.

"They have a somewhat different perspective in terms of politics, "Della Volpe said. "It hasn't really worked. They haven't been part of a movement that's been effective."

Yet Tillett, the teen in Nevada, exudes youthful idealism as he talks about casting his first vote in a presidential election.

"It means a lot to me personally because I'm making a difference in my life and in the country. My vote does matter," he said. "It really does."

____

AP journalists Gillian Flaccus reported from Colorado, Nevada and Oregon; Tamara Lush from Florida and North Carolina; and Martha Irvine from Ohio.

Diana Downard, a Bernie Sanders supporter who now says she will vote for Hillary Clinton, meets with friends in Denver on July 6, 2016. Downard, who is 26, works at a nonpartisan organization in Denver that works to increase civic engagement and voter registration among young people. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Diana Downard, a Bernie Sanders supporter who now says she will vote for Hillary Clinton, runs in a park in Denver on July 7, 2016. "We went to college in pursuit of a better life and really, now, we're kind of just paralyzed by our student debt," she says. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Pictures of children sponsored by Bill Clay, second left, and his wife, Kristi, are displayed on their refrigerator as they prepare breakfast for their children, Ami, left, and Xavier at their home in Ashville, Ohio, on Saturday, July 9, 2016. Kristi Clay opposes same-sex marriage and abortion and names those as her top issues. Yet the 32-year-old school librarian reluctantly leans toward Clinton, because she feels Trump is materialistic and prefers the Democratic views on immigration and poverty. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Kristi Clay, left, and her husband, Bill, second from right, pray before a meal with their sons, Ami, second from left, and Xavier, at their home in Ashville, Ohio., on Saturday, July 9, 2016. Their strong Christian faith has not helped him find much inspiration in the current presidential candidates, both of whom Bill sees as self-serving and unwilling to budge on important issues. Although they both plan to vote, he says, "I'm feeling a little pessimistic this year." (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Bill Clay, left, and his wife, Kristi, right, prepare to leave for church from their home in Ashville, Ohio, on Saturday, July 9, 2016. "If we're going to try to be Christian-like, and embrace people, I don't think you can shut the borders to an entire group of people just because of the fear that some of them don't like us," says Bill, who voted for Barack Obama in the last two elections but supported Republican Marco Rubio this time. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Anibal David Cabrera, 31, stands in front of a mural in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, Fla., on Thursday, July 7, 2016. Ybor City was founded in the 1880's by cigar manufacturers and was a melting pot for immigrants. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Anibal David Cabrera, 31, is photographed during an interview in Tampa, Fla., on Thursday, July 7, 2016. He graduated from college in 2008 as the recession was picking up steam. A finance major, he wanted to work for a hedge fund or bank, but the economic collapse meant jobs had dried up. Eventually Cabrera got an accounting job at a small tech firm. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Anibal David Cabrera, 31, takes a selfie photo during an interview in Tampa, Fla., on Thursday, July 7, 2016. He's backing Trump and prays the candidate keeps promises and boosts the economy. "That is something my generation has kind of never seen." (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

CORRECTS NAME TO BRIANA LAWRENCE, INSTEAD OF BRIANNA LAWRENCE Briana Lawrence, 21, adjusts a camera in a studio at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C., on Thursday, July 14, 2016. She was just 7 on Sept. 11, 2001 and the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks is the only time she can remember the nation feeling united, even if only by grief. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

CORRECTS NAME TO BRIANA LAWRENCE, INSTEAD OF BRIANNA LAWRENCE Briana Lawrence, 21, works on her lighting skills in a photo and video studio at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C., on Thursday, July 14, 2016. With $40,000 in student debt, she's working hard to establish her own cosmetic business after graduating. She plans to vote for Hillary Clinton, but feels America has lost its way. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

CORRECTS NAME TO BRIANA LAWRENCE, INSTEAD OF BRIANNA LAWRENCE Briana Lawrence poses for a photo in a studio at North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C., on Thursday, July 14, 2016. "My biggest hope for this country is for us to come back together as a community. As a United States of America, to unite together again," she says. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Recent law school graduate and Donald Trump supporter Trip Nistico, 26, hikes in the hills above Boulder, Colo., on July 5, 2016. He is an avid supporter of gun rights who goes to shooting ranges but also supports same-sex marriage. The Texas native voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 _ his first presidential election _ and Mitt Romney in 2012. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Recent law school graduate Trip Nistico, 26, walks through his apartment in Boulder, Colo., on July 6, 2016. "I'm pretty liberal on social issues. I don't really think that _ on a national level _ they're really as important as some of these other issues we've been discussing," he says. He says he's supporting Donald Trump because his preferred candidate, the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson, isn't likely to crack the polls. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Recent law school graduate and Donald Trump supporter Trip Nistico, 26, right, scales a rock with his friend, Adam Agostini, in the hills above Boulder, Colo., on July 5, 2016. Millennial voters' disdain for traditional party affiliation have made them particularly unpredictable. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Brien Tillett sits a park in North Las Vegas on July 12, 2016. Now 18, he was 10 when the recession hit and sucked the wind out of his family. In the 2016 election, the national debt is his No. 1 concern. As a black man, he's turned off by some of Donald Trump's remarks, but likes the Republican's aggressive economic stance. He's considered voting for Hillary Clinton, but is angry about her use of a private email server while Secretary of State. Undecided at first, he recently decided on Clinton. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Brien Tillett takes part in a Zumba fitness demonstration while working at a health fair in Las Vegas on July 9, 2016. Tillett exudes youthful idealism as he talks about casting his first vote in a presidential election. "It means a lot to me personally because I'm making a difference in my life and in the country. My vote does matter," he said. "It really does." (AP Photo/John Locher)
PICTURED: Editor selections from the past week in Asia

India and Indonesia both held Independence Day celebrations last week. India, which gained independence from British colonial rule on Aug. 15, 1947, marked the day with cultural and military parades, colorful festivals and political speeches. Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation, saying that India would not bow to extremism and calling for young people to turn away from violence.

Indonesia, which gained independence from Dutch colonial rule on Aug. 17, 1945, marked its Independence Day by sinking 60 foreign ships seized for fishing illegally in the country's waters. The government of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has taken a hard-line stance against illegal fishing, partly driven by the need for Indonesia to show its neighbors, including China, that it is in control of its vast territory of 17,000 islands.

In other images from the Asia-Pacific region last week, Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Palace, will be hoping luck is on his side as he prepares to launch his Wynn Palace project in Macau, where growth is downshifting into a new phase after years of turbocharged expansion. Macau, a former Portuguese colony near Hong Kong, is the world's biggest casino market, with revenues four times those of the Las Vegas Strip.

In this Monday, Aug. 15, 2016 photo, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses the nation from the ramparts of the historical Red Fort on the Independence Day in New Delhi, India. India commemorated its Independence in 1947 from British colonial rule, on Aug. 15. In the back ground India's biggest Jama Maszid or Mosque is seen. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)

Singaporean swimmer Joseph Schooling arrived back home after winning the Olympic gold medal in the men's 100-meter butterfly. Schooling upset Michael Phelps to win his island nation's first-ever Olympic gold. Phelps finished in a three-way tie for silver.

___

This gallery was curated by Associated Press photo editor Karly Domb Sadof in Bangkok.

In this Monday, Aug. 15, 2016 photo, Indians get themselves photographed infront of a photo of Taj Mahal at a food and culture festival being held near the India Gate war memorial as part of Independence Day celebrations in New Delhi, India. India gained its independence from British colonial rule on this day in 1947. (AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal, File)

In this Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016 photo, Indonesian men climb greased poles to retrieve prizes during the Independence Day festivities at the main business district in Jakarta, Indonesia. Indonesia gained its independence in 1945 from the Dutch colonial rule. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana, File)

In this Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016 photo, young Nepalese Hindu priests take bath as a part of holy rituals during Janai Purnima festival at Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu, Nepal. During this festival Hindus take holy baths and perform annual change of the Janai, a sacred cotton string worn around their chest or tied on the wrist, in the belief that it will protect and purify them. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File)

In this Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016 photo, a woman carries a rainbow-colored umbrella as she walks during a rain shower in Beijing. Although Beijing is in a semi-dry climate, it receives much of its annual precipitation during the summer months. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

In this Monday, Aug. 15, 2016 photo, a man floats past the reflection of a public sculpture standing by a river in Beijing, China. Swimming in the capital's rivers is a popular pastime in summer and even in the frigid winter. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

In this Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016 photo, Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Palace, speaks during a press conference in Macau, China. The U.S. casino mogul will be hoping luck is on his side as he prepares to launch his Wynn Palace project in the Asian gambling hub, where growth is downshifting into a new phase after years of turbocharged expansion. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu, File)

In this Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016 photo, visitors walk across a glass-floor suspension bridge in Zhangjiajie in southern China's Hunan Province. The bridge, which opened to the public on a trial basis on Saturday, spans 430 meters (1,410 feet) and rises about 300 meters (984 feet) above a valley in a scenic zone, making it the world's highest and longest glass-bottomed bridge according to Chinese state media. (Chinatopix via AP, File)

In this Monday, Aug. 15, 2016 photo, Singaporean swimmer Joseph Schooling, right, poses for a selfie as he arrives at Singapore Changi Airport in Singapore. Schooling won the gold medal in the men's 100-meter butterfly and made history by winning the country's first gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (AP Photo/Yong Teck Lim, File)

In this Friday, Aug. 19, 2016 photo, a Nepalese Hindu boy in festival attire walks in a procession during "Gai Jatra," or Cow Festival in Kathmandu, Nepal. Members of Nepal's Newar Community celebrate the festival in memory of their family members who died the preceding year, believing that the cow will guide them in their journey to heaven. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha, File)
Lead warning at Indiana housing complex roils residents

More than 1,000 residents of a northwest Indiana public housing complex have been in a state of panic and uncertainty since authorities informed them last month that their homes must be destroyed because of serious lead contamination.

A warning this summer not to allow children to play in the dirt and to wash toys because the soil is soaked with hazardous levels of lead and arsenic was the first many residents of the low-income complex had heard about plans to remove tainted soil that date back to at least 2012.

"Somebody dropped the ball somewhere," said state Sen. Lonnie Randolph, an East Chicago resident who began getting calls from panicked tenants in late July asking for help. "Maybe it was intentional, or maybe by mistake. Maybe it was negligence."

In this Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2016 photo, a child rides his bicycle past the West Calumet Housing Complex in East Chicago, Ind. More than 1,000 residents of a public housing complex in northwest Indiana have been left in a state of panic and uncertainty since authorities informed them last month that their homes need to be destroyed because of a serious lead contamination threat. (Jonathan Miano/The Times via AP)

The West Calumet Housing Complex sits in an area of winding canals, rivers and aging factories about 25 miles south of downtown Chicago across the border in Indiana, and is home to mostly African-American and Hispanic residents. From 1906 to 1985, a plant melting lead and copper in a process called smelting spewed toxic particles into the air that settled into the soil of residential yards throughout the area. The sprawling U.S. Smelter and Lead Refinery Inc. site was among several facilities contributing to the contamination.

"When the wind would blow a certain way you would get a dark cloud of dust that would blow across the whole complex. I mean, you would think it was a sandstorm," long-time resident Akeeshea Daniels said of one neighboring plant that's now closed.

The lead plant closed in 1985, but despite known hazards, neighboring areas including the public housing complex and hundreds of private residences were not added to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's priority list for cleanup until 2009.

By 2012, a plan for hauling away tons of soil from hundreds of yards was in place and more extensive tests came back showing alarmingly high lead levels, including in the upper six inches of soil in some yards in the public housing complex. The EPA gave the results to the city of East Chicago in May and said it wanted to start digging out the bad soil this summer.

Signs went up warning residents to keep their children away from bare soil in playgrounds and yards. EPA contractors spread rubber mulch as a temporary covering.

Mayor Anthony Copeland, who was already skeptical of the EPA plan, urged residents in a letter in late July to temporarily relocate. Days later, the city sent another letter informing them it was seeking to demolish the entire 346-unit complex and they must find new housing as soon as possible.

"I was like, 'Wait a minute. What is he saying? How long have you known this?'" said Daniels, 40, who grew up in the area and has lived in the complex for nearly 13 years. "They were doing testing all of these years and they never said anything. That was kind of shocking."

City attorney Carla Morgan says the city only found out about the specific lead levels in May and the mayor acted immediately.

"When he found out for the first time what the levels actually were he started asking very adamantly that the residents be immediately relocated," she said.

The city says that over the years its housing authority had also warned residents generally of lead risks. The EPA, which has put its plan on hold because of the impending demolition, felt its proposal was adequate, said the agency's on-scene coordinator, Brad Benning.

The dangers of lead contamination were highlighted this year by the crisis in Flint, Michigan, where old pipes leached lead into the city's drinking water beginning in 2014 and tests showed some children with elevated levels. Even low lead levels in children can reduce IQ, ability to pay attention and academic achievement.

Lead tests are being offered to the East Chicago residents. Of more than 400 preliminary blood screenings so far, 29 have come back high, including 21 children under age 6, according to the Indiana State Department of Health, which is assisting local health authorities.

For years, Daniels had had suspicions that something wasn't right. She and two of her children, now 12 and 18, have long dealt with illnesses, including respiratory problems and severe headaches. Routine lead screenings required for school attendance came back high.

Her younger boy has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and has a struggled at his zero-tolerance charter school.

"My biggest fear is that my 12-year-old will never be normal," she said. "He will always have these behavior problems, this learning disability. It's like it will always keep him held back a step or two."

The housing authority has promised residents federal vouchers to help them pay rent at new homes. But Daniels and other residents wonder where they can go.

Daniels doesn't want to go north of the contamination zone because gangs there are a threat to her two sons, who are not gang members.

Other nearby low-income housing units have waiting lists of years, and she doesn't want to leave behind the 85-year-old grandmother she cares for.

Private landlords want cash up front, which she doesn't have. Even if she did, she's competing with hundreds of other residents hustling to find new homes.

"I do have a lot of moments where I break down completely," she said. "I've been a single parent for 25 years ... so I've grown to have a tough exterior, but inside I literally feel like I'm dying."

This July 27, 2016 photo shows signs around the West Calumet Housing Complex in East Chicago, Ind. where residents have been told the soil around their homes contains much higher than expected levels of lead and arsenic. The complex sits in the heart of a former industrial zone along Lake Michigan, an area of winding canals, rivers and aging factories. (John J. Watkins/The Times via AP)

In this Aug. 3, 2016 photo, Joseph Russell, 2, rides his tricycle outside his home at the West Calumet Housing Complex in East Chicago, Ind. More than 1,000 residents of a public housing complex in northwest Indiana have been left in a state of panic and uncertainty since authorities informed them last month that their homes need to be destroyed because of a serious lead contamination threat. (Jonathan Miano/The Times via AP)
Recent developments surrounding the South China Sea dispute

BEIJING (AP)  A look at recent 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.

FILE - In this Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016 file photo, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, left, talks with Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua, right, during the 115th Police Service Anniversary at the Philippine National Police (PNP) headquarters in Manila. Duterte said last week that he would not raise maritime disputes with China at a meeting of Southeast Asian nations in Laos next month, preferring to talk quietly with Chinese officials. (Noel Celis/Pool Photo via AP, File)

DUTERTE TAKES LOW-KEY APPROACH TO DISPUTE WITH CHINA

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said last week that he would not raise maritime disputes with China at a meeting of Southeast Asian nations in Laos next month, preferring to talk quietly with Chinese officials.

"I will only bring the issue when we are together face to face," he told reporters. "Because if you quarrel with them now and you claim sovereignty, make noise here and there, they might not just even want to talk."

Duterte has been lukewarm in his support for the international arbitration case filed by his predecessor and has said he was adopting "a softer approach" to resolving the disputes.

He said last week that his special envoy to China, former President Fidel Ramos, is paving the way for possible talks with China.

"Let us create an environment where we can sit down, talk directly, and that is the time when I would say, we proceed from here," he said.

Ramos flew to Hong Kong earlier this month to meet the Chinese legislature's foreign affairs chief, Fu Ying, and a leading government-backed scholar on the dispute, and they agreed on the need to reduce tensions through talks.

China welcomed him to visit Beijing for discussions, but the tribunal ruling was not directly discussed, Ramos told reporters. He gave no indication of when any talks might be held.

___

PHILIPPINES RECEIVES COAST GUARD SHIP FROM JAPAN

The Philippine coast guard took possession last week of the first of nine multi-role response vessels being provided by Japan in an effort to boost a chronic shortage of maritime assets amid Manila's territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea.

The 44-meter (144-foot) BRP Tubbataha was formally received at the port in the capital, Manila, after having left Japan on Aug. 11 with a dozen officers and sailors on board. The ships are being built by the Japan Marine United Corporation's Yokohama shipyard.

Alongside the U.S. military's heightened emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region, Japan has been upping its presence in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, partly to counter China's growing footprint. Aside from their close geographic proximity, the Philippines and Japan are both U.S. treaty partners who are locked in maritime territorial claims with Beijing.

The Philippines challenged the validity of China's claims and aggressive actions in the South China Sea after Chinese government ships took control of disputed Scarborough Shoal following a tense standoff in 2012. China, meanwhile, claims sovereignty over a string of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea controlled by Japan and has lately stepped-up coast guard activities in the area.

Closer cooperation between Japan and the Philippines is sure to anger China, which suffered from Japanese invasion in World War II and warns constantly of a resurgence of militaristic sentiments within Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's conservative government.

___

CHINA, ASEAN AGREE ON RULES GOVERNING SEA ENCOUNTERS

Senior officials from China and Southeast Asian Nations met in northern China last week to agree on rules governing unexpected encounters at sea in hopes of avoiding conflicts.

Representatives from Beijing and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations discussed implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea signed in 2002.

That agreement was intended to promote "peace, stability and mutual trust in the South China Sea," but has been largely shoved aside by China's decision to assert its own claim to virtually the entire strategic water body.

Despite that, all parties say they want to avoid hostile encounters that could spark a larger conflict. The agreed on Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea had already been adopted by several, but not all ASEAN countries, at a meeting in China in 2014.

"The code itself is technical, but applying the code has political significance. It is politically important to prevent potential risks on South China Sea," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told attendees at the meeting in the city of Manzhouli in northern China's Inner Mongolia region.

China and ASEAN are still discussing a South China Sea Code of Conduct that would more explicitly define rights and obligations among countries with overlapping territorial claims in the crucial water body.

___

CHINA HOLDS LIVE-FIRING EXERCISES IN GULF OF TONKIN

China's coast guard launched live-firing exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, the latest in a series of military drills that come amid a renewed focus on the multinational dispute over maritime claims in the South China Sea.

The Maritime Safety Administration said ships and boats were barred from the area, called the Beibu Gulf by China, from Monday to Wednesday. The gulf lies between China's southern island province of Hainan and the northeastern coast of Vietnam

China's navy and air force have held a series of drills in surrounding waters since an international arbitration panel in The Hague issued a ruling last month invalidating Beijing's claim to virtually the entire South China Sea, where six governments in all claim territory.

China angrily rejected the ruling and said it would begin flying regular air patrols over the strategic waterway while continuing to develop airstrips, harbors and other infrastructure of military value on man-made islands it controls in the disputed Spratly group.

China also plans joint naval exercises with Russia in the South China Sea next month in a move criticized by the U.S. as harming regional stability.
Malian extremist pleads guilty to Timbuktu rampage

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)  Expressing "deep regret" for his actions, an Islamic extremist pleaded guilty Monday to orchestrating the destruction of historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu.

Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, wearing a dark suit and striped tie, stood and calmly told judges he was entering the guilty plea "with deep regret and great pain" and advised Muslims around the world not to commit similar acts, saying "they are not going to lead to any good for humanity."

The guilty plea was a landmark for the court, which has struggled to bring suspects to justice since its establishment in 2002. It was the first guilty plea and the first time prosecutors have launched a trial for the crime of deliberately attacking buildings of religious or cultural significance.

Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi appears at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, at the start of his trial on charges of involvement in the destruction of historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu. Prosecutors allege that Al Mahdi was a member of an al Qaida-linked occupying force that destroyed most of Timbuktu's World Heritage-listed mausoleums in 2012. (AP Photo/Patrick Post, Pool)

"Our cultural heritage is not a luxury good," Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the three-judge panel. She said Al Mahdi's guilty plea "will set a clear precedent, sending an important and positive message to the entire world."

She compared the case to the destruction last year of historic ruins in the Syrian city of Palmyra by Islamic State extremists.

The court can't bring charges in that case because Syria is not a member of the court and the U.N. Security Council hasn't called for an ICC investigation, court spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said.

Al Mahdi led a group of radicals that destroyed 14 of Timbuktu's 16 mausoleums in 2012 because they considered them totems of idolatry. The one-room structures that house the tombs of the city's great thinkers were on the World Heritage list.

Al Mahdi faces a maximum sentence of 30 years imprisonment, but prosecutors say they will seek a sentence of nine to 11 years. Judges will issue a verdict and pass sentence at a later hearing.

Prosecutors showed judges photos and videos of rebels wielding pick axes, sticks and axes to attack a mosque's door and small, brick-built mausoleums in the city. Among them were images of Al Mahdi, at times with a Kalashnikov rifle slung over his shoulder, directing the attacks, which reduced the historic structures to piles of rubble.

Prosecutors say Al Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, an Islamic extremist group with links to al-Qaida that held power in northern Mali in 2012. The militants were driven out after nearly a year by French forces, which arrested Al Mahdi in 2014 in neighboring Niger.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon commended the court for bringing the case against Al Mahdi, saying it "draws our attention to an increasingly worrying trend of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in situations of armed conflict," according to a statement released by his spokesman.

Human rights activists have also welcomed the case, but criticized prosecutors for failing to file more charges against Al Mahdi.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said its member organizations have documented a litany of crimes and filed a criminal complaint on behalf of 33 victims in Malian courts accusing Al Mahdi and 14 others of crimes including rape and sexual slavery.

"We ... deeply regret that the charges against Al Mahdi were not widened to include crimes against the civilian population, including sexual and gender-based crimes, whose victims are far too often ignored during accountability processes," FIDH member organizations said in a statement ahead of the trial.

Speaking after Monday's hearing, Bensouda said further charges could follow in her Mali probe.

"We are also investigating other crimes," she said. "So this is the first case we've brought and we will see with respect to other crimes that have been committed within the context in Mali."

On the eve of the hearing, Timbuktu's mayor, Halle Ousmane, welcomed the prosecution.

"Justice has been done," Ousmane said. "We thank almighty God and all our partners, all those who have helped with his arrest so that today justice can be done."

____

Baba Ahmed in Timbuktu contributed to this report.

Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi appears at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, at the start of his trial on charges of involvement in the destruction of historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu. Prosecutors allege that Al Mahdi was a member of an al Qaida-linked occupying force that destroyed most of Timbuktu's World Heritage-listed mausoleums in 2012. (AP Photo/Patrick Post, Pool)

Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, second from right, appears at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, at the start of his trial on charges of involvement in the destruction of historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu. Prosecutors allege that Al Mahdi was a member of an al Qaida-linked occupying force that destroyed most of Timbuktu's World Heritage-listed mausoleums in 2012. (AP Photo/Patrick Post, Pool)

Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, right, appears at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, at the start of his trial on charges of involvement in the destruction of historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu. Prosecutors allege that Al Mahdi was a member of an al Qaida-linked occupying force that destroyed most of Timbuktu's World Heritage-listed mausoleums in 2012. (AP Photo/Patrick Post, Pool)

Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, center, appears at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday Aug. 22, 2016, at the start of his trial on charges of involvement in the destruction of historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu. Prosecutors allege that Al Mahdi was a member of an al Qaida-linked occupying force that destroyed most of Timbuktu's World Heritage-listed mausoleums in 2012. (AP Photo/Patrick Post, Pool)
Turkey slams Israeli strikes in Gaza despite reconciliation

ISTANBUL (AP)  Turkey on Monday condemned what it said were "disproportionate" Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, insisting that a recent reconciliation pact doesn't preclude it from speaking out against the country's actions.

Israel responded hours later, calling Turkey's condemnation "baseless" and vowing to defend its civilians.

The Israeli military carried out a series of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip late Sunday, targeting Hamas positions in response to a Palestinian rocket attack that hit an Israeli border town.

"The fact that our ties with Israel have normalized does not mean that we will remain silent in the face of such attacks that target the Palestinian people," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"On the contrary, we will continue to (defend) the Palestinian cause," it said, calling Israel's actions "against international laws and especially against consciences."

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon responded: "The normalization of our relations with Turkey does not mean that we will remain silent in the face of its baseless condemnations."

"Israel will continue to defend its civilians from all rocket fire on our territory, in accordance with international law and our conscience. Turkey should think twice before criticizing the military actions of others," he said.

Turkey and Israel reached an agreement last month to end a six-year rift caused by an Israeli naval raid on a Turkish aid ship trying to breach Israel's blockade of Gaza. Ten Turkish activists were killed in the raid.

Turkey's parliament last week approved the reconciliation agreement under which Israel will pay $20 million in compensation to the victims within 25 days. Under the agreement, individual Israeli nationals also wouldn't be held criminally or financially liable for the incident.

Earlier, police detained five people who tried to break into the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul to protest the Gaza airstrikes.

State-run Anadolu Agency said the five entered a business center housing the consulate early Monday and were detained by police who were called to the scene.
Iran's defense minister criticized Russia on Monday for having 'kind of show-off and ungentlemanly' attitude for publicizing that it used an Iranian air base to launch airstrikes on Syria, the first sign of government dissent over the unprecedented stationing of foreign troops in the Islamic Republic.

The comments by Gen. Hossein Dehghan come after he chastised parliament this weekend for asking questions about Russia using the Shahid Nojeh Air Base to refuel its bombers striking Syria.

His remarks Monday, reported by state television, signal officials beginning to recognize how unpopular the decision could be with the public.

Scroll down for videos

In this frame grab provided by the Russian Defence Ministry press service, a Russian long range bomber, a Tu-22M3, drops bombs in the Aleppo region on August 22

There was no immediate response from Moscow.

Last week, Russia announced it used the airfield some 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of the Iranian city of Hamedan. Iranian officials only confirmed Russia's presence a day later.

On Monday, state TV quoted Dehghan as saying that Russia 'will use the base for a very short and fixed span, corresponding (to) operation in Syria.' So far, Russia has carried out three days' worth of strikes from the base.

Responding to a question about why Iran didn't initially announce Russia's presence at the airfield, Dehghan appeared prickly on the state TV broadcast.

'Russians are interested to show they are a superpower to guarantee their share in political future of Syria and, of course, there has been a kind of show-off and ungentlemanly (attitude) in this field,' he said.

His remarks also suggest Russia and Iran initially agreed to keep Moscow's use of the air base quiet. Its announcement likely will force a response from Iran's Sunni-ruled Mideast neighbors, which host American military personnel.

For Iran, allowing Russia to launch strikes from inside the country is likely to prove unpopular. Many still remember how Russia, alongside Britain, invaded and occupied Iran during World War II to secure oil fields and Allied supply lines. But while Britain withdrew, Russia refused to leave, sparking the first international rebuke by the nascent United Nations Security Council in 1946.

Analysts have suggested Russia potentially leveraged Iran into allowing it to use the airfield over either economic or military interests, such as Tehran wanting to purchase Sukhoi-30 fighter jets or its deployment of Russian S-300 air defense missile systems. Russia initially held off on supplying the missile system to Tehran amid negotiations over Iran's contested nuclear program.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, right, and Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan shake hands during a meeting in Moscow

Over the weekend, photographs of President Hassan Rouhani were published in Iranian state media near a Bavar-373 missile defense system. That system is designed to be the local equivalent of the S-300  perhaps an Iranian signal back to Moscow that it's capable of defending itself without the Russian missile system.

In his comments Monday, Dehghan said the Bavar-373 can hit targets at the height of 27 kilometers (16.7 miles)  the same height the S-300 can reach.
WHY IT MATTERS: China

WASHINGTON (AP)  THE ISSUE: Tensions have been rising between China and the United States. China is modernizing its military and pressing its sovereignty claims over the disputed South China Sea, an important route for global trade. The U.S. is pushing back by increasing its military presence in Asia, which China views as provocative. The U.S. also accuses China of unfair trading practices and cyber theft of business secrets. Tough action by either side could spark a skirmish at sea or a trade war that would make many goods in the U.S. more expensive.

___

WHERE THEY STAND

FILE - In this May 28, 2016, file photo, Tibetan exhibitors check on their phones at their booth displaying their products during the China International Fair and Trade in Beijing. Tensions have been rising over Chinas assertive behavior in the seas of Asia. The U.S. also accuses China of unfair trading practices and cyber theft of business secrets. Donald Trump says that the sheer volume of trade gives the U.S. leverage over China. He accuses China of undervaluing its currency to make its exports artificially cheap and proposes tariffs as high as 45 percent on Chinese imports if Beijing doesnt change its behavior. Such action could risk a trade war that would make many products in the U.S. more expensive. Clinton says the U.S. needs to press the rising Asian power to play by international rules, whether on trade or territorial disputes. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

Hillary Clinton says the U.S. needs to "stand up to China" and press the rising Asian power to play by international rules  in trade, in cyberspace, and in territorial disputes. But she's also said the two nations need to cooperate where they can. Trump says the high volume of U.S.-China trade gives Washington leverage over Beijing. He accuses China of undervaluing its currency to makes its exports artificially cheap and he proposes tariffs as high as 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports into the U.S. to force it to trade fairly and support other U.S. policy goals.

___

WHY IT MATTERS

The U.S. and China are the world's two largest economies and biggest military spenders. The wider world needs them to get along, to keep the peace and tackle global problems like climate change and a nuclear North Korea. The U.S. and China also depend on each other economically. Two-way trade topped $600 billion in 2015. China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, and by some estimates, Chinese foreign direct investment into the U.S. has started to outstrip the flow of U.S. investment into China.

President Xi Jinping is trying to manage a soft landing for a slowing economy, and boost domestic consumption to reduce China's reliance on foreign trade to drive growth. That goal is supported by Washington as it could help reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China, which hit a record of nearly $370 billion last year. But China has a mixed record on economic reform. It has allowed market forces to play a bigger role in its currency exchange rate, but the U.S. has other complaints: restrictions on market access for foreign companies, economic espionage, and state subsidies, including cheap imports from China's bloated steel industry.

China is building Asia's strongest military and wants to be treated as a global leader, but its assertive behavior has unnerved its neighbors who look to the U.S. to help preserve order.

The U.S. worries that China, which has built several artificial islands in the South China Sea, wants to control crucial sea lanes. China denies this but refuses to compromise in what it says is a historical right to tiny islands and adjacent waters in the South China Sea where five other governments have territorial claims.

The U.S. Navy has periodically sailed close to the islands to demonstrate its freedom to navigate the area, angering China. In July, China rejected an international tribunal ruling in a case brought by a U.S. ally, the Philippines, that invalidated the legal basis of China's claims. The U.S. hopes China will moderate its position, but it shows no sign of doing so, although Beijing says it is ready to negotiate directly with other claimants.

Such economic and strategic tensions between two world powers can directly affect American jobs, wages, consumer prices and security.

___
Some voting happens well before Election Day

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  Voters in tightly contested North Carolina have seen the presidential candidates and their surrogates a lot this summer.

What helps make the state such a political hot spot is that voting begins there before anywhere else.

Election officials begin mailing ballots Sept. 9 to any registered voter in North Carolina who formally requested one. That's the earliest in the country and 60 days before the Nov. 8 election.

A few other battleground states start mailing absentee ballots two weeks later. An array of states follows with differing forms of early in-person voting in the campaign's final weeks.

It's for that reason that North Carolina provides campaigns with an early test.

___

MAILING IT IN

People don't have to give a reason to vote by mail in North Carolina, such as out-of-town Election Day traveling or being too sick to leave the house.

A little over 200,000 mailed ballots were collected in 2012, which amounted to less than 5 percent of the state's 4.5 million voter turnout. Republicans historically have favored mail-in ballots and could be critical to who gets the state's 15 electoral votes. Republican Mitt Romney won the state by 92,000 votes in 2012, while Democrat Barack Obama won by 14,000 votes in 2008.

___

STILL IN COURT

Getting more attention right now in North Carolina is the early in-person voting the state offers in all 100 counties. It's wildly popular: 56 percent of the votes for the November 2012 elections were cast at early-voting centers and county election offices over a period of 17 days. Democrats generally favor this form of in-person "no excuse" absentee voting.

The Republican-led Legislature and GOP Gov. Pat McCrory reduced that period to 10 days in a 2013 law that also mandates photo identification to vote. Voters, civil rights groups and the U.S. Justice Department sued, and last month a federal appeals court struck down the photo ID mandate and ordered early voting restored to 17 days. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said that elements of that overturned voter ID law heighten the possibility for a "rigged" election.

The state has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay the ruling. Otherwise, early voting will begin Oct. 20. While more days are now required for early voting, local election boards  each with Republican majorities  are considering whether to cut back the number of early voting sites or hours.

___

WHO'S NEXT?

Georgia election officials begin mailing absentee ballots Sept. 20, followed by Wisconsin on Sept. 22, Virginia on Sept. 23 and Michigan the following day. Iowa begins mailing ballots Sept. 29. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire start in October.

___

PLANNING AHEAD

In addition to North Carolina, early in-person vote is permitted in some form by 35 other states and the District of Columbia. Among battleground states, Iowa also opens early voting Sept. 29, followed by Ohio (Oct. 12) and Georgia (Oct. 17). Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire don't have early in-person options.

Three states  Oregon, Washington and Colorado  mail ballots to all registered voters, but Washington and Colorado also allow the option of voting early in person.

___
Thousands who fled California wildfire allowed to return

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP)  Authorities have lifted all evacuation orders affecting thousands of people, less than a week after a wildfire raged through mountainous terrain in Southern California and consumed hundreds of homes and other buildings.

About 82,000 people were ordered to leave their properties when the fire broke out Tuesday, 60 miles east of Los Angeles. As firefighters advanced on the blaze, evacuation orders were gradually lifted.

Most of those residents are returning to find their homes intact, though not all. A preliminary damage assessment found 105 homes and 216 outbuildings destroyed across the rural, mountainous area where large swaths of land have been blackened.

A firetruck passes scorched cars and trailers burned by the Blue Cut fire in Phelan, Calif., on Friday, Aug. 19, 2016. More people returned to their homes Friday as firefighters made significant progress against a huge wildfire burning in Southern California's San Bernardino National Forest, but that was tempered by the announcement that at least 96 homes and 213 outbuildings were destroyed. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Johanna Santore, 63, her husband and their 10-year-old granddaughter were among the last permitted to return home, though they already knew they didn't have much to get back to.

The family's home and nearly all their belongings were destroyed in the blaze.

Santore said the family was "holding up," but that Saturday evening when everyone was asleep she'd gone outside and cried thinking of the family's lost pets and mementoes. The Santores were out running an errand when the fire broke out and were unable to return to save anything.

Four dogs, six cats and a hamster left behind are missing.

"I'm hoping someone is stuck around hiding someplace," Santore said. "And if I start calling, they might recognize our voices."

In the meantime she has begun looking into how to replace birth certificates, their housing deed and other important documents they are unlikely to recover.

A prolonged drought has transformed swaths of California into tinderboxes, ready to ignite. A half-dozen other wildfires were burning in the state, including one in central California that destroyed 34 homes and forced the closure of the famed Hearst Castle.

That fire has burned 43 square miles since it began August 13. It remained 35 percent contained. Fire spokeswoman Jaime Garrett said the fire was growing in the opposite direction of the Hearst Castle, a popular tourist attraction that houses a large art collection that belonged to media magnate William Randolph Hearst.

In rural Santa Barbara County, a 33-square-mile wildfire that forced the evacuation of two campgrounds was 20 percent contained.

In the southern Sierra Nevada, another blaze feeding on dense timber in Sequoia National Forest forced the evacuation of several tiny hamlets.

In Northern California, fire crews were gaining control Sunday on an arson fire that destroyed 189 homes. Officials said the 6-square-mile fire in Lower Lake was 95 percent contained.

A nearly monthlong blaze burning near California's scene Big Sur is not expected to be fully contained until the end of September. The fire has destroyed 57 homes and charred 133 square miles, Cal Fire said. It is 60 percent contained.

Scorched cars and trailers burned by the Blue Cut fire line a residential street in Phelan, Calif., on Friday, Aug. 19, 2016. Thousands of residents chased from their mountain and desert homes were slowly beginning to take stock of their losses as the preliminary damage assessment was released for the blaze that erupted Tuesday in drought-parched canyons 60 miles east of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Scorched cars and trailers burned by the Blue Cut fire line a residential street in Phelan, Calif., on Friday, Aug. 19, 2016. More people returned to their homes Friday as firefighters made significant progress against a huge wildfire burning in Southern California's San Bernardino National Forest, but that was tempered by the announcement that at least 96 homes and 213 outbuildings were destroyed. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Firefighters water down scorched compost material at a property burned near Phelan, Calif., on Friday, Aug. 19, 2016. The wildfire unleashed its initial fury on a semi-rural landscape dotted with small ranches and homes in Cajon Pass and on the edge of the Mojave Desert before climbing the mountains. (AP Photo/Christine Armario)

Firefighters water down scorched compost material at a property burned near Phelan, Calif., on Friday, Aug. 19, 2016. The wildfire unleashed its initial fury on a semi-rural landscape dotted with small ranches and homes in Cajon Pass and on the edge of the Mojave Desert before climbing the mountains. (AP Photo/Christine Armario)

An air tanker makes a fire retardant drop Friday, Aug. 19, 2016 on the Lebec Fire off Interstate 5 in Lebec, Calif. Firefighters kept the blaze to 10 acres. (Casey Christie/The Bakersfield Californian via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; MAGS OUT; NO SALES; ONLINE OUT; TV OUT

This photo provided by California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection shows smoke billowing from a wildfire near Lake Nacimiento in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016. (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection via AP)

This photo provided by California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection shows smoke billowing from a wildfire near Lake Nacimiento in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016. (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection via AP)
Israel takes steps toward new settlement in volatile city

JERUSALEM (AP)  Israeli authorities on Monday confirmed that they have begun the process of expanding an Israeli settlement in Hebron, a West Bank city that has been the focus of nearly a year of violence.

The Palestinians swiftly condemned the move, saying they would seek international pressure to halt the plan from going forward.

The Palestinians, along with the international community, oppose all settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories they seek for a future independent state. Israel captured both areas in the 1967 Mideast war.

In this Sunday, Oct. 11, 2015 file photo, a Palestinian woman walks by Jewish child as he lights candles where a stabbing attack took place last week in Jerusalem's Old City. A new poll of Israelis and Palestinians released on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, found that a slim majority on both sides still favor a peace settlement establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, despite years of conflict and deadlock in negotiations. The results of the joint poll may provide some small signs of encouragement when peace prospects appear bleak. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)

Construction in Hebron, the West Bank's largest city, is especially contentious. About 1,000 Jewish settlers live in heavily fortified enclaves in the city, surrounded by some 200,000 Palestinians. The city is holy to both Jews and Muslims. There is frequent friction between the sides, and the city has been a flashpoint of violence during nearly a year of fighting.

Since last September, Palestinians have killed 34 Israelis in shootings, stabbings and vehicular attacks. At least 206 Palestinians have died by Israeli fire in the same period. Israel says most of the dead were attackers, though the Palestinians have challenged many of the Israeli accounts.

The site in question is next to Beit Romano, one of the settler enclaves inside Hebron. Most recently, it has been used by the Israeli military.

COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for civilian affairs in the West Bank, confirmed Monday that permission "to plan infrastructures" has been granted.

Hagit Ofran of the anti-settlement group Peace Now said it was the first approval in the area in more than a decade. She accused Israel of using "legal acrobatics" of allocating the land to settlers, instead of turning it over to the Palestinian-run municipality.

Settlers say they are returning to properties that belonged to Jews before they fled the area following deadly Arab riots in 1929.

Yishai Fleisher, a spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, welcomed expanding the settlement, saying it "would be good news for the Jewish community here." However, he said there are no building plans yet.

Although any construction is likely years away, the plan threatened to upset the already-tense climate in Hebron.

Kamel Hmeid, the Palestinian governor of Hebron, called it "one of the most dangerous decisions" by Israel. "What is happening is a cooperation and collusion between the government and the settlers."

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, issued a statement accusing Israel of trying to "Judaize" Hebron.

It vowed to turn to the Israeli Supreme Court, United Nations and international courts to stop the plan. "We stress the need for immediate action to prevent the implementation of this new settlement plan," it said.

The Israeli steps come at a time of deadlock in international peace efforts. The most recent round of U.S.-mediated talks broke down more than two years ago.

A number of parties, including the U.S., France and European Union, have attempted to restart negotiations. On Monday, both Egypt's president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and Palestinian officials said that Russia has also offered to host peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Gaps between the sides are so vast that talks appear unlikely anytime soon. Nabil Abu Rdeneh, the spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Monday that the Palestinian leader is ready to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but only if he meets a series of conditions, including a freeze on settlement construction. The Palestinians say that continued construction on occupied lands is a sign of bad faith by Israel.

Netanyahu's government is dominated by West Bank settlers and their supporters, and Netanyahu is unlikely to agree to halt construction.

Despite the continued deadlock, a new Israeli-Palestinian poll released Monday showed that a narrow majority on both sides still favor a peace settlement that would establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The poll found that 51 percent of Palestinians and 59 percent of Israelis still support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Tamar Hermann, an Israeli political scientist who conducted the survey with Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, said that under the current circumstances, the results were "not amazingly encouraging," but also "not discouraging."

"It showed there is still some basis for optimism with the right leadership," she said.

The survey interviewed 1,270 Palestinians and 1,184 Israelis in June, and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

___

Eyad Moghrabi in Hebron, West Bank contributed to this report.

FILE -- In this Sept. 4, 1996 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, stands at the table with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat at the Erez military checkpoint between Gaza and Israel. A new poll of Israelis and Palestinians released on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, found that a slim majority on both sides still favor a peace settlement establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, despite years of conflict and deadlock in negotiations. The results of the joint poll may provide some small signs of encouragement when peace prospects appear bleak. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)

FILE - In this July 20, 2016 file photo, mourners walk past the Israeli barrier as they carry the body of Muhey al-Tabakhi, 12, who was killed after clashes erupted between Israeli forces and protesters in the West Bank, during his funeral in the West Bank town of Al-Ram, near Jerusalem. A new poll of Israelis and Palestinians released on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, found that a slim majority on both sides still favor a peace settlement establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, despite years of conflict and deadlock in negotiations. The results of the joint poll may provide some small signs of encouragement when peace prospects appear bleak. (AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi, File)

FILE -- In this July 3, 2016 file photo, mourners carry the body of Miki Mark who was killed in an shooting attack by a Palestinian gunman while driving his family in the West Bank, during his funeral in Jerusalem. A new poll of Israelis and Palestinians released on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, found that a slim majority on both sides still favor a peace settlement establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, despite years of conflict and deadlock in negotiations. The results of the joint poll may provide some small signs of encouragement when peace prospects appear bleak. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty, File)

FILE -- In this Oct. 24, 2015 file photo, Israeli left wing activists hold signs during a peace rally in Tel Aviv, Israel. A new poll of Israelis and Palestinians released on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, found that a slim majority on both sides still favor a peace settlement establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, despite years of conflict and deadlock in negotiations. The results of the joint poll may provide some small signs of encouragement when peace prospects appear bleak. Hebrew on sign reads: "Peace was killed with Rabin." (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)
Suspect in deaths of 5 in Alabama blames drugs for slaughter

CITRONELLE, Ala. (AP)  A Mississippi man arrested after five people were found dead in a rural Alabama home blamed the gruesome rampage on drugs, telling reporters Monday there weren't words to express his regret for what had happened.

Wearing shackles and escorted by law enforcement officers as he arrived in Mobile, Alabama, from Mississippi, where he surrendered to authorities, Derrick Dearman said he was on methamphetamine when he went to the house the night of the killing.

Dearman, 27, said he turned himself in after sobering up.

A photo provided by the Greene County Sheriff's Department shows Derrick Dearman, a suspect in the Saturday massacre of five adults in Citronelle Ala. Dearman, of Leakesville, Mississippi, will be charged with six counts of capital murder, Mobile County sheriff's spokeswoman Lori Myles said Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. (George County Sheriff's Department via AP)

"I came down and realized what was really going on," said Dearman, who didn't describe exactly what happened inside the home but apologized for his actions.

Earlier, a Mississippi sheriff said Dearman had admitted killing at least one of the five adults slain at a rural home where his estranged girlfriend had sought shelter amid allegations of abuse.

Hours after the slayings, Dearman walked into the sheriff's office in Leakesville, Mississippi, "stating that he had killed someone or more than one person in Citronelle, Alabama," Greene County Sheriff Stanley McLeod said in a statement.

The slayings, which happened at the end of a dirt road outside Citronelle, left three men and two women dead. The victims included a pregnant woman and her unborn child.

Authorities said Dearman abducted estranged girlfriend Laneta Lester and a child from the house after the slayings, but both were later released unharmed. The home belonged to Lester's brother, who was among the victims and had let his sister stay there because she was afraid of Dearman, friends and relatives of the victims said.

Dearman, in comments recorded on video, apologized to Lester by name and described the victims as his friends.

A teenager who said she was related to all five victims by marriage or blood shook her head and fought back tears as she described her anguish over the slayings.

"They were really good people. They'd call and check on you, ask if you want to come down and eat," said Madison McDaniel, 17, who lives near the scene of the horrific violence.

Relatives of the victims started an online fundraiser to help cover funeral expenses, and clerk Dawn Sullivan collected donations in a plastic jug on the counter at D&B Quick Stop, where the victims often stopped for snacks and drinks.

"It's a sad situation. It never should have gotten to that point," said Sullivan, whose husband was related to one of the victims.

Dearman, of Leakesville, will be charged with six counts of capital murder, including one charge for the unborn child, Mobile County sheriff's spokeswoman Lori Myles said.

Alabama court records don't indicate whether Dearman has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

The slain were identified as Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; Chelsea Marie Reed, 22; and Robert Lee Brown, 26, Myles said.

Turner was Lester's brother and had let her stay at the house, which all the victims shared, McDaniel and Sullivan said. Turner and Randall were married.

"I'd always get on my horse and ride down there bareback," McDaniel said. Her step-aunt Randall would say, "'Be careful because you're already got a hurt knee.' I'd say, 'OK, Shan-Shan.' That's what I called her."

Brown was Randall's brother, McDaniel said, and Chelsea Reed was Randall's niece. Chelsea Reed was pregnant with the child of her husband, Justin Reed, said McDaniel.

About 1 a.m. Saturday, someone inside the home called 911 and reported that Dearman was on the property, authorities said in a statement. Citronelle police came to the house, but Dearman had left before officers arrived, sheriff's officials said.

Before daylight Saturday, Dearman returned to the home and attacked the victims while they were sleeping, the sheriff's department said. Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich said "multiple weapons" were used.

After the killings, Dearman forced Lester and a 3-month-old identified by relatives as the child of Randall and Turner into a vehicle, and they drove to Dearman's father's house in Mississippi. Dearman released Lester and the infant and turned himself in, authorities said.

Dearman's ex-wife, Crystal Dearman, told WALA-TV the man "always had a temper, especially when he doesn't get his way."

"I woke up to him holding a knife to my throat in bed with my baby in the crib," said Dearman, who said the two divorced in 2010. "He's made threats the entire time we were together and after we separated."

___

Associated Press writers Jeff Martin in Atlanta and Bill Fuller in New Orleans contributed to this report.

Crime scene tape marks the home on Jim Platt Road near Citronelle, Ala., Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016, where authorities said five people were killed on Saturday. Police said that Derrick Dearman, 27, of Leakesville, Miss., has been taken into custody in connection with the murders. (John Sharp/AL.com via AP)
Clinton identity on world stage helped by 1995 China talk

NEW YORK (AP)  Flying across the Pacific on an Air Force jet bound for Beijing, first lady Hillary Clinton huddled deep into the night with a few aides and advisers, honing her speech for the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women.

It was 1995, and it had been a bruising first few years in the White House: Troopergate, Travelgate, Whitewater. Not to mention the failure of her own high-profile efforts  unprecedented for a first lady  to overhaul the nation's health care system.

Even her trip to China provoked controversy. There were objections in some quarters to a first lady wading into tricky diplomatic waters and addressing issues like human rights abuses. Some in Congress called the conference "anti-family" and felt the United States shouldn't be attending at all. Some feared offending the Chinese with criticism; others feared the hosts might use the U.S. participation  and the first lady's  as propaganda.

FILE - In this Sept. 5, 1995, file photo, first lady Hillary Clinton addresses the panel of women's health and security before addressing the U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing. Flying across the Pacific on an Air Force jet bound for Beijing, first lady Clinton huddled deep into the night with a few aides and advisers, honing her speech for the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women. It was 1995, and it had been a bruising first few years in the White House: Troopergate, Travelgate, Whitewater. (AP Photo/Greg Baker, File)

In the end, Clinton decided to make the trip, hoping to "push the envelope as far as I can on behalf of women and girls."

"All eyes were now on Beijing, and I knew that all eyes would be on me, too," she writes in her memoir, "Living History."

But as she rose to the podium, and even after she had stepped down to thunderous applause, Clinton had no idea the impact the moment would have, she says. More than two decades later, that 21-minute speech  with its declaration that "Human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights"  remains one of her signature moments in public life.

It also stands out as a moment Clinton began to truly forge an identity as a public figure on the world stage apart from her husband.

"It gave her a platform that was instantly recognizable, one that she could utilize in a very efficacious way to make a difference," says Melanne Verveer, Clinton's chief of staff at the time.

And while Clinton was no stranger to the subject she addressed  she had long been an advocate for women and children  the Beijing speech would set a course for the issues with which she would be involved for the rest of her career, especially as secretary of state, says Verveer, who later served as the first U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women's issues.

"It played a major role in who she would become. It really was one of those evolutionary, transformative moments."

And it almost didn't happen. A few months earlier, Chinese-American dissident Harry Wu had been arrested upon entering China and charged with espionage, throwing the participation of the U.S. delegation and Clinton, its honorary chair, into limbo. He was finally released less than a month before the conference; Clinton writes that there was "never a quid pro quo."

She and her aides flew from Hawaii, where President Bill Clinton was speaking on the anniversary of V-J Day at Pearl Harbor. Working on the draft while others slept, the group was keenly aware that "one wrong word in this speech might lead to a diplomatic brouhaha," Clinton writes.

Hours later, she took the microphone in the large hall. She began by telling the delegates that when women are healthy, educated and free from violence, with a chance to work and learn, their families flourish, too. About halfway through, she declared: "It's time to break the silence. It's time for us to say here, for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights."

With emphasis on the word "human" each time, she listed abuses against women  and called them human rights violations (she did not mention China by name). Then came her most famous line: "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights, once and for all."

Once the words had been translated for all to digest, the reaction was thunderous. "People have tears running down their cheeks, they're stomping their feet," Verveer recalls. In her memoir, Clinton writes that despite the reaction, she still had no idea "that my 21-minute speech would become a manifesto for women all over the world."

It's difficult to understand in 2016 just how new Clinton's message felt, says Kathy Spillar, executive director of the Feminist Majority Foundation.

"We look back 21 years later, and we go, 'duh'  but it was groundbreaking at the time," she says. "It was huge  the first lady of the United States saying this, just outright. Many women were coming from countries where discrimination against women disguised as cultural practice was widely happening. Even the U.N. as a whole hadn't embraced this agenda. ... It was just an extraordinary moment in the centuries-long struggle for women's full human rights around the world."

But does the moment resonate for younger generations? Clinton's presidential campaign has struggled  especially during the primary season against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders  to capture the enthusiasm of young voters.

"For millennials and the 18-30 group, it does seem like ancient history," says Debbie Walsh of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. "But I think that when that speech is played and those words are heard, they're still meaningful. The global issues are not solved, and I think they do resonate with young women. So teaching young women in particular about Beijing  and what a departure it was from most first ladies to do something like that  is an important message for the Clinton campaign."

Writer Andi Zeisler was in her early 20s at the time, and she remembers news of the Beijing speech coming in stark contrast to more negative coverage of Hillary Clinton, especially when her husband was running for president.

"Hillary had become a focal point in so many ways, almost all of which were negative  the fact that she didn't give up her career ... this whole phenomenon of Hillary Clinton as a first lady considered too big for her britches or uppity or unforgivably ambitious," says Zeisler.

And so the Beijing speech amounted to "seeing her find a place where her voice was welcomed and where she kind of fit," says Zeisler, 43, author of "We Were Feminists Once" and co-founder and editorial director of the nonprofit Bitch Media. "I always think of the Beijing speech in the context of the word 'empowerment' because it was one of the first places on a global level where empowerment as an agenda  and as something that we should be striving for  was brought up.

"It was such an obvious thing: Women's rights are human rights. It seemed self-evident. But that was a real bombshell for a lot of people," she says.

Reminders of the moment have arisen often in Clinton's global travels, Verveer says.

"Even today if somebody comes up to her who remembers, they'll introduce themselves," she says. "They'll say, 'I was in Beijing.' It's that instant recognition that they shared something."

___
Thousands turn out to honor slain New Mexico police officer

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP)  A New Mexico police officer who was fatally shot during a traffic stop was remembered as a man who worked tirelessly to get a job in law enforcement, ultimately winning over the small village he was charged with protecting.

Thousands gathered Sunday to pay their respects to Hatch police Officer Jose Chavez, who authorities say was shot and killed by an Ohio fugitive in southern New Mexico. A crowd that included officials such as Gov. Susana Martinez packed the Pan American Center in Las Cruces.

Chavez's flag-draped coffin arrived in a navy-blue hearse. Officers from across the region and residents lined the 9-mile procession route that began in Hatch, a small village that normally would be celebrating its famous green chile harvest.

Officers salute the hearse carrying Hatch, N.M., Police Officer Jose Chavez, while it backs up a ramp at the Pan American Center in Las Cruces, N.M., Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. Chavez, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop, was remembered Sunday as a man who worked tirelessly to get a job in law enforcement, ultimately winning over the small village he was charged with protecting. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)

Chavez was a 33-year-old father of two daughters and a two-year veteran of the Hatch police force. He was shot Aug. 12 and died at an El Paso, Texas, hospital.

Bishop Oscar Cantu told the crowd that Chavez's final words were a request to tell his mother and his entire family that he loved them.

"When his voice should not have been audible, he spoke clear and audible words of love," Cantu said. "In his final moments, he was thinking of love."

Jesse Denver Hanes, of Columbus, Ohio, faces a first-degree murder charge in Chavez's death. He also is a suspect in the death of a 62-year-old man in Ohio, authorities said.

In a letter from Hatch police read aloud at the service, department officials recalled how Chavez interviewed to be an officer in 2014 and later exceeded all expectations. He had an infectious smile that made him stand out from the five other patrol officers who make up the tiny police department.

Chavez also had a soft spot for animals and a knack for catching stray dogs and cats.

Born in Juarez, Mexico, Chavez was a student at New Mexico State University. School officials say he was 16 credits short of his bachelor's degree in criminal justice.

He became a U.S. citizen in 2011, which was a steppingstone to his real passion: law enforcement.

"Jose worked hard to earn his American citizenship. But for him, that wasn't enough," Gov. Martinez said. "He insisted on giving back, on serving the community and country that he loved."

Martinez ordered flags to fly at half-staff earlier this week in honor of the officer, calling his killing a senseless act and tragic reminder of the dangers law enforcement officers face daily.

Gov. Susana Martinez presents a New Mexico Flag to the family of Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez at his funeral at the Pan Am Center in Las Cruces, N.M., Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. Chavez, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop, was remembered Sunday as a man who worked tirelessly to get a job in law enforcement, ultimately winning over the small village he was charged with protecting. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)

Pallbearers carry the flag-draped casket of Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez at the Pan American Center for a public funeral in Las Cruces, N.M., Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. Chavez, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop, was remembered Sunday as a man who worked tirelessly to get a job in law enforcement, ultimately winning over the small village he was charged with protecting. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)

Relatives of Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez enter the Pan American Center for a public funeral for him in Las Cruces, N.M., Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. Chavez, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop, was remembered Sunday as a man who worked tirelessly to get a job in law enforcement, ultimately winning over the small village he was charged with protecting. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)

FILE - This Oct. 31, 2013, file photo released by Dona Ana County Sheriff shows officer Jose Chavez at his graduation ceremony from our Law Enforcement Academy in Las Cruces, N.M. Hatch Police Officer Chavez, 33, was gunned down during a traffic stop Friday, Aug. 12, 2016. Thousands are expected Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016, to gather to pay their respects to Chavez, a Hatch police officer who authorities say was shot and killed by an Ohio fugitive during a traffic stop in southern New Mexico. (Dona Ana County Sheriff via AP, File)

Vietnam War Veteran John Pummell carries a flag while the hearse carrying Hatch Police Officer Jose Chavez approaches the Pan American Center for a public funeral in Las Cruces, N.M., Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. Chavez, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop, was remembered Sunday as a man who worked tirelessly to get a job in law enforcement, ultimately winning over the small village he was charged with protecting. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)
Britain to separate Islamic extremists from other prisoners

LONDON (AP)  Britain announced plans Monday to house imprisoned Islamist extremists in separate units from other inmates, after a review found that some charismatic convicts were radicalizing the wider Muslim population in prisons.

The government-ordered study concluded that "cultural sensitivity" among National Offender Management Service staff toward Muslim prisoners went too far and "could inhibit the effective confrontation of extremist views."

"There are a small number of individuals, very subversive individuals, who do need to be held in separate units," Justice Secretary Liz Truss told the BBC.

But Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said that any program must "get people back into the main prison community."

"Anything else is just storing up an even more difficult problem for when they are eventually released," he said.

Though the full report was kept confidential, a summary of the findings of the review recommended introducing the specialized units in order to stop a small number of individuals from being able to "proselytize" to other inmates. The release of the findings comes in advance of the sentencing of Anjem Choudary, one of Britain's best-known radical Muslim preachers.

Choudary, who has been convicted of encouraging support for the Islamic State group, is set to be sentenced in September. He was arrested in 2014 after his name appeared on an oath recognizing the "proclaimed Islamic Caliphate State." He said the oath was made without his knowledge.
Russian activist requests political asylum in Ukraine

MOSCOW (AP)  Ukrainian authorities say a Russian activist has requested political asylum in their country.

Ukraine's State Border Guard Service said in a statement on Sunday that a Russian citizen requested political asylum at a border crossing in western Ukraine, citing his activism in Russia. The agency described the man as a political activist who had protested against Kremlin policies.

Ukraine's Hromadske television late Sunday identified the man as Roman Roslovtsev who is better known for his walks across Red Square in a President Vladimir Putin mask. He has been detained more than 20 times and served 20 days in police custody in May for one of his protest walks.
General to testify about burning letters inBergdahl case

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP)  The judge overseeing Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's military trial said Monday that a top general must testify about destroying letters that he received from supporters and critics of the soldier who walked off his post in Afghanistan.

The judge, Army Col. Jeffery Nance, also cast doubt on the viability of an early 2017 trial date for Bergdahl, but stopped short of changing it.

Nance expressed skepticism about the relevance of the approximately 100 letters that Gen. Robert B. Abrams put in a "burn bag" to be incinerated, but the judge still decided that the head of U.S. Army Forces command must testify. Abrams has been traveling and has the option to testify in person or by phone at a pretrial hearing this week.

"There are some questions I have to ask about the 100 or so letters," Nance told the lawyers.

The destruction of the letters is one of several reasons why the defense says Abrams, who referred the case to a general court martial, should be disqualified from the case. They also cite his prior role advising former U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel during efforts to return Bergdahl from captivity and questions about whether Abrams considered defense objections to the findings of a preliminary hearing.

The defense is seeking a reset in the case that would allow another commander to decide whether it warrants a general court-martial.

Prosecutors say the letters  which were largely sent by members of the public  didn't constitute evidence and that Abrams shouldn't be required to testify, nor should he be disqualified.

"Bringing him into court to testify would provide no value," said prosecutor Maj. Justin Oshana, who noted that defense lawyers have already interviewed Abrams outside of court.

Defense attorney Eugene Fidell argued in court that the letters were valuable for reasons including that they may have contained leads that Bergdahl's lawyers could have pursued.

"We'll never know what they said. All we have are Gen. Abrams' assurances," Fidell told reporters afterward, stressing the need to question him further.

The judge also said Monday that defense attorneys can propose a significant revamping of pretrial deadlines, and he may consider changing the trial date in the future.

The defense has argued that trial deadlines have been jeopardized by the pace at which prosecutors are producing classified information. Prosecutors acknowledged Monday that they were likely to miss an upcoming deadline on the documents, saying it's taking time to get military and intelligence agencies to review them.

Fidell said after the hearing that there is "a lot of doubt" surrounding the February trial date.

Bergdahl, who is from Hailey, Idaho, walked off his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and wound up as a captive of the Taliban and its allies until 2014. The Obama administration won his release by swapping him for Guantanamo Bay detainees. Bergdahl faces a court-martial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. The latter charge carries up to a life sentence.

On Tuesday, defense attorneys are scheduled to argue a separate motion that public comments by U.S. Sen. John McCain impermissibly tainted the case.

___
Pakistani court orders UK woman's suspected killers jailed

ISLAMABAD (AP)  A Pakistani court has ordered the father and ex-husband of a murdered British woman held for 14 days pending trial, apparently the latest case of so-called "honor killings" in Pakistan.

Chief investigator Abu Bakar Khuda Bux says the two suspects appeared on Monday before a court in the eastern Pakistani city of Jhelum, after the police investigation was completed.

Police have said that 28-year-old Samia Shahid, a British woman of Pakistani origin, was strangled to death in July. Her family claimed that she died of natural causes.

Shahid's second husband Mukhtar Kazim had raised the alarm, which resulted in the arrests. Kazim claims his wife was lured back by her family to visit Pakistan under the pretext of her father's illness.
Indonesia recovers all 15 victims from sinking of tour boat

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  Searchers on Monday found the last five victims of a tourist boat sinking in Indonesia that killed 15 people.

The search was ended with all the victims found, said Agustiawarman, the head of Tanjung Pinang Disaster Management Agency.

Only two of the 17 people on board the small wooden boat were rescued after it capsized in rough seas Sunday off Indonesia's Bintan island, south of Singapore.

Indonesian police carry a body bag containing a victim of a capsized boat, at a hospital in Tanjungpinang, Bintan island, Indonesia, Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. A number of people died and others were missing after a small wooden boat capsized in rough seas and sank Sunday off Indonesia's Bintan island, south of Singapore, Indonesian officials said.(AP Photo/Albert)

The search and rescue effort involving about 20 ships and 50 fishing boats had been hampered by high waves and strong currents, disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said on Sunday.

He said the people on the boat were local tourists traveling to Penyengat island, about 6 kilometers (4 miles) from the city of Tanjung Pinang on Bintan.

Nugroho said some of the passengers tried to swim but were overcome by 3-meter (10-foot) waves. Two children were among those who died. The boat operator and a female passenger survived.
ChemChina says US security panel clears Syngenta acquisition

BEIJING (AP)  China National Chemical Corp. said Monday a U.S. national security panel has cleared its proposed acquisition of Swiss agrochemicals giant Syngenta.

The $43 billion acquisition still requires approval from anti-trust and other regulators in the United States and other countries, the state-owned company, also known as ChemChina, said in a two-sentence statement.

If completed, the deal would be the biggest foreign acquisition to date by a Chinese company. Shares in Syngenta jumped over 11 percent to 423 Swiss francs on Monday's news of the security clearance.

A group of U.S. legislators called in March for a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. They cited the potential for "risks to our food system" and the U.S. agriculture industry.

CFIUS, led by the U.S. Treasury Department, has objected to a handful of Chinese purchases of U.S. technology industries but almost all acquisitions have been approved. Still, mergers consultants say the prospect of undergoing a CFIUS review has put off some potential Chinese buyers of U.S. assets, making acquisitions in Europe and other markets look more attractive.

The Syngenta bid comes amid a spree of global acquisitions by Chinese companies that are looking for technology, brands and new markets to speed their development.

ChemChina Chairman Ren Jianxin is China's most aggressive global dealmaker and has spent more than $60 billion on acquisitions since 2010. They include Italian tire brand Pirelli, Norwegian chemical supplier Elkem and KraussMaffei, a German industrial machinery maker.

Ren has said he hopes to expand Syngenta's presence in China and other emerging markets.
Vietnam says it's now safe to swim at most central beaches

HANOI, Vietnam (AP)  A Vietnamese government minister says it's now safe to swim at most beaches in four central provinces where massive fish deaths occurred more than four months ago because of toxic chemicals released by a Taiwanese steel company.

The online newspaper VnExpress quoted Environment Minister Tran Hong Ha as telling a conference Monday that aquaculture is now also safe in most areas, but that research by the Ministry of Health is needed to determine whether it's safe to eat fish caught within 20 nautical miles (23 miles, 37 kilometers) off the coast of the four affected provinces.

Professor Mai Trong Nhuan, who headed a team of Vietnamese and foreign scientists commissioned by the government to study the impact of the disaster, told the conference that the chemicals, including cyanide and carbolic acids, are becoming more dilute, according to VnExpress.

Nhuan said the marine ecosystem, including coral reefs, sea grasses and other marine resources that were seriously damaged, has begun to recover.

The factory, owned by the Formosa Plastics Group, acknowledged in June that it was responsible for the pollution that killed large numbers of fish off the central Vietnamese coast, and pledged to pay $500 million to clean it up and compensate affected people.

The country's worst environmental disaster has devastated the fishing and tourism industries in the region.

The government said in a report to the National Assembly in July that the disaster harmed the livelihoods of more than 200,000 people, including 41,000 fishermen.

An estimated 115 tons of fish washed ashore along more than 200 kilometers (125 miles) of the central coast in April, the report said. The pollution sparked rare protests across the country.
Turkey vows to 'cleanse' border of IS after deadly attack

ANKARA, Turkey (AP)  Turkey vowed Monday to fight Islamic State militants at home and to "cleanse" the group from its borders after a weekend suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding, an attack that came amid recent gains by Syrian Kurdish militia forces against the extremists in neighboring Syria.

The bombing Saturday in the southern city of Gaziantep, near the border with Syria, killed at least 54 people  many of them children. Nearly 70 others were wounded in the attack, the deadliest in Turkey this year.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but officials said it appeared to be the work of the Islamic State group. Authorities were trying to identify the attacker, who President Recep Tayyip Erdogan initially said was a child. However, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Monday that it was unclear whether the bomber was "a child or a grown-up."

People carry a victim's coffin as they attend funeral services for dozens of people killed in last night's bomb attack targeting an outdoor wedding party in Gaziantep, southeastern Turkey, Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said the "barbaric" attack in Gaziantep, near the border with Syria, on Saturday appeared to be a suicide bombing. Turkish authorities have put a temporary ban on distribution of images relating to Saturday's Gaziantep attack within Turkey.(AP Photo/Mahmut Bozarslan)

"A clue has not yet been found concerning the perpetrator," Yildirim told reporters following a weekly Cabinet meeting. He said the earlier assertion that the attacker was child was a "guess" based on witness accounts.

At least 22 of those killed were children younger than 14, according to a Turkish official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with Turkish government rules.

The attack came after the Syria Democratic Forces, a coalition led by the main Kurdish militia groups in Syria, captured the former IS stronghold of Manbij in northern Syria under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.

"It appears to be an act to punish the PYD," said Nihat Ali Ozcan a security and terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, referring to a Syrian Kurdish group whose militia is fighting IS. "It's the cross-border settlement of scores by two actors fighting in Syria."

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters Monday that Turkey would press ahead with its fight against the Islamic State group inside Turkey and support efforts to remove IS fighters from its borders.

"Our border has to be completely cleansed of Daesh," Cavusoglu said, using an Arabic acronym for the extremists. IS "martyred our ... citizens. It is natural for us to struggle against such an organization both inside and outside of Turkey."

Cavusoglu said Turkey had become a main IS target because of measures it has implemented to stop recruits from crossing into Syria to join the fighting, as well as hundreds of arrests of IS suspects in Turkey.

"Turkey has always been Daesh's primary target, because Turkey has dried out the source of Daesh's supply of foreign fighters. ... It has stopped them from crossing into Syria," he said.

The deadly attack also came amid ongoing struggles between the government and Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, known as the PKK, and as the country was still reeling from the aftermath of last month's failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on a U.S.-based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, and his followers.

The bombing follows a suspected IS attack in June on Istanbul's main airport that killed 44 people; a double suicide bombing blamed on IS at a peace rally in Turkey's capital, Ankara, in October killed 103 people.

Ozcan, the security expert, said Saturday's attack was likely carried out by a local IS cell whose members would have known the wedding was a Kurdish one and targeted the wedding party for the "shock" value.

The bride and groom, who survived the bombing, urged authorities to act to prevent future bloodshed.

"They turned our best day to hell. We have no relatives left. They all died," said the groom, Nurettin Akdogan. "I hope this will be the last one. Let no one else get hurt."

"From now on, find a solution," added the bride, Besna Akdogan, sobbing.

One of the wedding guests, Nursel Saglam, was on a rooftop overlooking the outdoor celebrations when the bomb went off. When she looked down after the explosion, everyone below was hurt or dead, she said.

"I can't forget that moment," she said, adding that she hasn't been able to return to her house near the scene of the attack and was staying with her sister.

Halil Ilter said he was at home when he heard the blast and rushed to the scene to check on his relatives.

"I cannot recount what I saw," said Ilter, who lost five young cousins. "I am not myself since. There is nothing to say. It was murder."

"My uncle's children died. They were aged 13, 14. One was only 5," he said.
Philippine senators investigate hundreds of drugs killings

MANILA, Philippines (AP)  Philippine senators opened an inquiry Monday into the killings of more than 1,700 suspected drug dealers and users amid a crackdown spearheaded by President Rodrigo Duterte, with witnesses accusing some policemen of gunning down suspects or being involved in illegal drugs.

Sen. Leila de Lima, who heads the Senate justice committee leading the investigation, said that she was worried about the widespread killings, and that law enforcers and vigilantes may be using the crackdown "to commit murder with impunity."

At least 1,779 drug suspects have been killed, including 712 who were gunned down in clashes with police, with the rest being slain in still-unclear circumstances, possibly by anti-crime vigilantes, national police chief Director-General Ronald dela Rosa told the senators, adding that he did not condone extrajudicial killings.

A pregnant witness, the live-in partner of JP Bertes, an alleged drug-pusher who was killed while in police custody, tearfully recounts their ordeal as she testifies before the Philippine Senate which is probing the extra judicial killings related to President Rodrigo Duterte's "War on Drugs" Monday, Aug. 22, 2016 in suburban Pasay city, south of Manila, Philippines. Philippine senators opened an inquiry into the killings of more than 1,700 suspected drug dealers and users amid a crackdown spearheaded by Duterte, with witnesses accusing some policemen of killing suspects and being involved in the illegal drugs trade (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

The high number of deaths has alarmed human rights groups and leaders of the dominant Roman Catholic church, as well as the United States and U.N.-appointed human rights experts, who have warned the Philippine government and its officials that they could be held liable amid the widespread killings.

Another senator, Antonio Trillanes IV, asked dela Rosa why the police have failed to stop the killings by suspected anti-crime vigilantes, including motorcycle-riding gunmen.

"This is like anarchy," Trillanes said. "It's continuing under your watch."

Trillanes warned policemen who might get involved in extrajudicial killings that they would be held criminally liable and convicted despite an assurance from Duterte that he would defend them if they face criminal and human rights charges while fighting crime.

"What I'm saying, general, is the world revolves," Trillanes told dela Rosa and other police generals at the hearing, citing instances when military and police personnel were criminally charged for heeding unlawful orders.

"President Duterte is in position now, but what if his successor will prioritize human rights and conduct investigations?" he asked.

The brash Duterte, who built a name as a tough crime-busting mayor before rising to the presidency in June, has repeatedly threatened criminals, especially drug dealers, with death, which dela Rosa has emulated and even joked about. After facing criticism, both have clarified that policemen were under orders to shoot only if their lives are threatened.

Harra Besorio, one of a dozen witnesses scheduled to testify before the Senate committee, told the senators that policemen illegally arrested her boyfriend and his father, and beat them up in front of her. Neighbors then took them to a police anti-drugs station, where they were shot and killed last month, she said.

While searching her house without any warrant, one of the policemen forcibly removed the underwear of her 2-year-old daughter to check if the child was used to hide illegal drugs but found nothing, Besorio said in the nationally televised inquiry, acknowledging that her husband had peddled drugs to feed his family.

Two policemen accused of shooting Besorio's boyfriend and his father argued that the suspects fought back and one tried to grab a police officer's gun, but Commission on Human Rights official Gilbert Boiser said that was unlikely because an investigation showed the two suspects have been weakened by the beatings and were already in police custody in a station when they died, adding that each was shot three times.

"There were human rights violations," Boiser said.

The two policemen accused in the killings of Besorio's boyfriend and his father have been charged with murder, police said.

Another witness, Mary Rose Aquino, testified that her poor father, accompanied by her mother, had peddled drugs supplied by policemen and then remitted the money to them. In June, however, her parents were called by the policemen and the two were never seen alive again, she told the senators.

Duterte, a former state prosecutor, has been hypersensitive to criticism of his anti-drugs campaign and accused de Lima last week of having an affair with her driver, who allegedly collected protection money from detained drug lords when she was still the justice secretary. De Lima denied any wrongdoing and vowed to proceed with her Senate committee inquiry of the massive killings.

Over the weekend, Duterte threatened to withdraw the Philippines from the United Nations after two of its appointed human rights experts expressed concerns about the drug killings. However, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. said Monday that the Philippines has no plans to break off from the U.N., adding that Duterte was expressing his disappointment over the experts' criticisms and was hungry and tired when he uttered those remarks.

Human Rights Commissioner Chito Gascon, right, gets a stare from Philippine National Police Chief Ronald Dela Rosa as he reads his statement at the start of the Philippine Senate probe on extra judicial killings related to President Rodrigo Duterte's "War on Drugs" Monday, Aug. 22, 2016 in suburban Pasay city, south of Manila, Philippines. Philippine senators have opened an inquiry into the killings of more than 1,700 suspected drug dealers and users amid a crackdown spearheaded by Duterte, with witnesses accusing some policemen of killing suspects and being involved in the illegal drugs trade. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)

Witnesses, whose parents were killed allegedly by police, tearfully recount their ordeal as they testifies before the Philippine Senate which is probing the extra judicial killings related to President Rodrigo Duterte's "War on Drugs" Monday, Aug. 22, 2016 in suburban Pasay city, south of Manila, Philippines. Philippine senators have opened an inquiry into the killings of more than 1,700 suspected drug dealers and users amid a crackdown spearheaded by Duterte, with witnesses accusing some policemen of killing suspects and being involved in the illegal drugs trade. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
The Latest: Reports: Turkey strikes Kurds, IS in Syria

BEIRUT (AP)  The Latest on developments in the Syrian war (all times local):

8:45 p.m.

Media reports say Turkish artillery has attacked a U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militia as well as Islamic State group positions across the border in Syria.

FILE -- In this Feb. 16, 2016 file photo, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, right, and Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan shake hands during their meeting in Moscow, Russia. Dehghan was quoted by Iranian State TV website Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, as saying an announcement by Russia on using an Iranian airbase to attack Syrian militants was a kind of show off and ungentlemanly. The remarks suggest that the operation was not supposed to get public by either side. (Vadim Savitsky/ Russian Defense Ministry Press Service pool photo via AP, File)

Hurriyet newspaper says the attacks targeted positions north of the town of Manbij, which a Kurdish-led force recently captured from IS, on Monday.

The state-run Anadolu Agency says Turkey has increased security measures at its border opposite the Islamic State-held town of Jarablus, deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Turkish officials were not immediately available to confirm the report, which came as Syrian activists claimed that hundreds of Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters have gathered in the Turkish border area of Karkamis in preparation for an attack on Jarablus.

Ankara is concerned about the growing power of U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, who are linked to Kurdish groups waging an insurgency in southeastern Turkey.

___

7:30 p.m.

The U.N. humanitarian chief is urging all combatants in Aleppo to agree to a 48-hour pause to deliver desperately needed aid, warning of a "humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled in the over five years of bloodshed" in Syria.

Stephen O'Brien says Aleppo is being bombed every day, including a dozen new attacks Monday, and has become "the apex of horror" in "the greatest crisis of our time."

He told the U.N. Security Council, which has been deeply divided over Syria, that "you have the power with a pen  a simple pen stroke  to allow food to people."

O'Brien says the U.N. sought to deliver aid to nearly one million Syrians in August but not a single humanitarian convoy has moved so far this month.

5:40 p.m.

London police have arrested two women, aged 16 and 20, for allegedly trying to travel to Syria to join a banned organization.

The Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command said Monday the pair were arrested on suspicion of violating the Terrorism Act. No further details were offered.

The arrest reflects heightened concern about young women trying to join the Islamic State group in Syria.

The issue particularly rose in prominence after three teenage girls traveled to Syria last year to become so-called "jihadi brides." One of the three, Kadiza Sultana, is believed to have died in an airstrike.

___

4:45 p.m.

The Russian Defense Ministry says all Russian warplanes that were based in Iran, from which they launched airstrikes in Syria, have returned back to Russia.

The ministry said in a statement on Monday that as long as Iran agrees Russia could use the Iranian air base again "depending on the situation" in Syria.

Russia first announced last week that its planes had flown combat missions from Iran, a move that represented a historical rapprochement between Moscow and Tehran.

Moscow's comments came hours after the Iranian Defense Ministry criticized Russia for having "kind of show-off and ungentlemanly" attitude for publicizing the fact that it had used the Iranian base.

___

2 p.m.

A Syrian Kurdish news agency says clashes have erupted again in the northern Syrian city of Hasakeh between Kurdish fighters and Syrian pro-government militias.

Monday's outbreak follows a short lull in violence the day before.

The Hawar News Agency says fighters loyal to the Kurdish political movement are engaged with pro-government fighters in the city. The government and the Kurdish movement have shared control of the city since the early years of the Syrian civil war.

Syrian government planes bombed Kurdish positions in Hasakeh last week as the struggle for predominance in the city escalated. The clashes had calmed Sunday amid news of a possible truce.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Kurdish fighters have advanced into the city's eastern Ghouieran neighborhood amid "violent" clashes.

___

12:10 p.m.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman says Russia will stop using an Iranian air base for airstrikes in Syria for the time being.

Bahram Ghasemi told reporters on Monday in Tehran that the Russian airstrikes on militants in Syria were "temporary, based on a Russian request."

He also says the strikes were carried out with "mutual understanding and with Iran's permission" and that the Russian mission "is finished, for now."

Ghasemi reiterated that Russia "has no base in Iran."

His remarks reflect the Iranian authorities' displeasure at the extent of publicity Russia's use of an Iranian air base got last week.

___

9:30 a.m.

Iran's defense minister is chastising Russia, saying Moscow's announcement on using Iranian bases for attacks on Syrian militants was "kind of show off and ungentlemanly."

State TV's website on Monday quoted Gen. Hossein Dehghan as saying "Russians seek to show that they are a superpower."

Dehghan's remarks were the first sign of pushback from Tehran after Russia last week began using Iranian territory to launch airstrikes in Syria, with Moscow's bombers flying out of the Islamic Republic for three straight days to hit what Russia says are Islamic State targets and other militants in the war-ravaged country.

Iran only confirmed the flights and the use of its bases a day after Russia made the announcement.
Japanese first lady pays tribute at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii

TOKYO (AP)  Japan's first lady has visited Pearl Harbor in Hawaii for the first time to pay tribute to the victims of the Japanese attack 75 years ago.

Akie Abe said in a Facebook entry Monday that she laid flowers and prayed at the USS Arizona Memorial.

"I offered flowers and a prayer," she wrote in the short message.

FILE - In this Sept. 4, 2014 file photo, Akie Abe, wife of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo. Japan's first lady has visited Pearl Harbor for the first time to pay tribute to the victims of the Japanese attack 75 years ago. Abe said in her Facebook entry Monday, Aug. 22, 2016 that she laid flowers and prayed at the USS Arizona Memorial. "I offered flowers and a prayer," she wrote in a short message. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)

In one of several photos also posted on Facebook, Abe posed with an American veteran who survived the attack.

She did not elaborate on her visit, which came amid speculation about a similar visit by her husband, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the first lady was in Hawaii to attend an environmental conference. Suga declined to comment further, saying she is making a private visit.

Speculation about a possible visit by Prime Minister Abe to Pearl Harbor has grown since U.S. President Barack Obama paid tribute in May to the victims of the U.S. atomic bombing in Hiroshima.

No serving Japanese prime minister has visited Pearl Harbor.

"I've come to Hawaii many times, but I've never visited Pearl Harbor. As I think about the past war more often over the past year as we mark 70 years since the end of the war, I've felt strongly about visiting the site," Akie Abe was quoted as saying in an online "Gendai Business" magazine article linked to her Facebook entry. "I wanted to see the site myself and offer a prayer for those who died."
Foreign ministers from China, Japan, South Korea to meet

BEIJING (AP)  The foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea are due to meet Wednesday in Tokyo amid frictions between Beijing and its neighbors over territorial claims and regional security.

The foreign ministries of China and Japan said Monday that Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida would chair the meeting with China's Wang Yi and South Korea's Yu Byung-se.

First held in 2007, the trilateral meetings resumed last year after being suspended for two years amid a sharp downturn in China-Japan relations.

Tensions between Tokyo and Beijing remain high over claims to an uninhabited Japanese-controlled East China Sea island group, called Senkaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China. Ties between China and South Korea have frayed recently after Seoul approved the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system that Beijing says will harm its own security.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang described Wednesday's meeting as routine.

"We hope this meeting can help maintain the momentum of cooperation between China and Japan and contribute to the regional integration in East Asia," Lu said.
Iran: Russia has stopped using Iran base for Syria strikes

TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Russia has stopped using an Iranian air base for launching airstrikes on Syria for the time being, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday, just hours after the Iranian defense minister criticized Moscow for having "kind of show-off and ungentlemanly" attitude by publicizing their actions.

Moscow, which had used the Shahid Nojeh Air Base to refuel its bombers striking Syria at least three times last week, confirmed that all Russian warplanes that were based in Iran have returned to Russia.

A statement issued by the Russian Defense Ministry said Monday that as long as Iran agreed, Russia could use the Iranian air base again, "depending on the situation" in Syria.

FILE -- In this on Tuesday Aug. 16, 2016 frame grab provided by Russian Defence Ministry press service, aRussian long range bomber Tu-22M3 flies during an air strike over the Aleppo region of Syria. Irans Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan was quoted by State TV website Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, as saying an announcement by Russia on using an Iranian airbase to attack Syrian militants was a kind of show off and ungentlemanly. The remarks suggest that the operation was not supposed to get public by either side. (Russian Defence Ministry Press Service photo via AP, File)

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told reporters in Tehran that the Russian airstrikes on militants in Syria were "temporary, based on a Russian request."

"It is finished, for now," Ghasemi said, without elaborating.

Last week, Russia announced it used the airfield, located some 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of the Iranian city of Hamedan. Iranian officials only confirmed Russia's presence a day later.

Earlier Monday, state TV quoted Iran's defense minister as saying that Russia "will use the base for a very short and fixed span." The comments by Gen. Hossein Dehghan came after he chastised parliament this weekend for asking questions about Russia using the base.

Responding to a question about why Iran didn't initially announce Russia's presence at the airfield, Dehghan appeared prickly on the state TV broadcast.

"Russians are interested to show they are a superpower to guarantee their share in political future of Syria and, of course, there has been a kind of show-off and ungentlemanly (attitude) in this field," he said.

Dehghan's remarks also suggest Russia and Iran initially agreed to keep Moscow's use of the air base quiet. Its announcement likely worried Iran's Sunni-ruled Mideast neighbors, which host American military personnel.

The Interfax news agency on Monday also quoted Russia's ambassador to Tehran, Levan Dzhagaryan, as confirming that all of Moscow's warplanes have been withdrawn from Iran. Dzhagaryan said, however, that he does "not see any reason" why the Russians can't use the Iranian base again.

For Iran, allowing Russia to launch strikes from inside the country is likely to prove unpopular. Many still remember how Russia, alongside Britain, invaded and occupied Iran during World War II to secure oil fields and Allied supply lines. But while Britain withdrew, Russia refused to leave, sparking the first international rebuke by the nascent United Nations Security Council in 1946.

Analysts have suggested Russia potentially leveraged Iran into allowing it to use the airfield over either economic or military interests, such as Tehran wanting to purchase Sukhoi-30 fighter jets or its deployment of Russian S-300 air defense missile systems. Russia initially held off on supplying the missile system to Tehran amid negotiations over Iran's contested nuclear program.

Over the weekend, photographs of President Hassan Rouhani were published in Iranian state media near a Bavar-373 missile defense system. That system is designed to be the local equivalent of the S-300  perhaps an Iranian signal back to Moscow that it's capable of defending itself without the Russian missile system.

In his comments, Dehghan said the Bavar-373 can hit targets at the height of 27 kilometers (16.7 miles)  the same height the S-300 can reach.

"When we make Bavar-373 operational, we will not need to purchase another high-altitude and long-range air defense system," he said.

Dehghan added that Iran still sees the Sukhoi-30 as "an appropriate fighting aircraft," though he acknowledged the U.S. could seek to block any fighter jet deal. The U.N. resolution enshrining last year's nuclear deal with Iran prohibits the supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran unless approved in advance by the Security Council.

"The issue of purchasing the fighters has been raised and we have not heard any negative answer," he said. "We are negotiating to learn how we can do this with the restriction that can be raised for the Russians."

Meanwhile, fighting continued Monday in Syria. In the northern Syrian city of Hasakeh, clashes again erupted between Kurdish fighters and pro-government militias, according to the Kurdish Hawar News Agency. The government and the Kurdish movement have shared control of the city since the early years of the Syrian civil war.

Syrian government planes bombed Kurdish positions in Hasakeh last week as the struggle for predominance in the city escalated.

Meanwhile, Turkish artillery on Monday attacked a U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militia as well as Islamic State group positions across the border in Syria, according to Turkish media reports .

Hurriyet newspaper said the attacks targeted positions north of the town of Manbij, which a Kurdish-led force recently captured from IS.

The state-run Anadolu Agency says Turkey has increased security measures at its border opposite the Islamic State-held town of Jarablus, deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Turkish officials were not immediately available to confirm the report, which came as Syrian activists claimed that hundreds of Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters have gathered in the Turkish border area of Karkamis in preparation for an attack on Jarablus.

Ankara is concerned about the growing power of U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces, who are linked to Kurdish groups waging an insurgency in southeastern Turkey.

Also Monday, U.N. humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien urged all combatants in the battle for the Syrian city of Aleppo to agree to a 48-hour pause to allow desperately needed aid to be delivered, warning of a "humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled in the over five years of bloodshed" in Syria. O'Brien told the Security Council that Aleppo is being bombed every day, including a dozen new attacks on Monday,

___

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow and Philip Issa in Beirut contributed to this report.

___

Follow Nasser Karimi on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ncarrimi. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/nasser-karimi.
DiCaprio, girlfriend unhurt after fender-bender in Hamptons

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y. (AP)  Authorities say actor Leonardo DiCaprio and his Danish supermodel girlfriend weren't injured when their vehicle was involved in a minor accident in the Hamptons over the weekend.

Police in the village of East Hampton say the accident occurred around 4:30 p.m. Saturday on Montauk Highway on Long Island's east end, where the 41-year-old Oscar-winning actor and 24-year-old Nina Agdal were traveling together.

A department spokeswoman tells Newsday the accident, first reported by the New York Post, was "just minor" and no one was taken to a hospital. Officials had not released any other information Monday morning.

FILE - In this March 23, 2016 file photo, actor Leonardo DiCaprio poses during a photo session of the movie "The Revenant" in Tokyo. Authorities say DiCaprio and his Danish supermodel girlfriend Nina Agdal werent injured when their vehicle was involved in a minor accident on Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016, on Montauk Highway in the Hamptons. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
Florida sends another $5 million to fight Zika in Miami-Dade

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP)  Gov. Rick Scott has announced that the Florida Department of Health is allocating another $5 million in funding to Miami-Dade County for Zika preparedness and mosquito control.

Earlier Monday, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine asked for more federal resources to combat Zika's spread in South Florida, where the first cases of the virus transmitted by mosquito bites on the U.S. mainland have been found in the neighborhoods of South Beach and Wynwood.

The mayor said "we need the federal government to step up."
The Latest: Clinton to propose new small business tax cut

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Latest on the U.S. presidential campaign (all times EDT):

12:01 a.m.

Hillary Clinton is introducing a new tax cut for small businesses on Tuesday. The proposal is part of a package of policies designed to encourage more Americans to start and expand companies.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton talks with Jimmy Kimmel during a break in the taping of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in Los Angeles, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Clinton will also offer new federal incentives to state and local governments for streamlining licensing and other regulations to make it cheaper to start a small business.

The tax cut, which would be developed in consultation with the Treasury Department, would offer small businesses a standard deduction.

The plan was announced by her campaign ahead of a public unveiling by running mate Tim Kaine at an event with small business owners in Colorado on Tuesday morning. Clinton will host a national conference call with small business owners in the afternoon.

___

9:55 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is pushing back against charges that she's physically unfit for the White House.

The Democratic presidential candidate says the accusations are part of a "wacky strategy" and an "alternative reality" that's not focused on the kinds of issues that are most important to voters.

"I do feel sometimes like this campaign has entered into an alternative universe," she says. "I have to step into the alternative reality and, you know, answer questions about, am I alive, how much longer will I be alive, and the like."

Clinton says she doesn't question GOP rival Donald Trump's health, saying he's as "healthy as a horse."

Clinton was speaking in an interview with late night host Jimmy Kimmel.

__

7:50 p.m.

Donald Trump is telling blacks and Hispanics that if he's elected president, "You'll be able to walk down the street without getting shot."

Trump made the comment Monday as part of his recent pitch to minority voters. He said Democratic policies have created inner cities so dangerous that for blacks, "now you walk down the street, you get shot."

The Republican presidential candidate said that the level of violence in some U.S. cities "is something no American should consider acceptable."

Trump said his economic and immigration policies would assist minorities land higher-paying jobs. He also said he will "get rid of the crime."

Repeating a plea he made recently to minority voters to back him, he declared, "What the hell do you have to lose? Give me a chance."

___

7:10 p.m.

Donald Trump is pledging that as president, he would appoint a special prosecutor to probe the financial dealings of The Clinton Foundation.

Trump said Monday that the Department of Justice had "acted unethically" in probing Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

He also said the Justice Department and the FBI "can't be trusted" to investigate the foundation after declining to prosecute Clinton over the email scandal. He criticized Attorney General Loretta Lynch for meeting privately with former President Bill Clinton as the department's probe was underway.

"I've become increasingly shocked by the vast scope of Hillary Clinton's criminality," Trump told a crowd in Akron, Ohio.

He claimed that Hillary Clinton, his election opponent, had overseen corrupt pay-for-play practices while heading the State Department.

___

6:55 p.m.

Donald Trump is declaring that "the era of economic surrender is over."

Trump, campaigning Monday in Ohio, has criticized trade deals put in place by President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton, husband of Trump's general election opponent, Hillary Clinton.

"If you are not prepared to put American workers first, you should be able to seek public office," Trump said at a rally in Akron.

He also bashed Clinton's immigration policy, saying it would lead to "open borders." Meanwhile, he doubled down on his own signature immigration plan.

"We're going to build the wall, folks. That wall will go up so fast your head will spin," Trump said. "You're going to say 'He meant it!' And you know what else I mean: Mexico is going to pay for it."

___

6 p.m.

Donald Trump is postponing a speech in which he was to lay out his immigration policy.

The Republican presidential nominee had been slated to unveil the proposal Thursday in Denver. A campaign official not authorized to publicly discuss Trump's plans said it was being postponed, likely until next week, but did not say why.

Trump promised in an interview Monday that he would deliver a "fair but firm" policy toward the 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally.

That has raised questions about whether Trump is backtracking from previous pledges to push for mass deportations.

Trump has insisted he is not "flip-flopping" But he told immigration activists he may consider allowing those who have not committed crimes, beyond their immigration offenses, to obtain some sort of legal status.

Jonathan Lemire

___

5:50 p.m.

Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence is doubling down on running mate Donald Trump's call for Hillary Clinton to shut down her family's long-time charitable foundation.

Pence said Monday at a manufacturing facility in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that Clinton must close the Clinton Foundation immediately. Trump issued the same call earlier in the day through social media.

Clinton's campaign announced recently the foundation will stop accepting foreign donations if she is elected president. Pence says that pledge isn't enough and the Democratic presidential nominee needs to "come clean" about the foundation.

The Indiana governor has made several stops in Iowa since securing the GOP vice presidential nomination. They include speeches in Sioux City and Council Bluffs and a stop at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.

___

4:25 p.m.

Donald Trump is suggesting he would resume the practice of giving surplus military equipment to local police departments.

The Obama administration banned police agencies from receiving military-grade equipment after 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the death of Michael Brown, a black man, in a confrontation with police.

Answering a question Monday in Akron, Ohio, Trump said, "I think it's ridiculous that they're not" given the equipment.

The Republican presidential nominee also said he believed that some rising crime is partly due to a decline in police manpower and vowed to change that.

Trump met with two dozen active and retired police officers at Lodge 7 of the Fraternal Order of Police. The union's national organization is expected to announce an endorsement next month.

___

2:40 p.m.

Is a 12-year-old really running Republican Donald Trump's presidential campaign in Jefferson County, Colorado?

Broadcast reports describe Weston Imer (EYE'-mer) as running the field operation in the state's fourth most populous county. The boy's mother, Laurel Imer, is technically in charge but says she's ceded responsibility to her son until school starts.

Trump's Colorado co-chair, Robert Blaha, says while the campaign likes to have Weston speak at rallies and knock on doors, he's not the campaign office boss.

Says Blaha in an interview: "There's not the possibility a 12-year-old can run an office."

Colorado is traditionally a swing state, but polls show Democrat Hillary Clinton opening a lead over Trump. Clinton and her allies have stopped advertising in Colorado and shifted money to more competitive states.

___

2:20 p.m.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine says GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump owes it to the public to release more details about his income and debts.

Kaine says Trump should release his tax returns and provide more information about his companies' debts, particularly those held by foreign banks.

Kaine says, "We've got to know who Donald Trump is beholden to."

Kaine spoke Monday in Las Vegas at the ironworkers' union annual convention.

He is also criticizing Trump's resistance to efforts by employees to unionize at his hotel off the Las Vegas strip.

Kaine is also attacking Trump's policies on immigration. He says conflicting statements the Republican's campaign has issued on the subject show Trump can't be trusted.

___

2:05 p.m.

Former President Bill Clinton is defending the work of his charitable foundation, saying it has "improved millions of lives around the world."

The former president is listing the accomplishments of the Clinton Foundation in an email to supporters. He says more than 11.5 million people in over 70 countries have access to HIV/AIDS drugs at a much lower cost and millions of American students have healthier food because of the foundation.

Bill Clinton said last week the foundation won't accept contributions from foreign governments and corporations if Democrat Hillary Clinton is elected president.

Republican Donald Trump says the foundation should be shut down immediately.

___

1:10 p.m.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has launched an online petition demanding that Donald Trump take the U.S. citizenship test.

The Nevada Democrat is an outspoken Trump antagonist. He argues that Trump would likely fail the citizenship test and that he should be forced to prove otherwise before setting rules for new immigrants to the country. Trump has called for "extreme vetting" of immigrants seeking admission to the United States.

"Donald Trump is nothing more than a spoiled, unpatriotic drain on society who has earned nothing and helped no one," Reid says in an email sent from his fundraising committee. "And before he degrades immigrant families who work hard and give up everything they knew to come to this country, he should put up  or shut up."

___

10:55 a.m.

Hillary Clinton says she will visit flood-damaged Louisiana when "the presence of a political campaign will not disrupt the response."

In a statement Monday, the Democratic presidential nominee called the floods a crisis in need of a national response. She noted that she had asked supporters to contribute to the Red Cross to help recovery efforts for the more than 100,000 people affected by the floods.

Clinton added that she wants to make sure there is a focus on Zika prevention, so that the mosquitoes that carry the virus don't spread to Louisiana.

Republican nominee Donald Trump visited Louisiana Friday and President Barack Obama is expected Tuesday. Heavy flooding this month killed at least 13 people and displaced thousands more after water engulfed their homes.

___

9:20 a.m.

Donald Trump is resuming his Twitter wars.

The Republican nominee is going after MSNBC's Morning Joe, tweeting that the show is "unwatchable!"

He says its host, Mika Brzezinski, "is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!"

Trump's tweets come after he spent a rare week reading from teleprompters and sticking to message following a campaign shake-up.

Trump's new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, insisted on Sunday that Trump "doesn't hurl personal insults."

Trump also suggested that he has damaging information on Brzezinski and co-host Joe Scarborough, whom he called "two clowns." Trump has targeted other people in similar style, claiming he has damaging information without ever releasing it.

___

9:10 a.m.

Donald Trump says he is not flip-flopping on a plan to deport the 11 million people living in the United States illegally.

The Republican presidential candidate said Monday he wants to come up with a "fair but firm answer" on immigration.

He told "Fox and Friends" that he is working with Hispanic leaders to address illegal immigration. He said: "It has to be very firm, but we want to come up with something fair.'

Trump met over the weekend with Hispanic supporters, representatives of a community that has been wary of the billionaire businessman's proposals to build a border wall and deport people living in the United States illegally. Trump's new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, Sunday that Trump's policy on deploying a "deportation force" was "to be determined."

___

9 a.m.

Donald Trump is calling on the Clintons to shut down their charitable foundation "immediately."

Trump says in a statement Monday morning that "the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history."

He says, "It must be shut down immediately."

The foundation announced recently that it would not accept donations from foreign contributors if Hillary Clinton were elected president.

The Clinton campaign has defended the foundation's work, insisting it is saving lives around the globe through vaccine work.

Trump donated to the foundation himself in the past.

___

7:50 a.m.

Donald Trump's son says his father isn't flip-flopping on immigration policy.

The Republican presidential candidate plans to speak about his immigration plans this week. That has raised questions about whether he will continue to call for forcibly deporting the 11 million people living in the United States illegally. Questioned on whether Trump still intends to deploy a "deportation force" to carry that out, his campaign manager said Sunday: "To be determined."

Eric Trump, one of Trump's sons, was asked on "Fox and Friends" Monday whether this was a flip-flop. He replied: "My father hasn't flip-flopped on anything."

He declined to provide details of his father's plans, but said they will be "humane and ethical and treats everybody well, but we have to solve a problem," referring to illegal immigration.

___

6:30 a.m.

Hillary Clinton's campaign is reserving an additional $80 million for fall campaign ads in eight battleground states. That brings the campaign's spending on television spots to $150 million, according to a campaign aide.

Clinton's team is also releasing a new ad that questions the judgment of GOP rival Donald Trump.

"All it takes is one wrong move," says a narrator, over the sound of a flying missile.

The ad is running in Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, North Carolina and Omaha, Neb. Clinton has paused ads in Colorado and Virginia, underscoring her confidence in those states.

Trump only began airing ads in recent days and has reserved just $5 million in battleground state spots over the coming week in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

___

6:00 a.m.

Secretary of State Colin Powell is pushing back against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's assertion that he suggested she use her private email account for non-classified information.

People magazine reported in a Twitter message that Powell said that Clinton's "people have been trying to pin" her email scandal on him.

Clinton has said that she and Powell were in agreement on the use of private email by secretaries of state. Clinton, though, had a private email server at her home in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Questions about Clinton's handling of government email have dogged her throughout her presidential campaign. The Justice Department investigated her practices and concluded there was no basis to recommend charges be brought against her, although FBI Director James Comey called her handling of the emails "extremely careless."

___

3:20 a.m.

GOP officials insist presidential nominee Donald Trump is finally hitting his stride and will catch up with Democrat Hillary Clinton by around Labor Day.

Clinton campaign officials dismissed the idea of a changed Trump as nonsense.

Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus (ryns PREE'-bus) said Sunday that "Donald Trump has been disciplined and mature. And I think he's going to get this thing back on track."

Polls now mostly show Trump lagging Clinton by 5 percentage points or more nationally, but Priebus predicted they will tighten up and Trump will be "ahead as we move through September."

Trump's new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, echoed Priebus' optimism, contending that the candidate just had the best week of his campaign, "mostly because he's able to be himself, the authentic Donald Trump."

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Akron, Ohio, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump meets with active and retired law enforcement at a Fraternal Order of Police lodge in Akron, Ohio, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016. At right is Lodge #7 vice president Mike Leslie. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. speaks at the International Ironworkers convention, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

FILE - In this Aug. 15, 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a campaign event in Scranton, Pa. This week Clinton will address Hollywood celebrities, financial titans and high-powered attorneys. Good luck finding out what she says. The Democratic nominee hold all of her fundraisers behind closed doors, leaving voters in the dark about what she's telling some of her most influential supporters. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
Valeant, attempting to normalize operations, names new CFO

NEW YORK (AP)  Valeant Pharmaceuticals replaced Robert Rosiello as chief financial officer as the embattled company attempts to normalize operations amid a host of investigations and class action lawsuits.

The Canadian company named Paul Herendeen, former Zoetis chief financial officer, to fill the post immediately on Monday.

The news sent shares up by more than 8 percent to $31.14 in midday trading.

FILE - This May 27, 2013, file photo, shows the head office and logo of Valeant Pharmaceuticals in Laval, Quebec, Canada. Valeant Pharmaceuticals is replacing Robert Rosiello as chief financial officer as the embattled pharmaceutical company attempts to normalize operations amid a host of ongoing investigations and class action suits. On Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, the Canadian company named Paul Herendeen, former Zoetis chief financial officer, to fill the post immediately. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press via AP, File)

Valeant has been under fire for its strategy of buying smaller drug companies, then hiking the prices of the drugs that those companies make.

Earlier this year, the company ousted Michael Pearson, the CEO who engineered the Valeant's acquisition strategy, replacing him with Joseph Papa.

Valeant is the target of at least 11 investigations in the U.S. and Canada, and a number of class action suits. The company's income has been declining drastically for more than a year. In the most recent quarter, revenue tumbled 11.4 percent and losses widened.

It is one of several pharmaceuticals that have come under the spotlight as skyrocketing drug prices become a national talking point ahead of the nation's presidential election.

Former CEO Michael Pearson was summoned before Congress to explain how Valeant, after acquiring other drug companies, jacked up prices of old, off-patent drugs with little competition as much as five times what they had cost for years. Several other companies have done the same, most notably privately held Turing Pharmaceuticals  whose former CEO, Martin Shkreli, gave the pharmaceutical industry a black eye by hiking the price of a life-saving drug called Daraprim by 5,000 percent, to $750 per pill.

Those price hikes do not appear to be abating, however.

The maker of the EpiPen, a device used largely by children to ward off potentially fatal allergic reactions, has surged in recent years, particularly after the recall of its only competitor.

When the autoinjector was acquired by Mylan in 2007, a two-dose package cost less than $60. To the alarm of many parents, schools and doctors, that cost is now closer to $400.

A two-dose package has recently been selling for more than $365, according to data from Elsevier Clinical Solutions' Gold Standard Drug Database.

The backlash against Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. has cost its shareholders, however. The stock plunged with the company's business model in doubt. Shares which hit an all-time high of close to $264 just over a year ago, have since plunged to less than $30.

Prior to Zoetis, Herendeen., the new CFO, logged a combined 16 years in the same position at MedPointe, and then Warner Chilcott.
Pakistan-Afghanistan border remains close for 4th day

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP)  Officials say the Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan remains closed for the fourth consecutive day after Afghan protesters burned a Pakistani flag.

A Pakistani official says Monday the decision to open the border would be taken at higher level after certain diplomatic issues are resolved. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Jordan gets $100 million for education of Syrian refugees

AMMAN, Jordan (AP)  Donor countries have pledged close to $100 million to help Jordan enroll all Syrian refugee children in the kingdom in schools next month.

In the previous school year, 145,000 Syrian children in Jordan attended school, while 91,000 didn't, in part because of overcrowding.

Jordan is now adding a second shift in 102 schools to accommodate the Syrians, bringing the total of double-shift schools to 200.

Jordan on Monday signed grant agreements for the school program with Britain, the U.S., Norway and Switzerland.

Some 5 million Syrians have fled civil war since 2011, many settling in neighboring countries.
Italy, German, French eye beefed up EU defense after attacks

ABOARD THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER GARIBALDI (AP)  The leaders of Italy, France and Germany vowed Monday to boost joint European security efforts in the wake of Islamic extremist attacks as they made a symbolic bid to relaunch the European Union after Britain's vote to leave.

From the deck of the Italian aircraft carrier Garibaldi, which is spearheading the EU's migrant rescue and anti-smuggling effort, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Holland also promised new economic prospects to young people  albeit without any specific proposals or details.

The three leaders travelled to the sun-soaked island of Ventotene to pay tribute to one of the founding fathers of European unity, Altiero Spinelli, and show common cause going into a bigger EU-wide summit next month in Slovakia.

Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, left, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel review the honor guard at Naples' Capodichino international airport, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016. The leaders of Italy, France and Germany headed Monday to one of the birthplaces of European unity in a symbolic bid to relaunch the European project following Britain's decision to leave the EU. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)

Spinelli, along with another intellectual confined to Ventotene in the 1940s by Italy's fascist rulers, co-wrote the "Ventotene Manifesto" calling for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war. The document is considered the inspiration for European federalism.

Renzi invited his French and German counterparts to the island off Naples to remind Europe of its founding ideals as the EU forges ahead amid a spate of challenges, from slow economic growth to extremist violence, after Britain's vote to leave the bloc.

The three placed three bouquets of blue and yellow flowers  the colors of the European Union  on Spinelli's simple white marble tombstone before meeting for an hour privately aboard the nearby Garibaldi.

"Many people thought that after Brexit, that Europe was finished. It's not like that," Renzi said from the deck. "We respect the choice of Britain's citizens, but we want to write a page for the future."

Renzi, Merkel and Hollande all voiced support for improved internal and external defense measures, including better intelligence-sharing and beefed-up border defenses, following a spate of Islamic extremist attacks in France that have rattled Europeans' sense of security.

Renzi said such measures were an "absolute priority" for the EU going forward.

"Europe should have a framework of protection. For security we need to have borders that can be guarded," Hollande said. "We also want there to be more coordination in the fight against terrorism."

Merkel said the EU is currently facing "enormous challenges" and needed to work together especially on the security front at home and abroad.

"We feel that faced with Islamist terrorism and in light of the civil war in Syria that we need to do more for our internal and external security," she said. "Defense cooperation ... should be strengthened and the exchanges between our intelligence services must be intensified."

The three also called for greater economic stimulus measures to create jobs, especially for young people, and improve investment opportunities.

For Merkel, the visit to Ventotene marked the start of a string of meetings with other EU leaders to discuss the post-Brexit EU, with visits to Estonia, the Czech Republic and Poland in the coming days and meetings with the leaders of Slovakia and Hungary in Warsaw. Merkel has also invited leaders from the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Austria and other eastern European nations for informal meetings at a government guest house in Germany.

"She wants to support a discussion that is as broad as possible, with as many actors involved as possible," her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said last week. That is aimed at ensuring that whatever emerges from the post-Brexit process "finds the widest possible acceptance in the member states and in the population."

Merkel has shown little enthusiasm for grandiose changes to the EU's structure, preferring to make things work better rather than embark on major structural reform. France, for its part, wants greater EU integration and Hollande is a strong proponent of joining European defense efforts as Italy wants. However the French presidential campaign is getting into full swing and is likely to unleash anti-EU sentiment.

Italy has a lot to gain from a reinvigorated EU as it copes with flat GDP, the migrant crisis and political uncertainties over a constitutional referendum this fall on which Renzi has staked his government's survival.

Monday's mini-summit will serve as a warmup for an EU-wide summit in Bratislava in September designed to chart the EU's post-Brexit way forward. It follows an initial three-way huddle by Renzi, Merkel and Holland in Berlin in the days immediately following the June 23 British referendum.

There, the three leaders pledged their commitment to European unity and plotted a common proposal to relaunch the European project focusing on three key areas: improving security, boosting economic growth and strengthening options and programs for young people.

Charting a course is difficult until Britain formally begins the exit process, probably next year, and lays out proposals for its future relationship with the EU.

___

Winfield reported from Rome. AP reporters David Rising in Berlin and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, left, welcomes French President Francois Hollande at Naples' Capodichino international airport, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016. The leaders of Italy, France and Germany headed Monday to one of the birthplaces of European unity in a symbolic bid to relaunch the European project following Britain's decision to leave the EU. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)

Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, right, welcomes French President Francois Hollande at Naples' Capodichino international airport, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016. The leaders of Italy, France and Germany headed Monday to one of the birthplaces of European unity in a symbolic bid to relaunch the European project following Britain's decision to leave the EU. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)

FILE - In this Monday, June 27, 2016 file photo, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, center, the Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Renzi, right, and the President of France Francois Hollande, left, leave a news conference during a meeting at the chancellery in Berlin. Italian Premier Matteo Renzi has invited his German and French counterparts to pay their respects at the tomb of one of the founding fathers of European unity in a symbolic bid to relaunch the bloc after Britain's clamorous decision to leave the EU. The location for Monday's summit carries particular resonance as Europe confronts Islamic extremist violence, economic stagnation and continued anxiety over the implications of the Brexit vote. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
Separated during migrant chaos, family reunites in Sweden

VASTERFARNEBO, Sweden (AP)  Love, not war, sent an Afghan family fleeing from Iran during last summer's chaotic mass migration to Europe. Luck reunited them a year later, after a dark night in a Turkish forest separated 14-year-old Mahdi Azizi from his parents and sisters.

The boy's father was at an open-air concert in central Sweden this summer when he thought he spotted his son. Nader Azizi had spent anguished months seeking information about Mahdi's fate, not knowing if he were alive or also made it to Sweden.

"Is that Mahdi?" Azizi, 36, recalled thinking as he strained to keep sight of the youth in the crowd. "I told myself it was a dream." He pushed closer and shouted out his son's name. Mahdi turned around and exclaimed "Baba!" the Farsi word for dad.

In this Aug. 14, 2016 photo, Mahdi Azizi hugs his mother goodbye before boarding a bus to return to a centre for unaccompanied minors, in Vasteras, Sweden. Love, not war, made the Azizi family flee Iran during last summers chaotic mass migration to Europe. Luck reunited them a year after a dark night in a Turkish forest separated 14-year-old Mahdi Azizi from his parents and sisters. (AP Photo/David Keyton)

The chance father-and-son reunion at a small town racetrack, along with a warm welcome from Mahdi's Swedish foster family, offers a bright spot amid the bleak stories emerging from the migrant crisis.

After joining the waves of refugees  mostly Syrian but some from Afghanistan and Iraq  pinning their hopes on human smugglers, Mahdi got split up from the rest of his family in Turkey during the rush to board a truck headed for the border.

The boy traveled thousands of miles under the watch of different smugglers. He managed to reach Sweden, unaware his family was at an asylum center less than 150 kilometers (93 miles) away from the foster home where he was placed.

"I was really confused," Mahdi said of his first days alone in the country. "At night, I couldn't sleep. I was crying myself to sleep thinking of my mother."

Azizi had moments during their yearlong separation when he felt confident he would see his son again, others when he feared the worst.

"When I thought about the difficult route, I was pessimistic," he said. "But then I could see lots of people still making it, and I found hope again."

Mahdi's mother, Raheleh Azizi, 34, at first didn't believe her husband when he called to tell her their son was safe and only moments away.

"He said, 'I've seen Mahdi, I've found him,'" she recalled. "I said, "You've seen Mahdi? Nader, please don't tease me, don't joke!' He said, 'I'm not joking. He is with me right now.'"

She paced around the family's room at the asylum center, not daring to believe the news. Then, Mahdi knocked on the door.

"We embraced and I cried," Raheleh Azizi said.

What triggered the Azizis' journey was an old family feud that began in their native Afghanistan.

Nader and Raheleh fell in love as teenagers while he was working as a servant in her wealthy family's home. Her family opposed the relationship, so the young couple ran away together.

Relatives attacked and made repeated death threats against the pair over the course of their marriage, believing Raheleh had dishonored the family, Nader Azizi said. Family members continued to pursue them, with the aid of a tight Afghan community in Iran, even after they moved with their two oldest children to Tehran a dozen years ago.

Azizi said he decided his family needed to leave the region when the threats turned to kidnapping the children. The family sold their belongings and gave 40,000 euros ($44,000) last year to smugglers who promised to take them from Iran to Sweden.

Asked about the night Mahdi got left behind in the woods, son and father are overwhelmed by painful memories.

"We were sitting in different groups underneath the trees. Then suddenly, the trucks arrived and we all rushed toward them," the elder Azizi recalled. He was carrying his younger daughter, a toddler at the time, and thought his son was following just behind.

"Once we were inside the truck, I yelled, 'Mahdi!' But I didn't hear him," he said, breaking off the story to compose himself.

Mahdi boarded another truck and eventually was pushed onto a boat for the crossing to Greece. Forced to keep moving, the boy said he could not get anyone to understand or care that he wasn't supposed to be by himself.

"I tried to explain that my family were still there, that I couldn't continue without them," he said. "But the smugglers wouldn't listen, and I didn't understand their language."

Last year, more than one million migrants reached Europe by sea, and a further 34,000 have crossed from Turkey into Bulgaria and Greece by land. After Germany, Sweden was the top destination for asylum-seekers entering Europe last year, with a record 163,000 people pursuing shelter there.

Among the 35,369 unaccompanied minors to arrive in the welcoming Nordic nation was Mahdi Azizi.

He quickly was placed with a Swedish foster family. His guardian, Carina Arnberg, took Mahdi and two other boys she and her husband were caring for to the July 29 concert at a racetrack about an hour's drive from her home.

Little could she have imagined that Mahdi's family was living nearby, or that his father would stop to listen to the music of a Swedish pop duo at the racetrack.

Arnberg gets goose bumps when she talks about how the stars aligned that day. One of the boys she was chaperoning pointed to a tree other children had climbed for a better view.

"Mahdi and I turned around to look at the tree," she said. "Mahdi said 'Wow! It's my dad.' And his dad said 'Mahdi!' They were so happy."

Arnberg and her husband invited the rest of the Azizis to stay in a cottage next to their home. There, Mahdi reconnected with his sisters  3-year-old Ghazal, who forgot him during his long absence, and 12-year-old Parvaneh.

But the happy ending is not yet complete. Although Sweden is known for its welcoming attitude to immigrants, lawmakers tightened regulations for asylum and family reunification in January to help manage the growing flow from the Middle East.

As an unaccompanied minor who has been granted asylum, Mahdi, now 15, lives at an apartment provided by the Swedish government. However, his parents' and sisters' applications were rejected on the grounds that they could live safely in Afghanistan.

They are appealing, but if forced to leave, hope another country will take the whole family. In the meantime, Mahdi had to return to school a six-hour bus ride away this month, interrupting their reunion.

"I don't know when we'll be able to see Mahdi again," Azizi lamented as he watched the boy who was lost and found board a bus for school. "I really don't know what's going to happen. We don't know anything."

But for a few strange and joyful days at the end of the short Scandinavian summer, just knowing Mahdi was safe was enough.

___

Associated Press Writer Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this story.

Follow David Keyton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidKeyton

In this Aug. 14, 2016 photo, Mahdi Azizi wipes a tear from his mother's eye prior to him boarding a bus to return to a centre for unaccompanied minors, in Vasteras, Sweden. Love, not war, made the Azizi family flee Iran during last summers chaotic mass migration to Europe. Luck reunited them a year after a dark night in a Turkish forest separated 14-year-old Mahdi Azizi from his parents and sisters. (AP Photo/David Keyton)
1 woman killed, 1 hurt in Charlotte shooting

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP)  Police in Charlotte, North Carolina, are investigating a shooting that killed one woman and wounded another.

Police told local news outlets the shooting was reported shortly before 3 a.m. Monday.

Officers closed a major road in southeastern Charlotte as they investigated a wreck where they found the two women with gunshot wounds. The driver was pronounced dead at the scene. The other woman was taken to a hospital with serious injuries.

Their names haven't been released.

Police said their initial information shows the shooting wasn't random and wasn't the result of road rage.
Greece: Blood donations curbed after malaria cases reported

ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Greece's health ministry says blood donations have been suspended at hospitals in several parts of the country following a spike in cases of malaria, linked to a high number of migrants traveling through the country.

The measure took effect Monday after 65 cases of the mosquito-borne infectious disease were reported since the start of the year, most involving migrants. The ministry described the cases as being "sporadic" and not a cause for public concern.

More than a million migrants have traveled through Greece since the start of Europe's refugee crisis in early 2015. Nearly 60,000 remain stranded following European border closures.
Union: Illinois prison worker assaults started with punch

PONTIAC, Ill. (AP)  An inmate punched a correctional lieutenant at an Illinois prison, sparking an assault that involved six prison employees and five inmates, the prison workers union said Monday.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said four correctional officers and two lieutenants were treated for scratches, bruises and possible concussions suffered in the incident Sunday at the Pontiac Correctional Center. They have all been released from the hospital.

"An inmate just began punching the lieutenant and knocked her to the ground," said Joe Lewis, a correctional officer at the Pontiac facility in central Illinois and president of AFCSME Local 494. "Then other inmates joined in the assault, injuring the other employees who had come to her assistance."

The Illinois Department of Corrections has put the facility on lockdown and is investigating. IDOC spokeswoman Nicole Wilson said Monday that the prison will remain on lockdown until the department finishes its investigation. At that time, the department will refer the case to the Livingston County prosecutor, she said.

Lewis said there has been other inmate violence and harassment toward correctional employees at the facility. He said policies and procedures to keep workers safe have been ignored or substituted with ineffective practices.

Wilson disputed Lewis' version of events.

"The events that led to this incident do not appear to be the result of a lack of policy or a breakdown in existing policies but rather a failure to follow workplace safety procedures already in place. DOC's investigation will include why procedures weren't followed and how future incidents can be prevented," Wilson said.

IDOC released no other details about the incident and didn't say what a lockdown at the facility entails. The prison's website said no visitors are allowed. Wilson didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment about the union's comments.
US says 100 troops deployed to troubled south Afghan city

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  Around 100 American troops have been deployed to a southern Afghan city at risk of falling to the Taliban, the spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan said Monday.

Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland said the soldiers had arrived in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, to provide training and support to Afghan forces. He said they would serve as a "new presence to assist the police zone," adding that Afghan security forces have conducted airstrikes in the area.

The Taliban have seized a number of nearby districts in recent weeks and now threaten to overrun the city itself.

Omer Zwak, spokesman for the provincial governor in Helmand, said there were plans for additional U.S. troops to support Afghan security forces in Lashkar Gah.

The head of Helmand's provincial council, Kareem Atal, told The Associated Press that battles were underway "on several fronts" in the province, closing off roads and highways.

"Around 80 percent of the province is under the control of the insurgents," he said. "There are a number of districts that the government claims are under their control, but the government is only present in the district administrative center and all around are under the control of the insurgents."

Helmand's annual $3 billion opium crop produces most of the world's heroin and is used to fund the insurgency. Its population is mainly Pashtun, the ethnic group from which the Taliban derives most of its support, and the province borders Kandahar, where the Taliban's government was based from 1996 until the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

The insurgents have stepped up attacks in other parts of the country as well, taking advantage of the warm weather to wage war against the Kabul government.
Advertisement

Many people turned to exploring local nature paths for their daily exercise when lockdown closed gyms and group sports took a hiatus amid the pandemic.

Amateur photographers who captured stunning images of animals in their natural habitat were quick to submit their snaps to Weekend magazine's annual Wildlife Photography Challenge in the hopes of winning a package worth over 1,000.

The entrants were split into five categories - Birds; Mammals; Insects; Under-18s; and Reptiles, Fish, Amphibians & Molluscs.

While each category winner received a Nikon mirrorless digital camera kit and a year's subscription to Nikon Owner magazine, the overall winner also received a trip to the Camargue with wildlife photographer Simon Stafford, courtesy of Create Away, for a four-night masterclass in photographing the region's wild horses, flamingos and bulls.

Judges David Suchet, Clare Balding, Lucy Cooke, Steve Brown, Kelly Brook and Michael Eleftheriades were impressed with Lee O'dwyer, 67, a retired engineer from Lancashire, who was awarded the overall winner for his shot of a long-tailed tit.

These runner-up snaps taken by talented amateur photographers prove choosing an overall winner was a tough decision...

BIRDS

PUFFIN: Taken by Joseph Bristow, 23, a retail supervisor from Llantwit Major. 'Arriving at 3am and queueing for the 6am ticket office to open. First in line I caught the boat over to Skomer Island. With only a few hours permitted on the island I had no time to waste. Surrounded by the Puffins was an amazing spectacle and allowed me to capture some amazing photos. I found this one puffin who seemed very tame and loved posing for the camera. As he stared down the barrel of my lens I took my shot and was pleased with the result. I found the black background really provides a provocative and striking image highlight the vibrant colour of the Puffins.'

KESTREL CHICKS: Taken by Jayne Kirkby, 20, from Braintree, Essex. 'Beautiful pair of Kestrel chicks, taken at Wrabness on 20th June 2020.'

KINGFISHER: Tim Clifton, a 59-year-old from, St Leonards on Sea, snapped this captivating photo of a kingfisher hunting for small fish

MALLARD: William Watson, 64, a semi retired HGV driver from East Dunbartonshire. 'Taken on the Forth & Clyde canal (December '19') Bishopbriggs, As I went to take this photo of this female Mallard it stretched creating a nice reflection....'

INSECTS

BUTTERFLY: Adam Lane, a 27-year-old host at Legoland, from Slough, captured a butterfly perched on a purple flower in specular detail

WASP: Shelia Moth took this captivating photo of a wasp on a thistle, capturing the insect and plant in immense detail

SPIDER: Taken by Geoffrey Wells, 67, a maintenance caretaker from North Yorkshire. 'This picture was taken in my back garden during the recent lockdown.'

REPTILES

MATING FROGS: Taken by Steve Jellett, 64, from Essex, who is retired. 'Taken in small garden pond when 21 frogs descended to mate.'

MAMMALS

ROE DEER: Tim Cliffton, a 75-year-old from St Leonards on sea, took a photograph of two roe deer spotted in a field

MOUSE: Taken by Cameron Parfitt, 20, a student at the University of Brighton, from Worthing. 'I would love to highlight that even in your back garden there are images to be had. This image is of a cheeky wood mouse that keeps stealing food from what we have now dubbed the mouse feeder. It's not unheard of for this little guy to be found inside the feeder without a care in the world stuffing himself with the bird seed.'

JUNIORS

FOX CUB: Billy Evans-Freke, 15, a secondary school student from East Sussex. 'It wasn't a long wait in the hide before the first fox cub woke up from its nap and came out into the open. It was soon followed by another cub. At first they stayed in the shadows of the bushes near the den. But once they gained their confidence they started coming closer. This cub in particular was very curious and came very close to the hide.'
The Latest: Washington blazes destroy at least 16 homes

SAN SIMEON, Calif. (AP)  The Latest on wildfires burning in the Western United States (all times local):

11:05 a.m.

Authorities say wildfires burning in eastern Washington have destroyed at least 16 homes.

A plane drops a load of fire retardant on the north side of Beacon Hill, Sunday, Aug 21, 2016, in Spokane, Wash. The fast moving wildfire is threatening structures as it moves in a north-easterly direction. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review, via AP)

The state Department of Natural Resources says a blaze just west of Spokane near the town of Davenport had destroyed at least six homes and scorched more than 9 square miles by Monday.

The Washington State Patrol says another wildfire, south of Spokane near the town of Spangle, destroyed at least 10 homes and numerous other buildings Sunday.

Local farmers helped firefighters build fire lines Sunday night.

___

11:05 a.m.

A wildfire burning through timber in the central Idaho mountains has expanded to 150 square miles.

Despite the fire's size, a key route through the area reopened over the weekend. Residents of about 125 homes have been warned to prepare to evacuate, but nobody has been ordered to leave by Monday.

A road opened Saturday after crews cleared trees and rocks that fell on the pavement after the fire moved through.

Drivers are urged to not stop where helicopters are collecting water because operations must be halted if vehicles get too close.

___

10:25 a.m.

Authorities say a blaze in eastern Washington state, one of several in the region, has destroyed at least six homes.

The Department of Natural Resources says the fire west of Spokane also scorched more than 9 square miles by Monday.

The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office says a total of 11 structures have been destroyed, a figure that includes homes, garages and outbuildings.

People in the small community of Wellpinit on the Spokane Indian Reservation have been told to evacuate.

Crews were trying to get some control of the fire, one of three causing evacuations and destroying buildings in the Spokane area.

___

9:35 a.m.

Warm, windy weather has led the biggest wildfire in Yellowstone National Park in northwest Wyoming to grow significantly.

All the park's main tourist facilities and roads are open Monday, but the fire was creeping toward a key road linking the West Entrance with the park's interior.

The fire grew by nearly 10 square miles Sunday, prompting firefighters to take measures to protect nearby park facilities in case it makes a run toward Madison Junction, an area with hiking, fishing and other activities.

The blaze has burned about 35 square miles of a mostly remote forest. It's between West Yellowstone, Montana, a town just outside the park's western boundary, and Madison Junction within the park.

It's one of four fires burning in Yellowstone, and warm, windy weather was expected again Monday.

___

8:20 a.m.

A wildfire in central California that destroyed 47 structures and forced the closure of the famed Hearst Castle has grown.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says Monday that the blaze in San Luis Obispo County has charred nearly 50 square miles  up from about 43 square miles a day earlier. It's partially contained.

Residents of at least 50 mostly rural homes near Lake Nacimiento were ordered to leave late Sunday. Several other nearby communities have been under evacuation orders for days.

Hearst Castle was closed over the weekend, though officials say the fire is growing in the opposite direction of the popular tourist attraction.

Meanwhile, a 58-square-mile fire that destroyed 105 homes in Southern California is almost entirely contained and all evacuation orders have been lifted.

___

7:40 a.m.

Authorities say a wildfire that has burned some homes west of Spokane, Washington, doubled in size overnight as it raged uncontained.

Fire officials tell Spokane TV station KHQ that the fire in Lincoln County scorched more than 15 square miles by Monday morning. It wasn't immediately clear how many homes were lost.

People in the community of Wellpinit have been told to evacuate. The town also lost power, making the battle by firefighters more difficult.

Authorities tell TV station KREM that the blaze has jumped the Spokane River and is charring tribal land. They said the fire is threatening homes and timber.

Two other wildfires are burning in the Spokane region, also causing evacuations and destroying an unknown number of buildings.

___

6:15 a.m.

A wildfire in central California that destroyed 47 structures and forced the closure of the famed Hearst Castle has chased more people from their homes.

Fire spokeswoman Diley Greiser said early Monday that residents of at least 50 mostly rural homes near Lake Nacimiento were ordered to leave late Sunday.

The fire in San Luis Obispo County has burned 43 square miles of timber and dry brush since it began August 13. It's partially contained.

Hearst Castle was closed over the weekend, though officials said Sunday that the fire was growing in the opposite direction of the popular tourist attraction built by media magnate William Randolph Hearst.

Flames erupt in a stand of trees north of Walla Walla, Wash., during a large wildfire Sunday night, Aug. 21, 2016. Firefighters from several districts were able to stop the blaze at Hwy 125. The fire, whose cause in under investigation, burned about 15,000 acres in very high winds. (Greg Lehman/Walla Walla Union-Bulletin via AP)

A fire truck moves along Hwy 125 past a blazing stack of hay bales north of Walla Walla, Wash., during a large wildfire Sunday night, Aug. 21, 2016. Firefighters from several districts were able to stop the blaze at Hwy 125. The fire, whose cause in under investigation, burned about 15,000 acres in very high winds and was contained about 11:00p. (Greg Lehman/Walla Walla Union-Bulletin via AP)

This photo provided by California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection shows smoke billowing from a wildfire in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016. (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection via AP)
Kerry: South Sudan agrees to deployment of regional force

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  East African foreign ministers from countries including South Sudan have agreed to move ahead with the deployment of a regional peacekeeping force to that troubled nation, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday on the first stop of his latest Africa visit.

South Sudan at first rejected the regional protection force after the U.N. Security Council earlier this month voted to deploy the 4,000 additional peacekeepers to help restore calm. Fighting that erupted in the capital last month killed hundreds amid widespread reports of rapes and other abuses and raised fears of a renewed civil war.

There is "absolutely no question" that the force should be deployed, Kerry said after the meeting with foreign ministers. He did not say when the force might be sent into South Sudan.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, front left, talks to Kenya's Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed, right, as he arrives at the State House for bilateral talks in Kenya's capital Nairobi, Monday Aug. 22, 2016. Kerry arrived Sunday in Kenya to hold talks with leaders of the East African nation that are expected to focus on regional security and extremism.(Thomas Mukoya/Pool via AP)

A spokesman for South Sudan's president, Ateny Wek Ateny, again expressed the belief Monday that the regional protection force violates South Sudan's sovereignty, but he said the country's transitional legislature could decide this week if they will accept its deployment. "The people should decide," he said.

Kerry said the force is "supplementary to the sovereignty and efforts of South Sudan itself, and I think we had a good clearing of the air in the discussions we had."

The secretary of state is in Kenya, East Africa's biggest economy, to discuss regional security and terrorism with regional leaders. He then will visit Nigeria for similar discussions.

Kerry also announced nearly $138 million in humanitarian assistance from the United States to South Sudan, where a humanitarian crisis has worsened amid the recent turmoil.

He added that the U.S., the largest donor in South Sudan, had made it clear that the help has a limit.

He said South Sudan's leaders have been asked to recommit in "word and deed" to the peace accord signed in August 2015 that was meant to end a two-year civil war that cost thousands of lives and displaced more than 2.5 million people. Representatives from South Sudan's government indicated their full willingness to that, Kerry said.

"The leaders of South Sudan have to live up to their responsibilities. They have to put the interests of their citizens first, and they have to refrain from violent and provocative acts," Kerry said.

But the peace deal appears to be unraveling after former rebel leader and vice president Riek Machar, who had been reunited with rival President Salva Kiir under the peace deal, fled amid last month's fighting. A spokesman announced last week that he had crossed into neighboring Congo. His current location is unknown.

On another regional crisis, war-torn Somalia, Kerry said extraordinary progress has been made in stabilizing the Horn of Africa country but much more needs to be done.

He said he and the East African foreign ministers agreed on the need to strengthen Somalia's institutions ahead of elections in September and October. They also agreed to ensure that African Union troops have the needed resources to partner with Somalia against extremists.

Somalia was plunged into chaos in 1991 following the ouster of longtime dictator Siad Barre by warlords who then turned on each other. The homegrown, al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab continues to launch deadly attacks.

___

Associated Press writer Justin Lynch in Juba, South Sudan, contributed.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, talks to Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta when before their bilateral talks at the State House in Kenya's capital Nairobi, Monday Aug. 22, 2016. Kerry arrived Sunday in Kenya to hold talks with leaders of the East African nation that are expected to focus on regional security and extremism.(Thomas Mukoya/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, sits with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Linda Thomas-Greenfield, at the start of bilateral talks with Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta, at the State House in Kenya's capital Nairobi, Monday Aug. 22, 2016. Kerry arrived Sunday in Kenya to hold talks with leaders of the East African nation that are expected to focus on regional security and extremism.(Thomas Mukoya/Pool via AP)

US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks, during a joint press conference in Nairobi, Kenya, Monday, Aug.22, 2016. Kerry says much has been achieved toward bringing peace in Somalia but much more needs to be done to stop the extremists waging an insurgency against the western backed government. (AP Photo/Sayyid Abdul Azim)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, is greeted by Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta before their bilateral talks at the State House in Kenya's capital Nairobi, Monday Aug. 22, 2016. Kerry arrived Sunday in Kenya to hold talks with leaders of the East African nation that are expected to focus on regional security and extremism.(Thomas Mukoya/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, is greeted by Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta before their bilateral talks at the State House in Kenya's capital Nairobi, Monday Aug. 22, 2016. Kerry arrived Sunday in Kenya to hold talks with leaders of the East African nation that are expected to focus on regional security and extremism.(Thomas Mukoya/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta begin their bilateral talks at the State House in Kenya's capital Nairobi, Monday Aug. 22, 2016. Kerry arrived Sunday in Kenya to hold talks with leaders of the East African nation that are expected to focus on regional security and extremism.(Thomas Mukoya/Pool via AP)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, centre left, and Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta, centre right, sit with members of their delegation before bilateral talks at the State House in Kenya's capital Nairobi, Monday Aug. 22, 2016. Kerry arrived Sunday in Kenya to hold talks with leaders of the East African nation that are expected to focus on regional security and extremism.(Thomas Mukoya/Pool via AP)
Rich season of fiction expected this fall

NEW YORK (AP)  For the weightiest novel this fall, or most any season, Alan Moore has the grandest ambition.

"The intention was to somehow combine four or five different books or impulses for books into one coherent whole," the author known for the graphic novels "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" says of "Jerusalem," a 1,266 page words-only union of science and fantasy that references everyone from Albert Einstein to Oliver Cromwell. Moore worked a decade on his all-encompassing tale, set in his native Northampton, England.

"This is the book in which I have written most directly about the things that are most central to my life, these being my family and the place that I emerged from. By making the narrative so personal and specific I hoped to conjure a kind of universality, an evocation of the families and places that we all come from at some point in our ancestry, irrespective of who or where we are, but the fact remains that the materials of 'Jerusalem' come from a source very close to me."

FILE - In a May 31, 2014 file photo, acclaimed novelist Zadie Smith is shown signing a book for a fan in Treasure Beach, Jamaica. Fall is the time for "big books," whatever the page length, and some of the top fiction authors from around the world have new works coming in 2016, including Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Rabih Alameddine, Emma Donoghue, Jonathan Safran Foer and Michael Chabon. (AP Photo/David McFadden, File)

Fall is the time for "big books," whatever the page length, and some of the top fiction authors from around the world have new works coming, including Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Rabih Alameddine, Emma Donoghue, Jonathan Safran Foer and Michael Chabon. Ann Patchett, owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, looks forward to selling Jacqueline Woodson's autobiographical novel "Another Brooklyn" and Colson Whitehead's celebrated, Oprah Winfrey-endorsed historical novel about slavery, "The Underground Railroad."

Ann Patchett, the author, will be promoting her novel "Commonwealth," although she'll keep it low-key at Parnassus Books.

"I'll sign them, put them in a linen bag, send them off with a picture of my dog Sparky. Sparky is the 'value added' element," she says.

Another author-book store owner, Jeff Kinney, has completed "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down," the 11th installment in his multimillion selling series. He will tour worldwide on behalf of "Double Down," but at Kinney's An Unlikely Story, in Plainville, Massachusetts, the message is "try not to overdo it on the 'Wimpy Kid' front."

"We have two small roller units with my books, and that's about it. I don't think someone coming off the street would know I own the bookstore if they hadn't heard beforehand," Kinney said.

Whitehead's novel is among several notable accounts of black life, past and present. Wesley Lowery's "They Can't Kill Us All" is The Washington Post reporter's book on the Black Lives Matter movement. "The Fire This Time," edited by Jesmyn Ward, includes essays and poems on race by Isabel Wilkerson, Kevin Young and 16 others. Margot Lee Shetterly's "Hidden Figures," which has been adapted for a feature film, documents the historic contributions made by black women mathematicians to the country's space program.

Douglas R. Egerton's "Thunder at the Gates" tells of the black Civil War soldiers made famous in the movie "Glory," which he calls a "powerful, beautifully acted" production that "manages to get absolutely everything wrong." Egerton says fiction and nonfiction on slavery and the Civil War have become more prominent in recent years.

"When I was younger, novels that wrestled with slavery were few and often published by obscure presses," he says. "That appears to be no longer true. Perhaps also the sesquicentennial of the war and the dawn of Reconstruction has led ... to a rebirth of scholarship about black history. One of the depressing things about going to conferences now is to wander through the book exhibit and realize how many new books there are that I need to read!"

Two books that could contain tough words for presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are scheduled for Nov. 15, the week after Election Day: Bernie Sanders' "Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In" is expected to include his thoughts on his surprisingly competitive primary battle with Clinton, while Megyn Kelly's "Settle for More" will likely recount her feud with Trump and her thoughts on ousted Fox News chairman Roger Ailes.

In music, Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" could be the hottest rock memoir since Keith Richards' "Life" was released in 2010. The Band's Robbie Robertson offers "Testimony" this fall, while "My Life with Earth, Wind & Fire" is a posthumous release from Earth, Wind & Fire founder Maurice White, featuring an introduction by Steve Harvey and foreword by producer David Foster.

Brian Wilson and fellow Beach Boys founder (and first cousin) Mike Love continue their long-running and occasionally litigious family competition as Wilson releases "I Am Brian Wilson" and Love has "Good Vibrations." Often cast as the business-minded Beach Boy, at odds with the visionary Wilson, Love provides detailed accounts of how he wrote the lyrics to many of the Beach Boys' best known songs.

"The problem is you have hundreds of thousands of words about us, not always by people who were actually there," Love says. "I wanted to show how I was actually working on the songs with my cousin, writing the lyrics while he was creating those incredible chord processions and harmonies."

Other musical memoirs are coming from Tom Jones, songwriter Carol Bayer Sager and the Sex Pistols' Steve Jones. Beatle fans with some extra cash might consider "A Hard Day's Night: A Private Archive," a $125 volume of photographs, documents and memorabilia about the 1964 film that stunned critics and delighted fans. Annotation is provided by one of the world's foremost Beatle experts, Mark Lewisohn.

"It isn't only the end-product that's extraordinary, it's the background story, too. It always comes down to the people, to the four guys themselves," Lewisohn told the AP.

"Why was 'A Hard Day's Night' their first film when it could have been their third or fourth? They'd had movie offers for six months before this one and turned them all down, because The Beatles were always innately clear on what not to do as well as what to do. They were prepared to risk never appearing in a film at all than say yes to something 'soft,' which in their vocabulary meant 'stupid.'"
Thrill-ride accidents spark new demands for regulation

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  In some parts of the U.S., the thrill rides that hurl kids upside down, whirl them around or send them shooting down slides are checked out by state inspectors before customers climb on. But in other places, they are not required to get the once-over.

The grisly death of a 10-year-old boy on a Kansas water slide and a Ferris wheel accident that injured three little girls at a county fair in Tennessee this summer have focused attention on what safety experts say is an alarming truth about amusement rides: How closely they are regulated varies greatly from state to state.

"Fifty states in the United States of America and no two inspect rides the same way. That's wrong," said Ken Martin, an amusement park safety consultant who has been one of the loudest critics of the nation's patchwork of state laws. "We're not close to being in the same book, state to state. We're not even on the same page of the hymnal. We certainly aren't singing in key."

In this Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2015 file photo, amusement device inspector Avery Wheelock inspects the safety pins on a children's merry-go-round at the Mississippi State Fair in Jackson, Miss. In some parts of the U.S., the thrill rides that hurl kids upside down, whirl them around or send them shooting down slides are checked out by state inspectors before customers climb on. But in other places, they are not required to get the once-over. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

Twenty-nine deaths on amusement rides or water slides have been reported to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission since 2010, spokeswoman Patty Davis said.

The amusement park industry has successfully lobbied against federal oversight for decades, and the CPSC doesn't regulate rides at permanent parks like the one in Kansas. It oversees only traveling carnival rides, like the Ferris wheel that broke in Tennessee. Even then, federal investigators don't conduct routine inspections; they respond only after accidents.

So whether a ride has to be inspected before thrill-seekers hop on depends on what state it's in.

Six states  Mississippi, Alabama, Nevada, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah  have no laws at all that require inspections, according to Saferparks, a nonprofit group that pushes to improve safety. In most cases, the ride operators' insurance companies require only annual inspections, Martin said, and the insurers set the criteria.

Kansas and Tennessee are among the many states that have light regulation. Kansas mandates annual inspections but allows a park to perform its own, using private, licensed inspectors. The state does random audits of the paperwork.

Tennessee follows a similar self-inspection protocol. The state relies on private inspectors hired by operators or accepts inspections conducted on traveling rides in other states.

On the other end, New Jersey is considered one of the toughest for its cadre of state-trained inspectors and engineers who routinely inspect rides. Pennsylvania, likewise, has a rigorous system that includes more than 1,000 state-trained inspectors.

Martin and others say the federal government should operate something equivalent to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which protects workers on the job. He says the government has a duty to set uniform standards for rides, such as mandatory inspections and training protocols for inspectors.

But David Mandt, a spokesman for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, a trade group, said that injuries are rare and that a federal program of inspectors would cost taxpayers millions.

"We believe strong local and state regulation is the most effective government oversight for the industry," he said in an email. "The states need the flexibility to create and enforce laws relevant to the attractions in their state, and that's what they have done."

In the Kansas accident, Caleb Schwab was decapitated on the world's tallest water slide on Aug. 7. Authorities have yet to say what went wrong, but at least one rider has reported that the nylon harness straps came loose on previous trips down the slide.

In Tennessee, a Ferris wheel gondola overturned, spilling three girls more than 30 feet to the ground. One, a 6-year-old, suffered a traumatic brain injury. Authorities blamed worn-out rivet fasteners on the underside of the carriage.

How much of a difference tougher regulations make is difficult to say. No agency collects uniform statistics on accidents or injuries from state to state. The figures available are all estimates extrapolated from a sampling of accidents.

The CPSC estimates that 37,300 people of all ages went to emergency rooms in 2015 after being injured on amusement rides, a category that includes bounce houses, mechanical bulls and other attractions. That number is based on reports from some hospitals.

Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, analyzed the data from between 1990 and 2010 and estimated that an average of more than 4,400 children per year are injured on rides at amusement parks and water parks.

Smith said researchers need better numbers on the scope of the problem and its causes if they hope to come up with solutions. "This is a public health problem, and we need to treat it like a public health problem," he said. "That starts with a national approach to collecting data."

The CPSC regulated both traveling and permanent amusement rides until 1981, when Congress limited the agency's authority to traveling carnivals. Lobbying records dating to 1999 show that the trade association has spent about $11.3 million lobbying Congress.

State laws also draw opposition from industry representatives.

Steve Geller, former Democratic minority leader in the Florida Senate, remembers facing industry lawyers when he proposed inspection requirements following a 1988 accident.

"I'm speaking semi-tongue-in-cheek only when I say I had to fight the carnival-industrial complex," he said.

Florida set pretty high standards: State inspectors look at most rides routinely. But there is an exemption for parks with more than 1,000 employees that have their own full-time inspectors  like Disney, Universal and SeaWorld.

The public tends to howl for regulation after major accidents.

In 2004, June Alexander, a 51-year-old woman who took her son to an unregulated, roadside amusement park in the Great Smoky Mountains to celebrate his 15th birthday, plummeted more than 60 feet to her death from a swinging gondola ride in front of her family. Her harness had failed to engage. An investigation found that the ride's safety system had been bypassed. The park's manager was convicted of reckless homicide.

Tennessee legislators scrambled to pass laws that required operators to have insurance, permits and inspections. "We thought some good had been done," said R. Price Nimmo, an attorney who represented the Alexander family.

But by 2014, a state audit found the ride inspection unit was failing. In response, the state decided to stop inspections altogether and rely on operators and other states' regulators.

So when an amusement company took apart a Ferris wheel in Indiana, drove it to Tennessee and put it back together at five county fairs, no one from the state checked to be sure it was in working order. The state relied on the Indiana inspection and gave it permission to start spinning. It broke at the Greene County Fair last week.

Republican Gov. Bill Haslam said last week that it was too soon to say what the state might do in reaction to protect riders.

Nimmo held out little hope that the accidents will result in lasting reforms: "There will be a big furor. Then two years from now, they'll be back to doing what they were doing before."

___

Associated Press writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Maria Sudekum in Kansas City contributed to this story. Galofaro reported from Louisville, Kentucky, and Foody from Atlanta.
Flash flood traps11 in huge bat cave in west Romania

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP)  Flash floods trapped 11 people, including four French citizens Monday in a huge bat cave in western Romania. Two were later rescued and authorities said there was no danger to the remaining nine.

A spokeswoman for the local emergency services, Alina Marescu, told The Associated Press that most of those stranded in the cave by the flood that came after torrential rain on Monday afternoon were aged 15-17. She said two people were later rescued.

Two of those trapped by the water were experienced speleologists, or those who study caves, Marescu said.

Another emergency spokeswoman, Mihaela Albu, told Mediafax private news agency that the remaining nine were not in any danger.

Marescu told the AP there was room for people to take shelter in the Huda lui Papara cave, a massive cave which is home to the largest bat colony in Europe, located in the Apuseni Mountains in the northwestern Transylvania region.
Analysis: Turkey's potentially momentous shift on Assad

CAIRO (AP)  For five years fighting has raged in Syria  a humanitarian disaster destabilizing the region and the world. The aim of Bashar Assad's opponents' always was to drive the Syrian leader from power, but they have lacked the means to dislodge him. Now an inflection point may be at hand, with powerful opposition backer Turkey suggesting Assad, despite his brutality in the war, could play a role in an unspecified transition period.

The statement Saturday by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim was nuanced: On one hand, "Assad does not appear to be someone who can bring (Syrians) together"  but on the other, "there may be talks (with Assad) for the transition."

Until now, Syria's neighbor to the north was determined to see him out of power  providing refuge and supply lines for a variety of Syrian rebel groups and turning something of a blind eye to the use of its territory by Islamic State jihadis waging their own fight with Assad as well.

FILE - In this Oct. 20, 2015 file photo, Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, shakes hand with Syrian President Bashar Assad as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, right, looks on, at the Kremlin, in Moscow, Russia. For five years fighting has raged in Syria -- a globally resonant nightmare kept going in part by the insistence of Bashar Assads opponents that he must go even though they were failing to dislodge him from power. Now an inflection point may finally be at hand, with increasingly important Turkey suggesting Assad could play a role in an unspecified transition period. (Alexei Druzhinin, RIA-Novosti, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

Turkey had several reasons for offering critical support to the rebellion. Though not an Arab state, Turkey is predominantly Sunni, like most of the rebels, and it naturally chafes at the domination of Syria by Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam and part of a regional axis that includes Lebanon's Hezbollah group and Iran. The government of President Recep Teyyip Erdogan is Islamist-rooted while Assad is avowedly secularist. And Turkey is a NATO member which until now has supported the West's efforts to end the repressive authoritarian system in Damascus.

Erdogan is not naturally given to back down, but he is operating in perilously shifting ground.

The Syrian Kurds have emerged as the main force fighting the Islamic State group, affording them a great deal of autonomy in their enclave in the north of the country, bordering Turkey. The strengthening of the Syrian Kurds has in turn emboldened Turkey's own minority Kurds; that's a worrying development for Ankara, which has long tried to keep down Kurdish power and ambitions.

Nonetheless, after suffering a series of attacks on civilians which were blamed on IS, Ankara is now promising to more actively fight the jihadis as well. That would create a supremely awkward implicit alliance of Turkey and the Kurds  as well as Iran, Syria and the U.S.-led coalition. It's a situation many would be eager to keep brief.

Ankara is also tired of taking in Syria refugees; they now number over two million.

Perhaps most important: Erdogan's strikingly repressive crackdown after the failed July military coup has been widely criticized by the West, prompting him to move closer to Russia; a friendly meeting two weeks ago with Vladimir Putin, Assad's determined patron, commenced a rapprochement and seemed to hint at more to come.

Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst with the Eurasia Group consultancy, said Turkey's position on Assad is becoming significantly more flexible as Russia plays a more active role, and that the Syrian government's recent and unprecedented bombing of U.S.-backed Kurdish positions sought to show Ankara that Assad is the only serious partner who can guarantee that Syria's Kurds remain contained.

"I think this is the beginning of a dance where both parties signal not only their willingness but ability as well to find areas of common interests in terms of containing the Kurds," Kamel said. "We are in the process of bargaining and trying to find a settlement in which all parties have a win."

With so many Arab nations unravelling or sidelined by insurgencies, Turkey is poised for greater influence in the region despite the lingering resentments of heavy-handed colonial rule by its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. Yet for its new openness to Assad to prevail, it would need to be adopted by other players, primarily the mainstream Syrian rebels and the key powers of the West.

For the West, the notion of a determined shift to democracy held great appeal back in 2011, when the Arab Spring was in its infancy and idealistic hopes ran high. But that has changed with the serial failures across the region  a failed state in Libya, the rise of IS in multiple countries, never-ending wars in Yemen and Syria, the election of Islamists in Egypt followed by misrule and their ouster by the military.

Iraq's sectarian miseries have even lent some currency in the region to the notion that Saddam Hussein, brutal despot though he was, at least held together a unified state.

The Syrian war in particular has had disastrous consequences across a wide area: a half million killed, half the country's population displaced, and millions of refugees flooding not only Turkey and other neighboring countries but also Europe, fueling xenophobia and economic difficulties. And it created bedfellows to discomfit Washington: Iran, astoundingly given its history, even recently allowed Russia to launch airstrikes from its territory in support of Assad.

The Syrian government, for its part, has unleashed all kinds of indiscriminate weapons against civilian areas in its quest for survival, using warplanes, so-called barrel bombs and siege-and-starvation methods that have resulted in the death of tens of thousands.

Yet the West, fearing another Middle Eastern quagmire, has wavered  stopping short of announcing a no-fly zone in northern Syria, not attacking Assad's forces after blaming him for the use of chemical weapons, and hesitating to forcefully back and heavily arm the rebels. That landscape has proven a boon for Putin, whose support of Assad appears determined, strategic and successful when compared to the Western powers' prevarications.

Viewed from that perspective, Western leaders may quietly come to the conclusion that the need to end the war could trump the need to be immediately rid of Assad. Nudging them in that direction is Assad's central argument: that the most powerful of his opponents, the jihadi radicals of the Islamic State group, are, amazingly perhaps, the greater of the evils.

___
Ukraine opens criminal probe of top Russian officials

MOSCOW (AP)  Ukraine's General Prosecutor's Office has launched a criminal investigation of 20 senior Russian officials, including the Russian defense minister.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko said Monday they are suspected of involvement in crimes against Ukraine's national security. He said Ukrainian authorities plan to seek international warrants for their arrests.

The list includes Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and two of his deputies, Kremlin economic adviser Sergei Glazyev, a former presidential envoy to Crimea, and other top officials.
Concrete block thrown off Danish bridge kills tourist in car

HELSINKI (AP)  Police say a heavy concrete block thrown from an overhead bridge onto a major highway in Denmark has killed a German woman and seriously injured her husband as their car passed underneath.

Police spokeswoman Charlotte Nyborg says the couple's 5-year-old son was not physically injured in the attack that occurred at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning.

Nyborg said Monday that a 30-kilogram (66 pound) concrete block tile and several rocks were dropped from the bridge for no "known reason" onto the highway near the central city of Odense as the car passed under the bridge. No one else was injured.

Police were investigating the incident as possible murder.
Tugboats move into place to re-float oil rig in Scotland

LONDON (AP)  Two tugboats have moved into place to re-float an oil rig that was blown onto a remote Scottish beach in a storm.

The Transocean Winner was being towed when it broke free of its tug and ran aground on the Isle of Lewis off Scotland's west coast on Aug. 8. The salvage team's plan focuses around high water levels expected late Monday.

The rig was grounded with 280 tons of diesel on board. While some of the fuel has been lost, the remaining material on board was transferred from the rig to the supply vessel Olympic Orion over the weekend.

FILE - In this file photo dated Oct. 9, 2016, showing the Transocean Winner drilling rig as it broke free from tug boats in rough seas and ran aground off the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Final preparations are being made for high tide on Monday Aug. 22, 2016, to re-float the 17,000-tonne oil rig carrying some 280 tons of diesel on board. (Andrew Milligan / PA FILE via AP)
The Latest: Man arrested in killings blames rampage on drugs

CITRONELLE, Ala. (AP)  The Latest on the massacre of five adults at a home in south Alabama (all times local):

8:50 p.m.

A man arrested after five people were killed in rural southwest Alabama is blaming the rampage on drugs.

Crime scene tape marks the home on Jim Platt Road near Citronelle, Ala., Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016, where authorities said five people were killed on Saturday. Police said that Derrick Dearman, 27, of Leakesville, Miss., has been taken into custody in connection with the murders. (John Sharp/AL.com via AP)

Derrick Dearman tells reporters he was on methamphetamine when he went to a house where the five were discovered dead Saturday. He says drugs made him believe things that weren't really happening.

Dearman's comments were recorded on video Monday as he was escorted by deputies while arriving to face charges in Mobile.

Authorities say Dearman will be charged in the killings of five people in Citronelle. He was arrested after turning himself in to sheriff's officials in Greene County, Mississippi.

Dearman says he surrendered after sobering up and realizing what he had done.

Authorities previously said Dearman admitted to killing at least one person at the house.

___

2:40 p.m.

Residents of a southwest Alabama town where five people were slain are trying to raise money to help the victims' families pay funeral expenses.

Relatives of some of the victims have started an online fundraiser, and a plastic jug for donations sits on the counter of a convenience store a couple miles from the scene of the massacre near Citronelle, located in southwest Alabama.

A clerk at the store, Dawn Sullivan, says she knew all the victims and was related to one by marriage. She says the community is coming together to help survivors of the slaying.

Residents say all the victims were related by blood or marriage.

Authorities say a Mississippi man will be charged with murder in the slayings. Authorities say the man killed five people at a house where his estranged girlfriend had sought refuge from him. The bodies were found Saturday.

___

11:30 a.m.

Authorities say the suspect being held in Mississippi after five adults were slain in south Alabama has signed papers allowing for his extradition to Alabama, where he will face murder charges.

Alabama authorities say the slain included a 22-year-old woman who was five months pregnant and four adults ranging in age from 23 to 35. Their bodies were found Saturday.

Stanley McLeod, the sheriff in Greene County, Mississippi, said in a statement that Derrick Dearman initially refused extradition following his arrest.

But McLeod said that by Monday morning, he had signed the necessary paperwork and was expected to be taken back to Alabama by Mobile County sheriff's officials.

___

10:55 a.m.

A Mississippi sheriff says the man accused of slaughtering two women and three men at a home in south Alabama walked into his agency's office and said he had killed at least one person.

Greene County Sheriff Stanley McLeod released a statement Monday that noted that Derrick Dearman said while surrendering that he "had killed someone or more than one person" in Citronelle, Alabama.

Alabama authorities say the slain included a 22-year-old woman who was five months pregnant and four adults ranging in age from 23 to 35. Their bodies were found Saturday at the home in Citronelle.

Mobile County sheriff's Capt. Paul Burch said Dearman attacked the victims as they slept and abducted his estranged girlfriend and an infant from the home. They were found alive.

____

2:40 a.m.

Authorities in south Alabama say the five people slain in a massacre at a south Alabama home included a 22-year-old woman who was five months pregnant and four other adults ranging in age from 23 to 35.

A sheriff's captain says the suspect attacked them as they slept and then abducted his estranged girlfriend and an infant from the home. Both of them were found alive.

The bodies of the two women and three men were found Saturday afternoon inside the home in Citronelle, a small town 30 miles northwest of Mobile.

Investigators say 27-year-old Derrick Dearman of Leakesville, Mississippi, faces six counts of capital murder  one count for each of the victims plus an additional murder charged since one of the victims was pregnant.

Ambulances wait along Jim Platt Road west of Citronelle, Ala., joining a stream of law enforcement vehicles at the scene of multiple homicides on Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016. The suspect in the killing of multiple people at a home in Alabama attacked them while they slept and then abducted his estranged girlfriend and an infant, both of whom were found alive, authorities said Sunday. (Lawrence Specker/AL.com via AP)

A photo provided by the Greene County Sheriff's Department shows Derrick Dearman, a suspect in the Saturday massacre of five adults in Citronelle Ala. Dearman, of Leakesville, Mississippi, will be charged with six counts of capital murder, Mobile County sheriff's spokeswoman Lori Myles said Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. (George County Sheriff's Department via AP)

A photo provided by the Greene County Sheriff's Department shows Derrick Dearman, a suspect in the Saturday massacre of five adults in Citronelle Ala. Dearman, of Leakesville, Mississippi, will be charged with six counts of capital murder, Mobile County sheriff's spokeswoman Lori Myles said Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. (George County Sheriff's Department via AP)
Court told money short for Missouri death row inmate defense

ST. LOUIS (AP)  Five legal groups are supporting a Missouri death row inmate, whose execution was halted hours before it was to be carried out in 2014, saying that he can't receive an adequate defense with the money allocated.

Three national criminal defense associations, a civil rights law firm and the American Bar Association made court filings last week to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis on behalf of Mark Christeson, convicted of the 1998 killings of a Missouri woman and her two children.

The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution because Christeson's original trial attorneys missed the federal appeal deadline. Virtually all capital cases are appealed through the federal courts.

FILE - This April 21, 2014 file photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections shows Mark Christeson. Three national criminal defense associations, a civil rights law firm and the American Bar Association have all filed amicus briefs in support of Christeson, a Missouri death row inmate. The Supreme Court ordered that new attorneys be appointed after halting his execution in 2014, but the defender groups and the ABA say that appointment is meaningless because a district court refused to provide adequate funding for the new lawyers. A district court agreed to provide $10,000; the attorneys had sought $161,000. (Missouri Department of Corrections via AP, File)

New lawyers were appointed, but a district court provided only $10,000 of the $161,000 sought.

The new attorneys can't afford to bring in experts to testify that Christeson's mental impairment left him unable to assert his own rights when his trial lawyers failed to adequately do their job, the defender groups said.

Janet Moore, co-chair of the Amicus Committee for the National Association for Public Defense, said in a statement Monday that failure to provide adequate funding for indigent capital defendants has "created an untenable system, where counsel are unable to satisfy constitutional and ethical demands."

Christeson was 18 in 1998 when he and a 17-year-old cousin, Jesse Carter, decided to run away from a home outside Vichy, Missouri, where they were living with a relative. They walked a half-mile to the neighboring home of Susan Brouk, armed with shotguns, planning to steal her Ford Bronco.

But once there, they used shoelaces to tie the hands of Brouk's two children. Christeson forced Brouk into a bedroom and raped her. They drove the family to a pond where Brouk and one of the children were stabbed and thrown into the water to drown. The other child suffocated when Christeson pressed on her throat while his cousin held her.

Christeson and Carter fled to California, where a detective recognized them from photos police distributed and arrested them. Carter agreed to testify against Christeson and was sentenced to life in prison.
Groups to court: Don't make murder victim's sex life public

CONCORD, N.H. (AP)  More than a dozen legal, law enforcement and victims' rights organizations told a New Hampshire court Monday that a murder victim's sexual past should remain out of the public eye.

Elizabeth "Lizzi" Marriott, of Westborough, Massachusetts, was a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire when she was killed in 2012. Seth Mazzaglia (muh-ZAYL'-ee-uh) was convicted of her murder and sentenced to life, but he is pursuing an appeal.

In June, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that information about Marriott's sexual activity that had been sealed during the trial should be made public during the appeals process, prompting objections from prosecutors and Marriott's family. On Monday, the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and 12 other groups filed a brief supporting the family's request to keep the records sealed, and Mazzaglia's attorney argued that the court should not conduct the appellate process behind closed doors and on the basis of a secret record.

Lyn Schollett, the coalition's executive director, said the June ruling jeopardizes every crime victim's right to privacy. In the court filing, her organization and others argue that the state's rape shield law applies through the entire criminal process, including any appeals.

"Otherwise, the purpose of rape shield would be completely eviscerated," wrote the group, which includes the New Hampshire Association of Chiefs of Police, The National Center for Victims of Crime and Aequitas: The Prosecutors' Resource on Violence Against Women. "Rape victims are entitled to rely on the protective provisions of the rape shield statute and rule. To hold otherwise would defeat the purpose of the rape shield protections, discourage victims from coming forward and have a terrible impact on the state's ability to prosecute sexual assault crimes."

During his trial, Mazzaglia denied raping and killing Marriott but said he helped cover up the murder. His girlfriend at the time testified that she lured Marriott to Mazzaglia's apartment as a sexual offering and that Mazzaglia strangled Marriott when she refused his advances.

In his brief, appellate defender Christopher Johnson said neither state law nor rules of evidence regarding prior sexual activity apply on appeal because the state Supreme Court does not hear witnesses or receive new evidence. He also said concerns about the victim's privacy do not outweigh the right of public access to the documents and proceedings on which the court will decide the appeal.
Hungarian official says pigs' heads would scare migrants

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP)  A Hungarian member of the European Parliament stirred controversy Monday by suggesting that displaying pig heads on a border fence would be an efficient way to scare Muslim migrants from entering the EU-member country.

Gyorgy Schopflin, a member of ruling Hungarian Fidesz party, made that suggestion in response to criticism of local people who have put carved root vegetable, human-face-like masks along the border, believing they would repel migrants.

He said: "Human images are haram (religiously prohibited.) But agree, pig's head would deter more effectively."

Muslims are barred from eating pork because pigs are considered unclean.

Over the weekend, Human Rights Watch director Andrew Stroehlein had written: "Refugees are fleeing war & torture, Hungary. Your root vegetable heads will not deter them."

In a follow-up tweet, Stroehlein said: "Pig heads an ugly idea. Worse is reality of Hungary border abuses with violence against kids."

In comments to Hungarian website mandiner.hu, Schopflin said Monday that the issue was a storm in a teacup.

"I did not humiliate anyone," he said. "When I noted in reaction to a raised question that the pig heads would actually be more effective than masks carved from sugar beets, it was a small thought experiment, nothing else."

The vegetable heads along the border with Serbia have been first reported by Hungarian media last week. There has reportedly been no effort by Hungarian police to remove them.

Human Rights Watch said in a report last month that migrants and refugees at Hungary's border with Serbia were being summarily forced back, in some cases violently. Refugees, including many children, had been beaten with batons, attacked by guard dogs and sprayed by tear gas.
Another off-kilter role for Aaron Paul in 'Louis Drax'

NEW YORK (AP)  Aaron Paul isn't a dad, yet, but he loves playing one, however flawed that dad might be.

"I love working with kids. I have lots of nieces and nephews. I can't wait to have children of my own," he said during a recent round of interviews for "The 9th Life of Louis Drax," in theaters Sept. 2.

Even if that kid's in a coma?

In this Aug. 6, 2016 photo, actor Aaron Paul appears during a photo session to promote his film, "The 9th Life of Louis Drax" in New York. The film opens nationwide on Sept. 2, (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)

That's the frame for "Louis," based on a Liz Jensen's best-seller of the same name. Paul plays two parts  sort of  and one came with a monster suit.

"It was a huge process, a four-hour process," he said of his transformation from ex-boxer, violent dad-with-a-drinking problem Peter Drax, to a dark, cave-dwelling thing.

"It was a big suit that I put on. A latex head. I kind of suppressed the memory. It was a nightmare of an experience. But I actually really enjoyed it," Paul said.

The psychological thriller stars Jamie Dornan as a coma specialist tasked with taking care of a 9-year-old, seemingly accident-prone boy named Louis whom Dornan's Dr. Allan Pascal mind melds with. There's also some romance, on Dornan's part, I mean, with Louis' mom.

The story is right in Paul's off-kilter wheelhouse, a la his award-winning role as Jesse Pinkman on "Breaking Bad." It's a more challenging stretch for Dornan, of "Fifty Shades" fame, despite being the son of a doctor who once had acting aspirations of his own.

"My dad is a doctor. My mother was a nurse. My stepmother is a doctor. My uncle's a doctor. It's funny, my dad tried to give me advice for pretty much every character I've played, except on this occasion when I was playing a medical professional," Dornan laughed.

Dornan, who has two young daughters, enjoyed working with a child actor as much as Paul. Louis is played by Aiden Longworth,who was 10 during filming and is now nearly 12.

Yes, Louis is in a coma, though he has more to do than just lie still.

"Aiden, he's brilliant," Dornan said. "You know the famous thing, never work with kids and animals? One of the early scenes I did was with a hamster and a child, so there's two in one. He talks non-stop, so actually the coma aspect, for him, was very, very difficult."

The script was a labor of love for Max Minghella, whose famous father, Oscar-winning director and screenwriter Anthony Minghella, had been developing it before he died in 2008. Minghella said French director Alexander Aja, known for slasher horror and fantasy, was true to the page, though the two didn't always get along.

"We butted heads a lot. I... but it was absolutely coming from a place of love and excitement," Minghella said.

Aja said he got carried away by "this crazy, amazing mysterious world of Louis Drax," a world where "you have no idea of who is who. Even if everything seems to be clear in the beginning, everything turns."

Of the vibe with Minghella on set, Aja would say only that the two had never worked together behind the camera. Minghella is an actor, director, producer, but "Louis Drax" is his debut as a screenwriter.

"It was an interesting thing to also be of service to the beautiful script that he'd done but also to try to bring a level up to the legacy," Aja said of Minghella's father, who directed "The English Patient" and wrote and directed "Truly Madly Deeply."

"Of course, every day going on set, I was thinking about his father, ... and what he would have done with the movie," Aja said.

Much of the action in "Louis Drax" takes place inside Louis' mind, which was among the elements that appealed to Aja. He said it was a difficult deciding on just the right boy to play Louis.

"We saw a lot of kids and at the end we had a couple that were really, really good, but I couldn't stop myself from thinking about Aiden, the first time he came to read. He did a scene inside of this supernatural, fantasy world. By the end of the scene we were all teary eyes, we were all almost crying," Aja said.

Dornan said it was refreshing to have a child on set.

"Adults, you know, you're trying to make this art and everyone's being very serious, and 'I need a minute,' and a kid just breaks all of that," he said. "They see it in the purest form, which is like we're basically playing dress-up and it's really fun. That is what making a film is. Whatever way we package it, we're playing dress-up and it should be frivolous. It should be fun, regardless of the context."

In this Aug. 6, 2016 photo, actor Aaron Paul appears during a photo session to promote his film, "The 9th Life of Louis Drax" in New York. The film opens nationwide on Sept. 2, (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP)
In dry, windy West, crews target flames in several states

SAN SIMEON, Calif. (AP)  Growing wildfires fed by windy, dry conditions have destroyed buildings and forced evacuations in central California, eastern Washington, Oregon and elsewhere.

Crews in both states fought to contain the blazes Monday, with firefighters making headway in the Golden State while authorities counted at least 16 homes burned in the Northwest.

Here's a look at major wildfires in the West:

A charred truck is seen near the home of Julie Thayer and her husband, Art, on South Yale Road near Valleyford, Wash., on Monday, Aug 22, 2016. The Thayers had been hiking over the weekend and returned home Sunday night to find their home destroyed. (Tyler Tjomsland/The Spokesman-Review via AP)

___

CALIFORNIA

A growing wildfire in central California had charred over 50 square miles by Monday, while a destructive blaze in Southern California was mostly under control.

Nearly 1,900 structures were threatened by a blaze in coastal San Luis Obispo and Monterey counties, where more than 2,400 people were under evacuation orders.

Despite its being well over a week old, the fire surged with new activity on Monday and threatened to jump the lines that were containing it, though by day's end containment remained at 35 percent.

The fire has destroyed 34 homes and 14 other buildings.

Eighty miles up the coast, California's biggest fire grew to nearly 135 square miles in rugged wilderness coast along Highway 1 north of Big Sur.

More than 400 homes remained threatened by the fire.

Meanwhile, a 58-square-mile fire that destroyed 105 homes in Southern California was almost entirely contained and all evacuation orders were lifted.

___

WASHINGTON

Wildfires in the Spokane area have burned more than a dozen homes and forced evacuations.

One blaze west of the eastern Washington city had destroyed at least six homes and scorched more than 9 square miles by Monday morning, the Department of Natural Resources said.

The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office said 11 structures were destroyed near the town of Davenport, a figure that includes homes, garages and outbuildings.

The fire jumped the Spokane River and threatened the small community of Wellpinit on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Residents were told to evacuate after the town lost power.

Another wildfire, south of Spokane near the town of Spangle, destroyed at least 10 homes and numerous other buildings Sunday, according to the Washington State Patrol.

A third blaze was burning on the northeast side of the city. That fire had scorched 250 acres, and officials said some homes were likely destroyed.

___

WYOMING

The largest fire in Yellowstone National Park in northwest Wyoming grew to about 35 square miles amid windy, warm weather, but tourists could still visit the popular park during the busy summer season.

All the park's main tourist facilities and roads were open Monday, although the fire was creeping toward a key road linking the West Entrance with the park's interior.

The blaze has charred mostly remote forest between West Yellowstone, Montana, a border town just outside the park's western boundary, and the Madison Junction recreational area within the park.

The flames expanded by nearly 10 square miles Sunday. It's one of four fires burning in Yellowstone, and warm, windy weather was expected again Monday.

___

MONTANA

Authorities ordered people in a rural area of northwestern Montana to evacuate before dawn Monday after a wildfire doubled in size in one day.

The Sanders County Sheriff's Office told people to leave their homes outside the small town of Thompson Falls. Wind gusts of up to 40 mph were expected to blow across the dry, hot terrain, stoking extreme fire behavior.

Some 20 homes and other buildings were threatened, and other residents were told that the evacuation area may spread.

Some 317 firefighters are responding to the blaze, which grew by 4 square miles Sunday to nearly 11 square miles.

___

OREGON

A wildfire spotted Sunday afternoon in eastern Oregon has quickly become one of the state's largest active blazes.

Fire officials say the fire has scorched nearly 50 square miles of brush and grass near the Idaho state line. Officials say the fire's size was reduced from 80 square miles due to better mapping.

Bureau of Land Management spokesman Larry Moore says the wildfire is burning two miles east of the Owyhee Reservoir, and it's threatening Succor Creek State Park.

One hundred firefighters battled the fire Monday morning. Forecasters were expecting afternoon wind gusts of 25 mph.

The cause of the fire has yet to be determined.

The Freeman High School football team practices amid a haze of smoke from the Yale Road fire on Monday, Aug 22, 2016, in Rockford, Wash. (Tyler Tjomsland/The Spokesman-Review via AP)

In this Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016 photo, a fast-moving wildfire approaches homes on the north side of Beacon Hill in Spokane, Wash. A series of fires started Sunday afternoon amid high winds and temperatures in the 90s. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review via AP)

In the aftermath of the fire started by a downed power line that spread about 6 miles northeast of Spangle, Wash. , firefighters sent a back up burn to get rid of fuels on the ground, Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. (Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Review, via AP)

A fire truck moves along Hwy 125 past a blazing stack of hay bales north of Walla Walla, Wash., during a large wildfire Sunday night, Aug. 21, 2016. Firefighters from several districts were able to stop the blaze at Hwy 125. The fire, whose cause in under investigation, burned about 15,000 acres in very high winds and was contained about 11:00p. (Greg Lehman/Walla Walla Union-Bulletin via AP)

In the aftermath of a fire that started from a downed power line, JJ Anderson uses a rake to put out hot spots on the property of his brother, PJ Anderson northeast of Spangle, Wash., Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016. His brother's home was spared. Others were not so lucky. (Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Review, via AP)

In this Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016 photo, a fast-moving wildfire approaches homes on the north side of Beacon Hill in Spokane, Wash. A series of fires started Sunday afternoon amid high winds and temperatures in the 90s. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review via AP)

A plane drops a load of fire retardant on the north side of Beacon Hill, Sunday, Aug 21, 2016, in Spokane, Wash. The fast moving wildfire is threatening structures as it moves in a north-easterly direction. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review, via AP)

A Benton City Fire District 1 truck travels north on Hwy 125 in front of a flaming stack of hay bales near the intersection with Valley Grove Road north of Walla Walla, Washington, Sunday night, Aug.21, 2016. Firefighters from several districts were able to stop the blaze at Hwy 125. The fire, whose cause in under investigation, burned about 15,000 acres in very high winds. (Greg Lehman/Walla Walla Union-Bulletin via AP)

Flames erupt in a stand of trees north of Walla Walla, Wash., during a large wildfire Sunday night, Aug.21, 2016. Firefighters from several districts were able to stop the blaze at Hwy 125. The fire, whose cause in under investigation, burned about 15,000 acres in very high winds. (Greg Lehman/Walla Walla Union-Bulletin via AP)
Lithuania in $437 million military vehicle deal with Germany

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP)  Lithuania says it has signed a contract to purchase dozens of German military vehicles worth 386 million euros ($437 million), in the Baltic country's largest weaponry purchase to date.

The Lithuanian Defense Ministry says the deal was signed Monday with Rheinmetall MAN Military Vehicles for 88 armoured Boxer cars.

The agreement comes amid growing tensions over neighboring Russia's increased military presence in the Baltic Sea region.

Lithuanian Defense Minister Juzas Olekas said at the signing ceremony that the contract "is a signal that Lithuania takes care of its security, and investments into it seriously."
Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday that he thought he had just a few weeks to live during his battle with cancer a year ago.

Carter and his wife Rosalynn spoke at a news conference at a Habitat for Humanity construction project in Memphis.

Carter revealed in August 2015 that he had been diagnosed with melanoma that spread to his brain.

Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday that he thought he had just a few weeks to live during his battle with cancer a year ago

Carter is pictured holding a morning devotion in Memphis, Tennesee, on Monday before he and his wife Rosalynn helped build a home for Habitat for Humanity

He said in March that he no longer needs cancer treatment.

'Now I feel pretty certain about my cure and the cancer being in remission, but the doctors are still keeping an eye on me,' he said.

But during the peak of his fight with the illness, he had his doubts.

'A year ago, I didn't think I was going to live but two or three weeks because they had already removed part of my liver because I had cancer there,' Carter said.

'After that, when they did an MRI, they found four cancer places in my brain so I thought I just had a few weeks to live.'

By last November, Carter was responding to treatment and was able to travel to Memphis for another Habitat for Humanity project.

'By the time I got to here, I was putting on a kind of a false optimistic face,' Carter said.

Carter revealed in August 2015 that he had been diagnosed with melanoma that spread to his brain. He said in March that he no longer needs cancer treatment

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former U.S. first lady Rosalynn Carter help build a home together

By last November, Carter was responding to treatment and was able to travel to Memphis for another Habitat for Humanity project

The 91-year-old Carter, a worldwide ambassador for Habitat for Humanity, is being joined by about 1,500 volunteers during a weeklong effort to build 19 homes in a low-income neighborhood near the city's downtown.

Before a question and answer session during the news conference, Carter drew laughs when he mentioned Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

'We'll have questions later. Anybody who asks about Donald Trump will be disqualified from the occasion and will have to leave,' Carter said.

'So, I just want to give that one premise for the question and answer period. We want to stick to Habitat, if you don't mind.'

The 91-year-old Carter, a worldwide ambassador for Habitat for Humanity, is being joined by about 1,500 volunteers during a weeklong effort to build 19 homes in a low-income neighborhood

Moving amid the skeleton framing of the house, Carter appeared energetic and sure-footed as he talked with workers and used a level to make sure wooden beams were properly installed

The former president wore blue jeans, a hard hat, a tool belt and a red bandanna around his neck as he hammered nails into the wooden frame of a house he was helping build. The project involves constructing one- and two-story houses.

Moving amid the skeleton framing of the house, Carter appeared energetic and sure-footed as he talked with workers and used a level to make sure wooden beams were properly installed.

Jonathan Reckford, CEO of the Atlanta-based charity, said Carter and his wife have donated their time to help build and improve 3,944 homes in 14 countries.

Carter said he plans to go to Canada to build homes with the charity next year. He still teaches Sunday school classes in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.
Turkey withdraws ambassador to Austria amid diplomatic spat

ANKARA, Turkey (AP)  Turkey is withdrawing its ambassador to Austria, the Turkish foreign minister said Monday, amid a growing diplomatic spat.

Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ambassador Hasan Gogus was called back to Ankara for "consultations and to review ties," citing Austrian authorities' decision to allow alleged supporters of Turkey's Kurdish rebels to hold a demonstration in Vienna over the weekend as well as rising anti-Turkish rhetoric in Austria.

Ties between Turkey and Austria have been tense for several weeks, with a top Austrian official saying Turkey was heading toward a dictatorship and other leaders calling for an end to Turkey's European Union membership talks.

Turkey, in turn, has described Austria as the "capital of radical racism."

"We saw that ... the PKK and its supporters were given permission to stage a demonstration in Vienna," Cavusoglu said. "This does not comply with honesty or sincerity. We couldn't stay inactive against this attitude which supports terrorism." He was referring to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which Turkey and its allies consider a terror organization.

Fighting between the PKK and Turkey's security forces resumed last year after a fragile peace process collapsed. The group has stepped up attacks targeting police and military in Turkey and at least a dozen people were killed in a string of bombings last week.

Cavusoglu said Austria's top diplomat in Ankara was also called to the ministry over the demonstration in Vienna.

There was no immediate response from Austrian officials.
Puerto Rico announces $20M in federal funds for road repairs

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  Puerto Rico says it will receive $20 million in federal funds to repair a road on the island's southern coast where potholes and uneven lanes have been blamed for numerous accidents.

It is the largest amount the U.S. government has ever disbursed to the territory for such a project.

Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla says 19 miles (30 kilometers) of the PR-10 road which runs from Ponce to Adjuntas will be repaired. Ponce is Puerto Rico's second-largest city.
UN warns Aleppo risks 'catastrophe,' urges 48-hour truce

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  The U.N. humanitarian chief on Monday urged all combatants in Aleppo to agree to a 48-hour pause to allow delivery of desperately needed aid, warning that otherwise the world risks seeing a "humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled in the over five years of bloodshed" in Syria.

Stephen O'Brien said Aleppo is being bombed every day, including a dozen new attacks on Monday, and has become "the apex of horror" in "the greatest crisis of our time."

He told the U.N. Security Council, which has been deeply divided over Syria, that "you have the power with a pen  a simple pen stroke  to allow food to people."

O'Brien said the U.N. asked to deliver aid to nearly 1 million people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas in August, but the Syrian government approved less than 50 percent of the requests, denying aid to rebel-held eastern Aleppo and several other besieged areas.

O'Brien said that not one aid convoy has moved yet due to fighting, insecurity and bureaucratic requirements, and the end of the month is just nine days away.

Russia, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, said last Thursday it was ready to back the U.N. call for weekly 48-hour cease-fires in Aleppo, provided aid convoys travel to both rebel-controlled and government-controlled parts of the city.

U.S. deputy ambassador Michele Sison reiterated American support for the humanitarian pauses in her speech to the council, saying "it is imperative that all armed groups in Aleppo respect these pauses." She urged Russia to follow its unilateral declaration "with genuine steps to support regular and sustained access to Aleppo."

O'Brien welcomed the Russian announcement but also stressed that "we need the agreement of all parties to let us do our job."

"In Aleppo we risk seeing a humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled in the over five years of bloodshed and carnage in the Syrian conflict," he said. "Once again, I cannot stress strongly enough the need for a 48-hour pause in fighting to be approved by all sides and come into effect, so that safe and sustained humanitarian access is opened to all areas of Aleppo."

The U.N. humanitarian chief said he and his office are working with all sides seeking to ensure that the Russian offer can be turned into "a comprehensive pause."

Rebel-held eastern Aleppo, where up to 275,000 people live, has been almost entirely cut off from vital supplies including food, water, medicine and electricity for over a month, O'Brien said, while access to the estimated 1.5 million people in government-controlled western Aleppo "remains extremely difficult."

The U.N. has found a new route into western Aleppo and has delivered some aid, and it is preparing 20 trucks to deliver food and other supplies to eastern Aleppo as soon as a cease-fire takes place, he said.

"This is a race against time, as fighting rages on, with ever more shocking reports of bombed hospitals and wrecked schools," O'Brien said. "Electricity is out, water is scarce, and movement is restricted."

He repeated his appeals for U.N. action, not just on Aleppo, but to end the war in Syria saying: "When hospital attacks have become the new normal, when medieval sieges of entire cities and neighborhoods have become a lasting reality for hundreds of thousands of people, this council cannot look the other way."

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin urged all those with influence to spur the opposition to move forward to a political settlement.

"Without that and without effectively combatting terrorism the necessary radical improvement in the humanitarian situation in Syria is impossible," Churkin said.
Nigerian oil militants declare ceasefire, ready to negotiate

WARRI, Nigeria (AP)  Nigeria's leading oil militants have declared a conditional ceasefire in attacks that are losing the West African nation a million barrels of oil a day. The Niger Delta Avengers also say they are willing to negotiate a peace deal.

A statement posted on the group's website and dated Saturday says they will continue an undeclared "cessation of hostilities" on condition that security forces stop harassing civilians, and that international mediators are involved.

A military campaign in the oil-producing Niger Delta has killed unknown scores of militants, soldiers and police.

The announcement follows a call Friday by community elders for all militants to join a dialogue for peace.

President Muhammadu Buhari's government already is in talks with other militants.

But it is the attacks by the Niger Delta Avengers that have cut production by 40 percent this year and caused Nigeria to lose its place to Angola as Africa's biggest oil producer.

The attacks on facilities of U.S.-based ExxonMobil and Chevron, Italy's Agip and the Dutch-British Shell resumed this year after the government stopped paying stipends to 30,000 militants under a 2009 amnesty that ended years of unrest in the Niger Delta. Some militant leaders were given multimillion-dollar contracts to protect the oil installations they once attacked.

Buhari's government earlier this month resumed the amnesty payments, though the Avengers have charged that some of the funds have been stolen over the years by militant leaders.

Oil companies have evacuated scores of workers because of attacks by the Avengers, who were demanding that the multinationals withdraw completely. The Avengers have said they want to stop production of the oil that has brought little more than misery to delta residents. Oil pollution has destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of fishermen and farmers who live in poverty without running water or electricity.
Michigan couple weds to sweet sound of tornado sirens

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP)  Not even tornado sirens could stop a Michigan couple from saying "I do."

As the sirens blared across Grand Rapids, Brandon Warner married Breane Proctor in front of family members and guests at a church.

Despite the storm threat, Warner decided to proceed with Saturday's ceremony.

A large tree branch lies on the ground after a severe storm in Grand Rapids, Mich., Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016. A number of homes had their roofs ripped off, trees were uprooted and vehicles damaged after the storm hit parts of western Michigan on Saturday. (Allison Farrand/The Grand Rapids Press via AP)

"Bree is ready and we're all here. Let's go through with this," he told The Grand Rapids Press (http://bit.ly/2bxiZP5 ) for a story Monday. "Let's make it happen. I figured if we were going to get hit, maybe it was meant to be."

"We just kind of shrugged our shoulders and went down the aisle," said Proctor.

After exchanging vows, storm sirens sounded again and everyone stood beneath the church's balconies, away from its stained-glass windows. A little less than an hour after they said "I do," a tornado reportedly touched down less than three miles away, according to the paper.

"The church seemed so big and massive and sturdy," Brandon said. "I truly did not know how bad it was until everyone got on their cellphones and looked at the maps."

After the storm passed, the wedding party rode around to look at some of the storm damage.

Some trees were knocked over and power lines were downed across some parts of southwestern and western Michigan. No injuries were reported.

Tree limbs crashed through the front windows of a home on Palace Avenue as a reported tornado swept through Grand Rapids, Mich. and surrounding cities on Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016. Residents exited through the back of the home to find power lines down in the front yard. (Allison Farrand/The Grand Rapids Press via AP)

A downed tree sits on a fence off of Prairie Parkway in Wyoming, Mich., Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016, after a reported tornado swept through the area. A storm that appeared to spawn at least one tornado slammed parts of western Michigan on Saturday, causing extensive damage, authorities said. (Neil Blake/The Grand Rapids Press via AP)
Police in El Salvador kill 5 suspected gang members

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP)  Police in El Salvador say they have killed five suspected members of an organized crime gang in a shootout outside the capital of San Salvador.

The national police force said Monday that five suspected members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang died in the confrontation in a rural area about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of the capital.

Police say they were patrolling in the area when they saw 10 people at a house and recognized one as a suspect in the August 15 killing of a police officer.

Police said the gang members opened fire on the patrol. A confrontation ensued and five suspects escaped.
Kagawa leads Dortmund to 3-0 win at Trier in German Cup

BERLIN (AP)  Shinji Kagawa scored twice as Borussia Dortmund progressed from the first round of the German Cup with a comfortable 3-0 win at fourth-tier Eintracht Trier on Monday.

The Japan international was in the right place at the right time to open the scoring in the eighth minute, and then again in the 33rd. Andre Schuerrle made it 3-0 before the break, thanks to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang's second assist.

Aubameyang was earlier denied by the far post after lifting the ball over Trier 'keeper Chris Keilmann. He also struck the crossbar with a header in the second half, when Dortmund's intensity dropped after a disciplined first half.

Keilmann made a great save to deny Adrian Ramos, while Aubameyang and new signing Emre Mor also went close.

Earlier, Croatia midfielder Alen Halilovic came off the bench to score on his competitive debut as Hamburger SV beat third-division FSV Zwickau 1-0.

The 20-year-old Halilovic, who joined Hamburg from Barcelona in the off-season, went on as a substitute in the 62nd minute, eight minutes before winning the ball from a defender and surging forward on the right from where he curled a brilliant strike in off the far post.

Zwickau came close to an equalizer but Hamburg held out.

Salif Sane secured a late victory for second-division Hannover at fourth-tier Kickers Offenbach, converting a penalty in injury time of extra time for a 3-2 win.

Stefano Maier conceded the spot kick in the final minute for a foul on Hannover's Felix Klaus. Both sides finished normal time with 10 men.

SV Sandhausen, from the second division, came from behind to beat third-division Paderborn 2-1.

Defending champion Bayern Munich progressed on Friday, while Bayer Leverkusen, Borussia Moenchengladbach, Schalke and Hertha Berlin also booked their places in the second round.
The Latest: Teacher union hopes tenure decision ends debate

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  The Latest on the California Supreme Court's decision to let the state's teacher tenure law stand (all times local):

12:55 p.m.

The American Federation of Teachers says it hopes the California Supreme Court's decision upholding the state's teacher tenure law closes the book on the flawed argument linking educators' workplace protections with student disadvantage.

A representative for students who challenged the tenure law, meanwhile, says he hopes the state legislature will rewrite education laws with students' best interests in mind.

In a victory for teacher unions, the California Supreme Court decided Monday to let the state's teacher tenure law stand.

The high court said it would not take up a lawsuit by a group of students who claimed that incompetent teachers were almost impossible to fire because of tenure laws and that schools in poor neighborhoods were dumping grounds for bad teachers. The decision leaves in place a lower court's court ruling that upheld tenure and other job protections for teachers.

---

12:25 p.m.

The California Supreme Court was divided 4-3 in its decision to let the state's teacher tenure law stand.

Three justices said Monday the court was wrong not to review a lower court ruling that upheld tenure and other job protections for teachers.

Associate Justice Goodwin Liu said the case affected millions of students statewide and presented a significant legal issue that the lower court likely got wrong. Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar echoed those concerns in a separate dissent.

The Supreme Court's decision came in a lawsuit by a group of students who claimed that incompetent teachers were almost impossible to fire because of tenure laws and that schools in poor neighborhoods were dumping grounds for bad teachers.

An appeals court said in April that the students had failed to show California's hiring and firing rules were unconstitutional.

---

11:30 a.m.

In a victory for teacher unions, the California Supreme Court has decided to let the state's teacher tenure law stand.

The high court said Monday it will not take up a lawsuit by a group of students who claimed that incompetent teachers were almost impossible to fire because of tenure laws and that schools in poor neighborhoods were dumping grounds for bad teachers. The decision leaves in place a lower court's court ruling that upheld tenure and other job protections for teachers.

The appeals court said in its decision in April that the students had failed to show California's hiring and firing rules were unconstitutional.
Bill Clinton defends work of Clinton Foundation

WASHINGTON (AP)  Former President Bill Clinton defended the work of his charitable foundation Monday, telling supporters that it had "improved millions of lives around the world" but needs to change if his wife, Hillary Clinton, wins the White House.

The former president outlined the Clinton Foundation's accomplishments and planned shift in scope in an email to about 500,000 supporters.

Hours earlier, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called the foundation "the most corrupt enterprise in political history" adding, "It must be shut down immediately." He bore down again during a speech later in Akron, Ohio, telling a crowd that if elected, he would have a special prosecutor appointed to investigate the foundation.

Bill Clinton announced last week that the foundation will no longer accept contributions from foreign governments and corporations if his wife, the Democratic presidential nominee, is elected. The ex-president, who oversees the foundation with daughter Chelsea Clinton, also said he would hold his final Clinton Global Initiative meeting next month in New York regardless of the election's outcome.

"Since Hillary began her presidential campaign in 2015, Chelsea and I have made it clear that the work the Clinton Foundation started should continue if Hillary is elected, but that changes would be necessary," Bill Clinton said in the email. "While it would be presumptive to assume a victory in November, now that Hillary is her party's nominee, it would be irresponsible not to plan for it."

The changes aim to address criticism from Republicans and some Democrats that the foundation has created a significant conflict of interest as Hillary Clinton seeks the presidency. While Trump has donated to the foundation previously, he has charged Hillary Clinton with creating a "pay-for-play" scheme at the State Department through the work of the foundation.

Defending the foundation's mission, Bill Clinton pointed to more than 11.5 million people in more than 70 countries who have gained access to HIV/AIDS drugs at a much lower cost and millions of American students who have healthier food and more physical education options because of the foundation. He also noted the foundation's work around the globe, including efforts to help improve Haiti's sustainability, foster job training in Latin America and support farmers in East Africa.

The ex-president said in the event of another Clinton presidency, the foundation's work, funding and his role in it would raise questions that would need to be resolved "in a way that keeps the good work going while eliminating legitimate concerns about potential conflicts of interest."

If Hillary Clinton is elected, the former president said the foundation would accept contributions only from U.S. citizens, permanent residents and U.S.-based independent foundations, whose names would continue to be disclosed on a quarterly basis. He said the official name would be changed from the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation to the Clinton Foundation. And he said he would step down from the board and no longer raise money for it.

Bill Clinton said that much of the foundation's international activities would be transitioned to other organizations to continue that type of work.

John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign, said in a statement on Monday that the foundation had laid out "unprecedented steps" that it would take if Hillary Clinton is elected. He urged Trump to "come clean" with the electorate about the business mogul's "complex network of for-profit businesses" that are in debt to big banks, the Bank of China and business groups with ties to Russia.

__

Editors: AP reporter Jonathan Lemire contributed to this story from Akron, Ohio.

__
Firefighter will get back dog after it escaped, got adopted

VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP)  A firefighter who left his dog with friends as he battled wildfires in Washington state will get back his dog weeks after the animal ran away and got adopted by another family.

The Humane Society for Southwest Washington says the family decided over the weekend to return Hunter the dog to William Jones. They initially declined, saying they had bonded with the animal.

After Jones left, the black Labrador retriever jumped a fence, got picked up by animal control and was brought to a shelter earlier this month. Hunter was adopted 10 days later.

Jones told KOIN-TV in Portland that he called the Humane Society when he returned but was told nothing could be done because the adoption was legal.
US works to keep Turkey in its fold as NATO ally looks east

WASHINGTON (AP)  With suspicions on both sides mounting, the United States is struggling to preserve its wobbly partnership with Turkey as it entertains a closer relationship with Russia and fumes over a U.S.-based cleric it blames for orchestrating last month's failed coup attempt.

Vice President Joe Biden faces a difficult mission when he travels to Ankara on Wednesday to try to smooth over recent strains: He comes bearing no assurances that the U.S. will agree to Turkey's demand that it extradite that cleric  Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania. Instead, he'll try to convey that the U.S. still needs and values Turkey as a key NATO ally, even amid worrying signs that the U.S. and Turkish approaches to the region's conflicts may be diverging  especially on Syria.

Tensions between the two countries were already bubbling under the surface before the attempted overthrow on July 15, but have since burst into the open. U.S. leaders were incensed when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan alleged the U.S. either supported or was involved in the coup attempt. As the U.S. issued denials, Turkish officials complained loudly that Washington was slow to show support for Turkey's government at its time of greatest need, even though the U.S. expressed support for Erdogan as the coup attempt was underway.

FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2016 file photo, Vice President Joe Biden gestures during a news conference in Belgrade, Serbia. Biden faces a difficult mission when he travels to Ankara on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2016, to try to smooth over recent strains: He comes bearing no assurances that the U.S. will agree to Turkeys demand that it extradite Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File)

At the same time, the U.S. has been rattled by Turkey's recent diplomatic flirtations with traditional U.S. foes Russia and Iran, concerned they may indicate that a frustrated Turkey is rethinking its allegiance with the West in promoting regional stability. This month Erdogan traveled to Moscow to try to boost ties and possibly even collaboration on ending Syria's civil war, something Moscow has sought unsuccessfully with Washington. And following the Turkish foreign minister's surprise trip to Iran last week, Turkish media reported that Erdogan planned to visit Tehran on Wednesday  the same day he's also slated to meet with Biden.

"Clearly President Erdogan is sending a message by getting closer to Russia and Iran that he's unhappy with the attitude of the West," said Bulent Aliriza, a Turkey analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Turkey's still going to remain a NATO member and aspire for EU membership, but the atmosphere is worse than it was on July 14," the day before the coup attempt.

A breakdown of ties to Turkey would be problematic for the U.S., which is counting on Turkey to pursue the same approach to fighting the Islamic State group and addressing extremism across the Middle East. Straddling Europe and Asia, Turkey shares borders with Iraq, Iran and Syria, where the porous border has allowed Islamic State fighters in to Turkey, and would-be recruits into Syria.

But the U.S. and Turkey are unlikely to resolve their dispute over Gulen, who has lived in the U.S. for years in self-imposed exile. Gulen has denied any involvement in the coup attempt, in which more than 270 died, but Turkey's government has insisted the U.S. return him to Turkey immediately.

The Obama administration wants more proof before considering extradition. Although Turkey has submitted extradition requests for Gulen, those requests have been based on previous alleged crimes by Gulen and not evidence of involvement in the coup attempt, senior Obama administration officials said.

The U.S. is sending a Justice Department team to Turkey to help sort out the technical requirements of the request, said the officials, who briefed reporters ahead of Biden's trip on condition of anonymity. They added that Biden planned to tell Turkey's leaders that their public allegations of U.S. complicity won't help their cause.

"People have an expectation that Gulen should be returned to Turkey immediately," said Gulnur Aybet, who teaches international relations at Turkey's Bahcesehir University. "If the extradition request is refused or delayed I'm afraid that's going to have serious repercussions."

The U.S. once looked optimistically at Erdogan as a Muslim leader interested in working with the U.S. and pursuing democratic governance. That optimism has been dampened as Erdogan has cracked down on press and other freedoms and his government has put a premium on opposing outlawed Kurdish rebels  sometimes at the expense, in the Obama administration's view  of focusing on IS.

Washington's concerns about human rights and democracy in Turkey intensified after the failed coup, which led the government to detain or fire tens of thousands of police, soldiers, teachers and journalists. Yet the U.S. has been careful not to hammer Turkey over those concerns in public out of concern it would undercut the U.S. message of support for Turkey's government.

The fragile situation in Turkey was compounded over the weekend when a suicide bomber killed at least 54 people at a Kurdish wedding celebration in Gaziantep, near the Syria border. It was the deadliest attack this year in Turkey, joining other deadly attacks by IS or by the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known as the PKK.

In another worrying sign for the U.S., Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim appeared to warm to the possibility of Syrian President Bashar Assad maintaining a role in a transitional government. Turkey and the U.S. have both called for Assad's ouster for years, insisting he can't be part of Syria's future government.

___

This story has been corrected in the 5th paragraph to say the day 'before' the coup attempt, not the day 'of' the coup attempt.

___

Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, video journalist Bram Janssen in Istanbul, and Dan Huff in Washington contributed to this report.

___
AG: Ex-Milwaukee officers investigate fatal police shooting

MILWAUKEE (AP)  Wisconsin's attorney general acknowledged Monday that former Milwaukee police officers, now working for the state Department of Justice, are investigating the fatal shooting of a black man by a Milwaukee officer that triggered two nights of violence.

Attorney General Brad Schimel said he doesn't see a conflict in using former Milwaukee officers in the investigation into the Aug. 13 shooting of Sylville K. Smith.

Smith, 23, was killed after what Milwaukee police said was a brief foot chase when he ran from a traffic stop. A few hours after Smith's death, a protest on the city's largely black north side erupted into violence that reignited the following night in the Sherman Park neighborhood.

FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Milwaukee County Sheriff shows Sylville K. Smith. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, that the fatal police shooting of Smith on Aug. 13 in Milwaukee that sparked two nights of violence was recorded by two body cameras. Schimel says the videos won't be released until after the county prosecutor decides whether to charge the officer. (Milwaukee County Sheriff via AP, File)

"Milwaukee PD has about 2,000 sworn officers as I understand. The likelihood that there would be some relationship between a particular patrol officer, who's going to be much younger than an experienced detective... is small. And if there is any relationship at all, that officer, that investigator would not be permitted to have any role in the investigation," Schimel said at a news conference in downtown Milwaukee.

He said the DOJ hires many retired officers to work for the Division of Criminal Investigation in the region that they have previously worked. An agency spokesman later said DCI has about 100 officers statewide; of 18 field agents in the Milwaukee office, eight once worked for the Milwaukee Police Department.

State Rep. David Bowen, who grew up in the Sherman Park neighborhood, questioned the use of former Milwaukee officers in the investigation and called for Schimel to turn the case over to the U.S. Department of Justice.

"People are crying out for transparency and crying out for accountability," said Bowen, who represents a large portion of the city's north side.

Schimel said his investigators have interviewed all "critical witnesses" at least once, but the investigation into the fatal shooting of Smith is not yet complete. His office has been working closely with Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, who ultimately will decide whether any charges are warranted against the officer who shot Smith, he said.

The attorney general said there are two videos from body cameras worn by two of the three officers who were at the scene of the shooting that show similar vantage points, but that no video or still shots from the video will be released until Chisholm is done with the case. There is no surveillance video from the neighborhood, he said.

While the video is a component of the investigation, Schimel said it's just one piece among many sources of information.

"They give only a narrow and incomplete glimpse of the overall picture," he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin has pressed Schimel's office to release the body camera video. Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said the video clearly shows Smith was holding a handgun and turned toward the officer when he was shot.

The first 30 seconds of the video has no audio. That's because Milwaukee police body cameras are set up to continuously record a 30-second buffer of video only. When an officer double-clicks his camera, the device instantly stores the past 30 seconds of video and begins adding audio only at that instant.

Schimel said it happened quickly.

"It's not easy to see everything unless you slow it down" he said.

Smith's family has been cooperative in the investigation, Schimel said. The Wisconsin Department of Justice is investigating the shooting, as required by state law for any fatal shootings involving police.

On Monday, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett eased curfew restrictions he had imposed on Aug. 15, saying they were no longer needed.

Smith's funeral will be held Friday at Christian Faith Fellowship Church in Milwaukee.

___
Pence doubles down on call for Clinton to end foundation

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP)  Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence is doubling down on running mate Donald Trump's new public push for Hillary Clinton to shut down her long-time charitable foundation.

Pence told a crowd Monday at a manufacturing facility in Cedar Rapids that Clinton must shut down the Clinton Foundation immediately. Trump issued the same call earlier in the day through social media.

Clinton's campaign announced recently the foundation will stop accepting foreign donations if she is elected president. Pence says that pledge isn't enough and the Democratic presidential nominee needs to "come clean" about the foundation.
More tests set for Yellowstone, tributaries after fish kill

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP)  Wildlife workers will conduct tests on fish from additional areas of Montana to determine the extent of a disease blamed in a massive fish kill along the Yellowstone River, officials said Monday.

The state indefinitely closed a 183-mile stretch of the river to all recreational activities on Friday after thousands of dead fish washed up along the river's banks in the Paradise Valley area north of Yellowstone National Park.

Biologists are trying to determine if the little-understood parasite that's blamed for the deaths has infected fish further downstream and in several major tributaries. Those tributaries also were closed under the order from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

This Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016, photo shows dead whitefish floating in the Yellowstone River near Emigrant, Mont. Montana wildlife officials closed a stretch of the river and numerous tributaries after a massive fish kill that is blamed on a contagious parasite. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)

Crews will be collecting fish throughout the week on the Yellowstone downstream of Springdale and on three tributaries  the Shields, Boulder and Stillwater rivers, said Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokeswoman Andrea Jones.

Results of laboratory tests are expected within a few days of collection. The parasite at issue causes infected fish to develop proliferative kidney disease. Warm water temperatures and low river levels have worsened the problem by stressing the Yellowstone's fish populations and making them more prone to dying.

The river's closure during the busy summer season dealt a major blow to fishing guides, fly shops, rafting companies and others who work in the region's thriving outdoors industry.

Officials have warned the closure could last for weeks or even months. It's intended to prevent the parasite from spreading to other waterways via contaminated boats, fishing waders or other gear.

However, state officials have acknowledged the order is all but impossible to enforce and they're counting heavily on voluntary compliance. The order did not apply to Yellowstone National Park.

Eric Burge of Livingston was among those forced to change plans, prematurely ending what was to have been a multi-day float trip down the river. As he washed down his raft with a washcloth, Burge said he was disappointed but was "here for the long haul."

"I love this river and am happy to take off it and put back on another day when there's not a potential to damage other waterways," he said.

So far, most of the fish killed have been whitefish. Few have been trout, a highly prized species among many anglers.

Dozens of independent outfitters depend on the trout fishery in the Yellowstone, charging clients up to $500 a day for a guided float trip, said Leslie Feigel, executive director for the Livingston Chamber of Commerce.

Some of those guides can relocate to rivers outside the closure area if they have the proper permits, but that's not the case for everyone, she said.

If the fish kill had happened in June, the consequences would have been far worse, Feigel added.

Gov. Steve Bullock planned to visit the river Tuesday, state officials said.

A community meeting on the closure and fish kill was scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday at Park County Fairgrounds in Livingston.

Jones said members of the public want to know when the river will open.

"That's something we can't say, but we can help them understand why it is closed to this extent," she said.

___

Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter at https://twitter.com/matthewbrownap

This Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016, photo shows Eric Burge of Livingston, Mont., looking over the Yellowstone River after prematurely ending a multi-day rafting trip because Montana wildlife officials closed a stretch of the river. The closure threatens to harm rafting companies, fishing guides and others from the outdoors industry. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)
Foes: South Dakota ballot measure circumvents right-to-work

PIERRE, S.D. (AP)  A coalition of business groups recently launched a campaign against a labor-backed ballot measure going before voters in November, arguing that the plan would allow unions to circumvent South Dakota's right-to-work law.

Supporters of Initiated Measure 23, which would give corporate or nonprofit organizations the right to charge fees for services provided, said the ballot measure corrects unfairness in state law. Opponents say people shouldn't be forced to make payments to a union as a condition of a job.

"It's designed to force people who choose not to belong to unions to pay them fees anyway," said opponent David Owen, president of the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "We think that's an end-run around right-to-work, and we don't think that's right."

Current South Dakota law says that a person's right to work can't be curtailed because of membership or non-membership in a labor union. It also prohibits requiring the payment of fees in lieu of union membership as a condition of employment.

Secretary of State Shantel Krebs determined that supporters turned in 14,861 valid signatures, which exceeded the 13,871-signature requirement to get on the ballot.

The proposed measure would allow a labor union that has a collective bargaining agreement with an employer to charge fees to non-union members covered under the contract for services such as representation during the grievance process, said Mark Anderson, president and financial secretary of the South Dakota State Federation of Labor.

The ballot measure reads: "Notwithstanding any other provisions of law, an organization, corporate or nonprofit, has the right to charge a fee for any service provided by the organization."

The measure doesn't refer specifically to unions because it's meant to apply to everyone who provides a service, said Marc Poulos, director of Americans for Fairness, a group based in Illinois that's supporting the initiative.

The proposal would improve fairness because it would simply require that non-members pay for services that benefit them, said supporter Jason George, special projects director at the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49, which is the main backer of the measure and has members in the Dakotas and Minnesota.

"You still don't have to be a member," George said. "You're just going to have to pay for what you get."

George said he isn't familiar with any such ballot measures being pursued in other states. If the plan is successful in South Dakota, "we'd definitely want to move elsewhere and do the same thing," Poulos said.

Twenty-five states have right-to-work laws that say workers cannot be compelled to become members of unions as a condition of employment. Among South Dakota's neighbors, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Iowa are right-to-work states while Montana and Minnesota are not, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Supporters of the South Dakota ballot initiative have raised about $250,000 from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49 and Americans for Fairness as of the latest campaign finance disclosure deadline. The opposition camp hopes to raise roughly $250,000 to fund mailers and a paid media presence including television, Owen said.

If approved by a simple majority in the November election, the measure would go into effect in 2017.

___
He said that one of the candidates is 'better

Former President Jimmy Carter said both major presidential candidates are 'quite unpopular.'

The 91-year-old Carter spoke on the site of a Habitat for Humanity construction project in Memphis on Monday and said in November he'll be voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Carter, considered a worldwide ambassador for Habitat for Humanity, said he doesn't like to advocate for particular issues because he works equally with Republicans, Democrats and people of many religious beliefs in his role with the home building charity.

But he did say that 'everybody knows that I'm a Democrat, and I'll be voting Democratic.'

Scroll down for video

Former President Jimmy Carter said on Monday that both major presidential candidates are 'quite unpopular,' but he plans to vote for Hillary Clinton in November

Speaking on the site of a home he is helping to build for Habitat for Humanity, Carter said that 'one of the candidates is better qualified than the other'

Carter, 91, said: 'Everybody knows that I'm a Democrat, and I'll be voting Democratic'

Clinton, a former first lady and Secretary of State, is running against Republican billionaire businessman Donald Trump.

Polls have shown that Clinton is unpopular with voters, Trump even more so.

'It's been an exciting and unprecedented kind of campaign this year, and unfortunately, the way it's turned out, both choices in the major parties are quite unpopular,' Carter said.

'But I don't have any doubt that one of the candidates is better qualified than the other.'

Carter, who has battled cancer in the past year, is being joined by about 1,500 volunteers during a weeklong effort to build 19 homes in a low-income neighborhood near the city's downtown.

The former president wore blue jeans, a hard hat, a tool belt and a red bandanna around his neck as he hammered nails into the wooden frame of a house under construction.

Carter (above) also said: 'It's been an exciting and unprecedented kind of campaign this year'

His wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter (above), joined him at the site to help build a home for Habitat for Humanity

Moving amid the skeleton framing of the house, Carter appeared energetic and sure-footed as he talked with workers and used a level to make sure wooden beams were installed correctly.

Carter revealed in August 2015 that he had been diagnosed with melanoma that spread to his brain.

He said in March that he no longer needs cancer treatment. He addressed his health during a news conference, seated beside his wife, Rosalynn.

'Now I feel pretty certain about my cure and the cancer being in remission, but the doctors are still keeping an eye on me,' he said.

But during the peak of his fight with the illness, he had his doubts.

'A year ago, I didn't think I was going to live but two or three weeks because they had already removed part of my liver because I had cancer there,' Carter said.

'After that, when they did an MRI, they found four cancer places in my brain so I thought I just had a few weeks to live.'

By last November, Carter was responding to treatment and was able to travel to Memphis for another Habitat for Humanity project.

Carter said Monday that he thought he had just a few weeks to live during his battle with cancer a year ago. He is pictured above with his wife, Rosalyn

Carter revealed in August 2015 that he had been diagnosed with melanoma that spread to his brain. He said in March that he no longer needs cancer treatment. He is pictured above with his wife, Rosalyn

'By the time I got to here, I was putting on a kind of a false optimistic face,' Carter said.

Before a question and answer session during the news conference, Carter drew laughs when he mentioned Trump.

'We'll have questions later. Anybody who asks about Donald Trump will be disqualified from the occasion and will have to leave,' Carter said.

'So, I just want to give that one premise for the question and answer period. We want to stick to Habitat, if you don't mind.'

Jonathan Reckford, CEO of the Atlanta-based charity, said Carter and his wife have donated their time to help build and improve 3,944 homes in 14 countries.
Mark Hamill supports terminally ill 'Star Wars' fan

LOS ANGELES (AP)  "Star Wars" actor Mark Hamill is among those lending his support to a terminally ill fan who wants to see "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" before he dies.

Hamill backed a social media campaign launched last week by hospice worker Amy Duncan asking for the "Star Wars" spin-off to be screened for illustrator Neil Hanvey from Oldham, England.

Duncan says the 36-year-old cancer patient was informed by doctors in April that he has six to eight months to live. "Rogue One" is set for release Dec. 16.

FILE - In this Dec. 14, 2015 file photo, Mark Hamill arrives at the world premiere of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in Los Angeles. Hamill is lending his support to a terminally ill fan who wants to see "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" before he dies. Illustrator Neil Hanvey from Oldham, England, was informed by doctors in April that he has six to eight months to live. "Rogue One" is set for release Dec. 16. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

The film stars Felicity Jones and is set between the third and fourth "Star Wars" installments.
California firefighters stretched thin as blazes sweep state

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  California's state fire department is stretched thin just as the bone-dry state enters the peak of its wildfire season, with vacancy rates exceeding 15 percent for some firefighters and supervisors. The vacancy rate is more than 10 percent for some fire engine drivers, according to statistics provided to The Associated Press.

A five-year drought and changing weather patterns have transformed what once was a largely summertime job into an intense year-round firefight, said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Janet Upton.

"It's not the old days where we were a seasonal department with a season that lasted a few months," she said. "It's an increasingly challenging job, no thanks to Mother Nature and climate change."

Laura Sutton, center, the wife of California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighter Nick Sutton, joins others at a rally calling for shorter hours and higher wages to retain firefighters, at the Capitol, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. Statistics provided to The Associated Press show vacancy rates exceeding 15 percent in some CaliFire positions. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

The shortage means that the state firefighting department is forced during weather conditions fanning large blazes to keep firefighters on duty for long hours as they do backbreaking, dangerous work trying to put out massive wildfires that have become bigger and more frequent in recent years.

Nearly 25 percent of departing employees over the last two years have told officials they quit for better-paying jobs with other firefighting agencies, according to the statistics provided to the AP by CalFire.

The union that represents the state firefighters who fight fires outside urban and suburban areas blamed low pay, as more than 100 members, families and representatives of other unions protested in Sacramento on Monday.

Union and department officials said California has enough state firefighters to keep the public safe  at the expense of firefighting men and women who frequently work for weeks without days off without seeing their families.

"We're short-staffed, we're stretched thin, we're in these epidemic fire conditions," said Patrick Walker, 40, a CalFire captain in San Diego County.

He worked 47 straight days fighting one large fire last year and said he worked three weeks with no break this year, most of it fighting a Monterey County fire that has burned more than 134 square miles.

"With the pay inequities, the shifts we work and the turnover, we're running less and less people," Walker said. "There may be a concern where the public is at risk due to the long hours."

Union members are seeking a mid-contract pay raise that would give compensation above the $60,000 a typical firefighter is paid each year in salary and overtime. Fire captains typically make more than $85,000 and the salaries of battalion chiefs exceed $98,000.

A 2014 study by the state's human resources department found state firefighters receive one-third less in pay and benefits, on average, than their counterparts at fire departments for 18 California cities and two counties surveyed.

The state firefighting department is responsible for preventing and fighting wildfires over terrain that covers about a third of California  more than 48,000 square miles spanning the Sierra Nevada foothills and the coastal mountain ranges from Santa Barbara to the Oregon border.

The federal government primarily handles firefighting at higher elevations, while local agencies are responsible for urban and suburban firefighting.

The department's survey of departing employees supports the union's complaint that there is a sizable exodus for better-paying jobs, although state officials could not immediately say if vacancy or departure rates were higher than in previous years.

State firefighter union president Mike Lopez said firefighters received a 4 percent increase last year after the minimum wage paid to entry-level firefighters rose to $10 an hour.

But the union wants the state to shorten the standard 72-hour work week that includes overtime and increase pay to bring state firefighters closer to the 56-hour standard workweek for urban firefighters.

Negotiations for higher state firefighter pay broke down about four months ago after Gov. Jerry Brown's administration made a last offer that the union rejected as unacceptable. Lopez declined to reveal the offer, which he said was not disclosed to the union's membership.

Administration spokesman Brian Ferguson called firefighters "everyday heroes," but added in a statement that "the state must balance the needs of many different bargaining units and the overall state budget."

State firefighters' duties have changed as they try to protect an increasing number of rural homes built in the midst of tinder-dry brush and trees, a problem that continues to grow, said University of California, Riverside, professor Richard Minnich, who studies fire ecology.

"Maybe people are leaving because it's too damn dangerous," he said. "In urban firefighting, not only are the hours more reasonable but they're also looking mostly at single structure events."

Jason Morris, right, a fire captain of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, joined by his wife, Rosie, left, and daughters Ashlynn, 8, left, and Brianna, attends a rally calling for shorter hours and higher wages to retain firefighters, at the Capitol, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. Statistics provided to The Associated Press show vacancy rates exceeding 15 percent in some CaliFire positions. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Nick Reeder, a firefighter for the California Forestry and Fire Protection, and his mother, Jeanine, left, joined other firefighters at a rally calling for shorter hours and higher wages to retain firefighters, at the Capitol, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. Statistics provided to The Associated Press show vacancy rates exceeding 15 percent in some CaliFire positions. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Ryan Mitchell, a fire captain with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, from San Diego, joined by his wife, Denelle, son Aiden, 3 months and dog, Oso, joins other firefighters and supporters at a rally calling for shorter hours and higher wages to retain firefighters, at the Capitol, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. Statistics provided to the Associated Press show vacancy rates exceeding 15 percent in some CaliFire positions. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Nikolai Goosev, 2, the son of California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection firefighter Matthew Goosev shows his support for his father and other firefighters at a rally Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, in Sacramento, Calif. Firefighters and their families rallied to call for shorter hours and higher wages to retain firefighters, as statistics provided to The Associated Press show vacancy rates exceeding 15 percent in some CaliFire positions. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Utility crews work to restore power along Highway 138, near Wrightwood, Calif., on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, following the Blue Cut Fire. (Will Lester/The Sun via AP)

Yo Chu Pak stands in what was the living room of his burned home off Highway 138, near Wrightwood, Calif., on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, for the first time since the Blue Cut Fire swept through the area. Pak, who has lived on the property for 13 years with his family, lost his most important item, his U.S. Citizenship certificate, to the Blue Cut Fire. They had no insurance. (Will Lester/The Sun via AP)

Yo Chu Pak stands in what was the living room of his burned home off Highway 138, near Wrightwood, , Calif., on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, for the first time since the Blue Cut Fire swept through the area. Pak, who has lived on the property for 13 years with his family, lost his most important item, his U.S. citizenship certificate. They had no insurance. (Will Lester/The Sun via AP)
Catholic monk charged with historical sex offences on return from Kosovo

A Catholic monk has been charged with a string of historical sex offences against teenage boys after he returned to Britain from Kosovo following a five-year police hunt.

Father Laurence Soper is accused of assaulting five boys, one under 14 at the time, over a period from 1972 to 1986.

The nine charges include offences of buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault.

The Metropolitan Police's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command had appealed for help in tracing Father Laurence Soper

The 72-year-old was arrested as he arrived at Luton Airport on Sunday by officers from Scotland Yard's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command.

Soper, who was detained under a European Arrest Warrant in Kosovo in May, will appear at Ealing Magistrates' Court on Monday.

Four of the charges, including buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault, relate to a single alleged victim and date from February 17, 1972 to February 18, 1976.

The boy was aged under 14 when Soper carried out an act of gross indecency against him, it is alleged.

Two charges of indecent assault relate to a second boy aged under 16 alleged to have occurred between 22 August 1979 and 23 August 1984.

Soper faces charges of indecent assault against two further boys under 16, alleged to have taken place between 4 December 1979 and 23 December 1984, and 10 November 1979 and 11 November 1984.
Woman 'imprisoned by father in Saudi Arabia' yet to return to UK

A 21-year-old woman who found herself at the centre of a High Court battle after complaining that she had been imprisoned by her father in Saudi Arabia has yet to return to Britain - despite a landmark ruling by a judge, a lawyer says.

Mr Justice Holman ordered Saudi academic Mohammed Al-Jeffery to return Amina Al-Jeffery to Britain on August 3 after analysing the case at a public hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

The judge said Mr Al-Jeffery had to "permit and facilitate" Miss Al-Jeffery's return to England or Wales by 4pm on September 11.

Amina Al-Jeffery is yet to return to the UK despite a court order

Solicitor Anne-Marie Hutchinson, who represents Miss Al-Jeffery and is a partner at London law firm Dawson Cornwell, said on Monday that her client had yet to return.

Miss Al-Jeffery - who grew up in Swansea and has dual British and Saudi Arabian nationality - complained her father locked her up in his flat in Jeddah because she had ''kissed a guy''.

She had described herself as being ''locked in a cage''.

Her father disputed her allegations and said he was trying to protect her.

Mr Justice Holman concluded that Miss Al-Jeffery's freedom of movement had been severely constrained.

He said she could be described as ''caged'' - although she was not literally ''in a cage''.

The judge said she was a British citizen abroad who was in peril and who needed protection.

He concluded he had the power to make protective orders and said doing nothing would be a ''dereliction''.
Speedo pulls out of sponsorship deal with Ryan Lochte

Ryan Lochte has lost his sponsorship deal with Speedo after his Olympic controversy.

The United States swimmer won his 12th Olympic medal during the Rio Games, but the achievement was overshadowed by a fabricated claim of an armed robbery after the 32-year-old was involved in an altercation at a petrol station, along with team-mates Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and James Feigen.

Bentz and Conger were removed from a plane on Rio's runway as they attempted to fly home while Feigen was reported to have made a charitable donation of more than 8,000 to have charges of criminal damage and falsely reporting a crime dropped, and to get his passport back.

Speedo will no longer sponsor Ryan Lochte

All four are subject to an International Olympic Commission investigation into their conduct and Lochte has now been hit financially as well.

A statement from his former sponsor read: "Speedo USA today announces the decision to end its sponsorship of Ryan Lochte.

"As part of this decision, Speedo USA will donate a 50,000 US dollars portion of Lochte's fee to Save The Children, a global charity partner of Speedo USA's parent company, for children in Brazil.

"While we have enjoyed a winning relationship with Ryan for over a decade and he has been an important member of the Speedo team, we cannot condone behaviour that is counter to the values this brand has long stood for.

"We appreciate his many achievements and hope he moves forward and learns from this experience."

Lochte was part of the USA's gold medal-winning 4x200 metres freestyle relay team for the fourth Olympics in succession, adding to further golds in the 400m individual medley at London 2012 and the 200m backstroke at Beijing 2008.
Government 'in disarray' over arms sales to Saudi Arabia - Oxfam

Oxfam will today accuse ministers of being in "denial and disarray" over the selling of arms to Saudi Arabia for potential use in Yemen's bloody civil war.

Fighting in the country pits the Yemeni government, backed by Saudi Arabia, against Shiite Yemeni rebels.

The UK Government has faced repeated calls to impose a ban on the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia amid concerns that international humanitarian law (IHL) could be being broken in the conflict.

Penny Lawrence, deputy chief executive of Oxfam GB, said the UK Government 'is in denial and disarray over its arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition bombing campaign in Yemen' (Oxfam/PA)

Its apparent reluctance to do so has prompted Oxfam to claim the Government has switched from being an "enthusiastic backer" of the Arms Trade Treaty to "one of the most significant violators".

The treaty, of which the UK is a signatory, seeks to regulate the international weapons trade.

The charity will use the second conference of states party to the treaty in Geneva on Tuesday to attack the Government's stance.

Penny Lawrence, deputy chief executive of Oxfam GB, will say: "UK arms and military support are fuelling a brutal war in Yemen, harming the very people the Arms Trade Treaty is designed to protect.

"Schools, hospitals and homes have been bombed in contravention of the rules of war.

"The UK government is in denial and disarray over its arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition bombing campaign in Yemen.

"It has misled its own parliament about its oversight of arms sales and its international credibility is in jeopardy as it commits to action on paper but does the opposite in reality.

"How can the Government insist that others abide by a treaty it helped set up if it flagrantly ignores it?"

Earlier this year the Government said it was confident that Saudi Arabia's intervention in the country did meet the terms of IHL.

However, it later corrected those statements and said assessments to verify such a claim had not been undertaken but insisted the original statements resulted from error and were not a deliberate attempt to mislead MPs.

Oxfam estimates that there are more than 21 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen - more people than any other country in the world.

The UN has estimated that more than 6,000 people have lost their lives in the war while millions have had to leave their homes.

Concerns have been expressed about the way in which the conflict is being fought on both sides, but the UN has estimated that the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as the other forces combined.

A Government spokeswoman said: "The UK Government takes its arms export responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world.

"The Government is satisfied that extant licences for Saudi Arabia are compliant with the UK's export licensing criteria.

"The key test for our continued arms exports to Saudi Arabia in relation to international humanitarian law (IHL) is whether there is a clear risk that those weapons might be used in a serious violation of IHL. The situation is kept under careful and continual review."

Colonel Bob Stewart, a Tory MP and member of the Defence Committee, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that mistakes may have been made by the Saudis in the past but operations have improved.

He said: "All I can say is what I have seen with my own eyes. I have been in Riyadh, three or four months ago, and I went to the air operations centre.

"I reckon they have made some mistakes and have breached in the past but I can tell you this: Having been to the air operations centre in Riyadh and talked to the pilots and the commanders and talked to the British personnel that are actually in that operations centre, things have been really tightened up."

He added: "The Saudis are extremely conscious that they shouldn't breach such treaties and they are doing their level best to sort it out."

But Sally Copley, director of policy and campaigns for Oxfam, told the same programme that there is "so much evidence" of IHL being breached that "I don't know where to start".
Gaza militant rocket hits Israel, Israel responds with air strikes, shells

JERUSALEM, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip launched a rocket that landed in the Israeli border town of Sderot on Sunday and Israeli aircraft and tanks responded by shelling the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the army and police said.

The rocket caused no injuries or damage in Sderot, where it landed in a residential area, police said.

An Israeli shell during an initial retaliation damaged a Beit Hanoun water tower and there were no casualties, local residents said.

Multiple air strikes later in the evening hit at least 30 different sites in the Gaza Strip belonging to Hamas, the smaller Islamic Jihad and other militant groups and two people were lightly hurt, Gaza health officials said.

A music festival in Sderot attended by hundreds of Israelis was temporarily disrupted as people sought shelter, television footage showed.

The Israeli military said aircraft had attacked targets in the northern Gaza Strip and added that since the beginning of the year, 14 Gaza rockets had hit Israel.

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said in a statement that the military "remains committed to the stability of the region and operated in order to bring quiet to the people of southern Israel."

"When terrorists in Hamas' Gaza Strip, driven by a radical agenda based on hatred, attack people in the middle of the summer vacation, their intentions are clear - to inflict pain, cause fear and to terrorize," Lerner said.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: "We hold (Israel) responsible for the escalation in the Gaza Strip and we stress that its aggression will not succeed in breaking the will of our people and dictate terms to the resistance."

Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and has observed a de-facto ceasefire with Israel since a 2014 war but some small armed cells of Jihadist Salafis have defied the agreement and have continued to occasionally launch rockets at Israel.

Israel has held Hamas responsible for all attacks originating in the coastal enclave.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.
Libyan forces say they capture mosque, prison from Islamic State in Sirte

TRIPOLI, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Libyan forces renewed their push to oust Islamic State from its former North African stronghold of Sirte on Sunday, saying they had seized the city's main mosque and a jail run by the militants' morality police.

The forces, mainly brigades from the city of Misrata, say they are close to capturing Sirte after taking most of the city in a three-month campaign and restricting militants to a shrinking residential area in the city centre. Since Aug. 1, they have been supported by U.S. air strikes.

At least nine brigade fighters were killed and 85 wounded in Sunday's fighting, Misrata hospital spokesman Akram Gliwan said.

Fighters backed by heavy artillery and tanks advanced early in the day in Bufaraa neighbourhood, seizing a building used by Islamic State's morality police as a prison, said Rida Issa, a spokesman.

Later, forces took Ribat mosque, Sirte's biggest, where senior militants, including leading Islamic State ideologue Turki Ben Ali, had preached, the forces' media office said.

The media office said "dozens" of bodies of Islamic State fighters were found in newly captured areas, although it did not give a specific number and it was not clear when the militants were killed.

As of Thursday, the United States had carried out 65 air strikes over Sirte, according to U.S. Africa Command, most recently against a supply truck, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device and three enemy fighting positions.

The strikes have accelerated the progress of Libyan forces, whose advance had been slowed by suicide bombings, snipers and mines.

Islamic State took control of Sirte last year, setting up a proto-state modelled on its practices in Iraq and Syria and enforcing its ultra-hardline rule on residents.

Losing the city would be a major blow for the group, although militants who escaped or are based elsewhere in Libya are expected to keep trying to exploit the country's political turmoil and security vacuum.
Chileans step up pension reform demands with nationwide protests

SANTIAGO, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Chileans took to the streets throughout the country on Sunday, seeking to increase pressure on the government to throw out Chile's private pension system in favor of one that would provide better retirement benefits.

Under the current system, which was started in the 1980s during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, six private pension funds, known as AFPs, manage some $160 billion in assets.

Opponents of Chile's private pension system say it forces workers to give their earnings to for-profit funds that do not ensure a dignified old age for all Chileans.

"We expect the president and her government to open a dialogue and listen to the citizens of the country, and not just the owners of the AFPs," said Luis Mesina, spokesman for a group called No More AFPs, which organized the march.

Organizers of the protest said 350,000 participated in the capital, Santiago, alone. Local police put the number at 80,000.

Some marchers carried signs reading: "Chileans Ripped Off".

President Michelle Bachelet has offered a plan to hike the pension contribution rate by 5 percentage points. That would cost about $3.8 billion a year, with the state paying $1.5 billion, the government said earlier this month.

But the protesters said they wanted the current system dismantled. Any reforms must be passed by Congress, where there is broad support for boosting pensions.
South Korea's boxed-in Kospi sends investors looking abroad

By Dahee Kim

SEOUL, Aug 22 (Reuters) - South Korean shares have been emerging Asia's most becalmed for six years, trading in a narrow range as a sluggish economy and weak exports stifle profits and investment, sending local investors increasingly in search of returns elsewhere.

The lack of long-term movement has led Korean investors to nickname the benchmark Kospi index the "Boxpi", despite short-term volatility that is the highest in Asia.

Koreans' overseas stock purchases increased from $1.5 billion in 2011 to $7.5 billion 2015, up 370 percent, according to Korea Securities Depository data. They have bought $4.1 billion worth of shares so far in 2016.

"Companies, especially the ones that are leading exporters, need to improve their earnings to escape this box. For this to happen, the global economy has to show clear signs of recovery," said Yuanta Securities analyst Cho Byung-hyun.

Korean large and mid-cap companies had Asia's second-lowest return on equity (ROE) last year at 8.5 percent, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine, ahead only of Japan's 7.2 percent.

South Korean shares have long traded at discounts to peers elsewhere due to low dividends and investor concerns about corporate governance and opaque shareholding structures at the conglomerates that dominate Asia's fourth-largest economy.

According to Yuanta Securities, from 2010 to July 27, the KOSPI showed the least movement among emerging Asian markets, gaining just 43.5 percent from its lowest to highest. In the same period, Manila's PSE jumped as much as 190.5 percent and the Shanghai SE Composite Index 164.9 percent.

It also moved less than markets in Japan and Hong Kong, although among developed markets Singapore has been even more range-bound.

The same pattern occurs when the markets are compared by how much they moved within the middle 50 percent range, which leaves out extreme moves and shows Korean shares gained only 6.5 percent from the bottom to the top of that range, while stocks in the Philippines rose 62.9 percent and Thai equities gained 39.4 percent, according to Yuanta's data.

The short term is a different story.

The Kospi's standard deviation - how much the daily move fluctuates from the long-term average - is 1.8 times, according to Thomson Reuters data, the highest in Asia and more volatile even than India. India's CNX Nifty Options contracts is the world's most heavily traded, while Kospi 200 options are the world's fourth most popular, according to the FIA.

OPPOSING FLOWS

Flows of local and foreign investors that cancel each other out help keep the Kospi in a box.

Since late 2011, domestic investors have tended to take profits when the Kospi nears 2,000 points - a level where offshore investors seeking bargains start to buy, said Seo Sang-young, analyst at Kiwoom Securities.

"The Korean economy is quite stable and its currency volatility is much lower than in other emerging countries in Asia, making it less risky for offshore investors," he said.

"Local investors, however, have expectations that the Kospi will not strengthen beyond the 2,000 level due to sluggish exports, and dump stocks," he said.

South Korean stocks have been range-bound for so long that shortly before she was elected president in late 2012, Park Geun-hye pledged to boost the Kospi over the 3,000 mark during her five-year term.

The benchmark, which traded at a 200-day moving average of 1,924.41 at the time of Park's promise, closed at 2056.24 on Friday, reflecting a global rally in stocks and a meteoric 32 percent gain this year by index heavyweight Samsung Electronics .

"We're seeing more investors take their money overseas and although exchange rates are a factor that can affect this, the trend is expected to grow stronger," said Seo.
Romania - Factors to watch on August 22

Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Monday.

DEBT TENDER

Romania aims to sell 500 million lei ($126.88 million) worth of February 2020 treasury bonds on Monday, series RO1620DBN017.

CEE MARKETS

Poland's zloty and stocks slid on Friday as expectations of monetary easing by the central bank resurged, while other assets in Central Europe were mixed.

RECORD CROP

Romania reaped a bumper wheat crop of 8.4 million tonnes this year, 7 percent up from 2015 at a 10-year record high yield, Agriculture Minister Achim Irimescu said on Sunday.

MOODY'S

Moody's update on sovereign calendar issuers

MAIZE CROP

Dry summer weather in the EU's biggest maize producers, France and Romania, has curbed yield prospects for the harvest, but better conditions elsewhere could allow EU production to exceed last year's drought-affected volume.

For the long-term Romanian diary, click on

For emerging markets economic events, click on

For an index of all diaries, click on
China stocks edge down on profit-taking, Hong Kong eases

BEIJING, Aug 22 (Reuters) - China stocks were dragged by infrastructure and transportation shares as some investors took profit on Monday, but the property market stayed buoyant, while Hong Kong shares eased slightly.

The CSI300 index, which tracks the largest listed companies trading in Shanghai and Shenzhen, fell 0.6 percent, to 3,343.61 points at the end of the morning session, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.6 percent, to 3,088.37 points.

Analysts said they expected further capital inflows to boost sentiment over the long run, supported by broader access to China's stock markets.

Zhang Qi, senior analyst at Haitong Securities in Shanghai, said trading was muted on Monday but he expects the upcoming launch of the Shenzhen-Hong Kong stock connect to attract some foreign capital into companies listed in Shenzhen.

"The market is quite stable and bland today despite some slight falls in the indexes and trading volumes. We have seen such a trend over the past few days and (I expect to see the trend) extend in the near term," Zhang said, adding that blue-chip stocks were also trading narrowly.

China CSI300 stock index futures for September fell 0.7 percent, to 3,311.2, 32.41 points below the current value of the underlying index.

Infrastructure and transportation sectors were among the top losers as of midday with sub-indexes falling 0.89 percent and 0.85 percent, respectively. The two sectors rose last week as state media reported that investment by Chinese firms into "One Belt, One Road" countries along the new Silk Road trade route has already reached $51.1 billion.

The real estate sector outperformed the market, with the subindex rising 0.52 percent, led by China Vanke Co . The index has risen more than 22 percent so far this month.

China Vanke, the country's biggest home builder, said on Sunday its first-half profit rose 10 percent, even though business has been bit a high-profile battle for control of the firm.

By the lunch break, Vanke's Shenzhen-listed shares gained 1.34 percent. Its Hong Kong-listed shares rose 0.74 percent, while it gained more than 2 percent at one point during morning trade.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index dropped 0.3 percent, to 22,860.96 points. The Hong Kong China Enterprises Index lost 0.8 percent, to 9,531.94.

Total volume of A shares traded in Shanghai was 10.60 billion shares, while Shenzhen volume was 12.50 billion shares.
U.S., South Korea begin joint drills amid tension after defection

By Ju-min Park

SEOUL, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The United States and South Korea kicked off annual military exercises on Monday, prompting warnings of retaliation from the North, as already-heightened tension on the peninsula has been inflamed by the defection of a Pyongyang diplomat.

North Korea has become further isolated after a January nuclear test, its fourth, and the launch of a long-range rocket in February brought tightened U.N. Security Council sanctions that Pyongyang defied with several ballistic missile launches.

About 25,000 U.S. troops are joining in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, which runs until Sept 2. The U.S.-led U.N. Command Military Armistice Commission said it notified the North Korean army the exercises were "non-provocative" in nature.

The North calls the exercises preparations for invasion, and early on Monday threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike. North Korea frequently makes such threats.

"From this moment, the first-strike combined units of the Korean People's Army keep themselves fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved in Ulji Freedom Guardian," a KPA spokesman said in a statement carried by the North's state-run KCNA news agency.

"The nuclear warmongers should bear in mind that if they show the slightest sign of aggression, it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike."

Last week, South Korea announced that Thae Yong Ho, the North's deputy ambassador in London, had defected and arrived in the South with his family, in an embarrassing blow to the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

High-level defections pointed to cracks in the Kim regime, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Monday.

"Recently even North Korea's elite group is collapsing, followed by key figures defecting to foreign countries, showing a sign of serious cracks, with chances of shaking the regime further," she told a National Security Council meeting.

Thae's defection followed the flight to Seoul this year of 12 waitresses from a North Korean restaurant in China.

On Monday, North Korea's Red Cross sent a letter to its South Korean counterpart asking for the women to be sent back, saying they had been kidnapped by the South, according to KCNA. South Korea denies they were kidnapped.
Croatia's politicians promise tax cuts, woo upstarts before vote

By Igor Ilic

ZAGREB, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Croatia's two biggest parties are promising tax cuts and toning down talk of tough reforms as well as building alliances with smaller, mostly upstart parties to try to convince voters they can produce a stable government in September's snap election.

Last November's election produced a fragile government embroiled in disputes over sensitive political appointments, reforms that would have meant massive public sector job cuts and a conflict of interest case. It collapsed after five months.

While opinion polls for the Sept. 11 vote point to a slight advantage for the SDP social democrats over the HDZ conservatives - who led the last government with the reformist Most party - neither is seen winning an outright majority.

"The parties know each other better now, so I expect the post-election coalition talks to be quicker than last year," the Economist Intelligence Unit's Maximilan Lambertson said, noting that Most and other newcomers are running for the second time.

"However, political instability may still persist amid possible disputes within a government on various reforms, like public administration or privatisation issues."

Opinion polls forecast that Most, or "Bridge", will come third again in the election, giving HDZ - with new leader, EU lawmaker Andrej Plenkovic - an advantage.

"I feel no responsibility for earlier difficulties in relations between Most and HDZ. I'm entirely open to cooperate, on a rational basis," Plenkovic has told national weekly Globus.

Most says it wants to put an end to two decades of control of Croatia's politics by the two biggest parties, which it accuses of clientelism and corrupt practices.

The SDP, which has formed a pre-election coalition with three other smaller parties, is also eyeing a partnership with the left-leaning regional IDS party from the western Istrian peninsula and national minorities groupings.

"We have a serious programme and experienced people ... we offer a safe course," SDP leader and former prime minister Zoran Milanovic told a rally this week.

The recent instability, combined with the major parties' promises to lower the tax burden for consumers and businesses, is raising eyebrows among business leaders and economists.

"I see two problems here. The parties largely offer partial economic ideas without offering a big, consistent picture. Also, the state is still a dominant factor in the economy and there is little talk about how to change it, about privatisation issues for example," independent economist Damir Novotny said.

"What basically prevails are talks about welfare transfers towards citizens."

Croatia's unemployment rate is close to 14 percent and growth at about 2 percent is not enough to create jobs, throwing into high relief the fact that SDP and HDZ are short on detail on issues such as how to overhaul the costly health and pension sectors, cut red tape and improve the glacial legal system.
Poland - Factors to Watch Aug 22.

Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Monday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 2 hours):

2017 BUDGET DRAFT

Poland has increased the upper limit of its central budget deficit to nearly 60 billion zlotys in the draft budget for 2017, but still sees the fiscal gap staying just below the EU ceiling of 3 percent of annual output, a source said.

KAZAKHSTAN PRESIDENT VISIT

Deals worth about 1 billion dollars will be signed during Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev visit to Poland on Monday and Tuesday, Kazakhstan ambassador to Poland told Polish state news agency.

DEBT FINANCING

Poland may start pre-financing next year's borrowing needs in the autumn by offering to buy back bonds maturing in 2017 at a September switch tender, the finance ministry told Dziennik Gazeta Prawna newspaper.

****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.****
Thailand bomb attacks the work of 'at least' 20 people - police

BANGKOK, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Thai police on Monday said at least 20 people were involved in carrying out a wave of deadly bombings in the country's south earlier this month.

National police chief Jakthip Chaijinda said that police have not ruled out any motive for the attacks and believe that many of those involved came from Thailand's Muslim-majority southern provinces.

"We know where they came from, where they went. We believe there are at least 20 people involved in this network," Jakthip told reporters, without giving further details.

No group has claimed responsibility for the Aug. 11 and Aug. 12 attacks which took place in seven provinces and targeted high profile beach towns, killing four people and injuring dozens.

The bombings came days after Thais voted to accept a military-backed constitution in a nation-wide referendum.

Police and the government ruled out any link to foreign militants within hours of the attacks and insisted the perpetrators were home-grown.

Jakthip said that he could not confirm whether the bombings were an extension of an insurgency in the southern provinces that border Malaysia, where Malay-Muslim insurgents are fighting a bloody war that has claimed more than 6,500 lives since 2004.

"We are unwilling to say what their motive is and whether it is related to the referendum, the insurgency or whether they were hired," Jakthip said.

Last week, Thai Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuwan said the bombings were "definitely not an extension" of the insurgency.

Security experts told Reuters that official denial of involvement by Malay-Muslim insurgents was unsurprising as admitting southern insurgents could be involved would have serious economic and security implications for Thailand.

A Thai military court issued an arrest warrant last week for a then unidentified suspect for attempting to bomb a beach on the tourist island of Phuket.

Police on Friday identified the man as Ahama Lengha from Narathiwat, one of the Muslim-majority provinces, but said he has not yet been taken into custody.
Anger in the Delta keeps oil majors quiet - and Nigeria's crude offline

By Libby George and Ulf Laessing

LONDON/LAGOS, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Oil companies and even Nigerian officials are losing faith in a deal anytime soon with militants who have slashed the nation's oil output, casting doubt on a production recovery in what is typically Africa's largest oil exporter.

In the six months since the first major attack on Nigeria's oil - a sophisticated bombing of the subsea Forcados pipeline - dozens of attacks have pushed outages to more than 700,000 barrels per day (bpd), the highest in seven years.

Talk in the country has shifted from ceasefire optimism, and oil companies' assurances that repairs were underway, to hedged comments from the government and radio silence from oil majors.

"People are giving up in the short term," one oil industry source told Reuters of a resumption in exports of key Nigerian grades such as Forcados or Qua Iboe, adding that you "can't get anything" out of the majors, including Shell, Chevron , ExxonMobil or ENI, about when the oil might come back.

Shell declined to comment, while the other companies did not immediately responded to a request for comment.

In June, Nigerian government officials said privately it had a ceasefire with militants. But pessimism crept in, with even Oil Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu telling journalists this week "we are talking but (it) is not an easy thing," and "we need a ceasefire" - a contrast to the belief that a ceasefire was underway.

The problems reflect deep-seated issues in the Niger Delta, which produces the bulk of oil but whose local communities complain of pollution, a lack of opportunities and what they say is an insufficient share of petro dollars. These problems are compounded by an economic crisis and a government battle with Boko Haram militants in the north.

"This is likely the beginning," said Elizabeth Donnelly, deputy head and research fellow of London think-tank Chatham House's Africa Programme said of the unrest, adding that "the resolution that will come will not come quickly."

The government this month resumed cash payments to militant groups that it stopped in February, just before the launch of the worst violence since the payments began under a 2009 amnesty. But attacks continued anyway.

A group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers claimed the bulk of them, announcing strikes on Twitter even before oil majors themselves knew their remote pipelines had been hit. Twitter shut the group's account, but sources said the Avengers have extensive knowledge of oil sites, and follow the media closely to track companies' actions.

"With the Avengers, you don't want to say 'we'll be back up next Wednesday', because then you'll get a bomb next Tuesday," one oil executive said. "They have to be careful."

But new groups, such as the self-styled "Revolution Alliance", which claimed an attack on a Shell-owned oil line, loom, while non-violent local protests have also exacted a toll.

Collings Edema, a local youth leader of the Itsekiri group that has blocked access to Chevron's Escravos tank farm for almost two weeks, said "the oil companies have not shown any sign that they are ready to improve our lives."

Experts warned that as long as people are unhappy, militants and their targets could evolve in unpredictable ways.

"This is also about frustrations of younger people coming up in the Niger Delta and needs not having been addressed," Donnelly said. "This isn't just about militancy, though the political and economic context feeds it."

Kachikwu told journalists this week that it was too early to say when Nigeria could increase output due to security concerns.

But the Avengers call the country a "failed state," while youth groups in the region remain deeply sceptical of the oil industry.
Number of drug-related killings in Philippines doubles to 1,800 - police

MANILA, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The number of drug-related killings since President Rodrigo Duterte took power in May and began his anti-narcotics war has doubled to about 1,800, police said on Monday.

Philippine National Police Chief Ronald Dela Rosa told a Senate committee investigating extrajudicial killings that 712 drug traffickers and users had been killed during police operations. Police were also investigating 1,067 drug-related killings outside police work, Dela Rosa said.
Pakistani forces kill six in new offensive near Afghan border

By Asad Hashim

ISLAMABAD, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Pakistani security forces have killed six people in a remote northwestern valley near the Afghan border in a new offensive against Islamist militants in the area, the military said.

All six of those killed in the offensive in the Khyber region were "terrorists", the military said in a statement late on Sunday. Reuters was unable to independently verify their identities as access to the area is restricted.

The army launched air and ground operations in the Rajgal valley, about 90 km (60 miles) west of the city of Peshawar, last week, the latest leg of an offensive against the Pakistani Taliban and its allies that began in 2014.

Pakistan has for years been battling militants who want to impose a strict version of Islamist law in Pakistan, while quietly backing others who are seen as furthering Pakistani objectives against old rival India and in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani offensive has squeezed some groups into small pockets of territory, while others have fled over the border into lawless areas of eastern Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, the militants are still capable of launching deadly attacks across Pakistan.

A bomb attack on a crowd in a hospital courtyard in the city of Quetta on Aug. 8 killed more than 70 people, the deadliest attack in Pakistan since 2014.

The military says it has killed at least 31 people in coordinated ground and air strikes in the Rajgal area since Aug. 16.

The attacks would "effectively check and guard against terrorists movement along high mountains and all-weather passes", the army said.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have accused each other repeatedly of not doing enough to stop the movement of militants across the border.

Pakistan has been battling the Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella organisation of hardline Islamist groups, since its inception in 2007.
Islamist militant on trial in Hague over destruction of Timbuktu shrines

AMSTERDAM, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The trial of an Islamist militant over the destruction of holy sites in Timbuktu during Mali's 2012 conflict began in the Hague on Monday, the first at the International Criminal Court to cite destroying cultural artifacts as a war crime.

Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi said at a hearing in March he intends to plead guilty and he faces a maximum sentence of 30 years.

Mahdi's rebel group is accused of destroying nine mausoleums and the door of a mosque. Most dated from Mali's 14th-century golden age as a trading hub and centre of Sufi Islam.
Turkey vows to cleanse Islamic State from border after wedding attack

By Orhan Coskun and Daren Butler

ANKARA/ISTANBUL, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Turkey vowed on Monday to "completely cleanse" Islamic State militants from its border region after a suicide bomber suspected of links to the group killed 54 people, including 22 children, at a Kurdish wedding.

Saturday's attack in the southeastern city of Gaziantep is the deadliest in Turkey this year. President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday it was carried out by a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14, adding that initial evidence pointed to Islamic State.

But speaking to reporters in Ankara on Monday Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said it was too early to verify the organisation responsible or whether the attack was carried out by a child.

A senior security official told Reuters the device used was the same type as those employed in the July 2015 suicide attack in the border town of Suruc and the October 2015 suicide bombing of a rally of pro-Kurdish activists in Ankara.

Both of those attacks were blamed on Islamic State. The group has targeted Kurdish gatherings in an apparent effort to further inflame ethnic tensions strained by a long Kurdish insurgency. The Ankara bombing was the deadliest of its kind in Turkey, killing more than 100 people.

"Daesh should be completely cleansed from our borders and we are ready to do what it takes for that," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference in Ankara, using an Arabic name for the group.

On Monday, Turkey's military launched howitzer attacks on Islamic State while artillery pounded Kurdish YPG militants in Syria, whom Ankara sees as an extension of its own Kurdish insurgency. An official said the strikes were designed to "open a corridor for moderate rebels".

A senior rebel official said Turkish-backed Syrian rebels were preparing to launch an attack to seize Jarablus from Islamic State, a move that would deny control to advancing Syrian Kurdish fighters.

The rebels, groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, are expected to attack Jarablus from inside Turkey in the next few days. Reuters TV footage showed around 10 Turkish tanks deployed at a village around 4 km (2.5 miles) from the border gate immediately across from Jarablus. It was not clear how long the tanks had been there.

Prime Minister Binali Yilidirm has said Turkey would take a more active role in Syria in the next six months to prevent the country from being divided along ethnic lines.

TURKEY TARGET

Cavusoglu said Turkey, a member of NATO and the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, had become the "number one target" for the militants because of its work to stop recruits travelling through Turkey across its over 800 km (500 mile) border into Syria to join the Sunni hardline group.

For Ankara, Islamic State is not the only threat across its frontier. Turkey is also concerned that attempts by Syrian Kurds to extend their control along the common border could add momentum to an insurgency by Kurds on its own territory.

Dogan news agency said the death toll in the Gaziantep bombing had risen on Monday to 54 after three more people died. Sixty-six were being treated in hospital, 14 in serious condition.

The attack comes with Turkey still shaken just a month after the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on U.S.-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen. Gulen denies the charge.

Turkish authorities have said a destroyed suicide vest was found at the scene of the bombing.

A second security official told Reuters that they were investigating the possibility militants could have placed the explosives on the child without his or her knowledge and detonated them remotely, or that a child with a learning disability was duped into carrying the device, a tactic seen elsewhere in the region.

"It could be that someone was loaded with explosives without even being aware of it and it may have been detonated remotely," the official said, adding a search was underway for suspected militants who may have played a reconnaissance role.

In the latest southeast violence, two Turkish security force members and five PKK militants were killed in clashes and attacks in three areas of eastern Turkey over the last 24 hours, officials said.

Some in Turkey, particularly in the Kurdish southeast, feel the government has not done enough to protect its citizens from Islamic State.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said the wedding party was for one of its members. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt.
Singapore's PM Lee to take medical leave until Aug 29

SINGAPORE, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will be on medical leave until Aug. 29 on the advice of his doctors, his office said on Monday.

Lee took ill while delivering a National Day rally speech on Sunday but returned to the stage after a break of about an hour.

Lee's illness was brought on by a temporary drop in blood pressure due to prolonged standing, exhaustion and dehydration, the prime minister's office said in a statement.

Doctors had confirmed there were no cardiac abnormalities and no stroke, the office said.

Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean will cover the duties of the prime minister in his absence.
Philippines and communist rebels start peace talks after truce

OSLO, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The Philippine government and Maoist-led guerrillas opened peace talks in Oslo on Monday to try and end nearly five decades of conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people.

Both sides, who agreed a truce over the weekend, sat facing each other in the Holmenkollen Park Hotel's "Nobel" room, named after the Nobel Peace Prize, with photographs of former winners including the Dalai Lama on the walls.

"This is a conflict that has been lasting for far too long," Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende told the meeting, saying there now seemed to be a "historic momentum" building to end the conflict.

"I'm really crossing my fingers," for progress, he told the parties, each represented by six negotiators.

Talks brokered by Norway between the government and the Maoist-led rebels' National Democratic Front stalled in 2012 over the government's refusal to free communist leaders who had been in jail for decades.

Both sides declared a truce at the weekend to pave the way for the week-long talks in Oslo. Last week, Manila also freed 17 captured communist guerrilla leaders in the Philippines so they could attend the talks in Norway.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had previously ended a unilateral truce with the communist New People's Army late last month as rebels did not respond to a deadline to reciprocate the government's truce.
Portugal's bond yields recede from 3-wk high as rating fears ebb

By John Geddie

LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Portugal's 10-year bond yield edged back from a three-week high on Monday after the country passed a ratings test that soothed concerns it could be on the brink of a potentially catastrophic downgrade.

The move marked a modest recovery from last week's biggest jump in bond yields seen in nearly four months after DBRS, the agency that holds the only investment grade rank Lisbon needs to qualify for the ECB's bond-buying scheme, hinted that it could be on the brink of a downgrade.

Those comments had thrust the focus on a routine review by another agency Fitch on Friday, which already rates Portugal in junk territory, as investors waited to see if they saw the same pressures building on Portugal's rating as DBRS had flagged.

In the end, Fitch affirmed its BB+ ranking with a stable outlook, although their comments that Lisbon's economic growth continued to disappoint kept some analysts cautious.

"Despite the rating affirmation by Fitch on Friday we affirm our cautious stance in Portuguese government bonds," Commerzbank strategist David Schnautz said.

Lisbon's benchmark 10-year yield fell 5 basis points, edging back below 3 percent and recovering from a three-week high of 3.08 percent hit on Friday. Yields had hit a five-month low of 2.69 percent at the start of the week.

That marked the biggest weekly jump in yields seen since early May, surpassing a surge seen in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the European Union in June which dealt a fresh blow on the outlook for global growth.

Portugal's bonds outperformed others in the euro zone on Monday, with benchmark German equivalents edging down 1 bps to minus 0.06 percent, according to Tradeweb.

Strategists said mounting expectations that the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve may signal tighter monetary policy in a speech on Friday should prevent yields from falling further.

U.S. 10-year yields hit a two-week high of 1.60 percent earlier on Monday, after Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer gave a generally upbeat assessment of the U.S. economy's current strength, saying the job market was close to full strength and still improving.

His comments chimed with those of New York Fed President William Dudley last week, raising the prospect of a near-term hike even though minutes of the Fed's last meeting showed the rate-setting committee spilt on the matter.
Japan, China, S.Korea foreign ministers to meet this week

TOKYO/SEOUL, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Foreign ministers from Japan, China and South Korea will meet in Tokyo for two days this week to discuss cooperation, the countries said on Monday, after tension among them raised doubt about prospects for talks.

Relations between the three big Asian economies are often difficult with the legacy of Japan's wartime aggression affecting ties between it and China and South Korea, territorial disputes hurting links between Japan and China, and Japan and South Korea, and China suspicious of the others' U.S. ties.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will hold a dinner for his Chinese and South Korean counterparts, Wang Yi and Yun Byung-se, on Tuesday, with an official trilateral meeting set for Wednesday, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said.

It will be the first visit to Japan by a Chinese foreign minister since the Japanese government took over three of the tiny islands at the centre of a dispute with China, from private Japanese owners in September 2012.

The nationalisation of the islands, called the Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, infuriated China.

Last month, a senior Japanese official said Japan was considering hosting the annual trilateral meeting in August, but a flare-up in Sino-Japanese tension over the territorial dispute stoked worry the talks might not take place.

Ties between China and Japan became strained after numerous Chinese coastguard and other government ships sailed near the disputed islets in the East China Sea.

Besides the row over the islands, ties between Japan and China have also been strained by the South China Sea dispute, with Japan urging China to adhere to a ruling by an international court that invalidated China's territorial claims there. China warned Japan not to interfere.

South Korea and Japan have a territorial dispute over small islands about half way between their mainlands.

The meeting comes amid escalating tension between South Korea and China over a decision by Seoul and Washington to deploy an advanced anti-missile defence, which the allies say is meant to counter growing threats from North Korea.

China has sharply criticised the decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system saying it would destabilise the region's security balance.

Nevertheless, the meeting will give the ministers the opportunity to discuss North Korea's nuclear and missile developments, which all three countries disapprove of, and to prepare for a trilateral summit that Japan is set to host this year.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the talks could not be considered a bilateral visit for Wang, as it was a routine trilateral meeting under an existing dialogue mechanism.

"The cooperation between the three countries has an important impact upon regional and global peace and stability and the development of prosperity," Lu told a daily news briefing.
Russia says future use of Iran air base depends on Syria circumstances

By Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

DUBAI, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The Russian military said on Monday its aircraft operating from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes in Syria had completed their tasks, but left open the possibility of using the Hamadan base again if circumstances warranted.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said Russia had stopped using the base for strikes in Syria, bringing an abrupt halt to an unprecedented deployment that was criticised both by the White House and by some Iranian lawmakers.

"Russian military aircraft that took part in the operation of conducting air strikes from Iran's Hamadan air base on terrorist targets in Syria have successfully completed all tasks," a Russian Defence Ministry spokesman, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, said in a statement.

"Further use of the Hamadan air base in the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Russian Aerospace Forces will be carried out on the basis of mutual agreements to fight terrorism and depending on the prevailing circumstances in Syria," Konashenkov said.

Last week, long-range Russian Tupolev-22M3 bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers used Nojeh air base, near the city of Hamadan, in north-west Iran to launch air strikes against armed groups in Syria.

It was the first time a foreign power had used an Iranian base since World War Two. Russia and Iran are both providing crucial military support to President Bashar al-Assad against rebels and jihadi fighters in Syria's five-year-old conflict.

Some Iranian lawmakers called the move a breach of Iran's constitution which forbids "the establishment of any kind of foreign military base in Iran, even for peaceful purposes".

Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan dismissed that criticism but also chided Moscow for publicising the move, describing it as showing off and a "betrayal of trust."

"We have not given any military base to the Russians and they are not here to stay," Dehghan was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency late on Sunday.

He said there was "no written agreement" between the two countries and the "operational cooperation" was temporary and limited to refuelling.

The U.S. State Department, which last week called the move "unfortunate but not surprising" and said it was studying if it violated a U.N. Security Council resolution that bars supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran, said that it was unclear if Moscow's use of the base had "definitively stopped."

ABRUPT END

On Monday, Iran's Foreign Ministry said Russia's use of the base had ended.

"Russia has no base in Iran and is not stationed here. They did this (operation) and it is finished for now," Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

Iran's defence minister had said last week that Russia would be permitted to use the Nojeh base "for as long as they need".

While noting that Iran has long supported Assad, a U.S. official said Tehran may not have wanted its involvement to be so public ahead of the 2017 Iranian presidential election.

"The Iranians don't mind helping out quietly. They just don't want the world to know that they are contributing to the deaths of thousands of Syrian civilians," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"It's their elections ... Everybody gets squeamish around election time," he added.

Relations between Iran and Russia, long cordial, appeared to reach a new level last September when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered military intervention in Syria in support of Assad.

After some delay, Russia supplied Iran with its S-300 missile air defence system, evidence of a growing partnership that is testing U.S. influence in the Middle East.

Dehghan said that to make up for the delay, Russia had suggested providing Iran with its advanced S-400, but that Tehran was not interested as it is working to advance its own home-made defence system.

Iran unveiled its new missile defence system, Bavar 373, on Monday, a system designed to intercept cruise missiles, drones, combat aircraft and ballistic missiles.

Iran's defence minister also said Tehran has shown interest in buying Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets and Moscow's reply "has not been negative so far."
Sun International joins South African exodus from Nigeria

By Nqobile Dludla

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Hotel and gaming group Sun International has become the latest South African business to pull out of Nigeria because of weak economic growth and clashes with regulators and shareholders in the west African country.

In January, Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) launched a probe into Sun International's initial investment in the Tourist Company of Nigeria (TCN) , which owns and operates the 5-star Federal Palace Hotel in Lagos.

Sun International, which also reported on Monday a 20 percent fall in diluted adjusted headline earnings per share (AHEPS) to 628 cents for the year to June, said The Federal Palace had been hit by slow economic growth, low oil prices, the threat from militant group Boko Haram and a weakening naira.

"The board has decided to exit Nigeria and steps will be taken to achieve this in a manner that does not erode further value," the company said in a statement.

"Continued setbacks in Nigeria as well as the ongoing shareholder dispute have frustrated all attempts to develop and improve the property," it added.

Sun International bought a 49 percent stake of the Nigerian Stock Exchange-listed TCN in 2006, becoming the largest single shareholder. In recent years, Sun has been drawn into a dispute within its fellow shareholder, the Ibru family.

The company's decision to exit Nigeria follows food and clothing retailer Woolworths and Tiger Brands, which sold its loss-making Nigerian arm to Dangote Industries.

Nigeria, Africa's largest economy, is suffering its worst financial crisis in decades as a slump in oil revenues hammers public finances and the naira. The central bank governor has said recession is likely.

Analysts said Sun International's dispute with fellow investors was at least as important in its decision to leave.

"They are in a way stuck in a problematic arrangement on the property and it's been very difficult for them to create value there. It certainly makes sense for them to reduce exposure to Nigeria," said Avior Capital Markets analyst De Wet Schutte.

"Nigeria is a difficult place to build a business."

CEO Graeme Stephens said the exit could take a year or two, and the company was no longer committed to expanding in Africa.

"We've been strategically exiting Africa for a couple of years and what was left was Nigeria. We're not looking anywhere else in Africa," Stephens told Reuters, adding the company would focus on growing its Latin America business.

In June, Sun said it was disposing its remaining minority interests in Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland to Minor International Public Company.

Shares in Sun International were down 0.47 percent by 1139 GMT.

Reporting its results, the company said poor economic conditions in South Africa resulted in revenue growth at casinos of only 0.8 percent to 7 billion rand ($515 million).

"In South Africa, the economic environment remains a serious concern. We do not anticipate any meaningful growth in gaming revenue until there is a recovery in the economy and renewed consumer confidence," Stephens said.

The South African Reserve Bank expects the economy to flatline this year, due to a drought and falling commodity prices.
Kurdish militia launches assault to evict Syrian army from key city of Hasaka

By Rodi Said

HASAKA, Syria, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The Kurdish YPG militia launched a major assault on Monday to seize the last government-controlled parts of the northeastern Syrian city of Hasaka after calling on pro-government militias to surrender, Kurdish forces and residents said.

They said Kurdish forces began the offensive after midnight to take the southern district of East Nashwa, close to where a security compound is located, near the governor's office.

The fighting this week in Hasaka, divided into zones of Kurdish and Syrian government control, marks the most violent confrontation between the Kurdish YPG militia and Damascus in more than five years of civil war. It forms part of a broader battle for control of the long border area abutting Turkey.

After a morning lull in fighting, fierce clashes broke out again across the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The powerful YPG militia has captured almost all of east Ghwairan, the only major Arab neighbourhood still in government hands.

The YPG is at the heart of a U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State militant group in Syria and controls swaths of the north, where Kurdish groups associated with the militia have set up their own government since the Syrian war began in 2011.

NATO member Turkey, facing a Kurdish insurgency of its own, is concerned about attempts to extend Syrian Kurdish control westward along its border. Turkey is currently allowing a rebel Syrian force under the banner of the Free Syrian Army to assemble on its soil for an attack on an Islamic State-held town, seeking to deny control to the YPG.

The Syrian army deployed warplanes against the main armed Kurdish group for the first time during the war last week, prompting a U.S.-led coalition to scramble aircraft to protect American special operations ground forces.

War planes were seen in the skies above Hasaka again on Monday, but did not drop bombs, the Observatory said.

Syrian state media accused the YPG-affiliated security force known as the Asayish of violating a ceasefire and said its members had torched government buildings in Hasaka.

It accused the Asayish of igniting the violence through escalating "provocations", including the bombing of army positions in Hasaka, and said the Asayish aimed to take control of the city.

"WE WILL NOT RETREAT"

The YPG denied it had entered into a truce. It distributed leaflets and made loudspeaker calls across the city urging army personnel and pro-government militias to hand over their weapons.

"To all the elements of the regime and its militias who are besieged in the city, you are targeted by our units," leaflets distributed by the YPG said.

"This battle is decided and we will not retreat ... We call on you to give up your weapons or count yourselves dead."

The YPG, known as the People's Protection Units and linked to Kurdish rebels who fight the Turkish state, appeared intent on leaving a nominal Syrian government presence confined to within a security zone in the heart of the city, where several key government buildings are located, Kurdish sources said.

The complete loss of Hasaka would be a big blow to President Bashar al-Assad's government and would also dent efforts by Moscow, which had sought through a major military intervention last year to help Damascus regain lost territory and prevent new rebel gains.

Kurdish forces have expanded their control of the city despite the bombing of several locations by Syrian jets.

Thousands of civilians in the ethnically mixed city, including members of the Christian community, have fled to villages in the countryside as the fighting intensified, residents said.

The confrontation appears to have undone tacit understandings between the YPG and the Syrian army that had kept the city relatively calm.

Hasaka's governor told state media after the flare-up of violence the military had armed the YPG with weapons and tanks to fight jihadist elements but had not expected them to turn against them.
U.S. seeks progress in deploying new U.N. troops to South Sudan

By Lesley Wroughton

NAIROBI, Aug 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday he and regional states were committed to giving momentum to the planned deployment of extra U.N. troops to South Sudan and said the country's leaders needed to recommit to a peace deal.

Fierce fighting in the capital Juba last month has raised fears that the five-year-old nation could slide back into civil war. It prompted the United Nations to authorise the deployment of 4,000 additional U.N. troops to bolster a U.N. mission there.

"We need to move forward with the deployment of a regional protection force," Kerry told a news conference in Nairobi after talks with foreign ministers from Kenya and other African states that had focused on South Sudan and Somalia's reconstruction.

Kerry said regional states, which have pushed for sending the new troops to help South Sudan's 12,000-strong U.N. mission UNMISS, had agreed on "the immediate implementation process" of meetings and steps to "guarantee some momentum builds up."

About two years of conflict that pitted troops loyal to President Salva Kiir against those of his former deputy Riek Machar was supposed to have ended with a peace deal last year. But fighting persisted and flared again last month in Juba.

After the latest violence, Machar, who had returned to the capital in April to resume his post as vice president, withdrew again to the bush and was picked up this month by U.N. peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo with a leg injury.

Kiir has again sacked him and appointed a new vice president.

Kerry said it was up to South Sudan's leaders, political parties and neighbours to work out "what is best or not best with respect to Machar", but all sides had to stop fighting.

"We urged all the parties to recommit in word and deed to the full implementation of the peace agreement," Kerry said.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed, speaking at the same news conference, said the new U.N. force should be deployed "sooner rather than later" but said it could be sent gradually.

South Sudan's government initially said it would not cooperate with the new U.N. troops which will be under the command of the 12,000-strong UNMISS mission. But since then it has said it was still considering its position.

"We have not rejected it or accepted it. The sovereignty of the people of South Sudan will be decided by the parliament," South Sudan's presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said.

World powers and regional states have struggled to find leverage over South Sudan's warring factions despite U.S. and European sanctions on some military leaders and African threats of punitive actions.

South Sudan secured its independence in 2011, but by December 2013 the longtime political rivalry between Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and Machar, a Nuer, had led to civil conflict that often followed ethnic lines.

The fighting has killed thousands of people and driven more than 2 million people from their homes, with many of them fleeing to neighbouring states.

Kerry, who pledged new humanitarian aid to South Sudan worth $138 million, said the new U.N. troop contingent was "not an intervention force" but would protect civilians and support those working to ensure peace prevailed.

In the latest flare-up in July, Washington was particularly concerned by an attack on a Juba hotel by uniformed men who killed a U.S.-funded journalist and raped civilians, including aid workers.

The U.N. has launched an investigation into accusations U.N. peacekeepers in Juba failed to respond properly to the attack.
North Korea appeared to resume plutonium production this year, U.N. says

VIENNA, Aug 22 (Reuters) - North Korea appeared to resume activities this year aimed at producing plutonium, which can be used in the core of an atomic bomb, the U.N. nuclear watchdog has confirmed, though it added that signs of those activities stopped last month.

Pyongyang vowed in 2013 to restart all nuclear facilities, including the main reactor at its Yongbyon site that had been shut down and has been at the heart of its weapons programme.

It said last year that Yongbyon was operating and that it was working to improve the "quality and quantity" of its nuclear weapons. It has since carried out what is widely believed to have been its fourth nuclear test.

"From the first quarter of 2016, there were multiple indications consistent with the radiochemical laboratory's operation," International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Yukiya Amano said in a report to the agency's annual General Conference, referring to a site used to reprocess plutonium.

"Such indications ceased in early July 2016," Amano said in the report posted online and dated Friday. Those indications included deliveries of chemical tanks and the operation of a steam plant linked to the lab, the report said.

The IAEA, which has no access to North Korea and mainly monitors its activities by satellite, said last year it had seen signs of a resumption of activity at Yongbyon, including at the main reactor.

There were signs the reactor had been running in the past year, with a pause between October and December, probably to refill it with enough fuel for the next two years, according to the report dated Friday.

Amano said in June that the agency had seen signs of reprocessing, the production of plutonium from spent reactor fuel, at Yongbyon.

Japan's Kyodo news agency last week quoted North Korea as saying it had resumed plutonium production by reprocessing and had no plans to stop nuclear tests as long as perceived U.S. threats remain.

North Korea's Atomic Energy Institute, which has jurisdiction over Yongbyon, also told Kyodo it had been producing highly enriched uranium necessary for nuclear arms and power "as scheduled".

"There were indications consistent with the use of the reported centrifuge enrichment facility," Amano's report to the General Conference, which will be held at the end of September, said, adding that construction work had been carried out around the building that houses the facility.
Global tourism GDP resilient this year, but woes for France, Turkey

BERLIN, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Travel and tourism will contribute less than previously forecast to the economies of France, Turkey and Brazil this year, hit by attacks, political and economic turmoil, though globally the sector is resilient, the World Travel and Tourism Council said.

Brazil is hosting the Olympic Games this year but its travel and tourism sector has suffered under a political crisis, its worst recession since the 1930s, and the Zika virus.

The sector's contribution to Brazil's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to shrink by 1.6 percent this year, against a previous forecast for a drop of 0.9 percent, the WTTC said.

Islamist militant attacks in Paris, Brussels and Nice have resulted in lower demand for travel to Europe. In France, the travel and tourism sector's contribution to GDP will grow 1.1 percent this year, down from a previous forecast of 2.9 percent.

"The Paris incident did have an impact because it's the first point of entry to Europe for a lot of Asian and North American travellers," David Scowsill, president of the WTTC told Reuters.

The number of foreign tourists fell sharply in France in the second quarter of the year, official data showed on Friday. In France, the sector contributed 80.4 billion euros ($90.9 billion), or 3.7 percent of total GDP, in 2015.

A series of militant bombings in Turkey and a failed coup have also deterred tourists, and the sector's contribution to GDP there will shrink by 3.2 percent this year, sharply lower than a previously forecast drop of 0.2 percent.

Overall, however, the global travel and tourism sector is expected to grow by 3.1 percent in 2016, faster than predicted global GDP growth of 2.3 percent, driven by increasing numbers of travellers from Asian countries, especially China and India.

"There's lots of macro-economic weakness around, but the travel and tourism industry is doing very well. It's the same level of growth as 2015," Scowsill said.

He said that despite security concerns, people were still travelling but had shifted destinations. Asian travellers were tending to choose Australia for vacations this year instead of Europe, for example.

Brazil's Olympic Games, which ended on Sunday, should help to boost demand for travel there next year, Scowsill said, although he said Brazil had to deal with its economic problems.

In 2015, the direct contribution of the sector to Brazil's GDP was 190.5 billion Brazilian reais ($59.5 billion), equivalent to 3.3 percent of total GDP, the WTTC said.
Renzi calls for less bureaucratic Europe ahead of 3-way summit

By Isla Binnie

NAPLES, Italy, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Europe needs to invest in defence, education and culture while breaking free of bureaucratic rules, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Monday ahead of a meeting with the leaders of Germany and France.

Renzi will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande at a summit rich with symbolism as the European Union gropes for a way forward following Britain's shock referendum in June to abandon the 28-nation bloc.

The trio will travel first to an island off the coast of Naples to lay a wreath on the tomb of an Italian intellectual seen as one of the founding fathers of European unity. They will then hold talks on an aircraft carrier that is coordinating an EU naval mission against migrant traffickers.

"These are two symbols in one. Ideal values and concrete commitments," Renzi said.

He said Europe needed to overcome the Brexit vote and a recent wave of militant attacks, and rediscover its role.

"We need to invest in a common defence policy, in digital innovation, in schools and culture. Europe is the affectionate mother of our values, it is not the icy guardian of bureaucratic rules that are difficult to accept," Renzi wrote.

Heavily indebted Italy, whose economy has barely grown since the introduction of the euro currency in 1999, has repeatedly chafed against stern EU budget rules, and both Renzi and Hollande want greater flexibility to help boost growth.

Germany is keen for rules to be respected and the issue is not expected to be broached on Monday. But the three leaders are due to discuss common positions ahead of an EU summit in Bratislava next month which Britain was not invited to.

While Italy is eager for greater European consolidation in the wake of Brexit, Merkel wants to cement "a better Europe" rather than forge ahead with "more Europe".

MIGRATION AND SECURITY

Monday's talks mark the beginning of a week of meetings for Merkel with other European governments that will see her travel to four countries and receive leaders from another eight. "The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27," an EU diplomat said.

Threats to the union that emerged long before the Brexit vote are also likely to be on the agenda, including internal and external security after Islamist militant attacks and Europe's migration crisis.

The three leaders are due to hold a news conference at around 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) on the Italian aircraft carrier, the Garibaldi, which is the flagship of the EU's "Sophia" mission in the Mediterranean. The operation is intended to tackle migrant smugglers, help enforce an arms embargo off Libya, and train the Libyan coast guard.

The EU plans to offer incentives to African governments to help slow the flow of migrants who have poured into Europe over the past three years, but disagreements on how to handle the situation have laid bare divisions between member states.
German exports to Iran soar after removal of sanctions

By Michael Nienaber

BERLIN, Aug 22 (Reuters) - German exports to Iran, mostly machines and equipment, jumped in the first half of the year following the removal of international sanctions against the Islamic Republic, official trade data showed on Monday.

Exports to Iran surged by 15 percent year-on-year in the first six months of 2016 to 1.13 billion euros ($1.3 billion), the Federal Statistics Office said.

This compares with a rise of 1.4 percent in overall German exports in the same period and a fall of 14 percent in German exports to Iran in 2015.

"There is a huge demand in Iran for plant and equipment", said Michael Tockuss, head of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce, adding that chemical products and electrical engineering were also doing well.

"And there is growing demand for technology from the renewable energy sector, mainly wind power stations," Tockuss said, adding that the reluctance of banks to finance bigger deals between German and Iranian businesses was slowly eroding.

Tockuss said exports to Iran would further pick up in the coming months and are expected to rise by as much as 25 percent in the whole of 2016 and by 30 percent in 2017.

"The sanctions against Iran were built up over several years and it now will take some years to reverse them and establish new business ties," he said.

In another positive sign, German exports to Russia fell only 3.5 percent to 10.1 billion euros in the January-June period after having plunged by 25 percent to 21 billion euros in 2015.

This indicates that the impact of international sanctions imposed against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine is bottoming out.

CLOUDED OUTLOOK

Overall trade prospects are more clouded, however.

German exports to the Unites States and France, its two most important markets, fell 4 percent to 53.4 billion euros and 2 percent to 52.1 billion euros respectively on the year in the first six months of 2016.

Exports to Britain, Germany's third-most important market, stagnated in the first half of the year at around 44.8 billion euros.

Demand from emerging markets was subdued, with German exports to China only inching up 1 percent to 36.3 billion euros, to Brazil falling 18 percent to 4.4 billion euros and to South Africa down 11 percent to 4.4 billion euros.

The head of Germany's BGA trade association has said exports will grow less than expected this year due to external risks, including Britain's vote to leave the European Union and uncertainties ahead of elections in the United States and France.

Anton Boerner said late in June that BGA would update its official forecast for export growth of 4.5 percent at the end of the summer and he expected 4.1 percent at best.

In 2015, German exports grew by 6.4 percent on the year, mainly driven by strong demand from other EU countries. This led to net foreign trade contributing 0.2 percentage points to an overall growth rate of 1.7 percent last year.

The German government expects the economy to grow by the same amount this year, helped by soaring domestic demand, while exports are unlikely to contribute much to overall growth.
Hungarian MEP: pigs' heads would deter migrants at border fence

BUDAPEST, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A Hungarian member of the European Parliament has sparred with a human rights campaigner and caused an outcry on Twitter after writing that pigs' heads along the border fence erected by Hungary to keep out migrants would make an effective deterrent.

Under conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary has taken one of the toughest stances among fellow European Union members against the recent mass influx of migrants and refugees to the bloc, a crisis that has divided the EU.

Last year Hungary erected a razor wire topped fence along its southern border to stop migrants, patrolled by thousands of extra troops. On Oct. 2, the country will hold a referendum on whether they agree with the EU's policy of mandatory settlement of migrants without consent of parliament.

The MEP behind the comments was Gyorgy Schopflin, a former BBC employee and London-based professor, who has been an MEP for Orban's conservative Fidesz party since 2004.

On Aug. 19, Andrew Stroehlein, Human Rights Watch's Brussels-based European media director, re-posted on Twitter a Washington Post article and photos showing root vegetables carved into shapes of human faces and put up along Hungary's southern fence.

These images had earlier appeared on a Facebook page that supports Hungary's border troops, with the caption: "Instead of scarecrows, these are 'scarepeople' made from sugar beet. Seems to work, nobody cut through the fence here in four weeks."

Stroehlein objected to the images, writing: "Refugees are fleeing war and torture, Hungary. Your root vegetable heads will not deter them."

On Saturday, Schopflin replied to Stroehlein.

"Might do so. Human images are haram," he said, referring to forbidden acts under Islam. "But agree, pig's head would deter more effectively."

Stroehlein shot back.

"An MEP spouting such xenophobic filth... You are an embarrassment to Hungary, to Europe and to humanity," he said.

In a subsequent torrent of comments from followers of either men, Schopflin was mostly derided for his remark. He occasionally defended by people who opposed immigration but said he never made any proposal to put up pigs' heads, telling Reuters his comment had been "a thought experiment."
Jailed Gambian opposition official dies in hospital - party

DAKAR, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A detained official from Gambia's main opposition movement died in hospital over the weekend, his United Democratic Party said, its second member to lose their life in custody since the start of a crackdown on protests.

Solo Krummah was arrested with 14 others on May 9 during rallies calling for electoral reform, and died on Saturday after an operation at the Edward Francis's Small Teaching Hospital in the capital Banjul, the UDP said.

His family had not authorised any operation and there were no details on what the treatment involved or how he died, the party added in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from the government or hospital authorities.

Activists and opposition members have been staging sporadic protests, demanding reforms before December elections - a rare display of defiance against President Yahya Jammeh.

Nearly fifty protestors were arrested in April and May, including UDP party leader Ousainu Darboe and at least 18 other senior members. Eleven opposition supporters were convicted in July, with sentences ranging from fines to three years in prison.

Krummah, the UDP's deputy chairman of the Sandu Constituency in eastern Gambia, was detained in Mile 2 prison in Banjul and admitted to hospital on August 8 under armed guard, the UDP said in its statement.

"The lawyers have been consulted and will act accordingly to get to the cause of the death of Solo and for the body to be given to the party and family for a fitting burial," the UPD added.

The party's national organising secretary, Solo Sandeng, died in custody in April after being arrested in similar protests.

The UDP says Sandeng was tortured to death - a charge dismissed by the government.
U.S. Secretary of State Kerry says pleased with Kenya's electoral reforms

NAIROBI, Aug 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday he was pleased to see progress in reforming Kenya's electoral commission and urged that differences be resolved through peaceful means in lead up to the 2017 elections.

"Let me just emphasise that holding a free and fair, peaceful credible election is a critical step in consolidating Kenya's decmocracy," he told a news conference.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Powell brushes off Clinton over emails

WASHINGTON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Former Secretary of State Colin Powell over the weekend dismissed reports that Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton told federal investigators that it was at his suggestion that she used a personal email account, according to a media report.

Powell, who served as the nation's top diplomat under Republican president George W. Bush, told People magazine that while he did send Clinton a memo about his own email practices, Clinton had already chosen to use personal email rather than a government account while she had the job.

Clinton, who faces Republican Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election, has been dogged for more than a year about questions over her use of private email account and a personal computer server while she was secretary of state from 2009-2013, during President Barack Obama's first term.

"Her people have been trying to pin it on me ... The truth is, she was using (the private email server) for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did," Powell told People on Saturday.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Clinton told federal investigators probing the issue that Powell, who was secretary of state from 2001 to 2005, had suggested she use personal email for unclassified email when the two spoke over dinner. The conversation occurred "in the early months" of Clinton's tenure at the State Department, the Times said, citing a forthcoming book by journalist Joe Conason that first reported the dinner exchange.

That revelation came as the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week turned over a number of documents to the U.S. Congress related to its probe into the emails. The FBI recommended against criminal charges for Clinton, but Clinton has been widely criticized by Republicans over the issue.

Representatives for Powell, in a separate statement to NBC news, said he had no recollection of the conversation with Clinton but did write to her about his use of a non-government email address.

"He did write former Secretary Clinton an email memo describing his use of his personal AOL email account for unclassified messages and how it vastly improved communications within the State Department," his office told NBC on Friday.

The email exchange occurred in 2009, according to the Times.

Powell and aides to his successor in the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice, received some classified information via personal email accounts, Reuters has reported. Clinton's additional use of a personal computer server at her home, however, broke State Department rules, an internal watchdog found.

The FBI document release to Congress has riled both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats have expressed concern over the potential for politically motivated leaks by Republicans to target Clinton less than three months before the presidential election.

Republican U.S. House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz told MSNBC on Monday the documents lawmakers received "are overly redacted" and that they are asking for another version with more of the missing information so they can be made public as soon as possible.
RBS to relive unpleasant memories as investor lawsuit looms

By Andrew MacAskill and Sinead Cruise

LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - At an English country mansion last month, lawyers for Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) sat down with representatives of angry shareholders to broker an end to what may end up being the costliest case in British legal history.

The meeting at The Grove, an 18-century estate near London that served as the secret World War Two HQ for Britain's biggest railway company, was convened to persuade investors to drop claims they were misled into stumping up 12 billion pounds ($16 billion) just a few months before the bank's bailout in 2008.

But the low-profile gathering came to nought, an outcome that could have huge implications for Royal Bank of Scotland's recovery as it risks adding up to 6 billion pounds to the lender's litigation bill, lawyers said.

Once a small Scottish retail bank, RBS staged a meteoric rise to global prominence over two decades with an aggressive expansion that threatened to topple the UK financial system.

By early 2008, bad bets on toxic mortgage debt, increased loan defaults and a highly leveraged takeover spree had left RBS's balance sheet in desperate need of capital, and management turned to investors for the ill-fated cash call.

More than 35,000 shareholders who took part, including some of Britain's biggest institutional investors and public pension funds, allege RBS deliberately concealed the extent of its financial woes when it raised the money in April 2008.

The bank succumbed to a 45.5 billion pound bailout just six months later in October and has since failed to post an annual profit. The shares issued in the rights issue have lost nine-tenths of their value, and the investors who bought them now want to be compensated.

At the meeting at The Grove, RBS offered investors about 700 million pounds, according to two sources present, but the claimants reckon they should get 4 billion pounds in damages, plus another 2 billion in interest and legal fees.

"They are offering pennies when we are after pounds," said one lawyer, who asked not to be named because the talks are confidential. "We are never going to meet in the middle. So we are now focused on pursuing the actions through the courts."

TOO FAR APART

The next pre-trial hearing is scheduled for Sept. 8 at the High Court in London. Over the next few months lawyers on both sides will learn who will be called as witnesses.

Former RBS Chief Executive Fred Goodwin, who has shouldered the blame for the bank's rapid demise from national treasure to national disgrace, is likely to be called, dealing another blow to the lender's efforts to draw a line under its troubled past.

RBS, which is now 70 percent state owned, has always denied any wrongdoing and said its former bosses did not act illegally.

"We continue to strongly defend these claims," the bank said in a statement, adding that it only explored mediation because it was legally obliged to do so.

The bank flew in commercial dispute resolution specialists from the United States and New Zealand to mediate at The Grove, one of the sources said, demonstrating the lender's desire to avoid a lengthy stint in court.

"We all thought we were going to get a deal," said another source at the talks. "The strategies are going to evolve over the coming months, but I think the parties are too far apart to get a deal."

Scheduled to begin in March, the case comes just as RBS is preparing to settle a record U.S. fine for mis-selling mortgage bonds before the crisis and shows how deeply the 2008 financial crisis haunts what was once the world's biggest bank by assets.

The investor lawsuit says RBS made no mention in its prospectus for the cash call that its capital levels had fallen below the regulatory minimum; that the government had ordered the bank to raise the cash, or that RBS was already using $11.9 billion of "secret" loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

INFORMATION TRAIL

The first part of the trial to establish if RBS must compensate shareholders is scheduled to last six months. If it loses, another case may decide how much it must pay and lengthy appeals are expected, sources close to the matter said.

So far, RBS has been forced to disclose 25 million pieces of information, including private emails and other messages sent by senior executives at the time, to lawyers who are hoping to prove that management deliberately hid evidence of the bank's deteriorating health before shareholders were tapped for cash.

The initial stage of the trial is expected to generate defence and prosecution fees of about 140 million pounds because of the number of claimants and the complexity of the case, according to four sources working on it.

If those estimates are correct, the case will become the most expensive in British legal history, exceeding the almost 100 million pounds of costs incurred during the News Corporation phone-hacking trial.

But some of the bank's shareholders say the U.S.-style shareholder class action suit against RBS is counterproductive and will just delay the point at which the bank can return capital to shareholders by resuming dividend payments.

"Institutional investors suing themselves for the enrichment of the lawyers is bananas but it is what it is," one shareholder, who declined to be named, told Reuters. "It chips away at the investment case, which is the return of surplus capital."

"Analysts typically have a few billion for the Department of Justice (settlement) but they've not had much in for the shareholder litigation ... you could be thinking, what surplus capital?" the investor said.

RBS CEO Ross McEwan has admitted he is worried about the damage the case could inflict on the bank's battered reputation but he has also said he could not agree to a settlement that was unreasonable and is ready to fight if the case reaches court.

"We have to assess this from many angles. One of those is the public reputation but the other one is for our shareholders ... we shouldn't be signing up for something that we don't think is fair," he told reporters this month.
U.S. seeks "momentum" in deploying extra U.N. troops to South Sudan

NAIROBI, Aug 22 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on Monday for immediate steps to give "momentum" to the planned deployment of extra U.N. troops to South Sudan and told the country's leaders to adhere in "word and deed" to a peace deal reached last year.

"We need to move forward with the deployment of a regional protection force, authorised by the U.N. Security Council, in order to be part of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in that country," he told a news conference in Nairobi after talks with foreign ministers from Kenya and other regional states.

South Sudan's government has said it is still considering a response to the U.N. decision to send 4,000 extra troops to the country after violence flared in the capital in July.
Libya's eastern parliament votes against UN-backed govt in Tripoli

BENGHAZI, Libya, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Members of Libya's eastern parliament voted on Monday to reject the U.N.-backed government in the capital, Tripoli, a spokesman for the chamber said.

Abdallah Bilhaq said 101 deputies had attended the session, with 61 voting against the Government of National Accord (GNA), 39 abstaining, and just one voting in favour.
EU requests WTO panel over spirits dispute with Colombia

BRUSSELS, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The European Union has requested the establishment of a World Trade Organization (WTO) panel to rule on a dispute with Colombia over what Brussels says are discriminatory measures against spirits made by European drinks companies.

Monday's request will be discussed by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body on Sept. 2, the European Commission said.

"EU spirits are subject to higher taxes and local charges than those applied to local brands," the Commission said in a statement. "This is in contravention of Colombia's non-discrimination obligations under WTO rules."

The EU and Colombia held talks in March as the first step in the WTO's formal dispute settlement process but failed to reach a solution.
Sarkozy announces bid for 2017 presidential race

By John Irish and Richard Lough

PARIS, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Nicolas Sarkozy will run for president in 2017, hoping to return as France's head of state after being unseated in 2012 by the now deeply unpopular Francois Hollande, he announced on Monday.

A figure either loved or loathed by conservative voters, Sarkozy says in a forthcoming book he will join more than a dozen contenders vying for the party ticket in primaries, where former prime minister Alain Juppe will be his strongest rival.

"I felt I had the strength to lead this battle at a troubled time in our history," Sarkozy wrote on his social media pages ahead of the publication on Wednesday of "Everything for France".

Sarkozy has done little to conceal his desire to return to the Elysee Palace since returning to high-level politics in late 2014 when he took the helm of France's main centre-right party, Les Republicains.

In July his poll rating overtook Juppe's among core Les Republicains supporters, though he was still less popular among centre-right voters as a whole.

With a string of deadly Islamist attacks shaping the political discourse, Sarkozy has been scathing of Hollande's security record, urging France to get tough on immigration, crack down on Islamist militancy and halt the erosion of France's secular identity.

Courting voters tempted by France's far-right National Front, Sarkozy has laced speeches with references to national identity and blamed "cowardly leaders" for a loss of French culture.

"It wasn't that long ago that when we talked about immigration, identity and removing citizenship we were called fascists," Sarkozy told supporters in June.

"But minds have changed, the masses are rising, the people are standing up and they are saying louder and louder: 'That's enough!'"

With France in a state of emergency, Sarkozy's emphasis on national identity and the credentials to present himself as a former interior minister and experienced Commander-in-Chief may help his chances.

But legal troubles surrounding party financing and over-spending by his 2012 presidential campaign, as well as his divisive personality could trip him up.

Sarkozy credits himself with steering Europe through the financial crisis during his 2007-2012 term. But his weak performance on free-market reforms to revive the economy disappointed business leaders.

The Nov. 20 primary is the first ever to be held by France's main right-wing party. If, as expected, no candidate, wins an absolute majority a run-off vote will be held a week later.

FRACTURED SOCIALISTS

Sarkozy's announcement comes as the list of candidates to replace Hollande grows and fractures between the Socialists are getting deeper just eight months before the presidential poll.

Government spokesman Stephane Le Foll urged leftist lawmakers on Monday not to place personal ambitions before the party after former industry minister Arnaud Montebourg threw his hat into the ring, saying it was "impossible to support the current president" who had betrayed socialist values.

Montebourg split with Hollande's government in 2014 over his shift in favour of market-friendly reforms. So did former education minister Benoit Hamon and former housing minister Cecile Duflot, a Green, both of whom are also running.

The simmering rebellion has already forced Hollande to allow an unprecedented primary contest to select the party's candidate.

But the increasingly crowded field complicates his re-election prospects should he chose to run for a second term.

A large pool of candidates, ranging from the communists to centre-left, would further dilute Hollande's support base.

Most polls show that if Hollande does run as the left's candidate, he will come third to far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen and whoever heads the main centre-right campaign.

Splits in the main parties is a gift to the National Front which hopes to convince voters it alone can offer a new form of leadership.
Protesters attack Pakistani TV station, shots fired

KARACHI, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Supporters of a powerful political party in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi fired shots at the office of a television channel on Monday before ransacking the building, police said.

The protesters belonged to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), senior superintendent of police Saqib Ismail said. Media reported they were angry about a lack of coverage of a hunger strike.

"MQM workers fired shots at the ARY (News) office, ransacked the premises and set fire to a police mobile," he said.

Local media said the protesters had rushed to the office of ARY shortly after the MQM leader Altaf Hussain, who lives in exile in London, had criticised Pakistan's media in a telephone address for failing to report on his workers' hunger strikes.

Security forces later arrived and dispersed the crowds. Local media said several people were wounded in the clashes.

The MQM protesters had earlier gathered outside the nearby press club where some had been on hunger strike to protest against alleged attacks by security forces on their members in Pakistan's violent commercial hub.
Iraq used torture to extract confessions from convicts, Amnesty says

BAGHDAD, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Amnesty International on Monday condemned the hanging in Iraq of 36 men convicted of a mass killing of soldiers, saying some of their confessions were extorted under threats and torture.

The watchdog called on the Iraqi authorities to establish a moratorium on executions and to hold "fair and transparent" trials for those accused of involvement in the massacre.

The hangings were carried out on Sunday, at a prison in southern Iraq, state television said. Those executed were convicted in the deaths of as many as 1,700 soldiers, mostly Shi'ites, two years ago.

The soldiers were killed after they fled from Camp Speicher, a former U.S. military base just north of Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, when it was overrun by Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni group, in 2014. U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces and Iranian-supported Shi'ite militias recaptured the region last year.

"One of the men executed `confessed' to killing 60 cadets at Speicher after receiving threats that his wife and sisters would be raped. He was also beaten with cables and given electric shocks," Amnesty said. "Even though he recanted this `confession' in court, according to lawyers, it was used to justify its verdict".

The government came under increased pressure from local Shi'ite politicians to execute militants sentenced to death after a massive bombing that targeted a shopping street in Baghdad on July 3, killing at least 324 people.

Claimed by Islamic State, the truck bomb that blew up in the Karrada district was the deadliest since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Tanzania's President Magufuli orders officials to speed up LNG project

By Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala

DAR ES SALAAM, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Tanzanian president John Magufuli ordered officials on Monday to speed up long-delayed work on a planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, saying implementation of the project had taken too long.

BG Group, recently acquired by Royal Dutch Shell, alongside Statoil, Exxon Mobil and Ophir Energy, plan to build a $30 billion-onshore LNG export terminal in partnership with the state-run Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) by the early 2020s.

But a final investment decision has been held up by government delays in finalising issues relating to acquisition of land at the site and establishing a legal framework for the nascent hydrocarbon industry.

"I want to see this plant being built, we are taking too long. Sort out all the remaining issues so investors can start construction work immediately," the presidency quoted Magufuli as saying in a statement.

Magufuli, a reformist who took office in November, has sacked several senior officials for graft and cut spending he deemed wasteful, such as curbing foreign travel by public officials.

The president's office said Magufuli issued the instructions for the LNG project to be fast-tracked during talks with Oystein Michelsen, Statoil's Tanzania country manager, and senior Tanzanian government energy officials.

The Tanzanian presidency did not give the construction schedule for the project, but said once completed the LNG plant would have an expected economic lifespan of more than 40 years.

The government said it has acquired over 2,000 hectares of land for the construction of the planned two-train LNG terminal at Likong'o village in the southern Tanzanian town of Lindi.

Tanzania discovered an additional 2.17 trillion cubic feet of possible natural gas deposits in February, raising the east African nation's total estimated recoverable natural gas reserves to more than 57 trillion cubic feet.

East Africa is a new hotspot in hydrocarbon exploration after substantial deposits of crude oil were found in Uganda and major gas reserves discovered in Tanzania and Mozambique.
Number of slavery victims seeking help from Salvation Army in UK soars

By Magdalena Mis

LONDON, Aug 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The number of victims of trafficking and modern slavery helped by the Salvation Army in England and Wales has increased nearly fivefold since 2012, the charity said on Monday.

The increase reflects a rise in both the number of people being exploited and in the number of those seeking help as awarenesss of the issue has grown, the Salvation Army said.

The charity helped more than 1,800 victims of trafficking and modern slavery between April 2015 and March 2016, up from 378 between July 2011 and July 2012, it said in a report.

"As knowledge and support (for trafficking and modern slavery) grows, there's more likelihood that people will take up the offer of support," said Anne Read, director of anti-trafficking and modern slavery at the Salvation Army.

"Greater awareness without a shadow of a doubt is resulting in more people being identified," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.

There are an estimated 13,000 victims of forced labour, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude in Britain.

Globally, forced labour generates an estimated $150 billion in illegal profits every year.

The Modern Slavery Act - which came into force in Britain in 2015 - increased maximum jail terms for traffickers from 14 years to life and brought in measures to protect people feared at risk of being enslaved.

Of those seeking help from the Salvation Army, 269 were from Albania, 148 from Poland and 136 from Nigeria, said the charity, which provides support services including accommodation, legal advice and counselling.

"For many years, the biggest source country (for people trafficked to Britain and Europe) was Nigeria (but) over the last two years there's been a shift to Albania," Read said.

Some 44 percent of victims had been subjected to sexual exploitation, 42 percent had been exploited for labour and 13 percent had been victims of domestic servitude, the report said.

The region with the highest number of referrals to the Salvation Army was London (29 percent), followed by the South East and West Midlands, both with 16 percent.

Read said that even though more victims of modern slavery and trafficking were seeking help, the government needed to step up efforts to combat the problem, including raising awareness and providing economic options in the victims' home countries.

She said better data meant it was now possible to trace victims' origins to specific regions, even towns and villages.

"We have that data now and targeting those places with awareness-raising resources is certainly one of the things we can do," Read said.

"The other thing is giving realistic economic options in those places because where people are still feeling so desperately hopeless, they might still risk the possibility of a better future if that opportunity is afforded them."
AT&T signs deal to offer roaming services in Cuba

Aug 22 (Reuters) - AT&T Inc, the No.2 U.S. wireless carrier, said it had signed a deal with Cuba's state-owned telecoms provider to offer direct roaming services to its customers visiting Cuba.

AT&T said on Monday it would announce the pricing and the launch date for the service at a later date.

Reuters reported in March that AT&T was trying to complete a mobile communications agreement with Cuba's telecoms monopoly, Empresa De Telecomunicaciones De Cuba (Etecsa).

The deal follows similar agreements between Etecsa and U.S. telecoms carriers including Sprint Corp, Verizon Inc and T-Mobile US Inc after U.S. President Barack Obama's administration eased some sanctions on Cuba.
Four people injured in Romanian Black Sea refinery fire

BUCHAREST, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Four people were injured in a fire and blast at Romania's Black Sea Petromidia crude refinery , deputy Interior Minister Raed Arafat said on Monday.

Arafat told Digi24 TV that a fire and blast at a nitrogen tank in the refinery was being dealt with by firefighters as footage taken from the nearby sea resort of Mamaia showed the facility spewing thick clouds of black smoke.

"The fire is now extinguished," a spokeswoman for the refinery, Costinela Dragan, told Reuters by telephone at about 1600 GMT. "Things are now safe."

In May Romanian prosecutors seized the Petromidia refinery and other assets belonging to Rompetrol and parent company KazMunayGas in a wider investigation into the Romanian company's privatisation in 2000.
Pakistani police to charge ex-husband, father in suspected "honour killing"

By Mubasher Bukhari

LAHORE, Pakistan, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Pakistani police are preparing to charge a man with the murder of his former wife, a 28-year-old British woman who died last month in a suspected "honour killing", the investigating officer in the case said on Monday.

Samia Shahid, a beautician from Bradford, northern England, died in the village of Pandori in northern Punjab province while visiting her family. Her second husband had alleged that she was killed because she remarried.

Deputy Inspector General Abubakar Khuda Bakhsh told Reuters that Shahid's ex-husband - her cousin Shakeel - would be charged with murder while her father would also be charged with involvement in her death, although the charges had not been finalised while investigations continue.

Police say Shakeel has confessed to strangling Shahid with a scarf but Bakhsh said a confession would not be enough to establish his guilt.

"Therefore, we have collected some forensic evidence against him which we will mention in our final report to the court," he said. "Shahid, father of Samia, also has involvement in her killing to some extent."

The father has denied any involvement in the case.

The chargesheet will be ready by the end of the month and both were remanded in custody during a court hearing on Monday.

Shahid's relatives have said she died of a heart attack, but her husband, Kazim Mukhtar, told Reuters last month that he believed she had been poisoned and then strangled.

The case attracted attention because it came days after the high-profile killing of outspoken social media star Qandeel Baloch, whose brother has been arrested in that case.
Iran says will open new chapter in relations with Cuba

HAVANA, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Kicking off a six-day tour of Latin America, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Monday in Havana his visit would open a new chapter in the Islamic Republic's relations with Communist-ruled Cuba.

Iran, which has long been friendly with Cuba, is on a drive to improve foreign commerce after the removal in January of international sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

"We will start a new chapter in the bilateral relations with Cuba on the basis of a big (business) delegation accompanying me on this visit," Zarif said at a meeting with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez.

The international community lifted sanctions on Iran as part of the deal under which Tehran curbed its nuclear program.

Rodriguez congratulated Iran on the "success of its foreign policy" while reiterating its longstanding support for "all countries to develop nuclear energy with pacific ends".

Cuba and Iran have in common a long stand-off with the United States. They were both on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorism sponsoring countries until Havana was removed last year as part of a detente with Washington.

"We have always been on the side of the great Cuban people in view of atrocities and unjust sanctions," Zarif said.

"The government and Cuban people have also always shown us solidarity with regards to the atrocities committed by the empire."

Zarif's tour will also take him to Chile, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela.

Just last week, Cuba's new Economy Minister Ricardo Cabrisas made a trip to Tehran where he met with President Hassan Rouhani.
Turkish military hits Kurdish militants, Islamic State in Syria -NTV

ANKARA, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Turkey's military hit Islamic State targets with howitzers near the border town of Jarablus in Syria on Monday while Syrian Kurdish YPG positions were hit with artillery north of Manbij in Syria, broadcaster NTV said.
Zambian regulator suspends three broadcasters for conduct during election

LUSAKA, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Zambia's broadcasting regulator on Monday suspended the licences of three private broadcasters, saying they had posed a risk to peace and stability during this month's presidential election.

President Edgar Lungu narrowly won the Aug. 11 poll and his opponent Hakainde Hichilema has filed court papers to challenge the result, claiming the vote was rigged.

Muvi TV, the nation's largest private television station, Komboni Radio and Radio Itezhi Tezhi had before, during and after the election conducted themselves in an "unprofessional manner", the Independent Broadcasting Authority said in a statement.

The broadcasters' actions "posed a risk to national peace and stability," the regulator said without giving further details.

"Now only ZNBC will be allowed to broadcast, only Times of Zambia, only Zambia Daily Mail," opposition leader Hichilema said at a media briefing, referring to state-owned media.

"And all of these are departments of the ruling PF (Patriotic Front party), pushing PF propaganda."
Venezuela interior minister lashes out at U.S. over cocaine charges

CARACAS, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Venezuela's interior minister and former boss of the country's anti-narcotics agency, General Nestor Reverol, hit back on Monday at accusations by a U.S. federal court that he abetted cocaine trafficking.

Earlier this month, U.S. prosecutors announced an indictment charging that from 2008 to 2010, Reverol and another official took payments to alert traffickers over raids, hinder investigations and arrange the release of suspects, cash and drugs. He called the accusations "unfounded."

"I reject them categorically in all their parts," Reverol, 51, said at a news conference at the anti-narcotics agency he used to lead in Caracas.

"They want to use it as a political weapon," Reverol said, flanked by General Edylberto Molina, his former deputy and until recently Venezuela's defense attache in Germany. Molina was also named in the Brooklyn court indictment and sat stony faced in a gray suit during the conference, without speaking.

Venezuela is a large, lightly populated country that shares a long and lawless border with Colombia. It is a major transport hub for its neighbor's cocaine destined to Europe and to a lesser extent to the United States.

Washington has long alleged senior Venezuelan military officials and political allies of President Nicolas Maduro were complicit in the trade. Last year, two nephews of the first lady were indicted in New York on charges of attempting to smuggle cocaine to the United States via Honduras.

Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez kicked out the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2005 and Reverol said cocaine seizures almost doubled the following year.

The numbers have varied since then, but last year overall drug seizures were 79 tonnes, most of that cocaine, current ONA head Irwin Escalona told Reuters. This year until Aug. 21, Venezuela had seized 33 tonnes of drugs, including 29 tonnes of cocaine, Escalona said.

Venezuela started seizing precursor chemicals used in cocaine production last year along the Colombian border, leading them to cocaine laboratories in Venezuela, he said.

Reverol accused the United States of hypocrisy, leading the fight against drugs on one hand while being lax on marijuana cultivation on its own territory and overseeing a surge in opium production in Afghanistan.
Egypt wheat commission submits corruption report amid calls for minister to resign

By Eric Knecht and Maha El Dahan

CAIRO, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A fact-finding commission investigating corruption in Egypt's domestic wheat supplies has delivered its final report to parliament, a lawmaker said on Monday, amid mounting pressure on the minister of supplies to resign.

Egypt, the world's largest importer of wheat, has been mired in controversy over whether much of the roughly 5 million tonnes of grain the government said it procured in this year's harvest exists only on paper, the result of local suppliers falsifying receipts to boost government payments.

The wheat corruption report, delivered late last week to the head of parliament, concluded some 200,000 tonnes of wheat was missing at ten private storage sites visited by the commission, Yasser Omar, a lawmaker on the commission, told Reuters.

"Of course there is more than one million tonnes missing ... but we won't be able to know exactly how much is missing because we cant inspect every single site," he said.

Minister of Supplies Khaled Hanafi told Reuters last month only 4 percent of this year's procurement was missing. Grains industry officials have said the figure likely exceeds 2 million tonnes.

If Egypt's local wheat procurement numbers were misrepresented, it may have to spend more on foreign wheat purchases to meet domestic demand - even as the country faces a dollar shortage that has sapped its ability to import.

Parliament will discuss the report this week before questioning Hanafi and possibly holding a vote of no-confidence that could remove him from office, Omar said.

CALLS TO RESIGN

Egypt's fact-finding commission has brought an unprecedented level of scrutiny to Hanafi's management of the commodities sector which has already faced criticism from grains industry officials over issues such as hacked bread distribution smart cards to subsidised rice shortages.

Nader Nour El-Din, a former adviser to the ministry of supplies, said Hanafi's policies had allowed corruption to flourish, prices on staple commodities to jump to "unprecedented levels," and public sector companies to be "destroyed" amid favouritism for private sector businesses.

Hanafi maintains that his stewardship of the supplies ministry has led to numerous successes that include savings in flour and wheat as well as the end of bread lines.

While Hanafi has not been accused of directly profiting from corruption, parliamentarians, industry officials, and media commentators have in recent weeks pinned blame for the wheat crisis largely on his shoulders, with many calling for his resignation.

"The minister has to bear political responsibility for this," said Omar.

Criticism took an unexpected turn late last week, when fiery media personality and lawmaker Mustafa Bekry accused Hanafi on television of using 7 million Egyptian pounds ($788,300) in state funds to maintain a residency at a posh downtown Cairo hotel.

The minister later said in a statement he had paid for the long-term hotel residence with his own personal funds.

Appearing before a parliament committee on agriculture on Monday, Hanafi chose not to respond to questions about the hotel controversy, saying only that he had no plans to step down.

"My resignation is not whatsoever on the table," he said.

($1 = 8.8799 Egyptian pounds)
Libya sovereign fund claimant denounces U.N.-backed govt's management plan

By Claire Milhench

LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A claimant to the chairmanship of Libya's $67 billion sovereign fund on Monday denounced the appointment by the country's United Nations-backed government of a panel to run the fund, saying he had not been formally asked to step down.

Last week, the Government of National Accord (GNA) appointed a five-member caretaker committee to run the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA). The announcement was welcomed by Western governments, but it did not list AbdulMagid Breish amongst the panel members.

The GNA was designed to resolve a conflict that flared up in 2014, when an armed alliance took control of institutions in Tripoli and the newly elected parliament relocated to the east.

The hope was that it would reunify institutions such as the central bank and the LIA, but opposition to the GNA continues with the parliament in the east of Libya voting on Monday against a motion of confidence in the Tripoli-based administration.

The LIA has been hampered by a long-running leadership dispute, which mirrors the split nature of the country and its institutions following the fall of Gaddafi in 2011. This has led to multiple individuals claiming to lead key bodies such as the LIA, the central bank and the national oil company.

Breish was one of two men who claimed to be chairman of the LIA. He was appointed chairman in June 2013, but stepped aside a year later, then said he had been reinstated following a decision by the Libyan Court of Appeal.

His rival, Hassan Bouhadi, was appointed chairman by the authorities in the east of Libya. But he resigned earlier this month, saying political infighting had made it too difficult for him to carry out his duties.

He has been replaced by Ali Shamekh, who was installed as chief executive officer of the LIA by the Tobruk-based board of trustees.

In a statement issued on Monday, Breish questioned whether the GNA's move complied with Libyan law and challenged the technical expertise of the five-member panel.

The statement said Breish had not yet received a formal notice mandating him to hand over his responsibilities, but on receipt of this, he would make an application to the Libyan courts to clarify the legal position.

"While I accept and share the Government of National Accord's desire to unify the Libyan Investment Authority, it is my responsibility as chairman and CEO to ensure that it is done in compliance with Libyan law, that the technical expertise is in place to manage the institution and its funds, and that multi-million dollar litigations that we are pursuing in overseas courts are not adversely affected," he said.

"I am therefore seeking an expedited court ruling to clarify the current legal position."

The LIA is currently embroiled in two lawsuits against investment banks Goldman Sachs and Societe Generale, seeking over $3 billion lost in trades carried out under the Gaddafi regime.
Brazil, with no minimum retirement age, committed to pension reform -official

BRASILIA, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The Brazilian government is committed to overhaul its expensive pension system despite an incipient economic recovery that could ease social security expenditures in the short run, pension secretary Marcelo Caetano said on Monday.

Caetano, who is helping draft the unpopular reform that is expected to be submitted to Congress this year, said in an interview that the overhaul is crucial to sustain a pension system that represents more than a quarter of the country's overall expenditures.

He said short-term measures to reduce the system's deficit, such as lifting social security contribution exemptions for commodities' exporters and charities, are not enough to solve the problem. He added that the government has not yet decided over those exemptions or other measures.

"The executive is very conscious of the need to carry out the pension reform to preserve the system," said Caetano, a former pension researcher with the government's think tank IPEA.

The Brazilian pension system is one of the world's most generous, with ample benefits to workers, putting the fiscal accounts under great pressure at a time when the population is rapidly growing older. The system's annual deficit is expected to nearly double to around 150 billion reais ($46.70 billion) this year.

Brazil is one of the few countries in the world without a minimum retirement age.

The pension reform and a public spending cap are at the heart of interim President Michel Temer's plan to rebalance the budget, which is expected to post a record deficit above 10 percent of gross domestic product this year.

A crippling recession in its second year has curbed tax revenues and widened a record budget deficit in a country that not long ago posted hefty surpluses amid a booming economy.

Unions have vowed street demonstrations and strikes to protest the reform, which they say hurt the fundamental rights of workers in a country that struggles with wide income inequalities.

Caetano said the government will strive to reduce inequalities in the pension system, reviewing the preferential treatment of military staff, police officers and teachers, who currently can retire at a younger age with full pension benefits.
Israeli air strikes target Syria after Syrian fire hit its territory

JERUSALEM, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft attacked a target in Syria on Monday after errant fire from fighting among factions in Syria struck inside Israel, Israel's military said.

The Syrian fire had hit an open area near the border in the Golan Heights, causing no injuries, and in retaliation the air force targeted a "Syrian army launcher", the military said.
Germany, France, Italy say Europe must move forward after Brexit vote

By Isla Binnie

ABOARD ITALIAN WARSHIP GARIBALDI, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The leaders of the euro zone's biggest economies held talks on Monday in the aftermath of Britain's shock decision to leave the European Union and said Europe had to turn its back on populists who blamed Brussels for all its problems.

Speaking on an aircraft carrier off the Italian island of Ventotene, Germany's Angela Merkel, France's Francois Hollande and Italy's Matteo Renzi issued calls for closer security cooperation and better opportunities for young people.

In a meeting heavy on symbolism, the three leaders visited Ventotene to lay a wreath on the tomb of Altiero Spinelli, an Italian intellectual seen as a founding father of European unity.

They then boarded the Garibaldi, which is in the front line of an EU mission to combat people traffickers who have carried hundreds of thousands of migrants to Europe across the Mediterranean.

"For many populists, Europe is to blame for everything that goes wrong," Renzi said at the joint news conference before the leaders sat down for talks aboard the ship.

"Immigration, it's Europe's fault, the economy is bad, it's Europe's fault. But that is not the case."

The meeting was designed to lay the groundwork for an EU summit in Bratislava next month.

Monday's talks marked the beginning of a week of meetings for Merkel with other European governments that will see her travel to four countries and receive leaders from another eight.

"We respect Great Britain's decision but we also want to make clear that the other 27 (member states) are banking on a safe and prospering Europe," the German chancellor said.

DIVISIONS

But questions of how to bring about prosperity have divided the three countries.

Heavily-indebted Italy, whose economy has barely grown since the introduction of the euro currency in 1999, has repeatedly chafed against stern EU budget rules, and both Renzi and Hollande want greater flexibility to help boost growth.

Germany is keen for rules to be respected, and Renzi and Merkel sidestepped a question on deficit limits.

All three leaders are threatened at home. Merkel faces discontent over her controversial decision to let in a million mainly Muslim migrants last year.

France is reeling from a wave of Islamist attacks and Renzi faces a referendum on constitutional reform this autumn that could trigger his downfall.

The EU plans to offer incentives to African governments to help slow the flow of migrants into Europe, but divisions among member states are stark.

Italy, the main entry point for Africans but rarely their planned destination, is struggling to house migrants turned back from neighbouring countries including France, and disagrees with Germany over how to finance the response.

Hollande stressed the need to protect the EU from militant violence by tightening borders and sharing intelligence.
South African opposition beats ANC in vote to govern Johannesburg

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 22 (Reuters) - South Africa's main opposition party on Monday won control of the local government in Johannesburg, the country's economic hub, unseating the ruling party, which has run the municipal council since apartheid ended 22 years ago.

The victory gave the Democratic Alliance control of both Johannesburg and Pretoria, the nation's capital, following heavy losses in urban areas by the ruling African National Congress at the Aug. 3 local elections.

By taking over the two major cities, the DA has reshaped the political landscape in South Africa, where the ANC has ruled unopposed since it ended white-minority rule in 1994.

"We going to bring change that is going to bring jobs to our people. Let's get this city working again," said new mayor Herman Mashaba, a black businessman.

The ANC took 45 percent of the vote to the DA's 38 percent in the elections - short of an outright majority. The DA rallied smaller parties to back Mashaba, who won by 144 votes to 125 for the former mayor, ANC's Parks Tau. The leftist Economic Freedom Fighters became the kingmaker when it came third in the city.

The DA last week took over the municipality that includes the capital, Pretoria, and Nelson Mandela Bay, which includes manufacturing hub Port Elizabeth, also with the support of smaller parties .

The DA has been running the local government in Cape Town, where parliament is situated, since 2006.
Japan's first lady makes first visit to Pearl Harbor

By Alex Dobuzinskis

Aug 22 (Reuters) - Japan's first lady Akie Abe made an unofficial visit to Pearl Harbor on Sunday where she paid tribute to Americans killed in Japan's surprise attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941.

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Monday the first lady made her visit as a private individual, and it was not an indication that Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would visit Pearl Harbor, the Japan Times reported.

A visit by Abe would mark the first time an incumbent Japanese prime minister had gone to the Pearl Harbor memorial.

The attack on the naval base by Japanese torpedo planes, bombers and fighter planes drew the United States into World War Two when it declared war on Japan.

In May, Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, one of two cities the United States hit with atomic bombs in 1945. The other was Nagasaki.

Since Obama's visit there has been speculation over whether Abe would visit Pearl Harbor.

Akie Abe posted photographs on Facebook and wrote that she had gone to the Arizona Memorial offering flowers and prayer. No previous first lady has visited the site while her husband was in office.

More than 1,100 sailors and Marines were killed on the USS Arizona in the Japanese attack. The sunken battleship, at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, is the resting place of almost all of them.

"I have been to Hawaii many times but I have never been to Pearl Harbor," Japanese publication Gendai Business quoted the first lady as saying. "Over the past year ... I have had many chances to think about (World War Two), and I felt a strong urge to visit at least once in my lifetime," she said.

Last year marked the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two.

Katina Adams, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department's bureau of East Asian and Pacific affairs, said, "We are aware of First Lady Akie Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor." She declined further comment.

"The fact that Akie Abe has gone is a tremendous step forward for Japan to come to terms with its past," Shihoko Goto, senior Northeast Asia associate for the Asia program at Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said in a telephone interview. "This is certainly a balloon test to see what the public reaction will be."

Japan's embassy in Washington said in an email, "As Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga stated, First Lady Akie Abe visited Pearl Harbor as a personal visit, and we would like to refrain from making further comments on this subject."

More than 2,400 U.S. service members were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, which President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as a date that would "live in infamy."

In April, Prime Minister Abe spoke to the U.S. Congress and expressed "deep repentance" over Japan's role in World War Two. Japan is America's staunchest Asian ally.

Japanese Emperor Akihito has expressed remorse over the war.
In Iraq, Nigeria and now Turkey, child bombers strike

By Patrick Markey

ISTANBUL, Aug 22 (Reuters) - The boy looked scared and younger than 16 when Iraqi police grabbed him on the street in the northern city of Kirkuk. Pulling off his shirt, they found a two-kilogram bomb strapped to his skinny frame.

That was last Sunday. Less than a day earlier, Turkey was less fortunate: a teenage bomber detonated his suicide vest among dancing guests at a Turkish wedding party, officials say, killing 51 people, nearly half of them children themselves.

Saturday's attack at the wedding in Gaziantep marked not only Turkey's deadliest this year, but also the first time in Turkey that militants may have deployed a child bomber in a way already used to deadly effect in wars from Africa to Syria.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban has long used children. One 14-year-old bomber on a bicycle hit the Kabul NATO base in 2012 killing six people; two years later a teenager blew himself up at French cultural centre in the Afghan capital.

Researchers and officials say Islamic State and other militants are now increasingly using the same tactics, perhaps to build ranks depleted by losses, preserve adult fighters or simply catch security forces off guard.

In West Africa, Boko Haram has preyed on displaced children or young girls it kidnapped to force them to become bombers. In Iraq and Syria, activists say Islamic State took in children from towns it captures or recruited families to its territory, and indoctrinated their children in its schools and camps.

Islamic State in particular, highlights its child recruits for its "Cubs of the Caliphate" brigades, publishing images and videos on social media of children receiving training and indoctrination, and carrying out bombings or executions.

"Child recruitment across the region is increasing," said Juliette Touma, a UNICEF regional spokesperson. "Children are taking a much more active role ..., receiving training on the use of heavy weapons, manning checkpoints on the front lines, being used as snipers and in extreme cases being used as suicide bombers."

Little has been publicly released about the attacker in the Gaziantep bombing. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that the bomber was between 12 to 14 years old, and said Islamic State was probably responsible.

The blast tore into celebrations at a Kurdish wedding on the street late at night. As many as 22 of the dead were under the age of 14. No one claimed the attack, but Islamic State in the past has targeted Kurdish gatherings to stir ethnic tensions.

Turkey's prime minister was more cautious on Monday, saying it was too early to say who carried out the attack, though security sources say witnesses reported the bomber was a child.

Turkish authorities are also investigating whether militants may have placed the explosives on the suspect, without his or her knowledge before detonating them long distance.

That tactic has been used before in Iraq, where children or even mentally disadvantaged adults have been dispatched as unwitting bomb couriers into markets and checkpoints before they are blown up from afar.

TEENAGE RECRUITS

In the failed attack in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk a day later, local television images and photographs showed the boy crying and screaming as he was grabbed by Iraqi security forces near an interior ministry building.

Security officials said the boy is 16 years old, though local media reports said he was much younger. He is an Iraqi national from Mosul, the largest urban centre still under militant control, which Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces backed by U.S. air strikes are moving to liberate.

Hisham al-Hashimi, an analyst and author who advises the Iraqi government on Islamic State, says militants this year had reactivated their Heaven's Youth Brigade, in reaction to the group's battlefield losses in Iraq and Syria.

"Teenagers are easier to recruit for suicide missions, especially in moments of suffering or despair having lost loved ones," he said. "They also attract less attention and less suspicion than male adults."

Child recruits who have escaped from Islamic State ranks in its base in Syria's Raqaa have described how they were taught to handle weapons, and also how to detonate suicide belts.

A study in February for Combating Terrorism Center at West Point military academy that examined Islamic State propaganda on child and youth 'martyrs' between January 2015 and 2016, found three times as many suicide operations involving children over the year.

"They represent an effective form of psychological warfare-to project strength, pierce defenses, and strike fear into enemy soldiers' hearts," the study said. "Islamic State is mobilizing children and youth at an alarming rate."

Those tactics are mirrored in West Africa where U.N. officials have tracked a rise in attacks like the one carried out by a girl as young as ten who last year exploded a bomb in a busy market place in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, killing 16 people.

Security sources at the time said the explosive device was wrapped around her body.

In an April report, UNICEF said attacks involving child suicide bombers between 2014 and this year rose four-fold in northeastern Nigeria, where militant group Boko Haram is based, and neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

A 12-year-old Nigerian girl captured with explosives in Cameroon in March told police she had been abducted by Boko Haram after the group overran her village a year earlier.

According to the UNICEF report, nearly two thirds of all the child attackers they tracked were girls. In the first six months of this year alone, UNICEF says it has also noted 38 child suicide bombers in West Africa.
Jailed Gambia opposition official dies in hospital - party

DAKAR, Aug 22 (Reuters) - A detained official from Gambia's main opposition movement died in hospital over the weekend, his United Democratic Party said, its second member to lose their life in custody since the start of a crackdown on protests.

Solo Krummah was arrested with 14 others on May 9 during rallies calling for electoral reform, and died on Saturday after an operation at the Edward Francis's Small Teaching Hospital in the capital Banjul, the UDP said.

His family had not authorised any operation and there were no details on what the treatment involved or how he died, the party added in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from the government or hospital authorities.

The U.S. State Department said the United States was "deeply concerned" by Krummah's death and was "troubled" by reports of government mistreatment of detained opposition figures, including allegations of torture.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner called for an "independent investigation of all credible allegations of torture and abuse" and urged Gambia to release all political prisoners and halt its crackdown on opposition politicians.

Activists and opposition members have been staging sporadic protests, demanding reforms before December elections - a rare display of defiance against President Yahya Jammeh.

Nearly 50 protesters were arrested in April and May, including UDP party leader Ousainu Darboe and at least 18 other senior members. Eleven opposition supporters were convicted in July, with sentences ranging from fines to three years in prison.

Krummah, the UDP's deputy chairman of the Sandu Constituency in eastern Gambia, was detained in Mile 2 prison in Banjul and admitted to hospital on August 8 under armed guard, the UDP said in its statement.

"The lawyers have been consulted and will act accordingly to get to the cause of the death of Solo and for the body to be given to the party and family for a fitting burial," the UPD added.

The party's national organising secretary, Solo Sandeng, died in custody in April after being arrested in a similar protest.

The UDP says Sandeng was tortured to death - a charge dismissed by the government.
RICHMOND  The Surry County Sheriffs Office on Sunday announced that it arrested a county man who authorities say led a trooper on a high-speed chase through Louisa County on Aug. 8.

Justin Eugene Abney, 28, was taken into custody Sunday evening, according to a post on the Sheriffs Offices Facebook page.

Abney was wanted on charges of eluding police, reckless driving, improper registration, lack of motorcycle endorsement and failing to pay an uninsured motorist fee.

Authorities have said a trooper monitoring radar on eastbound Interstate 64 clocked Abneys motorcycle at 102 mph near mile marker 147 in Louisa. The posted speed limit is 70 mph.

Authorities say Abney sped away at 120 mph after the trooper turned on his lights and attempted to stop the motorcycle.

The trooper followed the motorcycle for about 12 miles before ending the pursuit.
Updated at 8:42 p.m.

The mother of a new University of Virginia student died after being struck by a vehicle at the Shops at Stonefield on Sunday.

An Albemarle County police spokeswoman said three people  a mother, father and daughter  were crossing the street toward the shopping area when a driver was turning left from Bond Street onto District Avenue toward Hydraulic Road when the vehicle struck them.

The spokeswoman said the mother  57-year-old Bonnie Baha from San Marino, California  was transported to the University of Virginia Medical Center with life-threatening injuries. She was later pronounced dead. The father and daughter were sent to the hospital by ambulance with non-life-threatening injuries, and were still being treated as of Sunday evening.

The family was in the area to drop off a first-year student at UVa, according to a news release from the county police.

No charges had been placed as of Sunday evening, according to the release, and the crash is still under investigation.

County police are asking anyone who was in the area and witnessed the incident to call Officer R. Jamerson at (434) 296-5807.

Sundays incident marked the fifth fatality involving a vehicle in Albemarle County this year.
Gov. Terry McAuliffe will announce today that he has restored the rights of more than 13,000 felons on a case-by-case basis, two sources said.

During a noon ceremony at the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial on Capitol Square, the governor also is expected to detail his rights-restoration process for other felons who have completed their terms.

In a 4-3 ruling on July 22, the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down as unconstitutional McAuliffes April 22 executive order that restored voting and other civil rights to about 206,000 felons who had completed their terms.

The court ordered the Virginia Department of Elections to cancel the registration of all felons who had been invalidly registered under McAuliffes actions.

The governor had promised to swiftly restore rights a second time for the roughly 13,000 ex-offenders who registered to vote under his order before the Supreme Courts ruling. His office termed Mondays event a major restoration of rights announcement.

As yet unanswered is how McAuliffes new actions and procedures will affect a series of complications that resulted from the rights restoration dispute.

The Virginia commissioner of elections said Friday that its up to Richmond officials to decide how to handle the candidacy of a felon who won and subsequently lost the right to vote and ran for office as a result of the governors now-overturned restoration order.

That guidance pertained only to the case of Richmond School Board candidate Kevin Starlings. He registered to vote after McAuliffe issued the blanket restoration. Starlings was certified to appear on the ballot but then lost the right to vote when the Supreme Court overturned McAuliffes order.

The rights restoration dispute also has ramifications for Richmonds mayoral race. The ballot signature of a single felon who registered to vote this year, then lost his political rights in the Supreme Courts decision, could be critical to candidate Michelle R. Mosby.

Four of Mosbys 545 signatures to qualify for the ballot were from felons who registered under McAuliffes order that the Supreme Court overturned. One of those four was in Richmonds 1st District, where Mosby obtained 50 qualified signatures, the precise number she needed for each district.

Mosby has been certified as a candidate for mayor, but state officials have not yet given local officials guidance on the issue.

Another side effect of the rights restoration dispute is that the Supreme Courts reversal of McAuliffes order has left gun rights in limbo for some ex-offenders.

Restoration of civil rights is a prerequisite to apply for the restoration of firearms rights. A number of ex-offenders used their new status to apply to circuit courts to restore their gun rights and now possess firearms.

The governors office has blamed the complications on Republican leaders in the legislature who challenged McAuliffes order in court. GOP leaders say they brought the suit to hold McAuliffe accountable to the state constitution.

Michael Martz reports for the Richmond Times-Dispatch
GOP Demands Answers on Kaines 2009 Bid to Deport Convicted Murderer, read the headline in Politico the other day. The story referred to the controversy over then-Gov. Tim Kaines decision regarding Jens Soering.

Germanys penal policy is laxer than Americas, so sending Soering home probably would have meant his release within a couple of years. But because Kaines successor, Bob McDonnell, countermanded Kaines effort, Soering continues to serve time behind bars at Buckingham Correctional Center.

Dels. Rob Bell and Todd Gilbert say Kaine has never given a satisfactory explanation for his actions. The unstated implication is obvious: Liberal Tim Kaine is soft on crime.

Maybe. Then again, maybe Kaine was simply following proper Republican Party doctrine.

After all, in its 2016 Platform, the GOP says: The Department of Homeland Security must use its authority to keep dangerous aliens off our streets and to expedite expulsion of criminal aliens.

Seems like Kaine was doing precisely what the GOP wants. So whats the beef?

Richmond Times-Dispatch
Illinois attorney general recently cleared up some confusion about that states Freedom of Information Act. Virginia officials should take note.

The AG, Lisa Madigan, ruled that emails sent or received on personal email accounts still qualify as public records if they discuss public business. The specific case concerned a request by CNN for emails related to a police shooting.

Government acts through its employees, Madigan concluded, and it is the content of a communication  not its mode of transmission  that determines whether it is a public record.

Those same principles apply in Virginia  and have for a long time.

The Code of Virginia defines public records as all writings and recordings that consist of letters, words or numbers, or their equivalent . . . however stored, and regardless of physical form or characteristics, prepared or owned by, or in the possession of a public body or its officers, employees or agents in the transaction of public business.

That pretty much covers it, no?

Richmond Times-Dispatch
Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading.

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy
Culpeper Christian School opened 40 years ago in the fall of 1976 with three young boys in Emily Bussengers kindergarten class.

Bussenger taught in a one-room classroom when the church and school were located on East Street in downtown Culpeper.

Since then, the school has expanded twice - the first time in 1990 when it moved into a 10,000-square-foot structure on Old Rixeyville Road and more recently when it doubled in size in 2009.

After Bussengers retirement from teaching full-time, she returned part-time a few years ago to her beloved school  alongside 30 fellow staffers.

Four decades later, the school welcomed exactly 200 students on Monday, according to school spokeswoman Laura Rose.

Culpeper Christian Schools Administrator Mike Owings said he was pleased to open Monday with the schools largest enrollment ever.

Its a testament to the goodness of the Lord Jesus and the faithfulness of the talented teachers, staff, and Board of Culpeper Christian School. [I] also marvel at the dedication of school families, who often sacrifice so much to provide the type of education that they want for their children, shared Owings.

It was a thrill to see so many happy and excited students pour through our doors this morning. The staff and I feel so privileged to work with each child to help develop their gifts and talents for the Lord, while reminding them that they are made in the image of God and have a fantastic future ahead of them as they grow in their relationship with Him. This is such a joyful place. It really is an extended family, where we are all growing together and supporting one another to achieve our very best for the glory of God and for the good of others  and we are excited to add over a dozen new families to the school this year.

Rose agreed saying, You feel like family when you walk in the red doors at CCS.

According to Owings, the student enrollment stood around 180 for the last couple of years. In 2002, he said CCS started with 90 students.

Owings also added that during the summer, there was a waiting list for several grade levels at Culpeper Christian.

The faith-based private school provides academic studies for preschoolers to eighth-graders.

Rose added that fourth- through eighth-graders are utilizing a new smart board projector in their classrooms this year.

Leanne Falconers sixth-grade students used the new interactive projector in her classroom Monday to examine several Petri dishes during science class.

Rhonda Simmons can be reached at rsimmons@starexponent.com or 540/ 825-6397.
When the Culpeper Correctional Center for Women opens in July 2017 in the old Culpeper Juvenile Correctional Center in Mitchells, the prison will likely house about 500 female inmates, according to Virginia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Kinney.

The juvenile center located on Coffeewood Drive off Rapidan Road (Route 615)closed in July 2014 after Gov. Terry McAuliffe cut 565 jobsmainly Department of Corrections employeesto eliminate a budget shortfall.

The move reportedly saved the state $15 million over two years and eliminated 119 local positions.

The Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice turned over the Culpeper facility to the Virginia Department of Corrections when the juvenile facility closed two years ago for use as a womens correctional facility.

But budget shortages delayed the original opening of the womens prison from January 2015 until July 2017.

According to law makers, the switch was approved because the juvenile offender population was decreasing while the adult female population continues to increase.

Former Department of Juvenile Justice Director Mark Gooch said previously that since 2005, the number of youths entering the juvenile justice system because of criminal behavior has decreased from 1,000 average daily population to 600 offenders annually.

We see this as a very positive trend, one that can be credited to extraordinary teamwork between our courts and our professional staff in finding creative, effective ways to provide youths a path other than incarceration to a successful future, said Gooch.

Virginia Department of Corrections Director Harold Clarke said this transition will be a much needed resource for adult female offenders.

Turning the Culpeper juvenile facility into a DOC facility for adult female offendersan occasion heralded by successful alternatives to incarceration for youthsis a positive development not only for both agencies but for taxpayers, said Clarke.

According to juvenile justice spokesman Greg Davy, the estimated 40 juveniles housed in Culpeper were transported in 2014 to the two remaining juvenile correctional centers in the Richmond area: Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center, located in Chesterfield, and Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center, located in Powhatan, where theyll continue to receive the same educational services at those campus high schools.

Before its closure in July 2014, the Culpeper Juvenile Correctional Center housed males 18 to 20.

Opened in March 1999, the juvenile prisonwhich is about nine miles southwest of downtown Culpeperwas designed as a maximum security facility.

The 153,500-square-foot facility was designed for 293 beds, including the detention wing leased to Culpeper County, but when Culpeper closed the building due to the states population reduction a few years ago, the capacity was lowered to 156, according to Robert Wilburn, capital outlay director for the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice.

The building features four housing units, the main administrative section with the school and dining hall/kitchen and associated spaces. The separate standalone buildingsnot included in the overall square footageinclude a gatehouse, maintenance shop, tractor garage, warehouse storage and training modular spaces.
Former Culpeper Town Councilwoman Emma Richards advocated for fairness in making decisions that would impact her native town as she did in her daily life as a mother, grandmother, social activist and friend to many.

A gentle and kind spirit who spoke with authority and led by example, Richards died Friday at Culpeper Health & Rehab Center after a long illness. She was 74.

Richards only daughter, Joan Robinson, of Manassas, said she was a wonderful mother.

Very stern, Robinson added, But a great listener. She always wanted us to do our very best.

Richards had six sons as well as 15 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Helping others was her personality, said Robinson, and giving back.

Richards served on Culpeper Town Council for eight years, until 2008, during which time she sat on various committees including town & county interaction, economic development advisory, public safety & public works and the 250th anniversary oversight committee.

She was a strong supporter of the nearly-finished expansion of the Culpeper Senior Center and worked for years in Culpeper Human Services and also in special education at Fauquier County Public Schools.

Emma was a go-getter and she was always looking out for her constituents, said Culpeper Mayor Mike Olinger, who started his service on town council in 2000, the same as Richards. Everything she was a part of she took charge and tried to make it the best. She had a quiet way, but she was able to get things done.

Richards was past president of the Culpeper Branch NAACP. Current president Sanford Reaves said he knew her as a boy growing up in the same area of town.

I remember as a young boy, she was a very strong woman, he said, and that strength just went on. It didnt surprise me when she ran for town council.

Reaves said Richards always tried to further her education, earning her associates degree from Germanna Community College and then a bachelors degree from Old Dominion University later in life after raising her family.

She was a formative supporter of the NAACP, he added, and always wanted to help others.

Emma might have seemed quiet, but when she got in an environment where something needed to be said, she would speak up, said Reaves, calling her a trusted representative for local African-Americans. She had a lot of contacts and was one of the ones you could go to and she would give you an understanding of how issues would go.

In visiting her several months ago at the nursing home, Reaves said Richards wanted to be sure she was current on her NAACP membership dues.

She was always adamant about those things, he said. Emma was a true supporter of the civil rights movement.

Born in 1942, Richards attended George Washington Carver Regional High School during segregation and was a founding member years later of the alumni association that has raised thousands of dollars in scholarships for local students.

Her daughter said she believed in equality for everyone.

We may be in all colors, but thats what makes us beautiful is what she thought, Robinson said. She believed in standing up for what was right.

Richards was a life-long member of historic Antioch Baptist Church in Culpeper.

Ms. Emma was one of the sweetest ladies I have ever met, said the Rev. Adrian Sledge, pastor at Antioch. She is the reason why we started our Bible study via conference call. She loves her church and has made some type of significant impact on every person she encountered. She will be missed.

In her lifetime, Richards was involved with various nonprofit groups including the Red Cross, Salvation Army, the homeless shelter, Services for Abused Families, Culpeper Literacy Council, and Culpeper Renaissance. She helped bring public transit to Culpeper and in 1995 was named Ms. Culpeper in the Virginia International Pageant, proving that she was also beautiful on the outside.

Even in her final years as a rare blood disease sapped her strength and caused immobility, Richards was only ever a phone call away.

Ms. Richards wants you to know that she may be limited due to her health issues but she is still willing to be of help to anyone in need, according to a 2012 spotlight article about her in the Antioch Baptist newsletter.

In addition to her daughter, Richard is survived by five sons  George Robinson, of Richmond; Darryl Robinson and Nathaniel Robinson, of Fredericksburg; Michael Robinson of Dumfries and Dana Robinson of Culpeper. She was preceded in death by a sixth son, Gary Robinson.

Found & Sons Funeral Chapels is handling the funeral arrangements. It will be held Saturday at Culpeper Baptist Church on West Street starting with a biography viewing at 10 a.m. and a service at 11 a.m. with interment to follow at Canaan Baptist Church in Reva and reception at Antioch Baptist Church.
Three Northern Virginia men accused of killing a Louisa County man during a shootout earlier this year have been indicted on first-degree murder charges, according to authorities.

On July 11, a grand jury indicted Darcel Murphy, 29, of Stafford; Dion Phoenix, 24, of Woodbridge; and Tobias Owens, 30, also of Woodbridge, on charges of first-degree murder, robbery, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and use of a firearm in the commission of murder. Murphy and Phoenix also face charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Originally charged with second-degree murder, the grand jury upgraded the charge for all three men to first-degree murder, according to a news release.

At about 6:45 p.m. on March 30, rescue crews were called out to a home in the 2100 block of Oakland Road in Louisa County after the homeowner, Kevin Eugene Robinson, was found dead by a visiting family member. Robinsons body was covered in a blanket with just the lower part of his body visible, according to authorities.

Thinking Robinson had had a heart attack, the family member called 911, but when rescue arrived, authorities said it was clear Robinson had been shot several times. The rescue scene immediately turned into a criminal investigation.

Authorities said the scene indicated a shootout between Robinson and the home invaders.

According to court records, Murphy has previous convictions for robbery and abduction in Hampton County, as well as a robbery in Newport News. He also pleaded guilty to possession with the intent to distribute a Schedule I or II drug in Prince William County.

Murphy, Owens and Phoenix are scheduled to be arraigned in Louisa County Circuit Court on Sept. 12, according to a news release from the Louisa County Sheriffs Office. But according to online court records, Owens is only scheduled to be in Louisa County General District Court on Sept. 8. Clarification from authorities could not be confirmed Monday.

Murphy and Phoenix are being held without bond at the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange. Owens is being held without bond at the Rappahannock Regional Jail.
LONDON - England - The length and breadth of thug Britain is quivering in fear as terrified hoodie gangsters armed to the teeth are coming to terms with the prospect of receiving an Acceptable Behaviour Contract (ABC) from Jacqui Smith MP.

Thugs across Britain who have been carrying out a daily violence festival of hatred have voiced their fears on new proposals by Jacqui Smith the Home Secretary to make them sign a contract guaranteeing they change their ways and embrace good behaviour.

The new Acceptable Behaviour Contract (ABC) proposed by the Labour Government is aimed at quelling the mass murder and gun/knife killing spree that is happening on Britains streets every day.

The word on the violent streets of Britain from the thugs is that it is working.

Jacqui Smiths wonderful ABCs plan is a profound miracle amongst the gun-toting hoodie maniacs that are terrorising everyone.

The Daily Squib has had exclusive access to some of the hoodie thugs that are now blighting good ol Blighty.

Out of Englands 10,689 violent teenage gangs only one was prepared to speak to us  The Scrotes Boys of Manchester who have a massive following of 500 odd children/teenagers ranging from 9 years old to 18.

We shot people for fun, innit! If someone called the cops they get done. School for me was the street n I seen and done many boys, we jacked them cuz they crossed us. These are the words of Pete K who was the regional gang leader for this area. He also explains what happened if other gang members entered his area. If they get out alive then they was unlucky cuz we take down everyone then.





The Scrotes Gang of Manchester have fun after shooting

a disabled man and stealing his wheelchair

After the teen gang members are given an ABC they are also given an mp3 player and a safari holiday trip of a lifetime. The Home Office says this is to encourage young offenders and murderers that crime does not pay.

We ask the gang member what he thinks of signing a contract to curb his behaviour and violent ways. I was violent and I jacked alot of kids in my time but when I signed my ABC I was a changed boy. The ABC contract seems to have worked with him and he is now working for local Government as a councillor. Even though he could not read or write since signing the contract with an X, he has made a remarkable turn-around and all this thanks to Jacqui Smiths ABC contract.

ABC is truly a miracle cure indeed for the gun-toting, knife-wielding, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals that are plaguing the streets of Britain.

Since Jacqui Smith has introduced the amazing ABC contracts, crime has been reduced by 995% in the UK and over 3.9 million pieces of heavy weaponry have been handed in to Police Stations.

After I introduced ABC contracts all crime has dropped dramatically. We can now walk down our streets without being violently maimed, shot or stabbed, Jacqui Smith tells the Squib.

The Metropolitan Police who have been attending to highly prioritised duties such as paperwork, internal equality monitoring and conducting health and safety assessments for officers likely to be caught in a crime situation, are understandably too busy to realise the efficacy of the ABC but will address the issue after a draft fact-finding white paper is issued later on in the week.

Jacqui Smith MP : The ABC contract ensures that crime is halted in its tracks. Once they sign the piece of paper that means they have to stop the mass killing and looting, drugs and burglary or they will be in trouble and receive an ASBO after 12 months of supervision.

It seems the ABC has made Britain safe once again and we can now all thank the Labour Government for their wonderful crime-fighting policies.
Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) has been reportedly planning to launch the most affordable electric SUV via its Mahindra Electric Unit. The same was previously known as Mahindra Reva, after the M&M acquired the homegrown electric car company Reva in May 2010.

Currently, the compact electric SUV in the works has been code named S107. The idea is to fuse Mahindras special expertise in the SUV space with that of the Revas expertise in making electric cars. With its line-up in the electric vehicles segment consisting of the e2o, verito, etc., Mahindra believes in pioneering into the electric vehicles space, which it considers as the future.

If anyone is preparing feverishly for a disruptive future of mobility, it is Mahindra, Group Chairman Anand Mahindra told shareholders at the 70th Annual General Meeting, and added, We fully intend to be profitable participants in this new world.

Besides the e2o, Verito and the new compact SUV, Mahindra has also been contemplating the launch of an electric version of the KUV, though nothing has been finalized nor confirmed yet on that front. So going forward, Mahindra will be offering more of SUVs and commercial vehicles in the electric vehicles space at affordable costs.

Meanwhile, Ford is also likely to chip in with the launch of an electric version of its successful compact SUV Ford EcoSport. However, its a five year plan that will go on till 2020-21 before the American carmaker would launch the first electric version of the EcoSport.

Mahindra has been making its foray into the electric vehicle segment quite early in hopes of selling high volumes and working out economies of scale, expecting to sell initially about 6,000 units each year of the electric, hybrid and CNG models. In the meantime, Mahindra will also try to boost its export market for the Mahindra Electric range of vehicles.

While Indian carmakers Tata Motors and Mahindra came together to develop affordable electric and hybrid vehicle components via a consortium, Ford India opted out of the initiative to develop its own electric version of the EcoSport.

Source: Vicky.in
JNPT will be developing waterways in seven to eight rivers in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Goa.

Mumbai: To raise a part of large pool of resources needed to fund the ambitious inland waterways plan, Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari today said all major ports have been asked to start subsidiaries which will leverage dollar-denominated billing to raise low-cost money.

His Ministry has also written to the Finance Ministry to allocate 5 per cent of the corpus coming from the cess on petrol and diesel for inland waterways, he said.

"My Ministry's total budget is Rs 1,800 crore and it is not possible to undertake the inland waterways projects within that," Gadkari told reporters on the sidelines of the annual Indo-American Chamber of Commerce meeting here.

Starting with the largest container port JNPT, the Ministry has asked major ports to start subsidiaries for the purpose, he said.

JNPT will be developing waterways in seven to eight rivers in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Goa by raising cheaper forex credit against its annual foreign currency billing of over Rs 4,000 crore, Gadkari said.

Nearly Rs 50,000 crore in low-cost borrowings can be raised by JNPT alone through the receivables, he said, adding the Ministry has decided to ask other ports to start similar subsidiaries.

With resource mobilisation being a key worry, the Shipping Ministry has also asked the Finance Ministry to part with 5 per cent of the overall petrol-diesel cess for inland waterways, Gadkari said.

At present, the cess is being utilised for railway and road development (both at Centre and state levels), he said, and stressed it should also be used for inland waterways being developed under the Jal Marg Vikas plan funded by the World Bank.

The country has a vast network of rivers and canals stretching over 14,500 km.

The Centre has been collecting Rs 2 each on a litre of petrol and diesel since 2000 to part fund national highways and the money is parked with Central Road Fund, which was set up through a Central legislation. The Rs 2 per litre cess on petrol and diesel contributes about Rs 8,000 crore a year.

The Government has already approved developing 106 new inland water projects spread across 24 states as national waterways in addition to the five existing networks after the National Waterways Bill 2015 was approved by the Lok Sabha during last the winter session.

Currently, cargo movement along the five existing national waterways totalling 4,434 km is not even 3 million tonne a year, or a paltry 3 per cent of all cargo movement in the country.
Reliance Jio being a core member of COAI ought to have been consulted and its comments and views duly considered as part of any representation that the association intends to set to any government official.

New Delhi: In a no holds barred attack, Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio on August 22 lashed out at mobile phone operators body COAI, of which it is a member, for acting "maliciously" as "mouthpiece" of certain dominant incumbent operators having vested interests against the company.

Hours after the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) wrote to Prime Minister's Office (PMO) alleging free data and voice being offered by Reliance Jio under beta test was generating huge traffic using spectrum allocated for commercial use but no revenue came to government, the company shot of a letter to the association with copies marked to all the addresses the COAI letter had gone to.

Reliance, which is a member of the COAI, alleged that it received an email from COAI at 1505 hours on August 22 stating it would be sending a letter to the government on Jio's test service but the letter was actually submitted to the government officials "as early as 1250 hrs."

"Your email therefore is a blatant lie and a fraudulent act," it said.

"Prior to your email, Reliance Jio was not contacted in any manner whatsoever, as regards the intent or the contents of your attached letters to receive its views or comments."

Reliance Jio being a core member of COAI ought to have been consulted and its comments and views duly considered as part of any representation that the association intends to set to any government official, it said. COAI, it said, cannot unilaterally decide on sending out any such representations without following due process.

"COAI's act of sending the subject letters is yet another instance of abuse of process, which apart from being unethical also tantamount to breach of trust and gross violation of COAI's stated process in this regard."

Reliance Jio alleged that COAI was "deliberately and maliciously acting at the behest of and as a mouthpiece of certain specific incumbent dominant operators, having vested interest against Reliance Jio."

COAI, it alleged, is "openly promoting cartelisation in the guise of promoting the cause of the industry while acting perpetrating anti competition practices and misguiding and misinforming the government, statutory authorities and the consumers."

Reliance Jio said the incumbent dominant operators are "wilfully and deliberately in violation of the licence conditions restricting interconnection augmentation (and) MNP."

In yet another letter to the PMO today, existing operators under the aegis of COAI said the data traffic generated by such "so called beta tests" is rivalling the combined traffic of the rest of the operators who have been in operation for 15-20 years.

Reliance Jio said the contents of the COAI letter are "devoid of any merits and contains deliberate misstatements constituting misrepresentation of actual facts and are defamatory in nature."

It warned COAI to refrain from continuing the perpetration of "misdeeds forthwith".
New Delhi: Former CCI head Ashok Chawla will take over as non-executive part-time chairman of Yes Bank from October as the lender has received approval from the Reserve Bank for this appointment.

Yes Bank said Chawla's appointment is for a period of three years, with effect from the date of joining the bank.

"Chawla will take charge as non-executive part-time chairman of the bank with effect from October 30, 2016 upon the expiry of the term of the current Chairperson, Radha Singh," Yes Bank said in a release.

He was appointed as an independent director on the Board of Yes Bank on March 5, 2016.

A career bureaucrat, Chawla served as the chairman of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) post retirement. With over 40 years of experience as a civil servant, he held various secretarial jobs with the central government.

He also worked with various multilateral bodies and headed public sector enterprises.

Currently, he is the Chairman of NSE and chairs the governing council of The Energy and Research Institute (TERI).
Mumbai: Ranbir Kapoor is a big star in India and is immensely popular even abroad owing to their sizeable Indian population. But turns out not many Hollywood stars know him.

In an interview on CNN News18, Ranbir shared a few of his hilariously embarrassing interactions with Hollywood A-listers.

Elaborating on one of those incidents, Ranbir said, I am star struck. I have run behind Natalie Portman in Tribeca in New York, where she was on the phone and I didnt realize if she was crying, I quickly went behind and said I love your and before I could say work, she turned to me and said Get lost and walked away. So I have my heart broken also, but I would still chase them.

Portman, an acclaimed actress, is renowned worldwide, for her performances in films as Black Swan, for which she had also won the Academy Award for best actress.

Ranbir also spoke about fanboying over his self-professed inspiration, director Quentin Tarantino in London, when he was shooting for Karan Johars Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. Tarantino was entering his car, when Ranbir tried to get close and seek a picture, but the director was in no mood to oblige. He said that he was teased by the film's cast for a week for the snub.

He, though, had a friendly interaction with the Nightcrawler star Jake Gyllenhaal.

Watch the full interview here:
Apart from Sivaji Ganesan who received the award in 1995, Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Nandita Das and Shah Rukh Khan are among other Indians who have been conferred with the award. (Photo: File)

Chennai: Its a rare honour that visited Tamil Nadu nearly 21 years after the thespian Sivaji Ganesan was conferred the prestigious Chevalier de LOrdre Arts et Lettres. Veteran actor Kamal Haasan will be conferred with the Chevalier de LOrdre Arts et Lettres award (Knight in the National Order Arts and Letters) by the minister of culture and communication, France.

The award is recognition of significant contributions to the arts, literature, or the propagation of these fields, as well as people who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world. The award will be conferred on Kamal Haasan at a special ceremony soon.

The distinction, which is yet another laurel for the actor, is in recognition of his high level of artistic excellence and his distinguished career achievements. The award will be conferred on Kamal Haasan at a special ceremony, a statement from the actor said.

Apart from Sivaji Ganesan who received the award in 1995, Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Nandita Das and Shah Rukh Khan are among other Indians who have been conferred with the Chevalier Order for actors.

Ulaganayagan Kamal Haasan has been giving hits every year, though some of the films like Vishwaroopam (2013), Dasavatharam (2008) and Hey Ram (2000) to name a few, kicked up controversies. Currently, he is busy shooting the trilingual comedy Sabash Naidu.

He has won three national awards for the Best Actor and Presidents Gold Medal for the Best Child Artist for the film Kalathur Kannamma (1960) and was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Indian government in 2014, in his spectacular career spanning over half-a-century. Kamals magnum opus Vishwaroopam 2, sequel to the blockbuster film is to be released soon.

In a statement issued by South Indian Artistes Association, the Sangam congratulated Ulaganayagan Kamal Haasan who has been conferred with French governments highest award Chevalier. After Nadigar Thilagam Sivaji Ganesan, Kamal has been honoured with the prestigious title. Nadigar Sangam will felicitate the veteran at a grand function at a later date, it said.

The actor took to Twitter in January this year and within 24 hours over 30,000 people started followed him. He also surprised his fans with his version of national anthem. His daughter Shruti Haasan welcomed appa who made his debut on Twitter.

Born on Nov.7, 1954 in Paramakudi, Kamal debuted as a child artiste in the film Kalathur Kannamma (1960). Since then, he has starred in over 200 films in the major Indian languages including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi and he donned the mantle of numerous roles from child artiste, to romantic lead to one of the most respected and revered heroes of the film industry today.

He wrote his first script at age 18 for the film Unarchigal (1976), which was followed by films that have gone on to become cult classics Rajapaarvai (1981),

Sathya (1988), Apoorva Sahotharargal (1989), Thevar Magan (1992), Mahanadhi (1994), Kurudhippunal (1995), Avvai Shanmugi (1996), Hey Ram (2000), Pammal K Sambandam (2002), Panchathanthiram (2002) and Anbe Sivam (2003).

I dedicate this award to admirers, audience

Reacting to the announcement, Kamal Haasan said, the French Government has kindly conferred the Chevalier Award for arts and letters on me. On this occasion, I bow before my more deserving forerunners Mr Sathyajit Ray and Mr Sivaji Ganesan who made even the common man realise the value of the Chevalier award. I thank the Ambassador of France in India Mr Alexandere Ziegler, who intimated me of this honour. This award humbles me rather than stifle me with pride.

I realise my journey in my chosen field has not been alone. Teachers and admirers abounded around me with motherly care and they have applauded my every little step forward. The melancholy of my parents not being alive to see this day is allayed by the fact the elders and the young are still around in my family to enjoy it. I dedicate this award to my admirers and audience who give me the tenacity of purpose to purse to this day and moment my arts and letters.
Recently, Chennai welcomed renowned filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who was in the city for a special screening of his latest film Raman Raghav 2.0. Organised by Tamil Studios, the event brought together many film buffs and fans of parallel cinema, including writers like Charu Nivedita who were present for the viewing  which was followed by an interaction with the audience.

The Dev D director was shot with numerous questions about the film, Kollywood, his personal life and more  nevertheless Anurag, who looked exhausted, answered them relentlessly!

He reveals that he actually wanted to make a period film on the psychopath Raman, but dropped the idea citing budget constraints  The problem with making a period film in India is that one has to recreate the entire era. However, it is easy in other countries like Europe where the landscape stays pretty much the same over decades. Here we destroy everything and hold no respect for our heritage.

Anurag also spoke about how he managed to make the film with limited resources, The pub scenes in the film were actually shot in my office! Yes. All you get to see in a pub is lights. So, I just shot with an angle where the lights kept hitting the camera.

Being an ardent follower of Tamil cinema, he has always batted for the support of Kollywood. However, when asked what would be his critical take on the industry here, he opines, There are many good directors in Tamil. But I dont know why I am not able to see two good movies from the same filmmaker here.

He also remarked that Tamil cinema stays rooted to its ethnicity, and the reason it doesnt travel beyond boundaries is due to the distribution system  If Subramaniapuram had been sent to film festivals, it would have journeyed way more than even my films did! However, producers in Tamil cinema do not want to send them. I also tried to send one of Balas films, but the producer had issues, he opines.

Anurag further added, The production house is afraid that a film will get leaked, if it is sent for fests. So, they go for the theatrical release first. But the irony is that festivals wont take in films that have been released already! Vetris (Director Vetrimaaran) Visaaranai was able to do that because he held back the theatrical release  as he was one of the producers of the film. If filmmakers start controlling their films, then Tamil cinema will go places. The problem with Tamil cinema is not the films; it is the attitude.

Talking about censorship, the Udta Punjab producer feels it has turned harsh in the last two years. I use metaphors and symbolisms to get away from censorship; if not for censors, I would talk about everything openly! Actually, I have been straightforward in my previous films. But now over the last couple of years, everything has changed, he sighs, regretfully.

Answering a question about his experience of working with Mani Ratnam in Yuva, Anurag recalls that it was a terrific learning curve  No other person has made me write or rewrite as much as he did! He is very particular about every detail of a film. I look forward to my discussions with him.

The interaction also had its lighter moments. When asked if he would do a romantic movie with Shah Rukh Khan in the lead, Anurag laughs, Of course I would like to do a movie with SRK, but it wouldnt really be what you expect. My idea of cinema is this and I can only make something like this! A fan was quick enough to ask at the end if Anurag has ever loved anyone, and pat came the reply  Lots of people!
The study came about when doctor Robert Szabo, a professor of radiology at University of California spent 15 years warning a knuckle-cracking colleague to stop hurting herself with the habit.

A new study has questioned the myth that knuckle cracking leads to arthritis. In fact, it might actually be good for you.

The research looked at 40 knuckle crackers and used a combination of ultrasounds and grip strength tests to measure the effects the habit had on participants bones and flexibility. The results found that there was no immediate harmful effects. In addition, the participants experienced an increased mobility range.

The study came about when doctor Robert Szabo, a professor of radiology at University of California spent 15 years warning a knuckle-cracking colleague to stop hurting herself with the habit. His colleague, nurse Tanya Johnson, told him to prove it.

An associated study, presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) looked at where the pop/cracking sound comes from. While the study concluded that more research was needed on this point, auxiliary findings supported the idea that knuckle cracking did not harm the cracker in question.

One of the co-authors of this study, doctor Robert D Boutin found that there were no perceivable adverse effects from knuckle cracking, but nor were there noticeable benefits.

We found that there was no immediate disability in the knuckle crackers in our study, although further research will need to be done to assess any long-term hazard  or benefit  of knuckle cracking.

Source: www.indy100.independent.co.uk
Washington: Scientists have discovered three 16th-century Spanish shipwrecks off the coast of the US, containing looted French artefacts that may now be worth

millions of dollars.

The finds include three ornate bronze cannons - two that are three meters long and one that is two metres long - and a marble monument, engraved with the coat of arms of the king of France, which has been identified from the manifest of a 1562 expedition to Florida by the French navigator Jean Ribault. Records showed that the bronze cannons and monument from the expedition were installed at Fort Caroline, an early French Huguenot colony on the St Johns River, in what is now Jacksonville, Florida.

In 1565, the cannons and monument were seized in a Spanish raid, said Robert Pritchett, chief executive of the US-based Global Marine Exploration, the company which explored the wrecks. These items were being carried away from Florida as booty on Spanish ships, bound for Havana, Cuba, when they were

struck by a storm that banished them to the seafloor, Pritchett was quoted as saying by the 'Live Science'.

The cannons are now worth over a million dollars apiece, and marble monument may be worth many times that amount, as "the only one of its kind," he said.

In addition to the three bronze cannons and the marble monument, the divers found 19 iron cannons, 12 anchors, a stone grinding wheel, and scattered ballast and ammunition from the ships, Pritchett said.

The markings on one of the bronze cannons indicate that it was cast in the 1540s, during the reign of King Henry II of France, he added. The marble monument is probably the most significant piece of maritime history that has ever been found on the entire East Coast of the US, Pritchett said.
History has been filled with accounts of major heists being foiled or being botched up due to poor planning, but what one burglar in Bournemouth, Dorset did was another level of absurdity.

32-year-old Dawid Grzelewski broke into Paul Hattons house while he was at work, but while robbing the house, he found a bottle of rum in the house and ended up doing something entirely unexpected.

Hatton rushed home when he received a message alerting him that his burglar alarm had been activated. Little did he know that he will find the thief lying on his sofa in an inebriated state.

Hatton kicked Grzelewski out of his house and called the police, who arrested the burglar from nearby bushes with a bag of amphetamine in his mouth.

Hatton had also clicked pictures of the thief with a hammer and a large screwdriver next to him before calling the police.

Grzelewski was charged with burglary, possession of a class B drug and breaching a suspended sentence. He has been jailed for 60 weeks and will be extradited to Poland after his release.
"It was not an appropriate use of 911" (Photo: AFP)

Family vacations are supposed to be fun, but while some might disagree with it one teenager considered it a crime when her parents took her on a holiday.

A 15-year-old from Mississauga, Canada left everyone baffled when she actually called the cops on her parents because they forced her to go on vacation with them. Officers responded to the complaint and confirmed the girl was safe, but also stated that this was not an emergency.

Northumberland OPP Const. Stephen Bates told Metro that, she perceived this as a real issue, it was not an appropriate use of 911. Calls such as this tie up police resources which could impact the safety of others in the community who are in real need of assistance.

Not being too enthusiastic about a trip is understandable but describing it as an emergency is taking things to another level.
New Delhi: JNU Students Union on Monday approached the varsity Vice Chancellor seeking action against a student who has been accused of sexual assault by a fellow mate.



A 28-year-old JNU student had on Sunday approached Delhi Police and filed a rape case against an activist of the left-affiliated All India Students Association (AISA), accusing him of raping her in a hostel room on the university campus.



The woman, a Ph.D student, alleged that Anmol Ratan, also a Ph.D student, offered her a copy of a that she was looking for, took her to his hostel room and offered her a spiked drink.



She told police that he raped her when she was unconscious. He also threatened her and asked her not to report the matter.



Taking strong note of the incident, AISA had yesterday expelled Anmol from the party which ended his primary membership.



"We condemn the incident and call for speedy action in the case. Since the complaint has been filed with police, we demand that the force takes all necessary steps to ensure justice and arrest the accused without delay. Also, the university must take necessary action against the accused student," a statement issued by JNU Students Union (JNUSU) said.



Meanwhile, the complainant could not record her statement before the magistrate citing illness.



"The victim was sent for recording of her statement before a magistrate under Section 164 of CrPC but she cited illness due to which it has been postponed now," said RP Upadhyay, Jt Commissioner of Police, southeastern range.



He said that the statement is expected to be recorded tomorrow.



The accused student has not joined the probe and is unavailable for questioning, he added.



The university authorities condemned the incident as a blot on the university's image and urged the JNU community to remain vigilant against such incidents.



"JNU administration strongly condemns an incident of heinous rape in a campus hostel. It has completely shaken the JNU community and has tarnished the image of the university.



"The administration does not tolerate such incidences and resolves to take appropriate measures to prevent them in future. We appeal the students, staff and teachers to remain vigilant against such incidences," an official statement said.
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao acknowledges the cheers of the crowd as he is taken in a rally to the camp office from the Begumpet airport. Dy CM Md. Mahmood Ali and minister T. Harish Rao are also seen.

Hyderabad: TS and Maharashtra have set up the first inter-state board to oversee existing and new irrigation projects in both the states across River Godavari.

The board will be headed by the TS and Maharashtra Chief Ministers on rotation annually, according to the accord signed between the two states in Mumbai on Tuesday.

If the TS CM is the chairman of the board, the Maharashtra CM will be the co-chairman and vice versa.

Irrigation, finance, revenue, forest ministers of both the states, Union water resources official, principal secretary of irrigation departments, forest officials, engineers and others officials will be members of the board.

The board, which met briefly in Mumbai on Tuesday, will meet in Hyderabad soon to review the projects in both the states. Chief Ministers K. Chandrasekhar Rao and Devendra Fadnavis signed the MoU in this regard in Mumbai on Tuesday.

The board will oversee all issues pertaining to Lendi and Pranahita (Tummidihatti barrage), Kaleshwaram (Mudigadda Barrage), Rajupet Barrage, Chanaka-Korata Barrage, Pamparad Barrage on Penganga and Lower Penganga projects.

It will also oversee agreements with undivided AP, set up officials team to inspect projects in the state.
The driver of the private bus was apparently driving the vehicle at a very high speed. (Photo: Representational Image)

Vijayawada (AP): Ten persons were killed and 19 others injured when their bus fell into a canal at Nayakangudem in Khammam district of Telangana in the wee hours on Monday, police said.

Besides, three persons died in Andhra Pradesh when their car met with an accident in Chittoor district early this morning when they were returning from the Krishna Pushkaralu festival, they said.

The driver of the private bus was apparently driving the vehicle at a very high speed. He lost control over the wheels, as a result the bus on its way to Kakinada from Hyderabad, fell into the canal under Kusumanchi mandal, police said.

Andhra Pradesh government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 3 lakh each to the kin of the 10 deceased.

Some of the victims belonged to East Godavari and some were from West Godavari district of the AP. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed grief over the accident and spoke to East Godavari district Collector Arun Kumar over phone to enquire about the incident.

The 19 injured persons were admitted to the Government General Hospital for treatment, Kumar said.

Meanwhile, three persons were killed in a separate road accident in the Chittoor district early this morning.

The car they were travelling in rammed into a stationary lorry on the highway at Srimallavaram village, killing three persons belonging to Madanapalle.

The victims were returning to their town after taking part in the Krishna Pushkaralu.

Naidu also spoke to Chittoor district Collector Siddharth Jain over phone and enquired about the incident, a communication from the CMO in Vijayawada said.
Three students including the students union chief Kanhaiya Kumar were arrested in a sedition case over the event and are now out on bail.

New Delhi: The JNU on Monday said the Appellate Authority which heard the appeals of the varsity students who were penalised in connection with the controversial February 9 event has submitted its final report.

"In the light of the recommendation of the High Level Enquiry Committee and subsequently the recommendation of the panel constituted to assist the Appellate Authority, the Vice Chancellor put his mind to various dimensions of the concerned issue to come to a conclusion and has taken the final decision on the appeals made by the students," a university statement said.

"The authority after thorough analysis of each case, has issued the final report to be implemented by the Chief Proctor," the statement added.

Senior university officials, however, refused to comment when asked about the contents of the report.

JNU was at the centre of a controversy in February this because of an event on campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru at which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised.

Three students including the students union chief Kanhaiya Kumar were arrested in a sedition case over the event and are now out on bail. 21 JNU students were slapped with varied punishments ranging from rustication, hostel debarment to financial penalty on basis of the probe by the HLEC which found them guilty of violation of discipline norms.

The students had gone on an indefinite hunger strike against the decision which lasted for 16 days. As the varsity refused to relent and withdraw the punitive action proposed against the students despite their failing health, some students moved the Delhi High Court challenging the action.

Following this, the High Court issued directions to JNUSU to immediately withdraw the hunger strike and to not launch any fresh agitation. It had stayed action against the students till their appeals have been decided by the appellate authority.

JNU had then formed a four-member committee to hear appeals of those who had been found guilty of indiscipline by the varsity probe panel.
The court said it was proved that the three convicts had abducted Jigisha, robbed her of her gold chain, two mobile phones, two rings and debit and credit cards and killed her. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: A Delhi court on Monday awarded death penalty to two convicts and life term to another in the 2009 Jigisha Ghosh murder case.

The three men were convicted in July by a Delhi court for murdering and robbing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh which said it was "abundantly clear" that they had committed the crime.

28-year-old Jigisha, working as an operations manager in a management consultancy firm, was abducted and killed on March 18, 2009 after she was dropped by her office cab around 4 am near her home in Vasant Vihar area of South Delhi .

Her body was recovered three days later from a place near Surajkund in Haryana, police had said.

Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav held accused Ravi Kapoor, Amit Shukla and Baljit Singh Malik guilty of the offences of murder, abduction, robbery, forgery and common intention under the IPC. Kapoor was also convicted for the offence of using firearms under the Arms Act.

While pronouncing the judgement, the judge said "they (accused) committed her murder and disposed of her body in bushes and circumstantial evidence makes it clear that it was these men who committed the crime.

"It is abundantly clear from evidence that they committed the crime. There is no missing link of crime (and) hence innocence is ruled out. It is proved on record that Jigisha did not return home on expected time on the day of incident."

The court said it was proved that the three convicts had abducted Jigisha, robbed her of her gold chain, two mobile phones, two rings and debit and credit cards and killed her.

The court had fixed August 20 for hearing arguments on quantum of sentence.

It also asked Delhi 's Home Secretary to immediately appoint probation officers for filing reports on the background of the convicts and their conduct in jail.

The court had reserved the verdict on July 5 after hearing final arguments of the prosecutor and defence counsel.

Earlier, Special Public Prosecutor Rajiv Mohan had said there was ample evidence against the accused to hold them guilty of the offences.

Advocate Amit Kumar, appearing for accused Amit Shukla and Baljit Singh Malik, had argued that prosecution has not been able to probe its case beyond reasonable doubt and there was no evidence which could connect the accused persons for the offence of murder.

The police had filed the charge sheet in the case in June 2009 and the trial began on April 15, 2010, with the examination of her father as the first prosecution witness.

The court had framed charges against the accused under IPC and Arms Act, dealing with murder, abduction, robbery, forgery and using firearms.

Recovery of the weapon allegedly used in Jigisha's murder had led to the cracking of the murder case of Soumya Vishwanathan, who was a journalist with a news channel.

Soumya was shot dead on September 30, 2008 while she was returning home in her car from office in the wee hours.

Police had claimed robbery as the motive behind the killing of both Jigisha and Soumya.

The accused had used Jigisha's ATM card to buy expensive goggles, wrist watches and shoes from Sarojini Nagar market, police had said.
Chennai: Veteran actor Kamal Haasan on Sunday dedicated the French honour of Chevalier Award for him to his "admirers and audience" and said the prestigious recognition humbled him.

"On this occasion, I bow before my more deserving forerunners Satyajit Ray and Sivaji Ganesan who made even the common man realise the value of Chevalier award," the 61-year-old actor said in an audio message.

"I dedicate this award to my admirers and audience who give me the tenacity of purpose to pursue to this day and moment my arts," he said.

He said the award "humbles me rather than stiffening me with pride."

Though there was the "melancholy" of his parents not being alive to "see this day", other elders and youngsters were there in the family to "enjoy it," he added.

The Nadigar Sangam (Artistes' Association) and DMK Treasurer and Opposition Leader in Tamil Nadu Assembly MK Stalin greeted the actor for getting the French award.

The award was a "recognition" of the Tamil cinema industry, a sangam release said, adding the actors wanted to felicitate Haasan by conducting a function but said a decision on this would be taken after consulting him.

Stalin hailed Haasan as a "multi-faceted" actor and extended his hearty greetings to him.

In a Twitter post, Stalin wished more such awards to the actor "who has come up due to hardwork."
The Prime Minister said his government stands with the state of Jammu and Kashmir and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same. (Photo: Twitter)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday expressed "deep pain" and concern over the prevailing situation in Kashmir Valley and emphasised on the need for dialogue to find a lasting solution within the framework of the Constitution.

He told a delegation of opposition leaders of Jammu and Kashmir that those who lost their lives during the recent disturbances are a "part of us" and it is a matter of "distress" whether the lives lost are of "our youth, security personnel or police," official sources said.

Read: Kashmir Oppn parties meet Modi, demand dialogue with all stakeholders

The Prime Minister said his government stands with the state of Jammu and Kashmir and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same.

During the meeting with the delegation led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, the Prime Minister expressed "deep concern and pain" at the prevailing situation in the state and appealed for restoration of normalcy in the Valley which has been witnessing unrest for the last 44 days.

"We need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution," the Prime Minister said.

Read: Ask Centre to find a solution to Kashmir problem, Oppn urges Prez

Modi emphasised on the need for all political parties to work together to find a solution to the problems of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the sources said.

He also expressed his commitment to the development of the state.

Earlier in the day, a delegation led by NC leader Omar Abdullah had called on the Prime Minister and appealed that a political approach needs to be adopted for resolving the present crisis in the Valley and to ensure that the "mistakes" of the past are not repeated.

Kashmir has been witnessing unrest since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8.
New Delhi: More people have been summoned to join the investigation in a money laundering case against Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) told a special court on Monday.

Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar was informed by the agency that the probe is still going on in the case, after which court allowed the ED's plea and extended accused Anand Chauhan's judicial custody till September 3. Advocate N K Matta, appearing for the agency, told the court that ED has summoned four more people to join the probe and presence of Chauhan, who is currently in judicial custody, was required in the matter. However, the advocate did not disclose the names of the people called to join the probe.

Chauhan was arrested from Chandigarh on July 9 under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) as he was allegedly not cooperating with investigating officer of the case.

ED had claimed in the court that during Chauhan's interrogation, it was revealed that as an LIC agent, he had entered into a modus operandi to launder disproportionate assets by investing in LIC policies.

The agency had submitted that Singh, "while serving as Union minister, invested huge amount in purchasing LIC policies in his own name and his family members through Chauhan."

"Further, Virbhadra Singh, while functioning as Union minister during the period from May 28, 2009, to June 26, 2012, acquired assets, disproportionate to his known sources of income to the tune of Rs 6,03,70,782 and further tried to justify the same in the form of agricultural income.

"Pratibha Singh, wife of Virbhadra Singh, Chauhan, with whom Virbhadra Singh has signed the alleged MoU for managing his apple orchard and Chunni Lal Chauhan, proprietor of M/s Universal Apple Associates, who purportedly showed purchase of apple of Shrikhand Orchard, have facilitated in justifying the disproportionate assets of Virbhadra Singh and thereby abetted the offence," the ED had alleged.
New Delhi: After asking her orally to "gracefully" vacate the official bungalow here, Delhi High Court has said Payal Abdullah, estranged wife of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, and their sons are "liable to be evicted forthwith", terming their entitlement to retain the bungalow as "wholly illegal".

If Omar and Farooq Abdullah, both 'Z plus' protectees, can be secured while in private accommodation, "there is no reason" why Payal and her sons cannot be, the detailed verdict of Justice Indermeet Kaur made available today said, though the judgement was pronounced on August 19.

The court said Payal's apprehension that she and her sons would not be given adequate security cover was "misconceived" and dismissed her plea to retain the 7 Akbar Road bungalow in Lutyens Delhi.

"Noting the above factual matrix, this court is of the view that the entitlement of the petitioners (Payal and her sons) to retain this accommodation is wholly illegal. It is government accommodation. Petitioners have no claim or right upon it. They are liable to be evicted forthwith. Their apprehension that they will not be given an adequate security cover is misconceived.

"If the husband (Omar) and father-in-law (Farooq) of petitioner 1 (Payal) can be adequately secured (living in private accommodations), there is no reason as to why the petitioners cannot be protected. In fact petitioner 1 is a 'Z' category protectee and Omar Abdullah and Farooq Abdullah are 'Z plus' protectees," the high court said in its order.

On August 16, a trial court here, had asked Payal to move out of the house in Lutyen's zone here. Three days later, Justice Indermeet Kaur had asked Payal's counsel "Will you gracefully evict or I should pass an order?"

However, as the counsel had refused, the high court had said it would be passing a detailed order later on her plea. In its 15-page judgement, the high court said that Payal and her sons were deriving their entitlement to retain the bungalow only through the official position of Omar Abdullah and "have no independent right or claim in this property".

"This accommodation has now been alloted to the new Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. The admitted position as on date is thus that the petitioners are residing in this property as illegal occupants. Their entitlement to stay in the aforenoted government alloted bungalow is no longer available to them. They are admittedly not in government employment," the court said.
New Delhi: Enhancing anti-terror cooperation, sharing intelligence inputs and offering easy travel to each other's citizens would be high on the agenda during the visit of Home Minister Rajnath Singh to the US next month.

Singh will lead the Indian delegation at the Indo-US Homeland Security Dialogue to be held in Washington in September-end with the US team to be headed by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Charles Johnson.

The new dates have been fixed after the bilateral dialogue was postponed last month as Parliament was in session and the Home Minister was busy with the proceedings, official sources said.

Further cementing anti-terror cooperation, real-time sharing of intelligence inputs, cyber security and critical infrastructure protection, countering illicit finance, global supply chain security, megacity policing and science and technology are some of the other key issues to be discussed at the strategic meeting.

This senior-level exchange between India and the US will reinforce the strategic homeland security partnership and enhance operational cooperation in investigations, capacity building, and countering threats, sources said.

Upcoming law enforcement engagement proposals include sharing lessons learned and best practices in police training and responding to mass casualty exercises, improving both nations' capabilities to respond to terrorist incidents and natural disasters.

Besides, there will be discussions on two key recently- signed agreements -- Global Entry, a US Customs and Border Protection programme that permits speedy clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travellers upon arrival in America; and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive-6 (HSPD-6), which allows access to information on terrorists.

The US has been pressing for India's inclusion in the Global Entry so that high dignitaries like former presidents, former prime ministers, former Union ministers, film stars, top industrialists and frequent flyers could visit America without any hassle.

There will be extensive discussion on the Global Entry during the dialogue, the sources said.

Initially, the names of around 2,000 prominent Indians could figure in the coveted list, which would be expanded gradually after proper background checks of each individual.

Incidents like brief detention of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan recently at the Los Angeles airport would be avoided when the Global Entry will be implemented.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the meeting with former Chief Minister Omar Abdulllah and other Opposition party leaders. (Photo: PIB Twitter)

New Delhi: A joint delegation of Opposition parties led by former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Monday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and apprised him of the ground situation with an appeal to adopt a political approach in dealing with the unrest in the Valley.

The situation in the Valley, which continues to remain under curfew for last 45 days, prompted all the opposition parties in the state, cutting across party lines, to join hands and request the Centre for initiating a political dialogue with all stake holders in the state.

Besides Omar, the delegation -- comprising a seven-member team of state Congress led by its PCC chief G A Mir, CPM MLA M Y Tarigami, eight-member team of main opposition National Conference including its provincial chiefs Nasir Wani and Davinder Rana -- has been camping in the national capital and meeting political leaders from the government and opposition.

The delegation submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister, expressing its anguish, grief and sorrow over the painful loss of lives in the Valley and to express "dismay at the lack of a political approach to deal with the situation."

The delegation apprised the Prime Minister that the tried and tested formulations of dealing with the political issue in Kashmir administratively rather than politically has further exasperated the situation and "created an unprecedented sense of disaffection and disenchantment", especially among the youth.

"We are of the firm opinion that the Central Government should waste no further time in initiating a credible and meaningful political dialogue with all stakeholders to address the unrest in the state," the memorandum said.

The delegation said, "continued failure to address the unrest in Kashmir will further deepen the sense of alienation" and hoped that the Prime Minister "will take immediate measures to address this grave situation."
BSF jawans stand guard during curfew in Srinagar on Monday. The BSF has been re-deployed on law and order duty as the unrest enters 45th day in the Kashmir Valley. (Photo: PTI)

SRINAGAR: As the unrest in the Valley refuses to die down, Border Security Force (BSF) has returned to Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, after 11 years, to supplement the governments effort to contain the situation.

On Monday, a column of the BSF troopers was seen deployed in curfew-bound Srinagars Lal Chowk neighbourhood. They had mounted their weapons and taken up positions in the street corners and footpaths and more were standing guard along the nearby Residency Road. The men from J&K police and the CRPF in riot gear were patrolling the otherwise deserted streets.

BSF troopers were deployed in Srinagar and other areas of the State towards the end of 1989 when the Kashmiri separatist campaign turned violent with hundreds of local youth taking to the gun. However, it started its phase-out from the Valley in November 2003 and was replaced by the CRPF first in Srinagar where its eight battalions were deployed then.

The pullout started after the government, against the backdrop of the reports from two separate committees on the initial fiasco on the Kargil front, felt that this additional burden was leading to a dilution of the BSFs mandate and degrading its ability to perform its primary role of guarding the countrys borders.

In 2005, the government decided to implement recommendations to restrict each security agency to its mandate and soon the BSF was completely withdrawn from counter-insurgency duties and diverted back to guard the India-Pakistan border.

Bringing it back to Srinagar only points to the gravity which the prevailing situation in the Valley is being seen with by the authorities. The BSF was deployed in Srinagar as tensions were running very high in the aftermath of the killing of a local youth Irfan Ahmed Wani. He was hit by a teargas shell in the chest during a protest in Citys Nowhatta area late Sunday evening and soon died in hospital.
New Delhi: In a major effort towards reaching out to the Kashmiris, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed deep concern and pain over the situation prevailing there and emphasised on the need for dialogue to find a lasting solution within the framework of the Constitution.

During a 75-minute long meeting with a 20-member delegation of Opposition parties from J&K led by former chief minister Omar Abdullah, Mr Modi on Monday asked all political parties to work together to find a permanent and lasting solution to the situation prevailing in the crisis-hit state.

Making an appeal for restoration of normalcy in the Valley where the unrest entered the 45th day, Mr Modi emphasised that there has to be a dialogue.

Official sources said that after his meeting with the delegation, the Prime Minister appreciated the constructive suggestions made by them during the talks and reiterated his governments commitment to the welfare of people.

Omar told reporters the Prime Minister agreed with the delegation that development alone is not an answer to the crisis.

The PM told us in categorical terms that development alone will not resolve this problem, he said. I am not going to put words into the PMs mouth nor am I going to draw meaning from what he said, Omar said.
Hyderabad: Union minister for I&B M. Venkaiah Naidu on Monday advised the media not to play into the hands of terrorists and avoid making them heroes.

Mr Naidu visited All-India Radio and Doordarshan Kendra in Hyderabad on Monday. Speaking at the review meeting held at Doordarshan Kendra, Mr Naidu infused confidence in the officials of different media units of the ministry while interacting with them to understand their problems.

Mr Naidu said that the media should work together in bringing social harmony and discourage policitisation of social issues.

He stressed that there cannot be any compromise on the safety and security of the nation, adding that everyone must accept that the nation is above everything. Terror, terrorism and violence are the biggest threats to humanity. Terrorism has no religion, no colour and everyone in one voice must denounce terrorism, the minister remarked.

He further advised the media not to get involved in either speculation or invention of news. He said, Let us not mix news with views and create a bad practice.

He urged the media not to be biased towards rural people, agriculturists, down trodden sections, women and disabled people and give more coverage to highlight their grievances.

The Union I&B minister stressed the need for upholding credibility in dissemination of information by public broadcasters.

Public service broadcasters have a great responsibility on their shoulders to ensure credibility in the era of competition, he said.
Hyderabad: The preliminary notification on new districts released by the TS government on Monday led to violent incidents in some districts as protesters took to streets saying their demands were ignored.

An RTC bus was torched in Gadwal after the area did not figure in the list of new districts to be carved out of Mahbubnagar district. Fearing more attacks, RTC officials suspended bus services from evening, causing severe hardships to passengers.

Pilgrims who had come to the district for the ongoing Krishna Pushkaralu were the worst-hit due to services being stopped all of a sudden. This led to heated arguments between passengers and RTC officials who clarified that they had stopped services following an advice from the police.

Opposition parties meanwhile have called for a Korutla bandh in Karimnagar on Tuesday. Tension prevailed in minister K.T. Rama Rao's constituency Siricilla and Korutla in Karimnagar district as pro-district activists took out a rally and burnt effigies of the Chief Minister and Mr Rama Rao.

Gadwal town too witnessed protests through the day, with activists burning effigies of the CM and Mr Rama Rao, alleging that Gadwal was denied district status only on political grounds.

Congress MLA D.K. Aruna, who had been gunning for Gadwal to be made a district, said she would file a petition in the High Court soon after the final notification on new districts was released if the government failed to include Gadwal in the list.

Gadwal qualifies for district status over any other town in Mahbubnagar district be it geographical, historical or infrastructure facilities wise. The TRS government has deliberately ignored Gadwal just because it is the stronghold of the Opposition Congress, Ms Aruna said.

Protests erupted in Warangal district too after demands for creation of Jangoan and Mulug districts were ignored. Protestors have vowed to intensify agitations in Karimnagar, Mahbubnagar and Warangal districts from Tuesday, demanding the state government to correct the preliminary notification and include their districts in the final notification.
Bengaluru: For some inexplicable reason, the city police have not registered FIRs against five branches of National Public School in Bengaluru and Mysuru, for alleged forgery of signatures of central government officials to claim minority status and to deny seats to underprivileged children under the Right To Education (RTE) Act.

Officials in the Department of Public Instruction told Deccan Chronicle that the police are refusing to register the complaints citing technical reasons. But it might happen on Tuesday or Wednesday as the top officials have given the go-ahead, they said.

It is alleged that NPS used forged signatures of officials of the National Commission for Minority Education Institutions and the Directorate of Urdu and Other Minority Language Institutions to claim the minority status and to deny underprivileged children seats under the RTE quota.

DPI officials told DC that they are trying to register cases against NPS branches in Rajajinagar, Indiranagar, Koramangala, HSR Layout and National Academy for Learning, Basaveshwaranagar for the last ten days.

Our officials are meeting the police and other officers from the state government every day to register the case. Till Saturday we were asked to wait, but on Monday we got the signal that we can go ahead with the complaint. No one is sure what might happen on Tuesday, said officials, who are closely involved with the developments.

They also said that the government is under tremendous pressure not to act against NPS-run institutions. We have been told not to take any decision on NPS without bringing the issue to the notice of the state government, they said.

The DPI, meanwhile, has written to the CBSE asking it to withdraw the affiliation of NPS schools. We have sent a letter to the CBSE, the sources confirmed.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Gujarat government not to carry out admissions for general category students under the 10 per cent quota for economically weaker sections in the State.

Though a three-judge Bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud stayed the Gujarat High Court order quashing the ordinance till August 29, it said the stay will be subject to the condition that no admissions should be made on the basis of this quota.

The Gujarat government issued an ordinance in May providing for 10 per cent quota for EWS in the general category in the wake of widespread agitation by the Patel community for their inclusion in OBC. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi appearing for Gujarat pleaded for stay of the HC judgment dated August 4 pointing out that the HC itself had suspended its judgment for two weeks for filing an appeal. However, counsel Gopal Subramanian for the general category students opposed the blanket stay on the ground that the two weeks period had expired on August 17.

He said he had no objection if the order was stayed on the same terms imposed by the HC that no admissions should be made on the basis of 10 per cent quota. The Bench then passed a similar order and posted the matter for further hearing on August 29.

In its appeal, Gujarat said the high court had failed to consider that the provision as regards the earmarking 10% for Economically Weaker Class in the matters of admission and appointment is not reservation, but a further classification in the General / Open / Unreserved category of citizens of the State and that, therefore, the impugned judgment deserves to be held bad.

The state said the high court had failed to consider that mere use of expression reservation in the Ordinance for 10% of available seats in the educational institution and in the appointments under the State service will not per se brand the same as reservation contemplated under Articles 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitution.

The appeal said it should have been appreciated that in furtherance of the said proposition that the State has promulgated the Ordinance and fixed income limit of Rs 6 lakh per annum as one of the eligibility criteria.
New Delhi: The Centre on Monday informed the Supreme Court that there was no official talks between Kashmiri leaders and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi over the situation prevailing in Jammu and Kashmir following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani.

Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar told a three-judge bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justices A.M. Kanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud hearing a PIL filed by National Panthers party that the opposition leaders were meeting the Prime Minister on their own and there is no official level talks.

Opposition parties are going on their own and meeting the PM, the SG said when Prof. Bhim Singh appearing for the petitioner complained that his party was not being invited for talks. The CJI told Mr Singh that the situation in the state was a problem relating to governance, which cant be addressed by courts.

The CJI observed, Please appreciate, there are certain dimensions of governance which can not be addressed by courts. However, the senior counsel argued that situation has gone out of control. There is no law and order in the State for the past 45 days. People are living under the shadow of guns. No arrests have been made. Government is not functioning.
Chennai: Actress Radha who was featured in the film Sundara Travels told reporters on Sunday that a history sheeter lodged in Puzhal jail had called her and threatened to kill her. He also asked her to keep away from her lover Munivel, a producer, who is already married. The audiotape of the 2-minute plus conversation had been going viral on social media since Sunday morning.

Police said they are yet to receive a complaint from the actress, while the Sundara Travels star said she would lodge a complaint with the Chennai city commissioner on Monday.

In the audio, the man identifies himself as Vairam of Sriperumbadur and when confronted by Radha says he was facing so many cases. "You think you are bigger that me? You have acted in just 3 movies. I have so many cases against me. If you want I can come and meet you at your home in Virugambakkam," he says.

Jail sources confirmed that Vairam was lodged in Puzhal jail under the provisions of Goondas act but added that they don't know how he had access to a mobile phone to make calls and threaten the actress.

The caller tells Radha that if she informs Munivel that she got a call from Vairam, then he would immediately cut off his relationship with him. She received the call on the evening of August 18. Munivel is already married and there is a tussle going between his wife and Radha.

During the conversation Vairam says that he has not met Munivel's wife. "But I got this case through my friend and I want you stay away from Munivel, otherwise you would face the consequences," he says.
Nagapattinam: S. Palanisamy, district collector of Nagapattinam, has banned the annual festival at the 800-year-old Pazhankallimedu Bhadrakaliamman temple, 40 km from here, which falls in the Tamil month of Aadi, in deference to caste Hindus who wanted to keep Dalits out of the festival. All that the Dalits wanted was to host mandagapadi to Bhadrakali one day during the five-day festival and the temple car taken out in procession should pass through the Dalit section of Pazhankalimedu village having a population of about 1,000, one-fourths of them Dalits. The festival should have begun on August 8.

We asked for just one day, one day, to host mandagapadi to our Amma, rues 65-year-old Nagammal who believes the deity, Bhadrakaliamman, was born in the Dalit sector of Pazhankalimedu 900 years ago and had been taken over by the caste Hindus. We have been kept away from performing mandagapadi ritual for ages. Last month the Dalits sent a petition to Collector Palanisamy, demanding their legal and moral right to perform mandagapadi. He conducted peace talks with the caste Hindus, mostly belonging to the Pillaimar community, and the Scheduled Castes on July 30, but failed to reach a consensus. All the conditions laid down by the collector, including the allotment of one day for the Dalits, were unacceptable to the caste Hindus whereupon he banned the festival.

Only once in the past, the annual festival of this ancient temple could not be held and that was because it was undergoing major renovation.

Last year the temple car was not taken out in procession because there was a court order to include the Dalit area as well. Rather than honouring the court order, caste Hindus preferred to do away with the car procession.

The collectors unprecedented decision now to do away with the five-day festival has made the Dalits lose their faith in the government. The Bhadrakaliamman temple at Pazhankalimedu is administered by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department and it is their constitutional duty to ensure that Dalits are not discriminated against, says the Dalits. Last year, N Pakkirisamy, the village head, filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court about conducting the annual festival. The court ruled in favour of the Scheduled Castes.

Clearly taking the side of caste Hindus, the collector advised the Dalits to follow the age-old traditions of the Bhadra kaliamman temple. Only men tie thali to women. Women are not supposed to tie thali on men, said the collector as if to convince the Dalits that only caste Hindus can perform mandagapadi.

Jayabalan, accountant of the temple and a HR & CE department staff, said certain rituals and traditions cannot be changed, meaning that only the caste Hindus were performing the mandagapadi all these years and so the Dalits now have no right to change the custom.

The issue would have ended there but for the Dalits threatening to embrace Islam en mass if they were not allowed to host mandagapadi for one day during the annual festival. Why should we remain Hindus if we are not allowed to worship our Goddess? We have not yet decided (to convert) but if this discrimination persists, we have no other option, said Senthil Kumar, union secretary of the Viduthalai Chiruthaligal Katchi (VCK). The VCK has been saying that banning the annual festival by the district collector was tantamount to contempt of court.

When we asked for just one days permission to host mandagapadi for our Amman, the caste Hindus and their Collector tell us thats against the custom. We have been thus suppressed for ages and we are allowed to worship the deity only from the outside. Now our youngsters have become engineers, lawyers and doctors; will they fall in line with this discriminating custom? challenged Kanagavalli, 65, MNREGA worker.

The Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamat sent a team whose members distributed copies of the Holy Quran to the victims and asked them to study the basic tenets of Islam before getting converted. It may be recalled the entire Dalit population of Meenakshipuram village in Thirunelveli district converted to Islam in early 1980 as Islam does not practice caste discrimination and the Meenakshipuram converts have been free from discrimination.

The caste Hindus have accused the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) of instigating the Pazhankalimedu Dalits to defy the custom and demand access in the temple rituals. They also allege that the Jamat is trying to fish in troubled waters. The Hindu Makkal Katchi general secretary Ram Ravikumar landed at the village and camped for over a week trying to negotiate peace.

Its not wise to convert. Would they be able to host mandagapadi if they convert? We must negotiate, Ravikumar told this correspondent, adding that he too was taken aback with the Collectors order banning the festival. The collector did not give them time to think and decide when he just announced banning the festival. That was not proper, he said. Should the Dalits convert to Islam, only the caste Hindus of Pazhankalimedu, and perhaps the insensitive local administration, must be held responsible. And if that happens, the Badrakaliamman of Dalit Nagammal and caste Hindu Jayabalan is not going to be happy.
The girl was taken away from her mother at the age of six in December 2012 from Leicestershire UK to Shimla by her father. (Representational Image)

New Delhi: In a heart-warming move, the Supreme Court on Monday played a Good Samaritan and united a 10-year-old Polish child with her UK mother, four years after she was taken away and abandoned by her father in Shimla.

The girl was taken away at the age of six in December 2012 from Leicestershire UK to Shimla by her biological father Amarjit Singh, who is also a resident of UK. Singh was not married to the girls mother. Singh then admitted and abandoned his daughter in a boarding school in Shimla. Her mother is also a Polish National and permanent resident of UK.

A Bench headed by Justice J.S. Khehar set aside the Himachal Pradesh High Court order refusing custody to the mother and directed the school to hand over the custody of the child Julia Isabella Sobieraj to the mother Beater Agnieszka Sobieraj when she comes from the UK.

The childs return was stuck in obtaining the approval from the Indian Government ever since Interpol Manchestor informed Interpol Delhi of the abduction. Her father had been arrested on his return to UK from India on March 15, 2013 and subsequently convicted and imprisoned for 3 years in UK on November 27, 2015.

Reunite, CAFCASS (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service ) in the UK that represents children in family court cases entrusted the case to advocate Pritpal Singh Nijjar. A strong case was made out for the childs return because it was considered a clear abduction case and not an inter-continental parental custody dispute which is coming up in Indian Courts on regular basis.

Armed with orders passed by UK court, the mother Beater Agnieszka Sobieraj filed a habeas corpus petition in the Himachal Pradesh High Court which dismissed it in March this year. The HC held that the mother will only have visitation rights and the boarding school Alka Academy, VPO Baru Sahib, will have custody. The present appeal is directed against this order. The apex court allowed the appeal and united the child with her mother.
Kochi: The Tamil youth S. Nivas, 24, who tried to commit suicide by setting himself ablaze in the toilet of Netravati Express last week, succumbed to his burn injuries at a private hospital here on Monday. Nivas, hailing from Rajadalapathi Nagar, Vudiyattam, Vellore, died at the Ernakulam Medical Centre by 2.20 p.m. He was brought to the hospital with 60 per cent burns on August 16. He died at 2.20 p.m. while undergoing treatment, a hospital spokesperson said.

Nivas had locked himself up in the toilet of one of the bogies of the Trivandrum-Lokmanya Tilak Netravati Express near Kayamkulam and set himself on fire. The passengers who noticed fumes emanating from the toilet of the general compartment, which was next to the engine of the train, alerted the police and the loco pilot. The loco pilot detached the engine from the compartment and evacuated all passengers in it.

He was rushed to the Alappuzha Medical College and admitted to the Ernakulam Medical Centre the next day. The police suspect the man was mentally unstable. His relatives had earlier registered a man-missing case in Vellore police station. In the complaint, they stated that Nivas was a computer engineer and was running a laptop repair centre in his native place. He had been undergoing treatment for depression.
New Delhi: Coming down heavily on RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat for his recent statement urging Hindu families to have more children, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, on Monday, said that the celibate chief of the Hindutva outfit should father 10 kids and raise them well before provoking Hindus.

"Before provoking Hindus, Mohan Bhagwat should produce 10 children himself and bring them up well," the AAP chief tweeted earlier in the day.

Responding to a question at an event in Agra recently, Bhagwat had said, Which law says that the population of Hindus should not rise? There is nothing like that. What is stopping them when population of others is rising? The issue is not related to the system. It is because the social environment is like this.

His comments have triggered widespread reproach from across the political class, including BJP alliance partner in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena.

Terming the RSS chiefs comments on declining Hindu population as outdated, Shiv Sena said that progressive Hindu community would not accept his thoughts and asked the Centre to implement uniform civil code to maintain social and cultural balance.

Instead of focusing on increasing the population of Hindus to counter the rising Muslim population, the Narendra Modi government needs to implement the uniform civil code at the earliest, Sena, a long-time ally of BJP, added.

Opposition parties such as the Congress and BSP also hit out at Bhagwat for his comments.

Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Sunday said, " He banks on religion only, what else can be expected from him? In every statement Bhagwat talks of dividing (society). He should have talked about employment, price rise but he didn't do so."

Meanwhile, addressing a her maiden poll rally in Agra, BSP chief Mayawati said, "The RSS chief tells Hindus to produce more than two children. I want to tell him: you say produce more children, then ask Narendra Modi and central government if they will make arrangements for feeding them'," she said.
IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad proposed to take up the matter with the communication ministry.

The Indian government is planning to increase the minimum broadband speed to 2Mbpsabout four times the existing minimum broadband speeds of 512Kpbs. In August 2014, the government increased the minimum broadband speed from 256Kpbs to 512Kbps.

According to a report by Economic Times, IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad proposed to take up the matter with the ministry of communications. Prasad said that the government will consider laying down a policy for increasing the minimum broadband speed from the current levels.

The reports suggests that the rise in the startup ecosystem across India, delivery of various consumer services via mobile apps, such as taxis, social media and online retail, are among the reasons behind this move.

According to the State of the Internet report by Akami, India has the slowest average Internet connection in Asia at a max of 2.8Mbps, while the global average is almost three times that figure at 6.3Mbps.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Arjun Shamdai Pardas, 55, was arraigned yesterday before Queens Criminal Court Judge Gerald Lebovits on a criminal complaint charging her with one count of second-degree murder-an intentional killing that is not premeditated - of Ashdeep Kaur. (Representational Image)

New York: An Indian-origin woman faces 25 years to life in prison in the US for strangling her 9-year-old step-daughter to death as federal prosecutors charged her with the murder and her ex-husband for obstructing the investigation.

Arjun Shamdai Pardas, 55, was arraigned yesterday before Queens Criminal Court Judge Gerald Lebovits on a criminal complaint charging her with one count of second-degree murder-an intentional killing that is not premeditated - of Ashdeep Kaur.

Pardas, who faces up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted, was ordered held without bail.

She will return to court on September 2. Pardas' former husband Raymond Narayan, 65, is being held on charges of obstructing governmental administration and faces up to a year in jail and a USD 1,000 fine if convicted.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said Pardas' actions are "beyond comprehension" and she will be brought to book.

"This is a horrifying case of a child, a defenceless nine-year-old, who was left in the care of her stepmother who allegedly strangled her to death. Her actions, if true, are beyond comprehension and must be severely punished," Brown said.

Queens Assistant District Attorney Michael Curtis said Pardas repeatedly and on numerous occasions threatened to kill the victim, "most recently doing so this past Tuesday. On Friday, she made good on that threat."

Kaur had arrived in the US from India three months ago and was living with her father Sukhjinder Singh and Pardas in an apartment in Queens that was shared with another couple.

The housemate had seen Kaur go in the bathroom with Pardas, who later came out alone and left the building. She allegedly said that Kaur was taking a bath.

The charges added that on the evening of August 19, the housemate saw Pardas leaving the house along with Narayan, and her two grandchildren aged 3 and 5.

When the housemate asked Pardas about Kaur, she allegedly said that the child was in the bathroom and was waiting for her father to pick her up.

The housemate had observed that the bathroom light had been on for several hours and called Kaur's father. She was instructed to break open the bathroom door at which time she found Kaur's lifeless naked body in the bathtub. There were several bruises on her body.

A report filed by the Medical Examiner's Office determined that the cause of death was manual strangulation. It is further alleged that New York Police Depratment detectives went to Narayan's residence and found him, Pardas and the two grandchildren inside the apartment.

Pardas refused to come out and refused to allow entry to the police for over one hour.

Narayan later opened the door and both defendants were apprehended.

Kaur's relatives said the young girl had been previously allegedly abused by Pardas, who had been entrusted with her care while Singh worked in a local restaurant.
A 10-year-old boy, two six-year-old girls, and a three-year-old girl were found dead early Monday, according to police in the southern Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka. (Representational image)

Tokyo: A mother in Japan is under investigation for murder after her four children, including a girl as young as three, were found dead at home, Japanese media reports and police said today.

Local media reported the victims were killed by their mother before she tried to take her own life.

A 10-year-old boy, two six-year-old girls, and a three-year-old girl were found dead early Monday, according to police in the southern Japanese prefecture of Fukuoka.

"Their father found them dead and reported it to police," a police spokesman said, without providing further details.

Police are questioning the children's 41-year-old mother as a suspect in a possible murder-suicide attempt, according to Jiji Press and public broadcaster NHK.

The mother confessed to police she had killed the children, according to TV Asahi.

Police reportedly told media that at least one child had a mark indicating strangulation.

The mother was sent to hospital as her wrist was bleeding, the Asahi Shimbun daily said. She told police she cut herself with a kitchen knife but her injury was mild.

Murder-suicide cases are not uncommon in Japan and usually involve a mother killing her child or children.

Some parent-child murder-suicides have been attributed to poverty. In 2014, a single mother in Chiba prefecture killed her teenage daughter and tried to kill herself apparently because she could no longer afford to pay the rent.

On Monday, a mother and her two sons aged six and one, went missing in Gunma prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, and her car was found near a river.

Police suspect that the mother and her sons jumped into the river in a murder-suicide, the Sankei Shimbun daily reported.

Last month, a mother in Chiba prefecture killed herself after stabbing her three children, according to local media. Her 10-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son were confirmed dead.
Nay Pyi Daw: India is ready to give "all help" was the message given to the Myanmarese leadership by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who is in Nay Pyi Daw on the first high-level visit from India after the new government came to power in March following decades of military rule.

Ms Swaraj, who called on President U Htin Kyaw, also held talks with State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi.

Congratulating Suu Kyi for the victory in the "first genuine election", Ms Swaraj assured her of "all help".

"India is committed to strengthening your democratic institutions and socio-economic development of your people," Ms Swaraj said during her meeting with Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party won a historic landslide election last year that brought an end to five decades of military rule.

Ms Swaraj said this was the message of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee.

The one-day trip by Ms Swaraj, accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior Ministry of External Affairs officials, is the first high-level visit from India since the civilian government took over earlier this year.

Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar and a Nobel laureate besides being a democracy icon, thanked Ms Swaraj for the support.

Banned from becoming president by a junta-era Constitution, Suu Kyi has a strong control over the country's first civilian-led government.

The Constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president. Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.

The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 per cent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.

Incidentally, Ms Swaraj's visit comes just days after Suu Kyi made a high-profile trip to China.

India and Myanmar share close relations with a robust development cooperation programme in areas such as agriculture, IT, human resource development, infrastructure development, culture among others.

The visit reaffirms India's commitment to heighten partnership with Myanmar in the areas of priority by the new government of Myanmar, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.
London, United Kingdom: A British priest accused of child sex offences was arrested at London's Luton airport on Sunday, five years after he went on the run.

Laurence Soper was arrested on Sunday as he arrived back in the UK from Kosovo, police said in a statement.

Soper, 72, was taken into custody in London and is accused of nine sexual assault offences committed between 1972 and 1986.

His arrest concludes a lengthy legal battle between the UK and Kosovo, where Soper was arrested in May on a European warrant issued by Britain.

Police in Kosovo said at the time he was known as "Father Laurence" and gave his full name as Andrew Charles Kingston Soper.

Earlier this month a Kosovo court refused for the second time to extradite the Catholic priest, ruling he could not be extradited because the statute of limitations for the alleged crimes had been reached.

Kosovo authorities were not immediately available to comment on Soper's return to Britain and his subsequent arrest.

London's Metropolitan Police were unable to say whether his return to the UK was made possible through an agreement with authorities in Kosovo, or whether Soper flew to London voluntarily.

A spokeswoman for the UK's interior ministry was unable to confirm whether the government was involved in seeing Soper return to Britain.

The priest had been on the run since jumping bail in 2011. He has been accused of abusing five pupils when he taught at a private Catholic school in London.

Following an independent British report detailing 21 incidents of abuse by monks dating from the 1970s until 2010, the London school involved -- St Benedict's -- apologised in 2011 and accepted recommendations to fundamentally change the way it is run.
People mourn as they attend funeral services for dozens of people killed in last night's bomb attack targeting an outdoor wedding party in Gaziantep, southeastern Turkey. (Photo: AP)

Ankara: Turkish authorities were on Monday scrambling to ascertain the identity of a child suicide bomber acting on the orders of Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists who killed 51 people at a crowded Kurdish wedding.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the bomber at the street wedding late on August 20 in the city of Gaziantep close to Syria was aged "between 12 and 14" and that initial findings showed it had been "perpetrated by Daesh (ISIS)". Media said the majority of those dead were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18. At least 22 victims were under 14, a Turkish official added.

There were no further details on the bomber's identity, but Erdogan said ISIS had been trying to "position itself" in Gaziantep which lies just 60 kilometres north of Syria and is a major hub for refugees from the over five-year civil war.

The Hurriyet daily said that DNA tests were under way to ascertain the identity, nationality and gender of the bomber. It is possible that the bomber had come over the border from Syria but ISIS is also known to have built homegrown cells inside Turkey in Gaziantep and even Istanbul, wrote its well-connected columnist Abdulkadir Selvi.

He said Turkish security forces believed that attack had been timed as retaliation by jihadists for offensives both by Kurdish militias and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition forces against ISIS in Syria. "There's a fight against ISIS but we are paying the price," he wrote.

The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas said in a statement that "all of those killed were Kurds". The bride and groom -- a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast -- were rushed to hospital but not seriously wounded.

The attack followed a string of strikes blamed on ISIS and Kurdish militants in the last month but was the deadliest so far this year and first significant jihadist action in Turkey since the failed July 15 coup. Hurriyet said the type of bomb used -- stuffed with scraps of metal -- was similar to the explosives used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on ISIS in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station in 2015.

All 44 victims identified so far were laid to rest in harrowing ceremonies in Gazinantep on Sunday with relatives throwing themselves on the coffins in desperation, an AFP correspondent said.
People look at flowers and messages placed along the beach of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, southern France. (Photo: AP)

London: Britain's broadcast regulator on Monday rejected complaints that it was inappropriate for a hijab-wearing Muslim reporter to cover the terrorist attacks in Nice in July.

Ofcom had received 17 complaints about 'Channel 4 News' reporter Fatima Manji and today said there are no grounds to launch a full investigation.

"We received a small number of complaints that it was inappropriate for a presenter wearing a hijab to present a report on the attack in Nice," said a spokesperson for Ofcom.

"We won't be taking the matter forward for investigation. The selection of a presenter is an editorial matter for the broadcaster, and the way in which the presenter chose to dress in this case did not raise any issues under our rules," he added.

The controversy had been triggered after Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor and now columnist at the 'Sun' newspaper, attacked the decision in his column and called on readers to complain over the channel's coverage of the mass killings at Nice in France on July 15.

"Was it appropriate for her to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim? Was it done to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer who looks at the hijab as a sign of the slavery of Muslim women by a male-dominated and clearly violent religion?"

'Channel 4 News' editor Ben De Pear had said last month that the channel had made an official complaint to the UKs Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).

"ITN believes the article was in breach of a number of provisions of the Editor's Code, in particular discrimination, harassment by intimidation and inaccuracy," De Pear said.

IPSO has received around 1,700 complaints over MacKenzie's remarks after Manji co-presented the 'Channel 4 News' bulletin - produced by ITN - from London while Jon Snow reported from France during the coverage of the terrorist attacks.

Rupert Murdoch owned 'Sun' had distanced itself from MacKenzie's column, deleting a tweet promoting it.
Leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn speaks during a leadership campaign rally at Ruach City Church in London. (Photo: AP)

London: Voting starts on Monday to decide if veteran leftist Jeremy Corbyn will remain leader of Britain's Labour party, with an ill-tempered campaign deepening divisions that threaten the party's future.

Ballots and online voting forms were being sent to party members, who have until September 21 to decide whether to replace Corbyn with MP Owen Smith, previously little known outside parliament.

Corbyn, 67, is favourite and retains the backing of most trade unions and many grassroots supporters who signed up last year to propel him to a shock leadership election win.

But he has failed to win over many of the party's MPs, 80 percent of whom backed a recent vote of no-confidence in Corbyn.

Britain's vote on June 23 to leave the European Union provided the catalyst for the leadership challenge, with many lawmakers criticising Corbyn's performance during the campaign as lacklustre.

London mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour's leader in Scotland, Kezia Dugdale, are among those backing Smith over Corbyn.

Smith triggered the contest by declaring his candidacy last month, warning that Corbyn's leadership was making the possibility of a split in the party "dangerously real".

Principles and pragmatism

The 46-year-old is, like Corbyn, targeting voters to the left of the party but says he is better placed to sell the message to the country and take Labour to ballot box success.

Smith distanced himself from the centrist New Labour governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown -- the last time the party held power, between 1997 and 2010 -- in a speech in Wales Monday.

He said that sometimes those administrations "hid away from our principles" and believed that "what matters is what works".

"What works cannot trump what is right," Smith stressed.

Meanwhile, Corbyn released a list of four key pledges including replacing the House of Lords with an elected upper chamber of parliament and introducing mandatory collective bargaining for companies with over 250 employees.

Loud boos, cheers and heckling have characterised many of the debates between Corbyn and Smith while local party meetings have been suspended during the contest over allegations of intimidation levelled against Corbyn's supporters.

Membership surge

An estimated 640,000 people will be able to vote in the contest. Membership of Labour has surged since Corbyn became leader, with the party now Britain's biggest by far.

However, he received a setback earlier this month when a court ruled that 130,000 new party members who joined in the six months up to July 12 could not vote.

Khan also delivered a blow on Sunday by declaring his support for Smith.

"Jeremy's personal ratings are the worst of any opposition leader on record and the Labour party is suffering badly as a result," Khan wrote in the Observer newspaper.

"Jeremy has already proved that he is unable to organise an effective team and has failed to win the trust and respect of the British people," he added.

A YouGov poll conducted last week gave the ruling Conservatives 38 percent support among voters compared to 30 percent for Labour and 13 percent for the anti-EU UK Independence Party.

Corbyn was seen as the best person to be prime minister by only 19 percent, compared to 51 percent for the incumbent, Theresa May.

Backing Smith, Dugdale wrote in the Scottish newspaper the Daily Record: "We can't pin our hopes on a leadership who speak only to the converted, rather than speaking to the country as a whole."

While May, who became premier in July after David Cameron quit following the Brexit vote, has ruled out an election soon, many commentators believe a snap poll could still be possible.

The Labour result is to be announced on September 24 at a special conference in Liverpool, northwest England.
The video footage shows Iraqi officials taking off the boy's clothes and trying to remove his suicide vest. (Photo: YouTube Video Grab)

Kirkuk, Baghdad: An ISIS child suicide bomber was stripped off his explosive vest and detained by Iraqi officials, moments before it was detonated. The incident was captured on camera by an unidentified person.

According to a report in the Daily Mail, the boy, who was wearing a Barcelona shirt, started crying after he was stopped and arrested by the police in Baghdad's Kirkuk city.

The video footage shows Iraqi officials taking off the boy's clothes and trying to remove his suicide vest. A policeman then succeeds in removing the vest, while two officers drag the boy to a safer place, before detonating the belt.

Police believe that the boy was told by ISIS terrorists to blow up near a Shia mosque.

In their recent propaganda videos, ISIS has been portraying children as suicide bombers and terrorists.

In its statement, Europol, the law enforcement agency of Europe, said that these ISIS children are of 'particular concern', especially to the Western countries which have been the target of the terror group in the recent times.

Earlier this year, Quilliam, a UK-based think tank released a detailed report titled 'Children of Islamic State', which reveals how ISIS recruits children and then gives them jihad training by indoctrinating them at school, and sometimes at home too. These children are provided with rigorous training to become lethal fighters of the terror group. They are then infiltrated into the terror group's caliphates.

The report also focuses on how these jihadi children are inculcated with extremists values since their birth or when they are too small to distinguish between right and wrong. Tagged 'blank slate' by militants, these kids are provided with extreme martial arts training.

The arrest comes barely a day after a 12-year-old suicide bomber struck at a wedding party in Turkey, killing at least 50 people and injuring hundreds. The rising incidents of children being involved in suicide bombings has sparked outrage among people.
As many as 166 people were killed and over 250 injured in the attack carried out by 10 LeT men in Mumbai. (Photo: File/PTI)

Lahore: Pakistan is investigating another Mumbai attack suspect, who has recently been arrested, for allegedly providing financial assistance to the LeT men to carry out the deadly assault in 2008.

"The FIA (Federal Investigation Agency) has arrested Sufyan Zafar recently and is interrogating him for his role in providing financial assistance to the accused of the Mumbai attack - who are lodged in the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi," FIA special prosecutor Chaudhry Azhar said on Friday. He said Zafar was absconding after being declared proclaimed offender in the Mumbai case.

A resident of Gujrawala district of Punjab, some 80km from Lahore, Zafar is among 21 other absconding suspects wanted in this high-profile case. "Zafar will be indicted in the Mumbai case after completion of the investigation," the FIA official said.

A Pakistani anti-terrorism court has charged seven Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) activists - its operations commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younis Anjum - with abetment to murder, attempted murder, planning and executing the Mumbai attack.

The case has been underway in the country for more than six years. Lakhvi, the mastermind of the Mumbai attack, is living at an undisclosed location after getting released from jail on bail over a year ago.

The other six suspects are in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. The trial proceedings have come to a halt as India is yet to send 24 witnesses to Pakistan for recording of their statements in the trial court.

Pakistan says the trial cannot be concluded unless India sends its nationals for recording their statements in the case.

As many as 166 people were killed and over 250 injured in the attack carried out by 10 LeT men. Nine assailants were killed while the lone survivor, Ajmal Kasab, was captured and later executed.
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operations commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the Mumbai attack, is living at an undisclosed location after being released from jail on bail over a year ago. (Photo: File)

Lahore: The alleged financier of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, who supplied nearly Rs 4 million to the LeT men, has been sent to judicial remand after the Pakistani anti-terrorism court hearing the case did not allow the FIA to have his custody for more days.

Sufayan Zafar has joined the other six suspects  Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Mohammad Younis Anjum - in the high-security Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, where they are lodged since 2009.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operations commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the Mumbai attack, is living at an undisclosed location after being released from jail on bail over a year ago.

The anti-terrorism court sent Zafar on the judicial remand on Saturday noting that the Federal Investigation Agency had been given enough time to probe the suspect, a source in the FIA said on Monday.

He is accused of providing Rs 3.98 million to co-accused Riaz through account no. 2338-2 of the Muslim Commercial Bank's Drigh Road branch in Karachi and account no. 2464-0 of the Allied Bank's Drigh Colony branch in Karachi prior to the Mumbai terror attack.

During interrogation by the FIA, he was quizzed over providing millions of rupees to the suspected terrorists of the Mumbai attack case, his relations with them and other absconding suspects, the source said.

"The FIA has interrogated Zafar for providing financial assistance to the co-accused in the Mumbai case besides his connection with the terrorists and the LeT. He was also interrogated for the channel/source from which he got the huge sum of money to provide it to the co-accused," he said.

Zafar was absconding after being declared proclaimed offender in the Mumbai case. He was arrested early this month (on August 3 or 4) from?his hideout in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. A resident of Gujrawala district of Punjab - some 80

kms from Lahore, Zafar is among 21 other absconding suspects wanted in this high-profile case.

According to court documents, the other suspects who allegedly arranged funds for the attacks include undertrial Ahmed and Anjum and proclaimed offenders Mohammad Usman Zia, Mukhtar Ahmed, Abbas Nasir and Javed Iqbal.

The FIA wanted more time to investigate him further, the source said, adding that the agency would indict him along with the seven other suspects of the case in the trial court after completing his challan.

The trial court will resume the hearing of the case on September 7 after over a month-long court summer vacation.

Defence lawyers are of the view that indicting Zafar along with the seven accused may further delay the conclusion of the case, which has been pending in an anti-terrorism court (ATC) since 2009, due to repeating the exercise of cross-examining witnesses in the light of the new arrest.

"Since the trial is being conducted under Section 21-M of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, Zafar may be tried along with seven suspects for an offence they are alleged to have committed in connivance with each other," Raja Rizwan Abbasi, counsel for Lakhvi, told the Dawn.

"The Mumbai attack case has returned to 2009 when the trial against the seven suspects began," Abbasi said. He further said that seven years after its commencement, the case was still at zero point and the prosecution would take another seven to eight years to repeat the exercise.

"The interned accused cannot wait for such a long period and have the right to move the court for post-arrest bail," he said, adding the prosecution had no option but to seek a joint trial of Zafar along with the seven suspects.

The prosecution has concluded evidence of all 68 Pakistani witnesses and requested the court to summon 24 Indian witnesses.

The trial proceedings have come to a halt as India is yet to send 24 witnesses to Pakistan for recording of their statements in the trial court.

Pakistan says the trial cannot be concluded unless India sends its nationals for recording their statements in the case.

As many as 166 people were killed and over 250 injured in the attack carried out by 10 LeT men. Nine assailants were killed while the lone survivor, Ajmal Kasab, was captured and later executed.
Faisalabad: A man in Pakistan's Faisalabad district has allegedly set two of his younger brothers on fire after they refused to give him Rs 500.

According to reports, Mushtaq had demanded Rs 500 from his brothers Muhammad Umar and Abu Bakr.

After they refused, he sprinkled petrol on them and set fire to them. Mushtaq, later set himself ablaze too, reports the Express Tribune.

The trio has been shifted to Allied Hospital where they are said to be out of danger.

According to initial investigations, the family is said to have misreported the incident. Even the police claimed that Mushtaq was an alcoholic and was not in his senses when he attacked his brothers.
Samia Shahid, 28, was found dead on July 20 at her parents' house in Mangla area of Jhelum district in Punjab province. (Photo: AP)

Islamabad: A Pakistani court has ordered the father and ex-husband of a murdered British woman held for 14 days pending trial, apparently the latest case of so-called "honor killings" in Pakistan.

Chief investigator Abu Bakar Khuda Bux says the two suspects appeared on Monday before a court in the eastern Pakistani city of Jhelum, after the police investigation was completed.

Police have said that 28-year-old Samia Shahid, a British woman of Pakistani origin, was strangled to death in July. Her family claimed that she died of natural causes.

Shahid's second husband Mukhtar Kazim had raised the alarm, which resulted in the arrests. Kazim claims his wife was lured back by her family to visit Pakistan under the pretext of her father's illness.

Pakistan reports nearly 1,000 so-called "honor killings" every year.
Opposition leaders from Jammu and Kashmir are scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.





Led by former chief minister Omar Abdullah, they will urge Modi to find a political solution to the turmoil in Kashmir.



Leaders of National Conference, the Congress and the CPM, who petitioned President Pranab Mukherjee with a similar demand on Saturday, met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday evening and apprised him of the prevailing situation in the Valley.



The Valley plunged into turmoil since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani by security forces on July 8. Kashmir has witnessed sporadic protests since Wanis killing and more than 70 people have been killed in violence and police firing.



Accusing the PDP-BJP government of failing to control the situation in the Valley, Abdullah had called a meeting of Opposition parties in Srinagar last week in an attempt to find a solution to the crisis.



Abdullah, along with G A Mir of the Congress and Yusuf Tarigami of the CPM, is expected to urge the prime minister to direct the state government against dealing with the situation in the state administratively.



The Opposition parties want the government to begin credible and meaningful talks with all stakeholders in the state without losing any more time. The Centre has already declared that there would be no lowering of guard in the Kashmir Valley.



During a meeting with Rahul Gandhi, the leaders apprised him of the unprecedented disaffection among the youth because of the governments response to the crisis. Tarigami, who was part of the delegation, said the situation in the Valley should not be seen through the prism of law and order.



There needs to be a dialogue with all stakeholders, he said, recalling the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayees efforts to restore normalcy in Kashmir.
Ten persons were killed and 19 others injured when their bus fell into a canal at Nayakangudem in Khammam district of Telangana in the wee hours today, police said.





Besides, three persons died in Andhra Pradesh when their car met with an accident in Chittoor district early this morning when they were returning from the Krishna Pushkaram festival, they said.



The driver of the private bus was apparently driving the vehicle at a very high speed. He lost control over the wheels, as a result the bus on its way to Kakinada from Hyderabad, fell into the canal under Kusumanchi mandal, police said.



Andhra Pradesh government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 3 lakh each to the kin of the 10 deceased.



Some of the victims belonged to East Godavari and some were from West Godavari district of the AP.



Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed grief over the accident and spoke to East Godavari district Collector Arun Kumar over phone to enquire about the incident.

The 19 injured persons were admitted to the Government General Hospital for treatment, Kumar said.



Meanwhile, three persons were killed in a separate road accident in the Chittoor district early this morning.



The car they were travelling in rammed into a stationary lorry on the highway at Srimallavaram village, killing three persons belonging to Madanapalle.



The victims were returning to their town after taking part in the Krishna Pushkaram.

Naidu also spoke to Chittoor district Collector Siddharth Jain over phone and enquired about the incident, a communication from the CMO here said.


The AAP government has taken a step towards eliminating malpractices in hiring manpower and purchase of goods by introducing a model request for proposals (RFP).



The service providers would need to certify credentials of all personnel and for ensuring their police verification.



Special Secretary (Finance) Rakesh Bali said the Model RFP is generic in nature and aims at lending transparency and efficiency to the selection process.



It addresses the critical requirements that should be satisfied for conducting a fair and transparent bidding process, he said.



The Delhi government has also laid down a term that the department seeking to hire contract workers would have to be given bio-data of the personnel proposed to be provided.



Under the new provisions, not more than five bidders shall be shortlisted for financial evaluation  a step towards speeding up the process and enhancing transparency.



To ensure that contract employees are not exploited by their placement agencies, the government has stipulated that in case of such incidents, the service provider shall be deemed to be in breach of the agreement, according to a government advisory.



Timely payment of monthly remuneration by the service provider to their personnel has also been ensured through electronic transfer within seven days and payment of contributions towards ESI and EPF no later than 15 days after the completion of a calendar month.



Mid-contract manipulations by a service provider shall also be difficult as the Model RPF has made it clear that no substitution of personnel shall normally be permissible, except under compelling circumstances.



The maximum limit that the service providers can replace is 15 per cent of their total personnel.

A note issued by Bali, said: In the event that substitution of any personnel results in removal thereof, and the procuring authority may, in its discretion, refer the case to a substitution committee comprising nominees of the procuring authorities and services provider for its consideration.



The Delhi Cabinet earlier mandated that the performance security deposited by the services provider should be for an amount of 5-10 per cent of the annual value of the contract or agreement.



With a view to encourage good performance, the department announced a 15 per cent ex gratia payment on satisfactory delivery of service.



Bali said in case of any ambiguity or doubt with regard to application or interpretation of the clauses of the Model RFP, a clarification may be sought from the finance department and the Development and Dialogue Commission of Delhi.



With a view to eliminate favouritism in the award of contract, the government has now specified that the personnel deployed by the service provider shall have no contractual relationship whatsoever with the procuring authority.
The South Delhi Municipal Corporation has asked the government institutions not to show laxity in checking dengue mosquito breeding.



The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) commissioner P K Goel expressed his concerns, saying that the government agencies, offices and institutions are not taking action as requested in previous communications.



The Central Cross Checking Team of National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, National Institute of Malaria Research and SDMC are reporting high Aedes mosquito breeding from different government offices including hospitals, police stations, schools and different residential colonies and constructions sites, he said.



Goel requested the heads of offices of the various organisations/offices to nominate their nodal officers to ensure compliance of advisory and proper prevention and control of water born diseases by eliminating breeding of mosquito across their complex. He further asked them to communicate the names, addresses & telephone numbers of the nominated nodal officers to the SDMC.



He also mentioned that the Delhi Municipal Corporation bylaws, 1975 on malaria and other vector-borne diseases provide for an action on failure to take specified prevented measures. The failure is punishable with a fine up to Rs 500.



He has sent advisory to all offices of Central, state government, CPWD, PWD, DDA, Delhi Police, Delhi Jal Board, DMRC. Registrars of all universities and deemed university in Delhi, all associations of professionals and all associations of Traders/Chambers of Commerce.



He added that the data relating to previous year reveals that 65 per cent of dengue cases were reported in 15 to 45 year age group hence, there is a need to concentrate in schools, colleges, offices and work places.



He has requested the heads of educational institutions and offices to cooperate to control mosquito breeding by ensuring that overhead and other water tanks/containers are kept properly covered with lid and overflow pipe/air vent are covered with wire mesh.



Call for prevention



Calling for prevention of mosquito breeding by source, he also said that reduction is the only effective tool for prevention and control of these diseases.



He also stated that vector mosquito breed mainly on artificial collection of clean water in desert coolers, uncovered storage containers and old tyres. During rainy season the possibilities of accumulation of water become more.



The Commissioner has advised people to buy NCDC (National Centre for Disease Control) designed coolers which prevents mosquito breeding. Such coolers may be used instead of conventional desert coolers.



Goel also called upon RWAs, market association and general public to take preventive measures failing which the outbreak of dengue and chikungunya may become uncontrollable.


Myanmar will not allow its territory to be used for any anti-India activities, this was conveyed by Myanmarese leaders to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who assured "all help" to the new government that came to power in March after decades of military rule.



In the first high-level visit from India after the civilian government assumed office here, Swaraj called on President U Htin Kyaw and held talks with State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi on key bilateral issues, including cross-border activities by certain insurgent groups.



Describing India as a friendly country, Myanmarese President U Htin told Swaraj that he looks forward to a "very productive partnership".



"Myanmar leadership assured that they will not allow any insurgent groups to use any territory for action against India, (that) they all recognised is a friendly country which has stood by people of Myanmar and they look forward to a very productive partnership with



India as Myanmar continues on its journey of peace, progress and development," MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup told PTI.



The issue of cross-border activities by certain insurgent groups was taken up by Swaraj in her maiden meeting with the country's first democratically-elected President in five decades, according to sources.



Swaraj's visit comes just days after the Indian Army had an encounter with NSCN-K militants in Nagaland who were trying to enter the country from Myanmar. While reports suggested that the Indian Army had crossed over to Myanmar, it was denied officially by India.



Swaraj also discussed with the Myanmarese leadership how India can help in Myanmar's development efforts. They discussed a number of areas of possible collaboration, such as power. India is already supplying 3 MW electricity to Myanmar through the Moreh-Tamu link but this can be further upgraded, Swarup said.



Cooperation in renewable energy, transport, health, education and social development was also discussed during the meeting Swaraj had with the leadership here.



They also discussed the possibility of strong cooperation in area of agriculture, particularly pulses where there is a possibility of importing large amount of pulses from Myanmar,

Swarup said following Swaraj's 45 minutes-long meeting with Suu Kyi.



Congratulating Suu Kyi for the victory in the "first genuine election", Swaraj assured her of "all help". "India is committed to strengthening your democratic institutions and socio-economic development of your people," Swaraj said during her meeting with Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party won a historic landslide election last year that finally brought an end to five decades of military rule.



Swaraj said this was the message of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee. "Both sides agreed to make efforts to ensure peace and security along the long shared border. The Myanmar side stated that activities of insurgent groups would not be countenanced from Myanmar territory and suggested that this issue should be addressed and taken forward through cooperation in established bilateral forums," sources said.



Swaraj extended invitations to both the Myanmar President and Suu Kyi to visit India at their earliest convenience. Both invitations were accepted, sources said. Suu Kyi recalled her long association with India. Both Suu Kyi and the President said they were looking forward to a visit to India.



Swaraj also conveyed India's very strong support to Myanmar in exploring possibilities of further strengthening democratic institutions.



The Myanmarese President remarked that India is a country that Myanmar can learn from, Swarup said. "India is the country we should get best lessons from on what democracy means," U Htin was quoted as saying.



This visit by Swaraj will serve as a very strong foundation for development and diversification of bilateral ties which are set for a very bright future, Swarup said.



"Discussions were held in a very cordial and friendly atmosphere as befitting the traditionally close ties and strong people to people links between the two countries.



Myanmar leaders were deeply appreciative of the fact that EAM represented the first Cabinet-level dignitary who had paid a visit to Myanmar after the new government took office," sources said of Swaraj's meetings with the leaders here. Swaraj expressed "fullest support" to the new Myanmar government in its efforts to meet its developmental goals.



Suu Kyi also briefed Swaraj on the preparations for the upcoming 21st Century Panglong Conference for National Reconciliation. Swaraj, on her part, conveyed India's full support to this process and said India stands ready to extend any necessary help.



"Both sides agreed that India's Act East Policy fitted neatly into Myanmar's needs and as such areas of mutually beneficial cooperation should be identified in the near future," sources said.



Swaraj was accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior Ministry of External Affairs officials.



Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar and a Nobel laureate besides being a democracy icon, thanked Swaraj for the support. Banned from becoming president by a junta-era Constitution, Suu Kyi has a strong control over the country's first civilian-led government.



The Constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president. Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.



The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 per cent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers. Incidentally, Swaraj's visit comes just days after Suu Kyi made a high-profile trip to China.


The alleged financier of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, who supplied nearly Rs 4 million to the LeT men, has been sent to judicial remand after the Pakistani anti-terrorism court hearing the case did not allow the FIA to have his custody for more days.



Sufayan Zafar has joined the other six suspects - Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Mohammad Younis Anjum - in the high-security Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, where they are lodged since 2009.



Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operations commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the Mumbai attack, is living at an undisclosed location after being released from jail on bail over a year ago.



The anti-terrorism court sent Zafar on the judicial remand on Saturday noting that the Federal Investigation Agency had been given enough time to probe the suspect, a source in the FIA told PTI today.



He is accused of providing Rs 3.98 million to co-accused Riaz through account no. 2338-2 of the Muslim Commercial Bank's Drigh Road branch in Karachi and account no. 2464-0 of the Allied Bank's Drigh Colony branch in Karachi prior to the Mumbai terror attack.



During interrogation by the FIA, he was quizzed over providing millions of rupees to the suspected terrorists of the Mumbai attack case, his relations with them and other absconding suspects, the source said.



"The FIA has interrogated Zafar for providing financial assistance to the co-accused in the Mumbai case besides his connection with the terrorists and the LeT. He was also interrogated for the channel/source from which he got the huge sum of money to provide it to the co-accused," he said.



Zafar was absconding after being declared proclaimed offender in the Mumbai case. He was arrested early this month (on August 3 or 4) from his hideout in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. A resident of Gujrawala district of Punjab - some 80 kms from Lahore, Zafar is among 21 other absconding suspects wanted in this high-profile case.



According to court documents, the other suspects who allegedly arranged funds for the attacks include undertrial Ahmed and Anjum and proclaimed offenders Mohammad Usman Zia, Mukhtar Ahmed, Abbas Nasir and Javed Iqbal.



The FIA wanted more time to investigate him further, the source said, adding that the agency would indict him along with the seven other suspects of the case in the trial court after completing his challan.



The trial court will resume the hearing of the case on September 7 after over a month-long court summer vacation.



Defence lawyers are of the view that indicting Zafar along with the seven accused may further delay the conclusion of the case, which has been pending in an anti-terrorism court (ATC) since 2009, due to repeating the exercise of cross- examining witnesses in the light of the new arrest.



"Since the trial is being conducted under Section 21-M of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, Zafar may be tried along with seven suspects for an offence they are alleged to have committed in connivance with each other," Raja Rizwan Abbasi, counsel for Lakhvi, told the Dawn.



"The Mumbai attack case has returned to 2009 when the trial against the seven suspects began," Abbasi said.



He further said that seven years after its commencement, the case was still at zero point and the prosecution would take another seven to eight years to repeat the exercise.



"The interned accused cannot wait for such a long period and have the right to move the court for post-arrest bail," he said, adding the prosecution had no option but to seek a joint trial of Zafar along with the seven suspects.



The prosecution has concluded evidence of all 68 Pakistani witnesses and requested the court to summon 24 Indian witnesses.



The trial proceedings have come to a halt as India is yet to send 24 witnesses to Pakistan for recording of their statements in the trial court.



Pakistan says the trial cannot be concluded unless India sends its nationals for recording their statements in the case.



As many as 166 people were killed and over 250 injured in the attack carried out by 10 LeT men.



Nine assailants were killed while the lone survivor, Ajmal Kasab, was captured and later executed.
The ongoing trouble in Kashmir should be "dealt with politically" and everything cannot be managed within judicial parameters, Supreme Court said today.



The apex court also asked the Solicitor General to help activist lawyer and Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) leader Bhim Singh to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue.



"This issue has various dimensions and therefore should be dealt politically and moreover, everything cannot be managed within the judicial parameters," a bench headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur said.



The bench, which also comprised Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, referred to a meeting today between a delegation of the state's opposition parties led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and asked Singh to join the delegation.



When the senior lawyer said the "RSS-dictated" government would not invite him, the court, which asked Solicitor General (SG) Ranjit Kumar to facilitate Singh's meeting with Modi, was annoyed.



"Don't make a political statement here. You tell us whether you want to go and meet the political leadership or not," the bench said.



The SG said with regard to facilitating the meeting with the Prime Minister, he would "personally talk" to the Home Secretary.



In his plea, Singh, who sought various reliefs, also demanded imposition of Governor's Rule in Jammu and Kashmir.



The bench also asked Singh to file his response on the status report filed by the Centre on prevailing ground situation in the Valley.



At the outset, the Centre said the Jammu and Kashmir High Court was already seized of the matter and hence the plea, pending in the apex court, be disposed of.



The bench said the statements made by Bhim Singh may not be "relevant judicially" but

they may be "relevant politically".



Earlier, the Centre, in its status report filed in the court on August 5, had said that the law and order situation in the Valley has improved considerably with incidents of violent protests having gone down from 201 on July 9 to 11 on August 3.



The Valley has been witnessing a spate of violent protests following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani.



The Centre, in its report, had said that in view of the improved situation, curfew had been lifted from most parts of the Valley on July 30.



The Solicitor General, referring to the report, had said that curfew was in force only in certain areas of three districts in the Valley.



"Due to persistent efforts of the security forces/Jammu and Kashmir Police, the situation has shown remarkable improvement, with the number of incidents declining progressively since the outbreak of violent protests and clashes.



"Compared to 201 incidents on July 9, 2016, only 11 incidents were witnessed as on August 3, 2016," Kumar had said, adding that a total of 872 incidents of violence were reported mainly from south Kashmir and parts of central and north Kashmir.



He said that in these 872 incidents, 42 civilians and two security personnel were killed, while 2656 civilians and 3783 security personnel were injured.



Kumar said 28 government establishments were set ablaze and 49 such establishments were damaged. Due to the violent incidents, curfew was initially imposed in 10 districts out of 22 districts of the state.



He said the incidents of violence started after Wani and two other militants were killed by the security forces on July 8, leading to large-scale protests and law and order trouble in different parts of the Valley.



The apex court had earlier asked the Centre to file a status report detailing "ground realities" prevailing in Jammu and Kashmir after Wani's killing by security agencies.

Bhim Singh's petition had said that due to the use of pellet guns by the security forces, people were becoming blind and there was a shortage of medicines and medical facilities available to the citizens.



The plea had said that Governor's rule under section 92 of the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir should be imposed and had sought a direction to the Governor to dissolve the Assembly, claiming it "has failed to discharge its duties and functions".


Five cases, including that of sedition, have been registered against three top Baloch nationalist leaders in Pakistan for allegedly backing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's supportive words on Balochistan in his Independence Day speech.



Brahamdagh Bugti, Harbiyar Marri and Banuk Karima Baloch were booked under sections 120, 121, 123 and 353 of the Pakistan Penal Code at five police stations in Khuzdar area in the restive province following complaints, a senior police official said today.



The sections relate to "concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment", "waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against Pakistan", "concealing with intent to facilitate design to wage war", and "assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty".



The complainants have alleged that Bugti, Marri and Baloch had 'supported' Modi's speech, Acting District Police Officer Khuzdar Muhammad Ashraf Jatak said.



On August 15 from the historic Red Fort, Modi said that people from Balochistan had thanked him for highlighting the atrocities by the Pakistani state on the people of Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).



Pakistan has said Modi crossed the "red line" by talking about Balochistan and asserted it will "forcefully" raise the Kashmir issue at next month's the UN General Assembly session.



India and Pakistan have been engaged in a war of words over Pakistan and its Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's statements on the situation in Kashmir, which has been witnessing unrest following the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani on July 8.



Following Modi's supportive words for the people of Balochistan, protests against him were held in Balochistan, with large numbers of tribesmen coming out on the streets in Dera Bugti, Khuzdar, Quetta, Chaman and other parts of the province.



In retaliation, Afghan protesters also held rallies at the friendship gate at the Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the gate has been closed indefinitely by Pakistani authorities after the angry Afghan protesters burnt a Pakistan flag and pelted stones at the gate.



Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri in a speech last week alleged that the Indian government "fully supports the ongoing insurgency in Balochistan".



Zehri's speech came days after a video showing exiled Baloch leader Brahamdagh Bugti appreciating 'support' given to the Baloch people by Modi began circulating on social media.
Infosys today said it has laid off "a few" people on grounds of non-performance and disciplinary issues but denied reports of 500 jobs being cut by the country's second largest software services company.





"We would like to clarify that there are no layoffs at Infosys. There have been a few separations that are in response to performance and disciplinary issues, which take place on an ongoing basis and this is no different from previous years," an Infosys spokesperson said.



She added that the number of 500 people being laid off is "incorrect and the number is far below".



There were reports that Infosys had laid off 500 people in the aftermath of losing its multi-million pound deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland.



RBS had announced that it will not pursue its plan to separate and list a new UK standalone bank, Williams & Glyn (W&G), for which Infosys was a key technology partner. The move led to ramp down of about 3,000 jobs at the Bengaluru- based company.



At the end of first quarter of FY2017, Infosys had 1.97 lakh employees with an attrition rate of 21 per cent during April-June, 2016.



Infosys said it offers counselling to employees not meeting the expected standards of performance.



"After adequate counselling, those found consistently deviating from expectations are asked to find alternate employment. This applies to employees across levels and is not connected with any business situation that is not in the control of the employee. The numbers are very low and this is no different from what we have done in the past," it said.
Jarawas and Onges of the Andaman Islands remain one of the mysteries of science. Over the last 150 years, the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands evoked curiosity among the scholars, who tried to piece together the puzzle on their origin and evolution with limited success. Their origin has been considered different from other Asian population because of their distinctive Negrito looks and the unclassifiable language they speak.





Over the last few decades, researchers had suggested that the primitive tribals of the Andaman Islands were the living relic of the first batch of modern humans who moved out of Africa several hundred thousand years ago and travelled along the coast to populate large tracts of Asia, including India. They were those humans, who used the southern exit route, through Ethiopia, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Arabian Peninsula. Nobody knows how they landed in those islands in the middle of an ocean, but once they did, there were no mix with other ethnic groups.



The Out-of-Africa theory, however, does not explain everything as there are serious questions on whether mainland India and Andaman Islands were populated by the same wave of the Out-of-Africa migration. And if there were separate waves, was the wave that populated Andaman Islands substantially earlier than the wave that populated mainland India?



An Indo-Spanish group of researchers has now opened the windows of an exciting new possibility of the Onges and Jarawas to descend from an unknown hominid (ancestor of all great apes and human) that went extinct. There is no fossil record yet, but the DNA analysis provides first evidence on the existence of this new hominid.



Tracing the evolutionary path



This is the first example of genetics being used to predict the existence of a fossil. Usually, a fossil is discovered first and then studies are undertaken to understand the fossil, says Partha Majumder, director, National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG), Kalyani, West Bengal and one of the lead authors of the study. The research was published in the July 25 issue of Nature Genetics.



The saga of human evolution began almost two million years ago when Homo erectus evolved in Africa. It gave rise to a new species  Homo heidelbergensis about 6,00,000 years ago. About 4,00,000 years ago, Homo heidelbergensis came out of Africa and split into two well known lineages.



One of these lineages gave rise to Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) after moving to Europe through the Middle East. The other lineage likely went east and produced the Denisovans (named after the Denisova cave in Russia from where a finger bone of this species was recovered). Homo heidelbergensis also evolved into Homo sapiens in Africa about 2,00,000 years ago.



Modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens, largely evolved in Africa about 80,000 years ago. Almost 50,000 years ago, they spread from Africa to different regions of the world and met with other species, such as the Neanderthal and the Denisovan, who looked similar to them. The modern humans, Neanderthals and the Denisovans all shared a common ancestor about 6,00,000 years ago, but it is yet unclear how many different descendant species of this common ancestor existed.



Whatever may the number of such species have been, modern humans dont seem to have replaced them after they came out of Africa, as the dominant anthropological theory holds. Modern humans mated with them, even if not extensively, as has been inferred from recent DNA evidence. The admixing may have taken place for about 2,500 years.



This was seen from the evidences unearthed by geneticists who sequenced the DNA of the Neanderthal and Denisovans in the last 10 years. Analyses of the DNA sequence data illustrated that when modern humans met with the other species of Homo  the Neanderthal, Denisovan and possibly other  they even interbred. DNA evidence showed that there was recent gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans after the later migrated out of Africa.



Modern humans came out of Africa in multiple waves. One of the first waves came to India and followed the coastal route to populate the Andaman archipelago. The missing piece of mystery is how did they cross the ocean? But as some of the ethnic groups of the Andaman like the Jarawa and the Onge, look African, with dark complexion, short stature and frizzly hair, it was surmised they are a relic of the original set of individuals who migrated from out-of-Africa. The yet-to-be-classified language of these Andaman islanders bolstered this belief.



Of different lineages



A recent study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February 2016 by the same group of researchers demonstrated how the genetic lineage characterising the Jarawas and Onges was distinct from those characterising the ethnic groups of mainland India. Subsequently, the scientists set out to understand and identify the ancestral components in the genomes of the Andamanese.



The team sequenced the genomes of 60 individuals drawn from a carefully sampled set of diverse ethnic groups of mainland India and 10 Jarawas and Onges. The data was also compared with publicly available population genomics database. The findings are astounding. When comparing the DNA sequences of the Jarawas and the Onges with those of Neanderthals and Denisovans, we have found some notable differences. By exploring various possibilities that could have given rise to these differences, we have concluded that these DNA fragments belong to an extinct hominid that shares a common ancestor with the Neanderthal and the Denisovan but has a different history, says Partha.



Remains of this extinct hominid have not yet been recovered, but our results provide fresh evidence that Homo heidelbergensis had given rise to multiple lineages, not just the Neanderthal and the Denisovan, he said. The genes also suggest why they are short in height. With 11 out of 107 genes involved in height determination, they concluded that natural selection has favoured the retention of short height among the Jarawas and Onges.
A BJP leader's son has been kidnapped from Assam's Tinsukia district with the Paresh Barua-led ULFA-Independent releasing an ISIS-style video that purportedly shows him surrounded by armed and masked militants and appealing to Chief Minister Sarbanda Sonowal to secure his early release.





The video, aired by local TV channels today, shows BJP leader and Tinsukia Zilla Parishad vice-president Lakheswar Moran's son Kuldeep, who was allegedly abducted by the group on August 1, pleading to Sonowal, his uncle and Sadiya BJP MLA Bolin Chetia and his parents to secure his release.



Surrounded by five masked men pointing their rifles towards the kneeling young man in a jungle area, Kuldeep is seen looking at a video camera and narrating his plight -- about his deteriorating health, about the danger to his life as he could be caught in a crossfire between his kidnappers and security forces and about being moved from place to place.



Meanwhile, Sonowal tonight appealed to the abductors to release him on humanitarian ground.



"I appeal to the abductors to release the boy as a humanitarian gesture. Our government believes that violence will achieve nothing and we are committed to the peace process," he told PTI.



MLA Chetia said he had received a phone call from the anti-talk ULFA-I faction demanding Rs one crore ransom for his nephew's release, adding paying that amount was not possible for him and he also did not endorse the idea of paying ransom.



Kuldeep's mother and wife had earlier appealed to the ULFA-I to release him saying they do not have the finances to pay the ransom.



Assam and Arunachal Pradesh police are carrying out search operations to rescue Kuldeep from his abductors.


A 7-year-old girl was abducted and raped by three youths in east Delhis Mandawali area, the police said on Monday.





The minor girl is in hospital and is recovering. Three accused were mentioned in FIR and all have been arrested. The arrested accused including two of her neighbours are Bhure (19) Amir (21) and Bhim Sen (19), Reshi Pal, DCP (East) said.



The victim lived with his parents at Yamuna Khadar in Mandawwali. Her parents are involved in growing vegetables on the river floodplains, Pal said.



The girl was sleeping outside her house when she was picked up by the accused and raped around 11 pm on Sunday night, police said.



The accused dumped the girl near her house and fled.

She was found lying unconscious by her parents and locals who had been searching for her.



The girl was rushed to LBS hospital from where she was shifted to AIIMS trauma centre as she was in a critical condition.



A case under relevant sections of IPC and POCSO Act has been registered at Mandawali police station.
In the first such incident, the Paresh Barua-led Ulfa-I on Monday released a video where an abducted youth is seen surrounded by five kidnappers.





The captive, Kuldeep Moran, is the son of Tinsukia district panchayat vice-president Ratneshwar Moran, a very close aide of Sadiya MLA Bolin Chetia. Tinsukia district in Upper Assam is considered to be the stronghold of the United Liberation Front of Assam-Independent (Ulfa-I).



I have been abducted by Ulfa-I and they are taking me to different places blindfolded. My health is deteriorating. I am afraid I might die in cross-firing. I request my parents, Bolin Chetia and Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal to get me released, Kuldeep is seen saying in the video.



According to police sources, Kuldeep was abducted on August 1 from the AssamArunachal Pradesh border. Soon, the family received a call from the abductors asking for Rs 1 crore.



Ulfa-I, through a press statement, has taken responsibility for the abduction. It claimed that Kuldeep was trying to extort money in Upper Assam using the outfits name though he is not one of their cadre.



The area is under the jurisdiction of Arunachal Pradesh. The Assam and Arunachal Pradesh Police personnel have undertaken a joint search and rescue operation. We have inputs that Kuldeep is safe. We are also looking at which module of Ulfa is involved, Assam DGP Mukesh Sahay told DH.



The banned group had carried out an attack on Hindi-speaking people ahead of the Independence Day celebrations, killing two and injuring seven.
He declared he wont wield the pen again after facing insults and threats over his novel, but when Tamil writer Perumal Murugan returned to writing, he felt a censor is seated inside him.





Twenty-one months after Murugan declared that he was dead as an author after his One Part Woman ran into trouble with Hindutva elements, he is back in the literary world with a collection of Tamil poems Kozhaiyin Padalgal (Songs of Coward).



At the launch of his collection in Delhi on Monday, Murugan said, A censor is seated inside me now. He is testing every word that is born within me. His constant caution that a word may be misunderstood so or it may be interpreted like this is a real bother. But I am unable to shake him off. If this is wrong, let the Indian intellectual world forgive me.



Murugan had to leave his village following threats from caste groups over charges that he defamed their community in One Part Woman. He was made to apologise and withdraw the controversial parts in the novel, prompting him to take to Facebook saying, Author Perumal Murugan is dead. He is no God. Hence, he will not be resurrected. Hereafter, only P Murugan, the teacher, will live.



Recently, the Madras High Court while hearing a plea to prosecute Murugan and ban his book said, The right to write is unhindered.



Referring to the verdict, he said the high court noted that Murugan should be able to write and advance the canvas of his writings.



The last word of the verdict  write  sounds to me both as a command and benediction. The question of whether a word or a sentence in a judicial verdict should determine if I write or not remains in my mind. If a faceless force can put a full stop to writing, cant a line in a judicial verdict bolster writing? he said.



To spell out what would be the nature of that change will require quiet and reflection. I need time to gather my creative energies. I am not a motor pump to draw water from the depths the moment it is switched on. I am more a pupa in a cocoon. It will require time to develop colourful wings. Please allow me the time to do so, he said in a statement circulated at the venue.




In a blow to Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati, Brajesh Pathak, once seen as her close confidant, joined the BJP on Monday.





A former Rajya Sabha MP, Pathaks entry into the BJP came two months after a prominent backward class leader, Swami Prasad Maurya, rebelled against Mayawati. He was also her close aide.



Pathak joined the BJP in the presence of party president Amit Shah and Union Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma.



As a Brahmin leader in Mayawatis party, Pathak, like Maurya, was an important player in her social engineering formula, which helped her to come to power in Uttar Pradesh with an absolute majority in 2007.



The BJPs decision is seen as part of a strategy to leave the BSP without influential leaders who command caste votes. The state goes to polls in early 2017.



Pathaks admission into the BJP was announced after Mayawati expelled him for anti-party activities. She had also expelled Maurya, who had accused her of selling party tickets for a high price.



Maurya was the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly before he left the BSP in June.



I have decided to quit the BSP since the party is floundering on the very concept of Sarv Samaj (a policy once initiated by Mayawati to involve all communities), Pathak said.



Uttar Pradesh can only be saved by development, I have joined the BJP with the motive of development. I have only expressed faith in the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the work culture of BJP president Amit Shah. I will do whatever the party asks me to do, Pathak added.



Welcoming Pathak, Sharma, said: His presence will strengthen the BJP.
The ABVP and the BJP on Monday submitted separate memorandums to Governor Vajubhai Vala seeking his intervention in referring the Amnesty International India (AII) case to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).





The ABVP leaders submitted a memorandum to the Union Home Minister Rajnth Singh through the governors office. The state government is taking personal interest in the matter. Home Minister G Parameshwara and Law Minister T B Jayachandra are planning to close the case against the AII. Hence, the Union government should intervene and order a probe by the NIA, Vinay Bidre, ABVP National General Secretary said.



The delegation of BJP leaders led by party state president B S Yeddyurappa met Vala and submitted a memorandum that police have not arrested anyone despite having proof against those who shouted anti-national slogans at a programme organised by AII on August 13 at the United Theological College (UTC) on Millers Road.



The BJP charged that investigation of the case appeared to be influenced by politicians. Amnesty International being an international organisation has its offices in New Delhi, Pune, Chennai and Bengaluru. The Karnataka police may not be able to investigate the case efficiently as it goes beyond the state boundaries, the memorandum stated.



It also criticised the police action against ABVP members who were protesting against AII. The ABVP also demanded a ban on the AII and action against the UTC for supporting the AIIs activities.



Protest

The ABVP workers held a meeting at Maurya Circle around 11 am before taking out a procession to the Raj Bhavan. When the police stopped them near Freedom Park, the protesters blocked the road and staged a demonstration. Senior police officers told them that 10 ABVP workers would be allowed to visit the Raj Bhavan to submit the memorandum. The protesters moved out of the road after the assurance.



Meanwhile, the BJP Yuva Morcha workers staged a protest in front of the Halasuru police station seeking action against DCP (East) N Satheesh Kumar for the lathicharge against the ABVP workers in front of AIIs office in Indiranagar on August 19. The BJP workers raised slogans against Satheesh Kumar and sought his suspension. They warned of intensifying the protest if action was not taken against the DCP by August 24. BJP MLC Ashwath Narayan rushed to the spot and pacified the protesters. He said that senior police officers had heard the ABVPs plea. The officers had admitted that the DCPs action was wrong, he added.



DSS backs AII

The Dalit Sangharsh Samithi (DSS) leaders justified the Broken Families event that was organised by the AII. The AII had organised an interaction programme in which youths from Kashmir participated.



The ABVP workers are projecting these youths as anti-nationals and misleading the public, Dalit Sangharsh Samithi Students Union State Secretary Rajagopal said at a press meet.



The DSS seeks a thorough probe into the incident.



Raising slogans against the Army doesnt amount to sedition. The DSS will organise a state-wide campaign against the ABVPs hidden agenda, he said.




The Karnataka Labour Welfare Board has invited applications from the children of the workers for extending financial assistance to pursue education for the year 2016-17.





Students who have passed the previous examinations with 50% marks (general category) and 45% (SC/ST) are eligible to apply. The monthly income of the applicants parents should not exceed Rs 15,000. Workers who are paying contribution to the Karnataka Welfare Board Fund are eligible to apply.



The applications can be downloaded from the website www.klwb-kar.com. The completed applications should be submitted on or before September 29 to Welfare Commissioner, Karnataka Labour Welfare Board, Karmika Kalyana Bhavan, 48, 2nd Floor, Mathikere Main Road (near RTO office), Yeshwantpur, Bengaluru-560 022. Call 080-23570266.


State Congress working president Dinesh Gundu Rao has questioned why the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre had not taken action against Amnesty International India if the advocacy group was involved in anti-national activities.





Addressing reporters here on Monday, he said the BJP came to power at the Centre more than two years ago. The partys government could have taken appropriate action if the non-governmental organisation was involved in anti-national activities.



It shows that the BJP and its student wing (ABVP) in Karnataka are misusing for political gains the controversy on the recent programme organised by Amnesty in Bengaluru, he asserted.



The BJP and the ABVP are trying to whip up emotions by projecting Amnesty as anti-national. They twisted the statement of Home Minister G Parameshwara and suggested that the Congress was supporting those who are against the nation. The Home minister merely said that he did not believe that Amnesty conducted any seditious activity, Rao said and demanded that the BJP provide proof of Amnesty being an anti-national organisation.



The Congress leader also refuted the charge that police caned ABVP protesters. They (police) only prevented them from barging into Amnestys office in Indiranagar, Bengaluru. Some protesters were carrying petrol bottles, so police prevented them from creating a law and order problem. Students should be careful about the ABVP, it is misusing them, Rao said.



Meanwhile, Parameshwara said that he had not given a clean chit to Amnesty. Speaking to a news agency on Monday, he refuted media reports that he gave a clean chit to the advocacy group. All I said is that I have not heard Amnesty International being involved in anti-national activity. There is an investigation going on, and I am not a fool to say that everything is well, he said.



The (police) commissioner has made a statement which will be on record. It is left to the police and the IO (Investigating Officer) to take action accordingly  whether to close the case, whether to take it forward ... I am not going to interfere in that.



Referring to the allegations that his government is trying to protect the NGO, Parameshwara said, They (BJP) have the government of India in their hands and also all investigation agencies in their hands. Let them find out what Amnesty is doing and take action accordingly, he said.



Law minister slams BJP

Law Minister T B Jayachandra said that the Congress party did not have to learn nationalism from the BJP. Speaking to reporters, he countered BJP national president Amit Shahs remark on the Congress party with regard to the Amnesty controversy.

Shah had accused the Congress of indulging in vote bank politics and backing anti-national ideology.



By claiming to be gau rakshak, one does not become a nationalist. It is the Congress which is working for the development of the nation. The BJP has not even been in power for two-and-a-half years, and is pontificating on nationalism, Jayachandra said, adding that the Congress would give a befitting reply to its rival.
Two convicts in the 2009 Jigisha Ghosh murder case were on Monday awarded the death penalty, while one convict got away with a life term.





A Delhi court held that the 28-year-old techie was killed in a cold-blooded, inhuman and cruel manner and brutally mauled to death.



The court said the magnitude and brutality exhibited by the convicts made the case rarest of rare, warranting capital punishment for Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla. The third offender, Baljeet Malik, was given reprieve from the gallows for his good conduct in jail.



The court also imposed varying fines on the convicts, with Kapoor being slapped with a fine of Rs 1.2 lakh due to his incapacity to pay, while Shukla and Malik were directed to pay Rs 2.8 lakh and Rs 5.8 lakh, respectively, as the pre-sentencing report suggested they were financially strong.



The convicts are also facing trial for the murder of TV journalist Soumya Viswanathan, who was killed a year before Jigisha.



While awarding the capital punishment to Kapoor and Shukla, Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav said: They are a threat to society. An innocent, helpless and vulnerable victim remained in the captivity of the convicts for hours. She pleaded not to take her life, she handed over her debit card and other belongings. The victim also disclosed the pin number.



However, they were satisfied only by brutally mauling her to death. In other words, the convicts behaved in an uncivilised and barbaric manner against a helpless girl, the judge said, while pronouncing the order in a packed courtroom.



Cannot show leniency



The court said leniency cannot be shown to these convicts as there was a rise of gruesome crimes against women, which needed to be dealt with an appropriate sentence.



The court also directed that out of the total fine of Rs 9.8 lakh, Rs 6 lakh be paid to the victims parents, and an adequate compensation amount be decided by the District Legal Service Authority (South).



While awarding the compensation, the court noted that Jigisha was the sole bread winner of her family, earning Rs 45,000.

No amount of compensation can alleviate the agony, pain and trauma of the parents of the victim, resulting from the crime committed in the case. However, monetary compensation would provide some solace, the court stated.



The court, while awarding compensation, also took into consideration the health condition of the victims mother, who is suffering from diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, thalessimia and serious neurological ailments.



Jigishas father is a retired deputy director of the Ministry of Health, the court noted.



The court also appreciated the probation officer for filing the detailed pre-sentencing report. The court had on July 14 convicted the three men.



Malik and Shuklas counsel, however, said the death sentence was not warranted in a case based on circumstantial evidence and he would appeal in the high court against the verdict.




The state government will soon convene a meeting of fisheries ministers of all maritime states besides their counterpart in the Union Government to work out a fishing policy at the national level.





Addressing a press conference on Monday, Minister of State for Fisheries and Ports Pramod Madhwaraj said the meeting will be held in Bengaluru soon.



He said the national policy should benefit the entire fishing community irrespective of the state in which they reside.



Madhwaraj said his department will soon streamline the inland fisheries sector to weed out the menace of middlemen.



Compensation hiked

He said the state government has hiked compensation paid to families of fishermen who lose their lives while fishing in seas, from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.



The state government had saved Rs 20 crore after direct benefit transfer was

introduced last year for providing diesel subsidy to fishermen.



The minister said the state government will seek more grants from the Centre for development of ports.


Transgender rights activists have demanded wide-ranging revision in the Transgender (Protection of Rights) Bill 2016, which has been passed by the Lok Sabha and is pending in the Rajya Sabha.





Actvists have written to the prime minister for the inclusion of such provisions, which recognise the self-identification process and address the issue of violence against transgenders by family, state and others in a comprehensive manner.



Addressing a press conference on Monday, the activists also demanded reservations in education and jobs.



The new bill is not a step forward from the earlier bill, the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2015, they said.



Deletion of provisions



Stating that many definitions and provisions of the earlier bill have been deleted, rights activists demanded that the new bill be changed to make it consonant with the Supreme Court Judgement of April 2014.



Definition of transgender



Nish Gulur, trans-woman activist and advocacy officer of Sangama, a Bengaluru-based transgender rights organisation said, The bill in its present form does not recognise the self-identification process and makes a provision for a district screening committee led by a district magistrate to certify a persons third-gender identity and this was unacceptable.



She also opposed the definition of transgender. She said that the definition is not in line with the Supreme Court judgement.



Moreover the usage of the phrases like transgender person means a person who is neither wholly female nor wholly male; or a combination of female or male; or neither female nor male is inappropriate and derogatory. However inclusion of inter-sex persons in its definition is a welcome move, she said.B T Venkatesh, who identifies as trans man, is a former state public prosecutor for the government of Karnataka.

He said, The key provisions on Constitutional protection, which was included in the Rights of Transgender Bill, 2015, has surprisingly been removed. And also, provisions such as equality, non-discrimination and right to life and personal liberty have not been clearly emphasised in the present Bill.




Urging the Centre not to see all Kashmiris through the security prism, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Monday advocated initiating a dialogue with all shades of opinion to address anger and alienation in the state.





I want to make an appeal to the Centre; dont see all the people of Kashmir with the same eye. Kashmiris are peace-loving people and they dont like violence, she said while addressing a public gathering in Jammu.



They (Kashmiris) are not stone-pelters. They want to open their shops, they want to send their wards to school, they want to come out of the fear psychosis they have been forced into, Mehbooba said, adding: I appeal to the Centre to take care of those majority of the peace-loving people in Kashmir and reach out to them. They are our own people and they are in trouble.



The chief minister claimed that there were only 5% people, who were disturbing peace and instigating violence in the Valley. Ninety-five per cent are innocent and they want to live in peace but are suffering due to a section of selfish creatures, she added.



Mehbooba said the prevailing painful situation in Kashmir necessitates reaching out to all shades of the political opinion in the state and initiating substantive political and economic measures to revive and consolidate the peace and resolution process.

The political leadership in New Delhi and within the state must jointly work to initiate the confidence-building measures to respond to the peoples innermost yearning for peace with dignity, she said.



Maintaining that violence in any form only brings misery to the people and is not a means to seek resolution of problems, the chief minister reiterated that a solution can be found only through democratic and political means involving engagement and dialogue.



Time has come for the states political leadership, cutting across the divide, to work towards retrieving the people of Jammu & Kashmir, with honour and dignity, from the political uncertainties they are engulfed in for the past seven decades, she said and added that neither stones nor guns, either in the hands of militants or in the hands of security forces, would enable a peaceful solution to the Kashmir problem.




Scores of people were injured in fresh clashes across Kashmir on Monday as violence, strike and curfew continued for the 45th day in a row.





Reports said at least 20 people were injured in clashes between protesters and security forces in Ganalpora area of south Kashmirs Shopian district. Witnesses said that security forces, including army men, set ablaze tents, public address system and generator while trying to break up the referendum rally of separatists.



In similar clashes, five protesters were injured in Takipora village of Lolab in north Kashmirs Kupwara district. Reports of clashes and violence were also received from south Kashmirs Anantnag district where scores of people have been injured.



At least 30 people with eye and other injuries caused by pellets were admitted to Srinagars SMHS hospital till Sunday evening, a span of less than 24 hours, doctors said.



With Hurriyat hawk Syed Ali Geelani, who is spearheading the ongoing unrest, cautioning people to be prepared for more hard and harsh days ahead, there seems to be no end to the violence and curfew.



To counter the protest calendars of separatists led by Geelani, the authorities have imposed harsh curfew throughout the Valley.



Habib Naqash, senior-most photo journalist of Kashmir said, We have not seen such curbs and curfew even during 1990s when militancy was at its peak. Security personnel beating or harassing journalists has become a routine in the Valley from the last one week. Even newspaper hawkers are facing tough times as their early morning schedule makes them the first to confront the forces and often face their wrath.



Situation can be resolved politically: SC



The Supreme Court on Monday said the ongoing crisis in Kashmir can be resolved politically and such issues cannot be managed within judicial parameters, DHNS reports from New Delhi.



A three-judge bench presided over by Chief Justice T S Thakur asked Prof Bhim Singh, leader of the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party, why he did not accompany the delegation of Opposition leaders that met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss the situation. The court asked Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar to help Singh, who sought direction to impose governor's rule in the state, to meet the prime minister.



There are certain dimensions to the problem that the court cannot decide judicially. These issues find resolution in such meetings, which are happening, like between the Prime Minister and the Opposition, where all stakeholders get to be heard, the bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, observed. As Singh contended that the present government, guided by the RSS, may not invite him, the bench remarked, Don't make a political statement here. You tell us whether you want to go and meet the political leadership or not.






The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked an advocate why he didnt approach the trial court after Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala denied him sanction to prosecute former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa in five cases of land scam.





Why is everybody rushing to Tilak Marg (Supreme Court address)? Why should we spend our time on issue of grant of sanction? What is the difficulty for the trial court to proceed for penal offences, if the sanction for prosecution under the Prevention of Corruption Act was declined, a bench of Justices J Chelameswar and Abhay Manohar Sapre asked senior advocate Gopal Subramanium.



Subramanium, appearing for advocate Sirajin Basha, has challenged a Karnataka High Court ruling that quashed the sanction given by former Governor Hansraj Bhardwaj for prosecution of the BJP leader. He also challenged current Governor Valas refusal to give sanction for criminal proceedings against Yeddyurappa. Basha urged the Supreme Court to direct transfer of the writ petition against Valas order.



As the counsel submitted that there were conflicting views taken by the two Constitutional authorities (Governors Bhardwaj and Vala), the bench asked him to show his bona fide and approach the trial court to proceed for offences under the Indian Penal Code. The counsel sought four weeks from the court for the purpose. Basha has challenged a ruling given by the High Court in November 2015 to quash the sanction given by Bhardwaj for Yeddyurappas prosecution. K N Balraj, a co-complainant, had moved the High Court on February 19, 2016, after Vala declined the sanction on December 4, 2015.



The High Courts November ruling cited uneasy relationship between then chief minister Yeddyurappa and then Governor Bhardwaj to set aside the January 21, 2011 sanction. It also noted that the Governor did not seek the advice of the council of ministers before granting permission for Yeddyurappas prosecution in cases of land denotification. Yeddyurappa had claimed that Bhardwaj had an acrimonious relationship with him and that Basha, associated with the JD(S), just walked into Raj Bhavan and got sanction without following the due process of law.




A farmer committed suicide by consuming poison at his home at Magadi, 36 km west of Bengaluru. In a dying declaration before camera, he accused the son of state police chief Om Prakash of harassing him by supporting his rival in a land dispute.





T Shivanna, 57, had consumed poison at his home at Gavinagamangala village on Sunday evening. He was initially treated at a hospital in Magadi before being taken to Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru. Doctors could not save him and he died around 6 am on Monday. Shivannas son, Arun Kumar, made a complaint to the Magadi police and mentioned a civil dispute with his uncle Lokesh. Shivanna had even lodged a complaint with the police and moved the court, but the police did not act, Kumar said.



Kumars complaint prompted the Magadi police to register an FIR for unnatural death.

Later in the day, a video surfaced of Shivanna lying on the hospital bed and blaming several people, including Om Prakashs son Kartikesh, for his death.



DGPs son Kartikesh, DySP Lakshmi Ganesh, Srinivasa, Govindaraj and Devaraj are responsible for what happened. I had written a letter to the government on July 13, 2015, but no action was taken. Raja, Thimma and Narayan attacked my son and wife. I lodged a complaint with the police, but they did not take action. Police only registered a case, but did not take any action, he said before the camera and started gasping for breath.



IGP (central range) Seemant Kumar Singh told DH that the video emerged on Monday evening and that the FIR was registered on the basis of Kumars complaint. Several civil cases are pending over the land dispute between Shivanna and his brother. His son (Arun Kumar) filed the complaint in the afternoon before the post-mortem. Now, since the video has emerged, we will investigate further, he said.



Shivannas daughter Mamatha told DH, DGP Om Prakashs son Kartikesh and my father did not have any land dispute. Kartikesh owned a stone crushing unit at Maregowdana Doddi. We own land near Kartikeshs unit. He always wanted to buy land around the unit. He often pressured the police to act against my father. My father committed suicide as he could not bear with the torture.



Kartikesh jointly owns a stone crushing unit at Maregowdana Doddi along with Narasimhamurthy, a clerk at the DGPs office. Narasim-hamurthy was arrested by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) which is probing into cases of extortion and corruption in the Lokayukta. Local residents had objected to the crushing unit. The activities were stopped a year ago following the protests, an official said.



DG&IGP Om Prakash said that he was unaware of the incident and that his son had gone abroad.




The National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, teams have won top two places in ConQuest 2016, a national-level quiz contest on Indian Constitution, history and polity.





Jeydev CS and Abhishek Choudhary, fourth-year students, emerged as champions in a keenly-contested final round at Indian Society of International Law in Delhi on August 20.



The duo took home the winners purse of Rs 25,000. Another NLSIU team comprising Sarthak Gupta and Aradhya Sethia came a close second and pocketed a cash prize of Rs 15,000. The team from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, was the second runners-up.



The winners and runners-up of the four regional rounds of the quiz qualified from a pool of 200 students. Conducted by quizmaster Raghav Chakravarthy from Walnut Knowledge Solutions, the finals consisted of four rounds - potpourri, visual connect, clue and buzzer.




The blood samples of middle distance runner Sudha Singh, who returned from the Olympics and has been admitted to a private hospital in the city following the suspicion of contracting Zika virus, would be sent to Pune for examination.





Dr B G Prakash Kumar, deputy director, Vector Borne Diseases, Department of Health and Family Welfare, said Singh has been quarantined at Fortis Hospitals, Nagarabhavi. Samples to be tested.



On Tuesday, her samples would be sent for examination to the Pune Viral Diagnostics Laboratory. The samples would also be tested for dengue and chikungunya.



The patient landed in Bengaluru on August 20. She had fever from August 18. Singh said she had symptoms such as fever, headache, cold and body pain which are common among people affected by the virus. Since she returned from an endemic country (Brazil), she has been isolated, he added.



The Health and Family Welfare Department officials have alerted the Kerala Health Department as one of her roommates hailed from there.



Singh shared the room with two other athletes. We have alerted them as well, Dr Kumar said.



Meanwhile, in checks are on at the Kempegowda International Airport to quarantine any suspected cases.


If you have paid an additional 25-50% on your water bills in the last two months, you are among the 1.17 lakh property owners in the city who have been penalised for not adopting rainwater harvesting.





After the state government amended the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage (Rainwater Harvesting) Regulations 2011 early this year to make it more powerful, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), armed with the new guidelines, has collected a little more than Rs 30 lakh in July and August as penalty.

Rs 17.33 lakh was collected as penalty in July and around Rs 13.27 lakh in the first three weeks of August, a senior BWSSB official told DH.



Early this year, BWSSB was empowered to levy a penalty of additional 25% on the water bill (domestic connections) for the first three months and double the amount from the fourth month. Similarly, the penalty is 50% on non-domestic connections. We have identified about 1.17 lakh properties, measuring 60x40 sq ft and 30x40 sq ft (constructed after 2009) which are supposed to harvest rainwater. This is in addition to the 61,749 properties, both domestic and non-domestic connections, which already harvest rainwater in the city limits, he said.



BWSSB supplies water to 9.14 lakh metered and unmetered connections excluding 110 villages (five zones) which were added to the city limits in 2007.



BWSSB Engineer-in-chief Kempramaiah said the Board has spent Rs 5 crore to build and maintain the Sir M Visvesvaraya Rainwater Harvesting Theme park in Jayanagar V Block in addition to organising awareness programmes. The Board has spent a lot of money to popularise rainwater harvesting and training our staff. We will use a portion of the penalty to take up similar programmes, he said.



Rs 2.42 cr arrears



Cash-strapped BWSSB has raked in Rs 2.42 crore in the arrears collection drive on August 17. The south division tops with collections of Rs 62.40 lakh. With this, the Board was able to collect a total of Rs 6.42 crore in August so far. Details of collection in the last week is as follows: South division (Rs 62.40 lakh), East division (Rs 33.97 lakh), South-West (Rs 26.34 lakh), West (Rs 24.31 lakh), North-West (Rs 23.86 lakh), South-East (Rs 23.10 lakh), North division (Rs 16.10 lakh), Central (Rs 16.30 lakh) and North East

(Rs 15.63 lakh).


A house, some shanties and portions of six industrial units were demolished at Abbigere near Jarakabande Kaval on Monday in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palikes (BBMP) ongoing drive to clear encroachments on stormwater drains (SWDs).





The affected people began demolishing the encroached portions on their own as revenue officers marked the structures on the drain.



Balan Agro Products Private Limited, Axiom Manufacturing Private Limited, Hi-Tech Precision Industries and Srinivasa Printing and Packaging Industries were among the six industries in Abbigere that removed the encroachments on their own, a source in the BBMP said. It is learnt that the stormwater drain runs in the middle of Balan Agro Pvt Ltd, dividing the property into two.



Umashankar, whose house was marked as being built on the drain, argued that the previous survey had showed just a small encroachment but the latest survey indicated that the entire building would go. In the name of property, I have only this house. If this goes, I will be in difficulty, Umashankar said.



Resurvey of drains



Meanwhile, the BBMP has asked the Commissioner of Survey, Settlement and Land Records to assign 30 surveyors who previously surveyed SWDs across Bengaluru. The request has been approved, BBMP Commissioner N Manjunath Prasad told DH.



Prasad said many prominent buildings were not surveyed properly two years ago. The surveyors were required to resurvey the properties, he said and hoped that all structures built on SWDs would be surveyed in four weeks.



The court as well as the Lokayukta has directed us to identify flood-prone areas. We have received complaints about encroachment by big builders and prominent people like actor Darshan. Our survey is going on but we need to expedite the work, for which we need the surveyors, Prasad said.



He said the BBMP would assign an executive engineer in each zone to monitor the demolition drive instead of engaging zonal engineers.




The Shivajinagar police arrested a man from Chhattisgarh in connection with the theft at a jewellery store on OPH Road and recovered stolen jewellery worth Rs 44 lakh.





The suspect was identified as Sunil Ram, 24. He was employed by Ashok Kumar at his store.



Ashok Kumar had given the keys of the store to the suspect when he left for Mumbai on August 3. Sunil Ram opened the store, collected the valuables and absconded.



The theft came to light on August 4. He lodged a complaint with the police. A team was sent to Chhattisgarh to arrest Sunil Ram. The police team arrested Sunil Ram. He had planned to start his own jewellery store in Chhattisgarh, said the police.

DH News Service




With relentless protests and a spurt in militant attacks, the Border Security Force (BSF), which was taken off counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir in 2005, was redeployed in Srinagar on Monday.





Reports said BSF personnel were deployed in Lal Chowk, the city centre, and adjoining areas for law and order duties. While no official was ready to comment on the deployment of the paramilitary force, sources said BSF will replace the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in some sensitive areas of Srinagar and Kashmir to counter the rising militancy.



This is for the first time since 2004 that BSF has been called in for active duty in Srinagar.



Eyebrows are being raised over the operations of CRPF in tackling stone-pelters and militancy as the paramilitary force is being accused of alienating people in Kashmir by its methods, a source said.



BSF is a more lethal force specialised in counter-insurgency than CRPF. BSF is also better equipped in terms of weapons, they said.



In 2005, after fighting militants for 14 years, BSF was replaced with CRPF in Kashmir. In the first phase of the de-induction, CRPF took over Srinagar city and Anantnag town from BSF.



The decision to relieve BSF from counter-insurgency duties was taken by the then Congress-led UPA government after a group of ministers had recommended separate duties for various paramilitary forces.



BSF personnel had killed 2,800 militants during the forces 14 years of engagement in counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir. That comprised 100 top commanders, including the prized scalp of Gazi Baba who was Indias most-wanted militant following the December 13, 2001, attack on the Parliament House. The force had arrested 9,400 militants and seized 10,600 weapons.



The BSF troops were then moved to their primary duty of guarding the Line of Control and the international border.




Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday dropped hints of a fresh dialogue to find a permanent and lasting solution to the unrest in Kashmir, parts of which have been under curfew for the past 45 days.





Modi told a delegation of Opposition leaders from Jammu and Kashmir that all political parties should reach out to the people of the state to convey that the Centre and the nation stood by them in this period of crisis. Those who lost their lives during the recent disturbances are part of us, our nation. Whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us, the prime minister told the delegation, led by former chief minister Omar Abdullah.



Modi emphasised on the need for a dialogue to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution. He also stressed on the need for all political parties to work together to find a solution to the problems in the state.



In a memorandum submitted to the prime minister, the delegation expressed dismay at the lack of political initiative to deal with the situation. They also demanded immediate ban on the use of pellet guns and an advisory against the policy of mass harassment, raids and arrests.



They also expressed dismay at the lack of political initiative to deal with the situation.



The prime minister told us in categorical terms that development alone will not resolve this problem, said Omar.



After the meeting, Omar, who had struck a strident line accusing the Centre and the PDP-BJP alliance state government of mismanaging the situation, sounded ready to welcome the prime ministers initiative. Let us not play politics over Jammu & Kashmir. We will get ample time to play political games later, he said.




By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.comMarch 23, 2010 The Jakarta Post reports that, according to the local NGO Peoples Coalition for Justice in Fisheries (Kiara), Indonesia's has lost 2.2 million hectares of mangroves in less than thirty years, going from covering...
By Craig Welch

19 August 2016 (National Geographic)  When sea lions suffered seizures and birds and porpoises started dying on the California coast last year, scientists werent entirely surprised. Toxic algae is known to harm marine mammals. But when researchers found enormous amounts of toxin in a pelican that had been slurping anchovies, they decided to sample fresh-caught fish. To their surprise, they found toxins at such dangerous levels in anchovy meat that the state urged people to immediately stop eating them. The algae bloom that blanketed the West Coast in 2015 was the most toxic one ever recorded in that region. But from the fjords of South America to the waters of the Arabian Sea, harmful blooms, perhaps accelerated by ocean warming and other shifts linked to climate change, are wreaking more havoc on ocean life and people. And many scientists project they will get worse. What emerged from last years event is just how little we really know about what these things can do, says Raphael Kudela, a toxic algae expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Its been understood for decades, for example, that nutrients, such as fertilizer and livestock waste that flush off farms and into the Mississippi River, can fuel harmful blooms in the ocean, driving low-oxygen dead zones like the one in the Gulf of Mexico. Such events have been on the rise around the world, as population centers boom and more nitrogen and other waste washes out to sea. Theres no question that we are seeing more harmful blooms in more places, that they are lasting longer, and were seeing new species in different areas, says Pat Glibert, a phytoplankton expert at the University of Maryland. These trends are real. But scientists also now see troubling evidence of harmful algae in places nearly devoid of people. Theyre seeing blooms last longer and spread wider and become more toxic simply when waters warm. And some are finding that even in places overburdened by poor waste management, climate-related shifts in weather may already be exacerbating problems. Fish kills stemming from harmful algal blooms are on the rise off the coast of Oman. Earlier this year, algae blooms suffocated millions of salmon in South America, enough to fill 14 Olympic swimming pools. Another bloom is a suspect in the death last year of more than 300 sei whales in Chile. []

Tracking changes in the Arabian Sea

Joaquim Goes, a research professor at Columbia Universitys Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory has been trying to track climates role in transforming one of the worlds rapidly changing marine environments, the Arabian Sea. In the early 2000s, scientists documented blooms of shimmering bioluminescent Noctiluca scintillans, a beautiful green algae that can make the sea light up and sparkle. Now it shows up every year, in ever larger densities and covering more area. Globally, Ive studied lots of ocean basins, and here the change is just massivethis one species is just taking over, Goes says. [more]
OMG: You Won't Believe What These 90s Actors Are Doing!
Telenor is still investigating options for selling its $2.4 billion stake in VimpelCom after announcing its intention to divest in October last year.

The Norwegian firms CEO Sigve Brekke confirmed that the company was coordinating with financial advisers on how best to shift the 33% holding, but noted that this was currently in a planning phase. Recent reports have indicated that Telenor could face difficult in finding a buyer.

Brekke described the experience of holding shares in VimpelCom as challenging, and added that it would be some time before Telenor would be able to sell up. Industry analysts have noted that there are few viable options for a sale.

A seemingly logical buyer would be Mikhail Fridmans LetterOne as it holds the majority 48% stake in VimpelCom, but Carnegie analyst Haavard Nillsson has argued that this option would leave Telenor with little bargaining power if they want to sell all in one. Additionally, the two companies have rarely seen eye to eye.

Nillsson noted that the strategic importance of telecommunications infrastructure in Russia will make finding a buyer all the more difficult. VimpelCom CEO Jean Yves Charlier has confirmed that the operator would be happy for Telenor to sell shares via public offering, which would allow Telenor to avoid selling to LetterOne.
The government has finally released its childhood obesity strategy after months of delay, but the strategy has been widely condemned by experts as being weak and embarrassing.

The strategy, which was due to be published last year, builds on the introduction of a sugar tax made by then chancellor George Osborne in March.

A key measure of the new strategy is the introduction of a voluntary target for the food and drink industry to reduce sugar in products by 20 per cent. Manufacturers that adhere to these guidelines will escape a sugar tax, which is due to be implemented in 2018.

The money raised by this levy will be used to fund new breakfast clubs that ensure primary school children exercise for an hour each day.

The British Medical Association (BMA) called this target pointless, and Professor Parveen Kumar, the BMA board of science chair, says the government has rowed back on its promises by announcing what looks like a weak plan rather than the robust strategy it promised.

Although the government proposes targets for food companies to reduce the level of sugar in their products, the fact that these are voluntary and not backed up by regulatio, renders them pointless, Kumar said.

No bold action

A major complaint among campaigners is that Public Health England (PHE) failed to include two measures in the strategy that it had previously recommended.

PHE had highlighted the need for cut-price promotions of junk food to be banned in supermarkets, and for restricted advertising of junk food to children through television, social media and websites. But neither measure appears in this new strategy.

Jenny Rosborough, Action on Sugar, has called on Prime Minister Theresa May to step in and salvage the strategy.

Theresa May launched her prime minister campaign by saying that she wanted to tackle health inequalities, obesity being a major factor in this, she said.

The UK should lead the world in tackling obesity and type 2 diabetes and this is an embarrassing and inexcusable waste of a fantastic opportunity to put the nations health first.

Professor Neena Modi, of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, added that the strategy provides no bold action and instead relies on physical activity, personal responsibility and voluntary product reformulation.

What is included in the strategy?

PHE will also set targets for sugar content for 100g and calorie caps for certain products; report on whether the industry is reducing sugar content through this new voluntary scheme; and conduct a healthy schools rating scheme.

However, given that the strategy is, in essence, an elaboration of the sugar tax, its easy to understand why experts are exasperated, with Sir Harpal Kumar, chief executive of the charity Cancer Research UK, calling the strategy a missed opportunity to combat childhood obesity.

The Obesity Health Alliance added that the plan fell disappointingly short of what is needed, and was saddened to hear that initial proposals were significantly watered down or removed entirely.
Researchers from the Department of Medicine at the University of Minnesota, in collaboration with a cohort of other American scientists, have studied whether fitness level plays a role in the risk for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes among young adults.

The study findings from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA), published in the journal Diabetologia, shed light on the association between cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and the development of prediabetes or diabetes.

Continued fitness has been shown in previous studies to improve components of the metabolic syndrome such as reducing triglycerides, fasting glucose, waist circumference and achieving better HDL cholesterol levels.

In this study, Lisa S. Chow and her colleagues hypothetised that higher fitness levels would be associated with reduced risk for the incidence of prediabetes and diabetes by middle age.

The multicentre cohort study, which began in 1985-1986 and recruited healthy black and white women and men aged 18-30 years from four different US communities, documented the development of prediabetes/diabetes over 25 years.

The research scientists assessed fitness (CRF) using treadmill exercise duration at baseline (year 0: age 18-30 years), in early adulthood (year 7: age 25-37 years), and again at middle age (year 20: age 38-50 years), and followed the participants diabetes status over time.

Participants were classified as having prediabetes on the basis of a fasting glucose level at 100-125 mg/dL (5.6-6.9 mmol/L), 2-hour oral glucose tolerance test value of 140-199 mg/dL (7.8-11.0 mmol/L) or 5.7%-6.4% (39-46 mmol/mol) HbA1c value.

The development of diabetes was defined as having a fasting glucose level  126 mg/dL (7.0 mmol/L), 2-hour glucose tolerance test value  200 mg/dL (more than 11.0 mmol/L) or an HbA1c value greater than 6.5% (47.5 mmol/mol).

The results were adjusted for age, ethnicity, gender, field centre, time-dependent CRF, time-dependent BMI, and year zero lifestyle factors including smoking, energy intake, alcohol intake, education, blood pressure, hypertension medication, as well as LDL and HDL cholesterol levels.

By year 25, 44.5 per cent (1941) of participants had developed prediabetes and 11.5 per cent (505) of participants had developed diabetes.

The researchers found that those who developed prediabetes or diabetes were more likely to be male, drinking daily, overeating, taking blood pressure medication, smoke, have a higher body weight, BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure reading and LDL level.

Nevertheless, even after adjustment for these differences, higher fitness levels in participants examined from young adulthood to middle age was associated with lower risk for developing incident prediabetes or diabetes.

Researchers believe that fitness improved the participants risk profile by preventing the accumulation of visceral fat, which is an important metabolic risk factor, and by helping to bring down low-grade systemic inflammation associated with type 2 diabetes.

Overall, these findings suggest that there is much more to cardiometabolic risk than body weight and that one vitally component to health regardless of body weight is maintaining a decent fitness level through long-term physical activity.
The images suggest that the phone will come with a design similar to the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Injustice Edition, complete with a gold Batman logo at the back.

After launching a Batman-themed variant of the Galaxy S7 Edge, Samsungs newest flagship also seems to be getting the same treatment. A user on Weibo has posted images allegedly of the Batman-themed variant of the Galaxy Note 7. This variant of the phone would most likely be called the Injustice Edition, and would commemorate the video game, Injustice: Gods Among Us. Judging by the images, the phone would look similar to the Galaxy S7 Edge Injustice Edition, with a completely black body, gold detailing, and gold Batman logo on the rear of the phone.

The Batman theme seems to go beyond the design as the Weibo user has also posted screenshots of the phone. The screenshots show that the device would have a custom black-and-gold themed version of the phone's TouchWiz interface, complete with wallpapers of the superhero.

Those who purchased the Galaxy S7 Edge Injustice Edition also received a bunch of other goodies along with their phone, like a gold-plated Batarang, a case modeled after Batmans armour, and more. So its possible that Samsung will offer something similar to buyers of this variant of the Galaxy Note 7. It is also speculated that this variant might offer 6GB RAM and 128GB of storage, something that has already been confirmed to be heading to China.

Main Image credit: Weibo
AerCap's interest in participating in a take-over of EasyJet was "highly debatable", analysts at Credit Suisse said.

Various published reports on 19 August had suggested that EasyJet's founder and AerCap might try to take the firm private, with US private equity outfits having also been cited as potential suitors.

First of all, purchasing an airline would constitute a "major divergence" in strategy for the world's largest lessor of airplanes, the Swiss broker's analysts said.

Relative valuations were another consideration, analysts Neil Glynn, Tim Ramskill, Julia Pennington and Arthur Truslove said in a research note sent to clients on 19 August.

AerCap was changing hands at a forecast 2017 book-value of 0.88 whereas EasyJet was trading on a P/B multiple, excluding goodwill, of 2.5, "suggesting acquiring an interest in EZJ as an asset-play may be unattractive to it despite the fact that EZJ likely enjoys market-leading aircraft purchase discounts."

EasyJet's economic price-to-book value was estimated at nearer to 1.0, marking its own fleet to market, and AerCap had publicly confirmed it saw more value in buying back its own stock than purchasing aircraft at current market values, the analyst said.

Brexit was another potential stumbling block. AerCap was a Dutch/Irish concern and was technically free to invest in EasyJet today, the broker said.

Nonetheless, it risked falling afoul of updated foreign ownership restrictions for UK airlines, they believed.

In the same note Credit Suisse maintained its target price for EasyJet shares at 1,130p with a 'neutral' recommendation.
Pfizer was set to clinch a deal to purchase oncology-treatment specialist Medivation .

An all-cash $14bn deal might be announced as early as Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported overnight, citing people familiar with the matter.

San Francisco-based Medivation was the manufacturer of Xtandi, the market-leading drug for prostate cancer, which had already reached annual sales of $2bn.

A sucessful transaction would follow close on the heels of Pfizer's failed $150bn bid for Allergan and more than double the $6bn offered by French peer Sanofi SA earlier in the year.


After court cases, rallies and shadow cabinet resignations, ballot papers for the Labour leadership contest were sent out on Monday, as Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale followed London mayor Sadiq Khan in declaring her support for challenger Owen Smith.

Ballot papers have been sent out to nearly 650,000 Labour members in order to vote between incumbent Jeremy Corbyn and former work and pensions secretary Owen Smith.

The result will be announced at the party conference in Liverpool on 24 September.

In July, new 'registered supporters' paying a 25 fee handed the party over 3.2m in just 48 hours to bolster its finances.

With a total of nearly 650,000 members and supporters, Labour has the largest political party membership in Europe, far eclipsing the Conservative party's near-150,000 registered members.

Labour's support base is made up of 350,000 registered members, the 129,000 registered supporters who paid 25 each, and 168,000 from trade unions and other affiliations.

Smith gains prominent support

While he is opposed by a majority of Labours MPs, Corbyns candidacy has been endorsed not only by 84% local constituencies but also the two largest trade unions, Unison and Unite, as well as smaller unions such as the train drivers representatives Aslef and from Young Labour, while Smith has been endorsed by the GMB, the third largest union, and several other smaller unions, as well as the Labour Movement for Europe.

While Corbyn has strong grassroots support, Smith gained two big-name supporters in recent days.

On Monday, Kezia Dugdale, the leader of the Scottish Labour party, gave her formal endorsement to Smith and warned that Corbyn could not unite the party.

Dugdale, the party's most highly elected female politician, wrote in the Daily Record on Monday that Smith could win a general election and reunite the party.

She said: Owen Smith gets my vote. I believe Owen can unite our party, and mover us on from the divisions that exist under the current UK leader of Jeremy Corbyn.

Owen understands that to have a chance of implementing Labour values, we need to win over some of those who didnt vote for us at the last election."

Dugdale said if she had lost the support of her MSPs in the way Corbyn had with Labour MPs, she would have resigned. In June, Corbyn lost a confidence vote from the parliamentary party and there was an exodus of resignations of senior party figures from his shadow cabinet.

Dugdale said: My only public comment on Jeremys leadership before this contest was to say he had lost the confidence of his parliamentary colleagues. Thats a fact.

More than 80% of Labour MPs expressed a lack of confidence in Jeremys leadership. If 80% of my colleagues in the Scottish Parliament didnt support me, I wouldnt be able to do the job  even though I received 72% of the votes when party members and trade unionists in Scotland elected me to be their leader."

Dugdales latest endorsement comes after Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, also backed Smith for the leadership contest.

Khan wrote in the Observer on Sunday that Corbyns leadership had been disastrous and he should share part of the blame for the Brexit vote.

Khan said, although Corby was a principled Labour man, he felt he was extremely unlikely to win a general election.

He said: Jeremy has already proved that he is unable to organise an effective team and has failed to win the trust and respect of the British people.

Jeremys personal ratings are the worst of any opposition leader on record and the Labour party is suffering badly as a result. He has lost the confidence of more than 80% of Labours MPs in parliament  and I am afraid we simply cannot afford to go on like this."

He added: Throughout the [EU referendum] campaign and aftermath, Jeremy failed to show the leadership we desperately needed. His position on EU membership was never clear  and voters didnt believe him. A third of Labour voters said they did not know where the party stood on the referendum just a week before polling day."

During his campaign Corbyn said he planned several reforms and to democratise the country from the ground up.

His policies include devolving power to local councils and regions, replacing the House of Lords with an elected second chamber, mandatory collective bargaining in firms with 250 employees or more, and electing staff representatives to executive remuneration committees.
Londons FTSE 100 index was down 0.5% to 6,821.66 in afternoon trade, with miners suffering the heaviest losses.

Heavily-weighted miners were the biggest drag on the top-flight index as metals prices declined across the board, with silver, copper and gold all weaker as a stronger US dollar took its tool.

Fresnillo, Randgold Resources, Anglo American, Antofagasta, Glencore, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton were all sharply lower.

Energy stocks, meanwhile, fell in tandem with oil prices, with Shell and BP both weaker.

Oil prices retreated on news that Iraq  OPECs second-biggest oil producer  will boost its oil exports by 5%. A jump in the US oil-rig count also contributed to the decline in prices.

On the upside, housebuilders were in the black following a report from Countrywide, which predicted that UK house prices will fall by 1% next year on Brexit uncertainty but recover with a 2% increase in 2018.

Persimmon was the second-best performers ahead of its first-half results on Tuesday, with analysts expecting the housebuilder to shrug off the impact of the EU referendum with a surge in profits.

Deutsche Bank expects Persimmon to report a 26% increase in earnings before interest and tax for the first half.

However while there is no doubt this would be a strong results we believe the market focus will centre on trading for the group post the Brexit vote, management guidance and the commitment to dividends, the bank said.

Taylor Wimpey, Persimmon, Barratt Developments and Berkeley Group all slid.

Travis Perkins was on the front foot as Canaccord Genuity trimmed its price target on the stock but reiterated its buy rating.

The brokerage said: We continue to see Travis as being structurally attractive over the medium term and see value under the scenario of a relatively mild recession. We believe that it will perform relatively better than peers in potentially more difficult markets.

Risers

Taylor Wimpey (TW.) 157.50p 2.74%

Persimmon (PSN) 1,785.00p 2.12%

Barratt Developments (BDEV) 459.00p 1.84%

Berkeley Group Holdings (The) (BKG) 2,528.00p 1.65%

Dixons Carphone (DC.) 375.10p 1.54%

Provident Financial (PFG) 2,899.00p 1.29%

Travis Perkins (TPK) 1,577.00p 1.28%

International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 389.20p 1.12%

Capita (CPI) 1,027.00p 1.08%

BT Group (BT.A) 395.40p 1.01%

Fallers

Fresnillo (FRES) 1,830.00p -5.62%

Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 8,030.00p -3.83%

Anglo American (AAL) 837.80p -3.70%

Antofagasta (ANTO) 544.00p -3.63%

Glencore (GLEN) 182.90p -3.00%

Rio Tinto (RIO) 2,381.50p -2.64%

BHP Billiton (BLT) 1,029.00p -2.28%

Mediclinic International (MDC) 1,077.00p -1.82%

Royal Dutch Shell 'B' (RDSB) 1,976.50p -1.67%

BP (BP.) 427.80p -1.51%
Worldwide notebook shipment update - July 2016

Notebook Tracker data services. Please The DIGITIMES Research analysis you are trying to open requires subscription todata services. Please sign in if you wish to continue.

Worldwide top-5 notebook brand vendors saw their combined shipments drop 32% on month in July, during which the top-3 ODMs together recorded a sequential decline of 25% in shipments due to an inventory pileup at retailers. Demand for Chromebooks was weakening because seasonal factors, and vendors were conservative prior to the release of their new Wintel products. Some vendors had started aggressive price campaigns in Europe and North America in May and June, which dramatically increased their shipments in the two months, and the level of monthly comparison for the July shipments.
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.
What you get with a Dispatch subscription
Weve been known to splurge now and again. When finances allow, bring on the private islands, the glamping adventures, and the bucket list hotels. Well happily do our best impression of a Russian billionaire with the travel bug.

But when the bank account has been decimated from one too many indulgences, its time to reassess those jetsetting habits. It cant all be rubbing shoulders with Sir Richard on Necker Island.

Cambodia

Fortunately, there are plenty of global destinations that promise remarkable experiences at affordable prices. The cheapest countries to visit can be explored for less than the cost of a dinner date per day, so put down Tinder and save those funds for a change of scenery. These 9 countries offer maximum bang for your holiday buck.

Even in Southeast Asia, a region known for budget-conscious travel, Cambodia stands out as shockingly cheap. What the country lacks in high prices it makes up for in riches of other kinds  a wealth of complex history, spectacular scenery, friendly people, and tasty food. The temple complex of Angkor Wat is Cambodias most famous destination (deservedly so). Also worth a visit are the glittering spires of Phnom Penhs Royal Palace and the sandy strips of Sihanoukville.

Nicaragua

Nicaragua was off the radar for years due to a combination of natural disasters and political unrest. The good news is that those days are in the past, and the country is rapidly developing a reputation as the next Costa Rica. Adventure travellers are increasingly choosing Nicaragua for hiking, surfing, kayaking, biking, and boarding down an active volcano (yes, really) while the culturally curious flock to the colonial towns of Leon and Granada.

Turkey

Perhaps youve seen the ancient ruins of Ephesus on Instagram. Or the venerable architecture of Hagia Sophia. Or the surreal hot springs of Pamukkale. Or the fairytale topography (and hot air balloons) of Cappadocia. A perfect conflation of east and west, Turkey is brimming with unique experiences and miraculous landscapes waiting to be explored. Be sure to venture beyond Istanbul for some of the most memorable, and affordable, opportunities.

India

India remains one of the cheapest countries to visit if your globe-trotting has a spending limit. And as one of the worlds largest nations, it offers no shortage of incredible things to see, do, and eat on the cheap. Goa is the go-to for beaches and all-night parties. Mumbai is an architectural feast. Ladakh and Varanasi are sacred and soulful. Agra is home to the Taj Mahal. You could even see some of the worlds finest erotic temple art in the carvings of Khajuraho.

Bulgaria

Though its capital is believed to be the second oldest city in Europe, Bulgaria is surprisingly untouched by tourists. Sofia offers old world charm and a chilled-out vibe (just dont expect the opulent metropolis youd get in a western capital). Outside of Sofia, Bulgaria continues to blend ancient and modern. Fortresses, ruins, tombs, and caves remind of eras long gone by. Black Sea resorts and Pirin ski slopes tell more contemporary tales. Its all beautiful and not yet saturated with bargain-hungry holidaymakers.

Panama

From coffee farms to cloud forests, Panama has far more to recommend it than the famous canal. Panama City is the most cosmopolitan capital in Central America. The coasts pack plenty of postcard-perfect beaches. The highlands boast rugged natural beauty and some of the worlds finest caffeine beans. In a world where native cultures and untouched wilderness are rapidly disappearing, Panama is beating the odds with both intact.

Vietnam

Recent years have seen an increase in Vietnams popularity. Despite its newfound status as a tourist destination, the country remains largely unspoiled and inexpensive. Head to Ho Chi Minh City for urban chaos. Hit Phu Quoc Island for sun and sand. Rural adventures can be found in the far north, and the floating worlds of the Mekong Delta and Ha Long Bay are guaranteed to inspire. If youre feeling especially adventurous, take a cooking class and learn to make your favourite local dish.

Albania

Ever heard of the Albanian Riviera? No? Exactly. The area along the Ionian Sea is a hub for nightlife, ecotourism, and elite retreats, but the country has yet to explode as far as tourism goes. Those in the know come for beaches, mountains, castles, ancient cities, archeological sites, and yes, prices that soundly beat Europes more famous rivieras. Call Albania the dark horse hit of the Balkans.

Nepal

Following the devastating earthquake that struck in 2015, most of Nepal is open for tourism once again. The country is a haven for mountain lovers. Eight of the worlds 10 tallest peaks (including Mount Everest) call the nation home, as do many of the Himalayas most iconic hiking trails. Adrenaline junkies can also get their fix kayaking, rafting, biking, paragliding, and bungee jumping against Nepals dramatic natural backdrop.
China plans to develop its next-generation cruise missiles based on a modular design, allowing them to be tailor-made for specific combat situations with a high level of artificial intelligence (AI), according to a senior missile designer.

"We plan to adopt a 'plug and play' approach in the development of new cruise missiles, which will enable our military commanders to tailor-make missiles in accordance with combat conditions and their specific requirements," Wang Changqing, director of the General Design Department of the Third Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, said.

"Moreover, our future cruise missiles will have a very high level of AI and automation," Wang was quoted as saying by the state-run China Daily.

"They will allow commanders to control them in a real-time manner, or to use a fire-and-forget mode, or even to add more tasks to in-flight missiles," he said.

He added that future combat would require cost-efficient and flexible weapons, modular design would therefore be a good solution.

For the first time, last year, China showcased its Dongfeng-21D missile, the anti-ship ballistic missile described as the "carrier killer" which had US defence officials concerned as it could blow up aircraft carriers from a distance of about 1,500 km to 1,700 km.

Chinese engineers had researched the use of artificial intelligence in missiles for many years, and they were world leaders in the field, he said.

Modular design was not a new concept in missile design. The European missile developer and manufacturer MBDA displayed its CVW102 Flexis modular missile concept at last year's Paris Air Show.

The system would allow configuration of missiles in accordance with mission requirements.
Strife-torn Syria has suggested a bigger role for India in meeting the challenges of terrorism even as the two countries discussed terrorism, faith equality and the need to upgrade bilateral security consultations.

In talks with visiting Indian minister of state for foreign affairs M J Akbar in Damascus, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad suggested that New Delhi has a role to play in meeting the challenge of terrorism. He also invited India to play an active role in the reconstruction of the Syrian economy.

Akbar is on a week-long visit to West Asia from 17 August. His visit will boost Syrian President Assad's efforts to highlight continued critical support for his government.

Sources said New Delhi and Damascus have reasserted their rejection of ''foreign interference in the internal affairs of states''.

''There was an agreement between both the sides for further upgrading security consultations,'' government sources said.

During the meeting, the Syrian President also welcomed India's objective position on the conflict in Syria and both leaders acknowledged that terrorism was a global problem.

''As a growing power, India has a role to play in meeting the challenge of terrorism,'' sources quoted Assad as saying.

Akbar, during the meeting, said the age of destruction should give way to the age of reconstruction in Syria soon. The five-year-old Syrian civil war has resulted in unparalleled destruction in the West Asian Country where a rebel alliance is fighting against Assad's forces.

President Assad's forces are trying to recapture Aleppo and the fierce clashes were seen last week between regime and rebels backed by Fateh al-Sham around Om al-Qaraa and it was finally reclaimed by the government forces.

Several cities and heritage sites like Palmyra, Apamea, Bosra, Khan Sheikhoun, Kafr Nubbel have been damaged in the conflict. Cultural heritage site 'Temple of Baalshamin' was blown up in August 2015 while 'Tower of Elahbel' and several other ancient tombs were destroyed between June and September 2015.
As part of Heritage Week a talk will be given on Tuesday night (23rd) by Christy Gillespie on the fascinating story of Glenlough Valley.

It will take place in the Folk Village in Glencolmcille on Tuesday 23 rd of August beginning at 8.00p.m.

The lecture is titled The Road to Glenlough a title which the late, great fiddler James Byrne gave to one of his many tunes. Ironically there is no road leading into this remote yet enchanting valley and yet it has attracted the famous and indeed the infamous for various reasons.

Christy explains that if very strong and documented local tradition is to be believed, it harboured Prince Charles Edward Stuart or Bonnie Prince Charlie after his failed uprising as he tried in vain to wrest control back to the Stuart dynasty.

The valley was also a well of great inspiration for American artist and illustrator Rockwell Kent who produced many of his greatest works while living in the valley in the summer of 1926.

Then just nine years later Dylan Thomas followed in the artists footsteps,

brought there by his literary agent as he tried to get him as far away from the bright lights of Bohemian London as he could.

Little did he realise that he was bringing him into the poteen making capital of Donegal.

Come along on the evening and learn not only about these famous visitors but also about the harsh subsistence life of those that lived in and worked the valley as they tried to eke out a frugal existence there. It is a way of living long gone in Ireland but deserves to be recorded.

He adds the talk will be a very visual one, accompanied by hundreds of images projected onto a large screen.

Chirsty also asks that if people should have any stories relating to Glenlough, or photographs of the valley, please bring them along on the night as it will be the last chance to have them included in the forthcoming book which is the result of ten years of hard research.

Everyone is welcome and admission is free of charge.
Anyone with an interest in local history or the local landscape is asked to help out with the restoration of the historic EIRE sign at St John's Point.

Dunkineely Community Ltd (DCL) are spearheading this initiative which aims to restore the white stone marker and ID number which were used as a navigational tool by pilots.

It's also hoped that the project will be able to go on to also restore the Local Defence Force Lookout Post at a later date.

DCL's Michael Cunningham explains. "This project offers a real chance to be a part of history.

"Our landscape still features reminders of World War II. These include the Local Defence Force Lookout Posts, such as the one at St Johns Point, from where volunteers kept an eye on the unfolding drama offshore.

There is also the EIRE sign, at the end of the point, that was made from whitewashed stones which could be seen from the air by passing aircraft

And there's is a war grave in St Peters Churchyard as well. All of these things have an intertwined and fascinating story to tell.

"In close proximity to each of the LDF Lookout Posts was an arrangement of whitewashed stones that spelled out the word EIRE, that could be clearly seen from the sky.

"It could be looked upon as a declaration of Irish independence, sovereignty and neutrality, but just beside each of the EIRE signs was a number. The one at St Johns Point was 70, the next one along the coast at Carrigan Head is 71. In fact, each of the 83 Lookout Posts around the Irish coast had an identifying number that could be seen from the air. These signs, and later the numbers, were added at the request of the David Gray, the American Ambassador in Dublin.

"In the run up to D-Day on the 6th June 1944, and the subsequent assault on Germany, there were countless aircraft coming across the Atlantic from America.

On making landfall on this side of the Atlantic, it was important for the pilots to know where they were. The Irish government provided maps with these navigational numbers on them for the American pilots. Once they saw one of the numbers, they knew exactly where they were on the map and could easily navigate from there to their final destination.

"Todays events are tomorrows history. In time, your actions in helping with this restoration will be part of history."

Restoration work is set to begin on Thursday, September 1.

If you would like to help, please contact Michael on 087 2770408, at dunkineelycl3@gmail.com or the Dunkineely Community Ltd Facebook page.

"A few hours of your time will go a long, long way... all the way into history!" Michael concluded.
As many area communities will be observing Trick-or-Treating this weekend and Monday, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections advises you and your family to keep your children safer this Halloween by discussing ahead of time what to do if you are ever separated. A list of safety tips from state agencies is below to help ensure a safer Halloween weekend for everyone. You can also find the hours for trick-or-treating in Door and Kewaunee counties by clicking here.

-A parent or trusted adult should always accompany children

-Stay on well-lit streets and stick to neighborhoods you know

-Only stop at homes where the porch light is on

-Never enter a home or car for a treat

-Trick-or-treaters should carry a cell phone to allow for quick communication

-If the child carries a cell phone, activate location services prior to trick-or-treating

-Call 911 if you see any suspicious or illegal activity

Children should yell No! and run from any stranger who tries to take them somewhere

-Have a responsible adult check treats at the end of the night

Similarly, the Wisconsin Department of Health also suggests some tips for families with trick-or-treaters and families who are giving out candy.

Costume Tips

-Choose costumes that are light-colored and more visible to motorists.

-Use reflective tape to decorate costumes and candy bags to increase the visibility of children to drivers. Reflective tape may be purchased at hardware, bicycle, or sporting goods stores.

-Use make-up rather than a mask; if your childs costume does include a mask, make sure it fits snugly and that the eyeholes are large enough to allow full vision.

-Children should wear well-fitting, sturdy shoes.

-Costumes should be short enough that a child will not trip and fall.

-Choose costume accessories such as swords or knives that are made of soft and flexible material.

-Do not use novelty contacts such as cat eyes or snake eyes.

Pedestrian Safety

-Engage in Halloween activities during the daylight hours, if possible.

-Do not enter homes or apartments without adult supervision.

-Remind children to walk, not run, and to only cross streets at crosswalks.

-Be sure your children are accompanied by a responsible adult who has a flashlight. -----

-Flashlights or chemical light sticks should be used so that children can see and be seen by motorists.

Halloween Home Safety

-Remove obstacles from your lawn, porch, or steps if you are expecting trick-or-treaters.

-Make sure your front porch is well-lit.

-Avoid using candle-lit jack-o-lanterns if possible. If you do use candles, dont place them near curtains, furnishings, or decorations. Move them off porches where childrens costumes may ignite.

-Keep your pets in another room when you are expecting trick-or-treaters.

-Small children should not carve pumpkins; instead, allow them to draw the designs on the pumpkin and adults may carve.

-Turn on an outside light if welcoming trick-or-treaters.
Dundalk-native Laurie WInkless has just released a new book titled 'Science and the City'. In this Q&A with the Democrat she looks back at her time living in Dundalk and her memories of the place.

- Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your background here in Dundalk?

My parents are Rosemary and Jackie Winkless and I grew up in St Malachy's Villas. Lots of my family and friends still live in Dundalk, so I visit pretty often! Given my family history, I was also heavily involved in music and dance throughout my childhood. I went to St Malachy's primary school, followed by St. Mary's College, before heading to Trinity College Dublin, for a BSc Physics with Astrophysics. As part of that, I spent a summer in Florida on a scholarship to the Kennedy Space Centre.

I moved to London on the completion of my degree to do an MSc in Space Science at University College London. I then joined the Materials Team at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) as a scientist, where I worked for more than 7 years. I signed my book deal with Bloomsbury in the summer of 2014, and wrote the book, Science and the City, while working part-time with various science organisations. My book was published across Europe on 11 August, and will hit US bookshelves on 25 October.

- How do you find living in London, compared with old Dundalk?

To be honest, it's almost impossible to compare them! I haven't really ever lived in Dundalk as an adult - I left in 2003 (aged 19-20) - so most of my adulthood to date has been spent in London! As a big fan of urban technologies, transport and infrastructure, London's been a wonderful place to live - the scale of the city (its population is almost twice as large as Ireland's) means that the engineering / science challenges are huge, so its been rather inspirational. There's always something to do, and it's easy to find people who share your interests. It's also a great stepping stone for travel - something else I love to do! Dundalk has many benefits though - it's the home of my lovely family and some fantastic friends, as well as being a short drive from wonderful landscapes.

- Where did your early interest in science come from?

It was a combination of things, really. My parents tell me that I've always been very curious - from teaching myself to read at an early age, to taking things apart to understand how they work! I played with lots of my sibling's old toys too, including a telescope, which was what first hooked me in to all things space-related.

My mum was hugely encouraging of my love of reading and study, and used to bring me to the library a lot - books opened up the whole world to me, including science, and they introduced me to great writing! As well as that, my dad is a retired engineer - he always let me help him with various DIY projects, which helped to hone my practical skills. By first year in secondary school, I knew I wanted to study physics at Trinity. These days, I get to combine my love of writing with my love of science and engineering - I feel very lucky.

- What's your new book 'Science and the City' about and where did the inspiration come from?

I've described Science and the City as my scientific love letter to the great cities of the world - really, it's a primer to how cities work. More than half of the world's population now live in urban areas, and that proportion is only going to increase. With that comes an ever increasing challenge of delivering power and water to people, while transporting, feeding and housing a growing population.

Science and engineering have always been right at the heart of the city, but looking into the near future, I think they'll become even more important. In the book, which is split into 7 chapters (like, Switch, Drive, Wet), I look at the technologies that have gotten us to where we are today. I also interviewed researchers working right at the cutting edge, to uncover those technologies that will transform the city of tomorrow.

Inspiration for it came from various sources. My research at NPL was focused on materials, so that forms a large part of the book, and as an adopted Londoner, I am obsessed by transport. I'm also very curious by nature, so long found myself asking questions of the city, like how much water flows through its pipes, or why leaves on the line cause such problems for trains.

Together, this led to the idea of writing a book on how cities work. I also found myself getting tired of reading stories about new technologies that were more science fiction than science fact, so I included some realistic 'future gazing' to each chapter too.

Science and the City is very much targeted at a general audience - I promise you don't need a background in maths or materials science to get through it - it's really accessible! If anything, I want it to be the book that kick-starts a person's interest in science. Much of it is probably suitable for children, but I definitely wrote it for adults, so perhaps it is best for teens upwards. I'd say that anyone curious about the world they live in will get something out of it.

- Any plans for another book?

I definitely have the beginnings of an idea for Book #2, but it's too early for me to discuss it - sorry. I'm working on it, so fingers crossed my publisher likes the idea enough to ask me to write a proposal!

- Do you get back to Dundalk often?

Yes, at least a couple of times a year.

- Any stand out memories from Dundalk?

Lots! I loved my years at the Marist, so can't wait to visit the new school. Dancing was a huge part of my childhood too, so another strong memory is of going in and out of rehearsals and to the Town Hall for my mum's many productions. Mostly, I just associate Dundalk with my family and friends - I'm lucky to still have such a close link to my hometown!
Blog Archive June 2021 (1) May 2021 (77) April 2021 (77) March 2021 (82) February 2021 (68) January 2021 (64) December 2020 (67) November 2020 (66) October 2020 (66) September 2020 (67) August 2020 (74) July 2020 (83) June 2020 (92) May 2020 (86) April 2020 (104) March 2020 (105) February 2020 (74) January 2020 (75) December 2019 (75) November 2019 (70) October 2019 (89) September 2019 (69) August 2019 (81) July 2019 (77) June 2019 (73) May 2019 (110) April 2019 (110) March 2019 (102) February 2019 (85) January 2019 (123) December 2018 (116) November 2018 (112) October 2018 (121) September 2018 (107) August 2018 (150) July 2018 (163) June 2018 (190) May 2018 (145) April 2018 (112) March 2018 (124) February 2018 (113) January 2018 (164) December 2017 (150) November 2017 (144) October 2017 (169) September 2017 (171) August 2017 (135) July 2017 (131) June 2017 (147) May 2017 (160) April 2017 (138) March 2017 (156) February 2017 (143) January 2017 (203) December 2016 (208) November 2016 (185) October 2016 (173) September 2016 (194) August 2016 (232) July 2016 (225) June 2016 (238) May 2016 (231) April 2016 (215) March 2016 (246) February 2016 (226) January 2016 (252) December 2015 (230) November 2015 (250) October 2015 (234) September 2015 (222) August 2015 (253) July 2015 (275) June 2015 (279) May 2015 (223) April 2015 (226) March 2015 (243) February 2015 (258) January 2015 (281) December 2014 (292) November 2014 (296) October 2014 (413) September 2014 (472) August 2014 (506) July 2014 (483) June 2014 (488) May 2014 (512) April 2014 (497) March 2014 (531) February 2014 (482) January 2014 (535) December 2013 (482) November 2013 (441) October 2013 (416) September 2013 (491) August 2013 (521) July 2013 (491) June 2013 (470) May 2013 (457) April 2013 (426) March 2013 (420) February 2013 (414) January 2013 (489) December 2012 (433) November 2012 (504) October 2012 (469) September 2012 (430) August 2012 (427) July 2012 (360) June 2012 (336) May 2012 (362) April 2012 (322) March 2012 (263) February 2012 (224) January 2012 (291) December 2011 (295) November 2011 (325) October 2011 (330) September 2011 (319) August 2011 (333) July 2011 (318) June 2011 (387) May 2011 (373) April 2011 (389) March 2011 (375) February 2011 (335) January 2011 (400) December 2010 (445) November 2010 (395) October 2010 (312) September 2010 (262) August 2010 (277) July 2010 (323) June 2010 (386) May 2010 (360) April 2010 (333) March 2010 (351) February 2010 (336) January 2010 (384) December 2009 (353) November 2009 (300) October 2009 (308) September 2009 (350) August 2009 (298) July 2009 (255) June 2009 (203) May 2009 (193) April 2009 (186) March 2009 (197) February 2009 (173) January 2009 (148) December 2008 (181) November 2008 (197) October 2008 (236) September 2008 (304) August 2008 (314) July 2008 (273) June 2008 (27) May 2008 (1) April 2008 (6) October 2007 (1) May 2007 (1) April 2007 (6) March 2007 (2) February 2007 (1) October 2006 (1) September 2006 (1) August 2006 (4) July 2006 (4) June 2006 (1) July 2005 (1) May 2005 (2) March 2005 (1) June 2004 (2) May 2004 (1) April 2004 (4) March 2004 (2) February 2004 (2) July 2003 (2) June 2003 (5)
By Dan Ritzman

Migrations are the heartbeat of life in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Groups of thousands of caribou course across the landscape as they complete the longest migration of any land animal in North America. Arctic terns appear to be avenging angels as they guard their nests on riverside gravel bars; these birds have traveled 12,000 miles from Antarctica to find the perfect nest spot and they will let you know you are not welcome nearby. And I just completed what has become my annual migration. For more than two decades I have been traveling north each summer to experience the endless daylight, vast landscapes and stunning wildlife of the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge.

You dont have to be a scientist to see that the coastal plain is the biological heart of our nations wildest refuge, but if you need the numbersthe coastal plain is the nesting ground for 200 species of birds (who traveled there from every state and six continents), the calving ground and nursery for the Porcupine caribou herd and the most important on-shore denning area in Alaska for polar bears.

Not every animal present on the coastal plain hightails it out once the snow begins to fall, some have amazing adaptations to allow them to overwinter in this severe climate. On my last trip this summer we discovered the skull of a musk ox, a prehistoric-looking shaggy critter that is able to survive the deep cold. A close examination of the skull showed the spiral nasal passages that allow the frozen air the animal breathes to travel further and have more time to warm up as to prevent perpetual brain freeze. Equally fascinating is one of my favorites, the Arctic Wooly Bear Caterpillar. These are the longest lived caterpillars on the planet. They spend 7-14 years as a caterpillar before metamorphosing into a moth. During that time they spend about seven to eight months of the year frozen like a caterpillar popsicle. The three to four months they are thawed out are spent busily munching on the Arctic tundra. It takes them all those partial years to store up enough energy to undergo their change.

It isnt just the wildlife that are uniquely adapted to living in this landscape; the Alaska Native peoples who live above the Arctic Circle are intimately connected to the land and its rhythms. Every year Alaska Natives harvest, process, distribute and consume millions of pounds of wild animals, fish and plants through an economy and way of life that has come to be termed subsistence. Collectively, these varied subsistence activities constitute a way of being and relating to the world and thus comprise an essential component of Alaska Native identities and cultures.

The people and the wildlife of the Arctic Refuge are threatened by the double-whammy of climate change and oil development. Look at any of the recent maps that highlight where the world is warming the fastest and the Alaskan Arctic shows up as a fiery red blob. In fact the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. The effects of this can be seen and felt on the groundless water, more shrubs and trees and Ive even noticed the change in the different species of birds showing up in the high north. Most important, the sea ice is disappearing. This disappearance spells trouble for wildlife like polar bears and the Alaska Native peoples who rely on the ice to hunt. It also has caused an increase in coastal erosion and a number of villages in the Arctic will have to be relocated or risk being washed into the sea. Scientists are telling us that the loss of this ice is leading to the unusual weather patterns we are experiencing in the rest of the world. What happens in the Arctic doesnt stay in the Arctic.

Looming

The Canning River forms the western boundary of the northern portion of the Arctic Refuge, separating the land owned and managed by the state of Alaska around Prudhoe Bay from the coastal plain and other wildlands of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It had been three or four years since I had last floated the Canning to the mountains, across the 30 miles of coastal plain to the coast of the Arctic Ocean. This is one of my favorite rivers, delivering a wide array of landscapes and incredible wildlife from wolves and grizzly bears in the mountains and plains, to snowy owls, yellow billed loons, golden plovers and eiders in the delta and coast. This summer I was dismayed to see a new oil field development rising ominously out of the tundra. Point Thompson is the newest and easternmost expansion of Prudhoe Bay and sits just a dozen or so miles from the edge of the Arctic Refuge. With the flat topography of the coastal plain this industrial site mars the wild character of the land.

This was a wake-up call for me. During the Bush presidency millions of Americans took action to protect the refuge and convinced the decision makes in Washington DC to say no to drilling in the refuge. This place has felt safe from drilling for the past 10 years, but here is a brand new oil field knocking on the door of the coastal plain. Now is not the time to be complacent; now is the time for action.

As a wilderness guide I have had the honor and good fortune to be able to share this special place with adventurers from across the U.S. Over the years Ive traveled through this landscape with teachers, machinists, conservationists, veterans, musicians, artists, people from all walks of life and all corners of the country. To a person they have been moved by what they experienced. And many of them have been moved to take action and reached out to key decision makers to say that the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge deserves to remain forever wild. A collection of their actions can be seen here.

But the Arctic Refuge doesnt just speak to the people who have had the chance to visit. Like the migratory birds, the idea, the wildness and spirit of the Arctic Refuge touches people in every state and over the years millions of Americans have let it be known that the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is too special to drill; it deserves permanent protection.

Now is the time, before the oil fields creep one inch closer to this treasured landscape, to raise our voices and protect the this place once and for all.

Dan Ritzman is the Alaska program director for Sierra Clubs Our Wild America campaign.
By Willy Blackmore

Craig Watts raised broiler chickens for Perdue for more than two decadesuntil he let the animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) film inside one of his barns in 2014. As a result, Americans got an HD look at how their favorite meat is raised.

In the video, which has been viewed nearly 2.4 million times on YouTube, birds are shown unable to stand under their own weight, feathers burned off their stomachs by the noxious waste layered on the ground. The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote that as a farmboy who raised small flocks of chickens and geese, I never saw anything like the stomach sores that appear common in Watts barn.

Perdue announced on Monday one of the most ambitious animal welfare plans in the industry. Photo credit: Perdue

Nearly two years latertwo years that saw Perdue announce a No Antibiotics Ever plan for its poultry operations and Watts both leave his contract and file a lawsuit against the companyPerdue announced Monday one of the most ambitious animal welfare plans in the industry.

Based on the Five Freedoms endorsed by many animal welfare groups, Perdues Commitments to Animal Care: 2016 and Beyond lays out plans to create more space in poultry barns, increase the amount of time and space birds have for exercise and play and move away from the kind of rapidly growing modern breeds that result in birds that cannot withstand their own weight. Eventually, all birds will be anesthetized before slaughter.

There has been definitely criticism of Perdue from various fronts, Julie DeYoung, a spokesperson for Perdue, said in an interview with TakePart.

So as we studied and tried to learn from those and began talking with our critics a little bit more completely about that, they encouraged us to be more public about the changes the company is making. For example, while Perdue started to cut back on antibiotics in 2002, it only started talking publicly about the issue in the last couple of yearsa far greater interval than it took to engage with consumers over the conditions chickens live in. In addition to raising questions about animal welfare, DeYoung said that undercover videos reminded us of how important farmers are in our equation.

Compassion in World Farmings Leah Garces is one of the critics Perdue has been engaging with more. Last winter, she was invited to meet with Bruce Stewart-Brown, who oversees food safety and animal welfare issues for the company. On Monday, she called Perdues new animal welfare standards a good first step but said that time will tell what it means for the birds. Last year, Perdue raised 676 million chickens.

While there are questions over timelines, implementation and auditingthe kind of nitty-gritty concerns about large-scale corporate change that follow a feel-good press announcementGarces, U.S. director for CIWF, was clear that she sees this as significant for the industry. You have to recognize that no other company has done a policy like this, she said. Other animal welfare groups, including the Humane Society of the United States and Mercy for Animals, have lauded the announcement.

But where Garces sees progress, the man on the other side of the 2014 undercover video and his legal team are less than pleased.

I dont want to outright say theyre liars, said Amanda Hitt, director of the Food Integrity Campaign at the Government Accountability Project, which is helping Watts with his lawsuit against Perdue. But I dont believe that theyre necessarily telling the truth until we see some action and change. To suggest that they give a st about these birds or these farmers just belies what Ive learned over the last couple of years representing Craig and other farmers.

Watts didnt respond to a request for an interview made through GAP, but Hitt said he is not happy with the announcement. Part of the reason he wanted the world to see the conditions his birds were living in, Watts said in 2014, is that those were the conditions that Perdue mandatedand that he was unable to implement changes that would have made the chickens lives better. But at the time the video was released, Perdue said it showed that Watts was not following protocol and was himself responsible for the mistreatment of the chickens.

Perdues DeYoung said that changing the companys relationship with its contract farmerswho put up their own money to build and maintain chicken houses but do not own the birds or the feedcould be a part of the overall animal welfare improvement process. Contracts are traditionally built around concerns of production and efficiency, DeYoung said, but the company now provides bonuses for farmers who follow Perdues U.S. Department of Agriculture processverified poultry care standards. Going forward, the company wants to figure out other ways to connect animal care with pay and incentives, DeYoung said. In addition to bonuses, we are talking about ways we can, perhaps contractually, we can change the relationship.

Perdue is looking to Niman Ranch, which it purchased last year, for ways to improve relationships with farmers. (Niman ranchers are contracted to raise animals but are guaranteed a minimum price to protect the farmers overhead, earn a premium price over the industry standard and receive other financial support from the company). While its unclear how its poultry farmer contracts will change, Perdue is willing to widely adopt the best practices it learns from smaller companies like Niman that it acquires.

When Perdue bought Coleman Natural Foods, which produces organic and antibiotic-free poultry, in 2011, DeYoung said there was an assumption at Perdue that producing organic chickens would mean less efficiency or less productivity, but that was not the case. Some of the changes that will be implemented in the animal welfare overhaul are based on Perdues organic poultry production that will allow us to produce birds that are still productive and work for us from a business perspective as well.

While some changes have been a function of learning from other companies and some have been precipitated by consumer demand and very public forms of criticism, others are a matter of necessity, according to Garces. Raising birds in cramped, enclosed and dirty environments? Thats fine when we have antibiotics holding the whole thing together, she said. But the train has left the station for antibiotics. Without routine low doses of antibiotics, birds raised in such conditions are getting sick and passing disease to one another. Mortality rates are climbing up across the board after a decade of decline.

What weve found  is that we needed to look closer at the animal husbandry practices in order to be successful without antibiotics, DeYoung said.

While Perdues announcement gives hope to animal welfare organizers like Garces that we can see a future where birds are no longer being crushed under their own weight and broilers can move freely in natural light, the immediate changes from Perdue are going to be small. By the end of 2016, Perdue will retrofit 200 of its chicken houses with windowsjust 3 percent of its 6,000 houses across the country.

This article was reposted with permission from our media associate TakePart.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Scientists Grow First Edible Plants From Mars-Like Soil

Monsanto vs. People Power: EU Glyphosate License Set to Expire June 30

This City Is Home to 820 Urban Farms and Quickly Becoming Americas Urban Ag Capital

DARK Act Compromise Could Preempt Vermonts GMO Label Law
An oil spill from Royal Dutch Shells offshore Brutus platform has released 2,100 barrels of crude into the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqIG7ci3IfY

The leakroughly 88,200 gallonscreated a visible 2 mile by 13 mile oil slick in the sea about 97 miles south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana, according to the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

Officials said that the accident occurred near Shells Glider field, an underwater pipe system that connects four subsea oil wells to the Brutus platform, which floats on top of the water with a depth of 2,900 feet.

Shell spokeswoman Kimberly Windon said in a statement that the likely cause of the spill was a release of oil from the subsea infrastructure.

The Coast Guard said that the source of the discharge is reportedly secured. A cleanup crew has been dispatched.

Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said in a statement that a company helicopter observed the sheen yesterday, and that the wells were under control after it isolated the leak and shut in production.

There are no drilling activities at Brutus, and this is not a well control incident, the company said. Shell is determining the exact cause of the release by inspecting the subsea equipment and flowlines in the Glider field. The company has made all appropriate regulatory notifications and mobilized response vessels, including aircraft, in the event the discharge is recoverable. There are no injuries.

Citing industry trade publications, Reuters reported that the Brutus platform started operations 15 years ago and was designed with top capacity of 100,000 barrels of oil and 150 million cubic feet (4.25 million cubic meters) of gas per day.

Shell said that no release is acceptable, and safety remains our priority as we respond to this incident.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has tightened regulations for offshore operators ever since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that claimed the lives of 11 men and caused the largest man-made oil spill in history after dumping 3 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.

Still, environmental advocates have criticized Big Oils insistence that offshore drilling can be done safely and have urged for the practice to stop.

The last thing the Gulf of Mexico needs is another oil spill, Vicky Wyatt, a Greenpeace campaigner, told EcoWatch. The oil and gas industrys business-as-usual mentality devastates communities, the environment, and our climate. Make no mistake, the more fossil fuel infrastructure we have, the more spills and leaks well see. This terrible situation must come to an end. President Obama can put these leaks, spills, and climate disasters behind us by stopping new leases in the Gulf and Arctic. Its past time to keep it in the ground for good.

This latest offshore oil disaster once again demonstrates the inherent dangers of fossil fuels, and the irresponsibility of allowing new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico even as these spills continue to happen, Marc Yaggi, executive director of Waterkeeper Alliance, said.

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade noted in a press release this morning that the federal National Response Center clocks thousands of oil industry accidents in the Gulf of Mexico every year.

What we usually see in oil industry accidents like this is a gross understatement of the amount release and an immediate assurance that everything is under control, even if its not, Anne Rolfes, Louisiana Bucket Brigade founding director, said. This spill shows why there is a new and vibrant movement in the Gulf of Mexico for no new drilling.

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade, which aims to end petrochemical pollution in the Pelican State and a transition to renewable energy, said that on the same day as Shells accident, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) held a hearing focused on the environmental impact of oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. During the hearing, Gulf residents brought in tar balls found just last month at Elmers Island in Grand Isle, Louisiana as evidence that BOEMs environmental impact assessment is inadequate, the group said.

Gulf residents opposed to drilling are calling on President Obama not to open additional leases in the next Five Year Plan for the Gulf of Mexico.

This latest offshore oil disaster once again demonstrates the inherent dangers of fossil fuels, and the irresponsibility of allowing new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico even as these spills continue to happen, Marc Yaggi, executive director of Waterkeeper Alliance, said. We have a decade-long, ongoing oil spill that the government wont force Taylor Energy to fix and the Gulf is struggling from the impacts of Deepwater Horizon. The Gulf must no longer be treated as a sacrificial zone. It is time that the federal government recognized that for the health of our ocean, coasts and climate, there must be no further offshore oil leasing.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE



Big Oil Abandons the Arctic, Obama Under Pressure to Do More to Protect the Region

Record Dolphin Die-Off Linked to Gulf Oil Spill

What You Need to Know Six Years After BPs Gulf Oil Disaster

Captivating Video Shows True Cost of Offshore Oil Drilling
Chile awarded a contract to sell solar power for $29.10 per megawatt hour (MWh), the lowest ever across the planet.

ACERA

This surpasses the record set in May of a $29.90 per MWh bid in Dubai for an 800 megawatt (MW) solar project.

This is the lowest price ever seen, for any renewable technology, an analyst told Bloomberg. The low price is possible due to the rapid fall in cost of solar technology and the 12 MW solar plants location in the ideal conditions of Chiles Atacama Desert.

Wow. Chile is producing so much solar energy that its giving electricity away for freehttps://t.co/i4yNqvu97N pic.twitter.com/YucBodlpEP  Climate Reality (@ClimateReality) June 12, 2016

For a deeper dive:

News: Bloomberg, BusinessGreen, SeeNews Renewables

For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News.
More than 9 billion animals are slaughtered in the U.S. every year for meat with global demand skyrocketing. Animal agriculture is putting an ever-increasing strain on world resources, particularly global water supplies, according to VICEs two-part episode, Meathooked and End of Water, which premieres March 4 at 11 p.m. on HBO.

VICE correspondent Isobel Yeung traveled to a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, in Goias, Brazil to see firsthand how cattle are raised for slaughter. Photo credit: HBO

In Vices fifth episode of season 4, Isobel Yeung traveled to feedlots, farms and slaughterhouses to learn where our meat comes from and to uncover its true costs, and Vikram Gandhi traveled to the Central Valley in California and Sao Paulo, Brazil to find out just how severe the global water crisis has become.

In Californias Central Valley, farmers are quickly depleting the states groundwater as the state remains mired in a drought, despite El Nino rains. Sao Paulos drought has become so bad that water in at least one of the areas reservoirs is below what engineers consider zero, meaning that they have to pipe the remaining water uphill just to get it to the intake pipes.

Tulare County farmer Mark Watte shows VICE correspondent Vikram Gandhi the effects the California drought has had on his crops. Photo credit: HBO

Meat production, globally, is an environmental disaster now, Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group, said. If we try and expand production to reach 9 billion people by 2050, it will be a complete and unthinkable disaster.

Lets assume the population will reach 9 billion by 2050, Cook said. There isnt enough land, there isnt enough water, there isnt the capacity for the Earths atmosphere to absorb all of the CO2 and the methane that would come out of animal agriculture. The problem is that our focus is on making the meat as cheap as possible, and as they cut those corners, thats where we often have environmental catastrophes.

But there are agricultural innovators hoping to change the way we raise animals for food. Yeung met with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in Virginia. Salatin uses a sustainable system of raising animals called rotational grazing.

Young also met with Dr. Mark Post, professor of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, to discuss his work on creating the first synthetic burger. He has grown meat in a lab from stem cells in just seven weeksmuch, much faster than raising a cow for slaughter, he noted. The first trial cost $325,000, but he hopes to grow it cheaper and faster soon.

Watch a preview of the episode here:

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Nations First Vegan-Certified Farm Is Booming in Philly

Icelands Fin Whale Hunt Cancelled for 2016

Humpback Whale Entangled in Illegal Gillnet Saved by Sea Shepherd Crew

Organic Milk and Meat Is Healthier for You, Scientists Say
Scientists wanted to know if we could replicate the Earths ecosystems, so in the Sonoran desert outside of Tucson, Arizona they built a three-acre closed-system environment designed to do just that. Known as Biosphere 2 (Biosphere 1 is the Earth), the project was started back in the late 1980s. The idea was to test if we could re-create the Earths ecosystems in a closed environment to help people to be able to live in space for an extended amount of time.

The project has had a rocky past. In the early 90s, eight brave souls pledged to live in Biosphere 2 for a full two years. All of their food, water and amenities had to be obtained from inside the Biosphere, says PBS The Good Stuff. The project ended up hitting a number of stumbling blocks. Oxygen levels got so low halfway through the first year that they had to put more in over fear for the safety of the Biosphere residents. The media deemed the project a failure. A second mission began in 1994, but ended only six months later due to mismanagement and to the fact that two crew members sabotaged the project.

But John Adams, deputy director of Biosphere 2 doesnt see those projects as failuresmerely learning processes. What they did learn, and in my opinion the single most important lesson, was just how little we truly understand Earths systems, says Adams.

Although people dont live there anymore, the ecosystems have been growing for more than 20 years now, and researchers have been able to learn a lot from the project. In fact, although it was theorized for a long time, ocean acidification was first demonstrated on a large-scale by researchers from Columbia University at Biosphere 2. And now the University of Arizona is getting ready to conduct the worlds largest Earth sciences experiment at Biosphere 2.

Check it out:

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Donald Trump Declares War On Bernie Sanders With ISIS-Themed Attack Ad

Can Drinking Water Help You Lose Weight?

These 5 Countries Account for 60% of Plastic Pollution in Oceans

Scuba Divers Haunting Photos Show Devastating Impact of Ocean Trash on Marine Life
The South Carolina sheriffs department whose school-based officer drew headlines when he violently arrested a student last year has signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, under which it will set new policies and provide extensive training to deputies who work in 60 schools in three districts.

The agreement, signed by the Richland County sheriffs office, settles a civil rights review. A separate investigation will determine if the officer violated civil rights laws when he threw a black student from her desk last year and arrested her on charges of disturbing a school"after she refused to put away her cellphone in class. A video of the arrest, taped by another student, spread online and sparked debates about the role of police in schools.

Meanwhile, the student who recorded that video joined several other plaintiffs in filing a lawsuit calling the states disturbing schools law overly broad and unconstitutional. The state board of education took initial steps to limit the role of law enforcement in schools.
Teacher shortages became a major story in some states last school year, and they have continued to make headlines across the country this summer, with districts struggling to fill hundreds of openings as classes begin.

While the overall U.S. student-teacher ratio has remained relatively steady, shortages of teachers are common in certain subject areas, including special education, science, and mathematics, and in particular regions, like rural districts.

In some hard-hit states, the shortages have prompted legislative and administrative action.

Arizona

Current Status: Arizona has been struggling to retain its teachers, with thousands leaving the state in the past few years.

The state does not yet have data on current vacancies, a state education department spokesman said. But hundreds of vacancies have been reported across the state, according to local news reports. More than 1,000 teacher jobs were vacant last year.

Recruitment Strategies: A report by an education department task force called for salary increases, more professional development and new-teacher mentoring, and more strategic teacher-recruitment practices. In May, a constitutional amendment to increase education funding by $3.5 billion over 10 years passed; some districts will use the money to increase teacher salaries.

In one measure to curb the shortage, the state board of education agreed in March to temporarily lower requirements to teach middle school or lower-level high school math classes. Those teachers will only be tested on their proficiency in foundational-level mathematics, like algebra and geometry, instead of trigonometry and calculus.

Meanwhile, some state organizations and foundations have partnered to recruit military veterans to be substitute teachers by paying for their substitute-teaching certificates and fingerprint-clearance cards, in hopes that some will consider teaching full time.

Indiana

Current Status: Since 2011, Indiana has seen a 32 percent decline in the number of individuals receiving first-time licensesinstructional, administrative, or in support servicesfrom the state department of education. That drop, coupled with a dip in enrollment at schools of education, has reportedly created teacher shortages in certain parts of the state, although the department does not track teacher job vacancies.

Recruitment Strategies: In April, Republican Gov. Mike Pence signed a bill to establish a scholarship fund for college students who commit to teaching in Indiana for at least five years after graduation.

That was the primary bill related to teacher recruitment last legislative session, despite the recommendations of a blue-ribbon commission made up of 49 state officeholders and educators who studied the shortage. The commission had advised establishing a state-funded mentoring program, setting local compensation scales, and reducing the number of standardized tests in favor of teacher-constructed assessments.

The education department has made its own efforts to recruit and retain teachers, including creating a full-time position at the department to support educators and establishing the Indiana Center on Teaching Quality at Indiana University. The center, underwritten by a federal grant, will provide support to special education teachers.

Oklahoma

Current Status: Oklahoma districts are trying to fill more than 500 teaching vacancies as the current school year beginsdespite eliminating more than 1,500 teaching jobs since last school year, according to a survey by the Oklahoma State School Boards Association.

Last year, the associations survey found about 1,000 teaching vacancies across the state, even after 600 teaching positions had been eliminated.

Recruitment Strategies: In November, Oklahomans will vote on a ballot measure on whether to increase the sales tax to finance $5,000 raises for teachers. Republican Gov. Mary Fallin has proposed a separate, smaller salary increase, as well as a special legislative session to address the issue. Currently, the minimum starting salary for teachers in the state is $31,600, a comparatively low figure that some district officials say makes it hard to attract candidates from out of state.

In the meantime, the state is relying heavily on emergency certifications as a stop-gap measure. Such certifications allow people without a teaching certificate to teach for one year (or allow a certified teacher to teach a new subject before getting recertified). So far for this school year, the state board of education has approved 372 emergency certifications.

The number of emergency certifications issued has grown dramatically year over year; in 2015-16, Oklahoma issued a record-setting total of 1,063. In 2011-12, the state issued just 32.

Steffie Corcoran, a spokeswoman for the state education department, said in an email that hundreds more emergency certifications will likely be issued this month and probably a high number in September as well.

District leaders told the state school boards association that teachers with emergency certifications often require more support than other new teachers, and many only stay for one year.

Hawaii

Current Status: In April, Hawaii education department officials were expecting more than 1,000 teacher vacancies throughout the state. After a recruitment blitz, about 880 new teachers were hired over the summer, spokesman Derek Inoshita said in an email.

Inoshita said 483 positions were still open as of Aug. 16, although that includes non-classroom positions like librarians and positions that may not actually be needed.

Recruitment Strategies: The Aloha State has been recruiting teachers from the U.S. mainland, a strategy that has had varying degrees of success: After news broke that Hawaii was recruiting, the state department of education received thousands of applications, but many were not qualified teachers.

Yet the cost of living in Hawaii is high, and salaries for new teachers are relatively low, although the state did slightly increase starting salaries from last year. They are now $35,324 for teachers who are not licensed in Hawaii and $46,601 for state-certified teachers. That, coupled with the fact that 16 percent of schools are rural, has contributed to the shortages, union officials have said.

Department officials are also working on such initiatives as a new teacher-mentoring program to better retain teachers. Some improvements have occurred: 56 percent of new teachers were still employed in 2015 after five years, compared to 48 percent in 2011.

Nevada

Current Status: Teaching shortages have been most pronounced in Clark County, the nations fifth-largest district, which encompasses Las Vegas. The district has reportedly been making progress. In July, it announced that it had 370 teacher vacancies to fill before school starts on Aug. 29a large number, but a far cry from the more than 1,000 teaching slots the district had to fill in July 2015.

Recruitment Strategies: Last year, the Clark County district rolled out an extensive marketing campaign called Calling All Heroes and began aggressively recruiting teachers from out of state. The district held out-of-state and virtual job fairs, boosted social-media outreach, and offered financial incentives, including a $5,000 hiring bonus. Starting-teacher salaries in the district were boosted from $34,600 to $40,900, and a state scholarship program for career-changers was introduced at select education schools.

In February, Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval issued an emergency regulation, since codified into law, to allow the state to issue provisional licenses that allow people who have not fully met licensure requirements to teach.

The provisional licenses are good for one year of teaching, and the teachers must then meet state standards. Between Feb. 8 and Aug. 12, the state issued 1,372 provisional licenses and/or endorsements for an area of specialization to 1,248 educators.
WTO rules against Russia ban on EU pork imports

A World Trade Organisation (WTO) panel has declared that the import ban on EU live pigs, fresh pork and other pig products imposed by Russia in early 2014 is against international trade rules.

The WTO-declared illegal ban was imposed over what the UE said was a limited number of cases of African swine fever (ASF) in areas in the EU close to the border with Belarus.

The panel said the EU-wide import ban was not based on the relevant international standards and violates the rules of the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement). Individual Russian bans on imports from Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia received the same criticism from the panel.

"The ruling sends a strong signal to Russia, and all WTO members, as regards their obligation to respect international standards, in particular, in this case, the principle of regionalisation (which would allow trade from individual areas of a country which are recognised as pest or disease-free, even if the health status in the rest of the country is not favourable) and the requirement to conduct a risk assessment based on scientific evidence", the European Commission said in a press release.

The panel stressed that WTO members can exercise their right to determine their appropriate levels of sanitary protection and to restrict imports accordingly on the basis of sanitary concerns only when this is done in line with WTO rules.

The EC pointed out that the EU has one of the world's most efficient animal health and food safety systems, including high detection levels and stringent risk management rules. "Today's (August 19) ruling confirms that the measures taken by Russia against the EU have little to do with any real sanitary or health risks. EU products are safe and there is thus no need for any country to maintain unjustified import restrictions", it said.

Most of the products dealt with in this case, however, continues to be restricted in connection with a politically motivated ban imposed on EU agri-food products by Russia in August 2014. "Nevertheless, the panel's findings are of systemic importance, since they remind Russia about its international obligations and the fact that these cannot be arbitrarily ignored", the EC said.

The EC said EU will continue to use WTO procedures to ensure that international trade rules are respected.

The panel ruling can be appealed within 60 days. If no appeal is filed within that deadline, Russia will be bound to comply with the WTO recommendations.
To build the largest and most complete Amateur Radio community site on the Internet - a "portal" that hams think of as the first place to go for information, to exchange ideas, and be part of whats happening with ham radio on the Internet. eHam.net provides recognition and enjoyment to the people who use, contribute, and build the site. This project involves a management team of volunteers who each take a topic of interest and manage it with passion. The site will stand above all other ham radio sites by employing the latest technology and professional design/programming standards, developed by a team of community programmers who contribute their skills to the effort. The site will be something of which everyone involved can be proud to say they were a part. We welcome your comments. The eHam.net Team, Revision 07/2020.
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.
Ely, Cambridgeshire is best known for its majestic cathedral dubbed the 'Ship of the Fens' because it dominates the flat landscape. The city, which is the second smallest in England, is about 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about 80 miles by road from London.

14:55, 28 OCT 2022
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 22, 2016 -- During a heart attack, clots or narrowed arteries block blood flow, harming or killing cells within the tissue. But the damage doesn't end after the crushing pain subsides. Instead, the heart's walls thin out, the organ becomes enlarged, and scar tissue forms. If nothing is done, the patient can eventually experience heart failure. But scientists now report they have developed gels that, in animal tests, can be injected into the heart to shore up weakened areas and prevent heart failure.

The researchers will present their work today at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world's largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features more than 9,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics. A brand-new video on the research is available at http://bit.ly/ACShydrogels.

Heart attacks strike 750,000 people each year in the U.S., according to the American Heart Association. And more than 5 million U.S. residents are living with heart failure, with symptoms that progress from fatigue and shortness of breath to eventual death. "Heart failure is a huge problem, and few therapies are available for these patients," says Jason A. Burdick, Ph.D., leader of the study.

Treatments include lifestyle changes, medication, implants or heart transplants. Burdick, who is at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), explains that these options often don't work well or, in the case of transplants, are hard to come by. So scientists are pursuing other treatment methods. For instance, researchers at other institutions have done animal studies in which they injected cells into the damaged section of the heart to try to repair damage. To prevent the cells from leaking out, those researchers embedded them in biodegradable "hydrogels" -- water-swollen networks of polymer chains with a consistency similar to Jell-OTM. But the scientists noticed something odd when they ran control experiments in which they injected the hydrogel without added cells: Some of the animals' hearts still showed improvement compared with untreated animals.

Based on those findings, a handful of labs are now experimenting with hydrogel treatments, including two materials that are in clinical trials. Neither is from Burdick's lab, but as he notes, "It's important we all keep moving forward to figure out how this therapy could be used, because it's different than any current treatment." In addition, different types of hydrogels could suit different patients' needs.

Some experimental heart attack treatments require surgery to open up the chest, but the two hydrogel materials already in clinical trials are injected into the damaged tissue through a long catheter inserted through the skin -- eliminating the need for open-chest surgery.

Burdick and his graduate student Christopher B. Rodell, in collaboration with Robert C. Gorman, M.D., also at Penn, are using this same minimally invasive technique in their own work. But his team has gone a step further by identifying properties that would be useful in treating heart attack patients and then designing hydrogels with those properties. For instance, his group developed a hydrogel that forms additional crosslinks between the polymer chains after injection. The resulting material is stiffer and lasts longer than a gel without these additional crosslinks and the gels in clinical trials.

In fact, Burdick's gel is unique among hydrogels in providing mechanical support to stabilize the damaged area. In sheep studies, this gel limits formation of scar tissue, thinning of the heart's walls and enlargement of the heart. By preserving the organ's size, the gels also reduce leakage of blood through the mitral valve. Together, these benefits maintain the heart's blood-pumping ability and could stave off heart failure.

The team's materials are based on hyaluronic acid (HA), a type of sugar molecule that occurs naturally in the body. The researchers modified the HA molecules by attaching adamantane and cyclodextrin groups to allow the gels to flow through catheters, and they added thiol and methacrylate groups to enable post-injection cross-linking to stiffen the hydrogel. Once the researchers finalize the hydrogel formulation and delivery method, they hope to partner with a catheter firm to bring a product to market. Burdick's team and other research groups are also designing hydrogels that contain drugs or cells that can repair heart tissue.

###

He acknowledges funding from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association.

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With nearly 157,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note to journalists: Please report that this research is being presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Follow us: Twitter | Facebook

Title

Engineered injectable supramolecular hydrogels for myocardial applications

Abstract

Heart disease is a major clinical problem and post myocardial infarction (MI), left ventricular (LV) remodeling ensues and leads to geometric changes that result in dilation and thinning of the myocardial wall. This increases stress in the infarct and healthy tissue and can ultimately result in heart failure. Injectable biomaterials are being investigated to address this clinical problem, including to alter stresses in the infarct region when injected and to deliver biologics, such as stem cells and biomolecules. My laboratory is interested in a class of hydrogels based on the molecule hyaluronic acid (HA) and we have synthesized variations of HA macromers that form hydrogels with a range of mechanical properties and degradation (from a few weeks to stable over many months). This tunability in properties allows us to investigate how material properties (e.g., mechanics and degradation) influence the ability of injectable HA hydrogels to alter stress profiles and LV remodeling and to deliver therapeutic molecules (e.g., TIMP-3, to alter matrix remodeling within infarcts). Most recently, we have designed a class of shear-thinning and self-assembling hydrogels that can be used for the delivery of mechanical signals, as well as cells and therapeutics. Ultimately, these iterations on material design are teaching us what important signals are needed in these hydrogels towards the next generation of translatable therapeutics for cardiac repair.
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 22, 2016 -- Scientists may be closing in on a way to let consumers savor the sweet taste of cake, cookies and other culinary delights without the sugar rush. In preliminary tests using a new device developed in-house that allows them to screen for odor compounds in real foods, they have isolated several natural aromatic molecules that could be used to trick our brains into believing that desserts and other foods contain more fat, sugar or salt than they actually do.

The researchers will present their work today at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world's largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features more than 9,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

"Most consumers know that they should be eating more healthful foods made with reduced amounts of fat, sugar and salt. But this is problematic because these are the very ingredients that make many of the foods we like taste so delicious," says Thierry Thomas-Danguin, Ph.D. "Based on our lab work, we've come to believe that aromas can help compensate for the reduction of fat, sugar and salt in healthful foods and make them more appealing to consumers."

Aroma plays a vital role in how we perceive food (just try pinching your nose closed while you eat -- odds are you won't taste anything). Based on this fact, food scientists have long used chemical aromatics, essential oils and botanical extracts to enhance the flavor of food and beverages to boost sales.

Recently, scientists have turned their attention to using aromas to improve the taste of foods made with reduced amounts of fat, sugar and salt, which many consumers avoid because of their notoriously bland flavor.

"If you buy a product made with 30 percent less salt, and you don't like it because it isn't very tasty, what do you do?" Thomas-Danguin asks. "You'll probably reach for the table salt and put some into the product. So the target is missed. Our goal is to optimize the reformulation process, so the food industry can produce more healthful products that consumers will like as they are and will choose to eat them regularly."

In earlier work, Thomas-Danguin set out to prove that if the right aroma is added in the right amount in the right places in the right food, the brain can be fooled into thinking there is more fat, sugar or salt in it. Study participants were asked to taste flan, a type of custard, made in layers containing varying amounts of ham aroma and salt. The researchers found that the ham aroma, even though it contained no salt, increased the perception of saltiness of the flan. In fact, some participants thought one variation of the custard made with ham aroma and salt distributed unevenly in layers throughout it tasted the same as a flan made in the traditional way with 40 percent more salt.

In their latest study, Thomas-Danguin and his colleagues at the Centre des Sciences du Gout de l'Alimentation in France, sought to find a new way to isolate aroma molecules associated with sweet tastes. So they created a first-of-its-kind device called a Gas Chromatograph-Olfactometry Associated Taste (GC-OAT) and used it in conjunction with an olfactoscan, which delivers a continuous stream of aromas through a tube to a subject's nose.

Participants were asked to smell real fruit juice aroma through the olfactoscan. Meanwhile, the researchers used the GC-OAT to isolate molecules from the juice. Then, they added the molecules one at a time into the olfactoscan tube. As the participants smelled each of these mixtures, they were asked if the molecule contributed to their perceived sweetness of the fruit juice. Thomas-Danguin says the preliminary results suggest that this new technique could eventually help food manufacturers better formulate more healthful foods without sacrificing taste, aroma or texture of the original products.

A press conference on this topic will be held Tuesday, Aug. 23, at 9 a.m. Eastern time in the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Reporters may check in at Room 307 in person, or watch live on YouTube http://bit.ly/ACSlivephiladelphia. To ask questions online, sign in with a Google account.

###

Thomas-Danguin acknowledges funding from EU-FP7, EU-ERDF, EU-MSCA, Unilever R & D Vlaardingen, L.D.C. Group, INRA, Carnot Institute Qualiment and Regional Council of Burgundy.

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With nearly 157,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note to journalists: Please report that this research is being presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Follow us: Twitter | Facebook

Title

Aroma compounds to rescue the taste of healthy foods and beverages

Abstract

Health issues have led health organizations to endorse the decrease of fat, salt and sugar content in food. However, performing such reduction without changing consumer liking remains a major challenge because it usually alters products' sensory characteristics. In order to maintain taste of low-fat/salt/sugar foods, we propose to use odorants to compensate for the loss in perception through the multi-sensory-integration mechanism underpinning flavor perception. In a series of studies relying on water solutions, model and real food products, we demonstrated that well-selected odorants can enhance taste perception through the odor-induced taste enhancement effect (OITE). Our results highlighted several features of OITE. First, for OITE to be observed, odorants need to be congruent with the target taste: only odorants with a salty dimension can enhance saltiness (Lawrence et al., 2009, 2011). Moreover, the OITE width is related to the actual taste intensity. Indeed, when salty taste intensity is too high, OITE is no more efficient while it can compensate for 25% salt reduction in water solutions at medium taste intensity (Nasri et al., 2011). We also ascertained the advantage of combining OITE with other strategies developed to maintain taste in low-salt foods (Nasri et al., 2013; Emorine et al., 2013). In model-cheeses varying in both salt and fat content, we reported that a mixture of odorants could increase salty taste in almost all tested products while fat perception was improved unevenly across products, which suggested a critical impact of food matrix composition and/or structure on OITE (Syarifuddin et al., 2016). Recently, we developed a method to screen for odorants associated to taste in real food (GC-OAT for Gas Chromatography-Olfactometry Associated Taste); and using an online odor recombination system we pointed out odorants which modulate sweetness perception of a real fruits juice odor. Overall, these findings demonstrate that cross-modal interaction can be an efficient strategy to compensate for salt/fat/sugar reduction, which should help to develop sustainable and healthy foods and beverages while maintaining a good acceptability for consumers. We acknowledge collaborators and students involved in this research and financial supports from Regional Council of Burgundy, European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), Unilever R&D, Marie S.A., Carnot Institute Qualiment, AgreenSkills, EU Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions, EU TeRiFiQ project.
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 22, 2016 -- Whether severe trauma occurs on the battlefield or the highway, saving lives often comes down to stopping the bleeding as quickly as possible. Many methods for controlling external bleeding exist, but at this point, only surgery can halt blood loss inside the body from injury to internal organs. Now, researchers have developed nanoparticles that congregate wherever injury occurs in the body to help it form blood clots, and they've validated these particles in test tubes and in vivo.

The researchers will present their work today at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world's largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features more than 9,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

"When you have uncontrolled internal bleeding, that's when these particles could really make a difference," says Erin B. Lavik, Sc.D. "Compared to injuries that aren't treated with the nanoparticles, we can cut bleeding time in half and reduce total blood loss."

Trauma remains a top killer of children and younger adults, and doctors have few options for treating internal bleeding. To address this great need, Lavik's team developed a nanoparticle that acts as a bridge, binding to activated platelets and helping them join together to form clots. To do this, the nanoparticle is decorated with a molecule that sticks to a glycoprotein found only on the activated platelets.

Initial studies suggested that the nanoparticles, delivered intravenously, helped keep rodents from bleeding out due to brain and spinal injury, Lavik says. But, she acknowledges, there was still one key question: "If you are a rodent, we can save your life, but will it be safe for humans?"

As a step toward assessing whether their approach would be safe in humans, they tested the immune response toward the particles in pig's blood. If a treatment triggers an immune response, it would indicate that the body is mounting a defense against the nanoparticle and that side effects are likely. The team added their nanoparticles to pig's blood and watched for an uptick in complement, a key indicator of immune activation. The particles triggered complement in this experiment, so the researchers set out to engineer around the problem.

"We made a battery of particles with different charges and tested to see which ones didn't have this immune-response effect," Lavik explains. "The best ones had a neutral charge." But neutral nanoparticles had their own problems. Without repulsive charge-charge interactions, the nanoparticles have a propensity to aggregate even before being injected. To fix this issue, the researchers tweaked their nanoparticle storage solution, adding a slippery polymer to keep the nanoparticles from sticking to each other.

Lavik also developed nanoparticles that are stable at higher temperatures, up to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). This would allow the particles to be stored in a hot ambulance or on a sweltering battlefield.

In future studies, the researchers will test whether the new particles activate complement in human blood. Lavik also plans to identify additional critical safety studies they can perform to move the research forward. For example, the team needs to be sure that the nanoparticles do not cause non-specific clotting, which could lead to a stroke. Lavik is hopeful though that they could develop a useful clinical product in the next five to 10 years.

A press conference on this topic will be held Tuesday, Aug. 23, at 10:15 a.m. Eastern time in the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Reporters may check in at Room 307 in person, or watch live on YouTube http://bit.ly/ACSlivephiladelphia. To ask questions online, sign in with a Google account.

###

Lavik acknowledges funding from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With nearly 157,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note to journalists: Please report that this research is being presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Follow us: Twitter | Facebook

Title

Engineering nanoparticles to stop internal bleeding

Abstract

Young people between 5 and 44 are most likely to die from a trauma, and the primary cause of death will be bleeding out. We have a range of technologies to control external bleeding, but there is a dearth of technologies for internal bleeding.

Following injury, platelets become activated at the injury site. We have designed nanoparticles that are administered intravenously that bind with activated platelets to help form platelet plugs more rapidly. We have investigated the behavior of these particles in an number of in vitro systems to understand their behavior. We have also tested these particles in a number of models of trauma. The particles lead to a reduction in bleeding in a number of models of trauma including models of brain and spinal cord injury, and these particles lead to increased survival.

This work is not without challenges. One of the goals is to be able to use these particles in places where there are extreme temperatures and storage is challenging. We have engineering a variant of the hemostatic nanoparticles that is stable up to 50 C. A second challenge is that the intravenous administration of nanoparticles triggers complement activation as has been seen in a wide range of nanoparticle technologies from DOXIL to imaging agents. The solution is generally to administer the particles very slowly to modulate the physiological responses to complement activation, but that is not an option when one is bleeding out, so we have had to develop variants that reduce complement activation and the accompanying complications.

Ultimately, we hope that this work provides insight and, potentially, a new approach to dealing with internal bleeding.
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 22, 2016 -- Scrap tires have been on environmentalists' blacklist for decades. They pile up in landfills, have fed enormous toxic fires, harbor pests and get burned for fuel. Scientists trying to rid us of this scourge have developed a new way to make synthetic rubber. And once this material is discarded, it can be easily degraded back to its chemical building blocks and reused in new tires and other products.

The researchers will present their work today at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS, the world's largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features more than 9,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

"The basic idea behind this project was to take a byproduct of the petrochemical industry and turn some of it into recyclable value-added chemicals for use in tires and other applications," says Robert Tuba, Ph.D., one of the lead researchers on the project. "We want to make something that is good for the community and the environment."

According to the Rubber Manufacturers Association, nearly 270 million tires were discarded in the U.S. in 2013 -- more than one tire per adult living in the country. Thousands get stockpiled in landfills. And because tires are non-degradable, they could potentially stick around indefinitely. More than half go on to become tire-derived fuel -- shredded scrap tires that get mixed with coal and other materials to help power cement kilns, pulp and paper mills and other plants. But environmentalists are concerned that the emissions from this practice could be adding harmful pollutants to the air.

One possible solution to the nation's scrap-tire glut would be to make new tires with degradable materials. Since 2012, the research team led by Hassan S. Bazzi, Ph.D., at the Texas A&M University campus in Qatar (TAMU-Qatar) has been working on this option. They started with a basic molecule called cyclopentene. Cyclopentene and its precursor cyclopentadiene are low-value major components of the abundant waste from petrochemical refining, in particular its steam-cracking operation C5 fraction, which contains hydrocarbons with five carbon atoms. With colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, they have been experimenting with catalysts to string cyclopentene molecules together to make polypentenamers, which are similar to natural rubber.

Currently, synthetic-rubber makers use butadiene as their base material, but its cost has recently gone up, opening the door to competition. So Tuba turned to cyclopentene as a potential alternative. Calculations showed that polymerizing cyclopentene and degrading it under relatively mild reaction conditions -- and thus requiring minimal energy and expense -- should be possible.

"We did theoretical studies to predict the feasibility of the synthesis and recyclability of polypentenamer-based tire additives using equilibrium ring opening metathesis polymerization," explains Antisar Hlil, also at TAMU-Qatar. "Then we did experimental studies and found that the concept works very well."

Using ruthenium, a transition-metal catalyst, the researchers polymerized cyclopentene at 0 degrees Celsius and decomposed the resulting material at 40 to 50 degrees. For industry, these are low temperatures that do not require a lot of energy. Additionally, in the lab, they could recover 100 percent of their starting material from several polypentenamer-based tire additives they developed.

In progress are new studies that mix the synthetic rubber with other tire materials, which include metals and fillers. The researchers are also scaling up their lab experiments to see whether the tire industry could realistically use their processes.

"If the fundamental studies are very promising -- which at this point, we believe they are -- then our industry partner will come in to continue this project and bring the material to market," Tuba says.

A press conference on this topic will be held Tuesday, Aug. 23, at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time in the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Reporters may check in at Room 307 in person, or watch live on YouTube http://bit.ly/ACSlivephiladelphia. To ask questions online, sign in with a Google account.

###

The researchers acknowledge funding from the Qatar Foundation and the Qatar National Research Fund.

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With nearly 157,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note to journalists: Please report that this research is being presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Follow us: Twitter | Facebook

Title

New strategies for the synthesis of innovative recyclable polymers from raw materials

Abstract

There is an urgent need for developing cleaner sustainable concepts in olefin metathesis. The methodology is based on the synthesis of polyolefins with ruthenium based metathesis catalyst via ring opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) of cyclopentenes and their derivatives. Cyclopentene (CP) can be found in the C5 fraction of steam cracking operations (4%) or can be produced on an industrial scale from cyclopentadiene (CPD). Which are the main side products (25%) - in form of dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) - in the gasoline C5 fraction.

For examples the trans-polypentenamer has unique relevance among the synthetic rubbers since it has similar physical properties to the natural rubber. The polypentenamer additives have propitious effect on the tire properties made from blends with natural rubber and have been studied extensively for this application.

One of the most exciting new possibilities is the capability of preparing cyclic polypentenamer. New approaches to the synthesis of such materials have been recently developed.

Herein, we describe the synthesis of new cyclic and linear polypentenamers via ROMP using ruthenium catalyst systems. It was found that the cyclopentene conversion does not depend on the catalyst activity and catalyst loading. However, the applied reaction temperature has a significant impact on the polymerization yield. Equilibrium of growing chain and monomer was observed. This unique feature of the equilibrium polymerization opens a way for the synthesis of durable, environmentally friendly elastomers where tires can be not only synthetized by the transition metal catalyst systems but the worn tires can be readily decomposed by the same way and the recovered monomers can be easily recycle.
SEATTLE -- High school students who completed higher levels of math, performed better academically, and had a greater sense of control of their future were more likely to migrate and work in labor markets with larger shares of college-educated workers, according to a new study by sociologists at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin).

The United States has one of the highest internal migration rates in the world, with nearly one in four adults moving from one U.S. city to another in the past five years, as reported in a Gallup survey. Migration shapes the national landscape -- sometimes at the expense of equality of opportunity across labor markets. "Innovative" labor-markets with higher shares of college-educated workers expand due to economic growth and technological innovation and attract even more highly skilled workers, leaving other labor-markets behind, the researchers said.

"The uneven expansion of high-skilled jobs creates geographic inequalities in the workforce opportunities and differential opportunities for upward social mobility across generations," said lead-author Chandra Muller, a UT Austin sociology professor and research associate in the university's Population Research Center.

In their paper, which they will present at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA), Muller and her team of researchers analyzed the evolution of spatial inequality by examining the role of high school curriculum and performance in an individual's decision to move by midlife.

The researchers used data from the High School and Beyond sophomore cohort -- a nationally representative sample of 14,825 sophomores in 1,015 U.S. high schools initially surveyed in 1980 and surveyed again in 1984, 1986, 1992, and 2014, when the respondents were around 50 years old -- to weigh the influence of cognitive and non-cognitive skills, college preparatory courses, and academic degrees attained on migration between adolescence and midlife, over a time period that saw a rise in technology that drastically changed occupational demands.

In the sample, 36 percent of people moved across labor markets between high school and midlife, and they migrated an average distance of 676 miles. A person's level of internal locus of control, or the extent to which people believe they control their own destiny, was one predictor of who moved, with those ranked in the 68th percentile of locus of control being 3 percent more likely to move than those with average (50th percentile) levels of locus of control.

The researchers also found that people who had achieved more academically in high school -- as indicated by their test scores, their GPAs, and taking advanced math coursework -- were all more likely to move. For example, people who performed in the 68th percentile of the math achievement test were 2.3 percent more likely to move than those at the 50th percentile. Having a GPA in the 68th percentile increased the probability of moving by 2.5 percentage points over having an average GPA. And students who completed advanced mathematics were 6.2 percent more likely to move than students who only completed algebra 2, who were 4.2 percent more likely to move than students who had completed neither algebra 2 nor advanced mathematics.

"Data showed that some of the effects of academic preparation on moving were due to students attending college -- some likely first moved to attend college," Muller said.

The researchers also found that by midlife, individuals who had earned at least a bachelor's degree lived in areas with larger shares of college-educated workers than their high school classmates who had not graduated from college. Having college-educated parents also predicted who lived in areas with a larger share of educated workers by midlife.

"Indeed, the educational gradients in employment, health, and many indicators of well-being have become steeper and opportunities for intergenerational social mobility have declined," Muller said. "Although the data do not allow us to establish whether early skills and education cause migration and living in a labor market with a better economy, the evidence is consistent with the possibility."

###

About the American Sociological Association

The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.

The paper, "Migration Within the United States: Education and Skills for Pursuing the American Dream," will be presented on Monday, Aug. 22, at 4:30 p.m. PDT in Seattle at the American Sociological Association's 111th Annual Meeting.

To obtain a copy of the paper; for assistance reaching the study's author(s); or for more information on other ASA presentations, members of the media can contact Daniel Fowler, ASA Media Relations Manager, at (202) 527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org. During the Annual Meeting (Aug. 20-23), ASA Public Information Office staff can be reached in the on-site press office, located in Room 601 of the Washington State Convention Center, at (206) 219-4513 or (914) 450-4557 (cell).

Rachel Griess, College of Liberal Arts, UT Austin, wrote this press release. For more information about the study, members of the media can also contact Griess at (512) 471-2689 or rachelgriess@austin.utexas.edu.

Papers presented at the ASA Annual Meeting are typically working papers that have not yet been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Contact: Daniel Fowler, (202) 527-7885, (914) 450-4557 (cell), pubinfo@asanet.org

On-site Press Office (Aug. 20-23): Washington State Convention Center, Room 601, (206) 219-4513
SEATTLE -- Job satisfaction in your late 20s and 30s has a link to overall health in your early 40s, according to a new nationwide study.

While job satisfaction had some impact on physical health, its effect was particularly strong for mental health, researchers found.

Those less than happy with their work early in their careers said they were more depressed and worried and had more trouble sleeping.

And the direction of your job satisfaction -- whether it is getting better or worse in your early career -- has an influence on your later health, the study showed.

The good news is that people whose job satisfaction started low but got better over the course of their early career didn't have the health problems associated with consistently low or declining satisfaction.

"We found that there is a cumulative effect of job satisfaction on health that appears as early as your 40s," said Jonathan Dirlam, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at The Ohio State University.

Dirlam conducted the study with Hui Zheng, an associate professor of sociology at Ohio State. They will present their research at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

Zheng said the results showed the importance that early jobs have on people's lives.

"You don't have to be near the end of your career to see the health impact of job satisfaction, particularly on your mental health," Zheng said.

The researchers used data from 6,432 Americans who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, which followed adults who were between the ages of 14 and 22 when the survey began in 1979.

The NLSY79 is conducted by Ohio State's Center for Human Resource Research for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For this study, the researchers examined job satisfaction trajectories for people from age 25 to 39. These participants then reported a variety of health measures after they turned 40.

Participants rated how much they liked their jobs from 1 (dislike very much) to 4 (like very much).

The researchers put participants in four groups: consistently low and consistently high job satisfaction, those whose satisfaction started high but was trending down and those who started low but were trending higher.

The average score of those classified as the low group was nearly 3 (indicating they liked their job "fairly well"), Dirlam noted. But there was a lot of variance in that group, meaning that it included all the people who said they disliked their jobs somewhat or very much.

About 45 percent of participants had consistently low job satisfaction, while another 23 percent had levels that were trending downward through their early career.

About 15 percent of people were consistently happy at their jobs (nearly 4 on the scale) and about 17 percent were trending upward.

Using those who were consistently happy as the reference, the researchers compared how the health of the other three groups compared.

Mental health was most affected by people's feelings about their jobs.

People who were in the low job satisfaction group throughout their early careers scored worse on all five of the mental health measures studied, study results showed.

They reported higher levels of depression, sleep problems and excessive worry. They were also more likely to have been diagnosed with emotional problems and scored lower on a test of overall mental health.

Those whose job satisfaction started out higher but declined through their early career were more likely than those with consistently high satisfaction to have frequent trouble sleeping and excessive worry, and had lower scores for overall mental health. But they didn't see an impact on depression scores or their probability of being diagnosed with emotional problems.

Those whose scores went up through the early career years did not see any comparative health problems.

The physical health of those who were unhappy with their jobs wasn't impacted as much as mental health. Those who were in the low satisfaction group and those who were trending downwards reported poorer overall health and more problems like back pain and frequent colds compared to the high satisfaction group. But they weren't different in physical functioning and in doctor-diagnosed health problems such as diabetes and cancer.

As was true for mental health, no effects were seen on physical health for those trending upward.

Zheng said it is important to remember that participants were studied when they were only in their 40s.

"The higher levels of mental health problems for those with low job satisfaction may be a precursor to future physical problems," Zheng said.

"Increased anxiety and depression could lead to cardiovascular or other health problems that won't show up until they are older."

Dirlam noted that the study ended before the Great Recession.

"The recession almost certainly increased job insecurity and dissatisfaction, and that could have resulted in more negative health effects," he said.

###

About the American Sociological Association

The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.

The paper, "Job Satisfaction Developmental Trajectories and Health: A Life Course Perspective," will be presented on Monday, Aug. 22, at 4:30 p.m. PDT in Seattle at the American Sociological Association's 111th Annual Meeting.

To obtain a copy of the paper; for assistance reaching the study's author(s); or for more information on other ASA presentations, members of the media can contact Daniel Fowler, ASA Media Relations Manager, at (202) 527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org. During the Annual Meeting (Aug. 20-23), ASA Public Information Office staff can be reached in the on-site press office, located in Room 601 of the Washington State Convention Center, at (206) 219-4513 or (914) 450-4557 (cell).

Jeff Grabmeier, The Ohio State University, wrote this press release. For more information about the study, members of the media can also contact Grabmeier at (614) 292-8457 or grabmeier.1@osu.edu.

Papers presented at the ASA Annual Meeting are typically working papers that have not yet been published in peer-reviewed journals.
SEATTLE -- The U.S. prison population continued to rise even after the crime rate began declining in the mid-1990s because judges were faced with more repeat offenders, a new study suggests.

Using data from Minnesota, an Ohio State University sociologist found that the U.S. criminal justice system felt the reverberations from the increase in violent crime and imprisonment that occurred from the 1960s to the early 1990s.

"The issue is that the average offender who appears before a judge for sentencing today has a much more extensive criminal record than they did in the past," said Ryan King, the author of the study and a professor of sociology at Ohio State.

King found that the average offender in Minnesota in 1981 had one prior felony. That increased to two prior felonies in 1991 and 2.5 prior felonies in 2013.

"It is much harder for judges to not give prison sentences to repeat offenders, so we have more convicted people going to prison."

In fact, the study found that 15 percent of convicted offenders received a prison sentence in 1981, which increased to 20 percent in 1995, and reached nearly 30 percent in 2013.

King said that it is important to try to replicate these results in other states. But he believes the findings would be similar in most states, because judges across the country emphasize prior records when sentencing offenders.

King will present the study at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

The data needed for a study like this is not available for a national sample. So King used 33 years of data that was held by the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission. This included case-level information on each of the approximately 355,000 felony convictions in the state between 1981 and 2013.

This data included the criminal history of the offender, the severity of the crime, the sentencing outcome and several demographic variables.

King found that in 1981, fewer than 40 percent of sentenced offenders had criminal records, but almost 60 percent did in 2001.

"Criminal activity can decrease, but the criminal record only goes up. Judges are dealing with more repeat offenders now," he said.

It's not that judges are treating repeat offenders more harshly now than in the past. In fact, once he controlled for criminal record over time, King found that judges appeared to be getting more lenient, not harsher.

Minnesota has guidelines for judges to consult when they are deciding on prison sentences for specific crimes and circumstances. Sentences that went below the guidelines increased from 18 percent to 23 percent from 2001 to 2013. Sentences that went above the guidelines decreased by about 2 percent in that same time period.

That suggests the problem isn't the length of prison sentences, but who is being sent to prison, King said.

"Judges' hands are tied, to some extent. It is hard to show leniency and maintain legitimacy in the public eye when you're dealing with a repeat offender, and judges are seeing more of them than they have in the past," he said.

If the United States wants to reduce the number of people in our prisons, King said these results suggest we need a new approach.

"Instead of focusing mainly on first-time offenders, we need to come up with new ways of dealing with offenders who have just one prior conviction," he said.

"If we could find ways to keep them out of prison, that would have a large impact."

Regardless of what else is done, the number of people in prison should decline if crime rates stay where they are, he said.

"But it is going to be a slow process. Our prison populations are going to go down much slower than they went up."

###

About the American Sociological Association

The American Sociological Association, founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society.

The paper, "Cumulative Impact: Why Incarceration Rates Increase Even When Crime Declines," will be presented on Monday, Aug. 22, at 8:30 a.m. PDT in Seattle at the American Sociological Association's 111th Annual Meeting.

To obtain a copy of the paper; for assistance reaching the study's author(s); or for more information on other ASA presentations, members of the media can contact Daniel Fowler, ASA Media Relations Manager, at (202) 527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org.

During the Annual Meeting (Aug. 20-23), ASA Public Information Office staff can be reached in the on-site press office, located in Room 601 of the Washington State Convention Center, at (206) 219-4513 or (914) 450-4557 (cell).

Jeff Grabmeier, The Ohio State University, wrote this press release. For more information about the study, members of the media can also contact Grabmeier at (614) 292-8457 or grabmeier.1@osu.edu.

Papers presented at the ASA Annual Meeting are typically working papers that have not yet been published in peer-reviewed journals.
Prevalence hasn't budged in 30 odd years, but drug and surgical treatments on the rise

UK deaths from heart disease and stroke have plummeted by almost 70% over the past 30 years, but these improvements have not been equally distributed among all four countries, or between men and women, finds an analysis of the available data, published online in the journal Heart.

Furthermore, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease hasn't budged during this period, but drug and surgical treatments have increased, particularly over the past decade, adding up to a "substantial burden" for the UK, say the researchers.

In a bid to gauge the overall burden of heart disease and stroke, the researchers examined information from national annual datasets to assess trends in deaths, ill health, and treatment for cardiovascular disease (CVD) as a whole, and individually for coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke, from 1979 up to 2013.

They used data provided by the 2015 Cardiovascular Disease Statistics report published by the British Heart Foundation; the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) incentive scheme for family doctors in England; the Health Surveys for England and Scotland; and the General Lifestyle Survey, an annual cross sectional survey for Great Britain, which ended in 2011.

They also scrutinised NHS data on hospital admissions.

Their analysis showed that, when standardised for age, deaths from CVD, CHD, and stroke fell by around 70% across the UK during this timeframe--with even larger declines in premature death before the age of 75, of around 80%.

The largest falls across all three indicators occurred in Northern Ireland, with premature CVD and CHD deaths among women falling by 83% and 87%, respectively, and premature stroke deaths among men plunging by 77%.

Overall, the prevalence of CVD hasn't budged, however, remaining at 3% in England, and 4% elsewhere. The prevalence of stroke hasn't changed either, staying put at 2%, although the data indicate that there has been an increase among the over 75s, and for men aged 65-74, and a small decrease among 45-64 year old women.

Trends in treatment reveal gender disparities. Across the UK admissions to hospital for CVD rose by 46,000 between 2010-11 and 2013-14, most of which (36,000) were among men.

During this period, admissions among men for coronary heart disease rose by almost 3000, but fell by around 5000 among women. And while admissions for stroke didn't change among men, they fell by 4500 among women.

Between 2005-6 and 2013-14, the overall number of admissions for CVD rose by 11% in England and by 15% in Wales. But the patterns for CHD and stroke were different.

In Wales, CHD admissions rose by 4%--almost entirely driven by those among men as these admissions fell by 6% among women. In England CHD admissions fell by 6%, overall, but the fall among women was 11% compared with 4% for men.

Admissions for stroke rose by 13% in England among men, but by 6% among women, while in Wales, stroke admissions rose by 7% among women but by 17% among men.

England topped the UK league table for drug prescriptions for diseases of the circulatory system, which includes CVD.

Between 1991 and 2014 these soared by 243 million--78%. Between 2005 and 2014 they rose by 5.5 million (23%) in Wales, by 2.3 million (9%) in Scotland, and by 2.5 million (28%) in Northern Ireland.

Surgical treatments also rose: seven times as many PCIs (percutaneous coronary interventions) were carried out in 2013 as in 1993, while there were a third fewer coronary artery bypass grafts in 2013 compared with the 1990s.

"Despite large reductions in mortality from CVD, CHD, and stroke, these conditions have remained a substantial burden to the UK, with rises in treatment and hospital admissions for all CVD," conclude the researchers.

"There is some evidence that improvements have not occurred equally for men and women or between the countries of the UK," they write, adding: "Although these are promising trends for mortality and stroke admissions in women, prevalence and treatment are increasing over time for all CVD and stroke."

###

About the journal:

Heart is one of 60 specialist journals published by BMJ. The title is co-owned with the British Cardiovascular Society. http://heart.bmj.com
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] --To properly treat young children with severe diarrhea, caregivers in clinics long on patients and short on resources need a quick and accurate way to assess the severity of dehydration. After a study testing it with nearly 500 children in Bangladesh, the four-symptom "DHAKA" score is now the most tested method.

"The DHAKA score now has better evidence for its performance in assessing dehydration in a specifically low-income country setting than any other scale," said Dr. Adam Levine, associate professor of emergency medicine in the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and lead author of the study in The Lancet Global Health. "Looking at it from an evidence-based medicine point of view, it is better than anything else out there."

In a side-by-side comparison, the study showed that DHAKA, which stands for Dehydration: Assess Kids Accurately, was a significantly better predictor of dehydration severity in children under age five than the current standard, the World Health Organization's Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) guidelines.

Continuous improvement of diagnostic methods is vital, explained Levine, who is also a physician in the Lifespan health system, because in hospitals and clinics where intravenous fluids and beds are in limited supply, it's imperative that those treatment resources be provided only to severely dehydrated children. Children with moderate dehydration can be rehydrated orally. Moreover, mistaken overtreatment with IV fluids of only somewhat or non-dehydrated children can result in seizures or difficulty breathing.

A validated score

Levine and colleagues including a team at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Dhaka, Bangladesh, derived the DHAKA score in 2014 by analyzing the cases of 770 children with diarrhea due to cholera and other serious intestinal infections. The researchers statistically determined which clinical signs at intake best predicted dehydration severity. They found four such symptoms that a nurse or doctor could observe within two minutes to make an accurate diagnosis:

General appearance: Is the child restless or irritable, or lethargic or unconscious?

Breathing: Is it normal or deep?

Skin pinch: After a pinch, does skin snap right back or respond slowly, or very slowly?

Tears: Does the child produce a normal volume, less than normal or none at all?

When applied retrospectively to the patients, the DHAKA score showed significant accuracy, sensitivity and specificity in identifying which child had no dehydration, moderate dehydration or severe dehydration. The definitive measure is made by comparing a child's weight at intake and after full rehydration.

In the new study, Levine and his team returned to Dhaka in 2015 to validate the score by testing its predictive value with an entirely new population of 496 patients. This was a crucial step to determine whether the method would work for any group of patients, not just the ones from whom it was derived. Nurses employed both the DHAKA score and IMCI algorithm when new patients arrived.

DHAKA performed well. Each additional point on the 0 to 12 scale predicted a 0.6 percent increase in dehydration and a 1.4-fold increase in the odds of some or severe dehydration. On a statistical measure of accuracy where 0.5 is no better than chance and 1 is perfect, DHAKA rated 0.82 while IMCI rated 0.76.

"Not only is this the first score to be derived and validated in a low-income country setting, but the DHAKA study is also the largest study ever of dehydration assessment of kids anywhere," Levine said. "If you take the derivation and validation studies together with more than 1,200 children, that's more than all of the children who have been involved in every other study of every other dehydration scale ever assessed in the developing or the developed world."

Levine plans one more set of tests that he expects will be necessary before DHAKA can earn the WHO's endorsement as a new diagnostic standard for use in clinics in resource-limited settings. Next spring, as cholera makes its grim annual return to Bangladesh, he plans to test it in rural clinics where the question will be whether DHAKA is easy enough to use accurately when there isn't the same degree of training and experience as at the center in Dhaka.

###

In addition to Levine, the study's other authors are Dr. Justin Glavis-Bloom, Dr. Payal Modi, Sabiha Nasrin, Bita Atika, Soham Rege, Sarah Robertson, Christopher Schmid and Dr. Nur Alam.

The National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center funded the research (grant: 1K01TW009208-01A1).
Runaway electrons, a searing, laser-like beam of electric current released by plasma disruptions, could damage the interior walls of future tokamaks the size of ITER, the international fusion experiment under construction in France. To help overcome this challenge, leading experts in the field have launched a multi-institutional center to find ways to prevent or mitigate such events.

"This is like a strike force to solve the problem and we need to get it right," said physicist Dylan Brennan of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University. "It's very clear that runaways will be a problem," said Brennan, who with Xianzhu Tang of Los Alamos National Laboratory is co-lead principal investigator. "The goal is to take different scenarios for runaway electrons and come up with a recipe for solving them."

Causes and solutions for runaway electrons

The project, called "Simulation Center for Runaway Electron Avoidance and Mitigation," will combine simulations and data from worldwide experiments to explore the causes and solutions for runaway electrons. Members are from nine U.S. universities and national laboratories. Participants include the Oak Ridge, Lawrence Berkeley and Los Alamos national laboratories, the universities of Texas, California-San Diego and Columbia University and General Atomics in San Diego. Support totals $3.9 million over two years from the DOE's Office of Science.

Runaway electrons are relativistic -- they travel at nearly the speed of light. To control these particles, researchers must utilize equations derived from Einstein's special theory of relativity, which describes the effect of relativistic speeds on moving bodies.

These equations apply to the huge ITER tokamak. "ITER will be operating in a regime of plasma parameters well beyond the reach of any existing tokamak experiment," said Amitava Bhattacharjee, head of the Theory Department at PPPL. "Therefore, one must rely on the predictive power of theory and simulation, which must be validated by comparison with present-day experiments and extrapolated to ITER conditions."

Disruption mitigation system for ITER

Research of the center will contribute to a disruption mitigation system to be incorporated in ITER. The US ITER Project Office, based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), will be responsible for the system.

Tasks of the center will include:

Establishing the physical basis for the generation and evolution of runaway electrons.

Exploring the path for avoiding runaway electrons.

Investigating the leading candidates for mitigating the problem.

A key center tool will be input from scientists supported by DOE's Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program. It will handle the complex mathematics needed to simulate how runaways traveling at relativistic speed interact with the background plasma -- a major issue in comprehending the problem. "There is still much that we don't understand," said Brennan.

Cutting-edge simulations

ASCR scientists will facilitate cutting-edge simulations with advanced codes on the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) at ORNL, and on supercomputers at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The center will cross-check the results to verify their accuracy. OLCF and NERSC are DOE Office of Science User Facilities.

Another critical step will be to close the gap between theoretical explanations of runaway electrons and experimental observations, for which wide discrepancies have been found. The center will determine how well its simulations fit the experimental data -- a key factor needed to create confidence in the group's predictions for ITER.

Also under study will be the primary methods for mitigating runaway electrons. These methods inject impurities in the form of massive gas or shattered pellets to cool the plasma and shut it down before disruptions can occur. But such techniques could also cause the electrons to accelerate; the center therefore aims to define the best mix of impurities and their injection rates for avoiding the problem.

###

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.
BOSTON - (August 22, 2016) - Scientists have long known that infants born to women who are obese show higher risks of obesity, but they don't fully understand what boosts those risks. Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center now have demonstrated that umbilical cells from children of obese or overweight mothers show impaired expression of key genes regulating cell energy and metabolism, compared to similar cells from babies of non-obese mothers.

Such findings may help to pave the way toward improved healthcare, both before and after birth, for children at heightened risk of obesity, says Elvira Isganaitis, M.D., M.P.H., Assistant Investigator and Staff Pediatric Endocrinologist at Joslin Diabetes Center and Instructor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and corresponding author on a paper about the work published in the International Journal of Obesity.

The Joslin study also suggests that the increased risks of obesity may be driven by boosted levels of certain lipids (fats and other substances that are not soluble in water) in the maternal blood that flows through the umbilical cord, says Isganaitis. A research associate and staff endocrinologist at Joslin, she is an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

Suzana Maria Ramos Costa, M.D., Ph.D., of Joslin and the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil, who is co-first author on the paper, began the research by gathering umbilical cords after birth from healthy Brazilian women without diabetes. Costa recruited 24 overweight or obese women (with a body mass index over 25 before pregnancy) and 13 women who were not overweight for the study.

The scientists collected umbilical cells from the vein that carries oxygen and other nutrients from the placenta to the embryo. "These samples give a window into the nutrients and metabolites that are coming from the mom into the infant," says Isganaitis.

The Joslin team discovered that in these cells, increased obesity in the mothers correlated with lower expression of genes regulating mitochondria (which act as the cell's powerhouses) and of other genes regulating the production and metabolism of lipids.

"This suggests that already at birth there are detectable metabolic perturbations resulting from maternal obesity," she says. Changes in these cells were similar to some known to occur in obesity, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, she adds.

When the researchers followed up by analyzing fetal blood from the umbilical cord vein, "we found that the infants of obese mothers had significantly higher levels of many lipids that are known to be metabolically deleterious, like saturated fatty acids," Isganaitis says. Fat tissues in the obese mothers may shed fatty acids that make their way into the fetal blood and create a kind of "fuel overload" for the embryo, she remarks.

Isganaitis and her colleagues will carry out further research on umbilical cells and blood among Boston newborns to see if the study results are confirmed in this population. She also plans similar analyses for children born to mothers who have either gestational diabetes or type 1 diabetes.

Additionally, Isganaitis is examining how such prenatal exposures may encourage certain stem cells found in umbilical cords, which can differentiate into various types of tissues, to preferentially turn into fat cells.

She hopes that eventually it will be possible to use blood markers to identify embryos at risk for obesity or related conditions such as type 2 diabetes, and to follow up with suitable medical interventions.

"Pregnant women engage often with their healthcare providers, and you can really tap into their motivation," she says. "If we could come up with tailored interventions--if we could say, take this vitamin, exercise regularly and you can minimize obesity or diabetes risk in your child--I'm sure mothers would do it."

Isganaitis adds that mothers and healthcare providers also could carefully monitor the growth patterns and nutrition of children at risk of obesity, both in the first two years of life and afterwards. "Your risk of chronic diseases isn't set in stone at birth; there are many different periods in which your lifelong disease risk can be modulated," she emphasizes.

###

Joslin's Mary-Elizabeth Patti, M.D., was senior author on the paper. Other Joslin co-authors included Tucker Matthews, Katelyn Hughes, Grace Daher and Jonathan Dreyfuss. Giselia Alves Pontes da Silva of the Federal University of Pernambuco contributed to the work.

About Joslin Diabetes Center

Joslin Diabetes Center is world-renowned for its deep expertise in diabetes treatment and research. Joslin is dedicated to finding a cure for diabetes and ensuring that people with diabetes live long, healthy lives. We develop and disseminate innovative patient therapies and scientific discoveries throughout the world. Joslin is an independent, non-profit institution affiliated with Harvard Medical School, and one of only 11 NIH-designated Diabetes Research Centers in the U.S.
Ten pigtails of hair thought to be from seven mutineers of "Mutiny on the Bounty" fame and three of their female Polynesian companions will be analysed in a new collaboration between the Pitcairn Islands Study Centre at Pacific Union College (California, US) and the forensic DNA group at King's College London (UK).

The forensic DNA group at King's has been sent hair strands from the ten pigtails, which are currently on display in the California-based centre, to help establish as much information as possible on their origins.

As the pigtails purportedly date back to the pre-1800s, the King's team will first attempt to extract DNA from the historical hair samples after cleaning the outside and then digesting the hair matrix using a chemical process. Nuclear DNA is not found in hair shafts, only the roots which are not available here; however, mitochondrial DNA may be present. If sufficient mitochondrial DNA can be collected, the first step will be to investigate the ancestral origins of the owners of the pigtails.

Unlike nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA does not discriminate between all individuals as people sharing a common maternal ancestor will also share a similar profile. However, this type of DNA can provide some indication of maternal geographic origin e.g. whether someone is likely to be of European descent, so the team will aim to establish whether the hair samples do indeed come from seven Europeans and three Polynesian individuals, as the documentation accompanying the samples suggests.

Further, more detailed identification will require genealogical methods to trace the ancestors of the pigtail owners, to be able to link samples to names from historical records and other sources of information. A lot has been written about the possible descendants of the mutineers but this information will not be helpful with regards to the male mutineers; instead, their maternal line will need be traced. The study will therefore try to identify their maternal ancestors, such as their respective mothers and maternal grandmothers, and research other direct female descendants down to individuals living today.

Dr Denise Syndercombe-Court, project lead from the Analytical and Environmental Sciences Division at King's College London, said: "First, we will have to determine whether we can recover mitochondrial DNA of appropriate quality to be analysed. The hairs, if from the mutineers, are over two hundred years old and we have no idea what environments they might have been exposed to in the intervening time."

"Potentially as problematic will be the genealogical research as civil registration in the UK did not start until 1837, some 50 years after the mutiny and so, at best, the death of the mother may be listed in these records but other processes would need to be used to gather more information. Because of the patrilineal transmission of surnames we would not even expect to find someone who believes they may be linked to the mutineers and so we will have to depend on this research and hope for the agreed consent from any identified living descendant to act as a modern day reference. We do not anticipate that this will be easy and it will require other interested parties to get involved in this part of the study."

Herbert Ford, Director of the Pitcairn Islands Study Centre, said: "This hair is a gift from Joy Allward, wife of the late Maurice Allward of Hatfield, UK, who successfully bid for the hair at a Sotheby's auction in London in 2000."

"If the tests and genealogical studies of this hair authenticates that it is of seven of the nine mutineers who hid out from British justice on Pitcairn Island in 1790, it will be the only tangible physical evidence of their having existed. There is only one known mutineer grave on Pitcairn, that of John Adams. Of the whereabouts of the remains of the eight others, we can only speculate."

The pigtails on display in the US were housed in a nineteenth-century cylindrical tobacco tin. Also with the locks of hair was a handkerchief said to have belonged to Sarah, the daughter of William McCoy, one of the Bounty mutineers.

A worn, faded label with the pigtails notes that it is attached to the hair of William McCoy. The mutineer McCoy died on Pitcairn Island in 1800. Notes written on the label also state that the pigtails are of seven of the mutineers of H.M.S. Bounty and "also that of three of the Tahitian women," who accompanied the mutineers to Pitcairn in 1789.

Further information on the label notes that "The holders of the hair have been (1) Teio, wife of McCoy. (2) Mrs. Sarah Christian. (3) F. G. Mitchell. Given to F. G. Mitchell, 22nd June 1849 (Jubilee Day) by Mrs. Sarah Nobbs."

The story of the mutiny that took place on the ship H.M.S. Bounty in the South Pacific Ocean in 1789 was made famous by the publication of a trilogy of books published in the 1930s. Following the publication of the books, a number of Hollywood-type motion pictures about the Bounty mutiny were shown worldwide over the next four decades.

###
Scientists and clinicians have long dreamed of helping the injured brain repair itself by creating new neurons, and an innovative NIH-funded study published today in Nature Medicine may bring this goal much closer to reality. A team of researchers has developed a therapeutic technique that dramatically increases the production of nerve cells in mice with stroke-induced brain damage.

The therapy relies on the combination of two methods that show promise as treatments for stroke-induced neurological injury. The first consists of surgically grafting human neural stem cells into the damaged area, where they mature into neurons and other brain cells. The second involves administering a compound called 3K3A-APC, which the scientists have shown helps neural stem cells grown in a petri dish develop into neurons. However, it was unclear what effect the molecule, derived from a human protein called activated protein-C (APC), would have in live animals.

A month after their strokes, mice that had received both the stem cells and 3K3A-APC performed significantly better on tests of motor and sensory functions compared to mice that received neither or only one of the treatments. In addition, many more of the stem cells survived and matured into neurons in the mice given 3K3A-APC.

"This USC-led animal study could pave the way for a potential breakthrough in how we treat people who have experienced a stroke," added Jim Koenig, Ph.D., a program director at the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which funded the research. "If the therapy works in humans, it could markedly accelerate the recovery of these patients."

The researchers induced stroke-like brain damage in mice by disrupting blood flow to a specific part of their brains. One week later - the equivalent of several months in humans - the team inserted the stem cells next to the dead tissue and then gave the mice several infusions of either a placebo or 3K3A-APC.

"When you give these mice 3K3A-APC, it works much better than stem cells alone," said Berislav Zlokovic, M.D., Ph.D., the University of Southern California professor who led the research. "We showed that 3K3A-APC helps the cells convert into neurons and make structural and functional connections with the host's nervous system."

To confirm that the stem cells were responsible for the animals' improved function, the researchers used a targeted toxin to kill the neurons that had developed from them in another group of mice given the combination therapy. These mice showed the same improved performance on the tests of sensory and motor functions prior to being given the toxin but lost these gains afterwards, suggesting that the neurons that grew from the implanted cells were necessary for the improvements.

In a separate experiment, the team examined the connections between the neurons that developed from the stem cells in the damaged brain region and nerve cells in a nearby region called the primary motor cortex. The mice given the stem cells and 3K3A-APC had many more neuronal connections, called synapses, linking these areas than mice given the placebo. In addition, when the team stimulated the mice's paws with a mechanical vibration, the neurons that grew from the stem cells responded much more strongly in the treated animals.

"That means the transplanted cells are being functionally integrated into the host's brain after treatment with 3K3A-APC," Dr. Zlokovic explained. "No one in the stroke field has ever shown this, so I believe this is going to be the gold standard for future studies."

3K3A-APC is currently being studied in a NINDS-funded Phase II clinical trial to determine if it can reduce the death of neurons deprived of blood flow immediately following a stroke. As a result of the new mouse study, Dr. Zlokovic and his team, including co-first authors Yaoming Wang and Zhen Zhao, now hope to pursue another Phase II clinical trial to test whether the combination of neural stem cell grafts and 3K3A-APC can stimulate the growth of new neurons in human stroke patients to improve function. If that trial succeeds, it may be possible to test the treatment's effects on other neurological conditions, such as spinal cord injuries, for which stem cell therapies are being investigated.

###

The study was supported by the NIH (NS090904, NS075345, HL052246, HL031950) with additional funding provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Adelson Medical Research Foundation, the New York State Stem Cell Research Board, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Lundbeck Foundation, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the ALS Association.

Reference:

Wang et al. 3K3A-activated protein C stimulates postischemic neuronal repair by human neural stem cells in mice. Nature Medicine. August 22, 2016. DOI: 10.1038/nm.4154.

The NINDS is the nation's leading funder of research on the brain and nervous system. The mission of NINDS is to seek fundamental knowledge about the brain and nervous system and to use that knowledge to reduce the burden of neurological disease.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute provides global leadership for a research, training, and education program to promote the prevention and treatment of heart, lung, and blood diseases and enhance the health of all individuals so that they can live longer and more fulfilling lives.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Job satisfaction in your late 20s and 30s has a link to overall health in your early 40s, according to a new nationwide study.

While job satisfaction had some impact on physical health, its effect was particularly strong for mental health, researchers found.

Those less than happy with their work early in their careers said they were more depressed and worried and had more trouble sleeping.

And the direction of your job satisfaction - whether it is getting better or worse in your early career - has an influence on your later health, the study showed.

The good news is that people whose job satisfaction started low but got better over the course of their early career didn't have the health problems associated with consistently low or declining satisfaction.

"We found that there is a cumulative effect of job satisfaction on health that appears as early as your 40s," said Jonathan Dirlam, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at The Ohio State University.

Dirlam conducted the study with Hui Zheng, associate professor of sociology at Ohio State. They presented their research Aug. 22 in Seattle at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Zheng said the results showed the importance that early jobs have on people's lives.

"You don't have to be near the end of your career to see the health impact of job satisfaction, particularly on your mental health," Zheng said.

The researchers used data from 6,432 Americans who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, which followed adults who were between the ages of 14 and 22 when the survey began in 1979.

The NLSY79 is conducted by Ohio State's Center for Human Resource Research for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For this study, the researchers examined job satisfaction trajectories for people from age 25 to 39. These participants then reported a variety of health measures after they turned 40.

Participants rated how much they liked their jobs from 1 (dislike very much) to 4 (like very much).

The researchers put participants in four groups: consistently low and consistently high job satisfaction, those whose satisfaction started high but was trending down and those who started low but were trending higher.

The average score of those classified as the low group was nearly 3 (indicating they liked their job "fairly well"), Dirlam noted. But there was a lot of variance in that group, meaning that it included all the people who said they disliked their jobs somewhat or very much.

About 45 percent of participants had consistently low job satisfaction, while another 23 percent had levels that were trending downward through their early career.

About 15 percent of people were consistently happy at their jobs (nearly 4 on the scale) and about 17 percent were trending upward.

Using those who were consistently happy as the reference, the researchers compared how the health of the other three groups compared.

Mental health was most affected by people's feelings about their jobs.

People who were in the low job satisfaction group throughout their early careers scored worse on all five of the mental health measures studied, study results showed.

They reported higher levels of depression, sleep problems and excessive worry. They were also more likely to have been diagnosed with emotional problems and scored lower on a test of overall mental health.

Those whose job satisfaction started out higher but declined through their early career were more likely than those with consistently high satisfaction to have frequent trouble sleeping and excessive worry, and had lower scores for overall mental health. But they didn't see an impact on depression scores or their probability of being diagnosed with emotional problems.

Those whose scores went up through the early career years did not see any comparative health problems.

The physical health of those who were unhappy with their jobs wasn't impacted as much as mental health. Those who were in the low satisfaction group and those who were trending downwards reported poorer overall health and more problems like back pain and frequent colds compared to the high satisfaction group. But they weren't different in physical functioning and in doctor-diagnosed health problems such as diabetes and cancer.

As was true for mental health, no effects were seen on physical health for those trending upward.

Zheng said it is important to remember that participants were studied when they were only in their 40s.

"The higher levels of mental health problems for those with low job satisfaction may be a precursor to future physical problems," Zheng said.

"Increased anxiety and depression could lead to cardiovascular or other health problems that won't show up until they are older."

Dirlam noted that the study ended before the Great Recession.

"The recession almost certainly increased job insecurity and dissatisfaction, and that could have resulted in more negative health effects," he said.

###

Contact: Hui Zheng, 614-688-8348; Zheng.64@osu.edu

Jonathan Dirlam, Dirlam.1@osu.edu

Written by Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
COLUMBUS, Ohio  The U.S. prison population continued to rise even after the crime rate began declining in the mid-1990s because judges were faced with more repeat offenders, a new study suggests.

Using data from Minnesota, an Ohio State University sociologist found that the U.S. criminal justice system felt the reverberations from the increase in violent crime and imprisonment that occurred from the 1960s to the early 1990s.

The issue is that the average offender who appears before a judge for sentencing today has a much more extensive criminal record than they did in the past, said Ryan King, author of the study and professor of sociology at Ohio State.

King found that the average offender in Minnesota in 1981 had one prior felony. That increased to two prior felonies in 1991 and 2.5 prior felonies in 2013.

It is much harder for judges to not give prison sentences to repeat offenders, so we have more convicted people going to prison.

In fact, the study found that 15 percent of convicted offenders received a prison sentence in 1981, which increased to 20 percent in 1995, and reached nearly 30 percent in 2013.

King said that it is important to try to replicate these results in other states. But he believes the findings would be similar in most states, because judges across the country emphasize prior records when sentencing offenders.

King presented the study Aug. 22 in Seattle at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.

The data needed for a study like this is not available for a national sample. So King used 33 years of data that was held by the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission. This included case-level information on each of the approximately 355,000 felony convictions in the state between 1981 and 2013.

This data included the criminal history of the offender, the severity of the crime, the sentencing outcome and several demographic variables.

King found that in 1981, fewer than 40 percent of sentenced offenders had criminal records, but almost 60 percent did in 2001.

Criminal activity can decrease, but the criminal record only goes up. Judges are dealing with more repeat offenders now, he said.

Its not that judges are treating repeat offenders more harshly now than in the past. In fact, once he controlled for criminal record over time, King found that judges appeared to be getting more lenient, not harsher.

Minnesota has guidelines for judges to consult when they are deciding on prison sentences for specific crimes and circumstances. Sentences that went below the guidelines increased from 18 percent to 23 percent from 2001 to 2013. Sentences that went above the guidelines decreased by about 2 percent in that same time period.

That suggests the problem isnt the length of prison sentences, but who is who is being sent to prison, King said.

Judges hands are tied, to some extent. It is hard to show leniency and maintain legitimacy in the public eye when youre dealing with a repeat offender, and judges are seeing more of them than they have in the past, he said.

If the United States wants to reduce the number of people in our prisons, King said these results suggest we need a new approach.

Instead of focusing mainly on first-time offenders, we need to come up with new ways of dealing with offenders who have just one prior conviction, he said.

If we could find ways to keep them out of prison, that would have a large impact.

Regardless of what else is done, the number of people in prison should decline if crime rates stay where they are, he said.

But it is going to be a slow process. Our prison populations are going to go down much slower than they went up.

###

Contact: Ryan King, 614-292-6687; King.2065@osu.edu

Written by Jeff Grabmeier, 614-292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
Where light and matter intersect, the world illuminates. Where light and matter interact so strongly that they become one, they illuminate a world of new physics, according to Rice University scientists.

Rice physicists are closing in on a way to create a new condensed matter state in which all the electrons in a material act as one by manipulating them with light and a magnetic field. The effect made possible by a custom-built, finely tuned cavity for terahertz radiation shows one of the strongest light-matter coupling phenomena ever observed.

The work by Rice physicist Junichiro Kono and his colleagues is described in Nature Physics. It could help advance technologies like quantum computers and communications by revealing new phenomena to those who study cavity quantum electrodynamics and condensed matter physics, Kono said.

Condensed matter in the general sense is anything solid or liquid, but condensed matter physicists study forms that are much more esoteric, like Bose-Einstein condensates. A Rice team was one of the first to make a Bose-Einstein condensate in 1995 when it prompted atoms to form a gas at ultracold temperatures in which all the atoms lose their individual identities and behave as a single unit.

The Kono team is working toward something similar, but with electrons that are strongly coupled, or "dressed," with light. Qi Zhang, a former graduate student in Kono's group and lead author of the paper, designed and constructed an extremely high-quality cavity to contain an ultrathin layer of gallium arsenide, a material they've used to study superfluorescence. By tuning the material with a magnetic field to resonate with a certain state of light in the cavity, they prompted the formation of polaritons that act in a collective manner.

"This is a nonlinear optical study of a two-dimensional electronic material," said Zhang, who based his Ph.D. thesis on the work. "When you use light to probe a material's electronic structure, you're usually looking for light absorption or reflection or scattering to see what's happening in the material. That light is just a weak probe and the process is called linear optics.

"Nonlinear optics means light does something to the material," he said. "Light is not a small perturbation anymore; it couples strongly with the material. As you change the coupling strength, things change in the material. What we're doing is the extreme case of nonlinear optics, where the light and matter are coupled so strongly that we don't have light and matter anymore. We have something in between, called a polariton."

The researchers employed a parameter known as vacuum Rabi splitting to measure the strength of the light-matter coupling. "In more than 99 percent of previous studies of light-matter coupling in cavities, this value is a negligibly small fraction of the photon energy of the light used," said Xinwei Li, a co-author and graduate student in Kono's group. "In our study, vacuum Rabi splitting is as large as 10 percent of the photon energy. That puts us in the so-called ultrastrong coupling regime.

"This is an important regime because, eventually, if the vacuum Rabi splitting becomes larger than the photon energy, the matter goes into a new ground state. That means we can induce a phase transition, which is an important element in condensed matter physics," he said.

Phase transitions are transitions between states of matter, like ice to water to vapor. The specific transition Kono's team is looking for is the superradiant phase transition in which the polaritons go into an ordered state with macroscopic coherence.

Kono said the amount of terahertz light put into the cavity is very weak. "What we depend on is the vacuum fluctuation. Vacuum, in a classical sense, is an empty space. There's nothing. But in a quantum sense, a vacuum is full of fluctuating photons, having so-called zero-point energy. These vacuum photons are actually what we are using to resonantly excite electrons in our cavity.

"This general subject is what's known as cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED)," Kono said. "In cavity QED, the cavity enhances the light so that matter in the cavity resonantly interacts with the vacuum field. What is unique about solid-state cavity QED is that the light typically interacts with this huge number of electrons, which behave like a single gigantic atom."

He said solid-state cavity QED is also key for applications that involve quantum information processing, like quantum computers. "The light-matter interface is important because that's where so-called light-matter entanglement occurs. That way, the quantum information of matter can be transferred to light and light can be sent somewhere.

"For improving the utility of cavity QED in quantum information, the stronger the light-matter coupling, the better, and it has to use a scalable, solid-state system instead of atomic or molecular systems," he said. "That's what we've achieved here."

The high-quality gallium arsenide materials used in the study were synthesized via molecular beam epitaxy by John Reno of Sandia National Laboratories and John Watson and Michael Manfra of Purdue University, all co-authors of the paper. Weil Pan of Sandia National Laboratories and Rice graduate student Minhan Lou, who participated in sample preparation and transport and terahertz measurements, are also co-authors.

Zhang is now the Alexei Abrikosov Postdoctoral Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory. Kono is a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering, of physics and astronomy and of materials science and nanoengineering. Li received a "Best First-Year Research Award" from Rice's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering for his work on the project.

###

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, Lockheed Martin Corp. and the W.M. Keck Foundation.

Read the abstract at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphys3850

This news release can be found online at http://news.rice.edu/2016/08/22/light-and-matter-merge-in-quantum-coupling/

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews

Related materials:

Junichiro Kono Laboratory: http://kono.rice.edu

Wiess School of Natural Sciences: http://natsci.rice.edu

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.
PROBIOTICS FOR NEWBORNS: 20 YEAR STUDY REVEALS LONG TERM ALLERGY PROTECTION

Allergies belong to the most common diseases with steadily increasing incidence. Probiotics are believed to prevent or reduce allergy development. Nevertheless, the mechanism of their beneficial effect is poorly understood.

In research presented at the International Congress of Immunology (11:50 Monday) by Jiri Hrdy, from the Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, showed that decreased allergy incidence was observed 5, 10, 20 years after initial supplementation of newborns with Colinfant New Born (E. coli O83:K24:H31).

To reveal the mechanism of the action, the researchers looked at the blood of probiotic colonized and noncolonized children of allergic mothers (high risk children) and noncolonized children of healthy mothers.

They also tested the capacity of immune cells derived from cord blood to protect against allergies if associated with probiotic bacteria.

The researchers hypothesized that the beneficial effect of probiotics on newborn immature immune system could be, at least partially, explained by effect it has on immune cells, giving an insight into how babies at risk of allergies (because of a family history) may be protected against developing allergies later in life through exposure to probiotics as a neonate. NEW LONG LASTING VACCINE AGAINST CAT ALLERGIES

Prof Mark Larche, Canada's Research Chair in Allergy and Immune Tolerance at McMaster University in Ontario will describe a new vaccine for people with cat allergies that last 8 times longer than existing vaccines. He also believes that children are growing up in an environment that is too clean for their immune system to properly learn which substances to attack and which to ignore: parents should let their kids roll around in the dirt to boost their immunity. DAIRY FARM KIDS' IMMUNITY TO MILK ALLERGIES KEY TO ASTHMA VACCINE

Professor Hamida Hammad, from the VIB life sciences institute in Belgium will discuss how her team used the fact that children exposed to dust on dairy farms are generally protected against developing allergies and asthma to reveal a genetic mutation in 1500 children who lived on farms that did not have immunity against allergies and asthma. The discovery opens the way for a vaccine to prevent asthma, which affects over 330 million people worldwide.

###
Large-scale groundwater pumping is opening doors for dangerously high levels of arsenic to enter some of Southeast Asia's aquifers, with water now seeping in through riverbeds with arsenic concentrations more than 100 times the limits of safety, according to a new study from scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, MIT, and Hanoi University of Science.

Normally, groundwater levels in this monsoon region are higher than the rivers, so water flows from aquifers into adjacent waterways. A few years ago, however, scientists began noticing that large-scale groundwater pumping around cities like Hanoi was lowering the groundwater level, so much so that the flow had reversed in some areas and river water was making its way into the aquifers instead.

The scientists have since tested the water and riverbed along the Red River near Hanoi and discovered dangerously high concentrations of dissolved arsenic, far higher than expected, but they also found clear patterns of contamination that may be able to help farmers and communities locate lower-risk sites for wells.

The findings, appearing in the American Geophysical Union journal Water Resources Research, carry important lessons for groundwater management in a region that has long struggled with health effects of arsenic contamination. Arsenic in groundwater is a problem in many countries, including parts of the United States, but it is widespread in Southeast Asia, where its impact on poor communities has been described as the largest mass poisoning in history. Long-term exposure can cause liver and kidney damage and skin cancers that cause sores on the hands and feet. Arsenic can also affect crop yields.

"We have this perception of groundwater as this giant underwater lake, a nearly infinite resource. But even in places were the water is rapidly recharged, using it a lot can move water around in ways that affect the location and extent of contamination," said coauthor Ben Bostick, a geochemist at Lamont, who with coauthor Alexander van Geen of Lamont has been working for over a decade with communities in Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh to avoid arsenic contamination and locate safer water sources.

In Hanoi, groundwater pumping doubled during the 2000s to an estimated 240 million gallons a day by 2010, and groundwater levels there have been dropping by about 1 meter per year. The effects have become evident in the village of Van Phuc, about 10 kilometers downstream, where arsenic from riverbed sediments has started to contaminate an older aquifer that had long been considered clean.

For the new study, the scientists traveled along the Red River using a device that looks like a syringe with a very long needle to take samples of riverbed sediment and water at a depth of 1 meter. They found the highest arsenic levels in areas where the river flow was slow and new sediment was being deposited, typically next to land inside a river bend. Young sediments can be highly reactive and susceptible to releasing arsenic as water flows through them. The sediments in these slow-water areas were less than 10 years old in places, and they were releasing arsenic into groundwater at concentrations exceeding 1,000 micrograms per liter, 100 times higher than the World Health Organization considers safe.

In contrast, almost all of the wells near faster-flowing water - where little new sediment was accumulating - tested below the WHO limits.

"Prior to intensive pumping, the water would not have been flowing through these sediments, and the aquifer would not have been drawing in this much arsenic," said Mason Stahl, lead author of the study and a recent Ph.D. graduate of MIT. "If groundwater pumping continues - and it will probably intensify - the contamination will continue to migrate."

South and Southeast Asia are especially susceptible to arsenic poisoning because their low-lying deltas are largely made up of young sediments and have plenty of organic matter that contributes to the release of arsenic into water.

The Red River's arsenic generally comes from iron oxides carried downstream from the mountains. When iron oxides are deposited along the riverbed, they are in an environment that is low in oxygen and high in organic matter, from sources such as plant matter and sewage. Bacteria reduce the iron oxide to release oxygen, and that natural process allows the arsenic to enter the water. The process is fast. Within a few months, the scientists measured concentrations up to 1,500-2,000 micrograms per liter from new sediment.

The results suggest that for pumping, communities should still target the oldest aquifers, where sediments are no longer being deposited and most of the arsenic has leached out. But they also need to think about other potential arsenic sources - such river bends with fresh sediment.

"The good news is that rivers normally meander, and cities very seldom are the size of one meander," Bostick said. Cities can put their well fields in areas where the aquifers aren't being recharged through young river sediment, he said. Damming a river would also keep sediment back and control the river's height, but dams can pose other challenges by changing sedimentation, ecology and the water budget.

Water treatment and filtration are also becoming more common, and Bostick believes this may be the most effective solution. The arsenic is not going to go away overnight, and pumping for irrigation will have to continue so farms can feed the region's large population. "Although groundwater has a lot of advantages, you also have to really think about how much you want to use it. With technology, it's pretty easy to clean surface water to use it now," Bostick said.

Michael Puma, an expert on water and food security at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies who was not involved in the study, noted that "Arsenic contamination of groundwater threatens well over 100 million people worldwide. These important findings will help us as we strive to manage and improve the quality of drinking water, especially for those living in extreme poverty around the world."

###

The other coauthors of the new study are Charles F. Harvey of MIT; Jing Sun of Lamont; and Pham Thi Kim Trang, Vi Mai Lan, Thao Mai Phuong and Pham Hung Viet of Hanoi University of Science.

Copies of the study, "River bank geomorphology controls groundwater arsenic concentrations in aquifers adjacent to the Red River, Hanoi, Vietnam," can be obtained from the authors.

Scientist contact: Benjamin Bostick bostick@ldeo.columbia.edu +1 845 365 8659

More information: Kevin Krajick, Senior editor, science news, The Earth Institute/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu 212-854-9729

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is Columbia University's home for Earth science research. Its scientists develop fundamental knowledge about the origin, evolution and future of the natural world, from the planet's deepest interior to the outer reaches of its atmosphere, on every continent and in every ocean, providing a rational basis for the difficult choices facing humanity. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu | @LamontEarth

The Earth Institute, Columbia University mobilizes the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth. http://www.earth.columbia.edu.
Irvine, Calif., Aug. 22, 2016 -- Research from University of California, Irvine scientists and their colleagues offers new insights into why many animals sleep at night and are active during the day, while others do the reverse.

A team headed by Qun-Yong Zhou, UCI professor of pharmacology, examined the day/night patterns of monkeys (diurnal) and mice (nocturnal) and found that although both process light through the eyes in a similar way, the signals that determine sleep/awake modes are sent to the brain via different routes and produce completely opposite sleep/awake patterns.

"Since humans are diurnal, this has clear implications for potential novel treatment of certain sleep or mood disorders," said Zhou, the study's lead author. Results appear online in Molecular Brain.

Sleep/awake patterns are among the basic physiological functions in virtually all organisms that are governed by circadian rhythms. These fundamental time-tracking systems anticipate environmental changes and adapt to the appropriate time of day.

Zhou and his colleagues discovered that the sleep/awake switch exists in the eyes within the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, or ipRGC. Previously, a brain region called the suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN, was believed to house the master clock that keeps the body on an approximately 24-hour schedule.

The current findings give the eyes a more central role in the control of the sleep/awake cycle. In the nocturnal mice, ipRGC and SCN appear to function similarly, and either could serve as the timekeeper. But in the diurnal monkeys, the eyes' ipRGC seems to be dominant.

"Considering the long-held view of SCN as the master clock for our circadian rhythms, the idea that the eyes - or particularly ipRGC - are the commander in chief is somewhat surprising," Zhou said. "But it makes logical sense, as diurnal mammals are visually driven. The eyes not only guide us around during our wakefulness time, but they also dictate when we go to sleep."

It had been thought that distinct switches triggered after signaling to the SCN generated completely opposite sleep/awake patterns during day and night for diurnal and nocturnal creatures. But no such different switches have been found.

Instead, Zhou and his fellow researchers discovered that the sleep/awake control mechanism differs in monkeys and mice before signaling to the SCN, in the neural circuitry controlling sleep and wakefulness. A novel but elegantly designed bifurcation of ipRGC to brain centers produces the inverse sleep/awake patterns for the monkeys and mice.

In mice, ipRGC, via connection to the SCN, signals the animals to sleep during daytime. In monkeys, this stay-put message from the ipRGC-SCN pathway is overpowered by signals from a more dominant clock pathway of ipRGC to a midbrain structure called the superior colliculus that tell the animals to be awake during daytime.

These findings challenge the long-presumed master role of the suprachiasmatic clock in all mammals. At least in monkeys - and possibly in humans and other diurnal species - ipRGC may be more important than the suprachiasmatic clock in determining when to be active and when to sleep.

"Our thinking makes evolutionary sense as well," Zhou said. "Early mammals, during the dinosaur age, are believed to have been nocturnal, and diurnal species came later. It is completely logical that this diurnality co-evolved with the vision dominance of diurnal mammals via the expansion of the wake-promoting ipRGC-superior colliculus pathway and the simultaneous diminishment of the sleep-promoting ipRGC-SCN pathway. Thus, light puts mice to sleep, but it wakes up monkeys and other diurnal mammals."

###

Katherine Burton, Yanjun Sun, Xiangmin Xu and Xiaohan Li of UCI; Matthew Neal and Anumantha Kanthasamy of Iowa State University; Yu Qiao of Kunming Medical University in Yunnan, China; and Yuanye Ma of Kunming University of Science & Technology in Yunnan, China, contributed to the study, which was supported, in part, by National Institutes of Health grants.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 30,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit http://www.uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.
A human protein combined with stem cell therapy has been found to repair stroke damage to the brain, according to a new USC-led study on mice

Permanent brain damage from a stroke may be reversible thanks to a developing therapeutic technique, a USC-led study has found.

The novel approach combines transplanted human stem cells with a special protein that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration already approved for clinical studies in new stroke patients.

"This USC-led animal study could pave the way for a potential breakthrough in how we treat people who have experienced a stroke," said Jim Koenig, a program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which funded the research. "If the therapy works in humans, it could markedly accelerate the recovery of these patients."

Berislav Zlokovic, senior author of the Aug. 22 Nature Medicine study, and his colleagues identified a protein that spurs neural stem cells to become functional neurons: 3K3A-APC, a variant of the human protein "activated protein C."

The created compound is being tested as a neuroprotectant. Researchers in a National Institutes of Health-funded Phase II clinical trial administer 3K3A-APC to patients who have very recently (within a few hours) suffered from an ischemic stroke, when a clot blocks blood from reaching the brain. About 87 percent of all strokes are ischemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, Zlokovic, director of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, said he and his colleagues are the first to use 3K3A-APC to produce neurons from human stem cells grafted into the stroke-damaged mouse brain.

"We showed that 3K3A-APC helps the grafted stem cells convert into neurons and make structural and functional connections with the host's nervous system," said Zlokovic, a scientific founder of ZZ Biotech, a company devoted to developing therapeutics using variants of activated protein C. "No one in the stroke field has ever shown this, so I believe this is going to be the gold standard for future studies."

Although other researchers have experimented with grafting stem cells into injured brain areas, they have met with limited success -- partially because transplanted stem cells diminish with time. The therapeutic compound stops that from happening.

Every year more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke, according to the CDC. These debilitating seizures reduce mobility in more than half of stroke survivors age 65 and older.

More than 70 percent of stroke survivors live with substantial neurological symptoms such as muscle weakness or paralysis, according to Yaoming Wang, co-lead author of the study and a senior research associate at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at the Keck School.

"The need for an efficacious, practical and late treatment of stroke remains unmet," Wang said. "Regenerative medicine with stem cells holds great promise for the treatment of stroke."

How combination therapy works

A week -- the equivalent of several months in humans -- after scientists induced a stroke in mice, the researchers placed human neural stem cells next to damaged brain tissue. Then they administered the immunosuppressant cyclosporine and four doses of 3K3A-APC or a placebo solution over a span of seven days.

The transplanted stem cells matured into neurons and other brain cells. Mice treated with the special compound had 16 times more human stem cell-derived neurons than those who were treated with the placebo.

"Functional deficit after five weeks of stroke were minimized, and the mice were almost back to normal in terms of motor and sensorimotor functions," Zlokovic said. "Synapses formed between transplanted cells and host cells, so there is functional activation and cooperation of transplanted cells in the host circuitry."

To test whether the injected stem cells caused the observed motor and sensorimotor improvements, USC researchers used an assassin toxin to exterminate neurons that developed from human stem cells. They found that these mice lost improvements in motor or sensory tests, suggesting the neurons that grew from implanted stem cells were necessary for recovery from stroke-induced disability.

The motor and sensory tests

Researchers tested motor functions by having mice walk forward on a rotating rod without falling off. They tested sensory and motor function by placing tape on the mouse's forepaw and observed how long it took the mice to remove the adhesive.

Rodents given human stem cells and treated with 3K3A-APC performed much better on these performance tests, said Zhen Zhao, co-lead author and an assistant professor of research physiology and biophysics at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute.

Functional integration

To test the brain's circuitry after the stroke, researchers labeled stem cells with an indicator of neuronal activity and then stimulated the paws of the mice with a mechanical vibration. They noted the injured area in 3K3A-APC-treated mice was activated much more than in mice treated with the placebo. Moreover, the response time was much closer to that of uninjured mice.

These results suggest that neurons which grew from the stem cells are functionally integrated into the host's brain circuitry.

The future of stem cell therapy

In June, Stanford University researchers drilled a hole into the skulls of people whose motor and sensory abilities had been compromised because of stroke. Then they injected stem cells harvested from the bone marrow of adult donors. Although the study involved only 18 patients, researchers noted meaningful recovery, such as the ability to walk again. Stanford researchers said the stem cells seemed to trigger a biochemical process that enhanced the brain's ability to regenerate neurons. The transplanted stem cells themselves did not become neurons.

In contrast, researchers in the USC-led study were able to stimulate transplanted stem cells to becoming neurons in a mouse study.

Zlokovic and his team now hope to pursue a new Phase II clinical trial to test whether their combination therapy that stimulated the growth of neurons in mice can be replicated in human stroke patients. If the trial succeeds, they plan to extend the neural stem cell grafts and 3K3A-APC treatment to other neurological conditions, such as spinal cord injuries.

###

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Adelson Medical Research Foundation, New York State Stem Cell Research Board, Novo Nordisk Foundation, Lundbeck Foundation, National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the ALS Association.
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute scientists have shown that unexpectedly, oesophageal cancer cells do not divide faster than their normal neighbours. But unlike normal cells, the tumour cells produce slightly more dividing daughter cells than non-dividing ones, forming a tumour.

The study, published in Nature Cell Biology today, could lead to the development of new treatments for cancers that do not respond to current therapies which target fast-growing cells.

Normal cells produce equal numbers of dividing and non-dividing cells, a balance which sustains the tissue. For every 100 normal cells, 50 of them will divide and 50 of them will not. The researchers found that for 100 pre-cancer cells the balance was slightly skewed in favour of dividing cells, with 52 of those cells dividing and 48 remaining undivided. This is the first time this has been shown. The subtle shift loads the odds in favour of cell division and over time this can lead to tumour growth.

Oesophageal cancer is the sixth most common cause of cancer death in the UK. Each year 8,750 people are diagnosed with the disease, which is hard to treat even with aggressive therapy. Understanding the processes underlying tumour growth could help in the development of new cancer treatments.

Dr Philip Jones, lead researcher from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: "We created a new model of human squamous cancer of the oesophagus in mice, and measured the rate of cell division. In these mice all the cells in the body divided once per day, proving that precancerous and cancerous cells can divide at the same speed as surrounding normal cells. But the pre-cancerous cells produced a small excess of dividing over non-dividing cells - it was this marginal gain of cells that led to malignant tumours."

Tissues can naturally change the ratio of dividing versus non-dividing cells in response to certain events. For example, cells divide at the edge of a wound, but this imbalance in cell division stops once the wound has healed.

The scientists saw that in very early tumour tissue development, multiple different cells, each with different alterations in their DNA, came together to form a polyclonal pre-cancerous tumour. However, the researchers showed that as these various pre-tumour cells became cancerous, they evolved differently with some gaining an advantage by producing a greater proportion of dividing daughters. This led to a group of cells in the tumour that dominated and out-competed the other cells in the tumour.

Dr Julia Frede, a lead author from the Sanger Institute, said: "Our research showed that oesophageal carcinoma and possibly other hard-to-treat cancers may behave in a very similar manner to normal cells, rather than dividing more rapidly. This would explain why treatments such as radiation therapy that target fast-dividing cells don't work with all cancers. More research is needed to find the mechanisms that drive the proportion of cells that divide."

Dr Justine Alford, Cancer Research UK's Senior Science Information Officer, said: "This study, carried out in mice, uncovered surprising evidence that unbalanced cell division is important in the development of a certain type of oesophageal cancer. The next important step will be finding out whether the same is true in patients with the disease. If scientists can unpick the biology causing the imbalance, then it may lead to new treatments for this hard to treat type of cancer and boost the number of people surviving."

###

Contact details:

Dr Samantha Wynne

Press Office, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

Cambridge,CB10 1SA

Phone: +44 (0) 1223 492368

Email: press.office@sanger.ac.uk

Notes to editors:

About Oesophageal Cancer:

Oesophageal cancer is cancer of the foodpipe that carries food from your mouth to your stomach. The foodpipe is also called the oesophagus or gullet.

Cancers in the upper part and middle part tend to be squamous cell carcinomas. These develop from cells that make up the inner lining of your oesophagus.

8,750 people in the UK are diagnosed with oesophageal cancer each year in the UK, and it is currently the sixth largest cause of cancer death worldwide

For more information please see: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/oesophageal-cancer/about#UoEzTG1fU5uV1125.99

For any advice or to talk to a nurse, Cancer Research UK have a helpline at: 0808 800 4040

See: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/utilities/contact-us/send-a-question/#folt4SoJF7vPxIDE.99

Selected websites:

MRC Cancer Unit

The MRC Cancer Unit forms part of the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge. The Unit undertakes world-leading research into understanding how cancers develop, and seeks to translate this knowledge into new approaches for diagnosis and treatment that can be applied in the clinic. Its focus is on discovering the early steps in epithelial carcinogenesis, because better understanding of these steps will lead to new methods to improve the care and survival of patients with epithelial malignancies such as pancreatic, oesophageal, lung, breast and skin cancers. http://www.mrc-cu.cam.ac.uk

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is one of the world's leading genome centres. Through its ability to conduct research at scale, it is able to engage in bold and long-term exploratory projects that are designed to influence and empower medical science globally. Institute research findings, generated through its own research programmes and through its leading role in international consortia, are being used to develop new diagnostics and treatments for human disease. http://www.sanger.ac.uk

The Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We support the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. Our breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. We are independent of both political and commercial interests. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk
The first global-scale genetic study of Salmonella Enteritidis bacteria, which is a major cause of blood poisoning and death in Africa and food poisoning in the Western World, has discovered that there are in fact three separate types. Scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and University of Liverpool found two novel African types, which looked the same, but were genetically different from the Western type.

Reported in Nature Genetics today, the study showed the African types had developed resistance to many antibiotics and behaved slightly differently to the type commonly found in the West. This suggests a need to understand where in the African environment the bacteria live, in order to prevent this disease.

Once Salmonella reaches the bloodstream it's known as invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella (iNTS) disease, a serious and Neglected Tropical Disease. Last year, it was estimated to cause 680,000 per year deaths worldwide, more than half of which were in Africa.

The scientists sequenced 675 isolates of S. Enteritidis from 45 countries and six continents. Analysis of the Salmonella genomes revealed three major types - a common global one and two novel African types. Routine microbiological testing is not able to distinguish between the S. Enteritidis circulating in Africa and the rest of the world.

Identifying these new types is important because the common global type of S. Enteritidis, is normally associated with poultry and predominantly infects the intestine, causing diarrhoea. However, in Africa the two newly identified types are a major cause of blood poisoning and death, because in people with weak immune systems, Salmonellae are able to pass with greater ease from the gut into the bloodstream. The environmental reservoir from which these African bacteria are transmitted to people is unknown.

The study also showed that the two African types carried more of the genes that give them resistance to common antibiotics. These strains do not respond to the antibiotics commonly available, and have to be treated with cephalosporins or ciprofloxacin, antibiotics of last resort in many African settings.

Dr Nick Feasey, first author from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Sanger Institute, said: " iNTS disease is a huge problem in Africa, but it is difficult to identify due to lack of laboratory capacity and difficult to treat due antibiotic resistance. Using whole genome sequencing of S. Enteritidis bacteria from different settings we have revealed three distinct types of this bacteria, which was previously thought to have only one type. In the two novel types of Salmonella Enteritidis we found resistance genes to antibiotics such as amoxicillin and chloramphenicol, that are still widely used in Africa and it may be only a matter of time before resistance to the last line antibiotic, cephalosporin, spreads. We urgently need to find strategies to eradicate this disease."

Professor Melita Gordon, joint lead author from the University of Liverpool's Institute of Infection and Global Health, said: "To help prevent this disease, further investigations are urgently needed into where these African types reside in the environment and how they are passed on to or between people. It is possible that the Salmonella lives in standing water, so improving access to sanitation and clean water is extremely important. A human vaccine is also under development. Our research in Malawi, at the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust (MLW) Clinical Research Programme, will hopefully yield and implement relevant public health strategies to prevent this disease."

Professor Nick Thomson, joint lead author from the Sanger Institute, said: "This study highlights a very important issue; that a relatively mild version of a bacterium can evolve into a more dangerous pathogen under the right conditions. A combination of HIV, antibiotic resistance and lack of health care and sanitation has facilitated the emergence of Salmonella as a deadly disease in Africa and its importance was not originally recognised. The more we look, the more we understand the potential for bacteria which cause mild disease in rich settings to emerge as causes of highly deadly disease in Africa. Hence a critical first step in tackling diseases such as this is to be able to recognise the different 'types', which will in turn allow us to better understand how bacteria can exploit different ecological niches to which the global human population is exposed".

###

Notes to editors:

Contact details:

Dr Samantha Wynne

Press Office, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

Cambridge,CB10 1SA

Phone: +44 (0) 1223 492368

Email: press.office@sanger.ac.uk

Selected websites:

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) has been engaged in the fight against infectious, debilitating and disabling diseases since 1898 and continues that tradition today with a research portfolio in excess of well over 200 million and a teaching programme attracting students from over 65 countries. http://www.lstmed.ac.uk

The University of Liverpool

The University of Liverpool is one of the UK's leading research institutions with an annual turnover of 465 million, including 89 million for research. Liverpool is ranked in the top 1% of higher education institutions worldwide and is a member of the Russell Group. Visit http://www.liv.ac.uk or follow us on twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/livuninews

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is one of the world's leading genome centres. Through its ability to conduct research at scale, it is able to engage in bold and long-term exploratory projects that are designed to influence and empower medical science globally. Institute research findings, generated through its own research programmes and through its leading role in international consortia, are being used to develop new diagnostics and treatments for human disease. http://www.sanger.ac.uk

The Wellcome Trust

The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We support the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. Our breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. We are independent of both political and commercial interests. http://www.wellcome.ac.uk


Argentine finance minister Alfonso Prat-Gay

The decision on Thursday by Argentinas Supreme Court to repeal the Macri administrations changes to gas tariffs will come as a double blow to the countrys recovery plan, according to finance minister Alfonso Prat-Gay.

Speaking with Euromoney the day before the Supreme Courts ruling, Prat-Gay warned of the damage that would be done to his plans to tackle the countrys fiscal deficit  as well as to Argentinas reputation as jurisdiction for foreign direct investment.

I see this as a test of the judiciary system and everyone should be watching, he said. We are watching  the rest of the world is watching  and this decision will have obvious implications for foreign and local investment.

Prat-Gay drew a parallel between the courts decision and the vote in Congress in March, in which the government was able to get a majority in favour of resolving the countrys debt issue with the holdouts.

The holdout bill was a key test for the national congress  to see if it was changing alongside the population, he said. I think this is a similar test for the judiciary. Lets see whether we are all for a new Argentina  the rule of law and a judicial system that rules on the facts.

People who are looking at investing in Argentina remember Argentine history and they want to know if the country is truly reliable in the rule of law. It obviously wouldnt be a good sign for investment if something as critical as the price of energy is outside the control of the executive branch.

Momentous

When asked if he was making the ruling sound momentous, he responded: Well, it is. Its a lot of money, and its money that we designed to come from people who can afford it.

Prat-Gay argued that, while the increases were huge in percentage terms  the limit was 400%  the nominal increase was reasonable, pointing to the fact 80% of consumers had already paid their increased bills as proof of the affordability of the adjustment.

Prat-Gay has won plaudits for the way he has managed to tackle the toxic economic inheritance from the previous administration  by floating the currency, settling with the holdouts, introducing fiscal and monetary orthodoxy, and re-introducing credibility in the national statistics.

Of all these challenges  or bombs as they are sometimes referred  he said removing the subsidies on energy and transport was possibly the most difficult.

In terms of size this is probably the biggest bomb, he said. In terms of urgency, probably not, but in terms of size  Bear in mind that last year the last government spent four points of GDP subsidizing energy and transport for every single Argentinean.

Prat-Gays comments came before the ruling was made, and despite the decision being painted as a defeat for Mauricio Macris administration, there is nuance.

The court mandated that residential tariffs must be reversed to pre-adjustment levels until public hearings are held to discuss any potential adjustments. However, the court ruling does not affect tariff adjustments on the corporate or industrial sectors, which are recipients of the largest share of energy subsidies.

The court insisted the government had a duty to hold public consultation on the rate increases. The government responded by saying it would do so soon, but the delay will clearly damage the governments fiscal plans.



Mauro Roca,

Goldman Sachs

Mauro Roca, Argentina analyst at Goldman Sachs, estimates the fiscal impact at between $1 billion and $1.2 billion, which does not significantly alter fiscal dynamics.

However, Roca points to the risk that this could be applied to electricity and also lead to small businesses seeking to have their tariffs similarly reduced.

Extension

Meanwhile, a report from Itau suggests the extension of the courts decision to electricity tariffs is likely which would lead to a fiscal cost of $1.85 billion.

Itau also argues that while the government would be free to readjust tariffs after the hearings, the political cost do so increased substantially, especially considering the governments willingness to maintain its high popularity in the run up to the midterm elections next year. So the Supreme Court decision may lead to an even slower fiscal consolidation than currently indicated by the government.

However, comments made by Prat-Gay in anticipation of the ruling suggest the government will be aggressive in pursuing what is a key plank of its economic reforms.

When asked if there was a Plan B to tariff reforms, he was unequivocal. There is no Plan B possible, he said. If the judiciary system tells us we cant do [the tariff changes] without having to do this and that, then thats what well have to do.

But whether you look at electricity or gas, we are still way below the marginal cost [even if the governments proposed tariffs had stood]. And yet we still hit this constraint. But if you are not willing to spend political capital in the first six months

Roca says the courts ruling will ultimately  result in growing financing needs for this year but that doesnt necessarily mean new international debt transactions.

The government has just introduced a tax amnesty that is designed to drive government finances through either taxes or new bonds; individuals get tax incentives to buy new domestic debentures.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch believes the amnesty will be extremely successful and expects $35 billion to be declared  with upside risk  which will help repair the fiscal position as the government has budgeted for a conservative figure of $20 billion.
All Swiss Made, all under one roof. Eight independent Swiss watchmakers will participate in a joint pavilion at the Hong Kong Exhibition, from 6th to 10th September 2016.

The Swiss watch industry can definitely use a bit of unity at the moment. And thats especially the case in Asia and especially for the smaller brands. Demand for luxury watches (and other high-end goods) has plummeted since last year in Hong Kong  traditionally the top importer of Swiss timepieces.

So the question is how to confront the problem head-on? At this years Hong Kong Watch and Clock Fair - which takes places at the Hong Kong Exhibition from 6th to 10th September - the Swiss are adopting a positive motto: united we stand, divided we fall.

For the second time running, the Swiss Independent Watchmaking Pavilion will promote independent watchmakers based in Switzerland all under one roof. The brands slated to participate are: Adriatica, Greco Geneve, Kendall L. 1742, Mathey-Tissot, Ollivier Saveo, Pilo & Co., Saint Honore and WatchE.

The pavilion will allow the brands to connect with clients that otherwise couldnt make it to their boutiques. Thats definitely a way to broaden their client base in Asia.

Its also a way to present an alternative  and usually more affordable  face of Swiss watchmaking to the rest of the world, separate from the industrys giants.

And it just goes to show that we all could use a bit of solidarity in tough times.
In November 1983 the Soviet Union began to increase the combat readiness of its forces in Eastern Europe, including the air force forward-deployed in East Germany, in preparation to meet an expected pre-emptive strike by the United States and its allies.

The cause of this anxiety was the 1983 Able Archer NATO military exercise, an unusually large affair that focused on concentrating major formations of allied units in Western Europe in order to fight a combined arms operation, inclusive of tactical nuclear weapons, against the Warsaw Pact.

The series of events leading up to and including this exercise highlight multiple, highly serious intelligence failures by both sides. A recently declassified report from the Presidents Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, written in 1990 following a thorough investigation into the resulting war scare, brings to light deeply worrying misinterpretations of the others actions. Many of these same failures are all too apparent in the ongoing NATO-Russia confrontation, in particular the lack of empathy and critical self-assessment.

Taking place as it did in a period of particular hostility between the USA and USSR, effective strategic communication relaying the scope and explicit purpose of Able Archer should have been paramount. Instead the report reveals that the US intelligence community routinely dismissed the concerns raised by the Soviet leadership relating to the military build-up in Western Europe as propaganda. Furthermore the warfighting preparation initiated by the USSR in response to Able Archer was not identified as such, with no correlation drawn between the increased readiness of forward-deployed Soviet units and NATO military activity. Even more concerning was that when no intelligence on a particular units operational readiness was available it was routinely assumed to have remained at the same level as the last assessment. As the Board makes clear a preconception among western intelligence agencies that all was well was defended by explaining away facts inconsistent with [this view] and by failing to subject that interpretation to a comparative risk assessment. It was only due to the instinctual restraint shown by local commanders, bereft of effective strategic intelligence input, that NATO units did not respond to the increasing of readiness of Soviet units more aggressively, and thus avoided a potentially catastrophic escalation. At the highest level this consistent misreading of the Soviet leaderships concerns resulted in the President making diplomatic decisions based upon assessments that understated the risks to the United States and its allies.

It is clear from the Able Archer report that the US intelligence community in 1983/84 was too rigid in sticking to its assumptions to effectively respond to events as they unfolded. The Soviet concern that the US was preparing to utilise its increasing superiority by launching a first strike against the Warsaw Pact had by 1983 already been reflected in significant modifications to the Soviet force posture. This included, among others, the forward-deployment of special operations forces, increasing the readiness of ballistic missile submarines (lower launch times; more time spent at sea), improving the combat readiness of drafted personnel, (1) and a diplomatic provision that permitted the USSR to unilaterally commit the forces of its Warsaw Pact allies to war. These developments took place against the backdrop of the much more widely publicised deployment, first by the USSR and then by the USA, of intermediate range, nuclear capable, missiles to Europe.

The report also highlights failings in the Soviet process that led to its partial mobilisation. Exacerbated by a deep mistrust and lack of understanding of the Reagan administration, policy makers in Moscow had become increasingly reliant on an intelligence interpretation algorithm known as VRYAN (from the Russian acronym for Surprise Nuclear Missile Attack). In essence VRYAN was a computerised system, created in 1979, that measured as a numerical value the relative cumulative power of the USSR and the USA. This ascribed the USA with a value of 100, with the USSR noted as a percentage of the USA. This model determined that if the relative Soviet value dropped to 40 or below then the USA would have enough of an advantage to launch a pre-emptive, disarming strike, it thus followed that the Soviet Union should itself launch such a strike whilst it still could. Determining this relative value relied on the input of c.40,000 factors which were centred around the Soviet perception of those political, economic, and military factors that proved key to victory in the Second World War. KGB residencies around the world were responsible for collecting these inputs and forwarding them to the central analysis centre in Moscow. Whilst VYRAN allowed for the collation of large quantities of data and arguably presented it in a useable form faster than conventional analysis, the lack of proper qualitative analysis and the sensitivity to nuance that this provides distorted leadership perception. This distortion resulted in criticism that VYRAN, and thus those leadership figures accessing its product, was/were predisposed to assume a greater risk of conflict. This particular criticism proved crucial in the discontinuation of VYRAN in 1985 following the Able Archer war scare.

It is unfortunately the case that many of the mistakes that led to the 1983/84 war scare are being repeated today. Failure by the analytical community to adopt a self-critical perpetual beta (2) approach to their predictions, combined with a predilection to dismiss pronounced Russian or NATO concerns as propaganda or as an extended form of multidimensional warfare without first subjecting them to an empathetic review, are real inhibitors to establishing an effective interpretation of events.

The failure of the intelligence communities on both sides in 1983/84 to correctly interpret the actions of the other is in many ways mirrored by the unnecessary ambiguity in modern NATO-Russia relations. The shuttering of information sharing mechanisms following the Russian intervention in Ukraine play a fundamental role in this, however the deep lack of empathy between NATO member states and Russia is arguably a bigger hindrance to determining effective policy. An April 2016 study by the European Leadership Network found that the fundamental base interpretation of world events by Russian and western leaders and populations differs not just due to variable political expediency, but due to sincere differences of interpretation of international law and norms.

Neither side has made a concerted effort to address this impasse, with both accusing the other of a cynical and wilful misinterpretation of international law and norms, or at worse simply dismissing the others case as propaganda. This cognitive block, the inability to empathise with the other, remains just as serious an inhibitor to effective intelligence analysis and policy making in 2016 as it did in 1983. What is not acknowledged is that empathy is not synonymous with sympathy. (3) Attempting to develop an understanding of anothers perspective does not necessarily denote agreement with that perspective or actions resulting from it. The failure to distinguish this concept is readily apparent in the public debate on Russia policy today, in which efforts to explain the process by which the Russian administration has acted are all too often dismissed as a modern form of appeasement.

This failure to think critically and empathetically has serious ramifications. Whilst it will never be possible to predict with absolute certainty the behaviour of any international actor, developing a well-grounded understanding of how they perceive the world and the events that have shaped it is a crucial foundation.

The report by the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board also serves to highlight another fundamental problem with intelligence analysis that persists, namely the lack of critical self-evaluation by the intelligence community following the failure to properly interpret Soviet actions preceding and during Able Archer. The Board documents a period of lacklustre self-evaluation between the years 1984 and 1990 in which the most critical voices are dismissed, before outlining possible modifications.

This lack of institutionalised critical assessment and improvement is a theme that has been developed substantially by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner of the Good Judgement Project. (4) Tetlock and Gardner criticise the lack of self-assessment within the analytical community, encompassing the political predictions made by think tankers, journalists and professional intelligence analysts. This criticism is based in the lack of a methodology, or indeed a desire, to hold predictions accountable to events as they unfold in reality.

Vague analysis is a particular concern. This is evident in the use of such subjective verbiage as likely or probable. Such terms do not provide an effective base from which to make policy decisions and do not lend themselves to retrospective evaluation. The Good Judgement Project instead champions the use of a percentage figure to denote probability. This not only provides a much clearer position from which to make a decision (whilst intelligence agencies increasing make use of this format it is still worryingly absent from public analysis and political debate) it is also easier to retrospectively evaluate. Most importantly however, it allows for incremental modification as events develop; for example increasing the probability of an event occurring from 43% to 44% following the release of new data. This continually modified approach is qualitative in nature, with the best results garnered through collective (wisdom of the crowd through determining the mean) judgement among analysts. (5) This concept of constant development, or perpetual beta, is crucial for effective analysis.

It is of the utmost importance that the mistakes of Able Archer are not repeated. At worst a lack of rigour in intelligence analysis and presentation can distort vital national decisions relating to war and peace, as is now painfully clear following the release of the inquiry report into the United Kingdoms decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003.

Even on a theoretical planning level inaccurate analysis is dangerous. For example, the simulations that United States Strategic Command conducts in order to develop the USAs deterrence policy rely on detailed profiles of possible adversaries. If these profiles are based on inaccurate analysis then any conclusions drawn from these exercises, included in deterrence procedure, and, ultimately, presented to the President at a time of national crisis, are fundamentally flawed.

Russia  NATO relations are currently in flux, a cycle characterised by mutual recriminations of past and current behaviour and interlinked modifications of military force posture on a scale not seen since the early 1990s. In such a rapidly changing environment the analytical margin of error is thin. It is thus imperative to draw on the lessons of the past and adopt a more empathetic, perpetual beta approach in an effort to avoid miscalculation and escalation. This will not end the current confrontation, but presenting a clearer, probability-based analysis as clear as possible from prejudice to our political leaders is an important start.

(1) These measures included recalling reservists, lengthening service times, increasing draft ages, abolishing many draft deferments, and ending military support for the gathering of the harvest.

(2) Perpetual beta, originally a software development term, suggests that a project or concept can never be definitively completed. It thus remains in constant development.

(3) It is worthy of note that the Russian noun empatiya () has only recently been adopted from English. The definition remains similar but may imply sostradaniye (  compassion) or sochuvstviye (  sympathy), as is the case with an older translation of empathy, sopyeryeshivaniye (). This convoluted translation process will unfortunately complicate the adoption of this process in Russia.

(4) See Tetlock and Gardner (2016), Superforcasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, Random House Books

(5) The Good Judgement Project further improves its forecasting results by forming teams of Superforecasters, those analysts that have consistently produced the most accurate forecasts. These teams consistently outperformed the US intelligence community.

The opinions articulated above represent the views of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Leadership Network or any of its members. The ELNs aim is to encourage debates that will help develop Europes capacity to address the pressing foreign, defence, and security challenges of our time.
Research on the stars of the Design of Life films continues to reveal marvels beyond the reach of unguided processes.

Butterflies

Metamorphosis, one of the Design of Life films from our friends at Illustra, shows butterflies finding their host plants with extreme precision, utilizing multiple sensory modalities to ensure that the eggs would be laid on the right food source for the caterpillars. Now, researchers have added leaf shape to the list of cues, Phys.org says. Observations of the red passionflower butterfly show that females have an innate preference for plants with a particular leaf shape. But they can learn to overcome their preference for other shapes that may be more abundant in the rainforest, or for ones with a better food reward.

This shows that flexibility is a design feature, keeping an organism from getting into a rut that might lead to extinction. It also promotes biodiversity in the ecosystem, we learn. So in addition to odor, touch, and taste, the tiny flyers can also use vision. That makes sense because theyre well equipped for that as well. As Ronald Boender remarks in Metamorphosis, butterflies have better eyesight than humans.

Birds

Penguins dont feature in Flight: The Genius of Birds, but they deserve more-than-honorable mention. Recently, scientists outfitted some of New Zealands rockhopper penguins with geolocators to see where they go, as Carsten Egevangs team did for Arctic terns in the film. Rockhoppers spend up to six months at sea during the winter, but their paths were previously unknown. BBC News says that researchers were astonished by the birds long-distance journeys. The relatively small penguins travelled up to 15,000 kilometers (9,320 miles)  and that was by swimming! Adding to the feat is the birds vertical distance when they dive to catch fish, which as not measured by the devices, so the actual effort is even greater.

Scientists are beginning to combine data from geolocators with next-generation gene sequencing to learn more about bird migration. Scientists at the University of British Columbia installed geolocators on migrating songbirds called Swainsons thrushes. Two related populations take very different routes from Canada, one down the Pacific coast to Central America, the other down the east coast to South America. The researchers found a genetic basis for the difference:

By linking the migratory behavior of hybrids to their genetic makeup, these researchers pinpointed a single cluster of roughly 60 genes on one chromosome that largely accounts for the difference in migration patterns. The genes play an important role in the birds circadian, nervous and cell signalling systems. They are also located in regions of the genome that have reduced movement of genes from one population of thrushes to the other. Smaller scale studies have associated some genes in this region with migratory behavior in organisms as diverse as butterflies, fish and other birds, said UBC zoologist Darren Irwin, senior author of the study. These results provide even stronger evidence that evolution of this genetic cluster can cause different migratory routes, facilitating the evolution of two species from one. [Emphasis added.]

The speciation angle cant be pushed too far, since they are all Swainsons thrushes and are capable of interbreeding or hybridizing. Also, the study may not have taken epigenetic modifications into account. Nevertheless, it is interesting to find genetic variability reflected in the behavioral differences, again showing that flexibility can help a species remain viable under changing conditions.

Soaring birds manage to achieve great heights with a minimum effort. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals more of their techniques. The birds know how to turn challenges to their advantage. Researchers from UC San Diego say in the paper,

Thermals are ascending currents that typically extend from the ground up to the base of the clouds. Birds and gliders piggyback thermals to fly with a reduced expenditure of energy, for example, during migration, and to extend their flying range. Flow in the thermals is highly turbulent, which poses the challenge of the orientation in strongly fluctuating environments. We combine numerical simulations of atmospheric flow with reinforcement learning methods to identify strategies of navigation that can cope with and even exploit turbulent fluctuations.

Thats a design strategy that drone makers might learn from, notes Phys.org.

Sea Turtles

Illustras film Living Waters mercifully avoided shots of hatchling sea turtles getting picked off by crabs and birds, though it mentioned that hazard. News from the University of Bristol reveals one way green turtles avoid capture: they hatch en masse at the same time. This swamps the predators, allowing more of them to reach the safety of the water. They also emerge at night when they are less likely to be seen. Since they emerge from under the sand, they must rely on biological clocks, not sunlight, to know when to hatch. They also arrive on the surface with an uncanny sense of direction to the water, and travel fast with little flippers well designed to negotiate both sand and sea.

Unfortunately, birds and crabs are not the only dangers sea turtles face. National Geographic has an alarming story about a Vietnamese trafficker caught with a huge haul of endangered Hawksbill sea turtles, seven thousand in all. An investigator never thought it would be this bad when he entered three secret warehouses reeking of death. The illegal trader has not yet been arrested. Stephen Dunbar, who appears in the film, works to rescue sea turtles in Honduras and educate others about them.

Whales

In his new book Undeniable, Douglas Axe tells about his fascination watching orcas off the coast of Washington using teamwork at the hunt. Their show-off skill hoisting their heavy bodies into the air also elicited his admiration. He uses that experience to argue his point that orcas, salmon, and other creatures represent complete wholes as organisms that do not need to evolve into something other than what they are.

Living Waters includes beautiful drone shots of dolphins and humpback whales taken by Captain Dave Anderson, interviewed in the film, who was a pioneer in this photographic technique. The Associated Press reports that drone technology is being used more and more by whale researchers looking for clues to sustain healthy populations of the marine mammals. Observations that would be difficult from a ship can be made with drones, such as estimating the sizes of pods or orcas and false killer whales.

The vantage point of the drone also allowed them to more accurately count the number of individuals in a pod, including mothers and calves that sometimes stay underwater. The number of calves helps researchers gauge the whales reproductive health. The perspective also allows the scientists to get more accurate size estimates for individual whales.

Whales and dolphins play a crucial role in the ecosystem around the Hawaiian archipelago, where NOAA researchers tried out their drones. If populations decrease, reporter Caleb Jones remarks, the oceans food chain becomes unbalanced and could impact the entire ecosystem.

The Illustra film describes the elaborate echolocation system used by dolphins. And dont forget the songs of the Humpback whale. Phys.org has a new question: What do sperm whales say? Actually, nobody knows. A team listened in on a pod of seven of these giants swimming near the Azores Islands. They clearly have something on their minds  but to be perfectly honest, we havent the faintest idea what that might be.

Initial indications are that the whales communicate in clicks analogous to Morse Code.

Much like Morse code, these messages consist of a series of tapping (also described as clicking) sounds in a variety of combinations, such as four long taps followed by two short ones. The scientists registered 21 different messages.

An audio clip in the article lets you listen in on some of the sounds recorded by the scientists.

One could imagine that the vocalisations give information about who each of the individuals in the group are, whether they are heading for the surface or depths or if they have found food. It could be mothers calling to their young or females inviting males to mate with them.

These are just guesses at this point. One 9.3-meter whale was the most talkative in the pod. Four others vocalized, but two remained quiet. Research goes on. Heres more from the article about the incredible world of sperm whales:

Like elephants, sperm whales live in matriarchal groups. When young males reach maturity, they leave the group and travel north to the waters around Iceland and northern Norway, where they remain until they have doubled in size. Once they have grown sufficiently, they make their way back to the tropics to find a female to mate with. Sperm whales are capable of making the loudest sounds of any animal on the planet. They use these sounds for echolocation and as a form of communication. The sperm whale is the worlds largest predator, and it can track squids up to a kilometre away using echolocation.

As these news items show, evidence for the Design of Life is abundant and growing. Its clear that much of good science works to understand the design that is Undeniable to all who consider it with an open mind.

Photo: Thrush with geolocator, via University of British Columbia.
Hi there

I left my current employer in Dubai last week on the 17th August - and now currently waiting for my new Visa to be processed to allow me to start work - I'm going from a mainland to another mainland Visa.

My new employer has all my documents to start this process - they have said it will take around 2 weeks.

Does anyone else have any similar stories to share around Visa processing timelines - the other situation is my last employer wont pay my Gratuity until they see my new Visa stamped in my passport and wanted to understand if this common practice.



Thanks
Can anyone recommend a place to buy a reasonable " not so expensive " carpet for home use . i am looking for 6*4 meter size .I was told about a market near masafi but distance is an issue..so anything similar but in dubai or sharjah .
Isualt said: I have been unable to find a decent one here or in Spain and had to resort to getting one from the QVC in the UK, Octaspring Body Zone Mattress Topper - cost 38 carriage but it is really good. Click to expand...

France, however, offers a huge variety of mattress toppers, many way better than the egg-crate variety. However, it really depends how much you want to spend. I have significant arthritis and very debilitating back problems and consequently opted for a Tempur bed - have never been so comfortable in bed, despite having purchased the best of the best in Australia (most of the quality beds there come from the UK). Although I would say that I have trouble turning the mattress, but fortunately that only has to be done at most once every 3 months (currently I have managed to do it once every six months). One day I'll bite the bullet and employ a femme de menage who can help me, but right now I prefer to try to manage alone, albeit I'm fully aware that I really do need help with the housework - just a step too far for someone with an independent spirit
Monday, August 22, 2016

Ready to try something new?

By Tracy Jong

Have you ever wanted to explore a new product or market without tarnishing your existing product line and marketing positioning? There are several ways you can do this. Lets explore some scenarios.

Contract manufacturing

You can file an assumed (fictitious name) for your existing business to create a new and independent brand identity you can work with another craft beverage producer to produce a batch for you and have it bottled under the second brand. You can test the waters and consumer reactions. Contract manufacturing is especially advantageous for New York farm producers because they can do tastings and retail other New York labelled alcoholic beverage products. Thus, a farm brewer who wanted to experiment with cider or bourbon could have it made and bottled by another licensed farm producer. (In this case, the other producer would file an assumed name and use it under license from you as the brand owner.) While not the actual producer, the products can be sold at your retail location and satisfy that desire to try something new.

Alternating premises

Some New York farm brewers want to use non-New York ingredients for some batches but also want to leverage the advantages of the farm brewery license. Did you know a brewery can do both? It is possible to have two licenses (a manufacturing and a farm brewing) at a single location by using an alternating premises. In that business model, the brewery is used on some days under one license and other days under the second license. Separate record keeping is required for each separate business/license but it opens the door to having your cake and eating it too.

Multiple assumed names

A craft beverage producer may have several brands under a single license. This allows you to take advantage of different segments of the market. For example, there could be a brand with an irreverent personality, one with a sweeter taste profile, a premium productget the picture? Different brand personalities for different customer bases and a way to experiment without affecting your bread and butter products.

Alternating proprietorship

Craft beverage producers can also have two licenses under different ownership at the same premises. This is the perfect way for a start-up craft beverage manufacturer to launch without the expense of infrastructure and real estate. It allows an existing manufacturer to create a small revenue stream and use its excess capacity. In an alternating proprietorship one company is in control of the shared portion of the premises per day, alternating as agreed. This provides an opportunity to collaborate and do something in addition to your signature product. You may create a specialty line that has different ownership than your primary business. For example, a celebrity wants to lend his or her name to a product and wants revenue sharing to do so. This structure accommodates that business model.

If any of these scenarios interest you, contact your craft beverage legal advisor to strategize and minimize risk. Most of all, do what you love to do and have fun trying something new. New opportunities may be revealed.

Legal issues, regulatory applications, reports, audits and business disputes usually arent profit-generating activities but not addressing them timely, correctly and effectively can put a company out of business.

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.

www.TracyJongLawFirm.com

TJong@TracyJongLawFirm.com

Facebook: Tracy Jong Law Firm

Twitter: @TJLawFirm

LinkedIn: Tracy Jong

Tracy Jong Law Firm
PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE, Pa.  It was a full house in the College of Agricultural Sciences Exhibits Building Theatre, as dairymen, industry professionals and agricultural organizations filled the room to hear testimony on House Bill 1265 and seek answers for declining dairy prices.

The House Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee and Senate Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee held a joint informational meeting on dairy industry issues and HB 1265 Aug. 17, during Ag Progress Days.

Dairy issues

Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding opened the floor with remarks on the current dairy industry in Pennsylvania, reiterating sentiments of low prices and tight margins felt by producers across the commonwealth. Current market conditions, combined with current grower conditions, have resulted in very tight margins for dairy producers, said Redding, noting drought conditions many growers are experiencing in the state.

Market cycles

Charles Nicholson, a professor of supply chain management at Penn State University, highlighted four main challenges to growth in Pennsylvania dairy production.

Pennsylvania dairy production showed a negative growth around -3.1 percent from 2000 to 2015 while New York is showing growth of around 20 percent and Wisconsin around 25 percent, according to National Agricultural Statistics Service data presented by Nicholson. He said Pennsylvanias dairy production numbers are similar to 15 years ago.

The second challenge is a need to address capacity issues, he said. Slow milk production growth does not encourage investment in facilities and some periods of insufficient capacity led to dumped milk. A third challenge is a decline in the use of Class I milk, or fluid milk. Reductions in higher value milk use have had an effect on Pennsylvania milk prices.

The fourth challenge is the cycle of farm prices, margins and profitability. In 2014, dairy producers spiked an all-time high in prices before dropping in 2015 and 2016. The margin cycle is almost identical to dangerously low prices that were seen in 2009 and 2010, said Nicholson. How long is it going to take us to get to recovery and how much recovery are we going to see? asked Nicholson.

New legislation

See also: Pennsylvania lawmakers want state milk premium shown to producers

Some dairy producers feel some of that price recovery could be found if new legislation is passed. Sponsored by Rep. John Lawrence, R-West Grove, HB 1265 would require milk dealers, in addition to cooperatives who sell farmers milk, to provide the farmers a written statement of the specific dollar amount of state-mandated premium included in the payment for milk.

Pennsylvania dairies are awarded an over-order premium  an additional $1.85 per hundred pounds of milk or 16 cents per gallon  as an incentive for milk produced and sold within Pennsylvania. Lawrence said in his testimony, the idea behind this premium was that Pennsylvania consumers might be willing to pay more per gallon knowing they were helping out the Pennsylvania dairy farmer.

However, according to Lawrence, many family farmers do not know how much, if any, of that state-mandated money is actually getting back to them. Many have said to me that the money is lost in the system. Current Pennsylvania legislature protects cooperatives from disclosing specific dollar amounts of state-mandated premiums collected in a milk check.

The push is for more transparency between producers and cooperatives, allowing producers to see what dollars are being generated and who is benefiting.

Opposition

Addressing earlier testimony by Dairy Farmers of America, one of the largest dairy cooperatives in the state, Lawrence refuted DFAs opposition to the bill. DFA Northeast testified in June, that premiums from all members (in Pennsylvania and out of state) are collected and combined. After calculating marketing expenses, money is paid to its members in the form of market-driven premiums.

By law, DFA is allowed to blend proceeds of all sales and make payments to farmers as determined by farmer members in their cooperative agreement. However, Lawrence said Pennsylvania farmers should be getting the over-order premium on top of whatever market driven premium DFA negotiates.

I do take issue with DFAs stated desire to pool the Pennsylvania-created and mandated over-order premium with out of state dairy farmers, that is a key reason to support HB 1265, Lawrence said.

Neutral stance

Land OLakes representative, Tom Wegner, said Pennsylvania Milk Marketing payments only represent 10 percent of its member revenues. While the Land OLakes Carlisle, Pennsylvania, plant has a strong presence in the Pennsylvania dairy industry, Wegner said Land OLakes is remaining neutral on its stance, but will comply with whatever the final ruling may be.

Support from Farm Bureau and PennAg

Pennsylvania Farm Bureau (PFB) and PennAg Industries support the transparency suggested by HB 1265. We are all hurting across the industry, from egg production, to crop production and agricultural service, said PennAg Executive Vice President Christian Herr, adding PennAg would like to work with legislation that supports all agricultural industries.

PFB President Rick Ebert said even if prices were to rebound, things would remain tight as farmers work their way out of debt.

Justin Risser, a dairy farmer and president of the Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania, said the current permitting process puts the states dairy farmers at a competitive disadvantage with other high-producing states like New York, Michigan and Wisconsin. But he also pointed to the need for more processing opportunities in the Commonwealth and encouraged lawmakers to adopt an aggressive economic development policy to achieve that goal.

Amending HB 1276

Cooperatives really have carried the burden of balancing the market, said Redding. There is no way you can keep the Class I markets that we enjoy in Pennsylvania without having a place for those other classes of milk.

Redding suggested an amendment to HB 1276: We suggest, on one side, transparency on the premium and how it gets to the producer and, on the other side, to acknowledge that there is also an infrastructure in place that has to be built and maintained and that building and maintaining is done by our cooperatives in Pennsylvania.

Profitability

The bottom line is profitability, and Redding also could like to see changes to the federal Margin Protection Program. There is not enough data to have a basis for a regional feed pricing system which could help producers received a better premium. Redding suggests seeking government funding for a survey to determine that basis.
Midwest spinach production explained in detail

Learn how spinach performs in the Midwest and seasonal considerations in a new publication from ISU.
Writtle University College has officially launched its new name and brand identity to mark the start of a new chapter in its 123-year history.

Having achieved university college status earlier this year, Writtle University College (formerly Writtle College) has launched its new brand identity with a logo that brings together its values and heritage  having been founded in 1893  with its vision of enabling positive global change through inspiring education.

Writtle University College gained Taught Degree Awarding Powers in 2015 and will be awarding its own degrees from 2017.

Dr Stephen Waite, Vice-Chancellor of Writtle University College, said the change "emphasises the ambition" of Writtle.

"This ambitious nature is reflected in our students who go onto achieve fantastic careers having studied with us. We are very proud of the heritage and reputation we have in our specialist areas.

Stephen Waite and Craig Emery

"Our portfolio, which includes environmental, sport, design, animal and land-based courses, continues to attract students from across the globe.

"Today is a landmark moment in the history of Writtle, and of education in the south-east region altogether, as we become a university college.

"We have set a clear and ambitious vision; we are a specialist institution, nationally acclaimed and internationally recognised for the quality of our students, graduates and staff.

"These are exciting times for everyone associated with Writtle."

'Tells a story'

Speaking about the new branding, Craig Emery, Head of Marketing at Writtle University College, added: "We believe it really tells a story, embraces the subjects we offer and speaks confidently about us as a high-quality provider of specialist education with a global appeal.

"We wanted an identity that acknowledged and respected our history, but also presented us in a modern way to reflect how current and relevant our teaching is.

"Our new campaign asks our audiences if theyre ready; ready to learn, ready to achieve, and ready to be part of Writtle during this exciting period in our long and proud history.

"People are sometimes surprised about the scope of courses we offer at Writtle and we would always encourage prospective students to visit our campus to find out what opportunities we have waiting for them."

Writtles new launch campaign utilises the strapline Were ready. Are you? and the hashtag #writtleready which is a message that students, staff and industry will be able to get behind.
The president of the Canadian National Farmers Union has written to the EU's agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan to express dismay at the dairy sector affecting many European countries.

Jan Slomp encouraged Hogan to adopt a Canadian-style supply management system in order to end the European dairy crisis.

We in Canada have been observing from afar the crisis in the European Unions dairy sector following the elimination of production quotas on April 1, 2015, Mr Slomp said.

Those who do not have the means to expand fall deeper into debt as their daily work brings them mounting losses in spite of their best efforts.

Jan Slomp, Canadian NFU President

Mr Slomp said over the past year, farmers in England, France, Germany and Hungary have been in the streets protesting as all other means of protecting their livelihoods and the fruits of their lifes work seem futile.

We feel compassion for your farmers, Mr Slomp emphasised.

Those who remember our history in Canada know that our parents generation of dairy farmers went through similar hard times in the mid-1900s.

We would like to offer you the solution that was developed here with the wisdom, foresight and determination of farmers and political leaders, and which has worked well for over 50 years.

EU's agriculture minister Phil Hogan

Supply Management

Canadas unique institution, called Supply Management, protects the interests of dairy farmers, processors, and consumers without drawing upon the public purse, Mr Slomp said.

It provides farmers a fair return for their labour, management and investment through cost-of-production pricing; dairy processors receive a reliable supply of milk at predictable prices; consumers receive high quality, wholesome dairy products at reasonable prices and are never faced with shortages.

The whole system runs without a penny of government subsidy payments, Mr Slomp explained.

Each Canadian province has its own milk marketing board run by farmers who are elected by their peers.

The parameters of these boards authority are defined by overarching federal legislation along with each provinces corresponding law and regulations.

The dairy sector offers farmers a decent, predictable livelihood, allowing them to invest in environmentally-friendly technology, use sustainable management practices, and employ local workers at good living wage rates, Mr Slomp said.

Each province has its own dairy processing facilities, reducing the amount of transportation (and associated greenhouse gases) required to produce dairy products for Canadian consumers across the country.

Three pillars

The Supply Management system rests on a foundation made of three pillars: import controls, production discipline and cost-of-productionpricing.

Each pillar is necessary, Mr Slomp said, We must control the imports (via tariff barriers) in order to accurately predict the amount of dairy products needed by our market.

This also means that our dairy market is not buffeted by the political and economic vagaries of other countries markets which are outside of our control, he said.

Farmers must accept mandatory production discipline so that they provide enough, but not too much, milk for the countrys needs.

Farmers are willing to limit production because the price they receive per litre is determined annually through a cost of production formula that encourages efficiency.

He said: With these basics in place we continue to have a dairy sector with average farm herd size that does not stress local ecosystems or animal welfare.

Dairy farmers income stability often provides an economic anchor in their communities when other agricultural products or industries experience volatility and precarious incomes.

Thus, our Supply Management system contributes to rural employment, quality of life and social cohesion in addition to its economic contributions.

We encourage you to lead Europe to adopt a Canadian-style supply management system. It would solve multiple problems, starting with the income crisis your dairy farmers are suffering, Mr Slomp concluded.
The CLA has blamed the government for not delivering a pledge to help farmers and rural businesses reduce planning barriers.

The organisation, which represents thousands of landowners, farmers and rural businesses, announced that they are held back by the "delays, inefficiencies and inflexibilities" of the planning system.

A year ago this week, Ministers committed to delivering a "10-point plan for boosting productivity in rural areas" pledging to review planning rules that were holding back communities, jobs and growth.

A consultation on reforms followed in February 2016 but rural communities have seen "no outcomes and inaction is harming all those who live and work in the countryside", the CLA said.

'Tough times'

CLA President Ross Murray said that businesses across the countryside are working through "tough times".

He said: "There is a bright future ahead for many but it requires investment.

CLA President Ross Murray said that businesses across the countryside are working through "tough times"

"It is hard enough for businesses to take steps to invest but it can become impossible when faced with confusing, slow and obstructive planning rules.

"Farm businesses, in particular, need to invest to increase productivity and resilience.

"This can mean building new and improved storage facilities or on-farm reservoirs for better irrigation and reduce flooding risk.

"For other businesses, the best opportunities are in diversification thereby developing alternative income streams such as housing, leisure or in retail, which make the core farming business more secure.

Mr Murray expressed disappointment at the failure to deliver the fast track planning certification process

Mr Murray said the sector engaged "constructively" with the Review laying out a number of simple improvements that would have an "immediate beneficial effect."

He said: "Ministers must now act. Every day of further delay is damaging given the urgent need to boost investment and growth across the rural economy."

Making it easier for investment

Reforms proposed by the CLA include expanding the scope of successful permitted development rights to make it easier and more certain for farmers to invest in:

 farm shops - loosening restrictions on sale of products not produced on-farm which helps to make the shop business more viable and attract more customers,

 polytunnels  to help farmers increase production of domestically produced strawberries and other soft fruits,

 on-farm reservoirs - to help farmers better manage water through irrigation and flood prevention,

 general agricultural buildings - extending rights to farmers to erect small buildings (up to 458sq m) without prior notification of the planning authority to reduce costs and delays,

 conversion of agricultural buildings to homes  a successful policy that has seen significant numbers of moribund buildings brought back into use is still being held back by the obstructionist attitudes of local authorities, with half of all applications being refused.

 the construction of rural affordable homes for rent on rural exception sites - allowing the construction of between one and nine affordable homes in or adjacent to rural villages would help to address the shortage of homes for those who want to live and work in rural communities, as well as create income opportunities for local landowning businesses, the CLA said.

'Fast track planning certification process'

Mr Murray expressed disappointment at the failure to deliver the fast track planning certification process (also known as Planning-in-Principle) that was specifically promised in the plan.

He said: "This year has also seen the reversal in Ministers promise that rural businesses would benefit from a new Planning-in-Principle certification scheme.

"This innovation would have made a big difference in terms of giving businesses vital confidence that they would secure planning approval before making substantial investments.

"The change imposed on the Government by the House of Lords, limiting this new right to housing developments only, is a major setback and we urge Ministers to reintroduce the measure at the first opportunity in this Parliament," he concluded.
Farmers and rural businesses with an anaerobic digestion plant could secure a 10-20% premium on the gas they produce by tapping into growing demand for green energy across Europe.

Currently, most AD plants burn the gas they produce to generate electricity and heat.

But there is an emerging market for bio-methane, which can be injected directly into the gas main, says Richard Palmer, Energy Consultant at Butler Sherborn Energy.

"Although consumers in the UK are reluctant to pay a premium for this green energy, corporate energy customers across Europe are increasingly keen to demonstrate their energy credentials," he says.

"We have secured an agreement with a major energy company, which can pipe green gas through the interconnected gas mains to European customers, so can now offer British producers a share of this premium market."

The development comes at a critical time for the British renewable energy industry, which is looking increasingly unstable as a result of Government spending reviews and Brexit.

"Historically, biogas has been used primarily to generate electricity, supported by the Renewables Obligation and Feed-in Tariffs (FiT)," says Mr Palmer.

"However, in 2011 the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) helped to kick-start the market for bio-methane injection in to the mains gas grid.

"So far this has yielded two income streams: the RHI and the wholesale gas price. Now there is a third source of revenue, offering a 10-20% premium over current wholesale gas returns."

Tariff reductions

Lucy Hopwood, Director at bio-economy consultant NNFCC, says that gaining added value for green gas is very timely in light of recent tariff reductions.

"Its no longer possible to add additional capacity under the FiT scheme and the same is soon likely to be true of the RHI.

"So for many plants expansion isnt an option  they must make better use of what they have," she explains.

"Developers are also starting to look at how they can increase productivity, without the expense of capital outlay."

Existing plants can be converted to purify the gas by removing carbon dioxide and trace gases, after which the bio-methane is injected into the gas main and sold as renewable fuel, tracked via international trading schemes.

"Until now, Green Gas Certificates have represented little added value to the producer, as British consumers are reluctant to pay more for renewable fuel.

Tapping into European market

"Only now that we can tap into the European market can the opportunity be realised in the short-term," says Mr Palmer.

"That said, this is still an immature market in the UK and it may be that in the longer term British companies will be put under pressure to cut their carbon output, leading to premiums being available here."

Gas producers will have to register and meet the sustainability criteria of the International Sustainability & Carbon Certification body.

"Most farmers AD feedstock will meet these criteria and the costs of any audit required will be covered by the energy company," says Mr Palmer.

"The gas premium will depend on the carbon level of the feedstock, and as power purchase agreements can be made in advance it does not matter if the renewal on any existing gas contract, or commissioning of a new bio-methane plant, is over 12 months from now."
The NFU is today launching its options paper giving its members the chance to voice what they think is needed for post-Brexit British agriculture.

This marks the start of the official consultation period - the largest consultation in a generation - which has around 50 meetings being held across the country for members to attend and discuss the options with NFU officeholders and policy advisers.

The consultation period will end on 14 September 2016  the day the NFU will hold its Back British Farming Day to promote dynamic British food and farming to MPs.

NFU President Meurig Raymond said the vote to leave the European Union means that food security "must drive a new, bold ambition" for UK farmers and growers.

"This is a historic opportunity, which as NFU Officeholders working on our members behalves, we are determined to seize," Mr Raymond said.

"Were already seeing farmers joining the NFU to participate in the biggest consultation weve ever held on the industrys future.

"Were expecting thousands of NFU members to grasp both hands the opportunity to share their views.

"The integrity of British produce has never been greater"

"This is the chance to shape the future for our industry for all future generations of British farmers and growers.

'Bedrock of a vibrant supply chain'

"We all know that farming already makes a huge contribution to the nation; it is the bedrock for a vibrant supply chain and essential for our food and drink industry, worth 108 billion to the economy.

"Its now vital that we help shape a new vision for an agricultural policy which ensures a dynamic, profitable and productive future for farming and growing.

"We, as farmers and growers, produce high quality food to world leading standards while also caring for a thriving environment.

"And the British public has made it clear in survey after survey that they are hugely supportive and that fully aware of the contribution we make to the economy and the environment.

"On top of this, they would like to see more British food produced at home. The integrity of British produce has never been greater.

Creating a domestic agricultural policy

The NFU President said the nation's vision is for a future policy which "enables farmings contribution to Britain grow."

"Where our farmers are able to compete with the rest of the world and are able to access the latest technologies to allow us to be ever more resilient, competitive and profitable," Mr Raymond said.

"Where public goods farmers provide include not just the environment but also renewable energy, education, health and nutrition, to name but a few.

"Nobody should be under any illusions that Brexit will happen in a matter of months.

"The process of leaving the EU and of creating a domestic agricultural policy will take time and thats why the NFU has taken the opportunity to carry out this robust consultation.

"We want to ensure that when we present our vision for a new policy we can clearly demonstrate that this is what farmers and growers from all sectors and in all areas want and need.

"Brexit is about building bridges, building the industrys influence."
Welsh farmers have voiced their concern about the way crime impacts their farming businesses.

Newly elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent, Jeff Cuthbert, met with a small group of local farmers last week to discuss the issues.

Among those discussed during the Wednesday 17th August meeting was illegal off-roading, which continues to cause "significant damage to the environment", according to farming union NFU Cymru.

Farmers also raised concerns about vandalism to property and boundaries, which can result in livestock straying onto roads and lead to potential accidents.

Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent, Jeff Cuthbert

Fly tipping was also on the agenda as this remains a problem for a number of farmers in Wales.

Other concerns raised at the meeting surrounded the reporting of crimes, with farmers voicing frustration about the 101 police non-emergency number due to delays in the calls being answered.

There was further discussion among farmers whose land sits across boundary police force lines as to how neighbouring police forces could collaborate more effectively when investigating reports of crime.

Rural crime 'very important'

The Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent, Jeff Cuthbert, said: "The meeting gave me the opportunity to stress that we regard rural crime, including crimes on farms, as very important.

"Im also grateful for the comments and observations of the local farmers about how crime is impacting upon their businesses.

"I urged the farmers to make sure that they always report incidents in a timely manner and to let us know if theyre not satisfied with the response. This meeting was a good example of local engagement."

Rural Police Office for Gwent, Allan Mills, was also present at the meeting and discussed equipment and methods, including trackers and alarm systems, that could be used to help prevent farmers become the victims of theft.

He also urged farmers to be vigilant in always removing the keys from unattended vehicles.
The National Farmers Union Love Your Countryside team has created a leaflet warning to wedding and party planners outlining the dangers of sky lanterns.

The release of flying lanterns into the night-time sky may look pretty, the NFU warns, but the end result is litter, the flames can kill or harm farm animals when ingested and the candles are a major fire risk to fields of crops and buildings.

The NFU and other rural organisations continue to call for an outright ban on the sale of sky lanterns and we will continue to lobby government until action is taken.

Sky lantern poster

NFU Deputy President Minette Batters said she knows from personal experience how dangerous sky lanterns can be.

I lost a cow from my own herd which died after eating some fine wire from a lantern that landed on the farm, Miss Batters said.

The post mortem revealed that sky lantern was the cause of death.

A fire starter

But its important to point out that its not just farm animals which can be affected, she explained.

Sky lanterns cause fires to crops, grassland on moors and bales of hay and straw that have been stacked, which can lead to a loss of buildings.

It is really encouraging that local authorities are now starting to see sense and have banned the release of lanterns on their land.

However, we would like to see many more follow suit. Members of the public can play a big part by writing to their local councils spelling out how dangerous sky lanterns can be.

Please back British farming and think twice before setting sky lanterns alight and releasing them into the environment.
Three new records were set for Shropshire breed sheep and a complete flock of pedigree Llanwenog Sheep was sold at the successful seventh Traditional, Native and Rare Breeds Livestock Show and Sale at Shrewsbury Auction Centre.

The show and sale, hosted by auctioneers Halls, incorporated the National Show and Sale (West) of the Shropshire Sheep Breeders Association. Its the largest sale of Shropshire sheep anywhere in the UK this year.

A ewe lamb owned by William and Archie Dorrell from Stonegrove Livestock, Worcester, which went on to sell for a record 520 guineas, was selected breed champion, ensuring that the Morley Perpetual Challenge trophy returned home with them for the second year running.

British Saddleback champion

Reserve champion, a shearling ewe from Mark and Sue Shimwell, Congleton, also sold for a record price of 880 guineas and was purchased by Mr G. J. Hockridge, Oakhampton, who also paid a record breaking 1,000 guineas for the shearling ram Sprotborough Pinnacle by Stonegrove Archie from Alan Oliver, Doncaster.

The Shimwells also had a successful day in the show ring, winning the Roydon Shield for best opposite sex to the champion with a ram lamb. Highest priced ram lamb was from the Ushers Flock and was purchased by M. Zielinski of Shawbury for 800 guineas.

The Dorrells capped off a successful day for their flock by winning the Southworth Shield for the best pen of two Shropshires.

Longhorn cow champion

Shropshires averaged 567 for adult rams, 530 for shearling rams, 431 for ram lambs, 119 for adult ewes, 284 for shearling ewes and 190 for ewe lambs.

The sale also included the dispersal of the Henson familys 81 pedigree Llanwenog Sheep from the Brithdir Flock, Brithdir, Llwynmawr, Llangollen, which attracted keen interest.

Top price in the flock went to a ram which sold for 405 guineas.

Despite the Shropshires reaching record prices, the overall sheep section champion was a Poll Dorset ram, Buckenhill Wise, from Louise Crowther and Matthew Gray from Bormyard.

The longwool sheep champion was a Greyface Dartmoor shearling lamb, Boris, owned by David W. Booth.

Top price for a rare breed sheep other than a Shropshire went to a Greyface Dartmoor ewe owned by Liz Dawson, Criggion which sold for 380 guineas.

The cattle champion was a Longhorn cow, Julaw Gloria, owned by L. E. Dixon, Home Farm, Attingham, near Shrewsbury, which sold for 750 guineas and the champion pig was a British Saddleback boar from Home Farm, Tatten Park, Cheshire.

For the first time, poultry entries were welcomed to the event and the 60 cages were on offer, with plans to have show classes next year.

Entries in most sections were 10 per cent up on last year and the sheep section was boosted by the sale of the Llanwenog flock, which attracted a large crowd of buyers and competitive bidding, said auctioneer Nick Hyne from Halls, Shrewsbury Auction Centre manager.

This is now one of the countrys most important rare breed shows and sales and we hope to continue the growth next year.

For the third time, the event also included an auction of vintage farm machinery and smallholders equipment.
The Food Standards Agency has today published research which shows consumers want the food industry to continue action to tackle campylobacter on chickens.

Campylobacter is the biggest cause of food poisoning in the UK.

New findings show that two thirds (66%) of consumers think the industry should continue to reduce campylobacter beyond the agreed current target of less than 10% of chickens at the most highly contaminated level.

Campylobacter is the biggest cause of food poisoning in the UK

Retailers should also be telling customers what proportion of chickens are at this highest level of contamination, according to 75% of those questioned.

The research has been released to coincide with the resumption this month of our campylobacter survey, part of our on-going efforts to reduce the high levels of food poisoning caused by the bug.

Testing was suspended in April so we could update the way the survey was carried out to ensure results continued to be robust.

Now seeing progress

Steve Wearne, Director of Policy at the FSA, said publishing surveillance data on campylobacter has prompted action from retailers and processors and progress is now being made.

He said: Our campaign has also raised awareness of campylobacter amongst the public.

It is good to see from our research that it is customers, and not just the FSA, demanding action and information from retailers.

We have always said that consumer power will ultimately push industry action, Mr Wearne said.

Many retailers and processors should be commended for the action they have taken so far.

The majority signed up to the pledge to ensure that campylobacter in chicken ceases to be a significant public health issue, and continued action will be needed to deliver this.

The FSAs research shows that 76% of people questioned want retailers to be more proactive in telling them what actions they are taking to reduce the campylobacter levels on the raw chicken they sell.

More than half of people (53%) said that they would start buying chicken from another retailer if their usual shop was found to sell more than the industry average high risk chicken.
The Farmers Union of Wales has renewed its call for the Welsh Government to take the lead in initiating plans for more sustainable and supportive public procurement policies ahead of Brexit.

Union officials met with Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs Lesley Griffiths at the Denbigh and Flint County Show.

FUW representative Eurwyn Roberts said there has been very positive discussions with the Cabinet Secretary.

In our discussions we made it clear that Wales needs to decide what it wants to be and decide what Wales is about, Mr Roberts explained.

Welsh Union officials meet with Rural Secretary to discuss #FarmingMatters

It is clear that if those in power do just that they will understand the importance of agriculture.

We dont want to be the same as other countries; we want to create our own future.

And in order for us to create our own future, the Welsh Government has to realise that hiding behind state-aid rules is no longer an option: our schools, hospitals, armed forces and all other public services deserve access to the top quality produce that we grow here in Wales, and our farmers and rural economies deserve recognition for what they produce.

Procurement of British produce

Mr Roberts said the Union has renewed calls for immediate action to initiate draft legislation which will mandate the procurement of British produce by the UK public Sector.

This will support rather than spite the sectors which lie at the heart of our rural

economies, he said.

Our county shows are the perfect shop window not only to show off the great food we produce but also highlight that there are many other industries directly reliant on the success of agriculture.

If we want to see Wales prosper and be the powerhouse it has the potential to be, then we must recognise that family farms lie at the centre of our rural economy, culture and landscape.

FUW officials also highlighted that while food production is at the heart of direct economic benefits and the preservation of a culture intrinsically linked to farming, the wider benefits of Welsh agriculture as vast.

As managers of around 80 percent of Wales landmass, farmers play an invaluable part in managing and preserving the landscape we all enjoy so much, Mr Roberts continued.

Our countryside is diverse in habitat and species and includes more than 1,000 Sites of Special Scientific Interest and it also brings millions of tourists to our country each year.

So yes, we produce food  which is vital in terms of food security, but we also do a lot more than that, something that has to be recognised by all, added Mr Roberts.
Regulation goes into effect Jan. 1, 2017

By Diego Flammini

Assistant Editor, North American Content

Farms.com

Beginning in January 2017, new regulations in Ohio will require farmers to make improvements to migrant worker camps.

The rule was instituted by Ohios Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review. Some of the included improvements are sinks with hot and cold water in existing buildings, the installation of smoke detectors and the requirement that non-flush toilets be emptied and cleaned weekly.

According to the Toledo Blade, farm owners will have five years to make sure migrant worker camps have hot and cold running water. Its estimated to cost about $500 per unit to install a sink for hand washing.



Getty

The Common Sense Initiative, which is associated with the Lieutenant Governors Office, wrote in an analysis that the regulations will benefit the health of migrant workers.

Washing hands before and after you eat, use the restroom, [and] prepare food prevents the spread of disease. People are much more likely to practice good hand washing when facilities are readily available, the analysis says, according to The Blade. Running water in a housing unit where you are sleeping and eating is a basic necessity for human habitation."

According to the Ohio Latino Affairs Commission, there are 104 agricultural labor camps in the state.

Eugenio Mollo, an attorney at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, told The Blade that keeping migrant workers healthy and happy can help farmers.

Its not good for the overall agriculture industry if there isnt an adequate labor supply to do the farm work, he said. And this makes sure our food is being harvested with the highest level of food safety in mind.
The future of Fauquier Times now depends on community support. Your donation will help us continue to improve our journalism through in-depth local news coverage and expanded reader engagement.

Support
A juvenile male was injured in a shooting in Dale City Thursday night, but there's been no word yet on the condition of the victim or whether 
As hurricanes worsen, can Lumbee Tribe learn to live with water?

The Native American tribe was saved by the swamp. Now, like so many people in the South, flooding threatens to drive them away.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a civil complaint Thursday in federal district court in New York City charging Deutsche Bank AG with failing to report any swap data for multiple asset classes for five days in April when a software update went wrong and crashed the system.

The CFTC asked for unspecified financial penalties.

The agency also charged the bank with failing to supervise its employees responsible for swap data reporting, not correcting inaccurate filings, having an inadequate Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan, and violating a prior CFTC Order.

Deutsche Bank has already agreed to appoint a reporting compliance monitor. The CFTC said Deutsche Bank still isnt in full compliance with reporting requirements.

On April 16, Deutsche Bank scheduled a series of updates on its regular swap data reporting platform (Main Platform).

To run the updates, Deutsche Bank switched from the Main Platform to its backup platform, the so-called Disaster Recovery Platform.

After switching to the Disaster Recovery Platform, Deutsche Bank discovered that certain files on that platform were corrupt.

At that point, Deutsche Bank switched back to the Main Platform. But the corrupted files transferred from the Disaster Recovery Platform to the Main Platform.

As a result, the CFTC said, the corrupted files shut down the reporting for multiple asset classes from both the Main Platform and the Disaster Recovery Platform.

The CFTC said Deutsche Banks Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan didnt prevent the system outage and also prolonged the crash for five days.

Deitsche Bank didnt resume swap data reporting until April 21.

The CFTC said,

Deutsche Bank could not implement the Disaster Recovery Plan at all in response to the System Outage because the first step in the Disaster Recovery Plan required switching from the Main Platform to the Disaster Recovery Platform, which housed the corrupt files, and initiated the failure.

Even before the computer crash, Deutsche Bank was under a CFTC order for swap reporting violations it committed from January 2013 through July 2015.

There were between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of reporting violations in Deutsche Banks swap data reporting during that time period, the CFTC said.

Deutsche Bank paid a civil penalty of $2,500,000 to settle the 2015 enforcement action and agreed to fix its swap reporting functions. It didnt admit or deny liability.

CFTC enforcement director Aitan Goelman said Thursday: Deutsche Bank has shown over the last year its inability to comply with its swap reporting responsibilities under the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC Regulations.

* * *

The CFTCs civil complaint filed on August 18, 2016 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in U.S. v. Deutsche Bank AG (No.1:16-cv-6544) is 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.
Against the backdrop of years of unprecedented monetary penalties imposed through DOJ civil settlements and deferred prosecution agreements with financial institutions embroiled in the 2008 financial meltdown, the DOJ came under withering criticism for perceptibly treating scrutinized corporations simply as cash cows rather than addressing the actual criminal conduct of the corporations and their executives.

As a tacit acknowledgement of the merits of this perception, the DOJ took steps to reinforce the obligations of prosecutors when addressing corporate wrongdoing. From the Yates Memos prescriptions relating to executive liability to recent criminal pleas tendered by financial institutions, the DOJ has sought to fortify its reputation for responsibly addressing corporate malfeasance. The recent failed FedEx prosecution, however, has exposed inherent flaws in DOJs approach and has the potential to exact a crippling blow to these efforts.

Nearly two years after federal prosecutors in Northern California touted a sensational but otherwise precarious drug trafficking indictment of FedEx Corporation and two subsidiaries, prosecutors quickly raised the white flag on the second day of trial, when they conceded that evidence did not exist to sufficiently support the charges. This concession was not the product of a new revelation, like a witness gone south, but simply the product of an all too late admission that the evidence to indict the corporation was insufficient from the start.

Now, Brian Stretch, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, has commissioned an internal review of the actions that caused this frightful scenario to unfold.

While potentially laudable, this review should focus on procedural fixes that will ameliorate both the internal and external institutional failures, rather than an approach that would serve to only scapegoat the prosecution team. If recent past is prologue, rather than identifying and solving the actual problem, any after-action report likely will pillory line prosecutors and spare both supervisors and DOJ policy of scrutiny. Fixing the inherent systemic flaws that inevitably facilitated the FedEx prosecution will require a thorough and dispassionate analysis. While this review is pending, it is fair to ask how so flawed a prosecution passed the presumed DOJ litmus test of sound judgment.

Even a cursory review of the FedEx indictment (pdf) reveals readily obvious and potentially fatal deficiencies that deserved rigorous pre-charging analysis.

First, in its summary of FedExs alleged criminal conduct, the prosecution outlined no less than six times in the prior 10 years that FedEx had been informed that illegal Internet pharmacies were using its shipping services to distribute controlled substances and prescription drugs.

Next, the prosecution identified two of these illegal internet pharmacies as the Chhabra-Smoley Organization and Superior Drugs, a putative illegal fulfillment pharmacy. As such, the government set forth its burden as having to establish that FedEx  being generally aware of the problem of internet pharmacies illegal distribution of controlled and prescription drugs  knew and understood that specific deliveries actually contained illegally prescribed drugs and, as part of an illegal agreement, purposely made these deliveries in cahoots with either the Chhabra-Smoley Organization or Superior Drugs.

For a business with more than 400,000 employees that makes more than 12 million deliveries every day, meeting the burden posed by this evidentiary intent ladder would be manifestly difficult to even the casual observer.

The substantive counts of drug trafficking also amplify the steep evidentiary challenges faced by the prosecutors. The indictment charged FedEx with illegally delivering eight separate packages of controlled substances on five separate days in July 2007 knowing that these particular distributions were outside the usual course of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose. While the recipient of the packages was not identified in the indictment, presumably the government would have had to establish that FedEx also knew and understood that the recipient was a member of the otherwise notorious Chabra-Smoley Organization. Absent direct evidence in a form similar to undercover tapes, it is difficult to imagine the government ever meeting its burden here.

Given the case laid out in the indictment, it is unsurprising that the government quickly folded when called to meet its evidentiary burden. Whatever the motivation of the prosecutors and supervisors who saw fit to allow this problematic indictment to proceed, the DOJ must prevent such debacles in the future. Appropriate remediation must include a focus on providing training to prosecutors, promoting qualified supervisors and ensuring adequate review of decisions to prosecute public corporations.

Training. The profound evidentiary and legal hurdles lurking in the FedEx indictment should have been obvious to any sound white collar prosecutor. From 2002 to 2009, during the existence of the Corporate Fraud Task Force, DOJ made a concerted effort to train prosecutors in the methods of effectively prosecuting culpable corporations and their executives. These training courses were routinely offered at DOJs National Advocacy Center. Unfortunately, from 2009 through at least 2013, these training sessions largely disappeared.

The dearth of training coincided with the nationwide departure of droves of experienced white collar prosecutors from DOJ. It is against this backdrop that the efficacy of the FedEx investigation and indictment should be measured. Corporate prosecutions require the participation of thoughtful, well-trained prosecutors. Absent sufficient experience and training, potential disaster looms around every corner, and the FedEx indictment is a prime example. As such, the DOJ must redouble its efforts to provide adequate training to its prosecutors and agents, especially in the area of complex corporate frauds.

Supervision. Supervising the charging decisions of line prosecutors, especially white collar prosecutors, requires both experience and expertise in the subject matter. Again, the recent mass exodus of experienced white collar prosecutors has served to deplete the depth of experience required for promotion to DOJs supervisory ranks. Bolstering and training the new supervisory ranks will most certainly require a concerted effort. The primary requirement, of course, is objectivity. An ability to dispassionately review and distill the legal and factual efficacy of the charges is a fundamental skill that is especially essential in the review of complex corporate charging decisions. This does not require that government supervisors be principally rejective. Experienced and supportive supervisors understand that working with prosecutors to build strong cases necessarily involves killing the bad ones.

Line prosecutors intuitively appreciate the bona fides of such a process. While cultivating and promoting capable and experienced white collar prosecutors as supervisors can be a tedious slog, DOJ must make a concerted nationwide effort to diligently identify and promote from its ranks worthy candidates capable of fulfilling that vital function.

Review. Traditionally, upon request, Main Justice components would review corporate charging decisions of U.S. Attorneys offices prior to the filing of the charging instrument or indictment. This review, while not mandated by any written DOJ policy, would include a thorough review of the merits of the charging decision by the Chief or Principal Deputy Chief of the relevant component. For most corporate fraud charging decisions, the Fraud Section would be the appropriate component conducting the review. Upon review, the component would make either formal or informal recommendations to the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, who would then make a recommendation to the Deputy Attorney General, which would be communicated to the relevant U.S. Attorneys Office.

During my time at Justice, I participated in many of these reviews and, with few exceptions, generally recommended authorizing the corporate prosecution, sometimes with modest adjustments. Arguably that process is flawed in its informality; it is not mandatory and does not require a written synopsis of DOJs views. Whether or not Main Justice was asked to weigh in on the legal or factual validity of the FedEx indictment, it is now readily evident that such reviews should be formal and mandatory. There is little, if any, downside to such a procedure.

* * *

Charging a publicly traded corporation, given the potential breadth of harm to investors, employees and reputation, is an endeavor that requires the exercise of a great deal of deliberative, sound judgment. Rarely is the decision to charge a corporation one that needs to be made rapidly. Reflection and review are almost always appropriate. The propriety of these corporate charging decisions demands formal review by DOJ. Indeed, the Yates Memo requires a written justification supporting a prosecutors decision to not prosecute a corporate executive. With the potentially irretrievable consequences attendant to a corporate indictment, it seems obvious that there ought to be a formal written authorization by DOJ when the decision is one to prosecute a corporation.

In the aftermath of the FedEx prosecution a key unanswered question is whether the DOJ can find its way back to the successful strategies that it employed in the previous decade to credibly bring to justice to notorious corporate malfeasors. Recognizing the critical roles that adequate training, competent supervision and informed review play in an effective corporate enforcement program is a key step toward bringing the program back on course. Corporations and their employs simply should not have to suffer the consequences of a prosecutive rush to judgment. A thoughtful and concerted approach by the DOJ can prevent future injustices like the ill-timed delivery of the FedEx prosecution.

_____

Paul E. Pelletier is a partner in the White Collar Litigation and Investigations Practice Group in the Washington, D.C. Office of Pepper Hamilton LLC. His practice focuses on white collar criminal defense and compliance. He previously spent more than 25 years at the U.S. Department of Justice, serving as Chief of the Economic Crimes Section for the U.S. Attorneys Office in Miami and from 2002 to 2011 as Acting Chief and Principal Deputy Chief of the Criminal Divisions Fraud Section. He can be contacted here. Follow him on Twitter @PePelletier.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are to visit Cornwall and the Scilly Isles next month.

Duchess Catherine and Prince William

The royal couple are "looking forward" to their trip to the South

Coast of England where they will meet with many local entities over two days on September 1 and September 2.

A series of tweets by Kensington Palace revealed: "The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will visit Cornwall and the Isle of Scilly

between the 1st and 2nd September ... Over the two days TRH will meet local organisations businesses and charities, and visit a number of

Duchy of Cornwall projects ... The Duke and Duchess are very much looking forward to visiting Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. Stay tuned for updates on the day! (sic)"

It is a busy time for Prince William as he is off to Dusseldorf in

Germany on Tuesday (23.08.16) and he and Duchess Catherine will be visiting Canada next month as well.

The couple are to visit British Columbia and Yukon after being invited by the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

A statement from Kensington Palace read: "Their Royal Highnesses have been invited to visit by the Government of Canada.

"They will visit British Columbia and the territory of Yukon as part of their tour.

"The Duke and Duchess are delighted to be returning to Canada.

"They hold very happy memories from their visit in 2011 - their first overseas tour as a married couple.

They are really looking forward to seeing other parts of this

beautiful country and having the opportunity to meet many more

Canadians along the way."

William and Catherine, both 34, are expected to bring their children - 15-month-old Princess Charlotte and Prince George, three - with them to Canada.
Ranveer Singh was recently seen outside Sanjay Leela Bhansali's office, silencing all rumours of a fallout between the two of them. The actor-director duo met on 20th August after Ranveer returned from his trip to Switzerland.

As per reports, trouble broke out when Shahid Kapoor was roped in to play Deepika Padukone's husband. Ranveer simply wanted to confirm how much of the screenplay belonged to him and asked to see a copy of the script.

This apparently didnt go down well with Bhansali and he contemplated replacing Ranveer (his first choice for the role of the anti-hero).

Soon began a casting musical chair, with names of various A-list starsfrom Shah Rukh Khan to Hrithik Roshanweighed in for the role of Alauddin Khilji, the emperor obsessed with Rani Padmavati of Chittor. However, both Ranveer and Bhansali maintained a stoic silence over the matter and the actor even refused to comment on the issue when questions were thrown at him at a recent press conference.

Finally, with pictures of Ranveer being spotted outside Bhansalis office in Juhu, it is believed that the duo have ironed out their differences. Sources say that perhaps Deepika even had a role to play in this. However, it is confirmed that Ranveer is very much a part of Padmavati.
UK fashion retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) is among the first of UK based businesses to sign up to buy yarn from English Fine Cottons, the first cotton mill to be set up in UK in more than 30 years.Through this initiative, the department store chain has shown its support for 'Made in Britain' label one more time, by buying UK-made cotton yarn.

UK fashion retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) is among the first of UK based businesses to sign up to buy yarn from English Fine Cottons, the first cotton mill to be set up in UK in more than 30 years. Through this initiative, the department store chain has shown its support for 'Made in Britain' label one more time, by buying UK-made cotton yarn.#

Located in Greater Manchester, English Fine Cottons plans to be operational in the last quarter of 2016, at an investment of 5.8 million by restoring Tower Mill, a closed cotton mill.English Fine Cottons has set upon the objective to become a true 'Made in Britain' business by producing the finest quality of cotton yarns across the globe and will employ around 120 people.The Manchester region of UK was considered the textile hub of the world in the 19th and 20th century, however competition from Asian countries led to last of those mills closing in the 1980s. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Multi format retailer Shoppers Stop Ltd will invest an additional Rs 20 crore over the Rs 40 crore, it has spent till date, to offer a complete omni-channel experience to its customers over the next 18 months.In the company's annual report for 2016, Shoppers Stop chairman Chandru Raheja said, Shoppers Stop has plans for investment in technology and operations over the next 18 months.

Multi format retailer Shoppers Stop Ltd will invest an additional Rs 20 crore over the Rs 40 crore, it has spent till date, to offer a complete omni-channel experience to its customers over the next 18 months. In the company's annual report for 2016, Shoppers Stop chairman Chandru Raheja said, Shoppers Stop has plans for investment in technology and...#

This will help us provide a seamless online and in-store shopping experience through digital advancements and initiatives," Raheja said.The retailer will invest in customer relationship management (CRM) and warehousing management system to offer customers a seamless experience across both, online and in-store.The report informed that Shoppers Stop aims to garner 15 per cent of revenue through ecommerce by 2020, for which it has initiated a project named 'Mission 2020'. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Salman Khan's upcoming flick Tubelight is already creating buzz and fans are eager to know more about the film. The curiosity is immense as Salman would be playing the role of a special person for the first time and the backdrop is based on the Indi-Sino war which took place in 1964. It is now reported that Salman Khan's Tubelight is not an original story but a copy of the Hollywood flick, Little Boy.

The only difference in the story as claimed by Bollywoodlife is that Little Boy is based on the relationship between a father-son duo, whereas Tubelight focuses on the relationship between two brothers, Salman-Sohail.

For those of you who have no idea what Little Boy is all about, it's a film where a little boy named Pepper gets mocked by his classmates at school because of his small stature. The bullying takes a toll on his mental health and he suffers ruthlessly. Things take a drastic turn when his father goes off to war and is reported missing in action.

Red Hot Pictures! Bruna Abdullah Takes Hotness To A Whole New Level

Pepper wants his father back at any cost and goes to extraordinary lengths, ways beyond his capacity, against all odds and fears. The film showcases the spirit of the human soul winning against all adverse circumstances.

Hot Bikini Pictures! 'Chak De India' Girl Chitrashi Rawat Holidays In Goa

Now coming back to Tubelight, in the movie, even Salman Khan will face a lot of issues for being slow in picking up things and will be named Tubelight. His brother Sohail Khan will be reported missing during the war and it will be upto Salman Khan to search and bring him back to safety. Here Zhu Zhu comes in his life as a romantic encounter.

After Priyanka Chopra, Nargis Fakhri Joins Parineeti Chopra & Varun Dhawan For Dinner!
Just a week ago, Shahrukh Khan and Gauri Khan turned a lot of heads during their visit to the University of South California where they enrolled their eldest son Aryan Khan in a filmmaking course. The young lad wants to be an actor just like his dad.

The new college had a pool party and Aryan Khan along with his new classmates had a good swim and posted a few pictures on their social media handle. Aryan Khan is seen shirtless, showing off his abs.

Check out the pictures of Aryan Khan here!

Aryan Khan Aryan Khan poses for a picture standing shirtless by the pool along with his new classmates. Aryan is a six-pack abs in the making. Aryan Aryan Khan joined the University of South California and is currently pursuing a course on film-making. Pool Party The new students of the University of South California attend the pool party and are seen having a gala time all by themselves. Sooner or Later! Right after completing his studies on film-making, we guess Aryan Khan will take the plunge and debut in Bollywood filling his father's shoes.

The pool party is a perfect way to kickstart the college journey and mingle with your respective classmates. However, the pictures show Aryan Khan posing seriously for the camera and we're yet to see the teenager giving a smile, let alone a hearty laugh. Also, his abs look like six-pack abs in the making and sooner or later he'll be able achieve it.

Hope the new college would treat Aryan Khan really well and we're all eagerly waiting for him to complete his studies and step into his father's shoes to entertain the nation in terms of acting and film-making.

Red Hot Pictures! Bruna Abdullah Takes Hotness To A Whole New Level
The Oscar-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio had a major escape, when he, along with his girlfriend Nina Agdal reportedly got away with minor bruises from a car accident that could have been a serious call.

The 41-year-old Titanic fame actor was inside the car with his girlfriend, Nina Agdal when the incident happened near East Hampton Village in New York, on late Saturday afternoon, according to the sources.

It all happened when a Mini Cooper came rushing suddenly from nowhere and knocked the back of their car. Immediately, as a precautionary measure, an ambulance was called to the spot only to discover the star and his girlfriend were doing all fine except some minor bruises.

"Leo and Nina got rear-ended, but everyone is doing fine. It was Leo's friend's car," said a source.

However, the lady who was driving the Mini Cooper, got pretty much shaken by the incident, who was later helped by Leonardo DiCaprio to get on with it.

"Leo was nice about it, he motioned for her to come with him, and he helped her over to the guardrail so she could rest," said a source.

DiCaprio and his Danish girlfriend were heading to host Hillary Clinton's fundraiser event which was later overtaken by Justin Timberlake and wife Jessica Biel at the last minute, in course of the events.
Here we have got a few exclusive updates about Challenging Star Darshan's Chakravarthy, directed by Chintan. The film is produced by Anaji Nagaraj and Siddhanth under Namana Combines.

The team is shooting briskly for the film at different locations of Bangalore and Mysore. Currently, the team is shooting an item number in Mysore, which features Darshan and Ishitha Vyas. Ishitha Vyas has been a part of movies like Peepli Live and Gabbar Is Back, in the past.

The song, which is being shot now is "Rani Rani Rani Mai Mumbai Ka Rani" which has been composed by Magical Composer Arjun Janya. The song is set in the eighties, so the sets will match those times. Apparently 150 members are included in the making.

The movie is set in backdrop of eighties, so even this song will have retro feel to it. He has roped in the famous Bharath Brass Band, who will help him in getting the retro feel to the songs.

Once the song shoot is completed, team will move to Singapore where around 25 per cent of the movie will be shot. A few important scenes will be shot in a 12 storied cruise ship and Chakravarthy will be the first Kannada film to be shot there.

The director makes it clear that not only songs are being shot in abroad but a few major sequences are being shot there as script demands it. Apart from Singapore, movie will be shot in various locations of Malaysia and Bangkok as well.

With the abroad schedule, team would have completed the major part of shoot except for the patch work. Also, if everything goes as per the schedule, team is planning to release the movie for Kannada Rajyotsava.
Alphonse Puthren, the talented director, and his wife Aleena Mary are expecting their first baby. Alphonse announced the good news through his official Facebook page, on their wedding anniversary (August 22).

The director confirmed that the new family member will arrive in one and a half months. Alphonse is extremely thankful that they are blessed for a baby second time, soon after Aleena had a miscarriage.

Aleena Mary, who is the daughter of the popular film producer Alwyn Antony, met Alphonse Puthren for the first time when both of them were in Chennai. The couple soon became good friends and later fell in love.

They entered the wedlock on 22nd August 2015, in a traditional ceremony held at Aluva St. Dominic's Church. The wedding was attended by several eminent personalities of Malayalam and Tamil industries.

Alphonse Puthren, who made a place for himself in the movie industry with his second outing Premam, is currently on a break. Reportedly, he is scripting for his next project, which will have Mammootty in the lead.

The director-editor has recently associated with team Oppam, as the trailer editor. The lead actor Mohanlal is extremely impressed with his skills and has expressed his willingness to work with him in future.
Dr. Biju, the National award-winning film-maker is well-known for his outspoken nature. Recently, Biju shocked the industry by openly thrashing Adoor Gopalakrishnan's recently released Dileep-Kavya Madhavan movie, Pinneyum.

The director, who heavily criticized Pinneyum, stated that it is 'an amateur movie' which doesn't even hold the standard of a school drama. He remarks that the movie lacks both creative and technical perfection.

According to Biju, it is extremely disappointing to see a director like Adoor Gopalakrishnan settling for an over-dramatic film, with badly-written dialogues and childish scenes. He points out the scenes where the protagonist reaches Dubai, as an example.

Biju feels that the movie industry is showering praises on Pinneyum, just because of the intense respect towards Adoor Gopalakrishnan. He points out that the industry prefers to evaluate movies considering the names behind it.

The director remarks that Vidheyan is the last well-executed film directed by Adoor Gopalakrishnan. After Vidheyan, the legendary film-maker totally failed to create a classy film, which has badly affected the journey of Malayalam parallel cinema.

He feels that age is not a barrier to make good cinema, and points out Sathayjith Ray and Roman Polanski as the best examples for the same. Adoor Gopalakrishnan has not replied to Dr. Biju's comments yet.
A Lot Of Offers

Post Wagah, Ranya has said she's been getting a lot of offers. However, the actress doesn't want to go on a signing spree and instead wants to wait for the perfect role.

Before Taking Up Acting

"I was part of several plays. My parents were keen that I get a degree first. I did take up an engineering course, but I never pursued it. It was only then my parents realized that my passion lay in films," she told the leading daily.

Doing It The Right Way

Before pursuing her career in the filed of cinema, Ranya did a fourth-month course to get the nuances of acting right. "I wanted some training before I set out to pursue a career here. So, I did a four-month course."

Power Of Parents

"My parents were the ones who met casting directors and forwarded my portfolio. Also, I didn't see me coming into the industry as a struggle, as I was focussed," she has said.

The Debut

Ranya Rao, who hails from the Chikmagalur district of Karnataka, made her acting debut with Sudeep-starrer Maanikya, a Kannada film, that eventually landed her a role in Wagah.

Upcoming Films

The actress is awaiting the release of her Kannada movie Pataki. In Tamil, she is yet to sign on the dotted lines of a new project. Stay tuned for further updates.
In Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, as we revealed in the spoiler, Riya and her goons are caught. Akshara (Hina Khan), Naira, Kartik and Naksh get them arrested. Akshara is happy that they averted a big danger. But, Naksh will be facing trust issues.

Naksh had earlier faced trouble with a girl (Tara), who broke up with him and run away from getting married. And now with Riya's incident, he feels cheated again. He will be seen thinking very hard before helping somebody, and also will face difficulty in believing any girl! It has to be seen how Akshara brings Naksh out of this trauma.

Click On The Slides To Check Out The Spoilers...

Naksh After Riya's incident, Naksh will be facing trust issues. He will not be able to trust anybody, especially girls! Akshara is worried about Naksh. It has to be seen how Akshara helps Naksh in coming out of this difficulty! Kartik & Naira's Role Reversal Drama Naira feels bad for Kartik, as he is unwell. She thinks of cheering him up. She tries to divert him with a game - role reversal! Kartik dresses like Naira, and vice-versa. Kartik Dresses Like Naira It will be fun to watch as Naira will be seen acting like Kartik and vice-versa. Naira will be seen teasing and flirting with Kartik, who is dressed like a girl (just like Kartik does)! Rama Rama invites Gayu's best friend Vivaan home. She wants Vivaan to marry Gayu as she feels they understand each other well. Akshara feels strange as Rama will be seen taking decisions on behalf of Gayu and restrains Akshara from suggesting anything for Gayu! Gayu-Vivaan Vivaan tries to tell about their marriage proposal, but he gets an important call and the matter doesn't come out. Gayu thinks of revealing about her love for Kartik to Vivaan, thinking he might help her! Gayu-Naira But, Gayu will get to know that Vivaan wants to marry her! According to the latest spoiler, as soon as Gayu gets to know about Vivaan's marriage proposal (to escape from the situation), she tries to fix Naira and Vivaan's marriage! Naira-Kartik This will further complicate the story as Kartik loves Naira and Vivaan loves Gayu. It has to be seen whether Gayu tries to fix Vivaan's marriage with Naira after getting to know that Kartik loves Naira!

Also, Naira, Kartik and Gayu love triangle continues. As it is known to all that Kartik has been helping Naira and Gayu's family. Both the girls are impressed with Kartik - while Naira hasn't yet felt that she is in love with Kartik, Gayu is head over heels in love with Kartik and wants to marry him.

But, Gayu's Dadi Rama has brought a twist in Gayu's story, which will further become complicated. Rama has called Gayu's best friend Vivaan, home. She will also be the reason behind the rifts between Gayu and Akshara.

Watch: Its Role Reversal Time In Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai

Apparently, Rama wants Vivaan and Gayu to get married. She reveals the same to Akshara, who tells Rama to ask Gayu's opinion, as she is still young to get married. Rama tells Akshara that she is not Gayu's mother and not to take decisions on her behalf.

Now that Naira has completely accepted Akshara, Rama makes Akshara feel that her love for both the daughters - Gayu and Naira is being divided.
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. dollar strengthened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Monday. The U.S. dollar rose to nearly a 3-week high of 0.7584 against the Australian dollar and a 6-day high of 1.2923 against the Canadian dollar, from last week's closing quotes of 0.7625 and 1.2861, respectively. Against the euro, the Swiss franc, the yen and the NZ dollar, the greenback advanced to 5-day highs of 1.1271, 0.9644, 100.86 and 0.7212 from Friday's closing quotes of 1.1319, 0.9601, 100.17 and 0.7269, respectively. The greenback edged up to 1.3035 against the pound, from Friday's closing value of 1.3072. If the greenback extends its uptrend, it is likely to find resistance around 0.74 against the aussie, 1.31 against the loonie, 1.11 against the euro, 0.97 against the franc, 103.00 against the yen, 0.69 against the kiwi and 1.27 against the pound. 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.
EQS Group-News: Helvetica Property Investors AG / Key word(s): Funds Helvetica Property Investors is launching its first regulated Swiss Real Estate Fund for Qualified investors 2016-08-22 / 07:00 *Press release* *Helvetica Property Investors is launching its first regulated Swiss Real Estate Fund for Qualified investors* *Zurich, 22. August 2016 - Helvetica Property Investors AG, an independent Fund Management Company, is launching the Helvetica Swiss Commercial real estate fund. The FINMA-approved investment fund is aimed at qualified investors. The subscription period begins on 12 September 2016. * Helvetica Property Investors, which was recently approved by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), is launching its first regulated real estate fund, Helvetica Swiss Commercial. The fund is focusing on commercial properties across the most dynamic economic regions in Switzerland, and a 30% quote of residential properties, in order to balance the portfolio. With a hands on Active Asset Management approach, Helvetica Property Investors unlocks hidden value and secures long-term value creation. With this approach, our firm has been able to achieve attractive and stable returns for its investors since 2007. _"The core of the investment strategy is in real estate outside of the sold-out city centre locations as well as properties which, while achieving attractive operating returns, remain potentially undervalued and could therefore benefit from the next cyclical boom" _says Hans R. Holdener, CEO and Managing Partner of Helvetica Property Investors. Hans Ueli Keller, Chairman of the Board of Directors, comments: "_Helvetica Swiss Commercial is targeting qualified investors whose investment policy is bound to strict qualitative investment criteria and guidelines. We are offering investors such as pension funds the opportunity to benefit from our experience and expertise, and to acquire shares at Net Asset Value. We believe this is an attractive value propositions in today's market environment."._ The Swiss real estate fund market, currently has an average Net Asset Value premium of over 30 percent. This mirrors the great quality of the Swiss Real Estate Asset Class but also the strong demand from investors looking for positive returns and stable value growth. New funds such as Helvetica Swiss Commercial, is therefore considered an attractive alternative. *For more information* Hans R. Holdener Mobile + 41 79 700 78 78 E-mail hrh@helveticaproperty.com You can find all of our press releases at www.helveticaproperty.com/presse *Fund Detail**s* Fund Name Helvetica Swiss Commercial Legal form Contractual Real Estate Investment Fund under Swiss law Fund domicile Switzerland Fund Manager Helvetica Property Investors AG, Zurich Asset Manager Helvetica Property Investors AG, Zurich Sales Vescore AG, St. Gallen Custodian bank Notenstein La Roche Privatbank AG, St. Gallen Accounting currency Swiss Francs Investor Qualified investors under Art. 10, para. 3, 3bis and 3ter KAG Trading Raiffeisen Schweiz Genossenschaft Subscription period 12 September 2016 - 4 October 2016, 12 noon CET Issue volume min. CHF 100 million, max. CHF 200 million Helvetica Property Investors AG reserves the right to close the subscription period early. Minimum volume CHF 100,000.00 Payment 12 October 2016 Issue price CHF 100.00 per share (plus 1.75% issuing commission) Management fee 0.70% p.a. Issuing commission 1.75% Securities number 33550793 ISIN CH0335507932 Auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers AG, Zurich Use of Income Distribution of Dividends (min. 70%) NAV publication Annual (semi-annually unaudited) Accounting year 01/01 - 31/12 Published price Monthly (Bloomberg, Telekurs) *Helvetica Property Investors AG* Helvetica Property Investors AG is an independent partner-owned and managed Real Estate Fund Management Company regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. Helvetica Property Investors offers the full spectrum of real estate investments, including investment strategies, investment property selection, deal structuring, acquisitions, financing, portfolio management and sales. The firm offers both direct and indirect real estate investments in Switzerland, and manages the Helvetica Swiss Real Estate Fund II for Partners Group AG on behalf of its clients. 2016-08-22 This Corporate News was distributed by Tensid EQS AG. www.eqs.com 494535 2016-08-22

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 22, 2016 01:00 ET (05:00 GMT)
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Estonia's producer prices continued to decline in July, though at a slower pace than in the previous month, figures from Statistics Estonia showed Monday. The producer price index dropped 1.0 percent year-over-year in July, following a 1.4 percent decrease in June. The fall in July was largely caused by a 13.1 percent slump in the price index of mining and quarrying, followed by electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply with 8.1 percent decline. At the same time, manufacturing prices edged up 0.1 percent. On a monthly basis, producer prices slid 0.3 percent at the start of the third quarter. Data also showed that import prices dipped 3.4 percent annually and by 0.8 percent monthly in July. Similarly, export prices slipped 1.1 percent in July from a year ago and dropped 0.2 percent, month-on-month. 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.
ABU DHABI, UAE, Feb. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The International Defense Exhibition and Conference (IDEX 2017) was unveiled today atAbu Dhabi national exhibition center. Together with CATIC at the exhibition, drone manufacturer MMC, global leader in industrial and military drones and developers of the first hydrogen drone, introduced the next generation of its hydrogen technology, designed for the military: HyDrone 1800. The superior productwas an immediate successand attracted aconstant stream of visitors.

The carbon-fiber HyDrone 1800is an almost indestructible aircraft. Designed for use in the toughest conditions, the drone is wind-resistant, rain-resistant, cold-resistant and still incredibly lightweight. Most importantly, HyDrone 1800's hydrogen fuel cell technology provides a flight endurance of 4hours or of a stunning 50+ hours when combined with MMC tetheredtechnology. The endurance of the hydrogen drone changes the scope of applications dramatically: most military or industrial drones currently on the market are limited by flight times of under 1 hour. HyDrone 1800 achieves the extended flight time while maintaining altitude limits of 4500 meters - competitive or better than other similar sized aircraft - and a payload capacity of up to 5kg.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology is a breakthrough for drones. The technology is an environmentally friendly solution towards a drone industry bottleneck: flight endurance.Constructed for safety and durability,an auxiliary lithium battery starts the fuel cell and provides a backup source of power for the drone.The properties of hydrogen fuel not only allow for extraordinary flight time, but extend the ideal temperature range for operation.Hydrogen drones can be flown in extreme temperatures - from -10 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees Celsius.

"This technology is the next step forward for military grade drones," says MMC's founder Lu Zhi Hui. "It's safe, it's effective, it's proven - and the endurance is unmatched by other power sources. "

Payloads can be changed quickly and easily. Operators may choose from payloads including a thermal imaging camera, low light camera, laser equipment, or zoom camera; making the system ideal for many military applications. HyDrone 1800 can be used for intelligencegathering, border patrol, aerial fire support, laser designation, or battle management services to tactical military operators.MMC also offers packaged solutions in target acquisition and reconnaissance technology (ISTAR).

About MMC: MMC is a leading manufacturer of commercial and industrial drones focused on enhancing productivity, improving work safety and efficiency. In 2016, MMC launched the first commercial hydrogen-fueled drone, followed by the first commercial tethered drone. MMC is not only a leader in drone design and manufacturing, but is a pioneer in the use of ecofriendly hydrogen cell energy.

To learn more about the Hydrogen fuel cell drone, visit http://www.mmcuav.com/

Or Contact: info@mmcuav.com

Phone: +86 755 8607 4603






BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The pound drifted higher against its key counterparts in early European trading on Monday, as European shares rose on news that U.S. national security officials approved ChemChina's takeover bid for Syngenta.



Fed Chair Janet Yellen will speak at a meeting of global policy makers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming later this week, with investors looking for further clarity on the pace of future rate increases.



Some key U.S. economic data due this week, including reports on manufacturing, durable goods orders, new and existing home sales and the second estimate of June quarter GDP may also offer fresh clues on whether the world's largest economy is strong enough to absorb another rate increase this year.



The pound showed mixed performance in Asian trading. While the currency fell against the greenback and the yen, it rose against the franc and the euro.



The pound firmed to a 10-day high of 1.2641 against the franc, from a low of 1.2535 hit at 5:15 pm ET. The pound is likely to find resistance around the 1.28 mark.



Data from the Swiss National Bank showed that Swiss money supply grew at the fastest pace since early 2015.



Money supply grew 2.7 percent in July from prior year, following a revised 2.3 percent rise in June. This was the fastest growth since January 2015, when M3 climbed 2.8 percent.



The pound climbed to a 4-day high of 132.16 against the Japanese yen, off its early low of 131.14.The next resistance for the pound-yen pair may be located around the 133.00 region.



Data from the Japan Chain Stores Association showed that Japan's supermarket sales recovered in July.



Supermarket sales, after adjustment, increased 0.2 percent in July from a year ago, reversing a 0.5 percent drop in June.



Reversing from an early low of 0.8665 against the euro, the pound edged up to 0.8610. If the pound rises further, 0.85 is possibly seen as its next resistance level.



The pound, having fallen to an early low of 1.3034 against the greenback, advanced to 1.3121. On the upside, 1.33 is possibly seen as the next resistance level for the pound-greenback pair.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
HOUSTON, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- Nobilis Health Corp. (NYSE MKT: HLTH) (TSX: NHC) ("Nobilis" or the "Company") today announced that it has amended its credit agreement with Healthcare Financial Solutions, LLC (formerly known as GE Capital Corporation), increasing the total borrowing capacity to $36.6 million from $25.0 million.

Additional details regarding the Company's loan amendment will be included in a Current Report on Form 8-K that will be filed by Nobilis with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

About Nobilis Health Corp.

Nobilis (www.NobilisHealth.com) is a full-service healthcare development and management company which currently owns or manages four surgical hospitals and five ASCs, partners with thirty-six additional facilities throughout the country, and markets six independent brands. Deploying a unique patient acquisition strategy driven by direct-to-consumer marketing, Nobilis is focused on a specified set of procedures that are performed at our centers by local physicians.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian and United States securities laws, including the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include all statements that do not relate solely to historical or current facts and may be identified by the use of words such as "may," "believe," "will," "expect," "project," "estimate," "anticipate," "plan" or "continue." These forward-looking statements are based on current plans and expectations and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors which could significantly affect current plans and expectations and our future financial condition and results. These factors, which could cause actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from those anticipated, include, but are not limited to our ability to successfully maintain effective internal controls over financial reporting; our ability to implement our business strategy, manage the growth in our business, and integrate acquired businesses; the risk of litigation and investigations, and liability claims for damages and other expenses not covered by insurance; the risk that payments from third-party payers, including government healthcare programs, may decrease or not increase as costs increase; adverse developments affecting the medical practices of our physician limited partners; our ability to maintain favorable relations with our physician limited partners; our ability to grow revenues by increasing case and procedure volume while maintaining profitability at the Nobilis Facilities; failure to timely or accurately bill for services; our ability to compete for physician partners, patients and strategic relationships; the risk of changes in patient volume and patient mix; the risk that laws and regulations that regulate payments for medical services made by government healthcare programs could cause our revenues to decrease; the risk that contracts are cancelled or not renewed or that we are not able to enter into additional contracts under terms that are acceptable to us; and the risk of potential decreases in our reimbursement rates. The foregoing are significant factors we think could cause our actual results to differ materially from expected results. However, there could be additional factors besides those listed herein that also could affect us in an adverse manner.

We have not undertaken any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All of our forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of the document in which they are made or, if a date is specified, as of such date. Subject to a mandatory requirements of applicable law, we disclaim any obligation or undertaking to provide any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement to reflect any change in our expectations or any changes in events, conditions, circumstances or information on which the forward-looking statement is based. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to us or persons acting on our behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the foregoing factors and in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015, filed on March 15, 2016, as updated by other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Contact Information:

Kolin Ozonian

Vice President, Corporate Development

kozonian@nobilishealth.com

713-355-8614




According to the Rio 2016 energy figures, published by the Center on Global Energy Policy from Columbia University in New York, approximately 29.5 GW of energy were required to power the event. "Events usually rely a lot on temporary power provided on site by generators fueled by diesel," a spokesperson from the Rio 2016 Games sustainability team told pv magazine. However, since around 75% of Brazilian electricity comes from renewable sources -mainly hydropower-, the main strategy was "to use as much grid energy as possible and push for the reduction of the use of temporary power generators," she added. "In order to achieve this, new electrical distribution lines were installed from two different utility power substations to ensure power reliability and reduce the number of generators needed at the Barra Olympic Park." The Barra Olympic Park is a cluster of nine sporting venues in Barra da Tijuca, which is in the western part of Rio de Janeiro. Whenever the use of temporary generators was unavoidable, said the spokesperson, a number of such generators, required as backups in the case of a supply shortage, were deployed in 'cold standby' mode, meaning they were almost never running. All of these generators were fueled by a mixture of fuel, including 20% biodiesel, which is also a renewable energy. Demand side However, as well as energy supply for the event, they also focused on the demand side, the spokesperson added. "Thus, we always planned the operational energy demand carefully (for example, we fully assessed the air conditioning needs in non-critical space, aiming at finding opportunities for prioritizing natural ventilation and reducing the demand for central air conditioning systems) and reduced the primary power load needed through the use ...

Den vollstandigen Artikel lesen ...
PHOENIX, ARIZONA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- EPCOR Water (USA) Inc. (EPCOR USA), a wholly owned subsidiary of EPCOR Utilities Inc. (EPCOR), today announced that it has acquired the 130 Pipeline Project (130 Pipeline), a 53-mile wholesale water supply pipeline that delivers groundwater from Burleson County to eastern Travis County in the northeastern Austin, Texas metropolitan area.

"This acquisition is a natural extension of our U.S. business platform and builds off of our expertise in developing and providing water solutions in some of North America's most challenging arid environments," said Joe Gysel, President of EPCOR USA. "We are extremely pleased to be doing business in the state of Texas and look forward to developing and acquiring other similar businesses in the future."

EPCOR USA purchased the 130 Pipeline infrastructure and associated contracts and debt for total consideration of up to approximately USD $71 million, including future capacity-related payments.

The acquisition of the 130 Pipeline adds the state of Texas and wholesale water services to EPCOR USA's business platform.

EPCOR owns and operates more than 3,200 miles of water distribution and sanitary collection mains and transmission pipe infrastructure across its 20 regulated water and wastewater districts in the United States. In Canada, the company is responsible for more than 2,420 miles of distribution and transmission water mains in the City of Edmonton, located in Alberta's capital region. EPCOR also supplies wholesale water from its system to a vast regional network that serves over 290,000 people in more than 60 communities surrounding Edmonton.

"EPCOR has deep experience in water distribution and transmission development and operations. Leveraging that expertise for our U.S. business platform is a natural next step," Gysel noted.

Designed to deliver nearly 18 million gallons of water daily, the 130 Pipeline supplies private groundwater to municipal customers in Travis County (Texas) under long-term contracts. Additional wholesale water supply customers can be supported by the 130 Pipeline, which delivers water from the Carrizo-Wilcox Aquifer - one of the largest and most prolific aquifer systems in Texas - with a high degree of quality, reliability and resistance to drought.

The 130 Pipeline is the company's seventh acquisition since entering the United States, bringing EPCOR USA's total investment since 2011 to USD $736 million.

In 2011, the company acquired Chaparral City Water Company, followed by the 2012 acquisition of American Water's Arizona and New Mexico assets and operations. In 2013, EPCOR USA acquired North Mohave Valley Corporation in Arizona and Thunder Mountain Water Company in New Mexico, as well as existing agreements and master-planning responsibilities to provide wastewater and recycled water services to a 7,000-acre development corridor in Glendale, Arizona. In 2016, it acquired Willow Valley Water Company in Arizona.

Today, EPCOR USA is among the largest private water utilities in the Southwest. In addition to providing wholesale water services in Texas, EPCOR is the largest regulated water utility in Arizona and New Mexico, providing water and wastewater services to more than 350,000 customers across 22 communities and seven counties.

Forward-looking information

Certain information in this news release is forward-looking within the meaning of Canadian securities laws as it relates to anticipated financial performance, events or strategies. When used in this context, words such as "will", "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "intend", "target" and "expect" or similar words suggest future outcomes. The purpose of forward-looking information is to provide investors with management's assessment of future plans and possible outcomes and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Forward-looking information in this news release includes expectations regarding the timing of regulatory approval of the acquisition.

These statements are based on the assumptions and analyses made by the company in light of its experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors it believes are appropriate. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as actual results could differ materially from the plans, expectations, estimates or intentions expressed in the forward- looking statements. Except as required by law, EPCOR disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement even if new information becomes available, as a result of future events or for any other reason.

About EPCOR Water USA

EPCOR USA is an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of EPCOR Utilities Inc. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, EPCOR USA's wholly owned subsidiaries build, own and operate water and wastewater treatment facilities and infrastructure in the southwestern United States.

About EPCOR Utilities Inc.

EPCOR's wholly owned subsidiaries build, own and operate electrical transmission and distribution networks, water and wastewater treatment facilities and infrastructure in Canada and the United States. The company's subsidiaries also provide electricity and water services and products to residential and commercial customers. EPCOR, headquartered in Edmonton, is an Alberta top 70 employer. EPCOR's website address is www.epcor.com.

Contacts:

Rebecca Stenholm

Director, Public & Government Affairs

EPCOR Water (USA) Inc.

623.445.2424

Cell.: 602.390.5662

rstenholm@epcor.com




Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - August 22, 2016) - Ashanti Gold Corp. (TSXV: AGZ) ("AGZ" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Alecto Minerals PLC ("Alecto"), an AIM-listed public company, to earn an interest in the Kossanto East Gold Project (the "Project") in western Mali (Figures 1 and 2).

The LOI provides AGZ with the right to earn 65% of Alecto's interest (after including the Mali State carried interest of 10%, AGZ ownership of the property upon completion of the earn-in agreement will be 58.5%) in the Project by completing a Preliminary Feasibility Study ("PFS") within 36 months following the date of TSXV approval (the "Option Period"). AGZ may elect to pay in cash US$4.0M to Alecto within 90 days following the end of the Option Period in lieu of producing a PFS. AGZ will be the operator of the exploration and development programs during the Option Period.

Upon completion of its earn in rights, AGZ and Alecto will form a joint venture whereby each party will contribute proportionally to the Project's continuing exploration and development. The terms of the joint venture, including an interest dilution clause, will be set out in an option agreement that is currently being finalized by Alecto and AGZ.

If either party's interest is reduced to 10% or less (not including the Mali State interest), that interest will be converted into a 1.5% net smelter return royalty (the "NSR") which the other party will have the right for one year to purchase by paying US$100,000 for each 0.1% of the NSR.

The Kossanto East Project is a 66.41 km2 concession in the prolific Kedougou - Kenieba Inlier, the northwestern most exposure of Birimian rocks in West Africa. The Property hosts two principle drill-tested targets, Gourbassi East ("GE") and Gourbassi West ("GW") and several surface anomalies. Geochemical anomalies identified by previous explorers and Alecto led to drill testing, successful intersection of gold mineralization, and production by Alecto of an initial Inferred Resource1 estimate of 121,000 oz gold for GW and a 126,000 oz gold for GE. Gold hasbeen intersected in drill holes over a ~1 km strike length at GW and over a ~900m strike length at GE. Both areas remain open along strike and down dip and include some notable drill intercepts (Table 1). One of the other target areas (Berola) has been tested with shallow Rotary Airblast Drilling (RAB) and returned positive, first-pass intercepts (Table 1).

Gourbassi East is a NNW striking mineralised zone with notable gold grades (multi-meter intercepts at greater than 2 g/t; Table 1) located within a body of felsic volcanics. The Gourbassi West prospect lies approximately 3.7 km WNW of Gourbassi East. Similar gold intercepts are associated with silicified sandstones and NNW striking zone of mineralization (Figure 2).

The Kossanto East Project is located within the highly gold-endowed West Mali Gold Belt which extends approximately 180 km in a north-south direction along the Mali-Senegal border. The Project lies near the intersection of the Senegal-Mali Shear Zone and the Main Transcurrent Shear Zone, two major structures within this district associated with numerous world class orogenic gold deposits (Figure 1). Over the last 20 years approximately 40M oz of gold has been discovered in proximity to these structures resulting in construction of at least 8 new mines, including the world class Loulo group of deposits, Sadiola, Yatela, Gounkoto, Segala, Tabakoto, and Sabodala (Figure 1).

AGZ is very pleased to undertake exploration in this rapidly emerging district. Existing data for GW and GE along with nearby large gold deposits, suggests that significant mineralization could be present at grades, continuity and extent for definition of a larger resource that could lead to mine development in this rapidly emerging key gold region.




SAN MATEO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- SIOS Technology Corp. (http://us.sios.com), the industry's leading provider of software products that help IT ensure the performance, efficiency, and high availability protection of business critical applications, today announced that it will demonstrate live the newest release of SIOS iQ in booth #2361 at VMworld 2016 on August 28 - September 1 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Convention Center in Las Vegas, NV. SIOS iQ is designed to be the first stop for answers to VMware infrastructure questions.

Attendees will learn how SIOS iQ uses a big data/machine learning approach to the problem of IT operations analysis, optimization, and performance resolution. It acquires a broad set of data in real-time for all objects across the infrastructure -- CPU, storage, network, applications -- and then applies patented machine learning analytics technology to automatically identify abnormal behavior to precisely identify an issue, its root cause and a recommended solution.

The live demonstration of SIOS iQ will be conducted using augmented reality glasses and will showcase SIOS iQ's ability to provide measurable savings by identifying wasted virtual resources that can be eliminated, including over provisioned VMs, idle VMs, snapshot waste, and rogue VMDKs.

For the first time, IT staff can instantaneously identify and resolve the root causes of performance issues based on a comprehensive analysis of both the VMware infrastructure and the SQL Server application environment.

Breakout Session VIRT7699

SIOS CTO Sergey Razin, Ph.D., will co-present at VMworld with SQL Sentry in a session titled: VIRT7699 -- Use Cases in Performance Root Cause Resolution for SQL Server: How to Use vRealize Operations Manager, SIOS iQ Machine Learning Analytics, and SQL Sentry Performance Advisor. The session will take place on Thursday, September 1 at 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM. SIOS Technology Chief Technology Officer Sergey Razin will provide best practices steps for identifying and resolving an application performance issue in SQL Server. Using a new integrated workflow, users can identify SQL Server performance issues in VMware vRealize Operations Manager, characterize infrastructure root causes and recommended solutions with SIOS iQ machine learning analytics solutions, and define application-specific root causes with SQL Sentry Performance Advisor.

Speaking Session -- Tegile Booth 2057

SIOS Director of Field Engineering will be a guest presenter in the Tegile booth #2057 on Tuesday, August 30 at 11:15 AM where he will discuss the importance of machine learning analytics in implementing a successful storage acceleration strategy.

Book Signing with vExpert Michael Corey

VMware vExpert and noted author Michael Corey will be in the SIOS booth on Tuesday, August 30 at 2:00 PM to 2:45 PM to sign his book Virtualizing SQL Server with VMware: Doing IT Right. The first 10 attendees to arrive at the book signing will receive a free copy of the book. The book is also available in the show bookstore.

Guest Presenter: SQL Sentry

On Monday, August 29 at 2:00 PM-3:00 PM and Tuesday, August 30 at 11:00 AM to noon, Brian Davis from SQL Sentry will demonstrate the integration of SIOS iQ with SQL Sentry Performance Advisor, bridging a critical gap between IT infrastructure administrators and SQL Server administrators. See how easy it is to find and resolve SQL Server performance issues with SIOS iQ and SQL Sentry.

Enter to Win

Visitors to the SIOS booth who participate in our product demonstration will be entered into a drawing for a Samsung Gear VR headset.

Event Promotions and Resources

Visit the SIOS booth #2361.

To learn more about SIOS iQ, please visit here: http://us.sios.com/products/sios-iq/

To schedule a personalized demonstration of SIOS iQ email: http://us.sios.com/demo-request-SIOS-iQ

To learn more about VMworld 2016, please visit here: http://www.vmworld.com/en/us/index.html

About SIOS Technology Corp.

SIOS Technology Corp. makes software products that provide the insights and guidance IT managers need to manage and protect business critical applications in large, complex data centers. SIOS iQ is a machine learning analytics software that helps IT managers optimize performance, efficiency, reliability, and capacity utilization in virtualized environments. SIOS SAN and SANLess software is an essential part of any cluster solution that provides the flexibility to build Clusters Your Way to protect your choice of Windows or Linux environment in any configuration (or combination) of physical, virtual and cloud (public, private, and hybrid) without sacrificing performance or availability. Founded in 1999, SIOS Technology Corp. (http://us.sios.com) is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and has offices throughout the United States, United Kingdom and Japan.

SIOS, SIOS Technology, SIOS iQ, SIOS DataKeeper, SIOS Protection Suite, Clusters Your Way, SIOS PERC Dashboard, and associated logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of SIOS Technology Corp. and/or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contact:

Beth Winkowski

Winkowski Public Relations, LLC for SIOS

978-649-7189

Email Contact




WASHINGTON, DC -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- Apprio, a leading provider of specialized technology solutions, particularly for the health, defense and homeland security markets, today announced the appointment of Dr. David Wade as its chief medical officer (CMO). In this role, Dr. Wade is responsible for Apprio's clinical health innovations and offerings for federal agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the National Guard Bureau and the U.S. Coast Guard.

He comes to Apprio with a deep background in healthcare spanning more than 25 years in both the public and private sectors. His expertise ranges from serving as a surgical oncologist in the Navy, to his work as the deputy commander of the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) and his role as the CMO of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

During Dr. Wade's high-profile career, some of his major accomplishments included his efforts as the chief of staff of the National Capital Area Multi-Service Market Office to develop the business plans associated with closing Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, expanding NNMC to be the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and building the new community hospital at Fort Belvoir, VA. In this role, he led efforts to integrate military healthcare delivery in the National Capital Area. As the co-organizer of the Hartford Consensus, Dr. Wade has been deeply involved in efforts to improve survival in mass casualty events and is an established leader in federal health throughout the Washington Metro area.

"We're pleased to welcome Dr. Wade to the Apprio team and have him lead our healthcare practice," said Darryl Britt, Apprio's president. "During his tenure as a doctor and his time working as a CMO, he has advanced federal health and promoted a more positive future for military medicine. Dr. Wade will bring a unique perspective to our customers' programs, being able to come up with real-world, practical solutions to their challenges and complex needs."

Apprio has a history of hiring medical personnel within its health IT practices to ensure all of its healthcare focused work is solidly grounded in technology best practices and the practical needs of healthcare practitioners. Dr. Wade's expertise will impact all health programs operated throughout Apprio.

During Dr. Wade's decorated career, he has served in numerous leadership positions within NNMC, the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, the Naval School of Health Sciences, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, the Naval Health Clinic at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, the Department of Defense Tricare Management Activity, the FBI, and most recently, as the CMO of Hayes Inc., a health technology assessment company.

"Federal health programs are multifaceted and rank among the most important initiatives the government is working on today -- from serving our military and veteran communities, to supporting the care for the elderly and impoverished," said Dr. Wade. "Apprio has nearly two decades of managing health technology programs for customers and building the capabilities that advance federal agency missions. I'm excited to be a part of this important work and use my medical knowledge for the benefit of improving our nation's health posture."

Dr. Wade graduated with distinction from the United States Naval Academy majoring in biosciences. He earned his medical degree at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences (USUHS). He is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and holds an appointment as a clinical professor of surgery at USUHS. He is a Hayward Award winning graduate of the Naval War College and earned a diploma in the Medical Care of Catastrophes from the College of Apothecaries of London.

His military awards include the Legion of Merit (5), Meritorious Service Medal (3) and the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (2).

About Apprio

Apprio is a provider of specialized technology solutions, particularly for the health, defense and homeland security markets. The company provides innovative IT and program services in healthcare IT, emergency response management and financial management. Apprio delivers the methodologies, discipline and thought-leadership provided by the large integrators, with the cost structure and collaboration offered by smaller firms.

For more information, visit www.apprioinc.com. See also https://twitter.com/apprioinc.

Contact:

Jane Bryant

Spire Communications

(703) 406-8626

jbryant@spirecomm.com




PLYMOUTH, MN--(Marketwired - August 22, 2016) - TruStone Financial Federal Credit Union celebrated the opening of its newest branch at 527 Central Avenue NE, Suite 2 in Northeast Minneapolis, Minnesota on Monday, August 22, 2016.

"TruStone Financial is excited to remain a part of the vibrant Northeast Minneapolis community," said Chief Business Officer Steve Steen. "With features unique to this branch location, we will maintain the credit union's neighborhood atmosphere while implementing modern technology into essential everyday banking."

The Northeast Minneapolis community houses more than 36,000 residents and is already home to a large number of current TruStone Financial members. The improved accessibility to the branch will give the credit union the opportunity to better interact with members. Plus, the branch features a 24-hour walk-up ATM and night deposit for convenient banking along with reserved parking spaces available in the Red20 lot for members to utilize.

"With an already strong presence in the Northeast Minneapolis Community, we look forward to strengthening our relationships with current and new members alike," said Chief Executive Officer Tim Bosiacki.

The location at 527 Central Avenue NE, Suite 2 in Northeast Minneapolis opened for business on Monday, August 22, 2016. Community members are welcome to visit our new location during normal business hours.

About TruStone Financial

TruStone Financial is one of the fastest growing credit unions in the Midwest with assets of $1.1 billion and nearly 100,000 members. There are 13 branches across Minnesota and Wisconsin. The credit union is headquartered in Plymouth, Minnesota. For more information and full membership criteria, visit TruStoneFinancial.org.

Contact:

Katie Grindeland

Senior Vice President, Director of Marketing

Phone: 763.595.4002

Katie.Grindeland@TruStoneFinancial.org
TORONTO, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

/NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES/

AuRico Metals Inc. (TSX: AMI),("AuRico" or the "Company") announces that it has closed its previously announced bought deal offering of 11,500,000 common shares at a price of C$1.00 per common share, which includes 1,500,000 common shares issued pursuant to the exercise in full of the over-allotment option (the "Offering").

The shares were purchased on a bought deal basis by a syndicate of underwriters (the "Underwriters") co-led by National Bank Financial Inc. and Macquarie Capital Markets Canada Ltd., and included Mackie Research Capital Corporation, Canaccord Genuity Corp., Dundee Securities Ltd., and Paradigm Capital Inc.

In addition, Alamos Gold Inc. exercised its participation right to maintain its pro rata interest in full pursuant to a concurrent private placement undertaken in connection with the Offering for 1,272,611 common shares.As a result, combined gross proceeds raised by the Company totaled C$12,772,611.

The net proceeds from the Offering will be used to fund the potential acquisition of additional royalties, the advancement of permitting activities and detailed engineering at the Kemess Underground project, as well as for working capital and general corporate purposes.

The securities offered have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or any applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor will there be any sale of the securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

About AuRico Metals

AuRico Metals is a mining royalty and development company whose producing gold royalty assets include a 1.5% NSR royalty on the Young-Davidson Gold Mine, a 0.25% NSR royalty on the Williams Mine at Hemlo, and a 0.5% NSR royalty on the Eagle River Mine - all located in Ontario, Canada. AuRico Metals also has a 2% NSR royalty on the Fosterville Mine and a 1% NSR royalty on the Stawell Mine, located in Victoria, Australia. Aside from its diversified royalty portfolio, AuRico owns (100%) the advanced Kemess Gold-Copper Project in British Columbia, Canada.AuRico Metals' head office is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

CautionaryStatement

This news release contains "forward-looking information" which may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the future financial or operating performance of the Company and its projects, as well as the use of proceeds from the Offering. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this press release and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances, management's estimates or opinions should change, except as required by securities legislation. Accordingly, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company believes that, in addition to conventional measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, certain investors use this information to evaluate the Company's performance and ability to generate cash flow.



please visit the AuRico Metals website at http://www.auricometals.caor contact: Chris Richter, President and Chief Executive Officer, AuRico Metals Inc., +1-416-216-2780, chris.richter@auricometals.ca;David Flahr, Vice President, Finance, AuRico Metals Inc., +1-416-216-2780, david.flahr@auricometals.ca
WINNIPEG, MB--(Marketwired - August 22, 2016) - Canada's mineral exploration and mining industry is asking Energy and Mines Ministers, currently in Winnipeg for their 73 rd annual conference, to work on tackling several challenges that have resulted in Canada dropping to second place behind Australia as the most desirable mining destination in the world.

A brief submitted by the Canadian Mineral Industry Federation (CMIF) details seven policy priorities that will help the industry overcome current challenges.

Financing for early-stage exploration: CMIF asks that all jurisdictions in Canada maintain and enhance fiscal incentives. In particular, the Ministers are asked to support the renewal of the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit (METC) and to sustain the flow-through shares system. These measures have helped Canada attract billions of dollars in investment and led to the creation of thousands of jobs in remote areas of the country. Regulatory environment: The Ministers should ensure that the recently announced federal review results in an effective regulatory process that the public has confidence in, and that improves the competitiveness of the industry and attracts much-needed mineral investment to Canada. Federal-provincial coordination in this area is critical and provinces are strongly encouraged to participate fully in the review. Aboriginal affairs: CMIF recommends that governments support efforts to enhance the participation of Aboriginal peoples in the industry through investments in health, education and skills-training, and government benefits and resource revenue sharing. CMIF also recommends that governments examine and address challenges related to how they are implementing the duty to consult. Address the costs of operating in remote and northern Canada: CMIF recommends the creation of a northern infrastructure fund within the proposed Canada Infrastructure Bank, and strategic fiscal incentives to help offset the high costs of exploring and operating in remote parts of Canada. Climate change, clean technology and innovation: The Federal Government should invest $50 million over five years in the Canada Mining Innovation Council's Towards Zero Waste Mining strategy to achieve mutual goals of reducing GHG emissions and environmental impacts, and to support the transition to a lower-carbon future. Land withdrawals: Removal of highly-prospective areas is reducing the attractiveness of Canada as an exploration destination. CMIF is calling on all jurisdictions to ensure that mineral potential is factored into all land withdrawal decision-making processes. Strengthening Energy and Mines Ministers' Conference: CMIF encourages Mines Ministers to undertake a study to understand how similar meetings are used as a means to drive improvements in government and industry performance.

Restoring Canada's status as the top exploration and mining jurisdiction in the world will require concerted and sustained effort by all jurisdictions. CMIF looks forward to working in partnership with governments, industry, communities and Aboriginal partners to support a sustainable and competitive Canadian exploration and mining sector.

QUOTES:

"As the downturn is still being felt by the mineral exploration and mining industry, action is required to ensure Canadians are able to capitalize on the great opportunities that lie ahead. We will work with all jurisdictions and the Federal Government to ensure that Canada's reputation and attractiveness as the premier location for global mineral investment is regained. In doing so, the substantial social and economic benefits -- to all Canadians -- that accompany these investments will be enjoyed," says PDAC President, Bob Schafer.

"The mining sector's ability to continue its role as a powerful economic driver and top employer in regions across the country is in large part dependent on the decisions made by Canadians governments. There are incredible opportunities to achieve shared goals when it comes to socio-economic development, innovation, protecting the environment and solidifying Canada's leadership in mining -- let's work together to seize them," says MAC President and CEO, Pierre Gratton.

About the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC)

The Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) is the leading voice of the mineral exploration and development community. With over 8,000 members around the world in all sectors of the mining industry, the PDAC's mission is to promote a globally-responsible, vibrant and sustainable minerals industry. As the trusted representative of the sector, PDAC encourages best practices in technical, operational, environmental, safety and social performance. PDAC is known worldwide for its annual PDAC Convention, regarded as the premier international event for the mineral industry. The PDAC Convention has attracted over 25,000 people from 125 countries in recent years and will next be held March 5-8, 2017 in Toronto. Please visit www.pdac.ca.

About the Mining Association of Canada (MAC)

The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) is the national organization for the Canadian mining industry. Its members account for most of Canada's production of base and precious metals, uranium, diamonds, metallurgical coal, and mined oil sands, and are actively engaged in mineral exploration, mining, smelting, refining and semi-fabrication. Please visit www.mining.ca.

About the Canadian Mineral Industry Federation (CMIF)

The Canadian Mineral Industry Federation (CMIF) comprises more than 20 national, provincial and territorial associations that represent various components of the Canadian mineral and mining industry.

For more information, please contact:



Kristy Kenny

Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada

(416) 362-1969 x233

kkenny@pdac.ca



Jessica Draker

Mining Association of Canada

(613) 233-9392 x225

jdraker@mining.ca
Frost & Sullivan article reveals how harnessing the power of social media can positively affect brand strategies

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Today's changing consumer landscape has seen the increasing use of digital channels over more traditional voice, chat and email modes of customer service. In particular, consumer adoption of all forms of social media and messaging apps is at an all-time high. In this new mobile, social environment, businesses are now challenged to design strategies that will enable them to solve customer service issues on social channels with immediacy and authenticity.

Frost & Sullivan's latest article, Empower Your Customer Service Team to Be Brand Advocates, highlights the business value of social customer service, what makes customer service the new form of marketing, as well as the importance of having the right technology and people to handle social as a channel.

To download the complimentary article, please visit:http://bit.ly/2bvjVlW

In a recent Frost & Sullivan thought leadership forum which included the participation of a select group of Customer Experience executives from diverse organizations such as Moo, Jet, Sparkcentral, Shopify, David Yurman and Siemens Building Technology, panelists shared perspectives about a business climate where social customer service has become a necessity, and revealed how harnessing the power of social media can have a positive impact on brand performance.

"Social media shouldn't be viewed as a different animal, but as a valuable interaction channel that can create the 'make or break' factor in solving issues and creating good and lasting impressions with customers," said Frost & Sullivan Digital Transformation Principal Analyst Nancy Jamison. "To achieve this demands due diligence in finding the right tools to easily train and empower agents to handle this exciting new interaction channel."

To meet the changing landscape, organizations are going beyond inquiries and customer support to proactively engage with customers. Ultimately, social media can be utilized by businesses to do more than serve customers; it can be used as an effective strategy to garner promotion and boost community advocacy momentum.

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:

Clarissa Castaneda

Corporate Communications - North America

P: 210.477-4841

F: 210.348.1003

E: clarissa.castaneda@frost.com

http://www.frost.com








VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- Golden Arrow Resources Corporation (TSX VENTURE: GRG)(FRANKFURT: GAC)(OTCQB: GARWF)(WKN: A0B6XQ), "Golden Arrow" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that its common shares are now trading on the OTCQB Venture Market in the United States under the symbol "GARWF."

"Admission to the OTCQB market is part of a long-term strategy to broaden our shareholder base, improve liquidity and increase the visibility of our company," said Joseph Grosso, President and C.E.O. "We are pleased with our admission to trade on the OTCQB, as this provides us with a trading platform for American investors."

The OTCQB Venture Market is for entrepreneurial and development stage U.S. and international companies. To be eligible, companies must be current in their financial reporting, pass a minimum bid price test and undergo an annual company verification and management certification process. The OTCQB quality standards provide a strong baseline of transparency, as well as the technology and regulation to improve the information and trading experience for investors.

Golden Arrow will continue to trade on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V) under its existing symbol "GRG".

About Golden Arrow:

Golden Arrow Resources is a Vancouver-based exploration company focused on creating value by making precious and base metal discoveries and advancing them into exceptional deposits. The Company is currently focused on its Chinchillas Silver Project located in the mining-friendly Province of Jujuy, Argentina. Exploration has progressed rapidly since the acquisition of the project in late 2011. The innovative transaction announced October 1st 2015, positions the Company to maximize shareholder value by fast-tracking Chinchillas to production and becoming a 25% owner of the Pirquitas silver mine.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Mr. Joseph Grosso

Executive Chairman, President, CEO and Director

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. Such forward-looking statements concern the Company's anticipated results and developments in the Company's operations in future periods, planned exploration and development of the Chinchillas project, plans related to its business and other matters that may occur in the future. Statements concerning mineral resource estimates and the interpretation of drill results may also constitute forward-looking statements to the extent that they involve estimates of the mineralization that will be encountered if the Chinchillas project is developed. These statements are based on a number of assumptions which may prove to be incorrect, including, but not limited to, assumptions about the following: assumptions made in the Chinchillas Mineral Resource Estimate, including geological interpretation, grade, recovery rates, silver, zinc and lead price assumptions and operating costs; the availability of financing for exploration and development activities, including Silver Standard Resources Inc. ("SSRI") meeting certain milestones and exercising its election to proceed with the transactions contemplated under the Business Combination Agreement dated September 30, 2015 among the Company, SSRI and certain other parties; the Company's ability to attract and retain skilled staff; the Chinchillas project development schedule; the exchange rates of the Canadian dollar and United States dollar to the Argentina peso; market competition; ongoing relations with impacted communities; and general business and economic conditions.

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual events or results to differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to precious and base metal price fluctuations; risks related to the transactions contemplated by the Business Combination Agreement; risks related to fluctuations in the currency markets (particularly the Argentinean peso, Canadian dollar and United States dollar); risks related to the inherently dangerous activity of mining, including conditions or events beyond our control, and operating or technical difficulties in mineral exploration, development and mining activities; uncertainty in the Company's ability to raise financing and fund the development of the Chinchillas project, including as recommended in the Chinchillas Mineral Resource Estimate; uncertainty as to actual capital costs, operating costs, production and economic returns, and uncertainty that development activities will result in a profitable mining operation at Chinchillas; risks related to mineral resource figures being estimates based on interpretations and assumptions which may result in less mineral production under actual conditions than is currently estimated and to diminishing quantities or grades of mineral resources as properties are mined; risks related to governmental regulations and obtaining necessary licenses and permits; risks related to the business being subject to environmental laws and regulations which may increase costs of doing business and restrict our operations; risks related to the Chinchillas project being subject to prior unregistered agreements, transfers, or claims and other defects in title; risks relating to inadequate insurance or inability to obtain insurance; risks related to potential litigation; risks related to the global economy; and risks related to the Chinchillas project being located in Argentina, including political, economic, social and regulatory instability. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. The Company's forward-looking statements are based on beliefs, expectations and opinions of management on the date the statements are made. For the reasons set forth above, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

The information provided in this news release addresses the drill results from the Chinchillas project and is not intended to be a comprehensive review of all matters and developments concerning the Company. It should be read in conjunction with all other disclosure documents of the Company. The information contained herein is not a substitute for detailed investigation or analysis. No securities commission or regulatory authority has reviewed the accuracy or adequacy of the information presented. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements other than as required under applicable law.

We advise U.S. investors that the SEC's mining guidelines strictly prohibit information of this type in documents filed with the SEC. U.S. investors are cautioned that mineral deposits on adjacent properties are not indicative of mineral deposits on our properties.

Contacts:

Golden Arrow Resources Corporation

Corporate Communications

Tel: 1-604-687-1828

Toll-Free: 1-800-901-0058

Email: info@goldenarrowresources.com

www.goldenarrowresources.com




DAWSON CREEK, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

Post-secondary institutions help equip young Canadians with the education and training they need for future careers that will help them join a strong, healthy middle class. Today's $33.02-million investment at Northern Lights College will provide opportunities for those interested in a career in trades to obtain the necessary skills and training in a new state-of-the-art learning facility.

The joint federal-provincial investment was announced today by the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and the Honourable Mike Bernier, B.C. Minister of Education and MLA for Peace River South, on behalf of the Honourable Andrew Wilkinson, B.C. Minister of Advanced Education.

The Government of Canada's Innovation Agenda aims to make this country a global centre for innovation-one that creates jobs, drives growth across all industries and improves the lives of all Canadians. This investment exemplifies that vision in action and will help create the well-paying middle-class jobs of tomorrow.

The funding will enable Northern Lights College to build a new training centre for its skilled trades programs. The new building will replace the World War II-era structure currently in use. The Government of Canada is contributing $14.57 million and the Province of British Columbia is providing $15.06 million toward the $33.02-million cost of this project. Northern Lights College and private partners will contribute an additional $3.39 million. Private partners contributing to the new Northern Lights College trades building at Dawson Creek include Canbriam Energy Inc., Encana Services Company, Shell Canada and TransCanada PipeLines.

The project will support Indigenous learners as they prepare for careers in the skilled trades. It will also increase apprenticeship enrolment, address barriers that prevent student success and improve completion rates for Indigenous learners.

Federal funding will be allocated through the Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund, which will enhance and modernize research facilities on Canadian campuses and improve the environmental sustainability of these facilities.

As a result of these investments, students and professors will work in state-of-the-art facilities that advance the country's applied learning capacity. They will collaborate in specially designed spaces that support lifelong learning and skills training. They will work in proximity with partners to turn discoveries into products or services. In the process, they will train for-and create-the high-value, middle-class jobs of the future. And their discoveries will plant the seeds for the next generation of innovators.

That is how the Strategic Investment Fund will jump-start a virtuous circle of innovation, creating the right conditions for long-term growth that will yield benefits for generations to come.

Construction is expected to get under way in summer 2016, with occupancy in early 2018. The project itself will create 133 direct and 102 indirect jobs during development.

Nearly one million job openings are expected in B.C. by 2025 due to retirements and economic development, and nearly eight out of ten of those openings will require post-secondary education and/or skilled trades training.

Quotes

"This once-in-a-generation investment by the Government of Canada is a historic down payment on the government's vision to position Canada as a global centre for innovation. That means making Canada a world leader in turning ideas into solutions, science into technologies, skills into well-paying middle-class jobs and start-up companies into global successes. This investment will create conditions that are conducive to innovation and long-term growth, which will in turn keep the Canadian economy globally competitive."

- The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development

"Our government wants B.C. students to be first in line for the almost one million jobs expected by 2025. A new trades training facility in Dawson Creek benefits students, instructors and future employers in a range of sectors throughout northern B.C."

- The Honourable Mike Bernier, B.C. Minister of Education and MLA for Peace River South

"There is a consistent demand for well-trained, qualified tradespeople throughout the northeast. A new trades training facility will help Northern Lights train exceptionally prepared, job-ready graduates who are ready to serve in our local communities in a range of sectors."

- Dr. Bryn Kulmatycki, President and CEO, Northern Lights College

Quick facts

-- The Government of Canada is providing $14.57 million to Northern Lights College toward a new $33.02-million state-of-the-art training centre devoted to the skilled trades. -- The Government of Canada's Innovation Agenda is designed to ensure Canada is globally competitive in promoting research, translating ideas into new products and services, accelerating business growth and propelling entrepreneurs from the start-up phase to international success. -- The targeted, short-term investments under the Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund will promote economic activity across Canada and help Canada's universities and colleges develop highly skilled workers, act as engines of discovery, and collaborate on innovations that help Canadian companies compete and grow internationally. -- The Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund supports the Government of Canada's climate change objectives by encouraging sustainable and green infrastructure projects. -- Funding for the new trades training facility at the Dawson Creek Campus builds on investments already made in Northern Lights College as part of B.C.'s Skills for Jobs Blueprint. Provincial investments at Northern Lights College over the past two years include $799,100 for 198 additional critical trades seats and nearly $1.4 million for industry- standard trades training equipment. The investment in the new trades training facility at the Dawson Creek Campus is part of the B.C.'s Skills for Jobs Blueprint commitment to invest $185 million in trades training facilities and equipment in the province.

Associated links

Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund website

Post-Secondary Institutions Strategic Investment Fund backgrounder

Innovation Agenda backgrounder

B.C. Skills for Jobs Blueprint

Follow Minister Bains on social media.

Twitter: @MinisterISED

Instagram: ministerised

Follow BC Jobs Plan on social media.

Twitter: @BCJobsPlan

Contacts:

Philip Proulx

Press Secretary

Office of the Minister of Innovation,

Science and Economic Development

343-291-2500



Media Relations

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

343-291-1777

ic.mediarelations-mediasrelations.ic@canada.ca



Rodney Porter

Communications Director

B.C. Ministry of Advanced Education

250-889-7494



Jennifer Fernandes

Director, Communications and Marketing

Northern Lights College

250-785-6981, ext. 2090

250-219-2752 (cell)




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- Goldrea Resources Corp. (CSE: GOR)(FRANKFURT: GOJ)(OTC: GORAF) has closed its previously announced private placement (News: May 27, 2016). The $360,000 financing has been oversubscribed with gross proceeds of $448,500. The Company has issued 7,475,000 units at $.06 cents. Each unit consists of one share and one half warrant exercisable at $.12 cents for a period of one year. Agents received a total of $13,536 cash and 89,600 agent warrants as finders' fees, with the warrants having the same terms as the subscriber warrants.

Goldrea intends to utilize the proceeds from the private placement for exploration on its newly acquired Cannonball Property, Iskut River, located in the Golden Triangle region of northwest British Columbia as well as the Gaspe Lithium Property located on the Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec and for general working capital purposes.

"The Cannonball Property, located in the Golden Triangle, neighbors property held by Skeena Resources and Colorado Resources, both of which have successful drill programs in progress. Goldrea has mobilized a crew to the Cannonball. In Quebec, our Gaspe property has some of the highest historic lithium sediment samples reported, where our work program will commence. Area projects such as Nemaska Lithium have shown the possibility of success, given attractive lithium numbers," states Jim Elbert, President/CEO of Goldrea Resources. "Our exploration programs will be staged, allowing the company to examine data in order to plan its strategy on each property"

GOLDREA RESOURCES CORP.

James Elbert, President and CEO

The CSE has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may contain "forward-looking statements", which are statements about the future based on current expectations or beliefs. For this purpose, statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements by their nature involve risks and uncertainties, and there can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate or true. Investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by law.

Contacts:

Goldrea Resources Corp.

James Elbert

President and CEO

Telephone: (604) 559-7230

Email: info@goldrea.com

www.goldrea.com




CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- Veresen Inc. ("Veresen") (TSX: VSN) announces that its Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend for August 2016 of $0.0833 per common share. The dividend will be paid on September 23, 2016 to shareholders of record at the close of business on August 31, 2016. This dividend is designated an "eligible dividend" for Canadian income tax purposes.

As previously announced, the Board of Directors has elected to suspend the Premium Dividend and Dividend Reinvestment Plan of Veresen ("Plan"), meaning that no portion of the dividend is eligible for reinvestment under the Plan. Registered shareholders of Veresen previously enrolled in the Plan will receive $0.0833 per common share in cash and do not need to take any action for this to occur.

Preferred Shares Series A, Series C and Series E

Veresen's Board of Directors also declared the regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.275 per share, $0.3125 per share and $0.3125 per share for the period ended September 30, 2016 on its Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares Series A, Series C and Series E, respectively. These dividends will be paid on September 30, 2016 to shareholders of record at the close of business on September 15, 2016. These dividends are designated an "eligible dividend" for Canadian income tax purposes.

About Veresen Inc.

Veresen is a publicly-traded dividend paying corporation based in Calgary, Alberta that owns and operates energy infrastructure assets across North America. Veresen is engaged in three principal businesses: a pipeline transportation business comprised of interests in the Alliance Pipeline, the Ruby Pipeline and the Alberta Ethane Gathering System; a midstream business which includes a partnership interest in Veresen Midstream Limited Partnership which owns assets in western Canada, and an ownership interest in Aux Sable which owns a world-class natural gas liquids (NGL) extraction facility near Chicago and other natural gas and NGL processing infrastructure; and a power business comprised of a portfolio of assets in Canada. Veresen is also working to advance Jordan Cove LNG, a six million tonne per annum natural gas liquefaction facility proposed to be constructed in Coos Bay, Oregon, and the associated Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline. In the normal course of business, Veresen regularly evaluates and pursues acquisition and development opportunities.

Veresen's Common Shares, Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares, Series A, Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares, Series C, and Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares, Series E trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols "VSN", "VSN.PR.A", "VSN.PR.C" and "VSN.PR.E", respectively. For further information, please visit www.vereseninc.com.

 denotes trademark of Canaccord Genuity Corp.

Contacts:

Veresen Inc.

Mark Chyc-Cies

Director, Corporate Planning & Investor Relations

(403) 213-3633

investor-relations@vereseninc.com

www.vereseninc.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- Tudor Gold Corp. (TSX VENTURE: TUD) (the "Company" or "Tudor Gold") is pleased to announce that in connection with its recently completed private placement financing of 3,000,000 common shares at a price of $1.00 per common share (the "Private Placement") the Company has received subscriptions to partially exercise its 25% oversubscription right. In connection therewith, the sale of an additional 70,000 common shares at a price of $1.00 per common share was has been completed. The sale of the additional shares pursuant to the oversubscription right brings the aggregate gross proceeds to Tudor from the Private Placement to approximately $3,070,000.

The Shares issued under the private placement are subject to a hold period under applicable Canadian securities laws expiring on December 20, 2016.

About the Company

Tudor Gold is focused on being a significant explorer in British Columbia's Golden Triangle, an area which hosts multiple past-producing mines and several large deposits that are approaching potential development. The Company has a 60% interest in both the Electrum and Treaty Creek properties, and a 100% interest in the Mackie, Eskay North, Orion, Fairweather, Delta and the High North properties, all of which are located in the Golden Triangle area. There are no known resources or reserves on any of the Company's mineral properties, and the presence of mineral deposits on properties adjacent to or in close proximity to the Company's mineral properties is not necessarily indicative of mineralization on the Company's properties.

Walter Storm,

President and Chief Executive Officer

Cautionary statements

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Corporation's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and the Corporation is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Tudor Gold Corp.

Aris Morfopoulos

Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary

Tel: 604-721-2650

Email: aris@tudor-gold.com




(ASX:WHC)

Hello Im Carolyn Herbert from the Finance News Network and joining me from Whitehaven Coal Limitedto discuss its FY2016 results is CEO, Paul Flynn. Paul, welcome back.Nice to be here Carolyn.Youve just reported your results for FY2016. How does this compare to the same time last year and what were the highlights?Significant improvement over last year thats for sure. Certainly full year profitability has to be that the first point of call I think. $20.5 million in net profit this year, which is a big improvement over last year. Volumes up significantly, costs are down, sales have been very positive, premium for our coal increasing over time.How has safety performance been for the period?Safetys been good. The companys grown substantially in size, so maintaining safety is always important. Weve improved year-on-year about six per cent; we think we can do better in 2017. So thats certainly to be a priority this year.Now to production, youve reported record full year production of 20.5 million tonnes. Which projects were the major contributors and can you touch on each of them?The standout for us in terms of year-on-year improvement has been Maules Creek, its first year of commercial production. In this year we did 7.3 million tonnes from essentially a standing start, which is great. Narrabri has done exceedingly well at 6.9 million tonnes of ROM, so thats certainly been very positive. But Maules Creek has been the big addition year-on-year.Where are you at with approvals for the Vickery project?We have Vickery approved for a 4.5 million tonne scenario. We are reassessing a larger scale option for Vickery, which well seek approval for soon. Most of the studies weve done around this larger option have been completed now. The remaining piece of our puzzle is really just to bed down the optimal rail solution for Vickery. And we think thatll probably take about another six months worth of work, before we launch that enlarged application.Now to sales, how much coal did you sell and where did it go?Its gone all across the world, 20.1 million tonnes I think in sales for this past year. On the thermal coal side, you can essentially throw a blanket over Japan, Korea and Taiwan, thats about 85 per cent of our thermal sales. The met sales, which have been growing nicely because of Maules Creek entering into the fray, that goes to India, Japan, Korea. We actually sold a bit of semi-soft into China in this passed year unexpectedly, but an interesting development from our perspective. We generally dont sell coal to China, but to have steelmakers knocking on our door looking for the semi-soft out of Maules Creek was pleasing.Whats your outlook for sales going forward?For the New Year, I think well be doing between 21 and 22 million tonnes for 2017. I think well reinforce that same geographic spread of sales that weve had in 2016. I think premiums will increase over last year. So thats certainly coal prices have changed dramatically in six weeks. We finished the year on average at US$53, July was US$61 on average and so far in August were about $US68, so quite a marked change. Our premiums for equality go over and above that. So we would expect, say two to three per cent for energy over the top of that and then, probably about the same again for our ash premium. So looking good for the New Year.As you say Paul, weve seen a strong turnaround in the price of coal over the passed six months. So whats your outlook for the commodity?I think theres good support at this level. So its been a marked change, I think just some balance found in the supply/demand dynamic in the seaborne trade, which is good. We think that looks pretty robust, I think the supply side restructuring thats going on in China is definitely having an effect. So we see strong support for these sorts of levels for the next year.Finally Paul, Whitehaven Coals become one of the best performing stocks in the ASX 200. So whats your focus for FY17?I think weve got to continue to do the things that have been the foundation, for this improvement in prices. Obviously we cant necessarily control that, but were going to drive our costs even harder. So thats certainly focus for this New Year. We want to increase our metallurgical coal sales. So thats definitely a challenge for our marketing team, to try and drive greater penetration into that market. Our coal is washed very cleanly, so our yield loss when we do thats very low. So the cost of washing is really low, but the margin you improve by selling it semi-soft pricing, is a substantial benefit. So thatll certainly be a point of focus for this New Year.Paul Flynn, thanks for the update on Whitehaven Coal.Thanks Carolyn.
Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] acquired Saips, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based provider of customized algorithmic solutions in the fields of computer vision and machine learning.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

Led by Udy Danino, Founder & CEO, Saips has developed algorithmic solutions in image and video processing, deep learning, signal processing and classification. Its portfolio consists of five algorithmic suites that provide solutions for computer vision challenges in the areas of detection, tracking, image enhancement, registration, segmentation, pattern recognition, positioning, 3D, prediction, video intelligence, etc.

According to a written note, the companys expertise in artificial intelligence and computer vision will help Ford autonomous vehicles learn and adapt to the surroundings of their environment.

FinSMEs

22/08/2016
MediaBrix, a NYC-based provider of a platform to deliver contextual and emotionally targeted mobile brand experiences, raised $6.5m in funding.

Backers included Edison Partners, Revel Partners, and new investor Horizon Technology Finance.

The company, which has raised $18m in total funding, intends to use the funds to ramp its programmatic offerings, invest in R&D and expand its data sciences team focused on consumer receptivity.

Led by Ari Brandt, CEO and co-founder, and newly added President and Global Chief Revenue Officer Richard Kosinski, MediaBrix delivers mobile ad campaigns that aim to create emotional connections between brands and humans.

The companys products are integrated in more than 1,000 apps from such brands as Merck, AT&T, Hersheys, Ford.

In 2016, the company has added Canadian offices to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and New York, and major partnerships with Two Dots and Kik.

FinSMEs

22/08/2016
PerfectlySoft Inc., a Newmarket, Ontario, Canada-based creator of a server-side Swift* development framework, raised an additional $300k and closed a $1.5m seed funding round.

York Angel Investors Inc., an angel investment group based in York Region, made the investment in the round led by Impression Ventures.

The company will use the funds from York Angel Investors to advance and scale its server-side architecture in anticipation of Apples release of Swift 3.0 later this year.

Founded in 2015 and led by Sean Stephens, CEO, PerfectlySoft is the creator of the Perfect mobile app development framework for open source Swift programming language for the iOS, Mac OS, and Linux environments. Architected by Chief Technology Officer Kyle Jessup and introduced in November 2015, Perfect removes traditional front-and-backend iOS development silos by allowing developers to code in Swift on the server as well as on the device.

In recent months, the company has promoted coding education and Swift development globally and across the Greater Toronto Area through a series of programming meet-ups, lectures, and other community-building events.

* Swift, a modern programming language introduced by Apple in 2014, was made open source software in December 2015, with ports available for Linux and FreeBSD. In June 2016, Apple announced the forthcoming release of Swift 3.0, as well as the Swift Playgrounds iPad app for teaching kids to code in Swift.

FinSMEs

22/08/2016
Purple WiFi, an Ashton Under Lyne near Manchester, UK-based provider of a service for businesses to provide WiFi to their customers on a free to use basis, raised a 3M growth loan.

BOOST&Co provided the debt financing.

The company intends to use the funds to scale to accelerate its sales development and global deployment.

Led by Gavin Wheeldon, CEO, Purple provides a platform for physical spaces, which leverages social engagement, marketing tools and location analytics to allow brands to get digital insights using WiFi data from real world spaces to better understand their customers and to create a personalized experience for people in their venues. With nearly 7 million users in 134 countries, Purple works with a range of brands and venues including Legoland, Molson Coors, Jaguar, United Wireless Arena, City of York and TUI.

The company also has offices in Spain, the US, Australia and Singapore.

FinSMEs

22/08/2016
StyleLounge, a Hamburg, Germany-based fashion and lifestyle comparison site, raised a seven-digit round of funding.

Backers included Rocket Internet, TA Ventures, Astutia Ventures and Axivate Capital.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations internationally and continue to develop the product and the technology.

Founded in 2015 and led by John Heinen and Guido Lange, StyleLounge offers a price comparison platform for fashion and lifestyle products on the Internet. The company, which currently tracks over 300 online stores, and 10,000 brands with more than three million products, has 40 employees.

FinSMEs

22/08/2016
Ahmednagar: A 25-year-old woman was allegedly raped by three persons in Ahmednagar after they lured the victim with the promise of getting her a bank job, police said on Monday.

According to Deputy Superitendent of Police P Pratap Baviskar, the incident took place on Saturday evening after which two persons identified as Vilas Haribhau Varpe (32) and Vilas Raghunath Shinde (30) were arrested on Sunday.

Varpe is working in a co-operative bank at Supa tehsil in the district. The third accused is absconding and police have launched a manhunt to trace him, he said.

The accused abused the woman  a science graduate  after taking her to an isolated spot in Dharmadi hills in Rahuri tehsil, 48 kms from Ahmednagar. The trio also filmed the act and threatened the girl from disclosing anything, police said.

The victim was also robbed off her mobile and cash.

Soon after the incident, an FIR was registered in Rahuri Police station under sections 376, 392 and 506 of IPC on Saturday after the woman lodged a complaint. Varpe, one of the accused, is working in one of the Co-operative Banks at Supa tehsil in the district, police added.
Congress on Sunday came under fire from top ministers in the Modi government for "sympathising with supporters of terrorists", a day after Karnataka Home Minister gave a "clean chit" to Amnesty International over an event where anti-India slogans were allegedly raised.

Leading the charge, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said 'Azadi' slogans cannot be treated as freedom of speech and slammed Congress and its Karnataka government, accusing them of indulging in vote bank politics over the issue.

"Four days ago, in the capital of Karnataka, during a programme in Bangalore, 'Azadi' (freedom) slogans were raised by a few people. An organization, which gets funding from abroad, organized the event and yesterday I read the statement of Karnataka Home Minister in which he said that whatever happened is nothing wrong," Jaitley said.

"After so many sacrifices this country has made, some political parties do it for vote bank politics," he said addressing a rally on the outskirts of Jammu city.

The Finance Minister recalled a similar incident at JNU in January and said raising slogans to advocate the disintegration of the country cannot be seen as freedom of speech as advocated by some.

Union Minister Ananth Kumar, who met a group of ABVP activists on a dharna in Bengaluru, charged the Congress government in Karnataka with "sympathising with supporters of terrorists" and taking action against nationalists.

"It is unfortunate that the Congress government under the Chief Ministership of Siddaramaiah has taken action against nationalists and sympathised with supporters of terrorists," he told reporters.

"It is the duty of the Union and state governments to protect the unity, integrity and sovereignty of the country. I am very happy about ABVP activists' efforts to do so by waging a fight against the present Congress government in Karnataka," he said.

The protesting activists submitted a memorandum demanding an National investigation Agency (NIA) investigation into the whole episode.

In reply, Kumar said he would meet Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and convey the sentiments of the protesters and submit the memorandum seeking NIA investigation into the incident.

However, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor defended Parameshwara's clean chit to the human rights organisation, saying national security does not get compromised when a few people chant anti-national slogans.

"National security of our country is not going to be compromised by few people shouting slogans. We are stronger than that, we are bigger than that, we are better than that," Tharoor told PTI on the sidelines of a conference on IPR organised by O P Jindal Global University (JGU) in Delhi.

"Charging Amnesty with sedition law was already a big mistake. The NGO has not advocated violence and no one at the conference did so," he said, adding "we are not at war at the moment. We don't have to think in terms of treason and all," he told PTI.
Patna: Flood victims on Monday held demonstrations across Bihar, expressing anger and impatience over the quality and quantity of government aid that has so far been provided to them.

With over one million people affected by floods and the situation remaining grim, district officials, particularly block development officers and circle officers, are facing the fury of victims complaining about inadequate relief supplies.

Hundreds of flood victims protested against the circle officer of Raghopur in Vaishali district, demanding adequate relief and compensation. Raghopur is not far from Patna and is represented by Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Prasad Yadav in the state assembly.

Raghopur is considered stronghold of Tejaswi's father and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad. Earlier, former chief minister and wife of Lalu Prasad, Rabri Devi, also represented Raghopur in the state assembly.

Angry over lack of relief, the flood-hit people in Nathnagar in Bhagalpur district staged a protest demanding adequate relief and compensation. In Begusarai district, flood victims blocked roads for hours demanding adequate relief.

Similar reports are coming from other flood-affected districts like Patna, Samastipur, Bhojpur, Khagaria and Aurangabad.

"At some places, flood victims blocked roads to protest against inadequate relief," an official of disaster management department said.

Hungry and homeless, the people also expressed anger over not being provided fodder for their cattle.

Ganga and other major rivers have submerged vast swathes of the state, forcing thousands from their homes.

The disaster has so far claimed 14 lives, including nine in Bhojpur district alone.

An official of the disaster management department said: "Rivers flowing above the danger mark are posing threat to the low-lying areas."

Over a dozen teams of the National Disaster Response Force and the State Disaster Response Force have been deployed in the flood-hit districts.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has ordered cancellation of leave of police, administrative officials and engineers.

Nitish Kumar also directed officials to speed up rescue and relief operations in the flood-affected areas. He asked the health department to arrange for medicines and DDT sprays to check outbreak of diseases once the floodwaters receded.

Officials said standing crops worth crore of rupees have been damaged and road communications at several places have been flooded.
A joint delegation of opposition parties led by former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Monday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and apprised him of the ground situation with an appeal to adopt a political approach in dealing with the unrest in the Valley.

Delhi: Delegation of J&K opposition parties led by Omar Abdullah meet PM Modi on J&K situation pic.twitter.com/v9lEvK0kRk  ANI (@ANI_news) August 22, 2016

The situation in the Valley, which continues to remain under curfew for last 45 days, prompted all the Opposition parties in the state, cutting across party lines, to join hands and request the Centre for initiating a political dialogue with all stake holders in the state.

Besides Omar, the delegation  comprising a seven-member team of state Congress led by its PCC chief G A Mir, CPM MLA M Y Tarigami, eight-member team of main opposition National Conference including its provincial chiefs Nasir Wani and Davinder Rana  has been camping in the national capital and meeting political leaders from the government and Opposition.

The delegation submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister, expressing its anguish, grief and sorrow over the painful loss of lives in the Valley and to express "dismay at the lack of a political approach to deal with the situation."

The delegation apprised the Prime Minister that the tried and tested formulations of dealing with the political issue in Kashmir administratively rather than politically has further exasperated the situation and "created an unprecedented sense of disaffection and disenchantment", especially among the youth.

"We are of the firm opinion that the Central Government should waste no further time in initiating a credible and meaningful political dialogue with all stakeholders to address the unrest in the state," the memorandum said.

The delegation said, "continued failure to address the unrest in Kashmir will further deepen the sense of alienation" and hoped that the Prime Minister "will take immediate measures to address this grave situation."

Flagging the issue of continued protests in which many youths have fallen victim to the ongoing protest including a young teenager named Irfan who was killed last night when a teargas shell burst on his chest in downtown, the memorandum requested the Prime Minister to announce "an immediate ban on pellet guns that have caused grievous injuries in the current unrest and maimed and blinded many young boys and girls".

"We also request you to advise relevant quarters against the policy of mass harassment, raids and arrests as this has worsened an already volatile situation in the state and goes against the values and principles of our democratic fabric and ethos," the memorandum said.

However Omar Abdullah said that the delegation did not want to make any complaints. The former Chief Minister reiterated that it was not the time to indulge in politics and blame game.

we hv not come with complaints about anybody, we r hopeful that solution that is arrived at helps all: Omar Abdullah pic.twitter.com/x13kxDrTZr  ANI (@ANI_news) August 22, 2016

Jammu Kashmir jo hai politics ka akhadaa nahi ban-na chahiye: Omar Abdullah says not time for politics n blame game pic.twitter.com/Q7MZKDV82v  ANI (@ANI_news) August 22, 2016

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti too said it would be good if the opposition could reach a solution.

Its a really good thing if there is solution found by opposition meeting President and PM for restoring peace:J&K CM pic.twitter.com/8iKT4KTqz6  ANI (@ANI_news) August 22, 2016

The delegation started the political initiative on Saturday when it met President Pranab Mukherjee and submitted a memorandum, requesting him to use his office to influence the Centre for initiating a political dialogue with all stakeholders in the state.

On Sunday, the delegation from the state had met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and apprised him about the situation in the state. Congress is part of the Opposition in the Jammu and Kashmir.

"Discussed the current political crisis in Jammu and Kashmir with a delegation of Opposition leaders from the state led by @abdullah_omar (Omar Abdullah)," the Congress leader had tweeted after the meeting.

On Saturday, the delegation had met President Pranab Mukherjee requesting him to urge upon the central government to find a solution to the present Kashmir crisis politically rather than administratively.

With inputs from agencies.
A group named Kerala Cyber Warriors (KCW) on Monday hacked Union Minister Maneka Gandhi's People For Animals (PFA) website, pledging to make India free from stray dogs, reported Indiatimes. The group's action comes a day after 65-year-old Sheeluamma was killed by more than 50 stray dogs in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday.

According to News 18, the group had taken control of the site and blacked it out with a message "Stray Dog Free India."

The 'articles' and 'NGO' pages on the PFA website displayed news reports about Sheeluammas death and provided information about the website's hacking, The News Minute reported.

The group is also responsible for hacking a number of websites in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the report said.

There have been a lot of reports about attacks by stray dogs in Kerala.

In 2015, the government had decided to solve the problem by exterminating stray dogs but it had to drop the idea after animal rights activists launched an online campaign, the Indiatimes report said.
Archaic laws are among the biggest problems facing India. Apart from the fact that some laws like the one on sedition have led to conflicts and protests in India, there are other laws in our country which are so ridiculous that you wonder why they were created in the first place.

However, the Maharashtra legislature took a positive step when it repealed as many as 64 archaic laws on Sunday. Some of these laws date back to 1876.

'Maharashtra Repealing Act, 2016', passed by both houses of the legislature, is a part of larger exercise to delete altogether 191 such irrelevant and outdated legislations which have been deemed fit for removal from the statute book by the Law Commission.

These legislations have been divided into ten volumes and are to be repealed in phases, from the ones dating back to 1827 to those passed in 1984.

Of the total of 191 acts, 54 concern the Urban Development, 39 relate to the Revenue Department and 14 laws concern the Law and Judiciary.

Among the legislations repealed recently is 'The Maharashtra Dog Race-courses Licensing Act, 1976,' which regulated dog races. In these races, an object propelled by mechanical means was chased by dogs. But these dog races stopped taking place a long time back. In fact, we wonder how many people were aware of the fact that there was actually a law on a race for dogs.

'The Tolls on Roads and Bridges Act' dated back to 1875. It empowered the officers to levy toll on road traffic. The rate ranged from Re 1 for four-wheeled carriage on springs to 12 annas for carts and hackery (two wheel cart or sledge on springs drawn by horse or any other animal).

'The Maharashtra Refugees Act, 1948' was meant to regulate registration of refugees coming from 'West Pakistan' during the Partition. Most of these refugees settled in Mumbai, Ulhasnagar and Jalgaon, among other places. This would have been a very appropriate law if we were still living in 1948 and West Pakistan still existed.

'The Indian Lunacy, Bombay District Municipal and Bombay Municipal Boroughs (Amendment) Act, 1936' provided for a local authority for recovery of the cost of the maintenance of the 'lunatics'.

Of course, the good news is that these laws have been repealed.

Here are other laws in India which will make you shake your head:

For example, the Bombay Prohibition Act, 1949 states that a person is allowed to drink or possess not more than two units of alcohol a day. For hard liquor such as vodka and gin, the two unit limit is 214.28 ml (three and a half pegs), for beer it is 1.14 litres  a little more than two pints, and for wine, the limit is 0.448 litres.

So, consuming beer is all good until you have that third pint.

The Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act, 1956 says that the law aims at preventing the dissemination of harmful publications to young persons.

The problem here is that the definition of "harmful publications" is so vague that in order to rid Kochi of marijuana and other drugs, the police had not only raided several joints, but had also booked and arrested sellers of Bob Marley merchandise, including t-shirts, bracelets, bumper stickers and key chains.

The East Punjab Agricultural Pests, Diseases and Noxious Weeds Act, 1949 states that in face of danger of an invasion by locusts, the government has the right to call upon any person aged above 14 years to fight the attack. The person has to respond to the beat of the drum in the citys centre, failing which he will have to pay a fine of Rs 50 or be subject to simple imprisonment extendable to 10 days.

The infamous Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with sedition and had actually been coined to protect the British royalty from protesting Indians, says that any word, either spoken or written, or sign, or visible representation which incites violence, hatred or contempt, or excites disaffection towards the Government in India is punishable under the law.

Because of this law, amidst national outcry, Aseem Trivedi, a political cartoonist was arrested for posting caricatures of the Indian Parliament, national emblem and the Constitution on a web portal.

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which came into force in 1862, says, "Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 10 years, and shall also be liable to fine."

Even though the Delhi High Court in 2009 had de-criminalised consensual homosexual acts in private, the Supreme Court reversed the verdict in December 2013. This law has only worsened the discrimination and prejudice against the LGBTQ community.

With inputs from PTI
Bhubaneswar: A day after the mysterious deaths of former manager of Parlakhemundi palace Anang Manjari Patra and her two siblings, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday ordered a probe by Crime Branch into the incident.

"The chief minister has ordered Crime Branch of Odisha Police to probe into the mysterious death of former palace manager and her two siblings," a release issued by the chief minister's office said.

The police had on Sunday recovered bodies of the former palace manager Anang Manjari Patra, her brother and Maharaja Gopinath Gajapati Narayan Deb's ex-personal assistant (PA) Sanjay Patra and her sister Bijaylaxmi Patra in a house at Parlakhemundi. The police also found another sibling Santosh Patra in a critical condition in that house.

Both the former manager and the ex-PA were accused of keeping the ailing Maharaj Deb under "house arrest" and "misappropriation of royal family properties". Meanwhile, three suicide notes have been recovered from Anang Manjari Patra's house, DGP KB Singh told reporters.

He said the suicide notes were written in separate handwritings.

"Four persons attempted suicide in Paralakhemundi. Three of them died and one was rescued alive. He is out of danger. Once he gains consciousness, we will get details about the incident.

Meanwhile, we have recovered three suicide notes and we are examining them. We have sent forensic science team also," Singh said.

Soon after the Chief Minister ordered the probe, Special DG (Crime) BK Sharma said "A six-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) will be formed for the investigation.

The team will be led by an Additional SP and the SIT is likely to visit Parlakhemundi tomorrow (on Tuesday)."

The police had on Sunday found Sanjay Patra's body hanging from the ceiling while bodies of Anang Manjari and her sister Bijaylaxmi were found in another room of the House.

Santosh alias Tulu was rescued in critical condition from the kitchen, police said.

Though prima facie it appears that the trio had committed suicide, the government ordered a crime branch probe as the family members of the victims suspect otherwise.

Anang Manjari's brother Amulya Patra, who was staying at another house in Parlakhemundi town, blamed the local MLA, a television channel and some other local leaders of creating a situation for which the four persons attempted sucide.

He also alleged that the former employees of Paralakhemundi palace were under duress following the hue and cry over the allegation about them keeping the king under "house arrest and misappropriating royal property".

In a letter to the chief minister, the King's daughter Kalyani Devi, who is currently staying in Chennai, had urged him to inquire into the property transactions of the royal family for the past 35 years.

Cutting across party lines, local leaders had also demanded the arrest of Anang Manjari Patra and her brother Sanjay Patra.

The police had also registered a case in connection with the alleged illegal transaction of royal properties and the King being kept under "house arrest".

After the allegations were made about the Maharaj being kept under "house arrest", the Gajapati district administration had rescued him on August 15 and sent him for treatment to a private hospital in Chennai.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday stressed upon a dialogue to find a lasting solution to the problems in Jammu and Kashmir but within the framework of the Constitution.

At a meeting with a delegation of leaders of opposition parties from Jammu and Kashmir, Modi said the loss of lives in more than five weeks of unrest in Kashmir had distressed him.

Those who lost their lives during recent disturbances are part of us, our nation. Whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us, Modi said, according to an official statement issued after the meeting.

The Prime Minister expressed deep concern and pain at the prevailing situation in the state.

There has to be a dialogue and we need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution.

The statement said that Modi conveyed to the delegation, led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, that his government and the nation stand with the people of Jammu and Kashmir and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same to them.

He expressed his commitment to the development of the state and its people, and appealed for restoration of normalcy.

The Prime Minister appreciated the constructive suggestions the leaders of opposition parties made in the meeting.

The meeting comes as the Kashmir Valley remains under strict curfew for the 45th day in a row. The valley has been on the boil amid violent clashes between stone-throwing pro-freedom protestors and security forces since the 8 July killing of a rebel commander, Burhan Wani.

At least 68 people have been killed in firing by security forces in the weeks of unrest. Thousands have been injured, mostly by pellet firing.
New Delhi: Congress on Monday dismissed as "shooting from the hip" Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for a dialogue to find a lasting solution to the unrest in Kashmir Valley which is on the boil for 44 days.

"It looks that the Prime Minister's words keep changing. What he said at the all-party meeting, his remarks in the Independence Day address and on Monday, he is talking of dialogue, but dialogue with whom?. There is a suspicion that these are mere words, mere empty rhetoric for the Prime Minister. He is unfortunately shooting from his hip and merely shooting the breeze," party spokesman Manish Tewari told reporters.

He said that it was not clear with whom the Prime Minister wants to have a dialogue. "When you talk of a dialogue, to talk to people who are estranged from you. You do not talk to such people who are with you and are part of the mainstream."

Tewari said that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's assertion on Sunday that those indulging in stone-pelting in Kashmir are "not satyagrahis but aggressors" showed that he and the Prime Minister are not on the same page.

He also claimed that several Union ministers are also speaking in different voices. "The essence of the Finance Minister's statement is that there is no political problem in Jammu and Kashmir," he said, adding that Jaitley's comments implied that he felt there was no need for dialogue.

Asked whether Congress favoured talking to the Hurriyat, he suggested that the first learning of a spokesman was not to answer hypothetical questions. Noting that Congress is concerned over "irresponsible" handing of issues relating to national security, Tewari said that the party is willing to offer constructive suggestions if the governement approached it and have a "cohesive approach".

He said that the Prime Minister has been using three words "insaniyat, jamhooriyat and Kashmiriyat" for the past two years, but "we doubt if the Prime Minister understands the essence of these three concepts in entirety".

"What does Kashmiriyat mean to the PM. How does he include it in his policies? Are there, indeed, any policies on these? What does he mean by jamhooriyat? Parties have been contesting election for decades in Jammu and Kashmir," he said. He also asked as to what is the Prime Minister's definitaion of "insaniyat". "Is insaniyat used as a balm for those harmed in this sensitive time?"
Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday hit back at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for attacking the Centre on the issue of centrally sponsored schemes (CSSs), and alleged that the Trinamool Congress was opposed to transparency.

"The central government is funding the schemes and has all the rights to ensure that they are effectively implemented and also prevent misuse of the funds. The Chief Minister is opposing this, because the Trinamool is opposed to transparency," West Bengal state BJP President Dilip Ghosh said.

Dubbing the Modi government "dictatorial", Banerjee on Saturday lambasted it for restructuring the centrally sponsored schemes and expressed strong reservation over the Centre's bid to "monitor the state treasury".

"If the Chief Minister is so aggrieved, why isn't she taking legal recourse? The matter can be raised in parliament. Why is she politicising the issue by publicly attacking the Prime Minister?" asked Ghosh.

"Whoever raises his voice against her, our Chief Minister brands him a Maoist, I am thankful that she hasn't done that to the Prime Minister," he said.

The BJP leader also attacked Banerjee for ridiculing the Centre's foreign and Kashmir policies.

"Banerjee says India is no more free under Modi, but we want to ask is Bengal free under the Trinamool? It's the terrorists and criminals who are calling the shots and the administration has been rendered a mute spectator."

"Under Trinamool, Bengal is heading towards a law and order situation," said Ghosh.
Congress on Monday lashed out Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley over their statements on the Kashmir unrest, saying that the central government does not have any coherent policy on the Kashmir issue and it is engaging mere rhetoric over the issue.

"We want to ask the Prime Minister: When he talks about insaniyat (humanity), what is the definition of insaniyat as understood by the Prime Minister of India?" Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said at a press conference in New Delhi.

"When the Prime Minister talks about Kashmiriyat, what does he mean? Is there any policy behind these words?" he further said. "The PM talks about engaging in dialogue. But with whom is he going to engage in dialogue? These words are mere rhetoric by the Prime Minister," Tewari further said.

"Even after 45 days, the situation in Kashmir has not improved at all," said the Congress spokesperson. "PM Modi has no coherent policy to deal with Kashmir," he said, adding that the government also needed to decide on whether it wants to send an all-party delegation to Jammu and Kashmir, something which the Congress has been demanding since the second half of the Budget Session in the Parliament.

The party also took a dig at the Modi government's stand on nationalism. "Those people who hide behind pseudo-nationalism are insecure about their past and clueless about the future," Tewari said.

He also criticised Jaitley for his remarks on Kashmir. "The essence of the Finance Minister's statement was that there is no political problem in Kashmir. According to him, it was only a problem regarding development," he said.

Tewari's remarks come after Jaitley on Sunday had blamed the Congress and National Conference for not bringing about any development to Jammu and Kashmir, which he said eventually led to this unrest.

"There will be no compromise on the security and integrity of the country and no compromise with the people who indulge in violence.

"Secondly, as Jammu and Kashmir has faced violence and wars, it needs development which was denied for past 60 years by National Conference and Congress governments. Thirdly, Jammu, being the support base of BJP, needs added attention," Jaitley had said in Jammu.

Acknowledging that situation in Kashmir was "serious", Jaitley had said that those indulging in stone-pelting in Kashmir are "not satyagrahis but aggressors" who target police and security forces but some people with limited vision cannot see this.

He had also lashed out at Pakistan for the current unrest, saying it was "attacking the integrity of India" in a "new way" after failing to snatch the state by waging wars and fuelling trouble ever since partition in 1947. "Now this time, a serious situation has emerged in which Pakistan, separatists and religious forces have joined hands and now with a new way, they are attacking the integrity of India," he had said.

Even as political parties are busy blaming each other for the crisis in Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Monday expressed his "deep concern and pain" over the situation there. The Prime Minister had emphasised on the need for dialogue to find a "permanent and lasting solution" within the framework of the Constitution and had also asked all political parties to work together to find a solution to the problems in Jammu and Kashmir.

Making an appeal for restoration of normalcy in the Valley where the unrest entered the 45th day, Modi had emphasised that there has to be a dialogue.

An official statement issued after his 75-minute-long meeting with a joint opposition delegation led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the Prime Minister appreciated the "constructive suggestions" made by them during the talks and reiterated his government's commitment to the welfare of people.

The 20-member delegation comprising Omar and seven of his National Conference MLAs, Congress legislators led by PCC Chief GA Mir and CPI-M MLA MY Tarigami had called on the Prime Minister on Monday morning and had made an appeal for a political approach for resolving the crisis in the Valley and to ensure that the "mistakes" of the past are not repeated.

The Prime Minister had said, "those who lost their lives during recent disturbances are part of us, our nation; whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us."

"Government and the nation stand with the state of Jammu and Kashmir," the Prime Minister had said and had suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same. He expressed his commitment to the development of the state and its people, and appealed for restoration of normalcy in the state.

Kashmir has been witnessing unrest since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on 8 July and so far over 60 people have been killed.

With inputs from PTI
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday acknowledged that "only development can't resolve the problem in Jammu and Kashmir", said former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who led a delegation of opposition parties from the state that met the Prime Minister.

"The Prime Minister has acknowledged that development alone can't resolve the problem in the state," Abdullah told the media after the meeting.

As curfew continued for the 45th day in Kashmir, the delegation told the Prime Minister that a "political solution" would have to be found to the "political issue" in the state.

"We stressed on the fact that the issue in Jammu and Kashmir is a political issue. If we don't find a political solution to this, then every time we'll repeat the same mistakes.

The delegation warned that the continuing law and order problem and unrest in the state will only further alienate the people.

"We have told the Prime Minister that it is required to understand the problem that has led to the current situation in Jammu and Kashmir and find a right solution to the issue," Abdullah said.

The delegation, he said had come with the "hope that our voices will be heard. We have not come here with any complaints, we have come here with a request. The message with which we've come here, if it is executed, it will not only benefit the state of Jammu and Kashmir, but the country as a whole."

The delegation also submitted to the Prime Minister a memorandum that demanded an immediate ban on the use of pellet guns in the troubled state.

The meeting came a day after the delegation met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi on Sunday to discuss ways to contain the prevailing unrest in Kashmir Valley.

The Valley has been crippled by a curfew and protests called by separatists since 9 July, a day after the killing of a top militant, Burhan Wani, in a gunfight with the security forces.

At least 68 people have died in clashes with the security forces.
At a function in Agra this Sunday, RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat, urged Hindus to have more children. Through a PowerPoint presentation, the RSS leader underlined that while Hindus have a fertility rate of 2.1 per cent, the other community stands at more than eight per cent. If this remains the situation, one should forget about their existence in ones own country by 2025, he said, addressing a gathering of some 2,000 couples at a function organised by the Sanghs Kutumb Prabodhan. The couples, Bhagwat insisted, must strengthen family values and inculcate patriotic sentiment in children.

Perhaps such talk shouldnt really surprise us. Whipping up Malthusian fears of a Muslim demographic takeover has after all been an old Rashtriya Swayamseveak Sangh(RSS) bogey. Never mind that such fears of imminent danger  Hindus getting swamped by a fast expanding Muslim population  have been effectively contested by a range of experts, not once but many times over. But undaunted, functionaries of various RSS offshoots periodically exhort Hindus to have more children.

Absurd as the argument may sound, the Sangh Parivar has persistently made this emotive script one of its important campaign planks. Loaded with political implications, such rhetoric gets shriller during crucial poll seasons, and the approaching Uttar Pradesh polls are about as crucial as things can get in Indian parliamentary politics. Given the divisive political climate in the country today, its hardly a surprise that the RSS top brass has chosen - once again - to press the population question in the hopes of nudging dormant and baseless anxieties among Hindus to the surface.

This isnt the first time Bhagwat has issued such a call. In last years Vijaydashami speech, while quoting statistics from the last two Census reports, the RSS leader underlined apparent demographic imbalances and called for a holistic and uniformly applicable population policy. The 2011 Census  one of those that caused much anxiety within the Sangh  didnt, of course, make any such shocking demographic revelation. Continuing a trend since 1981, the Census figures showed that the population growth rate had declined from 21.5 percent to 17.7 percent. Based on these findings, it was observed that India would achieve population stabilisation earlier than expected.

What captured the Sanghs attention, however, was the fact that the Muslim population had registered a growth that was higher than the Hindu population. A simplistic and facile reading of the Census led to misleading conclusions. Or was it simply a case of intentional misreading?

In an article in The Indian Express on the subject last September, Abusaleh Shariff, executive director of the US-India Policy Institute in Washington DC, and former member secretary of the Sachar Committee, wrote: The Muslim population has increased from 13.4 per cent of the population to 14.2 percent, which is 0.8 percentage points higher. But the rate of growth is considerably lower than in previous decades. He added: Muslims are expected to grow faster than Hindus for a couple of more decades because they have the youngest median age and relatively high fertility among the major religious groups in India. In 2010, the median age of Indian Muslims was 22, compared with 26 for Hindus and 28 for Christians. Muslim women bear an average 3.1 children per head, compared with 2.7 for Hindus and 2.3 for Christians.

Interestingly, the writer observed that one of the factors behind the higher number of births is that Muslims have better sex ratios compared to Hindus. In contrast to attempts to portray the Muslim community as outside the ambit of population control, Shariff noted that there has been a rise in contraceptive use among Muslims since the mid-1980s. And that it is likely to catch up with the national average earlier than expected. The rate of increase in contraception among the Muslim community, even in states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, has been high. Overall, Shariff concluded that when all the data is analysed, it reveals that since 1981, Muslims have consistently shown a higher decline in growth rate than Hindus.

But of course, beyond a point, statistical clarifications are not the point. Underlying the supposed fear of being outnumbered is a larger political agenda that is more about fear-mongering than facts. Finally, the BJP must abandon its cynical policy of running-with the-hare and hunting-with the-hound. On one hand, Prime Minister Modi insists that development is his partys sole campaign project. On the other, his mentors in RSS systematically ratchet up communal sentiments. Drumming up anxieties that are a breeding ground for hatred are electoral ploys that need to be jettisoned once and for all.
Mao Zedong has been proven wrong for once: Political power doesnt grow out of the barrel of a gun; instead, its carved painstakingly through the network of social coalitions. The bigger the size of your social union, the greater are the chances of your electoral success. We have been a nation of castes and communities since time immemorial. And, like it or not, we continue to be so  even more so in Uttar Pradesh.

You can understand why the Congress, which doesnt enjoy the unflinching support of any caste or community any longer, is planning to hold an exclusive meeting of Brahmin leaders at Allahabad on 2 September. Election strategist Prashant Kishore, who is guiding the 125-year-old party this time, thinks that unless Brahmins get back to the party-fold, other castes wouldnt come anywhere near it. He is right. For, nobody in this age of competitive politics wants to waste his or her vote.

There is another compelling reason why he is focussing on the Brahmins first: It was the upper-caste vote-bank that had deserted the Congress first in wake of the Ram Janambhoomi movement in late 1980s. And once they moved away, others including backward classes and Dalits too followed suit. The desertion by Muslims, which took place in the aftermath of demolition of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992, proved to be the proverbial last nail in its coffin. All the four major pillars of its otherwise unbeatable social coalition  women, Brahmins (upper castes), Muslims and Dalits  lay crumbled. The party could never breathe life fully thereafter.

It wasnt surprising that the rise of the Samajwadi Party (SP), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the BJP coincided with the fall of the Congress. While upper castes moved towards the BJP, the Dalits and a significant section of have-nots among the Dalits sided with the BSP. The SP, on its part, got Yadavas, Kurmis and most importantly, Muslims. In later years, the BJP also became weak following weakening of its upper caste and floating vote-banks. Forget for a moment the 2014 Lok Sabha election result, which was in any case more of an exception rather than norm, and you would see that the two national parties, which had failed to retain their social coalitions over the years, gradually ceded space to the SP and the BSP.

Lets shift our focus back on the current activities of the Congress. Dont be surprised if you get to know that already a closed-door meeting of over 200 prominent Brahmin leaders cutting across party lines from all over the state was held in Lucknow last week to mobilise support of more and more Brahmins. According to The Indian Express, the Congress plans to galvanise at least 20000 more Brahmins leaders from district to village level in the run-up to the elections.

Their strategy may or may not succeed. But one thing is clear: The Congress genuinely believes that once the Brahmins get back to the party, Muslims would revisit them as always in the last century. Its a fact that from Jawahar Lal Nehru and Indira Gandhi to Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant, HN Bahuguna and ND Tiwari were all darlings of the Muslim masses in the bygone era, a top Congress leader, who had taken part in the Lucknow meeting, said adding that lets try to replicate it under Sheila Dixit this time. And why not? On its part, the BJP isnt worried. The party may, according to The Times of India report, avoid the Brahmin trap set by the Congress. There is a strong view in the BJP that the party should not deviate from its essential strategy to woo non-Yadava backward castes, the newspaper report said adding that the politically savvy community of Brahmins would eventually realise that a vote for the Congress, in effect, meant a vote for either the SP or the BSP.

The Congress genuinely believes that once the Brahmins get back to the party, Muslims would revisit them as always in the last century.

However, those who know UP rather well, think otherwise. Caste politics has always been a tricky affair and chances are that BJPs strategy might backfire once again. Dont forget what recently happened in Bihar. Despite all attempts to woo non-Yadava voters through Jitan Ram Majhis Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and Upendra Kushwahas Rashtirya Lok Samata Praty (RLSP), the BJP had to bite dust. Remember, the backward classes in the Ganga belt have almost always been running independent of both the Congress and the BJP since the days of Ram Manohar Lohia.

Bihar and UP, the latters eastern part in particular, present more or less a similar picture politically. And dont be surprised if you witness a nasty, intense fight between Mandal and Kamandal once again.
A 12-year-old child is believed to be behind the deadly attack at a Kurdish wedding party in Turkey that killed at least 51 people. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held Islamic State responsible for the bombing and said that either a suicide bomber, aged between 12 and 14 years, "detonated (the bomb) or others detonated it."

In war-torn countries, children are the first victims of violence. They are not just vulnerable to exploitation or abuse but are often used as human shields by extremist regimes. In the conflict zones of Syria, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Nigeria and Sudan, extremist groups have a history of using children as weapons and suicide bombers.

Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney, author and filmmaker in an interview explains that groups like Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Islamic Jihad and Hamas are promoting the concept of 'martyrdom' to school children and recruiting them as suicide bombers. She says families are known to encourage children to become suicide bombers and become martyr as they are promised cash payments.

She says:

On top of it all, terrorist groups such as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Islamic Jihad and Hamas, who have each openly declared responsibility for recruiting children as suicide bombers, patrol the streets for their child victims. Children are being picked up, literally, from the classroom and sent out with explosives in under 48 hours! Some of the children that are preyed upon are those who have, for one reason or another, been marginalised.

Islamic State (IS) videos have shown boys killing opponents through beheadings and shootings and they have deployed child suicide bombers to stage attacks in Iraq and Syria. According to AP, the group maintains an army of child soldiers, which it calls "cubs of the caliphate," and seeks to re-educate children at IS-run schools, indoctrinating them with their own radical version of Islam and exposing them to violent acts including beheadings as part of a concerted effort to build a new generation of militants.

The Guardian reported that the IS is recruiting children as "spies, preachers, soldiers, executioners and suicide bombers". The report states that children are either forced to join or kidnapped, and are given lessons on the Quran, use of weapons and combat tactics.

The Unicef in a recent report said that thousands of children have been abducted in Iraq. Girls are at the greatest risk of being sold into sexual slavery, while boys are often forced into becoming combatants or suicide bombers.

A report by the Combating Terrorism Center stated that the IS is recruiting children at an alarming rate. According to the report, "From 1 January, 2015, to 31 January, 2016, 89 children and youth were eulogised in Islamic State propaganda. Fifty one percent were alleged to have died in Iraq, while 36 percent died in Syria." It further stated that based on the sample size, 60 percent were categorised as 'Adolescent', 34 percent as 'Older Adolescent' and six percent 'Pre-Adolescent'.

Human rights groups and Unicef report a dramatic increase in Boko Haram's use of children as suicide bombers. In a report earlier this year, Unicef said one in five suicide attacks claimed by the militant group across Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad are now carried out by children. In Nigeria, Human Rights Watch said that since Boko Haram began its attacks in 2009, it has recruited hundred, and possibly thousands, of youngsters and used dozens, mostly girls, as suicide bombers.

In a BBC report, Unicef's Manuel Fontaine was quoted as saying, "As 'suicide' attacks involving children become commonplace, some communities are starting to see children as threats to their safety." UN report says that one in five Boko Haram suicide bombers has been a child and 75 percent of the children used were girls as they are believed to arouse less suspicion. The report added that these young girls are often drugged, and some are forced to marry Boko Haram fighters.

Even Al-Qaeda has a history of recruiting children and training them to be suicide bombers. The leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, used teenagers as suicide bombers to fight the American occupation in Iraq before he was killed in a US airstrike in 2006.

A PBS-Frontline report said that children as young as three years are indoctrinated. These children are recruited after the families are promised financial security. The report explains that since most of the families are large, they are willing to give up one of their child to the militants in exchange of money.

"Theyll tell children that if they become a martyr they wont feel any pain at the moment of the explosion. They even go through the motions with the older kids of burying them alive to get used to the idea that they rise from the dead, or they shoot them with fake bullets to show that theyre invincible," Mia Bloom, a professor of communication at Georgia University, told PBS-Frontline.

Recently, Omran Daqneesh, the five-year-old from Aleppo, whose face covered in dust and blood became the face of the conflict-torn Syria. Last year, the haunting image of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi's body lying face-down on a Turkish beach revealed the horror of the Syrian war. Through these images, the international community was forced to witness the tragic stories of Omran and Aylan. But there are scores of children who are being used as tools to propagate violence and war. Will their stories garner enough outrage and sympathy?

With inputs from AP
LONDON (Reuters) - Queen Elizabeth joined a spectacular armada of 1,000 vessels on Sunday for the most dazzling display of British pageantry seen on London's River Thames for 350 years, watched by cheering crowds celebrating her 60th year on the throne.

Pealing bells greeted the flotilla as the queen's gilded royal barge sailed alongside a colourful and eclectic array of boats from leisure cruisers and yachts to a Hawaiian war canoe and Venetian gondolas.

Typically inclement British weather failed to dampen enthusiasm, with hundreds of thousands of onlookers, waving "Union Jack" flags, massed on the riverbanks to catch a glimpse of the procession along the seven mile (11 km route).

The queen, wearing a silver and white dress with a matching coat, smiled broadly and waved to the crowds from the royal barge, "The Spirit of Chartwell", alongside her 90-year-old husband Prince Philip.

They were accompanied on the barge by heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, his eldest son Prince William and new wife Kate, a global fashion trendsetter who wore a vivid red Alexander McQueen dress and matching hat.

Up and down the country, organisers said millions of people attended diamond jubilee street parties in honour of the 86-year-old sovereign, the only British monarch after Queen Victoria to have sat on the throne for 60 years.

"We're English, we know what the weather is like. We really don't care if we get wet you know - it's the jubilee, it's the queen, so it's nice to come up and celebrate it," said Jackie, a 39-year-old sales consultant who travelled across southern England to watch the Thames pageant.

From New Zealand Maoris who paddled their canoe wearing traditional cloaks to sailors and people dressed as pirates, the flotilla boasted a colourful array of participants from every corner of the planet.

There were even vessels from the 1940 evacuation of British and Allied troops from Dunkirk in northern France - a famous rescue performed by crafts of all shapes and sizes and a celebrated piece of British history.

Organisers said Sunday's river pageant, reminiscent of a Canaletto canvas from the 18th century, was the largest of its kind since a similar spectacle was held for King Charles II and his consort Catherine of Braganza in 1662.

CHURCHILL AND EISENHOWER

Other craft included Motor Torpedo Boat 102 on which Allied Forces commander General Dwight Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspected warships before the 1944 D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France.

The flotilla passed under 14 bridges and past landmarks including the Houses of Parliament, St Paul's Cathedral, and the Tower of London, after the picturesque Tower Bridge bascules were raised in salute.

Another boat taking part, "Amazon", featured in diamond jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria, Elizabeth's great-great-grandmother, held in 1897 when Britain's empire spanned much of the globe.

The jubilee pageant appeared on news sites around the world and was among the top trending topics on the Twitter micro blogging site, with messages ranging from congratulatory to comic.

"Booze cruise" wrote @Queen_UK, an irreverent and unofficial spoof twitter handle written from the queen's perspective.

Although the queen is still head of state in 16 countries from Australia and Canada to tiny Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean and head of the Commonwealth, Britain is a shadow of its former imperial self.

Nevertheless, interest in the pageant and affection for Queen Elizabeth extended to former colonies such as Canada.

"I admire Queen Elizabeth II for her extraordinary grace and diligence," marketing expert Amanda Batchelor told Reuters from her home in Toronto where she was watching on television.

"The fact that she remains relevant to millions of people - in the UK and abroad - over six decades of rapid change is testimony to her longevity. She is a sign of stability and security. She is a kind of living history."

Historians and commentators say the pomp and spectacle of British royal occasions gives the country a sense of national pride at a time when the economy is in recession and people face deep austerity measures.

STREET PARTIES

Across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, street parties were being held to mark the occasion. Prince Charles and his wife Camilla dropped into one in central London before the pageant, joining in a rousing rendition of the national anthem.

While the queen and the royal party braved the elements under a golden canopy on a barge in the middle of the Thames, the wet conditions proved too much for Prime Minister David Cameron, who moved his Downing Street party indoors.

That said, the government hoped the festivities would mark the start of a summer of revelry capped off by the Olympic Games in London, raising the public's spirits and their poll ratings.

"What is great is that we have the jubilee and then the Olympics. We should show how great we are in Britain," said Joanne Richmond, 61, from central England, who was in London for the queen's coronation as a two-year-old.

However, economists have warned that the extra public holidays will hit Britain's already ailing economy, potentially prolonging a recession.

The celebrations come as polls show the overwhelming backing for the monarchy, which has overcome a slump in the 1990s following marital infidelities and the death of the hugely popular Princess Diana in a 1997 Paris car crash

However, not everyone in London was cheering as about 100 republicans waving banners demanding "Votes not Boats" and "Make Monarchy History" staged a protest near Tower Bridge.

"Her achievement is just staying alive, doing little and saying less," Graham Smith, head of campaign group Republic, told Reuters.

Even republicans acknowledge there is almost no chance that the queen will be ousted and take solace in indications many Britons are simply indifferent -- 2 million people are leaving the country to take advantage of the extended public holiday.

Celebrations will continue on Monday with a pop concert outside Elizabeth's London residence Buckingham Palace and conclude with a service of thanksgiving at St. Paul's Cathedral on Tuesday followed by a carriage procession.

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Gaunt, Philip Baillie, Peter Griffiths and Ethan Bilby, editing by Paul Casciato)
Zhangjiajie : Tourists who suffer from vertigo need not apply. The world's highest and longest glass-bottomed bridge opened Saturday in China's spectacular Zhangjiajie mountains  the inspiration for American blockbuster Avatar.

Some 430 metres (1,400 feet) long and suspended 300 metres above the earth, the bridge spans the canyon between two mountain cliffs in Zhangjiajie park in China's central Hunan province.

Six metres wide and made of some 99 panels of clear glass, the bridge can carry up to 800 people at the same time, an official in Zhangjiajie  a popular tourist destination  told the Xinhua news agency.

Tourists can walk across the bridge, designed by Israeli architect Haim Dotan, and the more adventurous will be able to bungee jump or ride a zip line.

"I wanted to feel awe-inspired by this bridge. But I'm not afraid  it seems safe!" Wang Min, who was visiting the new structure with her husband and children, told AFP Saturday.

Following an alarming glass bridge cracking incident at the Yuntai mountain in northern Henan in 2015, authorities in Zhangjiajie were eager to demonstrate the safety of the structure.

They organised a string of media events, including one where people were encouraged to try and smash the bridge's glass panels with a sledge hammer, and another where they drove a car across it.

"It's crowded today and a bit of a mess. But to be suspended 300 metres in the air, it's a unique experience," said Lin Chenglu, who had come to see the bridge with his colleagues.

Only 8,000 people each day will be allowed to cross the bridge, Xinhua said, and tourists will have to book their tickets a day in advance, at a cost of 138 yuan (USD 20).

People wearing stilettos will be banned, it added. Local authorities have said that one of the summits in Zhangjiajie Park inspired the floating mountain which appears in the American blockbuster Avatar.

A Hollywood photographer visited the area in 2008, taking images which were used for the film, according to media reports
Budapest: Severed pigs' heads should be hung along Hungary's border to deter Muslim refugees and migrants from entering the country, an MEP has suggested.

Gyorgy Schopflin, a member of the right-wing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, sparked outrage and disbelief with the suggestion.

He made it during an ill-tempered exchange on Twitter with a human rights campaigner.

Andrew Stroehlein, European media director for Human Rights Watch, posted a tweet in which he criticised Hungary for using bizarre, totemic masks made out of beetroot to scare refugees trying to cross the border from neighbouring Serbia.

The existence of the ghoulish vegetable heads was first reported last week by a Hungarian journalist. It is not clear who made them but there has reportedly been no effort by Hungarian police or soldiers to take them down.

@schopflinMEP Hungarian member EuroPlmt ForeignAffairs Cmtee suggests hanging pigs heads at border to deter Muslims @dickstevenson  RuthMarshall (@RuthMarshall) August 21, 2016

Refugees are fleeing war & torture, Hungary. Your root vegetable heads will not deter them, Stroehlein wrote in his tweet.

The MEP, a former academic who is a member of the governing Fidesz party, wrote back: Might do so. Human images are haram. But agree, pig's head would deter more effectively.

Last night, a member of European Parliament suggested putting pig heads on Hungary's border fence to scare refugees pic.twitter.com/QCKK11Xn1r  Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) August 21, 2016

He was described as a sad old man full of hate and his comment was branded as disgusting.

The pigs' head suggestion reflected a deep current of xenophobia and anti-migrant feeling within the Hungarian government, Stroehlein told the Telegraph.

With the current government, the idea of putting up pigs' heads and turnips is in many ways the least of the issues. Their treatment of refugees has been appalling - using violence to push people back from the border. Conditions in reception centres are inhumane. Refugees are treated like animals.

Hungary closed its southern border with Serbia last year as around a million refugees and migrants, many of them from Syria, sought to travel from Turkey, through Greece and along the Balkan route to Germany and Scandinavia.
Provincetown: Hillary Clinton's campaign is halfway to its goal of raising a billion dollars for the 2016 race, according to her finance director.

Dennis Cheng announced the achievement in a meeting with staff at the campaign's headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, according to a campaign aide who was present for the meeting but wasn't authorized to discuss internal campaign strategy and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Her campaign has resisted publicizing a fundraising target for the general election, fearing it would draw

attention to big donors at a time when voters angry about the role of money in politics. She aimed to raise $100 million for her primary bid.

Clinton raised $90 million for her campaign and Democratic party committees in July, according to finance reports released recently. She's maintained a staff of about 700 for months, opened up offices across the country and already spent $67 million on general election ads. This week, she'll spend at least $10 million more on ads. GOP rival Donald Trump raised $80 million for his campaign and the Republican party, including a $2 million contribution from Trump himself.

He's kept his payroll to about 70 employees, only began airing ads in recent days and has not undertaken a significant operational buildout across the country. Instead, nearly half the money he spent in July went to one web design firm, whose president is the campaign's director of digital marketing.

Clinton's campaign is in the midst of a fundraising blitz, with 43 events planned in 14 states over the next two weeks, according to a schedule obtained by The Associated Press. She was spending the weekend greeting donors on Massachusetts' Cape Cod before heading to California for a series of events at the homes of Hollywood celebrities and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Later this month, she will head to the Hamptons on New York's Long Island for another fundraising swing.

President Barack Obama hosted an event last Monday on Martha's Vineyard, off the Massachusetts coast, where he was vacationing. Her running mate, Tim Kaine, and former President Bill Clinton also have events planned around the United States.
Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar, who is on a three-nation West Asia tour (Lebanon, Syria and Iraq) from 17 August to 23 August, is scheduled to visit Iraq on Tuesday.

This official visit is an effort to strengthen bilateral ties with the West Asia region. Akbar's visit is significant because it comes at a time when the Islamic State (IS) has captured large parts of Iraq and Syria under its caliphate.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said that the visit to these three important countries in West Asia is a "reaffirmation of India's deep interest in promoting bilateral relations as also in the peace and security in the region in its extended neighbourhood."

The issue of Indians who had been taken hostage by IS in Iraq in 2014 will also find a mention in Akbar's talk with Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Eshaiqer Al-Jafari, according to Swarup, who termed the terror outfit as the biggest "security threat". Swarup further said that the visit is expected to add further impetus to India and Iraq's bilateral engagement.

"Our time-tested, warm and friendly relations with Iraq are underpinned by historical and religious inkages, strong people-to-people contacts, our energy security quest and capacity-building cooperation. It will also provide an opportunity to meet other senior leaders of Iraq, including religious leaders, and to convey India's abiding commitment to the emergence of a stable, peaceful, united and democratic Iraq, which is in the interest of regional and global peace and security," Swarup said.

In Iraq, Akbar will visit the holy city of Karbala, reported The Economic Times. What's interesting is that Akbar, a Sunni Muslim, will visit Karbala, one of Shiite Islams foremost holy cities, which derives religious significance from the Battle of Karbala where Prophet Muhammad's grandson and his troops were killed.

Tufail Ahmad in his lecture in Hyderabad touched on the various aspects of Islam, its various interpretations and permutations.

After Prophet Muhammad died, a war for succession began that later divided Muslims into two sects: Sunni and Shia. Except for the first caliph Abu Bakr, all three succeeding caliphs and twelve Shia imams were murdered. In fact, the Battle of Karbala was so bloody that after it most Shia imams were poisoned. Prophet Muhammad himself took part in 27 wars. Jihadi forces like the Islamic State were born in the times of early Islam itself, for example when the first caliph Abu Bakr took out his sword and threatened jihad against those Muslims who did not pay zakat (tax).

India and West Asia

Livemint, in a report, mentioned that Iraq is the largest supplier of crude oil to India, overtaking Saudi Arabia in June. A 2015 MEA report detailed that IOC is the single largest purchaser of crude from Iraqi crude procuring around 2,50,000 BPD.

While Indian exports to Iraq consist of agro chemicals, cosmetics, rubber manufactured products, paints, gems and jewellery, ceramics, manufactures of metals, machine tools, electrical machinery and instruments, transport equipment, electronic goods, handicrafts, cereals, sugar, tea, garments and pharmaceuticals, the MEA report added.

In an opinion piece in The Hindu titled Tilting towards the Saudis, Stanly Johny argued that India needs a "balanced West Asia policy", which has historically been multi-pronged. He further wrote that India, formerly a passive player in West Asia, took greater interest in the region after Manmohan Singh's tenure as prime minister with the former even appointing a special envoy for the region.

It is possible that Akbar's Iraq visit could've arisen out of a deputation of Shia representatives, who visited Prime Minister Narendra Modi and requested him not to limit his travel to Islamic countries to Sunni nations alone.

The BJP has also reportedly been trying to woo the Shia Muslims mainly in UP, Delhi, Kashmir and Gujarat, reported Economic Times. Modi has previously received "unlikely" support from the sect in Lucknow and Varanasi.

Speaking to Livemint, KP Fabian, former joint secretary in-charge of Gulf countries in the Ministry of External Affairs, noted that Akbar's Damascus visit would demonstrate a sense of belief that it is still important to keep in touch with Bashar al-Assad and that it is safe for a foreign dignitary to go there.

The conflict in Syria along with the recent terror attacks in Western nations sees President Bashar al-Assad being opposed by countries like the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.

With inputs from PTI
Lahore: The father and the former husband of a 28-year-old British-Pakistani woman, who are suspected of murdering her in a so-called honour killing, were on Monday remanded to 14-day judicial custody pending trial.

Chaudhry Shakeel, Samia Shahid's first husband, and her father Mohammad Shahid were sent into the remand by a court in Jhelum in Punjab province.

Samia, from Bradford, was found dead on 20 July in mysterious circumstances in the province. Police told the court that their work of evidence collection had been completed and sought to have Shakeel and Shahid sent into judicial remand, Geo news reported. The hearing was adjourned till 5 September.

Earlier this month, Samia's first husband had confessed to strangulating her to death, police had confirmed. "I strangled Samia to death using a dupatta," Shakeel had said in a statement recorded with the police. Samia, a resident of Jehlum, some 230 km from Lahore, had come to Pakistan from Dubai about two weeks ago to see her ailing father.

A beauty therapist from Bradford, Samia had previously been married to her first cousin Shakil but the couple parted ways after divorce in May 2014. She then married Kazim of Taxila in September 2014 and both started living in Dubai.

She was found dead on 20 July in mysterious circumstances.

Samia's family insisted she died of a heart attack. Later they changed their statement to claim that she had committed suicide. Samia's husband Syed Mukhtar Kazam however maintained that she was the victim of so-called 'honour killing' because she had rebelled against wishes of the family, divorced her first husband Shakeel and married him in Bradford in 2014.
Nay Pyi Daw: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj arrived in Nay Pyi Daw on Monday to hold talks with the top Myanmarese leadership, including State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, in pursuance of India's 'Act East Policy'.

The one-day trip by Swaraj, accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior Ministry of External Affairs officials, is the first high profile Indian visit after Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won a historic landslide election last year that finally brought an end to five decades of military rule.

She also called on President U Htin Kyaw, apart from meeting Nobel laureate and democracy icon Suu Kyi, who is the de facto leader.

Banned from becoming president by a junta-era Constitution, Suu Kyi has a strong control over the country's first civilian-led government.

The Constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president  Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.

The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 percent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.

Incidentally, Swaraj's visit comes just days after Suu Kyi made a high-profile trip to China.

The discussions between Swaraj and Suu Kyi are expected to focus on New Delhi's bilateral relations with Nay Pyi Daw, as well as plans for the upcoming Brics-Bimstec Outreach Summit scheduled to be held in Goa.

Security issues concerning certain Myanmar-based militant groups operating in India's North East could also come up for discussion.

India and Myanmar share close relations with a robust development cooperation programme in areas such as agriculture, IT, human resource development, infrastructure development, culture among others.

The visit reaffirms India's commitment to heighten partnership with Myanmar in the areas of priority by the new government of Myanmar, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.
Gaziantep: Turkish authorities were on Monday scrambling to ascertain the identity of a child suicide bomber acting on the orders of Islamic State (IS) jihadists who killed 51 people at a crowded Kurdish wedding.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the bomber at the street wedding late Saturday in the city of Gaziantep close to Syria was aged "between 12 and 14" and that initial findings showed it had been "perpetrated by Daesh (IS)".

Media said the majority of those dead were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18. At least 22 victims were under 14, a Turkish official added.

There were no further details on the bomber's identity, but Erdogan said IS had been trying to "position itself" in Gaziantep which lies just 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Syria and is a major hub for refugees from the over five-year civil war.

The Hurriyet daily said that DNA tests were under way to ascertain the identity, nationality and gender of the bomber. It is possible that the bomber had come over the border from Syria but IS is also known to have built homegrown cells inside Turkey in Gaziantep and even Istanbul, wrote its well-connected columnist Abdulkadir Selvi.

He said Turkish security forces believed that attack had been timed as retaliation by jihadists for offensives both by Kurdish militias and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition forces against IS in Syria.

"There's a fight against IS but we are paying the price," he wrote.

The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas said in a statement that "all of those killed were Kurds".

The bride and groom  a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast  were rushed to hospital but not seriously wounded.

The attack followed a string of strikes blamed on IS and Kurdish militants in the last months but was the deadliest so far this year and first significant jihadist action in Turkey since the failed 15 July coup.

Hurriyet said the type of bomb used  stuffed with scraps of metal  was similar to the explosives used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on IS in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station last year.

All 44 victims identified so far were laid to rest in harrowing ceremonies in Gazinantep on Sunday with relatives throwing themselves on the coffins in desperation, an AFP correspondent said.
This part two picks up from the previous part where the author discusses how the Islamic State terrorists use Twitter to drive communications over other social media platforms and Twitter's crackdown on hundreds of thousands of these pro-Islamic State accounts. The author also explains how social media platforms, particularly Twitter, serves as a breeding ground for the terrorists.

Numerous research findings have corroborated the vital functioning of online media in the process of radicalisation. Mass communication portals and social networking sites are facilitating the interconnection between the radical preachers and Islamic State sympathisers, like Anjem Choudary, and the gullible Muslims. This situation has triggered an academic debate on the online medias key role in mediating and popularising the extremist narratives among a section of the Muslim audience.

According to the Times of India report, it was the US-based non-profit think tank RAND Corporation which studied the Twitter accounts supporting Islamic State between July 2014 and May 2015. The think tank found that over 75,000 accounts were tweeting pro-Islamic State messages about 60 times a day on an average, which made them 50 percent more active than their online detractors.

Prior to this report, RAND also carried out a rigorous research on radicalisation in the digital era. Based on case studies, it primarily explored how individuals were engaged with the internet during the process of their radicalisation. For instance, a study held by RAND titled The use of the internet in 15 cases of terrorism and extremism has developed a nuanced understanding of the role of the online media in radicalisation. Some of the fundamental questions that this study sought to address are: How the radical Islamist groups are using the internet to indoctrinate radicalism into an individuals mind, and what are the ways in which a radical Islamists online engagement relates to his offline activities?

RANDs study also offers precise and useful recommendations for framing policy responses to the use of the digital media in the process of radicalisation. It argues that the digital media is an enabling technology in the case of growing Islamist radicalisation and thus this 'online onslaught' can best be tackled online only.

Empirical evidence in this study supports the hypotheses that internet eases the online process of radicalisation and that it acts as an echo chamber (a place where individuals find their ideas supported and echoed by other like-minded individuals). But this evidence relies only on a few cases which buttress the point that internet facilitates the radicalisation of Muslim users of certain Islamist websites and online portals. Although it is not the only driver of the radicalisation process. However, there is no substantial evidence in this study to corroborate the main hypothesis that the study holds. For instance, the online media maximises the potentials of self-radicalisation or that it occurs without any physical contact.

Several other think tanks have studied the scope of digital radicalisation from an anti-terrorism perspective.

A research journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism published a detailed report titled, Tweeting the Jihad: Social Media Networks of Western Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq in 2015. Jytte Klausen, the compiler of this report, did a social network analysis of the data on Twitter users, mostly militants, based in Western Syria. He used a snowball method with 59 starter accounts to collect data about the most popular accounts in the network at large from January to March 2014. The researchers engaged in this study used their own Twitter accounts to identify potential foreign fighters in Syria. A total of 60 accounts were initially identified but one was inactive at the time, and therefore excluded from analysis.

Klausen also used the social network analysis (SNA) tool in order to recognise the crucial disseminators of content that drove the traffic on Twitter. Using a snowball method, the original accounts were treated as starter nodes in a network of followers creating a larger dataset that covered the entire network. The snowball method captured a particular network that comprised only a slice of the global network of the Twitter. However, the analytical platforms of this study could not encompass the larger scope of the dataset for the whole of Twitter's network. Due to lack of capacity of the analytical platforms, there could not have been more sophisticated analytical description.

Another American think tank like RAND  Brookings Institution  based in Washington, D.C, found in its "Twitter Census" that Islamic State supporters used at least 46,000 accounts between September and December 2014. Alarmed at this increasing trend of Twitter jihadism, the social media network's daily suspensions of terror-linked accounts have jumped to 80 percent since 2015. Twitter has suspended an additional 2,35,000 accounts since February 2016, after halting 1,25,000 accounts since the middle of 2015, most of which were related to Islamic State.

However, experts believe that merely blocking the jihadist accounts on Twitter is not a guarantee for their complete elimination. Since the beginning of February 2016 when Twitter began this crackdown, terrorist accounts have started migrating to Telegram. Nevertheless, Telegram channels of the terror indoctrinators are also being shut down just like the Twitter accounts. But in recent years, several accounts promoting terrorism, particularly Islamic State, have used Facebook as their platform.

Clearly, just blocking the jihadist accounts on certain social platforms is not the solution. Also, a well-thought-out, well-reasoned, coherent and effective counter-narrative against the extremist rhetoric is imperative.

In this gigantic anti-extremism moderate, Islamic scholars and thinkers can help. Since the jihadist indoctrination and recruitment of the Muslim youth has been on the rampage in the cyber world, the online de-radicalisation is desperately required.

In this task, the fundamental questions that should be grappled with are: What drives online radicalisation to rely on a religious justification?  How operative is the ideology within the process of online radicalisation? What is the significance of idealism and theodicy and how these could be interpreted and implemented?  As most terrorists loudly claim to be inspired by Islamism, what is the moderate response of the Muslims to the violent extremist ideology; and how they interpret Quran and Hadith  the two primary sources of Islam  to counter radicalisation?

Omar Ashour, the author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements, wrote a paper Online De-Radicalization? Countering Violent Extremist Narratives: Message, Messenger and Media Strategy. Based on his empirical knowledge of the impact of religion on radicalisation, he explored the role of the new media or the online media in indoctrinating the violent extremist narratives into the young and impressionable Muslim minds. At the same time, he also examined how the online media and internet, as opposed to its effects on radicalisation, can play an effective role in promoting a counter-narrative to facilitate the process of online de-radicalisation.

The very first question Ashour addressed was: Whether online counter-extremism is possible? In conclusion, he offers what could be a concrete solution in his mind to online radicalisation. He opines that the ongoing online extremist indoctrination can only be countered by an online de-radicalisation. To work out an effective and impacting counter-narrative, he avers, we need to channelise digital media  websites, online newspapers, blogs, wikis, internet TV and most importantly social media.

Indeed, without an online counter-narrative, we cannot tackle the onslaught of the extremist Islamist narratives. But it is very unsettling that no such strategy has been evolved to control the ongoing digital radicalisation even in the US, UK or India. Ironically, this is too difficult a task for even these countries of the best tech-savvy people. One still fails to understand it. If the government-led high-tech teamwork is not capable enough to battle the jihadist radicalisation, no wonder that the executives from Twitter, Telegram, Apple Snapchat, Facebook, MTV to Buzzfeed still fail to tackle the online onslaught of the Islamic State.

The author is a scholar of Comparative Religion, Classical Arabic and Islamic sciences, cultural analyst and researcher in Media and Communication Studies. Write to him at grdehlavi@gmail.com
Scope: Provide the Owner with culvert replacements and safety improvements to County Road 239A at Swift Creek. The improvements include replacing of existing culverts, construction of headwalls and guardrails, and constructing an asphaltic concrete surface on the existing unpaved road-way, and guardrail installation as shown on the Drawings; performing earthwork associated with the improvements; placing reinforced concrete pipe; and providing pavement striping, signage, seeding, sodding, and maintenance of traffic.
Hello readers! We are coming to meet you again. After the successful ZUK Z1 meetups back in April before the launch of the smartphone in May, we are teaming up with the folks from Lenovo once again, who will be introducing their next version of the smartphone in the country soon.

Lenovo Zuk Z1 running Cyanogen OS was launched in India at a competitive price tag and was a huge hit in the price range.

Whoever gets to be at the meet up will be the first bunch of people to experience and spend some time with the upcoming product. FoneArena team will also be present at the event.

If you are interested in being a part of our meet up in a city near you, go ahead and RSVP in the below form. Please double check and make sure you are RSVPing for the right city!

[Update: You can signup for meetup here.]

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the meetup has been postponed. We will announce the new dates shortly.
Samsung is all set to launch Z2, its next budget Tizen OS smartphone in India tomorrow. Now the press shots of the smartphone has surfaced online. It shows a family design similar to other Samsung smartphones with 4G and Samsung branding on the back. It also has Samsungs signature home button along with capacitive touch buttons.

The phone is said to come with new Money Transfer app and also its latest S Bike Mode that is available on most other budget Galaxy smartphones.

Samsung Z2 rumored specifications

4-inch (800  480 pixels) WVGA AMOLED display

1.5 GHz quad-core processor

1GB RAM, 8GB internal memory, expandable memory with microSD

Tizen OS 2.4

Dual SIM

8MP rear camera with LED Flash

VGA front-facing camera

4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS

1500mAh battery

The Samsung Z2 is rumored to be priced at Rs. 4,499 and could be Samsungs most affordable 4G smartphone. We should know all the details about the phone when it launches tomorrow.

Source
Vodafone India today announced that it will activate new prepaid and postpaid connections immediate using AADHAR-based e-KYC solution that requires just the AADHAR number of the person along with their fingerprint to get the Know Your Customer (KYC) details.

Vodafone India said that it has developed a special app that enables retailers to activate customers using e-KYC. It will be available across 4,500 select Vodafone stores and Vodafone mini stores from Wednesday, August 24th, 2016.

Beginning September 2016, this paperless validation and activation facility will be rolled out in all 10,000 plus Vodafone branded stores in urban and rural areas and also across all multi brand outlets, pan India, in a phased manner.

This e-KYC solution eliminates the need for paper based documentation, which often takes time to collate and submit, ensures better confidentiality and privacy of customer information and radically reduces the waiting time for a new connection, leading to an overall superior customer experience.

Commenting on the new menthod, Sandeep Kataria, Director  Commercial, Vodafone India said:

We are all set to delight customers with the benefits of the e-KYC led paperless process. Customers walking in for a new connection at our stores will walk out talking in just a few minutes. We had partnered with the Department of Telecom (DoT) to pilot the AADHAR based e-KYC solutions in and tested it successfully in two circles. Effective Wednesday, 24th August, we are rolling it out across the country. The use of e-KYC will drastically cut down on delays in activating new connections because of infrastructure challenges like power cuts, transporting volumes of paper, lack of photocopying and photography facilities. It will also strengthen the verification process as there will be no room for any manual error.
We know some visitors come to the website because a domain name leads them to here. If you are interested in buying 
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore (Ret.), who was the Joint Katrina Task Force commander, weighed in on the aftermath from the flooding in southern Louisiana.

Honore explained that along with the direct impact on Louisiana residents, their families and homes, the flooding also affected a tremendous amount of local businesses.

This is a real tragedy that has happened here in this flood because its taken out so many of our local businesses  about 7,300 businesses in the flood zone we estimate, are now closed. People are not going to go to work there today because they have nothing to sell and they cant do business and about 60% of our people here work in small businesses so it has a cascading effect, Honore told the FOX Business Networks Sandra Smith.

According to Honore, the school system in the area was affected as well.

In some parishes nearly three-quarters of schools were under water and we have to find alternative places for children to go to school.

Honore responded to criticisms of President Obamas decision not to cut his vacation on Marthas Vineyard short to survey the damage in the region.

As a military guy having done this twice while in uniform, deal with a major disaster, now as a volunteer here on the ground and a resident of Baton Rouge, Ive come to a resounding conclusion. We do not need presidents doing search and rescue. We ought to make it a rule, we dont need them on the ground, we need to be able to spend those assets saving peoples lives. What we do need from these presidents is the authority for the federal government, just like FEMA did after this storm and during this storm, to get on the ground early.

Honore then discussed the insufficient funding making it to Louisiana residents to get them back in their homes.

And were going to have to get FEMA to open the books up a little bit because the amount of recovery money theyve been paying is too small to help these people get back in their homes.

Honore gave kudos to many in the private sector that have donated time and money to helping those impacted by the flooding.

We have companies that have been reaching out from throughout America. Tyson, to mention oneCoca-Cola, theyve all stepped up. Budweiser turning their distributors into making water. And theyre taking care of their employees.

Honore then spoke of the ways Americans across the country can help support flood victims in Louisiana through the recovery process.

Well the quickest way to help is donations through the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, which the governor has commissioned to accept donations, as well as through the American Red Cross. The Red Cross estimates they will spend $30 million here, about $10 million a week as long as we have people in shelters and taking food out to people in the communities. But reach out through your church, where you work, everybody around here, everywhere you go is looking out for their neighbors, looking out for their employees.
Trying to schedule a meeting with a large group of people is basically the worst. Microsoft wants to make it easier in Office 365.

Redmond has signed an agreement to acquire Genee, an artificial-intelligence-powered scheduling service. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Microsoft plans to leverage this technology to "accelerate intelligent experiences" in Office 365, according to a blog post from Corporate Vice President of Outlook and Office 365 Rajesh Jha.

The existing Genee service will shut down on Sept. 1, and will no longer send users reminders and agendas after that date. Any calendar entries created by Genee before the shutdown will remain on your schedule.

"The Genee team will take the valuable experiences and lessons that you taught us to Microsoft, where we'll continue to build amazing next generation intelligent experiences," Genee Co-founders Ben Cheung and Charles Lee, who plan to join Microsoft, wrote in their announcement.

Launched in 2014, Genee aims to simplify the time-consuming task of scheduling (and rescheduling) meetings," Jha wrote. "It's especially useful for large groups and for when you don't have access to someone's calendar."

How does it work, exactly? Genee uses "natural language processing and optimized decision-making algorithm" to mimic a real-life assistant. Say you need to schedule a meeting with a potential customer. Just send that person an email and copy Genee, like you would a personal assistant.

"Genee understands that you want to 'Find a time to meet with Diana for coffee next week' and will streamline the process by emailing her directly with appropriate options that work with your calendar and preferences," Jha explained. "Genee will even send out the meeting invite on your behalf  freeing up your time."

Meanwhile, this isn't Microsoft's first crack at simplifying meeting scheduling. The software giant late last year released an Outlook add-on dubbed FindTime, which simplifies the process of finding a meeting time that works for all parties involved.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
Some people look at bankruptcy as an easy solution to their financial woes, but in reality, bankruptcy is no picnic. A bankruptcy filing will remain on your credit report for seven years following a Chapter 13 repayment plan and 10 years following a Chapter 7 liquidation. During that time, you may find it difficult to get approved for a mortgage, rental, or car loan, and even if you are approved to borrow money, it will most likely be at an unfavorable rate. So if you'd rather avoid bankruptcy and the financial repercussions that come with it, here are five tips to follow.

IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES.

1. Create -- and stick to -- a budget

If you don't know where all of your money goes, you're more likely to overspend, and when that happens, you run the risk of not being able to pay your bills in full. By sticking to a budget, you'll have a better idea of how you're spending your money and whether you're spending too much.

On a basic level, creating a budget means listing your various expenses and estimating how much you're spending in each category, but there are plenty of tools and tips to help make your budgeting efforts even more successful. Ultimately, an accurate budget can help you avoid spending more money than you actually bring in.

2. Live below your means

Creating a budget can help keep your spending in check, but if you're serious about avoiding bankruptcy, your goal shouldn't just be to not spend more money than you make. Rather, you should always aim to reserve a portion of your paycheck for savings -- ideally, 10% or more. Just because you technically earn enough to swing a $2,000 monthly mortgage payment, for example, doesn't mean that you should actually stretch yourself to that limit. Spending your entire paycheck means leaving yourself without a cushion in the face of unanticipated expenses.

Imagine, for instance, that your car suddenly needs more expensive repairs than your budget allows for. If you don't have any wiggle room in your budget, you'll risk coming up short on your bills.

3. Don't rely on credit cards

There are certain benefits to using credit cards, like racking up rewards points and having an easy way to keep track of the things you buy. But if you're going to use a credit card, do so because it's convenient -- not because you don't have the money to buy whatever it is you're looking to purchase.

Charging things you can't afford is a good way to embark on a slippery slope toward bankruptcy. You might start by charging one or two smaller items, thinking you'll pay them off in a few months' time. But what happens if you do the same thing month after month? Before you know it, you could find yourself deep in the throes of credit card debt. A much smarter way to use credit cards is to pledge never to charge anything you can't pay off in full by the time your bill comes due.

4. Unload the expenses you can't keep up with

Do you own a home where the maintenance costs seem to rise by the day? Are you now on a first-name basis with your local auto mechanic? Bailing on a major money pit might be the key to helping you avoid bankruptcy in the long term. If you're struggling to cover certain expenses, you're often better off cutting your losses and pursuing more affordable options.

5. Negotiate your existing debt

If you've reached the point where your debt has piled up and you can no longer keep up with your payments, there may be an option to explore before resorting to bankruptcy: negotiating and settling your debts. While there are debt-settlement firms that can guide you through this process, they also cost money, so it's worth first discussing things with your lenders on your own. You can start by asking your credit card companies for an interest-rate reduction, or requesting that your lenders write off a portion of your debt, and accept a lower payment in total.

Now you may be wondering why a lender or credit card company would even be willing to negotiate in the first place, but the truth is, if you file for bankruptcy, these parties risk waiting a long time to get their money, or not getting it at all. Your lenders might be amenable to some sort of settlement if you can sell them on the fact that it's in their best interest.

Remember, bankruptcy isn't a magical get-out-of-jail-free card. There are serious consequences to filing, While some people have no choice but to go this route, taking steps to avoid bankruptcy will put you in a much healthier financial situation in general.

The $15,834 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $15,834 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after.Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies.

Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Parents across America have sharpened their No. 2 pencils and completed their math homework in preparation for the back-to-school shopping season. Data show shoppers are ready to dole out more green as they prep their students for a new school year.

While kids are still relishing summers last rays, parents on the hunt for the hottest back-to-school gadgets and gear are finally willing to stock up on fresh supplies rather than simply re-use last years items.

Were seeing a very resilient and eager shopper at the low to mid-income levels, and that clearly is an indicator that back-to-school will be a very productive season for the retailers, said PricewaterhouseCoopers Steven Barr, retail and consumer sector leader in an interview with FOXBusiness.com.

Ahead of the 2014 and 2015 school years, parents tightened their purse strings on school supplies for a number of reasons, but this year is different. The trend emerging among back-to-school shoppers is in line with economic data from the second quarter showing consumers as a whole began to feel more confident during the period, demonstrating more willingness to spend their cash as opposed to saving it.

The latest figures from the Commerce Department showed both consumer spending and personal income levels on the rise from the prior month in June, while retail sales jumped nearly 2% from the same period in 2015.

Parents are expected to spend a grand total of $75.8 billion on back-to-school items, up from $68 billion last year, according to the National Retail Federation, which said while families are looking for bargains, theyre less worried about the economy now than they have been in the past.

We fully expect retailers to be aggressive with offering great deals both in stores and online for back-to-school shoppers. And retailers will keep a close eye on inventory levels as families spread out their shopping throughout the summer, NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said.

Indeed, while kids step back into the classroom, retailers have taken note of distinct trends emerging in shopping habits this year. Within the technology space, students are on the hunt for fewer devices that can do more, according to Office Depots Petter Knutrud, senior vice president of merchandising.

Over the last two or three years, tablets were rather popular with middle school to early-college students. What were seeing is a meaningful decline around 7% to 8% in tablets, but almost an identical uptick in laptops, he said.

Driving that switch is a desire to own technology thats become more integrated, offering users the ability to convert their laptops into tablets and vice versa. Lower price points, better battery life, and lighter building materials are also fueling the trend.

While shoppers hunt for the latest and greatest gadgets, Knutrud has also noticed shoppers snapping up paper products as students and teachers alike become more adept at integrating learning experiences across technology platforms and pen and paper.

Year after year, were surprised that there is no decline in paper-based products, he said. We sell tens of millions of notebooks and binders, and its because educators understand its important for students to be writing in order to learn and retain information instead of doing it all digitally.

Following the overall trend of stocking up this back-to-school season, NRF data show families will rely less this year on discount stores, though its still the No. 1 destination followed by clothing stores, online shops, and office-supply retailers. Shoppers are also expected to spend most of their budgets on apparel and electronics, followed by shoes and school supplies. Overall, online shopping is expected to see a 30% jump from last year, momentum PwCs Barr attributes to kids of Millennial parents entering the back-to-school age range.

Still, while technology has made shopping for products during the hectic seasons both faster and easier, Knutrud said foot traffic at Office Depot stores across the country remains robust around the back-to-school season. Simply put, students still enjoy picking from an assortment of colorful folders, binders, and backpacks. He said one of the biggest days for his company is the day students go back to school when parents return to the stores to stock up on last-minute or forgotten items, or off-the-list supplies teachers request during the first week of class.
Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky. Image source: Johnson & Johnson.

This year, we've witnessed all three major U.S. stock market indexes hit new all-time highs, which is nothing short of amazing considering the year began with the worst two-week tumble in recorded history and culminated with all three major U.S. indexes losing at least 10% of their value through mid-February from the beginning of the year.

But the long-term lesson is simple: The buy-and-hold investor usually triumphs. Since 1950, we've borne witness to 35 stocks market corrections of at least 10%, when rounded to the nearest integer, and in each and every instance, we've watched as stock market corrections have been buried by economic growth and bull market rallies. Smart investors understand that stock valuations have a tendency to rise over time, which is why they're always on the lookout for high-quality stocks.

Could this be the first $1 trillion company?

Still, the one psychological mark that continues to be elusive for investors is the $1 trillion valuation mark. You could arguably say the race is on to reach this lofty ceiling, with expected contenders like Appleand Alphabet, the parent company of Google, leading the way. But, don't ignore healthcare conglomerate Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), which currently finds itself among the 10 largest companies in the world with a market valuation of $328 billion as of Friday. If the cards fall in J&J's favor, it could become the first company to add 12 zeroes behind its valuation.

How, you ask? There are three factors working in its favor.

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Product inelasticity

Economic cycles are inevitable in the U.S. economy. Although upswings tends to last a bit longer than downswings when we're talking about bull and bear markets, the U.S. economy has entered a recession, on average, about every six years since 1929. Johnson & Johnson, though, provides products that are considered inelastic, meaning whether the economy is running on all cylinders or struggling, it tends to generate a consistent amount of growth and cash flow. In plainer terms, it's pretty close to recession-proof.

Think about this from another angle. The consumer can't choose when they're going to get sick, or what type of illness they'll develop. That alone would imply that two of J&J's three operating segments -- pharmaceuticals and medical devices -- should do well in a robust or recessionary economy. J&J's consumer product segment is the only area where some weakness could be observed, but even here we're talking about consumer health products like Band-Aids that tend to be mostly resistant to downward pricing and demand pressures.

A number of companies with larger current market valuations than J&J are more susceptible to recessions, which could allow Johnson & Johnson to close this valuation gap over time.

Image source: Getty Images.

2. High-growth drugs

Secondly, don't underestimate the growth or pricing power of Johnson & Johnson's pharmaceutical segment.

Between 2009 and mid-2014, J&J brought 14 novel therapies to market, of which seven became blockbuster drugs (i.e., annual sales of $1 billion or more). Looking forward, J&J is forecasting that by 2019, it'll submit new drug applications for up to 10 drugs it believes have blockbuster potential. One of the most recent of these is Darzalex, a multiple myeloma drug that demonstrated an intriguing response rate of 29% in patients who had taken a median of five prior lines of therapy and progressed. Label expansion could easily push Darzalex into the category with more than $1 billion in sales per year.

Another fast-growing blockbuster in J&J's arsenal is blood cancer drug Imbruvica, which is co-owned with AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV). J&J originally partnered with Pharmacyclics on the drug's development more than four years ago. Imbruvica today already has a few label indications under its belt, and it may have more to come. Peak annual sales could touch upwards of $7 billion, which bodes well for AbbVie, which purchased Pharmacyclics, and J&J.

What investors need to understand is that these blockbusters from J&J have a long runway of a decade or more before generic competition is introduced. J&J can use the cash flow generated from these drugs to do more internal research, as well as seek collaborations or bolt-on-style acquisitions to complement its pipeline.

Likewise, J&J's pricing power looks to remain strong since Congress could run into many roadblocks in an attempt to cap or control prescription drug pricing.

Image source: Getty Images.

3. Long-tail medical device growth

Finally, Johnson & Johnson has a long-tail growth opportunity in medical devices that could give it the final push toward a $1 trillion valuation.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, America's elderly population is on track to nearly double to 83.7 million people between 2012 and 2050. As life expectancies lengthen, the reliance of the elderly on the healthcare network is also presumably going to increase. That's where J&J's medical devices come into play. J&J's leading position in orthopaedics via hip and knee replacements, as well as spine and trauma surgery, could be a major catalyst in the decades to come.

Don't overlook the impact of the Affordable Care Act in improving access to medical care for the general population. In just two-and-a-half years, we've witnessed the uninsured rate fall by more than six percentage points to 11%, according to Gallup. This would represent an all-time low reading for the national pollster. If patients have easier access to medical care, J&J could be a continued beneficiary.

However, it's important to keep in mind that J&J is traditionally not a fast-growing, high-volatility stock. It has no chance to double in valuation overnight. However, over time, and with continued drug and device innovation, J&J does have the chance to push forward toward a $1 trillion valuation -- maybe even before any other company.

A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early, in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.

Sean Williamshas no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen nameTMFUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle@TMFUltraLong.

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors.The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A and C shares), Apple, and Johnson and Johnson. It also has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Getty Images.

Over the past several quarters, Brazilian water and sanitation companyCompanhia de Saneamento Basico do Estado de Sao Paulo (Sabesp)(NYSE: SBS) has done what any company should when its operational environment turns south: It controlled what it could by cutting operational costs. Now that drought conditions have started to ease in the Sao Paulo region and currency effects have started to swing in its favor, Sabesp's results are improving in a big way. Let's take a quick look at the results from this past quarter as well as look at where the company goes from here.

Sabesp's results: The raw numbers

Results in millions, except per-share data. All financial results converted to U.S. dollars at $1 BRL=US$0.29. Data source: Sabesp quarterly earnings release.

It should be noted that this quarter does look a little better because of some currency tailwinds. Compared to the prior quarter, the Brazilian real has gained 6.8% on the the U.S. dollar. This is important for Sabesp because it generates all of its revenue in the local currency, but it has about 32% of its debts denominated in U.S. currency. So, as that currency gains traction, it's easier to pay off those debts. It's also important for U.S. investors in Sabesp because it pays its dividend in reals, so a stronger Brazilian currency means a higher dividend in U.S. dollars.

What happened with Sabesp this quarter?

There were two things that positively impacted Sabesp's results for this past quarter. The first one is the the easing of the drought conditions in the Sao Paulo region. After dealing with more than a year of severe drought conditions that impacted results, higher-than-historical average rainfall in six of the past nine months has helped to raise water levels atSabesp's major reservoirs. This has been very helpful because it has helped reduce the amount of lost revenue due to a water conservation program that was paying as high as a 30% bonus to customers that reduced total consumption by certain levels. This past quarter, we started to see a significant change in those reduction bonuses in over a year.

Image source: Sabesp investor presentation.

The second big factor has been a series of tariff increases over the past 12 months. Part of these tariff increases were in response to lower water levels in Sabesp's reservoirs, but it also was an effect of the billions or reals that the company is spending on upgrading and expanding its water and sewer infrastructure. Since June 2015, tariff rates across Sabesp's system were up 15.2%, and the company just announced another 8.4% increase in May. These two were the largest factors that led to a 21.8% increase in revenue from this time last year.

Some other highlights of the quarter are:

Total water and sewer connections increased by 2.6% and 3.2%, respectively, compared to this time last year. This and less severe drought conditions led to a 5.4% increase in total billed volume for the company overall.

While overall expenses increased compared to this time last year, costs as a percentage of net revenue decreased from 83.3% in Q2 2015 to 76.1% this past quarter. Most of the increases in operational costs was related to higher provisions for the Sao Paulo Municipal Fund for Environmental Sanitation and Infrastructureas well as litigation provisions.

Reservoir levels this past quarter were their highest in over two years.

Looking ahead

This past quarter goes to show how bad things have been in the past several quarters. The company had been dealing with a rapidly plummeting foreign currency, severe drought conditions, and all while trying to do a massive infrastructure build program. That simple reversal of currency from a headwind to a tailwind and the elimination of the high incentive bonus levels for customers have gone a long way in improving the company's overall results. If we can continue to see modest improvements in currency effects and a return to normal operations, then it should make the infrastructure spending program a bit more palatable.

Half of the company's goal of improving total water and sewer connections in the Sao Paulo region has been accomplished as it now has a 100% water delivery and treatment rate. The big spending push now is to increase total sewer connections, increase sewer treatment capacity, and improve water supply. Sabesp expects to spend $3.9 billion between now and 2020 to achieve that goal. Once complete, it will increase its sewer connections from 86% collected -- and 78% treated -- to 95% collected and treated. Once this goal is achieved, the company should be able to significantly reduce its spending program and free up cash to be used elsewhere.

A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.

Tyler Crowe has no position in any stocks mentioned.You can follow him at Fool.comor on Twitter@TylerCroweFool.

The Motley Fool recommends Companhia de Saneamento Basico. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
IMAGE SOURCE: TOTAL SA.

The oil-price crash over the past two years and subsequent struggles of oil and gas companies to remain profitable has left many investors wary of investing in the industry. Believe it or not, though, some companies have emerged in relatively good shape and continue to reward investors with solid dividend yields.

Second-quarter earnings results from Valero Energy(NYSE: VLO),Total SA(NYSE: TOT), andNuStar Energy L.P.(NYSE: NS),should give you relative confidence that their high yields are here to stay.

Valero Energy

Valero Energy, an oil and gas refining and marketing company, reported $503 million in second-quarter earnings despite refining margins that dropped 35% per barrel year over year. Its refining operating income of $954 million just barely covered its refining operating expenses of over $900 million and is $1.2 billion lower than a year ago. Regardless, it maintained its 4.6% dividend and returned $683 million to its shareholders in the second quarter, which includes $282 million in dividend payouts and $401 million in share buybacks.

Valero felt comfortable in these shareholder returns because it generated $2.3 billion in cash during the quarter. Company leadership attributes these strong cash flows to safe and low-cost operations in "advantaged" locations in the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, its cash on hand and temporary cash investments increased to $4.9 billion during the quarter, giving it considerable flexibility for the future.

Lower oil prices might improve refining crack spreads and improve refining margins in the second half. Either way, though, the company is committed to returning 75% of net income to investors this year. You should feel comfortable that Valero will maintain its dividend for the long term.

Total SA

Total SA, a large integrated oil company, delivered strong second-quarter earnings of $2.1 billion and operating cash flows of $2.8 billion. From the perspective of its 5.7% dividend, the second quarter was particularly promising. Despite paying out nearly $1.25 billion to its shareholders, Total still increased its cash and cash equivalents by $2.6 billion.

The results were driven by more than doubling its first quarter upstream operating income and continuing to drive down costs. In fact, the company expects to surpass its cost reduction goal for the year of $2.4 billion.

On top of that, Total is well positioned to increase its future earnings, both because of cost reductions and savvy investments. For example, in the second quarter, Total obtained a 30% interest in the giant al-Shaheen field off the coast of Qatar, which is underpinned by a 25-year contract. Total has also sought out ventures in Africa and green energy as it develops its strategy for long-term profits. Its dividend seems very secure.

NuStar Energy

NuStar Energy,an oil and gas midstream and storage provider, boasts an impressive dividend of 9.3%. While it's not uncommon for limited partnerships to boast such high yields, NuStar had a solid second quarter despite a difficult operating environment that makes it a good long-term pick for dividend hunters.

One source of confidence is simply the fact that its distributablecash flow of nearly $93 million more than covered its $85 million distribution, and NuStar expects this trend to continue for the remainder of 2016. One reason that its cash flows remained positive in the second quarter is that it boasts a large array of pipelines and storage facilities that can generate income. For example, while its crude throughputs dropped in the second quarter, its throughput of refined products increased, which helped offset potential losses.

Long term, NuStar has several projects coming online in 2017, such as the expansion of existing terminals and new pipeline development. These should add to its distributable cash flows next year and allow it to continue to cover its distribution.

A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.

David Lettis owns shares of Valero Energy. The Motley Fool recommends Total. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Who knew that Tom Selleck was such a softy? At the Emmy consideration screening for "Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise," which is nominated for Outstanding Music Composition, the macho actor wiped tears from his eyes as he took the stage for the Q&A portion of the evening.

It had been a while since Selleck had seen the ninth film in the franchise, and he unabashedly admitted to being so touched by it, he was crying at his own movie -- but laughing, as well, in the humorous parts.

In fact, he said the event at the Director's Guild in Hollywood was such shot a shot in the arm that chances are good that he and his co-screenwriter Michael Brandman will sit down and write the script for the tenth movie.

Movies one through eight were a little easier to create because the films, which are based on the novels by the late Robert B. Parker, were based on a specific book. The ninth movie was a little trickier to do because there were no more books and they had to start from scratch.

"It is hard with me doing 'Blue Bloods,'" Selleck said. "I don't become someone else but I pretend I do. But, basically, I do walk in that character's shoes. [So for Jesse Stone], we start with, 'Well, do we want to do a bank robbery?' And we waste two or three months doing that. Then we say, 'Let's do a character study on where every character in the recurring story is at. That's going to lend itself to something where the arena will come to us.'"

Selleck first became interested in playing Jesse Stone when Brandman brought him a copy of the novel Stone Cold. It isn't the first book in the series, but it is the first movie that they made.

"I just read it and said, 'I have to play this guy,'" Selleck said. "Jesse was just so wonderfully flawed. As Robert Parker, who became a friend, put it, the thing that keeps him from self-pity, which is not a color you want to play very often as an actor, is Jesse's sense of irony. And, I think, it was that that really made me want to play him."

A key element in all the movies is Jesse's relationship with his dog Reggie. But Reggie died -- as did Joe the Dog who played him -- and "Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise" opens with the chief of the Paradise Police Department sitting at his grave, which is the reverse of how Jesse found Reggie. Reggie was sitting by the body of his murdered owner.

"Reggie was a major part of his life," Selleck says. "Golden retriever's love affection and this dog had problems. Jesse never petted him until, I think, the last movie. The dog finally got on the bed and Jesse actually petted him and then the dog dies."

But Jesse gets a new roommate, named Steve, once "Lost in Paradise" gets going when Jesse is going through cold cases and sees photos of another dog sitting by the side of his murdered owner, a married prostitute, which inspires Jesse to take the case.

"In a Jesse Stone movie, you will never see a dog doing cute things," Selleck says. "Largely, you will see a dog with a closed mouth staring at a piece of hot dog and if you cut to that dog at the right time, you will read in a human thought. That is not easy for a dog to do. I am not trivializing that. Both dogs we lucked out with. The second dog [Ned] was also new and a little timid and that worked out very well for the story. Both dogs are the best animals I've ever worked with and neither of them were pros."

"Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise," is available on DVD. Then, catch Selleck when "Blue Bloods" returns for its seventh season on Sept. 23 on CBS.
Teens with dying parents don't benefit as much from hospice services as older members of the family do, a new study suggests.

The needs of teenagers with parents in hospice are often not met or even assessed, the study found - even though the hospices take a team approach to care delivery that's designed to manage the physical, psychosocial and spiritual concerns of dying patients and their families.

Most of the surveyed adolescents with a parent in hospice had zero or limited contact with staff, researchers reported in the Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing.

"In hospice, the unit of care is to the patient and family, but kids are being overlooked," said study author M. Murray Mayo of Ursuline College's Breen School of Nursing in Pepper Pike, Ohio.

Mayo's team interviewed 30 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18, living in the midwest U.S., who had a parent receiving hospice care. The team asked open-ended questions about how the youngsters learned their parent was dying and how they navigated the stress with ongoing responsibilities inside and outside of school. Twelve teens reported they had no interaction at all with hospice staff. Timing of providers' visits was largely to blame.

"Hospice visits happen between 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., and kids aren't there," Mayo said. "Efforts need to be made on the kids' time to say 'we're here for you, too.'"

Seven of the children reported "in-passing interaction" - brief contact that lacked meaningful support.

For example, a 16-year-old boy whose mother was dying of cancer told researchers: "Um yeah, we talked about a few things, they said a few questions to me, I mean, I don't know what they said, but we had a few (words exchanged)."

A 12 year-old boy whose father was a hospice inpatient said: "I was really curious, like everyone was. I asked the nurse how much time he had, and I got really mad because the nurse only said, 'Maybe if he is lucky, three weeks.'" The teen did not know how close his father was to death; he died six days later.

Six reported "engaged interaction" with positive, ongoing contact with at least one hospice staff member.

Six had "formal interactions;" they were referred to professionals, such as bereavement counselors or art therapists.

Adolescents "are willing to talk, and they have something to say," Mayo said, pointing out that teens' willingness to participate in this study is instructive to providers.

Outreach before a parent's death, experts say, can have long-term benefits. "A little prevention could go a long way to decreasing post-death suffering for these kids," said co-author Denice Kopchak Sheehan of Kent State University.

Several studies suggest that the death of a parent during adolescence can result in psychological issues that stretch into adulthood, including depression, self-injury and post-traumatic stress.

"No healthcare or social service professional ever talked with me when I was 15 and my father was dying of brain cancer," said Barry J. Jacobs, a psychologist and co-author of the newly-released AARP Meditations for Caregivers. "I didn't have any guidance for grieving my father's death, and this had long-term detrimental consequences for my emotional development. Teens need the outreach efforts of hospice programs."

At JourneyCare, the largest hospice provider in Illinois, social workers attempt to talk to all of a patient's children- no matter what age. Mary Ann Green, a JourneyCare project director and licensed counselor, stresses that normalizing the experience of illness and death is crucial for teens at an age when "fitting in" is a priority.

"Being able to be truthful and say that we can't fix it is very empowering to a teen, because we can sit there in the pain with them," Green said. "It's about listening, giving them the opportunity to share what they are feeling and validating their feelings. They want someone to understand that it's painful, it's frightening, and it feels out of control."

JourneyCare social workers find success connecting with teens through "legacy making": making a scrapbook together, encouraging letter writing, or producing a video or a song.

When teens of the dying find meaningful support and ways to channel their frustration, fear and sadness, Green says that they find resiliency unmatched among their peers. "They are way beyond their years in things they have to do and things they have to burden."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2btAAsq Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing, August 2016.
About 70 people have died after receiving treatment at a German cancer clinic where authorities were investigating three deaths already linked to the center earlier this month.

Central European News (CEN) reported that investigators are trying to determine whether cancer or a controversial substance called Bromopyruvic acid caused the deaths at the western German clinic, which is located near the border of Belgium and the Netherlands,and specializes in alternative therapy. Some holistic cancer treatment proponents believe the acid can eradicate cancer cells, but other doctors argue its highly poisonous and not fully researched, the news website reported.

Klaus Ross, a medical appliance seller and technician, ran the clinic. He was schooled as an alternative biological doctor and recruited patients who were told conventional medicine wouldnt help them beat cancer. Ross also had a license to administer injections and intravenous therapy, CEN reported.

Investigators suspected something may be amiss when they received notice of three deaths and two hospitalizations that occurred between July 25 and 27 after those individuals visited the Brueggen clinic. More families came forward, bringing the suspected deaths linked with the clinic to 70. Most of the bodies would need to be dug up for analysis, CEN reported.

Ross list of services included cancer and pain-reducing therapy, as well as drug addiction treatment. He charged about 10,000 Euros, or more than $11,300, for a 10-week course of treatment.


The rate at which women die in Texas from pregnancy-related complications is higher than in any other US stateor even in the rest of the developed world, reports the Guardian.

A study in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology found that the maternal mortality rate in Texas doubled in a two-year span, from about 18 per 100,000 births in 2010a year with 72 deathsto about 36 in 2012, which saw 148 deaths.

In the 48 states not including Texas and California, the rate was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2014, up 27 percent from 18.8 in 2000. California was the only state to see a drop.

The authors say the hike in the death rate in Texasno other state saw a similar uptickis difficult to explain "in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval," per the Guardian.

The Huffington Post notes the rise coincided with the state slashing health care funding for women. Women's health advocates blame a Republican-led state legislature that gutted Texas' family-planning funding by two-thirds$73.6 million out of its $111.5 million was cut in 2011, the year that maternal deaths spikedforcing the shuttering of 80 clinics that provided birth control, cancer screenings, and other services.

Dr. Lisa Hollier, who heads a state task force looking into the problem, told the Dallas Morning News that they don't "have a specific answer at this time." Dr.

Daniel Grossman of the University of Texas at Austin called the study findings a "tragedy" and an "embarrassment" and told the Morning News, "This is a problem we should be able to address and fix."

This article originally appeared on Newser: Texas' Maternal Mortality Spike Hard to Explain 'in Absence of War'
Max, a poodle and cocker spaniel mix, went to the groomer for a routine visit, but the 7-year-old rescue never came home after he was soaked in chemicals at the back of the store. The incident isnt the first pet death at Shaggy Dog Puppies & Supplies in Shelby Township, Fox 2 Detroit reported.

Dennis and Maureen St. Clair dropped Max off at Shaggy Dog on Thursday morning, but they didnt receive a call in the afternoon to pick him up. Concerned, Dennis drove to the shop.

"I saw the groomer, her name was Cindy, and she was coming out the back door with a dog wrapped in blankets and just soaking wet," Dennis told Fox 2. "And I looked and said, Oh God, I hope it isn't my dog, and it was Max, foaming at the mouth."

The couple had never had any issues with the groomers before, and Max went in last week to have his coat trimmed and nails clipped.

When Dennis saw Max, the dog had chemical burns all over his body and his newly groomed fur was falling off. Dennis rushed Max to the veterinarian, where he died.

Shaggy Dog Puppies told the St. Clairs that Max had been barking too much, so they put him in a utility closet and somehow gallons of chemicals spilled. The couple was not told what chemicals were involved or why no one called them sooner.

"I can see if the dog is barking, put it in a room, fine," Dennis told Fox 2. "But with chemicals? There shouldn't be anything in that room. There's no excuse for that."

Several years ago, another dog was killed at Shaggy Dog after it was left in a cage with a hot dryer, the St. Clairs lawyer told the news station.

The owner of Shaggy Dog offered the St. Clairs a new puppy, Fox 2 reported, and the couple has filed a police report with the goal of shutting down the business.
A Washington animal shelter has launched a campaign with a local Starbucks that banks on caffeine lovers opening their hearts to a fellow java fan, who happens to have four legs and a wagging tail.

Each Tuesday a volunteer takes a dog from the Kitsap Human Society to a local Starbucks in Washington for a Puppuccino and the chance to connect with a fellow patron. The specialty drink is on the coffee chains secret menu and is a small cup filled with whipped cream.

According to thedodo.com, the chosen Starbucks store posts signs ahead of the dogs arrival to boost chances of potential adoption. The website reported that even if the visit does not end in adoption, the shelter makes sure the dog gets a treat and plenty of exposure.

The shelter also features the dog enjoying his Puppuccino on Instagram.
A violent mob terrorized Donald Trump donors but the Mainstream Media ignored the story. It happened Friday night at a fundraiser held at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Some of Trumps supporters were punched and spat upon, The Hill reports. Others were pelted by garbage and taunted by the angry mob.

Click here to join Todds American Dispatch: a must-read for Conservatives!

The vicious thugs actually attacked elderly women. What kind of a lowlife does something like that?

Local news outlets reported that demonstrators blocked Trumps motorcade and one person actually jumped on the hood of a car.

The anti-American miscreants even burned the U.S. flag  as some of the crowd screamed, F*** the U.S.A.

A reporter for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune posted video of the mob scene online. It clearly shows Trump donors and supporters being manhandled and terrorized.

However, the newspaper dismissed the facts clearly shown in its own video. They reported that Trump supporters were harshly confronted.

The national media altogether ignored the story. There were no breaking news banners. There were no pundits demanding that Hillary Clinton denounce the violence. It was as if nothing happened outside the convention center.

Minneapolis Police say protesters started a fire and damaged one of the doors at the Convention Center. One person leaving the fundraiser was robbed of their cell phone.

And yet not a single person was arrested.

Fires were set. People were assaulted. A presidential candidates motorcade was attacked. But nobody was thrown in jail?

Why not? Were the police given orders to stand down? If so, who gave the order? Who organized the protest? Was this a Rent-A-Mob? If so, who paid the bills?

Those are questions the mainstream media should be asking, but they did not and they will not.

Thats because what happened in Minneapolis does not fit their narrative. They believe Trump and his supporters are morally tainted. And I suspect the mainstream media believes they got what they had coming to them in the Twin Cities.

Be safe out there, Trump supporters. Be safe.
Amid rampant online speculation about Hillary Clinton's health, one New York Times columnist has a solution  simply get Google to fix the search results.

The theories about Clintons health, often under the hashtag #HillarysHealth, have been gaining traction on social media in particular.

Democrats have dismissed the claims as a mix of conspiracy theories and misinformation. But now New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo has called on Google to step in.

Google should fix this. It shouldn't give quarter to conspiracy theorists, he tweeted.

A year ago, Clintons doctor said she was in excellent physical condition.

But that has not stopped speculation, with some Republicans including Donald Trump weighing in.

Trump said in a speech last week that Clinton lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS, and all the many adversaries we face.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said last week on Fox News, Go online and put down, Hillary Clinton illness, and take a look at the videos yourself.

Clintons health first became a matter of scrutiny when she suffered a concussion as secretary of state. Recently, coughing bouts on the campaign trail and pictures of Clinton being helped up stairs by multiple aides have stoked further speculation.

Breitbart News first noted Manjoos tweet.
EXCLUSIVE: A senior executive at the Clinton Foundation left almost 150 telephone messages for Hillary Clintons top aide at the State Department within a two-year time frame, according to previously unpublished documents obtained by Fox News.

A review of State Department call logs for Cheryl Mills, the longtime Clinton confidant who served as chief of staff for the entirety of Clintons four-year tenure as Americas top diplomat, reflects at least 148 messages from Laura Graham  then the Clinton Foundations chief operating officer  between 2010 and 2012. No other individual or non-profit appears in the logs with anything like that frequency or volume, the review found.

One of the messages Graham left for Mills, in August 2011, referenced our boss  without further identifying that individual. Another, from January 2012, appeared to reference former President Clinton, using his initials: Please call. WJC is looking for her [Graham] and she wants to talk to you before she talks to him.

The telephone records were released by the State Department to the conservative advocacy group Citizens United as part of a long-running lawsuit over the Freedom of information Act.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said he could not provide a read-out of every one of those messages or every one of those calls, nor estimate how many of them were returned. But he acknowledged that Mills and Graham never shared the same boss and insisted the department always acted under Clinton to advance U.S. foreign policy interests, with no other intent in mind beyond that.

Secretary Clinton's ethics agreement at the time [she assumed office] did not preclude other State Department officials from engaging with, or having contact with, the Clinton Foundation, Toner said.

Absent additional detail, there is no evidence of any misconduct in the calls or contacts between Graham and Mills. But the records surfaced amid mounting questions about the relationship between the Clinton State Department and the Clinton foundation, and particularly about the role played by Mills.

It's an amazing thing that the State Department spokesperson would actually make an argument, said Citizens United President David Bossie, that Hillary Clinton would be obligated under an ethics agreement that the White House made her sign with the foundation but her top employees would not be under that same agreement. I find its just very Clintonesque.

Last week, the State Department acknowledged that in June 2012, Mills spent two days traveling to New York to interview job applicants at the foundation. The State Department said Mills volunteered to do so, but neither the department nor a spokesman for the Clinton presidential campaign, nor Millss attorney, would say whether Mills used annual leave or unpaid days to perform that work  or whether it was done on the taxpayers time.

The call logs reflect a wide cross-section of individuals angling for the secretarys ear, from celebrities like Sean Penn to elder statesmen of the Democratic Party like Vernon Jordan. The messages include a number averring to irksome home-renovation issues Mills was facing, and even one left by the chief of staffs mother, who told her daughter, through the intermediary of a State Department secretary, in September 2011: Please call. Hadnt heard from you in so long and was wondering if you are out of town.
Newly released emails reveal more instances of the Clinton Foundation appearing to reach out to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clintons State Department for favors involving wealthy donors  including Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain  according to a watchdog group that fought to obtain the emails.

Judicial Watch, which released the documents Monday, said in a statement that the messages show Clinton aide Huma Abedin provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state. The documents include exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department.

The exchange involving the crown prince of Bahrain occurred in June 2009. It started with top foundation official Doug Band notifying Abedin that the crown prince was coming to the U.S. and seeking a meeting. He noted he is a good friend of ours.

Abedin wrote back that the crown prince had asked to see Clinton through normal channels.

She added: I asked and she said she doesnt want to commit to anything for thurs or fri until she knows how she will feel. Also she says that she may want to go to ny and doesnt want to be committed to stuff in ny.

Two days later, Abedin wrote to Band saying they were offering up a morning meeting between Clinton and the crown prince.

As noted by Judicial Watch, the foundation website says the crown prince made a commitment to his own international scholarship program in 2005, championed by the Clinton Global Initiative. According to the site, this commitment was worth $32 million, in addition to other reported donations from the Kingdom of Bahrain.

A statement released Monday by the court of the crown prince said his pledge "happened years before and was wholly unrelated to any meeting with Secretary Clinton."

The Clinton campaign, though, pushed back on the Judicial Watch claims, pointing to the original Abedin email that said the crown prince went through normal channels.

"Once again this right-wing organization that has been going after the Clintons since the 1990s is distorting facts to make utterly false attacks, spokesman Josh Schwerin said in a statement. No matter how this group tries to mischaracterize these documents, the fact remains that Hillary Clinton never took action as Secretary of State because of donations to the Clinton Foundation."

The foundation, meanwhile, has tried to settle any conflict-of-interest questions by preparing a series of changes if Hillary Clinton is elected.

Following a foundation decision made public last week to no longer accept foreign or corporate donations if she wins, Bill Clinton issued a detailed memo Monday announcing other changes in the event his wife is elected president, including: He will step down from the board and no longer raise funds for it; the foundations international work funded by other government aid programs will be moved to other organizations; and he will step down from the board of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI).

He also said the upcoming September annual meeting for the Clinton Global Initiative America will be the last.

In its statement on Monday, Judicial Watch highlighted several other exchanges that it claimed showed Abedin helping provide access to donors who had given anywhere from $25,000 to $10 million to the foundation.

The release Monday follows another email release earlier this month by Judicial Watch. One of those exchanges showed Band trying to put a wealthy foundation donor in touch with the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon.

Such emails have fueled accusations from Republicans of a pay-to-play operation. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump  Hillary Clintons rival in the 2016 race  on Monday called for the foundation to be shut down,

It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history. What they were doing during Crooked Hillarys time as Secretary of State was wrong then, and it is wrong now. It must be shut down immediately, he said in a statement.

The Clinton campaign touted the foundation's contingency plans in hitting back at Trumps call Monday.

"The Foundation has already laid out the unprecedented steps the charity will take if Hillary Clinton becomes president, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said in a statement, making several demands of Trump in response:

Donald Trump needs to come clean with voters about his complex network of for-profit businesses that are hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to big banks, including the state-owned Bank of China, and other business groups with ties to the Kremlin. Donald Trump should stop hiding behind fake excuses and release his tax returns and immediately disclose the full extent of his business interests. He must commit to fully divesting himself from all of his business conflicts to ensure that he is not letting his own financial interests affect decisions made by his potential administration."

More emails, meanwhile, are in the pipeline for release. A federal judge in a Judicial Watch case earlier Monday ordered the State Department to expedite its review of some 14,900 emails uncovered by the FBI over the course of its investigation into Clinton's private email practices.

Those emails are part of the larger cache of documents not previously disclosed by Clinton, and are in addition to the roughly 55,000 emails turned over to federal investigators.

Editors Note: The first sentence of paragraph seven of this article has been changed to: As noted by Judicial Watch, the foundation website says the crown prince made a commitment to his own international scholarship program in 2005, championed by the Clinton Global Initiative.

Fox News Catherine Herridge and Matthew Dean and FoxNews.coms Judson Berger contributed to this report.
Perhaps the most endangered Senate incumbent this cycle, Mark Kirk, is technically running against two-term Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth for his Illinois seat  but the Republican's campaign focus has been as much about vilifying Donald Trump as it is about beating back his actual opponent.

Among elected Republicans working to put a chasm between themselves and the partys standard-bearer, Kirk has been at the vanguard.

The one-term senator fighting to hold onto the seat once held by President Obama was the first to un-endorse Trump  in early June  following the nominees ethnically charged criticism of the judge in a Trump University court case. Hes called Trump too bigoted and too racist for the job.

And Kirk was the first GOP senator to run an anti-Trump television ad, saying Mark Kirk bucked his party to say Donald Trump is not fit to be commander-in-chief.

Whether the efforts are enough to retain the support of blue-state voters who elevated him to the Senate in 2000 remains to be seen.

The Duckworth campaign has questioned Kirks motivations for bucking Trump  claiming he only dropped his support after Duckworth called him out  and whether the anti-Trump rhetoric is doing him much good.

There is no empirical evidence to back up any claim that Kirk is even benefiting from disassociating himself from Trump  Id say on the contrary, Kirk is losing this race on his own merits, Duckworth campaign spokesman Matt McGrath told Fox News.

But Kirk campaign manager Kevin Artl defended the candidates stance.

Senator Kirk believes that Donald Trump does not have the temperament or judgment to be our nations commander-in-chief, he said.

The race is considered very tight. One poll released in July from Republican-aligned Basswood Research showed Kirk edging Duckworth by a little over a point.

Kirk isnt holding back on his criticism of the sitting president, either. In an interview published in The State Journal Register over the weekend, Kirk hit the Obama administration for the delivery of a $400 million payment to Tehran, which critics have described as ransom for four American prisoners. Kirk said Obama was acting like the drug dealer-in-chief.

Meanwhile, the senator is balancing his criticism in the campaign with highlights of his own record in office.

Kirks television advertisement didnt just attack Trump; it also highlighted the moderate agenda Kirk claims to support. He backs abortion rights and tougher gun laws  as the only Republican senator who voted to prevent people on the terror watch list from purchasing a gun.

The Duckworth campaign accused Kirk of trying to pretend to be a Democrat.

Senator Kirk is attempting to obscure his record in an election year and wish away his long record of being a down-the-line Republican on economic issues that matter most to Illinois families, McGrath told Fox News. I dont think anyone buys that this is done out of anything more than political survival.

But Kirks campaign says the veteran has been a social moderate and fiscal conservative since the day he was elected to Congress in 2000.

His independent and thoughtful leadership in always putting Illinois families first run in stark contrast with Duckworths extreme partisanship and ineffectiveness, Artl told Fox News.

Duckworth  a veteran herself, who lost her legs in Iraq  comes with star-power endorsements including those of President Obama, Vice President Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Despite the Duckworth campaigns claim that Kirk is distancing himself from the Republican Party, the senator has collected endorsements from over 150 Republican leaders and activists including 2016 GOP presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

A Kasich spokesman said the governor has also raised money and campaigned for Kirk. Kirk is important for keeping majority control of the Senate and for creating bipartisan solutions to our nations challenges, he said.

Meanwhile, Trump is brushing off Kirks jabs at him in characteristic fashion. Ahead of a meeting with senators last month, he called the Illinois senator a loser.
The owner of a Missouri gun parts and accessories retailer said his Facebook and Instagram accounts were deleted without explanation over the last two weeks.

TJ Kirgin, head of Tactical Shit, said the companys Facebook account, with roughly 480,000 fans, was deactivated last week without warning or explanation. The companys Instagram account, which Kirgin said had 250,000 fans, was then deleted without warning on Wednesday. The Facebook account has since been restored, but the Instagram account remains deactivated.

Facebook purchased Instagram in April 2012.

We received no warning or indication of why Facebook unpublished our page last week, Kirgin said to the Washington Free Beacon. All it said was your page Tactical Shit has been unpublished. Thirty-six hours later our page was republished after a ton of media exposure combined with petitions of FB executive staff to help us since we were unfairly targeted.

Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon.
Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk slammed President Barack Obama and his administration Saturday for the delivery of a $400 million payment to Tehran in exchange for the release of four Americans who were held in Iran.

We cant have the president of the United States acting like the drug dealer in chief, Kirk, a Republican, said in an interview with The State Journal Register editorial board Tuesday. The story wasnt published until the weekend.

Giving clean packs of money to a  state sponsor of terror. Those 500-euro notes will pop up across the Middle East. .... Were going to see problems in multiple (countries) because of that money given to them, he added.

According to The Guardian, Kirks campaign echoed his comments in a statement.

Senator Kirk was referring to the Administrations decision to send pallets of cash, not even US dollars but euros and Swiss francs, in a clear ransom payment to Iran, worlds leading state sponsor of terrorism, Kirks campaign manager Kevin Artl said in a statement.

The decision sets an awful and dangerous international standard that should be investigated and the lack of transparency from the Administration clearly indicated they knew their actions were not above board.

Kirk and his fellow Republican lawmakers have characterized the cash transfer between Washington and Tehran as a ransom, while the Obama administration has defended it as leverage to secure the release of the four Americans.

The transfer, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was the first installment paid in a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a failed 1979 arms deal dating back from just before the Iranian revolution.

The cash flown to Iran consisted of euros, Swiss francs, and other currencies because U.S. law forbids transacting American dollars with Iran.

"Paying ransom to kidnappers puts Americans even more at risk," Kirk said in a statement earlier this month. "While Americans were relieved by Irans overdue release of illegally imprisoned American hostages, the White Houses policy of appeasement has led Iran to illegally seize more American hostages."

Kirks criticism of the Obama administration isnt unprecedented. The Chicago Tribune noted that Kirk slammed Obama after the Iran nuke deal was cemented last year, saying Obama wants to get nukes to Iran and used the presidents full name to take a shot at him.

He would apologize for his nuke comments because he said he had been pretty angry about the Iran deal.

Kirk is also in the middle of a re-election bid for his Senate seat. His opponent, Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth, came out and disavowed of Kirks comments about the Obama administration.

It's no surprise Mark Kirk is embracing a conspiracy theory first articulated by Donald Trump  one that has already been debunked by numerous fact checkers," her campaign said in a statement.

Kirk is planning to hold a hearing to examine the Iran cash transfer to see if any American taxpayer money is ending up in hands of terrorists.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from The Guardian.
A federal judge on Sunday blocked the Obama administrations directive that school children be allowed to use bathrooms and other facilities that align with their gender identity regardless of biological gender -- siding, for now, with 13 states and agencies challenging the controversial order.

U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor did not rule on the underlying challenge itself. The order means that the administration's directive will be blocked while the case itself plays out.

O'Connor, a Texas-based federal judge, determined the administration had "failed to comply" with federal rules for issuing such directives -- including "notice and comment requirements."

The Department of Justice responded to the ruling in a statement, saying it was "disappointed in the courts decision" and is reviewing its options.

The challenge by the states and agencies, led by Texas, is the latest battle between the federal government and various states opposed to the policy changes.

The White House in May told the nation's public school districts they must allow transgender students to use bathrooms and other facilities like locker rooms matching their chosen gender identity or risk losing federal funding.

"We will not yield to blackmail from the president of the United States," Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in response to the order. "This goes against the values of so many people."

The other states involved are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Other states last month launched a similar suit to stop the new bathroom policy in public schools. They are: Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

In suburban Chicago, 51 families also have challenged a government directive on the issue, while earlier this month the Supreme Court granted a temporary injunction blocking an order that would have allowed a Virginia high school student who was born female but identifies as male to use the boys' restroom.

Fox News Shannon Bream and Matthew Dean contributed to this report.
Michigan officials have declined state Republicans request to review a decision to allow Little House on the Prairie actress Melissa Gilbert to withdraw as the Democratic nominee in an upcoming House race, due to health issues.

State GOP lawyers argued Michigans Board of Canvassers, not State Election Director Chris Thomas, should decide whether Gilbert can end her 8th Congressional District challenge to freshman GOP Rep. Mike Bishop.

Citing state law, Thomas recently told Michigan Democrats that a nominee can withdraw after winning a primary and that the party could replace Gilbert with assistant Macomb County prosecutor Suzanna Shkreli after the Aug. 2 primary results are certified in the coming days.

GOP state party lawyers, however, also argued that Gilbert -- who had surgery earlier this month for past neck and back injuries -- has not adequately proved that she would be physically unfit to serve in Congress.

Gilbert announced her plans in May to withdraw but remained as the lone Democrat in the August primary because the filing deadline had expired.

The Detroit Free Press and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
The State Department issued an updated travel warning on Monday for Americans, especially Iranian-Americans, on the risks of travel to Iran, even after the U.S. signed a nuclear deal and made a $400 million cash payment to the country that was contingent on the release of four American prisoners.

The travel warning replaces what was in effect since March 14, which reiterates the risk of arrest and detention of U.S. citizens, especially those with dual Iranian-American citizenship. Iran does not recognize dual nationalities.

The warning says that Iranian authorities continue to "detain and imprison U.S. citizens, particularly Iranian-Americans, including students, journalists, business travelers, and academics, on charges including espionage and posing a threat to national security."

"Iranian authorities have also prevented the departure, in some cases for months, of a number of Iranian-American citizens who traveled to Iran for personal or professional reasons," the warning continues. "U.S. citizens traveling to Iran should very carefully weigh the risks of travel and consider postponing their travel.

Since the U.S. government does not have any diplomatic or consular relations with Iran, the U.S. has "extremely limited" abilities to help any Americans in the country in case of an emergency. Currently the Swiss government, acting through its embassy in Tehran, represents U.S. interests in Iran.

Last month, Iran's judiciary confirmed the detention of an Iranian-American who was visiting family in Iran, the country's semi-official ISNA news agency reported.

The report did not name the Iranian-American involved or say when he was arrested. It quoted the spokesman for the judiciary, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, as saying that the man was arrested in the city of Gorgan on unknown charges and then referred to the Iranian capital for investigation. The State Department said it was looking into reports that Iranian-American Robin Shahini was been detained in Iran.

His girlfriend told the Associated Press she was worried Shahini was arrested over online comments criticizing Iran's human rights record, adding that he was arrested in Gorgan, where he was visiting his family.

She said that Shahini's sister told her Iranian authorities took him into custody on July 11 and that he has not been heard from since. Shahini, 46, left Iran in 1998 and lived in San Diego. He graduated in May from San Diego State University.

In recent months, there have been three dual nationals and a Lebanese man who have been detained in Iran. The four, who have ties to Britain, Canada and the United States, all are believed to have been detained by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, a hard-line force charged with ensuring the country's Islamic government remains in power. The charges they face remain unclear.

The latest detentions come as the Obama administration admitted last week that a $400 million cash payment to Iran in January was contingent on the release of American prisoners being held in the country  while still denying that the payment was a ransom.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said that the negotiations to return the money  originally from a 1979 failed military equipment deal made between Iran and the U.S.  were conducted separately from negotiations to free the four prisoners.

The four detainees who were released on January 17 were Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian; former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati; Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, whose case had not been publicized before the release.

However, Kirby said that the U.S. withheld the cash delivery until Iran made good on its promise to release the prisoners.

The new details, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, added to criticisms from Republicans that it was a ransom paid by the Obama administration.

Abedini has claimed that he and the other hostages were kept waiting at an Iranian airport for more than 20 hours before their departure. Abedini said he was told by a senior Iranian intelligence official that their departure was contingent on the movement of a second plane.

State Department officials denied Abedini's claims to the Journal, saying the delay was due to issues locating Rezaian's wife and mother, who accompanied him on the flight.

According to the Journal, GOP leaders say they plan to hold hearings on the payment next month, when Congress returns from its summer recess.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Donald Trump launched a fresh attack on the Clinton Foundation on Monday, calling it the most corrupt enterprise in political history and saying it "must be" shut down.

Trumps attack comes after Bill Clinton announced that if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, the Foundation will no longer accept foreign and corporate donations. The Associated Press reported that Bill Clinton said he would also stand down from his role at the foundation if his wife wins the White House.

"These steps would be implemented if Secretary Clinton is elected to avoid perception issues while ensuring the people who depend on our programs continue to be served," Clinton Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian said in a statement.

But in a statement released Monday morning, Trump called Hillary Clinton the defender of the corrupt and rigged status quo and accused the Clintons of caring more about donors than about the American people.

It is now clear that the Clinton Foundation is the most corrupt enterprise in political history. What they were doing during Crooked Hillarys time as Secretary of State was wrong then, and it is wrong now. It must be shut down immediately, he said.

Its pay-for-play. If you look at it, its pay-for-play, he told "Fox & Friends." "These are very greedy people, these are people who have skirted the law for a long time.

He also said that the foundation should return money donated by countries that America shouldnt be doing business with due to their human rights records.

The statement from Minassian indicated the charity has no plans to stop operations. "Nobody is presuming the outcome of the election, therefore implementing changes to programs before then would needlessly hurt people who are being helped by our charitable work around the world," he said.

Clinton campaign Chair John Podesta said Monday that Trump should "come clean" about his business interests after the changes to the Clinton Foundation.

"Donald Trump needs to come clean with voters about his complex network of for-profit businesses that are hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to big banks, including the state-owned Bank of China, and other business groups with ties to the Kremlin," Podesta said.

Pressure, though, continues to build on the organization.

On Sunday, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump supporter, said he would indict the non-profit for racketeering if he could.

If I was attorney general, I would indict the Clinton Foundation as a racketeering enterprise, Giuliani, who served as U.S. attorney in New York and as associate attorney general in the Ronald Reagan administration, told Fox News Sunday.

The foundation and Clintons campaign have been dogged by accusations of pay-to-play dating back to when Clinton served as secretary of state. Critics have raised questions about the amount of influence donors had when she served as the nations top diplomat.

Clinton stepped down from the foundations board when she launched her campaign in 2015, when she also stopped fundraising for the foundation and giving paid speeches.

Meanwhile, as Trump stepped up his criticism Monday of the foundation he was also trying to settle questions about his own immigration stance. In the same interview with "Fox & Friends," he said he's not flip-flopping when it comes to his proposal to deport the estimated 11 million people living in the United States illegally -- though his new campaign manager said Sunday his stance is "to be determined."

Trump had previously proposed using a "deportation force" to remove the 11 million people living in the United States illegally-- a proposal that excited many of his core supporters, but alienated Hispanic voters who could be pivotal in key states.

Trump met Saturday with Hispanic supporters, representatives of a community that has been wary of the billionaire businessman's deportation proposals and his plans to build a giant wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Questioned on whether Trump still intends to deploy the deportation force, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Sunday: "To be determined."

Trump told Fox News on Monday that he's "not flip-flopping," but wants to come up with "a really fair, but firm" solution.

Fox News' Mike Emanuel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
In a year, a large swath of the United States will fall under the shadow of the moon during a historic eclipse thats already generating buzz.

On August 21, 2017, the eclipse will travel a path from sea to shining sea: from Oregon, moving east through Idaho and Wyoming, then eventually through Tennessee and South Carolina.

This eclipse will be one for the record books. According to Space.com, there hasnt been an a total solar eclipse thats gone coast-to-coast across the U.S. since 1918, and according to USA Today, this is the first time a total solar eclipse has been seeable only in this country since its founding.

Solar eclipses occur when the moon is exactly between the sun and the Earth.



Moons shadow landfalls Oregon, crosses USA at 1800mph, exits SCarolina. Behold Muuuricas Eclipse. pic.twitter.com/fIMCnEyyQy  Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) August 21, 2016

The shadow the moon casts will be on average 67 miles wide, Space.com says, and it will be traveling very quickly 2,400 mph when it hits Oregon. The last time a total solar eclipse could be seen in the mainland United States was 1979.

In Oregon, local media report that hotels are already sold out for the celestial event, which begins there at 10:15 am, local time. On the other side of the country, Nashville has a clock counting down the weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds until the eclipse turns the city dark.

So mark your calendars for August 21, 2017: Millions of Americans are in for a rare event.

Follow Rob Verger on Twitter: @robverger
A research vessel will explore a ghost from World War II Monday night: a sunken aircraft carrier that served in the war and later withstood nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll.

The USS Independence, a light aircraft carrier, was intentionally sunk off California in 1951, and on Monday evening Eastern time, viewers can tune into Nautiluslive.org to watch scientists explore the ship, which sits in 2,600 feet of water and is reportedly in good shape. The dive is slated to begin between 7 and 9 pm, EDT.

Launched in 1942, the Independence served in the Pacific during the war, carrying planes that attacked Japanese forces. It was even torpedoed, in 1944, but managed to stay afloat, and was repaired.

But after the war ended, the 622-foot-long carrier was subject to nuclear blasts at Bikini Atoll, part of undertaking called Operation Crossroads. The explosions were as close as 560 and 1390 yards to the ship, which eventually, after the tests, was intentionally sunk in what is now the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary near California.

Resting upright in 2,600 feet of water off Californias Farallon Islands, the aircraft carriers hull and flight deck are clearly visible in sonar images, with what appears to be a plane in the carriers hangar bay, according to the National Marine Sanctuaries, a part of NOAA.

From WWII to atomic testing, USS Independence had a storied career. More @USNavyHistory: https://t.co/43C0vheIo7 pic.twitter.com/JjqEI7JrFn  E/V Nautilus (@EVNautilus) August 22, 2016

The Ocean Exploration Trust, which operates the 210-foot Nautilus, said that it will take an hour or more to get down to the Independence for a dive that will last around 16 hours and is expected to produce photographs and video of the historic ship.

Follow Rob Verger on Twitter: @robverger
The Chicago Police Department (CPD) is pushing back on a report that questions the effectiveness of an algorithm-based, crime-prediction system officials there have been testing since 2013.

The controversial system has already sparked comparisons with the 2002 film "Minority Report" where 'PreCrime' investigators arrest suspects before they commit crimes. The film is based on Philip K. Dick's 1956 short story "The Minority Report."



The predictive policing program, launched with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), generates a heat listor Strategic Subjects List (SSL)of people the system believes are most likely to kill or be killed.

"The goal is to ensure the individual is not only informed of the law enforcement consequences for deciding to engage or continue in gun violence, but also the devastating impact of gun violence within their community," the CPD wrote three years ago in its pilot program directive.

But according to a new report from the RAND Corporation, which was provided access to the system, it's not exactly working as planned. Rather than helping the police locate at-risk residents, the system is being used more as a suspect list when officials are trying to solve shooting crimes, RAND finds.

"Individuals on the SSL are not more or less likely to become a victim of a homicide or shooting than the comparison group, and this is further supported by city-level analysis," RAND writes. "The treated group is more likely to be arrested for a shooting."

At the time of the RAND study, the department's list contained 426 names. None, RAND says, are more or less likely to pull the trigger or be shot than a comparison group.

Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson and Director Anthony Guglielmi last week released a lengthy statement that argued, in part, that RAND evaluated an early verison of the model.

"The paper does not evaluate the prediction model itself [and reviews] our earliest person-based predictive model," the department says. "Since that time, the SSL model has undergone extensive refinement and repeated iterations. We are currently using SSL Version 5, which is more than 3 times as accurate as the version reviewed by RAND (Version 6 is in simultaneous development). Regarding this prediction model, repeated quantitative evaluations have shown that the model produces very accurate findings."

According to CPD, "RAND only evaluated the first few months of the program, and the findings are no longer relevant." The organization's findings do "not support a conclusion that the tools and predictive models to support the strategy are somehow deficient," the statement says.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
Many parents hope their kids will go far in life.

For this baby girl, the sky really is the limit.

A baby girl named Haven has been gifted 1 million airline miles from Cebu Pacific Air after being born four hours into a flight from Dubai, U.A.E. to Manila.

According to The Guardian, Havens mother, whose name has not been released, went into labor on Sunday-- five weeks before her stated due date. Cabin crew immediately found two nurses who assisted with the delivery.

Passengers onboard a Manila-bound flight witnessed a miracle after a woman gave birth to a baby girl mid-air.https://t.co/xthpKgUUNy  India Today (@IndiaToday) August 17, 2016

The pilot diverted the flight to Hyderabad, India to make sure the mother and premature infant received proper medical care after the birth.

Despite the flight diversion, at least one passenger didnt seem to mind, posting about the experience on Facebook.

It only happens in movies, and were lucky to witness this miracle, passenger Missy Berberabe Umandal, who says she was seated close to the mother who went into labor, wrote in a Facebook post. We only heard one semi-loud screech, and a few seconds later there were tinier, cute screeches, and it was when we knew the baby was born.

Cebu Pacifics chief executive Lance Gokongwei announced that the airline would celebrate the surprising birth by gifting baby Haven one million GetGo pointsworth over $109,000-- that will never expire and, perhaps most importantly, can be shared with any member of her family. Low-cost carrier Cebu Pacific is the Philippines largest airline with flights to 30 international destinations, spanning Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and US.

To baby Haven, said lead cabin crew member Mark Martin, you are Gods miracle at 36,000ft and were blessed to have been an instrument in your safe delivery. You will always be my most memorable passenger.

In April, a woman who gave birth to a baby boy during a Jetstar Asia flight named her son after the Singapore-based airline.
In an ongoing war between big hotel chains and online travel agencies, value-minded consumers are emerging as the winners.

Three out of four travelers believe theyll get a better deal by booking rooms through an online travel site such as Expedia or Priceline, according to a study commissioned by Triptease, a start-up company that helps hotels increase revenue through direct booking.

But major hotel chains are aggressively challenging that premise with high-profile ad campaigns like Marriotts It Pays to Book Direct and Hiltons Stop Clicking Around, which promise the lowest price when you book on their websites.

Hotels prefer direct booking because they can avoid paying a commission  often 15 to 25 percent  to the online travel agencies (OTAs).

Its made the OTAs less competitive because they no longer always have the lowest rates, said Dennis Schaal, news editor for Skift.com, a travel industry intelligence website.

What Expedia initially did was take the big chain hotels and push them way low in the listings so that you couldnt find them. If a hotel is not in the first five or six search results, it might as well be in Oshkosh.

Another key way in which hotels are offering better deals direct is by asking people to become loyalty members. You may get free-WiFi, an upgrade and discount because you join the loyalty program, said Triptease CEO Charlie Osmond.

Marriott Rewards members who book direct get free Wi-Fi, smartphone check-in and points toward free stays. And if you find a better rate within 24 hours after booking, Marriott will knock an additional 25 percent off the price.

Members of the Hyatt Gold Passport loyalty program who book direct can get a discount of up to 10 percent, along with online check-in, express checkout and 24/7 customer service.

Travelers who join the Hilton HHonors program can book direct for the lowest rate and accrue points for complimentary stays, free Wi-Fi, digital check-in and more.

This is a complete shift in the landscape, Osmond said. Most consumers do go and check the direct price on the hotel website, and what they are finding now, in 2016, is often a significantly better deal.

If theres a lesson for consumers, its that it always pays to shop around, said Schaal. I would always check out what is available on the OTAs and also check rates on metasearch sites like Kayak and Trivago. But when it comes to booking, I would book directly on the hotel website, because if you join the hotel loyalty program, youre going to get reward points, youre going to get a lower rate and youre probably going to get free Wi-Fi.

That advice strikes fear into OTAs like Expedia and Booking.com. For an OTA, the user journey of going to their website, looking up a hotel price, then leaving and going to that hotels website, and seeing that if you book direct it is cheaper  that process is extremely harmful to their business model, said Dori Stein, CEO of Fornova, another start-up that works with hotels to boost direct bookings.

On an April 28 earnings call, Expedias CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, warned the big hotel chains to play well with us or, essentially, risk losing audience on his site, Schaal reported on Skift.com.

Expedia was saying, If you dont give us your most competitive rates, there are other hotels that will, and those hotels are going to win more market share, Schaal said.

What Expedia initially did was take the big chain hotels and push them way low in the listings so that you couldnt find them. If a hotel is not in the first five or six search results, it might as well be in Oshkosh.

OTAs have also fought back through a practice known as dimming  stripping out images, review ratings and descriptive copy  to make properties less attractive to consumers.

A 2015 study commissioned by Expedia UK found that listings with images get more sales. A 2012 TripAdvisor report revealed that property listings with at least 20 photos received 150 percent more interaction.

But dimming also means less choice for online customers. As a consumer youre not aware it is happening, but you dont click on a hotel without an image, said Stein. The user thinks theres a bug or whatever because he sees other hotels on the page that look totally fine. We estimate that the user isnt even aware of it.

We want to make sure the hotels with the best rates and inventory are put first, Melissa Maher, a senior vice president at Expedia, recently told the Washington Post. (She declined to be interviewed for this report.) Were doing it because were consumer-focused,

But that explanation glosses over whats really going on.

Expedias algorithm emphasizes three things, said Schaal. Number one is the strength of the offer  is this the best rate? Number two is the quality score  is this a popular hotel? Is it getting good reviews? And the third thing is compensation for Expedia. What kind of commission is Expedia getting?

You have to understand that the OTAs havent been coy about it or hidden the fact that theyve been retaliating, said Stein, who appeared last May alongside a managing director from Booking.com on a panel at Phocuswright Europe, a major travel conference. When the subject of dimming came up, Stein said, He didnt hide it. Their position is: Were reluctant, but we have no choice because it hurts our business model and conversions, and so we have to do it.

Right now, said Schaal, the big hotel chains are in a position of strength. Rooms are full, rates are good and theyre winning share by offering lower rates through their loyalty programs.

But hotel chains still need OTAs, because OTAs fill a lot of rooms. A lot of consumers value OTAs for the ability to shop around and see what is available in the marketplace.

And what happens if the economy starts to get worse? Well, then those hotel chains are going to need the OTAs more and more. The OTAs are just tremendous marketing machines. Right now the pendulum is swinging toward the chains, but maybe in a few years it will swing back to the OTAs.

Executives from Hilton declined to comment for this report. Booking.com and Marriott did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
On Friday, a pilot for SriLankan Airlines was suspended for allegedly being drunk as he prepared to captain a flight from Germany to Sri Lanka.

According to Agence France-Presse, the SriLankan Airlines pilot arrived at Frankfurt Airport to fly 270 passengers and four crew members to Colombo, Sri Lanka, when other members of the cabin crew noticed that the man appeared to be intoxicated.

The crew was reportedly forced to block the pilot from taking control of the plane. The pilot was then reported to the authorities. After the pilot was taken off the plane, the passengers were forced to endure a 15-hour delay while SriLankan Airlines sent another pilot to Frankfurt Airport.

More from TravelPulse

Can Pokemon Go Brighten Thailand's Tourism Future?

The Business Customs You Must Know Before Traveling to South Korea

What Are the Best Days to Book a Cruise?

The Great (And The Offbeat) Museums of Mexico City

Start Getting Ready For Your 2017 Vacation

The pilot has been suspended while the incident is being fully investigated.

The airline released an apology on its website stating: Due to unavailability of a flight crew member, the aircraft was unable to leave Frankfurt as scheduled last afternoon.

SriLankan Airlines is expected to discontinue service to many European destinations in October, including the Frankfurt airport where the incident took place.
Job hopping is now expected among professionals. In fact, LinkedIns March survey of more than 26,000 members found that job seekers dont expect to stay with their employer for more than three years. But while company loyalty seemingly declines, there are still plenty of professionals out there who stay with their organizations.

Employees, who are motivated by purpose, rather than money or status, are much more likely to stick around.

According to the LinkedIn survey, 73 percent of those who find personal fulfillment in their work and want it to have an impact on the world, are satisfied with their jobs. They also tend to accept a job because of company culture, mission and values.

Heres how to attract these mission-driven job seekers.

1. Get specific about purpose, values and mission.

Sixty-one percent of employees surveyed by Achievers dont even know their company mission, and 57 percent said they arent motivated by it. However, during the hiring process, it is essential to make the company mission a priority. While many employees may not care about the mission, the ones who do care are those who will remain for the long-term.

A study published in Global Business Review in April looked at 480 IT professionals across India and found that leaders, who inspire meaningful work, improved commitment to the organization and employee performance.

One way to achieve this is to identify and share with job seekers the company mission and how it will lead to opportunities for them to work on meaningful projects. Use memorable phrases when describing mission, but also talk about how the company is working to reach those goals. Cite specific examples to really pique their excitement for the company.

2. Share purpose through employer branding.

After hearing about a job, nearly 60 percent of candidates first turn to a companys website to learn more before applying, according to the aforementioned LinkedIn survey. Additionally, 34 percent of candidates read articles online about the company. A strong employer brand, with an emphasis on the company mission, will attract candidates who have done their homework.

One way to strengthen employer branding is with a tool like Recruitee, a site that integrates employer branding, job promoting, talent sourcing and applicant tracking into one platform. Create a brand that draws attention to the company mission. In addition to building a branded career site, call out the culture and values in job descriptions and social profiles. Make the mission a key feature of the employer brand across the web.

Related: Here's What Happens When Salaried Employees Become Hourly

3. Share purpose with candidates.

In a survey of 7,700 millennials from 29 countries around the world conducted by Deloitte, 56 percent said they have ruled out working for an organization because of its values. Whats more, 70 percent believe their personal values are shared by the organizations they work for.

Among those who said they will stay with their employer for more than five years, 88 percent said they feel a sense of purpose. In the earliest conversations with candidates, whether through email, social media or face-to-face, place an emphasis on the company mission by calling it out in your job descriptions and specifically talking about the key messages.

Say to candidates, Our company strives to accomplish these goals, and here is how...

Those who feel connected to the goals of the company will be more interested in the job opportunity, and be most likely to stay with the organization for the long-term.

Related: 6 Reasons Why Your Best Employees Quit

4. Focus on goals in the interview.

The interview is the best opportunity to ensure alignment between a candidates values and the company values. During the interview, share the company mission statement and ask candidates how their own values compare.

Some questions to consider asking to facilitate this goal include the following.

What made you want to apply for this position?

What are you passionate about?

What are your ideal qualities of a job?

What is something you strongly believe?

Each of these questions can help uncover the candidates core values.

Related: 10 Reasons Nice Bosses Finish First

5. Seek candidates who are passionate about the company.

You can tell a lot about a candidate based on their resume and interview, but dont forget to check out their personal brand online. A strong candidate is more than their skills and experience.

Use social media to search for things theyve said about your company or industry. What do they share about their values? Compile all of these nuggets to paint a picture of the candidate, and use it to determine if they will be a good fit.

In a time where good workers often leap from company to company, it is possible to find those who will be loyal employees. Strong company values are the key to retaining them.
Attorneys for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will try to convince a judge this week that the U.S. military has mishandled its prosecution of the soldier on charges that he deserted his post in Afghanistan.

Among the issues being considered during pretrial hearings is whether Gen. Robert B. Abrams faced improper conflicts when he referred Bergdahl for a general court-martial rather than a lower-level prosecution.

Defense attorneys argue that Abrams, the commanding general of U.S. Army Forces Command, should be disqualified from the case because of a prior advisory role during efforts to return Bergdahl from captivity. In a separate motion, the defense contends Abrams was influenced by negative comments by U.S. Sen. John McCain.

Legal experts say the motions are longshots, but are likely to stoke courtroom drama.

Bergdahl is from Hailey, Idaho.
ABC newsman George Stephanopoulos gave Hillary Clintons campaign manager a grueling grilling over the scandal-scarred Clinton Foundations future on Sunday. But Stephanopoulos, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, must have forgotten to disclose his own five-figure donations to the organization.

Clinton has said if she is elected president, the controversial family foundation will cease taking foreign donations, but other media outlets, including the Boston Globe and the liberal Huffington Post, have called for it to be shut down altogether. Speaking to campaign manager Robby Mook, Stephanopoulos wondered if the post-election pledge was not tantamount to admitting Clinton was wrong to take previous donations.

You announced this week that the foundation would no longer take contributions from foreign governments or corporations, if Secretary Clinton wins the White House, Stephanopoulos stated, before asking, Doesnt it suggest that taking those contributions when Secretary Clinton was serving as secretary of state was wrong?

Stephanopoulos was communications director for the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, then served as White House communications director and senior adviser for policy and strategy before leaving following Clinton's first term.

On Sunday, Stephanopoulos did not mention that records show he has personally donated $75,000 to the foundation, noted NewsBusters. But he wasnt finished putting the heat on Mook, who defended his boss by citing some of the positive work the foundation purports to have done.

The Clinton Foundation is clearly a liability for Hillary Clinton as she seeks the presidency, Stephanopoulos said, quoting a recent Globe editorial. The foundation should remove a political and actual distraction and stop accepting funding. If Clinton is elected, the foundation should be shut down.

Critics say the foundations receipt of contributions from foreign people and entities seeking business deals with the U.S. while Clinton served as secretary of state created the appearance of pay to play.

Stephanopoulos donated $25,000 annually in 2012, 2013 and 2014, the foundation's records show. He did not disclose the contributions to viewers, even when interviewing Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer, whose book blew the lid off alleged improprieties at the foundation. He did finally get around to acknowledging his donations -- in May 2015.

"I made charitable donations to the foundation in support of the work theyre doing on global AIDS prevention and deforestation, causes I care about deeply," Stephanopoulos said on his blog. I thought that my contributions were a matter of public record. However, in hindsight, I should have taken the extra step of personally disclosing my donations to my employer and to the viewers on air during the recent news stories about the foundation. I apologize."

NewsBusters blasted Stephanopoulos and his network for not reprising the disclosure Sunday while interviewing Mook.

ABC demonstrated a marvelous case of hypocrisy on Sunday when it comes to its transparency and perhaps conflicts of interest, NewsBusters wrote.
Storm victims spill out of the waiting rooms, some clutching water-stained documents, others with the long stare of those stricken by disaster, each with a story of personal tragedy about the Louisiana flood's devastation to their homes and their lives.

The line for the makeshift Federal Emergency Management Agency recovery center started to gather before the facility opened Monday at a substance abuse treatment site run by a local Baptist church. The stream of traffic has been steady ever since.

Edward Shaw, 62, has been staying at a local Motel 6 since last week's flooding inundated the house he was renting, the water rising to the top of the front door. He lost his furniture and his car, and hasn't heard from his landlord about when the house might be repaired.

FEMA started covering his motel costs Sunday, though he's not sure for how long.

"I hope to God FEMA give me enough so I can start all over again," Shaw said.

And if that doesn't happen? "You just keep on praying," he said.

The long, hard slog of recovery is underway across south Louisiana, after a storm that began Aug. 12 dumped as much as 2 feet of rain in some areas over 48 hours, causing catastrophic flooding.

At least 13 deaths have been attributed to the flooding, and more than 60,000 homes were damaged by the storm, which has been described as the worst disaster since Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

President Barack Obama planned to visit the area Tuesday.

In hard-hit neighborhoods, people spent their weekend gutting homes in brutal heat, ripping out water-logged carpet and flooring, stripping out walls and insulation and sifting through personal belongings to determine if anything was salvageable. Piles of water-damaged furniture, clothes, photographs and toys filled curbs, as shell-shocked residents discarded nearly everything they owned.

At least $110 million in agriculture was damaged by the storm, a figure likely to grow, according to the an estimate released Monday by the LSU AgCenter.

In Ascension Parish, residents in some areas were still dealing with high water. Officials said they are waiting for water levels to drop so they can make a cut in the levee that would allow the water to drain. About 19,000 homes had water in them a about 40 percent of the parish's total housing stock.

The risk of further flooding has finally lessened, and the focus has shifted fully to recovery.

Disaster food stamp aid was being distributed in eight parishes, and the number of people staying in shelters had dwindled to about 2,800. Schools in some damaged parishes begin reopening this week. Debris removal started this weekend in heavily-damaged Baton Rouge neighborhoods.

Flood insurance adjusters were on the ground, assessing property damage.

Roy Wright, FEMA's deputy associate administrator for insurance, said more than 25,000 claims already have been filed with the National Flood Insurance Program and $15 million in advance payments had been distributed to homeowners to help people begin repairs.

"We want to make sure they have the resources they need immediately to muck out their homes, even as we go through the rest of the adjustment process," Wright said.

Large numbers of flood-damaged homes weren't covered with flood insurance.

Ariana Galindo, a Spanish teacher from Baton Rouge, is one of the many residents who didn't live in a designated flood zone that required flood insurance coverage, so she never bought it. Galindo's home was hit with 2 feet of water, and she and her husband were staying temporarily at her aunt's house.

"I lost everything, and I just called my homeowners' insurance and they told me that they don't cover anything because the insurance that I'm paying for doesn't cover flood," Galindo said Monday, waiting with dozens of others in the FEMA assistance center. "I need some help to repair my house."

Five such recovery centers had opened so far a and more were planned a operating seven days a week. About 110,000 people across south Louisiana already had registered for federal disaster assistance, most signing up online.

FEMA aid, however, isn't expected to be enough.

"This is really the first step in your recovery process. We can't get you back to where you were before the storm, but we can help you get to a safe, secure and sanitary environment," said FEMA spokeswoman Renee Bafalis.

Burnell Williams Sr. and his wife, Lois, lost their entire house in St. Bernard Parish to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After that monster storm, they moved to Baton Rouge a and that home was hit with 4 feet of water in last week's flooding.

"We lost everything in the house," Burnell Williams said. "This is the second time for us."
A man accused of threatening to shoot central Florida students and blow up pipe bombs inside campuses was arrested, authorities said Sunday.

The Orlando Sentinel reported that Jesus Kong, 23, was apprehended near the Canadian border, Orange County Sheriffs Office spokesman Jeff Williamson said. Kong appeared to be in some form of distress, Williamson said.

Immediate details of his arrest werent immediately available. The paper reported that Kong is also known under the aliases Jessie Eloah Calix and Jesus Matute.

Kong is a transient who has a lived in Florida, California, Virginia and Maryland.

He is accused of making the threatening comments on Twitter starting on July 24. The Sentinel reported that his threats targeted William R. Boone High School, Edgewater High School, Colonial High School, Colonial Ninth Grade Center and Liberty Middle School.

One of the messages Kong allegedly posted on social media read, I want to shoot a few at Liberty Middle School. I dislike homosexuals, officials said

The threats kept more than 900 students absent from the Orlando-area schools last week.

The FBI said they were looking into the threats, but didnt think they were credible.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from the Orlando Sentinel.
The owner of a Virginia restaurant said she doesnt want the patronage of a couple allegedly responsible for a nasty and racist comment that was left on a receipt and was directed toward a server.

WHSV-TV reported Thursday Sadie Elledge, 18, served a man and a woman two gyros, sodas and a Greek salad at Jess Lunch in Harrisonburg. Elledge said that she felt uncomfortable serving the pair because they wouldnt talk to her and only would nod their heads.

The woman signed the receipt and didnt leave a tip, which the station reported isnt uncommon for the restaurant workers. However, what she wrote in the tip spot is what has caused an uproar.

The receipt read: We only tip citizens.

A server here in the Valley received a #receipt with a note many are calling #racist that said #WeOnlyTipCitizens: https://t.co/XNs51ZyH0p  WHSVnews (@WHSVnews) August 19, 2016

"It shouldn't even matter, I just feel like it's rude and disrespectful. I've never met, I've never done anything to them," Elledge told WHSV-TV.

Elledge said she was born in the U.S., but is of Mexican and Honduran descent. She also said the woman who left the rude message had an accent and that the restaurant is an immigrant-created and owned business, which also left her in disbelief.

"Coward is the word to describe what they did. I have worse words to use," the eaterys owner Angeliki Floros told the station. "But let's go with coward."

The station reported that the entire incident was caught on surveillance footage.

Floros said she wants an apology.

"I would like for them to not come here unless they regret what they did," she added.

Click for more from WHSV-TV.
Authorities are searching for an ancient relic -- believed to be part of Christ's Crucifixion cross -- that was stolen from a San Francisco church.

Thieves broke into St. Dominic's Catholic Church on Thursday and popped the lock on the glass case that housed the artifact before fleeing without a trace, ABC affiliate KGO reported.

Church leaders and parishioners expressed their grief over the church's most treasured possession at Mass on Sunday.

"The true cross is a relic that goes back 2,000 years to the very cross of Christ himself. For it to be stolen in this kind of very deliberate way is certainly both upsetting and very saddening," the church's pastor, Father Michael Hurley, told parishioners, according to the station.

The church reportedly has no security cameras -- and police say they have few clues to lead them to the perpetrators.

Hurley said he's hoping the thief will have a change of heart and return the relic, the station reported.

"We're hoping that the thief will have a change of heart and perhaps we can discover it again and restore this important relic to our church," Hurley said.

Stolen! Sacred relic taken from St. Dominic's church in SF. Believed to be part of Christ's crucifixion cross. pic.twitter.com/MM4hWYfBg0  Cbarnard (@CornellBarnard) August 21, 2016

The church placed a sign on the display case asking that the thief return the relic, with no questions asked.

Click for more from ABC7News.com
Police are seeking at least two suspects in a shooting at a crowded Connecticut house party that left 13 people wounded.

Bridgeport police said they believe the shooters were hiding behind bushes alongside the house, and while the party was going on early Sunday morning, opened fire on more than 100 people.

"People initially thought it was fireworks. By some witness accounts, even the DJ said, 'don't worry about it, it's fireworks,' until people started realizing they were shot," Capt. Brian Fitzgerald said at an afternoon news conference.

Most of the victims, who range in age from 18 to 24, suffered gunshot wounds to their legs. By Sunday afternoon, only five remained hospitalized, including one woman who was listed in critical condition with injuries to her face and jaw.

Police said the people who threw the party had gone to the police department to try to apply for a permit, which was denied.

"They wanted to sell alcohol and charge for the party," said Chief Armando J. Perez.

Police said they believe they charged for alcohol anyway, and could face criminal charges.

A motive for the shooting remains unclear. Police are investigating whether the suspects were partygoers.

Democratic U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy released statements condemning the violence following the shooting.

"I'm simply unable to contemplate the evil behind such contempt for human life," Murphy said. "I'm overwhelmingly grateful that surprisingly no lives were lost."

Blumenthal reiterated his call for "common sense gun violence prevention measures."

Police said they are beefing up patrols in the area, and are asking anyone with information about the shooting to come forward.
Prosecutors in northern Italy are blaming the mysterious murder of a 92-year-old priest on the cleric who read him his last rites -- claiming the younger priest decided to kill after he was caught stealing relics.

Monsignor Giuseppe Rocco was found strangled on the floor of his room in Clerics House in Trieste on April 25, 2014 -- with a broken bone sticking out of his neck and blood under his body.

Two years later, prosecutors are claiming the murderer is 52-year-old Father Paolo Piccoli -- the priest called to give Rocco his last rites after a housekeeper discovered his body on the floor.

In the weeks before his murder, Rocco had reported the theft of a set of religiously significant statuettes from his cell, news.com.au reported. Then other items suddenly disappearred: the Madonna, horse and ship figurines.

Rocco suspected housemate Father Piccoli  once accused of stealing relics from another parish  as the culprit and alerted church authorities, who then sent Piccoli a warning letter over the alleged theft.

Local media reports that Piccoli had a fetish for sacred objects -- and court documents claim he ran huge debts on his fathers account in order to dress up in authentic priestly vestments as a boy, according to news.com.au.

Piccoli denies any involvement in Rocco's death, telling investigators there were many other people inside the residence the night Rocco was killed.

But Italian police say they were able to link the two spots of blood found under Rocco's body to Piccoli, according to local media reports.

When interrogated, Piccoli allegedly told police that he had a condition that weakened his skin and caused open sores. The blood on Rocco, he claimed, must have gotten there while he was administering last rites.

Rocco was found at 7:30 a.m. on April 25, 2014, by the housekeeper, Eleanora Dibitonto, who had come to make sure the elderly monsignor was awake for morning mass.

Upon finding Rocco fully dressed on the floor, she called an ambulance and asked Piccoli to give him his last rites. Paramedics immediately notified police after seeing the body, and the cause of death was ruled suffocation by strangulation.

Prosecutors allege that Piccoli confronted Rocco about the theft accusation on the morning of April 25. The two men argued, prosecutors claim, before Piccoli strangled Rocco and left him on the floor of his cell-like room.

Piccoli faces aggravated murder charges in the case. In December, a secular court will determine whether to put him on trial, according to Italian media reports.

Click for more from news.com.au
The leaders of Italy, France and Germany vowed Monday to boost joint European security efforts in the wake of Islamic extremist attacks as they made a symbolic bid to relaunch the European Union after Britain's vote to leave.

From the deck of the Italian aircraft carrier Garibaldi, which is spearheading the EU's migrant rescue and anti-smuggling effort, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Holland also promised new economic prospects to young people  albeit without any specific proposals or details.

The three leaders travelled to the sun-soaked island of Ventotene to pay tribute to one of the founding fathers of European unity, Altiero Spinelli, and show common cause going into a bigger EU-wide summit next month in Slovakia.

Spinelli, along with another intellectual confined to Ventotene in the 1940s by Italy's fascist rulers, co-wrote the "Ventotene Manifesto" calling for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war. The document is considered the inspiration for European federalism.

Renzi invited his French and German counterparts to the island off Naples to remind Europe of its founding ideals as the EU forges ahead amid a spate of challenges, from slow economic growth to extremist violence, after Britain's vote to leave the bloc.

The three placed three bouquets of blue and yellow flowers  the colors of the European Union  on Spinelli's simple white marble tombstone before meeting for an hour privately aboard the nearby Garibaldi.

"Many people thought that after Brexit, that Europe was finished. It's not like that," Renzi said from the deck. "We respect the choice of Britain's citizens, but we want to write a page for the future."

Renzi, Merkel and Hollande all voiced support for improved internal and external defense measures, including better intelligence-sharing and beefed-up border defenses, following a spate of Islamic extremist attacks in France that have rattled Europeans' sense of security.

Renzi said such measures were an "absolute priority" for the EU going forward.

"Europe should have a framework of protection. For security we need to have borders that can be guarded," Hollande said. "We also want there to be more coordination in the fight against terrorism."

Merkel said the EU is currently facing "enormous challenges" and needed to work together especially on the security front at home and abroad.

"We feel that faced with Islamist terrorism and in light of the civil war in Syria that we need to do more for our internal and external security," she said. "Defense cooperation ... should be strengthened and the exchanges between our intelligence services must be intensified."

The three also called for greater economic stimulus measures to create jobs, especially for young people, and improve investment opportunities.

For Merkel, the visit to Ventotene marked the start of a string of meetings with other EU leaders to discuss the post-Brexit EU, with visits to Estonia, the Czech Republic and Poland in the coming days and meetings with the leaders of Slovakia and Hungary in Warsaw. Merkel has also invited leaders from the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Austria and other eastern European nations for informal meetings at a government guest house in Germany.

"She wants to support a discussion that is as broad as possible, with as many actors involved as possible," her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said last week. That is aimed at ensuring that whatever emerges from the post-Brexit process "finds the widest possible acceptance in the member states and in the population."

Merkel has shown little enthusiasm for grandiose changes to the EU's structure, preferring to make things work better rather than embark on major structural reform. France, for its part, wants greater EU integration and Hollande is a strong proponent of joining European defense efforts as Italy wants. However the French presidential campaign is getting into full swing and is likely to unleash anti-EU sentiment.

Italy has a lot to gain from a reinvigorated EU as it copes with flat GDP, the migrant crisis and political uncertainties over a constitutional referendum this fall on which Renzi has staked his government's survival.

Monday's mini-summit will serve as a warmup for an EU-wide summit in Bratislava in September designed to chart the EU's post-Brexit way forward. It follows an initial three-way huddle by Renzi, Merkel and Holland in Berlin in the days immediately following the June 23 British referendum.

There, the three leaders pledged their commitment to European unity and plotted a common proposal to relaunch the European project focusing on three key areas: improving security, boosting economic growth and strengthening options and programs for young people.

Charting a course is difficult until Britain formally begins the exit process, probably next year, and lays out proposals for its future relationship with the EU.
North Korea threatened Monday to turn Seoul and Washington into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style pre-emptive nuclear strike if they showed any signs of aggression toward the Norths territory during their annual military drills.

South Korea and the U.S. began the drills despite the threats. Pyongyangs fiery rhetoric isnt unusual, but the latest warning comes at a time of more tension following the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a U.S. plan to place a defense missile system in South Korea.

The North's "first-strike" units are read to mount retaliatory attacks on South Korean and U.S. forces involved in the drills, according to the statement, carried by Pyongyang's state media.

South Korea expressed strong regret over Pyongyangs warning, saying the drills with the U.S. are purely defensive in nature. Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said they have no intentions of invading Pyongyang.

This years Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday for a 12-day run are largely computer-simulated war games. The training involves 25,000 American troops and 50,000 South Korea soldiers, according to the U.S. and South Korean militaries.

The drills come just days after Seoul announced that Thae Yong Ho, No. 2 at the North's embassy in London, had recently defected to South Korea because he was disillusioned with the North's leadership. Pyongyang's state media called him "human scum" and a criminal who had been ordered home for a series of alleged criminal acts, including sexually assaulting a minor.

South Korea's president said Monday there were signs of "serious cracks" in the North's ruling elite class, and that Pyongyang could carry out some action to divert public attention away from such domestic problems.

Many analysts said Thae's defection was an embarrassment to the North Korean government of leader Kim Jong Un, but would not weaken the unity of the country's elite class.

A South Korean official told Sky News that it is highly likely that North Korea will make various attempts to thwart any other defections, including possible assassinations.

Previous South Korea-U.S. military drills have brought threats of war.

North Korea has already boosted such war rhetoric because of the planned deployment of the U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system in South Korea, which Washington and Seoul says is needed because of the increasing North Korean threats.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
next Image 1 of 3

prev next Image 2 of 3

prev Image 3 of 3

Love, not war, sent an Afghan family fleeing from Iran during last summer's chaotic mass migration to Europe. Luck reunited them a year later, after a dark night in a Turkish forest separated 14-year-old Mahdi Azizi from his parents and sisters.

The boy's father was at an open-air concert in central Sweden this summer when he thought he spotted his son. Nader Azizi had spent anguished months seeking information about Mahdi's fate, not knowing if he were alive or also made it to Sweden.

"Is that Mahdi?" Azizi, 36, recalled thinking as he strained to keep sight of the youth in the crowd. "I told myself it was a dream." He pushed closer and shouted out his son's name. Mahdi turned around and exclaimed "Baba!" the Farsi word for dad.

The chance father-and-son reunion at a small town racetrack, along with a warm welcome from Mahdi's Swedish foster family, offers a bright spot amid the bleak stories emerging from the migrant crisis.

After joining the waves of refugees  mostly Syrian but some from Afghan and Iraq  pinning their hopes on human smugglers, Mahdi got split up from the rest of his family in Turkey during the rush to board a truck headed for the border.

The boy traveled thousands of miles under the watch of different smugglers. He managed to reach Sweden, unaware his family was at an asylum center less than 150 kilometers (93 miles) away from the foster home where he was placed.

"I was really confused," Mahdi said of his first days alone in the country. "At night, I couldn't sleep. I was crying myself to sleep thinking of my mother."

Azizi had moments during their yearlong separation when he felt confident he would see his son again, others when he feared the worst.

"When I thought about the difficult route, I was pessimistic," he said. "But then I could see lots of people still making it, and I found hope again."

Mahdi's mother, Raheleh Azizi, 34, at first didn't believe her husband when he called to tell her their son was safe and only moments away.

"He said, 'I've seen Mahdi, I've found him,'" she recalled. "I said, "You've seen Mahdi? Nader, please don't tease me, don't joke!' He said, 'I'm not joking. He is with me right now.'"

She paced around the family's room at the asylum center, not daring to believe the news. Then, Mahdi knocked on the door.

"We embraced and I cried," Raheleh Azizi said.

What triggered the Azizis' journey was an old family feud that began in their native Afghanistan.

Nader and Raheleh fell in love as teenagers while he was working as a servant in her wealthy family's home. Her family opposed the relationship, so the young couple ran away together.

Relatives attacked and made repeated death threats against the pair over the course of their marriage, believing Raheleh had dishonored the family, Nader Azizi said. Family members continued to pursue them, with the aid of a tight Afghan community in Iran, even after they moved with their two oldest children to Tehran a dozen years ago.

Azizi said he decided his family needed to leave the region when the threats turned to kidnapping the children. The family sold their belongings and gave 40,000 euros ($44,000) last year to smugglers who promised to take them from Iran to Sweden.

Asked about the night Mahdi got left behind in the woods, son and father are overwhelmed by painful memories.

"We were sitting in different groups underneath the trees. Then suddenly, the trucks arrived and we all rushed toward them," the elder Azizi recalled. He was carrying his younger daughter, a toddler at the time, and thought his son was following just behind.

"Once we were inside the truck, I yelled, 'Mahdi!' But I didn't hear him," he said, breaking off the story to compose himself.

Mahdi boarded another truck and eventually was pushed onto a boat for the crossing to Greece. Forced to keep moving, the boy said he could not get anyone to understand or care that he wasn't supposed to be by himself.

"I tried to explain that my family were still there, that I couldn't continue without them," he said. "But the smugglers wouldn't listen, and I didn't understand their language."

Last year, more than one million migrants reached Europe by sea, and a further 34,000 have crossed from Turkey into Bulgaria and Greece by land. After Germany, Sweden was the top destination for asylum-seekers entering Europe last year, with a record 163,000 people pursuing shelter there.

Among the 35,369 unaccompanied minors to arrive in the welcoming Nordic nation was Mahdi Azizi.

He quickly was placed with a Swedish foster family. His guardian, Carina Arnberg, took Mahdi and two other boys she and her husband were caring for to the July 29 concert at a racetrack about an hour's drive from her home.

Little could she have imagined that Mahdi's family was living nearby, or that his father would stop to listen to the music of a Swedish pop duo at the racetrack.

Arnberg gets goose bumps when she talks about how the stars aligned that day. One of the boys she was chaperoning pointed to a tree other children had climbed for a better view.

"Mahdi and I turned around to look at the tree," she said. "Mahdi said 'Wow! It's my dad.' And his dad said 'Mahdi!' They were so happy."

Arnberg and her husband invited the rest of the Azizis to stay in a cottage next to their home. There, Mahdi reconnected with his sisters  3-year-old Ghazal, who forgot him during his long absence, and 12-year-old Parvaneh.

But the happy ending is not yet complete. Although Sweden is known for its welcoming attitude to immigrants, lawmakers tightened regulations for asylum and family reunification in January to help manage the growing flow from the Middle East.

As an unaccompanied minor who has been granted asylum, Mahdi, now 15, lives at an apartment provided by the Swedish government. However, his parents' and sisters' applications were rejected on the grounds that they could live safely in Afghanistan.

They are appealing, but if forced to leave, hope another country will take the whole family. In the meantime, Mahdi had to return to school a six-hour bus ride away this month, interrupting their reunion.

"I don't know when we'll be able to see Mahdi again," Azizi lamented as he watched the boy who was lost and found board a bus for school. "I really don't know what's going to happen. We don't know anything."

But for a few strange and joyful days at the end of the short Scandinavian summer, just knowing Mahdi was safe was enough.

___

Associated Press Writer Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this story.

Follow David Keyton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidKeyton
North Korea threatened Monday to launch a nuclear first-strike and turn Seoul and Washington, D.C., into "a heap of ashes"  a threat that comes on the heels of China using its military to signal that it, too, would go to war to enforce its territorial claims.

While Pyongyangs threat isn't new, it comes as South Korea and the U.S. begin joint military exercises amid the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a U.S. plan to place a defense missile system in South Korea.

Tension in the region already was heightened after China last week flashed its newest offensive weapons during war games in the Sea of Japan, exercises that put on display Beijing's latest-generation frigate and long-range bombers as a warning to its neighbors and the U.S.  that if is not ready to negotiate its territorial claims.

China has grown increasingly assertive over its claim to a chain of uninhabited islands controlled by Japan, recently dispatching more than a dozen coast guard vessels as Chinese fishing vessels swarmed the surrounding waters.

South Korea and the U.S., meanwhile, began their joint exercise despite Pyongyangs fiery rhetoric, which claimed the North's "first-strike" units were ready to mount retaliatory attacks on South Korean and U.S. forces involved in the drills.

South Korea expressed strong regret over Pyongyangs warning, saying the drills with the U.S. are purely defensive in nature. Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said they have no intentions of invading Pyongyang.

This years Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday for a 12-day run are largely computer-simulated war games. The training involves 25,000 American troops and 50,000 South Korea soldiers, according to the U.S. and South Korean militaries. It comes days after Seoul announced that Thae Yong Ho, No. 2 at the North's embassy in London, had recently defected to South Korea because he was disillusioned with the North's leadership. Pyongyang's state media called him "human scum" and a criminal who had been ordered home for a series of alleged criminal acts, including sexually assaulting a minor.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
AAMCO Franchise Owners Log More Than 3,300 Years Of Brand Loyalty

Leader in Total Car Care Continues to Benefit from Thriving U.S. Automotive Aftermarket Industry

HORSHAM, Pa. - Aug. 22, 2016 // PRNewswire // - AAMCO Transmissions, Inc. ("AAMCO"), franchisor of the world's largest branded chain of transmission specialists and an industry leader in total car care services, proudly announces that nearly 100 of its longest-tenured franchise owners have spent between 20 and 50 years as part of the franchise system, equating to more than 3,300 years of brand loyalty. The announcement comes on the heels of a promising forecast produced by the Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association, which highlights the booming U.S. automotive aftermarket, which is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 3.7 percent through 2019.

"For over the last five decades, AAMCO has established a strong company culture and vision for the future that resonates with entrepreneurs," said Brett Ponton, CEO and president of AAMCO and its parent company, American Driveline Systems, Inc. "Our franchisees' longstanding commitment is a testament to the strength of the AAMCO brand, and their success can also be attributed to the growing automotive aftermarket. We look forward to strengthening our relationships with existing owners and forging new partnerships with future business owners for years to come."

Bill Harrison has spent nearly 50 years working at the AAMCO franchise he purchased in Springfield, Ohio. Prior to joining AAMCO, Harrison served as an engineer for Schlumberger, the world's largest oilfield services company. As AAMCO's longest-tenured franchise owner still operating a center to date, Harrison understands what it takes to run a successful auto repair franchise, as he has been part of the company's evolution into a leading brand for transmission repair and total car care services.

"The reason why AAMCO has been able to maintain such longstanding relationships with franchisees is because of its culture of support and transparency," said Harrison. "AAMCO is backed by a leadership team that values franchisee input and is highly invested in our success as business owners. Over the years, I've learned that the essential thing is to provide an exceptional level of service and make a genuine connection with people. If you do that, your customers will keep coming back."

Kurt Wood, owner of the AAMCO of Salt Lake City, has been an AAMCO franchisee for nearly 25 years. After graduating from high school, Wood worked as an AAMCO service technician and worked his way up to customer service manager prior to becoming a business owner. The entrepreneur has been supporting his community through various charitable initiatives to benefit veterans and others in need.

"Becoming an AAMCO franchise owner was one of the best decisions I ever made," said Wood. "I've always been passionate about cars and AAMCO offers a simplified business model for its franchisees to grow their business. Having been in the system for more than two decades, I couldn't be more pleased with the direction under the new leadership team."

For more than 50 years, AAMCO's network of locally-owned and independently-operated automotive service centers have employed the latest technology. Expert technicians diagnose a repair, fix it right the first time and back it with a nationwide warranty. Known as the world's leading transmission expert, the company has evolved into a total car care brand that provides a variety of services, including brake repair, tune-ups, shocks and struts, routine maintenance and more. AAMCO was recently named toEntrepreneur's 2016 Franchise 500, ranking at the top of the transmission repair category. Based on network size, growth rate and financial strength, the brand also earned a spot on Entrepreneur's "Best of the Best" list.

With nearly 700 centers across North America, AAMCO is actively seeking single- and multi-unit franchisee operators who are passionate about the brand and committed to providing the highest quality service. Interested candidates should have a minimum net worth of $250,000 and liquid assets of at least$65,000 per unit. Depending on the real estate site selected, franchisees can expect the total investment to be approximately $227,400  $333,000 with a $39,500 initial franchise fee. Reduced franchise fees are available for honorably discharged veterans.

To learn more about franchise or conversion opportunities with AAMCO, contact Eric Simon, director of franchise development, at 866-379-5649 or esimon@americandriveline.com, or visitaamcofranchise.com.

About AAMCO

AAMCO is the world's largest branded chain of transmission specialists and a leader in total car care services. AAMCO has nearly 700 franchised automotive centers throughout the United States andCanada. Established in 1962, AAMCO-branded centers are proud to have served more than 45 million drivers. For more information, visit: aamcouniversity.com, aamco.com or aamcoblog.com.

SOURCE AAMCO Transmissions, Inc.

Contact:

Claibourne Smith

Fish Consulting

407-808-2426

csmith@fish-consulting.com

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
Goldfish Swim School Franchising, LLC Recognized as Inc. Magazine Unveils 35th Annual List of Americas Fastest-Growing Private Companies

Goldfish ranks #725 with a Three-Year Sales Growth of 544%

August 22, 2016 // Franchising.com // BIRMINGHAM, MICHIGAN  Inc. magazine has selected Goldfish Swim School Franchising for its 35th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. On top of the overall company ranking, Goldfish comes in at number 7 in Detroit companies and number 16 in both the Michigan and Education segments. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economys most dynamic segment its independent small businesses. Companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Dominos Pizza, Pandora, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees of the Inc. 5000.

This is the second time that Goldfish has made the list, skyrocketing from number 4492 in 2013 to number 725 this year. The company has experienced exponential growth since the opening of their first franchise location in 2009. In the past 12 months alone, twelve locations have opened in seven different states. Over 20 additional locations are currently in development across the country.

This growth, coupled with the companys unique business model, has propelled Goldfish Swim School into the spotlight. The honor from Inc. is the latest in a string of awards the company has received in 2016.

Earlier this year, Franchise Business Review featured Goldfish as a Top Child Services Franchise, based on franchisee satisfaction. Entrepreneur Magazine also named the company as part of the 2016 Franchise 500 list. As a Michigan-based company, Goldfish was honored with two additional awards this summer  Michigan Celebrates Small Business Top 50 Companies to Watch and Corp! Magazines Economic Bright Spot award.

When my wife, Jenny, and I decided to start our own learn-to-swim business, we never imagined how following her passion to create a better way to teach children to swim would change our lives and evolve into what it is today, says Chris McCuiston, CEO and Co-Founder of Goldfish Swim School. It is an honor to continue to be recognized for our success by such prestigious outlets. We are proud of the system we have built with the help of our team, our franchisees and their teams.;

As Goldfish continues to grow, both franchisees and families will benefit from the concept and systems that the McCuistons have developed and continuously improve. For more information on franchising with Goldfish or to learn more about the schools, visit goldfishswimschool.com or call (800) 856-5120.

About Goldfish Swim School

Established in 2006 by husband and wife team, Jenny and Chris McCuiston, Goldfish Swim School provides swim lessons and water safety instruction to infants and children ages four months to 12 years. Classes are offered by specially trained instructors in a safe, kid-friendly and fun environment. Goldfish currently teaches more than 50,000 students per week to swim and be safer in and around the water. Headquartered in Birmingham, Michigan, Goldfish Swim School opened its first franchise in 2009 in Farmington Hills, Michigan and is in the process of expanding franchise opportunities throughout the country. Currently there are over 55 schools open or in development in more than 17 states.

SOURCE Goldfish Swim School

Contact:

Ashley Mitchell

Marketing Manager

Goldfish Swim School Franchising, LLC

ashley@goldfishfranchise.com

248-220-5345

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
Goodcents Deli Fresh Subs Names Scott Ford to President

Former Chief Operating Officer Promoted to Lead Company, Expand Franchise

DESOTO, KAN. (PRWEB) August 22, 2016 - Goodcents Deli Fresh Subs promoted Scott Ford to president to lead the nearly 30-year-old franchise-based deli sandwich company based in De Soto, Kan. Previously, Ford was chief operating officer managing day-to-day operations and human resources.

In addition to his responsibilities as COO, Ford will now oversee the strategic vision of the business, including franchise growth and overall customer experience.

We have aggressive growth plans for our business, and we need a strong leader to help us achieve them, said Joe Bisogno, chairman and CEO of Goodcents. Scott knows the business and has played a key role in innovating our brand and strengthening the experience for our customers, employees and owners. Im confident he is the right person to accelerate our growth moving forward.

During the last year, Ford has lead the charge on a new digital consumer interaction and ordering strategy for the business, including the launch of a new mobile app and online ordering system and the unveiling of its new Goodcents of the Future restaurant prototype featuring some of the industrys first in-store and drive-thru digital ordering kiosks. Also, he initiated a new area representative agreement (ARA) to allow for more rapid franchise expansion.

His strong focus on technology has benefited franchise owners and employees. He helped to develop a new mobile app for franchise owners that provides up-to-the-minute sales, product and labor details for individual restaurants, as well as territory, ownership groups and enterprise levels. He also helped launch a new e-learning platform for training employees.

We have a strong brand and a strong team that is poised for rapid growth, said Ford. Im excited at the opportunities ahead of us and look forward to continuing to build on our success.

Ford has worked in the restaurant industry for more than 30 years. Before joining Goodcents in 2010, Ford worked in leadership roles at Boston Market, McDonalds and Applebees. He is based in the Goodcents national headquarters office in DeSoto, Kan.

About Goodcents

Goodcents first opened in the Kansas City Metropolitan area more than 25 years ago with a focus on providing deli fresh subs, house-baked breads and pasta made in the restaurant every day. Now called Goodcents Deli Fresh Subs rather than Mr. Goodcents, the company remains true to its singular focus: offering a fresh, quality experience to its customers by slicing sandwich meats and cheeses to order, baking fresh bread each day and providing hearty pasta meals cooked in its restaurants. Goodcents has more than 80 locations across eight states. Visit http://goodcentssubs.com for more information. To connect with Goodcents through Facebook visit http://www.facebook.com/GoodcentsSubs or Twitter @EatGoodcents and Snapchat at GoodcentsSubs.

SOURCE Goodcents

Contacts:

Erica Cohen

MNPR

+1 913-707-8486

Amy Howarter

Goodcents Deli Fresh Subs

913-908-4627

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
National Award-Winning Duck Donuts Opening First Ohio Franchise: Columbus Location Will Open Its Doors in October

MECHANICSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA (PRWEB) August 19, 2016 - Russ DiGilio, founder and owner of Duck Donuts Franchising Company LLC, is pleased to announce the opening of his nationally celebrated donut franchise in the Columbus, Ohio suburb of Westerville.

Darren Shutler and Brad Hobbs, new franchise owners and brothers-in-law, are thrilled to bring the first Duck Donuts franchise to Ohio. They are planning an October 2016 opening at 825 Polaris Parkway, located in the Westar Development on the corner of Polaris Parkway and Worthington Road, just east of the Polaris Fashion Place and I-71. The 1,500 square foot location will feature select retail items and indoor seating that reflects the franchises iconic beach theme.

Our first Duck Donuts experience was love at first sight. We went on a family vacation to the Outer Banks in 2014 and visited the Duck Donuts in Corolla, North Carolina. They were the most delicious donuts we had ever tasted, but it wasnt just the donuts - it was the entire experience, from choosing the icings and toppings, to ordering and watching these special donuts being made and topped! It was so much fun, we couldnt wait to go back, says Darren Shutler, school teacher-turned-small business owner.

I have been happily teaching for over 20 years, but my Duck Donuts experience made me want to take a chance on something completely different. Its a unique, successful, family-oriented business, and we wanted to be a part of it, says Shutler.

Shutler added that they recently joined the Westerville Area Chamber of Commerce and are excited for Duck Donuts to add to the regions growing reputation as a foodie destination.

Movoto Real Estate named Westerville Americas Best Suburb in 2013 and Money Magazine ranked Westerville #15 on its list of Top 100 Best Places to Live in 2009. Westerville is known as a great place to live and raise a family, and we are elated to have the opportunity to share our Warm, delicious & made to order!TM donuts with the community, students, and families of this region, says Russ DiGilio. Central Ohio is home to more than a dozen colleges and universities. Were serving the best warm and fresh donuts in the world, but were also very proud of the number of jobs were able to provide for people who are passionate about the hospitality industry. With the expansion of each Duck Donuts location, we are adding 25 to 40 new jobs to the economy and that has a direct impact on the residents of Central Ohio.

The Franklin County location is store #42 in the Duck Donuts enterprise. By the end of 2016, Duck Donuts will have 100 stores in operation and/or with signed contracts.

Donuts are made fresh to order 7 days a week: SundayThursday from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Friday-Saturday from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Visit our Facebook Page for updates, follow us on Instagram, and connect with us on the web at DuckDonuts.com.

About Duck Donuts

Duck Donuts was founded in 2006 by Russ DiGilio in Duck, North Carolina. His intention? To solve a family vacation problem: Our family wanted a place to buy warm, delicious, made-to-order! donuts, and when we couldnt find one, we decided to start our own.

By 2011, Duck Donuts had expanded to four Outer Banks locations and the donut business was so successful that DiGilio was continuously approached about franchise opportunities and by fans who begged for a Duck Donuts in their communities. The first franchise opened in Williamsburg, VA, in 2013 and there are now 26 open franchise locations.

Duck Donuts store openings are scheduled for:

Woodbridge, VA  August 2016

Fayetteville, NC  September 2016

Bridgewater, NJ  October 2016

Wilmington, NC  October 2016

Stafford, VA  October 2016

Orlando, FL  November 2016

Charleston, SC  December 2016

Nashville, TN  January 2017

Birmingham, AL  January 2017

Pittsburgh, PA  March 2017

State College, PA  TBD

Atlanta, GA  TBD

The Duck Donuts Experience

We discovered that the most powerful marketing advantage we have is the aroma of warm donuts wafting from every store. Our light vanilla cake donut is a little crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, made fresh right in front of you, hand-dipped in hot icing, and sprinkled with your choice of delicious toppings and drizzles. Its that simple.

Children love to stand on the strategically placed step in the waiting area, allowing them to see the entire process, as the donut machine cooks and carries their donuts down the line, where they are dipped, topped, packaged, and served warm in the box. Duck Donuts serves its own signature coffee blends - Riptide Roast, Light House Blend, and Sunset Pier Decaf with new special seasonal flavors changing throughout the year - and offers breakfast options, as well as catering services. Indoor and outdoor seating is available at most locations. For customers who dont have a Duck Donuts in their neighborhood, or wish to gift a delicious box of Duck Donuts to someone far away, order specialty Flash Frozen donuts.

To learn more or to share your Duck Donuts experience, Like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, or send us a Tweet.

SOURCE Duck Donuts

Contact:

Anne Deeter Gallaher

Deeter Gallaher Group LLC

+1 717.525.8042

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
Radar Systems Market Rising at 5.39% CAGR to Exhibit $26.37Bn by 2021

According to latest research, North American region contributed the largest share to the radar systems market while defense segment is estimated to lead the radar systems market in 2016 to the increased investment by various countries across the globe.

--

The radar systems market is expected to grow from USD 20.29 billion in 2016 to USD 26.37 billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 5.39% from 2016 to 2021. The increased usage of radar systems in unmanned vehicles and homeland security is expected to drive the growth of the radar systems market in the coming years.

The pulsed radar segment has led the radar systems market, as continuous wave radars cannot detect the range of an object while pulsed radars are capable of detecting the range of an object and judging its speed.

Complete report on membranes market spread across 182 pages, profiling 14 companies and supported with 95 tables and 73 figures is now available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/radar-systems-market-by-technology-cw-radars-pulsed-radars-application-defense-commercial-range-short-long-medium-component-antenna-receiver-transmitter-frequency-band-l-x-c-s-and-region-glo-st-to-2021-market-report.html .

The defense segment is estimated to lead the radar systems market in 2016. This can be attributed to the increased investment by various countries across the globe for homeland security and coastal surveillance.

North America is expected to contribute the largest share to the radar systems market. This can be attributed to the presence of key market players, such as Lockheed Martin (U.S.), Northup Grumman (U.S.), Honeywell (U.S.), and BAE Systems (U.K.) in the region.

Break-up of profile of primary participants for this report:

By Company Type - Tier 1 - 35%, Tier 2 - 45%, Tier 3 - 20%

By Designation - C level - 35%, Director level - 25%, others - 40%

By Region - North America - 45%, Europe - 20%, Asia-Pacific - 30%, RoW - 5%

The key players operational in the radar systems market include Lockheed Martin (U.S.), Rockwell Collins (U.S.), Saab Group (Sweden), and BAE Systems (U.K.), Rheinmet all AG (Germany), and General Dynamics (U.S.), among others. Request a discount on Radar Systems Market by Technology (CW Radars, Pulsed Radars), Application (Defense, Commercial), Range (Short, Long, Medium), Component (Antenna, Receiver, Transmitter), Frequency Band (L, X, C, S) and Region - Global Forecast to 2021 research report at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/contacts/discount?rname=663688 .

From an insight perspective, the radar systems market report focuses on various levels of analysis, including industry analysis, market share analysis of top players, and company profiles, which together comprise and discuss the basic views on the competitive landscape, high-growth regions and countries, and their respective regulatory policies, drivers, restraints, and opportunities.

On a related note, another research on Radar Security Market Global Forecast to 2022 says, Border security application is estimated to capture the largest market share. The said market is expected to grow from USD 17.85 billion in 2016 to USD 25.17 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 5.90%. North America is the major region for the radar security market. Companies like Thales SA, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Raytheon Company, Saab AB, Elbit Systems Ltd., FLIR Systems, Inc., Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., Blighter Surveillance Systems, Kongsberg Gruppen, DeTect Inc., SRC Inc., ThalesRaytheonSystems and Kelvin Hughes Limited have been profiled in this 211 pages research report available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/radar-security-market-by-surveillance-type-ground-air-marine-range-long-medium-short-application-border-security-seaport-and-harbor-critical-infrastructure-and-geography-global-forecast-to-2022-market-report.html .

About Us:

RnRMarketResearch.com is your single source for all market research needs. Our database includes 500,000+ market research reports from over 100+ leading global publishers & in-depth market research studies of over 5000 micro markets.

For more information, please visit http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com

Contact Info:

Name: Ritesh Tiwari

Organization: RnR Market Research

Address: UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Phone: +1-888-391-5441

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/radar-systems-market-rising-at-5-39-cagr-to-exhibit-26-37bn-by-2021/128327

Release ID: 128327

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)
Drug Rehab Orlando Comments on Trucking Company Bringing Cocaine and Marijuana to Central Florida

( August 18, 2016 ) Orlando, Florida -- After a two year long investigation, an Orlando man was arrested for using his transportation business to bring pounds of cocaine and marijuana to Central Florida. Peter Truong, the president of the trucking business, used his transportation service to bring these drugs from California to Central Florida. Nine other individuals are being charged as well. These individuals were suspected to have begun to sell prescription pills. Drug Rehab Orlando asserts that arresting these individuals will allow the community to be safer from drug use. With the arrest of these individuals, the large amounts of drugs they were bringing into the community will no longer reach the area. The arrest may also deter individuals taking part in illegal drug activity to not do it in this area or at all.

An associate from Drug Rehab Orlando comments:

"The arrest of these individuals will make the community so much safer. Because of the arrest, the police were able to uncover how much drugs the company has been able to bring into the area. By doing this, the company is no longer able to transport the amount of drugs they were before. The arrest also serves as a warning to other individuals taking part in illegal drug activity in the community. The warning is to not take part in this illegal activity or they can end up being arrested just like those from the transportation company. The arrest exemplifies the negative effects taking part in illegal drug activity can have in one's life."

About Drug Rehab Orlando 38881:

Drug Rehab Orlando allows a client to address the psychological, physical, and emotional ties to their addiction through addiction recovery treatment. This addiction treatment center in Orlando provides clients with addiction recovery services such as heroin rehab in Orlando and alcohol treatment in Orlando. For more information visit http://www.drugrehaborlando.org/ or call (407)326-2266.

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)
Drug Rehab Baltimore Comments on Maryland Prisons' Approach to Drug Treatment

( August 18, 2016 ) Baltimore, Maryland -- With the growing problem of Suboxone being smuggled into prisons, correctional officials of Maryland have proposed to ban personal mail being received by prisoners. This proposal was later removed following the criticism of the ACLU. Many people believe that, by not allowing prisoners to receive personal mail, the problem is not effectively being solved. Drug Rehab Baltimore asserts that, though the issue of Suboxone infiltrating prisons must be solved, it must be solved in a way that does not negatively affect a prisoner. Many prisoners depend on their personal mail to remain level headed while in prison. By taking away the opportunity of prisoners being able to receive mail, correctional officials will create the possibility for negative relationships to grow between them and prisoners.

An associate from Drug Rehab Baltimore comments:

"By taking away the opportunity for prisoners to receive personal mail, correctional officials may be creating hostile feelings in prisoners toward correctional officials. Many prisoners use the personal mail they receive as a way to stay sane and behave correctly while in a correctional facility. Removing their ability to communicate with individuals they are close to will create anger in a prisoner that will most likely be directed to correctional officials. Instead, these correctional officials should find ways to effectively monitor what is going into prisons through personal mail. This will ensure that prisoners will not have feelings of hostility or anger toward any correctional officials."

About Drug Rehab Baltimore 28917:

Drug Rehab Baltimore provides clients with the opportunity to address their addiction through drug and alcohol rehab in Baltimore. Treatment offered by Drug Rehab Baltimore include inpatient and outpatient rehab, group and family therapy, partial hospitalization programs, sober living communities, and other addiction recovery services. This drug treatment facility in Baltimore provides clients with the necessary means to have more healthy and balanced lifestyles by maintaining their sobriety. For more information visit http://www.drugrehabbaltimore.net/ or call (410)709-3816.

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)
Hydrogen Peroxide Industry Growth And Forecast Report Up To 2021: Radiant Insights, Inc

This report provides detailed analysis of worldwide markets for Hydrogen Peroxide from 2011-2016, and provides extensive market forecasts (2016-2021) by region/country and subsectors.

--

This report provides detailed analysis of worldwide markets for Hydrogen Peroxide 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 Hydrogen Peroxide market and further lays out an analysis of the factors influencing the supply/demand for Hydrogen Peroxide, 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.

Hydrogen peroxide is a chemical compound with the formula H2O2. In its pure form, it is a colourless liquid, slightly more viscous than water; however, for safety reasons it is normally used as an aqueous solution. Hydrogen peroxide is the simplest peroxide (a compound with an oxygen-oxygen single bond) and finds use as a strong oxidizer, bleaching agent and disinfectant. Concentrated hydrogen peroxide, or "high-test peroxide", is a reactive oxygen species and has been used as a propellant in rocketry. Hydrogen peroxide is often described as being "water but with one more oxygen atom", a description that can give the incorrect impression of significant chemical similarity between the two compounds. While they have a similar melting point and appearance, pure hydrogen peroxide will explode if heated to boiling, will cause serious contact burns to the skin and can set materials alight on contact. For these reasons it is usually handled as a dilute solution (household grades are typically 3-6% in the U.S. and somewhat higher in Europe). Its chemistry is dominated by the nature of its unstable peroxide bond.

Browse Full Research Report With TOC: http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-hydrogen-peroxide-industry-report-2016

Global Hydrogen Peroxide Industry Report 2016 report has been prepared based on the synthesis, analysis, and interpretation of information about the global Hydrogen Peroxide 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 Hydrogen Peroxide market areMGC, Evonik, FMC, Arkema, Akzo Nobel, Kemira, OCI, Hansol Chemical, Jinke Chemical, Luxi Chemical, Shandong Hengtong, Huatai Group, Hebei Xinhua.

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 Hydrogen Peroxide industry has been provided.

See More Reports of This Category by Radiant Insights: http://www.radiantinsights.com/catalog/chemicals

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-hydrogen-peroxide-industry-report-2016

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/hydrogen-peroxide-industry-growth-and-forecast-report-up-to-2021-radiant-insights-inc/128516

Release ID: 128516

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 Dapsone Market Size, Product Analysis by Price, Profit, Capacity, Production, Supply, Demand and Industry Growth to 2020

Asklinkerreports.com adds yet another resourceful report to its database the Global Dapsone Industry 2016 Market Research Report that provides a complete and informed review of the organization of the Dapsone Market.

--

Global Dapsone Industry 2016 Market Research Report - This exceptional report provides a calculable and qualitative analysis of the development and status of the market and concentrating on the market size and trends, supply and future prospects. The report will streamline the operational and calculated decision making processes.

Browse 160 Pages Global Dapsone Industry 2016 Market Research Report.

The key segments covered in this report are Dapsone Industry Overview which includes topics such as classification analysis, main classification analysis, main classification share analysis, industry chain structure analysis, global market comparison analysis, and global import market analysis. In addition, Dapsone global export market analysis, global main region market analysis, global market comparison analysis, and Dapsone global market development trend analysis have also been included. Along with it an encompassing study of the Dapsone Industry in North America, Asia, and Europe has been made.

What makes the Global Dapsone Industry 2016 Market Research Report more trustworthy for the new investors is the info on the Global Dapsone apart from analyses on productions, supply, demand, forecast, market share, key trends etc. This report studies all the features of the present and forthcoming industry growth information which is crucial for all new players as well as the leading market players. For a deep insight of the Dapsone market the report presents a deep study of the capacity production trend, production and market share forecast, and import and export consumption trend. The report further highlights the demand analysis, supply demand analysis, along with Dapsone production cost price profit trend.

Order a Copy of Report at http://www.asklinkerreports.com/contacts/purchase/4458.

With numerous company profiles supporting the Dapsone market analysis, this research report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a treasured foundation of assistance and direction for companies interested in the market. The Global Dapsone Industry 2016 Market Research Report aids clients with investment viability analysis, project SWOT analysis, and investment return analysis. Wholly, the report provides a detailed understanding of the global Dapsone industry covering all vital factors.

2016 Market Research Report on Dapsone Industry Major Points from Table of Content

Part I Dapsone Industry Overview

o Chapter One Dapsone Industry Overview

Part II Asia Dapsone Industry

o Chapter Two Asia Dapsone Product History of Development

o Chapter Three Asia Dapsone Key Manufacturers Analysis

o Chapter Four 2011-2016 Asia Dapsone Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast Analysis

o Chapter Five Dapsone Industry Development Trend

Part III North American Dapsone Industry

o Chapter Six North American Dapsone Product History of Development

o Chapter Seven North American Dapsone Key Manufacturers Analysis

o Chapter Eight 2011-2016 North American Dapsone Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast Analysis

o Chapter Nine Dapsone Industry Development Trend

Part IV Europe Dapsone Industry Analysis

o Chapter Ten Europe Dapsone Product History of Development

o Chapter Eleven Europe Dapsone Key Manufacturers Analysis

o Chapter Twelve 2011-2016 Europe Dapsone Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast Analysis

o Chapter Thirteen Dapsone Industry Development Trend

Part V Dapsone Marketing Channels and Investment Feasibility

o Chapter Fourteen Dapsone Marketing Channels Analysis

o Chapter Fifteen Dapsone Development Environmental Analysis

o Chapter Sixteen Dapsone SWOT Analysis and New Project Investment Feasibility Analysis

Part VI Global Dapsone Industry Conclusions

o Chapter Seventeen 2011-2016 Global Dapsone Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast Analysis

o Chapter Eighteen Dapsone Industry Development Trend

o Chapter Nineteen Global Dapsone Industry Research Summary

Inquire for Discount at http://www.asklinkerreports.com/contacts/discount/4458.

About Us

AskLinker Reports is an aggregator of market research and industry intelligence reports providing data analysis of sectors including chemical, medical, machinery, food, energy, automotive, environmental protection, transportation, electric power, light industry, petroleum, electronics and other categories.

For more information, please visit http://www.asklinkerreports.com/4458-dapsone-market

Contact Info:

Name: Ritesh Tiwari

Email: Sales@asklinkerreports.com

Organization: AskLinkerReports.com

Phone: + 1 888 391 5441

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/global-dapsone-market-size-product-analysis-by-price-profit-capacity-production-supply-demand-and-industry-growth-to-2020/128374

Release ID: 128374

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)
Drug Rehab Orlando Comments on Drug Trafficking Ring Bust

( August 19, 2016 ) Orlando, Florida -- After two long years of investigation, a drug bust on an Orlando drug trafficking ring finally happened. Authorities were able to go into six different businesses and homes to search for illegal drugs. The trafficking ring was found to be linked to places such as Miami, New York, Colorado, and California. Drug Rehab Orlando asserts that the elimination of this drug trafficking organization will hinder the amount of drugs coming into these different areas. The bust will also discourage other organizations from organizing in places where the bust occurred. With the continued drug arrests, the community will grow to be more protected against drug use and drug abuse in the area. People will no longer have to be worried about if drug use will enter their families or communities as the threat diminishes.

An associate from Drug Rehab Orlando comments:

"By stopping this drug trafficking ring from continuing any further, the spread of drugs to the location listed will become less of a threat. The threat of this trafficking ring is diminished with the increase of arrests for illegal drug activity. As more illegal drug activity is taken out of the community, more people begin to feel secure about the protection being placed around them by authorities. With less drugs being used in the community, people hope to see less drug use in their communities."

About Drug Rehab Orlando 52801:

Drug Rehab Orlando provides clients with alcohol rehab in Orlando and heroin rehab in Orlando. This addiction treatment facility in Orlando gives clients access to services such as drug counseling services, medical detox, inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation and other addiction recovery services. These services will allow a client to maintain their sobriety by addressing both the emotional and physical ties linked to addiction. This facility ensures that a client will receive the correct treatment to maintain their journey toward sobriety.

For more information visit http://www.drugrehaborlando.org/ or call (407)326-2266.

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)
Ohio Trial Attorney Steve Crandall Named to 23rd Edition of Best Lawyers in America

Ohio trial attorney Stephen S. Crandall is selected for Best Lawyers in America for the third consecutive year, for the practice of plaintiffs medical malpractice law and plaintiffs' personal injury litigation.

--

CPW Law is honored to announce that Stephen S. Crandall, co-founder, has been selected for inclusion 23rd edition of Best Lawyers in America, in the areas of Plaintiffs Medical Malpractice Law and Plaintiffs Personal Injury Litigation. This is Mr. Crandall's 3rd consecutive year being named to the list.

"I feel very honored to be included once again," said Steve Crandall. "As trial attorneys, we fight so hard for our clients, who have sustained serious, often life-changing injuries. We want to hold the liable parties accountable to them, and it takes a tremendous amount of work and passion. To be recognized by Best Lawyers for this work for three years in a row means quite a lot, because I take my responsibilities to my clients seriously. Being recognized for that by some of the very same lawyers who sit on the other side of the aisle from me is humbling. I am very proud to be named to the list of one of the most well-respected publications out there when it comes to legal services."

CPW Law maintains offices in Ohio and Kentucky, and represents only plaintiffs. All three firm founders are former medical malpractice defense attorneys. Mr. Crandall has obtained some of the largest verdicts and settlements in Ohio history on behalf of his clients. He is one of only a few attorneys named to the list in Ohio for plaintiffs' medical malpractice.

About the Best Lawyers in America Award

Best Lawyers "is the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession. A listing in Best Lawyers is widely regarded by both clients and legal professionals as a significant honor, conferred on a lawyer by his or her peers. For more than three decades, Best Lawyers lists have earned the respect of the profession, the media, and the public, as the most reliable, unbiased source of legal referrals anywhere." For the 2017 edition, members reviewed more than 7.3 million nominations before finally deciding on the final list. It includes 54,905 attorneys from all over the country and in Washington, D.C., who practice in 140 different areas of law.

All nominees face a thorough vetting process by current members of Best Lawyers, making this list one of the most well-respected, peer-reviewed publications in the country. An attorney cannot nominate him or herself, but may be nominated by other attorneys, clients or members of the judiciary. Once all nominations are in, "current listed lawyers provide feedback on the nominee's work," and send their evaluations on to another team. Nominees must be confirmed as being in good standing with their local bar association(s) in order to be selected.

While inclusion on the list does ensure a nomination for the following year, it does not guarantee selection. Every attorney must be reevaluated to ensure that he or she is still eligible for inclusion.

CPW Law provides comprehensive counsel to the injured throughout Ohio and Kentucky. The attorneys only represent plaintiffs. The primary focus of their practice includes:

o Medical malpractice

o Auto and commercial truck accidents

o Catastrophic personal injury

o Birth injuries

o Wrongful death

For more information, please visit http://www.cpw-law.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Stephen Crandall

Email: steve@cpw-law.com

Organization: CPW Law

Address: 600 Superior Ave. Fifth Third Center, Suite 1300, Cleveland, OH 44114

Phone: 216-220-0000

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdNpbMmvZGE

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/ohio-trial-attorney-steve-crandall-named-to-23rd-edition-of-best-lawyers-in-america/128628

Release ID: 128628

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)
ESRD Market (End Stage renal disease): Size, Share, Trends and Forecasts 2020 Discussed in New Research Report

MarketReportsChina.com adds "Global End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Market: Size, Trends and Forecasts (2016-2020)" to its store.

--

End Stage renal disease (ESRD) occurs when the kidneys are no longer able to carry out their daily functions, requiring either dialysis or transplantation to sustain life. When properly functioning, kidneys act to filter the body of metabolic wastes, which are excreted as urine, and to maintain fluid balance. Chronic kidney failure, a decline in kidney function most often related to diabetes or hypertension, but resulting from other causes as well, including vascular disease, genetic disorders, and exposure to toxic levels of certain drugs. The best strategy for preventing ESRD is to detect chronic kidney failure at the earliest possible stage so that the decline in kidney function can be slowed through the use of medications and tight control of blood sugar and blood pressure levels.

Complete Report with table of contents available at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/482598.html.

The global ESRD market increased at a significant CAGR during the span of 5 years, i.e. 2010-2015 and projections are made that the market would rise in the next five years i.e. 2016-2020 tremendously. The upsurge in the market was due to the various reasons such as is diabetic nephropathy, genetic diseases, infection, drugs, traumatic injury, major surgery and etc. The market can be segmented on the basis of treatment as kidney transplant and dialysis. The global dialysis market can be segmented on the basis of products and services. On the basis of products, the market is segmented into hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis while on the basis of services, the market is segmented into in-center dialysis and home dialysis.

Company Coverage

1 Fresenius Medical Care

2 Baxter International

3 Davita Healthcare Partners

Inquiry for a discount on this ESRD Market Report at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/contacts/discount.php?name=482598.

The growth drivers for the market are: rise in diabetic and aging population, upsurge in per capita healthcare expenditure along with the emerging countries such as India, China and Brazil. Despite the market is governed by various growth drivers, there are certain challenges faced by the market such as: disparities in the access to renal transplant therapy, less public awareness and negative societal effects.

The report titled "Global End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Market: Size, Trends and Forecasts (2016-2020)" provides an in-depth analysis of the global ESRD market with detailed analysis of market size and growth, market share and economic impact of the industry. The report also provides market size of each of the segments of the market on the basis of the treatment opted by the patients along with the detailed overview of the home dialysis market. The report provides detailed market share analysis of the global dialysis market by players as well.

Order a copy of this research report at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/contacts/purchase.php?name=482598.

The report also includes the country analysis of the U.S. and Japan for ESRD market. It provides the analysis of ESRD patient volume along with the kidney transplant and dialysis market on the basis of the volume. The segments of the dialysis market are also analyzed in detail.

The report provides detailed regional analysis of North America, Europe, Meddle East and Africa (EMEA), Asia-Pacific and Latin America for the dialysis market. Regional analysis includes market size by volume along with the segments and clinic operators in each region.

Furthermore, the report assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global ESRD market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends. The competition in the global dialysis market is stiff and dominated by the big players like FMC. Further, key players of the dialysis market Baxter and Davita are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.

Key Topics covered in ESRD Market:

1. Executive Summary

2. Introduction

3. Global ESRD Market Analysis

4. Country Analysis: ESRD Market

5. Kidney Transplant Market Analysis

6. Global Dialysis Market Analysis

7. Regional Analysis: Dialysis Market

8. Home Dialysis Market Overview

9. Market Dynamics

10. Competitive Landscape

11. Company Profiling

Browse All Latest Pharmaceuticals Market Research Report at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/cat/pharmaceuticals-market-research.html.

For more information, please visit http://www.marketreportsonline.com/contacts/purchase.php?name=482598

Contact Info:

Name: Ritesh Tiwari

Email: sales@marketreportsonline.com

Organization: MarketReportsOnline

Phone: + 1 888 391 5441

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/esrd-market-end-stage-renal-disease-size-share-trends-and-forecasts-2020-discussed-in-new-research-report/128430

Release ID: 128430

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)
Drug Rehab Orlando Comments on Opioid Epidemic Occurring in the Older Addict Community

( August 22, 2016 ) Orlando, Florida -- Older addicts are usually paid less attention to when it comes to drug or alcohol addictions. This makes it harder for them to find the correct treatment for their addiction. Low-income seniors find the task of fighting addiction especially difficult. With older age, people who abuse drugs become more reluctant to find help for their addiction, especially because they feel ashamed. The "silent epidemic" is the phrase used to coin the amount of older adults with drug addictions who are not able to treat it. They are usually unable to pay for the cost of receiving the correct addiction treatment. These people usually aren't accounted for in the larger population of those suffering with an addiction. Drug Rehab Orlando asserts that, by not counting the amount of older adults suffering from an addiction, the number of addicts in the nation becomes inaccurate. No matter how old or young someone is, their addiction should be taken seriously. This should especially be applied to the older adults with addictions. Many people associate older adults' deaths with their age and age-linked diseases. By paying attention to the epidemic occurring throughout the nation of all ages, we will be able to really understand the addiction epidemic in our country.

An associate from Drug Rehab Orlando comments:

"It is sad to know that older people in the elderly community are really seeking help for their addictions but can not find it. The prejudice placed against older people because of their age must be stopped so that we will be able to actually address the addiction crisis in our country. By doing this, we will be able to understand how extensive the issue really is. Instead of not providing the elderly community with help for their addiction, we must help them address their situation completely to understand how to combat the addiction epidemic in the country."

Drug Rehab Orlando provides clients with the proper and necessary resources to overcome their addiction. The addiction recovery treatments provided include inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation, drug counseling, individualized treatment plans, alcohol rehab in Orlando, and heroin rehab in Orlando. By attending this addiction treatment center, clients are able to effectively combat their addiction. Through comprehensive care, a patient will successfully be able to achieve and maintain sobriety. For more information about Drug Rehab Orlando, visit http://www.drugrehaborlando.org/ or call (407)326-2266.

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)
China Heavy Duty Truck Industry Growth And Forecast Report Up To 2018: Radiant Insights, Inc

--

The global heavy duty truck market in China is expected to reach a total of over 1 billion units by the end of the forecast period (2013-2018). It is experiencing a decline in growth in recent years with premium manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz shutting down factories to overcome losses. It had accumulated almost USD 17 billion in sales in 2012. The market is heavily reliant on the logistics industry.

Heavy duty trucks are mainly used by cement, steel, coal mining, import and export, and infrastructure appliances industries. But the development of smart cities in China is expected to positively impact the market. The market is segmented by products and regions.

Products include special purpose trucks, heavy duty gasoline trucks, heavy duty diesel trucks, and buses, firefighting trucks, and other vehicles. Heavy duty gasoline trucks will be difficult to manufacture due to the rising prices of gasoline. Also carbon emissions by these trucks have generated a negative image. But Obama's new climatic policy which has been approved by the EPA can reduce fuel costs by USD 170 billion in the coming years.

Browse Full Research Report With TOC: http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/in-depth-research-on-china-heavy-duty-truck-industry-2013-2017

All regions of China operate at different rates according to technology developments and regulatory policies. This is expected to eventually stabilize in the near future. China's economic growth has given rise to many small competitors. Prominent manufacturers in the Chinese heavy duty truck market are Beiqi Foton Motor Co. Ltd., Chery Automobile Co. Ltd., Dongfeng Commercial Vehicles, and Sinotruk Group. Mergers and partnerships are a common strategy adopted by companies to stay afloat in the market.

For instance, Mercedes-Benz has partnered with Beiqi Foton Motor to develop its new brand of heavy duty trucks. These trucks would be fuel-efficient and compliant with the standards of the country which can cope with the rough terrain. Dongfeng Commercial Vehicles is another serious competitor which has gradually moved from manufacturing medium duty trucks to heavy duty trucks.

See More Reports of This Category by Radiant Insights: http://www.radiantinsights.com/catalog/transport-and-logistics

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.

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/china-heavy-duty-truck-industry-growth-and-forecast-report-up-to-2018-radiant-insights-inc/128918

Release ID: 128918

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)
InterServer Introduces New Daily Customer Limit In The Face Of Extraordinary Demand

InterServer has instituted a daily cap on new users to ensure they can continue to provide the same great service and support to all customers in the face of record-breaking demand.

--

In today's tech-savvy world, servers have become the backbone of the internet. Combined with a wide range of users, most with a variety of specific needs that require flexibility & collaboration. InterServer offers premium hardware, Limited Time Hosting and Exclusive Web Hosting packages available anywhere in the world to meet consumer demands.

While the move may seem counter-intuitive for maximizing growth, the company sees the move as the best solution to keep quality consistent. Rather than flooding their existing servers with an abundant amount of new customers, InterServer will limit the number of new customers that can sign up daily.

The daily cap is set to one hundred new customers per day. This ensures that services are rolled out in a timely manner, while preserving a moderate load on existing servers. This helps technical support staff by ensuring that they can provide excellent support while not being overwhelmed.

A spokesperson for InterServer explained, "We have set up a counter on our website, so individuals can easily see how many new customers we have already accepted during the day. This allows for people to quickly see whether or not they can sign up that day, or try again tomorrow. That being said, we pride ourselves on being the best, so this is something we must do in order to preserve that reputation, while ensuring the maximum number of new customers can still benefit from our services."

About InterServer: InterServer has been providing unbeatable server systems for the last 17 years. They own and operate their own datacenter in Secaucus, New Jersey. InterServer's core principles of quality service and support apply across their vast array of products which include dedicated servers, colocation, and other managed services. The company has established a solid reputation for commitment to security, reliability, and technical expertise.

For more information, please visit https://www.interserver.net/

Contact Info:

Name: InterServer, Inc

Email: sales@interserver.net

Organization: InterServer, Inc

Address: 110 Meadowlands PKWY; Secaucus, NJ 07094

Phone: 201-605-1440

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/interserver-introduces-new-daily-customer-limit-in-the-face-of-extraordinary-demand/128863

Release ID: 128863

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)
Jen Ferruggia Review Publishes New Review Of Kayla Itsines Bikini Body Guide

Jen Ferruggia Review is a website created to review Jen Ferruggia's products, but has now branched out to cover competitors, including Kayla Itsines' Bikini Body Guide version 1.0 and 2.0.

--

The bikini body is an ambition for many women throughout the world, and especially now that obesity has become an epidemic. However, losing weight and getting toned is incredibly difficult without a detailed plan to follow. There are many of these plans available, but not all of them are created equal. Jen Ferruggia Review is a website created to offer comprehensive reviews of bikini body guides, starting with those created by Jen Ferruggia. With those complete, they have now opened out to cover the competition, including Kayla Itsines' Bikini Body Guide.

The website has published the review (http://jenferruggiareview.com/kayla-itsines-review-the-bikini-body-guide/) posted by a middle class mother, who wanted to take control of her body after years of relative neglect, too busy with motherhood to focus on herself. The review describes in detail how she decided on the guide, what it claims to offer, and what is included.

The review (jenferruggiareview.com/kayla-itsines-review-the-bikini-body-guide/) then goes into detail about the level of commitment involved, how the workouts work, what nutrition is required and what the challenges are in keeping to the regime. It concludes with an evaluation of how well the piece delivers, replete with before and after shots and full metrics on the weight loss achieved.

A spokesperson for Jen Ferruggia Review explained, "We are pleased to be able to provide a platform for this great review on a competing product. It was always our intention to offer a full and unbiased account of the bikini body guides available and this has been an important step in that direction. Now, individuals can read about both of the biggest and most popular products available online, compare the differences, and see which one is the best fit for their needs. We are pleased that we can provide such a great, high quality resource to our readers and will continue to do so."

About Jen Ferruggia Review: Jen Ferruggia Review is a website dedicated to helping real women discover the experiences of other real women using bikini body guide workout programs. Starting with Jen Ferruggia's popular guide, the site is now expanding to cover other programs. The site is regularly updated by a committed team of writers.

For more information, please visit http://jenferruggiareview.com/kayla-itsines-review-the-bikini-body-guide/

Contact Info:

Name: Jen

Email: admin@jenferruggiareview.com

Organization: JenFerruggiaReview.com

Phone: (302) 526-5378

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/jen-ferruggia-review-publishes-new-review-of-kayla-itsines-bikini-body-guide/128797

Release ID: 128797

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)
Jerred Buys Dallas Houses Expand Their Services To Help Homeowners In Irving, Texas

Jerred Buys Dallas Houses has successfully helped many people in Dallas free the equity trapped in old homes, and has now expanded to help those in Irving, Texas as well.

--

When people hope to sell their homes in Texas, they will need a professional Real Estate consultant that is knowledgeable of the local market, expert in real estate transactions, and can communicate approachably and effectively. Even then, however, individuals can be left waiting months and months to successfully sell their home. For many, this is unacceptable, but they are left with no other alternative. Fortunately for the people of Dallas Texas, Jerred Morris is a seasoned home buyer who can offer fast turnarounds for those who need to sell their home. Jerred has extended his services, and is now buying in Irving, Texas.

Jerred Morris has consistently delivered results for local families in Dallas and now looks forward to doing the same in Irving. His skills and enthusiastic attitude have marked him out as a trusted home buyer over the many years he has been delivering these services. He even offers educational scholarships to individuals in the local community.

His services are invaluable to anyone who needs to sell a house fast, whether to relocate or as a result of job loss, or if the house is simply standing empty. The service is a lifeline for those facing foreclosure or considering bankruptcy, as well as couples who simply want to go their separate ways with a clean break in their assets. Jerred even offers a rent-to-own and equity sharing program for people to stay in their own home after selling.

A spokesperson for Jerred Buys Dallas Houses explained, "We buy Irving, TX houses quickly and pay cash. We are pleased to be able to help people in Irving Texas to liberate the equity from a home that may no longer serve their needs. Equally, for those struggling under the burden of debts, we can help free up cash to cover them. Extending this service into neighboring areas around Dallas has been on the cards for a long time, and we wanted to start with Irving."

About Jerred Buys Dallas Houses: Jerred Buys Dallas Houses offers a cash home buying service to help people free up the equity trapped in their current properties. Jerred has expertise in the local Dallas county real estate, as well as being knowledgeable, honest and approachable in dealing with clients. The company can close a deal in as little as one week. For more information please visit:

For more information, please visit https://www.jerredbuysdallashouses.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Jerred Morris

Email: buyer@jerredbuysdallashouses.com

Organization: Jerred Buys Dallas Houses

Address: 3824 CEDAR SPRINGS RD #801-9800 DALLAS, TX 75219

Phone: 469-608-1039

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/jerred-buys-dallas-houses-expand-their-services-to-help-homeowners-in-irving-texas/128870

Release ID: 128870

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)
Springfield Children's Music Academy Learn Piano With Parents New Site Launched

A well respected music school has launched a new site advertising its courses in the Springfield area. The Children's Music Academy offers both parents and children the chance to learn together.

--

Children's Music Academy, which is starting its twenty second year teaching in its own unique style and allows parents to learn piano and other instruments alongside their children, has launched a new site. The new site covers all of the different courses available at the Children's Music Academy, including courses for beginners ages three to nine years, and a masters course especially for graduates of the academy.

More information can be found on the Children's Music Academy website at: http://wwwChildrenLearnMusic.org.

The site explains that Children's Music Academy, based in Springfield, Missouri, offers music lessons for young children full of fun, interactive activities that can help the students to develop a grounding in musical learning and build essential life skills.

The Children's Music Academy was founded in Littleton, Colorado, with only 15 children in the original small studio. Today, it has dozens of teachers in 25 studios across the United States, and offers a unique and fun way into the world of music for children. They learn in an entertaining environment, with a hands on approach and close interaction with parents.

Because parents must join in on the lessons, they can learn instruments alongside their children, helping to expand their own musical skill set while spending quality time with their children. The CMA website emphasises that learning a musical instrument in this way can help to create a unique bonding experience between the parents and children.

Instruments available to learn at the Children's Music Academy include piano, guitar, percussion instruments, voice, and a range of other options. When children sign up to learn at the academy, they take lessons weekly, with the courses following the Springfield Public Schools calendar. This allows them to learn music in a supportive environment without interfering with vacations or breaks.

Interested parties can benefit from a free lesson both for their children and themselves, allowing them to see how the process works, and get a feel for whether they will enjoy it. Full course details are available on the academy website, where parents can get in touch using the contact form provided. The Children's Music Academy phone number is: 417-425-4618.

For more information, please visit http://www.ChildrenLearnMusic.org

Contact Info:

Name: James Rider

Organization: Site Net USA

Address: 19989 Orrick Trail, Kirksville, MO 63501

Phone: 1 660 341 8710

Release ID: 128980

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)
Falling Victim

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt created the first pyramid schemes. But since then these schemes have evolved to become more elaborate. The most recent example has taken shape in the form of a Gifting Circle, which specifically targets affluent women. According to the Better Business Bureau, a consumer watchdog, the scam works by inviting women to join wine parties and luring them in with the promise of a $40,000 payout if they invest just $5,000 themselves and recruit their friends. Organizers at the party claim to create abundance and spiritual healing for anyone who signs up.

Personally I thought spirituality was about self development and discovering meaning from within. I didnt realize it could be bought with money, lol. But I am certainly no expert on the subject.

Evan Kelly, an advisor for BBB Mainland B.C., says that since $5,000 is somewhat prohibitive, this scheme tends to go after wealthy women and their circle of friends. After all, a friend asked you to join. It couldnt possibly be a scam, right? Kelly says. But eventually the pyramid collapses under its own weight and members on the bottom lose thousands.

So if you ever get invited to a party that might be held under false pretense then enjoy yourself and drink responsibly.  But please DO NOT sign up for any programs they want you to join, especially if it involves recruiting more of your friends.

Here are some tips from the Better Business Bureau for avoiding potential scams such as this.

Do your own independent research and be skeptical.

If theres no actual product or service being offered, question how it makes money.

Be careful of investments that promise low risk and high returns.

So the lesson here is simple: Money cant always buy brains. However, brains will almost certainly make us more money.

__________________________________

Random Useless Fact:

A polar bears fur is not white. Each hair is a clear hollow tube. The bear looks white because of the way its hairs reflect the sunlight.
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.
Dividend payouts from UK companies are falling further behind other developed markets around the world, as the plunging value of the pound and cuts to dividends take their toll.

Hendersons Global Dividend Index revealed UK dividends were down 3.3 per cent year-on-year in the second quarter; the weakest performance of all the G7 nations.

As profit growth remains under pressure in the UK, the potential for companies to increase their dividends has been limited, with many firms announcing cuts or cancellations to payouts.

The pound has also fallen further on the foreign exchange following the EU referendum, continuing a descent that began in the months leading up to the 23 June vote.

Alex Crooke, head of global equity income at Henderson Global Investors, said the combination of these two factors has meant UK dividends will be worth a lot less for overseas investors.

But for UK-based investors, of course, the much weaker pound means dividend income coming from abroad is suddenly worth a lot more, he said, adding investors have a larger selection of global companies to choose from with faster growing dividends than the UK.

Fears about dividends have been haunting the UK market for months, and Standard Lifes Thomas Moore expressed concern that some large companies were using debt to pay their dividends.

Standard Chartered, Anglo American, Barclays and Morrison were identified by Henderson as companies which made steep cuts between April and June this year. Profit growth remains under pressure in the UK, limiting the potential for companies to increase dividends Alex Crooke

However, bearing in mind many of the UKs largest companies pay their dividends in dollars, Mr Crooke said the impact of falling payouts will be less severe than the devaluation in sterling might suggest.

On a headline basis, the UKs $33.7bn (44.2bn) dividend total was 7.7 per cent higher year-on-year, but that was only due to very large special dividend payouts from companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Intercontinental Hotels.

Overall, global dividends rose 2.3 per cent on a headline basis, reaching $421.6bn (552.1bn).

But underlying growth slowed to 1.2 per cent over the quarter, from the 3.1 per cent seen in the first three months of the year, which Mr Crooke said partly owed to a more muted performance from the US.

Henderson revised its global dividend forecast for the full year down to $1.16trn (1.52trn), from $1.18trn (1.55trn), predicting the second half of the year is likely to be weaker than the first.

The shifting fortunes of different parts of the world highlight the value of taking a global approach to income investing, Mr Crooke said. As the US engine of global dividends is slowing down, so Europe is showing encouraging growth.

Peter Lowman, chief investment officer at Investment Quorum, said: I think we must be careful that some of Britains largest UK companies might be paying out more in dividends than they are making in profits.
Property funds investing in UK commercial real estate have been through a torrid time since the vote to leave the European Union.

Many funds have shut their gates, either through temporary suspensions or through imposing fair value adjustments on those investors seeking to redeem their holdings.

But what does the post-Brexit vote effect really mean for property funds? Is there still value in the asset class and where should investors go to find it? Does global property really have long-term prospects in terms of rental income growth?

Tomorrow (23 August), FTAdviser will host a live panel debate at 12pm, bringing together experts from across the investment industry to discuss these and other questions.

Jason Hollands, managing director for Tilney Bestinvest; Justin Urquhart Stewart, head of corporate development for Seven Investment Management; and Tom Walker, co-head of the Schroder Global Cities Real Estate Securities fund, will be on hand to answer your questions during the live blog.

Send us your questions via Twitter to @FTAdviser or @FTATalkingPoint using the hashtag #FTAonAir or bookmark the following web page and make sure you add your comments as the live debate unfolds:

http://www.ftadviser.com/2016/08/17/investments/property/property-post-brexit-what-s-in-store-for-investors-nssplxtbjMmuOivEibyOXP/article.html
The fallout from the Vote Leave referendum victory means there has never been a more appropriate time to consider tax-efficient investments for a number of reasons. Let me outline my reasoning:

In an uncertain world advisers might not be able to provide investors with as much reassurance about projected returns from traditional markets as previously.

Therefore, one of the main areas where advisers can continue to add value to their clients is by astutely managing their tax position. Government tax-efficient investments, such as the Enterprise Investment Scheme, should be considered as part of this planning. It is likely if the UK does negotiate a new trade deal with the EU, or some associate member role, then the UK will continue to abide by EU State Aid rules

Whether deferring a capital gain, reducing an income tax liability or mitigating inheritance tax, there are numerous opportunities for tax planning using tax-efficient investments.

Uncorrelated investments

As a majority of tax-efficient investments are in unquoted stocks they could offer long-term protection from market volatility.

All investments carry their own inherent investment risk but if you understand the underlying investee companies it could be possible to identify asset-backed opportunities (such as BPR qualifying renewable energy projects) or growth opportunities which arent reliant on the UK or EU market.

EIS investments must be held for a minimum of three years, so the need to think long term can also help to reduce investors worry about short term factors.

Supporting the UK economy

It is expected that a short/medium-term consequence of leaving the EU will be reduced investment in UK businesses, both the disappearance of EU grants and the expected reduction in overseas investment which was previously contingent on the UK being within the EU.

Therefore, UK companies will need to find more investment from home-grown sources. The likes of the Enterprise Investment Scheme may appeal to UK investors looking to support growing UK businesses.

Because of this, it is likely there will be more companies seeking investment via EIS. This could potentially mean an increased volume of stronger investment opportunities.

State Aid

The Enterprise Investment Scheme and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme are both governed by EU State Aid rules.

It has been mooted by some that once the UK has left the EU, the UK Government will be able to increase the limits on how much companies can raise under EIS and SEIS. This could be great news for such companies and, in particular, enable seed-stage companies to receive funding more quickly.

However, it is likely if the UK does negotiate a new trade deal with the EU, or some associate member role, then the UK will continue to abide by EU State Aid rules but this is worth keeping an eye on as it could mean more established businesses qualify for SEIS or EIS.
We spend our working lives paying taxes, not just income tax, but National Insurance  which is all but another tax in name.

We also pay tax on certain goods and services, and if you are female you will even pay tax on sanitary products. You will also pay tax when visiting other countries, and certain other income streams attract tax too  capital gains tax, for example. I could go on...

There are only two things certain in this life  death and taxes. This is an abridged version of the comment made by the US president Benjamin Franklin when presenting the US constitution in November 1789.

But its true. However, dying does not mean you escape paying tax. In fact, shuffling off your mortal coil is an excuse for the government to come in and tax another chunk of our hard-earned cash.

There are ways of mitigating the tax bill your family and or beneficiaries will inherit, but they are complex; they are also costly, and make a lot of accountants incredibly wealthy. But I digress.

Once, inheritance tax was niche, and which only affected the incredibly wealthy. And often only really affected those who had inherited a great number of assets.

But now it affects almost anyone who has been lucky enough to buy their own home.

Large swathes of our public services remain incredibly inefficient. Only last week it was alleged that chief constables of several UK police forces were able to claim their lunch on the taxpayer.

I happened to work for the NHS as an acting communications manager and saw advertising campaigns costing hundreds of thousands of pounds signed off without even a by your leave; unthinkable in a publicly listed company.

Okay, this was some seven years ago, but I have no doubt it still goes on.

The government needs to take a good look at where it can legitimately cut costs, a nitty gritty wholescale investigation into the huge amount of waste  often in the upper echelons of public service.

And use those savings to scrap inheritance tax.
The World Trade Organisation has backed the EU in its row over Russias import ban on live pigs, fresh pork and other pig products.

The move puts Moscow under pressure to back down over the ban, which it introduced in 2014, purportedly because of concerns related to cases of African swine fever (ASF).

In a report published on Friday (19 August), a WTO panel declared the ban illegal in light of international trade rules.

See also: EU spells out 3.3bn effect of Russias pigmeat ban

It said imposing an EU-wide import ban because of a limited number of cases of ASF in the EU close to the border with Belarus violated sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures.

The overnight loss of valuable pigmeat exports caused oversupply in the EU market, which led to a damaging slump in prices.

In 2013, the value of EU pork exports to Russia was 1.4bn (1.2bn), which was about 25% of all EU exports.

Obligations

In a statement, the EU said the ruling sent a strong signal to Russia about its obligations.

It had challenged the ban on the grounds that it was politically motivated, arguing EU-wide restrictions in response to such isolated cases of swine fever were disproportionate.

[The] ruling confirms that the measures taken by Russia against the EU have little to do with any real sanitary or health risks, it said.

EU products are safe and there is thus no need for any country to maintain unjustified import restrictions.

Russia has an opportunity to appeal the WTOs report within 60 days.

If no appeal is filed within that deadline, the report will be adopted and Russia will be bound to comply with the recommendation.

Market implications

Stephen Howarth, market specialist manager for AHDB Pork, said if the Russian market was to reopen it would help with fats and offal, as it had been a struggle for the EU to find another home for these sort of products.

But overall the EU pigmeat market was in a healthier place than it had been a few months ago, with EU prices stablising in recent weeks.

Over the past two years there had been a boom in exports to China which meant the EU was exporting more meat than ever before, he said.

The Chinese market has expanded so much that the Russian ban is not as critical or damaging as it once was, he said.

UK prices

The more positive picture in the EU pigmeat market, coupled with the the weaker value of sterling which makes UK production look competitive, has been reflected in a sustained growth in prices in the UK.

In the week ending 13 August, UK pig prices rose to their highest level since February 2015.

The EU-spec SPP rose to 135p/kg DW, a total increase of 1.02p/kg on the week.
Independent monitoring of CCTV footage inside Englands slaughterhouses would likely cost between 150,000 and 370,00 a year, according to research.

The details are included in a new report  CCTV Monitoring in Slaughterhouses (PDF)  carried out by a team of experts at Sheffield Hallam University.

The reports publication comes against a background of undercover investigations of English slaughterhouses that have uncovered evidence of animals suffering serious abuse, including being deliberately beaten and burned with cigarettes.

See also: CCTV in all slaughterhouses  100 MPs back campaign

Modest cost

Defra farm minister George Eustice has already stated that the cost of installing cameras in slaughterhouses is relatively modest.

There are about 260 slaughterhouses in England and the cost of installing a four-camera system with remote viewing and night vision in each one would cost in the region of 700-900.

Depending on the scale of the operation, annual costs of up to 370,000 would be required to cover employment and training of a workforce to monitor the CCTV, plus any accommodation and data-logging support.

The report recommends that a formulating body (governmental, academic, animal welfare or other) establishes a monitoring committee to run the scheme, which needs to be transparent, effective and, for credibility, to be independent from interference by both government and industry.

Its members would be drawn from a range of stakeholders and would appoint staff who would be trained and supported in their viewing of footage.

Pilot scheme

The report recommends that a pilot scheme is established to test feasibility before wider roll-out across the industry.

More than 112,000 people signed a petition last year on the governments No 10 website calling for mandatory CCTV in all slaughterhouses. At least 145 MPs support the campaign.

Animal welfare charity Animal Aid, which financed the independent report, said the current system of welfare monitoring in CCTV slaughterhouses was failing and a voluntary welfare system would not be sufficient.

Isobel Hutchinson, head of campaigns at Animal Aid, said: The case has been decisively made that the current regulatory system is failing animals, and that CCTV  if monitored properly  could deter and detect crimes against vulnerable animals.

With the publication of this report, the suggestion that this wayward industry cant afford CCTV monitoring has been comprehensively debunked.

The government must make cameras compulsory and ensure they are independently monitored. Inaction is no longer an option.

The report does not consider the additional costs of independent CCTV monitoring in the estimated 50 slaughterhouses in Scotland and Wales.
Story Highlights 63% of Americans support automatic voter registration

Democrats (85%) most likely to favor early voting

Republicans overwhelmingly support voter ID laws (95%)

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As partisan-fueled court battles over state voting laws are poised to shape the political landscape in 2016 and beyond, new Gallup research shows four in five Americans support both early voting and voter ID laws. A smaller majority of 63% support automatic voter registration.

Americans' Support for Election Law Policies In general, do you favor or oppose each of the following election law policies? Early voting, which gives all voters the chance to cast their ballot prior to Election Day Favor: 80% Oppose: 18% Requiring all voters to provide photo identification at their voting place in order to vote Favor: 80% Oppose: 19% Automatic voter registration, whereby citizens are automatically registered to vote Favor: 63% Oppose: 34% Gallup, Aug. 15-16, 2016

These data come from an Aug. 15-16 Gallup poll.

While providing early voting opportunities and requiring voters to show photo identification at polling stations are popular among a majority of Americans, both are contentiously debated by party leaders and are being contested in state courts. Most recently, a federal judge in Ohio ruled against limiting early voting, saying the move would discriminate against black voters. There are electorally strategic reasons as to why each major political party has a stake in the two contested policies.

Majorities of Democrats and Republicans support early voting, but the option finds more favor among Democrats (85%) than Republicans (74%). Early voting typically benefits Democratic candidates, who have performed well electorally among early voters in many states that allow the option. Blacks and lower-income Americans -- key Democratic support blocs -- disproportionately opt to vote early.

Americans' Support for Election Law Policies, by Party Do you favor or oppose each of the following election law policies? (% Favor) Early voting Photo ID requirement Automatic voter registration % % % Republicans 74 95 51 Independents 80 83 58 Democrats 85 63 80 Gallup, Aug. 15-16, 2016

Studies have shown that voter ID laws reduce voting among blacks and young adults, who tend to vote Democratic. Many Republican leaders and Republican state legislatures have worked to put them into law. While majorities of Republicans and Democrats favor voter ID laws, Republicans (95%) overwhelmingly support them. Democratic support is more tepid, at 63%. GOP-led states have been the most active proponents of voter ID laws. Republicans who have championed these laws claim they prevent voter fraud, while opponents argue that there are too few cases to justify the legislation.

Meanwhile, a majority of U.S. adults (63%) also favor automatic voter registration, whereby citizens are automatically registered to vote when they do business with the Department of Motor Vehicles or certain other state agencies. This policy, which Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton advocated about a year before her party included it in its official 2016 platform, has been implemented in five states. Although Democrats (80%) are more likely than Republicans (51%) to favor the idea, in April, the Republican-controlled legislature of West Virginia made the state the third to enact automatic voter registration.

Majorities Among Racial Groups, Regions Support Election Laws

Though many of the arguments for early voting and against voter ID laws frequently cite minorities' voting access, nonwhites' views of the two policies don't differ markedly from those of whites. Seventy-seven percent of nonwhites favor both policies, while whites favor each at 81%. Nonwhites are, however, more likely to support automatic voter registration (71%) than are whites (59%).

More than four in five residents of the Midwest, South and West, regions where at least half of states have early voting, support the policy. The East, where the policy is favored least (71%), is unique in that only the District of Columbia and two states -- Maryland and West Virginia -- have a formal process of early voting.

But some states in the region offer alternatives to formal early voting. Three other Eastern states -- Maine, New Jersey and Vermont -- have what the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) refers to as "in-person absentee" voting. This is a less formal process of early voting in which a voter can apply in person for an absentee ballot and immediately cast that ballot before an election. In Massachusetts, early voting is allowed in even-year elections. The region's most populous states, New York and Pennsylvania, have no form of early voting.

Voter ID laws are most popular among residents living in the South (84%) and Midwest (84%), the regions in which eight of the strictest state voter ID laws are enforced, according to the NCSL. Nationally, election laws requiring voter identification exist -- with some variation of the requirement -- in 34 states, 33 of which are in effect for the 2016 election. West Virginia's law goes into effect in 2018.

Americans' Support for Election Law Policies, by Race and Region Do you favor or oppose each of the following election law policies? (% Favor) Early voting Photo ID requirement Automatic voter registration % % % Whites 81 81 59 Nonwhites 77 77 71 East 71 73 69 Midwest 83 84 56 South 82 84 60 West 81 78 66 Gallup, Aug. 15-16, 2016

Automatic voter registration is most popular in the East (69%) and West (66%), the only regions in which states have enacted it -- including Oregon and California in the West, and Connecticut, Vermont and West Virginia in the East.

The number of states offering automatic voter registration could increase nearly seven-fold, however. In 2016, 29 states and the District of Columbia have considered measures that would put in place some form of the policy.

Majority of Republicans View Voter Fraud as a 'Major' Problem

The survey also asked Americans about their general concern that ineligible voters would cast votes, and that eligible voters would be kept from casting theirs. Americans are fairly split on their degree of concern about votes being cast by people who, by law, are not eligible to vote. More than a third view it as a major problem (36%), while nearly as many view it as either a minor problem (32%) or not a problem at all (29%).

A majority of Republicans (52%) perceive voter fraud as a major problem, which is reflected in the policy stances of many GOP state governors. By contrast, just 26% of Democrats expect ineligible persons voting to be a major problem this year. Southerners (42%) are more likely than those in other regions to view it as a major problem. The South is the most Republican region in the country, and the only region where some variation of a voter ID law is in effect in every state.

Concerns About Voter Fraud and Eligible Voters Not Being Allowed to Vote In this year's election, do you think each of the following will be a major problem, a minor problem or not a problem at all across the country? (% Major problem) Votes being cast by people not eligible to vote Eligible voters not being allowed to cast a vote % % U.S. adults 36 32 Republicans 52 22 Independents 33 31 Democrats 26 40 Whites 37 25 Nonwhites 35 46 East 34 35 Midwest 34 26 South 42 32 West 33 32 Gallup, Aug. 15-16, 2016

The poll finds a bit narrower partisan gap over the issue of eligible voters not being allowed to cast a vote. Four in 10 Democrats, versus two in 10 Republicans, say keeping eligible voters from voting is a major problem. Mirroring these partisan attitudes, nonwhites are more likely than whites to say it is a problem.

Bottom Line

Despite widespread public support for early voting and voter ID laws -- including majority support among partisans on both sides -- the two parties' leaders often have strong preferences for one and not the other. The political squabbling over efforts to pass or restrict these laws in many states is therefore not representative of public opinion.

A smaller majority of Americans favor automatic voter registration, which could become more popular in the future as more states become acquainted with it. This is likely, as dozens of states have considered the policy in 2016.

In sum, Americans want easier processes for registering to vote and casting their ballots, as well as stronger checks against fraud.

Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Aug. 15-16, 2016, with a random sample of 1,013 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

View complete question responses and trends.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.
Poker Players Alliance objects to so-called "bad actor" clause that would prohibit PokerStars from entering California market

Approximately half of the parties pushing for legalized online poker in the state are working in conjunction with Stars

These proposed amendments would restrict competition and leave players dissatisfied, the trade organization claims

Deadline to submit bill is August 31 or else it gets scratched

Last minute amendments to a bill in California that would legalize online poker in that state has the grassroots organization Poker Players Alliance in a tizzy.

These proposed amendments would restrict competition and leave players dissatisfied, the trade organization claims.

In actuality these so-called bad actor clauses would prevent Web poker companies that have previously operated in the "grey" US market from doing business in California.

More specifically, PokerStars would be excluded.

Not only is PokerStars among the biggest backers of the PPA, they are also one of the top players vying for a piece of the California market. In fact, Stars is working in conjunction with around half of those legal land-based casino operators, mostly Tribal casinos.

A statement released by the PPA this weekend says that, with said amendments inserted, the California bill likely stands zero chance of passing.

The statement reads in full:

We are deeply disappointed that Chairman Adam Gray has chosen to play politics at the behest of special interests. The proposed amendments threaten to doom the iPoker legislation for which we and our members have advocated for years. Since the Internet poker debate began in California nearly ten years ago, PPA has been the only consistent voice urging lawmakers to license and regulate Internet poker. During this time, our message remained consistent: protect consumers and promote competition. Unfortunately, some of Chairman Grays proposed amendments undermine this principle.

A last-minute insertion of so-called bad actor amendments would, in reality, just be an anti-competitive measure that would single out Amaya/PokerStars and their California tribal and cardroom partners from participating in the regulated marketplace. And, while some are purporting that this is a temporary five-year ban, an examination of the proposed amendments reveal that it is actually a lifetime ban. This raises serious constitutional issues and calls into question whether a bill with this language would ever be enacted, assuming it could even pass over what is sure to be stiff opposition. Most importantly, these amendments threaten to prolong consumers wait for regulated online poker in California.

Also, the purpose of these amendments itself it flawed. Exclusion of Amaya/PokerStars would be detrimental for many reasons. California consumers would be left without one of the most trusted and popular online poker brands in the world. For years, California players have awaited the return of PokerStars and its proven technology. Their presence in markets increases competition, raising the bar for all operators to offer consumer-driven products. This was seen most recently in New Jersey. These amendments, were they to become law, would also mean that the operator with the most experience in protecting online consumers  from blocking underage access and mitigating problem gambling to collusion prevention and anti-money laundering measures  would be permanently forced onto the sidelines. This would be a loss not only for the consumer, but for the entire state of California.

PPA does not believe anyone should be entitled to a license to operate Internet poker in California. We feel a license to operate is a privilege that must be earned through a vigorous vetting process and that questions of suitability should be left to independent California state gaming regulators. Legislating a bad actor provision would strip regulators of that independent role.

We urge Chairman Gray and other members of the Assembly to pass legislation licensing Internet poker, but without this anti-competitive provision. We want an iPoker market that is strong, safe, open and competitive. That is the best result for California consumers.

The California legislature has until August 31 to submit bills for the 2016 period, otherwise all bills must be rewritten and the voting process started anew in 2017.

- Ace King, Gambling911.com
Jill Stein is the alternative to the alternative.

If you don't like either of the major party candidates for President--Democrat Hillary Clinton or Republican Donald Trump--you may be considering an alternative: third-party candidate Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party.

But if you don't like Johnson either, there's also a fourth-party candidate: Jill Stein of the Green Party.

Stein, 66, is a retired doctor-turned-political activist from Chicago who settled in the Boston area after graduating from Harvard Medical School.

She was twice elected to local political office in the Boston suburb of Lexington, but attempts at higher political office have all been failures.

She unsuccessfully ran for state representative once, commonwealth secretary once and governor of Massachusetts twice.

She was also the Green Party candidate for President in 2012, drawing almost a half-million votes out of approximately 100 million cast, a percentage of almost one half of 1% of all votes cast.

But this year, perhaps due to the electorate's disgruntlement with the major party candidates, Stein is doing much better--at least according to polls.

She recently has polled as high as 7% in some Presidential preference polls.

If she can get to 15% in the polls, she will be allowed to participate in the Presidential debates, which begin next month.

And if she does get in to the debates, and appears onstage as a credible and viable alternative to Clinton and Trump, anything could happen in the current atmosphere of voter revolt.

So would a President Jill Stein be a friend or foe of the gambling industry?

As part of a continuing series on the 2016 Presidential candidates, Gambling 911 examined Stein's public record on gambling issues.

Since she hasn't held any political office beyond the local level, she has never been involved in actually legislating gambling.

But as a political activist and sometimes-political candidate, she has publicly spoken on the issue.

Or more accurately, she has publicly spoken out against the issue.

Specifically, she has blasted casinos and the casino industry in general, taking shots not only at Massachusetts for considering expanding gambling but at Nevada and Atlantic City for having it.

According to VoteSmart.org, a politically neutral website that tracks political candidates and their views on various issues ( See Here ), Stein a few years ago publicly attacked then-Governor Patrick Deval for considering expanding gambling in Massachusetts.

VoteSmart.org originally obtained Stein's anti-gambling screed directly from a page on Stein's own website.

The page is no longer available on the Stein website, but the quotes can still be read at the VoteSmart.org website.

Here's what Stein had to say about gambling: "Casinos are job-killers because they pull money out of the productive economy. Each slot machine pulls enough money out of our economy to kill one job. The job claims for Governor Patrick's casino scheme are fundamentally misleading because they are not taking job losses into account.

"Casinos mostly concentrate jobs in the three casino host communities. This will result in pink slips being handed out elsewhere. And taxpayers will be stuck with paying for a host of social problems caused by gambling addiction, as well as the huge government bureaucracy required to oversee gambling operations.

"Nevada--which is loaded with casinos--currently has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. They are suffering a jobless rate of 14% while Massachusetts is around 9%. Nevada also leads the nation in foreclosures and bankruptcies. And Atlantic City, with 11 casinos concentrated within the city, has a jobless rate higher than Boston. Do we really want to emulate these economies? Let's think twice before going down that road.

"Casino gambling may be attractive to Beacon Hill politicians who will enjoy campaign donations from casino lobbyists, patronage jobs in the gaming bureaucracy and control over a cash-rich business. But casinos will just make life harder for the people of the commonwealth.

"What's the alternative? Rather than 12,000 low-wage, dead-end casino jobs, we could be creating 50,000 secure green jobs--jobs that we can create in every community in Massachusetts, not just in three casino communities. We can have jobs that make our environment cleaner and make our people healthier, jobs which won't disappear if oil prices spike. We call that the secure green future, and we need to start generating those jobs now."

Obviously, with such an anti-casino stance, Stein would be a great foe to the gambling industry should she become President.

Fortunately for those in the industry, though, she's a longshot--and likely will remain that way.

By Tom Somach

Gambling 911 Staff Writer

tomsomach@yahoo.com
'Guardians Of The Galaxy','Avengers' Crossover Latest News & Update: Vin Diesel Confirms Crossover, New Characters Introduced? Old Villains Resurrected?

In an alternate, fiction-filled universe, there is a possibility that the Earth will be ultra safe thanks to the impending "Guardians Of The Galaxy" and "Avengers" crossover. The internet have been buzzing around with the red hot news of "Guardians Of The Galaxy" and "Avengers" crossover, thanks to no other than Vin Diesel.

The burly "Fast And The Furious" topbiller chose to air out the absolutely awesome news during his Facebook live stint on Aug. 19. The news he shared was immediately followed by a very vital and pivotal question - what will be the main title of the said crossover? Who will be crossing over who? Will the Guardians crossover an up and coming "Avengers" movie? Or will the Avengers pay the Guardians set a visit?

To clear things up, the 49-year-old big buff unveiled that the "Guardians Of The Galaxy" team will be the ones to crossover to the "Avengers" set, most specifically in the "Avengers: Infinity War" film. The said crossover between the "Guardians Of The Galaxy" and "Avengers: Infinity War" will be witnessed by May 2017, which is noticeably the same month of release for the "Guardians Of The Galaxy: Vol. 2."

The fans can expect an amusing and impressive mash of existing characters and a possible resurrection of long-gone villains in the "Guardians Of The Galaxy" and "Avengers" crossover. The undeniable success of the previous "Guardians Of The Galaxy" movie has knowingly captured the attention of its viewers with its foolproof action sprinkled with comedy recipe, which fans are expecting to experience again in the crossover.

Of course, the heroes will have one aim and that is to protect the planet and the whole human race against all sorts of antagonists. A new set of villains is expected and some fans are already wondering if there would also be a crossover of the villains from the first "Guardians Of The Galaxy" movie. Stay tuned to GamenGuide to get more "Guardians Of The Galaxy" and "Avengers" crossover news and updates.
Hawaii Five-0 Season 7 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: 5 Things You Need To Know About Hawaiis Police Drama!

"Hawaii Five-0" Season 7 is up and all set for its first episode "Ready To Play" or ""Makaukau oe e Paani." Peter Lenkov, the show's big boss, has confirmed that it will hit the air on Sept 27 on CBS, but what do we expect from the police drama?

"Hawaii Five-0" Season 7 will get a new lady governor. Rosalind Chao claimed she did not audition for the role of Governor Keiko Mahoe but she got it nevertheless. Chao played the role of Mrs. Wu on "City Saints" of Yahoo! Screen's Sin. Claire Forlani will also play a recurring role as Alicia, the retired criminal profiler.

New faces are always welcome in new seasons. A British M16 agent will go against the force of Five-0. Chris Vance will get bring to life the character of James Whistler who starred in "Hawaii Five-0" Seasons 3 and 4. Will Whistler be a forever foe or later work with the team to uncover something huge? Vance played as Non, the bad guy, in "Supergirl." What will happen in "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7?

Faran Tahir is in luck as he plays Lucky in the "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7. His character is a businessman born in the Egyptian dessert who is both affluent and classy.

Meanwhile, "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7 welcomes old faces again! Christine Lahti and Michelle Borth will definitely bring you on your toes in the upcoming series. Doris McGarett, played by Lahti, has not been seen since season 3. What is she up to now? Spoiler news said that she will appear on the 150th episode to help her son, Steve McGarrett, portrayed by Alex O'Loughlin.

Romance will certainly sweeten any stories, and Catherine Rollins, portrayed by Michelle Borth will certainly do her part. How do you think the plot will involve Rollins as the ex-girlfriend, and nearly fiance, of McGarrett in "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7?

Showrunners of "Hawaii Five-0" Season 7 has confirmed that the upcoming installment is definitely not the last season. So, stay tuned with GameNGuide for the latest updates of your favorite procedural drama on TV!
Longmire Season 5 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Walt & Henry Fight Over Vic? Season 6 Confirmed With New Lead Star?

Millions of fans are now waiting for the premiere of "Longmire" Season 5. Now, new reports are claiming that Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) and Henry Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips) will be fighting over Vic Moretti (Katee Sackhoff) in the upcoming installment.

Walt and Henry fight over Vic in 'Longmire' Season 5

Rumor mill is spreading that the love triangle of Walt, Henry and Vic is going to be the focus on "Longmire" Season 5. Most fans know that Walt and Henry are best of friends, but their friendship will be tested by their love for Vic in the upcoming installment.

Previous reports have claimed that Henry and Vic are going to tie the knot in "Longmire" Season 5. However, before they could say their "I dos," Walt needs to face Henry first, who would like to steal his fiancee from him.

As a matter of fact, Lou Diamond Phillips has revealed to Access Hollywood that Henry will be battling against Walt after sealing a deal with Mathias (Zahn McClarnon). Despite this, it can be expected that both Walt and Henry could resolve all the issues that are surrounding their friendship and they will remain as best of friends.

Henry will kill Walt and Vic in 'Longmire' Season 5

Meanwhile, GamenGuide has previously reported that Henry will be killing both Walt and Vic in "Longmire" Season 5. Sources have said that Walt and Vic will be walking down the aisle to tie the knot.

However, the happy moments of Walt and Vic will be short-lived as they will be encountering the most tragic happening in their lives. The couple is reportedly going to meet a car accident, which is mainly caused by Henry, in "Longmire" Season 5.

It remains to be seen if both Walt and Vic will survive the car crash in "Longmire" Season 5. But, recent spoilers say that the two will die together, making Henry the new lead star of the series.

Other reports have suggested that Henry will take the lead role in Season 6 after Walt and Vic died in "Longmire" Season 5. Though these reports could possibly be true, Netflix has not yet confirmed anything until now.

"Longmire" Season 5 is expected to premiere in Sept. 23, 2016 in Netflix. Stay tuned to GamenGuide for more "Longmire" Season 5 spoilers, news and updates!
MacBook Air 2016 Release Date, News & Update: Main Reason Behind Delay Revealed! Is Apple Putting an End to MacBook Air Production?

Fans of the upcoming MacBook Air 2016 might be very disappointed because the giant tech company, Apple, is rumored not to release a new version of laptop line this year. There are also rumors that say Apple will still be focusing on MacBook Pro 2016 production and it is one of the reasons of MacBook Air 2016 delay.

MacBook Air gained many users all over the world because it is dependable and low price compared to the MacBook Pro. However, it was stated in our previous report that Apple might put an end to MacBook Air 2016 line production.

Apple hasn't officially announced anything about the upcoming MacBook Air 2016. The giant tech company has remained quiet, but this is only making the rumors louder. There are also rumors that the upcoming MacBook Air 2016 might probably have the same features and specs as the overhauled MacBook Pro 2016.

According to Vine Report, there are several products that Apple is planning on releasing this year. It is possible that the MacBook Air 2016 series is just stepping aside for the moment to give the public attention to other Apple products. Some of the speculated products that Apple might launch this year are the Apple Watch 2, the iPhone 7 and the MacBook Pro 2016.

With all the speculated products that Apple might launch this year, it is very hard to know if the rumors of ending the Air line are true. But, there is no denying that this year's MacBook Pro has increased publicity and hype compared to MacBook Air 2016.

Although there is no official announcement from Apple for the upcoming MacBook Air 2016, fans are still hoping that the device would still be released this year. For more latest new and updates for the upcoming MacBook Air 2016, stay tuned in GameNGuide!
WWE 'SummerSlam 2016": Brock Lesnar Sends Bloody Message to Conor McGregor

WWE "SummerSlam 2016" is over and done with though only a couple of matches were worth applauding.

Finn Balor became the first WWE Universal champion when he pinned Seth Rollins, one of the best matches for the evening. Other than that, there was only one other match that came too close to being hailed, the Brock Lesnar vs. Randy Orton match.

A Disturbing Delivery aimed at Conor McGregor?

Lesnar expectedly came out on top though it ended a bloody mess. The Beast Incarnate simply lost it and looked like he was dealing big blows similar to his tiff with Mark Hunt at UFC 200. And once Lesnar goes off like that, no one can stop him  not even Shane McMahon who was the unfortunate recipient of an F5.

Despite being the favorite, Orton had his chances by playing possum. He almost pulled it off but Lesnar was someone who cannot be pinned easily even with the Vipers patented RKO finisher. With the Beast unleashed, one has to wonder if he was trying to send a message to Conor McGregor, someone who claims that he can take on anyone easily. Lesnar did issue an open challenge to the Irishman though many took it as a light jab. Following Lesnars performance, it will be interesting if McGregor dares Lesnar again.

There was also the loud return of Nikki Bella who replaced the suspended Eva Marie in the six-woman tag team match. AJ Styles defeated John Cena who is expected to take some time off while Charlotte reclaimed the Womens title when she outwitted Sasha Banks.

The disappointments of 'SummerSlam 2016'

While those matches were the highlights of "SummerSlam 2016," a couple of matches disappointed. There was that one between Dean Ambrose and Dolph Ziggler which lacked the flair, a match that could have done better.

There was also that matchup between Roman Reigns, a match that never took place. While Rusev asked for it when he attacked the Big Dog, it denied the fans to see a brutal match with the Bulgarian Brute reportedly unable to continue.

If Rusev is indeed injured, it could mean some time off for the United States champion. But will he be forced to vacate the title?

Tune into Raw and SmackDown where new twists are likely to evolve.
'Stranger Things' Season 2 Air Date, Spoilers, News & Update: Major Character's New Look Revealed? See Dustin With His REAL Front Teeth

There are so many things to love about "Stranger Things". Fans enjoyed how the sci-fi series was a perfectly nostalgic creation. However, there is one character who stands out, even above Eleven, Mike Wheeler or Winona Ryder's Joyce Byers. Dustin has won the hearts of many viewers and is now the true fan favorite in the Netflix series.

One of the most charming things about Gaten Matarazzo's character is his toothless grin. The young actor suffers from cleidocranial dysplasia, which stops his two front teeth from growing. However, Dustin might appear completely different when "Stranger Things" Season 2 finally airs!

Finn Wolfhard Confirms Dustin's New Look In 'Stranger Things' Season 2

Game & Guide has previously reported about Finn Wolfhard teasing about Dustin's new look in "Stranger Things" Season 2. The "IT" actor revealed that Gaten Matarazzo finally got surgery to push his two front teeth out.

This might sound like bad news for fans who can't get enough of Dustin's adorable toothless smile. However, Gaten Matarazzo looks great with his new teeth. In fact, the "Stranger Things" Season 2 star loves sharing his new look on social media.

A photo posted by Gaten Matarazzo (@gatenm123) on Aug 20, 2016 at 1:38pm PDT

It looks like "Stranger Things" creator Matt and Ross Duffer are also incorporating the new changes into the new season. The Duffer brothers have confirmed that "Stranger Things" Season 2 will take place in the future.

'Stranger Things' Season 2 Will Take Place A Year After Will's Return And Eleven's Disappearance

The gang will definitely be a year older in "Stranger Things" Season 2. This should explain why the boys will have deeper voices as well as Dustin's brand new teeth.

The "Stranger Things" Season 2 air date has not yet been announced by Netflix. However, the series is expected to return by July 2017. In the meantime, enjoy Gaten Matarazzo's awesome singing voice in the video below.
The free event will take place on Saturday, Oct. 29, and feature more than 30 different types of aircraft.
News & Notes

The Samaritan Cancer Program recently earned accreditation from the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers.

The accreditation examines all aspects of breast cancer care and the patient experience. NAPBC-accredited breast cancer care ensures that a patient has access to comprehensive care, including a full range of state-of-the-art services; a multidisciplinary team approach to coordinate the best treatment options; information about ongoing clinical trials and new treatment options; and access to prevention and early detection programs, cancer education and support services.

The accreditation is administered by the American College of Surgeons, with evaluation of six components of a multidisciplinary breast team: radiology, pathology, surgical oncology, medical oncology, radiation oncology and plastic surgery.

For more information about the Samaritan Cancer Program and the services it offers, visit samhealth.org/Cancer.

Exalted Ruler Pernita Gregory of Corvallis Elks Lodge No. 1413 attended the National Convention of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, held last month in Houston, Texas.

Gregory was responsible for voting on decisions affecting the order and its policies. She also attended seminars and workshops enabling her to inform the lodges officers and members how best to serve the community.

The BPOE has nearly 800,000 members with more than 1,900 lodges, and the order gave over $282 million in donations last year. Much of it went to veterans programs, scholarships and community services. To find out more about the Elks, go to www.Elks.org.

Officers & Directors

Leadership Corvallis has announced new officers and its board of directors for 2016-17.

The following directors are serving in these positions for one year, effective July 1: president, Rebecca Badger, assistant director of marketing, Oregon State University Extended Campus; president-elect, Andrea Thornberry, executive director, Heartland Humane Society; and treasurer, Kristen Gose, partner, Anderson Group CPAs. Newly elected to the board are Brett Jeter, Emily James and Monee Johnston. Continuing board members are Carole Hobrock, Peggy Joyce, Janelle Iverson, Laura Shields, Hans Neukomm, Pete Bober, Scott Jackson and Stacy Mellem.

People on the Move

Keller Williams Realty recently announced the addition of Nicole Ponce to its Albany Business Center.

Ponce is originally from Southern California and has been in the Willamette Valley since 2009. She can be reached at 541-914-3999 or nponce@kw.com. The Albany Business Center is at 200 Ferry St. S.W.

The College of Science at Oregon State University recently welcomed Matthew Andrews as associate dean for strategic initiatives and administration, effective Aug. 16.

Andrews is a McKnight presidential professor of biology and founding director of the Bio-Translational Research Center at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

In the new position, Andrews will help advance the educational, research, diversity and outreach missions of the College of Science, and will provide leadership to faculty in developing policies and programs to improve student and faculty success.

Andrews research is focused on the function of gene products involved in hibernation and its translational applications in the areas of hypothermia, ischemia/reperfusion injury, cardiac function and organ preservation. He has received research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and other state and federal agencies.
Jan. 31, 1939  Aug. 4, 2016

Breaking curfew was never a good idea for Gerald Gleichers children. From the end of the cul-de-sac, one could see the porch light, the living room light and the chandelier in the stairwell from beyond the open front door. Drawing nearer, a figure could be seen sitting calmly on the front steps. Finally, upon stepping quickly from the friends car, the late child heard the unmistakable sounds of a loud aria or overture. The stage was set for the master to pass judgment, although he never spoke harshly. He always claimed he simply couldnt sleep until we were all home safe and sound. Not one of his three children willingly broke curfew more than once, although he continued his vigil throughout the rest of his life, ending finally on Aug. 4, 2016.

Dr. Gerald Jay Gleicher was born on Jan. 31, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York to his parents David and Sadie (Mayer) Gleicher. He lived in Brooklyn during his youth, but commuted via subway to Manhattan to attend Stuyvesant High School. Perhaps his favorite teachers grew weary of his frequent pranks and elaborate lines of questioning; he graduated at the age of 16 in 1955. He earned his bachelors degree from Brooklyn College in 1959. His masters and doctoral (1963) degrees in chemistry were awarded from the University of Michigan. He did postdoctoral work at the University of Texas at Austin and Princeton University.

In 1966 he married the love of his life, Mary Katharine Schmidt, and they spent the next 45 years together raising their family until her death in 2011.

Jerry and Mary Kay headed to Oregon on their honeymoon where Jerry had accepted a faculty position in the Oregon State Chemistry Department. The couple settled in Corvallis and welcomed the arrival of Abby, Tom, and finally, James. The children were raised listening to creative stories, going to the beach for impromptu picnics, and gathering knowledge from his virtually inexhaustible stores of facts. Jerry loved to plan intricate gourmet dinners and the menus would span the globe, feasts pulled together from his large collection of cookbooks. Family, friends and many wayward graduate students were the grateful beneficiaries of his culinary genius.

Jerry was a lover of history and classical music. His sharp memory and laser wit could weave together the intricate history of any country in the Western Hemisphere, and he would often delve into his extensive music collection to score his impromptu lectures. He was an avid model railroader, and over his life he took over the better part of the two-car garage with a detailed layout of the New York, Wisconsin and Western railroad. The cities of the railroad were named after his family members, and many a friend can find themselves immortalized with their name and a pun-infused logo on one of the HO-scale businesses.

Late in life, Jerry made sure to establish a legacy of generosity. His philanthropy extended from small, local nonprofit organizations to national causes. His daily activities in recent years included frequent stops around town to drop off small donations and check in with the recipients. He truly loved doing this.

Jerry is survived by his brother Jules (Joan) Gleicher of Rockford, Illinois; his children Abby (Chuck) Britton of Tigard, Tom Gleicher of Portland, and James Gleicher of Corvallis; his nephews David Gleicher of Chicago, Illinois, Matt (Lianne) Schmidt of Renton, Washington, and his niece Meredith (Todd) Fisher of Dayton, Ohio. He doted on his two grandchildren, Vivian and Levi Britton. His parents and his wife predeceased him.

If you care to make a small donation to a charity of your choice, know that he would approve of your efforts and would tell you its even more fun to do it in person.
Niklas P. case : Dead schoolboys brain had pre-existing damage

Bonn New findings from Niklas Ps post mortem will influence the case.

Teilen

Teilen Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Tweeten

Tweeten Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Drucken

The post-mortem of Niklas P., who was killed in Bad Godesberg on 7 May, has led to a turning point in the case. Professor Burkhard Madea, head of pathology in Bonn, said in his expert report that the 17 year old was already suffering from damage to the vascular wall in the brain when he received the blow to his head. Senior public prosecutor Robin Fabender confirmed this on Sunday and said, We therefore have to assume that a 17 year old without such pre-existing damage would not have died from the blow.

Fabender said it was highly likely this led to the previously damaged vein splitting resulting in the 17 year olds death. Further autopsy examinations will be carried out. According to witnesses, Niklas P. was set upon that night by three attackers. One of the three hit him in the head with their fist and then also kicked him in the head. Niklas P. collapsed unconscious immediately after the attack.

According to the provisional autopsy report, this single blow probably fatally injured the already damaged brain. Fabender said the post mortem did not indicate there was any further severe violent impact. Niklas P. died several days after the attack but despite being successfully resuscitated, was already brain dead shortly after being hit.

Fabender said the pathologists findings now mean the public prosecutors will no longer be pursuing a case of intentional homicide and they have therefore amended the charges against Walid S., who has been in custody since the middle of May. Fabender told the General Anzeiger an application had been filed with the Bonn district court to amend the claim to one of bodily harm resulting in death. The case is before the district court because prior to the autopsy findings being published, Walid Ss defence lawyer, Martin Kretschmer, had filed another complaint agaist his detention with the relevant criminal division.

The lawyer is still convinced that the evidence against his client is too weak and is not sufficient for a conviction. Kretschmer was unsuccessful in his first complaint against detention before the local court.

Following the autopsy report, the lawyer sees the case from a different legal viewpoint than the public prosecutors. As he explained to the General Anzeiger, he believes the death of 17 year old Niklas should be legally classified as involuntary manslaughter. This carries a far less severe sentence than bodily harm resulting in death, which in adult criminal law can lead to a prison sentence of 15 years. Involuntary manslaughter carries a sentence of 5 years or a fine.

As he is 20 years old, if Walid S. stands trial, he will appear before the juvenile criminal court. That court would then decide whether, as a minor, he should be sentenced as an adult. The two alleged accomplices have not yet been identified.
An opportunity for foodies and beer lovers to get lost in a world of food and drink from a hand-selected range of food trucks and breweries from around New Zealand.
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.
Samsung Z2 to Launch in India on August 23: Here's what we know about the upcoming Tizen smartphone Features oi -Chakri Kudikala

Samsung is all set to launch the Samsung Z2 in India, a Tizen-OS based smartphone which will be the successor to the last year's Samsung Z1. It is worth considering that Samsung has already launched the Samsung Z3 late last year, but going through the leaked specifications of the Samsung Z2, it will be an upgrade to Samsung Z1.

At the launch of Samsung Z3, the South Korean giant admitted that there is no point in releasing the Samsung Z2 with minor upgrades and apparently the company launched the Samsung Z3 with much-improved specs and upgraded Tizen OS version.

However, Samsung is now reversing their decision and planning to launch the Samsung Z2 in India on August 23 as we received a press invite from the company for the same.

SEE ALSO: Here are Top 7 Leaks which suggest Apple iPhone 7 will be a major upgrade over iPhone 6S

Last week, we covered the promotional video of the smartphone. Having said that, the Samsung Z2 has been appeared online several times which apparently confirmed the complete specifications of the smartphone. Check out the sliders below to know more about the specifications of the Samsung Z2.

The same 4-inch display as Samsung Z1 Considering it as an upgrade, Samsung might add the same display as seen on the Samsung Z1. The Samsung Z2 will arrive with a 4-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 480*800 pixels. Quad-core processor along with 1GB of RAM The Samsung Z2 is said to arrive with a quad-core chipset clocked at 1.5GHz, along with 1GB of RAM. There are no specifications leaked about which chipset will Samsung use to power the Z2. The Samsung Z1 arrived with a dual-core Spreadtrum SC7727S processor clocked at 1.2GHz. Samsung might use some upgraded Spreadtrum chipset to power the Samsung Z2. A 5MP rear camera and VGA front-facing camera The camera department might also see an upgrade when compared to Samsung Z1 as it arrived with a 3.15MP rear camera and Samsung is planning to pack a 5MP rear camera on the Z2. The front facing camera will be the same 0.3MP VGA camera as seen on the Samsung Z1. Upgrade to Tizen-OS The Samsung Z3 arrived with many changes to the Tizen OS and the device also justified the Samsung's intention to develop on a new smartphone OS. The Z2 will be the third smartphone to arrive with Tizen OS and the company might be releasing the smartphone with a new version of Tizen OS. . Upgraded battery The Samsung Z1 arrived with a 1,500mAh battery, whereas the Samsung Z3 packed a relatively bigger 2,600mAh battery. Samsung might upgrade the battery capacity in the Samsung Z2 something around the 2000mAh battery. Release date and pricing Samsung has sent out media invites for a smartphone launch to be held in New Delhi, where the company is expected to unveil the Samsung Z2. The smartphone will be immediately available for purchase, which was the case with other Tizen OS smartphones when they were released. In terms of pricing, the Samsung Z1 launched in India at Rs. 5,700 and is now available for around Rs. 3,700. We expect the pricing of the Z2 will be something around Rs. 6000 price bracket. The launch is scheduled for less than 24 hours from now. Stay tuned to GizBot as we bring the details from the launch event regarding the smartphone.

Best Mobiles in India
Sunil Mittal re-appointed Chairman of Bharti Airtel for 5 yrs News oi -GizBot Bureau

Sunil Bharti Mittal has been re-appointed as the Chairman of telecom giant Bharti Airtel for another five year, with effect from October 1, 2016.

"Sunil Bharti Mittal has been re-appointed as the Chairman of the company for further term of five years with effect from October 1, 2016," the company said in a BSE filing, communicating the outcome of its 21st AGM.

SEE ALSO: Here's How to Get a Free Reliance Jio 4G SIM Card for any 4G Smartphone!

Mittal is the Founder of Bharti Enterprises, India's one of largest conglomerates with diversified interests in telecom, insurance, real estate, agri and food, besides other ventures.

The Group also has joint ventures with global leaders like Singtel, SoftBank, AXA, Del Monte amongst others. Bharti Airtel, the Group's flagship company, offers mobile, fixed broadband and digital TV solutions to over 350 million customers across India, South Asia and Africa.

Source PTI

Best Mobiles in India

Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications
'Feels Like Home Season 2' offers something real and tangible to think about; takes home a pertinent point - if your intentions are good, there is nothing in life that isn't achievable.
Afghan Forces Recapture Key District of Northern Kunduz Province From Taliban

Sputnik News

20:20 20.08.2016

Afghan forces recaptured Khanabad district in the northern province of Kunduz from Taliban militants, according to local media.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) have retaken the country's strategic Khanabad district in the northern province of Kunduz from Taliban militants, local media reported Saturday.

The announcement comes after hours of clashes between the government forces and the militants ongoing since Saturday morning as the latter seized several key government compounds, the Khaama news agency said, citing its security sources.

The Taliban insurgents had to retreat after the Afghan forces launched an offensive to regain control over the district, the sources added.

There is no information about the casualties among the Afghan forces as well as Taliban militants. The insurgents have not commented on the situation so far, the media outlet noted.

The provincial capital, Kunduz, is one of the country's largest cities and has long served as a transport hub for northern Afghanistan. The Afghan forces are currently fighting against Taliban militants in 15 out of 34 country's provinces.

Afghanistan is experiencing significant political, social and security-related instability, as radical extremist organizations, including the Taliban, continue to stage attacks against civilian and state targets. The Taliban currently controls more territory than at any time since 2001, according to the United Nations.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Philippine President Declares New Ceasefire With Rebels Ahead of Peace Talks

Sputnik News

16:54 20.08.2016

President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte declares restoration of peace talks with a new unilateral truce with the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the country's Communist Party, according to official statement.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte declared a new unilateral truce with the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the country's Communist Party, on Saturday ahead of the Oslo peace talks, a statement issued by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process revealed.

"Today, the President restores the effects of ceasefire declaration precisely at this strategic time when we are all at the onset of the formal resumption of peace talks that had previously stalled for the last four years. The operational guideline of the said ceasefire declaration for the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police and other security units are also hereby restored," the statement says.

The previous ceasefire was introduced on July 25, but was withdrawn at Duterte's request five days after it was declared in response to the rebels' attack on soldiers.

On Friday night, the leftist rebels announced a separate seven-day ceasefire with the government until August 27. The announcement came after the government freed two top imprisoned leaders, who will take part in peace talks in Norway, slated for Monday. The communists said they would agree for a longer truce but only after all prisoners are freed. Currently, the government detains a total of 550 guerrillas.

The Philippines government is mired in a long-lasting standoff with the leftist rebels, which has led to about 40,000 deaths. At the beginning of 2011, the conflicting sides tried to reach a ceasefire deal, but it broke down in February of 2013 after Duterte's predecessor Benigno Aquino refused to free the jailed guerillas.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Yemeni Rebels Announce Plans to Form New Government

Sputnik News

14:50 20.08.2016

Yemeni Houthi rebels will work on the creation of the government in the coming days and the promotion of national reconciliation in Yemen, according to Saleh Ali Sammad, the head of the so-called Supreme Political Council.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Yemeni Houthi rebels are planning to work on the creation of a new government in the near future, the head of the so-called Supreme Political Council formed by the Houthis, said on Saturday.

In August, the UN-brokered talks in Kuwait ended with the government and Houthi rebels failing to come to an agreement. As the talks broke down, the hostilities intensified in Yemen, and the rebels formed the Supreme Political Council with a prospect of ruling the country.

"We will work on the creation of the government in the coming days and the promotion of national reconciliation," Saleh Ali Sammad said, as quoted by the Al Manar television channel.

Yemen has been engulfed in a military conflict between the government headed by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and Houthi rebels, the country's main opposition force. The Houthis are backed by army units loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Since March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition of mostly Persian Gulf countries have been carrying out airstrikes against the Houthis at Hadi's request despite a ceasefire agreed shortly before.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US Navy Moves Joint Planning Cell From Saudi Arabia to Bahrain - Pentagon

Sputnik News

04:29 20.08.2016

US Central Command (CENTCOM)'s naval component is moving its joint planning operation from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, the host country for the US Fifth Fleet, Defense Department spokesman Adam Stump told Sputnik.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The US government continues to support the Saudi-led coalition that is launching air attacks on rebel forces in Yemen's civil war, Stump acknowledged.

"In order to better utilize Joint Combined Planning Cell (JCPC) at the US Naval Central Command level and consolidate command and control, the JCPC forward team that was in Saudi Arabia moved to Bahrain," Stump said on Friday.

That support was based on the US policy "of promoting regional security and assisting partners to defend themselves individually and collectively, rather than any specific treaty or agreement," he added.

During an earlier phase of the conflict, US military personnel offered advice to the Saudi-led coalition, focusing on measures to prevent civilian casualties. However, that JCPC was largely shelved following the cessation of hostilities, Stump said.

Less than five US personnel are currently participating in the JCPC and are focused on logistics and intelligence support, he added.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Military Strikes Target ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Aug. 21, 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, ground-attack, attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 15 strikes in Syria:

-- Near Abu Kamal, a strike struck three ISIL wellheads and a crude oil collection point.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, three strikes struck three ISIL wellheads and three crude oil collection points and destroyed a pump jack.

-- Near Manbij, nine strikes struck eight separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two fighting positions, a vehicle, an artillery system, a supply cache and a rocket launcher.

-- Near Mara, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position and five bombs and damaged two fighting positions.

-- Near Tamakh, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle and a tactical vehicle.

Strikes in Iraq

Attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted eight strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Bashir, a strike suppressed an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Hit, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a fighting position.

-- Near Mosul, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed a fighting position and a vehicle.

-- Near Qayyarah, a strike destroyed two ISIL fighting positions, two rocket rails, two rocket systems, and two vehicle bomb storage facilities and denied access to terrain.

-- Near Ramadi, a strike destroyed two ISIL vehicles.

-- Near Tal Afar, two strikes destroyed an ISIL vehicle checkpoint and a vehicle and suppressed two mortar positions.

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, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Townsend Takes Command of Operation Inherent Resolve

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Aug. 21, 2016  Army Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, commanding general of XVIII Airborne Corps based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, assumed command of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve from Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the commander of III Armored Corps based at Fort Hood, Texas, during a transfer of authority ceremony held here today, according to CJTF-OIR officials.

Army Gen. Joseph L. Votel, U.S. Central Command's commanding general, presided over the ceremony that was attended by hundreds of U.S. and coalition soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines.

Pressuring ISIL

Votel expressed confidence in the team from Fort Bragg to continue pressuring the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

"We are very fortunate to be welcoming another great team in Lt. Gen. Steve Townsend and Command Sgt. Maj. Benjamin Jones," Votel said. "The XVIII Airborne Corps has very big shoes to fill, but I know they are up to the task and raring to go!"

Over the last several months, officials said, soldiers from the XVIII Airborne Corps conducted intense training to prepare for the mission.

Townsend highlighted the incredible work already accomplished in the region.

"Over the past year, CJTF-OIR, led by my good friend Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland and his III Armored Corps, and our coalition and regional partners, have done incredible work to degrade and dismantle ISIL's oppressive and brutal regime," Townsend said.

"Their combined efforts on the ground and in the air have accelerated" the counter-ISIL campaign, Townsend said, pushing ISIL back across the battlefield and achieving remarkable momentum towards ISIL's ultimate defeat.

MacFarland reflected on the turning point in the campaign against ISIL as Iraqi security forces drove them out of Ramadi, Iraq, in December 2015.

"Now the enemy is in retreat on all fronts and the Iraqi security forces have demonstrated that they can conduct complex and decisive operations," MacFarland said.

Counter-ISIL Accomplishments

Some key accomplishments achieved during the III Armored Corps tour include:

-- Trained more than 13,500 members of the Iraqi security forces including over 4,000 Iraqi soldiers, 1,500 counter-terrorism service soldiers, 6,000 Peshmerga, almost 1,000 federal police and 300 border guards.

-- Increased emphasis on police training and recruiting tribal forces, adding 5,000 trained local police and over 20,000 tribal fighters enrolled.

-- Conducted about 50,000 counter-ISIL sorties in the past year, in which more than 30,000 munitions were dropped on the enemy with approximately two-thirds of those in Iraq and about one-third in Syria.

-- These strikes have enabled the liberation of more than 25,000 total square kilometers from ISIL. That's nearly half of the territory the enemy once controlled in Iraq and 20 percent of the territory they once controlled in Syria.

-- Conducted more than 200 strikes against oil and natural gas activities of the enemy, which reduced their oil revenue stream by approximately 50 percent.

-- Vigorously attacked enemy leadership, command-and-control and weapons manufacturing capability, to include more than 25 bulk cash storage sites, resulting in at least half-a-billion dollars destroyed.

Townsend shared his vision for the CJTF-OIR mission ahead.

"Let me say for all to hear -- friend and foe alike -- we will continue the attack against ISIL, and we will defeat them in Iraq and Syria on our watch," Townsend said.

The XVIII Airborne Corps most recently returned from deployment in Afghanistan in December 2014, where in Afghanistan it led the NATO operational headquarters in Kabul, the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Israel pounds Gaza Strip, two Palestinians injured

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 2:44PM

The Israeli military pounded the town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, injuring two Palestinians.

An Israeli military official claimed that in response to a rocket attack from Gaza, the Israeli air force and tanks targeted two posts of the resistance movement Hamas in the northern part of the besieged Palestinian territory.

The rocket attack targeted the city of Sderot, the military official said.

Witnesses said Israeli aircraft struck civilian targets including a water tank in the area.

The Palestinian Information Center, which is affiliated with Hamas, reported that a Palestinian citizen was injured in the face by shrapnel.

The center quoted local sources as saying that Israeli artillery fire hit an agricultural land in al-Masriyyin neighborhood in Beit Hanoun. It reported that shells also landed in a training ground used by Hamas resistance fighters.

On July 2, the Israeli regime carried out a similar assault on four areas in Gaza.

The Israeli military frequently bombs Gaza. The disproportionate force is always used in violation of international law and civilians are often killed or injured.

In early July 2014, Tel Aviv waged a war on the Gaza Strip. The 50-day military aggression, which ended on August 26, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including over 570 children. Over 11,100 others were also wounded in the war. Israel continues to carry out attacks on the Palestinian enclave from time to time.

Gaza has been blockaded since 2007 and Israel denies about 1.8 million people in the besieged territory their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, proper job, and adequate healthcare and education.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






3 killed in suspected Boko Haram bombing in Cameroon

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 1:57PM

Three people have been killed and two dozen others injured in a bombing carried out by a suspected member of the Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist group in Cameroon's volatile northern region, security officials say.

The attack was carried out in Mora, a town in Cameroon's Far North Region near the Nigerian border, at about 7:00 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) on Sunday, when a young man, suspected to be from Nigeria and riding a motorbike, detonated his explosives on a bridge near a crowded market.

According to the governor of the region, Midjiyawa Bakari, the victims included a teacher, a high school student and a person from a neighboring town. He went on to say that five of the wounded were in a "serious condition."

No group or individual has so far claimed responsibility for the deadly attack, but Boko Haram, which is based in Nigeria, has carried out similar attacks in Cameroon.

In June, a bomb attack conducted by Boko Haram claimed the lives of 11 people at a mosque in the town of Djakana, located in the same region.

Mora, which has frequently suffered from deadly attacks by Boko Haram, is home to the headquarters of a joint force consisting of soldiers from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, which is tasked with battling the terror group.

Over 8,000 Cameroonian soldiers are currently deployed in the Far North Region as well as a large military base consisting of motorized infantry brigades in Mora.

Boko Haram is based in Nigeria but has been carrying out terrorist attacks in neighboring countries including Cameroon and Chad.

The terrorist group, which has pledged allegiance to the Daesh Takfiri terrorists, started its reign of terror in Nigeria in 2009 with the aim of toppling the central government. The violence is estimated to have claimed a total of 20,000 lives and forced over 2.8 million others from their homes.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Delta Avengers announce ceasefire with Nigeria

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 12:32PM

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), known for its attacks on Nigeria's oil installations, has announced a ceasefire, saying it will support the notion of holding talks with the government in Abuja.

The group said in a message on its website late Saturday that it would support efforts to negotiate with "the federal government of Nigeria, representatives from the home countries of all multinational oil corporations and neutral international mediators."

It said NDA would "observe a cessation of hostilities" and will honor its pledge "unless the ruling political APC (All Progressives Congress party) continues ... to arrest, intimidate, invade and harass innocent citizens and invade especially Ijaw communities."

The Ijaw ethnic people are the dominant militant group in the southern Niger Delta region. They have vowed to resume fighting if the current window for talks expires and the government fails to address their demands.

"We promise to fight more for the Niger Delta, if this opportunity fails," the NDA said in its message.

Attacks on Nigeria's oil pipeline and facilities have left a devastating impact on the African country's economy. Reports say Abuja has lost a third of its oil income as a result of the militancy affecting its oil facilities.

The government blamed two such attacks on Friday on the DNA while a second group, identifying itself as the Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate (NDGJM), carried out another attack on the state-owned pipeline on the same day.

The DNA has yet to comment on reports that it has been holding talks with government representatives in Abuja over the past weeks. The group has also refused to publicly support efforts by community figures from the Niger Delta region to resolve the conflict.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Deadly bomb, gun attack targets government office in Somali town

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 9:59AM

Al-Shabab militants have killed 17 people in an attack on the local government headquarters in a town in north-central Somalia.

The attack was carried out in the town of Galkayo, in Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland region, on Sunday. Witnesses said they heard two huge consecutive explosions, followed by gunfire.

"There were two huge bombs. The first one was a truck bomb, followed a minute or so (later) by another car bomb. My brother was injured at the scene," said Halima Ismail, a local resident.

The al-Shabab militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying two car bombs were detonated in the area.

Government forces, backed by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), have been fighting the militancy by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab for several years.

The joint forces have successfully forced the Takfiri militants out of the capital Mogadishu, as well as other major cities. But al-Shabab militants continue to carry out sporadic attacks across the country.

The militants have also attacked targets in neighboring countries, including Kenya.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






DR Congo opposition calls for nationwide strike

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 9:40AM

The main opposition group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has called for a general strike in the country following the government's refusal to hold an early presidential election.

The opposition called for the strike on Saturday after the government of President Joseph Kabila said the election, originally scheduled for November this year, should be delayed until at least next July, meaning that Kabila will be able to stay in power until then.

The government had, however, offered to hold talks with the opposition on the issue, an offer that was rejected. The opposition party insists that Kabila end his rule in December because, under the country's constitution, he has exhausted three five-year terms.

"Opposition parties call on the Congolese people to hold a dead city strike (general strike) on August 23," read a statement by the opposition.

Meanwhile, the electoral commission in the country said on Saturday that the voter registry will not be completed until next year, reiterating the possibility of a delayed election.

The commission referred to logistical problems due to the lack of funds as hurdles in registering more the than 30 million Congolese voters.

The DR Congo has faced such problems over the past few decades as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on since 1998 and left over 5.5 million people dead.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Philippine president slams 'inutile' UN

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 7:48AM

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has lashed out at the United Nations (UN) for calling on him to stop a wave of killings attributed to his war on drugs.

"Maybe we'll just have to decide to separate from the United Nations," Duterte said on Sunday following a UN statement urging Manila to put an end to the alleged extrajudicial killings of individuals linked to illegal drugs.

Duterte said the UN statement, which came out last week, was against protocol.

In the statement, UN special rapporteurs Agnes Callamard and Dainius Puras called on the Philippine government to stop the alleged extrajudicial executions and killings that they said have escalated since Duterte won the presidency on May 9.

Duterte on Friday denied that the government or police forces were involved in such killings.

The firebrand president, who has been nicknamed by media as "The Punisher," is known for his unorthodox methods and support for the death penalty.

He was the long-time mayor of the country's most dangerous city, Davao City, where he largely eliminated criminal activities.

The 71-year-old lawyer and politician said if the UN returned the money his country has paid the body over the years, Manila would consider leaving the international organization. He said the Philippines would set up an alternative to the UN with the help of China and African countries.

In his Sunday's remarks, he described the UN as an 'inutile' organization that has failed to carry out its duties and is instead "worrying about the bones of criminals piling up."

He then went on to criticize the UN for not doing enough to address hunger and terrorism and for not being able to do anything about Syria and Iraq.

"I do not want to insult you United Nations, if you can say one bad thing about me, I can give you 10 (about you). I tell you, you are inutile. Because if you are really true to your mandate, you could have stopped all these wars and killings," he said.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Afghan forces retake district in Kuduz Province

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 7:22AM

Security forces in Afghanistan have retaken control of a northeastern district in the country that had fallen to Taliban militants hours earlier.

Security officials in Afghanistan confirmed late Saturday that government forces recaptured the Khanabad district in the restive Kunduz Province from the Taliban militants.

The militants had overrun the district in fierce clashes with security forces earlier in the day.

The district is a strategic one, connecting Kunduz to Takhar and other northern provinces. Afghan officials had cited a lack of ammunition and reinforcement as the main reason for the district's fall.

"All checkpoints around us collapsed. We did not have sufficient weapons to fight and food to eat for four days. Finally, our check posts collapsed and we evacuated the area and arrived in the center of Kunduz," said Serajuddin, an Afghan National Police (ANP) officer.

Local reports said hundreds of civilians from the area had fled to the east, toward Takhar Province following the Taliban offensive to take the area.

The officials have not provided any details about the number of casualties in clashes between security forces and the militants.

Taliban militants have intensified their attacks on Kunduz and launched numerous offensives on key districts of the province during the past several months.

The militants have also attempted on several occasions to take control of the provincial capital city of the same name. They did seize it briefly last year before being driven out in a counteroffensive by Afghan military forces.

Afghanistan is still suffering from insecurity and violence years after the United States and its allies invaded the country in 2001 as part of Washington's so-called war on terror. The military invasion removed the Taliban from power, but their militancy continues in the country.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Clinton Campaign Suggests Trump May Be Kremlin 'Puppet'

August 21, 2016

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign manager says Republican rival Donald Trump should explain "the extent to which the Kremlin is at the core" of his campaign, her team's latest suggestion of Russian meddling in the November 8 election.

The August 21 comments to ABC News by Robby Mook came just days after the resignation of Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, amid reports about his lobbying work for a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian political party and failure to register as a foreign agent.

"Paul Manafort has been pushed out, but that doesn't mean that the Russians have been pushed out of this campaign," Mook said.

He added that there are "real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race."

Trump has said that if elected, he would seek to improve U.S.-Russian ties that were battered following Moscow's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea territory and backing for armed separatists battling Kyiv's forces in the east of the country.

But he says suggestions that the Kremlin is trying to help him get elected are ridiculous. Moscow has rejected the accusations as well.

Based on reporting by ABC News

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/clinton- trump-kremlin-puppet/27936749.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






CAR Seeks Justice Over Child Abuse Committed by French Peacekeepers

Sputnik News

21:56 21.08.2016(updated 22:12 21.08.2016)

The CAR is seeking justice for the victims of French troops who sexually abused children while they were on a peacekeeping mission.

The Central African Republic (CAR) is waiting for the result of France's investigation into the alleged misconduct of the French military during its mission there, CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera told Sputnik Francais.

In March 2013 a coup by the Seleka alliance of rebel militia overthrew the government, which was followed by what UN Secretary-General ban Ki-moon described as a "total breakdown of law and order."

The Seleka alliance, whose members are almost entirely from CAR's minority Muslim population, was ousted from power in January 2014. Since then the militia has been fighting with Antibalaka Christian militia groups in a sectarian civil war which has killed thousands of people.

In December 2013 France, the CAR's former colonial ruler, launched "Operation Sangaris," sending French peacekeeping troops to the country under a UN peacekeeping mandate.

However, in December 2014 allegations of child abuse by French soldiers against children in CAR began to surface. According to the results of an official investigation, ten children were raped by the peacekeepers, and five soldiers were arrested.

However, in spite of French President Francois Hollande's vow that there will be "no mercy" for French child abusers, the CAR has not been informed of any formal punishment of the soldiers.

"France should serve justice. We want the rights of the victims to be respected, and we have held negotiations with France so that there will be a just decision. We are monitoring the situation, and we are insisting that the victims' rights are respected," CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera told Sputnik.

"For us and the victims this is taking a long time, but we hope that when everything is finished, sanctions will follow. The people are waiting for this, especially those who have suffered."

NGO's in the CAR capital Bangui told Sputnik they suspect that official figures underestimate the number of victims of the abuse. While UNICEF confirms there were ten victims, the Yamacuir Center said that more than 100 children and adults visited their center in 2014 and 2015, complaining about abuse from French peacekeeping soldiers.

In April 2014, the UN Security Council authorized an international peacekeeping force of 12,000 troops for the CAR, to augment peace missions from the EU and African Union.

CAR has had several presidents since the 2013 coup; incumbent Faustin-Archange Touadera won 62.7 percent of the vote in presidential elections in February this year. Touadera, a former Maths professor, served as prime minister in the government of ex-president Francois Bozize, who was overthrown in the 2013 coup.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






South China Sea Time Bomb: Beijing Sets "Red Line" on Japan-US Joint Operations

Sputnik News

21:37 21.08.2016(updated 02:31 22.08.2016)

The Chinese Ambassador to Japan warned that Beijing would not concede on the demand or relinquish their sovereignty over the South China Sea even if it meant the two countries went to war.

On Saturday, diplomatic sources confirmed that China had issued a severe warning to Tokyo in late June demanding that Japan refrain from dispatching Self-Defense Forces to join US operations testing the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

Japan will "cross a red line" if SDF vessels take part in the freedom of navigation operations, Chinese Ambassador Cheng Yonghua conveyed to Tokyo at the time. Cheng threatened military action if Japan failed to comply with the ultimatum.

The warning came two weeks prior to The Hague international arbitration court's adverse ruling deeming the waters and territory that the Chinese people had historically viewed as their own were to be stripped of their control and that Beijing must immediately remove itself from the disputed territory.

China immediately denounced the ruling, on both substantive and procedural grounds, vowing not to comply with the court's ruling. The proceedings were triggered unilaterally by the Philippines, a move supported by the United States, without China submitting itself to the authority of the court's ruling. The court not only lacked requisite jurisdiction over the matter, but many legal scholars interpreting the Law of the Sea Treaty believe that China has the strongest claim based on its longstanding control of the disputed area.

Beijing has become irate over international pressure calling for it to comply with the court order in the name of international law, which China views the ruling itself violates, coming predominantly from regional competitors Japan and Australia as well as from the United States.

Those tensions risk spilling over with a Chinese state-run newspaper already issuing a warning to Australia that it would be the "ideal target for a strike" and repeated warnings to Japan to avoid intervening. Further complicating tensions, Reuters misreported that Vietnam had installed rocket launchers pointing at Chinese military assets over the territorial dispute leading China's press to caution Hanoi to remember the consequence of the last-time the two countries went to war in 1979.

While Tokyo continues to assert pressure on Beijing over the arbitration ruling, despite not itself being a party to the dispute, a Japan Times editorial left unsigned sought to offer reassurance saying that "the Japanese government has no plans to join the freedom of navigation operations, in which the United States since October has sent warships near artificial islands that China has built in the South China Sea."

The statement of measured and reserve action comes after revelations that Chinese Ambassador Cheng Yonghua told Japan explicitly not to take part in "joint military actions with the US forces that is aimed at excluding China in the South China Sea" and stating that China "will not concede on sovereignty issues and is not afraid of military provocations."

The stakes for Beijing are high in the South China Sea where over 40% of the world's shipborne trade transits through each day. The waters also are home to one of the world's largest deep-sea oil and natural gas deposits and serves a critical function for stretching China's regional military reach.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Obama Wants $8bn Fighter Jet Deal With Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar in Last 100 Days

Sputnik News

21:37 21.08.2016(updated 02:31 22.08.2016)

The arms deal with the Gulf dictatorships completely contravenes established US law prohibiting the transfer of arms to regimes that have shown a propensity to turn those weapons on their own civilians.

Kuwait's Al-Rai newspaper reports that White House sources indicate that it is likely that Congress will reverse its disapproval of US fighter jet sales to Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain before President Barack Obama leaves office on January 17, 2017 following intense lobbying by administration officials.

Obama administration officials with the US State Department and US Defense Department are engaged in a "brutal political battle" according to the Bahrain Mirror, in trying to convince Congress to acquiesce to the arms deal. President Obama agreed, almost a year ago, to sell 76 fighter jets valued at a total of $8 billion to the three Gulf States before the deal erupted into controversy.

The report comes less than two months after a bipartisan group of US Senators called on the State Department to discontinue all military aid and transfers to Bahrain citing the deteriorating state of human rights in the country following an escalation in crackdowns against pro-democracy demonstrations that have been ongoing for five years.

The letter, from Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Hillary Clinton's running mate Tim Kaine (D-VA) followed a June 21 State Department report to Congress that blasted the Bahraini monarchy for its wanton aggression against peaceful civilian demonstrators.

The situation had devolved such to the point that State Department spokesman John Kirby trotted out to say "The lack of due process and the criminalization of the exercise of free expression continue to undermine the progress Bahrain has made since 2011."

The Sunni-led monarchy has moved to revoke citizenship of members of the Shiite opposition party, al-Wefaq, in order to render the individuals stateless and beyond the protections of human rights protocols.

Over 70% of Bahraini Muslims are Shia, but the regime is nonetheless led by the Sunni Khalifa family which claims to own all of the fishes in the sea and 99% of the wealth in the country. The demonstrators have remained peaceful despite repeated armed assaults, imprisonment and torture by the regime and even argue that it would be positive for a transition to democracy for the monarchy to remain installed in a figurehead role while the decisions of the state would be decided by representatives of the people.

Notably, the United States maintains its critical Fifth Naval Fleet in Bahrain which serves a vital purpose in maintaining America's regional presence and for staging Special Forces operations against terrorists.

Nonetheless, US law prohibits the sale of arms to known human rights abusers which Bahrain has been repeatedly identified as by the State Department due to swelling reports that the regime has turned US provided weapons on peaceful protesters.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Kerry in Kenya for Talks on Keeping the Peace in South Sudan

By Ken Schwartz August 21, 2016

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Nairobi, Kenya, where he will hold talks with East African foreign ministers on ways to stop neighboring South Sudan from sliding back into civil war.

Kerry plans to meet with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta before joining the other ministers for talks on how to make sure peace is maintained in the world's newest country.

"The people of South Sudan have suffered for far too long," a senior State Department official told reporters. "The continued instability there has led to almost a million refugees and a humanitarian crisis that is far beyond the abilities of even the international community to respond to."

South Sudan has been troubled almost since the day it gained independence from Sudan in 2011. Civil war, violence and territorial disputes with Sudan have made it difficult for the oil-rich country to thrive.

Kerry and the African foreign ministers also plan to discuss the situation in Somalia, which is looking toward upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections to help bring stability.

Later this week, he will stop in Nigeria, where Boko Haram terrorists have killed more than 20,000 people since 2009 - and Saudi Arabia, which is leading an Arab coalition against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Saudi-led airstrikes have obliterated neighborhoods in the rebel-held capital of Sana'a and killed numerous civilians.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Counter-ISIL Forces Continue Operations in Manbij

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Aug. 22, 2016  The Syrian Arab Coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces continue operations in Syria's Manbij City in the ongoing effort to clear the liberated city of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters, identify and remove improvised bombs, and establish a defensive posture capable of thwarting an ISIL counterattack, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported yesterday.

The continued clearance is part of a broader effort to prepare defendable positions for long-term security in Manbij, officials said.

The full extent and complexity of the bombs and booby traps in city is slowly emerging and still presents a threat to civilians, officials said. These devices were left behind by ISIL fighters to maim civilians and slow operations, they explained. To protect the local population, the Manbij Military Council commander, Gen. Abu Amjad, has publicly warned citizens of these dangers.

Help for City's Population

The city's population is receiving a variety of assistance throughout the area. The Syrian Arab Coalition established dedicated medical facilities and continues to work with coalition partners to ensure the availability of humanitarian assistance. The Kurdish regional government increased the capacity of the Fishkapour crossing to allow the movement of nongovernment officials to deliver humanitarian assistance for internally displaced persons.

The coalition-supported Syrian moderate opposition efforts in Manbij City and Rai continue to weaken ISIL's threat to Turkey, Europe and United States, officials said.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US, South Korea begin massive military drill amid North warning

Iran Press TV

Mon Aug 22, 2016 5:14AM

Tens of thousands of troops from South Korea and the US have launched a massive military exercise, prompting North Korea to pledge retaliation against what it calls an invasion rehearsal.

The annual two-week "Ulchi Freedom Guardian" maneuver, which is largely computer-simulated, started on Monday with the participation of 50,000 Korean and 30,000 US soldiers.

Seoul and Washington say the drill is purely defensive in nature. North Korea, however, views the drill as willfully provocative and a rehearsal for an actual attack on the country.

The Korean People's Army (KPA) issued a statement Monday morning, threatening a "preemptive retaliatory strike" should the US-led war drills threaten Pyongyang's sovereignty.

"The first-strike combined units of the KPA keep themselves fully ready to mount a preemptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved in Ulchi Freedom Guardian," Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

"The nuclear warmongers should bear in mind that if they show the slightest sign of aggression on the inviolable land, seas and air where the sovereignty of the DPRK is exercised, it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike," the statement added.

In Seoul, anti-war activists held a protest rally to condemn the annual joint military exercise.

Holding placards reading "Stop war exercise," the protesters gathered near the US embassy in the South Korean capital, Seoul, on Monday.

North Korea said in January it had successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb, its fourth nuclear test, and vowed to build up its nuclear program as deterrence against potential aggression from the US and its regional allies.

A month later, Pyongyang launched a long-range rocket which it said placed an earth observation satellite into orbit. Washington and Seoul denounced it as a cover for an intercontinental ballistic missile test.

North Korea says it will not abandon its nuclear "deterrence" unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and dissolves the US-led command in South Korea. Thousands of US soldiers are stationed in South Korea and Japan.

North Korea said in January it had successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb, its fourth nuclear test, and vowed to build up its nuclear program as deterrence against potential aggression from the US and its regional allies.

A month later, Pyongyang launched a long-range rocket which it said placed an earth observation satellite into orbit. Washington and Seoul denounced it as a cover for an intercontinental ballistic missile test.

North Korea says it will not abandon its nuclear "deterrence" unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and dissolves the US-led command in South Korea. Thousands of US soldiers are stationed in South Korea and Japan.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






'New Wave of Reprisals' Against Azerbaijani Opposition Party

August 22, 2016

by Liz Fuller

Having failed to persuade key defendants in the so-called "Nardaran trial" to implicate Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (AHCP) Chairman Ali Kerimli in an alleged plot by Islamic extremists to incite mass disturbances with a view to seizing power, the Azerbaijani authorities have now changed tack. Over the past several days, four AHCP activists have been apprehended on a variety of charges; one of them is accused of being a follower of exiled Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen, who Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims was behind the botched coup attempt last month.

According to Azerbaijani presidential administration deputy head Novruz Mamedov, several Azerbaijani opposition parties have links to Gulen's Hizmet movement. He warned that all its supporters in Azerbaijan will be identified.

The AHCP, together with the Musavat Party, is one of Azerbaijan's longest-established opposition parties -- it is the successor organization of the Azerbaijani Popular Front established in 1989 -- and one of very few ever to have won parliamentary representation. Kerimli, 50, who has served as party chairman since 2000, was elected to parliament in 1995 and 2000.

Kerimli has for years been denied a passport for travel abroad, and the Justice Ministry declined late last year to recognize as legal his reelection as AHCP chairman.

Of the four AHCP activists detained, Qadim Bekirov was arrested on August 18 and remanded for 25 days for resisting police. Vasif Niftiyev, detained the following day, has not yet been formally charged. Neither has Faiq Amirov, Kerimli's aide and financial director of the AHCP newspaper Azadlyq, which is struggling to pay its outstanding debts to the state printing house.

The fourth is Fuad Ahmedli, head of the AHCP's youth organization in Baku's Khatay district. He had previously been detained in May and December 2015, reportedly for as retribution for criticizing the Azerbaijani authorities.

Police claim that during a search of Ahmedli's home on August 18, they confiscated banned religious literature and CDs, copies of Gulen's sermons, and documents originating with his Hizmet movement.Ahmedli's father denies this, however: he is quoted by the news site Caucasus Knot as saying that the police took only works of literature and some leaflets published in the late 1980s by the emerging nationalist-democratic movement. Asked why they were confiscating those writings, an officer reportedly replied "We've got to take something."

Kerimli denied any connection between the AHCP and Gulen, noting that when the July 15 coup took placed he immediately affirmed his full support for the Turkish leadership. He branded the detentions of the four AHCP supporters politically motivated.

Ahmedli, who worked for the mobile phone company Azerfon, has been charged with illegally circulating personnel data of mobile phone subscribers.On August 19, the State Security Service and the Prosecutor-General's Office released a statement accusing Ahmedli, together with Shahin Israilov of Bakcell Ltd and Etibar Musayev of Azercell Telecom, of supplying a fourth man, identified as Vuqar Qasymov, with details of the mobile phone accounts of "numerous" subscribers. Israilov, Musayev, and Qasymov have also been arrested.

The AHCP has released a statement branding the arrest of Ahmedli the start of "a new wave of reprisals" in retaliation for the party's uncompromising criticism of the planned referendum on constitutional amendments intended, in the view of many opposition activists, to ensure the rule in perpetuum of the family of President Ilham Aliyev.

Kerimli formally asked to be allowed to attend the session at which Azerbaijan's Constitutional Court was to rule on whether the proposals to extend the presidential term from five to seven years, abolish the minimum age limit of 35 for presidential candidates, and introduce the posts of first vice president and vice president, both to be appointed by the incumbent, are constitutional, but was refused. He subsequently denounced that refusal as evidence that "the country's entire judicial system, including the Constitutional Court, is controlled by one person -- Ilham Aliyev."

Kerimli has condemned the planned amendments as destroying the principle of the division of powers, and suggested that Aliyev's motive for proposing them was mistrust of unnamed "oligarchs" among his immediate entourage and within parliament.

The AHCP is not the only political force to be targeted for its negative stance with regard to the referendum, which is scheduled for September 26. Three members of the civic movement Republican Alternative -- Elshan Gasymov, Togrul Ismail, and ReAl executive secretary Natiq Cafarli -- have likewise been apprehended. Gasymov and Ismail were charged with resisting the police, while Cafarli has been charged with obtaining grants illegally and remanded in custody for four months.

ReAlis trying to collect the requisite 45,000 signatures to register a group that will formally campaign against the proposed constitutional amendments, which it described in a statement as "intended to preserve the existing authoritarian system" and contrary to "the traditions of democratic statehood."

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/new- wave-of-reprisals-against-azerbaijani- opposition-party/27938240.html

Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US Commander Warns Moscow, Damascus Against Operations Near American Positions

Sputnik News

00:41 22.08.2016

The US forces commander in Syria Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend says Moscow and Damascus have been informed about possible countermeasures should the coalition troops in Syria "feel threatened".

Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, recently appointed US commander of American forces in Iraq and Syria, have told reporters that the coalition forces have officially informed Moscow and Damascus of possible countermeasures should the US forces "feel threatened" by Syrian forces.

"We've informed the Russians where we're at (they) tell us they've informed the Syrians, and I'd just say that we will defend ourselves if we feel threatened," he said.

This statement came in the wake of Syrian Air Force sortie to the Syrian city of Hasakah. US-led coalition had to send its planes to scramble two Syrian Su-24 planes. When the coalition planes entered the area of operation, the Syrian planes had already left, their bombs dropped. The bombing has reportedly caused no civilian casualties.

The US Special Forces were ordered to change location as a precaution while US jet patrols over the region were beefed up.

Hasaka is located in northern region of Syria, which is currently under influence of Syrian Kurdish forces, who until recently were not in confrontation with Damascus, thanks to their successful fight against Daesh forces. But their growing military strength is now viewed as a possible threat of Kurdish separatism. The US-led coalition forces are known to use three airstrips located in northern Syria.

Earlier in July, the chief of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov reported that Russia and the US are exchanging information on "most sensitive issues." Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, has told journalists earlier in June that Russia and the US conduct constant informational exchange on military operations in Syria.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US, Ukraine Inspectors to Fly Over Russia Under Open Skies Treaty

Sputnik News

00:11 22.08.2016(updated 00:27 22.08.2016)

US and Ukrainian inspectors will fly over Russian territories this week under the Open Skies Treaty, the acting head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Nuclear Risk Reduction Center said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  He added that the flight will follow an agreed route and a team of Russian experts will be on board to ensure that the aircraft and the survey equipment used are in compliance with the treaty.

"From August 22 to 27, under the international Open Skies Treaty, a joint US-Ukrainian mission will carry out an observation flight over the Russian territory aboard a US observation plane OS-135B after taking off from [Russia's] Ulan-Ude," the Ministry's Sergei Zabello said.

He added that the flight will follow an agreed route and a team of Russian experts will be on board to ensure that the aircraft and the survey equipment used are in compliance with the treaty.

In return, a Russian observation mission is planned to take place over US territories at the same time, the Defense Ministry official said.

"A Russian team of inspectors plan to carry out observation flights aboard a Tu-154M Lk-1," Zabello said.

The plane will take off from US air force base Wright-Patterson in Ohio on Monday and fly a total of 3,000 miles. Another Russian mission is scheduled in Canada for August 29 and will last until September 3.

The Treaty on Open Skies was signed in March 1992 and became one of the major confidence-building measures in Europe after the Cold War. It entered into force on January 1, 2002, and currently has 34 states parties, including Russia and most NATO members.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Update: air strikes against Daesh

22 August 2016

British forces have continued to conduct air operations in the fight against Daesh

Latest update

- Saturday 13 August  a Reaper supported Iraqi forces near Qayyarah, conducting its own attacks on Daesh and facilitating several more by other coalition aircraft.

- Sunday 14 August  another Reaper continued to provide support around Qayyarah, attacking a further two targets.

- Monday 15 August  Typhoons bombed a terrorist mortar position in western Iraq.

- Tuesday 16 August  Tornados attacked a heavy artillery piece south of Manbij whilst a Reaper destroyed a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun in south-eastern Syria.

- Wednesday 17 August  Typhoons destroyed an armed truck in western Iraq, a Reaper eliminated a group of Daesh extremists in northern Iraq.

- Thursday 18 August  Tornados attacked two terrorist positions in northern Iraq.

- Friday 19 August  Tornados and a Reaper accounted for a number of rocket-launchers and mortars near Qayyarah in northern Iraq.

- Saturday 20 August  a Reaper destroyed another terrorist mortar team near Qayyarah.

- Sunday 21 August  Tornados struck a terrorist group and a tank in northern Iraq, whilst Typhoons bombed an armed truck in western Iraq.

Detail

A Royal Air Force Reaper remotely piloted aircraft provided overwatch to Iraqi ground forces clearing terrorist positions in the Qayyarah region of northern Iraq on Saturday 13 August. A number of groups of Daesh fighters, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, were active in the area, but were tracked down by the Reaper's crew using the aircraft's very capable surveillance sensors. Three successful attacks were conducted using the Reaper's own Hellfire missiles, and the Reaper also made possible a further five attacks by coalition fast jets, which accounted for other groups of fighters, two vehicles and a mortar team. A second Reaper ensured that the Iraqi units continued to receive close support into Sunday 14 August, and this aircraft delivered two Hellfire attacks, again on Daesh rocket-propelled grenade teams.

Typhoon FGR4s, based at RAF Akrotiri and supported by a Voyager tanker, patrolled over western Iraq on Monday 15 August. Some miles north of Ramadi, they used a Paveway IV guided bomb against a terrorist mortar position. Tornado GR4s and a Reaper conducted armed reconnaissance patrols over Syria on Tuesday 16 August; a coalition surveillance aircraft spotted a Daesh heavy artillery piece to the south of Manbij, and the Tornados were tasked to deal with it. The gun and an ammunition stockpile were concealed within a treeline at the edge of a road, but a pair of Paveway IVs struck their targets. The Reaper operated over south-eastern Syria, where it used a Hellfire to destroy an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a truck, around 40 miles north of Al Tanf.

A Reaper was again in action near Qayyarah on Wednesday 17 August, when it successfully engaged yet another group of Daesh terrorists armed with rocket-propelled grenades; a number of secondary explosions followed the impact of the Hellfire missile as the grenades caught fire. Typhoons also continued their patrols over western Iraq, along the Euphrates valley to the north-west of Ramadi, and here they used a Paveway IV to destroy an armed truck which the extremists had tried in vain to conceal under a large vehicle shelter.

Thursday 18 August saw Tornados operating over northern Iraq. A coalition aircraft spotted a group of extremists hidden in a position beneath trees on the southern bank of the Great Zab River, and these were successfully attacked by the GR4s using a Paveway IV. The Tornados then conducted a further such attack on a Daesh machine-gun position, several miles to the south of Sinjar. The following day, a Reaper and a pair of Tornados worked together near Qayyarah against a number of terrorist rocket and mortar teams. The Reaper observed a mortar firing from a compound at Iraqi forces, and responded with a successful Hellfire missile attack. The Reaper then provided support to the Tornados as they used a pair of Paveway IVs against a widely dispersed group of rocket-launchers. The Tornados also used a Brimstone missile to destroy a second mortar team, and another Paveway IV to strike an additional set of rocket rails.

Another Reaper patrolled over Qayyarah on Saturday 20 August, again hunting for a reported mortar team. The target was tracked down and successfully prosecuted using a Hellfire. On Sunday 21 August, a Typhoon flight bombed an armed truck a few miles to the north-west of Ramadi, on the northern bank of the Euphrates, while Tornados were active once more over northern Iraq; a Paveway IV attack struck a terrorist position to the south-west of Kirkuk, and a Brimstone missile was used to destroy a T-62 tank operated by Daesh to the north of Mosul.

Previous air strikes

Tuesday 2 August: With Iraqi ground forces continuing their offensive to clear Daesh from the area around Qayyarah, a Royal Air Force Reaper provided close air support. The Reaper observed terrorists attempting to salvage a heavy machine-gun from a truck that had been hit by a previous coalition strike and successfully engaged them with a Hellfire missile. A second group of extremists were also attacked with another Hellfire. UK aircraft then provided targeting support that allowed a coalition fast jet to destroy a mortar team. Over Syria, a pair of Typhoons were similarly supporting the Syrian democratic forces as they fought to secure Manbij. A number of buildings on the south-western edge of the town had been fortified by Daesh as a major defensive position. These were successfully struck by the Typhoons, using eight Paveway IV guided bombs, despite the proximity of the moderate Syrian forces.

Wednesday 3 August: Tornados destroyed a Daesh mortar position while patrolling the north and west of Mosul.

Thursday 4 August: Tornados were again active over northern Iraq and conducted a Paveway IV attack on a machine-gun position in the hills to the north-west of Tall Afar. Meanwhile, Typhoons destroyed two Daesh-held buildings in western Iraq, while assisting Iraqi forces in the Euphrates Valley.

Sunday 7 August: Daesh were observed to be attempting to extract oil from one of the eastern Syrian oilfields which had been successfully targeted by previous coalition air strikes earlier this year. Two Tornados attacked a convoy of tankers north of Abu Kamal. Four Paveway IVs and four Brimstone missiles accounted for a number of vehicles, denying the terrorists the oil revenue they desperately seek. In northern Iraq, a Reaper and Typhoons were again supporting the Iraqi operations around Qayyarah. The Reaper conducted Hellfire attacks on a mortar team that was firing on the Iraqis and on a set of rocket rails. It then helped other coalition aircraft to successfully target an improvised armoured vehicle. The Typhoons also used three Paveway IVs to destroy three Daesh-held buildings.

Monday 8 August: A Reaper flew overwatch for Iraqi ground forces operating near Qayyarah in northern Iraq on and used a Hellfire missile to destroy a terrorist vehicle as it was tracked at speed along an open road. To the east of Mosul, a light artillery piece had been identified, positioned within a building. This was successfully attacked by Typhoons with a Paveway IV guided bomb.

Tuesday 9 August: Typhoons were active over the same area, conducting attacks with Paveway IVs which destroyed three Daesh-held buildings and a vehicle some 20 miles south-east of Mosul. The same day, a Reaper was again assigned to support Iraqi operations near Qayyarah. Its crew observed a Daesh team setting up a mortar and attacked with a Hellfire. It then used a second missile to destroy a mechanical excavator which was being used to help plant improvised explosive devices and tear up the carriageway of the main highway, in an attempt to hamper the Iraqi advance.

Wednesday 10 August: A Reaper patrolled over Manbij, where Syrian democratic forces have cleared Daesh from much of the town. The Reaper intervened in close combat that developed just to the north of Manbij and successfully used Hellfires to clear two groups of extremists engaged in a fire fight with the Syrian moderates. Over Iraq, Typhoons bombed an armed truck concealed under trees some miles to the south-east of Hit. A number of secondary explosions followed as associated ammunition caught fire.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Chinese air force drill in Sea of Japan

People's Daily Online

(CRI Online) 15:44, August 21, 2016

The Chinese military has revealed a bomber squadron with the East China Sea Fleet have recently conducted a long-range combat drill in the Sea of Japan.

The bombers traveled thousands of kilometers and conducted saturation attacks on vessels of a simulated enemy to improve their capability of continuous strikes at maximum range.

Navy officials say the drill was routine and in accordance with international law, and not aimed at any specific country, region or target.

Last week, Chinese naval warships also held a confrontation drill in the same waters.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Protesters rally against pro-independence candidates poll ban in Hong Kong

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 5:26PM

Hundreds of protesters have taken to the streets in Hong Kong against a government decision to disqualify candidates advocating territorial independence ahead of the legislative elections in September.

Police said up to 760 people participated in the Sunday protest. Organizers claimed more than 1,000 supporters marched through main streets against the disqualification of five candidates from running in the upcoming Legislative Council elections.

Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit, a protest organizer of Civil Human Rights Front, criticized the vetting process for electoral candidates, saying, "I hope that people are aware of the political vetting. It is something that every Hongkonger should be concerned about because damage has been done to the rule of law as well as fairness in elections."

The demonstrators chanted slogans while holding banners reading, "No political vetting!" "Give me back fair elections!" and "Defend freedom of speech."

Five candidates who advocate a split from China have been banned from standing in the September 4 vote. The idea of independence is dismissed as illegal by Beijing and Hong Kong authorities.

The latest protest rally comes as critics complain about Beijing's growing influence in the city.

Some new parties have emerged campaigning for a breakaway in the Special Administrative Region of China.

In 2014, tens of thousands of protesters gathered on a regular basis for nearly 80 days to urge political reforms in Hong Kong and free leadership vote. Protests in Hong Kong began in September 2014, after China said voters had to choose the region's next chief executive in 2017 from a list of two or three candidates selected by a nominating committee.

Hong Kong has enjoyed substantial political autonomy since 1997, when it returned to China after about a century of British colonial rule.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






North Korean Diplomat Left for Seoul from UK to Escape Retribution for Crimes

Sputnik News

17:43 20.08.2016

North Korean diplomat Thae Yong Ho, comitted a series of crimes, including sexual abuse of minors, and decided to avoid retribution by fleeing to Seoul, according to North Korean state media.

TOKYO (Sputnik)  North Korean diplomat Thae Yong Ho, who went secretly to South Korea from London, where he worked at the North Korean embassy, committed a series of crimes and decided to avoid retribution by fleeing to Seoul, North Korean state media reported Saturday.

Earlier this week,, Seoul announced that the diplomat and his family had legally emigrated to South Korea.

"Amid fear of his crimes being unmasked and fear of punishment in accordance with the law, he portrayed despicable farce with the flight to South Korea with his family. The runaway stole large sums of public funds, sold state secrets, and was engaged in sexual abuse of minors, as well. To investigate all these crimes, he was sent a recall in June," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a statement.

On Friday, media reported that another North Korean diplomat, third secretary of the North Korean Embassy in Russia Kim Chor Sen, who had been considered missing in Moscow since last month, defected to South Korea. According to preliminary information by the Russian law enforcement, he initially flew from St. Petersburg to Minsk and from there, to Ukraine before leaving for South Korea.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Park Geun Hye Group Accused of Floating Story of Letting North's Abductees Settle in S. Korea

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

Pyongyang, August 21 (KCNA) -- The Park Geun Hye group of traitors in south Korea which had kept the women abductees of the DPRK in custody for over four months despite the strong denunciation and demand for their repatriation at home and abroad recently made public that they let those girls "be free and settle in society".

Timed to coincide with this, the puppet authorities and the ultra-right conservative forces are blustering that "there is no ground left for the north to claim that the women employees are in custody."

The Emergency Measure Committee for Rescue of Forcible Abductees of the DPRK in a statement released on Sunday says:

This is another mean burlesque staged by the puppet group to cover up forever the truth behind the group abduction committed by it and divert the social censure for its detention of those employees and calm down the strong voices of the public at home and abroad demanding it let them meet with their families and their repatriation.

The puppet group prevents them from being opened to public and keeps them from contacting media. This proves that its statement is a sheer lie.

The puppet group does not let those women make public appearance to freely express their will. It is not because of their "personal safety" but because it is afraid of its unheard-of group abduction and unethical crimes from being brought to light.

Aware that with neither appeasement nor threat can it shake the determination and will of those girls to go back to the fold of the homeland, the group is seeking to keep them in custody in a solitary place and ruin them.

In the light of the barbarous and cruel nature of the Park group there could be some women who had been mercilessly murdered.

We will never pardon the group abduction and crimes against humanity committed by the Park group but will fight it out till those women are rescued and brought back to the fold of the DPRK. -0-

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






I Can't Stand the Rain! Top German Military Vehicle Scared of Getting Wet

Sputnik News

14:02 20.08.2016

The German infantry fighting vehicle Puma, which is considered to be one of the best-protected armored vehicles in the world, has turned out to be vulnerable to rainwater.

The Puma, the pride of the German armed forces designed to replace the aging Marder IFVs, apparently has a minor but potentially dangerous defect  it's not watertight.

According to Suddeutsche Zeitung, the vehicle's top hatch  namely, the "two-man hatch in the rear troop compartment"  cannot be hermetically sealed, so in case of a heavy rainfall water can literally penetrate the IFV's defenses.

Rheinmetall AG, which handles the manufacturing of Puma together with Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, declared that "under real conditions of use it has been discovered that the roof hatch of the Puma infantry fighting vehicle requires improvement."

Indeed, the company had to develop a new insulation device and started installing it on the defective vehicles begining this spring, claiming that the problem has been isolated and solved. However, it remains unclear exactly how this defect avoided detection during factory trials.

It should be noted that this defect was in fact discovered by the German Defense Ministry back during the second quarter of 2015, and a "singular case" of a non-hermetically sealed Puma's hatch occurred in 2013, the newspaper points out.

However, the ministry didn't bother to mention this defect in its latest report, claiming that it has a "relatively low impact on operational readiness."

"It remains to be seen whether the mechanized infantry soldiers will share this sentiment when autumn and rainy weather come," the newspaper remarks.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






India to Purchase 36 Dassault Rafale Stealth Fighter Jets from France

Sputnik News

03:25 21.08.2016(updated 12:35 21.08.2016)

The fighter jet is considered by some analysts to be the most lethal warplane hovering the skies today due to its elite stealth capabilities making it comparable to a 5th generation combat aircraft.

The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi inches closer to securing a deal for 36 Dassault Rafale elite stealth fighter jets with France in an exchange that is expected to be worth $8.3 billion according to defense industry analysts. The final condition that the two countries must work out is a waiver provision, demanded by India, to avoid paying a deposit of $152 million to secure the contract.

Sources with India's Hindustan Times suggest that a deal has already been struck "as India had put its foot down on doing away with the advance guarantee clause as it was a government-to-government sale" with France trusting that the New Delhi government had more than enough reserves to back the exchange.

The newspaper's sources indicate that India's Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar conveyed the country's position regarding the need to waive the deposit clause via diplomatic channels to France on Thursday. It appears that Paris did not object to the condition and no other issues existed in the deal.

The news comes after the defense minister informed Lok Sabha (the lower chamber of the Indian parliament) that a team was negotiating to buy the French fighter jets manufactured by Dassault Aviation and that the team of negotiators had submitted their final report in favor of the acquisition.

The deal will not become complete, however, until India sends an agreement-in-principle to the finance minister who must first provide clearance on any transfer of state funds. Subsequently, the deal will be sent to the Cabinet Committee on Security, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi where it will await final confirmation before entering into force.

The deal will help the Indian Air Force (IAF) to fill a growing capability gap with the drawdown of its fighter fleet. The IAF has 33 fighter squadrons  consisting of 18 jets, but it requires 45 combat planes to counter threats from China and Pakistan according to the country's military planners.

Initially, India looked to acquire 126 fighter jets, but budgetary constraints mitigated against such an aggressive outflow of money on defense spending forcing authorities to instead pursue the purchase of 36 jets in a one-off purchase from France.

The 1,188MPH Dassault Rafale is considered by some defense analysts to be the most lethal fighter jet in the skies today thanks in large part to its near fifth-generation level stealth capabilities.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iran takes big steps in cruise missile area: Defense minister

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Aug 21, IRNA -- Minister of defense announced here Sunday that his Ministry has taken big steps toward improving capabilities of its marine cruise missiles.

Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan made the announcement at an unveiling ceremony of the first national turbojet engine to be used for aircraft.

President Hassan Rouhani also attended the ceremony that was held on the occasion of the National Defense Industry Day falling on August 21 this year.

The defense minister further said that the range of all missiles in the country have increased two or three times as much as they has been before.

In near future, he added, the country can achieve supersonic marine cruise missiles.

On defense achievements, he also said the Ministry has taken effective steps towards production of submarines and torpedoes.

In addition, the Defense Ministry has designed and produced the rapid vessels in line with the country's needs, he noted.

On the aviation industry, Dehqan stressed that the Defense Ministry today is well capable of supporting Iranian Airlines Fleet's needs on repairs or related problems.

1483**1771

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






President says JCPOA was Iran's moral victory

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Aug 21, IRNA -- President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday nuclear deal dubbed as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), among other things, was also a moral victory for people of Iran.

President Rouhani made the remarks at a ceremony marking the National Defense Industry Day falling on August 21 this year.

Prior to this ceremony, the President visited an exhibition on air capabilities of the Defense Ministry.

At the ceremony, the President appreciated the important role the Defense Ministry played in the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, between Iran and world powers that led to lifting of anti-Iran sanctions on January 16, 2016.

He further congratulated all involved in the area of defense industry on National Defense Industry Day.

Rouhani reiterated that defense industry is important and effective in country's fate.

'We can better use our opportunities being created for our country in the world,' the President stressed while referring to the conditions that have been created for Iran (after the JCPOA) in both world and region .

'JCPOA was a big good job in which many organs in the country including Defense Ministry played their effective roles,' the president noted.

1483**1771

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iran unveils new long-range missile system

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun / 21 August 2016 / 10:43

TEHRAN (ISNA)- Iran unveiled 'Bavar 373' missile system in a ceremony attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday.

Iranian Ministry of Defense unveiled capabilities of the ministry including fighter jets, transport planes, helicopters and drones.

The long-range missile system of Bavar 373 (Belief 373) has been designed jointly by Iranian scientists at Ministry of Defense and Khatamol Anbia Airbase.

End Item

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Rouhani unveils home-made plane turbo-jet engine

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Sun / 21 August 2016 / 11:13

TEHRAN (ISNA)- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani unveiled the first home-made plane turbo-jet engine of the country concurrent with Iranian National Day of Defense Industry on Sunday.

The locally-built turbo-jet engine of the plane named 'Ouj' (Peak) has been built by Iranian defense industry scientists without any foreign aid even in hardware or software section.

Iranian Minister of Defense Hossein Dehghan said that the turbo jet puts Iran among the 8 countries holding the know-how.

The product is capable of flying up to 50.000 feet and is equipped with systems with high capability in different environment and operational situations.

It can be installed on all flying objects with weigh at most 10 tons at the time of taking off.

The engine is involved of 14.000 parts.

End Item

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iran to build supersonic maritime cruise missiles soon: Dehqan

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 1:9PM

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan says the country plans to produce marine cruise missiles with supersonic speed in the near future.

"We have greatly increased the range of our marine cruise missiles and currently possess missiles with a range of 200 kilometers which are anti-ship and anti-surface," Dehqan said in a ceremony in Tehran on Sunday to unveil Iran's first turbojet engine which will be used in aircraft.

He added that the country has succeeded in taking major steps in the development of marine cruise missiles and has doubled or even tripled the range of all its missiles and made efforts to diversify their applications.

"We have succeeded in changing the strategic systems of cruise missiles and increasing the power of their engines and ranges," Dehqan said, adding that the missiles can now hit the targets at a distance of 100 kilometers.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian defense minister stated that the country has taken great strides in producing torpedoes, noting that the first consignment of home-made torpedoes would be delivered to the naval forces in the current Iranian calendar year (ending March 20, 2017) in a bid to boost their power in confrontation with any possible threat.

He added that Iran has produced high-speed vessels proportionate to its needs and put into operation a vessel which is capable of achieving speeds in excess of 60 knots.

Iranian experts are also capable of manufacturing various strategic products in electronics industries, which can be used in air defense bases of the Army and other units of the Iranian Armed Forces, Dehqan said.

On January 29, the Iranian Navy successfully test-fired surface-to-surface cruise missiles, dubbed Nour (Light), with a range of 150 kilometers during large-scale naval exercises in Makran coastal zone, east of the Strait of Hormuz.

The country's naval forces test-fired the missiles on the third day of military maneuvers, code-named Velayat 94, across a large swathe of territorial waters and high seas in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Indian Ocean. Nour cruise missile could be launched both from sea and surface.

Meanwhile, Iran's Aerospace Industries Organization affiliated with the Ministry of Defense on August 25, 2015 launched the production line of an air-launched cruise missile, dubbed Nasr (Victory), in a bid to upgrade the country's deterrence. Iran's Defense Ministry delivered the first batch of the cruise missile to the country's Air Force on February 9.

In recent years, Iran has made major breakthroughs in its defense sector and attained self-sufficiency in producing important military equipment and systems.

Iran has also conducted other major military drills to enhance the defense capabilities of its armed forces and to test modern military tactics and state-of-the-art army equipment.

The Islamic Republic maintains that its military might poses no threat to other countries, stating that its defense doctrine is merely based on deterrence.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Rouhani visits expo displaying Iran air defense achievements

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 8:28AM

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has paid a visit to a Defense Ministry exhibition showcasing the latest achievements in the air defense industry, including the domestically-built Bavar-373 air defense system.

On the occasion of National Defense Industry Day, Rouhani, accompanied by Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan, visited the exhibition at the Iran Aviation Industries Organization (IAIO) on Sunday.

During the event, the organization's latest achievements in air defense technology, including fighter and transport aircraft, helicopters as well as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were put on display.

The president was also briefed on the progress in the designing and manufacturing of the first national Turbojet engine.

The Iranian chief executive further visited different sectors involved in the production of the long-range Bavar-373 air defense system, which has been designed and constructed by Defense Ministry scientists and experts with the cooperation of the Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base as well as scientific and investigative centers.

Bavar-373, which was successfully test-fired in August 2014, is similar to the Russian S-300. The air defense system is capable of hitting targets at a high altitude.

In recent years, Iran has made major breakthroughs in its defense sector and attained self-sufficiency in producing important military equipment and systems.

Iran has also conducted other major military drills to enhance the defense capabilities of its armed forces and to test modern military tactics and state-of-the-art army equipment.

The Islamic Republic maintains that its military might poses no threat to other countries, stating that its defense doctrine is merely based on deterrence.

Defense Ministry helped closure of 'PMD' case

Delivering a speech at the event, Rouhani hailed the Defense Ministry for making "highly effective" and "precious" efforts in the lead-up to last year's nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries , known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

For more than a decade, certain parties were accusing Iran of covertly seeking to build weapons of mass destruction, but the enemies' allegations "were proven unfair and baseless," Rouhani stated.

He said the Defense Ministry greatly contributed to the settlement of the so-called Possible Military Dimensions (PMD) of Iran's nuclear program at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Last December, the IAEA Board of Governors overwhelmingly adopted a resolution, bringing an end to a 12-year investigation into what it called past and present outstanding issues regarding Iran's nuclear program.

Rouhani further described the closure of the so-called PMD case as "a legal, technical and moral victory for Iran, in which the Defense Ministry employed all its technical, legal and political capabilities."

"We proved that our enemies are lying and we are telling the truth," the Iranian president noted.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Home-Grown: Iran Unveils Its Own Long-Range Bavar-373 Air Defense System

Sputnik News

13:05 21.08.2016(updated 14:00 21.08.2016)

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday unveiled the country's long-awaited Bavar-373 air defense missile system with characteristics similar to Russia's S-300, according to the local media reports.

On the National Defense Industry Day, which is celebrated in Iran on August 21, Rouhani, accompanied by Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan, visited the exhibition at the Iran Aviation Industries Organization (IAIO) at the Defense Ministry, which showcased the latest achievements in the air defense industry, including the domestically-built Bavar-373 air defense system.

The Iranian president inaugurated the Bavar-373 (meaning 'Belief'), which was commissioned in February 2010 amid the suspension of a deal with Russia on deliveries of five S-300 systems over the adoption of UN Security Council sanctions on Iran.

The long-range mobile Bavar-373 air defense system has been designed and constructed by Defense Ministry scientists and experts in cooperation with the country's Khatam al-Anbia Air Defense Base and other scientific and investigative centers.

The home-grown system was successfully test-fired in August 2014. It is similar to the Russian S-300 and is capable of hitting targets at a high altitude.

The new system uses a phased array radar like Russian 96L6 radar for tracking aerodynamic targets and ballistic missiles in medium to long ranges, mounted on the ZAFAR heavy truck.

In May, Dehghan announced that Iran had completed development of the domestically-produced Bavar-373 air defense system, with mass production expected to be launched later in 2016.

Hassan Rouhani also observed the latest achievements and developments in air defense technology, including fighter and transport aircraft, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The president was also briefed on the progress in the designing and manufacturing of the first national Turbojet engine.

On Saturday, Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said the country is not going to purchase the Russian-made S-400 air defense missile system, though Moscow has offered to sell it to Tehran.

During his press conference in Tehran, the defense minister confirmed that Russia has offered Iran "S-400 and some other systems," but Tehran currently has no plans to order them.

He also commented on the S-300 system, which Moscow had undertaken to sell to Tehran under a 2007 contract.

Dehqan said Iran has voluntarily terminated a lawsuit against Russia after the delivery of the missile system to Iran began.

However, he added, Iran reserves the right to legally pursue the case if the full implementation of the deal runs into any problems.

Iran has received the bulk of the S-300 missile system, the minister noted, adding that the remaining parts are expected to be delivered within a month.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iraqi airstrike kills 19 senior Daesh commanders east of Mosul

Iran Press TV

Sun Aug 21, 2016 7:17AM

More than a dozen commanders of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group have been killed when Iraqi fighter jets carried out a precision strike in Iraq's troubled northern province of Nineveh.

The Iraqi Joint Operations Command announced in a statement on Saturday that the military aircraft struck a militant gathering in al-Sahel al-Aysar region, which lies east of the militant-held city of Mosul, leaving 19 senior Daesh figures dead, Arabic-language al-Baghdadia television reported.

The statement added that self-proclaimed Daesh governor Ayad Hamed Mohal al-Jumail, better known by the nom de guerre Abu Yahya, was among those killed in the aerial attack.

Hundreds of Iraqi families continue to flee southern Mosul as army soldiers and fighters from Popular Mobilization Units are taking up positions around the city.

Hisham al-Hashimi, a consultant to the Baghdad government on the anti-Daesh campaign, said the offensive for the liberation of Mosul was slated for late September.

Defense Minister Khalid al-Obeidi recently said high-ranking Daesh militant commanders and their families had sold their belongings and fled Mosul as Iraqi forces were closing in on the city.

Mosul fell into the hands of the Takfiri terrorists in June 2014, when they began a large-scale offensive in Iraq.

On Friday, Iraqi security forces managed to wrest control over Khalidiya Island river peninsula, located nearly 90 kilometers west of the capital, Baghdad, in the western province of Anbar.

The achievement came only a few hours after Iraqi government soldiers retook al-Kartan region from Daesh extremists, and purged the terrorists from Albu Kan'an district in the same province.

The northern and western parts of Iraq have been plagued by gruesome violence ever since Daesh terrorists mounted an offensive in June 2014.

The Iraqi army and fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units have been engaged in joint operations to retake militant-held regions.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Japan Bolsters the Lethality of its F-15 Fighter Jets Amid Tensions With China

Sputnik News

01:49 22.08.2016

As Japan prepares to officially announce its record-high $51.7 billion military budget proposal, it seeks to double the payload of its 200 F-15 jet fighters in an attempt to cool down Chinese military presence near southern Japanese islands.

Japanese military budget for fiscal year 2017, which will end in March 2018, includes a number of costly measures aimed to significantly bolster Japanese military amid rising tensions in South China Sea in particular and in the region in general.

Among other things, Japan seeks to boost weapon capacity of their 200 US-made F-15 jet fighters, by doubling the amount of air-to-air missiles they carry, from 8 to 16 per plane.

The Japanese Air Self Defense Force (ASDF) is also going to extend the planes' lifespan by starting a massive repair program for damaged planes.

The proposed military program, which will be officially introduced later this month, reportedly includes the purchase of an undisclosed number of controversial Lockheed Martin F-35 jet fighters and development of unmanned drone fighter jet, which is set to be put in operation by year 2037.

The massive increase in military appropriations out of Tokyo may be warranted in response to Beijing's growing animosity towards its longstanding regional rival including recent air contact between Chinese and Japanese warplanes over the East China Sea.

The two countries are embroiled in a territorial dispute regarding the Senkaku (known by China as Diaoyu) Islands with both China and Japan holding overlapping claims. The West recognizes Japan's control of the Senkaku Islands, a reality that may be increasingly unfavorable to China in light of the international pressure mounted on Beijing over the separate territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

Japan has inflamed historical tensions by beckoning China to give up its claim to the South China Sea, which includes islands and a valuable swath of water through which 40% of the world's shipborne trade transits each day, despite the fact that Tokyo itself is not a party to that dispute. China has repeatedly warned of war against Japan if it should undertake joint naval operations with the US in the contested area.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Seoul Says North Korea May Attempt Assassinations After Top Diplomat Defects

Sputnik News

23:35 21.08.2016

North Korea may attempt to perform assassinations and abductions, following the defection of Pyongyang's high ranking diplomat, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry official.

The defection of Thae Yong-ho, the No. 2 man at the North Korean Embassy in London, is posing a threat to South Korean citizens, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry.

"There is a considerable chance that the North confronted with difficulties may implement some sort of provocation to help rally its people and consolidate the regime's hold on power," the official warning say.

According to unnamed Ministry official, possible provocations may include assassination or abduction attempts. He recalled an attempt to assassinate Hwang Jang-Yop, the North's chief ideologue and former tutor to previous leader Kim Jong-Il, who defected to the South in 1997.

"Considering (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-Un's character, it is very dangerous," the official told reporters.

Earlier, Kim Jong-Un had dispatched squads to the Chinese border "to harm South Koreans" following the defection in April of a group of North Korean overseas restaurant workers, the official told reporters.

That was the largest group defection from North Korea in history. North Korean overseas workers are reportedly "hand-picked" from families that are considered "loyal", so the defection of 12 waitresses and their manager has put Pyongyang in an uncomfortable position. North Korea claims the workers were abducted and seeks to "rescue" them and bring them back.

Their explanations of Thae Yong-ho's defection are also different. According to South Korea, he acted out of disgust for the Pyongyang regime, admiration for South Korea's free and democratic system and concerns for his family's future. North Korean officials, however, insist that Hwang Jang-Yop sought to avoid criminal punishment in his home country for sexual abuse of minors and embezzlement of state funds.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Seoul Believes N Korea May Carry Out Provocation After Defection of Diplomat

Sputnik News

14:19 21.08.2016

South Korean government urges all citizens to be on guard for possible provocations after a high-ranking North Korean diplomat defected to the South, according to local media.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Pyongyang may carry out provocations after a high-ranking North Korean diplomat defected to the South, media reported on Sunday.

Earlier this week, Seoul announced that Thae Yong Ho, a London-based North Korean diplomat, and his family defected to the South.

"There is a considerable chance that the North confronted with difficulties may implement some sort of provocation to help rally its people and consolidate the regime's hold on power The defection of Thae Yong-ho, the No. 2 man at the North Korean Embassy in London may be causing tremors in the North as well as hurting the country's image abroad," South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported citing an unnamed official at Seoul's unification ministry.

The source added that such provocations may be aimed at diverting attention from the North's other problems as it is dealing with sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

"The government urges all citizens to be on guard for possible provocations and to cooperate with the government if the need arises," the official said.

On Saturday, North Korea state media said that Thae Yong Ho committed a series of crimes and decided to avoid retribution by fleeing to Seoul.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Kremlin Presses Turkey for Access to NATO's Incirlik Air Base, Home to US Nukes

Sputnik News

21:40 20.08.2016(updated 04:32 21.08.2016)

Russian officials have reached out to Ankara to request access to the American-built base as a convenient launch pad for airstrikes in the Syrian theater, but it remains to be seen whether such cooperation will roil NATO's feathers.

Russia has called on Turkey to provide access to NATO's Incirlik Air Base, the critical launch pad for US and coalition airstrikes in Syria, in a bid to expand the country's influence in the Middle East and to further the goal of combatting radical jihadist groups, primarily Daesh and al-Nusra, that threaten peace and stability in Syria.

The base is home to at least 50 US B-61 nuclear warheads each carrying the potential destructive capacity of 100 times the Hiroshima bomb, a reality that led to heightened concern among American officials during, and in the wake of, the failed coup attempt of the Erdogan regime.

Sitting only 65 miles from the Syrian border, defense analysts, including the former White House arms control official under Bill Clinton, have cautioned that these weapons are not safe from the Daesh terrorist organization and other hostile elements who could conceivably breach the perimeter if Americans are left unaided by Turkish police forces.

That fear likely grew more elevated as Turkey has drifted towards Russia in the wake of the coup with senior officials, including the Turkish President himself, insinuating if not outright claiming that the United States played a hand in the failed attempt to overthrow the government and with a brewing diplomatic row developing between Washington and Ankara over the State Department's refusal to clear the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, who has been alleged to have been the mastermind of the failed coup.

The brewing situation between the United States and Russia have opened the door for the reestablishment of relations between Moscow and Ankara including increased defense and strategic cooperation in Syria.

"It just remains to come to an agreement with Erdogan that we get the NATO base Incirlik as [our] primary airbase," Senator Igor Morozov, a member of the upper house's committee on international affairs said reports the British newspaper The Times. He explained that the development would enable the Russian air force to engage in "constant bombing" of Daesh and other jihadist groups to bring the conflict to a resolution faster.

"You'll see, the next base will be Incirlik," he told Izvestia after the Kremlin revealed this week that its bombers had started flying out of Iran to launch attack on Syria. "This will be one more victory for Putin."

Another Senator, Viktor Ozerov, told RIA Novosti, "It's not certain that Russia needs Incirlik, but such a decision would be seen as a real willingness on Turkey's part to cooperate with Russia in the war against terrorism in Syria."

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Russian Army to Receive Pantsir-SA Systems Designed for Arctic in 2016

Sputnik News

21:20 20.08.2016

Lt. Gen. Viktor Gumennyy, the Russia's Aerospace Forces' deputy commander-in-chief said that before the end of this year, first samples of a new Pantsir-SA self-propelled anti-aircraft complex, designed for combat in the Arctic conditions, will become operational in the Aerospace Forces and the Northern Fleet.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Russian army will receive the first samples of advanced Pantsir-SA air defense systems designed for the Arctic region by the end of 2016, the Aerospace Forces' deputy commander-in-chief said Saturday.

"Before the end of this year, first samples of a new Pantsir-SA self-propelled anti-aircraft complex, designed for combat in the Arctic conditions, will become operational in the Aerospace Forces and the Northern Fleet," Lt. Gen. Viktor Gumennyy told Russia's Life broadcaster.

He added that Russia's army was also receiving Pantsir-S and Pantsir-S2 systems.

Russia is currently implementing a large-scale rearmament program, announced in 2010, to modernize 70 percent of its military hardware by 2020. The total modernization program is estimated to cost about 20 trillion rubles (some $310 billion at current exchange rates).

In December 2014, Russia unveiled a revised military doctrine that prioritizes the protection of national interests in the Arctic. Russia has improved its presence in the Arctic, believed to hold huge oil and natural gas deposits, establishing a new Arctic command and is expanding its icebreaker fleet.

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia does not plan to militarize the Arctic, but will take the necessary steps to ensure its defense capabilities in the region.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Moscow's No-Fly Zones: Russia to Get New Long-Range Missile Interceptor

Sputnik News

17:54 21.08.2016(updated 18:09 21.08.2016)

An advanced long-range missile interceptor is due to be put into service with the Russian Aerospace Forces in the near future, according to the Forces' Deputy Commander-in-Chief Viktor Gumenny.

In an interview with the news website Life.ru, Russian Aerospace Forces Deputy Commander-in-Chief Viktor Gumenny did not rule out that a new long-range missile interceptor would enter service with the Forces in the immediate future.

He said that right now, more efforts are being made to create such a missile.

"The creation of the long-range missile interceptor will help the Aerospace Forces to duly fulfil any task set by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces," Gumenny said.

He added that also adding to the Aerospace Forces' defense capability will be a range of sophisticated anti-aircraft systems, including the Pantsyr-SM, Pantsyr-SA, Pantsyr-S and Pantsyr-S2 artillery units.

The Russian newspaper Vzglyad recalled that on July 27, a report by the scientific development and production center Almaz made it known that the Defense Ministry had decided to develop two new anti-aircraft missile systems (AAMS)  medium and long-range, on the basis of the S-400 Triumf missile system.

On April 15, the chief of air defense, Russian Aerospace Forces Deputy Commander-in-Chief Viktor Gumenny said that Russian troops expect the appearance of the first sets of S-500 anti-aircraft missile systems (AAMS) in the near future, according to Vzglyad.

The S-500 Prometey, also known as 55R6M Triumfator-M, is a cutting-edge anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missile system currently under development in Russia. It is designed to replace the S-300 and the S-400 systems.

Developed by Almaz Antey, the S-500 is said to have a range of 600 kilometers (more than 370 miles). The system can simultaneously intercept up to ten ballistic and hypersonic missiles moving at a speed of 7 kilometers per second.

The Prometey is capable of engaging targets at an altitude of up to 200 kilometers (more than 120 miles).

The system is capable of intercepting aircraft and UAVs, as well as destroying low-earth-orbit satellites, space destruction devices and orbital weaponry.

The S-500 will be a major upgrade to the state-of-the-art S-400 unit that is already in service. It "will form the upper tier of Russia's layered integrated air defense system," according to defense expert Dave Majumdar, writing for the US magazine National Interest.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Simple Yet Reliable: New Russian Armored Vehicles to Receive Slat Armor

Sputnik News

12:34 21.08.2016(updated 12:37 21.08.2016)

All advanced Russian armored vehicles will be protected from modern tandem weapons with the help of slat armor, according to the newspaper Izvestia.

The newspaper Izvestia quoted a Russian Defense Ministry source as saying that all sophisticated Russian wheeled and tracked armored vehicles will be equipped with slat armor.

Also known as bar armor, cage armor and standoff armor, slat armor is specifically designed to protect armored vehicles against anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade attacks.

"The decision on the development and subsequent use of slat armor has already been made", the source said, adding that the Russian Defense Ministry is currently considering what type of slat armor is needed for certain new generation armored vehicles being produced for the Russian Armed Forces.

In addition to the T-14 Armata tank, a whole array of state-of-the-art Russian armored vehicles is expected to be equipped with slat armor.

These include the Kurganets-25 infantry fighting vehicle, the Bumerang armored personnel carrier, the Platforma-M multi-purpose robotic system, the Dragun infantry combat vehicle, the Taifun wheeled armored vehicle, the Ural-VV wheeled armored vehicle and the Tornado multiple launch rocket system.

Slat armor takes the form of a rigid slatted metal grid fitted around key sections of the vehicle, such as its engine and transmission.

The grid disrupts the shaped charge of the warhead by either crushing it, preventing optimal detonation from occurring, or by damaging the fusing mechanism, preventing detonation outright.

In Russia, slat armor has been developed by the Steel Scientific Research Institute, Izvestia said, referring to the company's representative Yevgeny Chistyakov.

"Slat armor's efficiency is lower than that of dynamic protection, but slat armor is much easier [to produce] and cheaper. These metal grids help protect military equipment from cumulative grenades, something that especially matters during an urban combat when [a vehicle can be fired upon] from any direction," Chistyakov told Izvestia.

It is worth noting that although slat armor is effective against incoming missiles, it doesn't offer complete protection, given that about 50 percent of missile impacts remain unimpeded by the slat design.

This is why complex solutions should be taken when it comes to protecting armored vehicles, Viktor Murakhovsk, editor of the Russian magazine Arsenal Otechestva said in an interview with Izvestia.

He explained that when in action, the crewmembers of an armored vehicle typically die from the impact of fragments rather than that of a cumulative jet.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Taiwan to hold annual live-fire exercise

ROC Central News Agency

2016/08/21 18:20:55

Taipei, Aug. 21 (CNA) The Ministry of National Defense announced Sunday the drafting of reservists ahead of the start of Taiwan's annual live-fire exercise the following day.

An unspecified number of reservists, who recently received draft orders, have been told to report for duty at the time and locations listed on their orders to take part in the Han Kuang No. 32 exercise, the ministry said.

From Monday to Friday, Taiwan's military will conduct drills around the country designed to test its combat ability in scenarios simulating Chinese attacks to take over territory under the Republic of China's control, according to the ministry.

This year's Han Kuang drills will for the first time see the drafting of information technology specialists in the military reserves for exercises planned for possible cyber attacks, the ministry said.

The major live-fire exercises, meanwhile, are scheduled for the Air Force in Penghu County Aug. 23, for the Navy on Aug. 23 and Aug. 25, for the defense force in Kinmen that will be tested for its anti-landing abilities Aug. 25, and joint drills of the Army, Navy and Air Force in Pingtung County, also Aug. 25, according to the ministry.

Over 1,100 reservists reported for duty in Pingtung Aug. 19 to prepare for the Han Kuang exercises, while a Liberty Times report published Sunday estimated that nearly 10,000 reservists have been drafted for the five-day drills.

It has been reported that President Tsai Ing-wen () is scheduled to inspect the drills in Pingtung Aug. 25 as commander-in-chief for the first time since she took office May 20, but this has not been officially confirmed.

The Taiwan Area National Freeway Bureau recently announced closures of the Hsuehshan Tunnel on National Freeway No. 5 connecting Taipei and Yilan from 12 a.m.-6 a.m. Aug. 23-24 for routine exercises planned in response to disasters and road accidents.

The tunnel closure scheduled for Aug. 24, according to local media reports, is designed to test the defense of Taipei against enemy forces seeking to capture the seat of the government from Yilan.

(By Claudia Liu and Kay Liu)

ENDITEM/J

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Hsuehshan Tunnel to be closed for military exercises

ROC Central News Agency

2016/08/22 18:12:13

Taipei, Aug. 22 (CNA) The Hsuehshan Tunnel on the No. 5 National Freeway will be closed from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday for Taiwan's annual Han Kuang military exercises, according to the National Freeway Bureau.

The Shiding to Toucheng section of the highway, including the Hsuehshan Tunnel, will be closed to traffic during the six-hour stretches for military exercises designed to help prepare for natural disasters and road accidents, the bureau said.

The national freeway bureau suggested that motorists who had planned to use the No. 5 National Freeway between Shiding and Toucheng during the affected time frames opt for the Provincial Highway No. 9 instead.

The bureau also reminded motorists to pay attention to changeable road signs and traffic warning signs for the freeway section during the drills.

Kamalan Bus Inc. ,which operates bus services between the greater Taipei area and Yilan County, announced Monday that it will partially suspend service on the route after 11 p.m. Monday and cancel all service from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday.

It said it will refund or exchange bus tickets purchased for travel during the periods when service has been suspended.

The military's annual Han Kuang series of exercises kicked off on Monday, starting with small-scale drills aimed at putting the defensive capabilities of Taiwan's armed forces to the test.

The five-day exercises, which simulate attacks by China, will be staged on Taiwan proper and on its outlying islands until Friday, according to the Ministry of National Defense.

This year, the ministry has arranged for an additional military drill simulating a blocked tunnel scenario in the 12.9-kilometer-long Hsuehshan Tunnel on Wednesday, and a rehearsal for the drill will be staged Tuesday.

By simulating various Chinese attack scenarios, the drills "are aimed at testing the military's combat capabilities and testing the effectiveness of military mobilization, in an effort to bolster the country's overall combat capabilities," the ministry said.

The exercises -- Taiwan's most important annual war games involving all branches of the military -- will feature a set of live-fire drills and have the Army, Navy and Air Force test their joint response to simulated threats from China, the ministry said.

The major live-fire exercises will involve the Air Force in Penghu County on Aug. 23, the Navy on Aug. 23 and Aug. 25, and joint drills of the Army, Navy and Air Force in Pingtung County, also on Aug. 25, according to the ministry.

In addition, anti-landing drills will be staged on the offshore island of Kinmen and southeastern Pingtung County on Aug. 25, the ministry said.

President Tsai Ing-wen () will preside over the exercises in Pingtung for the first time in her capacity as commander-in-chief, after being sworn in as president on May 20, the ministry said.

The exercises will also focus on electronic warfare and cyber attacks to keep up with the global trend of advancing development of cyber warfare capabilities.

This year's drills will draft information technology specialists in the military reserves for the first time to take part in exercises planned to respond to possible cyber attacks, the ministry said.

The National Airborne Service Corps, meanwhile, will join the live-fire drills for the first time this year to test cross-ministry cooperation in the event of an enemy invasion, according to the ministry.

Also, a number of the nation's newly acquired advanced weapons systems, including the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter and the AS-365 helicopter, will be used in the exercises, it said.

(By Chen Wei-ting, Claudia Liu and Evelyn Kao)

Enditem/ls

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Bombing kills 50 in wedding in southeastern Turkey

Iran Press TV

Sat Aug 20, 2016 9:23PM

The death toll from a bomb blast that targeted a wedding ceremony in Turkey's southeastern Gaziantep Province has risen to 50.

According to Gaziantep Governor Ali Yerlikaya, the "terror attack" took place in the Sahinbey district's Akdere neighborhood late on Saturday.

Officials had earlier put the number of those killed at 30, with 94 others injured.

A parliamentary deputy from the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) has said the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group is responsible for the attack.

"We wish God's mercy for those who have lost their lives in this cruel attack, and for the injured, a quick recovery," said a statement released by provincial governor's office, confirming the incident's death toll.

"We strongly condemn this cruel terror attack and those carrying it out," it added.

After the blast, the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) announced that some of its members were present at the wedding where a large number of women and children were also present.

Daesh 'likely' behind fatal blast

In a statement issued hours after the massacre, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Takfiri Daesh terror group is the "likely perpetrator" of the bomb attack.

Such terror attacks, Erdogan added, are aimed at sowing division between different groups in Turkey and spreading "incitement along ethnic and religious lines."

The Turkish leader drew parallels between Daesh and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as well as the movement of the US-based opposition cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara blames for the July 15 abortive coup.

"Our country and our nation have again only one message to those who attack us -- you will not succeed!" he said.

Moreover, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said, "It is barbaric to attack a wedding The aim of terror is to scare the people but we will not allow this."

Turkey has suffered a series attacks by Daesh and Kurdish terrorists over the past year, the deadliest of which being a gun and bomb attack on Istanbul's Ataturk international airport, which claimed the lives of over 40 people and injured over 20 more.

The bombing incidents increased especially after last July when the country launched a military campaign against militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the southeastern border areas. The Turkish military has also been conducting offensives against the positions of the group in northern Iraq.

On Thursday, a bomb attack -- claimed by the PKK -- and clashes with the militants killed at least six members of Turkish security forces in the eastern parts of the country.

The attack occurred hours after six people were killed and more than 250 people injured in two separate bomb blasts that hit police stations in the city of Elazig in Eastern Anatolia and in a town in the province of Van.

According to the latest toll provided by the state-run Anadolu news agency in July, more than 600 Turkish security forces and over 7,000 PKK militants have been killed since the collapse of their truce agreement in 2013. Ankara says all of those killed in its operations were PKK members. Rights campaigners and Turkey's pro-Kurdish political parties challenge the figure, saying many civilians have been killed.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Turkish Prime Minister Admits Possibility of Use of Incirlik Base by Russia

Sputnik News

22:19 20.08.2016

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Saturday that Russia could possibly use country's southern Incirlik Air Base if it becomes necessary.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  At the same time Yildirim added that there were no need in Moscow's use of the base, because Russia possessed facilities located in Syria that was not far from Incirlik.

"This information is not correct, but if necessary the Incirlik base could be used," Yildirim told reporters, answering a question about Moscow's alleged request for use of the base, as quoted by the Turkish Anadolu news agency.

Russia has been conducting an aerial campaign against terrorists in Syria since September 30, 2015 at President Bashar Assad's request. The majority of operations is conducted from Russian air base Hmeimim in Syria, while country's Aerospace Forces are also conducting sorties from Russia and from Iran's Hamadan base.

Incirlik military base is used by the United States and shelters combat planes of the US-led coalition launching airstrikes in Syria and Iraq against the Daesh group outlawed in many countries, including Russia.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Turkish Intelligence Urges Germany to Assist in Tracking Gulen Supporters

Sputnik News

11:47 20.08.2016(updated 12:54 20.08.2016)

Turkey's National Intelligence Organization called on the German Federal Intelligence Service to assist in hunting for supporters of US-based dissident cleric Fethullah Gulen accused by Ankara of masterminding the failed coup attempt, local media reported Saturday citing sensitive documents.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Turkish intelligence urged Berlin to detain and bring back to Turkey several Gulen's supporters who have fled to Germany, the Spiegel newspaper said.

According to the media outlet, Turkey has sent 40 search and three extradition requests to Germany since the July 15 coup attempt.

German regional authorities have not yet acted on Turkey's request to keep watch on supporters of the Islamic preacher in 11 German states, including North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Saxony, the German newspaper added.

On July 15, a military coup attempt took place in Turkey, which was suppressed the following day. Over 240 civilians were killed during the coup attempt and at least 2,000 were injured. Over 13,000 people have been detained during the crackdown launched by Ankara after the coup attempt.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Turkey Recalled About 300 Diplomats After Thwarted Coup

Sputnik News

22:31 21.08.2016

Turkish authorities have recalled around 300 diplomats from abroad diplomatic missions, following the July coup attempt, local media reported Sunday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On July 15, an attempted coup took place in Turkey and was suppressed the following day. More than 240 people were killed in the incident and an estimated 2,000 were wounded. Ankara said that cleric Fethullah Gulen who, Ankara believes, is seeking to overthrow the current government was allegedly linked to the coup attempt.

According to Anadolu news agency, Ankara started to implement measures aimed at suspension of people, who supported the coup from their offices in the foreign service.

The media outlet added that the diplomats tied with Gulen would be fired, while the rest would be able to return to their duties.

Thousands of military officers, high-ranking civil servants, judges and teachers suspected of being Gulen supporters have been detained or sacked in Turkey after the failed coup attempt.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Turkey to Expand Military Role in Syria, Says Assad May Be Part of Transition

Sputnik News

02:49 21.08.2016

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced on Saturday that Turkey is going to take more active role on Syria in next six months. He also announced Turkey's position that President Bashar Al-Assad can be part of transition in Syria.

Apparently, the Kurds did manage to bring Syria and Turkey closer together. While Turkey's position on Syria for years has been based on the aim of immediate removal of Assad from office, the recent developments which include the failed coup attempt and strengthening of Syrian Kurds, may have led Ankara alter its calculation.

According to Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, Turkey thinks Bashar Assad can be a "part of the transition", but has no place in Syrian future in the long term.

"Could Syria carry Assad in the long-term? Certainly not," Yildirim said. "The United States knows and Russia knows that Assad does not appear to be someone who can bring (the people) together."

But Assad should not go away, according to the new Turkish policy, anytime before both Daesh terrorists and Kurdish rebels are defeated.

"There may be talks (with Assad) for the transition. A transition may be facilitated. But we believe that there should be no (Kurdish rebels), Daesh or Assad in Syria's future," Yildirim said.

The Kurdish forces, backed by the US, seek to establish their own autonomy which will secede from Turkey, Syria and Iran. Until recently, Damascus refrained from attacking their own Kurds, as they successfully defeated the Daesh terrorist group which at some point captured the majority of Syrian territory.

But Kurdish advances also created a potential threat of separatism in Syria, which is likely to spread into Turkish territory.

"Turkey we will be more active in the Syria issue in the coming six months as a regional player. This means to not allow Syria to be divided on any ethnic base, for Turkey this is crucial," Yildirim said.

Fighting erupted between the Kurdish Asayesh forces and the Syrian military this week over control of the northern city of Hasakeh, with Syrian warplanes raiding Kurdish positions inside the city, for the first time in the five-year-long Syrian war. The US-led coalition has launched jet fighters twice to scramble Syrian warplanes in order to protect coalition troops. The Kurds have no official protection guarantees from the US. But the coalition forces are known to use three airstrips in the Kurdish region of Syria.

Earlier this week, Yildirim unveiled a roadmap to resolve the Syrian crisis that comprised three key components, which include integrity of Syrian borders, changes to Syrian political structure (which means removal of Assad from office) and the return of 3 some millions of Syrian immigrants from Turkey.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Turkey's Erdogan Links Child Suicide Bomber to Wedding Massacre

By Dorian Jones August 21, 2016

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says a child suicide bomber carried out Saturday's attack on a wedding party in southeast Turkey, killing at least 51 people and wounding scores of others, many of them critically.

Erdogan, speaking Sunday, said initial evidence shows the bomber was between 12 and 14 years old. He said Islamic State extremists appear to have executed the attack in the city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border.

In an earlier written statement, Erdogan said there is "no difference" between Islamic State, the militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK, and followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he blames for a coup attempt last month.

"Our country and our nation have again only one message to those who attack us - you will not succeed!" he said.

The White House condemned the Gaziantep attack, saying the "perpetrators of this barbaric act cynically and cowardly targeted a wedding." The statement Sunday added that Vice President Joe Biden will visit Ankara Wednesday to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to work together with Turkey against "scourge of terrorism."

Blast scene sparks outrage, sorrow

All through Saturday night, ambulances rushed the wounded to hospitals across Gaziantep, a major city with a large Kurdish population.

Witnesses said the blast -- the deadliest terror attack on Turkish soil this year -- occurred in a packed street of people dancing and celebrating a marriage.

Speaking Sunday while surveying the wreckage, local resident Ibrahim Ozdemir said people are in shock.

"Our friends and neighbors were there. We are so sad and in pain. The attack is an atrocity." He said, "We want to end these massacres. We are in pain, especially the women and children."

The Turkish city is located just north of the Syrian border and about 90 kilometers from the Syrian city of Manbij. A U.S. backed coalition of Syrian fighters and Kurds earlier this month drove IS fighters from that city after a two-month siege, pushing them into the countryside northward toward the Turkish border.

Bombing hits hours after Kurdish militants hint at peace deal with Ankara

Shortly after Saturday's bombing, the pro-Kurdish political party HDP condemned the attack, while noting it came just hours after a Kurdish militant organization battling the Ankara government for autonomy announced new plans to try to end the decades-long conflict.

The so-called Group of Communities in Kurdistan, the KCK, which includes the outlawed PKK, said it is ready to resume peace talks with Ankara, but said the government should take the first step. A KCK statement also said those overtures are supported by "friendly" countries and non-government organizations both inside and outside Turkey.

The statement also said the Gaziantep attack "targets those determined and consistent in peace...and those struggling for democracy, equality and freedom."

The PKK launched an armed rebellion in 1984, seeking an autonomous homeland in a vast area of the southeast bordered by Syria, Iraq and Iran. Nearly 50,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

Last year, the armed wing of the PKK scrapped a three-year cease-fire with Ankara, after Turkish warplanes struck the group's military training bases in northern Iraq while PKK fighters battled Islamic State militants. Ankara also bombed several other PKK bases.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Clashes with PKK kill Turkey army soldier, injure three policemen

Iran Press TV

Mon Aug 22, 2016 1:32PM

One Turkish soldier has been killed and three police officers injured in clashes with militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in southeastern Turkey.

According to Turkish security sources, the casualties occurred early on Monday when clashes erupted between Turkey's army and the PKK militants near security outposts in the town of Nazimiye in Tunceli province, 500 kilometers (310 miles) northeast of the province of Gaziantep.

A female PKK militant was also killed during the skirmishes.

Sources further noted that the incident prompted Turkish authorities to impose a round-the-clock curfew on Nazimiye and order security forces, backed by attack helicopters, to seal the area and send in reinforcements.

The development comes at a time when Turkey is still reeling from the Saturday deadly bomb blast that targeted a wedding ceremony, killing more than 50 people in the city of Gaziantep.

That attack was described as the deadliest in a series of bombings in Turkey this year blamed on the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group and the outlawed PKK militant group that has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region in the country's southeast since 1984.

Turkey-PKK clashes

Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale anti-PKK campaign in its southern border region over the past few months. The Turkish military has also been pounding the group's positions in northern Iraq as well in breach of the Arab country's sovereignty.

Turkey's operations began in the wake of a deadly July 2015 bombing in Suruc, which the Turkish government blamed on the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

After the bombing, the PKK militants, who accuse Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, prompting Turkey's military operations.

A shaky ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 was declared null and void by the militants following the Turkish strikes against the group.

More than 600 Turkish security forces and over 7,000 PKK militants have been killed since the collapse of the truce, according to the latest toll provided by the state-run Anadolu news agency in July.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Turkish FM: Border With Syria Must be 'Cleansed' of Islamic State

By Dorian Jones August 22, 2016

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Monday the country's border region with Syria must be "completely cleansed" of the Islamic State militant group.

His comments followed a suicide bombing late Saturday at a wedding in southeastern Turkey that killed at least 51 people.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed Islamic State for the attack in the city of Gaziantep, saying evidence pointed to the bomber being a child between the ages of 12 and 14 years old.

In an earlier written statement, Erdogan said there is "no difference" between Islamic State, the militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK, and followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he blames for a coup attempt last month.

"Our country and our nation have again only one message to those who attack us - you will not succeed!" he said.

The White House condemned the Gaziantep attack, saying the "perpetrators of this barbaric act cynically and cowardly targeted a wedding." The statement Sunday added that Vice President Joe Biden will visit Ankara Wednesday to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to work together with Turkey against "scourge of terrorism."

Blast scene sparks outrage, sorrow

All through Saturday night, ambulances rushed the wounded to hospitals across Gaziantep, a major city with a large Kurdish population.

Witnesses said the blast  the deadliest terror attack on Turkish soil this year  occurred in a packed street of people dancing and celebrating a marriage.

Speaking Sunday while surveying the wreckage, local resident Ibrahim Ozdemir said people are in shock.

"Our friends and neighbors were there. We are so sad and in pain. The attack is an atrocity." He said, "We want to end these massacres. We are in pain, especially the women and children."

The Turkish city is located just north of the Syrian border and about 90 kilometers from the Syrian city of Manbij.

A U.S. backed coalition of Syrian fighters and Kurds earlier this month drove IS fighters from that city after a two-month siege, pushing them into the countryside northward toward the Turkish border.

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.
And there I stood in front of the keychain display at the sea turtle museum on some island I cant remember the name of, someplace in Florida, once more searching in vain for a keychain with the name of Brady inscribed on it.

That has been the story of my life for the last almost 32 years, looking for any kind of souvenir with the name Brady on it. I have yet to find one. I took a picture this time on my phone of keychains with the name Brandon and the name Brayden and sent him a message with the picture, showing him where his keychain should be.

Do you realize that I have searched for almost 32 years for any kind of souvenir with your name on it? I texted, hoping the full weight of my maternal sacrifice seeped through between the lines.

No, I did not know that, he replied a few minutes later. He didnt even add, But I appreciate your tireless efforts on my behalf to buy me some meaningless, cheap, made-in-China token of your eternal and always apparent love for me. And he texts light years faster than I do.

It was just another frustrating stop at still another souvenir stand to fill another one of my unfulfilled dreams in life to find some tawdry matching souvenir with the names of all my children on them.

But I guess its my fault, or maybe the universes. Now that I think about it, not many of my plans with my childrens names really turned out as I planned. Lets go down the list.

My first daughter is Dawn and her name has been hard to corrupt, although she is usually called Dawnie-poo. She doesnt seem to mind. With her disabilities, she calls me Susan or even at times if Im taking too long to get back from McDonalds that stupid woman, so weve reached a detente on names in our relationship.

Then theres Jenny. I deliberately named her Jennifer, so she could be Jenny. And, of course, half the other mothers in the 70s named their daughters Jennifer. It was the No. 1 name for girls in the 1970s decade. Give me an award for creativity. But I wanted Jenny and it worked until her future husband came along and started calling her Jennifer, although he mostly calls her Beautiful, so I forgive him for changing her name to her original one.

But whenever we go to where she lives, no one knows who Jenny is and she has to add My family calls me Jenny.

I want to say, No, her real name is Jenny. But I dont. I dont explain we really call her Jenny-bug most of the time.

And then theres Dennis, my oldest son, who is named after his father. Yes, Dennis the Menace first comes to mind when you hear his name. And, yes, he was quite the handful when he was little, although he has turned out to be wonderful and his four daughters are all extremely well-behaved. But I suffered through his Dennis the Menace years and often wondered if I should have named him Alexander or Percival or something befitting a quieter, better behaved child.

Then I have a Michael and just like my Jenny, hes now a Mike. I named him Michael, people, because I liked the name Michael. He will always be Michael to me, so there.

His middle name is Dale, who was the husband in the couple whose house we housesat when Dennis was born. That makes no sense at all.

My next son is Mark. It is the perfect name for him because I call him my monosyllabic son. He doesnt talk much and when he does, he expresses a novels worth of thoughts in one sentence. And his wifes name is Jill. Mark and Jill. Of course, Mark would find a girl with a four-letter name.

Mark will Skype me, text me and email me, but hates to talk on the phone. If I text, Call me, hell say Why? I know this and its OK. I remember he was a mamas boy when he was little and cried every time I left the room and deep down, he still feels that way.

Of course, he denies he did that when he was 10 months old. He says, Did not.

The only problem with his name is that nothing goes with Mark, but you have to come up with something when the birth certificate people are standing there. So he is named after Dawns physical therapist Andy whose real name was Andrew. I tell Mark sometimes I should have called him Andy and he says, Should not.

And since Im going on vacation and have so many kids, this is the end of Part 1: How I Messed Up My Childrens Names. Next week is part 2.
A new initiative to improve the health of residents in Danville is getting the finishing touches that will bring Community Health Workers into neighborhoods and homes to help people find the medical care they need.

In a collaborative effort that involves medical, housing and workforce development professionals, the plan involves sending 10 teams throughout the Danville area for a period of three years, Julie Brown, director of advanced learning at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, said.

One of the major goals is to improve overall population health and the key strategy is to connect more individuals to a primary care physician or medical home, Brown said. One outcome from that may be a reduction in visits to the emergency department for non-acute health issues.

The next step is to hire a manager to oversee the project, which is expected to launch in about a month, Brown said.

Community Health Workers are not required by the state to have specific training or licensure, though the state is currently exploring whether there should be a level of certification for those workers, Brown said.

While the group is working out the final details of how the project will launch, Brown said, the workers will be key for its success.

The workers will not dispense medication or give medical advice  though, Brown said. They will encourage people to take medications as prescribed by their doctors  they will be able to discuss residents needs, refer them to primary care providers and provide some basic health screening, such as blood pressure readings.

People dont always know that their insurance covers, Brown said. The CHWs can help them with that.

During the course of the project, the group expects to find out if the region has the capacity of primary health services that is needed and work on improving that if necessary, Brown said.

Other important elements of the initiative will be to teach residents about healthy eating and adopting healthy behaviors.

CHWs will work closely with medical providers, primary care teams, and other agencies to improve individuals care and outcomes and connect individuals to a primary care provider, Brown said. The CHW will primarily be working out in the community, providing social support and informal counseling, advocating for individuals and community health needs, and providing basic health screenings.

Brown said some workers could have some training, such as being a certified nursing assistant, or simply someone who is considering a career in nursing, but want to have more contact with people.

They have to want to help people  they will be on the ground and really talking to people, Brown said.

Brown said the Danville Regional Foundation introduced the idea the project as part of its mission to improve health care in the Dan River Region. Now the project also involves Gateway Health, Piedmont Access to Health Services, Danville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, hospitals and medical practices, in addition to the role the Institute will play in exploring the career potential for Community Health Workers in the region.

This is a tremendous project with a lot of community partners, Brown said. I think were going to learn a lot, especially in the first year.

Brown said more information would be available in about a month, including contact information to arrange visits from a Community Health Workers team.
With classes starting Monday, students, teachers, administrators and guests held a ceremony Sunday to celebrate the completion of the new entrance to Sacred Heart School  now renamed Sacred Heart Catholic School.

Kira Kania, principal of the school, told the crowd gathered at the new entrance that the new entrance  which includes a new covered walkway where students can line up for buses with some protection from the weather  symbolizes the faith-based education we provide as well as the community support the school has received to achieve this goal.

Sixth-grader Ryan Crawford spoke as well, talking about heading into his eighth year at Sacred Heart, which provides education for students in pre-K through eighth grade.

Crawford said he is excited about the new look and the superior education that encompasses Christian education that he has received at the school

Father Jonathan Goertz said the new entrance is a reflection of what goes on everyday inside the school and, with the assistance of Crawford, blessed the new entrance with holy water.

Prior to the ceremony, Donna Comper, director of development, said the new covered walkway will make it more efficient to load and unload students from school buses, and noted that there often seems to be rain between 2 to 2:30 p.m. when students are being loaded onto the buses.

Its something were very proud of, Comper said. It will add to the identity of our school.

The new sign for the school was not ready in time for the ceremony, Comper said, because it took longer than expected to get the necessary approvals and permits from the city.

Sacred Heart Catholic School is beginning the school year with 35 new students, bringing the total number of students to more than 180, Comper said. Small classroom sizes will still be maintained, with some having as few as 13 students and none with more than 24, she said.

Twenty is optimal, Comper said.
Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors voted to possibly bring a change to the way the county pays health insurance for employees.

But while the school employees are on the same plan, this change will not help them.

After an Aug. 2 meeting, the board authorized the formation of a 15-person insurance focus group to find short- and long-term solutions to the rising health care costs for Pittsylvania County employees. That group has met twice and discussed problems with the way the health insurance was handled in the county, as well as come up with solutions.

One of the biggest problems the group identified was wages for county employees are not competitive with other businesses, and theres a lack of incentives given for the work thats done.

Finance Director Kim Van Der Hyde and Human Resources Manager Lisette Jordan brought two options to the finance committee based on the input of the focus group: increase the countys fixed contribution toward the premium or increase the countys contribution so that employees only pay 15 percent more for their premiums from last year.

If the county increased its fixed contribution toward the premium, it would be an additional cost of $58,000. If the county increased the contribution so employees only pay 15 percent more for their premiums from last year, it would be an added cost of $103,271 at the highest, according to Van Der Hyde.

The finance committee recommended the second option for the short term, with the focus group continuing to meet to talk about more long-term solutions for helping the county.

Elton Blackstock, supervisor for the Staunton River District, said during the committee meeting if this change goes into effect, he needs department heads and constitutional officers to help us help you by refraining from asking for carryover money whenever possible.

Because the school system has a separate budget voted on by the Pittsylvania County School Board, this change will not go into effect for everyone on the employee health plan, if it is approved.

Pittsylvania Education Association President Henry Walker, who also is a teacher at Chatham High School, thought a state insurance option would be the best plan for many teachers. Virginia Education Association members from across the district will meet Monday evening to compare local health care rates, and try to discuss how these rates affect their members.

Walker said, First, most teachers have the utmost confidence that our school board and superintendent are working diligently on providing the best health care insurance possible for our employees. There [has] been an increase in insurance claims which affects health care rates. This makes it tough on the local school boards [to] fund health care and assist teachers.

Kathy Burcher, VEAs government relations officer, said Based on what we are hearing from the Virginia Human Resources team, the plan will be in development this year with an expected roll out in time for the 2017-18 school year. I talked with the head of the HR group  and the actuaries and underwriters are working to see what it will take to cost out the plan.

The school system has made an adjustment to the employer contribution based on the renewal meeting with Anthem in late June, said Finance Director Tracey Worley in an email.

The 2016-17 budget for county schools has been approved with all available resources earmarked.

We will continue to have discussions concerning health insurance benefits for our employees and as always continue to look for opportunities to make improvements, Worley.

The board of supervisors will bring the issue to a public hearing at the Sept. 6 meeting.
Whether youre heading back to campus this year, back to the office or just looking to get back into the swing of things this fall, the Goldman Sachs second annual Back-to-School Reading List features book recommendations for every age and career stage.

Ben Ferguson  Securities, Tokyo

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State, by Glenn Greenwald

Greenwald was The Guardian reporter chosen by Snowden to break the story of the NSAs vast powers of internet and smartphone surveillance. He painstakingly analyzes the NSA programs leaked by Snowden and starts a debate on the political, media and civil rights issues the programs have created. Greenwalds account is a suspenseful and lively read. It also does a great job of explaining the technical details of various programs in accessible language.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell

With the context of the Snowden leaks and NSA programs, I re-read 1984. Orwells dystopian 1950s masterpiece proves more prescient today than in 1984. It resonates in our world of disaffected politics, state-sponsored surveillance and geopolitical tension. One thing Orwell got wrong: his ubiquitous telescreens used by big brother to monitor citizens that are a considered a threat by the main characters. Today, we happily drop a GPS enabled smartphone with video/audio components and geo-tagging into our pockets that can easily double as a tool to monitor every move in our lives.



John Kim  Investment Banking Division, Hong Kong

Easternisation, War and Peace in the Asian Century, by Gideon Rachman

Written by the chief foreign affairs columnist for The Financial Times, this book describes Easternisation as the defining trend of our age, and how the growing flow of wealth and power from West to East creates a new era of global instability. Rachman provides interesting perspectives on how this will continue to impact world affairs for decades to come.



George Lee  Investment Banking Division, San Francisco

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari

Harari marries history and science to explain the dramatic rise of Homo Sapiens. This book is both a highly accessible scientific treatise and a fascinating meditation on the role of story-telling, imagination and culture in human progress.

Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love, by David Talbot

A cultural history of San Francisco from 1967 to 1982, Talbot traces a tumultuous period in US History from within one of the prime crucibles of change in this period, the San Francisco Bay Area. From the Summer of Love to the Grateful Dead to the Patty Hearst kidnapping, Charles Manson and the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk, this book paints a picture of a highly discordant and violent period in our history which brought elements of awakening, wake-up call and redemption. A fascinating lens to apply to today's social and political climate.

The Nexus Trilogy, by Ramez Naam

Brilliant and provocative science fiction which also makes for a great summer thriller. A story of advanced neuroscience, nanotechnology, experimental drugs and the potential and peril of shared human consciousness.



Eiji Ueda  Securities, Tokyo

The Real Face of Deflation, by Kosuke Motani

This book, published in 2010, clearly defines and analyzes the relationship between labor force participation and GDP growth and explains how Japans economy fell into deflation. Understanding these dynamics can help contextualize global developments such as the financial crisis of 2008 (peak in US labor force participation rate), sub-1.5% US Treasury yields eight years on (decline in US potential growth rate amid aging demographics) and concerns about China (sharp fall in labor force participation rate since 2014). Furthermore, if one understands that low growth is a symptom of shifting demographics, it will naturally take a long time to resolve. As super easy monetary policy drags on, views on capital and capitalism are shifting  as evidenced by the recent rise in gold prices. I believe this books clear and insightful analysis can serve as a basic primer on how to understand the economies of today.



Katie Koch  Investment Management Division, New York

GRIT: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, by Angela Duckworth

After reading this book you will no longer think it is a compliment to be described as a natural at anything. Duckworth provides copious examples, including West Point applicants, math champions, and elite athletes, to demonstrate how tests that seek to establish innate intelligence or ability fail miserably to predict long term success. What does correlate well with success? A distinctive blend of a growth-mindset, passion, and perseverance over adversity that she labels grit. Adopting the central thesis has profound implications for the way we parent, coach, mentor, hire and pursue our own top-level goals. Grit ends on an inspiring note because Duckworth explains grit is not a fixed characteristic but instead can be learned.

The Gene: An intimate history, by Siddartha Mukherjee

Siddartha Mukherjee, author of the cynosural history of cancer, The Emperor of all Maladies (another must-read!) once again skillfully weaves together the personal, the historical and the scientific in The Gene. Warning: there are sections where you may need to dust off your old biology books (I had to call my mom, a science teacher, to conquer certain chapters). However, the book really hits its stride when it moves far beyond the exploration of the gene as the essential unit of biological information and starts to probe at the practical, ethical and moral implications of genetic determinism and modification. Riveting.



Sonjoy Chatterjee  Investment Banking Division, Mumbai

The Argumentative Indian, by Amartya Sen

This book focuses on the long history of the argumentative tradition in India. It helps to understand the accepted heterodoxy in India where ancient leaders like Buddhist Emperor Ashoka and Mughal Emperor Akbar and modern leaders like Gandhi and Tagore have emphasized the role of deliberation and reasoning as the foundation of a good society. This book delves on how the tradition of persistent arguments is an important part of our public life and cuts across gender, class, caste and community despite the deep inequalities. The intellectual rigour in the book helps put in perspective the nature of the Indian identity both within the country and the large diaspora outside. It analyses the 'self images' of Indians affected by colonialism over the past centuries and the Western imagination of the Indian identity. Its a great book for anyone who wants to understand contemporary India's place in the world.



Michele Della Vigna  Global Investment Research, London

The Land Where Lemons Grow, by Helena Attlee

This wonderful book takes you on a tour of Italy, following the extraordinary story of citrus trees, their genetic evolution over the centuries and the profound effect on the local economy and culture. From bergamots of Calabria, to lemons of Lake Garda; from blood oranges on the foothills of Etna to chinotto in Liguria, it is an exhilarating trip full of discoveries that shows mens extraordinary resourcefulness and natures ability to evolve and surprise.

Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky

Suite Francaise is a fictional book that portrays life in a defeated France in 1940. It was left unfinished by the pen of Irene Nemirovsky, arrested and brought to Auschwitz, where she died in 1942. Irene was a brilliant representative of the cosmopolitan European society of the early 20th century: born in Ukraine, Irene lived in France and established herself in the French literary community. After the war, her work was largely forgotten, till her daughters rediscovered the unfinished manuscript in 1998. It is a very moving account of those months of terror, and a vivid description of human emotions, written as the events were unfolding. Irene only managed to write the first two novels of her five-novel project. We only have the title that Irene envisaged for the fifth novel: Peace. Unfortunately, she did not live to see it, or write it.

Edina Jung  Human Capital Management, Jersey City

Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown.

I love a good underdog story. This book, centered around the University of Washington crew team that wins gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, is all about determination, perseverance and teamwork. A great read.



Sarah Smith  Finance Division, New York

Evicted, by Matthew Desmond

The author recounts the stories of tenants and landlords in the poorest areas of Milwaukee during 2008 and 2009. It is an eye-opening account of the challenges faced by many in America to simply find and keep a place to live. It will stay with me for a long time.

The Quincunx, by Charles Palliser

I first read this novel many years ago and have recently re-read it. It is a huge, haunting story written by a modern-day professor of history in the style and era of Dickens, and is essentially a complex puzzle solving challenge disguised as a historic mystery novel. Not for the faint of heart.



Richard Manley  Global Investment Research, Hong Kong

Poorly Made in China: An Insiders Account of the Tactics Behind Chinas Production Game, by Paul Midler

This book is a look into the early years of Chinas rise to become the workshop of the world. It contains firsthand stories depicting conduct that many will struggle to comprehend, but also outlines the cultural and governance challenges Chinas manufacturers face as they are forced to compete beyond price.

Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and South East Asia, by Joe Studwell

While most listed Western companies are controlled by their minority shareholders, most Asian companies are controlled by a sovereign, corporate or family investors. Understanding the history, objectives and incentives of the tycoons that built many of Asias largest companies provides important context for anyone looking at Asias markets.



Liz Bowyer  Executive Office, New York

Dispatches, by Michael Herr

Years ago, when I went to work for Tom Brokaw on his book Boom! about the 1960s, the first thing he told me to read was Dispatches, Michael Herr's essential work of reportage on Vietnam. When Herr died this summer, I decided to re-read it, and was once again struck by how viscerally he captured the war experience. Herr renders Vietnam as at once terrifying and desensitizing, while also expressing the disaffection of a generation.

The Noise of Time, by Julian Barnes

The gap between appearances and reality is a theme in another book on my summer reading list, The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes. Barnes constructs an imagined inner narrative of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich as he grapples with the idea of truth in life and art under Stalin's regime. It's breathtaking.



William Hurley  Investment Management Division, Austin

Massive Change, by Bruce Mau

This book is a must-read. As author Bruce Mau says, it is "not about the world of design; it's about the design of the world." The book is a collection of essays from some of the most creative minds on our planet. This book will help you understand how to "tap into global commons," "distribute capacity" and "embrace paradox." At my last startup, I purchased a copy for employees as a way of indoctrinating them into the culture. I also sent copies to all of our customers to help break them out of their standard way of thinking and increase their ambitions around their projects and initiatives.

Zero to One, by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel

This is one of my favorite books to recommend to new entrepreneurs and innovators. The concept is simple enough, the next Bill Gates wont invent an operating system, the next Mark Zuckerberg wont invent a social network. To truly innovate, you are able to escape competition and market factors by creating ideas that are 0 to 1 and with those ideas, completely new marketplaces.



Bobby Vedral  Securities Division, London

Inverting the Pyramid: the History of Football Tactics, by Jonathan Wilson

For all the sports/soccer fans out there  this is an excellent book that describes how football tactics have evolved over time. Applicable to our work  as it shows how change is the only constant.

World Order, by Henry Kissinger

Nobody knows the world of politics & diplomacy better than Henry Kissinger  an absolute and undisputed numero uno!



Shigeki Kiritani  Investment Management Division, Tokyo

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond

Europeans conquered other continents with guns, germs and steel. What makes the difference between conquerors and conquered? The author demonstrates from various points of view that it wasnt because of the superiority or inferiority of particular races, but because of the geographical and ecological advantages that the Eurasian continent offered to the people who lived there. For example, in Eurasia, there happened to be plants and animals suitable for domestication, which could be transferred and shared relatively easily across the continent. Fun reading with lots of intellectual stimulation.



Dino Fusco  Services Division, Jersey City

Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything, by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

This is a must-read for every Seinfeld addict. It is a hilarious behind-the-scenes history of how Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld created the concept, characters and story lines that resulted in the greatest television series of all time. It will make you want to put on a puffy shirt and read it cover-to-cover in one sitting..

The Healthy Workplace, by Leigh Stringer

This is a well-researched book with relevant and provocative data and statistics  as well as intriguing insights and anecdotes  designed to shed light on how simple changes to our office workplace can increase worker productivity, reduce medical costs, and create healthier, happier employees. Everyone who works in an office can relate to the subject matter and assess for themselves the validity of its recommendations and conclusions.



Sally Boyle  Human Capital Management, London

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is my favourite of Chimamandas books (although Purple Hibiscus and Americanah are also wonderful). Half of a Yellow Sun combines a beautiful account of three lives in Nigeria in the 1960s against the backdrop of the countrys civil war. The characters in her book are so well-drawn and Chimamanda writes compassionately about her countrys history and its people.

A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara

A Little Life, which has been nominated for a number of book awards this year, is a long but very compelling read. It follows the lives of four classmates from a small Massachusetts college as they pursue their chosen paths in New York City. It is an extraordinary study of friendship and trauma  you are led to understand the minds of the characters in a way that is equally gripping and at times, harrowing.



Kent Clark  Investment Management Division, New York

The Signal and the Noise: Why so many predictions fail - but some don't, by Nate Silver

This is a remarkably engaging book about how people fail when making predictions and the approaches followed by superior predictors. Each chapter uses real-world examples from different disciplines to reveal how the best and worst predictors behave, including revisiting Billy Beane, the protagonist of Moneyball, and speaking with Goldman Sachs Jan Hatzius. Silver even successfully finds a way to gently introduce the reader to Bayesian statistics, which I realize is hard to believe but true.

Churchill: A Life, by Martin Gilbert

This is a good one volume biography of Churchill by Martin Gilbert, who was the official Churchill biographer. I think Churchill is as interesting for his mistakes and failures as he is for his successes, his seemingly boundless energy and curiosity, and for having been an incredibly prolific writer. The biography gives good perspective on some of the most important events of the 20th century, at least as seen from Churchills vantage point. Unless you have a good knowledge of the political figures of this era, Id recommend an e-book edition since you can easily get a bit of information on the many characters who feature throughout the book.



Lisa Opoku  Technology Division, New York

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The book is written by the author for his son. I chose to read it because I have a son and I think the experience of being a black male in America is unique. I want to be educated by his perspective for my son Austins benefit.

Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality, by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas Shapiro

Sherrilyn Ifill from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund recently recommended this book during a meeting I attended with her. The book explains many important historical facts about wealth in the black community and how public policies have impacted the problem. It is not light summer reading but I am enthusiastic about the education I am getting on how differences in the transfer of wealth contribute to racial inequality.

Homegoing, by Yaa Gyasi

My friend gave me a copy of this book and told me it was homework. I told her she had too much confidence in me if she thought I could work a full day and read 300 pages in 48 hours! It is about two sisters from Ghana where my friend and I are both from. The novel details the life of one sister in Ghana and the other who was sold into slavery in America. It is a very well-written and educational narrative of their lives.
SUDBURY, ON, Aug. 22, 2016 /CNW/ - Canadian Gold Miner Corp ("CGM") and Transition Metals Corp. (XTM  TSX.V, "Transition" or the "Company") announce that CGM has closed a seed financing totaling $495,000 by way of issuance of 4,950,000 common shares (the Offering) at a price of $0.10 per share. Of the total financing, $250,000 was placed by agents from Haywood Securities Inc. (Haywood) which received a 5% commission on its sourced portion of the Offering.

Greg Collins, P.Geo., CEO of CGM and Chief Operating Officer of Transition stated, "We are pleased to have secured this initial investment. Proceeds will be used to pursue acquisitions to further consolidate our property holdings in the Abitibi and to prepare targets on key projects for drilling this fall."

Post-financing, CGM has 22,950,100 shares issued and outstanding on a fully diluted basis. Transition Metals owns 15,000,100 CGM shares, or 65% valued at approximately $1.5 million.

About Canadian Gold Miner Corp

Canadian Gold Miner Corp. (CGM) is 65% owned by Transition Metals Corp. (XTM TSX-V) and, is a Canadian private corporation focused on exploring for gold in the Larder Lake Mining District near Kirkland Lake. The Company was founded by Transition to leverage its data, expertise and pipeline of exploration projects towards consolidating an extensive portfolio of high quality gold projects. CGM has assembled a dominant exploration land position in excess of 150 square kilometres around the Cadillac Larder and Ridout Structures in the southwestern part of the prolific Abitibi Greenstone belt in Ontario. The Abitibi is Canada's most prolific gold district having produced in excess of 170 million ounces of gold with >40 million ounces undeveloped to date1 located in a stable political jurisdiction with excellent mining infrastructure in place.

1 Source: Greenstone Hosted Quartz Carbonate Vein Deposits, Gosselin and Dube  Geological Survey of Canada, 2007

About Transition Metals Corp.

Transition Metals Corp. (XTM -TSX.V) is a Canadian-based, multi-commodity project generator that specializes in converting new exploration ideas into Canadian discoveries. The award-winning team of geoscientists has extensive exploration experience in established, emerging and historic mining camps, and actively develops and tests new ideas for discovering mineralization in places that others have not looked, which often allows the company to acquire properties inexpensively. The company has an expanding portfolio that currently includes 25+ gold, copper, nickel and platinum projects primarily in Ontario, Nunavut, Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Minnesota that it seeks to advance through funding partnerships and subsidiary companies to maximize shareholder value.

Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Information

Except for statements of historical fact contained herein, the information in this news release constitutes "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities law. Such forward-looking information may be identified by words such as "plans", "proposes", "estimates", "intends", "expects", "believes", "may", "will" and include without limitation, statements regarding estimated capital and operating costs, expected production timeline, benefits of updated development plans, foreign exchange assumptions and regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate; actual results and future events could differ materially from such statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, among others, metal prices, competition, risks inherent in the mining industry, and regulatory risks. Most of these factors are outside the control of the Company. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking information. Except as otherwise required by applicable securities statutes or regulation, the Company expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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 Transition Metals Corp.
Hole # From (m) To (m) Interval (m) Au (g/t)

Gourbassi East

CGM_GRC01 60 75 15 2.18

CGM_GRC05 9 14 5 2.24

CGM_TF07 92 99 7 3.10

CGM_TF11 42 55 13 2.07

GDD01 0 80.5 80.5 0.80

incl 0 14.8 14.8 3.10

GRC14 24 53 29 2.70

incl 28 34 6 7.94

GRC-15 7 60 53 1.51

incl 7 12 5 4.36

incl 19 31 12 2.55

GRC16 0 75 75 2.04

incl 3 8 5 11.28

incl 17 35 13 3.88

GRC17 29 75 46 2.16

incl 32 49 17 3.86

GRC18 47 51 4 3.72

GRC19 34 65 31 1.31

incl 35 48 13 2.29

GRC25 56 65 9 1.99

incl 56 60 4 3.25

GRC31 72 75 3 5.22

GRC32 113 119 6 4.18

incl 114 118 4 5.88

GRC33 51 75 24 1.73

incl 52 62 10 2.91

69 74 5 2.10

GRC34 73 81 8 2.55

and 90 96 6 1.21

GRC35 64 70 6 1.90

GR37 12 16 4 7.96

GRD04 248 252 4 3.98

TF22 28 30 4 4.63

TF34 0 18 18 2.98

incl 0 7 7 5.72

and 23 27 4 3.53



Gourbassi West

GRABL7/11 0 34 34 1.55

incl 6 12 6 5.89

GRABL27/9 6 36 30 1.28

incl 12 21 9 2.95

GRABL32/3 6 15 9 2.18

GRABL5/11 21 33 12 1.82

GRC43 37 58 21 1.80

incl 45 54 9 3.46

GRC46 47 55 8 1.31

GRC48 82 88 6 2.27

GRC49 2 9 7 1.77

GRC68 36 40 4 2.29

GRC69 26 39 13 4.36

GRC70 96 101 5 1.96

GRC76 24 141 117 0.97

GRC78 5 9 4 3.51

GRC79 14 35 21 1.24

incl 17 23 6 2.56

GRC80 3 14 11 1.04

and 43 46 3 2.95

and 114 120 6 1.81

and 150 152 2 5.73

GRC81 19 52 33 1.36

incl 33 40 7 2.40

ML02 10 27 17 2.05

incl 21 27 6 3.81

ML_07 144 147 3 3.10



Berola

FRABL1/3 0 12 12 0.65

FRABL1/4 0 9 9 0.83

FRABL4/6 0 15 15 1.18

FRABL4/7 0 18 18 0.73

VANCOUVER, August 22, 2016 - Ashanti Gold Corp. (TSXV: AGZ) ("AGZ" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Alecto Minerals PLC ("Alecto"), an AIM-listed public company, to earn an interest in the Kossanto East Gold Project (the "Project") in western Mali (Figures 1 and 2).The LOI provides AGZ with the right to earn 65% of Alecto's interest (after including the Mali State carried interest of 10%, AGZ ownership of the property upon completion of the earn-in agreement will be 58.5%) in the Project by completing a Preliminary Feasibility Study ("PFS") within 36 months following the date of TSXV approval (the "Option Period"). AGZ may elect to pay in cash US$4.0M to Alecto within 90 days following the end of the Option Period in lieu of producing a PFS. AGZ will be the operator of the exploration and development programs during the Option Period.Upon completion of its earn in rights, AGZ and Alecto will form a joint venture whereby each party will contribute proportionally to the Project's continuing exploration and development. The terms of the joint venture, including an interest dilution clause, will be set out in an option agreement that is currently being finalized by Alecto and AGZ.If either party's interest is reduced to 10% or less (not including the Mali State interest), that interest will be converted into a 1.5% net smelter return royalty (the "NSR") which the other party will have the right for one year to purchase by paying US$100,000 for each 0.1% of the NSR.The Kossanto East Project is a 66.41 km2 concession in the prolific Kedougou - Kenieba Inlier, the northwestern most exposure of Birimian rocks in West Africa. The Property hosts two principle drill-tested targets, Gourbassi East ("GE") and Gourbassi West ("GW") and several surface anomalies. Geochemical anomalies identified by previous explorers and Alecto led to drill testing, successful intersection of gold mineralization, and production by Alecto of an initial Inferred Resource1 estimate of 121,000 oz gold for GW and a 126,000 oz gold for GE. Gold hasbeen intersected in drill holes over a ~1 km strike length at GW and over a ~900m strike length at GE. Both areas remain open along strike and down dip and include some notable drill intercepts (Table 1). One of the other target areas (Berola) has been tested with shallow Rotary Airblast Drilling (RAB) and returned positive, first-pass intercepts (Table 1).Gourbassi East is a NNW striking mineralised zone with notable gold grades (multi-meter intercepts at greater than 2 g/t; Table 1) located within a body of felsic volcanics. The Gourbassi West prospect lies approximately 3.7 km WNW of Gourbassi East. Similar gold intercepts are associated with silicified sandstones and NNW striking zone of mineralization (Figure 2).The Kossanto East Project is located within the highly gold-endowed West Mali Gold Belt which extends approximately 180 km in a north-south direction along the Mali-Senegal border. The Project lies near the intersection of the Senegal-Mali Shear Zone and the Main Transcurrent Shear Zone, two major structures within this district associated with numerous world class orogenic gold deposits (Figure 1). Over the last 20 years approximately 40M oz of gold has been discovered in proximity to these structures resulting in construction of at least 8 new mines, including the world class Loulo group of deposits, Sadiola, Yatela, Gounkoto, Segala, Tabakoto, and Sabodala (Figure 1).AGZ is very pleased to undertake exploration in this rapidly emerging district. Existing data for GW and GE along with nearby large gold deposits, suggests that significant mineralization could be present at grades, continuity and extent for definition of a larger resource that could lead to mine development in this rapidly emerging key gold region.https://www.accesswire.com/uploads/22209_agz.ht2.jpgFigure 1. Geologic map of the Kedougou - Kenieba Inlier, the most northwest extent of Birimian rocks in West Africa. The Kossanto East Project is situated at the convergence of the Main Transcurrent Shear Zone and the Senegal-Mali Shear zone offering a rich structural environment for the formation of gold deposits. (adapted from Lawrence, et al., 2013; Economic Geology v.108,pp. 199-227. Gold ounces from Annual Reports and various on-line sources.)https://www.accesswire.com/uploads/22209_agz.ht4.jpgFigure 2. Kossanto East Project location and targets.On Behalf of the Board of Directors of ASHANTI GOLD CORP."Tim McCutcheon"Tim McCutcheon, CEO2300 - 1177 West Hastings StreetVancouver BC, V6E 2K3Phone: 604-638-3690The information presented in this Press Release has been reviewed by Dr. Paul Klipfel CPG of Mineral Resource Services Inc. and a Qualified Person as defined by Canadian NI 43-101. Dr. Klipfel is not an Independent Person, as he is a shareholder of AGZ.The historical estimates of inferred resources at GE and GW were developed by Alecto; and are considered relevant by the Company. AGZ is advised that such estimates are compliant with JORC rules of disclosure, however the Company has not independently verified such data, the Company's qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimates as current mineral resources, the Company is not treating the historical estimates as current mineral resources, and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance thereon.NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THATTERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.This news release includes "forward-looking statements", including forecasts, estimates, expectations and objectives for future operations that are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the control of the Company and are considered "forward-looking information for the purposes of Canadian Securities laws. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and that actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. There is no assurance the Company will be successful in negotiating a final agreement with Alecto, that the Company will be successful in raising the funds necessary to earn any interest in the Project, that the Company will be successful in maintaining tenure to the Project due to political or legal changes that are at the discretion of the Malian government, that historic drill results will be verified by the Company, or that any economic resource will be located within the Project.An Inferred Mineral Resource is that part of a Mineral Resource for which quantity and grade or quality are estimated on the basis of limited geological evidence and sampling. Geological evidence is sufficient to imply but not verify geological and grade or quality continuity.An Inferred Mineral Resource has a lower level of confidence than that applying to an Indicated Mineral Resource and must not be converted to a Mineral Reserve. It is reasonably expected that the majority of Inferred Mineral Resources could be upgraded to Indicated Mineral Resources with continued exploration.An Inferred Mineral Resource is based on limited information and sampling gathered through appropriate sampling techniques from locations such as outcrops, trenches, pits, workings and drill holes. Inferred Mineral Resources must not be included in the economic analysis, production schedules, or estimated mine life in publicly disclosed Pre-Feasibility or Feasibility Studies, or in the Life of Mine plans and cash flow models of developed mines. Inferred Mineral Resources can only be used in economic studies as provided under NI 43-101.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / August 22, 2016 / Westminster Resources (TSXV: WMR):

Highlights:

Additional prospect sampling across the 3.5 km wide circular Main Guayacan mineralized trend has been completed with concentrated prospecting near the reported 1090 g/t silver epithermal vein sample located in the Middle Guayacan target zone. Additional sampling along the Far East Guayacan airborne magnetic low anomaly corridor about 2.5 kilometers east of the large Main Guayacan target area confirmed an altered satellite intrusive body where previous prospect grab samples assayed up to 6.0 g/t gold and 26 g/t silver. Additional mapping of the Far North Guayacan linear magnetic low airborne anomaly corridor confirmed that altered intrusive bodies are related to the low magnetic response. Altered rocks from the corridor contain the same precious metal pathfinder suite of elements ( As, Bi, V, Sb, Cu, Pb,) (and include up to 229 ppm Te) as are often found associated with mineralization in the Main Guayacan system 3.5 kilometers to the south. The strongly altered samples contained up to 0.7% copper with silver ranging from 1.3 g/t to 3.6g/t and gold contents from 225 ppb to 620 ppb respectively. Activation Labs recent Soil Gas Hydrocarbon survey evaluation of the high priority 1400 meter long by 800 meter wide Main Guayacan system SGH soil geochemical copper -gold and silver patterns suggests depths from surface to mineralization of 50 meters to 80 meters in places . Highly anomalous SGH point location targets are covered by overburden.

Westminster Resources ("the Company") has recently completed prospecting and sampling of epithermal precious metal zones in the Guayacan region of the Company's 17,854 hectare 100% owned Sonora Mexico property. This road accessible, flat -lying area is partially covered with young volcanic rocks and sand-gravel overburden deposits. The Company's airborne magnetic-VTEM geophysical survey has guided exploration of partially covered target zones which are associated with major North - South structural linears and circular intrusive centers. Both have widespread alteration-silicification signatures related to Landsat imagery anomalies and magnetic lows.

The recent fieldwork and updated modeling of Soil Gas Hydrocarbon (SGH) geochemical survey soil results has increased the Company's confidence in the prospectivity of the Main Guayacan project area and defined two newly identified similar satellite intrusive centers, now known as the Far East Guayacan and Far North Guayacan targets.

Between the North and Middle Guayacan targets, at the Main Guayacan mineralized system, an overburden covered 800 meter wide by 1400 meter long area containing strongly anomalous gold and copper response patterns have been identified in a Soil Gas Hydrocarbon (SGH) geochemical survey (Activation Laboratories LTD, Special Report A11-4292, May12, 2016). Along the southern border the Middle Guayacan target is characterized by scattered, subcropping epithermal vein material and float. One composite grab sample of silicified rock and epithermal vein material from this area reported bonanza silver contents with a grade of 1090 g/t silver and 0.45 g/t gold.

The Company's recent sampling of a 500x500 meter area directly west of the Middle Guayacan bonanza epithermal silver zone was hampered by cover but some float and subcrop grab samples were selected. Eight samples returned between 124 g/t and 445 g/t Ag with an additional five samples ranging from 68 g/t to 82 g/t Ag. Gold contents were as high as 1.08 g/t Au and seven samples ranged from 113 ppb to 578 ppb gold. One lead-rich sample assayed 1.14% Pb.

The recent expanded grab sampling program confirmed that Middle Guayacan is a large area with an epithermal precious metal mineralization signature of highly anomalous copper, vanadium, bismuth, antimony, arsenic, mercury, and tellurium. This new area has now been identified as geochemically similar to the epithermal geochemical signature found in the adjacent Middle Guayacan epithermal bonanza silver zone.

Approximately 2.5 kilometers east of the center of the Main Guayacan target, a well- developed corridor of north-south anomalous magnetic-low linear features is underlain by alteration, young volcanics and a satellite intrusive complex named the Far East Guayacan target. At this prospect previous samples of hematite-limonite weathered intrusive rock material graded as high as 6.05 g/t gold and 26.0 g/t silver with 2.5 % lead, 0.16% copper , 0.12 % zinc and 436ppm vanadium plus the diagnostic epithermal element signature of anomalous bismuth, arsenic, antimony, mercury and tellurium. Recent Far East Guayacan exploration confirmed the presence of altered intrusions containing epidote and quartz -hematite float and breccia making this new satellite intrusive target worthy of further follow up exploration.

Westminster's recent exploration of the new surface exposures of precious metals across the highly prospective Guayacan region has been successful in expanding and specifically defining priority exploration targets. Our exploration work will continue to define these excellent drill ready targets

G. Macdonald, P.Geo., Director

The scientific and technical data contained in this news release pertaining to the GUAYACAN PROJECT was reviewed by Glen Macdonald, P.Geo, a non-independent qualified person to Westminster Resources Ltd. and a Director, who is responsible for ensuring that the geologic information provided in this news release and on Westminster Resources web site is accurate and who acts as a "qualified person" under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

Westminster Resources Ltd. rock sample material is delivered by its qualified geologic staff to Bureau Veritas Minerals Laboratory, Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico where their mineral division crushed and pulverized kilograms of each sample. Gold fire assays FA 530 on 30 gram pulps -gravimetric finish for gold and silver were analysed in BV Hermosillo laboratory. The sample rejects remained with BV in Hermosillo Mexico while the extra 150 gram pulps were transported to BV ISO 9001-2008 certified laboratory in Vancouver, BC, Canada for multi-element AR-ICP-MS analysis on 30 grams samples (AQ 250 ) with all overlimit base metals having a MA 370 determination method of analyses. A QA/QC program of standard and blank samples is part of the BV results. The analytical results for the Hermosillo FA lab and the Vancouver Lab have been compared as part of the exploration programs ongoing monitoring of results.

About Westminster:

Managed by an experienced team, Westminster is focused on exploring and developing prospects on a land package of approximately 17,854 hectares of contiguous mineral concessions in Sonora, Mexico. The Company's focus has been to assemble and explore unique and newly-discovered targets including (a) the Guayacan partially unroofed epithermal and copper-gold porphyry system, and (b) the Sierra hydrothermal diatreme breccia tertiary rhyolite hosted structure. Systematic exploration of the Company's new mineral district is ongoing in this region of Sonora with well-developed infrastructure, favorable permitting, and a strong mining history and community support.

For further information regarding Westminster Resources Ltd., please contact:

Bill Conlin at 604-608-0400

Toll Free: 1-877-608-0007

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulations Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility or accuracy of this release.

This news release may contain forward-looking information which is not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking information involves risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward-looking information in this news release may include, but is not limited to, the Company's objectives, goals or future plans. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to, those risks set out in the Company's public documents filed on SEDAR. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information, which only applies as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law.

SOURCE: Westminster Resources Ltd.
SHARE

U.S. News & World Report rates facilities

By Denise Morris

Shannon Medical Center has been recognized as one of the best hospitals in Texas for 2015-16 by U.S. News & World Report.

This is the first time for Shannon to attain this recognition.

Being ranked as the No. 23 hospital in Texas, and as a high performer in areas of care, shows our commitment to quality and accessible health care for our area, Shannon CEO and President Bryan Horner said.

At Shannon, our mission is to provide exceptional care for our family, friends and neighbors in West Texas, Horner said. We are fortunate to have associates and physicians who provide that exceptional care each day.

Shannon also scored as High Performing in two categories, which means that it exceeded the industrys expected standards for:

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) care, a distinction shared by 8 percent of hospitals nationally. Shannon was better than expected for survival 30 days after admission, and for success in preventing unplanned returns to the hospital for COPD or other causes.

Heart Failure care, a distinction shared by 11 percent of hospitals nationwide. Shannon was better than expected in two categories related to preventing deaths, complications and readmissions for heart failure issues, and significantly better than expected for readmissions within 30 days for other reasons.

U.S. News evaluated hospitals in 16 adult specialties and ranked the top 50 in most of the specialties. Less than 3 percent of the nearly 5,000 hospitals that were analyzed for Best Hospitals 2015-16 were nationally ranked in even one specialty.

A Best Hospital has demonstrated expertise in treating the most challenging patients, said Ben Harder, chief of health analysis at U.S. News. A hospital that emerged from our analysis as one of the best has much to be proud of.

The study evaluated hospitals in five procedures and medical conditions  heart bypass surgery, hip replacement, knee replacement, heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)  and rated their performance as high, average or below average. Only about 10 percent of the hospitals were rated as high performers.

We evaluated the treatment of more than 3.6 million patients and identified a small percentage of hospitals that have superior outcomes compared with their peer institutions, Harder said. Whenever possible, patients, in consultation with their doctors, should seek out high-performing hospitals that excel in treating their specific condition.

Objective outcome measures such as deaths, infections, readmissions and operations that need to be repeated as well as patient satisfaction data largely determined the ratings, U.S. News reported.

The Best Hospitals ratings rely on Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data for patients 65 and older, as well as survey data from the American Hospital Association and clinical registry data from the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

Detailed information and ratings for all hospitals are available at health.usnews.com/best-hospitals.
Associated Press Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump met Saturday with Hispanic supporters, the type of one-on-one interaction with voters he had mostly avoided in favor of large rallies.

SHARE

By Erica Werner, Associated Press

WASHINGTON  After a tumultuous stretch of gaffes and falling poll numbers for Donald Trump, top GOP campaign and party officials insisted Sunday that their presidential nominee is getting back on track and will catch up with Democrat Hillary Clinton by around Labor Day.

Clinton campaign officials dismissed the idea of a changed Trump as nonsense.

"Donald Trump has been disciplined and mature. And I think he's going to get this thing back on track," said Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman.

Polls now mostly show Trump lagging Clinton by 5 percentage points or more nationally, but Priebus predicted they will tighten up and Trump will be "ahead as we move through September."

Trump's new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, echoed Priebus' optimism, contending that the candidate just had the best week of his campaign, "mostly because he's able to be himself, the authentic Donald Trump," and "the pivot that he's made is on substance."

Conway, who supported Trump rival Ted Cruz during the primaries, was named to her post this past week in a shake-up in which the campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, resigned and conservative media firebrand Stephen Bannon, who led Breitbart News, took over as campaign chief executive.

A new style was immediately evident as Trump, in a first, offered regrets for any remarks that had caused offense, stuck with his teleprompter at a series of events and paid a visit to flood-ravaged Louisiana, where he briefly helped unload a truck of supplies. That type of one-on-one interaction with voters is a staple of most political campaigning, yet something Trump had mostly avoided in favor of large rallies.

Trump also announced his first ad buys of the campaign  more evidence of an acceptance of the traditional campaign elements most experts believe he will need to have a shot at winning. He made a direct appeal to African-American voters, who strongly support Clinton, and insisted he wants the GOP to become their political home as it was in the era of Abraham Lincoln.

Trump also met Saturday with Hispanic supporters, representatives of a community that has been wary of the billionaire businessman's proposals to build a giant wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and deport the 11 million people living in this country illegally. Questioned on whether Trump still intends to deploy a "deportation force" to carry that out, Conway said Sunday: "To be determined."

Conway, whose background is as a pollster, said the campaign wants to get away from a focus on Trump's personality and onto the Obama administration's record, and Clinton as a continuation of what it describes as unpopular policies such as the Obama's health care law.

"The Hillary people want this to all be about tone and temperament. We also want to it be about facts and figures," Conway said.

She said that the campaign would work more closely with RNC officials and try to expand the map of competitive swing states from seven or eight to 10 or 11. "Donald Trump is back in Hillary Clinton's head," Conway said.

Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, disputed such claims. "We're not seeing a pivot. Donald Trump himself said this was not a pivot. He wants to double down on letting Donald Trump be Donald Trump," Mook said.
FILE - In this May 27, 2016 file photo, passengers line up to check in before their flight at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. Significant progress has been made on shortening screening lines since earlier this spring when airlines reported thousands of frustrated passengers were missing flights, the head of the Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday, June 7, 2016. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)

SHARE

By Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES  The starting pay is about $34,000 a year with no automatic pay raises based on tenure. They are on the front line in the battle against terrorism but don't carry a gun. Their employer is routinely the punch line of jokes on late-night television shows.

Such is the life of a TSA screener.

"Every now and then, we get thanked by the public, but for the most part, it's a pretty thankless job," said Bobby Orozco Jr., a Transportation Security Administration screener at Los Angeles International Airport.

With U.S. airports handling record crowds this summer, airlines and federal lawmakers say they want to improve morale and reduce the unusually high turnover rate among the nation's TSA screeners to ensure security lines are well-staffed during peak travel periods.

Lines that kept travelers waiting for two hours and longer this spring even persuaded airlines to donate money and workers to help TSA speed up the queues. The slowdowns prompted the Republican Party to call for TSA reform in its party platform this summer.

The attrition rate among full-time TSA screeners has been growing over the last few years and is especially high among part-timers, who represent about 1 in 5 TSA screeners.

The TSA recently was ranked nearly last among all federal agencies in a job satisfaction survey.

Without a fix, travelers can expect continued staffing shortages at the TSA and long lines at airport screening checkpoints.

"The system is broken, no doubt about that," said Orozco, who is also president of his local union.

Lawmakers and aviation experts have offered two solutions: Either give airport screeners a raise and improve their employee protection rights or turn over more airports to private security firms, which have a reputation for happier workers and a lower turnover rate.

The TSA employs about 42,500 screeners, down about 10 percent from 47,000 in 2012, according to the organization. Meanwhile, the number of passengers screened at U.S. airports is expected to reach 740 million this year, up about 16 percent from 638 million in 2012, the agency said.

"There are not enough transportation security officers, and that is very evident," said J. David Cox Sr., national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA screeners.

One reason for the decline in screeners is that Congress cut the TSA budget, assuming that more travelers would sign up for programs such as TSA PreCheck, which offers expedited screening lines for frequent fliers who pass a government background check.

Another reason for the drop is the turnover rate, according to union officials who represent TSA workers. They blame low pay and difficult working conditions and being denied the full rights given to other federal employees.

TSA representatives declined to comment on the subject, citing negotiations with the union. But in testimony before Congress, TSA administrator Peter Neffenger has stressed the need for extra training to address morale problems.

"I have worked to set up our front-line officers for success through improved training, enhanced protocols and advancing technology," he told a congressional panel in June.

The TSA was created after the 9/11 attacks, replacing private security officers hired by individual airlines and overseen by the federal government.

But Congress initially didn't give TSA workers the same employee rights as other federal workers, such as the right to unionize, rely on collective bargaining for employee contracts or appeal disciplinary actions to a third-party board.

It wasn't until 2011 that TSA administrators allowed airport screeners to join a union. But TSA workers still have fewer rights than other federal workers, including other security and law enforcement staffers.

TSA officers, for example, don't get regular pay raises based solely on tenure. TSA screeners now get raises based only on performance and promotions. As a result, a TSA officer who has five or 10 years of experience can earn the same as a newly hired TSA officer.

"You have folks that have been here since 2002 and are making the same amount as someone who has been here about a year," Orozco said. "That doesn't add up."

In addition, new hires start as probationary screeners for two years, during a time that most maintain their starting salary. Orozco and Cox say many quit before they complete the probationary period.
SHARE

One of the most cynical men in America has taken Donald Trump under his wing and warned the bombastic billionaire to straighten up and fly far, far right or risk losing the November presidential election.

Roger Ailes, ousted earlier this summer as head of Fox News following allegations of sexual harassment from a number of former female employees, is the brains behind Fox's self-aggrandizing "fair and balanced" slogan, which actually describes the exact opposite of what the network pushes. Ailes probably has done more to foment political division and lack of civility in this country than anyone else and is now telling his old friend Trump what to do if he really wants to win.

And Trump, apparently, really does want to win.

After news of Ailes advising Trump broke, the often foul-mouthed, off-the-rails tycoon immediately read  actually read  a teleprompter speech in a lily white town near Milwaukee in which he stuck to the conservative script of being tough on "law and order," berating Hillary Clinton and insisting that Democrats merely want to exploit African-Americans.

Next we learned Ailes is forcing Trump to run TV ads, something Trump so far has not wanted to spend money on, preferring free publicity. Ailes was behind the "Morning in America" messaging that got Ronald Reagan re-elected. He also helped Richard Nixon get elected and worked to take the patrician edges off George H.W. Bush.

Up until now, Trump has refused to listen to Republican graybeards who have said he needs to stay on message, stop bloviating pure nonsense and vitriol, and keep focused on blasting Clinton. But as his polls plummeted and the pundits began looking at Trump's poor performance among college-educated voters, women, and minorities and in swing states, even Trump began to panic.

This is all of a pattern, folks. Rich, influential Republicans want to win. Trump was flailing. Tired of fretting, the big boys have taken the situation in hand.

Trump also tapped for his team two other friends, Kellyanne Conway, a take-no-prisoners GOP strategist, and Stephen Bannon, the "pit bull" executive chairman of Breitbart News, which long has touted Trump and derided Clinton.

If Trump listens to Ailes, Conway and Bannon, as well as his campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who helped pull strings for the Russians in Ukraine, November will be a narrow contest between Trump and Clinton.

Potentially both have a little over 40 percent of the vote just by virtue of being a Democrat and a Republican. So the real fight is over the roughly 13 to 15 percent of undecided independents who really don't like either one of their choices and who are waiting to see if Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson gets 15 percent of the polls to qualify for the all-important debates.

The first debate on Sept. 26, warns Ailes, will be crucial for Trump, who likes to say he needs no debate preparation and that Americans loved his all-over-the-place, domineering style in the Republican debates. Ailes, Conway, Bannon and Manafort have persuaded Trump that debating Clinton will be a different ballgame and that Trump better learn different rules and behavior. Fast.

Trump sulked a bit and fretted that if he changes, he'll lose his base. The we-who-must-be-obeyed quartet is sweet-talking Trump into realizing that it's not his base he has to worry about now  it's moderate Republicans and disaffected Democrats who want a candidate who isn't Clinton but who sounds rational, especially on economics.

Make no mistake, Trump will keep up his coded braying to his followers, assuring them that political incorrectness, sexism, racism and xenophobia are still OK with him. But he will put a fine sugarcoating on his words.

And middle-of-the-roaders will begin to convince themselves that Trump isn't so bad after all. He will say exactly what the oligarchs  and Trump is a true oligarch  want him to say: That lowering taxes on the rich will raise all boats (although it never has), the end justifies the means, cruel as they may be, and strange bedfellows produce results, although they may be the opposite of what most people want.

Do not gloat, Democrats. This is not over. In this wacky world of do-overs and second chances and mass manipulation, sow ears are made into silk purses all the time.

Ann McFeatters is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Contact her at amcfeatters@nationalpress.com.
SHARE

The following editorial appeared in the Aug. 15 San Antonio Express-News:

Afghanistan is a dangerous place. It is even more dangerous for Afghans who worked with and for Americans there.

That's why the United States established a visa program for those who translated for Americans battling in Afghanistan  and Iraq. The work came with a U.S. promise. Help us, and we'll protect you.

The U.S. is on the brink of breaking that promise. There is a possibility that the visa program won't be renewed. Moreover, Congress is being stingy with the visas. It has, since 2014, allowed about 7,000 visas for Afghan translators. In early July, fewer than 3,000 of these remained, though 12,000 Afghans are in the application process. And Congress is balking at a request for creating 4,000 more.

There was a compromise that settled on 2,500, but even this has been stymied.

It is with no measure of exaggeration that Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, argued on the Senate floor that these actions mean, "People are going to die."

The New York Times told the story of Zar Mohammad Stanikzai, who translated for Americans in 2012. He is essentially a prisoner in his own home, living in fear that the Taliban will be coming for him.

He applied for a visa in 2013 after an imam warned his father that he should stop helping U.S. troops or be killed.

"They will kill us," he said.

The Senate action  inaction, rather  comes amid controversy in the presidential campaign and in Congress over allowing in Syrian refugees fleeing the violence in their country. The United States has pledged to take in 10,000 and may be on track to exceed even that. Texas' leaders were unsuccessful in trying to block their resettlement here.

On the presidential campaign trail, GOP nominee Donald Trump suggested, first, that the U.S. halt all immigration by Muslims, refining that later to barring Muslims from countries suffering from terrorist attacks.

And that, of course, is a long list, including France and Belgium but also Afghanistan and Iraq.

Denying refuge to people fleeing our enemies in Syria is heartless. Applying a religious test for immigrants is odious  and likely unconstitutional. Blocking allies from coming here is heartless and odious, but throw in deceitful, too.

Congress must not succumb to the nativist sentiment fueling much of this anti-Muslim rhetoric. In the case of Afghan translators, it should simply keep this country's promise.
To OUR Gourmet Retailer Readers

While Gourmet Retailer no longer exists as a separate print publication and website, Progressive Grocer will continue to feature new content about boutique retailing in our ongoing coverage of Independent Grocers.

Please update your Gourmet Retailer bookmark and check our Independent Grocers topic page regularly for updates and fresh content.

-- The Progressive Grocer Team
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, on CNN Sunday morning, praised GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump for coming to see the massive flooding damage in the state first-hand."I think ... because it helped shine a spotlight on Louisiana and the dire situation that we have here that it was helpful," Edwards told CNN's Dana Bash.Edwards, a Democrat, also acknowledged that Trump made a $100,000 donation to Greenwell Springs Baptist Church that he visited during his trip, and brought attention to the plight of the thousands of people who have been displaced by the flooding, which has left 13 people dead.Edwards said that Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, called him Friday morning to offer assistance and discuss the situation."We spoke for a long time Friday morning about their desire to be helpful," Edwards said.Former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, also a Democrat, had praised Trump's trip earlier on Friday, saying that it brought needed attention to the plight here.Edwards on Friday, after Trump left, had dodged questions about Trump during a local press conference.Before Trump's visit his office had said he was not notified about the impending trip and hoped that it would not become a mere "photo-op.""Instead we hope he'll consider volunteering or making a sizable donation to the Louisiana Flood Relief Fund to help the victims of this storm," Edwards' spokesman Richard Carbo said Thursday night.The governor drew fire from Trump's campaign for the remarks, eliciting condemnations from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, both Republicans and ardent supporters of Trump."The criticism by Louisiana's Governor is injecting partisan politics into a tragic national disaster. I refused to do that during Hurricane Sandy and I put the people of New Jersey first. Governor Edwards should do the same thing because the people of Louisiana deserve better," Christie said in a statement released by the Trump campaign.Edwards had also defended President Barack Obama's absence, saying he worried it would be a drain on resources."I would just as soon he wait a week or two," Edwards told reporters.After Trump's visit, the White House announced that Obama would visit Baton Rouge to meet with area leaders and view flood-affected areas on Tuesday.Trump's Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has not scheduled a tour her, but said she has been in touch with Edwards and offered her sympathy for the victims.
With Miami-Beach now listed as a local source of the Zika virus, federal officials are advising pregnant women and their partners who are concerned about the virus to avoid non-essential travel to anywhere in Miami-Dade County.The warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is part of a wider travel advisory released after Gov. Rick Scott's announcement Friday that the Florida Department of Health has declared a section of Miami Beach between 8th and 28th streets to be a local transmission zone.The Florida Department of Health identified the zone after the discovery of five new locally acquired cases believed to be tied to that area, Scott said.The area is one of two known local Zika transmission zones in the mainland United States. The other is a 1-square-mile section of Miami's Wynwood neighborhood, identified earlier.The CDC had previously advised pregnant women against traveling to Wynwood. The agency also advised pregnant women who have visited the designated area of Miami Beach since July 14, 2016, to contact their health care providers about being tested for the virus.During his announcement, Scott also highlighted the state's prevention efforts, including mosquito spraying and public education, and announced expanded measures, including more spraying and a request to the CDC for 5,000 additional Zika testing kits and 10,000 additional Zika prevention kits."Just like when we learned of transmission in Wynwood, the county has already begun an aggressive mosquito eradication plan that includes additional spraying in Miami Beach," Scott said.In a news conference Friday afternoon, Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine expressed optimism about the county's efforts to combat the virus in his city."They're working aggressively. I know they started a couple of days ago. They were here at 6 a.m., early this morning. Our team was out there, we have inspectors out there, and we're doing everything we possibly can," Levine said.Bill Talbert, president and CEO of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, also spoke at the news conference and said he was confident that Miami Beach's tourism industry could weather the Zika scare."The traveling public, if we can get that message out, will continue to travel here," he said.As of Friday evening, Florida had 524 cases of Zika, including 488 travel-related cases and 36 locally acquired cases. The 36 locally acquired cases include one identified Friday outside of either of the two transmission zones, according to the Florida Department of Health.Zika is a mosquito-borne illness that first emerged in the continental United States on July 29. The virus is primarily spread via mosquito bite but also can be transmitted sexually. The Florida Department of Health and the CDC advise people who have traveled to Zika hot spots to engage in safe-sex practices and use condoms, especially if they plan to conceive in the near future.According to the CDC, Zika can lead to severe birth defects and microcephaly in an infant, a condition in which a baby's head is much smaller than expected. Because of the ramifications Zika can have for infants, the virus presents the biggest risk to pregnant women and expectant couples.
How the Rankings Coincide With Governors' Popularity

1. Massachusetts Charlie Baker (R) 72 percent 2. Oregon Kate Brown (D) 54 percent 3. Delaware Jack Markell (D) 66 percent 4. Colorado John Hickenlooper (D) 60 percent 5. California Jerry Brown (D) 57 percent 6. Tennessee Bill Haslam (R) 63 percent 7. New Hampshire Maggie Hassan (D) 56 percent 8. Utah Gary Herbert (R) 64 percent 9. Virginia Terry McAuliffe (D) 58 percent 10. Maryland Larry Hogan (R) 71 percent

41. Arizona Doug Ducey (R) 49 percent 42. Connecticut Dannel Malloy (D) 29 percent 43. Alabama Robert Bentley (R) 46 percent 44. Oklahoma Mary Fallin (R) 42 percent 45. Mississippi Phil Bryant (R) 60 percent 46. Louisiana John Bel Edwards (D) 45 percent 47. New Mexico Susana Martinez (R) 48 percent 48. Wyoming Matt Mead (R) 67 percent 49. Alaska Bill Walker (I) 62 percent 49. West Virginia Earl Ray Tomblin (D) 60 percent

Methodology

If the 2016 presidential election is all about Donald Trump, the gubernatorial landscape remains, to a large degree, about a more commonplace issue: the economy.For the first time since 2013 , we've ranked the overall economic performance of the 50 states. The results show a connection between a state's economic performance and its governor's approval ratings.To determine which states are doing well and which aren't, we looked at six variables from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis: the current state unemployment rate; the improvement in the state unemployment rate over the past year; the per capita state GDP in 2015; the percent change in real state GDP between 2014 and 2015; the percent change in state personal income per capita, from the third quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of 2016; and the percentage growth in year-to-date increases in jobs for 2016.These variables were chosen to offer a mix of static and dynamic measures of the states' overall economic performance. (See details on our methodology at the end of the story.)As in the 2013 rankings, we decided to focus on the top and bottom of the list because it's hard to say whether the states in the broad middle have relatively strong or weak economies.Our results are notable for their degree of flux. Only two of the top 10 states in 2013 -- Oregon and Utah -- repeated on the list in 2016. And only three of the bottom 10 states in 2013 -- Connecticut, Mississippi and New Mexico -- remained in the bottom 10 in 2016.Also of interest, a majority of the top 10 states are either blue or purple-to-blue on the presidential level, while most of the bottom 10 are red or purple-to-red states. States with favorable economic results the past eight years would presumably be more eager to support Clinton, whereas states with unfavorable economic results would be more hospitable to Trump.The parties of the governors, meanwhile, don't line up quite as neatly. For instance, two of the presidential blue states in the top 10 have Republican governors -- Massachusetts' Charlie Baker and Maryland's Larry Hogan. The red states of Louisiana and Alaska, which are in the bottom five, respectively have a Democratic governor and an independent governor who ran on a ticket alongside a Democrat.Here is the full list of states, ranked from strongest to weakest. Duplicate numbers indicate a tie.Once we compiled the state economic rankings, we cross-referenced them with gubernatorial approval ratings to see whether governors of strong economic states were being rewarded by the voters.In general, they have been.We used the results of a 50-state series of gubernatorial approval polls conducted by the online publicationbetween January and May 2016. We also spot-checked other gubernatorial approval polls in the past eight months and found them to be generally similar to whatfound.The approval ratings for governors of the top 10 states averaged 62.1 percent, while the gubernatorial approval ratings for those in the bottom 10 averaged 50.8 percent. No governor in the top 10 states had an approval rating lower than 54 percent, while six of the governors in the bottom 10 states had approval ratings below 50 percent and one -- Connecticut's Dannel Malloy, a Democrat -- had an approval rating as low as 29 percent.Here's the list of governors, and their approval ratings, in the top 10 states:The governor of the No. 1 state, Baker, is a moderate Republican in Massachusetts, a historically Democratic state."Baker has been in office less than two years and is seen as a positive for the state's economy moving forward," said Tufts University political scientist Jeffrey Berry. "The Massachusetts economy is in terrific shape, and it's poised for continued growth."That said, Berry added, most voters know that the state's positive economy is part of a long-term trend that predates Baker."No one sees him as primarily responsible for the high growth rate or low unemployment that we currently enjoy."Another moderate Republican in a solidly blue state, Hogan of Maryland, is also getting credit for the economy, said Lou Peck, who covers Maryland politics for"Hogan is enjoying approval ratings that I find little short of phenomenal given the political complexion of the state," said Peck.While one factor in his strong ratings is ongoing empathy for Hogan's successful treatment for lymphoma last year, Peck said, "the economy would seem to play into it."And in Utah, Herbert "receives a lot of credit from voters for the strong economy," said Morgan Lyon Cotti, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics. "This has always been a major priority for him, and he addresses it in nearly every speech he gives."Several political experts cautioned that voter sentiment in some of the top 10 states is divided depending on party and ideology.For instance, in Oregon, which has had Democratic governors since 1987, most residents of the state's prosperous and populous urban and suburban areas are happy with the long run of Democratic leadership, said veteran political columnist David Sarasohn.By contrast, Sarasohn said, much of rural Oregon has been in recession since the 1980s, when timber tanked, and those voters' identify the poor economy with Democratic governors.Similar divisions hold in states such as California and New Hampshire, experts said.As for the list of the bottom 10 states, here are their governors and their approval ratings:In Connecticut, where Malloy has the weakest approval rating, residents, "may be divided on Yankees and Red Sox, Giants and Patriots, but they are of one mind on Malloy -- he has been a disaster," said Kevin Rennie, a lawyer and a former Republican state legislator who writes on politics for theVoters in other states, however, are somewhat more forgiving.In Louisiana, Edwards was only sworn in earlier this year."Voters here have a very recent memory of former Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is given much of the blame for the current state of affairs," said Pearson Cross, a political scientist at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.Louisiana, like other states on the bottom 10 list, has also been heavily influenced by a decline in the energy sector. In addition to Louisiana, today's bottom 10 includes such energy-dependent states as Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming. In fact, two of these states -- Alaska and West Virginia -- actually ranked in the top 10 in 2013, before the full force of the energy decline was felt.Ironically, voters' understanding of the boom-and-bust patterns in the energy sector may be keeping their governors' approval ratings higher than they would otherwise be, said several experts."Most Alaskans recognize that the state's heavy dependence on oil production and tax revenues derived from it means that the fiscal health of the state suffers when production is declining and oil prices are low," said Jerry McBeath, a political scientist at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. "That's what most would blame for poor economic conditions now."For each of the six variables, we ranked the states from 1 to 50, with 1 being the best score for that variable and 50 the worst score. Once we had the 1 through 50 rankings for all six variables, we added up each state's ranking, double-weighting two of the six measures -- current unemployment and percent change in real GDP -- that we considered the most important. After adding up each state's rankings, including the double-weighted ones, we divided by eight to create an overall average ranking for each state. A rank of 1 in each category would produce an average rating of 1.0, while a rank of 50 would produce an average of 50.0. In reality, no state was perfectly strong or perfectly weak. All states had a mix of rankings, with the rankings for some variables higher than others, so the states' average rankings ranged between 13.3 and 40.6 rather than 1 to 50.
After nearly a decade as Baltimore's top lawyer, City Solicitor George A. Nilson will no longer lead the city law department, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced Friday.Her decision to replace Nilson came a day after the city faced embarrassment over his hiring of a former colleague who turned out to have neo-Nazi ties in his past. The mayor said Deputy Solicitor David Ralph will serve as interim city solicitor."The Mayor thanks Mr. Nilson for his dedicated service to the City of Baltimore and wishes him well in his future endeavor," Rawlings-Blake spokesman Anthony McCarthy said in a statement.Nilson had been city solicitor since 2007. He was paid $166,500 annually.The news came after the administration announced Thursday that it had terminated a contract with an attorney who was the subject of a Southern Poverty Law Center report.The Rawlings-Blake administration said it had fired Glen Keith Allen, 65, who had worked for years at the DLA Piper law firm until retiring in January. Allen had been working for the city since February as contract employee handling complex litigation. The city began investigating Allen's background after the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that he had a history of supporting the neo-Nazi National Alliance.In an interview Thursday with The Baltimore Sun, Allen said he was a casual member of the group in the late 1980s and early 1990s but had concluded "emphatically that that was a huge mistake."Allen was helping to defend the city in a lawsuit brought by an African-American man who alleges that police officers withheld and fabricated evidence to convict him wrongfully of murder. His termination came a week after the U.S. Department of Justice accused the Baltimore Police Department of violating civil rights, particularly in poor, black communities.Sources close to the mayor said that she had had some differences with Nilson in recent months but that the embarrassment of hiring Allen was the final straw. Nilson's last day will be Wednesday, officials said.Nilson, who has had a long career practicing both public and private law, did not respond to requests for comment.A native of Queens in New York, Nilson, 74, is a graduate of Yale Law School. He served as second-in-command in the Maryland attorney general's office in the 1970s and 1980s.In 1986, Nilson led an effort to reform campaign laws under Gov. Harry Hughes. He chaired a commission that proposed limiting the contributions of political action committees and barring lobbyists from raising money for state lawmakers. Later, Nilson become the lawyer for big tobacco companies fighting smoking bans.After working for DLA Piper, focusing on public and consumer law, Nilson was hired as city solicitor a decade ago by Mayor Sheila Dixon. As solicitor, he sat on the Board of Estimates and often emerged as a leading defender of Dixon's and, later, Rawlings-Blake's policies.While working for Rawlings-Blake, Nilson determined in 2011 that the mayor should abstain from voting on matters relating directly to Johns Hopkins Community Physicians, where her husband worked at the time. But, he argued, Rawlings-Blake was free to vote on matters involving other divisions of Hopkins. In 2012, when Comptroller Joan Pratt publicly criticized the Rawlings-Blake administration's purchase of high-tech video phones and other equipment, Nilson issued an opinion arguing the spending "was neither out of the ordinary, nor in violation of law."Appearing before the City Council, Nilson often pushed back against legislation that he argued encroached on mayoral responsibility. In doing so, Nilson sometimes clashed with City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young over high-profile bills, including Young's push to require city police to wear body cameras and force businesses to hire local residents. Nilson called those bills "illegal."Young grew so frustrated with Nilson's legal advice he drew up a charter amendment in 2013 to allow the council to hire its own attorney.On Friday, Young's spokesman, Lester Davis, said Young "wishes Mr. Nilson the best.""He respects the mayor's authority to make hiring decisions within her agency," Davis said.Councilman Bill Henry said Nilson worked to represent both the mayor's interests and the City Council, saying he took his "responsibility for being a lawyer to the whole city seriously.""It's a shame that this would have to happen," Henry said. "The solicitor has been a very conscientious public servant. Not a lot of people are willing to leave the private sector and come help the government get better."But City Councilman Brandon Scott took a different view."Accountability starts at the top," Scott said of Nilson's hiring of Allen. "This was unacceptable. In my opinion, he should have paid with his job."City Councilman Robert W. Curran said he'd "always had a good impression of [Nilson], and a good working relationship with him.""I'm sorry he had to leave under these circumstances," Curran said. "I wish David Ralph the best. I just wish George had done better vetting."
Utah, a state where even regular beer is considered too intoxicating, has made possession of heroin or cocaine a misdemeanor rather than a felony. Mississippi has reduced its prison population by 15 percent with new legislation.Several states have decriminalized marijuana for recreational use. More than a half-dozen states have passed laws restricting the use of cellphone-tracking technology by the police.Lawmakers across the country are experimenting with a range of criminal justice reforms, driven by protests, a reckoning with the effects of mass incarceration and anger over police killings. But this legislative momentum has mostly stalled in an unexpected place: New York, a state led by Democrats that outlawed the death penalty more than a decade ago and did away with the last of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, which mandated strict sentences for low-level drug offenses, in 2009.There has been hardly any legislation under the rubric of criminal justice reform passed in Albany since the governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, came to office in 2011, or in New York City since the Democratic mayor, Bill de Blasio, and many members of the City Council came to office in 2014 promising to overhaul police-community interactions.A state antishackling law passed in 2009 was expanded last year to prohibit the shackling of pregnant inmates under most circumstances. But in recent years, few laws have been passed to decriminalize behaviors, shorten prison or jail sentences, or restrict police actions. A strict medical marijuana law passed in 2014. Before that the last notable legislative action of this kind was in 2010, when the state forced the New York Police Department to stop maintaining a database of people who had been stopped by the police but were not found to have engaged in wrongdoing.As a growing list of police departments from Ferguson, Mo., to Baltimore are being rebuked for unconstitutional practices, some leaders in Albany and at City Hall have embraced the mantle of progressive criminal justice reform. But they have stopped short of enshrining broad change in law.Their reluctance is, in some ways, tethered to an enduring unease about public safety in New York, particularly in New York City. Statistics show street crime at historic lows, but many people say in polls that crime is worsening. Any effort to place new limits on law enforcement or to reduce punishments could prove perilous for politicians should a spike in crime occur.We have to be fair to victims of crime, State Senator Patrick Gallivan, a Republican who leads the Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee, said in defending the states unusually low age of criminal responsibility, 16. And we need to hold people accountable.Though Governor Cuomo has backed raising the age to 18, the legislation has not moved forward. New York remains the only state other than North Carolina to routinely prosecute 16-year-olds as adults.
Holding a defendant in jail simply because they cant afford a fixed bail amount is unconstitutional, the Justice Department said in a brief it filed Thursday in a Georgia lawsuit."Bail practices that incarcerate indigent individuals before trial solely because of their inability to pay for their release violate the Fourteenth Amendment," the department said in an amicus brief, referring to the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution."Fixed bail schedules that allow for the pretrial release of only those who can play, without accounting for the ability to pay unlawfully discriminate based on indigence," said the department.The friend-of-the-court brief marks the first time the Justice Department has submitted a legal opinion in a federal court on bail systems in state and local courts. It also is the most direct action by the Obama administration to push states to reform court practices it has said discriminates against poorer defendants. Those defendants tend to be black, Latino, or high school dropouts, as well as those with mental illness or substance abuse problems.The Justice Department filed the brief with the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in the class-action lawsuit of Maurice Walker, a Georgia man who spent six days in jail in the city of Calhoun because he couldnt pay the $160 bail amount for a misdemeanor charge.Mr. Walker was arrested in September, and charged with a misdemeanor of walking while intoxicated. According to a Calhoun ordinance, the charge carried a preset bail of $160 for Walker to avoid jail before his first appearance before the judge. Walker  who said he lives on $540 a month in Social Security disability benefits  was unable to pay that amount. So, he remained in prison following his arrest while he waited for his first court appearance before a municipal judge.
Ohio officials do not intend to follow the lead of the federal government in abandoning private prison operations.The U.S. Justice Department said Thursday it will phase out using private prisons for federal inmates, citing findings that 14 privately operated facilities around the country had more safety and contraband issues than government-run operations."They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department's Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security," Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote in a memo.The federal government began tapping private prisons about 15 years ago because of overcrowding. Private facilities housed 22,000 prisoners at the end of last year, roughly 12 percent of the total federal prison population, an inspector general report said.Ohio has no no private federal prisons. The Elkton Federal Correctional Institution in Lisbon, Ohio, is federally operated. The low security prison has 2,339 inmates.JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said in a statement that despite the federal findings, the state prison agency is satisfied with the two privately operated facilities in the state and has no plan to end the contracts."Ohio law requires no less than two privately operated prisons. Both facilities in Ohio perform in a manner that is safe and secure, as demonstrated by their contractually required accreditation status by the American Correctional Association and compliance with Ohio internal management audit standards. Ohio's two privately operated facilities are considered full partners within our prison system."The North Central Correctional Complex in Marion is operated by Management & Training Corporation of Centerville, Utah. The Lake Erie Correctional Institution in Conneaut in Ashtabula County is operated by the Corrections Corporation of America of Nashville, Tenn.By law, both prisons must save the state at least five percent annually compared to the cost of public operation of the facilities.Smith said the Lake Erie facility met nearly 100 percent of mandatory and non-mandatory standards set by the American Correctional Association, a national accrediting body, and scored nearly identically on state standards. The North Central prison also met nearly 100 percent of the association and state requirements.Christopher Mabe, president of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, the union representing prison employees, called the federal decision "very exciting news. We hope Ohio officials follow the lead of the Department of Justice.""Private prisons are a failed experiment," Mabe said. "It's time to stop locking people up for the sake of a dollar."Mabe disputed the state savings for private prisons, arguing the state supplements private operators with personnel and maintenance expenses that are not counted in the total cost.The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio has a long-standing campaign against private prisons, saying they pay employees low wages and provide less safe conditions for inmates and staff.
Gov. Bruce Rauner on Friday used his amendatory veto power to rewrite a bill that would have ended the state's growing practice of suing prison inmates to recover the costs of their incarceration -- effectively killing the legislation, according to the bill's two sponsors.The bill from state Sen. Daniel Biss, D-Evanston, and Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, now goes back to the General Assembly with Rauner's addition of a financial threshold that would be determined by officials at the Illinois Department of Corrections. Inmates who have less than the threshold in their bank or prison accounts would be shielded from the controversial lawsuits.The General Assembly can accept Rauner's rewrite, override it or let it die. Biss and Cassidy said Friday they likely do not have the votes to override the veto."The bill is dead now because of the governor's actions, and that is a travesty," Biss said Friday, noting that the bill had passed the Senate and House with a narrow margin. "He killed a bill that would have eliminated a wasteful and immoral program."Rauner, in a message with his veto, said that while he recognized that the lawsuits could make it more difficult for some inmates to rejoin society, he wanted to prevent offenders -- particularly violent offenders with "significant assets" -- from profiting from their crimes.He pointed to John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer who tried to sell his paintings before he was executed in 1994, as an example."While I agree that this power should be used sparingly and judiciously," Rauner said, "there are circumstances when it is warranted."Cassidy, though, said state law already prohibits inmates from profiting from their crimes, making Rauner's rewrite of the bill unnecessary.Cassidy said that if anybody should be able to sue prison inmates for their assets, it should be crime victims and not the state."He said he wants to eliminate wasteful programs and he wants to reform our criminal justice system," Cassidy said of the governor after she learned of the amendatory veto. "This runs counter to that. ... This has nothing to do with criminals profiting from their crimes."Illinois is one of at least 43 states that allows officials to try to recoup what often are called room-and-board fees from prisoners and parolees. Critics say such lawsuits recover little money, are overly punitive and make it more difficult for prisoners to get back on their feet after their release. And a Tribune story in November showed the lawsuits often targeted inmates with little money and few prospects.Attorney General Lisa Madigan, whose office filed the lawsuits following referrals from prison officials, supported the legislation, saying the lawsuits raised little money and raised difficult moral questions. The corrections department took no position on the measure.An IDOC spokeswoman said it was premature to comment on Rauner's move before legislators have a chance to act on the change.The law that allowed the state to sue prisoners and parolees for the cost of their incarceration dates to 1982. Corrections officials do not appear to have used it much until last year, when the number of lawsuits jumped from two each in 2012 and 2013 to 11 in 2015.Among the cases the Tribune focused on was that of Johnny Melton, who served 15 months for a drug conviction. Prison officials targeted Melton after he received nearly $32,000 from the settlement of a lawsuit over his mother's death in a nursing home, according to records. When he was released from prison early last year, Melton was forced to go to a homeless shelter and applied for food stamps.He died in June destitute, according to his family.In other cases, the state sued prisoners who received relatively modest sums of money, whether through an inheritance, a trust fund or, like Melton, a wrongful death settlement. The state has recovered more than $500,000 since 2010, but about $415,000 of that was obtained from just two prisoners. The amount the state recovered was a fraction of the prison system's $1.5 billion budget.
On Sunday, in the morning, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC and Mrs de Jersey returned to Brisbane from an official visit to Cairns and Townsville.
GIS

22 August 2016: A Ministerial Committee chaired by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Pravind Jugnauth, has been set up to monitor the timely implementation of the measures announced in the 2016-2017 Budget.

The Committee will be assisted by three Task Forces that will ensure proper coordination, prompt implementation of the measures, rapid elimination of bottlenecks, enhanced service delivery of the public sector, and faster realisation of projects and programmes.

The three main areas of focus are: (a) Public Infrastructure Projects  Task Force chaired by the Minister of Public Infrastructure and Land Transport; (b) Quality of Life and Poverty Alleviation - Task Force chaired by the Minister of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research ; and (c) Economy - Task Force chaired by the Minister of Agro-Industry and Food Security.
Improving efficiency

Hunting license issues

Lean Facts

Raimondo's Lean Initiative

(TNS)  Hunters have to obtain a state license for each species they want to pursue  deer, turkeys, beavers. Even crows and weasels.The method of hunting  gun versus trapping, for example  needs another license.Special permits are also required for certain areas in Rhode Island.And some 17,000 hunters have to seek licenses every year.The end result is 113,210 forms processed manually by a single state Department of Environmental Management worker. The paper alone costs taxpayers $30,000.Taxpayers deserve better, said Gov. Gina Raimondo.She signed an executive order her first year in office to borrow a strategy from the manufacturing industry to fix some of the problems associated with obtaining hunting permits  and multiple other inefficient processes throughout state government.Lean, as it is called, is responsible for multiple improvements started or coming with, as Raimondo characterized them: things that frankly bother Rhode Islanders when they interact with state government.As the state treasurer, Raimondo first started to use the Lean management method to cut waste, improve workflow and deliver better services in her office.The whole concept is you ask the people who are doing the job on how to do it better? she explained. How can we make this faster and cheaper? They are the ones who have the answers.A big aspect of the approach is to identify a process with problems and pick it apart in meetings  mapping out each step on giant paper taped on a wall with sticky notes that, depending on the color, indicate good and bad aspects to the current method. Typical meetings take 18 hours split over six, three-hour sessions.At some point, the meetings shift to what alternative process is better, and participants are encouraged to give suggestions. An action plan to get from Point A to Point B is then agreed upon. Some changes can be made immediately while others may need legislation, technology upgrades or more planning. Monitoring the progress, and tweaking when necessary, is also part of Lean, especially since it emphasizes "continuous improvement."A four-year backlog of the crime victims compensation program, more than 900 claims, were processed in months because of Lean, Raimondo said. Response time to victims, she added, is now within two weeks.DEM Director Janet Coit was also using Lean, which she incorporated shortly after taking over in 2011. She learned about it from a senior staffer who reached out to Karl Wadensten, president of VIBCO Vibrators in Richmond (which makes industrial vibrators used in dump trucks and asphalt repair), and a member of the states Commerce Corporation, who has been promoting and teaching the process around the country for the past 16 years.I think what strikes me the most is the humility that we are all learning from one another, Coit said. While we need leadership, we have to be connected with the workforce to get the feedback and act on it. Its a cycle of trust.In addition to the process meetings, called kaizens, which means improvement in Japanese, management and staff are trained and encouraged to learn from each other and see what they all do day to day.Both she and Raimondo said with that thinking  everyone is necessary for the right solution  no one has been laid off or fired because of the Lean initiative. There is more than enough work to do.Coit and Raimondo discussed making it a statewide effort when Raimondo transitioned to governor. She signed the executive order in April 2015. Wadensten was immediately on board to help.The relationships I have formed with other states, and seeing what they are doing, I said, Jeez, they have 4 to 10 and sometimes 20 times the population of us, Wadensten said. If they are doing all these things, there is no way we cant do it in Rhode Island.The budget that year had $100,000 to start the initiative  which included mandatory training for all staff, pairing department leaders with Lean mentors from the business sector, and designating Lean ambassadors within each department to continue the work into future years. The Rhode Island Foundation gave an additional $111,000 to help.The General Assembly removed $100,000 from the budget to continue with Lean into Year 2. Raimondo is going to use remaining money from year one, and those who are trained, to continue the efforts. She plans to put a request for money in again next year.The real breakthroughs, said Coit, are the kaizens. There have been 55 processes identified throughout the state, and 38 kaizens held so far for issues such as labor grievances, liquor licenses, the Department of Children, Youth and Families hotline, data collection from the health department, pothole claims and even intern selection for the public safety department.That flow of information, she said, when you get the right people in the room, its intensive, and we really scope out what the problem in the process is rather than blame the people.A kaizen to streamline hunting licenses in November 2015 discovered no one in DEM knew the entire process from start to finish  even though several thought they knew it, said Michaela K. Brockmann, its programming services officer and a designated Lean team member.Its chart had 89 sticky notes  only 20 of which had good remarks on them. The remaining notes talked about the problems, or as Wadensten called it, the ugly.No multiyear licenses, one said. No email address collected. One-third of vendors are late. Delay in state receiving funds.And all paper. Rhode Island is the only state that doesnt allow hunters to apply online for licenses.The group ultimately agreed to five things it must do, including having a paperless process; creating a database for the hunters and making sure vendors sell the full complement of licenses.The General Assembly approved legislation to allow hunters to apply online, which could be in place in a year. That change and others, DEM said, will result in improvements, such as a 75-percent reduction in the steps used in the current process; a decrease in printing and postage costs by 80 percent; and speedier money going to the state with online payments.But Rose Amoros Jones, chief public affairs officer at DEM, said that has not changed the fact that hunters need a license for nearly every animal, every season, every weapon, every trap, every year. They'll need to get a bill passed for that.: A management philosophy that uses a collaborative team effort to improve performance and remove waste. A key element is to bring everyone together to scrutinize every stage and aspect of a process, and then come up with a more efficient, streamlined strategy.: Although there are many thoughts of its roots, many say lean  as it's used today  started with the Toyota Motor Corporation in the 1930s when founder Kiichiro Toyoda hoped to repair poor, manufacturing quality by having an intense study of each stage of the process. He eventually developed "Kaizen" improvement teams.: Have employee training and meetings called "kaizens" to sort out problems within a process. Corrective action steps are key to Lean. The elimination of waste is the goal, and there are different types of waste identified such as "muri"  all the unreasonable work that management imposes on workers and machines because of poor organizationThe governor and other state officials believe the Lean philosophy has resulted in many improvements for residents and others who do business with state government as well as boosted morale among state employees. Here are some examples:45 minutes to 9 minutes: The reduction in call wait times to the unemployment insurance center at the Department of Labor & Training during a peak day. "Embracing the Peak" training, staff adjustments and standardizing the work also reduced calls by up to 1,000 calls per month.8.6 days to 2.3 days: The reduction in the time it takes the Department of Motor Vehicles to make new titles. It was done by reducing the number of people required in the process and prioritizing "title runs," as they are called, to be processed in the morning.65 days to 33 days: Creation of a standard electronic application for agency licensing at the Department of Children, Youth and Families is projected to reduce incomplete applications and cut decision time in half.6 to 9 months to 3 months: Legislation was passed to allow the state to more efficiently reimburse gas station owners when they complete cleanup actions on their properties. The turnaround time for payment dropped to 3 months by eliminating the need for approval from the Underground Storage Tank Fund board that had difficulty achieving quorums to meet.A 4-year backlog of more than 900 claims with the crime victims compensation program in the state treasurer's office was eliminated, and response time is now within two weeks by putting some aspects of the program online, volunteers initially working evening and weekends to tackle the backlog and a department-wide commitment to putting the victims first.The Office of Customer & Technical Assistance at the Department of Environmental Management, in Providence, was created - a one-stop resource for people needing information and assistance with applying for permits - to eliminate the need for people to go to multiple locations, particularly when a project needs multiple permits, and the unnecessary step of an administration review.SOURCE: Rhode Island Department of Administration, Department of Environmental Management, Department of Revenue and Governor Raimondo's Office
ProPublicas reporting on the water crisis in the American West has highlighted any number of confounding contradictions worsening the problem: Farmers are encouraged to waste water so as to protect their legal rights to its dwindling supply in the years ahead; Las Vegas sought to impose restrictions on water use while placing no checks on its explosive population growth; the federal government has encouraged farmers to improve efficiency in watering crops, but continues to subsidize the growing of thirsty crops such as cotton in desert states like Arizona.Today, we offer another installment in the contradictions amid a crisis.In parts of the western U.S., wracked by historic drought, you can get a tax break for using an abundance of water.Ah, no. But we understand your bafflement. The Colorado River has been trickling, its largest reservoirs less than half full. As recently as 2014 parts of Texas literally almost dried up. The National Academy of Sciences predicts the Southwest may be on the cusp of its worst dry spell in 1,000 years. Scientists are warning that the backup plan  groundwater aquifers from California to Nebraska  are all being sucked dry.But, yes, the tax break exists  in parts of eight High Plains states.Heres how it works: Farmers  or anyone who uses water in a business  can ask the Internal Revenue Service for a tax write-off for whats called a depleted asset. In certain places, water counts as an asset, just like oil, or minerals like copper. The more water gets used, the more cash credit farmers can claim against their income tax. And thats just what almost 3,000 Texas landowners in just one water district appear to have done last year  a year in which nearly half of Texas was in a state of severe or extreme drought.A bunch it seems, especially if youre a big farm and own a lot of land. We talked to an accountant in Levelland, Texas. He had a client who wrote off $10,000. Whenever you buy land, youre getting the dirt  and of course you are getting the water, said Sham Myatt, the accountant. And the idea is that that water is part of what you paid for in the land deal. If the aquifer was 50 feet deep at the time of the land sale, and it drops 10 feet in a dry year, then the farmer can deduct one-fifth of the value, and so on, until all the water is gone.No. Its not. In fact its an incentive to do the exact opposite. A farmer who tries to use less water because of the drought, say, by switching to really efficient irrigation techniques, could actually make less money. His water might last longer, but producing his crop would get a lot more expensive.We called Nicholas Brozovic, an associate professor of agricultural economics and director of policy at the University of Nebraskas Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Institute. Hed actually never heard of the water deduction; its that obscure. But he laid out some textbook economics: If youre overusing your water, then you are depreciating it, he said. And if the government pays for that, they are subsidizing that depreciation. The more you deplete your groundwater, the higher your tax exemption and that must create an incentive not to conserve, he said.We called the IRS, and they initially shared our doubts. Not because they cared much about groundwater (its a tax agency!) but because they said they were pretty sure no such deduction was legal. They pointed us to section 613 of the tax code, and it couldnt be more explicit: For the purposes of deducting the depreciating value of minerals, the definition does not include soil, sod, dirt, turf,, or mosses. Ok, who would ever have thought of deducting mosses or sod? But anyway. That left us really confused.We encouraged the IRS to check again. They did. And then they found the provision they thought didnt exist  right there in the text for Revenue Rule 65296. An IRS spokesperson laid out for us the specifics: Taxpayers are entitled to a cost depletion deduction for the exhaustion of their capital investment in the ground water extracted and disposed of by them in their business of irrigation farming specifically from the Ogallala Formation.For sure. We asked for clarification. The IRS said it would try to explain. Most importantly, they wanted to say it wasnt quite as crazy as it sounded. The deduction is only available for one small part of the country  an area that includes parts of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado. And it should only apply if people are using water from a source that is running dry anyway.Yes, thats why it is whats called a depleted asset. Its of less and less value with every day. Your car is worth less the moment you drive it off the lot. Or, more similarly, oil companies track the falling value of their reserves the more they pump out from underground. In fact, energy companies have been taking oil depletion breaks for decades. Texas landowners would say their property is getting less valuable the less water there is to use on it.Wrong. Ouch. I know, it hurts. But ProPublica last year wrote about all the ways water is coveted and controlled  and then often wasted  by just a few powerful groups. In most of the West, only some people and businesses have rights to it, depending on who showed up to claim it first. One big trend is that water is increasingly being bought and sold  including by hedge funds and big Wall Street investors, and the less water there is, the more the price is going up.About 50 years ago. A farmer in the Texas panhandle  along with his local water district  successfully sued the IRS, arguing that the roughly 200 million gallons he drew from his groundwater each year was no different than the depletion of the states other great natural resource, oil. He won, and the IRS was obliged to create rule 65296  the special allowance for tax credits that the IRS almost forgot about.Again, it was supposed to be limited  just to a slice of Texas and eastern New Mexico. The court even went so far as to warn that the case shouldnt become a precedent for groundwater tax claims elsewhere, saying the conditions in that area of the country were unique. But it didnt take long for the rule to be expanded, albeit just a little bit. By the mid 1980s any landowner overlying the sprawling Ogallala aquifer  a giant underground vault of precious but dwindling water  was eligible to file for the deductions, not just in North Texas and New Mexico.Well, the Ogallala, which spans from central Texas north to Nebraska and South Dakota is the nations largest groundwater reserve and is one of the most important, and (famously) threatened water supplies in the country. Its heavy overuse and plummeting water levels rang alarms among policymakers more than half a century ago. So this is no insignificant place to be even indirectly encouraging overuse. Texas High Plains are one of the most intensely irrigated and productive farming regions in the country. Hundreds of thousands of acres of cotton and corn, among other staple commodities, are grown there using this Ogallala water.We looked at recent water level changes in just one district  the one with thousands of tax credit claims  and found a disturbing trend. Underground water levels in the 16 counties of the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District have dropped nearly 10 feet over the last 10 years. Some parts of Castro County saw water levels drop more than five feet over the course of 2015 alone. The federal government estimates nearly 100 cubic miles of water have been withdrawn from the Ogallala in that part of Texas. That doesnt automatically mean the tax credits are responsible  water levels are dropping in most places thanks to overuse and it would take a lot more research to link up the cause and effect. But it certainly isnt a portrait of sustainability.Not yet. But that could change, as water supplies worsen and word of the tax break circulates more widely. Almost no one we spoke with had heard of it  not water lawyers in Arizona or groundwater conservation scientists in California. Armed with the knowledge, theres a pretty good chance farmers and businesses across the West could seek tax relief.Exactly.They say its very unlikely, mostly because they think the conditions in the Ogallala are rare, and that the agencys policy is to reject water allowance claims anywhere outside of the places covered in the original lawsuit. But if more landowners, in more places, were to file suits challenging the IRS to allow them to deduct for their water, or if they were to petition the IRS directly, the agency says it would undertake a review to consider it on a case by case basis. Landowners would have to present extensive scientific evidence that showed their situation was more or less the same as in North Texas.Fair question. John Leshy, professor emeritus at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, and a former solicitor for the U.S. Department of Interior, isnt persuaded. The IRS has really created a can of worms for itself, he said. It doesnt have any hydrological expertise.Its hard to tell, partly because no one appears to have examined that question. We asked the IRS for data on the number of claims and it hasnt responded. Folks in Texas dismiss the suggestion that the tax benefits are incentivizing water use as ludicrous. Myatt, the accountant, points out that only about one-third of the deducted value translates to cash in hand, and says for many smaller farmers that amounts to just a few hundred dollars. Jason Coleman, manager of the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District, says his members are as concerned about conserving their water for the future as anyone. Its already a declining resource, he said. I just cant imagine someone saying Im going to depreciate our resource any more because of a tax claim.But the academic consensus is that incentives encourage use, even overuse. And if the effect of depletion allowances on oil production are any guide  Leshy says they have spurred overproduction and led to artificially cheap, subsidized fuel prices  any significant expansion of the groundwater tax credit to other states could have lasting impacts on the way groundwater is used across the country.Not really, which is why people like Brent Blackwelder, president emeritus of the environmental group Friends of the Earth, which has long been involved in rooting out tax policy disincentives to conservation, are fuming. Its a pretty major outrage that we would so stupidly reward the over extraction and non-sustainable use of groundwater, he told me. Blackwelder helped push to purge the tax code of perverse anti-conservation incentives like this one way back in the Reagan administration, with the 1986 Tax Reform Act. They were largely successful, weeding out several other odd loopholes. But the groundwater depletion allowance persisted. And since then, apparently, its been forgotten about by all but the farmers who rely on it.
Massachusetts is the first state to tax ride sharing.The move, coming after Gov. Charlie Baker signed H.4570 into law this month, introduces a nationally unique package of regulations for Uber, Lyft and others in the growing industry. The state will take 20 cents per ride  which the companies cant add onto customers rates  and redistribute it among local governments, the states transportation fund and the taxi industry.Adrian Durbin, a spokesperson for Lyft, confirmed withthat this is the first such state fee the company is aware of.The money will largely go to fund transportation infrastructure, and each local governments share of the money will be based on how many rides originate within its borders. The last part  5 cents per ride going to the taxi industry, which acts as a competitor to ride sharing  will only last until 2022.On top of that, the bill introduces what Bakers office referred to as the strongest state background check system in the nation for ride share drivers. Thats been a controversial piece of the state regulation conversation as governments have grappled with the many unforeseen issues related to the gig economy business model. In Massachusetts, the answer comes in the form of requiring companies like Uber to check whether a potential driver has been convicted of any sexual offenses, robbery or fraud, and hasnt had more than four traffic violations in the past three years  among other things.The legislation sweetened the pot for ride sharing companies, though, as it gives them the ability to send drivers to Boston Logan International Airportand the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Logan International Airport is the 18th-busiest airport in the U.S., according to Airports Council International , serving more than 33 million passengers in 2015.Nestled into the bill are some other technologically minded caveats. The state will set up a task force to examine, among other issues, the impact that automated vehicles might have on the ride for hire industry, the feasibility of creating incentives for alternative fuel vehicles in ride sharing, and the possibility of linking ride sharing apps with emergency response agencies.This regulatory framework includes many of our own proposals to embrace disruptive technology and prioritize public safety to give consumers safe and reliable travel choices, Baker said in a statement
(TNS) -- When UCSF prostate cancer patient Joe Casserly agreed to participate in a clinical trial, researchers handed him a Fitbit.What I loved about the Fitbit, or any kind of device like this, is it gave me quantitative data for what Im doing, said Casserly, 58, of San Francisco, an IT asset manager for a large architectural and engineering firm.Consumer activity trackers like Fitbit are increasing becoming a tool used by researchers in clinical trials like Casserlys, which look at activities that could stop diseases from progressing or recurring.More than 100 studies listed on the federal governments trial-tracking website feature Fitbits, with smaller numbers relying on the Apple Watch or Jawbone, Garmin, Pebble and other devices.Wearables have made their way into the precision-oriented world of clinical trials in part because patients like them, theyre easy to use and more convenient for participants than coming to a clinic to be monitored. While the devices may lack clinical-grade accuracy, particularly when it comes to heart-rate technology and tracking calorie burning, they are considered far more accurate that self-reported data.Casserly, who had not used an activity monitor before, became a convert. Once (the trial) was over, I turned it in and bought myself one, he said.Wearable health devices are big business, and their popularity gives researchers another way to monitor patients participating in a wide range of trials. Researchers are using them to study sleep patterns among adolescents, physical rehabilitation of heart patients, the relationship between activity and epilepsy in children and ways to reduce the risk of falling among seniors.The U.S. wearable health care market, estimated at $2 billion in 2014, is expected to jump to more than $41 billion in 2020, driven primarily by the need to track such medical conditions as obesity, diabetes, sleep disorders and cardiovascular disease, according to data from Soreon Research survey released in May by the Association of Clinical Research Organizations described the use of wearables as a huge opportunity for increased efficiency and convenience in clinical trials.Oaklands Samuel Merritt University, in collaboration with San Francisco State University, is using the devices to study mobility in patients with multiple sclerosis. Meanwhile, UCSF is involved in a number of trials using health-tracking wearables, particularly with cancer patients.June Chan, UCSF professor of epidemiology, biostatistics and urology, said researchers are going beyond standard activity tracking. Chan is recruiting prostate cancer patients for a more complex trial using wearables that synch with a custom app to deliver personalized exercise sessions.Not only is the wearable a motivational tool for the participant and a device for collecting objective heart-rate data for research, but it is syncing with a custom-made app, she said.While some trials rely on existing wearables, other trials are testing prototypes that could help people better manage their health, such as monitoring pain or helping patients comply with their medication regimens, said Harry Wang, senior director of research at the Dallas market research and consulting firm Parks Associates Wang said theres still debate over how valuable the data from Fitbits and other consumer monitoring devices will be. This is in the very early stages of exploring and determining how much value this consumer data will have and how much it adds to the clinical trial process, he said.Fitbit is betting on the value of its information. The San Francisco company announced last month that with its Fitabase research, it has collected more than 2 billion bits of Fitbit data on behalf of research customers.Supporting the research community is critical to our efforts as we continue to grow as a digital health company, said Amy McDonough, vice president and general manager of Fitbit Group Health, in a statement.Still, concerns over privacy and accuracy continue.Fitbit is involved in a class-action lawsuit regarding the accuracy of its heart-rate monitoring . The study by the Association of Clinical Research Organizations, which represents medical researchers , urged federal regulators to offer more guidance for using the devices in trials, particularly when it comes to data security and privacy.But Jeff Moroso of Pacifica, who was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2013, didnt hesitate to participate in a UCSF trial that used Fitbit to monitor his activity.Anything I can do for UCSF by the way of research, Im on it, he said. I like helping out. Theres known research that shows the more exercise you get after cancer, the longer youll live.While the study gave patients a secure sign-in to access their data, the 71-year-old retired contractor said he doesnt care if anyone finds out that he logs more than 10,000 steps a day  often more than three times that.I dont have anything to hide, Moroso said.
Felipe Nasr took a bid for a works seat in formula one all the way to the top last week, according to a Brazilian media outlet.

Last week, the Sauber driver was forced to deny claims he took a side in Brazil's controversial current political situation by visiting the acting president Michel Temer.

"I didn't come to show support," the Brazilian insisted to O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper, "I came as a representative of Brazil to show my willingness to help the country."

However, the Rio-based newspaper O Globo claims that Nasr was accompanied to the meeting not only by his manager Steve Robertson, but also an official of the Brazilian state Parana.

In Parana, there is a Renault road car factory, and O Globo claims that Nasr's presidential visit was not just a simple meet and greet.

"The Sauber driver was asking for help in trying to convince Renault to hire him for the 2017 season," the report said.

(GMM)
Cabinet Meeting Only For Sindhu?

When Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu held a cabinet meeting on Saturday, people naturally expected that he would announce some crucial decisions concerning public. But they were surprised when Naidu announced hardly any decisions, except for announcing sops to badminton player Sindhu for winning Olympic medal.

This came in for sharp criticism from YSR Congress party. Senior leader of the party Ummareddy Venkateshwarlu alleged that the cabinet meeting has failed to discuss the core issues like special status and was a disappointment to the multitude of people which had high expectations.

"When Chandrababu Naidu came to brief the media about the cabinet meeting the expectations were high but he has utterly disappointed the people as it seems the core issues like special status, inadequate central funds, farmers issues, investment plans, deficit rainfall and others were not touched but for sanctioning land for a temple and a joint venture and sops to Olympian PV Sindhu," Ummareddy said.

It seems the State has given up the issue of special status as he did not speak to the Prime Minister on the issue but has shown great vigour in sanctioning lands to interested ventures. There has been no review on the Rs 4.67 lakh crore investment promised in the Partnership Summit.

The state had released water to cater to only 50 % of the actual needs. Farmers who turned into defaulters as Chandrababu Naidu has failed to fulfill his promise of loan waiver are bearing the brunt due to lack of water and no source of finance for the sowing season, he said.
Lalos chilled chileatole with lump crab. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

It was only a matter of time before Gerardo Gonzalez outgrew the 350-square-foot, 15-stool El Rey Coffee Bar & Luncheonette, where he made his name serving Cal-Mex small plates like vegan chicharrones and an eggy, chimichurri-splashed elaboration of avocado toast. Now, with new partners from nearby Aussie joint Dudleys, he expands his scale and creative scope with a restaurant nearly triple the size.

Lalo (the diminutive of Gerardo) will occupy the former premises of Chinatown karaoke bar Winnies, where Gonzalez aims to entice the diverse Civic Center precinct  lawyers and judges and jurors, and people getting married, as well as tourists and everyone else  with border-crossing cuisine and a quick, cheap set-menu lunch option that reflects the chefs fondness for the intimacy of the old-fashioned lunch counter. Prospective customers shouldnt expect El Reys exact same brand of SoCal health food, but rather what Gonzalez calls hippie Chicano cuisine.

You will probably never see a kale salad from me again, says the chef, who is also poised to forsake the avocado, at least in its common guise. Hed rather exploit the fruits good fats in the occasional dessert, or the avocado taramasalata that he created for a collaboration with Russ & Daughters Cafe, one of his favorite New York restaurants (the other is B&H Dairy). Growing up in San Diego as the son of Mexican immigrants, Gonzalez had little exposure to the Ashkenazi kitchen: To me its the most exotic food  New Yorkstyle smoked fish and knishes and kasha varnishkes. Which is why youll find a smoked-sable scramble on his lunch menu, alongside mofongo and a vegan Caesar. But he also intends to investigate the intersection of Turkish doner and Mexican al pastor and make his own tortillas to accompany carnitas. There was this place called Porkyland across the highway from my grandmas house, and they made the most amazing flour tortillas, he says. I want to explore that.

Chorizo-and-hibiscus-stuffed squid. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

Roasted squash with shaved mojama, gomasio, lemon, and tahini. Photo: Bobby Doherty/New York Magazine

104 Bayard St., nr. Baxter St.; no phone yet; Oct.

*This article appears in the August 22, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
Post-sipping sycamore sap & tasting literally wild & unimaginably delicious dishes at DAMON BAEHREL pic.twitter.com/i8BEeAE532  Page and Dornenburg (@KarenAndAndrew) August 12, 2016

As the legend of hermit chef Damon Baehrel goes, his upstate New York restaurant is the worlds most exclusive dining room (reservations are said to be booked out for a decade), nearly everything he serves is from his own property, and his idiosyncratic Native Harvest cuisine is the product of something like divine inspiration. The mystique surrounding Baehrel has grown in recent years, as the dining world, increasingly aware of farm-to-table myth-making, has became fascinated with the man making acorn and cedar flour in the woods for his impossible-to-get-into restaurant. For well-heeled restaurantgoers who prize exclusivity over all else, its become the place to dine.

According to Baehrel, his restaurant serves thousands of people a year, is booked through 2025, and has been visited by the likes of Rene Redzepi and Aziz Ansari. As is often the case in the food world, the story may be too good to be true. In the latest issue of The New Yorker, writer Nick Paumgarten set out to dine at and learn about the restaurant  only to find that not everything is as it seems. Both Ansari and Redzepi insist theyve never been; Baehrel refuses to disclose his suppliers; and Paumgarten becomes suspicious of just how many people the restaurant even serves. The entire story is truly fascinating. And there are some great takeaways.

1. Baehrel claims to have invented his style of hyper-local cooking  which he dubs Native Harvest  after casually realizing everything he needed to cook was growing on his property. Then he didnt sleep for three days straight. These moments of inspiration happen regularly: One time, he says, it occurred to him that pine needles make the soil sour, and he could use their acidic properties  via pine-needle juice, powder, and pulp  to cure meats.

2. Baehrels claims that hes completely self-taught ring false. Paumgarten tracks down at least one restaurant where Baehrel worked in the past: a French bistro near Albany called Chez Rene. The former owner, Rene Facchetti, says he was the one who taught Baehrel to forage in the woods for chanterelles and other wild goodies. Baehrel, as Fachettis wife, Corrine, points out, has never acknowledged this.

3. Redzepi and Ansari arent the only influential people Baehrel claims to have hosted at his restaurant who deny ever going there. After Albany Times-Union columnist Steve Barnes published news, via Baehrel, that an official had inquired about the Obamas dining there, the White House communications office denied that claim as well.

An unforgettable day -- thank you, Damon Baehrel pic.twitter.com/TgVzEtP6ap  Page and Dornenburg (@KarenAndAndrew) August 11, 2016

4. Aside from special seatings, most of Baehrels diners may or may not be phantoms. Despite trying for several months, Paumgarten fails to track down a single diner who has been to Damon Baehrel for a conventional meal. Everyone he finds instead arranged a special seating. Paumgarten also found reason to suspect Baehrels claims about the number of seatings at his restaurant, as well as the number of reservation requests Baehrel has received.

5. Regardless, everyone raves about the food. Baehrels creations do sound revelatory and fantastically resourceful. He claims to have once found out, while chopping wood, of course, that a type of lichen tastes like onion for a few weeks every year; he uses hickory sap for brining because its salty; he soaks inedible cedar bark in water for 12 to 18 months so he can turn it into flour,;and he creates a phony egg out of cattails, pickled heirloom tomatoes, and wild-parsnip juice. During his tasting menu, Paumgarten was also served Earlton Chocolate: fermented leftovers of acorn-and-hickory-nut faux coffee.

6. Baehrel appears to believe there is an active conspiracy by locals, whom he dubs the Albany club, seeking to undermine him. He even suspects this upstate shadow group, which includes Barnes, has hacked Yelp to make it seem as if his restaurant is closed.

7. The media has been complicit in inventing Baehrels legend. A reservation list for the restaurant was showed in a segment on the ABC News digital series Garage Geniuses, but producer David Fazekas admitted that he simply made up a phony reservation roll to imitate Baehrels, like a reenactment in a documentary. Paumgarten found this out after trying to reach individuals on the list, none of whom exist.

8. If many of Baehrels claims really are false, there seems to be no reason for it. The chef is, by all accounts, extremely talented, and the myth-making allows him to charge high prices (around $400 per person for a multi-hour tasting menu). But if he only serves a small number of diners each week, it wouldnt add up to a big haul. Instead, Paumgarten writes, Baehrel has concocted a canny fulfillment of a particular foodie fantasy: an eccentric hermit wrings strange masterpieces from the woods and his scrabbly back yard. The extreme locavore, pure of spade and larder. The toughest ticket in town.
Samsung is planning a refurbished smartphone program for next year, according to "a person with direct knowledge of the matter" who spoke to Reuters about this. The program will involve only the Korean company's premium models. The source doesn't name models, but we wouldn't be surprised if it applied to such handsets as the Galaxy Note7, S7, and S7 edge only (and possibly some of their predecessors).

Samsung will refurbish the units that are returned to it by users of one-year upgrade plans in markets such as the US and South Korea. After the refurbishment is complete, the company will sell the devices once more, but at lower prices than what you'd need to pay for a new unit of course.

Exactly how much cheaper the refurbs will be compared to a new phone hasn't been mentioned, unfortunately. We also don't know where such manufacturer-refurbished high-end Samsung phones will be available, though the US and South Korea seem like pretty safe bets given that they will be the markets in which the handsets were originally used. Additionally, it's unclear how much the refurbishing process will alter the devices, but typically this can involve replacing the battery or the casing.

Apple already sells refurbished iPhones in some markets, and Samsung probably wants to follow suit in order to fend off Chinese competitors that are offering budget-priced smartphones with good or even great specs. The logic here is that some people may choose a refurbished Samsung Galaxy Note7 over a OnePlus 3, for example - if this were to happen today and if this program would succeed in making the Note7 a lot cheaper than it is when buying a new one.

Source
Job Archive July 2021 (524) June 2021 (681) May 2021 (698) April 2021 (659) March 2021 (688) February 2021 (615) January 2021 (699) December 2020 (714) November 2020 (671) October 2020 (631) September 2020 (690) August 2020 (713) July 2020 (713) June 2020 (690) May 2020 (713) April 2020 (690) March 2020 (713) February 2020 (667) January 2020 (713) December 2019 (713) November 2019 (687) October 2019 (711) September 2019 (689) August 2019 (711) July 2019 (707) June 2019 (688) May 2019 (2002) April 2019 (1979) March 2019 (2039) February 2019 (1689) January 2019 (2253) December 2018 (2100) November 2018 (1933) October 2018 (1986) September 2018 (1915) August 2018 (39) July 2018 (72) June 2018 (44) May 2018 (76) April 2018 (65) March 2018 (16) February 2018 (32) January 2018 (201) December 2017 (352) November 2017 (381) October 2017 (600) September 2017 (1211) August 2017 (1655) July 2017 (1590) June 2017 (1506) May 2017 (1902) April 2017 (1965) March 2017 (1417) February 2017 (1808) January 2017 (1807) December 2016 (1593) November 2016 (1376) October 2016 (1408) September 2016 (1317) August 2016 (1499) July 2016 (1505) June 2016 (1421) May 2016 (1391) April 2016 (1340) March 2016 (1476) February 2016 (1396) January 2016 (1474) December 2015 (1409) November 2015 (1367) October 2015 (1478) September 2015 (1442) August 2015 (1468) July 2015 (1465) June 2015 (1410) May 2015 (1057) April 2015 (1269) March 2015 (1132) February 2015 (1152) January 2015 (1153) December 2014 (1156) November 2014 (1268) October 2014 (81)




Haiti - Politic : NOTICE to sea workers





The Directorate General of Maritime and Navigation Service (SEMANAH) reminds shipowners and sailors that the seaman's book (livret professionnel maritime) is mandatory for the exercise of the sailor profession.



Therefore, it is requested that all maritime workers, to renew their or to register to be able to work on ships.



For the administrative and technical formalities, please refer to the nearest SEMANAH office.



A period of 30 days [until September 18] is granted to all seamen concerned to become in good standing with the Maritime Service.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping politics...





Mess at ONI ?

The Coalition of Organizations for Electoral Observation (COE) takes note of the invitation launched by the National Identification Office (ONI) to voters to visit the various offices of the ONI to validate their national identification card. In this sense, the Coalition made itself the duty to inform the Electoral Council that many citizens have appearead in the various offices of the ONI, to be told that the process has not yet begun.



Meeting in Mexico around the struggle for democracy in Haiti

Friday, Guy G. Lamothe, Haiti's ambassador to Mexico, met with students of the "Universidad del Valle de Mexico" (UVM) Campus Hispano, on the political process in Latin America, the Inter-American Democratic Charter and the struggle for democracy in Haiti. Following the conference, the students in gastronomy and hotel industry have discovered the Haitian cuisine. The delegation of the Embassy was greeted by the rector Jose Gilberto Ortiz Flores and Mtro. Carlos Enrique Analco Tavera Director of the "Oficina Internacional".



End of the validation of models of ballots

Friday, the Provisional Electoral Council "CEP" concluded the process of validation of models of ballots of candidates for the senatorial elections of October 9, 2016.



Elections, 5 days of training

The CEP has launched a 5-days training days for the great trainers, who will in turn train the electoral supervisors and members of polling stations. The vice president of the CEP Carlos Hercules took the opportunity to invite interested parties to work independently in the exercise of their function.



The Finance draft law 2016-2017 unacceptable

The Deputy Mathieu Vilmar encourages members of the Commission "Economy and Finance" of the Lower House to return to the Executive the Finance draft law 2016-2017 which according to him is unacceptable because it has too many irregularities. Furthermore, he invites the Executive to include in the bill, the funds for the development of communes, which are notably absent...



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Login or sign up to follow actresses, movies & dramas and get specific updates and news

Login Sign Up

 New Ad-free Subscriber Login

Email

Password

Password Username Your E-mail will only be used to retrieve a lost password.

Stay logged in

Help
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.

06:00, 29 OCT 2022
s a CV full of multiple roles at various companies suggest an unstable job-hopper or an experienced worker seeking growth?It seems that the difference is just a matter of perception  one which is rapidly changing.As millennials, who are frequently cited as serial job-hoppers, begin to progress into management roles, their tendency towards jumping ship appears to be changing perceptions in the workplace.Whilst HR has traditionally been skeptical of candidates with a history of leaving jobs quickly, new research shows that the stigma around short-term roles is dwindling.Nearly 80% of recruiters in the US are more willing than they were a decade ago to consider executive prospects who stay in a company for less than three years, a survey of recruiters by the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants for The Wall Street Journal found.As employees increasingly focus on personal growth and look for roles that provide fresh challenges, HR faces a climate of decreasing employee loyalty.And it seems that millennials, who are set to make up 50% of the global workforce by 2020, are holding onto their title as notoriously disloyal to employers.In 2014, workers aged 25 to 34 years old had worked a median of three years for their current employer, findings from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed  compared to 5.5 years for all employees 25 and over.Some management theories suggest that employers should take a more direct approach to addressing staff turnover.The Alliance, a book co-written by Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder, suggests a model of mutual expectations for employer-employee relationships, in which the possibility of the worker leaving is openly discussed.But in recruiting future candidates, it seems employers are becoming less fearful of a history of short-lived roles.The change in attitude among recruiters suggests that hirers increasingly perceive a varied history of roles as a set of diverse experiences that can bring fresh insight; the stigma of the job-hopper may be dying out.
While the Jones House gears up for a fall indoor house concert series, the popular outdoor Friday evening summer series winds down this Friday, Aug. 26 with a showcase of North Carolina songwriters, including Jay Brown, David Childers, Aaron Burdett, and The Worthless Son-In-Laws.

The Jones House series started in June and features free performances each week from the porch of the downtown Boone community center. Patrons bring chairs and blankets, filling the front lawn under the giant maple trees. The series features local and regional musicians from a diverse array of genres and styles.

We are really excited to have so many talented acts coming to the porch to close out the 2016 series, says concerts organizer, Mark Freed. All of Fridays acts feature songwriters  some of the best from the western and Piedmont regions of the state.

The concert begins at 5:00 p.m. with Jay Brown, a longtime Boone resident and popular local musician, who has been based in Asheville for the past several years. Brown has already graced the porch this summer with his bands The Lazybirds and Swing Guitars.

Jay is a really diverse musician and one of my favorite songwriters in the state, Freed adds. He is always bringing something new to the table, including another solo album, which he released earlier this year.

David Childers is another veteran North Carolina songwriter, who has been writing and recording songs for decades. Born and raised in the North Carolina Piedmont, Childers is a lawyer and painter, but most well-known for his songs, which include The Prettiest Thing and Johnny Got a Mohawk, among many others. His Overmountain Men project, which includes Avett Brothers bass player, Bob Crawford, has helped propel Childers and his music even further.

Aaron Burdett, an Asheville-based songwriter, will follow Childers. This will be Burdetts first appearance at the Jones House. A regional favorite, Burdetts 2015 release Tinderbox was met with high praise from Americana and roots music fans.

We are excited to have Burdett at the Jones House for the first time, Freed says. He has a lot of High Country fans.

The evening will close with Boones Worthless Son-In-Laws, featuring the songwriting of guitar players Jimmy Davidson and Rob Brown. In addition to Davidson and Brown, the band features Rich Crepeau on bass and David Brewer on drums. The Alt-Indie-Rock style band formed in the High Country in 2004, releasing their debut album in 2007 and a well-received follow-up in 2013.

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 or other community center programs, please visit the Jones House online at www.joneshouse.org or call 828.268.6280

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Reddit

Pocket


(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a stockbroker and his friend with participating in an insider trading scheme to profit in advance of two major announcements out of a pharmaceutical company.

The SEC alleges that Paul T. Rampoldi coordinated the insider trading with two other brokers at his firm as well as a then-IT executive at Ardea Biosciences. The Ardea employee tipped one of the brokers ahead of the companys announcement of an agreement to license a cancer drug and later tipped him in advance of its acquisition by AstraZeneca PLC. The SEC charged the other two brokers and the Ardea employee last year.

According to the SECs complaint filed in federal court in San Diego today against Rampoldi and William Scott Blythe III, they made approximately $90,000 in illicit profits by trading ahead of those announcements based on nonpublic information that flowed to them through one of the fellow brokers who learned it from the other after he was tipped by the IT executive. It was decided that in order to evade detection by the compliance department at the brokerage firm where Rampoldi and the others worked, Blythe would fund the purchase of Ardea call option contracts in a brokerage account he held at a different brokerage firm, and they would subsequently divide the profits among them.

As a stockbroker, Rampoldi should have known better than to allegedly trade on tips about significant corporate events before they were announced, said Sharon B. Binger, Director of the SECs Philadelphia Regional Office. We further allege that Rampoldi and Blythe tried to evade detection by hiding their trading elsewhere, but to no avail.

In a parallel action, the U. S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of California today brought criminal charges against Rampoldi and Blythe.

The SECs complaint charges Rampoldi and Blythe with violating Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5. The SEC seeks permanent injunctions as well as disgorgement, interest, and penalties.
The EIU reports that the city shares tenth place with Zurich (CHE) in the 2015 Global Liveability Ranking  a ranking based on the performance of cities on 30 factors spread across the areas of education, environment, health care, infrastructure and stability.

Helsinki is one of the ten most liveable cities in the world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

The top-10 of the 140-city ranking is dominated by Australia and Canada, with Melbourne (AUS) coming in at number one, Vienna (AUT) at number two, Vancouver (CAN) at number three, Toronto (CAN) at number four, Calgary (CAN) at number five, Adelaide (AUS) at number six, Sydney (AUS) at number seven, Perth (AUS) at number eight and Auckland (NZL) at number nine.

The ranking also indicates that the global average liveability score has decreased by 1.0 per cent since 2010 following a 2.2 per cent drop in the score for safety and stability.

Ongoing conflicts in Syria, Ukraine and Libya have been compounded by terrorist shootings in France and Tunisia as well as civil unrest in America, explains the Economist.

Kiev (UKR), Damascus (SYR), Tripoli (LBY), Athens (GRC) and Detroit (USA) were among the cities to record the largest drops, while Harare (ZWE), Kathmandu (NPL), Dubai (UAE) and Honolulu (USA) were among those to record the largest increases in their liveability score in the 2015 Global Liveability Ranking.

The EIU notes that the most liveable cities in the world are usually mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Mikko Stig  Lehtikuva
LOCAL BRIEFS: I-26 widening, PFLAG in parade, tree walk, Big Sweep

Related Stories

Plans to widen Interstate 26 in Buncombe and Henderson counties cleared a hurdle last week when the Federal Highway Administration approved the draft environmental impact statement submitted by the N.C. Department of Transportation.

The combined projects will widen more than 22 miles of I-26 from U.S. 25 at Fletcher to the I-40 interchange south of Asheville. Proposed improvements include widening the existing freeway to meet future travel demands for the I-26 corridor and to improve insufficient pavement structure and deteriorating road conditions.

Approval from the federal government allows the transportation department to begin a public review period for the statement and schedule public hearings near the proposed improvements. The hearing times, dates and locations will be announced once they are determined.

PFLAG to march in King Apple parade



The Flat Rock-Hendersonville Chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) will march in the 2016 King Apple Parade, Monday, Sept. 5, starting at 2:30.

The lineup will be available a couple of days before the parade so for gathering time and place please email Jerry Miller at jerry.w96@gmail.com.

We want to make sure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults and youth in Henderson County know that there are people who welcome and support them, Miller said. We encourage the public to join us and show their support too.

For more information contact Miller at 828.697.0690 or at jerry.w96@gmail.com.

Convertibles needed for King Apple Parade

Classic, antique and newer convertibles are needed for the Henderson County King Apple Parade on Labor Day. It is anticipated that there will be an increased need this year to carry Apple Festival dignitaries, veterans and candidates.

Bring your convertible to the old Boyd Pontiac, Buick, Cadillac new car showroom on Asheville Highway across from Hendersonville High School at Five Points at 1 p.m. on the day of the parade. For more information call 828-329 4971 or e-mail noirs@aol.com.



Centennial Celebration set at Mount Mitchell State Park

North Carolina State Parks will hold its second Signature Centennial Celebration Aug. 27-28 at Mount Mitchell State Park, the site where the states system of protected lands for recreation and conservation began in 1916.

Visitors are invited to a daylong celebration on Saturday, Aug. 27, with traditional and bluegrass music, clogging, demonstrations of traditional mountain skills, such as blacksmithing, quilting, chair caning and spinning, traditional crafts for sale, storytelling and games for children and adults, and displays from area museums. Sunday will be dedicated to recreation and education with guided hikes by rangers and volunteers.

North Carolina legislators, at the urging of Gov. Locke Craig, launched an effort in 1915 to protect the mountains summit from intensive logging. By the end of 1916, 795 acres had been acquired to create what would become Mount Mitchell State Park. North Carolina now has 41 state park units open to the public as well as a network of protected state natural areas, state lakes, rivers and trails that cover 230,591 acres. During 2015, the parks system served a record 17.3 million visitors.

The park will limit access by private vehicles during the event, except for registered carpooling vehicles such as expanded passenger vans and activity buses. Free Saturday shuttle service will be available from locations in Asheville, Burnsville, Marion and Black Mountain. For details about the shuttle service visit www.ncparks.gov.

Sandburg Home sets September events

The Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site has scheduled the following events next month:

 Sept. 9: A Sandburg singalong features Jim & Beth McGill and celtic and classical music from Pat Corn, from 6 to 9 p.m.

 Sept. 17: The Centennial & Hobo Ball, the premier event of the Friends of Carl Sandburg, celebrates of the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service and the 50th birthday of Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site from 6 to 9:30 p.m. at the Mountain Lodge & Conference Center in Flat Rock. The fundraising event includes appetizers, dinner, open wine & beer bar, silent auction for national park trips, music by Katie Cillufo, Bill Altman and friends. Tickets are $100 and can be purchased on line at friendsofcarlsandburg.org or through FOCS board members. For more information call 828.708.3771.

 Sept. 19: The Day Carl Sandburg Died, the original movie by local producer Paul Bonesteel, chronicles the life of the Pulitzer Prize winning writer, poet, musician and champion of the people. Seating is limited. Call the Flat Rock cinema for reservations. Tickets are $8 and include popcorn & soda. Show is at 6 p.m. For more information visit friendsofcarlsandburg.org or 828.708.3771.

 Sept. 20: Spoken word performance poetry with Moody Black & Crew features slam poetry. For more information visit friendsofcarlsandburg.org or 828.708.3771. The free event is at 7 p.m. at Jonga Java coffeehouse.

 Sept. 22: Seasons of Sandburg, a retrospective art show inspired by Sandburg and Connemara, features 13 artists participating in a special show that runs for a week at the Gallery in Flat Rock Square. Opening night event at 6 p.m. features music, appetizers and beverages.

 Sept. 24: Historic Seventh Avenue Depot Hobo Days, a fun filled day for kids (and adults) with music and storytelling, craft making, hobo tales, train depot tours, free bandanas from Mast General, takes place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free lunch to children. The Apple Valley Model Railroad Club cohosts. Two of the Sandburg goats will be on hand at the depot.

 Sept. 24: David Nagler concert at 7 p.m. at the Flat Rock Playhouse Downtown features Sandburg poetry set to music. Hear the poems presented in folk, jazz and rock styles. Tickets are $25.

 Sept. 25: Books and Brunch, a unique opportunity to enjoy brunch, jazz and buy books from the Sandburg family collection, is 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Green Room Cafe & Coffee House.

Volunteers needed for Big Sweep

The community is invited to help clean up Henderson Countys rivers and streams on when MountainTrue hosts the annual Henderson County Big Sweep on Saturday, Sept. 10.

The countywide litter cleanup program brings citizens and community organizations together to clear trash from their waterways. Civic organizations, scout troops, church groups, school groups, Adopt-A-Stream teams, neighborhood associations, city and county departments, local businesses and individuals can all pitch in to make streams and creeks cleaner and healthier. To participate register at bit.ly/hcbigsweep. Teams will hold cleanups from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in waterways throughout the county. For more information or to volunteer for Henderson County Big Sweep with MountainTrue, visit bit.ly/hcbigsweep or call (828) 692-0385 ext. 1001.

Tree Board sponsors guided tree walk

A guided tree walk along Third and Fourth avenues in Hendersonvilles West Side Historic District neighborhood will highlight two registered Heritage Trees and a variety of large, mature trees that complement the historic homes at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11.

Space is limited for the 90-minute walk. Reservations must be made by Friday, Sept. 9, by phoning Judy Frank at 828-713-6807. The walk is open to the public at no charge.

Mark Madsen, a member of the Tree Board and an ISA certified arborist, will lead the walk, describing the oaks, maples, apple trees, hemlocks and other urban trees, some of which are 100-plus years old. He will identify the registered Heritage Trees on the route and discuss proper care to maintain health of older trees. To learn more about Hendersonville Tree Board visit t http://www.hendersonvillenc.gov/tree-board.

Baldwin graduates from basic training



U.S. Army Pvt. Adam P. Baldwin, a 2012 graduate of North Henderson High School, has graduated from basic infantry training at Fort Jackson, S.C. During the nine weeks of training, the soldier studied the Army mission, history, tradition and core values. The soldier also received instruction and practice in physical fitness, rifle marksmanship and bayonet use, chemical warfare, unarmed combat, drill and ceremony, marching, map reading, military courtesy, basic first aid, field tactics and the military justice system.



Foundation seeks grant applications



Nonprofit agencies are invited to submit applications for grants to the Community Foundation of Henderson County by 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 1.

Guidelines, the application form and more details about CFHCs General Grants program can be found at www.CFHCforever.org/generalgrants. Questions may be directed to Senior Program Officer Lee Henderson-Hill at LHenderson-Hill@CFHCforever.org or (828) 697-6224, Ext. 115.

Church announces GriefShare ministry

Hendersonville Presbyterian Church, 699 N. Grove St., is offering a 13-week grief counseling ministry, scheduled every Friday, beginning Sept. 9, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. GriefShare is a Christ-centered non-denominational program that includes a video and group sharing. Each session is self-contained, which means that anyone can attend as many or as few sessions that they want. The video discussions are led by experts in grief counseling. There is no charge and the public is invited.
Editors note: This is the 412th in a series of articles recalling vanished Huntington scenes.
Prominent drug dealers from Dublin were in a pub that was the scene of a potential attack over the weekend.

Police in Belfast mounted an extensive security operation on Saturday night amid fears that the deadly Kinahan-Hutch feud would erupt on the streets of Belfast.

A drugs gang linked to the Hutch-Kinahan feud, in which 10 people have so far been killed, held a private function in a north Belfast pub on Saturday night.

Well-known drug dealers from Dublin travelled to Belfast for the function which was also attended by dealers from Belfast.

After a telephone threat was made that an attack would be launched on those attending the party, the PSNI mounted an extensive security operation.

Land Rovers patrolled the area and under-cover police were also present near the venue.

The north Belfast pub had unwittingly accepted the booking for the party after it was made under a false name. The establishment only became suspicious on the evening of the event.

The pub received an anonymous phone call saying that a criminal drugs gang linked to the Kinahan-Hutch feud would be holding a function in their premises that night. The caller said that there would be "an attack on the party".

The establishment immediately contacted the PSNI and warned them of the threat. Doormen at the pub were also put on alert.

Members of a well-known criminal family from west Belfast, who were once associated with the Provisional IRA and later dissident republicans, were also in attendance.

Cartels

Sources said that at the beginning of the evening, it appeared that the PSNI had taken no action and there were fears that an attack could be imminent.

"Then, as the night wore on, a really heavy police presence became visible," the source added. The event passed off without incident.

The Kinahan gang have gained the upper hand on their rivals since the feud began less than a year ago. Based on the Costa del Sol, they are one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world, operating a billion-euro empire.
Jackie Rafter has opened up for the first time on her son Daniel's untimely death and how she's trying to turn the tragedy into "something positive".

The 25-year-old son that she had with her former husband, celebrity hairdresser David Marshall, died tragically on July 12, 2014.

Now his mum Jackie, who spent years working with the Bubblegum Club, has gone back to her charity roots and immersed herself in fundraising for youth support services.

She hosted a fundraiser in his memory over the weekend, namely the 17th International Polo Tournament at the Phoenix Park, as she and her friends raised thousands of euros for TeenLine Ireland.

And Jackie said that if the money raised can spare one family the pain that she went through, it will be worth it.

Last month she marked the two-year anniversary of his death with a seven-day trek to Mont Blanc in France, and said while she found it tough, it was very cathartic for her.

Dread

"It was an awful lot harder than I thought. I'm on my feet all the time in work, but this was 11 hours a day in the mountains and coming down was a lot harder than going up," she said.

The morning of her son's second anniversary, she said she woke up with a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach as she felt so far away from home - and her late son.

"On the day of Daniel's anniversary, it was really tough. I was upset when I woke up that morning.

"I was thinking, 'Oh my God, I'm so far away from Daniel, what am I doing here?' as I had his ashes at home.

"But I did feel closer to him up in the mountains - and I'm not normally a believer in things like that. I know I did the right thing.

"I had a prayer with me that my daughter Kate read out at his funeral, so I read that out. Everyone was really moved and I turned around afterwards and I saw there was a cross on the mountain in the middle of nowhere. I couldn't believe it."

Thanks to the trek, she and her 11 trekking companions helped raise nearly 30,000 for the Peter McVerry Trust.

Well-known on Dublin's social scene, she spent more than ten years working with the Bubblegum Club, which fundraises for children with life-limiting illnesses.

So while drumming up funds for worthy causes came as second nature to her, last Saturday was the first time that she held an event in memory of her beloved son.

Two years on from Daniel's passing, she said she has "good days and bad days" as she tries to come to terms with what happened.

She paid tribute to her family, including her twin sister Louise and her daughter Kate, whom she said has been amazingly strong as they try to come to terms with losing Daniel so young.

"Kate still lives with me and she has been a tower of strength, she's wonderful," she said.

Jackie also praised organisations like TeenLine, which offers a free phone and text service dedicated to troubled teens.

"It's absolutely scary what's happening and they're an amazing organisation.

"What's different with TeenLine is that it's specifically there for teenagers, and even if someone is not taking drugs themselves they can contact them if they're worried about a friend," she said.

Jackie reached out to restaurateur Sally-Anne Clarke after Daniel's passing, given that she's an ambassador for the charity.

Sally-Anne, who owns L'Ecrivain with husband Derry, also lost a child in tragic circumstances - their son Andrew died suddenly in December 2012.

"She was one of the first people I reached out to after Daniel's death.

Opportunity

"When the idea of hosting the polo day first came up, I went to her and said, 'What can I do for the charity?' So when the opportunity came up to host the polo day, it seemed an ideal event to have in Daniel's memory," she said.

She was joined by over 90 supporters at the Phoenix Park on Saturday for the 17th International Polo Tournament, with proceeds going towards TeenLine Ireland.

She and her pals raised more than 12,000 from the sell-out event and she said she was bowled over by the level of support.

Well-known publican Alan Clancy sponsored the whole day's proceedings, with Lisa Fitzpatrick helping to judge the 'best dressed' at the event.

"I'm beyond exhausted organising this for the past few weeks - I can't believe that I used to do this full-time," said Jackie. "But if I can turn something like Daniel's passing into something positive, it will be worth it."
A suicide bomber as young as 12 killed at least 51 people at a wedding party in Turkery.

The bomber attacked guests dancing on the street in the Turkish city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border.

Saturday'a attack was the deadliest in a series of bombings in Turkey this year, and President Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that Islamic State (IS) was likely behind it.

Turkey faces multiple security threats from militants at home and from Syria.

Tensions

"Initial evidence suggests it was a Daesh attack," Erdogan said, using an Arabic name for the hardline Sunni group during a visit to Gaziantep after the attack. He said 69 people were in hospital and 17 were "heavily injured".

Islamic State has been blamed for other attacks in Turkey, often targeting Kurdish gatherings in an effort to inflame ethnic tensions. The deadliest was last October, when suicide bombers killed more than 100 people at a rally of pro-Kurdish and labour activists in Ankara.

The latest attack comes with Turkey still in shock only a month after Erdogan and the government survived an att- empted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on US-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen. Gulen has denied the charge.

Saturday's wedding party was for a member of the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party, it said, and the groom was among those injured. The bride was not hurt.

Celebrations were ending at the traditional henna night party, when guests have decorative paint applied to their hands and feet.

Some families had already left when the bomb went off, but women and children were among the dead.

Blood and burns marked the walls of the narrow lane where the blast hit. Women in white and checkered scarves wept as they sat cross-legged outside the morgue waiting for word on missing relatives.

"The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing," said 25-year-old Veli Can. "There was blood and body parts everywhere."

Another witness, Ibrahim Ozdemir, said: "We want to end these massacres. We are in pain, especially the women and children."

NATO member Turkey is a partner in the western coalition against IS in Iraq and Syria, allowing US jets to fly attacks against the group from its air bases. It has also backed some rebel groups in Syria.

Syrian rebels were preparing to launch an operation to capture a town held by IS at the border with Turkey, a senior Syrian rebel said.

Hundreds gathered yesterday for funerals, some weeping over coffins draped in the green of Islam, local TV images showed. Other funerals would have to wait because many of the victims were blown to pieces and DNA forensics tests would be needed to identify them, security sources said.

In Gaziantep, the chief prosecutor's office said they had found a destroyed suicide vest at the blast site. Three suspected Islamic State suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul's main airport in June.

Violence flared again last week in the largely Kurdish southeast. Ten people were killed in bomb attacks, mostly police and soldiers, in an escalation that officials blamed on the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Turkey began air strikes against IS last August, in the weeks after a peace process with the PKK collapsed, and it also began targeting PKK targets in northern Iraq.

Rockets

Half-an-hour from Gaziantep is the border town of Kilis, which has been repeatedly hit by rockets and shelling from IS territory.

Yesterday, ruling AK Party lawmakers as well as Erdogan emphasised that they see IS as no different from the PKK and the group led by Gulen, all three classified by Turkey as terrorist organisations.
Michaella McCollum has spoken about her time in jail

Convicted drug mule Michaella McCollum has boasted about becoming 'top dog' in the Peruvian prison where she spent over two years for cocaine trafficking.

The Co Tyrone native returned to Ireland over a week ago for the first time in three years.

She was arrested in August 2013 along with Scottish national Melissa Reid in possession of 1.7m worth of cocaine as they tried to board a plane at Lima airport.

McCollum (23) has now opened up about her time in Peru's notorious Ancon 2 prison, and revealed how she went from being bullied at the jail to becoming 'top dog'.

The drugs mule also described how she managed to pay other inmates to do her cleaning duties, and ran a successful beauty salon earning the equivalent of 250-a-week.

"Because it's so dirty, I mean, even the bathroom, you wouldn't even touch it. You're literally cleaning your own c**p," she said.

Before her release, she spent the equivalent of a further 100 bribing a prison guard to get her a mobile phone.

For six months McCollum was given significant control in prison, being voted 'general coordinator' and being put in charge of the phone, television and shopping budget.

Despite the seemingly relative glamorous lifestyle she was living, diary extracts reveal a darker side to her time behind bars.

In one entry she revealed how unbearable the heat was in prison and detailed the insect problem which prevented her sleeping through the night.

"I have lots of [visitors] at night, mosquitoes, flies and some other form of insect but they come in forces, 10-plus at a time attacking you, crawling all over your skin."

Sabotage

During her prison stint, she also received almost 500 love letters.

McCollum also claimed her psychologist in the prison, Marco, attempted to sabotage her chances of being released after she rebutted his romantic advances.

"He once told me we could live happily ever after. He tried to propose. Once I rejected him, he sent letters to the court saying I was the head of a drug mafia. He told me I would never see the light of day."

She explained how she became involved in the trafficking operation out of "stupidity".

"I did it because I wasn't thinking straight; it was totally out of character. I did it for being stupid.

"If I wasn't under the influence of drugs I would never have done it. I know that had a big influence but I can't blame it on that," she said.

"Obviously you get an adrenalin high because you're doing something you know you shouldn't be doing."

McCollum was released from prison in Peru on March 31 after spending less than three years behind bars with Melissa Reid.

She had been ordered to spend the next six years of her sentence on parole in the city.

But after reports that McCollum made a secret deal with Peruvian authorities recently, she was given permission to fly back to Northern Ireland.

In June, McCollum was criticised after being pictured living it up in the capital Lima with fellow cocaine smuggler Kaouthar Essafi, who she befriended in prison.
Catawba Valley Community College officials recently celebrated the graduation of its first two apprentices and held a formal signing ceremony for new members of Apprenticeship Catawba.

The first two Apprenticeship Catawba graduates Michael Pilkington and Xzavier Patton, completed their training with Sarstedt. They graduated from CVCC this past May with an Associate in Applied Science in Mechatronics Technology. They will also earn a Journeymans Certificate through the N.C. Department of Labor, a nationally recognized industry credential signifying completion of 8,000 hours of on-the-job training.

Pilkington and Patton are now employed full time with Sarstedt and have benefits that include medical insurance, dental insurance, eye care and life insurance, plus paid holidays. They also have the opportunity to pursue further college education eligible for reimbursement by Sarstedt with passing grades.

Eleven new members of Apprenticeship Catawba also formally entered the program. These high school juniors will receive a college degree at CVCC in either mechatronics engineering technology or computer integrated machining technology, valued at approximately $16,500. Employment is guaranteed after successful completion.

Students entering this fall include Devon Lyda with Aptar; Paxton Sigmon with Continental; Vincent Melendez with GKN Driveline; Jacob Lasecki with Sarstedt; Daniel Schronce with Sarstedt; Thomas Shook with Sarstedt; Deana Stinson with Tenowo; and Lucas Branch with ZF Chassis.

The program is a CVCC collaboration with these area advanced manufacturers, the Catawba County Schools and the NC Department of Labor.

Over the past few years, manufacturing processes have evolved to require workers with computer experience and the ability to function in a highly automated environment. The skills learned and broad education provided at CVCC fills this gap.

Interested high school juniors should contact their career and technical education adviser or guidance counselor. For more information about Apprenticeship Catawba and the companies involved, visit www.cvcc.edu/Apprenticeship_Catawba.
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/
About

Hinduism Today Magazine is a nonprofit educational activity of Himalayan Academy with the following purposes: 1. To foster Hindu solidarity as a unity in diversity among all sects and lineages; 2. To inform and inspire Hindus worldwide and people interested in Hinduism; 3. To dispel myths, illusions and misinformation about Hinduism; 4. To protect, preserve and promote the sacred Vedas and the Hindu religion; 5. To nurture and monitor the ongoing spiritual Hindu renaissance; 6. To publish a resource for Hindu leaders and educators who promote Sanatana Dharma.
During her visit to China from August 17-21, Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmars state counsellor and foreign minister, was given a red-carpet welcome. She was virtually treated as the prime minister, for she, in effect, heads the government. She held discussions with the foreign minister, the prime minister and the president of China as well as other political and business leaders. The visits outcome indicates that China wants closer relations with its southern neighbour in the future than was the case during President Thein Seins tenure.

For Suu Kyi, this was the second visit to China. In June 2015 when she was in Beijing as an opposition MP, she was received by President Xi Jinping. This was an indication enough that China saw her as the future leader. The two sides had begun fashioning a basis for mutual cooperation. Chinas efforts to woo her gained momentum after the new government assumed power in Naypyitaw. Within a week, foreign minister Wang Yi visited Myanmar, thus becoming the first foreign dignitary to meet the new leaders, including Suu Kyi. A series of Chinese dignitaries have been to Naypyitaw since then.

Read | To secure Myanmars confidence, India must play cards in good faith

During discussions last week in Beijing, a serious exercise was conducted to craft a mutually beneficial give and take. As the joint press release points out, the two nations would follow a strategic and long-term perspective and are committed to achieve a new progress in their comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.

More specifically, China has conveyed a firm assurance of support for Myanmars economic development and national reconciliation. The latter is especially important now, as Suu Kyi prepares to convene the 21st century Panglong conference of all armed ethnic groups. Several of them have close links with the Chinese authorities. Chinas assurance implies that these groups may now participate in the forthcoming conference, set to begin on August 31, and try to be more moderate and constructive. In return, Suu Kyi seems to have promised some flexibility on Chinas request to revive the Myitsone Dam and hydroelectric development project that had been suspended by the previous president. Reports suggest that a via media could emerge, once the Myanmar government-appointed investigation commission submits its report on November 11. However, notably the press release makes no mention of this project.

Read | Myanmar-India interactions could be more active

What it states on political issues is bound to attract New Delhis attention. Myanmar has welcomed Chinas One Belt, One Road initiative on which South Block has serious reservations. Myanmar has also welcomed the proposed economic corridor connecting Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar (BCIM). India is no longer excited about this corridor. More significantly, Myanmar has refrained from expressing any views on the most controversial issue facing the region today  the South China Sea issue.

Suu Kyi has extended invitations to the prime minister and the president to visit Myanmar. Neither dignitary has paid a bilateral visit to the country in the past five years, but these visits will resume now.

Implications of the fast-paced improvement in China-Myanmar relations will need to be studied carefully by the Ministry of External Affairs. It is reassuring to note that external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj went to Myanmar on Monday. Despite an appearance to the contrary, there is no direct connection between Suu Kyis visit to China and the Indian ministers visit to Myanmar. (The latter visit was scheduled for May 1, but it had to be postponed due to unavoidable reasons.)

Read | Eye on security, Sushma Swaraj meets Myanmar leader Suu Kyi in historic visit

Myanmars top dignitaries  President Htin Kyaw and Suu Kyi  are expected to visit India in the coming weeks. Once these visits are over, the picture about the dynamics of the complex China-Myanmar-India triangle may become clearer. One point, however, is already crystal clear: The government, India Inc. and civil society need to work harder on deepening the multi-dimensional ties India enjoys with Myanmar.

Rajiv Bhatia is a distinguished fellow, Gateway House and former ambassador to Myanmar.

The views expressed are personal
The plan to interlink Indias rivers is not a new one. It was first mooted in 1858 by British irrigation engineer Arthur Cotton, who is known as the Delta Architect of the Godavari districts because of his work in irrigation engineering through his construction of the anicut system. Now more than 150 years later as that idea of interlinking of rivers (ILR) takes shape, there is strong opposition to it.

The big idea is to connect the countrys 37 Himalayan and peninsular rivers. Water-surplus rivers will be dammed, and the flow will be diverted to water-deficient rivers. According to government documents, some 30 canals and 3,000 small and large reservoirs will be constructed with potential to generate 34 gigawatt of hydroelectric power. The canals, planned between 50 and 100 meters in width, will stretch some 15,000 kilometres.

If we can build storage reservoirs on these rivers and connect them to other parts of the country, regional imbalances could be reduced significantly and lot of benefits by way of additional irrigation, domestic and industrial water supply, hydropower generation, navigational facilities etc. would accrue, Indias National Water Development Authority describes the project on its website.

A 2009 study by the by Upali Amarasinghe, a senior researcher at the International Water Management Institute, said that the project is expected to create some 87 million acres of irrigated land, and transfer 174 trillion litres of water a year.

Importantly, half a million people are likely to be displaced in the process, and knowing Indias record of tackling displacement, it is definitely not a happy thought.

There are several other serious challenges:

Cost of the project: The comprehensive proposal to link Himalayan rivers with peninsular rivers for inters basin transfer of water was estimated to cost around Rs 5,60,000 crore in 2001. Land submergence and R&R (relief and rehabilitation) packages would be additional to the cost. There are no firm estimates available for the scheme, such as the cost of power required to lift water, a seven member committee on water reforms, headed by Mihir Shah, former member of erstwhile Planning Commission, said recently.

Read: There isnt enough water to interlink rivers across India: IIT study

Rainfall is getting uniform: A study by IIT Madras and IIT Bombay presented evidence to show that rainfall in surplus basins was declining while it was increasing in deficient basins. It means, the report added, that rainfall was getting uniform, thus negating transfer of the water.

Read: There isnt enough water to interlink rivers across India: IIT study

Natural supply of nutrient will be affected: The Shah committee also pointed out that the linking of rivers will affect natural supply of nutrients for agricultural lands through curtailing flooding of downstream areas.

No scientific basis of the project: In an interview to Quartz last year, Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, said: There have been no scientific basis to say that. All you have is an incomplete study that says this is good for the country. One has to exhaust all options and potentials before concluding that river-linking is the best alternative. Exhaust options such as watershed development, rainwater harvesting, ground water recharge, optimising existing infrastructure and cropping methods and then we can conclude that water-linking might be good. But there has been no assessments done.

Read: In a historic move, Godavari and Krishna rivers linked

Govt data no reliable: In an interview to a national daily, S Janakarajan, professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, have said that the governments data on surplus rivers is not reliable. Who has done the surplus calculation and where in the river have they measured the surplus? he asked.

The interlinking of river project has also been questioned for its irrigation benefits.

These are serious questions. Will the government clear the air by answering these critical questions?

@kumkumdasgupta

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON


Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday signalled a course correction in his governments approach towards the prevailing unrest in Kashmir. Or so it seemed from his remarks to a delegation of opposition parties from Jammu and Kashmir.

Expressing deep concern and pain over the seven-week-long clashes between protesters and security forces, the Prime Minister said those who lost their lives are part of us, our nation.

Whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us, he said, urging parties to convey his sentiments to the people of the border state and emphasised the need for a dialogue.

Modis comments mark a departure from his three earlier statements since the outbreak of the unrest following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in July .

For one, efforts are being made to provide a healing touch by acknowledging the protesters in the Valley as part of us, our nation. It could be an attempt to blur the hyphenation between young protesters and peace-loving people.

Blaming Pakistan and separatists for instigating protests has lent credence to the shrill jingoistic discourse on Kashmir but has done little to contain the violence in the Valley.

At a rally in Madhya Pradesh on August 10, Modi spoke of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayees path of Insaniyat, Jamhooriyat and Kashmiriyat, but in the same breath blamed a handful of misguided people for hurting Kashmirs great tradition.

At an all-party meet in New Delhi two days later, he talked about the pain felt by all of us irrespective of whether it was a civilian or security personnel injured or killed, adding that to spread the myth that this is a public agitation is far from the truth.

Read| PM Modis promise of Insaniyat needs substantive unilateralism

The reference to the unrest in Kashmir in his Independence Day speech was marked by an escalation of rhetorical hostility with Pakistan over brutalities in Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Mondays remarks by the Prime Minister, therefore, signalled a change in the Centres assessment of the situation in Kashmir. His appeal to the opposition parties to convey to the people in Kashmir his distress over the loss of lives of our youth, security personnel and police could be the first step towards bridging the trust deficit in the Valley.

BJP sources said the Prime Minister hinted at a rethink in his interactions with party leaders in the past few days. Modi suggested to some party leaders last week that the countrys stand vis-a-vis Pakistan on cross-border terrorism should not be confused with that on protesters who should be dealt with differently. The healing touch offered by the PM on Monday comes in this backdrop.

On Monday, Modi also emphasised the need for a dialogue. But the question is: Dialogue with whom? Will the government have a dialogue with the Hurriyat leaders? Vajpayee had sent his deputy LK Advani to talk to the separatists . Will Modi walk the talk on following Vajpayees path?

Read| Talk peace: Dialogue alone can draw Kashmir out of the abyss
Dia Mirza is not active as an actress any more and she blames it on the sort of scripts that are coming her way. She is now producing the movies she believes in.

As a producer, I am very excited about some of the scripts that have come our way and we are looking forward to making these films. As an actor, I am dissatisfied, she told IANS.

But I am grateful that instead of moping about the lack of good opportunities to be in good films, I create opportunities by making the films I believe in.

Read: Dia Mirza is making her TV debut with a travel show on river Ganga

Dia Mirza with acid attack survivor Laxmi during closing ceremony of Dr.Abdul Kalam Memorial Youth Conclave in Lucknow. (PTI)

Dia believes there is a need for India to have more theatres as she feels the lack of screens is a threat to the countrys film industry.

Our biggest threat is the taxation policy as well as the lack of a sufficient number of movie screens. Both the issues need to be addressed urgently.

Read: Dia Mirza issues statement following backlash over her Holi tweet

Dia Mirza during a programme in Mumbai on July 21, 2016. (IANS)

The economics of making and releasing a film are getting increasingly difficult, add to that the advent of access to digital content, and at large, producers/studios have their work cut out for them, said the former beauty queen.

However, Dia is happy with growth in acceptance of regional cinema as well as English cinema in India.

As long as the screen count increases and better policies are ushered in for the movie industry, we will be able to celebrate the success of all stories that are well-told, irrespective of language, she said.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Jacqueline Fernandez considers Salman Khan-starrer, Kick (2014) a turning point in her life, and said prior to the film she lacked confidence in herself. Post-Kick, things have changed. Since Kick, it has been great work (for me) and it has been good. The offers have been great too. I am hoping I just keep growing, said Jacqueline during an interview.

It's finally here!! #aflyingjatt this weekend! I'm grateful to every character I get to pl https://t.co/vz4dM2dzEv pic.twitter.com/ONKlfDRo7W  Jacqueline Fernandez (@Asli_Jacqueline) August 22, 2016

Commenting on how she felt about working in the industry earlier, the actor said, I think what went wrong before was... I feel I didnt have any confidence before Kick . That was the only thing which went wrong. When I look back, I feel I didnt have the confidence back then.

Read: Salman told me hard-work, struggle got me where I am: Jacqueline Fernandez

The 31-year-old who is of Sri Lankan origin has been enjoying her tryst with commercial cinema in Bollywood.It is extremely exciting. When you are a part of big commercial films, its an amazing feeling. Having back-to-back releases feels great. It is taxing as well. You have to be on it, be aware, be focussed... And it can get very taxing, said the actor.

Read: Busy Jacqueline Fernandez has no time for her family

Jacquelines recent releases include the ensemble cast film, Housefull 3 , Varun Dhawan and John Abraham-starrer Dishoom and her upcoming film A Flying Jatt opposite Tiger Shroff.
Irrfan Khan divides his time efficiently between Bollywood, Hollywood and other international projects. He feels fortunate to have received so many opportunities and worked with different kinds of people.

If I do two-three films (in India) and still have time, I try to explore projects abroad, says Irrfan.

Read: Irrfan Khan is not scared of anybody

The Paan Singh Tomar (2012) actor, who has shot a Bangladeshi film recently, says he would like to do films anywhere.

If I am offered a non-Hindi film, say a Marathi movie, and I like the story, I would love to sign up for it without thinking about the money, he says.

The budget for the Bangladeshi film I acted in was a crore. But I signed it because I liked the director. People were surprised, he adds.

Read: On a movie date with Irrfan Khan

Irrfan has worked with several stars, including Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar, in the past. When I worked with Shah Rukh Khan on Billu (2009), he was honest with me. He did exactly what he promised when it came to the positioning of the film, says Irrfan, adding, I have also enjoyed working with Akshay. The actor says that no director has come up with a story, where we (a big star and him) have had equal roles since then.

Irrfan goes on to talk about how he doesnt need to struggle between choosing commercial and non-commercial films. I recently acted in Jazba. It was as commercial as it could be. So, it is fine at this stage, he says.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Sonam Kapoor has been invited by the Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC) Ladies Wing to be the guest of honour at their Women Entrepreneur Exhibition. It will be held in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Read: I have to find the right script: Sonam Kapoor

A source says, Sonam has several achievements to her credit. She also often talks about womens causes. This is why the IMC committee, volunteers and participants decided to invite her for the event, which will be held in Worli. It will be attended by several other celebrities to encourage women from various fields. Rashmi Thackeray, Kanika Kapoor, Alka Yagnik and Shaina NC, among others, are expected at the function.

Read: When you are a public figure, you need to be responsible: Sonam Kapoor

When contacted, Sonam confirmed the news, and said, The IMC is in its golden jubilee year, and this exhibition is a wonderful example of their consistent efforts over the years to bring the tremendous talent and skills of Indian women to the fore. I am looking forward to officially opening the exhibition.

Watch: Sonam Kapoor in song Abhi Toh Parthy Shuru Hui Hai

A group of visually-and-hearing impaired children from NGO Deeds In Dehradun will also attend the event, and sing the national anthem.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The upcoming festive season and booming passenger traffic in smaller towns; these are the two targets for SpiceJet as it adds four brand new Bombardier turboprop aircraft to its fleet.

With a fleet of 14 Bombardier Q400 planes, which can seat 78 passengers, Gurgaon-based SpiceJet is already one of the biggest operators of small jets in the country. It also operates the bigger Boeing 737s.

With the additions to its fleet, Indias second largest budget carrier in terms of market share will take advantage of the booming passenger traffic in the countrys smaller towns and cities as the government prepares to roll out its ambitious regional connectivity scheme (RCS).

Sources said the new planes will join the airlines fleet beginning October to take advantage of the peak festive season traffic. We are the largest regional player in the market and will launch flights to new destinations like Aizawl and Silchar. We will also launch additional flights to Dhaka, said a SpiceJet official, who did not wish to be named.

SpiceJets Q400 operations turned profitable for the first time last year. The Q400s are no longer operating on a standalone model for SpiceJet, but in sync with its Boeing flights that have brought in big benefits, said aviation expert Rajji Rai.

RCS will further boost operations to smaller towns with the government offering incentives to airlines in the form of a viability gap funding (VGF). Under the Route Dispersal Guidelines airlines had no option but to fly to remote areas, which are often unprofitable. However, that would change under RCS, which would ensure that operational costs are covered with VGF support from the government, said Rai. Air India has also announced that it would add 10 ATRs to its fleet by next March.

RCS specifies a fare cap of Rs 1770-Rs 4070 for flight durations between 200km to 800 km respectively. The government has suggested a VGF of up to Rs 4170 per seat for fixed wing planes and Rs 7200 for helicopters. Both the existing big carriers as well as charter operators, who can apply for a Scheduled Commuter Airlines license, will be eligible to operate flights under the scheme.

Under RCS that was unveiled in July, government plans to extend air connectivity to smaller towns and cities. There are a total of 394 un-served airports and 16 under-served airports in the country, which would be upgraded by AAI. The aviation ministry has already sought a budgetary provision of Rs 4,650 crore to revive 50 un-served and under-served airports.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Infosys on Monday said it has laid off a few people on grounds of non-performance and disciplinary issues but denied reports of 500 jobs being cut by the countrys second largest software services company.

We would like to clarify that there are no layoffs at Infosys. There have been a few separations that are in response to performance and disciplinary issues, which take place on an ongoing basis and this is no different from previous years, an Infosys spokesperson said.

She added that the number of 500 people being laid off is incorrect and the number is far below.

There were reports that Infosys had laid off 500 people in the aftermath of losing its multi-million pound deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland.

RBS had announced that it will not pursue its plan to separate and list a new UK standalone bank, Williams & Glyn (W&G), for which Infosys was a key technology partner. The move led to ramp down of about 3,000 jobs at the Bengaluru- based company.

At the end of first quarter of FY2017, Infosys had 1.97 lakh employees with an attrition rate of 21 per cent during April-June, 2016.

Infosys said it offers counselling to employees not meeting the expected standards of performance.

After adequate counselling, those found consistently deviating from expectations are asked to find alternate employment. This applies to employees across levels and is not connected with any business situation that is not in the control of the employee. The numbers are very low and this is no different from what we have done in the past, it said.
A merger that really never happened and, in the process, resulted in a chaotic situation is at the root of all ills that we are currently witness to.

This isnt an aviation expert giving gyan on the industrys favourite punching bag, Air India (AI). Its the man in the hot seat, Ashwani Lohani, the chairman and MD of the state-owned national carrier, writing in his blog, Think, about the problem that has seen thousands of crores of rupees go down the drain.

Rarely do we see a serving bureaucrat speak so openly. But that has been Lohanis style from the beginning, say people who have known him for years. I havent seen an AI chief talk so openly on why the airline, which once commanded a 50% marketshare, landed in such a mess, says a top official of the airline.

Appreciation is coming from unexpected quarters. He is fighting the legacy issues of Air India and trying to change the culture of the airline and we must appreciate him for that. He is working extremely hard, said Ajay Singh, whose SpiceJet competes with Air India.

Turnaround guy

Lohani was picked by the Prime Ministers Office in August last year to head Air India. The decision came as a surprise. Unlike the usual IAS appointed to head Air India, Lohani is a Railway Service officer with no experience in aviation.

There were compelling reasons for the move.

Nearly half of the 30,000 crore equity promised by the government to turn around the ailing flag carrier had been used up with little signs of a turnaround. The government needed a man who could deliver. And Lohani has the reputation of a turnaround specialist.

He had earlier turned around sick government organisations like the India Tourism Development Corporation and Madhya Pradesh Tourism and made them profitable.

AI has to turn around. There are no ifs and buts about it, Lohani told HT.

He is a firm believer in the employee first approach. On his office table is a picture of Virgin Group founder Richard Branson with a quote that says, Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.

Lohani says it makes him sad when the common employee is often blamed for the ills of the organisation. The real reason for the debacle lies elsewhere, in my opinion with the head honcho, Lohani wrote in the blog.

Within months of taking over, he made sure most employee grievances lingering on for years, relating to Air Indias merger with Indian Airlines, pay parity, and pilot salaries, were settled.

Passenger comfort was a top priority and so was an emphasis to get planes off the ground. At a time when rivals were ramping up their fleets, more than 10% of AIs fleet was grounded. Within months that changed and the airlines aircraft utilisation touched an all-time high.

Decision-making was another area. The decision on the Delhi-San Francisco flight had been pending for years. Lohani cleared it in one go and followed it up with flights to Vienna and Newark.

No special privileges

As the chairman of ITDC, Lohani had an office at New Delhis Ashoka hotel but never did he or his family dine there. Even when friends came to office, nothing was ordered from the hotel. It was a message to the staff  if the boss doesnt eat for free, they shouldnt either, said a former employee of the hotel.

As director, Rail Museum, Lohani was credited with restoring the worlds oldest working steam locomotive for running the Fairy Queen Express. But his family never got to travel in the train till he stayed in the post.

He is following the same policy in AI. Upgrade my family and face action is the message to his staff. By virtue of being the CMD, Lohanis family is entitled to travel in executive class.

It sends a message to bureaucrats and politicians who are perpetually requesting for upgrades, said an official.

Its extremely important to set an example, said Lohani, who stays in his house in the railway colony at Sardar Patel Marg in New Delhi.

He recently ordered employees not to present him bouquets nor queue up at airports to receive him. The emphasis is on work, not on petty courtesies.

Showing them the money

Lohani is not merely about banning bouquets and free food. AI is set to post its first operating profit this financial year, its first since its merger with Indian Airlines in 2007. Lohani is aiming for a net profit in 2017-18, two years before the turnaround plan expected.

The benefits of lower fuel prices are visible, said Kapil Kaul, South Asia CEO of Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Deferment of expenses may be key to delivering operating profits given aircraft ownership costs are below-the-line item and not included in operating costs. But overall a good beginning. Lower service levels , asset productivity and customer engagement continue to be a challenge and need to be addressed to ensure structural improvement.

If oil prices dont upset his flight path, the turnaround man may script his biggest turnaround yet.

READ I Man gets out-of-turn promotion in Air India for his honesty

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Online fashion retailer Myntra said on Monday that it is on track to cross $1 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) by March next year.

In July the company achieved this on an annualised basis, that is one months GMV extrapolated to 12 months.

Myntra on Monday said that it has crossed an annualised GMV $1billion rate (post discounts) in July 2016. This is the first time ever that an Indian fashion brand has recorded $1 billion rate on an annualised average GMV, the company said in a media statement.

We have now surpassed our January benchmark to make July 2016 the biggest month ever for Myntra. The annualised GMV run rate of $1 billion puts us on the path to touching the $1 billion GMV mark in a fiscal, CEO Ananth Narayanan said.

GMV is not sales, but the value of business generated by Myntra on its platform where numerous brands sell their products.

The company also said it expects to turn profitable early next financial year.

Narayanan said, We are unit economics-positive. We are excited by the growth trajectory because growth is coming in a sustainable manner. We want to be at the forefront of fashion revolution. We are looking to turn profitable early next financial year.

Last month, Myntra acquired its competitor Jabong for an estimated $70 million (around Rs 470 crore), enabling it to corner nearly three quarters of the online fashion market in India on a combined basis.

After the acquisition, Narayanan had said Jabong would be run as an independent brand, which he reiterated at Mondays media conference in Bengaluru.

Having two brands makes sense because there are more customers to reach out to. We are stronger on different geographies and customer demography. For instance, Jabong has a deeper penetration in north India and among women. There will be synergies around supply chain and logistics, he said.
The initial public offering of RBL Bank (formerly Ratnakar Bank) got fully subscribed on Monday, the second day of sale.

This is the first public issue by a private sector lender in a decade. The last private sector bank to hit the stock markets was Yes Bank in 2005.

The total issue size was of 37.9 million equity shares, but bids were received for almost 54.1 million shares or 143%, according to cumulative data available on stock exchanges as of 12:30 pm IST. The issue closes on Tuesday.

The price band for the issue has been fixed at Rs 224-225 per share and the bank is looking to raise around Rs 1,210 crore through the capital market listing.

On Thursday, RBL Bank raised Rs 364 crore by selling shares to 25 anchor investors at the upper end of the price band. The investors included Merrill Lynch Capital Markets Singapore, Government Pension Fund Global of Norway and Goldman Sachs India Fund among others.

The funds are to be used to augment the banks tier-I capital base to meet future capital requirements.

RBL Bank has emerged as one of the fastest growing private sector banks in the last six years and investors should subscibe to the issue, Siddharth Purohit of Angel Broking said.

At the upper end of the price band, the stock is offered at 2.4 times its pre-IPO book value, while on post IPO BV, its offered at 2.1 times. We believe this issue is attractively priced taking into account the valuations at which other mid-sized private sector banks are currently trading, he said.

With a strong management led by Vishwavir Ahuja, who previously served as MD and country CEO of Bank of America for the Indian subcontinent, the Kolhapur-based institution is transforming from a regional name into a more modern brand. RBL Banks retail deposits, the current account saving accounts (CASA), have been growing at 45%. A retail bank is a more stable and safe way to build a sustainable bank, experts said.

The bank has grown its loan book at a CAGR of over 60% in the last five years with diversification. The bank has stayed away from stressed sector lending like steel, power and infra, which has helped it to maintain its asset quality at better levels compared to peers despite 60% loans in corporate and medium and small enterprise sector, said Pritesh Bumb, analyst at Prabhudas Lilladher.

RBL Banks net non-performing assets stand at 0.6% of loans, while restructured book is small at 0.1% of loans, analysts point out. The industry average of net NPAs in India is 4.6% as of March 2016, according to the Reserve Bank of India.

Read: Retail loans will be the focus after IPO
NEW DELHI: A 10-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a relative in northwest Delhis Bhalswa Dairy area and the man was arrested on Sunday.

According to police, the incident took place on Saturday when the girl was playing with her friends, including the children of the 30-year-old accused, who is also her distant relative.

The man, who stays close to the victims house, called and took her to a nearby place and raped her behind bushes, deputy commissioner of police (Northwest) Vijay Singh said.

Police said when the girl came home, she told her parents about being sexually assaulted by the relative from her mothers side whom she used to call mamu.

The parents then approached police and a case was registered at Bhalswa Dairy police station.
NEW DELHI: The Bar Council of India (BCI) has decided not to cut down on the intake of students for this academic session.

The council has also decided that for this year the varsity can conduct evening classes for the second and third year students who have already enrolled with the faculty. In a meeting held on Saturday, the BCI decided that for this year the university can admit 2,310 students as advertised.

Earlier in a report sent to the university, the BCI had said that the university could not take more than 1,440 students, 480 in each of its three centres. Following this, the aspirants and students body had protested and even launched a hunger strike. Six aspirants had even moved the Delhi high court against the BCI order, thereby putting the admission process on hold.

The standing committee of the BCI has considered the request made by the registrar that as a one-time concession, 2,310 students may be permitted to be admitted for only this academic session, said Manan Kumar Mishra, BCI chairman.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
PATIALA: The academic integrity of Punjabi University has come under a cloud as a Delhi publisher has filed a Rs 20-lakh lawsuit against it for plagiarism.

Hindi publisher Rajkamal Prakashan Ltd has accused the university of reproducing its Hindi book in Punjabi. The original was authored by writer Sabyasachi Bhattacharya.

A civil judge of Delhis Tis Hazari court, Gurvinder Pal Singh, restrained the university from reprinting and selling its infringed publication till the settlement of the issue through an interim order on August 20.

T he next hearing is on September 19.

The publisher said he published a Hindi book, Aadhunik Bharat Ka Aarthik Itihaas, after buying its exclusive rights in 1988 from the author and the books seventh edition was in the market.

In June, we learnt that the universitys publication bureau printed a Punjabi book under the same title in 2012, which was nothing but a translation of our Hindi book, the publisher said in the petition.

Barring the first two chapters, the varsitys book was translated from our book, a fact confirmed by Hindi-Punjabi translator Subhash Neerav, when both the books were sent to him for his opinion.

Publishing house managing director Ashok Maheshwari said the name of the author of Punjabi Universitys book is SD Gajrani, who retired as a professor of history and died last January.

Before filing the lawsuit, we checked from Bhattacharya whether he gave any permission to Punjabi University to translate and publish the book, but he was unaware about the issue, said Maheshwari.

He said the varsity had been selling the book for four years in violation of the Copyright Act.

Even if the commissioned writer is at fault, the university is equally responsible not vetting the book before sending it for publication, he said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
NEW DELHI: A gang of robbers fired pistols and wounded a constable when two police cars closed in on them from behind and front, blocking their way on an isolated byroad in northwest Delhis Rohini on Sunday morning.

The operation began around 9am when the station house officer (SHO) of Sultanpuri police station was informed that a gang of five robbers was moving in the Rithala and Begampur Road localities in a white Maruti Swift to target a property dealer.

The SHO formed a team of 11 men and dashed off in three private hatchbacks to avoid alerting the gang. A scout car spotted the Swift on Begampur police station road, about 2km from Rithala Metro station, and quickly blocked the robbers from the front. Another car closed in from behind.

The gangster driving the Swift, identified as Sudhir alias Kala, tried to get away by accelerating and hitting the car blocking the way, and then reversed suddenly to make space to wiggle his vehicle out of the tight spot. When a constable saw the Swift trying to push its way out of the trap, he fired and deflated a tyre. The policemen then asked the robbers to surrender, but they pulled out their pistols instead and fired. A bullet hit constable Pradeeps left thigh and the police team engaged the robbers in a close gunfight.

The shooting ended as quickly as it started after a bullet grazed Sudhirs neck and pierced through the cheeks of fellow robber Vijay alias Rajesh seated next to him.

Constable Arvind sneaked from behind and broke the rear windscreen of the Swift, sticking his gun to the head of robber Sanjay Geroge, who was on the back seat with partner Farman.

The other three in the car tried to escape, but were overpowered in a matter of seconds. Fifth suspect Rahul alias Sunny, who was a scout, was on a motorcycle. He was caught a while later.

Sanjay, Vijay and Farman are known criminals. Police said Sanjay was arrested in 2008 for looting a bank car carrying cash in the Delhi Cantonment area. He is out on parole. In February, the trio was declared proclaimed offenders for attempting to murder a person.

Sundays attack was the second on Delhi Police personnel in less than 36 hours after constable Anand Singh was shot dead by three robbers in outer Delhis Bawana. Singh challenged them when the killers were robbing a woman in front of a crowd of people.

They escaped after shooting at the policeman. Nobody from the crowd came to his rescue.

Police suspect the robbers caught on Sunday murdered constable Singh. They were being interrogated, DCP (outer Delhi) Vikramjeet Singh said.
NEW DELHI: A PhD student of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has been booked for allegedly raping a fellow scholar after drugging her at his hostel room on campus, police said, adding that the accused was absconding.

The FIR filed by the 28-year-old student, who is also pursuing her PhD, said accused Anmol Ratan offered her a spiked drink when she went to his room on Saturday to copy a movie on her pen drive. Hostels at the university do not follow gender segregation.

The woman said Ratan messaged her that he had the copy of a film she wanted to see and offered to transfer it onto a pen drive. He came to her hostel and asked her to accompany him to his room at Brahmaputra hostel, said a senior police officer. The message was in response to a Facebook post the victim had made in June asking if anyone had the copy of the movie, police said.

In her complaint, the victim said she accepted the drink offered by Ratan and lost consciousness. She said Ratan raped her when she was unconscious. She tried to raise an alarm after regaining consciousness but Ratan did not allow her to leave, the officer said.

Police said the accused, associated with the All India Students Association (AISA), threatened her with his political clout if she reported the matter.

On Sunday, the woman lodged a complaint with the Vasant Kunj North police, who booked Ratan under sections 376 (rape) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.

Reports of the victims medical examination were awaited.

Within hours of the FIR, the Left-affiliated AISA expelled Ratan from its primary membership. AISA takes serious note of the fact that Anmol Ratan, a leading activist of AISA, is facing a criminal complaint of sexual assault. He is henceforth expelled from the primary membership of AISA. AISA will reflect on and deal with this issue with all the firmness it deserves... We stand by the complainant in her fight for justice, Ashutosh Kumar, secretary of the student bodys Delhi unit said in a statement.

JNU registrar Pramod Kumar said he had not received any complaint on the matter. There is no complaint that has been submitted to the university. I have made an enquiry with the security of the university and they have not got back.

The university had witnessed vociferous protests in February when student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested and charged with sedition for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans at an event to mark Afzal Gurus death anniversary.
NEW DELHI: Investigation into the international syndicate of foreign-made firearms busted on Thursday revealed that its networks are allegedly spread in Pakistan, China, Russia, Nepal and the United States.

The syndicate is primarily operated from Pakistan by relatives of Mohammad Rehan Ansari and his brother Qurban Ansari, who were arrested after a gunfight with special cell sleuths near Indraprastha Park late Wednesday night, police said.

Ten pistols, including Walther (German) and Sig Sauer (USA), worth Rs1 crore, and 157 cartridges were seized. Sources in special cell said the guns are first brought to Pakistan from the countries where they are manufactured, and sent to Nepal. From there it is smuggled into India through the porous Indo-Nepal borders and delivered to the Ansaris.

Ansaris deliver the consignment to their conduits in DelhiNCR. Lastly, the guns are sold to potential buyers, who are mostly criminals or someone who loves to possess sophisticated foreign-made guns, said an investigator.

The Ansari brothers told police that two more brothers and relatives were also involved in smuggling foreign-made firearms. All of them are missing after the Ansaris arrest.

When the special cell sleuths raided the Ansaris native home in Uttar Pradeshs Khurja, they were shocked to find the house and the lane outside under the surveillance of 50 CCTV cameras. Family members and neighbours claimed the cameras were installed recently for safety. Investigators, however, believe the Ansaris installed CCTVs to keep the police and rivals at bay.

Senior special cell officers have so far ruled out a terror link behind this busted module. But they believe the international firearm smuggling network is well organised and active for over five years.

Seventeen mobile phones were seized from the two arrested brothers. Their call detail records are being obtained to identify suspects in India and abroad who are part of the syndicate. Their seized laptop is also being thoroughly examined for clues about their counterparts in Pakistan, Nepal and other foreign countries.

Investigators believe the laptop will provide crucial details about the missing suspects as they communicated with each other through social networking sites to avoid police attention. The scrutiny of their social media accounts would also help police identify the key players who are based in Pakistan and Nepal. Sources said the network may be a part of pschy ops (psychological operation) against India, in a bid to destablise the country by pumping in arms.

The police are also looking for Ansaris clients. A Delhi-based man is also under police lens.
NEW DELHI: The South Delhi Municipal Corporation may soon set up mobile toilets at public places, instead of constructing permanent ones.

Municipal officials said that the south corporation was already in talks with agencies over installation of mobile toilets, a move they said will discourage open defecation.

The south civic body is planning to make use of mobile toilets in parks to discourage citizens from urinating on roadsides. The corporation is also planning to use such toilets in schools, said a municipal official.

Sources in the corporation said that the move by the municipal corporation comes amid the financial crisis currently being faced by the civic bodies. The municipal corporations were supposed to construct 1,000 toilets, including those meant for women by October 2015 besides repair the existing ones.

Though the civic bodies failed to construct any new toilets on their own in 2015, they did manage to set up around 80 toilets through joint effort and funds received under Corporate Social Responsibility since October last year.

The corporations had previously decided to construct permanent toilets, hoping to use them as advertising points and using the revenue thus gathered for maintenance. However, given the financial crunch, the south civic body is now planning to install mobile toilets, said a municipal official.
NEW DELHI: A 53-year-old Delhi Police head constable was killed when a speeding car, allegedly being driven by a teenager, knocked off the scooter he was driving on Sunday in northwest Delhis Welcome Colony.

Naresh Pal Malik is the second policeman to die in three days.

Police said the driver turned 18 recently and did not have a driving licence. The car belonged to his friends father Shubham, who was sitting next to him when the accident occurred. Police said angry locals chased and caught both Shubham and the teen.

Shubham was arrested and a case of rash and negligent driving causing death was registered against him. He was later released on bail.

Senior police officers said action will be taken against Shubham for allowing a teenager to drive the car without a licence. His vehicle was confiscated.

A senior police officer said the accident took place around 8.30 am when head constable Malik was on his way to office on his scooter. Malik was posted with the special branch in Police Bhawan in Daryaganj. A native of Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh, Malik lives with his family in Ghaziabads Surya Nagar.

When he reached the Welcome Colony-Seelempur intersection, the speeding car rammed his scooter.

Malik fell off the scooter and suffered severe head injuries. He was rushed to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital where doctors pronounced him dead on admission, said the senior officer.

Malik joined Delhi Police in 1982. He is survived by his wife and two children.

Constable Anand Singh was shot dead by three criminals when he caught them robbing a woman in outer Delhi on Friday night. An eyewitness, who saw Singh fight the men, said: Despite being shot, Singh chased the fleeing bikers on foot while holding his gunshot wounds with one hand. More than 150 people had gathered near the spot but no one helped him.
Taking a dig at the lieutenant governor, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said on Monday in the Delhi assembly that voter was bigger than the elected and the elected bigger than the selected. He questioned how a selected official (the L-G) can govern Delhi when the city has elected representatives.

Our fight is against the idea that Delhi will be governed by the L-G despite an elected government. When we contested elections, we knew that law and order, police and land were not under our control, he said at the four-day session of the Assembly.

Sisodia was referring to the Delhi high courts verdict that all decisions taken by the Delhi government have to be cleared by the lieutenant governor.

The L-G should cooperate with us on other subjects like he did with the other governments. We believe the elector is bigger than the elected and the elected is bigger than the selected. The weight of someones vote in Uttar Pradesh should be the same as the weight of a Delhiite, he said.

Sisodia said the Centre wants to govern Delhi via Presidents rule.

If it was up to them (Bharatiya Janata Party), they would tear the calendar and turn back time so that February 10, 2015 never comes, Sisodia said.

Read: AAP govt to seek clarification on its powers as 4-day session starts today

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government was elected on February 10 last year.

Sisodia said the opposition had a problem with the AAP governments style of working because the party challenged traditional norms and worked for the poor.

Party MLAs said they were answerable to the public but since work was stalled, they were not being able to give answers.

Delhi would have become jannat had the Centre not put a spanner in our works. For us, a manifesto is a contractual obligation. It might be a julma for others. We are accountable to the public, said Malviya Nagar MLA, Somnath Bharati.

AAP legislators said they pin their hopes on the Supreme Court.

The high court might have ruled against us but we are looking at the Supreme Court. It has ruled against the Centre in the case of Presidents rule in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, said Greater Kailash MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj.

Leader of the opposition Vijender Gupta said the AAP government had chosen the path of confrontation.

Other governments, with who the BJP can never be on the same page ideologically, have been working in their respective states without trouble. AAP has chosen the path of confrontation. We will support the government if it is ready to work according to the constitution, he said.
Days after banning the manufacture, storage and use of all sharpened kite strings, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs blamed the Central government for allowing the import of Chinese manjha. Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia sought an explanation from the prime minister.

The issue was raised by party MLA Somnath Bharti on the first day of the four-day assembly session.

The Central government should ban the import of killer Chinese manjha. People in Delhi can bring it from neighbouring town so no point just banning its use in Delhi. Import is not a state subject and the Central government should ban it across the country, said Sisodia.

Leader of Opposition, Vijender Gupta, however, accused the Delhi government of delaying the process, which led to the death of two children and an adult.

The Delhi government deliberately delayed the process of ban to benefit the mafia. An NGO alerted the government in March 2015, but they sat on it. The government is responsible for the deaths due to manjha, said Gupta.

Stakeholders have been asked to send in their objections, if any, explaining why the ban shouldnt be continued. The objections need to be sent over within 10 days from issue of the order.

Read: When manjha was just about kite-flying

The state environment department had issued a draft notification on Tuesday that sought to impose a ban on the Chinese manjha. The notification sought objections from stakeholders till 60 days, saying the final notice will be issued after that.

As per the act, people will get another 545 days to raise any objection. Last two years were wasted by Delhi government and the same government will waste next two years also, Gupta added.

Somnath Bharti, who initiated the discussion, said banning the use of manjha wont have much impact since the enforcement agencies are not with the AAP government. If import is banned, the problem will be resolved. Vijender Gupta is raising the issue but he is silent on the responsibility of Central government, said Bharti.

The discussion gained momentum when Sisodia demanded explanation from the PM and Gupta objected to the language used by him. In reply, Sisodia said when the matter is related to the people of Delhi, he will seek explanation from everyone.
A 30-year-old Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) constable allegedly committed suicide at the National Museum complex near India Gate on Monday afternoon.

Police said he used the lanyard of his service pistol to hang himself.

A senior police officer said the constable, Munna Kumar Roy, was under depression due to prolonged illness. He was undergoing treatment at Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences.

The CISF is in charge of securing the complex and has a unit there. Roy was posted as a washerman at the unit. No suicide note was recovered, said the officer.

At about 1.45 pm, one of Roys colleagues found him hanging the forces unit lines on the first floor.

Roy was rushed to RML Hospital where doctors pronounced him dead on admission. The Tilak Marg police station was later informed. A Court of Inquiry has been ordered.

Originally from Jharkhand, Roy is survived by his wife and a daughter. He was posted at the National Museum Complex two months ago. Before that, he was posted in Ghaziabad, police said.
A womans concern that her husband should not sleep on an empty stomach cost her life.

The 50-year-old woman was pushed off a balcony by her husband in East Delhis Khichdipur on Sunday night.

The couples 11-year-old grandson saw the incident. The boy told police that at 9.45pm his grandfather Dilip Kumar, 55, returned home from an outstation trip after a week. Kumar worked with a transport company.

He reportedly dozed off in a room and his wife was preparing dinner in the kitchen. At around 10 pm, Lalita called him for dinner from the kitchen.

On getting no response, Lalita called his name aloud a few times, unaware her husband was sleeping. A few minutes later, Kumar allegedly came out of the room and caught her by the hair.

Kumar thrashed his wife, took her to the balcony and pushed her from the second floor. His grandson Dilip tried to stop Kumar but he was slapped and told not to intervene, an officer said.

Locals who saw Lalita fall informed the police. Kumar allegedly fled the house after realising Lalita may have died. The police rushed her to hospital where she was declared brought dead.

Police said the couple had recently fought over financial matters.

Our probe revealed Kumar and his wife had a fight some months ago. On Sunday, neighbours heard them fighting. Lalita refused to let her husband inside the house. Neighbours have said that they heard the two fighting before dinner. We have registered a case and are verifying the details, a police officer said.
The East Delhi Municipal Corporation has devised a novel way to improve the efficiency of its sanitation workers (safai karamcharis). It will simply rechristen them.

Municipal sanitation workers will now be known as paryavaran sahayak or environmental helpers.

The corporation leaders believe this will bring respect and dignity of profession to over 60,000 sanitation workers who work for the three municipal corporations.

Sources in the municipal corporations said the North and South Delhi Municipal Corporation also plan to change the name of sanitation workers.

The sanitation workers are the pillars of our plans to keep the environment clean. Calling them safai karamcharis did not seem honourable. Therefore, we have decided to refer to all our sanitation workers as Paryavaran Sahayaks, said Raj Kumar Dhillon, east Delhi deputy mayor.

Sources said that apart from a name change, the corporations also plan to change uniforms of the sanitation workers. There are plans to conduct training exercises for them.

The proposal received mixed reactions from the unions of sanitation workers. Some unions welcomed the name change, saying it will be a huge morale booster. But some others said the corporation should instead try to improve their working conditions.

The change of name will benefit the workers psychologically. An honourable name will help the workers carry out their duties more efficiently. We welcome the move by EDMC and hope that other corporations will also follow, said Sanjay Gahlot, president of Swatantra Mazdoor Vikas Sanyukt Morcha.

Other unions, however, were not impressed.

How is a name change going to help the workers? The corporation should have rather paid the arrears which have been pending for more than a decade or agreed to their demand of making the contractual employees permanent. A change of name will not improve the working conditions. The corporations must first think about that, said Rajinder Mewati, general secretary of the United Front of MCD Employees.

Read: Day 6 of MCD strike: Garbage dumped outside offices of AAP MLAs

The municipal sanitation workers had gone on strike thrice in the past one year over non-payment of dues. The three corporations were struggling to stay afloat due to a crippling financial crisis. The strike, one of which continued for 15 days, had triggered a sanitation crisis in the national capital.

The real reason why sanitation workers, continue to work as sanitation workers generation after generation is the deep-rooted caste system in the country, said Bezwada Wilson, founder of Safai Karamchari Andolan and winner of this years Magsaysay Award.

However, the government agencies are oblivious of the real reasons behind their problems and now have found a new way to reinstate the caste by changing names. The changing of names seems like a way to glorify and ornamentalise the caste system. Such gimmicks must be stopped, Wilson said.

In his budget speech for the current financial year, rail minister Suresh Prabhu had also announced to replace coolie for porters with sahayaks or helpers.
A seven-year-old girl was allegedly kidnapped and gangraped by three youths in east Delhis Yamuna Khadar village near Mandawali late on Sunday night.

Police said the girl was allegedly brutalised for almost an hour by the three accused at an isolated place near Yamuna Khadar due to which she suffered injuries in her private parts.

The girl was bleeding when she returned home and told her parents about the brutality. She was first admitted at Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital from where she was referred to AIIMS for better treatment.

Police sources said the girl suffered multiple injuries in her private parts and her condition was serious.

Rishipal Singh, deputy commissioner of police (east), confirmed the crime and said that the girl was recuperating. Singh said that all three accused were arrested. Two of them are neighbours of the girl and the third is their friend, said the DCP.

The arrested persons were identified as Bhure, 19, Amir, 21, and Bhim Sen, 19. A case under the relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and IPC was registered against them at the Mandawali police station.

A police officer said, on Sunday night, the girl was sleeping outside her home on a cot. Around 11 pm, the three youths gagged the girl and took her towards an isolated place in a nearby jungle. They threatened to kill the girl if she screamed or raised any alarm.

The three then took turns to rape the girl till she fell semi-unconscious.

The trio then dumped the girl near her house.
Indias female athletes may have made the country proud at the Rio Olympics but back home, a Delhi University college has decided to shut down its physical education course.

The principal of west Delhis Bhagini Nivedita College, Purbi Saikia, put up a notice on August 17, saying students who opted for the physical education course should opt for some other subject.

Physical education is an elective course taken by third-year undergraduate students enrolled in the BA programme and is taught over two semesters.

The sudden decision has alarmed the 24 students who are currently enrolled in the course. They have approached DU vice-chancellor Yogesh Tyagi, along with their physical education teachers.

The course was introduced in 2011 but was put on hold  among a host of courses  last year because a new curriculum was introduced under the controversial four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP).

Read: DU aspirants brace themselves for tackling CBCS

This course was closed when FYUP was introduced. Now we have Choice Based Credit System and so cannot continue, said Saikia.

Because of changes in workload, the course was withdrawn. Moreover, the person teaching the subject is not equipped for classroom teaching.

But the concerned teacher, Mamta Sahrawat, alleged that the principal had unfairly targeted physical education among other courses and took the decision to shut it down with consultation and approval from the governing body.

There were other application courses running before FYUP like physical education, mass communication and creative writing. Students can opt for these courses but not physical education. This is not fair when there are interested students, said Sahrawat.

The decision has left students worried and confused about their future.

We hope that the principal agrees and lets us study. Seniors have told me it is a good course with several career option, said a student, on condition of anonymity.

Teachers from other departments of the college sent an application to the principal, requesting that the course be allowed to run.

This option is quite popular among students and has produced good results in the past. So for the benefit of the students the course should be continued, said the letter.

Read: 138 make it to DUs PG courses under sports quota

The controversy comes as a number of female athletes  shuttler PV Sindhu, wrestler Sakshi Malik and gymnast Dipa Karmakar  have captured the nations imagination with their stellar performance at the Olympics. Sindhu and Sakshi also won both of Indias medals at the Rio games.

But their success was peppered with impediments, especially at the school and college level, where they didnt receive adequate infrastructural or administrative support.

Experts say that a lack of proper facilities, awareness about physical education and reliance on classroom academic training are responsible for the paltry number of female athletes in India.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The JNU students union (JNUSU) has written to the universitys vice-chancellor, demanding action against a research scholar accused of raping another student.

A 28-year-old JNU student had on Sunday filed an FIR with Delhi Police against a member of the Left-affiliated All India Students Association (AISA), accusing him of raping her in a hostel room after spiking her drink.

The woman, a first-year PhD student, said that Anmol Ratan, also a PhD student, offered her to give a copy of a movie and asked her to accompany him to his room at Brahmaputra hostel.

She told the police that he raped her when she was unconscious and later told her not to report the matter.

We condemn the incident and call for speedy action. ...we demand that the (police) force takes all steps to ensure justice and arrest the accused without delay. The university must take necessary action against the accused student, the union said.

A police officer said the rape survivors statement could not be recorded before the judicial magistrate on Monday. The complainant told us she was unwell and wouldnt be able to record her statement. We will approach her again on Tuesday, said the officer.

Her statement before the judicial magistrate is important in the case because it is admissible in the court of law.

Read: JNU PhD scholar accused of raping colleague after spiking her drink

The police raided possible hideouts of the suspect, Ratan, in Delhi and adjoining states. The police approached his family members and asked them to produce Ratan before them at the earliest.

The university said the incident was a blot on its image and asked the JNU community to remain vigilant against such incidents.

In a statement, the university said, JNU administration strongly condemns an incident of heinous rape in a campus hostel. It has completely shaken the JNU community and has tarnished the image of the university.

The AISA had on Sunday expelled Ratan and ended his primary membership. The ABVP held a protest against Ratan in the campus and demanded his rustication.
A Delhi court on Monday awarded the death penalty to two convicts for kidnapping and killing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh in 2009.

Additional sessional Judge Sandeep Yadav awarded the death penalty to Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla, while the third accused, Baljeet Malik was sentenced to life in prison.

Kapoor, Malik and Shuklas shopping spree using Jigishas debit card after murdering her is what landed them in the police net in March 2009.

The court earlier found the trio guilty of abducting Jigisha from outside her house in Vasant Vihar, robbing, murdering and abandoning the body in Haryanas Surajkund.

Read: Images of her lifeless body still haunt us: Jigishas parents

After dumping her body in the bushes near Surajkund in Haryana, the men returned home and distributed the booty, investigators had told HT.

Malik kept the Rs 20,000 cash they withdrew using Jigishas card, Kapoor kept her emerald-studded gold chain and Shukla took her green sapphire rings.

The next morning, the trio met again to go shopping, investigators said. First they went to PVR Anupam in Saket and withdrew Rs 5,000 using her card. To see if they could swipe her card directly, they bought a CD from a music shop at the district centre and signed on the customer receipt. They bought a pair of Reebok shoes for Shukla from a showroom in Saket.

Sabita Ghosh (centre) and Jaganath Ghosh (extreme left) react after a Delhi court sentenced three men found guilty of murdering their daughter, IT professional Jigisha Ghosh. (Arun Sharma/ HT photo)

Reebok shoes have a unique number engraved on them that is also mentioned in the receipts, besides the cards account number. The men ignored it. They also went to Sarojini Nagar to shop more, said a senior police officer.

The officer said they bought two pairs of sunglasses and a pair of Reebok shoes each for Malik and Kapoor. They followed it up with a wristwatch for Rs 10,000 and an LCD TV for Rs 20,000.

The men had little clue that Jigishas father would follow the lengthy paper trail they had left behind and hand it over to the police.

We went to all shops from where the men purchased all the goodies and accessed the CCTV footage from the cameras installed inside they had worn the caps such that their faces were covered. But in one of the footages, we spotted a tattoo on Baljits hand. The men werenabbed at Nelson Mandela Marg, an investigator said.

He said the car used in the crime, also a stolen property, and Jigishas jewellery were seized from them.

A 15-hour interrogation had the trio confessing to the crime, the police said. They claimed they were drunk and looking for a target, when they spotted Jigisha. She was on the phone, outside her house. They forced her into the car, robbed her of her jewels and wallet, and took her to an ATM and asked for her password.

They withdrew Rs 20,000 and again took her to the car. They slapped her repeatedly, stepped on her face and smothered her to death. They drove her body around for half-an-hour before dumping it, a police officer said.

They also admitted to killing journalist Soumya Vishwanathan, a sensational case that had hit a dead end, a few months ago.

In Tihar Jail, their cells had to often be changed because they created a ruckus, the police said. In January 2013, the police arrested Tihar hospitals compounder for allegedly receiving Rs 50,000 from a Vaishali resident on behalf of Amit Shukla.

This is an updated version of a story published on July 15, 2016

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken yet again on the ongoing unrest in Kashmir but this time around, he has tried to apply a healing touch. Expressing deep pain and concern at the prevailing ground situation, Mr Modi said that those who lost their lives during the recent disturbances are part of us, our nation, whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police. For the first time in the six weeks that the Valley has been in the grip of unprecedented protests, the prime minister has spoken about civilian killings. But for his words to have any meaningful effect, they must be backed by serious action.

Read | Kashmir crippled by lazy politics, needs greater outreach

This is important because Mr Modi has changed his stance on the current Kashmir crisis once too often. When he first spoke, at a rally in Madhya Pradesh, he leant on former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayees Kashmir policy of jhamooriyat and insaniyat (democracy and humanity). Within a few days of that, however, Mr Modi uttered the Balochistan word, leaving Kashmiris wondering why they were being treated as pawns in a game that India wanted to play with Pakistan. Let us also remember that Mr Modis pain and concern have come a day after finance minister Arun Jaitley blamed Pakistan for the unrest and termed stone-throwing protesters as aggressors out to divide the country.

Read | PM Modis promise of Insaniyat needs substantive unilateralism

The thinking within government circles in Srinagar and New Delhi was that the protestors would get tired; that exhaustion would set in and the Valley would limp back to normalcy. The enraged youth however, have shown no signs of relenting and the last few days brought news that no nation should countenance  the security forces firing on an ambulance driver and then opening fire on an elderly couple, well into their eighties. Sensing signs of panic among its forces, the Northern army commander appealed to all sections, including the government, to initiate a dialogue. After a meeting with Kashmir-based opposition parties, the prime minister also called for a dialogue to work out a permanent solution within the framework of the Constitution.

Read | A Kashmir policy with Baltistan, owls and chickens

There are enough files already available to Mr Modi for reference: His predecessor Manmohan Singh, who worked the back channels with Pakistan through an envoy, said before demitting office that they were very close to a breakthrough on Kashmir. If Mr Modi does not want to take the back channel route, he could look up files pertaining to Vajpayees dialogue with the separatists as well as revisit the possibility of initiating talks with the Hizbul Mujahideen. After all, Vajpayee had followed up on his jhamooriyat and insaniyat comment by sending his home secretary to Srinagar for talks with the Hizb. Dialogue is clearly the way forward, for Kashmirs solution lies in the realm of the political and not the military, as the army commander too had hinted it. The time for rhetoric alone has long gone. Now is the time for action.

Read | Kashmir needs a new healing touch
The July 27 stabbing of a female student inside Devi Ahilya Vishwavidhyalaya (DAVV) in Indore has left many shocked and in fear, highlighting the campuss poor security, which authorities assured, would be upgraded.

With Indore rapidly becoming an education hub for central India, DAVV, graded A by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), is the natural choice of many in the state.

However, the poor security in the two campuses of the state-run varsity has raised questions in the minds of scholars and graduates, especially women.

The main problem, students say, is due to the unchecked entry of outsiders.

The first campusknown as Takshila Parisar 1 or Khandwa Road campusis spread over 300 acres and has four gates, with security guards manning only the main entrance.

But he is useless. He is old and ineffective at keeping a check on outsiders or helping anyone in trouble. He never bothers to verify the identities of anyone entering the campus, Roshni Verma, a BSc student, said.

The Takshila Parisar 2 or Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) campus, which lies west of the Inner Ring Road, has only two gates and both have guards.

But here too no one checks those entering or leaving, Verma said.

Students have reported several instances of vehicle thefts. When you ask the guards, they just look helpless, a student, who did not want to be named, said.

Students said varsity authorities showed no concern when they raised the matter before them. Students outfits such as NSUI and ABVP also asked the university to strengthen security arrangements, but it has all fallen on deaf ear, the student said.

The guards are sent by a private security agency and appointed by university authorities after due verification of background.

However, most of the guards are unskilled and armed with only a lathi.

Vice-chancellor Narendra Kumar Dhakkar, who took charge in May this year, said security at both the campuses was his top priority. I will do everything for it.

A first-year student was stabbed by two bike-borne men in front of CV Raman Girls Hostel on July 27. When the victim and her classmate sought the administrations assistance in reporting the matter to police, they were asked to do so themselves.

Poor security has led to incidents of eve teasing and sexual harassment in the campus, but many go unreported, students said.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) has decided that they will not allow the JNU administration to interfere with the students union poll this year. The union has also decided to hold a general body meeting with the students on working out modalities of the election process.

Unlike Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) election, the election in JNU is entirely managed by the students.

In April this year, the JNUSU had decided that they will not follow the Lyngdoh Committee Recommendation (LCR) and conduct election as per JNUs constitution.

A committee headed by former chief election commissioner JM Lyngdoh had in 2005 recommended a spending cap of Rs. 5,000 per candidate on election expenses, besides formulating other rules and regulations for cleaning up campus politics.

Read more: Uncertainty over iconic Ganga Dhaba, JNU students protest

The Lyngdoh Committee guidelines also put a cap on the number of times a student can contest university elections.

The JNUSU had in October 2015, decided that students election will be conducted in March but it could not happen due to the controversy over the February 9 anti-national sloganeering row. Till last year, the election used to take place in September.

The JNU administration has no role to play in the JNUSU elections. We condemn the attempts of the JNU administration to intervene in the election process and dictate terms to the student community, decided the student representatives in a council meeting on Saturday.

In a proposal put forward by Rama Naga, JNUSU general secretary, the council decided that they will work to pressurise MHRD to issue a notification declaring the LCR as null and void.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A cow was tied to a tractor and dragged, her horns broken and left to die in Bolani village of Rewari for the reason that the animal hit a bike and the biker got injured.

The incident happened in the village under Kasola police station of Rewari district on August 10.The furious biker called two other men and a tractor, tied the animal behind it and dragged it till it became unconscious. Not satisfied, the biker broke horns of the cow, police said.

Two dalit men, who tried to intervene during the torture, were bullied. The men informed police after which the cow was taken to a government veterinary hospital at Dadri Toe in Jhajjar district. The animal died at the hospital three days after the incident.

Bolani village, known as native place of many civil servants and defence personnel, was adopted by Gurgaon MP and Union minister of state for Planning, urban development and housing Rao Inderjit Singh under Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana because of its backward status.

Police filed a case under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act against two men - Dharmu, who drove the tractor and Mukesh Meena.

Police invoked the Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Act 2015 after the cow died. The duo was arrested on August 18 and the tractor used in the crime was seized, Hitender Kumar, station house officer (SHO) of Kasola police station, said.

Some villagers said police were not aware of the cows death and did not seek a death report from the hospital. It was after pressure from locals that police took action against the accused, a villager, who did not wish to be named, said.

SHO Kumar said there was a delay because of some procedural issues.

In March this year, the state government had passed Haryana Gauvansh Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Act 2015, making cow slaughter punishable with rigorous imprisonment up to 10 years and fine of Rs1 lakh. The act defines cow including bull, bullock, ox, heifer and calf.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON


The Border Security Force (BSF) was deployed on Monday in downtown Srinagar after over a decade, a move indicating a possible rejig of the security forces in the Valley. This follows the deployment of 4,000 additional army troops at hotspots in south Kashmir after the unrest triggered by the killing of Hizb militant Burhan Wani on July 8.

Thousands of people have been injured in clashes between security forces and protesters in the past 45 days. To review the situation, Army chief General Dalbir Singh will visit the troubled areas in Kashmir and the Line of Control (LoC) on Tuesday  his third trip to the state in a month.

The BSFs deployment, however, may put the state administration in a quandary  its personnel are not issued riot control gear such as batons or body armour like their counterparts in the CRPF, who took over law and order duties from the BSF in 2004.

Around 2,000 BSF personnel (24 companies) have been put at the disposal of the state government and their exact role will be finalised soon, said a senior BSF official, hinting that the paramilitary force may be used for setting up barricades or road opening duties due to lack of riot control gear.

The BSF men were originally deployed in the state for providing security during the Amarnath Yatra that ended on August 18. Earlier, the BSF was involved in security duties at the airport and the governors residence.

Former Northern Army commander Lieutenant General BS Jaswal (retd) said, The BSF appears to have been deployed as the troop-to-ground density in Srinagar had fallen. Its presence will deter protesters.

A senior army officer said General Singh will review the security arrangements in Kashmir and visit posts along the LoC, which has witnessed a spike in infiltration attempts in recent weeks.

The army is focused on tightening its counter-infiltration posture as there are indications that Pakistan is pushing militants into the state to create more trouble, he said. Sectors such as Tangdhar, Keran and Gurez sit on major infiltration routes along LoC.

In an interview to HT last week, Northern Army commander Lieutenant General DS Hooda had said that the unrest was being deliberately kept alive by internal and external elements (separatists and Pakistan).
The BJP is gearing up to take the Uttar Pradesh election war to the Congress.

After Congress chief Sonia Gandhis August 3 road show drew huge crowds in Varanasi, Narendra Modis Lok Sabha constituency, the BJP is planning a similar event by the Prime Minister in the Nehru-Gandhi bastion of Amethi in October.

We need to be seen in the fight. Modis event there will lift cadres morale, a BJP leader said on condition of anonymity. The party is looking at a road show or a public meeting.

Sonias son and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is the Lok Sabha member from Amethi, a seat that has remained in the Gandhi family for decades.

Uttar Pradesh is due for elections in early 2017 and the BJP is keen to do well in the state where regional parties dominate state polls.

Indias most populous state was central to the BJPs sweep of the 2014 elections where it won 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats. But, the state election is a different ball game, fought on local issues with caste equations playing a huge role.

Textiles minister Smriti Irani, then a rising star of the BJP, gave Rahul a tough fight in Amethi. Modi, too, had addressed a rally in the central UP constituency, seeking support for Irani.

Though Irani occasionally visits Amethi, the BJP has stayed away from the constituency. But, the Congress less than impressive showing in the Lok Sabha elections has the BJP believing that a few seats can be won in Amethi and neighbouring Rae Bareli, Sonias parliamentary constituency.

Amethi and Rae Bareli have five assembly seats each in the 404-member Uttar Pradesh assembly.

In the absence of a chief ministerial candidate, Modi remains the BJPs face in Uttar Pradesh, where the party is trying to expand its reach beyond its traditional support base of upper castes and some other backward classes.

The BJP is also looking at a Modi rally in Bundelkhand to launch Prime Minister Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (Prime Ministers Farm Irrigation Scheme).

There are around 20 assembly seats in the region that was battling drought for years but now faces flood threat to some parts. Bundelkhand is considered a stronghold of the Bahujan Samaj Party, which is looking to dislodge the ruling Samajwadi Party and make a comeback.

Later in the year, Modi will also give the Skill India campaign, which aims to enable millions of young Indians to earn a livelihood, a fresh push from the industrial town of Kanpur.

The Prime Minister has been in the state almost every month this year. He has addressed rallies, launched schemes and even chose Saharanpur in the north to mark his two years in office in May with a well-attended public meeting during which he famously declared himself to be a UP-wallah.

Amethi and Rai Bareli will test the UP-wallah.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Municipal authorities in Ahmedabad have shut down a snacks outlet that grabbed national headlines two years ago when it hosted the first of then prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modis popular poll campaign outreach programme, Chai pe Charcha.

Iskon Ganthia is part of a cluster of eight snack shops on the busy Sarkhej-Gandhinagar highway that was sealed last week. Authorities say the shops were operating without adequate parking spaces and the huge rush of customers would frequently trigger chaos on the highway.

Despite several notices, the cluster of shops did not mend parking at their premises. It was sealed last week, said an official from the municipal estate department.

Iskon Ganthia came under the spotlight on February 13, 2014 when then Gujarat chief minister Modi chose the outlet to launch Chai pe Charcha, where the BJP leader interacted with people while sipping tea as part of the Lok Sabha election campaign.

After the Chai Pe Charcha session, the joint became popular among local residents as the NaMo tea stall. (HT Photo)

The programme was a brainchild of Citizens for Accountable Governance led by Prashant Kishor and the first of hundreds of similar events across India  sometimes conducted virtually. Chai pe Charcha was also supposed to highlight Modis humble beginnings as a tea-seller.

After the Chai Pe Charcha session, the joint became popular among local residents as the NaMo tea stall. But the huge rush of customers might have brought about its downfall.

Municipal authorities said the outlet was illegal as it did not have a building-use permission. For four years, it was functioning without the necessary building use permission, said the official.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Congress came under fire from top ministers in the Modi government on Sunday for sympathising with supporters of terrorists, a day after Karnataka home minister gave a clean chit to Amnesty International over an event where anti-India slogans were allegedly raised.

Leading the charge, finance minister Arun Jaitley said Azadi slogans cannot be treated as freedom of speech and slammed Congress and its Karnataka government, accusing them of indulging in vote bank politics over the issue.

Four days ago, in the capital of Karnataka, during a programme in Bangalore, Azadi (freedom) slogans were raised by a few people. An organization, which gets funding from abroad, organised the event and yesterday I read the statement of Karnataka home minister in which he said that whatever happened is nothing wrong, Jaitley said.

After so many sacrifices this country has made, some political parties do it for vote bank politics, he said addressing a rally on the outskirts of Jammu city.

The finance minister recalled a similar incident at Jawaharlal Nehru University in January and said raising slogans to advocate the disintegration of the country cannot be seen as freedom of speech as advocated by some.

Union minister Ananth Kumar, who met a group of ABVP activists on a dharna in Bengaluru, charged the Congress government in Karnataka with sympathising with supporters of terrorists and taking action against nationalists.

It is unfortunate that the Congress government under the chief ministership of Siddaramaiah has taken action against nationalists and sympathised with supporters of terrorists, he told reporters.

It is the duty of the Union and state governments to protect the unity, integrity and sovereignty of the country. I am very happy about ABVP activists efforts to do so by waging a fight against the present Congress government in Karnataka, he said.

The protesting activists submitted a memorandum demanding a National investigation Agency (NIA) investigation into the whole episode.

In reply, Kumar said he would meet Union home minister Rajnath Singh and convey the sentiments of the protesters and submit the memorandum seeking NIA investigation into the incident.

However, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor defended Parameshwaras clean chit to the human rights organisation, saying national security does not get compromised when a few people chant anti-national slogans.

National security of our country is not going to be compromised by few people shouting slogans. We are stronger than that, we are bigger than that, we are better than that, Tharoor told PTI on the sidelines of a conference on IPR organised by OP Jindal Global University (JGU) in Delhi.

Charging Amnesty with sedition law was already a big mistake. The NGO has not advocated violence and no one at the conference did so, he said, adding, We are not at war at the moment. We dont have to think in terms of treason and all, he told PTI.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday responded to Mohan Bhagwats concerns over a declining Hindu population, saying the RSS chief must set an example before people by producing and bringing up 10 children himself before talking.

Before inciting Hindus, Bhagwatji himself should produce and bring up 10 children for setting an example, Kejriwal tweeted.

While addressing a gathering in Uttar Pradeshs Agra city on Sunday, Bhagwat had said, Which law asked Hindus to produce fewer children? Who has stopped them? It is not related to the system, but it is because the social environment.
For several years, Muzaffar Wani, a middle-aged school headmaster, lived an ordinary life in Sharifabad village of South Kashmir. But an encounter on July 8 catapulted the school principal to an exalted position in the Valley. Today, he is known as Burhan Wanis father, as the man who sacrificed two sons for the sake of Kashmirs azadi.

The death of the Hizbul Mujahideen poster boy, who had fired the imagination of young Kashmiris, has sparked an outrage so intense the Valley has been on the boil for over 40 days. Hundreds of youth have taken over the highways and by-lanes, and it is difficult to venture into South Kashmir. Burhan holds sway even after his death and the slogan everywhere is: Tera bhai mera bhai, Burhan bhai, Burhan bhai.

Read | He wouldve died even if he had not joined militancy: Burhan Wanis father

The only way to make it to his home in Trals Sharifabad village  and get a full sense of the fury that is sweeping the Valley  is by leaving Srinagar at the crack of dawn. We steal out of the city at 5am, long before the security forces are deployed, long before the stone-pelters are back on the streets. There are two security camps on the way to the village, but we are not stopped.

Read | Burhan Wani: Better living than dead?

Muzaffar Wani, Burhans father, is awake and not surprised to see us. We had met him a year earlier and discussed the possibility of his sons death. The father knew his sons body would come home one day; that outcome was ensured after he made an appearance on Facebook, wielding an assault rifle.

Islam says that God, Quran and Prophet are bigger than anything, even bigger and more important than our sons, he had said then. Our God should be happy with us even if my sons or my sacrifice is needed for that.

But, what now, now that the son was dead? Will he step in and lead the protesters who refuse to leave the roads? Will the headmaster don the role of a leader and try and defuse the tensions, now that the youth are looking at him for direction?

Muzaffar Wani concedes that groups of people have been visiting him, asking him to become a rallying point, but says hes happy being Burhans father. Surprisingly, he does issue an appeal, saying, Burhan is not alone. The entire Valley is with him. My son has been killed, but dont throw stones. I appeal to the youth not to pelt stones. They are no match in the face of guns (of security forces).

Read | No compromise over violence in Kashmir; Pak challenging Indias unity: Jaitley

Like other Kashmiris, he feels this is the time to voice their demand for azadi. My dead son has left the movement for azadi to the others. It is important to talk. Dialogue is the only way forward or they will prove once again that they are only interested in our land and not in us Kashmiris, he says.

At the graveyard in Sharifabad, angry villagers gather and raise slogans. Danish Bhat, a 21-year-old college student, is now a full-time protester. Arent you scared you might be killed or blinded by pellets? His answer is prompt, Weve lost all fear now. Even if I dont leave home, the security forces will come get us. Thats the story of Kashmir. Muzaffar Wani, who has been listening to the conversation, says, Our generation feared guns. This generation doesnt. Give them a gun and theyll disappear into the mountains and train as militants like my son did.

Read | Kashmir unrest: Teen boy dies after being hit by tear gas shell

As protests continue unabated, keeping the Valley in a tight grasp for over six weeks, officials from the CRPF and the army too are clear that the current phase of unrest is very different. As one army officer said, The youth are fearless. Theyre not scared of coming right up to the gates of our fortified camps to protest.

In the absence of an olive branch from the governments in Delhi and Srinagar, the volatile street has been left to men in uniform and they are discovering that the spark lit by Burhans elimination has spread to all parts of the Valley.

Sharifabad is now only the village in which Burhan was born and buried. The movement has moved beyond the village and well beyond the grasp of the Wanis.

Read | Want to see pens, laptops in hands of Kashmiri youth: Rajnath

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia targetted PM Narendra Modi over the killer Chinese manjha on Monday, saying saying the Centre is working with the Chinese mafia. Sisodia demanded an immediate ban on the import of killer Chinese manjha (kite string) by the Centre.

The central government is bringing Chinese manjha in the country by working with the Chinese mafia. Due to this, several deaths were reported throughout the country and Delhi while several birds were injured, Sisodia said in the Delhi legislative assembly during a discussion on the sharp imported Chinese manjha.

The sharp kite string has claimed three lives, including of two children, in the national capital on August 15 during a kite-flying festival in the Capital.

Modi should answer under what circumstances did he permit the import of killer Chinese manjha. Its because he had to enjoy a swing ride with the Chinese President near the river bank, Sisodia said sarcastically, referring to Modi and President Xi Jinping sitting on a swing on the bank of the Sabarmati river in Ahmedabad in September 2014.

The Delhi government earlier sought a ban on Chinese manjha but clearance to the file was delayed. The Delhi government has accused the Lt. Governor office and the Environment Secretary for the delay.

Sisodia added that merely banning the manjha in Delhi would not be enough as people will get it from neighbouring Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

We admit that after Lt.Governors approval, some delay occurred at the Environment Secretarys office. We have also recommended to the LG that action should be taken against the secretary, Sisodia said.

Leader of Opposition Vijendra Gupta, however, countered Sisodias claim and said that the Delhi government was deliberately delaying the process of issuing draft notification on the ban of Chinese manjha.

Government has showed laxity in imposing the ban. There are certain powers with the state government through which it can ban Chinese manjha for a certain period, Gupta said, demanding a probe into the delay.
The Chhattisgarh assembly unanimously ratified the 122nd Amendment Bill for Goods and Services Tax (GST) after it was tabled for discussion on Monday.

The BJP-ruled Chhattisgarh convened a special one-day session to ratify the bill, which is aimed at bringing a uniform tax regime in the country.

In the area of taxation, this is a historical reform. It would make taxation transparent, efficient and improve our ease of doing business. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, there will be barrier free flow of goods, said chief minister Raman Singh said.

The opposition Congress reiterated that the standard rate of GST should not be more than 18%. Our only concern is that the interests of Chhattisgarh should not be compromised by the framework of the bill, Leader of Opposition in the assembly, TS Singhdeo, said.

The Raman Singh cabinet held a meeting to approve the bill before it was tabled for discussion and voting in the House.

The GST Bill needs to be ratified by at least 15 state legislatures before the President can notify the GST Council which will decide the new tax rate and other issues. The government has set a deadline of April, 2017 for its rollout.
Weeks after the Indian government cleared the deployment of a special version of the BrahMos cruise missile in the northeast, China has warned that such a move would have a negative influence on stability along the border.

Earlier this month, the cabinet committee on security, which is chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cleared the raising of a new regiment to be equipped with an advanced version of the BrahMos developed for mountain warfare at a cost of more than Rs 4,300 crore.

The new regiment will be deployed in Arunachal Pradesh, which is claimed by China. There have been several standoffs between Indian and Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control in recent years.

A commentary over the weekend in the PLA Daily, the official publication of Peoples Liberation Army, said the deployment of the supersonic cruise missiles could lead to counter-measures by China.

India deploying supersonic missiles on the border has exceeded its own needs for self-defense and poses a serious threat to Chinas Tibet and Yunnan provinces, the commentary said.

Deploying BrahMos missiles is bound to increase competitiveness and confrontation in Sino-Indian relations and bring a negative influence to stability of the region, it added.

The piece noted other steps taken by India to beef up its capabilities along the border with China, such as the deployment of UAVs and Su-30 combat jets, and claimed such moves were part of a policy of counterbalance and confrontation. The BrahMos missile could increase suddenness and effectivity of attacks, including crushing blows on time-sensitive targets like missile launchers and solid targets like command centres.

Referring to descriptions of the new version of the BrahMos in Indian media reports, including the missiles excellent dive attack capabilities, the commentary said it fits in the Sino-Indian border where its mostly mountain topography.

The missiles penetration capabilities poses a threat to Chinas border regions, said the commentary by an expert from the PLA Navys engineering university.

However, it added that the BrahMos missiles range of 290 km cannot threaten Chinas deep zones.

The Indian Army has so far raised three regiments equipped with two earlier versions of the BrahMos, which was jointly developed by India and Russia and is named after the Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers. The missile has also been fitted on Indian warships.

The new regiment for the northeast will have some 100 missiles, five mobile autonomous launchers on heavy-duty trucks and a mobile command post.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Myanmars leaders assured external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Monday that they would not allow the countrys territory to be used by anti-India militants as New Delhi launched an effort aimed at charting a new course in ties with the Southeast Asian nation.

Swaraj flew to Myanmar with foreign secretary S Jaishankar and senior foreign ministry officials for a day-long visit, close on the heels of a five-day, high-octane visit to China by the countrys de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

This was the first high-level visit from India after Suu Kyis National League for Democracy pulled off a landslide win in last years election and brought down the curtains on five decades of military rule. Suu Kyi had been miffed by Indias decision to engage with the erstwhile junta, largely due to security concerns related to the northeastern states.

The Myanmar side stated that activities of insurgent groups would not be countenanced from Myanmar territory and suggested that this issue should be addressed and taken forward through cooperation in established bilateral forums, a source told Hindustan Times.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said Myanmars leadership had made an assurance that they will not allow any insurgent groups to use any territory for action against India.

The cross-border activities of insurgent groups figured in Swarajs discussions. Her visit comes days after Indian soldiers clashed with NSCN-K militants in Nagaland who were trying to sneak in from Myanmar. Reports suggested the Indian troops had crossed into Myanmar but this was denied by New Delhi.

India has a backlog to clear with Myanmars new leadership in terms of catching up with it and addressing the mistrust that seeped in because of the close ties with the junta. China, which too had a pronounced tilt towards the junta, gave Suu Kyi a welcome fit for a head of state when she visited Beijing last week.

Swaraj congratulated Suu Kyi for her victory in the first genuine election and assured her of all help. She said: India is committed to strengthening your democratic institutions and socio-economic development of your people.

Swaraj also met President Htin Kyaw. Both sides agreed to identify new areas of cooperation with untapped potential. This includes agriculture, especially the import of pulses from Myanmar, power, renewable energy, skill development, health, education, transport and social development, sources said.

The two sides also discussed the upcoming BRICS-BIMSTEC Outreach Summit to be held in Goa. Swaraj also invited Suu Kyi and Kyaw to visit India.

Swarajs visit assumes importance in view of Chinas active mediatory role in the ethnic conflicts of Myanmar, a declared priority for Suu Kyi, and its investment in massive economic projects. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi travelled to Myanmar in April.

Myanmar is the only Southeast Asian country that India shares a land boundary with and it is an important cog in the NDA governments Act East policy. As Myanmar shares a 1,643-km boundary with four northeastern Indian states, many militant groups use the country as a safe haven.

In my view, this is an important reach out effort. More than the geopolitics of it, the bilateral components are very significant. There are key security issues to be discussed, said M K Bhadrakumar, a retired diplomat and analyst.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A poor 45-year-old widower in Uttar Pradesh must consider marrying a second time to keep his home fire burning, but his four children are against the idea of having a stepmother.

A bizarre dilemma haunts Puttilal Gautam, a Dalit landless daily wage worker of Judhaura village in Sitapur district, about 90km from Lucknow.

Government rules demand he must have a wife to get a free cooking gas connection under a welfare scheme, called Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), launched this May. His daughters cannot apply either; they are too young.

He has been doing the rounds since, but each time he visited the distributor of liquid petroleum gas (LPG) canisters in his area, he was turned back.

They told me to send my wife with relevant documents. I told them my wife died and I have four children to look after. But they wont listen  a rule is a rule, Gautam said.

Gauri, his wife, died of illness two years ago, leaving him to take care of their two young sons and two daughters.

I have to purchase wood and kerosene from the market to cook food. I cannot afford to purchase wood; the price rose to Rs 500 a quintal because of the rain, he said.

He often sends his children to collect twigs and leaves from forests nearby. His daughters help him cook on a mud stove. After cooking for the family, I go to work, he said.

The desperate father approached the village council for help. He requested fellow villagers to put pressure on the administration. The villagers advised him to remarry.

My children rejected the proposal. They dont want a stepmother. My sons told me that they would collect wood and the daughters would help me cook, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Rs 8,000-crore cooking gas scheme from Uttar Pradeshs Ballia to provide 50 million free cooking gas connections to poor families over the next three years. Money saved from more than 11 million cooking gas users voluntarily giving up their subsidies will essentially fund the scheme, which is also an attempt to streamline a bloated and inefficient welfare system.

But much like everything else in India, the scheme for households living below the poverty line is caught in bureaucratic rules, which are invincible for poor, semi-literate people like Gautam.

The guidelines are against a widower. The Prime Minister must amend the rules. After the wifes death, the burden of feeding the children is on the father. An LPG connection comes for Rs 5,000 in the market. I cant afford it. Under the PMUY, its free, Gautam said.

He is the odd man out in a village where 25 Dalit women were given LPG connections under the scheme.

Village headwoman Rampyari said: He has been denied since he is a widower. The rules clearly state only eligible women candidates from BPL families can apply for the scheme.

She had a word with the district administration and Indian Oil Corporation officers.

The list of beneficiaries cannot be amended to include a widower. Remarriage is the sole option left for Puttilal to get an LPG connection, she said.
Under attack over the Amnesty International row, Karnataka home minister G Parameshwara on Monday said he had not given a clean chit to the rights advocacy group, which has been booked for sedition for hosting an event where anti-India slogans were allegedly raised.

First of all let me clarify because there is a lot of talk in the media about it.... let me be very clear, I have not given any clean chit to Amnesty International, Parameshwara told reporters here as he went into damage control after his remarks drew sharp criticism.

All I have said is that I have not heard Amnesty International being involved in any anti-national activity. Second thing is, there is an investigation going on, and I am not a fool to say that everything is well, he said.

To a query, Parameshwara said his remarks had been misinterpreted. Of course, I have been misinterpreted. That is why I did not want to react to it unnecessarily, he added.

Now that the investigation is going on, the law will take its own course. Thats all I have said and I am also standing by that statement, he said.

Read | Amnesty row: Cong sympathising with terrorist supporters, says Ananth Kumar

He said he is not going to interfere with the probe as home minister and it has been left to the police to decide on the next course of action against Amnesty International. The (police) commissioner has made a statement which will be on record. It is left to the police and the IO (investigating officer) to take action accordingly  whether to close the case; whether to take it forward  I am not going to interfere in that.

Parameshwara rejected the charge by some Union ministers that the state government was protecting Amnesty International and had virtually given it a clean chit.

He asked the Centre to get the activities of the NGO probed and take action accordingly.

Why they (Central government) think that we in Karnataka are trying to protect them, trying to give them (Amnesty international) a clean chit and all those things.

They (BJP) have the government of India in their hands and also all investigation agencies in their hands. Let them find out what Amnesty International is doing and take action accordingly, he said.

Nobody can stop the Centre or the Union home ministry or any other agency which is responsible for that (from probing Amnestys activities), he added.

Read | Amnesty row: Jaitley says Congress indulging in vote bank politics

Parameshwara had on August 20 said Amnesty has never involved itself in any kind of anti-national activities.

I have not heard of Amnesty International being involved in any seditious activity so far, he had said.

Kashmiri Hindu Cultural Welfare Trust chairman Romesh Kumar Mattoo had criticised him for having given a clean chit to the organisation when it was being probed for alleged sedition.

The Congress had on Sunday come under attack from top ministers in the Narendra Modi government for sympathising with supporters of terrorists following the Karnataka home ministers remarks. Leading the offensive, finance minister Arun Jaitley said azadi slogans cannot be treated as freedom of speech and slammed the Congress and its Karnataka government for indulging in vote-bank politics over the issue.

Four days ago in the capital of Karnataka, during a programme in Bangalore, azadi (freedom) slogans were raised by a few people.

An organisation, which gets funding from abroad, organised the event and yesterday I read the statement of Karnataka home minister in which he said that whatever happened is nothing wrong, Jaitley had said.

Union minister Ananth Kumar, who met a group of ABVP activists on dharna in Bengaluru on Sunday, charged the Congress government in Karnataka with sympathising with supporters of terrorists and taking action against nationalists.

Read | Amnesty has not indulged in anti-national activities: Karnataka minister

However, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor defended Parameshwaras remarks on Amnesty, saying national security does not get compromised when a few people chant anti-national slogans. He had also said, Charging Amnesty with sedition law was already a big mistake. The NGO has not advocated violence and no one at the conference did so.

The BJP on Monday submitted a memorandum to governor Vajubhai Vala, seeking a probe by the National Investigation Agency into the anti-national episode at the Amnesty event. The memorandum also alleged that a section of the audience had raised anti-national slogans and the organisers did not stop it.

We are having a strong feeling that they (Amnesty) are also a part of this malicious campaign. The programme also showed a nexus between Amnesty and secessionist forces and has exposed a systematic and sustained misinformation campaign against the Indian government agencies, especially the army, it said.
Muzaffar Wani concedes that groups of people have been visiting him, asking him to become a rallying point, but says hes happy being Burhans father. Surprisingly, he does issue an appeal, saying, Burhan is not alone. The entire Valley is with him. My son has been killed, but dont throw stones. I appeal to the youth not to pelt stones. They are no match in the face of guns (of security forces). Excerpts from an interview by Harinder Baweja :

Now that your son is dead, do you regret the fact that he chose the path of militancy?

He (Burhan) would have died even if he had not joined militancy. Allah has a calendar for all of us. Those who died after July 8 too were ordained to die by Allah.

You support his having become a militant?

Uska raasta theek tha. Jehad is fine. He was a mujahid, not a terrorist. He hit out through social media. He picked up the gun for his self-defence. As a father, I feel the pain. I have lost two sons. Burhan gave his life and it is for the people to take the movement for azadi forward.

When I met you the last time, we talked about how you cannot take on the might of the army. Civilians are dying. What would you like to tell the stone-pelters?

Raise slogans, but dont throw stones. People have been blinded. I appeal to the youth not to pelt stones. Stones are nothing in front of bullets. But India should also talk to us about our rights. They should think within the realm of insaniyat (humanity). We also have children who are dying. We have no dushmani (enmity) with India. We want friendly relations with India, but I dont know why India hates Kashmiris. If India thinks Kashmiris are their own, they should not use pellets. They were not used in Haryana during the agitation. Why this dual policy? Are you only interested in our land? You are killing our boys.

Read | Burhan Wanis father talks of sacrifice, but asks Kashmiris to show restraint

Militants are mixing up with protesters and complicating the ground situation. Armed militants attended Burhans funeral also

Yes, I was told about that. I heard some shots being fired. I didnt like that.

Your village lies in south Kashmir. A lot of you would have voted for Mehbooba Mufti. What would you like to tell the chief minister?

The (ruling) PDP had said they would remove the army after coming to power, but the government is bringing in additional companies. She is running a kathputli sarkar (puppet government). To save her chair, Mehbooba should leave her chair now. She is in power because of us, but her voters are the ones being wounded and killed. She is not even sticking to the agenda of alliance.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
As a growing power, India has a role to play in meeting the challenge of terrorism, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said as the two countries agreed to upgrade their security consultations.

Assad made the assertion during a meeting with minister of state for external affairs MJ Akbar when the latter called on him on Sunday during his Syria visit.

There was an agreement between both sides for further upgrading security consultations, the sources said. However, the sources did not mention the level to which they have been upgraded to.

During the meeting, Assad also welcomed Indias objective position on the conflict in Syria and both leaders acknowledged that terrorism was a global problem, sources said.

As a growing power, India has a role to play in meeting the challenge of terrorism, sources quoted Assad as saying.

On his part, Akbar, during their meeting, said the age of destruction should give way to the age of reconstruction in Syria.

Assad also invited India to play an active role in the reconstruction of the Syrian economy.

Both leaders agreed that as secular nations, India and Syria believe in faith equality.

Akbar is currently on a nearly week-long visit to West Asia from August 17.
Kashmir-based opposition parties on Monday demanded an immediate ban on pellet guns and requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to open talks with all stakeholders in the Valley, where 67 people have died in the ongoing unrest.

Led by former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah, the eight-member delegation met the Prime Minister in the morning to discuss the situation in the Valley, caught in violent protests for more than 40 days now.

We emphasised that the issue of Jammu and Kashmir is more political in nature. If we are unable to find a political solution to it, we will be repeating our mistakes again and again, Omar told reporters after the meeting.

The PM listened to us with patience.. the PM told us in categorical terms that development alone will not resolve this problem.

The delegation, which arrived in the Capital on Saturday to mobilise the central leadership to stop the cycle of killings in Valley, said failure to address the unrest would further deepen the sense of alienation.

We are of the firm opinion that the central government should waste no further time in initiating a credible and meaningful political dialogue with all stakeholders to address the unrest in the state, a memorandum submitted by the delegation said.

Read | Burhan Wanis father talks of sacrifice, but asks Kashmiris to show restraint

Using administrative approach to deal with a political situation had worsened the situation and created an unprecedented sense of disaffection and disenchantment, especially among the youth, the parties said.

The delegation also called for an immediate ban on pellet guns that have caused grievous injuries in the current unrest and maimed and blinded many young boys and girls.

Read | Pellet guns: Army recommends less lethal alternatives, CRPF resists

Use of pellet guns, considered a safe option by the forces that face stone-pelting mobs, has triggered a debate, as they have also caused fatal injuries.

Pellets guns are used for crowd control across the world. They are effective over short ranges but when fired from close quarters they can be lethal.

The delegations meeting with the PM comes a day after finance minister Arun Jaitley called stone-pelters Pakistani stooges and said there would be no compromise with those indulging in violence.

But Omar Abdullah refused to comment on the matter. Lets not play politics over Jammu and Kashmir. We will get ample time to play political games later.

The delegation, which includes CPM lawmaker Yusuf Tarigami and state Congress chief Ghulam Ahmed Mir, met the President on Saturday and called on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi a day later to convey the seriousness of the situation.

Clashes between civilians and security forces continued in the Valley on Sunday. A teenager, Irfan Ahmad, was killed in Srinagar when a tear-gas shell hit him in his chest, taking the death toll to 67.

Protests erupted in the Valley after Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani was killed in a gunfight with security forces in south Kashmir on July 8.

Read | More fatalities in Kashmir if pellet guns are banned: CRPF tells high court
Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa on Monday threw a challenge to DMK president M Karunanidhi to have the guts to attend the assembly session and participate in the deliberations.

Replying to the debate on the demands for grant for police and fire and rescue services departments, Jayalalithaa said, Whether the DMK leader has the guts to come to the assembly and participate in the deliberations like I did when all the AIADMK members were suspended when DMK was in power.

She pointed out that the DMK leader was not suspended and wondered whether he has the guts to participate in the assembly deliberations.

Jayalalithaa said in 2006, when all the AIADMK members were suspended, she as the leader of opposition, had put across the partys views during the discussions.

She added though leader of opposition MK Stalin was suspended from the assembly, DMK leader Karunanidhi was not suspended and he could have come and participated in the debate.

The DMK members did not participate in the debate as the law and order situation in the state during their rule would have been discussed and they would have anything to say.

Jayalalithaa said during the DMK rule between 2006-2011, people found it difficult even to safeguard their properties as anti-social elements grabbed these by threat and other means.
A 14-year-old girl and two housewives were allegedly raped in the past four days in Jharkhand, putting the state on the edge as a spate of crimes against women have been recorded this year.

According to police records, at least 90 rape cases were reported in the state from January this year.

Survivors of the latest atrocities reported the crimes to police in the past 24 hours. The teenager alleged a 21-year-old man, Mukesh Baitha, raped her on the night of August 17 when she was alone at home and had stepped outside to answer natures call.

Her parents were away to celebrate Raksha Bandhan at a different town.

The girl told investigators at Ramgarhs Giddi police station that Baitha was waiting outside her house and when she came out, he pounced on her and dragged her to the bushes nearby. After raping her, the girl said, he warned that I should not inform my parents or police.

The girl narrated her ordeal to her parents when they arrived on Monday morning and they filed a complaint immediately. The accused, however, is on the run.

In Pakud, a drunkard raped his friends wife finding her alone. She alleged the accused, Rajkumar and her husband went to a liquor shop together on Saturday and got drunk. On the way home, her husband left Rajkumar to join another group of alcoholics.

Rajkumar allegedly went to his friends house, thrashed his wife before outraging her modesty. He escaped after the incident and police were trying to catch him.

The third incident happened in Hazaribag, where four men on motorcycles allegedly kidnapped a woman waiting for a bus to Barhi on Saturday evening, took her to a secluded place, and raped her repeatedly.

The survivor, who lodged an FIR against the unidentified men on Sunday, said she was at the bus stop after attending a court case of her jailed husband.

She was released in the morning with a warning not to inform police. The traumatised woman went to Ichak police station and filed a complaint. Police said they were looking for the accused.
In the wake of continuous unrest in the Kashmir Valley, the Centre on Monday rushed 2,600 additional paramilitary forces to Jammu and Kashmir.

Twenty-six companies (100 personnel in each company) of the Border Security Force (BSF) are being dispatched to trouble-torn areas in the state for maintaining law and order, official sources said.

These forces are being drawn from Gujarat, Rajasthan and West Bengal and they are expected to reach the Valley in a day or two.

Read: Protests erupt in curfew-bound Srinagar over youths death

Besides, an additional 30 companies of the force are also expected to be sent to the state in next few days after their withdrawal from the Amarnath Yatra duties, sources said.

The Kashmir valley has been witnessing unrest after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani 45 days ago.

As many as 65 people including two police personnel have been killed and several thousands injured in the clashes that began on July 9.
Taking a serious view of the growing incidents of stay dog attack on people, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday directed officials to take urgent steps to catch stray canine with the help of trained dog catchers.

He gave the direction during a meeting held in the state capital to discuss measures to overcome the stray canine menace in the backdrop of the death of a 65-year-old woman after being attacked by a pack of dogs at Pullivilla coastal area near Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday night.

The meeting decided on initiation of comprehensive steps to tackle the problem with the cooperation of various state departments. In areas where the street dog menace is serious, the canines would be trapped immediately and subjected to sterilisation.

Special dog-sterilisation camps would be held for this, an official release said.

As a follow-up action, a detailed plan would be worked out on a long-term basis to check stray dogs in accordance with the law from October 1.

Respective district collectors would be in charge of monitoring the progress and implementation of the plan. With the cooperation of civic bodies, street dogs would be caught and sterilised. Later, they would be kept in separate shelters.

Read | After the fire: Torn clothes, smell of death, dogs at Kerala temple

The meeting also discussed the possibility of holding dog- sterilisation camps at the block level at least ten days in a month.

Health minister K K Shailaja, forest minister K Raju and home secretary Nalini Netto were among those who attended the meeting.

Meanwhile, local administration minister K T Jaleel said strong measures would be taken to get rid of canines creating havoc on streets and that there was no legal bar in killing violent dogs.

Life of a human being is more valuable, he said.

There is no legal hindrance for killing violent stray dogs. Lives of the citizens are of prime importance for a government, Jaleel told reporters in Nedumbassery near Kochi.

65-year-old Siluvamma was the latest victim of the continuing stray dog menace in Kerala. She was attacked by a large pack of dogs on the Pulluvila beach at nearby Kanjiramkulam and succumbed to injuries while being taken to a hospital.

The issue has been a point of debate in Kerala for the last few years after an increase in incidents of stray dog attacks and was also raised in the Assembly earlier this year.

According to a report submitted in the Supreme Court recently in a connected case, more than one lakh people in Kerala have been bitten by dogs in 2015-16.
Monsoon-triggered floods killed more than 400 people as scores of villages and towns and large swathes of cropland in five states were submerged by breaching water from swollen rivers over the past week.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered central help in relief and rescue after speaking to chief ministers of the affected states. He said home minister Rajnath Singh is monitoring the situation.

I pray for the safety and wellbeing of those in areas affected by floods in parts of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, the prime ministers office tweeted on Monday.

Madhya Pradesh is the worst-hit with over 101 people dead and around 350,000 affected. The state, which was reeling under drought until the monsoon arrived, has received more than double the normal rainfall for the period. Unprecedented rain triggered floods in 30 of its 51 districts.

The central states rain fury spilled over to neighbouring Rajasthan. The excess water flowing from MP has flooded the border districts of Kota, Jhalawar, Chittorgarh, Banswara and Pratapgarh.

Chittorgarh collector Inderjeet Singh said the situation was normal on Monday, but the administration is preparing for any eventuality as the weather office has predicted heavy rain for adjacent Neemuch in MP.

In Bihar, which has received less than normal rainfall, the danger comes from its rivers. The overflowing Son, which flows into the state from MP to join the Ganga, has flooded large tracts in the state.

The river has breached its banks at several places after excess water from Indrapuri Barrage was released. The situation aggravated after a spell of heavy rain on Sunday night.

Villagers would be shifted to a safer place as the water level is rising continuously. We have provided 15 boats to affected villagers for evacuation, said Amit Rajdeep, district disaster management officer, Sahibganj.

A fresh spell of downpour has affected over 35,000 people in Jharkhand.

In Uttarakhand, around 80 people have died this season with the latest victim being a woman said to be missing in Chamoli district following a cloudburst on Monday.

Seventy-three people were killed and thousands displaced because of the overflowing Ganga in Uttar Pradesh.

With inputs from Patna, Jaipur, Bhopal and New Delhi
The Nepal health ministry sacked 35 doctors working in various government hospitals for procuring forged Intermediate certificates from Bihar.

Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police had earlier had submitted to Himalayan nations Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda its inquiry report against these doctors who had allegedly obtained MBBS degrees and managed to get important posts in government hospitals after procuring forged Intermediate certificates from Bihar.

All these doctors were arrested by the CIB after the Inter toppers scam surfaced in Bihar early this year.

The CIB is probing the certificates of 3000 doctors suspected to have managed government jobs on the basis of fake documents and has arrested more than 100 of them.

Read | After toppers scam, Bihar grapples with record failures

According to the CIB, 35 doctors were found to have produced fake certificates of the erstwhile Bihar Intermediate Education Council (BIEC), now merged with Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB). The inquiry revealed that the BIEC had no records of 14 doctors, while 16 were found to have increased their marks.

Another doctor, who has been dismissed, was found to be working without a licence from the Nepal Medical Council (NMC)--a government body that regulates doctors and medical education in the country.

The list of the sacked doctors, made public by the CIB, includes chief executive officer of Kantipur Dental College Dr Buddhi Man Shrestha.
The Delhi high court has said Payal Abdullah, the estranged wife of former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah, was liable to be evicted forthwith from a government bungalow in Lutyens zone.

Payal has been asked to vacate the 7, Akbar Road bungalow, where she has been living since 1999, as it has been designated for the state Jammu and Kashmir chief minister. She has been contesting the eviction notice issued by the Estate Officer of Jammu and Kashmir in the courts.

Justice Indermeet Kaur said, The entitlement of the petitioners (Payal and her sons) to retain this accommodation is wholly illegal. It is a government accommodation. Petitioners have no claim or right upon it.

Their apprehension that they will not be given an adequate security cover is misconceived, the court said. If the husband (Omar) and father-in-law (Farooq) of petitioner 1 (Payal) can be adequately secured (living in private accommodations), there is no reason as to why the petitioners cannot be protected.

Police officials stand guard outside 7 Akbar Road. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

Payal had claimed that she enjoys Z category security cover, and each of her sons has Z plus security  comprising of a total 94 personnel, who operate on three shifts.

Payal has claimed that many personnel, their weapons and other security arrangements cannot be accommodated at her private flat in the city. She contended that she will not get the same level of protection in the new accommodation.

However, the Centre had submitted a report saying that there is no imminent threat to her, but the general threat perceived is from Kashmiri militant for being a member of the Abdullah family. It had also said the security threat is not as high in Delhi as in Jammu and Kashmir.

Payal Abdullah has been asked to vacate the 7, Akbar Road bungalow, where she has been living since 1999, as it has been designated for the state Jammu and Kashmir chief minister. (Vipin Kumar/HT Photo)

The court had taken note of the Centres submission that Payal will be given similar security arrangement in the new accommodation.

The admitted position as on date is thus that the petitioners are residing in this property as illegal occupants, the court said.
As floods ravaged some parts of the country, Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Monday spoke to chief ministers of four flood-hit states -- Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Rajasthan -- and assured all central help in dealing with the disaster.

Singh had a telephonic conversation with chief ministers Akhilesh Yadav ((UP), Harish Rawat (Uttarakhand), Nitish Kumar (Bihar) and Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan) and took stock of the flood situation in their states.

The chief ministers briefed Singh on the steps taken for rescue and relief of the marooned people.

The chief ministers also told Singh about the operations carried out by the National Disaster Response Force and State Disaster Response Forces in affected areas.

I assured the chief ministers of full cooperation from the Centre in the flood mitigation drive launched by the states, an official statement said.

The Ganga had on Sunday crossed the danger mark in West Bengal, Bihar and neighbouring districts of Uttar Pradesh where Yamuna river is also in spate, while heavy rainfall has created a flood-like situation in some parts of Rajasthan where six persons have died so far.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Monday said it has not asked Hindus to procreate more, but that it is concerned about the demographic imbalance in the country.

The statement comes in the wake of a political backlash invoked by its chief Mohan Bhagwats statement asking Hindus what law forbade them from having more children.

The Bharatiya Janata Partys ideological mentor, the RSS also reiterated its demand for a national population policy. It asked the government to take cognizance of the imbalance in the numbers and expedite the process of drafting a policy that will take into account Indias future needs.

Read | Mohan Bhagwats Hindu population comment triggers row

Bhagwats statement, made in Agra over the weekend, came in response to a question on whether the country will turn into an Islamic nation, given the rate of growth of Muslims.

Parties such as the Congress, RJD, JDU and the AAP had criticised Bhagwat for making a statement on what was essentially a matter of individual choice.

What he (Bhagwat) said was not to have more children. What he intended to say is that there should be a common law applicable to all, Manmohan Vaidya, the all-India Prachar Pramukh of the Sangh told HT.

He said Bhagwats statement has elicited support from the NCP.

On whether the RSS has come up with suggestions for the national population policy that it demands, Vaidya said the government should seek views from experts on what the policy should be and how the demographic imbalance can be reversed.

Read | RSS chief Bhagwat says he is not a messenger of the govt

We need a common national policy, applicable to all communities, (and) which takes into account the national resources and the future needs of the country. Population is not a burden, we must learn from China, we cannot have an aging population, he said.

He declined to comment on whether the current two-child preference should be done away with.

The demand for a national policy was made in 2015, when the RSS at its annual meeting had passed a resolution expressing concern over demographic imbalance, which it said was reflected by the religious census.

The Sangh had also sought a total ban on infiltration from across the border and a national register of citizens to prevent people from acquiring citizenship rights and purchasing lands.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The separatist leadership in Srinagar on Monday dismissed Prime MInister Narendra Modis statement about finding a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem.

All Parties Hurriyat Conference chairman, Syed Ali Geelani, said that for a lasting solution to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, the Indian state must shun violence.

We understand that the universal principle of right to self determination is the only road through which peace can be achieved in Jammu and Kashmir, he said in a statement.

Hurriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq dismissed Prime Ministers assurance saying if a lasting and permanent solution could be found within the Indian Constitution then it would have happened by now as Kashmir has been ruled by that Constitution for 70 years.

Closing ones eyes to the ground realities and parroting the script will not lead to any breakthrough... What is needed is boldness to address the issue head-on The most democratic way forward is to hold a referendum on both sides of the Line of Control and let the people decide or a meaningful engagement among the three parties - India, Pakistan and most importantly, the people of entire J&K, keeping in view their wishes and aspirations, Mirwaiz added.

The Congress asked the PM to clarify with whom in Kashmir his government intends to hold a dialogue and also claimed that Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley were not on the same page on the sensitive issue.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said, The essence of finance ministers statement is that there is no political problem in J&K But the Prime Minister, on the other hand, for two years has been using three words Insaniyat, Jamooriyat, Kashmiriyat, the essence of which we think he does not understand. This is mere empty rhetoric.
At least 10 people were killed and 18 others were injured, when a private bus in which they were travelling plunged into a canal from a bridge on the Hyderabad-Khammam highway in Telangana in the early hours of Monday.

There were 31 passengers in the bus, which was travelling from Hyderabad to Kakinada. While seven of them died on the spot, three others succumbed to injuries at Khammam government hospital. Three other passengers have not yet been accounted for. All the passengers are said to be from East and West Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh.

According to Khammam superintendent of police Shah Nawaz Khan, the bus belonging to private operator Yatra Genie, started its journey from Hyderabad at 11.30 pm on Sunday.

The tragedy took place around 2.30 am when the driver slammed the brakes to avoid colliding with another vehicle coming from the opposite direction on a bridge over Nagarjunsagar project left canal at Nayankangudem village in Khammam district.

The driver lost control of the bus which rammed through the parapet wall of the bridge and plunged into the canal.

Other travellers on the highway quickly informed the police, who rushed to the spot and began rescue operations. Rescuers recovered seven bodies and shifted around 21 others to the Khammam hospital. Of them, three passengers succumbed to injuries. The condition of at least five passengers is said to be critical.

The death toll is likely to increase as a few other passengers are believed trapped inside the bus. The police called for a crane to retrieve the bus from the canal.

Collector DS Lokesh Kumar and other senior officials reached the spot to supervise the rescue operations.

Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao expressed shock over the horrific accident. They instructed the officials to carry out the rescue operations and provide the best treatment to the injured.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed deep concern and pain on Monday over weeks-long deadly violence in Kashmir, saying there was a need for dialogue and a permanent solution to the regions troubles.

Modis comments are seen as conciliatory after he spoke of Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in his Independence Day speech but not the protests in Kashmir. Several of his ministers had also called the protesters aggressors and said there would be no compromise with them.

The prime ministers latest remarks came at a meeting with opposition leaders from Kashmir, where street protests against last months killing of militant commander Burhan Wani by security forces left 67 people dead, mostly in police firing. Parts of the state have been under curfew for 45 days.

Those who lost their lives during recent disturbances are part of us, our nation. Whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us, a government statement quoted Modi as saying at the meeting.

The prime minister emphasised that there has to be dialogue and we need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution, it said.

Modis Independence Day reference to Balochistan and PoK, the first by an Indian prime minister, was seen by many as inopportune and diluting Indias moral ground on Kashmir. His Mondays remarks appear more in line with the moderate vision of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee whose government was the first to hold talks with Kashmiri separatists.

Opinion: Dialogue alone can draw Kashmir out of the abyss

Kashmiri leaders have voiced concern over the use of what they say is disproportionate force against the local people and accused the states ruling BJP-PDP alliance of trying to tackle the violence using administrative measures such as indefinite curfew rather than seeking a political solution.

The Kashmiri delegation, led by former chief minister Omar Abdullah, told Modi it was dismayed at the lack of a political approach in dealing with the ongoing unrest, sources said.

The eight-member delegation urged him to start a dialogue with all stakeholders, saying an administrative response rather than a political solution had created an unprecedented sense of disaffection and disenchantment in Kashmir, especially among the youth.

A delegation member, who refused to be identified, said a suggestion was made that the prime minister directly address the people of Kashmir in his monthly radio broadcast Mann ki Baat.

The PM acknowledged that he should have reached out to the people earlier. His remark that there is a need to look beyond development aspect to address the problem is significant, said Congress leader GN Monga, who was also part of the delegation. Lets hope for the best.

Another member said Modi looked visibly concerned and serious to resolve the problem.

Abdullah said the prime minister agreed with the delegation that development alone was not the answer to the crisis.

The Kashmiri leaders met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday. The party leaders from the state urged him to visit the Valley and assess the situation first hand.

He might visit Kashmir soon, said a state leader.

In Jammu, chief minister Mehbooba Mufti said vested interests had incited the states youth to scuttle her development projects.

There have been encounters before, people have been killed before. But why so much madness this time around? she told a rally, referring to the gunning down of Wani.

Whenever they see that some constructive work is being done, some progress is being made, they try to hinder it, she said.

Read | Kashmir oppn parties meet PM Modi, demand immediate ban on pellet guns
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday hinted at the need for a healing touch in handling the situation in violence-hit Kashmir during a meeting with opposition leaders from Jammu and Kashmir.

Emphasising the need for dialogue in finding a permanent solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution, Modi said the lives lost in the valley are a part of us, our nation.

At least 67 people have died in clashes between civilians and the security forces in the valley which erupted in protests after a Hizbul Mujahideen militant was killed in a gunfight with security forces in south Kashmir on July 8. More than a thousand people have been injured.

In the days leading up to the meeting with the eight-member delegation led by former chief minister Omar Abdullah, Modis colleagues from within the government and the ruling BJP, however, have spoken with more aggression than compassion on the Kashmir violence.

Union finance minister Arun Jaitley speaking in the Samba district on Sunday said those who pelt police and security personnel with stones are not satyagrahis but aggressors.

A new serious situation has arisen. Pakistan and various other forces are involved in it, and the countrys unity has been challenged once again, Jaitley added, urging the people of Jammu and Kashmir to jointly fight the aggression.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh told the Rajya Sabha, a day before the all-party meeting on the unrest, that the violence in Kashmir was created by vested interests and misguided elements.

I have no hesitation in saying that whatever is happening in Kashmir is sponsored by Pakistan, Union home minister Rajnath Singh said on August 11.

Anti-national slogans against the country wont be tolerated on Indian soil, want to appeal people in Kashmir to stop such elements, Singh added.

BJP general secretary Ram Madhav said there cannot be a compromise on Kashmir.

You have to work for the nation, its good and unity. Like Yuddhishtra or somebody, you cannot compromise on Kashmir. It is yours, you have to work for it, but when you say Kashmir is yours, the people in Kashmir are also yours, he said in Chennai on August 14 while delivering a lecture on Nationalism, Internationalism and Bhagwad Gita.

Junior minister in the Prime Ministers Office Jitendra Singh said the Kashmir problem was an outcome of former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehrus failure on the political front.

If you want to see the failed political model of Nehru, then Jammu and Kashmir is the best example, Singh said at a Yaad Karo Kurbani rally on the outskirts of Jammu on August 21.
Serial killer Santosh Pol, the fake doctor who confessed to having murdered six people between 2003 and 2016, has told police that he was planning a suicide pact with his assistant-cum-nurse Jyoti Mandrare if they could not stop police from probing them in the Mangala Jedhe murder-cum-disappearance case.

Read: Santosh Pol killed two with overdose of anaesthesia

Sources in the investigation team said that Pol, now in police custody in connection with six murders in Wai tehsil of Satara district, had realised that he would be unable to hide the crimes for a long period after being summoned by police in Mangala Jedhe case.

Pol and Jyoti had tried to mislead and divert police investigation on some grounds. Sources said that both of them had realised serious consequences of police investigations.

Pol is believed to have told police that he and Mandrare decided to end their lives if they fail to stop police investigation.

Pol had used Mandrares cell phone to talk to Jedhe. Her call data record led to his arrest from Mumbai.

A few days before their arrest, they had decided to kill themselves.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The state assembly has decided to hold a day-long special session of Maharashtra legislature on August 29, to ratify the constitutional amendment to the goods and services tax (GST) bill.

The Centre has convened a meeting of finance ministers of all states in New Delhi on August 30. Against the backdrop of the meeting and on the occasion of Pola  the festival of worshipping bulls, which falls on September 1 and 2  the assembly decided to hold the special on August 29. The finance department had proposed that it be held on September 1.

The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha passed the Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill, 2014 on GST earlier this month. At least half the states should ratify it within 60 days for a notification on the formation of the GST council. The council will give two-third representation to states and one-third to the Centre.

Bihar, Assam and Jharkhand have ratified the amendment by convening a special session, while Gujarat, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh plan to hold this session during this week.

With the Opposition supporting the GST, the passage of the bill in both the houses of the state legislature will be a mere formality.

The state government has started to chalk out a plan to restructure the sales tax department to ensure that the GST is implemented without any hassle from April next year. The state plans to keep the tax rate at 20% under the GST, which may lead to a rise in bills for utilities and consumer services.

Maharashtra will have to bear a loss of Rs14,000 crore a year, including Rs7,000crore-Rs8,000 crore it collects through octroi in Mumbai. Although the losses will be compensated for the first five years, the real worry is losses from the sixth year onwards, the officer said.
The discussion about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) among Dawoodi Bohras, the only group in India known to practise it, has moved outside the confines of the small community. An online petition to the ministry of women and child development, asking for a ban on the custom, has received over 50,000 signatures in support.

The United Nations considers all procedures that involve altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons as FGM and says that the practice violates the human rights of girls and women. The custom is banned in many countries and some western countries prohibit families  usually of immigrant origin - from taking their children abroad to get it done.

The Bohras call the procedure Khatna; it is also called female circumcision. The group leading the campaign to end the custom now want to use another term  Female Genital Cutting (FGC)  so that they are seen as less value judgmental. Priya Goswami of Sahiyo, said that organisations across the world are shifting to the new term. To the extent that WHO released a report as FGM/FGC. FGM cannot be an umbrella term for all kinds of cutting, said Goswami.

The decision to avoid the word mutilation, the campaigners said, was part of the effort to get the communitys support for the cause. The Bohra clergy, which has a stranglehold on their followers, has refused to take part in any debate on the topic with the petitioners, but the spiritual leader, the Syedna, is reported to have told his followers that the ritual is a religious obligation that has to be done. The head of the rival branch of the Syednas family, which broke away after a dispute over the succession to the spiritual seat, has more liberal views. He has said that the procedure should not be forced on children, but has added that the surgery  often done in unsafe and risky conditions  actually benefits women. Women should make the choice after they reach adulthood, he said.

In the face of such challenges from the clergy, anti-FGM campaigners feel that a non-confrontational approach is needed to get the communitys support for the ban. Goswami said that the change in terminology was crucial in ending, or reducing the incidence, of the practice in places like Senegal, in West Africa. They have also been using the term FGC instead of FGM, especially in communities where it is a cultural norm. Parents do it (the procedure) with the intention of love so that the daughter is married off well, Goswami explained. Using the expression FGC is acknowledging their intent. At the same time we are not condoning to what they are doing.

Among the Bohras, too, the practice is seen part of their culture. The new term, according to Sahiyo, is more culturally inclusive. Families believe they are practising circumcision but the term is problematic because this is not like circumcision in males. This is done to curb sexuality in woman, said Goswami.

Will a change in terminology shift century-old beliefs? Irfan Engineer of Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, who is Dawoodi Bohra, said, I express my solidarity with the women but I do not think that using the word cutting instead of mutilation will get them the support of the clergy, said Engineer. I do not think the problem is with the terminology or semantics.

The whole idea is to kill or suppress the sexuality of women. To what extent, how far and what is cut is a different thing, said Engineer. They (elders) go to the extent of examining women to find out whether it done according to what is prescribed.

The right way is not to cut or mutilate, and definitely not on a seven-year-old child. If it is a considered and informed choice by an adult it is a different thing though I doubt whether any woman will chose to undergo it, said Engineer.
NEW DELHI: An Indigo flight came within seconds from colliding with an AirAsia aircraft 33,800 feet above Maharashtras Sindhudurg district on the night of May 7 this year. Luckily, a mid-air catastrophe was averted and lives of two planeloads of people were saved.

The air-traffic controller (ATC) asked the Delhi-Bengaluru Indigo aircraft to descend, but the signal was wrongly picked by the AirAsia flight, which started to lower its altitude.

At 10.25pm, the two aircraft were just 25-40 seconds from crashing into each other. The accident was averted when the Indigo A320 dived 800 feet in less than 30 seconds. The hair-raising account is only one of many near-misses, whose numbers have spiked this year, data from right to information queries filed by Hindustan Times show.

An HT investigation based on RTI data between 2011 and 2016 has found a 78% rise in the incidents of such potential mid-air collisions between this January and May, when compared to the same period last year.

The data suggest 2016 might record the highest number of near-misses  known as airprox or air proximity  if trends from the first five months hold.

Between 2011 and this May, 129 potential collisions have been reported. More than half of these are because of ATC error and nearly a fifth because of mistakes by the flight crew.

We have taken a very serious view of this increase in number of near-misses, said Lalit Gupta, joint director of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. The Airports Authority of India that controls ATCs and airlines Indigo and Spicejet did not respond to requests for comment. Experts say the rise in mid-air collision risk is because of a crippling staff shortage in the ATC, which is working without a quarter of its sanctioned strength. The staff crunch is appalling as India approaches the 20th anniversary of the worlds deadliest mid-air collision, which occurred near Delhi.

In November 1996, a Kazakh fight and a Saudi aircraft crashed into each other in the skies above Chakhri-Dadri near the Capital, killing all 349 people on board. A probe cleared the ATC, but held that a miscommunication between the controller and the Kazakh pilot led to the collision.

An analysis of DGCA records on near-misses from January 2011 to May 31 this year indicates 2016 could record the highest potential collisions since 2011, which registered 29 such incidents. (see graph)

Earlier this month, HT had reported that safety violations by pilots are up 30% from the corresponding period in 2015.

The numbers of near-misses are alarming. The ATC needs to urgently increase staff strength and airline operators need to keep doing refresher courses for the staff, said Mohan Ranganathan, a civil aviation safety expert.

Gupta said the DGCA asked all air operators and ATCs to provide detailed classroom sessions on Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) and crew resource management training.

Officials attributed the rise in mid-air scares to a steady climb in air-traffic. But DGCA data show only a 17% increase in on flight operations in 2016, compared to figures from the corresponding period last year. Till May 31 this year, there were 366,781 departures, whereas for the same period in 2015, the figure was 312,542.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
NEW DELHI: Taking action against corrupt officials could soon get harder. A parliamentary panel has backed a move to bar anti-graft agencies from probing bribery allegations against public servants without the governments approval.

The government can take up to four months to decide if the police should register the bribery case, and there will be no penalty if it takes longer. However, its sanction would not be required if the official is caught accepting a bribe red-handed.

The proposed move would cover states as well as the Centre, with governments at both levels getting the power to decide on probes against their respective officials. The CBI had opposed the proposal, which intends to protect honest senior government officials, ministers and top managers in public sector firms from undue harassment. It told the select committee  set up by the Rajya Sabha to study proposed amendments to the Prevention of Corruption Act  that such an action would impede the investigation process and delay prosecution of corrupt officials.

Even now, bureaucrats are protected by a procedural requirement after the completion of the probe  they cannot be tried in court without governmental sanction. While the Centre allowed prosecution in 239 cases under this provision through 2015, it rejected 39 requests  mostly pertaining to officials in the banking sector. The panel, which also okayed provisions to bring the private sector under the anti-graft law by explicitly making it a crime to give bribes, submitted its report in the Rajya Sabha last week. Communist Party of India MP D Raja  who was a member of the select committee  distanced himself from the recommendation. Raja told HT that he wanted to record his dissent, but had no time to prepare because the last meeting was called during the Parliament session at a very short notice. Yes, there are some issues... we will raise them when the bill is taken up in the Rajya Sabha, he said.

Transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj, who founded the Satark Nagrik Sangathan, a peoples group, termed the amendment as a completely regressive step. I am disappointed... I thought the idea was to make the anti-corruption law stronger, not weaker, said Bhardwaj, who had opposed these provisions before the panel.

The NDA government had originally come up with this amendment to the Prevention of Corruption Act last year, but proposed that the power to clear FIRs be given to the Lokpal.

Unsure of the public reaction, it didnt want to appear as if it was usurping power. Not surprisingly, the government promptly agreed to suggestions at panel meetings that the mandate should remain in its hands  and not with the Lokpal.

The decision to protect every public servant from harassment owes its origin to a May 2014 Supreme Court verdict, wherein a judicial bench struck down a provision requiring the CBI to obtain the governments permission to probe incumbents in all joint secretary-level posts. As the court held that the law cannot discriminate between public servants on the basis of their rank, protection was given to all.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
NEW DELHI: The government is looking to advance the budget presentation by a month to January from next year, a move that will allow individuals and companies more time to firm up savings and tax payout plans.

The budget is usually presented on the last working day of February, a month before the new financial year begins on April 1.

No final decision has been taken so far, but the ministry is examining the idea to advance the date of presenting the budget, said a finance ministry official who did not wish to be named.

The move will need bipartisan political support as it will involve advancing the Parliaments budget session at least by a month.

The Congress was not in support of the plan.

What is the logic behind changing a time-tested method? If the Budget is presented in January, the finances of the country will not be clear by then, said Veerappa Moily, Congress Lok Sabha MP and a former law and corporate affairs minister.

A January-budget would leave little time between the Parliaments winter session, which usually ends in the last week of December, and the Budget session that now begins in the third week of February.

If the Budget is presented in January, then there will be overlap of the winter and budget sessions of Parliament. Parliamentary work will be hampered, Communist Party of India leader Gurudas Dasgupta said.

Tax experts said it will aid better tax and accounts planning.

Presenting the budget in January will give two months time to individuals and corporate to realigns their plans, said Girish Vanvari, national head of tax at KPMG.

Though the budget is presented in February, several tax proposals kick-in only from June after Parliament passes the annual finance bill in May.

For instance, service tax was increased to 15% from 14% from June 1 this year, though the finance minister announced the change in the budget presented on February 28.

Income tax changes come into force only after the finance bill is passed, but these are retroactively implemented from April 1.

Parliament passes the budget through a two-stage process. A vote on account is passed in March to meet necessary expenses on employees salaries and other costs for two to three months.

The finance bill, which contains tax changes, and the demands and appropriation bill, which spells out full year expenditure details, are passed in May.

Political pressures often force tax changes proposed in February during the finance bills passage in May. The government is keen to conclude the process by March so that the budget spending and tax proposals can start to happen from the beginning of the financial year.

Top sources said the finance minister has begun discussions on the proposal with top bureaucrats in his ministry.

Economists are divided on the proposal, though.

What is the point of a budget in January? Are we transitioning to the calendar year as the fiscal year? asked a former chief economic adviser to the finance minister.

DK Joshi, chief economist at CRISIL, a credit rating firm, backed the move. It a very positive thing and will bring in certainty once the budget is presented at the beginning of the year.

The finance ministry official who confirmed the proposal said the governments pre-budget consultations on taxes and policy changes will likely begin from September, instead of October in the past.

There are several other changes that next years budget will likely contain.

If the April 1, 2017, deadline for implementing a nationwide goods and services tax (GST) is met, Part B of the budget speech, which contains tax proposals, will mostly contain direct taxes and customs duties as other indirect taxes will be subsumed in the new uniform tax regime.

The government is examining the option of merging the rail and general budgets beginning next year, ending a 92-year-old practice. A common budget will allow a seamless national transportation policy, insulating the railways from political pressures.

The government will, as finance minister Arun Jaitley announced in his budget speech this year, do away with the plan and non-plan expenditure distinction, which is the practice, beginning 2017.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
AGRA/LUCKNOW: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat told complaining teachers in Agra he was not a messenger of the BJP-led central government and goaded young Hindu couples to sire more children, the second comment triggering opposition flak on Sunday.

BSP chief Mayawati asked if Hindus began procreating more, would the BJP give jobs to the children.

Senior Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan of the Samajwadi Party, known for his controversial remarks, reacted sharply to Bhagwats comment on the size of Hindu families.

He should first ask shahenshah (reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi) to sire children, he told a television channel.

Bhagwats advice to teachers  that they should approach HRD minister Prakash Javadekar with their grievances, instead of him  was viewed as an attempt to delink the central government from the RSS, the BJPs ideological mentor.

The RSS has been often accused of influencing government policies and decisions, especially in education.

I know all of you are thinking that I am a messenger of the government but that is not true. I wont be able to help you with issues like pension, workplace harassment and others, he said.

He, however, promised he would try to present their case before the government.

Addressing around 2,000 young couples at another a function on Saturday, the 65-year-old Bhagwat urged them to work for family values and help inculcate patriotic sentiments in children. Which law says that the population of Hindus should not rise? What is stopping them when population of others is rising? The issue is not related to the system. It is because the social environment is like this, the RSS chief said.

His comments reminded of BJP parliamentarian Sakshi Maharajs remarks in January 2015 that every Hindu woman must produce at least four children to protect the religion.

Bhagwat addressed young couples at Agra College as part of his four-day stay in the city to interact with groups representing various social strata and professions.

Commenting on the RSS chief s remarks, Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said: Woh dharm ki hi khaate hain. Woh aur kya baat karenge? (He banks on religion only, what else can be expected from him?)

On Sunday, Bhagwat called for more opportunities, rights and say of woman in decisionmaking. He said many of the problems could be resolved if the family network was strengthened.

RSS volunteers at the event gave a presentation on the need to raise the Hindu fertility rate, warning anything below two children may lead to a race getting extinct.

They gave examples of France where the French fertility rate was 1.8, while that of Muslims was 8.1. This would lead to a situation when only one in five residing in France would be original resident by the year 2027, a volunteer said.
NEW DELHI: Thousands of students who crack the prestigious Joint Entrance Examination after burning the midnight oil for months may soon get a chance to unwind before plunging back into academics.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are likely to introduce a three-week induction programme that will allow students to adapt to their new environment, take courses pertaining to languages and creative arts (for those who require them), and bond with classmates as well as faculty members. Normal classes will commence only after the induction course has ended.

The IIT council, the top decision-making body for the premier technological institutes, will take up the matter at a meeting chaired by human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday.

The IIT-BHU at Varanasi has reportedly prepared a three-week induction module for all students set to join its first-year B Tech course with the objective of enhancing their basic language skills and conceptual understanding. Sources said all the IITs will be asked to design and execute similar modules for freshers, starting from the academic year 2017-18. These modules will also provide crash courses to undergraduate students who require assistance in meeting IIT standards, said a senior HRD official.

Under the proposed course, students will involve themselves in physical and literary activities, take up short courses related to the creative arts, and undergo training in the English language.

An IIT director said it was imperative that students coming from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds get an opportunity to adjust to the new environment.

They need some time to familiarise themselves with the institute, its faculty members and other students. It will help them de-stress too, he added.

There are 23 IITs in the country, with over 70,000 students enrolled in B Tech, M Tech and PhD courses. According to a statement made by the HRD ministry in the Rajya Sabha, as many as 656 students dropped out of the premier institutes in 2015-16  IIT Delhi accounting for the highest number of such cases.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A day after police cracked the kidnapping of software engineer Amandeep Singh with the arrest of five, including sleuths of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB), a local court here sent the accused to a days police custody on Sunday.

Must read | IB, CBI sleuths kidnap engineer in Amritsar over biz rivalry, arrested

Police tried their best to hide the accused from the media glare as they were brought to the court. The five accusedJasminder Singh, a head constable with the IB; Manjit Singh, a constable with the CBI; Varun Sareen, an employee with the Suvidha Centre of DC office; Paramjit Singh, a relative of Jasminder and one Manmohan Singh, a driver.

The five accusedJasminder Singh, a head constable with the IB; Manjit Singh, a constable with the CBI; Varun Sareen, an employee with the Suvidha Centre of DC office; Paramjit Singh, a relative of Jasminder and one Manmohan Singh, a driver. (Sameer Sehgal/HT Photo)

Police had parked three-four vehicles on the court premises to not let the photojournalist click their pictures. To avoid the media, the police brought out the accused from two different points, bundled them into the vehicle and sped away. The faces of all the accused were covered.

As there is involvement of the men from the intelligence agencies in the kidnapping of Amandeep, police are reluctant to speak and share details.

Police are yet to arrest two more suspects, Pawan Kumar, a sub-inspector with the IB and one Dharamveer Singh.

On Friday night Canada-returned software engineer Amandeep was kidnapped from the Civil Lines area. As police got a tip off, Amandeep was rescued and five accused were arrested.

The moment police found that the men from central agencies were among those arrested, they were treading with caution. As per information, some business rivalry was said to be the reason behind the kidnapping.

It is learnt that some people known to the victim had hatched the conspiracy to extort money from the victim.
Four car-borne miscreants robbed a cattle trader of two buffaloes and his truck in Sahnewal area after allegedly kidnapping him and two friends on Friday.

The accused looted Rs 12,000 in cash, three mobile phones from the trader, driver and his aide before locking up them in a tubewell motor room in Sahnewal.

The victims, however, managed to come out of the room and informed the police. The Sahnewal police lodged a case under Section 379 B (snatching), 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement), 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of IPC against unidentified miscreants in this context.

Jagar Singh of Amritsar, who is a truck driver, said the cattle trader Mohammad Irfan of Saharanpur of Uttar Pradesh and his associate Gagandeep Singh of Amritsar bought two buffalos from Amritsar. They hired the truck to carry the cattle to Dera Bassi.

He added that as they reached near Sahnewal, a Mahindra Bolero car intercepted them.

Four miscreants alighted from the car and flashed pistols and sharp-edged weapons and forced them to come down from the truck.

One of the miscreants drove away the truck, while three miscreants kidnapped them and took them to a village in Sahnewal after forcing them to sit in the car.

He added that one of the miscreants was turbaned, while three were clean shaven.

ASI Manjit Singh at police station Sahnewal said the police launched a manhunt for the arrest of the accused. The police got some vital clues about the miscreants. It is second such incident in three months. On May 26, four car-borne miscreants had looted a pick-up auto laden with cattle in Dehlon area. The case remains unsolved.
Punjab Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh said here on Sunday that the Congress was open to an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for the 2017 assembly polls.

Amarinder was here in connection with the 47th death anniversary function at Dera Baba Hans Raj in Pandwa village here.

Read more: Punjab Congress chief changes tune, attacks Badals over drugs issue

On the sidelines of the event, Capt told mediapersons that their options are open and if the BSP wanted they are ready for alliance. The SAD and BJP are again planning to loot the people of Punjab and to save my state, I am ready for an alliance with the BSP, Capt said.

Captain said the drug problem will be finished in four weeks after the Congress assumed power in Punjab. All kinds of drugs will be banned in the state. But, we will not ban the sale of liquor as it is business of hundreds of people in the state.

Calling chief minister Parkash Singh Badal an enemy of the state, the PPCC president said, Because of his cowardice, the state government failed to get Chandigarh back. As per the Rajiv-Longowal accord, Chandigarh belongs to Punjab and it should be given to it.

Captain described Aam Aadmi Party as a party of corrupt people. AAP is giving tickets to corrupt people, and if they came to power, they will loot the state. People should understand their strategy, Singh said.
A deputy superintendent of police (DSP), deputed in Batala, and his gunmen and aides, allegedly thrashed a man in full public view at Shanti Vihar Colony of Jamalpur in Ludhiana on Sunday.

The man, Sunny Mehta, filed a complaint against the DSP at the Jamalpur police station but no case had been registered so far. The complainant, a salesman at a garments shop, said the DSP, Surinder Bansal, owns a house in the same locality and often used to come in the colony as he was allegedly having an illicit relationship with a woman of the area.

When contacted, the DSP refuted the allegations and said the man was a close aide of former Shiv Sena leader Amit Arora, who was arrested for planting attack on himself for security cover.

He said Sunny was trying to blackmail him claiming that he had videos and would make them viral. On Sunday, when I visited the colony, he started abusing me. My gunman tried to stop him and pushed him, he said.

However, Sunny alleged that the DSP came to the colony with his two gunmen and two aides and started thrashing him.

Jamalpur station house officer Satnam Singh said action would be taken after investigation.
Airfares of the Chandigarh-Srinagar flight have been slashed by 70% due to the ongoing curfew in various parts of the Kashmir valley.

A one-way ticket, which was available at Rs 9,000-Rs 10,000 a week ago, is available at Rs 2,000-Rs 3,000.

While SpiceJet Airlines has suspended its operations till August 31, the other airlines have reduced their airfare, especially IndiGo airlines, which offer a direct flight from Chandigarh to Srinagar.

Ajay Jasra, general manager, SpiceJet, said, Considering the curfew in Srinagar, we have stopped the operations between Chandigarh and Srinagar till August 31. Also, it is an off season. It is only SpiceJet and IndiGo Airlines which offer direct flights between Chandigarh and Srinagar. The SpiceJet flight departs from Chandigarh at 12:35pm and reaches Srinagar at 1:40 pm while the IndiGo flight departs from Chandigarh at 1:25pm and reaches Srinagar at 2:30 pm.

The airfare for Indigos non-stop flight between Chandigarh and Srinagar is Rs 2,422.

Jet Airways station manager Sunil Sharma said, We do not have any direct flight between Chandigarh and Srinagar and hence we dont know about reduction in airfare.

The Jet Airways one-way flight between Chandigarh and Srinagar via Delhi costs Rs 12,791 while the flight between Chandigarh and Srinagar via Delhi and Bombay costs Rs 14,636.

From August 26, the ticket rates are likely to come down to Rs 1,639.

The Air India flight which goes to Srinagar via Delhi will cost Rs 4,724 for one-way trip.

Also read: Burhan Wanis father talks of sacrifice, but asks Kashmiris to show restraint
Reacting on the statement given by West Bengal chief minister Mamta Banerjee against Modi government, BJP MP Shwet Malik on Sunday said the statement is immature and hurt democratic values of the country.

He said charges of wrecking of federal structure levelled by the Banerjee against Modi government are condemnable. He alleged that she had a separatist thinking and wanted to dilute the democratic system of India, except West Bengal which she considers her own empire.

She is running an anarchist government for the last five years where no one is spared for questioning the government. She should shun hurting rich democratic ethos of the nation, he added. Welcoming the move of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union finance minister Arun Jaitley of bringing in Goods and Services Tax Bill (GST), he said the bill is the most important tax reform in Indian history and will bring a new regime One Nation One Tax.

Malik said, This will bring more transparency, attract more investments and will boost the growth of the country. It will be the best economic management of the country and will empower the states. This will increase revenues of states as well as centre.
A business start-up venture, Jet Smart, will start its first charted flight to New Delhi from Ludhiana from September 1.

The bookings of the air taxi, which comes at a cost of Rs 10,000 for the sole economy ticket and Rs 13,000 each for the seven executive class tickets for the 75-minute flight, has been thrown open for residents. Online bookings can be done by logging on to www.jetsmart.in.

As a promotional fare, booking price for the first five days has been slashed to `5,000 for economy and `10,000 for the executive class. The eight-seater aircraft, model Beechcraft B200 Superking Air, has seven executive class seats and one economy class seats available for booking.

Also read | Get one-way air ticket from Chandigarh to Srinagar for Rs 3,000

Fitted with a twin-engine turbo prop aircraft, Jet Smart will fly two flights to and fro from Ludhiana to New Delhi from Monday to Friday.

The timings (see box) are flexible and can be changed by half-an-hour here and there, depending upon the demands of our clients, said Angad Dhaliwal, Jet Smart head business development.

Since the flight is of a very short duration, no food will be served during the flight as of now, added Angad. He added that the concept will cater to the rising demand of residents who complain that despite having a domestic airport, Ludhiana has no air connectivity.

FARES

Economy: Rs 10,000

Executive: Rs 13,000

Executive class: 7 seats

Economy class: 1 seat

Frequency: 5 days a week

Inside the aircraft. (HT Photo)

TWO FLIGHTS TO AND FRO

The first flight will take off from Ludhiana at 9am and will land in New Delhi at 10.15am. The flight from New Delhi will take off at 11am and will reach Ludhiana at 12.15pm. The second flight from Ludhiana will take off at 2pm and land at the New Delhi airport at 3.15pm. The aircraft will leave New Delhi at 5pm and will reach Ludhiana at 6.15pm.
Firing a salvo at senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Kangra MP Shanta Kumar, partys Punjab leader Manoranjan Kalia questioned why he (Shanta) had not raised his voice on the appointment of chief parliamentary secretaries (CPSes) when he was the Punjab BJP in-charge.

Must read | HC quashes appointment of CPSes in Punjab, says it violates Constitution

Shanta had written an article in a vernacular daily criticising appointments of CPSes after the Punjab and Haryana high court, on August 12, had quashed 18 such appointments by the Parkash Singh Badal government.

In an open letter, Kalia questioned why Shanta, who was the Punjab BJP affairs in-charge in 2011, did not oppose the appointments if they were wrong when the SAD-BJP alliance formed government in the state. Your views in the newspaper article have raised questions on our party as well. Why have you missed your tenure as the CM of Himachal Pradesh from 1990 to 1992, in which you had nine ministers, three state ministers and two CPSes? Your article is full of self-praise, Kalia, who is BJP MLA from Jalandhar Central, said in the letter to Shanta.

Both the leaders had been at loggerheads ever since Kalia was removed from the Punjab cabinet as the local bodies minister when Shanta was state party affairs in-charge. Again in 2012, Kalia missed the cabinet berth despite being one of the senior-most MLAs of the party in the state. Shanta was still the party in-charge.

Dont miss | When Himachal HC quashed CPS appointments as fraud, but state found a bypass!

Says Shanta misused his position as CM

Kalias letter, which he posted on his Facebook page, also questioned Shanta over the permission for exchanging a private land in Palampur with a government land in the name of his hotelier son, Vikram Sharma, in 1991, when he was the Himachal CM. Kalia said under which policy the exchange was allowed. Isnt this a misuse of government position for personal benefit? questioned Kalia.

Kalia said a letter of the financial commissioner dated June 12, 1991, permitting exchange of over 1 hectares of land owned by Vikram Sharma with government land had no mentioned of the beneficiarys father. The land exchanged is opposite Yamini Hotel in Palampur, in which Vikram is a partner.

The hotel came into existence after Shantas first tenure as the Himachal CM ended in February 1980. He said that exchange of land was allowed in 1991 by relaxing norms during Shantas second tenure (1990-1992) as the CM, alleged Kalia.

Shanta Kumar was not available for comments. The person who attended the phone told HT that he was resting in his Palampur home and was recovering from fever and sore throat. Kalia also refused to talk saying the letter was based on facts and he doesnt want to say anything beyond that.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Noted historian Sabyasachi Bhattacharya said he was shocked and deeply hurt to know from the publisher that his book was plagiarised in a translated form by Punjabi University, Patiala.

A lot of hard work and research goes into writing a book and one doesnt expect such a treatment, said the former chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), considered to be an authority on economic history.

Bhattacharyas book Aadhunik Bharat Ka Aarthik Itihaas was published by Delhi-based Rajkamal Prakashan in 1990 after buying its exclusive rights from the author and currently books seventh edition is in the market.

As per the Rs 20-lakh lawsuit filed by the publisher against the Punjabi University at Delhis Tis Hazari Court last week, the varsitys publication bureau reproduced its Hindi book in Punjabi under the similar title in 2012. The author of the Punjabi book is SD Gajrani, who died earlier this year, and the book is on sale in violation of the Indian Copyright Act.

Bhattacharya said he didnt want to take legal course against the university, but he had no objection to publishers filing the lawsuit.

He said plagiarism in the academic world was an unfortunate trend and stringent mechanism to check this was the need of the hour.

He said reputed publishers such as Oxford University Press with which he was associated for long get their commissioned books vetted by two external subject experts besides the in-house scrutiny before publication.

Such checks and balances can stop malpractices in academics, he told HT over phone from Kolkata.

Varsitys vetting procedure has holes?

The alleged plagiarism has earned a bad name to the varsity even as the book was cleared by a panel of three experts and then edited by the department of Punjabi development (DPD) faculty.

DPDs current head Baljeet Kaur Sekhon said it was indeed a serious issue and would be dealt on priority.

Books editor Yograj, assistant professor at the department, however, defended himself saying that his job was only to edit the content.

The person at my level does not have resources and luxury of wide reference knowledge to actually unearth whether the content is original or copied, he said.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A Patiala court remanded Punjab Gau Raksha Dal chief Satish Kumar and his two accomplices to a days police custody on Sunday.

He was arrested in Vrindavan on Saturday for assault, wrongful restraint, sodomy, extortion and looting.

Punjab Gau Raksha Dal chief arrested for unnatural offences, abduction

He was on the run for 10 days after Section 377 (sodomy) of the Indian Penal Code was added in the first information report (FIR) against him for illegally detaining cattle traders.

Police said Satish and his accomplices used to detain, loot, assault and sodomise the cattle traders.

Besides, Satish, police also arrested his aides Arun Kumar, alias Anu, and Kapil Kumar, alias Gauri, both residents of Rajpura.

Must see | Watch: Gau rakshaks have been flaunting violent actions on YouTube

Police added sodomy charges after two victims, Imran and Naseem, both residents of Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, complained against the cow vigilantes.

Police are probing the property Satish bought in Ambala and other districts of Haryana after extorting money from cattle traders.

Crying foul

Satish said the Punjab government was targeting him to please Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It all started after Modis statement against cow protectors. The PM wants to please voters in Uttar Pradesh by encouraging cow killers, he said.

Satish was booked under Sections 323, 324, 341, 342, 382, 384, 148, 149 and 506 of the IPC at the Rajpura police station on August 8 after videos of excesses by him and his aides were found on social media.

Also read | Gau rakshaks harass us, cops shield them: Punjab traders point at Hindu Right
Not too long ago, my workplace was in this magnificent red sandstone building flanking Rashtrapati Bhawan. This building, along with its twin across the road, is seen as the nerve-centre of India.

Walking down the corridors of power one morning, I saw an unusual commotion. Some monkeys had decamped with a couple of official files. I wondered  why on earth would some macaques get interested in files of the Government of India? Then I heard the words of a wizened Babu: Dont mistake them for ordinary beings. These are former bureaucrats, reborn. Even in this monkey avatar, they cant stay too far from files!

Now for the uninitiated, here is some insight into the importance of files. If there are no papers concerning you, in some file, tucked away somewhere, in some government department, you simply dont exist! And because you do actually exist, your file, like countless other files, is created, managed and manipulated by the people of my ilk.

I began discovering my might some 20 years ago, sitting wide-eyed as a trainee in a police station. The munshi dropped this pearl of wisdom gleefully: Look carefully at this pen, Sirji! What I scribble on a piece of paper today would be argued over endlessly by the wisest lawyers for decades. The mightiest judges would scratch their heads trying to make sense.

We in the government create issues out of a paper under consideration (PUC). Innocuous green note-sheets are our battlefield. Our arsenal consists of a variety of inexpensive plastic pens. Armed with a few drops of ink, we make or mar anyone and anything. Thicker the file, greater the opportunity to exhibit our skills.

We aspire to get mightier with time, hence climbing the career hill continuously is very important. For which there is a cardinal principle  Thou shall strive to stay in the good books of thy boss. Because your boss controls the steps to your career progression  the annual confidential report (ACR). Therefore buttering up the boss is an absolute necessity.

Some years ago, I landed under a particularly obnoxious fellow. He would threaten all his juniors with regular alacrity: One good in your ACR and your career would be burnt forever. Now, in our cut-throat bureaucratic world, a good ACR is terrible news. You are condemned unless you are outstanding or at-least rated outstanding.

Nothing seemed to work on this fellow. And then, to my horror, he wrote just good as my final assessment. My nascent dreams of battling on juicy files perched high atop Raisina Hill were shot down cruelly and buried deep. Just then a resourceful colleague with access to forbidden files appeared on the scene, like a knight in the shining file cover. He managed to pull out my sullied ACR and inserted & in my brief epitaph to make it read an impressive just & good!

I survived to tell you this story, saved by a simple &. Thereafter, I have surfed the career waves quite enviably. But you will never catch me too far away from those lovely files  this lifetime or the one after.

The writer is a Shimla-based IPS officer

zahurzaidi@gmail.com
Right after the ministry of human resource and development (MHRD) gave approval to create 1,375 posts of junior basic training (JBT) teachers and trained graduate teachers (TGT), following the efforts of the members of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Teachers Welfare Association (SSATWA); ministry of finance has raised a few queries.

MHRD has sent the file to finance ministry, however, the latter had concerns as to whether the posts of teachers under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and the Right to Education (RTE) Act were the same. The officials were confused as to whether the SSA posts were contractual in nature. SSATWA president (Chandigarh) Arvind Rana clarified the same in meetings held on August 16-17 with the officials in New Delhi.

According to the revised SSA norms (dated January 1, 2014), additional teachers will be provided as per the RTE norms to all government and local body schools; however, SSA assistance will not be available for filling up state sector vacancies that have arisen on account of attrition and retirement vacancies.

The revised norms also mention that The States should maintain unified teaching cadres and no separate SSA cadre is permissible, as all teachers are ultimately to be borne on the state/UT government.

I explained the points to the ministry officials, after which they were convinced that SSA and RTE posts were not different. They have asked MHRD to convey this in written. As soon as it is done, I will be notified, said Rana.

He added that a copy of the letter has been sent to the secretary and additional secretary of MHRD and to those dealing with UT school division and UT SSA division.

Meanwhile, the Project Approval Board (PAB) minutes 2016-17, the commitment by UT, Chandigarh and MHRD to create 1,375 posts of SSA was under the UT education department.

Members of SSATWA held protests in the past two years over this issue. They had met MP Kirron Kher and BJP member Sanjay Tandon on many occasions to take up the matter. They organised the Challo Dilli campaign as well, in which the members held a massive gathering at Delhis Jantar Mantar and released over 200 balloons to make their voices heard, urging the prime minister to intervene in this issue.

Deputy director school education Chanchal Singh said, The process has started and will materialize soon.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A day after the suicide of a national-level handball player here, another girl committed suicide by hanging herself from a ceiling fan on Sunday at her employers house.

Victim Manisha (17) was from Chaura village, 7 kilometres from here, and caregiver at a house in Delight Colony near Hotel Delhi Plaza. Police have found a suicide note and claim that, in it, she has written that she loves her family and blames no one for her death.

House owner Kulvir Chand Sharma walked in on the body when he went to her quarters around 1pm, and informed police. The victims family said she had been happy with her work, which was to give care to Sharmas aged mother.

Police sent the body to Rajindra Hospital for autopsy. Investigating officer Sunil Kumar said police were recording the statements of the victims family.
VP Singh Badnore took charge as Punjab governor and Chandigarh administrator at Punjab Raj Bhawan here on Monday. Punjab and Haryana high court chief justice Shiavax Jal Vazifdar administered him the oath of governors office.

Addressing the media on the occasion, Badnore called for zero tolerance to drug abuse. Let us resolve to promote a healthier society just as the Prime Minister stressed on creating a healthy India through yoga and sports activities, he said. He said while Ludhiana had been selected under Smart City project, he will pursue the cases of Amritsar and Jalandhar as well.

Must read | 15th administrator Badnore will need to win Chandigarhs trust

New Punjab governor VP Singh Badnore walking towards the dignitaries after taking oath, in the downpour at Punjab Raj Bhawan in Chandigarh on Monday. (Keshav Singh/HT Photo)

Badnore said development required regular stocktaking to assess the distance covered, for which he would seek peoples feedback. Earlier, Punjab chief secretary Sarvesh Kaushal read out the warrants of appointment. Punjab chief minister, who sat next to Badnore, congratulated the new governor.

Union ministers Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Rajiv Partap Rudy, and Maneka Gandhi; Vidhan Sabha speaker Charanjit Singh Attwal; Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal; Gurdaspur MP Vinod Khanna; state Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh, and state ministers Bikramjit Singh Majithia and Dr Daljit Singh Cheema; and MLA Jagmohan Singh Kang were present.

Not invited as CLP leader, Channi skips function

Punjab Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Charanjit Singh Channi gave the swearing-in ceremony of Punjab governor VP Singh Badnore a miss on Monday in protest against not being invited as leader of the opposition. The invite to me came as an MLA, not the state CLP leader. Its a tradition that the leader of opposition gets a special invite, Channi said. In a democracy, the governor has a neutral role. Still, neither protocol nor democratic norms were followed.

Who is Badnore?

VP Singh Badnore, 69, replaces Kaptan Singh Solanki, who is the governor of Haryana and was holding additional charge of Punjab Governor and administrator of Chandigarh since January 2015. Badnore, who belongs to Bhilwara, was a four-time BJP legislator in the Rajasthan assembly. He was an MLA from 1977-80, 1985-90, 1993-98 and 1998-99. During his last term as MLA, he was the state irrigation minister.

He was a member of the 13th and 14th Lok Sabha from 1999-2004 and from 2004-09. In July 2010, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha.

A graduate in business management, he studied at Mayo College, Ajmer, and Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), Hyderabad. Rajya Sabha records describe Badnore as an agriculturist, environmentalist, social worker, and sportsman.

He was the chairman of the special task force to rehabilitate tigers in Sariska (Rajasthan) from 2005-09 and a member of the empowered committee of forests and wildlife management in Rajasthan.

He is a widely-travelled parliamentarian. He was a part of the Indian delegations to Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, Canada, in 1994 and in 2004 besides the Indian delegation of South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA) to Pakistan.

A keen swimmer, he participated in national school-level swimming competitions.
If you feel envious of others performance at workplace, be warned. This feeling may lead to a higher degree of ego depletion and can negatively affect your overall productivity, finds a new study.

The study shows that while employees are concerned with their treatment by an authority, they are equally concerned with that treatment relative to others in their work group.

The findings revealed that the more the envy increases, the more one may become ego depleted  a general lack of the personal resources one needs to focus on and complete daily tasks, the researchers said.

Read: Office-goers, take note! Kissing up to boss is not that bad for you

Employees who carried home these negative feelings went to bed with them, woke up with them and stuck with them into the following day, ultimately wasting valuable time and productivity.

This is significant because the workers who are valuable for problem-solving, skilled negotiating and finding timely solutions are also the ones who ruminate longer over processing the social injustice and envy they feel, said Joel Koopman, Assistant Professor at University of Cincinnati, in the US.

The more energy employees expend on processing the injustice, the less their resources are, and they become less likely to help others in the office.

This cycle can build to the point that tremendous time and energy is wasted on simply processing negative emotions, leaving critical work projects to flounder until resolutions are achieved, Koopman added.

Further, a strong link was found between an employees feelings of envy after they perceive a supervisor has treated them worse relative to their co-workers and the length of time by which they process this information.

For the study, the team tested a group of participants with two surveys per day for 15 workdays, each day asking the participants how fairly they had been treated by their supervisor relative to their co-workers.

Read: Feeling uninspired at workplace? You may be going through a burnout

The survey measured for the possible experience of envy immediately, and then how that envy persisted into the next day.

The results showed that during such a response, the length of that envy response affected the employees willingness to help co-workers with their tasks and were less likely to listen to personal problems.

Future research looking at solving the risk and benefits of workplace coping mechanisms can be key for maintaining a happy balance at work, Koopman noted.

The study was presented recently, at the 76th annual meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM) in Anaheim, California.

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more.
Is this the new Donald Trump, re-staffed, re-set? The Republican nominee, who has had a tough few weeks, appears to be wavering on his earlier hardline position against illegal immigration, a cornerstone of his campaign.

His new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said in a TV interview on Sunday his position on the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants had yet to be determined.

That seemed like a comedown, but Trump sought to dispel that notion on Monday, saying he was not flip-flopping and he still favoured firm, but fair measures as before.

Strong measures against illegal immigration  such as a wall along the border with Mexico  have been a key component of his campaign, one he has been hammering for the start.

But it also cost him the support of Hispanics, who account for 17% of the US population  more than blacks, less than whites  and most undocumented immigrants are Hispanic.

The Republican has the support of only 14% of registered Hispanic and Latino voters, according to a recent poll, to three-fourths for his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Trump has also been polling poorly among the other powerful ethnic minority, African Americans, getting only 1% support in a recent poll, with zero in some important swing states.

He tried to reach out to blacks last week, asking them to try him once as they didnt have much to lose, arguing the Democratic party has always taken advantage of them and their vote.

In a similar outreach to Hispanics, Trump met a group of them on Saturday and, according to reports, told them deporting undocumented immigrants was neither possible, nor fair.

His campaign pushed back immediately, saying he was making the same argument as he has before  that he has always favoured being fair and human. Conway made the same point.

But her statement that Trumps position was yet to be determined was seen as an attempt to throw the door open to softening the rhetoric, as the campaign has done before.

Trumps first call for banning Muslims from entering the US, for instance, was whittled down to a temporary suspension from some areas of the world, through multiple iterations.

Trailing Clinton in polls nationally  although the gap has narrowed lately  and some swing states, and hit by a spate of self-inflicted setbacks, Trump is trying to reset his bid.

He recently hired Stephen Bannon, a hard-charging media executive, as campaign CEO, promoted Conway to campaign manager, and fired campaign chair Paul Manafort.

Trump even expressed regrets during a campaign speech for offensive remarks. Though lacking specifics, it was considered a milestone coming from someone who never yields an inch.

Trump has also stuck to the script speech scrolling down the teleprompter by and large, checking his impulse to ad-lib, which often got him into unnecessary controversies in the past.

He has tried to change before, only to snap back to his old self, as noted by conservative columnist Byron York. He seems to be trying harder this time  no major gaffes for days now.
Two men suspected of starting a wildfire last year that scorched 40 square miles of Oregon forest land could soon get a bill for at least $37 million.

Jeff Bonebrake with the Oregon Department of Forestry says theyre still finalising firefighting costs for the 2015 Stouts Creek fire that burned east of Canyonville. The agency will send a bill once thats done.

The Oregonian/Oregon Live reports that fire investigators believe 70-year-old Dominic Decarlo, of Days Creek, and 64-year-old Cloyd Deardorff, of Yuma, Arizona, used their lawnmowers during hours prohibited by fire restrictions when the blaze started on July 30, 2015.

Kyle Reed with the Douglas Forest Protective Association says the men were cited for unlawful use of fire. Decarlo paid $110 in fines and Deardorff paid $440.

But Oregon also holds individuals financially responsible for fire suppression costs.

The men could not be reached for comment. Bonebrake says people can challenge the costs or their responsibility in the fire.
Britain announced plans Monday to house imprisoned Islamist extremists in separate units from other inmates, after a review found that some charismatic convicts were radicalizing the wider Muslim population in prisons.

The government-ordered study concluded that cultural sensitivity among National Offender Management Service staff toward Muslim prisoners went too far and could inhibit the effective confrontation of extremist views.

There are a small number of individuals, very subversive individuals, who do need to be held in separate units, Justice Secretary Liz Truss told the BBC.

But Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said that any program must get people back into the main prison community.

Anything else is just storing up an even more difficult problem for when they are eventually released, he said.

Though the full report was kept confidential, a summary of the findings of the review recommended introducing the specialized units in order to stop a small number of individuals from being able to proselytize to other inmates. The release of the findings comes in advance of the sentencing of Anjem Choudary, one of Britains best-known radical Muslim preachers.

Choudary, who has been convicted of encouraging support for the Islamic State group, is set to be sentenced in September. He was arrested in 2014 after his name appeared on an oath recognizing the proclaimed Islamic Caliphate State. He said the oath was made without his knowledge.

Some 12,633 Muslims were in prison in England and Wales at the end of June, compared to 8,243 a decade earlier. Of the 147 people in prison for terrorism-related offences at the end of March, all but 10 considered themselves to be Muslim.
Pakistani police have registered five cases against Baloch nationalist leaders, including Brahamdagh Bugti, for allegedly supporting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis remarks on the restive province, officials said on Monday.

The cases were registered against Bugti, Hyrbyair Marri and Karima Baloch at five police stations in Khuzdar area, police officials said.

All three leaders are currently in self-exile. Baloch Republican Party president Brahamdagh Bugti lives in Europe, Marri is based in London and Baloch Students Organisation-Azad leader Karima Baloch fled last year to Canada, where she has applied for refugee status.

Police acted after complaints were filed by five private petitioners. One complaint alleged the leaders had asked Modi to intervene in Balochistan. The leaders were booked under sections 120, 121, 123 and 353 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

These provisions refer to waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against Pakistan, concealing plans to commit an offence punishable with imprisonment, and use of criminal force to deter public servants from discharging their duty.

Read | Protests against Modis remarks in Balochistan, CM says India fomenting terror

Police official Muhammad Ashraf Jatak told the media the complaints alleged that the three Baloch leaders had supported Modis Independence Day speech, in which he referred to people who had thanked him for raising the issue of alleged rights violations in Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Earlier, Modi had triggered a storm by saying Pakistan would have to answer for alleged rights violations in Balochistan and PoK. Pakistans Foreign Office has said the remarks were aimed at diverting attention from the unrest in Kashmir sparked by the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani more than a month ago.

Last week, Pakistan Workers Party chairman Khudai-e-Dost Kakar filed a complaint at a police station in Quetta seeking the registration of a treason case against Brahamdagh Bugti. Brahamdagh Bugti is involved in anti-state activities in Balochistan at the behest of Modi and his countrys spy agency RAW, he said.

Read | Modi has time to talk about Balochistan, but not Dalits: Gujarat Congress

Modis statements also sparked protests across Balochistan, with people taking to the streets in several cities. Provincial chief minister Sanaullah Zehri condemned Modis statements and alleged that the Indian government fully supports the ongoing insurgency in Balochistan.

He further alleged that the Indian government is deeply involved in sponsoring Baloch nationalist leaders such as Brahamdagh Bugti, Harbiyar Marri, Zamran Marri and Allah Nazar. Zehri accused Bugti of getting funds from Indians.
China has issued new rules demanding the establishment of Communist Party panels in non-government bodies, aiming to beef up the ruling partys role in such social groups, amid a broad crackdown on civil society.

Western governments and rights groups have already lambasted a law passed in April, saying it treats foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as a criminal threat and would effectively force many out of the country.

The new guidelines, released late on Sunday by the general office of the partys central committee and the State Council, or cabinet, say party committees must be set up to ensure effective cover in all NGOs.

Strengthen political thought education for responsible people at social groups, and guide them to actively support party building, the guidelines said. Promote the place of party building in the social groups charters.

Supervision of the groups must also be placed high among the daily tasks of local party committees, whose performance will be judged on how well they manage the groups, the guidelines added.

Party committees can also assign their own representatives to run party activities in groups judged sufficiently large, the guidelines say.

The Civil Affairs Ministry will have a role in rooting out bad or illegal behaviour, including banning groups.

The ministry this month released its own proposals for new rules on NGOs, among them a demand that they publicise details such as funding and membership or face bans.

China had about 329,000 registered social groups by the end of 2015, state media say.

Chinese officials have defended the foreign NGO law, saying only a few law-breaking groups would be punished and there was no reason to fear the police.

The government also says it has been trying to bring order to a sector that has been plagued by scandals in recent years, including the embezzlement of funds meant for charities.

But rights groups say ambiguous language in the foreign NGO law banning activities that threaten national security or social stability could push out groups the party does not like.

The curbs on Chinese NGOs come as President Xi Jinping reins in civil society, including rights lawyers and the press, a step critics say is meant to quash dissent.
Former French leader Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday announced he will seek his partys nomination to stand in next years presidential election.

I have decided to be a candidate in the 2017 presidential election, Sarkozy, who was president between 2007 and 2012, wrote in a foreword to a new book to be released Wednesday and seen by AFP.

Sarkozy also posted a link to the extract on his Twitter account:

Ce livre est le point de depart -NS #ToutpourlaFrance pic.twitter.com/22pIXvfWq5  Nicolas Sarkozy (@NicolasSarkozy) August 22, 2016

The next five years will be filled with danger but also with hope, wrote the 61-year-old conservative, who had made no secret of his ambition to return to the top job.

He listed five major challenges for France, which included defending French identity, restoring lost competitiveness and enforcing state authority.

The announcement of his bid to secure the nomination of his opposition Republicans at a party primary in November comes in the midst of an impassioned debate over the place of Islam in French society.

Sarkozy said Frances top battle was over how to defend our lifestyle without being tempted to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world.
The killing of a nine-year-old Indian girl from Punjab by her stepmother took a sordid turn on Sunday when authorities arrested her ex-husband and accused him of helping her hide in his house.

Raymond Narayan was accused of helping his ex-wife Shamdai Arjun Pardas leave her home after allegedly strangling her stepdaughter on Friday and trying to hide her in his house, Ron Brown, the top public prosecutor for the New York city district of Queens, said in a statement on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Pardas was produced in Queens Criminal Court on Sunday and formally charged before Judge Gerald Beibovitz with murdering Ashdeep Kaur, who had come from India to the US about three months ago to join her father.

This is a horrifying case of a child, a defenceless nine-year-old, who was left in the care of her stepmother who allegedly strangled her to death, Brown said. Her actions, if true, are beyond comprehension and must be severely punished.

Judah Maltz, Pardas lawyer, asked the judge to place her in protective custody in jail, the New York Daily News reported.

This will keep her away from other prisoners as New York jails are notorious for brutal attacks by fellow inmates on those accused of heinous crimes, especially those involving children.

When authorities produced her in the court, she wore a white jump suit made of a tough plastic material, Tyvek.

Maltz said the 55-year-old Pardas denied killing the child and claimed there was no proof that she did it.

Michael Curtis, the assistant prosecutor, made chilling new revelations in the court. He said that on Tuesday Pardas had told Kaurs father, Sukhjinder Singh, 35, that she would kill the child, the News reported.

She had repeatedly and on numerous occasions threatened to kill the victim, Curtis said. On Friday, she made good on this threat.

Curtis told the court that circumstantial evidence that Pardas killed the child is overwhelming, according to the News.

Brown gave the following account: Narayan, who is 65 years old, was seen by a witness leaving Singhs house in Richmond Hill around 5.30pm on Friday with Pardas and two of her two grandchildren.

When detectives went to Narayans house in South Ozone Park he kept them at bay for over an hour refusing to come out or letting them in, before relenting and coming out.

Narayan and Pardas were then arrested. He is charged with obstructing governmental administration and faces a year prison if convicted. Pardas faces 25 years to life in prison.

Pardas told a witness as they were leaving that Kaur was in the bathroom and waiting for her father to pick her up.

The witness called the childs father and said that the light had been on in the bathroom since 11.30am. Singh asked the witness to break open the door and the child was found dead in the bath tub.

This is the second recent incident involving step-mothers of Indian origin in New York city.

Last month 35-year-old Sheetal Ranot was convicted of slashing her 12-year-old step-daughter with a broken metal broom handle and cutting her left wrist to the bone, Brown said.

Sheetal Ranot and her husband, Rajesh, of Ozone Park were also accused of torturing Maya Ranot for two years, Brown said.

They locked her up in a room without food or water for long periods of time and when she was found by authorities she weighed only about 26kg.

Sheetal Ranot faces up to 25 years in prison. Rajesh is waiting for his trial. They were both arrested in 2014, but the first case came up for trial only last month.

Richmond Hill has a sizable population of people of Indian descent, while South Asians have a significant presence in the Ozone Park neighbourhoods.
Thousands of Indians in traditional finery celebrated Indias 70th Independence Day here at one of the largest parades outside the country with the iconic Empire State Building lighting up in Indian tricolour.

The 36th India Day Parade by the Federation of Indian Associations - New York, New Jersey, Connecticut yesterday ran through about 13 streets in Madison avenue in Manhattan and featured tableaux by various Indian-American groups, marching bands, police contingents and cultural performances by young Indian-Americans.

Chief Guest at the event Yoga guru Baba Ramdev said India represents the glory of the past, the present moments strength and is moving forward with hopes and dreams of a brighter future.

India has made its mark through its strength, culture, heritage and honesty, he said, expressing hope that the Indian tricolour continues to fly high around the world.

Amid loud cheers and applause, Ramdev, speaking in Hindi, said the world today recognises Indias strength and its tremendous contribution to health, education, political and spiritual system.

Combining its spirituality and modernism, the country is moving forward, he said and called on Indians living in the US and abroad to work together to take the nation, its cultural heritage and Indianness to greater glory.

Indias over a billion-strong population and its diaspora spread across the world are working for the country and contributing to its growth and glory from wherever they are, Ramdev said.

Underscoring the importance of Yoga, he said it is not just a physical exercise but a complete medical science, life science and way of living and promotes non-violence and harmony.

Ayurveda, non-violence, truth, harmony, co-existence and brotherhood are Indias culture and heritage, Ramdev said, adding that the people of India have to take this ancient practise forward.

Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan, the Grand Marshal of the parade, said it felt wonderful to be the part of Indias Independence Day celebrations in New York.

He recalled that the last time he had attended the parade was in 1997 when his father, Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan was the Grand Marshal. The senior Bachchan had participated in the 50th anniversary of Indias Independence Day 19 years ago.

It is a huge honour to be here and represent the beautiful nation of ours, Abhishek said, waiving out to the crowd from a stage, as people thronged to click pictures with him and shake his hand.
A Malian jihadist on Monday asked the people of Mali for forgiveness after he pleaded guilty to ordering 2012 attacks on the fabled site of Timbuktu.

I seek their forgiveness and I ask them to look at me as a son who has lost his way, Ahmad al Faqi al Mahdi told the International Criminal Court.

As his unprecedented trial got under way in The Hague, Mahdi added he was really sorry and remorseful regretted all the damage that my actions have caused.

He pleaded guilty to intentionally ordering the attacks on nine shrines and the Sidi Yahia mosque between June 30 and July 11, 2012 when the jihadists seized control of part of northern Mali.

Mahdi, aged about 40, is also the first Islamic extremist charged by the ICC and the first person to face a solo allegation of cultural destruction.

I would like to seek the pardon of all the whole people of Timbuktu, he said, adding he also begged forgiveness from the ancestors of the mausoleums I have destroyed.

The attacks on the ancient shrines by jihadists triggered a global outcry, and archaeologists hope the trial will send a stern warning that such plundering of our common heritage will not go unpunished.

I would like to make you a solemn promise that this was the first and the last wrongful act I will ever commit, Madhi said.

The prosecutors revealed at the start of trial that they had made a deal with the defence team to ask for a jail term of nine to 11 years. In return, Mahdi said he would not appeal.

This video grab shows Islamist militants destroying an ancient shrine in Timbuktu. (AFP File Photo)

The judges recognised this, but also warned Mahdi that they were not necessarily bound by the deal and he faced a maximum term of 20 years.

Mahdi also distanced himself from the jihadists describing their acts as evil.

He said he wanted to give a piece of advice to all Muslims in the world -- not to get involved in the same acts I got involved in because they are not going to lead to any good for humanity.

After making his first court appearances in a white collarless shirt, Mahdi this time was dressed in a charcoal suit, with a striped blue shirt, and a blue-and-white striped tie.

(AFP )
A Malian jihadi asked for forgiveness as he pleaded guilty Monday to the 2012 attacks on the fabled city of Timbuktu, and urged Muslims not to follow such evil ways at his unprecedented war crimes trial.

Your honour, regrettably I have to say that what I heard so far is accurate and reflects the events. I plead guilty, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi said as his trial opened at the International Criminal Court, where he admitted a sole war crimes charge of cultural destruction.

Armed with videos, graphics and 360 degree landscapes, ICC prosecutors showed images of the destruction of the centuries-old sites in the west African city.

Aged about 40, Mahdi is the first person ever to confess his crimes at the ICC, is also the first Islamic extremist to appear before the tribunal and the first charged with crimes arising out of the conflict in Mali.

The razing of the ancient shrines by jihadis triggered global outcry, and archaeologists hope the trial will send a stern warning that such plundering of our common heritage will not go unpunished.

Alleged al Qaeda-linked Islamist leader Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi (right) looks on during an appearance at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. (AFP Photo)

Mahdi is accused of intentionally directing attacks against nine of Timbuktus famous mausoleums as well as the Sidi Yahia mosque between June 30 and July 11, 2012.

Founded between the fifth and the 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktus very name evokes centuries of history and has been dubbed the city of 333 saints for the number of Muslim sages buried there.

Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries and a designated UNESCO world heritage site, Timbuktu was however condemned as idolatrous by the jihadis.

Prosecutors on Monday showed shocking images of jihadis hacking away at centuries-old tombs, including video of Mahdi taking a pick-axe to on shrine and later justifying the attacks to cameras.

In one video, Mahdi and others are seen ripping open the door of the Sidi Yahia mosque, which had been kept closed for hundreds of years.

Evil acts

ICC prosecutors allege Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly Tuareg movement that in 2012 took control of Timbuktu some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) northeast of Bamako, along with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Mahdi, who was then head of the Hisbah or the Manners Brigade said he regretted the damage he had caused and was really sorry.

I would like to seek the pardon of all the whole people of Timbuktu, he said.

Mahdi has been described as a quiet Koranic scholar who turned ruthless jihadi enforcer, fiercely imposing the strictest interpretation of Sharia law.

But vowing he would never carry out such actions again, he sought to distance himself from the jihadis describing their acts as evil.

It is also my hope that the years I will spend in prison will be a source of purging the evil spirits that had overtaken me, he told the court, dressed in a western suit with a blue-and-white striped tie, instead of his earlier white collarless shirt.

Mankinds heritage

Amid scenes of similar destruction in Iraq and Syria, the ICC prosecutors have said the case is about much than just stones and walls.

Such deliberate attacks on cultural property have become actual weapons of war, ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the court.

It was a period in time that was one of destructive rage. The heritage of mankind was ransacked, she said.

The jihadis wanted to destroy these monuments and simply wipe them off the map, she said, urging the court to stand firm in our resolve to end impunity for such serious crimes.

The judgement will follow later, but it was revealed the defence and prosecution have struck a deal under which Mahdi would not appeal a jail term of between nine to 11 years.

The judges warned however the court is not bound by the deal, and he could face up to 30 years imprisonment.
A Malian jihadist sought forgiveness as he pleaded guilty on Monday to the 2012 attacks on the fabled city of Timbuktu, and urged Muslims not to follow such evil ways at his unprecedented war crimes trial.

Your honour, regrettably I have to say that what I heard so far is accurate and reflects the events. I plead guilty, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi said, becoming the first person to confess to the International Criminal Court, admitting the solo war crimes charge of cultural destruction.

Mahdi, aged about 40, is also the first Islamic extremist charged by the ICC, and the first charged with crimes arising out of the conflict in Mali.

The razing of the ancient shrines by jihadists triggered global outcry, and archaeologists hope the trial will send a stern warning that such plundering of our common heritage will not go unpunished.

The bespectacled Mahdi is accused of intentionally directing attacks against nine of Timbuktus famous mausoleums as well as the Sidi Yahia mosque between June 30 and July 11, 2012.

Founded between the fifth and the 12th centuries by Tuareg tribes, Timbuktus very name evokes centuries of history and has been dubbed the city of 333 saints for the number of Muslim sages buried there.

Revered as a centre of Islamic learning during its golden age in the 15th and 16th centuries and a designated UNESCO world heritage site, Timbuktu was however condemned as idolatrous by the jihadists.

Begs ancestors pardon

ICC prosecutors allege that Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, a mainly Tuareg movement that in 2012 took control of Timbuktu some 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) northeast of Bamako, along with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Mahdi told the tribunal, based in The Hague, that he regretted the damage he had caused and was really sorry.

I would like to seek the pardon of all the whole people of Timbuktu, he said, adding he also begged forgiveness from the ancestors of the mausoleums I have destroyed.

Vowing he would never carry out such actions again, he sought to distance himself from the jihadists describing their acts as evil.

It is also my hope that the years I will spend in prison will be a source of purging the evil spirits that had overtaken me, he told the court.

As the head of the Hisbah or the Manners Brigade he had ordered the shrines to be destroyed, ICC prosecutors say.

Such deliberate attacks on cultural property have become actual weapons of war, ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the court.

It was a period in time that was one of destructive rage. The heritage of mankind was ransacked, she said.

The jihadists wanted to destroy these monuments and simply wipe them off the map, she said, urging the court to stand firm in our resolve to end impunity for such serious crimes.

The prosecution said it would present to the court during the five-day hearing a video of Mahdi attacking the shrines himself with a pick-axe.

Ancient rites

The judgement will follow later, but it was revealed the defence and prosecution have struck a deal under which Mahdi would not appeal a jail term of between nine to 11 years.

The judges warned however the court is not bound by the deal, and he could face up to 30 years imprisonment.

Mahdi has been described as a quiet Koranic scholar who turned ruthless jihadist enforcer, fiercely imposing the strictest interpretation of Sharia law.

Frustrated when local people refused to stop worshipping at the ancient shrines, with such rites as praying for rain or a good marriage, Mahdi ordered the attacks with pickaxes, chisels and pick-up trucks and even a bulldozer.

UNESCO chief Irina Bokova said recently the case was close to her heart and that she would never forget the scenes of ransacked and damaged shrines she saw on a visit to Timbuktu in January 2013 shortly after the jihadists had been driven out by a French-led operation.
A nervous Indias decision to deploy BrahMos cruise missiles along the frontier in Arunachal Pradesh poses a threat to China and will have a negative impact on the boundary dispute, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) has said.

The deployment of a special version of the missile with updated capabilities for stealth and mountain warfare could threaten Yunnan and Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) provinces, located across the border from Arunachal Pradesh which is claimed by China, a commentary in the PLA Daily said.

The move is beyond Indias normal need for self-defence, complained military naval engineer Cheng Yuyi, who wrote the piece in the mouthpiece of the worlds largest armed forces. The commentary was carried with the headline: Playing tricks, they are bound to suffer the consequences.

The deployment of the BrahMos missile...is bound to increase the competitiveness and rivalry in the Sino-Indian relationship and negatively impact the region, the piece said.

Cheng compared the BrahMos to an agile cobra, poised for action in no time, and said it can improve the suddenness and effectiveness of attack by shortening the time gap between finding and hitting the target.

The commentary came weeks after the cabinet committee on security, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cleared the raising of a new regiment to be equipped with the advanced version of the BrahMos at a cost of more than Rs 4,300 crore.

In the piece originally published in Chinese, Cheng wrote: Its not hard to see that behind Indias move this time is the ideology to counterbalance and confront. In recent years, the String of Pearls Strategy and the China Threat Theory has been making a great clamour inside India, reflecting the psychological state of extreme nervousness.

The commentary noted other steps taken by India to beef up its capabilities along the border with China. It said the Indian Army has been planning deliberately to form an advantageous military power on the border area by deploying advanced weapons such as SU-30MKI fighters, missiles and unmanned spy drones.

However, the piece contended that the BrahMos missile would not be able to penetrate deep into Chinas territory because of its 290-km range.

The comparatively short range (of the missile) would not pose a threat for Chinas deeper regions, and if the missile was carried on the fighter aircraft to extend the coverage range, its combat effectiveness would be largely cut down, the commentary said.

It listed what it described as other drawbacks of the missile: The BrahMos can only attack effectively tactical targets within close range, but is unable to reach targets located far. Secondly, because it is too big, the missile is not suitable to be carried.

The BrahMos is 8.4 metres long and weighs around 3,000 kg. Not to mention that medium and small fighters wont be able to carry the missile, even the Su-30MKI type of fighter will only be able to carry one, it said.

The Indian Army has so far raised three regiments equipped with two earlier versions of the BrahMos, which was jointly developed by India and Russia and is named after the Brahmaputra and Moskva rivers. The missile has also been fitted on Indian warships. The new regiment for the northeast will have some 100 missiles, five mobile autonomous launchers on heavy-duty trucks and a mobile command post.
Activists of Muttahida Qaumi Movement, a key political party in Pakistan, clashed with police and ransacked a private television station in Karachi on Monday, leaving at least one man dead and seven others injured.

The violence erupted soon after the influential Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) partys exiled chief, Altaf Hussain, stoked up his supporters in the city, castigating the media for not giving them due coverage.

His activists, who had just ended a week-long hunger strike against a government crackdown against them, attacked the ARY station after Hussain addressed them by phone from self-imposed exile in London.

CM Sindh arrives at #ARYNews office moments after it was attacked by MQM activists#ARYUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/yPjv0B4hjB  ARY News (@ARYNEWSOFFICIAL) August 22, 2016

MQM workers also clashed with police on the streets, sparking volleys of gunshots and tear gas at several places across the city, police and witnesses said.

We have carried out teargas shelling to disperse the mob, who were trying to attack a television office, senior police officer Saqib Ismail said.

One unidentified man was killed and seven others injured, two with gunshot wounds, according to hospital officials.

One was brought (to the hospital) dead, who was shot with a gun, Dr Seemi Jamali, the director at a state-run hospital told AFP.

(ARY News on Twitter)

Three of the injured belonged to media organisations, she said.

Television footage showed dozens of men and women barging into ARYs office, smashing doors, windows and equipment with rods and batons and setting fire to several vehicles.

The MQM, run by Hussain from London -- and accused of using extortion and murder to cement its grip on power -- has long been blamed for ethnic violence in Karachi.

It has clashed repeatedly with authorities who, say rights groups, have resorted to hundreds of extra-judicial killings during a clean-up operation that began in 2013 in a city already plagued by violence.
The Philippines has recorded about 1,800 drug-related killings since President Rodrigo Duterte took office seven weeks ago and launched a war on narcotics, far higher than previously believed, according to police figures.

Philippine national police chief Ronald Dela Rosa told a senate committee on Monday that 712 drug traffickers and users had been killed in police operations since July 1.

Police were also investigating 1,067 other drug-related killings, Dela Rosa said, without giving details. The comments came a day after Duterte lashed out at the United Nations for criticising the wave of deaths.

As recently as Sunday, the number of suspected drug traffickers killed in Dutertes war on drugs had been put at about 900 by Philippine officials. But this number included people who died since Duterte won the May 9 presidential election.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks during a news conference in Davao city, southern Philippines. (Reuters)

Duterte said in a bizarre and strongly worded late-night news conference on Sunday the Philippines might leave the United Nations and invite China and others to form a new global forum, accusing it of failing to fulfil its mandate.

However, his foreign minister, Perfecto Yasay, said on Monday the Philippines would remain a UN member and described the presidents comments as expressions of profound disappointment and frustration.

We are committed to the UN despite our numerous frustrations and disappointments with the international agency, Yasay told a news conference.

Last week, two UN human rights experts urged Manila to stop the extra-judicial executions and killings.

Yasay said Duterte has promised to uphold human rights in the fight against drugs and has ordered the police to investigate and prosecute offenders. He criticised the UN rapporteurs for jumping to an arbitrary conclusion that we have violated human rights of people.

It is highly irresponsible on their part to solely rely on such allegations based on information from unnamed sources without proper substantiation, he said of the United Nations.

Senator Leila de Lima, a staunch critic of the president, started a two-day congressional inquiry into the killings on Monday, questioning top police and anti-narcotics officials to explain the unprecedented rise in killings.

I am disturbed that we have killings left and right as breakfast every morning, she said.

My concern does not only revolve around the growing tally of killings reported by the police. What is particularly worrisome is that the campaign against drugs seems to be an excuse for some law enforcers and other elements like vigilantes to commit murder with impunity, De Lima said.
Cooperation on several big ticket ventures, including the 6,720MW Pancheshwar power project and the construction of roads in the Terai region, are expected to top the agenda when Nepals new Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda visits India on September 15.

Prachanda, who came to power after his predecessor KP Sharma Oli quit, is visiting at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India has already assured him of full support for the new government.

Ahead of the visit, Prachanda has sent a special message to Modi that Indias moral support would be key in completing the remaining task of the peace process and implementation of the new Constitution, sources said. He has also said he wants to work closely with India to boost development and reconstruction work.

Top Nepalese officials told Hindustan Times that several crucial projects will be discussed during the visit, including the completion of the detailed project report for the Pancheshwar multi-purpose project to be built by a joint venture.

India is also expected to build a polytechnic institute in Prachandas hometown of Chitwan. New Delhi is also expected to pledge additional support for the victims last years major earthquakes in Nepal as the funding gap could rise to Rs 30 billion.

The construction of postal roads  so-called because they were originally developed for the movement of mail  in the Terai plains with Indian funding and the completion of other pending projects will also be discussed during the visit, officials said.

Deputy prime minister Bimalendra Nidhi, who is also the home minister and special representative of the Nepal government, is in New Delhi to prepare the grounds for Prachandas visit. He has already held talks with President Pranab Mukherjee, Modi and other senior politicians and officials.

Nidhi carried a wish list from the Nepali side that was discussed with the Indian leadership. His visit was also aimed at resuming high-level contacts after a thaw in bilateral ties following a months-long standoff.

Nidhi is also working out dates for the upcoming visit of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee to Nepal and a visit by President Bidhya Devi Bhandari to India later this year.

India perceives Nepals new government as comparatively friendly and soft towards the demands and grievances of the agitating Madeshi groups, which are opposed to the countrys new Constitution. The new government has also indicated it will pursue balanced and friendly ties with India and China.
South Korea and the United States began annual military drills on Monday despite North Koreas threat of nuclear strikes in response to the exercises that it calls an invasion rehearsal.

Such fiery rhetoric by Pyongyang is not unusual. But the latest warning comes at a time of more tension following the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a US plan to place a high-tech defence missile system in South Korea.

The Norths military said in a statement on Monday that it will turn Seoul and Washington into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style pre-emptive nuclear strike if they show any signs of aggression toward the Norths territory.

The Norths first-strike units are read to mount retaliatory attacks on South Korean and US forces involved in the drills, according to the statement, carried by Pyongyangs state media.

South Koreas Unification Ministry expressed strong regret over the Norths warning, saying the drills with the US are defensive in nature. Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said they have no intentions of invading Pyongyang.

This years Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday for a 12-day run are largely computer-simulated war games. The training involves 25,000 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers, according to the US and South Korean militaries.

The drills come just days after Seoul announced that Thae Yong Ho, No. 2 at the Norths embassy in London, had recently defected to South Korea because he was disillusioned with the Norths leadership. Pyongyangs state media called him human scum and a criminal who had been ordered home for a series of alleged criminal acts, including sexually assaulting a minor.

South Koreas president said on Monday there were signs of serious cracks in the Norths ruling elite class, and that Pyongyang could carry out some action to divert public attention away from such domestic problems.

Many analysts said Thaes defection was an embarrassment to the North Korean government of leader Kim Jong un, but would not weaken the unity of the countrys elite class.

Previous South Korea-US military drills have brought threats of war.

North Korea has already boosted such war rhetoric because of the planned deployment of the US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system in South Korea, which Washington and Seoul says is needed because of the increasing North Korean threats.
Suspected Boko Haram militants have killed 10 people and abducted 13 others in a raid on a village near the northeast Nigerian town of Chibok where the militants kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls in 2014, locals told AFP on Monday.

Armed jihadists on motorcycles invaded Kubrrivu at dawn on Sunday, firing on the residents as they were sleeping and looting and burning homes before fleeing into the bush with 13 women and children seized from the village.

The Boko Haram attackers rode on four motorcycles, three on each, and opened fire on the village as residents slept, said Luka Damina, a resident of nearby Kautikeri village where Kubrrivu residents fled to safety following the attack.

They burnt down the whole village after looting food supplies and livestock and taking away women and children, Damina said.

Ayuba Alamson, a community elder in Chibok, some 20 kilometres (12 miles) away, confirmed the attack, saying 13 people were abducted in the raid.

After killing 10 people and burning the entire village, the gunmen made away with 13 people, including seven women, five boys and a girl, Alamson said.

In 2014 Kubrrivu was burnt down in a deadly Boko Haram raid which forced residents to flee. A year later they returned and rebuilt their homes after Nigerian troops recaptured swathes of territory from the Islamists in a series of military successes against them.

Boko Haram, which seeks to impose strict Islamic law in northern Nigeria, has been blamed for some 20,000 deaths and displacing more than 2.6 million people since 2009.

The audacious mass kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in April 2014 provoked global outrage and brought unprecedented attention to Boko Harams brutal tactics.

A total of 218 girls are still missing.
Britains communications regulator Ofcom on Monday rejected complaints that it was inappropriate for a hijab-wearing Channel 4 News journalist to present reports of the Bastille Day attack in France that killed 84 people.

A suggestion in a column in the mass circulation tabloid The Sun that it was not right for a Muslim presenter wearing a hijab to report the incident set off a storm and prompted hundreds of complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).

However, Ofcom received 17 complaints about the channel using Fatima Manji to convey the news. She was scheduled to present the news on the day before the attack.

Ofcom said it assessed the complaints but deemed there was no ground to launch a full investigation into any potential breach of the broadcasting code.

An Ofcom spokesman said: We received a small number of complaints that it was inappropriate for a presenter wearing a hijab to present a report on the attack in Nice.

We wont be taking the matter forward for investigation. The selection of a presenter is an editorial matter for the broadcaster, and the way in which the presenter chose to dress in this case did not raise any issues under our rules.

In The Sun column, former editor Kelvin MacKenzie wrote that he could hardly believe my eyes when he saw Manji on screen. Was it appropriate for her to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim? he said.

He added: Was it done to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer who looks at the hijab as a sign of the slavery of Muslim women by a male-dominated and clearly violent religion?

IPSO is yet to rule on hundreds of complaints it received against MacKenzies column.

Channel 4 News said MacKenzies comments were offensive, completely unacceptable, and arguably tantamount to inciting religious and even racial hatred.

It said in a statement: It is wrong to suggest that a qualified journalist should be barred from reporting on a particular story or present on a specific day because of their faith. Fatima Manji is an award-winning journalist. We are proud that she is part of our team and will receive, as ever, our full support in the wake of his comments.

During the attack in the French Riviera city, a man drove a truck through crowds and killed 84. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
KUNDUZ: Afghan forces have recaptured a district that had fallen briefly to the Taliban, officials and residents said Sunday, after thousands of people fled their homes in Afghanistans northeastern Kunduz province.

Khan Abad district, which is around 30 kilometres east of Kunduz city -- the provincial capital where militants last year scored their biggest ever victory -- had fallen to the Taliban after they launched a pre-dawn attack on the district centre on Saturday, according to local officials.

Several hours later Afghan special forces were deployed to the area -- a key route to Kunduz city -- to retake the district.

The district was recaptured by government forces on Saturday evening, according to Sayed Mahmood Danish, a Kunduz governor spokesman.

Taliban are now being chased away. The threat to the city is gone. We are expanding our operations beyond the district, Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said.
ISTANBUL: An Islamic State group suicide bomber as young as 12 years old attacked an outdoor Kurdish wedding party in southeastern Turkey, killing at least 51 people and wounding dozens of others, the Turkish president said on Sunday.

The bombing late Saturday in Gaziantep, near Turkeys border with Syria, was the deadliest attack in Turkey this year.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking live on national television in front of Istanbuls city hall, said the attacker was aged between 12 and 14. He said 69 people were wounded, with 17 of them in critical condition.

It was clear that Daesh had such an organisation in Gaziantep or was attempting to make room for itself in recent times, Erdogan said, using an alternative acronym for IS. Many intensive operations were conducted, are being conducted. Of course our security forces will be conducting these operations with even greater intensity.

A bus driver who shuttled some of the guests from Siirt to Gaziantep said that he couldnt believe the party was targeted.

This was a wedding party. Just a regular wedding party, Hamdullah Ceyhan said. This attack was deplorable. How did they do such a thing?

Turkey has been rocked by a wave of attacks in the past year that have either been claimed by Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, or were blamed on IS. In June, suspected IS militants attacked Istanbuls main airport with guns and bombs, killing 44 people. A dual suicide bombing blamed on IS at a peace rally in Turkeys capital, Ankara, in October killed 103 victims.

The attack comes as the country is still reeling from last months failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers. Gulen denies any involvement.

Foreign governments, including the US, Sweden, Greece, France, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan, have condemned the Gaziantep attack.

Police sealed off the site of the explosion and forensic teams moved in. Hundreds of residents had gathered near the site chanting Allah is great as well as slogans denouncing attacks.

Turkish authorities issued a media blackout on coverage of the attack until the investigation is completed.
KATHMANDU: Nepals new Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda will embark on a three-day official visit to India on September 15, official sources here said on Sunday. Sources confirmed the date for Prachandas India visit though it is yet to be officially announced. This will be Prachandas first foreign visit after assuming office earlier this month. Deputy prime minister and home minister Bimalendra Nidhi, who was on a visit to India as Prachandas special envoy, had discussed with Indian officials regarding the visit, according to Indian embassy sources here. The confirmation of the date comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended an invitation to Prachanda to visit India at the earliest when Nidhi called on him. Nidhi had briefed Modi about the latest developments in Nepal.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
CULIACAN: The son of drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman has been released following his abduction earlier this week from a Mexico bar, a member of the Sinaloa cartel leaders family said. Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, 29, was freed along with the five other men with whom he was kidnapped, a relative who requested anonymity for security reasons said. They were negotiating all this time, but now are free and well, the source said, adding that some of the captured men were already back in Sinaloa state.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
WASHINGTON: The revolving door at the Trump Tower spun once again last week for yet another shakeup of the Republicans chaotic presidential campaign team.

This time, it was to welcome Stephen Bannon, a hard-charging media executive, as chief executive of Donald Trumps campaign.

Kellyanne Conway, a pollster who supported his rival Ted Cruz in the primaries, was promoted as campaign manager.

On Friday, the sidelined campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a former lobbyist whose links to Ukraine came under fresh scrutiny, left through the same door.

Just two months ago, Manafort had engineered the ouster of the then campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.

Trumps circle of advisers has been a work in progress, constantly in a flux, with less than three months left for the polls.

TRUMP FAMILY

His wife Melania has been a reluctant campaigner, but Trumps three adults children, Don, Ivanka and Eric form a tight-knit group of advisers, with Ivans husband Jared Kushner, also a real-estate businessman, receiving maximum attention.

He has been called the de facto campaign manager after engineering Lewandowskis ouster.

Kushner, a boyish 35-year-old, is believed to have stopped Trump from picking Chris Christie as his running mate, because the New Jersey governor had as US attorney in 2005 brought down Kushners father Charles Kushner and thrown him in jail.

Kushner, who is Jewish, also helped his father-in-law reach out to the powerful Jewish lobby, and helped him deal with blowback from an anti-semitic re-tweet.

CAMPAIGN TEAM

Chief executive Stephen Bannon, who headed ultra-conservative Breitbart News, is a colourful and combative figure much in the mould of Trump himself.

He has been a harsh critic of the party establishment and has encouraged Trump to run as himself, an outsider with a strong populist message and appeal.

Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway is a veteran Republican party pollster and strategist who had headed a political action group backing Tex Cruz during primaries.

SHADOW ADVISERS

The ousted head of Fox News Roger Ailes, who has been a long-time friend, is said to be helping the nominee prepare for the debates. Ailes brings a formidable reputation and experience, having helped three Republican presidents before: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H W Bush. He is best known for making Nixon, a very awkward candidate , acceptable. Roger Stone, a long-time party operative, is often called the dirty trickster . He is supposed to be close to Trump despite leaving the campaign last August.

Despite throwing him out, Trump continues to consult Lewandowski regularly, as perhaps the most steadfast supporter of the Let-Trump-Be-Trump approach.

TRANSITION TEAM

Chris Christie, a long time friend of Trump, heads the transition team which would lay the groundwork for Trumps presidency if he wins. He has been a close adviser and was shortlisted as a potential running mate before Trump chose Mike Pence.

A former prosecutor, Christie is often spoken of as a possible attorney general in a Trump administration. He famously led the chanting of Lock her up at the Cleveland party convention, calling for a trial of Hillary Clinton.

FOREIGN POLICY TEAM

When asked about his foreign policy advisers, Trump once cited himself as one, saying he has a pretty good brain. That may still be true, but he has since acquired real advisers with some real experience. Senator Jeff Sessions, one of the nominees earliest backers, heads the campaigns foreign policy shop and shapes his belligerent views on immigration.

Retired general Micheal Flynn, who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency, was one of the few national security experts to have backed the Republican nominee, and has been called Trumps favourite general. He accompanied the nominee to his first intelligence briefing this week.

ECONOMIC TEAM

A 13-member group of billionaires led by Stephen Mnuchin, with no women. Another billionaire friend Carl Icahn, who was frequently mentioned by Trump on the campaign trail, was left out to start a political action committee in support of the nominee.
Apple is not a tech company that likes to be left behind by its peers and as the market for electric cars continues to grow, it has not been revealed that the company already has its secret project in place to roll out electric cars by 2021. It is called Project Titan.

According to a report in the website, Fool.Com "Apple has revealed nothing about the details of Project Titan, or even that it exists, but that hasn't stopped the leaks. The first to break most of the news about Apple's car project was The Wall Street Journal. The paper first said the vehicle was expected to debut in 2019, but more recent detailsfrom The Information (paywalled) now points to a 2021 release. The vehicle is widely believed to be electric and a recent rumor says that a South Korean company is making cylindrical lithium-ion batteries with hollowed-out centers. The design is expected to make them lighter and protect against overheating, according to South Korean ETNews.

Apple has already been in talks with companies about building charging stations and has hired its own battery-charging experts away from BMW and Google as well, according toReuters. Earlier rumors suggested the car may be fully driverless, but it's much more likely that the Apple Car will have some level of self-driving capability (like Tesla's Model S and X, orHonda's inexpensive, semi-autonomous Civic). "

The report also revealed key information about the people in charge of the project, "Apple's car project has gone through at least a handful of leaders since its inception (or so we think). There's been speculation that Apple's Chief Designer Jony Ives was heading up most of the car project, but it's also been reported that Steve Zadesky, formerly a Fordengineer that helped oversee iPod and iPhone teams, was heading up Project Titan. The latest buzz is that Apple has actually brought back Bob Mansfield to oversee its car project. Mansfield was a longtime Apple executive who backed off of daily involvement with the company several years ago, and previously headed up hardware engineering for the iPad, iMac and MacBook Air.

Apple reportedly has about 1,000 people working on the project, and was even able to snag Tesla's VP of Vehicle Engineering, Chris Porritt. He was reportedly in charge of the project after Zadesky left, but is likely working under Mansfield now. Apple also hired a key deep learning expert, Jonathan Cohen, away from NVIDIA."

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
For several years, the term Brexit has become a household name in not only countries in Europe but also countries around the world, being the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. In 2012, UK Prime Minister David Cameron rejected calls for a referendum on membership in the European Union. However, he did not rule out a referendum happening in the near future. Fast forward to 24 June 2016, the people in the UK gathered and voted after a heavily publicised and contested pre-referendum period by both the 'Leave' and 'Stay' camps. In the end, 48.1% of those who voted preferred to stay and 51.9% preferred to leave. The vote was largely split by the greater London area and Scotland being in favour of 'Stay', whereas most other parts of the UK voted in favor of 'Leave'.
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
Bolsters Global Presence with Key Agreement in Japan

TrustYou (www.trustyou.com), the worlds largest guest feedback platform, has been selected by TRIPCON, Japans premier site for comparing and booking hotels, to provide Meta-Review data for its search results.

Nearly all travelers rely on review information before making a purchase; 95% of booking decisions are informed by online feedback. Meta-Reviews summarize verified hotel reviews, and are easily integrated into other websites. For instance; Google, Kayak and Hotels.com are among hundreds of sites that have included Meta-Reviews into the information they provide.

TRIPCON has an extensive reach to go along with a very innovative approach to connecting travelers with the information thats most valuable to them, said Yoshi Sakurai, COO at TRIPCON. By incorporating TrustYous vast review data, we can offer our users access to verified guest feedback that positively influences millions of booking decisions every day. TrustYous review data helps us categorizing the hotels based on true guest feedback and user can enjoy the best search experience with TRIPCON.

TRIPCON offers Japans first natural phrase search option in the travel industry, allowing its users to incorporate context into their requests. The site includes tourist and local information on more than 7 million travel destinations and 800,000 hotels worldwide.

This agreement is important for TrustYou, offering us a premier partner in Japan as we expand our global presence, said Kazuyoshi Shimojima, Managing Director of TrustYou, Japan. Since its launch, TRIPCON has developed a significant and loyal user base.

TrustYou analyzes millions of hotel reviews, guest surveys, and social comments and runs the most comprehensive guest feedback platform worldwide. For more information, visit www.trustyou.com.

About TrustYou

TrustYou, the worlds largest guest feedback platform, is on a mission to provide hotels with the insights they need to improve their hotel product and market their value to future guests. With 95% of travelers reporting that they read reviews before making a booking decision, the impact of guest feedback is more important than ever. TrustYou analyzes hundreds of millions of hotel reviews, surveys, and social comments scattered across a vast, fragmented market and transforms this content into actionable insights for 500,000 hotels. This enables travel sites to improve the trip planning process and hotels to optimize their service and influence bookings on scale.

TrustYou products include:

TrustYou Meta-Review*: Global review summaries of all verified reviews written worldwide that are displayed on hundreds of sites like Google, Trivago, KAYAK, Skyscanner, Wego, Sabre GDS, as well as on hotels own brand websites.

Checkmate: A guest messaging service, recently acquired by TrustYou, that allows hotels to communicate with guests via text, email or Facebook messenger in order to create a positive onsite experience.

TrustYou Stars: An advanced guest satisfaction survey tool that allows hotels to gain more post-stay reviews and enhance their content on Google.

TrustYou Analytics: The worlds leading online reputation management tool that allows hotels to leverage guest insights to drive bookings on scale. .

TrustYou Radar: A mobile app to engage with travelers and manage reviews available for iOS and Android to always be up to date, anywhere, anytime.

*TrustYou Meta-Reviews only contain verified reviews and do not include reviews from TripAdvisor.

Press contact

Katharina Sickora

Marketing

katharina.sickora@trustyou.net
U.S. Hotel Occupancy Down 1 Percent to 74.4 Percent for July 2016

Compared with July 2015, the U.S. hotel industry's occupancy decreased 1.0% to 74.4%. However, average daily rate for the month was up 3.6% to US$128.77, and revenue per available room grew 2.5% to US$95.81.

The U.S. hotel industry reported mixed results in the three key performance metrics during July 2016, according to data from STR.

Compared with July 2015, the U.S. hotel industry's occupancy decreased 1.0% to 74.4%. However, average daily rate for the month was up 3.6% to US$128.77, and revenue per available room grew 2.5% to US$95.81.

"July supply growth crept up 1.6%, and demand growth slowed to an anemic 0.6%basically no growth at all," said Jan Freitag, STR's senior VP for lodging insights. "Math then dictates that occupancy has to decline by 1%, but luckily, there was a bit of pricing power (ADR +3.6%). This month's occupancy decline is the sharpest this year, but the ADR growth is the highest (tied with February and June)."

Freitag also noted that U.S. RevPAR has grown in year-over-year comparisons for 77 consecutive months, and July demand was the highest for any month on record at more than 117 million roomnights sold.

Among the Top 25 Markets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-New Jersey, posted the largest year-over-year increases in each of the three metrics. Occupancy in the market rose 6.2% to 78.6%; ADR was up 30.5% to US$158.53; and RevPAR increased 38.6% to US$124.57. Philadelphia hosted the Democratic National Convention on 25-28 July.

Other top RevPAR percentage changes were reported in Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida (+9.8% to US$83.93); Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Virginia (+8.3% to US$105.39); and Los Angeles/Long Beach, California (+7.1% to US$163.29).

Houston, Texas, reported the steepest declines across the three key performance metrics. Occupancy in the market fell 12.8% to 61.2%; ADR was down 8.8% to US$95.71; and RevPAR dropped 20.5% to US$58.60.

New Orleans, Louisiana, reported the next largest year-over-year decrease in RevPAR (-6.6% to US$85.40).

Outside of Philadelphia and Houston, no other Top 25 Market reported a double-digit increase or decrease in the metrics.

"The Top 25 Markets are seeing the majority of new supply (+2.1%), so that is where a demand growth slowdown will hit first," Freitag said. "Occupancy declined 1.5% in the top markets, and ADR grew only 2.6%. In fact, 15 of the Top 25 Markets registered an occupancy decline. Nowhere was it worse than in Houston where demand dropped 7.9%, and supply increased 5.6%."

View monthly U.S. hotel performance review

About STR

STR provides clients from multiple market sectors with premium, global data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England. For more information, please visit str.com.
AC Hotel by Marriott Buckhead Opens in Atlanta

Positioned at the intersection of Peachtree Road and Wieuca Road and adjacent to Nordstrom at Phipps Plaza, the AC Hotel by Marriott Buckhead is the brand's first hotel in Atlanta and only its eighth in the United States.

Simon in partnership with Noble Investment Group, announced today the opening of the acclaimed AC Hotels by Marriott brand at Phipps Plaza -the Southeast's top luxury shopping destination located in the heart of Atlanta's fashionable Buckhead district. Positioned at the intersection of Peachtree Road and Wieuca Road and adjacent to Nordstrom at Phipps Plaza, the AC Hotel by Marriott Buckhead is the brand's first hotel in Atlanta and only its eighth in the United States.

ounded in 1998, AC Hotels is one of the most sought-after hotel brands throughout Europe, and has become synonymous with modern, first class European-inspired accommodations, generous amenities, and value for the discerning traveler. Along with 166 guest rooms and suites, 24-hour health and fitness including indoor swimming, local companies will be able to take advantage of the 2,500-square-feet of executive meeting space as well as the AC Library. Guests will enjoy a breakfast selection of self-serve European fare in the AC Kitchen, while the AC Lounge will boast tapas-inspired small bites, craft beers, cocktails, specialty wines, and also features an outdoor patio.

Recently unveiled in March of this year, Phipps Plaza's Peachtree Road entrance has been transformed to be an elegant facade of storefronts representing some of the coveted brands that call Phipps Plaza home, including Jeffrey, Versace, Tiffany & Co., Giorgio Armani, BOSS Hugo Boss and Bottega Veneta. The new entrance features intricately designed perforated metal panels and a backlit glass curtain wall that creates a vibrant gateway to the property both day and night.

Rounding out Phipps Plaza's enhancement project, the "Domain at Phipps Plaza," a residential development with 319 mid-rise, urban-style luxury residences, is opening in phases starting this fall. Please go to domainatphippsplaza.com for more information.

"The addition of the AC Hotel and Domain residences combined with the new aesthetic of the center will enhance the way our guests experience Phipps Plaza," said David Contis, President, Simon Malls. "We anticipate residents and businesses in Atlantawill enjoy the hotel as a meeting and business destination, as well as a lounge hot spot, and visitors to the area will have a new place to call home as they enjoy upscale hospitality and shopping at Atlanta's most beloved luxury retail destination."

"AC Hotels by Marriott is a new breed of lifestyle hotels created for the next-generation entrepreneurial traveler. Collaborating with a pioneering company like Simon, who shares our passion for beautiful design and style, has taken our brand to the next level," said Tina Edmundson, Global Officer, Luxury and Lifestyle Brands, Marriott International. "AC Hotel Atlanta Buckhead at Phipps Plaza's location provides access to stylish spaces that inspire and connect like-minded guests and locals alike."

"We are proud to introduce the highly-anticipated AC Hotel to our business colleagues, friends and neighbors in the Buckhead community who will enjoy experiencing first class hospitality integrated within Phipps Plaza, the region's most vibrant luxury retail destination," said Mit Shah, CEO, Noble Investment Group.
We'll also be seeing lots more of Vogue Williams, Nathan Carter, Des Bishop & the Rubberbandits

The Bord Gais Energy Theatre was the venue this morning as RTE unveiled its autumn TV schedule.

Amy Huberman, Rory Keenan and Neil Morrissey star in Striking Out, an Irish legal system four-parter that with Morrissey on board is likely to follow Red Rock and the back for a second season Bridget & Eamon onto UK screens as well.

Elaine Cassidy plays the lead in Acceptable Risk, a War of Independence drama from the makers of the flawed but popular Rebellion, while My Mother And Other Strangers follows the fortunes of the Coyne family and their neighbours as they struggle to maintain a normal life after a huge United States Army Air Force airfield with 4,000 service men and women lands in the middle of their rural Northern Irish parish in 1943. The heavyweight cast includes Mad Mens Aaron Staton and Hattie Morahan of Beauty And The Beast fame. Writing duties fall to Barry Devlin who continues to moonlight as a member of Horslips.

Actress and playwright Stefanie Preissner makes her TV bow in six-part, darkly comic drama Cant Cope, Wont Cope, which also features Dollhouses Seana Kerslake and Nika McGuigan who was previously to be seen in Philomena.

The comedic offerings dont end there with a second series of the Rubberbandits Guides and the new Des Bishop: This Is Ireland.

Body dysmorphia, drug culture, online bullying and transgenderism will be examined in Vogue Williams  On The Edge while author Louise ONeill fronts Reality Bites: Asking For It, which delves into the subject of sexual consent.

Pauline McLynn presents Painting The Nation, an eight-part search for Irelands finest amateur Leonardo da Vinci while the Irish East Enders spin-off, Redwater, and Dancing With The Stars are sure to be big ratings-grabbers.

There are also new vehicles for Tommy Tiernan and Nathan Carter, while Enda Kenny gets the documentary treatment.
62-year-old Lou Pearlman was sentenced in 2008 for masterminding a Ponzi scheme

The man responsible for the Backstreet Boys and NSyncs gazillion-selling exploits, Lou Pearlman, has died aged 62 in a Texas prison.

The boy band Svengali was sentenced in 2008 to up to 25 years after pleading guilty to his masterminding of an illegal Ponzi scheme that cost investors $300 million.

Taking to Twitter, NSyncs Lance Bass says: He might not have been a stand-up businessman, but I wouldnt be doing what I love today without his influence. RIP Lou.

Another of his former charges, O-Towns Ashley Palmer, adds: "Love him or hate him, Lou gave many of us our start. It's a shame he let greed get in his way."

Hot Press met Pearlman in 2002 in Brussels when one of his less successful creations, B 4-4, launched an EU anti-smoking campaign at the behest of Irish Commissioner David Byrne.
From partying with Noel Gallagher and Shane McGowan to getting airplay on the Beeb, Cronin look set to make waves with their debut album, The First Kiss of Love.

If friends in high rock 'n' roll places, influential connections and the imprimatur of their peers was all it took to make it to the top in the music world, then Cronin would be enjoying a very panoramic view indeed. The Mullingar outfit, formerly known as The Aftermath and headed up by Johnny and Mick Cronin, certainly seem to have mastered the art of winning friends and influencing all the right people.

Their debut album, The First Kiss Of Love includes a roster of guests that includes Waterboy Steve Wickham, The Frames' Karl Odlum, Shane MacGowan, Pugwash's Tosh Flood and Terry Edwards (PJ Harvey, Tindersticks.) "We're not a critic's band," insists Mick Cronin. "It's quite retro as we're obsessed with music and it's a nod to our influences. We've no intention of hiding that fact."

Despite it being their debut outing, they've attracted some notable fans of their own recently. In fact, a few months back when Noel Gallagher needed to escape the glare of the paparazzi as he emerged from a London club, he chose to hide his mug behind a Cronin CD. As Johnny Cronin explains, it was yet another one of those serendipitous things that seems to happen to the band with impressive regularity. "We've been playing with Shane MacGowan a lot recently and he was asked to do this benefit for Palestine at Ronnie Scott's club in London, so we went over on the boat. It was a great night, Van Morrison was on the bill and Noel was sitting in the front row having the craic with everyone. We ended up drinking with him until five in the morning and we got on great, especially when he heard our mum was from Crossmolina."

Mick takes up the story: "We gave him a copy of our CD, and when he came out of the place much later, he put it up to his face to block the cameras. It appeared in the Daily Mail the following day, Twitter started lighting up and NME got hold of it. We sold about 300 downloads of the album on the back of that alone - a lot of them in Japan!" In their previous incarnation as The Aftermath they enjoyed decent success over the best part of a decade with their mod-influenced fare. But why the name change? "We were The Jam then and now we're the Style Council," Johnny quips.

Advertisement

"But seriously, while people might have known that we were named The Aftermath after our favourite Rolling Stones' album, a lot of people, including some promoters, seemed to think we were some kind of heavy metal band and they thought it wasn't what it said on the tin. That said, we once did a gig in Mitchelstown and we were called After Mass so that was even weirder. With a name like Cronin you can't really go wrong - it's like Madonna. It's very Irish too and we're happy with it."

The album, which was three years in the making, displays a mellower, more 'mature' style with ambitious arrangements and a rich sonic template. One track that has caught the ear of the industry is 'Nelson Riddle', a tribute to Frank Sinatra's legendary arranger. Says Johnny: "Dermot O'Leary played it on BBC Radio 2 and Paul McLoone has played it a few times. Steve Lamacq said it was like a mix of Richard Ashcroft, Nick Cave and A House, which we loved. The song was influenced by American Music Club's 'Johnny Mathis Feet'. We did a gig in London and Nelson Riddles granddaughter was there which was a bit mental. "There's a good bit of Dexy's and Van Morrison in a song like 'In Loneliness Lives Love', he adds. "We actually have Helen Turner from the Style Council on that one."

Mick says the high production values are an important part of the Cronin sound. "We've our own studio and we're real trainspotters when it comes to recording, mastering and mixing and just trying to get that analogue warmth. It's quite heartbreaking really when your record costs ten grand to make and then everyone listens to it on their phone. Then you have other people buying the vinyl but I'm not sure if they're actually playing the records or just hanging them on the wall."
'The Rock' assures fans that Robin Williams will be honoured in the new film

The original film, starring Robin Williams was a '90s classic. Inevitably, rumours of a reboot set the twenty-somethings of the world into a wild panic.

To put fans at ease, Dwayne Johnson tweeted that the film would not be a reboot but is likely to be a sequel to the beloved classic: For the record we are NOT making a reboot, but rather a continuation of the awesome Jumanji story."

With an all star cast including Hugh Jackman, Diane Kruger, Elle Fanning and Antonio Banderas, let's hope the sequel will do justice to the original film.

Advertisement

Watch below the trailer for the original and new film below:
Metallica plays their newest single, Hardwired, live in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Just last week, Metallica announced their first new album in nearly a decade, titled HardwiredTo Self-Destruct.

Fans who attended the bands performance at the U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on the 20th of August were treated to the world debut of the new single.

Advertisement

The album will feature over 80 minutes of new sound. It will hit store shelves 18 November.
Summer break ends Monday for most of the Houston region's million-plus public school students.

Monday also marks the first full day on the job for the Houston Independent School District's newly hired superintendent, Richard Carranza.

He spent his first school day shaking hands, visiting classrooms and singing happy birthday to a smiling principal.

"The school looks immaculate," Carranza said as he walked the halls of Stevenson Middle School in south Houston.

Principal Ruth Ruiz led Carranza and a throng of central-office administrators to an English class to show the Houston Independent School District's new middle school literacy initiative in action.

A teacher read aloud to her sixth-graders while Carranza checked out a new classroom library that included books of various reading levels.

The initiative, called "Literacy in the Middle," builds on strategies implemented in elementary school classes two years ago when district leaders acknowledged a literacy crisis is leaving too many students below grade level in reading and writing. The district now calls on teachers to work with small groups of students to give more personalized instruction on their specific level.

"I'm a secondary guy so I learned elementary from some pretty good teachers," Carranza, a former high school history teacher, told Ruiz.

Carranza, unanimously hired by the Houston school board last Thursday, planned to visit six campuses Monday, jetting 60 miles across a district four times as large as his prior one, San Francisco public schools.

In Spring ISD, Superintendent Rodney Watson will hit the streets as well, stopping first at the newly renovated Spring Early College Academy, where students can graduate with an associate's degree. Watson also will visit Thompson Elementary to greet Texas A&M University education students assigned to the school. The college seniors are part of a new program, called the Urban Student Teacher Advanced Residency, to give them in-the-trenches experience.

The Spring school district also will kick off its new full-day pre-kindergarten program at five elementary schools, thanks to a state grant program pushed by Gov. Greg Abbott.

New superintendents in Katy and Humble, Lance Hindt and Elizabeth Fagen, both kick off their inaugural first days of schools, too, after being hired over the summer.

Not to be forgotten, this will be the first school year since Pokemon Go launched. Fort Bend ISD's police chief, David Rider, has issued a memo advising students to be careful while wandering to capture the virtual creatures. "One of the main safety reminders for playing this game is to stay alert and aware of your surroundings at all times," Rider said, "but it's also advisable to play in groups and be cautious." And, presumably, don't play while class is in session.
A homeless man accused of decapitating an auto parts store owner last week will undergo a psychological evaluation, his lawyer said Monday.

Raymond Jackson, 62, appeared Monday in a Harris County courtroom where a judge upped his bail from $50,000 to $75,000 after hearing the grisly allegations in the death of Enayatolah Khorsand, a 58-year-old Iranian immigrant who went by "Andy."
GALVESTON - The mayor of League City is accused of using an obscenity to describe a councilwoman and intimidating at least two female employees, according to an ethics complaint filed last week by the city attorney.

The complaint is the latest friction among city leaders since Pat Hallisey became mayor in a March special election. Hallisey denies the allegations, calling the complaint retaliation for his victory over the candidate supported by five of the six council members.

"This council and the city manager have conspired in every way to remove the mayor's power from the city," Hallisey said.

He said he has asked Galveston County District Attorney Jack Roady to investigate a violation of Texas open meetings laws by council members who signed a letter asking him to apologize for the alleged gender slur.

In a six-page complaint filed by City Attorney Nghiem Doan, Hallisey is accused of violating city rules of conduct and laws barring workplace discrimination by using an obscenity against Councilwoman Heidi Hansing during a heated discussion on May 10 with a councilman that was overheard by deputy City Attorney Michelle Villarreal. Hansing could not be reached for comment.

The complaint also alleges that in mid-May, City Secretary Diana Stapp made an verbal complaint to human resources about the mayor intimidating her and other employees by yelling and tossing things in her office. Stapp allegedly complained that the mayor was pressuring her to do unspecified things that were contrary to city rules and that he became angry when she refused.

The complaint said another city employee threatened to resign if the mayor persisted in pressuring her to violate city rules.

Conduct at issue

The complaint also alleges that Hallisey confronted Communications Director Angel Lopez on May 25 about not doing enough to communicate with homeowners associations. The mayor allegedly trapped Lopez in her chair by placing his hands on both chair arms, leaned in and "chastised her." The complaint said, "Mayor Hallisey's conduct toward Ms. Lopez was offensive and degrading, invaded her personal space, and made her feel very uncomfortable."

Hallisey denied pressuring and intimidating employees.

"It's a whole lot of foolishness about nothing," Hallisey said. "I like those people, and they would tell you I wouldn't intimidate anyone."

Neither Stapp nor Lopez responded to requests for comment.

'I'm going to survive'

Doan said that a City Council vote was not necessary for an ethics complaint but that the council decided it was appropriate in this case because only the council can discipline the mayor or other council members. He said he advised council members that signing a letter asking the mayor to apologize did not violate open meetings law, even though it was not done in a public meeting. "They were doing this in good faith based on my counsel," Doan said.

Doan said he has chosen an outside attorney as the ethics compliance officer to investigate the complaints. An independent eight-member Ethics Review Board chosen by the mayor and City Council must confirm his choice. The panel will appoint at least five of its members to rule on the final report.

If an ethics violation is determined, Hallisey could receive a letter sanctioning his behavior or a civil fine of up to $500, Doan said. The City Council could also vote to censure him, a stronger condemnation that requires a five-eighths vote of members present.

"I'm going to survive all this," Hallisey said. "I'm not going anywhere."
A circuit judge last week found a Texas County resident guilty of first-degree property damage and armed criminal action.

James Brittain, 43, of 15302 Bucyrus Drive in Bucyrus, was found guilty for actions occurring Nov. 1, 2015, when he allegedly used a metal pipe to cause damage in excess of $750 to a 2003 Chevolet Pickup, following a decision by Circuit Judge William Hickle. The pipe was later deemed to be a dangerous instrument.

Brittain was apprehended by Texas County Sheriffs Department deputies after charges were filed and subsequently posted $150,000 bond and was released.

After an investigation, county authorities submitted a probable cause statement and physical evidence to Texas County Prosecuting Attorney Parke Stevens Jr., and based on that he filed a criminal complaint and requested a warrant for his arrest be issued.

This a man with a co-defendant knowingly caused thousands of dollars of damage to a vehicle for no apparent reason, said Texas County Prosecuting Attorney Parke Stevens Jr., who tried the case. Because of his actions, the defendant now faces a minimum of three years in the Missouri Department of Corrections.

Hickle ordered a sentencing assessment report be prepared and set sentencing for 9 a.m., Nov. 8. Brittains bond was revoked and he is in the Texas County Jail to await sentencing.

Brittain owned and operated a vehicle repair business in Houston.
Classes began at Missouri State University-West Plains with an increased enrollment.

University officials said 1,827 students were enrolled as of Sunday evening  higher than the 1,619 enrolled on last years first day. Figures included enrollment numbers from Missouri State-West Plains extended campus in Mountain Grove, online courses and early enrollees in the dual credit/dual enrollment classes being offered this fall at several area high schools.

In addition to these students, 107 students are enrolled in the bachelors and masters degree courses offered on site and via interactive television (ITV) by Missouri State Universitys Outreach Program on the West Plains campus.

For more information about Missouri State-West Plains, its programs and registration deadlines, visit www.wp.missouristate.edu or call 417-255-7955.
A Houston man faces felony sodomy charges for allegedly inappropriately touching a 14-year-old girl.

Jonathan David Shane Southworth, 29, of 123 Remington Circle, was arrested last Thursday and charged with second-degree statutory sodomy. He was released from the Texas County Jail after posting $500,000 bond but was arrested again Friday on drug charges and held without bond.

According to a probable cause statement from the Missouri State Technical Assistance Team (STAT), which investigates crimes against children, the alleged sexual assault occurred June 17 inside Southworths Houston home. The victim, who was staying the night with a friend, told authorities she woke to Southworth touching her inappropriately while she was lying alone in bed. The probable cause statement included other details.

The victim told investigators she was scared and pushed Southworth away, according to court documents. He allegedly told the girl, You never let me do anything, and said he would go to jail if she told anyone about the incident.

The victims friend had left the home for a school-related function when the alleged assault occurred, the probable cause statement said.

The same girl told authorities Southworth had placed his hand under a blanket and touched her thigh on March 5 as she and others watched a movie in a RV located on Southworths property. She said she pushed Southworth away, and he left her alone. She was 13 at the time.

Southworth denied the allegations and invoked his right to legal counsel while being interviewed last Thursday afternoon by a STAT investigator at the Texas County Justice Center. He was placed under arrest and transported to the jail for a 24-hour hold pending warrant application. He was later charged and held before bonding out.

On Friday, STAT  with assistance from the Division of Drug and Crime Control of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Texas County Sheriffs Department and Houston Police Department  executed a search warrant at Southworths home related to the allegations. During the search, authorities said they discovered one vial of trenabolone acetate and two vials of boldenone undercylerode  both anabolic steroids and illegal to possess  as well as 104 unused hypodermic needles with syringes.

Southworth, who later admitted to authorities the substances were his, was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance and misdemeanor unlawful use of drug paraphernalia. He was arrested at 6:45 p.m. Friday without incident and taken to the Texas County Jail, where he was held without bond.

The STAT investigation began Aug. 10 after receiving a request for assistance from the Houston Police Department. The victim was interviewed the following day at the Childrens Advocacy Center in West Plains.
The president of Missouri Farm Bureau will be the speaker during the annual meeting of the Texas County chapter.

Blake Hurst will speak at the annual Appreciation Steak Dinner, which is 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13, at the community building at the Houston Area Chamber of Commerce Fairgrounds on North U.S. 63. He is well-known for his participation in the legislative actions going on not only in Missouri, but in Washington as well, as that legislation affects not only Missouri farmers, but all farming activities.

Those attending should bring a table service and silverware. The survey in the recent organizational publication, Sho-Me Magazine, can be brought. Entries will be included in a drawing for a free years membership. Survey comments will be compiled and included for consideration in the preparation of next years Farm Bureau Policy.

Missouri Farm Bureau president to speak in Houston

The president of Missouri Farm Bureau will be the speaker during the annual meeting of the Texas County chapter.

Blake Hurst will speak at the annual Appreciation Steak Dinner, which is 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13, at the community building at the Houston Area Chamber of Commerce Fairgrounds on North U.S. 63. He is well-known for his participation in the legislative actions going on not only in Missouri, but in Washington as well, as that legislation affects not only Missouri farmers, but all farming activities.

Those attending should bring a table service and silverware. The survey in the recent organizational publication, Sho-Me Magazine, can be brought. Entries will be included in a drawing for a free years membership. Survey comments will be compiled and included for consideration in the preparation of next years Farm Bureau Policy.
The following are excerpts from reports generated by the Houston Police Department:

Dylan B. Bell, 17, of 119 E. Hickory in Houston, was cited for following too closely after a two-vehicle accident at U.S. 63 and Oak Crest Drive at about 1 p.m. Aug. 18.

Bethanie L. Bilderback, 23, of 9140 Splitlimb Road in Raymondville, was arrested Aug. 20 for having an active Texas County warrant for possession of a controlled substance in jail.

An officer who was aware of the warrant made the arrest at about 7:30 p.m. after observing Bilderback in the parking lot at Sonic. She was taken to the Texas County Jail where she was unable to post $150,000 bond.

Nadatha S. Walker, 25, of Springfield, was arrested Aug. 15 for having active Texas County felony warrants for drug charges and assault of a law officer, and an active Houston municipal warrant for failure to register a motor vehicle.

An officer made the arrest after observing Walker hiding in the vehicles rear seat floorboards when he conducted another investigation. She was taken to the Texas County Jail and held without bond.

Austin R. Warner, 19, of 8205 Northview Lane, Lot 2, in Houston, was cited for failure to yield right-of-way after a two-vehicle accident at U.S. 63 and Main Street at about 4:45 p.m. Aug. 14.

Kristina M. Shelton, 38, of 16247 Roberson Drive at Houston, was issued citations for stealing under $500, first-degree trespassing and possession of drug paraphernalia after allegedly shoplifting at Walmart on Aug. 3.

Shelton had been banned from all Walmart properties after a shoplifting incident in June. She was taken to the Texas County Jail where she was unable to post $500 bond.
The following are excerpts from reports generated by the Texas County Sheriffs Department:

A 50-year-old Raymondville man reported on Aug. 20 that a canoe valued at $750 and several other items had been stolen from his Amburn Road residence. The man told an investigating officer a gate to the property had sustained $250 worth of damage after being hit by a vehicle.

There are no suspects.

A 25-year-old Licking man reported on Aug. 18 that someone drive through a fence at his Highway 32 property on Aug. 13.

The man told an investigating officer that he found out after a few days that a 17-year-old Licking man had been the driver, and he had agreed to repair the damaged fence. But the property owner said the repairs werent done properly, and that the suspect had ceased making repairs. He said he wanted to file property damage charges.

Investigation continues.

At about 8 a.m. Aug. 17, deputies went to three locations in the county to pull up marijuana plants. At a property on Highway M, 116 plants were pulled, while eight more were pulled at another property on the same roadway. At a location off of Highway MM, 499 plants were pulled. The total number of plants pulled was 623.

A woman called Aug. 2 to report that her 25-year-old friend  a Plato woman  was on her way to Texas County Memorial Hospital after being beaten with a crowbar by a 25-year-old Lynchburg woman during an incident at Roby Lake. An investigating officer made contact with the victim, who stated she had gone to Roby Lake with her two children because her husband wanted to see the kids.

The victim told the officer the woman who beat her was her husbands friend. She stated she went to a friends house to ask for a ride to the hospital. The victim is pregnant.

Investigation of the case continues.

A deputy was dispatched at about 2 a.m. Aug. 9 regarding a report of a man yelling at a Fisher Drive residence at Houston.

The officer was unable to locate anyone yelling or needing help, but did make contact with a man there who said he hadnt been yelling and didnt know why someone had called the sheriffs department. A routine computer check revealed that the man had an active West Plains warrant.

Daniel L. Roberts, 40, of 8227 Fisher Drive in Houston, was arrested and taken to jail to await extradition to West Plains.

A Missouri Department of Transportation representative reported on Aug. 16 that numerous tools with a value of $1,251.95 were stolen from a MoDOT truck while it was in for repairs at Wehr Ford at Mountain Grove. The representative stated the truck was dropped on Aug. 11 and picked up Aug. 15.

There are no suspects.

A 35-year-old Houston woman came to the TCSD office Aug. 16 and reported that a pair of 5-foot KMX speakers had been stolen from her Mineral Drive residence and that someone had destroyed the home while she was staying with her mother for about a month.

An investigating officer was unable to validate the womans claims. The officer did speak with a man named by the woman as a possible suspect, but he stated he knew nothing about the case and that the woman had likely stolen the speakers herself. Investigation of the case continues.

Texas County Jail admissions

Aug. 15

Brandon S. Breedon  possession of controlled substance

Patrick L. Vaughan  48-hour commitment

Amanda D. Smith  24-hour commitment

Kerri L. Von Hoton  drug charges

Donald A. Newell  writ

Amber R. Brim  passing bad checks

Nadatha S. Walker  drug charges

James A. Chitwood  24-hour shock

Roger C. Blanks  domestic assault

Aug. 16

Thomas A. MacKean Jr.  Camden County hold

Amber D. Benson  driving while suspended

Deann M. Morris  drug charges

Aug. 17

Summer D. Cain  assault

Joseph L. Hamby  DWI, driving while suspended

Aug. 18

Jonathan D. Southworth  sodomy

James R. Brittain  bond revocation

Aug. 19

Jamie E. Lane  Crawford County hold

Llonda R. Jones  possession of controlled substance, drug paraphernalia

Jonathan D. Southworth  possession of controlled substance, drug paraphernalia

Joseph A. Kaplan  48-hour commitment

Aug. 20

Jacob R. Witten  Mountain View PD hold

Bethanie L. Bilderback  possession of controlled substance in jail

Daniel M. Doughty  possession of marijuana

Matthew J. Ramsey  possession of marijuana, possession of controlled substance
Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print.

Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition.

If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create.
The news you need, when you need it, by the editors you trust. Get continuing news coverage and educational information on crops, livestock, soil health and other topics you select.
As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content.

When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to.

After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code.

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS!

OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK

The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those.
CATEGORY: Top Corporate Leader Award - Over 35 RANK: 6 Name: Dr. Trish Holliday, SPHR, SHRM-SCP Title: Assistant Commissioner and State Chief Learning Officer Company: Tennessee Department of Human Resources Number of people you lead  18 team members responsible for the learning and development of 40,000 + employees Email: Trish.holliday@tn.gov Our editorial team interviewed Dr. Trish Holliday from Tennessee Department of Human Resources at the Leadership Excellence Awards this past February. Here are some excerpts from the exclusive interview. What is your strongest characteristic you think has made you a great leader? I believe that leadership, at its fundamental level, is about relationships. Much of my success as a leader is a result of my focus on building and maintaining a relationship with those I lead. As the Assistant Commissioner and Chief Learning Officer (CLO) for Tennessee state government, I have to make decisions that are not always readily accepted with enthusiasm. Many decisions require individuals doing things differently from how they have always been done, and many struggle with such change. I have a strong desire to build a relationship that creates a partnership that can remain strong in the midst of change, and even in conflict. I had the opportunity to practice this characteristic in my former career on the mission field wor...
CEO of US media behemoth Viacom has resigned with a settlement package of US$72m after a fraught battle, it has been reported.Philippe Dauman, 62, stood down after the settlement package was agreed, following a drawn-out dispute with Viacom's controlling shareholder, Sumner Redstone, 93, amid allegations that the ageing billionaire owner is being controlled by his daughter, Shari Redstone.The Viacom board voted on Thursday night to approve Dauman's settlement package, and publicly announced the deal on Saturday, CNN Money reports.In July, Dauman 'reserved the right to resign' in a bid to protect potential severance pay, after Redstone sought to remove several board members, including Dauman, from National Amusements - the company that controls Redstone's major shareholdings in Viacom.Dauman's contract was said to have contained a clause which states that he could resign with good reason if there were changes to Viacoms board.In June, Dauman and Viacom director George Abrams filed legal papers that sought to have Redstone medically evaluated, after the pair were ousted from the Sumner Redstone trust.The filing contended that Redstone was not mentally competent to remove them and was manipulated into doing so by his formerly-estranged daughter.Dauman's settlement deal resolves a number of lawsuits and countersuits between the two sides.Dauman remains non-executive chairman of Viacom until 13 September, and is due to present a plan to sell a small stake in Paramount Pictures, BBC Online reports.
ppropriate social media posts often land employees in hot water and most HR professionals would probably prefer workers not to post anything at all  but not this company.More than 200 employees at a travel agency in China were fined recently for not commenting on their boss Weibo account  a social networking platform used widely in the country.According to the company's marketing manager, Zhao Ruxin, employees were warned that if they didnt comment on CEO Zhang Mings account, they would be punished accordingly.A report by the Beijing Youth Daily claims employees who did not comply were fined 50 Yuan each (NZ$10.38) under the policy.The workers were told to comment on the posts, which were a mix of company updates and motivational quotes, to "improve the work ethic of younger staff," Ruxin said.Workers expressed discontent at the punishment, according to the report, with one unidentified worker claiming that they were fined without prior warning.Others said that they believed the policy violates labour laws, and that fines were also given out for things like not carrying bags featuring the corporate logo, the BYD report claimed.However, CEO Zhang has since written a lengthy Weibo post in which he said he was pleased that people now understand the company's corporate culture, and that whilst staff were not happy to be fined, the business relies on its workers to promote it and spur growth, BBC Online reported.The story is the latest in a series of reports of unusual punishments for workers in China, including a company who forced workers to eat bitter gourd for not meeting sales targets, and a Chinese motivational trainer who spanked employees of a bank live on stage for not working hard enough.
After 16 emotional, intense and absolutely thrilling days of sport, the 2016 Rio Olympics have come to an end.

But before the flame was extinguished, one man made his triumphant return to the Olympic stage.

He's bbaaaaaaaccccccckkkkkk...

Advertisement

Yes, Olympic fans, it's Tonga's flag bearer, Pita Nikolas Taufatofua! AGAIN!

If you don't remember (shame on you), Taufatofua is the Olympian who put hearts in our eyes and a fan girl tweet on our Twitter accounts during the opening ceremonies when he showed up to the parade of nations oiled-up and half-naked.

BREAKING: Tonga has now has a shortage of oil. Please donate. #OpeningCeremonypic.twitter.com/8wsTkcl0cZ  Graeme O'Neil (@GraemeONeil) August 6, 2016

The flag-bearer, who became quite the star after the opening ceremonies, went on to appear on such American television programs as the "Today" show, who literally oiled him up on live television.

Tonga oiled flag bearer,Pita taufatofua- Literally i had to go through @TODAYshow tweets to get that #olymics2016pic.twitter.com/LX4FHLwLDc  viky thakur (@vikingviky) August 10, 2016

Advertisement

Awkward.

On Sunday, Pita, who was still flaunting his country's traditional ta'ovala, let loose with thousands of other athletes to celebrate all that was of the Rio games. And once again, the Internet's Olympic husband was showed some, in the words of Taylor Swift, mad love:

THE RETURN OF THE TONGA MAN.  Francine Guilen (@franfran) August 22, 2016

I need my Olympics to come full circle, so @CBCOlympics, show me the man from Tonga! #Rio2016#ClosingCeremony  morag (@heymomo) August 21, 2016

He's back! And more oiled than ever. It wouldn't be the same without Tonga's flag bearerhttps://t.co/3uvB66DQNNpic.twitter.com/jI9WMj8Why  BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 22, 2016

Advertisement

But guys, let's get real for a second. Taufatofua isn't just professionally good looking. He's also a professional athlete. An Olympian for that matter.

Believe it or not, he was at the Olympics to compete!

So how did Taufatofua do? He lost his very first match. But, like a true Olympian, he's not giving up any time soon.

"What I pride myself in is not my skill in my craft, there are others who will always be better.... What I pride myself in is that I do not quit, I do not stop!" he wrote on Facebook.

Advertisement

What a class act. Thanks for the Olympic memories, Pita.

(That's him with a shirt on, btw)

For more moments from the 2016 Rio Olympics, check out the slideshow below!

Rio Olympics 2016 Closing Ceremony See Gallery
darryl dyck/CP

Canada's border agency has a fairly simple request for Americans travelling north: Leave your guns at home.

The Canada Border Services Agency launched an awareness campaign Monday, aimed at reminding U.S. travellers about Canadian gun laws.

Advertisement

The CBSA wants Americans to leave their guns at home when travelling to Canada. (Photo: The Canadian Press)

A statement from the agency informs our southern neighbours that it is "strongly recommended" they not bring any firearms. If they have to, officials urge travellers to declare any and all guns they bring with them.

"Canadian firearm laws are clear - failure to declare any firearm may lead to seizure action, penalty, prosecution in a court of law; and may make you inadmissible to Canada," the release says.

Advertisement

Unlike the U.S., owning a firearm is not a constitutional right in Canada. Canadians can own guns, but they are required to hold specific licences depending on the firearm's classification.

Also On HuffPost:
Babies born to a U.S. mom nearly broke the world record for heaviest set of triplets, weighing a combined total of nearly 20 pounds!

Kate Tipton, from Knoxville, Tennessee, described her pregnancy to WBIR, saying: It was like I had a toddler in my tummy.

The Tipton family is growing by 3! TRIPLETS due in early March! #tiptontriplets A photo posted by Caleb & Kate Tipton (@c_k_tipton) on Sep 28, 2015 at 2:35pm PDT

Advertisement





Triplets Luke, Stella and Jack were born at 34 weeks. While they didnt weigh anything extraordinary as individual babies  ranging from 5 pounds, 9 ounces to 7 pounds, 4 ounces  their combined weight was a whopping 19.6 pounds.

We were shocked, Tipton told ABC News. They weighed Jack twice. He was first. They thought, Thats not right. He cant weigh 7 pounds, 4 ounces as a triplet. There was so much noise and excitement and disbelief.

A photo posted by Caleb & Kate Tipton (@c_k_tipton) on Aug 20, 2016 at 5:00am PDT





Twins, triplets and other multiples are often born premature, meaning they are also born smaller, which is why the weight of Tiptons trio was so surprising to both her, her husband Caleb and the medical staff.

Advertisement

In fact, doctors actually warned the Tiptons that their triplets would be very underweight. We had doctors telling us to prepare for the worst, the new mom told WBIR. If they made it, they would be so small.

Luckily, the little ones were born healthy, despite being born six weeks premature.

While the wee ones were born back in March, the Tiptons only recently consulted the Guinness Book of World Records to see if their trio was now the heaviest set to ever be born. Turns out, they missed the mark by 2.4 pounds.

The world record holder belongs to the Wilson triplets of Englewood, Colorado, who were born weighing a total of 22 pounds in July 2003.

First family photo (from early May when all the babies came home from NICU).  @emjulian12 A photo posted by Caleb & Kate Tipton (@c_k_tipton) on Jun 29, 2016 at 8:03am PDT





Despite not breaking the world record, the Tipton triplets are still the biggest to ever be born at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Tiptons doctor, Mark Hennessy, who has been an OBGYN for 25 years, revealed, I've never seen triplets this big.

Advertisement

Triplets Luke, Stella and Jack are now five months old and are the younger siblings of Sophia, 9, and Aubrey, 8.

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he commends Black Lives Matter and indigenous activists for pushing his government on issues of discrimination in the justice system.

In a wide-ranging interview that aired Monday on CTV's "Your Morning," host Ben Mulroney asked the prime minister about the over-representation of indigenous people in Canada's prisons and of black men who are more frequently stopped by police than those who are white.

Advertisement

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is shown with CTV's Ben Mulroney. (Photo: Your Morning/Twitter)

Mulroney said Manitoba imprisons "a higher proportion of its indigenous population than apartheid South Africa did its black population." He added that an aboriginal boy in the province is more likely to be incarcerated than graduate high school.

Drawing from a 2010 Toronto Star investigation, Mulroney said a black man between the age of 15-24 is 2.5 times more likely to be stopped by police than a white man of the same age. The Star report examined six years of carding data from Toronto police.

"Do we have a problem with racially-biased policing in Canada?" Mulroney asked.

Trudeau conceded there are "real challenges" in the justice system that must be addressed.

"I congratulate people who keep calling and challenging us  whether it's Black Lives Matter or indigenous activists  saying we need to do more, we need to do better. We agree. I agree."  Prime Minister Trudeau

"But a lot of them, when you look at the root causes, have to do with education and opportunities and investment in those communities," he said. "Proper mentorship properly moving beyond the discrimination that still does exist."

Trudeau said his government aims to tackle such challenges in a "thoughtful, broad way."

"I congratulate people who keep calling and challenging us  whether it's Black Lives Matter or indigenous activists  saying we need to do more, we need to do better," Trudeau said. "We agree. I agree. And that's what we're very much working on."

Trudeau marched in Toronto's Pride parade last month. The event was disrupted for roughly 30 minutes by a sit-in led by Black Lives Matter Toronto.

Watch Trudeau's full interview with Mulroney below. The conversation on racial issues in the justice system begins at the 2:52 mark.

Advertisement

Earlier this year, Canada's prison watchdog unveiled that indigenous people represent more than 25 per cent of federal inmates, despite comprising 4.3 per cent of Canada's population.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould  an indigenous leader herself  called the figure "totally unacceptable" in a keynote address to the Canadian Bar Association this month.

Wilson-Raybould's mandate letter from Trudeau calls for her to conduct a review of the criminal justice system to, among other things, "reduce the rate of incarceration amongst indigenous Canadians."

Also on HuffPost
Back in March, Marc Jacobs uploaded a photo of himself to Instagram enjoying a cigarette break while simultaneously showing off a set of dark purple nails. And the fashion designer's accompanying hashtag #malepolish has since turned into the hottest new men's beauty trend.

Me, my man, our MANicures @jinsoonchoi @chardefrancesco #itssuchaperfectday A photo posted by Marc Jacobs (@themarcjacobs) on Apr 24, 2016 at 3:33pm PDT

Advertisement

Jacobs, who has long been a pioneer of eye-catching style statements, has been single-handedly reclaiming the 'man' in 'manicure' via regular social media posts documenting his penchant for colorful nails. He favours dark, moody shades such as purples, blacks and burgundies, adding a touch of grunge-glam to his everyday look.

Social media users everywhere have since been embracing the #malepolish trend with renewed enthusiasm, with Instagram displaying over 1,200 images tagged with the caption.

Advertisement

However, there is some debate that the #malepolish hashtag begun three years ago by a trans woman from Edmonton named Aria Ehren. She took to Reddit last week to share a post expressing her feelings regarding a recent article published by Buzzfeed that cited Marc Jacobs as the founder of the trend.

... because Marc Jacobs made that term popular, not a trans woman named litui 3 years ago on /r/malepolish right? https://t.co/7gPuZhhnik  Aria Ehren (@litui) August 17, 2016

However, in a post on the Reddit thread /r/malepolish, Ehren does note that neither she, nor anyone else, "owns" the word or concept of #malepolish  it's simply a term that describes a person choice of self-expression.

And it's clear many men are indulging in this form expressive art. Although stars such as Marilyn Manson, Jared Leto and Jacobs himself are known for championing the gothic look with somber shades, the Internet shows a glitzier side to the trend. From creamy pastels to glittering metallics, guys, it seems, are getting bold with their manicure choices. Many have adopted an artistic approach, with NYC graphic designer Samsonntag documenting a spray-painted aesthetic, while others, such as dancer and nail artist-in-training Ben Thomas, have channelled a love of all things scientific into intricate, prism-like designs.

 #malepolish A photo posted by @samsonntag on Aug 5, 2016 at 9:42pm PDT

Advertisement

In memory of a young lady whose artistic inspiration transcended generations and genders. #sharingtheloveforaneli #malenails #malepolish #nailart A photo posted by Ben Thomas (@acrobennailsit) on Jul 25, 2016 at 6:34pm PDT

Whatever the color, the rising popularity of the #malepolish movement is symbolic of a wider trend  that of the increasing interest in male beauty in general.

In January, new figures predicted that the growth in the male grooming sector would drive a steady increase in the global haircare market over the next three years, with growing numbers of fashion-conscious consumers cited as the main reason for the boost. Male grooming has undergone a revival across the beauty industry over the last few years, boosted by the launch of high-profile products such as Clinique's Sonic System Deep Cleansing Brush, brewery Carlsberg's shampoo, conditioner and body lotion trio, and must-have products such as beard oils and scented moisturizers.

Chrome #malepolish A photo posted by Mark Fromm (@frommmark) on Aug 14, 2016 at 1:58pm PDT

#Malepolish is proof of just how much the face of mainstream men's beauty is changing.

With files from Monika Markovinovic.

Follow Huffington Post Canada Style on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter!
This is real life, you guys.

A Mountie was snapped in a picture with a four-month-old beaver on Friday, and it basically belongs on Canadian passports forevermore:

Advertisement

The photo was posted by the Salthaven Rehabilitation Centre in Regina, where RCMP Cpl. Jason Pinder (who is seen in the pic) has been a volunteer for about five years.

"It was pretty cool," centre director Megan Lawrence told The Huffington Post Canada. "He stopped by in his serge and we thought, 'We have to get a photo of this.'"

The orphaned beaver was rescued earlier this spring when it was about a day old, Lawrence said. After spending some time at the centre, it was released with a new beaver family on Friday afternoon.

The Canadian centre rehabilitates injured and sick wildlife with the goal of sending them back into their natural habitat. Volunteers help care for a range of animals including birds of prey, raccoons, and squirrels.

Advertisement

And, of course, beavers.

Also on HuffPost
Cigarettes, long the most popular currency in U.S. prisons, have been displaced by ramen, according to a new study.

Cutbacks in food services have led the value of the cheap, long-lasting packets of noodles to skyrocket, according to research from Michael Gibson-Light, a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona.

Advertisement

Gibson-Light spent a year investigating the lives of inmates at an unidentified U.S. prison, and interviewed nearly 60 prisoners and staff members, according to a press release from the American Sociological Association.

He said reports of a decline in the quality and quantity of the food were consistent among inmates and staff.

"Prisoners are so unhappy with the quality and quantity of prison food that they receive that they have begun relying on ramen noodles  a cheap, durable food product  as a form of money in the underground economy," he said.

"Because it is cheap, tasty, and rich in calories, ramen has become so valuable that it is used to exchange for other goods."

Advertisement

Stacked packages of dried ramen creamy chicken noodles. (Photo: Dorann Weber via Getty Images)

He found that the noodles were used to trade for clothes, cigarettes, fresh vegetables, or even services like bunk cleaning, according to the Guardian, which obtained a copy of the study.

Inmates buy items on credit at illegal stores, and one prisoner quoted said that he'd seen fights over ramen when debts aren't paid back.

People get killed over soup.

While Gibson-Light's research focused on one institution, he looked at similar investigations he said also discovered a spike in the popularity of ramen as currency.

"That's everybody's staple in prison: No matter who you are, you're cooking with ramen."

The instant noodle is so popular that one U.S. ex-con co-authored a cookbook of ramen recipes inspired by his time behind bars.

Advertisement

"That's everybody's staple in prison: No matter who you are, you're cooking with ramen," Gustavo "Goose" Alvarez told NPR's "Here and Now" last year.

Complaints about food in private prisons

The Obama administration revealed last week that it would work to end the use of private prisons after concluding they don't provide the same level of services or security as government-run facilities, according to the Washington Post.

A Department of Justice review found private institutions saw nearly twice as many inmate complaints about food over four years as compared to government-run ones.

A May 2012 riot at the Adams County Correctional Center, a private prison in Mississippi, left one correctional officer dead and 20 people hurt, according to the review. Low-quality food was cited in media reports as a reason by the roughly 250 inmates involved.

Gibson-Light told The Guardian the shift from cigarettes to instant noodles illustrates the extent of the food crisis in American prisons, which he sees as a result of a practice called "punitive frugality."

Advertisement

[Money] doesnt change unless theres some drastic change to the value in people using it," he said.

Also on HuffPost
VANCOUVER  Former prime minister Stephen Harper is expected to resign his seat in Parliament in the coming days or week ahead.

Harper, 57, resigned as leader of the Conservative party on election night in October after losing his attempt at a fourth term.

Advertisement

Stephen Harper waves as he leaves the stage after addressing supporters at an election night gathering in Calgary, Alta., on October 19, 2015. (Photo: Darryl Dyck/CP)

Since then, the Calgary Heritage MP has popped in and out of the House of Commons, casting 99 votes. He has not, however, spoken a single word in Parliament. He has not spoken at committee meetings either or sponsored any legislation.

But he continues to collect the base MP salary of $170,400.

Canadian Taxpayers' Federation federal director Aaron Wudrick said he doesn't begrudge Harper's extra time in the Commons. He noted former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin also hung around Parliament after he lost in 2006. Martin served his full term and did not run again in 2008.

Advertisement

While Harper continues to cash his paycheque and accrue his pension benefits, Wudrick said the former prime minister deserves kudos for cutting his own entitlements by $2 million.

Pension changes cost Harper millions

The Canadian Taxpayers' Federation estimates that changes Harper made to the MPs' pension plan personally cost him between $1.8 million and $2.2 million.

Harper is still expected to collect an estimated $127,000 MP pension annually the moment he resigns and another $58,000 a year as prime ministerial allowance after he turns 67, Wudrick noted.

"I don't know too many politicians that would give up millions of dollars and he did, so we are certainly applauding him pretty loudly on that particular point."

Last December, Harper registered a consultancy business, Harper & Associates Consulting Inc., with former chief of staff Ray Novak and former executive assistant Jeremy Hunt. Both are listed as company directors.

Advertisement

Stephen Harper talks to Ray Novak at a campaign stop in North Vancouver, B.C. on August 12, 2015. (Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/CP)

Over the past several months, Novak and Hunt have been meeting with potential clients in the U.S. and Middle East.

Former policy director Rachel Curran is also involved in the project.

Harper is also expected to announce he will be joining law firm and serve in an advising capacity.

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
Webber Academy/Facebook

Last week, an Alberta Court upheld a ruling that found Webber Academy, a private high school, discriminated against two Muslim students by failing to provide a prayer space for them.

Webber argued that their school was non-denominational and that therefore a prayer space could not be provided. It was determined that the purpose of such a policy was to provide students with a learning environment that is "free of religious influence."

Advertisement

While the merits of the goal of providing a space free from religious influence is pursued by some, the students' request was not looking to frustrate that purpose. The students sought a private space that they could use to perform daily worship while on the school's campus. They were not looking to impose their beliefs on other students or even the learning environment.

Situations like that of Webber Academy beg the question about what is the nature of being non-denominational?

There are at least two ways to interpret what is non-denominational. The first is to have an institution be "free from religious influence." That is, the institution would be neutral on matters of religion and not make decisions on the basis of religion. This does not preclude the institution's stakeholders (for example students in the case of a non-denominational school) acting based on or displaying their religion affiliation within the institution.

This interpretation is essentially what the Alberta Court mandated. They did not require Webber Academy to forgo the non-demonational policy; rather the Court only required Webber to accommodate the students' religious beliefs. Webber still retains a learning environment free from religious influence.

Advertisement

The other way to interpret non-denominational is to say that the institution will actively not allow any act or display of religion. This was the interpretation being offered by Webber Academy.

However, Webber was not applying this interpretation consistently. The Alberta Court noted that on Webber's Admissions page, there was a student with a Sikh turban prominently shown along with a statement in their handbook that says Webber believes in "creating an atmosphere where young people of many faiths and cultures feel equally at home."

The Court went on to say "[f]or some reason, it [Webber] drew the line at Sunni prayer rituals, conducted in private, in a place that was convenient to the school and the students from time to time. Its policy thus discriminated against the belief of the complainant Sunni Muslim students as compared, for example, to students who overtly averred their religious affiliation by forms of dress and grooming."

Clearly, Webber's interpretation of non-denominational is contrary to Canadian human rights codes and the values of our pluralistic society.

However, there are some who agree with Webber's interpretation of non-denominational. Consider for example the recent ban of burkinis (full-body and hair-covering swimsuits) in Cannes, France.

Advertisement

There, the relevant ordinance notes that swimwear "manifesting religious affiliation in an ostentatious way, while France and its religious sites are currently the target of terrorist attacks, could create risks of trouble to public order." Furthermore, the Mayor of Cannes is on record saying that the ordinance bans beachwear that does not respect "good morals and secularism."

While this ban is ostensibly being sold as a measure of secularism (a state-defined term for non-denominational), the ordinance clearly notes the threat against France's own religious sites. So in order to protect those sites, swimwear worn almost exclusively by Muslim women had to be prohibited. The Cannes policy does not appear to be applied in a manner that is consistent with the notion of secularism.

How does one interpret "ostentatious"? Perhaps just replacing "Muslim" with the word "ostentatious" would have captured the mayor's intention more clearly. But then he wouldn't have been able to play the secularism card.

The Webber and Cannes situations illustrate the unprincipled nature of interpreting non-denominational or secularism in opposition to, instead of being neutral towards, religion. This construct is an aberrant version of secularism. It's on the rise and we should be concerned. Will the moderate secularists condemn this deviation?

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
They are strategic; they map out their growth

A recent BDC survey of Canadian entrepreneurs found that successful businesses are much more likely (71 per cent) to have a strategic plan than less successful companies (46 per cent). Christine Deslauriers of Blezard Valley, Ontario, is an example of this. Using her knowledge of Canadian specialized sportswear, she built a business plan on the premise that she could purchase overstock figure skating inventory directly from Canadian manufacturers. In addition to her physical store, part of her strategy was to open an online store on eBay so she could increase her inventory depth, which helped her purchasing power and margins. Building on her sales success, she quickly expanded her product offerings both online and offline to include gymnastics, dance and sports swimwear.

They think globally from the outset

Kimberley Wotherspoon runs the online operations for a hardware and building supply store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. When she was first hired, she was tasked with improving the store's website traffic and making the online ordering process easier for Canadian contractors and retail customers. However, being an "intrepreneur" (an entrepreneur within a company), she didn't stop there; she wanted to find a way to reach a larger audience and generate incremental sales. Selling through a global online marketplace was her solution. Today, more than 60 per cent of her business's online orders are exported to countries such as Australia, United Kingdom, Norway, Italy and the United States.

They focus on niches to differentiate themselves from the competition

Finding a niche was the way Jean-Francois Lapointe of Gatineau, Quebec, successfully created an online business for his bicycle shop. Knowing his online competition were big retail chains who had greater buying power, he recognized that in order to compete, he would have to specialize: He started by focusing on selling high-end bike suspensions to bike enthusiasts all over the world, and today he is the largest online bike parts and accessories reseller in Canada.

They are passionate and resourceful

Farishta Zarify discovered her passion for fashion could be turned into a successful online business after she sold her own high-end designer gown on eBay and noted the number of interested buyers. Taking advantage of the marketplace's low selling cost, and using her own personal dress collection as her start-up inventory, she launched her business. Within the first six months she was able to quite her other job and focus on her online business full-time, sourcing and selling through this single ecommerce channel. Today, has repeat customers across the globe and her business continues to grow.

They are resilient; they learn from failure and pivot in the face of obstacles
Brian Vinh Tien Trinh

Advertisement

My childhood was defined by my achievements.

Shortly before turning 11, I made class valedictorian.

By the time I hit middle school, I was bringing home more As than a family-sized box of Alphabet cereal.

I graduated with honours throughout high school. I threw down a repeat performance during university between scoring scholarships and awards.

I was clueless when it came to drugs. I made curfew like my life depended on it. I respected my elders. By society's standards, I was a well-behaved kid.

So how come I've never heard my parents say, "Son, we're proud of you"?

It's a question I'm not alone in asking. Google autocomplete has it up there, right along with "why don't Asian parents say I love you" and "why don't Asian parents allow sleepovers" -- don't get me started on either.

Advertisement

It's a question that's given life to forums and subreddits like Asian Parent Stories.

It's even a topic Hollywood's tried to address, like in Aziz Ansari's Master of None, which phrased it best during a conversation between characters Dev (Aziz Ansari) and Brian (Kelvin Yu):

Brian: I have, I have never, ever heard my dad say the word "proud." It's always like, "That's it? So that's all you've done?" Like, if I went to the moon, he would honestly be like, "When are you going to Mars?" Dev: Yeah. "Oh, Brian, you went to the moon? That's like graduating from community college. When are you gonna graduate from Harvard, a.k.a. go to Pluto?" Brian: I just feel like Asian parents, they don't have the emotional reach to say they're proud or whatever. Have you ever hung out with a white person's parents, though? They are crazy nice. Yeah. I had dinner once with my last girlfriend's mom, and by the end of that meal, she had hugged me more times than my family has hugged me in my entire life.

It sounds like Aziz and company are onto something.

In an interview with Daily Life, Peking University sociologist Xia Xueluan told the publication Asian parents (in this case, Chinese), "are not good at expressing positive emotions" and "are used to educating children with negative language."

My parents aren't Chinese but this struggle of expressing positive emotions is something that stretches beyond geography.

Advertisement

Both my mom and my dad grew up in Vietnam during the '50s and left the country not long after Saigon fell to the Communists. My father was lucky enough to study engineering at the University of Utah as an international student while his birth country descended into chaos.

My mom was sponsored by my uncle where they settled down in Montreal. She finished CEGEP before moving onto studying at McGill and Concordia University. All this while working a part-time job and trying to master both English and French.

Pretty remarkable stories of overcoming adversity that, to this day, make me proud to be their son.

My parents aren't Chinese but this struggle of expressing positive emotions is something that stretches beyond geography.

But these weren't milestones to them, and not to my grandparents. No, for them, this was the norm; an expectation that life in a new country meant they'd have to work twice as hard to achieve something worthy of praise.

Graduation was no cause for celebration, it was a presumption for my parents' generation.

But I'm what Statistics Canada classifies as a "second-gen Canadian," someone born in Canada to immigrant parents.

Advertisement

And statistically speaking, I figured the odds were that I must have done something worthy in the last 26 years of existence to make them proud.

So I asked at a time I was guaranteed my parents wouldn't dare leave the room amidst a conversation: the dinner table.

It went something along the lines of this:

"How do you say, 'I'm proud of you' in Viet, Dad?" "Toi hanh dien ve anh con," he replies in between mouthfuls of rice. "So how come you've never said you're proud of me?" "That's because you haven't ever reached that level," he says, this time in English.

Ouch.

But then he laughs.

For him, it's a matter of familiarity, he explains. My grandparents never explicitly said they were proud of him. And it was the same for their parents, and their parents before that.

Advertisement

So for him, saying "he's proud of me" feels as unnatural as tucking me into bed or reading my brother a Dr. Seuss book, both rare occurrences.

Me graduating university was a moment of pride for him, he just didn't need me to know it.

As for my mom, she didn't believe in saying the "P word" to my face because in Vietnam -- much like in North America -- there's a concern too much praise goes to the head.

And she was right.

Because while praise from my parents was seldom, I got plenty of it from my friends and teachers. Teenage Brian may have scored 80s and 90s on tests but he was a 100 per cent certified asshole when it came to bragging about marks.

It wasn't until much later in life that I learned about khiem ton, Viet for "humility."

And that's about the same time I learned how mom and dad showed they were proud of me.

While it's clear he didn't like telling me, my dad made damn well sure my grandparents, aunts and uncles were well-informed of my achievements through half-hour long distance phone calls every weekend morning.

Advertisement

They displayed it through keeping my awards and medals safe, years after I thought they were long gone.

My mom proved it with small details, like how she'd purge decorations and jewellery in her bedroom but always managed to keep photos of myself and my brother as we graduated.

My childhood as a second-generation Canadian was very much defined by my achievements.

But the rest of my life? I'm going to let that be defined by my experiences, and cracking the secret to my parents and pride is one that definitely makes me proud.

Born And Raised is an ongoing series by The Huffington Post Canada that shares the experiences of second-generation Canadians. Part reflection, part storytelling, this series on the children of immigrants explores what it means to be born and raised in Canada. We want to hear your stories -- join the conversation on Twitter at #BornandRaised or send us an email at bornandraised@huffingtonpost.com.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

MORE ON HUFFPOST:

Quotes That Make You Proud To Be Canadian See Gallery
Wavebreakmedia Ltd via Getty Images Cape Town, South Africa

Picture this. You've just begun your vacation in the beautiful city of Montreal. The sights, the sounds, and, of course, the food -- it's hard not to feel enamoured. What's more, you've also discovered that delicious cocktails go REALLY well with the sights, the sounds, and, of course, the food. It may only be the first day of your trip, but you're celebrating as if it's the last.

Cut to the next morning. Your head hurts, your eyes refuse to open and your mouth feels like a literal desert. Face it, you're officially hungover. This spells bad news for the remainder of your vacation, right? Rest easy! With Cheapflights.ca's handy guide on doing Montreal on a hangover, you can forget spending the day cocooned in a duvet and embrace what the city has to offer.

Advertisement

But, first. Coffee - Cafe Olimpico

Let's be honest, breakfast may not be a viable option at this point. Caffeine, on the other hand? There's no better way to get your 'hangover day' off to a better start than an Americano or two (apart from a couple of Advil, of course). Cafe Olimpico can be found nestled in the heart of Montreal's Mile End district. With a welcoming ambiance and a menu that's delectably sweet and simple (no one wants to make decisions when they are hungover), you'll forget the fact that you can't remember getting back to your hotel last night and revel in caffeine heaven.

Brunch - L'GROS LUXE

With all that caffeine consumption and a light stroll, you're likely to be feeling slightly more human. At this point, your body will be craving the ultimate defence against a hangover: grease. But fret not if you're still feeling a little sluggish - you won't need to travel too far for a delicious brunch. Enter L'GROS LUXE. Handily located in Mile End, this cool eaterie is on hand to meet all your brunch and hair of the dog needs. To eat, try the Huevos Rancheros (eggs, tortillas, salsa: say no more). And to drink, look no further than Canada's favourite 'day after' beverage, the Caesar. You can even take things up a notch with the Walter Craft Caesar Mix, packed full of 'hangover-friendly' natural ingredients and various garnish options (including grilled cheese, believe it or not.) It's basically a meal in itself.

Advertisement

Spa - Bota Bota

After a heavy night, your desire to relax and be pampered is at an all-time high. If a spa treatment or two is your go-to 'hangover busting' option, check out the unique Bota Bota. Set in a converted ferry that floats on the St. Laurence River, this gorgeous spa offers breathtaking views of the Montreal skyline while you bask in the glory of a refreshing facial or a soothing massage. With some treatments even choreographed to live harp music, every inch of this spa says "stop feeling guilty about last night and come relax with with us instead."

Sight seeing (and some light shopping) - Old Montreal

Okay, so you're half way to feeling yourself again. Now you're feeling a bit more alive, taking to the streets is a great way to experience the sights of Montreal first hand. And if an afternoon's sightseeing can be incorporated with some light shopping, who are we to argue? The best spot to combine the two is Old Montreal, with its charming cobblestone streets and array of popular shops. Beyond shopping and aesthetic appreciation, Old Montreal is also home to some great galleries and cafes which are well worth a visit. If there was ever a time to share your vacation with an Instagram post, now would be it.

Advertisement

Poutine - Garde Manger

By this point, you're probably going to want to refuel. And what would a trip to Montreal be without indulging in the cities signature dish - poutine, a tasty concoction of french fries, cheese and gravy. Conveniently located on a side street in Old Montreal, Garde Manger offers seafood-focused grub from head chef Chuck Hughes. If you're questioning how seafood can tie in with poutine, one bite of the lobster poutine will provide all the answers. So famous that some travellers (particularly foodies) plan their entire trip to Montreal around the dish, the generously sized portions are guaranteed to combat your mid afternoon lull.

Gallery - DHC/ART

Now that you've satisfied your poutine curiosity, it's time to 'up the culture stakes' and appreciate all the spectacular art Montreal has to offer. First things first, head to the DHC/ART, a small but memorable gallery located in Old Port. With its museum atmosphere, the juxtaposition between the historical building and the modern contemporary art on display makes this gallery a cut above the rest.

Dinner (and, eventually, drinks) - Le Fantome

Advertisement

Located in the trendy Griffintown area of Montreal, chefs at Le Fantome like to mix the everyday with the gourmet. After successfully surviving the hangover from hell, sampling the adventurous menu is the perfect way to expand your culinary horizons. Try their decadent peanut butter and jelly sandwich assembled on brioche bread and layered with foie gras (a.k.a. the PBJFG). And if you're feeling particularly brave, celebrate the end of your hangover with an alcoholic beverage (wine, cocktails, beer -- you name it).

But be careful, or you'll be waking up in your hotel room needing to consult this guide again before you know it!
Sally Anscombe via Getty Images Little boy outdoors in the woods throwing a globe up in the air

Ed Gillis wanted to teach his sons about how glaciers are formed, so he took them to the top of New Zealand's Fox Glacier and let them fire questions at a pair of geologists.

For eight-year-old Heron Gillis and his brother Sitka, six, the world is their classroom.

In February, Ed (our friend and a former team member), his wife Jocelyn and their two sons began a six-month bicycle trip across Australia, New Zealand and French Polynesia. The family is part of a growing global trend: parents "world schooling" their kids while exploring the globe. It offers fascinating opportunities for connecting education to the real world.

Advertisement

Before leaving British Columbia, the Gillis' got assistance from teachers to prepare a basic curriculum for their boys. At their evening stops, the Gillis' work through prepared lessons. The scenery and experiences hammered the lessons home, creating a real-world connection to core subjects such as math and history that no classroom could ever offer.

Visits to volcanoes provided a lesson in geography. Reading signs and speaking with locals in French Polynesia has put the boys years ahead of their peers in bilingualism. "A lot of their math is going into grocery stores, looking at prices, and helping us plan our daily budget," says Gillis.

While standing on a glacier, or snorkelling at a coral reef, Heron and Sitka have seen first-hand the impacts of climate change.

"Instead of sitting at a desk and reading about coral reefs, I got to actually snorkel in one," Heron told us in a Skype conversation.

Advertisement

World schooling can take experiential service learning to the next level. Surveys conducted by research firm Mission Measurement have shown that incorporating issues of social justice and environmentalism into classroom lessons results in youth who are more active and engaged citizens.

While standing on a glacier, or snorkelling at a coral reef, Heron and Sitka have seen first-hand the impacts of climate change. Meeting Maori and talking about their culture and place in New Zealand society opened a discussion on aboriginal rights and history in Canada.

In a recent TedX talk, American world-schooling advocate Lainie Liberti and her teen son Miro talked about visiting communities in Columbia impacted by illegal gold mining. "To me, this is more real because it's someplace I've experienced," Miro observed.

World schooling is not without its challenges, notably cost.

With a daily budget of $100, the Gillis' estimate their trip is costing them around $15,000. They saved for four years, seizing every opportunity to collect air miles.

On the upside, technology means parents don't necessarily have to take an unpaid leave from work to do a world-schooling trip. They can continue working remotely. Renee Martyna, founder of the Canadian world schooling Facebook page Knowmads, helped establish a co-working hub in Bali where world schoolers and other travellers can connect and get some work done in a social environment.

Advertisement

A study by market research firm, The Wagner Group, found that teens who take educational trips get better grades in school and, when they grow up, earn an average of US$5,000 more income than peers who haven't travelled.

Any trip can become an educational experience. One of our team members fondly recalls a three-week family summer vacation when he was 11, driving from Ontario to B.C. with a camper trailer. He says he learned more about Canadian history stopping at Northwest Rebellion battlefields in Saskatchewan, and B.C. gold rush towns, than he did in eight years of elementary school.

Although they've only just returned from their big adventure, the Gillis' are already planning another world-schooling trip to Europe in five years.

There are online resources to help aspiring world schoolers like Martyna's Facebook group and Shift Ed. The National Geographic Society web site also has curriculum materials to help turn any trip into an educational experience.

Whether your next trip is in Canada or another country, consider how you can make it a world-schooling adventure.

Advertisement

Craig and Marc Kielburger are the co-founders of the WE movement, which includes WE Charity, ME to WE Social Enterprise and WE Day.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
I wanted to take my kids on a trip. Somewhere, anywhere in the world. I've always loved to travel, and one of the things about having kids is that travel plans tend to be put on hold until the kids are older or away at overnight camp. But I was feeling the wanderlust. Craving an adventure. And I wanted to experience the excitement of going somewhere new with my boys.

Of all the places we discussed, nothing brought such whoops of joy as when we landed on an ad in a travel magazine for Prince Edward Island. As Canada's tiniest province (population: approx. 146,000), I'd never thought about going, and Charlottetown, its capital, certainly wasn't on my radar. Yet when I started doing some Googling, I realized this might be the family travel adventure I was seeking.

Advertisement

As we began researching our activities, my boys, ages 6 and 7, were thrilled with the chance to trap lobsters, go clam digging in the red sand, swim in the ocean, pitch in on a farm, and, of course, eat at Cows ice cream. I booked us a room at the beautiful Holman Grand Hotel, rented a car and scheduled our nautical and farm adventures, cross referencing the tourismpei.com and experiencepei.ca websites with reviews on Trip Advisor. Within a day, it was all organized: we would spend day one shopping and eating our way through historic Victoria Row and Peake's Wharf and taking a Harbour Hippo tour through the city streets and the harbour. On day two, we would go lobster trapping with Captain Mark Jenkins and his brother Cody on Top Notch Charters. That afternoon, we would clam dig with Happy Clammers' John and Jackie Gillis. I even hired a photographer, Louise Vessey, to take our family photos at Stanhope beach one morning. In the afternoon, we would drive out to Hope River Farm, near Cavendish, to help Nancy Sanderson feed her chicken, sheep and pigs.

By the time we landed in Charlottetown, our suitcase full of everything from rubber boots and rain gear to bathing suits, it was clear we picked the right place. We loved the fresh sea air and the friendly people who were quick to smile despite how my boys ran up and down the sidewalks and through the hotel lobby. When we started to take in the sights by foot, the downtown area was picturesque and manageable enough to find our way to two different Cows locations several times over. We also had the best meal ever at a restaurant on Queen St. called Terre Rouge. My boys ate steak and PEI potatoes and I had the freshest scallops and a seafood platter featuring lobster, ceviche and an array of other chilled seafood. Dessert was divine. We splurged on chocolate mousse, creme brule and ice cream. We waddled back to the hotel, which was so centrally located that we were never more than a few blocks away.

Advertisement

Besides the food, each activity was a highlight in itself. On the lobster charter, my kids held lobster and crab and got to help haul the trap. We learned about the lobster industry and about the fisherman's way of life. It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and ones they will be talking about when they head back to school. But the "how I held a lobster" story will be followed quickly by the "how I dug for clams and fell in the mud" story. That afternoon, we never laughed so hard. Shovelling the mucky red sand looking for clams quickly turned into a whole other adventure. My boys got their boots stuck in the mud, and when they tried to pull one another out, they both ended up rolling around in it. We had to be saved and hosed down by our guide John. His wife Jackie boiled clams for all us diggers and John shucked the most delicious Pinette oysters. This culinary experience was lost on all the kids, but the adults devoured it. After clam digging, we headed to an oceanside restaurant called the Point Prim Chowder House. We were treated to delicious food and the most breathtaking view in which red rocks met the ocean. The boys climbed on the rocks and walked along the shore collecting shells as we waited for our food. On our way back, we stopped off at a fruit stand and bought several jars of homemade jam to bring home as souvenirs. And of course, they ate more ice cream! The beach photo shoot was a blast, and we had an amazing time driving through the country on our way to the farm. We stopped at a goat farm and ate goat cheese and goat milk ice cream and continued on. The boys and I put on our rain boots once again and got to hold chickens, pet sheep in the pasture, and feed crab apples to the pigs with farmer Nancy. It was another amazing highlight.
First France. Now Italy. Can Canada be the next country to pass a national law against food waste?

In May 2015, the French government did something incredible: the National Assembly unanimously passed a law forcing large supermarkets to donate unsold food to charities. The law was both strict and forward-thinking: not only did it include consequences for supermarkets that failed to sign a contract with a charity of their choice by July 2016, it also introduced a program for schools and businesses to educate people about food waste.

Canada has a food waste problem

I was immediately struck by this law and how painfully obvious the proposal seemed to be. I started looking into food waste in Canada and was ashamed at what I read. Not surprisingly, North America wastes the most food in the world, at almost 660 pounds per person per year, and Canada alone wastes $31 billion worth of food every year.

Advertisement

When I began asking around, speaking to people about France's new law, many people knew what that waste looks like firsthand. People who had previously worked in supermarkets, grocery stores, cafeterias, restaurants and other food services told me the amount of perfectly good food they threw out every evening was shocking. Many were forced to destroy food by pouring bleach over it, while others were warned that if they tried to take a bagel home rather than throwing it out, they would be charged with theft.

We have a crucial chance to pressure supermarkets, restaurants and fast-food chains to stop wasting and start redistributing food.

Hearing these policies made me shake my head. They seemed inhumane, unsustainable and illogical. They made me want to bring France's law to Canada.

In a lucky twist of fate, I happened to have a mutual acquaintance with the Parisian councilman, Arash Derambarsh, responsible for pushing the food waste law to fruition in France. My friend connected me with him and he explained that after working with local food redistribution organizations, he had started a petition that quickly gained national attention. It was the petition that galvanized people around the country and really got the ball rolling.

Advertisement

So that's how the #WhatAWaste campaign -- a grassroots effort to pressure Canada's political leaders to follow France's example -- was born.

An opportunity to create change

I am proud of my country and extremely fortunate to live in Canada. However, major cities like my home of Toronto are not without their issues. Income inequality is widening, jobs are increasingly difficult to find, mass layoffs are frequent, rent is steadily increasing, the cost of things like childcare and public transit are rising, and poverty rates are growing. As a result more and more people are relying on food banks to feed their families, but food banks and shelters are struggling to meet the demand.

Together with the trailblazing momentum of France and Italy, these factors represent an opportunity. We have a crucial chance to pressure supermarkets, restaurants and fast-food chains to stop wasting and start redistributing food. There will always come a time when laws in any area need to be revisited and revamped. For our laws regarding food, that time is now.

Some people tell me it will never work. I've been told that the goal is too small, because a significant portion of food waste happens at home. Others say the goal is too big, given the legal and logistical problems related to transport, storage, retail, health and safety.

I know there are challenges, but to critics I say: work with us on solutions. Together we can work to develop realistic, effective and sustainable policy proposals modelled after France's groundbreaking legislation. The benefits of drafting this law are too great to allow potential complications to stop us from pursuing this goal.

Advertisement

To potential supporters, I say do not be intimidated. Remember that if France, and now Italy, can find ways to address the same issues in order to implement this law, so can Canada.

Be part of the solution

More than 65,000 people have signed the #WhatAWaste petition so far. The campaign has received thousands of messages of enthusiastic support from people in big cities and small towns, farmers, students, managers and owners of supermarkets themselves. Thousands of Canadians wholeheartedly agree that our national food policy needs some serious attention.

With thousands of Canadians living in hunger and poverty, food waste is a disgrace. But it's a problem we have the collective power to fix.

Be part of the solution: join the fight against food waste and sign the #WhatAWaste petition here and learn more about the campaign by visiting our website!

Take Action Now Join thousands of Canadians calling on our governments and grocers to help reduce food waste. Sign a petition at Change.org

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

MORE ON HUFFPOST:
Sandy Huffaker via Getty Images SAN YSIDRO, CA-, JUNE 1: A Customs and Border Protection agent checks ID's from motorists crossing into the United States from Mexico at the San Ysidro Port of Entry June 1, 2009 in San Ysidro, California. The Western Hemisphere Iniative (WHTI) was put into effect today at all Canadian and Mexican border crossings where visitors and residents must present an approved travel document when entering the U.S. at any land or sea ports of entry. These travel documents include a U.S. passport or passport card, as well as a Trusted Traveler Card (SENTRI, NEXUS or FAST) or an Enhanced Driver's License. (Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) recently announced that it was proposing changes to its Trusted Traveller Programs (TTPs), which include CANPASS, Free and Secure Trade (FAST) and NEXUS. In furtherance of this proposal, CBSA intends to amend the Presentation of Persons (2003) Regulations (the "regulations"), which were implemented under the Canadian Customs Act.

Among other things, CBSA is proposing significant changes to the eligibility criteria. The current regulations only require applicants to be of "good moral character." Unfortunately, this term is not defined and it has sometimes resulted in inconsistent adjudications.

Advertisement

CBSA now wishes to replace the term "good moral character" with more specific eligibility criteria. Under the proposed rules, the following grounds (among others) would render an applicant ineligible to seek a NEXUS card:

Failing to provide complete personal information, supporting documents and/or attend interviews (if required) with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service will render an applicant ineligible. Unless the applicant has received a record suspension or pardon, one summary conviction (or two summary convictions arising out of a single occurrence) will render an applicant ineligible for 10 years, beginning after the end of the imposed sentence. In addition, an indictable offence (or multiple convictions, other than two summary convictions arising out of a single occurrence) will result in a lifetime ban. Finally, any convictions in relation to the following border enforcement priorities can result in a lifetime ban: (i) drugs and chemical precursors, obscenity and hate propaganda, endangered species, terrorism, kidnapping, child pornography or trafficking in persons/human smuggling; (ii) the importation, exportation or trafficking of alcohol and tobacco, currency, firearms and weapons; or (iii) the exportation of items on the Export Control List. All foreign convictions will be assessed by determining its Canadian equivalent under the Canadian Criminal Code. In the case of pending criminal charges (which would render the applicant ineligible if a conviction resulted) and any outstanding criminal warrants relating to such offenses, an applicant will be ineligible until a court decision is made on the charge(s)/warrant(s) or the warrant(s) have expired. Violations of program legislation (such as legislation and regulations administered or enforced by CBSA) can result in ineligibility. For example, multiple minor seizures would result in a ten-year ban and any contraventions in relation to the border enforcement priorities listed above would result in a lifetime ban. Where a person is required (i.e. by court order) to surrender their travel documents (such as a passport under the Family Orders and Agreements Enforcement Assistance Act), this person will also become ineligible for a NEXUS or FAST authorization (or their existing authorization may be suspended).

It should be mentioned that, although these proposed amendments may be significant for CANPASS or FAST participants, their effect on NEXUS participants may be less so. This is because NEXUS is a joint initiative of the United States and Canada. As a result, failure to satisfy the eligibility criteria of either country renders an applicant ineligible for NEXUS.

Advertisement

The NEXUS eligibility criteria used by United States Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) are already stricter in many ways than CBSA's proposed eligibility criteria. For example, CBSA's proposed criteria still allow an applicant who has been convicted of a criminal offence to remain eligible if they have received a Canadian Pardon or Record Suspension. However, USCBP does not recognize a Canadian Pardon or Record Suspension when considering an applicant's eligibility to participate in NEXUS.

The CBSA announcement states that it plans on updating its internal policies to reflect these amendments soon, long before the regulations are formally amended.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

MORE ON HUFFPOST:
Rodi Said / Reuters Civilians gather after they were evacuated by the Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters from an Islamic State-controlled neighbourhood of Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria, August 12, 2016. The SDF has said Islamic State was using civilians as human shields. REUTERS/Rodi Said TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

As fighting, death and destruction continue in Aleppo, aid workers struggle to deliver vital supplies inside the besieged city.

Islamic Relief is one of the few International NGOs still operating inside Aleppo city. Since the closure of the last route into Aleppo, our staff are facing huge difficulties and risks delivering aid to the needy families trapped inside the city.

Advertisement

Despite the danger, our staff work on the frontlines in Aleppo to deliver aid to the most difficult to reach civilians in Northern Syria. We provide food items and flour to the families and also medical supplies to health facilities still functional inside the blockaded city.

Our communications with our team inside the city are always met with shelling and bombing in the background, and many stories of injuries, death and destruction. The relentless bombardment on innocent civilians continue with casualties, death and destruction occurring every second. But this is just an ordinary day in Aleppo where simply every place is a target -- mosques, morgues, markets, bakeries, hospitals, ambulances, fire trucks, with absolutely nowhere safe for people to go.

Most of the families left in Aleppo are those who are unable to leave -- people with disabilities, older people, and the poorest of the poor.

Aleppo, in particular, has been hit badly in the five years since the crisis began and life has only gotten worse for the hundreds of thousands of people left in the area. A widely shared image of a Syrian boy in an ambulance is merely a glimpse into the devastation of what's happening in the country every day.

Advertisement

Five-year-old Omran Daqneesh sits in an ambulance after being pulled out or a building hit by an airstirke, in Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016. Photo by Aleppo Media Center via AP

The last children's doctor in the city was killed in May in an attack on one of the hospitals supported through Islamic Relief's projects. There are only around 25 doctors left in the city with medical centres particularly targeted and destroyed. Attacks have left hospitals (including the last women's hospital) inoperable, and only two makeshift 'field hospitals' now remain. The only blood bank in Aleppo has also been damaged, as well as the building where dead bodies are taken after airstrikes and barrel bomb attacks. The water that is currently available in Aleppo is unsafe to drink, as the water purification center has also been one of the targets.

Most of the families left in Aleppo are those who are unable to leave -- people with disabilities, older people, and the poorest of the poor. There was a time when people were selling their furniture just so they could rent a car and leave the city. Some people remain because they don't want to die in an air strike on a refugee camp, or by drowning trying to cross the Mediterranean, or in a difficult situation in the desert because the border they are trying to cross is closed.

Aleppo has been burning for some time. Next year, it will be six years since the start of the Syrian crisis. For almost six years, Syrians are being killed every day all over the country and those still inside have lived merely on external support and aid distribution. But now, with the access to Aleppo constantly closing and reopening, aid is not reaching those in need.

Advertisement

We cannot allow this to continue for another six years. The entire situation is a shame on humanity. As aid workers, we're calling for more to be done to guarantee safe access for aid delivery in and out of Aleppo.

Ahmed Mahmoud is Islamic Relief's Syria Country Director. He writes this from the Turkey-Syria border.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
Kevin Light / Reuters Tragically Hip lead singer Gord Downie performs with band members Paul Langlois, Gord Sinclair, Johnny Fay and Rob Baker at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre to kick off the band's latest

There aren't many bands in the world that could bring together an entire country to the degree that The Tragically Hip did on the final stop of its Man Machine Poem Tour.

Certainly, there are bands that are more famous, have sold more albums and put on bigger shows, but you'd be hard-pressed to find one that captured a country's attention -- at least 11.7 million of us, according to CBC -- like The Hip did that night in Kingston.

Advertisement

For several hours, everything seemed to stop. Nothing else seemed to matter. TVs, radios and streaming devices across the country were tuned into the CBC's presentation of The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration to watch Canada's band play what was likely their final concert. Even CBC's coverage of the Olympics paused and Canadian athletes in Rio gathered to watch the show in the Olympic village.

It was a special night and it truly was a national celebration. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel proud to be Canadian.

The night of The Hip's final tour stop also proved their legacy is bigger than Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told CBC host Ron Maclean prior to the show that the band is "anchored in Canada" through their lyrics and music.

Indeed, they are the definition of what it means to be Canadian. Their lyrics reference issues, historic events, landmarks, people and pastimes that touch nearly every province and territory. Downie's on-stage rants often do so as well, as evidenced in his First Nations commentary during the CBC broadcast.

Advertisement

They've influenced many of today's great Canadian artists and musicians. They've touched the lives of many and their fanbase has spanned generations. Whether you're into indie rock, punk rock, metal, pop, hip-hop or country, you like or at the very least have an appreciation for their music and what they've done for Canada. Hell, Stats Canada says 46 per cent of Canadians have learned more about our country's history from The Hip than they have in school.

A photo posted by Jeff Blay (@jeffblay) on Aug 20, 2016 at 4:54pm PDT

While this is all true, the night of The Hip's final tour stop also proved their legacy is bigger than Canada. It showed the world how powerful music can be and how entrenched The Tragically Hip are in Canadian culture. Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder mentioned Gord and The Hip during their set the very same night. U.S. outlets like the New York Times, the New Yorker, BBC, Pitchfork and Rolling Stone all wrote about it.

If it wasn't already, The Hip's legacy as the most influential band in Canadian history is now firmly cemented.

Watching the concert on CBC on a big screen in Toronto's Distillery District, I couldn't help but feel emotional about the whole thing. The realization set in the moment Gord Downie walked on stage with his feathered hat, metallic suit and Jaws T-shirt, that this could be the final time we get to see The Hip play live.

Advertisement

Throughout the show, I was on many occasions overcome by sadness, happiness, anger and energy all at once. It was one of the most intense moments I've ever experienced in music -- and I wasn't even there in person. It was the first time a concert drew me to tears. At many times, others around me were wiping theirs away, too. It was a beautiful experience, and it speaks volumes to how meaningful the band and their music are to Canadians.

Gord Downie wipes tears from his eyes in the middle of the Tragically Hip's "Grace, Too" https://t.co/JFz3pEkEwkpic.twitter.com/ZFOdKuBx9F  CBC News (@CBCNews) August 21, 2016

Gord's words between songs and sets, his apparent attempt at holding back tears as the band played Grace, Too, and the final bow the band gave the crowd after its third encore were all emotional moments I'm sure anyone who watched the show will never forget. But for me, the most difficult point was during the rendition of Scared, when Gord belted out lyrics that align all too familiarly with his current situation:

You made me scared, you did what you set out to do. And I'm not prepared, you really had me going there for a minute or two. He said, you made me scared too, I wasn't sure I was getting through. I got to go, it's been a pleasure doing business with you.

Whether or not the Kingston show was indeed the last we'll ever see the band play, there's no doubt they will always have a special place in the hearts of Canadians. Luckily for us, through their music, they will live forever.

Advertisement

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

MORE ON HUFFPOST:
Conservative Muslim leaders often claim that the Islamic position on homosexuality is clear and immutable. They exaggerate the issue of homosexuality to be on par with the six articles of faith and the five pillars of Islam. Despite their claims, the contemporary Muslim position on LGBT issues has gone through several shifts as follows.

1. Promoting the death punishment is no longer politically expedient

Three of the four Sunni and the Shia schools of jurisprudence prescribe death for homosexuality. A very influential scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi mentioned:

"The schools of thought disagree about the punishment. Some say they should be punished like fornicators ... Some say we should throw them from a high place, ... Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement."

However, such opinions, especially post Orlando, have become politically incorrect. A Canadian Muslim scholar, who had said, "put my name in the paper. The position is death," recently apologized:

"Many years ago I made hurtful comments against homosexuals for which I have apologized. My views have evolved over the years. I am fully committed to peaceful coexistence and respect among all people."

2. Homosexuality is no longer viewed as a disease

Muzammil Siddiqi, former president of the Islamic Society of North America, had expressed:

"Homosexuality is a moral disorder. It is a moral disease, a sin and corruption ... No person is born homosexual, just like no one is born a thief, a liar or murderer. People acquire these evil habits due to a lack of proper guidance and education."

However, in an interview from 2012, he expressed:

"Many Muslim jurists today are inclined to accept on the basis of modern research that it is quite possible that people may be born with this [orientation] ... we all have to learn and understand things more, so we do change our minds on the basis of understanding the human situation."

3. Social ostracism of homosexuals is no longer acceptable

In the past conservative Muslim leaders have socially ostracized gay Muslims to the extent of refusing burial rights in Muslim cemeteries. Muzammil Siddiqi had opined:

"Those who insist on this lifestyle, consider it legitimate and feel 'gay pride', we should not associate with them and should not take them as friends. We should certainly avoid those people."

However, post Orlando, Muslim and LGBT communities broke bread together in Toronto and Ireland. Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) expressed solidarity with the LGBT community:

"For many years members of the LGBTQIA community have stood shoulder to shoulder with the Muslim community ... Today we stand with them shoulder to shoulder."

4. Gay Muslims can lead in mosques

The late Taha Jabir al-Alawani at Corboda University in Virginia had scathing remarks for the association of gay Muslims with mosques:

Advertisement

"They are neither fit to establish masajid (mosques) and frequent them, nor are they fit to lead those who frequent the masjid whomever they may be."

However, in 2013, many Islamic scholars visited the El-Tawhid Juma Circle mosque in Toronto, co-founded by gay Muslims, who at times also lead prayers. One of the visiting scholars expressed:

"As a scholar I need to be able to meet those people on their own terms and not come across as somebody who is studying them for the sake of criticising them ... We want our own subjectivity to come into focus and hopefully allow us to become better scholars of Islam."

5. Transgender Muslims no longer have a test of celibacy

Conservative Muslim scholars have traditionally prohibited transgender Muslims from marriage based on the argument of trials of life. According to one opinion:

"The inherent guidance regarding sexual relationship corroborated by the Shari'ah directives may not be overlooked by them. Many other people also suffer some kind of physical abnormalities in this world of trial. If we appreciate that all of us are put through a test in this worldly life, it would surely lessen the sense of deprivation."

However, recently in Pakistan, a group of Sunni clerics issued a fatwa (legal opinion) allowing marriages of transgender persons:

"Through this fatwa, we want to inform the public that they can marry. ... It is permissible for a transgender person with male indications on his body to marry a transgender person with female indications on her body."

6. Homophobia is no longer acceptable

There are conservative Muslims scholars who have argued that not even pigs and dogs engage in homosexuality. Others associated homosexuality with the consumption of pork:

"You have substantiated my point that those who consume pork do not understand the harms of homosexuality. You have proven that eating najas (filth) instils a behavioural attitude that sees no harm in it."

However, in 2008, Imam Johari Malik expressed that Muslims who have never consumed pork cannot say that it is nasty and therefore we can question how those who claim that, "gay sex is nasty" know about it. He vehemently stated:

Advertisement

"It's time to get past our homophobia to help human beings."

7. Muslim scholars have shifted from opposition to solidarity

Before Orlando, Muslim scholar Omar Suleiman had expressed:

"Days are very near that disagreeing with homosexuality will be just as bad as being a racist. ... If as Muslims we don't take a clear stance on this, we will be forced to conform and watch this disease destroy our children."

After Orlando, he expressed:

"If you believe that homosexuality is immoral, that's fine, but you do not treat someone who's gay as less than you because they don't hold that belief."

However, conservative Muslim leaders still prescribe permanent celibacy to gay Muslims. But can we trust their opinions when a deep-rooted heterosexism clouds their judgment? Indeed, instead of yielding to their oppression, gay Muslims can reflect on the Qur'anic teaching:

They have taken their scholars and monks as lords besides Allah ~ 9:31
Hero Images via Getty Images Doctors using digital tablet in meeting

Ontario's Doctors have had five tumultuous weeks: beginning with the surprising news that the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) had negotiated a four-year Physician Services Agreement (PSA) with the Ministry of Health (MOH) and culminating with repudiation of the PSA by Ontario's physicians. How did these events come to pass and, perhaps more importantly, what happens next?

The General Members' Meeting, requested by approximately five per cent of OMA members, and attended in person by less than two per cent, was an opportunity to discuss the merits and faults of the tentative PSA. There was riotous applause for the leaders of the Coalition of Ontario Doctors and all those speaking against ratification, and only a smattering of applause for those speaking in favour. The Coalition's lawyers were also present, challenging the OMA from the microphone and providing legal advice to the leader of the Ontario Association of Radiologists (OAR) throughout the meeting.

Advertisement

The media, to date, has largely focused on the divisions between the OMA and the leaders of the Coalition.

The speeches were, by and large, articulate and passionately delivered by doctors who care deeply about their patients. The key themes identified: health system funding and a lack of trust in the OMA leadership and in the Ontario Liberal Government. However, the redress for these issues was not to be found at a General Members' Meeting, or even in the PSA.

The vote on the PSA, at its very core, was about physician income. Long wait times, underemployed physicians and patients without family doctors are larger health system issues (e.g. hospital funding, medication costs, need for long-term care) that are only peripherally related to individual physicians' paycheques. Throughout a physician's training, discussions of income are largely taboo so it is understandable that the nuances of collective bargaining, socioeconomic factors and political climate have been absent from the debate.

What is Happening Now?

The PSA was clearly defeated. Of the 55 per cent of Ontario doctors who voted, 63 per cent voted against the deal. The media, to date, has largely focused on the divisions between the OMA and the leaders of the Coalition. However, a broader narrative is emerging, one in which the government, rather than physicians, is rising above the fray. This leaves doctors to fight it out amongst themselves before the government is willing to re-engage with the OMA at the negotiating table.

Advertisement

The divisions between physicians are fierce, generationally: with older physicians attacking younger physicians and physicians in training, between types of physicians: generalists versus specialists and community physicians versus academics. Similarly, physicians on the Concerned Ontario Doctors (COD) Facebook group are calling for resignations from the OMA Board and are accusing the media of misrepresenting their position.

For their part, the Progressive Conservative Party and New Democratic Party leaders are calling on the Liberal government to reconsider binding arbitration while they themselves are unwilling to commit to do the same should they form the government in two years. Historically both the Conservative and NDP governments have had no compunction targeting doctors when economic times have been rough.

Clarity and Communication are Needed

The time for mending fences is now. In order to do this effectively, the OMA must engage with their membership, re-earn their trust, determine what they are looking for and have frank conversations about what is achievable. The OMA has committed to doing this and time will tell how effective their efforts will be. In order for physicians to create the organization they want, they must engage with the OMA, participate in meetings, fill out surveys, vote in elections and run for office.

The Coalition has achieved a decisive victory. It is interesting to note that despite their claims of an alternative option, none was or has been presented. The Coalition is also pressing the OMA for redress of wrongs and to fight for their rights, while simultaneously calling for the resignation of their leadership. In order to be considered a credible group, the Coalition must provide clarity on a number of fronts: what are their goals, who do they represent, what are their links to political parties and where does their money come from?

They have no member lists, collect no member dues and elect no officers. Their claim of "representing" 20000 physicians is unclear as many of their members were passively added to the Facebook group or are being counted based on their specialty, without their consent being obtained. The Coalition is accountable, it appears, to no one -- an accusation they routinely level at the OMA.

Advertisement

Government needs physicians to deliver health care; however, equally, physicians need government as they hold the purse strings and set public policy.

Supporters and detractors of the PSA both advanced their arguments on social media. It was clear from several posts that those against the PSA were prepared to personally attack those in support, with particularly fierce and, in some cases threatening, attacks leveled at trainees. Dr. Nadia Alam, erstwhile leader of the Coalition, has brushed this off in the Globe and Mail: "We don't know the nuances of Twitter. A lot of us don't know that writing in all caps means you're yelling."

This is unacceptable and must stop. Physicians are a self-regulated profession and we are responsible for holding ourselves and our colleagues to a professional standard. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) has clear guidelines regarding the use of social media by physicians. Leaders from both sides should step in to call out bad behaviour if and when it happens.

Physicians Must Engage

By rejecting the PSA, physicians have turned their backs on the proposed system of co-management. Physicians have clearly identified that they can see the failings of the system and it is critical that those perspectives are heard by government to ensure that the solutions implemented are effective. Physicians have also stated that they wish to be engaged and now is the time for them to suggest processes to work with government to ensure that their voices are heard. Government needs physicians to deliver health care; however, equally, physicians need government as they hold the purse strings and set public policy.

Physicians must be prepared to have frank discussions regarding the services they provide, their incomes and the cost that physician incomes represent in a health-care system with limited resources. Progressively escalating physician income, driven by providing more services to an aging population, is unsustainable. Physicians must also participate in rational health system reform discussions that are decoupled from negotiations about their fees. Creating the framework for these discussions is the labour that must be undertaken in the coming months. Physicians must take up the challenge, or have a new reality imposed upon them.

Advertisement

Special thanks to Dr. Melanie Bechard, Mr. Ali Damji, Dr. Bruce Fage, Mr. Jonathan Gravel and Dr. Natasha Snelgrove for assistance with this piece

Neither of our views reflect the organizations for which we work.
Andrew Bret Wallis via Getty Images mental health issues / anxiety & paranoia.

We hear about horrific situations in Canada when interactions between mentally unstable people and law enforcement lead to tragic outcomes.

Less well known are the longtime efforts of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) to meet the needs of the 30% of their calls that deal with mental illness. A summary of their most recent and ongoing efforts was released this summer in their policy statement "Vancouver Police Mental Health Strategy." This document offers a template for what an enlightened broadly-based approach to mental illness looks like.

Advertisement

One of the very successful VPD programs described in the policy statement is Car 87, a service that began in 1978. Car 87 involves sending a police officer along with either a registered or psychiatric nurse to assess and respond to an emergency situation.

Often people who become very psychotic have a brain-based lack of awareness of being ill, also called anosognosia, and so do not see a reason to seek or agree to medically-based help. Families often struggle to get an ill person to an ER, only to find out that they will have to wait hours before they can see someone. When families call Car 87, the police officer and clinician assume responsibility for getting a very ill person to the help they need.

I often describe the valuable services provided by Car 87 when I do public speaking about the perspectives of family caregivers. Often families in the audience come up to ask more about this service. If these caregivers were allowed to play a more active role in suggesting services for their communities, a role recommended by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, these kinds of sensible services would grow.

Advertisement

The VPD and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority have expanded their level of cooperation in better meeting the needs of people with severe mental illnesses. Besides cooperating in Car 87, police are involved in both Assisted Community Treatment teams and in Assertive Outpatient Treatment programs; both of these programs focus on providing help to the most high needs populations by taking services directly to them.

Of special interest to families is the clear support for cooperating with families. The policy encourages:

"engaging the assistance of a family member or caregiver of the affected individual, who can often provide insight and perspective on the behaviour, and may be able to serve as an advocate...."

Earlier in our daughter's illness, we had to twice contact the VPD. In both cases the officers who responded surprised us with how much they knew about mental illness and how skillful and compassionate they were in the important help they offered.

Families supporting people with severe mental illnesses were very encouraged at the most recent annual Family Conference in Vancouver which included a presentation by Constable Heidi Schoenberger.

Advertisement

Her description of the VPD's approach to dealing with mental illness not only demonstrated the extent of their training about mental illnesses and in crisis intervention and de-escalation techniques; it also confirmed their interest in working cooperatively with families. You can hear her at this link at 20:23.

Law enforcement approaches in B.C. for dealing with mental illnesses are being seen as a model for other jurisdictions. However, interactions with a volatile population still can go wrong. When law enforcement reports, as they do in Vancouver, that almost 30% of their calls involve mental illness, we need to better examine the various social forces that contribute to these problems. Here are just two of the factors:

Because we lack appropriate mental illness literacy campaigns, the public doesn't develop adequate knowledge about severe mental illnesses and how best to respond. Our current national mental illness awareness campaign doesn't even offer basic information about schizophrenia or bipolar on its website. And although Dalhousie psychiatrist Dr. Stan Kutcher has developed an excellent school based mental health/mental illness program, too few schools have incorporated it. The program has been shown to increase knowledge and help seeking behavior while also reducing stigma. Even though B.C. has a very good mental health act, it's not adequately understood and implemented. People who are too ill to realize that they need help are eligible for involuntary treatment. And service providers are allowed to communicate with family caregivers in order to provide continuity of care. Too often this treatment and this communication doesn't happen.

Trends to de-medicalize severe mental illnesses contribute to these problems. Psychiatric survivors are often seen as the legitimate voice for people who have mental illnesses. They and their allies, who often argue that mental illnesses don't actually exist, lobby against any involuntary treatment and against the mental health acts that allow it. Also, in the name of privacy, they seek to bar communication with families. Meanwhile, the perspectives of family caregivers are generally ignored.

Advertisement

The under-treatment of people with severe mental illnesses has led to members of this population becoming homeless and, increasingly, incarcerated. The problem is even bigger in the U.S., which has been more severely impacted by the lack of appropriate treatment. We have a lot to learn from California where disability activists have created the biggest barriers to treatment.

Police there are more powerless to get help for profoundly psychotic people. One Los Angeles police officer, Deon Joseph, has been creating video blogs documenting the problem. In this video, he describes his unsuccessful efforts at helping a profoundly psychotic, homeless woman, covered in her own urine and feces, get the involuntary treatment she is too ill to know she needs.

Canada is asking police forces to deal with a population they were not designed to focus on. While applauding the efforts of police to adapt, shouldn't we also be looking more closely at policies that are creating the chaos of so much untreated mental illness?
The history of chocolate in Saint Lucia dates as far back as the 1700s when cocoa plantations flourished in the area. And it's no wonder the crops fare exceeding well here; Saint Lucia benefits from a tropical, humid climate moderated by northeast trade winds that allow for enjoyable conditions year-round. The average temperature is 78.8 F (26C) at sea level.

Today, many local chefs and resorts are revitalizing this once thriving industry by offering multi-sensory chocolate experiences to guests; in doing so, they are fostering the growth of talented people and strengthening the heritage of chocolate growers.

Advertisement

If you share my enduring passion for chocolate, I recommend the following experiences on the island you won't want to miss out on:

Emerald Estate Farms and Jade Mountain's Chocolate Sensory Experience

About:

No other place encompasses the philosophy of 'farm to table' more than Emerald Estates. Started in 2007 by owners of Jade Mountain and Anse Chastanet resorts, Nick Troubezkoy his wife Karolin had the forward-thinking idea of owning an organic farm that could support the ingredient needs of the kitchen.

Today, the 40 acres of farmland grows an astonishing amount of food that include mangoes, sugarcane, eggplant, buckwheat, lovage, green beans, cilantro, amaranth, Malabar spinach, cocoa, and countless more. Each year, the farm grows enough to supply 70% of food for both resorts.

Advertisement

Notable:

Guests who stay at the resort will be allowed to tour the farm and see where their food comes from. Martin Joseph, the 'local boy' farmhand, will show guests around the property, highlight crop varieties, and answer questions.

If you're lucky, you'll have an opportunity to meet horticulturist and scientist Pawan Srivastava, who will happily delve into the specifics of cocoa with you.

He explains: "There are 3 types of cocoa in the world: Forastero - which creates what Pawan describes as 'your generic Cadbury and Hershey chocolates', Criollo - which creates premium Swiss and Belgian chocolate, and Trinitario (a cross between Criollo and Forastero)- which is grown at Emerald Estate."

There are 1000 cocoa trees on the property with two harvesting seasons, Sept - Oct & May- June. There are 45 pods per tree and 1 pod = 1 chocolate bar. That is a total of 90,000 bars per year. But it isn't enough. Demand has been so great that they've had to plant 500 more trees and also buy cocoa beans from local farmers.

Advertisement

Fun facts from Pawan:

Cocoa trees with labels are called ICS (Imperial College Selections). They are clones and numbered to identify the breed and what type of cocoa bean it grows.

The cocoa bean is "the most intelligent of plant species" and defies plant laws. They exhibit cauliflory and have no discernable flowering pattern. Once flowers are pollinated, they transform into pods.

There are 30,000 differences in genes between cocoa beans and humans.

Cocoa plants can live for 200 years.

Fermentation occurs naturally; once the beans are harvested, they're put in a box together for a week.

The beans separate from the white pulp (cocoa juice) and they're dried in the open sun.

This 'cocoa juice' is very acidic and it is used by locals for cooking.

Not-to-Miss activities at the Chocolate Lab:

Advertisement

Stefan Goehcke, Executive Chef at Jade Mountain, has been producing chocolate with the resort for 2  years. With chef, you'll have an intimate 'Chocolate Discovery' experience that lasts one hour. In addition to plenty of tastings, participants will learn how to temper chocolate and make truffles alongside chef. Also offered on site are the chocolate and wine tastings at the restaurant - Jade Mountain Club.

Souvenirs for friends and family:

The range of Nick Troubetzkoy's Emerald Estate Chocolate Bars (60%-92% cocoa solids).

I personally recommend 92% Cocoa and Chipotle 70% Cocoa.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hotel Chocolat Tree to Bar Experience

About:

The name 'Hotel Chocolat' was initially a metaphor devised by British entrepreneurs Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris. The idea was that a taste of their chocolate, bought from their shops in the U.K. or mail order catalogues, could transport you to " a state of bliss in your mind". But today, an actual Hotel Chocolat exists in Saint Lucia. For the partners, it seemed to be the next natural step. Rabbot Estate, the plantation they purchased, has never had slaves on it even though the 140 acre property dates back to 1745.

Notable:

You don't have to be a resident of one of their 14 resort homes to participate in the Tree to Bar experience. Participants get to graft their own cocoa plant in the nursery. Grafting is a way for farmers to control cross pollination that would otherwise occur naturally and randomly. The control method allows growers to continue to produce quality beans in the nursery.

Advertisement

Participants receive a photograph of their plant, an opportunity to name it, and receive timely updates on its progress and production of cocoa pods.

Interesting Facts from our Chocolate Guide:

120 farmers currently buy Hotel Chocolat's grafted plants. Hotel Chocolat then buys back the wet beans at a higher cost to encourage farm cultivation and production of cocoa. The program is called Chocolat Cacao Growers Program of Engaged Ethics.

Hotel Chocolat never borrowed any money from banks to facilitate the construction of the resort. Instead, the business owners sold Chocolate Bonds (33% worth) to its 100,000 members in order to raise the funds necessary. Money made from bonds sold: 3.5 million .

Thanks to the finance via Chocolate Bonds, the on-site chocolate factory in Saint Lucia will be completed in 18 months.

Not-to-Miss activities:

Making your own chocolate bar from scratch using a heated pestle and mortar, cocoa nibs, cocoa butter, confectioner's sugar, and LOTS of elbow grease. Take home your bar and brag to your friends about your homemade chocolate bar.

Souvenirs for friends and family:
Pic: Free Yezidi Foundation

We are now the media. Our generation have a more liberated voice than ever before so how in 2016 is genocide still a thing? We are living in one of the most pivotal times in recent history and it's time for us to wake up to reality. The day I met Pari Ibrahim she changed my life forever. Starting the Free Yezidi Foundation with her sister Zazi after losing members of their family to ISIS, their charity is based on the very front line of the Syrian War. Sat with our legs dangled over a bridge looking down at a river and up at Canary Wharf's bold skyline, what I was about to hear I knew the world needed to know in its purest form. This isn't easy to read but it's real and is happening in our world right now.

When you came to London what was your mission?

It was mostly to partner with Women for Women International to help us get funding and so they could advise us on one of the projects for one of the camps that we're doing for IDP women and girls. Also to show people in government that we, as a Yezidi organisation, led by women, can be strong and can eventually fight for justice and help women to succeed in the future and rebuild their lives.

Advertisement

How do you feel like it's gone?

It's gone well, they're all so supportive. Our organisation is registered in Holland and in Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The Middle East is a man's world, it's a competition and everyone wants to be on top.

How did it make you feel being brought up amongst that?

You always have to fight harder to get the same attention that the men get in the Middle East because they don't believe that women can be strong advocates. In the last one and a half years since ISIS committed these crimes against the Yezidi population, the women have been very strong in the community and around the world. Voices are being heard and that's mostly because of the women that speak.

How are those women changing?

All of the women who fight for women's rights and education are changing in a way that makes them stronger. Before this was happening to the Yezidis, the women went to school but they were very low profile and I now see they are much stronger.

Advertisement

How do the guys feel about it?

My father is very modern, we've lived in Holland for a long time and he continuously said it was so amazing that when the Yezidi genocide happened it was the women who stood up. I don't know how they feel. Some of them have tried to do something but I think because of what ISIS have done to the women and girls, the Yezidi community have the strength to raise their voice for those in captivity.

How do you think that these changes will have an impact on other women around the world?

I think it will definitely have an impact, especially in the Middle East. It will show that women can achieve something, starting from nothing. Starting a small organisation and then speaking at The Security Council or The House of Lords, it means so much. These are all men. I have many role models who are women. They give me strength and I hope also one day to become one for others. I think many of the Yezidi women have the same idea, to be a role models for others.

I was talking to Brita Schmidt from Women for Women UK recently. She was telling me the story about the women in the cage. When I read about it, I cried. How does something like that impact a country?

It impacts a lot of the Yezidi people and I know that many of the Kurdish and Iraqi people were hurt by it. The story about nineteen girls who were in ISIS captivity and sold as sex slaves, in the beginning there were over six thousand Yezidi girls and women captured and sold as sex slaves. It's unbelievable. We fight for the right of the women to be free and liberated but most governments keep a distance from it. We heard recently that nineteen Yezidi girls have been burnt alive in a cage by ISIS. It is unbelievable that we accept these things in the UK in 2016, we have to understand that the safety of the people here in the UK is also in danger. These ISIS members are now mingling with the refugees and also making their way here. The Free Yezidi Foundation tries to get attention for the liberation of these girls to bring justice for the victims at the International Criminal Court. Some of these people are from the UK. Jihadi John, he is now dead but there are others who are coming back here. What will happen to them? How will we prove that these men have committed crimes against humanity? I think there should be a link and the Free Yezidi Foundation is trying to form that link between the countries and the testimony of the women and girls. The evidence is there in Kurdistan and we want to bring at least one ISIS member to trial so we can show the world that they cannot act with impunity. We want to show that there will be justice for victims of sexual abuse in conflict.

You are on the front line. What made you want to help?

I was just a normal law student in Amsterdam. I had a job at the library and when this happened we got a call at 5am from family members that ISIS had entered Sinjar. They were saying that ISIS were killing all the men and taking women and girls as slaves. I was in Germany and went back to Holland to try to immediately raise awareness of the topic. We then heard that the Yezidis were trying to flee to Mount Sinjar and were there for three days without food or water. Finally, America said OK we're going to bomb ISIS. With the help of the YPG they opened the corridor and eventually freed all of the people who were surrounded. ISIS were about to kill all of them. Children, women and men were starving on top of the mountain; it was so hot that August in 2014. I just quit everything and started the Free Yezidi Foundation. We started doing demonstrations, went on BBC World and tried to raise awareness. In the beginning I wanted to collect some money that would get to the Yezidi IDPs but eventually it became so big that I couldn't get out of it. I don't want to get out of it, it's beautiful. I recently started my education again and I have just one test to go and then I hope to spend one hundred percent of my time on this cause.

You and your sister are both involved, what does that mean to you?

My sister means everything to me, when I'm down she comes and hugs me and tells me everything will be OK. She gives me strength. She lives with the victims one hundred yards from the camp that supports women and girls with therapy and music. We have computer classes, English and different things for women to empower themselves again to bring them back into society. These women are all victims. Some of them are victims of sexual violence, some of them are victims of unimaginable things that have caused trauma so sisterhood means everything. I've heard a lot of stories of women who have lost sisters. I hear girls say they are raising money so that if one day they receive a phone call from their sister they can buy her back from her captors. Having a sister, she is like the backbone for me.

What's been the most inspiring thing that you've seen along the way?

I cannot say anything about the political people, they do not inspire me at all. These people working at the UN, you'd think they would support the cause to stop girls being kidnapped and raped. I do have role models in the girls, in the victims that have escaped out of ISIS captivity. The strength that they want to keep on going with their lives, that's what makes them my role models because they are the voices of the Yezidi people. They come back with the strength and tell people what has happened to them and that is pure courage.

Advertisement

Why do you think these guys are behaving the way that they are?

Probably when they were children they had something very bad which has made them from a human being to a monster. I think that the failing of the world is what makes people monsters because we are silently agreeing with the crimes they are committing. I have warned a lot of countries. You have to look and ask are these really refugees or are these ISIS fighters who have committed horrible crimes, now mingling with society? It's dangerous for everyone.

Do you think that these people are ever going to change?

No. ISIS has experts in brain washing children and they won't be able to go back to normal. After you commit a crime, I do not think it's a good idea to bring you back into society. They will not change. The stories that I have heard from these girls and what has been done to them, young children are being hanged because they're crying for a bit of water, girls being raped ten times a day. It's unbelievable.

A lot of people I am friends with don't know about this. Is there anything we can do to help?

The FYF is trying to raise funds to use on the projects because there are many needed things inside the camp. With sewing classes, with music, we give them something back and that is happiness, we're putting a smile on their faces again. If anyone can raise funds through true music or true art it's a blessing. Right now, we would like to raise $7,000 for an electricity generator for our center in Iraq. My little brother is a producer and he made a song for the FYF with a friend of his and it's called 'Why Don't We Just Love?', it's an amazing song and through this we also raise awareness and money to help the Yezidi community.

How do you think music can help people?

It is a healing thing. If I'm feeling down then I listen to music to get away to a reality where everything is peaceful and that's what helps these young women and girls. In the beginning they are very shy and later on you can see the teacher really embraces them with love and they start singing. That's the best thing you can see as a human being.

Advertisement

You mentioned earlier that ISIS can brainwash children which is terrible. If you could sit with those kids and you give them a different message what would it be?

I would tell them that they have to look at their own parents and family members and ask them: would they want to see the people close to them hurt? Would they want to be hurt this way? If you relate it to a family member or someone close to them then that will help them see a change but you have to be quick with it. Yezidi children are being brainwashed by ISIS to commit suicide, to be bombers or be child soldiers. We've opened a children's centre because some of them escaped ISIS captivity. We try to comfort them by drawing, art, music and then they feel more at ease.

From here, what's next?

The Yezidi people have begun to raise money. There are smugglers and instead of smuggling tobacco, they smuggle to bring back the girls. Yezidi families don't have another choice. We need to save our girls. I have lost nineteen girls from my family. More than twenty-one men have been killed or taken, I don't know what has happened to them. Two of these girls came back out of ISIS captivity. It is horrible what they've been through, it is up to us to make a difference and liberate these girls. I think action from government and the international community is needed.

If you could change the world, how would you like it to be?

In the Middle East, I would start off with educating women, making them stronger and making them confident to change things. Most of the women have a good heart and a good sense of giving love. That's what the world needs.

And how would that change the world?

By loving and caring for people it will change everything, you give people a right to live.
As a child growing up in Manchester I was obsessed with magazines such as Just17 and Jackie - I spent all my pocket money on them. Soon enough though, I began to realise that there were no women in these magazines that looked anything like me.

There were no stories of black achievement; no features on the best beauty tips for black skin,so many of my white friends did a lot of their growing up through these magazines, but for me, it was as if girls of colour were invisible.

Advertisement

I began to spend my pocket money on American imports such as Essence magazine, which showcased black celebrities, featured black models and profiled people of colour in their professional lives. It unashamedly celebrated black success- but I really wanted to read about the black British experience. It was then, aged 11 or 12 years old, that I vowed one day to launch a magazine for women and girls who looked like me.

As I grew older, I realised how expensive setting up a print magazine was, but, online, I came across a wealth of publications aimed at African-American women. Yet there was still nothing for women of colour in the UK. The web gave me a publishing channel through which to launch the magazine I had wanted to create since childhood.

In 1999, PRECIOUS became the first digital magazine aimed at women of colour in the UK. Its remit was to showcase the achievements of women of colour in business, career and the arts. At its height it received 90,000 unique visitors a month from the UK and beyond.

As the magazine began to grow and develop, I was invited to lots of award ceremonies that celebrated women in business. These were events hosted by global organisations, yet I was often the only black woman in the room. On the platform there were never any women of colour nominated, let alone taking home a prize, yet I knew there were so many high achieving women of colour out there.

Advertisement

Once again, I saw women of colour not being recognised, so once again I decided to do something about it. I launched The PRECIOUS Awards in 2007 to celebrate the achievements of women of colour in business and leadership.

So often in the UK we only see or hear the stories of women of colour if we are in trouble or if something terrible has happened to us. Recently, we have seen the story of Sarah Reed, who was brutally assaulted by a police officer and years later found dead in a prison cell, and the tragic story of the murder of Sian Blake and her children. Even in fiction, we are often represented by stories such as that of Salma in BBC drama Murdered By My Father. Yes, it's critically important that these stories are told, yet these are not our only stories. Rarely are women of colour asked to appear in media to give opinions and commentary on hard news, financial stories, or entrepreneurship.

2016 sees the PRECIOUS Awards celebrate its 10th year and I am proud to provide a platform from which to unashamedly celebrate tales of success.. Our anniversary provides an opportunity to look back at the many brilliant women we have been so delighted to applaud. From Jessica Huie, the mum who set up the UK's first multicultural greeting cards company, to Kerrine Bryan, the engineer excelling in a male-dominated oil company to Bianca Miller, the young entrepreneur who has set out to redefine nude in the world of hosiery, to Three Sisters Care, the social enterprise set up by sisters Rahena, Jaida and Jobeda that is currently hacking the care sector.

It's unearthing these incredible women and their stories, that makes running the PRECIOUS Awards so important for me, and contributes so vividly to the visibility of women of colour in the UK, as well as being critical for inspiring the girls of colour who follow us.
Joe Clarke and Helen Glover's dazzling gold medal success at the Rio Olympics shows how Scouting gives young people skills that they can take forward and use throughout their lives. Scouting's campaign, A Million Hands is helping young people develop these skills to tackle some of the biggest issues facing society.

Gold Medallist Olympians don't just appear from nowhere. Team GB is doing a fantastic job of inspiring the Nation but this wasn't where our sporting heroes began their journeys. It's worth spending a little time looking at where some of these stars got their start! Take canoeist Joe Clarke who triumphed in the Kayak A1. The effort, training and time he has given are all his own, but it was in Scouting, as an eight year old Cub Scout that he got his introduction to canoeing and first took to the water.

Scouting gives young people skills for life. In the case of Joe Clarke and other Olympians, this might be a practical skill, such as how to steer around a course, learn white water kayaking or how to recover after capsizing (Which I personally seem to do a lot of whenever I'm on the water...). But it is the character skills - determination, resilience, independence and true grit that really give Scouts the edge. Bear Grylls has talked about Scouting as a 'character factory' and Joe Clarke is one of its finest exports. It is his belief in himself and strength of character that sets him apart.

Advertisement

And Joe is not alone! Fellow Rio gold medallist, rower Helen Glover, got her start as an eleven year old Scout in Penzance, being the first girl in her Troop at the time. Now a quarter of the movement is female and Scouting is committed to bringing the benefits and life skills it offers to all, regardless of gender, belief, nationality or social background. 'Scouting is for everyone,' says Scout Ambassador Steve Backshall. 'It might not bring you to an Olympic final, but you never know unless you give it a go.'

But let's face it, not everyone is a natural sportsperson or adventurer (And that's a good thing!) The Scout movement prides itself on providing a huge range of opportunities to young people to develop the skills to succeed. Through our A Million Hands campaign we are offering our 452,000 young people the opportunity to develop the skills they need to succeed by making a positive impact in their communities. This means taking practical action on issues as varied as disability, mental well-being and resilience, dementia care, clean water and sanitation, to support those around them.

The key to the project is what we call the 'double benefit.' For example, some Glasgow Explorers (aged 14-18) visited a care home to talk, play cards and read newspapers with the residents. While this was a welcome boost for the residents, the young people gained from the visit too, improving their communication skills, learning to listen and grow in empathy. 'I was so incredibly impressed,' said their leader Gordon Jack, 'with the way the Explorers conducted themselves in such a conscientious, gentle and caring manner. The impact that this experience has had on the young people involved has been very rewarding.'

Advertisement

There might not be a gold medal for supporting communities (Yet!), but in Scouting this work is recognised by the Community Impact badge. More importantly, the experiences and opportunities Scouting offers gives young people just like me a wider view of the world, a generosity of spirit and the confidence to seize opportunities life offers and the confidence to succeed.
British wars abroad have two enemies. First, the official enemy, portrayed as a monster whom we always battle with noble intentions. But second is the enemy within - us, the public. The danger posed by the public is that we may stop elites doing what they want, hence we are subject to state 'information operations' to convey messages and obscure facts, usually via compliant media organisations. Current British policy in Syria, which is having the effect of prolonging the terrible war by supporting forces fighting the regime, involves outright lying by ministers at a level similar to that over Iraq in 2002-3.

The British government is waging 'information warfare' by funding media operations for some Syrian rebel groups. The Ministry of Defence is hiring contractors to produce videos, photos, radio broadcasts and social media posts branded with the logos of rebel groups, to 'effectively run a press office for opposition fighters'. Materials are being circulated in the Arabic broadcast media and posted online with no indication of British government involvement.

But a key strand of government propaganda over Syria is often simply lying to parliament and the public. In July 2015, Defence Minister Earl Howe told Parliament that the government 'would seek further Parliamentary approval before UK aircraft conducted air strikes in Syria'. This was untrue - British aircraft were already secretly striking Islamic State targets in Syria as was revealed by human rights organisation Reprieve six days after Howe's statement. These air strikes, conducted by pilots embedded with US and Canadian forces, began months before Parliament voted in favour of them in December 2015.

Advertisement

The government also confirmed that neither Parliament nor the public should even be told of such operations. After Reprieve revealed the British role, the government told Parliament: 'Ministers authorise the embedding of UK personnel on deployment with host forces. It has been long-standing practice not to announce such deployments'.

Also in June 2015, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told MPs that the UK had 'begun' training Syrian forces in bases outside Syria. In fact, this programme started three years earlier. The Guardian had earlier reported that UK intelligence teams were giving Syrian army officers 'logistical and other advice' at bases in Jordan in a US-led programme begun in 2012. The report noted that while the government denied providing direct military training to the rebels, special forces were training the Jordanian military.

In September 2014, David Cameron said in a speech at the United Nations in New York that the UK would not deploy troops in Syria because 'I don't believe this threat of Islamist extremism will best be solved by Western ground troops directly trying to pacify or reconstruct Middle Eastern or African countries'. Yet within a year British Special Forces were 'mounting hit and run raids against Islamic State deep inside eastern Syria dressed as insurgent fighters'. SAS units dressed in black and flying Islamic State flags were being tasked with destroying IS equipment and munitions which insurgents constantly move to avoid coalition air strikes. British special forces now 'frequently cross into Syria to assist the New Syrian Army' from their base in Jordan.

Another issue is whether Britain has been supplying arms to the Syrian opposition. In July 2015, Foreign Minister Tobias Ellwood told Parliament that 'the UK does not provide lethal assistance to anyone in Syria'. Yet over two years earlier, it was reported that Britain had participated in 'a massive airlift of arms to Syrian rebels from Croatia', an operation led by the US and allegedly funded by Saudi Arabia. The New York Times reported later that year that a joint programme involving British, Saudi and US intelligence had sent weapons to rebels fighting in southern Syria.

Advertisement

American journalist Seymour Hersh wrote about an arms 'rat line' authorised in early 2012 that funnelled weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. MI6 supported this operation while funding came from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to Hersh, who added that 'many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida'.

Are any government statements on Syria believable? The government has consistently told Parliament it has no evidence that any UK air strikes in Syria or Iraq have resulted in civilian casualties. Yet Britain has conducted nearly 1,000 air strikes in these two countries since 2014 while the NGO, Airwars, estimates that there have been 1,568 civilian casualties from coalition bombing, mainly by the US, though it does not calculate how many of any of these are due to UK operations.

Should we take seriously the government claim that it wants to see an end to the war brokered by the UN? The government says that 'UN-led negotiations remain the best opportunity to end the conflict through political transition away from Assad to an inclusive government'. Yet UK and US policy has in practice opposed such negotiated deals. As prominent analyst Avi Shlaim has documented, Western insistence that Syrian president Assad must first step down sabotaged first Kofi Annan's and then Lakhdar Brahimi UN efforts to set up a peace deal.
Shocking and sustained ethnic inequalities that continue to mark modern day Britain are exposed in a new report, from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). Back in April 2015, on the general election campaign trail, David Cameron committed the government to tackling many of these inequalities with a set of '2020' targets. While Cameron may no longer be Prime Minister, his targets still live on as a Conservative campaign commitment. Indeed, Theresa May has made clear that her priorities included tackling racial discrimination.

One of the most important elements of the government's '2020 vision' was its employment target: a commitment to raise the number of ethnic minority people in work by 20% by 2020. One year on, the latest employment stats this week appear to show the government is so far on course to meet the target. Employment among ethnic minority people is up by around 4% since the same April-June period in 2015.

But the headline figure masks a more worrying picture. BME employment has been on the rise regardless of the target over the past decade, reflecting changing demographics.

Advertisement

The problem is that throughout this period, the gap between the white employment rate and ethnic minority employment rate has stayed stubbornly large. Indeed, the gap was roughly the same in Oct-Dec 2010 and Oct-Dec 2015, but in that time BME employment rose by more than 25 per cent. So the government could meet its target in large part through a growing BME population and an overall rising employment rate, instead of addressing the root causes of inequality.

Moreover, the EHRC report highlights further ethnic inequalities in youth unemployment, apprenticeship start-ups, earnings, and living standards.

As David Isaac, Chair of the EHRC, argues today, much more therefore needs to do more to tackle these inequalities head on.

I believe that the government should prioritise three key areas. First, as IPPR argued in our recent report with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the government should develop a localised approach to tackling these inequalities. This is because there are vast local differences in employment gaps between white and ethnic minority people - the Runnymede Trust has found using Census data that the unemployment percentage gap ranges from around 7 percentage points in Hackney and Sheffield to virtually no gap at all in Halton and Harrogate.

Advertisement

This means that government support and funding should be targeted where it is needed most - at local authorities facing the largest inequalities - and that local councils should be given more powers and support to develop their own tailored approaches to inequalities in their areas. More also needs to be done to ensure that different parts of the system -including job centres, Work Programme providers, local authority employment services, training providers, careers advice services and community and voluntary groups - share best practice and learn from each other.

Second, greater support is needed to smooth the transition between education and work for ethnic minorities. Progress for ethnic minorities in the labour market has not kept up with the marked improvements in educational attainment in the past decade. As the Women and Equalities Committee's inquiry into employment opportunities for Muslims argued last week, universities need to do more to provide targeted careers advice for BME groups.

Third, the government should take a more proactive approach to tackling discrimination among employers. Targets alone will not necessarily create progress. It should be made clear that legislative action will be taken if necessary in order to incentivise behaviour change. For instance, the government could indicate that it will enforce name-blind recruitment for employers or ensure diverse recruitment panels for larger companies if targets are not met.

Combined, these steps carve out an ambitious approach to tackling ethnic inequalities. Rather than simply relying on demographic and economic trends to get them over the line, the government should surpass their 2020 targets by getting to the root of the problem - and put ethnic equalities at the heart of its One Nation vision.
Artist, celebrity or star - is there a point in being a famous artist? Not unless you want to make money, and even that isn't guaranteed. The art market is all about money, and increasingly about PR, cross-branding, and combining art in a cross-collaboration between artist and luxury branding. Today, many works of art are mass produced in a factory where the artist is no longer involved in the process. The art market is a huge business, and much of the work the public can see is what they're allowed to see. The high end of the cultural industry is organised by people with money and censored by market forces. Someone with wealth and connections, or a gallery that can afford a PR agency has to open the door for the working class, female, black, and transgender artists. Nowadays, work alone is not enough, and artists have to work hard and make use of the system that has developed and exploit it for what it is.

In the past, I used the system and gained attention through stunts. In 2005, I exhibited a painting called 'Opera Paese' in London at Home House Members Club. The price of the work was 1.3m. At the time, the art market was going crazy with huge prices from relatively unknown artists. Brian Sewell, leading established art critic in London, sent me a handwritten letter telling me I had no right as an unknown artist to claim the 1.3m price. This provocation worked, launching me and my work into the next phase.

Advertisement

Many artists have used stunts to gain attention. For example, Christo caused a blockade with oil barrels in 1962 in a Paris street, which claimed the front page the following day. It is essential for artists have to promote themselves or they will sit with their work in a vacuum. In 2009, I was asked by Jenni Murray of BBC Radio 4 if I was presenting myself as a sexual object during my naked performance where the audience paints my body. I replied, "No, I am asking the audience to see a person," but the truth is, the naked female body gains attention. It worked, as I knew it would. Being naked was an important part of the work, making it about vulnerability and trust. The fact that I was a young, female artist putting my body on display warranted an image in The Times. The image was extremely popular, and more commissions followed. My naked body performance was used in the 2010 General Election campaign in the UK, as a way of encouraging first time voters to 'Use Your Body Use Your Vote.' The results were impressive: Stephen Fry tweeted about it, 6 million people saw it, and it was written about in the press.

Advertisement

Art history has mostly ignored women, black artists and transgender artists. So, it comes down to doing what you have to do to break through. I can't change the sexist and racist academic discourse, but I can make use of the system that is in place. Artists have to be smarter than the people who are controlling the system and standing to make a profit.

Cultivated ignorance spread by media, coupled with fast tracked fame seeking artists, has reduced the ability for artists and viewers to take the time to ponder over the work. Social media has made tabloid sensationalism a norm. Society is seeing the triumph of the superficial, and we, the over sensationalised, are out. The phase of gimmicks and shock factors is hopefully coming to an end, which will leave quality of work in at centre stage. If you're looking for a reminder of what quality looks like, all you need to do is stand in front of Leonardos 'Virgin of the Rocks' or any of Francis Bacon's triptychs.

The quality of work and the ideas behind it are all the work of the artist. Daring artists are being praised, as Graffiti art, started in the 90s, is now a mainstream activity recognised by galleries, art colleges and absorbed into the everyday. Today, artists have to be ten jumps ahead, constantly coming up with new and innovative ideas, not just stunts, gimmicks and celebrity stamped photographs. The internet has reduced the turnaround time of images causing work to disappear quickly. In today's world, a career can be launched and ended all in a day. On the art timeline, and in years to come, it will be interesting to see who and what sticks.
Last summer, I supported Jeremy Corbyn to be the Leader of the Labour Party. I attended his rallys and events and the atmosphere was simply brilliant. Young and old activists on the ground were buzzing for something new. He was the only candidate who stood out in a dull leadership race by offering hope and a vision for a different kind of Britain.

Fast-forward a year and I find myself at a Corbyn event again. This time, Jeremy is Leader of the Labour Party and he is hosting a rally for Labour IN. Instead of open-air rallys, we are in a stuffy conference venue. The crowd was considerably smaller and older. And there was no buzz in the air.

I wish Jeremy had used the referendum as the first opportunity to translate the energy and enthusiasm associated with his leadership campaign into success at the ballot box.

Advertisement

But instead, there was little action. Yes, Jeremy gave speeches and hosted events across the country. But we all knew he could do better than that. We see the Jeremy machine back in full force now in this summer's leadership campaign. Why is it that Jeremy is at his best when it is just about him? Thousands have been mobilized for Jeremy again, but he has failed to mobilize these numbers for the referendum.

I am an EU immigrant in Britain. Jeremy often voices support for immigrant communities and supports the free movement of people. But the nice words mean little if no action follows. Since the Brexit vote, the futures of millions of EU citizens in the UK and British citizens living elsewhere have been put in jeopardy. As an ally to European migrant communities in Britain, he should have never let this happen. He should have fought tooth and nail for us.

My fear is that Jeremy will continue to take a back seat during future Brexit negotiations. We need a Labour leader who recognizes the fundamental importance of this deal.

When I saw Owen speak for the first time in London, he talked about his anger during the referendum campaign. This deeply resonated with me. Owen displayed the passion which Jeremy never did. Here was someone willing and ready to fight for me and my rights as an EU migrant in the UK. If he had been leader during the EU referendum campaign, I have no doubt he would have thrown himself into it whole heartedly, mobilised activists, and fought tooth and nail for a remain vote.

Advertisement

I believe that Owen Smith, as leader of the Labour Party, will fight for a Labour voice at the negotiation table. He would fight for worker's rights, fight for the rights of European citizens here and UK citizens abroad.
Photo by Robert Golden and used with permission.

In a tumultuous Europe that is struggling to blend and work together, a collective of young people have come together to show that this does not have to be case.

From the 1st to the 14th August 2016, I was fortunate enough to take part in The Complete Freedom of Truth (TCFT) - "an international youth-led project with the ambition to develop global citizenship through culture and the arts" - for the second year. Joining me on the project were over 100 young people (from ages 13 - 26), supported by 12 partner organisations, from seven countries across Europe.

Advertisement

Although the divide between Eastern and Western Europe continues, countries from both sides were represented and it is if they were one in the same - the East and West divide does not apply in TCFT.

We are individuals from Bosnia & Herzegovina, Georgia, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Serbia and the United Kingdom with different identities, but as a collective we are Europeans brought together for a common cause. According to the TCFT website, "TCFT seeks to create a connected community of young people from across Europe who are passionate about positive social change within their communities and across Europe."

This year was the second phase of the project, held in the town of Bournemouth in the UK, following on from last year's first phase in Bosnia & Herzegovina's Srebrenica. Drawing on the title of the project, we were invited to explore the word 'Truth', after exploring 'Freedom' in 2015. The result was a series of interesting discussions, presentations and creative works that allowed all of us to explore our own truths, truths about society and truths about Europe.

Advertisement

Young people collaborated with, learned from and were supported by a number of processional artists, academics, producers, culture leaders and international peers over the two weeks. This allowed them to develop skills, hone their craft and create pieces of work in different areas, including dance, radio, visual arts, poetry, parkour, photography and theatre.

One of the highlights was a mass discussion that we had regarding Europe, asking what is Europe, how do we perceive Europe and what we do we expect Europe to look like in the next five years. The common consensus was that the future of Europe is looking pretty bleak, but we want to maintain some positivity and work together as young people to make changes for our future.

All of the work and collaboration from the two weeks culminated in a final showcase on the 13th August, which was presented to an audience of about 200. Not only was the audience able to see the creative results of the work we had put in, but they were also able to get a taste of the workshops that we had been a part of.

TCFT is a process that not only allows young people to develop creatively, but it also allows them to develop as individuals and as leaders for the future, learning from each other in a safe, relaxed environment. For me personally, it was truly amazing to watch the growth of one of the young people from Bosnia, who fully embraced the project, came out of her shell and performed a knockout piece of poetry during the final showcase. It is those little things that make TCFT so important and worthwhile.

Advertisement

At its core, TCFT is about inclusion, equality, tolerance and understanding, making it a powerful and life-changing experience that overflows with love. If Europe, and indeed the rest of the world, took this into consideration, we would be in a far better state than we are now.

Photo by Robert Golden and used with permission.

TCFT 2017 will be held in Sarteano, Italy from the 31st March to the 14th April, when we will be focusing on the word 'Complete'.
erhui1979 via Getty Images

At the risk of revealing my age, I was born during Thatcher's first term, into the ranks of people who suffered under her government. I started life on the estate where Joe Strummer once squatted, deemed slum housing in the 1970's. Our freezing cold council flat with one heater was run by the same council where, down the road, Dame Shirley Porter was selling homes for votes.

As starts go, it was hardly glamorous but was working class through and through and has stuck with me. Through it I gained my understanding of the need for good quality social housing, that education is the best route towards moving on up, and the impact seemingly distant politicians can have on a working peoples' lives.

Advertisement

So then why am I not more excited by the advent of Corbynism? As a working class Londoner employed in the public sector, why am I not reaching for my placard and taking to the streets? Perhaps it's more to do with my political experiences.

One thing I've learnt is that when people organise, they get things done. A wonderful group of people, with the help of the local Labour party, fought the council to improve our housing. It took time, but they won. In the height of Thatcher's Britain, in the face of a 1980's property boom and a renowned Tory council, a housing estate was saved for the working people it was meant for.

Move forward to 1997, I'm 16 and the first Labour government I have ever known comes into power. More money for the NHS and schools, huge cuts in child poverty and homelessness, movement towards peace in Northern Ireland and debt forgiveness - a whole world away from the Tory Britain of my youth. It seemed Labour were about fairness and that everyone should have an equal chance in life. So I became a member.

So much has changed since then, personally and politically. I've moved from city to countryside and back again. I've become an aunt. I've been to university, become a healthcare professional and am now working in a London hospital. Politically, we've had four Prime Ministers, four Labour leaders, September 11th, July 7th bombings and Brexit. Politics has changed, and changed again. But one thing hasn't changed about me - and that is my belief that Labour should stand for fairness, and for those who will never be represented by the Tories who represent the elite class.

Advertisement

Being a Labour member has been arduous at times, now more than ever. I voted for Ed Milliband, with the belief of substance over style. Last year I voted for Burnham, agreeing with him on the NHS, social care and his work over Hillsborough (the worst act of class discrimination this country has ever seen). Corbyn didn't appeal to me then and he doesn't appeal now.

To me, Jeremy's principles seem an indulgence to those facing the brunt of Tory governance. Whilst we faced the coronation of Theresa May, he attended a Cuban Solidarity event. This may appeal to the middle classes of North London but it does nothing to address the issues working people are actually facing. Millions of people can't afford a leader with such low personal ratings. They can't afford the party to be going into an election so far behind in the polls. They can't afford the luxury of a principled but powerless Labour Party. The Labour governments I knew of 1997 - 2010 weren't perfect, but a huge improvement after 18 years of Tory rule.

I've seen the improvements made by a Labour government to social housing in the 2000's. I've seen the decline in the NHS caused by the Tory government since training for a career in healthcare. I feel the very real threat of Brexit to my family. I cannot face the idea of waking up the day after the next election with another Tory government in place.

If the NHS as we know and love it survives this government, we'll be lucky. We need more than parish council victories to stand up against this threat to our greatest institution. We need a Labour opposition that actually does what it is meant to, oppose, not one led by someone who goes on holiday during the most important political event of my lifetime.
By Stephen O'Brien*

Two days ago, Rose Lokonyen made history by competing in the 800m heats at the Rio Olympics. Unlike other athletes, she didn't run under her home country's flag. 14 years after she made the impossible choice to flee her home and became a refugee in Kenya, she competed under the Olympic flag, as part of the first-ever team of refugee Olympians.

Rose's Olympic story is unique - but her story of fear and flight is not. Two weeks ago, I visited her home country of South Sudan. I travelled to Wau and Aweil, where thousands of people have congregated, seeking protection from violence or relief from unrelenting hunger. The situation there was much worse than when I last visited in 2015 - more than 2.5 million people have fled in terror of brutal killings and violent rapes and hunger is rife.

Advertisement

In Juba, I spoke to Nyadhial (name changed) who, like many others, had fled there seeking safety for her family. But when she arrived, she found that there was no food. To leave the site was to risk being raped or killed by gangs of armed men; to stay was to risk starvation. Nyadhial chose to feed her children. I admire her extraordinary courage - but I am outraged that she had to make that choice in the first place.

In Aleppo, Syria, nearly two million people across the city are suffering. Fighting is raging around the city, electricity is out, water is scarce, and movement is restricted. Some 275,000 people in the east of the city, who have lived through almost daily attacks that have devastated their neighbourhoods, have now been cut off from vital supplies, including food, for more than a month. These are women, men and children who are confronted with the impossible choice of leaving their homes and risking their lives to find safety, or staying to face indiscriminate attacks, starvation and disease.

Humanitarians working there also face impossible choices. Doctors facing shortages of supplies must decide which patients to treat, even as the hospitals they work in are being attacked. Rescue workers must decide which neighbourhoods to send ever-dwindling crews to after an airstrike or mortar attack destroys yet another home, school or hospital. It is staggering that after five years, such levels of human suffering continue. It is a stain on the moral conscience of the world.

The need is truly immense. The United Nations and our humanitarian partners have supplies ready to roll: food, hospital supplies, ambulances, fuel for generators. To move, however, we need the guns to fall silent. We have urged the parties to agree to 48-hour ceasefires to allow aid in and people out. We will take full advantage of an opportunity to deliver assistance to the most acutely vulnerable communities. However, ultimately the only stop to the suffering is a country-wide ceasefire.

Advertisement

South Sudan and Syria are just two of the unacceptable humanitarian tragedies that are taking place in more than 40 countries around the world. Yet, despite facing the highest levels of humanitarian need in more than 70 years, we are grappling with our biggest funding shortage. More than halfway through the year, the UN and our partners have received less than a third of the US$21.6 billion required to meet the most urgent humanitarian needs in 2016.

Humanitarians do extraordinary work in the face of these difficult circumstances. The World Food Programme delivers food to more than 80 million people in 80 countries. UNICEF vaccinates nearly half of the world's children, saving three million lives each year. In Syria we reach millions of people with assistance every month, and since January this year we have reached over 400,000 of the some 590,000 people besieged by conflict. This work is not without significant risk for the brave aid workers who commit their lives to helping those most in need.

Around the world in 2015, 109 aid workers lost their lives, 110 were injured and 68 were kidnapped. More than a fifth of these attacks took place in South Sudan, making it the most dangerous country in the world to be an aid worker. On 11 July, a despicable attack was carried out against aid workers at the Terrain Hotel in Juba, during which an NGO staff member was killed and female aid workers were gang-raped and beaten by armed men in uniform. This attack is emblematic of the immense risks that humanitarian staff in South Sudan face on a daily basis. Yet, despite these challenges, aid groups have reached more than 2.8 million people with life-saving assistance and protection in South Sudan this year.

This year, World Humanitarian Day follows on the heels of the World Humanitarian Summit, which took place in May in Istanbul. At the Summit, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon put forward an Agenda for Humanity, a five-point plan that outlines the actions that are needed under five core responsibilities: to prevent and end conflict. To uphold the rules of war. To invest in humanity and in saving lives. To move from delivering aid to ending need. And to leave no one behind in our fight to alleviate suffering, reduce risk and lessen vulnerability on a global scale. There leaders made over 3,000 commitments to action, in order to achieve the Agenda. These commitments represent progress. But it cannot end there. We must ensure that the commitments are transformed into action that will deliver clear results on the ground.

We must lobby for humanitarian budgets to be filled so that we can deliver on immediate needs. We must also think about how to stop the escalation of crises that we are witnessing today and reduce needs in the future.

As concerned citizens, we must continue to call for strong leadership and action. We must increase efforts to prevent and end the conflicts that take such a devastating toll on civilians. We must push for warring parties to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law. We must put pressure on global decision makers to take decisive action, and to ensure accountability for violation of these global norms. We must also step up our work to outlaw all forms of violence against women and girls and apply the strongest penalties to perpetrators.

Unless we see change, the unprecedented scale of forced displacement and humanitarian need will not decline. Each one of us can do more to give hope to those who are forced to flee their homes by lobbying our leaders to uphold their responsibility for helping and protecting the tens of millions of people displaced by conflicts and disasters in their own country or across borders. We must ask our leaders to respond to large movements of refugees and migrants in a more humane and dignified way, through increased international cooperation and responsibility sharing, including more resettlement opportunities for refugees and genuine legal pathways for migration. We must fight xenophobia.

People in crises face impossible choices. But our choice is clear. As citizens of the world, we must be outraged. We must demand more of our leaders. We must raise our voices against injustice. We must stand in solidarity with the 130 million people around the world whose lives are caught up in crisis. And we must not rest until Nyadhial and millions of others like her no longer have to make the choices she does.

Watch the video:

Advertisement

_________________
A dentist is simply a doctor in charge of your oral hygiene. So, let me ask you a question:

How many times have you visited a dentist this year?

Alright, you don't have to tell me your answer. Most people don't visit a dentist until they have severe problems in their oral area.

I am also part of this group even if I don't want to admit it. This is because most people are unaware of the importance and usefulness of a dentist. It is recommended that you visit a dentist at least twice in a year to keep your gums and teeth healthy.

Dental visits are supposed to start at the age of 8 years when the permanent teeth are replacing the milk teeth. Nowadays, psychologists recommends that dental visits should start at the age of 1 to eliminate the fear of dentists at an early stage.



Dentists normally work as partners and associate themselves to the bigger groups. While some of them work solely in private clinics, others work in the government, higher education, research programs or even in military.



A dentist will care for your oral cavity, teeth and gums by providing any of the following services:

Advertisement

Crowns and bridges

Dentures

Home care advice

Dental transplants

Cosmetic procedures

Gum disease treatment

Mouth-guards

Oral surgery

Partial dentures

Nutrition counseling

Orthodontics

Sealants

Restorative care

Tobacco cessation

Root canal therapy

X-rays and other diagnosis treatments

Teeth cleanings and flossing.

These are the 5 things that you probably don't know about a dentist and how he can help you with your oral health.

#1. Cleaning

Cavities are the most widespread long-lasting disease of teeth and molars. This problem is created when you are careless in the cleanliness of your teeth.

Regular cleaning and scaling of your teeth is necessary so as to prevent tooth decay. If you don't properly clean your teeth, plaque (sticky layer containing bacteria) will be formed and dentist will remove this plaque by tooth scrapper.

Advertisement

#2. Flossing

A dentist will floss your teeth and show you the right method to brush and clean your teeth at home. During flossing, a waxy thread is passed between unexposed places of your teeth to remove every food particle.

You will have to bear major surgical treatments of your teeth if you choose to ignore minor issues in your oral cavity.

#3. Care Reminder

It is not okay at all to go to a dentist only when you have severe pain in your teeth or when your gums are bleeding.

A dentist will always remind you of your general teeth care even when your teeth area is perfectly okay and would give you useful advices on how to properly care for your teeth.

As a matter of fact, oral hygiene training should be given at preschools to teach the young generation about importance of oral care.

Advertisement

#4. Teeth Restoration

When required, a dentist will perform important treatments such as diagnostic tests for chronic diseases, biopsies and screening tests for oral cancer.

A dentist will examine every type of disorder in your mouth area like lumps, ulceration, discolorations and inflammations and then treat them accordingly.

#5. Diseases Indicator

It has been said that oral cavity and the nails are mirror to your internal health. Never ignore the little signs of your gums and teeth.

Your dentist will help you to identify major issues like cardiovascular disorder and diabetes. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends oral checkup as another way of chronic disease prevention.

You can get to know about other major health problems by getting your teeth and gums examined by dentist.



As a matter of fact, visiting a dentist may be considered uneconomical and time taking but at the end of the day, it is worth it. It is important that you take actionable steps and teach your children about oral hygiene.

Advertisement
A Brazil fan cheers during the men's Gold Medal volleyball match between Italy and Brazil at the Maracanazinho stadium in Rio de Janeiro on August 21, 2016, at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. / AFP / Johannes EISELE (Photo credit should read JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images)

Following the Olympics play out in Rio and watching how Brazil was being mocked by foreigners, I'm sure that many Brazilians felt sick to their stomachs. I certainly did.

That's why I decided to write this letter to people who love to come here to enjoy the beaches and stare at women in bikinis, but disrespect the country that hosts them. Maybe they can learn something.

Advertisement

Dear gringos,

Yes, we live in a country full of problems, and we'll be the first to admit it.

We have hundreds of things to improve upon, from education to security.

It is true that some Brazilians have booed foreign athletes as they collected their medals, but they do not represent the majority.

Okay, we have many challenges; our politicians are corrupt, and we are living with deep social and racial inequality.

But we are like mothers who criticize their own children, but are furious the moment someone speaks ill of them.

You American swimmers must have thought: Of course it would be very possible for four foreign, white, tall, Olympians to be assaulted in Rio de Janeiro. Who would not believe it? This underdeveloped country can't even clean a pool the right way. They would never be able to find the truth. So we'll just go back to the American dream with our medals.

Advertisement

But we do not accept that these athletes wasted the time and energy of our police force to investigate a crime that did not exist, just to disguise a mess they made. We hope that they have learned their lesson.





We are like mothers who criticize their own children, but are furious the moment someone speaks ill of them.





We were not amused when your newspapers decided to ridicule our security. In Brazil, justice may be slow. Many people are still assaulted on the street, and far too many die because of drug trafficking. Many people are still assaulted on the street, unfortunately. But the victims are real people, mothers who lose their children, workers who lose everything they have. It's very painful and it should be taken very seriously.

We are sorry if we gave you the impression that women here are easy, and that they exist only to satisfy men's sexual desires. This is not true. If we go to the beach with smaller bikinis, this is our business, not an invitation. (By the way, the men here also have trouble understanding this.)

And when you cross the line, and commit acts of rape, we will acknowledge and denounce it, whether or not you're an Olympic athlete.

Advertisement

We don't like to hear that athletes from your country are alarmed at the risk of catching zika here. It is a sad disease that affects the lives of thousands of our babies. Sponsored by major brands and with access to medical resources, you would surely be in less danger than pregnant women that live in the northeast part of Brazil.

There is plenty of racism and prejudice in Brazil, and some people are even dying because of it. But we're still a diverse society that brings together people from different races, sexes and religions.

To claim that we are a "bizarre country" or that we are using magic to win is ridiculous. Would it hurt you to imagine that someone other than you might have talent?

Despite all this, we will continue to receive you with open arms, because we are Brazilians.

But we need to spell it out for you, so that you don't forget: BRAZIL IS NOT MESS!
Businesswoman looking out of office window, rear view

This is the story of a black transgender lesbian. Before you steel yourself for a long litany of pain, let me not bury the lede; this piece is largely innocent of the long litany of pain. Part of why I wrote this is because I can tell a story about transition and, while being perfectly honest, have not a scene that involves the back of a police car, or being arrested for prostitution, or even engaging in any kind of sex work. There's no period of homelessness and no vignettes where I wake up in a hospital, lucky to be alive. My life is quotidian and it is that very character that makes my story worth telling.

I started transition back in 1991, in 1993 I went 'full time,' had my ID changed and a year later I landed my first job in the software industry, working as a customer service rep for the Institute for Global Communications, a non-profit ISP. With the exception of the first four years of my time in Oregon, during the 2001 - 2004 crash, I have been steadily employed, largely paid fairly and where I have not been it has been rectified without my having to make a stink. I have seen the private sector move from a place where it was pretty amazing to have out gay men and lesbians to one where, as a new hire at at start-up in the latter 90s my HR person said that the subject of domestic partner coverage for insurance had never come up because I was employee #11 and only the second person to come 'outside the family' as it were and now that they had hired a lesbian they needed to add it. It was a matter of waiting a few days. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I didn't have a partner! That was in 1997. Fast forward to 2015.

Advertisement

Three things happened in very rapid succession starting last June. The first is that I received a rejection letter from Kaiser kicking back my doctor's referral for me to get GCS. The second is that the Obergfell decision was handed down and the third is the aftermath of my GCS referral being rejected.

The rejection letter speaks for itself. I was devastated but my wonderful wife, Jaime, reminded me that the doctor had said this might happen. I went to my HR department and made the case that because my employer, New Relic, is based in San Francisco had I stayed in the Bay Area and then been hired on my surgery would be covered on the Kaiser plan down there but it wasn't in Portland. PeopleOps said that they would look into the matter and get back to me.

This was last June, about a week before the Obergfell decision legalizing marriage equality. I heard back from HR in mid-July. They were in the middle of negotiating with Kaiser for this year's benefits, GCS would be added. In October, just before the open enrollment period began, I heard back on the details of what the benefit will be. Suffice to say that it's more than enough to cover the bottom surgery I need plus hospitalization. I now had only to wait until the beginning of 2016 and I would be in the endgame. I wrote the three top leaders in the company about the tears of joy I was crying and received wonderful, heartfelt responses of support back.

Advertisement

In December of last year, I told my boss and our director that in 2016 I was going to be getting surgery and what that surgery was for. I've never been out at work about this. I then told my team and then the department. A few weeks before I wrote this version of this essay, I gave a talk to the women of the engineering group -- comprising the software engineers, the TSE (Technical Support Engineers) and BSEs (Business Support Engineers) -- about what it has been like to transition, what the journey was like and, most importantly, what strengths I've picked up along the way.

A year ago on this date, the sum of people who knew I was transgender was less than 30. If you count only those disclosures that happened because I was dating someone, that number is less than 20. If you counted only people I worked with, it was four people, one of whom died a few years ago. Counting the people who knew me in high school or junior high, there were three -- including my sister. If you count the people who knew me prior to junior high, it was my sister and a sixth grade teacher who I got back in touch with.

Fast-forward to the present and I am writing this piece. I'm out at work, I'm out at the UU church we attend, I wrote a piece for Basic Rights Oregon's blog, which this essay is a riff on, I'm out at work, I'm out with the neighbors with whom we are close. I even, in the wake of Orlando, took a risk and reconnected with people from high school (and some as far back as elementary school!) and was shocked. I have my best girlfriend back, the person who I used to talk all day at school and then talk all night on the phone driving our parents to utter distraction. People I hadn't spoken to in three decades welcomed me home like a long lost sister. It put some perspective on things which resulted in me dumping someone whose 'support' consisted of misgendering me (publicly, multiple times in a given conversation) and using my wrong name, not a year on, or five but twenty-five years on. I am loved and people see the powerful woman I've become.

So why now? In thirty-nine days and eighteen hours from this writing (but who's counting?) I will be checking into Oregon Health Sciences University where my surgery is taking place. So why on God's green earth am I coming out now? I don't have to do this. I've been stealth long enough I could have kept flying under the radar.

Advertisement

There are three reasons, the first having to do with my parents and the charge they gave my sister and I; the second having to do with who I was 25 years ago, and the last having to do with a hedgehog. The first, is that my parents raised my sister and I that we would, by dint of our upbringing and privileges, be expected to take some kind of leadership role in our community. This, of course, meant the black community or at least the black church but I've taken that and just moved it over to the queer community. I was raised to carry myself a certain way and that makes me a good person to put out front as a visible symbol of a minority group.

The second is that to hear the Internet tell it, black transgender women only have one of two fates -- celebrity or a desperate, marginal existence ending lonely, too young, and possibly violently. Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, or one of the many black transgender women who were murdered in 2015. There is another possible future.

The third is because this last March, we put our first hedgehog, Nuggan, to sleep. She was a rescue someone had dumped next to our house and our dog had found. She was elderly and we gave her the best last couple of years of life we could manage. At the end, with cancer eating her back quarters and she unable to even get to the food bowl, we put her to sleep using carbon dioxide in a closed container. This is the method recommended by the American Veterinary Association to euthanize a small animal in the home. It seemed far less cruel on her than to take her to the vet, where a needle would be put through her heart. My part was to keep a tight seal on the pitcher we had her in so I watched the life go out of her eyes. I'd killed plenty of insects and spiders but never another mammal, not face to face like that (I've hit a couple of suicidal squirrels) but we did it because it was the best thing for her, even if it was the hardest thing for us.

It taught me something about love; if you really love someone or a group of someones you will do what is best for them, even if it is hardest for you. It is better for young transgender women to know that there's a life out there for them that doesn't involve sex work, either prostitution or pornography, nor does it rest on the vagaries of celebrity, stardom and being discovered. I am not a celebrity, I live a good life but it lacks glamour and excitement. That's kind of the whole point.

Advertisement

There's a teenaged girl, I didn't quite get to be and I've built the life she would have wanted. Somewhere out there, there's a version of me from 1991 and now she knows that it's possible.

--
ERIE, PA - AUGUST 12: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at a rally at Erie Insurance Arena on August 12, 2016 in Erie, Pennsylvania. Trump continues to campaign for his run for president of the United States. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

One of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's top advisers on Israel has close ties to a West Bank settlement whose history vividly illustrates the tragic and problematic nature of Israel's 50-year occupation of this territory.

The adviser, David Friedman, is head of an organization called American Friends of Beit El which has raised millions of tax-deductible dollars for the settlement in the heart of the West Bank. He has been pushing Trump and the Republican Party to abandon support for a two-state solution which has been a central plank of bipartisan U.S. foreign policy for the past three decades. His efforts were influential in persuading the Republicans to delete any mention of a two-state solution from their 2016 national platform.

Advertisement

For instance, Friedman recently told the Jerusalem Post in an interview that Israel might be able to keep the West Bank and still make peace with the Palestinians -- something no serious analyst or foreign policy professional believes. He added that a Trump administration might view an Israeli annexation of West Bank settlement as legitimate. But under a two-state solution, there is no way that the Beit El settlement could remain in Israel. By financing its expansion, Friedman's organization is making such a peace deal more difficult. Its ultimate aim, of course, is to make it impossible.

Beit El, began in 1977 when some 17 families, took illegally over an army base north of the Palestinian city of Ramallah. In their book, "Lords of the Land," Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar make it clear that the initial land for the settlement was expropriated from the Palestinian farmers who owned and cultivated it, under the questionable guise that it was necessary for Israeli security.

"The landowners did not even know about the cultivation order. When they came to work their lands in the summer of 1978, they were ejected by settlers," the authors write.

The Palestinian landowners appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, which ruled that the settlement did advance Israel's security needs, even though the land seizure clearly violated international law which forbids an occupying power from seizing or destroying the enemy's property unless such destruction or seizure "be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war." The court decision also left unclear how a settlement which required, then as now, constant Israeli Army protection advanced national security.

Advertisement

From that beginning, the settlement has grown to a sizeable town of around 6,000, divided into a residential religious community and a residential yeshiva (Jewish religious seminary).

As the seat of a regional council, Beit El provides a variety of social and educational services. There are also some private businesses, stores, restaurants, and light industry, most notably the Beit El tefillin factory and a small winery. There are two large synagogues and seven schools of varying religious degrees.

Author Hillel Halkin described a visit some years ago, noting that the settlement has now expanded to the outskirts of Ramallah, a Palestinian city of some 70,000 and headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.

"There are no relations of any kind between them. 'Our neighbors,' Beit-El's inhabitants call the residents of Ramallah with palpable sarcasm," he wrote. "The road leading to Beit-El from Jerusalem is traveled on almost exclusively by Israeli vehicles and passes through no Palestinian villages. For a short while it runs along the east -- that is, the 'wrong' -- side of the separation barrier between Israel proper with its 'settlement blocs' and the Palestinian territories. Then the barrier disappears and you are deep in the territory that, so recent Israeli governments have made clear, are considered tradable for a peace treaty with the Palestinian Authority."

The settlers are constantly looking for ways to expand the settlement, legally or illegally. A few years ago, some families illegally started a new neighborhood called Ulpana, building yet again on private Palestinian land. The Israeli Supreme Court for once sided with the Palestinians and court ordered their removal.

Advertisement

Last summer, violent clashes erupted at Beit El as security forces began demolishing two illegal buildings. Some 200 people gathered at the site, hurling rocks at officers and setting fire to tires. Police dispersed the crowd with water cannons. Right-wing ministers supported the illegal settlers and denounced both the court and the Prime Minister, while vowing to redouble their settlement efforts.

In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to build 300 new homes in the community.
Unless distrust, insecurity, and illusions are first addressed, no incentives -- however sweeping and compelling -- will motivate Israel and the Palestinians to make the critical concessions needed to reach a peace agreement.

Part II: This article is a continuation from last week's; please click here to see part one.

The international conference that was convened by France on June 3rd in Paris to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process ended up without concretely establishing specific measures that would persuade both parties to resume negotiations in order to reach a peace agreement. The joint communique issued following the conference stated "The participants discussed possible ways in which the international community could help advance the prospects for peace, including by providing meaningful incentives to the parties to make peace."

Although the conferees agreed to reconvene again later this year and offer some incentives to both sides to restart the negotiations in earnest, I maintain that no incentives, however extensive and compelling, will succeed unless preceded by a period of reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians. In fact, if Netanyahu or Abbas refuse to engage in a process of reconciliation, this would strongly suggest that they are not interested in reaching a peace agreement, let alone making the major concessions necessary to achieve peace.

Advertisement

While incentives will eventually become necessary to lock in an agreement, there are three essential impediments that must first be mitigated in order to change the Israelis' and Palestinians' perception of each other to enable them to negotiate in good faith.

The final element (in addition to distrust and national security) is the illusions that significant constituencies on both sides continue to entertain, which ultimately deny each other's right to an independent state of their own.

Illusions: In The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud offers the following definition: "...we call a belief an illusion when a wish-fulfillment is a prominent factor in its motivation, and in doing so we disregard its relations to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store by verification." What is characteristic of illusions is that: 1) they are derived from deep human wishes, and 2) the belief is held (or would be held) in the absence of any compelling evidence, or good rational grounds, on its behalf.

Both sides have a very powerful and widely influential constituency that still believes they can have it all. In Israel, parties such as Jewish Home, which is led by Naftali Bennett and part of the coalition government, still believe that much of the West Bank should be annexed and that no viable Palestinian state should be established as Israel can manage the conflict indefinitely.

Advertisement

On the part of the Palestinians, groups such as Hamas believe that all of Palestine, including Israel, is Palestinian territory, and that under any circumstances (and despite occasional statements to the contrary) Israel should not exist as an independent Jewish state. At best, they believe that the Jews can live in Palestine under Palestinian rule.

Both sides have been living with illusions about these issues and are imbued with a zero-sum approach, as if any gain by one side must be at the expense of the other. Unfortunately, the leadership on both sides have done nothing but promulgate these beliefs, and even less to disabuse themselves of these illusions.

Since illusions answer to inner needs, having to give them up can be an extremely painful, even traumatic experience. As a result, one of the major obstacles to adopting the Arab Peace Initiative (API) has been that many Israelis are still not prepared psychologically to relinquish some of their most cherished illusions (i.e. acquiring the whole land of Israel). On the other hand, the Palestinians, especially Hamas, also want to control the entire mandated Palestine, which is illusionary as well.

Israel's illusions have served to create the logic for occupation, ultimately perpetuating the dehumanization of the Palestinians. Israel's political leadership clung to these illusions and never understood the mindset of the Palestinians.

The Palestinians, for their part, cling to their illusions just as blindly and desperately as the Israelis, which leads to resistance to and fear of change. This has contributed to making the Israeli-Palestinian conflict both chronic and intractable, as the various illusions are continuously and consciously nurtured by daily encounters between the two sides.

Advertisement

Finally, illusions are also fed by experience itself -- since the creation of the state of Israel, neither side has come to terms with the fact that coexistence is not one of many options, it is the only option.

Incentives:

Given that these three points need to first be mitigated, any and all incentives provided have to occur once these issues have been largely allayed, while preparing the parties to embrace the overall framework for peace based on the API. In fact, providing any incentives prior to a period of reconciliation could undermine the effort to persuade both sides to make the necessary concessions for peace. Indeed, if they begin to benefit before making practical concessions, there will be no compelling reason to concede on anything, as has been the case in the past, and hope that their position could be further strengthened as time passes.

In an interview with Le Monde, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault stated following the June 3rd conference that "I am targeting two outcomes for this meeting [a follow-up international conference]: confirmation of the prospect of a conference with the parties by the end of the year and the creation of several working groups, one of which will be on the theme of economic incentives, e.g. the offer of a special partnership with the European Union and an association agreement for the future Palestinian State."

Foreign Minister Ayrault is absolutely correct to suggest that incentives are necessary to persuade both sides to come to terms with each other's rights and existence. These incentives, however, will not work unless, as stated above, they are preceded by a period of 18-24 months that allows for the mitigation of the three elements addressed above.

There is no doubt that finalizing a peace agreement would require significant incentives, and to that end the EU, along with the US, can offer the Palestinians the following, among other incentives: committing to raising billions of dollars to resettle and/or compensate the Palestinian refugees; and providing financial aid for the building of infrastructure throughout the Palestinian territories, in particular the building of schools, hospitals, and clinics, as these social and civic institutions are critical for the development of their future state. In addition, the EU can grant special provisions for Palestinian students to study tuition-free in European universities, provide guidance and assistance in the development of democratic institutions, and offer training and provisions for internal policing and security.

Advertisement

In regards to Israel, the EU can upgrade its association with Israel into a comprehensive partnership with increased trade and investments, and enhanced scientific and cultural links. In addition, the EU and the US can offer a financial aid package, similar to the ten-year plan currently being negotiated between the US and Israel, specifically for revitalizing debilitated, poverty-stricken areas in Israel, particularly those in urban locales.

Another potential incentive is establishing a special strategic association between Israel and NATO. Such an association would also provide a security umbrella to Israel, particularly in dealing with any potential threat from Iran. This measure will make it known that the US and the EU are prepared to come to Israel's aid against any material threat emanating from any source.

Conclusion:

Although a majority of Israelis and Palestinians realize the inevitability of coexistence and presumably understand the general parameters of a negotiated peace agreement, biased and selective perceptions, reinforced by historical experience and incompatible ideologies, have locked both sides into immobile positions. The factors that maintain and enhance these patterns include emotions such as fear, distrust, insecurity and illusions; the psychological outcome is mutual denial of the narrative of the other and mutual delegitimization. Put together, the operative result is stagnation and polarization.

What is therefore needed is a consensus-oriented dialogue and people-to-people interaction over a period of time, before they can sit and negotiate, to resolve the issues of perception-a tall order given the current environment that buttresses rather than ameliorates negative perceptions. Yet, this remains the only starting point that could usher in a negotiating process to successfully end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Although defeating Donald Trump is essential, that is not the only essential goal that needs to be achieved in the coming election. Long before the rise of Trump, the Republican Party of our times has been playing a destructive role in the American system, and that party must be stripped of its power.

Otherwise, although a Clinton victory would avert the Trump catastrophe, it will not also enable the American political system to take constructive action to build a better America. Not if the GOP retains the power in Congress to obstruct every proposal, regardless of its merits.

It is true that Trump himself - having given the Republican Party a more blatantly ugly face - will help pull down all the down-ballot Republicans running for House and Senate. That the Democrats should use the grotesque figure at the top of the Republican ticket to drag down the rest was the point of the first installment of this two-part message of strategy.

Advertisement

The idea there was that the Democrats should accentuate the bind in which all Republicans have been put by their repugnant presidential nominee. The bind is this: they don't want to be tarnished with Trump, but they also can't afford to alienate the large portion of their base that gave Trump the nomination. We've seen - e.g. in the contortions of Republicans like Paul Ryan, John McCain, and Kelly Ayotte - that these Republicans can find no good way out of this dilemma.

Democratic strategy should keep the spotlight on the inability of these Republicans to speak with integrity and stand for anything that even looks like principle. I proposed, for example, that Republican candidates be challenged in this way:

Do you endorse Trump? If so, how do you justify supporting a man to become president who... [fill in the portrait of a man manifestly unfit for that office]? And if you do not endorse him, stand up and be a leader to your followers and tell them why you cannot support this man, even if he is the nominee of your party.

But it would be a serious mistake to campaign as though Trump were the Republicans' only vulnerability. Trump may be pulling down the whole Republican ticket somewhat, but the needed Democratic victory may require that the whole GOP be pulled down further.

Advertisement

That can be done with what should be a second prong in the Democratic campaign strategy: an aggressive challenge to the Republicans regarding their obstructionism.

Obstructionism is not a legitimate political strategy. By all American political norms, it is simply not acceptable for a political party to put making the president fail their top priority (as they have throughout the presidency of Barack Obama, and quite likely will again with a Hillary Clinton presidency), even at great cost to the nation.

It should not be too difficult to persuade the electorate that the kind of obstructionism that the Republicans have practiced is a betrayal of the nation.

That the Republicans have been allowed to get away with their across-the-board obstructionism for so long - even to profit from it politically - is most regrettable. But the present campaign presents a new and important opportunity to make them pay.

Every Republican candidate should be confronted - by the media, by the public, by Democratic candidates, by Hillary Clinton herself - with some form of this challenge, pushing them to declare what they would do if elected (or re-elected) to the House or Senate.

Advertisement



Tell the voters, oh Republican Candidate, what you will do if you win this seat (in the House or Senate) and the Democrats win the presidency. Will you continue your Party's unprecedented policy of wholesale obstruction--which has given us the least productive Congress in our history? Or will you seek to work with the other office-holders the people have chosen - including the Democratic president - to find ways to move the nation forward? Are you going to try to find good solutions to our nation's problems, or are you going to just try to make the president look bad, as your party has been doing now for seven years?

Again, the job here is to shine a spot-light on what exposes the moral bankruptcy of today's Republican Party. That Trump is their nominee is one such vulnerability. And the whole Party's having put the quest for partisan advantage ahead of the good of the nation is another.

Some Republicans have talked about a strategy to support their down-ballot candidates by telling voters of the need for a "check" on a Hillary Clinton presidency. This argument should be turned back against the Republicans, exposing this "check" for whatit really is (judging from their treatment of President Obama): a crippling - for purely partisan reasons -- of the America's ability to move forward and meet our challenges.

Trump is ugly, and his ugliness wears off on his Party. But the Party has its own important ugliness as well.

A strong case can be made to persuade Americans who want their representatives to work to make a better America to reject this Republican Party and elect Democrats to Congress.

Advertisement
Notepad with Personal Branding on office wooden table.

Much has been said and written in the past few days about Donald Trump's noxious appeals to African American voters. Exemplifying those appeals is his August 19th speech in Dimondale, Michigan, where he addressed those voters directly (although not so much in person, as Dimondale is a predominantly white suburb of Lansing), rattling off a number of stereotypical problems in the African American community in order to ask, "What the hell do you have to lose?" by voting for the Republican rather than Democratic presidential candidate.

As political historian Kevin Kruse and others have noted, and contrary to some media coverage of Trump's speech, it's not at all new for the GOP presidential candidate to make such an appeal to African American voters. Indeed, as Kruse points out, the GOP nominee has done so in each of the last four presidential elections (as well as many prior ones). If anything, Trump's speech simply laid bare, as has become characteristic of his campaign, many of the hidden assumptions and stereotypes that have consistently driven those Republican racial outreach efforts.

Advertisement

To my mind, it was another phrase in Trump's August 19th speech that stood out and has been under-analyzed for what it reveals about our 21st century society and world. "What do you have to lose," Trump asked African Americans, "by trying something new like Trump?" The phrase presented Trump and his presidential candidacy as an explicit parallel to and even part of his commercial and personal brand, like trying a Trump steak or staying at a Trump resort (if you can still find any of either). And in so doing, Trump's comment reflects widely accepted contemporary social and political narratives of branding and success that we would do well to recognize and resist.

Perhaps the most prominent (and among the most successful by any measure) figures in 2016 America are the Kardashians, a family that has achieved their prominence and success based almost entirely on creating and capitalizing upon a personal brand. Using little if anything more than their private lives and public appearances, the family has built a brand worth (by some estimates) upwards of $100 million. It's easy to critique the Kardashians because of (among other things) how ubiquitous they are in our mass media, but that frustratingly inescapable presence in and of itself reflects their branding success and its effects.

Moreover, the Kardashians' form of branding is directly linked to many accepted narratives of success in contemporary society. It's widely understood that success in all social and commercial arenas now depends on social media presence and publicity, and such use of social media itself represents an overt form of personal branding--a process in which I'm entirely complicit, as I use the same name (AmericanStudier) on my Twitter and Facebook accounts among other sites. And when Omni hotels CEO Michael Deitemeyer delivered the 2013 commencement address at Fitchburg State University (my employer), he implored all of our graduates--based on his own experiences as well as the perspectives of many other business leaders--to focus on creating their own brand as an integral part of succeeding in both their professional and personal lives.

Advertisement

Branding has also become an increasingly central element of political success. Certainly Barack Obama's rise and successful first presidential campaign were connected to the creation of a brand, as exemplified by the famous Shepard Fairey poster that linked Obama's image to the concept of hope (a connection Obama extended in his campaign book The Audacity of Hope). We could trace that evolving political trend back at least to John F. Kennedy and the image of Camelot, an early example of the use of television and mass media to create and market a political brand. And I can't help but wonder how much of the ever-present narrative of Hillary Clinton's "unlikeability" boils down to her inability to create such a compelling personal brand, to link her campaigns or career to images or ideas that resonate in the popular imagination.

In a society and world where social media and the digital play such vital roles, where mass media influences our conversations so fully, and where image is ever more inextricably tied to identity, it's quite possible that personal branding is indeed and will remain a necessary component of success, in politics as in every other realm of life. But just as corporations are not actually people too, my friends, neither are people brands, and it's vital that we resist any narratives which equate the two.

Partly that's because, as the example of Trump's consistently bankrupt brands reminds us so potently, equating people with brands almost always means ignoring the limitations, failures, and flaws that are an inevitable part of the human experience--and likewise ignoring the more genuine successes that we can nonetheless achieve. Which is to say, equating Barack Obama with hope both inevitably leads to disappointment and makes it more difficult to recognize and appreciate the myriad ways in which his administration has been one of the most effective and successful in American history.

But it's also and especially crucial to resist narratives of branding because people, like political ideas and social movements, cannot be reduced to an image or icon without losing their nuance and complexity, and with them their potential for influential lives. The story of Hillary Clinton's life and career to date is defined not by what she has meant in our collective consciousness, but by what she has worked for and accomplished despite those simplifying narratives. And assessing her presidential candidacy similarly requires us to engage with her ideas and proposals for that potential next role, in direct relationship to those of her opponent. Whatever meaning brands might have in the realms of real estate and reality TV--or our social and mass media driven news cycle--they tell us very little about who a person is and how he or she will lead a nation.

Advertisement
Who is Robby Mook?

Well, he's Hillary Clinton's campaign manager.

Why should we care?

Because the people behind the candidates we elect matter. "Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future." Don't you think it's interesting that few know anything about this "operative?"

In the face of all the scrutiny of Donald Trump's staffers like Cory Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, Hope Hicks and others so well-known because of the Leftist media's convenient coverage, I thought the relatively unknown forces behind Hillary Clinton should be exposed and delved into in depth.

To me, Mook has been the arsonist/bomber who comes out as a Clinton surrogate and is all over lamestream media slamming Donald Trump. I find him an insufferably snarky weasel who rarely makes a point supported by the facts.

Advertisement

His wiseguy attitude and holier-than-thou responses to serious questions regarding his candidate's shortcomings are whimsical, if not misleading.

But who is this meely-mouthed, fresh-faced, smarmy political operative really? Inquiring minds want to know.

Advertisement

Mook was born and raised in Vermont, a bastion of course for Leftist political Progressives such as Howard Dean and Ben & Jerry, the ice cream Socialists.

According to his Wikipedia entry, Mook was the son of a physics professor at Dartmouth--an academic in Vermont, hard to get more liberal that that--and a hospital administrator mother.

He was indoctrinated apparently, into politics by a chance meeting with Matt Dunne while auditioning for a play in high school. Dunne had been elected at the age of 22 to the Vermont House of Representatives. Mook was also a US Senate page along the way.

Going on to Columbia University to major in the Classics, Mook presumably found nothing in Morningside Heights that would expand his thinking into a more Conservative viewpoint. That's a shrieking understatement.

Soon, Mook would be operating as a campaign volunteer and strategist for Dunne, Jeanne Shaheen's run for the Senate, Martin O'Malley, John Kerry, Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean's imploded run for President. A veritable who's who of Dem politicians responsible for our country's current condition.

Advertisement

Then in 2007, Mook became involved in Hillary Clinton's shocking campaign loss to Barack Obama and was underlyingly laying the groundwork for his eventual appointment eight years later as Hillary's campaign manager.

An interesting tidbit I didn't know: Mook is alleged to be the "first openly gay manager of a Presidential campaign." I'm not sure how open Mook has really been about this fact. It is certainly relevant.

Can you imagine if Paul Manafort had been the first openly gay campaign manager? We'd hear the press discussing it every single day with photos of Manafort's partner plastered all over the media. Nothing of this sort occurred with Mook.

As an unwavering Conservative, to say that I don't like or respect Robby Mook would be a very fair assessment.

He reminds me a little too much of Josh Earnest with his 'smartest guy in the room' psychology.

Advertisement

Watch as Mook squirms and struggles to respond to MSNBC's rather soft line of questioning

Watch as Mook's brother-from-another-mother, Josh Earnest is unctuous and prevaricating about the President's immigration policy.
What happens when you give eight bright young entrepreneurs the freedom and resources to change the way we approach sustainable business?

They create something revolutionary, while making established businesses sit up and take notice.

Over the northern summer, DNV GL gathered a team of students from a range of studies at the company headquarters outside Oslo, Norway. They were given six weeks to create a digital platform to drive awareness of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while creating value for both business and society.

The result is Wembo - a two-part digital platform designed to enable businesses and consumers to do their part in reaching the Global Goals through transparency, collaboration and sharing.

Advertisement



Four of the eight dedicated summer students in 2016 with the new Wembo app, from left: Marthe Sogn Lien, Alexander Gaugstad, Ingrid Bye Lken, and Stefan Elston.

What is Wembo?

Wembo consists of two digital products: an online dashboard called Wembo Analytics for businesses, and a smartphone application called Wembo Go for consumers.

Wembo Analytics is a web portal that will enable companies to share, monitor and improve their sustainability performance across every link of a product's supply chain. The information is then analyzed by DNV GL's data center that will provide companies with a score of how sustainable their production is. A company could see how it measures up against competitors, and select suppliers based on their sustainability scores.

The Wembo Go app lets consumers scan and compare to products side by side, choosing the product with the best sustainability score. This could be based on things like labour practices, or how far a product has travelled for processing and packaging. The aim is to encourage more sustainable consumption by letting consumers see the global impact of the products they choose.

Advertisement

"Before I started working on the project I didn't really grasp the size of the negative impact we humans are having on the planet. I hope Wembo can contribute to a more sustainable future", explains Stefan Michael Elston, a graduate student from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH).



The team presenting Wembo at DNV GL head office, from left: Stefan Elston, Eivind Harris, Ingride Bye Lken, Simen Hexeberg, Erlend S. Harbitz, Marthe Sogn Lien, Johan Jrgen Grav and Alexander Gaugstad.

Backing youth in business

When companies like DNV GL hire interns, the standard assumption is that we're going to teach them about the world of business. With our summer project, we turned this completely around. Instead we gave the students the opportunity to teach us what to do. I am convinced that giving young digital natives this kind of opportunities and responsibility will be a key factor for success in the accelerating technological shift that is happening today. As a company, this approach is extremely valuable. It helps us stay flexible, creative and keep us energized.

It's also a boon for the students: partnering with a global company and working on something that has real-world significance puts them a step ahead in the competitive graduate market.

I am truly impressed to see what the students have created over just six weeks. At DNV GL, we aim to enable sustainable business models and encourage industries to see the opportunities and the value of being transparent. Wembo fits right into this approach. Over a short period, these students have given us a tool to help the world reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals by year 2030. They really are members of 'Generation S'; the custodians of tomorrow who understand the power of sustainability to create positive change.

Advertisement

The combination of big data analysis and transparency Wembo provides could very well be the key to unlocking a safe and sustainable future.

You can read more about Wembo here, or check out the prototype for yourself.
It is common for international sales contracts to have a choice-of-language provision designating an official language for the agreement. However, when preparing the contract one should consider both the enforceability of the choice-of-language provision and its application to related activities, such as arbitration. This comment briefly discusses a single judicial decision. Always consult an experienced attorney in international business transactions.

A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit refused to enforce a Chinese arbitration award because the notice of the arbitration proceeding was in Chinese [CEEG (Shanghai) Solar Science & Technology Co., LTD v. LUMOS LLC]. In brief and incomplete overview, the U.S. purchaser made a warranty claim against the Chinese manufacturer. After two years of communications and negotiations in English, the Chinese manufacturer sent the U.S. purchaser a Chinese-language notice of an arbitration proceeding to be conducted in China in Chinese. The U.S. purchaser missed a deadline to participate in the selection of arbitrators. Ultimately, the Chinese manufacturer sought enforcement of an arbitration award in a U.S. court.

The parties had entered into a "Co-Branding Agreement" stating that "all documentation, notices, judicial proceedings, and dispute resolution and arbitration entered into, given, instituted pursuant to, or relating to, this Agreement be drawn up in the English language." It additionally provided that any disputes would be subject to arbitration by the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC). This agreement contained warranty language.

Advertisement

A separate "Sales Contract" entered into approximately one year later did not contain an English language arbitration provision but stated that arbitration "shall be conducted in accordance with [CIETAC's] arbitration rules." The Contract did state that if the Chinese and English versions conflicted, the English version would govern. The Contract did not contain warranty language but did provide that the purchaser could file a "quality discrepancy" claim within thirty days of receiving the goods.

CIETAC rules state that while the parties may agree upon an arbitration language, in the absence of such a provision, the arbitration language will be Chinese or another language that CIETAC might designate. Hence, the arbitration was conducted in Chinese.

The purchaser argued in the arbitration proceeding that the Co-Branding Agreement and Sales Contract should be read together. However, the Chinese arbitration panel declined to do so, citing inconsistencies in the agreements, concluding that the warranty provisions in the Co-Branding Agreement were not binding in the Sales Contract. Additionally, the arbitration panel stated that it had authority only to review the Sales Contract.



After obtaining a favorable Chinese arbitration award, the Chinese manufacturer sought enforcement in a U.S. federal District Court under the Federal Arbitration Act and the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the "New York Convention"). The District Court refused to enforce the arbitration award, finding that the Chinese-language notice of arbitration was insufficient and that the provisions in the Co-Branding Agreement were a "master agreement" that served as an "umbrella" and should have controlled.

Advertisement

The Tenth Circuit upheld the District Court's decision, indicating that while an arbitrator's decisions are subject to "maximum deference," the New York Convention specifies that an arbitration award may not be upheld if a party did not receive proper notice of the arbitration proceedings. Citing previous cases, the Tenth Circuit stated that "notice must be reasonable calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections." Furthermore, the previous communications between the parties had been in English, English was specified in the agreements, and it would have been easy for the Chinese manufacturer to have included an English-language notice with the Chinese-language notice of arbitration. This ease was demonstrated by an English-language email concerning the arbitration sent by the Chinese manufacturer one month after the Chinese-language notice of arbitration. Ultimate prejudice to the U.S. purchaser resulted from both the loss of the right to participate in the selection of the arbitral tribunal that the Court found to be "not a minor procedural misstep" and the "surprisingly" complicated task of obtaining Chinese legal counsel to represent it in the arbitration.

There are several noteworthy takeaways from this decision:

1. Be certain that multiple agreements have standardized provisions and that each one appropriately references and incorporates the others' provisions.

2. Understand the culture, business customs, and expectations of the nation where you are conducting business.

3. The routine manner of doing business between the parties, in this situation conducting the transaction in English, will be given considerable weight by courts.

Advertisement

4. Plan ahead for translators and foreign legal counsel to be available as potentially needed under the agreement and business relationship.

5.Be very careful how a choice-of-language provision is written and be clear that it applies to all situations and will be legally enforceable in the nation where the transaction occurs.

6. When referencing an external body's rules (in this case, CIETAC) specify any provisions contained in those rules that do not apply to this agreement.

7.Have an internal business protocol for each transaction that will result in promptly reviewing and responding to situations and correspondence.

8.Realize that fundamental fairness dictates that appropriate notice and right to participate in arbitration be given.

Advertisement

9.While arbitration awards are typically enforced, it is not true that courts will simply rubber stamp an arbitration.

10.The New York Convention references a number of situations in which enforcement of a foreign arbitration award may be denied. In brief, enforcement may be denied based upon: a party being incapacitated; the agreement being unlawful where made; the lack of proper notice to a party or a party's inability to present his case; the subject or award was beyond the scope of the arbitration agreement; the arbitration panel or procedure was not in accordance with the agreement of the parties; the award was not final or was overturned in the country where it was created; or recognition or enforcement of the award would be contrary to public policy.
Active or retired United States Army generals like David Petraeus advising on political arrangements in foreign lands to promote peace, government legitimacy, and liberty are like dogs walking on his their hind legs. As British sage Samuel Johnson would have said, "It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Architecting institutions to secure liberty by thwarting the sordid ambitions of politicians by long-headed diffusions of power among rival factions is the most challenging endeavor known to mankind. The architect must command a mastery of ulterior motives, the crooked timber of humanity, and the personalities of political institutions that override the personalities of the individual occupants That mastery requires a meticulous study of political communities and the human condition from the beginning of recorded history; and, political experience that imparts knowledge of the narcissism, ignorance and tribalism that earmark the political class. It is the work of a lifetime. Only a handful has ever attained this level of political genius.



James Madison was one. He is to political science what Albert Einstein is to physics. Among other things, Mr. Madison was the father of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, Member of Congress, Secretary of State, twice United States President, member of the Virginia legislature, delegate to the continental congress under the Articles of Confederation, and author of a Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, the precursor to Virginia's landmark Statute for Religious Freedom.

Advertisement

In preparing for the constitutional convention of 1787, Madison read voraciously, and authored "Vices of the Political System of the United States" and "Ancient and Modern Confederacies." A small sample of Madison's infinite learning included the following:

Horace, Justinian, Ovid, Terence, Sallust, the New Testament, Homer, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Shakespeare, Addison, Milton, Smollett's History of England, Montaigne's Essays, Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws, Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bunyan, Grotius, Sydney ,Coke, Blackstone, Voltaire, Gibbon, Priestly, Dryden, Tillotson, Newton, Defoe, Bacon, Trenchard, Pope, and Samuel Johnson.

The Constitution, which was largely Madison's handiwork, earned the effusive praise of British

Prime Minister William Gladstone: "[T]he most wonderful work ever struck off at a given

time by the brain and purpose of man." Despite Madison's miracle at Philadelphia, the nation split asunder in 1861, after earlier near misses with the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, the Hartford Convention, and the Tariff of Abominations.



In sum, architecting the diffusion of power to secure liberty, government legitimacy, and efficacy is no job for amateurs. When that happens, the results are uniformly grim. United States amateurs in high executive branch offices have unwittingly fueled tribal, ethnic, or sectarian strife in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan, and Syria, among other places.

Advertisement

Military officers are trained to kill, not to draft constitutions or political dispensations of less dignity. It is altogether fitting that this is so. Their exclusive duty is to kill the enemy, simpliciter. Thus, General George C. Patton's military greatness in World War II was not diminished by his naive likening of the Nazi party to Democrats and Republicans in the United States.

Wise persons know what they don't know. But the rich, famous, or beautiful commonly come to believe their ignorance is wisdom because what they say no matter how unschooled or idiotic is reported in the media and received with awe by their admiring flocks. Linus Pauling won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954, which gave him an international platform and megaphone to campaign against nuclear weapons. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1963, only weeks before the United States orchestrated the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem as a precursor to our full-fledged involvement in the grisly Vietnam War. Mr. Pauling was as clueless about peace as he was knowledgeable about chemistry.

Retired Army General Petraeus is a celebrity because of his much-lauded military performances in Afghanistan and Iraq. Like other celebrities, he is unable to resist the temptation to speak authoritatively on subjects far beyond his ken. Thus, writing in The Washington Post on August 14, 2016 ("For Mosul, learning from 2003"), the retired general opines on political arrangements in Mosul and Nineveh Province in Iraq that he conjectures will give birth to enlightened government, stability, and reconstruction following the defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in those areas.

This is the Petraeus plan. Sunni Arabs, Kurds loyal to the Barzani clan and to theTalabani faction (both of which favor Kurdish independence), Shiite Arabs, Shiite and Sunni Turkmen, Yazidis, Christians, Shabak, and numerous tribes, after centuries of antagonism, join hands, in a Nineveh council. The Kurds volunteer to renounce independence or a variation. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who relies on Shiite militias to remain in power, volunteers to exclude them from Nineveh and bestow greater resources on a council over which he will command little or no influence. Everyone agrees to find common ground on issues that escape description. If they balk, the U.S.-led coalition will cajole them into becoming Canadians or else.

If I were a betting man, I would wager the retired Army general has refrained from putting his own money behind his own starry-eyed plan. It is like believing the Israeli-Palestinian divide could be bridged if the Knesset sat with the Palestinian Legislative Council. The Petraeus plan also wrongly assumes a United States capacity to influence foreign governments that does not exist. President Erdogan of Turkey and President el-Sisi of Egypt routinely ignore our exhortations, as did former President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Our political influence in post-Gaddafi Libya is miniscule. In post-Saddam Iraq, Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, and Turkmen have repeatedly defied our commandments to unify around a rule of law that transcends tribal, ethnic, or sectarian divides. In Afghanistan, President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah remain at loggerheads over our pleas to put aside political differences to better fight the Taliban and ISIS. The United States influence Petraeus assumes will make his plan work is a mirage.



In sum, when our military leaders begin to play James Madison in foreign nations, our troops should be immediately withdrawn. When our objectives are other than to kill, their role
However one feels about the Black Lives Matter movement, it has proven to be an instructive barometer for 21st century America. We continue to be a nation with an unhealthy reliance on oversimplification on issues critical to our common life.

Those not directly involved could define Black Lives Matter by its name, along with how one views those three words taken together via a sound bite or video footage that affirms any preconceived notions.

Black Lives Matter was created in 2012 after George Zimmerman was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Though known by many primarily through the lens of advocating on behalf of black victims who died by the hands of white police officers, its guiding principles include, but are not limited to, affirming the black family, LGBT equality and enhancing intergenerational relationships.

Advertisement

Contrary to the popular narrative, Black Lives Matter is also concerned with black-on-black crime.

But Black Lives Matter as a phrase, for one who oversimplifies, becomes the piece de resistance. Almost assuredly, one emerging from the oversimplification category will respond with the oft-used "All lives matter!"

Whether intentional or not, it is a phrase designed to not hear the opposing viewpoint. Of course all lives matter, who would argue? But that's not the point of Black Lives Matter. It is suggesting that, for far too long, black lives have not mattered. The historical record suggests the latter statement should be just as obvious as "all lives matter," but it is not, hence the movement.

But the discomfort of the topic organically creates reflexive responses on both sides, designed more to drown out any opposing perspective than to ascertain authentic understanding.

Ironically, the strength that propelled the origins of Black Lives Matter has also proven to be a double-edged sword.

Advertisement

A movement started by the power of social media finds it harder to control the narrative. Invariably, in such cases, oversimplification wins out.

Sweeping statements are the norm. Regardless of its stated purpose, should violence occur at a Black Lives Matter rally, the BLM participants are assumed to be the provocateurs.

How quickly our historical memory fails as we seek to make an apt comparison, wrongly assuming that violence never broke out during the epic civil rights campaigns of the 1960s. What was different then was the absence of social media, which made it easier, some 50 years ago, to control the narrative.

Moreover, the issues are more complex and nuanced today than 50 years ago. It is actually easier to eradicate Jim Crow segregation than it is to provide corrective measures nationally for tens of thousands police departments -- local municipalities with different training methods and standards.

The public narrative truncates Black Lives Matter as being concerned only when a black person dies by a non-black police officer, with the ideal narrative being when the police officer is white.

Advertisement

There are supporters of Black Lives Matter for which all other facts quickly become subordinate, emotion becomes the primary motivator and the definition of justice equates to one's desired outcome. The natural, but unproductive, impulse is to craft a one-size-fits-all definition, creating, in the words of H.L. Menken, a narrative that is clear, simple and wrong.

Assuming the accuracy of the reports, should we conflate the shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge with that of Walter Scott in North Charleston? Scott, unarmed, while fleeing from a police officer, was shot in the back five times. Sterling was shot at close range while resisting arrest in possession of a firearm.

As long as the narrative remains on the oversimplified terrain of "unarmed black man killed by white police officers," we can offer our unexamined assumptions unabated.

Most of us, in varying degrees, are bogged down in the quicksand of race. It becomes much easier to label someone racist or to suggest a group is anti-American subversives than to have our prevailing assumptions challenged.

Whether it's Black Lives Matter, trade agreements, illegal immigration, the economy or something else, we crave oversimplification for a recipe that requires nuance. We seek the simplistic answer when only the difficult response will suffice.

Advertisement

At a time when we should be demanding difficult answers from our political leadership, we accept the insipid intellectual fare of pabulum, believing somehow it will provide the nutrients necessary to maintain our existing assumptions.
A couple of weeks ago I went to see An American in Paris with a friend who was only in town for a few days. During the curtain call, instead of applauding for the ensemble, he had taken out his phone, powered it on and began gathering his belongings. I snapped: "APPLAUD." He promptly obliged. Afterwards I calmly, in a non-accusatory manner asked him why he didn't applaud right away. I expected the answer to be akin to: "I needed to check work email." That stuff happens. Instead he said: "I don't know why you care, it's not like any of them did anything special. None of them really stood out." Seriously. I replied: "Wow, you are the worst human being. You're never going to the theater with me again." I realize perhaps the first sentence was an overstatement, but I will keep my word on the ban. You see, to me, the ensemble is super important.

The actors in the An American in Paris ensemble for the most part aren't paid to stick out. It's not a show where there is a lot of ensemble shtick. There is no room for a very campy ensemble member. There might be a dancer or two that make an impression because his/her grace is more apparent, but it isn't a show where you are constantly seeing the personality of the ensemble. The ensemble is paid to dance precise routines and contribute to the overall beauty of the show. They are magnificent. We're talking about a show that is almost constructed from a series of elegant stage pictures. One ensemble member is off, it destroys the mood. It's not funny like if it happens in Cats. It's bad. So Caitlin Abraham, Kyle Brown, Attila Joey Csiki, Megan Dickinson, Ashlee Dupre, Laura Feig, Kurt Froman, Stephen Hanna, Derek Hanson, Dustin Layton, Marina Lazzaretto, Cory Lingner, Nathen Madden, Gia Mongell, Christy Morton,Charlotte O'Dowd, Candy Olsen, Kristin Piro, Rebecca Riker, Sam Rogers, Shannon Rugani, Bradley Schlagheck, Jeffrey C. Sousa, Sam Strasfeld, Charlie Sutton, Tory Trowbridge, Mindy Wallace, Allison Walsh and Scott Willis you have my heartfelt thanks. I hope everyone who hasn't seen An American in Paris heads to the Palace to see you all (and the principals) before the show closes on October 9.

Advertisement

The ensemble of a show is so elemental to the magic of the theater. It's odd. In television and movies "the ensemble" is often thought of as a group of principals. Sometimes in the theater we refer to an "acting ensemble," but generally in the theater the term has taken on a connotation of "less than." These are the people that don't have a character name. They exist in both plays and musicals though somehow in plays a name like "neighbor" or "townsperson" usually manages to get attached. In musicals it is often a list of folks after the word "Ensemble." They are on something called the "pink contract" and for those that have been on a white contract the move back to a pink contract might be as scary as getting pink gum on Christian Louboutins.

Not everyone in the chorus dances--there are indeed some musicals (a la Fun Home) where almost no one dances--but I'm going to focus on dancers. These people are working hard. Most of them deserve applause, as I believe 99.9% of the world recognizes. (Note that I do not believe in applauding vigorously for every show or performer, so each individual audience member should make the decision on whether the product is worthy of applause. I simply do not agree that decision should be based on some ridiculous belief that the moniker 'ensemble' means you aren't doing anything special.)

A few months ago, Britney Spears blatantly lip synced at the Billboard Music Awards, but the world excused it because, Britney, and because of her supposedly amazing dance moves. Now Britney Spears is a great dancer for a pop star except she wasn't singing. When the world kept going on and on about her dancing, I thought: "I'm venturing to bet if there was a Lip Sync Battle between her and a Broadway dancer the Broadway dancer would kick her ass." When you go see a Broadway show, with the possible exception of maybe Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, you aren't necessarily going solely for the dancing. It's not like going to see the ballet where that is your definite focus. In fact big dance solos are almost always absent from modern musicals. But just because there isn't a dream ballet doesn't mean dance isn't extremely, immeasurably important to most musicals. No one would argue with that fact--everyone in an audience would admit that a show's choreography is a huge part of that show. So why don't those same people all recognize how critical having the right dancers is? I know some do acknowledge this, but sadly not everyone. Clearly not even all my friends.

Advertisement

I'm always watching the ensemble. This little photo of my nephew to the right in the onesie I bought him represents me watching the dancers in every big Broadway musical. As an audience member, who is by no means an expert on dance of any sort, I can tell when an ensemble is under-rehearsed or doesn't care. A few years back I saw The Phantom of the Opera and the principals were great but some of the ensemble members couldn't get "Masquerade" down. We're talking about a number where the dance involves a twirl, a kick, a few stomps and Vogueing and, yet, it was dismal. A while into some runs it almost feels like someone in charge stops caring. In musical comedies many in the cast--principals as well as chorus--get broader, which often leads to a seeming sloppiness. So when I went to see the final performance of Heidi Blickenstaff, Christian Borle, John Cariani and Kate Reinders in Something Rotten! and I thought the ensemble (which featured at least seven new members since opening) was looking great, I emailed the press agents to tell them. Because everyone in the show, not only the boldface names, make a tremendous difference to my enjoyment of a show. Sometimes what the leads are doing isn't all that interesting.

After I leave a musical I often loudly judge the principals; most times the judging of individual ensemble members remains silent. I don't go backstage, I don't wait after or immediately post something somewhere. I am noting everyone however. I'm pretty face blind (one of my closest friends claimed it took me three minutes to recognize him at a party), so it's not that I immediately know who each person is, but I spot people I like and then I look at the Playbill at intermission and remember what else I know that person from. If no one stands particularly out I remember general statements such as "great ensemble" or "bus and truck ensemble."

A couple of months ago I filled in teaching a college course on musical theater. The students had read some of my stories and asked me what inspired them. (They did their homework. A few asked me about composers I've written about over the years. One student asked me about a Los Angeles Times story I barely remembered writing on understudying in the John Doyle production of Sweeney Todd. That was inspired by a conversation with Donna Lynne Champlin. I'm fairly sure she wouldn't remember it either.) One student asked me what inspired my New York Times piece last spring about veteran ensemble members. The concept of that story came about because of something my friend Billy said, the odd things that interest me and Cameron Adams. There was a time when Adams might not have been in it--there were many wonderful people to consider and often a story morphs from initial idea to pitch to print--but the idea likely would not have existed without her. I was sitting watching rehearsals for The Unsinkable Molly Brown in Denver. There wasn't a ton of dancing in that production, so it honestly had nothing to do with her dancing in that show. It had to do with me remembering that the first show I saw when I got my first job as a theater reporter was The Music Man, featuring a young Cameron Adams in its ensemble. Then I started thinking about how many things I had seen her in through the years. She always stands out to me, partially because she doesn't have what we think of as a stereotypical dancer look but mostly because she is consistently great and always seems like she is having a good time. I saw her in a small scale revue at the York, but most of the shows I have seen her in were pretty dance heavy. I get winded if the elevator is broken in my apartment building and I have to walk five stories, so I began to think about how hard it must be for people to have the stamina to be a Broadway dancer after over a decade of being a Broadway dancer. I have a lot of friends who are barely-dancing actors, but I don't have dancer friends. (I don't know why. Perhaps it is my insistence on eating ice cream for meals and the fact that a big benefit of being friends with me--maybe more than my sparkling personality--is delivery of homemade baked goods, which is often dicey for any actor, let alone dancers.) So I legitimately had no idea what it took, mentally and physically, to be that good for that long.

Advertisement



Each of the four people in that story--Adams, Lisa Gajda, Grasan Kingsberry and Sutton--were people I remembered watching in the ensemble of shows for years. Other outstanding veterans considered included (and I'm doing this from memory, I'm sure there were more): Aaron J. Albano, James Brown III, Paul Canaan, Paula Leggett Chase, Colin Cuniffe, Stacey Todd Holt, Angie Schworer, Eric Sciotto, Sarrah Strimel and Dennis Stowe. They are all delightful performers. I wholeheartedly applaud each of them. Schworer--who amazingly made her Broadway debut in 1991--is so well known that right now she can be seen in Atlanta playing a character tailored for, and based on, her in the world premiere musical The Prom. Also when I was outside Something Rotten! once someone asked her to sign a board with a montage of Angie Schworer photos. It was quite something.

And that is a nice thing: we are living in a world where more people know the names and personalities of individual chorus members. All the big Broadway websites do features on chorus people. The Ensemblist podcast exists to feature ensemble members as does the Broadway's Backbone podcast on BroadwayWorld (which I take it is a sort of similar podcast). Cameron Adams has a freaking Broadway trading card with a drawing of her on it. Actors' Equity Association has an "Outstanding Broadway Chorus" award which is given to the actors in the chorus of one Broadway show per year. Some other theater awards include similar recognition. This all gives fans of Broadway a greater chance to know the people on that stage that often go without individual accolades.

However anyone listening to The Ensemblist podcast was likely already loudly applauding for the ensemble before that podcast existed (if they were old enough to attend much theater before that podcast existed). It is incumbent on the rest of us to remember--and to tell our friends--how significant an impact those individuals have on creating the experience of a Broadway show. You can have great leads but a crappy ensemble will make it all seem messy. When an ensemble is off its game, the show suffers to an extraordinary degree. On the other hand, I hate horrible shows less when the movement is impressive.

Advertisement

So to all the good Broadway dancers out there (and you know who you are), your work is valued. It's not always going to get the most applause or a standing ovation but it is nevertheless impactful. I'm sure most of you know this. I'm sure you don't need some writer who can't run a mile telling you. I'm simply hoping that everyone else recognizes it along with you.

If you want to contact me, you can find me on Twitter @CaraJoyDavid. I also welcome emails at carajoy@gmail.com. Please do not send me a Facebook message if we are not friends on Facebook. I will not see it.
Like much of my generation in America, I don't have to worry about where my next meal will come from. I don't have to worry about how I'll get to work. I don't have to worry about a safe, dry place to sleep.

So I worry about something else, with which much less of the world has the luxury of preoccupation: purpose. Some spend their days searching for food; I spend my life hunting meaning--full, but unsatisfied.

Most millennials' basic needs have been met--a prerequisite for fulfilling our greatest potential. If we don't make our lives meaningful, we will have dishonored and squandered our opportunity. Perhaps this responsibility explains our fixation with purpose.

Advertisement

We know what we want. The question is: how do we find it?

Hoping that international travel and novel experiences would infuse my life with meaning, I moved to Canada when I graduated college. There I learned, as I conclude in my essay The Myth of Wanderlust, "you can't drive to purpose."

So I returned home and pursued my lifelong passion of writing. For the last two years, I've followed a self-authored, step-by-step plan to successfully discovering, integrating and making money from my passions. A marketing position, an editing role and six months of self-employment later, I realized you can't write to purpose, either.

Passion, I've learned, does not equal purpose.

Why?

Here's a synopsis of the 8000 words I initially spewed on this question:

Passion, the way many millennials have come to define it, is self-oriented. Passion is "a strong inclination toward a self-defining activity that one loves, values, and in which one invests a substantial amount of time and energy," explains one study published in Self and Identity.

Purpose, on the other hand, is other-oriented. One Stanford study found that individuals with meaning mindsets "seek connections, give to others, and orient themselves to a larger purpose."

Advertisement

Modern passion is pleasure-oriented. One influential study on passion defines it as "an autonomous internalization that leads individuals to choose to engage in the activity that they like." In other words, passion's answer to "Why are you doing this?" is "Because I like it."

But meaningfulness, sums the Stanford study, sometimes involves "feeling bad".

Passion is short-term. Though we tend to assume it's lifelong, passion changes more than we anticipate because

. As Terri Trespicio observes in her

, "Passion is not a plan. Passion is a feeling, and feelings change."

Purpose is hardy. Gritty individuals, explains

, prioritize long-term goals. This long-term perspective,

notes, helps give "more weight to meaning than pleasure" and solidifies self-control.

I don't regret following my passion. In fact, I still endorse my strategy. Passions help us understand who we are and what we want. They bring vitality and joy to our days. But following your passion is a deceptively slow, uncertain way to purpose.

If I could tell myself anything three years ago when I graduated college, it would probably be this:

"Follow your passion, sure. But don't expect it to produce your purpose."
I visited Dublin in the midst of my search for freedom from an old life. At the time, I did not know that I would soon decide to couch-surf around the world. I was just looking to get out of New York City and the unfulfilling routine I was falling into, and a final round interview with a tech giant in Ireland seemed like the answer.

Prior to visiting, I could paint my impression of Ireland in broad strokes: I knew that it has spectacular nature, the people are friendly, the weather is deplorable, and it is *not* part of the U.K. (Northern Ireland is). I was also vaguely familiar with the country's past political struggles, including the Great Famine of 1845-52 that drove many migrants to the U.S., its tireless fight against Britain in the Independence War of 1919-21, a long-standing conflict between Catholics and Protestants, and the country's recent rise from poverty due to the tech industry boom in Dublin. Other than the information I gleaned from school and word-of-mouth, I admittedly hadn't given Ireland much thought.

I was mesmerized by Dublin's effervescent green parks, the simple elegance of British and Gaelic architecture, and the countless rows of vibrant, colorfully painted doors peppering the streets. More notable, however, were the people: the Irish's friendliness and hospitality is commonly touted as the country's trademark, and although I did not experience it right away (my visit began with the hotel's staff cluelessness to my arrival and a chase out of the park at dusk by an angry security guard), I soon found that there was much to learn from the Irish mindset.

Advertisement

What I most admired about the Irish was their deep-seated conviction to protect their freedom without compromising integrity. While the Irish have long struggled with their independence, they never lost their amicability. When I commended this trait to one of the locals I met, she joked that Irish friendliness is a by-product of a populace that until recently has only known poverty. Never having much to lose, she said, made it much easier to give: while they didn't have much material wealth, their way of being was worth protecting despite difficult circumstances.

My time in Ireland helped me understand that personal freedom is not easily acquired - rather, it is difficult to obtain, harder to sustain, and a commitment that we must actively work towards keeping.

Ireland knows something about freedom. Here is what it taught me.



There's an abyss between wanting freedom and taking responsibility for it

When I speak of freedom, I'm not talking about the great heroes of history who won independence wars or the underdogs who fought against their oppressors. Think smaller than that: I'm talking about you and me. I'm talking about that dream you've always wanted to pursue but never tried to because you were afraid of what people would think; that suffocating relationship you no longer want to be a part of but can't handle the insecurity of walking away from; the job you desperately hate but can't bring yourself to quit because not knowing what to do with your newfound freedom feels unbearable.

Advertisement

The struggle for freedom will always be there. The question is whether you want it badly enough to deal with the consequences once you decide to reach for it.

I may have been brave enough to spontaneously get on a plane to Dublin, but in all honesty, deep down I didn't want that job. Taking that offer would have meant packing up my life in New York City to move to a foreign country and industry within a few months' time. Which would be the change I thought I was looking for, except I wasn't ready. I was enamored with the idea of freedom from my current life, but wholly unprepared to deal with the realities that follow.

The problem with freedom is the unknown that lies on the other side of it. That's what paralyzes us - not knowing what awaits us once we break the chains that hold us back from doing what we really want to do.

What gets us moving is conviction. For us to gain the freedom necessary to dictate the course of our lives, we have to absolutely believe in and follow through on the decisions we take to get us there. Ireland's freedom was spearheaded by a group of artists, poets, and intellectuals who ardently believed in freedom and were willing to pursue it against all odds. The revolutionaries of the Independence War were idealists - not fighters - who were severely outnumbered by British soldiers and initially disliked by the Irish majority until public executions by the British sparked support for their movement. During times of turbulence, conviction that their freedom was worth the struggle kept them moving forward.

The main obstacle standing in the way of achieving personal freedom - that is, the ability to conduct the trajectory of your life without self-imposed restrictions - is lacking conviction that we want it. When the conviction is there, anything is possible. We are free agents in the pursuit of our dreams, only restrained by the lack of faith in our own capabilities. We are meant to be free - but this freedom asks us to take responsibility for our actions and decisions.





Don't let security shadow freedom

Advertisement

Claiming freedom for ourselves can also mean facing opposition, overwhelming self-doubt and insecurity, and even being ostracized. When we do what we truly want to do, rather than what society tells us to do, we aren't "normal." We face resistance because we are taught to fear what we don't know.

Our very human need for security too often trumps our hunger for freedom. When I thought about how easy and lucrative it would be to keep living my comfortable life in New York City (case in point: I didn't leave when first given the chance), I would almost forget how deeply I craved something more. Craving for something that doesn't exist yet, however, is a different animal than dealing with the realities of a current situation.

There are countless inspirational quotes floating around the Internet wistfully talking about the value of freedom, but when it comes down to claiming it as our own, why do we recoil? We welcome freedom when it comes comfortably and doesn't deprive us of security. What happens when we are asked to work for it, make sacrifices, be uncomfortable and risk being outcast from the norm? We put our heads down, thrust our hands in our pockets and mumble something about how it's great but we'll get to it another time.

Gaining freedom can be an unbelievably uncomfortable process. Even when the benefits are obvious, few are willing to undergo it if it means sacrificing security.



Don't fight for freedom. Instead, persevere.

I used to think I was a fighter. Anytime I perceived a threat - a deviation from what I wanted to do, an encroachment on my set-in-stone principles - I would get ready to pounce. A fighter is always on the defense, ready to resist anything in his or her way. But once that fight is conquered, there is nothing to do but gloat and slump back into suspended anticipation for the next battle. I realized during my time in Ireland that I am not a fighter, nor do I want to be. Fighting asks us to contract, to squeeze ourselves into tight little balls of ideologies and beliefs to protect ourselves from invaders. Perseverance, on the other hand, asks for patience and expansion - both ingredients for growth.

Advertisement

Personal freedom is not a one-time fight. It's a slow and gradual progression that must be cared for, nurtured, and increasingly committed to over time. Most of us don't just wake up one day, say screw it, and march out into the world with all our freedom in hand.

Truthfully, we may not even fully comprehend what freedom means to us until we are deep in the process of pursuing it. How could we understand something that we just obtained or don't have yet? That's why it has consequences - if we knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into and what the results would be when we set out for it, then it wouldn't be so intimidating to pursue in the first place.

We don't have to fully understand freedom to want it, but we do have to be ready to face the consequences of pursuing it and have conviction in walking that path. Once we've taken the first (and in my opinion, most difficult) step towards freedom, we need to keep nurturing it by creating opportunity.



Ireland has done just that by leveraging its independence to lift itself out of poverty, becoming a hotspot in the booming tech industry and even rivaling its former colonizer, Britain, as a choice for HQ.

In my case, I wanted freedom from my old life. The first step was saving money. The next was brainstorming alternate ways to change my job. The next was packing up and moving out. And so on. Rome wasn't built in a day. The path to sustainable freedom is a slow and gradual one.

Freedom is not something you need to consistently fight for more of. Similar to income, there is a tipping point -- after you reach a certain point, having more money won't make you happier, and neither will having more freedom. It's what you do with what you have, and how you choose to use it to reinvent yourself that matters. When you remove your self-imposed restrictions and choose to direct the trajectory of your life, the world and its endless possibilities open up for you.

Advertisement
Close-up portrait of female black small business owner. Woman owns a fashion design studio

Understanding the risks and adversity facing women of color in our culture, particularly Black women and girls, in the era of social movements like Black Lives Matter, remains a constant and very painful struggle. In 2016 alone according to the Washington Post database tracking fatal police shootings in the US, nine Black women have already been tragically killed by the police. In 2015 there were ten. We're poised to exceed those numbers. Yet, collectively, we've paid very little to no attention to the nine women that we've already lost by police violence this year or the impact it has on their families and communities. The deaths of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Freddy Gray, and Michael Brown have helped us galvanize support for social movements like Black Lives Matter and a call to end systemic police brutality. Unfortunately, we have not done the same work when it comes to the experiences of Black and Brown women and racialized police violence in our culture, and the distinct gendered ways that they and their children are victimized, targeted, and killed by police. Our silence should no longer be an option.

Advertisement



We've paid very little to no attention to the nine women that we've already lost by police violence this year.

As a social worker, I am calling specifically on us to do better as a profession when it comes to our commitments to promoting social justice and anti-racism in the world and culture seeped in persistent anti-Black racism, hetrosexism, patriarchal violence and misogyny, and anti-queer antagonism and violence. Social workers have a responsibility to intensively examine the ways that gender intersects and shapes police violence against Black and Brown women so that we can do the work to interrupt it and intervene wherever we find it and so that we do not unintentionally reenact, mimic, or perpetuate violence against vulnerable populations while we try to help them. Our past tells us that when we don't do this work, we reproduce violence in the world, just as we did during the height of the Eugenics movement when social workers helped the North Carolina Eugenics Board sterilize the poor and disabled, disproportionately targeting poor Black and Brown women (Murdock, 2013; NPR, 2011). With the help of social workers, North Carolina aggressively targeted and sterilized Black women: "...65 percent of all sterilizations were performed on Black women even though 25 percent of the state's female population is Black" (Krase, 2014). It took decades before North Carolina finally acknowledged the pain it caused those families, but as a profession, we have yet to fully acknowledge what part we played in that pain and harm and how to never let that happen again. California just recently banned the illegal sterilization practices of incarcerated women - overwhelmingly Black and Brown women reminding us that the past is prologue (Law, 2014). As former NASW President Jeane Anastas said in her 2012 NASW News article on social work and eugenics, "it is only by facing and reflecting on this history that we can avoid similar mistakes now and in the future".

We must reflect on our present moment as it relates to Black Lives Matter as another opportunity for us to decide who we truly are when it comes to the identity of our profession as one committed to social justice in our culture, particularly on issues where Black cis and trans women and girls are being killed and victimized while their suffering is marginalized, erased, and rendered invisible to us. Systemic racialized police brutality is a critical moment for us to reexamine our work, practices, and interventions as a profession so that our flawed messy past is not reproduced. Instead, we become strengthened by our vision for a more anti-racist equitable culture that is deeply rooted in a commitment to anti-oppression. Towards this end, I have come up with a list of five suggested actions that social workers, as social justice advocates, scholars, and practitioners, can immediately take up in support of an anti-racist social work practice that puts the Black Lives Matter movement at the center of our work with a particular lens on the gendered experiences of women and girls of color.

Advertisement

1. Become a member of the Collaborative to Advance Equity through Research on Women and Girls of Color through the White House Equity in Research Initiative.

The initiative invites colleges and universities to voluntarily join the collaborative in an effort to encourage students to use research to make policy recommendations that improves the lives of women and girls of color. The link to join can be found here.

2. Set as priority moving into 2017, at the national level, an explicit gender inclusive Black Lives Matter policy platform.

Lift up the work of the movement to embrace all Black lives by examining the patterns of police violence against Black and Brown women and gender-nonconforming people, that's rarely visible in our culture. Use the platform as a reminder that police reform must be framed to include the experiences of women and girls of color. See here for their policy platform. NASW could use its platform "Social Work Speaks" to set a policy position on this issue.

Advertisement

3. Specifically advocate for mental health services that, positions social workers, not the police, as the first responders when there is a mental health crisis.

Join divestment movements to pressure banks like Wells Fargo to sever ties with mass incarceration businesses like The Geo Group Inc. We can instead urge financial institutions to invest in mental health companies and non-profits with track records for caring for vulnerable groups.

4. Offer social work trainings, courses, and or workshops beyond "cultural competence..."

to foster social justice trauma-informed clinical techniques that address racial trauma with a critique and focus on the historical trauma that communities have experienced that make them fearful of police, and skeptical of the medical and mental health communities.

5. Social work continues to be a profession dominated by white women.

This is unacceptable for a profession that promotes itself as being social justice and socially conscious centered. In an increasingly multiracial United States, social work must do more to recruit, retain, and train professionals that reflect the communities it serves. It must do this at every level, from our undergraduate programs to our doctoral programs, leadership within NASW, and the agencies where social workers work every day. There are many ways to do this, but we could begin with a national level conference about recruiting and training social work professionals that are more reflective of the communities we serve. The conference would invite social workers from around the country to put together a policy and best practice document led by an interracial multi-ethnic coalition of social workers. This effort would include those who have already set this as an important goal for their programs and institutions with successful outcomes.



Social work continues to be a profession dominated by white women. This is unacceptable...



These are but a few suggestions, and I encourage all of us to continue adding to this list, because our silence is no longer acceptable when it comes to addressing police violence against Black and Brown cis and trans women and girls. Within a 48 hour-period alone, three Black women, one of them includes a Black transwoman, was murdered (Korryn Gaines, Joyce Quaweay, and Sky Mockabee) early August 2016.

On August 1, 2016, Korryn Gaines, a twenty-three year old mother of two small children, was shot and killed by Baltimore police after an hours-long standoff over an arrest warrant for traffic tickets that left her five year-old son shot and hospitalized (Lowery, 2016). On July 29, 2016, Joyce Quaweay, a twenty-two year old mother of two, was beaten to death by her boyfriend, a former Temple University police officer, and his best friend, also a police officer, because she refused to be "submissive" (Wells, 2016). On July 30, Sky Mockabee, a Black transwoman, was found dead in a Cleveland parking lot. Police and media misgendered her, making it difficult to investigate her case (Brighe, 2016). Mockabee is the seventeenth trans person to be killed in 2016, so it is not hard to believe that her gender identity might have something to do with her death. Yet, the call for justice for the loss of their lives is barely audible. In fact, at least in Korryn Gaines' case, many have swiftly stepped forward to argue against any such consideration on her behalf in an interesting departure from past demands for justice in similar cases involving Black men. Here, people have opted to instead accept the initial accounts of police and media that she was armed and pointed her gun at the police leaving them no choice but to kill her and shoot her 5-year-old son. This case is still developing; details will emerge about the circumstances and context that led to the shooting, but we know that Korryn is dead and her five year-old son injured. We also know that she was vulnerable despite media portrayals of her as a gun-blazing angry Black woman. There are reports that she suffered from lead poisoning, which is typically the result of gross systemic inequality and poverty disproportionately impacting Black and Brown families in the United States. She was a victim of domestic violence by a boyfriend twice her age who left the apartment, abandoning her after police arrived. She did not own her home, which made it easier for police to gain access to her apartment by asking the landlord for the keys, further compromising her sense of safety and protection. When the door chain presented a barrier to police entry even with the keys, they kicked it down. One of these things alone would make Korryn vulnerable, but the combination of them presents a situation that is unacceptably tragic and emotionally devastating.

Again, we are already set to exceed 2015 in the number of Black women killed by police with at least four more months left in the year; this is a brutal reality of our culture. Social work, as profession, cannot be absent any longer from meaningfully contributing to a gender inclusive analysis of racialized police brutality in our culture that disproportionately impacts cis and trans Black and Brown women. Given our social justice advocacy values and mental health training, social work has a powerful voice that can speak directly to the vulnerabilities of Black women in a culture that continues to need convincing that Black lives matter. As a "values-based" profession, social work is called to advocate for greater police accountability and policy reform in these cases, but it will require a willingness to say that Black women's lives matter without qualification or equivocation.

I feel haunted by the ghosts of Black women and girls who have been stolen from us by violence, particularly state sanctioned violence. Up to this point, I have been especially affected by one story in particular. Aiyana Stanley-Jones, a 7-year-old Black girl from Detroit, haunted me from the moment I first learned of her. She was killed in her sleep during a 2010 raid on her home by a Detroit SWAT team. They were there looking for her uncle. While her case received local attention from activists, and John Conyers, a Detroit US Representative, helped to get some national coverage by asking the Department of Justice, and then Attorney General, Eric Holder, to intervene, the police officers who killed her were officially cleared of all charges in 2015. Today, little Aiyana is barely remembered in the conversation to end police brutality, except by those of us (primarily feminist activists and scholars) actively engaged in remembering stories like hers. While all of these deaths are incredibly tragic and deeply disturbing, Aiyana's story continues to resonate with me, and now it includes Korryn and her son, Kodi. It is extremely troubling that police shot and killed Korryn Gaines in front of her 5-year-old; Kodi was injured that day too by police who shot him in the arm. While his physical wounds will heal, the psychological and emotional trauma of watching his mother killed by police is not something he will soon forget or ever get over.

No one should die over traffic tickets, especially a young mother holding her child. We must remember all of these stories and connect them to an emphasis on policy level reforms informed by an intersectional analysis of institutional racism and misogyny, police brutality, and white supremacy, which has arranged society to accept the marginalization and erasure of Black women's lives.

Civil rights scholar and attorney, Kimberle Crenshaw, reminds us that we must sharpen our lens when it comes to racialized police violence that is intersectional to include the lives of Black women and girls. Toward this end, the hashtag Say Her Name, a sub-movement of the Black Lives Matter movement, was coined by Crenshaw's advocacy think tank, the African American Policy Forum, in an effort to demarginalize the experiences of Black women felled by police violence.

This is a state of emergency. While social work has done much to acknowledge and address structural racism in our culture from joining national calls to end police brutality to specifically working at the local level like the NASW-NYC chapter that joined a coalition of institutions and individuals working to close the Riker's Island prison, we can always do better. I became a social worker because I believe in our social justice values. I believe in the transformative work that we do. I know that if we take this up too, we can help our country heal, end state sanctioned violence against Black and Brown bodies, and transform itself into a society where Black women's lives matter. I believe there is no Black Lives Matter without the humanity of Black women's lives at the center of all of our work. Towards this end, I would like to invite you to share your ideas with me about how to move forward. I would love it if you could share your thoughts on any of the ideas offered in this article, whether it is to convene a national social work conference and or social work journal completely dedicated to considering the nuances of Black women at the dangerous intersections between race, gender, and state sanctioned violence. Please feel free to share new ideas not mentioned here as well. You can share your thoughts with me via email at sayhernamemovement@gmail.com.

Advertisement

References

Anastas, J. (2012, February). Eugenics: We can learn from history. NASW News, 57.2. Retrieved from socialworkers.org

Brighe, M. (2016, August 2). Skye Mockabee is the 17 trans person murdered in the US this year. Retrieved from advocate.com

Dula, A. (1994). African American suspicion of the healthcare system is justified: what do we do about it?. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics,3(03), 347-357.

Krase, K. (2014, October 1). History of forced sterilization and current US abuses. Retrieved from ourbodiesourselves.org

Advertisement

Law, V. (2014, October 29). It's 2014 why do we still need laws banning coerced sterilizations?

Retrieved from truth-out.org

Lowery, W. (2016, August 2). Korryn Gaines cradling child and shotgun, is fatally shot by

police. Retrieved from here.

Murdock, S. (2013, July 26). North Carolina eugenics: Sterilization program victims' offered

funds. Retrieved from here.

NPR, (2011, December 28). Brutal chapter in North Carolina's eugenics past. Retrieved from here.
In October 2013, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the specialized UN agency that acts as the de facto regulator for aviation worldwide, established an aspirational climate goal of Carbon Neutral Growth (CNG) for the aviation sector from 2020 on. Since then, various working groups in ICAO have been meeting regularly to flesh out an industry proposal to promote carbon offsets through a global market-based measure (MBM) for decision at the ICAO's 39th Assembly next month.

Questions about the likely effectiveness of ICAO's MBM are many. Here we focus narrowly on the potential coverage of the MBM, and how consistent these various approaches are with ICAO's CNG goal. There is general agreement that the smallest and least developed countries, which have contributed little to historical emissions, should be exempted from the scheme. But those exemptions, if not made up by extra offsetting for the carriers that are included, would mean that the MBM would allow emissions growth beyond 2020. The question is how much.

There have been many iterations of ICAO's offsetting system along the way. A recent draft Assembly resolution proposed to implement the MBM in two phases. In Phase 1, states accounting for at least 1% individually or within the top 80% of aggregate international 2018 aviation activity in the form of revenue tonne kilometers (RTKs) must offset post-2020 emissions growth. Phase 2 would tighten the exclusion criteria via percent thresholds of 0.5% on an individual basis or 95% on an aggregate basis. Most recently, a news report indicated that the system may rely upon countries voluntarily "opting-in," with countries like the US, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, and the 44 European members of the ECAC as likely participants. India, on the other hand, has expressed hostility toward to any system covering its airlines.

Advertisement

So how do the current proposals stack up in terms of coverage? To figure this out, we estimated the coverage of several MBM systems based upon different threshold percentages (e.g., 1% and 80%) as well as any opt-in or opt-out countries (e.g., India). Key inputs included OAG Schedules data from 2016, growth rates from ICAO's 2013 Environmental Report and global average load factors from ICAO's Annual Report.

Several graphs depicting the estimated coverage of potential MBM approaches are shown below. The first graph shows the coverage of the current draft Assembly resolution, with excluded international aviation activity (2020 RTKs) shown in dark blue, post-2020 growth requiring offsetting shown in green, and growth not subject to offsetting shown in light blue. Surprisingly, what looks like near complete coverage on paper (~80% in Phase 1, and ~95% in Phase 2), ends up allowing for emissions growth that is not insignificant. Between 2020 and 2030, about 76% of growth, or 17% of total international RTKs, is covered in the base case scenario. This leaves behind about 8.6 trillion RTKs that would not be subject to carbon offsetting.

Why does a proposal that looks like 80% coverage on paper for the first five years end up covering only 56% of international activity? Two issues are at work, both related to ICAO's definition of a country's "individual share of international aviation activities." ICAO's approach is to define activity as the RTKs flown by air carriers registered to a given country via an air operator's certificate (AOC). If a foreign registered carrier provides most of the international flights to and from a country, this can make a decent sized market, like Brazil or South Africa, look small (and therefore exempt). However, once the list of exempt countries is determined, ICAO would exclude flights from all carriers flying to and from that country regardless of where there are registered. This makes sense to prevent airlines that do not need to pay for carbon offsets from having an unfair price advantage over included airlines, but has the side effect of allowing more emissions growth.

Advertisement

A second, and larger, effect occurs if the calculation of which countries would be exempt from the MBM and which flights would then be excluded are not properly aligned. The draft resolution's approach is generally understood to determine whether a country is exempt based upon its percentage share of global RTKs by departures only, or an equivalent value. The current proposal, however, excludes all flights to and from an exempt country, approximately doubling the coverage gap of the MBM. These two ways of defining aviation activity, combined, explain why what looks like 80% coverage on paper in fact leaves a 44% coverage gap through 2026.

Unfortunately, the numbers look even worse for an opt-in system focused on richer countries. The chart below shows our analysis of that system. When only the 48 countries identified in the article above are included under the MBM, the coverage falls significantly; in 2030, less than 22% of growth RTKs, or 8% of international RTKs, would be covered by the measure.

These estimates are subject to significant uncertainty, but clearly even the mandatory approach under consideration today would fall short of the CNG2020 goal. What could ICAO do to plug this gap? A number of solutions have been proposed. ICAO could base its exemption calculation upon all flights to and from a country regardless of where a carrier is registered, as recommended by industry. It could also tighten the exclusion criteria for a mandatory MBM, either by reducing the RTK numerical threshold or by aligning the method of exempting countries and excluding flights. Finally, the system could be designed so that uncovered emissions growth due to country exemptions is offset by carriers participating in the scheme, an idea advocated by environmental NGOs, but opposed by industry.

ICAO has struggled to develop an MBM for international aviation for the past 15 years. We'll know soon whether it succeeds this time and, if so, how close to its goal of carbon neutral growth it comes.

Advertisement
So there's this dragon -- a big, green dragon that defies all logic, and his name is Elliott.

And then there's this boy, Pete, an orphan who's survived in the forest thanks to the dragon's care. But when residents of a small town discover this curious duo, life as they know it changes forever. That's the plot of the recently released Pete's Dragon, a remake of the 1977 Disney flick, which has a similar plot, though it takes place in Passamaquoddy, Maine instead of a village called Millhaven, somewhere the Pacific Northwest. This remake, like the original, is essentially a story about faith, faith in the unknowable, the larger than life, faith that calls one to love of neighbor and to the practice of kindness.

In many ways, it's also a Christian allegory.

Indeed, both movies seem to place faith at center stage. Elliott, the dragon, has a name that derives from Elijah, a Hebrew prophet whose name translates to something like, "My God is Yah [God]." Throughout the film, Elliott functions like a prophet, acting in ways that are unconventional, demanding that the community recognize more wholesome and just ways to live.

Likewise, in the original, the viewer encounters a woman named Norah -- played by Helen Reddy -- who's name means "light" in Arabic and who literally spends the film searching for light in darkness, unable to believe in Elliott without seeing him. In the remake, her parallel character, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), is a pragmatic forest ranger who never believed in the existence of dragons because she'd never seen one. Not unlike Doubting Thomas, both women come to believe only once they see the dragon for themselves, their names symbolic of their experiences of light and grace respectively.

Advertisement

And then there's Pete himself, the boy who introduces all of Passamaquoddy/Millhaven to Elliott and who functions, not unlike Peter in the Bible, as the rock on which the towns' faith is built.

Just as characters go on faith journeys and have names that point to elements from the Judeo-Christian narrative, so does the plot. Case in point: the characters of Dr. Terminus (original) and Gavin (remake) who try to capture Elliott and use him for financial gain. They function as the films' antagonists, power hungry, corrupted by greed. Striking a parallel with those who opposed Jesus' ministry, they attempt to scapegoat and persecute Elliott, creating mass hysteria in their wake.

Yet if the original and remakes share parallels up to this point, their endings depart from one another, and it's that divergence that raises the most provocative questions for contemporary Christians. (Double spoiler alert.) In the original, residents push Dr. Terminus out of the town and embrace Elliott, who helped save many of them from personal injury. Elliott then voluntarily leaves Passamoquoddy to help other children, having brought joy to local residents, the restoration of Norah's faith, and Pete to a new, loving family. It's a hopeful, bright ending, the characters dancing around a lighthouse, singing, waving to Elliott as he rises to the heavens.

An allusion to Jesus' ascension, perhaps?

In contrast, the ending of the new film is much more somber. Gavin is not cast out, and Elliott leaves under duress, fleeing to a rural forest where his existence remains a mystery to all but Pete and his immediate family. He does not embark on further acts of goodwill; he's essentially in hiding.

Advertisement

So why make this change?

It's impossible to know without asking filmmakers. Were they trying to suggest that Christianity is no longer normative, dominant in American culture? Were they implying that times are darker, and God seems hidden? Did viewers find the ending more satisfying in focus groups? Were they trying to avoid something too saccharine? All are possible; none are known to be true. But while we cannot postulate a motive, we can still interpret the narrative of the film itself.

Now the easy thing to do as a Christian is to cast aside the new film and take solace in the unremitting optimism of the original. And yet, perhaps the story of this new movie is simply a different allegory, a different symbol of Christian faith. Whereas the original seems to make Elliott a metaphor for the prophetic life of Jesus, perhaps this new version presents Elliott as a symbol of one of the many Christians who attempted to live a life that followed in Jesus' footsteps. After all, Christians from the founding of the Church have had to live on the margins -- in both literal and metaphorical forests -- in order to practice their faith safely. The film is therefore an important reminder to today's Christians that members of their religion could not and cannot always gather freely to express their beliefs. From the early Christians in Rome who gathered, clandestinely, to worship inside their homes to those who feared the Inquisition and those who today feel that they are unable to practice their faith in various parts of the globe, Christians are not immune to religious persecution. Sadly, they share this history of mistreatment in common with their brothers and sisters from virtually every faith tradition.
The Blog Trickle-Down Economics Led To The Rise Of Trump By Undermining Our Democracy

The fact remains that our three decade experiment with trickle-down caused the financial crash and Great Recession by deregulating financial markets and driving the deep indebtedness of the middle class, pushing an already weakened middle class to the brink. Enter Trump, seizing the terrain that trickle-down created.
The military coup and the attempt to seize power in Turkey

Given campaign rhetoric about NATO's being obsolete and the inability of Muslims to govern free of religious dogma, the significance of last month's failed coup in Turkey is being overlooked at a time when it ought to be front and center, particularly as Americans contemplate their own role in an increasingly unstable Middle East.

Supporters of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan argue the United States had a hand in this bungled coup. Others claim the founder of the Gulen movement, a self-exiled Turkish cleric named Fethullah Gulen -- who ironically resides in Pennsylvania -- was behind it all. To confound matters, Gulen is (some claim) involved with a string of charter schools, including in Houston and Waco, Texas that encourage the teaching of science and math rather than religious ideology. The conflicting claims and charges about all this have left security analysts scratching their heads.

Advertisement

To those who claim the United States had a hand in the coup, the question is this: What possible motive could the United States have for manipulating the coup? The Turkish situation is far different from, say, what took place in Iran in 1953 when both the CIA and Britain's famed MI6 orchestrated the coup that ousted Mohammad Mossadegh. At the time Iran was seen as hostile to the United States and a threat to our strategic interests in the region.

It's unlikely Turkey will follow the Iranian model and spark an Islamic revolution such as that of 1979. Erdogan is no Khomeini. And Turkey doesn't fit the profile.

Whatever else, Turkey on paper remains an ally of the United States, despite its no longer necessarily sharing Washington's particular interests and vision. And it's still a NATO member. So the argument the United States would seek to destabilize a country pivotal to American interests including broad regional defense must falter on the altar of stone-cold reason.

And while it offers some plausibility, the argument about Gulen's backing the coup lacks evidence. Even so, the Turkish government has requested the United States extradite him to Ankara to face justice -- a contentious political issue in already tense U.S.-Turkish relations.

Advertisement

Despite its failure, the coup could have major ramifications. The concern among Western capitals is: What sort of foreign policy will Erdogan pursue now that he appears to wield even more power after his crackdown on remaining opposition, including the arrests of some 16,000 people? Washington has already expressed displeasure with Erdogan's authoritarian tendencies. To the chagrin of the United States, Turkey's increasingly combative nature could hinder regional efforts to crush ISIS.

The failed coup also paves the way for closer ties between Moscow and Ankara. This comes as analysts gauge vulnerabilities of the U.S. nuclear arsenal at Incirlik air base in Turkey.

In a world where tests of secular Muslim leadership too often seem to fail, what's unfolding in Turkey is discouraging. Chaos and lack of trust are becoming the order of the day. This could extend to massive surveillance programs under the dubious pretext of preventing further coup attempts. That means democracy is faltering, freedom of the press will cease to exist and Turkey, the one secular Muslim power we admired from afar, could become another example of short-circuited governance. This could confirm my theory that there will never be real democracy in the Muslim world -- and that the West needs to stop fantasizing about this unrealistic idea. And that means no more futile nation-building exercises in the Middle East.
If you want to see a carousel that's propelled by a bicyclist who high fives screaming children as he pedals then visit Alghero one of the two main cities of the Island of Sardinia. On the same main square, Piazza Sulis, you can also watch a puppeteer who delights onlookers with the delicately exquisite movements of her marionette and this right under one of the ancient stone towers (the Torre Dello Sperone) that populate the town and that at one point provided defenses against invading armies. There are streets named after the famed romantic poet Giacomo Leopardi and the Marxist Antonio Gramsci about whom the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote a poem, "Gramsci's Ashes." When you arrive at the airport there's a colorful mural of the city illustrating its battlements and a poster advertising, "endless island," which is, when you think of it, an oxymoron. During the summer Alghero is teaming with tourists who gravitate towards the art nouveau newpaper kiosk with its L'Unione Sarda" on top. Oh yes and if you're in doubt, sardines are definitely a Sardinian speciality. There's something garish about Alghero with its late night bazaar, which sells all the cheap memorabilia you will never need and street musicians wailing forth in a folk rock style derivative of American pop stars of the 70's and 80's. But Alghero is a place where memories are made and where many of the supernumeraries who populated Fellini classics like 8  probably learned their tricks.
Voluntourism harms, not helps, the world's orphanage children

By Georgette Mulheir

Anyone on a flight from the United States to Haiti this summer might be struck, as I was in July, by the sheer numbers of bright-eyed, well-meaning young people heading for volunteer assignments at some of Haiti's many orphanages, eager to help the struggling nation's more than 30,000 institutionalized children.

Sadly, despite their good intentions, volunteers at orphanages are unwittingly supporting the terrible harm that institutions afflict on children in their care.

More than 80 percent of children in the world's orphanages have at least one living parent and most have relatives. They should be at home with their families, not in institutions. What orphanage children and their parents really need is to be reunited, with all the supports and services that will enable those families - no matter how poor - to give their children what they need to thrive and reach their full potential.

Advertisement

J.K. Rowling, the founder of Lumos, who has spoken out against orphan voluntoursim frequently on Twitter, could not have put it better: " Voluntourism is one of drivers of family break up in very poor countries. It incentivizes 'orphanages' that are run as businesses. Globally poverty is the no. 1 reason that children are institutionalized. Well-intentioned Westerners supporting orphanages perpetuate this highly damaging system and encourage the creation of more institutions as money magnets."

Yet evidence suggests the number of children going into orphanages in some parts of the world is increasing.

While many orphanages are set up by well-intentioned people, some are set up by unscrupulous 'entrepreneurs', whose sole motive is profit and who treat children as commodities. We have helped close institutions and orphanages where parents were encouraged or paid to give up their children with the false promise of education and health care. The children tell us they were constantly hungry in the orphanage, were made to do heavy labor, were beaten by the 'director' and never went to school. Many were sick due to drinking polluted water and malnutrition. We have been able to reunite nearly all of them with their parents, who had thought they were doing the right thing for their children. The directors of these orphanages have posted images of the children on the Internet to raise funds around the world. For the most part donors who respond to these solicitations are good people, who want to help children. Donors - including volunteers - should ask themselves if their generosity might unintentionally support the business of separating children from families who love them in the name of profit.

Advertisement

Decades of research have shown orphanages to be harmful to almost every facet of child development. Children need consistent, loving adult care, which they can only truly receive from loving families. Orphanages, even those that are well run, cannot replace the love of a family. Crucially, children learn to make emotional attachments in families. And research proves that attachment is crucial to brain development and the development of cognitive and social skills.

A constant stream of volunteers to orphanages, showing affection to children and then leaving, disrupts this attachment process, and can leave children with many, many problems in their emotional and psychological development. The resulting desperation for affection and love leaves them much more vulnerable to others who seek to exploit and abuse them. On my recent visit to Haiti I met a group of children whom we had rescued from one such orphanage and reunited with their families. In just a couple of months at home they have regained the weight they lost, their skin and hair look healthy once more, they are smiling and laughing, although they still cling closely to their mothers and fathers. Their parents tell us they are afraid they will be taken away again.

One mother said, "I took the decision to give up my son because they told me he would get an education. I thought I was doing the right thing. If I had known what was really happening in that place, I would never have given him away". When I asked one little girl what was best about being at home, she said, "when I was in the orphanage, they fed us rotten food and I could not eat it. But if I did not eat it, there was nothing else and I went hungry. Now I am home, if I don't like the meal everyone is eating, my mum will just cook me something else". Children need families, not orphanages. Anyone hoping to volunteer in an orphanage should first remember why there are no orphanages in their own countries. Most developed countries did away with orphanages decades ago because of the harm caused to children, but somehow we have forgotten our histories.

There are far better ways to help the world's most vulnerable families and ensure that children in Haiti and across the globe have the love and nurture that only a family can provide.

Advertisement

Anyone on a flight from the United States to Haiti this summer might be struck, as I was in July, by the sheer numbers of bright-eyed, well-meaning young people heading for volunteer assignments at some of Haiti's many orphanages, eager to help the struggling nation's more than 30,000 institutionalized children.

Sadly, despite their good intentions, volunteers at orphanages are unwittingly supporting the terrible harm that institutions afflict on children in their care.

More than 80 percent of children in the world's orphanages have at least one living parent and most have relatives. They should be at home with their families, not in institutions. What orphanage children and their parents really need is to be reunited, with all the supports and services that will enable those families - no matter how poor - to give their children what they need to thrive and reach their full potential.

J.K. Rowling, the founder of Lumos, who has spoken out against orphan voluntoursim frequently on Twitter, could not have put it better: " Voluntourism is one of drivers of family break up in very poor countries. It incentivizes 'orphanages' that are run as businesses. Globally poverty is the no. 1 reason that children are institutionalized. Well-intentioned Westerners supporting orphanages perpetuate this highly damaging system and encourage the creation of more institutions as money magnets."

Yet evidence suggests the number of children going into orphanages in some parts of the world is increasing.

Advertisement

While many orphanages are set up by well-intentioned people, some are set up by unscrupulous 'entrepreneurs', whose sole motive is profit and who treat children as commodities. We have helped close institutions and orphanages where parents were encouraged or paid to give up their children with the false promise of education and health care. The children tell us they were constantly hungry in the orphanage, were made to do heavy labor, were beaten by the 'director' and never went to school. Many were sick due to drinking polluted water and malnutrition. We have been able to reunite nearly all of them with their parents, who had thought they were doing the right thing for their children. The directors of these orphanages have posted images of the children on the Internet to raise funds around the world. For the most part donors who respond to these solicitations are good people, who want to help children. Donors - including volunteers - should ask themselves if their generosity might unintentionally support the business of separating children from families who love them in the name of profit.

Decades of research have shown orphanages to be harmful to almost every facet of child development. Children need consistent, loving adult care, which they can only truly receive from loving families. Orphanages, even those that are well run, cannot replace the love of a family. Crucially, children learn to make emotional attachments in families. And research proves that attachment is crucial to brain development and the development of cognitive and social skills.

A constant stream of volunteers to orphanages, showing affection to children and then leaving, disrupts this attachment process, and can leave children with many, many problems in their emotional and psychological development. The resulting desperation for affection and love leaves them much more vulnerable to others who seek to exploit and abuse them. On my recent visit to Haiti I met a group of children whom we had rescued from one such orphanage and reunited with their families. In just a couple of months at home they have regained the weight they lost, their skin and hair look healthy once more, they are smiling and laughing, although they still cling closely to their mothers and fathers. Their parents tell us they are afraid they will be taken away again.

One mother said, "I took the decision to give up my son because they told me he would get an education. I thought I was doing the right thing. If I had known what was really happening in that place, I would never have given him away". When I asked one little girl what was best about being at home, she said, "when I was in the orphanage, they fed us rotten food and I could not eat it. But if I did not eat it, there was nothing else and I went hungry. Now I am home, if I don't like the meal everyone is eating, my mum will just cook me something else". Children need families, not orphanages. Anyone hoping to volunteer in an orphanage should first remember why there are no orphanages in their own countries. Most developed countries did away with orphanages decades ago because of the harm caused to children, but somehow we have forgotten our histories.

Advertisement
Businesses and consumers can expect to see more increases in their health care costs in 2017.

The hikes are expected to be about the same as 2016, and employees will continue to pick up a larger share of their individual medical expenses.

People obtaining their coverage through exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) can also expect their insurance premiums to rise, perhaps slightly more than people who are covered by company health plans.

However, some experts say these increases should start to level off as telemedicine gains in popularity, and the industry cracks down on the skyrocketing costs of pharmaceutical drugs.

Advertisement

What businesses expect

The managers of some of the larger companies in the United States expect their health care costs to rise about 6 percent next year.

That data was gleaned from a survey released this month by the National Business Group of Health.

The nonprofit organization received responses from managers at 133 large U.S. corporations that offer coverage to more than 15 million people.

The association said the 6 percent hike is what these companies would have experienced the past two years if they hadn't made adjustments to their health plans.

"These cost increases, while stable, are both unsustainable and unacceptable," Brian Marcotte, the organization's chief executive officer, said in a news release.

Advertisement

Employers listed rapidly rising pharmaceutical drug prices as the chief reason for their increase in costs. In particular, they noted the skyrocketing cost of specialty drugs.

Company executives also said they will utilize telemedicine more. Nine out of 10 executives said they will make telehealth services available to employees in states where it is permitted. That's up from 70 percent in last year's survey.

What employees can expect

Employees can probably count on higher premiums as well as paying more out of pocket for health care expenses.

About 84 percent of the large corporations surveyed said they would offer employees high-deductible health plans next year. That's about the same as this year.

About 35 percent will offer the high-deductible plans as the only choice for their employees.

That's also about the same percentage as this year.

Advertisement

Kurt Mosley, vice president of strategic alliances for Merritt Hawkins health consultants, said he's "shocked" by the 35 percent high deductible-only percentage.

However, he said the shift makes sense as companies try to keep up with rising insurance premiums as well as pharmaceutical, mental health, and other medical expenses.

"They have to balance their losses," Mosley told Healthline. "Bringing more costs to the workers makes sense."

Mosley added the new people obtaining health insurance through the ACA exchanges also is having an effect.

Many of those people have pre-existing health issues and are expensive to cover. The insurance companies in the exchange, however, are not getting enough younger, healthier people to balance that out.

Advertisement

The increased costs tend to ripple through the entire industry.

"It's all one pool. I don't care what anybody says," commented Mosley.

What to expect with the exchanges

People who sign up for health plans under the ACA exchanges may see their insurance premiums rise more than those with employer-based coverage.

An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation predicts the cost for the exchanges' second lowest "silver plans" will increase by an average of about 9 percent.

The foundation notes the increases may vary widely from state to state. In some places, they could drop as much as 13 percent, while in others they could leap by as much as 25 percent.

The foundation's predictions are based on requests made by insurance companies to the states for insurance premium hikes for the upcoming ACA enrollment period.

The so-called window where people can sign up or change their plans runs from Nov. 1 to Jan. 31.

There has already been some shifting in these marketplaces this year.

Advertisement

Earlier this month, Aetna officials said they would offer individual plans in four states in 2017. Currently, it offers plans in 15 states.

Company executives said Aetna has lost $430 million on individual marketplace plans since 2014.

In April, UnitedHealthcare officials announced they plan to significantly reduce their participation in ACA marketplaces in 2017.

This summer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota announced they will stop selling individual market plans in that state. The firm said the change was made because it was projecting a three-year loss in the individual markets of more than $500 million.

Mosley said these defections will have a ripple effect across the country.

"There are such big players. It affects everybody," he said.

What to expect in the future

Experts say there may be some leveling off on health care costs in the near future.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, the executive director of the American Public Health Association, said health care costs have risen lately but not as much as they would have if the ACA had not been implemented.

He said the industry right now is caught in an "insurance cycle" as firms adjust to the new members joining.

Advertisement

"We shouldn't expect that trajectory to continue," Benjamin told Healthline.

He added that preventive medicine programs, including those pushed by companies, should help lower costs as consumers improve their health and stop making repeat visits to medical facilities.

"We'll stop paying twice for things that should have been fixed the first time," he said.

Mosley said higher costs are going to force people to become better informed when it comes to making health care choices.

"Employees will need to become smarter consumers," he said.

By David Mills
As I mentioned in my last piece about my beloved father Jim Davey, I've spent much of my life searching for an understanding of just who he was. Having died in 1951 at the age of 64, when I was just eight years old, my father never knew me as an adult. Nor as an obnoxious teenager who goes through the process of differentiating from her parents. Therefore he remains my idealized parent who, in recurring dreams throughout my life, isn't really dead and is coming home.

As a psychoanalyst and writer, I've always been particularly interested in the trauma of early loss of a parent. I've learned that death is not the only way to lose a loved one. Divorce, alcoholism, mental illness, emotional detachment, and abuse in its various forms can also feel like a version of death. Having been in analysis myself for many years, I try to impart what I've learned about the effects of my father's death on my development, and how I might offer insight to others who've been left with a giant hole in their heart.

My mother also lost her father when she was only 3 years old, retaining only one vague memory of him chasing her around the dining room table. How sad it is to only have one memory. Always having been a healthy, vibrant man, my mother's father died of the swine flu in 1918, a horrendous epidemic that killed over 50 million people worldwide, when he was only 30 years old. To help compensate for this lack of a father, my mother married my father who was almost 30 years older than she, thus having a husband and father-figure in one person. It worked beautifully for her, except that they were only together for 13 years. However, she always said "I wouldn't trade those 13 years with him for a lifetime with anyone else." She never married again, saying that no other man ever seemed so exciting.

Advertisement

To cope with my own loss of this special man, I've continued my mother's project of chronicling everything she could find about my father's life. In 15 incredible scrapbooks that took her fifty years to compile, my mother documented through amazing photographs, newspaper clippings, and personal stories, the lives of my family - and especially that of my father - so that their memory will never die. This, of course, works for me because he was a good parent, and there's nothing I have a need to forget. I understand that for some people this isn't the case. For them, certain memories just bring pain.

As a result of my mother's devotion and diligence to accurate family history, I have a clear idea about my father's life after he married his first wife, Mary Binney Davey, at the age of 29. Individual stories about him as a child and young adult have been more difficult to find. I long to know more, but anyone who knew him when he was young has long since died.

The family stories are full of triumph and tragedy. My grandfather, John Davey, and grandmother struggled to raise their seven children, two of whom died in childhood. They were very poor, due to the fact that my grandfather farmed the land, and the crops were often destroyed by the harsh Ohio weather. John Davey was diligently and scientifically developing his theories about tree surgery, but at that time, nobody was interested in this new science.

The family often was not only hungry, but cold. My Uncle Martin Davey tells a pitiful story in his unpublished autobiography about how he and his little brother Jim (my father) were sobbing to their mother because their little hands were freezing and they had no mittens. How terrible she must have felt. What they did have, however, was a home full of riches in terms of love and intellectual stimulation. In fact, eventually John Davey became world famous for his work with the environment. Moreover, each of the siblings themselves became well known for their original endeavors.

Advertisement

So how, I've always wondered, did my father's personality develop over the years? What was he like as a child? How did he develop the sunny, optimistic, expansive personality for which he was known? How did he go from such a poverty- stricken childhood to become a creative entrepreneur, as well as a man who traveled the world long before it was in vogue? Also, having lived in a world of high society, how did he retain the values of his humble origins, holding fast to the sense of what was really important to him?

Also, although my father looked like a total "dude", he was, according to my mother, a man of his time who was shy and respectful of women. He never sought fame for himself, and didn't care when others took the credit for his achievements. My mother, who adored him, was always perplexed as to why my father "never thought he was anybody particularly special." To be honest, I've always wondered how this charismatic man did not become a narcissist! Thus, as a psychoanalyst, I look for clues.

Several years ago my brother, knowing I would be thrilled, sent me a large carton of books containing my father's high school books. With great excitement, I opened the box, gingerly lifted out the very old volumes, and arranged them around me on the floor. Beside me I had placed a large magnifying glass. I hoped that, like most young people, my father had defaced his books. Since I've always considered drawings and doodles that people create to be both very interesting and revealing, I was eager to begin my investigation.

The first book I picked up was an Elementary English Composition book in which my father had written the date Sept./'01, along with various styles of signatures of his name, Jas. Davey. He was 14 years old.

The book, which still had its cover intact, seemed to open itself to the middle. What was inside made my heart stop. There, perfectly preserved with its bright green color (with a little touch of purple) was a magnificent four-leaf clover with its sturdy-looking stem intact. I stared at it in amazement, until suddenly I realized that it was disintegrating into powder, right before my eyes. It only took minutes. I reached for the stem, thinking that perhaps it would stay together, only to see its form disappear as well. It, too, had crumbled into dust. It broke my heart, but I soothed myself by thinking I had been able to touch something that my father had last touched over a hundred years ago. This feeling gave me a deep sense of connection.

Advertisement

It took me awhile to recover from this emotional moment, but soon I was roaring with laughter as I began looking through the other books. Sure enough, all throughout these very old texts, he had drawn funny caricatures of people, some known (like Lincoln) and some unknown, but probably his friends. Throughout, he signed his name, like "Sunny Jim," or the "Reverend Jas.Davey." He penned supposedly serious phrases: "Love has the power to soothe the savage, to melt the heart, and split a cabbage- Shakespere." (Okay, maybe spelling wasn't his strong suit.) And in a huge Webster's Dictionary published in 1861, signed by his grandfather Harmon Reeves, and given to him on his fourteenth birthday by his mother, my father wrote his name across the forehead of N. Webster, and underneath his picture playfully wrote, "This is the famous Jas. Davey." I spent a whole day exploring this period of my father's life. In many ways, I had a lovely visit with him.

My Uncle Mart wrote that anybody who tried to understand my father could get along with him. However, his high school principal was a rather obtuse individual, who had quite a bit of trouble with a number of the students. My father was one of them. According to my uncle, Jim helped to make his life miserable, with the result that he was dismissed from school with a degree of finality that was all too real. So my father had to finish high school in nearby Ravenna, Ohio. Luckily, the Ravenna high school principal was a wise and understanding man, William J. Dodge. Uncle Mart writes,"very promptly he had Jim under complete control, and Jim has been his devoted friend ever since."

As is obvious, my father was not a student of formal education. He always joked that he'd had two years of college, when in fact he went to Massachusetts Agricultural College in the fall of 1907, and the spring of 1908. So, to him, he could say he went to school in 1907 and 1908 - two years! His favorite saying was "the best education is travel," and his travels were truly astonishing. Here, indeed, was where I got my passion for traveling and exploring the world, and Pan Am allowed me the fulfillment of that desire. Joining Pan Am aided me in my search for knowing my father: I could see the whole world as he did, and feel deeply identified with him.

In my family albums, we have a photograph of my 20-year-old father on his motorcycle in 1907, along with a letter he wrote from Amherst, Massachusetts. He was joking about having only 20 cents in his pocket, and what he was thinking about spending it on. Frankly, in the very early days of the Davey Tree Expert Company, this was probably true. My brother has written a note on the letter to my sister's boys: "When your grandfather Jim wrote this, he had 20 cents. Ten years later, after selling a lot of tree work, and being known as 'The Boy Wonder of Wall Street,' he retired as a millionaire at age 30." One must keep in mind that the Davey boys were all put to work - and hard work--at the age of six, and my father had big dreams about having a joyful life.

Advertisement

My grandfather's first book "The Tree Doctor" was published in 1901. While it laid the foundation for the Davey Tree Expert Company, he'd already perfected most of the new science by 1880. Davey Tree trucks today proudly, and accurately, advertise "since 1880. " My father joined the company in 1904, heading up its Northeast division. By 1907, the Davey Institute of Tree Surgery in Kent had begun. The educational facet was extremely thorough and intensive, but the physical training was also important. Climbing spurs were forbidden by John Davey because of the damage to tree trunks. So the men frequently had to shinny up trees eighty feet and higher. Then, moored only by safety tethers, they'd climb out onto limbs, saws and other gear in hand, to do their work. Thus developed a strong esprit de corps among tree men.

One night my father and other young tree surgeons were in Pittsburgh, where they went out with some of the local young women. The girls had never heard of tree surgery. When one of them asked, "What do you do, skin trees?" my father replied "Yes, we're tree skinners!" From that day on, Davey men referred to themselves as "tree skinners." Among his many talents, my father had a way of coining words and phrases that stuck.

As a child I always looked forward to my father's nightly bedtime stories, which were all based on his incredibly varied life experiences. My brother, sister, and I would listen breathlessly to every word, even when we knew the stories by heart. I would go to sleep with visions of foreign lands dancing in my head, longing to see them someday too.

Sometimes the stories were about snakes that my father had encountered around the world, despite my mother's protestations that we'd be scared. We loved it! My Uncle Mart tells this familiar story about the time when my father was way up in a tall tree that had a decayed and hollow top. He was busily and happily sawing away at this stub when suddenly a large snake came crawling out, pointing its ugly head directly at him. Instinct caused my father to make a dive for the nearest big limb, and by lucky chance he caught hold. Then he just held on, waiting with all the patience he could muster until the snake disappeared down the trunk.

Advertisement

My Uncle Mart also writes that my father was the best salesman the Tree Company ever had. He describes him as a hard and industrious worker whose natural aptitude for selling was due to his imagination, energy, enthusiasm, and perseverance. In addition, he put great value on family loyalty, while caring very little for money. He was never especially extravagant, viewing money as important only when he needed it. For example, it was impossible for my uncle, the President of the Tree Company, to get my father to make out an expense account, even though he worked for a small salary. So at the end of every year, Uncle Mart had to estimate what his expenses had been and give him credit.

We have a lot of photographs from this period of my father's life, but unfortunately I don't know who the people are or why they were important to him. I would have so many questions to ask him! He was extremely adventurous, and traveled a lot for the Davey Tree Company. Always a compelling storyteller, my father would be able to make each photograph and its people - as well as the adventure behind it - come alive. Wherever he went, people gathered around him to hear his stories. Yet he was a man who was always more interested in what everybody else had to say.

I'm sad to say that I don't know the story of how my father did so well on Wall Street. The truth is, I can't even imagine it, knowing that he was never interested in dynastic wealth and all that comes with it. He must have gotten lucky, as he often did, but acquiring riches wasn't something that he continued to pursue. We always heard that he made a million dollars before he was 30, and retired. He would say that with a great big grin, probably because it didn't mean that much to him. More important was to work very hard at having an unimaginably interesting life.

By this time, the Davey Tree Expert Company had become quite well known, beginning with its work on the country's most famous mansions, including the Flaglers, Roosevelts, Rockefellers, George Eastman, and many more. These people invariably became friends of my grandfather, inviting him into their homes to give talks about trees. However, no doubt the Washington Elm on the grounds of the White House was the Davey Company's most famous patient of the day.

In addition to the source of his early wealth, I also have no idea how my father met his first wife, Mary Binney. She was the daughter of Edwin Binney, who invented crayons (Binney and Smith Crayola Company). At the time, my father had an office in Manhattan, and Mary was from Old Greenwich, Connecticut. I've always imagined that they met in New York, but who knows? Mary's family was extremely successful, she herself was young and beautiful, and my father was a handsome young millionaire, so its not surprising that someone would introduce them - but who?

Advertisement

What follows will be the stories I do know about - ones that I heard at my father's knee--and that I treasure as my heritage.
There have been so many nicknames for Donald Drumpf this year. My favorite is "Apocalypse Cheeto." But it occurs to me that none of them captures the essence of the man's aesthetic, his appeal, or his cultural significance. So I propose a new one: the Troll King. Donald Drumpf is the Twitter troll of candidates.

Which would be funny, except that internet trolls are actually not funny. Aristotle said that the danger for a democracy is demagoguery, but he was wrong. The danger for our democracy at the moment is the tyranny of the loud.

Back in the mid-1990s, at the dawn of the age of online communities, one of the earliest successful virtual communities was MediaMoo, operated out of the Media Lab at MIT. It was intoxicating; there were famous stories of people losing track of their real lives because of the fascination of their virtual existence (the popular solution: hit "reset password" then bang your head on the keyboard.) Around that time, though, a problem began to appear. MediaMOO was a relentlessly democratic and libertarian community. But as one of its founders said to me in the mid-90s, it suffered from "the tyranny of the loud." A few participants dominated the conversation, bullied others, and simply spent so much time flooding the tubes with noise that others were not heard or simply gave up and were driven away.

Advertisement

Sound familiar? Today this is the standard observation about any insufficiently moderated online forum. The voices that define the discourse are not the smartest, or the most committed, or the most thoughtful, they are the loudest. And some kinds of voices are inherently louder than others. Invective and provocation are louder than reasoned dialogue. They are also easier - the transaction costs involved in flooding the airwaves with noise are much lower than the costs of actually saying something. And of course, on the internet no one knows you are a dog.

This is all very old hat, but it is by no means a problem that has been solved: witness among myriad other examples actress and comedienne Leslie Jones' decision to quit Twitter. What the people who attempt to design these virtual environments forget is that free discussion depends on regulation and self-control. (So do free and competitive markets, for that matter, but that's another discussion.) Roberts Rules of Order, the rules of a town meeting, asking students to raise their hands--these are not restrictions that exist to silence dissenters, they exist to ensure that dissenters can be heard at all. They are ways of preventing the Tyranny of the Loud.

In the early days of free speech doctrine, Alexander Miekeljohn understood this point very well. He said that the goal of free speech is not to maximize the ability of persons to speak, it is to maximize the number of different voices that people hear. In today's environment that idea has given way to narcissistic relativism: no one can limit my voice because it is mine, and no one's opinions are better than mine. Anyone who says otherwise is an elitist or politically correct, and if someone else is not being heard that just shows that they are a big loser. It is difficult to avoid slipping into some kind of vulgar Freudianism here, with the obvious insistence on the prerogative to force one's deepest id onto everyone around... There are deep reasons for the correlation between trolls and bros, just ask a gamer.

Advertisement

Roger Ailes more than anyone understood that this could drive new forms of media. The Tea Party movement--remember Santelli's (probably scripted) rant that started it all?--is only one example of politics reduced to organized screaming. Even our courts have embraced the ideal of trollish virtues. The Supreme Court has repeatedly adopted the idiotic assumption that the way to ensure all voices are heard is to have no limits on speaking. Anyone who has worked in politics, or communications, or advertising, or--well, The World--knows this is nonsense. That was the fundamental mistake of the famous case Buckley v. Valeo forty years ago, and repeated again in Citizens United. Aside from giving corporations more rights than actual citizens, the Court keeps saying that the act of spending money equates to speech. That's absurd. Spending money is not speaking, spending money is a way to make speech louder. That was the point of rules about campaign finance: to limit the use of money to turn the volume knob up to 11. But under the leadership of the late lamented Justice Antonin Scalia our highest court has declared a constitutional principle that louder is better.

Internet trolls didn't invent this ethos in media, politics, and law, they are just its apotheosis. And Drump if their king, the internet troll as President. Trump is very, very loud. He does not debate, he drowns out. He does not campaign, he provokes and then mocks the reaction. Drumpf is a walking comments section without an article.

We probably can't fix the Internet. But we absolutely have to do something about our politics, or else the experiment of American republicanism will end with the tyranny of the loud. If it has not already.
Penn State student Zaniya Joe wears a piece of tape over her mouth that says 'Black Lives Matter' during a Ferguson protest organized by a group of Penn State University students on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014, in University Park, Pa. (Nabil K. Mark/Centre Daily Times/TNS via Getty Images)

Even as the racial tensions buffeting the nation persist, the relatively new Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) has lost it focus. Its attention has been diverted thousands of miles away with the adoption of a platform that falsely accuses Israel of genocide and apartheid.

Instead of intensifying its efforts to build a real movement for change, including outreach to Americans of every color, ethnicity and background who share the vision of a more just society, BLM has directed its anger at the Jewish state of Israel.

Advertisement

Given the close familiarity of the Jewish people with genocide, it is not only wrong, but deeply offensive, to throw around loosely the charge of a crime against humanity. It also is startling to hear that accusation given the genocide being committed next door in Syria, the massacres of entire minority communities taking place in many parts of the region, the ethnic cleansing of Christians, which is a virtual fait accompli in much of the Middle East, the rape and sexual enslavement of women, and more.

If the charge of genocide had any credibility, it's not likely Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have been invited, let alone warmly received, by seven African heads of state last month. Contrast that with the visit to Sudan a few days later by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who embraced and strategized with President Omar al Bashir, the notorious war criminal wanted by the International Court of Justice for genocide and crimes against humanity.

In choosing to interject BLM into the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in this manner, tensions have been exacerbated, making it harder for advocates who continue to believe in the inescapable need for face-to-face negotiations to achieve two states for two peoples living side-by-side.

Even within the U.S., BLM is engaging in short-sighted tactics at the expense of addressing the many traumas inflicted on black communities. Recent efforts to get the city of Atlanta to stop cooperating with Israel on innovative police training suggests that antipathy for Israel overrides a common sense need to find better solutions to real problems.

Advertisement

Israel is far from perfect, and millions of its citizens take advantage of their democratic rights to protest its shortcomings. The nation is a loud and combustible mix of ethnicities, including well over a million and a half Arab citizens. Palestinians are members of the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court and, given a choice, have absolutely no interest in living anywhere else in the region.

As minorities that have faced intolerance and oppression, the African American and Jewish communities on many occasions have joined forces in the same trenches to fight, and even die, for the principles of freedom and justice both cherish. The fact that after all the progress of the civil rights struggle, parents of young black men still fear for their children every time they leave home is an outrage no American should tolerate.

BLM can play a vital role in helping our nation overcome its painful history. But to succeed, it must work in concert with others who also are strongly committed to ending senseless violence that has plagued us for generations.
Job application rejected

As any student of policy analysis knows, when we analyze the impact of a real policy on real people, we must look for "unintended consequences," a kind of backfiring where for some unforeseen reason, the policy hurts those it's trying to help.

This came up recently in a couple of research papers evaluating the impact of "ban the box," or BTB, an initiative intended to meet an extremely venerable goal: to help those with criminal records make their way back into the workforce. BTB does so by moving background checks from the beginning of the application process to the end, often after a conditional offer of employment has been extended.

Advertisement

The problem, according to some critics of the policy, is that while BTB might help those with criminal records get their feet in the door, employers without criminal record information will engage in "statistical discrimination." That is, they'll discriminate against applicants they believe most likely to have criminal records: young black and Latino men. Based on this dynamic, one author of a critical analysis of BTB concluded that the policy "does more harm than good."

Not so, and here's where policy analysts need to be a lot more careful. Are they identifying a problem with the policy or with employer behavior more generally? Especially if it is the latter, are there better ways to address that behavior than policy repeal? Do the policy's beneficiaries outweigh anyone hurt by unintended consequences?

That's why a new policy brief from Maurice Emsellem and Beth Avery (E&A) of the National Employment Law Project (disclosure: I chair NELP's board) is so important. Media reports haven't done enough to contextualize those studies' findings and have been too quick to dismiss a policy that, while only a limited part of what's needed to help disadvantaged individuals get a fair shake in the job market, generally appears to be having its intended effects.

As E&A note, evidence from cities across the United States - from Durham, North Carolina to Washington, DC to Atlanta, Georgia - indicates that ban the box is increasing employment among people with criminal records. The critical studies don't challenge that claim directly, but, as noted above, argue that employers respond to ban-the-box policies by discriminating broadly against all young black and/or Latino men. But while employer discrimination surely exists, the studies fail to make the case that this is due to BTB.

Advertisement

One study, by Amanda Agan and Sonja Starr, relies on fictitious job applications for young men ages 21-22 submitted to New Jersey and New York employers both "shortly before and after the New York City and New Jersey private sector ban-the-box laws took effect in 2015." The study found that the gap in callbacks between white applicants and black applicants (whom were given distinctively racial-sounding names) increased following the introduction of ban the box.

But does this prove unintended consequences? For firms that used and then banned the box, black callback rates were about 11 percent before and after the policy change, while white callback rates went up, from around 11 percent to 15 percent. It appears that these results were driven by increased callbacks for applicants with criminal records of bothraces, as black applicants with records had only an 8.4 percent callback rate and white applicants with records had only an 8.8 percent callback rate prior to the change.

In other words, there were increased callbacks for applicants of both races with records (though more so for whites): a good example of an intended consequence. The NYT also got this wrong, asserting that the paper found that "employers became much less likely to call back any apparently black applicant."

The other study, from Jennifer Doleac and Benjamin Hanson, compared employment across the United States between metropolitan areas that did and didn't enact ban the box laws. While the authors found reduced employment for black men without college degrees between the ages of 25 and 34, they also found increased employment for other black workers.

There are also some potentially serious modelling problems with this study. First, the authors consider every worker in an entire metropolitan statistical area (MSA) to be covered by a ban-the-box law "if any jurisdiction in their MSA has a BTB policy." A BTB law passed in East Palo Alto, CA in January of 2005, for example - a city with around 30,000 people - looks to me like it would have caused the entire San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA MSA, which has a population of closer to 4.7 million, to be considered covered, despite no other jurisdiction within that MSA adopting ban the box until San Francisco did so in October of that year.

Advertisement

What's more, public-sector-only BTB laws count, and they're all that's in place in nearly 80 percent of months the authors examine in MSAs covered in this way (including in the aforementioned California MSA until July of 2013). It's not clear why we'd expect public-sector BTB laws to affect the hiring behavior of private employers, or the behavior of both public and private employers in neighboring cities and counties that don't have BTB laws. The authors also neglect to control for local unemployment, which I'd guess matters in a model that predicts employment outcomes.

My conclusion from the studies and the NELP report is that it's not clear that employer responses to ban-the-box laws are the problem. What is clear, from these and many other studies, is that there are serious discrepancies in job opportunities for people of different races. Those discrepancies have nothing to do with BTB and must be addressed. And if the critics are right--if some employers are actually responding to ban-the-box laws by ramping up statistical discrimination--then they're doing so in violation of federal civil rights law.

E&A conclude correctly that "a comprehensive policy response is necessary to fundamentally increase job opportunities for people with records and reduce race discrimination in hiring." That policy response must include ban the box, enforcement of federal civil rights law, policing reforms, prison reforms, education about implicit bias, and a suite ofother policies. It takes a village of such policies to achieve economic justice.
Sean Peter Drohan's Cyrano: a love letter to a friendship, a modern-day re-imagining of the famously ageless love story, opens with two men dancing around on stage clad only in white briefs. Their dance is a mix of sexually-charged abandon and childlike exuberance. The small stage of New York City's SoHo Playhouse is adorned with giant, brightly colored Lego-esque building blocks. Pulsating trance/house music plays in the background, while neon strobe lights flash, swirl, and titillatingly assault the audience's eyes. It's an appropriate setting: For single gay men, New York City is indeed a playground of sorts-- complete with music, infinite eye candy, party drugs, and an endless number of candidates for both Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now. We are formally introduced to the two men: Christian (Adam Roberts) is rugged, tall, and lean. By contrast, the titular Cyrano (played by Drohan), who wears glasses, would likely be labeled a "cub" in modern-day gay lexicon. The audience learns that Christian and Cyrano are roommates and best friends. Cyrano makes his living as a ghostwriter for gay erotic fiction (Never say "porn"!) with titles like The Pageboy's Dilemma, while Christian seems content to be a full-time socialite. When the image-conscious Christian looks into a mirror and asks, "Do I need a nosejob?" Cyrano retorts, "No. You need a JOB!" It's just one of the many snappy (and often hilarious) pieces of interaction between the two. Their friendship is never sexualized but is clearly very intimate, to the point that Cyrano has no problem asking Christian to help him "prepare" for a hookup. Without giving too much away, it involves a razor, a can of shaving cream, and Cyrano bent over one of those aforementioned building blocks. Despite their closeness, the cute and smart Cyrano suffers from crippling insecurity when he compares himself to his more traditionally handsome bestie. The differences in their personalities come to the forefront, in a dramatic way, when Christian starts dating the impossibly fit and "brilliant" Rock (Judah Frank), the play's third character. In a bit of role reversal, it's now Christian who feels insecure about the new object of his desire-- and he reaches out to the more intellectual Cyrano for help.
The passing of Elie Wiesel serves as a timely reminder that one day soon Holocaust survivors will no longer be able to tell their own stories.

In a world where Holocaust denial is rampant, Generation Y and Z prefer videogames to reading books, and sensationalist culture has inspired apathy to the horrors of mass murder, the risk of our collective memory of the Holocaust fading into oblivion becomes realer and realer. Everyone can play a role in reducing the risk, but the burden perhaps falls more squarely on the shoulders of those like myself, third-generation Holocaust survivors.

Yet how exactly can we ensure that the 11 million people (6 million of them Jews) who burned in the crematorium and choked in the gas chambers are not forgotten?

Advertisement

Document Family History While We Still Can.

This is the first, most obvious step. Write a key to ancient family photos, detailing the names and fates of those pictured. Type up the memories that Holocaust survivors in your family share. Record their stories on videotape if still possible.

The most challenging part of documentation may be convincing survivors to speak about what for many of them remains unspeakable. Not uncommonly, Holocaust survivors have kept from going insane only through silence, internalizing their trauma and burying it deep inside them. Many of their children grew up only with a vague understanding of their parents' unimaginable past, unable to identify any distinct features on the dark shadows lurking all about their homes.

The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, however, are often in an unparalleled position to learn about their grandparents' pasts. The explanation may be that when survivors reach an older age, they recognize the urgency of finding a receptacle for their memories - a younger body and mind with greater ability to pass along history to future generations. And when this realization happens, survivors frequently choose their grandchildren as their audiences. This should be considered a privilege, not a burden.

Make the Choice to Take an Interest.

Most third-generation Holocaust survivors in the United States grew up as normal American children, with our European-born grandparents speaking English to us and our religion never provoking even a fraction of the degree of anti-Semitism that was the norm in Europe in World War II.

Advertisement

Living in a world of equal opportunity and religious freedom seems to present us with a choice: How "Jewish" do we really want to be? How much should we allow our family's Jewish history to be part of who we are today? To what extent should we share our grandparents' Holocaust stories with those around us? Despite being unaffected by it personally, some third generation Holocaust survivors choose to make the Holocaust part of their identities, while others choose to completely separate from it. If history is to not be forgotten and repeated, we need more individuals to select the former path and to truly take an interest in Holocaust.

Choosing the former path can manifest itself in a variety of ways. Reading classic books like Elie Wiesel's Night is a good start, followed by more eclectic tales, such as Ka-tzetnik's House of Dolls (about Jewish girls in concentration camps forced to sexually entertain Nazis soldiers). Holocaust films like Schindler's List and The Pianist are easy educational tools as well. Many universities even offer Holocaust studies classes. Taking just one or two classes will allow students to be informed enough to play a role in educating others.

Support Israel.

Israel remains the most prominent symbol of hope after the Holocaust. It represents the failure to destroy an entire people and the resilience of the Jews to continue to flourish after unthinkable atrocities. As long as Israel continues to exist, Jews will never again have nowhere to turn when the countries they call home turn against them. Israel is a haven and a home for any and all Jews around the world facing anti-Semitism. In the past few years, for example, French Jews have immigrated to Israel in large numbers as a result of rampant anti-Semitism in France, and they have been welcomed with open arms. Israel's creation and the Holocaust are forever intertwined.

In 2013, Israel's population reached a symbolic 6 million Jewish citizens, the same number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. This was a victory in itself.

Nevertheless, Israel remains the size of New Jersey and faces threats to its existence. Too many Jews today feel no responsibility to lend support to Israel, not understanding why its existence is so crucial or taking it for granted. Contributing can take many forms - from visiting the country to donating to Israeli organizations to rallying senators to reject anti-Israel legislation. Becoming an advocate for Israel is also critical; being an advocate means participating in dialogue on the Arab-Israeli conflict with friends and colleagues and correcting inaccuracies whenever possible. Self-education on both sides of the conflict is key.

Advertisement

Israel's continued existence is too important to preventing another Holocaust to allow the tiny nation to fend for itself unsupported.

Take Pride in Our History.

History is never remembered objectively. It is not simply a compilation of facts. Instead, history is molded and altered by the way people choose to retell it from generation to generation.

Third generation Holocaust survivors, playing a critical role in the way successive generations will understand the Holocaust, have a choice in how to present the atrocities. Whether World War II's Jews are perceived as strong or weak, for example, might be as simple as what events and memories are emphasized over others. Consider that International Holocaust Remembrance Day (celebrated in the United States) takes place on the anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau's liberation by the Soviets, while Israel's Yom HaShoah (Israel's Holocaust remembrance day) is set on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The former presents Jews as weak - as passive prisoners only able to gain freedom because of outside intervention - while the latter underscores the strength and active resistance of a people who refused to let the Nazis decide their fate for them. Sharing memories of the Holocaust in a way that more closely resembles the messages of Yom HaShoah rather than International Holocaust Remembrance Day will inspire a well-deserved pride in the resilience of the Jewish people.

As third generation Holocaust survivors, we should feel pride in our Jewish identity, the continued strength of the Jewish people in Israel and around the globe, and our unique privilege to pass on the legacy and memories of our families' pasts.

Advertisement
Today more than ever, your own network is the key to successfully funding your business.

You may be reading that statement and think, "Well, what do I do when my network isn't very big? I have friends and family but not those kinds of friends and family."

A New York Times article revealed that the average American person has at least 600 people in their network. That's not a small number! If you are reading this article, I'd be willing to bet that YOU are not average which means that you've got at least 600 people you can reach out to. You've likely got a network that is a lot bigger than you think.

Earlier this year I started working with two talented women entrepreneurs who run a fantastic adult sleep-away camp called Soul Camp. Upon the start of our collaboration, they were contacted by Google to investigate incubating their business. AMAZING!!!

Advertisement

The cost to be incubated by Google comes with a high ad spend requirement. These founders needed some extra capital to cover these costs but didn't think they had a strong enough network to help them find funding. I was convinced otherwise and immediately walked them through my Sx6 Finding Investors Formula and we developed a sound strategy that made sense. We tapped straight into their network and got them funded in under 60 days.

Start The Discovery Process

The first thing you need to do is set aside some time and start writing down (or typing if you are a spreadsheet guru) a list of all your family members, all your friends, all the people you've worked with in the past, people you've done business with, clients, everyone you can possibly think of who knows you and likes you.

Stress creeping up at the thought of reaching out? Don't worry, the point is not to directly ask these folks to invest in your business. Instead, you are going to shift your mindset and enlist these people as your tribe of fundraisers. Think of this as an opportunity to reconnect and share the excitement of what you are up to. If you are embarrassed about your business and what you are building, then you may need to rethink it altogether.

Otherwise, head up, shoulders back, smile on, engage that enthusiasm and make it your goal to have a phone conversation with everyone on your list. DO NOT DO THIS BY EMAIL! Email doesn't allow for two very important things:

Advertisement

1.Enlisting your tribe means that you need to show them that you care first. A phone conversation allows for you to explore how you can help them with one specific thing. That thing could be as simple as an introduction, a link to an article, etc. This is a critical step in your fundraising process.

Yes, it requires effort on your part. Yes, you are running a business and don't have a lot of time. I GET IT! However, unless you have months or years to wait around to get funded, unless you have all the word-of-mouth advertising you could ever want, you must take the time to have these conversations with your network.

Doing so will build an army of brand ambassadors who tell everyone they know about your business and connect you with others who are interested in funding you. Or maybe someone in your network, perhaps someone with young money, will seize the opportunity to immediately invest in you. Whatever the outcome, ALL of this comes at no cost other than a call and simple act of generosity. The return on investment of your time now is well worth it!

2.During this phone conversation you are going to ask one very important question: "Who do you know that might be interested in meeting with me to learn more about this opportunity?"

After asking, pause and wait for the response. Let them mention two or three people they know, and then make it really easy for them to help you. Tell them that you are going to provide the exact email they can copy, paste, and send to those people they mentioned. By crafting the email for them and sending it either during the conversation or within minutes after, you are increasing the likelihood of the connection happening--because you've made the task almost effortless.

Advertisement

You may not have phone numbers for every person on your list, so get resourceful and use things like LinkedIn to figure out how to get them on the phone. If you do this exhaustively, I promise you will be amazed at the results.

Put Fear Aside

Fear gets in the way of you going big. It stunts curiosity. When you're afraid, you don't ask important questions that can get you from no funding to fully funded in a matter of weeks.

More importantly, fear keeps you from tapping into your connections who want to support and help you. As a result, you could be leaving your ideal investor in the dark, with no idea that you're out there looking for funds. Since you are only six degrees of separation from your ideal investor, think Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, or Marcus Lemonis, not tapping into your network means you could be missing out on connecting with someone really big. You'll never know...

Conversely, by bravely reaching out to your connections, you're empowering yourself to do big things in the world. Finding and securing the right funding sources will enable your business to have the kind of impact that positively affects the lives of everyone in your network and beyond--and perhaps help you become the richest woman in the world.

In honor of Woman's Equality Day, let's acknowledge the progress made since women were first granted the right to vote and also recognize that women are upgrading the leadership rules. Yet, despite these strides, the reality is that less than 5 percent of all venture capital investment goes to a woman-owned business or one with a woman on the executive team, as reported by the Diana Project. All the more reason for women in business to move beyond their fear and secure funding within their own network.

Advertisement

Believe In Possibilities

Making connections and growing your network isn't a stand-alone action for success. It's part of a larger process that starts with believing that anything is possible.

Confidently tapping into your network is key! The authors of the Confidence Code say it well, "Confidence is life's enabler. It is the quality that turns thoughts into action. Confidence does require a choice: less worrying about people-pleasing and perfection and more action, risk taking, and fast failure." Be your own hero and take action, which means being prepared. Here is a list of ten questions every savvy investor will ask. Boost your confidence by making sure you are prepared to answer each of them.

Fear cannot live in inspired action, so do what it takes to identify and tap into your connections, make sure you are prepared and you'll find yourself moving forward in a very big way.




Before a traveler embarks on the treacherously winding and ridiculously narrow drive along Italy's Amalfi Coast, there are towns and pleasures along the way just south of Naples and before you get to Sorrento, not least, of course, Mount Vesuvius and the ruins of Pompeii. And in the foothills of the volcano lies one of the most enchanting attractions I know of in Southern Italy: Cantina del Vesuvio, where, on 30 acres of very rich volcanic soil, Maurizio Russo and his partner, Esther Grosso (below), produce excellent wines and run a little trattoria serving some of the best local food in the area.

The winery was founded in 1949 by Maurizio's father, Giovanni, at a time when wine was transported to Naples by horse-drawn wagons, then sold to merchants who supplied the restaurants and wine stores. Then, 18 years ago, Maurizio began selling his products from the winery itself, after improving their quality and making his estate a tourist destination at the base of Vesuvius.

And so you arrive--a twenty-minute drive from the center of Naples--among the cool green hills of Vesuvius. You will be effusively met by Esther, whose graciousness is exceeded only by her joy that you have come to visit. Maurizio, who is in the vineyards digging, planting, trellising, and pruning, invariably arrives and proudly shows off his winery.

Advertisement

Then you sit either on the leafy patio or in the rustic interior room, where the moment you sit down, bottles of Lacryma Christi bianco, Rosato, and Rosso wines, pitchers of water and a lavish antipasto platter of provolone and salami, local casatiello bread, and smoky bruschetta topped with heirloom Piennolo tomatoes are brought over.

Then arrives a bottle of Lacryma Christi Riserva and a platter of spaghetti tossed with a deep red tomato sauce of such intensity that, unless you have dined elsewhere in Campania, where the tomato achieves unparalleled greatness, you will never have tasted anything like it. Stick the bread into the sauce, leave nothing behind. Finish this supremely simple meal with a Napolitana torta di pastiera made with sweetened ricotta, candied fruit and boiled wheat berries, paired with Capafresca Spumante Rosato and Acquavite di Albicocche del Vesuvio. Nothing short of an eruption on Mount Vesuvius could possibly affect your bliss.

By then, with a languorous smile of satisfaction on your face, you will be powerless to resist going to the winery room and buying Cantina del Vesuvio's wines, their superb olive oil, and perhaps one of the pretty chicken-shaped pitchers. And, if you wish, you may even take a cooking lesson here.

It will have been a rare day, even in a region as beautiful as Campania, and you will feel you've made warm new friends, not just with Esther and Maurizio and their staff--even perhaps with a vineyard dog who ambles about the place--but with the others from all over who shared the experience with you that day.

Advertisement
We are blissfully disconnected, intentionally ignorant, not intending to devalue, degrade, and dismiss the suffering and murder of innocent people but that's precisely what we do each day. We are upstream from our prejudice and selfishness so we have no idea the impact that our action or inaction against the injustices we commit or don't stop others from doing. That is until a photo like the one of Omran Daqneesh covered in blood and dust or before him, Aylan Kurdi washing up on a Turkish beach invades our news feeds.

And we are forced to stop -- some of us anyway -- and contemplate just what the hell are we doing?

When I looked at the photo of that little boy in Syria I wasn't sad, I am angry. I am pissed that the United States of America and the vast majority of its citizens prioritize economic interests over the safety and care of the most vulnerable here and abroad. Selfish ambition and economic interest blinds us to the reality that some of our best and brightest scientists, programmers and businessmen are designing weapons to drop bombs on wedding parties because a "target" was supposedly in attendance and an algorithm that calculates collateral damage deemed this a good hit. Some of our greatest communicators are crafting language about how to spin stories of torture, violence, and extortion to narratives that move us "forward". Newsflash, saying enhanced interrogation tactics was not an accident and neither was the systematic torture of innocent men and women for NO actionable intelligence. Employees at Boeing, Lockheed Martin, IBM and other corporations compete for lucrative military contracts coming up with creative ways to kill people in the name of protecting our freedom. The freedom to do what I ask?

Advertisement

I am sickened by our sadness because it will last less than 180 seconds because we need to move on to the next segment on CNN or another photo on Instagram. We have built mighty altars to our selfishness and every day we bow down in worship; and every day we make sure these altars of radical self interest are protected. Our rhetoric is as elaborate as our weapons systems.

"We are not the world's police."

"We have enough problems here at home."

"It's not like we can help...everyone.

No, we are not the world's police but we certainly could serve and protect more than we manipulate and coerce.

Advertisement

Yes, we do have problems at home but the poorest white communities in Appalachia and the most depressed black and brown neighborhoods in our urban centers have abundant resources compared to Aleppo. It would not kill us to share.

And no, we can't help everyone but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to help anyone. Lord have mercy. How easily we give up when it comes to helping others but how resourceful we can be when it comes to helping ourselves!

Where oh God is Your Church in America? We are too busy worshipping like everyone else because instead of crying for justice we cozy up to political power and fall in line to pursue my best life now and Black Friday deals.

In Matthew 25 we see that God holds us responsible not just for what we do but for what we don't do. And just like God sees every missile fired from a flying death machine we call a "drone", hears every order to kill someone whom we deem to be a "terrorist" he sees we who stand by and do nothing except go about life as usual. I am sick to my stomach and bile rises in my throat at the horrific destruction that our country is a part of through the creation of weapons, their subsequent sale, our direct action and inaction that leads to the death and displacement of millions - literally millions of people we will never see or meet because we refuse to admit them as refugees and our media will not put them on our TV's.

If there were tables I could find, like Jesus I would flip them to protect my Father's House but sadly, I've come to realize this house is not His. So I'm left ranting at 230am longing for a people willing to stand on the power of Jesus and stand up to the greedy, "powerful" men and women who profit off of war and in world.

Advertisement
Imagine hundreds of vintage cars rusting in the blazing hot Breaking Bad sun of the New Mexico desert and that'll give you an idea of the Lewis Antique Auto & Toy Museum. As you approach it on old Route 66, you'll realize pretty quickly that this is not your typical car museum.

With his grizzled countenance, piercing eyes and cowboy hat, owner Archie Lewis looks like the long-lost brother of Willie Nelson. He's been collecting cars and toys for decades and doesn't seem like he'll ever stop. But this is no junkyard. Lewis makes it clear that he doesn't sell spare parts, so the vehicles are more or less intact. (Well, sometimes very less. A few look like they were towed here directly from the scene of an accident decades ago.)

Pride of place goes to the cars protected from the elements and stored in the massive warehouse. Here you'll find antique toys, plus rows of original-condition and semi-restored Ford Model Ts, Model As, Thunderbirds, and more.

Advertisement

It's a bit musty and dusty, but a true walk down memory lane. It's the opposite of seeing all the cars in pristine showroom condition. Plus, with over 1,000 toys on display, odds are you'll find a favorite toy from your childhood.

Outside, it's not just cars. There are also school buses, tractors, trucks, fire trucks, and more. A large collection of diminutive Crosleys look more like bumper cars from an amusement park than something you'd take on the open road.

The museum is a great place to stop if you're into automotive archaeology or photography. You'll get some incredible photos under the same cobalt blue skies and crisp clouds where Breaking Bad was filmed. In fact, Esquire magazine admired the place so much they did a photo shoot in the car lot a few years ago as part of a cross-country road trip.

The Lewis Museum should definitely be a part of any Route 66 itinerary.

Visitor Information:

Location: 905 US 66 East, Moriarty, NM 87035. Right off I-40 at exit 197, about 40 miles east of Albuquerque.

Advertisement

Hours: Daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., but best to call ahead to confirm someone is there.

Phone: (505) 832-6131
Awareness of the immense volume of wasted foods and associated problems is an important first step to reducing food waste in many countries, and the goal of creating increased awareness via outreach and capacity building is one reason that so much activity in the sector has been underway in the past few years.

Feeding the 5000 launched in London in 2009, and partners with local farmers, NGOs and governments to reclaim wasted foods and host public events where masses of people are provided with free food. Events have been held in partnership with:

Slow Food and Belgian Food Banks in Brussels (Jan 2014)

EndFoodWaste.org in Oakland (October 2014)

"Just Eat It" film makers in Vancouver (May 2015)

"Just Eat It" is a documentary on food waste (http://www.foodwastemovie.com/ ). JUST EAT IT: A FOOD WASTE STORY follows a couple who find it rather easier than expected to survive on discarded foods during a six month period, and was awarded the EFFY 2015 Grand Jury Prize at the Environmental Film Festival at Yale University.

Advertisement

In May 2016, two cities in the USA held Feeding the 5000 events (NYC and Washington DC), ramping up the food waste reduction movement in America. Future events are promoted via their website. http://feedbackglobal.org/events/

WRAP in the UK and NRDC in the USA were among the first to raise the issue of high levels of food waste in 2011, and the SAVE FOOD Initiative was launched in May 2011, with the FAO commissioned report "Global Food Losses and Food Waste" (Gustavsson, 2011).

WRI published its series of working papers on "Creating a sustainable food future" beginning in 2013 (Lipinski et. al. 2013), just a few months before the UN FAO launched their global SAVE FOOD Initiative online community and partnership drive -- more than 700 organizations have joined in to date. The Global Food Loss and Waste Protocol was developed by WRI with stakeholder input during 2015 and was launched in June 2016. It is being promoted now via a new website. http://www.flwprotocol.org

In Germany, www.foodsharing.de and their partners co-ordinate 7,000 people doing food pickups at more than 1,000 businesses across the country. These "food savers" either distribute the food themselves or leave it at designated spots, where it is free to pick up.

Advertisement

The Zero Hunger Challenge includes as one of its main objectives Zero loss or waste of food. "Minimizing food losses during storage and transport, and waste of food by retailers and consumers; empowering consumer choice through appropriate labeling; commitments by producers, retailers and consumers within all nations; achieving progress through financial incentives, collective pledges, locally-relevant technologies and changed behavior" (Zero Hunger Challenge).

During 2015-16 there have been a wave of activities and global, regional and national programs, projects and public outreach and capacity building events:

Expo Milano 2015 (May 1 - Oct 31, 2015) in Italy was attended by hundreds of thousands of people

UNEP - Think Eat Save

EU Consortium "Fusions"

Global FoodBanking Network (GFN)

Alliance Against Hunger and Malnutrition (AAHM)

Brookings Institution's Ending Rural Hunger project

National initiatives in UK, Denmark, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, USA, Canada, Portugal, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand

Thai SAVE FOOD Campaign

Many unique approaches to increasing awareness have been developed. The Culinary Institute of America in 2015 introduced the world's first business school dedicated to food entrepreneurship & innovation. Their slogan is: "We develop leaders to transform the business of food."

WastED, a pop-up restaurant in New York City, was launched in March 2015 by Dan Barber, Blue Hill. In an effort to both draw attention to and elevate the possibilities for food waste, the pop-up serves meals made from food scraps, with ingredients like cucumber butts, and typically rejected produce like ugly sweet potatoes and misshapen fruits and vegetables. Twenty renowned guest chefs are helping to develop recipes for the daily specials (WastEd 2015).

Food Tank (www.foodtank.org) has published a list of 21 organizations that are working to reduce food waste around the world. Food Tank: The Food Think Tank featured a series of articles throughout the week of World Environment Day in June 2015 highlighting different initiatives that are helping to prevent food waste in developing and industrialized countries. They have highlighted organizations working in schools, restaurants, businesses, and on farms to make sure all of the labor and natural resources that go into growing, processing, storing, processing and marketing food doesn't go to waste (Food Tank 2015) and interviewed the leaders of some of these organizations (Food Tank 2016).

Advertisement

This blog post is based on a major review article on food loss and waste issues prepared for the Brookings Institution's Ending Rural Hunger Project (https://endingruralhunger.org/report/), and has been updated to include activities being undertaken in 2016. For further information you can read the original review article (Kitinoja, 2016) and cited reports.

This post is part of our "Reclaim" initiative, which showcases solutions to the issue of food waste and engages our readers to take action. You can find all the posts in this initiative, as well as feature pieces, investigative stories and video, here. Follow the initiative on Twitter at #Reclaim. And if you'd like to add your own thoughts to our series, sign up here for a HuffPost blog account.

Citations

Food Tank 2015. http://foodtank.com/news/2015/01/twenty-one-inspiring-initiatives-working-to-reduce-food-waste-around-the-wo

Food Tank 2016. http://foodtank.com/news/2016/01/leading-a-global-mission-to-reduce-food-waste

Gustavsson, J. et al. 2011. Global Food Losses and Food Waste. Interpack/SAVE FOOD Initiative. http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-1961.pdf

Kitinoja, Lisa. 2016. "Innovative Approaches to Food Loss and Waste Issues," Frontier Issues Brief for the Brookings Institution's Ending Rural Hunger project. https://endingruralhunger.org/assets/files/downloads/Frontier_Issues_FLW.pdf

Advertisement
Thirty-four years ago, a former Jesuit priest threw an incendiary device into the world of televised political talk shows. He was John McLaughlin, host of "The McLaughlin Group," who has died at the age of 89.

Until McLaughlin exploded of the scene, it was all rather sedate. The dominant programs were PBS's "Washington Week in Review" and "Agronsky & Company," hosted by veteran broadcaster Martin Agronsky.

In these programs, the host was magisterial and the guests were journalists who answered questions either about what they were covering or what they thought; and their answers were expected to conform to a level of decorum. "Agronsky & Company" -- largely because of Agronsky's own strong personality -- had a little more flash than "Washington Week in Review," but there was a level of earnestness about both programs.

Advertisement

Along came McLaughlin, who was not so much a seeker-of-wisdom- and-truth as a man in pursuit of fun and something watchable. With "The McLaughlin Group," a window was opened and fresh air gushed in. The conventions were trounced. Shouting and loud dispute on television arrived, all skillfully goaded by McLaughlin.

The program became essential viewing not only for political junkies, but also for much of the nation. At one time, it was carried on nearly 400 PBS stations, although it originated on commercial television in Washington. It was sponsored by the Edison Electric Institute.

It was also commercially successful, so it was able to pay its contributors and to have a large staff -- a very large staff for a half-hour show. McLaughlin was not easy to work for, staffers who later worked with me said. Washington television circles are replete with stories of him sending staffers on personal errands and, in one case, ordering a woman to make toast for him.

All I can say is that in our very occasional meetings, he was very encouraging about my own television and radio talk show, "White House Chronicle."

Advertisement

McLaughlin left nothing to chance: the effect had to be right. So shows were packaged, reworked, and second and third takes were common. There was perfectionism in the riot.

He was the ringmaster, demanding terse answers, switching subjects and making declarative statements. After a "lighting round" of questions, he would opine, "The answer is."

McLaughlin had the best opinion journalists of the time on his program, including Jack Germond, Robert Novak, Morton Kondracke, Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift and Michael Barone. There were falling outs with some of his stars: Novak is reported to have stormed off the set, and Germond also quit with harsh words.

But there were loyalists and people who loved McLaughlin. They include Clift and Buchanan, whose friendship with McLaughlin dated back to the Nixon White House.

In the past decade, the program fell victim to the "new journalism" it had created. As the cable networks grew, they adopted the aggressive approach to political discussion that McLaughlin had introduced, but often without the finesse or the self-deprecation, which was part of McLaughlin as a broadcaster and as a man.

Advertisement

He loved Dana Carvey's skewering of the program on "Saturday Night Live." He would openly joke about a very prudish article of advice to girls about sex that he had written when he was in the priesthood.

McLaughlin, an extraordinary man with an extraordinary legacy, was an ordained Jesuit who left the priesthood and married twice. He ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the Senate from Rhode Island, became a speechwriter for President Nixon, and editor and columnist for National Review and then, without a background in television, reinvented political talk shows.
The core premise of The Movie Preview Review is so simple that everything you need to know is right there in the title. Hosted by comedian Kevin Bartini, joined by his regular crew -- Jelly Bean Schmidt, Adam Lash, and his wife, Jessica Bailey -- the point is to predict how well upcoming movies are likely to do based on nothing more than the trailer for the films.

They often have a guest join them in this endeavor and, in the most recent installment, the visiting commentator is Ned Kenney, the entrepreneur behind Laughable, a new iOS app designed to showcase and present comedy podcasts specifically, as well as the comedians and podcasters who host and appear in the shows.

After the interview niceties are over (during which time Bartini's gang threatens to beta test the bejeezus out of the nascent app), it's time for the fun. Bartini wisely suggests that, for maximum pleasure, listeners should pause the show as the movies are announced so they can pull the trailers up on the web and watch them. To help out for those who can't, won't, or don't, Lash gives a running commentary of the visuals of the action while the audio of the trailer plays.

Advertisement

On the docket this episode is The Accountant, In A Valley Of Death, and Drunk Wedding, a streaming movie selection. The first two movies don't fare too well, while the third leads the cast and their guest running off on some real life wedding tangents. I don't think they ever came back to give it a thumbs up or down.

  

Criminal

Episode 48: Eight Years

If you're a fan of the Serial podcast, or just like to hear a single real life crime story done justice, grab a listen to Criminal with host Phoebe Judge. Previously a host at WUNC North Carolina Public Radio, a producer for The Story with Dick Gordon, and a reporter based in the gulf coast of Mississippi, Judge combines the measured cadence of a traditional news reporter with the tone of someone who actually seems to care about the subjects she covers.

This past week the show focuses on the darker potential of the internet to become a tool for stalkers. In particular, it's the story of another podcast host, Melissa Anelli, the founder of The Leaky Cauldron, a website devoted to the world of Harry Potter. Eight years ago, Anelli began receiving unpleasant emails and eventually snail mail from a overly involved and enthusiastic fan-atic in New Zealand (Anelli lives on the East coast of the US.)

The messages escalated to actual death threats and the FBI were called in -- but it turns out to be no easy task to get much done when the perpetrator lives half a world away.

Advertisement

Unlike Serial, Criminal doesn't require weeks and weeks of listening to get the whole story. Judge and her production staff get the job done neat and tidy -- the Eight Years episode is briskly wrapped up in just 25 minutes.

  

Podcasts I'm also listening to this week: Pappy's Flatshare Slamdown -- Series 6, Episode 8: Put Up The Wallpaper; and Dazed & Convicted -- Episode 126: Prove Yourself for Perversity and Protect the Pomeranian Pawn

  
The test of a leader's commitment to democracy is not in peaceful and agreeable times but in times of dissent and disagreement. And Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has failed the test.

It's easy to be democratic when no one asks for rights to dissent, to express their culture, to practice a different religion, to protest against government policies that they find unfair. It's easy to be democratic if constituents obey, either mindlessly or for fear of retribution. But that's not a true democracy. Democracy is a messy business, based upon the idea that multiplicity is good, and that in the great marketplace of ideas, the best ideas win. It is the ideal that no one owns power for his own self-interest, but that power is to be used for the good of its constituents in the best possible fit. It's the idea that with discussion and debate, complaint and critique, the body politic waxes and wanes, tries this and tries that but overall improves the lot of the many.

Determining what is good for one's constituents never has and never will come from one person sitting in a position of power without an understanding of the experiences, hardships and desires of his constituents. And controlling the flow of information by seizing all of the media, the educational institutions, and the branches of government only makes this democratic goal impossible.

Advertisement

Democracy requires a lot of things, and among them is a free, open and ethical media establishment that fact-checks before it publishes and relentlessly checks propaganda. It requires the people's ability to hear and consider complaints and possible solutions for those complaints, and ideas for better policies. This is one way that people -- not tyrants -- can come to understand which ideas, policies and representatives they prefer.

Erdogan has failed this test and many more. He has brutally suppressed people who have protested against his policies. He has purged every branch of government of any opposition, large and small, alongside several mass media outlets and the educational academies. Human rights groups believe he has tortured and killed those who supported the failed coup. He has openly rejected the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights and openly advocated for the return of the death penalty.

Astute observers should not be surprised. Turkey has never lived up to its myth. Built upon the blood, bones and property of its past and present minorities, it has buried those facts and most of its evidence alongside their mass graves. The New York Times suggests that Erdogan's true desires are to supplant Ataturk, the country's leader who both modernized and "Turkified" the country after the 1915 mass annihilation of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks and finalized the elimination of the remaining Armenians.

The West has coddled Turkey for decades for geopolitical reasons. They have been strategic allies in NATO and for years, and with the crises and on-going wars in the Middle East, Turkey has willingly accepted the most asylum seekers and refugees of any other state. The geopolitical alliance faces some confusion with Erdogan's recent meetings with Russia's Vladimir Putin, who, according to Independent journalist Robert Fisk, was Erdogan's informant about the coup attempt. And alongside Turkey's past and present human rights abuses on its own people, the West must ask itself how long it can continue to ignore Turkey's violations. Can it justify for shaky geopolitical purposes normal relations with an oppressive leader like Erdogan? History tells us that staying silent on these matters can be a slippery slope signaling that human rights abuses are acceptable, leading thinking people to conclude that it may be time to reexamine -- or at least redefine -- the criteria for our alliances and geostrategic partners. Turkey would be a good place to start.

Advertisement
LISTEN HERE:

By Mark Green

Trump begins the week with the WSJ urging the RNC to cut him loose if he can't turn around his floundering campaign by Labor Day...and ends it with the Bannon-Manafort shuffle. Cooke & Lamarche laugh off the chance he can stop scratching his attention-getting-disorder itch. GOP prospects Nov. 9?



Trump's policy & personnel. We listen to his anti-ISIS speech explaining how he'd utilize joint operations with allies, cyber-tech, intelligence-gathering -- and "extreme, extreme extreme vetting" -- to defeat ISIS. Charles Cooke is not against ideological screening per se "so long as it's not religious screening" since the First Amendment doesn't apply to non-citizens applying to get into US. Gara Lamarche notes that his policy prescriptions are precisely what the Obama administration is now doing...and his version of "extreme vetting" sounds beyond the pale.

The Host asks Cooke to tell our listeners what Breitbart News is and who its recent head, Steven Bannon, the new campaign CEO, is. "Bannon turned an insurgent libertarian right-wing site into a home for right-wing white nationalists. That is not pleasant to read or be. It's a disgrace that a major party nominee associates with Breitbart." He adds the the hire of Kelly Anne Conway as campaign manager is different because "she's a good person with some talents." (Host agrees on Conway, who was a BSN regular for a couple of years...except that her on-message assertions (Trump has "humilty") and denunciations (HRC corrupt liar) renders her a Trumpian version of Baghdad Bob, albeit with a smile.)

Advertisement

Also, says Charles: "While fear-mongering often works and is done by both sides, it's unlikely to succeed in 2016. While there are problems with the economy and crime, it's nothing like the riots, assassinations and crime of 1968 that Nixon exploited."

Net-net on the personnel changes? Gara argues that the Bannon appointment shows Trump wants not to win but just solidify his reactionary white-high-school male base for later commercialization. We're reminded of the metaphor of Charles Sykes, a conservative talk show host in Wisconsin, who saw the move as an indication that Trump has entered his political hospice stage where he wants to be comforted by admirers at the end.

Can Trump's expressed "regrets" for his name-calling and insults help warm up his bellicose persona? Maybe says Cooke, "if he can keep it up or the next three months but, even though the media wants a new story, that's extraordinarily unlikely." Gara: " it's not in his nature. " Host: a person who's gained fame and fortune by living like Andrew Dice Clay for 70 years isn't very likely to turn into Ellen. Indeed, the next day he mockingly tweeted about Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner. Very presidential. And since we don't accept declarations of innocence by defendants at face value, it would be, er, credulous to believe the self-serving words of a proven serial liar who changes his views daily.

Ok, assume polls and trends are right and she wins by eight points + -- who's likely to win the battle for the soul of the Republican Party starting Nov. 9: the Trump/Fox/Cruz crowd or the Ryan/National Review/Reformocons team? Charles has a dog in this fight and argues for the latter because "Trump is sui generis -- there aren't any Trump-like Republicans, for example, running for the Senate. And he benefited from an unusual 17 person field [where he stood out]. Successful parties after a defeat can tamp down the excesses and absorb the best of both sides. Democrats too after the election will be split -- so let's see who can best absorb its rebels."

Advertisement

Gara, however, thinks that the Breitbart crowd more likely to prevail and that "Cruz could then be well positioned."

The Host dissents from Cooke: The problem is not so much Trump but the angry reactionary base that elevated him -- and presumably they'll be as furiously anti-Hillary as they've been anti-Barack. Unless they're chastised by the 6th popular vote loss in seven presidential elections, they'll continue to self-marginalize in a country where older Fox viewers are dying off to be replaced by rising and more liberal millennials and minorities. And there's little reason to believe that, with a Democratic president, the Democrats will be anywhere as divided as the GOP. For one example, Sanders will campaign for Clinton but Cruz won't for Trump.



Remember Hillary? Trump is not the only nominee to try pre-Fall to fix a this week. Gara applauds the news that Bill Clinton will resign from the Clinton Foundation if his wife becomes president and it will no longer accept foreign or corporate contributions to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest. Charles isn't impressed. arguing that it's largely been a place for Clintonites to be employed and generate profits for them. "Do you really think that they're grifters out to make more by raising a couple of billion to help advance health and the environment for millions of poor people in 3d world countries? Charles says, "'it's both." Gara insists, "it's public service."



Analyze this! Is it fair for Democrats to assume that Trump is a narcissistic sociopath and for Republicans to assume that Clinton, in Trump's words, lacks the "stability and stamina" to be president, while Hannity on Fox runs many segments asking "doctors" whether she's suffering seizures from a fall a couple of years ago?

Gara and Charles think both are wrong to use psychiatric terms to analyze public people not under medical care -- which is now called the "Goldwater Rule" after 1000+psychiatrists and psychologists said the '64 GOP nominee was mentally unfit to serve. Lamarche, however, notes that the Clinton's diagnosis is especially pernicious since a woman who served four years as a traveling Secretary of State and a vigorous candidate now for 16 months is in any way incapacitated, except as some WebMD docs assert on a partisan network.

*Will Trump's Collapse sink GOP boats? Four more Democratic senators will make Chuck Schumer not Mitch McConnell the Majority Leader, which the panel agrees is likely. Cooke thinks that three seats are all but gone -- Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois -- while several others are iffy, like PA and NH, perhaps NC and Arizona as well. Gara wonders "how can a Republican senator can survive if s/he has to run 8-10 points ahead of the top of the ticket? They have a very delicate dance here" because they can't live with Trump, who's so unpopular, but can't live without him since they need his "low-education" voters.

Advertisement

A Clinton-Schumer-Pelos/or weakened-Ryan D.C. is very different from a Clinton-McConnell-strong Ryan one. While the Clinton agenda won't be able to run the table due to the filibuster and likely House GOP majority, Ryan will have to deal more with her if his margin of 59 shrinks to say 25, which now appears to be likely.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks to the media during a campaign stop in Stafford, Virginia, U.S., August 20, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

If, like me, you think that a President Trump would be (not to coin a phrase) a total disaster, Hillary Clinton's widening lead in the polls gave you about five minutes to breathe easier, until Trump replaced his campaign chairman with honchos blunt enough to admit that his ugliness was killing him with undecided voters, and pushy enough to make him pretend to almost apologize for it.

Was last week a true turning point for Trump? Did it signal a transformation from the man-baby who won the Republican primaries to someone with the temperament to be president? In the word of the moment, is this the "pivot" that Clinton's supporters have most feared?

Advertisement

There are more strata of cynicism in the idea of a pivot than layers of pastry in a mille-feuille.

Start with the presumption of two kinds of Americans. Some of them -- political insiders, media junkies, savvy citizens -- know the score. They're hard-boiled enough to get that candidates can sometimes lie with impunity; that everything can come down to image and optics; that in an era of post-truth politics, narratives can matter more than facts.

The other Americans are the useful idiots whose gullibility is what pollsters measure. When a candidate pivots from one message in the primaries (e.g., Blacks are scary), to a contradictory message in the general (Blacks are suffering), or when a nominee torques from bullying (smearing a Gold Star mother, say) to sensitivity (I regret causing personal pain), his or her campaign calculates that the base and the undecideds will just roll with it. They'll bend themselves into pretzels, believe the character swings, dissolve the flip-flops in the solvent of amnesia.

So when insiders speculate whether the Trump pivot has at long last arrived, what they're really asking is whether Trump has the discipline to maintain the masquerade that he's changed. If he doesn't consistently act as though he can get his id under control, too many voters may conclude that the pathological liar and narcissist they saw in the primaries -- whom the elite knows is the real Trump -- is in fact the real Trump.

The cynicism of the pivot ploy came into sharp focus when Trump, under the tutelage of his new chieftans -- Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway -- declared in Charlotte, N.C., "Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that."

Advertisement

If you saw him say that, you couldn't mistake the meaning of the smirk on his face: "This is an act, people. I'm bluffing." No wonder the crowd laughed at the preposterousness of it. "And believe it or not," he continued, "I regret it." Trump's signature catchphrase is "believe me," so when he says "believe it or not," it's a tell, a hostage video. "Or not" is the equivalent of blinking "I'm lying" in Morse code. The only disclaimer missing was putting air quotes around "regret." No wonder his mea quasi culpa was met with even more laughter, and a Trump-Trump-Trump chant from the crowd; it was their way of saying they knew he was faking it.

Last Friday's Morning Joe on MSNBC epitomized the media response to the Trump shakeup. The question on the table wasn't whether Trump had truly changed; no one on the panel thought his pivot meant anything truthful about his temperament. Instead, it was all about performance, stagecraft, illusion - whether Trump's new minders can make him stick to the new script, whether they can market it with a straight face, whether the audience will buy it. Joe Scarborough called Conway's TV debut as campaign manager "the best pundit performance of the year." "It was quite a performance," agreed Andrea Mitchell, because "it didn't have performance written all about it - it was natural." Eugene Robinson thought Trump's attempting a pivot would "if not gladden the hearts of worried Republicans, at least calm their night sweats." Chris Cillizza wondered if Trump, a billionaire who managed to depict himself as a populist in the primaries, had already "damaged himself so badly, image-wise, that a change like this is not able to be sold to a skeptical electorate." Brand maven Donnie Deutsch said no, it wouldn't work, because "people are not stupid." The press needs to stop setting the bar so low, "to stop giving him presidential points because he can read off a teleprompter and he's not insulting anybody."

Within hours of his Charlotte speech, a Clinton ad collected video of Trump being asked if he regretted taking shots at the Khans ("I don't regret anything"); if he regretted denying that John McCain was a war hero ("I like not to regret anything"); if he regretted calling Mexicans rapists ("No, not at all); if he wanted to apologize for anything ("No, I don't apologize"). Will it work? Trump's tears may be crocodile contrition, but fact checking, even via video, sometimes can't keep a good charlatan down.

Nor, maybe, will Trump's message discipline stick any longer than after other reboots. Yesterday Conway tweeted that Trump "doesn't hurl personal insults." But during today's Morning Joe, Trump took to Twitter to call Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski "two clowns," adding that she's "a neurotic and not very bright mess." So much for temperament transplants.

Advertisement

A political pivot is a con that wins wolf whistles from people who think they're too smart to fall for it. I wonder what it would take to motivate some connoisseurs of that fakery to volunteer a little time on the vice squad cleaning things up.
Watching the news, reading the paper, listening to the heightened discourse of the last eight months, one might be forgiven for thinking that United States has become a parody of itself. Everyday television and social media is flooded with the latest comments from an almost inconceivable presidential nominee--who might best be described as a frankenstein composed of the most garish and rotten pieces of the American Dream--between reports of increasingly buffed-up and roided out police forces gunning down citizens in what amounts to, at its most generous, cold blood. As such, it might seem ill-advised for an already lackluster summer for cinema to round itself out with bro'd out comedy (perhaps?) about the glorious heights and despondent lows of the international arms trade.

Brought to you by Todd Phillips, director of The Hangover and its two mangled offspring, War Dogs stars Jonah Hill (in what could either be an ill-advised buy-in or half-hearted middle finger to his new status as a "serious" actor) and Miles Teller as two young gunrunning guns out to make a quick buck off the War on Terror. Based on a true story, the film tracks the pair from Teller's decision to join Hill (an already established member of the nouveau arms trade) to their inevitable, half-hearted downfall, wasting nearly every resource at its disposal. Containing zero bite, nary a smidge of charisma, and the most comically wrong-headed use of war movie staple "Fortunate Son," Phillips' picture is something of a wonder. The director and his actors seem totally unaware of what their picture is supposed to be (A satire? An object lession? Lord of War delivered via beer funnel?), and the resultant mish-mosh ultimately amounts to nothing. When the first trailers for the film premiered it seemed as though Phillips was looking to follow in the footsteps of Adam McKay, another filmmaker primarily known for his raunchy comedies, who parlayed his skills into the entertaining if overrated Big Short. If that's the case, the director failed. Where McKay's picture felt textured and lived in, War Dogs is fleeting, moving between three or four locations, countless useless interstitials, and a few clumsily delivered info-dumps that feel like they were pulled from a Wikipedia summary. Whether or not you understand finance, The Big Short convinced you of its authenticity. Phillips' movie, on the other hand, feels consistently phony, as though the three credited screenwriters were content to spend little more than an afternoon researching their topic, and fill the rest in when the time came.

Advertisement

It's a shame, really, because War Dogs had the potential to be something great: a look at the gaudy, tacky machinery of war-making, and the men and women who have set up camp beneath its gears. Midway through the picture, Teller and Hill visit a Vegas-based military-tech expo, which they compare to Comic-Con. What an opportunity for Phillips, to explore the macho, fetishization of government sanctioned bloodletting, to introduce his audience to the guys who can pitch you their improvements to a drone strike, and then invite you down to party. Murder Incorporated as a government funded bachelor party.

But Phillips does none of this. Instead he glides through the convention with a disinterested camera in what might be the least energetic montage in recent memory. Just this past June, Jenji Kohan and company took viewers into the dolled-up belly of the for-profit-prison industry with the fourth season of Orange is the New Black, demonstrating what happens when you put the best salesmen to work peddling misery. Apparently, War Dogs has no such ambition.

Make no mistake, the picture does make some attempts at satire or commentary, but each is half-hearted at best, and dishonest at worst. For the most part, these consist of moments where Hill offers women thousands of dollars in blood money for a hummer at a Miami club or the two leads high-fiving at the prospect of doing good in a bad business. Most irritating perhaps in the film's insistence on constantly referencing Brian De Palma's Scarface--from a massive poster depicting coked-out Pacino raining lead down from the stairwell of his mansion that hangs in Hill's office, to a gift Hill bestows upon Teller: a gold grenade inscribed with "The World is Yours." It's something of a masterwork of overstatement: one of the least subtle bits of irony from one of the least subtle films somehow blown up in scale for a coup de grace of on-the-nose foreshadowing. War Dogs, you see, wants its audience to recognize that these violent delights have violent ends--if by violent ends you mean a four year prison sentence for convictions on no less than seventy federal charges or a brief house arrest followed by a belated profit. And while lack of true retribution might have enhanced the bite of Martin Scorsese's brilliantly manic Wolf of Wall Street, Phillips' film has done nothing to earn the cynicism of its closing moments.

Advertisement

That's perhaps the greatest sin of War Dogs: a presumption of gravity, importance, and rigor; the seeming certainty that because its subject matter is weighty and bleak, the picture is automatically high-minded or subversive. April gave filmgoers a more pronounced big-budget example of this sort of delusion with Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, a picture convinced that monologues about God, a few extra scowls, and a body count was the secret recipe to grown-up filmmaking. Like that debacle, War Dogs is also filled with big empty ideas, some of which might have composed the spine of a truly great film had they been developed in any way. Instead questions of patriotism, jingoism, national security, and war profiteering are used to help the film puff out its chest before it slinks back to the blander, more timid ideas with which it is actually smart enough to contend: why you shouldn't lie to your girlfriend about your sneaking Italian handguns over the Jordanian border, and why crime might not pay. The result is something conventional and shallow working overtime to convince an audience that it's subversive, and doing a very poor job. Hell, if he knew he didn't have the chops to actually poke holes in the way the Department of Defense hands out military contracts, Phillips could have at least been ballsy enough to lean into the reckless international dickery of his protagonists. If slightly less morally agreeable, an unironic comedy about hard-partying arms dealers might at least have felt like something one could sink their teeth into.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Akron, Ohio, Monday, Aug. 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Kristin Dombek has just published a small, provocative book on how we have come to use the label of narcissism to attack our enemies or to distance ourselves from those who just don't want to be close to us. By labeling these people as narcissists, she argues, we give ourselves a false sense of superiority. She makes many important points in her essay, but, I suggest in this review from the Washington Post, there is now an elephant in the room whose character traits it would be dangerous to ignore.

In psychology, you're supposed to grow out of childish narcissism. Now Donald . . .



"No one knows the system better than me," Donald Trump said when accepting the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, "which is why I alone can fix it." Mr. Trump has long been labeled a narcissist by people across the political spectrum, an accusation that suggests he has an excessive sense of his own grandeur while also being overly sensitive to any perceived slight. Whatever the topic at hand, narcissists bring it back to themselves. Here's Trump on why he chose Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate: "So one of the primary reasons I chose Mike was I looked at Indiana, and I won Indiana big." Moderate Republican (and anti-Trump) columnist David Brooks observed, "There's sort of a gravitational narcissistic pull that takes command whenever he attempts to utter a compound thought."

Advertisement

Narcissists. You know the kind. People who may seem really into you one moment and then act as if they don't know you at all. People who are hypersensitive to any potential disrespect when it comes to themselves but haven't a clue about the feelings of others. In today's popular culture fueled by social media, everybody seems to know somebody who can be labeled a narcissist -- whether it's the bad boyfriend, the unfeeling killer or the pretentious artiste. In "The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism," cultural journalist Kristin Dombek begins by saying that "we know the new selfishness when we see it," and apparently we are seeing a lot of it these days. In today's "narcisphere," she argues, groups that feel injured find it expedient to label those they hold responsible as narcissists. "Narcissism is the favorite diagnosis," she writes, "for political leaders in whatever party opposes one's own."

So maybe we don't know the kind after all. Maybe we just deploy the label narcissist to feel superior amid our confusion about how others are behaving. Dombek writes breezily and well about the history of the idea of narcissism, leaning heavily on Elizabeth Lunbeck's excellent "The Americanization of Narcissism." In the psychoanalytic tradition, narcissism was a normal stage of development -- but you were supposed to grow out of it. Sigmund Freud thought narcissism was linked to a strand of femininity that turned inward, lovingly cultivating one's own beauty instead of turning toward others unlike oneself. Later writers in this field, especially Otto Kernberg and Heinz Kohut, investigated disorders of self-regard that persisted much later in life, and Kohut developed therapies that led from narcissism to relationship building and empathy.

Advertisement

For the psychoanalysts, the typical narcissist was a woman who wouldn't return male affection, while in today's self-help industry, it's the bad boyfriend who exudes only indifference. Dombek notes wisely that historically, "the gender of the archetypal narcissist shifts according to who's got the power of diagnosis," and that this power conveys a sense of moral superiority on the person who gets to do the labeling.

Bloggers and other pundits blame social media for creating a generation of people who need to be followed or liked, while business leaders who care only for profit are labeled corporate narcissists. Sexual narcs are good in bed, but only to shore up their own selves, while spiritual narcs seek a connection to the universe only to compensate for their own emptiness. Dombek displays a healthy skepticism about most of the theorists (and all the pop diagnosticians) she discusses. The exception is cultural theorist and literary critic Rene Girard, who brilliantly investigated the role of imitation in the formation of our selves and our desires. Girard argued that we become who we are only by imitating others -- we are made of each other, as Dombek puts it. We develop as individuals by copying what others do, who they are, and we grow up to be people who expect those we like to imitate us. But there is a dark side to this intermingling of selves through imitation. Our desires are constituted not only by empathic imitation but also by violent rivalry. "Just because we're made of sharing," Dombek tells us, "doesn't mean our understanding of others . . . leads us to care about them or treat them well."

In the early 1990s, neuroscientists discovered that in primates, the same neurons lighted up when the animals watched others perform an action as lighted up when the primates did the same thing themselves. Deep in our primitive brains are mirror neurons wired to respond to and imitate others. Some writers have concluded from this discovery that we have profound biological sources of empathy, but Girard and Dombek remind the reader that these neurons are also the sources of competition and conflict. "On just the other side of the comfort of fellow feeling," she writes, "is war."

Advertisement

Dombek's study of our fascination with the new selfishness leads her to spend lots of time with self-help books and websites that deal with matters like how to love someone who can't love you back and how to seduce as many partners as possible. She punctuates her survey of thinkers and pop culture with asides about her boyfriend, waiting for subways and living in Brooklyn. These digressions, for me, were mostly of marginal interest, not saying enough about either the writer or her concerns. She is sharp when seeing through puffed-up social scientists who know how to find what they are looking for (and publicize it), but she agonizes about her own choice of subject: "Any book you write is its own asylum, but a book about narcissism is like the padded cell inside the asylum." Really? This is a short book, but maybe she should have taken more breaks.

Labeling others as narcissistic may merely be an expression of our frustration that they don't really get us. "The selfishness of others is the feeling of your dependence revealed, as their gaze turns away," Dombek writes. If they don't understand us, she perceptively points out, we label them narcissists to show they are incapable of trying. She knows that our embrace of the idea of narcissism is a symptom of other things going on in our culture, but I don't think she's figured out why we are so enamored of the new selfishness right now. She probably started her book before Trump began to dominate politics and the media, when self-centered teenagers and bad boyfriends seemed the most important (and amusing) examples of narcissism. Alas, while writing this book in her padded cell, she has been overtaken by a very perilous turn in the history of American narcissism.

Has our overuse of the concept of narcissism made us more vulnerable to the wounded megalomania of a Trump? What's the connection between the contemporary politics of resentment and the new selfishness? Today's American attraction to an ultra-irritable would-be strongman is more important than our perennial griping about selfishness in young people and our exes. Maybe Dombek will turn to such issues in her next essay. Meanwhile, there's a very real and very dangerous narcissist on the loose.

Advertisement
Indulge me for a moment as I take you back to Tim Burton's 2001 installment of Planet of the Apes, the sixth film in the movie's franchise starring Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Clark Duncan, Paul Giametti, and Estella Warren. For purposes of this blog, the focus is on Roth's General Thade and Bonham Carter's Ari.

For the uninformed, the movie tells the story of astronaut Leo Davidson crash-landing in the year 5021 on a planet inhabited by intelligent apes. The apes treat humans as slaves, but with the help of the attractive ape, Ari, Davidson starts an uprising against Thade and his armies.

Roth's Thade was portrayed as an ambitious but brutal leader, who passionately hated all things human and wanted them eliminated. He ruled with cruelty and lived by a Machiavellian outlook on life, according to one Internet description. Any means justified the ends to him. He was a schemer, willing to tell those on whom he depended for power and backing, including Ari's powerful political father, anything that they wanted to hear to get his way. Thade also pursued Ari romantically, but failed due to her hatred for his barbaric, vile nature toward humans; that she felt he was only pursuing her because of her father; and her affinity to the humans on the planet.

Advertisement

Later in the movie, Thade vowed to his dying father (a cameo by Charleton Heston) to wipe out humans, even if they were once in charge before the rise of apes. Thade determined to wipe out any remaining human resistance. Key is that on his march upon the humans, Thade met up with Ari in his tent and branded her with a branding iron with the mark of human slaves on her palm after he found she was befriending them.

Fast-forward to the end of the movie where a final battle ensues between the remaining humans and Thade's forces at the location where the space station Oberon Davidson was a part had crash-landed eons ago. Thade chases Wahlberg's character into the interior of the craft, but he (Thade) was eventually locked into the control room of the station via some sort of see-through glass enclosure. At this point, Thade sees Ari in the interior of the craft, and asks, in gentle and soothing tones, for her assistance to escape. Her response was priceless---she put up the palm of her hand that Thade had branded, and "said" with it, bye-bye.

Let's return to the year 2016.

Donald Trump in his run for the presidency has labeled Mexicans rapists and drug-runners; wanting to deport 11 million immigrants; judges of Mexican heritage incapable of ruling fairly and impartially; wanting to also build a wall across our southern border; pointing out in one of his crowds an African American as "my" [African American]; and failing to attend the recent NAACP meeting or any gathering on the campaign trail of African Americans. He has also been labeled a racist ("Here are 13 Examples of Donald Trump Being a Racist" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-racist-examples_us_56d47177e4b03260bf777e83)); a bigot; and in his real estate days in the 1970s was sued for discrimination by the federal government for not renting to African Americans based on race and color. He was also sued again for racial discrimination in relation to his casino operations.

Advertisement

Last week at three campaign stops in overwhelmingly White communities (West Bend, Wis., Dimondale, Michigan, and Fredricksburg, Va.), Trump asked for the African American population to vote for him, as if he is their "messiah". As he said In Dimondale in reaching out to all Blacks, "What the hell do you have to lose?" Over the weekend, he also convened his National Hispanic Advisory Council in Manhattan in the hopes of courting the Hispanic vote. Even this morning, his new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said her boss wants to deal with immigration in a "humane" way.

So what should American voters of color and minorities think given Trump's months and years of bigoted and racist conduct and words, only to now say, in [Thade's] gentle and soothing tones, that he wants the African American and Hispanic vote because he will provide what they collectively need and require, like jobs, lower taxes, better schools, better living conditions, a fair approach to deportation, and more cops in their neighborhoods (remember, he is the "law and order" candidate)?
Sandile, a ten-year-old boy who lives in South Africa, has a daily schedule that is very different from other children: On Monday afternoons he is not on the playground with friends, his Wednesday nights are not occupied with reading or arithmetic. Sandile has never been to school. He is deaf and has a visual impairment, and he is kept out of the classroom, away from his peers, because stigma and lack of access to inclusive education deprive him the human right to learn.

Like Sandile, I also have a disability. Unlike him, I start graduate school at UC Irvine School of Law today. As a student with a disability in the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act and other legislation have provided the legal protections to ensure I receive the reasonable accommodations I need to excel. These include handouts in larger font, a front row seat, and other modifications that do not impose a burden in the classroom, but instead help me to understand the material and keep up with the coursework. Practices like these have followed me since early childhood in elementary school. Yet it was not until I contacted the Law School a few weeks ago that I felt so invited and empowered to accept them.

When administrators and technology specialists spoke of the range of services they could offer to help me, they made me feel a part of the law school community. Their flexibility in making books accessible and navigating campus, and responsiveness to my concerns about the reading load and participating in class showed they want me to thrive both in and out of the classroom. I did not feel stigmatized or different in claiming these rights. Rather, I felt comfortable and appreciated, feelings easily taken for granted, but which make all the difference in creating a sense of inclusion.

Advertisement

My experience with the Law School is remarkable. To obtain the accommodations, all I had to do was provide the proper paperwork and ask. Imagine if it were that simple for Sandile.

Around the world, millions of children with disabilities are either excluded from the education system entirely or attend schools that segregate and isolate them from their peers in the community. In other instances, even if they attend school, learners with disabilities do not have the reasonable accommodations necessary to facilitate their understanding of the course material.

For instance, in Russia some school administrators have refused to admit children with disabilities based on assumptions that they are unable to learn, are unsafe around other children, or engage in disruptive behavior.

In China, students with hearing disabilities have said they could not follow along because the teachers walk around while lecturing and do not to provide written notes. Making the problem worse, most mainstream schools fail to provide the sign language interpretation that would allow these students to participate. Students who are blind or who have low vision are not provided with magnified printed materials or tests.

Advertisement

Over 150 countries have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which requires states to provide people with disabilities a quality education just like everyone else. Imagine how the world might look if states met this obligation. Imagine the physician who is deaf and pushes hospitals to be more accessible for her patients. Imagine the architect who uses a wheelchair and advocates for better ramps and more elevators, not just to help himself, but also the elderly couple who live in his building. Imagine the lawyer with a visual impairment who understands what power the law holds to transform and better the lives around him.

Children with disabilities have the capacity and the will to learn. They can complete high school, attend university, and move on to graduate studies. I am proof of that. When I received my accommodations last week, I thought of the millions of children just like me who will not have this type of opportunity. It is a privilege to study the law. So when I attend my first law school class today, Sandile will stay on my mind. Education, and the sense of empowerment I feel at UCI Law are things every child deserves, so they too can endeavor to realize their potential.
MEET THE PRESS -- Pictured: Moderator Chuck Todd appears on 'Meet the Press' in Cleveland, OH, Sunday July 17, 2016. -- (Photo by: Duane Prokop/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)

Republican House and Senate candidates believe they have a strategy to avoid the taint of Donald Trump. It is quite simple: refuse to answer for whom they are going to pull the lever for president. That way, they believe, they will not alienate the Trumpistas, while also not attaching themselves to him.

But, Meet the Press's Chuck Todd is not going to let them get away with it. He set his baseline standard in 2014 during the race for the Senate in Kentucky. In the debate between Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D-KY) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Grimes said her vote for president in 2012 was private and personal, and did not disclose for whom she voted.

Advertisement

That was too much for Todd. It was fine, for example, for McConnell to have lied flat-out to more than a half-million Kentuckians about the fate of their healthcare if McConnell were elected, and did the bidding of his paymasters to take it away. McConnell had just claimed that the state exchange, KyNect, was "only a website." That was non-disqualifying.

But, it was disqualifying to Todd for Grimes not to disclose for whom she had voted for president.

Well, OK. Each of us has standards, this is Todd's. Indeed, when challenged on it, he doubled-down. It was clearly his moral Rubicon, forcing him to shed his 'honest broker' role and to reveal his judgment.

Now, two years later, Todd will have to apply this standard to nearly every Republican running for the House or Senate. Their strategy of refusing to disclose will run into Todd's buzzsaw.

Nor will it be sufficient to state they are not voting for Trump. They will have to say for whom they are voting.

Advertisement

Otherwise, Chuck Todd will state unequivocally that they are 'disqualified'. And, he will repeat it. He has no choice.
You can meet them on the streets of the city more and more frequently. Young people talking in Swedish, English, and other foreign languages. It is easy to know they are not tourists. They have come to stay for a longer time. These are our foreign students who come to study at Gdansk universities. Their numbers grow every year. Especially popular among foreign students is the Medical University of Gdansk, which each year attracts more and more participants from abroad.

Meeting with Gabrielle Karpinski from USA, the best foreign student of the Medical University of Gdansk 2014. Photo: J. Pinkas

Why do they choose Gdansk?I make it a point to approach them and ask why they have chosen our city. Invariably they cite traditional Gdansk openness and hospitality among main reasons. They praise a great location of the city between the sea and the Kashubian forests and a wide range of cultural events available throughout the year (I wrote more about in this entry).

Advertisement

Currently we host in Gdansk approximately 2000 students from abroad. Most of them, approx. 800 people are the participants of a demanding, English-language medical program at the Medical University of Gdansk (a so-called English Division). What particularly pleases me is that this number has been growing steadily over the years. It shows increasing recognition for the quality of studies and the town itself. More than half of the students come from Sweden, but some come to us from such distant countries as the United States, Canada and Saudi Arabia. They receive their training in medicine, pharmacology, nutrition or nursing. Some stay for longer, developing their scientific career at the doctoral studies, some move on to graduate studies in Canada or the US.

Students of GUM. Photo: courtesy of GUMStudents appreciate GUM (Medical University of Gdansk) excellent position in the rankings of universities, a modern, upgraded and intense didactic base and a high level of clinical and academic instruction at one of the best Polish medical universities.

This recent "fad" to study in our city can be easily explained. Gdansk is a big port city, which for hundreds of years has been building its prosperity based on active contacts with the outside world. Our openness and hospitality mean that foreigners can quickly feel at home here and can easily integrate with the local community.

Classes at GUM are held in mixed groups, which helps in rapid integration and the establishment of friendships, often for life. In many cases, students returning to their home countries after graduation, recommend to their friends or family to take up learning in our city, not only because of the high level of education, but also the friendly atmosphere and the possibility of numerous non-scientific activities. There are active international student organizations at our universities, such as the fraternity Phi Delta Epsilon, ANSA, IFMSA, Swedish Medical Students Association Abroad or English Division Student Council. These associations, in addition to scientific activities, carry out a number of charitable and social enterprises, enriching the calendar of events in the city.

Advertisement

GUM is of course not the only Gdansk university chosen by foreign students. Close to 300 students from Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and China study at the University of Gdansk. Gdansk University of Technology (Gdansk Polytechnic) is popular among Spaniards, 100 of whom are students there. There you can also meet, among others, Indians and Chinese.

With joy and satisfaction I observe how attractive Gdansk becomes in the eyes of foreign students. Until recently, Poland had not particularly enjoyed popularity as a studying destination. Today, it has become as attractive and viable as countries of the so-called "old" Europe. As a society we have come a long, hard way - and have been extensively modernizing our cities, investing in education and science, and raising the competitiveness of our economy. We have learned English. Today we can clearly see the fruits of this work - also in a growing number of foreign students coming to Gdansk.
The judge rejecting the $100 million (75 million) settlement to let Uber compensate their mobile workers for not being classified as employees and entitled to expenses seems to be more about excessive conditions or "strings attached" relating the Uber company performance in compensating the workers rather than taking issue with protection of workers whose rights may be compromised.

Looking at the detail of the San Francisco judge ruling that the settlement was "not fair, adequate or reasonable" criticizes its conditions to payout 80% of the $100 million to Uber drivers in California and Massachusetts, and the remainder on condition of Uber over company performance. Yet this may be deemed unfair in that the workforce collectively enable this growth goal but individually have very little ability to influence this.

That's the challenge with digital workforces

From Uber's perspective, their company only exists on the back of a large volunteer workforce that use their ride-hailing company app and platform to carry out piece work. The Uber company growth and performance relies on this workforce to deliver the service. Uber wants to treat this non-unionized group as a contractor arrangement which gives them the maximum flexibility and minimum employee commitments. The challenge is that a virtual business needs physical workers, at least until self-driving cars come along, and that's another whole story. But as lessons of Uber pulling out of China and with the continued competition against Lyft in the US, their business model is predicated on an available workforce to operate locally.

Advertisement

Tradeoff of being a contractor versus fair play

The media reports suggest that Uber drivers have been unfazed but the $100 million ruling, the benefits that a contractor lifestyle Uber gives outweighs the employee "benefits" lost from permanent employee and salary. This model of remote jobs or the "gig economy" is a core model of the sharing economy that is starting to mature, and people and regulation are starting to wise up more.

The recent UK Deliveroo couriers demonstration objecting to changes of payment to 3.75 per job from an hourly rate of 7 an hour plus 1 per delivery illustrates the challenge a disparate workforce keeping their rights and benefits when there is little employee protection.

The sharing economy and the viable minimum working wage

This model of jobbing contractors that some call "uberization" seems to continue to grow inspite the impact on loss of job security and issues of contract and pricing changes. It fills a need for services that can be run over the internet and is persistent in demand to provide a new kind of employment lifestyle.

But if these low-cost fares businesses continue to evolve with increasing automation and the increasing availability or oversupply of a workforce, there will be some crunch points when pricing and cost of operations will impact human workers who may see falling income. This speaks to the wider issue of automation in society and how to protect working rights and a minimum viable living wage for all, something that in 5 to 10 years will be headline news I predict with the rise of robotics and AI.
Ryan Lochte is a FRAUD.

This 32-year-old man and his gang of thugs stormed into a Brazilian gas station, took a piss on the floor, and broke the bathroom door.

After an armed security guard confronted the three thugs, Lochte and friends agreed to pay for the door, and stormed out. When approached by the press, Lochte told a different story.

"WE WERE ROBBED! THEY POINTED A GUN AT US!"

The press devoured Ryan's tall-tale and white America shared its unwanted assessment of Brazil and Latin America, painting the entire country/continent as filthy and with naturally violent people. This mechanism of white lies influencing public opinions is a dangerous thing. This is how racial stereotypes and oppressive white mentalities are formed. These lies include:

Advertisement

1.) "Don't go to that Black neighborhood because I knew a guy who knew a guy that got robbed! It's DANGEROUS!"

2.) "Dude, the women in Japan are so submissive! You can walk up to them on the street and do whatever you want!"

3.) "Chinese people eat dog and they try to hide it on the menu!"

4.) "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people."

These disgusting white lies -- often born of white racism, ignorance and cultural insensitivity -- stimulate white fear, which then produces REAL consequences for people of color. Latino families are deported, Muslim leaders murdered, Asian women sexually assaulted, and Black children shot in cold blood.

Advertisement
There seem to be two groups of "religious" people: those who adhere to a theology which makes God sovereign, and those who use religion as an excuse and a vehicle to spout and support their political ideology.

As the floods have raged in Louisiana, I have heard religious people say that the storm is one of Biblical proportions - which it certainly seems to be - but as the homes of straight, religious people are being destroyed by the raging waters, there is an eerie silence from religious people on just why the storm has come with such a vengeance.

It has always sickened me when religious people have said that natural disasters are punishment from God for some social or historical situation with which they do not agree. When the devastating 2010 earthquake hit Haiti, for example, Christian evangelist Pat Robertson said that the disaster, which caused over 100,000 deaths, was the result of Haiti having made a "pact with the devil" when the tiny nation fought to win independence from the French colonists. They won the battle, but apparently they also earned the wrath of religious people who believe in colonialism.

Advertisement

When Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, Robertson, an opponent of abortion rights, said that the storm had come and caused so much devastation because America, at that time, had "killed over 40,000 babies."

Both Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell blamed the 9/11 attacks on abortion and the push for rights for the LGBTQ community.

Every time there is a natural disaster I hold my breath, waiting for religious people to give their theological opinions - which in the long run are really no more than political ideology dressed in theological garb. It is disgusting and troubling, and, I have to believe, keeps people from wanting to be religious.

Now, as floods are causing behemoth destruction in Louisiana, the ideological religious are strangely silent as the floods tear through neighborhoods and communities which have never before suffered so. Tony Perkins, who is the president of the Family Research Council, has been quoted as saying that natural disasters are from God, punishing people for the "sin" of homosexuality. As late as October of last year, Perkins posited that Hurricane Joaquin, which hit the Bahamas, was punishment from God for the United States legalizing same-sex marriage.

Advertisement

Perkins is strangely quiet now, as his own home has been flooded.

This is not a uniquely Christian disposition; many fundamentalist religious leaders are quick to point to natural disasters as signs that God is not happy with sin. The trouble is, their God, whatever their religion, seems to be selective in choosing which sin. deserve total devastation by a natural disaster.

Abortion and LGBTQ issues are always front and center.

But other "sins" are ignored, like the molestation of children by family members and church leaders, or like hunger in a world that clearly has enough food for everyone. Violence against the LGBTQ community seems not to matter one iota to God, nor does racism.

Conservative fundamentalists are quick to say that people should be concerned only with their personal piety- i.e., being in "right relationship" with God on a personal level. In the Christian world, at least, many pastors avoid social justice issues altogether.

Unless those issues are abortion rights and the rights of LGBTQ persons.

That isn't theology. That is ideology, using theology as justification to castigate some societal and political realities which do not meld with their political views.

Surely God cares about hunger and starvation, surely God cares about the damage caused to children who are sexually molested, surely God thinks that domestic violence, which results in too many women being locked up because they finally could not take the abuse anymore - surely these are issues for which God would send a storm! Surely racism, in all its glory, and capitalism, which has resulted in people putting money before God, sexism and militarism... surely all of those things bother God... and, following the line of reasoning by people like Perkins and Robertson, earn God's wrath?

Advertisement

Apparently not. According to people who think this way, the only "sins" that make God angry are abortion and same-sex issues. Period.
This past week, the Associated Press published a story based on its analysis of leaked Islamic State (ISIS) recruitment documents. These documents indicate that, based on the recruits' own self-evaluation, most ISIS recruits have only a basic knowledge of Islam. Some have argued that these "findings suggest religion has nothing to do with people joining [ISIS]."

That argument is seriously flawed. It rests on a faulty premise, namely that one needs to be thoroughly familiar with a religion's doctrines to be motivated by that religion to engage in violence or embrace extreme positions on moral, legal, and political issues. There is no support for this premise.

Advertisement

Protestants and Catholics slaughtered each other for a couple of centuries in early modern Europe. Were all the Catholics who took part in or supported such violence able to explain transubstantiation, the treasury of merit, the role and effect of the various sacraments, apostolic succession, and the invocation of saints? Although we don't have surveys from 1550, somehow I doubt it.

Ignorance of the doctrines of one's own religion continues today, across the board. A 2010 Pew Research Center survey found that only 16% of American Christians are familiar with a core doctrine of Protestantism, namely that salvation comes from faith alone. (Interestingly, this same survey shows that atheists know more about religious doctrines and religious history than the religious.) This failure to grasp a key precept of their faith has not prevented many fundamentalist Protestants from insisting that their Christian faith should be the basis for determining what is legal and illegal in the United States.

Detailed knowledge of the doctrines and rules of a particular religion has always been the province of the clerical class, not of the mass of believers. Most people don't have the inclination or interest to delve into the intricacies of religious doctrines or to memorize the myriad restrictions on personal behavior in which religions specialize. They leave such matters to the priests, rabbis, and imams of the world, who tell the faithful what to eat, what to drink, what to wear, how to pray, and so forth.

So extensive knowledge of a religion's doctrines is not necessary to be committed to and motivated by a religious belief. And please don't say, "ISIS terrorists are perverting Islam; what they practice is not true Islam." There is no such thing as true Islam, true Christianity, true Judaism, or true Mormonism. All these religions are based on sacred texts which admit of a wide variety of interpretations. One can find a verse in the Bible or Qur'an to justify just about anything. ISIS propaganda is replete with quotes from the Qur'an. And their interpretation of the Qur'an is perverted because ... because someone else has a different interpretation of the Qur'an? Who arbitrates that dispute?

Advertisement

Of course, Muslims who support terrorism are very much a minority--albeit far from an insignificant minority. There are many factors other than religious belief that can play a role in causing someone to support terrorism, including social isolation, a sense of disenfranchisement, and so forth. But it's a mistake to exclude religious belief as a factor. It doesn't matter whether the person knows the details of The One True Belief as long as they are committed to The One True Belief. Far too often in human history, those committed to The One True Belief have viewed individual human lives as unimportant when compared to the greater glory of God.
On August 8, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in Baku. Shortly after their meeting, Putin announced Russia's intention to forge a strategic partnership with Azerbaijan. Putin also expressed interest in expanding Russia-Azerbaijan trade links and strengthening Moscow-Baku military cooperation in the Caspian Sea region.

As Russia has increased its arms exports to Azerbaijan in recent years, many analysts believe that the Putin-Aliyev summit is a starting point for a consolidated Moscow-Baku alliance. This assessment overestimates the strength of the Russia-Azerbaijan partnership. There is compelling evidence that the much-touted "alliance" between Russia and Azerbaijan is merely a temporary marriage of convenience aimed at maximizing both countries' geopolitical influence.

Even though Azerbaijan has recently upgraded its economic and military partnership with Russia, Azerbaijan's commitment to foreign policy neutrality and criticisms of Russian military activities in Ukraine underscore the limits of the Moscow-Baku partnership. Russia has responded to Aliyev's conduct by cautiously regulating the amount of military assistance it provides to Azerbaijan. This ensures that Nagorno-Karabakh remains a frozen conflict zone, and allows Armenia to gain a measure of security from Azerbaijani aggression.

Advertisement

Azerbaijan's Balancing Strategy has Caused Putin to Distrust Baku's Intentions

Since Ilham Aliyev took over from his father as Azerbaijan's President in 2003, Azerbaijan has bolstered its regional influence by maintaining cordial relations with both Russia and the West. Azerbaijan's neutrality is a rare phenomenon in the post-Soviet region. Aside from Moldova, Ukraine and Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan is the only CIS country that is not a member of NATO, the Russian-led CSTO security bloc, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) or the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

Azerbaijan has used its neutral foreign policy and strategic location to carve out a role as a mediator during international crises. On June 28, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildrim thanked Azerbaijan for its role in facilitating the normalization of relations between Turkey and Russia. Aliyev hopes that Baku's mediation role in the Russia-Turkey standoff could be a precedent for future successful Azerbaijani diplomatic interventions. In particular, Azerbaijani political analysts argue that Baku could be a mediator in the Russia-Georgia conflict and Russia-Turkmenistan standoff over natural gas exports.

Even though Aliyev's balancing strategy has bolstered Azerbaijan's international status, Azerbaijan is unlikely to forge a durable alliance with Russia. Baku's non-committal approach to international affairs has caused Putin to view Azerbaijan as an opportunistic country that seeks to maximize trade volumes and geopolitical influence at any cost.

Putin's concerns about Azerbaijan's loyalty to Russia have restricted Baku's ability to profit from the recent Russia-Turkey thaw. After Turkey's November shoot-down of a Russian jet flying over its soil, Azerbaijan refused to support either Moscow or Ankara. As the Russia-Turkey standoff escalated, Azerbaijan developed a southern gas corridor to expand Baku's natural gas exports to the EU. Russian policymakers viewed this gas corridor as an undue exploitation of Russia-Turkey tensions that threatened Moscow's hegemony over European energy markets.

Advertisement

To retaliate against Azerbaijan's energy deals with the EU, Russia has used its recent improvement in relations with Turkey to undercut Azerbaijan's position as an energy supplier to Europe. Russia's revival of the construction of the Turkstream pipeline linking Russian natural gas to Turkey has diminished the effectiveness of Azerbaijan's outreach to European energy markets. A decline in Azerbaijani gas exports to Europe could exacerbate Azerbaijan's worsening currency crisis and increase the vulnerability of Aliyev's government to popular unrest.

Azerbaijan's criticisms of Russia's military intervention in Ukraine have also obstructed progress towards a Russia-Azerbaijan alliance. During a recent bilateral summit in Baku, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko expressed solidarity with Azerbaijan's territorial claims to Nagorno-Karabakh. Ilham Aliyev reiterated his condemnation of the Russian annexation of Crimea and stated his opposition to Russia's efforts to undermine Ukraine's territorial integrity. Baku's pro-Ukraine position has helped Azerbaijan convince Western countries to turn a blind eye to Aliyev's human rights abuses but has also done great harm to Azerbaijan's prospects of cooperation with Russia.

Russia is Reluctant to Provide Decisive Military Assistance to Azerbaijan

Many experts on the post-Soviet region have cited Russia's handling of the April 2-5 hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh as evidence of a budding Russia-Azerbaijan alliance. During these hostilities, senior Russian officials vowed to uphold Moscow's strategy of selling arms to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia's refusal to provide military assistance to Armenia or condemn Azerbaijani aggression also fuelled speculation that Russia had foreknowledge of Azerbaijan's military activities in Nagorno-Karabakh and had not shared this information with Yerevan.

As Armenian nationalists were angered by Russia's neutrality during the Nagorno-Karabakh hostilities, anti-Russian unrest in Armenia has surged in recent months. The Azerbaijani government has exploited anti-Russian sentiments in Armenia to strengthen the Baku-Moscow relationship and highlight Armenia as an "untrustworthy" Russian ally.

Despite rising anti-Russian unrest in Armenia, Moscow is unlikely to pivot firmly towards Azerbaijan. Even though Azerbaijan has purchased 85% of its arms imports from Russia from 2010-2015, Russia has not provided Azerbaijan with enough military support to record a decisive victory in Nagorno-Karabakh. Instead, Moscow has provided Azerbaijan with just enough arms supplies for Aliyev to win small, tactical victories that rally Azerbaijani nationalists around his government. As Aliyev benefits politically from his relationship with Russia, Putin has used Russian arms contracts as a foundation for cooperation with Azerbaijan on issues of shared concern, like energy security and combating ISIS.

Advertisement

Putin's desire to demonstrate the firmness of Russian CSTO security guarantees to the international community will also prevent the formation of a Russia-Azerbaijan alliance. As the CSTO's two most powerful countries, Russia and Kazakhstan, have close diplomatic ties to Azerbaijan, many Armenians have questioned the credibility of CSTO security guarantees.

To appease Armenia's concerns about the credibility of Russia's alliance commitments to Yerevan, Putin has taken steps to upgrade the Moscow-Yerevan security partnership. On August 16, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu and his Armenian counterpart, Seyran Ohanyan, announced that the Russian military would provide more military training for Armenian soldiers. Shoygu also described Russia's military base in Armenia as a "guarantor of stability" in the Caucasus. This rhetoric demonstrates that Russia does not want the Azerbaijani military to become strong enough to completely overrun Armenian forces defending Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Holy Quran has laid the foundations for Islamic leadership, saying: "Let there arise out of you a group inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong. They are the ones to attain success." - [3:104]

Terrorist attacks shake us and plant fear in our hearts. They make us ask questions and demand answers in order to find a solution to establish peace and end global terrorism. As a result of the growing number of terrorist attacks around the globe, millions are now asking: what is the role of a Muslim Imam/faith leader towards the protection of the country he resides in?

In order to provide a befitting answer to the above question, firstly we need to understand the position and authority of a Muslim Imam or faith leader and what can be expected from them in terms of their stances, influence and power they may or may not have. The definitions outlined below should help in gaining a better understanding towards this matter.

Advertisement

Definitions of titles given to Muslim faith leaders:

Shaikh: A Muslim man who achieves a degree in Islamic Studies and pursues a career of preaching his faith.

Imam: A Muslim Shaikh who leads an organization, community and prayers, and is appointed by a higher Islamic authority to act on his behalf.

Mufti (Sunni Faith): A Muslim man that has achieved the highest level of Islamic Studies and is appointed by a group of people to represent and lead them, or appointed by a Muslim government to lead the majority of the nation.

Ayatollah (Shi'a Faith): A Muslim man that has achieved the highest level of Islamic Studies and is now able to deduct Islamic rulings from the Holy Qur'an and whose opinions are taken into consideration on certain issues by Grand Ayatollahs.

Advertisement

Grand Ayatollahs (Shi'a Faith): A Muslim man that has reached the highest level of Islamic Studies, able to deduct Islamic rulings from the Holy Quran, and has announced leadership of the Islamic nation. He is then widely followed by the hundreds of thousands that believe he is the most knowledgeable, pious and wise.

Due to the difference in authority, our expectations from all Muslim faith leaders cannot be the same. However, no excuse can be given for any Muslim faith leader not to condemn terrorism, because the silence of Muslim faith leaders - regardless of their status and authority - is exactly what ISIS wants. ISIS desire to murder and massacre nations in the name of Islam and not have one Muslim faith leader condemn and denounce their sickening actions. Henceforth, it becomes all the more important to denounce the ideology and practices of ISIS and that all Muslim faith leaders become aware of this stance of theirs.

Along with the tens of millions of dollars being spent by governments to tackle terrorism, there will always be room for Muslim faith leaders to cooperate and supplement the national security of the country they reside in. As an Australian Imam and son of an Australian Imam, I believe the following steps will have a great and positive contribution towards the security of any country. However, it is up to each concerned Imam or government authority to deduce what fits the standards of their society.



The First Step: Understanding the Role of the Grand Mufti

In non-Islamic governments, the Grand Mufti is appointed by Sunni Muslims - in the form of a council. However, in Islamic governments, the Grand Mufti is appointed by the government in order to assure his loyalty towards the government and nation. This is because if a Grand Mufti becomes widely and blindly followed, he could be a great government asset, or to the contrary, he could issue a Fatwa to oppose and bring down the government - as history has shown in previous decades.

In a country where the Grand Mufti is appointed by the government, governments usually have full control over the majority of the Muslim nation because the Mufti would himself be from amongst this majority.

Advertisement

In non-Islamic governments and where the Grand Mufti is appointed by the council, the Mufti knows very well that he has enough freedom to agree, differ or even verbally clash with the government based upon where his interests lie, or based upon the directives and teachings of the other Muslim governments he may receive funding from. Therefore, the struggle with a council-appointed Grand Mufti will always remain, and governments will go to sleep every night knowing that the Grand Mufti is not completely loyal to them and the nation's majority.

The role of the Grand Mufti is vital and great since he is the nation's top Muslim leader. However, it is unfortunate that in most cases the Grand Mufti does not fully understand his duty. This could possibly be due to him having no or very poor advisors. The duty of the Grand Mufti is much more than just issuing statements, appearing on television or attending public events.

Therefore, what are the steps a Grand Mufti should take in order to enhance national security?

1. Learning the Language of the Nation

It is impossible for a Grand Mufti to achieve success in leading the Muslim nation by speaking to them in Arabic. Not all Muslims are of Arab background and a large number of Arabs in the west do not speak Arabic. It is also impossible for a Grand Mufti to bring comfort to the hearts and homes of Non-Muslims after a terrorist attack has occurred if he does not converse with them in their own language.

Context is very important. A translator translates word for word and does not necessarily translate contexts or the concerns of the Mufti. It is essential to have a Grand Mufti that understands the thinking of the majority of the nation, and thus interacts with them satisfactorily whenever they are in need of clarification.

It is also a sign of respect to the nation to learn their language. It is not acceptable to live in a country for over a decade and make no effort in learning the language of the nation, and yet expect to be considered one of the nation's leaders. Would a Grand Mufti accept having a Grand Mufti in his own Middle Eastern country that spoke to his people in Mandarin? This is very highly unlikely.

Advertisement

2. Establishing a talented team and office

The office of the Grand Mufti should be fully aware of the conditions of all Muslims regardless of their faiths, and he should also attend to their community needs and concerns by keeping in touch with the directors of all Islamic organizations.

He should also request monthly reports of activities, achievements, accomplishments and progress by the Islamic Centres in order to evaluate the direction the Muslim communities are heading.

In cases where the office of the Grand Mufti feels worried, uncomfortable or at threat regarding activities of a particular Islamic organization, then the matter should be brought to the attention of the concerned police departments.

3. A Delegation from the Grand Mufti's Office

At least once a year, The Office of the Grand Mufti should send out a delegation to visit all Muslim organizations in the country in order to touch base with the directors and to experience the atmosphere of that particular centre; and should there be any concerns, then these can be addressed and thus fully understood in person rather than only reading written monthly reports.

During these visits, the Mufti's delegation must also remind the centres of the values of the very country they are residing in and the expectations of its greater majority and government. It is also essential to share experiences with these organizations in order to perfect their roles within their areas. In the case where the delegation sees that a particular organization requires special attention, then it should be visited more than once a year.

Advertisement

4. Stop Endorsing, Start Acting

There is a limit to endorsing Fatwas and verdicts against ISIS already issued by other Muslim leaders. A Grand Mufti should know when it is time to issue his own Fatwa against terrorist organizations. The reason for this is because one nation will not necessarily feel comfortable and in peace if the Grand Mufti of another nation has issued a Fatwa against terrorism. Each nation has the right to know the stance of its Grand Muslim Mufti and how serious he is taking these matters.

In January 2016, Australia's Grand Mufti endorsed a Fatwa already issued against ISIS. However, since January, many terrorist attacks have taken place around the world including the Brussels Blasts and several incidents in France. This calls for all Muftis to exercise their leadership powers and abilities against terrorism, and issue a Fatwa against ISIS which represents the people they lead.

5. Annual Imam's Meetings

It is important for a Grand Mufti to hold regular meetings with all Muslim Imams from throughout the nation in the form of a conference that could last for several days or in the form of a gathering after special events such as Eid. These meetings are vital as they bring together the leaders of Muslim communities under one roof, which subsequently opens doors for unity amongst different faiths and a unified stance against terrorism.

It also allows the Grand Mufti and the participating Imams to recognise and thus distinguish between those Imams who are concerned about the safety of the nation and those Imams who are not.

6. Following up with Imams

It is still not enough for the Grand Mufti to gather with Imams annually and send out delegations once every now and then. Rather, there should be an organized system that regularly touches base with all Muslim leaders to ensure that they are fulfilling their Islamic duties.

Advertisement

In a case where terrorist attacks occur in the name of Islam, it is a must that all Imams condemn these horrific tragedies and strive to restore peace and harmony within their local areas.

If a particular Imam remains silent from condemning terrorist attacks in the name of Islam, the Grand Mufti should question him, and so too the other Imams. If it becomes apparent that a particular Imam supports acts of violence against the West, the Grand Mufti should condemn and denounce him immediately and all Imams must endorse him in doing so.

The Second Step: The Imams and Shaikhs



1. Cooperation with the Police

To ensure full national safety, all Imams and Shaikhs must cooperate with the police and intelligence services. If the police request a particular matter, the Imam must respond accordingly. There also lies a problem in Muslim societies where the Imams do not give full information to the police regarding certain situations and conditions of the community along with the challenges it faces. This needs to change, and all Imams must give accurate reports to the police under all circumstances.



2. Issuing Statements Condemning Terrorism

According to the Holy Qur'an, the killing of one soul is equal to killing the whole of humanity. Therefore, all acts of terrorism are condemned in the Qur'an, and Muslim Imams should reflect this matter by publicly and openly condemning violence and terrorist acts attributed to their religion.

Language barriers are no longer an accepted excuse, since a professional translator is one telephone call away. All Muslim Imams and Shaikhs should openly condemn violence and terrorism at their weekly Friday Sermons.

Advertisement

3. Monitoring Community Activities

Most Muslim communities host weekly community events with aims to enhance education and provide an opportunity for members of their community to acquire Islamic Education. It is the responsibility of the Imam and/or Shaikh of the organization or centre to monitor the teachings being delivered to the youth by the invited or volunteer teachers. It is important to keep a close eye on the books being imported and introduced to the organization, as many Muslim books contain old classical teachings which do not coincide with today's western societies and values. This is important as the mind of a growing child could be negatively affected whereby they form an understanding that they are different from others within this nation and hence, results in social side effects.



No Shi'a - Sunni Business in matters of National Security

In the state of a serious matter of national safety, Muslim sects and divisions become irrelevant and all Muslim Imams should unite under one banner of loyalty to the land they stand upon. It is imperative to choose an extremely wise Grand Mufti since it will be him who shall lead and represent the Muslims, and as Muslims, we cannot afford anything but wisdom and strategic planning for what benefits the majority of the country and nation should a terrorist attack occur.

The Holy Quran also directs Muslims to strive in preventing evil from occurring:

The believers, men and women, are protectors of each other: they enjoin what is right and forbid what is evil.- [9:71]

Prophet Mohammad, peace be upon him and his family, had spent the majority of his life calling for change, reformation and the establishment of peace and justice, he once said:

Advertisement

Whoever amongst you sees an evil should change it with his hand. If he is unable to do that then with his tongue. If he is unable to do that, then with his heart. - Hadith
A global advertising buy worth millions of dollars has spread across screens from Brazil to Guatemala, Indonesia to South Korea.

Combining the world's anthems into one song for the Rio Olympics, Samsung has unwittingly shown their true corporate colours.

From global athletes, sporting heroes, weekend athletes and schoolchildren, each line of a national anthem weaves seamlessly together to create a song of global unity.

Advertisement

Behind this feel-good advert is a sinister message of the power of companies over governments, the power of corporations over nations.

Fifty of the world's biggest multinationals have a hidden workforce of over a million workers, and 25 companies have a combined wealth of US$1.9 trillion - that could buy a country the size of South Korea or Canada. Corporate power is out of check.

When a woman in Honduras gets up at 2:00 a.m. to travel to work in the melon plantations in Honduras where each day she faces violence and disrespect; where each day she will be harassed and bullied; where she is often forced to work hours of overtime for no additional money despite poverty wages on which she cannot live and without even the dignity of sanitation, something is wrong.

When a banana worker in Guatemala is forced to drag multiple banana stems each weighing up 50 kilos with a rope attached to his back, something is wrong.

Advertisement

And when workers standing up for fundamental labour rights, students calling for democratic rights and freedoms or indigenous people defending their lands from corporate takeover are shot with impunity in these countries, something is very wrong.

Workers know first-hand how corporate capture of government is undermining their rights and freedoms as citizens.

Disproportionate corporate power over governments is giving license to the greed that denies workers even minimum living wages. It is also seemingly a license to allow the sheer brutality of treatment of working people at the base of the supply chains.

When workers in the supply chains of multinational companies in the UK are on zero-hours contracts; in the US have below minimum-wage jobs; in Panama face the daily uncertainty of short-term contracts; and in Indonesia face hazardous working conditions, then the global model of trade is broken.

Panama, the gateway to Central America, is lively with construction from the canal to the city centre, but below the signs of prosperity and more than eight percent growth, the minimum wage is merely US$400 a month for retail workers with a maximum $534 a month in any sector despite a living wage being calculated at more than $1,000.

Advertisement

Informal working arrangements afflict the majority of people, and thus the majority of the population have no social protection. Even workers in the Canal Zone who are not on the ships are struggling to raise their families, and yet ships can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to pass through and ply their trade.

In Guatemala, workers have lost faith in a government that for many years has promised improved minimum wages and social protection, where indigenous people are still in extreme poverty and where trade union leaders or community activists can simply be shot with impunity. Some employers are even increasingly vocal against municipalities seeking to exempt themselves from even the low minimum wages paid today and the violence and corruption that is crippling a nation.

When minimum wages are at best US$332 a month and many rural workers and women earn less than US$200 while the government's own figures show that a living wage is around US$800, the dignity of families is damaged but so too is economic growth and sustainability.

And in Honduras, where a melon worker travelled many hours to tell me of the exploitation and forced overtime - with tears in his eyes when he described the treatment of women - we all have a responsibility to act.

He asks why a multinational company that earns tens of millions in profits won't even pay the minimum wage. Why indeed does the world watch a broken model of global trade - our supply chains - grow off the misery of people denied rights, minimum living wages, social protection and a rule of law they can trust?

Advertisement

These humble questions and gross symbols of corporate greed are too big to ignore.

The millions of hidden workers for whom companies take no responsibility, using forced labour or paying below the minimum wage, is compounded by the practice of companies changing their names leaving workers with no record of who their employers are and who is responsible for their wages and social protection payments.

Then there are the tax havens where corporate assets keep the wealth of the one percent.

The corporate capture of government is not an illusion when a former Shell executive is in the Minstry of Energy, and a former JP Morgan Director sits in a Finance Ministry in Argentina.

And when Samsung, a multinational that has built its business on a global supply chain of low-wage workers, takes over national anthems with the promise of a world without borders, their sinister wish is for a world without rights.
Since the release of the Tesla Model X, the car has constantly been under much scrutiny for its autopilot feature. Earlier this year critics exploded after it was determined that the controversial feature had actually played a role in a fatal car accident. While this one feature has been at the forefront of Tesla debates it is worth noting that the autopilot feature recently is said to have saved the life of a Missouri man who said the car drove him to a local hospital after suffering from a pulmonary embolism.

It was just a regular summer day for Joshua Neally when he decided to head home in his brand new Tesla Model X. As he began to head towards the local highway he decided to turn on the car's popular autopilot feature. As he drove down the road he describes feeling sudden pain in his chest. He was unsure if he could make it to the nearest hospital in time and made the critical decision to let the car drive him for the next 20 miles without his help. As he neared the hospital he drove the remainder of the drive.

While Neally did make it to the hospital safely, many experts including a Missouri traffic lawyer have spoken out against decisions similar to Neally's because it is always safer to just call 911. Neally activating his autopilot during the emergency could have put other drivers at an unknowing risk.

Advertisement

Many have used Neally's story of survival as a way to counteract several other stories that have turned more fatal. It has been used as a case to prove that Tesla's can be used as a lifesaving vehicle instead of a life altering one.

Earlier this summer Tesla issued a statement after a Model X accident in Montana stating that the driver in this particular accident was proven to not have used the autopilot feature correctly.

When it comes to driver safety it is always best to make sure you are considering the safety of others as well as yourself.
Refusing to cover health care for millions by expanding Medicaid. Dismantling Roe v. Wade. Forcing us to undergo invasive, medically-unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds.



These are just some of the ways Republican-controlled state legislatures have tried to cut off access to care for women -- and from the parental notification bill introduced in the Nevada legislature, to the Colorado state Senate's approval of yet another personhood bill, to the Minnesota state House bringing a bill to defund Planned Parenthood up for a vote, they show no signs of stopping any time soon.



This is thanks in large part to gerrymandered redistricting, which Republicans across the country have used to turn the map artificially red, rig legislative and congressional elections in favor of the most extreme elements of their party, and push their extreme agenda at every level of government. Republicans have been able to advance their dangerous agenda in state legislatures across the country and in Congress by quietly undermining the basic principles of our democracy.



If they thought we would let them get away with it, they were wrong. Women and families can't afford to let this continue. We've had enough -- and we're doing something about it. We will not let our voices be drowned out any longer.



This month EMILY's List launched one of our most exciting and ambitious efforts yet: Our new Focus 2020 program.



Named for the year the U.S. Census will be taken, the results of which will determine how legislative bodies and governors redistrict the map starting in 2021, Focus 2020 is targeted to flip critical legislative chambers and gubernatorial seats in 14 key states where legislators and governors wield power over redistricting, and to accomplish this goal over three election cycles.



The program will work to flip and make gains in state legislatures and win key gubernatorial seats in these 14 states: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.



In 2016 alone, we will fight to flip eight state legislative chambers in seven states -- potentially preventing major legislative losses like those states across the country have seen in recent years.



With Democrats in charge we get both fairer maps and fairer policy for women.
OAK HILLS, CA - AUGUST 19: Miguel and Mabel Ramos, both 73-year-old, are traumatized by the devastation caused by Blue Cut Fire that swept through his residence, on 6500 block of Oak Hill Road, burning guest house to grond, burning two cars and killing about 135 animals Oak Hills. (Photo by Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

People are losing their homes to floods in Louisiana and the Midwest and forest fires in California. It is not just heartbreaking to see people have their homes and life savings destroyed in an instant; it is a problem that calls out for a government response. I have written many times about the need for dedicated federal funds for the reconstruction of homes and communities destroyed by nature or terror. This will require a dedicated revenue stream, or what we used to call a tax, to generate these funds. The facts are that our population is growing, we live in places we never lived before, and we depend on energy, transport, water and waste infrastructure to live a modern lifestyle. We are more vulnerable to the impact of a storm than we were before our homes became hosts to the technology of comfort. Everyone watches the disasters on TV, feels bad, figures it can't happen here, and use their remotes to switch to the Olympics. But many can't flip the channel; they are living with the disaster and are desperately trying to find a new \home for their family.

Advertisement

The fundamental job of government is to provide security and safety for its people. Natural disasters may be predictable to some degree, but they are unavoidable. What is avoidable is the sense of economic hopelessness that follows these events. The community can't replace the memories and mementos of the past, but it can rebuild homes, schools, libraries, roads and other institutions. It's too bad that government can't support religious institutions because they are so valuable in the aftermath of loss, but the constitution really does forbid it.

In last week's New York Times, Campbell Robertson and Alan Blinde reported that:

In Louisiana, severe weather can often seem a trauma visited and revisited. But the disaster unfolding here this week fits into a recent and staggering pattern in more than half-dozen states, where floods have rolled out at such a scale that scientists say they might be a once-every-500-or-1,000-year occurrence. The cumulative, increasingly grim toll, from Maryland to South Carolina to Louisiana to Texas, includes scores of lives and billions of dollars in economic losses.

What were once rare occurrences have become commonplace. You could argue that we should build out communities in places less prone to flooding, but there are no such places. Even deserts occasionally get hit with sudden downpours. In addition to the flooding, we see growing impact from forest fires. California's Blue Cut fire has caused 80,000 people to evacuate their homes. According to Nick Strayer of the New York Times:

The size of wildfires has grown steadily for more than 30 years. In 1982, the average fire covered less than 25 acres. Today, the average wildfire burns about 100 acres...The federal government spent $202.8 million to fight fires in 1986. Last year, it spent $2.1 billion. One cause of the longer seasons is environmental: The warming climate has melted snowpacks earlier, increasing the length of time that forests dry out and become vulnerable to burning.

There is no question that with 39 million or so people living in California, many are living in places that were unpopulated a generation ago, and so a fire might have burned in some remote location 50 years ago but would had little impact on human communities. That increases the probability that people might be in the pathway of destruction, but frankly, that's the point. More and more extreme weather events are taking place, and we are more likely to suffer damage form those events.

It's time for a policy response that provides reconstruction insurance, so that along with a federal disaster declaration, funds become immediately available to rebuild homes, facilities and infrastructure. There are a lot of ways to generate revenue for such a trust fund. There are even more ways to create a lock-box system that ensure the money can't be diverted or influenced by political considerations. I would tax gasoline to fund this. Our federal gasoline tax is quite low when compared to other parts of the world, and a disaster surcharge could be set annually based on the needs of the previous year. We get lucky, the tax goes down; we get hit a lot, the tax goes up. But with a dedicated trust fund in place, when a twister carries your home to the Land of Oz, the state of Kansas shows up the next day with a check for you to rebuild your home. They also provide another check for temporary housing. If you're a landlord with renters, the same deal applies.

The disaster will be just as miserable, but the aftermath can be made predictable and less wrenching by a national insurance system that cleanly and efficiently funds reconstruction. Here in the northeast, we continue to live through the horrific follow-up of Superstorm Sandy. First, our congressional delegation had to beg their colleagues for funding. Then began a long and complex process to determine who was eligible for aid and to ensure there was no fraud in the process. Years later, people have still not returned to their homes.

Observing this failure of government response after Sandy and seeing the representatives in the Midwest and South resisting funding reconstruction, I warned that they would be next. And now they are. The ideology of a do-nothing government is an obstacle to taking the action needed. There are plenty of reasons to be cautious when designing a big new federal program--I get that. But how many more miserable people will we need to see before we act? How many lives and family savings are we willing to sacrifice before we design an approach to fund reconstruction?

Advertisement

The American dream of hard work and reward is under siege. That is part of what is fueling the political insurgencies of this presidential year. Reconstruction funding is an appropriate role for government because pricing disaster insurance is nearly impossible and no private firm will take this risk. But our community is stuck with somehow paying for the cost of reconstruction.
Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney arrives with his wife Ann to speak at the Republican National Committee Winter Meeting in San Diego, California January 16, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Blake (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS)

The candidacy of Donald Trump, and the rise of Trumpismo more generally, have been seen as a kind of Rorschach Test for the condition of the Republican Party. Mostly this has amounted to variations on a "ye reap what ye sow" theme. Personally, I like to think of Trump's operation being run by Nigel from the movie Spinal Tap: Trumpismo represents everything about the GOP turned up to 11.

Beyond the racism, the bigotry, the bullying, the nativism, the misogyny - I'll stop there - Trump's candidacy is of a piece in another way too. However much some prominent Republicans are outraged by Trump, he is the third GOP nominee of the last four to sell himself to the party and the nation as a businessman. In fact, the Republican Party's disdain of government has been matched by its veneration of businessmen (yes, almost entirely men). So whatever kind of referendum Trumpismo offers on the Republican Party, it certainly reveals a lot about the world of business.

Advertisement

In 2012, Mitt Romney ran away from his career in public service, and especially his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, and flaunted his boda fides as a successful businessman. And without question he made a boatload of money in a private equity firm. He was turn-around guy, he claimed. He found distressed companies and brought them back. He promised to do the same for an American economy that had not fully recovered from the Crash of 2007.

Bain Capital wasn't a service organization, of course, and people pointed out that private equity firms often found assets to gut, strip, and otherwise sell off. Short-term profits at the expense of. . .well, everything else, including jobs, communities and long-term economic health.

Honest people can disagree over Romney's work at Bain, but what was truly remarkable was how badly this businessman ran his own campaign. Not just the wooden, awkward public appearances and the flat stump speeches. Behind the scenes, Romney, wizard of high finance, was outclassed by the Obama campaign in data, technology and social media.

In fact, while Bain Capital may have billions under its management, Romney seemed incapable of counting to 270. Faced with polling numbers telling him he was losing, Romney kept believing he would win, in part, I suspect because he was surrounded by people who told him what he wanted to hear. All of which made one wonder: if this is how Romney operated at Bain, maybe one should invest elsewhere.

Advertisement

In 2000, Texas governor George W. Bush offered himself as the nation's first candidate to hold an MBA. And from Harvard no less! Never mind that Bush's own track record as a businessman was risible, or that his only success came as part-owner of and principle cheerleader for the Texas Rangers, whose value soared after they moved into a new, publicly-funded stadium. Bush had the business smarts to lead the economy.

We all know exactly where he led it, and several wags noted that Bush embodied the acronym MBA: Mediocre But Arrogant. What do they teach people at the venerable Harvard B-School?!

And so here we are again. Another businessman running for the Republicans promising us that his career as a successful businessman makes him ideal to run the country. Trump clearly suffers from the delusions common among those who live in the cosseted isolation of CEO-land. Surrounded by sycophants and lackeys and yes-men and women, never is heard a discouraging word at Trump central. You would get fired for that kind of insubordination.

Romney, at least, really does seem to have made money. In Trump's case, it's hard to tell what "success" means. The more we get to know about Trump Inc. - the byzantine labyrinth of ownerships, subsidiaries, and liabilities; the staggering debt; the pattern of stiffing contractors and his own workers - the more it all begins to look like a Trump Taj Mahal of Mirrors.

We know that Trump made money for himself - though we probably won't ever know just how much - but beyond that? Trump hasn't built anything of lasting importance or economic significance. He isn't a businessman, in the traditional sense. He's a grifter.

Advertisement

But running a con requires a mark. And in Trump's case the marks have included major banks, other real estate firms, the state of New Jersey, and the courts. I'm only secondarily astonished at the complexity of Trump's business shenanigans.

More egregiously, Trump's wheeling and dealing has relied on a whole host of perfectly reputable enablers, like Deutsche Bank, as the New York Times reported. What does it say about our financial system that it keeps lending him money? Why don't more business leaders have the courage to call him what he is, like Michael Bloomberg did at the Democratic National Convention? How much confidence should we in private sector institutions given that are repeatedly suckered by The Grifter?

Trump's ascendancy may speak volumes about the Republican Party. But it pulls a curtain back on the business world as well and what we're seeing isn't pretty.
I recently attended ColorComm Conference in Miami, which Ogilvy proudly sponsors. ColorComm, created by Lauren Wesley Wilson, convenes and supports women of color in communications.



I have only lived in the United States since 2015, and although talent, HR and issues around diversity have been top of my agenda for years, I know that the diversity and inclusion debate varies strongly from country to country. When I bought my ticket to ColorComm I had a couple of goals in mind: to educate myself on the issues from a US perspective, to listen to the concerns of attendees, to debate the issues with colleagues and finally to come back to New York with some ideas that I could help implement at Ogilvy. So what did I learn?



At ColorComm, I spent 48 hours with 400+ of some of the most talented, inspiring and engaging individuals I have met in my time in the industry. These were people I wanted to pitch with and work with - people I wanted at my side going into battle.



At the conference, I asked our own Chief Talent Officer of North America, Jean-Rene Zetrenne, why is the communications industry only slowly addressing its diversity issues? In his mind, our industry has inadvertently limited its efforts to recruit a more diverse workforce by relegating diversity to a concern that is nearly exclusively important to the HR department - when in reality, diversity is crucial for all aspects of the business.



Our industry needs to do better. More C-suite leaders need to be actively involved in promoting diversity on an all-agency level. The fact remains, diversity and inclusion is not just a moral imperative. It is not just the right thing to do, it is the right thing to do for our people, for our clients and for our business. Period.



Our staff must be as diverse as the audiences our clients and their brands are trying to reach. We cannot claim to know an audience if we are not representative of it ourselves.



We must lead by example -- both with our clients and across the industry. We must be representative of our clients, the people we sit with at the table designing campaigns. Within our company, we must show our employees that we understand why it is important to build a diverse and inclusive workforce and prove to them we are taking action.



Creativity is more vital to great modern PR than ever before, and creativity itself depends upon a collision of ideas. The more diverse the group generating those ideas, the more likely they will come up with one that's a game changer for a brand. Without diverse talent, we almost certainly limit the potential of our work.



And what solutions do we need? We need to think far beyond and before the next hire. We need to plan and start early -- by reaching out to students at both the high school and college levels. We need outreach programs that engage more diverse audiences and to create a pipeline of talent for the industry. Once hired, we need to make sure that we retain and foster our diverse talent. And finally, it's not about percentages of the overall workforce: we must look to the future and define success in terms of the percentages of people in senior management and leadership positions.



As Lauren kindly said to me in Miami: "It means a great deal to have a CEO like you join the conference. It sends a message to the industry that Ogilvy is leading the way towards change and understanding. This conference is not just for women of color as we understand diversity. This conference is for all races and demographics to learn how to better move the industry forward with diverse teams and a diverse workforce."
Hillary Clinton has a very challenging gauntlet to run in order to win a presidential race that so many in the media imagine to be in the bag.

Despite all the advantages she has had the past two months, including endless screw-ups by Donald Trump and his crew of freebooters and a massive spending advantage, Hillary Clinton now has, tossing her best and worst polls, about a 5-point edge in national polling. Which ought to be of real concern, since there are signs that Trump is kinda getting his act together and Hillary herself has some big emerging hurdles to surmount, especially with regard to Obama-identified economy, the problematic funding of the Clinton Foundation, and various geopolitical situations with Iran, Turkey, and Russia. And she must worry about sudden shocks to her campaign as a result of potential economic downturn, terrorist spectacular, and the intervention of Russian intelligence.

Let's start with the most counter-intuitive of Hillary's challenges. Trump bringing on the head of the frankly borderline psychotic Breitbart News outfit as his campaign CEO may be a very good move for Trump.

Advertisement

Forget about the nonsensically offensive hype and reactionary packaging of stories by the Breitbart operation. Forget about its slavish harping on behalf of the neo-fascist bully boy Trump. Think instead about the single most damaging attack on Clinton in this election cycle. That would be the book 'Clinton Cash' by Peter Schweizer, a book put together by the Breitbart operation's Government Accountability Institute.

Then consider the recent film pushing the book's storyline of the Clinton Foundation as Exhibit A for the couple being among the most corrupt and hypocritical political figures in American history. Whether it's entirely accurate or not, it's pretty darn good.

See for yourself.

'Clinton Cash,' a sophisticated agitprop documentary accompanying the best-selling book of the same name, makes a largely circumstantial but very effective argument that the operational pattern of funding the Clinton Foundation by unsavory foreign sources gives the lie to some of Hillary and Bill Clinton's most heralded progressive principles. Note that it is not an argument for the right, but an argument that could be very effective in suppressing the vote of millennials and others that Hillary is relying on for her edge in the presidential race.

That film was produced and co-written by Trump's new campaign chief, former Breitbart News boss Steve Bannon.

Advertisement

Frankly, if Trump does nothing but absorb what's in the movie and regurgitate it in his first debate with Clinton, he is halfway home to an effective performance.

Also on-board is shrewd, personable pollster KellyAnne Conway, as campaign manager/read candidate manager. If she can help keep Trump focused on stuff besides his own too easily wounded ego he will be an effective opponent.

Then there is Roger Ailes. Maybe many of us should not have been so pleased that he was so quickly forced out of Fox News on stunning sexual harassment charges. Because now he has plenty of time to help Trump get ready for the debates. Which is kinda how we got this guy in the first place. He was a producer for the Mike Douglas Show who decided to show a frequent guest with a personality problem, an ex-vice president named Richard Nixon, how to perform on television as a credible president.

Getting rid of money-marinating mercenary campaign chairman Paul Manafort -- whose highly lucrative coziness with and string-pulling for foreign dictators goes back to Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines -- was crucial for Trump's prospects. Just as getting rid of miscast bar bouncer type Corey Lewandowski was before Manafort took over.

Many in the media thought that Manafort would make Trump more palatable, i.e., centrist. (As if that is a default good thing.) But what he really did, with ongoing questions about his massive payments from a pro-Russia party in Ukraine's thoroughly corrupted politics, was make Trump look like both a money politics-oriented hypocrite and a Russian stooge.

Advertisement

The challenge for Trump is not so much sounding nicer but sounding coherent. I have never had any regard for Trump's temperament, as long-time readers know. But I've been agog at his endless string of comments since clinching the Republican nomination which have turned his candidacy into a non-stop psychodrama. I had hoped that would help Hillary build a big lead. But, though she has developed real strength in some key battleground states, her own vulnerabilities in the present dynamic have left her with the sort of lead that a few bad developments can wash away.

Any sign of an economic downturn as she runs for what is in essence a third term of the only presidency since Herbert Hoover's never to achieve three percent economic growth in any year could be devastating.

So too would b any revelations about the Clinton Foundation.

What was to have been a powerful government-in-waiting is now something to be avoided. In the wake of pay-for-play charges around foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation and Hillary's actions while secretary of state, the Clintons have announced that the foundation will no longer take foreign and corporate donations if she is elected president. Why the past practice was ethical for a secretary of state and not for a president is the sort of contradiction that a competent candidate can go to town on in a debate.

So, ironically, next month's annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York City, coincident as always with the UN General Assembly, which was to have a been a Clinton campaign showcase, now may be something to be avoided. Which turns out to be another sign of the precipitous decline of Davos culture, a larger topic I'll get into another time.

Then there are very recent developments with Iran, Turkey, and Russia which challenge Hillary's narrative of a successful run as secretary of state.

Advertisement

The execution of a returned Iranian defector as a traitor for collaborating with the "enemy," i.e., the US, coupled with the what looks like the paying of ransom to gain the return of hostages all occurred after Hillary left. But she was at the center of developing policy around the Iranian nuclear deal which clearly has defied Obama's description of a new positive relationship with the Islamic Republic. And now Iran is allowing Russia an air base with which to launch air strikes in the Syrian civil war.

Turkey is drifting rather rapidly away from the US in the wake of the recent failed coup there, and seems to be getting very chummy with Vladimir Putin's Russia. Since Turkey is a key NATO ally, and our nuclear weapons and air base there are very important, any new developments going the wrong way will be bad for Hillary.

And, speaking of Russia, we wait to see if there are other larger shoes to drop as a result of Russian intelligences penetration of the upper echelons of the Democratic Party.

The November 8th election really can't arrive soon enough for Hillary Clinton.
Four-week threshold has been passed and, looking deeply into the most important question on the botched coup in Turkey, we still are left wondering who orchestrated this bloody attempt.

In other words, to use a phrase by Dick Cheney, 'we know that we don't know.'

And, this is rather bizarre.

Day after day, since the morning of July 16, we are fed by endless flow of data by the government officials, over the consequences.

Most fresh update was by Turkish Prime Minister, Binali Yldrm. According to his latest statement, out of 40.029 who were arrested, 20.355 were sent to prison, to be kept in detention, pending trial. Those who were dismissed - read 'purged' - were 79.000. 35 private hospitals, 1061 schools, 800 dormitories, 129 foundations, 1125 NGO's, 15 universities, 19 trade unions, 130 media outlets and 29 book publishing houses were seized and closed.

Advertisement

102 journalists and intellectuals- including the internationally renowned author, Asli Erdogan and respected liberal academician, Sahin Alpay - are now in prison.

According to the the trade union, BASIN-IS, those journalists who have been left unemployed since the launching of the emergency rule is, 2.308.

A massive series of sanctions and consequences which, frequent official updates show, and the 'eye to eye' rhetoric imply, that apparently make the cabinet proud.

Yet, we don't know the answers to the most crucial of all questions:

Who were in the top of the chain of command?

The AKP government shows a remarkable timidity to unfold the truth about who, by way of an attempted putch, indeed triggered such wave of deeply dubious counter-measures.

Advertisement

There is clearly equally suspicious assymetry regarding the enthusiasm to make public the reason of the mutiny and the consequences.

What we do know so far, according to a sharp analysis by Aaron Stein, a keen researcher with the Atlantic Council, is this:

''The events on July 15 are still murky, but based on an open-source reconstruction of the military assets involved, it appears as if factions in the First and Second Armies as well as the Air Force spearheaded the coup. Elements of the Navy and the Coast Guard were also involved.''

At the same time, all we get from official sources - open or anonymous - is unequivocal: this act of evil was from the very beginning to the end, was choreographed by a single perpetrator: Gulenists.

Large bulks of Turkish media, that is staunchly pro-government, isolationist and the third, strictly controlled by power-submissive media moguls, for weeks now pump this univocal, stenographic output, while the tiny, critical, independent media segments are totally silenced day after day.

Advertisement

'''Not surprisingly, conspiracy theories have found fertile soil in which to grow. The government uniformly promotes one such theory--that the Gulenists hatched the plot with the backing of the CIA and the Obama administration. In the absence of free media, the AKP's accusations hinder any effort to establish the true forces and agendas behind the coup attempt. Instead, the government rhetoric lends respectability to an ongoing push for recrimination... It appears that (it) is content to withhold information that would clarify the details of what occurred.''

Let us now go a little deeper to highlight what the independent research has offered us until now.

''The coup plot drew support from various individuals with different political outlooks, belying the narrative that just one faction--the Gulenists--were involved in the coup attempt,'' wrote Stein, having gone through the available data:

''To date, little to no information has been released about the core group of coup plotters, which makes it difficult to draw any definitive conclusions about the ideological affiliation of the putschist leadership--and whether they have links to Gulen or not.''

Another researcher, Svante Cornell, in an article for Wifried Martens Center, Brussels, days after the uprising, had reached the following insight:

Advertisement

''...no one believes that Gulenist officers had risen to the ranks of three or four star generals. Thus, while it is very likely that Gulenist officers were involved, it is equally obvious that they could not have carried this out on their own. The more senior generals apparently involved do not seem to have any Gulenist affiliations. Hence, the coup may have been carried out by an unholy alliance between a faction of old-school Kemalist and Gulenist officers.''

''The coup was not planned and implemented within the chain of command. The Chief of General Staff and the heads of the crucial First Army and Special Forces remained loyal to the government. This, not people on the street, was the key reason the coup failed.''

These findings will certainly push the clash two lines about the key question I underlined.

There is no sign yet that parts of the Turkish media cop-out from the grip of self-censorship and talks to other sources than 'allowed'. As the AKP propaganda singles-out Gulenists as the 'one and only' culprit, this demonisation inevitably brought together Turkish media's pro-government, militarist and opportunist segments together in a chorus; and this large block still keeps avoiding to ask the hard questions.

And serious parts of the Western media, bashed in Turkey, seems persistent in the right to question each and every detail that, unquestioned, is published in Turkey. Alos because the more the AKP sharpens its anti-western rhetoric, instead of presenting concrete evidence on what it claims to be the truth, the more suspicious the outer world becomes.

This feeds the popular urge of isolationism inside Turkey, as the weariness among its allies reach new heights.

Advertisement

But, the concern, shared by some other independent Turkish colleagues, has to do with another core matter: if the mental gap is deliberately widened by the AKP government, using obstinately the 'Gulen card' vis a vis the Western allies, it will obscure further consequences the botched coup triggered in Turkey.

It leaves uf less and less doubt in the fourth week that the element of Gulenists (whose involvement nobody questions) provided a perfect pretext for President Erdogan to rise above 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' tactics.

When he was visited in his huge palace on Tuesday by a group of lawyers, he was happy to receive a full-scale support by the chairman of the Turkish Bar Association, Metin Feyzioglu, who is one of the most visible figures of Turkey's Kemalist elite. That Feyzioglu not mentioned anything at all in his speech about the power abuses, right to defence, media crackdown and allegations of torture speaks for itself.

Then, we reach the key question.

Does keeping whoever the top perpetrators were in a blur help the AKP government?

Apparently, it is intended to work in its favour in various levels.

It serves to attract the 'centrist' and nationalist anti-AKP parties to assemble in the orbit of the President, cement a strong enough majority to approve - in a referendum - shift to a one-man rule.

The recent wave of crackdown on Kurdish media signals a two-frontal warfare which, along with the one against the Gulenist business and bureaucracy elements, Erdogan hopes, will make his position unshakable.

Advertisement

But how efficient the 'Gulen card' will work abroad to legitimize the wreckage the post-putch purge and mass arrests and whether or not it at all will help repair Turkey's utterly weakened image is another question, which can not be answered as long as we are not offered credible data on who really was behind the coup attempt, and why.

''What is clear is that the government's pervasive campaign of disinformation masks an unhinged clampdown on a wide spectrum of Erdogan's opponents'' concluded Prof Cizre.

''There is a huge historical irony here: When the tanks were in the streets, Turkey's democrats--liberals, leftists, HDP members and others--shared the joy of protesting against a coup with fellow citizens from all walks of life (despite the religious chants and disapproving looks that disturbed some secular democrats and stylishly dressed young people). Now the democrats are shocked to discover that a normal judicial process to prosecute and convict the coup makers has metamorphosed into something almost out of control. A state of emergency was declared, allowing the government to act speedily against the members of the "Gulen terrorist organization," and which opened up the possibility of suspending basic rights and freedoms by decree. Erdogan has already started to talk about reinstating the death penalty. Turkey's democrats are legitimately concerned that the government is using the foiled coup as a pretext to eliminate whatever is left of due process, rights and freedoms, diversity and plurality. The president, meanwhile, is using the guise of post-coup restructuring to consolidate his own power even further without political backlash.''
Boo at the Zoo is back

Boo at the Zoo will take place from 2-5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 29, throughout the grounds of the zoo, and is free to the public.
Disgraced Boy Band Hit Maker Lou Pearlman Dies In Prison

Former boy band manager Lou Pearlman has died in price at the age of 62. The svengali behind *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys has been serving a 25 year federal prison sentence for swindling investors out of more than $300 million.

_________________________________

Lou Pearlman, the disgraced star-maker behind 1990s boy bands *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys, has died in prison, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The 62-year-old producer died Friday, according to the bureau's inmate data base. An official cause of death was not announced.

Pearlman had been serving a 25-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas, for running Ponzi and bank schemes. He was convicted in 2008 of fraud and swindling investors out of more than $300 million.



In the mid-1990s he formed the iconic boy bands responsible for hits like "I Want It That Way" and "Quit Playing Games  with my Heart" from the Backstreet Boys and "Bye Bye Bye," from *NSYNC.

Pearlman boosted the careers of entertainers who later achieved solo fame, like Backstreet Boy Nick Carter and former *NSYNC member Justin Timberlake. Timberlake tweeted Sunday he hoped Pearlman had "found some peace."

"His passing has touched a lot of people," said Mark NeJame, who represented Pearlman in civil lawsuits for many years."

"He literally revolutionized the world of pop music and was]a creative genius in that regard  but had a horrible dark side that eventually overshadowed his talents, he had a way of telling people what they wanted to hear," NeJame added. "He was very seductive."

Aaron Carter, brother of Backstreet Boys' Nick Carter, tweeted Sunday about Pearlman, "karma is real."

With Pearlman at the helm, the Backstreet Boys shot to stardom in 1996 and became one of the top-selling boy bands, selling more than 130 million records, according to the band's website.

Shortly after the launch of the Backstreet Boys, Pearlman followed up with a second boy band called *NSYNC  which sold more than 55 million records.

*NSYNC's website was down Sunday in the wake of the news of Pearlman's death.

Former *NSYNC band members Lance Bass and Chris Kirkpatrick also posted their reactions on Twitter. "He might not have been a stand up businessman," Bass tweeted, "but I wouldn't be doing what I love today without his influence. RIP Lou."

via Celebrity Access

Share on:
Over the course of 2014, oil prices dropped from approximately $90 to $100 per barrel to around $60 per barrel. And then last year, as detailed in Deloittes 2016

Outlook on Oil and Gas, prices continued to trend lower, moving down toward the $40-a-barrel mark in summer and then dropping below $40 per barrel in December.



The oil & gas industry has been in decline due to the reduced price of oil, says Michael Hill of Hill Program Managers, which serves a segment of the market primarily made up of small and medium-sized firms that provide service to the major producers. This has caused many small oil & gas operations to go out of business. Operations that have been able to stay in business are experiencing declines in gross revenue across the board.



According to the Deloitte report, upstream oil & gas companies faced a 50% drop in revenues in less than a year.



The impact on insurers and brokers has been a series of non-renewals and cancellations, Hill says. Industries under stress react by reducing expenditures, laying off employees and pushing suppliers for better pricing. The brokers and insurers are suppliers, and they are being pushed for reduced premiums. For the brokers, this results in reduced brokerage income, and for the insurers, this may result in higher loss ratios resulting from reduced rates.



When an industry is under stress like the current oil and gas industry, insurersfrequently see an increase in claims reporting, Hill adds. Workers compensation claims and equipment and property claims frequently increase in situations like this.



According to Deloitte, 2015 saw the exploration and production sector cut capital expenditure and defer major capital projects while reducing operating expenditures and headcount.



If the deterioration of premium levels continues, in tandem with no withdrawal of capacity, how profitable will carriers oil & gas portfolios remain? Will we see some

insurers exit the space?



The environmental aspect

Talking about developments on the regulatory front that will impact the space, Hill brings up the work currently being undertaken by the Environmental Protection

Agency. Recently, the EPA began a formal process of collecting information from oil & gas companies to assist in the development of comprehensive regulations, aimed at reducing the industrys methane emissions.



According to the EPA, nearly 30% of methane emissions in the US come from oil production, as well as the production, processing, transmission and distribution

of natural gas. The plans have been met with expressions of concern, particularly from the American Petroleum Institute. Those concerns have centered around the potential of the proposed reductions to reduce oil & gas activity in the US, which in turn has the potential to lead to more job losses and higher energy costs, and a possible greater reliance on foreign oil.



Whatever shape the EPAs proposed regulations ultimately take, this will obviously continue to be key regulatory activity that industry players will need to remain informed about.



Additionally, according to a US Geological Survey report, studies suggest that the increase in the frequency of earthquakes in certain parts of the country is potentially linked to fracking-related activities.



Carriers we trade with all seem to be looking at how each state will rule on seismic activity linked to the production of hydrocarbons, says Thomas Blanquez of Quirk & Company. Oklahoma has led the way in respects to this topic, and there seem to be rumblings that there are other states to follow. The impact of this will also carry over to the disposal of produced water and owners of wells who allow others to dispose their produced water at these sites.



Tech and cyber exposures

Deloitte reports that, throughout last year, the oil & gas industry continued to employ new technologies and innovation, and that this was a successful vehicle for cost-cutting.



One technology generating considerable conversation  and already being used  in the oil & gas space is the unmanned aerial vehicle (more commonly referred to as a drone). Drones today are commercially applied in an increasingly wide range of industries, for purposes from counting fruit on trees to tracking Malaria-ridden monkeys in Africa by the heat of their heads.



Use within the oil & gas industry has concentrated on the inspection and monitoring of oil & gas facilities and infrastructure. In place of human surveillance, high-quality images and videos of plants, platforms and pipelines can safely and quickly be collected by drones. The key benefi ts include safety and speed, higher-quality inspections and cost savings.



Of course, while new technologies can deliver a range of benefits, they can also bring their own issues and challenges. The energy industry has become increasingly reliant on GPS and networks that can be interrupted by natural disasters and are prone to cyber attacks.



The [oil & gas] industry in general has a heightened cyber risk due to the introduction of IP-enabled equipment, Hill says. The major companies have serious cybersecurity issues.





Continued here.
City/Town Adams Alford Amenia Ancram Ashfield Athens Austerlitz Averil Park Becket Bennington Berlin Bernardston Blandford Brattleboro Buckland Canaan Castleton-on-Hudson Charlemont Chatham Cheshire Chester Chesterfield Chicopee Clarksburg Claverack Colrain Connecticut Towns Conway Copake Cornwall Craryville Cummington Dalton Deerfield Dover East Chatham Easthampton Egremont Falls Village Florida Germantown Ghent Gill Goshen Grafton Granby Granville Great Barrington Greenfield Greenville Hancock Hatfield Hawley Heath Hillsdale Hinsdale Hopkinton Hudson Huntington Jacksonville Kinderhook Lanesborough Lee Lenox Leverett Leyden Litchfield Longmeadow Maynard Mendon Middlefield Milford Millers Falls Millerton Monroe Monson Montague Monterey Montgomery Mt Washington Nassau New Ashford New Lebanon New Marlborough New Salem North Adams North Canaan Northampton Northfield Old Chatham Otis Pelham Peru Petersburg Pine Plains Pittsfield Plainfield Pownal Readsboro Richmond Rowe Royalston Russell Salisbury Sandisfield Saugerties Savoy Schodack Searsburg Shaftsbury Sharon Sheffield Shelburne Shutesbury South Hadley Southwick Springfield Stamford Stephentown Stockbridge Stuyvesant Tagkanic Tolland Turner Falls Tyringham Ware Washington West Springfield West Stockbridge Westfield Westhampton Whitingham Williamsburg Williamstown Wilmington Winchester Windsor Woodstock Worcester Worthington - Region Berkshire - Central Berkshire - North Berkshire - South Outside Berkshire Connecticut Outside Berkshire New York Outside Berkshire Other MA Outside Berkshire Vermont

Broker 2/06/2019HEART AND HOME REALTY, LLC 360BERKSHIRE REALTY GROUP Accent Realty LLC ACORN REAL ESTATE AGENCY AGNELLI REAL ESTATE ALANDER REAL ESTATE LLC ALDEN COUNTRY REAL ESTATE SERVICES ALL SEASONS REALTY GROUP ALLEGRONE REAL ESTATE, INC ALTON & WESTALL REAL ESTATE AGENCY, LLC ANN SPADAFORA REAL ESTATE ASHMERE REALTY, INC. BARB HASSAN REALTY INC PITTSFIELD OFFICE BARNBROOK REALTY, INC. BARNS & FARMS REALTY BEACH & BARTOLO REALTORS BENCHMARK REAL ESTATE BERKSHIRE ACCESS REALTY BERKSHIRE ACCESS REALTY, INC BERKSHIRE AGENCY INC Berkshire Business Properties BERKSHIRE BUYER BROKERS BERKSHIRE COTTAGE REALTY BERKSHIRE COUNTRY HOMES LLC BERKSHIRE COUNTY REALTY BERKSHIRE DREAM HOME, INC. BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOME SERVICE BLAKE BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOME SERVICE COMMONWEALTH BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOMESERVICE BARNBROOK REALTY BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOMESERVICES REALTY PROFESSIONALS-WESTFIELD BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOMESERVICES BARNBROOK REALTY BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOMESERVICES REALTY PROFESSIONALS LENOX BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOMESERVICES REALTY PROFESSIONALS OTIS BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY HOMESERVICESBARNBROOK REALTY BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY NEW ENGLAND PROPERTIES BERKSHIRE HOMES AND CONDOS BERKSHIRE HOUSE HUNTERS, LLC BERKSHIRE LISTINGS BERKSHIRE LUXURY PROPERTIES BERKSHIRE PARKWAY REALTY, LLC BERKSHIRE PROPERTIES BERKSHIRE PROPERTY AGENTS BERKSHIRE PROPERTY AGENTS, LLC BERKSHIRE PROPERTY MANAGERS,INC BERKSHIRE REAL ESTATE BERKSHIRE REAL ESTATE CONNECTIONS Berkshire Stratton BERKSHIRE WATERFRONT HOMES BERKSHIRE WOODS REALTY, LLC BEST & CAVALLARO BEST OF THE BERKSHIRES REALTY BETSY LITTLE REAL ESTATE LLC BISHOP WEST REAL ESTATE BLOOMBERG REALTY, INC. BOULDERWOOD GROUP BROCKMAN REAL ESTATE, LLC BURNHAM GOLD REAL ESTATE, LLC CAPE COD VILLAGE REALTY CARRIAGE BARN REALTY CARRIAGE HOUSE REAL ESTATE CENTURY 21 - A-1 NOLAN REALTY, LLC CENTURY 21 A. PERRAS REALTY CENTURY 21 FRANKLIN ST - PITTSFIELD CENTURY 21 HEARTHSTONE REALTORS, INC. CENTURY 21 HOMETOWN ASSOCIATES CENTURY 21 HOMETOWN ASSOCIATES (LENOX) CENTURY 21 HOMETOWN ASSOCIATES (PITTSFIELD) CENTURY 21 NORTH EAST MAGGI REALTY GROUP CHARLOTTE MCCARTHY REALTY CHRISTOPHER A WARNER REALTY CLARK REALTY GROUP LLC Clockhouse Realty, Inc. COHEN & WHITE ASSOC - W STOCKBRIDGE COHEN & WHITE ASSOCIATES COLDWELL BANKER COMMUNITY REALTORS COLDWELL BANKER REALTY COLDWELL BANKER REALTY WESTFIELD Coldwell Banker Residential Broker-Madison COLDWELL BANKER RESIDENTIAL BROKERAGE COLDWELL BANKER UPTON-MASSAMONT COMPASS CONNECTICUT, LLC COMPASS MASSACHUSETTS, LLC. COMPASS REALTY PROPERTIES LLC CONTINENTAL REAL ESTATE GROUP, INC COPAKE LAKE REALTY CORP. COPAKE REALTY CORASHIRE REALTY D & DEE REALTY DALTON TOWN & COUNTRY ASSOC, INC DAYSPRING, REALTORS INC DENNIS G WELCH REAL ESTATE, LTD. DIGRIGOLI REAL ESTATE DONNA THOMAS REALTY DOTTIE PIRES REALTY DWYER AGENCY EAGLE RIVER REALTY, LLC ELDER & ASSOCIATES, LLC ELYSE HARNEY REAL ESTATE ELYSE HARNEY REAL ESTATE - FALLS VILLAGE EVERGREEN BUYER BROKERS EVERGREEN HOME REAL ESTATE, LLC EXIT REALTY CAPITAL'S CHOICE eXp Realty FAIRGROUND REAL ESTATE FAIRGROUND REAL ESTATE, INC FAIRGROUND REAL ESTATE, INC> FIRST CHOICE REAL ESTATE FLORENCE BROWNER REALTY FOX REALTY FRANZ J. FORSTER R. E. FREDA MANUEL, DESIGNATED REALTOR FRIDAY & CO. REAL ESTATE G. FULS JR. REAL ESTATE CO. G. FULS JR. REAL ESTATE CO. NORTH ADAMS Gallagher Real Estate GATEWAY BERKSHIRE REAL ESTATE & SERVICES, LLC. GELINAS REAL ESTATE GILCREST PROPERTIES GILE REAL ESTATE GREEN RIVER REAL ESTATE GREYLOCK REALTY GREYLOCK REALTY, LLC. HARSCH ASSOCIATES HART REALTY HARVEST MOON REALTY, LLC HELEN MULLANY REAL ESTATE, LLC HOME SWEET HOME REAL ESTATE, LLC HOULIHAN LAWRENCE, INC HOUSATONIC REAL ESTATE HOUSER METRO REALTY ISGOOD REALTY ISGOOD-PITTSFIELD ITZ YOURZ REALTY Jack's Real Estate JACOB'S LADDER REALTY JAN PERRY REALTY & ASSOCIATES, LLC JIMINY REALTY JL + CoRE Jones Group Realtors Karen Climo Real Estate, LLC KELLER WILIAMS SOUTH WATTUPA KELLER WILLIAMS KELLER WILLIAMS REALTY KELLEY & KATZER KEY REALTY L. J. STARK AND CO. LANCE VERMEULEN RE, INC Lance Vermeulen RE, Inc Pittsfield LANCE VERMEULEN RE, INC., LENOX LANDVEST, INC. LENOX CANYON REALTY LENOX MOUNTAIN PROPERTIES LENOX VILLAGE REALTY LES POINCELOT REAL ESTATE ListWithFreedom LITCHFIELD HILLS REALTY SOTHEBY'S INTERNATIONAL REALTY MACCARO REAL ESTATE MAPLE AND MAIN REALTY, LLC MARTY'S REAL ESTATE MCFARLAND REALTY CO. MOLE & MOLE REAL ESTATE, LLC MONARCH REALTY, INC. MORESI REAL ESTATE PARTNERS MOUNTAIN BROOK REALTY, LLC NEILSEN REALTY LLC NOCHER REALTY NON-MEMBER NON-MEMBER: Reciprocal Nuvallie Realty OLD COUNTY PROPERTIES OwnerEntry.com PACELLI ZEPKA PARK SQUARE REALTY PAULA MCLEAN REALTORS INC. Pete D. Scerbo Real Estate PETER A. GALE REAL ESTATE PINECROFT PROPERTIES, LLC PIRETTI REAL ESTATE POND PASTURE REAL ESTATE PREFERRED COUNTRY PROPERTIES PREMIER CHOICE REALTY PROPERTIES OF THE BERKSHIRES PROPERTY WORKS N.E. PURDY PROPERTIES RAYNARD AND PEIRCE REALTY LLC RE/MAX COMPASS RE/MAX INTEGRITY REALTORS, INC. REAL BROKER REAL LIVING PROFESSIONALS WESTFIELD REAL LIVING REALTY PROFESSIONALS REAL LIVING REALTY PROFESSIONALS LENOX REAL LIVING REALTY PROFESSIONALS PITTSFIELD REALTY STREET, LLC REALTY WEST HD APPRAISALS RED HORSE REAL ESTATE Redfin Corporation REI REALTY ROBERTS & ASSOC. REALTY, INC ROBINSON LEECH REAL ESTATE ROSE REAL ESTATE ROVI HOMES ROYAL PROPERTY GROUP SANDRA M. PRESTON REAL ESTATE SCALISE REALTY INC. SCHOENFELD, FRENCH & LULL REAL ESTATE SCOT COHEN REALTY SIGNATURE ASSOCIATES SKYTOP ASSET MANAGEMENT SOUTHERN BERKSHIRE REALTY STATE LINE REALTY STEEPLEVIEW REALTY - WILLIAMSTOWN STEEPLEVIEW REALTY - ADAMS BRANCH STEEPLEVIEW REALTY - N. ADAMS STEEPLEVIEW REALTY - PITTSFIELD STEEPLEVIEW REALTY - SOUTH COUNTY STEPHEN MARK ARTS STONE HOUSE PROPERTIES, LLC STORYBOOK HOMES Streamline Communities SUE BRENNAN REAL ESTATE SUMMIT REALTY TALBOT REAL ESTATE THE BERKSHIRES FOR SALE THE KINDERHOOK GROUP - NY THE KINDERHOOK GROUP - PITTSFIELD THE KINDERHOOK GROUP - SALISBURY THE KINDERHOOK GROUP - STOCKBRIDGE THE MURPHYS REALTORS, INC. TONY BLAIR REAL ESTATE, INC. TRANSPARENT REALTY & INVESTMENTS LLC TUCKER ASSOCIATES TUCKER REAL ESTATE TUCKER WELCH PROPERTIES, LLC VANTAGEPOINT REALTY VIALE REALTY, LLC WARNES-ALMGREN REAL ESTATE WHEELER & TAYLOR REALTY CO., INC. WHIPPLE CREEK REALTY WILLIAM PITT SOTHEBY'S - GT BARRINGTON WILLIAM PITT SOTHEBY'S - LENOX WILLIAM PITT SOTHEBY'S - SALISBURY WILLIAM PITT SOTHEBY'S INTERNATIONAL REALTY WILLIAM PITT SOTHEBY'S INTERNATIONAL REALTY, LENOX WILLIAM RAVEIS REAL ESTATE Williamstown Realty Group WITALISZ & ASSOCIATES, INC. WOLCOTT REALTY www.HomeZu.com ZOE MELISSA HIRSCH REAL ESTATE
The station has been on the air since 1973.

Future of WTBR-FM Remains Uncertain

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  The future of WTBR-FM is still uncertain.

The radio station "Brave FM," stationed at Taconic High School, was once under threat of being silenced because of budget and interest. It is now facing the challenge of the new high school project's impacts on the tower location.

Now, with the construction of a new Taconic High School, Superintendent Jason McCandless is trying to find a solution as to where to put the tower.

"We could be looking at $125,000 to $150,000 expenditure to build a new tower for broadcast," McCandless said.

The district is now looking at the possibility of moving the tower and McCandless said he isn't sure if it needs to be affixed to the top of a building or not. There are also models of broadcasting from cell phone towers being looked at. But, in order to keep it going, there will be a cost to it.

"At some point it is hard to conceive a way this happens without some cost to somebody being involved," McCandless said.

The station operates on an education license from the Federal Communications Commission and that expires in 2022. The tower also is also used by United Cerebral Palsy to broadcast the Berkshire Talking Chronicle. McCandless said there is little interest from both staff and students to continue operating the station and it has come under scrutiny for broadcasting an array of shows that are adult-oriented.

Further, McCandless questions how it fits into the educational programming and mission of the school.

But, the community did strongly urge to keep the station as a community resource and not fall into the hands of private station. McCandless said the license wouldn't fetch much for money if auctioned.

"Right now we have this really nice communication tool that we could use and others could use and it would be a shame to go from a public station to a private one," McCandless said. "It seems to be very important in this community that it remains a community-based radio station."

The station runs on a budget of about $6,000 for equipment, fees and other expenses, and is really managed by two individuals - Brad Lorenz and Beverly Gans. It also carries some level of legal liability.

The station will remain on the air for at least the next two years, but the district is trying to come up with partnerships or models to keep the station going after that. The station first went on the air in 1973 and had its ups and downs. Participation from students dropped and operating budgets kept getting slashed.

In 2006, radio veteran Larry Kratka took over as an adviser and with that a new interest sprouted. Kratka headed efforts to refurbish equipment and student participation jumped. The station started broadcasting the Pittsfield Suns games and performed live broadcasts from community events as well as a number of student and adult radio programs.

In 2014, Kratka retired and since then, the participation has dropped again.
Local author Kristen Demeo's 'Shrouded in The Mist' mixes offers some facts to go with the fictional Potterverse take on Mount Greylock.

Local Author Unveils Real Magic on Mount Greylock



Ilvermorny's granite castle may be fictional, but there's a granite tower at the summit.

ADAMS, Mass.  Local author Kristen Demeo has written "Shrouded in The Mist" to show kids the facts behind the fictional Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry located on the summit of Mount Greylock.



When Demeo heard that J.K. Rowling, the author of the "Harry Potter" book series, chose Mount Greylock to be the home of her fictional North American wizardry school, she felt she could harness a teachable moment.



"It connects kids with local history and helps them learn through a subject that may really interest them," Demeo said. "I hope kids realize that fantasy is real and there is a 'granite castle' in the mist up there but there are facts behind it."



Demeo said the book is a detective story that challenges children to engage in the fantasy, yet encourages them to search for the local history that she feels Rowling researched before releasing her short story about Ilvermorny.



Demeo said she connected the castle Rowling wrote about to the War Memorial Tower and the trails the school's founder Isolt may have actually taken to find the summit and the true stories behind them.



She also ran with the idea of a school offering an equal opportunity to all wizards and witches no matter their race, gender, pure-blood, or mud-blood and tied it into Adam's famed daughter Susan B. Anthony.



"She was a person that believed in democracy and equal rights for men and women and education," she said. "So when they are done, they may still have questions because there is real history."



Demeo said she not only covered the local history and the history of the mountain itself but took advantage of every teachable moment she could find.






iciHaiti - Diaspora : A Haitian wins the Women of Distinction Award





The Montreal Women's Y Foundation announces that Deborah Cherenfant, of Haitian origin, Creator of the blog,

Mots dElles, Founder and Manager of Colore Design, and designer of Marche Colore, won this year the Women of Distinction Award in the category Entrepreneurship.



The Women of Distinction Awards will be presented to the laureates at the Theatre Saint-James in Montreal on September 27, 2016.



Learn more about Deborah Cherenfant :

Deborah Cherenfant immigrated from Haiti to Quebec in 2005 to continue her studies at HEC Montreal and follow her two passions, entrepreneurship and fashion.



In 2011, she created "Mots dElles" a blog to showcase women in business, which quickly became an inspiration for many. Even today, this platform, which won several awards including the Best business Blog in Canada, draws portraits of women in business.



To give back to the community, in a society where immigrant women are underrepresented, Deborah Cherenfant launch in 2012 her own business in fashion accessories design and decoration "Colore Design" that only hiring immigrant women and produces locally .



In 2015, "Colore Design" organizes the market Colore, a new store concept brings together designer pieces, sharing the passion of motifs, textiles and colors.



In a perspective of action of women's empowerment, Deborah Cherenfant bet on the forthcoming creation of a production workshop that would promote leadership and the employment of women in vocational rehabilitation, currently living in precarious conditions.



IH/ iciHaiti


















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
30th Anniversary of BIOSTAR, Racing another 30 years to the future!

BIOSTAR is proud to celebrate its prestigious 30 years in the industry this year and is excited to celebrate another 30 years more of progress for the company. BIOSTAR sets a goal to keep on improving, becoming better but always find a way to stay within its vision of providing the best value for consumers yet still maintain a high-level of quality and performance from its products.

How BIOSTAR started

BIOSTAR was founded in 1986 where its race to the future began as a humble motherboard brand during its establishment as BIOSTAR MICROTECH INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION. In 1999, BIOSTAR was publicly listed in the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE). And soon after the companys growth started flowing with milestones like in 2005 when BIOSTAR established its Graphics Card Division to supply its customers with better solutions besides integrated ones. This year also marked the debut of BIOSTARs T-series motherboards to signify its aggressiveness in creating its own style and design. In 2006, BIOSTAR established its IPC division dedicated to the industrial sector creating solutions for specialized applications.

In 2008-2009 marked a momentous year for BIOSTAR highlighting multiple achievements when it released its first TPower extreme overclocking motherboard signifying its strong product development skills to allow it to compete in such a demanding market. During this time BIOSTAR was also awarded as Taiwans Top 20 Global Brand and was ranked #1 as the top motherboard brand for iCafe in China.

BIOSTAR followed up that year with its ISO 14001 certification and the debut of the BIOSTAR HIFI series in 2012. The next year in 2013, BIOSTAR introduces the 2nd-generation Hi-Fi 3D motherboard series and announces its 6+ experience feature set.

BIOSTAR enter the healthcare market aiming to be one of the best healthcare treatment technology provider to help improve the sector. BIOSTAR also introduces its mini-PC and bare bones system during this time in 2014.

And big changes have come in recent times with 2015 debuting the BIOSTAR gaming series motherboard which was immediately followed up by the new flagship RACING series and the PRO series of motherboard which introduces the best of what BIOSTAR has to offer and is a symbol of what the company represents now as it races towards the future.

What BIOSTAR will do

Theres a reason BIOSTAR has been in this business for 30 years and that reason is our passion and commitment says Kevin Cheng, Global Marketing Manager for BIOSTAR. Our passion in designing and delivering the best products and our commitment to provide them to our customers who will benefit the most from our passion. This is what drives us.

This signifies the unified thought of the four business units of BIOSTAR who together comprises the companys innovative lineup of solutions: Motherboard division, VGA division, Industrial PC division and the Healthcare division. Each one specializing in a particular market to deliver the utmost focus for maximum solutions.

In the foreseeable future, BIOSTAR will continue to grow and expand under the new branding vision, and we call it: B.I.O.S.T.A.R.:

To commemorate this occasion, BIOSTAR is releasing the limited edition motherboard model RACING B150 GT3 with the distinct BIOSTAR 30 year anniversary logo on its heatsink to signify this milestone.

Celebrating 30 years of excellence, the BIOSTAR RACING B150GT3 highlights the companies commitment to the industry with a special edition release. The BIOSTAR RACING B150GT3 features custom BIOSTAR 30 Years logo in the heatsink and the box with a gold distinction in the GT3 naming in the box.

Back to top
Local cloud services pioneer IPC (IP Converge Data Services, Inc.) recently announced that it will be holding regular digital enterprise innovation seminars for business owners and entrepreneurs, free of charge.

Entitled Gear up to Innovate: An essential blueprint for digital transformation, the session aims to emphasize to Filipino businesses the importance of taking on a digital mindset in todays highly connected world. Insights about digital best practices will be shared and the most relevant cloud-based business tools will be explored in-depth.

Digital is the new Normal. If a company doesn't take advantage of todays plethora of readily available enterprise applications, it runs the risk of being left behind by competition who do, said Nino Valmonte, Director for Product Management & Marketing at IPC. Doing business in this day and age compels us to adopt a digital mindset, and the fastest and most cost-efficient way to do it is through the cloud.

Attendees will be engaged in an immersive demo of collaborative business applications and witness how workplace productivity can be elevated through these tools. More importantly, IPC will elaborate on the effective ways to migrate business processes to the cloud.

The Gear up to Innovate seminar series starts on August 19, 2016 and will run until the end of the year. It will be held at 1:30 PM - 5:50 PM on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from there on at 34F RCBC Plaza Tower 2, Ayala Avenue, Makati City.

Participants will be accommodated on a first come, first served basis. To register, visit http://gearup.ipc.ph.

Back to top
Bay Area Woman Arrested on Federal Stalking and Computer Hacking Charges Stemming from Harassment of Kris Jenner and Associates

Los Angeles, California - A Northern California nurses assistant was arrested this morning on federal cyberstalking and hacking charges related to harassment and threats targeting television personality Kristen Jenner, members of her family and two assistants.

Christina Elizabeth Bankston, 36, of Newark, California, was arrested at her residence Thursday morning by special agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bankston was arrested pursuant to a 15-count indictment that was returned by a federal grand jury on July 26 and unsealed today. Bankston is scheduled to made her first appearance Friday morning in United States District Court in Oakland.

This defendant is charged with stalking her victims over six months, said United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker. The defendants criminal conduct included hacking personal accounts, impersonating her victims, extortion, and swatting. This case illustrates that stalking is a very serious criminal offense. Such conduct can put lives in danger, cause considerable stress and anxiety to victims, and consume considerable law enforcement resources to respond to the false emergency calls. We take seriously the defendant's reckless and outrageous electronic intrusion into the private lives of the victims, and will prosecute such conduct to the fullest extent of the law.

Most of the stalking and hacking was conducted anonymously while Bankston was in Northern California and consisted of her sending large numbers of text messages and e-mails, as well as making harassing phone calls, according to the indictment. Bankston allegedly used a variety of electronic means that caused or were intended to cause substantial emotional distress to the victims and their families.

The defendant in this case went to great lengths to stalk and even impersonate her victims to concoct disturbing scenarios that could have put lives in danger, said Deirdre Fike, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBIs Los Angeles Field Office. The violations alleged are egregious and the criminal charges should serve as a warning to anyone contemplating similar behavior targeting victims, whether they are celebrities or not.

According to the indictment, among other things, Bankston:

made multiple phone calls in which she impersonated Kristen Jenner, some of which involved false claims that Kristen Jenner had cancer and needed help, and one in which Bankston falsely told law enforcement that a family member was attempting to commit suicide at Kristen Jenner's residence;

sent numerous electronic messages to Kristen Jenner, in which Bankston claimed to be tracking Kristen Jenner and to have put tracking devices on Kristen Jenners vehicle, with some messages specifically referencing that Bankston was stalking Kristen Jenner and her family;

sent harassing and threatening text messages to Caitlyn Jenner;

gained unauthorized access to Kristen Jenners iCloud account, which allowed Bankston to impersonate Kristen Jenner in text messages to Caitlyn Jenner and one of Kristen Jenners children, some of which Bankston later threatened to release publically;

hacked into the email account of another member of the Jenner family;

made Internet postings that published telephone numbers for Kristen Jenner, two family members and a friend;

gained unauthorized access to Kristen Jenners Instagram account and publicly posted comments under Kristen Jenner's name and likeness that include disparaging comments about a member of Jenners family; and

falsely told law enforcement that someone was going to Kristen Jenner's residence to commit a massacre.

Bankston specifically is charged with six counts of stalking, one count for each victim discussed in the indictment  Kristen Jenner, Caitlyn Jenner, two of Kristen Jenner assistants and two unnamed Jenner family members. The indictment further charges four counts of computer hacking, one count of extortion by threat targeting one of Kristen Jenners assistants, and four counts of aggravated identity theft related to the computer hacking offenses.

An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.

Each of the cyberstalking and computer hacking offenses carries a statutory maximum penalty of five years in federal prison. The aggravated identity theft charge carries a mandatory two-year consecutive sentence.

This case is being investigated by the FBI.
FBI San Francisco Seeks Audi Bandit

San Francisco, California - The FBI is seeking the publics assistance in identifying a man, dubbed the Audi Bandit, who is suspected of at least three bank robberies in the Bay Area in the last three months.

The most recent robberies that the suspect allegedly committed were "note job"-style robberies at the following locations:

Wells Fargo Bank located at 1145 Broadway, Burlingame, California on May 27

Fremont Bank located at 1879 Holmes Street, Livermore, California on June 3, 2016

Wells Fargo Bank 4767 Hopyard Road, Pleasanton, California on June 3, 2016

The suspect was seen departing the banks in two different Audi vehicles: a late-model Audi A7 on May 27 and a late-model Audi Allroad on June 3. Both vehicles had car dealer license plates, tags, or inserts. The suspect is described as a Hispanic male in his mid-20s, approximately 57-58 tall with a skinny to medium build. He was also reportedly wearing a white mask made of a T-shirt or article of clothing, dark sunglasses, a white sweater, dark hoodie, and jeans.

Additional information on this suspect, including photos, can be found on the FBI's Wanted Bank Robbers website.

Anyone with information regarding the identity of the suspected robber is requested to contact their nearest FBI office. The FBI can be reached 24 hours a day at (415) 553-7400 in the San Francisco area. All calls are confidential. Tips can also be submitted to tips.fbi.gov.

Members of the media should contact the FBI San Francisco Division media office at (415) 558-2511.
Headaches: Treatment depends on your diagnosis and symptoms

Scottsdale, Arizona - Your head hurts. Again! The first step in foiling your frequent headaches is determining what type of headache you're battling. Sometimes headaches are a symptom of another disease or condition; sometimes there's no clear cause.

Take a close look at your headache signs and symptoms. Your doctor may suggest you keep a headache diary to help diagnose your headache type. Write down when your headaches occur, accompanying symptoms, and any potential triggers such as food, changes in sleep or stress.

Are the headaches dull and achy?

Tension-type headaches, the most common variety of headaches:

May be experienced as a tight band of pain around your head, a dull ache or pressure



May cause mild to moderate pain on both sides of the head



May be triggered by stress, neck strain, missed meals, depression, anxiety or lack of sleep



Vary widely in frequency



Can be occasional





May occur more than 15 days a month (chronic)

Last from 30 minutes to a week

Treatment

Most intermittent tension-type headaches are easily treated with over-the-counter medications, including:

Aspirin

Ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB, others)

Acetaminophen (Tylenol, others)

Daily prescription medications, including tricyclic antidepressants, may manage tension-type headaches. Medications combined with behavior therapies may be more effective.

In addition, alternative therapies aimed at stress reduction may help. They include:

Meditation

Relaxation training

Cognitive behavioral therapy

Biofeedback

Massage and gentle neck stretches

Heat therapy (warm compress or shower)

Are the headaches throbbing and severe?

Migraines affect three times more women than men. Migraines may:

Cause pain that is moderate to severe and may pulsate

Cause nausea, vomiting, or increased sensitivity to light or sound

May affect only one side of your head or may affect both sides of your head

Worsen with daily activity

Last from four to 72 hours without treatment

Treatment

Migraine treatment is aimed at relieving symptoms and preventing additional attacks. If you know what triggers your migraines, avoiding those triggers and learning how to manage them may help prevent and lessen migraine pain. Treatment may include:

Rest in a quiet, dark room

Hot or cold compresses to your head or neck

Massage and small amounts of caffeine

Over-the-counter medications such as ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB, others), acetaminophen (Tylenol, others), and aspirin

Prescription medications including triptans, such as sumatriptan (Imitrex) and zolmitriptan (Zomig)

Preventive medications, such as metoprolol tartrate (Metoprolol, Lopressor), propranolol (Propranolol HCL), amitriptyline, divalproex sodium (Depakote, Depakote ER, Depakote Sprinkle) or topiramate (Topamax)

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (therapy using electrical currents to stimulate nerve cells in the brain) for migraine with aura

Do you have headaches nearly every day?

Chronic tension-type headaches and chronic migraines are both types of chronic daily headaches, which are those that occur 15 days or more a month. Other common types of chronic daily headaches include hemicrania continua (a one-sided headache that may feel like a migraine) and new daily persistent headache (headaches that generally occur in people who do not ordinarily have headaches and occur daily).

These types of headaches are characterized by their frequency and duration. The symptoms and characteristics vary between chronic daily headache types and over time.

There are also several types of rare chronic daily headaches, including hypnic headaches, which generally occur after the age of 50 and can wake you from sleep, earning it the nickname the "alarm clock headache." Primary stabbing headaches (which last for a few seconds and may occur several times throughout the day), primary exertional headaches (from coughing or exercise) and chronic paroxysmal hemicranias (sharp, one-sided headaches that may cause tearing or nasal congestion) are also types of chronic daily headaches.

Treatment

Treating an underlying disease or condition often stops chronic daily headaches. If headaches aren't caused by another health problem, treatment focuses on preventive medication.

For chronic migraines, for example, tricyclic antidepressants (Amitriptyline) may help prevent future migraines.

Do the headaches recur for weeks at a time?

Cluster headaches occur off and on for weeks at a time over the course of a few months. These headaches are rare, but most often affect men and smokers. Cluster headaches:

Begin and evolve quickly, becoming intense within minutes

Tend to develop at the same time of day or night

Can occur several times per day during a cluster period

Usually affect one side of your head, often behind an eye

May occur with tearing, redness or swelling of the eye on the affected side of the head

Cause a runny or stuffy nose

Typically last from 15 minutes to three hours

May cause agitation or a restless feeling

Treatment

Cluster headaches tend to subside quickly, so treatments need to be fast-acting. Treatments may include:

Injectable medications, such as sumatriptan (Imitrex, Sumavel Dosepro, others), for quick relief during an attack

Prescription triptan nasal sprays, such as zolmitriptan (Zomig NS) or sumatriptan (Imitrex Nasal Spray)

Oxygen therapy (breathing pure oxygen via mask)

Preventive medications, such as verapamil (Verapamil HCL, Verelan, others)

Do you take pain medication more than 2 or 3 days a week?

Medication-overuse headaches occur from overuse of pain relieving medications for headaches for at least three months. They develop at least 15 days out of the month, and often occur along with chronic daily headaches. Taking pain medication several times per month can increase the risk of developing medication-overuse headaches.

Sometimes called rebound headaches, medication-overuse headaches:

Feel dull, achy, throbbing or pounding

May awaken you early in the morning and persist all day

May be most painful when medication first wears off

Occur daily or nearly daily

Sometimes cause nausea, trouble concentrating or irritability

Treatment

Typical treatment involves discontinuing the medications that cause these headaches. Sometimes medications need to be tapered off, and sometimes they are stopped altogether.

You may need preventive medications or other treatments, called bridge therapy, to help control pain as you stop taking the medications that caused your medication-overuse headaches. Your doctor can help you come up with the best plan.

Recognize emergency symptoms

Seek emergency evaluation if you experience:

A very severe, sudden headache

Headache after a head injury or fall

Fever, stiff neck, rash, confusion, seizure, double vision, weakness, numbness or difficulty speaking

Pain that worsens despite treatment

These symptoms suggest a more serious underlying condition, so it's important to get a prompt diagnosis and treatment.

Take control

Almost everyone gets headaches, and most are nothing to worry about. But if headaches are disrupting your daily activities, work or personal life, it's time to take action. Headaches can't always be prevented, but your doctor can help you manage the symptoms.
New American Cancer Society Breast Cancer Book Offers Newly Diagnosed Hope

Atlanta, Georgia - The American Cancer Society today announced the publication of Breast Cancer Clear & Simple, Second Edition: All Your Questions Answered, an engaging, question-and-answer book written to help newly diagnosed patients quickly digest the crucial information needed to navigate through their breast cancer experience.

Breast Cancer Clear & Simple was written to help women with breast cancer and their caregivers know what to expect, what to do, and how to get through what can be an overwhelming, life-changing experience. Professional illustrations throughout the book can help patients understand how breast cancer starts in the body, facts about breast anatomy, the lymph system, and the types of breast reconstruction available.

"When women are diagnosed with breast cancer, they have a lot to think about and a seemingly endless amount of decisions to make. This book supports them by providing a comprehensive and easy-to-understand format to help them navigate through their diagnosis and treatment options, especially during those first days and months," said Dr. Richard Wender, chief cancer control officer, American Cancer Society.

Written by medical experts from the American Cancer Society, with guidance from breast cancer survivors, this evidence-based book is a great resource for any breast cancer patient.

"This book is an important and innovative tool to support patients with a breast cancer diagnosis to help them make the treatment choices that are right for them," said Dr. J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer, American Cancer Society.

Breast cancer remains the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women. This year, invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in about 246,660 women. An additional 61,000 new cases of in situ breast cancer will be diagnosed. Survival rates are generally higher for women with earlier-stage cancers.

Breast Cancer Clear & Simple, Second Edition: All Your Questions Answered is available in both print and eBook formats.

Breast Cancer Clear & Simple, Second Edition: All Your Questions Answered

By: The American Cancer Society

Published: August 22, 2016

ISBN-13: 978-1604432367

Pages: 208

Price: $14.95 USD and $17.95 CAN (hardcopy)

To order this book, go to acs.bookstore.ipgbook.com.

For bulk order requests, email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

For help with your order, call the Independent Publishers Group (IPG) at 800-888-4741.
American Diabetes Association is a Joint Plaintiff in Lawsuit, Filed Today, to Fight Discrimination by Army Child, Youth & School Services Program

San Francisco, California - The American Diabetes Association (Association) today joined a family in California as the organizational plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging a nationwide policy by the United States Army's Child, Youth & School Services (Army CYSS) program that continues to prevent children with diabetes from participating in Army CYSS programs.

The policy prohibits Army CYSS staff from administering insulina hormone that helps the body use glucose for energy. The beta cells of the pancreas make insulin. When the body cannot make enough insulin, it is taken by injection or through use of an insulin pump.X or glucagona hormone produced by the alpha cells in the pancreas. It raises blood glucose. An injectable form of glucagon, available by prescription, may be used to treat severe hypoglycemia. The opposite of insulinX and from assisting with carbohydrate countinga method of meal planning for people with diabetes based on counting the number of grams of carbohydrate in food.X, which effectively excludes all children with diabetes from access to Army CYSS programs.

The lawsuit was filed today in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California by Disability Rights Advocates on behalf of the Association and the family. The litigation asks the court to order the Army CYSS to change its current policy so that children with diabetes may participate safely in Army CYSS programs alongside their peers.

"When barriers like this Army CYSS policy prevent children and individuals with diabetes from receiving the services they need and equal access to programs that should be accessible to everyone, the Association stands up on their behalf to fight for fair treatment under the law," said Kevin L. Hagan, chief executive officer of the Association. "We are filing this lawsuit on behalf of all people with diabetes affected by this policy  both those seeking to attend Army CYSS programs now, and those who will be eligible for this benefit in the future."

The Army CYSS operates numerous childcare programs including summer camps and before- and after-school care activities on its bases around the world. Access to these programs is particularly important for Army families, as they often live on bases far from family support and other childcare options, or they may have work schedules outside of traditional childcare operating hours.

While many other private and public child care programs  including other military programs  have policies ensuring access for children with diabetes, the Army CYSS program has yet to update this discriminatory policy. This lawsuit is the latest in a series of measures the Association has taken in recent years to educate the Army CYSS about the discriminatory nature of its policy and effect change on behalf of families of children with diabetes who have been denied access to the Army CYSS programs.
Parents More Likely to Support HPV Vaccine Requirements for School Entry if States Include Opt-out Provisions

Washington, DC - Parents are more likely to support laws that would make the human papillomavirus vaccine mandatory for school entry if their state offers opt-out provisions, according to a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

However, opt-out provisions may weaken the effectiveness of the vaccine requirements, cautioned the studys lead author, William A. Calo, PhD, JD, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina, Gillings School of Global Public Health.

The human papillomavirus (HPV) causes most cases of cervical cancer and a large proportion of vaginal, vulvar, anal, penile, and oropharyngeal cancers. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that boys and girls receive the three-dose HPV vaccination beginning at age 11 or 12. However, as of 2014, only 40 percent of girls and 22 percent of boys ages 13 to 17 had completed the HPV vaccine series, according to CDC statistics.

Calo said previous research has shown that school-entry requirements have contributed to high uptake rates for vaccinations such as Hepatitis B, Tdap, and MMR. Since 2006, half of U.S. state legislatures have introduced measures to add HPV to the list of required vaccines, however, most measures were rejected, often due to parental disapproval or ethical, political, or legal concerns, Calo said. Presently, only Virginia, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia require the HPV vaccine for school enrollment, and all allow parents to opt out.

In order to evaluate parental support for making the HPV vaccine mandatory for school entry, Calo and colleagues, including Noel Brewer, PhD, the studys senior author, professor of health behavior at the University of North Carolina, and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, conducted a web-based survey of 1,501 parents between November 2014 and January 2015. To be eligible for the survey, parents had to have at least one 11- to 17-year-old child living primarily in their household.

The survey stated, Some states are trying to pass laws that would require all 11- and 12-year-olds to get HPV vaccine before they are allowed to start sixth grade. Parents were then asked whether they agreed with the statement, I think these laws are a good idea. Overall, 21 percent of parents agreed that such laws are a good idea, and 54 percent disagreed. Twenty-five percent of respondents said they neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement; Calo said this group may benefit from public education about HPV vaccination and, as they learn about the benefits of vaccination, be more likely to support school-entry requirements.

Respondents who said they disagreed that the laws are a good idea then received this follow-up statement: It is okay to have these laws only if parents can opt out when they want to. When the opt-out provision was added, 57 percent of respondents agreed that the school-entry requirements are a good idea, and 21 percent disagreed.

Calo cautioned that opt-out provisions could weaken the overall effectiveness of vaccination if large numbers of families opted out. Any process for requesting an opt-out should have an educational component and encourage parents to carefully consider their decision, he said.

The study also identified several factors that influenced approval of HPV vaccine requirements. Nearly one-third (32 percent) of respondents felt that the vaccine was being promoted to make money for drug companies and only 40 percent felt that the vaccine was effective in preventing cervical cancer. Calo said changing some of those perceptions would be beneficial for improving HPV vaccination rates and for legislating school-entry requirements.

HPV vaccination saves lives, Calo said. We have an unprecedented opportunity to prevent thousands of HPV-associated cancers through vaccination and unfortunately, we are missing that opportunity.

Brewer noted the findings suggest that states should consider school-entry requirements for HPV vaccination once states have implemented other approaches that have proven successful in raising vaccination rates, such as centralizing vaccination reminders in state health departments, focusing quality-improvement visits to providers on HPV vaccination, and training physicians to use announcements to introduce vaccination.

The authors noted that a limitation of this study is that it asked about hypothetical school-entry requirements, rather than actual laws, and did not describe the scope of opt-out provisions. The researchers said parents opinions could differ if they were discussing actual legislation, and may vary depending on whether the opt-out provisions were based on medical, religious, or philosophical reasons.

This study was funded by a grant from the Merck Sharp & Dohme Investigator Studies Program. Brewer has received HPV vaccine-related grants from or been on paid advisory boards for Merck Sharp & Dohme and Pfizer. Brewer is also chair of the National HPV Vaccination Roundtable.
United States Condemns Terrorist Attacks in Somalia

Washington, DC - The United States strongly condemns the terrorist attacks carried out today against the Ministry of Transport in Mogadishu and government offices in Galkaayo.

We express our heartfelt condolences to those who were affected by today's tragedy. We note the Galkaayo attack detonated near an open market, resulting in the death of 15 people and more than 80 injuries.

The Somali people continue to bear the brunt of the trauma and destabilization resulting from al-Shabaab's vicious and persistent attacks. The United States will continue to stand with the people of Somalia, the Federal Government of Somalia, and our international partners to help to reclaim and rebuild a more peaceful, inclusive, and secure country for the citizens of Somalia.




This Isnt Our Last Love Letter



Dear Don Don,

Way back in 92



I walked into the room and knew



Never felt this way before



I shook your hand while gazing into your eyes



And the feeling grew



As I took a seat I knew



A love that would have my heart



Forever



I knew



Way back in 92





They say love at first sight doesnt always last or isnt true



We were the exception to that rule



Our love had no where to hide



A spark set fire



As if this is how the universe started





I never doubted our love or what we could do



Together we grew



Forming a bond everlasting



That became our glue



My euphoria was YOU



Im eternally grateful for the love and life we shared



For how fortunate we were :



to have and to hold

through sickness and in health

Til death do us part



Until we are together again



This isnt our last love letter



I love you with all my heart and soul



Yours forever,



Deirdre (Mrs. Hank Snow)





Im fortunate to have fallen in love with, marry and make a life with the sharpest, coolest, funniest, most rare, bad ass, tender loving, loyal man on the planet, my husband Don Imus.









A True American Hero

I dont know why it has been so hard for me to write about my dear friend Don Imus.



I certainly know what he meant to me, my family, my charity, my hospital and the millions of fans that listened and loved him for so many years.



I keep reading all the beautiful condolences that people are writing about how much a part of their lives were effected by listening to him over the years.

But what most people dont talk enough about is what he did for all of us.

In every sense of the word, he was an American Hero. His work with children with so many different illnesses and his dedication to their future was unmatched by anyone I have ever known or heard about.



Besides raising over $100,000,000 for so many causes, he took care of young people for over 20 years in a state where he could not breathe. Along with his incredible wife Deirdre, he created a world where children were not defined by their disease. That was a miracle! He was a miracle.

I will miss him ever day for the rest of my life.

I was blessed to be a part of his and Deirdes life.

No one will ever do what he did.

I love you Don Imus - A TRUE AMERICAN HERO





David Jurist

IMUS IN THE MORNING

FIRST DAY BACK!
This Russian Company Offers to Bury You Alive as part of Psychic Therapy to Reduce Anxiety
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 }}

Two teenage girls, separated by the vast continent of the United States of America, but bound by one horrific experience.

Though Netflix's new documentary Audrie & Daisy may focus on individual experience; it speaks to something that's become depressingly common in modern culture, one specifically dominated by the public life of the internet.

Filmmakers Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk share the stories of Audrie Pott and Daisy Coleman; both sexually assaulted while intoxicated with the incident caught on camera, soon leading to a torrent of abuse online from both classmates and their alleged abusers.

The film promises to take, "a hard look at the issues faced by America's teenagers who are coming of age in the new world of social media bullying, spun wildly out of control."

The film debuted in competition at Sundance; winning critical acclaim and soon sparking the attention of Netflix, who have picked up the film for distribution.

Audrie & Daisy will premiere on Netflix 23 September.
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 }}

Sausage Party - a new animated comedy from the mind of Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Jonah Hill - tells the story of a sausage named Frank who, along with an array of other supermarket foods, attempts to discover the truth behind his existence.

Don't let the fact it's an animation fool you - this is one film that's not for children. Filled with drug use, F-bombs aplenty and one hell of a leftfield sex scene, Sausage Party could very well be the year's most debauched cinema release.

In Sweden, you can see this film as young as seven.

 Sausage Party - Red Band Trailer 2

A far cry from the BBFC's decision to hand it a 15-certificate in the UK, the Swedish Media Council has rather leniently given Sausage Party an 11-rating which allows children over the age of 7 to see the film so long as they're accompanied by an adult.

Fortunately, this Swedish cinema's website appears to notice the accepted age limit as remarkably young - the final line of its written synopsis warns: "Sausage Party is NOT a family movie."

Take it from us - this is not a film you want to see with your parents at any age, let alone such a young one. Don't believe us? Then cast your eyes at advisory website Kids In Mind which provided a detailed list of Sausage Party's graphic scenes.

Such a scene includes a moment where "four items make an anal-vaginal-oral daisy chain, all thrusting wildly as a taco sucks violently on a hotdog."

Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did Show all 14 1 /14 Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 1. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Kicking us off is Phil Lord and Christopher Milles bizarre animated film about a scientist who creates a machine that transforms water into food. So far, not too crazy, but then the machine gets stuck in the sky and it starts raining food. Everything goes wrong and Flint Lockwood must save the day by flying up to the machine and kicking fried chicken butt. Yeah, a pretty crazy premise, but a fantastic film. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 2. Frank Michael Fassbender may be one of the most bankable stars of the moment - having starred in the likes of Steve Jobs, X-Men and Macbeth - but in 2014, instead of flaunting his face, producers decided to make him wear a weird papier-mache mask for the films near entirety. The plot sees Fassbenders titular character front a rock band, play SXSW and make likeable music. Its all just a bit strange. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 3. Groundhog Day Almost anything with Bill Murray in it is a win in my book, but when you say the premise of Ground Hog day out loud - a weatherman who must relive the same day over and over again - it sounds quite boring. What transpired was one of Murrays funniest films. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 4. Star Wars With Star Wars being so prevalent in pop-culture, its hard to imagine a time when no-one except George Lucas knew what a Lightsaber was. Producers must have been shocked when this young director came into the office trying to sell a script about Luke Skywalker, R2D2, Darth Vader, Chewbacca and Stormtroopers. Thankfully, they believed in his vision and now we have one of the best sci-fi sagas of all time. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 5. Incepetion A dream, within a dream, within a dream. Even those who watched Inception were left confused, let alone those who only heard what the film was about. Christopher Nolans final flick, however, was a masterclass in storytelling and one of the best films of the last ten years. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 6. Speed The high-concept Speed is quite ridiculous really. Keanu Reeves cant let a bus go below 50 miles per hour or it will blow up. Its quite amazing how Jan de Bont managed to make his debut 116 minutes long in the first place, let alone making it a decent film in the process. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 7. Edward Scissorhands Tim Burton is a director who could fill this entire list up. While he may have chosen to reboot numerous films in the past few years (Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the upcoming Dumbo 2) it was his original concepts that set him apart from everyone else. In Burtons head, the love story of a man with scissors for hands and a young woman made complete sense, while for everyone else - from just the premise - it seemed entirely weird. Luckily, he was given the opportunity to make the film and a cult classic was born, all while Johnny Depps ability to play the outsider was solidified. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 8. Mrs Doubtfire Post-Hook and Aladdin, Robin Williams was on a role. One of his standout performances was as Mrs. Doubtfire, the father-turned-drag-housekeeper. As a premise, dressing your lead male as a woman wasnt exactly new (see Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie), so the filmmakers ran the risk of it all seeming like an overdone joke. Luckily, Chris Columbus managed to pull off the ridiculous plot (how wouldnt the kids know its their father, really?) leading to one of the funniest films of the 90s. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 9. The Lobster Like Burton, most of Yorgos Lanthimoss films could probably feature on this page, but weve gone with The Lobster. The film tells of a hotel where residents must find a suitable partner within 45 days otherwise they will be turned into an animal. Try to run away and the other residents will hunt you down with tranquillisers. The result was one of the best love stories of 2015. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 10. Ant-Man Some comic book superheroes should not be adapted to the big screen (*cough* Howard the Duck *cough*). Ant-Man is not one of them. Against all the odds, Paul Rudd and Peyton Reed managed to make a compelling film about a man who could shrink down in size and control ants. Whats incredible is that - somehow - the film quickly became one of Marvels most beloved films. Of course, everyone knew Marvel could pull off weird, having knocked it out of the park with Guardians of the Galaxy the year before. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 11. Beetlejuice Two ghosts living in their old home want to scare away the alive people who now live there. Unfortunately, the new home-owners cant see them and so the ghosts have to call upon a deranged Michael Keaton to help them out. Add one of the strangest afterlife scenes in film history and youve got a brilliant film. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 12. Forrest Gump While not an obvious contender like Star Wars or Beetlejuice, when you think about it, Forrest Gump is a weird idea. A below-average intelligent man, sitting on a bench, waiting for a bus, telling strangers about all the famous moments in history where he observed/effected. Thanks to Tom Hanks, Gump was a magical film of love and hope, winning over the hearts of thousands and becoming an instant classic. Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 13. The Lego Movie Another film from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, The Lego Movie shouldnt have worked. Making a beloved toy into a film; it was all just a bit silly. Thankfully, Chris Pratts turn as Emmett (and a catchy song in Everything is Awesome) the film was a huge hit with critics and fans alike, and now we have a cinematic universe of Lego movies to come. Awesome? Film premises that shouldnt have worked but did 14. Im Not There Lets get Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw to all play Bob Dylan in a single film, Todd Haynes said. While you would think that would be overkill, the result was stunning, with Dylan himself eventually praising the film in 2012.

Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Edward Norton and Salma Hayek all provide voicework for the film, the latter playing a lesbian taco named Teresa.

Sausage Party is released in the UK on 2 September.
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 }}

Bank holidays provide the perfect excuse for a long weekend of excess; but this year - save the best till last as long-running ska-band Madness are hosting a summer party on Monday 29 August in Londons Clapham Common.

It will be the inaugural outing for House of Common, a special event curated by Madness: We are honoured and privileged that London has found us a place where for one day every year we can have our very own festival, we here by name that day House of Common

See you in Clapham Madheads For the love of the common people.

Joining Madness is a dream line-up for fans of reggae and ska  a particular highlight being a rare performance by Toots & The Maytals.

With a back catalogue full of classics spanning over twenty studio albums, it will certainly be a bank holiday to remember.

Elsewhere, David Rodigan MBE will be entertaining with his trunk load of dubplates.

Congo Natty and fellow dub heavyweights like General Levy and Sweetie Irie will also be sharing the stage in an UK-festival exclusive.

Theres a sprinkle of jazz provided by the likes of New Orleans Hot 8 Brass Band and UKs own funk-and-soul stalwart, Craig Charles.

And theres even something for the kids in areas dubbed as Minor Madness and Rave-a-Roo. They start so young.

Tickets are priced at 45 and the event is expected to sell out in advance.

Full line-up: Madness, Toots & The Maytals, David Rodigan, Norman Jay Mbe, Congo Natty & The UK All Stars, Mike Skinner & Murkage Present Tonga, Ms. Dynamite, Kiko Bun and very special guest Lee Scratch Perry, The Hot 8 Brass Band, Craig Charles, Terry Farley, Spring King, Toddla T, Rob Da Bank, Hollie Stephenson, Reggae Roast
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 }}

Nowadays its common knowledge that if you want to know the next big thing in beauty you look to Korea and just like the introduction of BB creams into the Western Market in 2011 we now have them to thank for the cushion compacts rise to beauty industry domination. The technology behind K-beauty is heralded as the most innovative and advanced in the world so it seems only natural that we would want a slice of the skin-perfecting action. Cushion foundations officially landed in the UK last year thanks to the launch of Lancomes Miracle Cushion Foundation, naturally, more and more brands are jumping on the bandwagon but with it theyre bringing a whole host of added skincare benefits, like added SPF, extra hydration and anti-aging benefits.

First of all, lets discuss what they actually are. These makeup compacts come loaded with a sponge soaked in a light foundation, BB or CC cream and a sponge pad applicator so you can dab the formula onto your face. While traditional foundations can lead to unsightly lines and a thick layer, freed from the tube, these snap-lock compacts offer the ability to target specific areas and build coverage where needed. They are undoubtedly the secret to an even, customisable and undetectable finish.

While these super thin, lightweight formulas are abundant, some brands are taking things one step further. Not only were Lancome the first to launch sponge filled compacts in the UK but they have just sprung upon us the first long wear, high coverage cushion foundation with an impressive SPF 50 sunscreen  the Lancome Teint Idole Ultra Cushion. If that wasnt enough, the brand have taken the concept of Air Cushion technology to blush territory; the results? A smooth, light and melt-away texture. In the same week, Dior has also launched its Dreamskin Perfect Skin Cushion which is one of those, part skincare, part foundation hybrids that give you instant moisturising, anti-ageing and complexion-perfecting results.

The job of applying foundation has never been easier and while the idea of a cushion foundation is all just a big step up from a BB cream its clear that some of the industrys leading brands are keen to see it evolve. Are you a cushion convert?
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 }}

Martin Shkreli has refused to stop making memes of Harambe, the gorilla who died, and called on other people to join him in continuing to do so.

The infamous businessman and pharmaceutical executive  who has in recent weeks called for Harambes DNA to be used to resurrect the gorilla  said that he will refuse to comply with the Cincinnati Zoos request for the joke to come to an end.

Harambe was killed at the end of May, when a zoo worker shot the gorilla because they were worried that he would kill a child that had fallen into his enclosure.

The most controversial animal killings Show all 6 1 /6 The most controversial animal killings The most controversial animal killings Cincinnati Zoo worker shots and kills Harambe, the 17-year-old gorilla Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla was shot and killed by a Cincinnati Zoo worker after a three-year-old boy climbed into a gorilla enclosure and was grabbed and dragged by Harambe. The incident was recorded on video and received broad international coverage and commentary, including controversy over the choice to kill Harambe. A number of primatologists and conservationists wrote later that the zoo had no other choice under the circumstances, and that it highlighted the danger of zoo animals in close proximity to humans and the need for better standards of care Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden The most controversial animal killings Walt Palmer (left), from Minnesota, who killed Cecil, the Zimbabwean lion (pictured here with another lion shot in Africa) Walter James Palmer has been named by Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force as the shooter of Cecil, a 13-year-old prized lion. He is now wanted by Zimbabwe officials on poaching charges. The lion was protected and the subject of a decade long study by the Wildlife Unit of Oxford University in the UK. He was outfitted with a GPS collar and was killed in Hwange National Park. The Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority and the Safari Operators Association said that two men were charged with poaching in connection to Mr Palmer The most controversial animal killings Kendall Jones hunting images Kendall Jones, a 19-year-old Texas Tech university student, has provoked worldwide fury after posting pictures of herself smiling next to animals she hunted, including a lion, rhinoceros, antelope, leopard, elephant, zebra and hippopotamus The most controversial animal killings Rebecca Francis hunting images Rebecca Francis, a huntress who has killed dozens of wild animals has been sent death wishes by furious social media users after a picture showing her lying down next to a dead giraffe was circulated. Rebecca Francis has a website and Facebook page dedicated to the animals she has killed in hunts across Africa and America. Francis, a prolific hunter who has also co-hosted the television show Eye of the Hunter, regularly posts pictures of herself posing next to dead bears, giraffes, buffaloes and zebras, among other animals. She uses a bow and arrow to kill her prey The most controversial animal killings The slaughter of Marius, an 18-month-old healthy giraffe in Copenhagen Zoo Copenhagen Zoo made the controversial decision to euthanise a healthy giraffe named Marius, which was later dissected and fed to lions as visitors watched. The slaughter sparked a furious backlash from social media users and zoo staff have received death threats by phone and email. Soon after the incident, Copenhagen Zoo faced an international outcry once again after four healthy lions were put down The most controversial animal killings Swiss Dahlholzli zoo kills healthy brown bear cub A Switzerland zoo faced heavy criticism from animal rights groups, after keepers put down a healthy brown bear cub to spare it from being bullied by its dominant male father. The 360 kg male bear Misha had already killed one of his 11-week old cubs in public and was bullying the second, staff at the zoo said, because he was jealous of the attention the cubs were receiving from their mother, Masha. Both adult brown bears had been donated to Berns Dahlholzli zoo in 2009. Campaigners condemned staff there for not separating the cubs, who are being referred to as Baby Bear Two and Baby Bear Three, and their mother from Misha after their birth in January Facebook

The zoo had asked that people on the internet stop making jokes because it was making it difficult for them to move on.

"We are not amused by the memes, petitions and signs about Harambe," Thane Maynard, Cincinnati Zoo director, told the Associated Press. "Our zoo family is still healing, and the constant mention of Harambe makes moving forward more difficult for us. We are honoring Harambe by redoubling our gorilla conservation efforts and encouraging others to join us."

But Mr Shkreli has refused to give up on memeing the gorilla and says that doing so serves an important purpose.

I have a profound love for non-human primates that is 100% real & 0% facetious, he wrote in a string of tweets. These animals are so close to human & we treat them poorly.

So if we want to celebrate the life of Harambe, as a symbolic gesture towards better NHP-Human relations, what is wrong with that?

It was his final tweet, though, that was the most vociferous response to the Cincinnati Zoos request.

As well as his efforts to bring the gorilla  or a clone of him  back to life through DNA sequencing, Mr Shkreli has been one of the most prominent people creating and spreading Harambe memes.
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 }}

People should stop making memes and jokes about Harambe, the gorilla that was shot after a child fell in his enclosure, according to the Cincinnati Zoo where he lived.

At the end of May this year, a three-year-old climbed into the gorilla enclosure at the zoo in Ohio. After the child was grabbed by Harambe, a zoo worker shot and killed the gorilla, because officials were afraid that the boy would be killed.

Since then, Harambe has become memorialised in more or less sincere memes, jokes and petitions. Those take various forms, and come from various parts of the internet and from across the political spectrum.

The most controversial animal killings Show all 6 1 /6 The most controversial animal killings The most controversial animal killings Cincinnati Zoo worker shots and kills Harambe, the 17-year-old gorilla Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla was shot and killed by a Cincinnati Zoo worker after a three-year-old boy climbed into a gorilla enclosure and was grabbed and dragged by Harambe. The incident was recorded on video and received broad international coverage and commentary, including controversy over the choice to kill Harambe. A number of primatologists and conservationists wrote later that the zoo had no other choice under the circumstances, and that it highlighted the danger of zoo animals in close proximity to humans and the need for better standards of care Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden The most controversial animal killings Walt Palmer (left), from Minnesota, who killed Cecil, the Zimbabwean lion (pictured here with another lion shot in Africa) Walter James Palmer has been named by Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force as the shooter of Cecil, a 13-year-old prized lion. He is now wanted by Zimbabwe officials on poaching charges. The lion was protected and the subject of a decade long study by the Wildlife Unit of Oxford University in the UK. He was outfitted with a GPS collar and was killed in Hwange National Park. The Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority and the Safari Operators Association said that two men were charged with poaching in connection to Mr Palmer The most controversial animal killings Kendall Jones hunting images Kendall Jones, a 19-year-old Texas Tech university student, has provoked worldwide fury after posting pictures of herself smiling next to animals she hunted, including a lion, rhinoceros, antelope, leopard, elephant, zebra and hippopotamus The most controversial animal killings Rebecca Francis hunting images Rebecca Francis, a huntress who has killed dozens of wild animals has been sent death wishes by furious social media users after a picture showing her lying down next to a dead giraffe was circulated. Rebecca Francis has a website and Facebook page dedicated to the animals she has killed in hunts across Africa and America. Francis, a prolific hunter who has also co-hosted the television show Eye of the Hunter, regularly posts pictures of herself posing next to dead bears, giraffes, buffaloes and zebras, among other animals. She uses a bow and arrow to kill her prey The most controversial animal killings The slaughter of Marius, an 18-month-old healthy giraffe in Copenhagen Zoo Copenhagen Zoo made the controversial decision to euthanise a healthy giraffe named Marius, which was later dissected and fed to lions as visitors watched. The slaughter sparked a furious backlash from social media users and zoo staff have received death threats by phone and email. Soon after the incident, Copenhagen Zoo faced an international outcry once again after four healthy lions were put down The most controversial animal killings Swiss Dahlholzli zoo kills healthy brown bear cub A Switzerland zoo faced heavy criticism from animal rights groups, after keepers put down a healthy brown bear cub to spare it from being bullied by its dominant male father. The 360 kg male bear Misha had already killed one of his 11-week old cubs in public and was bullying the second, staff at the zoo said, because he was jealous of the attention the cubs were receiving from their mother, Masha. Both adult brown bears had been donated to Berns Dahlholzli zoo in 2009. Campaigners condemned staff there for not separating the cubs, who are being referred to as Baby Bear Two and Baby Bear Three, and their mother from Misha after their birth in January Facebook

Interest in Harambe has surged in recent months, as the gorilla has been revived as a meme. Google Trends shows that searches for the gorillas name are now almost equal with their peak in the first week of June, when news hit that he had been killed.

But the Cincinnati Zoo has asked for those memes and other jokes to come to an end.

Recommended Read more Tens of thousands back Harambe to be next US president

"We are not amused by the memes, petitions and signs about Harambe," Thane Maynard, Cincinnati Zoo director, told the Associated Press. "Our zoo family is still healing, and the constant mention of Harambe makes moving forward more difficult for us. We are honoring Harambe by redoubling our gorilla conservation efforts and encouraging others to join us."

Other voices on the internet have said that the jokes have now gone too far and should be brought to an end.

WCPO-TV web editor James Leggate recently started his own petition, for instance, which asks that petitions about Harambe are stopped.

"At first, the petitioners had good intentions," he wrote. "But then the goofuses of the Internet hopped on the Harambe train for their jollies, and it has gotten out of control."

Footage of the incident that led to Harambe's death

Animal rights activist Anthony Seta organized a Cincinnati vigil in tribute to Harambe soon after he was killed. He said much of the attention in terms of memorials had been positive.

"For the most part, I'm very happy with it. It shows people are remembering what a wonderful being he was," he said. "The ones that are mocking and making light of the death of this being, I find incredibly offensive."

Ashley Byrne, an associate director at PETA, said that the trolls were in the minority among the people who were mourning the gorilla.

"This tragic incident really did start a new conversation," she said. "Most people who saw the video came away with a great degree of empathy for animals forced to live in captivity."
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 7-day week NHS may no longer be possible following Brexit because so many healthcare professionals come from EU countries, Department for Health officials have warned.

The NHS employs around 55,000 staff who are EU citizens, amounting to a tenth of the overall workforce. It is currently unknown whether freedom of movement and employment rights will change for EU citizens following the referendum vote, prompting uncertainty over future staffing levels.

Senior civil servants issued the warning to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt in internal Department of Health reports which have been leaked to the Guardian and Channel 4 News.

One states that Brexit: may adversing [sic] impact upon the delivery of the 7 Day Services programme, particularly with regards to workforce and finances.

The Institute for Public Policy Research has also recently warned the UK may face a public health emergency and see the NHS collapse following Brexit if EU staff leave the UK. The think tank has called on Theresa May to guarantee citizenship for all NHS workers.

The leaked Department of Health reports also warn a seven-day NHS might spread resources too thinly and cause workforce overload to the extent that the full service cannot be delivered.

Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests  but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty

Mr Hunts proposals for seven-day services have provoked bitter divisions among healthcare professionals, with junior doctors arguing the plan is unsafe and undeliverable. Figures cited by the Health Secretary to claim that patients are more likely to die on weekends have also been fiercely disputed.

However, the Department of Health has stood by the figures and service proposals, arguing that the 7-day service will improve quality of care for patients in the long term.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health told The Independent: "Over the past six years eight independent studies have set out the evidence for a "weekend effect"- unacceptable variation in care across the week. This government is the first to tackle this, with a commitment to a safer, seven day NHS for patients and 10 billion to fund the NHS' own plan for the future, alongside thousands of extra doctors and nurses on our wards."
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 }}

Leading health experts have accused the Prime Minister of failing the first test of her leadership due to her governments lacklustre response to the obesity crisis.

Campaigners have condemned the governments obesity strategy - which was published this week after months of delays - which they say is too heavily reliant on goodwill from the food and drinks industry.

The strategy document said the industry would pledge to reduce the amount of sugar in products by 20 per cent in exchange for an exemption from the sugar tax proposed by George Osbornes final Budget in March.

But crucially it contains no provision to crack down on junk food marketing and advertising.

Professor Graham MacGregor, a cardiovascular experts and anti-sugar campaigner, told the Guardian Ms Mays plan was even worse than a version he had seen under David Camerons premiership.

He said: She came in saying We are going to look after the poor and the socially deprived and immediately shown shes absolutely not interested.

This is a huge crisis facing the UK: we are the most obese nation in Europe; its going to bankrupt the NHS.

Farcically, shes gone backwards even on Cameron. Its a national scandal.

Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests  but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty

Its been watered down in the last three weeks. If she continues like that its [going to be] a disaster.

Prof MacGregor chairs the Action on Sugar campaign group which has previously called for the sugar content in food to be halved and fat reduced by 20 per cent.

At least one in five children are overweight or obese by the time they start primary school  with this rising to one in three by the time they reach secondary school.

Recommended Read more The obesity fight is about more than just fat

Action on Sugar has pointed out that obesity kills more people than tobacco, both in the UK and worldwide.

Prof MacGregor said foods with high fat and sugar content were disproportionately eaten by the poor.

Cancer Research UKs chief executive Sir Harpal Kumar condemned Ms Mays government for giving into industry lobbying and watering down the proposals.

Writing a piece in the Guardian, he said: "The new prime minister entered Downing Street with a pledge to tackle health inequality and to champion the needs of the individual in preference to the mighty.

"Obesity has a disproportionate impact on the poorest in our society.

Food and drink companies have agreed to voluntarily reduce the sugar content of their products in exchange for an exemption from the sugar tax (Getty)

"The new government faced its first test of this pledge with a chance to address inequality and to protect the next generation from diseases like cancer. This plan fails that test."

He said obesity was already costing British society almost 1bn every week.

A Department of Health spokesman told the newspaper: "Our obesity plan is world-leading, with more far-reaching and comprehensive measures than anything pursued by any other western government.

"Nevertheless, we will measure progress carefully and do not rule out further action if results are not seen."
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 }}

Disgraced Radio 1 DJ Chris Denning has pleaded guilty to 21 historical child sex offences as part of a police investigation into a youth disco.

The prolific paedophile, 75, admitted abusing 11 children, some as young as eight, between 1969 and 1986.

He pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court in London to 21 sexual offences, including indecent assault of men and boys and inciting boys under 16 and 14 to commit acts of gross indecency.

The offences relate to an investigation by Surrey Police, named Operation Ravine, into alleged sexual offences connected to the Walton Hop Disco, a teenage disco which ran from 1958 until 2001.

In court Denning denied three counts of indecent assault, but the charges were ordered to remain on his file.

He will be sentenced on 6 October, but is already in jail serving a 13-year sentence for sexual assaults on 24 different victims carried out between the 1960s and 1980s.

Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay said Denning had a very long record of offences against young boys.

Recommended Read more London Underground sees huge spike in reported sex crimes and violence

He added: Given the very long indictment he has pleaded guilty to, we take the view that these counts would not make a difference to (his) sentence.

Denning was a friend of Jimmy Saviles, and the court heard he had abused one of his victims at Saviles home, using the allure of the record industry and celebrity to attract his young victims, The Sun reports.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters 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

His career ended after he was first convicted of sex offences in 1974.
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 }}

A Catholic monk has been charged with a string of historical sex offences against teenage boys after he returned to Britain from Kosovo following a five-year police hunt.

Father Laurence Soper is accused of assaulting five boys, one under the age of 14 at the time, over a period from 1972 to 1986.

The nine charges include offences of buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault.

The 72-year-old was arrested as he arrived at Luton Airport on Sunday by officers from Scotland Yard's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command.

Soper, who was detained under a European Arrest Warrant in Kosovo in May, will appear at Ealing Magistrates' Court on Monday.

Four of the charges, including buggery, gross indecency and indecent assault, relate to a single alleged victim and date from 17 February 1972 to 18 February 1976.

The boy was under the age of 14 when Soper carried out acts of gross indecency against him, it is alleged.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures 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 UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA

Two charges of indecent assault relate to a second boy younger than 16, alleged to have occurred between 22 August 1979 and 23 August 1984.

Soper faces further charges of indecent assault against another two boys under 16, alleged to have taken place between 4 December 1979 and 23 December 1984, and 10 November 1979 and 11 November 1984.

A fifth boy, also under the age of 16, was assaulted on a day between 14 May 1982 and 15 May 1986, it is alleged.
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 }}

Air passengers could be forced to pay 25 to make a complaint against airlines including British Airways (BA) and easyJet under new procedures being adopted by the aviation industry.

The move comes as the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the airline regulator, cuts back on the services it offers.

The CAA adjudicates disputes between passengers and airlines over delays, cancelations, lost or damaged luggage and compensation requests.

Previously, passengers who complained to airlines and were unhappy with the outcome of their case could pursue the matter with the CAA, who would then mediate with airlines on customers behalf.

But as the service is reduced, airlines are registering with alternative dispute resolution (ADR) schemes.

Some of these services charge customers if their claim is unsuccessful.

One of these firms  the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution  charges 25 for unsuccessful claims and registered users include British Airways, easyJet, Thomas Cook and cruise company TUI.

Recommended Read more Airline ranked worst in the world for fourth year running

Other ADR companies services include the Retail Ombudsman and German firm Sop, neither of whom charge passengers. Meanwhile, a third firm, NetNeutrals, charges passengers 10 if their case is not successful.

The CAA will now only continue to work for those airlines not registered with an ADR scheme, according to The Sunday Times.

The CAA has successfully won 17m in compensation for passengers who have complained about carriers.

Labour MP Rob Flello, who is a member of the Commons Transport Committee, told the Sun the plan to charge customers whose complaints are not upheld was disappointing and outrageous in equal measure.

He said: There are certain airlines I have had cause to complain to in the past that havent even shown the courtesy of an acknowledgement.

Some airlines have no concept of customer service. Anything that puts a further barrier in the way for passengers who have a complaint is unacceptable.

A British Airways spokesperson said: "We always aim to provide our customers with a high quality service. If customers have cause to raise concerns about the service they have received from us we aim to address them quickly and efficiently.

"Should customers be dissatisfied with our response they can contact CEDR who we have selected as a professional and impartial adjudicator of claims."

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

In a statement, easyJet said: easyJet, like other airlines, BA, Thomson and Thomas Cook uses a CAA-approved Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) company, who are also the designated company by the Department of Transport to handle air travel complaints, to offer dispute resolution services as an alternative to a court process.

easyJets current ADR was chosen based on its competence and suitability to provide alternative dispute resolution procedures for us. This is a service easyJet pays a higher fee for than other ADRs charge.
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 }}

An American doctor has written about her admiration for the care on offer in NHS accident and emergency departments - after experiencing their services firsthand.

Dr Jen Gunter, an obstetrician based in the US, had to take her English cousin Helen to A&E at a hospital in Sunderland after she twisted her ankle while walking on cobbles in high heels.

Dr Gunter subsequently praised the speed and quality of care Helen received, writing on her personal blog: "My cousin was triaged immediately. Within two minutes a nurse checked her ankle, gave her codeine, and then sent her off to an urgent care clinic.

 Leading Junior Doctor quits live on air

"To receive this care, all my cousin had to do was provide her name and birth date.

"No co-payments, no pre-authorisations, no concerns about the radiologist or orthopedic surgeon being out of network."

It took four hours in total for Helen's successful treatment including an "unavoidable" hour's wait for the fracture clinic and approximately 30 minutes of travel around the hospital.

She compared the experience of visiting British A&E with American ER where patients are forced to make co-payments to get essential care, such as a CT scan to determine whether a cancer has returned.

Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests  but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty

Addressing British citizens, she wrote: "Dear UK, the NHS is awesome. Try to treat it a little better. Maybe teach kids in school how to use the health care system (hey, why not NHS ed alongside drivers ed or sex ed?).

"Have safe sex. Stop smoking. Try to lose weight if you need to (obesity causes 30% of cancers). Wear lower heels for dancing. And for crying out loud stop stealing wheelchairs.

"The next time anyone mentions privatization or user fees tell them in America there are people trying to save enough money for the co-payment for the CT scan that will tell them if their cancer has returned or not."

In a final note, she said: "To the British government, stop trying to mess it up."

This is not Dr Gunter's first experience with the NHS. In 2014, she took her son Victor, then 11, to A&E after he injured his eye. Writing of her experience then, she said: "Take away the accents and I could easily have been listening to a group of Americans discussing their care. With one exception: no one in the UK is left wondering what the price will be, or gets sent a horrific bill. It makes you wonder exactly what frightens Americans about the NHS."
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 }}

They handed her to me, a young girl, four or five maybe, to hold in my arms.

She was a mess, a lot of abdominal injuries  one casualty among many hit by a suicide bomb in an Afghan market place.

She didnt make a sound, just tucked her arms into my body armour and held on, like a limpet.

I talked to her, made funny noises, did whatever I could to reassure her, although Im sure she didnt understand a word. And when we landed at Camp Bastion, because I had carried her back like this, I went into the trauma room with her.

I dont know how many injured local nationals there were, but walking into that room was like walking into an abattoir.

She wouldnt let go of me. They had to pop my body armour off before they could prise her off.

I walked out of there covered in a young girls blood.

Someone once explained to me that PTSD is like a pint glass slowly being filled.

I had been on TELIC I, the invasion of Iraq. It was war. It was what you expected: Were the good guys, theyre the bad guys, lets go.

But the pint glass gets a little fuller.

I went to Afghanistan, 2006, Helmand  very kinetic, a stand-up fight, firing your weapon, coming under fire. It is addictive, very addictive, exhilarating.

But the pint glass is filling up the whole time.

And in late 2008, on my second Afghan tour, the pint glass was spilling over.

I was attached to a MERT (Medical emergency reaction team), as part of an explosive ordnance disposal unit, in case IED [improvised explosive device] or mine clearance was needed when the helicopter got to the casualty. No such clearance work was ever needed. Instead, I was in the Chinook, doing whatever I could to help the miracle workers, the incredible medical guys: holding hands, pushing fluids into people. Plugging holes.

The most iconic images from the war in Iraq Show all 20 1 /20 The most iconic images from the war in Iraq The most iconic images from the war in Iraq U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman HM1 Richard Barnett, assigned to the 1st Marine Division, holds an Iraqi child in central Iraq, March 29, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An explosion rocks Baghdad during air strikes March 21, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi woman watches U.N. weapons inspectors leave Saddam airport in Baghdad March 18, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi girl holds her sister as she waits for her mother (R) to bring over food bought in Basra March 29, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq U.S. Marine Corp Assaultman Kirk Dalrymple watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad's Firdaus Square, April 9, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq US Marines kick in a door while securing a building next to the main hospital in central Baghdad April 15, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq A soldier of U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division (Task Force Ironhorse) searches through dense vegetation around the Diala river where Iraqi militants are hiding outside Baquba early November 13, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi detainee gestures toward U.S. soldiers through bars of his cell at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad May 17, 2004 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq Mays, a young Iraqi Shi'ite girl, cries after a mortar shell which landed outside the family's home in a Najaf residential area injured her uncle August 18, 2004 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq U.S. Marines carry an injured colleague to a helicopter near the city of Falluja, November 10, 2004 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi man suspected of having explosives in his car is held after being arrested by the U.S army near Baquba, Iraq, October 15, 2005 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq A wounded Iraqi woman is helped after several bomb attacks in central Baghdad, July 27, 2006 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq A man runs down a street warning people to flee shortly after a twin car bomb attack at Shorja market in Baghdad, February 12, 2007 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi girl holds her hands up while U.S. and Iraqi soldiers search her family house in Baquba early June 30, 2007 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi woman tries to explain that she has nothing to do with illegal fuel as soldiers from the 2nd battalion, 32nd Field Artillery brigade patrol search for illegal fuel sellers in Baghdad August 6, 2007 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq U.S. President George W. Bush (L) walks in front of Humvees with Defense Secretary Robert Gates (C) and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice following remarks to the press after nightfall at Al-Asad airbase in Anbar Province September 3, 2007 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq U.S. soldiers blindfold an Iraqi man after arresting him during a night patrol at the Zafraniya neighborhood, southeast of Baghdad September 4, 2007 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi baby lies in a cradle while a woman argues with U.S. soldiers of 1/8 Bravo Company searching for weapons, explosives and information about militants in the area during a foot patrol in a neighbourhood of Mosul June 26, 2008 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq Policemen cry during a funeral of their colleague a day after a bomb attack in Baghdad's Jihad district November 3, 2010 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq Staff Sgt. Keith Fidler kisses his wife Cynthia, as their son Kolin looks on, during a homecoming ceremony in New York, April 8, 2011 for the New York Army National Guard's 442nd Military Police Company's return from Iraq Reuters

I remember a young female American soldier. She was so badly burned that we only knew she was a woman when we noticed she was wearing a bra. Sometimes, youd go out on six or seven jobs in a single day.

Two days before I left for Christmas R&R [rest and recuperation], we had a young Commando with a gunshot wound to the head. Incredibly, when we got to him, he was still alive. We dropped him off at Kandahar, but when we landed at Bastion, we were informed he had died. I walked into my tent covered head to toe in blood, slumped in my chair, and wept.

That had been my staff sergeants first medical evacuation job. He asked if they were all that bad. I told him that was one of the better ones. But it was the one that finished me.

The PTSD started manifesting itself while I was still on my tour. I told no one. I didnt want to be the lunatic in the troop. Weakness in the forces, you dont do it. And as an old-style NCO [non-commissioned officer], a leader, you cant do it. You just try to crack on as best you can. Until you are in complete crisis.

Which is why, five to 10 years from now, theres going to be a tidal wave of guys like me, coming forward saying they are suffering.

And there are more psychological injuries than anything else. Hundreds of guys were made amputees in Afghanistan  a large number  but how many guys are out there with psychological injuries? The psychological injuries are the worst. They say that more Falklands veterans killed themselves than guys who died in combat.

If youve had your leg blown off, you can get a prosthetic leg. If you have got PTSD, what can they do about your head?

 Afghan troops deployed to counter Taliban in Helmand

Back in England, I was all over the place: nightmares, flashbacks, crying like a little girl with a scraped knee.

I made two attempts on my life in 2009. Ive made three suicide attempts altogether. You don't sleep, you feel hopeless, reliving stuff you dont want to think about. You want it to stop. Suicide is something I think about daily.

I was put on sick leave, but in June 2011 I was medically discharged.

Im 36 now. Id gone into the recruiting office when I was 17 and a half, on a lunch break from working as a builders labourer. My dad had done it, my granddad had done it. I thought Id give it a go  even if I really wanted to be an archaeologist.

I loved it. You know what? You get to do a lot of good. In Kosovo I helped build and run a refugee camp for thousands of refugees.

And its the guys around you, the camaraderie, that makes the British Army the best in the world. No matter how bad things are, theyll always crack a joke. And last week, when they found out I was having a wobble  bad flashbacks  the guys from my old unit were phoning me up, from Malawi one of them. The support they have offered me has been amazing.

But the senior officers, Ive known some who can reel off the names of those who got physical injuries, but havent got a clue who the guys with PTSD are.

And the politicians  Yes, every soldier signs on that dotted line wanting to go to war, to fight the bad guys and feel what war is like, whatever they may say to the contrary. But the politicians who order them to fight, theyve no real grasp of the mental strain involved. And how many of their sons and daughters do you see going to war?

 Afghanistan: Tens of thousands flee Helmand's fighting

Its the same with society at large. Theyll see the guy on crutches, the guy in a wheelchair and understand. But then theyll look at you and say Whats wrong with him? He looks fine. If they cant see it, theyre not interested.

Nor is anyone involved with Armed Forces compensation. The visible injuries that they cant argue with, the lost limbs, they will pay for straight away. But the non-visible injuries, they dont want to give you a thing. They will fight and question everything. They will even try everything they can to discharge you before you get your diagnosis of PTSD.

Ive known guys discharged on the grounds of personality defect or burn out. Because they didnt get their diagnosis of PTSD before they were discharged, they got nothing. My initial compensation payment was 3,000  a joke. With that and a medical discharge payment based on my length of service I was left with 30,000.

30,000. After 14 years service, tours of Iraq and Afghanistan and an entire life messed up by PTSD. What was I supposed to do? It wasnt as if I could go into full-time employment in another job in my state. I tried. I lasted three months.

I would phone the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme in tears, explaining my situation, saying Look, Ive tried to kill myself. I was just told: Well pass it on.

They dont care. The fact that you have fought for your country, done three combat tours, that counts for nothing. You have to fight for everything. Which I did. I eventually got the maximum award  more than 160,000. But it took four years, and the involvement of lawyers.

Yes, at least I have my money now. But I would rather have my career and, above all, my health. So why am I telling you all this, why am I reliving everything? Because I want people to know this stuff is happening.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme had awarded more than 600m since 2005 and that service personnel were encouraged to submit claims so they could be properly considered: We are absolutely committed to the mental health of our armed forces and this increase in successful claims shows our campaigns are encouraging those who need help to come forward to get the compensation they deserve.

The young Afghan girl survived.
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The number of serving and ex-forces personnel being awarded compensation for mental disorders has hit record levels, leading to fears that we are now starting to see the true cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the form of the mental scars left on those who had to fight them.

Analysis of Armed Forces Compensation Scheme statistics by The Independent shows that the annual number of mental disorder pay-outs has increased by 379 per cent, from 121 in 2009-2010 to 580 in 2015-16, to reach the highest total in the 11 years the scheme has been running.

The claims are not broken down by type of mental disorder or whether a claimant saw combat, but mental health professionals say the timing of the increase mirrors the expected time lag before Afghanistan and Iraq veterans start to experience symptoms and seek help.

They admitted to being worried that the numbers are likely to increase further and we are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of those traumatised by their experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Veterans have also told The Independent that unlike those with visible injuries, the men and women left with the hidden wounds of mental trauma are being left to struggle against an Armed Forces Compensation Scheme determined to give them as little as possible.

Dean Upson, 36, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), said: They dont care. The fact that you have fought for your country, done three combat tours, that counts for nothing.

The former Royal Engineers corporal added: The visible injuries that they cant argue with  the lost limbs  they will pay straight away.

But the non-visible injuries, they dont want to give you a thing.

He also predicted that given that many soldiers tried to crack on, seeking help only when they were at breaking point, he expected a tidal wave of traumatised veterans to come forward in the coming decade.

Dr Walter Busuttil, director of medical services at the charity Combat Stress, said that given that mental symptoms can take years to surface and many veterans only start experiencing them after leaving the forces, it was highly likely the increase in compensation claims was driven by Afghanistan and Iraq veterans.

Describing the numbers seen so far, he said: Its the tip of the iceberg. We just dont know how big the iceberg is. If its a small iceberg, we are going to be really, really busy. If it is a big iceberg, we are going to be overwhelmed.

He added: This is not going to go away for some years. The indications are people will keep coming forward.

I am not predicting for how long and how many. I am not saying its out of control, but it has increased every year, so I am worried.

We need funds, we need help, from any direction.

The most iconic images from the war in Iraq Show all 20 1 /20 The most iconic images from the war in Iraq The most iconic images from the war in Iraq U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman HM1 Richard Barnett, assigned to the 1st Marine Division, holds an Iraqi child in central Iraq, March 29, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An explosion rocks Baghdad during air strikes March 21, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi woman watches U.N. weapons inspectors leave Saddam airport in Baghdad March 18, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi girl holds her sister as she waits for her mother (R) to bring over food bought in Basra March 29, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq U.S. Marine Corp Assaultman Kirk Dalrymple watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad's Firdaus Square, April 9, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq US Marines kick in a door while securing a building next to the main hospital in central Baghdad April 15, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq A soldier of U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division (Task Force Ironhorse) searches through dense vegetation around the Diala river where Iraqi militants are hiding outside Baquba early November 13, 2003 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi detainee gestures toward U.S. soldiers through bars of his cell at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad May 17, 2004 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq Mays, a young Iraqi Shi'ite girl, cries after a mortar shell which landed outside the family's home in a Najaf residential area injured her uncle August 18, 2004 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq U.S. Marines carry an injured colleague to a helicopter near the city of Falluja, November 10, 2004 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi man suspected of having explosives in his car is held after being arrested by the U.S army near Baquba, Iraq, October 15, 2005 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq A wounded Iraqi woman is helped after several bomb attacks in central Baghdad, July 27, 2006 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq A man runs down a street warning people to flee shortly after a twin car bomb attack at Shorja market in Baghdad, February 12, 2007 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi girl holds her hands up while U.S. and Iraqi soldiers search her family house in Baquba early June 30, 2007 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi woman tries to explain that she has nothing to do with illegal fuel as soldiers from the 2nd battalion, 32nd Field Artillery brigade patrol search for illegal fuel sellers in Baghdad August 6, 2007 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq U.S. President George W. Bush (L) walks in front of Humvees with Defense Secretary Robert Gates (C) and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice following remarks to the press after nightfall at Al-Asad airbase in Anbar Province September 3, 2007 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq U.S. soldiers blindfold an Iraqi man after arresting him during a night patrol at the Zafraniya neighborhood, southeast of Baghdad September 4, 2007 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq An Iraqi baby lies in a cradle while a woman argues with U.S. soldiers of 1/8 Bravo Company searching for weapons, explosives and information about militants in the area during a foot patrol in a neighbourhood of Mosul June 26, 2008 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq Policemen cry during a funeral of their colleague a day after a bomb attack in Baghdad's Jihad district November 3, 2010 Reuters The most iconic images from the war in Iraq Staff Sgt. Keith Fidler kisses his wife Cynthia, as their son Kolin looks on, during a homecoming ceremony in New York, April 8, 2011 for the New York Army National Guard's 442nd Military Police Company's return from Iraq Reuters

Dr Busuttil, a consultant psychiatrist who served for 16 years in the RAF, said that both the armed forces and NHS were working increasingly hard to help minimise the trauma experienced by veterans, and treatments were proving ever more effective, especially for those seeking help early.

He added, however: The services are good but there arent enough of them. There is a lack of expertise all round. Many doctors have never served in the military. There is a lack of understanding of military culture.

Training is really important. The NHS needs to ring fence funds for veterans mental health.

The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme, administered by Veterans UK on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, replaced the previous War Pensions administration in 2005. Since then there have been 2,400 successful claims for mental disorders, but 1,466  well over half  of these were awarded in just the three years between April 2013 and April 2016.

In a further possible indication that the true scale of the mental trauma caused by Afghanistan and Iraq is only starting to emerge, the number of claims rose by 35 per cent in the last year, from 429 to 580.

Dr Busuttil added that the numbers awarded compensation represent only a small subsection of those traumatised. He said that despite his charity usually helping the most severely traumatised veterans, only 4 per cent of ex-forces personnel seen by Combat Stress had ever applied for compensation.

Either they dont know compensation is available, or they are too ashamed to apply. Stigma is a big thing in the military.

Combat Stresss own figures show a 26 per cent increase in the number of veterans seeking the charitys help for mental health problems between 2014 and 2015, followed by a further six per cent increase to 2,472 referrals in the financial year 2015-16.

The Ministry of Defence has consistently argued that the rates of PTSD among forces personnel generally is low. This appears to be confirmed by a 2014 study by the Kings Centre for Military Health at Kings College London, which found that PTSD rates among UK regulars returning from Iraq or Afghanistan ranged between 1.3 per cent and 4.8 per cent  comparable to the 3 per cent rate found in the general civilian population.

Those figures, however, included the many forces personnel who were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan but did not directly experience combat or were in non-combat roles.

Among the minority who directly experienced fighting, the study found, PTSD rates were much higher, at about 7 per cent.

Dr Busuttil added: Its not just PTSD. The biggest problem from Iraq and Afghanistan is a very high rate of alcohol misuse, and then there are common mental illnesses  a bit of depression, a bit of anxiety, a bit of panic.

 Afghanistan: Tens of thousands flee Helmand's fighting

The Independent, which began investigating after being contacted by a veteran who wished to remain anonymous, has also been told that many ex-forces personnel have to struggle to get adequate compensation for their hidden, mental injuries.

Mr Upson, who fought during the invasion of Iraq and did two tours of Afghanistan, said on leaving the Army in June 2011 he was initially awarded just 3,000 for complex PTSD that was so severe it has left him suicidal and unable to do a full-time job.

He said: After 14 years service, tours of Iraq and Afghanistan and an entire life messed up by PTSD it was a joke.

Mr Upson said he eventually received a maximum award of more than 160,000, but it took him four years and the involvement of lawyers to get it.

His experience and that of others seeking compensation for mental illness, he said, was: They will fight and question everything.

They will even try everything they can to discharge you before you get your diagnosis of PTSD.

Ive known guys discharged on the grounds of personality defect or burn out. Because they didnt get their diagnosis of PTSD before they were discharged, they got nothing.

His views were echoed by the solicitor Hilary Meredith, whose law firm specialises in representing forces personnel.

She said: I have seen a turn in the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme. When it first started in 2005, far more awards were going through, on an easier basis.

Then something happened. A lot of the applications were turned down and had to go to appeal.

The people we help usually get a proper award on appeal, but the fact that they have to go to appeal in the first place adds to the distress they are already feeling.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said it has introduced anti-stigma campaigns to make it easier for service personnel to seek help for mental health problems, and had encouraged the submission of claims so they could be properly considered.

He said: We are absolutely committed to the mental health of our armed forces and this increase in successful claims shows our campaigns are encouraging those who need help to come forward to get the compensation they deserve.

The spokesman added that the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme had awarded more than 600m in compensation since 2005.

The Department of Health said 7.5m was invested in specific veterans mental health services over the course of the last Parliament, and NHS England intends to invest an additional 8.4m over the next five years.

An NHS England spokesperson said: On leaving the armed forces, most people successfully transition back into civilian life. But some individuals can experience very traumatic situations, which can take a severe toll.

While mental health awareness is improving, we can do more to identify issues, not just with PTSD but with wider problems linked to anxiety and depression. We have listened to feedback from veterans, their families and NHS specialists and will be announcing plans to improve mental health care for armed forces veterans shortly.
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 }}

A teenage girl and a 20-year-old woman have been arrested for allegedly trying to travel to Syria to join Isis.

In a statement, Scotland Yard said: Officers from the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command arrested a 20-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts, namely travelling to Syria to join a proscribed organisation.

They were arrested in central London at approximately 2100hrs on Sunday, 21 August. Both were taken into custody.

Official figures show that a record number of females have been arrested in 2015/16 as part of a counter-terrorism crackdown. There have been a total of 36 arrests in the 12 months to the end of March.

There has also been an increase in the number of under-18s detained, rising from eight to 14 arrests this year.

The arrests come only weeks after the news that Kadiza Sultana, one of three schoolgirls from east London who ran away to join Isis, is thought to have been killed in an air strike.

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 17-year-old was reportedly planning to escape and return to Britain after becoming disillusioned with life in Syria.
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 }}

An eight-year-old British schoolboy was killed by a grenade while he slept alongside his mother and young sibilings on a family visit to Sweden, in what has been described by police as a despicable and abhorrent attack.

Yuusuf Warsame, who was born and raised in Birmingham, had been visiting relatives with his mother, brother and sister.

The explosive was thrown through the window of a third-floor flat in the Biskopsgarden suburb of Gothenburg at around 3am on Monday morning, in what police have described as a possible revenge attack within the city's Somali community.

At least five children and several adults were inside at the time, said police. They said Yuusuf suffered serious injuries and later died in hospital.

The child was visiting relatives in the area when the grenade was thrown through a flat window (Getty)

Yuusuf's parents, both Dutch passport holders, moved to the Sparkhill area of Birmingham in 2001.

His father Abdiwahid Warsame told the Birmingham Mail his son had died in the grenade attack, and that he was awaiting more information from the Swedish authorities.

A spokesperson for the family told the newspaper: "The room that Yuusuf was in when the attack happened was also occupied by our mother, sister and youngest brother. It is a miracle none of them were badly injured."

Police spokesperson Thomas Fuxborg told the Swedish edition of The Local that the incident was being investigated as murder, saying the block of flats housed residents with a number of serious criminal convictions.

It could have ended much worse, he said.

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

Someone was standing outside the apartment and threw a hand grenade through the window, into the living room. The boy was not part of the family registered at the address.

"This is abhorrent. From the outside it is impossible to know who is in the apartment. That it affects an eight-year-old completely innocent boy is despicable, he added.

Fuxborg said one of the men registered to the address Yuusuf was visiting had been involved in a fatal shooting at the address last year.

He said the two incidents could be linked. Well have to see if the motive is linked to that, he said. Our theory is that it may be.
Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate 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

Independent Climate email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Beaches on Dorset's famous Jurassic Coast could be shut if tourists do not start to exercise common sense and listen to safety warnings when visiting the Unesco World Heritage Site.

"Visitors who sunbathe too close to the cliff edge dont really understand the risk or danger, according to Sally King, the areas visitor manager.

Around six million people visit the 95-mile stretch of coast each year, to walk along the steep cliffs or search the beaches for fossils. But landslides are common, said Ms King, adding that the cliffs are particularly proactive at the moment.

The Jurassic Coast Trust has urged people to remember the area looks the way it does because of erosion  meaning it is always on the move.

Rock falls and landslides can, and do, happen anytime without warning.

On Wednesday a large rock fall at West Bay, near Bridport, closed an area of the beach and emergency services were called out of concern people could be trapped beneath the stones.

One of the biggest rock falls happened in 2008, when 400 metres of cliff fell and blocked a beach between Lyme Regis and Charmouth.

In 2012, Charlotte Blackman, 22, was killed when rocks fell on top of her on Hive Beach at Burton Bradstock.

The local coastguard has also had to issue warnings in the past, urging the public to heed safety notices when enjoying the beaches.

But many visitors still remain oblivious to the risks and behave in a reckless way, leading to suggestions of introducing wardens or having police patrol the beaches.

Ms King said this wasnt ideal, and hoped increasing awareness would work instead.

We dont want to police the beach and close it off, we just want people to use their common sense, she told The Telegraph.

It would be hugely damaging if we have to close anywhere, but we have had to do that before. It is not an easy situation but gradually the message should get through.

Closing the beaches would be an immense blow to the local economy. The Jurassic Coast is England's only natural World Heritage Site and brings an estimated 111m per year to the Dorset and East Devon economy, helping to support 2000 jobs, a study found in February.

The top 25 beaches in the UK Show all 25 1 /25 The top 25 beaches in the UK The top 25 beaches in the UK 25. Castle Beach, Tenby The top 25 beaches in the UK 24. Goodrington Sands, Paignton The top 25 beaches in the UK 23. Barmouth Beach, Barmouth The top 25 beaches in the UK 22. Wells Next The Sea Beach, Wells-next-the-Sea The top 25 beaches in the UK 21. Nairn Beach, Nairn The top 25 beaches in the UK 20. Barafundle Beach, Stackpole The top 25 beaches in the UK 19. Crantock Beach, Crantock Thomas Tolkien The top 25 beaches in the UK 18. Porth Beach, Newquay The top 25 beaches in the UK 17. Gorleston Beach, Gorleston-on-Sea The top 25 beaches in the UK 16. Porthgwidden Beach, St Ives The top 25 beaches in the UK 15. Scarborough Beach, Scarborough The top 25 beaches in the UK 14. Whitby Beach, Whitby The top 25 beaches in the UK 13. Sandbanks, Poole The top 25 beaches in the UK 12. Filey Beach, Filey The top 25 beaches in the UK 11. Bournemouth Beach, Bournemouth The top 25 beaches in the UK 10. Luskentyre, Isle of Harris The top 25 beaches in the UK 9. Hengistbury Head, Bournemouth, Dorset The top 25 beaches in the UK 8. Perranporth Beach, Perranporth, Cornwall The top 25 beaches in the UK 7. Porthminster Beach, St Ives, Cornwall The top 25 beaches in the UK 6. Fistral Beach, Newquay, Cornwall The top 25 beaches in the UK 5. Porthmeor Beach, St Ives, Cornwall The top 25 beaches in the UK 4. Rhossili Bay, Rhossili, Swansea The top 25 beaches in the UK 3. St Brelade's Bay Beach, St Brelade, Jersey The top 25 beaches in the UK 2. Weymouth Beach, Weymouth, Dorset The top 25 beaches in the UK 1. Woolacombe Beach, Woolacombe, Devon

But when people just want to sunbathe, Ms King suggested they go elsewhere, to different beache or stretches of coast which are not at risk from rock falls.

There are loads of lovely beaches that arent dangerous and people can enjoy them with no problem at all, she said.

We want people to come here and enjoy it but there are obviously particular hazards, including rapidly eroding cliffs.
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 }}

There is little prospect of Britain leaving the EU before 2020, according to the former head of the Civil service.

Speaking at a Scottish Parliament event, Lord Bob Kerslake said that leaving the EU would be a lot more complex and take a lot more time than people think it will."

Lord Kersalke, who held the position for two years from 2012 to 2014, described Brexit as an "enormous challenge."

I dont believe we will have completed the process by 2019. I think there will still be big issues being resolved", Lord Kerslake said, according to the Daily Mail.

I think its at least five years away, maybe longer. All this talk of it being a two-year process is optimistic."

Britains exit is governed by Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and when invoked this will set out a two-year process to leave the EU.

Brexit reactions  in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Brexit reactions  in pictures Brexit reactions  in pictures Supporters of the Stronger In campaign look at their phones after hearing results in the EU referendum at London's Royal Festival Hall AP Brexit reactions  in pictures Leave supporters cheer results at a Leave.eu party after polling stations closed in the Referendum on the European Union in London Reuters Brexit reactions  in pictures Mr Cameron announces his resignation to supporters Getty Brexit reactions  in pictures Donald Tusk proposes that the 27 remaining EU member states start a wider reflection on the future of our union Getty Brexit reactions  in pictures Ukip leader Nigel Farage greets his supporters on College Green in Westminster, after Britain voted to leave the European Union PA Brexit reactions  in pictures Supporters of the Stronger In Campaign react as referendum results are announced today Getty Brexit reactions  in pictures Boris Johnson leaves his home today to discover a crowd of waiting journalists and police officers Getty Brexit reactions  in pictures Leave EU supporters celebrate as they watch the British EU Referendum results being televised at Millbank Tower in London Rex Brexit reactions  in pictures Supporters of the Stronger In Campaign react as results of the EU referendum are announced at the Royal Festival Hall Reuters Brexit reactions  in pictures Supporters of the Stronger In campaign react after hearing results in the EU referendum at London's Royal Festival Hall PA

The news comes as Iain Duncan Smith has called for talks about Britain leaving the EU to take place as soon as possible.

Writing in a column for The Sun the prominent Leave campaigner said: It is clear that the referendum was NOT a suggestion We need to get on with triggering Article 50, as the Government has said, in early 2017.

The leaders of Germany, France and Italy met to discuss the future of the EU and the implications of Britain triggering Article 50.

It is the second time the three largest eurozone countries have held talks since Britain voted to leave the EU in June.

The meeting comes ahead of an informal European Union summit to which the UK has not been invited.
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 }}

Downing Street has asserted its right to set tax rates after an EU leader warned Britain against aggressiveness in slashing business levies during Brexit talks.

A Number 10 spokeswoman said it is up to each member state how they set their taxes, following the comments made by Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Loefven.

The exchange highlights a potential conflict point in EU negotiations, with Britain seeking to boost growth through lower corporate levies while also trying not to aggravate EU states concerned about a tax war.

Chancellor Philip Hammond has already said he is ready to bolster the British economy with corporate tax cuts and other measures if need be.

But while Swedens previous centre-right government lowered corporate tax rates in successive moves to 22%, as the UK moved its down to the current 20%, Mr Loefvens government is embarking on an investment programme.

The Downing Street spokeswoman said: Its a matter for member states to set tax policy.

Since 2010 the Government has been taking forward measures to reduce corporation tax while in the European Union.

Mr Loefven made his comments to Bloomberg after being asked how Brexit negotiations would proceed.

As he prepares to travel to Germany to meet Angela Merkel on Friday, he said the UKs exit from the 28-nation bloc shouldnt take longer than necessary.

But he went on: If the UK wants some time to think about the situation, this will also give EU countries some time.

On the other hand, you hear about plans in the UK to, for example, lower corporate taxes considerably. If they, during this time, begin that kind of race, that will of course make discussions more difficult.

Mr Loefven added: Aggressiveness from Britain in [tax] issues, that doesnt improve the relationship.

Theresa May has said Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which would launch official Brexit negotiations, will not be triggered before the end of the year.
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A Conservative MP has sparked a backlash online after sharing an image suggesting the Olympics were won not by the USA, but by the British Empire.

Heather Wheeler, who was appointed to Theresa Mays team of government whips last month, wrote on Twitter celebrating the success of Team GB and all our Commonwealth friends.

Linking the result of the Olympics to the prospect for Brexit, the Eurosceptic MP said: Now that's what I call winning!!! Well done Team GB & all our Commonwealth friends, now for the Trade Agreements

That comment alone may have gone unnoticed - but the graphic accompanying it has been met with an angry response.

It showed a world map with former British colonies highlighted. Superimposed on that was an alternative Rio medals table with British Empire on 396, EU (Post Brexit) on 258 and Rest of World on 320. The image was entitled Empire goes for gold.

The tweet comes after the EU was itself mocked for sharing a modified medals table showing its combined member states in the top position.

And it has been shared hundreds of times in a matter of hours, with some trying to see the funny side.

Recommended Read more Our deluded government believes Olympic success is a Brexit blueprint

Political commentator Marina Hyde compared the tweet to the historical gaffes of Boris Johnson, saying Ms Wheeler had announce[d] herself as Foreign Secretary-in-waiting in adorable style.

But others were not so forgiving. Ben Grabham wrote: Given that Empire day became Commonwealth Day in 1958 your use of Empire in this context is erroneous. And offensive.

Chris Tacy said: You have no empire anymore. And soon you wont even have Great Britain. Well done.

Aakash Jayaprakash wrote: This is very offensive to invoke this alleged empire. Maybe look at all the facets including the killing and theft of millions.

And Jan Smith said: What an offensive, insensitive & ignorant comment. There's no empire; when there was we behaved appallingly. Shame on you!

Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Show all 74 1 /74 Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Eight Andy Murray celebrates his victory over Kai Nishikori to reach the men's Olympic final. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Eight Jessica Ennis-Hill continues her bid for gold in heptathlon. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Eight Usain Bolt breezed through his 100m heat. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Eight Team GB took silver in the women's eight. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Eight The men's eight gold took Great Britain top of the rowing medal table. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Seven Britain's Jazz Carlin secured her second silver of the Games in the women's 800m freestyle, as American Katie Ledecky surged to her fourth Rio gold. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Seven Singapore's Joseph Schooling won his nation's first gold medal with victory in the 100m butterfly as Michael Phelps was denied a 23rd Olympic title. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Seven Sir Bradley Wiggins becomes Britain's greatest Olympian ever as Team GB win gold in the men's Team Pursuit at the Velodrome. AFP Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Seven Bryony Page on her way to a silver in gymnastics trampoline. EPA Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Seven Heather Stanning and Helen Glover win gold in the women's rowing pairs. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Seven Alex Gregory, Mohamed Sbihi, George Nash and Constantine Louloudis celebrate their success in the mens coxless four. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Seven Defending champions Great Britain won silver in the Olympic team dressage, as world champions Germany claimed gold. The British quartet - Spencer Wilton, Fiona Bigwood, Carl Hester and Charlotte Dujardin - were beaten into second by 3.334 points. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Six American Simone Manuel became the first black female swimmer to win an Olympic title as she shared the women's 100m freestyle gold with Canada's Penny Oleksiak, 16, after a dead heat. Getty Images Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Six Swimming legend Michael Phelps demolished the field in the 200m individual medley to claim his 22nd Olympic gold. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Six Simone Biles takes gold in the Womens individual all-around artistic gymnastics. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Six Fiji's Vatemo Ravouvou breaks through to score during the Men's Rugby Sevens Gold medal final match against Great Britain. Team GB settled for silver as Fiji romped to gold. David Rogers/Getty Images Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Six Callum Skinner, Jason Kenny and Philip Hindes of Great Britain celebrate after winning gold in the men's team sprint. AFP Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Six Double act David Florence and Richard Hounslow won their second joint Olympic silver in the canoeing slalom. Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Six Victoria Thornley and Katherine Grainger show off their silver medals after the women's double sculls final Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Five Max Whitlock poses with his bronze medal Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Five Joe Clarke reacts to winning Britain's second gold of thee Games Reuters Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Five Jack Laugher and Chris Mears celebrate with their gold medals Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Four David Florence suffered heartbreak in the canoe single C1 men's semi-final Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Four Andy Murray celebrates his straight sets victory against Juan Monaco Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Lilly King shows off her gold medal as Yulia Efimova parades her silver AFP Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Russia's Yulia Efimova (left) looks on as the US's Lilly King (right) celebrates winning the Women's 100m Breaststroke Final earlier this morning Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Lilly King celebrates after beating her Russian rival Yulia Efimova Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Michael Phelps takes on Chad Le Clos in the men's 200m butterfly final Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Michael Phelps says it 'breaks my heart' to see drug cheats at the Olympics Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three James Guy missed out on bronze on Monday night Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Louis Smith reacts to his pommel stumble which may have cost Team GB a medal Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Dan Goodfellow (right) and Tom Daley celebrate with their bronze medals Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Tom Daley and Dan Goodfellow dive into the pool in delight after winning bronze Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Tom Daley (left) and Daniel Goodfellow performing in the men's synchronised 10m platform final PA Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Canada celebrate their victory against Team GB on day three Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Three Heather Watson leaves the court yesterday after losing her second round match against Elina Svitolina of Ukraine Reuters Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Carlin proudly shows off her silver medal Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Carlin reacts after learning that she has won the silver medal Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Peaty shows off his gold medal with pride Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Adam Peaty celebrates his gold Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Andy Murray and Jamie Murray were knocked out of the men's doubles by Thomaz Bellucci and Andre Sa AFP Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Venus and Serena Williams suffered their first ever Olympic defeat playing together Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Richard Kruse battling the Russian Timur Safin GETTY Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Lizzie Armitstead finished fifth in the women's road race PA Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Anna van der Breggen celebrates winning gold in the women's road race Reuters Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Annemiek van Vleuten suffered a horrific accident in the women's road race Reuters Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two The women's road race passes along the beach in Rio de Janeiro Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Andy Murray beat Viktor Troicki 6-3, 6-2 to win his men's singles first round match Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Serena Williams is through to the second round of the women's singles after defeating Daria Gavrilova Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Gold medal winner, Hoang Xuan Vinh of Vietnam, center, silver medal winner, Felipe Almeida Wu of Brazil, left, and bronze medalist Pang Wei of China, at the victory ceremony for the men's 10-meter air pistol event AP Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day Two Rowing was cancelled on day two over fears of sinking and capsizing due to strong winds Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Yusra Mardini has won her heat of the Women's 100m Butterfly but she will not be able to go forward to the semi-final Getty Images Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Britain's James Guy chops through the water Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Kantinka Hosszu of Hungary set a new world record in winning gold in the Women's 100m Individual Medley final Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Samir Ait Said receiving medical help after suffering a badly broken leg Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Yusra Mardini leads the race in the 100m Butterfly heat at Olympic Aquatics Stadium in Rio EPA Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Natasha Hunt scored two tries to inspire Britain to victory against Brazil Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Joanne Watmore scored Britain's first try in Olympic rugby sevens history Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Adam Peaty celebrates after breaking the 100m breaststroke world record Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Adam Peaty broke his own world record in the 100m breaststroke heats and is favourite to win gold on Sunday Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Adam Peaty broke his own world record in the 100m breaststroke heats Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Chris Froome speaks with a bruised Geraint Thomas after the men's road race PA Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Greg van Avermaet celebrates winning gold in the men's road race Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Rafal Majka was caught with just two kilometres to go Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Greg van Avermaet won a sprint finish to clinch Olympic road race gold EPA Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One A bullet is marked by Brazilian police in the equestrian media centre Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One The peloton make their way along the beach during the road race Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Chris Froome leads away the men's road race along with the rest of Team GB Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One The field make their way along the opening stages of the road race Eric Gaillard/Reuters Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Mahe Drysdale of New Zealand had no trouble in qualifying for the men's single skulls quarter-finals Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Day One Rowers warm up under the watchful gaze of the Christ the Redeemer statue Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Opening Ceremony A huge fireworks display signals the end of the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremony. Felipe Dana/AP Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Opening Ceremony Andy Murray leads out Team GB at the Rio Olympics opening ceremony Getty Rio 2016 Olympics - in pictures Opening Ceremony Gisele Bundchen turns the stage into a catwalk during the opening ceremony AP

Ms Wheeler, the MP for South Derbyshire, initially backed Brexit campaigner Andrea Leadsom to be the new Prime Minister after David Cameron.

But when Ms Leadsom dropped out, Ms Wheeler said she and the whole of the party would row behind Ms May.

After she was brought into the Government on 17 July, she tweeted: Absolutely delighted to be made a Whip & part of the new Government Team delivering for all of the UK.
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 }}

Angela Merkel has met with French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, in the first of a series of discussions between European heads of state aimed at protecting the European Union from the aftershock of Brexit.

The three leaders met at mini-summit on an aircraft carrier off the Italian island of Ventotene, and agreed there must be greater cooperation on defence and intelligence sharing in the fight against Islamist terrorism.

"In the face of Islamist terror and the civil war in Syria, we have to do more for both our internal and external security, said Ms Merkel, while calling for national intelligence services in EU member states to share information with each other more closely.

In the coming days, Europes de facto leader will meet eight more European Presidents and Prime Ministers, as part of a concerted effort to stabilise the bloc.

During the UKs referendum campaign, the Leave camp repeatedly argued that secret intelligence sharing was not done within the EU but via bilateral agreements between countries. The UKs intelligence is highly sought after, due to its close links with US intelligence agencies.

Chancellor Merkel is fighting an election campaign next year and she knows there is little will in Germany for further economic integration within the EU, as was proposed by several European finance ministers after the UKs Brexit vote in June.

The three leaders agreed that more must be done to prevent refugees risking their lives at sea to reach EU nations.

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

Mr Renzi said 102,000 migrants had reached Italian shores so far in 2016, compared to 105,000 at this point last year, and said help must still be available to those who really need it.

French President Francois Hollande said "Europe must protect itself but also welcome those who are pushed into exile often putting their lives at risk."

Britain will formally remain a part of the European Union for at least another two years, but will need to get used to life on the sidelines. Ms Merkel announced an informal meeting of Europes 27 remaining member nations was planned to take place in Bratislava next month. A spokesperson for the German Chancellor said it would be aimed at starting a mutual process of reflection and becoming clear about which Europe we want.

Europe is on the witness stand, Ms Merkel said. We respect the Britons decision to leave, but at the same time the remaining 27 of us want to show that we are focused on creating a prosperous Europe.
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 frontbencher has suggested that Jeremy Corbyn might be hauled before an employment tribunal for racial discrimination if he worked outside politics.

Chi Onwurah, shadow minister for culture and the digital economy, accused the Labour leader of picking on her and another black woman MP, which she said was statistically interesting, to say the least.

She said Mr Corbyn had dealt with her and Thangam Debbonaire incompetently by splitting a job between them and then failing to properly communicate the changes.

Recommended Read more Backlash against Khan after he calls on party to ditch Corbyn

If this had been any of my previous employers in the public and private sectors, Jeremy might well have found himself before an industrial tribunal for constructive dismissal, probably with racial discrimination thrown in  given that only 5 per cent of MPs are black and female, picking on us two is statistically interesting to say the least, she wrote in the New Statesman.

Indeed, as Thangam was undergoing treatment for cancer at the time, he could have faced disability action as well. In any other job I would have called on my union for support in confronting an all-white management that prevented two of its few black employees from doing their jobs.

Ms Onwurah remains in Mr Corbyns frontbench team but is backing Owen Smith for leader of the party.

A spokesperson for Mr Corbyn told The Independent: "Chi Onwurah's comments relate to a discussion about the delineation of Shadow Cabinet roles last January, as is not uncommon in both shadow cabinets and cabinets.

"Chi was appointed by Jeremy Corbyn to be shadow minister for culture and the digital economy last September. When Thangam Debbonaire was appointed as a dedicated shadow minister for the arts in January, there was a negotiation about the division of responsibilities with Chi and Thangam, but at no point was anyone sacked.

Chi Onwurah remains on the Labour front bench (Getty)

"We regret that Chi feels she was singled out, but this was clearly not the case."

The latest attack against Mr Corbyn comes as he lays out plans to increase democracy across society. The Labour leader said he would devolve more power to regions and local councils, introduce participatory budgeting, put workers on company boards, and democratise the party.

I am determined to democratise our country from the ground up, and give people a real say in their communities and workplaces, he said.

We need to break open the closed circle of Westminster and Whitehall, and of the boardrooms too.

Decisions in Britain are overwhelmingly taken from the top down. And thats crucial to why our country is run in the interests of a privileged few.

The announcement followed a further rift between Mr Corbyns supporters and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan  after Mr Khans name was booed at a rally in support of Mr Corbyn on Sunday night.

Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Show all 8 1 /8 Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith clash at a leadership hustings in Gateshead, where Mr Smith was scarcely able to answer a question without being booed by Mr Corbyns supporters PA Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy himself admitted he was seven out of 10 in terms of his faith in the European Union. He said it, said Mr Smith during his second live debate with Jeremy Corbyn Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Ballot papers are currently due to be sent out on 22 August and returned a month later, with the result being announced at a special Labour conference on 24 September Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy Corbyn supporters cheer and wave placards as the Labour Leader addresses thousands of supporters in in Liverpool, England Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour Party leadership candidate Owen Smith poses for a picture with supporters during a picnic for young members in London Fields, Hackney in London Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith The Labour leader has a spring in his step at a leadership rally in Sunderland Screenshot Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour leadership contender Owen Smith delivers a speech at the Open University in Milton Keynes, where he promised to reverse Conservative cuts set to leave millions of low paid workers thousands of pounds a year worse off PA Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has urged Owen Smith to distance himself from those saying they want to split the Labour party Getty

Meanwhile the leaders rival Mr Smith sought to reassure left-wing Labour voters that the he would not tack to the political centre if he won the contest with new pledges on policymaking.

I would bind myself to the decisions made by the party on party policy. I would not seek to overturn it, he said in a speech in his home constituency of Pontypridd.

Crucially I would give conference a new role and responsibility in our party to sign off on our manifesto.

I believe it is necessary to reassure people across the party that there would be no backsliding on my watch and that the radical and credible policies I laid out in this leadership contest will be laid out in a manifesto, guaranteed.

He also announced measures to strengthen the partys policy forum, suggesting that affiliated organisations should be more closely involved in the process.

Left-wingers may still be wary of Mr Smith tacking to the right, however. He has made few pledges on immigration and welfare during the course of the contest  two areas Labour centrists believe the party needs to move rightwards on to win over swing voters.

New right-wing policies on these issues are still therefore consistent with Mr Smith following through on pledges made in the campaign.

Earlier in the campaign Mr Corbyns team accused Mr Smith of copying his policies on a number of issues.

Ballot papers in the leadership contest went out to Labour members at the start of this week, with 640,000 eligible to vote, according to the party.
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 }}

Owen Smith has sought to reassure Labour members that he would not backslide on left-wing policy commitments made during the leadership contest.

In a speech in his home constituency of Pontypridd on Monday morning the leadership challenger unveiled a series of reforms to strengthen members role in party policymaking.

He also attacked his rival Jeremy Corbyn for campaigning against Trident nuclear weapons when it remained party policy to renew the system.

Recommended Read more Backlash against Khan after he calls on party to ditch Corbyn

The announcements appear to be a move by the Smith campaign to quell worries amongst Labour members that the candidate would tack to the political centre if he won the contest.

I would bind myself to the decisions made by the party on party policy. I would not seek to overturn it, he said.

Crucially I would give conference a new role and responsibility in our party to sign off on our manifesto.

I believe it is necessary to reassure people across the party that there would be no backsliding on my watch and that the radical and credible policies I laid out in this leadership contest will be laid out in a manifesto, guaranteed.

He also announced measures to strengthen the partys policy forum, suggesting that affiliated organisations should be more closely involved in the process.

Policies announced by the challenger candidate during the course of the contest have had a definite socialist flavour, in an attempt to win over those who voted for Mr Corbyn last time.

Left-wingers may still be wary of Mr Smith tacking to the centre, however. He has made few pledges on immigration and welfare during the course of the contest  two areas Labour centrists believe the party needs to move rightwards on to win over swing voters.

Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Show all 8 1 /8 Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith clash at a leadership hustings in Gateshead, where Mr Smith was scarcely able to answer a question without being booed by Mr Corbyns supporters PA Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy himself admitted he was seven out of 10 in terms of his faith in the European Union. He said it, said Mr Smith during his second live debate with Jeremy Corbyn Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Ballot papers are currently due to be sent out on 22 August and returned a month later, with the result being announced at a special Labour conference on 24 September Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy Corbyn supporters cheer and wave placards as the Labour Leader addresses thousands of supporters in in Liverpool, England Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour Party leadership candidate Owen Smith poses for a picture with supporters during a picnic for young members in London Fields, Hackney in London Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith The Labour leader has a spring in his step at a leadership rally in Sunderland Screenshot Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour leadership contender Owen Smith delivers a speech at the Open University in Milton Keynes, where he promised to reverse Conservative cuts set to leave millions of low paid workers thousands of pounds a year worse off PA Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has urged Owen Smith to distance himself from those saying they want to split the Labour party Getty

New right-wing policies on these issues are still therefore consistent with Mr Smith following through on pledges made in the campaign.

Last year Labours annual conference avoided voting on whether to change its policy on Trident after delegates selected another issue for debate.

Mr Corbyn has however continued to campaign for disarmament. This is not an unusual stance; previous Labour leaders have consistently ignored conference motions on policy on issues such a railway renationalisation.

Earlier in the campaign Mr Corbyns team accused Mr Smith of copying his policies on a number of issues.
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 }}

Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn booed and jeered a mention of Labours London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Sunday night, underlining tensions within the party.

The Labour leader held a rally of thousands of supporters on Sunday in north London, as ballot papers for the partys leadership contest were sent out.

But the 4,000 capacity venue Ruach City Church in Kilburn, north London, erupted in angry booing when Mr Khans name was mentioned.

Despite what Sadiq Khan says. We won London under Jeremy Corbyns leadership, NEC member Claudia Webber had told the audience, according to the Huffington Post  causing some supporters to erupt.

The angry reaction stems from criticism of Mr Corbyn by Mr Khan. The Mayor, who nominated Mr Corbyn for leader in 2015, said he backed challenger Owen Smith to lead the party.

In his piece for the Observer, Mr Khan said his leader did not have the qualities needed to take the party to success.

By every available measure, if Jeremy remains as leader, Labour is extremely unlikely to win the next general election, he said.

The hopes of the members who have joined our party would be dashed again. Jeremy has already proved that he is unable to organise an effective team, and has failed to win the trust and respect of the British people.

(Getty Images (Getty Images)

Jeremy's personal ratings are the worst of any opposition leader on record - and the Labour party is suffering badly as a result. He has lost the confidence of more than 80% of Labour's MPs in Parliament - and I am afraid we simply cannot afford to go on like this.

Mr Corbyn told the rally: I am so proud that our party is now the biggest in Europe with over half a million members. Unlocking the potential of every single member, taking our message of hope into every community across the country, is at the heart of my plan to win the next general election so we can rebuild and transform Britain so no one and no community is left behind.

I hope members and supporters cast their vote for us in this leadership election but after that, commit themselves to become active in our party, if they're not already. This election is not about one individual, but about all of us, and what we can achieve together.

More than 640,000 members and supporters will be eligible to vote in the Labour leadership contest between Mr Corbyn and Mr Smith, the party has said.

Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Show all 8 1 /8 Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith clash at a leadership hustings in Gateshead, where Mr Smith was scarcely able to answer a question without being booed by Mr Corbyns supporters PA Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy himself admitted he was seven out of 10 in terms of his faith in the European Union. He said it, said Mr Smith during his second live debate with Jeremy Corbyn Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Ballot papers are currently due to be sent out on 22 August and returned a month later, with the result being announced at a special Labour conference on 24 September Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy Corbyn supporters cheer and wave placards as the Labour Leader addresses thousands of supporters in in Liverpool, England Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour Party leadership candidate Owen Smith poses for a picture with supporters during a picnic for young members in London Fields, Hackney in London Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith The Labour leader has a spring in his step at a leadership rally in Sunderland Screenshot Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour leadership contender Owen Smith delivers a speech at the Open University in Milton Keynes, where he promised to reverse Conservative cuts set to leave millions of low paid workers thousands of pounds a year worse off PA Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has urged Owen Smith to distance himself from those saying they want to split the Labour party Getty

As the first ballot papers were being sent out the party estimated there were 343,500 fully paid up members entitled to a vote in the election.

Their numbers will be supplemented by 129,000 registered supporters who made a one-off payment of 25 last month so they would be able to vote.

A further 168,000 affiliated supporters who are members of affiliated organisations such as trade unions also have a vote - although that number is expected to rise as the unions are still processing some 20,000 applications.

More than 50,000 applications to become registered supporters were rejected for "technical reasons" - such as duplicate applications, where people hit the refresh button on the online form multiple times, or failure to make the payment deadline.

Party members will receive their ballots by post as well as an email with an online ballot code, giving them a choice as to how they vote, but supporters will receive only an online ballot.

Online voting codes will be sent out during the course of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday although Labour said the numbers involved meant that it would be "a number days" before all the ballot papers had been dispatched.
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 }}

Conservative plans to replace the Human Rights Act with a so-called British Bill of Rights will go ahead, the Justice Secretary has said.

Liz Truss dismissed reports that that the Government was abandoning the policy, which was included in the Tories 2015 manifesto, to avoid a fight with the Scottish Government

We are committed to that. That is a manifesto commitment, she told BBC Radio 4s Today programme on Monday morning.

Im looking very closely at the details but we have a manifesto commitment to deliver that.

The Times newspaper reported earlier this month that the draft bill for the act had been junked.

I think the priority for the justice department will be prison reform and she wont want another fight with the Scottish government [which is opposed to the policy, and already fighting Brexit], a source told the newspaper.

I just dont think the will is there to drive it through.

 Remembering when Liz Truss gave one of the weirdest speeches ever

The report was a surprise because Theresa May has previously expressed strong support for controversial constitutional change.

This is Great Britain, the country of Magna Carta, parliamentary democracy and the fairest courts in the world, she said in a speech in April this year.

Human rights attacks around the world Show all 10 1 /10 Human rights attacks around the world Human rights attacks around the world China Escalating crackdown against human rights activists including mass arrests of lawyers and a series of sweeping laws in the name of national security. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Egypt The arrest of thousands, including peaceful critics, in a ruthless crackdown in the name of national security, the prolonged detention of hundreds without charge or trial and the sentencing of hundreds of others to death. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Gambia Torture, enforced disappearances and the criminalisation of LGBTI people; and utter refusal to co-operate with the UN and regional human rights mechanisms on issues including freedom of expression, enforced disappearance and the death penalty. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Hungary Sealing off its borders to thousands of refugees in dire need; and obstructing collective regional attempts to help them. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Israel Maintaining its military blockade of Gaza and therefore collective punishment of the 1.8 million inhabitants there, as well as failing, like Palestine, to comply with a UN call to conduct credible investigations into war crimes committed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Kenya Extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and discrimination against refugees in its counter-terrorism operations; and attempts to undermine the International Criminal Court and its ability to pursue justice. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Pakistan The severe human rights failings of its response to the horrific Peshawar school massacre including its relentless use of the death penalty; and its policy on international NGOs giving authorities the power to monitor them and close them down if they are considered to be against the interests of the country. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Russia Repressive use of vague national security and anti-extremism legislation and its concerted attempts to silence civil society in the country; its shameful refusal to acknowledge civilian killings in Syria and its callous moves to block Security Council action on Syria. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Saudi Arabia Brutally cracking down on those who dared to advocate reform or criticise the authorities; and committing war crimes in the bombing campaign it has led in Yemen (pictured) while obstructing the establishment of a UN-led inquiry into violations by all sides in the conflict. Getty Images Human rights attacks around the world Syria Killing thousands of civilians in direct and indiscriminate attacks with barrel bombs and other weaponry and through acts of torture in detention; and enforcing lengthy sieges of civilian areas, blocking international aid from reaching starving civilians. Getty Images

And we can protect human rights ourselves in a way that doesnt jeopardise national security or bind the hands of parliament.

A true British bill of rights, decided by parliament and amended by parliament, would protect not only the rights set out in the convention, but could include traditional British rights not protected by the ECHR such as the right to trial by jury.

She had also however conceded that there would be no parliamentary majority for pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights, of which the Human Rights Act is the current British implementation.
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 }}

Jeremy Corbyns campaign has warned Labours Scottish leader that she is going against the will of members north of the border by backing rival Owen Smith.

Mr Corbyns team pointed out that Scottish Labour Leader Kezia Dugdale only has one vote in the leadership contest, but that the majority of her Labour members backed their candidate.

It follows the announcement by London Mayor Sadiq Khan that he will also back Mr Smith in the leadership battle.

Hundreds of thousands of ballots are being sent out this week, with the majority of the voting expected to take place in the first seven days.

After Ms Dugdale pledged allegiance to Mr Smith, a spokesman for the Scottish Labour For Jeremy Campaign said: "Kezia has one vote, just like every other member of the Scottish Labour Party.

But all the indications, both from canvassing and [constituency party] nominations, are that a majority of Labour Party members in Scotland will be backing Jeremy Corbyn."

Recommended Read more Backlash against Khan after he calls on party to ditch Corbyn

The spokesman said Mr Corbyn had won the backing of 24 Scottish Constituency Labour Parties compared with just 15 for Mr Smith.

Writing in her Daily Record column, Ms Dugdale accused the current leader of speaking "only to the converted" but said Mr Smith could unite the party and win the next General Election.

With the two rivals due in Scotland later this week for a hustings, Ms Dugdale said she had a "responsibility" to speak out as the most senior female elected leader in the party across the UK.

She added: "My only public comment on Jeremy's leadership before this contest was to say he had lost the confidence of his parliamentary colleagues. That's a fact.

"More than 80% of Labour MPs expressed a lack of confidence in Jeremy's leadership. If 80% of my colleagues in the Scottish Parliament didn't support me, I wouldn't be able to do the job - even though I received 72% of the votes when party members and trade unionists in Scotland elected me to be their leader.

Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Show all 8 1 /8 Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith clash at a leadership hustings in Gateshead, where Mr Smith was scarcely able to answer a question without being booed by Mr Corbyns supporters PA Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy himself admitted he was seven out of 10 in terms of his faith in the European Union. He said it, said Mr Smith during his second live debate with Jeremy Corbyn Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Ballot papers are currently due to be sent out on 22 August and returned a month later, with the result being announced at a special Labour conference on 24 September Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Jeremy Corbyn supporters cheer and wave placards as the Labour Leader addresses thousands of supporters in in Liverpool, England Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour Party leadership candidate Owen Smith poses for a picture with supporters during a picnic for young members in London Fields, Hackney in London Getty Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith The Labour leader has a spring in his step at a leadership rally in Sunderland Screenshot Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Labour leadership contender Owen Smith delivers a speech at the Open University in Milton Keynes, where he promised to reverse Conservative cuts set to leave millions of low paid workers thousands of pounds a year worse off PA Labour leadership contest: Jeremy Corbyn vs Owen Smith Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has urged Owen Smith to distance himself from those saying they want to split the Labour party Getty

"I don't think Jeremy can unite our party and lead us into government. He cannot appeal to a broad enough section of voters to win an election.

"I believe Owen can."

Mr Smith said he was "incredibly proud" to have the support of Ms Dugdale for his leadership bid.
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 }}

Ahmad al-Farqi al-Mahdi pleaded guilty at the International Criminal Court in the Hague on Monday to destroying historic cultural sites in Mali.

Dressed in a grey suit, blue and white striped shirt and matching tie, his long hair neatly combed, eyes blinking behind metal-framed glasses, the 40-year-old schoolteacher said he was really sorry for what he had done.

There was a different image of Al-Mahdi four years ago in Timbuktu, during a period of vicious Islamist occupation. An angry and spiteful figure in a black jalabiya, with a Kalashnikov in one hand and a pickaxe in the other, he led fighters of Ansar Dine, an al-Qaeda affiliate, as they destroyed 14 of the 16 mausoleums, Unesco heritage sites, in the ancient city which had once been a centre of learning, attracting scholars from across the region.

Elsewhere in the short-lived "caliphate", priceless manuscripts were burned and statues destroyed in the name of Islam, alongside the introduction of a savage regime of floggings, rape, amputations and executions.

The International Federation for Human Rights said it deeply regretted that Al-Mahdi was not facing other charges. They have catalogued evidence against him and 14 others, they said, on behalf of 33 victims for crimes including rape and sexual slavery.

Al-Mahdi faces a maximum of 30 years' imprisonment. But, his guilty plea means it is likely he will receive a sentence of no more than a third of that.

I regret all the damage my action has caused he said.

I would like to give a piece of advice to all Muslims in the world, not to get involved in the same acts as I was involved in, because they are not going to lead to any good for humanity.

But other Islamists have been involved in the same acts as the Malian, and his landmark trial may be followed by others. Al-Mahdi is the first defendant to appear in the Hague on a charge of cultural destruction, and officials say the International Criminal Court ( ICC) is exploring how Isis members who destroyed antiquities in Syria and Iraq and Islamists who carried out similar acts in Libya could also face justice.

Syria is not a member of the ICC, but the United Nations Security Council can ask the court to investigate nevertheless.

Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers Show all 13 1 /13 Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mail-main.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mali-5.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mali-2.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mali-3.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mali-4.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mali-6.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers Mali.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mali-7.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mali-8.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mali-9.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mali-10.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers mali-11.jpg Getty Images Timbuktu captured by ground forces backed by French paratroopers pg-8-mali-getty.jpg Getty Images

After Isis tore down the temple of Baalshamin in Palmyra, originally built in 17AD, Irina Bokova, the head of Unesco, declared  this destruction is a new war crime, an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity. Daesh [Isis] is killing people and destroying sites, but we cannot allow it to silence history.

After Al-Mahdi was charged, Karima Bennoune, the UN special rapporteur for cultural rights, stressed: Clearly we must understand that when cultural heritage is under attack, it is also the people and their fundamental human rights that are under attack. When mausoleums, as well as ancient Islamic manuscripts, were being destroyed in Mali various forms of other religious and cultural practices were also under attack.

Criminalising cultural atrocities, she held, will save lives. Speaking of the torture and murder by Isis of the Syrian archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, the chief of antiquities in Palmyra, Ms Bennoune stressed we must not wait to rally to the cause of the defenders of cultural heritage at risk until we are mourning their deaths.

The need was to protect historic sites but also those ordinary people who step forward to defend culture like those in Mali who reportedly hid manuscripts beneath the floorboards of their homes, and those in Libya who tried to peacefully protest [against] the destruction of Sufi sites.

The destruction carried out by Islamists in Timbuktu would have been much greater had the people of the city not taken manuscripts and artefacts from the museums and educational institutions at night, hiding them in their homes.

Some of those who had taken part told me at the time how they had outwitted the book-burners, spiriting away the treasures while the Salafists were sleeping or praying, leaving empty folders to disguise what they had done.

Dramane Maulvi Haidara was one of them. Can you imagine how terrible it would have been if they had burned this? he asked, holding up a book of Hadiths, the sayings of the Prophet Mohamed, pages of exquisite calligraphy between frayed covers of Moroccan leather written in the 14th century.

The rubble left from an ancient mausoleum destroyed by Islamist militants, is seen in Timbuktu, Mali (Reuters)

The book had been rescued from a college, the Ahmed Baba Institute, where the Islamists had thrown other works onto a bonfire.

Also of immense value from the Institute was a Quran from the 1600s, when the city became renowned for its book trade, while the Sankore Madrassa, an Islamic college, became a centre of religious discourse.

These are works of Islam, but that wouldnt have stopped them, as you know they burned holy books, they considered everything that did not meet their view of religion as things to be destroyed, said Mr Haidara.

Other manuscripts produced by Mr Haidara were on astronomy and algebra, poetry and horticulture.

The Salafists dont like these subjects because, they say, they are not in the Quran, he said. But this is not just our history, but of other people, some of them have been translated from other languages, some went to Asia, to Europe. We have saved these books, but the tombs we could not save, that is something we really regret.

Al-Mahdi and his followers had been thorough in their vandalism, using sledgehammers to smash the mausoleums into tiny bits. Abou Dardar, one of Mahdis fellow Salafists, had admonished a watching crowd do not mourn what is happening, that is forbidden. You are not allowed to worship saints, Allah does not like it. These will not be allowed to exist again.

Some of the mausoleums have, in fact, been rebuilt. A consecration ceremony, the first of its kind since the 11th Century in Timbuktu, was held for them eight months ago, the occasion marked with a cattle sacrifice and readings from the Quran. But they were, a local imam pointed out, remakes necessarily using modern material.

You cannot really replace something from history, something so precious, he said.

The manuscripts were smuggled out of Timbuktu to the capital, Bamako  Mr Haidaras brother one of those organising the transport  to be returned after the city was liberated from the Islamists. But this is yet to happen four years after French forces had intervened to drive out al-Qaeda and its allies.

Instead the collection remains, once again hidden, in Bamako. The jihadists are now carrying out attacks in the capital, and there are fears they may try to finish off the cultural destruction they started in Timbuktu. But they are not the only threat: criminality is rising as Malis economy continues to falter, and the manuscripts would be highly lucrative loot for gangs selling on the the black market for vast profit.

I came across some of the manuscripts I had last seen in Timbuktu while in Bamako earlier this year to cover an attack on a hotel, the Radisson Blu, which killed 20 people.

The largest batch, of 27,000 books, was at a two-storey house where the Ahmed Baba Institute had rebased from Timbuktu. Despite the obvious care and attention of those in charge, the conditions were far from ideal and many of the documents  some analysts estimate up to 40 per cent of them  have been damaged.

Initially this was caused by rainwater seeping through a leaking roof. Although this was repaired, dust and heat began to damage the writing, pages got stuck together due to humidity and insects ate through the bindings.

"I am afraid a lot of the manuscripts have been affected, it is a great pity," said Dr Abdoulkadri Idrissa Maiga, director of the Institute.

"The weather conditions here in Bamako are not good for keeping them. It's a big problem. Even the dust here is not the same as the dust in Timbuktu and believe it or not, the type of dust has a bearing on how the pages can be preserved.

But the manuscripts cannot yet be returned to Timbuktu. Security has unravelled in much of the country, al-Qaeda is back, half a dozen other armed groups control swathes of territory. Drissa Traore, head of the filing department, had returned to the city once. The terrorists are in all the surrounding areas, there is no way we can take these books back until the situation really improves. We dont know when that will be.

"People fear that these terrorists will always return. Some of the terrorists who were captured were freed after they promised they have reformed. But they are back with the gangs again. They will never change, they have evil in their hearts.
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 Islamic extremist has pleaded guilty to destroying historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu.

As his International Criminal Court (ICC) trial started Monday, Ahmad Al Faqi al-Mahdi told judges he was entering the guilty plea "with deep regret and great pain."

He also advised Muslims around the world not to commit similar acts, saying "they are not going to lead to any good for humanity".

This file image grab photo taken on 1 July, 2012 shows Islamist militants destroying an ancient shrine in Timbuktu (AFP/Getty Images)

It is the first ICC trial to charge an individual for war crimes against a historic and cultural monument. Mahdi is also the first person to plead guilty at the court since its establishment in 2002.

Prosecutors say Mahdi led a group of Ansar Dine radicals to destroy 14 of Timbuktu's 16 mausoleums in 2012 because they considered them totems of idolatry. The one-room structures housing the tombs of the city's great thinkers were on the World Heritage list.

This file image grab photo taken on 1 July, 2012 shows Islamist militants destroying an ancient shrine in Timbuktu (AFP/Getty Images)

Ansar Dine held power in northern Mali in 2012, but were driven out after nearly a year by French forces, which arrested Mahdi in 2014 in neighboring Niger.

Mahdi's trial is scheduled to last a week, with prosecutors presenting judges with evidence of the crimes and his defense lawyer also planning a presentation.

Judges will issue a formal verdict and pass sentence at a later hearing. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years imprisonment, but prosecutors say they will seek a sentence of nine to 11 years.

Mahdi told the three-judge panel he hopes his time in prison "will be a source of purging the evil spirits that had overtaken me."

Additional reporting by agencies
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 Donald Trump presidential campaign office in one of the most populous counties in swing state Colorado is being spearheaded by a 12-year-old boy.

Weston Imer runs day-to-days operation in the Jefferson County office, at least until he has to go back to school in September.

Though his mother is the official field coordinator of the volunteer-run office, Imer has been doing the lions share of the work, occasionally recruiting other pre-teen friends to help out (see below).

"Get involved," Imer told St. Louis local news station KMOV. "That's what I'm going to say. Get involved. Kids need to be educated.

Of his plan to some day become president himself, he added: "Watch for me - 2040. And Barron Trump, if you are watching, in 2040 I'll take you as my running mate."

Mr. Trump's had problems with staffing of late, his campaign manager Paul Manafort having resigned on Friday.
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 }}

To Maine police, a large snake on the loose is no joking matter.

Like the opening act of a B-movie creature feature, the sightings of the snake now known as Wessie have played out in glimpses. The first report, toward the end of June, was that a snake as long as a truck with a head the size of a softball slithered past a childrens playground in Westbrook, Maine. It disappeared into the nearby Presumpscot River. Only one witness said he saw the creature.

The police warned people to stay away, though the sighting attracted a handful of inquisitive souls to the playground.

Recommended Read more Scientists have discovered why snakes are so long

Not all Westbrook locals were completely convinced. That person may have seen something, but I doubt it was a big snake. You never know, though, people have crazy pets today, Michael Diemond told WCSH 6. A pet could have gotten away or abandoned down here.

A few days later, two officers with the Westbrook Police Department also spotted a snake of unusual size. The snake, as the police department wrote on its Facebook page, was eating a large mammal, possibly a beaver (not joking). As it swam away, the officers estimated it to be 10 feet in length. It was 3:30 am, the darkness foiling the officers attempt to take a video.

Given the 10-foot-long estimate, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife biologist Derek Yorks concluded it was likely a python or constrictor, neither of which are native to the area. We dont have anything big enough to eat beavers, thats for sure, Mr Yorks told the Bangor Daily News. His theory was that the animal was a pet that had outgrown its owners ability to keep it.

Interest in Wessie hit a fever pitch. City officials called in an unnamed animal tracker, though the self-proclaimed cryptozoologist rescheduled twice and has yet to appear.

Like many wild critters that end up in the spotlight, the snake enjoyed a healthy fandom on social media. (What isnt set in stone is a last name: Its Wessie P Thon on Twitter or Wessie the Presumpscot Python on Facebook.) Wessie buffs took to the animal with a zeal usually reserved for sasquatches, goat-men and other cryptids. Wessie earned itself a folk song as well as a locally brewed IPA in its name.

After a flurry of activity in June, Wessie seemed to have vanished. There had been no sign of Wessie since the police report. Some people began questioning that the police had seen a snake at all  perhaps it had been a beaver with a log in tow, rather than a snake feasting on the animal. But Saturday, evidence of a large snake appeared yet again. This time, it took the form of a giant snake skin, discarded near the boat launch by the Presumpscot River.

Police tagged and bagged the skin, a sample of which will be examined to determine the snakes species. Until the type of snake is determined and we can assess the safety risk, said a Westbrook Police Facebook post, we caution people who recreate along the Presumpscot River to remain alert, maintain a safe distance from any wildlife.

Still, snake experts see something wrong with the picture. Its very suspicious to find a shed thats laid out like this that wasnt laid out by someone, Rob Christian, president of the Maine Herpetological Society, told Portlands WCSH 6.

Auburn University herpetologist David Steen is also skeptical. On Twitter, he wrote that it looks like the skin was just placed there by someone, later comparing how neatly the snakeskin was displayed to a limbless person setting out a jacket and pants.

Unfortunately for Wessie, if the animal does exist, its chances of making it through a subzero Maine winter are not good. Exotic Burmese pythons have established themselves in Florida; some evidence suggests that the snakes could survive year-round as far north as DC (if they can learn to hibernate, a behavior practiced by some North American snakes but unusual for the Southeast Asian pythons).

But unless someone  even a cryptozoologist tracker  can catch Wessie, Maine will turn out to be too chilly for the truck-length snake.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A student who fathered his teachers baby has received the largest single-victim sex abuse settlement from a public agency in US history, receiving a $6 million (4.5 million) pay-out.

In 2013, English teacher Laura Whitehurst, who was 28 at the time, pleaded guilty to four charges of unlawful sexual intercourse and two of oral copulation with a person under 18.

The lawsuit was filed against Whitehurst and her employers, the Redlands Unified School District and the Citrus Valley High School, in California  where Whitehurst was teaching at the time the incidents took place.

The prosecution alleged the defendants failed to inform the boys family or the police about the matter, despite knowing Whitehurst was abusing the victim and other students.

Vince W. Finaldo, who represented the victim, said: The size of this settlement represents the gravity of the damage done to this young victim and his family, and it also highlights the extreme malfeasance and neglect by school officials who turned a blind eye to the criminal conduct of a teacher and failed to protect a student.

Whitehurst, now 31, had started a sexual relationship with the student in the summer of 2012 when he was 16 years old. It lasted for a year, during which she became pregnant with his child.

According to the victims legal representatives, Whitehurst called the school principal to inform them of the boys absence while he attended doctors appointments with her.

Whitehurst was eventually arrested in 2013 following a complaint from the victims parents, who said she had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with their son, Redlands Daily Facts reports.

According to the website, two former Redlands High School students  where Whitehurst previously worked  came forward with their own allegations against the teacher. She was charged with a total of 41 counts of unlawful sex acts with minors, and pleaded guilty to six.

Citrus Valley High School where Laura Whitehurst was an English teacher (Google Street View)

As part of her plea bargain Whitehurst was sentenced to one year in jail, of which she served six months due to good behaviour.

She received five years of probation, was ordered to relinquish her teaching credentials, was registered as a sex offender and ordered to wear a GPS tracking device. She was also forbidden from making contact with the victim, according to Redlands Daily Facts.

Manly, Stewart and Finaldi, the law firm which handled the case, have since filed another claim notice, representing the alleged victim of another Redland district teacher, Kevin Patrick Kirkland, 56, who teaches maths at Redlands High School. He has been arrested on suspicion of engaging in sexual acts with an underage girl from when she was 16 until the age of 18.
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 }}

Texas is scrambling to explain why it has suffered the sharpest increase in maternal deaths of anywhere in the US - a rate of mortality not matched anywhere within the developed world.

A new study has found the number of women who died from complications related to pregnancy doubled from 2010 to 2014. A number of observers believe the development is linked the slashing of funding for Planned Parenthood and other womens health programmes by the Republican-controlled state government.

A report in the September issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, found that after a modest increase in maternal mortality in Texas between 2000 and 2010, the rate of pregnancy-related deaths nearly doubled in 2011 and 2012- a trend the researchers found puzzling.

Activists say funding to groups such as Planned Parenthood has been repeatedly cut (AP)

Still, in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval, the doubling of a mortality rate within a two-year period in a state with almost 400,000 annual births seems unlikely, the authors said.

A future study will examine Texas data by raceethnicity and detailed causes of death to better understand this unusual finding.

Yet campaigners believe the increase is linked to a cut in funding for health clinics that were used by poorer women and members of the community.

Sarah Wheat, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, told the Dallas Morning News that many of the clinics that suffered a cut in funding acted as an entry point into the health care system for women.

Chances are theyre going to have a harder time finding somewhere to go to get that first appointment, she said.

They may be delayed in getting that initial pregnancy test and then a prenatal referral.

While Texas performed the worst, the study found that the maternal mortality rate for the remainder of the US was higher than previously reported, is increasing, and places the United States far behind other industrialised nations.

Indeed, the US is the only developed country in the world where maternal deaths increased between 1993 and 2013, according to the World Health Organisation.

While around 99 per cent of maternal deaths occur in developing countries, the US has a very high number for a developed nation. Other countries where maternal mortality increased during that same time period included Afghanistan, Botswana and Chad.

Experts say that in the US, race and poverty play powerful roles in determining who is more vulnerable to maternal health crises. Poverty is tightly linked to the issue, along with depression, asthma, obesity and diabetes.

In Texas, the first attack on Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics came in 2011, when politicians cut family-planning grants by 66 per cent across the state. The money that remained was directed toward community health centres and county health departments that provide more comprehensive care.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year found that one impact was an increase in births among low-income women who lost access to affordable and effective birth control.
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 }}

An Arizona man who tweeted about killing his roommate was arrested two days later, after allegedly murdering the other man. Police said 21-year-old Zachary Penton called them on Sunday to say he had shot his roommate after an altercation at the home they shared in Gilbert, a Phoenix suburb.

Penton was taken into custody and booked on murder charges at Maricopa County Jail. The victim, 41-year-old Daniel Garofalo, was pronounced dead at the scene. Officers also recovered the handgun thought to have been used in the shooting. With the investigation ongoing, attention has focused on a Twitter account apparently attributed to Mr Penton.

On Friday, the 21-year-old wrote that he might viciously murder his roommates unless he moved out of the home. In a separate post, he suggested that at least two of the people he lived with had got into a drunken brawl after one of them was stung by a bee.

Police told ABC15 they were looking into the possibility that the Twitter account did indeed belong to Mr Penton.
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 }}

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbis have banned women from going to university, The Independent has learned.

The strict Satmar sect issued the decree, seen by The Independent, warning that university education for women is dangerous. Written in Yiddish, the decree warns: It has lately become the new trend that girls and married women are pursuing degrees in special education. Some attend classes and others online. And so wed like to let their parents know that it is against the Torah.

We will be very strict about this. No girls attending our school are allowed to study and get a degree. It is dangerous. Girls who will not abide will be forced to leave our school. Also, we will not give any jobs or teaching position in the school to girls whove been to college or have a degree.

"We have to keep our school safe and we cant allow any secular influences in our holy environment. It is against the base upon which our Mosed was built.

The decree was issued from the sects base in New York and will apply to followers of the faith group around the world.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews follow a pre-enlightenment interpretation of traditional Judaism and discourage interaction with the modern or secular world. Men wear 19th century Eastern European dress including long black coats and black hats, while married women must dress modestly and cover their hair.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews estimates that there are around 30,000 strictly Orthodox Jews living in the UK, of which Satmar is the largest sect.

Last year, it emerged that some ultra-Orthodox Jews in north London had banned women from driving, citing concerns that it was immodest for them to do so.

It was condemned by Dr Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, Executive Director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, who told The Independent the decree would force people to stay in their communities. The Satmar community chooses to live in an isolationist enclave. They believe that the secular elements of the world would tarnish the lives and beliefs of those who consider themselves to be religious.

 Anti-women laws that still exist in 2016

There are probably other factors at play, but, ultimately, the results are devastating. Because people from similar communities are not provided with a foundational primary education, they cannot pursue higher education nor careers. When one does not have access to education, career opportunities are out of reach. It forces one to stay within the community as everyone's personal lives are tied up with their professional lives as well.

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

Dr Jonathan Romain, Rabbi of Maidenhead Synagogue and chair of the Accord Coalition which links religious and secular groups to promote inclusive education, told The Independent: There is much to admired about the ultra-Orthodox, including the Satmar group, who are a very law-abiding community. However, their choice to separate themselves from much of the world around them is not a view shared by many other Jews, who see no problem with being both rooted in Jewish identity and integrated into wider society.

Going to university is an experience to be valued, for both men and women, whom we regard as fully equal and who should have the same opportunities in education and the workplace. Limiting such abilities is a cause for regret.
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 Fox News anchor and broadcaster Sean Hannity has never hidden his admiration for Donald Trump.

During one of several fawning interviews during the course of the campaign, Mr Hannity in June made clear that support extended to the ballot box.

I am not the corrupt press. Im actually the conservative here, said Mr Hannity. Well, Im an opinion show. And I dont hold back that Ill be voting for Donald Trump in November.

Mr Hannity is a hero for many conservatives (AP)

On Monday, the extent of Mr Hannitys backing for the Republican candidate became clearer when it was reported that the Fox News broadcaster was acting as an unofficial adviser to Mr Trumps campaign.

In a development that asked questions about the firewalls journalists typically seek to keep between themselves and the politicians they report on, the New York Times said Mr Hannity had for months peppered Mr Trump, his family members and advisers with suggestions on strategy and messaging.

The report said that three sources within the Republicans campaign had suggested that Mr Hannity was behaving as if he wanted a role in a possible Trump administration.

Asked about his conversations with Mr Trump, Mr Hannity said: Do I talk to my friend who Ive known for years and speak my mind? I cant not speak my mind.

He said that he said nothing to Mr Trump in private that he did not say in private, and he added: I never claimed to be a journalist.

But many believe the development highlights a disturbing trend about the increasing proximity of some journalists and politicians. Professor Todd Shaw, a political scientist at the University of South Carolina, said that broadcasters such as Fox News, and more recently MSNBC, had been acting like echo chambers for certain political constituencies.

As a result, this is not entirely surprising, but many will see it as a problematic development, he said.

Mr Hannity, 54, is a well known, influential voice among conservative media in the US. A former talk radio host, he was one of the first people to signed by the Fox News channel when it was established in October 1996. (The channels founder, Roger Ailes, who was recently forced to resign amid allegations of sexual harassment, is also serving as an advisor to Mr Trump. Mr Ailes has denied the allegations of sexual harassment.)

 'I Sometimes Say the Wrong Thing' - Trump Regrets Making Hurtful Remarks

For many years, Mr Hannity was one part of the Hannity and Colmes show on Fox, in which a meek fellow anchor, Alan Colmes, sought to put a liberal counter to Mr Hannitys conservative rhetoric. The show ended in 2009, and was replaced by Hannity, in which the conservative anchor had no foil to offset his right wing opinions.

Mr Hannity has interviewed Mr Trump on many occasions. In recent weeks, his show, which broadcasts at 10pm and is filmed in New York, has carried a series of claims - widely debunked by other broadcasters - that Mr Trumps rival, Hillary Clinton, is suffering from an undisclosed medical condition.

Over the course of a week, he informed his viewers that a photo which shows Hillary Clinton apparently needing assistance to climb a flight of stairs at a campaign stop back in February.

He also assembled a panel of so-called experts to talk about Ms Clintons health, despite her doctor releasing a letter last July summarising her medical history and saying she was in excellent health.

The broadcasts appeared to be coordinated with Mr Trump, who told supporters she lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on Isis, and all the many adversaries we face.

Neither Fox News or the Trump campaign immediately respond to inquiries. Mr Hannity also did not respond to an emailed question.

Jeanne Zaino, Professor of Political Science at Iona College in New York, told The Independent there was undoubtedly no shortage of journalists in history who had advised presidents. Yet, she said as journalism had become more professional over the centuries and decades, there was no evidence in recent history of anything so blatant or shameless.

She added: It raises serious questions about an institution that is considered so important that it is mentioned in the Constitution.
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 }}

Its mid-August in Arizona and the mercury tops 40 degrees on the steps outside Phoenix College, but the heat does little to deter Jose Barboza from his task. The 24-year-old, who wears a yellow t-shirt to mark him out as a volunteer for the immigrant rights group Promise Arizona, has been diligently registering new voters six days a week since February.

Barboza arrived in the US from Mexico aged four, grew up in Phoenix and considers himself an American. But he remains undocumented, and so cannot vote himself. When I was in high school, my parents told me never to tell anyone where I was from, he says. I would say I was from Phoenix. But that was a lie, and I didnt want to be living a lie my whole life.

In 2012, he came out of the shadows and began volunteering for Promise Arizona, registering voters and getting them to the polls on election day. On a good day, hell sign up a dozen or more. I love registering people, it motivates me, he says. My dream is to become a citizen If you have the fundamental right to vote, thats a privilege.

 Arizona Latino Jose Barboza talks about registering people to vote

One of those new voters is Julio Ramos, a freshman at Phoenix College who was born and raised in Arizona, but whose mother is as-yet-undocumented. Barboza watches as he fills out a voter registration form in the shade. Ramos, who recently turned 18, says he plans to seize his opportunity to vote for the first time: My parents always told me, Your vote counts.

At the 2012 election, Republican nominee Mitt Romney beat President Obama by more than nine percentage points in Arizona, a state that has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate just once since 1948. A 2012 report by researchers at Arizona State University suggested its rising Latino population  21.5 per cent of eligible voters, at the last count  could turn the state blue by approximately 2030.

Instead, thanks in large part to Donald Trump, whose anti-immigrant rhetoric has done more to mobilise them than any Democrat, the state is a virtual toss-up in 2016. A RealClearPolitics average of recent Arizona polls puts Trump less than half a point ahead of Hillary Clinton.

A supposedly deep red state like Arizona would traditionally receive little attention from the candidates in a presidential election, but the Clinton campaign this month invested a six-figure sum to enlist new staff there, while the Republicans dispatched Trumps running mate Mike Pence to hold morale-boosting rallies in Phoenix and Tucson.

The progressive advocacy group MoveOn.org is hiring organisers to get out the vote in Arizona, alongside several more familiar swing states such as Florida and Ohio. This is an election that Democrats and progressives should win, said Matt Blizek, MoveOns electoral field director. The only way theyre going to lose is if theyre complacent and they dont show up and vote.

A Democratic win in Arizona is less about changing voters minds than it is about getting them to the polls. Yet, with a map that looks increasingly favourable for Clinton, her campaign doesnt need the Grand Canyon state to reach the crucial 270 electoral college votes, which is why much of the get-out-the-vote effort is being left to groups like Promise Arizona.

So far, it would seem to be working. On the day of the presidential primary in March, 600,000 people cast ballots in Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix. Thats twice as many as four years ago  despite a drastic reduction in the number of polling stations, from 200 in 2012 to just 60 in 2016.

Early last week, Barboza joined activists from One Arizona, a non-partisan coalition of Latino rights organisations, including Promise Arizona and Mi Familia Vota, as they relaunched their Viva the Vote campaign, a drive to register some 75,000 new voters across the state in the year to 10 October, the registration deadline.

One Arizona estimates that its volunteers have already knocked on more than a million doors and registered more than 100,000 people since 2010, when the states Republican-controlled legislature passed the controversial Senate Bill 1070 (SB1070), the harshest set of anti-immigration measures anywhere in the US.

SB1070, which prevented undocumented immigrants from having jobs and mandated state police to check the immigration status of anyone they detained or arrested, was widely criticised for encouraging racial profiling and terrorising communities with the threat of deportation. Some of the law's more draconian measures were later overturned in the courts.

For the activists, voter registration is not simply about winning another state for Hillary Clinton, says One Arizona spokeswoman Pita Juarez. These kids arent walking around registering voters in 45-degree heat for blue or red. Theyre walking for their families. We have candidates who are threatening to take peoples mothers away. Its personal.

The relationship between Latinos and Democrats is not uncomplicated. Despite his efforts to enact comprehensive immigration reform, President Obama is known to many as the deporter-in-chief, having expelled more than two million undocumented immigrants since he took office in 2009.

Clinton has vowed to pursue immigration reform anew, but it is Trump who has done most to turn Latino voters into a monolithic blue bloc in 2016. One recent national poll found that 82 per cent of Hispanic voters had an unfavourable view of the property mogul, who launched his campaign last year by describing Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug traffickers.

Neither party has really done a good job of building relationships with the Latino community, says Petra Falcon, the founder and executive director of Promise Arizona. Well often register people who dont know about the party system and have no idea whos a Democrat and whos a Republican. But this time, everybody knows who Hillary is and everybody knows who Trump is  and that is working in the Democrats favour.

Petra Falcon, founder and executive director of the immigrant rights group Promise Arizona (Tim Walker) ((Tim Walker))

Trumps unpopularity also threatens Republicans lower down the ticket, like John McCain, an Arizona Senator since 1987, who this year faces his toughest re-election fight to date. McCain must first defeat Kelli Ward, who is running from the right on a Tea Party-type platform, at the states Senate GOP primary on 30 August.

Then hell have to wage a general election campaign against Democratic congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick, who is explicitly targeting Latino voters. McCain, who turns 80 this month, won re-election in 2010 by 25 points, but recent polls put him a mere six ahead of Kirkpatrick.

The 2008 Republican presidential nominee was one of a bipartisan group of senators who wrote a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2013, only to watch it die in the House of Representatives. This year, however, McCain has reluctantly endorsed Trump  who has not only campaigned on a promise to deport all of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, but who has also insulted McCain personally.

If Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket, here in Arizona, with over 30 per cent of the vote being the Hispanic vote, no doubt that this may be the race of my life, McCain told guests at a private fundraising event in May.

Like the rest of the general public, the Latino community held Senator McCain in high esteem for his service and bravery as a prisoner of war [in Vietnam], as well as his willingness to see that the immigration system was broken and needed to be repaired, says Roberto Reveles, founding president of the immigrant group Somos America. But now he has a dilemma: does he continue to support Trump at the risk of offending the Mexican community? It puts him in a very precarious political situation.

John McCain is facing his toughest re-election in three decades as a US Senator (Getty Images) (Win McNamee | Getty Images)

Even if McCain survives, as seems likely, the Trump effect may yet unseat another Republican Arizona stalwart, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is also up for re-election this year. Arpaio, 84, a staunch Trump campaign surrogate notorious for his ruthless pursuit of undocumented immigrants, has been in office since 1993.

The man who styles himself Americas toughest sheriff may soon be the subject of criminal charges himself: this weekend, Arpaio was referred by a federal judge to the US Attorney, for allegedly violating a courts order that his office desist from racially profiling Latinos. That would be vindication for Latino groups such as Somos America, who have been doing battle with Sheriff Joe since long before Trump began his political career.

Whether or not Arizona votes for Clinton in November, the state is trending towards the Democrats. In time, it is expected to replace Colorado as a southwestern battleground, as the latter state grows an ever darker shade of blue. Republicans in other states  including Texas, ostensibly a GOP bastion  are keenly aware of Hispanic voters growing influence.

But that doesnt mean Democrats can take for granted the support of Latinos, whose turnout at elections has historically been modest. Nationally, Blacks and Whites are twice as likely to receive campaign mobilisation than Latinos, explains Edward Vargas, a senior analyst with the polling firm Latino Decisions.

So it is no surprise that Latinos have lower turnout  they have lower rates of contact by campaigns and candidates. We still have not seen a major investment by candidates and parties in Arizona to register and mobilise Latinos The parties cannot and should not outsource their Latino engagement to the Latino civic groups who have very little funding.

Groups such as Promise Arizona face logistical challenges beyond just voter registration. In the past, they have collected ballots from voters on election day to deliver to polling stations. But this year, Republican state legislators outlawed the practice in Arizona, calling it ballot harvesting and claiming it could lead to voter fraud.

Promise Arizona volunteers Jose Barboza (centre) and Maria Laris (right) registering new voters at Phoenix College (Tim Walker) ((Tim Walker))

If that means activists have to work harder, they will. At Phoenix College, Jose Barboza is joined by a fellow volunteer, 42-year-old Maria Laris, who has lived in Arizona for 10 years after making the difficult border crossing through the desert from Mexico. Last November, she was deported with her husband. For more than five months, the couple were separated from their children, including a seven-year-old daughter who was born in the US.

Laris returned in May and volunteered to register voters for Promise Arizona earlier this month. What motivated me was to make sure no other families get separated like mine, she says. The community needs change. God sent me to do this."
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A small group of so-called White Lives Matter protesters waved confederate flags as they staged a rally outside the Houston office of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) on Sunday.

Around 20 members of White Lives Matter, which was formed in response to the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter, demonstrated outside the NAACP office in the Texas citys largely African-American third ward. Some wore body armour and toted assault rifles, others carried signs and banners bearing white supremacist slogans.

One of the protesters, Scott Lacy, told KPRC-TV that the NAACP was one of the most racist groups in America.

The organiser of the rally, Ken Reed, told the Houston Chronicle that his group was protesting the civil rights organisations failure in speaking out against the atrocities that organizations like Black Lives Matter and other pro-black organizations have caused the attack and killing of white police officers, the burning down of cities and things of that nature.

Mr Reed, who was wearing a Donald Trump 2016 campaign hat, said the confederate flags were symbols of Southern heritage that had nothing to do with racism. Of those protesters who were carrying firearms, he said: We have to defend ourselves Their organisations and their people are shooting people based on the colour of their skin. Were not.

Mr Reed was apparently referring to the recent shootings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge by gunmen who apparently harboured black nationalist beliefs, but who killed non-white officers in both cases. The NAACP and Black Lives Matter leaders both condemned the attacks.

The demonstrators in Houston were soon outnumbered by a spontaneous counter-protest. In an Instagram post, Andre Smith, the son of the Houston NAACPs executive director, Yolanda Smith, revealed that it was his mothers birthday. So we spent the day celebrating a black life that did matter and will continue to do great work at this place you protest, he wrote.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A woman died after tripping over in her flip flops and falling from a cliff in southern California.

Lorena Barrera, of Sparks, Nevada, fell around 100 feet after stumbling while climbing over a low wall to take a photograph.

It was Ms Barreras first day in the Los Angeles area and she had gone to Point Fermin with two friends to look at the view.

Police and firefighters were called to the scene at around 2pm on Friday afternoon, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said.

The woman was found dead at the base of a cliff after (an) apparent fall, he added, describing the incident as completely accidental.

Los Angeles fire chief Albert Valle said Ms Barrera's friends tried to save her.

The two people she was with made an effort but they lost their grip and she fell," he said.

The two friends ran to a nearby bus stop and asked a bus driver to call the emergency services. The driver told Eyewitness News the women blamed themselves for not being able to save Ms Barrera.

Fire officers estimate about one person a month is killed falling from the cliff near Point Fermin.

In early August, the bodies of a man and a woman were found at the bottom of the same stretch of cliffs. Police said they believed the couple also accidentally fell.

Local woman Teresa Wood said she had seen several deadly accidents there.

She said visitors did not realise the danger of climbing over the wall to get to the edge and that more signs should be put up to warn people.

Im not sure people would necessarily adhere to them, but I dont think its a bad idea, Ms Wood said.

Secret California Show all 5 1 /5 Secret California Secret California Mojave National Preserve: Joshua Tree Getty Secret California Big Sur's Esalen Institute Secret California The Pacific Coast Highway Visit California Secret California San Diego's Crystal Pier Hotel Secret California

But Cecil Reynolds, who also lives near the cliff, told said people ignored the existing signs.

It happens all the time over here, left and right, a lot of young people, he told NBC Los Angeles.

They give you a sign, Dont go over and take pictures. A lot of people take chances, and the consequences ends up like this."
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 }}

South Korean security officials fear North Korea may hire local gangsters to carry out attacks on its citizens at soft targets overseas, a response to a wave of defections to the South.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may even be trying to secure alliances with local criminals in parts of China to carry out the attacks, sources said.

Fears have grown to the extent that travel warnings have been issued for Mount Paekdu, a popular destination for South Korean tourists, situated on China's border with the DPRK.

Relations between South and North Korea have deteriorated significantly in recent weeks, caused by a series of high profile defections from the DPRK, culminating in that of senior diplomat Thae Yong-ho. His defection from the DPRKs London embassy caused great embarrassment for the countrys regime.

"I can't give out the full details but the North Korean leadership has been infuriated over the series of recent incidents," a source told South Korean news agency Yonhap.

"For North Korea, provocative acts that won't leave any trace will be the easiest, like hiring local gangsters to commit a terrorist attack."

Inside the daily life in North Korea Show all 19 1 /19 Inside the daily life in North Korea Inside the daily life in North Korea People reading a newspaper at the metro station Inside the daily life in North Korea Thoughts of the leaders on the tram. They have about a dozen of these on every tram, all with different thoughts Inside the daily life in North Korea Young people training for a big upcoming festival Inside the daily life in North Korea People at the Pyongyang's annual marathon Inside the daily life in North Korea Many stars on one of the trolleys in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea An intimidating poster in a primary school in North Korea. Inside the daily life in North Korea Solar panels installed on a street lamp. Inside the daily life in North Korea A poster on the window next to one of the venues we visited in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea Kids playing football next to the Arch of Triumph. After a while tourists were allowed to join, so some of us did Inside the daily life in North Korea Class in an educational center in Pyongyang (where people over 17 years old can attend any classes they choose after school, for free) Inside the daily life in North Korea People waving at me during the Pyongyang marathon Inside the daily life in North Korea People having a great time dancing at a public park Inside the daily life in North Korea A metro driver in a metro station in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea Fireworks to mark the birthday of the Eternal President Kim Il Sung on our last night in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea My wonderful tour guide at a public park Inside the daily life in North Korea One of the parks in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea A person rowing some boats for the day at a river in Pyongyang Inside the daily life in North Korea The National War Museum Inside the daily life in North Korea Public park in Pyongyang

Security warnings have been given to South Korean citizens living in China and those travelling in the countrys border regions with the DPRK.

Visitor numbers to Mount Paekdu, where there is little security, have fallen dramatically since the warnings were made, affecting travel agencies who operate in the region.

One travel agency told the outlet: In the run up to the peak season of July and August, we used to receive inquiries from April. But this year, the number trickled to less than half.

"The dramatic drop was largely due to the rumours that North Korea was preparing a terror attack on South Koreans."

 Top North Korean diplomat in UK defects to South Korea

Another said: "When our South Korean partner companies ask if it is safe to travel here, we feel helpless because we can't guarantee absolute safety for the travellers."

The news comes as South Korea and the United States began large-scale annual military drills, prompting the DPRK to threaten both countries with a nuclear attack.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The chief minister of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is a man who likes to keep himself smartly turned out. And like many politicians around the world, he is not averse to the odd photo-opportunity to show off the good work he is doing.

But a visit to flood struck areas in his state backfired hugely for Shivraj Singh Chouhan, after he was photographed in pressed white trousers being carried through the waters by local police officers. Another image showed him finally rolling up his trousers and walking himself, but handing his shoes to an aide to carry. Worse still, the water was barely ankle-high.

The people of India are used to seeing their politicians demand and expect special VVIP treatment, even on visit to rural areas struck by hardship or disaster. But Mr Singh, a member of the countrys ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been roundly mocked on social media for his behaviour.

Mr Chouhan called for action to help those affected by the monsoon floods (NDTV)

Shivraj Singh Chouhan getting cop lifted is that bizarre example of nasty privilege politicians demand in India. Always, wrote Debarati Majumder.

Dripping with sarcasm, Bhupendra sharma, said: A humble and down to earth politician inspecting flood affected region. What a sight.

Some said the images were reminiscent of the worst days of the British Empire and posted images of Raj officials being carried on the backs of Indians.

A senior government official officer defended Mr Chouhan, saying it would have been dangerous for him to wade through the waters himself.

Nobody knew if the water level would rise suddenly or if the ground below was slippery, SK Mishra told the AFP.

There was also the danger of a snake or scorpion bite. He was desperate to meet the flood-affected people and the security guys could not have taken any chance.

Floods triggered by the annual monsoon rains have claimed hundreds of lives across India. In Madhya Pradesh at least 15 people have died after rivers burst and flooded villages, the Press Trust of India news agency said.

An Indian TV journalist was sacked in 2013 after he filed a report about deadly floods while perched on a survivors shoulders.

The reporter claimed the man who carried him while standing in ankle-high water had hoisted him onto his shoulders as a sign of respect.
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 }}

Ireland may have experienced a record number of people applying for passports when the UK voted to leave the European Union, but new data from New Zealands immigration office shows its not the only nation that has been inundated with requests for residency.

The number of people in Britain registering to move to New Zealand has increased ten-fold since the referendum, with the country recording a total of 10,647 registrations of interest 49 days after the result, according to Immigration New Zealand.

A total of 998 British citizens registered with New Zealand immigration on 24 June, the day of the result, while only 109 people had registered the day before. The 10,647 figure is double the number of people who registered in the same a year ago, which was recorded at 4,599.

Recommended Read more Ireland urges Britons to stop applying for passports following Brexit

A spokesperson for the immigration office said that it usually receives 3000 registrations from British nationals interested in studying, working or investing in New Zealand per month, but stressed that the numbers relate to registrations of interest for people moving to New Zealand and not visa applications.

Just days after the UK voted to leave the EU Irelands foreign minister Charlie Flanagan appealed to members of the British public eligible for an Irish passport to stop rushing to apply for one, claiming it was placing significant pressure on the system and turnaround times.

6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Show all 6 1 /6 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you More expensive foreign holidays The first practical effect of a vote to Leave is that the pound will be worth less abroad, meaning foreign holidays will cost us more nito100 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you No immediate change in immigration status The Prime Minister will have to address other immediate concerns. He is likely to reassure nationals of other EU countries living in the UK that their status is unchanged. That is what the Leave campaign has said, so, even after the Brexit negotiations are complete, those who are already in the UK would be allowed to stay Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Higher inflation A lower pound means that imports would become more expensive. This is likely to mean the return of inflation  a phenomenon with which many of us are unfamiliar because prices have been stable for so long, rising at no more than about 2 per cent a year. The effect may probably not be particularly noticeable in the first few months. At first price rises would be confined to imported goods  food and clothes being the most obvious  but inflation has a tendency to spread and to gain its own momentum AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Interest rates might rise The trouble with inflation is that the Bank of England has a legal obligation to keep it as close to 2 per cent a year as possible. If a fall in the pound threatens to push prices up faster than this, the Bank will raise interest rates. This acts against inflation in three ways. First, it makes the pound more attractive, because deposits in pounds will earn higher interest. Second, it reduces demand by putting up the cost of borrowing, and especially by taking larger mortgage payments out of the economy. Third, it makes it more expensive for businesses to borrow to expand output Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Did somebody say recession? Mr Carney, the Treasury and a range of international economists have warned about this. Many Leave voters appear not to have believed them, or to think that they are exaggerating small, long-term effects. But there is no doubt that the Leave vote is a negative shock to the economy. This is because it changes expectations about the economys future performance. Even though Britain is not actually be leaving the EU for at least two years, companies and investors will start to move money out of Britain, or to scale back plans for expansion, because they are less confident about what would happen after 2018 AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you And we wouldnt even get our money back All this will be happening while the Prime Minister, whoever he or she is, is negotiating the terms of our future access to the EU single market. In the meantime, our trade with the EU would be unaffected, except that companies elsewhere in the EU may be less interested in buying from us or selling to us, expecting tariff barriers to go up in two years time. Whoever the Chancellor is, he or she may feel the need to bring in a new Budget Getty Images

Ireland received more than 4,000 enquiries from Britons about whether they were eligible for an Irish passport and able to stay part of the EU three days after the result, compared with its usual average of 200 inquiries.

Professor Paul Spoonley, a sociologist professor at Massey University, said that the Presidential run in the US could see similar levels of interest from Americans.

Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, he said: "I anticipate that post Brexit and if [presidential candidate Donald] Trump wins in America, you're going to see a spike in interest from people there about coming to New Zealand.

"We saw it during the Bush years from Americans, and I think over the next three to five years, you're going to see a significant increase in the numbers of migrants coming from both Britain and the USA."
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 woman has been shot by police after she launched a knife attack on bus passengers in the Uccle suburb of Brussels.

At least three people were wounded with a machete, two seriously, while the attacker was taken to hospital with gunshot wounds, according to Belgian media reports.

Radio Television Belge de la Communaute Francaise (RTBF) reported that the attacker had been hit in the arm by police, and been arrested.

The radio station said initial indications pointed to the woman suffering from "psychological disorders".

At this stage, it is not being treated as an act of terrorism.

The incident was met with a large police response, and a secure perimeter has been set up at the scene.

Brussels remains on high alert after the coordinated terror attacks on the city in March this year, and in the wake of the Paris attacks last November.
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 wealthy businessman has paid fines imposed on three women who defied Frances burkini ban, and also offered to pay for other people charged under the new law.

Rachid Nekkaz, a real-estate entrepreneur of Algerian descent, said he personally opposes the burkini and niqab, but believes that within a democracy nobody has the right to prevent another person from wearing the clothing they choose. Provided that this clothing is not a threat to freedom of others or the security of the territory.

As soon as I see that France is not respecting fundamental liberties, I always get my cheque book out, he said, in an interview with the Telegraph.

In 2010, Mr Nekkaz, who grew up in a Paris suburb but renounced his French citizenship in 2013, set up a 1m "freedom defence fund" to pay the fines of women who chose to continue wearing the niqab after it was outlawed in France and Belgium. He has paid out more than 200,000 to help Muslim women who defied the ban on face coverings.

The burkini, a full body swimsuit which allows orthodox Muslim women to swim without exposing their bodies, has been banned in the French beach resorts of Sisco, Cannes, and Nice. At least four women have been fined for defying the new rule and at least six others have been stopped and asked to leave the beach, but were not fined because they complied.

Nice justified the ban by describing the burkini as clothing which overtly manifests adherence to a religion at a time when France and places of worship are the target of terrorist attacks.

The mayor of Cannes said last week when he announced his ban on burkinis, which are worn by very few women in France, he was simply forbidding a uniform that is the symbol of Islamist extremism.

Critics say the ban is islamophobic, misogynistic and misguided.

French film star Isabelle Adjani condemned the ban as ridiculous and dangerous, and said it was playing into the hands of Islamists and the far-right.

In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man reacts near bouquets of flowers near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores and injuring more who were celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A woman arrives with a toy and a bouquet of flowers as people pay tribute near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A woman reacts as she places flowers in front of the memorial set on the 'Promenade des Anglais' where the truck crashed into the crowd during the Bastille Day celebrations in Nice EPA In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack People gather to view the floral tributes near the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man reacts near bouquets of flowers as people pay tribute near the scene where a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores and injuring more who were celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday, in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Floral tributes are laid out near the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A child's toy is placed among the floral tributes laid out near the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Investigators continue at the scene near the heavy truck that ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores who were celebrating the Bastille Day in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Crime scene investigators work on the 'Promenade des Anglais' after the truck crashed into the crowd during the Bastille Day celebrations in Nice EPA In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A forensic expert examines dead bodies covered with a blue sheet on the Promenade des Anglais seafront in the French Riviera city of Nice Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A forensic expert evacuates a dead body on the Promenade des Anglais seafront in the French Riviera city of Nice, after a gunman smashed a truck into a crowd of revellers celebrating Bastille Day Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man reacts as he sits near a French flag along the beachfront the day after a truck ran into a crowd at high speed killing scores celebrating the Bastille Day in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Discarded items are left on the beach, not far from the site of the truck attack in the French resort city of Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Bullet holes in the windscreen of the lorry that was driven into the crowd at high speed Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man walks through debris on the street in Nice, France, the morning after a lorry ran into a crowd, killing at least 84 and injuring 50 Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Rescue workers help an injured woman to get in a ambulance AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Authorities investigate a truck after it plowed through Bastille Day revelers in the French resort city of Nice, France AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Celebrations of Bastille Day were targeted by the lorry driver AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack People cross the street with their hands on thier heads as a French soldier secures the area after at least 84 people were killed along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A paramedic attends one of the dozens of people injured in the Nice Bastille Day attack In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Soldiers march on street where the lorry crashed into the crowd REUTERS In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man sits next to a body seen on the ground after at least 84 people were killed in Nice, when a truck ran into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Bodies are seen on the ground after at least 84 people were killed in Nice, when a truck ran into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Children were among the 84 killed in the atrocity, with around 50 more hospitalised Reuters In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve (2nd L) speaks to the media in Nice AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack A man walks with his hands up as police officers carry out checks on people in the centre of French Riviera town of Nice AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack With injured people laying in the street police and onlookers react near to a truck in Nice AP In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Police officers, firefighters and rescue workers are seen at the site of the attack AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Police officers speak with a soldier after a truck that ploughed into a crowd leaving a fireworks display in the French Riviera town of Nice AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Bastille Day Nice attack Police shine a light into the cab as they approach the driver's cab of a truck, in Nice AP

I am always uneasy when we try to impose liberty by banning things, she said. We cant forbid women from going to the beach because of a costume.

Meanwhile, Mr Nekkaz, 44, likened the ban to saying you are not allowed to be a Muslim in France.

But Mr Nekkaz has been accused of exploiting the veil ban to raise his political profile. He attempted to contest the French presidency in 2007 and 2012 but didn't have enough support to stand.

In 2013, Mr Nekkaz was given an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a 5,000 euro fine for attempting to buy a sponsorship required under French law for presidential candidates.He claimed he was trying to demonstrate the fragility of the French electoral system.

He renounced his French citizenship in the same year, to try to run for president in Algeria.
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 German government is planning to tell citizens to stockpile food and water in their homes in case of a terror attack or catastrophe.

The "Concept for Civil Defence," which has not been released, will require the population to stockpile enough food for ten days, according to Frankfurter Allgemmeine Sonntagszeitung (FAZ) newspaper.

Citizens would also be required to stock enough water for five days.

Measures have been announced this month by the government to invest more on its police and security forces including creating a special unit to fight cyber crime and terrorism.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said the plan would be discussed by the cabinet on Wednesday and presented by the minister that afternoon. He declined to give any details on the content

Germany is currently on high alert after two Islamist attacks and a shooting rampage in Munich by a mentally unstable teenager in July.

According to FAZ, the report was first commissioned by a parliamentary committee in 2012.

The 69-page report does not see an attack by conventional military forces as likely.

 Munich gunman was 'obsessed' with mass shootings: Police

It also mentions the necessity of a reliable alarm system, better structural protection of buildings and more capacity in the health system, FAZ said.

Germany's Defence Minister said earlier this month the country was in the "crosshairs of terrorism" and called for the military to train closer with police in preparation for potential large-scale militant attacks.
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 }}

National borders are "the worst invention ever", European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has claimed.

The comments by Brussels' top official were dismissed by Theresa May, whose spokeswoman said "it is not something that the Prime Minister would agree with".

Mr Juncker's remark comes as nations across Europe have looked to tighten their borders in response to the growing migrant crisis which has threatened to overwhelm some countries.

He made the comments to the European Forum Alpbach, according to its website.

The website said he told the audience: "Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians", and said solidarity must be given to refugees and their children.

Responding to the comments, Mrs May's official spokeswoman said: "It is not something that the Prime Minister would agree with and, indeed, you have heard the Prime Minister talk about the views that the British people expressed in the referendum.

"The British people think that borders are important, having more control over our borders is important, and that is an issue we need to address."

Mr Juncker also said Brexit was not a pretty moment, and one which the EU must overcome, according to the website's report.

He said: "In the concentration of globalisation and European problems, we must not lose our way."

6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Show all 6 1 /6 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you More expensive foreign holidays The first practical effect of a vote to Leave is that the pound will be worth less abroad, meaning foreign holidays will cost us more nito100 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you No immediate change in immigration status The Prime Minister will have to address other immediate concerns. He is likely to reassure nationals of other EU countries living in the UK that their status is unchanged. That is what the Leave campaign has said, so, even after the Brexit negotiations are complete, those who are already in the UK would be allowed to stay Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Higher inflation A lower pound means that imports would become more expensive. This is likely to mean the return of inflation  a phenomenon with which many of us are unfamiliar because prices have been stable for so long, rising at no more than about 2 per cent a year. The effect may probably not be particularly noticeable in the first few months. At first price rises would be confined to imported goods  food and clothes being the most obvious  but inflation has a tendency to spread and to gain its own momentum AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Interest rates might rise The trouble with inflation is that the Bank of England has a legal obligation to keep it as close to 2 per cent a year as possible. If a fall in the pound threatens to push prices up faster than this, the Bank will raise interest rates. This acts against inflation in three ways. First, it makes the pound more attractive, because deposits in pounds will earn higher interest. Second, it reduces demand by putting up the cost of borrowing, and especially by taking larger mortgage payments out of the economy. Third, it makes it more expensive for businesses to borrow to expand output Getty 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you Did somebody say recession? Mr Carney, the Treasury and a range of international economists have warned about this. Many Leave voters appear not to have believed them, or to think that they are exaggerating small, long-term effects. But there is no doubt that the Leave vote is a negative shock to the economy. This is because it changes expectations about the economys future performance. Even though Britain is not actually be leaving the EU for at least two years, companies and investors will start to move money out of Britain, or to scale back plans for expansion, because they are less confident about what would happen after 2018 AFP/Getty Images 6 ways Britain leaving the EU will affect you And we wouldnt even get our money back All this will be happening while the Prime Minister, whoever he or she is, is negotiating the terms of our future access to the EU single market. In the meantime, our trade with the EU would be unaffected, except that companies elsewhere in the EU may be less interested in buying from us or selling to us, expecting tariff barriers to go up in two years time. Whoever the Chancellor is, he or she may feel the need to bring in a new Budget Getty Images

It comes as the leaders of Germany, France and Italy - Europe's three biggest countries - meet on Monday to discuss the way forward for the EU in the wake of Britain's historic decision to leave.

German chancellor Angela Merkel, the French president Francois Hollande and Italy's prime minister Matteo Renzi are meeting on the Italian island of Ventotene for talks.
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 }}

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is to seek his party's nomination to run as a candidate in the 2017 presidential election, he has announced.

He previously served as president between 2007 and 2012 and was beaten by Francois Hollande when he sought re-election in 2012. He became France's first president not to be re-elected for a second term since Valery Giscard d'Estaing in 1981.

His time in office was characterised by a number of scandals, including allegations of corruption. In 2014, he was held in police custody for 15 hours as part of an investigation into the finances of his party, Les Republicains, and allegations he tried to obtain information from a magistrate about legal proceedings against him. He denied the allegations, accusing political opponents of attempting to run a smear campaign against him to prevent him from re-entering the political arena.

His perceived extravagancy and penchant for celebrity friends earned him the moniker 'President Bling Bling'.

During his time out of office, Mr Sarkozy has kept a low profile, with the exception of police dealings.

Recent opinion polls have indicated Mr Sarkozys popularity has increased in France. Some French political commentators have suggested he has the required experience and authority to lead France as it struggles with the aftermath of recent terrorist attacks. He is expected to lead his campaign based on hard-line approaches to immigration and security.

Some critics of Francois Hollande have attacked him for being seen as too tolerant and not doing enough to prevent extremism.

Writing on his Facebook page, the politician announced: "I have decided to be a candidate for the 2017 presidential election.

I felt I had the strength to lead this battle at a tormented time in our history.

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

For the first time, France's right and centre will be holding primaries for their presidential race, akin to the US political system. A two-round ballot will be held in November for party members to lend their support to a candidate. Mr Sarkozy will face competition from Alain Juppe, who is currently favourite in the polls.
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 MP in Russia wants to make female genital mutilation (FGM) an offence with a prison sentence of up to 10 years for those who carry out the operation.

The bill, presented to parliament by Maria Maksakova-Igenbergs, says FGM has "no place in civilised society".

Discrimination of women based on religious motives manifested in full or partial amputation of external sex organs must be punished by a prison sentence between five and seven years, the draft bill reads, according to RT.

The same crime committed against an underage person must be punished by a prison sentence between seven and 10 years, it adds.

(Statista (Statista)

The practice of FGM involves either the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia.

The most extreme form, known as infibulation, involves the cutting away of the clitoris and sewing up the vulva to make a small hole for urine to pass through.

It is designed to make sexual intercourse painful for women and is supposed to stop them becoming promiscuous.

FGM is practiced in a number of remote villages in the Russian republic of Dagestan, according to a report published by the Russian Justice Initiative human rights organisation.

The report said FGM has been performed on tens of thousands of women, typically under the age of three.

Commenting on the report for the state news agency Interfax, Ismail Berdiyev, an Islamic cleric, reportedly claimed all women should be subject to the procedure, as this would "bring down sexuality and prevent lechery on Earth".

He later retracted his comment, saying it was taken too literally by the the media.

The countries with anti-women laws Show all 5 1 /5 The countries with anti-women laws The countries with anti-women laws The countries with anti-women laws The countries with anti-women laws The countries with anti-women laws The countries with anti-women laws

More than 1,200 cases of FGM were recorded in England between January and March, the NHS reported earlier this year.

At least two per cent of all new cases were girls under the age of 18.

The practice was made illegal in the UK in 1985.
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 22 of the victims of a suicide bomb attack on a wedding party in Turkey were under the age of 14, a government official has said.

A suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 carried out the attack, killing at least 53 people, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday.

Initial evidence suggested the attack was carried out by Isis, he added. It is the deadliest attack in Turkey this year.

 suicide attack at wedding in Gaziantep

"It was clear that Daesh had such an organisation in Gaziantep or was attempting to make room for itself in recent times," President Erdogan said, using an alternative acronym for Isis.

"Many intensive operations were conducted, are being conducted. Of course our security forces will be conducting these operations with even greater intensity."

The official said the death toll of 51 did not include the bomber. Earlier, officials said a destroyed suicide vest was found at the scene.

Ambulances arrive at the site of the explosion (Getty)

People were dancing when the explosion ripped through the celebrations on Saturday in the city of Gaziantep, in the volatile south east near the border with Syria.

Celebrations were ending at the traditional henna night party, when guests have decorative paint applied to their hands and feet. Some families had already left when the bomb went off but women and children were among the dead, witnesses said.

The late-night attack happened in Gaziantep in the south east (Getty)

Blood stains and burns marked the walls of the narrow lane where the blast hit while women in white and checkered scarves cried while waiting outside the morgue waiting for word on missing relatives.

"The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing," said 25-year-old witness Veli Can. "There was blood and body parts everywhere."

At least 12 people were buried on Sunday, but other funerals would have to wait because many of the victims were unidentifiable.

DNA forensics tests would be needed to identify them, security sources said.

People were dancing when the bomb exploded (Getty)

Forty-four of the 51 victims have been identified so far, according to the private Dogan news agency. Witnesses said a three-month-old baby was among the dead.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said the wedding party was for one of its members. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt.

Turkey is still in a state of emergency following an attempted coup on 15 July, which Ankara blames on US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. He has denied the charge.

Three suspected Isis suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul's main airport in June, which was then the deadliest in a string of attacks in Turkey this year.

In October last year, suicide bombers killed at least 95 people attending a rally of pro-Kurdish and labour activists outside Ankara's main train station.

Violence flared up again this week in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, with separate bombings killing at least 10 people, mostly police and soldiers, in an escalation officials blamed on the the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

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 }}

The suicide bomb attack at a wedding party in Turkey in which at least 54 people were killed might not have been carried out by a child, Turkish authorities have admitted.

The attack on Saturday has been widely attributed to Isis and was initially thought to have been carried out by a young boy.

On Sunday, President Erdogan said the attack, the deadliest in Turkey this year, was carried out by a bomber aged between 12 and 14 in an attempt by the terror group "to make room for itself".

However, Turkish authorities have now backtracked, with the prime Minister stating that officials were still trying to determine who carried out the attack and whether it was by a "child or a grown-up".

Speaking after a Cabinet meeting on Monday, Premier Binali Yildirim said "a clue hasn't yet been found concerning the perpetrator of the attack."

People were dancing when the explosion ripped through the celebrations on Saturday in the city of Gaziantep, in the volatile south-east near the border with Syria.

Celebrations were ending at the traditional henna night party, when guests have decorative paint applied to their hands and feet. Some families had already left when the bomb went off but women and children were among the dead, witnesses said.

Blood stains and burns marked the walls of the narrow lane where the blast hit while women in white and checkered scarves cried while waiting outside the morgue waiting for word on missing relatives.

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

"The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing," said 25-year-old witness Veli Can. "There was blood and body parts everywhere."

Following the attack, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said the country would provide every kind of support needed to "cleanse" Turkey's border with Syria of the extremists.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but officials have said it appeared to be the work of Isis, accusing it of trying to destabilise the country by exploiting ethnic and religious tensions. It was the deadliest attack in Turkey this year.

Mr Cavusoglu: "Our border has to be completely cleansed of Daesh (an Arabic name for IS). It's natural for us to give whatever kind of support is necessary.

"Isis martyred our ... citizens. It is natural for us to struggle against such an organization both inside and outside of Turkey."

Turkey has been beset by both external and internal strike.

This week, United Nations warned Turkey that wide-ranging purges and arrests following a failed coup go beyond what can be justified and may violate international law.
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 would-be suicide bomber thought to be as young as 12 has told Iraqi police he was kidnapped by masked men who placed an explosive vest on him.

Footage emerged showing Iraqi security forces removing a suicide bomb vest from the young boy after he was apprehended in Kirkuk, Iraq, on Sunday.

"The boy claimed during interrogation that he had been kidnapped by masked men who put the explosives on him and sent him to the area," Kirkuk intelligence official Chato Fadhil Humadi told the AP.

Iraqi security forces remove a suicide vest from a boy in Kirkuk, Iraq, 21 August (Reuters)

The boy, Mr Humadi added, was displaced from the Isis-held city of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, by recent military operations in the area.

He arrived in Kirkuk a week ago, Mr Humadi said. The boy's name is known to the police.

Hours earlier, a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a Shia mosque in Kirkuk, injuring two people.

There is a dangerous campaign tonight against Kirkuk, a security official told Kurdish news agency Rudaw.

In pictures: The rise of Isis Show all 74 1 /74 In pictures: The rise of Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters of the Islamic State wave the group's flag from a damaged display of a government fighter jet following the battle for the Tabqa air base, in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from Islamic State group sit on their tank during a parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from the Islamic State group pray at the Tabqa air base after capturing it from the Syrian government in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from extremist Islamic State group parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping A video uploaded to social networks shows men in underwear being marched barefoot along a desert road before being allegedly executed by Isis Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Haruna Yukawa after his capture by Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Khalinda Sharaf Ajour, a Yazidi, says two of her daughters were captured by Isis militants Washington Post In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Spokesperson for Isis Vice News via Youtube In pictures: The rise of Isis A pro-Isis leaflet A pro-Isis leaflet handed out on Oxford Street In London Ghaffar Hussain In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Isis Jihadists burn their passports In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A man collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A woman collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid Local civilians queue for aid administered by Isis. Since it declared a caliphate the group has increasingly been delivering services such as healthcare, and distributing aid and free fuel In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces detain men suspected of being militants of the Isis group in Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Mourners carry the coffin of a Shi'ite volunteer from the brigades of peace, who joined the Iraqi army and was killed during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Samarra, during his funeral in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Shiite Turkmen family fleeing the violence in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, arrives at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Arbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi A photograph made from a video by the jihadist affiliated group Furqan Media via their twitter account allegedly showing Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at a mosque in Mosul. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamist caliphate in the territory under the group's control in Iraq and Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Smoke and debris go up in the air as Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul. Images posted online show that Islamic extremists have destroyed at least 10 ancient shrines and Shiite mosques in territory - the city of Mosul and the town of Tal Afar - they have seized in northern Iraq in recent weeks In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq A bulldozer destroys Sunni's Ahmed al-Rifai shrine and tomb in Mahlabiya district outside of Tal Afar In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces celebrate after clashes with followers of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi, in front of his home in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi at his home after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A vehicle burns in front of a home of a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman holds her exhausted son as over 1000 Iraqis who have fled fighting in and around the city of Mosul and Tal Afar wait at a Kurdish checkpoint in the hopes of entering a temporary displacement camp in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees Displaced Iraqi women hold pots as they queue to receive food during the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, at an encampment for displaced Iraqis who fled from Mosul and other towns, in the Khazer area outside Irbil, north Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A militant Islamist fighter waving a flag, cheers as he takes part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa. The fighters held the parade to celebrate their declaration of an Islamic "caliphate" after the group captured territory in neighbouring Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters travel in a vehicle as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade with a missile in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from an al-Qaida splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from the splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters hold a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A member loyal to the Isis waves an Isis flag in Raqqa In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi anti-government gunmen from Sunni tribes in the western Anbar province march during a protest in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The United Nations warned that Iraq is at a "crossroads" and appealed for restraint, as a bloody four-day wave of violence killed 195 people. The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that broke out in Sunni areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago, raising fears of a return to all-out sectarian conflict In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces hold up a flag of the Isis group they captured during an operation to regain control of Dallah Abbas north of Baqouba, the capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Isis fighters parade in the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Volunteers, who have joined the Iraqi army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants from the radical Isis group, demonstrate their skills during a graduation ceremony after completing their field training in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Kurdish Peshmerga troops fire a cannon during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Jalawla, Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference Iraqi Prime Minister's security spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference about the latest military development in Iraq, in the capital Baghdad. Iraqi forces pressed a campaign to retake militant-held Tikrit, clashing with jihadist-led Sunni militants nearby and pounding positions inside the city with air strikes in their biggest counter-offensive so far In pictures: The rise of Isis A police station building destroyed by Isis fighters An exterior view of a police station building destroyed by gunmen in Mosul city, northern Iraq. Iraq's new parliament is expected to convene to start the process of setting up a new government, despite deepening political rifts and an ongoing Islamist-led insurgency. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani issued a decree inviting the new House of Representatives to meet and form a new government In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Smoke billows from an area controlled by the Isis between the Iraqi towns of Naojul and Tuz Khurmatu, both located north of the capital Baghdad, as Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces take part in an operation to repel the Sunni militants In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An elderly Iraqi woman is helped into a temporary displacement camp for Iraqis caught-up in the fighting in and around the city of Mosul in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Christian woman fleeing the violence in the village of Qaraqush, about 30 kms east of the northern province of Nineveh, cries upon her arrival at a community center in the Kurdish city of Arbil in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman, who fled with her family from the northern city of Mosul, prays with a copy of the Quran AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq The body of an Isis militant killed during clashes with Iraqi security forces on the outskirts of the city of Samarra Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi civilians inspect the damage at a market after an air strike by the Iraqi army in central Mosul EPA In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Members of the Al-Abbas brigades, who volunteered to protect the Shiite Muslim holy sites in Karbala against Sunni militants fighting the Baghdad government, parade in the streets of the city AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Shia tribesmen gather in Baghdad to take up arms against Sunni insurgents marching on the capital. Thousands have volunteered to bolster defences AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A van carrying volunteers joining Iraqi security forces against Jihadist militants. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced the Iraqi government would arm and equip civilians who volunteered to fight AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters of the Isis group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle down a main road at the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An Islamist fighter, identified as Abu Muthanna al-Yemeni from Britain (R), speaks in this still image taken undated video shot at an unknown location and uploaded to a social media website. Five Islamist fighters identified as Australian and British nationals have called on Muslims to join the wars in Syria and Iraq, in the new video released by the Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Al-Qaida inspired militants stand with captured Iraqi Army Humvee at a checkpoint belonging to Iraqi Army outside Beiji refinery some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad. The fighting at Beiji comes as Iraq has asked the U.S. for airstrikes targeting the militants from the Isis group. While U.S. President Barack Obama has not fully ruled out the possibility of launching airstrikes, such action is not imminent in part because intelligence agencies have been unable to identify clear targets on the ground, officials said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants attacked Iraq's main oil refinein Baiji as they pressed an offensive that has seen them capture swathes of territory, a manager and a refinery employee said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants from the Isis group parading with their weapons in the northern city of Baiji in the in Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A smoke rises after an attack by Isis militants on the country's largest oil refinery in Beiji, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad. Iraqi security forces battled insurgents targeting the country's main oil refinery and said they regained partial control of a city near the Syrian border, trying to blunt an offensive by Sunni militants who diplomats fear may have also seized some 100 foreign workers In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group stand next to captured vehicles left behind by Iraqi security forces at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province. For militant groups, the fight over public perception can be even more important than actual combat, turning military losses into propaganda victories and battlefield successes into powerful tools to build support for the cause In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An injured fighter (C) from the Isis group after a battle with Iraqi soldiers at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis aiming at advancing Iraqi troops at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group taking position at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group inspecting vehicles of the Iraqi army after they were seized at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq One Iraqi captive, a corporal, is reluctant to say the slogan, and has to be shouted at repeatedly before he obeys Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group force captured Iraqi security forces members to the transport In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group transporting dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members to an unknown location in the Salaheddin province ahead of executing them In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A major offensive spearheaded by Isis but also involving supporters of executed dictator Saddam Hussein has overrun all of one province and chunks of three others In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants taking position at a Iraqi border post on the Syrian-Iraqi border between the Iraqi Nineveh province and the Syrian town of Al-Hasakah In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis rebels show their flag after seizing an army post AFP/Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants waving an Islamist flag after the seizure of an Iraqi army checkpoint in Salahuddin Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Demonstrators chant slogans as they carry al-Qaida flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad. In the week since it captured Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, a Muslim extremist group has tried to win over residents and has stopped short of widely enforcing its strict brand of Islamic law, residents say. Churches remain unharmed and street cleaners are back at work

The Amaq news agency, Isis' media arm, claimed responsibility for the mosque bombing, but made no statement about the boy.

On Saturday, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said an Isis child suicide bomber as young as 12 was behind an attack on a Kurdish wedding which killed at least 51 people.

At least 22 of the victims were under the age of 14, a government official said.

Kirkuk, an oil-rich city in Iraq's north, is claimed by both Iraq's central government and the country's Kurdish region.

Kirkuk has seen a rise in ethnic tensions following Isis' blitz across northern and western Iraq in 2014. Iraqi security forces largely withdrew from Kirkuk and Kurdish forces known as the peshmerga took control of the city. Since then, Shia militia fighters have also massed around the city.

The area is home to Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen who all have competing claims to the area. The Kurds have long wanted to incorporate the city into their semi-autonomous region, but Iraq's central government opposes this.

Additional reporting by AP
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 }}

One of the few remaining doctors in Aleppo has started a petition calling on President Obama and Chancellor Merkel to help end the bombing of civilians, schools and hospitals in the city.

Doctor Hamza Al Khatib has previously written to both President Obama and Chancellor Merkel calling on them to use their influence to help civilians and doctors in Aleppo.

"But their response is the same as it has been for the past five years," Dr Khatib says in his petition, "from Merkel we heard silence and from the White House our letter was met with yet another tepid condemnation - but no talk of action.

"We have seen no real effort from President Obama or Chancellor Merkel to prevent the criminal attacks against civilians and our hospitals."

Nearly 200,000 people have signed the petition so far.

In pictures: Aleppo bombing Show all 14 1 /14 In pictures: Aleppo bombing In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Smoke rises after airstrikes on the rebel-held al-Sakhour neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria April 29, 2016. Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A Syrian family runs for cover amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following a reported air strike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of Al-Qatarji in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, on April 29, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A man reacts as he stands on blood stains at a site hit by airstrikes in the rebel held area of Aleppo's al-Fardous district, Syria, April 29, 2016. Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo The damage of the airstrikes in the rebel-held area of Aleppo on April 28 Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo The damaged the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF)-backed al-Quds hospital after it was hit by airstrikes, in a rebel-held area of Syria's Aleppo Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrians evacuate an injured man amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following an air strike on a rebel-held of Aleppo on April 29, 2016. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo People inspect the damage at a site hit by airstrikes, in the rebel-held area of Aleppo's Bustan al-Qasr AP In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A man leads a woman in tears and child out of the scene after airstrikes hit Aleppo AP In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Civil defence members search for survivors after an airstrike at a field hospital in the rebel held area of al-Sukari district of Aleppo Reuters In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A Syrian boy is comforted as he cries next to the body of a relative who died in a reported air strike in the rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Soukour in the northern city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo A Syrian family walks amid the rubble of destroyed buildings following a reported air strike in the Bustan al-Qasr rebel-held district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrian civil defence volunteers and rescuers remove a baby from under the rubble of a destroyed building following a reported air strike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of al-Kalasa in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrians help a wounded youth following an air strike on the Fardous rebel held neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo Getty Images In pictures: Aleppo bombing Bombing in Aleppo Syrian civil defence volunteers evacuate people from a damaged building following a reported airstrike in the rebel-held neighbourhood of Tareeq al-Bab in the northern city of Aleppo

Describing the ongoing situation in Syria, Dr Khatib writes: "I am one of the very last doctors serving the remaining 300,000 citizens of eastern Aleppo.

"Atrocities are being committed every day. The Syrian regime and Russian aircraft are systematically targeting civilians and hospitals across the city."

He continues: "For five years, we have borne witness as countless patients, friends and colleagues suffered violent, tormented deaths. For five years, the world has stood by and remarked how complicated Syria is, while doing little to protect us.

"Last month there were 42 attacks on medical facilities in Syria, 15 of which were hospitals in which my colleagues and I work. At this rate, our medical services in Aleppo could be completely destroyed in a month, leaving 300,000 people to die.

 Children play games in the streets of Aleppo while bombs fall on surrounding neighbourhoods

"What pains me and my fellow doctors the most is choosing who will live and who will die. Young children are sometimes brought into our emergency rooms so badly injured that we have to prioritise those with better chances, or simply dont have the equipment to help them.

"A few weeks ago, four newborn babies gasping for air suffocated to death after a blast cut the oxygen supply to their incubators. Their lives ended before they had really begun.

"Despite the horror, we choose to be here. We took a pledge to help those in need. We have a duty to remain and help. All we ask now is for Obama and Merkel to do their duty, too.

"We do not need their tears or sympathy or even prayers, we need them to act. We need them to prove that they are the friends of Syrians."

This image of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh shocked even hardened observers of the Syrian conflict

Pictures of a dazed and bloody boy, who was rescued from the rubble of a bombed building, have become a haunting symbol of the terror those living in the city experience in their day-to-day lives.

Video shot by media activists showed five-year-old Omran Daqneesh being lifted from the ruins of a house, covered in grey dust, and placed on a seat in an ambulance.

In the footage, Omran sits alone in the chair, staring blankly ahead before wiping blood from his forehead.

 The video which shows the suffering of the children of Aleppo

Aleppo has seen fierce fighting in recent weeks, as government forces fight to secure control of the city from rebel factions.

In August, the International Committee for the Red Cross called the battle for Aleppo "one of the most devastating conflicts in modern times".

Pro-government forces, supported by overwhelming Russian air power, had managed to encircle rebels and around 300,000 civilians in the city's eastern quarters in July, leading the UN to raise the concerns of catastrophic suffering if a protracted siege ensued.

However, a fierce offensive led by thousands of rebels from outside the city broke the blockade on 31 July and fighting has only intensified since then. Both sides are bombarding their opponents indiscriminately, at a tremendous cost to both infrastructure and human life.

The main Kurdish militia, known as the People's Protection Units (YPG) controls several predominantly Kurdish northern neighborhoods.

The main insurgent groups in the city are the Nour el-Din Zenki brigade; the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham group; and the al-Qaida linked Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra.

Sign the petition here.
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 top US military commander has warned the forces of President Bashar al-Assad we will defend ourselves after Syrian planes and artillery launched operations in an area where American special forces are located.

The US dispatched a small number of special forces troops to northern Syria to assist Kurdish Pershmerga and support Syrian rebel groups seeking to overthrow Mr Assad. Yet last Thursday, two Syrian Su-24 ground-attack planes targeted an area close to where they are based.

The incident in the northern Syrian city of Hasakah, highlighted the complicated and perilous situation in Syria, where the US and Russia are on different sides of a civil war that has now raged for five years and killed or displaced millions of people. While in disagreement over Mr Assad, the two countries are seeking to cooperate in efforts to attack and destroy Isis bases in Syria.

Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, who took control of US forces in Syria and Iraq last week, said he had voiced his concerns  passing a message to Syria through Russian intermediaries.

Weve informed the Russians where were at  [they] tell us theyve informed the Syrians, and Id just say that we will defend ourselves if we feel threatened, Mr Townsend told CNN.

Mr Townsend is the first senior military commander to speak on the record about the US possibly challenging the Syrian Air Force in the wake of the incident just days ago.

 Russian air strikes kill three children in Syrias Aleppo

Last week, Pentagon officials described the incident involving Syrian war planes as unusual. Several US troops had to be quickly moved, and US jet patrols over northern Syria have been increased as a result of what happened.

Mr Townsend said his main task was to keep up the pressure on Isis. He said he believed the US-led coalition could destroy the Islamist group in this next year. Thats my goal. I am intent [on doing] that.

I want them dead or on the run in a hole somewhere in the desert, and significantly less of a threat, he said.

Meanwhile, Isis is still planning global attacks, Mr Townsend said, adding that the groups leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, remained in charge and continued to issue orders that were communicated and followed.

The US has long believed senior leaders are in and around the city of Raqqa in Syria, the Isis-proclaimed capital of its caliphate. Mr Townsend said local Arab and Kurdish fighters, trained by the US, could start moving into areas outside Raqqa in coming weeks.

US, British, and French Special Operation troops have been advising local forces fighting in northern and eastern Syria since late last year. The US contingent is thought to number as many as 300.
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 }}

You need not delve far back into aviation history to discover when competition in European air travel really began. Thirty years ago this summer, British Midland started flying from Heathrow to Amsterdam.

The UK and the Netherlands were the first nations to acknowledge that allowing direct competition against existing flag carriers  in this case, British Airways and KLM  might actually be good for business. And so it proved: the market between the two airports expanded by more than the capacity that British Midland added.

In other words, once lower fares and higher standards stimulated the market, BA and KLM benefited from increased passenger numbers.

Nine years later, much the same thing happened when easyJet started flying from Luton to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Even though the upstart wasnt flying from fortress Heathrow, British Midland and BA suddenly found themselves exposed to cut-price competition  and once again the market grew.

Since those aviation milestones, ferocious competition has thrived in Europe. The arrival of open skies means any EU airline can fly between any two European airports  an arrangement that is likely to continue function for the UK even after Brexit.

The trajectory for the past two decades has been relentless expansion. To the enormous benefit of business and leisure travellers alike, we now enjoy a near-saturated market. With many city pairs looking full, things are about to get interesting, and business travel costs on some routes could tumble.

Most of the big flag carriers are still around, sparring with the low-cost giants, Ryanair and easyJet. New planes are being delivered every week from Airbus and Boeing to help fuel expansion. The fundamental of European aviation in the 21st century is that aircraft make money only when they are flying. That is when the dark art of network planning comes in.

Any rational firm will allocate its assets  in this case, planes and crews  to the routes that look most profitable. Thats why, when Stelios Haji-Ioannou started easyJet, his first routes from London were to Scotlands three biggest cities. Thousands of passengers were already flying on those links, ready to be tempted by the prospect of halved air fares.

Amsterdam and Nice were first on the international route network, and remain prodigious providers of profits. They carry healthy proportions of business and leisure passengers, and both ends of each route generate plenty of traffic.

The latest route announced by easyJet  its 107th from Gatwick  shows how far the airline has gone from those early cherry-picking days. It is to Ostersund in central Sweden. When flights begin on 11 December, the passengers will almost all be skiers and snowboarders heading for the resort of Are. At least easyJet faces no competition from other UK scheduled airlines to Swedens ski heartland. In contrast, another northern link announced this week looks like the height of commercial optimism from one of Europes leading budget airlines, Norwegian.

Every year, November is the month of lowest demand for air travel. There are no school holidays of note in the big countries for aviation; resorts from Greece to the Algarve are in hibernation; and the winter-sports season has yet to begin. So it is not the most auspicious time to begin a new route.

This year, 1 November happens to fall on a Tuesday, which is the day of the week of lowest demand for air travel. It is also the day that Norwegian has chosen to launch its latest route from Gatwick. The destination: Reykjavik.

If you thought there were already one or two flights from the London area to the Icelandic capital, youd be right. On that quiet Tuesday alone, easyJet has four flights from three London airports: two from Luton, one from each of Stansted and Gatwick. If the timing from the Sussex airport doesnt suit, then Wow Air and Icelandair also have planes waiting for you  with the Icelandic national carrier throwing in two more services from Heathrow.

Thats about 1,500 seats already shuttling between London and the capital of a country with fewer than one-third of a million inhabitants. While a fair few of the passengers on Icelandair and Wow may be transferring to onward flights to North America, easyJets customers wont.

Into this already well-served market comes Norwegian, promising seats for as little as 30. Thats for a journey thats further than from London to Palermo in Sicily  which, in November, might be a more tempting destination. Sicily, by the way, has a population of five million, and has only two flights from London on that day.

Will Norwegian still be on the route by the winter of 2017-18? The airlines network planners clearly think so, because dipping a toe into the market is an expensive undertaking. Its Tuesday and Thursday flights could appeal to business travellers, as the first London departure of the day to Iceland. But I cant see many executives wanting to take the Saturday afternoon outbound service, nor the inbound trip which arrives back at Gatwick at 10.45pm.

Should your travels take you north this winter, prepare for the lowest air fares in history between the UK and Iceland. But history also tells us that fares wars rarely stretch beyond a season before one or more of the players retires hurt, and tries to think of the next great destination.
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 Why the sudden huge hike in British Airways and Virgin flights to the US? We have family in America and need to fly into Phoenix (for which the only direct flight is BA) or Las Vegas. Its almost double the fare this year.

Julie Morgan

A The short answer is supply and demand. In terms of demand, there are plenty of people on both sides of the Atlantic prepared to pay what these two premium airlines are charging for non-stop flights. On the supply side, there has also been a reduction in competition over the past decade, with the six big US airlines consolidating into three: United/Continental, Delta/Northwest and American/US Airways. Go back five years and the sure bet for a cheap connecting flight to a destination in America always used to be on US Airways, but since it became part of American Airlines (or vice-versa, depending on your corporate viewpoint) the number of outright bargains has slumped.

To the rescue comes WestJet, flying from Gatwick to various Canadian cities with onward connections to a range of US destinations. For Phoenix next month, the fare is around 800 return via Calgary, compared with at least 150 more on the BA non-stop from Heathrow. And if youre travelling from November to March, Norwegian has some excellent deals on its Gatwick-Las Vegas route.

Every day, our travel correspondent, Simon Calder, tackles a readers question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder
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 }}

Big numbers are all around us, shaping our political debates, influencing the way we think about things. For instance we hear a great deal about the prodigious size of the national debt: 1,603bn in July according to the latest official statistics.

There has been a proliferation of stories about the aggregate deficit of pension schemes, which has jumped to an estimated 1trn in the wake of the Brexit vote. And how could we forget that record net migration figure of 333,000, which figured so prominently in the recent European Union referendum campaign?

Yet there are other massive numbers we seldom hear about. The Office for National Statistics published some estimates for the national balance sheet last week. This is the place to look if you want really big numbers. They showed that the aggregate value of the UKs residential housing stock in 2015 was 5.2 trillion  thats up 350bn in just 12 months. A lot of people are considerably wealthier than they were a year ago - we should pay more attention to who they are.

Thats property wealth. What about the total value of households financial assets? According to the ONS, that stands at 6.2 trillion  up 113bn over the year. It will be even higher since the Brexit vote. Why? Because those ballooning pension scheme deficits we hear about represent a part of the financial assets of households.

 Mark Carney announces interest rate cut

Incidentally, a majority of the national debt, indirectly, represents a financial asset of UK households too, through the assets held by insurance companies to match their liabilities owed to us.

We often forget that for every financial liability there has to be a financial asset.

Theres still a good deal of handwringing in some quarters about the supposedly excessive borrowing of the state. But we dont tend to hear anything about the debt of the corporate sector these days. The ONS reports that the total debt (loans and bonds combined) of British-based companies in 2015 was 1.35 trilion, pretty much where it was back in 2010.

Recommended Read more Theresa May has done what David Cameron never had the stomach to do

If debt is something to get excited about, shouldnt company borrowing be a cause for concern? Not, of course, if companies are borrowing to increase their productive capacities.

Actually, the major problem with corporate balance sheets lies in a different area. The ONS data shows that the corporate sectors overall stocks of cash rose to 581bn in 2015, up 41bn on last year and a sum representing an astonishing 31 per cent of our GDP. It should be seriously worrying that firms are still choosing to keep so much cash on their balance sheets at a time when we badly need them to invest.

We tend to fret about the wrong big numbers. Consider the data on the liabilities of UK-based financial institutions. If you want a large number try this: 20.5 trillion. And around a quarter of these are financial derivative contracts. Many of those companies are foreign firms with UK operations. But UK banks  which we taxpayers still effectively underwrite because they are too big to fail  have aggregate liabilities worth 7.5 trillion.

Thats around four times larger than our GDP, yet Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, has rather strangely suggested he would be comfortable with that figure eventually rising to nine times national income.

Sometimes we fail to appreciate what lies behind the big numbers that shape our debates. The headlines this week said total UK employment grew by 172,000 in the three months to June. But this only tells one part of the story. Other data from the ONS showed that 478,000 people without jobs got them in the quarter, while 317,000 people entered the ranks of the unemployed. That headline figure is a net change in employment figure. And this wasnt an unusually busy quarter for the jobs market.

This churn goes on constantly, with hundreds of thousands of us leaving jobs and hundreds of thousands taking new ones. The economic threat from the Brexit vote aftermath isnt just people being made redundant  its a slowdown in hiring and that mighty labour market churn.

Theres a similar issue with those ubiquitous net migration figures. Newspapers talk of immigration creating a new city the size of Newcastle each year (or some variation on that line). That is rhetoric designed to stir public anxiety.

The 19 countries with the highest standard of life Show all 19 1 /19 The 19 countries with the highest standard of life The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 19. United States  84.62 The US scraping into the top 20 may surprise some, and the report does call it a "disappointment," saying the country's huge economy does not translate into social progress for many of its citizens The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 18. France  84.79 For many France is a liberal bastion, but it scored low on "tolerance and inclusion" in the report, while a poor score in "opportunity" keeps it further down the list than it perhaps should be iStock The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 17. Spain  85.88 One of the most popular holiday destinations in Europe, Spain has a strong welfare system and work life balance, but high youth unemployment has hurt the standard of life for many of its citizens iStock The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 16. Belgium  86.19 The HQ of the European Union scores highly on social progress and demonstrates that sometimes being a smaller country makes it easier to look after all your inhabitants Getty Images The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 15. Germany  86.42 Another country which might be a bit lower down than some people would expect, Germany scores highly for inclusiveness after taking in more than a million refugees over the past few months, but some wonder if the infrastructure can handle GETTY The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 14. Japan  86.54 The 'Land of the Rising Sun' has made great strides in social progress in the last decade, particularly in women entering the workforce. It still has a very small immigrant population, though, and suicide rates for under-30s remain high Getty Images The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 13. Austria  86.60 Vienna is a cultural capital of Europe and Austrian ski slopes attract people from all over the world. Having the 14th biggest economy in the world, according to the IMF, does not hurt standard of living either AFP/Getty Images The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 12. Ireland  87.94 Brits scrambling for Irish passports in the wake of the vote for a Brexit may be pleased to discover it scores very high on meeting "basic human needs," and the potential investment of companies moving from the UK will only make things better AFP/Getty The 19 countries with the highest standard of life T-10. New Zealand  88.45 New Zealand's tourist board calls it "the youngest country in the world," and it is certainly one of the most beautiful. "Opportunity" is where it scores really high, as a low population means jobs are in abundance Getty Images The 19 countries with the highest standard of life T-10. Iceland  88.45 Speaking of beautiful countries, Iceland scores very well in social progress, particularly in the "basic human needs" index and GDP per capita. Its football team has proven itself a force to be reckoned with too Getty The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 9. United Kingdom  88.58 The NHS is big part of the UK's high placing, with "basic medical care" scoring almost 100% on the report. Education scores almost as highly, with free access to quality schools AFP The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 8. Netherlands  88.65 The Netherlands is famously one of the most tolerant countries in the world, so its position in the top ten should be no surprise. It is one of the highest-scoring countries on "personal freedom and choice" iStock The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 7. Norway  88.70 Get used to seeing Scandinavian nations in the top ten. Norway is big on "nutrition and basic medical care," and its "access to basic knowledge" is strong too. Many have said the Norway model is one to follow for a non-EU UK The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 6. Sweden  88.80 "Water and sanitation" may be taken for granted in developed economies, but it is not enjoyed everywhere. Luckily it is an area Sweden nails, scoring 99.77. The country also picks up high scores in "nutrition" and "personal rights" The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 5. Switzerland  88.87 Switzerland may have some of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, but its citizens get value for money. According to the Social Progress Report, "medical", "nutritional" and "access to basic knowledge" is where the country shines The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 4. Australia  89.13 There is a good reason so many people want to start a new life "down under." Austrailia has fantastic education, job opportunities and a strong sense of personal freedom. Its "tolerance and inclusion" score could be higher though iStock The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 3. Denmark  89.39 Denmark has one of the best social mobility and income equality rates in the world, so no surprise it makes it into the top three on this list. "Basic human needs" is where the country scores particularly highly, though its "health and wellness" stats such as life expectancy could be higher AFP/Getty Images The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 2. Canada  89.49 For such a huge nation, Canada only has 35 million citizens, and they are some of the best looked after in the world. Canada's healthcare is what stands it above the rest. Education and opportunity in the country are also impressively strong Getty Images The 19 countries with the highest standard of life 1. Finland  90.09 Everyone says Nordic nations have the highest standard of living, and now Finland has made it official. It scores highly on almost every index on the report, from basic needs, foundations of wellbeing and personal freedoms. If you move there just make sure to bring warm coat  temperatures can reach minus 50 celsius in the winter! Getty Images

Yet thats in context of an estimate of 36 million tourist and business visits to the UK each year, flows equal to half of the British population. And there are double the number of going the other way each year.

What these big numbers emphasise is that we live in a mind-bendingly busy, complex and internationally connected economy. The figures we hear about, and which pundits fixate upon, are often the differences between two, or sometimes more, very large numbers. That bigger context should not be ignored.

The economic risks and fragilities of our economy are not always where were invited to believe they are.
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 }}

Experimenting with Instagrams new Stories feature this weekend, it struck me that what my snoozy  and largely unwatched  output was possibly missing was some live, mid-rut footage of me underneath Usain Bolt. At my age, most of my experimenting with new media resembles a fractious panda trying to master Kerplunk, but my bid to make thrilling authentic, live, on-the-hoof content that will thrill Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook Live or go viral after starting its journey in a WhatsApp group has been the most disheartening.

20-year-old Jady Duarte from Rio did not have this problem. While apparently in bed with Bolt this weekend, Duarte had the presence of mind to grab the phone and snap evidence of his naked torso on top of her, while she peered lustfully over his shoulder. Duarte pinged the evidence to her friends on WhatsApp, thirsty for attention  because clearly getting off with Bolt, who is both enormously handsome and had just won three Gold medals wasnt enough  and was quickly furnished with more global attention than she could have ever dreamed of. She may be, apparently, mortified that pictures reached the wider world, but her photo set a ball in motion that is now out of anyones control.

 Why we love Usain Bolt

We have said goodbye, it seems, to the sleepy kissntell era. Now were kissing and telling simultaneously. As slaves to creating authentic footage and traffic, it seems now we cant even orgasm without worrying which WhatsApp group to send the mid-grunt snap. Random friends, bitchy gossip inner circle or book group? Will a Juno filter bring out the pigments on the backs of my ankles? And do my pupils look more dilated in X-Pro II or Hefe?

I thought of a joke here about Jady Duartes Bolt-In-My-Bed pictures spreading quicker than her ankles, but this would lead to me spending at least 72 hours fielding abuse from whining 19-year-old offendatrons claiming slut-shaming. And I feel quite the opposite. Im not shaming Usain Bolt either, for that matter. Im sure his reported girlfriend of two years Kasi Bennett will avail him of the requisite amount of moral-focused ear drubbing when he lands in Jamaica later this week. Jady Duarte is the epitome of the modern, emancipated, forward-thinking woman.

Usain Bolt's best moments Show all 10 1 /10 Usain Bolt's best moments Usain Bolt's best moments Beijing 2008 100m final (9.69 seconds, 2008 Beijing Olympics) Bolt wins his first Olympic gold after destroying the competition in Beijing. Getty Usain Bolt's best moments Beijing 2008 200m final (19.30 seconds, 2008 Beijing Olympics) Bolt doubles up in China after wining the 200m with a new world record time. Getty Usain Bolt's best moments Beijing 2008 4x100m final (37.10 seconds, 2008 Beijing Olympics) The Jamiacan 4x100m relay team make it a hat-trick in Beijing for Bolt. Getty Usain Bolt's best moments Berlin 2009 100m final (9.58 seconds 2009 Berlin World Championships) Bold sets a 100m world record of 9.58s at the Berlin World Athletics Championships, a feat that still stands today. Getty Usain Bolt's best moments Berlin 2009 200m final (19.19 seconds, 2009 Berlin World Championships) Bolt doubles up again with a new world record in the 200m final. Getty Usain Bolt's best moments London 2012 100m final (9.63 seconds, 2012 London Olympics) Olympic gold medal No 4 arrives in London with 100m success. Getty Usain Bolt's best moments London 2012 200m final (19.32 seconds, 2012 London Olympics) A fifth Olympic gold quickly follows as Bolt wins the 200m. Getty Usain Bolt's best moments London 2012 4x100m final (36.64 seconds, 2012 London Olympics) Jamaica continue their dominance of men's sprinting with 4x100m relay gold in London. Getty Usain Bolt's best moments Rio 2016 100m final (9.81 seconds, 2016 Rio Olympics) Despite fears over his form, Bolt retains his Olympic gold medal in Rio after winning the 100m final. Getty Usain Bolt's best moments Rio 2016 200m final (19.78 second, Rio 2016 Olympics) Bolt celebrates crossing the line for his eighth Olympic gold in the 200m final Getty

In a world where attention is everything, Duarte has won jackpot. Her WhatsApp update has led to her content gaining umpteen million viewers. Shell be a shoo-in for lucrative, self-effacing cystitis powder brand tie-ins and the Celebrity Big Brother 2017 shortlist. My generation of 90s women went out of their way to look like they didnt shag someone. We lied and fibbed and fudged matters. Oh, he stayed as he missed the last bus, but he slept on the couch, we said, our noses lengthening. Or, No we didnt get a taxi home together. Who said that? I went home alone! Or: We slept top and tail, like friends! My generation stares at these young guilt-free millennials, documenting their shags on social media, with a slightly envious bewilderment.

And meanwhile, my tedious Instagram story about my Sunday dinner drew a meagre 2,600 viewers in 24 hours. In millennial terms I may as well be dead. Or, at the very least, look into the possibility of adding some sex to my next broadcast. Some light fingering with Eddy The Eagle Edwards? Heavy petting with Steve Cram?

On my favourite podcast Reply All  an American sideways look at the internet  two American MTV News online writers, Maeve Kierans and Erika Harwood, were recently heard discussing the British YouTube presence Marina Joyce who had amassed a hefty avid audience with her prolific updates of banal babbling. She had a sizeable-ish following, Maeve explained in blase tones. 600,000 subscribers which is more than I have, but isnt that impressive. Two million is like, sure you did a good job, well pay attention.

Thankfully Joyces recent increasingly bizarre YouTube output, which led some viewers to believe shed been kidnapped by Isis, has seen her leap to the at least respectable 2,170,985 subscriber mark. More people now watch Joyce than the ITV News at Ten. Joyce must be thrilled, although probably less so the Enfield Police who visited her house at 3.30am to investigate reports that Caliphate supporters had Joyce held against her will and were forcing her to pirouette in a pink nightie wearing glittery eye-shadow.

On reflection I am wearing far too many clothes and being far too coherent in my social media output. Im not even in the running for adoration. Duarte and Joyce, on the other hand, have won gold.
Mr Murphy, who joined in 2010, will remain with the Bank until November.

Gareth Murphy, the Central Banks Director of Markets Supervision, has become the latest senior official to resign from the regulator.

The Central Bank said Mr Murphy, who joined in 2010, will remain with the Bank until November.

Mr Murphy said that after eight years dealing with issues related to the financial crisis, it was time to move on.

The last six years has been a period of unprecedented change at the Central Bank and it has been a privilege to have had the opportunity to contribute to the rebuilding of the institution during that time, Mr Murphy said.

I wish all of my colleagues every success as they continue to pursue the Central Bank's important goals of financial stability, consumer protection and market integrity."

In a statement announcing his resignation, the Bank said Mr Murphy will step away from all supervisory activities that could give rise to potential conflicts of interest.

Former Central Bank deputy governor Stefan Gerlach left the regulator at the end of last year, shortly after the retirement of former Governor Patrick Honohan.

Current FBD chief executive Fiona Muldoon left her former job as head of banking supervision in 2013, following the exit of former deputy governor Matthew Elderfield, who terminated his contract early and joined Lloyds Banking Group in London.

The bank has also lost Elderfield's deputy, Jonathan McMahon, head of enforcement Peter Oakes and credit union registrar James O'Brien.

Governor Professor Philip Lane said Mr Murphy had made a significant contribution since he joined in 2010, and had been a key member of the banks senior management team.

His contributions to the organisation have been highly valuable and we would like to wish him well in his future career, the Governor said.

Meanwhile, Permanent TSB chief executive Jeremy Masding has announced the appointment of Mark Coan as Group Commercial Director.

Mr Coan will have responsibility for the management and development of the Groups commercial agenda including responsibility for product development, brand and marketing activities across both traditional and digital channels.
Here are the main business stories fro this morning's papers:

Irish Independent

* Activate Capital, a 500m housebuilding fund that's a joint venture between the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and US private equity giant KKR, is likely to have committed upwards of 120m in capital to projects here by the end of the year, the Irish Independent understands.

It's believed to have committed about 50m in capital to projects since the start of the year.

* The Small Firms Association (SFA) has painted a harsh picture of the realities facing Ireland's small businesses as attention turns to Budget 2017.

The SFA, in a pre-Budget submission, has told the Government that "many small business are still waiting to feel the upturn", eight years after the country lurched into recession.

* The amount Irish people spend on everyday grocery items, such as food, drinks and toiletries, has jumped year-on-year for the fifth consecutive quarter, according to industry data.

Nielsen retail performance data showed that in the three months to June, so-called fast-moving goods, which include milk and packaged goods, rose 1.3pc year-on-year, while the average prices paid for those goods also rose 1.3pc.

The Irish Times

* The Central Statistics Office is seeking a change to EU law that will allow it use the roaming data of mobile phones to allow it build more accurate tourism figures.

The CSO is looking for the law on the subject to change, meaning that users would not have to consent to give up their location when it's been used for stats.

* Profits at Canada Life, the Dublin-based reinsurer owned by the same company as Irish Life, increased by 47pc to 165m last year.

The company also noted that it is pursuing an acquisition in Ireland.

* Eddie O'Connor, the renewable energy entrepreneur, is looking to raise up to 300m through new investors into his company Mainstream.

It is understood Mr O'Connor will raise the funds even if it means giving up his majority stake in the firm.

Irish Examiner

* The Small Firms Association has warned that capital investment is currently dangerously low and is looking for a new 10pc capital gains tax.

The SFA chairman AJ Noonan said the Irish economy is starved of investment in a pre-budget submission.

* The drop off in the value of sterling against the euro remains a major headache for Irish exporters, international trade consultant John Whelan has said.

Mr Whelan highlighted the importance of the UK market to Ireland, saying it still remains Ireland's third largest market.

* Consumers are now spending more on their groceries with after researchers Nielsen Grocers achieved a 2.6pc increase in their takings.

Sales in the Irish market increased by the fifth highest in Europe during the last quarter.
The Small Firms Association (SFA) has painted a harsh picture of the realities facing Ireland's small businesses as attention turns to Budget 2017.

The SFA, in a pre-Budget submission, has told the Government that "many small business are still waiting to feel the upturn", eight years after the country lurched into recession.

The small business group's remarks contrast sharply with recent GDP figures which suggested 26pc growth.

"This Budget comes at a time when the tailwinds that have propelled the Irish recovery over the past number of years are waning," the SFA said.

"While for many the fragility of the crisis years have passed, the recovery has not been consistent regionally or sectorally. Many smaller businesses are still waiting to feel the upturn."

Business sentiment has weakened considerably in recent months to its lowest level in three-and-a-half years, as concerns about Brexit and the global economy dented confidence.

About 80pc of companies surveyed in the most recent KBC Bank Ireland/Chartered Accountants Ireland Business Sentiment Index now see some implications of Brexit for their companies, with sterling weakness the main concern.

"Business costs are rising, many of the fundamental policy challenges facing the country have not been addressed and the international environment in which Ireland operates is uncertain, in particular in light of the UK's decision to leave the EU," the pre-Budget submission said.

Among small firms' asks of Budget 2017 are:

Better rewards for work by increasing the entry point to the top rate of tax, as well as a 1pc cut to the rate.

Abolition of the 3pc Universal Social Charge surcharge for self-employed people.

Investment in rural broadband and public transport networks.

A reduced 9pc VAT rate for residential house-building for two years, to fix shortages.

The group also criticised rising wage costs.

The Government has committed to raising the minimum wage from 9.15 an hour to 10.50 by 2021.

It wants wages to be determined by the labour market, "not be determined by an artificial legal instrument such as the minimum wage".

"Irish labour costs are the tenth highest in Europe and 20pc above the EU average. Irish small firms are at a competitive disadvantage relative to firms in the UK across a number of major business costs and total labour costs are 17pc higher in Ireland than in the UK," it said.
Samsung plans to launch a programme to sell refurbished used versions of its premium smartphones as early as next year, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The South Korean technology firm is looking for ways to sustain earnings momentum after reviving its mobile profits by restructuring its product line-up. As growth in the global smartphone market hits a plateau, Samsung wants to maximise its cost efficiency and keep operating margins above 10pc.

The world's top smartphone maker will refurbish high-end phones returned to the company by users who signed up for one-year upgrade programmes in markets such as South Korea and the United States.

Samsung would then re-sell these phones at a lower price, the person said, declining to be identified as the plan was not yet public.

The person declined to say how big a discount the refurbished phones would be sold at, which markets the phones would be sold in or how many refurbished devices Samsung could sell.

A Samsung spokeswoman said the company does not comment on speculation.

It was not clear to what extent the phones would be altered, but refurbished phones typically are fitted with parts such as a new casing or battery.

Rival Apple Inc's iPhone has a re-sale value of around 69pc of its original price after about one year from launch, while Samsung's flagship Galaxy sells for 51pc of the original price in the U.S. market, according to BNP Paribas.

Refurbished phones could help vendors such as Samsung boost their presence in emerging markets such as India, where high-end devices costing $800 or so are beyond most buyers.

Apple sells refurbished iPhones in a number of markets including the United States, but does not disclose sales figures. It is trying to sell such iPhones in India, where the average smartphone sells for less than $90 (69 pounds).

Selling used phones could help Samsung fend off lower-cost Chinese rivals that have been eating into its market share, and free up some capital to invest elsewhere or boost marketing expenditure.

Deloitte says the used smartphone market will be worth more than $17bn this year, with 120 million devices sold or traded in to manufacturers or carriers - around 8pc of total smartphone sales. Some market experts expect the used market to grow fast as there are fewer technology breakthroughs.

"Some consumers may prefer to buy refurbished, used premium models in lieu of new budget brands, possibly cannibalizing sales of new devices from those budget manufacturers," Deloitte said in a report.

CANNIBALISATION RISK

Samsung's refurbishment programme, details of which the person said could be finalised as early as 2017, could help the firm generate revenue from dated high-end smartphones returned by users upgrading to newer versions.

The company's latest premium phones, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note 7, have received favourable reviews, suggesting cheaper, refurbished versions could be popular. At U.S. carrier Verizon Communications, the Galaxy S7 edge with 32-gigabyte storage retails for $792 without subsidies, while the Note 7 costs $864.

The programme could help Samsung defend market share in emerging countries by bolstering mid-tier sales. Refurbished phones could also appeal to enterprise clients who want certain security or software products pre-installed on phones to give to their employees, the source said.

The risk of offering refurbished devices is that they could potentially cannibalise sales of Samsung's other mid-tier devices.

Expectations for solid smartphone sales helped Samsung shares to a record 1.675 million won each on Friday, taking two-day gains to 7pc and adding $15bn in market value. The shares traded down 0.36pc in Seoul on Monday.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump laid out his economic plan in Detroit just days ago. "I want to jump-start America," Trump announced, "It can be done. And it won't even be that hard."

Is it a coherent plan? Don't kid yourself. He's a deal-maker. Trump's stands on the issues are just starting positions. Everything is negotiable.

The real-estate developer has already shifted his views on income taxes. Last year, he proposed four brackets, with a top rate of 25pc for the highest earners. Now it's down to three brackets with a top rate of 33pc.

Trump used to call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants to the US. Now he says he wants to ban immigrants "from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism". That's a broader ban (France?), but without a religious test that critics found offensive.

Trump changes positions all the time. But his supporters don't seem to care. Why? Because he's not a politician. He has no fixed ideology. "I like being unpredictable," he boasts.

If Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton changes her position on anything - the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, for example - she is branded as untrustworthy. She's a politician. She is expected to have convictions. Trump has only instincts. His instincts pulled him in two different directions in Detroit. On the one hand, his speech, which he read from a prepared text, was aimed at satisfying anxious conservatives. Trump worries them because he deviates from their line on issues like free trade and entitlements. Many of his poll numbers are so low now that some conservatives are ready to write him off as a sure loser and focus their energies on saving the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate.

There was a lot in Trump's speech to reassure these conservatives: huge tax cuts, including an end to the estate tax; a moratorium on new government regulations ("I want to cut regulations massively"), and a call for more fossil-fuel drilling. On the other hand, he repeated his opposition to free trade and support for more infrastructure spending, which horrifies conservatives because it sounds like a stimulus plan.

Nor did he call for government spending cuts. Trump has no interest in an austerity programme. His base is populist, not conservative. His core support comes from white, working-class men. The populist impulse is conservative on social issues. Trump's supporters respond to his anti-immigrant message. But they tend to be fairly liberal on economic issues. Like his opposition to free trade deals, a position Trump shares with Clinton's rival throughout the primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

In Detroit, Trump proposed giving parents a tax break for childcare expenses. That sounds populist. Except that it will help mostly high-income taxpayers. Low-income families don't have a lot of tax liability to benefit from high childcare expenses.

Conservatives want to reduce spending on Social Security and Medicare, the two biggest government spending programmes. But they are the two most popular government programmes. Trump doesn't talk about cuts for fear of angering his populist base. Nor does he talk about another cause dear to the right - reducing the national debt.

Trump proposed no way to pay for his proposals. Unless you want to believe he could do it by raising tariffs on imports - something that would shock conservatives. "He's put Social Security and Medicare in a lockbox," a University of Michigan economist said, "promised massive tax cuts - which he claims at his rallies are for the middle class but mostly go to the rich - and he claims he's going to balance the budget. These things are incompatible."

Trump's attitude: So what? They're just starting positions. Conservatives don't like them? Let's make a deal!

The gist of his economic message was "change". "Ours is the campaign of the future," Trump insisted. "All we have to do is stop relying on the tired voices of the past." Like that of Hillary Clinton, who is inescapably tied to both her husband, Bill Clinton's, and Barack Obama's administrations.

Trump used Detroit as the symbol of failure. "The city of Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent's failed economic agenda," he said. But the Obama administration bailed out its car industry in 2009, which saved five million US jobs. General Motors, then on the verge of collapse, is now thriving and has paid back the bailout loans. (Reuters)

Bill Schneider is a visiting professor in the Communication Studies Department at the University of California - LA
Smiths was very familiar to drivers of British cars (when Britain had a huge car industry) because it was written where it could not be missed - right in the middle of the speedometer.

Smiths was the standard speedometer for pretty much all UK motors and such was the power of the logo that for some of us, the name, along with the sleekness of Jaguar styling and the peerless luxury of the Rolls-Royce, are the things we miss since the British motor industry no longer holds sway.

Smiths, the corporation, hasn't faded away. It just got out of the speedometer business. It is still a sprawling UK conglomerate, now making seals for oil pipelines, medical syringes and electronic equipment and detection scanners.

It has direct operations in 50 countries, markets its products in 180 countries, employs 23,000 people globally and is valued by the market at 5.3bn.

The company delivers its services through five divisions: John Crane, Medical, Detection, Interconnect and Flex-Tek.

However, it is the Crane and its medical division that are the key to profitability. These offshoots account for over 70pc of the group's operating profits.

The Crane arm manufactures a range of products like mechanical seals, couplings and bearings, so essential in the mining and oil industries.

Unfortunately, Crane - Smiths' largest division - suffered as crude oil prices tumbled. Its sales of 900m are down 4pc on the previous year but the operating profit of 225m is resilient, helped by its after-sales services which now account for 56pc of Crane's revenue.

The company's medical business, its second largest, produces infusion systems, needles and specialty medical products. The US is its largest market with almost half of its sales. Last year the medical unit accounted for almost one-third of the group's operational profit and its sales of 840m were the division's highest in the last ten years.

The name Smiths is not one well known to the public, yet millions of travellers around the world are protected by its detection equipment.

These include scanners that identify explosives, drugs, weapons and chemicals, used in airports, ports and border control. While its turnover is 660m, the group expects to gain traction from the harrowing terrorist threats.

In addition, its recent acquisition of the Californian-based Morpho Detection should boost future sales and profits.

The remaining divisions are Smiths Interconnect and Flex-Tek, both having modest profits of 50m each. Its Interconnect unit produces electronic equipment critical for the telecom, aerospace, rail and data centre markets. The group's smallest division is Flex-Tek, which produces engineering components for the aerospace, medical and air conditioning markets.

North America accounts for half of the group's total revenue of 3.3bn, which is down 2pc on the year; Europe trails with 17pc. Interestingly, the UK accounts for only 4pc.

Despite this, the company is still quoted on the London Stock Exchange - but then it has been a member since 1914. In the last few years, the group's shares have been unloved and were relegated from the FTSE 100. Up to recently, investors have been concerned with Smiths' pension problems. Fortunately, they were sorted out late last year. The company has also recovered from the Brexit brouhaha.

Two days after the elections the shares tumbled 10pc to 10.60. Investors who got on board at that price are happy, as they are now trading at 13.50, near its 10-year high.

Some investors have been seeking a break-up of the group following the rejection of a 2.5bn bid for its medical business five years ago. At the time, analysts were of the opinion the group was worth up to 8bn or 20 per share.

However, with the acquisition of Morpho, management believes the conglomerate is unlikely be broken up.

With dollar earnings and low exposure to the UK market, Smiths shares are worth a punt.

Nothing in this section should be taken as a recommendation, either explicit or implicit to buy any of the shares mentioned.
With the conclusion of the Rio Olympics, it feels like summer is coming to an end. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

With the conclusion of the Rio Olympics, it feels like summer is coming to an end. A slew of Irish companies report first-half results this week, including insulation maker Kingspan, newly-merged Paddy Power Betfair, CRH, Cairn Homes and Independent News and Media, the publisher of this newspaper.

It will be a busy week for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who will meet with a number of European allies in the coming days.

Today, Chancellor Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi gather on an aircraft carrier off the Italian island of Ventotene to discuss European economic growth and migration.

On Wednesday, Merkel will be in Tallinn, Estonia, for talks expected to include EU security matters.

Germany and the UK both release economic growth figures for the second quarter this week.

In the US, Volkswagen must provide an update on its efforts to fix 8.5m diesel engines in part of a settlement before US District Judge Charles Breyer. The Thursday deadline comes in the wake of the company's emissions scandal.

Tomorrow sees the release of new US housing data. Sales of new single-family homes probably stayed close to a more than eight-year high, helped by a healthy labour market and low mortgage rates. On Friday, Fed chair Janet Yellen speaks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Monetary Policy Symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Investors will be watching her remarks closely to gauge the likelihood of a rate hike in September. Medtronic, WPP and Royal Bank of Canada are among the other companies releasing earnings this week.
Two Dublin fire fighters picked up gold medals at the Red Head Convention this weekend.

Fire fighters Willie Birmingham and David Connelly were crowned the winners at the 7th Irish Redhead Convention which took place in the beautiful seaside village of Crosshaven in Co. Cork.

Willie scooped the award for "Best Redhead Dad" while David won the competition for "Most Freckles per square inch".

Competitions for the Reddest Eyebrows and World's Greatest Ginger Beard also took place.

The convention also included carrot-tossing, ginger speed-dating, frcertificates of genuine foxiness and the coronation of the Redhead King and Queen.

For the first time ever, the Irish Redhead Convention hosted the MOGO (Music of Ginger Origin) awards..

The Foxygen stage saw Orla Gartland, Miles Graham and Gary Lamont, actor and star of Scottish soap River City headline; while on the ElectRED picnic stage Red Shearin made an appearance, and redhead farmer Michael OSullivan and PJ Lynch co-hosted a sheep shearing demonstration.
Members of a group of squatters, who broke into and have been living in a disused and derelict prison, now face terms of imprisonment in fully operational jails for failing to comply with a High Court order.

Ms Justice Deirdre Murphy today granted the State leave to bring a motion before the court within the next two days seeking to attach and commit to prison the squatters for contempt of court.

Barrister Joseph OSullivan told the court that the Department of Expenditure and the Office of Public Works considered the former debtors prison between Halston Street and Green Street, Dublin, to be unsafe.

Last week the State was granted an injunction restraining the squat and directing those in unlawful possession to vacate the property by yesterday, Sunday.

Mr OSullivan said the order of Mr Justice Michael Hanna had not been complied with and he had been instructed to seek to attach and commit a number of unknown persons still squatting in the old prison.

John Roche, a man who identified himself as a member of the group, said he had complied with the order and had vacated the property. He told the judge that a week was not allowing the group enough time to leave the debtors prison and asked that the time be extended to a month.

Judge Murphy said she did not have jurisdiction to amend Judge Hannas order and granted the State bodies leave to bring their motion within 48 hours.

Mr OSullivan said a number of the squatters were in court but were unknown to the applicants. They were not identified in court and Judge Murphy granted the State leave to serve notice of the notice of motion on them by attaching it to the prison gate and placing copies in and around the old prison.

Earlier the court heard there were serious concerns about the safety of the group and anyone visiting them as the old debtors prison was in a derelict condition.

Judge Hanna had been told the squatters had recently been ordered by the High Court to leave a squat in Grangegorman and had moved to the old debtors prison.

He heard the building was in a dangerous state and had no running water. The State authorities feared that its electrical circuit would not support various appliances which had recently been brought in by the squatters. There were also health concerns in relation to the effect of pigeon droppings on young children.

The motion will be brought before the court on Wednesday.
From the serious crimes of murder and embezzlement to the more bizarre offences of stone-throwing and ferret-stealing - crime in the 1800s in Ireland was certainly a different story to the 21st century.

Assault was the most common crime in the country, with 28,353 cases reported over a 32-year period from 1863-1893, while 'breaking of license conditions' racked up 28,092 cases and theft hit 23,345 incidences.

And murders during the Victoria era were a whopping seven times higher than the present day.

Information on wanted criminals, types of crimes committed, rewards offered and missing people were all included in the 'Hue and Cry' - the official publication of the Royal Irish Constabulary which operated in Ireland from 1814-1922.

Now, a collection of 'Hue and Cry' records spanning 32 years have been made available online by Ancestry.com.

Here are three of the most notable crimes from 1800s' Ireland that you may not have heard of:

The Phoenix Park Murders 1882

On 6 May 1882 Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke were fatally stabbed in the Phoenix Park in Dublin. Cavendish was the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland at the time, and Burke was the most senior civil servant, a position known as the Permanent Undersecretary.

The duo were assassinated by four men in the evening of May 6, between 7 and 8pm.

It was believed the murders were carried out by a radical splinter group of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, known as the Irish National Invincibles.

A description of the men wanted for murder at the time read; "1. About 35 years old, stout make, dark complexion, hair, whiskers, and moustache recently clipped, so as to give a bristling appearance, narrow forehead, natural hollow or dinge on bridge of nose, wore a soft black jerry hat and dark clothes.

"2. About 30 years, sandy hair, whiskers, moustache, brown faded coat, as if much exposed to the sun, soft black jerry hat."

The third suspect was described as; "About 20 years, small dark moustache, no whiskers, soft black hat and dark clothes", while the fourth was described as; "About 30 years, sandy hair and moustache, beard on chin, wore dark clothes and soft black hat."

The advertisement, which offered a massive 10,000 sterling to a person who came forward with information, continued:

"The height cannot be given of any, all being sitting on an outside car, driven by aman between 35 and 40 years, red bloated face, with a few days' growth of beard on, dark or brown coat, supposed frieze and low, soft black hat."

The horse which the gang travelled with was described as "bay or chestnut, of good action".

Superintendent John Mallon added; "The men had the appearance of sailors or well-to-do artisans".

The Munster Bank Embezzlement 1885

This was one of the most notable embezzlement cases of the 1800s. Robert Farquharson was the assistant manager of the Dublin branch of Munster Bank.

He was reported to have "absconded from his office leaving his accounts in an unsatisfactory state. Farquharson was last spotted on the platform of the railway station on Amiens Street. He had embezzled over 70,000, a massive amount of money at the time, and then vanished without a trace. A report at the time read that Farquharson disappeared from his home at approximately midday on July 28, 1885. "He is about 40 years old, 5 feet 9 inches high, dark hair, dark beard, whiskers, and moustache, slightly tinged with gray, dark fresh complexion, good dark sparkling eyes, prominent teeth, average build, walks with a stoop, dressed in gentlemanly style, generally wears a silk hat, is a native of Scotland".

It continued: "Information to Superintendent William Reddy, Detective Department, Dublin, who holds a Warrant for his arrest."

The Maamtrasna Murders, 1882

This massacre of a family of five occurred in a small cabin in Mayo. The name 'Maamtrasna' is a Gaeltacht area located on Lough Mask on the border between Galway and Mayo. Almost the entire Joyce family were wiped out on the night of August 17, 1882. John Joyce, his wife Bridget, son Michael, daughter Peggy and mother-in-law Margaret were all killed. Their son Patsy (12) was the only person to have survived the killings.

Neighbours discovered the bloody scene in the rural area. The murders hit international headlines, with the English version of the Times reading; "No ingenuity can exaggerate the brutal ferocity of a crime which spared neither the grey hairs of an aged woman nor the innocent child of 12 years who slept beside her. It is an outburst of unredeemed and inexplicable savagery before which one stands appalled, and oppressed with a painful sense of the failure of our vaunted civilisation."

Ten men were convicted of the murders and three were hanged for the crime. Although most of the men spoke only Irish, they were tried in Dublin before a judge and jury in English. It is widely believed that one of the men hanged, Myles Joyce, was not involved in the murders.

British historian Robert Kee has described the Maamtrasna Murders trial as "one of the most blatant miscarriages of justice in British legal history".
More than 58,000 students got their results last week Photo: Douglas O'Connor

School-leavers are signing up in their thousands for courses in computers, business and engineering to secure well paid jobs at home and abroad.

A record 52,289 offers are being made by the CAO today, with points for many high tech, business and construction-related courses jumping this year.

Expand Close Click here to view full-size graphic / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Click here to view full-size graphic

One course in particular symbolises the aspirations of many young Irish people with ambitions to travel - Dublin City University's (DCU) degree in Global Business (USA), which has leapt to 590 points.

The increase in offers follows an all-time high in CAO applications - up to a total of 80,887 this year from 79,214 last year, reflecting an ongoing rise in school-leaver numbers.

The head of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), Prof Mark Ferguson, said that "with starting salaries of up to 30,000 and 80 new jobs in technology announced each week, a career path is STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) is a wise move".

Engineers Ireland also welcomed the increased demand for engineers - but it warned that severe shortages of specialists in this area will hinder the government's housing strategy.

"Ireland will face persistent housing shortages unless the demand for engineers catches up with demand," said Damien Owens of Engineers Ireland.

But it's not only the high-tech and business areas that are flourishing - a big demand for one of the more traditional careers, nursing, led to points rising for some courses.

In Dublin City University (DCU), the general nursing programme rose by 20 points to 450.

Meanwhile, at the University of Limerick (UL), applicants needed to be clear of 460 points to be sure of a place on its nursing programme.

Overall, about one-third of honours degree courses saw a points increase, with slightly more dropping and many others remaining the same.

While students chasing places on high-tech, construction and business courses - that are more likely to lead directly to jobs - faced a keener race for places this year, there have been drops in popular areas such as arts, easing the pressure on thousands of other college hopefuls.

A number of universities, such as DCU and Maynooth University (MU), increased their intake of arts students.

At UCD, which enrols 1,200 arts students, points dropped 10 to 320, while in MU, which now has the biggest arts intake in the country - up to almost 1,400 this year - points are down to 330.

The main primary teaching courses saw a slight fall in points.

In the construction field, architecture programmes saw some of the biggest points hike.

Quantitative business in University College Dublin (UCD) is the college's highest entry degree, at 585 points.

Meanwhile, at University College Cork (UCC) business courses rose by between five and 30 points.

UCD deputy registrar Prof Mark Rogers said the university continued to support the national recovery but the issue of funding higher education was holding it back.

In TCD there were increases of 10 points in engineering, maths and science.

Medicine points are down slightly, as they are in some other universities, although other healthcare courses, such as occupational therapy (520) and pharmacy (560), are showing increases of five points

UL saw a strong increase in demand for courses in its science and engineering faculty. Points for its aeronautical engineering course by 40 to 500 while its electronic and computer engineering course rose by 15 points to 425.

Science programmes in Limerick rose by 20 points for its applied physics degree.
'Although it's unlikely that your lecturers will have you chasing around your campus searching for a Pokemon, there is huge benefit in using more mainstream apps for education purposes'

Just weeks after its launch, there is already considerable discussion around how Pokemon Go, the most downloaded mobile game ever, could be used in a higher education context.

Indeed, the success of this augmented reality game may well signal a new direction and debate in social gaming and apps, and their role in a successful college experience.

Expand Close DITs Mary ORawe. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp DITs Mary ORawe.

Although it's unlikely that your lecturers will have you chasing around your campus searching for a Pokemon, there is huge benefit in using more mainstream apps for education purposes.

It seems clear that the 'smart' experience experienced by many second-level students needs to be continued in the third-level learning environment.

But many academics have been slow to view apps, and indeed the smartphone in general, as anything other than a distraction, with some banning them entirely from the lecture hall. It's understandable that academics would proceed with a certain amount of ambivalence.

However, apps have gained a new legitimacy in a third-level learning environment. Evidence shows that they can help make the often difficult shift to more independent thinking, as well as improving your organisational skills, offering you learning on-the-go, and helping you stay engaged with a lecture.

At the pre-entry stage and early orientation to college, many universities and colleges have developed bespoke apps to communicate course content, guide students around campus, facilitate easy connections to internal and external resources, and provide quick access to the all-important timetable.

DIT's Get Smart! and Prep for DIT apps are examples of such bespoke apps developed specifically for first-year undergraduates, foundation and international students.

The best experience of integrating apps and other technologies into your academic learning will come where your college or course works with you to provide guidance and some form of 'app toolkit', sorting through the clutter and offering suggestions for both in-class interaction and independent study/assessment preparation.

To maximise the value of apps, it's best to bear the following in mind:

1 Be clear about the purpose of the app: If your college/lecturer recommends a particular app, use it. Don't ignore apps developed for you, or learning platforms offered by your college in app form (e.g. Blackboard). And being caught on Facebook (and the like) in a lecture is still a no-no!

2 Organise yourself: Students often struggle to beat procrastination, especially in a more independent learning environment. Apps such as GoogleKeep and Wunderlist can help with cracking those scheduling difficulties. Tackling that individual assessment can also be guided by specific apps for various stages of planning e.g. Easybib for writing up that all-important list of references, Cogi and Evernote for note-taking.

3 Familiarise yourself with assistive technology apps: Whilst geared towards students who have learning difficulties, these apps are useful for the whole student population. UrAbility.com can point learners and educators to the best app resources for a range of learning styles.

4 Engage yourself: We've all drifted off in a lecture or talk to find that we missed the main points. Great interactive techniques are now available, among the most popular being apps to facilitate multiple-choice quizzes around the content just covered. Socrative is one of the best apps in this category, allowing students to test themselves in a fun and gently competitive environment, and offering a welcome break from listening to the lecturer!

5 Manage yourself and your group: Much continuous assessment is group-based at college, and group dynamics are probably the number one cause of frustration for students in preparing assessment work. Trello is a great app for project management, allowing team members to be added and progress tracked.

Perhaps not as electrifying as Pokemon Go, but these, and multiple other great apps can help ease your transition to college and your successful academic journey through your course. Best of all, most are free.

Mary O'Rawe is a lecturer in Management and Innovation Management, and first-year orientation coordinator, at the School of Hospitality Management and Tourism, DIT
If you're a parent or guardian of a Leaving Cert student, the summer of waiting is finally over. Hopefully your child is happy with their CAO offer - in which case you'll be feeling relieved, happy and focused on the practicalities of seeing them on their way to third level.

For those parents whose child may be experiencing disappointment today, there's no need for panic or hasty decisions. Your son or daughter still has options available to them and they have a full week in which to make their decision.

First things first though. For the next few days, see your main role as providing a supportive, sympathetic listening ear. However tempting it might be, don't launch the parent-rescue mission. Disappointment is part of life and it's important that you give them the time and space to experience it. You too may be feeling stressed and anxious but keep your focus trained on your child. Over the next few days, use the time to acknowledge their feelings and listen to their story.

This will be hugely helpful to them and, just as importantly, it will help you to understand, evaluate and respond to their perspective.

After a few days, gently bring the conversation around to the first round offer. Regardless of where it ranked on their list of CAO preferences, encourage your son or daughter to research the course using the online prospectus of the relevant institution. This may sound very obvious but it is amazing how many students accept course offers without exploring the course content or structure.

The fit between the course and their natural interests, preference and strengths should drive their choice - not their points count. Very occasionally, students may be offered one of their higher preference courses in round two.

However, the best advice is for your son or daughter to base their decision on the first round offer. Remember too, of course, that just because they secure an offer doesn't mean that they have to accept it. There's little sense in taking up a course in which they have no interest.

Perspective is very important at this time. Try to leave the hype aside. Be assured that Leaving Cert results, points counts and CAO offers are not a measure of your child or their future career success.

So, encourage your child to see higher education qualifications as the gateway to future career opportunities, rather than something that will somehow define their future. Remember that graduates are more career mobile than ever, with most graduates changing jobs at least once before the age of 24.

From my experience of graduate employability at the University of Limerick, employers look for graduates with a range of attributes that have little to do with degree discipline or academic results.

In this week of decision-making, your greatest gift will be to assure your child of their potential and remind them of their individual talents, skills and abilities. You are uniquely positioned to support them on this journey. Be confident that you can make a difference.

Patrice Twomey is Director, Cooperative Education & Careers Division University of Limerick and one of the authors of Aiming Higher, a guide for parents and guardians to support their children in higher education choices
The first reason, and by far the most important, to study the arts is because you love them, or are at least curious about them and want to find out more. I can't stress how important it is to study something with which you feel passionately engaged.

To those of you doing your Leaving Certificate, with decisions to make about your futures, I say this: during the course of your adult lives you will, believe me, have plenty of time to make your compromises with the world. For heaven's sake, don't start out with a compromise. Study the thing you love.

The arts are important because they are what make us human. The earliest recorded artefacts of our species include artworks - cave paintings, carved images. Homo sapiens made art, Neanderthal Man did not; we survived, they did not. Art is not an adornment or added extra that we can get around to once we have attended to the 'important' things in life.

Art encourages individual, personal responses. That's why repressive regimes are always so hostile towards the arts. The Taliban hate music. Fascists are afraid of art and artists - when they take over, it is usually the writers, film-makers, and intellectuals who are first against the wall.

And for good reason. Art bursts through the confines of ideology, seeks freedom. Attempts to regulate art and bend it to the will of dictators are generally failures - think of all those monumental works of Soviet Realist statuary, now torn down, broken up, or standing in museums, as a warning. We can tell the difference between art and propaganda.

Or we can if we are educated to do so. All education should instill the virtues of critical thinking. An education in the arts certainly does so. My own education in English literature has given me a critical vocabulary - and more importantly, a critical habit of being - which has served me well in any number of situations, from getting a job to casting a vote.

More than ever, we need a workforce and an electorate which is critically and culturally literate, intellectually self-confident, independent, and articulate. Employers tell us, time and again, that these are exactly the qualities they want in graduates: this is what they mean by 'transferable skills'.

When people talk to my colleagues in English and me at Trinity open days, the first question we are often asked is: What job can I get with an English degree? Obviously this is an important question. The answer is that English, or any arts subject, is not directly vocational, does not train you for one particular career. Rather, it provides a critical education which enables you to go on to any number of careers. English graduates have gone on to be successful business people, rock stars, and the Prime Minister of Canada.

As if this weren't enough, studying the arts will make you, at a stroke, devastatingly witty, suave, and attractive, if not downright irresistible. That, of course, is the real reason why I chose to study them.
1. Sony h.ear 100ABN, Price: 249 from Littlewoods

There's more to good headphones than Beats. These over-ear cans from Sony look great and perform superbly. Because they're noise-cancelling headphones, they also act as a superb buffer against external disruption when you're trying to study. They're light and padded, which adds to their comfort on your head over long periods. They have quick-access buttons (volume, pause, forward, back) which stop you having to take your phone out of your pocket so often when listening to music. These buttons also include an on-off switch for the noise-cancelling feature, which gives you options for battery life. They fold up tightly enough to fit into a large coat pocket or a modestly-sized compartment in an average bag

Expand Close Apple iPad Pro 13 (899 from PC World) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Apple iPad Pro 13 (899 from PC World)

2. Apple iPad Pro 13, Price: 899 from PC World

I'm including Apple's top-end iPad here because productivity iPads can now perform at the same level as laptops for most tasks. And this iPad is just as powerful with a gorgeous 13-inch screen. It also works brilliantly with a couple of custom keyboards, not least Apple's own Smart Keyboard. The iPad Pro has a few other major advantages over laptops. First, it's more portable and generally lighter, meaning you can pop it in a bag easier. Second, it recharges using an ordinary iPhone Lightning connection. And because of its top-class screen and four stereo speakers, it makes an unrivalled Netflix or movie screen for a generation that barely watch traditional telly anymore. The downside is that it's fairly expensive: the 128GB version costs over 1,200.

3. Acer Chromebook R11, Price: 399 from Argos

Acer's R11 convertible touchscreen Chromebook is nicely styled with a usable keyboard and a reasonably bright touchscreen. It's cheap, cheerful and very usable. The laptop's 11.6-inch screen folds over to turn the device into a large tablet, albeit one running on Google's desktop-like Chrome operating system. As it's a Chromebook, the vast majority of its functionality is based on 'cloud' apps like Google Docs - you won't be using this as an anchor device for an iPhone or iPod. There's also the bare minimum of onboard storage with just 16GB available. It has an HDMI port, a couple of USB ports and an SD memory card slot. It's a nice budget laptop option.

4. Dell XPS 13, Price: 1,189 from Dell.ie

If you're likely to need a serious, performance-driven laptop that can handle any kind of college project or software variation, Dell's XPS 13 is a pretty good choice. It has excellent power configurations, starting at an Intel i5 chip, 8GB of Ram and 256GB of internal storage memory. The 2k 'full HD' screen is also impressive. But its design is equally of note here: Dell has all but eliminated the screen's bezel to a hair's breadth. This means that what is supposed to be a 13-inch laptop takes up no more space than a 12-inch or 11-inch laptop, with consequent transportation advantages. The loss of the bezel also means that the XPS 13 is incredibly light. (At 1.2kg, it's over 10pc lighter than Apple's skinny 13-inch MacBook Air.) Battery life is good to excellent, at well over seven hours' use. The backlit keyboard is decent and there's plenty of connections of offer, with USB 3, Thunderbolt and a memory card port.

5. Sony xperia E5, Price: 220 sim-free from Argos

Sony's new budget Xperia E5 is bright, fairly powerful and has a decent camera. It feels easy to use despite being more than 300 less than many of the phones you're pitched these days. In other words, you can go full-power on Instagram, Facebook, Gmail, Outlook Exchange, Twitter and your media subscriptions without any real loss of performance on a device that's within the price range of almost everybody. The nearest you'll find to a catch is that its 16GB of internal storage isn't really enough these days (although to make up for this, Sony has added a memory card slot for up to 200GB extra). The speaker on the phone is surprisingly good for a budget model, while the five-inch screen just about makes the snazzy standard with 194 pixels per inch. The E5's 2,700mAh battery life is adequate and gets a general user through a full day's use.

Expand Close Acer Chromebook R11 (339 from Argos) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Acer Chromebook R11 (339 from Argos)
Kevin and Margo Greaney with a photo of their late brother Michael and his wife Valerie. Photo: Michael MacSweeney/Provision

The family of a man at the centre of a murder-suicide have revealed he was hounded by debt collection agencies and financial institutions within weeks of being released from the Central Mental Hospital (CMH).

A brother of Michael Greaney (53) called for a special moratorium on such debt issues, to protect vulnerable people trying to recover from serious mental health problems.

Kevin Greaney also blamed years of underfunding within Ireland's mental health support system for the 2014 tragedy that has left their family heartbroken.

His parents, Michael Senior and Maureen, and his sister, Margo, said they are haunted by what happened.

Michael Greaney, a Naval Service veteran, was admitted to the CMH in Dublin after he attempted to kill a teenager and then take his own life in 2013.

He was admitted under Section 5 (2) of the Criminal Law (Insanity) Act in May 2013.

Expand Close Michael Greaney pictured with his wife Valerie Photo: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Michael Greaney pictured with his wife Valerie Photo: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision

However, he was released from full-time residential care after six weeks and spent the next 18 months effectively being treated in the community.

In December 2014, a short time after being allowed back to his family home in Cobh, Co Cork, Mr Greaney fatally stabbed his wife, Valerie, before taking his own life.

He also stabbed his eldest daughter, Michelle (21).

Read More

Escape

The brave young woman managed to escape the property and has since recovered from her injuries.

Kevin Greaney said he didn't want any other family to suffer their heartache - and believes hard lessons urgently need to be learned.

Michael Greaney, was a trained physiotherapist but his Cobh business ran into problems when he expanded shortly before the economic crash.

"Part of Michael's problem was that he insisted on treating people who couldn't afford to pay him," Kevin said.

"He'd treated them in the good times and wouldn't turn his back on them in the bad times. That's how kind a person he was. But it broke him in the end."

The family also said that they were horrified to learn that, following his release from the CMH, he was actively pursued by debt collection agents acting for several financial institutions.

Kevin Greaney said he believed the Government should now look at offering some type of temporary court protection to people if they have serious mental health issues.

"How an earth can a man who was treated in the Central Mental Hospital for something as serious as happened in 2013 be chased by debt collectors just a few weeks after he was released?" he said.

"It just isn't right."
Don't cry and don't raise your eyes - from your smartphone, that is. It's the gorgeously warm night before the Leaving Cert results come out and all across the country teenagers are fretting themselves to a restless sleep. Or at least we might imagine they are. The class of 2016, or Generation K as they were recently dubbed (after Katniss Everdeen, the grimly determined heroine of The Hunger Games), seems to be a bit more chill about things.

In Dingle, Ruarc Scally (18) is fairly phlegmatic about his potential results - he wants to do 3D Design in Dun Laoghaire. "I do wish we could just get them now to save the waiting, but I won't be up all night or anything. I'm going to go in with a friend or two. I have a big day tomorrow, not just because of the results but because I'm dropping my girlfriend to the airport. She is doing a 'workaday', where you exchange living arrangements for a work situation. Now she has to leave. It will be emotional, but it'll be fine. Tomorrow I'll go out."

In Offaly it's a slight resignation, rather than puppy love, that leaves Hollie Gilson, also 18, equally non-plussed about Leaving Cert D-Day. "My heart wasn't really in it. I didn't make the best choices. I'm going out now, I'm not waiting until after."

Atta girl. To these kids the mere fact of having to go into the school to get actual pieces of paper seems ridiculously old fashioned. Online availability would be better, they agree. And yet for the smartphone generation, this is one of the last little real-life teenage sacraments in a world that is increasingly digital. Today's teenagers have sometimes been characterised by their reportedly resigned worldview - that we live an already dystopian and unequal society - but the thing that truly separates them from all other generations of Irish people is that they are the first to grow up fully in the world of competing screens.

This shapes everything we regard as innately part of the teenage years, from bullying to their burgeoning romantic lives. Social media broadcasts and amplifies age-old peer pressures. Some parents struggle to control access and the combination of technology and emergent sexuality is a heady mix. For instance, Irish teenagers are among the most prolific in the EU for 'sexting', the practice of sending explicit text messages and images, a conference taking place at Dublin City University heard in June.

Social media triggers body image issues in young people, according to a study this month by Bodywhys, the eating disorder association of Ireland. And there may be a connection between social media and teenage isolation. "It can definitely be isolating," Ruarc tells me. "There might be one sorry sod at home who is just seeing what's happening online. I've been in that situation myself before in the past. I think that might happen to people anyway though, even without social media."

"I think it's hard for some teenagers to draw the line between the internet and reality," Sophie Gilson (15) tells me. "There is always one friend who Snapchats everything. You can't get away from it. There are people who'll wait for the right time of day to post for the most likes." Like most Irish teens, she prefers other social media forums to fuddy-duddy Facebook. "Instagram - I definitely prefer that. I think that would be the same for most teenage girls."

There is a sort of a sense of pity you feel for the teens of today. The generations before them have saddled them with a lifetime of national debt. They come of age in the long shadow of economic decline, job insecurity and increasing inequality. They have the existential threats of war and climate change to deal with. They are bombarded with consumerism but can't afford any of it. They don't even get paid for the endless internships we make them do. Who would want to grow up?

Most girls would be shy in talking about how they feel inside - Rachel OReilly, 15

Expand Close Rachel O'Reilly, 15, Celbridge, Co Kildare. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Rachel O'Reilly, 15, Celbridge, Co Kildare.

"Actually, I think despite a lot of that it is still an exciting time to be young," says Rachel O'Reilly (15) from Celbridge. "There might be bad things happening in the wider world. But lots of things change in these years on a personal level and I think most teenagers would still be excited about growing up. Young people are naturally optimistic, I think."

Getting good grades is lifes biggest challenge - Jamie Pim, 15

Expand Close Jamie Pim 15, Kilternan, Dublin. Photo: Douglas OConnor. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Jamie Pim 15, Kilternan, Dublin. Photo: Douglas OConnor.

"There would still be peer pressures on teenagers - especially to do with taking drink or drugs," says Jamie Pim (15) from Kilternan in Dublin. "It could come from friends or whoever you're hanging out with. I wouldn't give in to that pressure though. Myself, I don't really care about having girlfriends and stuff, I'm more about enjoying life."

Teenagers can do the Queen's English, but they have their own language. If you attempt to speak it to them - "bae, your hair is on fleek" (I really like your hair) - they will coolly ask you if "that's a thing?" Which is their way of expressing incredulity that you, fusty old dinosaur that you clearly are, might think you're down with the kids. You can sigh but you should really pay attention because teenage jargon is what you will be speaking in very soon. Terms like 'duckface' (self-conscious pouting) 'PMSL' (pissing myself laughing), 'WTAF' (what the actual fuck) and 'jel' (jealous) are just a few of the words that have gone from being teenage or internet slang to being used by adults. It will happen again. Remember when people first started saying OMG and OTT and how silly you thought that was?

One boy begins with the sentence: After we found out about Dads other wife

Irish teenagers grow up in a time when family life is rapidly changing, with single parent, blended and gay families entering the mainstream. All of the teenagers I speak to express support for these changes, but, perhaps like other generations before them, they will have their own things to say about the way we shaped these changes. One boy I interview, not named in this piece, begins his explanation of his own family life memorably: "After we found out about Dad's other wife"

The stereotypical image of the teen emotional state is of chronic moodiness and dramatic strops but more recently it's been accepted that mental health is no joke at that age. Depression is the top cause of illness and disability among adolescents, the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed last week. And it said that globally, suicide is the third most common cause of death in adolescents, after traffic injuries and HIV-Aids.

Our teens are bombarded with stories of celebrities coming out about their mental health problems, but those I speak to say that despite this, most Irish teenagers would be reluctant to share their mental health difficulties. "I suppose seeing a famous person do something does normalise it, but at the same time I think most girls would be shy about talking about how they feel inside", Rachel O'Reilly tells me. "That does still take quite a bit of bravery."

Peer pressure is at a lifetime high in the mid-to-late teens, but tied in with this is the importance of friendship. "The group of friends I have at the moment are very understanding and would help a lot through tough times. I had cancer when I was younger and though there were some people who were mean, my friends always wanted to help me," says Jamie Pim. "After I got through that I felt stronger and ready to take every opportunity. My Mum asked me, 'If you could choose to have had it or not, what would you choose?' and I said I'd choose to have it because it made me mature so quickly."

People are escaping into their phones to escape real life - Hollie Gilson, 18

Expand Close Hollie and Sophie Gilson / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Hollie and Sophie Gilson

It's been said that a progressive can always console himself that one day the young will make his dreams come true. This could not be more apparent with Irish teenagers. They cheered gay marriage past the referendum post, for instance, and they have seen young people in school come out and are generally supportive of this. Their attitudes to abortion, based on this informal survey, however, seemed to be split down gender lines with boys leaning towards the idea that it should only be allowed in exceptional circumstances and girls more likely to be behind bringing it in, eventually, on demand. "I think that it happens anyway and all they are doing at the moment is making it uncomfortable for those women," says Hollie Gilson. "Having a child is such a huge thing, I don't think it's something somebody should be forced into doing. I don't know that I would necessarily want to have an abortion if I got pregnant today, but I know that if it was men who got pregnant the law would have been changed a long time ago."

Gender roles are less defined for Irish teenagers than for any generation before them and within the education system there are efforts to break down the ways in which these roles affect subject choices. Despite this, most of the top schools in the country are single gender, something which, exam results aside, might not be the healthiest thing for teenagers. Most of those I spoke to would prefer mixed classrooms. "I think girls can be really bitchy and nearly worse than the boys," Sophie Gilson tells me. "They might be mean to each other, but if there were guys there they might say, 'Why are you doing that? That's stupid.' I think if you're around males every day for instance, when you have to go on and get a job and a man is interviewing you, you'll have more confidence in that situation."

The image of teenagers is that they are vain, brand-loving and self-obsessed but Irish teenagers are among the top performers in the OECD when it comes to reading and literacy and are perhaps not as shallow as one might suspect. The ones I speak to cite different influences ranging from Lance Armstrong (before his drugs bust) to author Louise O'Neill. "A few years ago I might have liked the Kardashians, but not now," Hollie Gilson says. "I'm more interested in things that different journalists write now. I think if someone is closer to my own age I'm more likely to be interested in them. There are always trends in how we're supposed to look. Having big, defined eyebrows is something everyone loves at the moment, for some reason. I would spend money on clothes but not much on make-up. Brands come and go."

This generation is the first to come of age in a time when bullying has moved from being an accepted part of growing up to a social ill that must be stamped out. Despite, or perhaps because of this, we hear more about bullying now than ever before. There have been harrowing stories of teenagers being hounded to suicide. "I think the difference now is people understand that even someone who is doing the bullying probably has something wrong with them," says Ruarc Scally. "Some of the slagging that anyone would get in school might be called bullying. I've been fine with it but others might have taken it badly."

Tattoos have gone from subculture to pop culture in recent years, to the horror of many parents. Tina Fey memorably wrote a prayer for her daughter in which she wished that "her haunches would remain innocent of ink". Psychologists say the popularity of tattoos among the young is down to a desire for "individuation", or staking out their own identity. The dilemma of being a teen is how to rebel while conforming with peers. "I think I'd be worried that if I got one, when I got old it would look horrible," Jamie Pim says.

That's a mantra to repeat this week perhaps. In Offaly the sun has risen and Hollie Gilson has finally collected her Leaving Cert results. She's breathing a sigh of relief. "It was all a bit surreal. I counted them up wrong at first - they don't tot them on the paper for you. I'm happy with what I got and it was along the lines I expected. I don't think some curtain magically falls back now and everything is open to you. But at the same time it is exciting to get out of school and experience a new life."

Adulthood it seems, is still a thing.
Leo Varadkar is "just a little" fed up of people linking his every move to the Fine Gael leadership - but at the same time he keeps fuelling the fire.

As he stood at Michael Collins's graveside in Glasnevin yesterday he opened with few phrases as Gaeilge.

The minister has been brushing up on his Irish in recent months and it seems he has been reading a bit of history over the summer holidays too.

He mused about how Collins (the symbolic father of Fine Gael) and Arthur Griffith (founder of the original Sinn Fein) would not have been "natural friends" but were "bonded together by extraordinary circumstances".

He said the country should look to "complete their mission" because "it is a legacy we should all be proud to work for".

It was the type of speech that one might expect from a Fine Gael minister honouring Michael Collins, so when Mr Varadkar said afterwards that the content was nothing to do with leadership, he may well have been genuine.

However, until the day Enda Kenny's replacement is chosen, everything Mr Varadkar and his challenger Simon Coveney do will be judged in that light.

"I don't think the speech actually talks about leadership at all," he said.

"It talks about vision and it talks about really the legacy that our founding fathers, Collins, Griffith and others, left to us, and that revolutionary generation should be an inspiration to all politicians no matter how they intend to serve."

But leadership and vision are intrinsically linked.

Mr Varadkar only gave a snapshot of the direction he believes the country should move in - balancing taxes that encourage industry with investment that empowers people. It actually sounded a lot Fianna Fail's 'An Ireland For All' election slogan.

He also had a subtle message for Fine Gael that they should learn from their own communications mistakes during February's election campaign, while quoting poet Ezra Pound.

The story goes that Griffith told Pound you "can't move 'em with a cold thing like economics".

"Pound disagreed with this advice, and challenged it in his writings, but he missed a deeper wisdom. Griffith prefaced the advice by saying, 'it's a question of feeling'.

"In other words, you had to inspire someone to believe in your economic vision; you had to appeal to their heart as well as their head.

"Cold economics and policy on its own was not enough. There is a lesson there for politicians today," he said.

Leadership is a dirty word in Fine Gael right now but there's nothing wrong with aspiring to be at the top.

Maybe it's time the contenders to be the next Taoiseach told us a little bit more about their vision instead of giving speeches laden with double meanings.
In my lifetime, I've been flashed at seven times. Unsavoury highlights include missing a plane because of a man revealing himself to me en route to the airport and being exposed at twice in one day - once from a guy inside a car, then a few hours later in the middle of the baths in Budapest.

Back home, I've been called a tranny and when I used to host a karaoke night, a half-dozen or so people thought I was a man.

It's grotesque and offensive, but when I multiply days in the year with my age and humans I have encountered on the street in my life, it's an insignificant number of people who have been rude or perverted. I also join every living person who has been subjected to rude and vile sexist, racist or moronic jibes for no reason.

Yet, if it were up to the growing culture of offence which surrounds me, I should call upon all men to be castrated and create a #cuttofftheirballs movement.

The reaction du jour is to protest over one person's behaviour and cause a mass movement, the exact opposite of what we're told when it comes to terrorism - don't tar with a brush an entire race or religion because of the actions of a few.

I watched a breastfeeding social media campaign recently, which depicted women being forced to sit in toilets with their babies and feed them in dark cubicles covered in graffiti.

It had 7.5 million internet hits and thousands of comments by people who simply could not believe how women who nurse their babies could be vilified for such a natural and necessary act.

I searched in vain for comments saying "That happened to me", but alas my valiant efforts were fruitless. I breastfed my baby girl for 10 months and never once did I encounter any issues. I even ordered a pint of Guinness the odd time while I was feeding because I had a bottle prepared for the next feed and allowed myself a treat.

No one I know, nor anyone they know, was pushed into a loo to breastfeed out of public sight. But let's create a conspiracy where there is none. Everyone got on the bandwagon saying "How dare they?" and "How in modern times do women get treated like this by society?" The answer is - they don't.

You can breastfeed anywhere you want. You're just seeking attention, looking for some kind of medal for doing something totally normal.

The same goes for exhibitionist Carina Fitzpatrick, who was forcibly removed from Knockanstockan festival in Co Wicklow for being topless. Ms Fitzpatrick insisted that she subverted her body to (yawn) fight social stigmas and stand up against the blatant sexualisation of women's breasts.

Predictably, outrage ensued and the narcissistic we-have-too-much-time-on-our-hands #FreeTheNipple campaign got lots of traction. If men can go topless, then why can't women?

The male equivalent of going topless is going bottomless and, from what little I know, a bottomless man at a festival will get removed quicker than you can burn a bra.

If Ms Fitzpatrick had done it in another country - like Germany, for example, she would also have been removed, even though Germans have a very liberal attitude to nudity - but only in certain places at certain times.

Neo-feminists make a mockery of the cause they allegedly care so deeply about. I'm all for standing up for human and women's rights, but I want the thing I'm outraged about to be an actual thing.

Last week in the UK, a gay couple were shopping in Sainsburys when a fellow shopper complained to a security guard that they were behaving inappropriately.

The security guard informed them of the female shopper's disapproval of their holding hands and touching each other.

Next thing, outrage. One gay activist tweeted: "Sainsburys kicked out gays from shops, again, so we're gonna go and snog in the aisles."

It was great and they made their point and lots of people snogged in the aisles, but somewhere in the disgust the actual facts went askew - like the fact that they hadn't actually been kicked out at all and that Sainsburys had nothing to do with it.

On the other side of the coin, imagine a shopper, unsteady on their feet, faced with an aisle full of people getting in their way.

Would they have cause for outrage? No? Of course not.

Public discourse is often more vulgar, offensive and without regard for others than the supposed offensive act.

Just look at the abortion campaign - why are women being photographed with abortion pills at the tip of their tongue like tabs of acid in the early 90s? How crass.

While some people are getting offended about the removal of an Eighth Amendment poster in Temple Bar, they're happy enough to pay over the odds for an apartment in Dublin city.

The landlord decides to increase the rent from 1,800 to 2,800, no problem. Knock yourself out, rip us off, but what's worse is that there's this women who couldn't show her nipple somewhere in a packed festival. There's an element of do as I do about the virulent campaigns of yonder.

Intolerance is a key, as is a dismissal of large sections of society. While rambling on about feminism, strident women's rights campaigner Caitlin Moran - the one who likes to get her belly out in public - said "Women under 30 don't know what they're talking about" in a recent interview.

She was referring to Taylor Swift, who didn't identity as a feminist and disregarded the opinions of her generation. But that's okay, because she is an ambassador for women's rights.

In order to be a legitimate female member of society these days, you simply must be neo-feminist, breastfeed and shout it from the rooftops, have had at least one abortion and not regret it and not have had a new thought in the past decade.

Being pro-abortion is key. There is no choice in the matter.

I'm all for women having abortions here, if only just to shut everyone up about it.

Unlike the rest of the campaigners, I feel pain for people who can't have children, or regret having abortions - they do exist, even if their voice doesn't count.

Women shouldn't have to travel to the UK to have abortions in cases of foetal abnormality or rape, but why are the rest of them so offended?

It's not like they're being sent to an institution. London is a one-hour flight away. Plus there are monies available for people who can't afford the trip.

I have no issues with people being offended, I just wish they got offended about things like human sacrifices for medicine in China, the Syrian war, the refugee crisis, the activities of Boko Haram.

Before you #freethenipple, why not try to do something to stop climate change, which no one seems too bothered about.

The world is dying and we're killing it, but we are too busy indulging in the paroxysms of disapproval over 'that thing some rude guy said to that woman that time' to do anything about it.
Going to college is expensive - even if you're one of the 50pc of students on higher education grants - but it's still worthwhile getting a third-level qualification. And it's not just because of your greater earning power.

Of course, there are exceptions and too many drop out but those who stay the course generally do well in later and longer lives.

Just how well and for how long has been shown over the years in research from the Paris-based think thank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

A 30-year-old male with third level education can expect to live eight years longer than one who has not completed secondary education, according to data collected from 15 OECD countries.

In general, women outlive men, as we know, but they also benefit in terms of longevity from going to college by adding an extra four years to their lives.

Higher education also encourages graduates to become more active citizens and even cast their votes more frequently. A study across 25 countries shows that the gap in voting patterns between those with higher and lower levels of education is 15 percentage points, which is remarkable.

There are similar relationships between education and volunteering, political interest, interpersonal trust, as well as trust in institutions and engagement in social activities. Adults who have attained higher levels of education are generally more likely to report greater satisfaction in life than those with lower levels of education attainment.

It's not all positive, though. As the OECD puts it, "some studies have shown that the higher the level of education, the more likely an adult is to engage in potentially self-abusive behaviour, such as binge drinking".

You don't need research to know that whatever positive skills they develop while in college, too many Irish students often drink too much. And it's no consolation to know that this is not a particularly Irish phenomenon.

But it's in the jobs' stakes that qualifications really count, especially in Ireland.

In fact, the 'premium' attached to a third level award is higher in Ireland than in most other developed countries.

In other words, the earning gap between graduates and those who leave before finishing secondary education is wider in Ireland than in other member states of the OECD.

Graduates' lifetime earnings are much greater than those with lower levels of qualifications in this country.

Ireland's growing economy should mean that pattern will continue for the foreseeable future. This is unlike the situation in some other countries where graduates feel cheated that their time in college has not resulted in that elusive, well-paid job they were promised.

We all know of graduates who end up flipping burgers or working in bars when they leave college and we know people who are in other jobs that clearly do not need a third-level qualification.

Some of them may not stay in these jobs for long because they are just using them until they gain a foothold in the employment market; but others do get stuck in dead-end jobs. However, this issue of 'over qualification' is one that needs to be looked at closely.

It's one that colleges need to consider when they are offering new courses, especially in areas where there is already an over-supply of specialist graduates. Over-qualification is not peculiar to Ireland - in fact, research has shown that 22pc of graduates across OECD countries are overqualified for their jobs. In Ireland the figure is 28pc, according to the ESRI.

Employers are partly to blame, using third-level qualifications as a filtering mechanism to discard job applications from young people who finish their education at Leaving Cert level.

It makes it much more difficult for them to get on to the jobs' ladder. It's also difficult for those who drop out of college, and many do. It's a personal loss to them but also to the system. Our drop-out rates overall are not out of step with those in most developed countries but that's not of huge consolation to the individual who feels he or she has no option but to quit their course.

Dropping out can represent a personal and financial loss for the student and for the higher education system as a whole. There are some areas, such as computing, where there are particular problems with students staying the course. This relates to difficulties that many of our young people have with mathematics. Engineers Ireland last night expressed concern about the one in six who drop out of engineering-related courses.

Those who drop out and the 20pc of school leavers who don't apply to CAO need other options now that there are far too few job openings for those who finish school with the Leaving Certificate.

These other options are increasing, particularly in the apprenticeship and further education area - and not before time. Too often, we judge third-level education on the basis of the opportunities provided for students to develop skills such as resilience, communication skills, team working, projects etc, by way of preparation for the world of work.

But it has also the potential, as the OECD has pointed out, to bring significant benefits to individuals and society which go well beyond its contribution to individuals' employability.

John Walshe is an education consultant and former special adviser to former Education Minister Ruairi Quinn
LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 26: Honoree Zoe Kravitz (L) and presenter Lisa Bonet attend the InStyle Awards at Getty Center on October 26, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Actors Lisa Bonet and Jason Momoa arrive at the premiere of Summit Entertainment's "Divergent" at the Regency Bruin Theatre on March 18, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Actors Lisa Bonet (L) and Jason Momoa attend the premiere of Warner Bros. Pictures' "Mad Max: Fury Road" at TCL Chinese Theatre on May 7, 2015 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones

Former Game of Thrones actor Jason Momoa in Dublin. Picture: Instagram

Dublin's Game of Thrones fans got a right royal treat over the weekend after the actor who played the hunky Khal Drogo hit the town with a vengeance.

Strapping Hawaiian star Jason Momoa sent pulses racing after posing for a string of pictures of himself clearly enjoying his time in the capital city.

Expand Close Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones

One snap showing Government buildings was captioned: "Ireland, I am home. So happy to be back."

Another picture showed him downing a pint of Guinness in a pub with his two pals, saying how he was drinking "mother's milk with my brothers".

The actor is touring Europe with his wife Lisa Bonet and their two children and has been keeping fans updated on their adventures on his Instagram page.
Even at the height of her career, Louise Bowden was aware of the brutal nature of life as a performer. One day she might be starring as the lead in a West End musical, the next day, production over, she could be out on the street handing out leaflets for a living. "One minute you're on the stage, your poster's outside the theatre. The next minute you're trying to look for work to pay your bills. It doesn't matter how successful you are. I could be 55 and it would still be the same. And I just didn't see myself wanting that life."

Louise has just moved home to Ireland after living in London for 10 years, where she enjoyed a hugely successful career as a musical actress. Moving home was not a hard decision, says the 35-year-old. "I was starting to think about the future; 'Ok, I've secured a lead, I'm in the West End, but when it finishes I'm back to square one again.' As you get older, the waiting for the 'yes man' to say you've got this role is daunting. You begin to realise that you want more than the job. I found myself longing for a real life. Because in West End theatre and with acting [it] can be such a roller-coaster."

Luckily, an offer from her former teacher Lorraine Barry at The Billie Barry Stage School to come work for them appeared. It will be the first time a non-family member has taught dance at the legendary north-Dublin school. For Louise, it is, she says, in a way coming full circle.

She started dance classes there at the age of nine, old for the school, she laughs, which regularly gets pupils starting at the age of three. "I think from the moment I could talk and move I was into it," says Louise, who as a one-year-old growing up in Irishtown would dance to the video of The Beatles Yellow Submarine. "For me it was a calling," she explains. Throughout school she performed up to six nights a week in the Jurys Irish Cabaret in Jurys Hotel Ballsbridge, "learning my craft", she explains.

"It was two separate worlds. I'd go to school in the day, come home, do a bit of homework, then walk up to Jurys for the night. It was very exciting. Make-up, costumes, performance, and then up for school the next day. Really bizarre, when you think of it. I had this double existence as a kid. It's not your average childhood. But I couldn't have asked for a better one."

Her big break came with Mamma Mia's first international tour, which came to the then Point Theatre before heading off around the world. Louise attended an open audition with hundreds of others. "I was nervous, but as a young girl I just had this focus," she smiles. She got the part of a small female lead, travelling the world for two years. It opened up a gateway to the West End of London. "I moved to London after that, got an agent and within three weeks I got my first West End show, in the ensemble of Guys and Dolls. I just had to pinch myself the day I was walking in to get my script," she recalls.

Things escalated quickly, and it wasn't long before she was auditioning for legendary producer Cameron Mackintosh for the role of Mrs Banks in Mary Poppins. "With Cameron he has possibly up to 10 rounds before you get the gig. It was my first lead role. I went in for ensemble, but they gave me a script to read, thinking 'maybe she'll cover Mrs Banks'." It was a deeply nerve-wracking process, she recalls.

"I think when you're being seen for roles, as opposed to ensemble, there's a lot more to lose. You need to visualise yourself in the role, so you're investing in it, knowing the possibility of being let down. As you get older you realise how it affects you," she says.

"When you're younger, you've blinkers on, you're going from role to role, and life things don't matter so much. Personal things like settling down, building a family, having a home. Doing all those things that hopefully one day I'll be able to do," laughs Louise.

"I was just at a wedding there at the weekend, and most of my friends are either married, getting married, or having babies. That's always been put on the back burner for me. And I guess I had a turn around on that in the past few years. I think it's an age thing. You realise you're missing home more. And the normality of settling down in life. Having a firm base. Knowing you have consistency in your life."

The end of a performer's career can be hard, all that dedication and passion suddenly gone. For Louise, the opportunity to get stuck into a role with such potential has been hugely fortuitous. For now, she's working on the school's choir show before moving on to work on The Billie Barry Production show, which will perform for a week in October 2017 in the Gaiety Theatre. There is also her own venture within the school, the launch of adult dance and fitness classes this September. Being a teacher is a selfless role she reflects, different to that of performer, which can be utterly selfish. "I'm still making that transition." It's one she will no doubt handle as gracefully as her famous dance steps.

Adult dance and fitness classes launch this September with the Billie Barry Stage School, at the CYMC Hall, Philipsburgh Avenue, Fairview, Dublin 3. There are classes to suit every ability. For more information call Carla Purdue 087 4106761 or email bowden.louise1@gmail.com or lorrainembarry@eircom.net
King penguin Sir Nils Olav inspects soldiers of the King of Norway's Guard at Edinburgh Zoo to mark his promotion and new title of Brigadier

A highly decorated king penguin has been given a promotion in a special ceremony at Edinburgh Zoo.

Resident king penguin Sir Nils Olav is an honorary member of the King of Norway's Guard and gets to inspect the soldiers when they visit the Scottish capital.

Already a knight, the famous penguin has now been given the new title of Brigadier Sir Nils Olav.

The honour was bestowed upon the animal during a ceremony attended by more than 50 Norwegian soldiers from the unit.

The troops are taking part in this year's Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

Barbara Smith, acting chief executive for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said: "We are honoured to host His Majesty the King of Norway's Guard as they bestow a prestigious new title upon our king penguin, Sir Nils Olav.

"It is a very proud moment and represents the close collaboration between our two countries, Scotland and Norway."

During the ceremony, Sir Nils paraded along the zoo's penguin walk, while inspecting the soldiers of the guard.

Brigadier David Allfrey, producer and chief executive of the tattoo, added: "This is just a simply fantastic example of the great relations between our two countries and it couldn't be a more charming tradition.

"At the tattoo we, of course, have many inspecting officers but this is by far my favourite. Congratulations, Brigadier Olav."

The current penguin is the third to hold the name Nils Olav and carry on the links with the Norwegian soldiers.

The tradition dates back to 1972 when a king penguin at Edinburgh Zoo was named after two people - Major Nils Egelien, who organised his adoption by the zoo that year, and the then-King of Norway, King Olav.

After his adoption, the bird was given the role of mascot of the Norwegian Guard.

Since then, the original penguin and his two successors have moved up the ranks.

In 2005, the current Nils Olav became Colonel-in-Chief of the unit, before being knighted three years later - an honour approved by King Harald V of Norway.

But Edinburgh Zoo's history with penguins and Norway goes back much further than the 1970s.

In 1914, the Norwegian family of Christian Salvesen presented the Zoo with its first king penguins. Five years later, it had the first successful hatching of a king penguin chick.
DNA tests could prove that seven pigtails kept in a 19th-century tobacco tin belonged to the mutineers on HMS Bounty, the first physical evidence of the men's existence.

While the story of the mutiny against captain William Bligh by his disaffected crew in the South Pacific in 1789 is famous, the only tangible evidence of those who hid from justice on the remote Pitcairn Islands is the grave of mutineer John Adams.

But scientists at King's College London hope tests on strands of hair can eventually link the 10 pigtails to seven of the mutinous sailors and three of their Polynesian companions.

Herbert Ford, director of the Pitcairn Islands Study Centre at Pacific Union College in California, where the pigtails are displayed, said the potential proof was "extremely exciting" and would be "solid evidence" of the men having been on Pitcairn.

He told the Press Association: "If it's found to be the real hair it would be the only real, tangible evidence that we have of the existence of the known mutineers.

"There's one grave on Pitcairn Island today, that of John Adams, and that's the only thing you can put your hands on of the nine mutineers that were there on the island, starting in 1789.

"So we are very much hoping that the researchers at King's can see if we can really find the truth about this hair."

The Bounty mutiny was led by acting lieutenant Fletcher Christian, who cast Bligh and 18 loyal crew members adrift on a 23ft launch.

Bligh managed to sail back to England while Christian, after a stop in Tahiti, went on to Pitcairn where he and eight others founded a colony, eventually being discovered in 1808. Their descendants still live there.

Mr Ford said written material relating to the hair offered "pretty clear evidence" about its lineage, but the scientific could provide the definitive proof that it belongs to the mutineers.

A forensic DNA group at the London university will attempt to extract DNA from the hair samples using a chemical process.

The hair shafts do not contain DNA found in the nuclei of cells, so the researchers hope they will be able to collect mitochondrial DNA, which can offer indication of maternal geographic origin.

This would potentially enable them to pinpoint whether the hair comes from someone of European or Polynesian descent, as the documentation with the pigtails suggests.

A more detailed genealogical study would then be needed to trace the maternal ancestors of the owners of the hair to link them to names in historical records, before their maternal line is then traced.

The study will try to identify the men's maternal ancestors, such as mothers and grandmothers, before looking for direct female descendants alive today.

Dr Denise Syndercombe-Court, from King's analytical and environmental sciences division, said: "First, we will have to determine whether we can recover mitochondrial DNA of appropriate quality to be analysed.

"The hairs, if from the mutineers, are over 200 years old and we have no idea what environments they might have been exposed to in the intervening time."

The genealogical research is likely to be equally tricky as civil registration in the UK did not start until almost 50 years after the mutiny, meaning records may be incomplete.

The pigtails were given to the Pitcairn study centre by the widow of a collector who bought them at a Sotheby's auction in 2000.

Alongside the locks was a handkerchief said to have belonged to Sarah, the daughter of William McCoy, one of the Bounty mutineers who died on Pitcairn in 1800, while a faded label attached to one of the pigtails suggests it belonged to McCoy.

The label also notes that "The holders of the hair have been 1: Teio, wife of McCoy; 2: Mrs Sarah Christian; 3: F. G. Mitchell. Given to FG Mitchell, 22nd June 1849 (Jubilee Day) by Mrs. Sarah Nobbs."

Mr Ford said that other than Adams' grave, it appears there is no physical evidence relating to the mutineers. An expedition around a decade ago failed to discover any sign of the grave of Fletcher Christian.

He said: "This would be really the most important piece of evidence that we had of their existence there on Pitcairn."
A St Piran's Crab, which had not been seen in Devon for more than 30 years, has been found living on a popular stretch of coastline

A species of crab which had not been seen in Devon for more than 30 years has been found living on a popular stretch of coastline.

St Piran's crab, which is also known by the scientific name Clibanarius erythropus, was found in Wembury Bay, near Plymouth.

The crab was a common sight along the south coast but rising pollution and sea temperatures saw the species, which is no more than 15mm long, decline.

It is a type of hermit crab which uses the empty shells of other molluscs to make a home and the last recorded sighting in Devon was made in 1985.

Devon Wildlife Trust volunteer John Hepburn made the new discovery purely by chance during a tour of Wembury Bay's rock pools - thinking he had spotted a netted dog whelk shell.

"Picking up the shell I realised it was not empty. What I assumed was a hermit crab was more confident than usual and came out a long way to examine the end of my finger," Mr Hepburn said.

"Being colour-blind, I asked the family I was showing around the rock pools if the crab was red, and having been told it was reddish, I thought it worthwhile trying to get a picture in case it was a St Piran's crab."

Once back home Mr Hepburn examined his picture, comparing it with online videos of St Piran's crabs.

His find matched the videos, a fact confirmed later by the Marine Biological Association of the UK.

This Devon discovery of a St Piran's crab follows its re-discovery in March in Cornwall, close to Falmouth.

Mr Hepburn added: "This is a pretty special find. There were lots of other people hoping to be the one to discover the first St Piran's crab outside Cornwall.

"That it's now making a comeback after being absent from our shores for so long shows that it is always worth making the effort to save our seas."

Marine biologists think the St Piran's crab may have re-established itself in Devon and Cornwall having been carried across the seas as plankton from existing populations on the west coast of France.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan was visting villagers in the state of Madhya Pradesh YouTube

The chief minister of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is a man who likes to keep himself smartly turned out.

And like many politicians around the world, he is not averse to the odd photo-opportunity to show off the good work he is doing.

But a visit to flood struck areas in his state backfired hugely for Shivraj Singh Chouhan, after he was photographed in pressed white trousers being carried through the waters by local police officers. Another image showed him finally rolling up his trousers and walking himself, but handing his shoes to an aide to carry. Worse still, the water was barely ankle-high.

The people of India are used to seeing their politicians demand and expect special VVIP treatment, even on visit to rural areas struck by hardship or disaster. But Mr Singh, a member of the countrys ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been roundly mocked on social media for his behaviour.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan getting cop lifted is that bizarre example of nasty privilege politicians demand in India. Always, wrote Debarati Majumder.

Dripping with sarcasm, Bhupendra sharma, said: A humble and down to earth politician inspecting flood affected region. What a sight.

Some said the images were reminiscent of the worst days of the British Empire and posted images of Raj officials being carried on the backs of Indians.

A senior government official officer defended Mr Chouhan, saying it would have been dangerous for him to wade through the waters himself.

Nobody knew if the water level would rise suddenly or if the ground below was slippery, SK Mishra told the AFP.

There was also the danger of a snake or scorpion bite. He was desperate to meet the flood-affected people and the security guys could not have taken any chance.

Floods triggered by the annual monsoon rains have claimed hundreds of lives across India. In Madhya Pradesh at least 15 people have died after rivers burst and flooded villages, the Press Trust of India news agency said.

An Indian TV journalist was sacked in 2013 after he filed a report about deadly floods while perched on a survivors shoulders.

The reporter claimed the man who carried him while standing in ankle-high water had hoisted him onto his shoulders as a sign of respect.
Police in Australia's Northern Territory are searching for four young men who broke into a school near Darwin and releasing three saltwater crocodiles.

Four men were captured by CCTV forcing the reptiles in Taminmin College at Humpty Doo, near Darwin, before breaking in and ransacking the front office of the school.

The three female reptiles, of whom the biggest is two metres long, were all in poor condition and may have to be euthanised, said senior constable David Gregory.

"The ranger that turned up was very concerned for them - they had their mouths taped up," Mr Gregory said.

"They haven't seen water for a long time and are undernourished."

Luke McLaren, the ranger who helped rescue the animals, told ABC local radio on Monday morning that the crocodiles were in poor physical condition.

Basically skin and bones, not much meat left on them; they were really quiet and easy to catch, Mr McLaren said.

Really poor skin condition, like they havent been kept in water for quite a while, havent been fed, and one of them looked to be blind [as a result of neglect].

It is believed the reptiles came from a crocodile farm, he added.

Mr Gregory said that police are appealing to the public for information as to the identity of the offenders, who had their heads covered when they broke into the school.

Saltwater crocodiles are a protected species and interfering with them is a criminal offence, punishable by fines of up to AUD $77,000 (45,000) or a jail term of up to five years.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Europe wants to "write a future chapter" after Britain's vote to leave the EU and focus on common defence, security and economic growth, Italian premier Matteo Renzi has said.

At the end of a mini-summit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, Mr Renzi said improved security and intelligence sharing is an "absolute priority" for a Europe confronting Islamic extremist violence.

Mr Hollande stressed in particular the need for common European defence efforts after a string of deadly attacks in France and other European countries.

The three leaders held a press conference aboard the Italian aircraft carrier Garibaldi, which is co-ordinating the EU's Mediterranean migrant rescue operation, after paying tribute to one of the founding fathers of European unity on the island of Ventotene.

Standing silently together, the trio placed three bouquets of blue and yellow flowers - the colours of the European Union - on the simple white marble tombstone of Altiero Spinelli in the cemetery on Ventotene.

Spinelli, along with another intellectual confined to Ventotene in the 1940s by Italy's fascist rulers, co-wrote the Ventotene Manifesto, which called for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war.

The document is considered the inspiration for European federalism.

Mr Renzi invited his French and German counterparts to Ventotene to remind Europe of its founding ideals as the EU forges ahead after Britain's vote to leave.

They then moved on to the Garibaldi.

Ahead of the summit, Mr Renzi wrote of the venues: "Two symbols in one: idealistic values and concrete commitment.

"We want that the Europe after Brexit - the Europe hit in its heart by terrorism - will relaunch the powerful ideals of unity and peace, freedom and dreams, dialogue and identity."

For Ms Merkel, the visit to Ventotene marked the start of a string of meetings with other EU leaders to discuss the post-Brexit EU. She will be in Estonia, the Czech Republic and Poland in the coming days.

Ms Merkel has also invited leaders from the Nordic countries, Holland, Austria and other eastern European nations for informal meetings at a government guest house in Germany.

"She wants to support a discussion that is as broad as possible, with as many actors involved as possible," her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said last week. That is aimed at ensuring that whatever emerges from the post-Brexit process "finds the widest possible acceptance in the member states and in the population".

AP
Catholic priest who skipped bail five years ago has been arrested on suspicion of nine counts of historic sexual assaults.

Father Laurence Soper, 72, the former abbot of Ealing Abbey, was wanted on a European Arrest Warrant over allegations of child abuse.

The accusations date back to when he taught at St Benedict's School, a private independent Catholic school which is part of Ealing Abbey in west London.

In March 2011, Fr Soper was believed to have been living in a monastery in Rome and was due to return to London to answer bail but he failed to show up, sparking an international search.

After spending five years living as a fugitive, he was arrested in Kosovo in May.

However, attempts to bring him back the UK to face charges were thwarted when a Kosovan judge blocked the extradition order on the basis that his alleged crimes have expired in Kosovo, which has a 30-year statute of limitation.

On Sunday night, Scotland Yard announced that Fr Soper was arrested as he arrived back in the UK at Luton Airport from Kosovo.

A spokesman said he was arrested on suspicion of nine offences of sexual assault committed over a period from 1972 to 1986

In 2011, Lord Carlile of Berriew stripped monks of control at St Benedict's School, which offered a "heartfelt apology for past failures".

The peer said he hoped his decision to take powers away from Ealing Abbey would "set a template" for other schools.

In his inquiry into the sexual abuse, Lord Carlile outlined a catalogue of failures by the abbey to intervene as allegations of abuses came to light.

"I have come to the firm conclusion ... that the form of governance of St Benedict's School is wholly outdated and demonstrably unacceptable," he wrote.

"The abbot himself has accepted that it is 'opaque to outsiders'."

The report added: "In a school where there has been abuse, mostly - but not exclusively - as a result of the activities of the monastic community, any semblance of a conflict of interest, of lack of independent scrutiny, must be removed."

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
The summit comes at a difficult time for all three premiers, but for Mr Renzi in particular. Photo: Simona Granati/Corbis via Getty Images

A volcanic outcrop adrift in the cobalt blue of the Tyrrhenian Sea, it seems at first glance a curious place for a crucial post-Brexit European Union summit.

But it was on the island of Ventotene that a group of Italian politicians, who had been interned by Benito Mussolini during the Second World War, hatched a vision of a free, united, democratic Europe that eventually evolved into the European Union.

It is that spirit of optimism that Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, will try to tap into when he gathers with Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel on the island off Italy's west coast today.

Symbolic

For a Europe that has been wounded by Britain's vote to leave, the choice of Ventotene is symbolic - one of the internees was future statesman Altiero Spinelli, who in the darkest days of fascism and Nazism wrote a text now known as the Ventotene Manifesto, calling for a free, federal Europe.

Seventy years on, the three leaders will lay a wreath at Spinelli's tomb as they begin their bid to relaunch the European project in the wake of Brexit.

They are expected to discuss the implications of Brexit and the timetable for when it will take place, as well as the vexed issue of how to promote economic growth whilst keeping within tight budgetary constraints.

EU diplomatic sources said that the trilateral summit among Europe's three major post-Brexit powers would not discuss the specifics of any possible deal with the UK, since Britain had still not decided what kind of relationship it wanted with Europe.

However, the leaders are expected to discuss how hard to push Britain to set out its stance for the negotiation and to begin formal divorce proceedings with the EU by invoking Article 50.

After reports that Britain was considering delaying until after the French elections next June, both German and Italian ministers have warned there are limits to how long Europe can wait.

British officials told the 'Daily Telegraph' that Europe had softened its stance after initially demanding the UK move quickly following the June 23 vote, but said no decisions have been made on the timing of any declaration.

The three leaders will also discuss how the remaining 27 EU nations can present a positive economic and security agenda at an informal summit in Bratislava next month.

The summit comes at a difficult time for all three premiers, but for Mr Renzi in particular. The Italian economy, the third largest in the eurozone, continues to flatline and Italian banks are saddled with 360bn of problematic loans. His Democratic Party suffered humiliating defeats in municipal elections, losing Rome and Turin to the anti-euro, anti-establishment Five Star Movement. He also faces a referendum on constitutional reform, the loss of which could see his resignation and replacement by the Five Star Movement.

( Daily Telegraph, London)
A Muslim "bully" grabbed a schoolboy by the throat and threw him to the ground because he saw him hugging a girl in the street, a court was told.

Michael Coe, 35, was driving through east London when he spotted the two 16-year-olds cuddling on the pavement.

He allegedly confronted the pair, demanding to know if they were Muslims, before calling the girl a "whore".

Coe was said to have grabbed the boy by the throat, causing him to black out, before he woke up bleeding on the floor.

When passing schoolteacher Boutho Siwela tried to come to the couple's aid, Coe then allegedly attacked him.

Coe is on trial at Southwark Crown Court accused of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and battery.

Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay described the attack as "completely unjustifiable".

He told the jury: "This case is about what started as unpleasant bullying with religious overtones in the street, followed by an attack by this 35-year-old man on a 16-year-old schoolboy.

"This was followed by a further assault on a schoolteacher, a nearby bystander, who came to his aid when he saw what was going on.

"The victim was, and is, a schoolboy and, in the early evening, he was there with his girlfriend standing on the pavement in the street, cuddling each other in the street.

"They had the misfortune that, of all the people to drive by, it was this defendant who was driving by in a car."

Coe demanded to know if the teenagers were Muslim and when they lied and said that they were not, he replied: "Why am I wasting my time with you if you're not Muslim?"

He then called the girl "a whore" before attacking her boyfriend, Mr Polnay said.

"He (Coe) grabbed him around the neck, that's the last thing the victim remembered," he added.

"The next thing the boy woke up on the floor and he was bleeding.

"This was completely unpleasant and utterly unwarranted - this is a grown man on a child."

Mr Siwela heard the girl screaming and took a photo of Coe's number plate as he was getting back into his car.

Mr Polnay continued: "The defendant wasn't having that and he comes over to Mr Siwela and said give me that phone.

"Mr Siwela didn't want to hand over his phone so the defendant grabbed him and threw him to the floor. He then got in the car and drove away."

Coe denies the two charges against him. He admits assaulting the 16-year-old boy in Wilson Road, Newham, on April 15 but claims he was acting in self-defence.

The victim, who cannot be named because he is under 18, said he was hugging his girlfriend goodbye when Coe shouted "let that little schoolgirl go".

He later demanded: "Why are you acting like a punk in front of your whore girlfriend?" before attacking the boy.

"Within seconds of saying that I felt a hand on my neck and after that I don't remember anything else," the teenager said.

"I woke up - there was blood on my hands and I could feel blood on my face, my head was throbbing and I was very dizzy and also felt sick."
The multi-vehicle crash happened on Long Island in New York State

A former aide to New York governor Andrew Cuomo was among five people who died when a driver lost control and struck two other vehicles on Long Island.

Six other people were injured in the crash at around 9:30am local time on Sunday on the Long Island Expressway, near Manorville.

Scott Martella, 29, of Northport, a communications director for Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and a former aide to Mr Cuomo, was killed.

Police said the driver of an eastbound Subaru Outback, Carmelo Pinales, 26, of Hicksville, apparently lost control of his vehicle, crossed into the westbound lane, went airborne, and struck two vehicles, a BMW and a Honda.

Mr Pinales and his 27-year-old sister, Patricia Pinales, of Westbury, were killed. His 10-year-old son, Christopher Pinales, died of his injuries in hospital later.

Two others in the Subaru, including the three-year-old daughter of Ms Pinales, were treated for non-life threatening injuries.

A passenger in the BMW, Isidore Adelson, 81, of Westhampton, died of his injuries late Sunday at a hospital. Three others in the BMW, including Mr Adelson's wife, were also treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

Mr Martella, who was driving the Honda, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. His 29-year-old fiance, Shelbi Thurau, of Northport, was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Mr Cuomo said Mr Martella had served in his administration for more than four years. He called him a "dedicated, beloved public servant who worked day in and day out to improve the lives of his fellow New Yorkers".

Mr Bellone said: "Scott dedicated his all too brief life to public service and to helping others.

"My thoughts and prayers are with all those who lost their lives and suffered injuries in this horrible accident as well as their families."

Suffolk County police said detectives were investigating whether speed was a factor in the crash.

AP
Pat Hickey has stepped aside from his role as president of the Olympic Council of Ireland

PAT HICKEY will be visited in prison today by staff from the Irish consulate in Rio De Janeiro.

The 71-year-old spent the weekend in a cell at Gericino penitentiary complex - known locally as Bangu Prison - in West Rio.

RTE is reporting that Irish consulate staff in the city will visit him here today.

The Irish consulate are also providing support to three Olympic Council of Ireland staff who had their passports seized by police on Sunday morning.

General Secretary Dermot Henihan, CEO Stephen Martin and Chef de Mission Kevin Kilty have all agreed to give statements to police investigating an alleged ticket scam on Tuesday.

Mr Henihan reportedly fell ill on Sunday evening and was treated by a local doctor.

Expand Close The notorious Bangu Prison in Rio de Janeiros where Pat Hickey and Kevin Mallon are reportedly sharing a cell. Pic Steve Humphreys / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp The notorious Bangu Prison in Rio de Janeiros where Pat Hickey and Kevin Mallon are reportedly sharing a cell. Pic Steve Humphreys

It is believed a meeting took place yesterday between Irish Ambassador Brian Glynn and Mr Henihan, who is honorary general secretary of the OCI, at Mr Henihans hotel.

Police claim they want to speak to the men about an alleged ticket touting ring.

The Irish Consulate was unavailable for comment this morning.

More to follow

Read More

Read more:
These were the scenes at Bangu prison on Sunday morning as hundreds of women queued to visit inmates at Brazil's largest prison.

Patrick Hickey, who stepped down as Olympics Council of Ireland (OCI) president after his arrest last Wednesday, is currently housed at one of the jails in the Gericino Penitentiary Complex.

He is sharing a cell in Bangu 8 with fellow Irishman Kevin Mallon. Both are being held in connection with an alleged ticket touting probe.

Both men had their heads shaved upon entry and officials at the jail say they are being treated the same as any other prisoner.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Women queue with food parcels in the pouring rain for hours to visit relatives at the notorious Bangu Prison in Rio de Janeiros where Pat Hickey and Kevin Mallon are reportedly sharing a cell. Pic Steve Humphreys Women queue with food parcels in the pouring rain for hours to visit relatives at the notorious Bangu Prison in Rio de Janeiros where Pat Hickey and Kevin Mallon are reportedly sharing a cell. Pic Steve Humphreys Women queue with food parcels in the pouring rain for hours to visit relatives at the notorious Bangu Prison in Rio de Janeiros where Pat Hickey and Kevin Mallon are reportedly sharing a cell. Pic Steve Humphreys The notorious Bangu Prison in Rio de Janeiros where Pat Hickey and Kevin Mallon are reportedly sharing a cell. Pic Steve Humphreys / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Women queue with food parcels in the pouring rain for hours to visit relatives at the notorious Bangu Prison in Rio de Janeiros where Pat Hickey and Kevin Mallon are reportedly sharing a cell. Pic Steve Humphreys

On Sunday morning hundreds of women queued from early morning to visited their loved ones in the prison. They carried bags of food and other gifts for the prisoners.

Mr Hickey's wife Sylviane was not seen among the visitors.

However she too would have to wait her place in the queue if she wanted to visit the 71-year-old.

The complex is home to some of Rio's most dangerous murderers and drug dealers.

It will be Tuesday at the very earliest before Mr Hickey or Mr Mallon have an opportunity to get bail as Monday is a public holiday in Brazil.
The move is a blow to international efforts for political calm in Libya

The Libyan parliament has approved a no confidence motion in the country's UN-backed government.

The development is a major blow to international efforts to resolve the crisis in the deeply divided North African country.

Parliament spokesman Abdullah Ablahig said 101 politicians were present on Monday, enough to reach quorum for the vote. He said 61 supported it, 39 abstained and one member voted to support the government.

It is unclear what happens next. Some politicians claim the vote should automatically dissolve the government set up under a UN deal, while its supporters dispute such a move.

Libya's parliament is seated in the eastern city of Tobruk, while the government is based in the capital Tripoli.

Libya has been mired in conflict since the 2011 downfall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands (AP)

An Islamic extremist has pleaded guilty at the International Criminal Court and expressed "deep regret" for destroying historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu.

Wearing a dark suit and striped tie, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi stood and calmly told judges he was entering the guilty plea "with deep regret and great pain" and advised Muslims around the world not to commit similar acts, saying "they are not going to lead to any good for humanity".

Al Mahdi led a group of radicals that destroyed 14 of Timbuktu's 16 mausoleums in 2012 because they considered them "totems of idolatry".

The one-room structures that house the tombs of the city's great thinkers were on the World Heritage list.

Al Mahdi was the first suspect to face an ICC charge of deliberately attacking religious or historical monuments and became the first person to plead guilty at the court since its establishment in 2002.

Prosecutors say Al Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, an Islamic extremist group with links to al Qaeda that held power in northern Mali in 2012.

The militants were driven out after nearly a year by French forces, which arrested Al Mahdi in 2014 in neighbouring Niger.

His trial is scheduled to last a week, with prosecutors presenting judges with evidence of the crimes and his defence lawyer also planning a presentation.

Judges will issue a formal verdict and pass sentence at a later hearing.

Al Mahdi faces a maximum sentence of 30 years imprisonment, but prosecutors say they will seek a sentence of nine to 11 years.

Al Mahdi told the three-judge panel he hopes his time in prison "will be a source of purging the evil spirits that had overtaken me".

AP
Ali Daqneesh (10), the brother of Omran Daqneesh, in hospital in Aleppo, Syria, shortly before his death. Photo: Reuters

Three-yearold Omran Daqneesh, with bloodied face, sits with his sister inside an ambulance after they were rescued following an airstrike in the rebel-held al-Qaterji neighbourhood of Aleppo

The brother of a Syrian boy whose photograph has come to symbolise the suffering of civilians in war-torn Aleppo has reportedly died of his injuries.

Ali Daqneesh (10) was injured alongside his little brother Omran and the rest of his family when an airstrike reduced their apartment building to rubble on Wednesday night. He was taken to hospital with his parents and siblings, but died of his injuries yesterday, activists in Aleppo said, adding that mourners were gathering at the family's temporary home.

The UK-based Syria Solidarity Campaign also reported the death, calling the strike a "war crime".

A local opposition group posted a photo of Ali online, appearing to show him in a hospital bed with facial injuries, unconscious and breathing through a tube.

Ali and the rest of the Daqneesh family initially survived the bombing after being pulled out of the rubble by volunteer rescue workers and transported to hospital.

Abu Ali, the children's father, said Ali - his oldest son - was outside in the street playing with friends when the blast struck. He described how he was sitting on the sofa next to Omran at the time, with his wife, another son and two daughters elsewhere in the first-floor flat. "It is very painful to watch your children falling in front of your eyes," the father said in an interview with 'The Telegraph'. Images of Omran sitting dazed and silent in an ambulance, covered in dust and blood, spread around the world and has intensified calls for an immediate ceasefire.

His parents and siblings were also transferred to hospital for treatment and their condition could not immediately be confirmed.

Russia has denied responsibility for Wednesday's airstrikes in the Qaterji district, which killed at least eight people, including five children.

Aleppo, which is split between regime and rebel control, has been at the epicentre of continued battles and bombings despite successive attempts at ceasefires. More airstrikes were reported on Saturday, with pro-rebel activists saying one bombing killed seven members of the same family - including six children - early in the morning.

Aid convoys have not been able to access the city for months, with fighting continuing as a coalition of Islamist militants, including former al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, fight to open up a corridor out of besieged areas.

Russia, which has been conducting airstrikes in support of the Syrian regime since September, said it was willing to support weekly 48-hour ceasefires to allow aid to reach besieged areas. But battles continued on Saturday as forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad attempted to reinforce their positions.
Prime minister Haider al-Abadi has attempted to fast track the implementation of death sentences following a series of large-scale bombings in and around Baghdad in recent months. Photo: Carsten Koall/Getty Images

Iraq has executed 36 men convicted of taking part in the Islamic State (Isil) group's massacre of hundreds of soldiers in 2014, officials said.

The men were hanged at the Nasiriyah prison in southern Iraq yesterday.

A Justice Ministry official confirmed the executions.

Isil captured an estimated 1,700 soldiers after seizing Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit in 2014. The soldiers were trying to flee from nearby Camp Speicher, a former US base just outside the city.

Shortly after taking Tikrit, Isil posted graphic images of gunmen shooting the men dead after forcing them to lie face down in a shallow ditch.

The Speicher massacre sparked outrage across Iraq and partially fuelled the mobilisation of Shiite militias in the fight against Isil, a Sunni extremist group. The militias now rival the power of Iraq's conventional armed forces.

Iraqi forces arrested dozens of men allegedly linked to the massacre after retaking Tikrit in 2015 with the help of US-led airstrikes.

The men executed on Sunday were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court earlier this year.

The head of the provincial council in Salahuddin province, of which Tikrit is the capital, criticised the judicial process, saying some of the men executed had been tortured to extract confessions.

Some of them "were not even present at the scene of the crime", Ahmed al-Karim said.

"We support the death penalty for those who committed crimes," but "the use of violence and torture (in Iraqi prisons) should be investigated".

Prime minister Haider al-Abadi has attempted to fast track the implementation of death sentences following a series of large-scale bombings in and around Baghdad in recent months.

Iraq ranks among the top five countries in the world in the use of capital punishment, according to figures compiled by the rights group Amnesty International.
A teenage waitress from Virginia was left stunned after a diner she was serving left a hateful note instead of a tip.

Sadie Karina Elledge explained the 'frosty' couple hardly said a word to her and she later saw the note on the bill, which read: We only tip citizens.

Expand Close The receipt Credit: Facebook / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp The receipt Credit: Facebook

The 18-year-olds outraged grandfather John Elledge posted a photo of the receipt on Facebook, asking: How could anyone be so nasty to this lovely child?

Mr Elledge explained that his granddaughter was born in the United States and is of Mexican and Honduran descent.

They wouldnt talk to me. They would just nod their heads, the teenager told WHSV.

It shouldnt even matter, I just feel like its rude and disrespectful. Ive never met [them], Ive never done anything to them I was born here but Im Mexican and Honduran.

She added: It makes me the stronger person not to let these things bother me because I know Im a good person.

Her boss Angeliki Floros said the pair would not be welcome back at the restaurant unless they apologised.

Coward is the word to describe what they did. I have worse words to use. But lets go with coward, the manager told WHSV. I would like for them to not come here unless they regret what they did.

Mr Elledge told the Huffington Post: She [Sadie] was calm and collected. I was more upset.

One of my other granddaughters works at my firm as a secretary. She told me and I flew off the handle.

Residents in Harrisburg who heard about the incident decided to chip in and cover the tip, plus a bit extra, WHSV adds.

The Washington Post reports, the couple spotted on CCTV accused of writing the message returned to the restaurant and complained about the receipt being posted on social media.

Mr Elledge heard they had returned and confronted them but said he did not receive an apology. The woman denied she wrote the message, with Elledge suggesting it was her companion at the restaurant who was responsible.
The child's parents will not face charges

A paraglider has died after he plunged through the roof of a Utah church.

The incident took place on Sunday morning at a Mormon church in Draper.

Police and fire crews said the man was operating a motorised paraglider when he crashed.

Firefighters pronounced him dead at the scene.

Witnesses told fire officials the man appeared to be spiralling downward and out of control.

The church was evacuated and Sunday services were cancelled.

No other injuries were reported.

Police did not release the identity of the man, who is in his forties or fifties.

Investigators are trying to determine what caused the crash.
South Korean protesters stage a rally against joint military exercises between the US and South Korea (AP)

North Korea threatened nuclear attacks on Seoul and Washington as South Korea and the US began annual military drills on Monday.

The extreme rhetoric from Pyongyang comes at a time of high tension following the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a US plan to place a high-tech defence missile system in South Korea.

The North's military said that it will turn Seoul and Washington into "a heap of ashes through a Korean-style pre-emptive nuclear strike" if they show any signs of aggression toward the North's territory.

The North's "first-strike" units are ready to mount retaliatory attacks on South Korean and US forces involved in the drills according to the warning, carried by Pyongyang's state media.

South Korea's Unification Ministry expressed strong regret over the North's warning, saying the drills with the US are defensive in nature. Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said they have no intention of invading Pyongyang.

This year's Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills began on Monday for a 12-day run and are largely computer-simulated war games. The training involves 25,000 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers.

The drills come just days after Seoul announced that Thae Yong Ho, No 2 at the North's embassy in London, had recently defected to South Korea because he was disillusioned with the North's leadership.

Pyongyang's state media called him "human scum" and a criminal who had been ordered home for a series of alleged criminal acts.

South Korea's president said on Monday there were signs of "serious cracks" in the North's ruling elite class, and that Pyongyang could carry out some action to divert public attention away from such domestic problems.

Many analysts said the defection was an embarrassment to the North Korean government of leader Kim Jong Un, but would not weaken the unity of the country's elite class.

Previous South Korea-US military drills have brought threats of war.

North Korea has already boosted such war rhetoric because of the planned deployment of the US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence system in South Korea, which Washington and Seoul says is needed because of the increasing North Korean threats.

AP
The Philippines' brash-talking president has threatened to withdraw his country from the United Nations in his latest outburst against critics of his anti-drug campaign, which has left hundreds of suspects dead.

President Rodrigo Duterte pointed to the haunting image of a bloodied child being pulled from the rubble of a missile-struck building in the Syrian city of Aleppo to note the inability of the US and the UN to stop such deadly conflicts, complaining that he comes under fire for the killings of criminals.

The US State Department and two UN human rights experts have urged Mr Duterte and Filipino authorities to stop extrajudicial killings in the fight against illegal drugs. Philippine police say more than 500 drug suspects have been killed in gun battles with police since Mr Duterte was sworn in eight weeks ago.

Criticisms of the president's crusade against a problem that he says has become a pandemic provoked an angry outburst from Mr Duterte.

"Maybe we'll just have to decide to separate from the United Nations. If you're that rude, son of a bitch, we'll just leave you," Mr Duterte told reporters in Davao, where he first built a reputation for his tough crime-busting style while serving as the southern city's longtime mayor.

Mr Duterte also belittled UN work in the Philippines without providing facts, raising questions, for example, about the performance of the world body's agency that fights hunger.

If the Philippines breaks off from the UN - which Mr Duterte called "inutile" (useless) and "stupid" - he said he would invite other countries like China and African nations to form a new international body.

The UN, he said, should return Manila's financial contributions.

"Look at the iconic boy that was taken out from the rubble and he was made to sit in the ambulance and we saw it," Mr Duterte said, referring to the photo of a three-year-old Syrian boy, Omran Daqneesh, that has gone viral online.

"Why is it that United States is not doing anything? I do not read you," Mr Duterte said. "Anybody in that stupid body complaining about the stench there of death?"

When asked about the possible repercussions of his remarks, Mr Duterte replied: "I don't give a s*** about them. They are the ones interfering."

Mr Duterte's drug crackdown has left more than 500 suspected dealers dead and more than 4,400 arrested since he took office on June 30.
Ambulances arrive at the site of the massive explosion. Photo: Getty

Graves are prepared for the victims of the suicide bombing at a wedding in Gaziantep, Turkey. Photo: Reuters

A boy thought to be just 12 killed at least 51 people when he blew himself up at a Turkish wedding party, in the deadliest of a series of terrorist atrocities to hit the country this year.

Authorities blamed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) for the attack on street revellers in the southern city of Gaziantep late on Saturday night.

"Initial evidence suggests it was a Daesh attack," said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, during a visit to Gaziantep after the attack. 'Daesh' is an Arabic term for Isil.

Mr Erdogan said at least 69 people were wounded, 17 of them "heavily". A prosecutor said the remains of a suicide vest had been found at the scene.

The bomb exploded in the city's predominantly Kurdish Akdere neighbourhood, where several hundred guests were dancing in the street at an outdoor pre-wedding celebration.

"The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing," said 25-year-old Veli Can. "There were blood and body parts everywhere." The bride and groom were among those hurt but their injuries were not serious, Turkish media reported.

"We couldn't see anything. Nothing but body parts," the groom's brother Sukru Akdogan said.

Television footage showed white sheets covering dozens of bodies at the scene before forensic teams arrived.

Gulser Ates, who was wounded in the attack, said she had been talking to one of her neighbours when the bomb exploded.

"I don't know what happened. The only thing I know is that my neighbour died on top of me," she said.

"If she had not fallen on me, I would have died, too. Her body saved me."

Turkish authorities imposed a temporary blackout on coverage of the attack yesterday.

Isil has carried out a string of bombings in major Turkish cities. Besides bombings at symbolic sites, it has previously sought out Kurdish targets - including its deadliest attack on Turkish soil at a predominantly Kurdish peace rally Ankara last October - in an apparent bid to inflame tensions.

Saturday's attack is the first since the failed July 15 coup attempt. The last attack was in June, when more than 40 people were killed in a triple suicide bombing at Istanbul's main airport.

Condemning Saturday's attack, Mr Erdogan said: "Our country and nation only have a single message to those who attack us: you will not succeed."

Naming Isil as the "likely perpetrator", Mr Erdogan added that the attackers were trying to "provoke people by abusing ethnic and sectarian sensitiveness".

Mr Erdogan added that he saw no difference between Isil and followers of Fethullah Gulen, the US-based cleric accused of orchestrating last month's coup attempt, or the PKK, the Kurdish militant group which has also carried out attacks across Turkey in recent months.

Mehmet Simsek, the country's deputy prime minister and the MP for Gaziantep, told Turkish media that the death toll may rise further.

"The aim of terror is to scare the people, but we will not allow this," he added. "It is barbaric to attack a wedding."

The HDP, a pro-Kurdish party, said the attack was designed to thwart recently announced plans by militant groups including the PKK to attempt to negotiate an end to a three-decade conflict with the Turkish government.

Gaziantep lies close to the Syrian border and Isil has carried out attacks in the city before, including the assassinations of several Syrian opposition journalists reporting on the group's atrocities.

The jihadist group has suffered a series of battlefield setbacks in Syria recently, culminating in the liberation of the northern city of Manbij by the American-backed Syrian Defence Forces last week.

Turkey is still reeling from last month's abortive military coup, which left at least 240 people dead. Tens of thousands of people were arrested or suspended from their jobs in a subsequent crackdown against suspected sympathisers of the plotters. ( Daily Telegraph, London)
SHARE

A Solar Powered concert featuring Trapdoor Social will take place on Aug. 30 at McGee's Scot-Irish Pub. The band is on tour across the country. See the amazing technology that makes this music rock! $10 donation at the door. 50 percent of proceeds from full price fish and chips will go to Family Promise of Anderson County, a charity that serves the community.

Many thanks to John and Dixie Benca for hosting this event.

RSVP on our Facebook page! Donations are welcome. Mailing address is: Family Promise of Anderson County, P.O. Box 1466, Anderson, SC 29622.
SHARE

By Nathaniel Cary, ncary@greenvillenews.com

Duke Energy has received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to operate its 868-megawatt Keowee-Toxaway Hydroelectric Project, including the Jocassee Pumped Storage Hydro Station, Keowee Hydro Station and lakes Jocassee and Keowee, for another 30 years.

The project provides added electricity during peak usage times for thousands of South Carolina residents while the lakes are a drinking water supply for Upstate residents and a recreation resource.

Under the new license, Duke will maintain a higher lake level in Lake Keowee during normal conditions beginning in December 2019. The lake will be maintained between 790 and 800 feet above sea level. Its prior license allowed it to dip to 775 feet under normal conditions. Lake levels at Jocassee will remain the same.

It's the first relicensing of the project after it was initially licensed in 1966 to operate for 50 years. Its license was set to expire in August. The new license takes effect on Sept. 1.

Duke Energy had reached an agreement in November 2014 with stakeholders in North and South Carolina to gain support for the relicensing as the company sought to extend the life of its hydroelectric project. The company spent nearly a decade working with government and community stakeholders as it sought its relicensing.

"The project provides clean, renewable hydroelectric power generation, supports regional public drinking water needs and provides high-quality recreational opportunities for the region," Steve Jester, Duke Energy's vice president of water strategy, hydro licensing and lake services, said in a statement. "This license ensures the availability of these resources for future generations."

The project begins with Lake Jocassee on the border of North and South Carolina. It flows into Lake Keowee then downstream to Lake Hartwell, which is operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Keowee-Toxaway project is made up of the Jocassee and Keowee reservoirs with two powerhouses. It runs along 25 river miles and encompasses approximately 480 miles of shoreline. In addition to its hydropower generation, it provides cooling water for Oconee Nuclear Station, which has the capacity to generate approximately 2,500 megawatts of energy.

"Receiving the license allows us to implement operational, environmental and recreational resource enhancements that will result in many benefits to the community and the environment for decades to come," Jester said.

Under the agreement, Duke will enhance recreation facilities at both lakes. Proposals in its recreation management plan include adding diver access, a new courtesy dock, a new boat and trailer parking area, access for non-motorized boating and bank fishing signs at Devils Fork State Park. Duke Energy will add about 25 acres to Double Springs Campground and build new restrooms and 12 new campsites, according to the FERC relicensing agreement.

At Keowee, Duke will build new parking areas at three recreation sites, build new trails, add bank fishing signs and add new campsites, fishing stations and 10 cabins at Mile Creek County Park. It will build a canoe/kayak launch, fishing pier, and portage at 15-Acre Lake, a project recreation site located at Keowee-Toxaway State Park.

Duke also will implement a Habitat Enhancement Program in the watershed and conserve approximately 2,900 acres of property adjoining the lakes to preserve and protect ecologically and culturally significant resources.
SHARE ABE HARDESTY/INDEPENDENT MAIL Freshmen stroll through Archway at Anderson University Sunday morning. COURTESY ANDERSON UNIVERSITY More than 700 freshmen made the Archway Walk Sunday morning at Anderson University. COURTESY ANDERSON UNIVERSITY More than 1,000 parents and friends were on hand as Anderson University's freshman class performed the Archway Walk Sunday morning

By Abe Hardesty of the Independent Mail

It took Leah Rivera about 10 minutes to complete Sunday morning's Archway Walk at Anderson University. It was plenty of time, it turned out, to ponder a lifetime of dreams.

"I thought about graduation. I thought about my parents, and making them proud," said Rivera, a nursing major from Greenville. "I know it's a moment I'll remember the rest of my life."

Rivera was among more than 700 freshmen who made the stroll Sunday morning as part of the unofficial start of the AU school year.

Her parents, Sergio and Julia, were among the more than 1,000 parents who watched nearby as the freshman class walked from the Thrift Library to Merritt Hall, parading beneath the old AU archway along the way.

Another freshman, Katie Partin of Greenville, also had family on her mind as she made the quiet walk.

"It was really special to see all those parents here, a day after we moved in. I thought about how I'll miss seeing my family every day," she said.

The march is an 8-year-old tradition started by AU President Evans Whitaker, who shook hands with each student beneath the archway, then had a brief official welcome at the end of the walk.

The reverse side of the sentimental parade is planned in the spring of 2020, when the 2016 freshman class makes the trek in the opposite direction to end graduation exercises.

"When they make that march again, it's the last thing they'll do at commencement," Whitaker said. "It's big symbolism. A special moment, and one I believe students and parents will appreciate more over time.

"Symbolism is more important than we sometimes realize."

It was meaningful three years ago for Bradley Brazell, a senior from Eglin who positioned himself in a shady spot Sunday, about 30 minutes before the walk.

Brazell said the march gave him a sense of unity "under the banner of Christ" at a school that "fuses together exceptional academics with true Christian faith."

A few feet away, 2013 graduate Tony Price said the event seemed to gain significance during his four years at the school.

"The funny thing to me is, as a freshman, you see it as a walk," he said while filming the event, "but then, when you spend four years here, and see what the Lord has done in your life, it takes on a different meaning."

"It's incredible to see how much the Lord has done at this school since I came (in 2009) as a freshman," said Price, now an admissions counselor and social media analyst at the school. "The walk is going to mean more to these kids later than it does now."

The freshman class is the largest in school history. Classes begin Wednesday.

Follow Abe Hardesty on Twitter @abe_hardesty
SHARE Dillon Staton Tanner Staton Charles Nicholas Dunn Donavon Taylor Frizzell

By Ray Chandler

A drive-by shooting less than three hours into the new year sent a Georgia man to the hospital with a bullet wound and five other men to jail.

Investigators charged Dillon Logan Staton, 21, of 224 Oak Hill Drive, Seneca, on Jan. 1 with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature in connection with the incident. Donavan Taylor Frizzell, 19, of 78 Upper Glade Creek Road, Pisgah Forest, N.C.; Charles Nicholas Dunn, 17, of 702 S. Fairplay Street, Seneca; Tanner Reid Staton, 17, of 224 Oak Hill Drive, Seneca and Dellen James Metz, 18, of 640 Timberlake One Circle, Seneca were all charged as accessories before the fact.

Deputies answered a call to 203 D Street, Seneca, just after 2:42 a.m. Sunday at a report of a drive-by shooting and found Luther Clarke Dixon, 18, of 3726 Hunters Creek Road, Carnesville, Ga., lying on the floor of the residence. The officers reported that Dixon was bleeding from an apparent bullet wound in his front upper right shoulder and a corresponding wound on his upper right back, through his shoulder blade.

According to investigators, witnesses gathered at the house reported that a small car had driven down D Street past the house, turned around and again passed the house. They reported that a passenger in the rear of the car fired a shot into a car parked in the driveway. The wounded Dixon had then gotten out of the parked car and stumbled into the house before collapsing.

A female witness interviewed at the scene told investigators that she had had an earlier altercation with four white males and had them bring her to the D Street residence. According to investigators' reports, the witnesses interviewed said a shouting match ensued between the men in the car and those gathered at the house, with the riders in the car leaving and vowing to return. The witness given a ride by the car's passengers told investigators she was not from the Seneca area and did not know the men in the car. Investigators reported that all the witnesses denied knowing those in the car.

Dixon was transported to Oconee Medical Center for treatment.

Dillon Staton was released Tuesday on a $20,000 surety bond. Tanner Staton was released Tuesday on a $10,000 surety bond. Donavan Frizzell, Charles Dunn and Dellen Metz remained in the Oconee County detention center Tuesday, each with a $10,000 surety bond.
India Third Largest Tech-Startup Hub Globally

A new study by Assocham in association with the Thought Arbitrage Research Institute reveals that India has the third largest number of technology-driven startups in the world, after the U.S. and U.K., respectively. Bangalore hosts the largest share of technology startups in India (26 percent), followed by the Delhi National Capital Region (23 percent) and Mumbai (17 percent), while the cities of Hyderabad (8 percent), Chennai and Pune (6 percent each) are emerging as new popular destinations for technology entrepreneurs. Current estimates show that the U.S. has over 47,000 technology startups, the U.K. has over 4500, while Indias tech startups numbered around 4200 as of 2015. Combining both tech and non-tech startups, India and China feature among the five largest hosts, at 10,000 startups each. The U.S. dominates with a total of 83,000 startups.

The Assocham study notes that government initiatives such as Startup India, Make in India, and Digital India need to be synergized to create an ecosystem that supports technological disruption and innovation. Without this enabling thought, policy, and regulatory infrastructure in place, India will not be able to successfully expand the space for domestic entrepreneurs. Finally, the study recommends tax exemption for R&D to foster new ideas regardless of failure and the introduction of entrepreneurship courses in Indian universities, on the pattern of the Stanford University model.

The Rise of Hiring Via Referrals in Corporate India

An increasing number of companies in India have begun to tap into the employee referral system to meet their hiring needs. According to LinkedIn India, which recently published its study, India Recruiting Trends 2016, around 55 percent of the countrys talent leaders see employee referral programs as the top source of quality hire. Leading firms such as Coca-Cola, Infosys, Genpact, Capgemini, Deloitte, Jubilant, and more report that over 40 percent of their hiring are done through referrals.

Towards this, companies have begun adopting technology platforms. Technology major Infosys, for its part, has created a portal where employees track vacant positions and job requirements in real time, and can submit profiles of candidates directly. Deloitte is building an app to streamline and digitize their referral process. Geojit BNP Paribas, a retail financial services provider, uses a software called Workflow, a process automation of the employee referral scheme developed by its internal technology team. Other examples of non-technology referral solutions include, the Employee Referral Program (ERP) of financial services firm Credit Suisse and Ernst & Youngs Bring another you; Bring your buddy; and Refer a friend and Reward yourself.

The credibility and long-term viability of the referral system emerges from the fact that current employees understand the aspirations of their proposed candidates while also being familiar with the company culture and expectations. HR recruiters also find that varying the hiring process enables them to assess candidates based on attitudes and other personality parameters, rather than solely skillsets that have shorter lifecycles. The system can also improve the gender diversity of the workforce. For example, Lenovo India incentivizes its employees to recommend more women candidates for the same roles. Similarly, Capgemini just launched a recruitHER program, where employees recommending female candidates become eligible for a lucky draw. At Coca Cola, a 15 to 20 percent premium is placed on successful referrals of female candidates, which has directly converted into 31 percent of its associates being women.

Online Retailers Express Concerns over GST Rules

The government needs to address the prevailing concerns of online retailers over the implementation of the new Goods and Services Tax (GST) rules. The biggest of these relates to the potential for double taxation. Currently, the draft GST law does not provide for credit on tax paid on returned goods or sales return. This becomes pertinent because in the Indian e-commerce market, the volume of returned goods can reach as high as 50 percent of sales, on average. Yet, GST law does not provide for any refund or adjustment of the tax already paid on the goods returned by customers. This means that an online seller will pay tax twice if a replacement is provided. Further, if money is refunded to the buyer, a seller will have to pay the tax as no credit is allowed.

As a result, the industry has suggested that the government incorporate refunds and adjustment of tax already paid in sales returns through the mechanism of credit notes raised by the sellers themselves. The government has yet to provide assurance on this front. Moreover, the final version of the law will be framed in consultation with the states, leading to a second major worry  that of the proliferation of a new permits regime. Online retailers are wary of burdensome paperwork as the GST law includes a provision allowing states to seek additional authorization from transporters carrying goods exceeding US$ 744 (Rs 50,000) in value. Tax consultants point to two adverse sets of consequences in this regard. One is the fact that it can lead to states demanding different documents, given the open-ended nature of the provision, and ultimately fragmenting the national market. The second is that it could lead to cumbersome border checks in case of inter-state trade, undermining the benefits of speedier logistics promised under GST. If the GST structure is to succeed, tax invoices should suffice given the new systems technology enabled tracking of compliance.
Nihar Info Global applies for trademark registration for 'ONVO' Nihar Info Global Limited informed to the exchanges that it has successfully applied for Trademark registration of its private label "ONVO" under the 'Trademark Classes 18 and 21. ... October 28, 2022 | 28-10-2022 2:37 pm

Rupee rises 4 paisa to 82.29/$ Early on Friday, the rupee strengthened against the US dollar by 4 paise to 82.29, helped by a weak US dollar in the international market and strong local equities. The influx of new fore... October 28, 2022 | 28-10-2022 2:30 pm

PNB Housing Finance's net profit increases by 12% PNB Housing Finance announced on Thursday that its September 20222023 quarter net profit increased by 11.7% to Rs 262.63 crore, thanks to a little increase in core income. In the same period... October 28, 2022 | 28-10-2022 2:25 pm

Dhanuka Agritech soars ~8% as board to consider buyback Dhanuka Agritechs stock surged as much as 8% in Fridays intraday session and touched a high of Rs742. The company stated in its filing with the exchanges that at its ensuing ge... October 28, 2022 | 28-10-2022 2:18 pm

Markets trade flat amid volatility; Nifty below 17,800 dragged by metals Domestic benchmark indices in a volatile session and trading flat after a gap-up opening on Friday. Both the Sensex and Nifty benchmarks are in the green during the afternoon market session ami... October 28, 2022 | 28-10-2022 2:00 pm
The Kroger Co.s Central Division is hosting a job fair in Fishers, Indiana, hiring associates for the following positions for its new Marketplace store.

Deli and bistro clerks, general merchandise clerks, Starbucks, Murrays Cheese, meat and seafood and other positions are available. More than 150 job openings for day, evening, weekend and overnight shifts are listed.

The fair will be Tuesday, Aug. 23 and Wednesday Aug. 24 at 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on both days in the Kroger store at 11700 Olio Rd., Fishers, IN.

For additional information on employment opportunities with Kroger, please visit jobs.kroger.com then the enter zip code for your community to apply to available positions at all of our area locations.
The Junior League of Indianapolis (JLI) will hold a workshop for prospective Community Assistance Grant applicants on Wednesday, Sept. 7 from 6-8 p.m.

A total of $100,000 is available through Community Assistance Grants, which provide critical funding to non-profit organizations working within the JLIs interest area of preparing students for academic success. Grantees must demonstrate two key areas of focus: providing families with knowledge and resources to guide their children toward academic success; and/or equipping students, families and education providers with age-appropriate educational materials.

Applicants are able to request up to $25,000 for a program or project. Five ultimately will compete during a pitch competition at the JLIs December general membership meeting.

Previous recipients include Horizons at St. Richards Episcopal School, the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra, Visually Impaired Preschool Services of Indiana, the Indianapolis Public Library Foundation and Starfish Initiative.

Since 2000, the Junior League of Indianapolis has awarded more than $1.1 million through our Community Assistance Grants, and we are committed to ensuring that these investments reach as many students as possible, said Michelle Study-Campbell, JLI president. Preparing our students for academic success has a ripple effect on our city, and we are willing partners in an effort that will take the work of our entire community.

Individuals who wish to attend can contact grants@jlindy.org.

The Community Assistance Grant application will be available on the JLIs website on September 6. The submission deadline is October 14.
Construction is progressing quickly on the Cowlitz Tribe's casino in Washington. Still image from Live Construction Feed / Cowlitz Casino Project



The ink was barely dry on the decision when the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde announced plans to take a casino dispute to the U.S. Supreme Court

But the Oregon tribe might be going it alone in the effort, The Columban reports. One opponent has already dropped out, another is reconsidering its stance and the other parties haven't decided what they will do as the Cowlitz Tribe continues construction on the new casino in Washington.

The Cowlitz Tribe's ilani resort is due to open in April 2017. It's not anywhere near the Spirit Mountain Casino , owned by the Grand Ronde Tribes.

But ilani is a lot closer to Portland -- Oregon's biggest city -- than Spirit Mountain. The Grand Ronde Tribes have told the media that revenues will drop as much as 41 percent once the new facility opens.

It could take several months before the Supreme Court considers a petition in the case. And the chances of the justices actually hearing it are slim -- Indian gaming and gaming-related cases are rarely accepted by the nation's high court.

Read More on the Story: Grand Ronde gamble on challenge to Ilani (The Columbian 8/21)

An Opinion: In Our View: Know When to Fold em (The Columbian 8/21)

D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Decision: Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon v. Jewell (July 29, 2016)

Federal Register Notices: Notice of Final Federal Agency Actions on Transportation Project in Washington State (May 3, 2016) Proclaiming Certain Lands as Reservation for the Cowlitz Indian Tribe (November 13, 2015) Land Acquisitions; Cowlitz Indian Tribe (May 8, 2013)

Department of the Interior Solicitor Opinion: M-37029: The Meaning of "Under Federal Jurisdiction" for Purposes of the Indian Reorganization Act (March 12, 2014)

Join the Conversation

Related Stories
The Isle of Capri Casino Hotel Lake Charles in Westlake, Louisiana. Photo from Facebook



Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico is expanding its gaming enterprise to another state.

"Our acquisition of the Isle of Capri Casino in Lake Charles is the culmination of a two-year business development effort to expand LDC both within and outside of New Mexico," LDC President and CEO Jerry Smith said in a press release on Monday. "Lake Charles is Louisianas largest casino market. With our operating principals of quality, service and value we expect to continue to generate solid financial results for our owners and investors."

The 50,000 square-foot facility, located on Lake Charles, features a 493-room hotel, slot machines, table games, a poker room, a restaurant, a fast food eatery and a buffet. It's the only Louisiana property owned by Isle of Capri Casinos, Inc.

"We have enjoyed owning and operating Isle of Capri Casino Hotel Lake Charles for more than 20 years, and we appreciate the hard work and dedication of our team," CEO Eric Hausler said in a press release

Join the Conversation
A young dancer at the 50th annual Mille Lacs Band traditional powwow in Minnesota. Photo from Facebook



Indian children continue to be over-represented in the foster care system in Minnesota, The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

In fact, more Indian children are placed in foster care at at higher rate now than in 1978, when the Indian Child Welfare Act became law, according to the paper's analysis. They are 16 more times as likely to be in foster care than White children.

The number of Indian families being broken apart is a crisis-level problem, threatening the survival of American Indians as a community and as a culture, Melanie Benjamin, the chief executive of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe , told the paper.

Once Indian children are place in foster care, they stay longer and face more hurdles as the age, the paper reported. They are less likely to graduate from college and find a job and they tend to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and homelessness.

Native Americans represent just 1.3 percent of the state's population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau , and Indian children represent 2 percent of the state's child population. Yet they are 24 percent of the foster care population and no one really knows why, although removals based on incidents of neglect, substance abuse and child abuse are high.

Read More on the Story: Indian kids in foster crisis (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 8/21) These are my relatives (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 8/21) Saving themselves, then their family (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 8/21) Foster care disparities growing (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 8/21)

Related Stories

Join the Conversation
The Navajo Nation District Court in Window Rock, Arizona. Photo from Navajo Nation Courts



The Navajo Nation is defending its court system from an "attack" by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Four Navajo citizens have sued the Mormon Church, alleging they were sexually and physically abused during their participation in the Indian Student Placement Program . Their lawsuits were filed in the Navajo court system.

The Mormon Church, though, is asking a federal judge in Utah to prevent the tribe's court from hearing the cases. Church attorneys claim the tribe lacks jurisdiction over non-Indians and over activities that occurred off the reservation.

The Navajo Nation is fighting back and wants the Mormon Church to exhaust its remedies in the Navajo court system before going to federal court. The exhaustion doctrine gives a tribal court "a full opportunity" to determine its own jurisdiction, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in the Iowa Mutual Insurance Company v. LaPlante decision from 1987.

"The Nation has an interest in seeing that all Plaintiffs, including religious organizations, respect the jurisdiction of its courts," the tribe's motion to intervene reads. "If Plaintiffs are allowed to operate on the Navajo Reservation without being subjected to the jurisdiction of the Nation then the Nations interest clearly will be harmed."

A hearing on the tribe's motion took place on Monday afternoon, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Thousands of tribal youth took part in the Indian Student Placement Program between 1947 and 2000, when it was officially disbanded. They were placed by the Mormon Church in homes while they attended schools, typically off the reservation.

Read More on the Story: Navajo Nation seeks to intervene in abuse lawsuit against Mormon church (The Salt Lake Tribune 8/20) Lawyers in sex abuse lawsuits push judge to order deposition of LDS Church president (FOX12 8/16)

Related Stories

Join the Conversation
A. Prathap

Actor Kamal Haasan has another achievement to his credit. Kamal Haasan has become the second Tamil star after Sivaji Ganesan to be honoured with the Chevalier de L'Ordre Arts et Lettres (The Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by the French government.

The Order is part of Frances premier award, the Legion of Honor. Haasan's spokesman on Sunday told media, "The distinction...is in recognition of his high level of artistic excellence and his distinguished career achievements.

Dedicating the award to his admirers and audience, in a special audio message, Kamal Haasan said:

On this occasion, I bow before my more deserving forerunners Satyajit Ray and Sivaji Ganesan who made even the common man realise the value of Chevalier award. I dedicate this award to my admirers and audience who give me the tenacity of purpose to pursue to this day and moment my arts.

Additionally, he also said that these awards and recognition humbles him. He expressed his sadness that his parents are not alive to see their son receiving such an honor.
Speaking to the media during an inaugural ceremony of a private college, Mylswamy Annadurai, director, ISRO Satellite Centre at Bengaluru, has said that ISRO will soon launch four key satellites in the coming three months.

With a whopping plan of launching close to 70 satellites in the next three years, ISRO aims at exploring the outer space like never before. ISRO has already launched ten satellites between August 2015 and August 2016 and now Indian scientists are planning to lift up four more satellites  INSAT-3DR and SCATSAT-1 on September this year, GSAT-18 in October and ResourceSat-2A in November 2016.

After the distinguished success of Chandrayaan mission, ISRO had planned to launch Chandrayaan-2 (second lunar mission) along with Russia, however, it will now be Indias solo project. The launch of this indigenous lander and rover is expected to take place by the end of 2017 or the beginning of 2018.

attemptnwin

According to Annadurai, ISRO also has the plan to launch Aditya-L1, the first Indian mission to study the sun by the year 2020.

Under the realm of ISROs phenomenal journey, India has seen the launches of several space voyages in a single flight. Behind this exceptional journey of more than 82 satellites in the space and a successful mission of exploring the Moon, Mars and the stars, lies a team of trailblazing ISRO scientists and engineers.
In an attempt to dispense the immense pool of information and knowledge that NASA has gathered over the years, it will now give access to all its data for free.

The revered American space agency is all set to make its research available free of charge. The Obama administration has been pressing its science agencies to make its research more accessible for public and science lovers.

freelancer

Making our research data easier to access will greatly magnify the impact of our research, NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan said.

In 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy demanded a lot of its agencies, including NASA to increase access to its research for the welfare of science enthusiasts, aspiring scholars, and scientist around the world.

Usually, such data is hidden and kept under covers, but now it will be open for everyone through a web portal. The EU has also said that it plans to make all its research available free from 2020.

At NASA, we are celebrating this opportunity to extend access to our extensive portfolio of scientific and technical publications, said Dava Newman, NASAs Deputy Administrator.

With this move, NASA aims at inviting global communities to join them in exploring earth, air and space. Each and every research funded by NASA will be posted on the Pubspace within a year of its publication.
Sitting beside her 14-year-old daughter Insha Malik  a pellet victim from Sedow village of south Kashmirs Shopian, the sobbing mother repeatedly asking only one question:

What was the fault of her child who wanted to become a doctor but now cannot even see the world around her.

She has lost vision in both eyes after a stray pellet hit her on the night of July 10 when she opened window to peek outside at a protest rally going on in the streets around her home.

Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes

She has not only become blind in both eyes but also suffering from a severe brain infection resulting from pellet injury. Bed number 5 at AIIMS Trauma Centre in Delhi has virtually become a home for the grieved after the incident.

Around 8 PM on the fateful night, the class IX student had been sitting with her mother and siblings in the kitchen on first floor of her house after finishing her studies. She wanted to become a doctor and was studying hard. Clashes were going on all over the valley between protesters and armed forces over the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani.

Insha got up and peeked out of the window. Suddenly pellets hit her; she let out a sharp cry and collapsed.

AFP

She was a brilliant student and wanted to become a doctor. She used to say she will have no time to play next year when she would be in class 10. But everything is finished now. She was an inspiration for her two younger brothers. In addition to being a good student, she was an ideal daughter, her mother told Indiatimes and broke down with tears rolling over her face.

I want her eyesight back even if in just one eye. This is my only request, said the inconsolable mother.

Zero Chances of Regaining Vision

Doctors treating her say there are zero chances of the teenager regaining vision in her eyes, which are badly damaged by the pellets.

The pellets have ruptured her right eye and it has come out. The left eye is lacerated with zero chance of recovery, said a doctor attending to her.

She does not even have perception of light in the eye that she is left with. The pellet injury has resulted in multiple fractures and injuries in her face and skull, said the doctor.

Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes

The pellets  in addition to causing the loss of vision  have resulted in fracture to her frontal bone (forehead) and nasal bone. She has fracture in her maxillary bone.

Numerous pellets pierced inside her skull and at the base of her brain. The fractures caused pneumocephalus (a condition where air enters into the brain cavity), said the doctor.

The doctors are ensuring that her condition remains stable. There is no treatment  they says  which can get her vision back in her eyes given the damage caused by the pellets. Her fracture will heal up but the damage is done, said the doctor.

Insha was first admitted at surgical ICU of SMHS hospital in Srinagar but later referred to AIIMS in the national capital on July 24.

Ill Get Well And Able To See Soon

Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes

Unaware of the lifelong disability, Insha is hopeful of seeing the world again. As my father says I am being treated at the best hospital in the country. I am sure I will get well and be able to see soon. I will return to my school to study further, she told Indiatimes in barely audible voice.

Her eyes are covered with soft bandage and her face is swollen and disfigured. She would require multiple surgeries that will be costly, painful and time-taking.

Even if she gets specialised treatments, doctors are not sure that she would get back her eyesight. They are even ruling out any miracle.

Tarique Anwar/Indiatimes

We Are Too Poor To Afford The Cost of Treatment

Inshas father Mushtaq Ahmad Lone is a poor farmer who is unable to bear the expenses of specialised treatment of her daughter.

We are poor. We urge the government to look into our case and help this young girl. We just want her eyesight back. We will celebrate even if she can gain sight in one eye, he said.

Loan himself suffered a serious leg injury two years ago while he was working as a driver. A steel rod is fixed in his leg.
A woman at Jawaharlal Nehru University was allegedly raped by a fellow student on Saturday when she went to his hostel room to copy a movie on a pen drive. The police said that an FIR had been lodged and her statement under CrPC Section 164 would be recorded on Monday.

boldsky.com/Represenatational image

The survivor, a PhD scholar, told the police that she had asked a few people about the movie on a social networking site. The accused Anmol Ratan, an M. Phil student, replied, asking her to collect it from him. On Saturday, the youth sent her a text message offering to copy the film onto a pen drive. Later, he came to her hostel and asked her to accompany him to his room. The woman said that he gave her a spiked drink and she fell unconscious after consuming it. When she awoke, she found the youth lying beside her. He threatened to harm her if she revealed the matter to anyone.

She then approached Vasant Kunj (north) police station and registered a complaint later that night. An FIR under sections of rape and criminal intimidation has been registered against the youth. The complainant was taken for a medical examination and its report is awaited. The youth will be asked to appear for questioning, police said.

newsx.com

JNU registrar Pramod Kumar said that they have not yet received a formal complaint from the woman or the cops.

"I was unaware about the incident but will look into it," Kumar said.

The youth is a senior member of the students' council and he threatened to use his clout to get away with the crime, the woman told the police. Members of the students' council said that they will probe into the allegations. Reacting to this incident, AISA said it revoked Anmol Ratan's membership.

"We have taken serious note of the fact that a leading activist of AISA is facing a criminal complaint of sexual assault. He has been expelled from the primary membership," said AISA Delhi state secretary, Ashutosh Kumar.
Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) is said to have begun working on what is being pegged as the most affordable electric SUV in the world through its Mahindra Electric unit, formerly known as Mahindra Reva.

feedzbucket.com

The compact SUV with electric powertrain has been codenamed S107, said people with knowledge of the matter. After the Verito electric version, this is the company's next major project in the space. The idea is to combine the strength of Mahindra's SUV expertise with that of Reva in electric cars. The company, which sells the E2O entry level electric vehicle, recently showcased the Halo sportscar concept.

"If anyone is preparing feverishly for a disruptive future of mobility, it is Mahindra," group chairman Anand Mahindra had told shareholders at the 70th annual general meeting this month. Electric cars are a key element of this. While the Verito electric addresses the needs of the practical buyer, a compact electric SUV caters to those who are keen on driving as an experience.

"We fully intend to be profitable participants in this new world," Mahindra had said. Mahindra & Mahindra's Chief Executive for Automotive Pravin Shah told ET that the company is considering electrification of its KUV model, but the plans are yet to be finalised.

indiacarnews.com

"We are looking at adding more SUVs as well as small commercial vehicle to our electric vehicle portfolio. The focus will be on offering more affordable electric vehicles for higher accessibility. Mahindra Reva will continue to address the range anxiety with continuous development," Shah said.

Ford India is also exploring a hybrid-electric powertrain option for its all-new EcoSport planned for 2020-21, although this is at an early stage. The company is also exploring the possibility of a CNG version of the KUV. Mahindra expects modest annual sales of 6,000 units each for the electric and CNG versions, said one of the persons cited above.

The move is seen as a fresh attempt to boost Mahindra Electric, which is focussing on overseas markets and fleet operators to build scale and become viable.

Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors and Mahindra have formed a consortium to develop certain components for electric and hybrid cars and make them more affordable and accessible for the masses. Ford India dropped out of the grouping as it's exploring the EcoSport option.
When the CM of Madhya Pradesh wants to inspect how his state has been ravaged by poor flood planning, dont expect him to get his shoes wet.

MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan: "Chalo floods dekhne jaate hain!"

*arrives*

"Guys, yeh mera favourite white pant hai." pic.twitter.com/ojFk9nOvRw  Jose Covaco (@HoeZaay) August 21, 2016

Its not like he tripped and fell and sprained his leg. No, Shivraj Singh Chouhan was caught by cellphone cameras being carried by policemen during his visit to the flood-hit areas.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan promoting 'A Flying Jatt'. pic.twitter.com/nD9DuhOdJX  Shirish Kunder (@ShirishKunder) August 22, 2016

He was definitely briefed that he was scheduled to walk through (or glide through) waterlogged territory, to get an idea of what his constituency were experiencing.

Panna: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan visits flood affected areas in the state. pic.twitter.com/Q4HcBuEyOJ  ANI (@ANI_news) August 21, 2016

Government sources told the media that the authorities present decided to ensure that the CM wasnt bitten by snakes. Amusingly, the guy finally realised that he could hike up his lungi and get his feet wet. Possibly when he saw that the media was recording every moment.

Modi taking aerial survey of Shivraj singh chouhan's ground survey of flood affected areas in Madhya Pradesh pic.twitter.com/lZMuF7gzCP  Ritzz (@ritikajain01) August 22, 2016

Chouhan's cavalcade was not met with cries of help, but residents raising slogans against administrative apathy in relief distribution.

Some questioned the chief minister on why authorities failed in disaster management efforts despite a forecast of heavy rain. Protocol officers had to stop the chief minister and his team from visiting Bansghat area after intelligence inputs of mobilization of angry villagers. Mayor Mamta Gupta had to flee in the face of mob fury. Later, residents staged a dharna and shouted slogans against the state government. They said administration failed to provide food and drinking water in the last two days.
Members of a Ganesh Mandal in Pune publicly humiliated eleven Muslim workers after they refused to pay donations for Ganeshotav. The men, aged between 20 and 30 years old, from Uttar Pradesh left Pune after they were asked to do sit-ups as punishment, which was recorded on video and published online.

India.com

According to some reports, Shri Ram Ganesh Mandal members asked for Rs.100 for "Ganpati vargani" but the workers only wanted to pay half of that. This incident took place at Crown Bakers on the Bhosari-Alandi Road in Pimpri-Chinchwad and the employees were asked to do sit-ups on a busy road. They left Pune after being humiliated and went back to Uttar Pradesh, it was reported.

The police said the video shows the workers doing sit-ups while holding their ears and they are being told to say sorry repeatedly. Assistant Police Inspector, Mahesh Swamy, said: "We have booked three members of the Ganesh mandal but haven't yet arrested them. The offence is bailable. A notice has been issued to the three to be present in court on Monday to secure bail.
AMC

As he sits tight in an ambulance, dazed and confused and possibly unaware of the blood covering half of his innocent face, 5-year-old Syrian boy Omran Daqneesh has become the face of the Aleppo airstrikes in Syria. The boy was taken to M10 hospital where he was treated for his injuries and cleaned up before being released. Ironically, the M10 hospital itself has been struck by airstrikes.

The photograph (and video) of him being loaded into an emergency vehicle has gone viral on social media as we all cannot help but wonder why a human life has become so cheap. Read more here.

Here are 5 more stories that may interest you:

1. MD Asks For 'Sex' As A Birthday Gift From His CEO, Ends Up With A Surprise 'Prison' Party

A managing director of a private firm in Bengaluru has been accused of sexual harassment as he is believed to have asked his business partner, the CEO of the company, to give him a 'birthday gift'. The woman has filed a complaint after what she claims is an innuendo.

She claims he asked her to spend a day with him in his room. He also allegedly threatened her to strip in public and allegedly misbehaved with her in office as well as in the lift.

Shilpa (name changed) is the CEO of a healthcare company located in BTM second stage that focuses on creating cards for personalised health data. According to her complaint with the Bommanahalli police, soon after she started working with the accused, Brise John, he started sexually harassing her.

Shilpa claimed John started touching her inappropriately, to which she objected. However, she claims she bore it as they had started the company recently by investing huge money.

According to her complaint, John invited her to spend some time with her on July 21 as a 'gift' for his birthday. He is reported to have told her that if she did not comply, he would not part with the profits of the firm. More details here

2. VK Singh Victimized Me, Tried To Prevent My Promotion Says Army Chief General Dalbir Singh

General Dalbir Singh, the Indian Army chief has accused his predecessor and current Minister of State for External Affairs, VK Singh of trying to stall his promotion, in 2012 while he was at the helm of affairs of the force.

According to a report, Gen Dalbir in an affidavit submitted in the Supreme Court accused VK Singh of acting with mysterious design, malafide intent and to arbitrarily punish him for extraneous reasons.

I was sought to be victimised by the then COAS General V K Singh with the sole purpose of denying me promotion to the appointment of Army Commander, the affidavit submitted on his personal capacity said.

It was filed in response to a petition filed by Lt Gen (retd) Ravi Dastane alleging that Dalbir Singh was favoured over him to succeed Gen Bikram Singh in July 2014. Read more here.

3. Airlander 10, The World's 'Largest Aircraft' Begins First Test Flight

The world's "largest aircraft" has embarked on its maiden flight, four days after a previous attempt was abandoned due to technical issues.

The Airlander 10 , part plane, part airship, took to the skies amid cheers and applause from crowds gathered at an airfield in Cardington, central England.

The successful flight comes 85 years after another airship, the ill-fated R101 took off from the same airfield in October 1930 before crashing in France, killing 48 people and effectively ending the development of airships in Britain. Read more here

4. Some 60 Terrorists Sneak Into Kashmir, Taking Advantage Of The Violence After Wani's Killing

Taking advantage of the ongoing unrest in the valley, terrorists in north Kashmir's Kupwara and Uri sectors have sneaked into central as well as south Kashmir, sources told TOI.

Armed terrorists are believed to be travelling from one part of the valley to another after infiltrating into the Indian side in the days since the unrest began following the killing of Hizb commander Burhan Wani on July 8, said a senior Intelligence officer. Read more here

5. Over 1.3 Million Pellets Were Fired In Kashmir By CRPF Since July

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were using 14 types of less lethal and nonlethal munitions include Oleoresin grenades, pepper balls, stun grenades and electronic shells, to control crowds during the ongoing protests in Kashmir.

This was informed to the J&K High Court by the CRPF, in response to a PIL, which demanded the ban on the use of the controversial of pellet guns in Kashmir.

The CRPF also told the court that it has fired over 3000 pellet cartridges in the valley ever since July 8. Read the details here.
Tragic Victims of our Deal With the Devil By Peter Hitchens August 22, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - " Daily Mail " - Who can fail to be moved and grieved by the sight of a small child in distress? But please do not let your emotions stop you thinking.



The picture of the shocked Aleppo survivor, Omran Daqneesh, like that of the drowned child Alan Kurdi last year, should not be allowed to enforce a conformist opinion on the world.



The death of Alan Kurdi did not mean that it was wise to fling wide the borders of Europe (as Germanys Angela Merkel now well knows).



The rescue of Omran Daqneesh should not make us side with the bloody and merciless Syrian rebels.



Why is Aleppo a war zone in the first place? Do you know? I will tell you. Syria was a peaceful country until it was deliberately destabilised by Saudi Arabia and its fanatical, sectarian Gulf allies, consumed with hatred for the Assad government and, above all, its ally Iran.



Worse, this monstrous intervention was supported by the USA, Britain and France, all sucking up to the Saudis for oil, money and arms contracts.



In the hope of bringing down Assad, we made a devils bargain with some of the worst fanatics in the Middle East, people who make Anjem Choudary look like the Vicar of Dibley.



We know of Britains role for certain because of the very strange case of Bherlin Gildo, a Swedish man accused by British authorities of attending a terror training camp in Syria. His trial collapsed in June 2015 because his defence lawyers argued that the terror groups he was accused of supporting had been helped by British intelligence.



The Assad state, as you might expect, defended itself against its attackers, helped in the end by Iran and Russia.



And the war which followed was the ruin of Syria, whose innocent people found their peaceful cities and landscape turned into a screaming battlefield, as it still is.



If you are truly grieved by the picture of poor little Omran, just be careful who you blame.


Trump Hypes a New War on Terror



Donald Trump has urged a new war on terror that brings back torture and seeks revenge on terrorists families, but another problem with the Republican nominees approach is his exaggeration of the danger.



By Paul R. Pillar August 22, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - " Consortium News " - Much of Donald Trumps recent speech on terrorism left one to wonder how what he was proposing would differ from current practices he supposedly was criticizing. Working on counterterrorism with other states including Russia, for example, sounds like what the Obama administration is doing now, including discussing with the Russians ways of combating terrorist groups in Syria. And it is hard to see how Trumps extreme vetting would differ from the existing and already extensive review process for visa applications. Other parts of what Trump was proposing were just too vague for us to get a good idea of how they would be supposed to work. This is true of his proposal to suspend immigration from unnamed regions that either  depending on which sentence in the speech one looks at  are some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism or where adequate screening cannot take place. If any such list of regions were broad enough to stop a terrorist group trying to infiltrate operators into the United States, it would be so broad as to end immigration into the United States altogether. If there was any one theme that tended to unify what was in the speech about terrorism and that distinguishes it clearly from current policy, it was in explicitly invoking comparisons with the hot and cold wars of the Twentieth Century. In likening current counterterrorism to the Cold War, Trump even added a dose of McCarthyism with his proposal for a Commission on Radical Islam that would expose the networks in our society that support radicalization. Setting aside this McCarthyite twist, the overall theme is one that  as with several other aspects of Trumps candidacy  unfortunately manifests destructive attitudes and habits that go well beyond Trump and his campaign, and that were having debilitating effects on policy debates before his campaign even began. We have seen this with references to World War IV (the idea being that the Cold War was number III) and Islamofascism. The same pattern crops up in numerous other ways. The recent memoir of a former deputy director of the CIA (Michael Morell), for example, is grandiosely titled The Great War of Our Time. Several things are fundamentally wrong with framing counterterrorism this way. One is that this badly misrepresents the nature of the threat from international terrorism in suggesting a foe with a degree of unity and organization comparable to the enemy powers in the Twentieth Century world wars or to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. If terrorism is what we are worried about, then we need to remember that terrorism is not a foe or an organization or an ideology but instead a tactic used by many different perpetrators with many different ideologies. Even focusing just on the radical Islamist variety of terrorism, there is neither this kind of organizational unity (as indicated by several of the very attacks Trump mentions in his speech, in which the perpetrators had no organizational ties to any larger group) or even ideological unity (as reflected in the Sunni-vs.-Shia conflicts that dominate much of the current strife in the Middle East). The Great War Myth The framing of current counterterrorism as some kind of great war also grossly overstates the overall seriousness of the threat. Nothing the United States is combating today is comparable to the challenges that were posed by  quoting from the comparison made in Trumps speech  Fascism, Nazism, and Communism. The Axis powers in World War II not only threatened to, but did, overrun major portions of the globe. The USSR of the Cold War was a superpower. All of this is way out of the league of anything that comes under the label of radical Islam today. Overstating of the threat does a major part of the terrorists job for them by making people more scared than they ought to be. To the extent that there are organizational manifestations of radical Islam in the form of groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, the great war kind of framing does another part of the terrorists job for them. A grand, religiously defined struggle between a U.S.-led West and a Muslim adversary such as one of those groups is exactly the way such groups want to depict world politics. It elevates their stature beyond what it otherwise would be and enables them to appeal more effectively to a religiously defined constituency that otherwise would have little sympathy for their methods. The heavy emphasis on a religious definition of the adversary in this postulated war makes many members of that constituency more receptive to such appeals and more inclined to see the United States as their enemy. Particularly stupid is the insistence on naming Islamic terrorism. Not only President Obama but also President George W. Bush understood that such naming has nothing to do with understanding threats and instead only alienates more Muslims. The Cold War mindset that is involved here wasnt even an entirely appropriate way of looking at the Cold War itself. It saw global communism as more monolithic than it really was, a misconception that led to such misdirections as the Vietnam War. But at least there really was a USSR, which was a nuclear power and had a global policy of expanding its influence. Applying the mindset to current policy challenges is even less appropriate than it was during the Cold War. And its not only Donald Trump we have to blame for corruption of public thinking about such challenges. Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agencys top analysts. He is author most recently of Why America Misunderstands the World . (This article first appeared as a blog post at The National Interests Web site. Reprinted with authors permission.)
US Hawks Advance a War Agenda in Syria



The U.S. government, having illegally sent American troops into Syria, is now threatening to attack the Syrian military if it endangers those troops, an Orwellian twist that marks a dangerous escalation, explains Daniel Lazare.



By Daniel Lazare August 22, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - War, like politics, is filled with surprises. While the focus in Syria has been on a U.S.-backed rebel offensive in Aleppo that has succeeded in turning tables on Bashar al-Assads government, a new and unexpected flashpoint has developed 200-plus miles to the east where U.S. jets are engaged in a dangerous showdown with Syrian warplanes near the city of Hasakah. The trouble began on Wednesday when, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights , Kurdish forces advanced on the pro-government National Defense Forces that controls portions of the city. When the NDF responded with arrests, the fighting took off. This is not the first time that Kurdish and government forces have clashed in Hasakah, which is divided among Kurds, Arabs, Aramaic-speaking Assyrians, and a small number of Armenians. But what makes the latest confrontation so serious is that the U.S. quickly upped ante by scrambling two F-22 fighters to intercept a pair of Syrian Su-24s bombing Kurdish positions. NBC News reported that the jets came within a mile of one another on Thursday and were in visual contact before the Syrian aircraft left the scene. U.S. jets chased away two more Su-24s the next day as well. Noting that the Kurdish units are part of a U.S.-backed coalition known as the Syrian Democratic Forces and that U.S. Special Operations forces were in the area at the time, Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis, a Navy captain, said that the U.S. was resolved to protect the safety of both. We view instances that place coalition personnel at risk with the utmost seriousness he declared , and we do have the inherent right of self-defense when U.S. forces are at risk. As weve said in the past, he added, the Syrian regime would be well-advised not to interfere with coalition forces or our partners. Such statements are little less than Orwellian since the United States has essentially invaded Syria by inserting military forces without Syrian government permission in violation of international law. What Davis was saying, therefore, is that the U.S. will prevent Syria from protecting its own forces on its own soil, which was rather like the Wehrmacht condemning Poland for daring to defend its own territory in September 1939. A Pro-War Establishment The upshot is the latest example of how Washingtons vast pro-war foreign-policy establishment continues to get its way despite President Barack Obamas efforts to limit military involvement in the Middle East. Establishment of a no-fly zone in northern Syria has long been a neocon priority. Indeed, Hillary Clinton, a neocon favorite at this point, reiterated her call for a no-fly zone as recently as April during a televised debate with Bernie Sanders. Obama has opposed a no-fly zone because it would draw the U.S. into a direct conflict with the Assad government and likely its Russian and Iranian backers as well. But now with the U.S. promising to continue patrolling the skies over Hasakah, he finds himself backing into a no-fly zone regardless. The confrontation begs the question of who is really calling the shots with regard to Syria, the President or well-placed hawks whose specialty is maneuvering the White House into doing their bidding. It also raises the question of the role of the Clinton presidential campaign. The White House is obviously coordinating closely with Clintons campaign headquarters, and with prospects of a landslide victory that will give Democrats control of both houses of Congress plus the presidency, the stakes couldnt be higher. But since a quick and easy victory over Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies would vindicate the neocon position, the issue is whether pro-Hillary forces are pulling strings to make events in Syria go her way as well. This is not conspiracy mongering but simply the way policy in Washington is made. Hawks and doves are constantly jockeying for advantage with Obama standing haplessly in the middle. Moreover, the hawks seem to be winning since U.S. foreign policy has turned distinctly more robust since the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in late July. Around the time that retired four-star Marine General John Allen was warning Americas enemies, You will fear us, and Gold Star parent Khizr Khan was telling Trump to go home and read the Constitution, Obama gave Ashton Carter, his interventionist Secretary of Defense the go-ahead to bomb ISIS positions in Libya . On July 31  three days after Clinton gave her acceptance speech  Syrian rebels led by Al Nusra, the local Al Qaeda affiliate, launched its powerful offensive in Aleppo. Whether or not Washington OKd the offensive  citing reports of massive arms shipments to the rebels, the well-informed Moon of Alabama website argues persuasively that it did  there is no doubt that it encouraged and helped coordinate a powerful propaganda campaign that has followed in its wake. Omran Daqneesh, the dazed and dirt-encrusted five-year-old boy who has become a symbol of Aleppos suffering, according to The New York Times, is one example of how the campaign has borne fruit. Lina Sergie Attars powerful Aug. 13 Times opinion piece, Watching My Beloved Aleppo Rip Itself Apart, was another, while the rabidly anti-Assad Guardian has hardly let a day go by without running a heart-rending tale about this or that horror that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin have visited on Syrias civilian population. (Examples here , here , and here .) U.S. Media on the Bandwagon Context, balance, and plain accuracy have fallen by the wayside as various media outlets hop on the pro-war bandwagon. Why, for example, focus on one the fate of one child in rebel-held eastern Aleppo when the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the mainstream medias favor go-to source for Syrian casualty figures, reports that virtually the same number of civilians have died from random rebel shelling of government-held western Aleppo as from Syrian or Russian aerial bombardment in the east, i.e. 163 versus 162? While trumpeting the fate of Omran Daqneesh, who was shaken but apparently not seriously hurt, why has The New York Times failed to report the plight of 12-year-old Abdullah Issa, whose throat was slit last month by members of a U.S.-backed rebel force known as Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki because he had allegedly fought on the government side? We are even worse than ISIS, the fighters bragged before finishing the boy off. Yet even though the entire gruesome image was caught on video, the paper of record has refused to report a single word. The same goes for Lina Sergie Attars stirring Times op-ed. Although it invokes the infamous 2013 Queiq River massacre to describe the suffering that Assad has heaped upon the people of Aleppo, it fails to mention that the slaughter was most likely the work of Al Nusra . Why spoil a good story with the facts? Much the same can be said for Hasakah where The Wall Street Journal blandly reported that Syrian government bombers had been striking Kurdish positions near the city of Hasakah, where the U.S. has been backing Kurdish forces in the fight against Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh. Since the U.S. is battling the Islamic State, the quintessence of evil, its role must be above reproach while the Syrian government is plainly up to no good. Nonetheless, the questions continue to multiply. If U.S. military personnel are helping the Kurds battle ISIS, why are the Kurds fighting with pro-government forces instead? Since the Syrian Observatory says they started the fight, did the Americans do anything to restrain them or call them off? Or did they encourage them to attack in order to provoke a wider conflict? What, moreover, happens if the U.S. ends up downing a Syrian plane? Clinton will cheer. But what happens if Russia decides to join in the fray? Making Clinton Happy A happy romp in the skies over Hasakah would serve the Clinton campaign well. It would show that toughness pays, as Clinton has repeatedly argued. But the trouble with war is that it is rarely goes according to plan. Indeed, the Syrian conflict grows more complicated by the day. Syria and Russia are battling ISIS, Al Nusra, and other Islamist groups while the U.S. is battling ISIS as well while indirectly aiding Al Nusra by channeling arms to allied Islamist groups with which it shares weaponry and coordinates battlefield tactics. The U.S. has so far steered clear of conflict with Assad, although Hasakah may signal a change of heart. Turkeys megalomaniacal President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meanwhile, opposes ISIS but supports Al Nusra outright  it should not be considered as a terrorist organization since it opposes Islamic State, he declared in a recent interview  but reserves his real enmity for the Americas Kurdish allies. The Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) are battling Assad in Hasakah but at the same time fighting alongside Assads forces against U.S.-backed rebels in Aleppo. China has declared its support for Assad and has even sent military advisers to help his regime in its fight with the rebels, thereby introducing yet another explosive element into the mix. This is more intervention than one small country can handle, and tripwires are therefore multiplying. Obamas aggressive actions in Hasakah may help Clinton against Trump but they could all too easily blow up in the administrations face. War, indeed, packs just as many surprises as politics. Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
A Lawless Plan to Target Syrias Allies



Official Washingtons disdain for international lawwhen its doing the lawbreakingwas underscored by ex-CIA acting director Michael Morell voicing plans for murdering Iranians and maybe Russians in Syria



By Ray McGovern



August 22, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - On Aug. 17, TV interviewer Charlie Rose gave former acting CIA Director Michael Morell a mulligan for an earlier wayward drive on Aug. 8 that sliced deep into the rough and even stirred up some nonviolent animals by advocating the murder of Russians and Iranians. But, alas, Morell duffed the second drive, too. Morell did so despite Roses efforts to tee up the questions as favorably as possible, trying to help Morell explain what he meant about killing Russians and Iranians in Syria and bombing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into submission. What is needed is a serious commitment to peace talks without unacceptable preconditions, such as outside demands for regime change. Rose: We make them pay the price by killing Russians? Morell: Yeah. Rose: And killing Iranians? Morell: Yes  You dont tell the world about it.  But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran. In the follow-up interview, some of Roses fretful comments made it clear that there are still some American non-neocons around who were withholding applause for Morells belligerent suggestion. Rose apparently has some viewers who oppose all terrorism, including the state-sponsored variety that would involve a few assassinations to send a message, and the notion that U.S. bombing Syria to scare Assad is somehow okay (as long as the perpetrator is the sole indispensable nation in the world). Rose helped Morell splain that he really did not want to have U.S. Special Forces kill Russians and Iranians. No, he would be satisfied if the U.S.-sponsored moderate opposition in Syria did that particular killing. But Morell would not back away from his advocacy of the U.S. Air Force bombing Syrian government targets. That would be an okay thing in Morells lexicon. On Aug. 17, TV interviewer Charlie Rose gave former acting CIA Director Michael Morell a mulligan for an earlier wayward drive on Aug. 8 that sliced deep into the rough and even stirred up some nonviolent animals by advocating the murder of Russians and Iranians. But, alas, Morell duffed the second drive, too. Morell did so despite Roses efforts to tee up the questions as favorably as possible, trying to help Morell explain what he meant about killing Russians and Iranians in Syria and bombing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into submission. What is needed is a serious commitment to peace talks without unacceptable preconditions, such as outside demands for regime change. Rose: We make them pay the price by killing Russians? Morell: Yeah. Rose: And killing Iranians? Morell: Yes  You dont tell the world about it.  But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran. In the follow-up interview, some of Roses fretful comments made it clear that there are still some American non-neocons around who were withholding applause for Morells belligerent suggestion. Rose apparently has some viewers who oppose all terrorism, including the state-sponsored variety that would involve a few assassinations to send a message, and the notion that U.S. bombing Syria to scare Assad is somehow okay (as long as the perpetrator is the sole indispensable nation in the world). Rose helped Morell splain that he really did not want to have U.S. Special Forces kill Russians and Iranians. No, he would be satisfied if the U.S.-sponsored moderate opposition in Syria did that particular killing. But Morell would not back away from his advocacy of the U.S. Air Force bombing Syrian government targets. That would be an okay thing in Morells lexicon. Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Ray McGovern Debates James Woolsey On Iraq War - Charlie Rose - Audio Only - 8/20/2004
Can Russia Survive Washingtons Challenge?



By Paul Craig Roberts



August 22, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - News services abroad ask me if President Erdogan of Turkey will, as a result of the coup attempt, realign Turkey with Russia. At this time, there is not enough information for me to answer. Speculation in advance of information is not my forte.



Moreover, I do not know if it is true that Moscow warned the President of Turkey of the coup, and I do not know if Washington was behind the coup. Therefore, I do not know how to weigh the scales. As I see it, whether Turkey stays with Washington or realigns with Moscow depends first of all on whether or not Moscow warned Turkey and whether or not Washington was behind the coup. If this is what Erdogan believes, whether true or false, Erdogan is likely to align with Russia. However, other factors will also influence Erdogans decision. For example, Erdogans belief about how resolute Putin is to standing up to Washington.



Erdogan will not want to align with Russia if he thinks Russia is not up to Washingtons challenge. Erdogan sees Putin endlessly asking for Washingtons cooperation, and Erdogan understands that Washington sees this as a sign of Russian weakness. Washington slaps Putin in the face, and Putin replies by asking for cooperation against ISIS. I understand why Putin responds this way. He wants to avoid a war between US/NATO and Russia that neither side can win. Putin is a man of peace and accepts affronts in order to save life. This is admirable. But that might not be the way Erdogan sees it. Erdogan might see it like Washington sees it: weakness.



The second consideration is whether Washington or Moscow offers Erdogan the best deal. Washington most certainly does not want the breakup of NATO and will strive to keep Turkey in NATO at all costs. Washington, for example, might deliver Gulen to Erdogan, and Washington might put one billion dollars in a bank account for Erdogan. This is easy for Washington to do, as Washington can print all of the worlds reserve currency it wishes to print. It is impossible for Moscow to deliver Gulen, and because Yeltsin accepted US advice conveyed through the IMF, the Russian ruble is not a substitute for the US dollar.



The world is accustomed to seeing Washington prevail, because Washington relies on force. Except for Putins response to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia, the world is accustomed to seeing Putin rely on diplomacy. As Mao said, power comes out of the barrel of a gun, and so the world believes. Putin seemed to be decisive when he accepted the Crimean vote and reunited the Crimea with Russia, But Putin turned down the requests of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk to rejoin Russia, and this made Russia look weak. It also prolonged the conflict and the death and destruction continues.



In my opinion this strategic failure by Putin is the result of advice from the Russian Atlanticist Integrationiststhe people who think that Russia does not count unless it is part of the West. In every sense, these pro-Western members of the Russian government are de facto members of the Treason Party. Yet they serve as a constraint on Russian decisiveness. The absence of Russian decisiveness provokes more pressure from Washington. It is a losing game for the Russian government to invite pressure from the West.



Washington sees that Putin is unable to break away from the influence of the Atlanticist Integrationists, which includes the Russian economic establishment led by the independent central bank. Therefore, Washington continues to make Washingtons cooperation with Russia in Syria dependent on Putins agreement that Assad must go. Putin wants to get rid of ISIS, because ISIS can infect Muslim areas of the Russian Federation. But if he agrees to get rid of Assad, chaos will prevail in Syria just as chaos prevails in Iraq and Libya, and Russia will have accepted Washingtons overlordship. Russia will become another vassal country added to Washingtons collection.



The real danger for Russia lies in Russias desire for Western acceptance. As long as Russians have this desire, they are a doomed people. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order .
Russia Won't Let International Terrorism Triumph in Syria, China to Help By Stephen Lendman August 22, 2013 " Information Clearing House " - A lot rides on defeating US imperialism in Syria. The fate of the region and beyond hangs in the balance. If Syria goes, Iran is next, a war if initiated by Washington far more potentially consequential and devastating. Irans population alone makes it an important regional country  four times the size of Syria at around 80 million. Imagine the possible war-related death, injury and displacement toll. Transforming the Islamic Republic into a US vassal state would give America and Israel unchallenged Middle East dominance. Russian and Chinese regional influence would wane or be eliminated. The loss of Syrian and Iranian sovereignty would greatly aid the scourge of US imperialism worldwide  Moscow and Beijing the key independent powers standing in the way of its global dominance. Nuclear war would be more likely with the aim of letting America colonize planet earth unopposed if triumphant, provided nuclear devastation and radiation poisoning didnt kill us all  why nuclear confrontation is so crucial to prevent. The potential consequences should terrify everyone. Vladimir Putin is committed to defeating the scourge of US-supported terrorism in Syria, mainly concerned about preventing its spread to Russias heartland  at the same time wanting the Syrian Arab Republics sovereignty and territorial integrity preserved. During an August 15 meeting with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said (w)e believe that it is still necessary not to allow international terrorist entities to prevail here, and to ensure the beginning of genuine and true negotiations between all Syrian sides. Its alarming that many so-called (US-supported) moderate (sic) (anti-government combatants) more often coordinate their actions with Security Council-designated terrorist groups. China intends offering Syria humanitarian aid and enhanced military help. On Tuesday, Peoples Liberation Army Admiral/high-ranking Defense Ministry official Guan Youfei met with Syrian Defense Minister Fahad Jasssim al-Freij and an unnamed Russian general in Damascus. Following their meeting, he issued a statement, saying (t)he Chinese and Syrian militaries traditionally have a friendly relationship, and the Chinese military is willing to keep strengthening exchanges and cooperation with the Syrian military. How far Beijing intends going militarily remains to be seen. It has its own terrorist problem. Its threatened by US regional provocations, notably in the South China Sea. Its government reportedly sent dozens of military advisors to Syria last year to aid in the fight against terrorism, stopping short of committing warplanes and/or ground forces. Does Guans Tuesday visit signify Beijing intending more direct military involvement than already? Will greater East/West confrontation follow? Flashpoint conditions in Syria could become more serious than currently. Neocon Hillary Clinton likely succeeding Obama next year could threaten world peace and stability by escalating conflict into something more dangerous than now. A lot depends on the Syrian, Russian, Iranian, Chinese alliance against the scourge of US imperialism  maybe humanitys fate. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. -His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III. -http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html - Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com .
The Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU) has accused Pro-Chancellors and Vice Chancellors of Nigerian universities of corruption and running the nations ivory tower aground with their fraudulent activities, diversion of funds and awarding shady contracts.

The Union, which made this known at the end of its National Executive Council meeting yesterday, asked President Muhammadu Buhari to beam his anti-corruption searchlight on the Vice Chancellors and the governing council of the universities if the anti-corruption battle is to succeed.

In a communique signed by its National President, Comrade Samson Ugokwe and National Public Relations Officer, Salaam Abdussobur, SSANU said the government must take urgent steps to check the rot and sleaze in the ivory tower, which they said have become haven of corruption being run by greedy, inept, incompetent and rapacious administrators.

The union hailed the efforts of the government in fighting the hydra-headed monster of corruption, which it noted has crippled the economy, embarrassed the country in international circles and caused untold pains and hardship to Nigerians.

It also asked the Federal Government to do more, by shifting its attention from the political class, and beaming its searchlight on the Nigerian university system.

The communique said NEC noted various allegations against Pro-Chancellors, Vice-Chancellors and Councils, involved in fraudulent actions, illegal appointments, shady contracts, diversion of funds, and other corrupt practices and agreed that the level of rot and sleaze in our University system needs to be checked, as our ivory towers are now havens of corruption being run by greedy, inept, incompetent and rapacious administrators.

The Honourable Minister of Education, must put the issue of corruption in the front-burner of his engagements, investigate all reports brought to his attention and not spare any University official found indicted.

To this end, SSANU requests the Visitor(s) to our Universities to urgently constitute Visitation Panels to review the affairs of these Universities, and where Visitation Panels have presented reports, come up with White-Papers of the Reports for implementation.
Over 20,000 small scale traders in Kano State are set to benefit from the Federal Governments interest free loans to promote small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) in the state.

Alh Rabiu Bako, the Commissioner for Commerce, Industry, Cooperatives and Tourism in the state, revealed this while speaking to journalists in the state capital on Monday.

The amount to be given to an individual or organisation would be determined by its repayment capability, the commissioner said adding that government was determined to promote self-reliance and sustainability.

The commissioner urged interested traders to access the loan which would be repaid in two years in order to benefit from what he described as lofty objectives of the scheme.

Alh Bako said that the scheme was an initiative of the Office of the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, to promote micro-enterprises and empower petty traders.

He said that the ministry also organised a workshop aimed at enlightening the public on the processes and procedures of accessing the loan.

Bako urged traders who had yet to register their businesses with the ministry to do so; as well as open an account with the micro finance banks.
According to reports, two guests spent a night in a hotel in Pattaya, Thailand unaware that there was a dead body under their bed.

The body of the slain transgender woman was only discovered after the guests had checked out, when a maid noticed blood near the bed.

Police and rescue workers were alerted to the incident at the five-storey hotel on Saturday.

Rescue workers found the unidentified body after lifting up the bed in the room on the roof deck of the hotel.

Police believe the victim had been dead for three or four days. The body was sent to a forensic institute for an autopsy to find out the cause of the death.

Thai media reported that two men had checked into the room on Aug 16. They took a transgender guest to the room at 1.35am on Aug 18 before checking out later that morning.

On Friday evening, a man and woman checked into the room and reported a bad smell. They asked the hotel staff to spray the room before spending the night there.

On Saturday morning, a hotel maid came to clean the room, discovered blood coming from under the bed and a foul smell. She alerted the hotel manager, who immediately called police to investigate.

The Pattaya police chief, Apichai Kropphet, said officers had already obtained the identification of the two male suspects and footage from closed-circuit television.

Kropphet also added that police are now looking for the suspects.
As the Federal Government continues to explore option of dialogue to resolve the issue of militancy, the President of the Ijaw National Congress (INC), Alatubo Charles Harry, has declared that he can bring an end to the spate of bombings of oil and gas facilities in the Niger Delta region, within 30 days.

He, however, pleaded with President Muhammadu Buhari to give him a moratorium of just 30 days with the right atmosphere.

Mr. Harry said he would achieve the feat by mobilizing Ijaw elders into the creeks and engage the militants to lay down their arms for the sake of the dwindling national economy.

The INC President, who spoke in Port Harcourt, Rivers state capital, yesterday said that the congress would no longer folds its arms and watch any Ijaw or Niger Delta person killed in the ongoing war of attrition.

He said for the proposed dialogue with the militants to work effectively, there must be sincerity on the part of the federal government, adding that Nigeria cannot know peace until the country was restructured in line with true federalism.

Nigeria is a product of coercion. We were forced to be together. For a genuine dialogue to take place between the government and the militants there must be an internal mediation. Then grant us 30 days of moratorium, we will end the bombing in the Niger Delta, he said.
The Ijaw Youths Council, IYC, has commended the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, for declaring a ceasefire even as it urged the Federal Government to accept the militant groups offer of dialogue in good faith.

The NDA, which has claimed responsibility for a spate of bombings of oil facilities in the Niger Delta, weekend, made a U-turn as it expressed readiness to dialogue with the Federal Government.

The Avengers, in a statement by its spokesman, Mudoch Agbinibo, however, warned that it would return to attacking oil and gas installations in the region if dialogue with the government fails.

Reacting to the development, the IYC in a statement issued Sunday in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital by its spokesman, Eric Omare, called on the Nigerian Government to ensure that the dialogue deals with the core issues keeping the region perpetually in a state of conflict.

The Ijaw Youth Council has always advocated dialogue as the means to the resolution of the Niger Delta crisis. As a result, we welcome the conditional declaration of ceasefire by the Niger Delta Avengers if it is actually from them. We call on the government, especially President Buhari, to take advantage of this ceasefire to aggressively dialogue with the people of the region to address the issues affecting the region.

For the umpteenth time, we call for a bipartisan and sincere dialogue to resolve the root causes of the recurrent Niger Delta crisis. The dialogue should be issue-based and not to solve immediate problems and massage the ego of personalities. President Buhari must avoid listening to political hawks around him at the expense of the countrys unity and development, the statement read.
As part of Gov Nasir El-Rufais efforts to boost energy efficiency in Kaduna State, the government announced on Monday its plans to ban the sale of of high energy consuming bulbs.

Disclosing this to the media at the state capital, the states Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Muhammad Abdullahi said before the ban is in full effect, there would be a campaign all over the state next year for electricity consumers to switch to energy saving bulbs completely.

We have already started moving from high-energy consuming bulbs to energy saving bulbs in ministries departments and agencies, as he explained that the state would save N360 million from the exercisewhich accounts for 30% of the amount spent on light bills and fuelling of generators annually by electricity consumers in the state.

The commissioner continued by saying that the strategy was an idea of Dr Abdulkarim Mayere, who came third in the My Great Kaduna Competition- A competition organised by the state government in 2015 to source ideas from the people of the state on how to make Kaduna great again.

According to Abdullahi, the gov had since appointed Mayere as the General Manger of Kaduna Power Supply Company, a new company set up to ensure energy efficiency in the state.
The gubernatorial aspirant from KOWA party for the upcoming September 10 Edo State elections, Mr. Thompson Osadolor, has said the he will create about 300,000 direct and indirect jobs of elected into office.

Osadolor said this at some youths organisations in Benin on Monday, adding that the jobs will be created through mobile network, agriculture and artisanship.

While noting that agriculture has the potential of creating wealth for over a million of the people within the shortest possible time, Osadolor particularly stressed on providing a new mobile network that will be run as a state enterprise.

He gave reason for this as the exploitative nature of the already established mobile operator, noting however, that when floated, thousands of employment opportunities, direct and indirect, will be created.

He disclosed that he was already in talk with some investors who have expressed interest on the ideas he laid on the table.

While not giving specific time frame for the job creation, Osadolor said substantial part of it will be created within two years in office.

According to him, As regards the idea of a mobile network, it may seem an uphill task to accomplish to many of us, but discussion on this is on extensively, and positively too.

It is not going to be run by my money, it will be private, but state will however have a substantial stake in it.

The idea is that apart from the fact that it will end an ear of exploitation of the people in the industry, thousands of direct and indirect jobs will be created.

It beats me hollow, when I see Nigerians paying so much to make calls, even on the same network. With KOWA Mobile, it will be toll free within the same network.

Again, another benefit of this is that it will now become cheaper to have all educational institutions, including secondary schools, connected to Wi-fi, he stated.

On agriculture, the governorship candidate said an agricultural revolution is what he is bringing onboard, adding that the first thing he will do when elected, is to declare a state of emergency on the sector in a bid to reposition the sector.

Again, thousands of jobs will be unveiled in this area, while the state will not only become agricultural hub of the country, but become food sufficient to its people in particular and the country at large.
The Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has warned of grave dangers ahead for Nigerias democracy if the Federal Government goes ahead with its probe of former President Goodluck Jonathan over the Niger Delta bombings.

There were reports last week that the security agencies had launched a discreet investigation on the possible culpability of the former president and his wife, Dame Patience, in the recent spate of bombings in the Niger Delta.

Media reports had quoted an intelligence source as disclosing that it had been established that some of the oil installations bombed in the Niger Delta had actually been mined while Jonathan was president by some of the militants and operatives are known to be very close to him.

The reports also came less than two weeks after the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and Reformed Niger Delta Avengers (RNDA) alleged that the former president and some prominent politicians from the Niger Delta, were sponsors of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA)  a militant group responsible for bringing Nigerias crude oil production down to about 1.8 million barrels per day, from 2.2mbpd.

Mr Jonathan had in reaction to reports that he is being investigated by the security agencies, issued a statement through his spokesman, Ikechukwu Eze, accusing some unnamed persons, who may have an axe to grind with him, of feeling frustrated by his soaring reputation on the local and international scene.

In its reaction, the spokesperson of the caretaker committee, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, described the probe of the former president over the Niger Delta bombings as a pure witch-hunt.

Prince Adeyeye, in a terse statement, said: Its a pure witch-hunt and a very dangerous precedent which portends grave danger for Nigerias democracy.
he Borno State Command of the National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency has confirmed the death of one its staff who got drowned in a river while chasing a notorious drug baron.

Ona Ogilegwu, NDLEA Commandant in Borno, said on Monday that the incident occurred during an operation in Gwange area of Maiduguri.

He said, In an effort to arrest a notorious baron, four men of the command were involved in a water mishap after diving into the Gwange River in pursuit of the suspect.

The narcotic boss said that the NDLEA officials were involved in the mishap because they could not swim.

He said, The sad incident led to the death of one of our officers in the hospital after a failed attempt to revive him.

The survivors were discharged from hospital today.

The NDLEA boss said that the command would still go after the suspect and arrest him.

(NAN)
Joachim Iroko, the man who named his dog Buhari, was on Monday arraigned before a Magistrate Court in Ota, Ogun State.

The accused faced a one count charge of conduct likely to cause breach of peace.

The prosecutor, Itaita Ebibomini, told the court that the accused committed the offence on August 13 at the Hausa section of Ketere Market in Sango-Ota, Ota Magisterial District.

Mr. Ebibomini, a police inspector, said the offence is punishable under Section 249 (d) of Criminal Code of Laws of Ogun State of Nigeria, 2016.

The one count charge read: That you Joachim Iroko aka Joe and other still at large on Saturday 13th day of August 2016, at about 5.30 p.m. at Ketere area Sango, in the Ota Magisterial District did conduct yourself in a manner likely to cause breach of peace, by writing a name Buhari on a dog and parading same in the Hausa section of Ketere Market Sango and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 249 (d) of Criminal Code of Laws of Ogun State of Nigeria, 2016.

At the hearing, the accused who pleaded not guilty to the offence, was represented by a counsel, U. Michael.

The counsel pleaded that the accused be granted bail, as the offence was a bailable one.

The prosecutor did not oppose the plea for bail.

The Chief Magistrate, B. J. Ojikutu, granted the accused bail in the sum of N50,000 and two sureties who must be regular payers of tax in the state, in same sum.

The sureties were also to attach four passport photographs each to the bail bond, depose to affidavits of being gainfully engaged and reside in the courts jurisdiction.

The magistrate thereafter adjourned the case to September 19.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how the accused, also called Joe Fortemose Chinakwe, was arrested on Saturday after one of his neighbours complained that he named the dog after his father, Alhaji Buhari.

The accused was first taken to Sango Police Station, from where he was transferred to State Command Headquarters at Eleweran, Abeokuta.

He was yet to meet all the bail conditions at the time of this report.

Source: PremiumTimes
Vanguard

Against the backdrop of calls for true federalism, Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State has said restructuring was not the panacea to the nations current socio-economic woes.



Punch

Labour leaders and other stakeholders have condemned the move by Imo, Benue and Sokoto to reduce the working hours and days in the states.

Thisday

In spite of the several law suits occasioning many contradictory rulings and judgments from courts of coordinate jurisdiction, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders indicated yesterday that they would resume talks aimed at settling their squabbles out of court.

The Sun

Inspector General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris has commended Air Peace Chairman, Chief Allen Onyema for building Uli Police Station in Ihiala Local Government Area of Anambra State.

Daily Trust

Buhari was handed Nigeria on a stretcher  Badaru

Governor Mohammed Badaru Abubakar of Jigawa State explains why the economic policies of President Buhari must be supported.

Guardian

Mr Augustine Alegeh, President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), on Sunday pledged the associations support to the Federal Government`s fight against corruption.

Leadership

UNICEFs Chief of Field Office in charge of Katsina and Kano States, Padmavathi Yedla, has explained that the solutions to high infant mortality rate in Nigeria are not expensive but they are not properly observed because social norms are opposed to them.

The Nation

Chief of Air Staff (CAS) Air Marshal Sadique Baba Abubakar yesterday described as technically deficient the Boko Haram video showing how some of the abducted 215 Chibok girls were killed in aerial bombings.

Tribune

The Comptroller-General of Prisons, Jaafaru Ahmed has confirmed that no prisoner escaped during the attempted jailbreak in the early hours of Thursday, August 18, 2016.
Ahead of the August 27, 2016, governorship primary election of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Ondo State, the National Chairman of the party, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun has assured aspirants and party faithful that leaders at both national and state levels have no preferred candidate.

There were reports that a national leader of the APC, Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, had purportedly anointed one of the aspirants  Segun Abraham  as his preferred choice to pick the partys ticket.

The purported endorsement of Mr Abraham, led to the impeachment of the Ondo APC Chairman, Isaac Kekemeke, by some members of the party in the state, who accused him of acting out a script written by Mr Tinubu.

One of the governorship aspirants, Mr Tunji Abayomi, had in an open letter to Tinubu, warned him to steer clear of the governorship primaries in the state. But the APC national leader, in a reply, said he had the right to endorse any of the aspirants.

Speaking to journalists in Abuja after a meeting he held with Mr Kekemeke, the Ondo APC Secretary, Mr Rotimi Rahaman and 24 governorship aspirants, Mr Odigie-Oyegun said all the participants agreed that it was wrong if any member endorsed a particular aspirant.

The meeting was convened, following the crisis that rocked the state chapter of the party following the alleged endorsement of Abraham.

We have accepted unanimously that no attempt will be made by the party to impose any aspirant on them and the electorate. They (aspirants) are equal members of the party. We believe it is the choice of delegates to indicate their preference, said the APC National Chairman.

He also dismissed reports that there were many versions of delegates list, promising to make the clean and original list available to all aspirants before handing it over to one of the APC governors who will conduct the governorship primary election.
The long-awaited aptitude test for shortlisted applicants into the Nigeria Police Force is commencing today.

The Police Service Commission (PSC), in a statement Sunday by its head, Press and Public Relations, Mr. Ikechukwu Ani, said coordinators for the exercise were already in their states of deployment to ensure success of the process.

The statement said the PSC Chairman, Mike Okiro, had advised successful applicants yet to receive invitation via email, to check their names at the police command headquarters in their states.

It said the list containing names of invited applicants were pasted in all state command Headquarters.

Mr. Ani added that the commission would ensure that no successful and qualified candidate would be left out.

It would be recalled that the PSC shortlisted 110,469 of 338,250 for the aptitude test from 991,438 applications received.

The 110,469 applicants comprise 22,454 for Cadet ASPs, 24,456 for Cadet Inspectors and 63,559 for Constables.
The Rio 2016 Olympics closing ceremony was truly spectacular and Japan helped add extra colour to it! Tokyo will host the next Olympic games in 2020 and the Japanese prime Minister, Shinzo Abe appeared as a video game character.

Japanese PM Shinzo Abe cosplays as Mario at Rio Closing Ceremony w/ Captain Tsubasa, Hello Kitty and Doraemon pic.twitter.com/1CMjSYnV5I  Yuri (@yurixlax) August 22, 2016

Shinzo Abe appeared out of the pipe in character as Super Mario and with the captivating display, we can only look forward to what Tokyo will offer in 2020!
When United States (U.S) Secretary of State, John Kerry, visits the Aso Rock Presidential Villa tomorrow (Tuesday), he will not grant any press interviews or have his visit covered by reporters covering the State House, it was learnt on Monday.

The high ranking U.S Government official is expected to be received by President Muhammadu Buhari by 3p.m.

During the visit to the Presidential Villa, only photographers and videographers will be allowed anywhere near the U.S Secretary of State.

The photographers and videographers that will be allowed to establish arrival of Kerry by 2.55 pm, according to sources, are expected to set-up by 2.15 p.m.

Also, only the official photographers and videographer will be allowed to establish the bilateral meeting at the Presidents Office.

The Secretary of State will not grant any press interview at the end of the meeting with the President.

After meeting Buhari, he is expected to meet with select Governors from the Northern part of Nigeria at the State House Press Waiting Room.

Again seven media personnel comprising of photographers and videographers will be allowed to establish the event.

At the end of the meeting with the governors, Kerry again will not grant any press interview.
The latest company to leave Nigeria is South African hotel giant, Sun International. Sun International came into Nigeria ten years ago after buying 49% of the Tourist company of Nigeria.

Its 49% stake made them part operators of the Federal Palace hotel and Casinos in Lagos. Sun International blamed Nigerias difficult business climate in the second quarter of June 2016 as being the major decider in putting an end to its Nigerian interests. The companys earnings took a beating as revenue fell 58% in the last twelve months through June.

The company also cited an ongoing shareholder dispute has frustrated all attempts to develop and improve the property,

Several organisations have struggled with a near impossible access to foreign exchange coupled with a rise in the cost of doing business in the country.

According to a statement from Sun International;

Five of our staff members who were detained by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission earlier in the year have still not had their passports returned to them despite no charges being laid against the individuals, the company or Sun International.

As a result of the current environment and issues facing the company the board has taken the decision to exit our investment in Nigeria.

Sun International has an investment valued at $50 million in Nigeria and is the latest South African investor to end its operations in the country. Woolworths and Tiger Brands, also South African investors are some of the companies which have also halted their operations in the country.
On this day in 2015;The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) said it had secured over N200 million bank facility for disbursement to corps members as loans to enbale them start their businesses.

Brig.-Gen. Johnson Olawumi, the Director-General of the corps, said this when the Commander, Guards Brigade, Nigerian Army, Brig.-Gen. Musa Yusuf, paid a familiarisation visit to the NYSC Headquarters in Abuja.

Also on this day in 2015;Two Nigerian soldiers died during an advance through Boko Harams northeastern stronghold on Friday when they stepped on a land mine buried by the Islamists, the army said. Two other troops were seriously wounded in the explosion in Dikwa, a town in Borno State that was recaptured from the jihadist group in July, army spokesman Sani Usman said in a statement.

And on this day in 2014;Former Governor of Lagos State Babatunde Fashola said the Federal Government was yet to justify the 52 percent revenue allocation; it received monthly from the federation account.

The former governor, who described the central government as the big brother, lamented that the inability of the central government to deploy the larger percent of the allocation it received from the federation account to provide the basic social amenities like power supply and adequate security, had made life not too meaningful for the citizens.
Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State has joined other Nigerians canvassing for the restructuring of the country, saying a situation where the federal government has turned itself into lord and master over other federating units in the country, in unacceptable.

He also said it was strange that the All Progressives Congress, APC, which was at the fore-front of the agitation for true federalism, was now against restructuring as the governing party.

Governor Fayose, who hailed the position expressed last Thursday by the Southwest APC, said the party, must now go beyond playing to the gallery and set machineries in motion to restructure the country.

Recall that the leadership of the APC in the Southwest geo-political zone had at a conference held in the Banquet Hall of Premier Hotel, Ibadan, the Oyo State capital with the theme The Southwest and the Challenges of Change in Nigeria, demanded for true federalism in the national polity.

The participants, comprising party leaders as well as political office holders, lamented that over one year of assumption of office of the APC-led federal government, citizens of the geo-political zone were yet to feel the positive impact of governance as anticipated.

They, therefore, called for fundamental restructuring of Nigeria, true and genuine federalism and an all-inclusive participatory government.

In his reaction, Mr. Fayose, in a statement issued in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital on Sunday by his spokesperson, Lere Olayinka, said under the present APC government of President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria is returning to full-blown unitary system of government.

He also said It is on record that the APC said at a debate on Addressing the rising insecurity in Nigeria, what is the master plan? organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) on December 18, 2014, that it would ensure true federalism and ensure adequate community policing through the establishment of state-controlled police so as to curb the protracted security challenges in the country.

Sad enough, now that it is the ruling party, the APC is no longer talking about true federalism, especially the state police that it canvassed while in the opposition.

Governor Fayose, who said states must be strengthened for the country to develop, noted that; Nigeria developed faster in the fifties and sixties when it was practicing confederal system of government, with the regions running its own affairs almost autonomously.

A situation where there are mineral resources in a state and the state cannot do anything about them without approval from the federal government will not foster the development that we all yearn for.

A situation where the federal government has turned itself into lord and master over other federating units in the country, using federal agencies to oppress even state governors is not acceptable.

It was in this spirit that the immediate past Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government organized a National Conference in 2014 and far-reaching decisions were made by eminent Nigerians during the conference.

Sad enough, we are now being told by our president that report of the conference has been thrown into the dustbin of history. This is not good enough, coming from a president, whose party promised restructuring, including establishment of State Police.

It will therefore serve the collective interest of Nigeria and its people for the report of the 2014 National Conference to be considered by President Buhari with a view to, once and for all resolve the various national questions that are holding down the country.
"Drug-resistant infections are already costing lives all over the world. A problem of this scale can only be tackled through coordinated international effort to curb our massive overuse of existing antibiotics, and to accelerate the development of new ones.

Those words were spoken by Jeremy Farrar, Ph.D., director of the Wellcome Trust, the U.K.-based organization that announced a dramatic new focus on global health challenges after last years shakeup. At the front of Farrars mind is a terrifying fact that's been getting a lot of attention lately: After a spectacular eight-decade run, antibioticsmaybe the most important medical breakthrough everhave been losing their punch, with potentially catastrophic effects on human health and well-being.

Antibiotic-resistant strains of pathogens including staph, C diff, pneumonia and tuberculosis are emerging and spreading. The CDC estimates that antibiotic-resistant bacteria claimed more than 23,000 U.S. lives in 2015. A comparable number of people died in the E.U., and the global total is far higher still.

This summer, the sense of crisis has risen fast amid the discovery of a new "superbug" that can't be stopped by even the most effective antibiotics.

A number of foundations have been worrying about antibiotic resistance for a while, now. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has eyed this issue over the years and, among other things, funded an initiative based at the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy that helped "raise broad awareness about the growing threat of antibiotic resistance and offered comprehensive solutions to address the problem." Last year, a RWJF-backed report argued that the U.S. "must redouble efforts to better protect the country from new infectious disease threats, such as MERS-CoV and antibiotic-resistant superbugs, and resurging illnesses like whooping cough, tuberculosis and gonorrhea."

The Pew Charitable Trusts is another foundation that works on antibiotic resistance, focusing on different aspects of this problem, including overuse of antibiotics in food animals like chicken.

As might be expected, the Gates Foundation is alarmed, too, and backs research and solutions in this area. Early this year, it opened a Grand Challenge competition on antimicrobial resistance, specifically focusing on creating better tracking data. Among its earlier efforts was bankrolling a push by Resources for the Future to reduce the overuse of antibiotics in developing countries.

There are two main tracks for grappling with the antibiotic resistance threat, and funders are backing both. One is trying to reduce the chronic overuse of antibiotics. The second is to accelerate the development of drugs that outsmart the superbugs and still get the job done. As an RWJF issue brief says, "Unless new drugs are developedtogether with measures taken to slow the emergence of new drug-resistant microbespreviously treatable infections will become major public health concerns, posing grave threats to infected individuals and increasing the risk of spreading to others."

Last year, the Obama administration announced the CARB (Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria) initiative, building a coalition including the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the NIHs National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, RTI International, the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and the California Life Sciences Institute, along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

In July, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Boston University School of Law, the Wellcome Trust and the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Centre announced a $350 million accelerator: CARB-X, designed to speed development of new antibiotics and swift diagnostics.

We wouldn't be surprised to see more private funders beyond Wellcome getting behind this initiative, given what's at stake here.

CARB-X is headquartered at BU Law, and while a law school might seem like an odd nexus for a global health partnership, bear in mind that the limiting factor of drug development isnt often the scienceits the legal and economic framework that gums up the works.

Up to $250 million in grants promised by HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Developmental Authority and up to $100 million promised by the AMR Centre will seed a brand-new antibiotics pipeline, one that works smoothly to develop new drugs and save lives.

What will it look like? Well, according to BU health law director and CARB-Xs Executive Director Kevin Outterson, "The bulk of the money will go to research labs and small companies developing innovative products all over the world. We will fund the best science, wherever found. The goal is to invest money so that the products society needs will be ready in a decade. This is a social investment. We're trying to build a fire station before the buildings catch on fire."
@PtboSpeedway  Peterborough, ON (August 22, 2016)- The Ontario Modifieds Racing Series powered by Torque Builders Inc. is getting close to putting the wraps on its 2016 agenda and while it wasnt part of the announced schedule, the popular open wheeled road show checked-in Saturday, August 20th for an event at the venue known as Canadas Toughest 1/3-Mile Paved Oval.

Willow Barberstock and Rick Warnes brought the field of a dozen starters to the green flag at Peterborough Speedway. Barberstock took an early lead and while the 17 year-old from Stirling, Ontario has shown flashes of the form that she displayed as a track champion in the 4Fun division, her time at the front of the field was short-lived, as a spin through the infield grass brought-out the events first caution flag.

The father and son duo of Rick and Robert Warnes made-up the front row for the restart, with the former series champion taking the lead from the outside line. While the rest of the pack battled for position in his rear-view mirror, Rob Warnes sprinted out to healthy advantage of the field and was nearly a straightaway ahead of the second place runner as the laps clicked off.

With only one yellow flag during the entire 25 lap race distance, the younger Warnes was in a league of his own as he caught the tail-end of the pack with the scoreboard showing 20 circuits complete. Even though the rest of the pack began to close ranks, nothing would keep Rob Warnes from his second win of the year. Stu Robinson Jr., series point leader John Baker Jr., Christopher Mulders and invader Cory Horner rounded-out the top five. Duane Cinnamon, Ryan Dick, Rick Warnes, Randy Hollingsworth, Connor James, Barberstock and Chris Burrows completed the finishing order.

Earlier in the night, qualifying heat races were won by John Baker Jr. with a pair, Cory Horner, Duane Cinnamon.

Ontario Modifieds Racing Series Notebook: The Saturday, August 20th event was originally scheduled to be part of the August 13th Fan Appreciation Night, but was delayed by rainThe change in the schedule meant Alex Lees  another of this years main event winners  was unable to made the show due to prior commitments.

Fans can find full series details at www.ontariomodifiedsracing.com or www.facebook.com/OMRS. The Ontario Modifieds Racing Series is supported by Clarke Motorsports Communications.

Prepared by: Jim Clarke, Clarke Motorsports Communications/First Draft Media

clarkemotorsports@hotmail.com, www.facebook.com/clarkemotorsports

613.968.6410
This content is from: Opinion

Cryptos descent into hell, rather than sending institutional investors straight for the exits, has triggered a hunt for the next big bet.(Part of the crypto column series.)
Massachusetts is preparing to levy a 5-cent fee per trip on ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft and spend the money on the traditional taxi industry, a subsidy that appears to be the first of its kind in the United States.

Republican Governor Charlie Baker signed the nickel fee into law this month as part of a sweeping package of regulations for the industry.

Ride services are not enthusiastic about the fee.

I dont think we should be in the business of subsidizing potential competitors, said Kirill Evdakov, the chief executive of Fasten, a ride service that launched in Boston last year and also operates in Austin, Texas.

Some taxi owners wanted the law to go further, perhaps banning the start-up competitors unless they meet the requirements taxis do, such as regular vehicle inspection by the police.

Theyve been breaking the laws that are on the books, that weve been following for many years, said Larry Meister, manager of the Boston areas Independent Taxi Operators Association.

The law levies a 20-cent fee in all, with 5 cents for taxis, 10 cents going to cities and towns and the final 5 cents designated for a state transportation fund.

The fee may raise millions of dollars a year because Lyft and Uber alone have a combined 2.5 million rides per month in Massachusetts.

Adopt New Tech

The law says the money will help taxi businesses to adopt new technologies and advanced service, safety and operational capabilities and to support workforce development.

Regulations for how the fee will be collected and a plan for how it will be spent still need to be drawn up, said Mark Sternman, a spokesman for the states MassDevelopment agency, which will be in charge of the money.

Riders and drivers will not see the fee because the law bars companies from charging them. Instead, companies themselves will pay the state, although Evdakov said it will be passed on to riders or drivers one way or another.

Authorities worldwide are grappling with how to regulate and tax ride-hailing. Seattle has passed a law that allows drivers to unionize. In Taiwan, Uber is battling a tax bill of up to $6.4 million.

Despite the cost, ride services in Massachusetts appear to have accepted the fee in exchange for other provisions. For example, the law does not ban them from picking up at Bostons airport or convention center, although there will be special rules for those sites.

Lyft is pleased with the law even though it is not perfect, spokesman Adrian Durbin said.

Soliciting readers for how to spend the 5-cent fee, a column in the Boston Globe offered ideas such as hospitality training, incentive bonuses and help so taxi owners could buy flagship vehicles like a 1940s Checker or a Porsche.

Meister said the money could go toward improving a smartphone app his association has started using, or to other big needs.

We definitely need some infrastructure changes, he said.

The 5-cent fee will be collected through the end of 2021. Then the taxi subsidy will disappear and the 20 cents will be split by localities and the state for five years. The whole fee will go away at the end of 2026.

(Reporting by David Ingram in New York; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Topics Massachusetts
A man federal prosecutors say was victimized in an overseas, online romance scam has pleaded guilty to wire fraud for stealing more than $1.4 million from two Pittsburgh, Penn., area companies whose funds he controlled, according to officials.

Jeffery Plimpton, 59, acknowledged using more than $13,000 of the money he stole to pay his mortgage, and nearly $69,000 to pay credit card bills. But most of the money  nearly $1.39 million  was sent overseas at the direction of a woman with whom he had an online relationship, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shardul Desai told a judge. At least some of the money was sent to Malaysia.

Plimpton stole the money from Alpha Aromatics, a fragrance company, and a subsidiary, Pestco Professional Services, a pest control firm, while working as Alphas controller from April 2014 until the thefts were discovered in an internal accounting review in December. Plimpton was fired then confessed stealing the money to company officials and, eventually, the FBI, Desai said.

Confronted by Alphas chief operating officer, Plimpton claimed he invested company funds in offshore accounts, Desai said. Hes since repaid $50,000.

Plimpton, who now lives in Southaven, Miss., honestly believed the overseas money was to be invested by a woman he met online, public defender Linda Cohn told the judge.

Theres no indication that actually was a woman. That was someone Mr. Plimpton believed was a woman, Cohn told U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer. He also wants the court to know how truly sorry for his conduct he is, your honor.

Outside court, Cohn declined to further explain the situation.

The attorneys have agreed that federal guidelines call for a prison term of between 33 and 41 months when Plimpton returns for sentencing Dec. 15. The judge allowed him to remain free on bond until then.

Desai acknowledged that Plimptons behavior was driven pretty much by a romance fraud type situation.

Desai wouldnt detail who wound up with the money overseas but its definitely fair to say the moneys gone. It wasnt a legitimate person for the money to go to.

Online dating scams, particularly those involving overseas financialfraud, have become more common in recent years.

The FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 12,509 victims of Confidence Fraud/Romance scams who lost more than $203 million last year. So far this year, the center has 7,462 complaints resulting in nearly $120 million in losses.

In April, Sigismond Segbefia, a native of Ghana who lived in Silver Spring, Md., was sentenced to two years in prison by a federal judge in Pittsburgh, Penn., after pleading guilty to charges that he bilked a Pennsylvania woman he met online out of more than $220,000.

Segbefia, 29, used the name and address of an unwitting Pittsburgh-area postal worker to make his online identity seem more legitimate, but claimed to be a 55 year old Australian who owned a western Pennsylvania medical supply business, authorities say. He got the woman to send him money by claiming he needed it to ship medical devices from his company to England.

In another con, Segbefia admitted he pretended to be a 51 year old Army sergeant in Afghanistan. That online dating victim wired him more than $505,000 over six months.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Commercial Lines Fraud Business Insurance Pennsylvania
The family of a New York man who died in the University of Vermont Medical Centers emergency room in February has filed a lawsuit against the hospital claiming malpractice.

The Burlington Free Press reported the suit, filed last month in Burlington federal court, alleges that staff misdiagnosed and mistreated 44 year old Martin LaPoint while he was seeking treatment at the hospital.

LaPoint visited UVM Medical Center a number of times beginning Feb. 11 for treatment of two extruding spinal discs.

The suit claims hospital staff improperly used a compression device to relieve a possible blood clot in his legs, but the blood clot went undiagnosed. LaPoint later died of a bilateral pulmonary embolism, or blood clots in his lungs, on Feb. 18.

Hospital officials declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Medical Professional Liability Vermont
A U.S. agencys plans to ban forced arbitration clauses from financial contracts faces a tough road, with early reaction pointing to a years-long battle that could take a Supreme Court test to settle.

Thousands of angry consumers and business representatives have flooded the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with comments on its May proposal to block companies from forcing customers to take disputes to arbitration instead of joining group lawsuits.

Sentiment in the unusually high number of comment letters, more than 8,380 have already been filed though the deadline still is a week away, seems roughly divided between supporters and critics of the proposed rule.

Some of its biggest opponents, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Financial Services Roundtable, have yet to file their comments, although they are expected to do so closer to Mondays deadline.

If you see a final rule that is substantially similar or identical to the proposed rule there is a very high likelihood that there will be an industry challenge, that could go all the way to the Supreme Court, said Benjamin Saul, a partner with White & Case who has represented financial services clients in CFPB cases.

The CFPB will review the comments before issuing a final rule.

The biggest question  whether the CFPB has legal authority to create such a rule  could be settled earlier. Several lawsuits challenging the CFPB, created in the 2010 Dodd Frank Wall Street reform law, are working their way through the courts and one is already awaiting a ruling at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

Consumers Could Choose

Under the agency proposal, companies could still use arbitration, but would have to tell consumers they could join class actions lawsuits instead.

In class actions, people band together to sue over the same allegations of wrongdoing to make the lawsuit more affordable. In arbitration, individuals settle complaints against businesses one at a time, with an independent arbitrator deciding the case. Frequently, companies select the arbitrators, proceedings are confidential and decisions are hard to appeal.

Requiring customers to sign arbitration clauses when signing up for financial products has become standard practice since a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court validated the practice. The CFPB jumped into the issue at the direction of Dodd-Frank.

The current crop of letters, some coming from members of Congress and state attorneys general, reveals the passions this inflames. Around 6,000 were considered mass mail by the CFPB because they were form letters, sent together, or extremely similar.

Supporters, who are mostly Democrats, lawyers, organizations that advocate for the poor, told the agency that lawsuits are the best way to rectify wrongful practices and they portrayed arbitration clauses as snuck into contracts to deny consumers their constitutional rights.

Forced arbitration shields corporations from accountability for abusive, anti-consumer practices, which only encourages unscrupulous business practices by allowing violations of the law to go unchecked, said a comment letter from 38 U.S. senators including Virginias Tim Kaine, the Democratic Partys vice presidential candidate in the Nov. 8 election.

The proposals opponents, including conservatives, small businesses and car dealerships, said it will would increase their costs and open the door to frivolous lawsuits, benefiting only fee-driven trial attorneys.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; editing by Linda Stern and Grant McCool)

Topics Lawsuits USA
In 2015, two researchers remotely hacked a Jeep Cherokee being driven by a reporter who documented how the researchers controlled everything from the cars radio and media console to its brakes and steering.

For Dr. Shucheng Yu, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the exercise demonstrated how vulnerable smart cars with GPS, Bluetooth, and internet connections are to cyberattacks.

These cars have become the trend of the future, Yu said. There could be some very severe consequences if someone hacked into the car. A car can be fully controlled by the hacker if it is not protected.

So Yu and his student, Zachary King, a junior majoring in computer science at UALR, spent the summer researching how to keep cars safe from cyberattacks. They worked on the project during an intensive eight-week summer research program at UALR.

King was one of 10 college students from across the country recruited through a National Science Foundation grant-funded project, REU Site: CyberSAFE@UALR: Cyber Security and Forensics Research at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

The goal of the program is to decrease cyberattacks on people using mobile technology and social networking sites, said Dr. Mengjun Xie, an associate professor of computer science and director of the CyberSAFE@UALR program.

The basic idea is to integrate cybersecurity and cyber forensics research with the latest technology in mobile cloud computing and social media to provide research opportunities to students, Xie said.

More than 130 students applied for 10 spots. Participants included undergraduate college students with a grade point average of 3.0 or higher who are majoring in computer science, computer engineering, math, physics, or electrical engineering

Those selected spent eight weeks conducting research full time with a faculty mentor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Participants received a $4,000 stipend, on-campus housing, a meal plan, and travel expenses.

Smart Car Protection

In his project, Investigating and Securing Communications in the Controller Area Network (CAN), King created a security protocol to protect smart cars from hacking. He also built an experimental environment that simulates the communication system in a smart car, which allows the security protocol to be tested through simulations.

The research focuses on the development of a security protocol to protect the Controller Area Network (CAN), an internal communications system in vehicles.

There are many ways that hackers can control CAN, King said. Once they access it, hackers can pretty easily control your car however they want. We are proposing to add a layer of security, so if an unauthorized person accesses it, they still wouldnt be able to control your vehicle.

The security protocol protects the CAN in two ways. It authenticates messages sent through the network by creating an authentication code. This authentication code allows nodes on the network to differentiate between a valid message and an attackers message.

The second security feature protects against replay attacks, when a hacker attempts to breach the network by repeatedly sending an old message. The protocol uses a timestamp to calculate when the network last received the message, which verifies the messages freshness.

Yu and King are continuing their research this fall. In the future, Yu hopes to collaborate with industry and funding agencies to implement the security protocol in commercial vehicles and protect cars from hackers.

As for King, participating in this summer research program has left him considering a career in cybersecurity once he graduates in 2018.

Three months ago, I wouldnt have been able to tell you much about cybersecurity and what a security protocol would look like, he said. After having completed this program, I am more interested in cybersecurity than I was before, and I may end up going that route.

A Summer of Innovative Research

The CyberSAFE@UALR participants were honored during a commencement ceremony July 29 at the UALR Engineering and Information Technology Building.

Their research topics range from utilizing cybersecurity and social network forensics to understanding cyber warfare to the use of facial emotion recognition for security purposes.

The participants, faculty mentors, and projects included:

Jonathan Ming, a junior at Azusa Pacific University (mentor: Mengjun Xie): Remote Live Forensics for Android

Monica Bebawy, a junior at Azusa Pacific University (mentor: Mariofanna Milanova): Facial Emotion Recognition for Security

Dennis Frank, a junior at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Jasmine Mabrey, a sophomore at Norfolk State University (mentor: Kenji Yoshigoe): Neurological User Authentication: Security Framework

Antwane Lewis, a senior at Philander Smith College (mentor: Mengjun Xie): Real Time Motion-based Authentication for Smartwatch

Brandon Dalton, a sophomore at Wentworth Institute of Technology (mentor: Nitin Agarwal): Utilizing Cyber and Social Network Forensics for the Understanding of Cyber Warfare

Edsel Paula-Aquina, a senior at Warren Wilson College, and Ying Vang, a senior at California State University-Fresno (mentor: Chia-Chu Chiang): Computer on Encrypted Data

Diana Anguiano, a senior at California State University-San Marcos (mentor: Mengjun Xie): Comparison between Fingerprint Authentication and Behavioral Biometric Authentication using 2D and 3D Gestures

Source: University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Newswise

Topics Auto Cyber Tech Education Arkansas Universities
The state has given a round of almost $200,000 in grants to 23 Greenbrier County small businesses damaged by floods.

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin announced the grants Thursday at Cooks Country Kitchen in White Sulphur Springs and D&D Hardware in Rainelle.

The grants range from $2,000 to $10,000 apiece and affect almost 100 employees.

For the program named RISE West Virginia, Tomblin set a minimum $2 million goal through private donations and state money.

Tomblin plans to use some of the $4.5 million in state money usually earmarked for casinos.

Brad Smith, CEO of software company Intuit, donated $500,000 to the cause.

The state Development Office is overseeing the program with the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce.

The June 23 floods killed 23 people and ravaged homes, businesses and infrastructure.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Flood Virginia
A North Carolina insurance agent has been arrested and accused of creating false auto policies, according to a statement from North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin. Eddie Ray Butler, 29, formerly of Greensboro was charged with 11 counts of Identity Theft and one count of embezzlement by an insurance agent in Forsyth County and one count each of insurance fraud and attempting to obtain property by false pretense Guilford County.

North Carolina Department of Insurance (NCDOI) criminal investigators accuse Butler of creating eleven fraudulent auto insurance policies in order to collect approximately $1,200 in commission payment while acting as an agent in Forsyth County. Investigators allege Butler claimed larceny occurred at his residence in Guilford County and provided false documents to Allstate Insurance Company.

Butler was arrested on Aug. 4 in High Point and placed under a $115,000 bond.

NCDOI employs 20 sworn state law enforcement officers dedicated to investigating and prosecuting claims of insurance and bail bonding fraud.

Source: North Carolina Department of Insurance

Topics Auto Agencies Fraud North Carolina
Atlanta, GA, August 22, 2016  Breckenridge Insurance Group has filled several key leadership positions due to planned growth. The wholesale specialty insurance provider continues its efforts to strengthen operations and distribution capabilities with the hiring of two new executives in addition to the transition of another executive.

Pete Feeney, CIC has been named as president of the Breckenridge Insurance Services brokerage division charged with overseeing its expansion plans in specialty markets. Before Breckenridge, Feeney was a senior vice president and sales leader at Swett & Crawford. At Swett, he rose to become the manager of the Scarborough, Maine office and head of the eastern division of the transportation group during his eighteen-year tenure. Feeney will be located in the Portland, Maine area offices while overseeing the team nationally. He can be reached at pfeeney@breckis.com or 207-808-4943.

Pete is someone weve admired in the industry over the years for his quality operation and demonstrated success, commented Tracey Carragher, CEO of Breckenridge Insurance Group. His collaborative approach, teamwork and drive are key values we hold dear at Breckenridge. We welcome Pete to our organization in this pivotal leadership role, she added.

Joining Breckenridge affords me tremendous access and growth opportunities in helping serve the needs of our agents now and into the future, shared Feeney. Ive known of the Breckenridge expansion efforts, and Im happy to help drive this vision forward as a leader within this exciting company, he added.



Pictured left to right: Pete Feeney and Ron Boudreaux

With nearly forty years of insurance expertise, Ron Boudreaux also joins Breckenridge Insurance Services as executive vice president of national accounts. Boudreaux was last a senior vice president at Swett & Crawford with a focus on workers compensation and casualty risks. He previously worked at Zurich as the manager of their Minneapolis, Minnesota branch and is a graduate of the Wharton Business School. Boudreaux has established a new office for Breckenridge in Minneapolis and can be reached at rboudreaux@breckis.com or 612-889-0718.

Ron is a focused and passionate professional. He brings tremendous knowledge and energy to our team, stated Carragher. Were pleased Ron has joined us and I know he will make immediate contributions as a proven risk management professional, she added.

Robert J. Matamoros has been named executive vice president of specialized distribution for Breckenridge Insurance Group. Matamoros last oversaw the Breckenridge Insurance Services brokerage division as executive vice president. He will now focus on the optimization of distribution across the group in this newly created position.

Bob is a dedicated team member and well respected in the industry. This new role affords him the opportunity to take his knowledge of the marketplace and best target where we can drive growth across our diverse, specialized capabilities by building deeper relationships, stated Carragher.

About Breckenridge Insurance Group

Breckenridge Insurance Group, headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., is an international specialty wholesale insurance broker, program manager, managing general agent (MGA) and insurance services provider. The company offers access to a diverse range of commercial insurance and financial services products to businesses and professional services firms in a variety of industries by way of Blue River Underwriters, OSC, Breckenridge Insurance Services, Breckenridge Elevation Authorities contract binding group and InSpecialty. For more information, please visit www.breckgrp.com or call 630.945.3878. CA Insurance License #0G13592

Media Contact

Caren Henry

chenry@breckgrp.com

267.961.8252



Topics Agencies Leadership
Funding for insurance technology startups is outpacing the sector as a whole, according to industry analysis.

So far this year, the insurtech sector, which includes companies creating new underwriting, claims, distribution and brokerage platforms, as well as enhanced insurance-specific, customer-experience offerings -- has seen 47 venture capital investment deals totaling $1 billion, compared to 74 deals totaling $2.5 billion in 2015, according to Pulse of Fintech, a quarterly global report from KPMG International and CB Insights that explores equity transactions to venture capital-backed financial-technology companies.

That's despite the fact that for the fintech sector as a whole, deal activity fell in Q2, hitting a five-quarter low in the United States with just 97 deals, compared to 130 in Q1. Fintech startups also saw funding decline to $1.3 billion in Q2 2016 -- compared to $2.4 billion for the same quarter last year -- and drop 24% compared to $1.7 billion in Q1. Globally, funding for fintech startups dropped 50 percent in Q2 largely as a result of declining investment in Asia, where funding to VC-backed companies dropped to just $800 million in Q2 from $2.6 billion in Q1, despite a rise in the total number of fintech deals.

We are seeing a lot of alignment between these insurtech companies and the carriers, says Gary Plotkin, principal of KPMGs insurance management consulting practice. Insurers want to be able to influence these companies and keep them out of the hands of their competitors.

Capturing Customers via Insurtech

The list of factors driving the rise of insurtech is long, Plotkin says, including a softer market, the fact that insurers have cash to invest and the expectation that insurtech can enable them to sidestep the risk and expense associated with large-scale legacy-modernization projects. Everybody has one every year; then they realize the cost of change and the lack of return and they stall, Plotkin says.

Much of insurtechs appeal is in cutting development time and speed to market while partnering with companies that already have cracked the digital code or appeal to millennials, he says. Fundamentally, the biggest concern insurers have is the ability to capture the customer. These insurtechs offer light-weight capability to move forward. Suddenly, COOs and CIOs dont have to go build. They can subscribe to it.

Buy, Build or Fund

The growth trend for insurtech is supported further by traditional insurers that are creating venture capital funds to invest in insurtech manufacturers as they attempt to catch-up with banking and financial services, the report says.

There are a number of carriers that are doing joint ventures with these firms and taking shares to see what they can do in the marketplace, Plotkin says. They are saying, We will share our data if you help us move into this space faster. This allows them to expand their footprint and expand their brands to millennials and other markets. We are seeing more of that activity, particularly in the Fortune 1000 carriers.

Another trend noted in the report is that some insurers, such as Aviva, Allianz and MetLife, are bringing fintech and other technology firms together in innovation labs or garages in an effort to engage customers in more meaningful ways across online and mobile platforms and improve policy-handling and claims-payment processes, the report says.

While the insurance industry has been slow to change, insurers also increasingly are working to develop proof-of-concept initiatives around analytics, wearables, the Internet of Things, blockchain and other technologies to offer more customer insights, enable more effective insurance operations and engage millennials. I foresee a lot of activity in the P&C space because theres an aspect of innovate or die there, Plotkin says.

In the next couple years, Plotkin expects investment in insurance technology to significantly outweigh investments in banking and capital markets, much of which has been regulatory driven.

Insurers have so much more room to grow, he says. Not only to defend their existing market space but to move into new spaces while keeping those third parties out. Its a whole new world with new options and execs need to understand what this can mean for top-line growth before their competitors do.
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.
E arrivata lufficialita, dopo una giornata di voci rincorrenti: per il triennio 2018-2021 sara lemittente Sky a godere dei diritti televisivi per trasmettere, in esclusiva assoluta, le partite non solo delle prossime edizioni dellEuropa League ma anche quelle della massima competizione continentale, la Champions. Un pacchetto da favola per il quale la tv satellitare di Rupert Murdoch avrebbe messo sul piatto unofferta giudicata piu congrua di quella presentata dalla concorrente Mediaset. A dare lannuncio dellaffare concluso e stata la stessa Sky che, in un comunicato, ha spiegato che il nuovo format sviluppato dalla UEFA ci consentira di portare ai nostri abbonati un prodotto rivoluzionario per il calcio europeo in Italia. Per la prima volta la UEFA Champions League e la UEFA Europa League saranno insieme in unesclusiva offerta integrata, che permettera agli appassionati di seguire fino a 7 squadre italiane, mai cosi tante prima dora, impegnate nelle sfide con i migliori club europei.

Sky: Rafforzata leadership

Anche il livello tecnico dellofferta sara altissimo ed e ancora lemittente a rivelare i dettagli: Continueremo a fare innovazione, trasmettendo le partite piu importanti anche in 4K HDR. Questofferta senza precedenti rafforza la posizione di Sky come leader della programmazione sportiva in Italia ed e anche un altro passo importante di sostegno al calcio italiano. Insomma, per i prossimi tre anni, sara unegemonia totale quella della satellitare sul calcio europeo, avendo mantenuto il pacchetto Europa League (gia sua esclusiva) e affiancandola a quello ancor piu appetibile della Champions League ad appannaggio Mediaset dal 2015 al 2018.

Sfida Serie A

Ora la sfida fra i due colossi delle trasmissioni sportive si spostera sui diritti televisivi della prossima Serie A, per la quale si e ancora in attesa di un nuovo bando che, come annunciato dal commissario della Lega, Carlo Tavecchio, avra le stesse caratteristiche del precedente, andato pero a vuoto: solo una delle offerte presentate per i cinque pacchetti, infatti, superava la soglia minima richiesta dalla base dasta. Niente di fatto, quindi, anche in virtu della stessa Mediaset che, in sostanza, ha disertato il bando (giudicato inaccettabile) non presentando alcuna offerta. La battaglia, anche in questo caso, sara sulle esclusive: del resto, dopo essersi vista scivolare via una componente importante come la Champions, sulla Serie A Mediaset dara sicuramente battaglia.
What is the Economic And Social Stabilization Fund?

The Economic and Social Stabilization Fund is a government-owned investment organization that manages a sovereign wealth fund for the government of Chile. The funds deposited in the ESSF were sourced from surplus revenues from Chile's copper exports.

Understanding the Economic and Social Stabilization Fund (Chile)

The ESSF was established in March 2007 with a contribution of $2.58 billion, most of which was from the dissolution of the Copper Stabilization Fund, established in 1985, which the ESSF replaced. The ESSF was created to stabilize revenues for the government of Chile and to help overcome fiscal deficits when copper revenues suddenly decline, as copper is Chiles main export, or in periods of low growth. The fund supports fiscal spending stabilization by reducing the exposure to global business cycles as well as volatility from changes in copper price. It also provides funding for public education, health, and housing plans. The other sovereign wealth fund that was created around the same time is the Pension Reserve Fund (PRF), which aims to help finance pension and social welfare spending.

The ESSF receives deposits from the Chilean government each year where there is a fiscal surplus. It receives the resulting positive balance from the difference between the fiscal surplus and deposits to the Pension Reserve Fund and the Central Bank of Chile. Contributions into the PRF are a minimum of 0.2% of the prior years GDP. The majority of the ESSF is managed by the Central Bank of Chile. Appointed members of a Financial Committee are responsible for the daily running operations of the fund.

The ESSF is invested in the following asset classes: banking assets, Treasury bill, and sovereign bonds, inflation-indexed sovereign bonds, and equities. Its primary investment objective is to maximize value to cover cyclical reductions in fiscal revenues while minimizing risk. It employs diversification as part of its investment strategy. According to the Ministry of Finance, the portfolio has a high level of liquidity and low credit risk and volatility. It invests using a passive strategy, which means only minor deviations are permitted within the portfolio as far as asset allocation.
Panama has become a popular destination for foreign investment due to its stable political environment, pro-business government, rising real estate market, and growing economy. There are several ways to invest in Panama, including stock, American depository receipts, real estate, and starting a business.

Key Takeaways There are several ways to invest in Panama, including through the country's stock exchange, purchasing American depository receipts, investing in real estate, and starting a business.

Panamas stock market exchange is called the Bolsa de Valores de Panama; it trades stock, corporate debt, and government securities.

As of June 21, 2020, there were two available Panama ADRs on U.S. exchanges: Banco Latinoamericano de Exportaciones y Importaciones, S.A (BLX) and CopaHoldings S.A. (CPA).

Panama offers a retirement incentive that includes the import of tax-free household goods and many discounts on hotels, restaurants, movies, and other professional services.

Invest in Panamanian Stock

Panamas stock market exchange is called the Bolsa de Valores de Panama. This exchange trades stock, corporate debt, and government securities. Although relatively new and smaller in size, the Bolsa de Valores de Panama is attracting more companies to list their stocks. For example, one of the more heavily traded stocks on the exchange is Grupo ASSA, S.A., a large Panamanian insurance company that services clients in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and El Salvador.

Purchase a Panamanian American Depository Receipt

Typically, one of the simplest ways to gain exposure to an individual country is to invest in an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that either specializes or has high exposure to that country. However, Panama does not have a suitable ETF that completely fits this mold. As of Nov. 28, 2020, the iShares MSCI Turkey ETF has the highest exposure to Panama, with 4.49%.

Investors looking to gain exposure can seek other ties to Panama by investing in an American depository receipt, or ADR. As of June 21, 2020, there were two available Panama ADRs on U.S. exchanges: Banco Latinoamericano de Exportaciones y Importaciones, S.A (BLX) and CopaHoldings S.A. (CPA).

Invest in the Real Estate Market

Panamas real estate recovered from the global financial crisis of 2008 faster than most other Central American countries.

Much of the real estate recovery has been attributed to the growth of retirees moving to the area and the milder tropical weather. Panama offers a retirement incentive that includes the import of tax-free household goods and many discounts on hotels, restaurants, movies, and other professional services.

The country has many different real estate companies that can help foreign investors choose the right property. Knowing Spanish is not a necessity, as many of the real estate firms are accustomed to English-speaking investors.

Panama also has several incentives for construction projects. New residential construction valued up to $120,000 gets 20 years of property tax exoneration on the improvements. Construction ranging from $120,000 to $300,000 gets 10 years of property tax exoneration, and anything above $300,000 gets five years.

Invest in the Panama Pacifico Special Economic Area

The Panama Pacifico Special Economic Area is assigned to the production of goods and services that add value to Panamas economy. It's located at the former Howard Air force base and provides foreign investors with several incentives.

Panama encourages international trade, corporate offices, call centers, aviation services, film production, and more in this special zone. Some fiscal incentives include exemption from certain import, levy, real estate, stamp, commercial and industrial taxes. Panama also offers several labor incentives, such as fixed rates for overtime and holiday hours for employees, and exemptions for hiring foreign laborers.

Open a Business

Panama allows foreign investors to establish their businesses in the country as one of three structures: sole proprietor, partnership, or corporation. To begin the process, you must file a registro fiscal, or income tax registry, with the government. Then, you need to obtain a commercial license and a social security number. Finally, you must pay all municipal taxes, along with any necessary permits that coincide with the type of business that is being run.

Panama is a very popular place for companies to establish as their home country, due to the favorable tax laws and financial privacy. Offshore companies and their owners are exempt from corporate, withholding, income, capital gains, and estate taxes. Panama also maintains strict financial privacy laws that allow a corporation and its members to remain completely anonymous if need be. Additionally, Panama has few tax treaties with other countries, so offshore banking has little to no reporting requirements associated with it.

When opening a business in Panama, knowing Spanish is useful but not required. What is highly recommended is a good business attorney to help ensure that the business is going through the correct process with both the national and local governments.
Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) has become a staple of travel for consumers within the United States. While many other airlines boast more accommodating features and more lavish upgrades, Southwest Airlines has stuck to a business model of shorter, cheaper flights that cater to consumers looking for quick and painless flight plans.

While Southwest Airlines has become synonymous with airline travel, there are quite a few things that most consumers don't know about the company. Find out about four things that every consumer should know about Southwest Airlines.

Key Takeaways In 1972, Southwest Airlines found itself with only three airplanes and a schedule that required four airplanes, a situation that meant the company needed to implement a quick turnaround in order to make its schedules work.

Southwest Airlines focuses on operational efficiency and logistics as one of its core differentiators, catering to U.S. consumers who want quick, low-cost flights.

For the first nine years of its operations, the airline operated as a commuter airline with only three destinations in Texas: Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

Southwest was one of the first airlines to offer consumers a website, an online booking tool, and access to coupons and discounts directly from the airline.

When Southwest Airlines first launched, it had implemented a love-themed marketing campaign, which then became the origin of its LUV ticker symbol.

1. Southwest's Efficient Operations Stem From Failure

One of the amazing things about Southwest Airlines is the efficiency of its operations. Known to have a great gate-to-gate turnaround time and consistent on-time logistics, it's interesting to note that its quick turnaround time was born out of failure.

Back in 1972, when the airline was getting off the ground, it had to sell one of its four Boeing 737s to make payroll and remain in business. In spite of selling a quarter of its aircraft, Southwest remained focused on maintaining its four-aircraft schedule. To handle the demand of a four-aircraft schedule with only three planes, Southwest Airlines implemented a 10-minute turnaround to make the schedule work.

Southwest Airlines keeps that operational efficiency as one of its core differentiators to this day, continuing to implement a quick turnaround so consumers can get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

2. Southwest Only Had Three Destinations for Its First Nine Years of Operations

While Southwest Airlines can take a consumer all over the U.S. today, this wasn't always the case. Back in 1966, a group of Texas investors decided to buck the traditional airline industry and provide consumers with a commuter airline option.

The company was started with $500,000 in venture capital. Its founders envisioned it as an airline for Texas commuters between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

Due to the nature of the business model, Southwest Airlines instituted a no-frills approach to flying. Instead of trying to be everywhere at the expense of efficiency, Southwest Airlines instead focused on becoming excellent in the cities it serviced.

As competition and profits grew, Southwest finally made the decision to expand in 1975, growing into the dominant airline consumers know today.

3. Southwest Airlines Has Been a Pioneer of Technology That Helps Consumers

Southwest Airlines is more than a pioneer in commuter-focused airline travel. Southwest was also one of the first airlines to introduce a website as well as an online booking tool.

In 1995, Southwest Airlines launched its first display website, called "Southwest Airlines Home Gate." While consumers could not yet book flights online through Home Gate, they were able to receive up-to-date information and flight routes. In addition, online users of the Home Gate could receive coupons and discounts for air travel.

In 2000, Southwest Airlines launched a booking tool geared toward corporate travel. This was a great addition to its online functionality and serviced the type of consumer that used Southwest Airlines the most: the corporate commuter. This allowed corporate commuters to receive discounts directly through Southwest Airlines rather than needing to go through corporate discounts.

4. The Background of Southwest's Ticker Symbol, "LUV"

When Southwest Airlines first launched, it implemented a love potion theme. All flight attendants dressed in love-associated costumes and passed out "love potions" and "love bites," which later became known as drinks and peanuts.

When Southwest Airlines was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), it chose the ticker symbol LUV because of the company's love potion beginnings.
Investors interested in electric cars have a variety of options. Automakers such as Tesla Motors focus only on manufacturing electric vehicles and may be directly invested in by purchasing stock. Companies within the automotive sector that manufacture vehicle parts or supply raw materials used in producing electric cars are another means of gaining portfolio exposure to electric cars. Another slightly less risky option is to invest in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with holdings in securities related to electric vehicle production or electric vehicle parts.



Key Takeaways The two key ways to invest in electric vehicles are to buy the stock of automakers that focus on making EVs, such as Tesla, or buy an exchange-traded fund that invests primarily in companies tied to EVs.

Investors can also get exposure to EVs by investing in certain automakers that are looking to expand into the market, such as Toyota and General Motors.

Meanwhile, investors can also find opportunities by looking at companies that offer parts and supplies for EVs, such as Plug Power or Polypore International.

Direct Investment Options

Some major automakers, such as Toyota, are investing heavily in electric vehicles and allow investors to choose both traditional and electric vehicles for their investments. Chevrolet and Nissan have also made notable electric car models available in the U.S. market. Investors should carefully consider available investment opportunities and evaluate the potential risk-return tradeoff offered by electric vehicles and the automotive industry.

In addition to Tesla (TSLA), investors may also look to companies like Li Auto Inc. (LI), Nio Inc. (NIO), Nikola Corp. (NKLA), and Canoo Inc. (GOEV), which focus solely on manufacturing electric vehicles.

Many manufacturers also develop auto parts for traditional and electric vehicles. Polypore International (PPO) produces both lead-acid batteries and lithium-ion batteries, supporting conventional and electric vehicles. This stock offers investors the opportunity to invest generally in the production of vehicle batteries. As electric vehicle and conventional vehicle usage grow, more batteries will be needed, and this company will likely benefit from increased global car demand.

Another battery company, Plug Power (PLUG), manufactures hydrogen fuel cell batteries used in electric vehicles and many other types of electronic equipment. These batteries may replace lead-acid batteries in forklifts. Plug Power batteries are also used outside of the automotive industry, giving the company a large market.

Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (SQM) is a major supplier of lithium, an element used in many batteries powering electric vehicles and other clean technologies. Investment in companies such as Polypore International, Plug Power, and SQM offers portfolio exposure to electric vehicles while also maintaining diverse holdings outside the automotive industry.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 will provide support for the electric vehicle industry$7.5 billion of the bill total $550 billion in funding will be allocated to invest in a network of EV charging stations across the U.S.

Electric Vehicles Exchange-Traded Funds

ETFs that track EVs are another possible opportunity for investors. These funds allow investors to purchase shares in funds that track electric vehicle industry development. Investments are spread across multiple companies, reducing investment risk and offering returns similar to the average returns of the entire sector.

ETFs track gains and losses of stock indexes and are traded directly on the stock market in a means similar to stock trading. Just as in traditional stock trading, stop-loss limits may be placed, and dividends are paid to brokerage accounts.

Significant ETFs that include electric vehicle stock and supplier stock include QCLN and LIT. The First Trust NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index Fund (QCLN) has Tesla among its holdings and includes other companies with green technology offerings. Global X Lithium (LIT) tracks lithium suppliers and battery companies. This fund's most significant holdings include Albemarle Corp., Yunnan Energy-A Ltd., and Ganfeng Lithium Co. Ltd-A.
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 Cleantech News - Investor Idea

Breaking EV Stock News: Pre-orders for Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) FIVE Electric-SUV Crossover Exceed Expectations as the FIVE 'Strikingly Different' Tour Begins

BREA, Calif. - October 28, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces today that the Mullen FIVE "Strikingly Different" EV Crossover Tour which began yesterday, in Pasadena, California, is off to a great start with first day reservations exceeding expectations and overwhelmingly positive customer feedback.

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 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
Magic happened this past weekend when 2,500 redheads descended upon Crosshaven, Cork, for the small villages 7th annual Irish Redhead Convention. The festival, run by Crosshaven redhead Joleen Cronin, is a quirky, weekend-long celebration of fiery locks and freckles, packed with music, dancing, local food and art, and whacky competitions and prizes. And underneath the whimsical surface lies a very important message of togetherness, that instills pride and confidence in redheaded youth by celebrating the quality that sets them apart.

Convention-goers braved bouts of rain to partake in the worlds largest redheaded Ceili dance, ginger speed-dating, obstacle courses, photo shoots, craft and farmers' markets, a pub crawl, trad sessions, seminars and much more. In the Kid Zone, ginger children played carrot-tossing, ginger vs. non-ginger tug of war, three legged races and more. Everyone gathered to watch famous sheep shearer Red Shearin shear six sheep in record time. Each activity, of course, involved red: even the various foods used in the Blind Tasting game were red, like red onion, sweet potato and blood orange.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the convention was the prize ceremony, in which prizes were awarded to certain redheaded attendees: titles included best red beard, furthest traveled redhead, most freckles per square inch, best ex-redhead (for those gone grey), best redheaded couple, granny, baby and more. At the end, the King and Queen of the redheads were crowned.

This years Queen of the Redheads is Emma Ni Chearuil, 23, from Co. Kildare. Emma, who speaks fluent Irish, was thrilled to be crowned and became emotional during her acceptance speech in which she spoke about the importance of pride in having red hair  a nod to the fact that many children resent their rarity or may face bullying in school.

I think being a redhead is something I had to grow into and learn to appreciate, she said. I love that this convention can instill that in people from a young age, from the very start, and I hope to represent that really well.

The newly crowned King of the Redheads is Andy ONeill, a father of three from Kilkenny, who came to the convention with his entire redheaded family for the fourth year in a row.

Its great to be an ambassador for an important cause, ONeill said in an interview with IrishCentral, referring to the Conventions partnership with the Irish Cancer Society.

Read more: Red hair gene greatly increases risk of skin cancer

Twenty percent of the Conventions proceeds go toward the Irish Cancer Society  together they raise awareness about skin cancer. The Redhead Convention is an important platform for the charity, as redheads with fair skin are more susceptible to skin damage, increasing the risk of skin cancer.

Eimear Cotter, the Irish Cancer Societys Community Cancer Prevention Officer, had a tent at the Convention providing everyone with informational pamphlets, sunscreen, and bracelets that turn blue in response to UV rays.

Were really, really grateful for the support the Redhead Convention has given us. Weve been with them for a number of years now, Cotter told IrishCentral. Irish people and redheads would be more susceptible to skin damage  even on a rainy day like today, the bracelets are a bit blue. Our message is: between April and September, everybody needs to protect their skin in the sun, especially between 11 am and 3 pm.

People traveled from all over the world to attend the festival. Hannah, 25, traveled all the way from Melbourne, Australia for the ginger celebrations. There arent many of us redheads in Australia  I love it. We stand out in a crowd and were pretty unique, she told IrishCentral. Im on a eurotrip, but we based the whole thing around the Irish Redhead Convention. Were headed to the Redhead festival in the Netherlands in two weeks.

Other international attendees include Willem, 21, from Vancouver Island in Canada, who received a lot of positive attention during the festival, donning a massive red afro. Willem is also Redhead Festival hopping.

This festival is smaller than the one in Holland, but there seems to be much more to do here, Willem told IrishCentral. I like being different. Its nice to stand out, he said about his ginger pride.

Other international attendees came from England, Germany and Belgium, as well as the United States, with people traveling from Texas, Tennessee, New York, Pennsylvania and more.

Two friends, Jana and Lourdes, from Germany and Belgium, met at the Redhead convention last year in Holland, and traveled to Cork together this year. I dont think theres any other place where theres such a feeling of being together or being a team with so many people at once, Jana said.

When you see someone on the street whos also a redhead, theres an instant connection, Lourdes added.

Joleen Cronin, the Redhead Conventions founder, kept a cool head during the busy festival and mingled with all of the festival goers throughout the weekend, partaking in the activities herself.

Its really humbling that people actually do make the journey to be a part of it, Joleen told IrishCentral in an interview.

In Ireland were used to seeing redheads around, but you go to the States and its less than two percent, and its even less still in other countries. Its nice that those people can come here and be in the majority.

Read more: Massive new project aims to map all of the redheads in the world

Joleen said that growing up in a redheaded family, she never thought much about the color of her hair, but the festival has allowed her to experience a journey of her own:

I never really thought about it too much. But when we started the event and I realized what having red hair meant for so many people, it encouraged me to realize what having red hair meant to me, she said.

And then I thought, 'You know what? It is a very big part of my character, and I dont think I would like to dye it or change it in any way.' Im proud to be who I am, and from talking to other redheads and seeing the positive effect that this event has on people who might not have had so much confidence in themselves growing up, I realized how special it is.

The convention began as a joke  a throwaway idea for her brother Dennis birthday to only invite gingers to the party, and theyd do carrot-tossing, freckle-counting, and other redhead games. Their first event had 350 people. This weekend, far more than 2,500 redheads were in attendance.

The event means different things for different people, and in the majority of cases its very positive and empowering, and thats great, Joleen said. Joleens familys pub, Cronins, in the heart of Crosshaven, served as a hub for the attendees throughout the Convention.

In addition to bringing tourism to beautiful county Cork, the Convention allows local companies to set up tents for their jewelry, art, crafts or food, spreading their products to new audiences from all over the world. One tent was the well-known Irish T-shirt company Hairy Baby, who brought an entire exclusive line of ginger-related apparel designed specifically for the Convention.

This years Redhead Condition was extremely prideful  it provided redheaded children with their own special day dedicated to their common uniqueness  something that will change many young lives by instilling confidence early.

There was a familial air at the convention  people who had only met that morning seemed to know each other for a lifetime. People came together from every corner of the world to gather at the beautiful Cork harbor to sing, dance, eat, drink and be merrily ginger.
On Tuesday in New York City, thousands of police officers will walk solemnly into St. Patricks Cathedral to pay their respects to one of Americas most revered police leaders. John Francis Timoney died last Wednesday after a brief battle with cancer at age 68. It was the only fight that this brilliant, iconoclastic, wonderful person ever lost.

John was a Dublin native who immigrated to America with his family at 13. After the death of his father his mother decided to return home, but John, then 17, stayed along with his brother. America should be glad he did. He went on to become one of our greatest cops, named Americas Best Cop by Esquire Magazine.

He was Deputy Commissioner in New York, Police Chief in Philadelphia, Miami and called Americas best cop by Esquire Magazine. Wherever John went crime fell  and drastically. What greater tribute can we pay than that simple fact.

John was a man of great intellect and character who was comfortable with everyone  patrol cops, mayors and political leaders, intellectuals like the writer Tom Wolfe, downtrodden people on the streets  John could connect with them all. And he was welcome everywhere, from a Knights of Columbus hall in the Bronx to Elaines restaurant on the Upper East Side.

Read more: John Timoney, Irish American policing legend, passes from lung cancer

Everyone knew that John was born in Dublin and spent most of his childhood there. His family moved to New York in 1961, and John spent his teenage years there. His father Ciaran died while John was in high school, and Johns mother and sister moved back to Ireland after John finished high school. But John and his brother stayed in New York, sharing an apartment and supporting themselves. John became a police officer in the largest department in the United States, the NYPD.

John rose quickly through the ranks, and was named first deputy commissioner  the number-two person in the entire department  when he was only 46. It was William Bratton, one of the most highly regarded police chiefs in U.S. history, who recognized Johns talents and gave him this promotion. Bratton and Timoney were a great team in the NYPD. Bratton was the forward-thinking reformer from Boston, and John was the NYPD insider who had leapfrogged to the top. Together, they took the NYPD forward.

Johns brilliant career has been well-documented, both in New York and later in Philadelphia and Miami, where he served as the top police official.

I would like to share my perspective about John, as someone who knew him for 20 years, and as the executive director of a think tank that identifies best practices and policies in policing.

My perspective is that John was decades ahead of his time. Here is what I mean. Today, police agencies in the United States are facing unprecedented challenges. Controversial uses of force by police, and strained relationships in many cities between the police and communities of color, have put police under the microscope.

Fortunately, the best and brightest police chiefs today are finding ways to make needed reforms. And what is striking to me is that many of the new policies that are being implemented today are not really new. They were developed decades ago by John Timoney.

For example, many police agencies today still allow officers to shoot at moving vehicles. This is a policy that makes little sense, because even if the officer is able to shoot the driver, it doesnt help to have a mortally wounded person behind the wheel of a speeding car. So back in 1972, John Timoney helped implement a tight ban on that practice in the NYPD. This was a key element in a package of reforms that cut the number of police shootings almost in half, from 994 in 1972 to 526 in 1974. These shootings continued to decline, to fewer than 100 per year in recent years.

Later, John became chief of police in Miami in 2003, at a time when 13 Miami officers were being prosecuted on charges resulting from shootings of civilians. He implemented new policies, training, and equipment, and the change was immediate: 20 months without a single police shooting in Miami.

Weak investigations of sexual assaults are another issue that continue to make headlines across the United States. Back in 1999, when John was commissioner of police in Philadelphia, he took the unprecedented step of allowing leaders of womens organizations to review case files alongside detectives, in order to gain important new perspectives on ways to improve investigations. Today this is considered a model practice that builds accountability and public trust.

Another reform that is being discussed a lot these days is creating policies establishing a duty to intervene. The idea is that when an officer witnesses a fellow officer engaging in misconduct or looking like he is about to lose control, the officer should be required by policy to step in and intervene.

Many departments today have no such policy, even though its an excellent idea that dates back to 1993 for John Timoney and the NYPD. John recently described how it came about:

The Rodney King incident had just happened in Los Angeles, and the video showed more than a dozen officers standing by and watching the beating happen. For many of us seeing the sergeant at the scene watch passively violated every principle of proper supervision. So we wrote a policy for the NYPD creating a duty to intervene.

A duty to intervene policy not only prevents misconduct; it helps save officers careers. Here is how John explained it to his fellow police chiefs, earlier this year:

Sometimes, in the heat of battle, a cop loses his cool. Its never an excuse for using excessive force, but it happens. But it can be prevented if other officers step in at the first sign that another officer is losing control of himself. Thats what a duty-to-intervene policy is about.

Because racial issues are central to the strife in American policing today, I should mention that John Timoney spoke plainly and directly about racial justice. In the late 1990s, the organization I direct convened a national meeting of police chiefs following a controversial police shooting of an African-American man. When the meeting ended, we were trying to craft a statement of consensus, summarizing what we had learned from each other. I remember that John read a draft of a statement, and told us, This doesnt say anything. We have to say that race matters. That is the reality. When a police chief gets a call in the middle of the night about a police shooting, the first thing he asks is, What is the race of the officer, and what is the race of the person who was shot? Race matters, and we need to admit it.

There are many other examples I could mention, but it all adds up to this: in the year 2016, thousands of American police agencies would do well to adopt policies that were advanced by John Timoney and his colleagues decades ago, and which have proved successful for all these years in the departments that John led.

I also want to mention that John loved to tell stories, and he had good ones about his adventures as a young cop in the Bronx. John had presence. He could light up a room when he walked in. His face captivated everybody, and he had a great sense of humor. Well never forget the Timoney sayings, like He had an ego that could choke a horse, or someone was a bird of rare plumage.

But his forte was good old common sense and how to impart it to cops.

He once noted, Theres a fine line between disorderly conduct and freedom of speech. It can get tough out there, but I tell my officers, Dont make matters worse by throwing handcuffs on someone. Bite your tongue and just leave. 

And there were Timoney rules for police chiefs, like this classic: Any time something big happens, the first information you get is always wrong. And cops always want to tell you what they think you want to hear. So if youre having a problem getting information, it means theres a problem with the information!

The policing profession in the United States is saddened by the death of John Timoney. He is held in such high regard here because he personifies what we all think of when we think of a good cop: he was courageous, thoughtful, and had a good heart. And he knew how to get things done. He successfully pushed American policing to do what is morally right, not just what is legally required.

There are thousands of people like me who will miss him and think of him often.

* Chuck Wexler is executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a Washington, D.C.-based organization whose mission is to research and develop best practices in policing.
A look back on the character Michael Collins - "The Big Fella" - and his incredible life story.

Where are The Big Fella's mugshots? They dont exist because they were never taken.

One of the great mysteries concerning the Easter Rising  and the subsequent arrest of its participants  is why didnt the British photograph their prisoners? As someone who has written two books on Michael Collins, who was assassinated nearly 100 years ago, this has always bothered me.

"Why?" because Collins survival depended on his anonymity. With a 5,000 (sometimes embellished to 10,000) bounty put on his head by Winston Churchill, Collins walked about the streets of Dublin at the height of the terror in 1919-20 and almost never feared for his survival. There are many reasons for this.

Collins believed that if you didnt look guilty you had nothing to worry about. He always dressed impeccably and carried an attache case. He was a businessman. Why would the British bother a busy businessman?

When he went into the Great Brunswick (now Pearse) Street Dublin Metropolitan Police Station on April Fools Day 1919 to read his file, he discovered that they had a poor photograph of him taken in profile. He promptly pinched it, which left them with no picture at all.

Read more Greatest quotes from and about Michael Collins

Collins was also the perfect chameleon. I have never seen someone who could change their facial appearance so dramatically. The differences between the scowling Collins and the laughing Collins are so great that they are like two different, distinct people. This is especially evident in the official photograph of the members of the First Dail where Collins has an absolute look of disgust on his face.

Read more How Michael Collins wrote the book for revolutionaries

Collins never missed a wedding. The tradition at the time was that the entire wedding party lined up to be photographed. Collins, always the perfect guest, duly lined up with everyone else, but when the photographer said watch the birdie Collins always dropped or turned his head. I have seen at least five or six of these photos from different weddings.

However, the biggest mystery regarding the missing mugshot goes all the way back to the Easter Rising. After the rebels were rounded up they were taken to Richmond Barracks for processing. There they were separated into elites and non-elites. Legend has it that Collins saw that the elites were probably going to be shortly staring down the barrel of a rifle and crossed the room and lined up with the non-elites. Shortly thereafter he was shipped off to Stafford Prison in England and then Frongoch Prison Camp in Wales.

There are a few clues as to what happened at Richmond Barracks. Vinny Byrne, one of Collins "Twelve Apostles, said in his witness statement that he was fingerprinted while at Richmond Barracks. Thanks to his young age he was soon sent home to his mammy  a dramatic blunder on the part of the British.

After all the research Ive done over the years (reading many witness statements) I have come to the conclusion that the British, in their rush to execute the leaders and deport the rest, simply did not take mugshots of the participants. And this would be natural because the British would have processed thousands in the days after the Rising.

In 2016, the Irish Times reported that rare mugshots from 1916 were going on sale. The Irish Times did not say where these mugshots have been, but one can guess that they were in someones attic for the last hundred years.

These mugshots are important because they contain the photographs of two of Collins closest associates: Liam Tobin (#4 W. Tobin) and Piaras Beaslai (#6 P. Beazley), who was Collins first biographer. Tobin was one of the most important members of the IRA in Dublin in 1919-20. This is because he was the Assistant Director of Intelligence (Collins was the chief) with an office at #3 Crow Street in Dublin. The office is a mere two blocks from Dublin Castle but was never discovered by the British.

I decided to check the witness statements of both Beaslai and Tobin. Beaslais shed no light whatsoever. Tobins statement, however, told his 1916 story. (Surprisingly his statement ends after his incarceration and he never mentions his work for Collins.)

During the Rising, Tobin fought at the Four Courts before his unit's surrender. He was taken to Richmond Barracks to be questioned and processed. For some reason Tobin, a regular foot soldier in the Volunteers without rank, was singled out, sent to Kilmainham Gaol, and sentenced to death, which was immediately commuted to penal servitude. (His harsh treatment may have been because he fought at the Four Courts under Commandant Ned Daly and they had given the British a brutal time.)

The Irish Times speculates that the mugshots, including those of Tobin and Beaslai, were taken at Richmond Barracks in Dublin  a British army facility in Inchicore where most of the rebels were taken after the Rising. It is believed that the photos were taken by the Dublin Metropolitan Police, who were called on to assist the military in processing the detainees.

I disagree with this. Tobin was then removed to Mountjoy Gaol for a while before being deported to Britain. He makes no mention of being photographed while at either Richmond Barracks or Kilmainham Gaol. But when he moved to Mountjoy he was received by warders, had a bath and the usual prison routine gone through.

Could that usual prison routine included the taking of mugshots? I think so because both Richmond (a military facility) and Kilmainham (an antique of a prison even in 1916) were not equipped with the photographic equipment to take mug shots. Mountjoy, of course, would have had such equipment.

So where are Michael Collins mugshots? With a great degree of certainty, I can speculate that they dont exist because they were never taken. Collins, like many of his fellow GPO rebels, was quickly processed at Richmond Barracks and taken to the North Wall for his voyage on the cattle boat to England.

The British, in their rush for vengeance, probably only photographed a handful of their 3,000 prisoners, mainly those few who were sent to Mountjoy Gaol like Tobin. This blunder, in less than six years, would cost them their first colony, Ireland.

*Dermot McEvoy is the author of "The 13th Apostle: A Novel of a Dublin Family," "Michael Collins, and the Irish Uprising and Irish Miscellany" (Skyhorse Publishing). He may be reached at dermotmcevoy50@gmail.com. Follow him at dermotmcevoy.com. Follow The 13th Apostle on Facebook.

*Originally published in 2016.

IrishCentral History Love Irish history? Share your favorite stories with other history buffs in the IrishCentral History Facebook group.
Limousin is an ancient breed of highly muscled beef cattle which originated in France and then spread word wide.

The International Limousin Congress, held every two years, began with a banquet in Athlone, Co Westmeath, on Saturday.

It is being attended by over 300 delegates from 20 countries and will continue until next Sunday when there will be a closing banquet in Kilkenny.

The congress, which aims to showcase worldclass cattle, will include a one-day technical conference in Grange, and a nationwide travel programme. Breed views, research, market and technical information will be exchanged at the various open days and visits to some of Irelands leading limousin herds.

Today, the delegates will visit the Drummin Herd, Bunratty, Co Clare, and the Northwest Limousin Clubs Cattle Show and social evening at Glenamaddy Equestrian Centre, Co. Galway.

A visit to Ardlea Pedigree and Commercial Herd in Raheen, Portlaoise, Co Laois, is arranged for tomorrow and on Thursday the Roundhill Herd in Fedamore, Co Limerick, is scheduled for a visit.

Kilkenny will be the focus of the following two days of the congress with the National Limousin Show at The Hub, Cillin Hill on Friday.

A parade of Champions, the Anglo Irish Young Members Association final and the Irish Limousin Cattle Societys elite sale will be held at the same venue on Saturday.

The society says that with farm profit harder to achieve each year it is becoming vital that farmers become aware of any opportunity to increase their income.

It says limousin cattle can definitely play a role in achieving increased profitability in all livestock sectors.

Paul Sykes, chief executive, said the society is immensely proud to be hosting this worldclass event in Ireland.

The congress will showcase the very best Ireland has to offer  our rich diverse countryside, our culture and our outstanding limousin cattle, he said.
Almost 600 families became homeless in Dublin in the first seven months of this year, according to the Dublin Region Homeless Executive.

Figures from the statutory body show that the number of children within families who are homeless in the city has exceeded 2,000 for the first time since current records began.
Three people have been arrested following the seizure of drugs worth 210,000 in County Louth.

It is part of an operation targeting Cross Border criminal activity involving An Garda Siochana and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Under the plan, an exchequer spend of 27bn on capital projects up to 2021 ranging from broadband to flood defences and including an extension of the Wild Atlantic Way and preparation work on the Metro North scheme was committed to.

A further 14.5bn is to be made available by commercial semi-states companies such as the ESB and Ervia (formerly Bord Gais). So what has happened in the intervening period?

The housing crisis has moved centre stage. The new minister Simon Coveney has, in a sense, staked his future on early success.

There is a dawning, if belated, realisation within the political and business classes that the surging cost of accommodation is threatening national competitiveness as well as fomenting social discord and threatening the futures of thousands of families.

In late July, Mr Coveney launched an action plan aimed at boosting overall national supply, providing more social housing and utilising more of the countrys vacant housing stock.

The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland praised the ministers considerable achievement in producing a report with timelines and key deliverables set out over a 100-day period, thereby imparting (one hopes) some sense of urgency into the administration.

The report is described by the CEO of the McVerry Trust, Pat Doyle, as a strong statement of intent.

Ensuring delivery is another matter. The institute expressed the hope that the cross-departmental approach envisaged will overcome many of the unnecessary blockages which architects have seen at first hand.

Here, at least, Dundalks local authority appears to have stolen a march through its use of compulsory purchase orders to take over empty derelict properties for conversion to public use.

Elsewhere, the final planning hurdles in the way of the National Childrens hospital have been overcome, with the authorities still confident that construction can get underway in Kilmainham by the year end.

The Dublin Airport Authority unveiled its 320m plan for a second runway at an increasingly busy Dublin airport in April. It has refinanced 550m in debts and has sought tenders. The aim is to begin site works by the year end and to get full construction underway, next year.

During the year, some innovations in the financing of capital projects have taken place.

A deal on Irelands first healthcare public-private partnership (PPP) was closed. Under the scheme, 14 long-awaited new primary care centres are being provided.

The National Development Finance Agency also completed the first ever refinancing of a PPP transaction, taking advantage of a general fall in borrowing costs.

The development agency is acting as agent for the Department of Education and Skills in seeking to rein in costs.

For once, the State is making an effort to plan ahead for population changes rather than sitting back and waiting for the consequences of long-term neglect to fall on successors in government.

The real concern is that we are playing catch up when it comes to infrastructure provision more generally.

In 2010, the plug was pulled on many capital projects and the total spend has fallen off dramatically since 2008 when spending on capital projects reached an annual peak of around 9bn.

Under the capital plan, an exchequer budget of 3.8bn has been provided for 2016. It rises steadily to 5.4bn over the next few years. This is nothing like enough, say industry bodies like the CIF, Ibec and Engineers Ireland.

As Ibec has put it : The experience of the 1980s demonstrates that a decade of under- investment in infrastructure limits the economys growth potential.

The Brexit vote has if anything increased the sense of urgency. However, the Irish government is like the mother of a hungry brood all laying claim to a near empty larder. Damien Owens is registrar at Engineers Ireland.

He points to the need for long-term, joined-up thinking when it comes to capital projects. In a sense, our infrastructure is decaying, he says.

He is also concerned at what he describes as the drying up of PPP projects since the years of the boom. He also believes that such approaches require careful assessment, particularly when applied to schools and colleges.

Time will tell whether PPP schools are better kept than the publicly funded ones. In schools, as opposed to roads, there are much more variables, Mr Owens says.

While more funds should be made available for projects, particularly in an era of low borrowing costs and broadening fund availability, this can only happen if good husbandry practices occur across government.

Why, for example, are so many public officials working in expensive city centre offices when they could be accommodated at a fraction of the cost on the city edges?

Then, of course, there are the incessant pressures on cabinet to boost public spending, an attitude fostered in the media where outlets prefer human interest stories to dry accounts of expenditure control.

As the pressures grow on the minority government in the run up to budget day, who would really wish to be in the shoes of the Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe right now?

Already, he is faced with demands from Fianna Fail for a hike in the State pension while his colleague, Leo Varadkar, talks of linking social welfare payment to earnings increases.

In this environment, long-term thinking tends to go out the window. Yet it is worth remembering that some very accessible sites across our cities are not suitable for housing or other purposes because of a lack of sewerage or water facilities.

The anti-water charge groups have yet to come up with a properly costed alternative to the plans being put in place by Irish Water beyond a general proposal that such investment should come exclusively out of an already over-stretched public purse.

Some tough choices will have to be made if we are not to end up deferring the investments that would bring multiples benefits, and avoid unnecessary bottlenecks some years down the road.
Large institutional investors are making a killing in Ireland; we are well accustomed to hearing about the so-called vulture funds who had the clout to buy in bulk.

They had the savvy and the expertise to time their Irish investments perfectly.

That is all well and good.

What would you expect such birds to do  ignore the opportunity to pick over a fresh carcass?

But to think that our legislators and regulators laid out the carcass, garnished it a little and then provided a knife and fork  that is hard to conjure with.

The more that emerges about legal tax avoidance on property investments the more difficult it becomes to argue with this analogy. Take the ICAV for example.

The Irish Collective Asset-management Vehicle was a nifty little tax structure introduced last year.

Designed to primarily facilitate the transfer of US funds into Dublin, it allows foreign investors to channel their investments through Ireland while paying no tax.

The IFSC and those big office blocks in the Dublin Docklands need to be kept busy after all.

And as long as the users of the ICAV are avoiding tax on investments made in other jurisdictions and not Ireland  then you may ask what is the issue?

Guess what? The ICAV, it turns out, can be used to buy Irish property and assets too.

Analysis of the register of ICAVs at the Central Bank shows that just over 200 have been deployed so far. As we recently reported on TV3s Ireland Live News, over 10% of these have been used in Irish property deals.

Several of them relate to significant apartment and office block developments in Dublin city and county.

Big investors bought land and properties here at rock-bottom prices which already guaranteed the healthy margins they desire  and in many cases they will be required to pay no tax.

The Department of Finance, and Revenue, have been examining the loophole and are due to report back soon. It seems whoever constructed the legislation did not intend that ICAVs be used in such a way.

Lets turn next to what are known as Section 110s. These are tax neutral vehicles much beloved of Dublin law firms and foreign funds.

As the Social Democrat TD, Stephen Donnelly, has noted, buyers of distressed debt and in some cases residential mortgage books, have availed of a structure that facilitates the payment of little or no tax.

Separate to the world of ICAVs and the Section 110s, we have also seen the emergence over recent years of another, again entirely legitimate, investment concept. REITs  Real Estate Investment Trusts  allow investors to take a punt on property without directly owning it.

There is a romantic notion that the plain man or woman can avail of such tax-efficiency, but in reality they are used by mammoth institutional players such as pension funds.

The REITs have done very well in the Irish market over recent years. They have snapped up huge swathes of apartment blocks at low cost.

With no end in sight to the accommodation crisis, those same apartments are likely to provide healthy rental income and profit for many more years to come.

But exactly how did the enabling legislation for ICAVs and Section 110s pass muster without unintended consequences being detected? Who lobbies for such structures so successfully?

And how did foreign institutions become so dominant in the private rented sector? This could prove to be a real test for the already damaged notion of the new politics.

Until now, majority governments have used the Dail to rubber stamp legislation, including legislation which allowed for ICAVs and Section 110s.

When lobbyists won the argument with Government Buildings they could comfortably ignore any submissions that might later come along at committee stage.

That could change. Should an angsty opposition feel the need to scrutinise politically-charged tax breaks, the previously irrelevant latter stages of the legislative process could put a few noses out of joint along Dublins quays.

Paul Colgan is economics editor with Ireland Live News on UTV Ireland.
For anyone who has been living under a rock lately, tell us what Intercom does?

Our mission is to make internet business personal. I think the best way to think about is this: If you go back about 15 or 20 years, businesses by default had to have a personal touch.

You had your coffee shops or your hardware shops where you could see people browsing around. If they needed help or wanted to clarify something, all you had to do was head down to them and ask.

Since then the scale of the internet has grown. With that scaling comes the loss of the ability to know who your customers are. We lost that personal touch. That gap is what were trying to close.

A simple example would be that if someone downloads your app or buys your product, there is a good chance that they will know whether or not they like your product within the first eight hours of getting it. Intercom allows you connect them personally to find out.

It has Irish people at its head, but it is an American based company?

Yeah. So we have the headquarters in San Francisco and our R&D facility here in Dublin. We have four Irish founders who started in another consultancy company called Contrast in the mid-2000s.

Contrast was a pretty epic company. I remember reading their blog and thinking I needed to get a job there. I was working at a much smaller company at the time and I remember thinking, These people are so smart; they know what theyre doing.

I also thought that I was nowhere near good enough to work there, so I ended up at Amazon. They then set up Sentinel, which was an error tracking application. Around 2008-2009, applications were finding it really hard to scale without errors.

Im sure a lot of people will remember the twitter fail whale of the same time. So Sentinel provided a constant update on how your application was performing. It was really one of the first of its kind to tackle something like that.

They told me about this problem that came up. Somebody had paid them for the service, a nominal $9 a month.

They emailed out apology service emails every time something went down. One day, they got an email saying, This is the fourth time I have recently received one of these emails. I dont know what your product is, I dont know what it does, but seems to be down all the time.

So this was someone who had just signed up but never really used the service and was getting emails irrelevant to them. So they got this idea to create an in-app message to customers. Turns out it was one of the first in-app messages ever to be sent.

Now its possible to get updates directly from the customer about their experience by contacting them. It saves time for you and lets the customer provide instantaneous feedback on the product. From that grew Intercom.

There are Facebook and Slack as well. What makes you different?

For us, its about how customers want to talk to companies. With the likes of Facebook and their messenger service, its designed to keep you on their platform.

Facebook is never going to build a Twitter integration into their platform, that would take people away from them to another messaging service.

For us, the channel doesnt matter, what does matter is that you are able to reach the people that you need to. Were always experimenting with using new channels. So if its Facebook or Twitter or SMS, it doesnt matter to us.

Convenience for the user is what matters.

People want to buy online, but they still want a personal touch too?

Yeah, its a really important route for us. Perhaps we dont sell that aspect of things event to our own customers, but its very important. For example, weve just launched out new messaging service, which is really slick.

As part of it, companies can connect Twitter profiles or LinkedIn profiles to their chat session with customers. This doesnt have anything to do with getting them more followers, but actually to show that there is a real person behind the online interaction.

If you browse the web these days you get these little pop-ups where youre asked to talk to us. They have those stock photos of somebody on a headset. We really want to change that. People want to trust you and speak to the person behind what they just bought.

Is there then a constant reassessment of Intercom and how it works?

One of the things that was a surprise to me when I arrived at Intercom was the level of autonomy that was given to people and teams.

So on the Intercom platform, we sell a range of products. Each one of those products has been designed and built by a single group of people. Its quite a mix of skill sets in each.

Well have people from research, analytics and product design. Its really up the team to develop how something is built and what happens to it next. Customers will say we need this, to do X, Y and Z.

It will be up to us to interpret that and develop a product accordingly. Its a really satisfying thing to see when you work with a bunch of really smart people to make something work and then have people buy into that too.

What can we see from you in the next phase for Intercom?

Well continue to iterate on what weve got, but I think there is still really interesting areas to come where well be inventing new stuff. We talk a lot about first principles.

So any new area that we move into, we work really hard to go from whats real problems that were trying to solve here and whats the first principles approach.

We dont want to build a better version of something that someone else has built. We want to figure out what the problem is and then figure out the best way to solve it.

There are some pretty exciting new sides of the products that will come along soon enough. Even in themes and strands connected with the product, Im expecting some exciting things.

We always considered ourselves as competing with consumer software. We dont see ourselves as competing with enterprise grand software.

We very much see ourselves as consumer grade software that just so happens to be targeted at enterprise. You wont have to wait long to find out about some great things weve got planned.

For more information: www.intercom.io
When the judges in the UK Great Taste Awards described its butterscotch sauce as heaven in a bowl and awarded it three gold stars, it seemed as if things couldnt get any better for The Tipperary Kitchen in Holycross.

But then, the judges picked its sauce as one of the Top 50 products in the competition.

Our sauce is one of 50 selected from 10,000 entries and is one of only three Irish products on this list - its absolutely incredible for us, says company co-founder Anne Marie Walsh who has, since the announcement earlier this month, been approached by several distributors interested in supplying the UK market with the companys sauces, meringues and biscuit cakes.

The award couldnt have come at a better time for The Tipperary Kitchen, which started out in the boom, survived the recession and is now making plans to establish a new food production facility, increase sales and to migrate into the food service industry.

It all began when Ms Walsh and her husband Brian set up shop at the Holycross Stores, in 2005. In subsequent years their survival strategy involved building a small bakery, selling cakes and bread to local stores and also developing products which could be sold nationally.

The couple identified a gap in the market, first for high-quality biscuit cake, made with local butter and Belgian chocolate, and then for meringues.

Our meringues are hand piped and slow baked with added flavours which make them unique. This year we also won two gold stars at the UK Great Taste Awards for our beetroot and ginger meringues, she says.

Registering The Tipperary Kitchen in 2010, the couple started selling newly rebranded Holycross chocolate biscuit cakes to speciality shops.

We had spent a year working out the best way to wrap and present them  we created a log shape and made them our signature product, Ms Walsh says.

Supported by the local enterprise office, the company worked on building sales, and for a few years supplied Fortnum & Mason in London and Selfridges with chocolate biscuit case, but later stopped due to distribution difficulties.

The companys major breakthrough came in 2014 when it was selected to take part in the first SuperValu Food Academy Programme.

In 2014, we started selling in 12 SuperValu stores and are now in 190, says Ms Walsh.

Employing a staff of seven, The Tipperary Kitchen still has a shop and local bakery, but the sale of products to SuperValu and specialty stores now accounts for over 70% of turnover.

The company increased turnover by 50% last year but has encountered capacity problems, which it plans to solve by setting up a new facility to produce its three main product lines.

We have identified a new premises and we hope to start production there either late this year or early next year, says Ms Walsh.

She has identified a gap in the food service area for high-quality biscuit cakes and meringues, and also sees opportunities there for the companys acclaimed butterscotch sauce.

With 15,000 raised through crowdfunding, the Tipperary Kitchen has now begun working on developing products for the catering industry.

It has also applied to Tipperary Local Enterprise Office for assistance with its expansion plans.

Those plans were already in place when the UK Great Taste Awards were announced earlier this month, opening up further opportunities.

Ms Walsh says the key focus will still be the move into supplying the food service industry but that she and her husband will explore all the new opportunities that present themselves.

She believes it is possible the UK Great Taste win may help the company develop exports earlier than planned and that attending the Speciality & Fine Food Fair in London in September, as a Top 50 producer, could lead to further opportunities.

Company:

The Tipperary Kitchen

Location:

Holycross, Co Tipperary

Set up:

2010

Founders:

Anne Marie and Brian Walsh

Staff:

7

Main products:

Biscuit cakes, meringues and sauces

Website:

thetipperarykitchen.ie
Just like every other year, factors like course place numbers, demand for them, and the exam achievements of applicants influence wide variations on how CAO course points compare to last year.

Two of the biggest points drops, both down 110 points on last year, are a media studies degree at Maynooth University, and an Irish degree focused on translation at NUI Galway (NUIG).

The first results from the merging of two programmes at Maynooth last year, one of which had a 360 cut-off and the other 450.

An increase of one-quarter in the number of places being offered over those given on the two degrees last year means the lowest-ranked person offered a place on the new degree this morning has 340 CAO points.

The minimum entry requirement to the Gaeilge agus Leann an Aistriuchain degree at NUIG returns nearer to the 340 points needed two years ago.

Its entry threshold rose 170 points to 485 last year  perhaps prompted by students aware of increasing opportunities due to the languages increased status in the EU  but has now settled back to 375.

Nearly half of arts and social science degrees are easier to get into this year, with points falling for 80 out of 170-plus courses under this heading, and up in just over 50, or less than one-third.

For the main university arts degrees, accounting for at least 10% of the entire 47,000 places likely to be filled by the CAO this year, a five-point increase to 355 for entry to University College Corks BA programme is the only such hike.

Maynooth University said the addition of another 100 places to last years intake of 1,300 to its BA degree, now also incorporating five humanities courses offered separately last year, have helped to see the entry cut-off drop 20 from the 2015 minimum entry standard of 350 points.

Although it remains one of the countrys largest single intakes, UCD said that weaker demand influenced the fall of 15 points to 320 for its common-entry arts degree.

Points for 10 of around 40 level 8 teaching degrees are unchanged, and an almost even number of the remainder either up or down, half of them by only five or 10 points. Entry to four of the main primary teaching degrees is open to applicants on points scores five lower than this time last year.

Those who applied to Dublin City Universitys main primary teaching degree, at the St Patricks College Drumcondra campus, or the equivalent at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, could receive offers with 465 points, but not all applicants with that score will get one.

With renewed student interest in the small number of building and related degree courses, the main architecture degrees have risen by 10 points at UCC/CIT and by 25 points at UCD. But among a handful of direct-entry civil engineering degrees, points are only up at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, and are down at University of Limerick and NUIG.

After increases in first-preference demand by students for engineering and technology, these are among the few disciplines in which points are up for more courses than those on which they have dropped. The average among 60 courses under this heading which recorded increases now require 15 points more than a year ago, with a dozen of them at least 30 points higher.

Despite these rises, around half of 140 level 8 programmes in the engineering and technology category are in the score range of 300 to 400 points, results achieved by well over one-third of this years Leaving Certificate students.

However, UCDs general-entry engineering degree requires 515 points, with the 250 students who will be enrolled having the option after first year to specialise in electronic, energy, biomedical, civil, mechanical or other areas of engineering. With the number of students choosing UCCs engineering degree as their first preference up over 50% since 2015, the minimum points needed are 75 higher at 490.

At the higher end of the achievement scale, students with some of the best Leaving Certificate results still dominate entry to the five undergraduate medical schools. However, the combined scores needed from those exams and the HPAT aptitude test are down by between three and six points at three of them, and remain the same as last year at UCC and NUI Galway.

Nursing points are down or unchanged in the majority of cases, while only those with at least 550 to 565 points are offered places in the three pharmacy degrees, each up either five or 10 points on last year.

The Round 1 cut-off points for all CAO courses, as well as last years Round 1 and final cut-off points, can be seen on pages 9 to 11 of the 12-page Choices for College supplement inside todays Irish Examiner.

READ MORE: CAO day: Points for most courses fall or stay the same as last year

READ MORE: CAO day: Points race slowed as colleges look to broaden course entries

READ MORE: CAO day: 15,000 already approved for college grants
More than 10,000 tourists, have in August alone, clambered on to Spike Island in Cork harbour to view its vast heritage.

Such is the attraction that Cork County Council, which is in charge of the Spike Island tourism experience, is planning to increase ferry traffic to facilitate visitors.

The famed island has, through the ages, been a monastery, a massive prison and a fortress.

In the past two years, over 6m has been spent turning the island into an tourist attraction, with funding poured in by the local authority and, to a lesser extent, Failte Ireland.

The island now employs 26 tour guides along with maintenance crews, archaeologists and administrators.

Visitor numbers are very encouraging, said Spike Island manager John Crotty. We attracted 10,000 this August alone and we are only restricted by our ferry capacity, which we hope to increase next year to two ferries,

We aim to be a major provider of school tours, corporate events and ghost tours in the coming months.

The Mayor of County Cork, Cllr Seamus McGrath said the Spike Island tourism experience had been a tremendous success story, so far, for Cork County Council.

I think the time has come to open up access to the ferry service from other locations in the harbour.

The ferry service from Cobh has been extremely popular and I am asking the council to consider running a service from other areas such as Passage West, Monkstown, Crosshaven and possibly Ringaskiddy, Cllr McGrath said.

The main attractions on the island are the 1850s punishment block, a former prison used to punish unruly prisoners, the 1985 cells and riot exhibition, six-inch guns that guard the harbour and the recreation of a transport ships hull.

Other items of interest are the gun park with dozens of artillery and coastal defense cannons and Mitchell Hall which houses art temporary exhibitions.

The island was first used for a monastery in the 6th century.

It began its military phase in the 1600s when Cromwell held Royalist prisoners there before they were transported to Bermuda.

The first fort was erected on the island in 1779 during the turmoil of the American War of Independence and it was expanded upon due to fears of a French invasion during the French-British war in 1793.

In 1804 work began on the 50 acre Fort Mitchell that dominates the island today, one of the largest star shaped forts in the world.

The fort was hastily converted to a prison due to an explosion of crime in the 1840s and 50s, during the famine years.

By 1851 Spike Island was the largest prison in the British empire, most likely the world, with 2,300 prisoners crammed into its inadequate cells.

Conditions were appalling and at its worst the death rate was 12%. Thousands of convicts are buried in mass graves on the island and the period is a dark chapter in British penal history.

From 1791 to to 1851 over 40,000 Irish prisoners were transported from Cork harbour to Australia alone. Another 2.5m emigrated from Cobh during the Famine, the largest emigration point in Ireland.
However, job creation is expected to snowball in the coming years.

Martin Wall, manager of the IMERC entrepreneurship scheme, said he was very pleased the campus was helping to produce new jobs since the scheme started last October.

He said the new positions are being created by a mix of start-up indigenous companies and foreign direct investment. He was also confident about prospects for even more significant job creation in the years ahead.

The Government has a target to double the percentage of GDP from the ocean economy from its current 1.2% to 2.4% by 2030.

A huge amount of leadership has come together to deliver something special through the combined work on IMERC with CIT, UCC and the Naval Service and produce a campus where we now have the National Maritime College and the Beaufort Centre, Mr Wall said.

He said eight new companies were now located on the campus which had raised combined funding of 1.2m for research and venture projects.

He said the project had, so far, created 30 new jobs.

The new start-up companies will outgrow our facilities and its part of our job to ensure that we have more in the pipeline to come in and replace them, he said.

We already have three more companies who have presented applications to use our campus.

Mr Wall said as available space was near capacity in the incubation units, some units were being configured to allow start-up companies facilitate more employees.

We hope to create up to 3,000 new jobs through the IMERC partnership by 2020.

They are all maritime and energy-focussed and they are a pathway for college spin-outs and local entrepreneurs

We currently have companies coming in from abroad and partnering indigenous companies. In addition, we have companies from the likes of the UK and America which are visiting and actively considering setting up offices in Ireland, Mr Wall added.
ALMOST one third of the cases in the Court of Appeal are run by lay litigants, according to the Courts Service. The figure illustrates how frequently litigants are representing themselves and not hiring legal counsel.

There are a number of reasons for this increase. The most obvious is cost. Since the recession, the volume of litigation, in relation to economic matters, has ballooned. Debt and dispute over debt have become big business in the courts.

For many, the prospect of further debt  by having to pay legal costs  is too much. They go it alone. This risks an unfair fight, with one side  more often than not a company or institution  being represented by experienced counsel, familiar with the law and courts, and the other a litigant who is a novice to both. Yet, some see little choice in the matter and plough on.

Apart from the financial hardship it inflicted, the other impact of the recession is that far more people are now economically literate, and often, by extension, more informed about the law. People decide to literally take the law into their hands by battling the system.

Another reason litigants are going it alone are cuts to free legal aid. The scheme is for those whose resources are such that they cant afford to go to court.

But it has been subjected to the same cutbacks as all other spending in the State, and so fewer people have access to it than was the case prior to the recession. Those who cant access free legal aid are left to their own devices.

There is no breakdown on the kind of cases being taken by lay litigants, but many are associated with the fall-out from the construction boom and the recession.

The two cases featured on this page are of a more traditional variety, and offer differing perspectives on how well a lay litigant can run a case.

Another traditional area for lay litigants is family law. According to one lawyer, parties sometimes use the courts more for purposes to do with the relationship than with obtaining legal remedy.

There are times when some people, men in particular, run their own case in order to question their spouse, he says. Often, this is because they simply cant come to terms with the fact that the relationship is over.

FOR those who do decide on the DIY option, there is help. The Free Legal Advice Centre runs a network of evening meetings, where people can ask questions about the basic elements of attending court and presenting a case.

The centre also has a series of short videos on how to dress appropriately, a run though court documents, and an outline of the court system.

All of these matters can be daunting to somebody who represents themselves.

Apart from potential cost, lay litigants sometimes act alone because legal representatives have advised them that they dont have a case.

Few solicitors or barristers will take on a case knowing that it will lose and that they will have next to no chance of recovering any costs for it.

Michael Murphy Jnr: Fought a lengthy battle in the Supreme Court to clear his familys name.

This was mentioned in a ruling in the Stephen Murphy case, delivered by judge Peter Charlton, who was speaking generally, rather than referencing the case at hand.

Often, people feel aggrieved by some real or perceived personal wrong, and added to that is the conviction that the administrative system, or legal structure, of the State has let them down. One characteristic of this is the serial addition of defendants, as wrong allegedly piles upon wrong, which, in some cases, looms as the perception of persecution.

In such an environment, Judge Charlton pointed out, patience is required by judges to ensure that court proceedings proceed appropriately.

He also suggested that: It must be remembered that those facing such actions may also have their lives deeply affected by the pursuit of wrongs, where these are either imagined or are not actionable.

Finally, he also said that while patience would be supplied in abundance, the same could not be expected of the courts scarce resources.

Lay litigants are no more entitled to use disproportionate resources from the courts than any professionally represented litigant and while, in that context, case management may usefully be engaged by a judge at an early stage, all litigants are required to state the essence of their case and cannot attract unlimited indulgence.

Sometimes the law is a Wunder

Issac Wunders name entered the legal annals on the basis of a ruling in his case.

In Mr Wunders case, it was doubly so, as he was not the first litigant to attract such a ruling.

Back in 1965, a libel action in the case known as Keaveney v Geraghty was set in train, but the High Court found that the proceedings were frivolous.

Following an appeal, the Supreme Court ruled that the proceedings could not be continued again without leave from the court. This effectively acted as a block to a litigant taking a whole variety of proceedings, one after another, in endless pursuit of a preferred outcome, despite practically no chance of success.

A few years later, Dublin man Wunder took a case against the Irish Sweepstakes, over winnings to which he claimed he was entitled. His claims were dismissed as frivolous. He made several claims against the defendant on the matter, each of which he lost, and nearly all of which were ruled as groundless.

In light of his pursuit of the Sweepstakes, the Supreme Court issued an order similar to that in the Keaveney v Gereghty case, and although Mr Wunder was not the first recipient of such an order, his name was the one attached to it thereafter.

The courts, ever-vigilant of at least giving the impression of keeping justice open to all, tend to be reluctant to issue the dreaded Issac Wunder.

Yet, there are inevitably times when judges feel they have no alternative.

One case, in recent years, involved John Burke, from Elmy, Co Tipperary, a farmer who had been accused of numerous instances of animal cruelty. Following proceedings in the District Court, he conducted his own defence in the Circuit Court, and then brought at least seven sets of judicial review proceedings in the High Court.

One of the 19 grounds on which he brought the judicial review proceedings was that the State had failed to compel some witnesses to attend when he represented himself at the Circuit Court. Yet, Judge Mary Irvine found, in the High Court, that he had cross-examined the two State witnesses in the lower court for six-and-a-half and four hours, respectively.

She said that she had come to the conclusion that Mr Burke had managed to demonstrate that the applicant has not only a seemingly inexhaustible appetite for litigation, which is without merit, but that he harbours a deliberate and sustained intention to thwart the administration of justice.

On that basis, the judge issued an Issac Wunder.

Apart from his travails in that case, Mr Burke had form in representing himself in court. In 2009, he had brought judicial review proceedings to prevent the government rerunning the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. He was unsuccessful with that, also.

CASE STUDY: Golf handicap dispute went to Supreme Court

TOM Talbot had been a member of the Hermitage Golf Club for 40 years when the trouble began. He was a retired insurance official, and avid golfer at the club, in Lucan, Co Dublin.

Thomas Talbot, a retired insurance official, leaving after he failed in a High Court action. Picture: Collins Courts

He set about improving his handicap. This is the number of strokes allocated based on ability and means that more shots can be taken to reach the hole than the persons true level of play would allow.

In July, 2003, the clubs handicap sub-committee sent Mr Talbot a certificate stating his was 13, with the words general play (handicap-building) at the bottom of the cert.

Mr Talbot took exception and so began a long road that led to 83 days in the High and Supreme Courts, during which he represented himself against the club.

He claimed the words on the certificate meant that he was cheating at golf and he launched a defamation action on the back of it. The defendants included the Hermitage club, its handicap subcommittee, the chair of the club, and the Golfing Union of Ireland. Subsequently, he claimed other irregularities at the club, which complicated the actions.

Over 20 days in the High Court, Mr Talbot called a number of witnesses and questioned them at length. Some of the witnesses gave evidence that diminished rather than enhanced Mr Talbots case, but that didnt prompt him to revisit his legal strategy.

He told the court that, in 2003 and 2004, the subcommittee had reduced his handicap six times, which he said was unprecedented in the decades he had been at the club.

No other player, he said, had ever been accused of handicap-building.

The Golfing Union of Ireland had carried out an audit at the club and had mistakenly suspended Mr Talbots handicap.

All of this emerged over twenty days of what one observer called torturous proceedings in the High Court.

The presiding judge, Daniel Herbert ruled that the words handicap building were defamatory, and any reasonable and well-informed golfer would fairly conclude that he was being accused of consciously and deliberately inflating his handicap to give himself an unfair advantage in the game by misrepresenting his true playing ability.

However, the judge said, he was also satisfied the words were not published to a third party, which is a requirement for a document to be libellous.

The certificate of his handicap was only addressed to Mr Talbot and contained in a sealed envelope left for him in the mens competition room.

Justice Herberts ruling was delivered on July 27, 2012.

Over the following two years, Mr Talbot made a number of appeals to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled against him.

In delivering her ruling, Chief Justice Susan Denham called for better case-management in the courts to avoid so much time and resources being taken up with a case that should have been dealt with more quickly.

Judge Peter Charlton expanded on the point, including the observation that he wasnt making a criticism of anybody in particular.

As the Chief Justice points out in her judgment, with which I agree, the delivery of this judgment will constitute the 83rd day that the resources of the High Court and the Supreme Court have been directed towards this claim, he ruled.

This was, in essence, a very simple case: was it defamatory to say of an amateur golfer that he was handicap-building; was that statement published to anyone other than the maker of the statement and the subject of it; and, if yes was the answer to these two questions, was publication on an occasion of qualified privilege not undermined by malice?

He went on: The resources of the courts are there for litigants. Those resources are not, however, unlimited. No litigant is entitled to more than what is reasonably and necessarily required for the just disposal of a case, within the context of the other demands on court time.

Whether it is an unrepresented litigant or not, the resources which the courts decide to assign to a case must depend upon the importance of the legal issues involved; the gravity of the wrong allegedly suffered by the moving or counter-claiming party; the monetary sum involved; and the public interest in the outcome of the case. Courts are entitled, and indeed are required, to foster their resources. This is both a matter of public and private interest.

Court resources used in litigation are funded by public money. In addition, the parties pay for legal representation.

Litigants should not be faced with cases that are longer or more expensive than they need to be for a fair resolution.

In many instances, costs, if awarded against a losing party, may not be recovered. In that regard, putting reasonable limits on submissions, in terms of time, and allowing a measured number of hours or days for each side to litigate their case, is both right and appropriate. The calling of repetitive expert evidence may, and should, also be curtailed.

The case was one of the most extraordinary taken in the High Court by a lay litigant and costs were awarded against Mr Talbot, which were estimated to be somewhere north of 700,000. Since then, there has been little indication that those costs were recovered.

CASE STUDY: Murphy spent 20 years challenging wrong conviction

Occasionally, a lay litigant takes on the system and actually wins. One such case was completed in the Supreme Court last month, involving a farmer from west Cork.

The Four Courts, Dublin. Prohibitive legal costs deter many litigants.

It started with cow dung on the road and ended twenty years later in the Supreme Court. Along the way, Stephen Murphy learned a lot about the state. Principally, he discovered that once the apparatus of the criminal justice system is directed against you it takes major perseverance to pursue justice all the way to resolution.

Stephen Murphy is from Drimoleague in west Cork. He still lives today in the home in which he was reared, but in June 1996 there was major trouble in the area. The Murphy family, Stephen, his father Stephen Snr and sister Anne, were, as they saw it, being seriously put upon. Two years earlier, their neighbours, John McCarthy and his son Dermot, had reclaimed some land which affected a water source for the Murphys.

Relations between the two households soured. The Murphys harboured a sense of injustice about the prevailing situation. This fed into a dispute over the McCarthys driving their herd of cattle past the Murphy home.

The Murphys claimed that the cows liberally relieved themselves of their dung on the roadway, giving off fumes that caused health issues for the family. The gardai were called a number of times in 1994 and 1995 to deal with the disruption. Then matters came to a head on Thursday 27 June 1996.

At around 8.30am, Dermot McCarthy was driving his herd on the road. He claimed that Stephen Murphy Jnr was en route to work in his car and he used the vehicle to block the cattle, sending them back up the road. Dermot McCarthy phoned a guard he knew, Michael McCarthy, who was no relation, but was known to the McCarthys through horse breeding. Garda McCarthy was off-duty. He passed on the complaint to his colleagues at Bantry station.

An hour later, there was more hassle. Dermot McCarthy later outlined the event in a statement.

The squad car from Bantry and a Garda Walsh arrived. He went into Murphys house and my father and myself turned the cows along the road towards the field.. As the cows went along Stephen Murphy senior and Anne Murphy came out onto the roadway and stopped the cows and were shouting and roaring.

Garda Walsh asked them to get back and let the cows through. They refused and he asked them several times.

That evening at 4.30pm, there was more of it. This time it was alleged that as a result of the excitement the animals fouled the roadway.

Stephen Murphy Snr was also alleged to have said hed get a gun and shoot every one of them if necessary, an apparent reference to the cows rather than the McCarthys.

Two days later there was a reprise with more confrontation despite the presence of the gardai.

As a result, the three Murphys were charged with a number of public order offences. There was, however, one major problem. Stephen Murphy Jnr was charged with the incidents on June 27 when he wasnt actually present.

This, it would be discovered years later, was down to a typists error. When transcribing written statements, Junior was mistakenly inserted where Senior should have been.

The Murphys were convicted of a whole series of the public order offences in the District court, where they were represented by a solicitor. They appealed to the Circuit court, where a number of the convictions were set aside.

The Murphys were still not happy that some of the convictions stood, and they initiated a judicial review of the decision. In particular, Stephen Jnr was aggrieved that he was still convicted of offences allegedly committed when he wasnt even present.

I argued about how I wasnt there, he says of his appearance at the Judicial review, where he represented himself. In the end the DPP ruled that the summons werent properly drafted and I won.

The judicial review result was delivered on 5 March 1998, clearing the Murphys of all but two of the offences. Stephen Snr died the following February.

By then, Stephen Jnr and Anne had decided to initiate a civil action against the state for malicious prosecution. Their case was that the prosecutions against them were motivated by the friendship between Garda Michael McCarthy and the McCarthys.

Anne Murphy also sued for what she claimed was false imprisonment arising from being barricaded inside her house due to the actions of the gardai on that day.

I approached solicitors in Cork and none of them were interested, Murphy says. They said that as other colleagues had left it they wouldnt be taking it on. The whole thing was a mess.

So he decided to read up on the law and represent himself and his sister in court. Years earlier he had studied aspects of the law as a part of an accountancy course, but now he would be taking on the state in the highest courts in the land.

The ruling issued by Judge Charleton last week referred to the challenges of a lay litigant taking on the state.

Often people feel aggrieved by some real or perceived personal wrong and added to that is the conviction that the administrative system or legal structure of the State has let them down.

One characteristic of this is the serial addition of defendants as wrong allegedly piles upon wrong, which in some cases looms as the perception of persecution.

Thus, the job of a judge is; to attempt to dispel the charge of emotion over the facts; to endeavour to find key facts within the characteristic confusion of allegation; to try to find if there is, or ever was, a root cause for the disgruntlement.

There was plenty of emotion in the legal documents submitted by Stephen Murphy. He likened the gardai to the Black and Tans, Nazi Gestapo and even Blue Shirts. One line of argument forwarded was that the Murphys had been entrapped in a crime by the defendants.

Murphy took to the task in earnest. In particular, he went through a long process of discovery, obtaining rosters, the superintendents report on the prosecution and correspondence between the force and the old Garda Complaints Board, to which Murphy had earlier made a complaint.

Much of this was to go towards putting together his case based on a claim that Garda McCarthy had acted maliciously against him in aiding his neighbours.

The High Court hearing in 2003 brought little joy. Judge Aindrias OCaoimh dismissed the action, ruling that the prosecution was not malicious, that it was down to typists error.

At that point, many a lay litigant may have thrown in the towel, but the Murphys sense of injustice drove the siblings for another thirteen years, all the way through an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The final outcome brought a similar result in legal terms, but the Supreme Court judges had some harsh words for the gardai, whose work was described as slipshod.

Referring to the charges brought against Murphy for offences he couldnt have committed, judge Charleton ruled: That original conviction should never have happened. Furthermore, there should never have been a recommendation to the district superintendent of the gardai to prosecute him in respect of any such offenceThis is not impressive. While there is nothing wrong with the other charges, it is necessary for the gardai to exercise care in the prosecution of citizens.

However, the judge ruled, that the wrongful prosecution was down to human error rather than malice on the part of anybody.

Judge Frank Clarke, sitting with Judge Charleton and Judge Elizabeth Dunne, said that despite the result, the state should make a significant ex gratia payment to the Murphy siblings for what they had been put through it attempting to right a wrong over 20 years.

Normally, having lost the case, the Murphys would be left with paying the costs for the state bodies, but Clarke said any application for such costs by the state would be treated with severe disdain.

The Murphys were not happy with the outcome. Outside the court, Anne Murphy referred to cowboy rule in west Cork. Later, speaking to the Irish Examiner, Stephen Murphy pointed to the fact that it took him to go to the High and Supreme Court before the typists mistake was acknowledged.

They could have come to me but they fought me twice over it, he says. And to this day Ive never even seen that statement.

He doesnt regard the recommendation that the state make a payment as any major victory.

I was never looking for money. All I wanted was justice. It maddened me the amount of money they wasted all along the way. It could all have been sorted out a long time ago.
The agency said 2015 was marked by a large increase in the number of single males seeking asylum and entering the direct provision system. Last year, the overall numbers housed in direct provision centres rose from 4,364 to 4,696 at a cost of 57m  up 4.7% on 2014.

Since the introduction of direct provision in 1999, over 55,870 have been accommodated by the agency at 35 centres around the country.

Agency official Eugene Banks said the latest annual figures hide the fact that in 2015 a significant number of people left State-provided accommodation as well as the 2,828 arrivals who moved into such centres.

The majority of these new arrivals and in particular towards the latter half of the year, were single men, said Mr Banks.

The agency said it had to source and open a new accommodation centre in Co Longford to cater for the influx of single males in 2015.

The agency figures also show almost a quarter of all residents in direct provision centres at the end of 2015 had been living in such accommodation for over five years.

A total of 1,158 individuals have been living under the system for at least five years including 683 who have been there longer than seven years.

However, the number of long-term stays has been declining with 38 months the average length of stay in 2015 down from 48 months in 2014. Around a quarter of all residents of direct provision centres at the end of 2015 were children with almost an equal number of boys and girls among the 1,172 underage residents.

The biggest centre is the former Butlins camp at Mosney, Co Meath which had 530 residents last December.

Several NGOs including the Irish Refugee Council have called for the ending of the system of direct provision which provides asylum applicants with accommodation on a full-board basis as they are not allowed to take up employment.

Residents are paid a weekly allowance of 19.10 (9.60 for children).

Justice Minister, Frances Fitzgerald said the vast majority of residents in the direct provision system who are awaiting a protection decision are now living in such accommodation for less than three years.

Agency figures show residents made 14 written complaints about conditions in direct provision centres last year. Five were upheld by an independent adjudicator. The Government has agreed the ombudsman and the ombudsman for children should have their powers extended to include persons living in direct provision.

The agency said 3,276 applications for asylum were made in the Republic last year. That is the highest level since 2008 but well below the 10,000-plus number of refugees which arrived in Ireland each year at the turn of the century.

Pakistanis accounted for over 41% of all applicants (1,352) followed by Bangladesh (286) and Albania (214).

Of 1,552 applications completed last year by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner, only 10% of cases or 152 individuals, received a positive recommendation.

The agency assisted with the voluntary repatriation of 243 destitute citizens from 13 of the newer EU member states last year at a cost of 59,633.
President Higgins claimed Ireland won admiration as a beacon for other struggling peoples. He said that in a guerilla campaign led in the early 1940s against the administration of the British Mandate of Palestine, Yitzhak Shamir took the nom de guerre Michael in homage to Collins.

On visits to Africa and Latin America as President of Ireland, I have received countless expressions of admiration for the Irish people, conveying the memory not just of Irelands independence struggle, but also of its later role, as a member of the League of Nations and then the United Nations, in defending decolonisation and the freedom of oppressed nations.

President Higgins said Collins was a man of compassion in the terrible Civil War. He said the memory of Collins would forever be enmeshed with that of the tragic and bloody war which he described as being a dreadful tragedy for so many Irish families.

In his oration, the President said Collins would have had a flexible approach to decommissioning, markedly different from that of his colleagues.

President Higgins stressed that when the time comes to commemorate the events of the early 1920s we will need to display courage and honesty as we seek to speak the truth of that period, and in recognising that, during the War of Independence, and particularly the Civil War, no single side had the monopoly of either atrocity or virtue.

He emphasised that Collins contribution in the flux of military, political, social, and cultural crises, was of an immense kind.

President Higgins said he believed Collins would have wanted our people to have reached sufficiency in all of the essentials: Health, housing, education, childcare, culture, and above all in the ability to live together.

Following the oration, President Higgins travelled to Kilmurry village to officially open a museum which houses an exhibition commemorating Corks role in the fight for Irish freedom.

On Easter Sunday 1916, Volunteers mobilised at Sheares St in Cork and took the train to Crookstown. From there they marched to Beal na Blath and joined more Volunteers. The combined columns marched to Kilmurry en route to their final rendezvous in Carriganima where they were scheduled to meet Volunteers from Kerry with munitions from the ship Aud.
Emma, who works for Aras na Gaeilge in Galway, won the colourful title in Crosshaven, Co Cork, over the weekend after entering the competition on a whim.

I cant believe I won. It is just a great opportunity. I will be doing events with the Irish Cancer Society and the St Patricks day parade and there is talk of us going to the International Redhead Convention in the Netherlands. When you have red hair, when you are young you want to fit in or you rebel against it. But I grew up to eventually appreciate my hair. And there are young kids here today with red hair and they are proud of it.
Ancestry.ie today publishes the Ireland Police Gazettes, 1861-1893, records which have been extracted from Hue and Cry, the official publication of the Royal Irish Constabulary which operated from 1814-1922.

Ancestry said its analysis of the collection has shown that assault was the most common crime over the 32-year period with 28,353 cases reported, followed by reports of breaking of licence conditions (28,092 cases) and of theft (23,345 incidences).

Some noteworthy entries include the story of William OBrien, a member of the South Mayo Militia who was also known as William Black or Sheridan, who was charged with stealing two ferrets in Achrony in 1877.

The records show that one ferret is described as a white buck, the other a dark-coloured doe. OBrien was last seen near Castlebar.

The records also detail notorious events such as the 1882 Phoenix Park murders, when the newly appointed chief secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and Thomas Henry, permanent undersecretary, the most senior Irish civil servant, were fatally stabbed. The assassination was carried out by members of the Irish National Invincibles, and the records show police hunted four men for the crime.

The records are also remarkable for the often colourful descriptions of the wanted persons, such as Timothy Conner, who was sought after in 1863 for stealing two cows from Michael Murphy in Duhallow, Co Cork.

Conner was described as having long black hair, no whiskers, slight make, knock-kneed, and having a simple, countrylike appearance, and apparently evaded police for some time, judging by the number of repeat appeals for his arrest that were made in subsequent editions of the police records.

Another interesting missive from February 1877 saw police in Templemore on the hunt for 80-year-old Richard Bourke of Rathcardan, Tipperary, who was wanted for inflicting with a blunt weapon an injury on the head of John Bourke, at Rathcardan, from the effects of which he died.

The bulletin does not disclose the relationship between the victim and his octogenarian assaulter, other than revealing that they share a surname.

The Police Gazette records give us great insight into a particularly turbulent time in Irish society in the late 19th century, said Rhona Murray, historian at Ancestry.

At this time there was significant unrest due to the Land War which saw many political figures, landlords, agents and tenants murdered.

Its fascinating to see the variety of crimes and note how some of them differ from those committed today.
IN Europe, however beset by the continued weakness of the euro, Britains vote to defect from the European Union and the rise of the far right, a vacation is a right for oneself, a duty to ones family.

In Italy, especially, the beach doesnt just beckon  it commands attendance.

On the beach, Italians and tourists doze, chat, leaf through magazines, minister to the old folks, play with, or shoo away, the kids, and at times take a dip in an almost-warm sea.

But, as Corriere Della Seras commentator Beppe Severgnini observed, its a summer composed of sun and insecurity, fun, and fear.

Italys peninsula isnt just seductive for natives and visitors; but for the migrants who continue to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean to get to a country that has, till now, remained relatively calm about the influx. It even welcomed them  perhaps heeding Pope Francis passionate plea for tolerance toward immigrants.

That toleration is breaking down now, however, out of a growing fear that agents of Islamic State lurk among the migrants, ready to unleash terror on a European state that has suffered relatively little. That last fact allowed interior minister Angelino Alfano to declare that he would not go down a road that, were it not so serious, would have otherwise seemed a product of the August silly season: A ban on Muslim women wearing an article of clothing called a burkini.

A burkini is a linguistic cross between a burka and a bikini. But it is most of the former with none of the latter. Likely invented in 2004 in Australia, it is a one-piece swimsuit that covers the body, with only the face, hands, and feet exposed.

A third French town bans burkini swimwear after clash among bathers https://t.co/5clbaVKoAX pic.twitter.com/JKJtUsByNB  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) August 15, 2016

It seemed to cause no great fuss in Australia. But it did in Paris in 2009, when a woman wearing one was banned from swimming in a public pool. Now some French resorts, starting with the classiest, Cannes, have ruled the burkini against the law and levied fines on those defying the ban.

It hasnt stopped at the beach resorts. Looking a little embarrassed (as well he might), French prime minister Manuel Valls said last week that he supported mayors who had banned the garment because it is not compatible with the values of France. He did not announce a national ban, though.

Valls and the various mayors are appealing to Frances strict secularism, which bans all wearing of religious symbols in public institutions, though not, until now, on beaches. Secularism has been a national choice for a century. But applying it to Muslim women who wish to remain modest tips into legal extremism and makes the state look ridiculous. Critics say the ban could provoke a violent reaction from Islamist terrorists.

Indeed, that was the main reason Alfano, the Italian minister, gave for rejecting a burkini ban. He received a rebuke from centre-right senator Lucio Malan, who said laws should not be adopted, or not adopted, based on presumed threats. Both the far right and centre right are beating hard on the drum of fear. The French mayors who have banned the burkini are largely centre right. In Italy, the most right wing of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconis TV channels, Canale 4, broadcast last week a programme that featured Mirandola, the epicentre of a serious earthquake in 2012 and where a beloved church remains unusable.

Yet a new mosque has opened in the town, built with public funds, as well as money from Qatar. Citizens, massed in the square, screamed Shame! Shame! at the lonely spokesman from the governing centre-left Democratic Party, whose plea for understanding seemed to enrage them more.

The miasma of fear spreads across the West, prompted by massacres in France and the United States, by the continuing official police warnings of the not if but when variety, by the evident enthusiastic ruthlessness of Islamic State and other terrorist groups, as well as freelance murderers who act in their names after brief exposure to their methods on the internet.

There seems no point in saying that more victims die in road accidents in a month than terrorism in a year, nor that Islamic State is losing territory in Syria, Libya, and Iraq. The fear of evil hidden in the community is too great for that kind of reckoning. It has become a political fact which causes leaders to back futile and perhaps illegal bans.

Donald Trump has long known the power of the fear of terrorism, and his recent speech on immigration was one of his most carefully constructed. He pulled back from his blanket temporary ban on all Muslim visitors to the US and called instead for a ban confined to nations where terrorism was out of control and for an ideological test on those who did seek to come to the US.

Peter Feaver, a former George W Bush official who signed a letter along with 50 top Republican former national-security officials saying they would not vote for Trump, said it was a surprisingly serious speech.

It was serious because Trump knows he has to be credible on the issue. This is what those beyond the roughly 30% in the US who strongly believe in him are fearful of.

This is big politics, which can make a centre leftist like Valls endorse nonsense because, if he doesnt, his already unpopular government may slide into toxicity. This is the largest element that created the majority for Brexit. This is a defining period in the Wests relations with the Muslim world.

One that fear, even on sunny beaches, makes it very hard to manage.
The bombing late Saturday in Gaziantep, near Turkeys border with Syria, was the deadliest attack in Turkey this year.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking live on national television in front of Istanbuls city hall, said the attacker was aged between 12 and 14. He said 69 people were wounded, with 17 of them in critical condition.

It was clear that Daesh had such an organisation in Gaziantep or was attempting to make room for itself in recent times, Erdogan said, using an alternative acronym for IS.

Many intensive operations were conducted, are being conducted. Of course our security forces will be conducting these operations with even greater intensity.

A bus driver who shuttled some of the guests from Siirt to Gaziantep said that he couldnt believe the party was targeted.

This was a wedding party. Just a regular wedding party, Hamdullah Ceyhan told Anadolu. This attack was deplorable. How did they do such a thing?

Turkey has been rocked by a wave of attacks in the past year that have either been claimed by Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party  known by its acronym PKK  or were blamed on IS.

In June, suspected IS militants attacked Istanbuls main airport with guns and bombs, killing 44 people. A dual suicide bombing blamed on IS at a peace rally in Turkeys capital, Ankara, in October killed 103 victims.

The attack comes as the country is still reeling from last months failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers. Gulen denies any involvement.

Earlier, Erdogan said there was absolutely no difference between IS, Kurdish rebels and Gulens movement, calling them terrorist groups.

These bloodthirsty organisations and the powers behind them have neither the will nor power to silence the calls to prayer, lower the flag, divide our motherland and break up our nation, he said.

Earlier this week, a string of bombings blamed on the PKK that targeted police and soldiers killed at least a dozen people.

A fragile, two-year-long peace process between the PKK and the government collapsed last year, leading to a resumption of the three-decade-long conflict.

In Gaziantep, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek and the countrys health minister visited the wounded and inspected the site of the attack.

This is a massacre of unprecedented cruelty and barbarism, he told reporters. We... are united against all terror organisations. They will not yield.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim condemned the bombing, which he said turned a wedding party into a place of mourning and he vowed to prevail over the devilish attacks.

Opposition parties have also denounced the attack. The main opposition Republican Peoples Party held an emergency meeting and a delegation was being sent to Gaziantep by the Nationalist Movement Party.

Supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democracy Party planned to hold a protest against the attack.

Foreign governments, including the US, Sweden, Greece, France, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan, have condemned the attack.
The World War II veteran dipped his toes in the Atlantic Ocean Saturday morning, ending a cross-country run that started in San Diego.

Local media reported that Andrus was surrounded by hundreds of people, including family members and friends who have joined him along his journey.

He started his trek on October 7, 2013 on the sands of San Diego, weaving his way over the months and years through the southern United States until he reached St. Simons Island in Georgia on Saturday morning.

Oh, its great, Andrus told The Brunswick News after the run was over.

Im glad to have finished and met the goal. But I wish it wasnt over.

People travelled from as far away as Arizona and New York to be there at the end of his journey. A marching band welcomed him, and the crowds shouted his name.

All these people, its so wonderful, he said. John and Michelle Crosby met Andrus when he ran through Madisonville, Louisiana, last year and went on to accompany him on 15 legs of his journey, including his trek through Mobile, Alabama, in February.

Along the way they have helped him with police escorts. But this was the first time they had seen him since Mobile.

Mobile City Councilman John Williams met Andrus when he ran into the district Williams represents.

It didnt take long after his arrival to know we had a special person in our city, Williams told AL.com. Andrus turned 93 on Friday.

He was running to raise money to return a WWII-era ship in Indiana to Normandy, France, for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing. He was a medic on a similar ship during the war.

Now that this epic run is finished, Andrus has already planned a new adventure. Hes going to drive his motor home to Alaska where his stepdaughter lives and drive the Alaska Highway.
Australia has been criticised by international human rights groups over its slowness to act on same-sex marriage.

Several countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, United States, France, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa, have already amended their marriage laws to recognise same-sex unions.

The Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday that the plebiscite, which Turnbull had promised to hold this year, had been delayed until at least February, but a spokesman for the prime minister said no date had been set.

Late last week the AEC provided advice to the Special Minister of State that strongly recommended against the conduct of a plebiscite this calendar year, the spokeswoman told Reuters.

The government has always said that a decision on same-sex marriage will be made by a vote of all Australians in a national plebiscite to be held as soon as practicable.

"That commitment has not changed. The mechanics of the plebiscite, including the specific question and also the timing, are subject to the usual cabinet processes. No decisions have as yet been made.

The Daily Telegraph reported that Turnbull would reveal his timeline for the plebiscite at a party room meeting of the ruling coalition on September 13.

A leading gay rights advocate and former judge last week urged Parliament to prevent the popular referendum on legalising gay marriage.

Michael Kirby, a former High Court judge who headed a United Nations inquiry into human rights abuses in North Korea in 2014, wrote in The Australian newspaper that a popular vote against gay marriage would likely set back the cause of marriage equality for decades.

Kirby, a 77-year-old who has been in a same-sex relationship since 1969, urged the new Senate to reject legislation that would allow the plebiscite.

Defeat in a plebiscite on same-sex marriage would kill the reform, probably for decades, Kirby wrote. A defeat in Parliament alone would do no more than delay the inevitable.
Police said the victims were found on Saturday afternoon inside the residence located in the city of Citronelle, about 30 miles northwest of Mobile.

A four-month-old infant was found alive at the home.

Authorities were still working to identify the bodies and notify relatives, Capt Paul Burch of the Mobile County Sheriffs Office told reporters.

Given the way the scene looks, were going to be here a couple of days, Burch said. Its obviously a horrific scene.

Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich told Al.com that the crime scene where five people were brutally and viciously murdered was the worst shed seen in 20 years as a prosecutor.

Burch said suspect Derrick Dearman of Leakesville, Mississippi, was taken into custody after he walked into the Greene County Sheriffs Office on Saturday afternoon and confessed to the crimes. Burch said he expects Dearman to face five or six counts of capital murder.

Sad to say, one of the females was about five months pregnant, Burch said.

Burch and Rich revealed few specifics of the scene, but said it was clear that firearms and at least one other type of weapon had been used.

Burch said that it wasnt immediately clear whether the victims had been attacked while sleeping or had engaged in a prolonged struggle.

Were not there yet, Rich said, when asked about details of the deaths. We have a horrible scene here.

Burch said it appeared events began unfolding in the early hours of Saturday morning. Somewhere between midnight and 1am, residents of the house had called 911 to report a trespasser. Burch said it was his understanding that during the call Dearman had been identified as the trespasser.

Burch said he understood that Citronelle police responded to the call, but found no one.

Burch said it appeared the murders had taken place later Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon, a woman reported to Citronelle police that shed been kidnapped and escaped.

Information from her account led Citronelle police to the house on Jim Platt Road. Burch said investigators believed the woman who contacted police had an undetermined relationship with Dearman.

An investigation is ongoing.
Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi hosts German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Francois Hollande on an island off the coast of Naples ahead of Septembers EU summit called to discuss reverberations from the Brexit vote.

Officials in Brussels and Berlin fear the June 23 vote could lead to a referendum in the Netherlands  a founding member of the union  on whether to also leave the bloc.

Monday aims to show the unity of Europes three biggest countries, but not to create a specific club, a French diplomatic source said, noting that the aim was to prepare for the groundwork for the Bratislava summit.

Faced with existential risks, Merkel wants to cement a better Europe rather than forge ahead with more Europe.

Renzi wants Italy to have a strong voice in how the blocs future is shaped after Brexit and, according to the French diplomatic source, Hollande wants an EU-wide investment plan to be doubled.

The three leaders differ over how to boost economic growth  which slowed across the 28-nation bloc in the second quarter and stagnated in France and Italy  and cut unemployment.

France supports Renzis push for expansionary measures and against austerity, Germany is likely to oppose any undermining of Europes deficit and the debt constraints that Italy and France have struggled to comply with.

Italy is eager for greater European consolidation in the wake of Brexit, but Merkel is more concerned about preserving the integrity of the eventual 27-member bloc.

For her it will be the beginning of a whirlwind week of meetings with other European governments that will see her travel to four countries and receive leaders from another eight.

The goal must first of all be to preserve the status quo and to prevent a further disintegration of the EU-27, said one EU diplomat.

Renzi chose to meet on the island of Ventotene because of its symbolic significance as the place where two Italian intellectuals, held there in World War Two, wrote a manifesto calling for European political unification.

One of the two, Altiero Spinelli, is buried on the island. Lingering threats to the union that emerged long before the Brexit vote are also likely to be on the agenda, including internal and external security after Islamist militant attacks and Europes migration crisis.

Emboldened by the Brexit vote, Hungarys prime minister Viktor Orban has called a referendum on Oct. 2 on whether to accept any future EU migrant settlement quotas as his government steps up its fight against the EUs migration policies.

The EU plans to offer incentives to African governments to help slow the flow of migrants who have poured into Europe over the past three years, but disagreements on how to handle the situation have laid bare divisions between member states.
Instead, about half of the campaigns $18.5 million in spending was vacuumed up by Giles-Parscale, a web design and marketing firm new to national politics, Federal Election Commission filings show.

Its a crossover vendor from Trumps real estate organization. The campaign paid Giles-Parscale $8.4m (7.42m) in July.

The big expense came as Trump put a new emphasis on online fundraising, after paying for his primary run mostly out of his own pocket.

Millions more went on air travel. The campaign paid about $2m for private jets other than Trumps own TAG Air, which also collected $500,000.

Some of Trumps consultants are also mysteriously well-paid.

Chess Bedsole, the campaigns Alabama state director, was paid $64,000 last month for field consulting. His last campaign payment was for $15,000 in December.

Yet the campaigns payroll remained thin, and there did not appear to be much new in the way of office leases across the country, including in critical battleground states such as Ohio.

Trump has relied heavily on the Republican National Committee for conventional campaign infrastructure. And hes boasted of holding the line on his campaign spending.

But hes running critically low on time to build an operation that can compete with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

In addition to being ahead of Trump in polls in key states, Clinton has maintained a staff of about 700 for months, opened offices across the country and already spent $67 million on general election ads.

Trump put out his first ads days ago, spending $5m to air them in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Her campaign spent $38 million in July, about double Trumps spending.

Clinton can afford to spend more than Trump, the July campaign finance reports show. Her campaign raised $52 million while his brought in $37 million for the month, including a $2 million contribution from Trump himself.

The candidates also raise money for their parties, enabling them to ask for contributions far higher than the $2,700-per-donor limit to the campaigns.

Overall in July, Clinton raised $90 million for her campaign and Democratic partners, while Trump raised $80 million for the campaign and Republican groups.

Trump did bring aboard some new consultants in July. He paid $100,000 to Cambridge Analytica, a deep-dive data firm that did business with Republican opponent Ted Cruz.

Hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who gave $2m to a pro-Trump super political action committee in July, is an investor in Cambridge.
The men were hanged at the Nasiriyah prison in southern Iraq, according to provincial Governor Yahya al-Nasiri.

A Justice Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief reporters, confirmed the executions.

IS captured an estimated 1,700 soldiers after seizing Saddam Husseins hometown of Tikrit in 2014.

The soldiers were trying to flee from nearby Camp Speicher, a former US base just outside the northern city.

Shortly after taking Tikrit, IS posted graphic images of gunmen shooting the men dead after forcing them to lie face-down in a shallow ditch.

The Speicher massacre sparked outrage across Iraq and partially fuelled the mobilisation of Shia militias in the fight against IS, a Sunni extremist group.

The militias now rival the power of Iraqs conventional armed forces.

Iraqi forces arrested dozens of men allegedly linked to the massacre after retaking Tikrit in 2015 with the help of US-led airstrikes.

The men executed yesterday were sentenced to death by an Iraqi court earlier this year.

The head of the provincial council in Salahuddin province, of which Tikrit is the capital, criticised the judicial process, saying some of the men executed had been tortured to extract confessions.

Some of them were not even present at the scene of the crime, Ahmed al-Karim said.

We support the death penalty for those who committed crimes, but the use of violence and torture (in Iraqi prisons) should be investigated.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has attempted to fast-track the implementation of death sentences following a series of large-scale bombings in and around Baghdad in recent months.
USA: A Connecticut state worker fired after he was caught smoking marijuana on the job was punished too harshly and should get his job back, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

Gregory Linhoff was fired from his maintenance job at the University of Connecticut Health Centre in Farmington in 2012 after a police officer caught him smoking pot in a state-owned vehicle. He had no previous disciplinary problems since being hired in 1998 and had received favourable job promotions, according to his union. He was arrested, but the charges were later dismissed.

State officials said firing the New Hartford resident was the only appropriate penalty for his conduct and not doing so would send a bad message to other employees. An arbitrator disagreed and overturned the firing, saying Linhoff instead should be suspended without pay for six months and be subject to random drug testing for a year after he returned to work.

The state appealed and a Superior Court judge overturned the arbitrators decision on the grounds that it violated Connecticuts public policy against marijuana use. Linhoffs union, the Connecticut Employees Union Independent SEIU, appealed the judges ruling to the Supreme Court.

All seven justices agreed that the lower court judge was wrong to overturn the arbitrators ruling, saying that while state policy on drug use in the work place allows for firing workers it does not require it. Justices also said that judicial second-guessing of arbitration awards is uncommon and should be reserved only for extraordinary circumstances.

The misconduct at issue was completely unacceptable, and we do not condone it, Chief Justice Chase T Rogers wrote in the decision.

By the arbitrators estimation, (Linhoffs) personal qualities and overall record indicate that he is a good candidate for a second chance. Moreover, the discipline the arbitrator imposed was appropriately severe, and sends a message to others who might consider committing similar misconduct that consequences will result.

Secret service

USA: About 30 people have paid their respects to a woman they never met after responding to a call for attendees for a suburban New York funeral at which no one was expected to show up.

The Journal News reports strangers served as Francine Steins pallbearers and also helped bury her during the cemetery service.

Stein died at the age of 83. Rabbi Elchanan Weinbach officiated the service and says there was no eulogy because he didnt know anything about the woman.

He learned at the cemetery that Stein was a musician and had taught at the Julliard School.

The call for volunteers came on Facebook from Weinbachs daughter.

One attendee said she came to the service as a simple act of human decency.

Furtive fugitive

USA:

Authorities say an elderly man found at a Massachusetts home actually was a 31-year-old fugitive wearing a disguise.

Police went to a house on Cape Cod last Thursday looking for Shaun Miller, whod been a fugitive since April when he and several others were indicted on heroin distribution charges. Police say when they ordered a man there to come outside, an elderly man emerged.

The US Attorneys office says when officers realised the man was Miller they pulled off his realistic disguise and placed him under arrest. Nearly $30,000 in cash and two loaded guns were found in the house.

Ambulance absconder

USA:

Police say a woman who missed the last bus for the night is accused of stealing an ambulance to get home from an Ohio hospital.

Court documents filed in Hamilton Municipal Court in Cincinnati say 43-year-old Lisa Carr is accused of getting into an ambulance that a driver had left running and driving to her home in suburban Cincinnati. The driver apparently had left the ambulance to go inside the hospital with a patient.

Police say the Springfield Township woman was arrested after a short pursuit. They say she told them she took the ambulance because she had missed her bus home.

Liquor licence

USA:

A grocery store in Pennsylvania has become the first supermarket since Prohibition to sell wine in the state.

A Giant Eagle store in suburban Pittsburgh began selling wine on Friday. Only state-owned liquor stores or kiosks had been allowed to sell wine since the nationwide ban on alcohol that lasted from 1920 to 1933.

Under a new law, customers can buy up to three litres of wine to go from businesses that hold restaurant or hotel liquor licenses. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board says it has approved more than 80 supermarkets, restaurants, and hotels to sell wine to go.
Reuben Harvey-Smith was taken to A&E at Ipswich Hospital after accidentally burning himself.

When his mother Lou took him back two days later with a fever and sore throat she was given antibiotics and told that her son had tonsillitis.

The following day he was fighting for his life.

He was later diagnosed with toxic shock syndrome, a life-threatening infection caused by bacteria entering the wound and releasing poisonous toxins into his blood.

Reuben had to have both legs amputated below the knee and also lost seven fingers after the infection took hold in July last year.

The hospital trust has admitted liability, and that amputation could have been avoided.

But Ms Harvey-Smith, from Chelmondiston, near Ipswich in Suffolk, said her little Mr Positive refused to let it get him down.

He came round from the operation and the first thing he did was ask for mummy cuddles and his dinner, she said. He looked at his amputated legs and said poorly feet gone, get new ones.

He just accepts it and gets on with things. He never gets frustrated. I try not to waste energy getting angry because at the end of the day Ive still got my son, but what I have got to do now is make sure it doesnt happen to anyone else.

Reubens sore throat and fever had been misdiagnosed despite a recognised link between burns and toxic shock syndrome.

Ms Harvey-Smith called the burns unit at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for a second opinion when she suspected things were still not right, and doctors immediately suspected toxic shock.

Reuben survived, but medics at St Marys Hospital in Paddington, London were forced to amputate.

Ms Harvey-Smith, 41, later launched legal action against Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust which admitted toxic shock was a significant possibility based on his symptoms at the time, and amputation could have been avoided with earlier diagnosis and treatment.

The NHS trust has made an interim payment of 50,000 (58,000) while legal proceedings continue over a final settlement.

A spokesman for Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust said: In an ongoing legal case the trust has admitted full liability for shortcomings in the A&E care provided to Reuben in July 2015 and have offered an unreserved apology to Reuben and his family.

We are now working with the family to ensure that lessons are learnt from Reubens case and further training has been provided to A&E staff on recognising the warning signs of septic shock syndrome.
Burma Burma Army, UNFC Delegation Disagree on Peace Conference Dialogue Facilitation

A meeting between representatives from the governments National Reconciliation and Peace Center and ethnic armed groups Delegation for Peace Negotiation is held on Monday in Rangoon / Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy

RANGOON  Burma Army representatives of the National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC) objected to a proposal put forward on Monday by an ethnic armed group delegation regarding the facilitation of dialogue at the upcoming Union Peace Conference.

The upcoming conferencealso being lauded as the 21st Century Panglong eventwill begin on August 31 in Naypyidaw. At a meeting in Rangoon on Monday, the Delegation for Political Negotiation (DPN)a group of representatives from the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), a coalition of ethnic armed groups who opted out of signing 2015s nationwide ceasefire with the governmentproposed a facilitation strategy for the conference involving three chairpersons from three sides.

From our ethnic armed groups, we will select three people who will act as chairpersons at the conference. This is the issue we had a disagreement about today with the Tatmadaw. They wanted [their own] three persons who would act as chairpersons at the conference, said a representative from DPN who wished not to be named.

The idea put forward by the DPN was to select three individuals each from the ethnic armed groups, the government, and the countrys political parties. These people will act as chairpersons and sit at the front of the stage at the conference.

The Burma Army said that they would also like to have three representatives of their own, as well as three from the leading National League for Democracy, and the Parliament. The ethnic delegation disagreed, pointing out an imbalance created by having nine people on the side of the government and only three representing ethnic interests.

The government agreed to have this tripartite political dialogue we proposed, and there was no problem, the source added.

Sai Nyunt Lwin, the general secretary of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) political party and an acting committee member for the Union Peace Conference, confirmed to The Irrawaddy that there was a disagreement regarding the format for the dialogue, but said that there will be ongoing negotiation on the issue.

There could be three parties or five parties in the future, he said, referring to the proposals put forward by both the DPN and the Burma Army.

When asked about the specifics of the disagreement, Sai Nyunt Lwin declined to comment, saying, It was not good to mention who, before adding, You know who disagreed with this.

Regarding the three ethnic armed groups whose attendance at the Union Peace Conference is not yet confirmedthe Taang National Liberation Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Arakan ArmyHla Maung Shwe, a member of the NRPC, said that there will be another meeting soon to negotiate between the government and the groups.

Members from NRPC have met the three ethnic armed groups twice already in eastern Shan States Mongla region. The Burmese Army has asked them to state an intention to disarm before they can attend the peace conference, but the groups have objected to this demand.
Burma Hoteliers Left in Limbo in Bagan

The government debates what to do about unsanctioned hotels built in Bagans archaeological zone. / JPaing / The Irrawaddy

NAYPYIDAW  The government remains undecided on whether to grant official approval to unsanctioned hotels that were built in Bagans famed archaeological zone without the permission of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture.

Existing laws prohibit commercial buildings in Bagans archaeological zone but for 25 hotels that have already been built, the ministry is debating whether to allow or demolish them, said Aye Ko Ko, director of the Department of Archaeology, National Museum and Library, at a press conference on the ministrys 100-day plan in Naypyidaw on Friday.

According to the law, hotels, motels and guesthouses cant be built in archaeological zones unless the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture approves. This approval cannot be authorized by local authorities or our department, said Aye Ko Ko.

As for those 25 hotels, the minister has urged us to find a solution that is acceptable to both sidesto ensure that hotel owners do not suffer losses and that our cultural heritage is not affected, said Aye Ko Ko.

Because Bagan is widely regarded as a national treasure, the ministry will work with other concerned ministries as well as local authorities to find the best possible solution, he added. Apart from the hotels that were constructed without approval, the department has received 17 proposals for new hotel projects since 2013.

We rejected [the 17 proposals] immediately because the proposed projects were located in the ancient archaeological zone, Aye Ko Ko said.

Tin Htoo Maung, the administrator of Nyaung U Townshipwhich houses hundreds of pagodassaid he has not received official instruction regarding these hotels.

The 25 hotels are not allowed to open yet. Hotels come to this region because of the cultural heritage. And because regional development also depends on the hotel industry, we need to consider both sides. It depends on the foresight of the upper leadership. Our duty is just to implement their instructions, he said.

Nandar Hmun, permanent secretary of the ministry, said at the press conference, We have adopted regulations that clarify which actions are against the law. Because Bagan is an archaeological area, we have designated zones there, such as the protective zone and the ancient zone. But hoteliers are unaware and when they build extensions, they encroach on these zones. And in some cases, they build without permission.

Bagan locals generally oppose new hotel projects along with the appropriation of pagodas located on hotel compounds.

In 2012, businessmen attempted to establish a new hotel zone in Bagan with the approval of the Mandalay divisional government in response to opposition from locals and the Department of Archaeology, National Museum and Library.

With an increase in visitors, Bagans hotel industry is short of rooms, leading to conflict between hoteliers and locals.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
With ruined and neglected buildings across the town, Mai Ja Yang on the Sino-Burma border has a lifeless appearance.

Previously, the border towns main livelihood was poppy cultivation. But after the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO)the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA)granted 25-year casino licenses to Chinese businessmen in 2002, the village developed and was later dubbed little Hong Kong by visitors and gamblers.

As the casino industry thrived, crime increased and attracted the attention of Burmas central government. Under pressure from the Burmese authorities, China got out of the industry in 2008.

The KIO is currently opening colleges in Mai Ja Yang, which houses a population of around 8,000. The KIO plans to establish universities, in the hope that the area will become an important seat of education on the border.

The once crime-ridden Mai Ja Yang recently earned its place in history as host to a milestone in Burmas peace process when ethnic armed groups gathered there in July to work toward lasting peace.
Burma Overcrowded Katha Prison Criticized by Human Rights Commission

Prisoners walk out of Rangoons Insein Prison after being released in a general amnesty in 2011. / The Irrawaddy

RANGOON  In a statement on Friday, Burmas National Human Rights Commission criticized overcrowding, and inadequate staffing and provisions of water and medicine, at Katha Prison in Sagaing Division, and called for drastic improvements to be made.

During a session of the Union Parliament on July 28, 16 lawmakers debated the commissions annual report for 2015, directing heavy criticism at its weaknessesincluding in promoting prisoners rights.

Myint Kyi, a Lower House lawmaker representing Katha Constituency, told Parliament that earlier recommendations from the human rights commissionto build additional sleeping quarters in Burmas overflowing prisons, fill medical and security staff vacancies, and supply sufficient medicine for prisonershad not been acted on.

He cited Katha Prison, which was built 120 years ago with a capacity to hold 480 inmates, as now severely overcrowded.

It is really hard for the inmates now to sleep, to use toilets and water facilities, and even to get food. It is not good for their health; infectious diseases can spread easily, he said.

Myint Kyis comments prompted a team from the human rights commission to visit Katha Prison and interview 39 inmates and detainees. The commission discovered a total of 1,003 inmatesmore than double its official capacity136 of which were female. The minimum requirement of 18 square feet per inmate far exceeds the reality of just 8.6 square feet per inmate.

In their statement, the commission reiterated their earlier recommendations regarding facilities and staff levels, and the need to take preventive measures against infectious diseases.

The overcrowding and the inadequate staff, water and medical supplies are the same as in other prisons, as well as in police lock-ups. The relevant ministries should implement the commissions recommendations as soon as possible, and the government needs to provide the necessary budget, lawmaker Myint Kyi said during the session on July 28.

This year, the human rights commission issued four other statements related to prison conditions in Pegu Division, Shan State, Kayah State and Khamti of Sagaing Division.
Commentary Is Suu Kyi Stealing the Show?

State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi meets with UNFC ethnic armed alliance leaders for the first time in Rangoon on July 17. / Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy

State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyis comment to ethnic armed group leaders in Julythat they should consider what they could give to, rather than take from, the peace processhas caused some unease among the fragmented ethnic bloc.

Ethnic armed group leaders and observers of the peace process have privately criticized Suu Kyis approach as a one-man-show: stealing the limelight and monopolizing positions of responsibility. Without properly consulting ethnic leaders, Suu Kyi has expedited the Union Peace Conference, now scheduled for August 31.

Some ethnic armed group leaders have confided low expectationsthat the 21st Century Panglong Conference, as it has been branded, will be mostly for show, rather for reaching agreements to seriously further the peace process.

Nai Hong Sar, a spokesperson for United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC)an alliance of nine ethnic armed organizations that didnt sign the Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA) last yearattributes Suu Kyis early timing of the peace conference to her desire to present a first step at a session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. Real negotiations would take place only afterwards.

Suu Kyi is Burmas state counselor, its foreign minister, a presidents office minister and the chairperson of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD). She also chairs both the National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC) and the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC), which oversee the peace process.

However, some observers point to the militarys continued monopolization of the security sector, and the powerful ministries of defense, home, and border affairs, as an obstacle to smooth progress in the peace process.

Gen Baw Kyaw Heh, vice chief-of-staff of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), said ethnic armed groups dont have a clear idea of what Suu Kyis next move will be after the peace conference. They see difficulties ahead, including in implementing a military code-of-conduct, repositioning troops and monitoring the ceasefire on the ground. Suu Kyi must rely on the cooperation of the Burma Army in all these areas.

A longtime observer on ethnic affairs said, If she is capable, I wonder why she doesnt announce a nationwide ceasefire, under her own authority, and take action against those who violate the ceasefire. It would then become obvious who wants peace and who doesnt.

The peace process under the NLD government inherits the baggage around the deals made under the former military-backed governmentparticularly the NCA, which has caused considerable division among ethnic armed groups after only a minority of groups signed.

Even among signatory groups, there are disagreements over the text of the NCAfor instance disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, as proposed by the Burma Army.

However, under Suu Kyis leadership, ethnic armed organizations are treated differently than they were under the previous government. Suu Kyi hasnt offered lucrative business opportunities to ethnic armed organizations, of the type that tend to benefit only top leaders and not civilians in the areas under their control.

Suu Kyi has indicated a belief that development and economic growth will go a long way toward solving many of problems faced by ordinary people. But, unlike previous governments, she may develop economic policies that reach civilians in ethnic areas.

One reason we havent achieved peace is that the physical and mental needs of the people still cannot be fulfilled, Suu Kyi said during a recent UPDJC meeting.

During the government of former President Thein Sein, business opportunities including car permits and company licenses were granted to ethnic armed groups. Some groups now make good money running businesses, their enterprises extending into neighboring countries such as China and Thailand. Not only do the benefits generally bypass ordinary civilians, armed group leaders also often lack policies to improve their wellbeing.

Due to personal interests, ethnic leaders are frequently divided. In Shan State, over the last year, ethnic armed groups such as the Taang National Liberation Army and the Shan State Army-South have fought against each other. This runs on considerable precedent: in the past, ethnic Shan armed groups have fought with the United Wa State Army, and rival ethnic Karen armed groups have a history of internecine conflict.

Differences in views among stakeholders are to be expected, but without a genuine willingness to find common ground, the peace process will never be concluded. Ethnic politics is not black and white: Suu Kyi should be aware of hidden interests among individual ethnic armed groups, as well as in the Burma Army.

It seems that ethnic armed groups and the Burma Army dont want real peace, but a peace with interests. Few appear willing to give up their arms and existing powers to help turn Burma into a genuinely democratic country. Such willingness is essential, no matter how much support Suu Kyi can command from both inside and outside Burmaor how many decision-making positions she can occupy.
Monday, August 22nd, 2016 (10:17 am) - Score 1,331

Cityfibre has announced that the roll-out of their new multi-million-pound and 40km long Gigabit fibre optic (FTTP) broadband and Ethernet network in the city of Glasgow (Scotland) will begin within the next 3-4 months, which seems to represent a delay from the original early in 2016 plan.

Last year Cityfibre pledged, with support from local ISP partner HighNet, that they would ultimately deliver the huge benefits of pure fibre connectivity to the whole city and that the new network could offer internet connectivity [that is] up to 100 times faster than the UK average.

Phase One of the construction should have begun in early 2016 (focus on the city centre) and this would have then put the infrastructure within close reach of up to 7,000 local businesses and public sector sites (including 7 local hospitals) by the end of 2016, rising up to 15,000 by completion.

However todays release states that the roll-out will now commence later this year and will then go live in early 2017, although Cityfibre clarifies that early 2017 doesnt represent completion because the first phase will take up to 12 months to complete. No reason for the delay is given, although such things rarely go precisely to plan.

As part of this work HighNet has opened its first Central Belt location in St Vincent Street, which is being supported by an investment of 250,000. HighNet has also recruited 8 new employees in the city and adapted the 4000ft2 office space to include a range of technical and customer facilities.

James McClafferty, CityFibres Head of Regional Development, said: In cities like Glasgow, the rise of new technologies is radically transforming the way we live and work, and this means that our digital connectivity can either be a barrier to growth and innovation or a catalyst for economic and social development. Working with HighNet, we want to make sure Glasgow has the infrastructure it needs to compete with other cities in the UK and across the world. Every Gigabit City we build provides local businesses, Government, public services and mobile operators with a modern fibre infrastructure, capable of meeting their data connectivity and communication needs now, and for decades to come.

CityFibre are currently in the process of completing Gigabit City projects in 37 cities around the United Kingdom, such as Aberdeen and Edinburgh. The operator aims to reach as many as 50 UK cities by 2020, which has been made possible by last years 90m acquisition of KCOMs UK network assets (here).

UPDATE 1:55pm

According to a spokesperson for Cityfibre, the reason for Glasgows roll-out being a bit behind schedule is because they prioritised the completion of our Edinburgh Gigabit City project, which grew significantly in scale since our partnership with Commsworld was first signed and this took the focus away from Glasgow. Edinburgh is now approaching completion and thus they will soon be able to shift that focus back towards the Glasgow build.
Monday, August 22nd, 2016 (3:56 pm) - Score 1,519

The London Internet Exchange has criticised last weeks progress report on the roll-out of superfast broadband in Scotland (here), not least because of Audit Scotlands failure to fully reflect that LINX has already established an Internet Exchange in Scotland (IXScotland) and it needs support.

The report stated that the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) has been working to develop the Scottish Governments vision of world-class digital infrastructure. As part of that SFT have also proposed 6 interconnecting key pillars of infrastructure, one of which is centred around Exchanges.

According to Audit Scotland, While there is an exchange in Scotland, the majority of data must be sent to England before returning to Scotland. The point is understandable, but a spokesperson for LINX today complained that no reference was made to the fact that LINX had established such an exchange nearly three years ago (here).

At present IXScotland is a single node IXP (Internet Exchange Point) using switching gear from Extreme Networks, which functions independently of the much larger LINX networks in London and Manchester. The exchange, which keeps traffic local and thus improves latency / regional connectivity, is managed in consultation with a local steering committee of member networks.

However the exchange has not grown as fast as LINX would have liked and today it only handles 708.90Mbps of peak data traffic via 20 connected members (the network also supports 19 Gigabits of connected traffic), but there is some progress (see below).

By comparison IXManchester was launched a year before IXScotland and has seen much stronger growth, with 78 connected members and 35.82Gbps of peak traffic.

John Souter, CEO of LINX, said: We worked very closely with the Scottish Government when launching IXScotland but unfortunately growth at the exchange has not been as rapid as we wouldve liked. We know that the LINX membership is keen to be even more involved with developments in the country and that includes raising awareness of the benefits of joining a local exchange. IXScotland has so much potential  with a more concentrated effort from all parties it could become an effective interconnection hub for the country and something the whole tech community can benefit from.

James King, Scottish Futures Trust, added: We have taken the lead to develop an approach to implement the Scottish Governments World-Class digital vision. Our focus, working together with industry and the Scottish Government, is to ensure the right mechanisms, partnerships and commercial approaches are developed to deliver a programme to improve digital infrastructure investment and its delivery across Scotlands diverse landscape. Anything that can be done to move the agenda along is a positive step for us.

Naturally IXScotlands future would be much brighter if they could encourage more ISPs and local businesses in Scotland to join up. This would of course be helped if reports, like the one from Audit Scotland, actually recognised their contribution and delved into the matter with a little more depth.
There have been new updates to the upcoming "Gilmore Girls" revival that has been highly anticipated by the fans of the series since it ended back in 2007. "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life" is going to feature three women struggling at the crossroads of their lives.

"Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life"

"Gilmore Girls" ended on 2007 with their seventh season and ever since then, fans of the series have been hoping for a comeback to give them some closure on all the characters' stories. Much to their surprise, it has been confirmed that a revival will be coming later this year, consisting of four 90-minute episodes, each featuring their lives on each season: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.

Just recently, series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino revealed some juicy details on what is in store for the Gilmores this upcoming revival. According to Elite Daily, Amy revealed that Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) will be in the middle of a life-crisis as the "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life" opens up.

Rory Gilmore Struggling With Her Career And Life In The Revival

Rory can be seen struggling with her life, especially given that she did everything by the book. She went to an Ivy League college, good grades, worked really hard and all of that. However, things don't seem to have worked out well for her since her graduation at Yale and she is struggling with her life. According to the series creator, it is something that most of the young adults can definitely relate to these days.

Will Rory Gilmore Be Teaching At Chilton?

Starz reported that in an earlier teaser photo for the "Gilmore Girls" revival, Rory can be seen in the halls of her high school alma mater, Chilton. This has led fans to speculate that she may be an English teacher in the school, which could be great, except she had always dreamed of being a reporter. Could this be the life struggle that Amy Sherman-Palladino was talking about?

Questions about how Rory's life has come about will finally be answered on November 25, as Netflix releases the four-part revival of "Gilmore Girls."
More updates have been revealed on what is in store for the upcoming season three of "The Flash," that including a new villain. This new villain is going to be portrayed by "Awkward" actress Ashley Rickards.

Ashley Rickards Of "Awkward" Makes Appearance On "The Flash"

Ashley Rickards is well-known for her series on MTV entitled "Awkward" which just wrapped up its fifth season. There hasn't been any news yet if it is going to be renewed for a sixth season. However, Ashley will soon be seen on the third season of "The Flash" as a new villain on the series.

According to the International Business Times, the actress will be playing the role of Rosalind "Rosa" Dilon, who will then be known as The Top. This villain is known to be one of the most dangerous villains in the comic books. However, in the television series, she will be paired up with Mirror Master and together they will create chaos in Central City.

The Top And Mirror Master Together In Trying To Destroy Central City

The Top and Mirror Master will be partners in creating havoc in the city while having a romantic relationship along the side as well. Mirror Master will be portrayed by actor Grey Damon.

In the comic books of "The Flash," The Top is a male criminal known as Roscoe Dillon and the series creators managed to alter it a little bit, featuring a woman as the villain. Ecumenical News reported that Ashley Rickards will be making an appearance on the series as The Top, along with Grey Damon as Mirror Master and Wentworth Miller as Captain Cold during the fourth episode of season three in "The Flash."

Mirror Master's origin and the return of Wentworth Miller, a.k.a. Captain Cold

It has been reported that the executive producers of the show said that this episode will feature the origin of Mirror Master. This also marks Miller's return on the series, despite having his own "Prison Break" on hand. His appearance on the series has received many positive reviews, and everyone is excited just how the three villains will go about terrorizing Central City.
As the premiere of "Arrow" season five now gets closer by the day, more details and updates have been revealed on what to expect this season. More information has been revealed on one of the antagonists of the series, an unnamed villain played by Dolph Lundgren.

Dolph Lundgren On Being Part Of Bratva, The Russian Mafia

Even though his name is in the series hasn't been revealed yet, actor Dolph Lundgren is going to play one of the new villains in the fifth season of "Arrow." His appearance will be more on Oliver's flashback during his time with the Bratva, which is the name of the Russian mafia, as reported by International Business Times.

Lundgren's role is highlighted as one of the men belonging to Bratva who gave Oliver a hard time during his stay in Russia, before he ever came back to Starling City and decided to become a vigilante.

Writers for the show have assured fans that Oliver's flashbacks will get more interesting for season 5. This season will explain Oliver's time away after the accident on the boat further and cover some of the time on he stayed in Russia. Since this season will already be avoiding the mystical creatures as villains, Lundgren's character is no different.

Season 5 Of "Arrow" To Be Darker Than Past Seasons

According to Cinema Blend, the executive producer of "Arrow," Wendy Mericle, revealed that Lundgren's character is a government strongman, who is a scary and terrible man in power. In addition, the writers have researched Bratva and the Russian prison well to ensure that the story is as real and as dark as is it could be.

Mericle also elaborated that Lundgren's character has a connection or a tie with the Russian government, making him more powerful and feared. He also has a hand in the events that emerged with Taiana's family before she was sent to prison on Lian Yu.

Tobias Church, New Villain Of The Green Arrow In The Present Time

While Oliver deals with Lundgren's character in his flashbacks, he is also challenged by many other villains in the present time, including Tobias Church to be portrayed by Chad L. Coleman. In line with this is when his new vigilante trainees come into the picture to help him as the Green Arrow.
The release of the "Winds of Winter," the latest instalment of the book series "A Song of Ice and Fire," has been very much awaited and anticipated by avid fans of the book. Recently, author George R.R. Martin admits to the slow progress of the book and assures it shall be released soon.

There have been numerous speculations feeding the hopes of many stating that the book can still be released within this year. However, there are four months to go before 2016 ends and there haven't been any reports yet to confirm such allegations. Thus, fans are now starting to believe and accept that they will have to wait until 2017 for the book to be published.

George R.R. Martin Admits To Being A Slow Writer

According to MNR Daily, in an interview that George R.R. Martin had, he had admitted to being a "slow and painstaking writer." He was good enough to admit that he has been struggling to write the storyline of the book, having some good and bad days in the process.

Martin has done a few readings on some of the chapters that he has finished in the book. Some fans even took the time to decipher all of the clues that Martin has revealed, to put together some sense into what is in store for "Winds of Winter." Of course, there is nothing better than the actual book itself to be released already.

George R.R. Martin Confirms Attendance In Upcoming Worldcon 2016

Ecumenical News reported that George R.R. Martin has confirmed to be attending and making a public appearance at Worldcon later this year. There have been speculations that the announcement of the release date of "Winds of Winter" will be done at the said event. The author even requested not to be photographed or asked for autographs during Worldcon, stating that he wants to enjoy the event as well.
The new Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is just released, but it is now experiencing a handful of criticisms from the users. One of it is the noticed scuffing under the glass as well as separation issues on the screen.

It is also reported that one of the delivered units has a loose button. It was then sent back to the store. According to the unfortunate buyer of Samsung's new device, he has researched other threads on the internet to find similar experiences.

Samsung has been known to have a series of quality control issues. One of it is the S Pen that is featured on the Galaxy Note 5 where if it was placed incorrectly, it would be stuck inside the phone.

After various complaints regarding the issue, Samsung released an improved version which does not enable the S Pen to be stuck inside. However, this is not enough to stop the worries for the Note 7.

It is truly a big disappointment that some obvious quality control issues are still present, knowing that the unit costs $850 to $900, in addition to being a flagship of known phone manufacturer Samsung. The journey does not yet end for Samsung as there are still lots of room to make up for the problems that its phones, especially the new Galaxy Not 7 are currently experiencing.

Samsung is a company that has a reputation of moving beyond the criticisms and making up for it. Hopefully, this time, it does improve.

The Galaxy Note 7 is a living testament of how innovative and competitive Samsung phones are. But if these quality control issues still prevail in the near future, it is very sure that Apple will overtake Samsung and deal a disastrous blow to its reputation.
HBO's hit TV series Game of Thrones is indeed under the heat of pressure as it is now approaching the final part of the saga with the upcoming Season 7. However, in order to make the entire production a real work of art, one needs to find the people who will be a perfect fit to the characters that will complement well on the plot line.

Even though Game of Thrones Season 7 is still far from its premiere, there are now rumors and leaks that circulate throughout the internet showing the potential new characters in the TV series.

General

Most reports support the idea of having a character that has an upper class origin. Most probably the character would be a person who is living in the capital, King's Landing.

Priest

It is a very good theory to say that the priest will also be compared to the general, due to the imperative powers of the church and state as what is seen on the previous season of Game of Thrones.

Warrior

The rumored new character will most likely be a hybrid between the two fallen characters of Ned Stark and Khal Drogo. This will most probably be given to a prominent celebrity, and would surely have an epic entrance in Season 7.

Lovely Lady

Peter Dinklage is known to be a charismatic small man and has seen a lot of nakedness throughout the entire series. For Season 7, things are about to unfold as a new love interest of the "rumored to be a Targaryen" is very likely to come up.

However, if the producers would want to not take off the focus of the fans from Emilia Clarke, the great Mother of Dragons, then it would be better to change it from a "Lovely Lady" to a "Lovely Dude".
Facebook is launching Lifestage in order to be cool again with the young and teenagers. The App is intended to take back the ongoing exodus of youngsters leaving the social network site.

Lifestage is reportedly based on Facebook's first model used more than 12 years ago. The new app also borrowed some of its features from other current social sharing sites. Facebook hopes that Lifestage will be able to lure the teens who left the site.

Facebook's popularity among teens is waning over the years, according to Digital Trends. The percentage of teenagers leaving is estimated to be in the double digits. This is the reason why Facebook is desperately trying to sell its Lifestage app to teenagers.

The Lifestage app basically enables its users to use their "Reach Me" account update their status through video. The update will only be visible to their direct contacts or friends. Only persons 21 and below are allowed to sign up for this app. This means that Lifestage is primarily targeting high school students whose age from 13 to 21 years old.

Lifestage users can skip signing through their Facebook account as long as they sign up with their school. The new app, however, requires the school to have at least 20 users to enable them to see the profiles of their classmates, schoolmates and other students at neighboring schools. This method though seemed intended to recruit as many teenagers as possible, according to PC Mag.

The app also gives simpler and easier privacy controls for its young users. One only needs one swipe to report or remove a classmate or friend from the social circle. Hope this feature keeps the bullies at bay.

Curiously, Lifestage is only available for iOS users. No words yet on when the Android version will be released. Only time can tell if Lifestage will make it a hit with the youngsters.
The Dell UltraSharp 34 inch Curved Monitor engages you in a new wrap-around viewing experience with a 21:9 ultra-wide curved screen that offers more display area and enhanced viewing comfort. Easily display content from 2 different PCs at the same time with the Picture-by-Picture or Picture-in-Picture features, via the USB 3.0 upstream ports. Plus enjoy the convenience of using just one keyboard and mouse to navigate content from both PCs.

This monitor currently averages 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon from 1,400+ people (read reviews) and its list price of $1,199 has been reduced to $699.99.

This story, "42% off Dell UltraSharp U3415W 34-Inch Curved LED-Lit Monitor - Deal Alert" was originally published by TechConnect .
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
In 1990 the council agreed to act as guarantor on a 4.2 million loan, which was needed to restore the theatre, a move which is now costing the council more than 1,000 a day.

The council is locked into the much-criticised agreement until 2013.

The new report by district auditor, Brian Willmor, found the council had acted legitimately in its dealings with the theatre but criticised it for failing to conduct either a risk assessment or an audit of the accounts before agreeing.

He said: "Neither members nor officers appear to have considered the full potential financial consequences of the guarantee."

He recommended that in future the council conducts risk assessments and ensures all reports are produced on time and relayed to councillors.

The report also states that the council should ensure decisions are fully documented and be open to scrutiny.

But council leader David Williams, who called in the district auditor in an attempt to clear the air over the controversial agreement, claimed last week that the report gave the council "a clean bill of health".

He said: "The financing of Richmond Theatre was complex and is easy to misinterpret.

"The criticisms in the report are about procedures, not about the transaction itself. There is no criticism whatsoever of any councillor in this."

Coun Williams said the council's support for Richmond Theatre was a common practice and other authorities provided funding to enable similar to survive.

He added: "I am very happy to accept the report and I hope the public will accept it too."

But Conservative group leader, Councillor Tony Arbour, said: "I don't believe this report gives the council a clean bill of health at all.

"The only thing it says is that there were no serious irregularities. It certainly does not say that the council carried out its decision legitimately."
Ellen J. MacKenzie

2017-present

Ellen J. MacKenzie, PhD 79, ScM 75, an expert on trauma care systems and policy, was named the Schools eleventh dean on October 1, 2017. She has served the School as director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy, senior associate dean for academic affairs, and chair of Health Policy and Management. MacKenzie founded the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium of more than 50 U.S. trauma care facilities dedicated to establishing best practices for treating both service members and civilians with severe musculoskeletal trauma. Her election to the National Academy of Medicine in 2018 recognized her role in shaping the field of trauma services and outcomes research, leading to improved quality of life for trauma survivors. She was also named one of 20 leaders and visionaries who have had a transformative effect on the field of violence and injury prevention.

In 2018, MacKenzie led the creation of the Bloomberg Schools five-year strategic plan. Its five main themesEducation, Science, Partnerships, People, and Advocacyfocus energy and resources that aim to shape the Schools agenda and the future of public health. As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in 2020, MacKenzie led during an unprecedented time of challenges and opportunities for the School and the field. In 2022, MacKenzie served on the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a National Public Health System.

Michael J. Klag

2005-2017

Dean Emeritus Michael J. Klag, MD, MPH 87, is an internationally known expert on the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular and kidney disease, and a Johns Hopkins faculty member since 1987. He presided over historic increases in the size of the faculty (43 percent), endowment (94 percent) and budget (53 percent), and the addition of 35 new research centers and institutes, including the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities. By the time he stepped down, he had signed one in three degrees ever conferred by the School. Through his 12-year tenure, he led the School through refugee crises, wars, tsunamis, earthquakes, and outbreaks of Ebola and Zika.

Under Dean Klag, the Bloomberg School became the worlds largest nonprofit online provider of public health education and increased its offerings of free or low-cost non-degree programs, such as a partnership begun in 2012 with Coursera, a for-profit provider of massive online open courses (MOOCs). As a global public health statesman, he assisted in establishing strong roots for public health education in China by convening a series of meetings of Bloomberg faculty with more than 50 Chinese public health deans.

Alfred Sommer

1990-2005

Dean Emeritus Alfred S. Sommer, MD, MHS 73, is a pioneer in the epidemiology of eye disease who discovered in the 1980s that vitamin A supplements could dramatically reduce rates of child mortality by one third. He led research and advocacy efforts to prevent blindness and mortality worldwide, and UNICEF credits vitamin A supplementation with saving the sight and lives of more than 4 million pre-school age children in the developing world since large-scale distribution programs began in 1998. Sommer is an elected member of both the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Science, and his many awards include the Lasker Award for Clinical Research.

During Sommers 15 years as Dean, the School embarked on a building campaign that modernized the existing main auditoria and classrooms and more than doubled the size of the Schools facilities. In 1999 it became the first school of public health to offer online courses and in 1994 began its unbroken reign as the top school in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. In recognition of the philanthropic relationship Sommer built with financial media entrepreneur Michael R. Bloomberg, the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health was renamed the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2001. The School also adopted its tagline, Protecting Health, Saving LivesMillions at a Time.

Donald A. Henderson

1977-1990

D. A. Henderson (1928  2016) MD, MPH 60, (1928  2016) directed the World Health Organization global smallpox eradication campaign, which in 1980 made smallpox the first human disease ever eradicated worldwide. Henderson had been committed to the importance of biosecurity since his early days serving alongside Alexander Langmuir, MD, MPH 40, director of the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service, and he established what is now the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in 1998. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services appointed Henderson as the first director of the Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness.

John Chandler Hume

1967-1977

John C. Hume, MD, DrPH 51 (1911-1998), an expert in sexually transmitted diseases, helped administer Indias anti-malaria campaign that reduced annual cases from 75 million in 1950 to 50,000 by 1960. During the 6 years from 1961 to 1967 that he served as associate dean and chair of Public Health Administration, he worked closely with Dean Ernest Stebbins to make the department an incubator for new ventures that became separate departments, including Maternal and Child Health, Population Dynamics, Chronic Diseases, International Health, Mental Hygiene, Behavioral Sciences, and Medical Care and Hospitals. When Hume succeeded Stebbins as dean in 1967, he continued to focus on the growth of health services research and the integration of social and behavioral sciences into the School's rapidly expanding public health curriculum.

Hume feared that the surge of Great Society funding for health research and education might split the School into a series of minischools with limited interests. To keep the School a united but versatile institution, Hume foresaw the need for a capacity to rapidly develop interdisciplinary groupscalled centers, institutes, clones, or clustersand to react quickly and flexibly in order to grasp new opportunities and address [significant] problems. The School had 6 centers when Hume stepped down in 1977; today, it has more than 80. Hume was a tireless lobbyist for government-financed family planning programs and for a strong network of public health schools worldwide.

Ernest Stebbins

1946-1967

Ernest L. Stebbins, MD, MPH 32 (1901-1987), a former New York City health commissioner, oversaw two decades of rapid growth in enrollments, faculty, and research during a golden era of federal funding for health and science research and international development. When the Committee to Reconsider the Educational Objectives of the School proposed to eliminate the MPH in 1957, Stebbins and other faculty rallied to save the program. He spearheaded new clinical programs in environmental medicine and chronic disease. With Charles D. Flagle, DEng, he launched a new center and department devoted to health services research and, with Timothy D. Baker, MD, MPH 54, he co-founded the first academic unit devoted to international health in 1961.

As president of the Association of Schools of Public Health, Stebbins was instrumental in enacting and renewing U.S. foreign aid to international health as well as direct federal aid to U.S. schools of public health, which enabled the supply of public health graduates to expand five-fold from 1961 to 1978. He co-founded the American Board of Preventive Medicine in 1948; co-founded (with Timothy D. Baker) the first academic unit devoted to international health in 1961; and in 1967 co-founded the World Federation of Public Health Associations. He was elected president of the APHA in 1966.

Lowell Jacob Reed

1937-1946

Lowell J. Reed, PhD, (1886-1966) coined the term biostatistics and chaired that department from 1925 to 1948. Reed and Wade Hampton Frost, chair of Epidemiology, developed the Reed-Frost epidemic model, a mathematical probability formula that simulated how disease spread through a population. With Surgeon General Thomas Parran, Reed helped establish the MPH curriculum as the standard degree for public health professionals and, in 1941, was elected founding president of the Association of Schools of Public Health.

In the U.S. and internationally, Reed led in integrating and systematizing statistical classifications for birth, death, and disease. The U.S. Committee on Joint Causes of Death, chaired by Reed, paved the way for the first Manual of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries, and Causes of Death (ICD) in 1948. Reeds own work was foundational for the postwar use of demographic data to promote national family planning programs as a primary objective of international health. Reed served as APHA president in 1950 and was the only JHSPH dean to also serve as president of Johns Hopkins University, from 1953 to 1956.

Allen Weir Freeman

1934-1937

Allen W. Freeman, MD (1881-1954) believed that public health should ideally work through voluntary organizations, with Government help only occasionally in recalcitrant cases. Yet Freeman led JHSPH to dramatically expand its MPH program with aid from the 1935 Social Security Act, for which he assisted in writing the public health title. Freeman, chair of Public Health Administration from 1920 to 1946, was influential in shaping the contours of local public health departments across America. Known in medical and public health circles as the epidemic chaser, he served as APHA president in 1942. Freeman helped write and enact legislation for a sweeping reorganization of the Maryland State Health Department in 1951. He was instrumental in establishing the Maryland Medical Care Program, one of the nations first state health plans for low-income residents and later a template for Medicaid.

Wade Hampton Frost

1931-1934

Wade Hampton Frost, MD, (1880-1938), the founding chair of the Department of Epidemiology, is acknowledged as a father of American epidemiology. His work with statistician Edgar Sydenstricker to measure the impact of the 1918 Great Influenza Pandemic on the United States yielded the excess deaths method, which is still used today to quantify the impact of pandemics. Frost was an expert on tuberculosis who concluded, based on his observations that incidence rates were declining and patients were surviving longer, that the leading causes of U.S. mortality were shifting from infectious to chronic diseases. He was among the first to advocate using epidemiological methods to study chronic as well as infectious diseases.

Frost helped establish the Eastern Health District (EHD) in Baltimore in 1932, which served as a joint teaching and research site for the School and the Baltimore City Health Department. The EHD provided the data for the Schools early research on statistics, demography, infectious disease prevention, and the social epidemiology of the family. It was also where he taught students the fundamentals of shoe-leather epidemiology, which emphasized the value of field work and extensive interaction with the community to gather data and make observations. The CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service adopted Frosts shoe-leather epidemiology and case-study teaching methods to train generations of field epidemiologists.

William H. Howell

1926-1931

William H. Howell, MD, (1860-1945) had been appointed the first professor of physiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where he served as dean from 1899 to 1911. While they were still both on the medical faculty, he worked closely with William H. Welch to establish and plan what was then the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Howell was also the Schools first faculty member and founding chair of the Department of Physiological Hygiene, predecessor of the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. While at JHSPH, Howell discovered, isolated and purified the blood anticoagulant heparin.

William Henry Welch

1916-1926

William Henry Welch, MD (1850-1934) was the founding dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, from 1893 to 1897, and the Rockefeller Foundations key medical advisor. Known as the dean of American medicine, he was instrumental in securing the Rockefeller grant in 1916 that established the worlds first graduate school of public healththe Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Informed by his training in bacteriology and pathology in Germany, Welch strongly believed that basic science was the engine of progress in public health and medicine. His legacy is evident in the Schools two basic science departments, Molecular Microbiology and Immunology as well as Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, which rank JHSPH as the top grantor of basic science PhDs among U.S. schools of public health. The William H. Welch Medical Library, directly across Monument Street from the Schools Wolfe Street building, is named for him.
Reddit Email 0 Shares

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Clashes continued on Sunday between the Kurdish YPG [Peoples Protection Units] and the Syrian Arab Army in Hasaka, according to the Egyptian press . Surveying Syrian social media, Misr24 said that the Kurds had apparently advanced into Hasaka and driven the Syrian army from some districts, including al-Nashwa and Ghuwayran.

The Kurds are reported to have taken 2/3s of the city.

On Saturday, there had been heavy clashes and thousands of civilians fled from the city. Last Thursday, YPG-held districts were subjected to aerial bombardment by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

On Friday, US planes showed up, apparently to contest Syrias ability to target YPG fghters.

Some observers maintain that Turkey indirectly greenlighted the Syrian regimes attack on the Kurds in Hasakah when it made up with Russia and accepted the idea that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad can stay in power during an envisioned transition to a new and more democratic government. Damascus may have interpreted that Turkish concession as permission to attempt to reestablished state control in the breakaway Kurdish districts.

The regime has lost control of most of the al-Jazira region of northeast Syria, but did have troops stationed in Hasakah and Qamishly.

Russia, which has close relations with the Syrian armed forces, is attempting to mediate a settlement, since Moscow would prefer that its two clients declare a truce so that the Arab Muslim radicals might be defeated.

Related video added by Juan Cole:

AFP: Syria regime hits Kurd-held area for first time
Reddit Email 0 Shares

By Brian Whitaker | ( al-Bab.com) |  

In a TV interview today, Yemens ex-president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, appeared to invite Russian military intervention in the countrys conflict. He talked of reactivating old Yemeni agreements with the Soviet Union and offfered all the facilities of Yemens bases, ports and airports to Russia.

Saleh seemed to be advocating something similar to what happened in Syria, where Russia and Iran joined the conflict on the Assad regimes side under the guise of fighting terrorism. A video of the interview is here, with a transcript in Arabic here.

Saleh, who was ousted from the presidency in 2012, is allied to the Houthis who currently control the Yemeni capital and large parts of the country, especially in the north. For more than a year Saudi-led forces, who back Salehs exiled successor, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, have been bombing Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. Meanwhile the Houthis, who have some Iranian backing, have attacked Saudi territory in the border area.

Talks in Kuwait aimed at ending the war recently collapsed. Separately from the Houthi-Saleh-Hadi conflict there are frequent attacks in Yemen by Islamist militants.

In the Russian TV interview, Saleh described Russia as the closest kin to us, adding that it has a positive attitude in the UN Security Council.

Saleh continued:

We extend our hands to Russia. We have agreements with the Russian Federation which were with the Soviet Union. The legitimate heir to the Soviet Union is the Russian Federation, we are ready to activate these treaties and agreements that were between us and the Soviet Union.

We agree on a principle, which is the struggle against terrorism  We extend our hands and offer all the facililties, and the conventions and treaties  We offer them in our bases, in our airports and in our ports  ready to provide all facilities to the Russian Federation.

Via al-Bab.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Wochit News: Yemens Ex-president Could Ally With Russia To Fight Terrorism'
Reddit Email 0 Shares

By Rebecca Gordon | ( Tomdispatch.com ) |  

What Does It Mean When War Hawks Say, Never Trump?

The Enemies of My Enemy May Be War Criminals

By Rebecca Gordon

Its not every day that Republicans publish an open letter announcing that their presidential candidate is unfit for office. But lately this sort of thing has been happening more and more frequently. The most recent example: we just heard from 50 representatives of the national security apparatus, men  and a few women  who served under Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush. All of them are very worried about Donald Trump.

They think we should be alerted to the fact that the Republican standard-bearer lacks the character, values, and experience to be president.

Thats true of course, but its also pretty rich, coming from this bunch. The letters signers include, among others, the man who was Condoleezza Rices legal advisor when she ran the National Security Council (John Bellinger III); one of George W. Bushs CIA directors who also ran the National Security Agency (Michael Hayden); a Bush administration ambassador to the United Nations and Iraq (John Negroponte); an architect of the neoconservative policy in the Middle East adopted by the Bush administration that led to the invasion of Iraq, who has since served as president of the World Bank (Robert Zoellick). In short, given the history of the global war on terror, this is your basic list of potential American war criminals.

Their letter continues, He weakens U.S. moral authority as the leader of the free world.

Theres a sentence that could use some unpacking.

What Is The Free World?

Lets start with the last bit: the leader of the free world. Thats what journalists used to call the U.S. president, and occasionally the country as a whole, during the Cold War. Between the end of World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the free world included all the English-speaking countries outside Africa, along with western Europe, North America, some South American dictatorships, and nations like the Philippines that had a neocolonial relationship with the United States.

The U.S.S.R. led what, by this logic, was the un-free world, including the Warsaw Pact countries in eastern Europe, the captive Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the Peoples Republic of China (for part of the period), North Korea, and of course Cuba. Americans who grew up in these years knew that the people living behind the Iron Curtain were not free. Wed seen the bus ads and public service announcements on television requesting donations for Radio Free Europe, sometimes illustrated with footage of a pale adolescent man, his head crowned with chains.

I have absolutely no doubt that he and his eastern European countrymen were far from free. I do wonder, however, how free his counterparts in the American-backed Brazilian, Argentinian, Chilean, and Philippine dictatorships felt.

The two great adversaries, together with the countries in their spheres of influence, were often called the First and Second Worlds. Their rulers treated the rest of the planet  the Third World  as a chessboard across which they moved their proxy armies and onto which they sometimes targeted their missiles. Some countries in the Third World refused to be pawns in the superpower game, and created a non-aligned movement, which sought to thread a way between the Scylla and Charybdis of the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Among its founders were some of the great Third World nationalists: Sukarno of Indonesia, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, along with Yugoslavias President Josip Broz Tito.

Other countries werent so lucky. When the United States took over from France the (unsuccessful) project of defeating Vietnams anti-colonial struggle, people in the U.S. were assured that the war that followed with its massive bombing, napalming, and Agent-Oranging of a peasant society represented the advance of freedom against the forces of communist enslavement. Central America also served as a Cold War battlefield, with Washington fighting proxy wars during the 1980s in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, where poor campesinos had insisted on being treated as human beings and were often brutally murdered for their trouble. In addition, the U.S. funded, trained, and armed a military dictatorship in Honduras, where John Negroponte  one of the anti-Trump letter signers  was the U.S. ambassador from 1981 to 1985.

The Soviet Union is, of course, long gone, but the free world, it seems, remains, and so American officials still sometimes refer to us as its leader  an expression that only makes sense, of course, in the context of dual (and dueling) worlds. On a post-Soviet planet, however, its hard to know just what national or geographic configuration constitutes todays un-free world. Is it (as Donald Trump might have it) everyone living under Arab or Muslim rule? Or could it be that amorphous phenomenon we call terrorism or Islamic terrorism that can sometimes reach into the free world and slaughter innocents as in San Bernardino, California, Orlando, Florida, or Nice, France? Or could it be the old Soviet Union reincarnated in Vladimir Putins Russia or even a rising capitalist China still controlled by a Communist Party?

Faced with the loss of a primary antagonist and the confusion on our planet, George W. Bush was forced to downsize the perennial enemy of freedom from Reagans old evil empire (the Soviet Union) to three rogue states, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, which in an address to Congress he so memorably labeled the axis of evil. The first of these lies in near ruins; the second weve recently signed a nuclear treaty with; and the third seems incapable of even feeding its own population. Fortunately for the free world, the Bush administration also had some second-string enemies to draw on. In 2002, John Bolton, then an undersecretary of state (and later ambassador to the U.N.), added another group beyond the axis of evil  Libya, Syria, and Cuba. Of the three, only Cuba is still a functioning nation.

And by the way, the 50 Republican national security stars who denounced Donald Trump in Cold War terms turn out to be in remarkably good company  that of Donald Trump himself (who recently gave a speech invoking American Cold War practices as the basis for his future foreign policy).

He Weakens U.S. Moral Authority

After its twenty-first century wars, its black sites, and Guantanamo, among other developments of the age, its hard to imagine a much weaker moral authority than whats presently left to the United States. First, we gave the world eight years of George W. Bushs illegal invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as CIA torture sites, enhanced interrogation techniques, and a program of quite illegal global kidnappings of terror suspects (some of whom proved innocent of anything). Under President Obama, it seems weve traded enhanced interrogation techniques for an enhanced use of assassination by drone (again outside any law of war, other than the legal documents that the Justice Department has produced to justify such acts).

When Barack Obama took office in January 2009 his first executive order outlawed the CIAs torture program and closed those black sites. It then looked as if the countrys moral fiber might be stiffening. But when it came to holding the torturers accountable, Obama insisted that the country should look forward as opposed to looking backwards and the Justice Department declined to prosecute any of them. Its hard for a country to maintain its moral authority in the world when it refuses to exert that authority at home.

Two of the letter signers who are so concerned about Trumps effect on U.S. moral authority themselves played special roles in weakening U.S. moral authority through their involvement with the CIA torture program: John Bellinger III and Michael Hayden.

June 26th is the U.N.s International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. To mark that day in 2003, President Bush issued a statement declaring, Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example.

The Washington Post story on the presidents speech also carried a quote from Deputy White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan to the effect that all prisoners being held by the U.S. government were being treated humanely. John Rizzo, who was then the CIAs deputy general counsel, called John Bellinger, Condoleezza Rices legal counsel at the National Security Council, to express his concern about what both the president and McClellan had said.

The problem was that  as Rizzo and his boss, CIA director George Tenet, well knew  many detainees then held by the CIA were not being treated humanely. They were being tortured or mistreated in various ways. The CIA wanted to be sure that they still had White House backing and approval for their enhanced interrogation program, because they didnt want to be left holding the bag if the truth came out. They also wanted the White House to stop talking about the humane treatment of prisoners.

According to an internal CIA memo, George Tenet convened a July 29, 2003, meeting in Condoleezza Rices office to get the necessary reassurance that the CIA would be covered if the truth about torture came out. There, Bellinger reportedly apologized on behalf of the administration, explaining that the White House press secretary had gone off script, mistakenly reverting to old talking points. He also undertook to [e]nsure that the White House press office ceases to make statements on the subject other than [to say] that the U.S. is complying with its obligations under U.S. law.

At that same meeting, Tenets chief counsel, Scott Muller, passed out packets of printed PowerPoint slides detailing those enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, so that Bellinger and the others present, including Rice, would understand exactly what he was covering up.

So much for the moral authority of John Bellinger III.

As for Michael Hayden (who has held several offices in the national security apparatus), one of his signature acts as CIA Director was to approve in 2005 the destruction of videotapes of the agencys waterboarding sessions. In a letter to CIA employees, he wrote that the tapes were destroyed only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries.

Of course destroying those tapes also meant that theyd never be available for any future legislative or judicial inquiry. The letter continued,

Beyond their lack of intelligence value the tapes posed a serious security risk. Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qaeda and its sympathizers.

One has to wonder whether Hayden was more concerned with his CIA colleagues security from al-Qaeda or from prosecution. In any case, he deprived the public  and any hypothetical future prosecutor  of crucial evidence of wrongdoing.

Hayden also perpetuated the lie that the Agencys first waterboarding victim, Abu Zubaydah  waterboarded a staggering 83 times  was a crucial al-Qaeda operative and had provided a quarter of all the information that the CIA gathered from human subjects about al-Qaeda. He was, in fact, never a member of al-Qaeda at all. In the 1980s, he ran a training camp in Afghanistan for the mujahedin, the force the U.S. supported against the Soviet occupation of that country; he was, that is, one of Ronald Reagans freedom fighters.

Bellinger later chimed in, keeping the Abu Zubaydah lie alive by arguing in 2007 on behalf of his boss Condoleezza Rice that Guantanamo should remain open. That prison, he said, serves a very important purpose, to hold and detain individuals who are extremely dangerous [like] Abu Zubaydah, people who have been planners of 9/11.

He Appears to Lack Basic Knowledge About and Belief in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Laws, and U.S. Institutions

Thats the next line of the open letter, and its certainly a fair assessment of Donald Trump. But its more than a little ironic that it was signed by Michael Hayden who, in addition to supporting CIAs torture project, oversaw the National Security Agencys post-9/11 secret surveillance program. Under that program, the government recorded the phone, text, and Internet communications of an unknown number of people inside and outside of the United States  all without warrants.

Perhaps Hayden believes in the Constitution, but at best its a selective belief. Theres that pesky 4th Amendment, for example, which guarantees that

[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Nor does Hayden appear to believe in U.S. laws and institutions, at least when it comes to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established the secret courts that are supposed to issue exactly the sort of warrant Haydens program never requested.

John Negroponte is another of the signers who has a history of skirting U.S. laws and the congress that passes them. While ambassador to Honduras, he helped develop a murderous contra army, which the United States armed and trained to overthrow the government of neighboring Nicaragua. During those years, however, aid to the contras was actually illegal under U.S. law. It was explicitly prohibited under the so-called Boland Amendments to various appropriations bills, but no matter. National security was at stake.

Speaking of the Constitution, its instructive to take a look at Article 6, which states in part that all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land. Such treaties include, for example, the 1928 Kellogg-Briand non-aggression pact (whose violation was the first charge brought against the Nazi officials tried at Nuremberg) and Article 51 of the U.N. charter, which permits military action only if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.

In 1998, Robert Zoellick, another of those 50 Republicans openly denouncing Trump, signed a different letter, which advocated abrogating those treaties. As an associate of the Project for a New American Century, he was among those who urged then-President Bill Clinton to direct a full complement of diplomatic, political, and military efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power. This was to be just the first step in a larger campaign to create a Pax Americana in the Middle East. The letter specifically urged Clinton not to worry about getting a Security Council resolution, arguing that American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

He Is Unable or Unwilling to Separate Truth From Falsehood

So says the letter, and that, too, offers a fair characterization of Trump, who has often contended that President Obama has never proved he was born in the U.S.A., and has more than once repeated the long-disproved legend that, during the 1899-1913 Morro Rebellion in the Philippines, General John J. Pershing used bullets dipped in pigs blood to execute Muslim insurgents. (And thats barely to scratch the surface of Donald Trumps remarkable unwillingness to separate truth from falsehood.) What, then, about the truthfulness of the letter signers?

Clinton never bit on the PNAC proposal, but a few years later, George W. Bush did. And the officials of his administration began their campaign of lies about Saddams weapons of mass destruction, yellow cake uranium from Niger, and smoking guns that might turn out to be mushroom clouds (assumedly over American cities), all of which would provide the pretext for that administrations illegal invasion of Iraq.

The Bush administration didnt limit itself to lying to the American people. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte was dispatched to the Security Council to lie, too. Security Council Resolution 1441 was the last of several requiring Iraq to comply with weapons inspections by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Some members of the Council, especially Russia and France, were hesitant to approve 1441, fearing that the U.S. might interpret it as a license to invade. So, in the discussions before the vote, Negroponte assured the Security Council that this resolution contains no hidden triggers and no automaticity with respect to the use of force. If there is a further Iraqi breach, reported to the Council by UNMOVIC, the IAEA or a Member State, the matter will return to the Council for discussions. The British ambassador used almost identical words to reassure the Council that, before attacking Iraq, the United States and Britain would seek its blessing.

That, of course, is hardly what happened. On February 24, 2003, Washington and London did bring a resolution for war to the Security Council. When it became apparent that two of its permanent members, France and Russia, would veto that resolution if it came to a vote, Bush (in consultation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair) decided to withdraw it. We all agreed, he wrote in his memoir, that the diplomatic track had reached its end.

And so the U.S. was on its foreordained path to war and disaster in Iraq, the path that after much winding, much failure, and much destruction would lead to Donald Trump.

So much for keeping promises and separating truth from falsehood.

The Enemies of My Enemy

Keep in mind that this is just a taste of the CVs of this list of 50 Republican foreign policy and national security luminaries who took out after The Donald.

With any luck, between his indirect call to assassinate his opponent and the latest news about his campaign director Paul Manaforts shady Ukraine connections, we have now reached Peak Trump. With supporters bolting on all sides, its just possible that we wont have Trump to kick around forever.

But we shouldnt forget that the party that made Trump possible is also the home of the crooks, liars, and war criminals now eager to disown him. The enemies of our enemy are not our  or the worlds  friends.

Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes (Hot Books). Her previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turses 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 Rebecca Gordon

Via Tomdispatch.com



Related video added by Juan Cole:

NBC2: More Republicans drop support of Trump
DEBORAH CROMBIE : This weekend my daughter and I took my six-month old granddaughter on her first plane flight. We went to Kansas City to visit my oldest childhood friend, and as a nice parallel, my daughter's first flight, at eight months, was to see the same friend, but in Seattle. (Now I'm impressed that I tackled a four-hour-each-way flight with an infant on my own!) Here are Kayti and Wren at breakfast at Love Field in Dallas.





Here's Wren enjoying the wait to board (and what grown-ups enjoy this part???)



And here she is landing in Kansas City. So stressful!!!





REDS , have you had good experiences flying with children? And what about flying with other people's children? There's a thing going around on the Internet suggesting that parents of infants take goody bags to mollify other passengers, but I think that's a bit much. You shouldn't have to apologize for flying with a baby. I always offer to help, especially if mothers are flying alone with infants and toddlers. A little good will does go a long way, however.



What do you think about the goody bags for other passengers? A fun idea or not?



: I never even thought of goody bags.... Yes, it's hard to travel with a baby/todder, especially when they are sleep-deprived, which seems unavoidable sometimes with travel. But most of my memories are really good, with lovely people stopping to smile and flight attendants giving us special attention (and handing out plastic pilot "wings" and letting Kiddo see the cockpit after landing, of course).



I remember being held on the tarmac at one point, when Kiddo was about 18 months, and he just screamed and screamed  yes, he was "that baby"  and I remember smiling sheepishly and trying to apologize to those around us. And a woman, a nun, I believe, said, "Well, he's just doing what we all wish we could do. Good for him!"



: I used to be an expert at flying with children. When my four were small I took them to England at least once a year. John was with an airline and we also took them to New Zealand and other parts of the world. Goody bag were a godsend. I made one for each child. Inside were small wrapped gifts and they could open one every half hour. Age appropriate things--crayons and small coloring book, beads to thread, a puzzle, sewing kits, cards, a small book--oh and candy surprises too. They played, they traded. I don't remember any of them acting up on a plane. and I feel so sorry for kids who are just expected to sit there or stare at an iPad for ten hours.



Actually Dominic did have a melt-down once. But that was when we were off-loaded in New York (always traveled standby on a staff ticket) and had to wait a day and a half to get out. Poor kid was eight months old. I ran out of diapers for him. He wasn't on much solid food but had just stopped nursing. He couldn't sleep in a motel bed and he just lost it. I finally was boarded to first class with a screaming infant. The first thing the flight attendant did was to press a glass of champagne into my hand. The engines started and Dominic fell asleep. Bliss.



: I read the goody-bag article -- the idea is, if YOU HAVE an infant who you are afraid is going to cry and torture your neighbor, deliver a preemptive strike by bringing goody bags (include a set of earplugs) to distribute to your neighbors, make them your 'friend'/sympathetic before your kid erupts.)



We traveled with babies a lot, and most of the time they were fine. It's so much easier now if you have a computer or iPad to entertain them.



We went to Guadaloupe when Naomi, my #2, was almost two. The flight home was delayed, a lot (six hours as I recall). And we were all wiped out when we finally arrived at Logan. Bleary-eyed, we waited for our luggage to show up and somehow missed the fact that Naomi had slipped out of her stroller and taken off all her clothes. We noticed when she started streaking, starkers, up and back through baggage claim screaming MY BODY, MY BODY! She did have a delicious little body. SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL : I never even thought of goody bags.... Yes, it's hard to travel with a baby/todder, especially when they are sleep-deprived, which seems unavoidable sometimes with travel. But most of my memories are really good, with lovely people stopping to smile and flight attendants giving us special attention (and handing out plastic pilot "wings" and letting Kiddo see the cockpit after landing, of course).I remember being held on the tarmac at one point, when Kiddo was about 18 months, and he just screamed and screamed  yes, he was "that baby"  and I remember smiling sheepishly and trying to apologize to those around us. And a woman, a nun, I believe, said, "Well, he's just doing what we all wish we could do. Good for him!" RHYS BOWEN : I used to be an expert at flying with children. When my four were small I took them to England at least once a year. John was with an airline and we also took them to New Zealand and other parts of the world. Goody bag were a godsend. I made one for each child. Inside were small wrapped gifts and they could open one every half hour. Age appropriate things--crayons and small coloring book, beads to thread, a puzzle, sewing kits, cards, a small book--oh and candy surprises too. They played, they traded. I don't remember any of them acting up on a plane. and I feel so sorry for kids who are just expected to sit there or stare at an iPad for ten hours.Actually Dominic did have a melt-down once. But that was when we were off-loaded in New York (always traveled standby on a staff ticket) and had to wait a day and a half to get out. Poor kid was eight months old. I ran out of diapers for him. He wasn't on much solid food but had just stopped nursing. He couldn't sleep in a motel bed and he just lost it. I finally was boarded to first class with a screaming infant. The first thing the flight attendant did was to press a glass of champagne into my hand. The engines started and Dominic fell asleep. Bliss. HALLIE EPHRON : I read the goody-bag article -- the idea is, ifan infant who you are afraid is going to cry and torture your neighbor, deliver a preemptive strike by bringing goody bags (include a set of earplugs) to distribute to your neighbors, make them your 'friend'/sympathetic before your kid erupts.)We traveled with babies a lot, and most of the time they were fine. It's so much easier now if you have a computer or iPad to entertain them.We went to Guadaloupe when Naomi, my #2, was almost two. The flight home was delayed, a lot (six hours as I recall). And we were all wiped out when we finally arrived at Logan. Bleary-eyed, we waited for our luggage to show up and somehow missed the fact that Naomi had slipped out of her stroller and taken off all her clothes. We noticed when she started streaking, starkers, up and back through baggage claim screaming MY BODY, MY BODY! She did have a delicious little body.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING : Hallie, I bet you could have, as we like to say, eaten her with a spoon.

I've done plenty of traveling with kids and babies over the years. Once they're old enough to play games or read, it's SO much easier. We flew from Boston to Honolulu when the Smithie was 7 and the Sailor was 6. We got them their first-ever Gameboys for the flight, and a bunch of little-kid-suitable games. Easiest long distance flight ever. We kept on using that trick - in our house, the ONLY time you could play an electronic game was while traveling by car or train or plane.

Ross and I flew from Portland to Cancun with three-month-old Baby Smithie. I know, it was insane, but my father-in-law had a fantastic condo on the beach, and once we got there, we had built-in babysitting. Emphasis on ONCE we got there. We were delayed in Boston, rerouted through Charlotte, and had to wait in the terminal for what felt like hours. Baby Smithie got more and more agitated until we finally sat down in our seats, which was her cue to start wailing. We passed her back and forth, I nursed her, we swaddle wrapped her, change her diaper - everything that was in our meager new-parents arsenal.





So you have heard about, right, the fabulous Jet Blue (I think it was) solution to the baby dilemma? As I heard the story, on one particularly crowded airplane, the flight attendant announced over the PA system something like: We have a lot of babies on this flight. But here's the deal: If four babies cry on this flight, Jet Blue will give every passenger a free ticket anywhere we fly.

Finally, she fell asleep. We landed, with her still asleep, and sat in our seats to let the rest of the plane (whom I was sure loathed all three of us) debark. Amazement! So many people, as they passed, said, "What a good baby," or sympathized with us. Truly an example of the kindness of strangers. Now, as an old hand at parenthood, I always try to acknowledge young parents traveling with their kids. Although I still pray I'm not the one seated by the baby... HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: So you have heard about, right, the fabulous Jet Blue (I think it was) solution to the baby dilemma? As I heard the story, on one particularly crowded airplane, the flight attendant announced over the PA system something like: We have a lot of babies on this flight. But here's the deal: If four babies cry on this flight, Jet Blue will give every passenger a free ticket anywhere we fly.

So of course, every time a baby cried, people were thrilled and delighted.



Is that not BRILLIANT?



If have no idea of the rest of the story. But I love it! It's all about perception.



Oh--one more hilarious thing. I was on a Southwest flight once--you know how their pre-flight announcements are sometimes funny--and this flight attendant got to the part about the oxygen. He said: "In case of a loss in pressure, oxygen masks will drop from above. First, stop screaming. Then, put the mask over your nose and mouth, and breathe normally. If you are traveling with small children: what were you THINKING? But anyway. cover your own nose and mouth first...."

It was so funny...

DEBS : Hank, we flew Southwest and they were terrific!







Of course my parents drove across country with four kids and a German shepherd, and took many smaller trips too. My sister and I would read, or else torture the younger two by "distributing" houses as we passed them, giving ourselves all the nice ones and the other kids an occasional shack. My brother finally melted down one day.



My mother, "oh for goodness sake girls, will you give him a nice house?"



DEBS : I don't think we needed goody bags for the other passengers. Here's Wren enjoying our descent into Dallas on the return flight. LUCY BURDETTE: No, have not flown with children but have taken many long car trips with our kids pre-ipad era where we came close to imploding along the way. The ice and snow storms on the way to Vermont did not lighten the mood. Rhys, I'm so impressed with your planning those bags for four kids!Of course my parents drove across country with four kids and a German shepherd, and took many smaller trips too. My sister and I would read, or else torture the younger two by "distributing" houses as we passed them, giving ourselves all the nice ones and the other kids an occasional shack. My brother finally melted down one day.My mother, "oh for goodness sake girls, will you give him a nice house?": I don't think we needed goody bags for the other passengers. Here's Wren enjoying our descent into Dallas on the return flight.

(Although she did have a little melt down once we were on the ground. And I don't blame her. I hate the waiting to de-plane part, too...)



I think this girl is going to be a world-class traveler!

Our seatmates were very nice on both flights, and, honestly, the planes are so loud, and so many people are wearing headphones, that you might only want a goody bag for the person next to the baby.



Rhys, we never did the kind of flying you did, and then with only one child. We took Kayti to England for the first time when she was six, and we packed a goody bag for her just like you did for your kids, with books and puzzles and toys. She weathered the flight better than the grown-ups...



READERS, do you/did you travel with infants? And would you appreciate a goody bag from a traveling parent?




Toronto, Ontario / TheNewswire / August 22, 2016 - Latin American Minerals ("LAT" or the "Company") (TSX-V: LAT) is pleased to announce that Dr. Quinton Hennigh has been appointed as an advisor to the board of directors.

Dr. Hennigh has assembled world class gold projects and led successful exploration programs resulting in significant discoveries throughout the world.

Dr. Hennigh, an economic geologist has more than 25 years of exploration experience with major gold mining companies including Homestake Mining Company, Newcrest Mining Limited and Newmont Mining Corporation. Dr. Hennigh made significant contributions to Newcrest Mining and Homestake Mining throughout North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and South America. He also served as senior research geologist with Newmont Mining Corp. and also served as its exploration geologist. From 2004 to 2015 he led the exploration program at Gold Canyon Resources Springpole Gold project near Red Lake Ontario, a 5 million ounce gold asset that was eventually sold.

Currently, Dr. Hennigh is president and CEO of Novo Resources Corp., a junior gold and development company with highly prospective assets in Western Australia. He earned a M.Sc. and a Ph.D in geology and geochemistry from the Colorado School of Mines in 1993 and 1996, respectively. Dr. Hennigh also holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Missouri.

" I am very excited by the prospect of advising Latin American Minerals," commented Dr. Hennigh. " After recently reviewing the Paso Yobai gold project, I immediately saw similarities to some other multi million ounce gold systems on which I have worked. Paso Yobai is a very subtle gold system possibly related to alkaline magmatism and have the potential to be large systems".

Basil Botha, Chairman and CEO of Latin American Minerals stated, "Over the past 25 years, Dr. Hennigh has established an enviable reputation for timely and efficient completion of exploration programs which under his supervision has led to the discovery of multi million ounce gold projects. We are very fortunate to have him join our team and play a key role in our exploration program as we move toward advancing our assets in Paraguay".

Subject to regulatory approval and the Company's stock option plan, the Company also announces that it has granted an aggregate of 1,000,000 options to purchase common shares of the Company exercisable at a price of $0.37 per share for a period of 5 years to advisors and consultants of the Company. The common shares issuable upon exercise of the options are subject to a four month hold period from the original date of grant.

About the Company

Latin American Minerals Inc. is a mineral exploration and gold mining company which holds its core gold and diamond projects in Paraguay. The Company is currently expanding its Independencia Mine gold processing plant to encompass vat-leach gold recovery from mineralization extracted in open pit bulk mining activities at its fully permitted mining concession.

Management has identified six gold zones for drill testing on the Company's adjacent exploration claims, which is part of the Company's 15,020 hectare Paso Yobai gold project.

For more information, please contact:

Basil Botha, CEO & Chairman

Toronto: (1-416) 363-0841 or Vancouver: (1-604) 418-3856

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Website: www.latinamericanminerals.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
Toronto, ON. / TheNewswire / August 22nd 2016. Chilean Metals Inc. ("Chilean Metals," "CMX" or the "Company") (TSX.V:CMX, OTCQB: CMETF, SSE:CMX ).

Chilean Metals intends to place 5 million shares at $0.15 per share to enable it to drill its Zulema Project in Chile later this fall. A fee of 10% is payable in cash to eligible brokers who will also be provided a broker warrant to purchase up to 10% of the private placement at the same terms for a period of twelve months from close of the transaction.

Patrick Cruickshank Chilean CEO commented "Completion of this placement will enable us to drill on our Zulema project. It is a Copper Gold target that our geological team feels is analogous to the neighbouring Candelaria mine since previous drilling demonstrated the presence of a similar style sulphide system, intersecting 22 meters of 0.45% copper and 0.11 g.t gold. Pervasive potassic alteration, skarnification and widespread copper and gold bearing sulphides in magnetiferous andesitic rocks further support a geologic model similar to Candelaria. Our primary target is an intensely skarned hydrothermal breccia with widespread disseminated copper at surface. We would expect to drill 10 holes of about 300 metres per hole of core drilling. We will be going to Chile in September to finalize drill contracts and would anticipate a late September early October launch of drilling with results within the next 30 days."

Chilean Metals will require regulatory approval to complete the private placement.

About Chilean Metals

www.chileanmetals.com/

Chilean Metals Inc. is 100% owner of five properties comprising over 50,000 acres strategically located in the prolific IOCG ("Iron oxide-copper-gold") belt of northern Chile. It also owns a 3% NSR royalty interest on any future production from the Copaquire Cu-Mo deposit, recently sold to a subsidiary of Teck Resources Inc. ("Teck"). Under the terms of the sale agreement, Teck has the right to acquire one third of the 3% NSR for $3 million dollars at any time. The Copaquire property borders Teck's producing Quebrada Blanca copper mine in Chile's First Region.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

Chilean Metals Inc.

"Patrick Cruickshank"

Patrick Cruickshank, CEO

Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Qualified Person for Chilean Metals Inc., as defined by National Instrument 43-101, is Gary Lohman, P. Geo., Vice President, Exploration.

Forward-looking Statements: This news release may contain certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical fact, that address events or developments that CMX expects to occur, are forward looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Forward-looking statements in this document include statements regarding current and future exploration programs, activities and results. Although CMX believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration success, continued availability of capital and financing, inability to obtain required regulatory or governmental approvals and general economic, market or business conditions. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward looking statements.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
Vancouver, British Columba--(Newsfile Corp. - August 22, 2016) - Blackrock Gold Corp. (TSXV: BRC) (the "Company") is pleased to announce a non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement") of up to 4,000,000 units (the "Units") at a price of $0.075 per Unit, for gross proceeds of up to $300,000. Each Unit is comprised of one common share and one share purchase warrant. Each warrant will entitle the holder to acquire one additional common share in the capital of the Company at a price of $0.15 per share, for a period of two years from the date the Units are issued. If during the exercise period of the warrants, but after the resale restrictions on the shares have expired, the Company's shares trade at or above a weighted average trading price of $0.30 per share for 15 consecutive trading days, the Company may accelerate the expiry time of the warrants by giving written notice to warrant holders that the warrants will expire 30 days from the date of providing such notice.

Assuming the Private Placement is fully subscribed, the Company plans to allocate the gross proceeds of the Private Placement as to: (i) mineral exploration work ($200,000) and (ii) general working capital ($100,000).

A portion of the Private Placement may be completed in accordance with the exemption set out in BC Instrument 45-536 (Exemption from prospectus requirement for certain distributions through an investment dealer) (the "Investment Dealer Exemption"). The Company may pay finder's fees on a portion of the offering in accordance with applicable securities laws and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"). If the Private Placement is not fully subscribed, the Company will apply the proceeds to the above uses in priority and in such proportions as the Board of Directors and management of the Company determine is in the best interests of the Company. Although the Company intends to use the proceeds of the Private Placement as described above, the actual allocation of proceeds may vary from the uses set out above depending on future operations, events or opportunities.

In accordance with the requirements of the Investment Dealer Exemption, the Company confirms there is no material fact or material change related to the Company which has not been generally disclosed.

The Private Placement is subject to approval of the Exchange.

The Private Placement securities have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "1933 Act"), or under any state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold, directly or indirectly, or delivered within the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons (as defined in Regulation S under the 1933 Act) absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy such securities in the United States.

BRC is also pleased to announce the appointment of Hendrik (Henk) Van Alphen to the Board of Directors of the company. Based in Vancouver, BC, Mr. Van Alphen has over 30 years of experience in the mining industry. He has been a key player in such companies as Corriente Resources, Cardero Resources, Trevali Mining, Balmoral Resources and International Tower Hill Mines. During his career Mr. Van Alphen has been involved in raising over $1 billion in financing for various junior resource companies. He has been President and CEO of Wealth Minerals Ltd. since 2005.

"Henk will add a wealth of experience to the Board of Blackrock Gold; we are very pleased with his addition. Furthermore, we very much look forward to commencing exploration on our highly-prospective Medicine Springs silver-lead-zinc property in Nevada," commented the Company's President & Chief Executive Officer, Mr. David R. Robinson.

ABOUT THE MEDICINE SPRINGS PROPERTY

As per the Company's press release of June 16, 2016, BRC entered into an option and joint venture agreement with Golden Tiger Minerals Inc. ("Golden Tiger"), pursuant to which the Company has been granted an option to acquire a minimum 50% interest and a maximum 80% interest in certain rights Golden Tiger holds relating to a property known as the "Medicine Springs Property", which comprises 149 unpatented mineral claims and is located in Elko County, Nevada.

An NI 43-101 technical report on the property dated June 1, 2016 prepared by Paul D. Noland, certified professional geologist has been filed on SEDAR. The property is located in the Ruby Valley / Medicine Range area of south-eastern Elko County in Nevada, USA, and has an extensive history of exploration and drilling, with reported significant intercepts of silver, lead and zinc.

Historical workings on the Property included four phases of drilling, geological mapping, rock and soil geochemistry, preliminary metallurgical work, CSAMT geophysical surveying and historic mining. The primary target is silver  zinc  lead oxide mineralized material localized along NW and NNE trending fault and fracture systems and porous/ reactive horizons in the Permian silty/sandy limestones. The mineralized zones are expressed as breccias, jasperoid, carbonate replacement associated with decalcification and oxidized barite  bearing rubble. The mineralized material is known to be oxidized to the maximum depth of the data available, being approximately 200 meters.

The author of the technical report states that the economic viability of the Medicine Springs Property depends on successfully expanding known mineralization, and developing an economically viable recovery method. Potential for expansion of demonstrated mineralization is significant. Proposed exploration will target and extend known structural trends along strike initially, then attempt to discover other parallel structures indicated by mapping and geophysics.

Key points to note about the Medicine Springs Property:

Near surface oxide Ag-(Pb-Zn) deposit

Of 73 holes that intersected mineralization, only 9 intercepts were deeper than 100ft (30m)

Two principal trends localized along steeply dipping NE trending fractures expanding along adjacent favorable horizons

Silver Standard's Maverick Springs deposit (Indicated : 63.2Mt @ 34.3g/t Ag and Inferred : 77.6Mt @ 34.3 g/t Ag) is located 10km SE of Medicine Springs

Medicine Springs is of a higher average grade, more deeply oxidized and is closer to surface than Maverick Springs

Previous drilling totals 121 holes and 16,665ft (5000m), with 2 trends defined

Of 121 holes drilled, 73 intersected mineralization; 95 holes were only drilled to depths of less than 150ft

Gold Pipe trend extends NESW. Mineralization extends 450m x 125m. Open in both directions along strike

Step out hole JS105 drilled 900m to NE and under cover, cut 9.2m @ 76.3g/t Ag

As per the recommendations in the technical report, BRC plans to conduct a 2-phase exploration program on the Medicine Springs Property.

Phase One: the Company will undertake a scoping level metallurgical study on the Medicine Springs prospect in Nevada, with the objective of determining the best processing option to recover silver. The two options that will initially be evaluated will be heap leach and agitated leach. Historically the test work has indicated  60% extraction of silver.

Phase Two: following successful completion of the metallurgical testing at Medicine Springs, the Company proposes to conduct a drilling program.

The Company plans to drill 4 to 6 reverse circulation (RC) drill holes of approximately 600 to 800 feet each. These holes will be designed to extend known mineralization down-dip to greater depths and extend resource along strike along identified structures. The estimate cost of this Phase Two program is $150,000 USD.

The technical information related to the property presented in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Mr. Paul D. Noland, a qualified person.

For further information, please contact:

David R. Robinson, President & CEO

Blackrock Gold Corp.

Phone: 1.403.399.9047

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the accuracy or adequacy of this release. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This press release contains forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, constitute "forward-looking statements" and include any information that addresses activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future including the Company's strategy, plans or future financial or operating performance and other statements that express management's expectations or estimates of future performance.

Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by the use of the words "may", "will", "should", "continue", "expect", "anticipate", "estimate", "believe", "intend", "plan" or "project" or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. These statements, however, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed, implied by or projected in the forward-looking information or statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements include but are not limited to the ability of the Company to attract financing and the general market conditions of the industry in which the Company operates and the other factors discussed in the sections relating to risk factors discussed in the Company's continuous disclosure filings on SEDAR.

There can be no assurance that any forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader should not place any undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. Except as required by law, the Company does not intend to revise or update these forward-looking statements after the date of this document or to revise them to reflect the occurrence of future unanticipated events.
A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas [official website] on Sunday temporarily blocked [order, PDF] federal guidelines that allowed transgender students to use the bathroom according to the gender with which they identify. Judge Reed OConnor found that the federal government overstepped its authority in issuing the guidance [press release] in May. A group of 13 states challenged the guidelines [JURIST report]. In his 38-page order granting the motion for preliminary injunction, OConnor concluded that, Defendants failed to comply with the Administrative Procedures Act by: (1) foregoing the Administrative Procedures Acts notice and comment requirements; and (2) issuing directives which contradict the existing legislative and regulatory texts. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton welcomed the ruling [press release]. A spokesperson for the US Department of Justice said they are reviewing their options [NYT report].

Earlier this month the US Supreme Court blocked [JURIST report] a lower court ruling allowing a transgender student who identifies as male to use the boys restroom at school. In July US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced a new policy [materials] that allows transgender individuals to serve openly in the military [JURIST report], effective immediately. In May Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced legislation that would ban transgender discrimination [JURIST report], including it within Canadas hate crime laws.
[JURIST] Officials in the Iraqi province of Dhi Qar on Sunday administered the hanging of 36 men convicted for their participation in the Speicher massacre of 2014. The event infamously involved the kidnapping and killing [Guardian report] of 1,700 military recruits by Sunni militants claimed to be members of the Islamic State (IS). The massacre has since been known as one of the greatest IS atrocities in the country. The executions were performed in Dhi Qars Nasiriyah prison and overseen by governor Yahya al-Nasseri and the justice minister. Al-Nasseri has recently fast-tracked the execution of convicted terrorists following last months suicide bombing in Baghdad [BBC report]. These executions have drawn heavy criticism from advocacy groups criticizing Iraq for ignoring human rights standards.

Iraq has long faced international criticism from for its use of the death penalty. Earlier this month UN human rights official Zeid Raad Al Hussein deplored [JURIST report] Iraqs efforts to expedite implementation of the death penalty. In February Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] criticized [JURIST report] the state of justice in Iraq after a court sentenced 40 men to death also connected to the Speicher massacre. Last August a spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) [official website] spoke against the execution [JURIST report] of an Iraqi man and his two wives in the Kurdistan region. In 2014 UN officials called on the government of Iraq to impose a moratorium [JURIST report] on the death penalty in response to a significant rise in executions since the country restored capital punishment in 2005.
NEWSLETTER

Sign up

Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive.

Just Drinks Daily News

The top stories of the day delivered to you every weekday.

Just Drinks Weekly News

A weekly roundup of the latest news and analysis, sent every Monday.

Just Drinks Magazine

The industry's most comprehensive news and information delivered every quarter
A court in the US has dismissed a class action lawsuit against Amira Nature Foods stemming from allegations made last year that the rice supplier over-stated its revenue and used funds for personal use.

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. Please enter a work/business email address Country United Kingdom United States Afghanistan Aland Islands Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Congo, The Democratic 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 Ethiopia Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and Mcdonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Korea, Democratic People"s Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao People"s Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte 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 Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Reunion Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Helena Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Pierre and Miquelon 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 Georgia and The South Sandwich Islands Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand Timor-leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United States Minor Outlying Islands Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Viet Nam Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, U.S. Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Download free Report By clicking the Download Free Report button, you accept the terms and conditions and acknowledge that your data will be used as described in the GlobalData privacy policy By downloading this Report, you acknowledge that we may share your information with our white paper partners/sponsors who may contact you directly with information on their products and services.



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.

Amira announced today (22 August) the United States District Court for the Central District of California had granted the companys motion to throw out the lawsuit.

Judge Fernando Olguin dismissed the class action without prejudice for lack of prosecution and failure to comply with court orders.

The court announced on 18 July it backed Amiras motion but gave the plaintiffs in the suit until 4 August to file another amended complaint. No further complaint has been made.

The legal action started in February 2015 when a group of shareholders in Amira accused the company of over-stating its revenue before its IPO in 2012. The investors pointed to a report from Prescience Point Research Group, published earlier that month, which claimed Amira had exaggerated its revenue, flagged concerns over the businesss profits and the use of company funds by CEO Karan Chanana.

In April 2015, the legal action was combined into one class action with another suit from an investor who claimed they had lost money after Amiras share price had plunged in the wake of the publication of the Prescience Point report. The combination was made at the request of the Steamfitters Local 449 Pension Plan, another investor that claimed they had lost out from the fall in Amiras share price. The class action suit was filed against Amira, CEO Chanana, three company CFOs including incumbent Bruce Wacha and the underwriters of the companys IPO.

Last month, Amira filed its results for the year to the end of March.

The companys revenue fell 19.5% year-on-year to US$563.4m. Amira said the decline was primarily due to lower volumes in emerging markets, macro factors including the impact of currency translation on its business in India, as well as lower prices for its basmati rice in the wake of a decrease in input costs. The group said it believes the fall in volumes in emerging markets was short term in nature.

Net profit attributable to shareholders of the company stood at $25.8m, versus $42.1m a year earlier.

Amira provided an adjusted EBITDA figure, which excluded legal and professional charges, costs from a notes offering and non-cash expenses for share-based compensation. It stood at $74.7m, compared to $99.9m the previous financial year.

Wacha said: As we noted previously, 2016 was a challenging year due to a number of factors that we believe to be largely temporary in nature. Nonetheless, we maintained margins at historical levels  generating adjusted EBITDA of $74.7m and adjusted EBITDA margins of 13.3% for the year. We continue to maintain strong relationships with our major customers and now that we have reported our results for fiscal 2016 we look forward to returning to our growth model in 2017 and having a deeper engagement with our investors. We continue to see many opportunities in India and around the world to further expand our business and create value for our shareholders.

Related Companies
NEWSLETTER

Sign up

Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive.

Just Style Daily Update

The top stories of the day delivered to you every weekday.

Just Style Weekly Update

A weekly roundup of the latest news and analysis, sent every Monday.

Just Style Magazine

The industry's most comprehensive news and information delivered every quarter.
The New York Times detailed how Donald Trumps advisers had pleaded with him to become a more disciplined, credible candidate. Mr. Trump bowed to his teams entreaties, the Times reported. It was time, he agreed, to get on track.

Trump immediately denounced the story. He hadnt bowed to anyone. He wasnt going to change. I am who I am, he tweeted.

That reaction reveals a key reason why Hillary Clinton, a deeply unpopular candidate, is running so far ahead. Trump firmly believes in his own wisdom and boasts constantly about defeating 16 opponents in the Republican primaries. And yes, he defied the predictions of virtually every political analyst, including us.

But the primary period is profoundly different from a general election. Trump might still be the same  I am who I am  but hes now operating in a new world. Once candidates get the nomination, once they actually have a chance of becoming president, the spotlight gets much brighter and hotter. Every word, every gesture, every innuendo becomes magnified, scrutinized, dissected.

Trump blames the media for his plunge in the polls, and in a way hes right, because theyre taking him much more seriously. They are subjecting his words to a much sterner test, and holding him accountable for them. As a result, the outrageousness that earned him almost $2 billion of free TV time in the primaries is now being turned against him.

For months, he insulted just about everybody  Mexicans and Muslims, women and the disabled  while primary voters cheered him on. But once he became the nominee, and demeaned the parents of a slain Muslim soldier, or casually incited Second Amendment people to violence, the intensity of press coverage became his enemy, not his friend.

And its not just the media. In the primaries, Trumps rivals were generally reluctant to attack him directly because they didnt want to alienate his supporters. Now, Team Clinton and the Democrats are savaging him daily, joined by a steady stream of Republicans who have decided that, alas, Trump is who he is: undisciplined, unqualified and downright dangerous.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine spoke for many of those Republicans when she told CBS why she couldnt support her partys nominee: I always expected that he would evolve and change and that we would see a new Donald Trump after the primary. Instead, the constant barrage of the ill-informed and cruel comments continued.

Another difference is the political landscape. Republican primary voters are much whiter, and more conservative, than the country as whole. Now Trump faces a national electorate that is only 70 percent white. And in many swing states, the voting population is even more diverse: about 50 percent white in Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, 40 percent in New Mexico.

Sure, he continues to attract large and enthusiastic crowds, but he willfully deludes himself into thinking those crowds reflect the wider voting population. For instance, he defended his attacks on President Obama as the founder of ISIS by telling radio host Hugh Hewitt, Everyones liking it.

Voters are taking Trump more seriously, as well. As the election gets closer, they are viewing him through a different lens and holding him to a much higher standard. Hes no longer just a celebrity, a reality TV star who tells it like it is. There is no New Trump, and no campaign shake-up will change that. He is who he is. And at last the country is starting to say, Enough already.
Donald Trump last week gave a foreign policy speech in which he promised to curtail immigration from terrorism-breeding countries and to subject potential immigrants to extreme vetting, including an ideological test aimed at weeding out un-American attitudes.

In addition to screening out all members or sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes toward our country or its principles  or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law, the GOP presidential nominee said.

What to make of Trumps proposal? Will it make America safer, or will it simply ban individuals with unpopular views?

Its discrimination

n MATHIS: Religious liberty for me but not for thee. Thats the essence of Trumps proposed ideological test for immigrants. Everybody  yes, even us spineless liberal Democrats  wants to filter out terrorists and their sympathizers. Theres so little debate on that point that you can easily argue the Obama administration is already subjecting many immigrants to the kind of extreme vetting Trump says would be a hallmark of his tenure.

After that, though, it gets tricky: Were going to exclude Muslims who believe their religious beliefs sometimes outweigh American law? Heres the problem with that: American Christians already routinely make the claim that their religious beliefs trump the requirements of federal law. And they call these exemptions religious liberty.

One group that recognizes the problem: Mormons. Their own history as exemptions from the rule of religious liberty in America makes them sensitive to such issues  so much that Trump stands a very good chance of losing Utah, an otherwise rock-solid Republican state, in the November election. His new ideological test, its clear, is nothing more than old-fashioned religious discrimination.

We decide who enters

n BOYCHUK: Who said anything about a religious test? Yes, yes, liberals are suspicious that Trumps talk of an ideological screen for immigrants is really nothing more than a fig leaf for his original idea he blurted months ago to ban Muslims from entering the United States altogether. Some critics, including more than a few Republicans, said a religious test for newcomers would be un-American, to say nothing of unconstitutional.

On that last point, they are dangerously mistaken. True, the Constitution forbids religious tests for holding public office; but the immigration and naturalization statutes allow the president to consider religion among other factors when carrying out the law.

The question here really has little to do with religious liberty. Instead, the issue revolves around a basic principle of sovereignty: We get to say who enters. We get to say who stays.

The first generation of U.S. leaders spilled plenty of ink trying to figure out what an immigration policy should look like. They worried that foreigners who did not share a disposition toward liberty and equality under the law could overwhelm the country. Cultural assimilation was essential.

Trumps idea of extreme vetting may or may not work in the long run. But it shouldnt be dismissed out of hand.

Joel Mathis is an award-winning writer in Kansas. Ben Boychuk is managing editor of American Greatness.
We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on!

Go to form
Detour Gold Further Trims Debt From Existing Cash Balance

Detour Gold Corp. (TSX: DGC) has trimmed its debt by using existing cash, reporting that the company repurchased $60 million of convertible notes for an aggregate purchase price (including principal and premium) of $62.1 million, plus accrued and unpaid interest of $0.7 million. For the year to date, Detour has repurchased $142 million in face value of convertible notes, reducing the amount due at maturity in November 2017 to $358 million. The convertible notes were sold in December 2010 to finance development of the Detour Lake gold mine in northeastern Ontario. "As the company's financial position continues to strengthen, we have taken this opportunity to further reduce debt levels from existing cash balances. With continued confidence in the gold price, we expect to refinance less than $300 million of notes at maturity, says James Mavor, chief financial officer. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com AuRico Metals Closes Equity Financing, Private Placement With Alamos Gold AuRico Metals Inc. (TSX: AMI) announces the closing of its previously announced bought deal offering of 11.5 million common shares at C$1 each, which includes 1.5 million shares through the exercise of the over-allotment option. The shares were purchased on a bought deal basis by a syndicate of underwriters. In addition, Alamos Gold Inc. exercised its right to maintain its pro-rata interest through a private placement of 1,272,611 shares, taking combined gross proceeds raised by AuRico Metals to C$12,772,611. The net proceeds from the offering will be used to fund the potential acquisition of additional royalties, the advancement of permitting activities and detailed engineering at the Kemess underground project, as well as for working capital and general corporate purposes, AuRico Metals says. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.

kitco news
(Kitco News) - Its only a matter of time before central banks take the next unprecedented step and issue helicopter money, and this stimulus will be a positive factor for gold, this according to some market players.

The potential for more accommodative policies from central banks was one of the main topics of Incrementums tenth annual advisory board discussion, which included bestselling author Jim Rickards; trader and technical analyst Heinz Blasnik; economist Frank Shostak; former investment manager Zac Bharucha; and, and Santiago Capital CEO Brent Jonhnson.

Kicking off the discussion, Rickards said he expects central banks to crank up the printing press by 2017. He added that the main question is: what will this helicopter money look like? Will it be money given directly to consumers or to the government, who will spend it on infrastructure development, he asked.

Johnson said that he is also expecting to see renewed central bank spending and while it will create short-term growth, it is not fixing the underlying global economic problems.

He added that continued money printing will just lead to more excesses, to more misallocation of capital and sooner or later, you get the big debt knockout.

Blasnik noted that the problem with an expanded quantitative easing program, either supporting infrastructure growth or money sent directly to consumers, is that governments cant create wealth or prosperity.

That is the basic problem  there aint no free lunch. And that is what helicopter money implies: It implies that there is a kind of free lunch somewhere, but there isnt, he said.

In this environment, the analysts are optimistic on gold, even if the market does face some hurdles in the near term.

Blasnik said that he is expecting to see a correction in gold during the second half of the year; however, he added that it would be a good opportunity to jump back into the market.

I wouldnt chase [gold and gold-mining stocks] now, but I think theres going to be a good opportunity during the second half.

Johnson agreed that investors shouldnt chase the gold market at these current levels.

I think we will get the chance to buy them at a lower price sometime in the next 3-4 months. And even if you dont get the chance to buy them at a lower rate in the next few months, you might be able to buy them with a lot more certainty, he said.

Although Shostak said his economic models are still bullish on equity markets, he noted that investors should exercise some caution because stock markets are really going crazy.

I think its reasonable holding that core gold position and looking for tactical opportunities. I think theres probably going to be a kind of crunch again in the markets, I think the sentiment is very fragile, he said.

Although gold is struggling to hold onto recent gains, stuck in a tight trading range for the last two weeks, Rickards said that he thinks it is only a matter of time before markets move higher.

I would make the point that we are not near the top, its quite close to the beginning - so Im very bullish on that sector, he said.

By Neils Christensen of Kitco News; nchristensen@kitco.com

Follow @Neils_C
(Kitco News) - Large speculators scaled back their bullish positioning in gold and silver futures during the most recent weekly reporting period for data compiled by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The report covers the week through Aug. 16. During this period, Comex December gold managed a $4.70 gain to $1,351.30 an ounce, while September silver slipped 8 cents to $19.79.

Net long or short positioning in the CFTC data reflect the difference between the total number of bullish and bearish contracts. Traders monitor the data to gauge the general mood of speculators, although excessively high or low numbers are viewed by many as signs of overbought or oversold markets that may be ripe for price corrections.

The commission issues two reports each Friday -- a so-called legacy report and a disaggregated report, started in 2009 and meant to offer more detail.

The disaggregated Commitments of Traders report shows that money managers cut their total longs, or bullish, positions by 4,344 futures contracts to 277,152 lots. This more than offset the short covering, as reflected by a 1,819 decline in total short, or bearish, trades to 34,425. This left money managers net long by 242,727 contracts, down from 245,252 the week before.

According to the most recent COTR, managed money again decreased their Comex gold positioning in the week up until 16 August, which was consistent with ETF (exchange-traded-fund) outflows, (with) the SPDR (Gold Shares ETF) seeing a further 4.5 tonnes worth of outflows last week, according to a research note from MKS (Switzerland) S.A. These trends continue to threaten gold's upside.

Still, MKS characterized gold as resilient, with the market holding within its recent trading range.

HSBC characterized the reduction in gold speculative net length as modest but suggested the decline in silver net length was greater on a relative basis. Money managers trimmed their gross silver longs by 2,574 lots to 98,767, according to the CFTC disaggregated report. They also added 2,451 shorts, bringing the total to 17,311. This left them net long by 81,456 contracts, compared to 86,481 the prior week.

Silver specs turned a little more bearish last week, cutting back slightly on their heavy level of long contracts and seemingly shifted those positions rather to downside bets, said TD Securities. Recent public hawkish rhetoric from Fed members despite global yields falling even more negative seems to have kept precious metals range bound, but ultimately had some specs correctly expecting this would lead prices to trade to the lower end of the range.

HSBC added that the remaining silver net length means we could see some further liquidation near term, despite our generally positive view on silver prices longer term. However, the bank pointed out that while bullish positioning in silver futures fell, holdings by exchange-traded funds rose 4.5 million ounces on the week.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

Follow @KitcoNewsNOW
SHARE

It looks increasingly likely that Hillary Clinton, a self-described "progressive who likes to get things done," will have her chance starting next January. But how much that's progressive will she actually be able to get done?

The Senate may flip to the Democrats, but there's almost no way Democrats will have the 60 votes they need to stop Republicans from filibustering everything she says she wants to do.

She is unlikely to have a typical presidential honeymoon because she won't be riding the wave of hope and enthusiasm that typically accompanies a new president into office. She's already more distrusted by the public than any major candidate in recent history. On Election Day, many Americans will be choosing which candidate they loathe the least.

She hasn't established a powerful mandate for what she wants to get done. Her policy proposals are admirably detailed but cover so much ground that even her most ardent supporters don't have a clear picture of what she stands for. And she's had to spend more time on the campaign trail attacking Trump's outrage du jour than building a case for a few big ideas.

To say nothing of the moneyed interests  wealthy individuals, big corporations and Wall Street  that are more powerful today than at any time since the Gilded Age and don't want progressive change.

Even if Hillary sincerely intends to raise taxes on rich Americans to pay for universal child care, affordable higher education and infrastructure spending, the moneyed interests have the clout to stop her.

They'll also resist any effort to raise the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour, require employers to offer paid family leave, or push employers to share their profits with employees.

The heart of American politics is now a vicious cycle in which big money has enough political influence to get laws and regulations that make big money even bigger, and prevent laws and rules that threaten its wealth and power.

Before Hillary can accomplish anything important, that vicious cycle has to be reversed. But how?

Bear with me a moment for some pertinent history.

As economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted in the 1950s, a key legacy of the New Deal was creating centers of economic power that offset the power of giant corporations and Wall Street: labor unions, small retail businesses, local banks, and political parties active at the state and local levels.

These alternative power centers supported policies that helped America's vast middle and working classes during the first three decades after World War II  the largest infrastructure project in American history (the Interstate Highway program), a vast expansion of nearly free public higher education, Medicare and Medicaid, and, to pay for all this, high taxes on the wealthy.

But over the last three decades, countervailing power has almost vanished from American politics. Labor unions have been decimated. In the 2012 presidential election, the richest 0.01 percent of households gave Democratic candidates more than four times what unions contributed to their campaigns.

Small retailers have been displaced by Walmart and Amazon. Local banks have been absorbed by Wall Street behemoths.

And both political parties have morphed into giant national fundraising machines. The Democratic National Committee, like its Republican counterpart, is designed mainly to suck up big money.

So where can Hillary look for the countervailing power she'll need to get the progressive changes she says she wants?

The most promising source of a new countervailing power in America was revealed in Bernie Sanders' primary campaign: millions of citizens determined to reclaim American democracy and the economy from big money. (Donald Trump's faux populism tapped into similar sentiments but, tragically, has channeled them into bigotry and scapegoating.)

That movement lives on. Organizers from the Sanders campaign have already launched Brand New Congress, an ambitious effort to run at least 400 progressive candidates for Congress in 2018, financed by small, crowd-sourced donations and led by a nationwide network of volunteers. Sanders himself recently announced the formation of "Our Revolution" to support progressive candidates up and down the ticket.

Hillary Clinton has been relying on big money to finance her presidential campaign, but she's always been a pragmatist about governing. "A president has to deal in reality," she said last January in response to Sanders. "I am not interested in ideas that sound good on paper but will never make it in real life."

The pragmatist in her must know that the only way her ideas will make it in real life is if the public is organized and mobilized behind them.

Which means that once she enters the Oval Office, she'll need the countervailing power of a progressive movement  ironically, much like the one her primary opponent championed.

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich is a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and author.
NZ Firsts Clayton Mitchell stated:

A predator-free New Zealand by 2050 is likely to cost trillions, not millions as the government claims, says New Zealand First.

The National governments promise to make New Zealand predator-free for the bargain price of $28 million is nothing but greenwashing, says Conservation Spokesperson Clayton Mitchell.

Zealandia, a predator free plant and bird sanctuary in Wellington, cost $17 million to set up with an operating cost of $867,000.

Using these figures as a yardstick, the cost of keeping the entire country predator free and maintaining it would see a capital expenditure cost of $1.67 trillion and an operating cost of $91 billion per annum  as New Zealand is 98,000 times larger than Zealandia.

The operating cost alone would be 40% of New Zealands GDP.
Stuff reports:

Hundreds of would-be bus drivers could be granted visas to work in New Zealand, Winston Peters claims. The NZ First leader said bus company Go Bus was considering employing 200 drivers from the Pacific.

But 

Go Bus managing director Calum Haslop said his company had talked to Immigration New Zealand about the prospect of bringing Pacific Islanders into the country and offering them jobs. However, he said that was unlikely because of the high number of applications from local jobseekers.

So only if they can not get locals would they look overseas. As it should be.

The company had only advertised locally, not overseas.

Again as it should be.

A spokeswoman for NZ First said a lady who came in told them about the company potentially hiring 200 people from Samoa. The lady told us and I believe her, she said. The spokeswoman said the lady likely found out about the bus drivers thanks to word of mouth.

This is what NZ First regard as credible. A lady came in and told us, as she heard about it word of mouth.

It would almost be a joke if not so serious.

But NZ First did not have a copy of an advertisement to prove it had been run offshore.

Evidence? Whats that.

Share this: Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Reddit

WhatsApp

More

Pinterest

Print



Tumblr


The Green Book was published for nearly 30 years after the Great Depression so African American travelers would know where they'd be allowed to stop for food, gas, and to rest. (National Park Service)
Photos by John Saunders Photography/Special to the News Sentinel The canning operation is overseen by Jay Connatser, former bread baker and chef at The Old Mill Pottery House Cafe and Grill, and will focus on fresh seasonal fruit, both heirloom and hybrid variety, with a nod to southern tradition and the Smoky Mountain region.

SHARE Chef Liz Denham, a Gatlinburg native and graduate of the Sullivan University Culinary Program, has created a series of handcrafted jellies: Mountain Blueberry, Strawberry, Tennessee Blackberry and Nantahala Red Raspberry for The Old Mill's new Heritage line. Photo by John Saunders Photography/Special to the News Sentinel Some of The Old Mill's canning products are shown, including blackberry, blueberry, strawberry and red raspberry preserves. Laurie Faulkner, marketing director of The Old Mill family of businesses, said the labeling and packaging for the new products is intended to give them a home-style feel. Photo by John Saunders Photography/Special to the News Sentinel Fresh fruits are hand cut, prepared and blended by hand for the business' Heritage line. Photo by John Saunders Photography/Special to the News Sentinel The Old Mill Farmhouse Kitchen was recently renovated to include a specialty farmhouse store to showcase the company's handcrafted products. The store is pictured here during Heritage Day in 2015.

By Ali James of the Knoxville News Sentinel

The Old Mill in Pigeon Forge has opened the area's first new canning operation in decades.

Visitors to the Old Mill Farmhouse Kitchen are regularly overcome by a feeling of nostalgia the moment they step through the door.

"Especially when we are cooking strawberry preserves, it fills the whole store up with the perfume of the strawberries," said Chef Liz Denham, who oversees research and development of recipes for the new brand. "There's this sense of nostalgia; people come over and say, 'I used to help my grandmother make jellies/'"

Using many of the same techniques that the Pigeon Forge Canning Company did before it closed in the 1930s, the new business processes everything by hand and cooks small batches in copper pots.

The operation is also focusing on preserving local produce from family-owned Tennessee farms. Ingredients are selected from PickTN family farmers and growers, such as Rutherford Farms of Maryville and Mountain Mist Farms of Pigeon Forge.

Laurie Faulkner's family owns and manages The Old Mill family of businesses, and she serves as the marketing director.

In the 1930s, Faulkner said, mountain children picked blackberries to preserve.

"Our goal is to have the same close relationships with the Tennessee farmers and growers," she said. "We already handcraft our products, and we thought adding a canning operation was a natural progression.

"We recently renovated our farmhouse kitchen to add a specialty farmhouse store," Faulkner said. "We have been talking about this for a couple of years, playing around with ideas and experimenting."

It's also a growing tourist attraction.

"Our kitchen is open air to the public; it's very interactive," Denham said. "We are bringing the community into something."

In the first year, they operated as more of a test kitchen, allowing customers to tell them what they wanted, troubleshoot recipes and exchange stories.

Fresh fruits are hand cut, prepared and blended by hand for the business' Heritage line. The handcrafted jelly flavors include mountain blueberry, strawberry, Tennessee blackberry and Nantahala red raspberry.

"We wanted to can fruits we love, so they can be enjoyed any time of the year," Faulkner said. "We like to think of it as capturing a piece of what makes this region so great.

"Phase One is about the simple recipe of the fruit, sugar, the acid and the pectin and getting the process down," she said. "Then we want to do a flair line of limited releases, mixing modern flavors such as strawberry and balsamic, blueberry and jalapeno, or putting flowers in it."

Denham is also working on seasonal fall releases and a special Christmas jam to be marketed starting in November. Next, they hope to make preserves from grapes, elderberries, apples, pears and figs for the fall and winter lines.

They are also planning on fruit butters and working with The Old Forge Distillery brand.

"We took the chocolate cherry moonshine jelly and turned that into a jelly," Denham said. "We've been testing it in the store and everybody has been going crazy for it."

Establishing the first canning operation in decades has been a long process, according to Faulkner.

"It's been in the making for over a year," she said. "We just purchased the copper kettles and we are doing it all the same way, in small batches."

It's done on a limited scale for now.

"We learned through trial and error that it was better to work in smaller batches," Denham said. "It might be a little bit bigger batch than your grandmother did, but we are not doing as much as 300 jars a day. We do batches of 50-60 to control how much water is in the fruit, to accommodate the sweetness of the berry. You really come out with a higher quality and consistent product.

"We have not added a full-blown production facility with two kettles, two copper pots and three sinks," Denham said. "As with everything, we've started small and grown from there."

At The Old Mill, the staff wants to focus on getting the products right and establishing the relationships with local and regional farmers, Denham said. "It's from the farm to the jar at the peak of the fruit season. We work daily with the farmers to see what is coming next.

"It emphasizes that behind The Old Mill brand, there is family," she added. "We're also supporting the communities and providing another avenue for farmers to sell large quantities of their produce. We're utilizing local produce and showcasing it. We're asking them the best time for their strawberries or the blueberries."

Farmers are very passionate about what they do, said Faulkner, who hates to see fresh produce thrown away. "As a brand, we are always trying to improve on what we do, not sacrificing quality for success."

The Old Mill family of businesses is locally owned and managed. Since the early 1800s, The Old Mill's water-powered gristmill, on the banks of the Little Pigeon River, have faithfully produced meals and flours.

Today, the stones of the mill still convert grain into about 1,000 pounds of product each day, six days a week. Resident millers then hand-fill, weigh and tie each bag of stone-ground grain.

The products ground at The Old Mill are used in many of the dishes at The Old Mill Restaurant, including biscuits, cornbread, pancakes, hushpuppies, muffins and grits.

They also use their own grains for the homemade artisan-style breads that are prepared each day at The Old Mill Pottery House Cafe & Grille.

Products from the canning operation are among several handcrafted offerings at The Old Mill, which also sells handcrafted pottery from Pigeon River Pottery, small-batch spirits from Old Forge Distillery, and freshly ground grain from the historic Old Mill.

Faulkner said that the labeling and packaging for the new products is meant to impart a home-style feel. The operation uses specialty glasses, not the traditional Mason or Ball jars.

They are working with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture to make their handcrafted jellies and preserves an official PickTN product.

Besides being sold at the store, the products will be available online at www.old-mill.com and in The Old Mill's catalog, the women said.
SHARE Former Knox County school bus driver Hollis Clay Walker makes a statement with his attorney, James A.H. Bell, after DUI charges were dismissed in Knox County General Sessions Court on Monday Aug. 22, 2016. Toxicology results showed he did not have any drugs or alcohol in his system when he crashed his bus into a gate at Safety City on March 10. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL) Former Knox County Schools bus driver Hollis Clay Walker, 78, appeared Tuesday, Mar. 22, 2016 in Knox County General Sessions Court. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL) Related Photos Photos: All charges dismissed against former Knox school bus driver

By Hayes Hickman of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Charges were dropped Monday against a former Knox County school bus driver suspected of being intoxicated during a March crash at Safety City.

Judge Geoff Emery granted prosecutors' motion to dismiss charges of driving under the influence, reckless endangerment and simple possession against Hollis Clay Walker, 78, in light of medical records that showed he suffered a medical emergency while behind the wheel.

Toxicology tests by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation after the March 10 crash were negative for drugs and alcohol.

"It's very commendable that the government would quit when they realized they do not have a case," Walker's attorney, James A.H. Bell, said after Monday's hearing. "We appreciate the efforts of the prosecution to avoid us having a long and lengthy hearing.

"There was no forensics involved that supported any theory. ... The evidence did not support any charge whatsoever."

Bell said his client suffered a "mini-stroke" when the school bus struck a gate and sideswiped a fence. Walker was found incoherent and slumped over the wheel afterward. Twenty-six students from Green Magnet Academy were on board at the time. No one was hurt in the crash.

According to arrest warrants, Walker later was found to be in possession of a bottle of Klonopin pills from a prescription filled earlier that morning. The prescription, which was not in his name, was for 90 pills. Only 69 pills were in the bottle. The anti-anxiety medication is used to treat panic attacks, seizures and other disorders.

Bell said the pills belonged to Walker's long-term girlfriend, Charlene Brady. The prescription was filled that day and promised for pickup at 8:42 a.m.

According to court records, earlier on the day of the crash, Walker had dropped off Brady at the City County Building, where she was surrendering herself to the Knox County Jail. The documents do not specify the charges against her.

Brady couldn't take her prescription with her and gave Walker the bottle of pills to take home with him, according to the court documents.

Court records also allege law enforcement rushed to judgment about the prescription pills Walker was carrying. Lawyers wrote that Brady was never interviewed after the crash about the pills in her name.

She has since died, according to court documents, although the records do not list a cause or date of death.

Walker, who has driven for the school district since 1992, was taken to a hospital and spent time in jail after he was charged. He was removed from the district's roster of eligible drivers.

A previous review by the News Sentinel of Walker's nearly 40-page personnel file showed several complaints that the school bus was late and caused near-crashes, as well as his removal from a route after Walker allowed several students to get off the bus because they refused to sit down in November 2013.

Walker was not charged after a December 2014 incident when the bus he was driving ran off Northshore Drive and got stuck in a ditch. There were no injuries.

In the motion to dismiss the charges against Walker, filed Monday, Assistant District Attorney General Danielle Jones notes that prosecutors still have concerns about his ability to safely operate a vehicle, particularly a school bus. The motion states that prosecutors have asked the Tennessee Department of Safety to "reevaluate the status of Mr. Walker's driving privileges."

After the hearing, Walker said he has recovered from the stroke but wasn't anxious to return to the job.

"It don't make any difference to me," Walker said. "I'm 78 years old, so I can take it or leave it."
Karen Carson at her home on Thursday, August 18, 2016. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL)

SHARE

By Georgiana Vines of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Karen Carson first ran for the Knox County school board 12 years ago to make sure voters in the 5th District had a choice of candidates, and she leaves the board one year after losing a legislative race with the feeling she's moved on with her life.

In all, she ran successfully for the school board three times. The one race she lost was for the Republican nomination to represent the 14th House District in a special election in 2015, which was won by state Rep. Jason Zachary.

"You do a lot of thinking after you lose," she said in an interview at her West Knox County home on Thursday. "Contested elections are better than uncontested elections. Once over, I've gone on with my life."

Carson, one of three school board members whose terms end Aug. 31, is being succeeded by Susan Horn, elementary education coordinator for Christ Covenant Church. The others leaving are Doug Harris, who served one four-year term, and Tracie Sanger, who served two years. None sought re-election.

Carson, 58, joined the school board in 2004 when Charles Lindsey was superintendent at a time when she was active in parent-teacher groups and saw bickering on the school board she thought needed addressing. Two years later she chaired the board and helped negotiate a buyout with the superintendent and find a new superintendent.

Lindsey said Friday he had been with the Knox County school system almost 10 years, "which is phenomenal," and had gone through 11 school board members when he left. Sam Anderson, now retired, was the only one left when Lindsey got ready to leave.

Lindsey had only "good things" to say about Carson, he said.

"I've had several good chairmen, Sam Anderson, Jim McClain, Karen and another four or five in other school systems," Lindsey said.

He said it was evident his tenure was waning, so a negotiated contract was worked out that freed the school board to look for another superintendent.

"I most certainly understood there is a time and place for every superintendent. I was on the crust of retiring, so it worked out well for me," Lindsey said.

The superintendent hired in 2008 to succeed Lindsey was Jim McIntyre, selected in a 5-4 vote over Assistant Superintendent Bob Thomas. McIntyre announced in January he was leavingdue to the climate in Knox County politics and anticipated changes to the school board. He's become the director of the University of Tennessee's Center for Educational Leadership. Buzz Thomas, president of the Great Schools Partnership, is the interim superintendent.

Over the past few years the school board and superintendent have dealt with new standards and changes to tenure and teacher evaluations in reforming the schools, sometimes amid controversy.

"It all came at one time" from state and federal initiatives, Carson said. Today she wonders whether the district or the school board level could have tried to implement the changes over time.

If that sounds like a pattern, Carson said that is exactly what she decided about two years ago and why she ran for the Legislature.

"It takes energy (to be on the school board). I see so many things in cycles. I just knew I was getting tired of it," she said.

Besides, she and her husband, Joe, an engineer in Oak Ridge, have become "empty nesters," she said. Their youngest child, Rebeka, is a senior at UT. Two adult sons are Doug, who lives in Knoxville, and T.J., who lives in Atlanta.

Leaving the school board gives Carson time to do some "home repairs," she said, and she wants to get into pickleball, go hiking and biking, play board games and take a class on financial planning for retirement.

She also continues to work at Children's Hospital as a nurse, something she knew she wanted to do as a child. She holds a degree in nursing from the University of Southwest Louisiana and has worked in emergency room or intensive care units of hospitals in New Orleans, her hometown, and Cleveland, Ohio, besides Knoxville.

Now she wants to figure out how she can tie in her knowledge of what schools need to Children's Hospital, to provide educational opportunities for children to move forward as they're in recovery, she said.
SHARE

Learn more about the influence of lobbyists in a lunchtime book discussion Wednesday at the East Tennessee History Center.

Mike Cohen, owner of Cohen Communications Group, will lead a discussion at noon of the book "Republic, Lost: The Corruption of Equality and the Steps to End It" by Lawrence Lessig.

Part of the Books Sandwiched In program, the event is in the auditorium of the history center on South Gay Street and is part of a series sponsored by the Friends of the Knox County Public Library.

In his book, Lessig, a Harvard University law professor, explores corruption in campaign finance and corporate lobbying and how people with good intentions allowed for outside interests to have influence, according to a news release for the event.

Lessig also calls for change and presents possible solutions.

"Whatever your political viewpoint, money is an issue in politics  overly helping to define who runs, who wins and how they serve once elected," Cohen said in the release.

Cohen has worked in various newsrooms and was also in government public relations as spokesman for Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe and for Knox County Schools and on the communications staff for Knox County.

Future topics for the program include: Voting rights on Sept. 28 with Knoxville attorney Tammy Kaousias; poverty and race in schools and classrooms on Oct. 26 with Ronni Chandler, executive director of Project Grad and Jackie Clay, former program manager for the city's Save Our Sons initiative; and free speech on Nov. 16 with Stuart Brotman, professor at the University of Tennessee School of Journalism and Electronic Media.
SHARE

By News Sentinel Staff

Knox County Health Department will spray an area of North Knoxville near Fourth Avenue for mosquitoes Tuesday night, weather permitting.

The health department is spraying the area because Culex mosquitoes it trapped there have tested positive for West Nile virus.

"I know we've talked a lot about Zika and the Aedes mosquito this summer, but it's important for the public to remember that mosquitoes can transmit other diseases, such as West Nile or La Crosse encephalitis," said Vector Control Supervisor Andrea Woodard. "Mosquitoes in Tennessee are known carriers of these other diseases," unlike Zika, she said.

"Regardless of the disease, the public can help reduce all mosquito-borne illnesses by wearing repellent and removing standing water from their property" to cut down on places for mosquitoes to breed.

Knox County follows the CDC protocal, which is to spray for Culex mosquitoes only after finding West Nile virus present. It will spray between 9 p.m. and midnight, weather permitting, and will post signs in the affected neighborhoods. Residents are asked to stay inside during spraying and keep pets inside or in back yards.

The area includes Cooper Street north of West Fifth Avenue; West Fifth Avenue from Cooper Street to Boyd Street; West Fourth Avenue; Elm Street; Marion Street; Dameron Avenue; Hatton Avenue; Burgess Avenue; Baxter Avenue from Elm Street to Wray Street; Lee Street; and Bernard Avenue. Follow-up spraying on is scheduled for Sept. 6.

Learn more about the health department's mosquito control program at 865-215-5093 or www.knoxcounty.org/health.
SHARE Nightlife traffic moves down Gay Street past the Tennessee Theatre and Regal Riviera Stadium 8 cinema signs in 2013. (J. Miles Cary/News Sentinel)

By Travis Dorman of the Knoxville News Sentinel

One block of South Gay Street will be closed overnight Tuesday as two cranes hoist a better and brighter vertical sign to its rightful place on the historic Tennessee Theatre.

The block of South Gay Street between Clinch and Church avenues will be closed from 6 p.m. until 8 a.m. Wednesday morning while a service crew installs the refurbished sign. There will be temporary no-parking zones on that block for the duration of the project, according to a news release from the city of Knoxville.

"The vertical sign is an important part of downtown Knoxville's visual identity and our theater's history," said Becky Hancock, executive director of the Tennessee Theatre. "After more than two months of work, we will welcome back our vertical sign and refurbished marquee, both of which will shine on Gay Street even brighter and better."

The iconic sign was taken down in June and transported in three pieces by the Knoxville-based Pattison Sign Group to a warehouse in South Carolina, where it was upgraded with 5,700 LED bulbs, sockets and new electrical wiring. As a result, the repaired sign will shine brighter and be more energy-efficient.

Service crews also repainted the 12-year-old sign and marquee and repaired cosmetic damage caused by various hailstorms over the years.

The truck carrying the refurbished sign is slated to turn onto Gay Street around 7 p.m. Tuesday evening. Two cranes will then hoist the sign and put it in place, and welders will work to secure it to the building.

The Tennessee Theatre will celebrate the return of its vertical sign by holding a free open house and relighting ceremony on Wednesday, Aug. 31. The theatre's stage and backstage areas will be open to the public from 6-8 p.m., organist Dr. Bill Snyder will play the Mighty Wurlitzer and a caricature artist will be there to draw guests with the theater marquee.

At 8 p.m., attendees will move outside onto a closed Gay Street to witness a countdown to the relighting of the sign led by Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero, elected officials and theater board members.
A federal judge in Texas is blocking for now the Obama administration's directive to U.S. public schools that transgender students must be allowed to use the bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

SHARE

By Joel Ebert, USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee

NASHVILLE  Conservatives in Tennessee praised a Texas judge's decision Monday to block the Obama administration's controversial directive that requires public schools to allow transgender students to use the restroom of their chosen gender identify.

"I applaud the court's decision to temporarily block this heavy-handed and politically motivated directive that had no right to be forced upon our schools in the first place," U.S. Rep. Diane Black, R-Gallatin, said in a statement issued shortly after news broke that U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor called for a temporary injunction of the directive.

The directive, introduced in May, was widely blasted by Southern conservatives, including Black who said the administration's order was tantamount to extortion.

Tennessee was one of the 13 states, including Texas, Georgia and Alabama, that challenged the directive.

"I have long said that a federal government so big and so powerful that it has extended its reach all the way to the school bathroom stall is a government that has lost its way," Black said. "Tennesseans know that our educators and school administrators are better equipped than any DC bureaucrat to care for the unique needs of their student population, and I am pleased that our state is among those challenging this senseless decree."

Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, said, he was grateful the "forces of common sense prevailed over the forces of political correctness."

"A federal judge has told us what common sense told us months ago: Obama's directive was an unlawful, unconstitutional federal intrusion," he said. "We simply cannot place the tyrannical whims of an infinitesimal minority above the legitimate needs of the overwhelming majority."

Kara Owen, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Beth Harwell, R-Nashville, said, "Tennessee joined this case as a result of the federal government's overreach into state and local affairs, and the Speaker is pleased with the federal court's decision to issue an injunction while further review takes place."

When Tennessee joined the lawsuit, Attorney General Herbert Slatery called the directive a "social experiment implemented by federal departments denying basic privacy rights and placing the burden largely on our children, not adults."

"Once again a federal-district court has prohibited the (Obama) administration from unilaterally changing the law without complying with well-settled procedures on congressional action," Slatery said in a statement Monday. "Senator Lamar Alexander said it best: 'We do not need or want a national school board.' This is a state and local issue. The people should have a voice. Basic privacy rights, especially those of our children, should not be denied in such a far-reaching way by an agency sending a letter and threatening to withhold federal funds."

Before Tennessee joining the lawsuit, Republican lawmakers considered holding a special session over issue of transgender students' access to bathrooms. As many as 57 House members signed onto an effort to reconvene the Legislature over the issue. But that effort subsided after Slatery's office joined the lawsuit.

Evangelical Christian leader Russell Moore thinks the judge's decision is yet another step in the country's long-standing skirmish over the sexual revolution. Moore is the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention. He anticipates the U.S. Supreme Court will be asked to take up the issue.

Moore, who believes God intended for a person's gender to be defined by their biological sex, thinks the transgender bathroom issue demonstrates just how much American culture has changed. Churches need to explicitly affirm what scripture says about being male and female, he said.

"In reality, every church now is having to address this issue," Moore said. "Martin Luther never had to answer the question of whether or not it's possible for someone to be biologically female, but identify as male. That's not a question that even crossed his mind," Moore said in an interview. "Billy Graham never had to give a great deal of attention to that as recently as 30 years ago."

But not all Tennesseans were pleased with the judge's decision. Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, said she is troubled by the court's "misguided decision," which she said targets vulnerable young people who are trying to live without facing discrimination.

"However, this ruling does not change the fact that transgender students still have the right to go to school without being singled out for differential treatment or discrimination," she said. "Tennessee school districts are not only permitted, but required, to treat transgender students fairly. We will continue to fight for the fair treatment of all students in Tennessee."

Earlier this year, Weinberg's organization filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education against Sumner County Schools over a transgender student's access to restrooms.

Students' access to bathrooms became a hot-button issue during the 2016 legislative session, when Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mt. Juliet, and Sen. Mike Bell, R-Riceville, sponsored a bill that would have required students to use the restroom that corresponds with their sex at birth. The legislation drew significant opposition from businesses, musicians and others before Lynn shelved it for the year.
SHARE

Tennessee's economy keeps getting stronger and now is growing faster than its pre-recession pace, according to state and University of Tennessee officials.

Though the current numbers are rosy, uncertainty about the future  not least regarding the outcome of this year's presidential election  is keeping the recovery from growing even faster.

Still, Tennesseans should be optimistic, given the state's pro-business climate and efforts to improve the skills of its workforce.

In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Secretary of State Tre Hargett said new business filings are up and closures are down.

Tennessee recorded 8,919 new businesses from April to June, up 7.2 percent from the same time last year. The increase is the state's 19th consecutive year-over-year, according to a report prepared by Tennessee Secretary of State's office and UT's Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research. Meanwhile, the state experienced a 53 percent drop in business closures.

Tennessee's economic growth is showing up on state government ledgers. State tax revenues for the fiscal year ending July 1 were $925 million more than anticipated when the 2015-16 budget was adopted, according to the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration.

The state's unemployment rate remained at 4.1 percent for a second straight month, still below the nation's rate of 4.9 percent. Nonfarm employment grew by 66,800 jobs, or 2.3 percent, in June.

"What we are seeing in Tennessee is this very robust growth in employment," Hargett said. "It's across all sectors of the economy and across most regions of the state. It's a really strong economic outlook for the foreseeable future."

The state's robust employment picture mirrors national developments. The U.S. labor market is nearing so-called "full employment," with wages showing signs of rising, Dennis P. Lockhart, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said during a visit to Knoxville on Tuesday.

The full employment market puts pressure on companies as they try to retain current workers and hire new ones, he said. Low productivity growth, however, continues to keep wages down.

In Tennessee, the income outlook is brightening. A recent Boyd Center report projects nominal personal income growth of 5 percent in 2016 and another 5 percent in 2017.

There remains cause for concern. Economists are worried about the "very slow pace" of fixed investment by businesses, Lockhart said. Fixed investment is money businesses spend on new equipment, which indicates they are expanding production.

Uncertainty about the future is one reason businesses have been reluctant to expand production, Lockhart said, citing the effects of the coming election as an example.

Still, there are ample reasons for Tennesseans to be upbeat about the economy. Gov. Bill Haslam's administration has been a national leader in education and job training, and the state's "economic momentum," an index that factors in population, income and employment growth, is sixth in the nation. Tennessee continues to be a good place for business investment and economic opportunity.
SHARE

Great universities were not the tools that brought jobs to Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Rather, development of great jobs in automotive and machine tools created a multi-state environment that created prestigious universities like Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, Ohio State and others. Even established elite universities could not save jobs lost to political and executive mismanagement. Development of a first-class high school in Briceville, Tennessee, did not bring about jobs in coal mining. Jobs in coal mining brought about better education in Briceville. A first-class high school in Oak Ridge did not bring in nuclear development. Government-funded jobs built the first-class Oak Ridge High School.

If University of Tennessee graduates are the nation's best, they will go to states where preferred jobs are in demand, as UT graduates have done for years when suitable jobs do not exist in Tennessee. It is best not to put the cart before the horse. The creation of a preferred Tennessee job environment will attract the nation's best educated, who with their influence will create the best Tennessee high schools and universities. An excellent job environment must come first to develop and retain the nation's best educated.

Eddie Madden, Oak Ridge
SHARE

Kirk Bado's article revealing his feelings about interning in the state Legislature this summer says volumes about the way our General Assembly conducts its dirty business. Not only has House Speaker Beth Harwell handled the situation with Rep. Jeremy Durham poorly, but the response of virtually the entire House, allowing Durham to retain his lifetime benefits, says much about the circus that is the Tennessee Legislature.

Chris Buice's excellent Citizen's Voice, "Scandal-plagued legislators show hypocrisy on sex," tells how President Harry Truman once compared politics to being a piano player in a whorehouse. The Tennessee Legislature is definitely in need of a piano player. Shame on them. The most disgusting part is, the people of Tennessee re-elect them, over and over. Shame on us all.

Randall Dyer, Jefferson City
South Korea announced another attempt Monday to privatize Woori Bank, a leading lender in the country, saying the possibility of a successful sale is "higher than any other time."

The government has agreed to sell off 30 percent of its stake in the bank to several different buyers by the end of this year, according to the Financial Services Commission (FSC).

"It's judged that potential demand for investment has been confirmed on a level (enough) to push for the sale," FSC Chairman Yim Jong-yong said at a related committee meeting.

He cited the privatization of Woori Bank as "the biggest pending issue in South Korea's financial industry and the largest task for the financial authorities."

The government owns a 51-percent stake in the bank through the state-run Korea Deposit Insurance Corp., a legacy of the 1998-99 Asian financial crisis.

At that time, it poured 12.8 trillion won ($11.3 billion) in bailout funds into Woori. It has so far retrieved 8.2 trillion won, or 64.9 percent, of the taxpayers' money.

The FSC said it aims to sell 30 percent of its stake in Woori via a bidding process to kick off later this week. A related public notice will be issued on Wednesday.

An investor will be restricted to bid for 4-8 percent of the bank's stake in what the FSC described as a "oligopolistic stockholder" manner.

That's a "realistic way" to succeed in privatizing the bank this time after four previous failed attempts, most recently in 2014, it added. (Yonhap)
Consumers pack a newly opened Paris Baguette store in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. / Courtesy of Paris Baguette



By Lee Hyo-sik

Paris Baguette has opened its first store in Chengdu, one of the largest cities in southwest China, to target increasingly wealthy inland consumers.

Korea's largest bakery chain said Monday that it opened a 100-seat shop on a 270 square-meter site at The MixC, the city's largest shopping mall.

It is located on the mall's first floor along with Armani, Gucci, Boss and other luxury brand shops, while Starbucks and other food and beverage stores are located in the basement, according to company officials. The officials added that Paris Baguette is regarded as a premium brand among Chinese consumers.

The company plans to spread Korea's bakery culture in Chengdu, a burgeoning city with a population of 14 million people, by offering bread and a variety of snack foods, coffees and other beverages.

"So far, we have opened stores in Beijing, as well as Shanghai, Dalian and other coastal cities," a Paris Baguette official said. "Since we entered the world's second-largest economy in 2004, we have significantly bolstered our brand. We think now is the time for us to move inland to grow into China's national bakery brand."

For the past four years, the company has conducted extensive market research and built an efficient production and logistics system to make inroads into China's southwestern region, the official said. "We will open another store in Chengdu by the end of the year and then set up a shop in Xi'an. We will have at least 80 stores in the region by 2020.

Paris Baguette currently operates a total of 168 stores in China, mostly in Beijing and Shanghai.
By Yoon Ja-young



The government has resumed its attempts to privatize Woori Bank. Now, it hopes to sell the bank to several large investors instead of handing over managerial control to a single buyer.



The Public Funds Oversight Committee under the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said Monday that it decided to sell the government's 30 percent stake in the bank to several different buyers. These oligopolistic shareholders will hold stakes between four and eight percent each.



"After examining the market demand, we once again found that it isn't easy to sell the managerial rights of the bank," said Yoon Chang-hyun, head of the committee. "However, we confirmed that there is considerable demand to participate as an oligopolistic shareholder."



Woori Bank was formed by merging Hanil Bank and the Commercial Bank of Korea in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. The government has injected 12.77 trillion won in bailout funds into the bank so far, of which 8.29 trillion won was retrieved by selling stakes of subsidiaries and receiving dividends. This means the government has 4.48 trillion won more to retrieve. The government holds a 51 percent stake in the bank through the state-run Korea Deposit Insurance Corp.



This is the fifth attempt by the government to privatize the bank.



The FSC previously tried to sell the 30 percent stake in the bank to a single entity, which would have managerial control over the lender, but it has failed each time. It determined that the attempts failed as the country's third-largest lender by assets is too big for a single buyer.



The FSC expects its attempt to sell off the stake is likely to succeed this time as it isn't as burdensome as purchasing managerial rights. It also hopes that investors will find it attractive to participate in management through the board of directors. The oligopolistic shareholders will have the right to recommend outside directors. The shareholders will participate in the appointment of managers through the board or the executive recommendation committee.



"Right after the sales, Woori Bank will form a board with the oligopolistic shareholders, who will be electing the president of the bank," FSC Chairman Yim Jong-yong said. "It will be an exemplary case of governance structure at financial companies."



Once its attempt at privatization succeeds, the government plans to sell its remaining 21 percent stake in the bank. It hopes that share prices will rise so that it can retrieve some of the remaining taxpayers' money injected in the bank. The bank closed at 10,250 won Monday, down 0.97 percent from last Friday. For the government to retrieve the remaining 4.48 trillion won, however, the share prices will have to climb to 13,000 won.



The government plans to make notice about the sales public on Wednesday, to receive a letter of intent by Sept. 23. It is scheduled to complete the sales process by the end of this year.




A scene from "Ballenas, Historias de Gigantes" / Courtesy of by Pedro Arnay



By Yun Suh-young

The Seoul International Dance Festival will hold its 19th edition from Sept. 24 to Oct. 15.

The festival, part of UNESCO's International Dance Council (CID), will be held at the CJ Towol Theater of Seoul Arts Center, the Grand Theater and Small Theater of Sogang University's Mary Hall and the outdoor stage of D-Cube Park in D-Cube City, Sindorim, southwestern Seoul.

This year, the festival specially focuses on France and Spain, as this year marks the Year of Korea-France bilateral exchanges in commemoration of the 130th anniversary of diplomatic ties. As for the Spain section, it had long been a request of the country to participate in the festival.

For the special programs offered as part of the France Focus, a variety of contemporary French dances will give audiences a glimpse of the trends in the contemporary dance scene. They can enjoy "Nouvelle Danse," which shifted the center of contemporary dance from the U.S. to France, and other French contemporary works.

The festival kicks off with Ballet Preljocaj, a company known for its exceptional performances and sensual energy, performing "Gala Preljocaj." Then the Carolyn Carlson Company, renowned in the field of Nouvelle Danse, will follow with "Short Stories." In "Black over Red (My Dialogue with Rothko)," Carolyn Carlson herself will perform to express the poetic movements inspired by the paintings of Mark Rothko. Carolyn Carlson is the oldest active contemporary dancer in the world.

Other performances include "Anatomia Publica" by Tomeo Verges, expressing the anatomical exploration of human movement, and "(M)IMOSA, Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at The Judson Church (M)" by four young dancers  Cecilia Bengolea, Francois Chaignaud, Trajal Harrell, and Marlene Monteiro Freitas.

Cie Yann Lheureux, who integrates hip-hop with contemporary dance, collaborated with dancers from the Korea National University of Arts in "Red Circle."

Diverse contemporary dances from five regions in Spain also await audiences. Thomas Noone Dance from Barcelona presents "Medea," an intense physical piece reinterpreting the Tragedy of Euripides.

Free performances will be available at outdoor stages in D-Cube City's park such as "Sorbatza," a new interpretation of traditional Basque dance, and "Gelajauziak" by Kukai Dantza. Marco Vargas and Chloe Brule perform "Por Casualidad" (By Chance), which is a mix of flamenco and contemporary dance based on Sevilla, while Baal Dansa from Mallorca presents "Travelling."







There are also performances for children. Larumbe Danza from Madrid, Pendulo Cero, and SNEO Mestizaje Projects presents "Ballenas, Historias de Gigantes," a collaboration of 3D animation and contemporary dance which is based on a fairy tale about a whale. "Sugungga," or the tale of a rabbit, is another performance for children based on a Korean fairy tale. It is a collaboration of Korean pansori and Swiss yodeling performed by "Cie Nuna." Cho Young-soon, a contemporary dance choreographer based in Switzerland, performs for the first time in Korea since her departure in "Sugungga." Cho will also perform solo in "Tac. Tac."

There are other Korean artists to take note of such as Lee Eun-yeong who established Compagnie Komusin which integrates the cultures of East and the West through dance.

An interesting program to take note of is "Who's Next" which is a platform for collaboration between international and Korean artists. Initially began as a collaborative project between Korea, China and Japan, this year it grouped together artists from South America, Africa and Korea for a vibrant dance exchange.

Dance programs will also be available to the public. There will be dance workshops for both professional dancers and actors, as well as for nonprofessionals. Talk sessions with artists and face painting programs for children are also offered.

Tickets range from 20,000 won to 50,000 won and there are discounts for package purchases  30 percent for three to four performances, 45 percent for five to seven and 50 percent for eight or more. Visit sidance.org, sacticket.co.kr and interpark.com for ticket reservations.
A fan club of South Korean actor Park Bo-gum made a donation to Africa under the actor's name as an act of goodwill as well as support for the actor's upcoming period drama.

The fan club Bogum Ilbo said Monday that it has donated solar lamps to electricity-scarce African countries through Christian relief organization Worldshare.

Solar lamps are known to be very useful on the continent that suffers from chronic electricity shortage.

Earlier this year, the club, consisting of the actor's fans aged over 30, also built a well in Cambodia and donated desks and chairs to China.

Park became widely popular with the success of tvN's "Reply 1988" which ended in January. His new show "Love in the Moonlight" is set to premier tonight. (Yonhap)
President Park Geun-hye will preside over a Cabinet meeting on Monday, during which she is expected to call for a robust readiness posture to cope with continuing North Korean military threats, her office Cheong Wa Dae said.

The meeting is timed to coincide with the start of the four-day Ulchi-Freedom Guardian exercise aimed at better coping with national emergency situations.

Observers say Park is likely to mention the planned deployment of an advanced U.S. antimissile system to South Korea, which she has repeatedly defended as an "inevitable, self-defense" measure to better counter Pyongyang's evolving nuclear and missile threats.












By Jun Ji-hye

The Air Force dispatched four F-15K fighter jets after three Chinese military planes entered the overlapping air defense zones of the two countries near Jeju Island, Thursday, officials said Monday.

The Chinese planes, including a bomber, were participating in the country's own military exercise. They briefly flew into the Korean Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ) over Ieodo, a submerged rock controlled by South Korea, without prior notification.

Situated about 149 kilometers southwest of Jeju Island, Ieodo is an area where the air defense identification zones of South Korea and China overlap.

The intruders left shortly after South Korean military issued a warning message and sent four F-15Ks to the area, according to defense officials.

The incident came amid growing tension between the two countries over Seoul's recent decision to allow the United States Forces Korea to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here. Beijing has strongly protested the plan.

In November 2013, China unilaterally expanded its own air defense zone to cover the airspace over the reef of Ieodo and other islands off the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula. In December of the same year, South Korea announced an expansion of the KADIZ to counter the Chinese move, which also included airspace over the reef of Ieodo as well as the southern islands of Marado and Hongdo.

On Jan. 31, China's war planes also passed through the overlapping air defense identification zones, but at the time South Korea did not dispatch fighter jets.

Some observers say China's latest violation of the overlapping zones should be seen as a show of force against the planned deployment of the THAAD battery.

On July 8, Seoul and Washington announced that a THAAD battery will be deployed on Korean soil by the end of next year to better deter evolving nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.

Beijing has repeatedly claimed that the THAAD's radar can be used to spy on its military activities, despite Washington's assurances that it only aims to deter Pyongyang's missile attacks.
Fighter jets participate in a Soaring Eagle war simulation exercise at an air base in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, Monday. South Korea and the United States also began a separate war drill, Ulchi Freedom Guardian, the same day. / Courtesy of the Air Force



By Jun Ji-hye

South Korea and the United States began their annual joint exercise Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), Monday, prompting North Korea to threaten to launch a nuclear attack.

Pyongyang said it will launch a preemptive nuclear strike on Seoul and Washington "if they show the slightest sign of aggression."

According to the allies' Combined Forces Command (CFC), the computer-assisted drill will run until Sept. 2, with 75,000 troops mobilized, including 25,000 from the U.S.

The United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission (UNCMAC) informed North Korea's Korean People's Army (KPA) through its Panmunjom mission of the exercise dates and the non-provocative nature of the training, the CFC noted.

"UFG is designed to enhance alliance readiness, protect the region and maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula," the CFC said in a release. "Approximately 25,000 U.S. service members will participate in the exercise, with about 2,500 coming from outside the peninsula."

For this year's exercise, nine member countries of the United Nations Command based in South Korea will join the computerized military exercise, the CFC said, noting that they are from Australia, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Italy, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

The Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission observers will also participate in the drill to monitor the exercise to ensure it is in compliance with the armistice agreement between the two Koreas, the CFC said.

"Training exercises like UFG are carried out in the spirit of the Oct. 1, 1953, ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty and in accordance with the armistice," the CFC said. "These exercises also highlight the longstanding military partnership, commitment and enduring friendship between the two nations, help to ensure peace and security on the peninsula, and reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the alliance."

The drill was started amid growing military tension on the peninsula following a series of missile launches conducted by Pyongyang in recent months. The North also carried out its fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch the following month.

The CFC refused to disclose details about scenarios for the exercise, but observers say the drill may be aimed at striking missile and nuclear facilities in the North in response to the repressive state's continuous provocations.

As the exercise began, Pyongyang threatened a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the allies.

The General Staff of the KPA warned that South Korea and the U.S. "should bear in mind that if they show the slightest sign of aggression on the DPRK's inviolable land, seas and air ..., it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike."

North Korea customarily reacts with anger and military threats to such joint military exercises which they say are a rehearsal for invading North Korea.

Seoul officials are paying keen attention to the possibility that Pyongyang would carry out military provocations during or after the exercise, which closely followed the government's confirmation of a London-based senior North Korean diplomat's defection to the South. The Ministry of Unification said Wednesday that Thae Yong-ho, who was a deputy ambassador at the North Korean embassy in the United Kingdom, has recently entered South Korea with his wife and children.

Meanwhile, the ROK Air Force has been carrying out a war simulation exercise involving some 60 military aircraft including F-15Ks, KF-16s, FA-50 and C-130 transport planes as well as 530 troops.

"The Soaring Eagle exercise was begun on Aug. 19 and will run until Aug. 26," the Air Force said in a release, Monday.

During the drill, the Air Force is exercising to preemptively remove the North's ballistic missile threats by proactively blocking the missiles and their supply route, the Air Force said.
By Kim Hyo-jin



An Army lieutenant general and a colonel are facing an investigation by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) for allegedly sexually harassing a civilian female counselor for soldiers on separate occasions.



The investigation is based on complaints from the female counselor that the officers, whose identities were withheld, physically and verbally harassed her while she was working under them.



The commission said Monday it will investigate the cases.



The alleged victim is a counselor tasked with listening to soldiers about sexual abuse cases.



According to the petition, she faced frequent misconduct from the lieutenant general while working at a military unit in Gangwon Province in 2013.



In one instance, the general massaged her shoulders without her permission and told her, "I wish I could live with you," causing her humiliation, she insisted.



His harassment continued for a year until she requested a transfer in March last year.

She was able to move to an infantry regiment in Gyeonggi Province. But she was sexually abused by her new supervisor there  the colonel  she claimed.



When she tried to discuss a soldier whom she counseled with the colonel over a meal, he responded, "I came here to meet a girl, not to work," she claimed.



Lawyer Lee Sun-kyung, who helped the counselor file the petition, said, "Sexual abuse of a counselor whom female soldiers can only seek help from in the military is not just a personal issue, but a human rights issue involving all female soldiers."



The colonel reportedly apologized to her after the counselor spoke out about the problem. But the lieutenant general strongly denied the allegations, vowing to take legal action against her, according to a military official.



"Before the cases were filed with the NHRC, the military police investigated the cases but found no proof supporting her claims," the official said.




Ewha Womans University President Choi Kyung-hee waits for striking students to come for talks under a tent in front of the main campus building, Seoul, Monday. With the dispute between the students and the school continuing over a night school plan, the two sides have been unable to come up with a solution to the deadlock. / Yonhap



Students, president insist on own ways of communication



By Kim Bo-eun

Universities are set to begin the fall semester in September but the student sit-in on the campus of Ewha Womans University is showing no signs of breakthrough.

The sit-in has continued for about a month since July 28 when hundreds of students occupied the main building to protest the school's arbitrary decision to set up a night school for workers.

A week into the protests, the school announced it would drop the night school plan, but students vowed to continue the sit-in until President Choi Kyung-hee steps down.

The president has been attempting to talk with the students, visiting the main building multiple times. But they have been refusing to see her, insisting they will only communicate in written correspondence.

On Monday, the university set up a tent at a different entrance of the main building, where the president and vice president stayed throughout the day, waiting for the students to approach them to discuss the issue. They will stay there every day for the time being, but it appears unlikely that the students will attempt to talk with them.

The Ewha protest initially gained a positive response as a new form of protest when they nullified the night school plan through rallies joined by thousands of students and graduates, unlike regular protests led by a small number of student council leaders.

However, some say the absence of leadership has resulted in the current deadlock, in which no student is taking the initiative to resolve the issue.

Choi said she will host an official discussion with students, Wednesday.

"The president has acknowledged that there was a lack of communication in making decisions on the school's policies," said Jin Young-ju, the university's vice director of PR.

"She is pledging to improve the decision-making processes by sufficiently collecting opinions, and is currently reaching out to the students."

But the students are reiterating their stance that they will not end their protest unless the president steps down. They refused to meet at the tent or attend Wednesday's discussion as a means of communication, adding that Choi insists on face-to-face communication while they called for written communication.

Jin said that the school will host its summer graduation ceremony, Friday, and a large amount of administrative work needs to be completed before the start of the fall semester.

"The conflict must be patched up and the school and students must start afresh on the same boat," Jin said. "What we are hoping for is the swift stabilization of Ewha."

Students had opposed the night school plan, claiming it was devised mainly to generate revenue.

They are also taking issue against the school's mobilization of some 16,000 police to break up the sit-in. Police forces were dispatched in order to let out professors and a staffer who were trapped in a meeting room when students began their sit-in.

Students say the president has consistently made arbitrary decisions since she began her term two years ago  including scrapping GPA-based scholarships as well as pushing forward with a plan to merge colleges and scale down certain majors, despite their opposition.
Civic activists pass by a statue of a girl symbolizing Japan's wartime sex slavery during a rally across the street from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Aug. 2. / Korea Times photo by Shin Sang-soon



By Yi Whan-woo



Korea and Japan are likely to drag on their disputes over "comfort women" even after Tokyo pays 1 billion yen ($9.9 million) to Seoul in line with last year's agreement over the thorny historical issue.

Claiming lack of historical evidence, Japan still denies its sexual enslavement of the Korean women for its army before and during World War II.

Tokyo also insists that it will offer the 1 billion yen on humanitarian grounds while refusing to accept demands from surviving victims that the payment must be made as legal compensation.

Concerning the "girl statue" that symbolizes former Korean sex slaves, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida has repeatedly expressed hope that Korea will consider removing it.

The statue, across the street in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, has irked conservative Japanese. The Japanese government has claimed the statue should be removed in line with its agreement with Seoul on Dec. 28, when the two sides agreed to settle sex slavery issues "finally and irrevocably" and refrain from blaming each other over the "comfort women."

On the Korean side, the survivors and their advocates claim the Dec. 28 agreement is void because it lacks Japan's acknowledgment of its legal responsibility for its state-perpetrated sex crimes.

They also said the agreement was reached without consulting the victims.

"I'd say the Dec. 28 agreement will cause another controversy over comfort women' following the 1965 pact made between Korea and Japan," said Lee Myeon-woo, a Japan expert at the Sejong Institute.

"There have been little changes since 1965 when it comes to Japan's compensation over sex slavery."

Speaking on condition of anonymity, another researcher said, "It will be an endless cycle of disputes and I'm uncertain whether Korea and Japan can resolve their dispute permanently as they promised."

Effective from Dec. 18, 1965, the pact was originally aimed at restoring the Seoul-Tokyo ties after Japan's 1910-45 period of colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, but instead stirred up controversy over sex slavery issues.

Tokyo claimed that it had resolved all colonial-era issues, including its state-perpetrated sex offenses, on a government-to-government basis in the form of economic cooperation under the 1965 treaty.

It cited the provision to Korea of $300 million in grants and $200 million in soft loans after the agreement was signed.

But Seoul argued that such funds did not cover compensation for former sex slaves here.

Lee also pointed out that the Asian Women's Fund failed to resolve the historical dispute.

The fund was set up in July 1995 by sympathetic Japanese in line with then-Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono's landmark apology over sex slavery.

The surviving victims and civic activists in Korea rejected the fund, claiming it was aimed at making compensation to the former sex slaves as being for humanitarian reasons rather than legal ones. The fund was dissolved in March 2007.

In 2012, Korean politicians refused to accept a draft proposal made by former Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Kenichiro Sasae in 2012 to resolve "comfort women" issues.

The so-called "Sasae Proposal" suggested that then-Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda would make a formal apology. It suggested that then-Japanese Ambassador to Korea Muto Masatoshi would visit victims to apologize on behalf of the prime minister and offer compensation on humanitarian grounds.

In early August, the Japanese foreign ministry posted on its English-language website a summary of controversial comments by Deputy Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama at a U.N. committee meeting in Geneva in February.

Sugiyama said Japan started a fact-finding work in the early 1990s about "comfort women," but could not confirm whether its government coerced the women into sexual servitude at front-line brothels for Japanese troops.

Sugiyama also said arguments about forced mobilization of the women for sex slavery were fabricated, based on a book titled "My war crimes."

Written by Seiji Yoshida, the book stated that the Japanese military took many women from Korea's southernmost Jeju Island to brothels.

Koreans accounted for most of an estimated 200,000 "comfort women" coerced into prostitution at frontline brothels operated by the Japanese Army across the Pacific.

Sugiyama also claimed that even the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, acknowledged its errors in its reports about "comfort women."

Meanwhile, Kishida promised during a telephone conversation with Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se on Aug. 12 that Japan would "promptly" give the 1 billion to help the former Korean sex slaves.

Their talks came after the Korean government said on Aug. 9 that the neighbors had made "significant" progress in their working-level talks about how to implement follow-up measures concerning the Dec. 28 agreement.

Chung Byung-won, director-general of the Northeast Asian Affairs Bureau at the foreign ministry, led the Korean delegation. Chung's counterpart Kenji Kanasui led the Japanese delegation.

The topics discussed included the so-called "Reconciliation and Healing" foundation, which was set up under the Dec. 28 agreement.

When the money 1 billion yen will be paid so the foundation can carry out projects to help the "comfort women" has been drawing public attention.

"The working-level officials had in-depth internal talks on the general direction of the business to be implemented through the foundation," a diplomatic source said.

"When the foundation was launched, its officials said the related projects will be carried out in a way to help victims retrieve their dignity and also heal their emotional wounds.

"The foundation also promised to meet all of the surviving victims one by one to provide tailored support. That's what Chung and Kanasui kept in mind during their discussions."

In what was seen as a move not to provoke Japan, President Park Geun-hye did not mention "comfort women" during her speech marking the 71st anniversary of Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule.

She instead called for a future-oriented relationship between South Korea and Japan, saying that to make meaningful changes it was important that Japan first face up to history.
By Yi Whan-woo





President Park Geun-hye

President Park Geun-hye said Monday that North Korea has begun to show signs of "serious cracks" within its regime, citing a series of defections by members of the North Korean elite recently.

Park warned that Pyongyang could launch terrorist attacks or resort to military provocations against Seoul as the prospect of political upheaval looms large there because leader Kim Jong-un will try to keep his grip on power.

"There are growing possibilities over all sorts of terrorist attacks and provocations targeting us, including cyber terrorism, as North Korea tries to battle internal upheaval, to prevent any further defections, and to stir up chaos in our society," she said during a National Security Council meeting at Cheong Wa Dae.

Park convened the meeting as South Korea and the United States began Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), a joint military exercise held every year on the peninsula. It will run through Sept. 2

The meeting also took place after Thae Yong-ho, North Korea's deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, defected to South Korea with his family in late July.

Thae was one of the high-profile figures who have deserted the dictatorial regime in recent years.

The young despot reportedly responded angrily and ordered attacks against South Koreans abroad.

"We can't lower our guard even for a moment considering key North Korean officials have been fleeing their country and that their regime is going to extreme measures," Park said. "We must be fully aware of the nature of the emergency, and I ask all Cabinet members to take stern measures against any action that can create rifts and conflict within our society."

The President especially called for a robust readiness posture as the UFG is underway, citing Pyongyang's threats to launch preemptive nuclear attacks, Monday. Pyongyang has protested that the Seoul-Washington exercise is a rehearsal for the invasion of the North.

North Korea also confirmed last week that it has begun resumption of nuclear fuel reprocessing for plutonium production, triggering concerns over a fifth nuclear test.
North Korea's Red Cross demanded Monday that South Korea should unconditionally repatriate 13 North Korean overseas restaurant defectors who it claimed were abducted by South Korea.

The Central Committee of the DPRK Red Cross said it sent a letter to its South Korean counterpart which calls for Seoul to return the workers without condition.

Seoul said last week that the 13 North Koreans working at a restaurant in China have begun to settle down here after undergoing a months-long probe in the wake of their rare mass defection in April.

The North's Red Cross said that Seoul's announcement is "a mean plot" to avoid public criticism of forcible detention of its citizens and "cover up the truth behind the group abduction."

It is not the first time that North Korea has claimed that the defectors were kidnapped by South Korea's spy agency.












By Doug Bandow



Once again Donald Trump has shocked the American foreign policy establishment. He suggested that maybe the U.S. should no longer defend its prosperous, populous allies in Europe.



The North Atlantic Treaty Organization made sense when created in 1949. War-ravaged Western Europe faced an aggressive Soviet Union. The American defense shield allowed Washington's allies to recover and rebuild.



Nearly seven decades later the alliance has become a means rather than an end. The world has changed, yet Washington continues to guarantee the security of its 27 (soon to be 28) NATO allies (as well as Japan, South Korea, and others). Yet only four European nations bother to devote even two percent of GDP to the military, barely half America's level.



Trump sees this as just a free-riding problem. He said he'd like to keep the alliance, but doesn't know if it's possible. "Many NATO nations are not making payments, are not making what they're supposed to make," he complained." He "would prefer not to walk," but if the Euro-wimps don't "fulfill their obligations to us," perhaps Washington shouldn't defend them.



A predictable firestorm erupted about America keeping its word and reassuring allies. U.S. officials rushed to calm the Europeans' fears. "In good times and in bad, Europe can count on the United States," declared President Barack Obama.



The Trump campaign appeared to retreat ever so slightly: aide Sam Clovis downplayed the candidate's remarks: "We just want people to follow the rules. We're putting a marker out there." Trump told the Washington Post: NATO is a "good thing to have" and "I don't want to pull it out."



The problem is real, but Trump fundamentally misperceives the real problem. The issue is not burden-sharing, getting the Europeans to do more. It is burden-shedding, turning responsibility over to the Europeans. There no longer is any geopolitical justification for America to defend Europe.



The only potential serious threat facing Europe is Russia, and even that fear is overblown. Vladimir Putin's behavior is egregious, but he's shown no interest in dominating or conquering distant territories peopled by non-ethnic Russians. Trump was almost alone among presidential candidates to recognize that it is U.S. interest to accommodate rather than confront Russia.



In any case, Europe enjoys a population advantage approaching three-to-one and economic lead of nearly ten-to-one over Russia. Europe has a larger population and economy than America. Even today Europe spends two to three times as much as Russia on the military.



Relative economic parity doesn't mean America and Europe should share equal responsibility for protecting Europe. It means Europe should protect Europe.



Why should the U.S. maintain the status quo?" America gets a lot out of the alliance, argue representatives of the countries being defended. Jens Stoltenberg, the former Norwegian prime minister who now serves as alliance secretary general claimed that "we defend one another," pointing to European contributions in Afghanistanfar less than America's role in that nation, and far less costly than bearing most of the burden in confronting nuclear-armed Russia.



The U.S. is interested in the continent's security and stability, it is said. Of course, but the Europeans have an even greater interest. Yet they lack an incentive to act if America promises to take care of their problems.



Moreover, there's an even better case for the Europeans to subsidize America's defense. After all, the continent is vitally interested in U.S. well-being, more so, frankly, than the other way around. Why don't the well-heeled Europeans subsidize American security?



Washington uses bases in Europe for its misbegotten activities in the Middle East, contend some NATO enthusiasts. But America would be much more secure if it didn't intervene so promiscuously and disastrously. Anyway, it's possible to negotiate base access without promising to inaugurate nuclear war on behalf of the host country.



U.S. officials should stop whining about European nations which won't fulfill their promises to do more. As long as Washington insists on defending its well-off friends, U.S. officials declare the commitment to Europe to be absolute, and American presidents jet off to "reassure" the Europeans, the latter would be stupid to spend more on the military.



As for Trump's complaints, increasing Europe's outlays would not suddenly make it in America's interest to defend that continent. Nor would any increase be sustainable. Most Europeans perceive little threat, and thus little justification, for additional military outlays.



No one should mistake Donald Trump as a great strategic thinker. But when it comes to foreign policy he exhibits more common sense than the usual gaggle of establishment politicians, starting with Hillary Clinton. NATO has outlived its usefulness. The U.S. should turn over defense responsibility for Europe to Europe.





Doug Bandow is the senior fellow, Cato Institute.




Two recent cases show Beijing's immaturity



On Aug. 18, China staged a major military drill in the East Sea, involving destroyers armed with missiles, strategic bombers and early warning flyers. Although the drill was conducted on the high seas, the Chinese armada wedged itself between Korea and Japan, a provocative act.



Recently, Beijing unilaterally postponed this year's Korea-China CEO meeting, an annual confab of top executives held since 2012. It wanted to put on the agenda Seoul's decision to deploy the U.S. terminal high-altitude area defense (THAAD) against the North Korean missile threat.



These aggressive moves prove what has been widely suspected: China is suffering a severe case of unilateralism. It has grown to be the world's No. 2 economy in three "short" decades but it remains boxed in a cold war era mentality.



Unless it sheds this anachronistic mould and modernizes, China will certainly be alienated from its neighbors, its only friends being rogue states like the North.



Beijing's East Sea drill is the continuation of its defiance of the international rule of law.



According to China's military newspaper, the sea where the drill was conducted was filled with smoke and thunder from live artillery firing, an intimating account.



This followed China's naval exercise in the South China Sea after an international tribunal ruled Beijing's dominant moves illegal last month. Beijing has built manmade islets and airstrips there in a move to effectuate its control of the world's artery sea lane and islets locked in territorial disputes with other countries.



It also coincided with Seoul's THAAD deployment decision, which Beijing claimed would target it, ignoring the apparent fact that it is aimed at countervailing the North's WMDs. Beijing through media outlets stated Seoul would press on with the deployment at the peril of all-out retaliation. Japan also was irked by China's latest drill because of its territorial dispute over Japan's Senkaku Islands.



If China thinks that its act of flexing military muscles frightens Korea, Japan and other countries in the region into submission, it should think again. Rather, the region would opt to strengthen its ties with the United States and go ahead with its plan to encircle China.



Then, the postponement of the CEO meeting raises a big question mark on China's reliability as a business partner. First of all, discussing THAAD or more specifically the impropriety of Korea's decision as China requested was the least appropriate for a business meeting.



China's tendency to mix business with politics should be taken into consideration before the Dec. 11 deadline by which China must gain market economy status (MES) from the World Trade Organization. Earning MES may lift restrictions on China in trade disputes.



There are already signs that China is taking retaliatory steps against Korea over the THAAD: visa restrictions for Koreans and cancelation of business deals besides the delayed CEO gathering.



China should bear in mind the fact that it is Korea's biggest trading partner goes both ways. China is the biggest importer of Korea's goods but much of the imports are intermediate products that are used for its own exports. In other words, China could cause Korea great damage but only at a significant cost to itself as well.



It's time for China to stop acting like an adolescent that has an uncontrollable itch to pick an uncalled-for fight. Only then, the world will treat China as an adult and give it the respect it so craves.




South Korea will kick off its annual Ulchi exercise this week to better prepare for national emergency situations, the Ministry of Public Safety and Security said Sunday.

The drill that runs from Monday through Thursday is the 49th of its kind and comes amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula following North Korea's fourth nuclear test and long-range missile launch earlier this year.

The ministry said this year, emphasis will be placed on dealing with North Korea's frequent global positioning system jamming attacks along with cyberterrorism.

"Compared to the past, greater focus will be placed on actual drills to cope with threats and emergencies," it said.

It moreover said authorities will check the mobilization of key technical personnel and construction related assets and protection of critical facilities like nuclear power plants, airports and harbors.

It said some 4,000 state-agencies and 480,000 people will take part in the drill this year.

Earlier the education ministry said 212 education offices and agencies will take part in this year's Ulchi exercise.

The ministry said for this year's exercise, particular emphasis will be placed on the ability of educational institutions to respond to and minimize damage caused by cyberthreats like hacking attacks.

"The goal of the training is for all participants to prepare for emergency situations and respond quickly to national crisis situations if they arise," said Education Minister Lee Joon-sik. (Yonhap)
North Korea's state-run media that caters to its domestic audience has remained silent on the defection of a senior diplomat, Pyongyang watchers here said Sunday.



Newspapers, TV and radio stations in North Korea did not mention Thae Yong-ho whatsoever, even though the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Pyongyang's official news wire, blasted Seoul for using the diplomat to fuel anti-DPRK propaganda and create dangerous friction between the two Koreas.



The KCNA generally focuses on broadcasting Pyongyang's messages abroad and is not accessible to ordinary North Koreans.



Observers said that even after Seoul acknowledged the defection of Thae and his entire family last week following media reports, Chosun Central TV and the Rodong Sinmun, the country's main paper and organ of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), did not cover the incident at all.



"Internal news outlets covered 'regular stories,' which seems to be an intentional move by authorities to withhold the defection from the general population," said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University.



He speculated that Pyongyang clearly does not want the people to know that the No. 2 diplomat to its embassy in London had defected to South Korea.



"By attacking Thae and Seoul through the KCNA it is expressing its views without running the risk of ordinary people knowing about the desertion," he said.



The North has claimed Saturday that Thae is a criminal and attacked Seoul for using him to spread lies about the North. It also attacked London for not handing the criminal over to North Korea despite strong protests being lodged.



Related to the defection that probably took place last month, a British newspaper over the weekend said that Thae contacted British intelligence two months ago and that he made his escape with the help of the United States.



The Sunday Express said Thae and his family got on a British military jet and were flown to Germany before heading to South Korea. It added that while the diplomat was given "carte blanche" to choose where he wanted to go to, he opted for South Korea. (Yonhap)




By Lee Min-hyung



With Europe's largest electronics fair coming next week, the world's top-tier technology giants are preparing to showcase their latest achievements in the consumer electronics industry.



Samsung and LG, the nation's largest electronics giants, also unveiled Monday a glimpse of what they will focus on at the upcoming IFA tradeshow, which is held from Sept. 2 to 7 in Berlin, Germany.



LG Electronics is seeking to draw attention by focusing on the business-to-business (B2B) sector. The company said it plans to introduce key components for consumer electronics devices  including motors and compressors  in a bid to win more orders from global clients there.



For the first time in its history, IFA plans to open the IFA Global Markets focusing on the B2B market for suppliers and component manufacturers.



At the B2B marketplace, LG plans to introduce some 30 key components for washing machines, vacuum cleaners and air conditioners, the company said.



This is in line with its group-wide efforts to generate more revenue from the lucrative B2B business. LG Group Vice Chairman Koo Bon-joon, head of the group's new growth engines, has in recent years called for the company to look for new business chances keeping track of global market trends.



Under his leadership, LG Electronics has since boosted its investment in the B2B sector, which in a general sense is more stable and less volatile than the conventional business-to-consumer (B2C) sector.



"We are going to strengthen our foothold in the components business by continuously increasing our B2B sales ratio," Kim Kwang-ho, head of the compressor and motor business division at LG Electronics, said. "The key reason behind our premium appliances' success comes largely from our industry-leading technology to manufacture motors and compressors."



Samsung Electronics also said it will unveil its new AddWash drum washers at the upcoming fair.



The nation's largest electronics firm plans to unveil new premium washers  including a slim version tailor-made for urban life, the company said.



Samsung Electronics will also introduce its AddWash Combo lineup, which allows users to wash and dry laundry at the same time.



The new washers will be equipped with the firm's Smart Check functionality, allowing users to monitor problems with the washers in real-time.



Seo Byung-sam, vice president of Samsung's consumer electronics business division, said: "We decided to launch the new lineup on the strong popularity for our AddWash washers in the European market"






By Kim Tae-gyu

Samsung Electronics plans to take the wraps off its third budget smartphone, the Z2, in India during an unveiling event soon, the company said Monday.

The low-cost smartphone is expected to strengthen Samsung's stake in both the high-end and low-end markets with its Galaxy Note 7 gaining popularity across the world despite its high price.

"We have invited journalists to the event introducing the Z2 on Aug. 23 in India," a Samsung official said.

Much speculation has swirled surrounding the Z2, which is powered by Samsung's own Tizen operating system. In comparison, the firm's top-end Galaxy devices use Google's Android.

Early in 2015, Samsung phased in the Z1 with a price tag lower than 100,000 won ($88) to win customers in countries such as India and Bangladesh.

Buoyed by the success of the low-priced model, which sold more than 1 million soon after its debut, Samsung followed up with the Z3 with better applications and specs but a higher price of around 150,000 won.

The Z2 is the third of the Z series and as the serial number indicates, its price is expected to be somewhere between that of the Z1 and the Z3.

Its two predecessors supported third-generation technology but the Z2 will be based on fourth-generation long-term evolution (LTE). It is predicted to have a 4-inch active mode organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) display, 5 million-pixel camera, 8-gigabyte expandable memory and 1.5-GHz quad core processor.

Unlike the Z1 and Z3, Samsung seems to be marketing the Z2 not only in the Asian markets of India and Bangladesh but also in African countries of Kenya, Nigeria and the Republic of South Africa.

However, Samsung has so far refused to disclose details about the phone.

"All information will be provided at the forthcoming unveiling event. We expect that the new model will also be a hit," the Samsung official said.

The Korean tech giant came up with the Galaxy S7 this year to chalk up success in top-end markets and its recent Galaxy Note 7 has also got off to a solid start in the world market.

Included in Samsung's smartphone line-up are Galaxy A-, C-, E- and J-series products, all geared toward the mid-tier markets.

The multi-segment strategy boosts Samsung in a two-way rivalry with Apple, which has stood out in the premium phone market but failed to carve out a big share in the lower-end market.

While strengthening its presence in budget phone competition with the Z series, Samsung has eaten into Apple's share with its flagship Galaxy phones. Apple is expected to strike back with its iPhone 7 later this year.
Tokyo Summerland / Courtesy of Twitter



By Lee Han-soo

A knife-wielding assailant terrorized female visitors at Tokyo Summerland, a water park in Tama, a city in the western part of the Tokyo Metropolis, according to The Japan Times.

There have been eight cases where females swimming in the Cobalt Pool, an artificial wave pool, received slashes from a knife to their lower bodies on Sunday.

The victims whose ages ranged from 18 to 24 were rushed to the hospital. None of their wounds were life-threatening.

The Japanese police have opened an investigation into the incident and have raised the possibility of a hate crime. According to the Tokyo Summerland spokesman, the wave pool was packed at that time, making it hard to identify the culprit.
A dog sacrificed himself to save a baby in a house fire. / Screen capture from YouTube



By Lee Jin-a

A dog heroically saved an eight-month-old baby from a house fire by shielding the infant from the flames using its own body.

According to a CBS report, Friday, a fire broke out at the home of Erika Poremski, who lived with her daughter Viviana and their dog Polo in Baltimore, Maryland. Poremski arrived at home to discover the fire, while her daughter and dog were still inside.

"I tried to keep getting in. She was up the stairs, but the fire smoke was so heavy I couldn't get past it," said Poremski. "I kept running back out and back in, trying to get up there. Then, the door curling started falling and I couldn't get back in."

From the several attempts to rescue her daughter, Poremski suffered burns on her hands and face. However, she was so desperate that she did not notice that part of the skin on her hand came off when she grabbed a hot railing.

"I couldn't see all the skin was off my hand from grabbing the rail and it melted off," she told CBS News.

When firefighters finally reached the house, they found Polo shielding Viviana with his own body. Only suffering from the burn on her arm and sides, the baby was revived at the scene. But Polo did not survive.

"He was my first baby before Viv. He was like my child," Poremski said weeping. "I'm losing everything I love in the blink of an eye. I feel like I'm drowning and can't get out."

The local fire department said the cause of the fire is under investigation.
Omran Daqneesh sits in an ambulance after pulled out of a collapsed house hit by an airstrike in Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday. His brother Ali Daqneesh died from injuries sustained in the same airstrike three days after being hospitalized. / Courtesy of YouTube



By Hong Dam-young

The elder brother of a Syrian boy rescued from a missile-attacked house with a blood-stained face and dust-covered body died on Saturday at a hospital from multiple injuries sustained from the attack. He was 10.

Ali Daqneesh was rescued on Wednesday from the house in Aleppo, a war-torn Syrian city, along with his 5-year-old younger brother Omran Daqneesh. Photos of blood-stained Omran sitting silently in an ambulance seemingly too dazed and shocked to even cry  shocked the world, highlighting the brutality of the ongoing civil war in the Middle East nation.

"Omran was pulled out of the rubble quickly to come back to life, Ali stayed under the rubble for a while," Dr. Abu Rasoul, who treated the deceased brother, was quoted as saying in a CNN report. "His brother, whose photo was not taken, no one mentioned him, he died and he is by God's side now."

Russia denies allegations that its Air Force was responsible for the deadly attack on the children's house. Moscow said on Thursday it will support a U.N. proposal for weekly two-day ceasefires to allow aid deliveries to get through the besieged city that has been suffering from shortage of basic supplies.

Aleppo, once Syria's commercial and industrial center, has been devastated by the civil war that lasts for five years with the government controlling the west and rebels the east. More than 400,000 people were killed with the death toll expected to rise further.
Three gunmen who alighted from a tricycle on Saturday in Kaduna opened fire on a 27-year-old man, Mohammed Rabiu, killing him on the spot.

It was learnt that Rabiu just returned from Malaysia where he went for studies. He was shot in his car at about 8:30 pm on Saturday after driving all the way from Abuja.

Rabiu was said to be in company of a friend, Jafar Ali.

According to the friend, who later narrated the incident to journalists, the duo drove from Abuja to see another friend of the deceased along the Lugard Hall.



The friend, he said, had gone out when they arrived at the Lugard Hall, located in the heart of the city. Ali, who escaped the assailants bullets by a whisker, said three gunmen alighted from a tricycle parked near to where we parked our car.

He said the gunmen made straight for them and demanded for their mobile phones.

Ali said, Initially we thought they were policemen because they were pointing guns at us but the next thing I heard were gunshots.

The men kept firing as they opened the doors of the car, pushed us out as they entered the car and drove away with it.

All these happened in less than two minutes. As I struggled with them, they kept firing but somehow the bullets from the locally-made guns missed me but they shot my friend.

It was when they left that we got a car from the house which took him to the hospital but he was confirmed dead in less about an hour after that.

Meanwhile, it was gathered that that the Kaduna State Police Command had commenced preliminary investigation into the killing, following the formal report of the incident to the police.

Though, the Kaduna State Police Commands Public Relations Officer, Aliyu Usman, could not be reached, a source said the police had retrieved the bullet shells at the scene of the incident.

Punch

Follow Us on Facebook  @LadunLiadi; Instagram  @LadunLiadi; Twitter  @LadunLiadi; Youtube  @LadunLiadiTV for updates
The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary

Read more
PRESS RELEASE

Putin Keeps Changing the Strategic Situation in Southwest Asia

Aug. 20, 2016 (EIRNS)Turkeys Deputy Prime Minister, Numan Kurtulmus, on Aug. 17 stated that Turkeys policy towards Syria is undergoing "a seismic shift." That description accurately reflects the process underway throughout the entire region, under the influence of the forceful leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Turkish media outlets are reporting that Moscow has taken diplomatic steps toward establishing a permanent solution to the ongoing Syrian civil war with a trilateral coordination group of Turkey, Russia and Iran. The Aug. 18 Daily Sabah noted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans stressing the importance of Russian-Turkish-Iranian cooperation and reported that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov met with some Syrian opposition representatives on Aug. 16, "initiating efforts to establish the trilateral coordination group with Turkey and Iran to end the ongoing civil war."

Russia is expected to issue a three-step plan, now. "According to the plan, the first step would be to provide a safe return for refugees to Syria within two years, while establishing safe passage to the Jarablous-Azaz road that Turkey and Russia would jointly control. Furthermore, within the two years it is expected that the Damascus administration will be transformed into a strengthened federal governing system. The system mentioned in the media indicates that it aims to integrate all groups into the political system in Syria."

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim stressed yesterday, as did the Daily Sabah article the day before, that Syrias territorial integrity must be maintained.

"One of the most important conditions for going back to smooth sailing in Syria is preserving the territorial integrity of Syria. Syria depends on a governance figure that does not rest on ethnic structures,"

Yildirim said, adding that he believed a "noteworthy development on this path could be experienced in the forthcoming months."

Russias initiatives are both diplomatic and military. The Russian Defense Ministry announced yesterday that the corvettes Zeliony Dol and Serpukhov launched three cruise missiles at Jabhat al Nusra from the Mediterranean Sea, destroying a command center and a terrorist base near the Dar-Taaza inhabited area as well as a plant manufacturing mortar munitions, and a large depot with armament were destroyed in the Aleppo province. Meanwhile, Irans Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan said that Russia can use the Iranian Shahid Nojeh air base in Hamedan for strikes against ISIS "For as long as they need." According to Dehghan, Irans decision to allow the Russian Aerospace Forces to use that airbase is a part of cooperation in fighting the Islamic State terrorist group at the request from the Syrian government.

"It is a military decision made in the framework of cooperation in fighting IS and other terrorists, which is organized at request from the Syrian government,"

he said.

This Russian display of military power is making some people nervous. "Taken together, the new military moves appeared to be a demonstration that Russia has the ability to strike from virtually all directions in a region where it has been reasserting its power ... from Iran, from warships in the Caspian Sea, from its base in the Syrian coastal province of Latakia and now from the Mediterranean,"

reports the New York Times.
Call it logrolling or one hand washing the other, a generally recognized fact in Washington is that if you want something for your district, it pays to agree to the same thing for another guys district.

That point may have been lost on three Louisiana congressmen when they voted against a $50.5-billion relief package for the victims of Superstorm Sandy. The 2012 storm ravaged coastal communities in New Jersey and New York. Now theyre in the position of needing the same sort of aid for their own state. How will that play out?

The three lawmakers, all Republicans, are Rep. Steve Scalise (currently the House majority whip); Bill Cassidy, who moved up to the Senate last year; and John Fleming. Theyre all likely exemplars of another Washington truism: fiscal responsibility is great, until its your own district thats getting fiscally hammered. Then Job One becomes working to help the residents of the threatened areas in their time of need.

Advertisement

Paying for disasters and being fiscally responsible are not mutually exclusive.  Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), on rejecting a $50-billion aid package for Superstorm Sandy in 2013

At least, thats what the letter all three signed to President Obama on Aug. 14 said. The letter, which sought a disaster declaration for the state in response to its floods, came from all six Louisiana members of Congress and its two senators. Obama issued the declaration that very day.

Fleming, Scalise and Cassidy, by the way, are also climate change deniers, a sign that theyre unable to process evidence in front of their own eyes. Fleming has claimed that evidence of climate change is the product of a radical environmental agenda. Scalise has griped that its an effort by radicals to prop up wave after wave of job-killing regulations that are leading to skyrocketing food and energy costs. Cassidy in 2014 claimed that global temperatures had not risen in 15 years, which happened to be untrue. Remarkably, both Fleming and Cassidy are medical doctors.

No one is saying that the flood-stricken communities of Louisiana dont deserve all the assistance that the U.S. government can provide them. But so did the residents of the Sandy zone. How do the lawmakers 2013 votes to deny relief to those Northeast communities square with their demand for emergency flood assistance now?

Apples and oranges, says T.J. Tatum, a spokesman for Scalise. To begin with, he explains, the money sought under the disaster declaration has already been appropriated; the declaration is merely a formality needed to authorize the Federal Emergency Management Agency to start spending it in the disaster zone.

The Sandy relief, by contrast, was supplemental relief to cover recovery and rebuilding in the wake of the disaster. Scalise and Cassidy, according to their spokesmen, actually voted for a $17-billion initial appropriation for that purpose. But they balked at a further $33-billion chunk. A spokesman for Flemings office didnt return our call.

Because the two appropriations were bundled together in a final bill on Jan. 15, 2013, they voted the whole package down. (It passed the House anyway, 241-180, and the Senate followed suit two weeks later.)

Scalise and Cassidy said their objection actually had been that the House had failed to offset the Sandy appropriation with federal budget cutbacks elsewhere. Paying for disasters and being fiscally responsible are not mutually exclusive, Scalise said at the time.

But they almost certainly knew that their proposed offsets were sure bill-killers: They would have eliminated mass transit subsidies for federal workers and certain agricultural subsidies, among other things. When an amendment to require those offsets was voted down, Scalise, Cassidy and Fleming rejected the $50.5-billion total, including the initial $17-billion piece.

Some fellow lawmakers warned them that their position could come back to bite them in a sensitive spot later. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)  who was defeated by Cassidy in 2014  called the demand for budget offsets a dangerous precedent serving only an extreme, tea party ideology.

Indeed, the funds made available through the emergency declaration are likely to be a drop in the bucket compared to what ultimately will be needed in Louisiana. FEMA will spend several million dollars on emergency housing and other aid. But the final toll could be well into the tens of billions. Initial estimates in Baton Rouge, covering about half of the parishes hit by the flooding, are that 110,000 homes worth a total $20 billion have been damaged. Business losses and reconstruction costs will come to much more.

These are the categories covered by the Sandy appropriation that Louisianas lawmakers voted down. Tatum, the spokesman for Scalise, says hes not sure how the members will deal with that demand. The states congressional delegation will meet next week to determine what the appropriate legislative response should be.

Plainly, an insistence by lawmakers from outside the flood-stricken region on budget offsets resembling what the Louisiana congressmen demanded will delay that relief; thats what happened with the Sandy package, which was deferred for weeks by the budget dickering.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltziks blog.

MORE FROM HILTZIK

The Supreme Courts awful Hobby Lobby decision just spawned a very ugly stepchild

These new stem cell treatments are expensive  and unproven

Smoking gun? Aetna threatened to quit Obamacare if the government blocked its Humana merger
The Trump Presidential campaign rolled out its first major television ad last week, aimed at voters in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. For Social Security experts and advocates, it wasnt worth waiting for.

In Hillary Clintons America, the system stays rigged against Americans, the ad declares. Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay, collecting Social Security benefits, skipping the line.

Bluntly speaking, these statements about Social Security are untrue. Here are the facts:

Advertisement

1. Unauthorized workers are not permitted to collect Social Security benefits.

2. No one can collect Social Security benefits he or she didnt earn from working in Social Security-covered employment.

3. Theres no mechanism for anyone to skip the line, whatever that means.

All Social Security benefits are based on ones work history. To be vested in the program requires 40 quarters, or 10 years, of covered employment. In 2016, in practice, that means earning at least $1,260 in a quarter for that three-month period to count. No one who works has any more or less right to Social Security than anyone else, so the idea that anyone is skipping the line is just false.

Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay, collecting Social Security benefits, skipping the line.  A Social Security fantasy retailed in a Donald Trump campaign ad

Despite all that, the idea that unauthorized workers receive Social Security is one of those lies that can be found circulating around the Internet but contains not one iota of truth, says Social Security expert Nancy Altman.

As it happens, illegal immigrants have been something of a boon to the Social Security system. Thats because many of them secured work by showing faked, stolen, or otherwise misused Social Security numbers; some could be workers who paid into the program while present on a work visa, but overstayed the visa and kept working. The Social Security Administration calculated a few years ago that in 2010, the program collected $13 billion from those workers and paid out about $1 billion in benefits to recipients in those categories, for a net profit of $12 billion.

The myth of illegal immigrants receiving Social Security is fueled by misconceptions that have been harder to eradicate than cockroaches. One involves persistent confusion between Social Security and Supplemental Security Income, or SSI. Thats an anti-poverty program aimed at low-income people who are 65 or older, or blind or disabled. Its administered by the Social Security Administration, but its not part of the Social Security program and its funded out of the general treasury, not through the payroll taxes of Americans, despite what this Fox News report from 2003 said.

Nor are any but a tiny percentage of immigrants eligible for SSI at all. As this overview from the National Immigration Law Center explains, the only immigrants who may qualify for SSI or almost any other federal benefit are lawful residents (those with green cards), people officially granted refugee status or asylum, Cuban and Haitian entrants, some abused immigrants along with their children or parents, and victims of human trafficking. When it tightened up assistance programs in 1996, the law center says, Congress reserved its harshest restrictions on immigrant seniors and immigrants with disabilities who seek assistance under the SSI program.

Legal immigrants with a green card theoretically could bring over their parents and sign them up for SSI under some circumstances. But as Kathy Ruffing of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities observes, there are such circumstances, but theyre so rare as to be meaningless. The parents would have to be refugees, which is unlikely since theyd be brought to the U.S. as sponsored entrants; or theyd have to serve in the U.S. military or work at least 40 quarters, or 10 years, in Social Security-covered employment.

Ruffing told us that there was a time when it was a tad easier for adult immigrants to bring their parents from abroad and put them on SSI, though in such cases the childs earnings could be attributed to the parents, which typically made the parents ineligible for SSI. But Congress tightened up the rules even further  in 1996. Memo to the Trump campaign: That was 20 years ago. Please update your knowledge base.

A couple of Trump surrogates tried to push back at the truth last week, after the Washington Post debunked the Trump ad. They didnt get it right, either.

Trump spokesman Stephen Miller maintained that Clinton supports executive amnesty for illegal immigrants of all ages, which confers guaranteed access to Social Security benefits at U.S. taxpayer expense (net payments will be dwarfed by net withdrawals). Nope: nothing guarantees access to Social Security benefits except ones work history, and on average, workers born after 1955 will have paid for their own Social Security benefits out of their payroll taxes.

Another surrogate, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), told the Post that Clintons plan would give illegal immigrants instant access to Social Security. She will do this through her plan to continue and expand President Obamas illegal executive amnesty  which includes Social Security Disability Benefits.

Again, no. No one gets instant access to Social Security benefits; you have to work to receive them, and that includes Social Security disability. Trump and his echo chamber need to go back to the drawing board.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltziks blog.

UPDATES:

3:44 p.m.: This post has been updated with more details on SSI rules for immigrants.
Wells Fargo has agreed to pay more than $4 million in fines and rebates over allegations that it charged illegal fees to student-loan borrowers.

As part of a deal announced Monday, the San Francisco banking giant did not admit or deny wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $3.6-million penalty to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, plus $410,000 in refunds to borrowers who paid fees that the bureau said should never have been charged.

Wells Fargo spokesman Jason Vasquez said all of the CFPBs allegations relate to practices that Wells Fargo changed several years ago and that affected only a small number of borrowers.

Advertisement

The CFPB said problems in the banks student loan servicing arm resulted in borrowers paying a few types of unnecessary fees from 2010 to 2013.

For instance, the bureau said that when borrowers who had more than one loan made a partial payment, the bank would apply part of that payment to each outstanding loan, even if the payment would have covered what was owed for one of the loans. The result is that borrowers might have paid late fees for all loans.

Thats reminiscent of a practice Wells Fargo and other banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, have been sued over: maximizing the number of overdraft fees they charge by reordering transactions to pay the largest first, sometimes resulting in several overdraft fees for small transactions.

The Supreme Court in April upheld a lower court verdict ordering Wells Fargo to pay $203 million to customers who paid multiple overdraft fees because of that reordering.

The CFPB said Wells Fargo also improperly charged late fees to customers who paid on the last day of their payment grace period, discouraged borrowers from making partial payments and failed to update inaccurate payment information sent to credit bureaus, potentially harming borrowers credit scores.

james.koren@latimes.com

Follow me: @jrkoren
SAN DIEGO  The Old Globes staging of Loves Labors Lost proves that it is possible to fall in love with a production at first sight.

John Lee Beattys scenic design transforms the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre into an elegantly verdant royal park. I havent yet taken a vacation this summer, but the beauty of this aristocratic enclosure, an ideal setting for a romantic frolic, was as rejuvenating as a stroll through the manicured grounds of a European castle.

Kathleen Marshall, a director and Tony-winning choreographer who made her name with Broadway musicals (including blissful revivals of Anything Goes, The Pajama Game and Wonderful Town), was an inspired choice to stage this most Elizabethan of Shakespearean comedies. Though bursting with chaotic silliness, the play has the formal patterning of a dance, and Marshall choreographs the comic action with lustrous panache.

Advertisement

Loves Labors Lost is a tricky play to pull off today. The language can be arcane, and the literary satire is accessible to only a handful of Renaissance literature scholars. Yet the charming plot, the quick-wittedness of the characters and the agile handling of darkening tones make this one of the most loved of Shakespeares less-popular works.

SIGN UP for the free Essential Arts & Culture newsletter 

The play, as the title stipulates, flouts that most important rule of romantic comedy, the happy ending. Our wooing doth not end like an old play: Jack hath not Jill, as the constantly japing, super-sophisticated Berowne says in the final act after being out-mocked by Rosaline, the woman hes plainly fallen in love with.

Its fun to imagine Shakespeare pitching this comedy to his company, the Lord Chamberlains Men: No sooner has Ferdinand, King of Navarre, taken an oath with his buddies to swear off women for three years, trading sensual pleasures for the life of the mind, than the Princess of France arrives with her train of nubile young ladies. Silly love games, along with a good deal of hypocrisy horseplay, ensue.

A merry entertainment, Will. How does it end?

Just as Ferdinand and his courtiers are ready to discard their ruses and reveal their hearts, a messenger arrives with the news that the Princess father has died. The ladies return to France for a year of mourning, promising the lords they will accept their tenders of affection if they undergo a 12-month period of penance for their gibing spirits.

No doubt the company asked to take a closer look at the script before giving this rising star playwright the green light. Young Shakespeare was undeniably talented, but boy, could he cast a pall on final act festivities!

The intrusion of deaths messenger into this teasing romance poses no problem for contemporary audiences who have grown accustomed to comedies taking twisted turns. Harder to reanimate today is the antique comic business involving masquerades, rhyming repartee and a slew of supporting characters who seem to have sprung from a commedia dellarte trunk.

But Marshall finds fresh life in this old material. Her cast for the most parts is exceptionally vivid, the hilarity emerging from character rather than coming at its expense.

Somewhere along the line, Stephen Spinella, forever to be remembered for his Tony-winning portrayal of Prior Walter in Angels in America, became one of the countrys most versatile classical actors. He brings flamboyant drollery to the part of the pedant Holofernes, breaking into Latin at every ill-judged opportunity and flipping his hair triumphantly after employing the adjective thrasonical.

Patrick Kerr summons some wild-eyed Martin Short lunacy in his handling of Sir Nathaniel, the curate who always looks happily stunned by Holofernes inscrutable erudition. Greg Hildreth is a delight as the clown Costard, a simpleton whos far too smart to renounce wine and women.

Daniel Petzold, one of the cast members from the Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre program, doesnt quite have the experience to maximize the effect of Moths puncturing retorts. But he nonetheless jauntily acquits himself in the role of the page of Don Adriano De Armado, the Spanish braggart Triney Sandoval deliciously plays to the hilt.

But what about main cast? Marshall lets the lords rule the stage. Jonny Orsinis Ferdinand may be king but he runs with the pack. His charisma is great but so too is his skittish vulnerability. Kieran Campions Berowne is like head boy at a boarding school, a natural wise guy but the one everyone rushes to when in a jam. Orsini and Campion collectively share the honors of leading lads.

I wish Marshall had foregrounded the female characters a bit more. As it is, Kevin Cahoons Boyet, the lord attending the Princess on this embassy on behalf of her father, steals every scene hes in with his mincing mischief.

Shakespeares men always seem to marry up, and theres no denying that the women in Loves Labors Lost are far cleverer than their male counterparts. Rosaline is the sharpest of them all  at times too sharp for her own good. Some critics consider her a sketch for Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing and Rosalind in As You Like It, though Pascale Armand (who received a Tony nomination this year for her performance in Danai Guriras Eclipsed) imbues her with an independent feistiness. Her ripostes can be ripping, but Armand suggests that Rosalines comebacks are spoken more out of somber self-protection than cruelty.

Kristen Connolly majestically outlines the Princess noble bearing but misses the poetry when it matters most. Two lines in Shakespeare never fail to bring tears to my eyes when I read them: Cordelias No cause, no cause after Lear acknowledges his paternal wrongdoing and the Princess Dead, for my life! when she anticipates the news the messenger brings about her ailing father.

Connolly pauses before the Princess words but still fails to register their emotional resonance. She also doesnt quite convey the contemplative brilliance of the Princess answer to Ferdinand, who hastily insists that she grant him her love before she departs: A time methinks too short/To make a world-without-end bargain in.

The richness of Shakespeares unique comic vision inheres in such intelligent lyricism. Fortunately, this graceful production captures more than enough of this challengingly frolicsome yet ultimately piercing play to win us over. The experience of this Loves Labors Lost is as sweet as the swing that sways in and out of this scenically enchanting revival.

------------

Loves Labors Lost

Where: The Old Globes Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, 1360 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, San Diego

When: Schedule varies; ends Sept. 18

Tickets: Start at $29

Info: (619) 234-5623 or www.OldGlobe.org

Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes

charles.mcnulty@latimes.com

Follow me @charlesmcnulty
Former NBC News correspondent Chris Hansen, best known for his To Catch a Predator investigative segments, will be the new host of the nationally syndicated news magazine Crime Watch Daily.

As part of the deal, announced Monday by Telepictures Productions and Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution, Hansen brings along a new series of Predator-style investigations, in which he uses hidden cameras to ensnare people who use the Internet for criminal activity.

Hansen brings a high-profile name to the program, which is averaging about 1.3 million viewers since its launch in September 2015. He was an NBC News correspondent for 20 years until he left the network in 2014. The show will be renamed Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hansen when he joins Sept. 12.

Advertisement

Hansen will anchor the program out of New York, often using the streets as a backdrop. The other reporters on the series  Matt Doran, Jason Mattera, Ana Garcia, Andrea Isom and Michelle Sigona  will continue to operate out of the programs Los Angeles newsroom.

To Catch A Predator became a TV sensation when it was introduced on Dateline NBC in 2004. Using decoys and hidden cameras, the investigations targeted men who used the Internet to meet underage sex partners. The suspects would be lured to a location and then confronted by Hansen with his signature line, Have a seat, before being arrested by police.

Hansen and NBC News conduced the investigations until 2007. But they were repackaged and ran for years on cable network MSNBC and on overseas TV outlets.

The series was criticized in some journalism circles for blurring the lines between news and law enforcement. A lawsuit was filed by the family of one man, an assistant district attorney in Texas, who killed himself when police showed up at his door with Dateline NBC cameras rolling. NBC settled the lawsuit.

But Hansen has said viewers still ask him about the series, which was lampooned in an episode of South Park. Last year, he used crowdfunding to partly finance a new series of investigations under the name Hansen Vs. Predator, which will be shown on Crime Watch Daily. The hidden-camera segments will look at Internet-related crimes that go beyond sexual predators.

Crime Watch Daily is seen on TV stations in 99% of the U.S. including KTLA in Los Angeles, WGN in Chicago and WPIX in New York.

stephen.battaglio@latimes.com

Twitter: @SteveBattaglio
Sumner Redstones granddaughter Keryn Redstone did not participate in Viacoms boardroom settlement, and would like an opportunity to weigh in, according to court papers filed Monday.

Late last week, Viacoms board approved an agreement with National Amusements Inc., the investment firm that holds Sumner Redstones and his familys controlling shares in Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp.

The settlement agreement was designed to end the rancor that pitted Sumner and Shari Redstone against several Viacom board members, including the companys former chief executive Philippe Dauman.

Advertisement

The three-month legal battle centered on who would steer the Redstone familys $40 billion media empire  Viacom and CBS  and Shari Redstone emerged the victor.

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour 

Judges in Massachusetts and Delaware must approve the settlement between Viacom and National Amusements before it becomes official. The case had been draining energy from Viacom, and the various parties wanted to end the bickering.

But there were problems with the deal, according to Keryn Redstones Los Angeles attorney, Pierce ODonnell.

Keryn Redstone  who counter-sued in the contentious legal dispute earlier this month  was not included in settlement talks  nor did she consent to the agreement.

In addition, public documents havent indicated what role, if any, the ailing Sumner Redstone, 93, had in approving the deal that included the ouster of Dauman from his corporate role. Dauman also was removed from the trust that will eventually oversee Sumner Redstones stake in the controlling National Amusements.

Keryn Redstone is one of the beneficiaries of Sumner Redstones trust.

Massachusetts Probate Judge George Phelan agreed to hear Keryn Redstones motion on Friday, during a previously scheduled hearing on the matter. That hearing was intended to discuss Daumans demand that Sumner Redstone undergo a mental evaluation. However, due to the settlement, Dauman is withdrawing his request.

ODonnell is pushing forward, and has asked the judge to nonetheless order an examination of Redstone.

The lawsuit was filed in May by Dauman and another Viacom board member, George Abrams, to contest their removals from the trust. Until last week, Dauman and Abrams had alleged that the moguls daughter, Shari Redstone, was inappropriately pulling the strings  not Sumner Redstone.

In the blink of an eye, plaintiffs have apparently turned tail, agreed to acquiesce in Sharis palace coup, and suddenly seek to go gentle into that good night with their pockets full of nearly $100 million, Keryn Redstones motion read. Inquiring minds want to  indeed, must  know why Plaintiffs have joined hands with Shari and are now abdicating to her.

National Amusements declined to comment.

Dauman, who was chief executive for nearly 10 years, agreed to leave Viacom with a $72 million golden parachute. As part of the agreement, Daumans longtime lieutenant at Viacom, Thomas Dooley, was elevated to chief executive.

Viacom owns such assets as Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, BET and the Paramount Pictures movie studio.

There have long been tensions between Shari Redstone and her niece, Keryn Redstone, who lives in Los Angeles. Keryn Redstone aligned herself with Manuela Herzer, the moguls former companion who brought the initial lawsuit late last year, claiming that Sumner Redstone was mentally incompetent.

ODonnell also represents Herzer, who is suing Shari Redstone. The case against Shari Redstone is proceeding in a California court.

Keryn should be permitted to analyze the documents to satisfy herself that they do not jeopardize her rights and reflect her grandfathers true wishes, the motion said.

Viacom shares on Monday slipped 4%, or to $1.75 a share, to $41.74.

meg.james@latimes.com

@MegJamesLAT

MORE REDSTONE NEWS:

The Redstones war with Viacom ends: Philippe Dauman resigns, Tom Dooley elected new CEO

Settlement to end Viacom war would have CEO Philippe Dauman replaced by Tom Dooley

Redstone family blasts Dauman after Viacom profit tumbles 27%

Sumner Redstones granddaughter countersues; Viacom settlement talks held

Redstone family reaffirms opposition to Paramount sale

UPDATES:

4:10 p.m. : This article was updated with additional details. It was originally posted at 8:05 a.m.
Old people! So funny, and without even trying!

As a culture more invested in the inchoate ramblings of teenage pop stars than in the earned wisdom of the early-bird-special class, we find anything outside the imagined norm of the elderly  bad words, motorcycles, sex, shenanigans, hijinks  improbable, unallowable and automatically comedy gold. Thus, your Grumpy Old Men, your The Over-the-Hill Gang, your classier gerontological comedies like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Somethings Gotta Give. How dreary Downton Abbey would have been without Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton not acting their age.

Now here is Better Late Than Never, a new reality comedy, premiering Tuesday on NBC, in which the unlikely quartet of seniors Henry Winkler, Terry Bradshaw, George Foreman and William Shatner  whom we are meant to regard as already the best of chums rather than four unrelated celebrities cast in in a reality show  go traveling in Asia together. Comic Jeff Dye, in his early 30s, plays their factotum, chaperone, social director and element of contrast.

Based on a highly successful South Korean series called Grandpas Over Flowers  a title the producers, whose ranks include The Bucket List producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, sadly did not retain  the series will include visits to Japan (Tokyo, in the opening episode, and Kyoto); Seoul, South Korea; Hong Kong; and Phuket and Chiang Mai in Thailand. Though it is represented as a spur-of-the-moment, anything-can-happen adventure  and while it is possible that the stars were kept in the dark about some of what was in store  most of it feels carefully fabricated and well-protected.

Advertisement

In any case, this is not Michael Palin circling the globe thataway and thisaway  that is, a real travel show, with a comic host  but a comedy with travel features, like If Its Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium or The Hangover Part II. And old people.

The principle seems to be to make the show as much like a sitcom or theatrical romp as possible  with Winkler the affable, befuddled nominal leader, Shatner the irascible seeker after new sensations, Bradshaw the bull in the noodle shop and George Foreman as Ringo -- and not to discover how these men would actually get on as traveling companions. (Or as Dye describes them, these bionic men with their hip replacements and recent knee surgeries.) Or who they really are.

Another form of easy humor Better Late offers is that of the muddled tourist: the innocent abroad alarmed by the funny ways and foods of foreign lands  not funny or foreign, of course, to the people who live there. Much supposed hilarity is mined from feeding the travelers parts of animals Americans do not consider food. (The good thing about me, says the man whose name is on the George Foreman Grill, I will eat anything  as long as he can put some barbecue sauce on it.)

There are a lot of short people here, observes the 6-foot-3 Bradshaw, walking in crowded downtown Tokyo. Certainly, if you want foreign flavor, Japan is a good place to start, with its pinball-machine aesthetics, its giant-fighting-robot restaurants, its capsule hotels, where the travelers stay alongside an old Japanese man who walks around naked. I been in New York; I been in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Bradshaw says, but Ive never seen anything like this.

Through the tommy-gun edits, paced to create a sense of Fun! and Excitement! the forced marches and arranged meetings, one gets an occasional glimpse of real people having some form of a real experience, and exchanging sincere thoughts. And yet this air of discovery and intimacy  even Shatner, who at an uncannily lively 85, is nearly two decades older than Bradshaw and Foreman, announcing his fear of death  is also, in a way, built into the feel-good script.

It is possibly not the worst thing to plug into the lazy, hazy, waning days of summer  I mean, I can see its appeal to other people -- as current events melt your mind and before everything gets busy again.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com

On Twitter @LATimesTVLloyd

Better Late Than Never

Where: NBC

When: 10 p.m. Tuesday

Rating: TV-14-L (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14 with an advisory for coarse language)
How does New Mexico cope?

Water covers just 0.2% of the Land of Enchantment, Census Bureau statistics show, making it the driest state by percentage of land area. Its not that most of its 2.1 million residents cant get a drink from the tap; ground and surface water see to that.

But New Mexico, like 15 other states, is landlocked. The broad middle swath of the country plus Vermont are missing out on the aural benefits of the ocean  the sound of waves, for instance, as they break on a beach in a sort of unsynchronized water ballet.

Those tones and their constancy are balm for the brain.

If this is so, the National Park Service holds the key to a 600,000-acre medicine cabinet.

Advertisement

The park service has gathered within its fold 10 national seashores that are protected in perpetuity. Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County is the only West Coast entity, although one day there may be more, assuming coastal quibbling can be overcome.

Celebrating our national parks 

Also within its storehouse of 412 units, the park service has four national lakeshores, all on the Great Lakes, five national rivers and 10 wild and scenic riverways.

Geographically disparate, all share water as their common denominator.

For visitors, the appeal, at first glance, may be recreational opportunities  boating, swimming, fishing and more.

But you need not put forth any effort to enjoy the benefits of these watery wonderlands. You have only to listen.

Water sound is high enough in amplitude that it blocks out other sounds, said Erik Miller-Klein, an engineer and partner in A3 Acoustics in Seattle.

Traffic noises and the clack of shopping carts could be heard in the background as he talked while he walked toward a shopping center. But if he had been next to a water feature  a man-made waterfall, for instance  youd just hear sh-h-h-h, sh-h-h-h, making conversations and almost anything else indistinguishable.

Couple that masking effect with an oceans rhythms  they are probably very similar to a really good breathing pattern that encourages relaxation, he said  and you have a sort of cocoon into which your brain can burrow with no more effort than cocking an ear.

The result of listening to that continuous soundtrack? A drop in blood pressure, which suggests relaxation, said Dr. Jennifer Derebery, an associate partner at House Clinic and a clinical professor of otolaryngology at UCLA.

Stress reduction is almost certainly an unintended consequence of the park services move to protect these seashores and their cousin, the lakeshores.

North Carolinas Cape Hatteras was established in 1937 as the first national seashore to protect a unique environment and shelter its species, many now threatened or endangered, said Darrell Echols, acting deputy regional director for resource stewardship and science for the Southeast region of the National Park Service.

Everything at the beach is encouraging you to slow down.  Erik Miller-Klein

But it was also a way to ensure that city dwellers would have an escape hatch.

Not everybody had a car, and trains didnt get to Hatteras, so it was an effort to get to the Outer Banks, he said of those early visitors to that string of North Carolina barrier islands.

Hatteras got them away from large urban areas to a wild place for a kind of experience like what some of our Western parks [visitors] were experiencing, which was some solitude, some opportunities to recreate by themselves without the influence of other people and other demands on their time.

Sound familiar?

The seashores still sing a siren song. Everything at the beach is encouraging you to slow down, Miller-Klein said, noting that youre probably also getting a dose of vitamin-D-rich sunlight that contributes to a feeling of well-being.

President Kennedy, addressing Americas Cup crews in Newport, R.I., on Sept. 14, 1962, just a day after designating Point Reyes as a national seashore, explained our bond with the water, with the waves.

We all came from the sea, said Kennedy, an avid sailor. We have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going back from whence we came.

Listen carefully and youll hear the ocean welcoming you home.

Freelance writer Rosemary McClure contributed to this report.

travel@latimes.com

MORE NATIONAL PARKS

Unplugging at Point Reyes National Seashore, home to a famous lighthouse, pristine beaches and off-the-grid peace

The sea caves of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore are portals to awe-inducing adventure

Want to hike Point Reyes? Try this four-day backpacking trip
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
A coalition of environmental groups Monday announced plans to sue a regional water treatment authority and the cities of San Bernardino and Colton over the repeated stranding and killing of Santa Ana suckers, a fish on the federal threatened species list.

Roughly once a month, a water treatment plant that is jointly owned by the cities halts its outflows, quickly reducing a drought-stricken stretch of the Santa Ana River to a ribbon of dry gravel and stranding thousands of suckers.

During some of these events, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees and volunteers rush into the vanishing puddles to rescue as many of the 4- to 6-inch fish as possible, placing them in buckets and ice chests filled with water.

Advertisement

A few hours later, treated water starts flowing into the river again and the crews return the fish to the stretch of critical habitat for the species that has lost more than 75% of the area where it historically lived.

The 60-day notice of intent to sue filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society alleges the cities and their Regional Tertiary Treatment and Water Reclamation Authority allow the plant to kill suckers without a permit required by the Endangered Species Act.

It is outrageous that the cities plant is allowed to get away with killing and injuring Santa Ana suckers, Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the center, said. So, once again we are having to take legal action to protect these fish from going extinct in their namesake river.

In an earlier interview, Stacey Aldstadt, general manager of the San Bernardino Municipal Water District, said the treatment plant shuts down its outflows to conduct maintenance required by its operating permits.

Under federal restrictions, the city isnt allowed to turn off the water because doing so threatens the fish. At the same time, however, federal water law requires the city to perform the regular maintenance because it is the only way to keep the plants discharge clean.

1 / 7 Brian Wang, 20, left, Perry Lau, 21, and Parsa Saffarinia, 24, all students from UC Riverside, catch and rescue threatened Santa Ana sucker fish from the Santa Ana River after a treatment plant halted flows into a stretch of the waterway in Colton. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 7 Conservationists, state wildlife authorities and volunteers rescued threatened Santa Ana sucker fish after a water treatment plant halted flows into a stretch of the Santa Ana River in Colton. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 7 Heather Dyer, a biologist with the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, looks for Santa Ana sucker fish in the Santa Ana River. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 7 Conservationists, state wildlife authorities and volunteers venture out along the Santa Ana River. We are caught between the federal Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act, said Stacey Aldstadt, general manager of the San Bernardino Municipal Water District. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 7 Parsa Saffarinia, 24, Brian Wang, 20, and Perry Lau, 21, all students from UC Riverside, try to catch Santa Ana sucker fish. Were forced to decide which enforcement agency we can afford to offend worse, Fish and Wildlife or the Regional Water Quality Control Board, which could have us indicted, handcuffed and sent to jail, said Stacey Aldstadt, general manager of the San Bernardino Municipal Water District. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 7 Brandy Wood, a biologist with San Bernardino Flood Control, walks through the receding Santa Ana River looking for sucker fish. The total number of Santa Ana suckers killed remains unknown. But records show that 1,361 suckers were rescued in September and January, and at least 81 died before they could be saved. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 7 Kerwin Russell of the Riverside-Corona Resource Conservation District scoops threatened Santa Ana sucker fish into a bucket. The fish are being dealt a serious injustice, said Jason May, a USGS biologist. Its a travesty when you get down to it. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

The problem was discovered in 2014, when a team of U.S. Geological Survey researchers reported seeing a large number of suckers floating belly up downstream in the Santa Ana River.

The plants average outflows of treated water have been halted at least 60 times over the last two years, according to Regional Water Quality Control Board records.

There have been 140 confirmed sucker deaths since June 2014.

The Water Reclamation Authority said it plans to make improvements to the waste water treatment system that would reduce the frequency of shutdowns.

The suckers, which scientists know as Catostomus santaanae, were once abundant across Southern California. They have mottled gray backs and silver bellies, and have large, thick lips and small mouths that vacuum or suck up algae and other organisms for food.

Today they are found in the headwaters of the San Gabriel River in Angeles National Forest, Big Tujunga Creek in the Los Angeles River Basin, portions of the Santa Ana River and parts of the Santa Clara River system in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Louis.Sahagun@latimes.com

@LouisSahagun

ALSO

Hearst Castle remains closed as crews battle Chimney fire

Expedition documents sea life, habitat around Channel Islands

California voters will most likely legalize recreational marijuana this November
Monday was the end of the line for a landmark California case challenging tenure and other traditional job protections for teachers  and the teachers won.

A state Supreme Court majority declined to hear the case, Vergara vs. California, and let stand an appeals court ruling that preserved an array of employment rights.



For the record: An earlier version of this article misidentified Michael Petrilli as the executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is the president of the organization.

The outcome left some union opponents looking for a different battlefield in the ongoing wars over public education, while others said they should try the courts again.

Advertisement

The Vergara litigation was closely watched across the country as a test of whether courts would invalidate rules that protect teachers on the argument that they violate the rights of students.

The assault on these protections is part of a broader approach to reforming education that would make schools more like the private sector, which relies on competition, measurable results and performance incentives.

In such a scenario, employee protections get in the way, said Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers.

Its fundamentally about providing a marketplace agenda within public education  doing away with the kinds of protections teachers have won over many years, such as seniority and due process, and creating the dog-eat-dog narrative that exists in the private sector, he said.

Attorneys pursuing the case on behalf of nine students presented a different narrative. They argued that these job protections caused such harm to students that the rules violated their constitutional rights. Making it easier to fire bad teachers, the attorneys said, would not only improve academic performance, but would narrow the achievement gap that separates white, Asian and wealthier students from their lower-income, black and Latino peers.

At trial, students testified about teachers who belittled or ignored them, while plaintiff experts asserted that such instruction left students behind, unable to catch up.

This testimony bowled over the trial court judge, who in 2014 threw out the job protections, saying that the damage to students shocks the conscience.

But in April, a three-judge court of appeal panel shrugged off the claims of harm and said it was up to the Legislature to set education policy, including the regulations in question.

Mondays high court decision was about whether justices would hear arguments and weigh in. Their 4-3 split against doing so may well reflect the level of contention over how best to improve education.

This has been such a polarized issue, said Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla (D-Concord.).

Bonilla tried to craft compromise legislation that eventually was abandoned by teachers unions and their critics.

Unfortunately, on one side, we had the California Teachers Assn. that is satisfied with the status quo, Bonilla said. On the other side, you had many people interested in making changes to education but  if they couldnt have everything in a bill, they werent going to support my bill. Thats not a realistic perspective in terms of how policy is crafted.

Although Vergara backers could not get around union clout in the Legislature, they had access to money and a crack team of attorneys.

The lawsuit challenged five statutes that in combination, it argued, violated the constitutional rights of students. These laws grant the protections of tenure to teachers after two years on the job. They stipulate that teacher layoffs, when they occur, must be based primarily on seniority. And they set up a dismissal process for instructors that is more lengthy and difficult than for many other state employees.

The effort was a Hail Mary pass, said Michael Petrilli, president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning think tank. You throw a Hail Mary pass when youre out of other options. The reformers in California turned to it because the Legislature was locked up by unions.

You throw a Hail Mary pass when youre out of other options. The reformers in California turned to it because the Legislature was locked up by unions.  Michael Petrilli, president at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute

The Legislature remains the most logical place to determine such employment rules, some advocates on both sides said.

This was an appropriate move by the Supreme Court and really a victory for the idea of a separation of powers as it relates to education-policy matters, said Mark Paige, an assistant professor in public policy at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. The trial court decision was an example of an activist court. The opinion lodged the trial court in the middle of a policy matter.

I dont think it means the end of the tenure war, Paige said. My hunch is that it wont be in California, given the states more liberal leanings.

The state Supreme Courts four-member majority did not issue an opinion, which isnt required for a case that wont get review. Three justices wanted to hear the case, and two of them issued dissenting statements saying important issues of law were at stake.

The court majority, however, accepted the logic of Division Two Presiding Justice Roger W. Boren, who wrote in April for the court of appeal: The courts job is merely to determine whether the statutes are constitutional, not if they are a good idea.

The appeals panel did not challenge evidence that many students are ill served in California public schools. But the judges said the laws being questioned were not necessarily responsible.

That logic bodes poorly for future court challenges in California or elsewhere, said Eric A. Hanushek, a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution of Stanford University, who testified on behalf of the Vergara plaintiffs.

Courts dont make policy decisions except in extreme cases and California is an extreme case, he said. And even in the worst case, the courts arent stepping up.

But plaintiffs attorney Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. insisted that the disagreement of three Supreme Court justices on Monday suggests a path forward.

The two justices who posted statements said the findings of the trial judge should have received more deference. Both concluded that the appeals panel set too high a barrier for considering the merits of the claims.

Because the questions presented have obvious statewide importance, and because they involve a significant legal issue on which the Court of Appeal likely erred, this court should grant review, wrote Justice Goodwin H. Liu. There is considerable evidence in the record to support the trial courts conclusion that the hiring and retention of a substantial number of grossly ineffective teachers in California public schools have an appreciable impact on students fundamental right to education.

Boutros said that reasoning provides a launching pad.

The door is open to bring other suits in state court and federal court, he said.

The group Students Matter, which funded the lawsuit and recruited the students and their families, said it will continue to push for legislative change in Sacramento. It also is pressing its reform agenda on other fronts. In another lawsuit, the group is trying to force several school systems to use standardized test scores in teacher evaluations.

Student Matters has access to a network of philanthropists and foundations willing to bankroll its business-inspired vision of education reform.

Nationally, Vergara-like legal challenges are being pursued in New York and Minnesota. Neither appears close to resolution.

What will carry the day, Boutros said, is public opinion.

If you talk to any rational person on the street about the issues, theyre going to agree with us, he said.

Some in his camp are talking about a ballot initiative as a next logical step to limit job protections, although unions defeated such an attempt in the past.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the Vergara case distracted from real problems and potential fixes. Schools, she said, need smaller classes, an influx of new teachers and more generous, secure funding.

The backers of Vergara, she said, make it harder to promote effective change because they pretend there are simple silver-bullet solutions  that you can fire, threaten or sanction your way to helping children succeed.

howard.blume@latimes.com

joy.resmovits@latimes.com

Twitter: @howardblume and @Joy_Resmovits

ALSO:

More than 400 new USC students are the first college-goers in their families

Exide cleanup: Lead-contaminated soil to be removed from 2 L.A. schools, district says

Students traumatized by loss and violence get a fighting chance to learn

UPDATES:

Aug. 23, 11:25 a.m.: This article was updated to bring higher up the first reference to the courts decision.

Aug. 22, 8:30 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional background and comments.

5:17 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional reaction and background.

12:20 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction to the court decision and background information.

This article originally was published Aug. 22 at 11:40 a.m.
For several days now, teams of firefighters have been guarding Hearst Castle as the fast-moving Chimney fire burned nearby.

The historic 165-room estate remained closed Tuesday, though the landmark castle was still a beehive of activity.

Parking lots outside the visitors center are full, but with fire engines instead of tourists cars. The property has been abuzz with hundreds of firefighters and is serving as a full-fledged operations center. Firefighting aircraft are even using the Hearst familys private airstrip, said Roger Colligan, a supervising ranger at California State Park.

Advertisement

The castle, he said, is full of priceless, irreplaceable items. If staff had to remove them because of an immediate fire threat, there would be security all the way around, everywhere, he said.

Hearst Castle staff had an evacuation plan but declined to provide specifics, citing security concerns.

No artwork has been removed from the castle, according to officials.. The estates doors and windows have been closed to keep out smoke.

None of the castles collections have been reported damaged by smoke or soot. Colligan said that if the marble on the property were to become darkened by soot, museum curators have a cleaning process and would be able to restore it.

Hearst Castle, built between 1919 and 1947 for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, is a museum and California state park, with more than 127 acres of gardens, pools and terraces. The hilltop property, which Hearst called La Cuesta Encantada (Spanish for the enchanted hill), houses his extensive art and sculpture collection.

Colligan said that although the castle did not appear to be under immediate threat by the fire, crews were well aware that winds can change quickly.

We really dont expect the fire to really come any closer than it has with the fire lines that have been cut, he said. Were pretty optimistic.

The 37,101-acre Chimney fire was about 2 miles east of the castle Tuesday morning, said Capt. Lucas Spelman of the California Dept. of Forestry and Fire Protection. Firefighters have multiple fire lines to protect the estate, he said.

The blaze has been moving north, away from the castle, fire officials said. Still, Spelman said, the winds have been erratic and were expected to shift on Tuesday.

The fire has destroyed 52 structures and damaged seven more, according to Cal Fire. Another 1,896 are threatened, including homes.

Crews over the weekend slowed the fires advance toward Hearst castle by concentrating firefighters and engines in the area between the castle and the fires edge. Though the threat has lessened, firefighters remain at the site and will continue to keep the fire at bay from the Hearst Castle, said Kenichi Haskett, a Cal Fire spokesman.

Read more on wildfires raging in California 

Low humidity and erratic wind behavior have caused the Chimney fire to behave unpredictably, Haskett said.

Evacuation orders have been given for several small communities in San Luis Obispo and Monterey counties, near Lake Nacimiento and Lake San Antonio.

The evacuations affect 2,448 people, according to Cal Fire. The fire was being fought by 3,813 firefighters.

Last week, crews thought they had gained the upper hand on the Chimney fire, which started Aug. 13 near Running Deer and Chimney Rock roads south of Lake Nacimiento. But the fire exploded over the weekend, said Daniel Berlant, a Cal Fire spokesman.

It was about 33% contained on Friday, but thats when the winds picked up and really pushed this fire, advancing it to the north and forcing new evacuations, Berlant said on Periscope. On Tuesday, the fire was just 35% contained.

Haskett said firefighters are working 24-hour shifts, protecting the communities threatened by the fire.

Thats why its imperative that people evacuate when we issue evacuation orders so firefighters can be in there working, he said.

Its not like going down the street in Los Angeles, he added. These are remote, windy, steep, curvy, narrow roads; were dealing with areas that take time to get into and out of.

The Chimney fire has destroyed 52 structures, damaged seven more and continues to threaten 1,898, authorities said. The structures include homes, mixed-use properties and ranches, Haskett said.

Cal Fire has received numerous reports of scammers contacting the public, pretending to be fire agencies and asking for donations and volunteers, Haskett said.

That isnt from us, he said.

Cal Fire has its own system for obtaining supplies and services that is managed by the state, he said.

Meanwhile, in San Bernardino County, the Blue Cut fire that destroyed about 105 homes last week was 89% contained. Firefighters were continuing to extinguish hot spots within the 37,020-acre fires perimeter, but all evacuation orders have been lifted.

The wildfire now ranks among Californias most destructive. It is the 20th most destructive in state history, Berlant said. In addition to the homes, the blaze destroyed 216 other buildings.

The 23,546-acre Rey fire burning in Santa Barbara County was 30% contained Monday. People will likely see smoke and falling ash in Santa Barbara, Montecito and Carpinteria over the next several days, fire officials said.

The Clayton fire in Lake County, which destroyed 300 structures and burned nearly 4,000 acres in and around the town of Lower Lake, was 96% contained. The 20,148-acre Cedar fire burning in Kern and Tulare counties was 5% contained.

The massive Soberanes fire, which has been burning near Big Sur since July 22, was 60% contained on Monday and had scorched 86,294 acres  an area more than twice as large as San Francisco.

The blaze  which was sparked by an abandoned, illegal campfire  has destroyed 57 buildings and 11 other structures and killed a bulldozer operator who was helping to fight it.

More than 2,100 firefighters continue to fight the Soberanes fire.

In addition to the six major wildfires in California, about 250 additional fires ignited last week, but firefighters were able to contain them to small acreage, Berlant said. So far this year, there have been more than 4,900 wildfires statewide, charring more than 417,000 acres, he said.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

Twitter: @haileybranson

Para leer esta historia en espanol, haga clic aqui

ALSO

Man dies after falling ill during surfing event in La Jolla

Video shows LAPD officer kicking and punching in controversial South L.A. arrest

Couple are tied up, pistol-whipped during home invasion; 4 assailants at large

UPDATES:

9:18 a.m., Aug. 23: This article was updated with new Chimney fire acreage and structure numbers.

7:55 p.m.: This article was updated with current statistics about the size and containment of fires burning across the state.

5 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details.

1:52 p.m.: This article was updated with information about canceled tours.

1:22 p.m.: This post was updated with information from Daniel Berlant.

11:55 a.m.: This article was updated with information from California State Parks.

This article was originally published at 9:50 a.m. on Aug. 22, 2016.
Nearly two years ago, Gary Grimes lost his bid to overturn his death sentence.

The vote on the California Supreme Court was close  4-3  and the decision was not technically final when the court changed membership. Two new justices, appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown, joined the dissenters to reconsider Grimes appeals.

On Monday, the court overturned Grimes death sentence on a 4-3 vote, with Browns appointees in the majority.

Advertisement

The turnaround underscored the malleability of the law. A judges perceptions, views and inclinations matter, and differences can determine whether someone lives or dies. Federal appeals court Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in a law journal that much of what judges do amounts to guesswork.

In Grimes case, the issue turned on whether a legal error by the trial judge affected the jurys decision to recommend a death sentence.

Grimes, a Shasta County resident, participated in a 1995 home invasion that resulted in the killing of Betty Bone, 98.

The trial judge refused to allow testimony that the man who slayed Bone told others that Grimes did not participate in killing the woman. The killer committed suicide before the arrests.

The first majority, in a ruling written by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, said the omission of the testimony would not have made a difference to the jury.

Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, a moderate to liberal Republican appointee, and Justice Goodwin Liu, a Brown appointee, disagreed. The third dissent came from an appeals court judge filling in because of a vacancy on the court.

They said the jurors might have spared Grimes life if they believed he had not committed the actual killing.

Then Justices Leondra Kruger and Mariano-Florentino Cuellar joined the court, and in an extremely rare action, they joined Werdegar and Liu in voting for reconsideration.

In a ruling written by Kruger, the court on Monday unanimously upheld Grimes conviction.

No reasonable jury could have found that defendant was not a major participant in the crime or that he did not act with reckless indifference to life, Kruger wrote.

But the court split on the death penalty. The majority said it found a reasonable possibility that the jury would have spared Grimes life if it had heard the excluded evidence.

For the first time in decades, the state high court has a majority of moderately liberal judges, and Mondays result reflected that. The Brown appointees do not always agree with each other, but they appear to be gently pushing the court in a new direction.

A more liberal bloc is firmly in control, consisting of Justices Werdegar, Liu, Cuellar and Kruger, Santa Clara Law Professor Gerald Uelmen wrote in a study of the courts voting patterns.

The four agreed with each other in 95% of the cases Uelmen examined in a one-year period.

The court has certainly moved a bit to the left, in both civil and criminal cases, but the efforts to maintain a high level of agreement reflect both restraint and collegiality, Uelmen wrote.

Mondays decision also raised questions of how the law should function technically, but the ruling did not answer them.

The attorney general had not initially argued that the trial judges decision to limit the witnesses testimony was harmless. The court ordered both sides to present written arguments on that point and held a second oral argument.

That troubled Liu. Under the law, failure to raise an issue means you cant argue it later. A defense lawyer who fails to object to something during a trial cannot bring it up later in an appeal.

Should the court have given the prosecution the opportunity to argue the winning point when it hadnt even raised it in the first place?

Although the question was left unanswered, the three justices who were in the previous majority insisted they had been right all along.

Even assuming error by the trial court, Cantil-Sakauye wrote in a dissent joined by two other Republican appointees, no reasonable possibility exists that the error affected the outcome at the guilt phase or the penalty phase of defendants trial.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

Twitter: @mauradolan
Four masked assailants broke into a Sun Valley home, tied up a couple and one of their parents, and beat them before stealing money and jewelry, authorities said.

The couple heard a noise about 4:10 a.m. in the backyard of their home in the 8700 block of Bradley Avenue, according to Los Angeles Police Sgt. Fred Cueto. The man went to the backyard to investigate and encountered the four men, who wore black clothing and ski masks, Cueto said.

Two of the masked men pulled out handguns and the assailants forced the man back into the home. Inside, the intruders used tape to tie up the couple and their relative, Cueto said. The man was pistol-whipped and his wife was kicked in the back of the head.

Advertisement

The robbers made off with cellphones, wallets, jewelry and purses.

The three victims were not freed until a neighbor heard their screams for help and called police, Cueto said. Responding officers also heard the screams and forced their way into the home.

The couple had minor injuries. Their three young children were home at the time of the robbery but were not physically injured, police said.

See the most-read stories in Local News this hour 

Authorities did not have a description of the attackers.

The man did not believe he was targeted, Cueto said. He told police he thought the four intruders may have entered the backyard to climb over a wall and break into neighboring businesses.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno

MORE LOCAL NEWS

Earthquake: 3.8 quake strikes near Mammoth Lakes

Evacuation orders lifted for San Bernardino County residents who fled Blue Cut fire

Mother and her two children hit and killed by suspected drunk driver
Concert promoter Live Nation has been sued for negligence and wrongful death by the mother of a 19-year-old woman who died after attending a rave at a Los Angeles County park two years ago.

Emily Michelle Tran was pronounced dead at a South El Monte hospital after she was transported from the Hard Summer rave in August 2014 at the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area. The coroner said she died of acute intoxication from Ecstasy.

Filed earlier this month in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the lawsuit said that the Beverly Hills company knew, or should have known, that raves like Hard Summer encourage the possession, distribution and consumption of illegal drugs like Ecstasy.

Advertisement

By failing to staff the event with enough security to discourage use of drugs, Live Nation breached its duty to keep its attendees safe, the lawsuit said.

The suit accused Live Nation of being negligent, careless and reckless, and having failed to provide adequate security and medical services. It also alleged that the company knowingly oversold the event and created an atmosphere that was overattended, overcrowded and dangerous.

The lawsuit also charged that Trans transport to the hospital was negligently delayed.

They turned a blind eye to the known risks in order to capitalize on teenagers and young adults, who believed they were attending a safe party environment properly staffed with adequate security services and emergency personnel, said the lawsuit, filed by lawyer Arthur G. Lesmez on behalf of Trans mother, Julie, a resident of Anaheim.

The suit asked for punitive damages against Live Nation in order to set an example of it, and to dissuade it from future reckless and illegal conduct.

Hard Summer did not return to Whittier Narrows Recreation Area in 2015. Its subsequent events have attracted scrutiny.

Hard Summers 2015 event at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona ended with two college students being rushed from the venue to hospitals, where they died of drug overdoses. The parents of one of those attendees, Cal State Channel Islands student Katie Dix, has also filed suit.

The 2016 edition of Hard Summer on the last weekend of July, held at the Auto Club Speedway in an unincorporated part of San Bernardino County near Fontana, ended with three rave-goers sent to hospitals, where they were later pronounced dead. Causes of death have not yet been released for those three.

Also named as a defendant was Staff Pro, a Huntington Beach company that provides staffing for large events. Staff Pro is a division of U.S. Security Associates, one of the nations largest security companies, which is based in Georgia.

Representatives of Live Nation and Staff Pro declined to comment.

ron.lin@latimes.com

Twitter: @ronlin

To read the article in Spanish, clic here.

ALSO

Hearst Castle remains closed as crews battle Chimney fire

Two Cal State Fullerton students stabbed near fraternity house

Video shows LAPD officer kicking and punching in controversial South L.A. arrest
Three days after 18 people were rushed to hospitals from downtowns skid row, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to another multi-patient medical emergency there on Monday.

The patients may have shared an illicit drug or other intoxicant, said Margaret Stewart of the Los Angeles Fire Department, but the source of the illnesses has not yet been identified.

The Fire Department received a 911 call at 10:21 a.m. that led them to 429 E 5th St., where they found multiple people suffering from a variety of symptoms. Police blocked off San Pedro Street between 4th and 5th streets and canvassed the area for additional patients. By noon, a total of 18 people had been assessed and 14 were transported to hospitals.

Advertisement

Officer Aareon Jefferson of the Los Angeles Police Department said that several subjects told police that they ingested spice, a synthetic form of marijuana which is typically sprayed on cigarettes and smoked.

Were not doctors so we cant confirm, Jefferson said. That would be up to the hospital to determine what they ingested.

Side effects of spice can include rapid heartbeat, nausea and seizures. On Friday, a similar multi-patient incident led paramedics to cordon off an area near 5th and Wall streets, but authorities have not indicated that the cases were related.

The LAFD can not confirm any connection to previous medical incidents near this location, the department said in a press statement.

Fire Department personnel provide assistance to a man believed to be feeling the effects of a synthetic cannabinoid called spice on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, in downtowns Skid Row (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times )

Jefferson said that police are not investigating Mondays incident or the incident from Friday.

Until we can confirm it was a paraphernalia drug, there is no crime, he said. If theres no crime, we dont investigate it.

This is not the first time spice on skid row has led to mass hospitalizations. In April, 15 people were hospitalized after consuming a tainted batch of the synthetic drug. Officials said most victims collapsed on sidewalks, but none died.

Fire Department personnel provide assistance to a man believed to be feeling the effects of a synthetic cannabinoid called spice on Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, in downtowns Skid Row (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times )

ALSO

Hearst Castle remains closed as crews battle Chimney fire

Live Nation sued in death of woman, 19, who went to Hard Summer rave

Former USC star Todd Marinovich arrested after being found naked with drugs in strangers backyard, police say
Anita Leblanc was riding home on a tractor through several feet of floodwater Sunday, the same tractor that moments before had towed her car away from the overflowing Vermilion River to safety.

More than a week after a storm flooded much of central Louisiana, killing 13, more than 86,000 have applied for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. About 4,000 were still in shelters.

Residents returning to their homes  or those who never left, choosing to ride out the storm  were struggling to survive. Leblanc and about two dozen others in what Cajuns call Pont Breaux, about 50 miles west of Baton Rouge, must still be ferried home through rank, alligator-infested floodwaters by tractors, off-road vehicles and boats.

Advertisement

I need to get back to some kind of normalcy here, Leblanc told a neighbor. We ran into Katie on her kayak on the way in holding onto the street sign.

Leblancs boyfriend, Cody Benoit, 47, pointed to submerged street signs on Bergeron Road.

Were getting everybodys water from up north, he said, and as other inundated areas drain, water levels here remain high.

 Residents of Breaux Bridge, La., check on their homes after deadly flooding hit central Louisiana.

More rain was forecast Sunday afternoon. Benoit expects water wont disappear from the road for another month.

Neighbor David Lester, 54, dropped the couple off, traded his tractor for an ATV and headed up the flooded road to check on others. He plowed through the storm waters oily sheen, the sun hot on the back of his denim work shirt.

Lesters wife, Carla, keeps a list of residents who are sticking it out. Shes dubbed them Bergeronville Diehards.

As the roar of Lesters ATV approached, neighbors emerged to wave from their porches, still surrounded by water.

Easton Hayes greeted Lester in his yard by a flooded truck. He wanted to know how high the water level was on the main road in.

Did the bayou go down? he asked.

Its not going down fast, Lester said.

Hayes requested five gallons of gas. Another ATV passed with a couple carrying a large white trash bag. They havent had trash collection for 12 days.

Im going to have to call a dump truck, Lester said. Then we can use the tractor to haul the trash.

Hayes has been looking after a neighbors pig, which was grazing nearby. He said another neighbors place had been burglarized  the thieves took electronics, an ice box.

Lester said he would check on other homes nearby and return later with the gas.

On the way, he ran into Katie Nero. Nero, 34, was in the water in her new waders, preparing to set off in her green kayak. She hugged her husband, Sasha Urban, goodbye. He hadnt left the house since the storm, staying to care for their geese, chickens and other animals.

Every time theres a torrential downpour, Im grinding my teeth, said Urban, 48. Its not supposed to rise anymore, is it?

Lester couldnt say. They went their separate ways.

Dont let the alligators get you! he called to Nero, who laughed.

Lester has a photo at home of a 12-foot alligator he hauled out of this swamp. Hes caught other big ones since. And then there are the snakes: king snakes, copperheads, banded water snakes and cottonmouths, which also swim.

Lester returned home to swap the ATV for a metal motor boat he likes to use in his shallow crawfish pond, then set out for one last friends place.

Farther into the swamp he motored, down to what was once Bergeron Willow Lane. A sign painted on a tin shack warned, Travel at your own risk substandard roadway.

He remembers when the Bergeron family built this road, how they later paved it only to see ancient tree roots tear it up. The emerald canopy of cypress and oak was so thick, he seemed to be steering down a green tunnel. At the end, below a towering oak dripping Spanish moss, was a cemetery.

Miraculously, it was high and dry, an island of stone crosses and mausoleums.

Lester stopped to snap a photo.

What am I going to do? Louisiana flooding leaves thousands looking for housing as losses hit $20.7 billion 

I know some people buried out here and their kids have been calling me, he said. They were worried about the graves. In other parishes, the flood unearthed caskets. Not here.

Lester restarted the motor, and a flock of white herons that had settled in a nearby yard took flight. It was still sunny. He pulled up next to a tractor and several cars, all destroyed by the flood. He pointed to a house, also flooded. There he and deputies rescued a man during the worst of the storm.

He walked back along the banks of the swiftly flowing Vermilion, still awash with debris from the storm, to his friends place.

Shes all flooded up, he said, taking another photo.

Some neighbors have offered to pay Lester for his help. He declines.

You got a lot more problems than me, he tells them.

As he set off toward home, a woman wearing pink camouflage rain boots at the end of a driveway hailed him. It was his sister-in-law, Ruby Lester. She needed a ride back to what has become the launching place for boats and tractors braving the flood waters.

After a quick lunch of crawfish jambalaya, Lester readied the boat again. It was starting to rain again.

I always said I wanted to live on an island, his wife said, ruefully. I guess I should have been more specific.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Twitter: @mollyhf

ALSO

Latest pastime in an Arizona hippie enclave: Speculating about why Warren Buffetts son is in town

Donald Trump wrestling with how  and whether  to deport 11 million people from U.S.

Suspect in the killing of five people in an Alabama home surrenders, police say
A Mississippi man admitted killing at least one of the five adults found dead at a rural home where his estranged girlfriend had sought shelter amid allegations of abuse, a sheriff said Monday.

Hours after the slayings, Derrick Dearman, 27, walked into the sheriffs office in Leakesville, Miss., stating that he had killed someone or more than one person in Citronelle, Ala., Greene County Sheriff Stanley McLeod said in a statement.

The slayings, which happened at the end of a dirt road outside Citronelle, left three men and two women dead. The victims included a pregnant woman and her unborn child.

Advertisement

Authorities said Dearman abducted his estranged girlfriend Laneta Lester and a child from the house after the slayings, but both were later released unharmed. The home belonged to Lesters brother, who was among the victims and had let his sister stay there because she was afraid of Dearman, friends and relatives of the victims said.

A teenager who said she was related to all five victims by marriage or blood shook her head and fought away tears as she described her anguish over the slayings.

They were really good people. Theyd call and check on you, ask if you want to come down and eat, said Madison McDaniel, 17, who lives near the scene of the horrific violence.

Relatives of the victims started an online fundraiser to help cover funeral expenses, and clerk Dawn Sullivan collected donations in a plastic jug on the counter at D&B Quick Stop, where the victims often stopped for snacks and drinks.

Its a sad situation. It never should have gotten to that point, said Sullivan, whose husband was related to one of the victims.

Dearman, 27, of Leakesville, will be charged with six counts of capital murder, including one charge for the unborn child, Mobile County sheriffs spokeswoman Lori Myles said. He was being held Monday in a Mississippi jail awaiting transfer to the county jail in Mobile, Ala.

Alabama court records dont indicate whether Dearman has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

The slain were identified as Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; Chelsea Marie Reed, 22; and Robert Lee Brown, Myles said.

Turner was the brother of Dearmans estranged girlfriend and had let her stay at the house, which all the victims shared, McDaniel and Sullivan said. Turner and Randall were married.

Id always get on my horse and ride down there bareback, McDaniel said. Her step-aunt Randall would say, Be careful because youre already got a hurt knee. Id say, OK Shan-Shan. Thats what I called her.

Brown was Randalls brother, McDaniel said, and Chelsea Reed was Randalls niece. Chelsea Reed was pregnant with the child of her husband, Justin Reed, said McDaniel.

Around 1 a.m. Saturday, someone inside the home called 911 and reported that Dearman was on the property, authorities said in a statement. Citronelle police came to the house, but Dearman had left before the officers arrived, sheriffs officials said.

Before daylight Saturday, Dearman returned to the home and attacked the victims while they were sleeping, the Sheriffs Department said. Mobile County Dist. Atty. Ashley Rich said multiple weapons were used.

After the killings, Dearman forced Lester and a 3-month-old identified by relatives as the child of Randall and Turner into a vehicle, and they drove to Dearmans fathers house in Mississippi. Dearman released Lester and the infant and turned himself in, authorities said.

Dearmans ex-wife Crystal Dearman told WALA-TV the man always had a temper, especially when he doesnt get his way.

I woke up to him holding a knife to my throat in bed with my baby in the crib, said Crystal Dearman, who said the two divorced in 2010. Hes made threats the entire time we were together and after we separated.

ALSO

In a flooded Louisiana neighborhood, residents ride home through alligator-infested waters

Donald Trump wrestling with how  and whether  to deport 11 million people from U.S.

Trumps courts Latinos, says African Americans will support him in future

UPDATES:

2:05 p.m.: This article has been updated with details and quotes throughout.

This article was originally published at 5:40 a.m.
Clinton jokes about health conspiracy theories at start of California trip

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Monday poked at Republicans for questioning her health during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, pretending to exert great effort as she opened a jar of pickles and asking the host to check her pulse.

Clinton dismissed the attacks as wacky and noted that critics had claimed she would be dead in six months, she said. So with every breath I take I feel like I have a new lease on life.

Kimmel put his hand to Clintons pulse point on her wrist and exclaimed, Oh, my God, theres nothing there!

The jokes came as conservative websites, Donald Trump and some Trump supporters, notably former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, have questioned Clintons physical fitness for office during the presidential campaign.

Clintons personal physician has affirmed that she is healthy.

Late-night television talk shows are a mainstay for presidential candidates, and Clinton used her appearance on Kimmels show to joke about the ongoing scandal over her use of private email and a private server in her home basement while secretary of State. On Monday, a federal judge ordered that an additional 15,000 emails would be released before the general election in November.

Kimmel asked Clinton whether she wished she could spend more time with her young grandchildren rather than campaigning, and the nominee responded that it would be more difficult without FaceTime.

Kimmel asked Clinton, Have you considered using FaceTime instead of email?

Clinton responded, I think thats actually really good advice.

The pair also discussed the first presidential debate, scheduled for late September in New York.

Im planning on drawing off my experiences from elementary school, Clinton said, after asking for Kimmels advice on debate prep.

Clinton is in California for a series of fundraisers, including one Monday evening at the home of Magic Johnson, where 500 guests spent between $2,700 and $27,000 or more to attend.
Chefs are often obsessive by nature, as I think weve mentioned before, and its something that can work very well for them  and for us, the happy recipients of those culinary fixations. This week Jonathan Gold reviews a newish Japanese restaurant in downtown L.A. where he finds much to obsess about, either from the chefs standpoint or our own.

Another collective object of desire: charcuterie. This is, of course, nothing new  the curing of meats is as old as kitchens  but a new wave of butcher shops and meat-intensive restaurants showcases some pretty deft work; we consider eight of them. Other things to obsess about: Taiwanese street food and new coffee houses. And if you need something to read while youre doing shots of espresso, theres a pretty fun new cookbook weve pulled from our stack.

 Amy Scattergood

Advertisement

Shibumi

This week, Jonathan visits Shibumi, the long-awaited izakaya from David Schlosser, a chef whose resume includes lOrangerie, Urasawa and some terrific restaurants in Japan. It may be jigsawed into a parking structure, but its a serene culinary oasis. (Order the cucumbers.)

Stuffed cucumber from the new downtown Los Angeles restaurant Shibumi. (Harrison Hill / Los Angeles Times )

More fun with charcuterie

Deputy Food editor Jenn Harris tours the city, finding restaurants and butcher shops doing great work with charcuterie. Terrine with Thai basil at Bestia, Singaporean candied pork at Cassia, culatello at Chi Spacca, duck speck at Gwen  we could go on, but its probably more fun to read the story.

A plate of truffled chicken liver, terrine de campaign, rillettes, mustard, testa, liverwurst, andouille, smoked beef deckle, house pickles and olives at Terrine. (Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times )

Street food, by way of Taiwan and L.A.

Love Taiwanese street food but find yourself in Los Angeles instead of, say, Taipei? Food writer Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee scouts out MCON, a recently opened restaurant near the Beverly Center. So: Chinese five-spice cured brisket and turnip cake fries instead of, I dont know, Jamba Juice? Thank you.

5 more ways to get caffeinated

Because some of us can never have enough cortados, food writer Tien Nguyen helpfully checks out five new coffee houses around town. A fika, or coffee break in Redondo Beach comes courtesy of three fair-trade coffee farms in Colombia; a new outpost of Cognoscenti Coffee has opened in DTLA; and BrewWell, which closed in Koreatown, has reopened in Hollywood.

The Taste is coming: Our annual Labor Day food weekend, Sept. 2-4, will be here before you know it; heres how to get tickets.

Jonathan Golds 101 Best Restaurants, the authoritative annual guide to local dining, is online for subscribers.

Check us out on Instagram @latimesfood

In the Kitchen: Sign up for our weekly cooking newsletter

Check out the thousands of recipes in our Recipe Database.

Feedback?

Wed love to hear from you. Email us at food@latimes.com.
A day after Donald Trump met with a group of Latino supporters, top aides suggested Sunday that the GOP nominee may be reconsidering his signature campaign promise to round up and deport 11 million people who are in the country illegally.

His new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, was asked on CNNs State of the Union if Trump still wants a deportation force to remove everyone in the country illegally, as he has vowed repeatedly on the campaign trail.

To be determined, she said.

Trump is wrestling with how to remove those in the country illegally, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a close advisor to Trump on immigration matters, said on CBS Face the Nation.

Advertisement

Apprehending and removing the estimated 11 million people who either entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas would cost about $400 billion and could reduce U.S. gross domestic product by $1 trillion, according to a study released this year by the free-market think tank American Action Forum.

The aides comments appeared to be the latest sign that Trumps newly installed management team may be trying to broaden his appeal to stem his steady fall in the polls with less than three months until election day.

Trump has never explained how he intended to find, detain and deport millions of people, many of whom have built businesses and started families in the U.S., or how he would pay for it even if it passed judicial scrutiny.

To be determined.  Kellyanne Conway, Trumps new campaign manager, on the candidates plan to deport 11 million people

He has compared his proposal to Operation Wetback, a controversial removals program carried out in 1954 under President Eisenhower. More than 1 million people were apprehended, mostly from border areas in Texas and California, and sent back to Mexico.

Any easing of Trumps hard-line stance on immigration  which also includes building a wall along the border with Mexico and temporarily banning Muslim immigrants  could alienate some of his most ardent supporters.

After a year of using harsh rhetoric against Latinos  from calling Mexican migrants rapists to repeatedly attacking a federal judge as unfair because his family was from Mexico  polls show he faces intense opposition among Latinos.

His campaign thus has moved in recent days to soften his edges and to try to shift attention past the turmoil caused by the dramatic shake-up of his top management team last week.

In Charlotte, N.C., Trump announced regret that some of his heated comments  he didnt say which  may have caused personal pain. In Fredericksburg, Va., he said the GOP must do better to reach out to African American voters.

And in New York City on Saturday, Trump told his campaigns newly named Latino advisory council that he wants to find a humane and efficient solution to deal with illegal immigration.

He did not make a firm commitment to the group on how deportations would work, Sessions said.

Trump is expected to speak about immigration policy Thursday at a campaign event in Colorado. Conway said he will be more specific on his immigration plan as the weeks unfold.

What he supports is to make sure that we enforce the law, that we are respectful of those Americans who are looking for well-paying jobs and that we are fair and humane for those who live among us in this country, Conway said.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has called for providing a pathway to legal status for some of the people in the country illegally.

A bipartisan immigration reform bill that would have boosted border security while providing a pathway for citizenship passed the Senate in 2013 but died in the Republican-led House.

Trumps campaign also announced plans Sunday intended to repair months of discord with the Republican National Committee.

Conway said the campaign would bring Sean Spicer, a senior GOP strategist, into Trumps New York City headquarters several days a week, and that the RNC would increase sharing of political data and fundraising strategies.

Despite Trumps dire position in national polls, Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman, insisted that Trump would catch up to Clinton as we move through September.

Donald Trump has been disciplined and mature, he said on ABCs This Week. And I think hes going to get this thing back on track.

Conway, the new campaign manager, insisted that the campaign already was on track.

Trail Guide: Live updates on the presidential campaign 

We had a great week, the best week so far, she said, citing the airing of Trumps first TV ads, his appearance in flood-ravaged Louisiana, and his attempts to reach out to black and Latino voters.

Hes able to be himself, the authentic Donald Trump, she said, and the pivot that hes made is on substance.

Clintons campaign manager, Robby Mook, who appeared on the same show, disputed that Trump had made a pivot, saying that even Trump had denied that.

Mook also argued that Trump should publicly account for his financial ties to Russia and his repeated praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

There are real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race, Mook said.

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Follow me @ByBrianBennett on Twitter

ALSO

Donald Trumps media obsession led him to hire the head of a far-right news site to run his campaign

Whos winning? Where the presidential polling stands today

Interactive: All things Trump
*This column has been updated, as noted below.

Newport Beach Councilman Scott Peotter is at it again with another email blast that many, including me, find offensive.

This week he sent out something criticizing the Supreme Courts decision to allow gay marriage in all the land.

In the latest, he writes:

The Supremes  I know, The Supreme Court (that would be 5 out of 9 guys in black robes) decided 10 days ago to overturn 5,000 years of Judeo-Christian tradition, by redefining and allowing gay marriage.

All of a sudden, a lot of the important stuff of the city didnt seem so important.

I like how the White House is really quick on the important stuff like this rainbow lighting.

I do find it interesting that the homosexual movement adopted the rainbow as their symbol, as it was Gods symbol that he wouldnt destroy the world by flood again ... Maybe they are wishful thinking ...

If Peotter had taken the time to do a simple Internet search, he would have discovered the rainbow flags history has nothing to do with End Times.

It was designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker in 1978 and flew that year in the first San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade.

Many suggest Bakers inspiration was Judy Garlands rendition of Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz.

But more important, the city of Newport Beach does not issue marriage licenses to anyone  gay or straight  so this seemingly official correspondence, which makes use of the city seal, makes even less sense.

Orange County gay leaders were incensed and called on the city to make clear its position.

Im disgusted an elected official would issue such a homophobic hateful message, says Kevin S. OGrady, executive director of the LGBT Center of Orange County. It is even more disturbing that the site on which this message appears carries the seal of the city of Newport Beach. The use of the seal gives the appearance that this bigoted message is endorsed by the city. If the city does not endorse this message, they should repudiate it immediately.

OGrady told me his organization plans to send an official letter of protest and is urging members and supporters to do the same.

The views shared in Peotters email blast are clearly his own and some city leaders are quickly distancing themselves. I talked with two councilmen who arent standing by their peer.

In my opinion, personally and as mayor, council member Peotters comments on the Supremes are inappropriate ... and are not reflective of city policy, said Mayor Ed Selich. Council member Peotter is entitled to his opinions but he should choose a platform where his personal opinions cannot be confused with or misconstrued to be city policy.

In a prepared statement, Newport City Attorney Aaron Harp reiterated that Peotters comments were made in a personal capacity and not intended to reflect the position of the city of Newport Beach.

The city welcomes and values its citizens, visitors and employees, irrespective of sexual orientation or marital status, and embraces Newport Beachs place in a diverse and vibrant Southern California, he added.

Indeed, the citys anti-discrimination policy applies to sexual orientation.

But this city still has not taken any steps to stop Peotters use of the official city seal in his email blasts, even though its usage is against city policy.

This is why we have a law against allowing extremist council members from using the city seal for their own intemperate rants, Councilman Keith Curry explained. Mr. Peotter should spend more time focused on trying to make this a better city for all of our residents and less on his national political agenda.

Newport Beachs top municipal executive, who belongs to the class of folks Peotter doesnt believe should marry, said he will continue to uphold the citys policies.

As the city manager, who happens to be a married gay person, I will continue to administer the citys detailed personnel policies and rules in a manner compliant with state and federal law, City Manager Dave Kiff said. We are an organization that adheres to and respects the laws of our land.

Of course I wanted to talk to Peotter about this, but he didnt return my calls.

But this isnt his first go around with anti-gay rhetoric.

In 1989, as president of a group called the Irvine Values Coalition, he stated, Homosexuals, like any other citizen, are welcome in the city of Irvine. We just dont want homosexuality promoted in Irvine.

According to the Los Angeles Times he worked on a campaign to take out civil rights protections from an Irvine city ordinance. The campaign succeeded.

[Updated: 11:45 a.m., July 8] On Wed. I received a call from Selich. He told me he has had conversation with Peotter who has now agreed to remove the city seal from his website and future email blasts.

BARBARA VENEZIA lives in Newport Beach. She can be reached at bvontv1@gmail.com.
Yesterday, after walking almost a mile on snow-covered streets, I ate a tandoori pizza, courtesy of the Bengali-American community and the fusion of their rich cuisine with that of American favorites.

A few days before that, I had a paczki, pronounced ponchki, on Fat Tuesday, a Polish delicacy that people in Detroit and probably the greater Midwest love so much, that Uber even offers to make deliveries on demand of the doughy pastry that comes with a variety of fillings.

NEWSLETTER: Stay up to date with whats going on in the 818 >>

Recently, I ran into a neighbor who was walking his dogs, and it turned out he was Serbian. He asked what my ethnic background was, and when I told him I was Armenian, a smile beamed across his face.

So youre Orthodox like me! he said. I smiled back, and somehow in the span of 10 minutes, we had somehow managed to cover the entire history of the Yugoslav wars, along with the situation in Crimea, musings on Vladimir Putin and Nostradamus.

After our conversation, I made my way to the Arabic supermarket to stock up on garlic sauce and olives. Today, I discovered a bar where some of the most legendary black musicians have performed over the years and put it on my To-Do List of all things Detroit.

I now live in the most diverse Zip Code in the state of Michigan, in a delightful mix of cultures and backgrounds that on paper might not seem to work, but get along just fine in the surrounding 2 or 3 miles they encompass, thank you very much.

It is cold, and the gear needed for surviving winter is a new challenge for me, a native Californian who prior to last week had no proper, practical use for thermals. But despite the weather, I am truly embracing the neighborhood I now call home.

There is so much to discover in Detroit, once considered the fastest-growing city in the United States. There is so much that the world does not know about Detroit, so much that does not fit into the neat narratives and sound bites youve probably heard on the news, so much that goes beyond numbers and worst of lists.

But the thing is, you have to be here to see and embrace it all. My optimism for this place doesnt ignore the reality its going through. The devastation of this city is real, it confronts you before you have a chance to confront it.

Drive down any street and the crumbling, decaying structures tell a silent story that constantly reminds you of the reality of being here  the crime, the segregation, the education system in need of a complete do-over, the city services in need of major improvement.

However, in the short time Ive been here, I have met and spoken to more strangers in one day than I have an entire year in Los Angeles. Ive had the opportunity to learn and see the history of one of the most important and significant cities in this country. Ive gotten a chance to hear from Detroit natives and their insights into both the descent and ascent of their city, which is not without its controversy.

Ive eaten Michigan apples, the best in my life, and started to set my sights beyond the city, hoping to write some stories about life in rural America, too. I have started researching the immense Armenian-American contribution to this city (for starters, look up the Manoogian Mansion  official residence of the mayor of Detroit) that often remains hidden, sometimes to people who have been here all their lives.

The Motor City and its surroundings have gone through a lot, but if you want to get a sense of what makes this place great, all you have to do is talk to the people. Just a few minutes alone with my Serbian neighbor, who made sure he let me know that I should not be eating pork after 50 before saying goodbye, will convince you that theres much to treasure about Detroit, after all.

--

LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.
In the late 16th century, British explorer Sir Francis Drake is thought to have stopped at Point Reyes during a round-the-world journey. The ships chaplain wrote a description of the landscape and complained about the stinking fogges that shrouded the headlands in summer.

That hasnt changed.



For the record: This story incorrectly says bicycles are allowed on the route. Bicycles have limited access to the backpacking loop and campgrounds inside the parkland.

The fog, the hulking headlands and the craggy cliffs define this stunning slice of Californias coast. Point Reyes National Seashore is not really on the way to anywhere; you must seek it out off Highway 1 in mellow Marin County about 30 miles northwest of San Francisco.

RELATED: Unplugging at Point Reyes National Seashore, home to a famous lighthouse, pristine beaches and off-the-grid peace 

Advertisement

1 / 27 A marooned fishing boat is reflected in low tide pools along Tomales Bay at Point Reyes National Seashore. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 27 A view of the bow of the Point Reyes, one of many shipwrecks along the Point Reyes Headlands. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 27 Guides prepare to take a group of kayakers on a tour of Tomales Bay from Heart Desires Beach. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 27 A surfer passes through a ray of the setting sun in Bolinas Bay. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 27 The view from the trailhead to the lighthouse overlooks Point Reyes Beach. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 27 Visitors walk the half-mile trail approaching the Monterey cyprus trees en route to the historic Point Reyes Lighthouse. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 27 A sparrow sings on the side of the trail to the Point Reyes Lighthouse. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 27 Its 308 steps down and 308 back up to the historic Point Reyes Lighthouse, which began operating in December 1870 and was decommissioned in 1975. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times ) 9 / 27 The Point Reyes Lighthouse stands watch over the Pacific. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 27 A kayaker paddles out as a fisherman returns in Bolinas Bay. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 27 Visitors find natural places to nap at the Bear Valley Visitor Center. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 27 Surrounded by tall grasses, visitors walk along the Earthquake Trail at the Bear Valley Visitor Center. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 27 John Lill of Kentfield enjoys the scenery as he reads on a sandbar along Tomales Bay. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 27 The Marin-chic village of Point Reyes Station has one gas station, a bevy of boutiques and little star, a.k.a. Osteria Stellina, a big-city Italian restaurant in a charming little town. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 27 The view through the balcony at a newly renovated room at Tomales Bay Resort in Inverness. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 27 Drakes Beach is a landscape of cliffs-meet-surf. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 27 The surf swirls at Drakes Beach as the sun creates prism images. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 27 You can find solitude and dramatic cliffs at Drakes Beach. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 27 Stunning cliffs fill the landscape at Drakes Beach. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 27 An elephant seal takes a swim as others nap in the setting sun at Chimney Rock in Iverness. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times ) 21 / 27 Early morning fog hovers over a cattle ranch near the trailhead to the Giacomini Wetlands. The trail down to the restored wetlands habitat meanders through a series of cattle gates and is a good birding spot. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 27 A cow wanders in the early morning fog near the trailhead to the Giacomini Wetlands. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 27 Tule elk stand poised on a hillside in the Tule Elk State Natural Reserve. The native elk once numbered in the thousands, until they were nearly hunted to extinction in the 19th century. Today, the elk population is the largest it has ever been in California. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 27 Surf and sun create a dreamscape at Drakes Beach. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 27 Beachgoers walk through the dunes and grasses at Limantour Beach. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times ) 26 / 27 Beachgoers enjoy vast sandbars along Tomales Bay. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 27 Clear water and the deep blue sky at Tomales Bay. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The national seashore designation can be a bit confusing. True, the beaches along Drakes Bay are a drawing card for visitors, but equally beautiful meadows and fir-tree-filled woods can be found in the interior.

A four-day backpacking trip from the parks eastern boundary provides plenty of time to experience it all  and slip far away from paved roads.

For the first night, you cant beat Sky Camp, an inland campground that overlooks the bay and the headlands. The sweeping views below camp provide a teaser of whats to come.

The easy trail from the Bear Valley Visitor Center takes you along a deeply shaded path lined with towering Douglas firs and a smattering of oaks. You come to 11 campsites tucked neatly into the flank of Mt. Wittenberg, the parks high point at 1,407 feet.

On day two, head toward the water and bed down at Coast Camp, a flat, beachy campground that can be foggy and windy but is oh-so-close to the waters that Drake emerged from four centuries ago. From here, its an easy walk to popular Limantour Beach, where bush lupine bloom in springtime.

Spend two more days on foot, staying a night in the woodsy, wind-protected Glen Camp in the interior of the park and another at Wildcat Camp, a meadow near southeastern beaches and Alamere Falls, a rock-pounding cascade that flows from the cliffs to the shore.

RELATED: Think of these liquid spots as the National Park Services water supply ... for recreation and relaxation 

Beachgoers walk through the dunes and grasses at Limantour Beach. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times )

One thing you wont see during your walkabout: Arch Rock, a onetime natural landmark that used to be a popular hiking destination and picnic spot. The formation was buried in rubble last year after a bluff collapsed, killing a hiker who was on the overlook.

By the end of four nights, you will have hiked 6 to 10 miles a day, depending on your routes and the number of side trips you take. The terrain is gentle, the views sublime.

Visitors are allowed to bicycle on this backpacking loop. Its strictly regulated, and you need permits to stay at the $20-a-night camps.

The maximum stay is four nights, which you can spend at one or two camps, or try to hit all four. Each campground has a vault-style toilet and water spigot. You can read a description and see pictures of the sites at www.lat.ms/ptreyescampgrounds.

The Bear Valley Visitor Center is a good starting point for your backpacking trip (to trim miles you can start at Limantour Road) and then map your route. Go to www.lat.ms/permits to learn how to reserve backcountry permits.

Short on time? The National Park Service recommends several day hikes, some only two or three hours, that vary in mileage. Go to www.lat.ms/dayhikes.

Follow our adventures: Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest

travel@latimes.com

MORE NATIONAL PARKS

Discover our desert national parks and rediscover yourself. You can start with Joshua Tree

10 adventures to pursue in San Franciscos Golden Gate National Recreation Area

Think you know the Statue of Liberty? Think again
In my mind, kayaking the sea caves here meant translucent water, sunshine and trees so green theyd hurt this drought-stricken Californians eyes

Instead, I encountered turbid waters and heavy skies delivering a continuous cold drizzle. Fog blanketed the evergreens atop the cliffs.

Yet it was a delight, the type of scenery the typical tourist kayaker rarely gets to see in the Apostle Islands. At least thats what my guides, Bill and Ian of Trek &Trail Bayfield, said.

Advertisement

At first I wasnt convinced, but they soon won a convert.

The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, the jewels of Lake Superior, is a collection of 21 islands and a 12-mile sliver of the Bayfield Peninsula in northern Wisconsin.

Although I was in the area to attend a writing workshop, what I was really itching to do was explore the famous sea caves that line that slice of the peninsula.

After a quick lesson at Meyers Beach Recreation Area, our group of six kayakers headed for the caves a couple of miles away.

The water was choppy, and my bare feet ached when Lake Superiors icy water sneaked into the double kayak I shared with Ian.

It was nippy even in early June. Three layers of fleece and a wet suit underneath couldnt shield me from the chill. I paddled furiously just to keep warm. Ian admonished me to slow down and enjoy my surroundings.

He pointed out an eagles nest on top of a naked poplar tree  promising two eagle sightings later on our nearly eight-hour trip.

The wet weather added some mystery to the towering red sandstone caves. I had expected the blinding green of the Midwest, but the iron-oxidized cliff formations took me aback.

As we paddled closer, the caves arches and openings materialized in the mist, giving the eerie appearance of rust-hued, gigantic human skulls emerging from the lake.

Bill went ahead of our pack, making sure the caves were accessible despite the choppy waters. Most were all clear.

I giddily paddled through grand archways of carved-out rock to enter the first cave. Cliff swallows fluttered in and out, and crevices in the sandstone sucked in, churned and spat out water.

Celebrating our national parks 

The second cave  nicknamed the garage for its enormous size that could easily fit several vehicles  was one of the most exciting. VW bug-sized openings in the cave walls sucked in, then expelled lake water, transmitting a thunderous sound as it slammed into the caverns walls.

At one point, I stopped and gawked at the geological wonder of the cave, created after a billion years of glacial, wave and wind erosion. A thin pillar of stone appeared to support thousands of pounds of rock.

How does a 5-foot pillar hold so much rock? I wondered.

About halfway through our cave explorations, we stopped on a sand beach to munch on sandwiches, smoked trout  a local delicacy  and chunky cookies. I walked and ate at the same time to keep warm.

Even Bill and Ian admitted that it was too cold to be out on the lake  even for the locals  so we soon headed for home.

The excursion also was a feast for those hoping to glimpse wildlife. Purple-bellied salamanders scurried on the majestic cliff walls, and hooded merganser ducks skied on the water.

By late afternoon the lake had calmed and looked like the dull side of aluminum foil. The fog and drizzle had dissipated.

We paddled along the shoreline of the peninsula, in awe of the funky shapes and red, pink, peach and yellow splashes of color on the rock formations.

The sky was still hazy, so we didnt get a chance to see most of the outlying Apostle Islands. Still, I was more than satisfied, marveling at each cave and the shorelines distracting beauty.

I almost forgot my fingertips were nearly numb.

If you go

THE BEST WAY TO APOSTLE ISLANDS NATIONAL LAKESHORE

From LAX, Delta, United and Alaska offer connecting service (change of planes) to Duluth, Minn. Restricted round-trip fares from $402, including taxes and fees. Its about a 90-mile drive to the Apostle Islands headquarters in Bayfield, Wis.

WHERE TO STAY

Bayfield Inn, 20 Rittenhouse Ave., Bayfield, Wis.; (715) 779-3363. A newly renovated hotel offering simple accommodations, waterfront suites, condominiums and cottages. Close to the ferry, shops and restaurants. Standard rooms from $99.

Old Rittenhouse Inn, 301 Rittenhouse Ave., Bayfield, Wis.; (715) 779-5111. A historic bed and breakfast offering luxury suites, whirlpool rooms and standard rooms with Lake Superior views in two Victorian homes. Queen rooms from $140.

Harbor Hill House, 141 N. Front St., Bayfield, Wis..; (715) 779-9616. A charming three-bedroom bed and breakfast overlooking Lake Superior. Queen rooms from $110.

WHERE TO EAT

Landmark Restaurant at Old Rittenhouse Inn (see above), (715) 779-5112. Old-world, white linen tablecloths and attentive service featuring American and French-inspired cuisine. Try the fresh and buttery seared scallops and local smoked trout salad. Entrees $10 to $40.

Fat Radish, 200 Rittenhouse Ave., Bayfield, Wis.; (715) 779-9700. Good for lunch, with inventive wraps and healthful offerings.

Wild Rice Restaurant, 84860 Old San Road, Bayfield, Wis.; (715) 779-9881. High-end American cuisine featuring locally sourced house-smoked duck and Bayfield sugar peas. Extensive wine list.

TO LEARN MORE

Trek & Trail, 7 Washington Ave., Bayfield, Wis.; (800) 354-8735

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, 415 Washington Ave., Bayfield, Wis.; (715) 779-3397

Bayfield Chamber and Visitor Bureau, 42 S. Broad St., Bayfield, Wis.; (715) 779-3335

cindy.carcamo@latimes.com

MORE NATIONAL PARKS

Discover our desert national parks and rediscover yourself. You can start with Joshua Tree

10 adventures to pursue in San Franciscos Golden Gate National Recreation Area

Think you know the Statue of Liberty? Think again
Bloodstains and broken bodies left after Turkeys deadliest bombing this year cruelly underscore the complex rivalries swirling among the Turkish government, the Sunni militants of Islamic State and members of Turkeys largest ethnic minority, the Kurds.

The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed Islamic State for the devastating attack on a Kurdish wedding party late Saturday in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the Syrian border.

The group has not claimed responsibility, but if it was behind the strike  which killed at least 54 people, about half of them children, according to the state-run Anatolia news agency  the carnage likely served several purposes, in the groups eyes. Chief among those: fueling enmity between the Turkish state and the Kurds.

Advertisement

On the surface, there were other powerful motivations at play. Erdogans government is a sometimes-reluctant partner in the U.S.-led coalition confronting Islamic State, and Turkey has been hit over the last year by a string of bombings attributed to the extremist group, seemingly meant to punish the Turkish leader for taking the Wests side.

The bombing also bore the hallmarks of a revenge attack against the Kurds, whose ethnic brethren in Syria have helped inflict significant battlefield losses on Islamic State in that countrys multi-sided war. The wedding party would have been a tempting target: The bride and groom both came from well-known Kurdish families affiliated with a pro-Kurdish political party, the Peoples Democratic Party, and Gaziantep is a known haven for Islamic State sleeper cells.

For Islamic State, though, the wedding-party attack would have been a prime opportunity to play two of its enemies off against one another. Here is a short primer on the Turkish governments recent history with its Kurdish population and how the war next door in Syria has inflamed passions on both sides of that divide.

How did Turkeys accord with Kurdish separatists break down?

A peace arrangement in 2013 had ended decades of fighting between Turkish forces and the militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. It ushered in hope of longer-term political reforms, spearheaded by Erdogan, to lift up a large and long-disenfranchised ethnic minority. But that accord fell apart last year amid a series of Islamic State-suspected attacks against Kurds who felt the government had failed to protect them.

Many Kurds believe Erdogan deliberately sought to draw Turks attention away from what he feared would be an unpopular move: joining forces with the West in the fight against Islamic State.

Turkish troops have been hounding PKK militants in their strongholds in the mountainous southeast for more than a year, a bloody struggle that has also caught up tens of thousands of civilians in the violence. Some 300 noncombatants have been killed in warfare that often rages in urban areas. The insurgents, in turn, have used suicide attacks and car bombings to target Turkish security forces

At the same time, the government has repeatedly accused the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party, which won landmark representation in Parliament in June 2015, of supporting armed separatists. The party denies the charge.

The Turkish leader has repeatedly characterized the PKK as a greater threat to the Turkish state than Islamic State.

How has the latest attack increased tensions?

The Gaziantep blast galvanized already existing anger and mistrust between Turkeys government and the Kurds. At funerals for bombing victims on Sunday and Monday, mourners shouted Murderer Erdogan! and threw rocks at government representatives who carried Turkish flags.

Turkeys government, for its part, spoke Monday of the need to purge the Turkish-Syrian border of Islamic States presence. Daesh should be completely cleansed from our borders, and we are ready to do whatever it takes, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara, using an Arabic acronym for the group.

But Syrian Kurdish fighters hold much longer stretches of the frontier than does Islamic State, and many Kurds in Turkey believe that the ostensible targeting of the extremist group in northern Syria is a pretext to deny further territorial gains to Syrian Kurdish militias.

Is there a link between the latest attack and prior strikes against Kurds and their allies?

The wedding-party bombing in Gaziantep was reminiscent of some previous strikes, including a suicide bombing in July 2015 in the border town of Suruc, targeting Kurdish activists and their allies, and the attack in October on a pro-Kurdish rally in Ankara that left more than 100 dead. Islamic State was blamed for both strikes, but did not make any kind of claim. The device used in Saturdays bombing was of the same type as those used in the Suruc and Ankara bombings, a senior security official told the Reuters news agency.

How are domestic politics driving Turkeys role in the Syrian conflict?

Although it now formally supports the anti-Islamic State coalition, Turkeys Islamist-leaning government  hoping and expecting that Syrian President Bashar Assad would be swiftly toppled  long turned a blind eye to Islamic State extremists using its frontier with Syria as a gateway to the battleground.

Turkey has been deeply alarmed by Kurdish battleground successes in Syria, notably in the border town of Kobani, where American backing helped them fight off an Islamic State onslaught. Erdogans government views the largely autonomous Kurdish region in eastern Syria as a strategic threat, believing it will strengthen separatist sentiments on the Turkish side of the border.

Turkeys actions often seem aimed more at hindering Syrian Kurdish forces rather than actively targeting Islamic State fighters. A Turkish-backed Syrian rebel faction is reportedly making preparations to strike Islamic State fighters in the Syrian town of Jarabulus  which would simultaneously prevent advancing Syrian Kurdish fighters from taking control of another sensitive border area.

How might the Gaziantep attack bolster Erdogans authority?

The presidents allies have already been carrying out a wide-ranging purge in the wake of last months coup attempt, targeting people alleged to sympathize with Fethullah Gulen, an elderly cleric in self-imposed exile in the United States. News media freedom has been a principal casualty in the crackdown, with many outlets shuttered and journalists among the tens of thousands who have been arrested or detained.

Violence like the Gaziantep strike gives Erdogan even greater leeway in imposing press restrictions; the government has decreed a blackout on news coverage inside Turkey of the wedding-party attack.

Many Turks are supportive of sweeping government powers as the country has been hit this year by a string of bombings, widely seen as a spillover from the Syrian conflict. Bombings blamed on Islamic state have hit Istanbuls Old City as well as its main shopping boulevard and main international airport.

Alarmingly for many Kurds, Erdogan has painted various threats to the country  Gulen loyalists, Islamic State and Kurdish separatists  with the same brush of harsh but vaguely worded condemnations, whipping up nationalist sentiment they fear will target them.

laura.king@latimes.com
A slim majority of Israelis and Palestinians still favor a peace settlement with a Palestinian state alongside Israel, a new poll showed Monday as Israeli authorities confirmed granting permission to plan the expansion of an Israeli settlement in the tinderbox West Bank city of Hebron.

The poll found that 51% of Palestinians and 59% of Israelis still support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Tamar Hermann, an Israeli political scientist who conducted the survey with Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, said that under the circumstances, the results were not amazingly encouraging, but also not discouraging.

Advertisement

It showed there is still some basis for optimism with the right leadership, she said. Right now I dont see on the horizon a leader on either side willing or capable of using this as a springboard for intensifying the negotiations. But its not impossible.

The poll comes amid nearly a year of low-level violence between Palestinians and Israelis. Since September, Palestinians have killed 34 Israelis in shootings, stabbings and vehicular attacks. At least 206 Palestinians have died by Israeli fire in the same period, most of whom Israel says were attackers.

Hebron has been a focal point of violence in the West Bank. About 1,000 Jewish settlers live in the city, in heavily fortified enclaves surrounded by tens of thousands of Palestinians.

In June, a Palestinian assailant stabbed a 13-year-old Israeli girl to death in her bed in Kiryat Arba, an Israeli settlement adjacent to Hebron. In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a $12.9-million plan to strengthen Kiryat Arba and the Jewish settlement in Hebron.

Hagit Ofran of the anti-settlement group Peace Now said Israeli authorities are taking steps to add more Israeli homes in Hebron on land used for a military base. Ofran said this is the first such approval in more than a decade.

COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for civilian affairs in the West Bank, confirmed Monday that permission was given for planning infrastructure.

Ofran said the homes will be built on land that the military requisitioned from the Palestinian-run municipality. Israeli law requires the land to be returned to the municipality, she said, accusing Israel of using legal acrobatics to allocate it to settlers.

Settlers say they are returning to properties that belonged to Jews before they fled the area, after deadly Arab riots in 1929.

Yishai Fleisher, a spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, welcomed expanding the settlement, saying it would be good news for the Jewish community here. However, he said there are no building plans yet.

The settlements are built on land Palestinians want for a future state  a state that the new poll shows both Israelis and Palestinians still hope will be created.

Among Jewish Israelis, 53% support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Among Israels Arab minority, the number is much higher, 87%. Conversely, just 34% of Palestinians and 20% of Israelis support the idea of a single shared state where they are both citizens with equal rights.

After two decades of failed peace efforts, and nearly a year of low-level violence, mistrust is strong. The poll found that 65% of Israelis fear Palestinians. In contrast, just 45% of Palestinians fear Israelis.

Hermann said she was surprised by the higher fear level on the Israeli side and cited a number of factors. She said many Israelis have no contact with Palestinians, making it easier to dehumanize the other side.

She also said the recent wave of violence had jolted Israeli society, which had been more insulated from the conflict than Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. In addition, she said Israeli leaders  by painting the Palestinians as utterly hostile  and Israeli media reports had contributed to the atmosphere.

The only images the average Israeli, and I suppose the average Palestinian, gets are the negative ones, she said.

The survey interviewed 1,270 Palestinians and 1,184 Israelis in June, and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points. It was conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute, where Hermann is a senior fellow, and Shikakis Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

ALSO

Singer who added all lives matter to Canadian anthem finds himself on the sidelines

Afghan city of Kunduz, briefly captured by the Taliban last year, is in danger again

Turkeys president says wedding attacker who killed dozens was Islamic State bomber as young as 12

UPDATES:

9 a.m.: Updated with details on a poll about Palestinian and Israeli opinions

This story was originally posted at 5:15 a.m.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday that Russia will stop using an Iranian air base for airstrikes in Syria for the time being.

Bahram Ghasemi told reporters in Tehran that the Russian airstrikes on militants in Syria were temporary, based on a Russian request.

He also said the strikes were carried out with mutual understanding and with Irans permission, and that the Russian mission is finished, for now.

Advertisement

Ghasemi reiterated that Russia has no base in Iran.

His remarks reflect Iranian authorities displeasure about the extent of publicity that Russias use of the Iranian air base got last week.

MORE WORLD NEWS

Afghan city of Kunduz, briefly captured by the Taliban last year, is in danger again

Iraq executes 36 men convicted in massacre carried out by Islamic State

Turkeys president says wedding attacker who killed dozens was Islamic State bomber as young as 12
Turkish authorities have backed away from their assertion that the suicide bombing that killed at least 54 people at a Kurdish wedding Saturday was carried out by a child.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had told reporters that the bomber was between 12 to 14 and that there were strong indications that Islamic State militants were behind the attack in the southern city of Gaziantep.

But Prime Minister Binali Yildirim backtracked on Monday. There are rumors, but we have no clues on the Gaziantep bombing perpetrator or organization [right now] and cannot say if it was an adult or a child, he said.

Advertisement

Confusion over the age of the attacker could have been caused by witnesses seeing children at the scene, officials said. Many were still out on the streets as the wedding party was winding down.

Of the 54 victims  up from 51 on Sunday  29 were younger than 18, the prime minister said.

The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that video from the scene showed two people fleeing just before the bombing and that investigators were looking into whether they played a role in the attack.

As for the group behind the bombing, a Turkish security official told Reuters that the device was the same type as those used in two attacks last year that were attributed to Islamic State militants.

In both of those cases  an attack in July that killed more than 30 people in the border town of Suruc and another three months later that claimed 103 lives in the capital, Ankara  Kurdish activists and their allies were the target.

That Islamic State never claimed responsibility was widely seen as part of its strategy of trying to foment the rift between the Turkish state and its Kurdish population. The government is battling an insurgency by militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK.

Kurds were also the target Saturday. Many guests at the wedding were from the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party.

If it turns out that the bomber was a child, that would be not be unheard of for Islamic State.

Special correspondent Farooq reported from Istanbul and Times staff writer King from Washington.

laura.king@latimes.com

ALSO

Her husband was killed in the Philippines drug war. No one will support her quest for answers

Afghan city of Kunduz, briefly captured by the Taliban last year, is in danger again

Iraq executes 36 men convicted in massacre carried out by Islamic State

UPDATES:

5:05 p.m.: This article was updated with staff reporting.

This article was originally published at 10:45 a.m.
For years, the Syrian government and U.S.-backed Kurdish forces shared control of Hasakah, a city in Syrias northeast. But last week, the Kurdish militia known as the Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, launched an assault on government-controlled areas of the city, activists said  marking a rift between onetime allies and further blurring the lines between the warring sides in Syrias bloody internecine civil war.

More than 50 people had been killed in the clashes, including fighters and civilians. It is the most violent confrontation between pro-government and Kurdish forces since the start of the civil war, said Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Kurds have played both sides of the Syrian conflict, forging tactical alliances with both the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad as well as the rebels fighting to end his rule. They have also worked with other countries involved in the civil war, and emerged as the biggest recipient of U.S. largesse, which has given them weaponry as well as logistical weapons support.

Advertisement

Ever since the opposition took over large swaths of the countrys resource-rich northern areas, a number of rebel factions have battled the YPG in areas around Aleppo. Many accuse the YPG of seeking to consolidate areas extending from Syrias northeastern tip to Afrin, roughly 250 miles to the west.

In July, the YPG assisted pro-government forces in establishing control over the Castello road, a strategic highway that had linked rebel-held areas of Aleppo city to the Turkish border.

But on Tuesday, a dispute between the Asayesh, a Kurdish internal security force, and a pro-government militia escalated into a full-blown drive by the Kurds to consolidate their control of the city.

Then, on Thursday, Syrian warplanes launched unprecedented airstrikes on Kurdish positions in the area. Hundreds fled the fighting.

The Pentagon said U.S. special operations forces were caught in the middle when they, acting as advisors in the region, were nearly hit Friday with a Syrian airstrike.

In response, the U.S. scrambled two F-22 stealth fighter jets to monitor the area around Hasakah and chase away any Syrian jets that entered the airspace. U.S. officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said Syrian jets have not flown near Hasakah since Friday and that American warplanes continue to police the region, providing de facto aerial protection for Kurdish forces that U.S. officials nevertheless insisted was not a formal no-fly zone.

The Kurdish security force, the Asayesh, issued leaflets telling government troops they had to lay down their arms or consider [themselves] dead, according to images uploaded to social media.

Russia brokered a brief ceasefire between the two sides Sunday  but hours later, shortly after midnight Monday, Kurdish forces relaunched their offensive. They moved to encircle government positions in what was seen as a final bid to oust Damascus remaining presence from the city.

Kurdish forces had now completely surrounded government troops that had been forced to retreat from the southern neighborhoods of Nashwa and Ghweiran, said Fahed Fataah, a local resident.

Kurdish fighters took down images of Assad and Syrian flags that adorned government buildings and replaced them with the YPGs banner, activists said. They imposed a curfew on neighborhoods under their control.

A pro-government Facebook community, The Men of the Syrian Army in Hasakah, corroborated Fataahs account, but added that Russia was still mediating negotiations despite the ceasefires breakdown.

But a ceasefire might prove elusive. The Asayesh will not back down no matter what concessions the regime offers, Abu Araaj, a spokesperson for a YPG-allied Arab coalition called the Army of the Revolutionaries, said Monday. He gave a nom de guerre for reasons of security.

He added that Arab units were not involved in the offensive but would intervene if required.

The escalation between the Kurds and the Syrian government came as two of Damascus key allies appeared to be in disagreement. Iran chastised Russia for revealing that Russian Tupolev-22M3 strategic bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighters had used the Shahid Nojeh airbase near the city of Hamedan to mount bombing runs in Syria.

Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Deghan criticized Russia for exhibiting a show-off and ungentlemanly [attitude] in this field, the BBC reported.

The operation is now over and Russian units are no longer at the base, Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said Monday, according to Irans Press TV. But Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov suggested that there would be future deployments of Russian warplanes to Iran, based on mutual agreements on fighting terrorism and depending on developments in Syria, Russia Today reported.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish offensive on Hasakah, seen as a further bid to create a Kurdish autonomous entity on Syrian soil, has pushed Turkey to soften its stance toward Assad.

Turkey views the YPG as a proxy for the Kurdistan Workers Party, with whom it has waged a decades-long insurgency war and counts as a terrorist force on a par with Islamic State. It fears that a Syrian Kurdish presence on its southern border could give rise to a fresh PKK campaign for an independent Kurdish state -- a concern it now shares with Damascus.

The clashes pushed Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim to say that the Syrian leader could remain in a transitional role Saturday. He also said that Incirlik airbase, used by the U.S.-led coalition to launch sorties against Islamic State, could be opened to Russia as well.

The offensive has even led to a rare point of agreement between Assad and the opposition: Both Damascus and the rebels have insisted they aim to maintain Syrias territorial integrity and are vehemently against what they describe as secessionist projects.

Washingtons aerial support for the Kurds, which has effectively grounded Assads warplanes over Hasakah and given the YPG an immense advantage against government troops, is likely to further alienate Turkey.

Nonetheless, the U.S. defended its aerial patrols over Hasakah by maintaining it will not tolerate any threat thats posed to the more than 300 U.S. special forces commandos, many of whom are stationed in northeast Syria.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters Monday that the U.S. military informed the Russian military where the troops were located through an emergency communications channel set up to avoid air accidents. The Russians have passed the message to the Assad government, he said.

We would continue to advise the Syrian regime to steer clear of those areas, Cook said. As our forces move through Syria and continue their partnered operations, we will do what we need to do to protect our forces.

Special correspondent Bulos reported from Amman, Jordan, and staff writer Hennigan reported from Washington.
Donald Trump's foreign policy speech last Monday had very slim chances of winning over liberals and left-leaning moderates, but there was hope the Republican presidential candidate would gain traction with on-the-fence voters.

The goal was to divert attention from his call to take Second Amendment action against Hillary Clinton and repeated claims that Clinton and President Obama created ISIS. This would be Trump's pivot to a presidential message; one focused on national security and strategic ways of defeating global terrorism.

Focused it was. Only it focused on causation while providing little correlation, or detailed solutions.

Trump justifiably attacked the Obama administration's Middle East role ahead of the Arab Spring, and he correctly referenced honor killings terrorist organizations embrace, but both predate Obama's presidency. While a case can be made that Obama had missteps, including the administration's handling the 2012 U.S. embassy attack in Benghazi, Trump openly supported many of the administration's efforts at the time.

"It all began in 2009 with what has become known as President Obama's global 'Apology Tour," Trump said, before outlining specific - yet insubstantive - anti-terrorism proposals.

Here's a look at 10 of Trump's more questionable foreign policy speech statements.

"If I become President, the era of nation-building will be ended. Our new approach, which must be shared by both parties in America, by our allies overseas, and by our friends in the Middle East, must be to halt the spread of Radical Islam."

The U.S. did nation-build in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it ended some five years ago when a majority of American troops left following the Iraq War. The strategy now is less about instilling democracy than fighting terrorist organizations.

The Pentagon deployed an additional 560 troops to Iraq last month, bringing the total number of boots on the ground near 4,647, along with troops deployed on temporary assignment.

"I was an opponent of the Iraq War from the beginning - a major difference between me and my opponent. So I have been clear for a long time that we should not have gone in."

Trump's 2002 interview with Howard Stern, when Trump says "yeah, I guess so" to supporting the war, is a vague response that should not be taken as his definitive stance.

His interview with Fox Business News anchor Neil Cavuto a year later gave more context.

"Well, (George Bush) has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps, because perhaps shouldn't be doing it yet and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations," Trump said. "He's under a lot of pressure. He's - I think he's doing a very good job."

"I have long said that we should have kept the oil in Iraq - another area where my judgement has been proven correct...If we had controlled the oil, we could have prevented the rise of ISIS in Iraq."

Here, Trump says the U.S. should have prevented insurgents from taking Iraq's oil. His beliefs fall in line with the Bush administration's when troops were specifically sent to protect oil fields. The interest isn't in taking Iraq's oil but in assuring U.S.-based oil companies wells are secure.

ISIS reportedly makes $500 million a year selling oil on the black market. Less-savvy terrorist groups are funded by wealthy donors, sometimes referred to as "angel investors," who provide seed money for oil smuggling, travel, and weaponry.

Trump's claim isn't completely baseless, but its likely ISIS would have received funding another way.

"I had previously said that NATO was obsolete because it failed to deal adequately with terrorism; since my comments they have changed their policy and now have a new division focused on terror threats."

Last month, New York Times chief Washington correspondent David E. Sanger asked Trump about NATO and whether he would aid affiliated countries. Trump said "if they fulfill their obligation to us, the answer is yes."

Every presidential nominee since its inception in 1949 supported NATO. It is what prevented feeble nations from being strong-armed following World War II and prevented the spread of communism during the Cold War. The coalition may play a bigger role soon enough, if Russia President Vladimir Putin continues making allies across the Middle East.

Coincidentally, NATO did announce a new position recently, though it had nothing to do with Trump's comments.

A NATO official told POLITICO the new assistant secretary general for intelligence position was considered for years "to deal with threats such as hybrid warfare."

"I also believe that we could find common ground with Russia in the fight against ISIS. They have too much at stake in the outcome of Syria, and have had their own battles with Islamic terrorism."

Trump's affinity for Putin makes Republican lawmakers worry, once predicting he and the Russian leader "will get along very well."

Based on Trump's campaign advisors, the relationship may already have blossomed. Campaign chairman Paul Manafort previously consulted the Ukraine's ruling political party and former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych.

A New York Times investigation found handwritten ledgers with Manafort's name next to $12.7 million cash payments. Anti-corruption officials Yanukovych's inner circle may have laundered money to offshore accounts and funded the purchase of a cable television network.

Manafort worked with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska on the television deal. Deripaska, according to the Times, is closely associated to Putin.

On Sunday, Ivana Trump was seen vacationing with Wendi Deng Murdoch, who is rumored to be dating Putin. Ivanka and Murdoch's relationship has nothing to do with the presidential election, but it may encourage decisions a President Trump makes with Russia.

"We cannot allow the internet to be used as a recruiting tool, and for other purposes, by our enemy. We must shut down their access to this form of communication, and we must do so immediately."

If software developers and social media companies ban individuals with terrorist ties those individuals simply open new accounts using pseudonyms and fake email addresses. Or they download new messenger apps.

When the Patriot Act was revised last summer, Nationals Security Agency officials lost the ability to wiretap phones and collect telephone records. What they can arguably and hypothetically do is access anyone's Facebook and Twitter accounts. If so, it would be a counterterrorism tool aimed at terrorism suspects that ultimately infringes upon a person's right to privacy.

To shut down the internet for one person means shutting it down for all.

"The common thread linking the major Islamic terrorist attacks that have recently occurred on our soil...is that they have involved immigrants or the children of immigrants. Clearly, new screening procedures are needed."

Trump used the term "extreme vetting" when discussing his anti-immigration proposal. Vetting immigrants is a long-held American tradition, from colonial-era ideals denying poor arrivals to the 1917 Immigration Act - which discriminated against Asians - to modern green card applications.

The difference between Trump's proposal and the 1917 Immigration Act is that Trump specifically cites children as a threat.

Undocumented individuals undergo a throughout screening process, as the White House detailed last November. They are screened by four different government agencies, interviewed by Department of Homeland Security officials, and re-interviewed if their information doesn't check out.

The process can take up to 24 months. Even then, the 50 percent of applicants who pass the screening process aren't guaranteed entry. For her part, Clinton has proposed an increase of 55,000 refugees a year, on top of some 100,000 arriving in fiscal year 2017.

"We must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law."

Trump's "extreme vetting" process includes an ideological test that may or may not discriminate based on an immigrant's heritage.

It all depends on what Trump defines as "principles."

Federal immigration law allows the president to deny entry to undocumented individuals who could be a detriment to American interests. As a Yale Law School professor told ABC News, "This authority has never been used in the way Trump suggests, and it is so broad that the Supreme Court would likely subject it to some constitutional limitations."

"To put these new procedures in place, we will temporarily suspend immigration from some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism."

Trump's campaign kicked off with a statement calling Mexicans "criminals". He proposed a policy blocking Muslims from entering the country, regardless of their U.S. citizenship status. In his speech Monday, Trump proposed suspending immigration from countries with "a history of exporting terrorism."

France and Germany would be banned. Latin America, which was the epicenter for terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s would also be denied. Colombia, for example, is home to both the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). El Salvador has the Farbundo Marti National Liberation Front. Peru has the Shining Path, a longstanding communist party.

"Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country."

No one will argue against newcomers embracing American principles and adhering to American laws, but Trump's entire campaign is based on excluding outsiders.

Trump accused U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel of being biased against him because Curiel has Mexican roots. He still backs surveillance of mosques as an anti-terrorism measure. When Gold Star mother Humayun Khan silently stood behind her Muslim husband, Trump suggested it was because she wasn't allowed to speak.

Trump concluded his 46-minute speech by saying he was hopeful the Muslim community would work with him "to build bridges and erase division."
In one of his first general election TV ads to hit the airwaves, Donald Trump paints the issue of immigration as a problem that has grown so out of control only someone as hard on the issue as himself can fix it.

Just hours after reflecting in a campaign speech delivered in North Carolina how much he regrets some of the "personal pain" his words and tone may have caused this election season, Trump blisters undocumented immigrants in his latest production.

"In Hillary Clinton's America ... Syrian refugees flood in, illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay, collecting social security benefits, skipping the line," a narrator booms over blurred images of apparent criminals.

"It's more of the same, but worse," the narrator adds of the prospect of a Clinton White House., before wrapping "His America is secure. Terrorists and dangerous criminals are kept out. The border secure. Our families safe."

Ads Panned Across Board

Almost immediately, Trump's divisive words have been blasted by those at both ends of the political spectrum.

"Trump's ugly and dishonest new TV ad shows he isn't changing a thing," veteran Republican presidential strategist Rick Wilson lamented in a tweet.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's press secretary, Brian Fallon, took Trump to task over what he viewed as his blatant dishonesty in pushing the untruths voiced in the ads.

"In case you thought for a split-second Trump was genuine about feeling regret, he is back to demonizing immigrants again in his new ad today," Fallon added.

Plans call for the Trump campaign to spend up to $4 million over the next 10 days having the ads aired in the critical states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida.

Claims Unfounded?

The Washington Post instantly blasted Trump's words about undocumented immigrants collecting Social Security benefits under Clinton as false and misleading. In general, people in the United States illegally are only allowed to collect any such benefits after either obtaining legal status or being granted some sort of deferred action status.

And even then, they are required to have worked for at least 10 years, paid taxes and reached retirement age, a system that hardly qualifies as the "skipping the line" scenario Trump touched upon.

The Post also notes immigration reform proposals thus far put forth by Clinton would enforce all immigration laws by focusing resources on detaining and deporting those who "pose a violent threat to public safety."

During his North Carolina stop, Trump characterized some of his prior hardline stances and fiery words as things said "in the heat of debate."
The 2016 wildfire season in California is an extremely active one, with new fires igniting almost daily. Two of California's most problematic fires as of mid-August include the Rey Fire and the Cedar Fire. The Cedar Fire, which sparked on Tuesday Aug. 16, has grown to 20,000 acres, while the Rey Fire, ignited on Thursday Aug. 18 has burned through over 23,500 acres of land.

Containment efforts with these two fires are coming along slowly, with thousands of residents in the communities being affected by mandatory, precautionary, and suggested evacuation orders as well as mandatory road closures.

The Cedar Fire is currently affecting communities in both Kern and Tulare counties, and the Sequoia National Forest has issued a closure order for lands, roads, and trails near the blaze. As of the most recent update from InciWeb, the current fire behavior is described as moderately active, fueling on dry timber and brush in the local area.

The size of the fire was most recently measured at 19,629 acres and was at approximately five percent containment. Fire officials estimate a final containment date on or near Sept. 15, 2016.

Officials report that abundant smoke is being generated by this blaze, due to extremely dry vegetation that is fueling it. Most of the smoke produced during Sunday's firefighting effort, which came from the northeast side of the blaze (where it crossed Spear Creek) is now burning toward Sugarloaf Creek.

In Kern County, several areas within Wofford Heights are under a recommended evacuation status, meaning that the fire is an "imminent threat" and residents are being strongly advised to leave their homes and seek shelter in safer areas, further from the blaze. These communities include: Pala Ranches; Homestead Tract; residences north of Anchorage Road, including Earl Pascoe Road; Alta Sierra; Slick Rock; and Shirley Meadows.

The area east of Highway 155 and north of Wofford Boulevard is now under a precautionary evacuation order, meaning that the fire may become a threat in the near future and residents are advised to be prepared to evacuate at any time.

In terms of Kern County road closures, they include: Highway 155 at the eastern junction of Pascoe Road on the west side, to Calgary Drive in Wofford Heights on the east; Forest Highway 90 from Highway 155 to Portuguese Pass; and Old State Road in Wofford Heights at its junction with Mountain Shadow Road.

In Tulare County, there are a number of communities currently under mandatory evacuation orders. These include: Posey; Pine Flat; Pine Mountain; Sugarloaf, including Sugarloaf Mountain Park and Sugarloaf Village; California Hot Springs; Panorama Heights; McClenny Tract; Spear Creek Mountain Homes; White River Summer Homes; Portuguese Meadow; Balance Rock; Idlewild; and Poso Park.

For residents affected by evacuation orders from the Cedar Fire, two temporary shelters have been set up. The first is in Lake Isabella at the First Baptist Church, located at 3701 Suhre Street. A second shelter has been organized in Porterville at the Granite Hills High School, located at 1701 E. Putnam Avenue.

For assistance in sheltering pets and/or livestock, residents are urged to contact Kern County Animal Services or Terry Way's Ranch & Equine Rescue at 416 N. Anderson Way in Exeter.

In terms of firefighting efforts, 1,197 firefighters have been assigned to help contain this blaze. Among the resources being utilized in the firefight are 171 fire engines, 28 hand crews, 15 aircraft, 18 dozers, and 25 water tenders. The cost to date in battling this fire, whose cause is currently under official investigation, has reached $11.1 million.

The Rey Fire, according to InciWeb's most recent update, has been displaying extreme fire activity in recent days due to extremely dry vegetation burning where no other fire has ever reportedly burned before. Santa Barbara County Officials maintain, however, that the fire has slowed in its advance as of Monday Aug. 22.

The total current burn area is now at 23,546 acres and containment has increased to 20 percent. The number of firefighting personnel currently on scene at the Rey Fire is approximately 1,260. The cause of this blaze is still under official investigation.

Sunday's firing operation in the southwest portion of the blaze was successful, allowing for containment near Horse Canyon. Fire authorities report that the blaze spread yesterday primarily to the east, toward Little Pine Mountain, and to the northeast toward Alexander Peak.

However, the Santa Ynez Watershed, a critical water source for the area, continues to remain under threat from the blaze. The Santa Ynez Creek and Lake Cachuma reportedly provide 80 percent of the water supply to the entire Santa Barbara area.

On the upside, fire officials say that despite "dramatic plumes of smoke" being seen along coastal areas, the Rey Fire moved closer toward deep wilderness areas over the weekend, straying away from communities populated with homes, residents, and other structures. Heavy smoke and plumes from the fire are anticipated to remain around the affected areas for the next several days, though.

There are not currently any residential evacuation mandates in place due to the Rey Fire, however there have been some changes in terms of road closures near the wildfire. State Highway 154 is now open in both directions between Santa Ynez and Santa Barbara, but Paradise Road remains closed for the foreseeable future.

Please check back in with us at LatinPost.com for further news and updates on these and other wildfires plaguing California during this 2016 season.
Donald Trump met with his new National Hispanic Advisory Council in New York on Saturday as a first step in reaching out to Latino voters.

Based on who was asked, Trump either did or did not insinuate changes to his strict anti-immigration policy proposals.

BuzzFeed reported that the Republican presidential candidate was considering a "humane and efficient" way of dealing with some 11 million individuals living in the U.S. illegally. Attendees who spoke with Univision said Trump's upcoming immigration policy speech in Colorado will "include finding a way to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants."

On Sunday, nascent campaign manager Kellyanne Conaway disputed the reports by saying Trump's position has not changed.

"What he supports is to make sure we enforce the law, that we are respectful of those Americans who are looking for jobs, and that we are fair and humane to those living among us," Conway said on CNN's State of the Union.

Asked if Trump still supports a deportation task force, which the presidential candidate previously said would be done "humanely," Conway responded: "to be determined."

"I'm Not Flip-Flopping"

Trump appeared on Fox News Monday morning to set the record straight.

"We have to be very, very strong when people come here illegally," Trump said. "We have a lot of people that want to come in through the legal process, and it's not fair to them. We're working with a lot of people in the Hispanic community to try and come up with an answer."

Trump added, "I'm not flip-flopping. We want to come up with a really fair but firm answer."

Trump's anti-immigration proposals are the cornerstone of his candidacy. Whereas ousted GOP contenders like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio walked a tepid line, Trump launched his campaign by taking a hardline stance against Mexicans he deemed "criminals" and "rapists."

A record 13.3 million GOP primary voters sided with Trump because of his vow to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border wall at the Mexican government's expense. Rally speeches often include victims of undocumented immigrants, like Northern California resident Kathryn Steinle and former sheriff's dispatcher Dominic Durden.

In an August 2015 interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Trump repeatedly responded "They have to go" in defending his deportation stance. A successful example he has used is "Operation Wetback," a controversial 1950s mass deportation program administered to round up immigrants and drop them off in remote areas.

Trump's Hispanic Advisory Council

Nationwide polls show Trump trails Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by a wide margin among minorities. Some polls have Clinton courting as much as 76 percent of the Latino vote.

Members of Trump's Hispanic advisory council and Latino voters may have similar concerns, as Dallas pastor Mark Gonzales told TIME over the weekend.

"I wasn't aware that I was on any list in the capacity, official," Gonzales said, initially unaware that he was included in Trump's council. "We are waiting for more details, we want to see what he will do on immigration...Our stance remains the same, we are willing to serve in that capacity if that takes place."

The Republican National Committee initially released a statement that named Gonzales as a member, along with about two-dozen other Hispanic leaders. An updated press released backtracked from announcing Gonzales' participation.
According to recent polls making the rounds in terms of President Obama's approval ratings, the marks are up considerably and this is especially true among such constituent groups as Latinos, women, voters under age 30, and those who identify themselves as Independents.

A recent report from The Washington Post postulated that some of these increased approval ratings - specifically, among Latinos - may have a direct link to the coming presidential election. Alternately, a political scientist from the University of California-Irvine argues on the basis of a new Fox News Latino ratings poll that Latinos in the United States view the commander-in-chief as being extremely sensitive to their opinions, needs, circumstances, and criticisms. According to the numbers, this particular demographic seems to highly appreciate his work toward their communities within the United States.

Looking first to the Washington Post review of Obama's approval ratings, it was noted that among the groups with the biggest increases in approval for Obama over the past year are Latinos, people under age 30, women and "those who identify their political ideology as 'Independent.'"

It was reported that there is a likelihood of some overlap between these Independents and the under-30 demographic, as younger Americans are less likely to tag themselves with an "ideological label." Additionally, "the increase among Hispanics may also be linked directly to the presidential election," the Post notes.

A report from Politicsusa.com held a similar stance on the notion that Obama's approval rates may be tied in to all the rhetoric regarding this year's presidential candidates. Well, one candidate in particular - Donald Trump.

Politicsusa.com reporter Jason Easley notes that beyond economic improvement, lower gas prices and an overall increased level of stability under the Obama administration, the biggest change to the American political landscape over the past year has been the rise of Donald Trump.

"...and no figure in American politics is more anti-Trump than President Obama," Easley says.

"As potential voters have witnessed Donald Trump in action, they appreciate Obama more...President Obama is everything that Donald Trump will never be, and voters are noticing the difference," Easley said. "The demographics that are fueling Obama's rising approval rating should be a cause for alarm in the Republican party. Independents, women, people under thirty, and Hispanics are all groups that Trump has turned off."

However, from the perspective of the pollsters at Fox News Latino, the Hispanic demographic is reported to give Obama a notably high approval rating because of how satisfied they report being with the way "things are going with the country today," (according to 53 percent of respondents); how the United States is "the best country to live in," (according to 76 percent of respondents); and how, under the Obama administration, the current immigration system "allows people in who bring new ideas and entrepreneurial spirit" (according to 75 percent of respondents), among other aspects.

The Fox News Latino poll was conducted in jointly with Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw & Company Research. It was conducted by telephone among a random sample of 803 registered Latino voters. The results of the poll have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three-point-five percentage points.

"The policy focus of President Obama's administration has addressed a range of concerns of Latinos and, in those areas, they have generally approved of his actions," Louis DeSipio, political scientist at the University of California-Irvine told Fox News Latino pollsters. "This would include efforts to rebuild the economy after the Great Recession. Latino unemployment rates have dropped considerably. The Affordable Care Art has ensured that many previous uninsured U.S. citizens and permanent resident Latinos now have access to insurance, and, depending on their incomes, federal subsidies to purchase health insurance."
>>> The High Courts rose to the discriminating practices and delivered trans-formative ruling giving land inheritance rights to tribal women and thus provided a cause to celebrate.

High Court judgment changes the legal status of tribal women. In one stroke the high court has thrashed polyandry, polygamy, bigamyJoridara system,...................

>>> Background:

Constitution provides for protection of tribal indigenous communities and their customs through Articles 244, 244-A, 371-A, and the Fifth and Sixth Schedules. Because the customary law ( purported to be prevailing customary law), recorded almost a century back by the British) in revenue related documents like Riwaj -I-Am (common tradition) or Wajib ul Arz denies daughters and wives the right to inherit property, and professes only males are allowed to inherit ancestral property and bars women from such rights. The brothers, male members/relatives, often ill treat their unmarried sisters after the death of the parents. Then in certain regions, the law of primogeniture, which gives the right of inheritance only to the firstborn male child, deprived the rest of the male siblings of their legal right to property. In the absence of an heir, inheritance passed to collateral relatives  usually male, in order of seniority.  Earlier, the security of women in tribal society was taken care of by a unique custom. The father-in-law pledged a part of the land and house to the daughter-in-law in writing .The paper was kept with the father of the bride. In case of a dispute with the husband, the bride would get the pledged share. Meanwhile, while this traditional custom that somewhat helped secure a womans future, the discriminatory custom that daughter or wives cannot inherit property continues unabated, Polyandry was practiced in certain places/tribes like upper Himalayas. The practice of polyandry by the major tribes too was a result of limited land and resources. Several brothers married a single woman to avoid division of land, which resulted in the single status of several women since they did not get married. ..

While cases of polyandry are rare now, women continue to suffer from the discriminatory law that bars them from inheriting property.. It is the deserted, widowed and unmarried women who suffer the most as they have to live at the mercy of others Picture changes when several women (that became aware and active) traveled to seat of governments presented a memorandum to the State Governor demanding that this tribal law be scrapped but nothing happened. The women planned to pursue the matter both at the State as well as Centre level and take their agitation to Delhi.

>>> Indian courts recognize custom as law only if the custom is ancient or immemorial in origin; reasonable in nature and continuous in use, and certain. Courts interpret ancient or immemorial" to mean that for a custom to be binding. it must derive its force from the fact that by long usage it has obtained force of law.

>>> IN THE HIGH COURT OF HIMACHAL PRADESH SHIMLA

RSA No.39 of 2002 Alongwith Cross Objections No.129 of 2002.

Date of Decision: 19:10:2011.

Baan Singh and Others Vs. Devi Ram and Others http://164.100.138.228/casest/generatenew.php?path=data/judgment/2013old/&fname=RSA392002.pdf&smflag=N

2.They claimed that in accordance with the custom in joridara system it is the joridar brothers who inherit the estate of the deceased and the estate is not succeeded according to the provisions of the Hindu Succession Act.

3. The learned trial Court held that the custom stood abrogated after coming into force the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 and since admittedly the so called marriage with Dharmi had taken place after 1969, there could be no valid polyandrous marriage.

6. This appeal was admitted on the following question of law: Whether Mohi Ram, deceased constituted Joridara with Ghassi Ram, Telu Ram and on the death of Mohi Ram, his property will be inherited by whom?

8. To understand the question, it would be appropriate to refer to the joridara system. This custom was a mixture of both polygamy and polyandry. Under this Joridari system the eldest brother amongst the brothers was the pivot and the woman who was brought into the house in a marriage ceremony became the wife of all the brothers who joined him or associated with him.

9local customs governed the field and the ordinary Mitakshara School of Law did not govern inheritance or succession between the parties. 1. This Court has dealt in detail with the............. Joridari system in Partap Singh vs. Guman Singh and another, Latest HLJ 2010 (HP) 857,............. and it is not necessary to go into the entire concept of Joridari system.

In the aforesaid case, this Court clearly held that after the coming into force the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, by virtue of Section 4 of the Act, any text, rule or interpretation of Hindu law or custom or usage being part of the law immediately before the commencement of the Act shall cease to have effect in respect of the matters governed by the Act. It was clearly held that after the year 1956 succession amongst Hindus shall be governed by the Hindu Succession Act and not by custom.



Join LAWyersClubIndia's network for daily News Updates, Judgment Summaries, Articles, Forum Threads, Online Law Courses, and MUCH MORE!!"





Join our Telegram group

Join our Whatsapp group

"Loved reading this piece by Kumar Doab Join LAWyersClubIndia's network for daily News Updates, Judgment Summaries, Articles, Forum Threads, Online Law Courses, and MUCH MORE!!"

Tags : Civil Law
The Bethlehem Area School District is heeding the old adage, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

This week, the district found itself dragged into a social media furor after postcards promoting a new Catasauqua charter school started landing in Lehigh Valley mailboxes.

The mailer paints Liberty High School students as drug users by pointing to the September 2015 drug arrest of a student who had recently transferred into the district.

The charter school denies sending or paying for the mailers and Auditor General Eugene DePasquale is calling for an investigation.

School board President Michael Faccinetto and Superintendent Joseph Roy, both avid Twitter users, and other school officials frequently employ the hashtag BASDProud on social media.

On Sunday night, Faccinetto decided to rally the Lehigh Valley around the many things that the school district can boast about -- not one negative.

If you're a proud parent or @BethlehemAreaSD alumni I'd love to hear how BASD positivity impacted your life. Share it here using #BASDProud  Michael Faccinetto (@MikeFaccinetto) August 21, 2016

Liberty High School graduate and Bethlehem City Council President J. William Reynolds chimed in:

From T. Jefferson to Northeast to Liberty, I learned everyone is important and deserves respect. We are all in this together. #BASDProud  William Reynolds (@jaywreynolds) August 22, 2016

The rivalry between Freedom and Liberty exists, but at the end of the day we are a Bethlehem Family. #BASDProud pic.twitter.com/4Bkw2LoWxN  FHS Class of 2017 (@freedom_2017) August 22, 2016

One of my old interns who went to Liberty HS is starting medical school in Pittsburgh. #BASDProud  Jeff Warren (@Jeffrey_Warren) August 22, 2016

#BASDProud alum of TJ, NE & LHS. BASD teacher - 25 yrs. Parent of 3 sons who found a world of opportunities @ MH, EH, & FHS. Thank you BASD!  Stephanie Smith Augello (@SSAugello) August 22, 2016

14th yr teaching @ BASD. Moved here to give my children a great education, Freedom 2013&2017 graduates. #BASDproud https://t.co/2QANKwk9ps  Traci Millheim (@tracimillheim) August 21, 2016

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.

Save

Save
A Bethlehem man is jailed after allegedly threatening to kill his wife and then himself following an argument at a Freemansburg home.

Miguel A. Morales-Rosario, 53, of the 600 block of Labor Street, just before 8 p.m. Friday allegedly began arguing with his wife at a home in the 200 block of Juniata Street. Police said the argument was about a financial issue.

Morales-Rosario grabbed his wife by her throat, slammed her against a dining room wall and slapped her face, police said. He then fled the scene.

A church pastor alerted the victim and officers that Morales-Rosario had called him and threatened to kill his wife and then, himself, according to police.

Morales-Rosario is charged with simple assault, harassment and making terroristic threats. He was arraigned before District Judge Nancy Matos-Gonzalez, who set bail at $150,000.

In lieu of bail, Morales-Rosario was taken to Northampton County Prison.

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A man claims in a lawsuit the sellers of the Forks Township home he bought filled a large cistern with water to trick him into believing the home had water service.

The faucets and toilets worked on March 12 but stopped working March 31, 15 days after the home at 1600 North Delaware Drive was sold, according to a lawsuit filed by William Kaye.

Kaye alleges the previous owners, Brandon and June Colosi, hired Palmeri Water Service to fill an on-site cistern with water. The cistern was the water source for the home, but it ran dry some time ago because a nearby spring or water source changed course.

Kaye paid $8,100 to have a well drilled, the suit says. He paid $134,000 for the home, the suit says.

The suit says the Colosis are Realtors and failed to live up to the National Association of Realtors' code of ethics.

Brandon Colosi didn't return a call left on his work number.

The lawsuit was filed Friday by Harold J.J. DeWalt Jr.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
UPDATE: Charter school wants to get to the bottom of mystery, too.

Pennsylvania's auditor general is determined to find out who is behind a "deplorable" mailer that promotes a new charter school by disparaging Liberty High School.

This fledgling Catasauqua charter school denies authorizing, paying for or sending out this mailer.

Innovative Arts Academy Charter School, a grade 6-12 school soon set to open in Catasauqua, has denied in social media postings that it authorized or paid for the mailers. And its attorney Daniel Fennick is investigating what it can do to legally distance itself from the mailers and stop further unauthorized advertising.

Neither Fennick nor school CEO Loraine Petrillo responded to messages seeking comment Monday.

"I stand with the students and taxpayers in Northampton County eager to find out who paid for this advertising and what they are trying to accomplish with this unwarranted attack," Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, who has been sharply critical of Pennsylvania's charter school law, said in a statement Monday.

The Bethlehem Area School District, which the ad attacks, is located in both Lehigh and Northampton counties. The charter school plans to open at 330 Howertown Road in Catasauqua, Lehigh County, in a building owned by developer Abe Atiyeh.

Reached by phone Monday, Atiyeh said he had no comment and hung up the phone.

DePasquale said he has contacted the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General and other state and federal agencies urging a full investigation into the mailer's origin.

Aimed at boosting attendance at the fledgling charter school, the postcard reprints a Morning Call headline, "Teen busted by Liberty HS officials with more than $3,000 of heroin, cocaine," and asks "Why worry about this type of student at school? Come visit Arts Academy Charter School."

It was circulated over the weekend.

In September 2015, a 17-year-old Liberty student was arrested after school officials found he had heroin and cocaine with a street value of $3,000 to $4,000 in his backpack. The student was a recent transfer.

"Unfortunately we have become accustomed to dirtball mailers and tactics like this in political campaigns," DePasquale said in his statement."But when it spills over into our education system and one public school appears to have attacked another it becomes downright deplorable."

The Bethlehem schools community has rallied on social media to highlight all it has to be proud of using #BASDProud.

"Liberty High School has been a respected pillar of the Bethlehem community since its dedication in 1923," Superintendent Joseph Roy said in a statement late Sunday. "Liberty's long history of accomplishments and deep traditions make it immune to scurrilous attacks."

DePasquale emphasized that charter schools are public schools supported by tax dollars funneled from a student's home school.

"We cannot, and should not have to, tolerate such disgraceful tactics as those employed in this mailer," DePasquale said. "This despicable practice sends a horrible message to the students in our public school system, both traditional public schools and charter schools."

Roy said he hopes the mailer finally pushes the state Legislature to reform the state's charter school law.

"The mission of public education is corrupted when the profit motive replaces the public good as the primary driver of our community's schools," Roy said.

The charter school also says that two recent full-page color ads promoting the school and published in The Morning Call were not authorized or paid for by the school. Fennick, the attorney, contacted both The Express-Times and the Morning Call requesting no further ads be published without the approval of school officials.

The Morning Call declined to identify who paid for the newspaper ads.

"It is our policy not to provide business information on our advertisers," said Renee Mutchnik, director of marketing and communications.

The mailer lists the school building as a return address. It is the former location of the Arts Academy Medical Charter School, which shuttered in June. Atieyeh, who bought the building in 2007 for $900,000, leased the space to both charters.

When the Arts Academy Elementary School was trying to open in his building in Allentown, Atiyeh paid consultants $30 for each student they enrolled. He also hired RML Creative to design social media advertisements, fliers, billboards and a website with an online registration system.

At the time, Atiyeh defended the practice as legal and common, arguing that the Allentown School Board was only objecting because it opposes all charter schools for financial reasons.

Then-school board President Robert Smith accused Atiyeh of hiring the consultants because he wanted the income from the charter school lease.

Arts Academy Elementary School charter founder Thomas Lubben said at the time he was not involved in Atiyeh's decision to hire the consultants but he did not think it was improper.

DePasquale is also referring the new postcard to the Internal Revenue Service, which has strict guidelines for charter school advertising, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Department of Justice and the state Department of Education and Office of the Attorney General.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save
patrick cline

Patrick Cline, seen here in 2014, was known for toting a large white cross around the Lehigh Valley (Sarah Cassi | lehighvalleylive.com)

( )

Patrick Cline talked a lot about God's law Monday, but the man known for carrying a large white cross around the Lehigh Valley will be jailed under man's law for the next few months.

Cline was sentenced to 11 1/2 months to 23 months in Lehigh County Jail, followed by three years of probation, for surreptitiously recording a custody conference with his cellphone and posting it to his Facebook page.

Cline was convicted by a jury in June of intercepting communications and disclosing the recording.

First Assistant District Attorney Steve Luksa said while Cline puts God's law above man's law, the man who constantly speaks about Jesus "puts his interpretation of God's law above everybody else."

That includes insisting that he and his ex-wife are still married, listing in court moral judgments of her life without him, and demonstrations outside his children's school.

"He uses God to justify his actions," Luksa said.

Cline gave a detailed list of alleged honors, awards and achievements, from getting his CDL and being an employee of the month at various jobs, to maintaining his slim figure, writing 11 books (self-published on Amazon) and becoming a "minor Facebook celebrity."

"I am absolutely no threat to the community. I am a pillar of the community," Cline said.

Cline said he has read the entire Bible 50 times and "most importantly, I do what it says." Cline ended his statement be reciting a Bible verse, and then said, "I rest my case."

Cline who questioned the legal merits of his conviction during Monday's hearing, said he has not yet decided if he will appeal.

Prosecutors argued there was an expectation of privacy at the custody conference with a custody master, held in 2014 in a private room behind a closed door. Cline did not inform anyone at the beginning that he was recording the meeting on his cellphone, and didn't ask during the meeting.

"I don't know what an appellate court will do with this," the judge said.

The sentencing hearing became heated at one point between Judge James Anthony and Luksa, as Luksa argued Cline's biblical interpretation of "till death do us part" could be ominous for Cline's ex-wife.

The judge repeatedly said he didn't want to discuss Cline's religious beliefs, and that the focus was on Cline's actions and not his Christianity.

"I'm very uncomfortable getting into the whole religious aspect. ...Let's focus on the facts of the case," the judge said, later adding, "There is a law higher than man's law. Let's stick to the case."

Anthony said he had 19 years of Catholic-school education and regularly reads the Bible.

"That does not allow you take these measures," the judge said. "What you did was wrong. Do you understand that?"

Cline and his wife had an acrimonious battle over custody of their three children, and Cline "felt he wasn't being treated right," defense attorney John Baurkot said.

"All he was trying to do was be the best father that he could," Baurkot said.

Baurkot said his client has irritated and aggravated people when he travels with his cross and preaches about Jesus.

"Some people like me," Cline said.

In January 2015, Cline failed to appear at a Lehigh County district court to answer to his charges, and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Cline claimed on his Facebook page that he went to Maui, and then Los Angeles, and the page showed him with a different cross in sunny locations with palm trees. In a previous interview, Cline said he carries the cross around in an attempt to spread the word of Jesus Christ as part of his Jesus is God's Ministry.

Cline was arrested by Allentown police in March, and brought to county jail on St. Patrick's Day.

The following week, Cline was found guilty of contempt of court for violating a protection-from-abuse order his former wife filed against him. Judge Michele Varricchio sentenced Cline to three to six months in county jail; prosecutors were not sure how the contempt sentence will be factored in with Cline's criminal sentence.

Custody corruption... part 1 of 3 Posted by Patrick Matthew Cline on Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The body of an Ocean County man was found early Monday morning in the Round Valley Reservoir, a New Jersey environmental official confirmed.



Koon Fung, 71, of Toms River, was found dead Monday in the reservoir in Clinton Township following a search by State Park police and State Police, Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Bob Considine confirmed Monday afternoon.

State Park police were notified of a missing person by the Toms River police on Sunday night, said Considine.

Fung, whose vehicle was found at the reservoir, apparently left his home Sunday to wade or swim in the reservoir, which he had often done, he said.

Fung's body was taken to Hunterdon County Medical Center, where an autopsy is scheduled to be performed Tuesday morning.

Dave Hutchinson may be reached at dhutchinson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @DHutch_SL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Hillary Clinton

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

(Andrew Harnik)

Hooray! The Bloomberg view op-ed,"Troubling case of an attorney general who lied," proves absence of intervention from the lying Clinton machine does allow justice to prevail. Kathleen Kane, a Pennsylvania Democrat, resigned after being convicted of perjury for lying under oath, a crime that will dictate prison time for sure. In these days of rampant government corruption, pinching oneself seems proper, in order to believe what has just happened.

Author Noah Feldman delves into how and why the justice system first settled for pledging oaths in the name of God to get to the truth from people, whose sinful natures do harbor lying in their lifetimes. Of course it presumes they believe in God -- lying would induce their god's wrath. However, research disclosed this methodology of fearing God's punishment had become ineffective. Thus the courts developed the charge of perjury, using the fear of jail time for lying under oath, and it worked. Except in Hillary Clinton's case -- so far.

As ordered by a federal judge, Clinton must provide written testimony under oath about her private unsecured computer servers while secretary of state. This judge also allowed the Judicial Watch group to depose a senior State Department aide, who warned two lower aides not to question Hillary's email practices. This deposition will take place Oct. 31.

Surely Clinton's hee-haw lying legacy has failed her and perjury is just around the corner. (Matthew 5:37 -- "But let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No.' For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.")



Philip H. Beach Sr.

Bethlehem Township, Pa.
Almost 200 passengers were riding the Extra 1104 that night in 1925.

Most of them were German-Americans, headed from Chicago to Hoboken where they planned to board a ship bound for Europe.

Fifty of them died horribly, essentially cooked alive as steam from a ruptured pipe blasted through the train cars piled on top of the overturned engine.

It was the deadliest disaster in Warren County history. And John General barely knew it had happened.

"Just the thought of a train wreck occurring just down the road from where I was born and raised quickly drew my attention," the Mansfield Township resident said. "Just about every day, I can hear the train go back down the street, but never once thought it was the site of terribly tragic disaster -- let alone the deadliest disaster in our county."

Two years ago, the senior visual arts major at Emerson College in Boston began making a documentary on the crash. The final product, the 30-minute-long "Extra 1104 -- The Story of the Rockport Train Wreck," will premiere 7 p.m. Aug. 29 at the township municipal building. A free online release is expected in September on General's website, www.johngeneral.com.

He answered some questions about the film ahead of the debut.

How did you become interested in making films?

I started making films when I was around 10 years old after saving up birthday money to buy myself a Sony camcorder. ... What really drew me to film initially remains a mystery to even myself, but once I did start filming ... I just felt like anything that came to my mind was possible through film, and so film became my main way of expression. It fused art and technology together, and I absolutely still love that about filmmaking.

What drew you to Extra 1104 as a topic?

I think I was scouring a website that was a forum for my local community, and somebody had mentioned this "Rockport train wreck." ... My dad had actually then mentioned to me that there was a monument erected at the site of the crash on Hazen Road, so I quickly jumped in my car and searched for the monument for what felt like a half hour. I did find it, but also discovered how overgrown the memorial had become; so much so that you really couldn't see it from the road. I don't think many people at all even knew it was there, which really prompted me towards the end of making this film to work with the town to beautify it. The memorial should be seen, and it should certainly appropriately memorialize the poor people who perished at the site.

Months of research went by before the camera was even turned on. It was shocking to find out just how inaccurate and... Posted by Extra 1104 - Documentary Film on Saturday, June 25, 2016

What did you know about Extra 1104 before you started, and what did you learn doing this project?

Before I started the film, all I knew was that when the train crashed, the boiler had split open and funneled into the train cars causing the passengers to be steamed alive. ... As I got more and more into it, even my professor became shocked at how interesting the story is.

The story of the Rockport train wreck isn't your usual train wreck. ... Rockport was an actual village at that point in 1925. There was no electricity, no fire department, no police, no medical personnel (the closest hospitals were Easton and Dover at the time), and hardly any automobiles. So when a train crashes in the middle of the night when everyone on the train is sleeping and the people of Rockport are already watching Hackettstown's lumber yard engulf in flames from a lightning strike, all you can think about is that some people there must've honestly thought it was the end of the world.

I hate saying it but it's true that these poor people on this train were cooked alive from the scalding steam that had funneled into the train cars, which is a death unlike almost any other train wreck in history I would say. Not to forget either, the way that the people of Rockport stepped up to help those who were injured is incredible. I think you see it very much in our community still today, but the Rockport train wreck just goes to show that selflessness and courage go far back in this community and are part of the foundation that makes us who we are here.

Just when you thought the night couldn't get more disastrous for the small village of Rockport who had no fire... Posted by Extra 1104 - Documentary Film on Friday, August 5, 2016

How did you track down sources for your film?

One of my absolute favorite parts of making this film was tracking people down and actually talking to them about the train wreck. It all started with Frank Dale's book, which is in the Warren County libraries, "The Disaster at Rockport." Dale laid a solid foundation of knowledge about the wreck down for me. For interviewees, one kind of just led to another. ...

When I started making this film, I never thought for a second that I would be so fortunate as to talk to someone who grew up in Rockport and was alive at the time of the wreck, but ... I found Mr. (Alfred) Dellicker, and I cannot tell people enough how grateful I am to have been in the company of such a kind man with so many stories and insight into what Rockport was like "back in the day." ... Even if this film fell flat, I knew I was already beyond happy with how I got to talk to the wonderful and insightful people I interviewed for this film. Filmmaking is really just full of surprises.

Alfred Dellicker is one of the last living witnesses of the disaster and is featured in the upcoming film premiering August 29th. Check out the trailer at: https://youtu.be/d4z7ArQzfDQ Posted by Extra 1104 - Documentary Film on Monday, August 1, 2016

What should people know going into your film, and what do you hope they take away?

Before going into the film, I think people should know that 50 people died in our town just down the road from where some of us grew up, and that these people had families who loved them. There were entire families wiped out in this train wreck. They really did die in extreme pain. And it's easy to forget how human they all were given how distanced we are in years from the train wreck itself.

But as much as mentioning how gruesome this disaster was makes for interesting conversation, I hope people take away more how selfless the first responders were and how many acts of heroism were displayed that night by porters, uninjured passengers, and the people of Rockport village despite the horrible situation. It's extremely admirable what was done that night in the face of death.

In 1995, through the efforts of local townspeople, a monument was erected at the site of wreck where the railroad tracks... Posted by Extra 1104 - Documentary Film on Thursday, June 16, 2016

How is this accident remembered within the community, or how should it be?

About 20 years ago, the community had erected a memorial at the site of the disaster ... . This summer (with some assistance) my family and I were able to beautify the memorial so that it continues to appropriately memorialize the victims of this tragic disaster. You can't really blame people for not knowing about the train wreck because the memorial for years was overgrown and not much is written about it, but that's ultimately what I hope this film does. I've already had numerous people tell me how shocked they are to hear that this disaster happened in our town and that they never knew about it. That's not a bad thing. It just means we're moving in the right direction right now and making people more aware of the history that we live with in our town.

It really is fascinating, and it sounds odd but if you drive out to site of the wreck at night where Hazen Road meets Rockport's train tracks and just stare down the tracks watching them get swallowed up by the dark and imagine the screams and the confusion that must've filled the air in our town that night, it really can give you the chills. That's something I think everyone should try out because it'll really give you a new perspective on the whole event.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
MORE than half of undergraduate courses at the University of Limerick have seen points increase, as CAO first round offers go out to prospective students across the country today.

And LIT has reported a strong increase in demand for the majority of its CAO programmes across all areas, with substantial points increases in Built Environment, Science, Engineering and Creative programmes.

UL said CAO application figures show continued demand for its programmes by this years Leaving Certificate students. 37 of its 69 programmes registered a CAO first round points increase.

ULs BEng in Aeronautical Engineering is up 40 points from last year, while its International Business Programme has also seen an increase of 25 points, which Professor Paul McCutcheon, vice president academic and registrar, said was reinforcing the quality of the education and student experience on offer at UL.

There is a continued demand for the innovative programmes on offer at UL, he said.

Six programmes at UL now require 500 points or more.

ULs Faculty of Science and Engineering saw 18 of 32 programmes registering point increases, while in construction related programmes, architecture rose by 30 points to 420.

The Bachelor of Science in Psychology has seen an increase also this year as points now stand at 525, up 15 on last year.

ULs Bachelor of Laws (Law Plus) and BA in Economics and Sociology both rose by 10 points, while its Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Sociology sees an increase in demand with a jump of 15 points to 505.

LIT interim president Terry Twomey said the increase in demand for programmes was "reflective of the ongoing recovery in the economy".

"The trend is particularly pronounced at our Department of the Built Environment, where points have increased for all honours degree programmes. For example, our honours degree in Quantity Surveying is up by 60 points this year, and Property Valuation and Management is up by 35 points," he said.

"Demand is also particularly strong for Science and Engineering related programmes. Applied Biology, Mechanical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, as well as Video and Sound Technology are among the most popular programmes for the class of 2016.

"Game Art and Design, and our Art and Design programme are also showing strong increases in points, reflecting a continued growth of interest in the creative technologies and the arts.

"Against this backdrop, LIT is attempting to meet demand for CAO programmes by offering access by Direct Entry, an option that is proving very popular with Leaving Cert students. Id encourage students to get in touch with us here in LIT and to check out cao.lit.ie for information on other course options and to apply."

Some 2,573 students across Limerick city and county sat the Leaving Cert, receiving their results last Wednesday.

Padraig Flanagan, principal of Castletroy College, told the Limerick Leader that the CAO in a way is a bit like a SatNav  if you dont get the points or the first course you would like, it will direct you.

CAO Round Two offers will be issued on August 31 and the Union of Students in Ireland has cautioned students that if they dont get their first choice, to wait and see what they get in the second round.
Water, ice, electric shocks barbed wire and mud...lots and lots of mud. Thats what the participants in Adare To Survive can expect when the event returns to Clonshire for the fourth consecutive year next month.

With over 2,000 people expected to take part, this years event will feature a number of new obstacles, alongside those that regular participants have come to know  and fear  from previous years.

And, for those who really want to push themselves, in addition to the standard 7.5km route, there will be an option for elite athletes to undertake the course twice  covering 15km.

The official launch of the event  which takes place on September 25  was held in the Woodland House Hotel in Adare this Tuesday.

The numbers are continuing to grow year on year, said organiser Ray Nash.

We had about 1,650 competing last year, and hope the numbers will be up to around 2,000 this year. Many of the entrants are from Limerick and Munster generally, but we have people travelling from across the country, particularly along the west coast, down to Adare for this event, he told the Limerick Leader.

In line with their tagline  Endeavour, Endure & Enjoy, the race is not timed, and there is no prize for the fastest athlete, as the spirit of the event is about camaraderie and helping others through obstacles of varying degrees of difficulty.

As well as facing obstacles involving water, ice, lots of mud, electric shocks, barbed wire, competitors will have to climb over and crawl under various challenges along the route.

The course is tough! There is no point in lying about it - you will get wet, cold, tired, mucky and sore but you wont be sorry. Many people who have finished the race have said Wow, I cant believe I just did that, he said.

The website, www.adaretosurvive.com contains details of what participants can expect as well as advice on training and preparation for the day.

Entry costs 50 per person for the 7.5k event and 65 for the 15k, and a booking fee also applies. There are concessions for groups of 20 or more. There will also be a smaller route for kids to take part in on the day. Entrants are also welcome to take part in fancy dress.

Clonshire is located just off the N21 to the south of Adare. To register see www.adaretosurvive.com.
INVESTIGATIONS are continuing following a significant drugs and firearms seizure in east Limerick.

It is understood that the gang associate and liaise with criminal elements in the city.

As part of Operation Thor, local gardai targeting organised criminal activity in the Limerick area have seized cannabis herb, cocaine, benzodiazepines and alprazolam [prescription tablets] with a combined estimated value of 126,000, pending analysis, said a spokesperson for the garda press office.

Two firearms, ammunition and a firearm component were also recovered at Brooks Bridge near Pallasgreen.

Over 20 gardai were involved in the searches last week as part of the operation led by Inspector Luke Conlon, acting superintendent of Bruff garda station, with the assistance of Detective Inspector Eamon ONeill; Detective Inspector Brian Sugrue; the divisional drugs unit and gardai from Bruff and Henry Street garda stations.

It is part of an intelligence led operation which has been underway for some time.

The exact value of the drugs will not be known until they are technically examined at Garda Headquarters.

While gardai are following a number of definite lines of enquiry, no arrests have been made to date.
THE 'fiasco' over the delay in replacing Maria Byrne on the council will come to a head at a Fine Gael meeting in Limerick this Monday night.

Numerous local party members are expected to address the event at the South Court Hotel as their frustrations at seeing the new Senators council seat lie vacant for four months threaten to boil over.

The delay  which almost cost Fine Gael the metropolitan mayoral election  has been caused after Patrickswell man Fergus Kilcoyne lodged a complaint to party headquarters over serious irregularities in the addresses of some members in the partys largest city branch.

He has since called for this James Reidy branch to be stripped of its voting rights for a year.

Mr Kilcoyne  who missed out by a whisker in being elected in 2014  is due to face Elenora Hogan, South Circular Road in the battle for the vacant seat.

Although the issue of the co-option is not on the formal agenda it is set to be raised under the topic of branch affiliations or any other business. It is going to be a stormy meeting, let me tell you, one Fine Gael source said, All this is going to come to a head.

It is the first time in living memory Fine Gael has ever held a local constituency party meeting in August.

The Leader understands their is an acute sense of embarrassment that Fine Gael has not completed the co-option, with local members pointing out that other parties had theirs done within weeks of Februarys general election.

Members are getting sick and tired of this. It is frustrating. When you dont address issues like this, it allows the rumour mill to go into overdrive, was how one Fine Gael councillor put it, with another saying it is bordering on a fiasco.

Open to all Fine Gael members in the city, the meeting is expected to draw a larger than normal attendance with around 100 expected to attend.
GARDAI have renewed their appeal for information on the whereabouts of two teenagers who have not been seen since last week.

Craig Boylan, 15, was last seen at Sarsfield Street in the city centre at around 4.30pm on August 16, last.

He is described as being 5'8'' in height, of slim build with short red hair and green eyes.

When last seen he was wearing a grey hoodie, a white t-shirt, grey tracksuit bottoms and black runners.

Separately, gardai are seeking help in locating 16-year-old Chloe Elderfield.

Chloe, who is originally from Drombanna was last seen at Whitegate, Co Clare since on August 17, last.

The teenager, who was the subject of another missing persons appeal in May, is described as being 5'8'' in height, of thin build with red hair and brown eyes.

When last seen she was wearing a black top, jeans and black boots.
THE Irish Chamber Orchestra is gearing up for its return to the University Concert Hall this September, with a musical programme sprinkled with works by popular musical icons.

Icons, the orchestras first offering of the Autumn season, under the baton of internationally renowned conductor Gabor Takacs Nagy, will feature works by Tchaikovsky and Schubert, rock icons of their era, rubbing shoulders with twentieth century rock icons Jimmy Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, in a season opener.

Joining the ICO for the September 15 concert at the UCH is gifted Hungarian cellist Istvan Vardai, who adds colour and dimension to an imaginative programme that features variations on Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones and Purple Haze by Hendrix, as arranged by Daniel Schnyder. There will also be works by Ian Wilson and Abdullah Ibrahim.

Takacs Nagy, principal artistic partner of the ICO for the past five years  relationship that in fact spans more than a decade  offered his praise for the orchestra.

They are all at such a high level that we don't know who is inspiring whom. Their ideas and energies help them to push each other to higher and higher artistic and spiritual levels, he said.

Dont miss another exciting season with the Irish Chamber Orchestra in Limerick. See www.irishchamberorchestra.com.
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.
Here, a computer-simulated image of a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy, with the black region at the center representing the event horizon.

Are black holes truly black? A new laboratory experiment points toward "no."

Using a simulated black hole made from soundwaves, scientists have observed a phenomenon known as Hawking radiation: a faint energy emission that, in theory, is created right at the edge of a black hole's event horizon, or the point beyond which even light cannot escape.

If Hawking radiation comes from astrophysical black holes (not just those created in a lab), it would mean these objects are not entirely dark. It could also help scientists solve a paradox posed by black holes, and perhaps shed light on one of the most significant problems facing modern physics. [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]

Jeff Steinhauer, an experimental physicist at the Technion  Israel Institute of Technology in Israel, and lead author on the new study, told Space.com.

According to Steinhauer, earlier calculations by cosmologist Stephen Hawking (who came up with the theory that bears his name) combined the theories of quantum physics and gravity. The current experiment tests those calculations, providing the first strong evidence that they are correct, Steinhauer said.

"A black hole is a testing ground for the laws of physics," Steinhauer said.

Swimming against the current

There's a tricky concept in physics that says that pairs of particles constantly blink into existence throughout space. One is a particle of normal matter and the other is its exact opposite, or antiparticle, so the two annihilate one another, and there's no change to the universe's energy balance sheet. These are called virtual particles. When this happens near the edge, or event horizon, of a black hole, the particles can avoid complete destruction; one can fall inside while the other escapes.

But observing such interactions in nature has remained difficult, the Hawking radiation around a black hole (if it exists) is so faint that it can't be seen from Earth around known black holes (most of which are very far away). In addition to the distance, the Hawking radiation is likely overwhelmed by radiation from other sources, Steinhauer said.

"It makes it seemingly almost impossible to see this very slight radiation coming from the black hole," he said.

The same problem applies in a laboratory, where any heat can create background radiation that overwhelms the lab-produced Hawking radiation. To eliminate that problem, Steinhauer's experiment ran at less than a billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

In the analogue black hole, a line of cold rubidium atoms stream from a laser to create a form of matter known as aBose-Einstein condensate. The cold gas flows faster than the speed of sound in one direction, so that a sound wave trying to go against the flow can't manage to move forward. In this respect, the slower moving sound wave is like a particle trying to escape from a black hole.

"It's like trying to swim against the river," Steinhauer said. "If the river is going faster than you can swim, you go backwards, even though you feel like you're going forward."

The upstream attempt is analogous to light in a black hole trying to escape, he said. Sound waves trying to move forward instead fall backward. If two virtual particles were created near the edge of the event horizon, one particle could be consumed by the black hole (the fast-moving stream), while the other escapes, avoiding destruction. The escaping particles are called Hawking radiation.

A method of creating a black hole using sound waves was proposed in 1981, and since then scientists have struggled to simulate Hawking radiation in the lab. Two years ago, Steinhauer performed an experiment that measured Hawking radiation after something was deliberately crashed into the event horizon of the analogue black hole. This new experiment took more of a wait-and-see stance, waiting for the particle-antiparticle pair to appear without external stimulation, more like what happens in the depths of space.

Jeff Steinhauer stands with a machine capable of simulating black-hole conditions in the laboratory. (Image credit: Nitzan Zohar, Technion Spokesperson's Office)

Just as Hawking theorized, the simulated black hole spit out the predicted particles, a sign of Hawking radiation.

"What I saw suggests that a real black hole might emit something," Steinhauer said.

The new finding also has larger implications for the field of physics, he said. One of the biggest mysteries in physics is why Einstein's theory of gravity (which describes large-scale interactions in the universe) doesn't seem to be compatible with quantum mechanics (which describes very small-scale interactions).

"Combining gravity with quantum physics is one of the main goals of physics today," Steinhauer said. "Hawking made the first steps toward that."

The simulated black hole tested Hawking's equations.

"His calculations predicted there should be light from a black hole," Steinhauer said. "It turns out his calculations were correct."

Solving a paradox?

One intriguing result of the artificial black hole involved insight into the information paradox. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, everything that crosses the event horizon of a black hole is consumed, including information. As the escaping particle steals energy from a black hole, the massive object can shrink over time, eventually evaporating into nothing. Of course, this assumes it has stoppedconsuming nearby material and thus isn't putting on new weight. Theoretically, a black hole can shrink into nothing, taking with it the information carried by or about the particles it consumed.

"Information has vanished," he said. "It's like it goes into the black hole and disappears."

Since quantum mechanics suggests that information can't be lost, that raises a paradox.

According to Hawking's calculations, the surviving particles contain no useful information about how the black hole formed and what it consumed, suggesting that information vanished with the black hole itself.

Steinhauer's black hole revealed that the higher energy particle pairs remained entangled, even after one was swallowed by the event horizon. Entangled particles are able to share information instantaneously, even when they are separated by great distances, a phenomenon sometimes described as "spooky action at a distance."

"Some of the solutions to this [paradox] probably rely on entanglement," Steinhauer said.

Scientists not associated with the research who were interviewed by Nature News (opens in new tab) and Physics World both said that while the experiment appears to have measured Hawking radiation, it does not necessarily prove that Hawking radiation exists around black holes in space.

The research was published online in the journal Nature Physics (opens in new tab).

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published onSpace.com.
An ancient Mayan Text called the Dresden Codex contains detailed recordings of the phases of Venus in its Venus Table, on pages 46 to 50. Data in the Venus Table may have been gathered by astronomers to help time ritual events with the cycles of the planet.

An ancient Mayan text captured the moment when a royal astronomer made a scientific discovery about the movement of Venus across the night sky.

The text, called the Dresden Codex, contains laborious measurements of the rising and setting of Venus. Based on these recordings, historians can now place this astronomer within a 25-year span within the first half of the 10th century.

"We can see the moment when this person puts it all together," said Gerardo Aldana, a science historian in the Department of Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a co-author of a new study describing the findings. [10 Biggest Historical Mysteries That Will Probably Never Be Solved]

Fascinating backstory

The Dresden Codex is a gorgeous Mayan text of 39 double-sided pages with a murky and fascinating backstory. The document somehow made it out of the Yucatan Peninsula and into the Royal Library in Dresden, Germany by the 1730s, according to the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies. Then, in the late 1800s, Ernst Forstemann, a German mathematician with no background in Mayan history or culture, came upon a table of Mayan numerals on page 24 of the codex. Forstemann deduced that the table contained measurements pertaining to Venus, even though no one at the time could decipher Mayan hieroglyphics.

Then, in the 1920s, chemical engineer John Teeple looked more carefully at the numbers and realized that the Maya were using a sophisticated technique to correct for the shift in their calendar caused by the irregular cycle of Venus, Aldana said. Many scholars assumed that these corrections were done by using numerological techniques, for instance by inventing a past Venus event and then predicting future ones by calculating from that fictional anchor event. [See Photos of Mayan Calendar Carvings]

But few had taken a careful look at the text that surrounds the table. (That was in part because Mayan hieroglyphics were not deciphered until well into the 20th century, when much of the early scholarship had already taken place, Aldana said.)

Ancient astronomer

For this new research, Aldana analyzed the wording around the Venus table. From that, he deduced that the Maya were actively measuring the phases of Venus in order to time their ceremonial events with more precision. That meant the first anchor event was an actual, historical measurement.

The Maya "had a really elaborate ritual set of events that were tied to the calendar," Aldana said. "They were probably doing large-scale ritual activity connected to the different phases of Venus."

The corrections in the Venus table, then, were made because the Maya didn't want to have their holidays at the wrong time: Little inaccuracies in the calendar wouldn't have mattered much in the short term, but over hundreds of years, they could lead to a big mismatch in when certain ritual events were supposed to occur and when they actually did occur.

The combination of the text and the table reflects a sophisticated scientific method of observation at a specific point in time in the "Terminal Classic Period," or the 10th century.

"There's this 25-year period, a window, when an astronomer could have been making these records," Aldana said.

This Mayan Copernicus, whose name is unknown, could have been looking up at the star-speckled night sky for years, making minute observations from the shell-shaped observatory called El Caracol at Chichen Itza. What's more, he may have been put to this task by a historical figure named K'ak' U Pakal K'awiil, Aldana reported in the current issue of the Journal of Astronomy in Culture.

The Venus table also matches another measurement of a Venus event found in a text from an ancient Mayan civilization called Copan, in what is now Honduras. That text was written 200 years earlier than the Dresden Codex, suggesting that the Maya were keeping centuries of astronomical data around for future scientists to analyze, Aldana said.

Venus rising

The measurements in the Dresden Codex coincide with a time period when Venus became much more religiously significant in Mayan culture. In the Classic period, between A.D. 300 and 1000, civilizations at Copan, Palenque and Tikal had no oversize interest in Venus.

But in later years, a feathered serpent named Kukulkan emerged as a dominant figure in Mayan religion. (Kukulkan is very similar to the deity Quetzalcoatl that was worshipped by the Aztecs.)

"There's this transition that occurs in the post-Classic [period]," Aldana said. "Some scholars have argued there's closer to a pan-Mesoamerican religion tied to this Quetzalcoatl figure who is very tied to Venus."

As a result, the Maya of the last Classic period would have had an increased interest in studying the movement of the planets, Aldana said.

Original article on Live Science.
USS Independence operated in the Pacific from November 1943 through August 1945, later joining more than 90 vessels in the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests in 1946.

Join researchers on a dive to the wreckage of the USS Independence, a World War II-era aircraft carrier that was deliberately sunk off San Francisco in 1951.

The research vessel E/V Nautilus will broadcast video live online tonight (Aug. 22), beginning between 7 and 9 p.m. ET, as the research vessel conducts the first visual survey of the Independence, the deepest shipwreck in in the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary (GFNMS).

Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) acoustically mapped the wreckage, and scientists said the carrier is "amazingly intact." The mapping revealed the hull and flight deck were clearly visible. There also may be a plane in the carrier's hangar bay, according to the NOAA survey. The E/V Nautilus dive tonight will be the first visual survey of Independence. [Photos: World War II-era Aircraft Carrier Discovered]

During World War II, the Independence operated in the central and western Pacific between November 1943 and August 1945. The Independence later became one of more than 90 vessels in the target fleet for the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests in 1946. Though damaged by shock waves, heat and radiation, the Independence survived the Bikini Atoll tests and, like dozens of other Operation Crossroads ships, returned to the United States.

The Navy continued decontamination studies on the Independence while it was moored at San Francisco's Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. The damaged carrier was eventually towed out to sea for scuttling on Jan. 26, 1951.

While in the national marine sanctuary, the E/V Nautilus will also research the area's ecosystem to provide scientists with a better baseline understanding of the area. Specifically, the research will characterize the habitat of deep-sea coral and sponges for future studies on ocean acidification monitoring and impacts.

Currently on a four-month expedition to explore the eastern Pacific Ocean, the E/V Nautilus' mission is to explore the oceans and seek out the unknown. Past expeditions have included the discoveries of other previously unseen shipwrecks, sea creatures and more. The vessel is operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust, a nonprofit organization founded by oceanographer Robert Ballard.

Original article on Live Science.
A man's craving for metal that led him to swallow 40 knives may sound bizarre, but such strange cravings can be symptoms of an eating disorder in which people ingest anything from dirt to talcum powder.

The 42-year-old man in India said he had consumed the knives over a 2-month period, according to CNN. Some of the knives were folded up when the man ingested them, but some were unfolded, and extended to about 7 inches (18 centimeters) long. The man required a 5-hour operation to remove the knives. Because some of the knives were open, the man was bleeding profusely and couldn't have survived for much longer before his operation, according to the Washington Post. But now he should be able to leave the hospital in a few days.

The man told CNN that he wasn't sure why he swallowed the knives, but that he liked the way they tasted. "I just enjoyed its taste, and I was addicted ... how people get addicted to alcohol and other things, my situation was similar," the man was quoted as saying. [7 Weird Things People Have Swallowed]

People who eat nonfood materials for at least one month may have an eating disorder called pica, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). People with the condition have been known to consume a variety of substances, including dirt, clay, hair, paint, sand, soap, metal and paper.

Up to a third of young children may show symptoms of pica at some point, the NIH said. Pica is also more common in pregnant women, particularly those from certain cultures. One study found that 44 percent of Mexican-born women living in Southern and Baja California had symptoms of pica during pregnancy.

Exactly what causes pica in a given case is not always known, but the disorder may be a sign of a medical or psychological problem, said Dr. Gilda Moreno, a clinical psychologist at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami, who was not involved with the Indian man's case.

For instance, a lack of certain minerals in the body, such as iron or zinc, may trigger pica in some people, Moreno said. In these cases, people could crave an unusual substance the way that thirsty people crave water, she said. That the Indian man said he liked the taste of metal, and even equated it with an addiction, "almost tells you that there must be some nutritional component to it," Moreno told Live Science.

Still, pica is also linked to a number of mental disorders, including autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia, Moreno said. In cases of people with schizophrenia, the patients may consume nonfood substances because they are unaware of their surroundings, she said.

In 2011, researchers from the United Kingdom reported a case of a 19-year-old woman who had the mental health condition called borderline personality disorder. She swallowed a number of objects in order to deliberately harm herself, including knives, razors and 6-inch (15 cm) sewing pins.

People who have pica need to be assessed for medical problems that might result from their unusual eating patterns, including intestinal blockages, tears in the esophagus, infections and poisoning, Moreno said.

With various treatments, pica usually goes away over time, particularly if it's caused by a nutritional deficiency, Moreno said. But some people, particularly those with compulsions, might struggle with the disorder their whole lives, she said.

Original article on Live Science.
Local News, Crime, Business & Finance, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: August 22 2016

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today signed legislation that will strengthen protections for employees who are prone to assault.

Albany, NY - August 19, 2016 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today signed legislation that will strengthen protections for employees who are prone to assault.



The measure elevates assaults on utility workers (S2251-A / A4738-A), station and terminal cleaners (S8104 / A10048-B), and process servers (S2991-A / A6772-A) from a misdemeanor to a D felony.



"These workers perform tasks that are vital to the operation of New York institutions and have increasingly become the targets of aggression and assaults, Governor Cuomo said. Signing these measures into law will help better protect these employees from harm and I thank the sponsors for their work to get them passed.



Several laws have previously been enacted to extend protections to employee classes similarly prone to attacks, including other MTA employees, emergency medical service providers and emergency medical service technicians.



Senator William Larkin said, I sponsored this legislation after hearing from a utility worker in my district who was violently attacked while simply doing his job. His story is unfortunately not unique. I applaud the Governor for signing this legislation to improve worksite safety for utility workers.



Assemblyman Francisco Moya said, "After years of hard work, I am ecstatic to have seen the passage of A4738 this legislative session and now the signing of the bill by Governor Cuomo. By making the assault of a utility worker a felony, this law will provide critical protections to workers that enter into private homes daily and put themselves at risk. This bill brought together labor and industry to fight to keep workers safe. I applaud all of my brothers and sisters in labor, the industry, my colleagues, and the Governor for making this crucial bill a law."



Senator Kevin Parker said, I enthusiastically applaud Governor Cuomo for signing my legislation, Senate Bill S. 8104-A, into law as the passage of this bill increases the penalty for assaulting our MTA station and terminal workers to a class D felony. Although laws were enacted in 2002 to protect and deter assaults on transit employees while performing their duties, the law did not include station and terminal workers. Today, thanks to Governor Cuomo and my colleagues in the State Legislature, station and terminal workers will be added to the list of covered MTA employees. I am extremely proud to be a part of this milestone achievement and I stand eager to continue working with the Governor and Legislature to pass laws that improve the quality of life of New York State residents.



Assemblywoman Diana C. Richardson said, I thank Governor Cuomo for his leadership in protecting the rights of our hardworking brothers and sisters in New York State. No employee should have to work facing the threat of assault and this legislation will help ensure a hardworking and dedicated part of our workforce is properly protected under the law. I am proud to stand with the Governor on this issue and thank him for signing this important piece of legislation.



Senator Catharine Young said, Process servers play an important role in our justice system. It is reprehensible that someone would intentionally injure a process server simply for conducting the business of the courts and citizens of New York State. This new protection will elevate repercussions for those who harm process servers, keeping more New Yorkers safe.



Assemblyman J. Gary Pretlow said, Process servers are considered the legal systems delivery agents and should be given the same laws of protection as we do law enforcement agents. This legislation will give process servers the protection they need and deserve and I thank Governor Cuomo for signing it into law.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Home & Garden, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: August 22 2016

Schneiderman: This office will help communities bring vacant properties back to life and provide affordable rental homes for their neighbors.

Newburgh, NY - August 19, 2016 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced a new pilot program that will provide New York State land banks with $4 million in subsidies for everyday New Yorkers to take over individual, abandoned properties in their neighborhood  at little or no cost  and rehabilitate them into affordable rental housing.

Created with affordable housing and community development nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise), the program requires the new housing units to remain affordable for at least 20 years. Funding for the program will come from the Attorney Generals 2014 and 2015 settlements with Citigroup and Bank of America over the banks conduct leading up to the 2008 housing crash.



Neighbors for Neighborhoods builds on the success of New York States non-profit land banks. Ten of these lands banks have, with support from the Office of the Attorney General, reclaimed over 1,600 abandoned properties across the state since 2013. Recently, five new land banks have formed and received capacity-building grants from the Office of the Attorney General, and a sixth is in the process of getting certified.



The initiative was inspired by such successful land bank efforts as 13 Chambers Street in Newburgh. The property, which was acquired by the Newburgh Community Land Bank in 2013, was renovated by a local architect and now provides three families with affordable rental housing.



Too many communities across this state are still plagued by the blight of vacant and abandoned properties, while at the same time suffering from a critical shortage of affordable housing, said Attorney General Schneiderman. Neighbors for Neighborhoods helps communities reclaim their neighborhoods from blight and will help generate the affordable housing stock that New York families need. Just as important, it empowers the people who have the most at stake in revitalizing their communitiesthe community members themselves. This is truly a win-win.



The grant program will be administered by Enterprise, which for more than 30 years has created affordable housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income communities across the country, in addition to identifying programmatic solutions and advocating for policies that connect low-income communities to opportunity. In early fall, Enterprise will invite the 16 land banks across the state to submit their qualifications and select those land banks that:

Demonstrate the capacity to oversee the rehabilitation of the properties and enforce the long-term affordable-rental requirement;

Demonstrate that they are in an area with a concentration of potential rental properties and a set of local community members who have the capacity to own and manage a nearby rental property.

Land banks that meet the requirements will then be able to submit requests for the subsidy on a project-by-project basis.



Once selected, land banks will transfer ownership of the dilapidated properties at low or no cost to the identified community members; provide the new community-based property owners with a subsidy toward the costs of renovation (approximately $50,000 per unit); and dictate the terms and scope of the renovation. Importantly, the renovations must also include exterior rehabsto provide curb appeal, a critical part of boosting property values in neighborhoods plagued by vacant homes.

In exchange for the property and the renovation subsidy, the new property owners will convert the properties to affordable low- and moderate-income rental units for local families. This $4 million investment is estimated to yield up to 80 affordable rental homes for working families in the cities and towns where land banks are active.



Funding for the initiative will be drawn from the $7 billion settlement agreement with Citigroup and the $16 billion settlement agreement with Bank of America that Attorney General Schneiderman, as co-chair of the federal-state working group on residential-mortgage-based securities, negotiated in July and August 2014, respectively. Those two settlements together brought $982 million in cash and consumer relief to New York State alone.



Neighbors for Neighborhoods is but one component of Attorney General Schneidermans broad strategy to help New York families and communities recover from the housing crash. He has led the fight for strong bank settlements that hold the banks accountable for their recklessness and responsible for mitigating the damage they caused. He has obtained settlements that brought more than $95 billion to communities across the country.



More than $5.5 billion of that settlement money has flowed into New York. It allowed the Office of the Attorney General to establish the Homeowners Protection Program, HOPP, in 2012, which currently funds 90 agencies across the state to provide legal services and counseling to help families stay in their homes. More than 64,000 families have been served to date; and over a third of them have mortgage modifications pending or approved.



The settlement money has resulted in over $30 million in grants to New Yorks land banks since July 2013, making it possible for the land banks to reclaim those 1,600 properties from blight.



And the settlement money was used to establish the New York State Mortgage Assistance Program (MAP) in 2014. Since it began, MAP has provided $18 million in small loans to homeowners to clear other debts and qualify for mortgage modifications; it has prevented more than 650 foreclosures; and it has preserved $153 million in property value for nearby homeowners.



The Attorney General also pursued legislative responses to the states housing crisis, and in June 2016 his bill, the Abandoned Property Neighborhood Relief Act, was signed into law. Among other provisions, that law requires banks to register any properties abandoned by their owners with the Department of Financial Services and to maintain those properties during the foreclosure process, and not just once the process has been completed. Banks face significant fines for non-compliance. The state will share the registry with localities and will run a toll-free hotline for individuals to report such properties.



And in July 2016, the Attorney General announced a $13 million grant initiative, the Zombie Remediation and Prevention Initiative, funded by an allocation from the Morgan Stanley settlement agreement, to help cities and towns maximize the impact of the Abandoned Property Neighborhood Relief Act. It provides funding to municipalities to catalog and monitor zombie properties within their jurisdictions, to boost local housing code enforcement, and to help the state ensure implementation of, and compliance with, the law.



This program is a powerful opportunity to give community members ownership over what happens in their neighborhoods and involve them in the critical work of creating and preserving affordable housing throughout New York, said Judi Kende, Vice President and New York Market Leader, Enterprise. Enterprise is proud to partner with the Office of the Attorney General on such a creative and exciting initiative that will bring positive change to communities statewide for decades to come.



I thank Attorney General Schneiderman for his continued support of the City of Newburgh, said Newburgh Mayor Judy Kennedy. Funding through this innovative pilot program will help to ensure the continued revitalization of our neighborhoods by bolstering the availability of high-quality, affordable rental units while attracting local investors to invest in their community.



Rehabilitating dangerous, abandoned buildings and zombie homes will strengthen Hudson Valley communities like Newburgh by revitalizing our neighborhoods, providing housing for local families, and growing our economy  all while keeping ownership in local hands, said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney (NY-18). The Neighbors for Neighborhoods investment program is good for our communities, good for renters, and good for local businesses, and I want to thank AG Schneiderman for making this program possible in communities throughout New York, including the Hudson Valley.



This public/private partnership is an example of cooperation and teamwork producing positive results, said State Senator Bill Larkin. The Neighbors for Neighborhoods program will promote positive community development while providing much needed high-quality affordable housing for Hudson Valley residents.



Attorney General Schneiderman has focused his attention on one of the most significant ways to improve neighborhoods and turn a city around - the restoration of decaying homes, said Assemblyman Frank Skartados. His continued commitment to help the land bank will prove to be a key element in Newburghs revitalization.



Sustained affordability for low income families in our area is crucial to maintaining a diverse community. Every high quality of affordable unit that is added to our City improves the quality of life for our residents and guarantees that families will remain in the City continuing to contribute to the fabric of our neighborhoods, stated Newburgh Councilwoman Karen Mejia.



Attorney General Schneidermans leadership is critical to rebuilding neighborhoods decimated by the 2008 mortgage crisis, said Newburgh City Manager Michael G. Ciaravino. We appreciate Attorney General Schneidermans Neighbors for Neighborhoods pilot program and are looking forward to our Land Banks application.



Attorney General Schneidermans support has been essential to the Newburgh Community Land Bank, said Madeline Fletcher, Executive Director, Newburgh Community Land Bank. And now, this new and innovative program bolsters the partnership between land banks and the communities we serve, provides community members who care about their neighborhoods with the tools they need to improve it, and expands affordable housing options.



Not too long ago, I was facing eviction, said Joseph Williams, Tenant of 13 Chambers Street. Having a stable place to live, with the help of the Newburgh Community Land Bank, has helped me improve my family's life. Its great to know that Neighbors for Neighborhoods will give other New Yorkers the same opportunity I was given.
Local News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: August 21 2016

Suffolk County Police Seventh Squad detectives are investigating a motor vehicle crash that killed three people and critically injured a child in Manorville today.

Among those killed in the multi-vehicle crash, Scott Martella, 29, of Northport, who served Governor Andrew Cuomo's administration.

Manorville, NY - August 21, 2016 - Suffolk County Police Seventh Squad detectives are investigating a motor vehicle crash that killed three people and critically injured a child in Manorville today.

Carmelo Pinales was driving a gray Subaru Outback eastbound on the Long Island Expressway when he apparently lost control of the vehicle which crossed over the grassy median, went airborne and struck two vehicles, a BMW and a Honda, that were travelling westbound near Exit 68 at approximately 9:35 a.m.

Carmelo Pinales, 26, of Hicksville, and his sister, Patricia Pinales, 27, of Westbury, were pronounced dead at the scene by a physicians assistant from the Office of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner. Carmelos 10-year-old son, Christopher Pinales, also from Hicksville, was transported in critical condition to Stony Brook University Hospital via Suffolk County Police helicopter. Winnifer Garcia, 21, of Hempstead, and Patricias 3-year-old daughter, also of Westbury, were transported to local hospitals where they were treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

The driver of the 2014 Honda, Scott Martella, 29, of Northport, was pronounced dead at the scene by a physicians assistant from the Office of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner. His fiancee, Shelbi Thurau, 29, of Northport, was transported to a local hospital where she was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

Marvin Tenzer, 73, the driver of the 2016 BMW, and his three passengers, Sandra Tenzer, 69, Helen Adelson, and Isidore Adelson, 81, all of Westhampton, were transported to local hospitals where they were treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

Detectives are investigating reports that the driver of the Subaru was traveling at a high rate of speed.

All three vehicles will be impounded for a safety check and the investigation is continuing. Detectives ask anyone with information regarding this crash to call the Seventh Squad at 631-852-8752.
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
Since July, state-affiliated media in Iran has publicized the Yemeni Houthi movements use of a model of the Zelzal-3, an Iranian rocket. Iranian media and the Houthis (officially known as Ansar Allah), however, insist that this model has been produced indigenously in Yemen. While prominent government officials in Tehran regularly tout their political support for Ansar Allah, they often reject the charge of military assistance to their campaign. Moreover, despite ambiguity over the degree to which Tehran can control Ansar Allah, the Islamic Republics military aid to the group is readily apparent, and has been noted by senior American officials. As such, Ansar Allahs display and deployment of rockets that feature the same name and number as Iranian rockets further serves to strengthen those ties.

The Zelzal, meaning earthquake in Persian and Arabic, is a type of unguided, mobile Iranian artillery rocket. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) produced the Zelzal platform during Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), and is reportedly one of the first rockets ever fired by Tehran during the conflict. Although some analysts classify it and the larger Zelzal family as a short-range ballistic missile, Iranian sources attest that it is a surface-to-surface, solid-fueled, short-range rocket. The Zelzal comes in three different forms, and can travel upwards of 300 km with a warhead that can shower its target with sub-munition payloads. Iran publicly debuted the Zelzal-3 at a military parade in 2007.

Ansar Allahs Zelzal-3 may be a variant of the original Iranian version. A closer look at the Zelzal-3 that the Houthis claim to have domestically produced does not appear to exactly match the Iranian Zelzals. The former have larger fins and shorter bodies, while the Iranian model is longer and can be fired from rail launchers. Iranian media nonetheless has not been shy about highlighting the successful launching of several Zelzals towards southern Saudi Arabia just this past week.

The Zelzal may not be the first rocket or missile platform that links Tehran to Ansar Allah. In December 2015, the Houthis revealed the Qaher-1 ballistic missile. According to Janes, this was based off of the Soviet S-75 (SA-2), a surface-to-air missile long present in Yemen. While the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency ran a lengthy article praising Ansar Allah for developing this missile, it also denied Iranian military support to the endeavor, claiming that the blockade surrounding Yemen rendered transfers of such technology impossible. As early as 2014, however, Iran had developed a model of the SA-2, and called it the Sayyad.

Iran has a history of reverse-engineering projectiles, as well as providing some of these model to its allies. Yet, considering the above-mentioned blockade, the method for transferring the weapon remains unclear. The most likely scenario would involve the IRGC, which may have provided know-how through either the Qods Force or Hezbollah, though the former leads all extraterritorial operations for the IRGC, which in turn produces missiles and oversees Irans missile command. In May 2015, U.S. intelligence officials affirmed that both the Qods Force and Hezbollah are active in Yemen. The Qods Force deputy commander Esmail Ghaani himself has proclaimed that Houthi rebels have been trained under the flag of the Islamic Republic. Hezbollah reportedly operates a train-and-equip program there.

There is a precedent for the IRGCs proliferation of the Zelzal platform to militias. Iran previously transferred the technology and know-how to deploy the Zelzal-2, a 610 mm variant of the original Zelzal, to IRGC proxies, such as Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Guard has also equipped Hezbollah with other model of IRGC-produced rockets and missiles. In July, the deputy commander of the IRGC, Hossein Salami, exclaimed that Hezbollah possessed a stockpile of more than 100,000 missiles. The history of Iranian missile transfer to allies, along with the Iranian medias brandishing of the successful firing of the Zelzal-3, suggests that the IRGC or its proxies are implicated in the provision of either material or know-how for the latest rocket used by Ansar Allah in the Arabian Peninsula.

Zelzal-3 triple launcher during a 2012 military parade in Tehran.

Zelzal-3 fired during IRGCs Great Prophet VI military exercise.

Behnam Ben Taleblu is a Senior Iran Analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Amir Toumaj is a Research Analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Anwar ul Haq Mujahid, the commander of the Tora Bora Military Front and son of an influential Taliban leader who was instrumental in welcoming Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan after al Qaeda was ejected from Sudan in 1996, has sworn allegiance to the Talibans new emir.

Anwar ul Haqs pledge was announced on Aug. 21 by Zabihullah Mujahid, an official spokesman of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan  the official name of the Taliban.

Son of Khalis Baba (RA), respected Mawlawi Anwarul Haq Mujahid declares allegiance to Amir ul Mumineen, the Taliban spokesman wrote on his official Twitter feed.

Khalis Baba is a reference to Maulvi Mohammed Yunis Khalis, Anwar ul Haqs father, who led a faction of Hizb-i-Islami before his death in 2006. Khalis was close to Jalaluddin Haqqani, allied with al Qaeda, and advocated jihad outside of Afghanistan. In 1991, Khalis wrote An Appeal to Support the Holy War in Sudan, a letter that urged Muslims to fight in Sudan, according to evidence submitted by the US government in a conspiracy case against the director of an al Qaeda charitable front organization.

The Amir ul Mumineen, or the Commander of the Faithful  a title usually reserved for the Muslim caliph  is Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, the groups new leader. The Taliban spokesman also published a handwritten letter attributed to Anwar ul Haq.

Anwar ul Haq rose to prominence in the wake of his fathers death in 2006 and established the Tora Bora Military Front. Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate is said to have detained him in Peshawar in June 2009, but it was rumored that he was released sometime in 2010. US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal at the time said that Anwar ul Haq had not been imprisoned but merely placed into protective custody.

Anwar ul Haq reemerged in February 2011 when he spoke at the funeral of Awal Gul, who was detained by US forces in 2002 and died at Guantanamo Bay earlier that month. Gul was a Taliban commander in Nangarhar province who had allegedly been entrusted by Osama bin Laden with $100,000 to aid al Qaeda operatives fleeing Afghanistan to Pakistan in late 2001. Gul also associated with bin Laden on three occasions, according to declassified documents produced at Guantanamo. [See LWJ reports, Former Taliban commander dies at Gitmo and Tora Bora Military Front commander speaks at funeral of former Gitmo detainee].

It is unclear why Anwar ul Haq has waited nearly three months after the death of Mullah Mansour, the previous emir who was killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan on May 21, to pledge to Haibatullah. According to the Taliban, the Tora Bora Jihadist Front of Shinwar District in Nangarhar Province offered condolences for Mansours death and allegiance to Haibatullah on May 26. One day later, Close Friends of Mawlawi Mohammad Younus Khalis did the same. And on May 29, the Taliban released a statement claiming the family, companions and Mujahideen of late Mawlawi Younus Khalis Baba had pledged to Haibtullah.

No matter the delay, Anwar ul Haqs pledge to Haibatullah will aid in the ongoing reunification with wayward leaders as well as the consolidation of its forces in Nangarhar province, where the Taliban have been facing a challenge from the Islamic State.

The Taliban have made a concerted effort to reunite with commanders who parted with the group in the wake of the death of its founder and first emir, Mullah Omar. Some leaders and commanders were unhappy that Mullah Omars death in April 2013 was hidden from them and how Mullah Mansour, who secretly led the group until Omars death was disclosed in July 2015, was selected to replace him. Influential leaders and commanders such as Mullah Omars brother, Mullah Abdul Manan Akhund, and son, Mullah Mohammad Yaqoub, were rewarded for reconciling by being given top leadership positions within the Taliban. And just last week, the Mullah Dadullah Front, a dangerous Taliban faction, returned to the Taliban fold.

Anwar ul Haqs return may also help the Talibans position in Nangarhar, which has descended into chaos over the past two years since the US military scaled back forces there. Afghan forces, backed by US troops, have been struggling to contain both the Taliban and the Islamic State in the eastern province. The Islamic States Khorasan province has a foothold in Nangarhar and is said to control three districts there, however the Afghan military has recently made a push to retake the ground from the jihadist group. The US military said it killed the emir for Khorasan province while supporting Afghan forces in July.

Despite setbacks due to the emergence of the Islamic State in Nangarhar, the Taliban remains a potent force in the province, where it has a presence in all districts and uses this base to launch attacks in Jalalabad and Kabul. The Taliban claimed it took control of Hisarak district in Nangarhar over the weekend, but this was denied by Afghan officials.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Iranian media has reported that Russian use of the Hamedan air base (also known as the Nojeh air base) in Western Iran has been halted. According to Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi, the presence of Russia in Iran was temporary.

Russia has neither bases in Iran nor is it deployed [there], Qassemi said. It was  with the agreement of both sides and it took place with Irans authorization and Russias request and it has ended for the time being.

Irans defense minister, Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan claimed that there was a kind of showing-off and thoughtless [attitude] behind the announcement of Russias use of the Nojeh air base to attack terrorists in Syria.

The Associated Press also carried news of Russias reported cessation of the use of the Hamedan air base and drew historical parallels to Iranian antagonism over allied-occupation of Iran during WWII.

Irans defense minister elaborated on Russias use of the air base in a press conference this morning. In an attempt to explain the reported termination, he noted that the Russians had not come to stay, but instead they were engaged for a short and defined period of time according to the operations carried out on the ground and in Syria.

Describing the entire experience, Dehqan said naturally, the Russians want to demonstrate that they are a superpower and an influential country. Dehqan also made sure to debunk reports about Russian involvement in Iran as a violation of UNSCR 2231  the resolution which enshrines the Iranian nuclear deal (also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action  JCPOA). To that effect, he noted that this issue has no relation to that Resolution and no arms sales have taken place.

This sudden pause and somewhat public rebuke of what until recently appeared to be rapidly warming ties between Tehran and Moscow is surprising. Speaking to the Iranian press on Saturday, defense minister Hossein Dehqan previously appeared to one-up the statement of a senior Iranian parliamentarian who stated that Russian warplanes would only stage in Hamedan air base to refuel (as reported in The Long War Journal here). Dehqans comments instead had left options open for enhanced cooperation with Russia, alluding to the possibility that other air bases could potentially be opened up to Irans northern neighbor. Specifically, Dehqan said: It is clear that they (Russian planes) do not come to Iran for recreation, they come to  refuel or be armed. However, at present we have no plan for the Russians to use other bases, but if the situation calls for it we will review it. Earlier, Dehqan had gone so far as to indicate that Russia could use the Hamedan air base until whenever is necessary.

This reported reversal comes at a time when Russo-Iranian defense cooperation was increasingly made public. Irans defense minister himself played a largely public role in facilitating greater security ties between Iran and the Russian Federation. Dehqan met with his Russian and Syrian counterparts in Tehran as late as this June, and travelled to Russia for meetings in February 2016. In the aftermath of those meetings, Iranian outlets carried a quote from Dehqan attesting to his belief that a very bright horizon would emerge from the strategic cooperation between the two countries. Dehqan also believes that the very close cooperation of Iran and Russia will cause the return of stability and security to the region.

As such, comments by Qassemi during his press conference on Monday about ending the Russian use of the Hamedan air base may well be a ploy to divert media attention away from the increased cooperation between Moscow and Tehran required to help save President Assad of Syria and his embattled regime.

In his weekend press conference, Dehqan had also pushed back against parliamentarians who cited legal concerns over Russian use of the air base in Western Iran. Dehqan retorted that this issue has nothing to do with the parliament. This was the decision of the system in order to combat DAESH [the Persian/Arabic acronym for the Islamic State] and terrorists in Syria. He further exclaimed that if someone out of ignorance had such a take-away that we put [an] Iranian military base at the disposal of the Russians and this action was against the constitution, they are wrong.

Dehqans comments Saturday were soon followed by what appeared to be an attempt to soften his statement to the press. Dehqans legal and parliamentary affairs deputy Reza Talai-Nik told the press hours after the minister spoke on Saturday that the intended purpose of his remarks were to note that such operational support does not need a directive from parliament and that it is coordinated and executed by the responsible authorities within the parameters of the law and regulations.

Dehqans attempt to excise the Iranian legislature from discussions over Russian use of the air base should be seen in light of the suspicion some parliamentarians displayed toward Russias intentions, as well as the constitutionality of the move. They also indicate an early attempt to downplay the importance of Russian usage of an Iranian air base for a sensitive Iranian domestic audience, as well as international audiences concerned with Russian airpower in the Syrian theater. In sum, such suspicions over intentions, constitutionality, as well as increasing publicity are likely to have played a facilitating role in effort to end Russian use of the air base, should Qassemis comments prove correct.

For their part, the Russian response appears minimal, but optimistic. Moscows Ambassador to Tehran, Levan Jagaryan stated that Moscow is hopeful that Tehran is able to strengthen engagement in the process of resolving Syria, but all Russian military personnel have presently left the Hamedan air base. Tasnim News Agency, an Iranian outlet close to Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) further reported that according to Jagaryan, Russias Aerospace forces may, if necessary, and based on the decision of the leaders of Russia and Iran, resume their operations at the Hamedan air base.

On Sunday, at a ceremony featuring President Rouhani, Dehqan showcased Irans new Bavar 373- surface-to-air missile (SAM) defense system. The Iranian SAM is a domestically produced variant of the Russian S-300, a platform which until recently figured negatively in the Russo-Iranian relationship. Previously, Iran had lodged a formal complaint against Russia regarding the sale and much-delayed transfer of the S-300 to Tehran. Now, Dehqan not only heralded that the rest of the S-300 was slated to be shipped to Iran in a month, but reportedly went so far as to proclaim that the Russians had put the S-400 on the table, but Tehran refused the offer. Given the recent developments over the Hamedan air base, no matter what direction cooperation between Moscow and Tehran takes, it will likely continue to provide the West with surprises, be it over airbases, SAMs, or the Syrian theater.

Behnam Ben Taleblu is a Senior Iran Analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

Behnam Ben Taleblu is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
The great Gold Rush Music Festival returns to the township of Waihi, with the first nuggets of gold dropping for the highly anticipated return of the 2023 festival.
For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser
Arctic melting slowed enough in midsummer that scientists don't expect this year's sea ice minimum to set a new record. This years melt season in the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas started with a bang, with a record low maximum extent in March and relatively rapid ice loss through May.

The melt slowed down in June, however, making it highly unlikely that this years summertime sea ice minimum extent will set a new record.

Even when its likely that we wont have a record low, the sea ice is not showing any kind of recovery. Its still in a continued decline over the long term, said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Walt added: Its just not going to be as extreme as other years because the weather conditions in the Arctic were not as extreme as in other years.

A decade ago, this years sea ice extent would have set a new record low and by a fair amount. Now, were kind of used to these low levels of sea ice  its the new normal.

As scientists are keeping an eye on the Arctic sea ice cover, NASA is also preparing for a new method to measure the thickness of sea ice  a difficult but key characteristic to track from orbit.

"We have a good handle on the sea ice area change," said Thorsten Markus, Goddards cryosphere lab chief. "We have very limited knowledge how thick it is."

Arctic sea ice has varied terrain in the summer months, as ridges and melt ponds form and floes break apart. A new NASA satellite called ICESat-2, launching in 2018, will measure the height of sea ice year-round.
Austal celebrated the christening of the Expeditionary Fast Transport ship USNS Yuma (EPF 8) with a ceremony at its state-of-the-art shipyard here, this morning.



The ships sponsor, former Secretary of Homeland Security and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, headlined the group of Austal officials, naval guests, civic leaders, community members and Austal employees who attended the ceremony beneath the hull of the ship in Austals final assembly bay.



As a former governor of Arizona, I am especially pleased to sponsor a ship that bears the name of a city whose history is synonymous with the arc of American history, said Napolitano, who currently serves as the president of the University of California. For generations, Native Americans flourished on the land that makes up present-day Yuma, and the Spanish explorers who made contact with them in the 16th century were among the first to arrive in what is now the United States. In later years, the trail that led thousands of people to California during the Gold Rush ran right down Yumas present-day Main Street.



Yuma is the eighth of 10 Expeditionary Fast Transport vessels (EPF), formerly joint high speed vessels (JHSV), that Austal has under contract with the U.S. Navy as part of a $1.6 billion block-buy contract.



On behalf of Austal USAs shipbuilding team, we are proud to provide our Navy with an incredible vessel that will honor the great city of Yuma as she supports humanitarian efforts around the world, said Austal USA president Craig Perciavalle. We are also honoured to be a part of such an amazing community that has provided Austal with many of our over 4,000 highly talented employees.



Chosen by the SECNAV to infuse her spirit into the ship as the ships sponsor, Napolitano, is a distinguished public servant with a record of leading large, complex organizations at the federal and state levels. She is the 20th president of the University of California. From 2009 to 2013, Napolitano served as Secretary of Homeland Security; from 2003 to 2009, as Governor of Arizona; from 1998 to 2003, as Attorney General of Arizona; from 1993 to 1997, as U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona. Prior to that, she practiced at the law firm of Lewis & Roca in Phoenix, where she became a partner in 1989. She began her career in 1983 as a clerk for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.



Secretary Napolitanos government service background, including her term in office as the Secretary of Homeland Security, make her well-qualified to serve as sponsor of this amazing vessel, said Perciavalle



EPF 8, a 338-foot shallow draft aluminum catamaran, is a multi-mission, non-combatant transport vessel characterized by its high volume, high speed, and flexibility. It is the fourth U.S. Navy ship to be named Yuma as a tribute to the residents of the Arizona city and their close ties with the military.



When Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus officially named EPF 8 "USNS Yuma" in April 2014 he stated, "The real reason we're here today is the people of Yuma. For 86 years you have been supporting military aviation here in the heart of Arizona, and for 55 years you have been the desert home of Marine Corps aviation." Mabus went on to say, The ships we build today will be a part of fleet for more than three decades. Sailors not yet born will serve in her. With her ability to operate in areas that might be otherwise inaccessible, USNS Yuma may well be the only part of America, and her Sailors the only Americans, some people in the world will ever see."



Yuma will ultimately join her sister EPFs that have been delivered over the last three years, including USNS Spearhead (T-EPF 1) which has logged over 100,000 nautical miles at sea and is currently on her fifth deployment since she was delivered in 2012.



Three EPFs and six Independence-variant Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) are currently under construction in Austals Mobile, Ala. shipyard. Next month, the company is scheduled to launch USNS Yuma, while the future USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10) will undergo builders sea trials.
Environmental regulations for ships are getting more stringent, but automated sensor technology could help ship operators remain in compliance.

The recent agreement signed in Paris, at the UN Climate Change Conference, will require all industries to keep reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Although there was no specific mention of shipping, the aim of keeping global temperature rises below 2C this century will require the industry to play its part  as it is responsible for about 2% of global CO2 emissions.

Environmental rules for the industry are enshrined in the MARPOL (standing for Marine Pollution) regulations as well as several local regulations, such as VGP (Vessel general permit) 2013, which set strict emission limits. Emission targets in open water are less stringent, allowing high-sulphur fuel to be used there, for example. However, closer to shore  or in special areas such as the Baltic Sea  these targets are far stricter, so ships must switch over to a cleaner fuel. These rules are only going to get tougher: as a special area under Annexe IV of MARPOL, the Baltic Sea will fall under tough new regulations for waste water discharge, for example. The rules will be introduced in 2016 for new passenger vessels and 2018 for existing vessels.

The punishment for breaking MARPOL rules can be severe, particularly in the U.S. For example, recent cases include a German management company fined $800,000 for breaking the Clean Water Act, and an Italian ship owner fined $2.75 million for infringing the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships. In each case, both the operating company and individual members of the crew were held to be at fault and received fines or community service orders.

At the same time, the U.S. Coast Guard recently issued a Safety Alert, regarding the use of ultra-low sulphur (ULS) fuel. It recommends that switching to ULS fuel  which can result in loss of propulsion  is accomplished outside of busy traffic lanes (generally 200 nautical miles off the main U.S. coast). As part of the guidance, it says: Ensure all sensors, controls and alarms are operational and function as designed.

Condition Monitoring (CM) uses sensors to assess the health of components such as bearings and is commonplace in the manufacturing industry. CM has taken a few tentative steps into shipping, but it is early days: many ship owners, while recognising the benefits, are reticent to invest in such systems.

This type of automated, sensor-based system can also be used for so-called functional monitoring: instead of spotting bearing failure, it could automatically monitor critical environmental attributes such as fuel consumption and GHG emissions. This is the basis behind SKFs BlueMon. Often the necessary sensors are already on board, and are monitored by the crew. What BlueMon does is automate the whole process and add an extra level of security by helping the crew avoid mistakes. Most importantly, it overlays all this information with positional data. Marrying environmental and GPS data is a vital resource that helps ship owners and operators to stay within the MARPOL regulations. For example, BlueMon will sound a warning when the ship is approaching the shore  meaning that it must shift to a cleaner fuel, for example, or must not discharge bilge water overboard.

Bilge water must be fed through a separator until it is clean enough to be discharged. Out at sea, it can contain 15 parts per million of oil and be safely discharged. Closer to shore, the levels can drop to 5ppm  or even to zero bilge water discharge. By knowing the exact position of the ship  and correlating it with sensor readings  the system will take charge, and shut off the bilge water discharge valve if necessary.

With BlueMon, data is logged automatically by the system and kept for 24 months. In the case of a dispute, a log of all activities  from fuel-switching to bilge discharge  is available, with a precise location.

It is worth noting that offences under the various pollution and discharge acts can be punished even the offence takes place outside territorial waters. For example, a recent prosecution in the U.S. went ahead on the basis that fraudulent log book claims were presented to U.S. officials. It goes to show how important it is stay within the rules  and to keep accurate records.

BlueMon could comfortably handle tightening emission levels  and the changing boundaries of special areas such as the Baltic Sea  with simple software updates: the warning alarm of a special area could be triggered earlier, to account for a boundary change, for example.

BlueMon has been adopted by operators of tankers and liquid natural gas (LNG) carriers, due mainly to their presence in sensitive areas. The sensitivity factor could also see it deployed on ships that ply their trade in the Arctic  especially as these routes are more often open, due to melting ice.

For now, the system is restricted to the ship itself. There is no ship-to-shore transmission of data  although this is likely to be introduced in future. Such an arrangement is already in place for on-board CM: rather than having multiple maintenance experts on every ship, a fleet owner can transmit CM data back to shore, where remote experts can analyse all the data and act accordingly. This type of remote monitoring is already being used for route optimization. Data is transmitted to onshore experts, who may determine that the most cost-effective route is a longer journey using heavier fuel, for example.

A ship is sometimes considered a floating factory, as it has so much machinery to maintain. Consider, though, that a traditional land-based factory only needs to abide by local environmental regulations. A ship is a moving target  with multiple regulations to obey  so anything that can ease this burden is to be welcomed.

The Author

Claus Beiersdorfer studied process engineering at the University in Cologne and obtained the degree as Mechanical engineer (FH) in 1995. Since then he has gained a worldwide expereince as sales engineer for marine products which require integration in different ship machineries. Today Claus Beiersdorfer heads the sales teams for newbuilding equipment at SKF Marine GmbH in Hamburg.
Iran plans to export Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to Europe, Mehr News Agency quoted Iranian Minister of Oil Bijan Zanganeh as saying.

Zanaganeh described Irans plan for gas exports to Europe saying the main objective is to transfer the Iranian product in the form of LNG.

He touched upon measures taken by the Oil Ministry to supply petrochemical complexes with feed asserting the issue at stake is that producers need to pay taxes for selling feedstock to domestic petrochemicals and downstream industries while they enjoy tax exemption for selling products to global markets."

Zanaganeh assured that producers will not be charged by taxes for the profit they make in exports though for domestic activity, tax payment is required which discourages them from working with Iranian complexes.
The Baltic Exchange board has unanimously backed a takeover bid from Singapore Exchange Ltd , a deal that will give SGX access to a trading platform for the multi-billion dollar freight derivatives market.

On Aug. 4, SGX offered shareholders in London's privately owned Baltic Exchange 160.41 pounds in cash per share, for a total 77.6 million pounds ($102 million), and urged them to back the deal.

The exchanges have agreed on the terms of the SGX offer, they said in a joint statement on Monday.

"The proposed acquisition will accelerate the growth and development of the Baltic Exchange beyond what it could achieve on its own," Baltic Exchange Chairman Guy Campbell said.

Founded in 1744 as a forum for chartering vessels, the Baltic Exchange now produces benchmark indexes for global shipping rates. SGX's offer comes as freight costs wallow at record lows, after a slump in commodity markets coincided with an increase in the number of vessels.

(Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan and Anshuman Daga)
Rig firm Fred. Olsen Energy and South Korean yard Hyundai Heavy Industries settle dispute over construction of semi-submersible rig Bollsta Dolphin.



Shares in Fred. Olsen Energy up 17 percent at 0736 GMT on the news, after rising 37 percent at the opening of the Oslo bourse. Ownership of platform will be retained by Hyundai and arbitration proceedings associated with disputes have been terminated by consent. Fred. Olsen Energy's subsidiary firm Bollsta Dolphin will receive about $176.4 million from Hyundai of first installment paid by Bollsta.





Reporting by Gwladys Fouche
Ten people have drowned while five are still missing after a wooden boat carrying 17 people capsized in the province of Riau Islands on Sunday morning, reports the Jakarta Post.

The boat capsized in rough seas and sank off Indonesia's Bintan island, south of Singapore.

The boat carried 17 persons and overturned after it departed from a port in Tanjung Pinang of Riau province, Xinhua quoted navy spokesman Admiral Edi Sucipto as saying.

Bad weather was blamed for the disaster, he said. Navy command in western Indonesia undertook the evacuation just after the incident, Sucipto said.

About 20 ships and 50 fishing boats have been deployed in the search. The effort was being hampered by high waves and strong currents, said disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.

Two people were rescued. Two children were among the 10 people who died. The boat was close to its destination when it sank. Nugroho said some of the passengers tried to swim but were overcome by 3-meter (10-foot) waves.

Boat sinkings are common in Indonesia, an archipelago of some 17,000 islands. Ferries are often overcrowded and poorly regulated.
Researchers from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its partners are set to visit what remains of two shipsa German U-boat and a Nicaraguan freighter  which sank off Cape Hatteras during World War IIs Battle of the Atlantic, which pitted the U-boats of the German navy against combined Canadian, British, and American forces defending Allied merchant ships.

By July 1942, the United States had been in World War II for less than a year, but the fight was coming to the nations shores. On July 15, 1942, off Cape Hatteras, N.C., the German U-boatU-576 sank the Nicaraguan-flagged freighter SS Bluefields. But it came at a steep price  the merchant ship convoy and its U.S. military escorts fought back, sinking the U-boat within minutes as U.S. Navy air cover bombed the sub while the merchant ship Unicoi attacked it with its deck gun.

NOAA discovered the two sunken vessels in 2014, 35 miles offshore and approximately 700 feet underwater just 240 yards apart. Archaeologists aboard NOAA research vessel SRVX Sand Tiger located the ships during an autonomous underwater vehicle survey, using a sophisticated high resolution sonar. Last year, both ships were placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Using manned submersibles, the researchers will collect data to visualize and virtually recreate an underwater battlefield that has remained undisturbed for 74 years. Project Baseline, a global conservation non-profit, is supplying the GlobalSubDive assets including the research vessel Baseline Explorer, and two manned submersibles.

Underwater robots and advanced remote sensing technology, provided by 2G Robotics and SRI International, will generate bathymetric data and detailed acoustical models of the wrecks and surrounding seafloor. University of North Carolina's Coastal Studies Institute will provide three-dimensional modeling of the wrecks

This discovery is the only known location in U.S. waters that contains archaeologically preserved remains of a convoy battle where both sides are so close together, said Joe Hoyt, Monitor National Marine Sanctuary archaeologist and chief scientist for the expedition. By studying this site for the first time, we hope to learn more about the battle, as well as the natural habitats surrounding the shipwrecks.

The expedition, which runs through September 6, builds on previous work by NOAA and its partners to document nationally significant shipwrecks in the Graveyard of the Atlantic off North Carolinas Outer Banks. During the expedition, NOAA will also visit several other World War I, World War II and Civil War vessels including the USS Monitor.

NOAA is currently considering an expansion of Monitor National Marine Sanctuarys boundaries to increase the protections to the Bluefields, U-576 and other historic shipwrecks. Although the crew of Bluefields evacuated and did not suffer any casualties, the site is a war grave for the crew of U-576.

The significance of these sites cannot be overstated, said David Alberg, superintendent of Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. This area off North Carolina is the best representation of a WW II battlefield off the East coast. Now, working with our partners, we have an opportunity to study it, characterize it, and, like other historic battlefields in this country, hopefully protect it.

Additional funding to support the mission was provided through a grant from NOAAs Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
The Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC), the nations leading oil spill response organization, has announced that Steven T. Benz, the companys President and CEO, will be retiring on April 30, 2017.



Tim Plummer, Chair of the MSRC Board of Directors, said We are thankful to Steve for his many years of strong leadership. During his tenure, he has solidified MSRC as the preeminent spill response organization in the nation, as demonstrated by the critical role MSRC played in the Deepwater Horizon response. He has been an outstanding CEO, and the Board is grateful for his innumerable contributions."



My 20 years as Chief Executive with MSRC has been filled with pride and satisfaction because of the opportunity to work with and lead MSRCs outstanding employees. Together, we have made MSRC the premier spill response organization servicing the oil and transportation industries operating in the United States, Benz said. Over such a long period there are always the challenges of oil price cycles, regulatory activity, customer changes and, of course, emergency response. Throughout it all, MSRC, and most especially its employees, has consistently achieved and sustained the reputation for passionate customer service in a safe, efficient manner and demonstrated performance at a time of crisis. It has been a privilege to work with such a dedicated group.



Mr. Benz joined MSRC as CEO in 1996 after an extensive career working for a major oil company. During his tenure, notable achievements at MSRC have included:

Transforming MSRC into a cost effective, customer service oriented organization.

Expanding MSRCs footprint in oil spill response services through several mergers and acquisitions.

Leading MSRC in its response to major environmental events, including large-scale responses on hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon incident.

Overseeing the enhancement of spill response capability with major additions to MSRCs toolkit such as aerial dispersants, advanced technology skimming and other response systems, emergency telecommunication services, and MSRCs current state-of-the-art oil spill surveillance and remote sensing technology.



The MSRC Board of Directors has launched a search for Mr. Benzs successor. As stated by Mr. Plummer: Because Steve has been such an outstanding CEO we want our search for his replacement to be as comprehensive as possible. We have engaged the services of Russell Reynolds Associates, a leading executive search and assessment firm, to assist us in that process as we consider both external and internal candidates for the position. Our plan is to select Steves successor by the beginning of next year.
In a bid to help South Korean local shipyard weather their worst-ever slump, the State-run Korea Gas Corp. (KOGAS), the world's largest LNG importer, will soon place shipbuilding and maintenance orders with them, says a report by Yonhap.

KOGAS will advance the schedule of placing orders for two new LNG carriers to the first half of next year and assign sizable maintenance work for its large LNG carriers to local shipyards, said its president Lee Seung-hoon.

The construction of a LNG carrier with a capacity of 3,500 tons normally costs a 150 billion won (US$134 million).

"At the moment, demand for global LNG is waning, which works to reduce demand for new LNG carriers," he said. "As new shipbuilding orders are declining, we are looking at an option to assign maintenance work to local shipbuilders as well."

His remarks came as the country's shipyards are faced with a sharp drop in new orders and increased costs stemming from a delay in the construction of offshore facilities.

The nation's big three shipyards -- Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co. and Samsung Heavy Industries Co. -- racked up a combined loss of over 8 trillion won last year.
In June this year, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) introduced sustainability reporting on a comply or explain basis. To assist and encourage the maritime sector to embrace the new requirement for Sustainability / Integrated reporting, MPA organised a Maritime Sustainability Workshop.

At this workshop, Special Advisor to SGX, Ms Yeo Lian Sim, explained the rationale for the new requirements.

Tan Suan Jow, MPAs Director of Shipping, also highlighted that to promote clean and green shipping, MPAs Maritime Singapore Green Initiative has various incentive schemes that maritime companies can tap into to help them embrace efforts to reduce the environmental impact of shipping and its related activities.

Yvonne Chan, MPAs Director of Corporate Development and Chief Financial Officer, shared her knowledge and experience in producing MPAs first Sustainability / Integrated Report for Year 2014. Chan also announced a new co-funding initiative to assist SGX-listed maritime companies in Singapore with the production of their Sustainability Report.

MPA will co-fund 50% of the qualifying costs, up to a cap of $50,000 per company. The funding to the first 10 approved applications is on a reimbursement basis.

The companies initiatives in reducing negative environmental impact, social causes and corporate governance will also be part of the co-funding considerations. Companies who take up this co-funding will have to publish their sustainability report using world standards such as but not limited to Global Reporting Initiative Guidelines, before 31 Dec 2017.

Andrew Tan, Chief Executive of MPA, said, MPA is the first local maritime organisation to publish both an Integrated Report and Sustainability Report last year, and we hope to encourage the rest of the maritime industry to adopt the best practices and mitigate any risks to the environment arising from their operations. The so-called triple bottomline - people, planet and profits - will enhance their shareholder value.

Yeo Lian Sim, Special Advisor to SGX, commended MPA for promoting Green Awareness in Maritime Singapore through sharing best practices and co-funding efforts. With MPAs Green Awareness Programme, shipping companies have every encouragement to become early adopters of sustainability reporting and lead the way in raising transparency and communication standards in the maritime sector she said.
Ron Paul - What Should We Do About Crimea?

Is Crimea about to explode? The mainstream media reports that Russia has amassed troops on the border with Ukraine and may be spoiling for a fight. The Russians claim to have stopped a Ukrainian sabotage team that snuck into Crimea to attack key infrastructure. The Russian military is holding exercises in Crimea and Russian President Vladimir Putin made a visit to the peninsula at the end of the week.

The Ukrainians have complained to their western supporters that a full-scale Russian invasion is coming, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he may have to rule by martial law due to the Russian threat.

Though the US media pins the blame exclusively on Russia for these tensions, in reality there is plenty of blame to go around. We do know that the US government has been involved with "regime change" in Ukraine repeatedly since the break up of the Soviet Union. The US was deeply involved with the "Orange Revolution" that overthrew elected president Viktor Yanukovych in 2005. And we know that the US government was heavily involved in another coup that overthrew the same elected Yanukovych again in 2014.

How do we know that the US was behind the 2014 coup? For one, we have the intercepted telephone call between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. In the recording, the two US officials are plotting to remove the elected government and discussing which US puppet they will put in place.

You would think such undiplomatic behavior could get diplomats fired, but sadly in today's State Department it can actually get you promoted! Nuland is widely expected to get a big promotion  perhaps to even Secretary of State  in a Hillary Clinton administration, and Geoffrey Pyatt has just moved up to an Ambassadorship in Athens.

Ambassador Pyatt can't seem to control himself: Just as tensions were peaking between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea this month, he published a series of Tweets urging Ukraine to take back Crimea. Is this how our diplomats overseas should be acting? Should they be promoting actions they know will lead to war?

When the mainstream media discusses Crimea they are all lock-step: that's the peninsula Putin annexed. Never do they mention that there was a referendum in which the vast majority of the population (who are mostly ethnic Russians) voted to join Russia. The US media never reports on this referendum because it produced results that Washington doesn't like. How arrogant it must sound to the rest of the world that Washington reserves the right to approve or disapprove elections thousands of miles away  meanwhile we find out from the DNC hacked files that we don't have a lot of room to criticize elections overseas.

What should we do about Ukraine and Russia? We should stop egging Ukraine on, we should stop subsidizing the government in Kiev, we should stop NATO exercises on the Russian border, we should end sanctions, we should return to diplomacy, we should send the policy of "regime change" to the dustbin of history. The idea that we would be facing the prospect of World War III over which flag flies above a tiny finger of land that most US politicians couldn't find on a map is utterly ridiculous. When are we going to come to our senses?



Buy Ron Paul's latest book, Swords into Plowshares, here.

Dr. Ron Paul

Project Freedom

Congressman Ron Paul of Texas enjoys a national reputation as the premier advocate for liberty in politics today. Dr. Paul is the leading spokesman in Washington for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies based on commodity-backed currency. He is known among both his colleagues in Congress and his constituents for his consistent voting record in the House of Representatives: Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution. In the words of former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Dr. Paul is the "one exception to the Gang of 535" on Capitol Hill.

Dr. Ron Paul Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




COLLINSVILLE - A Martinsville woman will serve just over one year in prison on charges of distribution and possession of cocaine, along with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The latter charge, a misdemeanor, was amended from a charge of felony endangering the life of a child.

Judge David V. Williams gave Kimberly Dawn Hall Royal, 34, of Martinsville, the same sentence for distribution of cocaine and possession of cocaine: five years in prison, of which she must serve two months, with the balance suspended on condition of indefinite probation, payment of $100 restitution to the Henry County Sheriffs Office and suspension of her drivers license for six months.

Williams sentenced Royal to 12 months in jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

A summary of the commonwealths evidence alleged the following:

On Feb. 8, 2015, Deputy Robert Wade responded to a call at Food Lion at 2829 Greensboro Road about a drunk female causing trouble in the store. Wade found Royal in the produce area of the store. Royal was arrested on a charge of drunk in public. Wade searched her pocketbook and found a glass pipe, with had an off-colored burned residue inside. This was sent to a forensic lab and tested positive for cocaine.

On Oct. 22, 2015, Henry County Sheriffs Office investigators met with a confidential informant in an effort to buy cocaine from Royal. The confidential informant talked with Royal on the phone and she agreed to meet him at the Food Lion in Bassett Forks. A sheriffs office investigator gave the confidential informant two recording devices and $100, and the informant left.

The confidential informant sat in the parking lot for nearly an hour. Eventually, someone drove up, with Royal in a passenger seat and a toddler in a car seat in the back. The driver had a tied baggy with what appeared to be cocaine inside it. When the confidential informant questioned Royal, she said the informant had asked for boy, which she thought was the same as hard (rock cocaine) and did not know that boy meant heroin. The informant told her no but he would be willing to buy crack cocaine instead of heroin.

The driver and Royal struggled with getting the baggy opened but eventually the driver was able to do so. The driver took a small amount of product from the bag and gave the bag to the informant in exchange for money, which the driver took possession of.

A forensic lab later determined the suspected cocaine to be 0.353 grams of cocaine.

Royals lawyer, Christina Slate, argued that Royal had a very rough upbringing, and is a drug addict who has been getting help through Piedmont Community Services.

Slate also argued she felt Royal has been treated detrimentally by authorities in these cases because she was not sentenced on these charges at the same time she was sentenced on some other charges in the not too distant past. Sentencing her on everything at once could have reduced her possible sentence, Slate said.

Henry County Commonwealths Attorney Andrew Nester indicated that Royal has a lengthy criminal history.

Also in Henry County Circuit Court, Judge Williams sentenced Michael Allen Bryant of Spencer on four felony charges  make false statement to a firearm dealer, grand larceny and two counts of felony obtain money or property by false pretence  and two misdemeanor charges (two counts of misdemeanor obtain money or property by false pretense).

Williams sentenced Bryant on each felony charge to five years in prison, suspended, with two years of probation, five years of good behavior and payment of $70 restitution to Riverside Pawn. Williams also ordered Bryant to attend and complete the diversion center program (an alternative to traditional incarceration) and to remain in jail until he is taken to the diversion center.

On each of the misdemeanor charges, Williams sentenced Bryant to 12 months in jail, suspended on the same conditions as the felony charges.

The commonwealths summary of evidence alleged the following:

On July 31, 2015, Bryant went to retrieve a Mossburg 500 shotgun from Riverside Pawn Shop in Collinsville. Bryant previously had pawned the shotgun and was attempting to get the gun out of pawn on this day.

Bryant filled out the Virginia firearms transaction record documentation and checked no for question 11b, indicating that he was not under indictment or information in any court for a felony or other crime for which a judge could imprison him for more than one year.

However, Bryant was indicted on felony construction fraud on Feb. 9, 2015, in the city of Martinsville. On April 28, 2015, Bryant pleaded guilty to the indictment and the commonwealth agreed to take the case under advisement for 12 months, during which time Bryant was supposed to pay restitution to the victims and be of good behavior. If Bryant complied with those conditions, the felony charge of construction fraud would be reduced to a misdemeanor. The review was set for April 14, 2016.

Bryant allegedly stole jewelry and a 12-gauge Mossberg 500A shotgun, together valued at $4,360, from his sister-in law, Betsy Wilson. Bryant allegedly received a total of $640 for jewelry and the shotgun that he sold or pawned at Riverside Pawn in April, May and July 2015.

Bryant indicated to a deputy that he took the jewelry and weapon because he had fallen on hard times and made a bad choice.
MARTINSVILLE - Donors who contribute to a local nonprofit will get something back, in the form of tax credits.

Solutions That Empower People (STEP), a group dedicated to helping people in crisis, has become the latest local nonprofit to qualify for tax credits.

The Virginia Department of Social Services approved STEP for such credits, through their Neighborhood Assistance Program. Depending on the size of the donation, people can get a tax credit of up to 65 percent of the donation. For example, a $1,000 donation could yield a $650 state tax credit.

They get to choose how their money is spent, said Marc Crouse, STEPs executive director. They might look at our program and say, Im really into that. I love helping seniors. Or you can send it to Richmond where it buys a wrench.

Although it is the designated community action agency for Franklin and Patrick counties, STEP also serves Henry, Pittsylvania and Bedford counties as well as the cities of Martinsville and Danville.

Were a hand-up as opposed to a handout, Crouse said. We exist to partner with people impoverished and in low income situations. We match their efforts with our resources.

The tax credits help donors and STEP in tandem.

This is like getting paid to support your favorite charity, Crouse said. As taxpayers, we dont usually have an opportunity to choose how our tax dollars are spent, but donating to STEP, Inc. through the Neighborhood Assistance Program is one way to influence that.

While financial donations help STEP continue its mission, donations of time help as well.

We couldnt do this without our volunteers and board of directors, Crouse said.

Donations to STEP, Inc. are used to support programs and services that strengthen the communities it serves. For more information about making a donation to STEP and the NAP program, contact Crouse at (540) 483-5142 or marc.crouse@stepincva.com.
In Defence of Marxism is committed to safeguarding your privacy. At all times we aim to respect any personal data you share with us, or that we receive from other organisations, and keep it safe. This Privacy Policy (Policy) sets out our data collection and processing practices and your options regarding the ways in which your personal information is used.

This Policy contains important information about your personal rights to privacy. Please read it carefully to understand how we use your personal data. We may update this Policy from time to time without notice to you, so please check it regularly.

The provision of your personal data to us is voluntary. However, without providing us with your personal data, you will be unable to (as appropriate): contact us; subscribe to our mailing list; subscribe to any of our publications; or receive information about In Defence of Marxism.

We collect information about you:

(1) When you give it to us DIRECTLY

You may give us your personal data in order to subscribe to a newsletter or publication, when you contact us by phone, email or post, when you sign a petition / statement, and/or when you donate money to us.

(2) When you give it to us INDIRECTLY

Your information will also be provided to us when you follow us or otherwise interact with on or via Twitter, when you like and/or join our page on Facebook or interact with us in other ways on or via Facebook.

(3) When you give permission to OTHER ORGANISATIONS to share it or it is AVAILABLE PUBLICLY

We may combine information you provide to us with information available from external publicly available sources. Depending on your privacy settings for social media services, we may also access information from those accounts or services. We use this information to gain a better understanding of you and to improve our communications and fundraising activities.

(4) When you visit our WEBSITE

We use cookies to identify you when you visit our website. Please refer to our Cookies Policy for details on the way our use of cookies affects your personal data.

What information do we collect?

We may collect, store and use the following kinds of personal data:

(1) We will typically hold your name and contact details, including telephone number, location, and e-mail address. However, we may request other information where it is appropriate and relevant, for example:

Your bank details or debit/credit card details (if making a donation).

(2) any communication preferences you give;

(3) information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website including your IP address, geographical location, browser type, referral source, length of visit and number of page views; and/or

(4) any other information shared with us as per clause 1.

Do we process sensitive personal information?

Applicable law recognises certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring more protection, including political opinions and trade union membership. In limited cases, we may collect sensitive personal data about you. We would only collect sensitive personal data if there is a clear reason for doing so; and will only do so with your explicit consent.

How and why will we use your personal data?

Personal data, however provided to us, will be used for the purposes specified in this Policy or in relevant parts of the website.

We may use your personal information to:

(1) Enable you to subscribe to our hard copy publications;

(2) Send you information about our work, campaigns, organisations and any other information, products or services that we provide (this will not be done without your consent);

(3) Provide you with the services, products or information you have requested;

(4) If you request, put you in touch with other supporters in your area (who have also provided such consent);

(5) Handle the administration of any donation or other payment you make via credit/debit card, cheque, standing order or BACS transfer;

(6) Collect payments from you and send statements and/or receipts to you;

(7) Conduct research into the impact of our activity / campaigns;

(8) Deal with enquiries and complaints made by you relating to the website or us in general;

(9) Make petition submissions to third parties, where you have signed a petition and the third party is a target of the campaign to which the petition relates; and/or

(10) Audit and/or administer our accounts.

Supporter Analysis

Google Analytics

We may use some of your personal information to analyse our digital performance, for example to see how our website can be improved to help us achieve the purposes set out in section 9 below, to record how you are using our website or to assess the popularity of different articles / campaigns.

For more information on how we use your personal information in relation to Google Analytics, please view our cookie policy by clicking this link cookies policy



You can opt-out of the collection of information for such purposes here: http://www.aboutads.info/choices

Communications, updates, fundraising

Where you have provided appropriate consent, we will contact you by telephone and e-mail, with targeted communications to let you know about our events and/or activities that we consider may be of particular interest; about the work of In Defence of Marxism; and to ask for donations or other support.

Donations and other payments

All financial transactions carried out on our website are handled through either:

PayPal (Europe) S.a r.l. (PayPal), a third party payment services provider. We recommend that you read PayPals privacy policy (available at https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/ua/privacy-full?locale.x=en_GB ) prior to effecting any transactions with us through PayPal; or

GoCardless Ltd (GoCardless), a third party payment services provider. We recommend that you read GoCardlesss privacy policy (available at https://www.gocardless.com/legal/privacy) prior to effecting any transactions with us through GoCardless.

We will provide your personal data to PayPal / GoCardless only to the extent necessary for the purposes of processing payments for transactions you enter into with us. We do not store your financial details.

Childrens data

We do not knowingly process data of any person under the age of 16. If we come to discover, or have reason to believe, that you are 15 and under and we are holding your personal information, we will delete that information within a reasonable period and withhold our services accordingly.

Security of and access to your personal data

We endeavour to ensure that there are appropriate and proportionate technical and organisational measures to prevent the loss, destruction, misuse, alteration, unauthorised disclosure or of access to your personal information.

Your information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff and volunteers.

We may also use agencies and/or suppliers to process data on our behalf. We may also merge or partner with other organisations and in so doing transfer and/or acquire personal data.

Please note that some countries outside of the EEA have a lower standard of protection for personal data, including lower security requirements and fewer rights for individuals. We may transfer and/or store personal data collected from you to and/or at a destination outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Such personal data may be processed by agencies and/or suppliers operating outside the EEA. If we transfer and/or store your personal data outside the EEA we will take reasonable steps to ensure that the recipient implements appropriate measures to protect your personal data.

Otherwise than as set out in this Privacy Policy, we will only ever share your data with your informed consent.

Your rights

Where we rely on your consent to use your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This includes the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes or to be unsubscribed from our email list at any time. You also have the following rights:

(1) Right to be informed  you have the right to be told how your personal information will be used. This Policy and any other policies and statements used on our website and in our communications are intended to provide you with a clear and transparent description of how your personal information may be used.

(2) Right of access  you can write to us to ask for confirmation of what information we hold on you and to request a copy of that information. Provided we are satisfied that you are entitled to see the information requested and we have successfully confirmed your identity, we have 30 days to comply.

(3) Right of erasure  as from 25 May 2018, you can ask us for your personal information to be deleted from our records.

(4) Right of rectification  if you believe our records of your personal information are inaccurate, you have the right to ask for those records to be updated.

(5) Right to restrict processing  you have the right to ask for processing of your personal data to be restricted if there is disagreement about its accuracy or legitimate usage.

(6) Right to data portability  to the extent required by the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) where we are processing your personal information (i) under your consent, (ii) because such processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are party or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contact or (iii) by automated means, you may ask us to provide it to you  or another service provider  in a machine-readable format.

To exercise these rights, please send a description of the personal information in question using the contact details in section 15 below. You can also unsubscribe from our email list by sending a blank email to news-unsubscribe@marxist.com

Where we consider that the information with which you have provided us does not enable us to identify the personal information in question, we reserve the right to ask for (i) personal identification and/or (ii) further information.

Lawful processing

We are required to have one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. Only 4 of these are relevant to us:

Personal information is processed on the basis of a persons consent Personal information is processed on the basis of a contractual relationship Personal information is processed on the basis of legal obligations Personal information is processed on the basis of legitimate interests

(1) Consent

We will ask for your consent to use your information to send you electronic communications such as newsletters and and fundraising emails, and if you ever share sensitive personal information with us.

(2) Contractual relationships

Most of our interactions with supporters are voluntary and not contractual. However, sometimes it will be necessary to process personal information so that we can enter contractual relationships with people. For example, if you subscribe to one of our publications, or purchase merchandise online.

(3) Legal obligations

Sometimes we will be obliged to process your personal information due to legal obligations which are binding on us. We will only ever do so when strictly necessary.

(4) Legitimate interests

Applicable law allows personal information to be collected and used if it is reasonably necessary for our legitimate activities (as long as its use is fair, balanced and does not unduly impact individuals rights).

We will rely on this ground to process your personal data when it is not practical or appropriate to ask for consent.

Achieving our purposes

These include (but are not limited to) promoting socialist policies

Governance

Internal and external audit for financial or regulatory compliance purposes

Statutory reporting

Publicity and income generation

Conventional direct marketing and other forms of marketing, publicity or advertisement

Unsolicited messages, including campaigns, newsletters, and fundraising appeals

Analysis, targeting and segmentation to develop and promote or strategy and improve communication efficiency

Personalisation used to tailor and enhance your experience of our communications

Operational Management

Maintenance of suppression files

Processing for historical, scientific or statistical purpose

Purely administrative purposes

Responding to enquiries

Delivery of requested products or information

Communications designed to administer existing services including subscriptions, administration of petitions and financial transactions

Thank you communications and receipts

Maintaining a supporter database and suppression lists

Financial Management and control

Processing financial transactions and maintaining financial controls

Prevention of fraud, misuse of services, or money laundering

Enforcement of legal claims

Reporting criminal acts and compliance with law enforcement agencies

When we use your personal information, we will consider if it is fair and balanced to do so and if it is within your reasonable expectations. We will balance your rights and our legitimate interests to ensure that we use your personal information in ways that are not unduly intrusive or unfair in other ways.

Data retention

The length of time each category of data will be retained will vary depending on how long we need to process it for, the reason it was collected, and in line with any statutory requirements. After this point the data will either be deleted, or we may retain a secure anonymised record for research and analytical purposes.

In the event that you ask us to stop sending you direct marketing/fundraising/other electronic communications, we will keep your name on our internal suppression list to ensure that you are not contacted again.

Policy amendments

We keep this Privacy Policy under regular review and reserve the right to update from time-to-time by posting an updated version on our website, not least because of changes in applicable law. We recommend that you check this Privacy Policy occasionally to ensure you remain happy with it. We may also notify you of changes to our privacy policy by email.

Third party websites

We link our website directly to other sites. This Privacy Policy does not cover external websites and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any external websites you visit via links on our website.

Updating information

You can check the personal data we hold about you, and ask us to update it where necessary, by emailing us at webmaster@marxist.com

Contact

We are not required by law to have a Data Protection Officer  however we have a Data Protection Manager.

Please let us know if you have any queries or concerns whatsoever about the way in which your data is being processed by emailing the Data Protection Manager at webmaster@marxist.com
The new and completed edition of Stalin, the critical biography Trotsky was working on at the time of his death, was officially launched at the Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky (Leon Trotsky House Museum) in Mexico City by the IMT with presentations by Esteban Volkov, Trotskys grandson, and Alan Woods, the editor of the new edition of the book.

The International launching of the book, painstakingly worked on and completed over almost three years by Alan Woods, the editor of In Defence of Marxism, took place on August 20, 2016, at the very location where Trotsky was assassinated and on the 76th anniversary of the attack that led to his death on August 21, 1940.

Buy the book at WellredBooks.net

Photo: La Izquierda SocialistaThe meeting was held in the auditorium of the museum before a packed house with some 120 to 130 people in attendance. By the time the meeting started there was standing room only as people were eager to hear the speakers.

The meeting was presented and chaired by Ubaldo Meneses, a comrade with the IMT in Mexico. Ubaldo explained that Trotsky was working on the book when he was assassinated, and that his biography of Stalin was not only of historic interest and remained relevant to this day.

The book presents a powerful historical analysis that offers many ideas and opens possibilities for the Trotskyist movement, as well as for the youth and workers struggling against capitalist exploitation and oppression today.

Photo: La Izquierda SocialistaUbaldo explained that Trotsky was one of the giants of the 20th Century, a man whose ideas animated and fuelled the greatest event in human history  the Russian Revolution of October 1917.

Trotskys ideas, particularly the theory of permanent revolution, along with his great work on The History of the Russian Revolution and his analysis of the bureaucratic degeneration of the revolution in Russia rank among his most important contributions to Marxist theory. The new edition of Stalin can also be added to this list of his most important works.

Photo: La Izquierda SocialistaBut as Ubaldo explained, Trotsky was not only a great theoretician, writer and orator. He was a revolutionary through and through and lived his life and engaged in political work and his personal interests with great intensity, who along with Lenin was one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution.

Although he was one of the principal leaders of the October Revolution, had played a key role in the formation of the Red Army and was the commander of Red forces in the Civil War, Trotsky considered the defence of Marxist ideas in the face of the Stalinist counterrevolution in the Soviet Union to be the greatest and most important task of his life.

Restoring the biography

Esteban Volkov - Photo: La Izquierda SocialistaUbaldo then introduced Esteban Volkov, Trotskys grandson and the director of the Trotsky House Museum, who has dedicated most of his life to defending the ideas of Trotsky, and fighting for the truth about his life and struggle against Stalin.

Esteban began by thanking Alan Woods and the IMT for their admirable work in completing and restoring the book, which is now as close as possible to Trotskys original intentions for the biography.

Esteban has long fought for the restoration of the Stalin biography and discussed the history of the work and the role played by Charles Malamuth in the original publication following Trotskys death.

He explained that contrary to what many believe, Trotsky did not undertake the biography to spite Stalin or out of a sense of resentment or hatred against him and his cronies in the Kremlin.

In fact, as Esteban explained, Trotsky had no real interest in writing a biography of Stalin. His real interest at that time was completing a book on the life of Lenin, which he had already started.

The time Trotsky and his family spent in exile was one of extreme hardship and danger, and Esteban explained that one of the primary motivations in writing the biography was the extremely difficult economic situation they found themselves in.

When an American publishing house, Harper & Brothers, offered a considerable sum of money for a biography of Stalin, Trotsky, though reluctant, undertook the task in earnest.

After Trotskys assassination by a Stalinist agent, and motivated by purely commercial interests, Harper & Brothers tasked the translator of the work, Charles Malamuth, whose work Trotsky was not entirely pleased with, with the editing and completion of the biography for publication.

Malamuth effectively butchered and destroyed the book by shortening it considerably and adding many of his own annotations that went directly against the ideas expressed by Trotsky in the work. Despite the many problems and inaccuracies in the edition completed by Malamuth and the objections of Trotskys family, the publishers went ahead and released the book anyway.

Photo: La Izquierda SocialistaAt this point Esteban compared a copy of the original publication with a copy of the new edition, explaining that by removing Malamuths poor annotations and by translating and including the material he had removed or not included, the work was now some 30 to 40 percent larger than the original. Holding the books side by side he pointed out that the original edition was some 500 pages long, with the new edition containing nearly 900 pages.

Esteban went on to explain that Trotskys biography of Stalin was not only of interest because of Stalins exceptional criminality, and that the book was not simply an historical recounting of these crimes. In fact, the work is multi-dimensional, and presents a meticulous analysis of historical processes and individual personalities, making it a profoundly political work.

Esteban finished by explaining that the IMT had set itself the task a number of years ago of saving and rescuing the work, a task that had been successfully achieved. He personally thanked Alan and the IMT for the meticulous and hard work that was put into restoring the book, adding that Alan Woods and the IMT were able to achieve this task as genuine representatives of the ideas of Trotsky.

Marxism, the history of the Soviet Union and the role of the individual in history

Alan Woods - Photo: La Izquierda SocialistaAlan Woods was then invited to speak and discuss the publication of the latest and most complete edition yet of Stalin. Alan began by explaining the historic nature of the book launch meeting at the Trotsky House Museum.

Trotskys biography of Stalin, along with Trotskys other key works, is a work on the highest order in the theoretical arsenal of Marxism. Yet, the book did not necessarily have to exist. Stalin was utterly intent on destroying the book, and did not want it to see the light of day. Why? Because Trotsky was a witness who knew Stalin and the true history of the man and the Russian Revolution. Stalin feared this above all.

Stalin was in fact obsessed by Trotsky. Stalin always had the latest works of Trotsky on his desk every morning, often before they were published. But he didnt follow the writings and work of Trotsky and the Left Opposition, and later the Fourth International, out of political interest. Stalin was one of the greatest criminals in human history, and like all criminals he was intent on eliminating and destroying all witnesses  witnesses to his true past and to his crimes.

Stalin was in reality a very superficial and mediocre person. He was profoundly jealous of Trotsky, and the role he played in the Russian Revolution and Civil War. In the face of accusations that he had allowed his hatred of Stalin to influence his judgment and ideas, Trotsky explained that he had no personal relations with Stalin. He had explained that they had parted ways so long ago that any personal relations between them had been entirely extinguished, and that his personal feelings towards Stalin were in reality no different than his feelings towards Hitler or Mikado, for example.

Alan went on to explain the rise and development of the cult of personality around Stalin after the death of Lenin. During Stalins rise to power, the idea was developed by the cronies in the Kremlin that one person could determine the fate of an entire country, without any collaborators or assistance, a monstrous distortion of the historical process. An analysis of this cult of personality is what helps to make Trotskys biography of Stalin unique in Marxist theory.

When the USSR collapsed, the bourgeoisie around the world was euphoric. They pronounced the death of socialism and the end of history. There was a veritable avalanche of attacks and relentless propaganda against socialism, communism, Marxism and the Russian Revolution, etc. Demoralized and cynical, many former communists and Stalinists joined in on these attacks.

Alan explained that if the ruling class and the bourgeois media attack Marxism, and continue attacking Marxism, it certainly isnt because its dead  in fact the opposite is the case.

Photo: La Izquierda SocialistaAs Alan pointed out, the coming year marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution, which was in fact the most important event in human history. It was the first time that the masses  millions of ordinary workers and peasants overthrew a rotten regime that had existed for hundreds of years and set themselves the task of building a socialist society.

Russia in 1917 was exceptionally backwards  more backwards than countries like Pakistan or Mexico today. The country was largely illiterate, and out of a total population of around 150 million, only some 3.5 million were industrial workers.

Enemies of the revolution claim that the October Revolution really amounted to nothing, or that it was simply a coup detat led by a small minority. The truth of the matter, however, is that the Russian Revolution was the most democratic, mass revolution in history.

Yet, the Revolution unfortunately ended in an aberration, a bureaucratic caricature of the spirit and ideals that animated October. As Alan explained, the brutal methods and crimes of the Stalinist bureaucracy had nothing in common with the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. The roots of the degeneration of the Revolution and the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy were explained by Trotsky in one of his most important books, The Revolution Betrayed, a book Alan encouraged all present to read and study.

Alan continued by explaining that one of the most common and greatest attacks on Marxism appears on college and university campuses. This is the argument that says that Marxism essentially reduces everything to economics. This simply is not true, and any serious study of the ideas of Marxism will demonstrate this. In the final analysis, economics are a decisive factor, but they are not the only factor to the exclusion of all others.

History is not simply determined by economics. History is the history of men and women, of people and individuals. In certain periods of history, individuals can play a decisive role, for example Lenin and Trotsky in the October Revolution.

Marx explained that men and women make their own history, but that they do not make it as they please, as free agents independent of the economic and social context they find themselves in.

Alan explained that Lenin and Trotsky played a key role in the Russian Revolution. Without their presence, the October Revolution would not have happened, or at least it certainly would not have unfolded as it did. Yet after the death of Lenin, Trotsky was powerless to change the situation individually in the context of the Stalinist counterrevolution.

A superficial and simple response to the question of why Stalin was victorious and Trotsky lost in the struggle following Lenins death is that Stalin was more prepared, or that he had a better grasp of tactics.

But this is not true, and is really too simplistic an explanation for what was an extraordinarily complex process. Stalin was ignorant and mediocre. Trotsky was a giant. Yet, Trotsky lost the struggle to the lesser man. Alan explained once again that men and women are not free agents, adding that many others have sought the reasons for Trotskys defeat in psychology, arguments which do not hold up under serious scrutiny.

Photo: La Izquierda SocialistaAlan then explained the connection between Trotskys biography of Stalin and an important work written by Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Louis Bonaparte was an utterly mediocre man, yet managed to win power in France. Through the development of the Marxist theory of the role of the individual in history, we understand that there are historical periods, heroic periods in which the giants of history dominate, and other periods of demoralization in which mediocrity dominates.

As Alan explained, there are historical similarities between the Thermidorian Reaction in France and the Stalinist counterrevolution in the USSR, which Trotsky often referred to as the Thermidorian Reaction in the Soviet Union.

Trotsky explained that a revolution is like a great strike, only on a broader scale and on a national level. Strikes and revolutions develop according to the same laws. As Alan explained, during the period of revolutionary ascent in the French Revolution, an heroic period, we see the rise of figures such as Robespierre, Danton and Saint-Just, who were historical giants.

However, when the revolutionary desires of the masses are not met, a contrary process opens. The participation of the masses declines. This is when space is cleared for mediocrity and the rise of lesser men and women. It was during this period of the French Revolution that we see the rise of the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte, who destroyed many of the conquests of the Revolution, restored the Catholic Church and declared himself emperor. There is a similarity between these events in the French Revolution and the rise of Stalin in the Russian Revolution.

Alan continued by discussing the final years of Lenins life, when he battled against the unhealthy and corrupt elements in the Soviet Union and the Communist Party. Given the crushing backwardness of Russia at the time, and after years of war, revolution, and civil war that had left the country utterly in ruin, the Soviet Union had developed around a weak edifice of workers democracy.

As Marx had explained, the development of the productive forces is a necessary premise of communism, because when want and misery are generalized, the struggle for necessities begins anew, and that means that all the old crap must revive.

The degeneration of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy were rooted in this backwardness  in this revival of all the old crap. When during the Civil War and afterwards with the delay in the international revolution and with the economy in ruin and millions of people dying of starvation, you cannot speak of socialism.

This process of the degeneration of the revolution was reflected in the theory of socialism in one country, which in reality is an anti-Marxist idea. Lenin and Trotsky never saw the Russian Revolution as an isolated national event, but rather as one of the first steps in the world revolution.

Alan explained that this was the context in which the struggle between Trotsky and Stalin took place, the struggle between the ideas of Marxism and for workers democracy against the narrow interests and brutal methods of the privileged bureaucracy, represented in the end by Stalin. Stalin wasnt victorious because he was more intelligent or more prepared, but precisely because he was mediocre, something that fit the situation to a far greater degree.

A revolutionary epoch requires heroic leaders, great writers and speakers, and bold thinkers who can take the desires of the revolutionary masses and push the movement forward  such as Robespierre and Danton, or Lenin and Trotsky.

But a counterrevolutionary period is a period of ebb and demoralization. These periods do not require the giants of history, who often find themselves isolated and fighting against the stream, but require mediocre men of lesser stature.

Alan then discussed the topic of Trotskyism itself, which he explained doesnt exist in reality. Trotskyism was an invention of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin. The idea was to create a dividing line between Lenin and Trotsky in an effort to isolate the genuine revolutionaries struggling against the rise of the privileged bureaucracy. In reality, however, the ideas of Trotsky are rooted in and are not different from the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in fact represent a continuation of these ideas and traditions, going all the way back to The Communist Manifesto and earlier.

Many people argue that Trotsky lost because he didnt understand tactics, or that he didnt understand how far Stalin would go to defeat him. The reality was, on the basis of his understanding of Marxism and history, Trotsky knew that he was going to lose.

Alan explained that as Trotsky had pointed out, with the exception of the nationalized planned economy, Stalins regime in the Soviet Union could only be compared historically to the fascist regimes of Mussolini and Hitler.

In this light, many have argued that the Soviet Union under Lenin and Trotsky was the same as the regime under Stalin. Many have argued that Trotsky and Stalin were really the same as well. But if this were truly the case, then why did Stalin annihilate the Bolshevik Party? Why did he have to annihilate the vanguard of the Old Bolsheviks?

Criminals cannot suffer witnesses, and likewise Stalin, one of the greatest criminals in all human history, could not have any witnesses. Trotsky knew that he could not win, knew that the movement of history was against him and watched as all those around him capitulated to Stalin and were killed.

Trotsky refused to capitulate. He fought to defend the banner of October, the genuine ideas of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party for future generations. Bukharin, Zinoviev and the others who capitulated lost everything, and no traditions based on their ideas remain. In this sense Trotsky was victorious, and he won for this generation of revolutionary workers and youth.

A vile and cruel counterrevolutionary assassin killed Trotsky with an ice pick. Stalin achieved his goal of killing his enemy. As Alan explained, human beings are frail and fragile. They can be shot, or stabbed, or otherwise killed. In fact, it is rather easy to end the life of an individual. Ideas are not so easily destroyed. It is not possible to kill an idea, especially an idea whose time has come.

Alan explained that in this sense too Trotsky was victorious. The ideas of Leon Trotsky, the ideas of Leninism, Bolshevism and the October Revolution did not die in August 1940. In fact, the struggle based on these ideas continues to this very day. It has been 76 years since the death of Leon Trotsky. Where are we today? The ideas of Trotsky, the ideas of Marxism, remain the only ideas today that can take us forward in the struggle against the misery, poverty, class exploitation and oppression we face under capitalism.

The fact that Trotskyism continues to haunt the bourgeoisie and the reformist and Stalinist leaderships of the labour movement is evidence of the power of these ideas. The ideas of genuine Marxism are the only ideas that can explain the problems of society and their solutions for the workers and youth. This is the power of these ideas that Stalin could not destroy.

Alan finished by explaining that the only way forward is to struggle, and to continue struggling on the basis of these ideas. People can unfortunately fall into despair, and want to hide away from the struggle. As has often been said, you can ignore politics but politics wont ignore you. One can try to hide from it at home, but politics will inevitably come knocking at the door. For this reason we must be bold, prepared, and organize.

Alan finished his presentation by explaining the great revolutionary traditions of the Mexican people. The key task now is for the workers and youth to return to the ideas of Marxism to take the struggle forward. We must unite and organize around the ideas of Marxism. To this end he encouraged all present to read and study Stalin as well as the ideas found in the other works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. United on the basis of Marxist ideas, we can only win in our struggle against the misery of capitalism.

Discussion and remarks

Photo: La Izquierda SocialistaThe presentations of Esteban Volkov and Alan Woods were followed by a lively discussion. The discussion was mostly focused on how to take the movement and the struggle forward in Mexico and other various countries, and how to take the ideas of Trotsky and genuine socialism to the masses.

Esteban Volkov offered his final remarks by saying that we want a better world, and that the future of humanity depended on the achievement of a better world. There are two perspectives, either the destruction and misery of the planet under capitalism, or a humane world under socialism. He finished by offering a few memories on the death of Leon Trotsky, explaining that he was very pleased and proud that there were still so many interested in the ideas he defended.

Many of the questions in the discussion period had been directed to Alan Woods about the history of the Soviet Union and Stalinism. Alan explained the achievements of the nationalized planned economy, including the spectacular growth rates and scientific achievements that were achieved and never matched by any capitalist country, despite the gross corruption and mismanagement of the privileged bureaucracy in the USSR. These achievements offer us but a glimpse of what could be achieved with the building of genuine, international socialism.

One of the greatest lies put forward by the ruling class and the enemies of Marxism is that it was socialism that failed in the Soviet Union. In reality, what failed and what had to fail, as Trotsky explained and predicted in 1937, was Stalinism.

As Trotsky had explained in the 1930s, the nationalized planned economy requires democracy, genuine workers democracy, as the human body requires oxygen. Without genuine workers democracy, bureaucracy and corruption will take hold, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in history. The parasitic growth of the Soviet bureaucracy, which acted as a plug on the Soviet economy, are not arguments against economic planning, nationalization, or socialism, but rather are powerful arguments against Stalinism, bureaucratic mismanagement and corruption.

The final point of the discussion was on the developing world crisis of capitalism. The tide of history turned profoundly with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. But history is turning once again. The crisis of Stalinism has led to a much more profound crisis  the crisis of the capitalist system as a whole.

The crisis of the global capitalist system can be seen almost everywhere, from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America to Greece and Spain to Britain and now even the United States. In the United States, this was reflected in the rise of the Bernie Sanders phenomenon. Over a year ago almost no one had heard of Bernie Sanders, but with the crisis his call for a political revolution against the billionaire class resonated with people and found a powerful echo. Now is not a time for demoralization and despair, but a time of hope and optimism.

Alan finished the discussion but explaining that the crisis of capitalism was knocking people hard over the head, waking the masses from a long slumber, and now we are seeing the resulting shifts and changes in consciousness. The Marxists are still found but in small groups, but if we unite and organize around the ideas defended by Lenin and Trotsky, we can transmit these ideas to the mass of workers and youth. These ideas show us the way forward, and are the only ideas capable of leading to the overthrow of capitalism and the building of a truly human society  that of international socialism.
Boston Skyline

A view of downtown Boston from the Evelyn Moakley Bridge, Thursday, May 19, 2016, in Boston. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

(Elise Amendola)

Calling all Boston based young professionals:

Plenty of recent college graduates are moving all over the country, starting new ventures and figuring things out.

General Assembly, a company that "fosters an elite professional community of individuals and companies through education and strategic career connections," has partnered with the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, City Awake, Hatch Fenway, and more to host "The Future of Boston: Millennial Mixer," a free social mixer event for young professionals in the Boston area.

The event is geared towards helping young Bostonians in the professional world meet and mingle with one another in order to "expand their personal and professional network beyond coworkers," according to the event page.

The mixer will take place on Wednesday, Aug. 24 from 6 to 9:30 p.m. at Hatch Fenway, located at 401 Park Drive in Boston.

#MillennialMonday: Calling all professionals! Network with #Boston's smartest + brainstorm solutions for the future: https://t.co/u4YUmhj0hC -- General Assembly BOS (@GA_boston) August 22, 2016

For more information and entry to the event, visit generalassemb.ly.
Keith Lockhart Leads the Boston Pops at Tanglewood (Hilary Scott).JPG

Keith Lockhart Leads the Boston Pops at Tanglewood in Lenox.

(Hilary Scott | BSO photo)

In a thrilling matchup of live music with classic film adventure, Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops will present "Raiders of the Lost Ark" at Tanglewood on Friday.

In past years, Tanglewood concertgoers have enjoyed "West Side Story" and "The Wizard of Oz" screened with live performance of the film score. The adventure continues Friday as Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) rambles around the globe in a race-against-time search for the Ark of the Covenant.

Thirty five years ago, master film composer John Williams created musical atmospheres, themes, leitmotifs, textures, and full-fledged concert pieces to heighten the drama of the hair's-breadth escapes, car chases, duels, digs, fights, flights, and ultimate supernatural horror and wonderment that is "Raiders."

"I remember loving the film when I saw it in the theater," Lockhart said in a recent telephone conversation. Of course Williams' music is an integral part of the experience and the enjoyment, but "...the great thing about it is that it doesn't jar you, or take your attention in a distracting way," Lockhart said.

Lockhart said that conducting a film score in synchronization with the film is one of the toughest things he's ever done as a conductor. It is a job that hinges on quarter-seconds of timing. Using visual cues on a special projection of the film that only he can see, and a score marked to correspond with that special video track, Lockhart must keep the orchestra in exact time with the film, "...so that all those exciting moments that John Williams put into the score that match up with the action do indeed match up with the action!"

For Lockhart, "...It's a challenge - I like to think of it as a conductor's version of playing a video game. It's actually kind of fun."

He said that the trickiest sequence to match up the score with the film is the long scene that begins with Indy's fist fight under the German flying wing aircraft and segues into a hot pursuit across the desert. Lockhart agreed that he sometimes feels like the Germans who are pursuing Indy's truck across the sands.

"There's just as much pressure," he laughed.

Lockhart has conducted several such film score screenings now, among them "Fantasia," "Home Alone," and "The Wizard of Oz."

"This process takes something audiences are very familiar with - a great film - and presents it in a way that shines a brighter light on the music," Lockhart said. "It's a whole new experience of seeing the film, really, and it give us in the Boston Pops a chance to play some really great music, which is something we love to do."

Tickets from $22-$124 and information may be obtained at www.bso.org
SilverRosary.png

(Wikimedia)

Two Somerville women face assault charges after rosary beads belonging to a Roman Catholic nun were stolen.

Quincy police were called to The Daughters of Mary of Nazareth Convent after a nun reported she was robbed.

She told police that while walking in civilian clothing a woman approached her and tried to steal her bag. The nun told the woman that she did not have any money but the struggle over the satchel continued. After several minutes, the victim said another woman approached and, holding a knife out, told the nun told open her bag.

The victim said she did as told and the women took the contents: rosary beads, a key and a small keepsake.

She gave police a description of the two suspects, which was broadcast to area officers.

After leaving the convent, Quincy Police Officer Ken Wood reported seeing two women matching the suspect's description nearby.

Both denied any involvement in the robbery but following a search of their persons, officers found: a checkbook belonging to a resident of Weymouth, six cellphones, and a knife matching the victim's description. No rosary beads were found on either woman but the victim did later positively identify both suspects.

Vanessa and Crystal Young, both 26 and of Somerville, were arrested and charged with armed robbery. Vanessa faces additional charges of assault with a dangerous weapon and, in connection with another reported crime, breaking and entering during the daytime. Crystal faces an additional charge of accessory after the fact.

Both are scheduled to be arraigned Monday morning in Quincy District Court.
IMG_6562.JPG

Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack shows the proposed rates under all-electronic tolling.

(Gintautas Dumcius)

This story is part of ongoing MassLive coverage into the state's October 2016 launch of all-electronic tolling on the Mass. Pike and the elimination of toll plazas.

_________________________

Monday MassDOT released the proposed rates for the new all-electronic tolling system that is now scheduled to go live along the Massachusetts Turnpike on Oct. 28.

The new system will replace the current toll plaza system with 16 gantries along the Mass. Pike that will scan for transponders as vehicles move at highways speeds. All of the states toll plazas will be dismantled and the exits reconfigured.

As part of the conversion to all-electronic tolling, the state is hosting seven public meetings across the state to get the public's input on the proposed rates before the MassDOT Board of Directors votes on the rates at its Oct. 6 board meeting.

"The law says we need to have two public hearings," MassDOT Highway Administrator Thomas Tinlin said at a press briefing Monday morning. "We'll do seven plus a legislative hearing."

The proposed meeting locations and dates are:

Tuesday, Sept. 6

Worcester, Union Hall at Union Station, 6:30 p.m.



Wednesday, Sept. 7

Lynn, North Shore Community College, 6:30 p.m.



Monday, Sept. 12

Newton, War Memorial Room at City Hall, 6:30 p.m.



Tuesday, Sept. 13

Framingham, Town Hall, Nevins Hall, 6:30 p.m.



Wednesday, Sept. 14

Springfield, Springfield City Hall, 6:30 p.m.



Thursday, Sept. 15

Lenox, MassDOT District 1 headquarters, 6:30 p.m.

Following the meetings, the state will hold a 14-day public comment period from Sept. 16 to Sept. 29.

The switch from a point-to-point system with toll plazas at the exits to an on-highway system necessitated a new rate structure, Secretary of Transportation Stephanie Pollack said.

"This is not a toll increase. This is a rate setting process," she said.

MassDOT has pledged to keep the cost of driving from one end of the Mass. Pike to the other about the same as it is now for E-ZPass transponder holders. The state has also sought to keep the cost of driving the Western Mass. Turnpike about the same as it is under the current system.

"The legislature wanted to make sure, and we agreed, that the folks who are driving on the Western Mass. Turnpike aren't subsidizing Boston area," Pollack said.
3 teachers.jpg

Three Western Massachusetts teachers were named recipients of Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. They are, from left, science teacher John Heffernan and math teacher Karen Schweitzer of the Anne T. Dunphy School in Williamsburg, and science teacher Keith Wright, formerly of the Springfield Renaissance High School and currently with Hampshire Regional High School.

(Submitted photos)

Two elementary school teachers in Williamsburg and a high school science teacher from Springfield were among some 200 teachers nationwide selected as recipients of the 2016 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, the White House announced Monday.

Science teacher John Heffernan and math teacher Karen Schweitzer of the Anne T. Dunphy School in Williamsburg were selected in the kindergarten through grade 6 category, while high school science teacher Keith Wright was chosen in the grade 7 through 12 category. Wright had been at the Springfield Renaissance High School for nine years, but will begin as a chemistry teacher at Hampshire Regional High School in Westhampton this fall.

In all, 213 teachers were selected for the honor, representing all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, and the Department of Defense schools for the children of U.S. servicemen and women stationed at military bases.

Just four teachers were selected from Massachusetts. Neil Plotnick, a math teacher at Everett High School, was the fourth.

All recipients are invited to the an awards ceremony Sept. 8 in Washington, D.C.

The Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching are awarded annually to outstanding math and science teachers in grades K-12. Recipients are selected by a panel of scientists, mathematicians and educators.

Recipients each receive a $10,000 award from the National Science Foundation.

In a statement issued by the White House, President Barack Obama said teachers selected to receive the award are among the best at seeing that their students possess the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills that will aid the country in the future.

"As the United States continues to lead the way in the innovation that is shaping our future, these excellent teachers are preparing students from all corners of the country with the science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills that help keep us on the cutting edge," the statement reads.

Schweitzer has been a teacher for 34 years, including the last 26 at the Dunphy School in Williamsburg. According to the White House commendation, in Schweitzer's classroom, "all students can become mathematical thinkers. Her activities invite students to explore concepts, create solutions and work collaboratively. (Schwietzer) believes even the youngest minds can engage with big mathematical ideas."

Heffernan has been the pre-K through grade 6 technology teacher at the Dunphy School since 2003. He previously taught third grade in Amherst for seven years. He turned to teaching in 1992 after earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering and working for 10 years as a software engineer. The change in careers came about after realizing he liked connecting with children, he said.

He said he sees his life's work to be getting elementary school children fascinated with science and engineering.

"When you look at kids, they are natural-born engineers. They're always playing with blocks and digging," he said.

At the elementary school level, that hands-on engineering instinct is drummed out of them by a curriculum that makes them sit at desks all day and read from textbooks. "And then they get to high school and we say, 'Why don't you want to be an engineer?'"

Wright taught 11th grade chemistry and middle school science at Springfield Renaissance School for six years before moving to Hampshire Regional High School this fall.

According to the White House commendation, "Renaissance is an Expeditionary Learning School in an urban district where students complete a rigorous academic and extracurricular program emphasizing real-world learning, individual responsibility, and preparation for higher education opportunities. ... (Wright) and other teachers provide opportunities for students to build on their interests and develop new knowledge through real-world fieldwork experiences."
The department awarded the contract to Milwaukee agency Hoffman York at the beginning of August using a point system it says is objective to evaluate bidders.

By Lewis Kendall Chronicle Staff Writer

Full Story: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/economy/industry-sources-question-state-s-decision-to-award-m-tourism/article_47dfe35d-e95c-515f-b83a-a234ac390e93.html
I was 13 when the first Hmong refugees began arriving in Missoula from a place about which I knew nothing; a country across the planet I didnt know existed. They looked different from my classmates at Willard Elementary and, a little later, my classmates at Hellgate High School, as well as the other kids in my Lutheran Sunday-school class. They had accents or didnt speak English. They were very different from me. But everything Id been taught by my folks, my teachers, my pastors and the world told me that different is OK. And I was never, ever afraid of the Hmong.

Mayor John Engen

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/missoula-ready-to-welcome-refugees/article_5b0dd84a-95fc-550f-99fa-7ac7adc68eaf.html
Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank.
by Bob Garfield , Featured Columnist, August 22, 2016

As you know, according to the landmark Citizens United case, political money is a form of protected speech and corporations are people. And because those people happen to be blabbermouths, the Supreme Courts nutty 2010 ruling has amounted to the Broadcast Stations Not Becoming Completely Irrelevant and Going Out of Business Act.

Every two years the money sluice begins, and in presidential years its more like a tidal wave. Last time around, in 2012, it was $2.9 billion, buying up almost all the inventory surrounding the local news, especially in battleground states. You know how many retailers do 75% of their volume in Q4? Well, Citizens United is broadcast Christmas.

This even though people decreasingly watch TV and those who watch local news are, on average, 104 years old. It turns out that that demographic is really, really dependable at voting. (Im guessing that Election Day is also very good for Old Country Buffet.)

advertisement advertisement

But maybe not this year. Its already a bizarre election. One nominee is the Lady Macbeth of national politics who is roundly despised partly because she isnt in the kitchen baking cookies, and partly because she exudes a sense of entitlement so intense it leaves a silhouette on X-ray film. The other is a spoiled-brat hatemongering ignoramus who cant recite the alphabet without telling 26 lies.

Another weird thing is that guy will get 50 million votes, which is -- to quote the philosopher -- sad. Incredibly sad. Because it means that it can happen here after all. Among his most ardent supporters, according to recent polls, are evangelicals -- who are ignoring his multiple marriages, sleazy affairs both personal and professional, vastly un-Christian lack of humility, pathological lying, bullying, vulgarity and history of supporting abortion. So what are they attracted to, these holier-than-thou Americans? Could it be the naked racism? Nooooo.

His other big constituency is the people who hate big intrusive government so much they want to elect a dictator. So what are they attracted to, these small-government cultists? Could it be the naked racism? Nooooo.

And most unexpected of all, hes gotten the Republican nomination for the presidency spending less money than is sitting in the cupholder of your car. Its all been on Twitter, and so-called earned media, which means this: if you mimic the spastic body movements and vocal deficit of a disabled reporter, it will be on the news within the hour. Its the old Al Sharpton/Calvin Klein trick. Keep setting fires, and the media fire trucks will come racing to the scene every single time.

Im not sure if youve heard the news: Syria is a pile of rubble, Zika is headed north, the planet is burning to a cinder, but the big story on Action news: Donald Trump says something assholic again.

And that has done what four Supreme Court Justices and the entire political left could not do: neutralized Citizens United.

According to Bloomberg news, spending in the general election so far has been $146 million -- down from $373 million at this point four years ago. If youre keeping score at home, thats 60% less. TV stations will also note that the Trump campaign has signaled its intentions to devote much of its war chest to online advertising..

(pausing here to let you laugh hard and then regain your composure)

.having plunked down $8.4 million there in July alone. He perhaps has not been informed of 0% click-through rates, banner blindness, slow-loading, ad blockers et al. On the plus side, hell be able to finely target the portions of the electorate that polls show are not buying his act: Hispanics, African-Americans, women, Muslims, gun-control advocates, federal judges, the disabled, college-educated whites, Gold Star families, worriers about nuclear annihilation, those with a shred of human decency.

That should go splendidly for him. Im mainly out of the ad-criticism racket, but I strongly advise that he stick with the strategy he just took up to cultivate African-Americans: that their lives are so uniformly horrendous what have you got to lose?

So, yeah, the irony is that the novel SCOTUS construct of money speech has been entirely usurped by actual speech. Ironic because thats exactly how its supposed to work, and -- as the GOPs scummy demagogue nominee runs his mouth to keep citizens disunited -- exactly how it isnt.
by Chase Martin , August 21, 2016

The airspace below 400 ft. might see more devices flying soon with initiatives from Amazon, CNN and the White House.

CNN recently launched its new CNN AIR division to expand news coverage to aerial perspectives, using Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) like quadcopters with gyro-stabilized cameras on-board.

The AIR unit, which CNN says is shortened from Aerial Imagery and Reporting, will employ two full-time flight operators, who will integrate the new capability into CNNs entire portfolio of networks and platforms.

Formalizing the AIR unit has been in the works since last year when CNN teamed up with Georgia Tech Research Institute and the FAA to conduct research on best and safest ways to integrate aerial image capturing into CNNs operations, according to the network.

Along with the FAA, CNN says it has been researching the industry and collecting data to establish a framework for adding these devices safely and legally to the national airspace.

The White House is also heavily investing in and researching the aerial industry.

Earlier this month, the White House allocated $35 million to fund the research of Unmanned Aircraft Systems. Carried out by the National Science Foundation, the research will focus on how to effectively design and control aerial devices, as well as identify the most beneficial applications for the crafts.

In New York, $5 million will be invested to grow the aerial devices industry. The state has also created a business accelerator program called Genius NY, which will award up to $1 million to startups centered around Unmanned Aircraft Systems.

Googles Project Wing, which aims to bring drone delivery to the masses, is now in operational testing phases at FAA designated test sites in the U.S. The testing is focused on cargo-carrying drone flights and out-of-sight operation, according to the White House.

In addition to flight testing, Project Wing is also working to develop a system to manage the low-altitude airspace in which proposed drone delivery fleets would operate. The airspace management system will be geared toward operating across manufactures and industries to safely integrate all flying devices into the airspace below 400 feet.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently published a patent application for some of Amazons Prime Air drone designs, which GeekWire reports include quadcopter and octocopter configurations with large motors and propellers surrounded by a protective shield to minimize damage in the event the craft hits an obstacle.

Amazons drone delivery service, which was also recently cleared for testing in the U.K., is striving to capitalize on the low-altitude airspace, which is currently open for the taking, according to a New York Times report.

Amazons longer-term goal is more fantastical and, if it succeeds, potentially transformative, the New York Times reports.

It wants to escape the messy vicissitudes of roads and humans. It wants to go fully autonomous, up in the sky.

Drones could be combined with warehouses manned by robots and trucks that drive themselves to unlock a new autonomous future for Amazon.

Current FAA regulations require that remotely operated aerial vehicles stay below 400 feet.
by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, August 22, 2016

It has almost become a fad. Google has spent years building apps that test mobile-friendliness and the speed of Web sites, pages and apps. Now Netflix and Ookla have developed an app that checks Internet connections.

Apparently, troubleshooting tech woes has become big business. The Android and iOS Netflix app called Speed Text measures download speeds in megabits per second (Mbps). Netflix originally launched the service on Web site fast.com.

It's really all about knowing the customer's speed and preferences. Many marketers have lost sight of major performance issues. They don't know the ways in which their customers struggle with their products.

Similar to a Web site visitor closing a browser because it takes too long for it to load on a mobile devices, a bad streaming experience wither uploading, downloading or when watching a movie will discourage a viewer from coming back to rent more. In fact it's likely to stifle advancements in the entire streaming industry, from videos to live content.

advertisement advertisement

Considering that the future rests on mobile devices, companies like Netflix and Ookla need to help consumers and companies troubleshoot slow connections.

The report also tells us what speeds are good for what type of media. For example, 0.5 Mbps is good enough for streaming music, 1 Mbps can handle basic video chatting in an app like Apple's FaceTime, 5 Mbps gets you streaming video on Netflix or Hulu in 1080p HD, and 25 Mbps is the minimum requirement for 4K Ultra HD video.

One thing it doesnt do is test upload speed, but the Web site does. Netflix explains that download speed is more relevant to users when it comes to streaming content. Fast.com provides data on pings, download speeds, upload speeds, and the best and worst Internet service provider speeds in the area.
by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, August 22, 2016

Mobile ad developer MediaBrix this morning announced a new round of venture funding and a new key member of its management team: Richard Kosinski, who joins as president and chief revenue officer, following a successful run at viral video platform Unruly.

MediaBrix Co-Founder and CEO Ari Brandt said the new funding -- a $6.5 million round from Edison Partners, Revel Partners, and new investor Horizon Technology Finance -- would be used to ramp our programmatic offerings, invest in R&D and expand our data sciences team focused on consumer receptivity."

The latest round brings MediaBrixs total funding to $18 million since launching in 2011. The company claims to have grown its revenue 741% over that period, or a compounded annual growth rate of 43%, generating more than $100 million in total revenue to date.

advertisement advertisement

The company said Kosinskis role would be to accelerate that growth. Kosinski served as U.S. president of Unruly, which was sold to News Corp. last year for $176 million. Before that, he held a variety of senior roles in sales, marketing, and product development at Yahoo!, Quantcast, The Wall Street Journal, and CNET.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, August 22, 2016

A consortium of Chinese investors led by Zhiyong Zhang, chairman of Beijing Miteno Communication Technology, have acquired the ad tech startup Media.net for about $900 million in an all-cash deal. Eventually, the company will land in the sole hands of Miteno, a Chinese tech conglomerate.

Through demand-side platforms and ad exchanges, Media.net provides products to create, target and analyze advertising campaigns, supporting publishers like the Yahoo Bing Network.

With a foothold in the Chinese capital markets, Media.net sees new opportunities through organic growth and acquisitions in China and the U.S. The transaction, now closed, was paid with $426 million from the consortium and the rest diversified in a pool of global investment funds co-owned by Divyank Turakhia and Bhavin Turakhia.

advertisement advertisement

Brothers Div Turakhia -- who founded Media.net -- and Bhavin Turakhia led the transaction.

The business received a lot of interest, seven bidders from around the world, Bhavin Turakhia said in a prepared statement. During the intensive phases, there were 20-plus lawyers in a room, and the excitement was palpable. I am excited about being able to get back to launching and growing the new startups that I have been working on.

Div Turakhia started his first Internet business in 1996 at age 14 and made his first $1 million at 18, his first $100 million at 23, and has now crossed his first $1 billion at the age of 34, per the release.

Breaking distribution into buckets, the company manages about $450 million of annual advertising revenue through its platform, about 52% generated by mobile users. Some 90% of Media.net's total revenue comes from the U.S.

With seven offices worldwide, including global headquarters in Dubai, and U.S. headquarters in New York City, Media.net has more than 800 employees, up from 650 in 2015.

Company stats estimate its technology manages traffic that generates more than 70 million paid ad clicks each month, as of the first quarter in 2016. It reached this goal by identifying user search intent and displaying relevant search keywords that lead to display of search ads bought by advertisers on a cost per click (CPC) pricing model.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, August 22, 2016

Print isnt dead, and it has one of the hippest celebrities in the world on its side.

After several years in the works, recording artist and producer Frank Ocean released a raft of new music last week including a visual album, Endless, and an audio album, Blond, which is being packaged with a special popup magazine called Boys Dont Cry.

The publication is a premium bookazine, printed on glossy, heavy stock paper, with a CD of the album mounted in the centerfold. A different version of the album, titled Blonde (with an e) is also being released on Apple Music.

The magazine, covered in an opaque plastic wrapper at four popup newsstand locations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London, went on sale Friday. It contains a variety of photographic and text contributions by peers and collaborators on the albums.

They include Kanye West, who wrote a poem about McDonalds; German fine art photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, who also contributed a techno track to the album; and Ocean himself, who wrote a meditative essay about images and travel.

The release of Boys Dont Cry was announced on Oceans Web site of the same name, shortly after the debut of the first music video for the single Nikes. According to Spin, the Chicago venue was an ordinary magazine newsstand with all the regular stock removed, with lines around the block.

Ocean will eventually release a digital version of the Boys Dont Cry, but given the limited number of originals, its no surprise prices for print versions are soaring online. Some unopened copies command up to $1,000 on Ebay.

The decision to publish a long-form print product, along with the music, is something of a throwback to the glory days of CD liner notes in the 1990s, which often aspired (and sometimes attained) the status of art and literature by themselves.

For the truly hip, famous contributors were de rigeur. Back in 1996, the band Lotion released the Nobodys Cool album with liner notes famously penned by the reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon.
by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, August 22, 2016

Mobile apps are more likely to offer privacy policies now than just four years ago, according to a new study by the think tank Future of Privacy Forum.

Seventy-six percent of the most popular apps for Apple and Android devices now have privacy policies, up from 68% four years ago, according to the think tank. Nearly nine in 10 free apps (86%) have privacy policies, compared to just 66% of paid apps. Prior studies by the Future of Privacy Forum also found that free apps were more likely to have privacy policies than paid apps.

Ironically, popular health and fitness apps -- which potentially gather particularly sensitive information -- are less likely to offer privacy policies than other types of apps, the think tank reports. Consider sleep aid apps, such as apps that enable users to keep "sleep diaries," or that offer white noise. Just 66% of those apps offered privacy policies.

advertisement advertisement

"Given that some health and fitness apps can access sensitive, physiological data collected by sensors on a mobile phone, wearable, or other device, their below average performance is both unexpected and troubling," the report states.

The authors add that people's sleep habits can reveal information like their work schedules, or whether they are traveling. The Future of Privacy Forum adds that some apps might ask users for "unusual permissions," including access to their contacts or photos.

Since 2012, Google, Apple and other major operators of app marketplaces have said they require developers to post privacy policies if their apps collect personal data from users.

The state of California has a privacy law, the Online Privacy Protection Act, that requires all Web site operators to post privacy policies. State Attorney General Kamala Harris argues that this requirement applies to mobile app developers.

Harris has pushed many app developers to add privacy policies to their apps, but she lost a lawsuit accusing Delta Air Lines of violating California's privacy law. She argued that Delta should have posted a privacy policy that details everything collected by its Fly Delta app. A California trial judge and appellate court ruled against Harris on the grounds that a federal law governing airlines trumped California's Online Privacy Protection Act.

It is worth noting that the mere existence of a privacy policy doesn't in itself guarantee much. For one thing, even when companies have privacy policies, they're often so poorly written, and filled with such incomprehensible jargon, that they don't actually communicate anything to users. What's more, even when companies disclose their data collection practices, they often do so on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

Still, despite their limits, privacy policies can give regulators some ammunition against companies that engage in questionable practices. That's because companies that violate their own privacy promises arguably engage in deceptive business practices. Consider, in recent years the Federal Trade Commission has brought cases against numerous online companies -- including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat -- for failing to follow their own privacy policies

The FTC is slated to take up questions about privacy policies at a workshop next month.
by Jess Nelson , August 22, 2016

Microsoft announced the acquisition of Genee on Monday, an email-powered virtual assistant that brings artificial intelligence to meeting scheduling.

Genee is a scheduling service that integrates directly with calendar and email applications, automating the organization process required in planning and scheduling meetings and events. When Cced in an email, Genee instantly coordinates the best meeting times and dates for everyone included in the email. Genee will then automatically send out calendar invitations to further streamline the process.

Microsoft plans to add Genee into Office 365, meaning that Outlook email users may soon have an easier way to schedule meetings with friends, colleagues, clients or prospects.

Genee uses natural language processing and optimized decision-making algorithms so that interacting with a virtual assistant is just like interacting with a human one, states Rajesh Jha, corporate vice president of Outlook and Office 365 at Microsoft, in a blog post announcing the news.

advertisement advertisement

The co-founders of Genee, Ben Cheung and Charles Lee, plan to join the Microsoft team according to their own blog post.

We consider Microsoft to be the leader in personal and enterprise productivity, AI, and virtual assistant technologies, so we look forward to bringing our passion and expertise to a team that is committed to delivering cutting-edge language and intelligence services, states Cheung and Lee.

Genees standalone application will be shuttered on Sept. 1, but all existing calendar entries will remain in place.

Genee was first founded in 2014 and launched in public beta the following summer. The financial details of the acquisition agreement were not disclosed.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, August 22, 2016

The Internet service provider Cox Communications is appealing a decision ordering it to pay $25 million to music publisher BMG for failing to police piracy on its network.

The verdict, issued by a jury late last year and upheld this month by a trial judge, appeared to mark the first time a broadband carrier was held responsible for copyright infringement by users. Late last week, Cox filed the paperwork to appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The battle between Cox and BMG dates to 2014, when BMG sued Cox for infringing copyright and for contributing to infringement by users. BMG alleged that it informed Cox about thousands of repeated and blatant infringements, but that Cox didn't move against the subscribers.

advertisement advertisement

Cox argued that it was protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor provisions. Those safe harbors immunize Internet service providers' liability for piracy by users, but only if the ISPs have policies for handling repeat copyright infringers.

U.S. District Court Judge Liam O'Grady in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled last year that Cox wasn't covered by the safe harbors, because it didn't implement a policy regarding repeat infringers.

Instead, until the fall of 2012 Cox "nominally" terminated users who repeatedly infringed copyright, but reactivated their accounts upon request, O'Grady found. In late 2012, Cox began requiring six-month terminations for people who received multiple warnings of copyright infringement, but BMG presented evidence showing that Cox didn't carry out that policy, according to O'Grady.

The digital rights groups Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge backed Cox, arguing that the company wasn't obligated to disconnect broadband users based solely on allegations sent by content owners.

There's already some evidence that other Internet service providers are taking note of the decision. In June, RCN asked a federal judge in Manhattan to issue a declaratory judgment that the company didn't infringe copyright.

RCN alleged in a complaint filed in that matter that it's received "millions" of notices from BMG's copyright enforcement outfit, Rightscorp, about alleged piracy by subscribers.

RCN added that it received letters from BMG's counsel in April and May accusing the service of engaging in copyright infringement by failing to disconnect allegedly infringing subscribers.

BMG hasn't yet filed a response to that complaint.
Tattoos are becoming ever more popular. In the EU, the number of people with tattoos has increased from 5% in 2003 to 12% in 2016 (60 million people in the EU-28), with at least half of them having more than one tattoo. A new JRC report explores the safety and regulation of the inks used for tattoos and permanent makeup.

Particularly popular among young people, 30% of 16-34 year olds in the EU have tattoos. In the US, 40% of the same age population have at least one tattoo. Tattoos are created by injecting coloured inks into the skin and are intended to be permanent, thus resulting in long term exposure to the chemicals injected and, possibly, to their degradation products.

There is currently no specific EU legislation on tattoos or permanent makeup products ((semi)permanent tattoos used to resemble make-up). They fall, like any other consumer products, under Directive 2001/95/EC on General Product Safety (GPSD) requiring that only safe products may be placed on the market.

While most tattoo inks on the EU market are imported from the US, permanent makeup inks are generally manufactured in Europe. They all contain a combination of several ingredients and more than 100 different colorants and 100 additives are currently in use. The pigments used are not specifically produced for tattoo and permanent makeup applications, and generally contain impurities. Over 80% of the colorants in use are organic chemicals and more than 60% of them are a certain type of pigments, known as azo-pigments, some of which can release carcinogenic aromatic amines. This can be the result of a degradation process in the skin, particularly under solar/ultra violet radiation exposure or laser irradiation.

There is no systematic data gathering for adverse effects on human health, so the actual prevalence of tattoo complications (mainly of dermatological nature) is not well known. Most complaints are transient and inherent to the wound healing process. However, bacterial infections may happen in up to 5% of people with tattoos, especially when the tattooing was carried out in unhygienic settings. Adverse health effects linked to the application but also increasingly to the removal of tattoos are reported. The risk of (skin) cancer from tattoo procedures has been neither proved nor excluded.

Measures that could contribute to enhancing the safety of tattoos would be Good Manufacturing Practices for manufacturing tattoo/permanent makeup inks, guidelines for their risk assessment, as well as harmonised analytical methods and information campaigns on risks for both tattooists and potential clients.

The JRC study, carried out on behalf of the Commission's Directorate-General Justice and Consumers, aims to provide the scientific evidence needed to decide if EU measures are necessary to ensure the safety of inks and processes used in tattoos and (semi)permanent makeup.

The findings of this JRC report, as well as two previous reports, on trends in tattoo practices and on legislative framework and analytical methods, will be used by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to prepare a possible restriction proposal in the framework of the REACH regulation following a request from the European Commission. REACH refers to 'Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals' and is a EU Regulation, adopted to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks that can be posed by chemicals, while enhancing the competitiveness of the EU chemicals industry.
Canada's public consultation on plain packaging for tobacco requires strict guidelines to protect against interference by the tobacco industry, and media must also be wary, according to a commentary in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

The Canadian government's public consultation on plain packaging of tobacco products, as a public health measure, will close Aug. 31, 2016. In the past, the tobacco industry has tried to thwart plain packaging initiatives using threats of legal action and by influencing public opinion through biased research - for example, in Australia in 2011, when its government introduced this type of packaging. Similar tactics are now being deployed in Canada, with individuals and organizations linked to the tobacco industry speaking against plain packaging in the media.

Plain packaging requires the removal of all branding (colours, imagery, corporate logos and trademarks) on tobacco products, so that all packaging is standardized. Manufacturers may only include the brand name in a mandated size, font and location on the package. According to the Australian government, which was the first to implement plain packaging, this move has contributed to a decrease in smoking.

The authors of the commentary call for vigilance by several sectors.

"The Canadian media should remember their important role in challenging industry-affiliated sources regarding their conflicts of interest, and should guard against simply becoming vehicles for industry misinformation," write Drs. Julia Smith and Kelley Lee, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia. "The [Canadian] government must require any individual or organization making a submission to the federal consultation to declare potential conflicts of interests, including funding sources, and must require that any claims made in submissions be substantiated by peer-reviewed evidence, with transparent methodologies, non-industry-linked data sources and clear funding declarations."

Article: Protecting the plain packaging consultation from tobacco industry interference, Julia Smith PhD, Kelley Lee DPhil, CMAJ, doi: :10.1503/cmaj.160791, published 22 August 2016.
The very first cry of neonates is marked by their maternal language. This seems to be especially apparent in tonal languages, where pitch and pitch fluctuation determine the meaning of words. Chinese and German scientists under leadership of the University of Wurzburg have demonstrated this phenomenon for the first time by with newborn babies from China and Cameroon.

Tonal languages sound rather strange to European ears: in contrast to German, French or English, their meaning is also determined by the pitch at which syllables or words are pronounced. A seemingly identical sound can mean completely different things - depending on whether it is pronounced with high pitch, low pitch or a specific pitch fluctuation.

Tonal languages in China and Africa

One example of such a tonal language is Mandarin. It is China's official language that is spoken predominantly in China, Taiwan and Singapore - by just over one billion people as of now. Four characteristic sounds must be mastered to speak this language. Things are much more complicated with Lamnso, the language of the Nso - a people estimated at 280,000 living mostly in high-altitude villages in the grasslands of Northwest Cameroon, where they practice agriculture. This complex tonal language possesses eight tones, some of which furthermore vary in their contour. This means that whoever wants to speak Lamnso perfectly should not only be able to hit the perfect tone but also to integrate specific pitch fluctuations in certain words.

Now if pregnant women speak such complex tonal languages: does it show in the crying of their newborn infants? This question has now been examined by scientists from different countries in a joint project. The results of their studies have been published in the latest issues of the journals Speech, Language and Hearing and Journal of Voice.

Like tonal languages, crying sounds like chanting

The result: "The crying of neonates whose mothers speak a tonal language is characterized by a significantly higher melodic variation as compared to - for example - German neonates", says Professor Kathleen Wermke, Head of the Center for Pre-speech Development and Developmental Disorders at the University of Wurzburg (Department of Orthodontics) and lead author of the two studies. The infants of the Nso in Cameroon exhibited not only a significantly higher "intra-utterance overall pitch variation" (the interval between the highest and the lowest tone); also, the short-term rise and fall of tones during a cry utterance was more intensive in comparison with the neonates of German-speaking mothers. "Their crying sounds more like chanting", says Professor Wermke to describe this effect. The results were similar for neonates from Peking - but to a somewhat lesser degree.

Language right from the start

From the scientists' point of view, these findings support a theory that they had already considered to be corroborated by comparisons between German and French neonates: "Building blocks for the development of the future language are acquired from the moment of birth, and not only when infants begin to babble, or to produce their first words", says the scientist. Having had ample opportunity to become acquainted with their "mother language" in their mother's womb during the last third of pregnancy, neonates exhibit in their crying characteristic melodic patterns influenced by their environment - precisely by the language spoken by their mother - and that even before they coo their first sounds or try out speech-like "syllabic babbling".

Same results across cultural boundaries

At the same time, these findings highlight that neonates exhibit a high degree of cross-cultural universality in their crying. "We have examined in this case neonates from very different cultures", says Kathleen Wermke. On the one hand, there are neonates from Peking, who developed surrounded by all influences of modern civilization - radio, television, smart phone. On the other hand, there are the children of the Nso, who were born in a rural environment where none of the technical achievements of modern times are to be found. "The fact that despite these cultural differences both tonal language groups exhibited similar effects in comparison with the non-tonal German group indicates that our interpretation of data points in the right direction", explains the scientist.

With all due caution, these results could even suggest that genetic factors are involved in the process in addition to external factors. "Of course, it remains undisputed that neonates are able to learn any language spoken in the world, no matter how complex it is", says Kathleen Wermke.

A basis for the early diagnosis of disorders

55 neonates from Peking and 21 from Cameroon have been examined by scientists in the course of their studies, and their cry utterances recorded during their first days of life. Of course, no baby was made to cry for the purpose of research. "We only recorded spontaneous utterances, normally when a baby started to fuss because it was hungry", says Kathleen Wermke.

From the scientists' point of view, the results of these studies contribute to a better understanding of essential influencing factors on the earliest phases of speech development than we have now. At the same time, they improve the possibility to identify early indicators that provide reliable information about any developmental disorders in this field at a very early stage. However, many questions remain to be clarified before these findings can be used in clinical practice.

Article: Fundamental frequency variation in crying of Mandarin and German neonates, Kathleen Wermke, Yufang Ruan, Yun Feng, Daniela Dobnig, Sophia Stephan, Peter Wermke, Li Ma, Hongyu Chang, Youyi Liu, Volker Hesse, Hua Shu, Journal of Voice, doi: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2016.06.009, published online7 July 2016.
Patient evaluation by video in ambulances resulted in 13-minute faster administration of brain saving drug

For patients experiencing ischemic stroke - the leading cause of disability in the U.S. - time to treatment is critically important for avoiding irreversible brain damage. A study by researchers at Overlook Medical Center and Atlantic Health System published by the journal Stroke shows that patients evaluated in ambulances while in-transit to the hospital, could be treated with the brain saving drug alteplase 13 minutes faster once in the Emergency Department (referred to as door-to-needle, or DTN, time) than patients not evaluated with in-transit telestroke (ITTS).

The first-of-its-kind study assessed 89 presumptive stroke patients in ambulances over 15 months (Jan. 2015-Mar. 2016). Atlantic Health System paramedics responding to neurological emergencies used an InTouch Xpress device - a portable unit with a high-definition camera, microphone and screen - allowing video communication with a stroke neurologist who performed a neurological evaluation of the patient while in-transit to the emergency department (ED). Once the patients arrived at the participating hospital's ED, the neurologist assumed care and, when indicated, administered alteplase, a tissue plasminogen activator (TPA) that breaks down blood clots to restore blood flow to the brain.

"We are constantly looking for ways to treat stroke patients as quickly as possible, as each passing minute of lost blood supply translates to more brain damage," explained John J. Halperin, M.D., lead study investigator and chair, department of neurosciences at Overlook Medical Center. "Our observations suggest that in-transit telestroke may provide a scalable, inexpensive way to expedite stroke treatment. We are hopeful that the outcome of this study will encourage more hospitals and ambulance corps to adopt telemedicine for stroke."

Study Details

Atlantic Health System, a not-for-profit multihospital system in suburban New Jersey, includes Overlook Medical Center, a Joint Commission - certified Comprehensive Stroke Center, and Chilton Medical Center, a Primary Stroke Center. Overlook provides 24/7 telestroke coverage to six emergency departments (EDs), including Chilton. The current study was piloted at Overlook and Chilton, selected for well-functioning ED telestroke systems (DTN<45 minutes for 85% of patients at both) and an EMS structure facilitating implementation.

New Jersey's EMS is organized in a two-tiered system, comprised of over 500 Basic Life Support (BLS) units and 22 advanced life support (ALS) units. When ALS paramedics are engaged by 911 dispatchers, they join BLS first responders at the scene and then accompany the patient to the ED. Atlantic Health System has two ALS units serving OMC and covering a population of 300,000, and two ALS units serving CMC and covering a population of 160,000.

Each of these four ALS units was provided an InTouch Xpress device, which is clamped onto BLS ambulance stretchers, allowing images to be transmitted by 4G wireless during patient transport. Atlantic Health System paramedics determined patient eligibility, then collaborated with the stroke teleneurologist in performing the neurological evaluation. In the ED, the stroke team, typically with the same stroke neurologist performing in-ambulance assessment, assumed care.

Interventions

From January 2015 through March 2016, all patients managed by these four ALS units, with an abnormal Cincinnati Stroke Scale or otherwise suspected stroke, brought to these two EDs, were assessed with in-transit telestroke (ITTS). We compared DTN and last-known-well to needle (LKWTN) times in this group with all other intravenous alteplase - treated stroke patients brought to these two EDs by EMS. Twenty-five treated walk-in stroke patients were excluded. Analysis was intention to treat; patients with failed ITTS were included in the telestroke group. Prespecified primary outcome measures were the differences in DTN and LKWTN times between these two groups.

Results

Eighty-nine patients with suspected strokes were evaluated by ITTS. There were no misses; all alteplase-treated strokes brought to the Overlook ED by these two ALS units had ITTS. Mean tele-consult duration was 7.3 minutes among the 15 (17%) receiving alteplase, 4.7 minutes among the 74 who did not. Although 39% of tele-consults required reconnection, connectivity was rapidly re-established in all but two; in all but these two, the tele-neurologist felt the clinical evaluation was satisfactory.
Advertisement

A team of five surgeons conducted the five-hour-long operation to remove all the knives from Singh's stomach on August 17."The patient said that he had swallowed 28 knives but we removed 40. To check that there were no more knives left and to ensure that the patient does not come up with the same problem again, we conducted a metallic scan of the whole body including the stomach, and we found that we had removed all the knives from the stomach. The surgery was a success," said Malhotra.Surgeon Jitendra Malhotra said Singh suffered from a psychological disorder where he had an urge to swallow down knives. "As soon as we placed the camera inside, we saw some metallic material on our screen. In those metallic materials, there were shards of blades and woods which were very rare and surreal. I had never seen something like this in my 20-years of practice. We thought they wereknives and retrospectively asked the patient and he said he has this urge to swallow knives. He said he had swallowed 28 knives," said Malhotra on August 20.Singh said he developed the habit of swallowing knives while recuperating from a road accident. "I met with an accident in Chandigarh and could not walk properly after that. I used to sit idle and started swallowing down knives," said Singh, adding, "it pained a little."Source: Medindia
Advertisement

Hunt said, "Our proposals to extend the CQC's powers to rate more providers are an important step forward in improving standards and will help to end the lottery of poor practice in parts of the cosmetic industry."The proposals also involve rating up to 1,000 providers of procedures and services including substance misuse centers, refractive eye surgery providers, independent community health providers, ambulance services and dialysis units. Clinics offering termination of pregnancy services could also be rated.Since 2014, more than 10,000 providers have been rated by the CQC. But, it has focused on providers with the most patients, including NHS trusts, foundation trusts, GP practices, adult social care providers and independent hospitals.Douglas McGeorge, consultant plastic surgeon and former president of the the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), said "The proposals were welcomed by the industry. However, the ratings would apply to the facilities rather than clinicians, so users still needed to be "extremely vigilant" and check their surgeon's credentials.""We welcome - and indeed, have been calling for during the last decade - as much government scrutiny as is possible of the cosmetic sector. This is an arena where regulation has historically been lax and many practitioners can engage in procedures they are not trained or even qualified to perform," he said.The CQC's remit will involve inspecting a facility or practice's equipment, record-keeping and administrative areas, rather than individual surgeons, McGeorge said.According to the Department of Health "Shining a light on poor care in this manner is an essential part of developing an open and honest learning culture, where mistakes are acted upon and prevented from reoccurring. Since the PIP breast implant scandal in 2012, we have made good progress raising the standards of care in the cosmetics industry so patients can feel confident they are getting the best care from professionals with the right qualifications."Source: Medindia


Please complete this form and we'll send you a personalised information that is requested

You may use this for your own reference or forward it to your friends.

Please use the information prudently. If you are not a medical doctor please remember to consult your healthcare provider as this information is not a substitute for professional advice.
Thyroiditis refers to the inflammation of thyroid gland  that is located on the front of the neck below the larynx .

The thyroid gland is responsible for producing thyroid hormones which are vital for normal body mechanisms.(1 Trusted Source

Thyroiditis - National Health Services (NHS)



Go to source)

There are various forms of thyroiditis namely:

Hashimoto's Thyroiditis named after Japanese physician Hakaru Hashimoto (1912), is the most common cause of hypothyroidism in the US and also known as autoimmune or chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis. It is commonest cause of hypothyroidism. In India, it is predominantly 5-10 times more in women than men and has a reported prevalence of 1-2% in women.(   Trusted Source

Hashimoto Thyroiditis



Go to source Trusted Source

named after Japanese physician Hakaru Hashimoto (1912), is the most common cause of hypothyroidism in the US and also known as autoimmune or chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis. It is commonest cause of hypothyroidism. In India, it is predominantly 5-10 times more in women than men and has a reported prevalence of 1-2% in women.( Postpartum Thyroiditis causes temporary thyrotoxicosis, followed by temporary hypothyroidism. This is a common cause of thyroid problems after the baby is delivered.

Silent Thyroiditis is the least common form of thyroiditis. It resembles Hashimoto's thyroiditis and to some extent De Quervain's thyroiditis. Silent thyroiditis is a self limited subacute disorder that commonly affects women during the postpartum period. Initially symptoms of hyperthyroidism are seen, then hypothyroidism and then the affected person recovers to an euthyroid (normal functioning thyroid gland) state. During the hyperthyroid phase, drugs belonging to the category of -blockers can be used. If hypothyroidism is permanent lifelong supplementation with thyroxine would be required.

is the least common form of thyroiditis. It resembles Hashimoto's thyroiditis and to some extent De Quervain's thyroiditis. Silent thyroiditis is a self limited subacute disorder that commonly affects women during the postpartum period. Initially symptoms of hyperthyroidism are seen, then hypothyroidism and then the affected person recovers to an euthyroid (normal functioning thyroid gland) state. During the hyperthyroid phase, drugs belonging to the category of -blockers can be used. If hypothyroidism is permanent lifelong supplementation with thyroxine would be required. Sub-Acute Thyroiditis (De Quervain's Thyroiditis) is less common than Hashimoto's thyroiditis. In this the gland gets rapidly swollen and becomes painful and tender. Also, the gland discharges thyroid hormone into the blood making the patient hyperthyroid. The gland quits iodine uptake and hyperthyroidism resolves after next several weeks.

is less common than Hashimoto's thyroiditis. In this the gland gets rapidly swollen and becomes painful and tender. Also, the gland discharges thyroid hormone into the blood making the patient hyperthyroid. The gland quits iodine uptake and hyperthyroidism resolves after next several weeks. Acute Thyroiditis also known as pyrogenic and bacterial thyroiditis is a rare form and results from direct infection in the thyroid due to neck wound or could be due to the spread of bacterial infection into the thyroid that has occurred elsewhere in the body.(   Trusted Source

Acute Infectious Thyroiditis



Go to source Trusted Source

also known as pyrogenic and bacterial thyroiditis is a rare form and results from direct infection in the thyroid due to neck wound or could be due to the spread of bacterial infection into the thyroid that has occurred elsewhere in the body.( Drug-induced Thyroiditis is caused by drugs like amiodarone, interferon, lithium and cytokines. This type shows symptoms of hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism and symptoms continue as long as drug is taken.

is caused by drugs like amiodarone, interferon, lithium and cytokines. This type shows symptoms of hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism and symptoms continue as long as drug is taken. Radiation-induced Thyroiditis is a painful acute form of thyroiditis that results from radioactive therapy used to treat hyperthyroidism or from radiation used to treat lymphoma or head and neck cancer.

is a painful acute form of thyroiditis that results from radioactive therapy used to treat hyperthyroidism or from radiation used to treat lymphoma or head and neck cancer. Riedel's Thyroiditis is a rare disease involving fibrosis of thyroid gland.(   Trusted Source

Thyroiditis - American Thyroid Association



Go to source Trusted Source   Trusted Source

Thyroiditis - American Academy of Family Physicians



Go to source Trusted Source

Advertisement

There can be numerous causes which can lead to thyroiditis, such as:

Autoimmune disease, making antibodies against thyroid, e.g. juvenile diabetes rheumatoid arthritis

Infection, like virus or bacteria

Drugs like interferon, amiodarone causing damage to the thyroid gland.

Graves disease

Pregnancy: Pregnant women who test positive for thyroid antibodies in their 1st trimester have 30%-50% chances of developing thyroiditis post delivery

Thyroiditis refers to group of disorders than just a single disorder, hence symptoms may differ. Also, it can result in slow, long-term damage to thyroid cell and destruction, causing thyroid hormone levels in the blood to fall. In such cases, symptoms of underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism) are:

Unexpected weight gain

Constipation

Fatigue

Muscle aches

Dry skin

Depression

On the contrary, thyroiditis can also cause rapid damage to the cells, due to which thyroid hormone in the gland leaks out raising thyroid hormone levels in the blood, thus giving rise to hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid), and symptoms include:

Rapid heart rate

Difficulty in getting sleep

Muscle weakness

Fatigue

Weight loss

Shaking of hands or fingers

Pain in thyroid gland (in front of the neck)(   Trusted Source

Thyroiditis - Family Doctor Organization



Go to source Trusted Source

Physical Examination

Laboratory Tests are useful in determining elevated thyroglobulin levels, insufficient uptake of radioactive iodine, the amount of hormone produced by the pituitary gland and antibodies present in the body. Tests included are -

Thyroid function tests (T3, T4, TSH)



Radioactive iodine uptake



Antibody tests

Biopsy is done to find out the cause for thyroid attack.(   Trusted Source

About Thyroiditis



Go to source Trusted Source

Treatment mode depends on type of thyroiditis and clinical presentation

Advertisement

Hyperthyroidism: If there are symptoms of hyperthyroidism, drugs belonging to the category of beta blockers may be prescribed for lowering heart rate and reducing tremors. As symptoms of hyperthyroidism may be temporary, dose may be tapered once symptoms improve.(9 Trusted Source

Beta Blockers in the Treatment of Hyperthyroidism



Go to source)

Hypothyroidism: If the symptoms of hypothyroidism are experienced, replacing with thyroid hormone may be prescribed for restoring hormone levels and shifting metabolism back to normal. This may take some time for your body to adjust to the right dose and as symptoms improve, your doctor will slowly taper this dose.(10 Trusted Source

Guidelines for the Treatment of Hypothyroidism: Prepared by the American Thyroid Association Task Force on Thyroid Hormone Replacement



Go to source)

Surgery: Thyroid gland surgery is well tolerated and has low complication rates, if performed by an experienced thyroid surgeon.

In rare cases, bleeding in the neck region may occur in about 1/300 thyroid operations. Though the amount of bleeding is very small, if left uncontrolled can compress windpipe and cause breathing difficulty. In such cases, an urgent surgery may be performed to drain the blood and relieve the pressure.

Thyroid Pain: Mild anti-inflammatory medicines like aspirin or ibuprofen may be prescribed for mild pain. For severe thyroid pain, treatment with steroid therapy may be required.

Massage: Therapeutic massage may aid in relieving stress and increase sense of well being.

Thyroid in Pregnancy: Thyroid disorders are very common endocrine disorders in pregnant women. Even a slight hormone deficiency can cause problems with fetus. Hence your doctor will closely monitor the levels of thyroid hormones during this period.

Health Tips

Hypothyroid

Eat healthy foods such as veggies, fruits, lean protein, whole grains and healthy fats. For keeping your energy levels stable, eat small meals throughout the day. As weight gain is a common symptom in hypothyroidism, eating well will help maintain a healthy weight. High fiber foods and supplements like iron and calcium may affect absorption of levothyroxine. Talk to your doctor before taking these foods and supplements.

Meditation: Get much needed relief from stress by practicing meditation or deep breathing for at least 5 minutes.

or deep breathing for at least 5 minutes. Sleeping early is much needed if you have hypothyroid as you tend to feel tired throughout the day. Hence go to bed early and wake up at the same time every day. Have at least 7-9 hours of sleep.

Exercise is good and mix it up with your daily routine as it can boost energy, reduce stress and help maintaining a healthy weight (especially for hypothyroidism). Consider doing exercises for strengthening and flexibility. Try out weight lifting and yoga. But, talk to your doctor before starting.

Hyperthyroid
Russia This Week is a weekly review by the MEMRI Russian Media Studies Project, covering the latest Russia-related news and analysis from media in Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe.

Cartoon Of The Week



Vk.com/13studiya, August 18, 2016

US President Barack Obama is an old memory. Russian President Vladimir Putin bids him farewell.

Zakharova Dixit

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova is one of the most-quoted Russian officials. She is known for using colorful language when describing Russian foreign policy in her weekly press briefings. The following are Zakharova's quotes of the week:



First press briefing, after Zakharova's return from her summer vacation. (Source: Mid.ru, August 18, 2016)

During her press briefing, Zakharova commented on former CIA deputy director Michael Morell's recent statement that Russians and Iranians in Syria should be killed to "pay the price" ("CBS This Morning," August 8). Zakharova said: "We noted the statements by Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, made on the CBS News TV channel on August 8 when he said that it is necessary to make Moscow 'pay a price' for its actions in the Middle East. To the host's question whether that means 'killing Russians and Iranians' in Syria, Mr. Morell responded positively and stressed that it must be done 'covertly.' We are talking about August 2016 here, not the Middle Ages or ancient times, and this was actually broadcast on Western television. Calling these statements inhumane would be stating the obvious. I would even go as far as to say that it is not so much inhumane as it is a very ISIS-style statement. This is the language ISIS speaks. It was shocking not only to Russia but, finally, this time it was shocking to the US Department of State, who repudiated any connection to the former CIA deputy director's words."

(Mid.ru, August 18)

Quotes Of The Week:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a press conference: "As the presidential campaign in the United States gained pace, the Russian theme sounds ever louder...The surge of Russophobic hysteria is a fact... We hear and see Russophobia that is skyrocketing in the US information space...They are making us look like a global villain and in fact try to accuse Russia of everything under the sun."

(Tass.ru, August 17)

In The News:

Russian Bombers in Iran

Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said that the Hamadan airbase is no longer in use by Russian fighter jets and that the cooperation has come to an end for the time being. Meanwhile, Russian long-range bombers Tupolev-22M3 and frontline bombers Sukhoi-34 returned to Russia. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said: "The Russian military aircraft that participated in the operation to deal air strikes from the Iranian air base near Hamadan against terrorist facilities in Syria have coped with all of their tasks. At the moment all of Russia's planes that participated in that operation are in Russian territory." He then added: "Further use of the Hamadan airbase in Iran by the Russian aerospace force will be based on mutual agreements on struggle against terrorism and depending on the situation in Syria."

(Mehrnews.com, August 22; Tass.ru, August 22)

During an interview, when asked why Iran was not the first to announce the use of Hamadan airbase by Russian fighter jets, Iran's Minister of Defense and Logistics of the Armed Forces Brigadier-General Hossein Dehqan said: "Firstly, Russians are keen on showing that they are a superpower and can greatly impact security trends. Secondly, they wish to appear as an effective agent in the scene of operations in Syria so that they will be able to negotiate with the Americans and guarantee their own part in Syria's political future." He then added: "There has been a kind of showing-off and inconsiderate attitude behind the announcement of this news."

The Iranian minister also said: "Russia became involved in the Syrian crisis at the request of the Syrian government. Syrians were lacking in the airstrike department so Russians planned to deploy a part of their air fleet there. But after the short-lived ceasefire, the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar began to arm terrorists with advanced weapons such as tanks, artillery and even armored personnel carriers."

Moreover, Dehqan gave an explanation for Russian fighter jets' presence in an Iranian airbase: "Given the new terrorist moves in Syria and the need for a much stronger confrontation with them, Russia's air fleet needed to refuel in a closer area, hence the use of Hamadan airbase." However, Dehqan stressed that "under no circumstances [Iran] will ever provide Russians with a military base. They have not come here to stay."

Earlier, Dehqan said that Iran may consider any request by Moscow to use extra air bases. However, there is no such a plan yet.

(Mehrnews.com, August 22; Irna.ir, August 20; Video on Youtube.com, August 21)

Iran's Defense Minister Dehqan disclosed that Iran received the full package of S-300 defensive missile systems from Russia. Head of Majlis Commission on national security and foreign policy Alaeddin Boroujerdi, stated that Iran and Russia renewed the former contract on delivery of S-300 missile defense system, and that Tehran rejected Moscow's proposal to replace the order with S-400 or Antey-2500.

(Irna.ir, August 20)

On August 17, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, denied that Iran had permitted Russia to establish a permanent air base on Iranian territory. Larijani said: "We are allies with Russia, and we cooperate in the resolution of regional issues, especially on Syria. But this does not mean that we provided our base to Russia for military use. We refute such an interpretation of this topic in the media." Iran's Chairman of the Iranian parliament's Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security Alaeddin Boroujerdi specified that Russia uses an air base in Iran exclusively for refueling its bomber aircraft.

(Irna.ir, August 17, Tass.ru, August 17)

The newspaper Kommersant citing its own independent sources commented: "the question [of deploying the bombers] was settled by the highest military-political echelon of the two countries in a short period of time". The article and the experts cited believe that the deployment of strategic bombers in Iran is expected to signal the region's countries that Russia and Iran are now key players in Syria. One of the experts quoted by the newspaper, Andrey Frolov, researcher with the Center for Analyses of Strategy and Technology (CAST), said that henceforth Russia may use both airbases for strategic bomber strikes in Syria - the one in Hamadan and another permanent regimental air-base in Mozdok. Frolov said: "Russia may increase the air force operating in Syria without actually increasing the air force on Syrian soil - the territory there [Hmeymim airbase] is dangerous - militants may strike the base with mortar shells and heavy fire.. It's one thing to lose a helicopter and a completely different thing to lose a strategic bomber."

(Kommersant.ru, August 17)

On August 17, Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers again took off from Hamadan airbase to strike targets in Syria.

(Ria.ru, August 17)

On August 17, the pro-Kremlin think tank Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) published an article, titled "Autumn is coming, Russian VKS in Iran," stating the following:"Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) warplanes have been deployed in Iran's Hamadan...The move followed the meetings between the leaders of Russia and Iran at a summit in Baku, leaders of Russia and Turkey at a summit in St. Petersburg, and heads of the Foreign Ministries of Iran and Turkey. Therefore, there is a chance that the deployment of the Russian TU-22M3 strategic bombers at Iran's 3rd Tactical Air Base in Hamadan had been coordinated in advance. Previously, those aircraft had been involved in the Syrian operation of the Russian VKS, flying from Mozdok in the Russian republic of North Ossetia.

"The Hamadan air base is located in western Iran and is used exclusively for military purposes. Unlike other military air bases of the country, the 3rd Tactical Air Base does not accept civil aircraft. The air base is considered to have state-of-the-art equipment and has a 4,600-meter runway. A TU-22M3 strategic bomber requires from 2,000 meters to 2,200 meters to take off. The size of the Noje Hamadan air base and its capacity are its key advantages over the Russian Khmeimim Airbase in Latakia.... The closest IS targets are in Iraq. However, Russia has not yet received any invitation or authorization from the government in Baghdad to engage in operations in that country...Moreover, according to sources at the Ministry of Defense, Russia has filed a request [seeking permission] for its cruise missiles to fly in Iraqi and Iranian airspace. Those two countries have reportedly given the green light. It appears that Russia may launch its Kalibr cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea, let alone from the ships of the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean..."

(Russiancouncil.ru, August 17)

Victor Litovkin, Tass military commentator, in his article headlined "Double Blow: Russia and Iran are Changing the Operational-Strategic situation in the Middle East" argued that Teheran openly joined the fight against ISIS, formed an alliance with Russia, and changed the operational-strategic situation in the Middle East. According to Litovkin, Turkey as well has modified its position towards ISIS, and is starting to control the flow of militants on its borders thus denying them armaments and reinforcements. Litovkin added that Russia has obtained a leading Middle East role: "In Washington, Brussels, Berlin and Paris, Ankara and Riyadh and also in Amman they have to take Russia into consideration...Moscow has always been a reliable neighbor and partner for Teheran, Moscow has never blackmailed Iran and did not play on its contradictions with its neighbors and never speculated on the issue."

(Tass.ru, August 16)

(See MEMRI Special Dispatch No.6577, Russian Strategic Bombers Deployed To Iran; Russian Senator Says Nuclear Weapons, Heavy Bombers Will Not Be Permanently Deployed In Syria, August 16, 2016)

Hamas Politburo Chief Meets Russian Deputy Foreign Minister

On August 16, Russian Special Presidential Representative for the Middle East and Africa and Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, met with Chairman of Hamas Political Bureau Khaled Mashaal, during a working visit in Qatar. The website of the Russian Foreign Ministry reported: "The meeting's participants discussed the Middle East situation in detail, particularly developments in Syria and Yemen, the situation in the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip, and surveyed current issues related to the Middle Eastern peace process. Russia reaffirmed its position, during an exchange of views on restoring Palestinian unity, and overcoming intra-Palestinian divisions as soon as possible via the PLO and Arab Peace Initiative. These were essential prerequisites for reaching a comprehensive and equitable solution to the Palestinian issue based on international law."

(Mid.ru, August 17)

On August 17, Bogdanov met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Russian Foreign Ministry reported: "During a frank conversation, the sides discussed in detail the prospects of progress of a Palestine-Israeli settlement on the basis of relevant international laws. They also spoke about the need to restore Palestinian national unity on the political platform of the Palestine Liberation Organization aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state that would live in conditions of peace and security with its neighbors, including Israel."

(Mid.ru, August 17)



Hamas' delegation visiting the Russian Foreign Ministry (Source: Mid.ru, August 17, 2016)

Putin The Peacemaker

In an interview that Egyptian President 'Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sisi gave to three Egyptian national newspapers he said that Vladimir Putin informed him that he had invited Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to Moscow for direct talks. Al-Sisi claimed he supported these efforts to revive talks between the two sides. Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin noted last month in a UN Security Council debate on the Middle East that when Al-Sisi proposed hosting such talks in May, Russia welcomed the proposal.

(Tass.ru, August 22)

Russia-Turkey Relations

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that Russia had no demands to use Incirlik air base in the southern province of Adana. However, he added that if Russia wants to use the base to hit ISIS target in Syria, it can do so.

(Hurriyetdailynews.com, August 20)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov may visit Turkey in November or December.

(Hurriyetdailynews.com, August 18)

Russia In Syria

In an article published in Gazeta.ru, titled "It becomes impossible to leave Syria without losing face," Russian journalist and specialist on international relations, Vladimir Frolov, wrote: "...It will soon be a year since Russia is fighting in Syria, and the military operation is already planned to last until at least February 2017. However, there has not been any decisive breakthrough...There is no prospect of a political solution in the form of a viable negotiation process. A purely military solution, if it is possible at all, will require a large-scale build-up of combat power. The problem with this solution is that at some point it becomes impossible to 'leave Syria' without losing face. That is why the 'battle for Aleppo'... is of paramount importance. For Damascus and Moscow it is the most realistic opportunity so far to reverse the strategic situation in this war..."

(Gazeta.ru, August 2)

Tensions Between Ukraine And Russia

On August 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the permanent members of Security Council in Crimea. In the meeting, Putin said: "Apparently, our partners in Kiev decided to aggravate the situation, and it is clear why they are doing this: they do not want to, or cannot for whatever reasons, honor the Minsk agreements and, secondly, they cannot explain to their own people the significant mistakes they have made in their socio-economic policies. This method of aggravating the situation is not new. It has been used since time immemorial, sometimes successfully, but not always. I hope that this will not be the ultimate choice of our partners, and that common sense will eventually prevail. For our part, while discussing the issues of additional security measures in Crimea, we should also say, and I would like to mention this once again, that we are not going to cut off relations. Despite the reluctance of the current government in Kiev to have full-fledged diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level, we nevertheless will leave them opportunities to develop and maintain contacts."

(Kremlin.ru, August 19)

Despite the recent announcement by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the upcoming Normandy Four meeting in China has been cancelled, and Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev's remarks about the possible severing of diplomatic relations with Ukraine, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia is currently uninterested in a rupture of diplomatic relations. Lavrov said: "I don't think this is a situation where anyone is interested in breaking off diplomatic relations. That would be an extreme measure. I think the main goal now is to avoid succumbing to emotions or taking extreme courses of action but to work for stabilization in a restrained and consistent manner. As I said, we will and are already doing this in Crimea regardless of what conclusions our Western partners and colleagues in Kiev will draw from the events of ten days ago. I am in favor of focusing efforts on returning to the sequencing and the substance of the Minsk agreements in all aspects of the situation - security and political settlement."

(Mid.ru, August 15)

The newspaper Moskovskii Komsomolets published a commentary by Igor Korotchenko, editor in chief of National Defense Magazine and Duma Nominee from Rodina (Homeland) nationalist party: "When it comes to Ukraine, I think, Moscow should deliver a missile strike against the bases of international terrorists, located in Ukraine's territory. Also we need to strike the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Intelligence Directorate headquarters if the trial (against alleged infiltrators to Crimea) proves that its officials were behind the training and dispatch of those terrorists to Crimea. That's exactly what the US does when fighting international terrorists".

(Mk.ru, August 15)

(See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 6573, An Overview Of The Rising Tensions In Russian-Ukrainian Relations, August 12, 2016)

Russia-Serbia Relations

Serbia will not impose sanctions on Russia even if the common EU policy demands this. Serbian President Timislav Nikolich said during a meeting with the US Vice President Joe Biden that "we can't impose sanctions on Russia if it implies an adjustment of Serbian foreign policy towards the EU".

(Ria.ru, August 17)

Russia Defense News

Russian logistics and maintenance units launched missions to provide support for force groups at ground and sea practice ranges in Crimea.

(Tass.ru August 19)

The Russian news agency Tass.ru reported that about 10,000 troops and 2,000 pieces of armored equipment are involved in the command and staff exercises of Russia's Eastern Military District that kicked off in the Amur Region and the Trans-Baikal Territory. District spokesman Colonel Alexander Gordeyev stated: "The exercises will be conducted in several stages spread over August 17-20. Up to 10,000 servicemen and 2,000 pieces of armament and military hardware, including aircraft and helicopters, will be involved in maneuvers at practice ranges in the Trans-Baikal Territory and the Amur Region". He then added that the maneuvers' goal is to test new automated troop control systems.

(Tass.ru, August 17)

Mobile ground missile complexes RS-24 Yars of the Russian Strategic Missile Force's Teikovskaya division will be involved for the first time in special drills of radiological, chemical and biological troop protection. (Tass.ru, August 17)

The Russian Northern Fleet's large anti-submarine warfare ships Vice-Admiral Kulakov and Severomorsk have teamed up with aviation in exercises to detect and sink hypothetical enemy submarines.

(Tass.ru, August 16)

Recently, a Collective Security Treaty Organization's (CSTO) drill in Pskov and Leningrad regions kicked off. According to the operational scenario "unlawful armed units" invaded the territory of one of the treaty's states and the attack was supposed to be repelled by CSTO rapid response forces. According to the Russian news agency Ria.ru, during the drill, loudspeakers in the field communicated the following message in Russian, German and English: "NATO soldiers! You are being fooled. You are no peacekeepers. Lay down your weapons. You fight on a foreign territory. You have invaded a peaceful country. You'll be haunted by the vengeance and the outrage of the people which have never lost in a war. Lay down your weapons, stop being marionettes in your leaders 'hands."

(Ria.ru, August 18)

A ballistic missile Iskander was launched during a drill in the Jewish Autonomous Area in the Far East. Eastern Military District's spokesman, Aleksandr Gordeyev, said: "The launch was performed from a training site in the Jewish Autonomous area [Birobidjan]. The missile hit a target at a proving ground in the Amur region 300 kilometers away." The Russian news agency Tass.ru reported that "more than 400 officers and men and 100 pieces of military equipment from a missile unit of the Eastern Military District" are involved in the drill.

(Tass.ru, August 19)

Russia-Italy Relations

According to the National Association of Italian Farmers, Coldiretti, Italy's agricultural and agro-industrial sector was the one that was most severely hit by the sanctions against Russia. In Coldiretti's estimate, two years following the imposition of sanctions, Italy's exports towards Russia from the agricultural supply chain sustained a loss of nearly 7.5 billion Euros. The products currently banned for export to Russia include fruits and vegetables, cheese, fresh meat and meat products.

A Coldiretti official argued that the commercial war with Russia interrupted a very positive trend in exports towards Russia that in the previous five years had increased by 112%. In quantitative terms, two years of embargo meant export losses of 39,400 tons of apples, 29,500 tons of table raisins, 29,000 tons of kiwis, 2,800 tons of parmesan cheese, 14,200 tons of peaches and nectarines and 85,000 units of certified Parma and San Daniele hams.

"Once again the food industry was used as a bargaining chip in international negotiations without any consideration of the heavy impact in economic, employment and environmental terms" - said Roberto Moncalvo, president of Coldiretti - "it is an unbearable cost both for Italy and for the European Union where the prices of the products that used to be exported to Russia have collapsed, causing an unprecedented crisis in certain perceptible sectors such as, for instance, dairy products. Furthermore, the cessation of imports from Italy has fostered a real boom of fake Italian products..."

(Affaritaliani.it, August 8)

Strange But True

North Caucasus Grand Mufti Endorses Female Circumcision



The Grand Mufti of Russia's North Caucasus republic Karachay-Cherkessia, Ismail Berdyev (Source: Georgiatoday.ge)

The Grand Mufti of Russia's North Caucasus republic Karachay-Cherkessia, Ismail Berdyev, told his interviewer on "Moscow Speaking" radio that female circumcision does not contradict Islam. Berdyev said: "As far as I know it's done in order to somewhat calm down a woman's 'spurt'. It is completely harmless to health".

Later, in an interview to Interfax agency, the mufti said that the sexuality and lustfulness on the Earth should be diminished: "If all women would be circumcised it would be a good thing. The Almighty has created a woman to give birth and raise children. This [sexuality] has nothing to do with that. Women do not stop giving birth after that [circumcision])". Earlier, the human right organization "Law Initiative" published a report claiming that female circumcision is widely practiced in Northern Caucasus villages, with girls aged 3-12 undergoing this procedure without any medical supervision.

(Echo.msk.ru, August 15; Interfax.ru, August 17)
Oh, hello there Indian Government and your annoying tactics to piss me off on a Monday morning! Remember the time you tried to ban porn websites earlier and how it outraged most of us? Well, youre trying to do the same thing by banning my torrent websites. In fact, you want to ban the very idea of torrents.

You see, If you visit a torrent website you are committing a crime. According to the Indian Government, if you even attempt to look at a torrent website, you can earn yourself a 3 lakh fine and land yourself in Jail for up to 3 years. Their ban is so ridiculous that not only downloading a torrent file is banned, but even viewing an image hosting website like Imagebam is a crime. Cmon Government dudes, who the hell is making these lists and why the fuck is it so poorly compiled?

If you visit a torrent website in the near future you will get a warning like this:

"This URL has been blocked under the instructions of the Competent Government Authority or in compliance with the orders of a Court of competent jurisdiction. Viewing, downloading, exhibiting or duplicating an illicit copy of the contents under this URL is punishable as an offence under the laws of India, including but not limited to under Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act, 1957 which prescribe imprisonment for 3 years and also fine of upto Rs. 3,00,000/-. Any person aggrieved by any such blocking of this URL may contact at urlblock@tatacommunications.com who will, within 48 hours, provide you the details of relevant proceedings under which you can approach the relevant High Court or Authority for redressal of your grievance"

Most of these compiled URLs are blocked via your DNS. They filter these websites via the DNS filter and block them via a list that is maintained by your internet service provider. You can easily bypass this by using Googles very own DNS service. However, you can still be traced by the government. Alternatives include using VPN software to access torrent websites that is much safer in our opinion.

Please be safe when you access Torrents in the next few days, you might just end up in jail and they dont have WI-FI over there.
Neat tache who was he?

Once called the most powerful man in Germany, Erich Ludendorff was a prominent general in the German Army of the First World War. He was also a writer, military theorist, and ultra right-wing politician. He went to cadet school at an early age, and later attended the prestigious War Academy. He quickly rose through the ranks of the German military: in 1894 he was appointed to the General Staff of the German Army, and by 1911 he was a colonel.

He looks stern. What was he like in war?

Ludendorff was well read in military matters and put his education to use. Prior to the outbreak of the First World War, he worked on the Schlieffen Plan, Germanys plan to wage war on two fronts against France and Russia.

In 1914, Ludendorff oversaw Germanys first major action of the war: he led the German Army to victory at the Battle of Liege in August 1914, part of Germanys invasion of Belgium, which was the gateway to France. Ludendorff remembered this attack on the Belgian fortified city with great fondness, later writing:

The favourite recollection of my life as a soldier is the coup de main on the fortress. It was a bold stroke, in which I was able to fight just like any soldier of the rank and file who proves his worth in battle.

The feat won him the Pour le Merite, Germanys highest military award for bravery, presented to him by the Kaiser.



Did he always find victory easy?

Despite his strategic skill and bravery in war, one of Ludendorffs greatest victories was also one of his most difficult to achieve. The Germans had underestimated the strength of the Russian Army, and they were vastly outnumbered by their opponents at Tannenberg between 26 and 30 August 1914.

Our decision to give battle arose out of the slowness of the Russian leadership and was conditioned by the necessity of winning in spite of inferiority in numbers, yet I found it immensely difficult to take this momentous step, wrote Ludendorff.

Nevertheless, superior German tactics led to the Russians being encircled and crushed by their foe. The commander of the German 8th Army, Paul von Hindenburg, was celebrated for leading his army to victory at Tannenberg, but Ludendorff was also praised for his leading role in the battle, and the importance of his actions have since been emphasised by historians.

Ludendorff later called Tannenberg one of the most brilliant battles in the history of the world.

He sounds arrogant. Was he?

In short, yes  Ludendorff has even been accused of being a dictator. In 1916, when Hindenburg took over from Erich von Falkenhayn as Chief of Staff of the German Army, Ludendorff asked to be made Quartermaster General. Together, the two men led the Third Supreme Command, which effectively turned Germany into an expansionist military state over which Ludendorff had control.

In 1918, the Germans realised that they were about to lose the war; Ludendorff then resigned, and his power diminished. He spent the interwar period promoting the stab-in-the-back myth, blaming others for his own failure to effecively manage the German Armys supply chain.

He became involved in politics and was a vigorous supporter of the Nazi Party, participating in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. His relationship with Hitler was strained, but the latter was keen to align himself with the right-wing veteran, who became increasingly paranoid about the number and nature of Germanys enemies.

What did he write about?

As well as writing his memoirs, Ludendorff advanced a theory of total war (the total mobilisation of a nations forces against its enemies). He published this in 1935, just two years before he died from cancer.

This article was published in issue 72 of Military History Monthly.
Legion derives from the Latin legio, which itself comes from the verb legere, meaning to choose or to levy. The legion represented the muster of Romes citizens in times of war. It appeared in English in the Middle Ages, and came to mean a large body of soldiers, or simply many people or things.

In 1611, Shakespeare wrote in Cymbeline: The Romaine Legions, all from Gallia drawne,/ Are landed on your Coast. In the Gospel of Mark, just before Jesus Christ exorcises a multitude of demons from a possessed man, they identify themselves to him: My name is Legion, they say, for we are many.

During the American War of Independence, a Loyalist British Legion would fight on behalf of the Crown. Today, it might be said of someone well-regarded that they have a legion of admirers.

The great strength of the Roman legion was its tactical flexibility, with its legionaries fighting in 30 maniples (or later ten cohorts) that could manoeuvre and fight independently of one another.

During the Roman Republic, the legion of 4,200 was drawn up in three battle lines: 1,200 hastati, each armed with pilum (javelin) and gladius (sword), in the front; 1,200 principes, each also bearing pilum and gladius, forming the second line; and 600 spear-wielding triarii in the rear. Ahead of them all fought 1,200 skirmishing velites armed with swords and javelins.

Later, in the 5,000-strong professional legion of the Roman Empire, the old distinctions between the hastati, principes, and triarii were done away with. To these were attached 120 cavalry to conduct reconnaissance and deliver messages.

Overall command of the legion rested in the hands of a legate, with assistance given by the tribunes and centurions who served beneath him. In its early 1st-century AD heyday, the Empire was defended by 28 such legions.

Marc DeSantis

This is an article from the September 2016 issue of Military History Matters. To find out more about the magazine and how to subscribe, click here.
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.
Naval Air Forces Commander Vice Adm. Mike Shoemaker is still at a loss to explain how the Navy suffered three Class A mishaps and three lost aircraft in an eight-day period in May and June of this year.

But, he added, it's just as hard to explain how the fleet went the previous eight months with just one mishap.

As the Navy seeks to claw back readiness amid aging aircraft and the residual effects of sequestration budget cuts, some look to draw a connection between the rash of recent mishaps and readiness shortfalls. Shoemaker said the data just doesn't support this conclusion.

"As I look back at those [mishaps] and then the last couple of years, trying to make a tie to readiness and proficiency, in every case it's not there," he said.

On May 26, two F/A-18F Super Hornets crashed following a collision off the coast of North Carolina. All four crew members ejected safely. And on June 2, an F/A-18C Hornet that was part of the Navy's prestigious Blue Angels demonstration team crashed during air show practice near Smyrna, Tennessee, killing the pilot, Blue Angels soloist and Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss.

In an incident that drew less attention but was still identified as "Class A," meaning $2 million or more in damage was done, an EA-18G Growler suffered in in-flight arresting gear engagement leading to nose landing gear and engine damage May 29 during operations in the South China Sea.

But overall, Shoemaker said, major Navy aircraft mishaps are on a downward trajectory.

"Look at the trends a from '14 to '15 to where we are today, actually the trends for Navy aviation are coming down," Shoemaker said. "I wouldn't characterize it as a crisis; I can't make that connection."

Shoemaker, who spoke to an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Thursday, said he expected to brief Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller on the Navy's ongoing readiness recovery plan. He emphasized the launch of a service-life extension plan for the Navy's F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets, the first of which entered service in 1999 and will reach its 6,000-hour service life threshold sometime next year.

"We've got to make sure we get that right," Shoemaker said. "I think if we look at where we are,we can't afford to have 50 percent of the fleet out of reporting. We've got to keep that down; one-fifth, maybe, is our target."

He acknowledged that the Navy's strike fighter squadrons, which fly Hornets and Super Hornets were among those most acutely affected by required maintenance that leaves fewer aircraft available for missions and can cut into the flight hours that pilots need to stay ready and proficient. The others are the Navy's C-2 Greyhound and E-2 Hawkeye aircraft, which support aircraft carriers.

On average, he said, aircraft flight hours remain above the "tactical hard deck" or minimum safe number determined by the Navy. And, he said, aircraft readiness is improving, albeit gradually.

"The needles are moving and they're movinng slowly, not as fast as [Davis] or I would like," he said. 'But I think we have the problem bounded and I think we've got the support we need in most cases."

--Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend took command Sunday in Iraq and Syria with a pledge to speed up the campaign against ISIS and take back Mosul and Raqqa "on my watch."

"I don't want to make promises, but I intend to have Mosul and Raqqa done on my watch," Townsend told Stars and Stripes on the sidelines of the change of command ceremony in Baghdad in which he succeeded Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland.

Townsend did not say how long his "watch" would extend but MacFarland served as commander of Combined Joint Task Force-Inherent Resolve for nearly a year in the overall effort of U.S. and coalition forces against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Iraq President Haider al-Abadi has predicted that Mosul would be taken back by the end of this year.

Townsend also had a warning for the Syrian air forces, which bombed last week near U.S. Special Forces trainers and advisors in northeastern Syria.

"We've informed the Russians where we're at" and they "tell us they've informed the Syrians, and I'd just say that we will defend ourselves if we feel threatened," Townsend told CNN Saturday.

Two Syrian Su-24s bombed last Thursday in the Syria city of Hasakah, where fighting has broken out between Kurdish militias backed by the U.S. and forces supported by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In response, the U.S. scrambled F-15 fighters but the Syrian jets left the area before the U.S. warplanes arrived, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said last week. The next day, the U.S. dispatched F-22 stealth fighters after Syrian Su-24s again flew in the area.

Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of U.S. Central Command who attended the change of command ceremony, praised MacFarland's contributions to the anti-ISIS campaign.

Since MacFarland took over, Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. and coalition airpower have retaken Ramadi and Fallujah in Iraq's Anbar province and have begun setting up a base in northern Iraq to serve as a "springboard" for the long-awaited offensive to retake Mosul.

In addition, the U.S.-backed Syrian Arab Coalition earlier this month took the northeastern Syrian city of Manbij, seen as a stepping stone for an eventual push against Raqqa, the self-proclaimed ISIS "capital."

Townsend, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, echoed the warnings of the CIA and the FBI that ISIS will remain a terrorist and insurgency threat even after the fall of Mosul and Raqqa.

"The enemy at that time [will] have to crawl into holes and little villages in the desert and hide, and he'll become an insurgency, which is a new and dangerous phase in its own right, and we'll have to deal with that," Townsend told Stars and Stripes. "But right now, my focus is on destroying the physical caliphate."

--Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
After eight months in port at Singapore's Changi Naval Base, the USS Fort Worth is finally headed back to its homeport in San Diego.

Officials with the Navy's Task Force 73 announced the littoral combat ship departed Singapore yesterday following repairs to three bearings in the combining gears damaged Jan. 12 in an incident that sidelined the ship.

The damage was caused by a failure to properly apply lubrication oil to the combining gears during the startup of the main propulsion diesel engines, Navy officials have said.

It was a costly error with serious consequences: In March, Fort Worth commanding officer Cmdr. Michael Atwell was removed from his post in connection with the incident.

CNN reported in April that repairs to the Fort Worth had been estimated to cost the Navy $23 million. A spokesman for U.S. Pacific Fleet, Lt. Clint Ramsden, told Military.com that actual damage to the ship proved to be less serious than originally estimated, however. Ramsden declined to confirm the accuracy of CNN's report, but said the final cost of repairs fell far below that figure.

"We later determined that the damage was far more localized," Ramsden said. "It was a win: Once we started the repair process and started getting into the finer details of the assessment, we saw [the damage was] localized to three bearings in the combining gear. Those were able to be quickly, efficiently replaced at a significant cost savings to the Navy."

After Navy personnel determined a course of action and ordered the repair parts, which were manufactured in the United States and shipped to Singapore, the repairs themselves took a matter of weeks, Ramsden said.

The Fort Worth then had to complete standard workups and pre-underway checks and assessments before departing for home, he said.

Upon arrival in San Diego, the Fort Worth will enter a scheduled shipyard maintenance availability for routine upkeep. But Ramsden emphasized that the repair work conducted in Singapore is expected to fix the combining gear damage for good.

"This is the long-term fix," he said. "That's one less repair that will have to be conducted."

In a statement, the current commander of the Fort Worth, Cmdr. Michael Brasseur, praised the work of the crew and Navy personnel who worked to repair the ship.

"I'm very proud of the entire team and our efforts over the past few months as we have worked to get Fort Worth back on-line," Brasseur said. "It's been a lot of hard work, but our team has performed beyond expectations and we are excited to get this ship back to sea, and ultimately return home to San Diego."

Ramsden said the crew that took the Fort Worth into Singapore, LCS Crew 101, had rotated out on schedule in the spring. LCS Crew 111 will take the ship back to port.

Officials said the Fort Worth will make use of both main propulsion diesel engines during the transit to San Diego, allowing the ship to make the journey with fewer underway refueling operations.

The results of the Navy's investigation into the error that caused the damage have yet to be made public. That investigation is still awaiting final endorsement, Ramsden said.

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck.

Related Video:
Army Spc. Paul Chelimo ran a personal best time of 13:03.90 in the 5000m race at the Olympic Games on Saturday night, finishing second to repeat gold medalist Mo Farah of Great Britain.

But while being interviewed about his silver medal live on NBC, Chelimo learned that he'd been disqualified for stepping out of bounds.

U.S. track officials appealed the ruling. Chelimo barely stepped on the line, and the track's inside rail had been taken down and replaced with traffic cones because the women's high jump was going on at the same time.

After an extended wait, the disqualification was overturned and Chelimo got his silver.

"I thought it was a joke. I thought he was joking," said Chelimo about the TV interview. "Now I'm really happy. I got reinstated. It's the best feeling ever. It's the best, best feeling ever."

Chelimo earned the United States' first medal in this event since Bob Schul won gold at the 1964 games in Tokyo. The runner made a push to catch Farah about 200m from the finish, but the U.K. runner pulled away for a definitive victory.

Army Secretary Eric Fanning, who was part of the U.S. presidential delegation that attended the closing ceremonies on Sunday, watched the race in person and later took to Twitter to congratulate Chelimo on the achievement.

#Silver !!!!! Wow. Chelimo, incredible. 2nd Army medal at#Rio2016!

He also took a photo with the medalist.

Fanning also wrote: Wonderful meeting all our Soldier Athletes and to share with@Paulchelimo joy after silver#TeamUSA#armystrong

Chelimo grew up in Kenya and moved to the United States to run track at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. Rather than return to Kenya upon graduation, he joined the Army as part of its World Class Athletes program, an arrangement that allows selected athletes to train more or less full time while serving.

The program is open to both citizens and immigrants who are legal residents of the U.S.

Foreign athletes get expedited U.S. citizenship: Instead of a five-year naturalization process, they can become citizens after they complete basic training.

Chelimo joined the Army in 2014 and is now a U.S. citizen. He currently holds the rank of specialist and works in water treatment.

After all the drama, Chelimo just wanted to celebrate his success. "I don't really know what happened, but I am happy to be back in it and I'm happy to call myself the 5000m Olympic silver medalist."

Chelimo joins Army Reservist Sam Kendricks, who took bronze in the pole vault, as one of only two U.S. military athletes to medal at the 2016 Olympic Games.

-- James Barber can be reached at jbarber@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @mrjamesbarber.
Photo gallery: A look at the Washtenaw Community College campus

The 'Bold Futures' event takes place on August 24, 2016.

(File photo | The Ann Arbor News)

ANN ARBOR, MI -- High school students from across Washtenaw County will take part in special one-day program designed to increase their problem-solving skills in a workplace environment. The "Bold Futures" project takes place Wednesday, Aug. 24, on the campus of Washtenaw Community College.

The program is hosted by WCC, which also partnered with Eastern Michigan University -- which provides the programming for the event -- and the University of Michigan. The students are placed in groups and partnered with a facilitator from U-M that helps them tackle the issue facing a business they are assigned to assist.

The groups then work through different ideas to solve the issue and create a presentation for the business owners on how the students would solve the problem. The business owners are asked to give their feedback on the presentation and to ask questions along the way.

"The whole purpose is to get a real business challenge in front of the students," said Kristin Gapske director of the Entrepreneur Center at Washtenaw Community College. "We're trying to teach these basic entrepreneur skills, which is basically problem solving."

While the leaders in the program focus on solutions in the business world, Gapske says the event benefits any student that attends, regardless of their interests.

"It's not about trying to lead them toward opening a business, it's more about understanding those skills can be put toward any career you go to," Gapske said.

Washtenaw Technical Middle College student Mohamed Said participated in last year's event as is looking forward to attending this year's as well.

Said says the experience last year really helped him improve his confidence because it forced him to be part of a group working toward a solution and to share his ideas on how to make the solution effective.

"If you want to learn how to communicate effectively with peers, how to strength your problem solving skills, hone your critical thinking skills and improve your confidence, this is a great program to go into," Said said.

Although he's not interested in being an entrepreneur, Said said he likes the program because it provides real-life experience in problem solving. He also enjoys the mentors that are on hand to help the students along the way without just solving the issues for them.

"At the end, they want us to learn to solve the problems on our own," Said said.

Approximately 70 students from various high schools in Washtenaw County are taking part, up from last year when 30 students were part of the program.

"I like that fact that the teens are coming from all over the different schools. So it's not serving just one school," said Gapske.
Conan_Smith_050416_RJS_01.jpg

Conan Smith, D-Ann Arbor, at a Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners meeting on May 4, 2016.

(Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News)

ANN ARBOR, MI - Interested in serving on the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners?

If you live on Ann Arbor's west side in District 9, there might be an opportunity to serve for at least a few months or so.

A map showing the boundaries for the District 9 seat on the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners.

Conan Smith has

resigned from his seat

-- at least temporarily -- to seek a full-time job with the county.

Smith still might apply to get his seat back.

Citizens interested in taking over the remainder of Smith's current term through the end of the year are asked to submit resumes by 5 p.m. Sept. 2 to the Board of Commissioners for consideration on Sept. 7.

The appointment by the board will be effective immediately.

So far, Ann Arbor residents Dan Ezekiel, a local science teacher and member of the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission, and Jen Eyer, vice president of Vanguard Public Affairs and a former employee of MLive and The Ann Arbor News, have indicated they're applying for the seat.

Requirements for applying can be found on the county's website. Those interested are asked to submit letters of interest and resumes, including home address, political affiliation and past political involvement.

Smith, a Democrat first elected in 2004, announced his resignation on Aug. 16, declaring his intentions to avoid conflicts as he seeks a job as director of the county's Office of Community and Economic Development.

Smith said he felt it would be wrong to be in a position of both asking the county administrator for a job and simultaneously exercising power over his job. Gregory Dill has been the county's interim administrator since February.

Smith is up for re-election this year but does not face opposition on the November ballot. He will be re-elected in November to a new term starting in January unless a write-in challenger steps forward and defeats him.

Smith said he will take his seat back if he's re-elected and does not get the county job he's seeking.

"My goal this week was to take as many current conflicts off the table as possible so the hiring process is as fair as can be," he said on Aug. 19.

If the administrator makes a decision on the OCED director job before the board appoints a new District 9 commissioner, Smith said he'll probably apply to get his seat back right away if he doesn't get the job.

Smith's resignation announcement came one day after Ann Arbor resident Mary Morgan sent a letter to the board, saying Smith should resign as a commissioner immediately if he is seeking the OCED director job.

Smith responded to Morgan's letter by saying he appreciated it because it captured much of what he had been grappling with for two weeks. The job was posted on Aug. 1 and Smith said he learned about it on Aug. 3.

At the time of Morgan's letter on Aug. 15, Smith said he had not yet made the decision to apply.

"Several times over the last week I've looked at my application but not submitted it," he wrote in his Aug. 15 email. "I know that doing so starts a cascade of decisions, and I haven't been ready to tackle them all. My time for punting, however, is coming to an end. Applications are due tomorrow. If I actually do make a bid for the job, then it's definitely time for a public conversation."

Smith decided the next day to resign and seek the job.

"The reason I'm choosing the potential of the job over the sure thing of the commission seat is this: for the past year I have been spending more and more time working on issues of inequality and economic opportunity in our county, to the point that I feel I could be a more constant and effective force as a full-time staff member than as a part-time elected official," he wrote in an open letter.

"I sincerely believe that I can better elevate the values of our district and the county as a whole if my j-o-b day in and day out is to focus on the systems and issues that impede or create opportunity for our residents."

Smith said he loves serving on the board and there are issues that go well beyond his personal interests that made this a tough choice.

"For example, I am deeply concerned that my constituents have a voice in the selection of the County Administrator and in the adoption of the 2017 budget -- two policy issues that will heavily influence the organization," he wrote in his Aug. 15 email. "That raises questions about the timing of my potential resignation and the expeditiousness of the process to appoint my replacement."

If Smith gets the OCED director job and declines to take office as a commissioner upon winning the November election, the board would have 30 days to appoint someone to the vacant commissioner seat and that person would hold the position until the term expires at the end of 2018. If the board failed to make an appointment within 30 days, a special election would be held.

The county's Office of Community and Economic Development, which Smith hopes to direct, is responsible for undertaking a wide range of county initiatives, including everything from affordable housing to human services funding, workforce development, brownfield redevelopment, the ReImagine Washtenaw initiative and the Zero:2016 campaign to address homelessness.

Mary Jo Callan was the last full-time director of the office. Brett Lenart, who is now Ann Arbor's planning manager, stepped in on an interim basis after Callan, and now Andrea Plevek is the interim director.

Ryan Stanton covers the city beat for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at ryanstanton@mlive.com.
-e69c3ff2f0c752ef.JPG

Three high-potential companies from the West Coast -- Zendrive, PolySync and Civil Maps -- will join TechLab at Mcity this fall, moving resources to develop their driverless vehicle technologies in Ann Arbor. The move is part of an expansion of an innovative program designed to drive the future of mobility, announced the University of Michigan Center for Entrepreneurship, in partnership with the U-M Mobility Transformation Center. MLive file photo

ANN ARBOR, MI -- Three driverless vehicle startup companies from the West Coast -- Zendrive, PolySync and Civil Maps -- will join TechLab at Mcity this fall, moving resources to develop driverless vehicle technologies in Ann Arbor.

The move is part of an expansion of an innovative program designed to drive the future of mobility, announced the University of Michigan Center for Entrepreneurship, in partnership with the U-M Mobility Transformation Center.

"The U-M Mobility Transformation Center is pleased to welcome the fall class of TechLab companies," said Carrie Morton, deputy director of MTC in a press release.

TechLab is an incubator that matches early-stage technology with students interested in applying classroom learning to practical development. The students help bring connected and driverless innovations closer to market.

Mcity, operated by the U-M Mobility Transformation Center, is the world's first controlled environment specifically designed to test the potential of connected and automated vehicle technologies.

"TechLab at Mcity represents a learning opportunity for engineering students that is uniquely available at U-M thanks to the commitment of faculty and the unparalleled resources of Mcity," said Thomas Frank, executive director of U-M's Center for Entrepreneurship. "We are expanding this program because the demand from both emerging companies and students interested in participating is extremely high. We believe in the model of applied learning as a key driver for innovation."

In February, CFE launched the pilot of TechLab with Zendrive, a Bay Area startup founded by Google and Facebook veterans. The initial partnership demonstrated a valuable collaboration among university research, advanced transportation startups and student innovators.

At the completion of the independent study period, participating students presented key ideas they learned to faculty, venture capitalists and stakeholders working on the autonomous mobility technologies.

Several students continued work over the summer as Zendrive interns. The company returns to TechLab this fall to accelerate the development of technology that uses a driver's smartphone to measure actions such as acceleration, braking, swerving and phone use. Driver safety is the ultimate goal for this emerging technology. Earlier this year, Zendrive secured $13.5 million in funding to improve the technology and expand its team.

"As the first company to be a part of the TechLab program, Zendrive and U-M have offered students a one-of-a-kind opportunity to work with data and advanced connected vehicles," said Zendrive CEO Jonathan Matus. "Continuing our collaboration with U-M will progress our research and development, taking essential steps to benchmark safety for self-driving cars. TechLab is the ultimate coming-together of Detroit and Silicon Valley to bridge groundbreaking technology and research."

New companies in the fall 2016 TechLab cohort also include:

PolySync: An operating system, built for the high-bandwidth, high-compute requirements of fully autonomous driving. The system turns algorithms, sensors and actuators into plug and play applications, allowing developers to focus less on coding and more on user experience.

Civil Maps: A 3-D mapping technology to help fully autonomous vehicles to drive anywhere smoothly and safely. Through artificial intelligence and vehicle-based local processing, Civil Maps converts sensor data into meaningful map information built specifically to direct driverless vehicles. In July, the company raised $6.6 million in a seed funding round led by Motus Ventures.

The fall TechLab cohort begins Sept. 6, when selected U-M engineering students start work on a semester-long project tailored to the needs of each participating company.
A Korean firm and a local company have teamed up with a view to building free-on-board (FOB) garment factories on 500 acres of land through a 50-50 joint venture.





Myanmar-based Olympus Asia Group and Koreas Panko Corporation signed a memorandum of understanding on August 20 and are looking for land in Yangon, Bago or Ayeywarwady regions.

Olympus Asia Group CEO U Okkar Zaw Naing said the factories would operate under the FOB model, and would focus on creating jobs for local people.

The vast majority of Myanmars garment factories operate under the cut-make-pack system, according to the Myanmar Garment Manufacturers Association.

Under the CMP model, a foreign buyer with financial backing and technical expertise will contract a garment factory, usually in an emerging market, to carry out their labour-intensive work.

Under the FOB system, on the other hand, foreign retailers place orders from well-financed factories with technical expertise. Most factories in Myanmar lack access to financing and do not have enough skilled workers to operate under the more profitable FOB model.

The project will start within one year and it will take three years to build the required infrastructure, said U Okkar Zaw Naing.





This timeframe is based on the time it took for Panko Corporation to build a similar zone in Vietnam, which was launched in 2013 and completed this year, he said.

The project will include an international-standard wastewater treatment plant; generate its own electricity; and include dormitories for employees. The companies will produce their own cotton and buttons in Myanmar, as well as producing clothes for export.

U Okkar Zaw Naing believes the integrated factories will create between 40,000 to 60,000 job opportunities for Myanmar people. The company will also offer training and competitive salaries, he said.

Now we have signed, the project can start within one year. We are looking at three places for the project, in Yangon, Bago and Ayeyarwady regions, but have not yet made a decision, he said. It will depend on which place is best in terms of electricity, employees and logistics costs.

Myanmars garments industry has great potential, but its development will require foreign investment, he added, and without good local businesspeople, foreign companies cannot invest.

The industry is growing fast, and is a priority sector for the government. However, for foreign companies sourcing from Myanmar, there are a host of challenges including underage workers, unsafe factories and high logistics costs.

For companies building new factories in Myanmar, infrastructure is a major challenge.

Our partner company has asked us to build our own substation for electricity, because power here is not reliable, said U Okkar Zaw Naing.

Choi Yung Joo, chair of Panko Corporation, said, Myanmar has the potential to develop its textile industry and we are sure this project will contribute to development.

The government welcomes foreign companies that can create job opportunities while protecting employee rights, said U Phyo Min Thein, chief minister of Yangon Region.

Speaking at a press conference to announce the investment he said, Industries create job opportunities  We will support opportunities for all people according to the rule of law.

Olympus Asia Group, which was formed in 2010, is also working on a wastewater management project in Mandalay.
Yangon officials will allow the developers of 12 suspended high-rise projects to start work again, and have revoked an earlier demand that some of the companies knock down floors in their projects because the designs were breaking urban planning rules.





U Than Htay, head of the Department of Engineering (Building) at Yangon City Development Committee said developers were told on August 21 they could resume work. This decision was made by Yangon Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein at a cabinet meeting last week, he said, after developers complained about an earlier order to change their project designs.

Following their complaints, Yangons mayor and the head of the high-rise inspection committee carried out a second inspection, U Than Htay said.

None of the 12 developers will have to knock down floors they have already built, but they need to complete their projects in accordance with the terms they have agreed with the chief minister, he added, declining to elaborate further.

We have told developers they can continue building under the terms of their original permits, but some need to make changes in accordance with commitments they have made to the chief minister, he said yesterday.

Ko Kyaw Kyaw Naint, developer of Sein Lae Aung condo, was told last month to cut the number of floors in his project from 12.5 to six. He said he has committed to building more car parking and tweaking the project design.

We met with the chief minister and presented some changes that we agreed to, he said.

While YCDC has told developers they will be able to resume work and will not need to demolish floors, companies will not start work again until they have picked up an official letter from the office, he said. We have heard that we will not need to cut floors, but will only be sure once we have the letter in our hands, he said.





He said he wanted to thank the chief minister and mayor for listening to developers concerns.
Telecoms companies Telenor and state-owned MPT will be among the potential bidders at a long-awaited auction for more broadband spectrum next month, while rival telco Ooredoo has decided to wait for a separate auction it expects to happen later in the year.





Spectrum  the radio frequency on which communication traffic can be sent  is a crucial resource for telcos, mobile operators and service providers, who rely on it to provide and expand coverage.

The new government will hold its first spectrum auction  for a 40 megahertz (MHz) slice of the 2600MHz band  on October 17. Under the auctions terms this 40MHz is available only for the provision of broadband data services.

The previous government cancelled a planned auction on the 2600MHz band earlier in the year after criticism from Telenor and Oordeoo about the lack of a clear policy for spectrum management.

The Ministry of Transport and Communications published a list of companies last week that had made expressions of interest (EOI) in the October auction, and a list of those selected as potential bidders.

{modal url=http://www.mmtimes.com//files/images/mte/2016/di359/auction-bidders-list...} {/modal}

Telenor and MPT both made EOIs and were chosen as potential bidders (see list), but Ooredoo did not apply. Selected bidders still need to meet financial and technical criteria  including providing a US$500,000 deposit  to be on a list of qualified bidders, which will be announced in late September.





Of the firms that made EOIs only two  Eager Communication and Bluewave Broadband  were not chosen as potential bidders. An official in the Posts and Telecommunications Department said this was because neither held a Network Facilities Service (Individual) License  another criteria for application.

Rene Meza, Ooredoos CEO in Myanmar, said the firms priority is the 1800MHz spectrum, which will allow Ooredoo to roll out its 4G network more efficiently. Lower-frequencies are better able to penetrate walls and are more suitable for expanding coverage.

Mr Meza is expecting the 1800MHz auction before the end of this year, although officials at the ministrys Posts and Telecommunications Department would only say it will be held as soon as possible.

Ooredoo became the first Myanmar telco to offer fourth-generation services in May, and recently told The Myanmar Times it now has half a million 4G users across Yangon, Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw.

Telenor rolled out 4G in Nay Pyi Taw in July, and is testing the service in Yangon Shan States Muse and Myawaddy in Kayin State. Like its Qatari rival, Telenor is looking forward to the 1800MHz auction, but has applied to bid on the 2600MHz band too.

A spokesperson for Telenor declined to comment on what the firm would use an additional 2600MHz allocation for, or what regions it would bid for. An official at MPT also declined to comment.

The auction structure divides the 40MHz on offer into two 20MHz chunks, which are in turn available in three separate regions. This means there are six separate 20MHz slices on offer.

A bidder cannot win more than 20MHz in any one region, and can only win up to two regional 20MHz slices.

Region one encompasses Nay Pyi Taw, Magwe, Bago and Tanintharyi regions and Mon and Kayin states. Region two is Yangon and Ayeyarwaddy regions and Rakhine State. Region three is Mandalay and Sagaing regions and Chin, Shan, Kachin and Kayah states.
Spurred by a Singaporean photography project called 7 Days in Myanmar, travel photographer Kyaw Kyaw Win thought, We can do that.





We Live in Yangon is the result. At a press conference called to launch the project on August 18, Kyaw Kyaw Win said he has participated in plenty of international travel projects, but has never seen one in Myanmar.

I noticed that nobody had ever organised such a project for our country. We just have individual photographers or people working in small groups, he said. Then I saw the program arranged by a Singapore publisher, 7 Days in Myanmar and thought, Why cant we do that?

I issued a call for participants on May 24, thinking it might attract 14 or 15 photographers, but 58 people applied, including people living as far away as Chin State and Magwe Region. They seemed so enthusiastic I accepted all of them.

Throughout the month of June, the 58 entrants took pictures in four groups  buildings, lifestyle, beliefs and transportation in Yangon. In July, an initial collection of 400 of the resulting pictures was assembled, to be narrowed down further to a total of 70. Those pictures will be on show from August 27 to September 4, and more than 100 photos will be included in an album. The profits will be donated to education, said Kyaw Kyaw Win.

A photo competition, the exhibition, the album and a workshop will all form parts of the project.

Kyaw Kyaw Win said, There will also be a competition for any non-contributor interested in photography. The deadline will be 5pm on August 23, and the judges will be from the Myanmar Photographic Society. We will offer five prizes  the Grand Prize and four Best in Category Prizes, as well as photography workshops and talks by professional photographers.





I organised these events out of my love for the heritage buildings that we have to maintain, to promote the tourism sector through photography, and to support amateur photographers and to get their photos better known, said Kyaw Kyaw Win.

He plans future exhibitions along the same lines in Mandalay and Bagan.
Edison must be turning in his grave.





It isnt just the light bulbs that irk me. Located on Bogyoke Aung San Street near the corner of Thein Phyu Road, Eatfinity has all the hallmarks of a place trying too hard to be trendy. The faux-industrial decor and exposed brick wallpaper are straight out of a hipster restaurant design manual, and the kitchy drinks menu  which consists mainly of luminous syrups served in ubiquitous Mason jars  includes entire tanks of pastel milk teas.

Service is friendly and well-meaning but utterly shambolic. Since the idea of pouring my drink into a glass is evidently beyond the scope of the servers imagination, I decide to forgo the light bulb tea altogether and order a pineapple juice instead. Is the juice fresh? I enquire. Confused, the server calls another server to help, who calls another server, who calls another, until an entire crowd has formed around my table. I order an Italian soda (K2000).

Fortunately, the food is not nearly as vexing. Served up by an actual Thai chef, the Thai dishes are probably as close as you get to the real deal in Yangon for the price. Seafood seems to be the specialty, and diners at the tables next to me tuck in to generous seafood platters piled high with giant shrimp, crab and squid. The curried fish cakes (K3500) are some of the best Ive eaten  delicate and easy on the oil, without the rubbery texture common even to some of Yangons best Thai restaurants. My red curry (K4000) is served with such an impressive array of seafood that I have to check that it is, indeed, what I ordered. A comedic performance ensues: Managers are summoned, the kitchen is consulted and there is much examining of menus and heated discussion before, five minutes later, it is confirmed that it is, in fact, what I ordered. Of course, then they forget the rice and I go through the arduous fiasco all over again.

High-jinx aside, the classic dishes are sure to please Thai food epicures, and the one plate with rice menu offers a lot of bang for your kyat. Besides the extensive seafood menu, dishes include chicken with basil, tom yum, and stir-fried chicken or pork with cashew nuts. The pad Thai with big shrimp (K6000) is a stand-out dish: prepared with vermicelli  sans ubiquitous puddle of oil  it is fresh, fragrant and served in the traditional way with chilli, peanuts and bean sprouts on the side. Im disappointed to learn that shrimp is used in the singular sense of the word; nevertheless, it is very big. The chicken or pork version is an absolute steal at only K3000.





Dont be tempted by the desserts. My chocolate lava cake (K4000)  which presumably came from a box  is rubbery and devoid of any melting innards. The table next to me orders honey toast, an enormous slab of cake/bread topped with ice cream and syrup that is popular elsewhere in Asia but shouldnt be. If you want to leave with your teeth, give it a miss.

But Eatfinity doesnt give a shrimps bottom what I think of its restaurant: The place has only been open a few weeks and its already packed. Who knows  perhaps its the light bulbs. With few lunch options this side of the city, its sure to remain a popular spot even with more conventional diners. And with The Myanmar Times office just around the corner Ill certainly be going back  though I doubt theyll be delighted about that.
In a case that threatens to turn the spotlight on alleged abuses in Thailands poultry farming industry, 14 Myanmar migrant workers are to press ahead with demands for substantial compensation from a factory in Lopburi province.





U Sein Htay, chair of the Thailand-based Migrant Workers Rights Network (MWRN), said his organisation would assist them in preparing an appeal against compensation they considered too low. The appeal will be filed by September 4.

He said the workers received a fixed 6900 baht (US$200) per month, rather than the Thai government-stipulated minimum wage of 300 baht per day. They had to work for 65 days straight before getting just three days off, with workdays stretching from 7am to 5pm.

All the workers were legally employed, but the management forced them to work under these conditions and refused to pay the compensation stipulated by law, he said, describing the terms of the appeal.

Thammakaset Farm has been the object of allegations that it abuses its largely Myanmar migrant workforce, and was served with a lawsuit on June 28.

The workers allege the factory owner forced them to log overtime without extra pay and to work without proper breaks. They demanded compensation for being forced to work punishing hours for less than the minimum wage.

According to the MWRN, the court ordered the farm owners to pay 1.7 million baht compensation for the 14 Myanmar migrant workers, well below the 4 million baht compensation for abuse that the workers had demanded.

Ko Naing Win, 28, has worked at the farm for more than three years. He told The Myanmar Times that the workers deserved the compensation because of the abuse they had suffered.





The court judgement is not fair. Theyre awarding us only 100,000 baht. Weve decided to appeal, he said, adding that each worker should have received 400,000 baht.

MWRN said it had been trying to direct international attention to the Thai poultry industry, which they said had long avoided the kind of criticism the seafood industry has faced despite also being rife with abuse.

I hope the case will be resolved soon, and the court will take a look at the chicken market, said MWRN vice chair U Aung Kyaw.
Zalone Mountain is to be declared a conservation zone, MPs have been informed. In response to a question from Sagaing Region MP U Khin Maung Win (NLD; Sagaing 7), Conservation Minister U Ohn Win told the Amyotha Hluttaw on August 15 that the move would now go ahead.





U Win Naing Thaw, a senior official from the forestry departments Nature and Wildlife Conservation Department, said it would take about a year to establish the zone, in which local residents would be able to make use of forest flora and fauna. However, he added, potential land ownership disputes would also have to be cleared up.

Resolving all the land ownership problems could take five years, said forestry department director U Myo Min.

The Sagaing Region forestry department will carry out most of the functions required to bring the zone into being, including conducting surveys and raising awareness among the local communities, said U Win Naing Thaw.

Minister U Ohn Win said designating Zalone Mountain as a conservation zone would help protect the ecosystems and various species in the area.

Environmentalist Daw Daewi Thant Sin also said the designation of Zalone was the best way of preserving it.

Community-based tourism would be able to provide job opportunities for local residents so that they refrained from damaging the ecosystems and threatening the forests and wildlife, she said, calling for a campaign to heighten awareness of the fragility of the zone.

The zone should be able to regulate conduct within it that would disturb animal and bird species, including making unnecessary noise and leaving litter, she said.





The Zalone Mountain area is located in an existing forestry conservation zone, Nant Khaung Huu, in Banmauk township, Sagaing Region.
Foreign Minister Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has ended her five-day trip to China, returning to Yangon yesterday.





The visit, which came after an invitation from Chinas Premier Li Keqiang, was Daw Aung San Suu Kyis first major overseas trip since the National League for Democracy government took office in March.

China and Myanmar reached an agreement to work toward close coordination on worldwide issues concerning climate change, natural disasters and communicable diseases, according to a statement from the Presidents Office.

The two sides agreed to promote rule-of-law in the border areas, and to enhance trade, economic cooperation and various forms of friendly exchanges that would contribute to the well-being of the public, the statement said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to play a constructive role in Myanmars peace process, according to an official Chinese statement obtained by AFP.

The 21st-century Panglong Conference, slated to start next week, aims to quell the strife between numerous ethnic groups across Myanmar. Chinas promise to promote the peace process and promote rule of law in the borderlands are related, political analyst U Than Soe Naing told The Myanmar Times.

Some of the ethnic groups are located along Myanmars porous border with China, where drugs and guns are often bought and sold. Some armed ethnic groups along the border have ethnic or cultural ties to the people in Yunnan province on the Chinese side of the border.





As a good neighbour, China will do everything possible to promote our peace process, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was quoted by AFP as telling reporters in Beijing.

She also confirmed that the Myanmar government would set up a committee to review the controversial US$3.6 billion Beijing-backed Myitsone dam project, frozen in 2011 after protests, but did not say whether or not it would continue.

 With AFP
Rumours that activist Ko Aung Hmaing San will stage a hunger strike aimed at the release of Sagaing Region wood factory worker protesters are not true.





If I do something, I will announce it first, the All Burma Federation of Student Unions member told The Myanmar Times on August 19. And I will set a time frame for the protest  If I have a plan to hunger strike, I will officially announce it on my Facebook page.

The Sagaing protesters situation has not reached a level that warrants a hunger strike, he said. He stands by the factory workers, who are being detained in Yamethin Prison and facing trial in Tatkon Township Court, he said.

The factory workers, who said they were wrongly fired, marched more than 185 miles (300 kilometres) over three weeks from Sagaing Region to Nay Pyi Taw, where they were arrested in May.

Currently, I am standing by them to provide help for them, said Ko Aung Hmaing San. Protesters only took to the streets after negotiations failed, he added.

He said he would no longer protest, but seek resolution through negotiation. We will talk with the relevant government officials, parliament members and other organisations if there is a case related to politics or education, he said. If negotiation fails, we will consult each other about what we should do.

Ko Aung Hmaing San was detained in Thayawady Prison under the U Thein Sein government last year after calling for education reform. He was released after being granted amnesty this year.





Translation by Thiri Min Htun
The Myanmar Police Force needs to expand, says the Ministry of Home Affairs, as the current police-to-public ratio falls well below international norms.





Speaking in parliament last week, Deputy Minister for Home Affairs Major General Aung Soe said that for Myanmars population of some 51.4 million, just 76,964 police officers are currently in full service.

This figure represents about 46.25 percent of the total police force. Myanmars police-to-public ratio sits at around 1:1191, he said  a far cry from the UN-recommended minimum of 222 officers for every 100,000 citizens, a ratio of 1:

Prior to 2012, the total police force was 121,613. By March this year, this had increased to 166,404, he said, explaining that the police force has been upgraded in stages. Training schools in regions and states have recruited new members, but more are needed.

As well as being chronically understaffed, Maj Gen Aung Soe said the police force is under-resourced. He said in many cases police stations had inadequate security equipment and lacked patrol vehicles  a significant impediment to the forces ability to effectively tackle crime.

Crime rates are reportedly rising in densely populated urban areas, particularly Yangon, Ayeyarwady and Sagaing regions, he said.

Translation by Zar Zar Soe
Kayah State-based political parties have rejected an invitation to next weeks 21st-century Panglong Conference, expressing dissatisfaction at the meagre representational quota they have been granted as unsuccessful contestants in last years election.





According to the National League for Democracy governments plan for the conference, about 70 political parties that did not win any seats in the November election will be granted just five seats at the table, out of about 700 representatives in total.

We got an invitation letter from the National Reconciliation and Peace Center. We decided it doesnt make a difference whether we attend the conference or not. We reject participation and object to the invitation, said U Phoe Yal, chair of the All Nationalities Democracy Party (ANDP).

The ANDP, the Kayah Unity Democracy Party (KUDP) and the Kayan National Party (KNP) jointly decided on August 20 that they would not attend the Panglong Conference, the NLDs first major foray into Myanmars peace process.

A statement released by the three groups said, To the Kayah State parties, it seems like discrimination against political parties that didnt win a seat in the 2015 election.

On August 10, a senior NLD cabinet official announced that about 700 representatives were expected to attend the Panglong Conference. According to a political dialogue framework approved under the previous government, the executive and parliament are both set to hold 75 seats, with 150 seats each for the Tatmadaw, ethnic armed organisations and election-winning political parties, and 50 seats each for ethnic representatives and other invitees.

U Phoe Yal said the five seats for political parties without representation in the nations legislatures would fall under the latter two groupings totalling 100.

Echoing the ANDP leaders complaint, U Khum Bee Htoo, chair of the KNP, said five seats were too few for the dozens of political parties that contested the election unsuccessfully.





U Phoe Yal said Kayah State political parties would instead rely on proxy representation at the Panglong Conference, which is due to convene on August 31 in Nay Pyi Taw.

We will not attend but other attendants from our state will represent our expectations on the peace framework and federal Union, he said. We already discussed the issues for 21st-century Panglong among armed groups, political parties and CSOs.

The three parties statement said they had not been informed of the outcome of a review of the framework for political dialogue that took place earlier this month, as well as being kept in the dark on the forthcoming Panglong Conference.

Meanwhile, with just over a week until the Nay Pyi Taw gathering, ethnic armed groups, political parties, civil society organisations and youth associations nationwide are busy preparing to present their positions  and jockeying for political space.

A statement released by ethnic youth activists following a recent summit in Shan State demanded that youth voices be accorded a specific allocation of seats at the Panglong Conference.
Humbled at the ballot box more than nine months ago, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party convenes its convention today with senior members promising both big changes and more of the same as the party eyes a 2020 comeback.





Among items on the agenda during the meeting at the USDP headquarters in Nay Pyi Taw this week is an overhaul of the partys central executive committee, with one prominent cadre telling The Myanmar Times a major shake-up is in the offing.

Seventy percent of the current central executive committee membership will be changed, said U Hla Swe, a former USDP lawmaker. Members of new committees will be announced at the last day of the convention.

Former president U Thein Sein returned to the helm of the party following the transfer of power to the National League for Democracy at the end of March, admitting that as chair, he was most responsible for the partys poor showing in the November election.

The result of the vote  delivering an overwhelming electoral mandate to the National League for Democracy  shocked the USDP, party members told The Myanmar Times, with a widely held pre-poll belief that the party could win at least 20 percent of seats in the Union parliament proving utterly unfounded.

Instead, Daw Aung San Suu Kyis NLD won nearly 80pc of elected seats, while the USDP took just 8pc.

I have responsibility for the defeat [in the 2015 election]. I also feel I have a responsibility to do things to win [in the 2020 election]. Thats why I came back to the party, U Thein Sein said at a Yangon meeting with the partys senior members in May.

The convention will be held from August 22 to 24. In addition to reconstituting the central executive committee, the three-day meeting will see the party approve a draft paper to be submitted to the 21st-century Panglong Conference, discuss research papers submitted by state and regional committees, and review the partys annual report.





While a major shake-up of the central executive committee has been tipped, there is one senior figure who is not going anywhere: U Thein Sein.

He will remain the leader of the party until the 2020 election, U Hla Swe said.

The USDPs five-year reign came crashing down in the November vote, with critics saying disunity was a contributing factor in the partys decisive defeat at the ballot box.

Former parliamentary Speaker Thura U Shwe Mann led the party while U Thein Sein served as president, and the duelling centres of power held by the two men proved untenable as the years went by. Thura U Shwe Mann and his followers  a faction within the party seen as too close to then-opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi  were ultimately ousted from the party leadership in an August 2015 purge.

The former Speaker was later among 17 senior USDP members expelled from the party entirely.

Thura U Shwe Mann and other ousted members have said the decision to remove them in May was unfair and urged that the issue be taken up at this weeks convention, while the surviving leadership says disloyalty to the party was the reason for their expulsion.

Some three months since the dust-up, party leaders say there is no plan to consider the grievances of Thura U Shwe Mann and his allies.

Instead, the USDP gathering will focus on getting the party back to winning ways, both in the 2020 general election and a by-election to fill vacant parliamentary seats sometime before that.

We have to try as though the election is tomorrow, not in 2020, said U Hla Swe, who lost his re-election bid in November.

U Thein Sein has said the primary reason for the partys failure in November was institutional weakness, expressing confidence that those deficiencies could be mended ahead of the 2020 nationwide vote.

We lost once. We have to try to win next time as there are many people who believe in and support our party, U Thein Sein said.

Party leaders dont see a need to make significant changes to the party platform, insisting that the policies it practised in power and campaigned on last year still have merit. During the 2015 campaign period, the USDP sought to sell itself as the father of democratic reforms over its term in power that brought sweeping economic and political changes.

We dont need to change the partys policies, but we must change the people, said U Khin Ye.
A multi-faith gathering calling for prayers for peace and social order for the sake of children was held yesterday, in advance of the 21st-century Panglong Conference, at Chatrium Hotel in Yangon.





The event, which was organised by Myanmar Interfaith for Children in collaboration with Faith for Children, UNICEF and the Ratana Metta Organisation, hosted leaders from four religions who gave speeches or said prayers, primarily asking that the nations children be considered by decision-makers at the Panglong Conference.

Our main purpose is to encourage those who are going to attend the 21st-century Panglong Conference to stop the war for the childrens sake, said Ratana Metta Organisation president U Myint Swe.

Children make up 17 million of Myanmars population of 51 million.

There are more than 1800 children studying in my monastery because they cannot study in schools, said U Kavinda, who delivered a speech on behalf of the Buddhist community. That is because of the unrest in the nation. I want to ask those leaders and representatives from organisations who are going to attend the conference to make peace for the sake of our children.

Muslim leader U Aye Lwin said the beauty of Myanmar comes from its diversity. Its differences are not a mistake but an energy, he said.

We need to understand that, he said. We need peace in this beautiful Myanmar for the sake of children.





Around 200 people attended the ceremony, which ended at 3:30pm with children singing a song for peace.

The 21st-century Panglong Conference will start on August 31 as the cornerstone of the 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 also the father of State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
As controversy continues to swirl around allegations that the Myanmar government was condoning the legal trafficking of migrant workers to overseas jobs, it has emerged that more than 100 employment agencies have signed up to a new code of conduct.





Earlier this month, Thai and Myanmar labour officials vowed to take action against activist organisations that had accused them of complicity in poor working conditions endured by Myanmar workers in the kingdom.

Two rights groups, the Myanmar Association in Thailand (MAT) and the Aid Alliance Committee for Myanmar Workers (AAC), had compared the formal, sanctioned channels for sending Myanmar labourers overseas via memoranda of understanding to exploitative human smuggling rings. The Myanmar labour ministry then threatened unspecified action against them.

The code of conduct, which is designed to improve migrants working conditions, was drawn up by the Myanmar Overseas Employment Agencies Federation with the help of the International Labour Organization (ILO). On August 19, 122 of 143 agencies signed the document at Yangons Novotel Max Hotel in front of officials from the ILO and the Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population.

I want agency members to regard this code of conduct as a shield. Were signing to demonstrate the level of our services to the media and social organisations that have attacked our agencies, said U Win Tun, deputy chair of MOEAF.

However, he said that despite the involvement of MOEAF members in the drafting of the code, some members were not interested in signing. Initially, only about 40 members had undertaken to comply with its provisions.

Were being criticised because some agencies couldnt follow the rules. If the agencies comply with the code, I believe our reputation will improve, he told participants at the signing ceremony.





MOEAF officials told The Myanmar Times that the rules laid down in the code of conduct were not very different from the rules laid down by the ministry when the agencies applied for an overseas employment licence.

The code is expected to spell out the rights of Myanmar migrants more clearly and to monitor the service standards of the agencies, MOEAF said.

We will award marks and ratings to agencies according to their level of compliance with the rules and their responsibilities for the treatment of the migrants they have sent abroad. If they follow the rules, their reputation will be enhanced, said U Kyaw Zaw, general secretary of MOEAF.
I have always admired the courage and political instincts of Myanmars press.





Although my knowledge is limited to English-language media, when I read what Myanmar journalists are writing I have often been impressed by how valuable and reliable the best Myanmar journalism is.

But I have also seen some Myanmar journalism which is not so impressive, a common concern in any country.

A few Myanmar journalists have received training from foreign experts and practitioners. Some of this was, in effect, training on the job, where foreign journalists had come to Myanmar to work alongside their local colleagues. Some of these foreign journalists were Australians who seemed to be both professional and dedicated instructors.

Another significant source of media training during the period of the military regime  that is, from 1988  was specialist training provided overseas by international agencies which were committed to bringing democracy to Myanmar.

The main international donor was the United States, which delivered this training through government and non-government channels. The US government claims that by 2014 training in basic media skills was provided to more than 400 Myanmar journalists to support the countrys democratic transition.

Some of this media training was especially targeted at ethnic groups or womens groups, many of which were based outside Myanmar (many were in Thailand).





The results can be seen in the impressive amount of documentary reporting produced by ethnic media networks recording from abroad the conditions in ethnic regions and the abuses these groups suffered, mostly at the hands of the Myanmar military. The anti-government character of this kind of reporting, compared to reporting emanating from journalists working inside Myanmar, is also striking.

Japan was the only other bilateral donor which included media training in its technical assistance programs during Myanmars military rule, much of it delivered by Japanese NGOs such as the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. Very little is known about the results.

After 2011, under the U Thein Sein government the intensity of media training increased. A few international agencies such as UNICEF, UNESCO, International Media Services and International IDEA provided in-country training in specialised areas such as health, children, climate change and election reporting.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is one of the few government-funded foreign news agencies to have undertaken media training in Myanmar, in its case for its counterpart Myanmar-government-owned Myanma Radio and Television (MRTV). Voice of America also has a formal agreement with MRTV, and Japanese and Chinese state-funded agencies provide assistance to Myanmar as well.

Using its experience as a broadcaster with a clear national mission to help rural listeners, or young listeners, and to promote the arts, the ABC and MRTV signed a memorandum of understanding in 2013 under which the ABC provided specialist programming and other technical training for MRTV staff.

This interaction was not exactly collaboration between comparable organisations: The ABC has always been politically neutral in a way the MRTV could not have been.

Active participation by Myanmar in ASEAN, especially as chair in 2014, has also influenced Myanmars treatment of its own media. Peer pressure, for example under the U Thein Sein government, persuaded Myanmars leaders to seek comparable standards to its ASEAN media counterparts, even though media freedom in some ASEAN countries is not high. As a result, Myanmar media performance during its chairing of ASEAN was creditable.

As for outside assessments of press freedom, Reporters Without Borders ranked Myanmar a low 143 for 2016, with the comment that the government seems to have opted for [closely] monitored freedom instead of the drastic censorship that was in effect until recently. So media that cover political subjects have a bit more freedom. The Burmese-language state media nonetheless continue to censor themselves and avoid any criticism of the government or the armed forces.

According to UNESCO, Myanmar has still not ratified most of the international conventions relating to media standards.

On the other hand, while social media use has expanded very rapidly in Myanmar in recent years, censorship of social media may still be an issue. And many users still have to be careful of what they say on social platforms  so it is not yet possible to say press freedom in Myanmar is improving overall.

Yet, timely and relevant media reporting is playing a key role everywhere: in explaining Myanmars political developments; in disseminating the directions of economic reforms; in mobilising support for all social initiatives.

Without the energising role of Myanmars media, progress would falter, reforms would flounder and change would stall.

 New Mandala

Trevor Wilson is a visiting fellow at Australian National Universitys Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, a former Australian ambassador to Myanmar and author of Eyewitness to Early Reform in Myanmar. This article is a collaboration between The Myanmar Times and New Mandala, a specialist website on Southeast Asian affairs based at ANU
[August 22, 2016] Accela Kicks Off Engage 2016 to Showcase Best of Civic Technology Industry

SAN RAMON, Calif., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Accela, the leading provider of cloud-based productivity and civic engagement solutions for government, today kicked off its annual Accela Engage conference, the nation's biggest civic technology conference. The six-day event, which takes place at the JW Marriott Los Angeles L.A. LIVE August 21-26, brings together more than 1,000 customers, government leaders, business partners, industry thought leaders and Accela staff for a week of training, networking and inspiration. The conference will feature discussions led by more than 30 civic leaders including the Lieutenant Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, who will join Accela President and CEO, Maury Blackman, for the conference's opening session to share insights on ways to strengthen the citizen-government experience, innovate with technology and build trust in government. "Accela Engage is an opportunity for the best in the civic technology industry to gather and challenge one another to think differently, explore more efficient processes and ultimately help inspire innovation in a sector that is ripe for continued disruption," said Maury Blackman, CEO and President of Accela. "This year's conference is our largest one to date and a testament to te evolving and expanding role of civic technology in our lives. We are thrilled to showcase the inspiring thinking of government leaders, share stories of customers leveraging technology to drive innovation in their communities, and celebrate individual civic heroes making a difference every day."



Accela Engage 2016 highlights include: Government technology thought leader panel discussion on "hot" topics and emerging regulatory issues

State of the Civic Technology Industry address by Accela President and CEO Maury Blackman

Fireside chat between Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and Accela President and CEO, Maury Blackman

and Accela President and CEO, Nearly 200 sessions and multiple product expert desks for hands-on training

New product feature reveals for Accela Civic Insight and Accela Contractor Central

Live demo of drone roof-top inspection capability in a sponsored drone cage

Accela Trendsetter Awards honoring customer innovation and technology integration Accela Engage 2016 is sponsored by more than 25 industry-leading companies including, OpenGov, Adobe, Laserfiche, FutureNet Group, Microsoft, Selectron Technologies, TruePoint Solutons, Carahsoft, MCCi, Bryne Software, Avocette, VuSpex, IK Consulting, OpenCounter, CityGovApp, Sidwell, e-PlanSoft, Cities Digital, Brother, zedIT, Tech Global, SEP Technology Consulting, DocuSign, APPCityLife, BuildingEye, Cities Digital, DigEplan and Missionsky. For more information on Accela Engage sponsors please visit: https://www.accelaengage.com/Sponsors.

About Accela

Accela provides a platform of cloud-based productivity and civic engagement solutions to governments of all sizes worldwide. The Accela Civic Platform includes solutions to cost-effectively manage critical enterprise functions and mobile apps to foster greater citizen engagement. From asset, land and legislative management to licensing, finance, environmental health and more, Accela's software drives efficiency for more than 2,200 governments, including more than 60 percent of America's 50 largest cities. The Company was listed on the 2016 Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies in America, named to Government Technology's 2016 GovTech100, and certified as a Great Place to Work for 2016-2017. Accela is headquartered in San Ramon, California, with offices in San Francisco, New York, Boston, Portland, Melbourne and Dubai. For more information, visit www.accela.com. Media Contact:

Rachel Fukaya

Barokas PR for Accela

(831) 229-5761

[email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151007/275174LOGO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/accela-kicks-off-engage-2016-to-showcase-best-of-civic-technology-industry-300316077.html SOURCE Accela

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[August 22, 2016] GSMA Announces First Speakers for Mobile 360 Series - Middle East

The GSMA (News - Alert) today announced the first speakers for its Mobile 360 Series - Middle East conference taking place in Dubai 17-18 October 2016. The mobile industry-focused event, which is now in its fourth year, brings together representatives from the region's largest operators and technology companies to debate the key opportunities and challenges facing the industry in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The first speakers confirmed for the event include: Osman Sultan, CEO, Du

Hatem Dowidar, CEO International Operations, Etisalat

Mats Granryd, Director General, GSMA

Lin Yanqing, VP Marketing, Huawei (News - Alert) Middle East

David Irvine, CTO, icflix

Anthony Nicalo, VP, Platform, Mobify

Mohsen Malaki, MD & Partner, Synergy (News - Alert) Consulting

Ricardo Tavares, CEO, Techpolis

Raffaele Annecchino, President & MD, Southern & Western Europe, Middle East & Africa, Viacom (News - Alert) Mobile 360 Series - Middle East offers delegates an opportunity to discuss and debate the most pressing issues and industry trends impacting the region. Over the two-day conference, industry experts and leaders from both developed and emerging markets will offer insights through a series of keynotes, seminars and in-depth panel discussions. The conference will cover topics including the evolution to 5G, digital payments, identity and privacy, the Internet of Things and Low Power Wide Area networks, mobile media and smart cities, amongst others. The Call for Papers (CFP) for the Mobile 360 - Middle East conference is currently open and submissions will be accepted through 23:59 GMT Thursday, 25 August. More information on the conference, including the agenda and CFP, is available at www.mobile360series.com/middle-east/#learn Further speakers and event details will be announced in the coming months.



"The Middle East and North Africa is an incredibly diverse region, with varying levels of mobile market maturity, but it is clear that investment in mobile networks is having a transformative effect in many countries, reflected by growth in subscribers and the increased adoption of smartphones and new mobile services, as well as a rise in the number of innovative start-ups," said Michael O'Hara, Chief Marketing Officer, GSMA. "We look forward to welcoming delegates to this year's show to discuss how truly innovative mobile-connected products and services are positively changing the lives of millions of people from across the region." Mobile 360 - Middle East will be co-located once more with GITEX at the Dubai World Trade Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. This year, the event will be held in a new location at Gulfcomms in Za'abeel Hall 6 within the Dubai World Trade Centre. Industry leaders supporting the event include Etisalat (Host Sponsor), STC (Platinum Sponsor) and Huawei (Global Industry Supporter).

Get Involved at Mobile 360 - Middle East The 2016 GSMA Mobile 360 - Middle East is the fifth in a series of seven industry-focused events held in major cities across the world. Registration for Mobile 360 - Middle East is now open and attendees can visit www.mobile360series.com/middle-east/#attend to register. For further information on Mobile 360 - Middle East, including sponsorship opportunities, please visit www.mobile360series.com/middle-east. Follow developments and updates on Mobile 360 - Middle East (#m360ME) on Twitter @GSMA, on Facebook www.facebook.com/Mobile360Series and LinkedIn (News - Alert) on www.linkedin.com/company/gsma-mobile-360-series. -ENDS- About the GSMA The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting nearly 800 operators with almost 300 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and internet companies, as well as organisations in adjacent industry sectors. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as Mobile World Congress, Mobile World Congress Shanghai and the Mobile 360 Series conferences. For more information, please visit the GSMA corporate website at www.gsma.com. Follow the GSMA on Twitter: @GSMA. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160822005007/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
When Wayne State University's

"We were among the first in the whole country to teach about war and peace, and we're among the first ever to train conflict resolution in schools," explains Dr. Frederic Pearson, just the third director of the Center for Peace in its more than 50 years. "Detroit ironically had one of its most liberal mayors, Jerome Cavanagh, at the time. He had, I guess, thought he was moving the city forward."

The Center hoped to disarm the period's increasing fears of international warfare by way of teaching about peace and conflict resolution. But a war was already brewing in its backyard, boiling over in the form of Detroit's 1967 riot.

As the 50th anniversary of the riotor rebellion, depending on who you askapproaches next summer, the Center's work is as vital as ever.

Originally founded as the Center for Teaching about War and Peace, the Center's role quickly expanded from curriculum to community outreach in Detroit Public Schools, training staff to teach students in peer mediation.

"Further along the way, still interested in international conflicts of course, but further along the way, we began do more involvement in settling local disputes, particularly racial, ethnic issues," says Pearson.

This included more work with civilians in schools and neighborhood outreach to negotiate cultural understanding between communities. Their work also included training police in conflict diversity. "Police are often the touch point when urban unrest occurs. Police are often in the middle between the politicians and the public," he says.

Harnessing the future, now

Tyler Claxton, 15, student at Detroit Country Day

In the Center's weeklong

That motto helped Detroit Country Day incoming junior Tyler Claxton see new potential in her and Detroit's future.

"I've only ever been to the part of Detroit where there are lights and everything is very new. Now that I've seen [the ways] you can help change the city, it gives me more hope," she says.

Named after

negotiator and Detroit-native, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, the Institute hosts students (10 to 12 grade) from high schools across metro Detroit to spend a week in the city. Modeled after Bunche's career as a peacemaker, students are briefed on a special curriculum of hot button social issues, and educated on the power of conflict resolution.

Students then give presentations on how they would help solve current issues in their community.

Barbara Lynette Jones, program director of the Ralph Bunche Institute

"We like to focus on overarching themes when it comes to diversity, social justice, race relations, civil rights, because they all can be the source of conflict," says Barbara Lynette Jones, program director of the Ralph Bunche Institute and community dispute resolution specialist at the Center. "Some of our young people are not equipped with the basic skills that they need at this crucial age to be able to navigate life."

Although students from both struggling and stable districts enter the program, navigating school can be difficult anywhere.

Dale French, 16, an incoming junior at The International Academy of Macomb, had to deal with bullying and low self-esteem in middle school. "It affected how I thought about myself," he says. "If I knew what I know now, I think I would have handled things differently."

French hopes to use what he's learned from participating in the Bunche Institute to be an advocate for conflict resolution in his community.

"With everything that has been going on, I feel like it is really important to have something like this because it opens up dialogue and discussion," he says.



Beyond all the topics the Center explores through its programs, Hamtramck High School student Scott Hallett, 16, says it's been good to know that, regardless of age, your voice matters.





Wayne State officers roleplay a traffic stop with participants in the peace and conflict studies workshop "We could make a change if we really put our mind to it, and I never thought of that before," says Hallett. "I always thought that they would just shoot our ideas down because we are not adults yet. I now know that people will listen to us if what we're saying is valid."



Up until the early 2000s, the Center had peer mediators in every Detroit Public School, funded by a grant to Wayne State through the U.S. Department of Education. But for the last three years, the Center has been completely dependent on outside funding. Jones says recent increases in school suspensions and other disciplinary issues could be curbed by programs like the Bunche Institute.

"We depend on our teachers so much to educate our students. They can't focus on academics if they are always trying to resolve conflict with students," says Jones.

Parks as places of peace

With the Center's anticipation of the 1967 riots' golden anniversary, the Bunche Institute has used the occasion as an historic framework to revisit the frustrations that fueled the riots and examine how they still affect the city today. Students visit places relevant to the riots, talk to police officers, and see revitalization efforts in historic neighborhoods.

Another location they visit, just as crucial to the itinerary, is parks.

The Bunche Institute's most prominent sponsor and partner this year is the National Park Service , which is celebrating its centennial anniversary. The agency is making a concerted effort to engage urban cities in ways to utilize parks for grooming the next generation of stewards.

"We tell American history," says David John Goldstein, an urban fellow of the National Park Service. Part of telling that history, he explains, is to ensure that people recognize the significance of the National Register of Historic Monuments and Places, managed by the Park Service.

Take Belle Isle. People arrested during the 1967 riot were held in jails on the island, a fact the Detroit Historical Museum has on record.

"The National Park Service is the only agency entrusted with all of our country's cultural aspects," says Goldstein. "I think we underestimate the role that stewardship can have in a city. It might make you a better park ranger. It might make you a better cop."





All photos by Helping people feel more connected to the country through teaching about historic monuments will help and prevent conflict. It starts, says Goldstein, with engaging the next generation of leaders. "We have to change that in order to remain strong and relevant in a country that is changing."All photos by Nick Hagen

This article is part of Michigan Nightlight, a series of stories about the programs and people that positively impact the lives of Michigan kids. It is made possible with funding from the . Read more in the series W.K. Kellogg Foundation . Read more in the series here
22.08.2016 LISTEN

Captain of the Black Stars of Ghana, Asamoah Gyan has shown his love for Ghanaian music once again. In a short video circulating online, the Shanghai SIPG forward is seen performing the live band version of I Love You, a song by Bisa Kdei off his Thanksgiving Album.

The video below was recorded in Asamoah Gyan's mansion as part of his music rehearsals.

Bisa Kdei in response posted the video on his timeline with the caption, @asamoah_gyan3 singing his favourite Bisakdei song (I LOVE YOU),

Watch the video of Asamoah Gyan's live band version of the song and give us your comment. I think he killed it.
Award winning Ghanaian Sound engineer,George Forest has indicated that he is very sick and needs prayers from the general public.

The Kumasi based sound engineer,George Forest who has been battling an undisclosed illness for some time now, was rushed to a private hospital in Kumasi a fortnight ago and was discharged on Friday ,19th August.

"Reagan Mends,i'm very sick.its started some time ago so i thought it was just a normal malaria but because of the deteroriating nature of my health conditions,i was rushed to a private hospital two weeks ago and was discharge on Friday",George Forest noted.

Deliberating further on his health condition,George Forest told Reagan Mends of www.razzonline.com via telephone that,doctors are yet to actually ascertain the kind of sickness he is battling with.He appealed to the general public to remember him in prayers:

"My brother,what bothers me now is doctors are yet to ascertain the kind of illness am battling with.I feel so very sick.I'll like to appeal to the general public to remember me in prayers in order for me to heal quickly",George Forest sorrowfully opined to www.razzonline.com

George Forest,as a recording engineer in Ghana who is based in Kumasi has won a lot of spurs in his field and owns a band called the Adepa Band.

He has worked on songs by seasoned musicians such as Nana Acheampong, Obaapa Christy, Philipa Baafi, Gifty Osei Doris Gyamo among a blizzard of other renowned musicians.
Last weekends edition of the flagship magazine programme of the Cable News Network, CNN African Voices, sponsored by Glo, celebrated outstanding African women, including Ghana's social media curator, Nicole Amarteifio.

Specifically, the 30-minute programme highlighted some of Africa's most enterprising women who are shattering the glass ceiling in their areas of endeavour.

The female achievers featured in the edition included South Africa's first African female pilot, Asnath Mahapa, one of Uganda's biggest media personalities, Flavia Tumusiime, and Ghana's social media curator, Nicole Amarteifio.

Nicole recently embarked on a new venture with an ambitious web series, An African City. It is being well received and getting thousands of hits with people across Africa and worldwide with over one million YouTube hits and counting.

African Voices was aired on CNN International at 11.30 a.m. on Friday with repeat broadcasts at 3.30 p.m. on Saturday, 1.30 a.m. and 8.30 p.m. on Sunday, Monday at 12:30 p.m. and on Tuesday at 6.30 a.m.
Popular Nigerian comedian; Klint Da Drunk, together with Ghanas reigning comedy champion DKB will storm Ghanas Accra International Conference Centre in a bid to unite the people of Ghana through laughter.

Tagged, If We Can Laugh Together, We Can Live Together, this event is Ghanas first ever diplomatic comedy show, and it seeks to bring together the Presidential candidates from all the 24 political parties in a special night to remember encounter.

Also expected to attend this event is Ghanas two former Presidents; Ex Prez Jerry John Rawlings and John Agyekum Kuffuor, Ministers of State, the Clergy, top CEOs, Diplomats, among others, and it will be co-chaired by the Chairman of the National Peace Council; Most Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Asante, the Speaker of Parliament; Edward Doe Adjaho and the Chief Justice: Georgina Theodora Wood.

In an exclusive interview with the organizers of this historic event, the Coordinator; John Bosco Tieyiri indicated that this peace concert will use laughter and humor to reduce the mounting tension in the country and build bridges among top politicians and their supporters, while promoting oneness before, during and after the December general elections.

...This is an event being held under the auspices of the National Peace Council, and it will be coordinated by the National Security and State Protocol, as well as the Ghana Police Service, and so maximum security is assured, he said.

John Bosco also stated that apart from Klint Da Drunk and DKD thrilling the audience, the Armed Forces Band and the Winneba Youth Choir will be administering patriotic songs, and also, all the Presidential candidates will deliver peace messages.

Tickets are currently on sale at GHC100 for Regular and GHC150 for VIP, available at all NIB Branches, Vision 1 Fm, GBC Outer Reception, Marina mall, West Hill Mall, Airport Shell, and the AICC, among others. One can as well reach the organizers via 0207872547 for tickets.
Kano (Nigeria) (AFP) - At least 30 people were killed on Friday when two female suicide bombers detonated their explosives in a busy market in northeast Nigeria, the military said.

"At least 30 people have been killed in the suicide blasts carried out by two female suicide bombers in the market" in the town of Madagali, military spokesman major Badare Akintoye told AFP.

"Several people have been injured in the attack," said Akintoye on the phone from a military base in the town of Mubi, 100 kilometres (60 miles) away.

A local government official and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) confirmed the attack, the latest in Boko Haram's seven-year insurgent campaign in the restive region.

"The two bombers who (were) disguised as customers, detonated their suicide belts at the section of the market selling grains and second-hand clothing," said Yusuf Muhammad, the chairman of Madagali local government.

"We still don't have the exact number of those injured but they are many," he added.

Ibrahim Abdulkadir, NEMA spokesman for the northeast, said rescuers had been deployed to the scene.

"We heard there was a twin-blast in a market at Madagali this morning. Our men are on (the) ground evacuating the victims," he told AFP. "We still don't have details of casualties."

He said security agents had cordoned off the scene of the explosions.

Madagali was among the territory captured by Boko Haram in 2014 before Nigerian troops, supported by a regional force, liberated it in 2015.

Friday's incident was the third in the town since two female suicide bombers attacked in December last year, killing and injuring scores.

Boko Haram is seeking to impose a hardline Islamic legal system on Nigeria's mainly-Muslim north. Its campaign of violence has killed at least 20,000 people and displaced some 2.6 million since 2009.

Nigeria's military campaign against the jihadists is increasingly bogged down as it confronts suicide attacks, looting and indiscriminate slaughter.

The United Nations has warned that the affected region faces the "largest crisis in Africa".

The UN estimates that 14 million people will need outside help in 2017 because of the ongoing violence, particularly in Borno State, the epicentre of the rebellion.
Sorry, we can't find the content you're looking for at this URL.
Nairobi (AFP) - With a peace deal unravelling in South Sudan and jihadist attacks continuing in Somalia, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi on Monday.

The two discussed regional security and terrorism before Kerry met with the foreign ministers of Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda for talks focusing on a faltering peace agreement in South Sudan and looming elections in Somalia.

A statement from the Kenyan presidency ahead of Kerry's visit said discussions with Kenyatta would focus on "regional security and stability" including South Sudan where a civil war has been raging since December 2013, Somalia where elections are due next month, and Burundi in the throes of a political crisis since April 2015.

Terrorism would also be on the agenda, the statement said, as the threat from Somalia's Shabaab militants continues to affect the region.

Kerry's previous visit to Kenya in May 2015 paved the way for US President Barack Obama's trip two months later.

The high-profile US diplomatic missions underline Kenya's importance as a regional partner to the US, particularly on security, and demonstrate a thawing of relations that cooled while Kenyatta was under indictment by the International Criminal Court for alleged election-related crimes against humanity.

Kerry is expected to focus his attention on South Sudan and shoring up a year-old peace deal that has so far failed to end the conflict.

An outbreak of fresh fighting in the capital Juba last month led to the ousting of vice president Riek Machar as leader of the former rebels, threatening to return the country to all-out civil war.

The UN Security Council this month adopted a US proposal to send a 4,000 strong "protection force" to bolster the peacekeeping mission in South Sudan but repeated threats to impose an arms embargo have come to nothing.

Kerry is due to travel to Nigeria on Tuesday before leaving Africa for Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.
A suicide bombing which killed 51 people in the Turkish city of Gaziantep was carried out by a 12 to 14-year-old, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

Mr Erdogan said the so-called Islamic State (IS) was behind the attack, which targeted a Kurdish wedding party. Gaziantep, near the Syrian border, is known to have several IS cells.

The bomb wounded 69 people, Mr Erdogan added, 17 of them seriously.

The bomber targeted the wedding guests as they danced in the street.

The BBCs Seref Isler, who is from Gaziantep, says the city of 1.5 million was already on edge because of events in Syria, where IS has been battling Syrian Kurdish forces.

A suicide bomber believed to have links to IS killed two policemen in Gaziantep in May.

In a written statement published by local media (in Turkish), Mr Erdogan argued there was no difference between IS, the Kurdish militants of the PKK, and followers of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he blames for the coup attempt last month.

Our country and our nation have again only one message to those who attack us  you will not succeed! he said. Blood everywhere

The bomb went off in a part of town popular with students and which has a large Kurdish community.

Local MP Mahmut Togrul told the Reuters news agency it had been a Kurdish wedding.

Mr Togruls party, the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), said the wedding had been for one of its members.

According to a report (in Turkish) by Turkeys Dogan news agency , the couple had moved to Gaziantep from the Kurdish town of Siirt further east to escape fighting between Kurdish rebels and security forces.

On Sunday morning, smashed garage doors and windows could be seen at the site of the blast, Reuters reports.

The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing, said Veli Can, 25.

There was blood and body parts everywhere.

On Saturday, Turkeys government said the country would take a more active role in efforts to end the war in Syria.

-bbc
Three people are in critical condition at the Holy Family Hospital in Techiman in the Brong Ahafo Region after a KIA truck skipped off the road and rammed into them Sunday.

An eye witness told Joy News Anas Sabbit the truck with registration BA 2327-12 drove into a storey building at high speed in what is believed to the result of brake failure.

The victims, including a porridge seller, were going about their business near the building.

The incident occurred at the Tamale lorry station in Techiman, near the Access Bank branch.

The driver has been picked up by police to assist with investigations.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
Fidelity Bank, the largest privately owned indigenous bank in Ghana today has held its maiden graduation ceremony for the Harvard Manage Mentor program.

43 middle managers successfully completed the twelve month program, which is aimed at providing leadership training for managers.

The program, The Fidelity Certified People Manager Program (FCPMP)", is part of the Banks Employee Development program through its partnership with the Harvard Manage Mentor Program from the Harvard University, U.S.A. and the Learning Resource Management Group (LRMG) Pty Ltd, South Africa.

Speaking at the graduation event, the Deputy Managing Director of Fidelity Bank, Mr. Jim Baiden, indicated that, as a fast growing bank, leadership development has become a key focal area in the banks people management strategy.

He added that Fidelity Bank places premium on the quality of its human resource and as such offers all levels of staff adequate training to equip them with the requisite knowledge and skills to deliver great services to customers.

The facilitator of the program and Director of Lead Strong, Dr. Alan Bougardt, was full of praise for the depth and experiences of the participants.

He also challenged the participants to bring the skill sets acquired to bear on their work and to strive for continuous learning. He further applauded management of the bank for their commitment to investing in people development.

Participants lauded the management of the bank for their commitment and investment in them and added that some of the courses covered under the pogrammme including Goal Setting, Career Management, Feedback Essentials, Team Leadership and Developing Employees have proven very beneficial to them.\

Mr. Jim Baiden (Dep. MD of Fidelity Bank

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
Lubumbashi (DR Congo) (AFP) - "In this stream, the fish vanished long ago, killed by acids and waste from the mines," says Lubumbashi resident Heritier Maloba, staring into the murky waters of his childhood fishing hole.

Pollution caused by copper and cobalt mining has not only poisoned the Katapula, a tributary of the mighty Congo River and one of the main waterways in this second city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but has also induced widespread illness.

"High concentrations of toxic metals ... cause respiratory disorders and birth defects," particularly in people living near the mines, said toxicologist Celestin Banza of the University of Lubumbashi.

The damage has spread through acids in untreated waste released into nature, polluting the air, the water, and much of Lubumbashi, a city of more than two million residents in the country's southeast.

Until recently, Lubumbashi was the capital of Katanga province whose fabulous copper wealth was first tapped by Belgian colonists early in the 20th century.

Last year, Katanga was divided into four new provinces. Mining is prevalent in the two southern ones.

Hindered by neglect during the regime of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko (1965-1997) and in the second Congolese war (1998-2003), the mining industry rose from the ashes of devastating conflict.

Between 2010 and 2014, mineral production led strong economic growth and lifted the country up to the rank of the world's fifth copper producer and top producer of cobalt.

With demand for cobalt driven by its use in mobile phones and electric car batteries, the trade has come at a dire environmental and health cost for DR Congo.

- 'Lack of expertise' -

"Mining pollution in Katanga is an undeniable reality," admits member of parliament Davon N'Sa Mputu Elima, who served as environment minister in 2012-14.

He says that mining firms put up considerable resistance to a 2009 amendment in the country's environmental code, which imposed stringent new health and safety requirements.

Such protective measures are often not enforced because of what the MP calls "a lack of expertise" among administrative officials responsible for seeing that mining firms comply.

The public health risks listed by Banza, the toxicologist, also include metabolic disorders, certain tumours, burning sensations in the eyes and the throat, and even "short-term sterility".

"You get the feeling you're suffocating as you breathe," says Viviane Kibwe, a mother of four in a city where mining installations can be located hard by people's homes, schools and fields.

Plumes of smoke and clouds of dust rise into the air carrying dangerous particles, while used water containing cleaning chemicals and mineral alloys runs off untreated into streams.

A 2012 toxicology study by the Carter Center found that many ailments in the area are indeed the result of prolonged exposure to harmful chemicals.

The foundation set up by US former president Jimmy Carter in 1982 also criticised "several flaws" and "ambiguity" with regard to the treatment of waste in DR Congo's mining code of 2002.

Eric Monga, chairman of the Katanga branch of the Business Federation of the Congo, counters that sustainable and safe mining practices have become "an ethical rule" observed by companies.

"An approved study on the environmental impact is a requirement before any operations," he says.

Yet Belgian and Congolese experts carrying out health studies since 2008 find that concentrations of cobalt, copper, lead and even uranium in urine samples "largely exceeded the reference values accepted by the World Health Organization," Banza says.

This is particularly true among children, according to the professor.

- 'Nothing has grown' -

At the Shinkolobwe mine some 150 kilometres (95 miles) northwest of Lubumbashi -- the source of the uranium used in the Hiroshima atomic bomb -- thousands of people worked for many years without the slightest protection.

Banza told AFP that he plans to publish a new public health report demonstrating that people in the south of the former Katanga are far worse affected by breathing difficulties than people in the north, mainly farmland.

"My colleagues and I have recorded a comeback of cardiac and respiratory diseases, (particularly) among children and women," says Jean-Marie Kazadi, senior medical expert for the new Haut-Katanga and Lualaba provinces.

Yet many thousands of people work arduous shifts in the mines, desperate to make a living in conditions worsened by a global tumble in copper prices.

The high price of mining is also evident at Kipushi, about 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Lubumbashi, where savannah abruptly gives way to a broad strip of scorched, barren land where the state mining firm Gecamines used to dump acidic waste.

"For more than 30 years, nothing has grown in this place," says Mwalimu Kasongo, a retired teacher of 76.

Former minister N'Sa Mputu says several bird species that once thrived in the area have now "disappeared".

For Lubumbashi resident Maloba, now an unemployed man in his 30s, the childhood fishing expeditions remain a distant memory, with little hope of ever catching anything more in his beloved river.
22.08.2016 LISTEN

The Ghana Police Service has begun investigation into alleged robbery attack on GCB bullion van last Tuesday at Afram Plains in the Eastern Region and disturbances that ensued after the attackers, involving two police officers, escaped.

The police have commenced investigation into the entire incidents on the front of the robbery attack, arrest and escape as well as public disorder and disturbances, COP Prosper Kwame Agblor, Director General of Police Investigation Department told journalists on Friday.

The conduct of the police officers involved in the robbery and those involved in the arrest and escort of the suspects will be subjected to a thorough investigation, he said and anyone found to have mis-conducted himself or herself accordingly punished.

He said the police would pursue rioters at Donkorkrom and Tiase [where riots sparked] until the perpetrators were arrested and prosecuted, adding no single person who has a hand in this act of criminality will escape the wrath of the law.

Residents of the area clashed with police on Thursday after inhabitants staged a demonstration to register their anger over the escape of two police officers and a civilian, who were arrested in the failed GCB Bank bullion car robbery.

The police vowed to clamp down on what they called evil behaviours in the society and would use the incident in Donkorkrom as a test case.

COP Agblor said the practice of attacking police offices, accommodation facilities and logistics with impunity were becoming provocative and rampant and must be stopped.

What the people who engaged in these shameful acts fail to recognize is that these attitudes affect the development of their communities, he said.

He also warned that communities which attack their police and damage their police stations will suffer a close down of their stations, and will not to be reopened until they have renovated or reconstructed them at their own expense.

He assured the pubic that Donkorkrom was calm following deployment of police personnel from the Formed Police Unit, Counter Terrorist Unit and other action units in the area to maintain law and order.

We wish to entreat the residents of Afram Plains to remain calm as investigation into the incident continues.
President John Mahama on Friday inaugurated the first phase of the upgrade and expansion of the Tamale Airport and the first direct commercial flight from the Airport to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The Boeing 747 400-series, which took off at 15:40 GMT, carried 498 passengers to Mecca to participate in this years Hajj activities.

President Mahama, who witnessed the take-off of the first direct commercial flight from the Tamale International Airport, was elated that his government has fulfilled a major campaign promise to the people of the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions to fly direct from Tamale to Mecca for Hajj activities.

The upgrade and expansion of the Tamale Airport into an international airport means that the country now has an alternative airport capable of handling wide body aircraft like Kotoka International Airport.

The upgrade and expansion of the Tamale International Airport is to transform the economy of the country in general and the northern part of the country in particular as Tamale has the potential of attracting increased air traffic and international connectivity.

President Mahama said the Tamale International Airport would support economic activities such as the exportation of perishable agricultural produce from the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority zone.

He said the government was working to develop aviation infrastructure across the country adding the runway of the Ho Airport would be completed this year whiles in the next few months, the Wa Airport would begin recording commercial flights.

Mr Fiifi Kwetey, Minister for Transport, urged airlines in the country to reduce air fares as government has also reduced the cost of aviation fuel to make their services affordable.

Sheik Osman Nuhu Sharubutu, National Chief Imam, who also witnessed the take-off of the first direct commercial flight from the Tamale International Airport to Mecca, thanked Allah for the initiative and prayed for the leadership of the country.

Sheik Sharubutu also thanked Allah for the peace prevailing amongst various religious and ethnic groups in the country.
OBINIM WANTED; POLICE GIVE 24-HOUR ULTIMATUM

Woes of the General Overseer of the International Gods Way Church Bishop Daniel Obinim, appears to have deepened as the Tema Regional police are on the verge of declaring him wanted within the next 24 hours, if he fails to report himself.

ACHIMOTA FOREST NOT FOR SALE

Deputy Minister for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Dr Alfred Sugri Tia, on behalf of President John Mahama, last Friday cut the sod for the commencement of the redevelopment of the Achimota forest reserve into an eco-tourism centre.

TEMA POLICE LOCATE TRAINING GROUND FOR ARMED ROBBERS

The Tema Regional Police Command has uncovered a shooting range that it suspects to be the training ground for suspected armed robbers.

SIAW AGYEMPONG, DUFFUOR, OTHERS HONOURED

Eight successful African personalities have been honoured for their contributions to development on the continent at this years Lifetime Africa Achievement Prize (LAAP) in Accra.

WASSCE: OVER ONE MILLION FLOP IN 6 YEARS

Over one million out of the over 1.5 million candidates who sat for the West Africa Senior Schools Certificate Examination (WASSCE) between 2011 and 2016 failed to secure grades A1 to C6 in the three core subjects required for admission into tertiary institutions.

DEPOSITS RACE HOTS UP AS BANKS RAISE INTEREST TO ATTRACT SAVINGS

The average interest paid on deposits in the banking sector have started climbing as banks bid to attract deposits from savers at a time cheap funds have become scarce.

POLICE OFFICERS WITHDRAWN FROM DONKOKROM

Head of Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, Prosper Agblor, has announced the immediate withdrawal of all police personnel stationed at Donkokrom in the Afram Plains North of the Eastern Region.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), President John Dramani Mahama, will continue his campaign for re-election with a four-day campaign tour to his home region, the Northern Region.

This will mark the second regional stop on President Mahama's campaign tour after the completion of a four-day tour of the Western Region.

The Presidents campaign team has indicated that this leg of his tour is expected to focus on interactions with with the people on the ground.

The NDC flagbearer's campaign in the Northern Region will start in Salaga where he will pay a courtesy call on the newly enskinned Kpembewura.

President Mahama will also call on other chiefs in the region and engage with various sections of society on his scheduled campaign route.

The campaign team has noted that the areas to be visited on this tourinclude Salaga, Kpandai, Bimbilla, Wulensi, Yendi, Gushiegu, Zabzugu, Tatale, Mion, Nanton and Chereponi.

In what could have been viewed as a prologue to his tour of the region, President Mahama was in the Northern Regional capital, Tamale, on Friday, August 22 to see off the first batch of Muslim pilgrims airlifted directly from Tamale to Medina in Saudi Arabia for the Hajj.

His presence in the region also saw the government showcase some development projects with the inauguration of completed works of the first phase of the Tamale airport expansion and upgrade project.

President Mahama said the decision to establish the Tamale airport was aimed at extending opportunities to the North for growth and development.

Dimiiya protests to greet Mahamas first day

President Mahamas first day in the Northern region may be overshadowed by protests as the coalition of opposition parties in the region has vowed to resist any attempt by the Northern Regional police command to ask the organizers to postpone the much publicised demonstration in Tamale Township.

The police administration argued that President Mahamas campaign tour was starting on the same day, hence calls on the coalition to reschedule the date.

The demonstration dubbed, Dimiiya meaning Times are tough is aimed at renewing calls on government to reduce what they have described as 'Killer' electricity tariffs.

Hairdressers, tailors, barbers, welders and other small scale industry players have announced their participation.

Ahead of the demonstration, the coalition's Spokesperson, Mohammed Abdul Kudus served notice that no amount of force or persuasion will convince the organizers to postpone the demonstration.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow the hashtag #GhElections on Social Media for election related stories
Over three thousand members of the Ghana Association of Biomedical Laboratory Scientists (GABMLS) will lay down their tools beginning today [Monday].

The strike has been called, to get government to implement the National Health Laboratory policy immediately, in order to help raise the quality of laboratory science practice in the country.

Last week the association accused the Health Minister, Alex Segbefia of not showing up at a meeting which was to address the stalled implementation of the policy.

The General Secretary for the association, Michael Amoh Omari told Citi News, they believe the strike, will cause the ministry to be committed to solving their issues.

We have that about 3,000 of which out of this 2,000 are in the public sector. The strike will come on, all our staff all over the country will withdraw their services. The only option is that we will put few staff at the blood bank to attend to maternal and certain cases for Monday. If nothing concrete comes out, then from Wednesday, the blood bank will also join in the full strike, he added.

Omari also noted that they are taking such decision because they don't want to be taken for granted.

We are realizing that because we have always taken the gradual stage, those who matter think other groups have higher muscle than us so they will not listen to us. This strike is to tell the Ministry to be committed to solving the problem.

A separate statement signed by Dennis Adu-Gyasi, Public Relations officer of the association said government current position on the matter is not the best.

It is evident in the unfolding events that the MOH has not shown any interest to resolve our matter and have no option than to follow through the roadmap proffered by congress to lay down our tools if we don't see any concrete evidence of the three policy documents being launched. It is in the light of the commitment of leadership to the congress decision that we have declared to embark on an indefinite industrial strike action effective 22nd August 2016, the statement added.



By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonilne.com/Ghana

Follow @AlloteyGodwin
The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has said the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntome (TEN) oil fields has the capacity of supporting Ghana's economic transformation.

A statement signed by Executive Director of ACEP, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam believes the revenue emanating from the field will benefit Ghanaians if managed efficiently.

It is important to note that the arrival of TEN oil is happening at the time the Ghanaian economy is facing difficulties and the hope of the people about the transformative effect of oil diminishing significantly. We must therefore ensure that the resources being extracted from the TEN fields and the revenues from the export of the oil are managed efficiently for the benefit of the people, the statement added.

President John Dramani Mahama last Thursday turned on the valves of the new John Evans Atta Mills FPSO to mark the beginning of oil production in Ghana's second oil reserve.

The TEN Oil field on which the new vessel Atta Mills FPSO sits is expected to produce between 20,000-23,000 barrels of oil per day.

While urging Ghanaians to moderate their expectation on the new oil field, ACEP, also admonished government to ensure that challenges encountered with the [first] Jubilee FPSO are not repeated.

Below is the full statement from ACEP

The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) welcomes the flow of first oil from the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntome (TEN) oil fields. As the second producing oil field, Ghanas oil and gas industry is growing and presents many opportunities for the government, the companies and the citizens.

Starting with 23,000 barrels of oil production daily and expected to peak at 80,000 barrels, TEN has the potential to double government petroleum revenue, contribute to economic growth and provide job opportunities.

We are also encouraged that the development of the oil fields provided room for Ghanaians to build the capacity of sector institutions and local firms through the local content initiatives. Particularly, the fabrication of some parts of the second Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) Vessel in Ghana, such as the anchor piles and module deck stools, has laid the foundation for more oil industry fabrication works to be done in Ghana.

The government should therefore invest in building the capacity of more Ghanaians and setting fabrication centres in strategic areas of the country to maximize benefits from the oil industry and to position Ghana as an alternative service hub to Nigeria in the sub-region.

Delivering the project on time and within budget in spite of the oil price crisis further establishes Ghana as a low cost environment and ready to attract more investments upstream. We are however aware that producing oil is one thing but sustaining production and accounting for it is another. Government must ensure that the challenges encountered with the Jubilee FPSO are not repeated.

The anchoring and rotation enabling system, called the turret mooring system, the flow metre as well as the compressor system must be subject to strict due diligence and quality assurance. The flow meters ensure that the right volumes of oil are exported and revenue inflows could be accurately determined. The Ghana Revenue Authority must in addition, ensure that the integrity of the measurement of oil produced is protected by installing parallel electronic seals in the pipelines of the FPSO to ensure electronic data transmission to onshore computerized centres to enable it monitor in real time the flow of oil from the field and to appropriately establish the tax liability of the oil companies.

It is important to note that the arrival of TEN oil is happening at the time the Ghanaian economy is facing difficulties and the hope of the people about the transformative effect of oil diminishing significantly. We must therefore ensure that the resources being extracted from the TEN fields and the revenues from the export of the oil are managed efficiently for the benefit of the people. We know that expectations are legitimately high as people are yearning for development. We wish to therefore add our voice to the many calls on Ghanaians to moderate their expectations about the promise of oil, but we also believe that moderating expectations should not be an excuse for the poor management of the limited oil and gas resources.

We therefor encourage Ghanaians to translate their high expectations into perpetual vigilance on the authorities for the transparent and accountable management of the resources. We are also worried about the statement by the president of Ghana to the effect that the Ghana-Ivory Coast boundary dispute affected the TEN project as the provisional measures order from the international tribunal included an order prohibiting new oil wells in the field.

As an African institution, we wish to see our governments cooperate more on matters relating to the harnessing of our natural resources to address underdevelopment on our continent. Therefore, whilst we wait for the final ruling on the boundary dispute, we encourage the two countries to increase dialogue on the matter to ensure that the citizens of the two countries do not suffer any potential insecurity that could arise from the ruling.

Signed

Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam

Executive Director



By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana
The Chiefs and People of Maame Krobo and Donkorkrom all in the Afram Plains in the Eastern region are calling on the Police administration to rescind the decision to withdraw police personnel from the area.

Last week, the residents went on rampage, set a Police station on fire and destroyed other property belonging to the Police.

This was after they accused the Police of shielding two of their own involved in an attempted robbery on a Ghana Commercial Bank Bullion van last Monday.

At a press conference in Accra, called by the police administration, they announced a withdrawal of their men from the area until the residents rebuild the police stations but the chiefs say this is unfair.

Nana Ohene Agyekum, chief of Maame Krobo in an interview said If the Police say they are withdrawing their men are they trying to say that residents of Maame Krobo are not part of Ghana?

We are all Ghanaians. Since we came to live in the Afram Plains nothing of this nature has ever happened. The youth only got angry because they found out that the Police people are the same people behind all the rebel attacks here.

His counterpart at Donkorkrom, Nana Akuamoah Boateng, shares the same views and accuses the Police of being behind all the attacks.

For the past three years, there has been series of armed robbery cases. We usually attribute this to the Fulanis but the recent incident has taught us that it is not the Fulani people but it is the Police who always dress like Fulanis and attack people on the way. Each time there is an armed robbery and we call the Police, they feel reluctant to come. There is not a single day that a Police has arrested an armed robber. There is not a single day that a Police has arrested an armed robber there.

The IGP I would say is not trying to be fair. The people are very angry so the IGP should say something to cool the people, the chief added.



By: Godwin A. Allotey & Pearl Akanya Ofori/citifmonline.com/Ghana
22.08.2016 LISTEN

I have just finished reading the statements of the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu in the PUNCH newspaper of August 20, 2016 that he and his Commision would not be able to guarantee conclusive elections in 2019. He engaged in some noxious inanities and obnoxious platitudes to justify the possibility of this ridiculous position. He, without any shame insisted in the statement that any attempt to give such an assurance at this time would be to second guess the outcome of the election.

Without any sense of accountability that reinforces his obvious lack of integrity, Professor Yakubu said inter alia:

It is not strange. More than any commission in the history of the country, we have conducted more elections outside the context of general elections. People often forget that we had inconclusive elections in the past.

This is an admission of incompetence of this commission under his leadership. Professor Yakubu might have issues of amnesia, but not all of us are inflicted with the same challenge. It is this same commission that conducted several elections outside the general elections under Professor Attahiru Jega and did so conclusively. I remembered several complaints by members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) wondering why they were losing elections under a PDP controlled Federal Government. But they could not make a good case against what Professor Jegga was doing. He made sure Nigeria had conclusive elections during general election and off general elections.

It is my view that Professor Yakubu potentially, is one of the enemies of Nigeria. He is bent on destroying this imperfect democracy that everyone is working hard to sustain. He is making it clear that he is not capable. He is saying it loud that he is not fit for this position. He is saying it loud that Nigeria is in danger and this democracy would hit the rocks if he continues to be in charge of INEC until 2019. Professor Yakubu is so shameless about his incompetence that it boggles the mind. He has to be removed using the instruments of the law now if he does not know how to resign.

He rhapsodized about the 1979 general elections tragedy to justify in advance what is to happen in 2019. Extricating himself from the restraints of rectitude, he exuded disrespect for the concerns, anxiety and aspiration of Nigerians when he added as follows:

In recent times, we have had series of inconclusive elections. The governorship election in Bauchi State was inconclusive because of the post-election violence and INEC concluded the election after two weeks. The same thing happened in Imo; the first election that brought in Rochas Okorocha was inconclusive, until two weeks after. In 2015, Taraba, Abia and Imo were inconclusive and there were other constituency elections where elections inconclusive.

As a Professor of Political History and International Studies, it is amazing that Professor Yakubu has no respect for logic in his approach to issues. If elections were held, the votes counted and results available, why not make that result available to the public rather than hold on to it on the excuse that it is inconclusive.? Is it not the refusal to make the result available that leads to violence in the first place? Is it not the suspicion that INEC was holding on to the result of election because a particularly preferred candidate did not win that causes post election violence? Is Professor Yakubus INEC not an active collaborator in fostering post election violence if it holds on to results that are available for whatever reasons?

It is an abdication of responsibility for Professor Yakubu to begin to suggest that 2019 elections would be inconclusive. What would he be doing as the Chairman of INEC between now and 2019 to ensure that the election is conclusive? If he has the knowledge that 2019 elections could be inconclusive what is he doing to rectify the variables and do a good job for Nigeria and her democracy? Is this not an obvious self disqualification for this responsibility?

It is my conviction that Professor Yakubu is flying a kite for 2019. He is trying to prepare Nigeria for the rigging that is about to take place in 2019. He is trying to set the table for the tragedy he and his sponsors are ready to inflict on Nigeria in 2019. Professor Yakubu is spilling the secret plans of his sponsors for 2019. The plan ought to be obvious to all Nigerians. When in 2019, President Buhari is voted out of power, they would come out and insist that it is an inconclusive election. This way, President Buhari would be able to remain in power technically after he has been rejected at the polls.

In 2019, Nigerians should be allowed to pass judgment on President Buhari conclusively. The election has to be free and fair. It is not negotiable. It has to be transparent. It also has to be conclusive. For the Chairman of INEC to suggest that the 2019 elections could be inconclusive, shows that he is not up to the task. He is incompetent. He is unsuitable. He has to quit now. He has to resign his post now. If he fails to resign, he must be impeached by the Senate.

It is not a secret that Nigeria has a lot of enemies. These enemies are not few and they amount to many among her citizens and those holding the helms of power. These enemies are allergic to facts and are cocooned from reality. Some of these enemies of Nigeria get to this stage unconsciously. Some of them are aware of what subsists, but for their selfish reason do not really care if Nigeria goes to the dogs. These enemies of Nigeria are those who despite all the empirical evidences that this Buhari Administration has failed are still plotting to sustain him in power beyond 2019. Professor Yakubu and his INEC are collaborators against the people of Nigeria in this heinous conspiracy.

President Buharis incompetence could not even be put in words. His sadism is becoming legendary. His nepotism has undermined the fight against corruption. He has inflicted economic woes on Nigeria. Social and religious tension is mounting across the country; there is increasing armed insurrection against the Nigerian state on daily basis and this President Buhari has no idea what to do about it.

In spite of all this, some politicians within the set up of the All Progressives Congress (APC) are still insisting that this country must have Mohammadu Buhari as its candidate for presidency in 2019? They strut the land with blatant arrogance; flagrant in their condescension and contemptuous in their insensitivities. They address Nigerians with a noxious sense of insouciance, suggesting that Nigerian really do not have a choice but must continue to carry this odious burden called Buhari.

This group of APC leaders, with a disturbing degree of coldness permeated with toxic tinges of sadism gallivants around the public space daring Nigerian to accept their fate or go to hell. They blame everyone but their Party. They reach deeper down beyond illogicality to defend the indefensible insulting the intelligence of suffering Nigerians. They look for any and whatever excuse to absolve the obvious debilitating ignorance of President Buhari. They blame others for President Buharis nauseating incompetence.

Professor Yakubu is in on a conspiracy. This is why he is indirectly telling Nigerians that the election in 2019 would not be free and fair. He is already preparing Nigerians to accept President Buhari despite all his glaring failures. Professor Yakubu is working hard to ensure that President Buhari would still remain in power technically beyond 2019. Nigerians who love their country should begin to speak out now. This is a deliberate plan. Professor Yakubus reach into the past in relation to 1979 is very ominous. It is dangerous.

Nigerians must begin to pay more than due attention to INEC and its commissioners at all levels. Nigerians must begin to scrutinize every action or inaction of INEC. All INECs acts of omission or commission must be examined. This INEC is compromised. It is no longer an impartial arbiter. Professor Yakubu has just undermined the remaining modicum of credibility that this INEC enjoys. We can no longer trust this INEC anymore.

All of us can blame President Goodluck Jonathan for everything, and he would deserve all the blames. But one thing separates him from other leaders in Nigerian history, his ruling party lost elections in several states while he was in control during off-general election years. He did not mess with the courts to give judgment in favour of his own partys candidates. He never intervened which he could have done. And at the end when all was said and done, he gave us conclusive election that brought in the Buhari administration.

Nigerians must protect this democracy from the enemies of Nigeria, one of which Professor Yakubu potentially is. Inconclusive elections would not be acceptable in 2019. Nigerians ought not to accept such a travesty. They should not and would not accept such retrogression. Nigerians must not accept any inconclusive election from INEC. Those of use seeking the balkanization of the Nigerian State should not be given an excuse to further make our case. Every one of us must stand up now and defend this democracy or say bye-bye to Nigeria.

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
I wasnt the least bit surprised that Baba Jamal, the National Democratic Congress Member of Parliament for Akyem-Akwatia, would sign the presidential petition notebook seeking the immediate release of the Montie Three, and then turn around a couple of weeks later to publicly plead with President John Dramani Mahama to refuse a pardon for Messrs. Salifu Maase (aka Mugabe), Alistair Tairo Nelson and Godwin Ako Gunn (See Mahama Shouldnt Pardon Montie 3  Baba Jamal Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/17/16).

For those of our readers who may have so soon forgotten about the man, Mr. Jamal was the Deputy Information Minister who lectured reporters and writers of the Information Services Department about the need to wildly exaggerate the activities of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), if these civil service employees desired to keep their jobs for any considerable amount of time.

Back then, the current Deputy Minister for Employment and Labor Relations was widely reported to have told the employees of the Information Services Department that if President Mahama donated a goat to any charitable or civil society organization, they were to report that the President had donated a cow; and if the goat was black in color, they were to describe the same as snow-white.

In other words, Baba Jamal is a personality who woefully lacks the integrity and honesty required of a good leader. In the hot-button matter of the Montie Three who were recently prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to 4 months imprisonment for threatening to rape Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, as well as summarily execute at least five other associate justices of the Supreme Court of Ghana, for example, Mr. Jamal now says that he decided to sign the presidential petition notebook in sheer solidarity with his fellow NDC cabinet appointees, and not because he was of the firm belief that Messrs. Maase, Nelson and Gunn did not deserve the disciplinary sanctions meted them by the Supreme Court.

Now, the NDC-MP for Akyem-Akwatia would like to make President Mahama fully aware of the fact that should he make the egregious error of granting a pardon to the Montie Three gang members, in the words of Mr. Sam Okudzeto, he would be presiding over his own political funeral. What Baba Jamal clearly seems to be implying here is that the grossly anti-judicial invectives peddled by the Montie Three, in an unmistakable bid to influencing the Apex Courts verdict on the integrity of the current National Voters Register, had the full backing of the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress, if not, in fact, the entire ministerial panoply of the Mahama government.

What makes Mr. Jamal somewhat of a political standout, at least in the wake of his most recent public pronouncement on the fate of the Montie Three, is the Akyem-Akwatia NDC-MPs bold, albeit belated, recognition of the fact that the perennial strategic policy of judicial persecution and intimidation, originally hatched by Chairman Jerry John Rawlings, may, after all, not be the healthiest way of effectively advancing postcolonial Ghanaian democracy, much less facilitate the establishment of a stable and peaceful polity.

He does not specifically say it, but it well appears that closely following in the more legally informed footsteps of Nana Ato Dadzie, the former Rawlings Chief-of-Staff, it has gravely dawned on Mr. Jamal that setting the presidency and, in fact, the executive in general, against the judiciary may not be in the best interest of the nation at large, least of all, whatever legacy Mr. Mahama may want Ghanaians to remember him by.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
The other time I informed my dearest readers about my long-term friend Kofi, who has seen enough of the rot in his beloved NDC and President Mahamas government and threatening to walk out of the NDC Party.

According to Kofi, he has been defending and promoting the partys ethos of probity and accountability for well over twenty three years, but wont be able to continue as the sleaze and corruption have reached immeasurable proportions in Mahamas government.

Kofi insists that the straw that broke the camels back was when President Mahama unjustifiably gave Madam Akua Donkor of Ghana Freedom Party (GFP) two four wheel drive cars and a luxury bungalow for no work done.

Kofis beef stems from the fact that he had worked his socks off all those years for the Party to enjoy power for well over fifteen years and has nothing to show for his efforts.

Meanwhile, parasitic creatures like Madam Akua Donkor are needlessly being showered with all sorts of melodic gifts.

Unsurprisingly, Kofi has demitted his role in the NDC party and has confided in me that he wont even travel to his pooling station on the voting day. He does not see the need to vote for NDC and President Mahama. He is indeed distraught about Mahamas handling of the economy and his maladaptive laissez faire leadership.

In fact, I would have loved for my friend Kofi to vote for a more formidable and competent Nana Akufo Addo, but Kofi is so aggrieved and does not even want to vote for anyone. To be quite honest, I cannot blame him.

Indeed, President Mahama and his NDC government have disappointed the vast majority of Ghanaians with their maladaptive governance. Hence, most discerning Ghanaians dont see the need to travel to the polling station to cast their vote.

And more so a large number of NDC supporters are unhappy with the leadership style of President Mahama and have threatened on numerous occasions to show him the red card.

NDC Supporters Threaten To Leave Party Over Preferential Treatment Given To John Dumelo,Mr.Beautiful,Tracey Boakye and co (ghanakasa.com).

Angry residents of Gbulung and its surrounding communities in the Kumbungu District of the Northern Region, have threatened to boycott the 2016 polls if government fails to fix their road.

About a thousand of them including sub and youth chiefs, opinion leaders and assembly members, joined a massive demonstration on Wednesday August 17, 2016 to express their anger.

They held placards some of which read, John Mahama stop sleeping, NDC since 92 why, JM it is going against us why, We are tired, no road no vote, John Mahama, remember where you are coming from (cityfmonline.com).

Ho residents in the Volta region, called the bluff of the Volta regional Minister, Madam Helen Notoso as they protested over the poor road networks in the municipality. The aggrieved residents say they are tired of governments failure to fix the bad roads in the area. The protestors ignored warnings from the Police and the regional minister not to demonstrate without police protection.

The poor turnout did not however prevent the protestors from presenting a petition to the president through the regional minister.

Some of the demonstrators speaking to Starr News said the bad nature of the roads is making life unbearable for residents. They warned the governing NDC they are likely to lose more votes in the region in the upcoming 2016 elections if the government does not pay attention to their needs (starrfmonline.com ; peacefmonline.com; ghanaweb.com ; modernghana.com).

Obviously, I share my friend Kofi and other discerning Ghanaians pain. However, they should never make the catastrophic mistake of not voting in the general election on 7th December 2016.

They should rather vote for a positive change if they indeed feel aggrieved about Mahamas maladministration.

For if they refuse to vote, their unhappiness will not go away as the non-performing government of President Mahama may be retained by other voters.

K. Badu, UK.
President John Mahama will Monday take his re-election bid to the Northern Region amid a street protest by a coalition of opposition parties in the region.

The President is expected to campaign in Tamale, the regional capital, and other parts of the region.

The Northern Region becomes the second stop for the Presidents campaign after a tour of the Western Region.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) campaign will be visiting markets and institutions to tout the achievements of the Mahama government and make a case for why they should be retained.

A coalition of opposition parties in the region have vowed to protest in the streets ahead of the Presidents visit.

The opposition parties led by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) have threatened to disregard orders of the Police to postpone the demonstration.

The coalition, including the Convention Peoples Party (CPP), Progressive Peoples Party (PPP), National Democratic Party (NDP) and the All Peoples Congress (APC) say it is too late to call off the protest scheduled for Monday. The protest has been nicknamed Times are hard.

Joy News' Northern Region Correspondent, Martina Bugri, says the demonstrators are massing up to march through the streets of Tamale.

The parties are protesting soaring electricity bills and the prices of other items they claim are skyrocketing in the country.

They have appealed to market women, students and all professionals in the region to join them in the cause.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | GN
Some of the empty cartridges, plastic bottles and a shot gun retrieved at the camp

A hidden training camp of robbers has been discovered by the Tema police at Ramseyer Site in Community 3, where armed robbers reportedly practise shooting before they embark on their criminal operations.

The shooting range was discovered following unusual sounds of bullets emanating from the bush, which had put some residents in fear. They therefore, alerted the police.

Police personnel stormed the place where they met a gang of armed robbers going through shooting rehearsals Saturday afternoon.

The suspects, upon seeing the police, allegedly opened fire and so the police also returned fire, which led to the killing of one of the suspects.

Two others managed to escape but the police arrested two others who are assisting with investigations.

The police retrieved empty plastic bottles which they said the suspects use as their targets, 72 shell casings of used AAA cartridges and a shot gun from the training camp.

Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Juliana Obeng, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Tema Regional Police Command, told journalists that on August 20, 2016 at about 2:00 am, the robbery gang attacked Sentuo Steel Limited, a steel manufacturing company in Tema.

According to her, the robbers attacked security men on duty, ransacked offices and residences of the Chinese expatriate at the same premises.

She noted that the suspected criminals made away with unspecified amount of money, mobile phones, iPads, laptops and other valuables.

After the operation, the Tema command picked up information that a gang of suspected armed robbers were rehearsing at a site where police investigation had revealed it's a newly improvised private shooting range located at the Ramseyer Site where they rehearse ostensibly before robbing their targets.

ASP Obeng further stated that police patrol team was quickly dispatched to the place and the robbers, upon seeing them, opened fire, making them (police) return fire.

She further stated that the arrested suspects had admitted during police interrogation that they were part of the gang that successfully robbed Sentuo Steel Friday midnight.

The Tema Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Paul Manly Awini, noted that the shooting range was a new modus of criminal practice where suspects had improved on their tactics due to how sophisticated police in the area had become with the arrest of criminals.

According to him, his outfit was making frantic effort to arrest the other two suspects who escaped, to face the full rigors of the law.

He assured residents of the area of constant police protection, appealing to the public to assist with information to fight crime in order to make the area a crime-free region.

Meanwhile, some residents of the area have raised concern about the incident, saying that the deceased person was not an armed robber.

According to Mr. Edward Papa Akorful, Chairman of One Accord Residents Association, the deceased, whom he named simply as Kwame, was a taxi driver who was returning from a funeral with other friends but told them he was attending nature's call in the bush.

He added, A full-scale investigation should be launched into the matter.

From Vincent Kubi, Tema
Let me share this true election story with you in my attempts to advising all Ghanaian eligible and registered voters to cast their votes wisely in the upcoming 7 December 2016 general election.

There are some electorates out there who will easily deceive themselves by their own actions, inactions, commissions and omissions. There are others that will be deceived by some cunning fellow Ghanaians in their aspirations to either further their political career, enhance their chances of being offered higher political or public appointments or simply to acquire immense wealth.

Those seeking to fool the electorates in pursuit of their selfish secret or open agenda will try to induce their targets (electorates) with one-off offers like the sort of things (outboard motors, China made sewing machines, few kilos of fertilizers, machetes, hoes, tins of sardine and geisha and rice etc.) that President Mahama and the NDC are currently giving out to some people.

The recipients of the electioneering gifts may deceive themselves into thinking that the President is a good person who deserves a second term in office because of the gifts they have been given. They do not think about the consequences of allowing themselves to be fooled by such petty offers that will pale into nothing with the passage of time or within weeks, considering the cost of living and the prices of essential commodities that will skyrocket.

People like Koku Anyidoho, Kofi Adams and the agents and assigns of NDC may come to you, remind you of some done and dusted injurious tribal remark(s) made against an individual of a particular tribe but mistakenly perceived or misconstrued to have been directed at the entire tribe, to incite your anger. As they whip up your anger, their motive is to get you to remember the bitterness of that remark to eventually get you to vote for them.

Hang on a minute; have you checked your personal circumstances? Have you realised how fate has been dealing harshly with you under the NDC government of which toady Koku Anyidoho is a well-placed member earning so much money to pile up body mass weight while you grow lean by each passing day as if famine is your best and inseparable mate?

As they trick you to get your vote, they feed off your ignorance and propensity to get bitter for something that has been dealt with decades or scores ago. Why should you allow them to play on your intelligence in their deplorable quest to stay powerful and rich at all times while you remain destitute?

Sorry for the delay in recounting the main motive behind todays write-up.

During the 2012 general election, I was in Ghana to participate in the electioneering campaign in the hope of getting a comparatively more credible and incorruptible candidate elected as the President of Ghana with a political party of same description.

While I was campaigning for NPP and Nana Akufo Addo, very aware of the bad things the NDC were doing; rotten to the core with corruption, overflowing with lawlessness, nepotism, incompetence, practice of selective justice etc., one Kufour in Kumawu was aggressively actively campaigning for the NDC and President Mahama to win power.

I used to question him about his reasons behind his overly display of such interest in campaigning to see NDC win the election. He would not tell me but continued with all the energy he could muster, boarding the NDC campaign vehicles, leading in the singing of their campaign chorus, and being conspicuous in all their campaign activities.

All my advice to him to see reason or relent on his active campaign for a party that does not mean well for the collective interests of Ghanaians but a selected few of whom he was not included, fell on deaf ears.

Luckily for him, President Mahama and the NDC were declared the winners of the election by the Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyans Electoral Commission. Come and see, how jubilant Kufuor was, joining cars moving up and down the streets of Kumawu, blowing their horns.

At nightfall, he met me in the street on my way to my in-laws house. He approached me, pleaded with me to give him money to buy food to eat as he had not eaten the whole day. Instantly, I got furious and chastised him saying, your party has just won the election, go to your partys local leaders to ask for money. I have no money to give to you.

Kufour: Please, I am very hungry. My son has come from Kumasi to visit me today. He is at home but I have no money to buy him food tonight. We shall be starving so please help me.

Rockson: Kufour did you hear what I told you? I said, go and collect money from your party leaders, I have nothing to give to you. Were you not the one who had been campaigning actively for the NDC and President Mahama to win the election even though you knew very well that the party does not mean any good for the ordinary people like you and I? Go to them and stop disturbing me.

Kufuor: Please, help me or else I will have nothing to eat and my son is already hungry.

Rockson: You have just voted NDC. You were very active, if not more active than anyone in your camp to campaign for NDC, go to them and they will surely help you.

Kufour: No, they wont!

Rockson: Why then did you put up that conspicuous campaign attitude? You have voted for the party that will help you so go to them and leave me alone. Did I not warn you to vote for a party that cares for the entire people of Ghana? You have made a choice, deal with it.

I started walking away. He ran to me and said, please help me because I am very hungry. I am even more worried about what my son will eat tonight. I have no money.

Rockson: You have just voted NDC. Why are you bothering me with your problem? You dont listen when we advise you.

Kufour: Let me confess to you, I did not vote NDC. I know what party I voted for.

Rockson: Stop taking me for a fool. Did I not see how you were campaigning and how you refused all my admonition to you to be careful of what you were doing?

Kufuor: Before God and man, I did not vote NDC. I know the party I voted for. I was alone in the polling booth and I know the person and party I voted for. If I had not shown active interest in the campaign in favour of NDC, they would have sacked me from my job.

Rockson: What job are you talking about?

Kufour: I work for "Zoom lion", employed by the District Assembly. Please help me for I have told you the truth.

As compassionate as I am and have always been, and knowing Kufour from my infancy, attending the same Church with him for about two years during my days as a student at Kumawu Tweneboa Kodua Secondary School, I gave him GHC10.

He thanked me profusely and said, now, I can go home in peace, get my son and then visit Obaatanpa (name of a Chop bar  restaurant) to buy something to eat.

Why should people do things that they will soon regret for? Why should you campaign and vote for a party that you know cannot help you nor has your interest at heart? Why?

I hope people will think very deep; reflect on their aspirations, before they campaign and vote for a party.

The NDC has nothing good to offer Ghanaians. They are only good at fooling you by their promises and one-off gifts. Please, think about the future. Think about your long term wellbeing in order not to allow NDC and President Mahama fool you for the second time.

Do not be like Kufuor who just after his party has won the election, started feeling the mistaken pain of voting or campaigning for it.

This Kufour I am talking about has just passed about two or three weeks ago. I am yet to find out if his funeral has taken place already. May his soul rest in perfect peace.

I call on all Ghanaian electorates to vote for a party and person who care about the collective interests of Ghanaians. You have seen NDC. Dont allow them to fool you with gifts that will soon pale into insignificance when the harshness of the economy comes to bite you hard.

Vote for a change. Vote for Nana Akufo Addo and the NPP. Try Nana Akufo Addo to see the difference.

Rockson Adofo
Ghana must go to the polls come December 7th and not November 7th because our lawmakers in a beautiful edifice in Accra called parliament are still in love with the darling and so have no plans of filing for a divorce anytime soon. The love is still deeper than that which is between lovebirds in a televised telenovela.

Without any shred of doubt, we shall elect our leaders to man the affairs of the country for the next four years not because we do not like president Mahama and the Members of parliament, but we have subscribed to a way of governance called Democracy and a neatly codified book of rules and regulations and respective punishments for our guidance called constitution which is a supreme book for charging and prosecuting those who behave contrary.

In this book, article 42 reads Every citizen of Ghana of eighteen years of age or above and of sound mind has the right to vote and is entitled to be registered as a voter for the purpose of public elections and referenda. Relative to this article, you have the right to choose who leads you base on your philosophical and political conviction. For the records, I am unlearned lawyer who just shoplifted an article from a public document.

Imagine how time flies, 2016 is finally here and soon shall December 7th for us to have a taste of what happened four years back. You can call it elections but I will call it the test of democracy. Ghana have gone through stages aimed at making her elections credible and open. From the days of opaque ballot boxes to transparent ballot boxes and now to the almighty Biometric registration as a way of reducing double registration and double voting.

The political environment is filled with realistic campaign messages and polluted by political promises that are cock-eyed aiming to win the votes of loyal and floating voters. The environment is charged up with comments that are unpalatable to the airwaves and unpleasant to the discerning listening Ghanaian ear. The political temperature has reached a boiling point like a boiling point program on Oman FM and bears a striking resemblance of Pampaso program on Muntie Fm.

Some became contemnors and ended up as inmates. Others yielded to a certain malady by debasing womanhood. Some participated in democratic exercises and subsequently became one-eyed. Every stakeholder is leaving no stone unturned in order that we have free and fair elections. A cohort of citizen vigilantes has visited the apex court of the land as though they were a group of commoners seeking a biometric birth certificate from the Birth and Death Registry to seek a clarity about who supposed to be a voter in our electoral roll because to them, a card that can be owned by all including noncitizens for the purpose of healthcare access being a proof of citizenship cannot fly in the face of law and common sense. Luckily enough, their arguments were upheld by the superior court of the land.

Some through biometric facial recognition devices, has produced ten percent of allege non Ghanaians in our register with a promised ninety percent on the run. Pro political party pressure groups have mounted series of demonstrations on the electoral commission to register their displeasure about a register they said was incurable flawed. The electoral commission did their part in making the controversial book clean like a clean sheet by expunging names of those who registered with National Health Insurance Cards in compliance with the ruling of the supreme court. The cacophony did not end there!

The Charlotte Oseis outfit was none pressure-phobic. A graphic designer was hired to put a mixture of colours together to produce a new logo which many thought was needless, misplaced of priority and waste of scarce economic resources. Some political parties did not panic a bit as they say would not contribute to their electoral fortunes. Others maintained that the commission has so many issues to deal with that is in sync to having a credible and fair elections including the incurably flawed register.

African politics is dissimilar and surreal like the Ghanaian voter. What informs the voters decision is unthinkable! Some vote parties base on sectionalism, religion, ethnicity and tribalism (hard truth). Others can travel on a road of potholes from Kpandai to Kpatinga, which was a campaign promise by a political party in the last four years to still vote for same political party. Likewise, the voter has no interest in microeconomic indicators as he does not seem to understand and eat Gross Domestic Product or chances are that he might be arrested one day over Ghanas public debt.

The politician will bring goods that are attractive. You know why? the Ghanaian voter is notorious and goods-sensitive. The actions and inactions of the politician in this period to some degree, is because of the voter. To every action, there must be a reaction, nay, actions and reactions are equal and opposite though I am not a physicist. An ill-informed voter in Dzolokpuita and akyerekyerekrom in the Volta and Ashanti Region respectively will just vote regardless of a document called manifesto purporting to be selling the ideas of a political party having unbridled appetite for political power. Arguably, we are all politicians not only the politicians!

We have only one Ghana so peaceful elections is paramount. Political parties come and go but Ghana continues to remain as a beacon of democracy in sub - Saharan Africa. This hard won accolade and reputation must be jealously guarded by all. Election is about ballots and not bullets. National Peace Council is doing their best and so the other stakeholders, what about you? Do not allow yourself to be used as a foundation block for somebodys future. If a clueless political party cannot convince you with a development policy, convince not yourself to snatch a ballot box on election day.

Vote but dont take part in violence. I have pledged not to indulge in violence with those who indulged therein. Dont wield a machete to fight for a political party that cannot convince an electorate with a policy but rather be a bystander. It is an irresponsibility of highest order, finding it difficult to divorce violence from political activism. The former brings irreparable damage and irreplaceable losses and the latter is basically the application of common sense to bring out practical development policies geared towards winning elections through the ballot box.

This upcoming elections is crucial but peaceful elections is the most crucial. Some think it is an election that must be won in their third attempt. Others say it is an election they must win just not to become a one term administration in the history books. Equally, some will not allow the hope in their loyalists to die down as they hope to perform miracle like Jesus Christ on the election day. But from my ignorant point of view, I think it is an examination of democracy we must not trail at all cost. The international community is watching. lets make ourselves proud in the face of the watchers and shame the many eyes of the naysayers.

Quick reminder worth reminding! The constitution made reference to those who are eighteen years and above and of SOUND MIND so let your sound mind guide you on election day. Mad men who are eighteen years and above cannot take part in that sound minded activity so dont make yourself a replica of them.

Ghana is boarded eastwards by Togo. They speak French, I would not be comfortable there because I dont understand French maybe you are a Frenchman. Same can be talked of our westward border and northward border to the La CoteDivoire and Burkina Faso respectively. Let us not forget that Ghana is boarded southwards to the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. Living there is an impossibility needless to talk of your comfortability because you are not an amphibian.

Exercising of franchise is not synonymous with violence. Say no to violence and say yes to a Peaceful election because we cant afford to describe Ghana as the country that rose from the ashes of war one day.

God bless Ghana.

The writer is a student studying BSc.Computing-with- Accounting at UDS, Navrongo Campus;

Email: [email protected]

Contact: 0506262345/0248805809.

Alhassan A. Alhassan.
Another election season is staring us in the face and many people are wondering what the outcome of this year's elections will be, considering the back and forth and legal brouhaha that characterized the last elections in 2012.

I am very confident that Ghana will once again pull through this tough test and our democracy will continue to thrive over and over again, come December 7th and beyond. Indeed, our founding fathers built a legacy of political tolerance and patience which will forever be the hallmark of our political success.

It can be recalled that the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) founded by J.B. Danquah and the big six in1947 asked for self-governance "in the shortest possible time" from colonial rule until the arrival of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah who was a bit radical and advocated for "self-governance now." This is to drive home the fact that Ghanaians naturally are patient and peace loving people who are tolerant and believe that the best interest of the country is second to none. We have seen successive elections since 1992 and the peaceful transfer of power between different political parties without bloodshed.

Who would have thought that Jerry John Rawlings would relinquish power to J. A. Kufuor after the 2000 elections? He did that for the love of Ghana. The late professor Mills, who had been hand-picked to be the successor of Rawlings, gracefully conceded and accepted the verdict in good faith and asked for nothing but asumdwe (peace). Our level of tolerance makes us who we are as a nation and nobody can take that away from us.

Time and time again, we have continued to set the bar so high to challenge ourselves and we always emerge as one unified strong nation with a common destiny. We may belong to different political parties or believe in different a political ideology, which is okay. That is what democracy and nation building is all about. The bottom line is the prosperity, well-being and security of all citizens.

The future safety and security of Ghana squarely rest on the shoulders of our current political players, particularly the incumbent candidate, President John Dramani Mahama and opposition leader Nana Addo Danquah Akuffu Addo. Their egocentric conduct and rhetoric during the electioneering campaigns will determine the political temperature of the land before and after the elections.

They owe the country a great duty and responsibility to do everything in their capacity to prevent it from engulfing in flames. They must desist from bigotry and inciting unnecessary violence when the scales fail to tilt their way. Ghanaians cannot afford to jeopardize the freedom we are enjoying nor endanger the property we have toiled to acquire and become refugees in neighboring countries due to the selfish interest of an individual.

It will be ludacris and suicidal to also blame their failure on voter fraud which is inevitable in every election on this planet including the United States of America. Advanced countries have learned to accept election results as free and fair if voter fraud is found to be minimal. This is the only country we can call home and none other. Lets not get so obsessed with our political leaders for they are mere mortals like us who badly need our votes to live up to their dreams. We must stand up against them if they try to divide or sow the seed of rancor between us. They should make a strong case with convincing policies to substantiate why we the people must hire them into office.

As citizens, it is imperative that we carefully assess the promises these candidates will make and see if they are realistic, measurable and achievable and exercise our civic responsibility by voting and voting wisely regardless of party affiliations.

Shani Mohammed ( [email protected] ), Atlanta Georgia, USA.
High-ranking government officials, including former Interior Minister, Mark Woyongo, have been interrogated by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), on the controversial Mahama Ford gift saga.

The officials were made to answer questions on Mahama's decision to accept the gift from a Burkinabe contractor, Djibril Kanazoe, when he (Mahama) was vice president in 2012.

Sources close to CHRAJ confirmed this to Citi News.

The CHRAJ investigators are also expected to present its report on the saga by the end of August 2016.

Mr Woyongo, who is now a minister of state at the presidency, was the Upper East Regional Minister through whom the Ford Expedition vehicle was sent to President Mahama, after allegedly receiving it from the then Ambassador to Burkina Faso, Chief Dauda Bawumia.

The Youth League of the Convention People's Party (CPP), the Progressive People's Party (PPP) and a private citizen, (Nana Adofo Ofori) petitioned CHRAJ with claims of conflict of interest against the president and called for an investigation into his receipt of the gift.

The presidency subsequently submitted volumes of documents to the Commission, in which he (Mahama) rejected accusations of bribery and corruption leveled against him.

CHRAJ is in custody of the vehicle's log book and other relevant documents to guide it bring closure to the matter after investigaions.



Background

President Mahama came under intense public criticism for accepting the Ford gift worth about $100,000 from the contractor, allegedly to influence him.

The Burkinabe admitted giving President Mahama a Ford Expedition vehicle, for which the president called to thank him.

The gift, according to reports, was bait by the contractor to win a bid to execute the Dodo Pepeso-Nkwanta road construction project.

Mr Kanazoe's company had also been contracted to build a wall at a cost of over half a million dollars, for the Ghana Embassy in Ouagadougou.



Mahama's Letter To CHRAJ

President Mahama, in a letter signed by his lawyer, Tony Lithur, asked CHRAJ to dismiss the allegation of conflict of interest.

In the letter addressed to the acting Chairperson of CHRAJ, President Mahama held that he was innocent of all the allegations leveled against him.
The Donkorkrom incident is nightmarish and disturbing. The knee-jerk reaction of the Police Administration has not helped matters.

While we do not begrudge the Inspector General of Police (IGP) and his management board for taking such decision, we think that closing down the station there is tantamount to leaving the residents of the town to their fate; it also leaves an impression of cowardice on the part of the law enforcement system.

It is the responsibility of the State to provide security to citizens, regardless of the cost of such service.

For the law enforcement system, which draws authority from the constitution to perform this onerous and often dangerous mission, to withdraw its presence from a trouble spot even for a second suggests shirking of responsibility.

We might not be privy to what informed such a decision of national security implications, suffice it to, however, state that it falls short of security wisdom.

We hasten to state that the earlier the decision is rescinded the better it would be for the maintenance of law and order in what has become a flashpoint, albeit temporarily.

It is unfortunate that the residents of the town vent their umbrage upon the law enforcement agents. Although it was irritating to learn that two arrested cops had escaped under questionable circumstances, the torching of a police station fell short of civility.

While the action of some of the residents is condemnable and should not be entertained under any circumstance, it is an expression of angst by a frustrated people which cuts across the country.

The socio-economic challenges in the country have led to frustration which needs only a small spark to ignite.

The Donkorkrom issue should be a wakeup call for the authorities to go beyond what they are doing currently to address the teething problems facing the nation: unemployment being one of the most crucial and parlous.

We do not know how the broken bridge between the law enforcement agents and the locals is going to be mended.

There have been arrests of suspects, action which has fueled the already tensed situation.

An assemblyman, who the police claim is at the centre of the unlawful action by the residents, is being held much to the chagrin of the people of Donkorkrom. An uneasy calm is reigning in Donkorkrom: let cool heads replace the haughtiness on both sides so that normalcy would be restored.

We would also use this opportunity to call for a better screening of prospective recruits because the occasional implication of police officers in criminal activities which triggered the mayhem in Donkorkrom is the result of interference in the recruitment process. Integrity standards appear to have been lowered because of interference by top politicians whose party is in power.

It is really unacceptable for police officers who are cited in robbery operations to make such negative headlines.
The alleged abuse of incumbency purportedly exhibited by the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) when President John Dramani Mahama visited the Sekondi Zongo in the Western Region last Thursday assumed the highest proportion.

DAILY GUIDE learnt that while the President  who doubles as 2016 presidential candidate of the party  was interacting with the Zongo chiefs, some activists of the ruling party stormed the region's NPP Zongo for Change office in the area and ordered for its closure because the president was in the vicinity.

Residents in the area asserted that some supporters of the NDC in the company of some security personnel, demanded that the NPP office should be closed until the president had left the area.

The NDC activists also ordered that a pickup which was embossed with the photographs of the NPP flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-addo and his running mate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, which was parked far away from where the president was, be moved away.

The people indicated that the only reason given by the party activists for their action bordered on security. However, the NPP office was far away from where the president was meeting with the Zongo chiefs.

DAILY GUIDE gathered that the few NPP supporters who were around at the time of the incident attempted to resist the NDC activists, but were overpowered and so the office was eventually closed until President Mahama finished his meeting with the chiefs.

Eyewitnesses pointed out that if the NPP activists in the Zongo community were to be at the office in their numbers at the time of the incident, the situation would have been disgusting.

Confirming the story in an interview with DAILY GUIDE, Labib Ali, Western Regional Coordinator of 'NPP Zongo for Change,' claimed that on that fateful day he was at the office when he saw his own brother, Alhaji Sanusi, an NDC activist, together with some people, claimed to be personnel of the national security, approaching.

They came straight to me and asked me to move the NPP pickup away from where it was parked, which was even far away from where the president was. Their reason was that the president did not want to see any NPP vehicle in the area, Labib Ali narrated.

According to him, his brother told him that if he (Ali) wanted peace, he should see to it that the vehicle was moved away else he (Alhaji Sanusi) would bring a towing van to tow the vehicle from the vicinity.

Ali pointed out that he later received calls from some executive members of the NPP in Sekondi asking him to comply with the instructions by the NDC to forestall any conflict.

So I decided to call the driver to come and move the vehicle away. Unfortunately, I called the driver about 13 times but he did not pick my calls, so I left the area.

Some minutes later, I had a call that I should rush to the office and when I got there, I saw my brother and the security personnel forcefully closing the office, he averred.

Ali told DAILY GUIDE that he explained to the security men that the driver was not picking his calls and so he, together with one Saliu Ahmed, tried to prevent the NDC activists from closing the NPP office but they were overpowered.

An ardent supporter of the NPP at Sekondi Zongo, popularly known as Sansiro, attributed the incident partly to the fact that the NDC had realized that the NPP was making inroads at the Sekondi Zongo.

He stressed that the era when the NDC used some Muslim youth to cause mayhem in certain communities was past and that the youth had resolved to support the NPP and Dr Mahamudu Bawumia.

Sekondi has been the stronghold of the NPP, and so we the Muslims are working hard to increase the votes and also win massively in all the Zongo communities to ensure that Nana Addo becomes the next president and Dr Bawumia the vice president, he added.



NDC Reacts

When DAILY GUIDE contacted Alhaji Sanusi, who claimed to be a regional executive member of the NDC and the elder brother of Ali, he indicated that the NDC had to close the NPP office for security reason.

According to him, since there were lots of NDC supporters in the area when the president visited Sekondi, it was prudent for the NPP vehicle to be moved away and get the office closed because the NDC activists could have vandalized the vehicle and things at the office.

Oh this is no issue, Labib Ali is my brother and so looking at the crowd that gathered at the area, we wanted to protect the NPP office and the vehicle, he told DAILY GUIDE.

Later in the evening of Thursday, the president addressed supporters of the NDC at the Sekondi main lorry park where he told Ghanaians that he had done his best for the country by executing numerous infrastructural projects.

From Emmanuel Opoku, Sekondi


The Western Regional branch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has described President John Dramani Mahama's comments that the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) slept while on his tour of the region and for that matter, could not see the development projects in the area as an insult not only on the opposition leader, but also the chiefs and people of the region.

Mr Mahama, while on his tour of the region last week, took a swipe at the flag bearer of the NPP, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, when the latter complained of the deplorable road network in the Western Region.

Nana Akufo-Addo assured the people that should he win the elections to become the next president of Ghana, he would rehabilitate the poor roads.

President Mahama then reacted to the observation of Nana Akufo-Addo saying he (Nana) slept during his five-day tour of the region and that was the reason why he (Nana Addo) did not see the numerous road projects in the region.

A statement issued and signed by Okatakyie Amankwaa Afrifa, Western Regional NPP Communications Director, on Friday, August 19 said: We see this not only as an insult to Nana Akufo-Addo, but also the chiefs and people of the Western Region.

The Western Rgional branch of the NPP will like to place on record that it is the chiefs and people in the region who first complained about the roads to Nana Akufo-Addo.

The statement therefore called on the president to apologize to the chiefs and people of the area.

The following chiefs  Ogyeahorhuor Kwaku Gyebi II of the Anhwiaso Traditional Area, Nana Kojo Adoah IV of Adabokrom, Nana Aning Baffour II of Essam, Nana Ntaadu III of Bonzai, Nana Kwame Nkrumah I of Bodi, Nana Badu Kwasi Kwarteng II of Akontombra and the chiefs and people of Prestea-Heman, all mentioned the bad state of their roads as their number one concern, the party indicated.

How can a president who has made infrastructural projects his main campaign message think it is wise and decent to insult those who ask for the same thing? Isn't this strange? it queried.



Appreciation

Meanwhile, the leadership of the NPP in the Western Region have expressed their heartfelt appreciation to the chiefs and people of Bibiani Anhwiaso Bekwai, Sefwi Wiawso, Bia East, Bia West, Bodi, Sefwi Akontombra, Suaman, Wassa Amenfi West, Central and East, Prestea Huni Valley, Tarkwa Nsuaem and Sekondi Constituencies for their love and support during the five-day tour of the region by Nana Akufo-Addo.

We were overwhelmed by the support shown to the NPP and hope the numbers will translate into votes for the NPP come December 7. This, we believe, will help change the fortunes of the Western Region and the country, the party expressed.

The statement indicated, The time has come for change of government and a change for our betterment and development. This we believe will get Ghana working again.

Okatakyie Amankwaa Afrifa also commended the people of the region for accepting the 'One District, One Factory' policy of the NPP and believed that with the regions numerous resources, the next NPP government would create jobs and wealth for all.

We also thank the Western Region 2016 Campaign Team members, our MPs and parliamentary candidates and all constituency and polling station executives who contributed directly and indirectly. We say thank you. We hope you will be vigilant and give of your best on December 7 to help us recapture power from this incompetent NDC, the statement underscored.

From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi
Answers Africa is one of a kind platform created for Africans both locally and in the diaspora and those seeking for more in-depth information about Africa. We have always focused on creating the highest quality informational contents right from the beginning. We share the most relevant information on the latest and trending news, events, people, and places in Africa.

We produce contents across various categories including Politics, People, Love and Romance, Nature, Entertainment, Technology and pretty much everything else that Africans may find relevant.

We aim to answer the most relevant questions about Africa in areas of entertainment, famous people, emerging technologies while we also engage with various distribution capabilities to connect with Africans in need of information who rely on our website to keep in touch with the world that is changing so fast.

These are some of the articles you may be interested in reading:

10 Famous TV Personalities Born In Ethiopia Ethiopia is a country best known for its fast athletes like Dibaba and Bekele, breathtaking models like Liya Kebede and of course Haile Selassie but there are also famous TV personalities who are doing a great job in entertainment and pushing the country to civilization. The following is a list of ten most famous TV ...

Top 10 African Authors of All Time The pace of present African literature is moving at a high-speed; more defiant in both style and tone than those of the great independence writers generation. Here, the subjects of taboo are widely explored. The emerging African authors of this generation are not afraid to go further afield for the literary fodder. Meanwhile, since the birth ...

Maina Kageni Biography  Daughter, Salary and Gay Rumors Maina Kageni is one of those Kenyans who has remained as interesting as ever in the eyes of the public. A strong Red devil fan and lover of football, the man is currently a Breakfast Show presenter with Mwalimu Kingangi on Nairobis Classic 105 Radio Station. Many questions have always emerged on the man in serious ...

Kalekye Mumo  Biography, Boyfriend and Salary Kalekye Mumo has been described as someone who is as vibrant as she is beautiful, a Kenyan radio queen, TV host and media personality, movie actress, Musician, businesswoman, and fashionista but what else is there to know about this Kenyan icon, Kalekye Mumo and her co-host Shaffie Weru have been among the most listened to radio presenters ...

Julie Gichuru Bio  Age, Husband & Children In Africa, women have a long history of bringing under control obstacles to keep their heads above the water. So, it comes as no surprise whenever African women are recognized and decorated across the continent and globe for performing brilliantly well in their various fields of endeavor. In Kenya for instance, a list of national ...

Jeff Koinange Biography  All About His Age, Wife  Shaila Koinange & Family Jeff Koinange is a well-known Kenyan journalist. He currently hosts Jeff Koinange Live on KTN. Koinange has served as a journalist in the United States and has also worked for a few U.S. broadcasters. He was born in Kenya but attended college in the United States, which may explain his accent. There are several interesting ...

Caroline Mutoko Biography  Age, Daughter & House Caroline Mutoko is a Kenyan radio presenter, famously known for hosting a morning breakfast show on Kiss 100 FM. The station is based in Nairobi and ranks among the highly-rated radio stations in Kenya with online streaming services as well. Learn more about the Kenyan-born journalist. Caroline Mutokos Age and Bio Born on January 4, 1973, Caroline is ...

The Most Stunning News Presenter In Kenya Discloses Her Real Age  You Would Not Believe It In modern African societies, it is often regarded as impolite or outright lack of disrespect to ask a woman of her age. We also have seen celebrities lie about how old they are when asked their age. People, mostly women have refused to let people know their real age, despite being public figures. The few ...

Demystifying Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies Biography, Husband & Education Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian novelist, non-fiction writer, short story writer and actress. As a seasoned Nigerian writer, she has been called the most prominent of a procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors that is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature. She has been making Nigeria proud in the global scene ...

Wole Soyinka  Biography, Wife, Children, Family, Quick Facts Professor Wole Soyinka, a great and brilliant Nigerian writer and political activist, who was the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The name, Wole Soyinka, is a household name both in Africa and beyond especially in the field of literature. With over 50 pieces of work, his writing includes poems, novels, memoirs ...

5 Most Vulgar Kenyan Radio Presenters It appears being vulgar is the real deal nowadays especially for the fact that the world is becoming more exposed and civilized. Sadly, but true, young people are constantly being exposed to images, discussions, and content that most people would deem detrimental to the African culture and moral statutes. This is because most of us ...

6 Sexiest News Anchors In Kenya Some news anchors have been stealing eyes every time they appear on-screen. Most of us hardly concentrate on the programme they present as our entire focus is usually on their striking physique and beautiful faces. It is common knowledge that Kenyan women are amazingly beautiful. From the celebrities to the everyday woman, they are all in ...

Interesting Oprah Winfrey Quotes To Keep You Motivated Oprah Winfrey is one of the worlds most powerful women in the media and business sectors. Her life is the typical success story that motivates and lifts ones morale. One amazing thing about this media mogul is her sincerity about past hurts, mistakes, healing, and success. The renowned talk show host and media personality is the first ...

Chinua Albert Achebe Biography- Family, Net Worth & Death Chinua Albert Achebe, of blessed memory, was a Nigerian prolific author best known for his inventive style of writing and simplicity of expressions. Famed as one of the finest writers Nigeria has ever produced, Achebe lived and died an international hero and a literary giant, who left behind unforgettable legacies and footprints in the sands of ...

Steve Harvey  His Wife, Kids & Height Steve Harvey is an American comedian, actor, radio and TV show host, producer and an author of different relationship advice books. Steve Harveys Early Life Born in Welch, West Virginia, on January 17, 1957, as Broderick Stephen Harvey, Steve was the last of five children. His family relocated to Cleveland when he was young and there, he attended Glenville High School from ...

Intriguing Things You Should Know About Danny Kokers Rise to Fame and Who His Wife Is Danny Koker is popular as the star of the History Channel reality TV series, Counting Cars. Prior to him appearing on the show, the TV personality was a musician who had embarked on a number of national tours with his rock group, Counts 77. He and his group have released quite a number of songs ...

Fun Facts You Didnt Know About Andy Cohens Rise to Prominence and His Partner Andy Cohen is one of Americas top media personalities who gained prominence after helping to bring the Bravo network back to life. He also hosted a couple of shows on the network, including the popular nightly series Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. After rising to the position of head of production and development at ...

Tracing Isha Sesays Career Until CNN, Her Worth And Why She Divorce Her Husband As far as journalists of African origin go, Isha Sesay is one of the most famous on the continent  and by extension, the world. The Sierra Leonean and British journalist has had a successful career since she joined the industry in 1998. In that time, she has worked for a host of major media ...

Open Secrets of How Joanna Gaines Balances Her Career With Being a Wife and Mother Joanna Gaines is the co-founder of Magnolia Homes, a business she runs with one goal: converting houses to homes. She doubles as the lead designer of the company which she co-owns with her husband, Chip Gaines. Lady Gaines gained massive popularity when she became a co-star with her husband on the HGTVs show, Fixer Upper. ...

Juicy Details of Ayesha Currys Love Story With Stephen, Her Family Members and Recent Pursuits When your husband is one of the greatest basketballers that the NBA has ever seen, then it bestows on you the status of a celebrity wife  and may not even demand that you do anything extra to maintain that status. However, Ayesha Curry, the wife of multiple NBA champion, Steph Curry, is not one ...

What Is Tarek el Moussas Ethnicity, Why Did He Divorce His Wife and Who Is He Dating? Tarek El Moussa has made himself one of the most recognizable men on reality television, especially to fans of HGTV. Thanks to his expertise in the world of real estate, Tarek has become a national star. But even to his hardcore followers, there are questions about Tarek El Moussa that remain unanswered, such as his ...

Fun Facts About Natalie Beckers Lonely Childhood and Eventual Career Success Natalie Becker is an actress of South African descent who became famous for her appearance in films like The World Unseen and The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior. A multitalented individual, Natalie is also a television/radio presenter. She is also a co-founder of the Thought Leader Global Media which she runs together with ...

Top 3 Female CNN News Anchors You Didnt Know Were Africans CNN is one of the leading news agencies in the world. The satellite and cable news network was founded in 1980 by Ted Turner and has been one of the best sources of news for a number of years. It also boasts of the best journalists and presenters all around in media broadcasting. The company is a ...

Channels That Aided Katie Pavlichs Growth as a Journalist and All About Her Marriage To Friedson If you have ever come across any Fast and Furious featuring Barack Obama, it is the handiwork of Katie Pavlich. The book which claims to have exposed Obamas bloodiest scandal and the shameless cover-up thereof, has been earning Pavlich much praise and fame ever since it was published in 2012. Nonetheless, Pavlich is more famed ...

Is Oprah Winfrey Married? Husband, Children, Biography, House, Facts Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire philanthropist, talk show icon, producer, actress, and writer. The media icon famously dubbed The Queen Of All Media owns and hosts the highest-rated television program in the media circle. Read more about the powerful television star below. Oprah Winfrey Biography Oprah was born as Orpah Gail Winfrey on January 29, 1954, to a ...

Who Is Arsenio Hall, What Happened To His Talk Show and Why Do Fans Think He Is Gay? He is one of the funniest beings to have graced the comedy constituent of the American entertainment industry. Arsenio Hall has a reputation for the rib-cracking disposition always portrayed in his comedy roles. He is not just a comedian; he is also an actor and a former talk show host for his popular show, The ...

What Is Woah Vicky Famous For and Who Are Her Family Members? Like most social media celebrities in this digital era, Woah Vicky is one of those stars that have utilized the internet as a powerful tool to propel themselves to instant fame. The social media space, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc., offers lots of people the right opportunities and potentials to become superstars overnight. Not everyone achieves ...

Where Is Michael Strahan Since His Retirement From The NFL and Who Is His Partner? Michael Strahan is a retired American football player turned media personality. He played the defensive lineman position and holds the record for most sacks in a single NFL season. He also only played for the New York Giants throughout the entire 15-year professional career that saw him win a Super Bowl ring. In February 2014, ...

How Wendy Williams Went From Being a College DJ to Having Her Own Talk Show and More About Her Divorce Wendy Williams is a former radio personality, now talk show host, who is known for her outspokenness and brash no-nonsense attitude. She gained fame and notoriety for her on-air clashes with celebrities before moving on to host her own talk show. Since 2008, Williams has hosted the nationally syndicated television talk show, The Wendy Williams Show. ...

Who is Sunny Hostin? Her Husband, Family & Net Worth Sunny Hostin is no ordinary Latina  American lawyer but also a successful columnist, multi-platform journalist, and social commentator. A happily married woman and mother of two, Hostin is the Senior Legal Correspondent and Analyst for ABC News and co-host of ABCs popular morning talk show, The View. She is a legal expert popularly known as a former ...

Who Is Robert Costa and Is He Married, Who Is His Wife? Robert Costa is a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC who is regarded as being part of Americas next generation of journalists. The University of Notre Dame graduate, who is of Italian/Portuguese descent, has been lauded for his fresh political perspectives in an industry full of old heads. In addition to his work listed above, Costa ...

Team Valor Pokemon Go  7 Key Facts You Need To Know Team Valor Pokemon Go  The craze of the new game Pokemon Go is one that took the gaming world by storm sending teenagers and adults alike into a frenzy and one of its teams Team Valor, has proven to be instrumental in making it so. Before the game was created, Pokemon was a cartoon ...

Sheryl Underwood  Husband, Family & Net Worth She is known for her trademark smile which can be described as the brightest and broadest smile ever seen on planet earth. She is none other than Sheryl Underwood the comedian, actress, and TV host whose funny wits has left America in great awe. Although Sheryl has risen to become an important personality in the industry, ...

Team Mystic Pokemon Go: 7 Facts You Need To Know And Signs You Are One Team Mystic of the break out game Pokemon Go is a team that is full of sass and chivalry. With an enchanting monicker, Team Mystic stands out from the rest of its counterparts and deserves to take the crown as champion in the Pokemon gaming-verse. To be a member of this exceptional team of Pokemon battle ...

Exploring Guy Beahms Dr Disrespect Persona, Wife and Why He was Banned Permanently From Twitch Guy Beahm who is popularly known by his online alias  Dr DisRespect, is an award-winning Twitch.tv streamer. He has leveraged on the Twitch platform to become an internet personality that is quite widely known. His online success is just more proof that anyone who is good at what they do can attain celebrity status ...

Critical Facts About Lee Ann McAdoo  The Infowars Anchor Lee Ann Mcadoo is a conservative journalist and television host whose interests in conspiracies and astrology has established her as a famous American reporter. Often referred to as Wonder Woman, McAdoo is a reporter who works for InfoWars.com, a controversial right-wing website run by radio show host, Alex Jones. Who Is Lee Ann McAdoo? Lee Ann McAdoo was born on 7 ...

Millie Weaver  Age, Husband & Infowars Career Millie Weaver is an American model, journalist, political activist, and social commentator. The young and beautiful journalist rose to fame working as a reporter for a controversial right-wing website InfoWars.com. Also known as Millennial Millie, Weaver is a social media influencer with over 100,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel and over 35,000 followers on Twitter. Who Is Millie Weaver and What Is ...

Is Jessica Tarlov Married? What Are Her Height & Weight? Jessica Tarlov is an American political consultant, strategist, and analyst whose influential and regular TV presence has made a popular figure. A good example of beauty with brains, Tarlov has appeared on various TV networks, mostly the FOX News Network where she is known for her liberal views on political analysis and insights. She is also the senior director ...

Who Is Kelly Rebecca Nichols  Alex Jones Ex-Wife? Kelly Rebecca Nichols is the ex-wife of controversial American radio show host, Alex Jones. She got nationwide attention following her divorce and subsequent custody battle with her estranged husband. Nichols, who worked with PETAs public relations department, was herself no stranger to controversies as she was involved in several publicity stunts of the non-profit animal rights ...

Who Is Bree Morgan  Cole Sprouse Ex-Girlfriend And What Is She Up To Now? Although Bree Morgan became famous through the Instagram, she also sapped some dose of popularity from Disneys sweetheart, Cole Sprouse of the Sprouse brothers. She is not only an Instagram star but also a YouTube vlogger whose popularity has long exceeded the ordinary level. Bree is conspicuously prominent on the internet and has her digital savviness ...

Does Vanna White Have Husband or Children, What Is Her Net Worth / Salary? For over three decades, Vanna White has been a household name, famous as the co-host and letter turner of the iconic NBC game show Wheel of Fortune. The talented and beautiful television personality is also an actress with several TV series and films to her credit. Since making her Wheel of Fortune debut in 1982, she has become one ...

Liz Wheeler  Biography, Husband & Net Worth Liz Wheeler is the kind of girl who sets the room on fire whenever she comes around. In this situation, however, she sets our screens on fire each time she appears as the host of One America News Tipping Point. She is, therefore, a presenter, publisher, consultant and a member of the Board of Zoning ...

Betty White  Net Worth, Children & Husband The entertainment industry will remain indebted to personalities like Betty White who brought something extra to the table and kept the world entertained for donkey years. The comedienne, actress, and writer graced the big screens in the early 50s as a show host and has been a delight since then. She is the queen of ...

Is Bill Nye (The Science Guy) Dead or Alive, What Are His Net Worth & Education? Everyone will always remember Bill Nye as the Science Guy. Besides his TV show Bill Nye the Science Guy, he is well-known for his Netflix show Bill Nye Saves the World which started airing in 2017 as well as his appearances in many famous media projects as a science educator. The star studied mechanical engineering ...

Is Cesar Millan Dead, Who Is The Wife & What Is His Net Worth? Cesar Millan is the famous dog whisperer who often stirs up mixed emotions. The Mexican-American is precisely speaking, a dog behaviorist; he has been in the game for over 25 years. His Emmy-nominated television series, Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan further pushed his method and tactics into the limelight. The series was produced from 2004 ...

Is Thomas Sanders Gay and Does He Have A Boyfriend? By the time Vine was shut down in January 2017, Thomas Sanders was already popular within and beyond the internet community for his heavy involvements on the online video hosting platform. After the tragic shutdown of Vine impacted on the growing career of the multi-talented personality, he immediately switched over to YouTube where he continued to upload ...

Is Shepard Smith Gay, Who Is The Boyfriend & What Is His Net Worth? There are only a few media personalities who are as bold and confident as Shepard Smith. Apart from his impressive stint at Fox News Channel which includes but not limited to his classic news delivery, upfront stance on virtually every issue and much more; he loves his job as much as he loves his personality. Smith ...

Is Milo Yiannopoulos Gay? His Husband and Net Worth Milo Yiannopoulos is a popular writer, journalist, polemicist, public speaker, and political commentator who is also known as the founder of The Kernel, an online blog. He has been said to be among the list of 100 weird and influential people in the United Kingdom. He appeared on this list as a result of personal beliefs and ...

Does Ryan Seacrest Have A Wife Or Girlfriend, What Is His Net Worth? From radio to television, Ryan Seacrest is a household name and a force to be reckoned with in showbiz. The radio personality, television host, and producer is best recognized as the host of the popular TV talent search contest American Idol. Heres how the media personality who always knew what his lifes ambition was and diligently pursued ...

Is Anderson Cooper Gay, Who is The Boyfriend or Husband? For many, the thought of becoming a millionaire by writing and talking about other people appears unachievable but this is the reality of the prominent American journalist Anderson Cooper who gathered millions of dollars for conducting accurate political analysis and other vital reports on TV. He is the main anchor of the CNN news show Anderson ...

Is David Muir Gay or Does He Have A Wife, What Is His Salary? David Muir is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who works for the ABC broadcast-television network and anchors the ABC World News Tonight with David Muir program while also co-anchoring the magazine program 20/20. The Ithaca College graduate, whose show has become the most-watched newscast in America, has covered stories from all across America and the world; reporting ...

Joel Osteen  Divorce Rumors, Net Worth & Family Members Joel Osteen is an American Televangelist, Senior Pastor of Lakewood Church based in Houston, Texas, a husband and a father of two. He is an author of many books, seven of which are New York Times Best Sellers and his televised sermons capture more than 7 million viewers per week and 20 million every month ...

Who Is Todd Chrisley? What To Know About His Children, Gay Rumors & Net Worth Premiered on the USA network in 2014, Chrisley Knows Best is one of the most watched family reality TV shows in the U.S. The series which is currently in its sixth season is centered around U.S real estate mogul Todd Chrisley and his family. The show reveals Todd the patriarch of the Chrisley family as a strict dad who rules ...

Who Is Shannon Bream Of Fox News? Her Husband, Children & Net Worth Shannon Bream who hosts the iconic primetime program started her journalism career in the late 1990s debuting as the evening and late-night news reporter for the CBS affiliate, WBTV. The beauty from America currently works for the Fox News Channel and she is best known for anchoring the primetime program. She also hosts Americas News ...

Is Troye Sivan Gay, Who Is His Boyfriend and What Is His Net Worth? Troye Sivan is an Australian singer and songwriter best known for songs like Happy Little Pill, Youth, Heaven (with Betty Who) and The Boyfriend Tag (with Tyler Oakley) which have all garnered him different awards and ranked on the Billboard Charts. Sivan, who was born in South Africa but now resides in the United States, is ...

Did iDubbbz Have Cancer, Is He Gay and Who Is His Girlfriend Now? iDubbbz is one YouTuber who has made a career out of courting controversy. Renowned for his absurdist channels and comedy video series, the Los Angeles based personality is the owner of two channels, iDubbzTV, and iDubbzTV2, as well as the brains behind comedy video series such as Content Cop, Kickstarter Crap, Gaming News Crap, and ...

Inside Greg Gutfelds Love Story With Wife Elena Moussa and Why Fans Thought He Was Gay Greg Gutfeld is a seasoned American television producer whose career in the media industry has spanned over a decade. He is a man of many talents who makes extra income through comedy, journalism, and editorial works. Gutfeld regularly appears on Fox News Channel as a panellist and co-host of the political talk show The Five ...

Works That Made Bo Burnham A Household Name and How Much He Is Worth Now One of YouTubes first viral stars and the worlds most exciting young comedian, Bo Burnham, has always amazed critics and comedy aficionados alike. Often regarded as the Justin Bieber of comedy, thanks to his fresh looks, floppy blond hair and hoodies, he has a multi-faceted career bigger than many comedians twice his age. It wouldnt ...

Is Louie Anderson Gay And What Is His Net Worth? Louie Anderson has one of the most abstract faces in the industry and equally knows how to use it to his advantage. He is not only a stand-up comedian but also an actor and television host who is known for his distinctive comic wits. Some of his notable projects include Family Feud, where he was ...

Is Don Lemon of CNN Gay, Who is His Partner and What Is His Salary? Don Lemon has risen to become one of the most recognizable faces on CNN over the past few years. The fiery journalist, who anchors CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, is liked and somewhat disliked for his strong and candid opinions on a variety of matters that do not just include politics but also race, significantly, matters that ...

Is Rachel Maddow Gay, Who is the Wife and How Much Does She Earn in Salary? Rachel Maddow is an award-winning American journalist, political commentator, and television news anchor. She is best known for hosting the popular nightly TV show The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Prior to this, she hosted a talk radio program on Air America Radio from 2005 to 2010. As of now, the TV sensation co-anchors MSNBCs ...

Demystifying Pokimane  Her Real Name, Ethnicity & Boyfriend Like most social media celebrities in this digital era, Pokimane Thicc is one of those stars who took advantage of the internet to make a name for herself. Given the unlimited potentials which the social media space offers, many people have been instantly propelled to fame just by posting creative online contents. Not only has ...

A Breakdown of Kris Jenners Net Worth, Sources Of Income and Relationships Over The Years Standing outside and looking in, Kris Jenner looks like the oil that greases the wheels of the entire Kardashian/Jenner machine. She has been dubbed a momager and rightfully so because she seems to have had a part to play in the trajectory of each and every one of her daughters individually and the Kardashian brand ...

Pursuits That Brought Liza Koshys Fame To its Zenith and Her Love Life Since David Dobrik Liza Koshy is an American actress who has leveraged YouTube as a platform to promote her comedy while also serving as a television host on occasions. She is talented and funny and has gathered a lot of fans from around the world. Koshy started on Vine in high school and was able to get millions of ...

Alex Aiono Biography  Inside The Life Of The American Singer Not everyone who started from the streets has attained the heights where Alex Aiono is currently. His story could be referred to as the perfect definition of rising from Grass to Grace. He came into the limelight after he started out as a YouTuber, singer, and producer. One fascinating thing about the young YouTuber is ...

Virginia Vallejo Biography And Her Love Story With Pablo Escobar Virginia Vallejo can be referred to as one of the oldest whistleblowers in history after her involvement with Pablo Escobar which made her famous. Over the years, many questions have been raised about her relationship with the drug lord and why she endangered her life to be with him despite his notorious acts. The death ...

Princess Love Bio  Ethnicity, Real Name & Parents For many people, Princess Love is simply Ray Js wife but there is so much more to this feisty lady than meets the eye. She is a star in her own right and has many feathers on her cap. Princess Love is a reality TV star, a model, video vixen, and fashion designer. She and her ...

Who is Papa Franku Also Known As Filthy Frank or Joji, Where is He Now? The social media as we all know today has given people the opportunity to be creative and innovative and at the same time, make something of themselves. YouTube is one of the known social platforms we have today that makes it possible for people to express their God-given talents and post videos they created to ...

Who Is Molly Qerim, How Did She Become a Famous Sports Anchor and Who Is Her Husband? Molly Qerim is an American sports anchor popularly known for moderating First Take, a highly rated sports talk show, on ESPN. Prior to joining ESPN, Qerim hosted Fantasy Live and NFL AM on NFL Network. It is quite obvious that the widely acclaimed television personality is in a class of her own when it comes ...

Safiya Nygaard  Height, Parents & Net Worth Safiya Nygaard is an American YouTuber, writer, content producer, and director who is popular for posting makeup, beauty and fashion videos on YouTube. Her videos regularly top at least one million views, thanks to her lively character as well as her willingness to experiment with outrageous outfits and different beauty products. Here are the things to ...

The Rigors of Sunlen Serfatys Career Journey Until CNN and Fun Facts About Her Personal Life CNN correspondent, Sunlen Serfaty is an Emmy Award-winning journalist known for covering a broad range of breaking news stories, national news, and Washington politics. She has been able to garner widespread recognition for herself which even goes beyond the sphere of her work. Her profile also increased with the extensive work she did in covering ...

Demystifying Jazz Jennings Real Name, Boyfriend & Family Of One The Youngest Transgenders Jazz Jennings is an unusual personality who became famous as a transgender activist and was recorded as the youngest documented public figure to be seen as transgender. She is also a YouTube personality and spokesmodel for brands, her fans, and other transgenders. She fought for acceptance in her high school with her super supportive family for over ...

Inside Fred Armisens Life  Ethnicity, Romantic Relationships and Gay Rumors Fred Armisen is an award-winning American comedian, he is also a writer, an actor as well as a musician. He was a cast member of the legendary comedy show, Saturday Night Live for 13 years and also one of the brains behind the successful satirical show Portlandia. Find out more about this incredibly talented guy ...

Ed and Lorraine Warren Biography: Cases, Kids, and Family Life Have you ever woken up with fear you could not explain, or felt a strange presence that made the hair at your nape rise or even experienced strange occurrences around you? Well, these were some of the promptings that made the well-known paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren delve into trying to explain the ideas ...

Truth About Tony Romos Wife, Kids and Life Since His NFL Retirement Tony Romo grew from the field as a quarterback to the screens as an American Football Analyst. He was a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys in the richest football league in the world (NFL) before retiring. As a junior, he was honored as an All-Ohio Conference Member, an Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year and ...

Who is Brittany Venti, The Controversial Game Streamer and YouTuber? In recent times, many people live stream themselves playing video games. This has become a popular pastime on the internet and many highly skilled gamers have become internet celebrities through this means. However, some of them rather than becoming renowned for their gaming skills and great commentary, have become controversial and infamous. A good example ...

Rob Dyrdeks Family: His Kids And Relationship With Wife Bryiana Noelle Flores A multi-talented star and an elite pro skateboarder, Rob Dyrdeks success story began at a remarkably young age. Yet another proof that schooling doesnt always correlate with success, Rob has established himself not just as a phenomenal sportsman but also as a successful entrepreneur. Besides perfecting his skill as a natural talent on the board, ...

xChocobars  Biography and Everything You Should Know About Her Having distinguished herself and recorded massive successes in an industry notably dominated by men, it is very safe to say that Xchocobars deserves all the attention and cash she makes from her career. A household name on Twitch (a smart live streaming video platform), the online-gamer is popularly known for streaming classic games such as Stardew ...

Everything To Know About Mary Padian, Her Boyfriend and Net Worth Mary Padian is a famous American television reality personality best known for her involvements on the Reality show Storage Wars. She also has her own shop called Mary finds where she displays her antique collections. Since her childhood, Padian has been a creative learner. At the time, she used to create new items out of reusable ones and ...

Betsy Woodruffs Family Life: Is She Married or Related To Bob Woodruff? An old name in the world of journalism, Betsy Woodruff has warmed her way into the hearts of many with her impressive talents. Through hard work, Woodruff has carved a niche for herself in a very competitive field. Betsy has strong family and work values and is also an advocate for equal opportunities for everyone ...

Matpat (Matthew Patrick)  Wife, Height & Net Worth As far as internet business is concerned, Matpat remains one of the most dynamic and seasoned figures. He boasts a wealth of experience that has helped him in growing his business from one level of greatness to another. Like most successful people, MatPat started out small but today, he makes millions of dollars from his ...

Facts About Ricegum  His Girlfriend, Real Name & Net Worth Ricegum is an online gamer and YouTube sensation who ditched college; took advantage of the digital era, and made a name for himself on the internet. Though he began as a gaming YouTuber, Ricegum soon gained recognition as a controversial internet star following his many diss tracks. Here is everything you need to know about the youngster ...

Joy Taylor Once Married MLBs Richard Giannotti  Inside Look At Her Love Life and Family The erosion of the sexist idea that women have no business in sports broadcasting created a host of women celebrities who attained fame outside of modeling and acting. One of them, Joy Taylor, a radio personality and TV host for Fox Sports 1, has been in the industry since 2009, becoming one of the most ...

What To Know About Conan OBriens Wife, Kids & Family Today The name Conan OBrien is one that jumps right at you almost immediately you start talking about the most popular television hosts in the USA and this is no surprise because the man behind that name has risen to become one of the most admired men in the business. Known for hosting the late-night talk ...

David Letterman  Net Worth, Wife & Son In all of American, one man whose face has been seen frequently by late night TV talk show lovers is none but David Letterman. The comedian and TV show veteran has been hosting late night talk shows for more than three decades. His Late Night with David Letterman show began on February 1st, 1982 aired ...

Demystifying Sssniperwolfs Family Background And The Boyfriends Shes Had Since she launched her eponymously named channel in 2013, Sssniperwolf has been on the rise when it comes to video game influencers. She is one of the biggest names in the online gaming subgenre of YouTube videos. Real name Lia Shelesh, she started with Call of Duty: Black Ops II but has diversified with other ...

Lester Holt  Wife, Family & Net Worth Lester Holt is a multiple award-winning journalist, newscaster, reporter, and actor who has worked for notable media houses like WCBS TV, CBS, MSNBC and among others. His remarkable feat in journalism has endeared him to the hearts of many and earned him some awards and recognitions. Read on to get acquainted with his biography, ethnicity, ...

What Is Louis C.K. Doing Now, Where Are His Family And How Much Is His Net Worth? It is not easy to make it in comedy. It takes more than a funny bone and the ability to elicit a few giggles from a listening audience. For all the complexities that go into making a successful career in comedy, Louis C.K, the Washington D.C-born comedian, did it. For years, he was at the ...

The Progression of Hoda Kotbs Career, Her Ancestry and Family Life Hoda Kotb gained fame as a television host and news anchor for NBC. She anchors the shows signature show Today, and it has been an excellent vehicle for her skills in front of a camera. Kotb has won several awards, including Daytime Emmys and Peabody Awards. Simply put, she is one of the most successful ...

Jerry Seinfelds Family: All About The Amazing Comedians Wife and Kids Apparently one of the highly important entertainers in America, Jerry Seinfeld is a man of many talents. A very funny man, he is considered to be one of the most successful comedians in the USA who has been in the business as a professional rib-cracker for more than 40 years. As an actor, he has ...

The Rigors Of Sarah Silvermans Rise To Prominence And Rundown Of The Men She Has Dated A comedian, writer, and actress, Sarah Silvermans art and craft is as unique as you would ever find. Her poignant use of comedy to discuss social issues such as race, sexism, politics, and religion has gained her an impressive following. As unorthodox as her style is, so is her life experiences. She previously suffered from epiglottitis ...

Who Is Hannibal Buress, Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend & Why Was He Arrested? Making people laugh when they are tense or not in the mood is a tough order and to ply the trade, it must indeed take some guts and expertise, this is what the humor maker, Hannibal Buress has been able to achieve and sustain after his inital teething process. The African-American is a screen writer, stand-up ...

The Success of John Mulaneys Career Efforts Since His Work On Saturday Night Live and Facts About His Wife John Mulaney had been working as a professional comedian for years before Saturday Night Live changed his status for life and like many who are now his fans, you probably did not know of him then. However, that changed when he joined the sketch comedy show in 2008. Since then, he has been one of ...

Jeff Dunham  Wife, Children and Net Worth Ventriloquism is a very subtle method of making an inanimate object (like a puppet, doll or dummy) appear to be saying words which are actually coming from the person (holding the inanimate object). In effect, the individual throws his/her voice to the puppet and can even appear to be having a conversation with it. Not ...

Ellen DeGeneres  Net Worth, Wife  Portia de Rossi & Parents Ellen DeGeneres is an American female standup comedian who has proven that whatever a man can do, a woman can also do. Since her journey as a standup comedian started in 1981, she has held swirl as one of the finest comedians America and the world at large has seen. She is often referred to ...

Revisiting Joan Rivers Death  The Daughter, Husband & Net Worth She Left Behind Joan Rivers was a renowned American comedian, TV host, writer, and actress. Her brand of comedy consisted of scathing one-liners and no individual or topic is spared. She hosted her own talk shows in the 80s and 90s and was a pioneer for women in stand up comedy. She was the first woman to host a late night ...

The Struggles of Margaret Chos Childhood, How It Influenced Her Career Growth and Love Life Margaret Cho is best described as a comic star who knows how to maneuver everything related to life into a rib-cracking joke. She is also known to criticize every social and political problem, especially those involving race and sexuality. Apart from her talents as a comic actress, she does amazingly well as a singer and ...

Where Is Eric Bolling Today? Who Is His Son & What Is His Net Worth? Eric Bolling who was once a notable figure on Fox News, is an American TV personality, an author, and versatile Journalist. As a political and financial analyst/commentator, he anchored discussions bothering on finance for Fox Business Channel. Here is everything there is to know about his career, family, and allegations that led to his exit ...

Who Is Chelsea Handler and Does She Have A Husband or Boyfriend? Chelsea Handler is one of Americas top female comedians. She is also an actress, writer, television host, producer, and activist. She is known to be very outspoken even with things that are very personal. In separate interviews with The New York Times, Handler revealed that she had an abortion twice when she was 16. She has authored five books ...

How Did Laura Lee Achieve Fame, How Much is She Worth and Who is Her Husband? Laura Lee is a popular American YouTuber, make-up artist and beauty blogger. From posting videos of her makeup routines on Instagram, Lee has transformed into a beauty influencer and a YouTube sensation. Today, her YouTube Channel has over 630 million views and 4.5 million subscribers. Asides having millions of followers across all social media platforms, ...

Madison Gesiotto Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Measurements Madison Gesiotto is no ordinary woman; although she excelled in quite a number of pageants and competitions while she was in school, it is her views on politics and issues in America that has made her name known to most people. She possesses beauty and intelligence in a seemingly equal measure and has been able ...

Who Is Lil Tay? Parents, Brother, Sister, Age, Net Worth, Ethnicity Child stardom is nothing new in the entertainment world. With the advent of social media, we have seen more stars made from the internet than ever before, and Lil Tay is one of them. Her uploaded rap videos trademark is cursing, swearing, cash-throwing, and use of obscene languages. Her fame went wild after she dropped ...

What To Know About Tig Notaros Wife, Kids and Family Today Tig Notaro is an American stand-up comic star, writer, actress, and radio analyst. Since she started her career in 2001, she has become one of Americas best comedians, particularly when it comes to observational comedy. One prominent aspect of her routine involves her family, which includes a wife and two children. Interestingly, Tig Notaro is part ...

Who Is Chantel Jeffries? What To Know About Her Age, Ethnicity & Net Worth Chantel Jeffries is a lady of many talents. Beyond being celebrated as a DJ, she has fared well as a model, an actress, musician, and as an artist. She first rose to fame on Instagram where she has a large following. However, in recent times, she has hit the spotlight for her rumored relationships with some ...

Is Ellen DeGeneres Married, Who Is The Brother  Vance DeGeneres and Family Members? Ellen DeGeneres is one of a kind celebrity in todays world as she has used her wealth for the greater good for many people. She has served a host of famous awards shows like the Grammy, Primetime Emmy and Academy Awards. Moreso, she is probably one of the most decorated entertainment personalities around the world and ...

Carli Bybel Bio  Height, Boyfriend & Net Worth Video blogging is now on the rise and YouTube is the place where most of it happens. If you are a lady who cares about her looks or a guy who likes to help his woman out with her looks, then one person whose name rings a bell when it comes to giving beauty tips ...

Who Is Lexy Panterra? What To Know About Her Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth Lexy Panterra is one of the YouTube personalities whose breakout came through the Twerk dance videos she posted on her social media handles and YouTube which has so far generated over 13 million views for her. From there on, she created her LexTwerkOut workout program in 2014. She is sure very talented as she as moved ...

Who Is AnneMunition? What Is Her Ethnicity & Does She Have A Girlfriend or Boyfriend? AnneMunition is a professional gamer and content creator of American origin. She is one of the most sought-after streamers on Twitch  a popular online platform for watching and streaming videos, especially video games. AnneMunition has almost half a million followers on Twitch and her channel has accumulated at least 13 million views. Her favorite games ...

Norm MacDonald  Former Wife, Son & Net Worth Recently, 59-year-old former Saturday Night Live stand-up comic Norm MacDonald caused a not-so-funny stir when he expressed his personal opinion about the #MeToo movement speaking in defense of Louis CK and Roseanne Barr. Following the backlash of his actions, he is diligently doing damage control for his questionable opinion by posting a public apology on ...

Inside Iliza Shlesingers Life With Husband and How Much She is Worth Now Witty, spontaneous, and truly humorous, Iliza Shlesinger is an American comedian who is clearly proving that the stereotypical claim that women are not really funny is not only incredibly wrong but completely outrageous. Having been in the game for more than 10 years, Shlesinger has grown bigger with each step, stunning fans with her incredible ...

Who Is Nessa Diab? Details of her Parents, Ethnicity & Relationship With Colin Kaepernick Nessa Diab has gained more fame as the girlfriend of different footballers than in her career. She is currently with the popular National Football League (NFL) player, Colin Kaepernick, and has stood by his side during his most trying times. Also known for her mononym, Nessa, she recently engaged in a tweet battle with the ...

Samantha Bee  Inside the Life of Full Frontal Comedian and Presenter We have over the decades seen various brands of humor and personalities who have walked the ropes. One of the formidable forces in the world of comedy is no other than the iconic Samantha Bee of the Daily Show who now runs her own television show on TBS channel. She is a Canadian-American political commentator, ...

What Happened To Jessica Williamss Boyfriend And Which Are Her Best Works? Jessica Williams is a woman who has a lot of feathers in her cap  and keeps acquiring more. The former senior political correspondent of the comic Daily Show, who is also a comedian and actress whose recent movie appearance include starring as a playwright just recovering from a recent split with her boyfriend, Damon, and ...

Who is Nicole Byer? Here are 5 Facts You Need To Know About The Comedian Nicole Byer, an American comedian, actress, and writer, made a name for herself after she played supporting roles on MTVs prank show Ladylike and the reality show Girl Code. The latter was a series that featured comedians who analyzed in minute details, all the issues that young women deal with daily, from period to dating, to weird friendship dynamics and questions about sex. Currently, ...

A Closer Look At Bart Kwans Ethnicity, Height & Personal Life Bart Kwan is one of few Asians who is known for being successful in the comic industry at an international level. His fame broke out after the YouTube channel which he created with his close pal Joe Jo garnered up massive followings. The talented duo has been running the channel since 2007 and their success ...

Heres How VanossGaming Achieved Fame Online, His Worth and Other Facts About The Gamer For many years, the decision to drop out of college to pursue an online career was considered to be foolish and self-destructive by conventional wisdom. It was no different when Evan Fong, popularly known as VanossGaming, dropped out of college to pursue a YouTube career. However, that radical move paid off, and he stands shoulder to ...

Desi Perkins  Ethnicity, Net Worth & Husband YouTube is littered with videos of makeup tutorials by different people but if you are interested in learning how to do your makeup like a pro, there is just one person on that platform who you must follow. She is none other than Desi Perkins! She is a popular make-up artist, Instagram star, and vlogger. Desi, ...

The Phases of Casey Neistats Pursuits and His Love Story With Candice Pool YouTuber, vlogger, filmmaker, and creator extraordinaire; these are just a few hats that Casey Neistat wears and the story of how he got here is incredible. A native of Connecticut, Neistat started out by making refreshingly-authentic short films and videos that featured content that was based on everyday life and called attention to serious issues. He ...

Connor Franta  Inside The Life of American YouTuber YouTube has produced a lot of young celebrities in modern times and Connor Franta happens to be one of them. Apart from being a YouTuber, the young American is also an entrepreneur, entertainer, and writer. His journey to fame began almost a decade ago when he started a self-named YouTube channel where he uploads content ranging ...

Rhett and Link  Bio, Who are Their Wives, Net Worth and Family Facts Rhett and Link refer to an American comedy duo who are very popular on YouTube. They are known for their comic songs, viral commercials, skits and the daily show, Good Mythical Morning. Good Mythical Morning is the most watched daily show online, averaging 100 million views in a month. The show has featured guests such ...

A Walk Through The Maze of Ryan Higas Career Pursuits And Relationship With Arden Cho Ryan Higa is not only celebrated as a YouTube star, but he is also famed for appearing on television screens as an actor and comedian. Nigahiga, his Youtube channel, has gathered over 20 million subscribers and billions of views with his different comic acts, short films, and music videos uploads. With the rise in his career, ...

What to Know About The Shows That Made Craig Ferguson a Star and His Family Ties Rising to the top of your profession can sometimes be a hard and difficult process. It requires days and nights of working consistently hard to be better than what you were yesterday. It requires not giving up when all of your experiences seem to be pushing you to quit. It is because of these challenges ...

David Dobrik Married Liza Koshy for One Month  Inside His Family and Relationships David Dobrik is a YouTube sensation who has garnered fame not just for his vlogs but his love life too. Given his career as a YouTuber, his channel is one place where he shares his romantic escapades. With a cute boyish look like his, this Slovakian young man is definitely a good catch, and not ...

Merrell Twins Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Boyfriend One of the beautiful things about modern life is social media. As rudimentary as it might seem, it could turn out to be the greatest thing that would be invented in the next 50 years because of its impact on human life. Very few tools have revolutionized human behavior and culture as much as social ...

Who Is Bunny Meyer, Is She Married & What Is Her Net Worth? Bunny Meyer is a YouTube celebrity who has amassed over 8.8 million subscribers with 1.5 million viewers on her channel. She is popularly known as Grav3yardgirl and is one of the highest-paid YouTubers in the world. She initially started out as a fashion designer and later chose the path of a YouTuber. Grav3yardgirl has used her knowledge on fashion, makeup, ...

Ninja  Inside The Life of The American YouTuber and Internet Personality Ninja is a talented video game player known for his mastery of Fortnite and other seemingly difficult games he plays with ease. The video gamer made a career out of what is ordinarily the hobby of many people and has since then amassed a huge online following. Find out about him here, including the controversies that ...

What Is Eva Gutowskis True Sexuality and How Did She Rise So Fast As an Influencer? Ever since Eva Gutowski joined YouTube in 2011, it has been an interesting journey for her, moving from one milestone to the other. Backed by an army of young women and teenage girl fans known as Evanators, she has risen to become one of the most-talked-about personalities in the digital stratosphere. She has also leveraged ...

Emma Chamberlain Biography  Age, Height & Net Worth Before now, people in the entertainment industry could only achieve popularity after many years of dedication and hard work but since social media came into the scene, massive success and overnight popularity became possible. That is the story of Emma Chamberlain who encountered fame as a fifteen-year-old. Emma is one of the many young people who became ...

Anna Akana  Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth There is a new crop of YouTubers known by their different contents with a very strong uniqueness that stands every one of them out, some upload video games, some fashion while some others have comedy video contents to showcase on their channels. Anna Akana has used her platform to showcase her comedy contents to the ...

Revealing Truths About Lilly Singhs Ethnic Background, Family and Her Relationship With Yousef Erakat Lilly Singh is an Indian-Canadian YouTube personality, actress, and comedian also known as Superwoman. She kicked off her YouTube career in 2010 with the launch of her channel IISuperwomanII and followed it up with a vlog channel in 2011. This paved the way for her fame and success which led to a world tour. The ...

Who Is Andrea Constand, Is She Married and What Is Her Connection With Bill Cosby? Many people got sexually molested but could not voice out due to the stigma victims suffer and what will become of them thereafter. Very few of the victims danm every consequence to seek justice and bring the perpetrator to the book, like Andrea Constand. She never got any media buzz, not until her friend cum molester; ...

Who Is Lazarbeam (Lannan Eacott)? Here Are Facts You Need To Know Lannan Eacott became a person of interest after his YouTube channel, LazarBeam pulled him to the limelight. Initially, he started with uploads of Madden Challenge videos before deciding to build his own channel in January 2015. Within the space of three years, his YouTube channel had gathered over 7 million loyal subscribers. Today, he has not ...

Puzzling Facts About Wengies YouTube Success and More About Her Fiance Among the many YouTubers who have succeeded in winning the hearts of millions of people is Wengie. She is a Chinese-Australian YouTube personality, vlogger, singer, and voice actress. Wengie is famous for a lot of things, from her simple life hacks, DIYs, craft ideas to fun experiments, tricks and pranks. Her content portfolio also includes hair tutorials, diet & fitness tips, lookbooks, ...

Is Jeffree Star A Billionaire and How Much Does He Make On YouTube? If looks can be deceptive then theres no other person who proves this maxim better than Jeffree Star. A quick look at Stars pictures would likely leave you wondering whether or not to tag him a male or female. But who says being controversial has to be a curse? For Star, his looks have caught ...

The Place of Rosanna Pansinos Career Hats In Her Rise To Fame and Facts About Her Personal Life There are a few phrases that could summarize Rosanna Pansinos rise to fame. None of them can do it better than the famous axiom, no knowledge is lost. Her popularity YouTube comes out of her foray into other professions, specifically acting. Although acting now occupies one of the major professional hats in Rosannas resume, it was ...

Muselk (Elliott Watkins) Biography  Age, Girlfriend and Net Worth The new and best in-thing in terms of career is video gaming and we have over time seen young men and women make massive income from an activity that was purportedly designed to serve as a hobby or a relaxation activity. One of such individuals is the Australian-born YouTube Celebrity and Twitch streamer, Muselk, whose ...

PopularMMOs Biography: 5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know We have over the years seen social media millionaires, especially on the YouTube social platform. These celebrities cum millionaires have made names for themselves after carving out niches on the internet, and a typical example of one of such exciting media personality on the YouTube is American Minecraft gamer and YouTube star, PopularMMOs whose channel ...

Jason Nash Once Married Marney Hochman  What To Know About His Ex-Wife and Kids The now-defunct video-sharing app Vine was the path that led Jason Nash to fame. With it, he built an audience of over two million followers, which he parlayed into a significant YouTube career. That move has seen him become one of the most popular personalities on the internet, with the cash income to go with ...

Where Does Dantdm Live? What Do We Know About His Net Worth, Wife and Brother? Most parents buy video games for their kids to occupy their time leisure, while other parents frown at their kids when they play video games. Despite the disparity, every parent would be proud of their child if he/she eventually turns a celebrity or millionaire through playing video games like Dantdm. Biography of Dantdm Dantdm was born Daniel ...

LaurDIY  Biography: 5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTuber LaurDIY is the YouTube channel of Lauren Riihimaki which she created on December 1, 2011, when she was still a college undergrad with the sole aim of giving Do It Yourself (DIY) as well as practical fashion and beauty tips to her followers. She has used the channel to establish herself as a YouTube personality ...

Lachlan Ross Power  Bio And Family Life Of Australian The YouTube Star It is amazing the varied sources of income that the internet has made possible in this day and age. Internet fame can get its holder a whole lot of monetary and social benefits, but it must be noted that it does not come easy or cheap. For those who desire fame, content is the sacrifice ...

Alfie Deyes  Bio and Net Worth: Everything You Need To Know Alfie Deyes is one internet personality you definitely would like to know about. He boasts of over 10 million subscribers on three of his YouTube channels and has three bestseller books to his name. He is probably the most renowned young personality on YouTube today and his vlogging empire continues to grow by the day. ...

Colleen Ballingers Love Story With Husband Erik Stocklin and How Much She Is Worth Now Colleen Ballinger is an American comedian and YouTuber who is a very funny, adventurous, and highly talented woman. She is also an actress, singer, and writer. Collen is widely known for her work on YouTube where she posts content on her channel, Miranda Sings. The comedian has gained many subscribers over the years and has ...

Who Are The Dude Perfect Members and How Much Are They Worth? Entertainment in the 21st century can be digested in many forms and with platforms like YouTube, the creators and purveyors of entertainment have been democratized. Today, one of the most popular platforms to exhibit ones creative talents is YouTube, even though there are other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, who suffer in comparison to YouTube because ...

Who Is Rudy Mancuso, What Is His Earning Power and What Do We Know About His Girlfriend? Rudy Mancuso started his internet journey on Vine. He would later transition to YouTube where he solidified his place among the internets most beloved comedic creators. He is now regarded as one of the renowned internet personalities in the world, with a presence in mainstream TV and film projects like Comedy Centrals Drunk History and ...

Vsauce (Michael Stevens) Biography and Net Worth: All You Need To Know The advent of YouTube and the internet as a whole revolutionized how human beings consume information. With each passing year, the percentage of learning that is done in a traditional classroom decrease as a seismic shift to internet-based learning happens in our education industry. From open courses online to YouTube classes and videos, there are ...

How did Jake Paul Make His YouTube Big Break and Who is His Wife? One of the most interesting Social Media personalities of the 21st century is the young and popular Jake Paul whose elder brother is the famed Vine star, Logan Paul. Jake has utilized the power of the internet to bring himself to the limelight with a channel named JakePaulProductions that has amassed up to six billion ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About Reaction Time (Tal Fishman)  The American YouTuber Before 2015, the leading meaning of reaction time was the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, until Tal Fishman started his channel, Reaction Time on YouTube and the dominant meaning changed. Today, a google search of Reaction Time would deliver Tal Fishmans videos and YouTube channel link with a few physics ...

Grace Helbig  Net Worth, Boyfriend and Family Life of The YouTuber Grace Helbig is an American internet personality, comedian, actress, and writer. She became popular due to her daily vlog series, DailyGrace, which ran on My Damn Channel from 2008 to 2013. Helbig is also popular for her own indie series on YouTube, ItsGrace, which she launched in 2014. Her vlogs which feature random stuff such as ...

Mark Wiens Bio  Ethnicity, Wife and Parents Food is a great way to connect with people. We all love to eat, if not for the pleasure of food, the satisfaction of quenching hunger, and the very process of providing and sharing that food is part of the strongest bonds that bind humanity together. Maybe it is our historical connection to food, where ...

Is Filthy Frank Dead, What Happened To Him and How Much Is He Worth? As George Kusunoki Miller, he was a nobody. However, as Filthy Frank, George was one of the most famous internet personalities on the planet. The Filthy Frank Show, a sketch series on his YouTube channel, TVFilthyFrank, was one of the platforms most influential creations. He is the reason a crazy dance song, Harlem Shake, made it ...

CaptainSparklez Bio  Net Worth, House and Cars of The Famous YouTuber Sometimes, what society wants from its citizens is quite different from what the citizens want for themselves. This is evident in the life and career of video blogger and American YouTube personality, Jordan Maron famous for his YouTube channel CaptainSparklez. He dropped out of school after discovering his talent in playing an online game called Minecraft. ...

Who is Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg)? Here are Facts You Must Know Canadian Youtube personality, Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg) originally started out polishing and designing nails even before it became a trendy culture in the social media. Simply Nailogica started out her showbiz career in her early days as a child actress, acting in commercials for game and toy companies. Aside from acting, she is blogger, vlogger, specializing ...

5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know About Huda Beauty In the world of entrepreneurship, it is interesting when an individual has a mentor who he/she looks up to, this yield more productivity on the part of the individual. The iconic and rich American beautician and makeup artist Huda Kattan nicknamed Heida is the founder of the Huda Beauty blog which is number one Instagram beauty blog ...

Is Dino MasterChef Gay? Details About His Ethnicity, Girlfriend, Where He Is Now Food, for the better part of the early years of human life, was nothing more than what we needed for survival. There was no artistry or curation to the method of cooking. The scarcity of food left no room for artistic expression until we figured out agriculture and we could make as much as we ...

Who Is Gabbie Hanna And How Did She Become Famous? As the world shifts to digital media and depends more and more on streaming services for its news and entertainment content, YouTubers have become one of the leading creators in the new media world. Their understanding of the online audience: how to create, maintain, and increase followers, are all handy skills that have primed them ...

Jacksepticeye  Height, Girlfriend & Net Worth Jacksepticeye is a YouTuber and actor who gained popularity with a series of gaming videos he uploads on his channel to the delight of millions of his subscribers. He is Known primarily for his comic video game series titled Lets Play and his vlogs. His channel was formerly ranked 46th in the list of most subscribed ...

Chris Heria Personal Details: About His Wife, Height & Ethnicity Background In this generation, keeping fit has become one of the major criteria for being hale and hearty. In fact, most occupations these days are majorly concerned with ones body mass, weight and looks. Unlike the past where most people have to register in a gym to keep fit, social media has made it quite easy ...

Everything You Need To Know About Game Grumps Gaming is becoming incredibly popular on YouTube these days with game vloggers make millions of dollars out of them yearly. One of the most popular up-coming gaming YouTube channels is Game Grumps. The Lets Play series was created in 2012 and celebrated its fifth anniversary on July 18th, 2017. In six years of its existence, the ...

Daithi De Nogla Biography, Girlfriend and Net Worth YouTube has created an avenue for many to make wealth and become famous from the comfort of their homes while having fun. Many have built a career out of the platform, uploading numerous videos that have earned them the admiration of viewers across the globe. For Daithi De Nogla, he is loved for his humorous commentary on ...

Does Phoebe Robinson Have A Boyfriend or Husband and What Do We Know About Her Family? Phoebe Robinson is a New York-based comedian, writer, and actress. She is best known as the co-creator and co-host of the WNYC Studios podcast 2 Dope Queens. Just like some other female comedians, she never had any original plans of becoming a stand-up comedian even though, according to her, she took a class on a whim at Carolines on Broadway. After ...

Who Are Lex and Alana from Listed Sisters? What Is Their Ethnicity & Is the Show Cancelled? America is a country built on diversity. Everywhere you look all over the country, a countless number of immigrants or children of immigrants have become an integral part of the fabric of the country. From entertainment to business, immigrants are creating a niche for themselves and climbing to the summit of their respective professions. One ...

Riveting Facts About Danielle Lombard And What She Is Best Known For The American entertainment industry is one that provides many avenues for aspiring hopefuls to express their talents and become famous. From films to television shows and game shows, there is no shortage of ways for men and women who desire fame to pursue and earn it in the United States of America. Another tested medium ...

Unearthing New Details About The YouTube Success And Personal Life of Alex Burriss of Wassabi Productions Wildly hilarious and truly audacious, Alex Wassabi is an American YouTuber who has become a very popular face on the video-sharing platform after having garnered millions of subscribers over the years by keeping people glued to his channel with his witty parody video releases. If you have always loved parody videos, there is every chance ...

Everything You Need To Know About H2O Delirious H2O Delirious whose full birth name is reported to be Jonathan Gormon Dennis has successfully kept himself mystified by hiding his face behind the masks leaving his loyal fans speculating who he really is for many years. The American YouTube star is easily identified by the Jason Mask Style with make-up which he wears on his ...

Who Is HolaSoyGerman and What Happened To Him? German Garmendia has certainly seen it all when it comes to internet success. His channels, HolaSoyGerman and JuegaGerman are in the top twenty most subscribed channel on YouTube. The Chilean YouTuber found a way to tap into one of the worlds greatest inventions and make a living from it. He has been able to build ...

Who Are Glenn Becks Family, What Is His Net Worth And What Happened To Him? The American political commentary space is filled with different personalities. A few of them, through their rhetoric, charisma, and resources have been able to build a large following of men and women who listen to them for insight and direction for various political and social issues in the United States. For Conservatives, the story is ...

Following Charissa Thompsons Rise Through The Ranks Of Sports Casting and All About Her Boyfriend Superstar TV host and sportscaster, Charissa Thompson, has been hailed as one of the highest-profile women journalists in America, and the reason is there for all to see. She has worked for popular establishments such as Versus, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN, GSN, and Big Ten Network. She currently hosts the popular pre-game show, Fox NFL Kickoff, ...

Is Chris Kattan Gay or Does He Have A Wife? What Is His Net Worth? Chris Kattan is a popular American comedian and actor. He has appeared in several comic movies and TV series such as The Middle, A Night at the Roxbury and Bunnicula. Kattan is, however, most popular for his six-year stint as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. During his time on the legendary show, he ...

Everything You Should Know About the Rise of Insta Star Claire Abbott and Why She Gave It All Up A lot of young Americans have shot into the limelight for uploading different kinds of videos on YouTube. Some of these young stars include Connor Franta, Desi Perkins, Emma Chamberlain, the Dolan Twins (Ethan and Grayson), and Claire Abbott. The latter became a social media celebrity for uploading sexy bikini pictures of herself on social media. Apart from ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTube Channel  h3h3Productions H3h3Productions is a YouTube channel that specializes on Comic responses or reactions of other contents or trendy stories. The celebrity couple that created the channel has over time racked up sizable views for their commentaries and contents. Even though they had their own fair share of copyright cases, thankfully they scored an unprecedented victory in all ...

Lilypichu Bio  Height, Brother and Love Story With Albert SleightlyMusical Chang Like most popular internet celebrities, Lilypichu is one of those Twitch streamers who spend their lives on camera. From daydreaming about the possibility of becoming a full-time professional streamer, she grew to live out her dreams on the popular live streaming platform where people play games, make crafts, and showcase their day-to-day activities. Given the rise of ...

KSI  What To Know About His Girlfriend, Brother  Deji Olatunji & Net Worth Assuredly, when Internet inventors Vint Cerf and Bob Khan created the technological masterpiece, they probably did not know how massive the creation will be harnessed by many for different purposes including as a platform for earning money through content creation. One of such person who smiles to the bank regularly today for spending time creating ...

The Interesting Progression and Highlights of Carrie Keagans Career as a Host and Actress Carrie Keagan has garnered huge fame through her various stints on television. She is not just your regular TV host but one with a difference. Keagan has hosted several high profile events and TV shows, including VH1s Big Morning Buzz Live and Fox News Channels Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. However, not many know she ...

The Gist On Elise Jordans Marriages And Her Rise To Prominence Political commentaries tend to be boring when it is handled by someone who does not have a knack for it. However, when you see the likes of Elise Jordan run the same commentary, you will have a lot of reasons to look forward to watching her again as the journalist is well-versed in the field ...

What Is Timmy Thick Best Known For and How Successful Is The Star? Thanks to the internet, many people whose talents would have ordinarily gone unnoticed have become famous. A very good example of this modern-day internet celebrity is Timmy Thick, an American social media star. He became popular on Instagram due to his penchant for posting raunchy pictures of himself. He also often posted videos of himself ...

What Does Heather Storm Do For a Living and Who Is She Dating? Reality Television is a great way to make a name for oneself as well as amass a fortune. Heather Storm can attest to this as she is one of those who have made a name and earned a lot from reality TV. She made her name appearing on shows like Car Fanatics, Awesome Autos, and, ...

Matt Carriker Biography  Net Worth, Wife & Height Unlike your regular veterinary doctor next door, Matt Carriker chose to spice up his noble profession with the unusual. Though he is known to many as a medical practitioner, Carriker is better renowned as a YouTube star and an animal lover. Having recorded huge successes on his various YouTube channels, the vet doctors name and ...

Jillian Mele of Fox News Career Achievements, Husband & Measurements There are quite a good number of presenters on radio and television who listeners and viewers may never wish to miss any of their shows because of their sensational golden voice, beauty or the special way or artistry they anchor their shows. Jillian Mele is one of such. She has been at the top of ...

Who is Gillian Turner of Fox News? Her Fiance or Husband and Net Worth Gillian Turner is well-known as a news correspondent for Fox News Channel but before she became a TV personality, she built an intimidating resume working for different institutions, including the American government. She served in different capacities at the White House National Security Council during the administration of former US Presidents  George W. Bush and Barack Obama. ...

Gloria Govan Bio  Age, Ethnicity & Height Even as Gloria Govan is famous as an American actress, author, a TV host, and reality television star, shes more popular as the wife of the former NBA player, Matt Barnes. She became known after appearing on the Florida version of the reality television series, Basketball Wives and later, Basketball Wives: LA  after Matt was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. Sadly, ...

Michael Fishmans Interesting Start as an Actor and Why He Divorced His Wife of Many Years When one door closes, another one opens. As silly as that axiom may seem, it is the story of the resurgence of Michael Fishman, who plays D.J Conner on the popular show, Roseanne. Having played the character for several years as a child actor into his teenage years; when the show originally ended, Michael did ...

Who Is October Gonzalez  Tony Gonzalezs Wife? All You Need To Know October Gonzalez is a popular American TV host and media personality. Additionally, she is also a model. Gonzalez has hosted several TV shows such as Beat Shazam, Entertainment Tonight, and Rachel Ray. She has also featured in several reality TV shows. Gonzalezs fame is not just due to her profession but also because of her ...

Who Is Tony Berlin  Harris Faulkners Husband: His Children and Family Facts Tony Berlin is a popular American media guru. He has variously worked as a reporter, anchor, and producer for some of the biggest TV networks in America. They include CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC (where he hosted the popular Good Morning America). Berlin has now diversified into public relations and owns his own PR firm. ...

The Progression of Gianna Tobonis Journalism Career and Details About Her Marriage to Kyle Buckley Gianna Toboni may not be your ideal newscaster but her unusual reporting is what made her a household name. The American journalist is renowned for her hard-hitting and authentic reportage. A motivator and activist for total press freedom, Gianna loves to explore pervasive cultural issues. Not only does this unique and ambitious journalist call for all ...

Dog The Bounty Hunters Family Including Details of His Late Wife and Kids Popularly known as Dog, a name which he got from the television series, Dog The Bounty Hunter, Duane Chapman, an American bounty hunter, and one-time bail bondsman, went from being convicted for a felony to being a reality TV star. He was brought to the limelight following the capture of the convicted criminal, Andrew Luster in 2003 and this eventually made ...

Vicky Karayiannis, Chris Cornells Wifes Bio, Children and Family The world of showbiz is made up of different people who serve different roles, and function in a variety of capacities, and one of the most important people are those in the background. Publicists are undoubtedly one of these background people yet they are vital to the life and fame of most of our favorite ...

Joe Rogan Has A Step-Daughter and 2 Other Kids With Wife Jessica Ditzel  Meet His Family Joe Rogan is a popular American stand-up comedian and TV host. His journey to stardom began in the late 80s and has seen him host several shows, the most popular is the game show titled Fear Factor. The exciting show dares contestants to face some of their greatest fears and embark on challenging stunts. The ...

Josh Gates and Wife Hallie Gnatovich Have 2 Kids But Who Has the Higher Net Worth? Best known for his explorations and adventures, Josh Gates, is a television presenter with a voracious appetite for seeing the world and the beauties in it. Some of that beauty, however, is in his home, in the form of two children he shares with his wife, Hallie Gnatovich. Not excluded is their marriage which has lasted ...

Holly Sonders Wiki, Plastic Surgery & Why She Divorced Her Husband  Erik Kuselias After trying everything within her capacity to have a low key wedding, Holly Sonders was drawn to the public because of her husbands controversy at his workplace. Well, the two are rumored to be divorced but the article below will give more light on how true these rumors are. Meanwhile, Holly Sonders is yet to ...

Nadeska Alexis Bio  Age, Boyfriend & Net Worth Journalism is one diverse profession that allows the practitioners to choose their area of specialty, build a career on it by reporting the truth and facts which in the long run will distinguish them as deserving commendation and recognition among their peers. Some choose to specialize in political journalism, while to others it is sports ...

Media Platforms Charlamagne Tha God Has Explored and All The Controversies He Has Courted Charlamagne Tha God is an American on-air personality, radio presenter, and more recently, author. He is popularly known as a co-host on New York radios nationally syndicated show, The Breakfast Club, a program he has been hosting alongside DJ Envy and Angela Yee since 2010. However, his early years had no connection to his current career ...

A Look At Jimmy Fallons Net Worth and Family Including His Wife & Kids Sometimes, a childs passion for something is a pointer to what he/she would become in the future. As a child, Jimmy Fallon was literally obsessed with watching the late-night comedy program, Saturday Night Live (SNL). Then, his parents would tape the clean parts for him to watch and later, he and his sister would re-enact sketches from the ...

Kay Adams Biography  Does The Sportscaster Have A Husband or Boyfriend? When you hear the phrase sports enthusiast, women are hardly the first group that comes to mind. Well, thats changing pretty fast. Especially with the rise of female sports analysts and broadcasters like Kay Adams who is famed for knowing more about sports than most men do. And why not, shes paid handsomely for it ...

Ben Shapiros Family  Meet His Wife, Kids and Sister Who is Popular for the Wrong Reasons A multi-talented man, Ben Shapiro is a man of controversial nature, an attribute that has made him an unusual public figure. An intellectual whose career path was clearly defined even before he became a man, the Jewish conservative commentator has always had his way with words. He became popular by sharing his critical and often ...

QVC Shawn Killinger Bio  Husband, Net Worth & Facts To Know Shawn Killinger is a prominent TV personality who has worked her way to the top. Though not initially a journalist by training, she defied the odds and today has established herself as a household name, as well as, worked alongside some industry legends. More than just being a reporter, newscaster, and anchor, heres all you ...

Liv Lo  Dissecting the Ethnicity, Parents and Personal Life of Henry Goldings Wife While many are aware that Liv Lo is the better half to Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding, only a few understand why his beautiful wife appears increasingly endearing to fans. A former model turned TV personality, and fitness star, Liv has an impressive resume which when combined with that of her statuesque spouse is considered a perfect ...

Stpeach Age, Husband and Other Facts About The Twitch Streamer Lisa Vannatta, famously known by her online alias, STPeach is a Canadian video game streamer cum vlogger who has garnered fame through her appearances on different video-sharing/social networking platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Twitch, Reddit, and Twitter. The beautiful lady got her career to a start in August 2015 when she joined the live streaming video platform, Twitch. She rose to ...

Insights into Seth Meyers Wife, Family and What His Net Worth Is Celebrities are mostly remembered and known for the work they do. For Seth Meyers, his career as a comedian, writer, actor, TV host, and producer is his biggest identifier. He was on Saturday Night Live SNL show as a head writer and cast member for more than ten years during which he built a reputation ...

Who Is Jessica Gadsden  Age, Net Worth & All About Charlamagne tha Gods Wife Jessica Gadsden is an American fitness coach as well as a personal trainer. She is better known as the spouse of popular American media personality, Charlamagne Tha God. Charlamange Tha God is a well-known TV and radio personality in the U.S. He has featured in several shows (both on the radio and TV) and is ...

Who Is Collins Tuohy  Michael Ohers sister ? Her Wedding, Husband & Net Worth Collins Tuohy is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, blogger, and social media personality. She is also better known as the adoptive sister of NFL player, Michael Oher, whose life story inspired the Hollywood blockbuster The Blind Side. The Blind Side tells the true life story of Oher who grew up in an impoverished background consisting of a ...

Eye-Popping Facts About The Personal Life And Career Success Of Sportscaster Heidi Watney Heidi Watney is a media personality who has created a niche for herself as a sportscaster. Starting out as a radio presenter, the brilliant young lady has gone on to work for several prominent sports networks, and currently, she is with the MLB. The sportscaster is also known to have been an avid sports lady right ...

Marty Lagina Bio  Siblings (Martina and Rick Lagina), Net Worth and Wife Marty Lagina is an American engineer and businessman who has risen to fame as a reality TV star. This is thanks to his involvement in the adventure TV series, The Curse of Oak Island. The Curse of Oak Island is a long-running TV series which airs on the history channel. The show aims to solve ...

Is Jordan Schlansky Just A Character or a Real Life Person and What Does He Do? The world of late-night television is an interesting one. Shows during that time are geared towards giving viewers comedic relief from a long day at work through interviews and comedy sketches. The often charismatic host of this show requires the balancing talent of a producer whose primary job is to deliver great episodes. It is ...

Heres How Wealthy Jimmy Kimmel Is From All The Phases of His Career, Marriages and Sons Health Jimmy Kimmel is a renowned late-night talk show host known for his charm, wit, and the A-list guests he features on his show. As the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! On ABC, Jimmy has been serving comedy to television viewers for years which played a pivotal role in launching him into mainstream fame and enabled ...

Natasha Bertrand Biography  Is She Married? Who Is the Husband & What Is Her Age? Natasha Bertrand is not just a young prominent journalist but a first-rate investigative reporter. With her natural beauty and smile, Natashas sharp, insightful political commentary also makes her a thorough reporter. Her sound political perspective and coverage in the country have made her a force to be reckoned with in the profession. Renowned for her ...

What Happened to Shane Kilcher? His Injury Update, Net Worth and More Shane Kilcher is well-known thanks to the Discovery Channel series Alaska: The Last Frontier. It is a show that documents the daily lives of the extended Kilcher family, people who live without plumbing or modern heating. The episodes follow their routines as they rely on hunting and farming for their nutritional needs as well as ...

Is Stephanie Gosk Gay or Lesbian, Who is the Wife or Partner  Jenna Wolfe? In August 2013, NBCs Today viewers were greeted with two shocking news. Today weekend anchor, Jenna Wolfe, announced that she was as a lesbian, introducing her partner as NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk, and said the two are expecting their first child. A long time has passed since then and certainly, a lot of things ...

Nikki Mudarris  Bio and Net Worth: 5 Interesting Facts You Need to Know Nikki Mudarris, also known as Miss Nikki Baby, is a reality television star, model and fashionista. Shes best known for VH1s reality TV series Love & Hip-Hop: Hollywood. Her entrepreneurial skills enable her to create and run a successful lingerie line Nude by Nikki. Not only that, but Nikki has also successfully run the Las ...

5 Interesting Things You Need To Know About Kelly Nash Ever heard of the lady who gained national prominence for taking a selfie with a dangerous ball just a few inches away from hitting her? Its no other person than Kelly Nash, an American sports broadcaster currently working as host of The Rundown show which airs on MLB Network every weekday at 2 pm ET. ...

Understanding The Height of Fame John Oliver Achieved With The Daily Show and How He Met His Wife Without knowledge of who he is and his exemplary career, John Oliver cuts an unassuming figure of a regular man but he is one of the most influential personalities in America, especially on television. Since he began his career in 1998, he has been a loud and unapologetic agent of change, using his wit and ...

Why Did Big Chief Leave Street Outlaws, Where Is He Now And Why Did He Divorce His Wife? Justin Shearer, otherwise known by his professional name Big Chief is a famous street racer and television personality. He is famously known for being one of the main characters on the racing reality television series, Street Outlaws. Justin, who had been a significant part of the show since its premiere in 2013, appeared in a ...

Who is Josina Anderson of ESPN? Her Husband and Family Facts There has been a gradual paradigm shift in the world of sports which has today produced the likes of Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and other female athletes that are pulling great feats in different sporting fields. Their achievements have also been followed by the emergence of female sports journalists such as Jillian Mele, Eboni Williams, ...

Is Brittany Wagner Married, Who Is The Husband, How Old Is She? Brittany Wagner has been an inspiration to a lot of sports youngster. She has won the hearts of many athletic students with her role as a life coach and an academic counselor. She is well groomed in her career and has worked over a decade for The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and The National ...

Tati Westbrook Bio  Age, Husband & Net Worth With five videos dished out every week, alongside running her own brand, beauty guru, and YouTube superstar Tati Westbrook has proved to the world that theres utterly no impossibility or limit to whatever one is passionate about. Tati is best known for being the owner and manager of the worlds most-viewed beauty and lifestyle YouTube channel, ...

Cathy Areus Long Road to Becoming a Freelance Journalist and What to Know About Her Kids An American freelance journalist, news analyst, and author, Cathy Areu has built a lasting reputation for herself on cable television. Popular for her skillful and sassy presentation of professional views on varying topics including cultural and feminist issues, Cathy is an inspiration to many women across the globe. In addition to being a journalist, she ...

Tucker Carlsons Love Story With Wife Susan Andrews, their Children and Net Worth Today On the TV screens, Tucker Carlson is that fiery fellow who passionately dishes out his conservative and often controversial views on issues of national importance. Such brazenness has fetched him many enemies, especially on the left-wing, but it has also helped him cement a reputation as one of the foremost broadcast journalists in America. His ...

Paige Wyatts Net Worth, Boyfriend and Where She Is Now Paige Wyatt became popular after the Wyatt family began running the reality television show, American Guns. The Wyatt family comprises Rich Wyatt (father), Renee Wyatt (mother), Paige and Kurt Wyatt (children). Rich Wyatt originally ran a gun shop, the Gunsmoke Guns in Wheat Ridge, Colorado which is outside of Denver. The business which he ran together ...

The Progression of Howard Sterns Career As A Media Personality And Why He Divorced His First Wife Howard Stern is a legendary American radio host, who has also done some notable work as an actor, producer, author, as well as photographer. The radio personality achieved worldwide fame as a result of his self-titled radio program, The Howard Stern Show. As a professional radio personality, he has worked in different radio stations. Since 2006, ...

Lisa Joyners Biography  Ethnicity, Net Worth and Other Key Facts Lisa Joyner is an American Journalist, TV talk show host, and actress. Some of her well-known works are her correspondences for the Los Angeles based TV KCBS, inFANity show, Find My Family Show including her film and television appearances in Brimstone, American Sweetheart, The Bold and The Beautiful among others. Lisas passion for reconnecting people with their biological families ...

Amanda Balionis Rise Through the Ranks of Sportscasting and the Identity of Her Boyfriend Amanda Balionis is an American sportscaster currently working as a golf broadcaster for CBS Sports. Among so many of her works in the field of sports reporting, Amandas PGA Tour coverage seems to be the most popular so far. She covered the Super Bowl working with CBS Sports social media team in Atlanta, where she ...

Dissecting Charles Paynes Sexual Allegations, Its After Effects and More About His Wife Charles Payne had a respectable career as an analyst on Wall Street before he made the transition to television and became a contributor and later a host on Fox. In that time, his expertise has come under scrutiny, and he has been at the center of at least one major controversy. The major controversy in question ...

Erik Asla And Tryra Banks Split: Everything You Need To Know Tyra Banks and Erik Asla have called it quits! The couple, who began dating in 2013 and have a son named York Banks Asla, has decided to end what everybody taught was the perfect relationship. Neither person has come out to give a reason for the breakup, but what is obvious right now is that ...

What to Note About Dr Terry Dubrows Qualifications, TV Works and Marriage to Heather Kent In the realm of people that we expect to see regularly on our screens, medical doctors are closer to the bottom of the list. Aside from the fact that their work has little correlation with TV, they are presumably too busy to pursue life as TV personalities. Yet, a few of them have usurped this ...

Jessica Goch  Bio: 5 Things You Didnt Know About Ninjas Wife Jessica Goch is the Schofield-born American Social Media Influencer who has worked as a model but is now better known as a host and interviewer of prominent Electronic sports celebrities at popular gaming events/tournaments. The screen queen also serves as the manager of her famous husband Ninja aka Tyler Blevins whose exploits on Twitch and Fortnite has ...

CNNs Chris Cuomo Biography  Wife, Family & Net worth Chris Cuomo needs no elaborate introduction as he has starred graced many prominent Television cable networks and his voice has been heard through acknowledged radio shows. He is a television journalist and Lawyer who has previously worked for ABC News as Chief law and justice correspondent as well as a co-anchor on 20/20. If you still ...

Neil deGrasse Tyson  Family, Religion & Net Worth Neil deGrasse Tyson is a distinguished American astrophysicist and author who has been able to achieve so much after falling in love with astronomy at the age of 9. He has since attended and become an alumnus of prestigious universities such as Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, and also recorded numerous achievements in his field of ...

Is Simon Cowell Gay? Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend and Why is He Famous? Simon Cowell is a well-known talent show judge, TV producer, entrepreneur and one of the most popular TV personalities that Britain has ever produced. In conjunction with his company, Syco, Cowell is the brain behind hugely successful talent hunt shows such as The X-Factor UK, The X-Factor US, Britains Got Talent, Americas Got Talent and ...

Everything To Know About Joanna Gaines Life With Chip Gaines, Their Business Pursuits and Kids Joanna Gaines and her husband Chip Gaines became celebrities after their television show Fixer Upper began airing back in 2013. The show which was about home renovation and decoration ran for about 6 seasons with a total of 79 episodes before the couple bade farewell to it in April 2018. Apart from their appearances on ...

Who Is Larry The Cable Guy? What To Know About His Wife And Net Worth Larry the Cable Guy is a self-professed country kid renowned for his trademark Southern accent and sensational catchphrase Git-R-Done! The famous comedian who talks about anything under the sun has gone on to become one of the most memorable characters in comedy history. Join us in unearthing lesser-known facts about the former on-air-personality, standup comedy superstar, movie ...

Who Is Patrick Starr, What Is His Net Worth and Gender? The make-up industry over the years has grown to become a billion dollar industry not just because there are probably more women wearing make-up but because a whole lot of men, especially the young ones, have become bold enough to wear it unlike before. A few of these men, like Patrick Starr, have even gone ...

How Did Chris Jansing Become a Senior Correspondent at MSNBC and Who Is Her Husband? An award-winning American television news reporter and journalist, Chris Jansing has succeeded in carving a spectacular niche for herself in the field of TV journalism. Outstanding for not just her excellence in journalism, Chris is also cherished for her incredibly gorgeous looks post 60! For close to four decades, Jansing has continued to soar in her ...

Jaclyn Glenn Biography  Age, Height & Ex-Boyfriend American Youtuber, Jaclyn Glenn, rose to prominence through her self-titled YouTube channel Jaclyn Glenn. She has remained an acclaimed atheist and continues to air her views on hot issues from politics, religion, animal rights, to atheism. During the heated 2016 US Presidential elections, Glenn featured in Hump Trump: Official Donald Trump Song. Her parallel acting career ...

Is Pat Sajak Married to a Wife or is He Gay With a Partner? Pat Sajak is one of the most popular TV game show hosts in America. He commenced his career as a radio disk jockey as well as a TV weatherman before being tapped to host Wheel of Fortune, the longest-running syndicated game show in the United States. Sajak has hosted the popular game show from 1983 ...

Nayyera Haqs Bio  What To Know About Her Husband, Parents And Family Nayyera Haq can take anyone on political debates as well as discussions on social issues affecting many. Her ability to masterfully deliver her stance on every issue or political debate has made her a regular face in morning and evening news media platforms. This is not a common feat especially for someone from her kind ...

Inside Guy Fieris Family With Wife, Kids and Sister Who Died of Cancer Over the years we have seen men dominate the kitchen and churn out amazing delicacies from it. Some do it way better than their female counterparts and one of such men is Guy Ramsay Fieri  an American TV host, celebrity chef, restaurant owner, bestselling author of four culinary books, and game show host. His ...

Meet Phil Mudd of CNN  The Former CIA and FBI Exec, Is He Married, Who Is The Wife? When it comes to discussing issues surrounding terrorism, American Counterterrorism and National Security Expert, Phil Mudd, occupies a globally significant position. He has voiced his interest in the fight against terrorism and insecurity on many popular media platforms, both print and broadcast, such as CNN, BBC, CBS, MSNBC, al-Jazeera, ABC, NBC, Fox, The New York Times, ...

Jim Hoffer: Biography, Wife  Mika Brzezinski, Children and Net Worth Jim Hoffer is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who works as an investigative reporter for Eyewitness News, New York City. In his over two decades of investigative journalism, Hoffer has been at the front lines of several crucial stories from the 9/11 attack to the crash of American Flight 587 to the 2003 Blackout. On top of ...

The Ups and Downs of Erin Mcpikes Journalism Career and Other Facts About Her Personal Life Erin McPike is a journalist working for the Independent Journal Review (IJR) as a White House Correspondent but she gained widespread recognition for her coverage of general news. Whether its breaking news or some mainstream story, McPike has a reputation of baring the facts. As a journalist, her work as a White House Correspondent for Independent ...

Bert Kreischer Is Married To LeeAnn Kreischer With 2 Kids  Meet His Family Those familiar with Bert Kreischer mainly have the image of a large-bellied party man whose college life inspired the National Lampoon film, Van Wilder. It is an image that one would not naturally associate with a wholesome family. The standup comedian still maintains his wild party animal image on stage. But, back at home, he is ...

How Brendan Greene Became a Game Designer to Look Out For and Facts About His Failed Marriage The name Brendan Greene may not easily ring a bell in the larger society but for gaming enthusiasts, he is considered a god and this is because of his invention of the video game, Player Unknowns Battlegrounds, also called PUBG. Based on the popular last-man-standing/battle royale concept, Greenes creation has taken the gaming world by ...

WFAAs Sonia Azad Bio  Does The Reporter Have A Husband Or Boyfriend? Emmy Award-winning journalist and Health & Wellness reporter Sonia Azad is on the news segment News 8 Daybreak for the television station WFAA-TV in Dallas, Texas, a channel which she joined in October of 2015. Besides her time on the news, Azad is also a marathon runner and a certified yoga instructor. She has covered major news ...

This Is Everything You Should Know About Caroline Heldman, Her Career Portfolio and Other Facts Love it or hate it, there is no escaping the fact that feminism has come to stay in our world. The movement has continued to garner momentum over the years and this is due to the sustained push by several women, and even men, including the likes of Caroline Heldman. A Professor of Politics at ...

Understanding The Enigma That Is Gavin McInnes, The Controversies He Has Stirred and All About His Wife Gavin McInnes is a polemical English-born writer and TV personality, who is best known for his racist and fascist ideologies, as well as his co-ownership of Vice Media and Vice Magazine. He is also an actor a
Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate, has appealed to the various Zongo communities in the country to reject people who would come to them to peddle lies about him in the coming months.

He observed that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) members had continually made it their agenda when they visit the various Zongo communities to cast insinuations and peddle lies about him, especially as the general elections draw closer.

According to him, the NDC is sinking and therefore, needs propaganda to hold on to power, asking the Zongo communities to reject the ruling party.

Nana Akufo-Addo said during the past elections the NDC lied that he (Nana Addo) and the NPP abhored people in the Zongo communities and so if the NPP won the elections it would expel people from the Zongos which is false.

He predicted that the NDC bigwigs, who are desperate to win political power this year, would soon be visiting the various Zongo areas once again to lie about him and the NPP, in order to retain power  having mismanaged the country's economy in the last eight years.

Nana Akufo-Addo said the NDC adopted the same propaganda and dirty politics against the NPP before the 2000 elections, but no Zongo person was unfairly treated in the country during President Kufuors administration, which he (Nana Addo) was an integral member.

He gave the assurance that God-willing if Ghanaians elect him as president in December, he would make sure that every Ghanaian is treated fairly, irrespective of their political, religious or tribal affiliations, as it did occur during President Kufuors regime.

Nana Akufo-Addo was addressing a colossal number of NPP supporters during the campaign launch of the partys branch at the Asawase Constituency in Kumasi on Sunday.

The event, dubbed Peoples Forum, was aired live on Ashh FM.



Zongo Development Fund



The NPP presidential candidate promised that his administration would institute a Zongo Development Fund which would be used solely to develop all the Zongo communities to help better the lives of people residing in those areas.

Nana Addo stated that it is his top priority to develop all the deprived areas in the country, especially the Zongo areas, urging people living in there to vote massively for him and all NPP parliamentary candidates in the coming elections.

One District One Factory



He expressed concern about the rising unemployment rate in the country, stressing that his heart always bleeds whenever he sees the energetic youth roaming the streets selling dog chains and other wares.

The NPP leader warned that the high unemployment rate poses a great threat to the security of the state and appealed to the electorate to vote massively for him and his team of experienced people to create jobs and solve the unemployment canker once and for all.

According to him, the 'One District One Factory' campaign promise is feasible, pointing out that the programme would help solve the unemployment problem.

He urged the people of Asawase to vote for Alhaji Alidu Seidu, the NPP parliamentary candidate, whom he described as a hard working, visionary and development-oriented person, to replace the incumbent MP, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka.

Nana Akufo-Addo lamented the fact that people at Asawase had continually voted for the NDC but sadly the area had not seen any significant development.

FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi
It is quite an interesting story. I am talking about the at once rather risible and pathetic decision by Mr. John Kudalor, the Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service, to withdraw all law-enforcement personnel from Donkorkrom township in the Okwawu district of the Eastern Region (See IGP Withdraws All Police Personnel from Donkorkrom Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/19/16). The order follows the reported torching of the townships police station, after two police officers arrested and detained there and charged with having attacked and robbed a Ghana Commercial Banks bullion van were alleged to have escaped from the stations cells.

Some Donkorkrom residents, it appears, had logically concluded that a police service, or force, that could not police its own thievish personnel was not worth maintaining in the township. As of this writing, a combined team of riot-quelling police and military personnel was reported to have descended on the Afram Plains township with the objective of restoring peace and stability. The two police officers alleged to have escaped from the stations cells were also reported to have been rearrested in the Okwawu commercial capital of Nkawkaw and transported to Koforidua, the Eastern Regions capital, for prosecution.

It was the alleged escape of the two unnamed police officers that reportedly touched off a firestorm of violent protests at Donkorkrom, because the youths of the township believed that it was the alleged suspects own uniformed colleagues who had let them off the hook. An unknown number of police vehicles were also reported to have been set alight. Deputizing for IGP Kudalor, Mr. Prosper Agblor, the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Division of the Ghana Police Service, stated that law-enforcement services in Donkorkrom township would not be restored until residents had repaired the damage done to the police station, as well as paid for the torched vehicles.

Now, this is the sort of gut reaction that one expects from an unenlightened street urchin, and not from either the Inspector-General of the Ghana Police Service or the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Division (CID) of the Ghana Police Service. Rather, what Messrs. Kudalor and Agblor ought to be doing presently is to be working out the details of the acquisition of temporary housing for the Donkorkrom-stationed police personnel, and then having the arsonists hunted down, rounded up and vigorously prosecuted. Those forensically established to have participated in such acts of vandalism should then be made to pay for the cost of the damage caused to both the physical plant or building housing the police station, as well as the vehicles torched by the forensically identified culprits.

The collective punishment of having police personnel withdrawn from Donkorkrom has absolutely no basis in common sense and the imperative need to ensuring that the reported acts of vandalism did not escalate into other neighboring town and villages. While the members of our police service, like the rest of their human kind are not angels or infallible, nevertheless, we expect candidates selected to be trained as law-enforcement agents to be of higher moral standards than the majority of the citizens and residents they are charged to protect and bring to book, should any of them be found to be in contravention of the laws of the land.

In this connection, we equally expect that thorough investigations will be conducted into the circumstances leading to the escape of the two police officers alleged to have attacked and robbed the GCBs bullion vehicle. For all we know, this racket could be part of an extensive network involving far more than just two law-enforcement officers.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) correspondent Andrew Harding launched a new book about Somalia at a ceremony held in Mogadishu on Saturday as the second annual book fair came to a close in Somali.

Titled The Mayor of Mogadishu, Hardings book tells the story of former mayor Mohamed Ahmed Nur and draws on visits made by the author to Somalia over the past 16 years. The book paints a vivid picture of the country and the migration and resilience of its people as they recover from two decades of armed conflict.

Addressing the reception, UK Ambassador to Somalia Harriet Mathews said;

In Somalia, many people often focus on politics and security problems but the book fair gave me a real insight into the depth of Somali culture and how much there is an appetite for literacy and literature in Somalia

Federal Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Abdirahman Aynte said;

Although they can kill, maim and injure, they cannot stop (young Somalis) from celebrating one of the most beautiful things that humans do, which is to write and read

Harding said Mayor of Mogadishu is a book that not only Somalis can identify with but rather covers a range of issues such as migration.

Here is one familys journey over many decades through the ups and downs of one country,

Mogadishu Book Fair organizer Mohamed Diini thanked Harding for attending this years Mogadishu Book Fair, which attracted thousands of people. Diini said it was a sign that Somalis were ready to rebuild what was an amazing and beautiful place.

The launch was also attended by the ex-mayor Nur, the Abdirahman Ali Aynte, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, Michael Keating, USAID deputy Head of Mission Steve Olive and several Somali authors and researchers.

Mr. Nur praised the Harding book as an important work for Mogadishu and predicted that people who have never read anything about Somalia would read it.
The mentioning of the word insecurity raises concern for many Ghanaians who witnessed or experienced the dictatorship of military regimes, especially, under the J. J. Rawlings-led Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC). The violence and human rights abuses under military governments, to a large extent, are firmly ingrained in the collective psyche of the older generation of Ghanaians. The younger and technologically savvy post-PNDC revolution generation is not adamant to the impact of violent politics.

They flip through the history books and watch videos on the internet about brutal civil wars from elsewhere on the globe. There is no denying that the relative violence in other parts of the African continent, especially, reinforces the popular notion that Ghanaians are generally peaceful by nature. But the idea that Ghanaians are peaceful by nature is a form of security threat in itself. It appears to undermine the needed for innovative internal security reforms for the sustenance of democratic governance. The very fact that Ghana has never experienced violence on a national scale is no guarantee that it cannot occur.

The work of the security agencies and the establishment of the National Peace Council are testaments to the fact that prevention of violence is better than cure, and security, define here as national and human survival itself, is of paramount importance to the state. Put differently, security is not only about the militaristic protection of the statewhat is traditionally referred to as national security. The concept and practice encompasses socio-economic development and has national and human dimensions.

There are two truisms about Ghana as far as security is concerned. First, as mentioned earlier, the country has never experience a civil war on a national scale. Second, Ghana as a sovereign state has never been at war with any state. These truisms, however, do not necessarily mean that the state and people are secured at all times. In practice, there is nothing like absolute security. There are consistent human and national security challenges. Armed robbery, poverty, joblessness of the youth, and police brutalities during demonstrations are just a few examples of human security threats. At the inter-state level the ongoing territorial dispute with the Ivory Coast regarding the discovery of oil is a reminder that Ghana is not absolutely secured from external security threats. International and domestic terrorism add to the milieu of security challenges that Ghana faces. Let us dig a little deeper by refocusing on the dynamics of internal security as related to the 2016 Elections and beyond.

Analytically, Ghana, in its 59 years of existence, has experienced two distinct but interrelated regimes of internal security; first, the rule of men under military governments, and second, the rule of law under constitutional democracy. The dominant feature of the rule of men security regime was the rampant disregard for fundamental human rights principles and due process as prescribed by law. This was largely responsible for the many atrocious crimes in these eras. Readers may recollect that the work of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) that was established by the Kufour administration sought to put this dark history behind Ghanaians. The content of the NRC report is a guide into the future for the protection of human rights and human security. This dovetails, and reinforces the rule of law security regime that 1992 Constitution seeks to establish.

There is the need to create national consciousness of the fact that Ghana has some distance to cover in terms of constructing a sense of common security that is embedded in a whole-of-society approach, and not what appears to be the renting out of security matters to identifiable state institutions. What I mean is that national security, while it remains the privilege of constitutionally mandated institutions such as the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), Police Service, Ghana Immigration Service, Customs Excise and Preventive Service, and Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), is a collective public act. The role of public safety institutions like the police and BNI is not only to enforce laws but also create the environment for security to emerge and established. The public is the primary stakeholder in maintaining national security. In other words, the public is both the object and subject of security. This is firmly embedded in the rule of law security regime of the 1992 Constitution.

It follows that the capability of national security agencies in creating an environment for security to flourish during Elections and beyond is not only predicated on the availability of material, financial and human resources. It is also inextricably linked to the public identity or perception of the security agencies. Following this analogy, and taking a step back into history, it is safe to say that the negative image of the GAF that prevailed under military regimes is gradually been eroded through proactive civil-military relations programs which have become an essential part of their training and community engagement. More importantly, and by default, the armed forces continue to adhere to its mandate under the 1992 Ghana Constitution. The somewhat positive perception of the armed forces appear to be an essential factor in its collaboration with the police and the forestry department to combat illegal logging and galamsey operations in the county. On June 24, 2016, the La Dade Kotopon Municipal Assembly solicited the help of the army to address security challenges in the municipality. While this is positive for the army, it also reflects the state of policing and law enforcement in Ghana.

Contrary to the progress that is being made by the GAF, the police and BNI who are constitutionally mandated to maintain internal security appear to have assumed somewhat a belligerent posture against the public, especially, the political opponents of ruling governments. Although it is fair to say that there are several cases under the NPP and NDC governments where the police or BNI acted in unprofessional manner, the problem is worsening in recent times. It is deeply rooted in the perceived corruption and overt politicization of these constitutional institutions for public safety. Ghana Center for Democratic Development Survey in August 2016 saw a decline in public confidence in the NDC governments effort towards crime and violence prevention from 57% (Afrobarometer 2014) to 48% (Pre-Election Survey 2016).

The Institute of Economic Affairs in a survey in 2015 reported that the police followed by the presidency are perceived by Ghanaians to be the top most corrupt institutions in the country. Additionally, the behavior of the BNI in the two recent cases of the South Africa trio and the Montie trio raises public concern of the politicization of what is legally supposed to be an impartial national security institution. These examples suggest an uncomfortable truth that there is public mistrust of these security institutions, and to some extent, their behavior pose existential threat to the rule of law and human rights protection of all Ghanaians.

The somewhat perennial negative public identity of the police and BNI reinforces the perceived or reality of threats of violence during elections. The public expectation of these security agencies falls below the norm of impartiality and proper conduct of public institutions. The very fact that the police have identified 5000 flashpoints in the upcoming elections is commendable. Yet, we should take a cue from the comment by Dr. Vladimir Antwi Danso on Myjoyonline.com on August 8, 2016 that the situation could be worse than the report of the police suggests. In his view, all the 29,000 polling stations should be put under that radar.

They are all potential flashpoints. The country is reeling under a psychology that this election is a do-and-die affair. Politics has become a zero-sum game. While not being dismissive of Dr. Antwi Dansos argument, the figure from the police alone should be a matter of concern to all Ghanaians that after 24 years of practicing electoral politics, the country is reeling under the fear of an outbreak of violence in the upcoming elections. To live in a state of fear during elections is a little less than the outbreak of violence itself. The continuous deployment of security forces including the police and military to safeguard polling stations and collation centers is a dark spot in Ghanas 24-years of practicing constitutional democracy.

I do not intend to arouse the fear of Ghanaians by mentioning that the recipes for widespread violence abound in the country. The politicization of chieftaincy disputes and sectarian violence such as in Old Tafo in the Ashanti region for example no longer make these disputes local affairs but national security threats. Moreover, the castigation of ethnic and religious identities through extremist media broadcasting and the reported unsavory religious comments by Hon. Colins Dauda, for example, pose existential threat to society. These security challenges would require professionally-minded and impartial public safety administration by the police and the BNI to address them.

As noted before, the posture of the police and BNI as somewhat belligerent and non-impartial sets them against society and erodes public confidence. The general perception of the police especially is not only about an organization that is corrupt, but as well, it is seen as trigger-happy and willing to use force at the least provocation. There are many examples in Ghanas recent national history to recount in this short piece. But the most recent example is the police brutality on the Let My Vote Count Alliance demonstrators who were pressing on the Electoral Commission for a new voters register. The legal manipulations of the police add to its negative public image.

Until the High Court ruling to prohibit the police from resorting to the Circuit Courts to stifle demonstrations, the police had turned the Public Order Act into a  soft weapon of choice to undermine civil rights. Sadly, the IGPs warning to ban social media on Election Day epitomizes what appears to be the psyche of a public institution that is rapidly severing the idea of collectively working with society to promote human and national security. The IGPs pronouncement is tantamount to the popular saying that I will show you where power lies on the day of the elections. President Mahamas remark that social media would not be banned appears to have watered down the public apprehension. In short, the perceived corruption and posturing of the police and to some extent the BNI, undermines their moral authority to fighting crime and pursuing the noble function of promoting national and human security.

Dr. Kwesi Aning, while commenting on the Interior Ministrys 32-day amnesty for the voluntary turn in or licensing of illegal weapons is reported by Myjoyonline.com to have argued that the elections  have no bearing on the reason why people seek and posses small arms. Dr. Anings call on the Interior Ministry to find out the reasons behind the acquisition of fire arms should be highly commended and taken seriously by the government. Indeed, inadequate financial, human, and material resources for the police to undertake their constitutional mandate of providing public safety need critical attention.

But the resourcing of the police and BNI would make little difference if deeply seated public mistrust of these security institutions is not addressed. Although elections in itself may not necessarily be the reason why people acquire fire arms; it is the single most important passion of the nation that is bequeathed to Ghanaians by the Fourth Republican Constitution and could actually trigger the use of fire arms when the public and political parties have little or no expectations for a fair and impartial police service and BNI to investigate and prosecute offenders of electoral malpractices.

The United Nations estimates that there are over 500 million illegal small arms and light weapons in the West African sub-region. That is more than twice the population of the entire sub-region. Ghanas closest ally (I use the concept of ally loosely to mean the perceived social and economic interaction between these countries), Nigeria, has over 350 million (70%) of these weapons. Ghana has over 2.3 million of these weapons. In view of the porous nature of Ghanas borders, it should not be difficult to imagine that any trigger of violence would open the doors for swift and massive importation of weapons from the sub-region. The science behind this argument is found in the sad examples of Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast.

To be sure, the greatest security threat that Ghana faces is not external aggression by other states. It is the taken for granted notion that Ghanaians are peaceful by nature. This public mindset appears to stifle the need to undertake innovative institutional reforms, and public education to ensuring durable peace and security and, in turn, sustain and improve upon the countrys democratic and economic gains. Sustainable internal security would depend highly on the changing of the attitudes of the police service and the BNI especially to win public confidence.

Beyond addressing the financial, material and human resource challenges of the police and BNI to maintaining public order, these institutions of national security need to work hard to (re)gain public trust. The 2016 Elections is an opportunity for them to shirk their belligerent posture and actively begin to recognize the essential role of the public and educate them as partners in the promotion of peace and security. In short, the police and BNI need immediate and proactive public education programs to build strong civil relations in the communities they serve to promote sustainable human and national security.

Edward Akuffo is an associate professor of international security and international relations at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada. [email protected]
I believe in the capitalist orientation of job creation. When a capitalist oriented person governs the state, the private sector expands hence employing majority of the youth and reduces the tundra of youth unemployment.

In 2008 when I registered as a first-time voter, of course I had completed SHS that same year. I was desperate to further my education and for that matter, I didn't want to make a mistake in exercising my franchise because I knew very well that the decision I was going to take will certainly impact my life someday.

Being the first time for me to vote, I did not really know whom to vote for. I liked Professor Mills outward attitude and I liked Nana Akufo-Addo's tone of speaking especially the Queen's language; of course these have nothing to do with good governance.

As a young dreaming lawyer, I had gotten the opportunity to read some books which had Nana Akufo-Addo's legal quotes being cited on countless times. This didn't influence me because I come from a family dominated by both NPP and NDC (Professor Kwaku Danso Boafo - former Ghana's High Commissioner to Britain is my uncle). I know that because of Professor Kwaku Danso Boafo, people will link me to the extended family of Nana Akufo-Addo. Well, they may be right but that wasn't an issue to me. Even Dr. Owuraku Amofa was a strong NDC (I say this for he broke away).

Because it was my first time to vote and as one of the most acknowledged government students at OPASS, I didn't want to disenfranchise myself neither did I want to vote on any worthless issues such as tribe, religion, perception, political attributions and physical looks (stature, complexion).

For this reason, I decided to make a thorough background search of the two leading candidates. I realized Prof Mills was a brilliant student who had his PhD at age 27 very encouraging but those days isn't today; you know what I mean. You could easily gain scholarship for further studies and the cost of education wasn't so high compared to today. I also realized that Nana Akufo-Addo is one of the eminent lawyers in the country and has trained many lawyers from which some are judges at the superior courts of the land. Also, the Attorney General at that time - Hon. Joe Ghartey also passed through Nana Akufo-Addo's Chambers.

I also realized that Nana Akufo-Addo a successful businessman employing thousands of Ghanaian youth. You agree with me that many were those who got employed when the Buzz mobile communication network came to Ghana. I also realized that at age 34, he (Nana Akufo-Addo) was an influential youth in Ghanaian political front who played a major role in the formation of the Peoples Movement for Freedom and Justice - a movement that stood vehemently against the UNIGOV decision by the to fly on to exile because his life was in danger. You know how risky it is to fight a military regime.

As though not enough, I realized that Nana Akufo-Addo has not fought anyone before but political opponents have succeeded in tagging him "arrogant" because he led the famous "Kumi Preko" demonstration in 1995 - a demonstration which sort to deepen the nation's democracy.

I realized again that Nana Akufo-Addo, in his political carrier as Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister never took salary, allowances or any other political benefits. He never used a state car or house. Of course candidate Mills took all his salary when he was Vice President to former President Rawlings and his running mate (Mahama) never skipped a pesewa of his salary and allowances as MP and Minister.

My conscience began elucidating to my thoughts as Nana Akufo-Addo is not in politics to enrich himself rather, he is there to serve his country Pro Bono (Credit to Sarkodie).

Still, I was not convinced I decided to access the political parties these two gentlemen stood for individually, their campaign messages and ideologies. I came to realize that the NDC hang its ideology on Socialism while the NPP is on Capitalism. I love capitalism because I always want to do it my own. I think socialism breeds laziness - my opinion though. But these are just ideologies.

I came to realize that although the NDC claim to be socialist, there was no social intervention which could trace its root to the NDC. All the social interventions were initiated by the NPP government under the leadership of the then President J. A. Kuffour which Nana Akufo-Addo was key in the government. Social interventions such as NYEP, NHIS, School Feeding, Free Maternal Healthcare, Metro Mass Transit, Cocoa Spraying, MASLOC, PSI etc were helping Ghanaians a lot.

One day, I heard Vice Presidential Candidate Mahama saying "for the NPP to tell Ghanaians that they have built schools, hospitals, stadia, interchanges, pipes, and other infrastructure, it is an exercise in mediocrity. Every government does it".

I said to myself; if every government puts up infrastructure then let me see if I could see any initiative that can be pointed to 19 years rule of PNDC -NDC other than the mediocrities. Unfortunately, I the NPP, aside what Hon. Mahama termed as "mediocrity", had achieved other successes.

I got convinced after hearing Nana Akufo-Addo throwing a challenge that he is not corrupt, has never been corrupt and will never be corrupt. Transparency and accountability are his basic fiscal principles. Political opponents tagged him "litigant" but he has never indulged in negative litigations. I once heard him saying "my political opponents are saying I'm a litigant. They are just getting me wrong. I'm not corrupt and I don't condone corrupt practices. I want my resources as well as resources of the state to be used efficiently. For this reason, if you embezzle or misappropriate any resource, I will let you refund it. Enjoy what you have worked for not from the state, you block the chance of one poor child succeeding". I shouted "wooooow"! Corruption is dwindling Africa's development and for that matter Ghana. This is the man we can entrust with our resources.

I therefore concluded that if Nana Akufo-Addo could sacrifice his youthful life for Ghanaians as he fought military rule, if Nana Akufo-Addo as opposition member in the 1990s could establish companies to employ thousands of Ghanaian youth, if he served Ghana without his due salary and allowances etc, then Nana Akufo-Addo is ready to serve Ghana for no bid. Remember Jesus said "whoever wants to be a leader must be a servant". Above all, if Nana Akufo-Addo could help President Kuffour to achieve other successes aside what Hon. Mahama termed "mediocrities" then the man Akufo-Addo has something good for Ghana.

I belong to a school of thought that believes the government successes and failures are best measured using social intervention policies. For that matter, a government that fails to initiate social intervention policies is a failure.

This is why I decided to vote for NPP and Nana Akufo-Addo in 2008 and 2012. I will vote for him again coming 7th December and entreat you to join me make this visionary man our next president! God bless Ghana.

I believe in Nana Akufo-Addo's political, social and legal experience.

I believe in the practical economic endowment of Dr. Alhaji Mahamadu Bawumia.

I will go for 1 District 1 Factory.

Nothing is beyond the capabilities of a wise leader.

Believe in Nana Akufo-Addo

#VoteNPP2016

Kukurudu!!!

Saakia! Saakia!! Saakia!!!

Nana Ofori Kissi Ratina

Atiwa West Constituency

Youth Organizer

0247454953
Massive crowds called by a coalition of political parties have brought traffic in the Tamale township to a virtual standstill.

Themed Di Mii Ya which translates into Times are Hard, the demonstration is to protest the hardships and suffering in the Northern parts of the country, particularly and Ghana generally.

The organizers say President John Mahamas government has, through failed policies, imposed untold hardship on the people.

They claim that a thick cloud of hopelessness and despondency has enveloped towns and villages in the north.

They hope to draw governments attention to the unbearable pain being endured by citizens of the North whose living conditions have deteriorated significantly in the last few years.

Joy News Correspondent Martina Abugri reported that the crowds caused a huge traffic jam in the Central Business District of the Northern Regional capital, Tamale.

She reported a counter-demonstration by supporters of the governing National Democratic Congress led by the regional Chairman, Sofo Azorka, nearly marred the protest.

She said there was a standoff between the two groups of protesters with youth of the coalition of political parties insisting that they will not change course as suggested by their leaders.

They were angered by the fact that their leaders capitulated and decided to change course because the NDC protesters had marched on their advertised route.

Eventually, reason prevailed, Martina said, so the angry youth backed down, changed course continued with their demonstration.

More soon

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
22.08.2016 LISTEN

The Upper West Region recorded 0.5 percent malaria fatality cases among children under age five from the period January  June 2016.

Within the same period, a total of 200,086 number of suspected cases were recorded by health facilities in the Region and out of this 137,127 were tested and 69,926 proved positive.

Mr Titus Tagoe, the Upper West Regional Malaria Focal Person, disclosed this during a Regional Stakeholders Meeting organized by the Institute of Social Research and Development (ISRAD)  Ghana in Wa.

He said malaria was endemic in Ghana but was more pronounce in the rural areas as compared to the urban areas.

He said statistics from the 2014 Ghana Demographic Health Survey (GDHS) indicates that the malaria prevalence among children less than five years of age ranged from 11.2 per cent in the Greater Accra Region to 40 per cent in the Northern Region.

Prevalence of the parasite in rural Ghana, he said, was 37.7 per cent and 15 per cent in urban Ghana.

Mr Tagoe said malaria was confined to Africa, South America and Asia, adding that it was prevalent in 110 countries and territories.

He said an estimated 2,400 million people were at risk of the disease with over 500 million cases being reported every year.

This, he said, reduced economic growth by 1.3 per cent and took about 40 per cent public health expenditure in endemic countries.

Mr Issah Hassan Mubarack, the Regional Coordinator of ISRAD, said despite concerted efforts by key stakeholders to reduce the disease, malaria still remained the leading cause of morbidity and illness in the country.

He said it was for this reason that ISRAD was implementing the Advocacy for Malaria Stoppage (ARMS) project to contribute to reduce the incidence of malaria in Ghana.

He explained that the project would select a group of five persons in every six district of the 10 regions of the nation to advocate for the release of the 0.5 per cent of the District Responsive Initiative for the prevention of malaria.

He said ISRAD believed strongly that when these funds were channeled through Ghana Health Service (GHS) for the work of malaria prevention, it would go a long way to help reduce the malaria burden in various districts.


The Ghana Nursing and Midwifery Trainees Association (GNMTA) has kicked against admission fees for the 2016/2017 academic year.

The leadership of GMNTA has described as exorbitant and a ploy to deny the indigent students into the various nursing colleges the decision of the Nurses and Midwifery Council to increase the admission fees of the 2016/2017 academic year exceedingly.

Students who have gained admissions into the various nursing and midwifery training colleges across the country are to pay a total of about GH4,850 as admission fees for the 2016/2017 academic year, a situation the student body finds worrying.

The National Chairman of GMNTA, Godwin Akazee, who has been speaking to Kapital News on the issue, said, We were engaged in the billing process of the 2016/2017 academic year fees, only for the one that has been approved by the ministry come out and the schools were supposed to have specific things that they can add and you realise that the ones they have added is even more than what the ministry has approved without consultation with local board of the school.

He said when things are not streamlined by authorities, it will come to a time it's only the rich who can do nursing.

Let's consider our counterparts coming from the north.., how many cows will my father be able to sell for 48million for me to go for a semester? he lamented, tasking the government to take a keen interest in the health sector education and find lasting solutions to the various problems so that nursing will not become the preserve of the rich.

Already, GNMTA has pending issues with government over the non-payment of their school fees, trainee allowances, clinical charges, utility and feeding bills, among many others.

He has, therefore, warned government to be prepared to face their wrath, if their grievances are not addressed by the end of the week.

-kapital971.com
The Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II has expressed an optimistic view of Africa's ability to overcome obstacles that would lead to better democratic outcomes and engineer economic transformation of the continent.

The democratic change of governments through constitutional means of which election is the means and not the end, has created a big space for peace and security of nations.

He told an audience that included Members of both Houses of the British Parliament, the diplomatic community, faculty of universities and a selected number of Ghanaians including the former President of Ghana, John Agyekum Kufuor at Westminster, London as he spoke on the topic, Africa's Democratic Path and the Search for Economic Transformation.

The Asantehene explained that stability and planning for development predicated by 16 presidential and parliamentary elections in Africa alone this year was an encouraging step of consolidating peace.

Whilst expressing some optimism citing development data from Africa's own think tanks which he said had come of age as seen in their input leading to policy enrichment, outreach programmes and sensitization, safe-guarding electoral processes with the emergence of reforms in telecommunication and associated multi-media, he spoke of how they have created a knowledge-based economy that did not exist in many parts of Africa two decades ago.

These benefits and new ways, he elucidated, should however lead to adjustment in thinking and a strategy of less dependence on multi-donor budget support and financing of electoral reforms and institutions as they are not permanent fixtures.

Though the journey to development is on course, the challenges could be daunting, dwelling on the uncertainties South Sudan finds itself.

Otumfuo Osei Tutu referred also to infractions of politicians and their surrogates whether in Kenya, where some members of their Parliament had to be arrested by the police for ethnic incitement or in Ghana where radio presenters threatened murder of the Lady Chief Justice and some members of the judiciary.

Lord Paul Boateng of the House of Lords and of Ghanaian descent praised the Asantehene for his traditional leadership which fits finely into modernity and in particular his focus on education and agriculture. Unfortunately, he said, Africa's agriculture is suffering from all fronts, a situation which affects millions of dependants.

The event was also a literary fanfare which saw the launch of two books- May Their Shadows Never Shrink- Wole Soyinka and the Oxford Professorship of Poetry edited by Ivor Agyeman-Duah, a Ghanaian author and Lucy Newlyn, a professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and All the Good Things Around Us- An Anthology of African Short Stories also edited by Agyeman-Duah.
Nene Kano Atiapah II, the Acting President of the Ningo Prampram Traditional Area and member of the Greater Accra Regional House of Chiefs has denied a report which quoted him as saying he and other chiefs were going to demonstrate against President John Mahama.

What I said was that; we are running out of patience over the reluctance of the Minister of Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs, Dr. Henry Seidu Daanaa to rescind his decision to transfer our Registrar, Harry Anthony Attipoe he said in a reaction to the story.

I indicated that we have observed that the Minister of Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs is happy with the numerous chieftaincy disputes in the region that is why he has refused to rescind his decision to transfer the Registrar he continued.

He said he had appealed to President John Dramani Mahama, to as a matter of urgency intervene in the matter to allow peace to prevail in the region and within the chieftaincy sector.

Explaining further, he pointed out that as members of the Greater Accra Regional House of Chiefs we met when the issue started and petitioned the Chief of Staff to intervene, by getting the sector Minister to rescind his decision, due to the Registrar's efforts in settling chieftaincy matters in the region adding

Our decision was based on the fact that nobody wants to lose a hard working Registrar who was doing everything possible not only to solve the numerous chieftaincy problems in the region, but also bringing unprecedented development to the House.

The sector minister, he said, disrespected them by not consulting them before taking such a malicious transfer decision.

According to him, he gave the Chieftaincy Minister; a two week ultimatum to rescind his decision to transfer Harry Anthony Attipoe else, we would be left with no other option than organize a demonstration and march to the Flagstaff House to express our dissatisfaction over the decision.
I don't know how many young women come to this blog or how many are parents of teenage or young adult women, but here are some safety tips from Kelsey's Army:

T

I

P

S

1. Trust your instincts - If something feels wrong then something probably is wrong.2. Know your surroundings - know who and what is around you.3. Always have a plan for where you would go and what you would do if a situation arises.4. Be willing to make a scene in order to be noticed.5. Let someone know where you are going and when you will be back.Remember the acronym TIPS:ake Chargenform others of your whereaboutsrepare for any situationurvival Mentality (role play situations so you will respond should they happen)For more information, go to Kelsey's Army
GLICO Group limited, a leading indigenous company in Ghana's insurance and financial services sector, has once again demonstrated leadership in the insurance industry by winning three awards at the recently held 13th Ashanti Financial Excellence Awards in Kumasi.

The event was held under the auspices of the Manyhia Palace.

Three awards were presented to GLICO Life Insurance Company (GLICO LIFE) and GLICO General Insurance Company (GLICO GENERAL), both subsidiaries of GLICO GROUP.

GLICO LIFE received a Gold Award for best life insurance company that provides protection-based funeral insurance, and GLICO GENERAL received two Silver Awards for providing fire and travel insurance to the people of Ashanti region.

A statement from the organizers, Top Brass Ghana said, GLICO LIFE and GENERAL were awarded for their strong brand position on the Ghanaian market, especially for their contribution to the development of Ashanti region.

Receiving the award on behalf of the GROUP, Nana Efua Rockson, Group Head, Corporate Affairs and Marketing of GLICO Group said, We are thrilled about this recognition, as it underpins our fervent commitment to providing our customers with value-based products that make their lives easier and secure.

Being named amongst many notable companies and worthy peers in the financial industry in Ghana is a great honour, and we dedicate these awards to all our customers.

The Ashanti Financial Services Excellence Awards scheme continues to recognize and celebrate creativity and innovation of companies.

GLICO Group is made up of six subsidiaries namely: GLICO LIFE, GLICO CAPITAL, GLICO HEALTHCARE, GLICO PROPERTIES, GLICO GENERAL and GLICO PENSIONS, with over 21 branches nationwide.

A Business Desk report
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan will be hosting the Sub-Saharan Africa High-Level Ministerial Exchange Visit (Exchange Visit) from 22 to 24 August 2016. 10 Ministers from Botswana, Cabo Verde, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mauritius, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe will participate in the Exchange Visit. The theme for the Exchange Visit is Singapore and Africa: Partnering for Sustainable Development.

During the visit, the Ministers will call on Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and meet with Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies Tharman Shanmugaratnam. They will also be hosted to meals by Coordinating Minister for Infrastructure and Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli, and Minister of State for Trade and Industry and for National Development Dr Koh Poh Koon. They will exchange views on the challenges of sustainable development and share experiences in dealing with urban solutions, water management and skills development.

The Exchange Visit will feature site visits to [email protected], Marina Barrage and Singapore Sustainability Gallery, Institute of Technical Education College Central and Singapore Aviation Academy. To obtain a sense of Singapores culture and history, the Ministers will tour the Civic District, Kampong Glam, National Gallery Singapore and Asian Civilisations Museum. The Exchange Visit will conclude with the Ministers networking with select Singapore business leaders at the 4th Africa Singapore Business Forum organised by International Enterprise Singapore from 24 to 25 August 2016.
Guy Warrington, the new British High Commissioner to Sierra Leone, presented a copy of his Letter of Credentials to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Dr Samura Kamara at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday 9 August. Mr Warrington also met Directors-General and Directors from the MFAIC.

Mr Warrington emphasised the enduring and unique partnership between the United Kingdom and Sierra Leone. Through the Ebola epidemic to recovery, the UK stands with Sierra Leone, supporting the governments plans to rebuild Sierra Leone, in the words of President Koroma, as a better, more resilient and fairer society. The lessons from the Ebola response should help guide this work. It is on this basis that the UK Government pledged 240 million to support recovery over two years, the biggest bilateral donor partnership with Sierra Leone and the highest per capita UK bilateral programme in the world. The new High Commissioner stressed that his focus, and that of the UK team in Sierra Leone, will be to help the government deliver rapid progress across the Presidential recovery priorities.

Increasing private sector investment and jobs will be an essential part of that recovery. Mr Warrington said that much of his career had focused on trade, investment and commercial diplomacy; he was keen to support improvements to the business environment and on that basis to promote greater UK private sector involvement in the Sierra Leonean Economy.

The UK will continue to support steps towards free, fair and participatory local, Parliamentary and Presidential elections in 2018 working with the government, international partners, political parties and civil society. Voter registration will be an essential step towards that aim. A successful review of the 1991 Constitution will also be an important sign of progress in enhancing long-term democratic stability.

The UKs commitment to Sierra Leone is an example of our determination to increase the UKs focus on parts of the world outside of Europe, including the Commonwealth, following the recent referendum decision to leave the EU. The UK remains committed to its 0.7% ODA targets and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Two years on from the outbreak of Ebola, Mr Warrington stressed the importance of Sierra Leone maintaining vigilance against future outbreaks of the disease. As he begins a three year posting to Freetown, the UK-Sierra Leone partnership has never been stronger.
Johannesburg (AFP) - Steelmaker ArcelorMittal has agreed to pay a $110-million (88-million-euro) fine for illegal price fixing in South Africa, the country's competition watchdog announced Monday.

The Competition Commission launched a probe into steel producers in the country in 2008 following concerns around high steel prices, and found that the company colluded with its competitors in "fixing" prices and allocating customers.

The company "admits having been involved in the long steel and scrap metal cartels, and agrees to pay an administrative penalty of 1.5 billion rand" ($110 million), it said in a statement.

The local unit of the company will pay the fine in five annual instalments of at least 300 million rand each.

The South African government said it welcomed the punishment of the country's largest steel maker in what it ranked the "largest single" fine imposed so far against an individual firm by the competition authorities.

"The action by the competition authorities is part of a crackdown against abuse of market power and price-fixing that undermine the performance of the economy," Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel said in a statement.

The watchdog's chief commissioner Tembinkosi Bonakele said the "penalty sends a strong message of deterrence and is an important milestone in the Commission's enforcement against cartels".

ArcelorMittal South Africa is the continent's largest steel producer, supplying more than 61 percent of the steel used in Africa's most industrialised country.
It is about time we reimagine what defines citizenship in the 21st century. Some philosophers have defined the concept of citizenship in logical terms. This may include freedom for all, enjoyment of privileges and the establishment of governing structures that will encourage and facilitate everyones involvement in their chosen communities.

The reorganisation of things regarding life within the era of the internet changes citizenship from civic duties to individual rights and privileges but as citizens of this community you do not only have the entitlements to enjoy, you also have a number of obligations to fulfil in order to be considered a good citizen. For some of us, that should be our business online.

To ensure that we are fulfilling this role effectively and in an organised manner, it is important we educate people, especially children, about appropriate behaviours and codes of conduct befitting citizens who occupy this new community, referred to as the new media.

By doing this, we ensure that the online community, which cannot be legislated but is expected to have some level of well-behaved citizen, has members who are contributing to the good of that community. Therefore, the work of the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) should not only be limited to the offline world but must be brought to bear on the online citizenry.

It is important that as good digital citizens, we are able to connect with our chosen communities to the best of our abilities. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to keep a balance and follow the tenets of a good digital citizen and fulfil our obligations towards the communities we belong.

Online citizenship requires some kind of virtuous behaviour which should not be taken for granted but must be taught. From the beginning of virtual realities until now, if we have not seen anything at all, the disturbing images of children engaging in harmful online activities or another, tells you that it is important to give some kind of character education to online citizens regardless of their social background or status.

This is one of the reasons behind our call for the review of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) curriculum for schools in Ghana. The truth is, if it is not started early and targeted at the classrooms, it will be difficult to consider that after a lot of water has passed under the bridge.

The kind of citizenship under discussion requires participation from you and I. This is the party-cipation which costs close to nothing to get it underway. Aside the cost, this kind of participation has several options for the participants. What most of us forget to realise is this; not everyone is who they claim to be online.

Since participation online is open to all and available to anyone to join, coupled with the lack of the virtuous behaviour, participants are increasingly getting marred by all sorts of bad habits which could have been checked before people were introduced to the online space in the first place. I believe that although the digital world is participatory, it is up to the society to help citizens use their tools for participation effectively and wisely.

Over the years, there have been talks about an Internet Governance Forum (IGF), to rule and manage online affairs and conducts.

This forum came about because the digital citizenship is a humongous membership affair. It is therefore very crucial that there are attempts to hear and listen to the voices of all these large numbers of people as well as establish an ethics and engagement resource in this constantly changing space. This is not to say that citizenship in the context of the digital world is about doing the right thing, rather it is about occasionally re-examining the culture and the communities within the online sphere and making sure its standards are in line with the growing trend as well as our own standards as citizens.

For digital citizenship to be effective, it must be INCLUSIVE.

In order for digital citizenship to thrive, it is important it is looked at with the lenses of equity, lest we promote instability and revolution in the space. Under no circumstance should there be any form of disparity between the rich and the poor. I am excited about an initiative by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialised agency for information and communication technologies, called the Child Online Protection (COP) initiative.

This is to guarantee some kind of freedom for children and young people to learn and explore, a safe haven designed to ensure that systems are put in place to prevent some adults from taking advantage of children online. Our organisation, J Initiative, provides tools for effective digital citizenship but very few people actually take advantage of it.

Another aspect of digital citizenship is media ratings or assessment. The digital citizenship has a lot to do with media development and which form development takes. Therefore, digital citizenship can be said to be dependent more on how effective the media is in spreading new and useful ideas to promote development. News used to be accessed from traditional sources but now news is all over the place, summed up in 140 characters in the case of Twitter and the streaming of news items and live videos online.

However, how well those videos or ideas spread depend on the affordability, the reach or coverage platform and the relevance of the information to what the members of the society need. With this in mind, the question for any digital citizen should be this: How best can I ensure a virtuous behaviour while having a form of effective participation with our community culture in mind?

Having answered the above question, citizenship can be referred to as members of the online community. Community is said to be formed when a group of people gather with common goals. If that is the case, then citizenship is tied to a group and any member of the group must be seen to belong, therefore it is important you and I exhibit some level of citizenship based on the culture of the community.

The bigger question is: How well can a group define itself with regards to the digital space and in relation to its belief, customs and practices as well as which behaviours it reinforces or discourages? There is a lot of tribalism and hate speech going on within our various online communities in Ghana. How can you and I stand up to say lets correct these wrongs without churning out more of the negatives?

The way to go is to respond to the call for digital citizenship, where we have our curriculum revolutionised with digital literacy and fluency skills. Is this what we are experiencing today?

Awo Aidam Amenyah

Child Online Protection Advocate

J Initiative, Ghana
22.08.2016 LISTEN

A Nigerian man living in Indonesia, Izuchukwu F. Ezimoha, who was recently executed by the Indonesian government for allegedly dealing in drug trafficking has been laid to rest.

Ezimoha was among the three Nigerians executed in Indonesia for alleged drug trafficking.

The three were killed by firing squad on July 28, 2016 in Indonesia following claims that they had transported drugs into the country.

They were put to death after midnight on Thursday, while 10 others had been slated for the same crimes but escaped death.

Ezimoha was buried in his multi-million mansion in Ezigbo village, Ihiala LGA of Anambra State on Thursday.

-adomonline
The Running Mate of Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, Ms. Brigitte Dzogbenuku will be touring the nation towards the December 7, elections under the theme, "The Bright Awakening".

The tour, which begins in the Volta Region is set to reiterate the consensually accepted practical reality that indeed a wasted vote is one that brings unemployment, diseases, unfriendly economic environment, etc.

All over the country, there is the hunger to break away from the duopoly and status quo, and to support an alternative political party that is set to bring real change to the country as a whole and the many precious lives.

Ghanaians want a government that will break away from the practice of alienation and embrace inclusiveness.

Ghanaians want a disciplined and committed government that will work with the sole aim of attaining a hallmark of excellence with a sense of urgency.

The PPP is committed to forming a government which will provide incorruptible leadership, create jobs across the country, ensure a cleaner and healthier society, and ensure the implementation of the FCUBE.

Ms. Dzogbenuku will be engaging the electorates to reiterate the point that proper change lies with votes for Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom, and the PPP as a whole. She will interact directly with the electorates through small community group meetings, radio stations, and places of work.

Together, we will succeed.

Long live Ghana !

Long live the PPP!

Signed

Berlinda Bulley

2nd National Vice Chairperson

0246287495
President John Mahama has arrived in Salaga in the Northern region as he begins his four day campaign tour.

According to Joy News' Northern Region correspondent, Hashmin Mohamed, hundreds of supporters welcomed the president with chants and camaraderie.

The campaign tour comes at a time when some residents led by opposition political parties have taken to the streets in protest over harsh living conditions.

The protesters, including, traders, market women, artisans, say they are unhappy with the rising cost of living in the region.

They cite the high electricity bills as one of their major headaches in the region and want the government to quickly reduce the price of electricity.

Not even the appeal by the Tamale police for them to postpone the demonstration will stop them from hitting the streets.

Their concerns notwithstanding, the governing National Democratic Congress is touting what it says to be its major achievements in the Northern Region.

One of the most talked about success stories the NDC projects is the upgrade of the Tamale Airport which has made it possible for pilgrims to fly straight from Tamale to Mecca without having to travel to Accra first.

Deputy Education Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa in a discussion on Joy FM's newsfile program claimed the achievement was unprecedented.

Hashmin Mohamed said the president arrived in Tamale around 12:00 noon on a helicopter and was met by a partisan crowd.

He will be moving to the newly enskinned Kpenbewura's Palace to pay a courtesy call on him.

The president will then address a rally at the Salaga township where the Parliamentary candidates will be introduced to the mammoth crowd.

He will then proceed to other constituencies in the Eastern Corridor part of the region where the achievements of the governing will be touted.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com|Nathan Gadugah
The Northern Regional Executives of the incumbent National Democratic Congress (NDC), says the demonstration by pro-opposition parties in the region, will not in anyway affect President Mahamas tour of the region.

Opposition parties in the region are embarking on a demonstration, they call, 'Damiiya' meaning 'times are tough', in the Northern Regional capital, Tamale.

The NDC however believes the demonstration is being spearheaded solely by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), to dim the president's visit to the region.

Sammy Awuku was there, Mustapha Hamid among others were there, I saw all the national executives of the NPP except those they have suspended. So if they pretend that it is other political parties, they can go ahead. But let me tell them that the good people of the Northern Region, are going to vote massively for President Mahama. The seats in Northern Region of which NPP has nine, we are going to recapture all those seats, Abdul Mumin Alhassan, NDC Northern Regional Communication Director, said.

Mumin Alhassan told Citi News the NPP's plan against President Mahama's tour will not succeed.

The NPP issued a statement that they will demonstrate if VRA does not review tariffs. We advised them the only body they can petition about electricity tariffs was PURC, yet they ignored our advice. These people are nation wreckers, you remember even when Nkrumah was going for independence, they said it must come later so that is the people we are dealing with. We are not going to relent on our efforts of doing what we are doing. President Mahama is focused on developing this country and he is going to deliver on his mandate, he added.

He was also hopeful that President John Mahama, who is currently on a tour of the Northern Region, will receive a rousing welcome from the majority of the people in the area, despite the ongoing demonstration.

As I'm speaking now, he's gone to visit the eastern part of the region for his first visit. I understand he will be visiting the northern region three times before the election. He will have the opportunity to drive on the eastern corridor road, which he awarded some few years back. There is a massive infrastructure development that is ongoing in the Salaga south constituency where dormitories, libraries and school blocks have been put up, so he will be visiting to see the facility. He will also pay a courtesy call on some paramount chiefs along the eastern corridor. He will also continue his tour tomorrow [Tuesday], to other parts like Yendi, Zabzugu, Tatale among other places. So the prospects are high, the people are very happy, the NDC communicator added.



By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @AlloteyGodwin
The National Democratic Congress says the failure of New Patriotic Partys Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia to submit the over 76,000 supposed 'foreign voters' to the Electoral Commission for deletion exposes NPPs hatred for persons of the Volta region.

According to Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Koku Anyidoho, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia deceived the Electoral Commission (EC) when he said the party had some evidence to show that some 76,000 Togolese had their names on the countrys electoral register.

Rekindling the sentiment that led the NDC General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia, to call for the NPP runningmates arrest, Anyidoho stated that Dr. Bawumias claim shows that NPP still sees the Volta region as not part of Ghana.

Addressing a press conference in the Volta region Monday, Anyidoho called on Voltarians to reject the NPP in the upcoming December polls for looking down and treating them with disdain.

Have we ever sat down to plot evil against the Ashanti region because it is the stronghold of the NPP, certainly not...it is now clear as daylight that Dr, Bawumias evil agenda of presenting fake voters register from Togo and making a false claim that thousands of Togolese have their names on Ghanas register (specifically from the Volta region) feeds into the UP traditions sick thinking that the Volta region is not part of Ghana.

They insult us, they spit on us, they consider us to be Togolese (Not that there is anything wrong to being Togolese) and when we refuse to vote for them, they say we are inward looking. Why shouldnt we look inward when the view outside is not pleasant to the eye?.

Ladies and gentlemen, this whole nonsensical approach by Bawumia to create a false impression that thousands of Togolese vote in the Volta region is deeply rooted in the UP tradition agenda against Voltarians and Volta region.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. The Venice Commission transmitted to the authorities of Armenia the 2nd joint opinion with the OSCE/ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) on the amended Electoral Code of Armenia on July 19, Armenpress was informed from the press service of the CoE.

The document outlines that the electoral reform under consideration stemmed from the adoption of a new constitution in December, 2015 shifting the governance system of Armenia from a semi-presidential to a parliamentary one. While the electoral system is totally new, the reform addressed issues, such as the accuracy of voter lists, which had been the object of longstanding OSCE/ODIHR and Venice Commission recommendations. Importantly, the adoption of the new Electoral Code on 25 May 2016 was achieved with a significant majority and was followed by a broad political agreement between the governing and opposition parties on additional measures to enhance the preconditions for democratic elections (local elections will be held in the autumn of 2016 and parliamentary elections in the spring of 2017). Civil society organizations were also constructively involved in the negotiations, although they eventually did not sign the final agreement. The agreement formed the basis for additional amendments to the Electoral Code adopted by the Parliament on 30 June 2016, bringing about, in particular, the use of new technologies for the oversight of the electoral process, on condition that adequate funding is secured. Many of these additional amendments may be seen as measures to increase public confidence in the new electoral system and procedures. This situation shows a welcome constructive attitude on the part of both the majority and the opposition, which may be conducive to the good faith implementation of the new Electoral Code. The Venice Commission and OSCE/ODIHR underscore their support for this spirit of compromise and their wish for it to continue to prevail as regards the implementation of the Electoral Code and the election of a new Central Electoral Commission in the autumn of 2016, reads the document.

The second joint opinion of the OSCE/ODIHR is available here.
Nairobi (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Monday for the deployment of a 4,000-strong "protection force" to bolster the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.

"There is absolutely no question that we need to move forward with the deployment of the regional protection force authorised by the UN Security Council," Kerry said after meeting with five regional foreign ministers in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed also urged a speedy deployment. "When should it be there? Sooner rather than later," she said.

In the wake of fresh fighting in the South Sudanese capital Juba last month, Kenya offered to provide troops for a new force, approved by the Security Council on August 12, alongside Ethiopia and Rwanda.

The 4,000 new troops will join 12,000 already deployed as part of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) which has been widely criticised for its serial failure to protect civilians.

- Not an 'intervention force' -

Mohamed said a "gradual deployment" would allow troops to reach Juba more quickly.

"Any number of soldiers that goes in in the name of a protection force would be welcome and would open the door to everything else," she said.

Kerry said the new force would only seek to improve security in Juba and allow for the implementation of a peace deal signed a year ago.

"This is not an intervention force, it is a protection force, with a very clear mandate to protect people, to ensure access, freedom of movement and to be free from ambush or attack of any sort," he said.

No timeline has been given for the deployment but South Sudan's government has expressed strong reservations over the plan and called for further discussions.

"We want to know the mandate of this protection force," said South Sudan Vice President Taban Deng Gai during a visit to the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Monday. "We want to sit with them in Juba, not in New York."

Deng is strengthening his position after seizing the vice presidency from his old friend and ally Riek Machar who was forced to flee Juba during last month's fighting.

Kerry signalled that Machar's ouster did not undermine the August 2015 peace agreement of which he was a key signatory. "Legally, under the agreement, there is an allowance for the replacement of personnel and that has been effected with the appointment of a new vice president," he said.

- Regional threat -

Kerry also announced an additional $138 million (122 million euros) in aid for South Sudan where 2.5 million people have been uprooted by war since December 2013 and close to half the population is in need of emergency food aid.

During his meetings in Nairobi Kerry also addressed the threat of terrorism emanating from Somalia where a new government is due to be chosen next month.

"Al-Shabaab may have had its start in Somalia but it doesn't care about national borders," Kerry said. "The terrorists are a regional threat and demand a regional response."

He pledged continuing support for the internationally-backed government in Mogadishu and the cash-strapped African Union force fighting the Shabaab in Somalia.
Empowering Berna Project to support infertile women in Africa

Supporting governments in defining policies to regulate fertility care in Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria

Providing comprehensive training for African embryologists

Merck More than a Mothers (www.MerckGroup.com) efforts received big support in Finland from a high level panel of ministers, parliamentarians, academia, International Federation of Fertility Societies (IFFS), African Fertility Society and global fertility experts who called for action to improve access to regulated fertility care and empower infertile women in Africa through access to information, health and change of mindset.

Watch this video for a summary of the high level panel to improve access to regulated fertility care and empower infertile women in Africa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFxYJpvlVEo

During the event that was held in Finland, a productive dialogue started to address the different angles of Merck More than a Mother initiative by the high level panel.

The panel included, Dr. Belen Garijo, Member of Executive Board and CEO of Merck Healthcare; H.E. Sarah Opendi, the Minister of Health, Uganda; H.E. Betty Amongi, the Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development and Chair of Uganda Women Parliamentary Association; Hon. Senator Dr Lanre Tejuoso, Chairman of Senate Committee on Health, Nigeria; Hon. Joyce Lay, Member of Parliament, Kenya; Prof. Joe Simpson, President of IFFS; Prof. Oladapo Ashiru, President of Africa Fertility Society-Nigeria, Dr. James Olobo-Lalobo, Vice President of Africa Fertility Society-Uganda; Dr. Ivans Sini, Director of Indonesian Reproductive Sciences Institute (IRSI); Dr. Karim Bendhaou, President of North and West Africa, Merck Healthcare and Dr. Rasha Kelej, Chief Social Officer, Merck Healthcare.

All the panel members agreed that Merck More than a Mother addressed successfully most if not all the angles relevant to infertility in Africa, such as creating a culture shift to respect and appreciate infertile women in Africa; raising awareness about infertility prevention and management and male infertility by integrating it into healthcare infrastructure such as HIV, maternal health and mother and child programs; education and training for African embryologists since lack of trained and skilled staff is a big challenge; defining ART policies to improve access to regulated fertility care; building advocacy and open dialogue with governments, policy makers, parliaments, healthcare providers and media; and empowering infertile women through access to awareness, health and change of mindset and empowering women who can no longer get pregnant by starting a small business for them to build their independent and happier lives through Empowering Berna project.

Most women in the rural areas dont know that the problem of infertility can actually be managed for many of them. Since we launched Merck More than a Mother in Uganda we have been trying as a country to integrate fertility care services and awareness about prevention, management and male infertility into the already existing reproductive healthcare services which will be cost effective as the infrastructure is already there, said H.E. Sarah Opendi, the Minister of Health, Uganda.

It is very important to empower infertile women through improving access to awareness and fertility care so they can bear children as part of their human rights. In case they can no longer be treated, Empowering Berna project will contribute towards empowering and training them to establish their own small business so that they can be independent and re-build their own lives, a woman is more than a mother, Empowering Berna initiative will prove this every day, Rasha Kelej, Chief Social Officer of Merck Healthcare emphasized.

In Africa, the issue of infertility is embedded in culture and also the wealth of most African countries is embedded in land and property. Therefore, culturally a girl child or a woman inherits from where she is married and when you dont give birth you are supposed to go back to your home and when you do, you cannot inherit any property or land because your brothers and their children are the ones entitled to it, explained H.E. Betty Amongi, Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development and Chair of Uganda Women Parliamentarian Association.

This leads to economic exclusion for infertile women. In Uganda, we are working on enforcing the law where women will equally inherit from their blood family so that they become independent and have the power of choice over their lives which will also help empowering infertile women in Uganda, Hon. Amongi added.

In Nigeria, when there is infertility men believe that the woman is the problem. As a parliamentarian I will make sure that the Merck More than a Mother initiative will go everywhere including churches and mosques where people go for prayer when there is infertility so that the religious leaders can tell people to go for screening to determine if there is a medical problem first, emphasized Hon. Senator Dr. Lanre Tejuoso, Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, Federal Republic of Nigeria.

We are looking forward to welcoming Merck in Nigeria to launch the Merck More than a Mother later in the year and I am happy to be the initiatives only man ambassador. I will also introduce the ART bill in parliament so that we also join Kenya in having regulation in place, he added.

The event also marked the kick-off of the Empowering Berna Project and the Merck Africa Embryologists Training Program.

Among the infertile women who have benefited from the Empowering Berna Project include:

Grace Kambini from Kibera, Kenya:

She is now able to stand on her own feet after Merck More than a Mother helped her build a small local kitchen and cafeteria from where she cooks and sells food.

My suffering and stressful life is over now I am a new person. I can now walk with my head up knowing that I have a great business that will sustain me. I am very happy with this program and I wish that Merck can continue helping many other desperate people in this world, says Grace.

Watch in the video below the story of empowering Grace: https://youtu.be/7VzfaV6inpA

Noonkipa Mpalush also from Kenya:

She has been provided with two cows to enable her become a productive member of society. Each of the cows is able to produce six liters of milk per day. From this she is able to earn about USD 6 from the sale of the milk every day.

But now my life has changed with the help of Merck, I am happy and proud because I can support myself. Now I am more than a mother, says Noonkipa with a beaming smile."

Watch the story of empowering Noonkipa in the video below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3WV34G1o0M

Berna Amullen from Uganda:

She is now more independent and happier after Merck More than a Mother helped her establish a poultry project that now enables her to have a steady income to support herself. She has also been provided with the training needed to run and sustain her chicken business.

I am so delighted, I used to be useless and laughed at in this community. Nobody cared about me when I was sick. I am now happy, I am strong. I have strength all over my body, Berna says while dancing with her neighbors.

Watch in the video below the story of empowering Berna: https://youtu.be/KRv2mSaa18o

Chinelo Azodo from Nigeria:

She has been empowered to start a restaurant where she can be able to earn about US$ 120 per month. Previously, Chinelo who is not only childless but also a widow was earning less than US$30 per month from providing tailoring services.

Chinelo says: Before this I used to walk around stitching peoples torn clothes with my sewing machine. But now with the restaurant I can now take good care of myself. People say my food is delicious, I have earned their respect because of Merck, and they no longer insult me. I can now earn a better living and also save money towards adopting a child. I am a very happy woman I dance all the time.

Watch in the video below the story of empowering Chinelo: https://youtu.be/MmjwBol4kI0

At IFFS we dont only look at the success rate but we also look at guidelines, regulations and what prevents the success of fertility therapy. We also have basic trainings which we have in developing parts of the world on what any physician or health provider can do to determine there is infertility. We will work with Merck More than a Mother on this, Prof. Joe Leigh Simpson, President International Federation of Fertility Societies said.

The Merck More than a Mother initiative will energize my team to speed up in finding solutions to train and employ community based officers to provide essential primary healthcare at the village level, said Dr. Karim Bendhaou, President of North and West Africa, Merck Healthcare.

During the panel, the Merck Africa Embryologists Training Program was discussed. The aim of this comprehensive three months training program is to improve access to quality and safe fertility care across the continent. The training of African embryologists through Merck More than a Mother has already started in Indonesia at the Indonesian Reproductive Science Institute (IRSI) with two participants: Emmanuel Okullo from Uganda and Pauline Kibui from Kenya.

It has been very exciting being here for the training. It has answered most of the questions I had on embryology and also cemented my knowledge, says Pauline Kibui.

We are excited to take the knowledge we have acquired here back home to our countries, sums up Emmanuel Okullo about the training.

Watch the video below as Dr. Ivan Sini, Director of IRSI highlights the focus areas of the embryology training and as trainees Kibui and Okullo share their experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9u60X-Alls

Watch the long version of the high level panel of Merck More than a Mother below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G97oJE6Kzbc

Watch more videos on the transformation of other women below:

https://youtu.be/HgOgzwOn16k

https://youtu.be/Yc-ugNhpdkg

https://youtu.be/etPmh-YmjpY
22.08.2016 LISTEN

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party, deserves commendation for rejecting the invitation to descend into the gutter with President John Mahama, who, from all indications, is bent on engaging in dirty politics of insults and trivialities in the lead up to this years general elections.

Many were those who expected Nana Akufo-Addo to reply the President, in equal measure, after he had claimed the NPP flagbearer did not see any good roads in the northern part of Western Region during his recent campaign tour to the area because he slept throughout the tour.

But, addressing supporters of the NPP in Accra, the opposition leader stated clearly that he would not trade insults with the President, but would instead thank him for the comments, and leave the electorate in the northern part of the Western Region to bear their own testimony of the nature of the roads in the area.

Undoubtedly, Nana Akufo-Addo has shown true leadership and demonstrated that he is a listening president-in-waiting, mindful of the plethora of advice from various renowned chiefs and well-meaning individuals and groups who have consistently urged political leaders to engage in issue based politics devoid of insults.

We at the Daily Statesman are not surprised at the high level of maturity exhibited by the flagbearer of the NPP because he has been known over the years as a consummate political leader who represents one the countrys finest when it comes to decency in politics.

He has always shown that he is more concerned about what needs to be done to tackle the developmental problems confronting the people, and thus sees petty politics as something belonging to those who are always found wanting when confronted with politics of ideas.

That is the nature of President Mahama and the NDC who are always determined to bury the bread and butter issues that affect the people in the dirty gutter of trivialities and insults because it fits into their game plan, especially as they lack ideas on the political battle field.

Nana Akufo-Addo has always been consistent with espousing one idea or the other which he believes could help move the development agenda of the country to the next level, as he is currently doing with the One District, One Factory policy.

As usual, his detractors say the policy cannot be feasible in the country, just as they sought to bastardise the Northern Development Authority Fund (NDAF) and Free Senior High Education programme he espoused during the electioneering campaigns of 2008 and 2012.

President Mahama and his NDC government later took Nana Addos idea of NDAF and put in place the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority, only to turn it into a vehicle for corruption and massive looting of state funds for the benefit of family members and friends.

Now, they want Ghanaians to believe that they are implementing the Free SHS Education Programme, which they insisted was not possible, but parents and guardians are the best judges as to whether or not that is the reality, in a period where schools are compelled to close down over non-payment of feeding grants.

Nana Akufo-Addo has consistently demonstrated that these are the issues that concern him; and that is why he will never allow trivialities and insults to take his better part when he mounts the political platform, even in the face of provocation from his detractors.

That is the mark of a true leader who means well for the suffering people. And we are convinced the electorate will take a special notice of this and support him to win the December polls for the good of the country, for Ghana deserves better than an insulting president.
Kinshasa (AFP) - The tense DR Congo faces a nationwide shutdown Tuesday after the country's main opposition alliance refused to join talks with President Joseph Kabila's government in a stormy row over delayed presidential elections.

The fractured opposition recently came together in a new coalition -- "Rassemblement" (Gathering) -- headed by veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi to demand Kabila end his 15-year rule and step down when his mandate expires on December 20.

The coalition this weekend rejected an offer of all-party talks on the election that had been scheduled for Tuesday by Togo's former premier Edem Kodjo, who was asked to step in by the African Union (AU) to avoid a crisis.

In a statement it also called on "the people to mobilise as one to stop this umpteenth abuse of authority by observing a dead city strike this Tuesday August 23."

The opposition has signalled agreement to join the AU-run talks but only on condition Kodjo, seen as biased towards Kabila, be booted, and that the government release all political prisoners.

In an apparent sign of compromise, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo last week promised to free some two dozen prisoners of conscience to "ease political tensions" ahead of "inclusive national dialogue" -- the all-party talks.

But the coalition says 112 political prisoners remain behind bars, with only four facing release.

And in the latest sign of a delay of the election, the electoral commission said this weekend that a voter registration drive launched in March would not be complete by December as it would need around a year of work.

The country's highest court earlier this year ruled that Kabila could stay in office beyond December if no election were held.

- Warnings of 'high treason' -

Tension has been building for months in the vast mineral-rich nation of 71 million over fears Kabila will follow in the footsteps of neighbouring heads of state and change the constitution to extend his rule with a third term.

When Tshisekedi, who is 83 and frail, returned to DR Congo last month after a two-year absence he was welcomed by hundreds of thousands of supporters.

In a fiery speech in Kinshasa, Tshisekedi warned Kabila not to extend his rule, saying it would be "high treason" if the electoral process were not launched on schedule on September 19.

He told a rally that date was the "first red line which must not be crossed".

"The electoral body must be convened (by that date) for the presidential election. If it is not, high treason will be proved in the person of Mr Kabila, who will take responsibility for the misery of the Congolese people," Tshisekedi said.

"From that moment, his three-month notice period on the presidential palace begins. On December 19 the notice expires and on the 20th the house must be free," he added, to rousing cheers.

An immensely popular figure who emerged as a leading dissenting voice as far back as the 1980s, when he was a critic of strongman Mobutu Sese Seko, Tshisekedi in June in Brussels accomplished the rare feat of uniting the opposition.

Also in June, another leading light of the opposition, Moise Katumbi, was sentenced in absentia to three years in jail for property fraud.

The presiding judge in the case has since claimed she was pressured by the authorities into signing off on a guilty verdict, to ensure Katumbi would be ineligible to run for office, according to a letter seen by AFP.
In The War The World Forgot, a People & Power investigation for Al Jazeera, Callum Macrae returns to the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, the frontline of Sudanese president Omar Al Bashirs five-year war against his own citizens.

The civil war has now displaced as many as one million people, many of whom are at serious risk of malnutrition, but Bashir has banned everyone from international NGOs and humanitarian aid to demining companies and journalists from the area.

Macrae traveled illegally, overland, across the border from South Sudan, a difficult route made even more challenging by the rainy season. Khartoum believes the inaccessibility of this area is why it can get away with what its doing, without the world noticing, says Macrae.

Macrae last visited the Nuba Mountains five years ago, just as the war started and South Sudan was about to achieve its long-awaited independence.

The people of South Kordofan and the Blue Nile had fought with the South, but remained in the north after partition, says Macrae. They had been promised consultation on their future  but instead Khartoum launched a pre-emptive war, attacking both civilian and military targets.

Macrae returned because of reports that the war had reached a critical stage. There is a tense military standoff, while negotiations for peace are on a knife-edge, he says. The Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement North and its army (the SPLA-N) controls four key regions in South Kordofan. The rest are mostly held by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

Khartoum announced a unilateral cease-fire the week before Macrae arrived, describing it as a chance for the rebel SPLA-N to join the peace process and surrender their arms.

The people in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile dismiss this, saying fighting usually stops anyway in the rainy season when government forces are unable to move.

Local community leader Kukuandi Kalo believes that Khartoums real aim is to maintain its occupation of key farming areas like Al Azarak in the north, cutting off the food supply while preventing humanitarian access to other rebel-held areas. Unless Khartoum lifts the blockade on humanitarian aid, he says, any ceasefire is meaningless.

Suliman Jobona, deputy governor of South Kordofan, says Khartoum is now using denial of aid as a weapon of war. Whether you are Muslim or Christian or whatever, you are targeted equally. They are denying food; they are denying medicines and education. Everything they are denying. People are dying from malnutrition and people are suffering but nobody is caring about that.

He feels abandoned by the international community. Theyve left and theyre even not talking about us.

That sense of betrayal was heightened three months ago when the European Union granted Bashirs regime one hundred million Euros to tackle instability and the root causes of irregular migration. Its a decision that mystifies locals, given that Bashirs wars have created so many refugees.

As Kalo says, How do you support someone who is wanted by the International Criminal Court because he committed crimes against humanity in Darfur? And the killing of people in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile is still going on  but he is still getting support from the European community?

Macrae finds evidence that civilians are still being targeted by the SAF.

For example, three unexploded bombs surround the rural hospital in Kauda. It was a miracle that none of them exploded, but in a sense the damage is almost as serious, Macrae says. Theyve had to abandon the hospital. There are no military targets here  there is no excuse for this bombing  and the effect of this bombing goes on.

Macrae also visits the area around the village of Karkarai, destroyed during a SAF raid. As a local who escaped tells Macrae, When we go after one day, we find all of them. They are burnt. Even we can find one leg there. You can find a head. You can find part of the body. You find very, very bad things. There are many.

In Hieban district, Macrae talks to Fatana Kodi and Abduraman Alom, who watched Antonovs blow up their four young children and two friends two months ago. There were bodies everywhere, Abduraman says. Children with broken skulls, with eyes blown out. Corpses everywhere.

A Sudan government spokesperson told Al Jazeera the SPLM/A North in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile is simply a branch of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) that misrules South Sudan and that arms and salaries are transferred through the porous border.

However, the SPLA Norths commander-in-chief, Major General Jagod Marada, insists the SPLM North has no desire to be part of South Sudan but rather seeks equality and self-government within a democratic Sudan.

The government is waging this war against us and all we are doing is to defend ourselves, says Marada. We are defending our citizens and our lands. We will continue until we achieve our goal, which is to change the government and build a new system in a new Sudan, one which every Sudanese citizen can be proud of.

Last week African Union mediated talks  initiated as part of a planned roadmap to peace - stalled after Khartoum refused to allow any humanitarian access via Ethiopia, saying the route could be used to supply weapons. The government insisted instead that all humanitarian access came through Sudan. The SPLM North  which believes Khartoum would use exclusive controls over humanitarian access strategically as a weapon of war - suggested a compromise whereby 80% came via the government and just 20% via Ethiopia. Khartoum rejected that.

With South Sudan on the brink of its own civil war, there are fears that South Kordofan will become effectively cut off, giving Khartoum complete control over any humanitarian access.

The War The World Forgot premieres on Al Jazeera English at 2230GMT on Wednesday, 24 August 2016 as part of People & Power, Al Jazeeras weekly investigative programme that looks at the use and abuse of power.

For more information, visit http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/ or follow @ajpeoplepower on Twitter. You can also watch and embed a 9-minute feature from The Listening Post, about local reporters in South Kordofan trying to get their story out, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSqAwg9FXlg .
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), in collaboration with the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP), Ghana, is offering funding opportunity to Ghanaian journalists for the production and publication of stories on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

About 15 stories will be financially supported and the overall best story will be awarded a US$1000.

The initiative forms part of MFWAs project: Mainstreaming the Sustainable Devolvement Goals in Development Reporting in Ghana.

The project seeks to increase the awareness and knowledge of journalists on the SDGs and promote their incorporation in development reporting for social change in Ghana.

As part of the project, 30 selected journalists from across the country will participate in a 2-day training workshop on August 23 and 24 at Paloma Hotel in Accra.

The training is expected to enhance participants knowledge of the SDGs and improve their capacity to produce effective development oriented stories.
It is three months that a former Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu told Nigerians in service of this years Democracy Day, on May 29, to keep hope alive and have patience with the government of Major General Muhammadu Buhari.

Im responding to the comment now because in Igbo, we believe that a man does not give his verdict over an issue, till he must have slept over it. Ive slept over it!

For the avoidance of doubt, the statement of Kalu reads, Nigerians must display endurance at this critical time as President Buhari cleans the Augean stable. It is quite easy and simplistic to destroy but takes a longer period, commitment, hard work and sacrifice to correct ingrained anomalies. There can be no magic wand in sorting out the maze of unprecedented corruption, official banditry, nonchalant looting and holistic underdevelopment, which characterised the immediate-past government.

Before Kalus comment of hope, I had seen Buhari being represented in a statement in "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen, saying, There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.So, Buhari does not care!

Id not seen any cogent reason to align with Buhari or have hope in his government, because he is dogmatic; and dogmatists do not make good democrats. But regarding the fact that Kalu who is renowned for being a social democrat has made the comment of hope, I think there is a reason to look at Kalu and his comment of hope again.

My position in this treatise is not to say whether the immediate-past government that Buhari succeeded was corrupt or not. What I want say is the underlining hope in the statement by Kalu, which points him out as a man of hope. This has made many Nigerians to have hope in Kalu.

On July 8, this year, Kalu who never had any government contract since democracy was attained in 1999, equally said that he was yet to believe that the anti-corruption war by Buhari was selective.

Also, hear Kalu, I do not believe that the anti-corruption war by President Buhari is selective. Someone may look at it in the perspective that it is selective because it is the people in the previous government that are involved and this is because they are the ones who handled the money during that period.

I support President Buhari in the fight against corruption, but as we are fighting corruption, we should also look at the industrial base of the country. No country can survive with only politics. The economy is very important to the nation.

While Kalu came to Buharis rescue in these times that Nigerians are growing Iroko-size of impatience against the government of Buhari, I want to keep hope alive in the sense that Kalu is one gold that glitters and that is good, unlike what it used to be, All that is gold does not glitter.

Why I'm interested in what Kalu told Nigerians was that he had advised Buhari not to be like Chief Olusegun Obasanjo used the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to settle scores with his political opponents. So, Kalu had.

A comment by Kalu in this regard, reads: He (Buhari) should not fight corruption the way former President Olusegun Obasanjo did, when you have seen me spend security vote and you are after me on that to settle personal scores. You pursue people for not supporting your inordinate ambition and policies, it is wrong. I appeal to President Buhari not to get involved in that kind of corruption-fighting and I am happy he has appointed someone who has lesser belief in material things, as acting chairman of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). I am saying this because when all these people say they are fighting corruption, they dont really fight corruption. You know I dont fear anybody; Im not even afraid of dying today and not afraid of not saying the truth.

Kalu was telling us that from the ashes of a fire shall the phoenix be woken; something that he had experienced before he attained his global status as a distinguished entrepreneur and anti-corruption crusader.

I want to deem Kalu that we should be patience with the clumsy Buhari government because I had known from a Friedrich Nietzsche, saying, That which does not kill us makes us stronger. It was not that Kalu deeply loves Buhari or deeply hates Nigerians and he made that comment of patience. What I have understood by the comment, when others were perhaps shouting Kalu! was that Kalus love for Nigeria gives him strength and courage that all would be fine again.

Others might not have seen what Kalu saw before making that comment; he is one man that does not say things because he wants his voice to be heard. No. He does not say things because he wants others to praise him. No. He shows the words of Mahatma Gandhi of India in the work All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections in practice, which is that the weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Gandhi had affirmed the position of Kalu today, when the former said, Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.

Kalu is not weak that he cannot forgive; he is strong, but not as strong in the words of President Obama, when later said, Africa needs strong institutions, not strong men. Kalu believes in the words of J.K. Rowling, saying, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Kalu believes that all mankind should show positive expression, even in the face of disheartening courage.

We have to be united in the hope that Kalu has raised and not in looking at the directionless government of Buhari that its proceedings have broken a lot of people down. Im protected by the hope that Kalu had raised and not in the government that had broken many with yearning, making many to be in solitude, not to love again, because of government-generated hardship.

Kalu had raised hope for Nigerians to see the reason they must still be proud, whereas the government continued to break a lot of peoples heart. Oh! Im taking solace in the words of Kalu which invariably depicted the words of a Albert Camus, saying, In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

It was Dalai Lama XIV who said that there is a saying in Tibet, 'Tragedy should be utilised as a source of strength. No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster. So, we have to thank Kalu for building that courage of patience, which is most important of all the virtues of life.

Kalu has shown character, courage, essence, determination, goodness, fortitude inspiration, life-lessons, persistence, resolve, self-reliance, strength in making sure that Nigerians keep hope alive.

Odimegwu Onwumere is award-winning journalist based in Rivers State. Email: [email protected]
A 25-year-old pupil teacher, Atigah Koame Agbessi is the grips of the Akatsi Police in the Volta region for allegedly murdering a 5-year-old boy in the area.

According to a Starr News source, the suspect who reportedly carried out the act at Anta-Estate a suburb of Akatsi, was in process of burying the victim, Monday morning when he was seen by a passer-by removing the body from a sack.

The passer-by immediately raised an alarm which led to the arrest of the suspect by some residents who rushed to the scene and handed him over to the police, Starr News gathered.

The boy identified as Prince Ahiatrogah was a kindergarten pupil at Akatsi R.C Basic School and his body has been deposited at the morgue awaiting autopsy.

Superintendent Dennis Fiakpui, the Akatsi district Police commander confirmed the incident to Starr News Lambert Atsivor and said investigations has commenced into the incident.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has expressed concern over the decision by the Electoral Commission to register prisoners without informing the various political parties.

A statement signed by the party's acting General Secretary, John Boadu, said, We have observed that the Commission is commencing voter registration in prisons across the country per letters emanating from some District offices.

However, there has been no notification to political parties to inform them and have the opportunity to monitor this process as has been the practice.

Below are details of the letter

THE ELECTORAL COMMISSIONER

GHANA.

Dear Madam,

CONCERNS OVER ONGOING PROCESSES LEADING TO THE 2016 GENERAL ELECTIONS

We wish to bring to the attention of the Commission some concerns for urgent redress as we prepare towards the 2016 General Election.

1. We have observed that the Commission is commencing voter registration in prisons across the country per letters emanating from some District offices. However, there has been no notification to political parties to inform them and have the opportunity to monitor this process as has been the practice.

2. We request to know what modalities are in place towards foreign registrations for this years election as well as particulars of the existing foreign registrations done earlier by the Commission.

3. We note a release from the Commission on challenges encountered with the ongoing Continous Voter Registration on the 19h August exercise and the decision to extend the registration hours to 8pm on that day and an additional day extention to the 27th of August 2016.

We would have wished that much as the C.I 91 grants this activity of the Commission in consultation with political parties, the parties would have been duly notified/consulted before any such decisions are taken.

4. The procedures announced for proxy vote has to be reviewed. The Commission directs that a prospective proxy can go to the Commission and pick up forms for the applicant. This should not be the case because of the inherent abuse.

I refer to Regulation 25 (2) of C.I 94 which states that The applicant shall complete a proxy form set out in Form Six of the Schedule. What this means is that nobody can make or complete proxy forms on behalf of an applicant.

The Commission has also decided to do this exercise at all district offices and adds the headquarters of the Commission. One wonders why the EC headquarters must be part of this as its not even a registration center. We want the Commission to engage with the Parties on this exercise to ensure effective monitoring.

An early response to the concerns is anticipated. As a stakeholder, we would wish to receive formal correspondence from the commission on activities that we are required to play a part instead of through the media , so as to help in getting our members and the general public to participate fully .

As we approach the election, it is expected that the Commission would be more transparent and ensure inclusiveness of stakeholders in its activities.

Sincerely,

John Boadu

General Secretary (Ag.)
YEREVAN, AUGUST 22, ARMENPRESS. The creation of a free economic zone on the Armenian-Iranian border will be another opportunity for economic development of Armenia, Armenian PM Hovik Abrahamyan told the participants of Baze-2016 pan-Armenian youth camp. During the last meeting of the Prime Ministers of the EAEU member states in Sochi we reached an agreement over establishing a free economic zone on the Armenian-Iranian border, in the region of Meghri. This is a vital program creating new opportunities for economic development of our country, Armenpress reports the PM mentioning.

He also added that the program will give an opportunity to Iran and the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union to establish joint enterprises in the free economic zone, organize production and export them to the EAEU member states without custom duties.
22.08.2016 LISTEN

The Ashanti Regional branch of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has raised strong exception to the process being adopted by the Electoral Commission in the ongoing continuous registration exercise.

The party says it suspects deliberate frustrations on the part of the electoral body to prevent potential registrants from getting their names on the register.

Addressing a press conference at the regional office of the EC to express the partys displeasure, the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the party, Mr. Bernard Antwi Boasiako, lamented that looking at the slow pace at which the exercise was being conducted, it is likely many more potential registrants would not have the chance to register.

According to him, the decision of the electoral body to adopt the VMS process rather than using the BVD machines, in order to speed up the process, is responsible for the hiccups.

You have all witnessed the long queues and the frustrations the people are going through; I want you to speak to them yourself and see how they feel, so that when we are raising concerns, people will know how legitimate they are.

Mr. Antwi Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, said the attitude of the EC was inimical to the process, stressing that the electoral body was being lackadaisical towards the exercise.

We have been here since morning, and so far, only [a] few persons have been registered. We actually dont know why the EC is behaving this way; there is every indication that they are working to satisfy the whims and capricious interests of the NDC, and we will not accept that, an angry Chairman Wontumi pointed out.

His assertion has been corroborated by many potential registrants, who claimed to have been in a queue since morning, but have not been registered.

During a visit to the EC premises on Friday, it became evidently clear that potential registrants were not happy with the way the exercise was being conducted, with many complaining bitterly.

The NPP regional boss, therefore, warned that his party will not accept any shoddy work from the EC, threatening that it will make sure every single individual gets his or her name in the register to participate in the upcoming elections.

He cautioned that any attempt by the EC to subvert the process in favour of the ruling party will be severely resisted.

Let Beautiful Charlotte Osei understand that the EC exists to run elections for the people, and not one particular party. She must execute her duty in a manner devoid of manipulations, otherwise all these calls for peace will not materialise, because we wont allow the EC to subvert the will of the people, he warned

Meanwhile, a Deputy Regional Director of the EC, Mr. Lucas Yirdgh, has allayed the fears of the opposition party and potential registrants, stressing that the commission was committed to the process, and that every person will have his or her name registered.

According to him, the slow pace of the process was a result of poor internet connectivity, but was quick to add that such inconveniences will not in any way affect the eventual outcome.

He said unlike the previous exercises, this current one was being done through an online system, which, he said, was susceptible to failure.

Mr. Lucas Yirdgh, however, denied the assertion that the EC was deliberately frustrating registrants, adding that the Commission will, at all times, operate in a free, fair and transparent environment.
John Magafuli assumed control over his country after a keenly contested elections which was won with 58% of total valid votes cast.

He is referred to as the "bulldozer" and immediately he won his elections, university students and the intellectual community in Tanzania flooded social media with the hashtag "what can or will the bulldozer do".

Indeed one of the issues we face in our continent is not the availability of good leaders but rather the ability of leaders to live up to the expectations of their constituents especially when several campaign promises have been made by them during their electioneering period .

The leadership of John Magafuli is a direct indication that not all is lost with respect to African leadership. Pombe, as he is locally called has shown his desire and commitment in salvaging his country from the abject poverty ,to a nation of hope and opportunities for the next generation of young Africans in Tanzania.

His demeanor ,words, desire and commitment to changing the status quo in line with making his country better, must be recognized in the nook and cranies of our continent.

Tanzania now is a true reflection of Changing lives and a transformation agenda carefully orchestrated to yield the requisite results which remains a mirage in other countries.

The praises and sweet words hurled on Pombe is to let our African leaders know that their actions have an effect in determining the future of the next generation whether bleek or bright.

John MAGAFULI as president has placed a ban on all foreign travel for Senior Government officials in Tanzania. This drastic measure to save the coffers of his country was implemented immediately he assumed office as President of Tanzania.

A friend of mine opined that these actions of his would go a long way to adversely affect his chances of controlling his party as he will desire to seek re -elections after his term and as such he should have waited until his second term to implement such a harsh policy.

I asked him why he used the word "harsh " for such a policy and his point was that, it was the usual norm for their Senior Government officials to travel outside with their women and as usual get numerous allowances .

It was very interesting to most people in other parts of Africa as they felt there will be a revolution in other parts of Africa because of the works exhibited since he assumed office but that was not what has been felt even though a good precedence has now been set.

Placing a ban on all travel was a great policy as several amount of money would be saved by the government. Other African leaders must learn from this policy including Ghana led by His Excellency John Dramani Mahama. High Commissioners and Ambassadors of various African Countries outside our continent must represent their respective governments in the host countries in the most cost effective manner to save the continent from spending millions of dollars on government delegations alone, as John MAGAFULI is doing.

MAGAFULI has decreed that on the day of independence, every single person has to pick up their tools and clean their backyards which means a national sanitation day so to speak.

Let's look at this policy of MAGAFULI closely. What is the relevance of the celebration of independence day ? Do you think Ghana must adopt this decree in Tanzania as well by cleaning our environment on this day and on several holidays in this country?

I will say "Yes" and side directly with this action from the Tanzanian leader.We spend huge sums of money to celebrate an independence day which has no effect on how the country's economic fortunes.

Such amounts of money could be used to complete road networks, hospitals,schools and other infrastructural facilities that are deemed necessary for the people.

Remembering our past leaders and celebrating an anniversary which adds no solution to our problems such poverty,unemployment, economic instability among others is a total waste of time to say the least. The actions and works of our leaders can be felt in our hearts and not just on an anniversary day.

Great countries around the world did not achieve greatness overnight but with sacrifices,commitment and fortitude, they pressed on. It is thus true that Rome was not built in a day but if the builders had stolen the building materials, Rome would have never been built. l am of a firm believe that if we wish,as a continent (and Ghana specifically) to make an impact in the world and to live a legacy worthy of emulation for the next generation,we must be willing to sacrifice our love and joy now for the good of our motherland.

Even though Ghana as a country has introduced a national sanitation day, one does not need a soothsayer to tell him/her that the policy is not nationalistic in nature and as such, it is only done by acolytes of the government which is wrong in principle .

Moving forward, just as Paul Kagame of Rwanda re- introduced the ancient old community cleaning exercise which is nationalistic in nature, other African Countries can do same.

Today in Rwanda, every last Saturday of the month throughout the year, all abled-body Rwandans pick their tools to do general cleaning around designated sites of their communities. During the same day, locals build homes for the poor or initiate a project to help the most vulnerable within their community. Many other activities are done.

Ghana has a national sanitation day but our government must enforce laws to make it compulsory for all Ghanaians to get themselves involved in it.

It is so shameful that we are spending huge amounts of money to celebrate years of independence when our people are dying of cholera,malaria and hunger.

That time can be spent on street-cleaning to improve sanitation and arrest contagious diseases outbreak.

Now let look at this policies from Magafuli too; Instead of sponsoring a World AIDS Day exhibition, Magufuli ordered the money to be spent on anti-retroviral drugs for AIDS sufferers ,he has turned up in person -and-on-foot at government ministries and demanded to know why civil servants were not at their desks.

Some officials have been jailed for lateness, the head of the tax authority has been suspended and the use of public funds to pay for Christmas and New Year greeting cards banned, according to local media.

He has shown courage ,wisdom and strength among his citizens and that has encouraged his citizens to have trust and hope in his leadership.

Africans take a lot of inspiration from their leaders, so their deeds and words go a long way to affect them.

MAGAFULI matched his words with actions, slashing the number of cabinet posisitions from 30 to 19 by merging ministries since he believed that some ministries were irrelevant in the protection of the people's future.

Our African leadership must allow their constituents to have trust in them even if they voted against them and l believe with that we can make great impact in the world.

Our President His Excellency John Mahama must learn and adopt from some of the measures taken by President John MAGAFULI in Tanzania in order for Ghanaians to have full trust in his government and governance.

God bless Africa

God bless Ghana

Tinkaro Asare is a former NUGS President for the University of Ghana and a concerned citizen interested in Political and International issues.
Every day, fake medicines and medical products are sold at street corners, in open air markets or on unregulated websites in several countries in the African Region. These poor quality, unsafe medicines and products promote drug resistance and lead to loss of confidence in health professionals, pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors and in health systems.

In an effort to protect peoples health, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, has proposed a strategy aimed at strengthening National Medicine Regulatory Authorities (NMRAs) in order to ensure that only safe, good quality and effective medical products are available in countries. The strategy was presented at the annual meeting of Health Ministers from the WHO African Region (the 66th session of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa) which is taking place in Addis Ababa from 19-23 August 2016.

Functional regulatory systems ensure that medical products consistently meet international standards and are monitored from clinical evaluation to licensure and use. They play a critical role in protecting peoples health and strengthening health systems to contribute to Universal health Coverage, said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa

WHO has been supporting countries in the Region to strengthen their regulatory systems through several collaborative initiatives including the African Vaccine Regulatory Forum, the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization initiative, harmonization projects in regional economic communities and the African Medicines Agency.

Despite these, countries still face challenges in the governance of their regulatory systems, as well as in the human, financial and technical resource capacity required to function effectively. In addition, access to quality medical products is delayed by the time-consuming examinations and approvals of clinical trials and product registration.

In a strategy aimed at ensuring that NMRAs are strengthened to effectively fulfil their regulatory functions, Dr Moeti highlights a range of actions to be taken by countries. By 2018, countries are expected to ensure that a regular surveillance of all medical products circulating on the market is carried out. During the same timeframe, it is recommended that countries have access to certified quality control laboratories, and embark on joint reviews of applications for clinical trials. The Regional Director urged countries to establish governing bodies and quality management systems for NMRAs by 2025. She also urged that by the same period, application for clinical trials or marketing authorization of medical products takes a maximum of six months.

It is expected that countries will provide adequate human, financial and technical resources for the NMRAs to be functional and harmonize their regulatory practices with international recognized standards and initiatives.

Every two years, there will be an assessment of how countries are implementing the strategy based on a set of agreed indicators.
22.08.2016 LISTEN

Oil exploration firm, Kosmos Energy is set to invest about $100,000 in two start-up companies.

The Jubilee field partner has instituted a programme dubbed Agric Challenge Contest under the Kosmos Innovation Centre (KIC) project to invest in young entrepreneurs with special interest agri-business.

Two successful start-ups will benefit from a $50,000 package each. According to the Corporate Affairs Director of Kosmos Energy, George Sarpong says the package aimed at reigniting the youths interest in Agric forms part of the companys diversified Corporate Social Responsibility.

He spoke with Joy Business after a visit to the company at the instance of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP).

"Kosmos Innovation Centre is multi sectorial but for now we are focusing on agric-business. People are being drawn away from agricultre so what we can do to excite the youth to go back to agric-business," he said.

According to Mr Sarpong, that is why they are using agric-business to for now and levaraging to excite the youth to come up with home grown solutions to the challenges facing the agric-business.

He said the contest is still underway with five teams in the final who are expected to make their presentations on August 23 with two teams who proceeding to the incubation stage.

He added that Kosmos is going to make a $50,000 investments in each of the two businesses.

Research shows that most start-ups do not survive beyond their first year of operations. Mr Sarpong tells Joy Business the two successful start-ups will be adequately equipped to avert such instances.

Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com | Kuuku Abban | Joy Business
Flagbearer of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo, has reiterated his promise of establishing a special prosecutors office within six months of his administration, if elected President in the December polls to deal with corruption related issues in the country.

According to him, such a special office, will have a legal backing, and will be independent of the Executive tasked with an an exclusive remit to investigate and prosecute certain categories of cases and allegations of corruption, including those involving alleged violations of the Public Procurement Act and cases implicating political office holders and politicians.

Prosecutions of such persons, he stressed, will no longer be tainted by perceptions of witch-hunting and selective justice.

The NPP flagbearer made the statement today, [Monday] while he was addressing the 16th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, at Abetifi, Kwahu, in the Eastern Region.

Announcing measures to deal with corruption, Nana Akufo-Addo, who was the Special Guest at the General Assembly, explained that, a successful Ghana can only be built on the basis of good governance, underpinned by efficient and honest public services.

This requires that we succeed in eliminating corruptionPublic service is for me exactly that. Anyone who joins my team to make will not be welcome. Money is made in the private sector, not in public office. I will be strict in my supervision of this principle, he assured.

Nana Addo also said he will ensure that the Public Procurement Act (Act 663) is adhered to in awarding of contracts.

Inflated contracts, which are currently the bane of our public finances, will be things of the past. Competitive bidding is the best protection of value for money in our public transactions, and will be the consistent mechanism for undertaking such transactions. The era of sole sourcing will come to an end, he added.

The NPP flagbearer further asked for prayers for the peace for the nation ahead of the December 7 polls.

Add prayers for God's guidance to members of the Electoral Commission, so they can make transparent and fair arrangements for the electoral contests to enhance the stability of our country. And please pray for the NPP and myself, that I will be given, by Almighty God, wisdom, strength, courage and compassion to enable me carry out my duties as a good leader.

And finally, I ask that you pray that, during this election campaign period, those who seek for votes from the people come with malice towards none and love towards all, he added.

Dzifa Attivor's claim

His comment comes months after former Transport Minister, Dzifa Attovor told Ghanaians in the Volta Region that the NPP will jail some people in the NDC should they [NPP] win power hence must not be given such chance.

She however received a public out lash for making such claims against the NPP.



By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @AlloteyGodwin
The Convention Peoples Party (CPP) has stated its resolve to deal with the fundamental challenges facing Ghana if given the mandate in this year's election.

According to the party, its Apam foforo (New Covenant) ideology, presents the best source of reprieve to Ghana's descent into mismanagement by the NPP and the NDC.

Speaking to Citi News, the Communications Director of the party, Abdul Rauf Kadr, said We feel strongly as a party that the NDC and the NPP have failed Ghanaians and because of that, a greater chunk of Ghanaians have lost interest in the political processes.

He however stated that, the CPPs message offering Ghanaians a new leadership covenant, is already resonating with the masses in the Brong Ahafo Region where their Flagbearer, Ivor Greenstreet, is currently on a campaign tour.

On that basis, Ivor Kobina Greenstreet has been traveling the length and breadth of the country meeting with groups, communities and villages explaining to them the essence of the 'Apam Foforo which means the new covenant, he said.

Mr. Kadr explained that the new covenant actually stems from our own Nkrumahist beliefs of self-determination, social justice and pan-Africanism.

He highlighted further the fact that research has shown Ghanaians hold corruption, employment and the energy issues as key concerns ahead of the polls, adding that our message of Apam foforo has been styled in such a way that, it provides tactical responses and solutions to these key sectors of the economy.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
22.08.2016 LISTEN

 Withdraws Personnel & Closes Down Station

 Vows To Pursue Perpetrators And Arrest Them

By Bernice Bessey

The Ghana Police Service (GPS) has warned that it will no longer condone any act of indiscipline, criminality and lawlessness from the public against personnel of the service.

According to the police, it will arrest and prosecute any person who takes the law into his own hands to attack or destroy facilities belonging to the service. The warning came as a result of the riot at Donkorkrom and Tiase, both in the Eastern Region on Thursday, August 18, 2016.

Residents in the two towns attacked the police personnel and destroyed the police station and barracks, vehicles, stand-by generator and water reservoir among others.

Offensive weapons like guns, clubs and stones used by the rioters resulted in injuries to two police men and fourteen (14) demonstrators.

Since the practice of attacking the police was becoming rampant, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Dr John Kudalor, said the service would no longer overlook such impunity and that all persons involved in the crime would be arrested and made to face the full rigors of the law. Currently, about 100 police officers have been dispatched to the two towns to investigate and fish out all the persons involved in the mob action, he announced.

IGP John Kudalor made this statement at a press briefing to announce the arrest of suspects who attacked a GCB bullion van in the Afram Plains over the weekend.

He said the police administration had taken stringent measures to check all unacceptable behaviour from the public and police service, saying: we are not going to condone lawlessness, indiscipline and criminality.

To use Donkorkrom and Tiase as a test case, the head of the police administration indicated that the law and order enforcement agency has temporally vacated the communities until they have rebuilt and replaced all the destroyed facilities.

The IGP pleaded with the general public to continue with the trust they have in the Police Service, adding: The arrest shows the police is willing to rip the bad nuts from the police.

The Director General of Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Prosper Agblor, briefing the media on how the escapees were recaptured, said some members of the public assisted the police to capture the suspects within 24 hours.

According to the CID director, the three (3) suspects -Hasifu Mohammed, a taxi driver and the two police officers, No_39482 Corporal Elvis Mensah and No_44912 Lance Corporal Daniel Abrokwa were captured at their hideout at Nkawkaw.

Mr Ablor further assured the public that, the police will investigate the incident that led to the escape of the 3-gangs. He, however, condemned the acts of the residents of the town: Irrespective of the magnitude of the supposed provocation, the reaction put up by the residents of Donkorkrom cannot be tolerated in any civilized society.

In any democratic environment, when one is aggrieved by anything, one has to resort to due process to seek redress, and not take the law into one's own hands, and exact justice by one's own way

Though the attack by the residents cannot be justified by any reason, however, they might have descended heavily on the police because it has revealed that the two police suspects were personnel stationed at Donkorkrom.

Situation that led to the disturbance

On Tuesday August 2016, at about 10:00 a.m. the Police in Donkorkrom received a report that there was a robbery attacked on GBC bullion van with registration number GN14-15 at Maame Krobo Junction in the Afram Plains.

The police promptly responded to the call and after some serious operational maneuvers, the suspects, numbering three, were rounded up.

In line with Police procedures and practices, the suspects had to be transported to Koforidua for further investigations.

Reports have it that, in the course of the journey the police suspects among the gang, managed to escape at Nkawkaw when the escort team had stopped to refuel, an incident which is currently a subject of investigation by the Police Administration.
22.08.2016 LISTEN

From Inusa Musah, Dodowa

Members of the Greater Accra Regional House of Chiefs (GARHC) have threatened to demonstrate against the Minister for Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs, Dr Seidu Daanaa, should he ignore their appeal to let their Registrar stay in the region.

Nene Kanor Atiapah III, Acting Paramount Chief for Ningo Traditional Area said Harry Anthony Attipoe, the GARHC Registrar, had worked very hard to ensure sanity in all the traditional areas in the Region.

The immense peace we are enjoying in our various traditional areas is as a result of the hard work and constant workshops on conflict resolution that Harry Attipoe has been taking the paramount chiefs in the Region through, Nene Atiapah III explained.

Sounding very angry during a media interaction with him at Dodowa, at the GARHC head office, Nene Kanor Atiapah III said the House was aware of a transfer letter the Ministry of Chieftaincy and Traditional Affairs had sent to Mr Attipoe to start work in the Volta Region with immediate effect.

That transfer, he said, was one that would affect the operations of the House because we know the contributions the Registrar has been doing to ensure that Greater Accra chiefs enjoyed total peace.

The move by the sector Minister to get the Registrar out, Nene warned, would force the chiefs to hit the streets of Accra in a vehement protest, saying that the GARHC, too, deserved to enjoy the long service of a hardworking and visionary registrar.

What is more, Attipoe has few years to go on retirement and so what is the need in rushing to transfer him? Nene Atiapah III posed.

Meanwhile, Nene Abram Kabu Akuaku III, President of the GARHC, has issued a press release petitioning President John Dramani Mahama to intervene in the transfer of their hardworking Registrar.

He said the House was shocked to receive a letter from the sector Minister on August 12, 2016, transferring Harry Anthony Attipoe to the Volta Region.

What necessitated the Minister to transfer MrAttipoe, Nene Akuaku III said, followed some unfounded allegations and demonstration by some youth of Kpone Traditional Council that the GARHC Registrar had collected and pocketed the sum of five million dollars from the SunonAsogli Power producers.

The registrar had additional oversight responsibilities for the Kpone Traditional Council. Nene Akuaku III explained that SunonAsogli Power wrote to the Minister on April 27 to deny the allegation by the agitated youth.

He said they were stakeholders in the affairs of the country and so the House was disappointed that the Minister failed to hear their side before hastily serving Harry Attipoe with the transfer letter.

The Minister could not do this following an ultimatum given him by a Coalition of Ga-Dangbe Youth in a letter the group served him on August 1.

The Minister should have granted us audience as respected stakeholders in the development of the Region and the nation as a whole, unless the Minister and Chief of Staff are telling us as chiefs that we do not matter in the affairs of the Region, the GARHC President indicated.

Nene Akuaku III said they would not welcome the Registrar's transfer. He said: Your Excellency, we are hereby petitioning you to immediately reconsider the unfortunate decision taken by Dr Seidu Daanaa and retain Mr Attipoe as the Registrar of the GARHC.
22.08.2016 LISTEN

The 2016 presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has reiterated his commitment towards ensuring that the private sector regains its pride of place in Ghana's economic setup, God-willing, from 2017, when he wins this year's elections.

According to Nana Akufo-Addo, no political party has the private and informal sectors of the economy at heart like the NPP, evident in the history of the party's tradition, which has been a consistent and principled promotion and protection of free enterprise and private sector development.

To buttress this assertion, the NPP flagbearer recounted how, a couple of weeks ago in Tamale, he was the only presidential candidate to honour an invitation from the Association of Small Scale Industries, where he put forward his vision for the development of micro and small scale enterprises.

Why is this so? It is because we in the NPP are fully aware of the importance to the growth of Ghana's economy of small scale businesses? When given the opportunity, we intend to support small business owners across the country, as we believe this will help create jobs and bring progress and prosperity to Ghanaians, he said.

To this end, Nana Akufo-Addo outlined a number of interventions his government will institute to help create an enabling environment for the private sector to thrive, when he's given the mandate to serve Ghanaians.

Firstly, the NPP flagbearer noted: There are too many taxes in our country, adding that it is the reason why businesses are collapsing in our country. We are coming into office to reduce these killer taxes and scrap the ones we deem unnecessary. This will help bring relief to business owners, who can then, in turn, create jobs for our unemployed youth.

Secondly, the NPP flagbearer assured the artisans and mechanics of the availability of MASLOC loans, devoid of politicisation, stressing that the loans are going to be restructured to allow small scale industries to be the major beneficiaries of the MASLOC programme.

In keeping up with modern technological trends, Nana Akufo-Addo indicated that his government will introduce into the country, the 'Dual System, which is in operation in Germany  a system which combines apprenticeship and schooling. This, he noted, will afford artisans and mechanics the opportunity to go to school to learn and upgrade their skills, whilst working at the same time.

In responding to a request from the leadership of the Ghana National Association of Garages, which appealed for the finalisation of the transfer of ownership of the lands at Odawna to them, Nana Akufo-Addo gave the assurance that my government will regularise the ownership documentation, so you can have full access to these lands.

However, in order to bring these into fruition, he indicated that Ghanaians have an opportunity, this year, to alleviate their suffering, through the power of their thumbs.

We are coming to vote and elect a new government, which is bringing development to every part of the country, without discrimination. We are asking Mahama, this year, to leave office, so an Akufo-Addo government will bring progress, development and prosperity to all. Ghanaians have had enough of President Mahama's mess, he added.

Nana Akufo-Addo was addressing mechanics, fitters and business owners at the Odawna garages in the Klottey Korle constituency, on Thursday, August 18, 2016, when he made these known.

He was accompanied on the visit by the Greater Accra NPP Regional Chairman, Ishmael Ashitey, and his regional executives; NPP parliamentary candidate for Klottey Korle, Philip Addison; former Minister for Trade and Industry under President Kufuor, Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku; NPP Campaign Sector Committee Chairman for Employment, Stephen Asamoah Boateng; former MP for Klottey Korle, Nii Adu Mante; and former NPP parliamentary candidate for Klottey Korle, Nii Adjei Tawiah; Campaign Aides, Musah Iddrisu 'Superior', Charles Nii Teiko Tagoe and NaPaga Sulemana Tia, amongst others.
22.08.2016 LISTEN

The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has disclosed that with the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntome (TEN) oil fields, which will start producing 23,000 barrels of oil daily, now on stream, Ghana has the potential to double its petroleum revenue.

ACEP said government must therefore invest in building the capacity of Ghanaians and set up fabrication centres in strategic areas of the country to maximize benefits from the oil industry and to position Ghana as an alternative service hub to Nigeria in the sub-region.

This was contained in a press statement, signed by Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam-Executive Director of the economic think-tank group and released in Accra yesterday. Below is the full detail of the statement:

The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) welcomes the flow of first oil from the Tweneboa, Enyenra and Ntome (TEN) oil fields. As the second producing oil field, Ghanas oil and gas industry is growing and presents many opportunities for the government, the companies and the citizens.

Starting with 23,000 barrels of oil production daily and expected to peak at 80,000 barrels, TEN has the potential to double government petroleum revenue, contribute to economic growth and provide job opportunities.

We are also encouraged that the development of the oil fields provided room for Ghanaians to build the capacity of sector institutions and local firms through the local content initiatives.

Particularly, the fabrication of some parts of the second Floating,

Production, Storage and

Offloading (FPSO) Vessel in Ghana, such as the anchor piles and module deck stools, has laid the foundation for more oil industry fabrication works to be done in Ghana. The government should therefore invest in building the capacity of more Ghanaians and setting fabrication

centres in strategic areas of the country to maximize benefits from the oil industry and to position Ghana as an alternative service hub to Nigeria in the sub-region.

Delivering the project on time and within budget in spite of the oil price crisis further establishes Ghana as a low cost environment and ready to attract more investments upstream.

We are however aware that producing oil is one thing but sustaining production and accounting for it is another. Government must ensure that the challenges encountered with the Jubilee FPSO are not repeated.

The anchoring and rotation enabling system, called the turret mooring system, the flow metre as well as the compressor system must be subject to strict due diligence and quality assurance. The flow meters ensure that the right volumes of oil are exported and revenue inflows could be accurately determined.

The Ghana Revenue Authority must in addition, ensure that the integrity of the measurement of oil produced is protected by installing parallel electronic seals in the pipelines of the FPSO to ensure electronic data transmission to onshore computerized centres to enable it monitor in real time the flow of oil from the field and to appropriately establish the tax liability of the oil companies.

It is important to note that the arrival of TEN oil is happening at the time the Ghanaian economy is facing difficulties and the hope of the people about the transformative effect of oil diminishing significantly. We must therefore ensure that the resources being extracted from the TEN fields and the revenues from the export of the oil are managed efficiently for the benefit of the people.

We know that expectations are legitimately high as people are yearning for development. We wish to therefore add our voice to the many calls on Ghanaians to moderate their expectations about the promise of oil, but we also believe that moderating expectations should not be an excuse for the poor management of the limited oil and gas resources.

We therefore encourage Ghanaians to translate their high expectations into perpetual vigilance on the authorities for the transparent and accountable management of the resources.

We are also worried about the statement by the president of Ghana to the effect that the Ghana-Ivory Coast boundary dispute affected the TEN project as the provisional measures order from the international tribunal included an order prohibiting new oil wells in the field.

As an African institution, we wish to see our governments cooperate more on matters relating to the harnessing of our natural resources to address underdevelopment on our continent.

Therefore, whilst we wait for the final ruling on the boundary dispute, we encourage the two countries to increase dialogue on the matter to ensure that the citizens of the two countries do not suffer any potential insecurity that could arise from the ruling.

Signed

Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam

Executive Director


President John Mahama has pardoned three persons serving a four month jail term for criminal contempt.

A statement signed by the Communications Minister Dr Omane Boamah said the decision was taken on the advice of the Council of State and was on compassionate grounds.

A radio host with the Accra based Montie FM Salifu Maase and two panelists, Alistair Nelson and Godwin Ako-Gunn were found guilty for scandalizing the court and sentenced to four months in prison.

Barely a month after being in jail, the three can now heave a sigh of freedom following the remission of their sentence.

Background

The three had threatened to rape the Chief Justice Mrs Georgina Theodora Wood and kill other judges who sat on a case brought against the Electoral Commission.

By presiding over the case, the three said the judges wanted to foment trouble in the country and that if the 2016 elections turned violent they knew the homes of judges and finish them.

Their comments were roundly condemned by all and were later hauled before the judges to answer why they should not be held liable for contempt.

The three, together with the Directors of the radio station and the owner pleaded guilty to the charges of contempt and were duly sentenced.
President John Dramani Mahama has granted a petition seeking a pardon for the Montie FM host and two panelists who were convicted of contempt by the Supreme Court and jailed.

Alistair Nelson, Godwin Ako Gunn and Salifu Maase, alias Mugabe, had been sentenced to serve four months in jail.

The trio had expressed their regret for the comments they made on the Accra-based radio station and called on the President to bear in mind the embarrassment their conduct and incarceration has caused their loved ones, in his consideration of the petition and reverse the harsh and excessive sentence.

A statement signed by the Minister of Communications, Edward Omane Boamah, said that the President had taken the decision to pardon the three on compassionate grounds given the remorse they had demonstrated.

The decision of His Excellency the President to remit their sentences on compassionate grounds follows a petition submitted to him by the contemnors appealing to the President to exercise his prerogative of mercy even as they continue to express deep remorse and regret for the unacceptable statements they made against the Judiciary, the statement said.

The president had been under pressure to pardon the three, after two separate petitions were presented to him, endorsed by some Ministers of State and senior members of his party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Education Minister, Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang, deputy Education Minister Sam Okudzeto Ablakwa, the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Elizabeth Ofosu-Agyare, Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur and Foreign Affairs Minister, Hanna Tetteh all endorsed the petition.

Other Ministers including Trade Minister, Ekow Spio Garbrah and Transport Minister, Fiifi Kwetey have visited the trio in jail.

Full statement

PRESIDENT GRANTS REMISSION OF SENTENCE TO THREEE CONTEMNORS

The President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama has, in consultation with the Council of State and in exercise of his constitutional powers under Article 72 of the Constitution, remitted the remaining prison sentence imposed on three persons: Salifu Maase (alias Mugabe), Alistair Nelson and Ako Gunn who were sentenced to 4 months imprisonment and a fine of GH10,000.00 each for contempt of court. The remission is effective 26th August 2016

The three were sentenced on 27th July 2016 and have served part of the prison sentences imposed on them. They have also paid the GH10,000.00 (ten thousand Cedis) fines.

The decision of His Excellency the President to remit their sentences on compassionate grounds follows a petition submitted to him by the contemnors appealing to the President to exercise his prerogative of mercy even as they continue to express deep remorse and regret for the unacceptable statements they made against the Judiciary.

His Excellency, President Mahama takes this opportunity to remind all Ghanaians of the need to respect the institutions of State and exercise freedom of speech responsibly mindful of the need to preserve peace and national unity.

The President reminds all concerned especially persons working in the media or appearing on its platforms to be circumspect and guard against the use of intemperate language which has the potential of causing unnecessary tension especially in this election year.

The President is hopeful that all will draw lessons from the events leading to the conviction of the three persons and bear in mind the consequences of injudicious utterances.

Signed:

EDWARD K. OMANE BOAMAH (DR.)

(Minister)

More soon

By: Edwin Kwakofi/ citifmonline.com/Ghana
One of the lawyers for the three Montie FM trio who are serving a four-month prison sentence for threatening the lives of judges, Godwin Edudzi Tamakloe, has lauded President John Mahama for pardoning his clients saying they deserved it.

Like any Ghanaian, we are entitled to this prerogative of mercy and the President had to exercise it, he said on Eyewitness News.

President John Mahama on Monday remitted the four-month sentence given the trio ; Alistair Nelson, Godwin Ako Gunn and Salifu Maase, alias Mugabe, who had already served one month of their jail term.

A statement signed by the Minister of Communication, Edward Omane Boamah, said the President took the decision in consultation with the Council of State.

The decision of His Excellency the President to remit their sentences on compassionate grounds follows a petition submitted to him by the contemnors appealing to the President to exercise his prerogative of mercy even as they continue to express deep remorse and regret for the unacceptable statements they made against the Judiciary, the statement said.

Mahama hasnt undermined the judiciary  Lawyer

While speaking on Eyewitness News, Edudzi Tamakloe argued that, President Mahama in triggering the necessary laws for the pardon has not undermined the judiciary.

The action taken by the President cannot in the remotest sense by any shred of legal reasoning or imagination amounts to a slap in the face of the judiciary, he said.

He was also extremely grateful to the President for the gesture.

We are extremely thankful to the President, we are equally thankful the good people of Ghana. We are continuing with our sincerest apology to the entire judiciary and the people of Ghana, he added.

Prior to the pardoning, top officials of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) signed a petition calling on the President to free the contemnors claiming the sentencing was harsh and also because they had apologized for their acts.

Education Minister, Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang, deputy Education Minister Sam Okudzeto Ablakwa, the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Elizabeth Ofosu-Agyare, Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur and Foreign Affairs Minister, Hanna Tetteh all endorsed the petition.

Foreign Affairs Minister Hanna Tetteh signing the petition

Other Ministers including Trade Minister, Ekow Spio Garbrah and Transport Minister, Fiifi Kwetey and General Secretary of the NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia all visited the trio in jail.



By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @AlloteyGodwin
President John Mahama has pardoned three persons serving a four month jail term for criminal contempt.

A statement signed by the Communications Minister Dr Omane Boamah said the decision was taken on the advice of the Council of State and was on compassionate grounds.

A radio host with the Accra based Montie FM Salifu Maase and two panelists, Alistair Nelson and Godwin Ako-Gunn were found guilty for scandalizing the court and sentenced to four months in prison.

Barely a month after being in jail, the three can now heave a sigh of freedom following the remission of their sentence.

Background

The three had threatened to rape the Chief Justice Mrs Georgina Theodora Wood and kill other judges who sat on a case brought against the Electoral Commission.

By presiding over the case, the three said the judges wanted to foment trouble in the country and that if the 2016 elections turned violent they knew the homes of judges and finish them.

Their comments were roundly condemned by all and were later hauled before the judges to answer why they should not be held liable for contempt.

The three, together with the Directors of the radio station and the owner pleaded guilty to the charges of contempt and were duly sentenced on July 27, 2016.

Apart from the four month jail term, the three were each slapped with 10,000 cedis fine. Three of the Directors also had to pay 10,000 cedis each whilst the owner, was slapped with 30,000 cedis.

Petition

Shortly after they were sentenced there was a groundswell of petitions, mostly from party supporters, ministers of state and the contemnors themselves begging for pardon.

One of the lawyers for the contemnors, George Loh said the sentence was harsh and pleaded with the president to activate his powers of mercy under Article 72 of the Constitution.

The petitions were signed in haste and presented to the president, who in an unusual fashion, announced a handing over ceremony of the petition to the Council of State for advice.

myjoyonline
By George-Ramsey Benamba, GNA

Salaga (N/R), Aug. 22, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama on Monday began a four-day campaign tour of the Northern Region.

While in the Region, the President would interact with the people, inspect and inaugurate completed projects and address rallies.

On the first day of the tour, President Mahama would pay a courtesy call on the newly enskinned Kpembewura, who in private life was known as Bismark Salifu Dari.

On the second day of his tour, President Mahama would address rallies at Kpandai, Kumidi in the Kpandai District, make a whistle stop at Lungni, call on Wulehi-Naa at Wulensi and hold a rally at Nakpayili all in the Nanumba South District.

He would also call on the regent of Nanung and chiefs in Bimbilla and address a rally at Chamba all in the Nanumba North District.

President Mahama would later on Tuesday pay a courtesy call on the Regent of Dagbon, and address rallies in Yendi and Mion in the Yendi Municipality.

On Wednesday, President Mahama would begin his itenary at Tatale-Sangule District, where he would interact with the chiefs and people and address a rally at Tatale, the District capital.

He would also address rallies at Zabzugu, make a whistle stop at Sabari, and then move to Saboba, where he would call on the paramount chief and later address rallies at Saboba and Wapuli to close the activities of the day.

On his last day of the campaign, President Mahama would move to the Chereponi District, where he would address rallies at Garinkuka, Chereponi and Wachiki before leaving for the Gushegu and Karaga District where he would be addressing rallies to round-off his first phase campaign tour of the Region.

The Region is the second President Mahama has carried his campaign to after previously visiting the Western Region soon after the campaign launch in Cape Coast last week.

GNA
By Yussif Ibrahim, GNA

Kumasi, Aug 22, GNA - The lack of ready market has become a huge threat to the continued operation of the revived Kumasi Shoe Factory, which has been re-named the Defence Industries Holding Company (DIHOC) Footwear Division Limited.

The factory, employing about 200, is reported to be operating under-capacity because of the poor patronage of its products.

Dr. Karl Laryea, the Chief Executive Officer, expressed disappointment at the state of affairs in a meeting with the Trade and Industry Minister, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah in Kumasi.

The factory had been re-activated in year 2011 to produce safety boots for the uniformed security agencies but he said, that had not been the case.

The apparent disinterest of the state security agencies had constrained it to deal mainly with the private security companies and schools.

He underlined the need for the government to do everything to make sure that the directive to the military, police, CEPS, Prisons, Fire and Immigration Services to buy their boots from the company was complied with.

Dr. Laryea said this was critical to its survival and warned that it could fold up if the state failed to act.

He added that, given the needed patronage, it could hire about 3,000 people.

He spoke of plans to penetrate the West African market but said that could only come on the back of strong sales on the local market.

Dr. Spio-Garbrah, who was on a three-day working visit to the Ashanti Region, to acquaint himself with the challenges facing businesses and the way forward, said it was unfortunate the security agencies had failed to go with the directive.

He gave the assurance that he would engage his colleague sector ministers to find a way to address the problem.

He indicated that patronage of the made-in Ghana goods was vital to the growth of the local industries including the DIHOC Footwear.

He could not hide his satisfaction with the quality of the company's products and encouraged the management to maintain the standard to attract more clients.

GNA
By Dennis Peprah, GNA

Bechem, (B/A), Aug. 22, GNA - The Forestry Services Division (FSD) raked in GH28 million internally, says Mr Michael Paintsil, the Operations Manager of the Division.

The figure comprises stampage, plantation sales donor inflows, confiscated lumber and rent, Mr Paintsil said during interaction with members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Lands and Forestry at Bechem in the Tano South District of Brong-Ahafo Region.

Led by its Chairman, Alhaji Amadu Seidu, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Yapei Kusawgu, the committee was on a day's visit, and inspected the Bosomkese and Aparapi forest reserves at Bechem.

Wild fire swept through the two national reserves and destroyed a number of tree species early this year.

Mr Paintsil expressed concern about inadequate funds for the maintenance of almost all the forest reserves in the country, saying in 2015, the division received only GH1.7 million from the government.

The budget for the year was GH13 million.

Mr Painstil observed that because of inadequate funds, the division could not undertake regular patrols, monitoring and assessment at the various reserves, a situation that is impeding efforts to control illegal logging and annual busfires.

Reacting to the concerns, Mr Benito Owusu-Bio, a ranking member of the committee, and MP for Atwima Nkwabiagya, asked the division to take advantage and make effective use of ICT.

He said drowning technology - use of drown cameras, is a recommendable and best method to monitor and assess the state of the national forest reserves.

Mr Owusu-Bio expressed worry about that successive government showed little concern on forest resources and management, and called on the government to pay particular attention to protecting the forest.

He said if properly resource and managed, the forest sector alone could fetched Ghana more than GH 10 billion annually.

Mr Thomas Okyere, the Brong-Ahafo Regional Manager of the FSD, expressed discomfort that forest offences are always considered minor offences.

He said the country could make a headway in the forestry sector, if forest offenders are regarded serious offences and harsher punishment are meted on illegal loggers, and fire setters to serve as deterrent to like-minded people.

Mr Henry Kwadwo Kokofu, the MP for Bantama, expressed unhappiness that annual bushfires remain serious threat to forest sustenance and food security.

He said a national policy direction is required to tackle bush and wild fires, and asked forest fringe communities to support in the preservation of the especially forest reserves.

GNA
Accra, Aug.22, GNA - Dr Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), has called on African leaders to adopt good city management practices to enhance development and technological advancement.

He said they should also move away from the old ways doing things and focus on best practices for the formulation and implementation of policies to make cities in Africa better places to live.

Dr Vanderpuije made the call when a delegation of military officers, led by Colonel Joseph Muzvidziwa, Commandant of the Zimbabwe Armed Forces Staff College, visited the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to learn and develop skills and opportunities to manage security challenges.

The visit also afforded them the opportunity to examine how nations' survive and reduce the damage caused by natural disasters and their adverse effects on socio-economic development.

Dr Vanderpuije said many African countries were struggling with climate change and terrorism, adding: 'we cannot deal effectively with such situations without the involvement of the security agents,'' he said.

Dr Vanderpuije reminded the officers that the days are gone when you find soldiers only in their barracks, adding; ''come out to join the people for community development so that they will feel your presence.'

He said it had become necessary now to find ways of promoting community cohesion, reforming government's agencies and improving the physical, socio-cultural and economic conditions to enhance the health and education of the population.

Col. Muzvidziwa expressed satisfaction of AMA's resilience strategies addressing both stresses and shocks that occurred in Accra.

He said the presentations enabled the officers to confirm that developing proactive and integrated plans was expedient for economic development and social justice.

'This should not be done without a real participatory and decentralised approach of the security agencies and focus on citizens' livelihoods improvement,'' he said.

He appealed to the AMA to develop activities on exchange visit to assess their progress while sharing knowledge among two Staff Colleges.

GNA
By D.I. Laary, GNA

Accra, Aug. 22, GNA - About 60 people gathered at the Australian High Commissioner's residence to celebrate the accomplishments of Ghanaian and Australian women in politics and discuss ways to 'pave the way for women at all levels of governance'.

National Women leaders from all political divide, heads of student representative councils, ambassadors, academics, journalists and civil society representatives discussed various issues affecting women in politics.

Chief among the topics discussed included 'promoting gender perspectives in political systems and processes,' 'getting more women into winnable seats' and 'lessons for women in political leadership'.

The Australian High Commissioner, Andrew Barnes, hosted the event to highlight female leadership and discuss Australia's Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment strategy.

'Leadership, crucial for women's empowerment, means giving women a voice, whether in parliaments, in communities, or in peace negotiations.

'It is about enabling and empowering women to be leaders in their communities, supporting women's participation in politics is an important way to help realize this goal.

'In Ghana, 11 per cent of parliamentarians are women, and I share the hope of many in the audience tonight that we'll see that number increase come December.

'Looking around, it's evident that as in Australia, there is a community of passionate and skilled advocates women's participation in Ghanaian politics who are dedicated to raising this number.'

Mrs Dela Sowah, Deputy Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, expressed worry that despite the population of women outstripping men in Ghana only 30 are lawmakers out of the 275 legislative body.

She noted that attitudes favouring men are so deeply entrenched that women are not seen to be able to work on their merit, 'there is always a hidden reason'.

She blamed the situation on religious, social and cultural barriers, which often fuel the perception that women who secure leadership positions are either witches or prostitutes.

As part of efforts to reverse the trend, she said, government has launched a gender policy document and an affirmative action bill, which would give 40 per cent representation of women in public offices.

Ms Elizabeth Ohene, Former Minister of State, said: 'When a woman goes into politics there are questions about her marital status and whether she has children but the men are never being asked these questions.'

'If a woman goes for a meeting that ends at 12 am or 2am, you run into trouble," she added.

However, she noted that many women even think it is alright for the men go and work while they sit behind.

She also said women often worry about what they wear, 'they worry about their hand bag, they worry about their shoes, and they worry about their hair.

The event boosted networking between women involved in democratic governance and raised awareness of the crucial role women are playing and could play in leadership positions as well as issues and barriers to achieving greater inclusivity in both Australian and Ghanaian politics.

The Australian Minister for International Development and the Pacific and Senator, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, contributed to the discussion via video statement and noted Australia's gradual process towards gender equality in the political arena.

GNA
By George-Ramsey Benamba, GNA

Accra, Aug. 22, GNA - Mrs Sedina Tamakloe-Attionu, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Micro Finance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), says the contribution of women in Ghana's socio-economic development is phenomenal and therefore needs support.

She said the disbursement of loans to them in the rural areas is one of the steps government is using to support them to blossom.

Mrs Tamakoe- Attionu stated this when she disbursed GHa 1.2 million to 2,325 beneficiaries, mostly market women in some communities in the Northern Region.

"Women's contributions to the socio-economic and political development of Ghana cannot be over-emphasised. Women have played and continue to play leading roles in the development of mother Ghana, hence government's commitment to resource them to stand on their feet."

The beneficiaries were drawn from; Tamale North, Tamale South and Tamale Central constituencies, Bole-Bamboi, Sawla-Tuna-Kalba, Salaga Yendi, Chereponi, Nanumba South, Mion, Savelegu, East Gonja, Saboba and Kpandai.

Mrs Tamakloe Attionu before disbursing the funds gave the market women training on saving on their trading activities.

She noted that women are the backbone of every economy and therefore, it is the responsibility of government to give them financial support.

Mrs Tamakloe-Attionu challenged them use the funds for the intended purposes and not for other activities.

Mr Inusah Fuseini, Minister of Roads and Highways, who assisted the MASLOC CEO to present the cheques to the women, commended management of MASLOC and President John Dramani Mahama and wife for the honour done to women.

GNA
A state Supreme Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging tax benefits granted to del Lago Resort & Casino by the Seneca County Industrial Development Agency.

The legal challenge was filed by town of Tyre residents who oppose the casino project. The petitioners argued that del Lago wasn't eligible to receive tax breaks from the IDA and accused the agency of miscalculating the assistance the casino was scheduled to receive.

Judge W. Patrick Falvey disagreed with the claim.

"The court concludes that the IDA's determination to grant benefits to (del Lago) was not made in violation of lawful procedure, affected by error of law, or arbitrary and capricious, or an abuse of discretion," Falvey wrote in his decision.

The victory in court is the latest legal win for del Lago. In June, courts dismissed separate lawsuits filed against the $440 million project.

Tom Wilmot Sr., chairman of del Lago Resort & Casino, said once the project is complete, the facility will the largest taxpayer in Tyre and Seneca County.

"As we continue to employ hundreds of local craftspeople in building what will become the best resort and casino in upstate New York, we appreciate this court victory, which is really a victory for the people of Tyre and Seneca County," Wilmot said.

The agreement between del Lago and the Seneca County IDA will require the casino to pay $45.3 million over a 20-year period to Seneca County and the Waterloo Central School District. The funds include $5.5 million for upgrades along Route 318.

Del Lago is planning to hire 1,800 workers for the casino and hotel. Another 1,800 will be employed during the construction process.

The casino is slated to open in February. The hotel will open in July 2017.
By Afedzi Abdullah, GNA

Cape Coast, Aug. 22, GNA - Ghana is currently in a period of 'epidemiological transition' where infectious diseases like tuberculosis have declined substantially but non communicable diseases like diabetes and cancer are on the ascendancy.

Dr Daniel Asare, the Chief Executive Officer of the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital (CCTH), said infectious diseases were no longer the leading cause of deaths.

He was briefing a delegation of Public Account Committee members from the Danish Parliament who are in the country to investigate the finances and state of affair of projects being financed by the Danish Government.

The Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) is supporting the Ministry of Health in four high priority areas namely family planning, procurement, service delivery and emergency obstetric and new born.

The support is to help attain the Millennium Development Goal (MDG 5) of which the CCTH is an implementing agent.

Dr Asare described as worrying the number non-communicable diseases among the Ghanaian populace and in the younger generation which, he said, must be given the necessary attention to stem the phenomenon from reaching an epidemic stage.

He said chronic diseases such as cancer, kidney infections, diabetes and heart diseases were disproportionately killing the younger population in Ghana compared to HIV/AIDS but were often disregarded.

The trend, according to him, was being driven by urbanisation, lifestyles of the citizenry and other major challenges such as galamsey operations which at a large extent pollute water bodies with substances such as cyanide and mercury.

Dr Asare said kidney related problems for example were on the increase in the country due to environmental challenges causing many people, mostly from mining catchment areas, to regularly report kidney related issues at the hospital.

'Kidney injuries care is now rampant among children as young as 12 years,' he said adding that the situation needed rapt attention since its management and treatment was costly.

On diabetes he said it had almost reached an epidemic stage as more than 3,000 patients including children were attending diabetes clinic at the facility.

Dr Asare said the scariest aspect was that children with such chronic diseases did not have child psychologist to counsel them.

Giving an analysis on maternal and child health at the facility, he said skilled delivery and antenatal care had seen significant improvement from 42 to 73 per cent and 88 to 97 per cent respectively.

However, maternal mortality ratio increased from 1,389 per 100,000 live births in 2015 to 1,488 per 100,000 live births as of June 2016 though some measures were put in place by management to reduce it.

Dr Asare attributed the increase to late referral, lack of skilled staff accompanying patients, and arrival of patients in critical condition among other factors.

The hospital has recorded 21 maternal deaths in mid 2016 as against 20 in 2015 while still birth also increased from 78 in 2015 to 96 in mid 2016.

The hospital also saw a slight increase in supervised delivery in mid-2016 which recorded 1,444 cases and expressed concern about the high rate of caesarean section deliveries but added that the option was always considered to save the lives of mothers and their babies.

The Danish Ambassador to Ghana, Ms Tove Degnbol, who led the Danish delegation, expressed satisfaction about the projects carried out by CCTH and commanded the CEO for the good work done.

GNA
By Stephen Asante, GNA

Mpasatia (Ash), Aug 22, GNA - The Business Advisory Centre (BAC) has urged small-scale and medium enterprises (SMEs) to forge stronger partnership with business research institutions for optimal performance.

Mr. Benjamin Kwasi Marfo, the Atwima-Mponua District Head of BAC, said it was the path to travel to achieve technical efficiency to survive the intense market competition.

He was addressing a day's consultative meeting of the Association of Small-Scale Industries (ASSI) held at Mpasatia with support from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Veterinary Services, Food and Drug Authority and the National Vocational Training Institute.

It was meant to build the capacity of small businesses in the district to aid their growth through the adoption of best practices.

Mr. Marfo indicated that small-scale enterprises had become increasingly knowledge-based and technologically-driven and said companies whose operations were underpinned by research and innovation 'always have a competitive edge over other businesses'.

He made reference to the findings of a study, which showed that many SMEs, particularly, in the developing nations, tended to collapse within the first five years of operation with only about five per cent surviving.

This, he said, was often the result of insufficient capital, the lack of focus, inadequate market research, over-reliance on just a single or two markets for finished products and inexperience.

Added to these, were the lack of proper book keeping, irregular power supply, poor infrastructure, equipment and machinery as well as the inability to attract qualified people.

He called for the government to do more to improve the infrastructure to facilitate business growth.

Mr. Kwame Buor, the Ashanti Regional Chairman of ASSI, said the association had struck a partnership deal with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Business School to train its members on modern business practices.

The goal was to inject professionalism into their operations to bring high level of efficiency for sustainable growth.

Mr. Buor said the economic development of any country was measured by the vibrancy of its private sector, adding that, it was time the government gave priority attention to the private sector.

That, he said, was vital for creating jobs and lifting the people from poverty.

GNA
By Edna A. Quansah, GNA

Accra, August 22, GNA - The Noviha Community based in the United Kingdom (UK) has presented a modern autoclave steriliser to the Sacred Heart Hospital at Weme-Abor in the Volta Region.

The presentation forms part of the community's annual charity works in various fields to support the development of the Volta Region.

The Chairman of the UK based group, Mr Gabriel Awunyo, said his family had been victims of bacterial infection therefore sterilization of medical equipment was important to him and so he is pleased to be associated with the autoclave donation to the hospital.

He said after a careful study of the proposal received from the hospital, the autoclave was deemed urgent hence the presentation to the hospital.

According to him, the group is registered as a welfare body, which undertakes developmental projects in education and health, adding that, they have donated over 2,000 books to over 20 schools within the region.

Mr. Awunyo also assured the hospital of their continuous support and urged them to use the machine for its intended purpose.

The Medical Director of the hospital, Dr. Emmanuel Nachellah thanked the group for the support and assured that the hospital will adopt the best maintenance culture to prolong the lifespan of the machine.

He said the autoclave came at the right time since the previous one they had was outdated and needed to be operated manually, which was a challenge to them, but with the current one presented by the Noviha Community-UK, they are assured of the best output in their work.

The Noviha Community-UK was formed in 1981 by a group of indigenes from the Volta Region with the aim of supporting each other through education and health.

As the group grew, it was registered as a welfare charity to extend their benevolence to the whole of Volta Region.

Members of the group who graced the occasion were; Mr. Bliss Ayivor, Mrs. Veronica Awunyo, Mrs. Claudette Ayivor, Mr. Armstrong Gbewonyo, Mrs. Olive Gbewonyo, Mr. Gabriel Goka, Mr. Philip Mortoo and Dr. Ambrose Togobo.

GNA
By Laudia Sawer

Tema, Aug 21, GNA - Some suspected armed robbers operating in Tema and its environs have created a shooting range at the Sakumono Ramsar site near Tema Community three.

The group is said to use empty plastic bottles as their target practice to sharpen their shooting skills.

Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Juliana Obeng, Tema Regional Police Public Relations Officer, revealed this to the media in Tema on Sunday.

ASP Obeng said the Tema Regional Police Command had a tip off on Saturday at about 16:00 hours that a group of five suspected armed robbers were busily having shooting rehearsals at the Ramsar site.

She indicated that the range was a novelty created by the robbers to enhance their criminal operations.

She added that a police patrol team was immediately dispatched to the place where the said robbers opened fire upon seeing the team.

The Patrol Team also returned fire killing one of them instantly while the others managed to escape.

The Police PRO said 72 catridges made up of Trust Super Halcon and A A catridges, and several empty plastic bottles were sighted.

ASP Obeng pleaded with the public to volunteer information on any person reporting to health facilities with gunshot wounds.

Meanwhile, a group of armed robbers on Saturday at about 02:00 hours, a group of armed robbers attacked Sentuo Steel Company in the Tema Industrial area.

The robbers ASP Obeng said they attacked the security officers and ransacked offices and residence of Chinese expatriates residing on the same premises.

The robbers made away with unspecified amount of monies, mobile phones, ipads, laptops and other personal effects.

GNA
Accra, Aug. 22, GNA - SEND Ghana has held its annual social accountability clinic to help deepen and improve citizen's participation and demand for transparency through proven tools and processes.

The clinic also coincided with the 18th anniversary celebration of promoting good governance and equality of women and men in Ghana.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Ms Harriet Nuamah Agyemang, Project Lead at SEND Ghana on Making the Budget Work for Ghana, said understanding the concepts would help citizens to know what government had in store in terms of social accountability.

She said if government was also doing its part it was necessary for the citizens to see what role they could play to make the intervention or project successful so that its intended benefit was achieved.

'For us social accountability is about learning and putting that into practice,' she said.

Meanwhile, SEND Ghana had launched its unique Participatory, Monitoring and Evaluation Network (PM&E) framework, a tool that drives its public policy advocacy work.

The 140-page manual was launched by Dr Esther Ofei-Aboagye, a Social Policy Analyst and Development Management Consultant.

The framework, which has proven effective over the years to ensure accountability, equity, transparency and participation, was developed in 2003 to assess Ghana's Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) projects.

Since then SEND Ghana had applied it in monitoring government pro-poor policies, programmes and public expenditure in the Agriculture, Health and Education sectors.

The successful application of the PM&E framework has led to the establishment of platforms for civil society and government engagement at the district, regional and national levels.

At the national level, SEND Ghana had developed effective working relationships with various parliamentary select committees and key ministries with an objective of influencing government policies through citizens' feedback mechanism.

Mr Siapha Kamara, the Chief Executive Officer of SEND West Africa, said the organisation continued to live by its principles and standards of transparency and accountability as well as the pursuit of equitable and just society.

He urged civil society organisations not only to demand accountability from duty bearers but must be seen to be living by its tenet.

Mr Dominic Sam, the Country Director of United Nations Development Programme, lauded the organisation for the ability to deliver development projects that are transformational.

SEND Ghana's 2014-2018 Strategic Plan titled Making Ghana Work for Equity moves into its second year with a much stronger determination to influence policy change and promote good governance.

Through its three main programmes - Grassroots Economic Literacy and Policy Advocacy Programme, Livelihood Security Programme, and SEND Financial NGO, the organisation had directly impacted on the lives of about 43,149 Ghanaians.

These beneficiaries were in the 65 poorest districts and from six out of the 10 regions of Ghana.

GNA
By Prosper K. Kuorsoh, GNA

Wa, Aug. 22, GNA - SAVE-Ghana, a non-profit organisation has launched a web-based technology that would help check teacher absenteeism in 88 basic schools in the Upper West Region.

The technology was launched under a 15- month project: 'Improving learning outcomes through ICT and evidence based approach (IMPROVE) in the Upper West Region,' with funding from 'Making All Voices Count' an NGO.

Mr Sule Tayiru Dintie, Executive Director of SAVE-Ghana noted that the Education Sector Performance Review (ESPR 2008) report indicated that Ghana remains the highest investor in the education sector in the sub-region; investing 30 per cent of its annual budget in the sector.

'Notwithstanding the huge investment in the sector, poor learning outcomes continue to manifest in basic schools leading to poor quality basic education,' he said.

Mr Dintie noted that work by SAVE-Ghana and other actors in the education sector have also incontrovertibly established the fact that beside inadequate supply of teaching and learning resources, poor learning outcomes is largely caused by loss of valuable contact hours.

Another daunting challenge to poor learning outcomes, he mentioned, is the use of school children especially in deprived and rural schools for private labour, saying the practice is a violation of the labour laws of Ghana and the Ghana Education (GES) Service regulations.

He said it is for these reasons that SAVE-Ghana together with Making All Voices Count and the GES launched the innovative governance and accountability project.

Mr Dintie said explained that the mobile and web-based application is expected to easily and efficiently facilitate communication between school governance structures.

He explained that all the 11 district education offices and the selected schools would be provided with computers and Android devices and networked with internet connectivity.

The SAVE-Ghana Executive Director said it would allow teachers the opportunity to login when they report to school and logout when leaving school.

He added that this information, which would also reflect on the computer at the district office would enhance monitoring to eliminate teacher absenteeism.

Dr Musheibu Mohammed Alfa, Deputy Regional Minister said teacher absenteeism and teacher indiscipline are the greatest challenges affecting education performance in the region.

He expressed hope that the SAVE-Ghana intervention would be able to improve on monitoring of teachers to eliminate the teacher associated challenges.

Dr Alfa said development in the 21st Century is driven by information and communication technology, adding that government recognises this and has invested in the training of ICT teachers, distributed RLG Laptops to facilitate the teaching of the subject and provided community information centres to connect people living in rural areas to the rest of the world.

The Deputy Regional Minister expressed hope that these initiatives by government coupled with others such as the IMPROVE initiative would help enhance the human resource base for the socio-economic development of the country.

Mr Sachibu Mohammed, Making All Voices Count, Country Engagement Developer noted that technology presents lots of advantages that are capable of addressing development challenges.

He said what is needed is collaboration and teamwork that would enable them to connect all the dots that would lead to effective and efficient use of technology to enhance development.

Mr Moses Batong, the Project Manager said the overall goal of the project was to improve monitoring and supervision, thereby improving learning outcomes in basic schools in the Region.

GNA
Akim Swedru (E/R), Aug. 22, GNA - The Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), has held a forum to sensitise people of Birim South District and Birim Central Municipality on its works.

The forum was on the theme: 'Sources of Petroleum Revenues, Distribution of Petroleum Revenue (PR) - The Right to Demand for Better Management and Where to get Information about the use of Oil and Gas Revenue.'

Dr Steve Manteaw, a member of PIAC and a Co-chairman of the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in an address said the Committee was formed under Section 51 of the Petroleum Revenues Management Act (Act 815) in 2011.

He said it was to deal with public interest in tracking and monitoring the petroleum revenues.

Dr Manteaw said petroleum revenues sources could be found in the corporate income tax, royalties and others while distribution of PR goes into the Annual Budget Funding Amount, Ghana Heritage Fund, Petroleum Companies in Ghana and Ghana Stabilisation Fund.

He said the rest of the information could be found at www.piacghana.org.

Dr Manteaw said that the expected number of barrels of oil this year would reduce due to faulty on some parts of the oil machine.

The Chief Executives from the Birim South and Birim Central and the participants expressed gratitude to the PIAC members for the education on the petroleum revenues management and requested for frequent flow of information.

The groups on the committee include the Ghana Bar Association, Ghana Journalists Association, Trade Union Congress, community based organisations, traditional and religious leaders.

GNA
By Eunice Terkie Tei, GNA

Mpraeso (E/R), Aug 22, GNA - The Kwahu South District Assembly has made environmental sanitation and the provision of potable water an urgent priority as it channels significant proportion of its funds into these.

Mr. Joseph Omari, the District Chief Executive (DCE), said it was determined to ensure that the people had access to good drinking water and sanitation facilities to prevent diseases.

He told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that, these projects were being financed from the assembly's share of the Common Fund and the District Development Fund.

He indicated that the people could become economically productive only when they were healthy.

The situation where some of them had either been struggling with good drinking water or forced to defecate in the open could not continue.

Mr. Omari said the assembly had already completed washrooms at Pitiku, K-Yeboah, Brenadi, Asakraka, Bepong and Atibie.

He also spoke of the construction of mechanized borehole at Adensua and installation of a water reservoir in Mpraeso.

The DCE said the expectation was that the people would show ownership of every single development project provided in their community - take good care and properly maintain these to make them last.

GNA
Accra Aug. 22, GNA - A mechanic who was arrested with two robbers after robbing a forex bureau at Kaneshie to the tune of GH150,000.00 at gun point was on Monday sentenced to 21 years imprisonment by an Accra Circuit Court.

Haruna Abdulai, aged 22 had earlier pleaded not guilty but changed his plea when he appeared before the court today.

He was convicted on his own plea.

Abdulai told the court that he was a mechanic and was in need of money to purchase spare parts and took part in the robbery.

According to him he does not know Yakubu Alhassan whom he was standing trial with.

His counsel, Mr Joseph Kaponde prayed for mitigation since he was a first time offender should be given the minimum sentence because he also did not waste the court's time.

Mr Kaponde said considering Abdulai's age, he has a lot of life ahead of him and giving him an advanced sentence would lead to his inability to contribute his quota to national development.

The court presided over by Mr Aboagye Tandoh after listening to the submissions said he had considered the five months stay of the accused person in prison.

However the trial judge said Abdulai's modus operandi was worrying. It said the trial of the Alhassan would continue irrespective of the fact that Abdulai said he did not known him.

Alhassan and Abdulai aka Borbor are being held on the charges of conspiracy to commit crime and robbery.

Alhassan had pleaded not guilty and is on remand.

Two more people including a woman are said to be at large.

According to the prosecutor, Chief Superintendent Mr Duuti Tuaruka, Alhassan is a welder residing at Agbogbloshie while Abdulai is unemployed and living at Ashiaman.

On the 23 of March Alhassan and Abdulai together with two other suspects at large went to a forex bureau at Mpamprom near Kaneshie under the pretext of conducting business.

They pulled locally manufactured pistols and robbed the forex bureau at gun point.

The prosecution said one of the forex Bureau staff raised an alarm and with the support from a Police Patrol Team from Kaneshie, Alhassan and Abdulai were apprehended while two of their accomplices escaped. The two while on the run fired indiscriminately into a mob chasing them injuring 14 people.

Alhassan admitted the offence in his caution statement and mentioned Abdulai and one Issah, who live at James Town and another person whose name he did not know as accomplices.

The Prosecution said GH58,000.00 have been retrieved from Alhassan and Abdulai as well as two locally manufactured pistols.

Hearing continues on August 23.

GNA
President John Mahama says the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is growing from strength to strength, disputing claims by the opposition that it has collapsed.

According to him, in 2014 government spent GH1 billion for the treatment of NHIS patients which was significantly higher than GH183 million spent by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in 2008.

Our political opponents say NHIS has collapsed [but] we have spent more on facilities providing treatment to patients in the country than the NPP did, he told supporters of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC).

President made this comment on Monday when he addressed supporters of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Northern Regional town of Salaga during his 2016 campaign tour.

The NPP has accused government of collapsing NHIS  a scheme that was introduced during the erstwhile NPP-led-Kufuor administration.

NPP flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, says when given the mandate in the upcoming election, he will revive the scheme.

I am coming to revive the National Health Insurance Scheme, which ensured that the poor in society gained access to healthcare without the financial burden which used to be associated with healthcare delivery [under the cash and carry regime], he told NPP supporters of Dormaa West in the Brong Ahafo Region.

He explained when former President Kufuor introduced the programme, it was aimed at making healthcare accessible and affordable but the NDC has defeated the concept by collapsing the system.

But in his reaction, President Mahama said his government has exhibited more commitment to the scheme than was done by the NPP.

He said when the NHIS was introduced by the NPP the prediction was that the scheme was going to collapse in 2010, but when they took over one of their decisions was to extend the life of the National Health Insurance Authority.

He said under his leadership NHIS patients visitation has grown from nine million to 29 million.

On challenges of residents of Salaga:

President Mahama assured residents of Salaga his government will build the town to regain its role in a business transaction in the continent.

This was the biggest commercial center in the whole Africa of and we want Salaga to recapture its glory days," he said.

With a grasp of the three main challenges of residents, he said, he will ensure that the roads, hospitals and water are provided for the people of Salaga.

"For water, it is a problem between me and the women because they go to a long distance to fetch water. As for the roads they have been given on contract," he added.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | Email: [email protected]
Medicare is the federal government program that gives you health care coverage if you are 65 or older, or younger than 65 and have a disability, no matter what your income. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is the federal agency that oversees Medicare.

This is different from Medicaid, which is a state and federal program offering health care coverage to people of most ages, but generally only those with low income.

Everyone starts with Original Medicare, the traditional fee-for-service program offered directly through the federal government. Most people keep it. In Original Medicare, you are covered to go to just about any doctor or hospital in the country. Everyone who has Medicare receives a red, white and blue Original Medicare card.

Medicare has different parts that cover inpatient services, outpatient services and prescription drugs at the pharmacy. You can get these parts through Original Medicare or from private plans.

Different parts of Medicare cover different services. You may hear about four parts of Medicare: Part A, Part B, Part C and Part D:

 Part A (hospital insurance) covers most medically necessary hospital, skilled nursing facility, home health and hospice care. It is free if you have worked and paid Social Security taxes for at least 40 calendar quarters (10 years); you will pay a monthly premium if you have worked and paid taxes for less time.

 Part B (medical insurance) covers most medically necessary doctors services, preventive care, durable medical equipment, hospital outpatient services, laboratory tests, X-rays, mental health care, and some home health and ambulance services. You pay a monthly premium for this coverage.

 Medicare Part D (prescription drug insurance) is the part of Medicare that provides outpatient prescription drug coverage. Part D is provided only through private insurance companies that have contracts with the government  it is never provided directly by the government (like Original Medicare is). Part D is optional for most people; whether you should take it depends on your current drug coverage and needs. If you want Part D, you must choose Part D coverage that works with your Medicare health benefits. If you have Original Medicare, choose a standalone Part D plan.

 Medicare Part C is not a separate benefit. Part C is the part of Medicare policy that allows private health insurance companies to provide Medicare benefits. These Medicare private health plans, such as HMOs and PPOs, are sometimes known as Medicare Advantage plans.

Some people then choose to get their Medicare benefits through a Medicare private health plan (such as an HMO or PPO), instead of Original Medicare. These plans must offer at least the same benefits as Original Medicare but have different rules, costs and coverage restrictions. In a Medicare private health plan, you can get Parts A, B and, if you choose, D  all in one package. These plans must offer at least the same benefits as Original Medicare, but have different rules, costs and coverage restrictions. Many different kinds of Medicare private health plans are available. You may pay a monthly premium for this coverage, in addition to your Part B premium.

A great resource for learning more about Medicare and getting your questions answered is the Medicare Rights Center at medicarerights.org. It is the largest independent source of health care information and assistance in the United States for people with Medicare. Through the Consumer Hotline (800) 333-4114, MRC provides counseling to individuals who need answers to Medicare-related questions or help getting care. Hotline counselors are available 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. EST Mondays through Fridays.

As always, the Cayuga County Office for the Aging Health Insurance counselors are available by appointment only to assist Cayuga County seniors with problems with their Medicare insurance. To request an appointment, please contact the Office for the Aging at (315) 253-1226.
The Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II is optimistic Africa can overcome its obstacles and build a better democratic outcomes and engineer economic transformation.

Speaking to members of both Houses of the British Parliament, the diplomatic community, faculty of universities and a select number of Ghanaians that included former Ghana President, John Agyekum Kufuor at Westminster, London, the Ashanti King also paid glowing tribute to the fledgling democracy on the continent.

He was speaking on the topic, Africas Democratic Path and the Search for Economic Transformation .

He explained that the stability and planning for development predicated by 16 presidential and parliamentary elections in Africa alone this year is an encouraging step for consolidating peace .

The Asantehene also touted outreach programmes and sensitization, safe-guarding of electoral processes as well as the emergence of reforms in telecommunication and associated multi-media, and how that have created a knowledge-based economy that did not exist in many parts of Africa two decades ago.

These innovations he explained, should lead to better ways of doing things in Africa and hopefully a better strategy of less dependence on multi-donor budget support and financing.

With many of Africa, growing into middle income economies which have come with withdrawal of subsidies, the Asantehene said the time has come for Africans to be all the more thorough in the economic policies they implement.

Though the journey to development is on course, the challenges could be daunting as he dwelt on the dangers that South Sudan finds itself, the Asantehene noted.

He also referred to infractions by politicians and their surrogates in Kenya where some members of Parliament had to be arrested by the police for ethnic incitement and in Ghana where radio presenters threatened murder on the Lady Chief Justice and some Members of the judiciary.

Lord Paul Boateng of the House of Lords and of Ghanaian descent praised the Asantehene for his traditional leadership which he said fits so well into modern democratic governance.

He also applauded Asantehene's commitment to education and agriculture, saying, the two sectors have served Africa well in the past, without which many elite individuals would not be where they were today.

Unfortunately, he said, Africas agriculture is suffering from all fronts a situation which affects millions of dependants.

The event was also a literary fanfare which saw the launch of two books- May Their Shadows Never Shrink- Wole Soyinka and the Oxford Professorship of Poetry edited by Ivor Agyeman-Duah, a Ghanaian author and Lucy Newlyn, a professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and All the Good Things Around Us- An Anthology of African Short Stories edited by Agyeman-Duah and which was described by Dr. Augustus Casely-Hayford the British cultural historian who launched them as brewed in centuries of traditional creativity which brings together some of our most eloquent and able voices.the imaginations to capture this moment of critical cultural shift..

Agyeman-Duah who described the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and the Nigerian Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka (who was the Guest of Honour) as Keeper of Heritage and our Cultural Antiphonist respectively, spoke about the relevance of better economic choices in both the creation and consumption of literary arts in Africa.

Hon. Diane Abbott, Shadow Secretary of Health and MP for North Hackney and Stoke Newington who chaired the event spoke about cultural knowledge and understanding especially literature which leads to identity confidence and better economic diagnosis.

Prof. Soyinka disclosed to the audience that all is not lost in Africa notwithstanding challenges of nation-building and difficult economic situation some of which lead to violence.

He spoke about the current violence in the Delta region of Nigeria and the blowing of oil installation by some militants as an example of such economic frustration and a feeling of inequality with people who suffer most from the effect of extractive economies.

An international observatory post of which he would be involved have had preliminary discussions with President Buhuari and the leadership of the militants and that further consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, Some members of the British Parliament, the Asantehene, Osei Tutu II would be pursued as an international mediation effort to help bring peace to the afflicted region..

It is some of these issues and conditions, Prof. Soyinka explained which unfortunately serve as themes on contemporary literary production in Nigeria and parts.

Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline.com
you are here:
Chinese demand for infant formula triples Bellamys profits





Bellamys Organic has more than tripled its 2016 financial results thanks to strong domestic and international demand for its products, especially from China.

The Tasmanian-based infant formula company achieved earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of AUD $54.3 million for the 12 months ended 30 June 2016, a 324 per cent increase on its 2015 financial year results. Bellamys net profits grew to AUD $38.3 million and its revenue hit AUD $244.6 million, a 95 per cent increase on its results for the prior 12 month period.

Chief Executive Officer of Bellamys, Laura McBain, said that Bellamys brand reputation and relationship with parents was driving the companys success both in Australian and in China.

We are passionate about producing world class, safe, clean, organic products so that babies can have a pure start to life, McBain said.

This passion has underpinned our brand, making us the leader in organic food and formula products for babies and toddlers in Australia, with a growing strong reputation among Chinese parents, she stated.

Online shopping the key to cracking Chinese market

McBain reported that throughout Bellamys 2016 financial year the company continued to experience strong growth in China across all of its distribution channels.

We recognise the importance of having a multi-channel distribution strategy in china, and providing easy access to our products for parents regardless of their physical location, she said.

Bellamys reported that its presence on popular Chinese online shopping sites, TMall and JD, were significantly contributing to sales within China.

Continuing to drive growth in Australian market

Bellamys said within the Australian market it spent the financial year expanding its presence within pharmacies and grocery stores.

Bellamys products are now distributed in more than 4, 400 outlets nationally across all major retailers, McBain said.

McBain stated that in December 2015 it decided to increase its Australian-sold infant formula prices to help manage the increasing cost of organic ingredients.

This has delivered benefits to our gross profit margins in the FY16 year, McBain said.

Further Asian growth on the agenda

Outside of China, Bellamys said it has experienced improved sales and market share in other Asian countries including Singapore where its market share now sits at 3 per cent.

In Vietnam we are working towards improving Bellamys footprint through adopting a direct market model that will provide greater control over distribution of our products, McBain said.
Identity theft

Someone used the victims social security number to fraudulently open phone accounts in the victims name. The crime was reported 3:56 p.m. Aug. 11.

Stolen vehicle

A thief or thieves stole a silver 1997 Honda Civic from a residential parking spot on the 200 block of East Dunne Avenue. The crime was reported 8 a.m. Aug. 12.

Someone stole a white HaUlmark trailer that was parked at Pinnacle Manufacturing, 17680 Butterfield Blvd. The crime was reported 10:38 a.m. Aug. 12.

A white 1993 Honda Civic was stolen from a parking spot on La Honda Court. The crime was reported 8:20 a.m. Aug. 14.

Someone stole a white 2005 Chevrolet Impala from the 16800 block of Barnell Avenue. The crime was reported 6:33 p.m. Aug. 18.

A thief or thieves stole a white 2003 GMC pickup from the 18500 block of Butterfield Boulevard. The crime was reported 8:53 a.m. Aug. 18.

Petty theft

A homeless man stole two bottles of Grey Goose vodka from Trader Joes, 17035 Laurel Road. The suspect was detained and cited on suspicion of petty theft. The crime was reported 10:49 a.m. Aug. 13.

Someone stole about $300 worth of meat from Safeway grocery store, 840 E. Dunne Ave. The crime was reported 3:40 p.m. Aug. 14.

A customer at Dollar Tree, 16975 Monterey Road, ate five grocery items from the store and refused to pay for them. The crime was reported 4:07 p.m. Aug. 19.

Three men and a woman stole an air mattress and other itemsworth a total of $548from Target, 1061 Cochrane Road. The suspects were associated with a silver Honda Civic.

Burglary

A thief or thieves broke into a new home on the 1700 block of Ventura Drive and stole speakers. The suspect or suspects gained entry by popping open a rear window. The residents of the home were just starting to move in. The crime was reported 4:29 p.m. Aug. 13.

A woman in her 20s walked into Target, 1061 Cochrane Road, and stole about $875 worth of electronics items. The suspect reportedly entered the front door of the store during business hours and walked back to the electronics section. The woman loaded two fire alarms and two security cameras into her cart and ran out of the store, to a white Honda Accord. The crime was reported 5:35 p.m. Aug. 17.

Auto burglary

A thief or thieves broke into a silver Honda Civic parked on LaCrosse Drive and stole a stereo. The crime was reported 2:16 p.m. Aug. 14.

Two suspects cut the lock of a Ford F350 work truck and stole tools. The crime was reported 3:14 a.m. Aug. 19 on the 16900 block of Del Monte Avenue.

Someone broke into a Toyota Highlander on Lotus Way and stole a purse. The crime was reported 6:38 p.m. Aug. 17.

A thief or thieves broke into a Toyota Tacoma on the 16400 block of Del Monte Avenue, and stole a key that belonged to another vehicle. The crime was reported 9:14 a.m. Aug. 18.

Hit and run

A driver of a red Chevrolet pickup truck collided with a gray PT Cruiser in the area of Fisher Avenue and Butterfield Boulevard, and left the scene without exchanging information. Police tracked the red pickup to a residence in Gilroy. Property damage but no injuries were reported in the accident. The incident was reported 5:20 p.m. Aug. 17.

All subjects are innocent until proven guilty. Information is compiled from public records.
Patties Foods profits improve after Creative Gourmet sale





Patties Foods, the owner of FourN Twenty Pies, has increased its profits after selling its Creative Gourmet division at the end of the 2015 calendar year.

For the 12 months ended 30 June 2016, Patties achieved a AUD $13 million net profit, a significant increase on the AUD $2.1 million profit it made during its 2015 financial year.

During Patties 2015 financial year, the company experienced significant financial losses when it recalled its frozen berry products after they were connected to a Hepatitis A outbreak. By December 2015, Patties made the decision to sell its Creative Gourmet division, which included all of its frozen berry products, to Victorian based company, Entyce Foods.

Success in pie brands

Chief Executive Officer of Patties Foods, Steven Chaur, said revenue for the companys FourN Twenty pie brand in 2016 grew by 6.2 per cent when compared to the previous 12-month period and its Herbert Adams brand revenue grew by 11.6 percent.

Over the financial year, management worked diligently to mitigate the residual effects of the February 2015 Berries recall, Cahur said.

Chairman of Patties, Mark Smith, said it was pleasing to see the companys increased investment in brand marketing and product innovation paying-off.

The strategic decision to exit the Frozen Fruit category is now complete and accordingly the business continues to concentrate on driving its profitable core Bakery business and importantly iconic food brands such as FourN Twenty, Patties, Herbert Adams, Nannas and Chefs Pride, Cahur stated.

Future plans

When it came to discussing future plans, Patties Foods remained relatively tight lipped but said it was progressing through its three stage growth roadmap and it was currently in the second stage, Driving for Growth.

The Company enjoys solid customer relationships, has growing iconic brands and our employees remain highly engaged. As we prodly celebrate our 50th year of operations during 2016, the Companys future remains energised and vibrant, the company said.
Tassal tops global salmon sustainability report





Tasmanian salmon producer, Tassal, has been ranked number one in a global report which measures the sustainability practices of salmon and trout companies.

The 2016 Sea Food Intelligence Report ranked Tassal number one after examining 150 key performance indicators.

Each year, Seafood Intelligence, an information service for the seafood sector, compiles a new sustainability report on the global salmon and trout industry.

The 2016 report stated Tassal was one of only a handful of companies that were providing sustainability reporting leadership.

Tassal is driven by the sustainability of its business, which includes the financial dimension, the report said.

Tassal said an important element of maintaining its sustainability practices was its partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Tassal is a great story of an Australian company working for sustainability, and since 2012 Tassal have been certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) which WWF recognises as the highest global standard for responsibly farmed seafood, said Dermot OGorman, Chief Executive Officer of WWF Australia.
Woolies loyalty program stop start, new Woolworths Points scheme launched





Woolworths is once again updating its loyalty program after receiving more complaints from shoppers about its recently overhauled system.

In October 2015, Woolworths had announced changes to its Everyday Rewards loyalty program to replace Qantas Frequent Flyer points with Woolworths Dollars.

The Woolworths idea was that Woolworths Dollars could only be earned on selected items.

However, soon afterwards, customers took to social media complaining about its decision to end the Qantas Frequent Flyer points.

Woolworths then reversed its earlier decision to end the partnership with Qantas, and reinstated the ability for shoppers to earn Qantas Frequent Flyer points.

Members will now earn on every dollar spent at all Woolworths supermarkets

Woolworths has now announced from 31 August 2016 Woolworths Dollars are scrapped and replaced by Woolworths Points earned on every dollar spent at its supermarkets, BWS stores and Caltex retail outlets.

Director of Loyalty and Customer Data at Woolworths, Ingrid Maes, said when the group launched Woolworths Rewards it made a commitment to put our members first and to make improvements in response to their feedback.

However, weve acknowledged that we didnt deliver enough orange ticket offers in-store and while many of our members have been rewarded well, too many have not, Maes said.

Other changes to the program

Other changes to the Woolworths loyalty program announced today include the following:

Exclusive member offers at Woolworths supermarkets and BWS stores

Double points on essential items including fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and deli items

Increased personalised offers based of the consumers shopping habits

Members can now continue to convert their Woolworths Points to Qantas Frequent Flyer points or choose to accumulate them for Christmas time

Overall, we are confident these changes will be well received by our members, Maes said.

Every Woolworths shopper can enjoy money off their shopping without any effort required. Alternatively, from the end of August, members can convert their savings to Qantas Points or bank their savings for Christmas, she said.

Remaining the same is a shoppers choice to either get $10 of their shop every time their point balance reaches 2, 000 or they can decide to convert the 2, 000 points into 870 Qantas Frequent Flyers points.

This isnt the end of improvements to our loyalty program. Well continue to listen to our members and introduce new, attractive features to evolve the program in line with member preferences and feedback, Maes said.
Less than 12 months prior to the next provincial election, a recent poll revealed that affordable housing is the foremost concern among B.C. voters.In its latest study, the Innovative Research Group Inc. found that at least 17 per cent of B.C. residents considered home affordability as the most important issue in the province at presentahead of environmental concerns (8 per cent) and health care (7 per cent), The Globe and Mail reported.In terms of whats most pressing today, the top-of-mind response tells us its affordable housing. That is on the tip of the tongue for people, Innovative Research managing director Greg Lyle said.In addition, 83 per cent of the 600 random respondents agreed that the government should take the lead in keeping residential real estate price down.Affordable housing is an issue that picks itself for attention, Lyle stated. To ignore that issue for either [the Liberals or the NDP] would be to alienate core parts of the electorate.83 per cent of the poll respondents noted that government should make education more affordable, while 80 per cent called for authorities to keep the cost of living down. Meanwhile, 78 per cent of the poll respondents cited the need for more action on jobs and economic development.Earlier this month, the provincial government implemented a 15 per cent property transfer tax on foreign home buyers. Agents have decried the move as an indicator of deep-seated discrimination, and various observers have voiced skepticism over the governments claims that the tax will cool down the market.It is certainly within the realm of possibility that if foreign buyers left this market, there could be something along the lines of a crash, which politically would be very bad for the Liberals, according to Thomas Davidoff, associate professor at the University of British Columbias Sauder School of Business.However, Davidoff hastened to add that the tax was the correct first step in addressing the problem, even if he has reservations about the way the levy was designed and implemented.I think they really did something fairly major that needed to be done, and I certainly hope they will stick to their guns on this.
You would think that when a mongoose battles a cobra that the snake would always triumph. After all, mongooses are little furry mammals that resemble ferrets and weasels (though theyre not related) and cobras are poisonous snakes with venom powerful enough to cause respiratory failure, extreme pain and death in humans. Yet, in the majority of cases, its the mongoose who is victorious, killing the snake.

The mongoose succeeds against cobras because of many characteristics and talents. The mongoose has thick fur which offers some protection from the fangs of the snakes. In addition, its extreme speed, fast reflexes and impressive agility all help it avoid being bitten by cobras.

Finally, one of the biggest reasons that mongooses do not lose in their fights with cobras is that these mammals are immune to their venom. Cobra venom acts by binding to acetylcholine receptors, effectively blocking communication between nerves and muscles, leading to paralysis of the body, including the lungs. Due to a mutation, mongooses have a slightly different acetylcholine receptor to which the venom is unable to bind.

The mongoose, then, has many defenses against the cobra, and can go on offense against it with less risk than other animals. Mongooses attack cobras by biting them on the head or neck. They dont always eat the cobras after killing them, but when they do, they eat the entire body, which means that they even consume the venom sacs.

The counterintuitive triumph of mongooses over cobras is just one of the ways in which our typical view of snakes in the western world can be turned on its head by a visit to Asia.

On a recent trip to Sri Lanka, we saw spectacled cobras and Indian gray mongooses, and we also learned a bit about the cultural view of snakes in this area of the world. Unlike in western folklore where snakes symbolize temptation and evil, they are frequently viewed positively in eastern religions.

In Buddhism, for example, the cobra is sacred. Legend has it that after the Buddha attained enlightenment, a snake named Muchalinda used its hood to shelter him from the elements. (The hood is the wide flattened section of the body near the head that results from the snake spreading out its neck ribs in a threatening posture.) It is common to see statues depicting the Buddha meditating under the shelter of a hooded snake. Such statues are called Naga Buddhas.

Nagas are mythical serpent beings, but the word naga is Sanskrit for cobra. A female naga is a nagini, explaining the name of Voldemorts snake, Nagini. Nagas are also important in Hinduism, where these snake deities are associated with water and creation, and specifically with the gods Vishnu and Shiva.

Moving from religion to sport, the epic battles between mongoose and snake are every bit as engaging as any Olympic contest. If youre suffering from Olympic withdrawal and long for more references to Rio, the word cobra comes from Portuguese and is short for cobra-de-capelo, meaning snake with hood.
Public Citizen Texas, an advocacy group that seeks public policy changes in the energy industry, will testify before the Sunset Advisory Commission today to discuss changes it seeks for the Railroad Commission.

In talking with the Reporter-Telegram ahead of the event, Public Citizen Texas representatives said their top priority is addressing the lack of consistent, predictable well inspections.

They dont have enough inspectors to inspect each well even once a year, and they dont seem to have a methodology or strategy for inspecting wells, said Carol Birch, a former administrative law judge in Texas who serves as Public Citizens legal counsel. I dont know that theres a fixed schedule for when they routinely inspect the wells. I assume theyll inspect if theres a complaint, but are there follow-up inspections?

According to Public Citizens Oil & Gas Best Practices study, the advocacy organization suggests the commission impose an annual inspection fee to help cover the additional costs necessary to carry out their mandated duty to protect public health and the environment.

Also at issue is campaign finance. Public Citizen would like to see an end to elected RRC commissioners and instead have appointees in order to avoid corruption and influence by campaign contributors from the oil and natural gas industry.

Unlike other regulatory agencies in Texas, the (RRC) regulators, who are kind of like judges, can have interests in the business they regulate and take contributions from participants in contested case hearings or others who have interest in the business not just while theyre running for office, but at any time during their term, Tom Smitty Smith, director of Public Citizen, said. Not unsurprisingly, you find contributions coming in either before or immediately after a regulatory decision, say allocation formulas or well plugging rules. These are clearly attempting to influence the commissioners or paying them back. That needs to stop.

Public Citizen compared Texas with energy industry regulatory bodies in other states. Birch and Smith said Texas falls short to its peers, particularly to Colorado, which they both praised for the structure of its commission, which includes an environmental advocate; its transparency; and the ease of access online when searching for data such as dispute resolutions.

If you look at Colorados website, you can find anything you want about violations and about operators, Birch said. If youre a landowner and youve got several operators who want to lease your land, you have a way to look at their track record. In Texas, you dont have any way to tell. The information is there, weve done some open records requests, but you just get a mountain of paper that would take forever to go through. They seem to be collecting the data, but they couldnt give accurate figures to the sunset staff on some of the things they were looking at, and you cant find any of it online.

The RRC undergoes sunset review every eight to 12 years. It has been under review every legislative session, except 2015, since 2011 because of the failure of the Legislature to pass the bill of changes. Railroad Commissioner Ryan Sitton explained to the Reporter-Telegram earlier this month why the commission has been under so much scrutiny.

What happened is the RRC came up for review in the 2011 session after an eight- or 10-year break. The RRC commissioners and staff did not have a very good review session. The Legislature, feeling like, Hey, you guys didnt put your best foot forward, said, Were going to give you a two-year pass, and you can come back in two years and do it again. So, in 2013, the RRC came back under sunset review and didnt do a very good job again. The Legislature said, You know what? Were going to give you a four-year pass because you did OK but not very well. In the 2017 session, you had better get it right.

Sitton said the RRC has worked hard on preparing for sunset review and that he expected the commission would do an exceptional job in engaging the Legislature and showing metrics for what the commission does.

Commissioner Christ Craddick commented via email: I believe industry and regulatory bodies across the country recognize the Railroad Commission as a regulatory leader. We appreciate Public Citizens comments and look forward to working through the sunset process.

This will be Sittons first time facing sunset, and it will be Craddicks first time being involved in the preparation process. Commissioner David Porter will not seek re-election in November.

There hasnt been any dialogue between Public Citizen Texas and the RRC this time around. Sitton told the Reporter-Telegram via email that: No one from Public Citizen has ever reached out to me or my office to discuss any concerns or suggestions that they have. Its disappointing that they appear to be trying to grab headlines rather than engage in a meaningful dialogue about how to make the RRC the very best that it can be. Ill review their suggestions as I do for all recommendations for improvement. That being said, Texas is not like any other oil or gas producing state in the country - we are the biggest and the best.

Smith said that, in his experience, talking directly with the RRC has never really paid off.

I have been doing this for 30 years, and these are the issues weve raised each and every session for the last 30 years, he said. This should be no surprise to the commission. These are the same issues we raised back in May when we submitted our comments to the Sunset Commission. The RRC has long been on notice that these are our issues.

Added Birch: Were not circumventing them any more than theyre circumventing us. Were following the process to present our findings, and theres time after that to discuss anything the commissioners might want to discuss. This is not the end of the road.

Todays Sunset Advisory Commission session begins at 9 a.m. The meeting will be streamed live at www.sunset.texas.gov/meetings.

Like Trevor on Facebook and follow him on Twitter at @HowdyHawes.
Avi Dodi

AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush has made a 3-day visit to Israel, his first overseas trip since taking elected office last year.

Bush met last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Spokesman J.R. Hernandez says Bush "expressed his strong support for Israel" while thanking Netanyahu "for all he is doing to fight terrorism."
10 Survival Tips to Training Muay Thai in Thailand

THE MUAY THAI GUYS PODCAST: EPISODE #42

By Sean Fagan

Training in Thailand can be a daunting task. Everyone who has done it has made a number of mistakes (including Paul and I) and are constantly learning new things about training in the motherland of Muay Thai.

Our goal for this podcast episode is to get you as prepared as possible for the intense training that comes with Muay Thai in Thailand. Follow these 10 survival tips for training in Thailand and youll be happy you did

Heres a brief summary of the things we cover in this weeks podcast:

#1. Proper Cooldown  Its critical to minimize delayed onset muscle soreness and keep the body from locking up in future sessions.

#2. Thai Liniment  This stuff is awesome! It will help warm up stiff joints, minimize pain and help keep you from being unbelievable sore.

#3. Electrolytes and Hydration  You sweat a TON in the muggy heat of Thailand, so making sure you are hydrated to reduce cramps, perform at a high level and maximize your recovery is critical.

#4. Massage  Get the blood circulating to help aid in muscle recovery and release some tension in pain points in your body.

#5. Meditation & Yoga  Clear your mind, visualize your success and improve your flexibility, balance, stability and strength all in one practice.

#6. No Mind  Going along the same lines of meditation, its extremely important to focus on the present moment and putting all your focus on the task at hand.

#7. Rest and Recovery  We must know our body even if our mind pushes us past our physical limitations. It is often thought of as weakness, but what good is going through the movements and without learning? Make sure youre taking power naps and getting a good nights rest.

#8. Distractions  There are a ton of distractions in Thailand, and not just the nightlife either. There are always awesome fights going on and things to do in a group environemtn, but making sure youre not skipping out on training because of these other activities is key to your success.

#9. Changing the Routine  The day to day training that most Thais go through can be very mundane and mindless. Be sure to switch it up with a variety of training, i.e. strength and conditioning, partner drills, etc.

#10. Being You, Being Authoritative  Often times you know whats best for your body/mind, so make sure you take initiative when it comes to your training.

Make sure to follow Thailand Training Camp on Facebook for updates on fights, training footage and more straight from Khongsittha Gym in Bangkok!

The Muay Thai Guys come out with NEW episodes almost every week! Make sure you dont miss one by subscribing via one of the options below:

Click here to subscribe on iTunes

Click here to subscribe on Stitcher

Follow Muay Thai Athlete and Muay Thai Guy on Facebook

Have any questions or suggestions for future podcast topics?

Contact Sean or reach out to Paul on Muay Thai Athlete or comment below with your ideas and maybe your topic will be covered in the next episode!
We were not bribed to drop ...
The Obama Family During a Weekend Hike In Yosemite View Photos

President Obama was Mondays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words:

Hi everybody. Earlier this summer, Michelle, Malia, Sasha and I headed westto the national parks at Carlsbad Caverns and Yosemite. And Ive got to say, it was a breath of fresh air. We explored hundreds of feet underground, standing beneath dripping stalactites in New Mexico. We hiked up a misty trail next to a waterfall in California. And I even took a few pictures of my own  not bad, right?

But the truth is, no camera  especially one with me behind it  can fully capture the beauty and majesty of Americas national parks. From Glacier and Denali to Gettysburg and Seneca Falls, our more than 400 parks and other sites capture our history and our sense of wonder. As FDR once said: There is nothing so American as our national parks the fundamental idea behind the parks is that the country belongs to the people.

This month, were celebrating the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. And I want to encourage all of you to Find Your Park so that you and your family can experience these sacred places, too. If youre a military family, you can even get in free through Michelle and Jill Bidens Joining Forces initiative. And if youve got a fourth grader in your family, you can get a free pass, too, by going to EveryKidInAPark.org.

I hope you do. Because all across the country, the National Park Service is preparing for a big year. Were revitalizing a grove of giant Sequoias in Yosemite; repairing the Lincoln Memorial; and enhancing the iconic entrance to our first national park at Yellowstone.

As President, Im proud to have built upon Americas tradition of conservation. Weve protected more than 265 million acres of public lands and waters  more than any administration in history. Weve recovered endangered wildlife species and restored vulnerable ecosystems. Weve designated new monuments to Cesar Chavez in California, the Pullman porters in Chicago, and the folks who stood up for equality at Stonewall in New York  to better reflect the full history of our nation. And weve got more work to do to preserve our lands, culture, and history. So were not done yet.

As we look ahead, the threat of climate change means that protecting our public lands and waters is more important than ever. Rising temperatures could mean no more glaciers in Glacier National Park. No more Joshua Trees in Joshua Tree National Park. Rising seas could destroy vital ecosystems in the Everglades, even threaten Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

So in the coming years and decades, we have to have the foresight, and the faith in our future, to do what it takes to protect our parks and protect our planet for generations to come. Because these parks belong to all of us. And theyre worth celebrating  not just this year, but every year. Thanks everybody. Have a great weekend. And see you in the parks!

The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 AM.
California Supreme Court Building View Photos

San Francisco, CA  The California Supreme Court dealt a blow to the gold mining industry this morning.

In a unanimous vote, the high court upheld a ban on suction dredging in California. The technique includes using high powered vacuums to search for gold underwater by sucking up rocks and gravel from riverbeds. State officials banned the practice over concerns that it threatens fish and stirs up toxic mercury. Opponents argue that it essentially bans commercial gold mining because searching by hand makes the operation too tedious to be profitable.

The lawsuit stemmed from a question over whether a 19th century federal law allowing for the mining of gold and other minerals on federal land should override the newer state rules.

The Associated Press reports that Associate Justice Kathryn Werdegar said the federal law doesnt regulate how gold is mined and supports local control over mining land.
With a murky abandoned swimming pool as a backdrop, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn set out to assure residents the city is doing everything it can to fight the Zika virus.

Total number of Florida cases of Zika now at 36

New cases of Zika in Miami Beach

Zika: What you need to know

www.FLGov.com/Zika

Buckhorn said the city is not waiting for politicians to take action on the virus locally. He promised his city will be pro-active.

"I cant tell you when Congress is going to come back in session, I cant tell you when Zika dollars are going to be available, all I can control is what I can control and I can control this, said Buckhorn. So, were not waiting for anybody else were gonna go after it and eliminate a lot of these opportunities for mosquito breeding to occur."

Standing in the backyard of a Tampa home set for demolition with a swimming pool full of standing water, Buckhorn said the city must eliminate breeding grounds.

That's one of the steps code enforcement is taking, deploying mosquito dunks citywide.

Dunks have been used for years by pest control officials to kill mosquito larvae before they mature into biting adults.

"We have purchased 3,600 of these dunks that we will distribute," Buckhorn said. "And they (code enforcement) will distribute as they make their rounds through the city to throw them into pools, throw them into retention ponds and throw them into swales.

(We will) throw them into areas that hold standing water - this will kill any mosquitoes or any larvae that's contained within."

One of the dunks can cover a 100 square-foot area and last for 30 days. Mayor Buckhorn reminds residents to wear insect repellent, keep their yards free of standing water and to report areas of concern in their neighborhood by calling 813-274-5545.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine said more federal resources are needed to combat the spread of the Zika virus in South Florida.



They're holding a news conference Monday at a popular Miami Beach cafe in an effort to urge Congress to return from its summer break to deal with the virus outbreak.



President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion in emergency funds in February to develop a vaccine and control the mosquitoes that carry the virus.



But lawmakers left Washington in mid-July for a seven-week recess without approving any of the money.



Mosquito-borne Zika cases have been found in two neighborhoods of Miami-Dade County.



They're the first areas on the U.S. mainland where health officials determined mosquitoes were transmitting Zika.
Crews in Volusia County broke ground Monday on a roundabout at the intersection where a grandmother and three girls died last April.

Grand Avenue and State Road 44 in DeLand area

Crews broke ground on roundabout at intersection

Grandmother and 4 girls killed in crash back in April

Sandy Lopes and three children died when the Jeep they were in was struck by an SUV at the intersection of Grand Avenue and State Road 44.

The impact was so severe that the Jeep burst into flames.

The Florida Department of Transportation agreed to build the roundabout after heavy lobbying from the Volusia County Council and the countys sheriff.

Transportation officials say the roundabout will bring down the number of crashes at the intersection  at least 42 since 2011.

Albert Shoemaker, grandfather to two of the victims, says the number of crashes will fall because temporary traffic lights are not doing enough to slow traffic at the intersection.

Some drivers fear the roundabout might make matters worse.

"It doesn't make sense in an area where people are coming 60 miles an hour down the road to stop like this," said DeLand resident Alex Copper.

Jeff Elliott spent time in England and said he has seen his fair share of roundabouts.

"With roundabouts, they're tricky, Elliott said. You know, people are going to be driving and all of a sudden, here comes a roundabout and they're slamming on the brakes."

There are no other roundabouts on State Road 44, from the intersection near the Volusia and Lake County line, all the way to New Smyrna Beach.
The man who was placed in custody for allegedly threatening to harm schools while attempting to cross the Canadian border has been released by authorities, according to Orange County Sheriff's Office.

Jesus Kong was caught trying to cross Canadian border

For some reason, he was released and allowed to enter Canada

He made threats via social media about harming various Orange County Schools

Jesus Kong, also known as Jessie Calix, was detained and questioned at the border over the weekend, but was later released, stated the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

"He was ultimately allowed to enter Canada. We will continue to work with our Federal partners regarding this incident," Jeff Williamson, public information officer for the Orange County Sheriff's Office stated in a press release.

The press release did not say why Kong was allowed to be let go or who questioned him.

The 23-year-old suspect who allegedly made threats on social media to shoot up and even blow up schools in Orange County appeared to be in some form of distress as he was attempting to cross over into Canada, the Orange County Sheriffs Office Intelligence Unit stated.

He was detained on a warrant from another state, but not Florida. After being questioned, he was allowed to enter Canada.

The Orange County Sheriffs Office said Kong made threats to do harm at Boone, Edgewater and Colonial high schools, as well as Liberty Middle School.

Kong, according to investigators, made the social media posts threatening to shoot up the schools or plant a pipe bomb on August 18th.

There were stepped up patrols last week at the schools and there were no incidents.

Kong is known as a transient and has a history of law enforcement encounters.

News 13 is checking with the sheriffs office to see if Kong will be extradited back to Orange County.


Aug. 23, 1946: Ashley Mixons Hale County Foods canning plant, now operating as Plains Food, Inc., is all set for the black-eye pea crop which is expected to be moving in for preservation soon. Among growers are R.A. McAlister, northwest of Plainview, with 100 acres.

--Henry Hooper, seaman second class, son of Mrs. Ethel Hooper, Plainview, was serving aboard the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga before it was sunk in the recent atom bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. The first aircraft carrier launched by the U.S., it survived many submarine and kamikaze attacks in the Pacific during the war.

--James R. Russell Jr., seaman first class, was discharged from the Navy on Aug. 6 at San Pedro, Calif. Before he enlisted May 25, 1945, he was employed with Railway Express in Plainview.

Aug. 23, 1956: A.B. Buchanan of Hale Center has been named an authorized Golden Guernsey Milk distributor by Golden Guernsey, Inc., of Peterborough, N.H.

--Ernest L. Smitty Smith has been employed as service manager for the Martin Motor Co., Plainviews Studebaker dealer. The veteran auto repairman has 31 years of experience in Plainview, including 12 years as service manager with Shepard Chevrolet.

--A fire Monday morning burned out the interior of the Lockney Post Office, destroying the fixtures and an undetermined amount of mail. Jeffie Griffith, postmistress, said the fire was discovered at 4:15 a.m. Dorsey Baker of Lockney owns the building.

Aug. 23, 1966: W.L. Kidd, 1207 W. 10th, plans to release three squirrels he ordered from Vermont at the Hale County Courthouse grounds today. Kidd planted pecan trees at the courthouse in 1929, and recently installed houses for the squirrels in those trees.

--Prentice C. Windsor, principal of Bellview School District in the mid-1930s, attended the Bellview Reunion last weekend. He is now a professor at San Angelo State College.

--Bill S. Weaks of Plainview received his Master of Photography degree at the 75th annual convention of Professional Photographers Association of American, Inc., in Chicago. It was presented by Hugh W. Trible, PPA president.

Aug. 23, 1986: Viola Steelman, head of X-ray at Central Plains Hospital, has marked her 40th year of service. Fellow employees presented her a plaque to mark the occasion.

--Central Plains MHMR is in the process of relocating from its old facility at Central Plains Regional Hospital into the new Haven Crisis Stabilization Center at 801 Eighth St. NME Hospitals donated the former Nichols Hospital building to the MHMR Center.

--Boy Scout Troop 253, sponsored by the Evening Lions Club, was named Honor Troop during summer camp at Camp Tres Ritos, N.M. Ronnie Bolding is scoutmaster. Assistants are Rick Sisemore, Paul Brown, Coy Koen and Leonard Phillips.

--Compiled by Doug McDonough
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."
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Alamo officials have discovered a clue to the building's mysterious past, right over the doorway some 3 million visitors pass through each year.

Experts believe 1802 might have been scratched into the wall when the Alamo was a mission under Spanish rule, or perhaps decades later, after the U.S. Army added a second floor and roof in the mid-1800s.

Or, as Alamo historian and curator Bruce Winders suggests, it could have been left by an Alamo defender who kept watch from a ledge by a window during the 1836 siege and decided to mark the year of his birth.

More than likely, it's evidence of a little-known period between 1793, when Mission San Antonio de Valero was secularized; and 1803, when Spanish troops began to occupy the former mission that later would be known as the Alamo, Winders said.

If you look at historic graffiti at face value, people usually put the date when they did it, he said. Americans at that time were kind of notorious for leaving behind something that says, I was here.'

The Alamo's on-site conservator, Pam Jary Rosser, made the discovery last week while removing dust and mold from a wall with a sponge and distilled water.

She spotted the date, the earliest ever found in the building, etched in numbers nearly an inch high into the mission-era plaster and limestone wall.

More Information The Alamo See More Collapse

Also by the window above the Alamo's main doorway were etchings of WVA, and what appears to be 54 or SA, and TEX. Since W rarely is used in Spanish, and West Virginia didn't become a state until 1863, Winders could not explain the markings.

The find was the latest of several intriguing discoveries Rosser has made while working as the Alamo's on-site conservator for more than a year.

As a contractor in 2009, she uncovered an arched doorway leading to one of the side rooms of the Alamo that dates to the 1700s. She and her mother, Cisi Jary, also discovered remnants of mission-era frescoes about a decade ago.

Rosser said it's exhilarating to find clues to the past at the Alamo, which is filled with markings and etchings, including many that can be seen only with ultraviolet lamps.

Some historic graffiti she's uncovered might date to the Civil War era. Alamo officials believe markings in ink or paint might have been left by the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secretive organization in the South that had a chapter in San Antonio.

Thursday's announcement of the discovery came less than a week after Gov. Rick Perry signed a bill giving the state oversight of the Alamo for the first time in 106 years.

Though some members of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas opposed the change, the DRT has officially embraced the new law and appointed a transition team to forge an agreement with the General Land Office to remain as Alamo custodians.

The DRT recently adopted a master plan for the state-owned Alamo complex that identified a need for $19.8 million in restoration and maintenance work, including $11.2 million for the Alamo church.

DRT President General Karen Thompson said the DRT hopes to work with the land office to keep doing preservation work that is adding to what's in our history books.

The Daughters are refurbishing the shrine, adding a gray sealant to its ceiling for appearance and to keep out rainwater. In response to concerns about structural stability, the DRT hired a contractor to investigate the flat roof on the building's north side, to see if it needs more steel reinforcing.

Crews are soon expected to begin applying an acrylic waterproofing product called Hydro-Stop to the vaulted portion of the roof's exterior to control leaks. An engineer's report has called water intrusion the single largest threat to the continued viability of the Alamo structure.

Aside from the change in management structure, the new law authorizes the land office to form a nine-member Alamo preservation advisory board. Some of the law's verbiage alters the Alamo's role as a patriotic symbol.

The law directs the board to: educate the public on the historical significance and factual record of the Alamo complex; inspire virtues of honor and Texas pride; preserve the memory and achievement of individuals who served at the Alamo; and honor all Texans who have served in the armed forces or died in service to ensure the freedom of the people of this state.

Under the 1905 law that gave the DRT custodianship, the Daughters were required to keep the Alamo in good order and repair without charge to the State, as a sacred memorial to the heroes who immolated themselves upon that hallowed ground.
Smoke that was billowing from the roof of San Franciscos Ferry Building on Monday morning apparently came from a cooking fire in one of the buildings restaurants, fire officials said.

The one-alarm fire at the iconic building on the Embarcadero was first reported at 7:14 a.m. Firefighters used ladder trucks to attack the smoke emanating from a ventilation shaft on the roof.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Joyce Carol Thomas, a prolific and prize-winning childrens author whose books centered on African American life and tackled racial inequality, has died. She was 78.

Ms. Thomas, who lived in Berkeley, died Aug. 13 of cirrhosis of the liver at Stanford University Medical Center. The condition stemmed from a long-ago blood transfusion, her sister, Flora Krasnovsky, told the Associated Press.

Ms. Thomas won the National Book Award for Marked by Fire, published in 1983. The childrens novel tells of a girl, Abyssinia Jackson, who overcomes struggles in rural Oklahoma. Ms. Thomas, too, was raised in Ponca City, Okla., moving to California as a child with her parents.

Abyssinia was one of the musicals adapted from Ms. Thomas books.

A recipient of a Master of Arts degree from Stanford University, Ms. Thomas also taught at elementary schools and universities, including the University of Tennessee and Purdue University.

Ms. Thomas won the Coretta Scott King Honor for The Blacker the Berry (2008) and for Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea (1995), her first picture book. Another picture book, I Have Heard of a Land (2000), was also awarded a Coretta Scott King Honor and was named an American Library Association Notable Book.

In Linda Brown, You Are Not Alone: The Brown v. Board of Education Decision (2004), Ms. Thomas assembled a series of poets, essayists and novelists who examined the landmark Supreme Court decision on its 50th anniversary. In her review of the book, Chronicle critic Susan Faust wrote, From subdued to angry, they raise authentic voices and together stir a complex sense of history.

In a 2004 Chronicle profile of Ms. Thomas, Rona Marech wrote, Thomas points out that while shes not a confrontational person  shes preternaturally soft-spoken and calm  the subject of the book [Linda Brown], by nature, is confrontational.

The stories themselves are screaming, so I dont have to, Ms. Thomas said. I wonder when people scream, are they thinking? I find it impossible to be out screaming and listening to whats inside.

John McMurtrie is The San Francisco Chronicle's book editor. Email: jmcmurtrie@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @McMurtrieSF
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

As of Monday, General Electric is no longer a Connecticut-based company.

GE celebrated its first official day in Boston with a small morning ceremony at its interim headquarters in the Fort Point neighborhood, just a few blocks from where it plans to create its permanent three-building campus.

The corporate giant has moved into a 43,000-square-foot space in an office building at 33-41 Farnsworth St. in Boston. It will expand to about 66,000 square feet and double its employee count, now between 150 and 175 people, by years end, according to Susan Bishop, a GE spokeswoman.

The building, which has other tenants, is a far cry from the companys 66-acre campus in Fairfield. But the space is only temporary.

Earlier this month, GE unveiled its proposal to rehabilitate two brick structures and construct a 12-story building on several acres in the Fort Point neighborhood. Its new 293,000-square-foot headquarters will not only consist of office space, but will have a community lounge, coffee bar and museum showcasing the history and future of GE on its lower levels.

The structure is expected to be completed in 2018.

But the Massachusetts address on official documents does not mean the company is done with Connecticut. There are still employees working out of its Fairfield property, company officials say.

And most of those people who worked in Fairfield  roughly 600 of the 800  are in the process of moving into its GE Capital office on Main Avenue in Norwalk. That move should be completed by the end of October, Bishop said.

GE still owns its Fairfield property on Easton Turnpike and is talking to potential buyers.

There are still employees here going to work on the site, said Fairfield First Selectman Michael Tetreau. They are still paying taxes here on that site.

The property generated more than $1.5 million in taxes last year.

Tetreau, who said he didnt know GE had officially moved to Boston on Monday, said he has not been informed of any timeline for the sale of the property. Until the property transfers hands, he said the town wont know the actual impact of the move.

Thats when well see a difference, he said.

In May, CEO Jeff Immelt purchased an $8 million condominium in Boston and put his New Canaan home on the market for $5.5 million. The following month, the price was reduced to $5 million on his 4-acre Connecticut property.
A taste of social media: #BackToSchool: Monday saw most of San Antonios kids march off to a glorious, albeit soggy, first day of school. And we do mean kids, because most of San Antonio saw plenty of Facebook and Twitter posts featuring our beloved littler ones posing with their colorful backpacks and other kit for campus.

The Express-News and mySA.com have plenty of back-to-school snapshots from across town. So in case you missed it or just want to revisit it, check out Tuesdays Express-News and mySA.com for more of those fresh-faced little academics.

Pandora to roll out on-demand streaming: The worlds most popular internet radio service is finally giving you total control of the dial. Pandora aims to offer on-demand streaming as soon as next month, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the WSJ said Pandora will still provide its familiar free tier, but also will serve up two monthly subscription options: a new $10/month service for unlimited on-demand access to millions of songs, and a tweak to its $5 per month, ad-free tier with the power to skip more songs and enjoy music offline.

Pandora is close to reaching deals with major record companies to do both in the United States and overseas, the WSJ report said.

Pandora looks to join a crowded field with similar $10 services from Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal. But the WSJ noted Pandoras enhanced $5 tier may just tap more consumers who want more music control for half the price, according to music industry executives.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update breaking webcams: As PCWorld reported, many Windows 10 users are complaining the recent Windows 10 Anniversary Update has rendered their webcams useless, dead eyes. Lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a dolls eyes, but with a USB cord.

The problem: The Anniversary Update filters out MJPEG and H.264, two common video compression formats for connected webcams, PCWorld said.

The move was actually meant to help users. According to a Windows Camera Team member cited in the report, multiple apps can decode MJPEG at the same time and impact performance, while H.264s issue would result in apps interfering with each other.

Microsoft aims to fix the MJPEG problem in September, the Windows Camera Team member said, but the H.264 issue could take longer.

In the meantime, try rolling back your system to its pre-Anniversary Update status. Just remember you have only 10 days to do so from the time you first installed the upgrade.

Bye-bye, Chrome apps for Windows, Mac and Linux: Unless you roll with a Chromebook, chances are you rock Google Docs or other Chrome apps online in your browser. Google figures as much, so its doing away with packaged and hosted Chrome apps for Windows, Mac and Linux. Google will phase out support for those apps over the next two years.

A Chromium Blog post noted only about 1 percent of users on those three systems actively use Chrome packaged apps for off-browser and offline use, while most cloud-based hosted apps already run well enough as regular web apps.

So by the second half of 2017, the Chrome Web Store will no longer show Chrome apps on Windows, Mac and Linux, the blog said. Then in early 2018, users of those platforms will no longer be able to load Chrome apps. This wont affect Chrome OS users or their apps.

Rene A. Guzman
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Over the course of two years and three round-trip walks to Walmart per day, a man in Arizona shed more than 300 pounds for a jaw-dropping transformation.

Pasquale "Pat" Brocco, a 31-year-old Avondale, Ariz., told ABC News his journey became a literal one three years ago when, at 605 pounds, he began making the mile walk to the nearest Walmart each time he needed to eat. Walking off the weight helped him lose 300 pounds.

RELATED: Woman loses more than 200 pounds in less than a year, now looks amazing

You walk to Walmart three times a day, and you end up walking 6 miles, he told ABC News. Its amazing because I never walked 6 miles in my life, and I was doing it every day.

Once at the store, Brocco opted for more health-conscious meal options like vegetables and meats. The following is a 11,200-calorie menu example Brocco gave the site, showing how much he would devour before the change:

Box of cereal 1/2 gallon whole milk

1 package peanut butter cups

1 candy bar

12-inch meatball and cheese submarine sandwich

100 fast food chicken nuggets

1 fast food apple pie

1 fast food milkshake

2 liters soda

4 doughnuts

The man said a warning from his doctor about threatening levels of high blood pressure and cholesterol prompted the drastic life change. He is now only 11 percent body fat, a new lease on life and has made him a social media inspiration with nearly 100,00 followers watching his transformation on Instagram.

RELATED: Texas woman drops more than 200 pounds, spends $12,000 on 'dream body'

Brocco told ABC News friends once dubbed him "Fat Pat," but once he shed the weight and started working out in a gym, where he used the treadmill and weight training to loose more weight, he has earned a new moniker: "Possible Pat."

RELATED: Seen on Instagram: Fitness elite flex for national-qualifying San Antonio bodybuilding competition

Now weighing in at 280 pounds, Brocco underwent surgery this week to remove 30 pounds of excess skin.

"Now that the skin is gone a new chapter a new chapter starts," he said in an Instagram post on Thursday.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
Despite an arrest on child endangerment charges and his resignation earlier this year, the former longtime treasurer of the Connecticut Republicans has received more than $4,000 in pay for the last four months, federal election records show.

Gary Schaffrick received nine paychecks totaling $4,275 since his March 28 resignation from his unpaid treasurers post and his paid back-office job with the state GOP, according to the Federal Election Commission. The most recent payment for $475 was dated July 21.

The Bristol resident was charged on March 6 in his home city with one count of risk of injury and impairing the morals of a minor, a felony, for allegedly taking a bath naked with a 5-year-old boy who is a family acquaintance.

State Republican Party boss J.R. Romano said Monday that the party has severed all ties with Schaffrick, but would not elaborate on the payments, which were marked as payroll on FEC reports.

Hes not an employee, Romano said. Hes no longer at the party.

Schaffricks Bristol-based lawyer, Jodi Zils Gagne, did not respond to a request for comment Monday. Schaffricks next court appearance is scheduled for Thursday in state Superior Court in Bristol.

Paul Rotiroti, the prosecutor in the case, said Monday that he could not discuss the matter because the charge is still pending. In May, the Bristol Press reported that Schaffrick was turned down for a first-time offender program that allows defendants to avoid a conviction.

In the police report, investigators say he openly bragged to relatives about how much he enjoyed bath time with a 5-year-old during sleepovers at Schaffricks residence. Schaffrick took baths with the boy and put him in his lap while both were nude, according to the warrant, which said the two sometimes shared a bed.

The charge of risk of injury to a minor covers a range of offenses, from supplying a child with alcohol, cigarettes or pornographic material to inappropriate sexual contact. The latter carries a minimum penalty of five years in prison for cases involving minors under the age of 13.

In addition to serving as elected treasurer, Schaffrick was a paid employee of the party and earned about $10,000 a year helping the party leaders with logistics and record keeping.

He also served on the Republican State Central Committee, but is no longer on the 72-member governing body of the party, according to Romano. In April, Schaffrick traveled to Cleveland as part of the state GOPs preparations for the national convention in July, which he did not attend. The move rankled some members of the GOP.

neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Christian Abraham / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 3 File Photo / John P. Lawson / File Photo Show More Show Less 3 of 3





The number of lifeguards at state park swimming areas will be significantly reduced as the summer dwindles down, according to a Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection press release.

Many lifeguards are heading back to school and leaving their summer jobs, meaning most state park swimming areas will be unguarded on weekdays from now through Labor Day. DEEP will post signs at swim areas without lifeguards.
Max Becherer / Associated Press

Three American Red Cross volunteers from the Bridgeport region are deploying to Louisiana to support Red Cross relief efforts after excessive rainfall has resulted in moderate to heavy flooding across many parts of Louisiana. Deanna Bouchard will be physically deploying and serve as a shelter service associate. Brittney Wiley and Missy Lundeen will be virtually deploying where Wiley will serve as a call center agent and Lundeen will serve as a client casework service associate. They are three of close to 3,000 Red Cross volunteers in the Connecticut and Rhode Island Region of the American Red Cross. There have been eleven volunteers who have physically deployed to support the relief efforts and fifteen volunteers have virtually deployed in response.

The American Red Cross is helping thousands of people in Louisiana affected by the devastating flooding there, likely the worst natural disaster since Superstorm Sandy in 2012. More than 500 disaster volunteers from all over the country are on their way to help in Louisiana. The Red Cross has also mobilized 60 disaster response vehicles, 40,000 ready-to-eat meals and more than two dozen trailer loads of shelter and kitchen supplies.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Two sailors from the Capital Region have served or now serve on the Navy's first stealth destroyer.

As the lead ship of its class, which will ultimately include three ships, the Zumwalt has advanced technologies in every area including energy efficiency, main engines, weapons systems, shipboard electronics and sensors, Chief Mass Communication Specialist Bill Steele, a Navy spokesman, said.

The ship carries cruise missiles and features two advanced gun systems capable of firing long-range projectiles more than 70 miles. It is equipped for hunting and tracking submarines, conducting airspace surveillance and providing support to special operations forces.

The ship's name commemorates the late Adm. Elmo "Bud" Zumwalt Jr. During World War II, he earned a Bronze Star with Valor for his actions during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. After the war, Zumwalt served at a variety of commands.

The two local sailors are:

Navy Rear Adm. James Downey, formerly of New Lebanon, assumed command of the Navy Regional Maintenance Center at Norfolk Naval Station, Virginia.

Downey also became deputy commander surface warfare of Naval Sea Systems Command.

He replaces Rear Adm. William Galinis.

The son of Ethel and the late Harry Downey of New Lebanon, Downey previously served as the program manager of the $20 billion Zumwalt Class Destroyer Program at Bath Iron Works, Maine, and at Grumman Shipbuilding Systems at Pascagoula, Miss.

He was major program manager for the Zumwalt-class destroyers since 2010, overseeing the recent delivery of the first of three stealth ships to the Navy. The USS Zumwalt was assigned to the Pacific Fleet.

He also was the CG(X) next-generation cruiser program manager and the chief engineer, principal assistant program manager and warfare systems director for the Ford-class aircraft carrier program.

Downey graduated from the University at Albany in 1986 with a BS in economics and computer science. He entered the Navy as an ensign in 1987. He earned an MS in computer science from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif., in 1997.

He qualified as a surface warfare officer on the USS Hayler (DD 997) in 1989. Additional operational assignments included intelligence briefing officer to the commander in chief, Combined Forces Command, U.S. Forces Korea, Seoul, Korea, and multiple deployments in the North Atlantic, Baltic, Arctic Circle and Pacific.

Downey earned the following medals: two Legion of Merit, a Navy/Marine Commendation, two Defense Meritorious Service, two Meritorious Service, two Navy/Marine Joint Achievement and a Navy/Marine Achievement.

A Scotia native is the top enlisted sailor serving aboard the USS Zumwalt: Master Chief Petty Officer Leonard Greene is the command master chief aboard the guided missile destroyer.

The ship has a crew of more than 150, is more than 600 feet long and looks as small as a fishing boat to enemy radar.

Greene is a 1983 Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake High School graduate.

He is responsible for the enlisted crew's morale and training and mentors the crew and families as well as advocates for them to the commanding officer.

News of your troops and units can be sent to Duty Calls, Terry Brown, Times Union, Box 15000, Albany, NY 12212 or brownt@timesunion.com.
The Willingness to Give Up Power: A look at Washington and Obama

George Washington is widely regarded as the most important man in American History, and rightfully so. Not only was he a fierce warrior, but a natural leader and a fountain of wisdom. His heroics in the Battle of Monongahela in the French and Indian war commanded a deep respect from his countrymen that eventually led to his position as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in the struggle for independence. While his accomplishments in that conflict should hardly need reminding, it's difficult not to get chills thinking of the courage Washington demonstrated when he and his men crossed the Delaware under the brutal conditions of Christmas 1776 to earn the first major American victory of the war, or when Washington put his military genius on full display, baffling British General William Howe to take back Boston. In 1783, several years after Washington's forces had triumphed at Yorktown and with America's independence from Britain confirmed, the General did something unprecedented. Instead of making a grab for totalitarian authority, Washington gave up power. The decorated General returned to his farm, resigning his military commission to the Continental Congress.



However, we all know that this wasn't the last position of power General Washington would hold. After the Constitution was ratified in 1789, Washington was unanimously elected to be the first president of the United States. He held the office with dignity, authority and most importantly a firm respect for the Constitution that he had sworn to defend. Despite being offered a third term, Washington decided that two was enough, longing for a quiet retirement to Mount Vernon. Thus again, Washington peacefully handed over power to the elected John Adams, shattering the historical trend of great leaders becoming corrupted by their own authority. While Washington's list of achievements are considerable, this is irrefutably the greatest contribution he made to his country. Where history had been stained by tyranny, Washington showed the American people that a chief executive could show restraint. and more importantly, that federalism and liberty could co-exist.



Today we see a much different picture being painted. Two hundred and twenty years from Washington's last term, a historic election is unfolding in front of our eyes. This shift hasn't come in a good way either, with one candidate a pandering, pathological liar, holding ideas hostile to the principles of liberty, and the other a loose cannon with no clear principles and an overzealous streak for the theatrical that has turned our politics into something more closely resembling reality television than a substantive contest of ideas. Perhaps more disturbing than the candidates themselves, however, is the need our current president feels to involve himself in the election at every possible turn. With our economy barely moving and the terror threat from ISIS more apparent than ever before, President Obama has reportedly cleared the majority of his October schedule in order to campaign for Hillary Clinton. He has taken every opportunity he gets with the media to bash Donald Trump, recently calling the GOP nominee "Unfit for office", and arguing that Republicans should find a way to replace Trump. CNN Presidential Historian Douglas Brinkley argues, "It is unprecedented in recent American history the way President Obama has been lambasting Trump as being a dangerous menace to America." While it is hard to disagree with the notion that the GOP nominee has said some highly objectionable things, it is unthinkable to me that President Obama could criticize him from a perceived moral high ground. Not only has the president endorsed one of the most corrupt people to ever seek the presidency in Hillary Clinton, his own record of unlawful actions and a lack of transparency has stained his own administration. Whether it be the recent discovery that his administration illegally and secretly paid a 400 million dollar ransom to Iran, his targeting of Conservative groups through the IRS, or the unconstitutional executive actions on immigration, his ever-apparent authoritarian streak has led many to the conclusion that our President isn't necessarily as concerned with the health of the nation he governs as he is the preservation of his legacy. While each of the scandals listed above took place with the end goal for the administration being political gain, his involvement in this election cycle only further reveals such motivations, only this time, they come in the form of a fight for a practical third term through Clinton.



This shines a light on the contrast between our first president and our forty fourth, and perhaps even indicates the emergence of a new and more dangerous type of presidency. Where Washington understood that the most important action he could take for the Republic was to demonstrate that power could be peacefully transferred, Obama is clinging onto whatever he can grab to stay in some sort of power. He has even recently said himself, "I'm being forced out." Though not said in any serious context, it reveals his underlying feelings on the transfer of power that is about to occur. His deep involvement in this general election is unprecedented, and shows no signs of slowing down. Despite this, the president's charisma and likeable demeanor have kept his popularity among the public at bay. However, it is indisputable that the beast he now fights in Donald Trump is a direct result of his own failures, in both foreign and domestic affairs. At this point it should be clear that the uplifting words and smooth tone are just a front, an effort by the president to project himself as something he is not. Conversely, a brief study of Washington's life makes clear that he was a man that didn't have to project a front. His record spoke for itself. Before the presidency, he was a war hero, and Obama a community organizer. That alone should speak volumes on who should be more willing to pass the torch. My ideological objections to our current president notwithstanding, it would be refreshing to see him develop a Washingtonian penchant for leadership, and perhaps even retire with some of the quiet dignity that our first president did.


The city of Norwalk remains robust, in part, because it has 22 pillars of strength to rest upon in times of need. Twenty-two  thats the number of neighborhoods, both large and small, scattered throughout the city.

Likewise, when the various constituents that comprise these neighborhoods find themselves in need, they look to the city to alleviate and ameliorate their concerns.

If you or your neighbors find yourselves pressed with community concerns, then there just may be an outlet to relieve your frustrations.

Join your fellow Norwalkers and share your neighborhood concerns at this months meeting of the Coalition of Norwalk Neighborhood Associations (CNNA), scheduled at 7 p.m. Monday in Room 101 at City Hall.

Featured largely on this months agenda are the concerns about the reopening of the Quintard Avenue halfway house.

All residents of Norwalk are always welcome, and CNNA member associations are each urged to send at least one representative to the monthly meetings.

The CNNA seeks to provide a common voice on larger Norwalk issues by providing information to members on important issues, meetings and events, in addition to soliciting fair and equal participation of neighborhood association and residents.

For more information visit us at www.norwalkneighborhoods.com.

CRANBURY

Once a year  everyone can be Greek, reads the newsletter from St. George Greek Orthodox Church, declaring the arrival of this years Greek Festival.

And with gyros, souvlaki, baklava and mosaiko in their arsenal, who wouldnt take the church up on its offer? With four separate days of festivities, participants can actually live the Greek life not one, not two, not three but for four days of the year.

The event will offer homemade Greek cuisine, authentic Greek pastries, traditional Greek dancing accompanied by live Greek music and traditional festival activities like an outdoor cafe, marketplace and, of course, games and rides.

Festivities are set to kick off at St. George, 238 West Rocks Road, from 5 to 11 p.m. Thursday. Friday night will feature the same hours, while Saturday will be open from noon to 11 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 10 p.m.

Gates will be open regardless of weather conditions. Admission is free, as well as valet parking. Bracelets for rides will cost $25, and will be available to the public at the event.

For ticket information contact nafentoulides@gmail.com, or visit the church website at http://www.stgeorgect.org/church_festival.html.

WEST NORWALK

Whether its a block party, a summer cookout or just an informal gathering for drinks, summer is perhaps the best time of year for neighbors to get out and mingle with one another.

In the hopes of facilitating this sort of friendly neighborhood atmosphere, the West Norwalk Association will host a happy hour night for residents on the terrace of the Oak Hills Restaurant from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday.

Come meet your friends and neighbors for appetizers and drink specials. Beer is $3, wine and mixed drinks $5 and mini appetizers $4.

Events like these are important because they foster a sense of community and nurture relationships between neighbors who very much enjoy living in our beautiful neighborhood, said Isabelle Hardgrove, member of the West Norwalk Association board. In an era where superficial internet relationships reign supreme, it is very refreshing to live in a community where you actually know your neighbors.

For more information on the event, check out the neighborhood associations website at http://westnorwalk.org/.

EAST NORWALK

Regardless of where you live in Norwalk, theres a good chance that there are some hazardous materials lying around your house that are in need of disposal.

Fret not, however, as the city will host its Household Hazardous Waste Day from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Norwalk High School, 23 Calvin Murphy Drive.

During the drive, officials will collect hazardous waste items including gasoline, auto care products, oil-based or alkyd paints, insect killers, weed killers, chemical fertilizer, cleaners, polishes and pet care products.

Included on a list of items not accepted are latex paint, motor oil and antifreeze, electronics, cooking oil, ammunition, flares, explosives, asbestos, CFL bulbs, medical or biological waste, and radioactive materials.

People are asked to provide their drivers license or have their vehicle registration readily available when dropping off waste. This program is for residential-use only  no commercial/business loads accepted.

For more information, call customer service at 203-854-3200 or visit www.norwalkct.org.

Share your neighborhood news

To share your community and neighborhood news with The Hour, contact staff writer Pat Tomlinson at 203-354-1046, or at ptomlinson@thehour.com.
NORWALK  The pain started 10 years ago.

A degenerated disk in Michael Blooms neck sent sharp, shooting pains from his neck, through his left arm, to his fingertips. After two years, it became unbearable and he had two choices: a risky surgery to fuse two vertebrae in his spine or pain management medication.

He chose medication and kept working through the pain. After 18 months, he was taking more than 100 milligrams per day of prescribed opiate-based pain medication. He was irritable, angry and, worst of all, still in pain.

After awhile, I felt guilty for being irritable and then I started to hate myself for being irritable, Bloom said. I felt like I was rotting away. My spirit and soul were gone, and the pain medications were eating away at who I was. So I finally went through with the surgery and the pain was resolved.

His dependence on prescription painkillers, though, was not.

If you take something four or five times a day for that long, you cant just wake up one day and say, Im not going to take this anymore,  Bloom said. Theres no way to just stop taking it. You go into withdrawal and it makes you really sick, so you keep taking it. Its not abuse, but theres a stigma attached to it because its hard to judge whos just trying to get high.

Bloom finally sought help for addiction, and has been clean for four years. But the daily Suboxone pills he was forced to take to combat his bodys physical demand for opiates were a constant reminder of his addiction. Now, the Norwalk native is the first New England recipient of a Probuphine implant, approved in May by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The implant, administered by Westport doctor Joseph Russo in June, is roughly the size of a matchstick and was inserted just under the skin on the inside of Blooms upper arm. It is designed to provide a constant, low-level dose of buprenorphine  the same drug in Suboxone  for six months.

Im back to the mind set I had pre-addiction, Bloom said. With Suboxone, I still felt like I was addicted because I had that daily interaction with pills.

Russo, the CEO, founder and medical director at Saved From Addiction, Inc. and co-owner of The Recovery Center of Westport, said the treatment can be used to combat any form of opiate addiction from

heroin to prescription painkillers. He said there are many benefits to the treatment, but the biggest is it eliminates the possibility for human error.

The strength of the implant is that it prevents relapse which can happen if you forget to take the pills or decide not to, Russo said. For at least six months, relapse isnt even an option.

According to the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, there were 208 opiate-related accidental-overdose deaths in the first quarter of 2016, and opioid deaths in Connecticut grew from fewer than 300 in 2009 to nearly 500 by 2014, matching national statistics for what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls an epidemic.

On an average day in the U.S., more than 650,000 opioid prescriptions are dispensed and 78 people die from an opioid-related overdose, either from prescription opioids or illicit opioids such as heroin, according to the CDC.

The six-month Probuphine implant costs about $5,000, and doctors must order it directly. Its unclear whether many insurance companies will initially pay for Probuphine, and many insurance companies may not have considered coverage for it yet. Russo said the biggest risks associated with the implant are related to insertion, which is done in about 30 minutes under local anesthetic in his office.

For me, when he asked if I wanted to try it, I said yes before he could even finish, Bloom said. I wanted to prove Im all in. I dont ever want to go back to where I was with the painkillers.

The treatment is available for anyone who is on 8 milligrams or less of Suboxone. When Bloom started treatment, he took 16 milligrams and was down to 4 milligrams when Probuphine was approved. Russo said the medication in Suboxone and Probuphine, which works by suppressing withdrawal symptoms and opioid cravings, should always be part of a broader treatment plan that includes psychological therapy.

Addiction is not a moral failing or a character weakness, Russo said. Its a chronic illness and if society could see it that way, the stigma would be reduced. Theres too much shame associated with it and it prevents people from getting the help they need.

Russo said he hopes the implant takes off as the go-to treatment for opioid addiction, and Bloom said he hopes sharing his story will encourage others to seek help without shame.

Thats another reason Im taking about this now, Bloom said. It becomes a personal struggle and you become embarrassed because of the stigma, but Im tired of burying my friends who die from addiction. We have to talk about it and I hope that this helps someone find treatment.

KKrasselt@scni.com; 203-354-1021; @kaitlynkrasselt
WILTON  Police are seeking the person who broke into three cars in the YMCA parking lot within 30 minutes.

According to police, two cars were broken into between 3 and 3:30 p.m. Another car was in the process of being broken into when the owner came out of the main building and scared off the perpetrator.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

WILTON  When Stephen Blinder first started playing the steel drums at age 10, he didnt know how to play a single melody. Now, at 16, he plays virtuoso solos in the Wilton Steel Community Band  under the direction of Wilton Steel founder Arthur Lipner.

Were very lucky to have Arthur, Blinder said. He is somebody that really caters to the individual  he figures out your learning style and he really knows how to take you step by step and takes you through.

Lipner is an internationally renowned percussionist and composer. Since he was 14 years old, he has played on more than 50 albums, toured overseas about 70 times and presented workshops at hundreds of universities and music schools around the world.

And for the past 30 years, the steel drums have been a major part of Lipners music career  which is why he decided to form the Wilton Steel Community Band seven years ago.

Theyve always been a pretty big part of the fabric of what I do for my living, and I just wanted to bring it to the community where I live, Lipner said.

With summer coming to an end, Lipner is currently looking for new members for the bands beginner and advanced groups in the fall  regardless of age and level of experience, with no audition necessary. Because, to Lipner, the steel drums is an instrument that anyone can learn to play.

When youre playing in an ensemble the way that I have it set up, you dont have to have any degree of proficiency to play the music, Lipner said. So you can actually play one note per measure in time and itll still sound good.

Sometimes this is the case for Darla Shaw, the oldest member of Wilton Steel. At 78, Shaw said her age can make it difficult for her to play the steel drums. But, with Lipners guidance, she said shes been able to play different chords and melodies in every performance she participates in.

Arthur, whos this amazing world famous vibraphonist, finds what I can do and how I can do it so that I feel like a valuable part of the group, she said. He just finds a place for everyone to succeed.

Because of this, Shaw said Wilton Steel has grown into an intergenerational group  including a 10-year-old, a high school student in a wheelchair, two top executives from big companies, a Jamaican brother and sister, and other community members who make the band unique. Although the band is based in Wilton, members come from surrounding communities, like Redding, Ridgefield and Weston.

Theres people from each generation and everybody comes with such different talents and backgrounds, Shaw said. We have people from every decade and we all accept each other for our level of ability.

I love Wilton Steel for so many reasons, but most of all they are family, she added.

To join, members need to pay a monthly $50 membership fee and a one-time registration fee. All rehearsals and performances are optional. The band plays at private and public places, one of which is at Wilton Pizza every Tuesday night, from 6 to 8:30 p.m.

Wilton Pizza owner Matthew Criscuolo said he started this tradition because the music adds another dimension of vitality and energy that makes dining and living in Wilton more enjoyable.

You feel like youre on vacation or on a cruise ship somewhere in Jamaica when theyre playing, Criscuolo said. The sounds are indigenous to those areas, so you really get a nice feel.

Betsy Perry said this is why she has been coming to Wilton Pizza with her husband and grandkids every Tuesday night this summer.

We just came to dinner one night and they were here, she said. Theyre really good. Weve been to the islands before, so we like steel drums.

During the performances, Perry said her grandkids usually dance to different rhythms of the music and are even invited by the band to play on the steel drums. Its moments like these that make it rewarding to lead Wilton Steel and to be a musician in general, Lipner said.

We live in a global world thats inclusive and being able to share the music of Trinidad and the different styles of world music that the band plays  helps people to connect to with other types of cultures and other ways of hearing music, Lipner said.

SKim@hearstmediact.com; 203 354-1044; @stephaniehnkim
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

AUSTIN - Donald Trump is headed to Texas amid conflicting reports on his plans for the millions of undocumented immigrants living in this country, but he said Monday hes not flip-flopping.

Trump has advocated mass deportation to deal with people who have come here without legal documents.

After he met Saturday with his Hispanic advisory council, BuzzFeed reported that sources felt he was going in the direction of legalization, even though he didnt use that word.

The Trump campaigns Kellyanne Conway told CNN on Sunday that Trumps statements were consistent with what he publicly has said before. But when asked whether he still supported the idea of a deportation force, Conway said that was to be determined.

Trump told Fox & Friends on Monday, We have to be very firm. We have to be very, very strong when people come in illegally. ... We are working with a lot of people in the Hispanic community to try and come up with an answer.

Asked whether he is flip-flopping, Trump said, No, I'm not flip-flopping. We want to come up with a really fair, but firm answer.

Trump will talk about his border strategy in a townhall meeting with Fox News Sean Hannity Tuesday and Wednesday, according to a tout for the program. The Tuesday townhall meeting will be broadcast from Austin, where Trump also has scheduled a fundraiser and a rally. He will be in Fort Worth earlier in the day for another fundraiser
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

SAN ANTONIO  The victims of recent Louisiana flooding, being called the worst natural disaster since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, are getting some comfort food and relief from a San Antonio woman.

Chef Joan Cheever, who operates The Chow Train, which has been serving the "hungry, food insecure and homeless residents" gourmet meals for years in town despite opposition, has taken her truck to aide Louisiana.

RELATED: Nationwide support for San Antonio chef catering to homeless evident as her case goes to trial

Cheever, who has been working throughout the weekend, was not immediately available to return request for comment Monday morning, but has kept "The Chow Train" Facebook page updated with her journey to the storm-ravaged state.

"Once The Chow Train arrives, we hit the ground running; we get to the site and open up the serving window and start serving ASAP," a post on Friday said. "We serve the victims of the disaster and all first responders, police, firefighters, medics, etc. Anyone who is hungry. That's all we ask: Are you hungry?"

RELATED: San Antonio drops case against chef who was ticketed for feeding homeless

The Chow Train's current mission is its ninth disaster voyage in 5 years, according to the Facebook page. Cheever said it took 12 hours through rain and traffic to land in Denham Springs, about 24 minutes out of Baton Rouge, where she said "there's a whole lot of hurt."

As cleanup efforts continued throughout the state, where at least 13 people have been killed due to the storms, areas like Baton Rouge were showered with an additional 2 to 3 inches of rain on Sunday. More than $30 million in federal housing aide has been approved for Louisiana residents and approximately 3,200 people remain in shelters.

"The Chow Train will be bringing not only our food to serve, but most importantly, all the love from San Antonio," a subsequent post said.

While Cheever and her team help those on the ground, Texas businesses including Bakery Lorraine, Peralta Farms, Huspeth River Ranch and Loncito's Peaceful Pork have donated food to keep the truck stocked, she said on Facebook.

RELATED: Flood-weary Louisiana cleans house while search continues

Cheever and her help were able to serve meals like spaghetti bolognese, Cambodia Caw and braised lamb over orzo with mint leaf and pulled pork to more than 1,000 people in under an hour, according to the page.

"Let me also say, whatever we go through to get here is NOTHING compared to the people of Louisiana and most especially to the people we will serve tomorrow morning, noon & dinner throughout the days," Cheever said in a post. "They are the heroes. Their resilience is incredible and I am always in awe of the survivors."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
The National Weather Service reports there is a 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms today going into the first day of school, so get your umbrellas and coats ready for the day ahead.

And while the San Antonio area was blasted with storms over the weekend, Cory Van Pelt, NWS meteorologist, said heavy rainfall should subside before the morning rush hour when the majority of children in San Antonio and the Hill Country report for the first day of school.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Hundreds of San Antonio kids heading back to the classroom this week will be met with some changes like later start times or a new campus.

For example, Alamo Heights Independent School District is instating new start times for their students. Junior high and high school students will start about 30 or 45 minutes later in the morning and elementary students will have an earlier start time.

RELATED: San Antonio teacher buying school supplies for students gets pay-it-forward surprise

The new start times are the effect of House Bill 2610, which took effect in 2015 and requires students to attend a minimum of 75,600 minutes of class each year. Before, they were required to go to school 180 days each year.

Alamo Heights Junior High and High School will start school at 8:45 a.m., Howard Elementary School will start at 7:50 a.m. and Cambridge and Woodridge Elementary Schools will start at 8:20 a.m.

Because of the different start times, school zones for Cambridge Elementary School and Alamo Heights High School will be different in the afternoon. Now, school zones will be in effect from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m., around 30 minutes later than usual. The morning school zone hours, however, will stay the same from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m.

RELATED: San Antonio law enforcement to increase patrols Monday morning as kids head back to school

The San Antonio Independent School District will add one new campus next fall CAST Tech High School.

In Boerne, students will attend class in a brand new building, equipped with all the latest technology, at Fabra Elementary School. The school was built in the 1940s and had not been upgraded since, KSAT reported. Now, students will be attending a new campus just down the street from the old.

RELATED: San Antonio sees soggy start to school; weather clears through Friday

Video cameras are now required in all special needs classrooms across the state after Senate Bill 507 was passed during the 84th Legislature. The cameras, according to the law, are for safety reasons.

Additionally, all 16 traditional school districts in Bexar County received passing grades in accountability from the state last week.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
Press Release:

Transcript

Contact: Jesse Hunt

Jesse Hunt jhunt@burrforsenate.com

Raleigh, NC In a WRAL interview released this morning, Deborah Ross stumbled when asked whether she felt Hillary Clinton was trustworthy. Ross dodged the initial question and the follow up question, and only after WRAL reporter Laura Leslie called her out for "parsing" her words did Ross finally say Clinton "is trustworthy."Given that polls show about nearly 60% of voters find Hillary Clinton to be dishonest, it's no wonder it was so painful for Deborah Ross to finally weigh in on how she truly feels about Clinton's trustworthiness. Now Ross will have to explain to the same large swath over voters who find Clinton untrustworthy why she's standing up for someone who continues to mislead the public on scandal after scandal.Watch the painful exchange for yourself: Deborah Ross Struggles To Answer Whether Hillary Clinton Is Trustworthy They said that-they're asking you and Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Roy Cooper, do you believe Hillary Clinton is trustworthy?They're asking me that? I've never heard this so I'm just letting you know.Yes that is what they're asking.I just want you to know that this is the first that I've heard. Hillary Clinton will be an excellent President of the United States, and she is the most prepared person to do that job as we've heard time and time again. And I trust her to do that job.So is that a yes or a no?She is trustworthy as our commander-in-chief.That feels like you're parsing.She is trustworthy.
SAN ANTONIO  A fourth man was arrested earlier this month in connection to the slaying of a 25-year-old woman who was strangled to death and then lit on fire to cover up evidence, according to the Wilson County Sheriffs Office.

Stuart Fraser, 40, faces a charge of first-degree murder in the killing of Jessica Edens. He is currently in Wilson County Jail on a $250,000 bond, according to officials. He was arrested Aug. 9.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

SAN ANTONIO Two people involved in a Friday afternoon murder-suicide were identified Monday by the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office.

The man, Jenny Fernandez Cabrera, 39, shot and killed his girlfriend, Eliyanis Ricardo Verdecia, 29, before turning the gun on himself around 4 p.m. Friday at the Nest apartments, 8607 Jones Maltsberger Road, on the North Side.

RELATED: Murder-suicide leaves couple dead at North Side apartment

They were found dead by investigators in the back of an apartment at the complex.

The two bodies each had a gunshot wound to the head, the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office confirmed Monday.

One neighbor, Dimitrius Cirilo, told mySA.com on Friday how he felt about the events that happened at his apartment complex.

RELATED: ID released of one dead in apparent murder-suicide

That is a shocker. I did not see that coming, Cirilo said. They mostly argued. I never thought that this would actually happen.

The San Antonio Police Department had no new information to report regarding the incident Monday morning.

Text "NEWS" to 72727 to sign up for breaking news from mySA

twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhite
Courtesy BCSO

SAN ANTONIO -- Police are investigating an off-duty police officer who fired his weapon at a vehicle Saturday afternoon when the driver attempted to run him over.

Pablo Gonzalez, a 28-year veteran with the San Antonio Police Department, was working off-duty at the Growden Vehicle Storage Impound on the Southwest Side when he saw an unauthorized vehicle enter the pound according to a police report.
Customers buying groceries at Albertsons can save a little more money with a new app on their smartphones.

The Just for U app, available for both Android and Apple devices, allows shoppers to check for deals while in the store, said Kathy Holland, a spokeswoman for the Boise, Idaho-based grocers Intermountain division.

The app combines a range of coupons, including manufacturer deals, newspaper ads and others, into one spot, Holland said. Customers need only punch in their phone number when paying to access the deals, and the app will highlight commonly purchased items over time, she said.

They dont have those random coupons on items they wouldnt normally purchase in their basket, she said.

Albertsons is Billings largest grocer with five stores. Holland said the company isnt planning to cut back on current coupon advertisements with the app. Its only available now for smart phone users, but the company is working on a web-based version, she said.

The idea was born in early 2015 after Albertsons completed the acquisition of rival Safeway, which has a similar card-based program, Holland said.

The app went live Wednesday, and workers are available at local stores to help customers download and use the app.
MISSOULA  As the first refugee family in decades was arriving in Montana, GOP gubernatorial candidate Greg Gianforte mailed out fliers using a photo suggestive of a terrorist and urged a halt to refugee resettlement here.

One of two fliers the campaign said were sent statewide pictured Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock under the armed man with head draped in a scarf and claimed "Bullock supports bringing Syrian refugees into Montana.''

On the flip side, under a smiling photo of Gianforte, he says: My heart breaks for those families torn apart by Radical Islamic Terrorists abroad and I feel we have a moral obligation to help. However, that obligation does NOT include settling unvetted refugees in our communities and homes here in Montana. As Governor, Ill stand up to dangerous refugee programs.

Mary Poole, who founded the community organization aiding with resettlement in Missoula, Soft Landing, said the reality for refugees is very different than the picture painted by the stock photo on of an armed man on Gianfortes flier.

Id be surprised if that photo was even a Syrian person at all, let alone a Syrian refugee, she said. Its just really misinformation and its disheartening that people seeking a position of power would promote that misinformation and play off of such a persecuted population.

In reality, she said most refugees arrive to their resettlement city carrying one little blue plastic bag like a grocery bag with a few papers and all their worldly possessions.

Campaign spokesman Aaron Flint said it is sheer coincidence that thousands of the fliers hit mailboxes the same week a refugee family of six from the Democratic Republic of the Congo arrived in Missoula.

The revival of resettlement office there has fueled protests and debate.

In the flier, Gianforte promises to ban refugees from countries with terrorism ties, stop any resettlement until vetting is fixed and to prevent attacks "like we've seen around the world.''

But governors have no authority to control immigration. Decisions about who can enter the U.S. are made by federal officials.

The flier is Gianfortes latest shot at Bullock over an issue that first became political currency last fall when President Barack Obama proposed resettling 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S.

The mailers wording matches rhetoric from conservative stump speeches nationwide, including from Donald Trump, who has called to block the resettlement of Muslims out of fear they could be Islamist terrorists.

A November letter signed by 30 governors, all but one of whom were Republicans, called for federal leaders to halt resettlement until the countrys vetting process could be strengthened.

Gianforte has criticized Bullock for not joining them.

Bill Swersey, who helps resettle refugees in several states coast-to-coast, said the Montana debate is playing out in campaigns across the country.

The history of resettlement is that Democrats and Republicans have supported it almost without question. Unfortunately, a lot of the discussion is divided along party lines this year, said Swersey, a spokesman for HIAS, a Jewish nonprofit that is one of the countrys nine resettlement agencies.

We dont want to resettle people in places where theyre not welcome, but the fact of the matter is communities all across the United States are welcoming refugees despite what their governors are saying.

Between Oct. 1 and July 31, nearly 60,000 refugees from 75 countries were admitted into the United States, according to federal records. By comparison, millions of foreign nationals enter the country each year as tourists, students, workers or immigrants with much less security scrutiny.

Out of the nearly 750,000 refugees settled in the United States since 9/11, only three people have faced terrorism charges, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute last fall.

Its very difficult to get into the United States as a refugee,'' said Molly Short Carr, the new head of Missoula's refugee resettlement office. "Its a complex process thats in the hands of the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security. Refugees are the most vetted immigrant groups. The average processing time is about three years.

"Weve admitted hundreds of thousands of refugees since the 1980s in the U.S. going back to the Hmong and Vietnamese," she said. "These are the people feeling the violence, not perpetrating the violence. These are the groups who are victims of ISIS.

Poole said photos like the one on the Gianforte flier matter.

She noted that the 2015 photo of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi, washed up dead on a Turkish beach, helped sparked the push to bring resettlement back to Missoula, which had taken in Hmong and Russian refugees decades earlier.

As the first Congolese family arrived in Missoula on Thursday, a video and photo of a 5-year-old Syrian boy, covered in dust and blood after surviving a bomb blast, circulated on social media.

Those are photos of refugees, she said. Families that are suffering. Families that have had relatives killed and are fleeing for their lives.

The Congolese family resettled in Missoula had lived in a region where hundreds of Christians have been murdered by a rebel group identified by the United Nations as an Islamist terrorist organization with ties to Al Shabaab.

Speaking only through their spokesmen, neither Bullock nor Gianforte had a message for the newly arrived family.

Bullock has repeatedly taken a hands-off approach to the states debate about bringing refugees to Montana, noting that governors have very little authority to influence the federal resettlement process. He used the issue as an opportunity to cast Gianforte as someone who stretches the truth for political gain.

As governor and as a father, the safety and security of Montana families, especially our kids, is always priority number one for Steve Bullock, Montana Democrats spokesman Jason Pitt wrote. It remains ever important to maintain a thorough vetting process to ensure Montanas safety and security while honoring our responsibility to keep all families and kids safe. The fact that Greg Gianforte is misleading voters with fearsuggesting that any governor has the power to ban refugees  is dishonest and concerning."

Gianforte, meanwhile, has attacked Bullocks stance as weak and putting Montanans at risk. The fliers and statements reflect ther campaign's assertions that Bullock has repeatedly failed to stand up to federal overreach.

While this is predominately a federal issue, the governor could be an effective voice to stop Obama's Syrian Refugee Program  he is the former chairman of the Democratic Governors Association after all, Flint wrote. Seems he's more interested in protecting Obama than in protecting Montana.

Flint said Gianforte was unavailable to comment about his newest fliers, citing campaign responsibilities in Colstrip.

The spokesman could not say how Gianforte would fulfill his promise to stop resettlement in Montana, nor which countrys refugees the Republican would ban given that many, not just Syrians, are fleeing terrorism in their own nations.

This is not about refugees, Flint said. This is about ISIS, a terrorist organization which is dedicated to killing Americans.
BATON ROUGE  About 10 days ago, torrential rains led to catastrophic flooding in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and across Acadiana. Thousands of residents are now without a home, another shock to an already extremely difficult summer for Baton Rouge residents, beginning with the shooting death of 37-year-old Alton Sterling in front of a Triple S convenience store on July 5, and a lone gunman who killed three law enforcement officers on July 17 outside of a B-Quik convenience store.

Justin Alford of Bennys Car Wash and B-Quik Convenience Stores conveyed to NACS that while everyone is safe, 100 employees have lost their homes. The company also lost an entire facility to three feet of water.

Al Hebert, our Gas Station Gourmet columnist for NACS Magazine and Abbeville, Louisiana, resident, told NACS that hes never seen such widespread destruction, perhaps larger than any hurricane hes experienced. Cars have been floating down the street about a half mile from here, he said, adding that the banks of the picturesque Vermilion River were at my back doorstep.

Actor and convenience retailer Wendell Pierce told CNN that he lost his home to the flooding in Baton Rouge. The flooding is being called the worst natural disaster since Superstorm Sandy in 2012. An estimated 40,000 houses have been damaged, according to news reports, and roughly 86,000 people have applied for federal disaster aid.

Across the country people are looking for ways to help and make donations. Volunteer Louisiana is assisting those who are looking for state-wide opportunities to volunteer or donate funds. The website includes links and information to a variety of organizations.

Online donations are being accepted from numerous groups. The Red Cross is accepting donations at 1-800-REDCROSS and via text to 90999 (type LAFLOODS to donate $10 automatically). For those outside of Louisiana who would like to mail items, information can be found here.
Yves here. This article by Rebecca Gordon does a fine job of calling out the recklessness and disregard for the law of a group of foreign policy experts who signed a letter calling Trump unfit for office. But its disconcerting to see Rebecca Gordon document how these individuals have engaged in the same sort of unacceptable behavior that they Trump would undertake, and then argue that Trump is obviously dangerous, and by implication, Clinton is not. Clinton is fully on board with the policies that these experts represent, so how exactly is she better? Gordon needs to make a case, not just assert superiority in the face of facts she presents that indicate otherwise. Gordon tries arguing for Manafort as proof that Trump is tainted. But Manafort was a recent hire and has just been dispatched, while long-term Clinton key player John Podestas firm also appears to have advised pro-Russia parties in Ukraine.

By Rebecca Gordon, who teaches in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes (Hot Books). Her previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua. Originally published at TomDispatch

Its not every day that Republicans publish an open letter announcing that their presidential candidate is unfit for office. But lately this sort of thing has been happening more and more frequently. The most recent example: we just heard from 50 representatives of the national security apparatus, men  and a few women  who served under Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush. All of them are very worried about Donald Trump.

They think we should be alerted to the fact that the Republican standard-bearer lacks the character, values, and experience to be president.

Thats true of course, but its also pretty rich, coming from this bunch. The letters signers include, among others, the man who was Condoleezza Rices legal advisor when she ran the National Security Council (John Bellinger III); one of George W. Bushs CIA directors who also ran the National Security Agency (Michael Hayden); a Bush administration ambassador to the United Nations and Iraq (John Negroponte); an architect of the neoconservative policy in the Middle East adopted by the Bush administration that led to the invasion of Iraq, who has since served as president of the World Bank (Robert Zoellick). In short, given the history of the global war on terror, this is your basic list of potential American war criminals.

Their letter continues, He weakens U.S. moral authority as the leader of the free world.

Theres a sentence that could use some unpacking.

What Is The Free World?

Lets start with the last bit: the leader of the free world. Thats what journalists used to call the U.S. president, and occasionally the country as a whole, during the Cold War. Between the end of World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the free world included all the English-speaking countries outside Africa, along with western Europe, North America, some South American dictatorships, and nations like the Philippines that had a neocolonial relationship with the United States.

The U.S.S.R. led what, by this logic, was the un-free world, including the Warsaw Pact countries in eastern Europe, the captive Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the Peoples Republic of China (for part of the period), North Korea, and of course Cuba. Americans who grew up in these years knew that the people living behind the Iron Curtain were not free. Wed seen the bus ads and public service announcements on television requesting donations for Radio Free Europe, sometimes illustrated with footage of a pale adolescent man, his head crowned with chains.

I have absolutely no doubt that he and his eastern European countrymen were far from free. I do wonder, however, how free his counterparts in the American-backed Brazilian, Argentinian, Chilean, and Philippine dictatorships felt.

The two great adversaries, together with the countries in their spheres of influence, were often called the First and Second Worlds. Their rulers treated the rest of the planet  the Third World  as a chessboard across which they moved their proxy armies and onto which they sometimes targeted their missiles. Some countries in the Third World refused to be pawns in the superpower game, and created a non-aligned movement, which sought to thread a way between the Scylla and Charybdis of the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Among its founders were some of the great Third World nationalists: Sukarno of Indonesia, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, along with Yugoslavias President Josip Broz Tito.

Other countries werent so lucky. When the United States took over from France the (unsuccessful) project of defeating Vietnams anti-colonial struggle, people in the U.S. were assured that the war that followed with its massive bombing, napalming, and Agent-Oranging of a peasant society represented the advance of freedom against the forces of communist enslavement. Central America also served as a Cold War battlefield, with Washington fighting proxy wars during the 1980s in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, where poor campesinos had insisted on being treated as human beings and were often brutally murdered for their trouble. In addition, the U.S. funded, trained, and armed a military dictatorship in Honduras, where John Negroponte  one of the anti-Trump letter signers  was the U.S. ambassador from 1981 to 1985.

The Soviet Union is, of course, long gone, but the free world, it seems, remains, and so American officials still sometimes refer to us as its leader  an expression that only makes sense, of course, in the context of dual (and dueling) worlds. On a post-Soviet planet, however, its hard to know just what national or geographic configuration constitutes todays un-free world. Is it (as Donald Trump might have it) everyone living under Arab or Muslim rule? Or could it be that amorphous phenomenon we call terrorism or Islamic terrorism that can sometimes reach into the free world and slaughter innocents as in San Bernardino, California, Orlando, Florida, or Nice, France? Or could it be the old Soviet Union reincarnated in Vladimir Putins Russia or even a rising capitalist China still controlled by a Communist Party?

Faced with the loss of a primary antagonist and the confusion on our planet, George W. Bush was forced to downsize the perennial enemy of freedom from Reagans old evil empire (the Soviet Union) to three rogue states, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, which in an address to Congress he so memorably labeled the axis of evil. The first of these lies in near ruins; the second weve recently signed a nuclear treaty with; and the third seems incapable of even feeding its own population. Fortunately for the free world, the Bush administration also had some second-string enemies to draw on. In 2002, John Bolton, then an undersecretary of state (and later ambassador to the U.N.), added another group beyond the axis of evil  Libya, Syria, and Cuba. Of the three, only Cuba is still a functioning nation.

And by the way, the 50 Republican national security stars who denounced Donald Trump in Cold War terms turn out to be in remarkably good company  that of Donald Trump himself (who recently gave a speech invoking American Cold War practices as the basis for his future foreign policy).

He Weakens U.S. Moral Authority

After its twenty-first century wars, its black sites, and Guantanamo, among other developments of the age, its hard to imagine a much weaker moral authority than whats presently left to the United States. First, we gave the world eight years of George W. Bushs illegal invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as CIA torture sites, enhanced interrogation techniques, and a program of quite illegal global kidnappings of terror suspects (some of whom proved innocent of anything). Under President Obama, it seems weve traded enhanced interrogation techniques for an enhanced use of assassination by drone (again outside any law of war, other than the legal documents that the Justice Department has produced to justify such acts).

When Barack Obama took office in January 2009 his first executive order outlawed the CIAs torture program and closed those black sites. It then looked as if the countrys moral fiber might be stiffening. But when it came to holding the torturers accountable, Obama insisted that the country should look forward as opposed to looking backwards and the Justice Department declined to prosecute any of them. Its hard for a country to maintain its moral authority in the world when it refuses to exert that authority at home.

Two of the letter signers who are so concerned about Trumps effect on U.S. moral authority themselves played special roles in weakening U.S. moral authority through their involvement with the CIA torture program: John Bellinger III and Michael Hayden.

June 26th is the U.N.s International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. To mark that day in 2003, President Bush issued a statement declaring, Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example.

The Washington Post story on the presidents speech also carried a quote from Deputy White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan to the effect that all prisoners being held by the U.S. government were being treated humanely. John Rizzo, who was then the CIAs deputy general counsel, called John Bellinger, Condoleezza Rices legal counsel at the National Security Council, to express his concern about what both the president and McClellan had said.

The problem was that  as Rizzo and his boss, CIA director George Tenet, well knew  many detainees then held by the CIA were not being treated humanely. They were being tortured or mistreated in various ways. The CIA wanted to be sure that they still had White House backing and approval for their enhanced interrogation program, because they didnt want to be left holding the bag if the truth came out. They also wanted the White House to stop talking about the humane treatment of prisoners.

According to an internal CIA memo, George Tenet convened a July 29, 2003, meeting in Condoleezza Rices office to get the necessary reassurance that the CIA would be covered if the truth about torture came out. There, Bellinger reportedly apologized on behalf of the administration, explaining that the White House press secretary had gone off script, mistakenly reverting to old talking points. He also undertook to [e]nsure that the White House press office ceases to make statements on the subject other than [to say] that the U.S. is complying with its obligations under U.S. law.

At that same meeting, Tenets chief counsel, Scott Muller, passed out packets of printed PowerPoint slides detailing those enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, so that Bellinger and the others present, including Rice, would understand exactly what he was covering up.

So much for the moral authority of John Bellinger III.

As for Michael Hayden (who has held several offices in the national security apparatus), one of his signature acts as CIA Director was to approve in 2005 the destruction of videotapes of the agencys waterboarding sessions. In a letter to CIA employees, he wrote that the tapes were destroyed only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries.

Of course destroying those tapes also meant that theyd never be available for any future legislative or judicial inquiry. The letter continued,

Beyond their lack of intelligence value the tapes posed a serious security risk. Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qaeda and its sympathizers.

One has to wonder whether Hayden was more concerned with his CIA colleagues security from al-Qaeda or from prosecution. In any case, he deprived the public  and any hypothetical future prosecutor  of crucial evidence of wrongdoing.

Hayden also perpetuated the lie that the Agencys first waterboarding victim, Abu Zubaydah  waterboarded a staggering 83 times  was a crucial al-Qaeda operative and had provided a quarter of all the information that the CIA gathered from human subjects about al-Qaeda. He was, in fact, never a member of al-Qaeda at all. In the 1980s, he ran a training camp in Afghanistan for the mujahedin, the force the U.S. supported against the Soviet occupation of that country; he was, that is, one of Ronald Reagans freedom fighters.

Bellinger later chimed in, keeping the Abu Zubaydah lie alive by arguing in 2007 on behalf of his boss Condoleezza Rice that Guantanamo should remain open. That prison, he said, serves a very important purpose, to hold and detain individuals who are extremely dangerous [like] Abu Zubaydah, people who have been planners of 9/11.

He Appears to Lack Basic Knowledge About and Belief in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. Laws, and U.S. Institutions

Thats the next line of the open letter, and its certainly a fair assessment of Donald Trump. But its more than a little ironic that it was signed by Michael Hayden who, in addition to supporting CIAs torture project, oversaw the National Security Agencys post-9/11 secret surveillance program. Under that program, the government recorded the phone, text, and Internet communications of an unknown number of people inside and outside of the United States  all without warrants.

Perhaps Hayden believes in the Constitution, but at best its a selective belief. Theres that pesky 4th Amendment, for example, which guarantees that

[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Nor does Hayden appear to believe in U.S. laws and institutions, at least when it comes to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established the secret courts that are supposed to issue exactly the sort of warrant Haydens program never requested.

John Negroponte is another of the signers who has a history of skirting U.S. laws and the congress that passes them. While ambassador to Honduras, he helped develop a murderous contra army, which the United States armed and trained to overthrow the government of neighboring Nicaragua. During those years, however, aid to the contras was actually illegal under U.S. law. It was explicitly prohibited under the so-called Boland Amendments to various appropriations bills, but no matter. National security was at stake.

Speaking of the Constitution, its instructive to take a look at Article 6, which states in part that all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land. Such treaties include, for example, the 1928 Kellogg-Briand non-aggression pact (whose violation was the first charge brought against the Nazi officials tried at Nuremberg) and Article 51 of the U.N. charter, which permits military action only if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.

In 1998, Robert Zoellick, another of those 50 Republicans openly denouncing Trump, signed a different letter, which advocated abrogating those treaties. As an associate of the Project for a New American Century, he was among those who urged then-President Bill Clinton to direct a full complement of diplomatic, political, and military efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power. This was to be just the first step in a larger campaign to create a Pax Americana in the Middle East. The letter specifically urged Clinton not to worry about getting a Security Council resolution, arguing that American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

He Is Unable or Unwilling to Separate Truth From Falsehood

So says the letter, and that, too, offers a fair characterization of Trump, who has often contended that President Obama has never proved he was born in the U.S.A., and has more than once repeated the long-disproved legend that, during the 1899-1913 Morro Rebellion in the Philippines, General John J. Pershing used bullets dipped in pigs blood to execute Muslim insurgents. (And thats barely to scratch the surface of Donald Trumps remarkable unwillingness to separate truth from falsehood.) What, then, about the truthfulness of the letter signers?

Clinton never bit on the PNAC proposal, but a few years later, George W. Bush did. And the officials of his administration began their campaign of lies about Saddams weapons of mass destruction, yellow cake uranium from Niger, and smoking guns that might turn out to be mushroom clouds (assumedly over American cities), all of which would provide the pretext for that administrations illegal invasion of Iraq.

The Bush administration didnt limit itself to lying to the American people. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte was dispatched to the Security Council to lie, too. Security Council Resolution 1441 was the last of several requiring Iraq to comply with weapons inspections by the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Some members of the Council, especially Russia and France, were hesitant to approve 1441, fearing that the U.S. might interpret it as a license to invade. So, in the discussions before the vote, Negroponte assured the Security Council that this resolution contains no hidden triggers and no automaticity with respect to the use of force. If there is a further Iraqi breach, reported to the Council by UNMOVIC, the IAEA or a Member State, the matter will return to the Council for discussions. The British ambassador used almost identical words to reassure the Council that, before attacking Iraq, the United States and Britain would seek its blessing.

That, of course, is hardly what happened. On February 24, 2003, Washington and London did bring a resolution for war to the Security Council. When it became apparent that two of its permanent members, France and Russia, would veto that resolution if it came to a vote, Bush (in consultation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair) decided to withdraw it. We all agreed, he wrote in his memoir, that the diplomatic track had reached its end.

And so the U.S. was on its foreordained path to war and disaster in Iraq, the path that after much winding, much failure, and much destruction would lead to Donald Trump.

So much for keeping promises and separating truth from falsehood.

The Enemies of My Enemy

Keep in mind that this is just a taste of the CVs of this list of 50 Republican foreign policy and national security luminaries who took out after The Donald.

With any luck, between his indirect call to assassinate his opponent and the latest news about his campaign director Paul Manaforts shady Ukraine connections, we have now reached Peak Trump. With supporters bolting on all sides, its just possible that we wont have Trump to kick around forever.

But we shouldnt forget that the party that made Trump possible is also the home of the crooks, liars, and war criminals now eager to disown him. The enemies of our enemy are not our  or the worlds  friends.
Last year, we wrote at length about how CalPERS had made a remarkably poor choice for its fiduciary counsel, arguably the funds most important outside advisor.

The boards pick, Robert Klausner, has a decades-spanning record of improprieties, including running big-ticket pay-to-play conferences for his pension fund clients that touted pension consultants that were sanctioned by the SEC. He was also effectively fired by the City of San Diego in 1999, ostensibly for not being licensed in California, but a news story suggests the proximate cause was Klasners willingness to legitimate anything the pension wanted to do, such as raising the salary cap of the pension administrator by 10%. More recently, Klausner has been at the center of a fight between the City of Jacksonville and its fire and police pension fund, the result of extensive reporting by the Florida Times-Union which in turn led the city to hire forensic investigator Ted Siedle to dig further. Among other things, Klausner set up a secret pension fund for its executives only. Not only did it pay benefits so high (up to $200,000 per year in total) that put the total payments to the top executive over exceeded IRS limits, but it was also superfunded while the underlying pension fund was one of the most underfunded in the state.

In fairness to the board, CalPERS legal department, which did the screening of fiduciary counsel candidates, misled the board by withholding unfavorable information about Klausner, including the many press stories about his unsavory conduct. In the last month, a prominent reporter at a top mainstream media outlet privately called him a world class con artist.

Klaunser is out, despite having been less than two full years into a five-year contract with the giant public pension fund. CalPERS peculiar effort to minimize Klausners departure is consistent with the board forcing his departure. Here is the only official mention of Klausners exodus, courtesy the Pensions & Investments article CalPERS issues call for fiduciary counsel:

CalPERS is searching for a full-time fiduciary counsel, said spokesman Joe DeAnda in an e-mail The boards current fiduciary attorney Robert Klausner consults with CalPERS on a case-by-case basis, but CalPERS wants a permanent fiduciary counsel, Mr. DeAnda said. Mr. Klausner is eligible to bid, Mr. DeAnda said.

Its comical see CalPERS try to put a good face on Klausners exodus by saying he can bid on the very same contract that he just had, particularly since Klaunser quoted the lowest price per hour of the finalists (ie, his departure is highly unlikely to be about his bills being excessive).

Absent a tidy explanation as to why Klausner is being replaced, individuals with knowledge of CalPERS and public pension funds say it looks like he was pushed out. There is no sign he is cutting back on his practice, and documents we obtained from CalPERS show that Klausner was touting his assignment with CalPERS in pitching business to other public pension funds.

This conclusion is plausible given that some members of the board were dissatisfied with the information they were given at the time of the review of candidates in October 2014. Richard Costigan and Priya Mathur both objected to the elimination of detailed backup that had been given in the past. Later, the two lawyers on the board (Richard Costigan and Dana Hollinger), objected when when Klausner supported CalPERS staff in its indefensible efforts to deny board member JJ Jelincic information when he was forced to resort to a Public Records Act request (Californias FOIA) to get it.

In addition to our coverage of Klausners long record of shady conduct and legal advice, as well as bird-dogging his questionable opinions at board meetings, a big wake-up call came from Californias highly regarded First Amendment Coalition and the states top Public Records Act lawyer, Karl Olson, taking up our Public Records Act request on Klausner. Weve attached the letters that Mr. Olson sent to CalPERS on behalf of the First Amendment Coalition; we helped draft both and sent them to all members of the board. I encourage you to read them in full. The priceless remark about henhouses in the second missive, on March 31, came from Mr. Olson.

This development is clearly positive, since it would be difficult to find an attorney as compromised as Klausner. Even so, its disturbing to see CalPERS not only be secretive, but to evade legally-mandated public disclosure requirements yet again. The board has to have discussed and approved a decision to launch a search for a new fiduciary counsel. While it is perfectly kosher for that discussion to take place privately, in closed session, it needs to be listed on the board agenda with statutory citations as to why the item is not required to be handled in public view. We see no such item in recent board agendas. That means the decision was taken in violation of the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, a statue that CalPERS regularly flouts.

Independent observers also saw Klausners exodus as a step in the right direction. As one commentator who has written regularly on pensions noted:

For many year Robert Klausner has been offering public pension boards advice that raises serious questions about whether hes serving them or himself first, or even acting legally. His departure from Calpers might indicate that pension boards are finally waking up.

But Andrew Silton, the former Chief Investment Officer for North Carolina, doubts that CalPERS is turning over a new leaf:

An investment organization cant learn and improve if it doesnt acknowledge its short-comings. CalPERS would have us believe the search for a new fiduciary counsel is just business as usual. However, anyone listening to meetings of the Investment Committee would have to acknowledge that CalPERS has struggled when it comes to delineating fiduciary responsibilities, and Mr. Klaunser seemed incapable of steering them in the right direction. In due course, CalPERS will have a new fiduciary counsel, but theres a decent probability that nothing of substance will have changed at CalPERS.

Indeed, CalPERS defensiveness over Klausners exit suggests theyve drawn the wrong lesson. Better to have some minor embarrassment for correcting this mistake than have Klausner persuade the board to sign off on self-serving moves by staff that could do the system far greater damage. The institution seems to believe its own PR even when it is unconvincing. That combined with an apparent inability to admit to and examine bad decisions means it is destined to keep making serious errors of judgment.

Jacobs-Letter-CALPERS-3.8.16-2

Jacobs Letter- CALPERS  3.8.16-2

3.31.16-Letter-to-Ms.-Evans-and-Mr.-Gregory-CalPERS-1

3.31.16 Letter to Ms. Evans and Mr. Gregory- CalPERS-1
By Thorvaldur Gylfason, Professor of Economics, University of Iceland; Research Fellow, CESifo and CEPR Research Fellow. Originally published at VoxEU.

By GDP or GNI per capita, the US was for a long time the undisputed front-runner of the world economy, surpassed only recently by a few small countries that became rich due to their oil wealth (Kuwait and Norway, for example) or their financial prowess (Luxembourg). Per-capita GDP or GNI continue to be prevalent in economic policy analysis, apparently because of convention and easy availability of data. When GDP and GNI at market prices and exchange rates were seen to significantly overstate the income differences between rich countries and poor, economists promptly made adjustments for purchasing power. The Penn World Tables adjust national accounts, country by country, in their own currencies by using detailed price data to produce real national accounts in a common currency (US dollars), covering 182 countries from 1950 to 2014. Even so, PPP-adjusted national accounts data as reported by the World Bank and the IMF reach back only to 1990. Thus World Bank and IMF national income data between 1960 and 1990 is not PPP-adjusted.

Stocks Matter for Flows, and Vice Versa

To improve their national accounts, some countries have made adjustments for home production and the informal economy (Schneider, 2007). We do not yet have internationally standardised green national accounts that take environmental degradation into consideration, but the World Bank (2006) has measured different kinds of capital, including natural, human, and social capital, to permit adjustments to national accounts for changes in national assets and liabilities. If two countries have identical incomes, but one of them runs down its national assets (environment, natural resources, human capital, societal institutions, infrastructure or public trust) or piles up foreign debts, then the country that maintains its national assets and liabilities is clearly in a stronger economic position  even if national accounts fail to chart the difference. Put differently, sustainable development matters.

Introducing Other Dimensions

In finance, no one would consider judging an asset solely by its return. Assets need to be assessed in two dimensions: by their return as well as the associated risk. Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi (2010) and Deaton (2013) among others, argue that economic indicators and social indicators, when viewed jointly, provide a clearer picture of a countrys economic standing. If two countries have the same per capita income, but one of them is able to offer its people better education and longer lives, then the latter country is clearly better off. In this spirit, the UN Human Development Index (HDI) weighs incomes, education, and health in equal proportions to produce a broader index of the standard of life than income alone would do.

Likewise, a nations economy needs to be judged not only by the incomes generated or consumption enjoyed by its people, but also by the distribution of the nations income and consumption across the population as measured, for example, by the Gini index (Gylfason 2007). The Gini index is closely correlated with other common measures of dispersion. Thus, a balanced comparison of the economic performance of Europe, Japan, and the US needs to take distribution into account.

To investigate this, I compared purchasing power of national income per hour worked across the G8 countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the US. I compared income per hour worked rather than per capita, because this reflects economic efficiency  in other words, the effort behind the income earned. Below I adjust the results for inequality, as well as for social measures such as education and health.

Income Per Capita vs. Income Per Hours Worked

Figure 1 shows the purchasing power of income per person, and per hour worked, in the G8 countries in 2014. The measure of hours used is hours actually worked, including paid overtime and not including paid hours not worked due to sickness, holidays, and so on. The US continued to lead the G8 countries in terms of GNI per capita in 2014 (the blue columns) but Germany and France are almost equal in terms of GNI per hour worked (the red columns). Americans work longer hours (1,800 per year in 2014) than in Europe (1,700 in Italy and the UK, 1,500 in France, 1,400 in Germany). Further, partly because European workers retire earlier than American workers, labour force participation rates are higher in the US (63%, equal to the UK) than on the European continent (60% in Germany, 56% in France, 49% in Italy). One likely reason why Americans work longer hours and retire later than many Europeans is that many Americans lack the social security that most Europeans take for granted. The pattern is complicated slightly, however, by the fact that unemployment is lower in the US (6% in 2014, as in the UK) than in parts of the European continent (10% in France, 12% in Italy, although 5% in Germany). While France and Germany are roughly equal to the US in income per hour worked, this adjustment means that Italy rises from 63% of the US income level to 77%, and the UK rises from 71% to 76%.

Figure 1. GNI per capita and per hour worked 2014 (current USD, PPP)

Source: World Bank, World a Indicators (blue columns) and The Conference Board Total Economy Database, May 2016 (red columns).

But income per hour worked, like GNI per capita, is a one-dimensional measure, so we can adjust these statistics for education and health, as in the HDI. The HDI is defined as a geometric average of three component indices reflecting GNI per person, education (an average of mean years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and more and expected years of schooling for children of school entering age), and health (life expectancy). On average, except for Russia, Europeans live two to four years longer than Americans. The UN inequality-adjusted HDI is then defined as a geometric average of three component indices as before, where each of the three components is adjusted downward to a degree that reflects the inequality of the distribution of each variable across the population.

Adjusting the HDI for inequality affects the rankings. Figure 2 shows how the US drops from a first-place tie in the G8 with Canada and Germany based on the unadjusted HDI (the blue columns) to the second lowest ranking based on the inequality-adjusted HDI, followed only by Russia (the red columns). Globally, the US rank drops 20 places when the HDI is adjusted for inequality, from 8 to 28, while Frances rank remains unchanged at 22. Germany also remains unchanged at 6 while Italy drops one point from 27 to a tie with the US at 28.

Figure 2. HDI and inequality-adjusted HDI 2014

Source: United Nations Development Program.

While these adjustments for education, health, and equality broaden the measure of economic success, but we can still make an adjustment for income per hour worked, rather than per-capita income. In keeping with an inequality-adjusted HDI, inequality-adjusted income per hour worked is just the raw measure multiplied by one minus the Gini coefficient. This compresses the two dimensions into one. The Gini index is closely correlated with other standard measures of dispersion such as the standard deviation of incomes around the mean or the 20/20 ratio (the ratio of the share of the richest 20% of the population in GNI divided by the share of the poorest 20%).

Figure 3 shows GNI per hour worked and inequality-adjusted GNI per hour worked in 2014 side by side, based on the HDI measure of income inequality. This measure of inequality differs slightly from the Gini index for 2005-2013 (UNDP 2015) and also from the most recent Gini indices reported by the World Bank. Without the adjustment for inequality (the blue columns), the US leads France and Germany, as in Figure 1. After the inequality adjustment (the red columns) the US falls to third, after Germany and France. It remains slightly ahead of the UK, Canada, Italy, Japan, and Russia.

Figure 3. GNI per hour worked and inequality-adjusted GNI per hour worked 2014 (2015 USD, ppp)

Source: Authors computations based on sources behind Figures 1 and 2.

Note: The blue columns in Figure 3 are the same as the red columns in Figure 1.

HDI Adjusted for Hours Worked

To combine inequality adjustments with adjustments for income per hour worked, I computed an index for income per hour worked to replace the per-capita GNI index behind the HDI, then multiplied the outcome by (1  Gini) to adjust for inequality, and substituting the result for the income component in the formula for the inequality-adjusted HDI. This gives an estimate of an HDI doubly adjusted for inequality as well as for hours worked (Gylfason 2016).

Figure 4 shows an inequality-adjusted HDI weighing together income, education attainment and life expectancy, and relying on the purchasing power of income per hour worked rather than of income per capita. These considerations dramatically change the relative positions of the countries. Most significantly adjusting for hours and inequality, as well as for education and health, relegates the US to seventh place among the G8 countries. It is ahead only of Russia.

Figure 4. Inequality-adjusted HDI, also adjusted for hours worked 2014 (2015 USD, ppp)

Source: Authors computations based on sources behind Figures 1-3.

The distribution of income, wealth and various social indicators are now in the mainstream of economic and political analysis. Distribution, education, and health need to be taken into account in statistical cross-country comparisons of economic performance. Viewed through such lenses, compared with the US, Europe appears to be doing well after all.

References

Conference Board (2015), The Conference Board Total Economy Database, accessed 8 July 2016.

Deaton, A. (2013), The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford.

Gylfason, T. (2007), Why Europe Works Less and Grows Taller, Challenge, January-February, 21-39.

Gylfason, T. (2016), Efficiency, Fairness, and Social Cohesion in Europe and the United States: Incomes, Hours of Work, and Equality with an Afterthought on Iceland, CESifo Working Paper No. 6025, August.

Schneider, F. (2007), Shadow Economies and Corruption All Over the World: New Estimates for 145 Countries, Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, July, Vol. 1, No. 2007-9, 1-66.

Stiglitz, J. E., A. Sen, and J.-P. Fitoussi (2010), Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesnt Add Up, Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, The New Press, New York.

United Nations Development Program (2015), Human development Report.

World Bank (2006), Where Is the Wealth of Nations? Measuring Capital for the 21st Century, Washington, D.C.
The Custer Gallatin National Forest is proposing to make permanent the prohibition of the discharge of a firearm, air rifle, or gas gun for the purpose of target shooting within the Hyalite drainage south of Bozeman and is seeking public comment.

A temporary restriction enacted in April remains in place until an environmental analysis is complete and a decision is reached, likely in January.

The primary purpose of the target shooting restriction was for public safety. The Hyalite drainage receives more than 40,000 visitors monthly in the summer and over 20,000 visitors monthly in the winter. It is the most heavily recreated drainage on National Forest System lands in the state of Montana.

A broader, county-wide planning effort for target shooting may occur in the future. Alternatives that address target shooting opportunities and/or restrictions on other national forest lands are not being considered at this time. The proposed restriction does not limit the ability to carry or possess a legal firearm within the Hyalite drainage.

Comments will be accepted until Sept. 19 and can be mailed to the Gallatin National Forest, attn: Steve Christiansen, P.O. Box 130, Bozeman, MT 59771. Electronic comments can be emailed to comments-northern-gallatin@fs.fed.us, enter the phrase Hyalite Shooting Restriction in the subject line.

Comments may also be faxed to 406-587-6758. For more information contact Steve Christiansen at 406-587-6701 or Lisa Stoeffler, Bozeman District Ranger, at 406-522-2520.
New microchip demonstrates efficiency and scalable design (Nanowerk News) Princeton University researchers have built a new computer chip that promises to boost performance of data centers that lie at the core of online services from email to social media.

Data centers - essentially giant warehouses packed with computer servers - enable cloud-based services, such as Gmail and Facebook, as well as store the staggeringly voluminous content available via the internet. Surprisingly, the computer chips at the hearts of the biggest servers that route and process information often differ little from the chips in smaller servers or everyday personal computers.

By designing their chip specifically for massive computing systems, the Princeton researchers say they can substantially increase processing speed while slashing energy needs. The chip architecture is scalable; designs can be built that go from a dozen processing units (called cores) to several thousand. Also, the architecture enables thousands of chips to be connected together into a single system containing millions of cores. Called Piton, after the metal spikes driven by rock climbers into mountainsides to aid in their ascent, it is designed to scale.

This is an annotated CAD tool layout of the Princeton Piton Processor showing 25 cores. (Image: Princeton University) (click on image to enlarge)

"With Piton, we really sat down and rethought computer architecture in order to build a chip specifically for data centers and the cloud," said David Wentzlaff, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and associated faculty in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University. "The chip we've made is among the largest chips ever built in academia and it shows how servers could run far more efficiently and cheaply."

Wentzlaff's graduate student, Michael McKeown, will give a presentation about the Piton project Tuesday, Aug. 23, at Hot Chips, a symposium on high performance chips in Cupertino, California. The unveiling of the chip is a culmination of years of effort by Wentzlaff and his students. Mohammad Shahrad, a graduate student in Wentzlaff's Princeton Parallel Group said that creating "a physical piece of hardware in an academic setting is a rare and very special opportunity for computer architects."

Other Princeton researchers involved in the project since its 2013 inception are Yaosheng Fu, Tri Nguyen, Yanqi Zhou, Jonathan Balkind, Alexey Lavrov, Matthew Matl, Xiaohua Liang, and Samuel Payne, who is now at NVIDIA. The Princeton team designed the Piton chip, which was manufactured for the research team by IBM. Primary funding for the project has come from the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

The current version of the Piton chip measures six by six millimeters. The chip has over 460 million transistors, each of which are as small as 32 nanometers - too small to be seen by anything but an electron microscope. The bulk of these transistors are contained in 25 cores, the independent processors that carry out the instructions in a computer program. Most personal computer chips have four or eight cores. In general, more cores mean faster processing times, so long as software ably exploits the hardware's available cores to run operations in parallel. Therefore, computer manufacturers have turned to multi-core chips to squeeze further gains out of conventional approaches to computer hardware.

In recent years companies and academic institutions have produced chips with many dozens of cores; but Wentzlaff said the readily scalable architecture of Piton can enable thousands of cores on a single chip with half a billion cores in the data center.

"What we have with Piton is really a prototype for future commercial server systems that could take advantage of a tremendous number of cores to speed up processing," said Wentzlaff.

The Piton chip's design focuses on exploiting commonality among programs running simultaneously on the same chip. One method to do this is called execution drafting. It works very much like the drafting in bicycle racing, when cyclists conserve energy behind a lead rider who cuts through the air, creating a slipstream.

At a data center, multiple users often run programs that rely on similar operations at the processor level. The Piton chip's cores can recognize these instances and execute identical instructions consecutively, so that they flow one after another, like a line of drafting cyclists. Doing so can increase energy efficiency by about 20 percent compared to a standard core, the researchers said.

A second innovation incorporated into the Piton chip parcels out when competing programs access computer memory that exists off of the chip. Called a memory traffic shaper, this function acts like a traffic cop at a busy intersection, considering each programs' needs and adjusting memory requests and waving them through appropriately so they do not clog the system. This approach can yield an 18 percent performance jump compared to conventional allocation.

The Piton chip also gains efficiency by its management of memory stored on the chip itself. This memory, known as the cache memory, is the fastest in the computer and used for frequently accessed information. In most designs, cache memory is shared across all of the chip's cores. But that strategy can backfire when multiple cores access and modify the cache memory. Piton sidesteps this problem by assigning areas of the cache and specific cores to dedicated applications. The researchers say the system can increase efficiency by 29 percent when applied to a 1,024-core architecture. They estimate that this savings would multiply as the system is deployed across millions of cores in a data center.

The researchers said these improvements could be implemented while keeping costs in line with current manufacturing standards. To hasten further developments leveraging and extending the Piton architecture, the Princeton researchers have made its design open source and thus available to the public and fellow researchers at the OpenPiton website: http://www.openpiton.org
'It just flipped': Busch details final season with Joe Gibbs Racing in 'Race for the Championship' In the latest episode of USA Network's "Race for the Championship," Busch describes the change at JGR and is introduced with a new team.
Firefighters had achieved 75 percent containment on a 200-acre fire burning just inside the Yellowstone National Park boundary and were shifting resources Sunday to aide firefighters tackling a larger complex of fires outside the park.

According to a news release from park officials, the Tatanka, also known as the Buffalo Complex fire, is a series of three lightning-caused fires.

At more than 16,000 acres, the Maple fire, four miles east of the parks west boundary, grew about 1,500 acres Saturday but had not crossed the West Entrance Road. Contingency plans have been developed should the fire move westward towards West Yellowstone. Firefighters plan on holding the fire to the east of the Madison River.

The Buffalo fire, now about 2,200 acres, is three miles south of the park boundary.

The Fawn fire, west of Fawn Pass, is now about 1,100 acres. Both the Buffalo and Fawn fires will show increased smoke and fire activity in the coming days, fire managers said.

The West Entrance road to the park remains open. Should smoke and fire activity increase, pilot cars may be put in place to safely escort vehicles through the area.

The National Park Service will hold a community meeting at 6 p.m. Monday at the Union Pacific dining hall in West Yellowstone to discuss the Maple fire and the Tatanka Complex of fires.

The Boundary fire, four miles north of West Yellowstone, is now less than 200 acres. Cause of the fire is still under investigation. One crew and a four-person engine module will remain on the Boundary fire to finish mopping up and patrolling the fire.

All roads leading into and through the park are open. All park visitor facilities, including park concession-operated services, and businesses in surrounding communities are not impacted by the fires and remain open.
Missoulas latest wave of refugees has begun. A family of six Congolese arrived in town Thursday from East Africa, and the first five-person family mentor team trained by Soft Landing Missoula swung into action to ease the shock.

Theyre so in culture shock. Theyre exhausted. I know it took me a good month before I was adapting to the time here, said Molly Short Carr, director of Missoulas International Rescue Committee (IRC) office.

Carr arrived in Missoula six weeks ago from a two-year stint working at a refugee support center in Nairobi, Kenya.

As announced earlier this month, the family is made up of a mother, father and four children, three of whom have spent their whole lives in a refugee camp in Tanzania. Because of privacy issues, Carr cant release the names of the new arrivals. Details on the parents plight and flight out of their native Democratic Republic of the Congo arent available.

Youre going to see them in the community and know theyre here, but at the same time we need to remember they are individuals and may not want this information shared, Carr said.

The new family is in temporary housing and at the beginning of a 90-day cultural orientation period.

We assist them and facilitate the process to apply for social services, Social Security cards, registration for the children to attend school and registration for (English as a Second Language) classes for the parents, said Carr.

The three oldest children of the family are of school age.

They are the first of what the IRC hopes will be 25 refugees landing in Missoula by the end of the federal fiscal year on Sept. 30. Missoula can expect to see 100-125 refugees in the first year. All are products of a vetting process through the United Nations, Department of State and Department of Homeland Security that the IRC says began, on average, almost three years ago.

A family mentor team will be trained for each family that arrives in Missoula. Carr said she and the volunteers have been showing the first arrivals how to use an oven, sink and refrigerator. Theyve known no other means of cooking except over an open flame.

If theyre living in a refugee camp theyre not going to have running water, let alone hot and cold water, she said. Theyve never refrigerated milk or eggs or mayonnaise, which are prepared for warm storage there.

Cleaning and maintaining a closed house with walls to keep mice and other rodents out is a new experience as well.

While the majority of Congolese refugees are Christian, I havent asked this family their specific faith affiliation, Carr said.

They speak Swahili, the primary language in eastern and southeastern Africa. Carr is acting as the primary interpreter through their common knowledge of French.

Soft Landing Missoula, spurred by the Syrian refugee crisis, formed a year ago and successfully petitioned the International Rescue Committee, one of nine federally funded resettlement agencies working in the U.S., to open an office in Missoula.

The IRC was here in the late 1970s and early 1980s to help Hmong refugees from Laos start new lives. It gave way to the Lao Family Community, which morphed into the Refugee Assistance Center that helped bring a smaller wave of Russians to town starting in the late 1980s.
BOZEMAN  Greydun Flinn Stockinger, 9, of Belgrade, has been identified by police. as the boy who was fatally shot with a semi-automatic handgun.

Belgrade police say Stockinger did not live in the home where the shooting occurred. Authorities say there was another boy in the house at the time of the shooting but no adults were home.

Belgrade police and the Gallatin County Sheriff's Office are investigating. Authorities have not released any information about the circumstances of the shooting, and no one has been arrested.

According to a press release, detectives sent some evidence to the state crime lab for analysis.

Stockinger's family released a statement calling the incident a "tragic accident."
California fire burns with never-before-seen intensity

Ignoring a potential crisis

Environmental groups: Easing water restrictions sends the wrong message

(NaturalNews) Tens of thousands of residents of Southern California have been forced to pack their bags and quickly flee their homes due to a massive, uncontrollable blaze that has overtaken major highways in the state, burning an estimated 50 square miles.The fire was first reported on Tuesday morning in Devore, California, but quickly gained momentum, spreading from just five acres to more than 1,000 within an hour. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reported that by the end of the day the inferno had burned more than 15,000 acres.The UK'sreports that the fire is burning with "a ferocity never seen before by veteran California firefighters," leading Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency."In my 40 years of fighting fire, I've never seen fire behavior so extreme," Incident Commander Mike Wakoski told the media."It hit hard. It hit fast. It hit with an intensity that we hadn't seen before," said San Bernardino County Fire Chief Mark Hartwig. "There will be a lot of families that come home to nothing."More than 82,000 residents from nearly 35,000 homes were asked to evacuate due to their homes being threatened by the blaze. All but about a dozen residents agreed to leave.The massive fire comes on the heels of one of the worst droughts in California history. Though water use restrictions were lifted across two-thirds of the state in June, California remains in a severe drought."We've been clear at a state level we're still in a drought, there's still a need for conservation," said Max Gomberg, conservation manager for the state Water Resources Control Board, before adding, "We don't need people to go to extraordinary measures like they did last year."However, California's lackadaisical attitude towards water conservation is largely responsible for getting the state into the situation it's in now.The state's wealthiest residents sparked controversy last summer, after it was revealed that they were using high quantities of water to maintain their lush green lawns and sparkling swimming pools.One Rancho Santa Fe resident told thethat not everyone is equal when it comes to water, adding that if you can afford it, you should be able to have it.Though the wealthy don't appear too concerned about water shortages, polls show that the majority of Californians consider the drought to be one of the state's most critical issues.It's for this reason that environmentalists say that lifting water restrictions sends the wrong message to consumers, leading them to believe that water shortages are no longer a threat.Reports confirm that the majority of the state's larger water districts no longer have to comply with conservation orders, because the agencies claim they have enough water to last even another three years of drought But environmental groups aren't buying it."Moving to zero percent mandatory conservation - it's a confusing message to be sending to California. We're in the midst of the hottest summer on record and fighting raging wildfires," said Tracy Quinn, senior water policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council environmental group.In addition to a severe drought and looming water shortages, another major environmental disaster threatens the Golden State. Experts recently warned that a monster earthquake along the San Andreas Fault could have devastating consequences for the state.Scientists say it's only a matter of time until a massive earthquake strikes, potentially leaving tens of thousands of people homeless or dead.Asreported, even worse is that "some experts believe that the next earthquake could coincide with one rippling along the adjacent San Jacinto fault line, which happens to run through more densely populated cities, and could escalate the devastation to much higher levels than predicted."This is what is believed to have occurred in 1812, and there is a strong chance that it could happen again, as past geological events are considered good indicators of future ones."
Donating one's body to science is no longer 'taboo'

Cadaver shortages still a problem in some areas

(NaturalNews) Americans are donating their bodies to medical schools in record numbers due to the skyrocketing cost of traditional burials, according to a recentstory featured byThe average cost of a traditional funeral and burial in the United States ranges between $8,000 and $10,000, including the ceremony, casket and headstone.Many Americans these days simply cannot afford such an amount, so more and more of the less affluent are choosing to donate their bodies to science  a practice that was once unthinkable for a large portion of the population.Several medical schools are reporting a marked increase in the number of donations, which are welcomed by researchers and students who use thefor anatomy class dissections, surgical practice or testing of new technologies and procedures.From"The University of Minnesota said it received more than 550 cadavers last year, up from 170 in 2002. The University at Buffalo got almost 600 last year, a doubling over the past decade. Others that reported increases include Duke University, the University of Arizona and state agencies in Maryland and Virginia. ScienceCare, a national tissue bank, now receives 5,000 cadavers a year, twice as many as in 2010."According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the cost of traditional burials has increased by nearly 30 percent in the last decade. When a person donates his or her body, the medical schools cremate the unused remains and often return the ashes to the family at no charge.Changes in cultural and religious attitudes are partly responsible for the surge in donations, along with the concerns regarding the exorbitant expense of traditional burials , according to specialists in the field.Such donations are no longer taboo, it seems. "Now we have thousands of registered donors," said Mark Zavoyna, manager of Georgetown University's body donation program.Although animals and artificial cadavers are useful to a certain extent for teaching and, nothing can replace the "real thing" for medical students, according to Duke University surgery professor Dr. Michael Zenn, "because ultimately these people are going to be taking care of patients.""It's just a priceless donation," said Zenn.Although many medical schools are benefiting from the increase in donations, some are still facing a shortage. In some states, such as Illinois, the number of donated cadavers has actually decreased in the past few decades.The Anatomical Gift Association of Illinois has begun purchasing newspaper ads, while many other such programs still avoid resorting to advertising.However, a recent video produced by Donate Life  a non-profit alliance "committed to increasing the number of donated organs, eyes and tissue available for transplant"  has gone viral on the web, and may serve to increase the number ofIn the video, a fictional "assh**e" named Coleman Sweeney is seen going about his typical daily routine  which includes the insulting and harassment of neighbors, strangers and children  before the character suddenly drops dead of a brain aneurysm.It is then revealed that, despite being the "world's biggest assh**e," Sweeney is actually an organ donor, thereby redeeming his atrocious behavior while alive.The clever, humorous and somewhat poignant video (posted below) is likely to be effective in at least making people think about organ donations in a new light.(Warning: Video contains strong language and content inappropriate for children)Whether it's an act of compassion, self-redemption or financial desperation, the donation of one's body to science is a gift to the living  but of course for many the concept is still a difficult one to accept.However, if you have no personal or religious objections, or would simply like to save your surviving family members the cost of an expensive traditional burial, it may be an idea worth considering.
Ruling favors states' rights

The cost of the 'War on Drugs'
Authorities have not released the name of man who was shot by a Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper Sunday near Casper following a high-speed chase.

Officials have also not said what the mans condition is. He was taken to Wyoming Medical Center and underwent surgery, said Lt. Chris Schell. Authorities believed the mans injuries were not life-threatening.

The patrol said a trooper shot the man after he drove toward officers.

Natrona County District Attorney Mike Blonigen said his offices investigation remains in its earliest stages. He declined to name the trooper who fired the shot.

The shooting followed a pursuit that began around 3:30 p.m. on Interstate 25 near Douglas after authorities received a complaint that a pickup was driving recklessly, the Highway Patrol reported Sunday night. A trooper ran the truck's plates and learned it was stolen, the patrol reported.

The driver of the pickup refused to stop and led two troopers on a pursuit that spanned two counties and more than 40 miles. The truck reached a speed of 100 mph, authorities said.

A few miles east of Casper, a third trooper used a spike strip in an effort to damage the pickup's tires. After the truck rolled over the device, it crossed the median and began driving into oncoming traffic for about a mile.

The pickup eventually drove back into the median, where a trooper rammed it with his patrol car.

The suspect was shot by law enforcement as he drove at officers who were out of their patrol cars at the time, the highway patrol reported.

After being shot, the suspect rammed a highway patrol car before driving off the highway and onto the prairie. The man was arrested at 4:16 p.m. between Interstate 25 and U.S. Highway 20/26 near Blackmore Road.

No officers sustained serious injuries during the chase.

The Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation is looking into the incident.
NASA is almost ready to launch another mission that will mark another genre of space exploration. NASA's OSIRIS-REx, the asteroid-bound spacecraft, is set to visit a nearby asteroid, map its surface and collect samples that might pave the way to the discovery of elements that did not originate from Earth.

Earlier this year, NASA announced that their asteroid mission, using the Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-Rex), will be launched this September. Experts say that the mission to collect samples from an asteroid can provide lots of new information about the universe that men haven't discovered before.

"The asteroid, little altered over time, is likely to represent a snapshot of our solar system's infancy. The asteroid also is likely rich in carbon, a key element in the organic molecules necessary for life" said Dr. Dante Lauretta, from the University of Arizona, is OSIRIS-REx's principal investigator said in a statement.

As the launch date approaches, the agency said that its preparations are on the dot and that OSIRIS-REx with its robotics arms is almost ready to collect samples from asteroid Bennu using its robotic arms.

I'll use this unique instrument, called the TAGSAM, to do my "touch and go maneuver" and grab a sample of #Bennu. pic.twitter.com/ZHxOOknCK6  OSIRIS-REx (@OSIRISREx) August 19, 2016

One of the main goals of the mission is to collect samples from Bennu and to safely bring them back to Earth. Geoff Yoder, the acting associate administrator for NASA's Science Directorate (SMD) said that the asteroid sample and the OSIRIS-REx mission is a step towards further exploring the Solar System and that it will pave the way to explore and discover the universe, TechTimes reported.

To collect valuable science, OSIRIS-REx will use its innovative robotic arms to gather about 70 ounces of asteroid samples from Bennu and its surface. The samples are expected to reach Earth in 2023 and are expected to undergo rigorous analysis to extract the science that comes with it.

Dante Lauretta is one of the brains behind the asteroid mission that started it in 2004. This week, Lauretta is scheduled to view the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.

"I've come to really enjoy visiting the spacecraft and seeing it grow up," Lauretta said in an interview. "I'm happy to send it on the journey to Bennu and back," Lauretta added.

OSIRIS-REx will be enclosed inside a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and is scheduled to depart for Bennu on Sept. 8.
Finns are now genetically considered an independent population instead of a part of the European population, thanks to a recent study.

A large team of scientists analyzed the genetic codes of more than 60,000 people from five continents in order to provide the biggest data set of its kind to the scientific community. The details of this study, published in Nature, are already providing interesting insights, including the genetic difference of the Finnish population to the rest of the European population.

The study analyzed mutations in the protein coding regions in the DNA, called exome regions. Different populations display different mutations on some of these genes.

Limited genetic diversity within the Finnish population has been a previous fascination for scientists. The categorizing of Finns as an independent genetic population has broad implications for various branches of science.

Genetic variations allow scientists to study and understand the functions of different genes. Medical biology and epidemiology (the study of health and disease in defined populations) especially rely on the study of genetics.

Finns are an ideal population for gene mapping due to their genetic lack of diversity, called homogeneity. Gene mapping needs to be completed prior to specialized studies on specific genes.

Population genetics are directly related to the study of history and evolution. The genetic difference of the Finn population raises many questions.

If Finns didn't evolve from Europeans, where did they come from? How did Finnish people end up adjacent to, but separate from, the European population?

Scientifically, the "Finnish population" is not inclusive of all Finns. It is limited to genetic relatives of the 16th century settlement population consisting of about 1,500 families in eastern Finland.

In addition to genetics, Finnish linguistics also evolved separately from other European languages. Finnish is part of the Uralian language family, with its closest relative being Estonian.
NASA once again opened its research archive to the public for free. This means that students, private space companies, medical and climate change experts as well as the general public will have access to tons of NASA-funded research.

This is not the first time that NASA released a part of their information treasure trove to public domain. Last May, this year, NASA also put some of its databases into public domain that was greatly appreciated by the public.

"At NASA, we are celebrating this opportunity to extend access to our extensive portfolio of scientific and technical publications. Through open access and innovation, we invite the global community to join us in exploring the Earth, air and space," NASA deputy administrator Dava Newman said in a statement.

Recently, the agency launched an online archive that houses its journal about the researchers it has funded over the years. The online portal is called PubSpace, and this paved the way for easier access to research and information that are usually not accessible to public even to those with journal subscriptions. Aside from that, PubSpace will make data available for NASA-funded research since the site was launched.

"Beginning with research funded in 2016, all NASA-funded authors and co-authors (both civil servant and non-civil servant) will be required to deposit copies of their peer-reviewed scientific publications and associated data into NASA's publication repository called NASA PubSpace," a NASA official said in a statement.

NASA PubSpace will be managed by the National Institute of Health as part of its own PubMed Central database, according to the Verge. NASA's move to release some of its databases is still part of the Open Science move, a request done by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

"Making our research data easier to access will greatly magnify the impact of our research," NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan said in a statement. "As scientists and engineers, we work by building upon a foundation laid by others," Stofan added.

NASA said that the PubSpace will be fully operation in the fall of 2016.
A new study reveals that the cheap cloth masks, most commonly used in highly polluted areas in Asia and Southeast Asia, could not protect people from the harmful effects of air pollution.

The study, published in the Journal of Exposure & Environmental Epidemiology, showed that inexpensive cloth mask, about 10 to 15 cents each, performed poorly compared to standard hygiene mask known as the N95, which costs about $3 to $4 each.

"This has clear public health risk," said Richard Peltier, an environmental health scientist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-author of the study, in a statement. "Especially if an individual makes personal choices not to avoid high concentration environments because they assume they are protected from these contaminants."

For the study, the researchers conducted a series of experiments on various types of mask: one pleated surgical type, two cloths and one cone-shaped cloth with exhalation flaps. The researches simulated real-world conditions and tested the effectiveness of each mask in filtering out five different synthetic aerosol particle sizes plus three particle sizes of diluted whole diesel exhaust.

The cloth mask with exhaust valves is the best performing one among the tested, with 80 to 90 percent reduction of synthetic particles and about 57 percent of diesel exhaust.

On the other hand, the least expensive cloth mask only removed 39 to 65 percent of standard particles of 30, 100 and 500 nanometers, and 1 and 2.5 micrometers. Plain cloth mask performed better than the others in removing larger particles size, but performed poorly in smaller particles, which are about 2.5 micrometers and often considered to be more harmful than the larger particles due to their ability to penetrate the lungs deeper.

Furthermore, the researchers discovered that effectiveness of the masks to filter air pollution rely on its shape and ability to mold to the face. The cone-shaped mask and snug-fitting surgical mask performed better than the looser-fitting masks.

Their findings are very significant because people who are wearing cloth mask are oftentimes given false sense of security. Because they feel secure and protected by their mask, people sometimes walk freely in highly polluted areas, leading to unwanted health risks.


A San Diego man faces time behind bars for using cleaning solution to refill beer bottles and return them to stores for a refund.

The investigation into tampering of beer began in May 2014. Thats when two beer brewing companies, Target and Walmart reported getting consumer returns for tampered or altered beer.

In all, there were 13 reported incidents of 12-packs. In each case, someone was emptying the contents of the bottles without damaging the bottle cap. Inside the bottles was some kind of soapy solution that had been dyed to make it look like beer.

The bottle was then recapped and either re-crimped or glued with a silicone type adhesive to maintain a seal, according to court documents.

Investigators with the San Diego District Attorneys Office started looking into who was returning 12-packs of beer.

On October 7, 2015, a 12-pack was returned to the Target on Jamacha Road in El Cajon. When investigators looked into the person who returned the beer, they found the same customer returned beer five times between September and October 2015.

Surveillance video showed Eduardo DeJesus Cossio III returning the alcohol.

According to court documents, investigators served a search warrant at Cossios home on October 28 and found evidence of the beer tampering. Among the items were cleaning solution, glue sticks and glue guns.

According to court documents, Cossio told investigators he replaced the beer using whatever cleaning solution was cheapest and sometimes experimenting with dyes."

He pleaded guilty to three felony charges of poisoning or adulterating food, drink or medicine with a special allegation of intending to defraud a company.

Hes been placed on probation and may be sentenced to a year in custody when hes sentenced on October 7, according to a DAs Office spokesperson.

Hes also been ordered to pay more than $59,000 in restitution.

In the initial charging document, Cossio was accused of 32 counts of returning beer between December 2014 and October 2015, at numerous stores, including several Target stores throughout San Diego County and three separate Walmart stores in Chula Vista, Logan Heights and San Ysidro.
The following content is created in consultation with Mancini's Sleepworld. It does not reflect the work or opinions of NBC BAY AREA's editorial staff. To learn more about Mancini's Sleepworld, visit Sleepworld.com.

With school just around the corner, many parents will be brushing up on their bedtime enforcing skills. A good nights sleep  or a lack thereof  can impact everything from a childs ability to focus to their ability to manage their emotions and impulses  vital skills when young students are required to concentrate in the classroom.

But a 2014 study suggests that its the quality of sleep rather than the bed time that matters most in regard to academic performance. Conducted by researchers at McGill University and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute in Montreal, the study found a correlation between better report cards and a childs sleep efficiency, or simply the portion of time spent in bed that is actually spent sleeping.

Stay informed about local news and weather. Get the NBC Bay Area app for iOS or Android and pick your alerts.

Specifically, researchers discovered that higher quality sleep resulted in better performance in both math and languages, subjects considered strong indicators of a childs future academic success. Both subjects depend on our executive functions, skills that require working memory, the ability to plan and tune out distraction. In other words, skills that are dependent on a well-rested mind.

So while Mancinis might not be able to help parents get their children to bed on time (sorry, mom and dad, but youre on your own), they can help them optimize their childrens sleep by helping them find the ideal mattress. From the ability to form memories to creativity to physical health, getting good, consistent sleep is vital to a successful and happy life, especially among children who are still developing.

To start your little student off on the right foot this school year visit Mancinis Sleepworld, where their experts can help you find the best high quality mattress for your child. Visit their website or call (800) 647-5337 to learn more.
An ordinary taxi ride in San Francisco swiftly turned into a melee between a driver and his passenger early Monday.

The violent ordeal broke out around 3 a.m. when the passenger, 36, became irritated with the 65-year-old driver's route selection. The passenger proceeded to punch the driver in the face, prompting the cabbie to stop the vehicle and yank his assailant from the cab, police said.

NBC Bay Area obtained dashcam video of the altercation that ensued near Silver Avenue and Mission Street before escalating when the passenger used his thumb to gouge the driver's left eye, police said.

In the video, a 36-year-old man in the back of an SF Super Cab appears to do something; it's not clear what, but the 65-year-old driver rubs his face.

Seconds later, it's the driver who appears to punch the passenger, the start of a struggle that spills onto the streets.

The driver was transported to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries while the passenger was taken into custody, police said.

A Super Cab manager said it's the second attack on one of his drivers in three months.

"I'm not surprised," said Cloud Friedrich, who also drives for Super Cab late at night. "There's a lot of attacks and robberies that happen I dont hear about."

Cab driving is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Taxi drivers are up to 33 times more likely to be killed on the job than other workers and have the third highest rate of assaults after police and security guards.

Local cab drivers say it's getting less safe because Uber and Lyft continue to eat up business. They now feel they have to pick up riskier fares just to make ends meet.

"Its so difficult to make money now, we have to take more chances," said Barry Korengold, a Citywide Cab driver.
The United States is home to what the FAA calls the safest and most efficient airspace system in the world. But several aviation experts tell NBC Bay Areas Investigative Unit a crisis has hit Americas aviation industry; one that could mean headaches for travelers and could put that top-notch safety reputation in jeopardy.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the number of certified air traffic controllers safeguarding our nations skies is at a 27-year low.

A recent wave of retirements where no workers have been hired to replace them has left fewer controllers to monitor increasing air traffic at towers and radar centers across the country.

Now Bay Area controllers are warning that delayed flights and safety impacts could soon follow if the staffing shortage is not addressed.

Rich Burton and Shawn Blondin are among the recently retired veteran controllers. With more than 25 years of experience working in the tower at Mineta San Jose International Airport, the two say they felt the brunt of working at a short-staffed facility.

I had to work later shifts. More overtime. As a matter of fact, I worked overtime the weekend before I retired, Blondin told NBC Bay Area. Blondin also noted he was frequently asked to work two positions at once when there werent enough controllers in the tower.

"There is an inherent risk to the system when you've got tired air traffic controllers. Overworked air traffic controllers, Burton said. If they are not adequately staffed, theyre working multiple shifts of overtime, ultimately what happens is mistakes are more likely to happen.

According to data from the FAA, San Joses tower has only three quarters (76.9%) of the certified air traffic controllers the FAA considers to be full staffing. But the problem is even more severe at Chicago OHare (76.5 percent), New Orleans (75%) and Miami (67%).

Staffing numbers also show the controller shortage extends beyond airport towers, impacting radar facilities that control high altitude flights known as TRACONS.

Staffing Levels

New York (60.6%)

Dallas (61.3%)

Atlanta (69.1%)

Denver (73%)

Steve McCoy works at the regional TRACON facility based in Sacramento, handling all air traffic flying through Northern California. Their TRACON facility is operating at its lowest staffing level ever.

Its not good for the flying public, McCoy said. Where we normally have seven or eight people on a shift, if were now limited to five or six, were going to have to slow airplanes down.

Scott Conde works out of Oaklands Air Route Traffic Control Center based in Fremont. The center controls high altitude air space from the West Coast to Guam. He believes overworked controllers is becoming a problem everywhere.

Regardless of whether you work the towers, approach control, or the center, everybody is tired, Conde said. Were at an all-time low for certified controllers. Its a lot of six-day weeks, a lot of overtime on the front or end of your shift, and a lot of working sectors combined where you would prefer to work them separate.

Picture yourself driving in your car, Conde said. Youre trying to clean your windows, youre trying to program your (navigation) system, youre trying to change the radio. Youre not really sure where youre going. And all the cars around you are going 400 miles an hour. So doing that by yourself, youre going to slow down a bit because you have to do one thing at a time in order to make sure its safe.

Were not going to compromise safety, but it is a fact of the matter that we will slow things down, said Fred Naujoks, an air traffic controller at SFO. If it gets to the point where were over our limit, then were going to slow things down.

He, Conde and McCoy all talked to us as representatives of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the air traffic controllers union.

Congress recently took up the staffing issue at a hearing earlier this summer. The FAA officials acknowledged the problem and said they are working to streamline its current hiring process.

FAA officials are now working to hire 1,400 new controllers immediately. But with pending retirements for an aging workforce, this shortage has been in the works for decades and will likely take years to address. The process for training and certifying a new controller can take up to three years. Plus, many new hires simply wash out because the demands of the job are that great.

Commercial airline pilot Doug Rice says tired and overloaded controllers is a problem he has also noticed in recent years.

You'll hear a little frustration; hell get short with another pilot. You hear that. Youll hear a guy make a mistake. He'll set you up behind an airplane, he'll set you up high, he misses an altitude, Rice, a captain for a major airline, said.

NBC Bay Area examined safety complaints filed in the Aviation Safety Reporting System over the past 10 years. The anonymous database is maintained by NASA and allows people in the aviation industry to file reports without fear of punishment. Records show hundreds of mistakes and delays where controllers cited staffing shortages and heavy workloads as a factor.

STAFFING AND WORKLOAD SAFETY REPORTS (Sample 2006-2016)

There certainly is that perfect storm thats probably on the horizon. ... There is the likelihood that there could be a catastrophe and that that's not something that anybody wants to see, Burton said.

The FAA maintains that America has the safest aviation system in the world, adding that safety and staffing are top priorities.

As of Aug. 15, 2016, the FAA says 29,000 applicants have applied for the 1,400 positions. But even if all those air traffic controllers are hired tomorrow, experts estimate it will take an additional 1,500 controllers to maintain adequate staffing and keep up with retirements.

If you have a tip for the Investigative Unit, you can reach us at 1-888-996-TIPS, or by email at theunit@nbcbayarea.com
Demonstrators took to the streets of San Francisco Sunday afternoon for a peaceful protest in the wake of violent attacks committed against members of the LGBTQ community in the region.

The rally kicked off at Jane Warner Plaza in the Castro neighborhood with demonstrators brandishing "Stop the Violence, Stop Hate" signs as residents and community members clamor to regain a safe living environment.

Tommy Castellani, who was attacked early Thursday morning, said a group ambushed him outside a Castro night spot and used his bicycle helmet in the assault.

"They used it to bash my face in," said Castellani, who was hospitalized and required surgery to repair his injuries. "They broke my nose, fractured my jaw in several places. I've been told I have a limited concussive memory loss."

NBC Bay Area

Police did not have a motive for the attack, but Castellani and the Castro community claim its hatred towards the area and part of an on going problem.

"There's continuing violence and harassment and bullying of LGBT people in San Francisco," Supervisor Scott Wiener said.

Wiener has pledged tougher laws to protect assault victims.

"We have to make sure our hate crime laws are where they need to be," he said.

Members of the San Francisco Police Department, Castro Community On Patrol and Weiner's office are working in unison to cut down on recent hate crimes and violence. Activists say they will also begin to increase patrols and teach people in the Castro community how to watch their backs.

Another man, Jeffery Lafayette, went public with an alleged assault in February by posting about it on Facebook. Lafayette said a large group of people attacked him on Feb. 6 outside a bar because he is gay.

Meanwhile, Castellani is wondering why he was singled out.

"I just want to know why we have to be victims or targets," he said. "Was there not a better solution they would have? I know I'm a pretty OK guy."
A bartender had to have his finger amputated after a drunk patron bit it off, San Francisco police said on Sunday night.

Police released the information and two surveillance videos about a month after the alleged finger-biting attack occurred. The videos do not show the finger biting, but police say the suspect is pictured in the video after the fact.

Customer Who Allegedly Bit Bartenders Finger Tussles on Sidewalk San Francisco police released surveillance video of a suspect who they say bit off a bartenders finger on July 17, 21016

Officer Carlos Manfredi said that the bartender was trying to close the Silver Clouds bar in the 1900 block of Lombard Street on July 17 at 2:15 a.m. when the suspect, who had been drinking inside earlier that evening, tried to get back in.

The bartender told the man the bar was closed, which made him irate, police said and he began kicking and pulling on the bar door.

The bartender went outside to tell the customer to knock it off, police said, which is when he allegedly started climbing on top of the bartender, hitting him in the face several times and bit his ring finger, severing it, Manfredi said. The customer then left the bar with some friends, police said.

Surveillance video released by police shows the suspect an hour or so before the attack outside on the sidewalk, eating something with a pink button-down shirt on, and then wrestling, without his shirt, with a heavyset friend wearing a leather jacket.

The bartender was taken to the hospital with swollen eyes, contusions to the head, scrapes and an amputated finger, police said. On Monday, police said the bartender is back at work.

Police are asking anyone who recognizes the suspect to please call the department. The suspect is facing felony charges of assault and mayhem, which in the criminal code is described as the intentional maiming of another person.

NBC Bay Area's Mark Matthews contributed to this report.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe got support from oil-rich Fort Berthold Indian Reservation Monday as it awaits a potential bench ruling on an injunction stopping Dakota Access Pipeline construction near the reservation.

Three Affiliated Tribes chairman Mark Fox issued a formal letter of support for Standing Rocks opposition.

Weshare the firm belief that Dakota Access should find an alternative means and method of transporting oil to market that has less potential for negative impact to Standing Rock and the lands we have historically shared with a fellow nation, friends and relatives, Fox said.

Fox was not available for questions after issuing the letter on behalf of himself and the tribal council. He said Three Affiliated will continue to provide logistical support and supplies to the protest effort.

Meanwhile, Jan Hasselman, an attorney with EarthJustice who filed the suit on behalf of the tribe, said the federal judge hearing arguments Wednesday for the possible injunction told parties during a status conference that he will try to rule immediately after the hearing, settling in the near term whether pipeline construction will continue at a location just north of the tribes reservation boundary.

The location, where the 500,000-barrel Bakken crude line will be drilled under the Missouri River-Lake Oahe near the tribes water intake, is under protest by Standing Rock Sioux tribal members and other tribes. After 28 arrests and daily police and protest encounters, the company stopped work there last week pending the hearing.

The tribe wants the court to stop pipeline construction while it determines whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated the National Historic Preservation Act and other federal laws when it issued water-crossing easements for the pipeline in late July.

Its estimated some 60 tribes are represented at the protest and tribal leaders say its the largest gathering of Native Americans in modern times.
Twitter Inc. is looking to sublease a significant chunk of its San Francisco headquarters, according to multiple media reports.

The move, which was first reported by the San Francisco Business Times on Aug. 8, appears to be another sign of the social media giant's financial struggles. The company is subleasing more than 180,000 square feet in two buildings at 10th and Market streets in San Francisco, the Business Times reported, citing materials from brokerage firm Cresa.

The square footage up for sublease amounts to about one quarter of Twitter's headquarters space.

Twitter has lost a third of its market value in the past year, reporting slower-than-expected growth over several consecutive quarters as well as executive turnover, according to Bloomberg Markets.

Twitter slashed about 8 percent of its workforce, or 336 jobs, at the end of last year. Company shares on the New York Stock Exchange (TWTR) closed at $18.98 on Friday.
Donald Trump has called for a more inclusive GOP, which earned him some rare praise within the Republican party.

The GOP presidential nominee is scheduled to speak on immigration issues in Colorado on Thursday, and while his latest musings may give the appearance he is softening his stance, some in the Bay Area are still skeptical.

"I dont think he really understands communities of color," said Ana Torres, an Oakland schoolteacher who was an activist in her college days.

Torres has followed the presidential race closely, especially Trumps stance on immigration.

"A lot of students that we work with and their parents are undocumented and afraid," she said.

Regardless of what Trump says now, Torres is not swayed and does not support him. Torres was convinced back in May, when Trump said about illegal immigrants: "Theyre going to be deported. We have many illegals in the country, and we have to get them out."

When asked Sunday about mobilizing a deportation force if Trump becomes president, Trump's new campaign manager said thats still to be determined.

"Perhaps his new campaign manager has realized the Latino vote is important. And it is," Torres said.

This weekend, Trump met with a new group of Hispanic advisers. But many believe he will stand firm on tightening immigration policies, that his position has not changed and likely won't.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived Sunday in Kenya to hold talks with leaders of the East African nation that are expected to focus on regional security and extremism.

Kerry's plane touched down at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Sunday night, where he was welcomed by Foreign Affairs Minister Amina Mohamed. Presidential spokesman Manoah Esipisu had said earlier that Kerry will hold discussions with President Uhuru Kenyatta on regional security and stability.

Esipisu says specific issues likely to be discussed include stabilizing northern neighbor South Sudan, which is dealing with a recent upheaval, and developments in Somalia and Burundi.

Somalia faces key parliamentary elections next month and a presidential election in October. A homegrown al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab continues to launch deadly attacks in the capital. The country has been trying to rebuild after establishing its first functioning central government since 1991.

Burundi has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza won a third term that many in the opposition consider unconstitutional.

Kerry on Tuesday and Wednesday then visits Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation of about 160 million people and one of its largest economies.

He will meet with President Muhammadu Buhari on the oil-rich country's worsening economy and its efforts to fight corruption. Kerry also will meet with leaders from the country's largely Muslim north, where the extremist group Boko Haram continues to carry out attacks.

Boko Haram appears to be snarled in a power struggle after a new leader was announced by the Islamic State group earlier this month and the longtime leader protested.

Kerry then heads to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday and Thursday for discussions on the conflict in neighboring Yemen. The talks will include Saudi leaders, counterparts from Britain and in the regional Gulf Cooperation Council and the U.N. special envoy for Yemen.

A Saudi-led coalition has been fighting Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, and rights groups and U.N. agencies say more than 9,000 people have been killed since Saudi-led airstrikes began in March 2015. The conflict has pushed the Arab world's poorest nation to the brink of famine.
Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and now Donald Trump's adviser, continued to insist Monday that Hillary Clinton's physical and mental health is failing, citing debunked theories on the Internet, NBC News reported.

While on Fox News over the weekend, he urged people to look for videos on the Internet that support such theories. He continued the attack on Monday, saying on Fox News that the Democratic presidential candidate is "tired" and recently "looked sick."

Conservative media outlets have fueled speculation about Clinton's health in recent weeks, showing old photos and debunked reports, such as Clinton faking medical records or false accusations that she uses a defibrillator. Trump himself said last week that Clinton "lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS."

In response to the rumors, Clinton's physician, Lisa Bardack, said the candidate "is in excellent health and fit to serve as President of the United States."
Rep. Tammy Duckworth is scheduled to address a City Club of Chicago event Tuesday at Maggianos Banquets downtown.

Tickets for the event cost $35 for members and $45 for non members. Sponsor tickets for the event cost $750.

Duckworth, who is locked in a tight race for Sen. Mark Kirks Senate seat, also released a new campaign ad Friday highlighting the adversity the congresswoman faced growing up.

In the 30-second spot, Duckworth reflects on her father, a Marine who faced unemployment. The congresswoman notes that her family was forced out of their house and left to use food stamps.

He didnt want a handout, he just wanted a chance to keep working, Duckworth says in the ad. I know what its like to overcome tough times.

During the ad, Duckworth promises to fight Chinas unfair trade deals that take our jobs and to cut taxes for our middle class families. The congresswoman also claims she is dedicated to giving "everyone a fair shot at overcoming adversity."

Duckworths campaign team expounded on the ads message Monday.

Tammy is running for Senate to help families like her own  families that have been knocked down but havent given up, Duckworth spokesman Kaitlin Fahey said in a statement. Tammys own experience inform her priorities, and as she often says on the stump, she embraces the notion that lifting one another up doesnt cost nearly as much as leaving other Americans behind."
Chicago police are searching for suspects after an 8-year-old girl was shot while at a prayer vigil for another young victim of gun violence on the city's West Side.

Authorities say Jamia Barnes was with her family at a vigil near their home at North and Major Avenues in the North Austin neighborhood just before 8 p.m. Sunday when someone opened fire. The community had been gathered to pray after a 14-year-old was shot and killed the night before.

Jemiah was struck in the arm and rushed to the hospital, police said. She was treated and released Monday morning.

A 36-year-old woman was also shot in the hand and was said to be in stable condition, police said.

It is still unknown who it was who approached the group and started shooting, according to police. Authorities are offering a $1,000 reward for anyone with information leading to an arrest.
An Illinois soldier stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, was found dead Friday in his barracks room, officials announced Monday.

Spc. Dion Shannon Servant, 24, of Maywood, entered active-duty service as a petroleum supply specialist in June 2014, according to a news release from Fort Hood. Servant was assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division since December of 2014.

According to the news release, Servants awards include the Army Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal and Army Service Ribbon.

The incident is under investigation, the release said.
Sen. Mark Kirk claimed President Barack Obama was acting like the drug dealer in chief for making a $400 million cash payment to Iran that was tied to the release of American prisoners.

During an interview with the State Journal-Register editorial board last week, Kirk claimed Obama gave clean packs of money to a state sponsor of terror and warned that those 500-euro notes will pop up across the Middle East.

The payment was reportedly made in euros and Swiss francs.

Were going to see problems in multiple (countries) because of that money given to them, Kirk said during the interview.

Last week, the Obama administration claimed the $400 million payment was used as leverage to push for the release of four U.S. prisoners, NBC News reported.

The payment was announced in January, a day after the four Americans were freed and on the same weekend U.N sanctions against Iran were lifted. The White House and State Department have denied Republicans claims that the transaction served as a ransom payment, claiming that the timing was coincidental.

Secretary of State John Kerry released a press release at the time, noting that the $400 million was used by Iran to purchase military weapons and equipment from the U.S. while the shah was still in control, prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Iran will receive the balance of $400 million in the Trust Fund, as well as a roughly $1.3 billion compromise on the interest, Kerry said in a statement in January.

On Monday, the Kirk campaign continued to call the payment into question.

After using unmarked cargo planes to deliver pallets of foreign currency totaling over $400 million to Iran to get our hostages back, the (Obama) Administration is now attempting to change the literal definition of ransom, Kirk spokesman Kevin Artl said in a statement. Sen. Kirk believes the administrations actions, which Tammy has supported, were reckless in the extreme. The administrations pay off will endanger more Americans abroad (and) is almost certain to fund terrorism."

According to his campaign, the senator will hold an oversight hearing on the payment next month as part of his role as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance.

Earlier this month, Kirk issued a release about the ransom payment. The senator said Congressional hearings were the only way for the American people to fully know whether their tax dollars went directly to Irans terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Kirk is facing a tough bid for reelection against Rep. Tammy Duckworth in November. The congresswomans campaign responded to Kirks comments Monday, calling for an apology.

Senator Kirks comments are misguided and deeply offensive, and beneath the dignity of the office he holds, Duckworth spokesman Matt McGrath said in a statement. He should apologize.

SEIU Healthcare Illinois Executive Vice President Greg Kelley also responded to Kirks statements Monday, calling for an apology.

What (Kirk) said about President Obama was totally inappropriate and he must apologize, Kelley said in a statement. Its another example of Kirks long history of insulting the president which is now matching up with the hateful and birther space carved out in the public sphere by fellow Republican Donald Trump to dehumanize Barack Obama.

Either he doesnt know what hes doing, which is alarming; or he does know what hes doing, which is despicable, Kelley added.
A Bristol veteran is getting some much needed home repairs after an Connecticut construction company heard of the serviceman's need for help.

Vietnam Army Veteran Robert Gentle said he was surprised to see construction workers arrive at his Cypress Street home.

"I'm not used to it," said Veteran Robert Gentle.

Gentle said he joined the army at 17 years old.

Now at age 63, his health has stopped him from making needed repairs to his two bathrooms.

"I have PTSD and nerve damage," Gentle said.

His wife Doreen said she just happened to mention the need for repairs while at work to a friend. Then nearly two months later, construction workers arrived.

"I guess I just hit the right person at the right time," smiled Doreen Gentle.

The program put on by the Connecticut chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc is called Open Shop Salute.

The organization works with 200 non-union commercial contractors and Connecticut veteran organizations to find vets and military personnel in need of home repairs and other construction needs.

The workers are volunteers, the materials are donated and the work is done free of charge.

"For people who have gone above and beyond to serve our country and who have given so much sacrifice this is really the least we can give back to them," said president of ABC, Inc. Chris Syrek.

Work on Gentle's home should save him $20,000.

"When people do this, more or less changes my perspective on society in general," said Gentle.

Syrek said the program has helped nearly three vets a year for the last 10 years. Gentle's home is the first one being repaired this year.
Superintendents from across the state of Connecticut met at the A.I. Prince Technical High School in Hartford Monday for a back-to-school meeting.

The meeting was to discuss the Connecticut Department of Educations goals as the school year begins.

"This is kind of like our New Year's Eve. Kids are coming really soon, we have worked all summer to be ready for them," said Dr. Dianna Wentzell, the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Education.

Wentzell said the Connecticut Board of Education has come up with a five year comprehensive strategic plan. They plan to promise to have high expectations for all students, promise to support students to help them reach those expectations, promise great teachers and leaders in every school and promise to support all schools so they can achieve greatness.

Wentzell said she is already pleased with the improved state test scores from the Smarter Balance Assessment.

"We are very excited by that, but we also know there is a lot more work to do to make sure that all kids are ready for college or career after high school," said Wentzell.

Superintendents say they also plan to integrate more technology.

We are constantly striving to look at the ways, the tools that are emerging in digital technology, blended learning, online learning, said Dr. Colleen Palmer, the superintendent of Westport Public Schools. How are those things going to change how we deliver instruction and how we create learning environments for our students, more powerful ways to reach all our students and be more impactful.
This is Up and Down, where we give a brief thumbs up and thumbs down on the issues from the past week.

Up

The Spokane, Wash., City Council did the right thing when it decided to withdraw a proposal to voters to fine railroad companies for hauling crude oil and coal through the city. The council feared an accident. The council dropped the plan after deciding they wouldnt be able to beat a legal challenge. Instead, the council will work with BNSF Railway to achieve the same safety specifications that were in the ordinance. Thats the proper course of action, otherwise, what other dangerous cargo would Spokane have to fine. Reason won the day in Spokane.

Down

Someone stole the money intended to buy school supplies or shoes for kids staying at Pams House, a domestic violence shelter. The money was in a donation box at Seeds of Hope, a downtown Bismarck thrift store operated by the Abused Adult Resource Center. There was more than $300 in the box, not a lot of money, but enough to make a difference for kids in need. You have to be pretty desperate to take money from a donation box. The thief needs to look in a mirror to see who doesnt need the money.

Up

A National Veterans Cemetery planned near Fargo will serve a need for vets in North Dakota and Minnesota. The cemetery will be on land north of West Fargo and west of the Sheyenne River. Its part of an effort by the Department of Veterans Affairs to make it easier for veterans to access a national cemetery. The cemetery should be completed in September or October of 2018. Its five acres that sends a big message to veterans.

Down

A number of years ago North Dakota was threatened by meth labs that popped up across rural North Dakota. Drug dealers found they could make good money creating a product in old shacks. Law enforcement cracked down and the problem seemed to have faded away. Unfortunately, its back. In the last five years the drug has rebounded. The percentage of adults reporting meth as one of their drugs of choice more than doubled, from 17 percent in 2011 to 39 percent in 2015. At the same time, the percentage of adolescents who said meth was a drug of choice rose from 1 percent to 7 percent. The numbers continue to rise in 2016. Why people want to use a drug that will rot their teeth is unknown, but its time for a new crackdown.

Up

Over the years Conservation Reserve Program acres have provided a fallback plan for farmers and ranchers. This years no exception. This years hay crop in Hettinger County has fallen short of expectations. Those in need are turning to CRP acres and its giving them hope for the winter. Because of CRP there will be feed for the livestock.
A New Haven man found with a stab wound on his neck was charged with robbery, larceny and assault on Friday, police said.

At 7:43 a.m., police responded to Burwell Street a woman called police to report that her brother, Randy Lee Sullivan, had been stabbed in the neck, New Haven Police said.

The 26-year-old was transported to Yale-New Haven Hospital for the lacerations on his neck and torso, police said.

The man was uncooperative with police trying to ask him questions about the alleged attacked, according to law enforcement.

Police said hospital workers told them about another stabbing victim who was being treated at the same time as Sullivan.

When police questioned the other victim, he said a man grabbed him around 6:45 a.m. and ripped his wallet from his pants. The victim explained that while fighting, a chair was broken on him and he used the leg of the chair to fend off his attackers, according to police.

Police said when they showed the victim a photo of Sullivan, he identified the New Haven man as the alleged robber.

The suspect later told police he had been in a fight but denied the robbery, police said.

Sullivan, a convicted felon, was charged with first-degree robbery, second-degree larceny, second-degree assault and conspiracy for each charge. He was released from the hospital and brought to the New Haven Police Department detention facility.
As concerns over the spread of Zika continue to grow, Dallas County health officials said it's critical they prepare now for a possible outbreak.

That means all options must be on the table, including the controversial practice of aerial spraying.

Monday morning, several county health officials met with a small committee of Dallas City Council members, asking them for the green light to conduct aerial spraying if necessary. In a 4-2 vote, the committee opted to bring the issue to the full City Council for final approval.

"If they feel in their professional opinion that it's necessary to do that. Doing nothing, in my opinion, is not an option," said Councilman Rickey Callahan.

Council members Philip Kingston and Mark Clayton expressed concerns with aerial spraying, questioning its effectiveness and potential effects it could have on beneficial insects such as bees.

"There was very confusing data regarding the effectiveness of aerial spraying from the 2012 West Nile Virus outbreak [in Dallas]," said Kingston. "In the absence of evidence that aerial spraying works, I'm not going to just give you a blank check to do it."

County health officials told council members if they discover a case of Zika that originated in North Texas, they would need to act quickly and that aerial spraying would be more effective than ground spraying in that case.

"It was really bad in 2012," said Dr. John Carlo, former Medical Director for Dallas County Health and Human Services and in the incoming President of the Dallas Medical Society. "In terms of whether it worked, we believe it did. After the aerial spraying, we really saw a tremendous reduction in mosquito activity and a tremendous reduction in human cases."
Fifteen people were injured at a concert in Norway on Sunday where an American DJ was scheduled to perform, NBC News reports.

Police in Oslo told NBC News that part of the venues roof collapsed just before 5:30 p.m. None of the injuries at the venue, Sentrum Scene, were serious, according to police.

Among the injured were 13 Norwegians, one French and one German national.

American DJ Steve Aoki tweeted that he was saddened and shocked that a piece of the roof collapsed in an accident at the venue in Oslo tonight."
Wisconsin's attorney general said Monday a fatal police shooting in Milwaukee that sparked two nights of violence was recorded by not one but two body cameras.

The state is investigating the Aug. 13 shooting of 23-year-old Sylville Smith. Authorities have said he was fleeing police and that footage from the officer's body camera clearly shows Smith holding a handgun and turning toward an officer when he was shot.

Attorney General Brad Schimel said authorities are reviewing that as well as a second video recorded by another officer's body camera. He says the vantage points are similar.

Schimel says the videos won't be released until after the county prosecutor decides whether to charge the officer. He said releasing the videos now "will not answer all of your questions" and that it will be better viewed in context once all of the information is available.

"The crime lab is still conducting its work. They are still working on DNA examination of the firearm," Schimel said.

He said the unrest that broke out after the shooting hampered the investigation progress but "all significant witnesses" have been interviewed as of Monday.

The ACLU and others have pressed the state to release that video as soon as possible.
A veteran and defense contractor at MCAS Miramar killed in a crash Friday was a father of two who served in "Operation Desert Storm".

Scott Chmura, 52, was driving his motorcycle east on Miramar Way when a 26-year-old woman driving a white Toyota Carolla crashed into his motorcycle. The crash happened at approximately 3:39 p.m. on the 9600 block of Miramar Way near Kearny Villa Road.

He had been on his way home from work, turning onto an on-ramp to the Interstate 15, when he was hit. The impact from the crash was so severe, the veteran died at the scene.

Chmura's wife declined an interview with NBC 7 San Diego, but said the army veteran spent the last seven years fueling planes at MCAS Miramar, working for the Department of Defense.

His wife said Chmura had a big Dodge Ram truck and would rotate between the truck and the motorcycle when he went to work.

"God how I wish he took his truck that day," she told NBC 7.

The couple inside the Toyota did not suffer injuries but are shaken up from the incident. Authorities say the driver may face charges.

Police say it doesn't appear that speed was an issue. Both parties seem to not have seen each other.
A 14-year-old bulldog named Angus, whose eyes were surgically removed, had to be rescued from a 10-foot-deep hole Saturday.

Anguss owner, Robyn Hubbard, said she calls her English Bulldog, "the no eyes, wonder dog." Hubbard left Angus inside her house when she left Saturday afternoon, but could not find him when she returned four hours later, she said.

While she looked everywhere for him, her friend noticed a pile of dirt next to Hubbards deck outside. She discovered a hole that went 10-feet-down, and saw Angus at the bottom, Hubbard said.

Hubbard did not know how Angus had managed to get outside.

*Animal Rescue Update* FF have dug an access hole and are attempting to rescue Angus; 14 y/o English Bulldog. pic.twitter.com/CpD3VB3ZO1  Costa Mesa FD (@CMFD_PIO) August 20, 2016

They called the Costa Mesa Fire Department, who helped rescue Angus from the hole. He was taken to the vet, but had no injuries.
The evacuation orders for the communities affected by the Blue Cut Fire were lifted Sunday afternoon, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff.

Residents who live in the Wrightwood, Swarthout Canyon, Lone Pine Canyon, West Cajon Valley and Lytle Creek areas were allowed to return home at 4 p.m., although some residents may find their homes without electricity.

At least a thousand Wrightwood residents were allowed home by noon on Saturday as crews made huge gains against a massive wildfire in Southern California.

At least 105 homes were destroyed in the so-called Blue Cut Fire.

The blaze was 89 percent contained as of Monday morning.

The majority of those evacuated were allowed to return Friday evening. At the height of the fire, some 82,000 people were under evacuation orders.

A preliminary assessment found 96 homes and 213 outbuildings were destroyed by the blaze, most of them in its first fierce days on Tuesday and Wednesday.

More damage might still be discovered as firefighters pore through the aftermath of the fire that had burned 58 square miles about 60 miles east of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County.

The I-15 is open in both directions through the Cajon Pass. There may be delays due to intermittent lane closures to make repairs.

Highway 138 is open to residents only from Highway 2 to Stone Basin Rd.

Highway 138 at Stone Basin to I-15 is closed to allow emergency equipment in the area to replace power poles affected by the fire.

Lone Pine Canyon Road at Swarthout Canyon Rd. to Highway 138 is closed.

US Forest Road 3N31 at Lone Pine Canyon Road is closed.

The dirt road portion of Lytle Creek is closed from the gun range into the Forest.

Johanna Santore was among those left homeless. She was running an errand Tuesday when the fire charged through her neighborhood. She tried to rush home to rescue the family's four dogs, six cats and hamster but was blocked by closed roads.

A group of animal rescue volunteers found the house in smoldering ruins  with no signs of the pets.

"I'm actually feeling numb," said Santore, who fled with her husband and granddaughter to an evacuation center. "It's like a nightmare."

A prolonged drought has transformed swaths of California into tinderboxes, ready to ignite. Several other wildfires were burning in the state, including a blaze in rural Santa Barbara County that prompted the evacuation of a pair of campgrounds.

In the southern Sierra Nevada, another blaze feeding on dense timber in Sequoia National Forest forced the evacuation of several tiny hamlets.

Another blaze burned in Santa Barbara County and forced the evacuation of a pair of campgrounds during the height of the summer season.

In mountains north of San Francisco, a 6-square-mile blaze was 80 percent contained after destroying 300 structures, including 189 homes and eight businesses, in the working-class community of Lower Lake. All evacuation orders have been canceled.

No deaths have been reported in the fire east of Los Angeles and the cause of the fire was under investigation. Crews continued to sift through burned regions to tally the damage.

The Santores weren't as lucky. Volunteers who drove to their house found a moonscape. Some of the neighbors' homes were still standing, seemingly intact.

Before the fire roared through, Johanna Santore had redecorated her granddaughter's room in a zebra pattern and added a loft bed.

"We don't plan on rebuilding," she said. "We plan on leaving."

The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Milagro Perez, a young Santa Ana girl born without legs whose special needs wheelchair was stolen last year, isn't letting that slow her down. On Saturday, she celebrated her 5th birthday with potato sack races and a lot of smiles.

Milagro, Mili, made headlines on Nov. 2015 after her specialized wheelchair had been reported stolen.

Girl Whose Wheelchair Was Stolen Celebrates 5th Birthday

Mili was born without legs, and the wheelchair had been her closest link to normalcy, allowing her to get around the house, the yard and to-and-from school. After numerous media reports, many viewers stepped up to help. In fact, a generous donor contacted NBC4 offering a $10,000 donation for Mili and her family.

But just days after the wheelchair was stolen, someone returned it, leaving it on the side yard of the family's apartment complex. Regardless, the generous donor insisted that Mili's family keep the money so that the family could give Mili a better life.

Mili's life has improved in many ways, and she continues to move forward just like any 5-year-old.

She got a new wheelchair, and was able to take a trip to Mexico to visit her grandmother. Over the summer she underwent two surgeries, one for her ears, and another to repair work in her mouth. Mili, who loves school, graduated from pre-school in May, and will be starting kindergarten in the coming week.

Mili's parents are working through personal problems, but set everything aside for her special birthday weekend to celebrate the significant milestone.

More than 50 guests, including family and friends, attended the party at Adams Park in Santa Ana Saturday. There were three pinatas, plenty of food, cupcakes, an extra large birthday cake, music and lots of games. Mili's physical challenges do not deter her from doing all the things that children her age do.

At the party, Mili chased friends around the playground, going up and down slides. She participated in balloon games and even joined in on the sack races.

Mili's mother, Rosa Perez, had been up since 3 a.m., setting up decorations and other preparations. She said she wanted everything to be perfect for Mili. Before taking on pinata duties, Mili's father, Antonio Perez-Sanchez, took a moment and shared a little more about the struggles the family has faced.

"When her mother was 3 months pregnant, the doctor told us that Mili's body had not fully formed, that she would have no legs. The doctor also said that because of this they didn't know how well her brain had developed. He said that she could have heart complications and that she could also die," Perez-Sanchez said with head bowed. The doctor suggested that we consider terminating the pregnancy. We struggled with the decision. All the advice was to abort the pregnancy. I told my wife it was up to her. And one day, she went to the clinic, thinking to terminate the pregnancy. But some ladies were there and they told her not to do it, to leave it all in God's hands.

So my wife didn't do it. And we accepted Mili in our lives the way she is. Mili went through a lot. She had many surgeries, and she did have heart problems."

He made a confession about his daughter's struggles.

"You know at first I was embarrassed. When I held Mili in public, I would try to cover up the bottom part of her body, so that people wouldn't see that she had no legs. But later I realized I was making it worse," Perez-Sanchez said. "We needed to let her feel accepted the way she is. I remember a lady at church asking in an almost angry voice, 'Why did you have a child like this?' I remember a co-worker asking me the same thing."

Mili's father looked up, watching Mili on the playground, and said, "You know, I spent a lot of time worrying about Mili. For many years I worried, how is it going to be when she gets older. If she can't work, who's going to take care of her? But now I look at her, the way she is, her strength, and now I think maybe she's the one who's going to take care of us."

Mili's full name, Milagro, means Miracle. And many around her do consider her the "Miracle Girl."
One telephone carrier is making it easier for people to communicate while traveling in Cuba.

AT&T announces they have reached an agreement with ETECSA, the government owned telecommunications provider on the island, to expand coverage on the island for subscribers.

With this agreement, AT&T customers soon will be able to seamlessly connect with talk, text and data while visiting Cuba, said Bill Hague, the executive vice president for AT&T Global Connection Management.

The company said it will announce the date the service will start and pricing at a later date.
It's back to school week and NBC 6 wants to make sure parents and students are well-prepared for the new school year as Zika cases rise in South Florida.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools offers tips to help students protect themselves from the mosquito-borne virus. Click here for the school district's Zika preparedness plan.

For complete Back to School information, click here to visit the NBC 6 Education on 6 Section.
The federal government has ratified a treaty with the Native Americans back in 1868, maybe you heard of it? Treaty of Fort Laramie in which specific text says the following: www.digital.library.okstate.edu/.../treaties/sio0998.htm

"Article 1: From this day forward all war between the parties to this agreement shall forever cease. The Government of the United States desires peace, and its honor is hereby pledged to keep it. The Indians desire peace, and they now pledge their honor to maintain it."

The United States and the state of North Dakota are pledged to keep the peace.

Supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution also stipulates that treaties are law of the land and federal law trumps state law.

The Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2) establishes that the Constitution, federal laws made pursuant to it, and treaties made under its authority, constitute the supreme law of the land. [1] It provides that state courts are bound by the supreme law; in case of conflict between federal and state law, the federal law must be applied.

So if Morton County allows a commercial pipeline to cross treaty land, Morton County violated the treaty; the pipeline violates treaty. It always comes back to money, how much did the pipeline give your local politicians to allow this?

The law enforcement agencies involved Morton County Sheriff, Mandan police (are they out of their city jurisdiction arresting individuals defending the supreme law of the land) and state troopers are on the wrong side, they should be defending the Constitution instead of violating their mission statements and oaths of office.

One more thing, the county zoning map does not indicate a pipeline going through the county. Who approved it? Why, when? Somebody needs to investigate that.

Stop the pipeline. Stop it now.
Not one to shy away from throwing his support behind a political candidate, billionaire car dealer Norman Braman is backing a familiar name in the race for Miami-Dade County mayor.

Braman released a statement expressing his support for Raquel Regalado, who is running against the current mayor, Carlos Gimenez. Braman cited her work on the Miami-Dade County School Board, calling her trustworthy and honest.

The former owner of the NFLs Philadelphia Eagles, Braman has become involved in South Florida politics in recent years, helping lead the recall effort against former county mayor Carlos Alvarez in 2009 and financing legal battles against the Miami Marlins over construction of their new stadium.

Braman was one of the main backers of Marco Rubios campaign for President this year, having a previously relationship with Rubio that included employing his wife on several occasions.
A man accused of raping a woman at knife-point in Hollywood was arrested after he left his wallet at the scene of the crime, police said.

Christian Alexa Londono Castro, 25, was arrested Sunday on charges of sexual assault with a weapon and aggravated battery, according to a Hollywood Police arrest report.

Londono Castro appeared in court Monday, where he was ordered held without bond. It was unknown if he has an attorney.

Speaking through an interpreter, Londono Castro told Broward Judge Stephen Zaccor he is from Colombia but has lived in Hollywood for more than five years and works in construction.

According to the arrest report, the woman was walking to her car in the 800 block of Tyler Street late Saturday night and was talking on the phone with her friend. The woman said she thought someone was following her and her friend hung up and called police.

But after her friend hung up, the woman told police she was approached from behind by Londono Castro, who put a knife to her neck and forced her to a bush on the lawn of a nearby home, the report said.

Londono Castro said "pants" and directed the woman to take her pants off, the report said. He then held the knife against her face and forced her to perform oral sex on him then raped her, the report said.

"The violence involved in this episode is extreme," Zaccor said.

At one point, Londono Castro fell down and the woman was able to run to a nearby home, where she was let inside until police arrived.

"We were inside just watching TV and then we heard banging on the door frantically," said Caterina Schraiber, one of the people who helped the woman. "Her pants were kind of hanging off, so obviously we let her in because she looked like she needed help."

When the woman went back to get her keys from the scene, she found Londono Castro's wallet, which had his Florida license inside, the report said.

Londono Castro was found at his home in Hollywood and taken into custody. The victim suffered superficial knife wounds to her stomach and right arm and had redness on both sides of her neck.
As the Zika battles continue across South Florida, politicians on both sides of the aisle are asking for help  and seemingly blaming the other side for the continuing struggles in combating the disease.

Miami Beach Mayor Phillip Levine, just days after his city announced their first confirmed cases of Zika, pleaded for federal funding to help fight the virus Monday. He was joined at a press conference by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who urged Congress to gavel back into session and address funding for the fight.

President Obama asked for nearly $2 billion in emergency funding to fight Zika, but Congressional members adjourned for a seven week vacation before the issue could be voted on.

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Rick Scott was joined in Wynwood by the states Agricultural Commissioner, Adam Putnam, at a school in the area that was first hit hard by Zika. The area north of Downtown Miami has been struggling to regain visitors and customers since the federal government issued advisories for people to avoid the area.

Scott visited Jose de Diego School before announcing that $5 million in additional Zika preparedness funding will be allocated to Miami-Dade.

Scott has consistently been critical of the Obama administration, saying they should have been doing more to help fund the states fight.

Earlier Monday, Levine criticized Scott for controlling all of the Zika information and not looping local officials in about what's going on.

"The governor made, I believe a big mistake by not speaking with the folks that are on the ground, myself, Mayor Gimenez, informing us and telling us what he knows," Levine said. "He not only blindsided me, he blindsided our administration, the county administration, I think he blindsided everybody."

"What's important here is the health of our citizens, through our Department of Health, which is the only agency that can confirm whether an individual has Zika, we are timely and accurate with our information," Gov. Scott said.

Friday, the CDC extended that warning to include a 20 block section of Miami Beach as well as the original area in Wynwood. Through Thursday, 479 travel related cases of Zika have been discovered in Florida with 35 additional cases being non-travel related.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's brief but showstopping gig at the Olympics closing ceremony as the Nintendo game character Super Mario offered a tantalizing glimpse at Tokyo's plans for the 2020 games.

The organizers for the Tokyo games crammed the works into a brief two-minute film montage before Abe's appearance: athletes participating in more than a dozen sports, as iconic Japanese images like Tokyo Tower, cherry blossoms, a bullet train, Tokyo Bay Bridge and the famous "scramble" intersection in Shibuya whiz by.

[NATL] Rio's Goodbye Party: Images from the Closing Ceremony

Anime and video game characters including Pac Man and Hello Kitty are featured, along with the beloved blue Doraemon cat, who pulls from his pocket of magic gadgets a green warp pipe to whisk Abe, transformed briefly into Super Mario, from his limousine in Tokyo straight to Rio.

Shortly after the IOC flag was handed off from Rio to Tokyo, the video boards inside Maracana Stadium showed Mario from the popular video game running through the streets of Tokyo.

Abe arrived at a tube there and pulled out a map that showed Rio de Janeiro at the other end. With a red ball in his hand, Mario jumped into the tube and arrived in Rio with the familiar sound from the video game.

[NATL] Trailblazers, Record-Setters and More: Top Moments from the 2016 Rio Olympics

Instead of Mario appearing, Abe rose up from the tube, holding a red ball and a red hat as the crowd roared its approval.

Tokyo 2020 organizers said in a statement that the Super Mario idea came up during a brainstorming session. Staff at Nintendo would say only that the government asked to borrow the character for the show.

Abe was a big hit on social media, too:

The only glitch? After the presentation was over and Abe was gone, workers had a hard time removing the tube from the stadium floor. They were still trying to move it well into a speech by Carlos Arthur Nuzman, president of the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee.
You might want to think twice before posting photos of that new TV, computer or piece of jewelry to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Several thieves said they had used social media to case targets for break-ins when responding to a survey the I-Team sent to 500 convicted burglars in New York and New Jersey. More than 10 percent of those 57 respondents said they've logged on to find targets and good times to strike.

It's just one of the findings in an unprecedented four-part I-Team series on burglaries in the tri-state (watch News 4 New York at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. for the latest stories).

Vincent Medina, one lifelong burglar who responded to the survey, said that while older criminals tend not to use social media to identify targets, some younger crooks might be more likely to do so.

"You dont want to get on Facebook and say Were going on vacation," Medina said.

Medina said that he and more seasoned burglars are more likely to case a house by watching the place and its occupants for a good time to strike, more technologically savvy thieves could use apps like Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare to plan a break-in.

One burglar in Orange County, California, targeted at least 33 women he saw in public and using GPS data embedded in photos posted to Facebook and Instagram to get to their homes in 2015. Once he had an address, court records showed, he stole more than $250,000 in electronics and jewelry along with his victims underwear and bras.

Police across the country have been warning residents to be aware of what they post to social media. Police in Orange County cautioned women to check their settings on social media apps to disable location features after the rash or break-ins there.

And in Prince William County, a suburban Virginia county outside Washington, police warned residents to avoid publicly posting photos of new items or checking in on location-based apps because of the risk of being targeted by burglars.

Medina said he would warn homeowners to avoid posting that theyre going on vacation or posting about what they have inside their homes because they dont know whether a friend or follower could be a potential burglar.

"You dont want your neighbor to know because he could be a burglar," he said. "Hes got seven days to take whatever he wants (if you announce that youre leaving on social media.)"

The I-Team sent the survey to 500 convicted burglars in New York and New Jersey. Fifty-seven sent back their responses.
The ex-husband of a woman accused of strangling her 9-year-old stepdaughter is being charged with obstructing police in their effort to arrest the accused killer.

NYPD detectives searching for the stepmother, 55-year-old Shamdai Arjun, after the girl's body was found Friday, located her at the residence of her former husband in the South Ozone Park section of Queens.

The ex-husband, Raymond Narayan, 65, refused to allow police to enter his home and Arjun refused exit the house, police said. About an hour later, Narayan opened the door and he and Arjun emerged.

Earlier in the day, at about 5:30 p.m., the couple were seen leaving the Richmond Hill home where Arjun lived with her stepdaughter, Ashdeep Kaur, and her father, investigators said.

As they were leaving, they were asked about the whereabouts of Ashdeep by another resident of the house and told the girl was in the bathroom.

The resident noticed that the bathroom light had been on for several hours and called the girl's father, who instructed him to break through the locked bathroom door.

Ashdeep's body was found in the bathtub.

The Medical Examiner's Office determined that death was caused by strangulation.

Arjun is charged with second-degree murder and faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted, said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Narayan is charged with obstruction of government administration and faces up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, if convicted, Brown said.

This is a horrifying case of a child, a defenseless nine-year-old, who was left in the care of her stepmother who allegedly strangled her to death," Brown said. "Her actions, if true, are beyond comprehension and must be severely punished.

Arjun was arraigned on the murder charge Sunday and ordered held without bail. A request for comment was left in a telephone message for her attorney, Judah Maltz.
A Jonesboro police officer went to a hospital and a detainee in the backseat of a cop car went out the back window with the vehicle flipped.

The man in the backseat of the cruiser, 19-year-old Logan Younger, appears to pull a lighter out of his pants right before the crash. As he lights the lighter, the car flips and he's ejected out of the rear window.

Officer Justin Thompson was injured and trapped in the vehicle, according to the Jonesboro Police Department. He had to be extricated by the Jonesboro Fire Department.

Thompson was conscious and talking but is still undergoing tests to determine the nature and extent of his injuries.

Younger fled the scene but was caught a short time later.

More: KAIT-TV
A 25-year-old Bucks County woman was charged Thursday with allegedly rigging thoroughbred horse races by administering a performance-enhancing drug to horses.

Marian Vega, of Bensalem, Pennsylvania, was charged with one count of rigging a publicly exhibited contest following an investigation by the Office of Attorney Generals Organized Crime Section and Gaming Unit. The probe followed an investigation by the state Horse Racing Commission.

According to a criminal complaint filed in support of the charge, Vega illegally administered the drug Clenbuterol to horses while she was employed at the Parx Casino and Racing venue in Bensalem. The number of affected races was not disclosed by the Attorney General's Office.

Clenbuterol is drug used in the treatment of asthma and other respiratory diseases in humans and animals. It promotes the growth of muscle, and has been used illegally by athletes to enhance performance.

To read the full article, click here.

For more business news, visit Philadelphia Business Journal.
A judge has ordered the mother of Pennsylvania twins whom child welfare caseworkers haven't been able to locate for more than 10 years to undergo a mental health evaluation.

A district judge postponed Monday's preliminary hearing for Patricia Fowler on charges she endangered the children and obstructed efforts to find them. The judge rescheduled the hearing for Sept. 12 and said the evaluation must be done before then.

The 47-year-old Penn Hills woman and her lawyer declined to comment.

Fowler has given various accounts of where the 17-year-old twins live, none of which have checked out, said police.

"We have no reason to believe she did harm them," Penn Hills Police Detective Leo Johe told NBC affiliate WPXI. "There's no evidence. There's no bodies. But since we don't know exactly what happened, we can't rule it out."

Family members told investigators they also don't know where the twins are.



Fowler's son, 18-year-old Datwon Fowler, is charged with pretending to be one of the twins and sending a text to police saying they're OK. He doesn't have an attorney listed in court records.




Two men, at least one armed with a shotgun, burst into a Philadelphia home overnight and shot and killed one of their victim, and injured his wife with the mans children inside the home at the time.



"It appears that this is a home invasion, robbery, double shooting, homicide," said Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small.

The deadly incident played out after the men entered through a kitchen window of a home along N 7th Street near Erie Avenue and demanded money around 1 a.m. Monday.

Hakim Rahman's six children  ages 5 to 13  were home at the time and some of them were in the same rear bedroom where the shooting took place, said Small. None of the children were hurt. [[390898161, C]]

Officers found the 36-year-old father dead of shotgun wounds to the abdomen.

Medics rushed Rahman's 40-year-old wife, suffering from gunshot wounds to her face and forearm, to Temple University Hospital. Though in critical condition, she was alert and talking on her way to the hospital, said Small.

Investigators found three spent shotgun shells on the scene. They also recovered a bag containing a box of 12-gauge shotgun shells, loose shells and a skull cap in a rear alley behind the home and a sawed-off shotgun nearby.

Investigators believe the suspects knew Rahman.

The childrens grandparents came to pick up them up early Monday.

No word yet on possible suspects in the case.
Authorities say a man accused of murdering his wife last year apparently killed himself in his cell at the Monmouth County jail.

A corrections officer making routine security checks found 44-year-old Thomas McManus around 2:30 a.m. Thursday.

Authorities say it appears that McManus hanged himself with a bed sheet, but the death remains under investigation. They say McManus was alone in his cell at the time his body was found.

The Jersey City man was accused of fatally stabbing his 36-year-old wife, Alnisha Jones, in their home in March 2015. He was being housed at the Monmouth County jail because one of Jones' relatives works at the Hudson County jail in Kearny.

McManus was facing murder and weapons charges in the death.
A man is accused of beating his girlfriend's toddler son to death in South Jersey over the weekend.



Authorities said the 2-year-old boy's mother called 9-1-1 Saturday night when she realized the child was unresponsive in the Pennsauken apartment where they live. But it was too late: Doctors at Cooper University Hospital pronounced the little boy dead at 12:08 a.m. Sunday. Authorities said he suffered injuries including severe blunt-force trauma to his organs and torso area, along with internal bleeding.

Police investigated and quickly arrested 24-year-old Zachary Tricoche, of Pennsauken, for allegedly beating the child to death. Tricoche is the mother's boyfriend, police said.

Neighbors of the apartment on Mansion Boulevard near Frosthoffer Avenue said they saw an ambulance at the home late Saturday night, and then police cars parked outside and detectives coming in and out of the home through the night and into Sunday, NBC10's Cydney Long reported.

"They had gloves on and the guy was taking photos," said Dennis Manos, a Pennsauken resident. "Another guy was taking photos down the street. They were going in and out. The door was open all afternoon and they were going in and out. Carrying stuff in and out."



[[390923021, C]]

Neighbors told NBC10 the family moved in only a month ago and mostly kept to themselves.

"It breaks my heart," said Mabel Stevenson. "I can't even imagine what the parent, the family, feel like."

Tricoche faces charges including first-degree murder and was being held at Camden County Jail on Monday, according to the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. He is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. in front of Judge Edward J. McBride Jr. A source told NBC10 two siblings of the toddler were also injured by Tricoche and more charges could be on the way.
State Police in New Jersey say a Pennsylvania woman was driving drunk when her minivan crashed on an interstate highway, killing a man and injuring a teenage boy.

The crash occurred just before noon Saturday on eastbound I-78 in Clinton.

A state police spokesman says the minivan driven by 35-year-old Tiasha Falu, of Reading, went off the left side of the roadway and spun around before it overturned and re-entered the eastbound roadway.

Ariel Lozano, a 32-year-old Reading man sitting in a rear seat, was ejected and pronounced dead at the scene. A 16-year-old Reading boy sitting in the front-seat was hospitalized with ``moderate'' injuries.

Falu was charged with drunken driving and may face other counts once the investigation concludes. A telephone number for her could not be located Sunday.
A judge has postponed the sentencing of a Florida woman convicted of killing her 5-year-old son in New Jersey in 1991 so he can consider a defense motion to acquit her or grant a new trial.

Michelle Lodzinski was due to be sentenced Tuesday. The Port St. Lucie woman was convicted of murder and faces up to life in prison.

It's not clear when the judge will rule on the motion.

The defense cites what it calls a lack of evidence and the judge's decision to dismiss the jury foreman for undisclosed reasons and replace him with an alternate while the panel was deliberating. The verdict came the next day.

Lodzinski reported Timothy Wiltsey missing from a carnival in Sayreville in May 1991. But she almost immediately became a suspect when she changed her story several times, eventually saying he had been kidnapped.

Lodzinski, who has two other sons in Florida, was charged with murder in 2014, after investigators reopened the case and found witnesses who could identify a blanket found near the boy's remains as having come from Lodzinski's apartment.

No forensic evidence tied Lodzinski or the boy to the blanket or other items found near his remains 11 months after he disappeared. A cause of death couldn't be established due to the deterioration of the skeleton.

Prosecutors painted Lodzinski as a young woman- she was 23 at the time of his disappearance- who struggled with jobs and relationships because of the boy and wanted to move on in life without him.
Joseph Palaia, a longtime state lawmaker who was a leading voice for children with disabilities, has died. He was 89.

The Francioni Taylor & Lopez Funeral Home in Neptune City says Palaia died Saturday. But a cause of death was not disclosed.

The Republican lawmaker was a teacher and school administrator for several years before he first sought elected office in the late 1960s.

He served on the Ocean Township Council and the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders before he was elected to the Assembly in 1982. He served there until he won a state Senate seat in 1989, a post he held until he retired in 2008.

During his time in the legislature, Palaia sought to expand educational and medical services for children with disabilities. He also was a gun control advocate who co-sponsored the state's Childproof Handgun Law.

"Mary Pat and I offer our condolences to Senator Palaias loved ones, friends and all those whom he inspired for decades as an educator, elected official and champion of children with special needs," said Gov. Chris Christie in a prepared news release. "Joe has certainly left a venerable legacy for generations of public servants to follow. Joes success came from putting others needs before his own. He was a problem solver who built brighter futures for families, above all else."
Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence is headed to a Bucks County business Tuesday.

The Trump campaign says the event will be a town hall-style affair at 4 p.m. at Worth & Co. in Plumstead Township, which makes heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems for larger buildings. [[338107532, C]]

The company hosted a similar event for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain in 2008. The company's founder and head, Stephen Worth, has supported the Republican National Committee and its candidates for years.



Tickets to the event and other information are available on the Trump campaign website. Doors open at 1 p.m.

You can WATCH Pence's comments LIVE at 4 p.m.
With the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline swelling to 2,000 people near Cannon Ball, Morton County officials may seek to access emergency funds to pay overtime to their deputies and other law enforcement agencies assisting Morton County in keeping the protest boundaries safe.

Protesters oppose the pipeline beneath the Missouri River because they fear it could contaminate their water supplies.

A special Morton County meeting will be held 4 p.m. Monday to address the emergency declaration, signed by Cody Schulz, chairman of the board, last week.

"This is to maintain public safety and to make sure the legal rights of everyone is enforced," Schulz said Sunday. "This has required a great deal of law enforcement manpower and time."

Schulz signed the declaration Aug. 15 and state law requires the remainder of the county board ratify the declaration within seven days to keep it binding.

County Commissioner Bruce Strinden said Sunday the declaration will allow the county to use its own emergency funds to pay deputies and other law enforcement for overtime tied to the protest.

"Without an emergency declaration, we cannot access those funds," said Strinden, who estimated the county may have banked about $125,000 in emergency funds. "We're getting help from neighboring counties and cities' law enforcement through mutual aid agreements, and appreciate it, but that help doesn't come free. We have to compensate them for food, lodging and of course pay. We're only a week into this."

Protesters said they are keeping the demonstration peaceful. Yet, the protest has challenged the county's enforcement capacity.

"This is a very large protest -- 2,000. So a protest of that size is of a concern to us," Strinden said. "People have a right to protest. The law enforcement will support legal activity in a protest unless it goes the other way."

"Right now, our primary goal is keeping everyone safe," he added, speaking of the need to close Highway 1806 during the protest. "There were vehicles parking on both sides of 1806. We don't want anyone injured or accidents."

Gov. Jack Dalrymple signed a declaration of emergency Friday. Strinden believes the state will pay for a large portion of North Dakota Highway Patrol troopers enforcing the highway because it lies in their jurisdiction, he said the county at this point will have to reimburse other law agencies for their assistance.

"At this point, we aren't seeking additional funds from the state," Schulz said. "The governor's declaration allows us to request extra resources, manpower or equipment from the state."
One person was arrested following a slow-speed chase through San Diego Monday.

A vehicle drove on the shoulder of northbound I-805 south of University Avenue at 7:50 a.m. A California Highway Patrol officer tried to stop the driver but the driver would not pull over.

The man behind the wheel of the car threw something out of the window twice during the pursuit, according to CHP Sgt. Dan Kyle.

When the pursuit came to an end on Swift, CHP officers took the man into custody.

Kyle said methamphetamine was found in one of the places where the suspect allegedly threw something out of the car window.
San Diegos annual Festival of Sail returns to the Embarcadero Labor Day weekend. The three-day event will feature tall ships, a street faire, cannon battles, food and a kids' zone.

The largest tall ship festival on the west coast, the event kicks off with the Parade of Sail where boats sail from the mouth of San Diego Bay, past Shelter Island, Harbor Island, and downtown and back to the Maritime Museum.

For a fee some ships will take passengers aboard for the Parade of Sail, including American Pride, Bill of Rights, Curlew, Exy/Irving Johnson and the Spirit of Dana Point.

During the weekend tall ships crews will engage in mock cannon battles, bringing the history of sea warfare alive. Weekend warriors can board the ship and join the battle as they fire at will at their opponents.

Tall ships will also offer two-hour mid-day sails through the bay, which gives views of the cannon battles.

Hosted by the Maritime Museum of San Diego, more than a dozen tall ships will participate in this years event, including the iconic Star of India, which at 148 is the oldest active ship in the world.

Swift Boat Cruises give passengers a tour of San Diegos military history and Twilight Sails on a classic sail boat make for a romantic evening.

Tickets for the festival are available online and run $5 to $7. The festival is from September 3 to 5. Tickets for boat rides cost a separate fee.
A 73-year-old Torrey Pine in Ocean Beach was removed Monday morning, several weeks after a public protest delayed the move.

The decades-old tree was the site of a sit-in protest earlier this month. The tree has been deemed unsafe, according to the City of San Diego.

This is a moderate threat and we dont know when this tree will fail, said Jeremy Barrick, City of San Diego Planning Department Urban Forestry Planning Department.

City officials met with members of the community last week, Barrick said. He acknowledged that there was a community forum planned for August 24 but the action had to be taken because of the increased risk.

In this case, this is a public safety issue. We need to move forward with this before it comes down, Barrick said.

Jeremy Barrick, City of San Diego Planning Department Urban Forestry Planning Department explains the reports filed prior to taking down the Torrey Pine.

However, several nearby residents dispute any real risk from the tree.

The tree on Saratoga was named "Esperanza" by the community according to Ocean Beach Planning Board Chair John Ambert.

Ambert said he met with city officials on Aug. 11 to discuss what residents considered a conflict of interest in having the same company assess the health of the tree and removing it. He was also upset about what he called a lack of community engagement.

In a written statement Ambert said the tree's removal has taught him, "...community action and oversight is very much needed to ensure the City is working with the community, and is following the same rules and guidelines of the Municipal Code imposed on the general population."

Virginia Wilson lives two streets from the Torrey Pine and was not aware the tree was going to be removed Monday.

I feel betrayed by the city because they have not produced any evidence that this tree is a risk to anyone, an imminent danger, Wilson said.

She said a report from an independent arborist shows the tree was low-risk.

It does not need to come down today, she said.

Bill Posey lives a few blocks away from the Torrey Pine and has lived in Ocean Beach for 40 years.

He also mentioned the report from an arborist hired by residents.

The community paid $750 for an independent arborist who said the tree is low-risk, Posey said.

And the City just comes in and cuts it down, he added.

Resident Bill Posey argues that there is no reason the City of San Diego should remove a Torrey Pine.

When news of the tree's removal was initially made public, residents were angered.

In an act of protest, Ocean Beach resident Crystal Rose Speros scaled the tree and sat in a groove for most of the day. About a half-dozen residents on the ground joined Speros in protest, claiming the city was not transparent in its plans for the doomed tree.

Mark Leimbach/NBC 7 San Diego

The City told NBC 7 that four different arborists have looked at the Torrey Pine and determined the tree is hazardous. NBC 7 was able to obtain these reports.

The tree is rooted adjacent to where two other similar large Torrey Pines were removed earlier in the year, after El Nino storms caused them to uplift.

Megan Tevrizian/NBC 7 San Diego

According to this Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve website, Torrey Pine trees are the rarest native pines in the United States, and were first seen in San Diegos Sorrento Valley area as early as 1769.

In 1850, the tree was official discovered and named the Torrey Pine by Dr. Charles Christopher Parry  a doctor with an interest in botany  when he was in San Diego as a botanist for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Survey. Parry named the tree after his mentor, Dr. John Torrey, of New York, one of the leading botanists of his time.
Republican Donald Trump promised Monday to be "fair, but firm" toward the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, a shift in tone that raised questions on whether he's backtracking from previous pledges to push for mass deportations.

The billionaire businessman, whose hard-line approach to immigration and fierce rhetoric propelled him to the GOP presidential nomination, insisted that he's not "flip-flopping" on the divisive issue as he works to broaden his support two-and-a-half months before the general election.

But in a meeting with Hispanic activists Saturday, Trump indicated he was open to considering allowing those who have not committed crimes, beyond their immigration offenses, to obtain some form of legal status  though attendees stressed Trump has yet to make up his mind.

"The impression I got was that the campaign is working on substantive policy to help the undocumented that are here, including some type of status so they would not be deported," said Pastor Mario Bramnick, president of the Hispanic Israel Leadership Coalition, who was in attendance.

Any walk-back would mark a dramatic reversal for Trump. During the GOP primary, Trump vowed to use a "deportation force" to round up and deport the millions of people living in the country illegally  a proposal that excited many of his core supporters, but alienated Hispanic voters who could be pivotal in key states.

Trump said in an interview with "Fox & Friends" on Monday that he was "working with a lot of people in the Hispanic community to try and come up with an answer."

"We want to come up with a really fair, but firm answer. It has to be very firm. But we want to come up with something fair," he said.

Later, he told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, "I just want to follow the law."

"The first thing we're gonna do, if and when I win, is we're gonna get rid of all of the bad ones. We've got gang members, we have killers, we have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country. We're gonna get them out," he said.

"As far as everybody else, we're going to go through the process," he said, citing the policies of President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush as examples.

Asked whether Trump's plan still included a deportation force, his new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said Sunday it was "to be determined."

"Even Sen. Jeff Sessions," a hard-liner on immigration, "he doesn't deport 11 million people in his plan," Conway said on CNBC Monday.

Trump had been scheduled to deliver a speech on the topic Thursday in Colorado, but has postponed it.

There have been signs for weeks now that Trump was shifting course. Hispanic business and religious leaders who would like to see Trump move in a more inclusive direction have reported closed-door conversations with Trump in which they say he has signaled possibly embracing a less punitive immigration policy that focuses on "compassion" along with the rule of law.

At last month's GOP convention, the Republican National Committee's director of Hispanic communications, Helen Aguirre Ferre, told reporters at a Spanish-language briefing that Trump had already said he "will not do massive deportations"  despite the fact that Trump had never said so publicly.

Instead, Aguirre Ferre said, "he will focus on removing the violent undocumented who have criminal records and live in the country."

Indeed, Trump's first television ad of the general election specifically singles out illegal immigrants with criminal records, claiming that, if Clinton is elected, "Illegal immigrants convicted of committing crimes get to stay."

Trump's campaign has pushed back on the notion that he's reversing course. "Mr. Trump said nothing today that he hasn't said many times before, including in his convention speech," rapid response director Steven Cheung said after the meeting.

At a rally in Akron, Ohio, Monday evening, many Trump supporters seemed unfazed by Trump's potential shift.

"Mr. Trump is a smart man who uses common sense," said Jennifer Carter, a small business owner from Barberton, Ohio. "He knows he can't break up families and round up people on buses to kick them out."

But Robin Luich, 52, a stay-at-home mother from Medina, Ohio, said those who've broken the law should be permanently barred. "There can be no exceptions. If you are here illegally, you have to stay out." she said.

When asked how she would feel if Trump softened his stance to allow some illegal immigrants to remain, she said: "That would be a disappointment. That's not what he is supposed to be about."

Clinton, meanwhile, is spending the next three days fundraising across California. She'll stop by the home of actors Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel in Los Angeles, address donors with NBA Hall of Famer Magic Johnson in Beverly Hills and join Apple CEO Tim Cook and other business leaders in Silicon Valley.

But Clinton's email scandal continues to haunt her. In the latest revelations, the State Department said Monday it is reviewing nearly 15,000 previously undisclosed emails. They were recovered as part of the FBI's now-closed investigation into the handling of sensitive information that flowed through Clinton's private home server during her time as secretary of state.

Lawyers for the department said they anticipate releasing the first batch of these new emails in mid-October, raising the prospect new messages sent or received by Democratic nominee could become public just before Election Day.
Monday was the first day back to school for students in D.C. Public Schools -- and the first day ever for those at the District's new school for boys.

The Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Northeast is the District's first boys-only school and the first school to focus on young men of color.

The boys came to school Monday in coats and ties, the required uniform at the school.

"It's another high standard for me," said Absalom Bolling, one of the 110 students who started at the school Monday. "You have to wear a suit and tie to school. That's professional. That shows that people hold a higher expectation for me, and that's something I want to step up to."

The school is opening with some controversy. The ACLU has said the school discriminates against girls, but the D.C. attorney general says the school doesn't violate any laws.

DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson at the school's opening that the school district is looking at what might work in a girls-only school, too.

"We're not a one-size-fits-all school district," Henderson said. "Because something might work for some of our young people doesn't mean it will work for all of our young people."

There's still a lot of work to do inside the school. The school system says the school is ready to open, but added that the building is a three-year construction project.

Meanwhile, Mayor Muriel Bowser still has a very important position to fill.

D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson is stepping down from her position next month. Her last day will be Sept. 30.

The move does not come as a surprise; Henderson has said she planned to leave DCPS, although she had previously said she would remain until 2017.

She has been with DCPS for nine years, taking over as chancellor in 2010 after serving as deputy chancellor under Michelle Rhee.

Officials will launch a nationwide search for a new chancellor in the fall. John Davis will serve as interim chancellor; he most recently held the role of DCPS' Chief of Schools, Bowser said.

Monday is also the first day of schools for students in Anne Arundel and Frederick counties. See other back-to-school dates for public school students in the D.C. area here.
Firefighters battled a three-alarm fire at a commercial building in Prince George's County, Maryland, Monday afternoon.

An open air loading dock with a roof caught fire at a warehouse for ABC Supply Co. Inc. -- a building supplies wholesaler -- in the 3400 block of Kenilworth Avenue, Mark Brady of the Prince George's County Fire Department said.

The smoke could be seen from miles away.

The fire did not reach the interior of the warehouse, which stores combustible materials, including pallets and roofing materials. The biggest concern was foam insulation, which is toxic when it melts.

No one was injured, according to Fire Chief Marc Bashoor.

The Hyattsville Volunteer Fire Department also battled the fire.

The cause is under investigation.
Suicide bombers from the militant al Shabaab group detonated two car bombs, killing more than 20 people on Sunday, NBC News reports.

The group, which has carried out deadly attacks in the Horn of Africa country as it tries to topple the Western-backed government, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Residents in the north central Somalian town of Galkayo said they heard two loud blasts followed by heavy gunfire. The bombs went off at a local government headquarters in the countrys semi-autonomous Puntland region, officials and witnesses said.

Al Shabaab has become more active in Puntland since moving more forces there after being pushed out of strongholds farther south by an African Union force and the Somali National Army, experts and officials say.
East Providence, Rhode Island, police and the Rhode Island State Fire Marshal's Office are offering a $5,000 reward for information that leads to the conviction of whoever was responsible for two arson fires last month.

Det. Lt. Raymond Blinn says both of the fires were started around 2:15 a.m. on July 25.

The first blaze was reported at a home on Earl Avenue by a neighbor. Blinn says the fire was started in a truck and then spread to a boat and garage.

While firefighters were extinguishing the first fire, the same resident who called it in reported that his own car was on fire across the street.

Anyone with information is urged to call the fire marshal's hotline or East Providence police.
Police in Medfield, Massachusetts, say a driver is critical after crashing into a telephone pole early Monday morning.

The crash happened just after midnight in the area of 15 High St.

The driver, who had to be rescued from the vehicle, was taken to Beth Israel in Boston.

Police say the driver was wearing a seatbelt.

The operator's identity is being withheld pending notification of family.
Massachusetts State Police said an elderly man was killed in a highway crash on Sunday afternoon in Berlin.

The crash happened at 3:22 p.m. on the Route 495 northbound ramp, near exit 26.

Police said the victim, a 96-year-old Berlin man, somehow struck the rock wall on the highway ramp. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The ramp was closed for an hour while police investigated.

The man's name has not been released.
Three people, including a Bowman man and woman and a Minnesota man, were taken into custody in Colorado in connection with the death of a Bowman man found early Saturday afternoon at a Bowman motel, said Police Chief Charles Headley.

The name of victim, described as rural Bowman man in his early 20s, is being withheld as family members are still being contacted, said Headley. An autopsy will be performed on the victim at the State Laboratory in Bismarck to determine the cause of death.

Criminal charges and the extradition of the three people of interest will be processed through the Bowman County State's Attorney's Office and the district court system, Headley said. He did not release the ages of the three being held, but said they were taken into custody Saturday evening.

Shortly after noon on Saturday, housekeeping staff at the El-Vu Motel made an emergency call reporting that they discovered a man on the floor of the hotel and he had a "sizeable amount of blood" around him, Headley said.

Ambulance and police officers responded to the scene and declared the man dead.

"It was obvious by the condition of the room, that foul play was suspected," Headley said.

The death occurred sometime after midnight, but Headley gave no further details about the condition of the room.

The State Bureau of Criminal Investigation is assisting with the icase along with the Bowman State's Attorney and investigative agencies in Wyoming and Colorado.
Two human trafficking convictions in less than a month in New Hampshire are shedding light on a problem that many don't know exists in the Granite State.

"It's heartbreaking," said YWCA Crisis Center Director Amy Pettengill. "It's not just an international problem it's right here in our backyard."

She says human trafficking is so prevalent in the city that victims are coming forward on a weekly basis.

"One of my first human trafficking calls was a 17-year-old girl who had been trafficked from Oregon," she said. "I met her and she had been mased and burned because she tried to get away from her trafficker."

Pettengill says the stories don't stop there.

"We'll get women that walk in and they'll have what people would think are tattoos, but they're actually brands from their pimps," she explained.

On Monday, Nathanial Clarke was sentenced to at least ten years in prison. Prosecutors say Clarke preyed on heroin addicts, then beat them and withheld their drugs, forcing them into having sex with strangers for money.

"He would have the needles ready and he would give it to them as long as they worked for him, and when they didn't, if they didn't want to work, he wouldn't give it to them," explained Assistant Hillsborough County Attorney Greg Lenti.

The head of a separate trafficking ring, Donald Kaplan, was convicted earlier this month.

Prosecutors say he beat and raped his victims into cooperation.

"The message is we're not going to tolerate it, we know it's out there,' said Manchester Assistant Police Chief Carlo Capano at a press conference Monday afternoon. "We're going to work together, use whatever resources we have to prosecute these people to the fullest."

For Pettengill, it's a relief to see local, state, and federal investigators taking aim at these criminals who she says will do anything to keep their victims quiet.

"If they don't get out, there's a chance they're going to die," she said.

Pettengill says the best way for someone to escape a dangerous situation is to make an excuse to go to a hospital. At that point, there will be a Crisis Center advocate available to help within minutes.

You can also call the National Human Trafficking Hotline 1 (888) 373-7888.
Police say a man is in custody following a standoff that prompted the evacuation of a South Portland, Maine, apartment building over the weekend.

Chief Edward Googins says the incident began around 5:10 p.m. Sunday when a woman reported she was being threatened by her boyfriend at the Olde English Village apartment complex.

Police say Ricky Anderson refused to exit the building or communicate with officers upon their arrival to the scene. Googins says the woman told police that her boyfriend was manufacturing drugs inside his apartment.

Members of the Southern Maine Regional SWAT team entered the apartment around 9:30 p.m. and arrested Anderson, who didn't resist.

Googins says evidence collected from inside Anderson's apartment is consistent with a methamphetamine lab.

It's unclear if Anderson has an attorney who could comment.
The Providence Board of Licenses has ordered an immediate temporary closure of a Rhode Island nightclub following a stabbing and assault there over the weekend.

Affiliate WJAR reports Providence police Sgt. David Tajeda told the board at Saturday's emergency hearing that police arrested 22-year-old L'Quan Arnum in connection with the stabbing. Online court records didn't list a lawyer for Arnum.

Tajeda says Arnum was on a party bus with about 20 passengers. Police recommended that Van Gogh Lounge be closed in case passengers on the bus tried to retaliate.

The violence happened outside the club around 2 a.m. Saturday. The stabbing victim was taken to an area hospital in critical but stable condition. The second victim was taken to a hospital for an evaluation.

The club must remain closed for 72 hours.
Getting pregnant is much harder than movies would have you believe.

In fact, women have only a 25 percent chance of getting pregnant every month. So, its no surprise that couples are keen to improve their odds. IoT makes it a little easier.

Why its hard to get pregnant?

There is just a 12- to 24-hour window each month when a human egg can be fertilized by a sperm. This fertile window occurs during the six days after ovulation while the egg passes down the fallopian tube. Pinpointing the exact time period, though, is hard because it varies from woman to woman. Sex has to take place within this fertile window to maximize the chances of becoming pregnant.

Predicting the fertile window

Three approaches are commonly used to help women get pregnant.

1. Calendar method

The 28- to 32-day menstruation cycle is mapped on a calendar, with the fertile window occurring between days 7 and 20. This simple method is often undependable and doesnt work well for many couples.

2. Ovulation test kits

These tests rely on the changes in a womans Luteinizing Hormone (LH) level to calculate her fertile window. This hormone increases 24 to 48 hours prior to ovulation, indicating the best time to become pregnant. First Response and ClearBlue make two popular ovulation kits.

3. Core body temperature

Mary Coynes research in 2000 showed that a woman's fertile period can also be identified by measuring her body's core temperature. Her research involved having women swallow temperature sensors to measured their temperature. The data collected showed that women have a significant decrease in their core body temperature one to two days before their urinary LH-surge. This information indicates the best time to become pregnant.

Swallowing temperature sensors works for a research project, but isn't a very practical solution. Advances in IoT technology have now made fertility tracking commercially feasible.

Ava bracelet

The Ava is an IoT fertility-tracking bracelet that's worn at night and informs women about their fertility status through a mobile app. Its automated approach avoids the need to take temperature at the same time every morning, go through multiple urine tests each month or enter data into an app every day. Ava is an FDA-approved Class 1 medical device that has been shown to detect an average of 5.3 fertile days per cycle with 89 percent accuracy.

The Ava bracelet collects more than 3 million data points and measures nine physiological parameters. This information is analyzed, and the Ava mobile app alerts the wearer of her fertility status.

Sensor data

The Ava bracelet sensor measures nine fertility-related factors:

Resting pulse rateHow often a heart beats per minute (bpm). Typical resting pulse rates for adults are between 40 and 80 bpm Skin temperatureAverage skin temperature readings are between 90.68 and 98.24 degrees Fahrenheit. Heart rate variabilityThe changes in heart rate from beat to beat. This fluctuates with hormone levels, which also impact physiological stress levels. Amount of sleepThe quality and amount of sleep is an indicator of fertility. Average percentages are 55 percent of light sleep and 45 percent deep sleep. Breathing rateThe rate of respiration per minute. MovementMeasuring the amount of movement while sleeping indicates the percentage of light and deep sleep. PerfusionThe process of supplying blood to the tissues in the body. This is impacted by hormone levels. BioimpedanceThis is the resistance of the skin to small electrical signals. This changes with phases of the menstrual cycle. Heat lossCore body temperature falls with sleep as metabolism slows down. The amount of heat being lost while asleep helps predict the fertility phase.

This collected sensor data is analyzed with sophisticated algorithms developed by Ava data scientists using research conducted by Prof. Dr. med. Brigitte Leeners at the University of Zurich.

FDA classification of medical devices



The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ensures the safety and effectiveness of devices such as the Ava bracelet. Medical devices are classified by the FDA according to their associated risk:

Class I (low risk)subject to the least regulatory controls, e.g. dental floss

(low risk)subject to the least regulatory controls, e.g. dental floss Class II (higher risk)require greater regulatory controls to provide reasonable assurance of the devices safety and effectiveness, e.g. condoms

(higher risk)require greater regulatory controls to provide reasonable assurance of the devices safety and effectiveness, e.g. condoms Class III (highest risk)subject to the highest level of regulatory control that must typically be approved by FDA before they are marketed, e.g. replacement heart valves

Parenting resources

BabyCenter is a wonderful resource on both pregnancy and parenting. It also supports Mission Motherhood, a global charitable project to promote maternal healthcare. HopePhones is one of their programs, which is run in conjunction with MedicMobile, a program that recycles phones to fund healthcare programs in developing countries. Health workers use the phones to register pregnancies and call for transport to ensure women get to a health facility in time. You can help their efforts by donating your old phones.

The joys of parenthood easily exceed the challenges of having a baby. IoT solutions such as the Ava bracelet enable more people to share this joy.
Before we start the work week, heres a tiny personal tale from the weekend that has me puzzled.

Im at the local liquor store buying wine and my tab is $21.98. I hand the clerk $22 cash and patiently wait for my two pennies change, as I always do, because I like putting them in the leave a penny, take a penny (LAPTAP) container that youll see at all of your finer booze stores.

Thats what I did, left my two pennies.

There had been zero pennies in the container before I donated my two. As I was walking out, my back to the check-out, I distinctly heard the clerk slide the two pennies out of the LAPTAP container, open the cash register, and drop them in.

Sliding coins on plastic. The ring and opening of a cash register. The clink of coins dropping onto coins. These are all distinct, recognizable sounds. I heard them clear as day and even though this was all happening in a second and outside my field of vision Im fairly certain thats what happened.

What I cant fathom is why?

Why would anyone take two pennies out of a LAPTAP container and drop them into the cash register? If the clerk had just slid the pennies out and I had heard nothing beyond that sound I would assume this master criminal had simply pocketed the pennies to support his drug habit. Its putting them in the cash register that has me stumped.

Maybe the guy is stealing from the till in some other way and hes using the pennies to cover up? That seems unlikely because even if he made this move 50 times a shift were still talking about only a dollar.

Maybe store ownership and its employees realize that despite the altruistic intentions of people like me, these pennies are routinely snatched up by cheapskates and shoplifters, so why not add a little to the stores bottom line instead? Thinking about it I get the same why-not on this theory, though: because its literally a handful of pennies, not even worth a staff memo. And, if this were the reasoning, why not just have no LAPTAP container in the first place. Theyre not required.

One more data point: Some time ago, perhaps in the same store, I remember getting the stink-eye from a clerk who apparently didnt appreciate me waiting around for my two pennies no matter what my reason for doing so might be. I thought it ridiculous, but there was definite stink-eye. So maybe this clerks sweeping the pennies back into the register was a simple eff-you for me making him do all that extra work of giving them to me in the first place.

I was tempted to go back and ask for an explanation  or my two cents.

But it wasnt worth my time and effort. Why was it worth his?
After a recent trip to Argentina, Samuel Gregg reflects on its current economic state in a piece for The Catholic World Report. Gregg highlights the role that current Argentine politics play on economic policy and how Pope Francis affects the Catholic Church in his home country.

For the first time in 13 years, Argentina has elected a non-Peronist leader. Mauricio Macri replaced Nestor Kirchner and his wife Cristina in November 2015. The Kirchners represented a wave of Latin American leftist-populists and brought economic disarray to Argentina. Gregg talks about some of the good economic policies that Macri is already putting in place:

Since assuming office, Argentinas new President, Mauricio Macri, has sought to take the country in very different directions. He ended Argentinas backing of the Chavista regime that has all but destroyed Venezuela. Macri is also exposing deep-seated corruption, the most notorious case thus far being a former Kirchner government official caught hiding several million US dollars in a convent. This has been accompanied by an effort to detoxify public discourse of the demagogic rhetoric thats long plagued Argentine politics. Economically, Macri has started, albeit cautiously, moving Argentina away from its closed, highly-statist economic arrangements. This has included abolishing currency and capital controls as well as eliminating some price-controls, particular export taxes, and specific subsidies.

Will the Catholic Church help smooth the path away from populism? Or will it, in the name of defending the poor, encourage resistance to reform?

Its also evident that the manner in which the pope speaks about poverty is shaping many Argentine Catholics approach to this subject. In an August 1 letter to Argentinas bishops, for instance, Francis spoke of peoples need for bread and work. People must be able to feed their families, he noted. But they also want to earn their bread through work, Francis stressed, instead of receiving handouts.

In the end of the article, Gregg discusses Argentinas greatest hurdle in getting away from collective populism and that is the idea that the state should be the leader in fighting unemployment, food-shortages, and poverty-increases.

Argentinas Catholic bishops had generally been careful not to comment on the precise policy details surrounding these challenges. This is, they recognize, primarily the responsibility of lay Catholics. But on August 13, the bishop who heads the Argentine episcopal conferences Social Pastorate Commission publicly called for a greater presence of the state to combat unemployment, food-shortages, and poverty-increases.

You can read Greggs full article on The Catholic World Report here.
Children's charity calls for action

The number of reported sex offences in Thames Valley schools has more than doubled in the last four years.

Thames Valley Police classed 370 alleged incidents as sexual offences in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire schools between 2011 and 2015. Reported sex offences on school premises have more than doubled in the four-year period, rising from 65 in 2011/12 to 137 in 2014/15.

Reported incidents included in the 110 per cent increase were abuse of trust, causing a child to watch a sex act, rape and attempted rape, sexual assault, voyeurism, sexual activity involving a child and exposure.

The figures were obtained by global childrens charity Plan International UK, which is calling for action. It wants the Government to commit to mandatory sex education which covers sexting, consent, healthy relationships and the law.

Plan International UK head of girls rights Kerry Smith said: This shows that were failing young people when it comes to learning about healthy relationships and consent.

Quality sex and relationships education helps young people to develop healthy attitudes towards sex and relationships while helping to tackle inappropriate and aggressive sexual behaviour.

The Thames Valley figures follow a national pattern of doubling sexual offences in schools; rising from 1,955 in 2014/15.

Figures were disclosed after a Freedom of Information request of UK police forces with 34 of 45 responses across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Police Scotland declined the request on cost grounds. Less than one in 10 suspected cases resulted in criminal charges or summons.

Although more than two-thirds of police forces responded, the charity said that the data contained many gaps and inconsistencies.

Given the nature, severity and school setting, its alarming that reporting on this data is inconsistent across police forces, said Ms Smith.
Teen also found to have no insurance after being pulled over near Newbury

AN unemployed teenager who tried to outsmart police by giving a false name after being caught travelling at more than 100mph on the M4 near Newbury has been fined more than 300.

Djamel Said Benadjaoud was pulled over as he approached Junction 13 at 106mph in the early hours of Sunday, July 24.

The 19-year-old from London, who was also driving with no insurance, initially gave officers a false name in an attempt to hide the extent of his motoring offence.

However, savvy police officers confirmed his true identity through the use of a mobile fingerprint device.

Appearing at Reading Crown Court last Thursday, Mr Benadjaoud pleaded guilty to obstructing a constable in the execution of their duty, speeding, driving without insurance and driving without a licence.

Defending, Tom Brymer told the court that his clients girlfriend had suffered a miscarriage and Mr Benadjaoud was merely attempting to be by her side as quickly as he could.

However, magistrates were unsympathetic saying: He could have tried anything else [to get there].

Its not just the fact you were driving fast, but that you werent insured either.

If you had an accident other people could have been involved, other people could have been injured, they could have died.

The teenager was fined a total of 330 and disqualified from driving for a period of six months.
The Birmingham Area Team for Operation Christmas Child will host a Kickoff Event from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, August 27, at First Baptist Church of Pelham in the annex building, located at 2867 Pelham Parkway.

The event is open to the public. There will be a time of prayer, praise and worship. Attendees will receive updates from "Around the World with Operation Christmas Child."

The updates will include:

* Haiti: Hear about the impact of an OCC Outreach Event

* Democratic Republic of Congo: Learn about packing parties

* Zambia: Get ideas for how to "pack more and spend less"

* Philippines: Get fun craft ideas for your shoeboxes

* Paraguay: Hear about the journey of a shoebox

* Ukraine: Experience the power of praying for OCC

Refreshments will be provided and there will be games and prizes.

Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritan's Purse, an international Christian relief and evangelism organization headed by Franklin Graham. The mission of Operation Christmas Child is to demonstrate God's love in a tangible way to children in need around the world, and together with the local church worldwide, to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Since 1993, Operation Christmas Child has collected and delivered more than 135 million gift-filled shoeboxes to children in more than 150 countries and territories. For many of these children, the gift-filled shoebox is the first gift they have ever received.

For more information about Operation Christmas Child visit samaritanspurse.org/occ.

MEDIA NOTE: For complete media materials including fact sheets and high-resolution, downloadable photos, visit samaritanspurse.org/occnewsroom.
 Twitter Shuts Down Accounts Linked to Terrorists | Main | Reuters Headline Describes Palestinian Attacker As "Driver" 

August 22, 2016

Wheres the Coverage? Four Palestinians Killed by Palestinians in Clashes



Four Palestinian Arabs were killed in clashes between Palestinian security forces and terror suspects? in Nablus on Aug. 18-19 2016, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) noted (4 killed in Nablus fighting between Palestinian officers, terror suspects,? Aug. 19, 2016). At least two other Palestinians were wounded during the violence. However, the fighting was not reported by many U.S. news media outlets.

JTA, citing the French news agency AFP, said that the fighting began when Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces sought to collect illegally owned weapons? in Nablus. Four PA operatives were shot. Two, identified by Palestinian news agency Maan as Shibli Ibrahim Abed Bani Shamseh and Mahmoud Tarayra, later died (4 killed, 2 injured after clashes between wanted Palestinians and security forces,? Aug. 18, 2016).

The PA is tasked with security cooperation with Israel, to include efforts against terrorist groups, as part of the 1990s Oslo diplomatic process that created the authority. Despite this requirement, PA security has a history of participating in or encouraging terror attacks, such as in Dec. 3, 2015 when a PA intelligence officer attacked and wounded an Israeli civilian and IDF soldier (Wheres the Coverage? Palestinian Official Shoots Israeli Solider,? CAMERA, Dec. 9, 2015).

Two other Palestinian men were killed early Aug. 19, 2016 during armed clashes when security forces attempted to arrest them,? Maan said. Citing an unnamed Palestinian official, Maan reported that the PA has launched a concerted campaign to detain the Palestinians responsible for the shooting.?



However, that campaign? and the violence which preceded it went unreported by the U.S. news media. A Lexis-Nexis search of major print outlets, such as The Washington Post, The Washington Times, USA Today and The Baltimore Sun, showed not a single mention of the four Palestinians killed, the fighting or the raids.

By contrast, Israel frequently receives media attention that is often disproportionate and frequently inaccurate. As a recent CAMERA Op-Ed in The Hill noted, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus dog bit two dinner guests at a party, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Reuters, among others, carried the story (Palestinian activist challenges anti-Israel campaign,? June 23, 2016). Of those outlets, only Reutersin a four-sentence briefreported the August 18-19 clashes? in which four Palestinians were killed (Four killed in Palestinian police arrest raid in West Bank,? Aug. 19, 2016).

In their report, Reuters uncritically quoted Adnan al Damiri, a Palestinian security spokesperson. However, as CAMERA has pointed out, al Damiri has a history of questionable statements. For example, he blamed the West for the March 22, 2016 Islamic State terror attack in Brussels, during which 31 people were murdered (U.S. and EU-Trained Palestinian Official Blames West for Brussels Terror Attack,? March 24, 2016).

Al-Damiri told Maan news agency that five [PA] security officers have been killed in the past month?presumably by Palestinian terrorists. Not surprisingly, these deaths also received scant attention from the U.S. news media.

Wheres the coverage?





Posted by SD at August 22, 2016 01:36 PM

Why is there no coverage by major media? How do we get them to post it on their websites? ellensue jacobson

Posted by: ellen sue jacobson at August 27, 2016 01:26 PM

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
JD Crowe flood art.jpg

File photo

(J.D. Crowe )

PASCAGOULA, Miss. - Although Monday evening at 5 p.m. is the deadline for those who feel compelled to provide flood relief items to the people in Louisiana, citizens of Pascagoula have done a lot to send their heartfelt condolences to the people whose shoes they occupied during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Items were loaded up Monday morning by the Pascagoula Police and Fire Department to deliver to Louisiana on Tuesday. What started as an idea between friends has now blossomed into something bigger than they could've imagined.

#Pascagoula's Fire Department and Police Department began loading all of YOUR donations this morning! Thanks for all of... Posted by City of Pascagoula -- Government on Monday, August 22, 2016

"The outpouring love for others is an amazing force," Suzanne Steinberger, Community Events Coordinator said. "I believe that the people in the community wanted to help the flood victims of Louisiana because they have helped us in the past. Helping others is something that both Ashley and myself have always had a passion for and try our best to put forth that effort whenever we can."

"We have such wonderful people both in the community and that work for the City of Pascagoula that take pride in representing our little town and without everyone coming together this idea would have been just that an idea and nothing more," Steinberger said.

Singing River Health System also collected donations until August 17 and delivered those items to Baton Rouge on last week. According to Richard Lucas, Director of Communications, the system simply wanted to do its part in helping to send relief to those in need.

"We on the Mississippi Gulf Coast certainly know about the difficulties that weather-related events can cause," Lucas said. "By sending supplies, Singing River Health System is telling our brothers and sisters in Louisiana, 'we have your back.'"

A huge thank you to all of our staff and members of the public who donated supplies for our friends in Baton Rouge! A... Posted by Singing River Health System on Thursday, August 18, 2016

Pascagoula Mayor Jim Blevins was overwhelmed at the way the city responded but said the type of generous spirit that lies within the community doesn't surprise him.

"It warms my heart to see Pascagoula and the surrounding communities send donations to help with relief in Louisiana," Blevins said. "We know what it feels like to lose everything so we want our neighbors to know that we will do what we can to support them. We're grateful to our Fire and Police Departments for their hard work in packing up all of the donations and getting them ready to help our neighbors in Louisiana.
JACKSON, Mississippi -- The coast's first confirmed case of the Zika virus has been reported by the Mississippi Department of Health.

According to the MDH, the case was reported in a Harrison County resident who recently traveled to Puerto Rico. The new case brings the state's total to 17 for the year.

Zika is a mosquito-borne virus that causes severe birth defects in a developing fetus - including brain damage, hearing and vision loss, and impaired growth - if the mother is infected during pregnancy.

Zika virus infection can cause a mild illness with symptoms (fever, joint pain, conjunctivitis or rash) lasting for several days to a week, but 80 percent of those infected have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. Death is very rare. The MSDH strongly advises pregnant women not to travel to countries where Zika is actively being transmitted.

"So far in Mississippi, all of our Zika cases have been travel-related," said Deputy State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers. "It remains crucial that pregnant women not travel to countries where Zika is actively being transmitted.

"Also, we are in peak West Nile virus season in Mississippi, and all residents should be mindful of protecting themselves, regardless of whether there has been a case reported in your county."

Zika has been seen in parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and some Pacific islands for years, but has recently been reported in approximately 50 countries, mostly in the Caribbean, Central and South America.

The breed of mosquito that is spreading Zika - Aedes aegypti - has not been detected in Mississippi since the early 1990s. The MSDH is currently conducting surveillance for Aedes mosquito populations in every county in the state.

The MDH also reported three new cases of West Nile virus in Chikasaw, Copiah and Perry counties, bringing the 2016 total to 14.

The MSDH suggests Mississippians use the following precautions to protect themselves and their environment from mosquito-borne illnesses:
ST. MARTIN, Mississippi -- A 23-year-old Vancleave man has been arrested after police say he struck and killed a 26-year-old man riding his bicycle in the St. Martin community.

According to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office, the incident occurred about 12:45 a.m. Saturday when, according to witnesses, a Ford F-150 truck struck a man riding a bicycle on Tucker Road near the intersection with Pine Ridge Road.

The bicyclist -- Jason Michael Salisbury -- was killed in the incident and witnesses told deputies arriving on the scene that the truck had left the scene and turned on to Deneen Road.

Deputies located the suspect -- identified as Dylan Anthony Bullock of Krohn Road in Vancleave -- standing outside the disabled truck.

Bullock was taken into custody and charged with leaving the scene of a fatality, with additional charges pending, according to the JCSO.
Willie Williams.jpg

Willie C. Williams was found dead in his Moss Point home on Friday afternoon. Residents in the area say that Williams was a pillar in the community, passionate about education, and commanded respect from the youth in the community.

(Facebook)

MOSS POINT, Mississippi --- Friend, mentor, leader, and peacemaker, were just some of the ways loved ones described Willie C. Williams. Moss Point police are still searching for answers, and the community is still in shock upon hearing that Williams, a well-known retired educator, was found dead in his home located at the corner of Frederick and Charles Street in Moss Point Friday afternoon.

"We lost a great man, a friend and mentor to so many in this community," said Patrice Pickett Thomas, who attended Charlotte Hyatt Elementary during Williams' tenure as principal. "Dr. Williams always made you feel special. He knew how to reach everyone."

Jhai Keeton couldn't agree more. Williams was his principal at Charlotte Hyatt and again during his ninth grade year at Ed Mayo Junior High. Keeton said Williams effortlessly transitioned as principal at the junior high school in the middle of the school year.

"I will never forget how Mr. Williams stood in front of the entire student body - seventh, eight, and ninth graders, and not one peep was heard," Keeton said. "He let us know what he was doing there and what he expected out of us. There was no giggling or anything. He commanded that kind of respect."

Williams served as principal, assistant superintendent, and interim superintendent during his time in the Moss Point School District. He was known as a stern, loving educator able to help students and staff members reach their full potential.

"It was different when he told you to pull your pants up," Keeton said. "I think it was because everybody knew it was no favoritism. They knew that if you respected him, he respected you."

"All children who were blessed to have him as an educator, found discipline and learned morals," said Thomas. "He was a serious disciplinarian but he did it with care and love. He would go to houses...not just make phone calls. We have lost someone who cared genuinely about us all."

When word circulated through social media that Williams had been found deceased, youth whose lives he impacted posted statuses about the impact he had on their lives.

He wasn't even my principal but he acted like he was every time he saw me.. RIP Mr. Williams Posted by L.j. Molden on Friday, August 19, 2016

Mary Alice Knight-Webb worked as Williams' secretary at Charlotte Hyatt for four years. She says staff members felt the same way students did about his leadership. Knight-Webb says it was a joy working for him, and she appreciated his humbleness.

He was always "focused on the students" she said. One year, she led a pretend fire drill to gather all students and staff outside to sing "Happy Birthday," and Williams was overwhelmed.

"He was very surprised and excited at the same time. He told me as we were walking back to the building that that was the first time anyone had done that for his birthday," said Knight-Webb.

Moss Point Police Chief Art McClung says 64-year old Williams was found stabbed to death in his home Friday afternoon by a friend who had been trying to reach him by phone. His vehicle had been stolen, but was recovered at an apartment building. Friends say he was last seen on Wednesday.

Police are following leads and have two people of interest, but want the community's help in solving the case. McClung says anyone with information is asked to call the Moss Point Police Department at 228-475-1711 or Crime stoppers at 877-787-5898.

Folks in the community say Williams left a great legacy, but still had so much more to offer this world, because he was passionate about education even in his retirement.

"I think that we should do a better job of appreciating our leaders," Keeton said. "Appreciate them while they are here. I want him to know that I loved him, and I cared about him."

"We have lost a gem," said Thomas. "I loved him, but God loves him best."

Williams funeral service will be held August 27 at 10 a.m. at First Missionary Baptist Church in Moss Point.
What if one blood test could screen for more than 50 types of cancer?
One of Editor & Publishers 10 That Do It Right 2021
Elephants are among the most highly intelligent, empathetic creatures on the planet and they are under siege from poachers and trophy hunters. Photo by Alamy

1.7K shares







France has become the first European country to ban the domestic trade in ivory and rhino horn. This lifesaving policy, announced by Environment Minister Segolene Royal, goes far beyond the European Unions current wildlife trade regulations and follows a series of progressive steps that Royal has already taken to combat wildlife trafficking since 2014. Royal also restricted the import of lion trophies into the country, so we are witnessing real leadership from her and from the administration of President Francois Hollande.

During my hour-long appearance on yesterdays Super Soul Sunday to discuss The Humane Economy, Oprah Winfrey included a short piece about the emotional lives of elephants and how they grieve for the loss of their family members, touching the bones of the fallen for days on end and helping to bury them. When we talk about policies to protect elephants, its not an abstraction. These are among the most highly intelligent, empathetic creatures on the planet  a keystone species in their ecosystems  and they are under siege from poachers and trophy hunters.

The United States implemented a near-total ban on the African elephant ivory trade earlier this year. In addition to this action by our federal government, a number of states have adopted or are considering measures to shut down in-state markets for such wildlife products. In Oregon, we are leading the Save Endangered Animals Oregon Coalition to support the measure, YES on 100, which will appear on the November ballot to protect 12 magnificent animals imperiled by poaching and global trade in their parts.

Frances move reinforces our continued call for an EU continent-wide ban. The European Union is a significant transit point and consumption destination for elephant ivory. It is the worlds largest exporter of pre-convention ivory  ivory acquired before the entry into force of the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Between 2003 and 2014, 92 percent of EU exports of pre-convention ivory tusks went to China or Hong Kong. Between 2011 and 2014, EU member states reported seizures of around 4,500 ivory items and an additional 780 kg as reported by weight. The rest of the EU member states should not continue to be outliers, defying conservation pleas when countries such as China and a majority of African elephant range states support or are working toward closing their domestic ivory markets. The EU member states too need to step up to meet the threat and pass the right kinds of restrictions  ones that result in better protections for endangered species.

Frances actions come just a few weeks before a Humane Society International policy team heads to Johannesburg, South Africa, for the Conference of the Parties for CITES. This is the forum at which nearly every country in the world comes together to decide how much protection from trade will be offered to endangered and threatened species, including elephants, lions, and rhinos. The African Elephant Coalition (AEC), representing 70 percent of the African elephant range states, has put forward a proposal to list all African elephant populations under Appendix I, affording these animals the highest level of international protection under the CITES treaty. Other proposed agenda items by the AEC include calling for the closure of domestic ivory markets worldwide and restricting the trade in live elephants to release back into the wild in another country.

Shockingly, the European Commission has voiced opposition to these elephant protection proposals. The EUs opposition has been called a death sentence to the elephants because as the largest voting block at the CITES Conference of the Parties, the EU holds the key to the success or failure of these crucial elephant protection documents. As if that is not shocking enough, World Wildlife Fund, the conservation organization, holds the same view and has encouraged the EU to oppose the AEC proposals.

Elephants and rhinos are beloved species and should not be reduced to trinkets, decorative items, or health tonic. The ecotourism revenue driven by wildlife watching provides an important economic foundation for so many local communities across the African continent.

Hats off to the French, to the range state nations, and to other countries that have taken strong measures to end the wasteful, disrespectful, and violent trade in wildlife products. Were doing our part in the United States, with measures like YES on 100, and well do still more in the next several years.
Columnist

Tom Kacich is a columnist and the author of Tom's Mailbag at The News-Gazette. His column appears Sundays. His email is tkacich@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@tkacich).
Reporter

Tim Mitchell is a reporter at The News-Gazette. His email is tmitchel@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@mitchell6).
Harry "Wayne" Roosevelt talks about the times he was shot at in the US Army in Vietnam. At his home in Mahomet on Friday, August 12, 2016.
Reporter/Columnist

Julie Wurth is a reporter covering the University of Illinois at The News-Gazette. Her email is jwurth@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@jawurth).
Oophorectomy is a surgical operation in which the ovaries are removed. The removal of these sex organs has been practiced for over a century as part of the treatment of breast cancer. It causes a significant reduction in the production and circulation of estrogen and progesterone, the primary female sex hormones.

Oophorectomy derives its clinical benefits from the fact that some breast cancers require these hormones to grow. Thus, reducing the production of hormones in the body may lead to a halting or slowing in the progression of these hormone-dependent breast cancers.

The history behind the procedure

The relationship between breast cancer and the presence of functional ovaries was first observed by a British doctor, Thomas William Nunn. He reported breast cancer regression in a woman 6 months after she had reached menopause. Based on Mr. Nunns observation, a German surgeon, Albert Schinzinger, was the first to propose removal of the ovaries as a potential therapy for breast cancer. This procedure was subsequently done for the first time in 1895 by a British physician, George Thomas Beatson. While some success was reported, it was largely unpopular at first, because it was associated with a high degree of morbidity.

It was not until the mid 20th century that large oophorectomy trials focusing on its role in breast cancer were studied and reintroduced into the mainstream of breast cancer treatment. Studies by reputable bodies, such as the Early Breast Cancer Trialists Collaborative Group, showed compelling evidence for the procedure. These studies suggested that the removal of the ovaries had a large positive effect on disease-free survival as well as on the overall survival of patients with early breast cancer. Advancements in medicine, and our understanding of breast cancer, however, has affected the practice of oophorectomy. These advancements include using chemotherapy, targeting hormone receptors and alternative ways to suppress ovarian function without the removal of these key organs.

Indications for oophorectomy, and risk factors

Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

Women who possess BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations have a greater risk of developing ovarian and breast cancer.

Those who have completed their families and have a genetic predisposition to the development of these malignant conditions are prime candidates for the procedure.

It may also be performed prophylactically in those who have a strong family history of ovarian and breast cancer.

Studies show that the risk of developing breast cancer in women with a BRCA mutation may be halved by bilateral oophorectomy. The chances of developing ovarian cancer in such women may be reduced by up to 90% by this procedure.

Important to note that is that the total risk varies depending on several factors, such as the lifestyle choices of the women (including their weight management and alcohol consumption), and their family history. Hence, oophorectomy may be of immense benefit in some women, but not in others. In the latter, the risks associated with the procedure and the possible side effects outweigh the benefit due to the reduction in cancer propensity.

While the surgical procedure is generally safe, the associated risks include injury to internal organs, intestinal blockage and infection. Moreover, the premature reduction of sex hormones may lead to problems, such as osteoporosis (or bone thinning) and an increased risk of heart disease.

References

Further Reading
Geographers at the University of Southampton have completed a large scale data and mapping project to track the flow of internal human migration in low and middle income countries.

Researchers from the WorldPop project at the University have, for the first time, mapped estimated internal migration in countries across three continents; Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Professor Andy Tatem, Director of WorldPop, comments: "Understanding how people are moving around within countries is vital in combating infectious diseases like malaria. The parasite which causes the disease can be quickly reintroduced to a malaria free area by highly mobile populations.

"Having an accurate overview of how different regions of countries are connected by human movement aids effective disease control planning and helps target resources, such as treated bed nets or community health workers, in the right places. Having data for all low and middle income countries across three continents will greatly aid disease control and elimination planning on global and regional scales."

Working with colleagues at the Flowminder Foundation and supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the researchers have used census micro-data (anonymised census information at the individual level) to model estimates of migration flows within countries and then produced a series of maps to visually represent the data. The research paper 'Mapping internal connectivity through human migration in malaria endemic countries' published in Scientific Data details the methods they employed, and presents the freely available data.

Lead author Dr Alessandro Sorichetta from the University of Southampton says: "We sourced the census data from around 40 different countries and have produced detailed population migration maps on a scale not seen before. They show webs of connectivity within countries - indicating high and low flows of people moving between different locations."

Figures from the International Organization for Migration and The World Bank show that, without accounting for seasonal and temporary migrants, more than one billion people live outside their place of origin - 740 million as 'internal migrants'. Human mobility is expected to continue to rise, creating a range of impacts, such as invasive species, drug resistance spread and disease pandemics.

Dr Sorichetta comments: "It's crucial we understand human mobility, so we can quantify the effect it has on our societies and the environment and provide strong evidence to support the development of policies to address issues, such as public health problems."

The researchers are now integrating the migration estimates with data on malaria prevalence - helping to inform regional elimination and global eradication plans for the disease. Equally, they believe the data could be used to support regional control and elimination strategies for other infectious diseases, for example, Schistosomiasis, River Blindness, HIV, dengue and Yellow Fever. Furthermore, the datasets could help inform decisions in the fields of trade, demography, transportation and economics.
Khammam: At least 10 passengers died and more than 15 people were injured after a private bus fell from a bridge into a canal in Khammam district in Telangana on Monday.



Preliminary inquiry revealed that the bus was on its way from Hyderabad to Kakinada via Khammam when the bus driver is said to have lost control of the vehicle.



"The accident occurred near Nayakangudem when the bus lost control and fell off a bridge on Nagarjunasagar canal," sources in the police department said.



"Seven persons were killed on the spot while three died in the hospital. All the injured were admitted to government-run hospital in Khammam," he added.



The survivors told the police that the negligence by the driver led to the accident.



According to them, the driver was running the vehicle at a high speed and applied sudden brake on reaching the bridge. The bus overturned and fell into the canal.



There were 31 passengers aboard the bus which had left Hyderabad around 11.30 p.m. on Sunday.



Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N. Chandrababu Naidu expressed shock over the accident.



Rao directed officials to ensure best possible treatment to the injured.



(With IANS input)
Patna: Flood victims on Monday held demonstrations across Bihar, expressing anger and impatience over the quality and quantity of government aid that has so far been provided to them.



With over one million people affected by floods and the situation remaining grim, district officials, particularly block development officers and circle officers, are facing the fury of victims complaining about inadequate relief supplies.



Hundreds of flood victims protested against the circle officer of Raghopur in Vaishali district, demanding adequate relief and compensation. Raghopur is not far from Patna and is represented by Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Prasad Yadav in the state assembly.



Raghopur is considered stronghold of Tejaswi's father and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad. Earlier, former chief minister and wife of Lalu Prasad, Rabri Devi, also represented Raghopur in the state assembly.



Angry over lack of relief, the flood-hit people in Nathnagar in Bhagalpur district staged a protest demanding adequate relief and compensation. In Begusarai district, flood victims blocked roads for hours demanding adequate relief.



Similar reports are coming from other flood-affected districts like Patna, Samastipur, Bhojpur, Khagaria and Aurangabad.



"At some places, flood victims blocked roads to protest against inadequate relief," an official of disaster management department said.



Hungry and homeless, the people also expressed anger over not being provided fodder for their cattle.



Ganga and other major rivers have submerged vast swathes of the state, forcing thousands from their homes.



The disaster has so far claimed 14 lives, including nine in Bhojpur district alone.



An official of the disaster management department said: "Rivers flowing above the danger mark are posing threat to the low-lying areas."



Over a dozen teams of the National Disaster Response Force and the State Disaster Response Force have been deployed in the flood-hit districts.



Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has ordered cancellation of leave of police, administrative officials and engineers.



Nitish Kumar also directed officials to speed up rescue and relief operations in the flood-affected areas. He asked the health department to arrange for medicines and DDT sprays to check outbreak of diseases once the floodwaters receded.



Officials said standing crops worth crores of rupees have been damaged and road communications at several places have been flooded.


Jammu: Contending that the unrest in Kashmir was "pre-planned", Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on Monday said a "handful of people" were deliberately keeping the Valley on the boil while 95 per cent people were peace-loving and should not be punished for the fault of 5 per cent.



She expressed pain that children are being used as a shield by "vested interests" while attacking camps and posts of security forces to incite them, as a result of which innocent kids become a casualty.



Mehbooba also sent out a message to those raising "pro-azadi" slogans, asking them to see the condition of Muslims in Islamic countries like Pakistan, Syria, Turkey and Afghanistan even though these nations have "freedom".



She said once gun makes inroads in a society, then the meaning of 'azadi' is lost.



"I have been saying that gun will not solve anything. Stones also will not solve anything," she said at a public meeting here, while underlining that anybody having any grievance should come forward to discuss it through talks.



Contending that she had planned so many developmental programmes to be pushed after Eid, she said the unrest was "pre-planned" as "vested interests" were keen to latch on to something to trigger unrest.



"I don't understand what happened... people were waiting for a chance. Whenever the situation becomes little better in J&K, tourism starts, work begins, something or the other happens which creates problems in normal functioning," Mehbooba said.



"After the Assembly (session) was over, we had decided to work more. But after (her) Assembly (election) result and Eid, all this began," she said.



Referring to the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in a gunfight, the Chief Minister said, "there was nothing new in this. Killing of militants has been happening for the past 25 years. I want to tell you this because all this was pre-planned. They were waiting for a reason, a chance to put the state back into that fire in which it was always."



She said, "they (those indulging in violence) are only a handful of people. Most Kashmiris want peace. They understand that the kind of freedom Kashmir is enjoying today is not there even in Islamic countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey and Pakistanis. When gun enters a country, it is no more free, no matter how much it claims to be free."
Ganjam:A woman was killed and her husband seriously injured in a village in Odisha after they complained to the police against a group of men who harassed their daughter.



Police sources said the parents were attacked by four young men in the Bhabarada village in Ganjam district after they lodged the complaint. The father of the victim is battling for life in hospital.



Following the incident, irate villagers set fire to a police jeep and staged a road blockade to protest against the incident.







The four men had allegedly passed lewd comments on the girl, following which her father filed the complaint with the Polasara police.



Relatives of the family allege the police failed to act even after they sought action against the culprits.




Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the 1.25 billion people will "always" stand with the neighbouring country in ensuring peace and prosperity as he jointly inaugurated through video conferencing the restored Stor Palace in Kabul with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.



"Afghanistan is a close friend. Our societies and people have had age old ties and links. It, therefore, saddens us to see that your proud nation continues to be challenged by externally sponsored instruments and entities of violence and terror.



"Let me assure the people of Afghanistan that in your quest to build a prosperous Afghanistan and to bring peace, security and stability to your society, the 1.25 billion people of India will always be on your side," he said. Modi, while speaking from his North Block office here, stressed that "whatever may be the odds, India will work with you for a bright future for all Afghans".



"The pledge of our partnership and strength of our friendship with Afghanistan is unwavering. Today's event is a testimony to the resolve and range of our cooperative endeavours. We want each Afghan to flourish and your society to be benefited from fruits of economic growth," he said.



On his part, Ghani said the "logic" of peace and benevolence will defeat the logic of terror and violence as he said India and Afghanistan have always been close friends and joint initiatives like these are a fruitful journey of cooperation between the two nations.



The Prime Minister underlined that "in our hearts and minds Indians and Afghans have always been closest of friends."



Modi also thanked the Afghan government for "protecting Indian Embassy and Consulates and ensuring the safety and security of Indian experts working in Afghanistan."



"The sacrifices made by our Afghan brothers will not be forgotten," the Prime Minister said.



Modi said the Stor palace "brings back to life a valuable landmark of Afghanistan's cultural heritage." The palace, located on a hilltop in capital city Kabul, was built by Afghan King Amanullah Khan in the 1920s. "The Stor palace has been the setting for many momentous historical events. To those who cannot see beyond shadows of violence in Afghanistan, the restored Stor palace is a reminder of the glory of Afghanistan's rich traditions.



"And for our Afghan brothers and sisters, it revives the beauty, the richness and splendor of lost memories of Afghan society," he said. True to the foundations of Indo-Afghan ties, Modi said, it links the present of the friendship to the historical bonds.



"I must commend all the artists, experts and consultants who worked day and night to accomplish this delicate task," he said. Calling Afghanistan a "close friend", the PM said the societies and people of the two nations "have had age-old ties and links."



"It, therefore, saddens us to see that your proud nation continues to be challenged by externally sponsored instruments and entities of violence and terror," he added. During his speech, the PM talked about the successful "joint initiatives" that both the countries have accomplished in the past like inauguration of the new Parliament complex in that country and the Salma dam in June this year, also called as the Afghanistan-India Friendship dam.



The Salma dam will revive and renew not just the economy and agriculture of the Herat region of Afghanistan. But will also build a strong and lasting pillar of support for Afghanistan's overall growth and development. The historic palace, also known as the Darul Aman palace, has been a witness of decades of conflict in the country.
Three days after a 65-year-old woman was mauled by 15 stray dogs in Thiruvananthapuram, another shocker comes from Palakkad where 8 people were bit & injured by the dogs.



The eight people attacked by the stray dogs sustained major hand and leg injuries.



Following these two major incidents of stray dogs injuring people within a week, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has called a meeting of concerned departments in the state capital to look into the issue.



Before the CM's meeting, the Thiruvananthapuram council will also hold a meet to discuss the menace that needs immediate attention.



It was on Friday night that the 65-year-old woman, Sheeluamma, was killed by 15 stray dogs at a sea shore near the state secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram. She suffered dog bites all over her body and succumbed to injuries on her way to hospital.



The dogs also attacked the local people who tried to rescue the woman by chasing them away. Sheeluamma's son Selvan, who was also attacked by the dogs while trying to rescue his mother, escaped by jumping into the sea.



The district administration has promised to act against the menace, but there is no clarity over the strategy to control stray dogs. Reports say the state human rights commission has directed Kerala Govt to compensate dog bite victims.







Congress MLA K Muraleedharan slammed the state government saying it is the responsibility of the state government to protect its people and that the Supreme Court has already directed that the life of a human being is more important than that of a stray dog.



"If the dog is mad (ill), the only solution is to kill it," added Muraleedharan.



Meanwhile the anger over the stray dog menace is spilling into the political domain too .The website of an animal welfare organization linked to Union Minister Menaka Gandhi was hacked by a group that's demanding culling of stray dogs.



The hackers demanded a 'stray-dog-free' India and put up screen shots of newspaper clippings of the death of 65-year-old woman in Thiruvananthapuram after she was mauled by stray dogs.



In view of the latest incidents, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday assured that necessary steps would be taken to end such canine attacks.



The former district collector Biju Prabhakar, however, had something more to say. He blamed it on the NGOs saying that the NGOs protecting the stray dogs are getting bribes from anti-rabies vaccine companies.



"We are seeing such incidents because of vested interest" said Prabhakar. "And country's leading lawyers are representing these NGOs in Supreme Court." added the ex collector.



"If these people are very serious about killing of any kind of animal, they should extend this kind of privilege to all the other animals which are being culled."



The section 11 of prevention towards cruelty says that nothing of this shall prevent a stray dog from being destructed in lethal chambers, asserted Biju Prabhakar blaming the NGOs for the growing menace.




New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj reached Mayanmar on Monday to hold talks with the top Myanmarese leadership, including State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, in pursuance of India's 'Act East Policy'.



The one-day trip by Swaraj, accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior Ministry of External Affairs officials, is the first high profile Indian visit after Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won a historic landslide election last year that finally brought an end to five decades of military rule.



She will call on President U Htin Kyaw, apart from meeting Nobel laureate and democracy icon Suu Kyi, who is the de facto leader.



Banned from becoming president by a junta-era Constitution, Suu Kyi has a strong control over the country's first civilian-led government.



The Constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president - Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.



The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 per cent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.



Incidentally, Swaraj's visit comes just days after Suu Kyi made a high-profile trip to China.



The discussions between Swaraj and Suu Kyi are expected to focus on New Delhi's bilateral relations with Nay Pyi Daw, as well as plans for the upcoming BRICS-BIMSTEC



Outreach Summit scheduled to be held in Goa.



Security issues concerning certain Myanmar-based militant groups operating in India's North East could also come up for discussion.



India and Myanmar share close relations with a robust development cooperation programme in areas such as agriculture, IT, human resource development, infrastructure development, culture among others.



The visit reaffirms India's commitment to heighten partnership with Myanmar in the areas of priority by the new government of Myanmar, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.
Micro-blogging website Twitter can be utilised to gauge negative emotions in the aftermath of violence, especially on campuses since students are the most likely users among the general population, revealed a research. Twitter can help analysts to gather the overall effect of traumatic experiences, like a school shooting, on people."Twitter's rapid distribution and widespread use enable us to avoid the fundamental difficulties with traditional survey methodologies," said lead researcher Roxane Cohen Silver, Professor at the University of California, Irvine."Studying communities impacted by traumatic events is often costly and requires swift action to enter the field when disaster strikes," Silver added.Social media, such as Twitter, offers a wealth of information that can provide an immediate window into a community's emotional response to a trauma experienced collectively by them. However, using a big data approach presents its own unique challenges, according to Nickolas M. Jones, student at University of California, Irvine."Locating community members who have experienced the trauma can be problematic," Jones explained.To infer members' location, prior researchers have either used geotagged tweets, which account for only 3 to 6 per cent of Twitter users, or tweets with hashtags, which yields vast numbers of tweets without certainty of the users' location.The new approach was deployed to study the impact of the deadly gun violence at University of California-Santa Barbara, Northern Arizona University and Oregon's Umpqua Community College.Followers of local Twitter accounts were identified, and the tweets of these likely community members were then downloaded for data analysis.In the study, the team compared negative emotional expression via Twitter by people in the impacted communities and those in three matched control communities shortly before and after the campus killings.Despite variations in the severity of violence at the colleges, results showed similar patterns of increased negative emotional expression in the post-event tweets from those in the affected areas, while tweets from those in the matched control locales exhibited no change in negative emotional expression during the same period of time.The study features in the forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Methods.
New Delhi: A Delhi court on Monday sentenced Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla to death and Baljeet Malik to life for murdering and robbing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh in 2009, observing that it was a "brutal" and "cold blooded murder".



During arguments on the quantum of punishment, Delhi Police asked for death penalty for the convicts, saying they killed her for "pleasure" and showed no remorse.



The judge observed that gruesome crimes against women were on the rise and any leniency to the criminals would send a wrong message to society. "The offence was committed in a brutal, cold blooded and cruel manner. The victim was helpless and remained in captivity for hours and the convicts brutally mauled her to death. It was an uncivilised act done in a barbaric manner. The magnitude and brutality of the crime makes it fall in the category of rarest of rare," the judge said.



Twenty-eight year old Jigisha, working as an operations manager in a management consultancy firm, was abducted and killed on March 18, 2009, after she was dropped by her office cab around 4 am near her home in Vasant Vihar area of South Delhi. Her body was recovered three days later from a place near Surajkund in Haryana.



The court had in July 2016, held the three men guilty of murder, abduction, robbery, forgery and common intention under IPC, saying it was "abundantly clear" that they had committed the crime. Kapoor was also convicted for the offence of using firearms under the Arms Act.







While convicting them on July 14, the judge had said "they committed her murder and disposed of her body in bushes and circumstantial evidence makes it clear that it was these men who committed the crime."



The police had filed the charge sheet in the case in June 2009 and trial began on April 15, 2010.



Recovery of the weapon allegedly used in Jigisha's murder had led to the cracking of the murder case of Soumya Vishwanathan, who was a journalist with a news channel. Soumya was shot dead on September 30, 2008, while she was returning home in her car from office in the wee hours.



Police had claimed robbery as the motive behind the killing of both Jigisha and Soumya.



The accused had used Jigisha's ATM card to buy expensive goggles, wrist watches and shoes from Sarojini Nagar market in South Delhi, police had said.
New Delhi: Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone has been roped in as the new brand ambassador of domestic airline company Vistara.



A new multimedia brand campaign of Vistara along with its first TV commercial (TVC) will be launched on Monday.



The campaign reinterprets and delivers on the brand promise of Fly the new feeling, through the eyes of Deepika.



The concept of the TVC revolves around how Deepika Padukone feels the same wonder and joy every time she flies Vistara, as she felt when flying for the first time.



The campaign intends to elaborate on the core interpretation of the brand promise which is about the feeling of looking forward to flying again.



It is a matter of great pride for me to be associated with Vistara, a brand that is reliable, warm and friendly; a brand that carries the lineage of Tata and Singapore Airlines...The new TVC aims to capture that feeling in a charming and evocative manner," Deepika said in a statement.



The airline has been giving a sneak peek to its customers through its ongoing teaser campaign #WhichStar running on various platforms, that has captured the imagination of millions of people already. The integrated campaign will be deployed across multiple platforms including TV, Digital, Print, Outdoor, Cinema and Airports.



Our new brand campaign with Deepika Padukone highlights the unique feeling of flying Vistara. Through this campaign, she has brought to life the special spark of happiness that people feel when they fly with Vistara, the airline that is proud to carry the remarkable heritage of Tata group, JRD Tata, and Singapore Airlines, Phee Teik Yeoh, CEO, Vistara said.
'The world is a book and those who do not travel have read only one page'



Whether youre a bag packer embarking on a solo trip, planning a romantic getaway, or wanting to spend quality time with your family miles away from home, travel offers huge benefits. Be it a short or long trip, travelling provides that much-needed break from the routine life and renews our perspective on life.



In fact one of the most commonly listed interests of people is to travel.



However, travel can have several forms. For instance, some travel only when it is required, like on a business trip, some travel to meet family and friends, while others travel for leisure. For such people travel is all about jet setting around the world, exploring different cuisines, cultures and also learning more about themselves in the crucible that is travel.



There is no denying that with changing trends and busy lifestyles people have been making that extra effort to take out time for their families. In fact, not just lifestyles, people's choice of destinations have also changed drastically.



Not domestic, most people now prefer travelling to international destinations. And while it is a fact that international locations attract tourists, there a few issues that potential travelers face.



First is expensive air tickets. Fliers find it extremely pinching to spend their hard earned money in air tickets. They would rather be happy spending it on shopping or exploring the destination.



Then there are a host of issues that the aviation industry has been trying to address since the longest time like flight delays, less frequent flights to certain destinations, troublesome transfers etc. But expensive air fares remain as one of the major issues holding people back from taking up travelling.



But since the launch of AirAsia, flying to destinations like Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, hasnt been any easier.



In fact there is lots to discover in Malaysias capital Kuala Lumpur. Called the shoppers paradise, the literal meaning of Kuala Lumpur is Muddy Confluence. The city was founded near the place where the rivers Klang and Gombak intersect, hence the name.



Merdeka Square, Chinatown, Petronas Twin Towers are a few interesting places to see around the city.



Heading to one of the biggest cities in the world Bangkok, the place has innumerable things to offer to tourists.



From the famous temple of the reclining Buddha, river cruise, Khao Yai National Park, Wat Arun, Chatuchak Weekend Market to the shopping malls and amazing spas, Bangkok has something for everyone.



And if you aim to travel within India, AirAsia perfectly connects you to different parts of the country. It has flights from a host of destinations including Bangalore, Kolkata, New Delhi, Kochi, Tiruchirappalli, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Chennai etc.



And the topping on the cake is that the air fares are the best in the industry.



Ironically, although the number of airlines and flights have increased and the rates are highly competitive, fares offered by these innumerable airlines are still high enough to burn a hole in a common man man's pocket.



So, a large percentage wait, book months in advance to lay their hands on the most economical air tickets that they can get.



But despite the low budget that people allocate for air travel, there are certain things that they do not wish to compromise with, and that is, easy, hassle-free and a comfortable travel experience.



Whether it is a couple heading for their honeymoon, a solo traveler, a family going on a vacation, group travelers, an athlete or a business traveler for that matter, everybody wants a good and comfortable air travel experience.



And although it is difficult to find an airlines that offers both economical air tickets and a pleasant and warm air travel experience, there is one airlines that offers both, and that is AirAsia.



So the next time you plan to head out for a holiday, the one stop destination for economical yet comfortable air travelling is AirAsia.

So, Explore. Dream. Discover.


Actor Ali Fazal is currently enjoying the positive reviews that is coming his way thanks to his latest release Happy Bhag Jayegi. The actor known for playing diverse characters and his expressive eyes shared with News18 how he connected to his character Guddu in the film."Guddu is the underdog in the film and that's the beauty of the character. No one can love the way he does and I connect with him on that aspect," Ali said.The actor says that he himself is very emotional and would rather kill for love rather doing the other way round. Happy Bhag Jayegi is a story of a young girl who in order to elope with her lover, Guddu, ends up in Lahore, Pakistan. In Bollywood, including our neighbouring country in the storyline is always controversial. However, Ali has a different take on it."There is nothing suggestive against the neighbouring country in Happy Bhag Jayegi. It's a feel good, happy go lucky family entertainer. There is no scope of controversy in it," Ali says.Ali Fazal has found success doing multi-starrers. Does it bother him to work alongside actors like Abhay Deol, Jimmy Shergill and Piyush Mishra who are known for their acting prowess?"I learnt a lot from all the senior actors during the filming of Happy Bhag Jayegi. I like it when I work with a talented cast, says Ali.He further added, "Whatever they were bringing on the table, I was using it to better my own performance."Before stepping in Bollywood, the actor has had worked in English films. He even featured in popular Hollywood franchise, Fast and Furious.About bridging gap between Bollywood and Hollywood, Ali says, "We live in a time where country specified cinema no longer exist. We are talking about world cinema now. The gap between Hollywood and Bollywood is narrowing and I am happy to play even a small part in the larger picture. "Ali will next be seen in a Hollywood venture being directed by Academy winner Stephen Frears titled Victoria and Abdul. The actor would be seen sharing screen with British actress Judi Dench. About the venture Ali says, Victoria and Abdul is my dream project. It's a biopic based on a true event in Queen Victoria's life and I would be playing the role of a clerk who the Queen shared a very interesting relationship with."The actor has been preparing for the role for a couple of months and will be leaving for London soon.Apart from films, the actor has worked in YFilm's web series Bang Baaja Baarat and he is excited about the future of digital. "Digital platform in on the verge of explosion. It's the next big thing as we live in the time where everything is being made for global audience. I feel lucky to be a part it, says the actor.From Bollywood to Hollywood, Ali admits he has too much on his plate and it's time to work on it. "I am in a happy place right now looking at my career graph. I don't have a particular genre, sometime it works against me because people get confused where and how to cast me but overall I am enjoying the experience."The actor will next be seen in Fukrey 2 which he will start shooting for by the end of this year.
New Delhi: Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, speaking in the Delhi legislative assembly, on Monday said the central government is trying to "destabilise" the Delhi government.



The opposition, however, countered the claim, saying the Delhi government has chosen "a path of confrontation".



"Like Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the central government is consistently trying to run Delhi indirectly like a President-ruled state," Sisodia said during a short duration discussion on the situation arising out of the August 4 judgement by the Delhi High Court in the matter related to governance of Delhi.



Sisodia added that Delhiites had chosen this government and its work is being praised around the world.



"We might be children in politics but if you (Centre) will obstruct our work and stop us from delivering on our promises, we will not spare you," Sisodia said.



Leader of Opposition Vijendra Gupta countered Sisodia, saying "the Delhi government is doing politics of confrontation and wants to continue it".



Sisodia also took a jibe at Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for being carried by two police officials while inspecting a flood situation in his state. The photograph went viral, attracting trolling of Chouhan.




New Delhi: With Kashmir in turmoil, a delegation of opposition parties from the state will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday to impress upon him the need for finding a "political solution" to the crisis by initiating a dialogue with "all stakeholders".



The delegation led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of the National Conference will apprise Modi of the ground situation in the state, which is in the grip of a prolonged spell of violence and lockdown since the gunning down of militant commander Burhan Wani by security forces on July 8, and highlight the plight of Kashmiri people.



The delegation will include CPI-M MLA Mohammed Yusuf Tarigami, state Congress President G A Mir, senior leaders of National Conference and some Independent MLAs.



Sources in the opposition parties that would comprise the delegation said it would request the Prime Minister to impress upon the state government to stop dealing with the situation "administratively" as it was leading to "unprecedented disaffection", especially among the youth.



It would underscore the need to initiate a "credible and meaningful" dialogue with "all stakeholders" to bring an end to the unrest without "further waste of time", sources said.



The delegation would bring up the issue of use of pellet guns by security forces which has caused injuries to civilians on a large scale and pitch for an end to "mass harassment, raids and arrests" as these have worsened an already volatile situation in the state.



With the unrest in Kashmir showing no signs of abating, leaders of opposition parties led by Omar had on Saturday called on President Pranab Mukherjee and requested him to urge the Modi government to find a political solution to it.



The visit to the President followed a meeting chaired the 46-year-old Omar where serious concern was voiced about the turmoil spreading to other parts of the state including Jammu and Kargil.



The former chief minister, who was also accompanied by senior leaders of NC including Nasir Wani, Davinder Rana, Ali Mohammed Sagar and AR Rather, had on Saturday said, "The fire that has been raging in Kashmir Valley has already started spreading across Peer Panjal and Chenab Valley in Jammu region and Kargil area."
New Delhi: The government has rejected suggestion to abolish tax exemptions given to political parties, saying these are to strike a balance between encouraging political activities and regulating their activities in the interest of democracy in the country.



Terming the suggestion of RTI activist Subhash Agrawal as not feasible, the Ministry of Finance has said, "Political institutions are cornerstones of any democratic set-up and provisions contained in the 13A, 80GGB and 80GGC of the Income Tax Act, 1961 intend to encourage and empower such institutions."



Six national political parties -- Congress, BJP, BSP, NCP, CPI and CPI(M) -- were brought under the purview of the RTI Act by the CIC because they enjoy indirect funding from the government in the form of subsidies and tax exemptions.



All the political parties brought under the RTI Act are opposing the directive of the transparency panel.



"It would not be appropriate to attempt a parallel comparison with the activities of other entities such as trusts, funds and institutions of charitable nature. The nature of activities undertaken by charitable entities is very different from that of political parties.



"As the very purpose of charitable entities and political parties are different, different provisions have been made under the Income Tax Act," it said.



The response was provided to Agrawal who wanted to know what action has been taken on his suggestion to abolish tax exemption to political parties and NGOs.



"Democratic institutions form the very basis of polity in India and it was deemed necessary that political parties be treated differentially so that impetus is given to organised political activity.



"Political parties require funds in order to carry out a variety of activities including contesting of elections, organising meetings and rallies, publishing literature among others," it said.



The response said these activities are both of a regular nature such as organising of rallies and bringing out publications and also periodic with respect to certain matters such as conduct of elections, etc.



"Accordingly, political parties have been granted certain exemptions and deductions so that they are able to utilise maximum funds for the public purpose of political activity," it said.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday expressed deep concern and pain over the prevailing situation in Kashmir and said that those who lost their lives during the unrest are "part of us, our nation".



"Whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us," Modi told a delegation of opposition leaders of Jammu and Kashmir.



Modi said his government stands with the state of Jammu and Kashmir and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same.



During the meeting with the delegation led by former chief minister Omar Abdullah, the Prime Minister expressed "deep concern and pain" at the prevailing situation in the state and appealed for restoration of normalcy in the Valley which has been witnessing unrest for the last 45 days.



"We need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution," he said.







Modi emphasised on the need for all political parties to work together to find a solution to the problems of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the sources said.



He also expressed his commitment to the development of the state.



Earlier in the day, a delegation led by NC leader Omar Abdullah had called on the Prime Minister and appealed that a political approach needs to be adopted for resolving the present crisis in the Valley and to ensure that the "mistakes" of the past are not repeated.



Kashmir has been witnessing unrest since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8.



(With inputs from PTI)
Bangladesh government has launched a large scale counter propaganda to fight extremist ideology and groups like the ISIS. The move comes after it was discovered that the young men involved in the attack on July 3 at Holey Artisan Bakery were from top schools and were strongly motivated by extremist ideology and online propaganda of ISIS.



The government however claims the ISIS has no presence in Bangladesh.



Soon after the terror attack, the Ministry of Education gave clear instructions to all schools and colleges to regularly monitor students and teachers and report all suspicious activity.



Speaking exclusively to CNN-News18, Hasanul Haq Inu, Minister for Information and Broadcasting said, "The govt has intensified counter propaganda after the Holey Artisan Bakery attacks. We have asked television authorities, radio and even cinema to dedicate more time for addressing false propaganda, rumours, misinterpretation of religion and destruction of history".







The Minister said the Bangladesh state-run television and other broadcasters have been asked to make small television commercials and even documentaries to tell people about the reality and counter terror ideology," he said.



"Terrorism is a political phenomenon and must be handled politically. Law enforcement agencies can take care of terrorists, but terrorism can only be destroyed when you crack down on people who propagate it, who make hate speeches and instigate attacks," he added.



The government claims that at least a hundred Muslim clerics have signed a letter asking people to reject terror ideology.



The fact the students who were involved in the brutal killing of twenty hostages were from top schools like Scholastica, North South University and Turkish Hopes came as a huge shock for the government.



Recently the Bangladesh police also arrested a teacher formerly employed with one of these universities on conspiracy charges. The government claims it has begun close monitoring of all schools and universities across Bangladesh.



Minister Hasanul Haq Inu told CNN-News18, "We have asked all educational institutions to go for interactive meetings with guardians, students and teachers. There are question and answer sessions on what students should do and should not do, what religion means and how guardians must behave."



Confirming the directive, Professor Atiqul Islam, Vice Chancellor of North South University said the institution has already held four interactive sessions for over six thousand students. The discussions revolved around the curse of extremism and misinterpretation of religious scriptures.



On the directions of the government the college has also formed an anti-terror committee asking students to report the slightest hint of terror-related activity.



The notification, a copy of which is also on the college website, says the identity of the informer will be kept a secret. One of the main tasks of this anti-terror committee is to monitor online activity and social media accounts of all students.



Talking about the extent of vigilance, Prof Islam said, "If any student remains absent without reason for ten days then his guardian is called and questioned about the students whereabouts. If the case is suspicious we report it to law enforcement authorities immediately".



Schools have handed out a list to the government containing the names of students who have been missing for the last three years.



The government is also monitoring provocative preachers. Zakir Naik of Peace TV is one such speaker whose speeches have been formally banned in Bangladesh.



Top government officials also confirmed that he will not be allowed to enter the country. This after investigators said that some of the accused in the Holey Artisan Bakery attack may have been inspired by Naik.
Budapest: Severed pigs' heads should be hung along Hungary's border to deter Muslim refugees and migrants from entering the country, an MEP has suggested.



Gyorgy Schopflin, a member of the right-wing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, sparked outrage and disbelief with the suggestion.



He made it during an ill-tempered exchange on Twitter with a human rights campaigner.



Andrew Stroehlein, European media director for Human Rights Watch, posted a tweet in which he criticised Hungary for using bizarre, totemic masks made out of beetroot to scare refugees trying to cross the border from neighbouring Serbia.



The existence of the ghoulish vegetable heads was first reported last week by a Hungarian journalist. It is not clear who made them but there has reportedly been no effort by Hungarian police or soldiers to take them down.



Refugees are fleeing war & torture, Hungary. Your root vegetable heads will not deter them, Stroehlein wrote in his tweet.



The MEP, a former academic who is a member of the governing Fidesz party, wrote back: Might do so. Human images are haram. But agree, pig's head would deter more effectively.



He was described as a sad old man full of hate and his comment was branded as disgusting.



The pigs' head suggestion reflected a deep current of xenophobia and anti-migrant feeling within the Hungarian government, Stroehlein told the Telegraph.



With the current government, the idea of putting up pigs' heads and turnips is in many ways the least of the issues. Their treatment of refugees has been appalling - using violence to push people back from the border. Conditions in reception centres are inhumane. Refugees are treated like animals.



Hungary closed its southern border with Serbia last year as around a million refugees and migrants, many of them from Syria, sought to travel from Turkey, through Greece and along the Balkan route to Germany and Scandinavia.
Commissioner @nishasagarwal @NYCImmigrants proclaims today as NYC India Day Parade on behalf of Mayor @BilldeBlasio! pic.twitter.com/U2oeh10rnt  NYC Mayor's CAU (@mayorsCAU) August 21, 2016

Thousands of Indians in traditional finery celebrated India's 70th Independence Day at one of the largest parades outside the country with the iconic Empire State Building lighting up in Indian tricolour.The 36th India Day Parade by the Federation of Indian Associations - New York, New Jersey, Connecticut on Sunday ran through about 13 streets in Madison avenue in Manhattan and featured tableaux by various Indian-American groups, marching bands, police contingents and cultural performances by young Indian-Americans.Chief Guest at the event Yoga guru Baba Ramdev said India represents the glory of the past, the present moment's strength and is moving forward with hopes and dreams of a brighter future."India has made its mark through its strength, culture, heritage and honesty," he said, expressing hope that the Indian tricolour continues to fly high around the world.Amid loud cheers and applause, Ramdev, speaking in Hindi, said the world today recognises India's strength and its tremendous contribution to health, education, political and spiritual system."Combining its spirituality and modernism, the country is moving forward," he said and called on Indians living in the US and abroad to work together to take the nation, its cultural heritage and "Indianness" to greater glory.India's over a billion-strong population and its diaspora spread across the world are working for the country and contributing to its growth and glory from wherever they are, Ramdev said.Underscoring the importance of Yoga, he said it is not just a physical exercise but a "complete medical science, life science and way of living" and promotes non-violence and harmony."Ayurveda, non-violence, truth, harmony, co-existence and brotherhood are India's culture and heritage," Ramdev said, adding that the people of India have to take this ancient practise forward.Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan, the Grand Marshal of the parade, said it felt "wonderful" to be the part of India's Independence Day celebrations in New York.He recalled that the last time he had attended the parade was in 1997 when his father, Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan was the Grand Marshal. The senior Bachchan had participated in the 50th anniversary of India's Independence Day 19 years ago."It is a huge honour to be here and represent the beautiful nation of ours," Abhishek said, waiving out to the crowd from a stage, as people thronged to click pictures with him and shake his hand.Amitabh tweeted, "And this Abhishek in New York a short while ago... Grand Marshall for theIndia Day Parade in Manhattan NYC, USA. A proud moment... I was appointed the same years ago... now son follows".India and the US share common values of plurality, secularism and justice for all, Jain spiritual leader Acharya Lokesh Muni said in a statement.The Indian diaspora has contributed significantly to America's progress and now under flagshipprograms such as 'Make in India', 'Digital India' and 'Startup India', India is emerging as the land of opportunity for American companies.India's Consul General in New York Riva Ganguly Das, along with several Indian-American leaders, witnessed the parade. Tamil actor Vikram was also the Chief Guest at the parade.Organisers of the event said they were expecting a crowd of about 75,000-100,000 people for the day-long celebrations, which also included special food stalls, cultural extravaganza and special floats by various Indian organisations based in the US such as Air India and State Bank of India.On the occasion, the iconic Empire State Building was lit up in the Indian try-colour.People chanted patriotic slogans such as 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', 'Vande Mataram' and 'Jai Hind' and carried banners, placards along with Indian and American flags as they witnessed the floats and celebrities from the barricaded pavements along the parade route.Indian music and popular Bollywood songs reverberated through the air as people celebrated with a fervourof patriotism. Several Americans also watched the event.Families had travelled from nearby states such as Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts to witness the parade, which has been an annual fixture in the city's calendar since 1981.There was a large presence of personnel from the New York Police Department against the backdrop of security concerns doing such large gatherings.The parade showcased India's cultural richness as well as the achievements of the diaspora through colourful floats.
Appomattox residents can comment on a trash removal company moving to the old Thomasville Furniture plant property and the possibility of having apartments above retail space on Church Street at Tuesdays 6 p.m. public hearings at the Appomattox Municipal Building, 210 Linden St., Appomattox.

Bedford-based Bays Trash Removal, Inc. wants to store portable toilets and service trucks at the old Thomasville Furniture plant. Latitude 37 Appomattox, LLC, owned by Bedford County developer George Aznavorian, filed for a conditional use permit seeking permission from the town of Appomattox to store the items at the plant, on behalf of Bays Trash Removal, Inc.

Council is expected to vote on that request, as well as another that would allow self-storage units on the Thomasville Furniture property after the public hearings Tuesday.

According to public hearing documents, two to three Bedford-based Bays Trash Removal employees will be on site at various times throughout the day. Bays' trucks with the portable toilets are filled with water each morning at the Appomattox site and waste will be emptied each evening.

The towns planning commission recommended approval of the permit providing that no septic waste is dumped on the site, a maximum of 8,000 gallons of water and sewer capacity are used, Bays installs a sewer meter and submits a monthly report on its sewer usage to the town of Appomattox.

Clerk of the Council Roxanne Casto said Friday when reached by phone Bays would be locat-ed behind the old plant, closer to the railroad tracks.

Tuesdays second public hearing will address Church and Main, LLCs request to add an apartment to the second level of 1848 Church Street, the old Babcock Store property. Church and Main, LLC is owned by Donald Wilk.

The planning commission recommended approval of the permit on the condition the property owner lives at the property and two off-street parking spaces be provided for the apartment.

Earlier this year, former Town Manager William Bill Gillespie proposed an ordinance that would allow residences above retail spaces in downtown Appomattox. The planning commis-sion was in favor but town council decided to continue on a case by case basis, Casto said.

During a workshop following the public hearing, members will discuss a new Board of Zoning Appeals member, drainage complaints on Sunrise Street and a request for financial assistance from the town of Pamplin City for its annual Celebrate Pamplin event.
Gov. Terry McAuliffes massive restoration-of-rights order for about 206,000 felons prompted 13,000 of them to register to vote before the Supreme Court of Virginia overturned the order last month.

Because restoration of civil rights is a prerequisite to an application for the restoration of firearms rights, a number of ex-offenders subsequently used their new status to apply to circuit courts throughout the state to restore their gun rights.

But now authorities and individuals involved in gun-rights restoration potentially affected by the court ruling are confronted with a murky legal and logistical question: What to do with ex-offenders who successfully applied to have their gun rights restored and now possess firearms?

Its quite a pickle for the citizens actively involved, said Seth Saunders, a Richmond criminal defense attorney who also specializes in firearms-rights restoration.

None of them did anything wrong ... but its created a minefield of issues when it comes to the process, he said. There is no solid answer right now, and thats part of the problem.

The issue is yet another unintended consequence of the Democratic governors order, and the Supreme Court of Virginias ruling on July 22, in response to a legal challenge by Republican General Assembly leaders.

This is a pretty unusual situation without a clear answer, said Michael Kelly, spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring.

The Supreme Court dealt with voters in its order, but not other Virginians who had relied on the governors order to exercise certain rights and privileges. The situation will ultimately require some judicial clarification from a circuit court, or perhaps the Supreme Court itself.

***

Its hard to gauge how many people are caught up in the gun-rights limbo. Local prosecutors said they did not see a huge leap in applications for firearms restoration after the governors blanket civil-rights restoration orders in April, May and June.

Those orders automatically granted to nonviolent and violent felons alike who had completed their sentences the right to vote, sit on a jury, become a notary public and seek elective office.

But the absence of guidance from the courts regarding the gun-rights restoration since the Supreme Court overturned McAuliffes order restoring other rights has left no clear direction on how to handle those who obtained guns in the interim, people involved in the process said.

I can only imagine that your firearms restoration is not valid if you are someone caught in the middle, said Richmond defense attorney Susan Allen, who handles restoration issues as part of her practice.

If you no longer have a valid civil-rights restoration, you dont meet the eligibility requirements.

Saunders, however, said he could argue that clients who successfully pursued restoration of gun rights under the authority of the governors mass civil-rights restoration order are entitled to retain their firearms, despite the rescinded civil-rights order.

If I took a ripe claim to the courts  which it was at the time a judge signed off on it  that tells me the rights are restored and valid, he said. Otherwise, Saunders said the courts or law enforcement need to clarify the law and let all folks affected know it has been corrected.

The consensus among commonwealths attorneys and law enforcement officials interviewed appears to be that people who obtained firearms using the now-rescinded mass civil-rights restoration order technically are no longer legally allowed to possess them.

Individuals need to refer back to the governors website for direction on how to proceed concerning the steps necessary to secure a valid restoration of their voting rights, the Virginia State Police said in a statement.

Once thats accomplished, then those individuals will have to reapply through the circuit court to have their gun rights restored.

If someone in possession of a firearm as a result of the order is stopped by a law enforcement officer, the state police said the individual would need to show documentation of gun-rights restoration.

The officer would advise the person that any firearm in that individuals possession at the time would have to be turned over to another individual, such as a family member, neighbor or friend, who can lawfully possess a firearm.

Officials said that if no one else was in the vehicle when the person was stopped, the officer would need to take custody of the weapon until a person legally able to possess the firearm could claim it.

Defense attorneys said that if someone possessed a weapon and had not received notice that the gun rights are no longer valid, such circumstances would not warrant the filing of charges for illegal possession of a firearm, let alone successful prosecution.

Youve got a darn good defense, Allen said. You would be hard-pressed to think anybody is going to be convicted under those circumstances.

***

But those caught in the middle of the gun-rights situation still face additional obstacles.

As a result of the Supreme Court ruling, state elections officials set an Aug. 8 deadline for local registrars to remove from the voting rolls the names of the 13,000 felons who had registered under McAuliffes order.

The governor said he would reinstate individually the voting rights of all who had received them under the blanket orders he issued in April, May and June.

To date, however, none of those affected has had their rights individually restored. On Friday, McAuliffes office said he will make a major announcement on rights restoration on Monday.

Felons wishing to vote will have to wait until they receive notice from the governor that their individual rights are restored and then re-register  a process that takes little time and no money.

But people who have to reapply to a circuit court for gun rights potentially face additional court costs and legal fees to restore their firearms rights.

The process, which involves a scheduled court hearing and review by a local commonwealths attorneys office, also can take time  anywhere from three weeks to months, defense lawyers say.

Its not something you can do on a Tuesday afternoon, Saunders said.

Henrico County Commonwealths Attorney Shannon L. Taylor, among the first to raise the gun-rights limbo issue after the Supreme Courts ruling, said she believes a number of circuit judges, recognizing the potential legal challenge to McAuliffes original order, continued cases involving firearms restoration to avoid the potential conflict.

After the Supreme Court ruling, the Virginia Association of Commonwealths Attorneys sent an email to prosecutors throughout the state raising the issue and suggesting ways to handle gun-rights cases once they come back around.

After reviewing the research and communicating with the Henrico Circuit Court, we have decided that for the one or two individuals who fall into this category, we will issue a show-cause motion to bring them back before the court so that the judge might be able to explain what has happened with the Virginia Supreme Court decision and how it voided their order, Taylor said.

It is my understanding that those individuals who acted upon either their right to vote and/or their right to possess firearms are a priority for the current secretary of the commonwealth to ensure that the appropriate executive order is enacted for that individual. Thus, it is our intention to work with the individual to ensure that they are following the law.

Richmond Commonwealths Attorney Michael N. Herring said those who had gun rights restored after McAuliffes order that are now invalidated by the Supreme Court ruling should be given notice that they are technically in violation of the law if they possess a firearm.

The idea that we can reasonably expect the restored to inspect the governors website (to understand their legal status) is ludicrous, he said.

Instead, he hoped that those who possess firearms under the order will do the right thing with the understanding that down the road, we would be there with them through the process to reacquire his rights.

To some, the unintended consequences of the governors rights-restoration effort would have been easier to address before the fact, instead of after.

The governor rushed into something, and I dont think he thought it all the way through, said Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun-rights advocacy group. I dont even think he was considering gun rights.
Gov. Terry McAuliffes massive restoration-of-rights order for about 206,000 felons prompted 13,000 of them to register to vote before the Supreme Court of Virginia overturned the order last month.

Because restoration of civil rights is a prerequisite to an application for the restoration of firearms rights, a number of ex-offenders subsequently used their new status to apply to circuit courts throughout the state to restore their gun rights.

But now authorities and individuals involved in gun-rights restoration potentially affected by the court ruling are confronted with a murky legal and logistical question: What to do with ex-offenders who successfully applied to have their gun rights restored and now possess firearms?

Its quite a pickle for the citizens actively involved, said Seth Saunders, a Richmond criminal defense attorney who also specializes in firearms-rights restoration.

None of them did anything wrong  but its created a minefield of issues when it comes to the process, he said. There is no solid answer right now, and thats part of the problem.

The issue is yet another unintended consequence of the governors order, and the Supreme Court of Virginias ruling on July 22, in response to a legal challenge by Republican General Assembly leaders.

This is a pretty unusual situation without a clear answer, said Michael Kelly, spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring.

The Supreme Court dealt with voters in its order, but not other Virginians who had relied on the governors order to exercise certain rights and privileges. The situation will ultimately require some judicial clarification from a circuit court, or perhaps the Supreme Court itself.

Its hard to gauge how many people are caught up in the gun-rights limbo. Local prosecutors said they did not see a huge leap in applications for firearms restoration after the governors blanket civil-rights restoration orders in April, May and June.

Those orders automatically granted to nonviolent and violent felons alike who had completed their sentences the right to vote, sit on a jury, become a notary public and seek elective office.

But the absence of guidance from the courts regarding the gun-rights restoration since the Supreme Court overturned McAuliffes order restoring other rights has left no clear direction on how to handle those who obtained guns in the interim.

I can only imagine that your firearms restoration is not valid if you are someone caught in the middle, said Richmond defense attorney Susan Allen, who handles restoration issues as part of her practice. If you no longer have a valid civil-rights restoration, you dont meet the eligibility requirements.

Saunders, however, said he could argue that clients who successfully pursued restoration of gun rights under the authority of the governors mass civil-rights restoration order are entitled to retain their firearms, despite the rescinded civil-rights order.

If I took a ripe claim to the courts  which it was at the time a judge signed off on it  that tells me the rights are restored and valid, he said. Otherwise, Saunders said, the courts or law enforcement need to clarify the law and let all folks affected know it has been corrected.

n n n

The consensus among commonwealths attorneys and law enforcement officials interviewed appears to be that people who obtained firearms using the now-rescinded mass civil-rights restoration order technically are no longer legally allowed to possess them.

Individuals need to refer back to the governors website for direction on how to proceed concerning the steps necessary to secure a valid restoration of their voting rights, the Virginia State Police said in a statement.

Once thats accomplished, then those individuals will have to reapply through the circuit court to have their gun rights restored.

If someone in possession of a firearm as a result of the order is stopped by a law enforcement officer, the state police said, the individual would need to show documentation of gun-rights restoration.

The officer would advise the person that any firearm in that individuals possession at the time would have to be turned over to another individual  who can lawfully possess a firearm.

Officials said that if no one else was in the vehicle when the person was stopped, the officer would need to take custody of the weapon until a person legally able to possess the firearm could claim it.

Defense attorneys said that if someone possessed a weapon and had not received notice that the gun rights are no longer valid, such circumstances would not warrant the filing of charges for illegal possession of a firearm.

Youve got a darn good defense, Allen said. You would be hard-pressed to think anybody is going to be convicted under those circumstances.

n n n

But those caught in the middle of the gun-rights situation still face additional obstacles.

The governor said he would reinstate individually the voting rights of all who had received them under the blanket orders he issued in April, May and June.

To date, however, none of those affected has had their rights individually restored. On Friday, McAuliffes office said he will make a major announcement on rights restoration on Monday.

Felons wishing to vote will have to wait until they receive notice from the governor that their individual rights are restored and then re-register  a free process that takes little time.

But people who have to reapply to a circuit court for gun rights potentially face additional court costs and legal fees to restore their firearms rights.

The process, which involves a scheduled court hearing and review by a local commonwealths attorneys office, also can take anywhere from three weeks to months, defense lawyers say.

Its not something you can do on a Tuesday afternoon, Saunders said.

Henrico County Commonwealths Attorney Shannon Taylor, among the first to raise the gun-rights limbo issue after the Supreme Courts ruling, said she believes a number of circuit judges, recognizing the potential legal challenge to McAuliffes original order, continued cases involving firearms restoration to avoid the potential conflict.

After the Supreme Court ruling, the Virginia Association of Commonwealths Attorneys sent an email to prosecutors throughout the state raising the issue and suggesting ways to handle gun-rights cases once they come back around.

We have decided that for the one or two individuals who fall into this category, we will issue a show-cause motion to bring them back before the court so that the judge might be able to explain what has happened with the Virginia Supreme Court decision and how it voided their order, Taylor said. It is my understanding that those individuals who acted upon either their right to vote and/or their right to possess firearms are a priority for the current secretary of the commonwealth to ensure that the appropriate executive order is enacted for that individual. Thus, it is our intention to work with the individual to ensure that they are following the law.

Richmond Commonwealths Attorney Michael Herring said those who had gun rights restored after McAuliffes order that are now invalidated by the Supreme Court ruling should be given notice that they are technically in violation of the law if they possess a firearm.

The idea that we can reasonably expect the restored to inspect the governors website [to determine their status] is ludicrous, he said.

Instead, he hoped that those who possess firearms under the order will do the right thing with the understanding that down the road, we would be there with them through the process to reacquire his rights.

To some, the unintended consequences of the governors rights-restoration effort would have been easier to address before the fact, instead of after.

The governor rushed into something, and I dont think he thought it all the way through, said Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun-rights advocacy group. I dont even think he was considering gun rights.
Crop yields forecast to climb

Soybean, corn, cotton and peanut production forecasts are up this year from last year, while winter wheat and barley has decreased from 2015 levels, according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Corn is forecast to hit 51.3 million bushels, up 6 percent from the previous crop. According to Virginia state statistician Herman Ellison, the corn crop will be the third highest on record.

Soybean production is predicted to be 15 percent higher than 2015, with a yield of 24.6 million bushels. With 69 percent of the crop rated good to excellent, its expected to be the second highest on record, according to Ellison.

Virginia cotton production is projected to be 167,000 bales higher than last year, an increase of 17 percent.

Peanut farmers anticipate a 78-million-pound harvest for 2016, up 6.6 percent. Alfalfa hay production also is estimated to increase 10 percent, with a haul of 248,000 tons.

On the other hand, winter wheat is forecast to be down 31 percent from 2015, and barley is down 4 percent.

Margaret Carmel

State ag department revamps website

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services redesigned their website, which helps connect those interested in farming with those looking to sell.

After reviewing feedback from users, the VDACS worked with the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation and the Virginia Beginning Farmer and Rancher Coalition to create a certification process for farm seekers to better demonstrate their qualifications.

Farm seekers who have completed the Certified Farm Seekers program will be highlighted on the new sites interactive map, which shows the location of farm owners and certified farm seekers.

Farm seekers interested in completing the program should visit http://www.vafarmlink.org to fill out the application.

Margaret Carmel

Lynchburg city managers influence recognized

An association of more than 1,500 local-government professionals has named Lynchburgs new city manager a top influencer in government.

Engaging Local Government Leaders, which covers 45 states, ranked City Manager Bonnie Svrcek in 11th place among 100 such influencers. The list came from nominations received.

In May, Svrcek was named as Lynchburgs first female city manager. Her predecessor, Kimball Payne, retired June 30.

The top 100 is not based on title or longevity. Its based on the influence that an individual is having in their community and outside their community through professional associations, publications, and presentations, according to a city news release that quoted ELGL.

Staff reports
Neat columns drawn over hundreds of pages in two full-size notebooks trace the financial transactions of Ruby Van Scoten at the now-defunct Lynrocten Federal Credit Union in Lynchburg.

Cursive handwriting notes deposits earned from the upkeep and eventual sale of several rental properties, her bill payments and loans she made out to relatives, among many other transactions recorded over a more than 25-year span.

A notation from July 24, 2004, for example, shows a payment of $30.26 to Verizon. Another, on March 19, 1995, records $25.52 spent on groceries at Kroger. Each column includes the check number, and in the cases of same-day transactions, the time she wrote the check.

And so it goes, page after page of deposits and withdrawals yellowing with age between the faded notebooks covers crumbling from use. Van Scoten, 90, has maintained her accounts, both savings and checking, in these notebooks since she moved into her Madison Heights home in 1987.

The notebook shows the last time funds were added to her Lynrocten savings account. The date was Jan. 15, 2013, when an $8,300 deposit brought the balance to $229,588.17, according to her notebook notation.

That was about four months before the credit union shut down for good on May 3, 2013.

More than three years later, Van Scoten is among a handful of former Lynrocten members who said they have not recovered money lost in a fraud scheme that drained nearly $12 million in assets and forced the credit unions closure. Her case shows the difficulty of unraveling fraud operations and returning lost savings. With Lynrocten, authorities said the task is complicated by the length of time over which the fraud occurred.

Lynrocten began in 1936 as a financial institution for employees of wood-products manufacturer Rock-Tenn Company and their families; it had more than 1,000 members when it closed. It was located on Concord Turnpike, next to the companys paperboard mill in downtown Lynchburg.

The credit unions two full-time employees  former lead teller Teresa Humphries and branch manager Linda Sue Newcomb  were convicted in what federal prosecutors called a years-long plot to embezzle funds from deposits through unauthorized and fraudulent loans in the names of credit union members. Both women pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Lynchburg and are serving time in federal prison.

The National Credit Union Association, a federal agency that regulates and insures credit union deposits up to $250,000, is continuing to work through cases in the wake of the closure. NCUA spokesman John Fairbanks said the association has paid $9.4 million to 1,132 accounts.

Of the 32 remaining accounts, two-thirds have balances of less than $10.

Any time fraud affects members accounts, tracking is difficult, Fairbanks told The News & Advance in an email. Credit union members first line of defense is keeping their account records, such as statements, in order.

Just prior to closure, Van Scoten heard rumors from friends and neighbors who had accounts at the credit union that Lynrocten was in trouble.

Like many other credit union members, Van Scoten knew and trusted the staff there. In fact, her ties were closer than most. Her nephew, Arthur Newcomb, was married to Linda Sue Newcomb, who Van Scoten said would come by her home to pick up deposits. Arthur Newcomb, whose name also was on Van Scotens credit union account, was not charged with any crimes relating to Lynroctens closure.

They were moving money in and out of my account and making all of these loans, Van Scoten said. I never made loans in my life. I didnt need to, because I had all of this money saved up.

Days after the closure, she received a letter from the National Credit Union Association (NCUA) asking to confirm a $228,700 account balance and about $42,000 in three loan transactions.

She mailed back a confirmation of the balance, but disputed the loan transactions, which ultimately were removed from her account statement, in April 2015, according to a letter from the NCUA to Van Scoten.

After being extensively questioned by the FBI and the NCUA, Van Scoten was left to wait for a decision.

They kept coming by to ask me questions, Van Scoten said. I felt harassed. All I did was put my money [in Lynrocten]. Its the craziest thing Ive ever seen.

Fairbanks would not directly address Van Scotens case, noting agency policy to not comment on an individual members financial situation.

NCUA is continuing to work to settle matters with respect to the Lynrocten Federal Credit Union, and we are down to a handful of accounts, he said in an email.

While awaiting an answer, Van Scoten said she is living on roughly $1,100 a month from Social Security and savings she is drawing on from a bank checking account. She goes to the store exactly every 10 days to buy essential groceries, such as peanut butter and muffin mix.

I thought I was doing the right thing, saving all of my money like that, she said. You can see how thin my hair is after three years and three months of stress.

Born and raised in Madison Heights, Van Scoten left school in eighth grade to take care of her ill mother. She worked alongside her sister in the weaving room of Cotton Hill mill, off Carroll Avenue in Lynchburg, for 14 years.

She lived with another nephew, Albert Gene Grubbs, in Madison Heights until his sudden death in 2003. He left her four rental homes and a duplex he had managed. Van Scoten sold the duplex, depositing the profit in her savings account. Her nephew also left her the contents of his savings and checking accounts plus stock, all of which she said she added to her Lynrocten savings account.

While Van Scoten waits for her money, NCUA investigators are working to compare supporting materials provided by account holders and the records kept by the credit union to return the money lost due to the closure.

Before restoring lost funds, the agency investigates every account with a closed credit union and then makes a determination of how much money is owed. The NCUA has painstakingly gone through all of the fraudulent loans made in Van Scotens name and checked all of her transactions, but has made no final determination.

Her Roanoke attorney, Ray Ferris, said any legal action must await a final decision from the NCUA.

If we were to sue now, theres nothing we can do to force their hand until a determination is made, he said.

Both Ferris and Erin Ashwell, a co-counsel in the case, said Van Scoten was taken advantage of by the fraud.

All she did was trust a system with her money that was run by someone in her family, Ashwell said. Its not unreasonable that an elderly person could be taken advantage of by a family member. That is no reason why she should have lost her money and now cant get her insurance back.

Ruby didnt pay, Ruby didnt benefit, and Ruby didnt know, Ferris said. Shes the collateral damage.

Despite personally knowing the women who caused the financial turmoil, Van Scotens anger is directed at the process itself that failed to catch the scheme for so long.

I dont understand how they didnt see this, Van Scoten said. Who wasnt doing their job?

In the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners annual report, the organization outlines the typical profile for someone who commits fraud as a person of authority who most likely works in the accounting department.

Frauds like this are usually committed by people in trusted positions, said Dave Murphy, professor of accounting and economic crime at Lynchburg College. That element of trust is what lets them get away with it.

Van Scoten said Linda Sue Newcomb would come by her house periodically, whenever she had money to deposit in her account.

She was always talking about how she wanted to grow membership, she said. She would drive over and collect my check and later drop off my receipt for my records. It seemed so helpful at the time, which is what makes this all so confusing.

Murphy said frauds that are long-term in nature can make it increasingly difficult to reconcile payouts.

As common as fraud is, victims arent always compensated for their losses, he said. It depends on the size of the fraud and how much was stolen. Another part of it is the time and cost needed to do the investigation and how long the fraud itself went on.

Despite the years of waiting, Van Scoten remains hopeful.

In all of my life, this is the only problem I have not been able to solve for myself, she said.

I see the light at the end of the tunnel, though. I believe something has to happen soon.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is awarding money to three Lynchburg-area community health providers as part of an investment in health center quality improvement efforts.

The awards honor high levels of performance in one or more of five different categories.

Almost all the nearly 1,400 health centers across the country received some award, but the categories honored and amounts given varied between centers.

The local centers receiving awards include Blue Ridge Medical Center in Nelson County, Horizon Health Services Inc. in Lynchburg and Johnson Health Services, which has locations in Lynchburg and Amherst and Bedford counties.

Millions of Americans rely on health centers to provide them with quality health care, HHS Acting Deputy Secretary Dr. Mary Wakefield said in a news release. These quality improvement awards will support health centers to continue to deliver superior health care that engages patients, improves care coordination and bridges overall access to care.

Blue Ridge Medical Center, located on U.S. 29 in Arrington, received about $69,700 and Horizon Health Services received about $80,400. Both were honored for improving clinical quality and having high clinical performance compared to peers, as well as using electronic health records to report on clinical measures for all their patients.

Johnson Health Center was awarded about $73,800 for electronic health records reporting for all patients, improving clinical quality and expanding access. That last measure refers to health centers that increased the total number of patients served and the number of patients receiving comprehensive services between 2013 and 2014, according to DHHS.

The $100 million awarded for fiscal year 2016 nationwide comes from the Affordable Care Acts Community Health Center Fund.
There is rarely actual discussion in LinkedIn Groups any more. If there are comments, they are undisguised pitches for companies. In this particular discussion, the reader can conclude that most people know very little about the market that they are in. Apparently, competitive analysis is not a high priority.

The article about Google partnering with RingCentral to add some additional UCaaS features to its Google for Work (GfW) suite was posted. This partnership is just noise really. RC has had integration with GfW for almost a year. The surprising thing is that no one realizes that Microsoft and Google have been battling it out for years. Google Docs versus Microsoft Office. Gmail versus Hotmail. Bing trying to compete with Google.

Office365 has over 50 million users. Skype has hundreds of millions users. Skype for Business is a merger of Lync and Skype that is now bundled with Office365 in various iterations.

I'd like to point out that 50 million users is more users than RC, 8x8 and all of Broadsoft combined (not including the BSFT users who are only on SIP trunking). So it might be significant. It would be more significant if the users of Office365 were trained on it - but you can say that about any platform including Broadsoft.

Slack got to 3 million daily users in three short years due to ease of use and functionality.

With WebRTC and so many apps adding video chat and voice calling functionality, UCaaS providers better figure this stuff out fast - adoption, ease of use, migration, integration, training and frictionless sales.

What real pain point does a UC&C Platform really solve?

If it was a problem that was more than voice, the UC providers would NOT appear to be Polycom distributors. When it falls down the scope to just voice, you are either selling it wrong; you don't know the benefits at all; or you are not hitting a target audience.

The SPIFF Wars of 2016 point to a problem with sales. Either there are too many Hosted VoIP provider in North America (there are!) or there are not enough businesses that see the need for this vaguely marketed comms platform.

Slack didn't have a CMO (chief marketing officer) for two years!!! It grew by word of mouth. How come that hasn't happened with a UCaaS platform? Even Hipchat grows via WOM.

WebRTC, APIs and integrations have us at a point where voice calls happen anywhere. That is bad news for VoIP companies who have sell as a voice replacement because there isn't much voice to replace, so you better be cheap.

When a channel partner goes to a master agent for UCaaS, he has well over 20 VoIP providers to choose from. How does he choose? VoIP companies better get clear on that fast because it is getting expensive to get attention. 6X MRR anyone?

Google+RC isn't going to work any better than AT&T @Home did. As for Google sticking to search, they have over 5 million businesses using it. And again that is more that most other companies have by a long shot!

Mitel is confused. Now that they can't take Polycom off the plate, what now? Try to buy Shoretel again, since Shoretel announced they were looking to sell? What does that solve? Oh, right, nothing, It is about maximizing shareholder value, not about the customer.

When you look at the landscape, RC, 8x8 and others, especially Panterra, are jamming as much functionality into the product that they can. Conferencing, screen share, video chat, IM, presence, analytics, reporting, ad nauseum. What effect does that have? Think Microsoft Office 2013. Most people use about 3-7 features and the rest is beyond them. It is bloatware. And without constant training for users, what good is it?

It is to appeal to a broad audience, which is old market thinking. Mass products for the masses, like Kellogg's Corn Flakes. Slack is for a limited audience. APIs, bots and integrations make it even more appealing to that same audience- and more useful It doesn't result in market creep, just usefulness.

Microsoft, Cisco, Google and to some extent most companies are looking for broad appeal. Everyone is our market. That is such broken thinking that I can't even wrap my head around it any more.

Even AT&T and Verizon have left that thinking in telecom.

When you think about the most successful CLECs (almost an oxymoron, I know) they had no more than 65K customers. USLEC was at 30K. 8x8 is at almost 50K. Yes RC claims over 300K but most of those are paying about $38 per month, but count them if you want. There are 25 million SMB in the US. What percentage is that? The UC space has been spending money since 2003. And it has less customers than GfW. The biggest has 300K very small businesses. Sales are getting more expensive because your marketing sucks. Everything for Everybody means nothing to most everyone.
Hawk Claus spreads Christmas cheer in DC's Grifter Got Run Over By a Reindeer first look

Take a look at two stories from the DC holiday special including the titular chapter and a Hawkwoman and Hawkman tale
An invitation worth accepting

KHUTBAHS means sermons in Arabic.

Oftentimes delivered by an imam (Islamic teacher) during Jummah (congregational prayers at dhuhr (noon) on Friday), these published speeches by Trinidad- born Imam Iqubal Hydal are timely, given the misinformation about Islam and the corruption of the faith by many who purport to be Muslims . Using the Quran (Islams holy book) as the source of his sermons, Imam Hydal addresses social, political and spiritual issues. His words are measured, and with sound analysis he presents the relevance of Islam to modern times.

Expectedly, Hydal is preaching to the choir, as sermons delivered in mosques and not geared to non-Muslims.

In book format, though, many readers unfamiliar with the Quran are indirectly invited to learn more about a religion that continues to attract many to its fold.

It is an invitation worth accepting.

Hydal is punctilious in his interpretation of Al Fatihah, the most recited prayer in the Quran. It extols the magnanimity and all-encompassing wonder of the Creator.

Gods omniscience, omnipresence and beneficence are immutable.

Non-Muslims will find their definition of God is shared with Muslims.

Hydal is scholarly in his examination of physical laws, cosmogony, and the ineffable, unseen forces that sustain the universe. In a laudable undertaking he ably bridges the gap between science and theology, concluding that even the most powerful and frightening forces in the universe are completely subservient to Him. In his sermon commemorating the birthday of Prophet Muhammad, Hydal deftly allows non-Muslim authorities to speak for him.

Of the Prophet, Gandhi said: I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind. I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam, it was the rigid simplicity; the utter self-effacement; the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers; his intrepidity; his fearlessness; his absolute trust in God and in his mission. And in The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, Michael H Hart writes, He [Muhammad] was the only man in history who was successful on both religious and secular levels. Hydal presents the Quran as an arbiter of social justice. Therein, he argues, are injunctions and warnings against excesses at all levels of governance.

He states, Who would have thought that countries grounded in Islamwould have seen leaders emerging, who by the accusations being levelled against them, would have engaged in corrupt practices.

It is a lesson for all Muslims, particularly for us here in Trinidad. Later, he calls for a democratic, God-fearing society. And sermons addressing crime, capital punishment, and racism are testament to the worth of the Quran as veritable source of reference on judicial matters.

Undoubtedly, Hydals pedagogical offering will add to the discourse on the role of Islam in a chaotic and divisive world. Many will be heartened by Islams affinity to Judeo-Christian Thought and Jesus august stature in the Quran. Submission to God, justice, equality and the sanctity of life are meticulously recorded and well articulated by Hydal.

Regrettably, tradition and customs have taken precedence over the divine word resulting in inequity and human rights violations. Of the many sexist and misogynist charges levelled against Muslims, Hydal responds unmistakably.

The revelation of the Holy Quran gave rights to women, which even to this day are non-existent in some civilised societies which boast of women-liberation movements. He continues, The Quran, more than 1400 years ago gave property rights and rights of inheritance to women at every level of society. He then asks rhetorically, Has any other nation or religion ever given such legal rights in property and wealth to women? On the spiritual level he affirms that both sexes have been instruments of divine revelation.

He later encourages Muslim women to learn about their rights and responsibilities as enshrined in their holy book and stand up for their beliefs... Unquestionably, Khutbahs on the Quran is richly informative.

Still, it follows the path of exceptionalism and does little to advance unity of faith.

Islam assumes pre-eminence and is presented as the balm for a rotting world.

Hydal unfailingly underscores the authenticity of the Quran creating some measure of uneasiness in the process.

Of the Bible, he avers, Even amongst the four gospels there is much contradictory information that one cannot decide which of the four is authentic. In fact, none of them can be authentic.

In addition to being translations, they cannot be the revealed word of God in their present form because they were authored by human beings and they present different version of the life history of the Messiah. He follows his edgy declaration with the following: [T]he Holy Quran leaves no doubt about these matters with regard to itself. One cannot help but wonder how non-Muslims will respond.

Feedback: glenvilleashby@ gmail.com or follow him on Twitter@ glenvilleashby Khutbas of the Quran by Imam Iqubal Hydal, 2016 Available: www.safaripublications.

com Ratings: Recommended
Teen girls killed in Tobago crash

Shiann Thomas, 13, of Patience Hill, Tobago and Lariann Perez, 19, of Signal Hill, Tobago, were in a car which was proceeding towards the roundabout at the Claude Noel Highway when, according to witnesses, Perez, the driver, lost control as the car went around a bend near the Carnbee Gas Station.

The car crashed into the embankment on the opposite side of the road, hit a road sign and flipped several times. Eyewitness reported that Thomas was thrown from the car and landed in a drain.

Perez was said to have sustained an open fracture of her head.

Just over a month ago, Obina Daniel, 16, and Aaron George, 20, died in a road accident at Milford Road, Bon Accord in a two car collision.

And on Saturday, motorcyclist Earnoll Charles was killed when he collided with a truck at Tragarete Road, Portof- Spain. Reports are that Charles had just left work at Massy Stores at the corner of Tragarete Road and Richmond Street at about 2.30 pm when the accident occurred.
Rowley and the Arts

This was Prime Minister, Dr Keith Rowleys appeal to the nations youth on Saturday night as he delivered the feature address at the Gala launch of the Cazabon Legacy art collection at the Diplomatic Centre, St Anns.

Rowley said an appreciation of the arts and countrys history could minimise the likelihood of young people being drawn to a life of crime and delinquency.

Noting that four persons were killed recently in his constituency of Diego Martin West, Rowley observed that the country was grappling with an outpouring of barbarism. This is not what we are about.

There is a much wider canvas to Trinidad and Tobago, he told guests, who included members of Government, the Diplomatic Corps, legal fraternity, cultural luminaries and representatives of civil society organisations.

Rowley stressed that greater attempts must be made to expose young children to the arts and other expressions which reflects the best of Trinidad and Tobago.

If this is done, then it is my hope that the behaviour of the country might change. Rowley said he was certain that the vast majority of young people did not know anything about Cazabon and his contribution to local culture.

Michel Jean-Cazabon was an internationally recognised 19th century artist who died in 1888.

His paintings which depicted salient aspects of the countrys history, capture sceneries and portraits of 19th century planters, merchants as well as workers and their families.

Charting the history of this countrys attempts to reclaim Cazabons work, Rowley recalled that he had encouraged late prime minister, Patrick Manning, in 2004, to purchase some of the artists paintings which were being auctioned in the United Kingdom.

Rowley said when he became prime minister last year, he again encouraged the Cabinet to deliberate on purchasing the remainder of the collection.

It is my belief that a people who is uninterested in art and history are people who are not worthy, he said.

Saturdays exhibition, which is being housed at the Diplomatic Centre, features 49 of Cazabons pieces. It is open to the public on Tuesdays to Sundays until September 24 (Republic Day). Rowley encouraged guests to view the paintings. Look at the paintings and transpose yourself from there to where we are now. Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly also urged the audience to ponder on the pieces which, she said, were part of this countrys cultural heritage
More info needed on Sandals

They are questioning, what they say is, the secrecy behind the Sandals arrangement for Tobago.

At a symposium hosted by the Tobago Benchmark at the Buccoo Multi-purpose Facility, in Tobago, community activists, tourism stakeholders, attorneys at law and economists called for information on the proposed project to be made public.

The Tobago Division of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce will not sit idly by according to its president Demi John Cruickshank.

He said his team will be going to get all the necessary data acquired in islands where Sandals already have operations.

The problem in Tobago at this time is that everybody is speaking without the data, Cruickshank said.

We would travel to the destinations that have a Sandals resort and we would like to speak to the Chamber of Commerce, the Hotel Association, the environmental people, the taxi people.

That would take us a couple weekends. Meanwhile, community activist and Speyside resident, Farley Augustine, explained that the Tobago experience, which includes the beaches, food and culture, is unique and one which, he said, that he would like all tourists visiting the island to be privy to.

If Sandals can allow for that experience, well then fine, but I am very doubtful, very cautious, almost suspicious that Sandals wont be able to provide that experience to the visitors. President of the Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association (THTA), Chris James, delved into the past as he produced documents which, he suggested, proves that approvals were given to Angostura to build a much larger hotel in the same space.

This has lapsed. But from an environmental point of view, I would be interested in the argument that people would come up with.

If this was passed for over 2000 rooms, how can they argue against 750? James noted that whilst his views towards Sandals remain neutral, he is interested in the kind of development that would bring non-stop international flights to the island.
Was he a target?

Whether it was to wound or kill the child of Byron Street, La Romaine, residents said they were unsure. However they believe the shooting incident may have stemmed from a dispute, some weeks ago, between a male relative and some men.

It was initially believed that Cyon, a pupil of the La Romaine RC School, was struck by a stray bullet while walking along the Southern Main Road, La Romaine.

Some residents claimed that a group of men were liming at the roadside where they were playing with guns, one of which accidentally went off. Another report suggested that a group of men spotted members from an opposing group, opened fire and one bullet struck Cyon. Yesterday Southern Division police threw out the theory that the child was hit by a stray bullet and told Newsday the boy was shot four times, twice in the chest and twice to his shoulders.

Even family members yesterday had opposing views on the theories which are circulating in the La Romaine area. Cyons bereaved grandmother, Jenny Charles, 48, admitted to having heard all the rumours and believes it was deliberate.

Something is smelling fishy based on what people are saying now. Look at the timing and how it happen. As they saw him, they put it on him. That was not no accident, based on the rumours we are are hearing. Some say people in a car opened fire but no car was passing when it happened. That is not true, Charles said.

Reports are at about 8.30 pm on Friday, Cyon left home with his 13-year-old cousin to purchase hot dogs from a businessplace at the nearby Potato Trace. Upon reaching a service station along the Southern Main Road, several gunshots rang out. Cyon and the relative turned around and started to run but Cyon collapsed in the driveway of a businessplace.

Cyons mother, Safiya Williams, 27, a mother of two, remained inconsolable and relatives said she has been crying since the shooting.

A male relative yesterday said he believed that Cyon was not the intended target of the gunmen. Instead he labelled the killers as trigger happy people.

He explained: I dont think that bullet was meant for Cyon. I feel them fellas (gunmen) were testing out the gun which went off while playing with it. While the police parked up at Charles Street, two opposing groups of people hustling (engaged in illegal activities) out there. It could have been more than one gun. Newsday learnt that police have since obtained CCTV footage from businesses to ascertain how the incident occurred. An autopsy is expected to be performed today at the Forensic Sciences Centre, St James.
Protest at Roodal Moonilal Ramai Trace Hindu School

With just two weeks to go before the start of the academic year, PTA members and other parents of pupils of the school charged that without immediate intervention by Garcia, students and staff will continue to suffer. Due to the ongoing construction of the school, students were relocated to the Hanuman Milan Mandir at the Penal Rock Road, Penal. PTA president Indar Jairaj vowed yesterday that failure by the minister to meet with the PTA will result in further protests.

The school, formerly called the Ramai Trace Hindu Primary School, was officially renamed in 2013 in honour of then Housing Minister now Opposition Member of Parliament for Oropouche East, Dr Roodal Moonilal.

The temple is located some 55 minutes away for here. We are pleading with the minister, come and look at the school. It is more than 90 percent completed. We were expected to get in the school since last term. We are hearing that contractors are not being paid.

This is real stress on the 271 students and on the parents, Jairaj explained.

Jairaj added that students leave Debe as early as 6.30 am to attend classes at the mandir which is very cramped.
Pan Trinbago head calls for more prayer

I hope that todays message will reach out, not only to members of the steelpan community, but to the entire nation, Diaz said.

He briefly recalled the evolution of the steelpan and praised youths for their continued support as part of the steelpan movement.

When you look back at the steelpan movement, its beginnings and some of the words used to describe panmen, words like bad John, lowlife and vagabond, you really have to appreciate the journey that we made to get here. The steelpan came from poor people in impoverished areas and to see how far we have come is really something to think about. The service, which featured various religious leaders from the Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Orisha faiths, took place at the Murchison Brown Auditorium at the Port-of-Spain City Hall and drew a modest crowd of supporters. The steelpan was declared as the National Musical Instrument of Trinidad and Tobago in 1992 by former Prime Minister, the late Patrick Manning.
Its hard to be one of only a few students of your race in a science field, but new research suggests the possibility of helping your own community can spur students to become trailblazers.

Researchers at California State University, Long Beach, and San Diego State University tracked 249 incoming freshmen science majors in California. They found that among first-generation college students, those who came in with a strong belief that science could be used to help their communities were more likely to see themselves as scientists over time.

Educators and industry leaders alike have bemoaned the lack of black and Hispanic students in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics careers. The California study was part of a special issue on encouraging more diversity in STEM fields in the journal CBE-Life Sciences Education, published by the American Society for Cell Biology.

Prior research has found black and Hispanic students can be discouraged from studying subjects like science by environments that seem to reinforce negative stereotypes . Holding a community-oriented goal may work to buffer that threat, the researchers said.
Blind in sweet-hand battle

Asha Alexander-Lall, head chef of D Hot N Spicy Crew representing the San Fernando branch, prepared rice, dhal, curried duck and pepper choka with a special side of curried corn.

Meanwhile, head chef of the DSSS Flavours Shirley Dookhantie from the Port-of- Spain branch, served up curried duck and common fowl, channa, aloo (potato) and rice, while Spicy Divas prepared Trini-styled ochro rice, baigan (eggplant) in parmesan cheese, a full salad, and chicken stuffed with sweet potato.

Public Relations Officer of the TTBWA, radio disk jockey Anthony Tom, told Newsday the event was designed to highlight the culinary ability and skills of citizens who are blind or visually impaired.

While most people in society do not understand and think blind people are limited when it comes to normal or fun activities, we are going to prove to the public that we can do just as much as a person who is not visually challenged, Tom said.

He said five teams vied for the $2,000 first prize.
New Appeal Court judge appointed

The presentation was made in a simple ceremony at Presidents House, St Anns, and was also attended by acting Chief Justice Nolan Bereaux.

Carmona said he could personally attest to the phenomenal work ethic of each of his two former colleagues on the bench.

He related that as State attorneys, both he and Bereaux, after working late hours in the Office of the Attorney-General, would then face a threehour drive home to their homes in Fyzabad and Erin respectively.

Carmona saluted Rajkumar for his impressive work ethic, and described him as kind, fair and humble and as doing his job without fanfare.

He recalled that as an attorney, Rajkumar has worked for most of the top law firms including Hobsons, De la Bastide and Company, Martin Daly and Hamel-Smith and Company.

Carmona said that as a High Court Judge, Rajkumar has delivered judicially sound judgements characterised as far-reaching and socially transformative.

Welcoming judicial activism but noting that it is not always popular amongst all quarters, Carmona welcomed judgements that lead to a better society.

Saying that Rajkumars remit will expand from having ruled on just civil cases in the High Court to now having to adjudicate on both civil and criminal matters in the Appeal Court, the President said, I know youll be fair and straightforward in your judgements.

He added that a judge lives a lonely life and cannot be seen talking to an attorney however innocent the conversation may be.

Carmona concluded that Rajkumars late father, also a judge whom he referred to as good old Raj, was regrettably absent from yesterdays ceremony but would have been very proud of his son.

Bereaux recalled his professional relationship with Rajkumar whom he hailed for his integrity and hard work.
Non-profit opens a door for young film-makers

The Digital Film Institute (DFI), over the last four years, has provided an opportunity for young film-makers to showcase their short films which they direct, produce and write. To date, DFI has assisted over 500 film-makers.

Co-Founder Rose-Ann Clement told Newsday that the DFI is the only non-profit training academy that concentrates specifically in delivering cost effective training in film, broadcast and digital media.

Located on the Eastern Main Road in Mount Hope, DFI was founded in 2009 and offers training from industry experts with over 20 years of combined experience in the film industry. The organisation also offers full and partial scholarships to deserving young persons in the country and is involved in community outreach programmes with at-risk youths.

Recently, the institute held a screening for young film-makers at the Trinidad Theatre Workshop (TTW) in Port-of-Spain. Sydney Ledger, an upcoming film-maker and former student of DFI, was one of the film-makers at the workshop whose short film was featured.

Ledgers short film, The Lady from Ivory Road, was based on a true story from her childhood.

Growing up, I was always an avid reader [and] my imagination would always be going like it never had an off switch thanks to my creepy old neighbour in my old neighbourhood for the inspiration she told Newsday.

Ledger added, There were rumours of him being a Lagahoo and his nickname was Old Man Jenkins. In my old neighbourhood there was this creepy house, so all the elements from [it] inspired my film and helped shape it. In fact, that very creepy house was used in the film. As this is her first film, an overwhelmed Ledger gave credit to the actors who helped bring the characters in her film to life.

The very talented Girma Vincent, who portrayed Miss Ivory, Andre Williams, who stole the show as he portrayed the hilarious coward Raymond, brought a lot of his own sense of humour into his character which worked great, she said. Donovan Withfield, who portrayed Old Man Jenkins, [and] last but not least, Jonnelle Hagley and Leonardo Ramkissoon, as Reese and Dale she said.

Also present at the screening was Withfield, the lead actor in Ledger film.

Ledgers success is the reason why DFI was initiated. Clement emphasised that their mission is to educate young persons who have the passion for film making, photography, acting and editing to name a few. In 2013, the institute collaborated with the Ministry of Trade to work on a project called the Apprenticeship Portal Program where some 25 students were given the opportunity to work with professionals from Germany and Canada.

Speaking at the recent screening, Chief Executive Officer of DFI, Garland Holder, issued a passionate plea for the students to invest their time and energy towards building the film industry in Trinidad and Tobago. He also issued an open invitation to young film-makers, who want a chance to feature their films at the workshop, to submit their work to DFI via email digitalfilminstitute@ yahoo.com. Young film-makers can also contact DFI by telephone at 289-6761.
(Newser)  The rate at which women die in Texas from pregnancy-related complications is higher than in any other US stateor even in the rest of the developed world, reports the Guardian. A study in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology found that the maternal mortality rate in Texas doubled in a two-year span, from about 18 per 100,000 births in 2010a year with 72 deathsto about 36 in 2012, which saw 148 deaths. In the 48 states not including Texas and California, the rate was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2014, up 27% from 18.8 in 2000. California was the only state to see a drop. The authors say the hike in the death rate in Texasno other state saw a similar uptickis difficult to explain "in the absence of war, natural disaster, or severe economic upheaval," per the Guardian.

The Huffington Post notes the rise coincided with the state slashing health care funding for women. Women's health advocates blame a Republican-led state legislature that gutted Texas' family-planning funding by two-thirds$73.6 million out of its $111.5 million was cut in 2011, the year that maternal deaths spikedforcing the shuttering of 80 clinics that provided birth control, cancer screenings, and other services. Dr. Lisa Hollier, who heads a state task force looking into the problem, told the Dallas Morning News that they don't "have a specific answer at this time." Dr. Daniel Grossman of the University of Texas at Austin called the study findings a "tragedy" and an "embarrassment" and told the Morning News, "This is a problem we should be able to address and fix." (Read more Texas stories.)
(Newser)  Germany doesn't want its citizens to panicbut it would like them to be a little more prepared for an attack or a disaster. According to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, the German government plans to bring back its Cold War-era requirement for people to stockpile enough food for 10 days and enough drinking water for five, as well as medicine and other supplies. The government is also planning to boost security by bringing in a nationwide alarm system.

A "Concept for Civil Defense" plan that will be discussed by lawmakers this week says an armed invasion of German territory is unlikely, but that citizens should "prepare appropriately for a development that could threaten our existence and cannot be categorically ruled out in the future." Reuters notes that the new civil defense plan comes amid other security measures, including major increases in police funding and the creation of a new anti-terror unit. (Read more Germany stories.)
(Newser)  South Korea and the United States began annual military drills Monday despite North Korea's threat of nuclear strikes in response to the exercises that it calls an invasion rehearsal. Such fiery rhetoric by Pyongyang is not unusual, but the latest warning comes at a time of more tension following the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a US plan to place a high-tech defense missile system in South Korea, the AP reports. The North's military said in a statement Monday that it will turn Seoul and Washington into "a heap of ashes through a Korean-style pre-emptive nuclear strike" if they show any signs of aggression toward the North's territory.

The North's "first-strike" units are ready to mount retaliatory attacks on South Korean and US forces involved in the drills, according to the statement, carried by Pyongyang's state media. South Korea's Unification Ministry expressed "strong" regret over the North's warning, saying the drills are defensive in nature. The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday for a 12-day run are largely computer-simulated war games. The training involves 25,000 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers, according to the US and South Korean militaries. (When the annual drills began in 2014, Pyongyang told John Kerry he had a "hideous lantern jaw.")
(Newser)  "I think it's time to bring him home," says Richard Johnson, and he's putting up a huge reward in hopes of making that happen. The man from Boulder, Colo., is referring to son Ryder, who hasn't been seen since Jan. 17. The 20-year-old was seen at 3pm on that day, just after his shift at the Eldora Ski Resort near Nederland; there have been no confirmed sightings since and leads have dried up, reports the Daily Camera. Ryder Johnson's car was found parked at Gross Dam Road that evening, and the Gross Reservoir was searched afterward. Now, friends and family have put together a $100,000 reward for information leading to the younger Johnson, the arrest of anyone potentially involved, or items he had on him when he vanished.

The Denver Channel reports the reward's distribution will be at the family's discretion. "It's been pretty frustrating," said Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle in early February. "They're just not finding anything," he said of his investigation. The Camera reported that foul play is possible, but there's no evidence to that end. The other "working theories" are that he went into the mountains and harmed himself, or vanished to start a new life. Pelle called those two the "strongest possibilities." A severed foot found in a hiking boot in June at the ski resort was determined not to belong to Johnson; KDVR reports 180 acres around the resort were searched after the boot was found. The reward will expire on Jan. 17, 2017. (Read more missing person stories.)
(Newser)  PubSpace may sound like an app that maps out local watering holes (not a bad idea in its own right), but it's actually an online repository where NASA will make all its publicly funded research available for free, the Independent reports. This unprecedented access, which came after the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy mandated three years ago that federal agencies share more of their data, requires any NASA-funded research to be posted to PubSpace within a year of being published.

What readers won't find gratis: any articles related to national security or to patents and a limited group of other types of research. "Through open access and innovation we invite the global community to join us in exploring Earth, air, and space," NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman says in a press release. There are already more than 850 articles up for perusingan intriguing list of what's available so far can be found here, including such sexy-sounding papers as "Hot super-Earths stripped by their host stars"with more soon to come. NASA notes PubSpace will be up and running with full functionality by the fall. (NASA set a huge fire in space earlier this year.)
(Newser)  It used to be that landing a job at Kimberly-Clark meant keeping it for life. Even low-performing employees rarely worried about their future at the US company, where salaries were higher than the usual and layoffs rare, the Wall Street Journal reports. A lot of people could and would hide in the weeds, said Rick Herbert, a sales director who retired in 2014. But times have changed at the company, maker of Kleenex and other big household brands, which now uses personalized data from sources such as performance-management software to review employees and keep them working at optimal levels. The strategy is part of a trend in corporate America to overhaul how workers are assessed, doing away with old-school annual reviews in favor of continuous appraisals.

At Kimberly-Clark, where the goal is now managing out dead wood, the approach appears to be working. Share prices have doubled since 2008, though nearly 3,000 of the company's 43,000 employees have been laid off. The Journal notes that other firms also are changing to more real-time oversight. At Coca-Cola, managers carry out monthly reflections of each worker that include the question, Is this associate at risk for low performance? The last recession prompted companies to scale back raises and bonuses and look at ways to improve workforce performance, according to the Journal. But some critics say the constant oversight can feel threatening to workers. And one Forbes contributor rapped performance evaluations as just another bureaucratic crock. (Read more Kimberly-Clark stories.)
How and from where we communicate is changing. How we do our banking is changing. How we get our news and gain information is changing. Even how we get our groceries is changing for many. In the world of work outside of education, work environments are taking down walls and making borders obsolete. Some are working in open environments together and others are home, alone in a redefined work day. Innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship are all sought as attributes of those entering the work force.

Successful Hard Work

Yet, how many schools are entering a new year with new course offerings, with new schedules, new learning environments, and expectations that support the skills and abilities our students need for that ever new real world? Schools have thought that the model and practices they have been using are successful. Here is why:

While U.S. students are scoring higher on national math assessments than they did two decades ago (data from science tests are sketchier), they still rank around the middle of the pack in international comparisons, and behind many other advanced industrial nations (Pew Research ).

The operative here is still. While the data continued to be collected, schools found themselves with less resources, a more mobile student body, a more inclusive classroom environment, and a growing ELL population to name a few. With all of those changes, schools were able to hold steady and to even raise their scores in math. That is evidence of successful work. Most of that work has been done in an old model. But since that old model worked, it is held close. What might work better moving forward?

Based upon the Pew research, we conclude there has been quite a bit of hard work. Building on that premise, whats next? Are we preparing students for the world they are both living in as children and that they will enter upon walking across the graduation stage? How can we get students to want to be actively engaged in their learning so that more children can be experiencing success?

So Why Change?

Changing schooling is a complex endeavor. There are some aspects that are common to all schools, and others that are locally defined. Can the model that has held our international standing, and even raised our math scores a bit, continue to have success while the rest of our world continues to change? Can we allow achievement gaps to remain as they are? Are our students engaged and active learners? Are our goals for our students to graduate or to be prepared to be successful no matter their career paths? These are questions that challenge the status quo. Although being ready for college and career has been an articulated intention of education, now we have to acknowledge that the world is different and being prepared requires more and different skills and experiences.

Innovators and entrepreneurs are purveyors of optimism in the land of possibility. They are confident and experimental and persistent. They are creative and energetic and collaborative. They are risk takers and in Judi Neals language, edgewalkers. Educational leaders are not often described in those terms. The future is amorphous at best, but there is a confluence of forces at this moment calling educators to take a bold step, to create a new educational system (Myers & Berkowicz. p.14).

Schools do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of an interdependent community. The relationships among schools and the local and global community is revealed in this video The Social Side of Education from the Albert Shanker Institute:

If the vision for change is difficult to invoke, visit schools that have begun their journey. The relationships that are described in the video, The Social Side of Education can be developed and/or strengthened. Research and data can be gathered. Partners can be identified. Processes can be developed for the changes to be decided, shared, and begun. Communication can be improved. The manner of feedback and timing can be set. Plans for responding to opposition can be made. Emotional challenges can be identified and responses planned.

The Pathway To Educational Excellence Lies Within Each School. -Terrance Deal

What is clear is that no living organism can stay in the status quo for long. And, we dont need mandates to be bold and innovative. In fact, mandates have discouraged those qualities within us. There is still time for educators, themselves, to lead their schools on a new path toward graduation for their students. The need is clear. The world in which we live, and in which schools sit, is in motion. The path to a new horizon line, to rethinking the vision for our schools, can be uncovered when the leaders begin the process. If not now, when? This year is the time.

Resource:

Myers A. & Berkowicz J. (2015). The STEM Shift: A Guide for School leaders. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin

Connect with Ann and Jill on Twitter or Email .
(Newser)  When Islamic rebels backed by al-Qaeda infiltrated Timbuktu in 2012, they wreaked havoc in the Malian city and destroyed Muslim shrines, including nine mausoleums and the door of a mosque that had remained shut for hundreds of years, per the Guardian. Now Ahmad al-Mahdi, a former employee with Mali's education department, is facing war crimes charges at the Hague for directing this cultural decimation, pleading guilty Monday at the international criminal courtthe ICC's first prosecution of such a case, the New York Times reports. "All the charges brought against me are accurate and correct. I am really sorry," al-Mahdi told the court, noting his following of Islam led him to repent. "We have to be truthful, even if it burns our own hands." And the lead prosecutor says al-Mahdi used his own hands during the rampage, showing "determination and focus" to turn the revered structures to rubble.

"We must eliminate from the landscape everything that doesn't belong," al-Mahdi, believed to be around 40, said in a 2012 video shown in court. Although he could have faced up to 30 years in prison, al-Mahdi struck a deal that will likely net him just nine to 11 years behind bars. Although al-Madhi was suspected of other crimes, too, the ICC prosecutor purposely limited charges to the cultural destruction as a symbolic move, per Swissinfo.ch. Some experts say the case could spur the prosecution of other culturally related war crimes in countries like Iraq and Syria, which the ICC doesn't have reach over. Al-Mahdi promised in court he wouldn't commit such a transgression ever again, asked Timbuktu residents to forgive him "as a son who has lost his way," and said he hoped the "evil spirits" that took him over will be purged in prison, per the Guardian. (A dissenting opinion in the Guardian.)
(Newser)  Rescuers scrambling to rescue a 23-month-old after a boat crash in Cocoa, Fla., on Friday night could hear the toddler crying, but they couldn't figure out where she was. Those tense moments gave way to relief as Kennedy Bossard was located underneath the overturned boat, frightened but OK, 45 minutes after rescuers arrived on the scene. It was her life jacket and an air pocket that kept her safe, News 6 reports. Kennedy was on the boat in the Indian River after dinner with her familyincluding mom Tammy, dad Brian, and 7-month-old sister Charlottewhen the vessel crashed into a power line and threw the four into the water, per ABC News. "I'm in the river," Tammy said in her 911 call. "My boat crashed and I have a baby still in the water. Please God send someone now  please hurry."

The Cocoa Police Department says on its Facebook page it received several 911 calls and that patrol officers rushed to the scene, quickly locating the other three members of Kennedy's family with the help of a nearby boater and "multiple agencies." Finding Kennedy proved challenging in the dark and cold river, but officers Matt Rush and Alan Worthy persevered until they tracked her down floating in the air pocket and yanked her to safety. "I just can't imagine," Tammy Bossard said of what her daughter's fate could have been, per CNN, becoming emotional as she thanked rescuers for "saving our baby and saving our world." All four family members were taken to the hospital to be checked out and are in good condition, though the Bossards say Kennedy is at slight risk for developing asthma because of the stress on her lungs. (Two teens went missing off the coast of Florida last year.)
(Newser)  So long, tobacco: There's a new most-prized currency in America's prisons, at least according to a University of Arizona PhD candidate in sociology: ramen. Michael Gibson-Light's new study is the culmination of a year's worth of interviews with about 60 inmates at an unnamed "male state prison in the US Sunbelt," per a press release. The upshot: Where cigarettes were once king, "soup is money in here," as one convict says. But the reason behind the shift is essentially hunger. Gibson-Light explains that in the early 2000s, a new vendor began supplying the food to the prison he studied in a bid to cut costs. He was told the price per meal was slashed from $2 to $1.25 as a resultand both quality and quantity took a hit. Specifically, three hot meals a day were no more.

Weekday lunches are now cold, and on the weekends only two meals are served; all portion sizes were shrunk. With inmates working and exercising throughout the day, caloriesand edible ones at thatbecame precious. The Guardian reports an ominous anecdote from Gibson-Light: Corrections officers suggested he not eat the prison food, so as to avoid any potential food poisoning. The most popular forms of currency don't change "unless theres some drastic change to the value in people using it," says Gibson-Light, which signals to him how much food services has degraded. In terms of value, at the prison studied, ramen cost 59 cents a pack but was worth a lot more. One telling example: Five hand-rolled cigarettes, worth $2, can be bought for just one package of ramen. (The Justice Department, meanwhile, is phasing out privately run prisons.)
(Newser)  No matter the outcome of November's election, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid will never work with a President Trumpso the outspoken critic of the GOP nominee is having a little fun trolling him, reports the AP. His latest salvo: An online petition demanding that Donald Trump take the US citizenship test. The Nevada Democrat argues that Trump would likely fail and that he should be forced to prove otherwise before setting rules for new immigrants, for whom Trump has called for "extreme vetting." "Donald Trump is nothing more than a spoiled, unpatriotic drain on society who has earned nothing and helped no one," Reid says in an email sent from his fundraising committee. "And before he degrades immigrant families who work hard and give up everything they knew to come to this country, he should put upor shut up." (Read more Harry Reid stories.)
(Newser)  Laneta Lester had been trying to end her relationship with 27-year-old Derrick Dearman, who allegedly abused her. And so she headed to Citronelle, Alabama, in hopes of finding shelter at a relative's house. The home's inhabitants gave it to her, but Dearman allegedly wrested it away in a brutal way. People reports the five people killed in that home were trying to protect Lester from Dearman, per a statement from the Mobile County Sheriff's Office. The AP reports Lester arrived at the home Friday; around 1am Saturday, one of Lester's relatives called 911 to report a sighting of Dearman. Responding officers didn't find him on the property.

He allegedly came back sometime before sunrise and killed Shannon Melissa Randall, 35; Justin Kaleb Reed, 23; Chelsea Marie Reed, 22; Joseph Adam Turner, 26; and Robert Lee Brown, 26. Chelsea Reed was 5 months pregnant. The AP reports it's unclear which of the adults was related to Lester, who authorities say was then kidnapped by Dearman along with a 3-month-old who was in home. After the trio arrived at Dearman's father's home in Mississippi, Lester and the baby were reportedly freed. Dearman then turned himself in at the Green County sheriff's department some 20 miles west of Citronelle "stating that he had killed someone or more than one person in Citronelle," per the Green County sheriff. Dearman is to be charged with six counts of capital murder. (Read more murder stories.)
Microsoft did not expect to have user woes related to battery drainage of Surface Pro at the time of its release. A release of Surface Pro 3 on June 20, 2014 in US, UK, Australia & other countries expected to get a good demand as Microsoft believed that this tablet would replace the laptop on table. As per the tech giant Microsoft, it did really go well apart from the battery issues.

People were in full flush of buying this tablet cum laptop type device but disappointed by the way battery drained even after using the device for small period. Some people brought it to internet and showed their dissatisfaction and concern over the device. A coincidence happened as well with the owners, battery started to drain quickly after the warranties of the device ran out

According to slashgear, Microsoft released a user relaxing statement that the battery issues are not due to any hardware problems. The user's concern can be fixed by only software update. Microsoft confirmed that the team is testing the software and soon be released into the software world for quick updating by the Surface Pro 3 users. But, the exact release date is not confirmed by the Microsoft.

Microsoft released the statement, "We can now confirm that this Surface Pro 3 battery capacity question is not a hardware issue, but one that can be addressed with a software update. Our team has been working on and is now testing, an update that will address this. We'll publish the update as soon as it has passed our quality assurance process. For now, you should not consider replacing your device as an update is pending."

Before the release of official statement from Microsoft regarding the software update, some users already spent $450 for hardware replacement. Microsoft has no words on offering compensation for those who have already paid for the replacement but the tech giant assures the release of software update soon.
Putting an end to a vanguard lawsuit that sought to overhaul California teachers job protections, the states highest court, in a split decision, declined to hear the Vergara v. California case. In April, a state appeals court overturned a lower court decision that found that Californias teacher-tenure laws deprived countless students of good teachers and thus a quality education. That appeals court decision will stand. The states two primary teachers unions issued a joint statement heralding the decision as not just a victory for teachers but also for students .

The teacher shortage facing California has been stoked by the Vergara case, the expensive publicity machine surrounding it, and the constant attacks by so-called reformers on teachers and public education, said Joshua Pechthalt, the president of the California Federation of Teachers. We can now turn closer attention to solving the actual problems we confront in our schools, such as securing adequate funding through Prop. 55, reducing class sizes, promoting and strengthening peer assistance and review, and reinforcing collaborative district practices with a proven record of success. These efforts will result in a more positive climate to address the teacher shortage crisis, bring young people to teaching and encourage experienced teachers to stay in the classroom.

Todays decision is being seen as a victory for teachers unions both in California and across the nation.

It is now well past time that we move beyond damaging lawsuits like Vergara that demonize educators and begin to work with teachers to address the real issues caused by the massive underinvestment in public education in this country, said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten . The state of California, like many others, remains in the throes of a serious teacher shortage. We need to hire, support and retain the best teachers, not pit parents against educators in a pointless blame game that does nothing to help disadvantaged students pursue their dreams.

While the 2012 case solely concerned the Golden States teacher-tenure laws, some of the most robust in the nation, it was widely seen as the forefront of a national movement to use the courts to bring down job protections that some in the education reform community contend keep bad teachers in the classroom. The plaintiffs in the Vergara case maintained that it was virtually impossible to get rid of bad teachers and that those vigorous protections were given to new teachers far too soon, often after they had just 18 months in the classroom. A timeline that challengers say simply doesnt give administrators enough time to properly evaluate new educators teaching chops. Tenure opponents argue that this all has a disparate impact on poor and minority students, as bad teachers often land in the nations toughest-to-staff schools, which disproportionately serve those kids. In Vergara, plaintiffs argued that tenure laws were effectively denying those children their rights, under the state constitution, to a quality education.

As Teacher Beat has reported, Vergaras initial success spawn copycat lawsuits like one filed by four Minnesota mothers just before Vergara was overturned on appeal in April . A similar lawsuit is still working its way through New York courts. Even if all those suits are ultimately unsuccessful, Joshua Dunn, associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, argues the damage has already been done to teacher tenure.

"[E]ven if the lawsuits do not ultimately succeed, the discovery process is likely to create a public relations nightmare for unions, wrote Dunn in a recent piece for EducationNext , a journal that contends that bold change is needed in American K-12 education.

That process will allow the lawsuits supporters to publicize embarrassing facts about incompetent teachers protected by tenure and generate momentum for reform in the legislature, Dunn continued. Unions will, of course, object to the use of litigation for political purposes, but that has been the strategy of school-finance litigants for decades: use a lawsuit to pressure the legislature to cave in to your demands.

As for California, many say the battle now moves to the states legislature.

It is time for California lawmakers to focus on the inequities that rob our most vulnerable students from access to highly-effective teachers, said Mike Stryer, Teach Plus California Senior Executive Director. The fact that substantive legislation wasnt addressed in the last term makes it even more incumbent on the legislature to develop sensible legislation that provides more equitable access to excellent teaching for Californias lower-income students and students of color.

Teach Plus advocates for making job performance a more prominent factor in decisions over which teachers are fired. Under Californias current laws, decisions about which teachers are laid off during budget cuts are largely driven by seniority. In a 2014 Teach Plus poll of 500 California educators , most said that tenure determinations shouldnt be made until teachers have at least five years on the job. That poll also found that 70 percent of educators wanted performance to be considered when there are layoffs.

While the appeals court confirmed that poor and non-white students were more likely to be taught by less competent teachers, the justices, in a 3-0 decision, blamed administrators for keeping bad teachers at those schools. The California School Boards Association, which supported the plaintiffs in Vergara, says they recognize that problem and plan to pursue a legislative fix.

Most teachers do an outstanding job, but we must take every measure possible to ensure that underperforming teachers are not concentrated at schools where they are teaching our poorest and most vulnerable students, said California School Boards Association president Chris Ungar. Although poor and minority students did not get relief through the courts today, CSBA will continue to advocate for students within the current legal framework and push for changes to existing law that will provide more equitable access to high-quality instruction.

But as Teacher Beats Stephen Sawchuk reported back in April, theres little willingness in the legislature to come up with a compromise on this polarizing issue .
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.
New Delhi :

Shiv Sena comes heavily on RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat over his statement which he made while addressing a large gathering in Agra on Saturday.

Mr. Bhagwat in his long lecture asked, Which law asked Hindus to produce fewer children, he asked responding to a question on the alleged rising growth rate of Muslim population in India. Who has stopped them [Hindus], he said responding to a participant.

Disapproving of Bhagwats statement, Shiv Sena in its Marathi-language newspaper Saamna wrote, Growing population of Muslims in India is indeed a concern, asking Hindus to produce more kids is also in nations favour but PM Modi is not going to endorse this.

Further criticising Bhagwats statement he added, He should not give out such speeches, it doesnt suit the ideology of Hindutva.

Not only this, he also suggested the government to implement a universal policy of family planning which will be applicable to all religions and sects.

In Saamna, it also raised the concern over growing population and its effects on the country. Unemployment, poverty, starvation already afflict the country and Bhagwats such advice to Hindus is of no use.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

The JNU rape case has taken a political turn with the students union calling for protests through the day on Monday and asking everyone to join a protest march - 'Bekhauf Azaadi.' The joint secretary of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) Saurabh Sharma has dubbed Anmol Ratan, accused of raping a girl in a hostel room on the university campus, as "Rapist Left Brigade".

The protests that begin from 10am will continue till 10PM. At 3PM, the JNUSU will protest at the administrative block of the university to demand justice for the victim and will ask JNU vice-chancellor to rusticate Anmol Ratan.

An evening 'mess campaign' from 7.30 pm to 9.00 pm will also be held in all hostels for "the justice to the survivor and to uphold our legacy of gender justice and to save JNU's name, pride and culture." "Please join us at Sabarmati Dhaba at 10 pm for effigy burning of the Rapist Left Brigade," Sharma said.



Sharma also dubbed AISA as hypocrite on Facebook. He said: "Not mere an activist, but STATE SECRETARY of AISA : Mr. Anmol Ratan ( meaning a Precious jewel) is booked under 376/506 IPC for RAPE of a poor 1st year JNU Phd girl. Initial reports are coming that he even threatened The poor girl of CONSEQUENCES if she reports to Police."



A 28-year-old JNU student has filed a rape case against the AISA activist accusing him of raping her in a hostel room on the university campus, police had said on Sunday. The woman is a first-year Ph D student and she has alleged that Anmol Ratan, a JNU student and AISA activist, raped her on Saturday, police said.

According to the complaint filed by her at Vasant Kunj (North) police station, she had posted on her Facebook profile that she wanted to watch Sairat movie and asked if anyone had a CD of it.

It said Ratan apparently messaged her saying that he had a copy. Thereafter, he picked her up yesterday on the pretext of giving her a CD of the film and took her to Brahamputra Hostel, where he stays.

She said in the complaint that he offered her a spiked drink and allegedly raped her. He also threatened her and asked her to not report the matter. However, the woman approached the police today and a case of rape was registered and further investigation is underway.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi :

Delhis Saket court today pronounced the quantum of sentence for the three convicted in the Jigisha Ghosh murder case, news agency reported. Two out of three convicts are awarded death sentence and one convict is sentenced to life imprisonment.



The three men are convicted for murdering and robbing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh here in 2009 on Monday, with the Delhi Police seeking death penalty for them saying they killed her for "pleasure" and showed no remorse.



Jigisha, an operations manager at Hewitt Associates Pvt Ltd in Noida, had been abducted on March 18, 2009, after she was dropped by her office cab at 4 am in south Delhis Vasant Vihar. A day later, her body was found near Surajkund in Faridabad, police had said.



Besides, in July this year, the trio was held guilty of charges pertaining to destruction of evidence, forgery, robbery and common intention under the Indian Penal Code.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi :

GoAir plans to hire 500 personnel, including pilots, in the coming months as the budget carrier prepares to expand its aircraft fleet and fly overseas next year.



Gearing up to implement its ambitious expansion plans, the Wadia group carrier is looking to have 26 aircraft by end of March next year from the current fleet strength of 21, a senior official said.



The airlines CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer said plans are on for listing and it would happen at the right time.



We will expand our fleet by up to 26 aircraft by the end of March next year. We need to build up for the expansion that we are going for. Every aircraft (inducted) needs 100 increase (in manpower) approximately. So we will naturally hire, he told PTI.



This would translate to hiring requirement of at least 500 personnel, including a significant number of pilots.



At present, GoAirs head count is around 2,300, Prock-Schauer said.



GoAir has 21 Airbus A320 aircraft, including A320neos which are more fuel-efficient. Generally, an Airbus 320 plane needs maximum 14 pilots for its operation, with seven commanders and an equal number of first officers.



A back of the envelope calculation indicates that addition of five such aircraft would mean the need for about 70 pilots.



In June 2011, the Mumbai-based airline had placed an order with European aviation major Airbus for 72 new A320 neo aircraft valued at about Rs 32,400 crore on list price.



Besides, the carrier inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Airbus for another 72 A320neo aircraft at Farnborough International Airshow in June.



Earlier this month, GoAir got governments approval to fly to nine countries including Iran, Uzbekistan and Kazakhastan. It expects to start international operations from the next summer schedulewhich generally spans from the last Sunday of March and extends to the last Saturday of October.



GoAir would be the first Indian private carrier to fly to any CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). CIS countries for which the carrier has got flying nod include Uzbekistan, Kazakhastan and Azerbaijan.



On the much-awaited IPO, which has been in the works for some time, Prock-Schauer said it would hit the market at the appropriate time.



We are preparing ourself (for the IPO). Its a question of timing; it is about the right timing. We are not in a hurry. We will wait for the right timing. We want to be well prepared. There are many things which we need to look at (before going to stock exchange), he said.



About the recent MoU with Airbus, Prock-Schauer said the order is expected to be in place in the next 2-3 months. Economic things are stipulated in the MoU and only legal issues are to be worked out, he added.
New Delhi :

Pakistan police have registered five cases against Baloch leaders Brahamdagh Bugti, Harbiyar Marri and Banuk Karima Baloch for allegedly supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statements on Balochistan in his Independence Day speech from the historical Red Fort in New Delhi.

According to Dawn.com, the cases were registered on the complaints registered at five police stations at Khuzdar area in Balochistan.

The complaint filed against the Baloch leader also says that Bugti, Marri and Baloch had 'supported' Modi's Independence Day speech on August 15 this year.

Also read: In his I-Day speech, PM Modi mentions PoK and Balochistan

The dawn report further says that the Baloch leaders were booked under sections of Pakistan Penal Code that refer to "waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against Pakistan."

One of the petitioners also alleged that the Baloch leaders had asked PM Modi to commit aggression against Pakistan.

PM Modi had highlighted human rights violations by Pakistan in Balochistan, the Giligit-Baltistan region and Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) in his Independence Day speech on August 15 this year. Later, the Pakistani media had said that PM's speech was a breach of international norms and intrusion of India into Pakistans sovereignty.

After PM Modi's statements on Balochistan, many Baloch leaders and activists had staged massive protests in Dera Bugti, Khuzdar, Quetta, Chaman and other parts of Balochistan.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Los Angeles:

Actress Lindsay Lohan is allegedly demanding 500,000 pounds and a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in exchange for doing an interview about her tumultuous romance with Egor Tarabasov on Russian TV.



The 30-year-old actress was invited to appear as a guest on Russias most popular talk show, Pust govoryat, which airs on state-owned station Channel 1, but will only agree if they meet her outrageous demands, according to TMZ.



Lohan wants a private jet, security, a one-year Russian visa with extension, 500,000 British pounds, hair, makeup and manicurist on-board the jet, Ritz-Carlton penthouse suite and a meeting with Putin.



Surprisingly, some of the demands have been agreed on and both parties are still in negotiations.



The show wants to do an interview with Lohan about her turbulent relationship with the 22-year-old Russian heir.



Lohan revealed she called off their engagement after a series of recent fights, including a violent altercation on a beach on Mykonos and a row at their London flat.



The dramatic scuffle in Greece, which was caught on camera, occurred following an argument in a car, during which Lohan hurled Egors phone out of the window.



The flame-haired actress was reluctant to go into detail about the incident but suggested Tarabasovs judgement was clouded by alcohol.



The duo had another fight on the balcony of the flat they shared in Knightsbridge, London, which was also caught on camera.



During that incident, Lohan accused Tarabasov of assaulting her, shouting: Please, please. He just strangled me. He almost killed me.



The police were subsequently called to the scene but no-one was charged.

For all the Latest Entertainment News, Hollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Kolkata:

Two more deaths due to dengue were reported in West Bengal, taking the toll to 22.

Around 300 new cases of dengue infection were reported in the state taking the total number of persons infected by the virus in the state to 4,523 since January, West Bengal Director of Health Services Biswaranjan Satpathy told PTI.

Among the two persons died of dengue since sunday, one is a 20-year-old youth from Udaynarayanpur in Howrah district while the other one is a 75-year-old man from Siriri in South 24 Parganas district, he said.

Most cases in the state so far have been reported from Hooghly district's Serampore and North and South 24-Parganas, and Nadia district.

Now, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation is on a dengue-combat mission and opened five blood test centres in KMC area, Mayor-in-Council, Health, Atin Ghosh said today.

He said five more blood test centres will come up in city area in next one month's time taking the total number of such centres to 10.

Ghosh said KMC employees were regularly visiting residences in different localities to detect mosquito larvae and people were being made conscious and the situation was under control.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Beijing:

China launched its first Tibetan-language search engine which will serve as a unified portal for all the Tibetan-language websites.

The search engine will serve as a unified portal for all major Tibetan-language websites in China, Tselo, director of the Tibetan Language Work Committee of the Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai said.

Yongzin means "master" or "teacher" in the Tibetan language. It will also be a major global source for information in Tibetan online, he said.

The search engine has eight sections for news, websites, images, videos, music, encyclopedia, literature and forums, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

"The search engine will meet the growing needs of the Tibetan-speaking population and facilitate the building of Tibetan digital archives and the expansion of databases in the Tibetan language," he said.

The project, which costs 57 million yuan (about USD 8.7 million), is supported by the government. The work began on the project in April 2013.

More than 150 people were hired for the project, said Dora, technical director of the search engine and a professor with the Digitisation Institute of Tibetan Literature of Northwest University for Nationalities.

People of Tibetan ethnicity make up 80 per cent of the team, Dora said.

"Popular search engines such as Yahoo and Google enable searches in Tibetan, but they mainly support searching with single characters," he said.

Yongzin.com enables searches using words and phrases to yield more accurate results, he said. Yongzin also leads to more web resources than its competitors, said Dora.

"For example, the news function leads to more than 200 domestic Tibetan-language websites in China," he said. It is expected to gain around 1.2 million users in its initial stage, Dora said.

Contents are also categorised according to different local dialects such as Amdo, Kamba and U-Tsang, he said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi :

A 7-year-old girl was abducted and allegedly raped by three youths in east Delhis Mandawali area, police said on Monday.

The minor girl is in hospital and is recovering. Three accused were mentioned in FIR and all have been arrested. The arrested accused including two of her neighbours are Bhure (19) Amir (21) and Bhim Sen (19), Reshi Pal, DCP (East) said.

The victim lived with his parents at Yamuna Khadar in Mandawwali. Her parents are involved in growing vegetables on the river floodplains, Pal said.

The girl was sleeping outside her house when she was allegedly picked up by the accused and raped around 11 pm last night, police said.

The accused dumped the girl near her house and fled away. She was found lying unconscious by her parents and locals who had been searching for her.

The girl was rushed to LBS hospital from where she was shifted to AIIMS trauma centre as she was in a critical condition.

A case under relevant sections of IPC and POCSO Act has been registered at Mandawali police station.
New Delhi, :

The Centre tonight rushed 10 NDRF teams to flood-hit areas of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in order to launch massive relief and rescue operations to help those marooned in these states.

NDRF Director General O P Singh told PTI that while five teams are being airlifted for immediate deployment from its base in Odisha to Uttar Pradesh, the rest five are being picked by choppers from Bathinda in Punjab and will be sent to Bihar.



"These fresh teams will be launched into operation by early tomorrow," the DG said, adding they would be equipped with boats and essential items like medicines. Singh said the teams will be in addition to the 56 such contingents which are undertaking flood combat operations in these two states, besides Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The DG also briefed Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh with full updates of the flood situation in these states late in the night.

In order to launch massive operations in the two worst-affected states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the NDRF has created on-ground control rooms in these two states and deputed two senior Deputy Inspectors General (DIGs) S S Guleria (Patna) and R K Rana (Varanasi) to take control of the situation.

Earlier in the day, the NDRF said it had rescued more than 26,000 people from the flood-ravaged areas of these states. "So far, the NDRF teams have evacuated more than 26,400 people from various flood-prone areas in the country this monsoon season.

Besides the rescue work, these teams have provided medical care to the more than 9,100 people in these States," the NDRF said. In Bihar yesterday, NDRF teams evacuated 3,400 people from Didarganj, 580 from Bakhtiyarpur, 545 from Danapur, 380 from Chhapra, 355 from Vaishali and 15 from Maner in Patna.

The NDRF said 11 flood rescue teams rescued 275 people from Ballia, 275 from Varanasi and 325 from Chitrakoot in UP on yesterday.

Nearly 150 marooned people were shifted to safer places from Rewa district in Madhya Pradesh on Sunday. "An NDRF team pre-positioned in Sikkim conducted similar operations in Tingbung and Lingdang villages and evacuated more than 450 people on Sunday," it said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised full support to these flood-hit states in the conduct of rescue and relief operations.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh is closely monitoring the situation and had telephonic conversation with Chief Ministers Akhilesh Yadav (UP), Harish Rawat (Uttarakhand), Nitish Kumar (Bihar) and Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan) and













For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
According to the local residents, the accident took place on Zi Kondan creek under Rathidaung township, where 13 passengers survived. The ferry sank at 9.15 am when it was crossing the creek carrying 17 students.

The missing schoolgirls hail from Kyauk Zartin village under Rathidaung township. The tragedy took place while they were on way to attend classes in Ran Aung Byint government high school, said U Maung Kyan Wai, who witnessed the incident.

Among those missing schoolgirls, there were two sisters from Kyauk Byint Site village. The sibling was identified as Ma U Tin Yee {grade 9} and Ma Ni Ni Aye {grade 7}, both were daughters of U Sein Yin Maung. The other two schoolgirls were identified as Ma Khaing Pyo Wai {grade 5 and daughter of U Maung Than Tin} and Ma Tin May Oo { grade 5 and daughter of U Aung Kyaw Moe}.

A similar kind of tragedy occurred on 1 June 2016 in Ponna Kyaunt township, when 7 students including 6 girls died in a ferry boat capsize on Tawphyr Chaung river. The students were returning from the new seasons first day classes in Pho Yee Byint high school to their native Gan Gar village.
He made the comments to discuss problems of malnutrition in the state during a program in Pauktaw that was part of nutrition promotion month currently being observed across the country for the month of August.

Burma is in the list of least developed countries in Asia and its poverty rate is 37.5 per cent. As poverty is high, children in the Arakan State are facing malnutrition, he said explaining that Save the Children has been promoting nutritious development for children in 36 villages in Arakan State.

Physicians Assistant Dr Aung Kyaw Than, of Pauktaw Townships Health Department, said the malnutrition rate is high both in the township and in the statehighlighting the importance of observing the nutrition promotion month.

Activities planned for Arakan State, said Aung Kyaw Than, included breastfeeding monitoring in the first week, in the second week nutrition for children under five, and final weeks: healthcare of pregnant women and lactating mothers.

U Khin Maung Oo, township administrator for Pauktaw, said: Full nutrition is needed for physical growth, good health, and high intelligence. This will only be achieved when the public, organisations, and government departments can cooperate. Only when children and youths have full nutrition and high intelligence will they become good citizens who can work for the country.

Reporting by San Maung Than for Narinjara News

Translated by Thida Linn

Edited by BNI staff
~Avigilon Security Solutions Helped Protect 2016 Rio Olympics~

VANCOUVER, CANADA, August 22, 2016 /CNW/ - Avigilon Corporation ("Avigilon") (TSX: AVO), provider of trusted security solutions, today announced that its video surveillance cameras, network video recorders, and video management software helped protect the 2016 Summer Olympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (the "Rio 2016 Olympics").

"Hundreds of thousands of people attended, participated, and volunteered at the Rio 2016 Olympics, making security of paramount importance," said Alexander Fernandes, Avigilon's Founder, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board. "We're extremely pleased that Avigilon's advanced video surveillance solutions were chosen to help protect people and venues at the Rio 2016 Olympics."

Avigilon Control Center video management software was used to help Rio 2016 Olympics security personnel analyze and manage video data captured by surveillance cameras installed at venues and common areas throughout the Rio 2016 Olympics. Among other things, Avigilon's advanced video surveillance solutions enabled security personnel to view activity within large crowds and provide video evidence and information in real time. To learn more about Avigilon, visit avigilon.com.

About Avigilon

Avigilon Corporation provides trusted security solutions to the global market. Avigilon designs, develops, and manufactures video analytics, network video management software and hardware, surveillance cameras, and access control solutions.

 2016, Avigilon Corporation. AVIGILON, the AVIGILON logo, and AVIGILON CONTROL CENTER are trademarks of Avigilon Corporation. Other marks referred to herein are the property of their respective owners.

For further information:

Darren Seed

Vice President, Capital Markets & Communications

T: (604) 629-5182

[email protected]





SOURCE Avigilon Corporation
The Carnival of Space #472 is up at Everyday Spacer

Universe Today  Earth-Like Planet Around Proxima Centauri Discovered

Artists impression of a sunset seen from the surface of an Earth-like exoplanet. Credit: ESO/L. Calcada

Universe Today  Why Havent We Found Any Aliens Yet?

The Galaxy is very big and it is tough to scan for alien signals plus we do not know how scarce intelligent radio using life is. Plus the signals get weaker over the distances.

New, very powerful listening devices will be coming into operation soon as well as sophisticated instruments that will be able to analyze exoplanets atmospheres to look for hints of life. SETI will expand into new areas and scientists will be able to devote a lot more telescope time to the search as the newly funded (100MM) Project Breakthough Listen kicks into high gear. It will cover 10 times more of the sky and the entire 1-10GHz radio spectrum. There will be more powerful optical and infrared searches and it is estimated the project will generate in a day as much data as SETI produced in an entire year.

The program includes a survey of the 1,000,000 closest stars to Earth. It scans the center of our galaxy and the entire galactic plane. Beyond the Milky Way, it listens for messages from the 100 closest galaxies to ours.

The instruments used are among the worlds most powerful. They are 50 times more sensitive than existing telescopes dedicated to the search for intelligence.

Try to brainstorm about how to search for non-radio using intelligent life

SETI scientist Nathalie Cabrol thinks its also time for a new approach to SETIs search, a reboot if you will. She feels that SETIs vision has been constrained by whether ET has technology that resembles or thinks like us. She feels that the search, so far, has in essence been a search for ourselves. Electromagnetic fingerprints of radio transmitions carry a strong like us assumption. She proposes involving a lot more disciplines in a redesign of the search. Astrobiology, life sciences, geoscience, cognitive science and mathematics among others. Her plan is to invite the research community to help craft a new scientific roadmap for SETI that very well may redefine the meaning of life and the cosmic search for new forms of it.



Centauri Dreams  The newly discovered trans-Neptunian object called Niku may have much to tell us about things lurking in the outer regions of our Solar System. But Niku does not validate Planet Nine. The question remains: What is causing the apparent clustering of certain TNOs in distant orbits?

Nextbigfuture  A team of researchers affiliated with the Warsaw University Observatory has captured for the first time the events that led to a classical nova exploding, the explosion itself and then what happened afterwards. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the team describes how they happened to capture the star activity and why they believe it may help bolster the theory of star hibernation.

In this type of binary system, a white dwarf sucks gas from a much bigger partner star until it blows up  about every 10,000 to one million years.

The consistent stream of images snapped for that project, the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, allowed the researchers to go back and see what the star system looked like before the explosion brought it to their attention in May 2009.

Even though it is 20,000 light-years away  a terribly faint pinprick of light barely visible among brighter stars, even in magnified images  this was a rare opportunity to study the build-up and aftermath of a classical nova.

Nextbigfuture  Spacex plans to use a lot more carbon fiber components instead of aluminum in their rockets. SpaceX aims to hold down expenses by reusing rockets and spacecraft. Originally, the company made rockets mostly out of aluminum to keep costs low, using carbon fiber only for a few parts, such as connecting joints.

Japanese materials maker Toray Industries will supply a lot of carbon fiber to SpaceX for use in the bodies of rockets and space vehicles.

The multiyear deal with Tesla founder Elon Musks 14-year-old venture is estimated to be worth 200 billion yen to 300 billion yen ($1.99 billion to $2.98 billion) in total. The two sides are aiming to finalize the agreement this fall after hammering out prices, time frames and other terms.

Carbon fibers are more elastic than similar material used in aircraft and thus will be able to withstand the harsh conditions of space travel. Re-using space vehicles will help slow the proliferation of debris, which has become a substantial risk to space exploration.

The Falcon 9 first stage weighs about 40,000 pounds and the second stage about 6000 pounds. When Aluminum is swapped out for carbon fiber typically 40% of the weight can be saved in airplanes and probably rockets.

Dry mass of the rocket is about 26 tons with a fuel mass of 396 tons, that is 5.9%, so you could save 2.3% by making it 40% lighter (this includes the thrust assembly/engines). A lighter system would also save on fuel usage.

Nextbigfuture  An Earth-like planet that orbits Proxima Centauri in its habital zone has been found.

The discovery was made by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) using the La Silla Observatorys reflecting telescope.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) will be announcing the finding at the end of August

Nextbigfuture  The High Definition Space Telescope is a proposed space telescope that would be five times as big and 100 times as sensitive as the Hubble, with a mirror nearly 40 feet in diameter, and would orbit the sun about a million miles from Earth.

The revolutionary HDST space-based observatory would have the capability to find and study dozens of Earth-like worlds in detail.

The 10 milliarcsec resolution element of a 12 meter telescope (diffraction limited at 0.5 micron) would reach a new threshold in spatial resolution. It would be able to take an optical image or spectrum at about 100 parsec spatial resolution or better, for any observable object in the entire Universe. Thus, no matter where a galaxy lies within the cosmic horizon, we would resolve the scale at which the formation and evolution of galaxies becomes the study of their smallest constituent building blockstheir star-forming regions and dwarf satellites. Within the Milky Way, a 12 m telescope would resolve the distance between the Earth and the Sun for any star in the Solar neighborhood, and resolve 100 AU anywhere in the Galaxy. Within our own Solar System, we would resolve structures the size of Manhattan out at the orbit of Jupiter

Nextbigfuture  Large baselines will be required in the future to perform direct imaging and, in some cases, spectroscopic observations of exoplanets. Therefore, astronomers will inevitably be led to design large interferometers, even at short visible wavelengths.

If around 20202030 we have found a promising biomarker candidate on a nearby planet [for instance, around Proxima Centauri, such a discovery would trigger two kinds of projects:

Direct visualization of living organisms. To detect directly the shape of an organism 10 meters in length and width, a spatial resolution of 1 meter would be required.

Even on the putative closest exoplanet, Proxima Centauri A=B b, the required baseline would be at 600 nm B  600,000 km (almost the Suns radius). In reflected light, the required collecting area to obtain 1 photon per year in reflected light is equivalent to a single aperture of B  100 km. In addition, if this organism is moving with a speed of 1 cm s 1, it would have to be detected in less than 1000 s. To get a detection in 20 minutes with a S=N of 5, the collecting area would correspond to an aperture B  3 million km. Laser-trapped mirrors and other hypertelescope designs could make massive optical astronomy possible.
A new generation of Chinese cruise missiles will be created using modular construction technology and will use a high level of artificial intelligence. This is according to the director of the main department of development of the Third Academy of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) Wang Changqing.

We plan to take the approach of plug and play in developing new cruise missiles, which will enable our military leadership to configure cruise missiles according to military conditions and specific requirements, Changqing said.

Modular design is not new to the worlds missile developers. The European missile developer and manufacturer MBDA displayed its CVW102 Flexis modular missile concept at last years Paris Air Show. The system will allow missiles to be configured, according to mission requirements.

The modular weapon that could be tailored for specific applicationssimilar in concept to the Russian Kalibr, which is made in multiple variants for different types of missions. The cruise missile will have drone like capabilities.

Moreover, our future cruise missiles will have a very high level of artificial intelligence and automation allowing commanders to monitor them in real time or use them for automated real time navigation, as well as add more tasks during the flight, Changqing said.

They will allow commanders to control them in a real-time manner, or to use a fire-and-forget mode, or even to add more tasks to in-flight missiles.

Chinese engineers have researched the use of artificial intelligence in missiles for many years, and they are leading the world in this field, he said.

The CVW102 Flexis is designed for an aircraft carrier strike group. Missiles will be selected and assembled with different warheads, engines and guidance devices based on target information, according to a report on advanced missiles published by the Beijing Hiwing Scientific and Technological Information Institute, which researches aerodynamic missiles and unmanned systems.

A senior researcher at the institute who requested anonymity said a modular missile system is flexible and multifunctional. This will help manufacturers reduce development and storage costs and will enable a military user, such as an aircraft carrier, to prolong the operational range and duration of a mission.

It is a promising approach in terms of the design of next-generation missiles, but we should also consider its technological complexity and production costs, he said.

Wang Yanan, editor-in-chief of Aerospace Knowledge magazine, said a modular missile will be capable of changing its destructive capacity, flight mode and range, and so is suitable for striking targets on the ground or at sea.

However, engineers will have to make sure such a missile can be assembled within a very short period of time. Otherwise, the best time to engage the target will be missed, he said.

SOURCES- China Daily, National Interest
Elon Musk critical innovation for both the electric car and power storage is the cylindrical battery that will be made at Gigafactories. IT looks a lot like what you buy at Walgreens, but with lithium-ion guts which powers laptops today. Musk based the Tesla car fleet, and the Power Wall that acts as a buildings energy reservoir, on this proven low cost design.

He and Panasonic are setting out to make billions of them at a gigafactory in Nevada, and they have two huge markets to go into.

The basis of the energy storage system of Tesla products are lithium-ion cells in the 18650 form factor. These cylindrical cells have a diameter of 18 mm and are 65 mm in length, a size used for the batteries of laptops. Cylindrical cells are generally less expensive (costing 190200 dollars per kWh as of 2014) than large format cells whose active layers are stacked or folded (approximately 240250 dollars per kWh).

The battery cells that will be produced at the Gigafactory are of a new form factor, larger than the 18650 cells used in the Model S and Model X automobiles. While the cells were originally expected to be at least 20 mm in diameter and 70 mm in length,revised specifications for the optimized form factor are 21 mm (0.83 in) by 70 mm (2.8 in). The new battery cells themselves will be bigger than the ones currently used (18650 to 20700), the battery packs will be smaller thanks to better packaging and cooling.

Tesla expects to achieve a cost target for production battery packs of under US$100 per kWh of energy storage by 2020.

Detailed analysis shows a potential path to a 30% cell-level cost reduction to ~$88/kWh by using a more efficient lithium-rich nickel cobalt manganese cathode (vs. NCA), doubling the percentage of silicon in the synthetic graphene anode, replacing the liquid electrolyte with an ionic gel electrolyte which eliminates the need for a separator, and using a water-based electrode solvent for the cathode. The gigafactory could drive pack-level costs by 70% to ~$38/kWh via economies of scale, supply chain optimization, increased automation, and production domestication.

Cheap batteries will enable scalable DC microgrids will help bring energy access more quickly to the 1.5 billion or so people that have none, greater efficiency and flexibility to those at the top of the economic pyramid, and good new elements of each to the people in between.

Prior to the building of more gigafactories, Tesla may expand and potentially double the size of Gigafactory 1. In June 2015, Tesla announced it exercised its option to buy 1,864 acres (754 hectares) of land adjacent to the original 1,000-acre (400 ha) Gigafactory site.

On April 30, 2015, Elon Musk announced that the factory heretofore known simply as the Gigafactory was now to be known as Gigafactory 1 as Tesla plans to build more such factories in the future. At the same event, Musk also said that he believed that other companies would build their own similar Gigafactories. After receiving $800M of orders ($179M PowerWall, $625M PowerPack) within 1 week of unveiling, Musk estimated that the Gigafactory 1 is not enough to supply demand.

Teslas activities and interest in Japan indicate that a Gigafactory, perhaps Gigafactory 2, could be built in that country. As of March 2015, Japan was the second-biggest source of Tesla components after North America.

Musk has indicated that Gigafactory 2 may also integrate Tesla motor vehicle production into the factory along with cell, battery pack and PowerWall manufacturing that is done in Gigafactory 1.

At the 2016 annual shareholders meeting, Musk reported that the Fremont factory makes good use of only two to three percent of its car manufacturing space, and could achieve an order of magnitude (i.e., tenfold) increase, to effectively use 20 to 30 percent of its space. If Tesla can do that, its auto factory, which produced close to 500,000 cars per year when it was known as NUMMI, and is now producing close to 100,000 cars per year, could meet TSLAs goal of 1 million cars per year (i.e., about 10 times the current rate) by 2020, without the need for another auto factory.

Tesla engineering has transitioned to focus heavily on designing the machine that makes the machine  turning the factory itself into a product. A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a 5 to 10 fold improvement is achievable by version 3 on a roughly 2 year iteration cycle. The first Model 3 factory machine should be thought of as version 0.5, with version 1.0 probably in 2018.

SOURCES  Wikipedia, Forbes, Seeking Alpha, Street Insider, Tesla, Twitter
The deputy in-charge of information department in ALP, a ceasefire armed group, was produced once again in a defamation case against the Burma Army.

It was the fourth time, Khaing Myo Tun was produced in the court following a case filed by an Army lieutenant colonel based in the regional Army headquarter in Sittwe, said Daw Kyaw May adding that the trial was however postponed till 25 August, as the complainant failed to be present in the court.

Over 300 locals carrying various posters with the photograph of Khaing Myo Tun assembled in the front of Sittwe township court to express their solidarity to the ALP leader.

We came to the court to express our support to Khaing Myo Tun, as he is working for our people. We also believe that he was right while alleging the Army for its abusing misbehavior towards the common people said Ko Maung Chay from Sittwe.

It may be mentioned that Khaing Myo Tun was arrested on 25 July for a statement released by the ALP information department on 27 April claiming that the Tatmadaw had committed war crime and violated the recommendations of Geneva Convention.

The Burma Army accused the leader of the Rakhine ethnic armed group, which signed the nationwide ceasefire agreement with the Myanmar government in Nay Pyi Daw last year, for the statement and filed defamation case under sections 505(b) & (c) of the Burmese penal code.
A former Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu, says President Muhammadu Buharis administration means well for Nigerian...

A former Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu, says President Muhammadu Buharis administration means well for Nigerians, urging support for its developmental programmes.Wogu said this on Monday in Umuahia while speaking with newsmen after a closed-door meeting with Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia. I am advising Nigerians to give Buhari administration the necessary support to realise its economic policies and ideas. According to him, the planned economic stimulus will go a long way in improving the nations economy.Wogu said that the Federal Governments effort on security was paying off, adding that the anti-corruption programme was also in the right direction. In a remark on Abia politics, Wogu advised the people to support the state government in enhancing economic development.
President Muhammadu Buhari has been advised by a United Kingdom based Nigerian activist, Philip Agbese, to overlook the offer to swap the ...

President Muhammadu Buhari has been advised by a United Kingdom based Nigerian activist, Philip Agbese, to overlook the offer to swap the abducted Chibok schoolgirls with Boko Haram prisoners, adding that there is every chance that Nigeria will be reintegrating nothing less than 300 terrorists into the society by giving in to such call.He added that such move will put the country in high security risk.Agbese said it would be wise to consider the damage the released detainees will do to the country.The activist said the move will be harmful to Nigeria, the entire West African region and some will spill over to Central and East Africa.His words, The ongoing orchestra that is whining for terrorists considers everything with the exception of one. Recidivism.These groups and individuals that have been canvassing a swop of Boko Haram prisoners for the abducted Chibok Girls do so without regards for the penchant for recidivism among terrorists like any other type of criminals.Recidivism is the chances of a previously arrested, detained or convicted terrorist returning to extremism or violence.Military records would probably show that some of these people we are being asked to free are in incarceration because it was not their first time of being tied to terror.Mr President, recidivism is difficult to measure, particularly so in a country like Nigeria where we are still working to bring our statistics and research capabilities up to date.Instead, the reality is there is the risk of them returning to the war front to re-stock Boko Harams fighting ranks.
The Department of State Services (DSS) says it has arrested the spiritual leader at a Boko Haram cell in Kano, as well as other insurgen...

The Department of State Services (DSS) says it has arrested the spiritual leader at a Boko Haram cell in Kano, as well as other insurgents plotting to carry out attacks in some states.A statement signed on Monday by Tony Opuiyo, its agent, said the secret police also disclosed that it rounded up some members of kidnapping gangs in Benue, Akwa Ibom and Calabar states.Following threat messages against some members of the diplomatic corps in Abuja and Lagos, this service responded and subsequently apprehended one Aikhoje Moses, on 19 August 2016, at Azagha by-pass off the Benin-Asaba expressway in Edo state. Before his arrest, Moses had threatened the diplomatic community in Nigeria, particularly the consular-generals of Switzerland and Denmark and their embassies in Nigeria, warning them to leave the country, it said.The service also arrested one Mudaisiru Jibrin aka Namakele/Alarama on 17 July, 2016, at Sauna quarters, Yankaba area in Kano. Jibrin was the spiritual leader to a newly uncovered Boko Haram cell in Kano. Preliminary investigation so far conducted revealed that he was also the mastermind of the shooting of some students at Government Secondary School (GSS), Mamudo village near Potiskum, Yobe State, in 2013.Similarly, on 8 July, 2016, at Kinkinau area in Unguwar Muazu of Kaduna metropolis, the service arrested one Mukhtar Tijani, a notorious Boko Haram fighter and three of his accomplices namely, Isiaku Salihu, Abdullahi Isah and Hindu Isah. The four suspects were apprehended while perfecting arrangements for major coordinated attacks on selected targets and locations in Kaduna state.In a related development, on 12 August 2016, at Auchi in Edo state, three members of the Ansaru terrorist group hibernating in Kogi state were apprehended by the service. Usman Abdullahi, Abdulmumuni Sadio and Ahmad Salihu were arrested while making arrangements to launch attacks on some selected targets in Edo and Kogi states, before escaping to join ISIS in Libya.The DSS further said that it arrested members of a gang which specialised in cattle rustling and kidnapping in Zamfara and Katsina states.Following recurring attacks by cattle rustlers in Zamfara state, this service conducted series of operations in collaboration with the military to degrade the criminal network of one Buhari General in the state. Sequel to these operations, this service arrested one Abdullahi Haruna aka Douglas, a bread seller on 13 August, 2016, at Hayin Buba area in Gusau LGA of Zamfara state. Haruna was intercepted while using the cover of his petty business, to monitor security bases and movement of security agents in the state, in a bid to facilitate counter-attacks against security personnel deployed to the state, it said.Also, on 12 August, 2016, at Aliero town in Aliero LGA of Kebbi state, one Hussaini Alhaji Sule aka Yellow, was apprehended by the service. His arrest was facilitated by an earlier operation of 29 July, 2016, when one Hafizu Sani, a spy and criminal associate of Buhari General, was apprehended by this service. Prior to his arrest, Sani was also spying on the movements of security agents in Zamfara state. Sani, in concert with other elements, has been terrorising local communities in Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara states respectively, engaging in cattle rustling and kidnap activities.Meanwhile, following the spate of gruesome killing and kidnap incidents in Benue state, on 8 August, 2016, the service arrested one Terfa Jirgba and two of his accomplices, namely Terzungee Kwaghaondo and Mathias Aende, at Badagry street off Esther Aka road in Makurdi, Benue state. Jirgba is an active ally and gang member of Terwase Agwaza aka Ghana, a notorious kidnapper who runs a kidnapping and criminal network in Benue state.In a follow-up operation, one Terungwa Abur was trailed to Port-Harcourt City in Rivers state. He was eventually picked up on 16August, 2016. Abur is the second in command to Agwaza and a key member of the kidnapping gang of Terwase Agwaza aka Ghana which operates from Benue state. He acts as a courier for the underworld gang and was the negotiator of the N4m ransom paid to the gang for the release of two Indian national staff of Dangote Cement Company, Yander-Gboko, who were kidnapped on 29July, 2016, in Markudi city. He also participated in the killing of one Ortin in Gboko township on 1August, 2016.To address the activities of various criminal syndicates that have in recent months terrorised residents of Calabar and parts of Akwa Ibom state, on 15 August, 2016, along Ukpong street in Oron LGA, one Benjamin Emomotemi and his accomplices namely Gabriel Ambrose, Godbless Taliboth Mattias, Blessing Sunday, Simeon Blessing Sunday, Edet Effiong Asanagasi And Rose Williams, were all apprehended by the service tactical team. The suspects were part of a kidnap ring which masterminded the abduction of one Mr Rufus AKV on 31 May, 2016 and Senator Patrick Ani on 6 July, 2016 in Cross River state.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, yesterday, blamed the continued fall in the value of the naira against ot...

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, yesterday, blamed the continued fall in the value of the naira against other major currencies on the huge demand for foreign exchange (FOREX) necessitated by the importation of petroleum product into the country.According to the Minister, the sector accounts for between 30 and 40 per cent of foreign exchange demand, adding that the failure of the nations refineries to work optimally has led to shortfall in the availability of FOREX in the open market.Speaking in Lagos yesterday, the minister painted a gloomy picture of the industry stating that proactive steps are required to bring Nigerias economy back on positive track. He said, We need to get our refineries to work optimally, in order to inject funds back to the economy. It is taking us four to six months to go through processes and bureaucracy even to get investors coming into the country and inject money to take the refinery to the point where it is neededAnd the reality is that unless we do that, the dream and hope I had was that in 2018 we should begin to reduce drastically petroleum product import into the country and in 2019, we should be able to exceed total local demand, and so, if we can take care of that alone, the pressure on foreign exchange will reduce. The foreign exchange conversion rate, the exchange rate will improve in favour of the Naira.
The Federal Government will train 500 ex-militants in agriculture and aquaculture under its amnesty programme, an official has said. T...

The Federal Government will train 500 ex-militants in agriculture and aquaculture under its amnesty programme, an official has said.The Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta, Paul Boro, disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria shortly after his visit to Bio-resources Development Centre (BIODEC), Odi in Bayelsa .He said the would-be trainees were selected from Akwa-Ibom, Abia, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Imo, Ondo and Rivers.The special adviser said the training would create jobs and wealth for the youth, especially now that the country sought to diversify the economy.According to him, 18 other ex-militants had acquired skills in aquaculture under the programme.Mr. Boro, who is also the Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, said he took a tour of the centre to monitor the progress of staff and livestock in the centre.The amnesty office is committed to training youths to become productive in the area of agriculture and aquaculture.We will encourage them to plan their future, study and appreciate the value of knowledge in the modern society, the retired Brigadier General said.He promised that loans would be made available to the beneficiaries to enable them to establish businesses after the training.(NAN)
Making his first visit to Canada, Cardinal Bo met with Burmese expatriates and stopped at some of the countrys major religious sites, including Canadas Martyrs Shrine, according to a news report in Simcoe.com on August 19.

I was very impressed (by the Martyrs Shrine), he said during his August 17 stop. So much so I almost decided to become a Jesuit.

Cardinal Bo is the archbishop of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Yangon. He was named archbishop in 2003 and cardinal in 2015.

There have been Catholics in Myanmar for over 500 years, he said. But Im the first cardinal. After 500 years, we finally got there.

The cardinal was accompanied on his visit by Simcoe North MP Bruce Stanton, who serves as chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Burma, according to the newspaper.

This is a country that is in the very early stages of putting together a democratic and peaceful country, said Mr Stanton. The work of Cardinal Bo and other civil-society groups is helping to move this along.

Cardinal Bo said the efforts of Canada and others in imposing sanctions on Myanmars former military government were a huge help in ensuring democracy returned to his country.

Canada continues to be a land of hope in a fast-changing world, he told media. Even as dark clouds of hate speech form over your neighbor (United States), you are unflinchingly welcoming to every stranger.
Oba of Lagos Rilwan Akiolu has hailed the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) for leading the offensive against militants, who held Lagos and Ogun co...

Oba of Lagos Rilwan Akiolu

Oba of Lagos Rilwan Akiolu has hailed the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) for leading the offensive against militants, who held Lagos and Ogun communities hostage.Akiolu spoke when the Air Officer Commanding (AOC) Logistics Command, Air Vice Marshal Sani Ahmed, visited his palace.According to Akiolu, the NAF has played vital roles in crime prevention, urging continuous cooperation among security agencies.Warning the militants to stay off Lagos territory, the monarch called for enthronement of security plan between Lagos and Ogun states.He advised the militants to seek alternative ways to channel their grievances.The AOC sued for cordial relationship between residents and NAF personnel.He urged Lagosians to avail security agencies useful information to prevent crimes.He noted the importance of the commands role to military operations, adding that it was responsible for procuring, receiving, storing, distributing, transporting and sustaining NAF equipment.There is virtually no military operation that can be successful without logistics as is evident in the ongoing operation AWATSE, which needed logistics for its success, he said.
Some inmates of the Abakaliki prisons who sustained gunshot injuries during the August 18 botched jailbreak are set to undergo surgery.

Some inmates of the Abakaliki prisons who sustained gunshot injuries during the August 18 botched jailbreak are set to undergo surgery.The prisoners are receiving treatment at the Federal Teaching Hospital, Abakaliki, where they were rushed after the riots.While sources said 19 inmates died during the attempted jailbreak with 16 others injured, prison officials have said 6 inmates died with 10 others injured.Six prison officers were (also) severely injured, the Comptroller General of Prisons, Jafaru Ahmed, said.News reporter saw hospitalised inmates with various body injuries. Some of the inmates were chained to their hospital beds.Prison officials did not allow taking of pictures at the hospital.The Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Emeka Onwe, said all the wounded were receiving adequate treatment.All I know is that the inmates in our hospital have gunshot injuries, whether as a result of accidental discharge or not, he said.Our orthopaedic surgeons are working hard to carry out surgeries on the inmates to remove the bullets that penetrated the inmates during the incident.Mr. Onwe added that none of them is in the intensive care unit, they are all at the Accident and Emergency Unit. We planning to take them into the theatre and carry out surgery on them as recommended by doctors.During his visit to Governor David Umahi on Friday, Mr. Ahmed said no prisoner escaped during the jailbreak.The Controller General, who had earlier inspected the prison, stated that trouble started when prison officials were about to carry out routine cell-search in the morning. He said the inmates in a particular cell resisted the exercise.They suddenly became riotous, broke other cells and released the inmates.They eventually broke into the workshop to arm themselves with dangerous weapons and severely attacked some staff trapped in the yard while others made for the main gate and pulled it down, he said.Mr. Ahmed said the prisons armed squad and officials from other security agencies on guard outside the perimeter fence were firing warning shots to deter the rampaging inmates; but a number of them rushed out to escape.The bold attempt was resisted by the combined team of armed personnel who presented what would have turned into a catastrophic security situation had the inmates succeeded in escaping, he said.The prisons boss subsequently set up a 3-member panel to investigate the Thursday incident.The Abakaliki prison in the Ebonyi State capital was built in 1946 with an installed capacity of 387 inmates. As at the day of the escape, the prison had a population of 920 prisoners out of which 811 were awaiting trial leaving just 109 as convicted inmates. The suspected ring leader had spent about 9 years awaiting trial, according to an official statement by the immigration service.
court williamloiry.com 1.jpg

William "Bill" Loiry, the man sued by New Jersey over a 'summit' on rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy.

(WilliamLoiry.com)

A man accused of trying to defraud New Jerseyans in the wake of Superstorm Sandy has lost his appeal of a case brought against him by the state's attorney general in 2012.

William "Bill" Loiry, a self-proclaimed "philanthropist/entrepreneur," has made a career of sponsoring for-profit reconstruction conferences in disaster areas.

After Sandy hit New Jersey, Loiry announced plans to hold the "Superstorm Sandy Reconstruction Summit" on Dec. 17, 2012.

The event promised to put attendees in contact with "local, state, and national government, business and nonprofit decision-makers."

But Bamboozled investigated and learned that several high-profile speakers who Loiry said were invited to attend in fact never received invitations. Others -- who we considered the kinds of "decision-makers" who would be involved in such an event -- were also never invited.

The event was another in a long line of conferences sponsored by Loiry in disaster areas. He had previously held conferences after Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill and other catastrophes.

The court said Bill Loiry had to take down the Sandy summit site -- www,SandyReconstruction,org -- within five days of the original Dec, 22, 2014 order, but the site was still operational on Jan. 6, 2015.

When New Jersey got wind of the conference, it investigated, too. And it filed suit, accusing Loiry of several Consumer Fraud Act violations, including falsely implying the sponsors were affiliated or endorsed by federal, state or local governments, misleading advertising and doing business under names that were not registered in the state.

Loiry cancelled the summit, but the court case continued.

The state won in January, 2015.

Loiry was ordered to pay $46,384.20, including $12,500 in restitution for 55 New Jersey consumers who paid registration and sponsorship fees, $10,000 in civil penalties, and the rest would cover the state's attorney and investigative costs.

But Loiry vowed to fight.

"It should be indicated to the readers that Bill Loiry plans to pursue every avenue of appeal and reconsideration of this ruling," said John Shoreman, Loiry's attorney at the time. "He views it as an injustice. From his point of view, this case is far from over."

It's over now, unless Loiry tries to take it to the state Supreme Court.

Loiry's current attorney didn't respond to requests for comment.

In July, the state's Superior Court Appellate Division sided with New Jersey.

The court agreed that Loiry violated the Consumer Fraud Act by using unregistered company names, and by using the presidential seal on his websites to misrepresent that his conferences were associated with the federal government.

"A reasonable person viewing defendant's websites and his solicitations for the Summit would assume defendant was affiliated with the federal government, or the governments of New Jersey and New York," the court said.

It also said Loiry promised that federal, state and government officials would be part of the conference program when no such guests were confirmed.

An undated photo of William "Bill" Loiry in Washington, D.C.

Steve Lee, the director of the Division of Consumer Affairs, said the agency is pleased that the appellate court upheld the judgment against Loiry, whose actions Lee called "deceptive" and "misleading."

"It is unfortunate that Mr. Loiry has not yet complied with the court's order for payment, which includes restitution for the 55 New Jersey consumers who paid registration or sponsorship fees for this non-event," Lee said. "The division will do everything in its legal power to secure the money owed by Mr. Loiry."

We asked Loiry's attorney about his client's plan to pay, but the attorney didn't respond.

We also gave a yell to Washington, D.C., which in 2013 filed its own suit against Loiry, claiming many of his conferences were not as advertised.

The complaint alleged Loiry made misrepresentations about conferences, failed to refund registrants' conference fees or sponsorship fees when conferences were rescheduled or changed, and that he continued operating in D.C. after his business' registration was revoked.

One event, the district said, was advertised as the "American Energy Security Summit" and the "American Energy Summit." The event was postponed for months and not rescheduled, but Loiry had received and not refunded nearly $28,000 from hopeful attendees, it said.

In 2015, Loiry was permanently enjoined from operating in D.C. until his company was properly registered and the court-ordered fees and penalties were paid.

Those fees and penalties have not been paid to date, nor has Loiry registered his company, according to a spokesman for the district.

We also took a look around to see if any of Loiry's many event websites were still up.

And indeed, he appears to still be in business.

A group linked to Loiry, United States Defense Leadership, will be holding several events in this year and into 2017 -- but none are in New Jersey or Washington, D.C.

There's the Army Contracting Summit in Texas in late August, the Air Force Small Business Contracting Summit in New Mexico in September, the Navy Small Business Contracting Summit in Florida in October, and in November, the Marine Corps Small Business Contracting Summit in California.

We checked in with the attorneys general of those states to see if they had complaints or if Loiry and his companies are registered in those locations.

There are no complaints in New Mexico, and Loiry and his companies are not registered there. That's a violation of state law, according to the state's Department of State.

In Florida, where vendors previously said Loiry didn't pay for services they provided for conferences, there are no complaints, but Loiry and his companies are not registered.

"After reviewing the website we did not see that they are soliciting any funds, which may require them to register with our department," a spokesman said.

Another violation.

Requests made to Texas and California were not answered in time for publication.

And we'll let you know if Loiry ever pays up in New Jersey.

Staff researcher Vinessa Erminio contributed to this report.

Have you been Bamboozled? Reach Karin Price Mueller at Bamboozled@NJAdvanceMedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KPMueller. Find Bamboozled on Facebook. Mueller is also the founder of NJMoneyHelp.com.

Stay informed and sign up for NJMoneyHelp.com's weekly e-newsletter.
US-GAY PRIDE-MARCH

Three New Jersey universities rank among the most LBGTQ-friendly in the nation, according to a new survey by Campus Pride. (TIMOTHY CLARY | AFP | Getty Images)

(TIMOTHY CLARY)

Montclair State, Princeton and Rutgers universities are helping lead the nation in welcoming LGBTQ college students, according to a new national ranking.

Campus Pride, a national non-profit advocacy group, released its annual "Best of the Best" list Monday highlighting colleges with policies and programs that help LBGTQ -- short for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning - students and their families.

The three New Jersey schools each received five stars, the top ranking, on the list of 30 top colleges.

Other nearby colleges on the "Best of the Best" list include Penn State, the University of Maryland, the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University.

"Prospective students and their families today expect colleges to be LGBTQ-friendly. They want to know what LGBTQ programs, services and resources are available on the campus - and which are the 'Best of the Best,'" said Shane Windmeyer, Campus Pride's executive. "Now more than ever, there are colleges that are recruiting LGBTQ youth and they are investing in a campus that is fully supportive of LGBTQ students."

The rankings are based on a survey of more than 235 colleges and universities nationwide. The schools answer more than 50 questions, including whether they have non-discrimination policies, LBGTQ student groups, special gender-inclusive housing and training for campus police on sexual orientation issues.

Two other New Jersey colleges, Rowan University and Ramapo College, participated in the survey. Both received two stars on the five-star scale, according to the Campus Pride website.

The ranking comes as colleges are under increasing scrutiny for their policies on sexual orientation and transgender students. Rowan is among those installing all-gender restrooms and implementing new policies allowing students to use whatever name they prefer.

Some colleges, including the College of New Jersey, Kean and Montclair State, revised their healthcare plans last year to offer counseling and possible sex reassignment surgery to students with gender identity disorder.

Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find her at KellyHeyboerReporter on Facebook.
TRENTON -- Gov. Chris Christie once compared New Jersey's state-funded pre-kindergarten program to government babysitting. Now, he's proposing a divisive school funding proposal that threatens to destroy it.

Christie in June introduced a major school funding overhaul that calls for redistributing the state's $9.1 billion in direct school aid equally per student.

If that plan, which takes money from urban districts and gives to many suburban districts, gets approved, Christie would not protect the $653 million currently spent on full-day preschool for three and four years olds, he said earlier this month.

That means that the $86 million in preschool funding to Newark, $44 million to Elizabeth, $29 million to Trenton and millions more to other urban and low-income districts would be among the billions sent to suburban towns for property tax relief.

Without direct funding, the preschool programs in urban districts are unlikely to be spared from the massive budgets cuts Christie's plan would necessitate, said John Donahue, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials.

"What are you going to do?" Donahue said. "It's not a matter of preschool. It's a matter of keeping the lights on in some districts."

New Jersey currently provides pre-K funding to 143 districts, ranging from as much as $86 million to as little as $6,600. The vast majority of that money goes to about 90 districts that will lose or, at best, break even under Christie's proposal, according to an NJ Advance Media analysis.

Passaic City School District, for example, wouldn't only lose its $24 million in preschool funding, but also $140 million in state aid, or about 43 percent of its annual operating budget, NJ Advance Media found.

The idea of wiping out preschool programs in urban districts is an example of why it's difficult to take Christie's plan seriously, Donahue said. If enacted, the plan would force sweeping budget cuts and probable school closures in districts serving large numbers of students from low-income and minority families.

Christie's office declined to comment on his reasoning for not protecting preschool aid, but the governor has been clear that New Jersey's urban districts are failing in his view, saying "more money doesn't equal better results."

The only category of education funding Christie plans to protect in the proposed redistribution is some special education aid, he said.

Christie wants his plan, which would require a state constitutional amendment, to be presented to voters as a ballot question next fall, an election that will decide the next governor. But Democratic lawmakers who control the Legislature have said they oppose the plan and are unlikely to put it on the ballot.

Still, Christie continues to promote it as a viable option, pressing residents in affluent towns to demand their elected officials endorse it.

"There is plenty of stuff that you thought I wouldn't get done that I got done," Christie said earlier this month. "So we'll look to shock you again."

New Jersey's wealthier communities currently receive significantly less state school aid than urban districts and are expected to pay a higher percentage of their school funding through local tax dollars.

Christie's proposal calls for abandoning that system and giving every school $6,599 per student, regardless of the needs of the child or the wealth of the community.

By not protecting preschool funding, Christie would allow the money currently spent for three- and four-year olds in districts like Irvington and Camden to be sent to districts such as Montclair and Cherry Hill to lower property taxes.

While that may please homeowners in highly taxed communities and critics of public preschool, it would come at the expense of one of New Jersey's most effective school reforms, said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at Rutgers.

"The benefits of high quality pre-K are an order of magnitude larger than the cost," said Barnett, a professor and an economist. "Taking it away from the kids who need it most is not the solution to the problem."

The state's public preschool program, which began in 1999 after a ruling from the state Supreme Court, is a public-private partnership. Many students are enrolled in preschool programs run by private providers that contract with school districts.

The arrangement has served as a model for other states and countries, Barnett said.

A study by NIEER found that students in New Jersey's preschool program did better in reading and math in kindergarten and the benefits continued into elementary school. State-funded pre-K also helps students from low-income families catch up to other students, NIEER found.

The Education Law Center, which has waged several court battles against the state over funding for urban districts, will likely challenge any reduction in preschool funding, executive director David Sciarra said.

"There is simply no way (districts) would have the resources to continue the program, and the program would essentially collapse, " Sciarra said. "That would be a tragedy for children in these communities."

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Four New Jersey teachers are being honored by the White House for keeping the country "on the cutting-edge" of science, mathematics and technology.

The Obama administration on Monday announced the winners of the annual Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Two teachers from grades K-6 and two teachers from grades 7-12 were honored in each state.

Julia Ogden, a science teacher at Woodcliff Middle School, and Coshetty Vargas, a math teacher at Washington Park School in Totowa, won the grades K-6 honor for New Jersey.

Victoria Gorman, a science teacher at Medford Memorial Middle School, and Amy Mosser, a math teacher at Seneca High School in Tabernacle, won award for grades 7-12.

The teachers will receive $10,000 to be used at their discretion from the National Science Foundation and be honored at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.

"The recipients of this award are integral to ensuring our students are equipped with critical thinking and problem-solving skills that are vital to our Nation's success," President Barack Obama said

The Presidential Award is given annually to more than 200 outstanding K-12 science and mathematics teachers from across the country. Winners are selected by a panel of distinguished scientists, mathematicians, and educators after an initial selection process at the state level.

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
ESSEX -- A 39-year-old man was sentenced Monday to serve at least 40 years in prison after admitting he repeatedly raped a girl for eight years.

Superior Court Judge Russell J. Passamano sentenced Korynn Hunt to 50 years in prison and ordered him to serve at least 40 years and seven months before he could be eligible for parole.

The prison term is less than a prosecutor has requested.

Assistant Essex County Prosector Amber Loughran, in her statement before the sentence was announced, asked that Hunt receive an 80-year term. "Ten years for each of the eight years of abuse that he inflicted on her," Loughran said.

Loughran read a portion of a letter from the girl, who the assistant prosecutor said was present in court but too nervous to speak. Authorities say the attacks began when she was 9 years old and continued until she was 15.

"He would always want me naked. He said it was normal," the victim said in the letter. She said Hunt constantly demeaned her, causing her at one point to take one of his guns from his home. "I held it to my head and desperately wanted to pull the trigger."

She called Hunt a monster who will continue to affect her relationships. She is still being treated by a therapist, she said.

The girl's mother, who had known Hunt for many years, also addressed the judge, fighting back tears as she admitted failing to protect her daughter. About 15 other people sat in courtroom wearing pink tee shirts with the words "Justice For (the victim)."

Loughran said the victim made a video recording of one attack that occurred when she was 15. In a brief portion of the video that was played in court, the girl is heard pleading for the Hunt to stop, and he is seen yelling at her.

"Why do you always resist? What's wrong with you? This is not that bad. You turn something good into something that is bad," Hunt says in the video.

In court, Hunt, a U.S. Marine veteran with no prior criminal record, apologized for the assault.

"That image disgusts me," Hunt said, referring to the video. He said that for a long time, he had previously been in therapy for problems he was unable to handle.

According to Loughran, Hunt sexually abused the girl twice a week for eight or nine years.

In May, Hunt pleaded guilty to a 26-count indictment, that included 17 counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault and nine counts of second-degree endangering the welfare of a child.

Passamano ordered concurrent sentences for most of the charges, but consecutive sentences for three of the sexual assault charges.

The maximum penalty for each first-degree crime is 20 years in prison and the maximum term for each second-degree term is 10 years.

"What this defendant did to this girl is reprehensible,'' Loughransaid in the statement. "He stole her youth and destroyed her innocence. Yet, in the midst of all he did, she was able to confront him. And, today I hope she is able to begin the process of healing and reclaiming her life.''

Tom Haydon may be reached at thaydon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @Tom_HaydonSL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK -- Authorities have arrested a West New York man who they say flew into Newark airport with more than four pounds of heroin.

According to a release from Port Authority Police, David Molina-Haro, 39, had concealed about four-and-a-half pounds of heroin in packages he carried inside his bag on board a flight into Newark from Ecuador at about 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 19.

They were hidden in packages labeled "cafe" and "Nestle Recacao," and were discovered during a "routine inspection," police said.

Molina-Haro was arrested without incident on drug charges, police said.

Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
DEPTFORD TWP. -- A "Back the Blue Jeep Run" was held Saturday across Gloucester County to show support for police officers.

Participants met at Deptford Mall before heading out to stops at police departments around the area, including Washington Township, Pitman and Mantua.

In addition to a huge turnout of Jeep enthusiasts, participants also joined in on motorcycles and other vehicles.

Organizers said the event was an opportunity to show solidarity with our men and women in blue.

Participants had a chance to meet officers and learn more about their duties.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
WASHINGTON TWP. -- A drug investigation in Washington Township came to and end resulting in the arrest of a township resident on Thursday.

According to a police report, the Washington Township Police Department's Investigative Division and the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office Narcotics Strike Force executed a search warrant of a property on McKinley Avenue after naming resident Nikko Harris as a suspect in a lengthy narcotics investigation.

Police say that upon searching the residence, which is shared by 26-year-old Harris and his mother, drugs and drug paraphernalia were recovered. As a result Harris was charged with three counts of distribution of a controlled dangerous substance, distribution of controlled dangerous substance within 1000 feet of a school zone, and possession of controlled dangerous substance.

According to police, Harris was sent to jail in default of $50,000 cash bail.

Caitlyn Stulpin may be reached at cstulpin@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @caitstulpin. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Fridays meeting with MPCs chairman Dr. Tin Myo Win was to ensure that the MPC would commit to implement at least 30 per cent participation by the women at different levels of political dialogues since only 7% of women were invited to the [Panglong] Conference, as highlighted in the AGIPPs recent analysis, according to a AGIPP press release.

At the meeting, we requested to read the advice paper concerned with the conferences policy. We also discussed the inclusion of women in the technical advisor team of the Myanmar Peace Commission and to invite women to comprise a third of attendees in the 21st Panglong Conference. However, we did not get exact answers from Dr. Tin Myo Win. We also asked to have the list of the women that the MPC will invite, said Daw May Sabe Phyu, a steering committee member of AGIPP.

AGIPP representatives meet with MPC chairman Dr. Tin Myo Win (Photo: AGIPP)

AGIPP also submitted an open letter to the MPC chairman, requesting that any revision of the political dialogue framework must guarantee female participation in the peace process by supporting meaningful engagement; ensuring womens rights are part of the discussion and that the process and policy outcomes are gender-inclusive  meaning gender equality issues are taken into account, according to its press release.

The statement continued, urging the allowance of AGIPP representatives working on Women, Peace and Security to attend the 21st Century Panglong Conference in order to put forward gender inclusive policy recommendations in each of the five key conference themes: politics, security, economics, social issues, land and resources.

AGIPPs steering committee member Daw May Sabe Phyu also said that the AGIPP has received a response from the MPC acknowledging AGIPs proposals at the first meeting between the AGIPP and MPCs chairman.

In 2014, AGIPP formed as a civil society alliance through national organizations and networks working for womens rights, gender justice as well as peace and security processes. It has eight founding members, including the Gender and Development Institute (GDI), Gender Equality Network (GEN), Womens League of Burma (WLB), Kachin State Womens Network (KSWN) and Mon Womens Network (MWN).
JERSEY CITY - Nearly 250 years ago, Jersey City was not much more than a swampy marshland where a miscalculated battle ensued and changed the tides for the morale of some 300 American rebels: the 1779 Battle of Paulus Hook.

And every year, the Historic Paulus Hook Association takes the time to commemorate the Aug. 19 battle.

This year marked the 239th year since the battle for America's independence. On Friday, modern-day patriots dressed in old revolutionary war uniforms with fife and drum and marched through Downtown Jersey City - from Washington Street by the Korean War Memorial to the Four Corners Park - with dozens of residents waving flags and marching along.

Upon arriving at the park - before retelling the story of the historic raid of the British fort - local public officials spoke of the importance of remembering our past as neighborhoods continue to grow and change.

"There are few cities in the country that are going through the same type of changes that Jersey City is going through, and I think most of them are positive," said Mayor Steve Fulop. "But at the same time it's important to recognize our past and our history. These types of events and this community group certainly do that, so it's a privilege to be here and be part of such a great neighborhood."

The commemoration ceremony is held every year by the Historic Paulus Hook Association (HPHA), the neighborhood organization involved in maintaining the quality of life for residents of the area while maintaining its historical aspect. The HPHA continues to work for the community; it is within $250,000 of reaching its goal to renovate the Paulus Hook Park, according to Diane Kaese, the president of the association.

"They do this every year, and that keeps a community together," said Councilwoman-at-large Joyce Waterman during the commemoration. "It keeps the neighborhood thriving; I commend the Historic Paulus Hook Association."

The surprise attack was led by Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee - the father of confederate leader Robert Lee - and took away much of British control over New Jersey.

While the battle - a miscalculated yet successful attack on British forces by rebels trekking all around what is now Hudson County and parts of Newark - was not a major turning point strategically for the war, it certainly improved morale among American forces, and depleted the morale of the British force that at the time was the largest and most feared in the world.

For more information on the Historic Paulus Hook Association, visit its website, PaulusHook.org.
JERSEY CITY -- If Pint were Cheers, Roger Brown would have been its Norm.

The East Orange man was a regular at the Downtown Jersey City pub, where he could be found sitting on the third stool down from the entrance, drinking a vodka-and-cranberry with slices of orange and lemon and playing trivia game Buzztime, often on multiple controllers at once.

Some of his Buzztime usernames were Bozo and No Bra.

"On the running sitcom that was this bar, Roger was a central character," Pint regular Russell Presgraves said.

Brown's stool at Pint was empty on Thursday night, when the bar's regulars gathered to memorialize the avid sailor, who died on Aug. 6 when he drowned after falling from a boat in Liberty Harbor Marina. Brown -- his full name was Roderick Roosevelt -- was 64.

The open-mic memorial was a chance to give Brown's Pint family a chance to honor him with memories and stories, said bar owner Wolf Sterling. Brown was "a part of this place," Sterling said.

"If you sat next to him, he would be your instant best friend," he said. "He would talk to anybody. And he would laugh."

The memorial attracted about 30 people to the tiny Wayne Street bar. A few tears were shed, but the mood was rarely mournful. The crowd laughed as Brown's friends remembered his catchphrases, how he'd gripe that no women worked at the gay-friendly bar, that Halloween he dressed up as the Mad Hatter.

Hazel Smith, of New York City, called Brown "incredibly inappropriate" -- eliciting knowing guffaws from Brown's friends -- "but a good guy." The two became pals when Smith lived in Jersey City and was struggling with some personal issues. She would "hide out" at Pint, she said.

"He gave me a lot of peace when I was going through a lot of heartache," Smith said.

Authorities began searching for Brown in the early morning hours of Saturday, Aug. 6, after a man spotted an unattended sailboat with its motor running floating in the water at Liberty Harbor Marina. Authorities say Brown, whose body was recovered the next day, suffered a head injury before falling into the water. His death was classified as accidental.

Brown was buried Thursday morning at Rosedale Cemetery in Orange. Friends who attended described it much like the Pint memorial: a celebration of his life, with many jokes and little crying. Brown died what he loved doing best, they said.

"Here's to Roger," Moses Jones said as he raised a glass inside Pint, "who is now sailing in the skies."

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
According to Khun Soe Myint Tun, a member of the Eastern Nationalities Political Center, or ENPC, the forum focused on the State Reorganization Act, a matter that is on the agenda for discussions at the peace talks beginning in Naypyidaw on August 31  negotiations that have been dubbed the 21st Century Panglong Conference.

The main discussion was to get support from minority groups in Shan State. We want to hear their opinions on this issue, he said. At the Panglong conference, we will discuss the matter of the various ethnic groups in Shan State. Thats why we had this meeting  to prepare for it.

The closed-door meeting, from August 11 to 15, concluded with an agreement on 10 points of national security, 12 points of national defense, and five points on federal principles.

Fifty-three representatives from ethnic political parties in Shan State attended the meeting, alongside one delegate from Karenni State and another from Chin State.

The 13 indigenous groups said that they will also seek cooperation with the United Nationalities Alliance, led by Khun Tun Oo, and the Nationalities Brotherhood Federation, chaired by Sai Ai Pao of the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party.

By Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN)
Its time to change from an out-of-date country to a developed country, said the August 15 statement.

Peng Jiasheng, who is now 85 years old and lives in Chinas Yunnan Province, stands accused by Burmas military of igniting the conflict between Kokang rebels and government forces in February last year. The MNDAA, alongside its allies the Arakan Army (AA) and the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), were refused seats at the peace talks table until now as they maintained hostilities against Burmese forces in the remote northeastern region of Shan State.

Burmas military previously said the three ethnic armed groups would be excluded from any ceasefire initiatives until they had disarmed.

However, the new government in Naypyidaw, led by Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD) party, has shown a willingness to include all armed groups  whether they be signatories to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement or not  in this new round of negotiations, which are due to begin in the capital on August 31.

According to political analyst Than Soe Naing, the MNDAA leader has changed his tune due to encouragement from Beijing.

Last week, Chinas President Xi Jingping hosted Burmas State Counselor Suu Kyi, after which the United Wa State Army (UWSA) made a decision to attend the Panglong Conference.

Than Soe Naing said he believes that if Suu Kyis government invites the MNDAA, AA and TNLA, they would most definitely join the conference.

However, Khin Zaw Oo, the secretary of the Peace Commission, who also joined the official trip to China, stated that the MNDAA, TNLA and AA must first release a public statement saying they will disarm, before they can join the peace talks.

On August 9, representatives of the three militias met for talks with a government peace delegation from the National Reconciliation and Peace Center on the issue of participation in the peace process.

The meeting was held in Mongla, the headquarters of the National Democratic Alliance Army, on the Sino-Burmese border. After the meeting, the secretary of the TNLA announced that their participation would depend on Burmas State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi.

The so-called 21st Century Panglong Conference is slated to begin next Wednesday in the Burmese capital, where some 700 delegates from the military, government, parliament, political parties and ethnic groups will sit around a table to discuss the nature of future peace talks.

Hosted by Aung San Suu Kyi, this round of negotiations is being named after the 1947 Panglong Conference, when Suu Kyis father, Gen. Aung San, sat for talks with representatives of the Chin, Kachin and Shan minority groups as the country prepared for independence from Britain.

By Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN)
Two people were shot in the 2000 block of Cypress Acres Drive, New Orleans Police said.
UK-based NGO Global Witness reports that at least 185 environmental activists were murdered last year around the globe, and two-thirds of those were in Latin America. According to the report:

On average, more than three people were killed every week in 2015  more than double the number of journalists killed in the same period. The worst hit countries were Brazil (50 killings), the Philippines (33) and Colombia (26). Mining was the industry most linked to killings of land and environmental defenders with 42 deaths in 2015. Agribusiness, hydroelectric dams and logging were also key drivers of violence. Many of the murders we know about occurred in remote villages or deep within rainforests  it's likely the true death toll is far higher. For every killing we are able to document, others cannot be verified, or go unreported. And for every life lost, many more are blighted by ongoing violence, threats and discrimination.
The federal government plans to pour $125 million into the fight against a mysterious disease that has ravaged corals in Florida and much of the Caribbean, and now poses a dire threat to the treasured reefs off the Louisiana and Texas coasts.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump. The nine-member panel sent a letter to the former president's lawyers on Friday, demanding his testimony under oath by mid-November and outlining a series of corresponding documents. The decision by lawmakers to exercise their subpoena power comes a week after the committee made its final case against the former president, who they say is the "central cause" of the multi-part effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It remains unclear how Trump and his legal team will respond to the subpoena, if at all.
Today

Thunderstorms likely. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 76F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%.

Tonight

Clear to partly cloudy. Low 62F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tomorrow

Partly cloudy skies. High near 75F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.
In the Bronx (and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere) when your belongings are seized as "evidence," it can be impossible to ever get them back, even if you're never charged with a crime.

For starters, half of the clients on the Bronx Public Defenders' roster say they were never given an itemized receipt for their seized property. Then there's the fact that you need two pieces of ID to get your stuff back, and the ID in the wallet that the cops seized doesn't count.

But then you need a signed letter from the DA saying your stuff isn't evidence anymore. The Bronx DA doesn't give those out, generally speaking (nor does the DA's office explain why they won't send such a letter). The poorer you are, the less recourse you have, because the next step is to hire a lawyer  not a public defender to go through a complex administrative process to challenge the ongoing retention of your seized property.





The most commonly seized items are wallets, cash and smartphones (when the cops seize your smartphone, you have to keep up payments on your plan, but you don't get to use it anymore). For self-evident reasons, depriving someone who's already poor of their smartphone, ID, and money is especially debilitating. For good measure, the cops also steal poor peoples' winter coats.

The Bronx Defenders have filed a class-action suit against New York City, alleging that there is a "policy, pattern, and practice" of abusive, unconstitutional conduct on the part of the city toward their client.

If this sounds familiar, it's probably because you're thinking of civil asset forfeiture, the process by which cops across America were able to steal pretty much anything and keep it for themselves or sell it to cover their departmental budget  a practice that is now falling into disrepute and declining somewhat in the field.

As with civil forfeiture, this evidence scam can enrich police departments, because items that are not "claimed" (heh) are auctioned off.



All manner of other things get taken, too. James King, a staff attorney at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, says his clients often want to get their winter coats back after an arrest. "Since they're hiring us, they can't afford attorneys," King said. "These are people who are poor." But the hunt to get their coat back sometimes takes so long that, even if it's ultimately successful, winter has ended by the time the coat is returned. In New York, a clock starts ticking the moment a criminal case is over, whether or not it resulted in a prison sentence: A property owner has 120 days to demand the return of their things before the NYPD has the right to dispose of the property, which can mean auctioning off a vehicle or sending seized cash to the city's general fund. If they can't demand the property back in personperhaps because they're behind barsthey must formally authorize an attorney, friend, or family member to do so. (If the items are categorized as evidence, the property owner has another 270 days after making the original demand to secure the elusive district attorney's release. If the items are slated for forfeiture, the owner also needs an additional release from the NYPD civil legal bureau.)

Police Can Use a Legal Grey Area to Rob Anyone of Their Belongings

[Kaveh Waddell/The Altantic]





(via Techdirt)





(Image: 111117-A-BE343-008, Arctic Wolves, CC-BY)
Today

Thunderstorms likely. Potential for severe thunderstorms. High 76F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%.

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 62F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tomorrow

Intervals of clouds and sunshine. High around 75F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.
We thank our sponsor for making this content possible; it is not written by the editorial staff nor does it necessarily reflect its views. Are you looking to save on top-selling items? Our overstock deals have you covered. While the Overstock Sale runs from October 24 through 31, you can get some of the hottest items READ THE REST
A native of Council Bluffs, he was the son Verne Welch, Sr. and Doris (Odenwalder) Welch. He grew up on the west side of the city where his mother ran Rite Way Cleaners and his father was a boilermaker for the Union Pacific Railroad. He graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1955. Shortly following his graduation, he left Council Bluffs to join the Navy. As he did with every endeavor, he gave it his all and soon became a naval intelligence expert, serving until 1968. As he transitioned from his military career, he moved from Los Angeles to Reno, Nev., where he joined the management team at Harrahs Casino. After spending 15 years in various Harrahs locations from Lake Tahoe to Atlantic City and Las Vegas, he felt it was time to come home to Council Bluffs. He brought his knowledge and expertise of casino infrastructure to his home town where he worked with local leadership and legislators to eventually bring Harveys Casino to Council Bluffs. He played a key role in laying the foundation for how the casinos would operate as well as organizing their involvement in local philanthropy through the formation of the Iowa West Foundation. Over the past few decades the Iowa West Foundation has donated more than $300 million to the community. As senior vice president and general manager of Harrahs, he was instrumental in organizing the event that became known as Spirit of Courage. In 2001, Verne was nominated as the first Spirit of Courage Award recipient in recognition of his courageous battle with prostate cancer 1999.
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.
A NEW route is being considered which would take the proposed 5.6 billion Central Railway line and its freight trains away from the High Wycombe area.

Consultants have been commissioned by the South East England Development Agency (Seeda) to draw up an alternative line for the southern end of the north-south route. This would go east of London, not west. Its report should be ready in about three months.

The decision to reconsider the Central Railway route was taken after a meeting of county council leaders and officers at Gerrards Cross a few weeks ago.

It was hosted by David Shakespeare, leader of Buckinghamshire County Council and chairman of the South East Regional Assembly, and Seeda chairman Allan Willett.

They realised they must support the strategy of getting heavy freight traffic off roads and on to rail, but if they were not to have a route they didn't like they would have to come up with their own.

The current proposed route travels through the middle of Buckinghamshire and along the Chiltern Line through Haddenham, Princes Risborough and High Wycombe. The proposal created an outcry from people along this part of the line, who say they gain no immediate benefit, only noise.

After the Gerrards Cross meeting, Cllr Shakespeare told the Free Press the feedback he had from it was that the line went round the wrong side of London. It should go through Milton Keynes and via the area known as Thames Gateway a growth area.

Regional assembly leaders in the north of England are in favour of the Central Railway project with only the south-east region against it.

Central Railway wants the Government to introduce another bill in the Commons. People would give evidence at the committee stage and there would be no need for two or three years of planning inquiries.

Chris Williams, the council's chief officer, said there was lots of pressure for the scheme from northern regions. "They get lots of benefits from it, which is the opposite of the south, which gets disbenefits," he said.

County councillor David Rowlands, vice-chairman of a consortium of county councillors looking at public transport, said he had discussed the idea with members.

"I am pleased that Seeda has commissioned W S Atkins to review the route," he said. But he said leaders in the north wanted it to go west of London so that there would be good links to the M25 and the motorways to the west of the country.

A Central Railway spokesman said: "Central Railway has undertaken extensive engineering studies using international consultants, and the route to the west of London emerged as our preferred route."
Robert Moses gets remembered as the father of New York's modern urban plan, the "master builder" who led the proliferation of public benefit corporations, gave NYC its UN buildings and World's Fairs, and the New Deal renaissance of the city: he was also an avowed racist who did everything he could to punish and exclude people of color who lived in New York, and the legacy of his architecture-level discrimination lives on in the city today.

Last December, Daniel Kolitz wrote a cover story for Hopes and Fears reminding us of Moses's public declarations about the racist character of the streets, buildings and infrastructure he planned, like his rationale for putting still-fatal low bridges over the Long Island Parkway to keep urban black people from traveling by bus to the de-facto whites-only beaches he built; or his decision to put his legendary parks, pools and playgrounds as far as possible from black neighborhoods (the one pool he did install within walking distance of a black neighborhood was kept "deliberately icy" because Moses had heard that black people wouldn't swim in cold water).

Many US cities have similar architectural biases, and these, combined with the redlining that excluded black people from owning homes or moving to new neighborhoods (a practice that also pays dividends to whites, at the expense of black people, to this day), and the American city begins to resemble a machine for stripping black people of prosperity, dignity, and comfort, and reallocating their share of all three to whites, especially rich ones.



Moses's discriminatory activity wasn't limited to Long Island. As Parks Commissioner of New York City, he imported his racist building methods to an area dense with people of color in need of relief from overcrowded neighborhoods. Almost all of Moses's public works projectsamong them Jacob Riis Park, Alley Pond, and Riverside Park, as well as 255 of the 256 playgrounds he built in the 1930swere placed out of reach of the poor, and, as Caro points out, the one pool built anywhere near a black or Hispanic neighborhood was kept at a "deliberately icy" temperature, because "Moses was convinced that Negroes did not like cold water." And as Schindler points out in her paper, Moses also went out of his way to clog Harlem with cars: He placed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge's exit ramp there, when the sensible location would have been the Upper East Side, as almost all traffic at that time came from below 100th street. As a consequence, wealthier neighborhoods remained untouched by traffic, while Harlem's streets were overrun with bridge-bound vehicles.

The lingering effects of NYC's racist city planning

[Daniel Kolitz/Hopes and Fears]





(Image: Aymann Ismail/Hopes and Fears]





(via We Make Money Not Art)
NRL match review committee coordinator Michael Buettner says Sam Kasiano's lashing out at Corey Parker from the Bulldogs' Round 24 loss to Brisbane warranted a two-match ban.

Bulldogs prop Kasiano pleaded guilty to a grade two charge of dangerous contact to the head or neck, and will miss the final two rounds of the regular season ahead of the NRL finals series.

"Sam Kasiano made direct contact with his boot to the face of Corey Parker, the Broncos back-rower," Buettner said.

"The match review committee deemed his actions as careless, with facial lacerations [caused] to Corey Parker's face, and the force [was] considered moderate."

Knights winger Nathan Ross, Eels duo Rory O'Brien and Bevan French and Dragons centre Taane Milne were the other players charged from Round 24 ahead of Monday night's game between the Rabbitohs and Sharks.
The National Wildlife Federation brings nature to life in the pages of our publications, inspiring people of all ages and reading levels to develop a deeper relationship with our natural world.

To learn more about receiving magazines from the National Wildlife Federation, please visit our subscription page.

For information about rights and permissions, visit our Permissions page or contact permissions@nwf.org.
Airports across the Region are battling a decades-long downturn in general aviation, with each striving to secure and grow on-airfield businesses to keep them flying high.

At Michigan City Municipal, skydiving and tourism help fill that bill. Griffith-Merrillville Airport relied on businesses like training Chinese pilots and aerial advertising to help pull it through the recession. Porter County Regional continues to put its faith in a comprehensive plan that makes the airport a linchpin for serving existing employers and attracting new ones to the community.

Since the recession started, there has been a general downshift in pretty much everything in aviation, but we are starting to see an upturn in it, said Craig Anderson, general manager at Griffith-Merrillville Airport.

Figures on landings and takeoffs collected by the Indiana Department of Transportation confirm the observations of local airport operators, with year-by-year figures for all six Northwest Indiana airports showing declines of varying magnitudes during the last decade.

Those declines for the 2006 to 2015 period range from a significant decline of 57.4 percent at LaPorte Municipal, to a barely perceptible decline of 2.4 percent at Griffith-Merrillville. Other Indiana airports, even the states busiest, have suffered similar declines.

Operators of each airport caution that the INDOT figures may not be wholly accurate. Some years were estimated. Much of the data is collected through equipment that may not always be accurate. Also, airports that have significant flight-school activity often show greater variation.

But all of the operators contacted during the last month acknowledged they are fighting national trends, including a rapid decline in people acquiring and holding private pilots licenses.

The number of people holding private airplane pilot licenses had declined to 162,969 as of 2015, from 245,230 in 2002, a 33.5 percent decline over just 14 years, according to the Federal Aviation Administrations U.S. Civil Airmen Statistics. Those holding commercial airplane pilot licenses dropped 20 percent during that same time.

Airport operators see hope on the horizon, with a resurgence in companies use of private aircraft and the burgeoning use of drones by both companies and private individuals.

Dawn of the drones

Federal Aviation Administration regulations require a remote pilot certificate if a drone is used for commercial purposes. One route to that certificate is to already possess or obtain a pilots license. That could grow business at flight schools and also provide a pool of pilots who may one day want to sit in the drivers seat of an aircraft rather than just controlling one from the ground.

The potential for drone use, and for training pilots to fly them, could be particularly robust in an area crisscrossed by pipelines and high-voltage lines serving major industrial establishments such as Northwest Indiana, Anderson said. It appears that drones could be taking over for the manned aircraft that now sometimes monitor those facilities.

Even smaller airports like Michigan City Municipal-Phillips Field are catching the excitement, although they havent seen any direct benefit as of yet.

A lot of companies are using them already, said Michigan City Airport Manager Jessica Ward. And there is a lot of interest from airports with the introduction of drones.

Chicago powers NWI flights

For now, much of the business for Region airports is generated by their proximity to Chicago, and most are looking to increase that part of their business.

Proximity to Chicago is why so much aerial banner advertising is pulled by small planes out of Griffith-Merrillville. Small rural airports like Kentland Municipal entice planes down by offering lower gas prices than airports in the Chicago area. And most of the customers for Skydive Windy City Chicago at Michigan City come out of Chicago.

Ward said it may be hard to believe, but some small aircraft from Chicago land at Michigan City simply to deliver a posse of shoppers to Lighthouse Mall. The airport gives them and others spending a day in town stickers reading: I came here because of Michigan City Airport.

Taxpayers help keep em flying

In fact, almost all airports locally  because all except Griffith-Merrillville are taxpayer-subisidized  engage in low-level public relations campaigns to convince the public of their worth. Michigan City Municipal receives about $200,000 per year from the city to supplement on-airfield income, Ward said.

Lansing Municipal receives between $275,000 and $300,000 per year in taxpayer money to pay off borrowings for capital projects, according to airport Manager John DeLaurentiis.

A study done a couple of years ago for the Illinois Department of Transportation pegged the total economic benefit of the Lansing Airport for the community at $20.6 million per year, when all impacts such as wages, off-airport spending by fliers and other expenditures are added up.

There is a secondary financial benefit to communities in having an airport, but its hard for people to understand that, DeLaurentiis said.

Porter County Regional Airport generates about 60 percent of its income from fuel sales, leases and other on-airport activities, said airport Director Kyle Kuebler. But about 40 percent, or $537,000 in the most recent year, is raised from a tax levy.

County leaders support the subsidy because they think the economic return to the county is well worth it, Kuebler said. The Porter County airport has about a $17.3 million total economic impact on the community, according to a 2012 study commissioned by the Aviation Association of Indiana.

The county and city of Valparaiso are centering much of their economic development activity on industrial and business parks surrounding the airport.

Our goal is to always be the aviation asset for our communitys needs, Kuebler said. And we want to be one of those check-marks for a company when they want to come into our community and have aviation needs.

Gary/Chicago International Airport has suffered the same downturn in landings and takeoffs as other Region airports for much of the last decade. But last year, total aircraft operations rose 14.5 percent as compared to 2014. And so far this year, aircraft operations have increased 12.3 percent as compared to last year.

The increase in flight activity is a hopeful sign for an airport that just last year completed a $174 million project that lengthened its runway to 8,900 feet.

The Gary airport places itself firmly in the greater Chicago market. Executive Director Daniel Vicari said Gary can appeal to cargo and commercial users as well as general aviation by offering the lowest fees and fuel costs in the region, close proximity to downtown Chicago and the entire metropolitan area, and an expanded runway that can service planes flying to and from destinations further away.

The Gary airport is the only one that aspires to host regularly scheduled airline service and currently handles large jets that cannot be handled on a regular basis by any other airport in the Region.
Bowalley Road Rules



The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place.

So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules.

These are based on two very simple principles:

Courtesy and Respect.

Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned.

Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym.

Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse.

However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen.


Indianas jobless rate fell 0.2 percent for the second straight month in July, while Illinoiss unemployment rate plunged by 0.4 percent.

Illinois now has a jobless rate of 5.8 percent, while Indianas stands at 4.6 percent, according to the agencies that track unemployment in each state.

Indianas labor force has been trending positively throughout the last three years, which demonstrates confidence among Hoosier jobseekers as they secure gainful employment. The corresponding contraction of the applicant pool is also increasing employer demand for workers with the right skills and training, Isaid Steven J. Braun, Indiana Department of Workforce Development commissioner.

Indiana is tied with Texas for the 23rd lowest unemployment rate nationally, while Illinois has the 43rd highest jobless rate. The Hoosier state has the ninth highest jobless rate of the 12 U.S. Census-designated Midwestern states. Only Missouri, Ohio and Illinois have higher unemployment rates in the Midwest.

More than 11,200 Indiana residents found work in July, and 7,480 left the labor force. Illinois gained 11,600 jobs but state officials say the steep drop in the unemployment rate was largely due to a decline in the labor force.

A decrease in unemployment is concerning when its the product of people leaving the labor force or giving up on finding a job, said Sean McCarthy, Illinois Department of Commerce acting director. Were not growing enough jobs for everyone that wants to work.

As a result of Illinois subpar job growth, every day more than 1,000 people give up looking for work. We owe it to these people to make our economy grow at a more competitive rate.
MICHIGAN CITY  A Valparaiso woman was arrested last week accused of trying to smuggle tobacco and narcotics into the Indiana State Prison.

Barbara Powell, 60, was charged with trafficking.

According to the Indiana Department of Correction, staff members from the Office of Investigations and Intelligence saw Powell trafficking with her son during a visit on Wednesday.

A package was found and inspected and contained one small clear bag of tobacco and three small bags of a white powdery substance. The white powdery substance was field tested and tested positive for narcotic substance.

Powell was arrested and taken to the LaPorte County Jail.

Trafficking is a level 5 felony offense punishable by imprisonment of up to eight years and up to a $10,000 fine.

According to IDOC, Powell was visiting her son, Jason Powell, who is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for a murder conviction in Elkhart County.
Death, a law against double-dipping and brighter private-sector opportunities have brought a new crop of city, town and township officials to office in recent weeks.

Background

Democratic and Republican caucuses have been busy this summer filling vacancies in local government ranks caused by several departures.

Most recently, four East Chicago, Hammond, Hobart and New Chicago council members resigned late last month after a state judge ruled them to be in violation of a state law forbidding municipal employees from holding a second job as elected officials in the same local government unit.

Since local government cant wait for the next regularly scheduled elections, state law lets the former officials political parties name their replacements.

Susan Pelfrey, Michael Opinker, Juda Parks and Matthew D. Claussen went to court to declare the law unconstitutional, but their suit failed last month.

Pelfrey gave up her seat on the New Chicago Town Council to remain office manager for the towns water works. The New Chicago caucus to replace her was an intimate affair with only two committeemen, including Susan Pelfrey, and one candidate, her daughter, Tara Pelfrey.

Opinker surrendered his 5th District Hammond City Council seat to remain an assistant Hammond fire chief. David Woerpel, Hammonds Democratic city chairman, was the only candidate for the vacant post.

Parks left his East Chicago City Council at-large seat to remain an East Chicago police officer. Democrats Wednesday elected Ronald London, a retired East Chicago police officer, from among nine candidates.

Matthew D. Claussen resigned his Hobart City Council at-large seat to remain a Hobart police officer. Democrats Thursday elected Dan Waldrop, a Hobart committeeman for 16 years, and business manager and financial secretary of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union.

Whats next?

The new officials will remain in office three years before they can face a re-election challenge.
MERRILLVILLE  Equity Property Management is pursuing $17 million in renovation work for three apartment complexes it owns here.

Cloisters, Edgewood Terrace and Tan Tar A complexes have been around for decades and need upgrades, Kevin Donohoe, executive vice president of Equity Property Management, told the Town Council recently.

He said the facilities in north Merrillville will receive new roofs, windows, bathrooms, kitchens, cabinetry, flooring and other improvements. The exteriors of the complexes also are expected to receive upgrades with landscaping and new security features.

Donohoe said the properties will be enclosed with security fencing and electronic gates. Cameras also will be installed.

There are a total of 190 apartments in the three complexes, 130 two-bedroom units and 60 one-bedroom units, Donohoe said.

Town Attorney John Bushemi said the construction period is expected to last about 13 months.

Donohoe said no tenants are being asked to leave and Equity Property Management has created a relocation plan.

Donohoe said construction will last about one week in each unit. The three buildings wont need to be completely empty when the renovation work takes place.

Tenants will be offered multiple options. If a resident wants to move into a different unit, he or she can do so after it is upgraded. If tenants desire to stay in their current apartment, hotel units will be available, Donohoe said.

Those units will be similar to hotel rooms and residents will stay in them while their apartments are updated.

Equity Property Management is seeking tax credits and the process will preserve affordable housing offered at the complexes, Donohoe said.

He said the company is expected to receive $6 million from a tax credit investor to help fund the work. The company also is pursuing an $11 million loan for the project.

Donohoe said Equity Property Management wants to start the renovation project as soon as possible and the company is seeking assistance from the town so those deals can be finalized.

Density ratios for multifamily housing developments have changed since the three apartment complexes were constructed.

If the complexes were destroyed in a natural disaster or fire, Equity Property Management wouldnt be permitted to rebuild the same number of units that currently exist because of the changes in the towns density rules, Donohoe said.

The company is seeking an amendment to Merrillvilles ordinance so it would be permitted to rebuild the same number of units if there was a catastrophic incident that destroyed apartments in those buildings.

Donohoe said the investor and loan officials have indicated that approval is necessary before funding would be issued.

Councilmen seemed receptive to that request. The matter would first need to be heard by the Plan Commission. Final approval would come from the council. Both panels could take action on the request in September.
At Hanover Central High School the Advanced Placement Spanish Literature and Culture students began by meeting and greeting new students to the school and class. Speaking primarily Spanish, teacher; Stephen Gustas welcomed everyone back to school and discussed the summer care of the class fish, his dislike for gum chewing and told a story about his own experience as a student in Spanish class.

First graders in Juliana Caffarinis class at Jane Ball Elementary School spent some quality circle time talking about why they were glad to be back in school. Across town at Lincoln Elementary School, 4th grade students were delighted to find out there is nothing more fun and innovative than 'Camp Wagner. Students arrived to find out that this fourth grade class is led by Camp Counselor, Jenny Wagner, who was splendidly attired in her 'Camp' clothes. The students spent time in the morning sorting and labeling all those back to school supplies that were so much fun to buy, but will be even more fun to use. After completing that task, the campers had their pictures taken and filled out questionnaires designed to help Wagner get to know each one of her campers a little better.
CEDAR LAKE  A police chase involving several departments Friday evening ended with the arrest of a 42-year-old Crete man, who is facing seven charges.

Police also found an unrestrained 3-year-old in the front seat of the accused's vehicle.

The chase began around 6:30 p.m. when Cedar Lake officers tried to make a traffic stop on U.S. 41 after seeing the vehicle traveling south weave on and off the road and into northbound traffic. When they tried to stop the driver, later identified as Akia Phillips, at 129th Avenue, he drove off at a high rate of speed.

Phillips turned west onto 133rd Avenue to Calumet Avenue, drove through the stop sign and proceeded north on Calumet to 101st Avenue. He continued to flee west on 101st and then north on Sheffield Avenue to 81st Avenue.

The chase ended at 81st and State Line Road when Phillips reportedly slammed on his brakes and was struck in the rear by a pursuing police car. Both vehicles then went off the road. As officers approached the vehicle and ordered Phillips out of the car, he at first refused and then complied.

Officers discovered a 3-year-old child in the front passenger seat, unrestrained and crying. The child was removed, and Phillips again tried to flee, accelerating and trying to put the car in gear. After refusing several commands from the officers, police used a Taser, and Phillips was taken into custody.

Phillips and the child were taken to St. Margaret Hospital Southlake Campus in Dyer as a precautionary measure. The child was released to the mother. Phillips was taken to Lake County Jail where he faces two counts of felony resisting enforcement, four counts of reckless driving and one count of driving without a license.

Also assisting in the chase were the Lake County Sheriff's Department, the Dyer Police Department, Dyer Fire Rescue and the Cook County Sheriff's Department.
GARY  Deputy Chief Dan Murchek of the Lake County Sheriff's Department has rescued potential victims from fires before, but Saturday was the first time he ever did it from a burning car.

Murchek was on patrol on Cline Avenue about 9:30 p.m. when dispatch reported a car on fire near Burr Street on the Borman Expressway. Murchek said he was on patrol because the department was helping the Indiana State Police, which was shorthanded because of extra security needed for the Indiana State Fair.

He reached the scene in two minutes and saw two men standing near the car, which was burning pretty good under the hood and had started to spread to the interior of the car. As he was talking to the men and asking if everyone was out of the car, one said he thought his dog was still inside. He wasn't sure if the dog had run out when the two men escaped.

Checking the car, Murchek could see the dog cowering on the floor behind the driver's seat. The back door was locked and he tried unsuccessfully to break the window. His patrol car was too far away to retrieve the tool for breaking the window, so he opened the driver's door, took a deep breath and tried to grab the dog.

The frightened dog shrank from him and snarled at him. With the heat of the flames making it impossible to stay in the car for more than three or four seconds, Murchek stepped outside to get another breath and decided to make one more try.

"I've been bit before, but I was going to try," he said. "I said it's now or never and got on my knees on the seat and reached into the back and grabbed the dog's collar and his scruff and pulled him out. I was a K9 officer and I love animals, and I didn't want to see him burn to death."

He handed the dog, whose name is Bella, to the owner, John Manning, of Crown Point, who said Bella had been rescued by him seven years ago.

"I told him he's going to have to change the dog's name to Lucky."

Traffic on the Borman was bogged down because of the car fire, and Murchek said several people witnessed the rescue and gave him a thumb's up. For his part, Murchek said he was just checking to make sure his uniform wasn't on fire.

"Part of this job is being at the right place at the right time," Murchek said.
HOBART  Saturday's rainy weather was only fit for ducks, but all the rain ended up making the Sunday's annual Dam Duck Race unsuitable even for them at the 25th annual Hobart Lakefront Festival.

For the second time in the 17 years of the race, conditions were deemed unsafe. Water levels were too deep and rapid at the Lake George dam for anyone to be positioned in a boat to catch the ducks as they crossed the finish line to determine prize winners.

Instead, the Hobart Community Foundation, which sponsors the event, went to Plan B, a raffle. The 70 winners were drawn from a drum and prizes handed out accordingly. Dave Vinzant, the organization's treasurer, said about 3,200 tickets were sold for the event, one of two major fundraisers for the foundation along with the Mama Mia spaghetti dinner.

The money that doesn't go for prizes is used for grants to various nonprofit groups. Vinzant said past grants have gone to the city's parks department, the police K9 unit, the Hobart Historical Society and the food pantry.

Even without the duck race, the festival drew at crowd of 5,000 to 7,000 people on its final day at Festival Park. Parks Superintendent John Mitchell said the weather also forced postponement of the cardboard boat race, It will be held Thursday instead with 12 intrepid masters of cardboard and duct tape construction entered.

"This is the fourth year of the boat race, and we've only had a couple sink," Mitchell said. "We get 400 to 500 people watching, and it's fun. Every year we re-evaluate everything to see what we can add or subtract for next year."

A new addition this year was a group of circus performers from Chicago. Julie Mandon, recreation coordinator, said fire eaters, a contortionist, stiltwalkers and jugglers walked the grounds Saturday and even interacted with the bands in the band shell.

Another special feature Sunday was City Judge William Longer helping Sadie and Seymour Duck reaffirm their wedding vows after 16 years as the mascots for the dam duck race  and one child, Quackers. Longer asked the couple if they promised to stay together through fair and foul (or maybe it was fowl) weather as well as rough or smooth water.

"They are great symbols of the community spirit in Hobart," Longer said. "When you consider the importance of the lake to the community and its connection to raising funds, this is a big occasion."

Amy and her young son Michael recently moved to Hobart and were enjoying their first visit to the festival.

"I think it's fun," Amy said. "It has lots of different kinds of food and good music. We've been coming to the farmers market here. Michael is in kindergarten, so he's seeing some of his classmates here and I get to meet the parents."

Pat and Vickie Van Laningham came from Highland because their daughter Sara was playing keyboards in two of the bands performing at the festival, the Random Band and The Difference.

"We'd heard about the festival," Pat Van Laningham said as the couple shared a funnel cake. "I like it. It's nice to go some place where you can feel comfortable."

Unless you happen to be a racing duck.
THE ISSUE: Pariah state North Korea could soon be capable of targeting America with nuclear weapons. Economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation have failed to halt its progress. What can the United States do to stop the authoritarian government from building up a nuclear arsenal that threatens our nation and its allies in Asia?

Where they stand

Donald Trump: The Republican presidential nominee says the United States can put more pressure on China to rein in its unpredictable North Korean ally. He has suggested that Japan and South Korea could get nuclear weapons to defend themselves rather than depend on the U.S. military. But hes also ready to meet the North Korean leader.

Hillary Clinton: The Democratic candidate isnt contemplating a face-to-face with Kim Jong Un, who has met no other foreign leader. She wants the international community to intensify sanctions on North Korea as the Obama administration did with Iran, which eventually opened the way for a deal to contain its nuclear program.

Gary Johnson: At one point calling North Korea the greatest threat in the world, the Libertarian nominee has said he favors using diplomacy to convince China to keep North Korea in check.

Why it matters

Unlike Iran, North Korea already has the bomb. It has conducted four underground nuclear test explosions since 2006. The most recent test was in January, when it claimed to have detonated a hydrogen bomb  a much more powerful device than in the previous tests  although the U.S. government doubts that claim.

North Korea also is working on ways to deliver nuclear weapons. After five failures, it successfully test-launched in June a ballistic missile that puts U.S. military bases in South Korea, Japan and Guam within reach. North Korea has displayed an intercontinental missile that could potentially hit the mainland United States, but it has not yet been flight-tested. It could take several more years to perfect that missile, which can be moved by road, making it harder to destroy pre-emptively. The U.S. military has said North Korea may by now have developed a nuclear warhead small enough to mount on such a missile.

The United States keeps 28,500 troops based in neighboring South Korea as a deterrent force, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended without a formal peace treaty. North Korea is unlikely to launch a nuclear attack on the United States or its allies, a move that would invite its own destruction. But mindful of the fate of ousted dictators in Iraq and Libya who gave up nuclear weapons programs, Kim is clinging to his. He views atomic weapons as a security guarantee for his oppressive regime. That is the main obstacle to resuming negotiations in which the North could win much-needed aid in exchange for disarming.

International attitudes to North Korea are hardening. The nuclear test in January triggered the toughest sanctions yet, restricting the Norths access to foreign currency and weapons technology. But it remains to be seen how aggressively China enforces them. In a sign of how seriously the U.S. takes the emerging North Korean threat, it is investing in missile interceptors in Alaska and California to combat it. U.S. experts estimate North Korea has 13 to 21 nuclear weapons  and could have as many as 100 by 2020. Thats about 20 weapons fewer than what India is estimated to have in its arsenal today.

This story is part of APs Why It Matters series, which will examine three dozen issues at stake in the presidential election between now and Election Day.
Featured Post Tohono O'odham Ofelia Rivas at White Mesa Ute Sacred Walk: An Offering to Mother Earth Ofelia Rivas, Tohono O'odham, encouraging walkers. Tohono O'odham Ofelia Rivas at White Mesa Ute Sacred Walk An Offering to Mother E...

White Mesa Ute Spiritual March to Shut Down Uranium Mill



Mohawk Warrior Society Book Launch



Lakota Jean Roach: The True Story of Leonard Peltier



Justice for Dad: Taylor Dewey Shares the Harsh Road to Justice



Justice Dept Files Lawsuit Against Rapid City Hotel



Western Shoshone Ian Zabarte Speaks on Radiation



Archive

Search This Blog

About Censored News Censored News is published by Brenda Norrell. Since 2006, Censored News has received more than 20 million pageviews. As a collective of writers, photographers and broadcasters, we publish news of Indigenous Peoples and human rights. Contact publisher Brenda Norrell: brendanorrell@gmail.com

From the publisher Censored News is published by Brenda Norrell, a journalist in Indian country for 40 years. Norrell created Censored News after she was censored and terminated as a staff reporter at Indian Country Today in 2006. She began as a reporter at Navajo Times during the 18 years that she lived on the Navajo Nation. She was a stringer for AP and USA Today and later traveled with the Zapatistas through Mexico. She has been blacklisted by all the mainstream media for 14 years. Contact brendanorrell@gmail.com

Translate
MICHIGAN CITY  Making Northwest Indiana more accepting of the LGBT community and reducing gun violence recently gave birth to a new organization that has a kick-off event scheduled next month.

The inspiration behind forming the NW Indiana Gay Straight Coalition was the 49 people fatally shot and 53 others wounded in the Orlando, Florida, gay nightclub attack in June, said John Parro, co-founder of the group.

"There we saw the gay community being traumatized by gun violence," said Parro, who felt having such a dual-purpose organization with diverse membership could make a difference in the region.

The Long Beach man said acceptance of the LGBT community in Northwest Indiana is "far less" than what it is in Illinois and other surrounding states and the surge of gun violence nationwide points to a need for "common sense reform of gun laws without taking away gun ownership rights."

He also said the rights and dignity of the LGBT community have been called into question by public figures like Gov. Mike Pence, whose presence is now on a more national stage as the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

"Indiana could not be a more critical state in the union for these issues," said Parro, who operates an internet sales business.

Currently, the group has 15 members all residing in the Michigan City area, but others are welcome to join.

To help raise awareness of the group and its mission, the public is invited to a kickoff party at 7 p.m. Sept. 10 at the Artspace building, 717 Franklin St., in Michigan City's Uptown Arts District.

Another purpose is to generate funds to offset expenses of pushing for policy changes at the state and local levels.

The cost is $75 to attend the event featuring things like appetizers, wine, a silent auction along with the presentation of a formal program.

"It's going to be more of a fun get-together to understand what we can do to raise funds to foster the goals that we've established," Parro said.

Tickets can be purchased at endtheviolence.eventbrite.com.

To become a member and obtain more information about the group, go to info@gaystraightcoalition.org.
A federal judge in Texas is blocking the Obama administrations guidance to school districts that transgender students must be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice. Washington bureau reporter Geoff Bennett filed the following report.



The Obama administration on Monday defended the guidance it issued public schools, which said transgender students must be allowed to use bathrooms consistent with their chosen gender identity.

"Its a complicated issue, but our goal has been from the beginning to provide for the safety and security and dignity for students all across the country," said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.



The defense came after a federal judge on Sunday blocked the policy in response to a lawsuit brought 13 states led by Texas. The judges 38-page order says, in part, that federal agencies exceeded their authority.

The White House argues that the guidelines are legally sound.



"It certainly was not a mandate. It was never described as such by the administration," Earnest said. "I know it was described that way by some of our critics."



The federal government published the public school bathroom guidelines in May. That announcement came just days after the Justice Department sued North Carolina over a state law requiring people to use public restrooms matching their gender at birth.

The White House on Monday dismissed criticism of its actions as election-year politics.



"I recognize there are people who are eager to play politics with this just a few months before a national election," Earnest said.



The federal judges ruling applies nationwide, with the first day of school set to arrive soon in many districts around the country.


A little more than a month after a week-long vacation in Italy, Mayor Bill de Blasio is taking a break and is on the road again, although this time a little bit closer to home. NY1's Courtney Gross filed the following report.



On Sunday evening, all was quiet at Gracie Mansion. A single black SUV sat in the driveway.



On Monday, the same could be said for City Hall.



Quiet because the mayor is out of town.



Bill de Blasio left quietly on Sunday afternoon for a family vacation across New England.

de Blasio, Chirlane McCray and their two children will visit Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. They will not return until next Sunday.



A spokesman said the trips, which weren't announced to the media until Sunday night, would be to visit family and to drop de Blasio's youngest child, Dante, off at college in Connecticut.



On his first night away, de Blasio mixed in some politics. The entire family had dinner with former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in Vermont.



The trip comes just five weeks after the mayor's first summer vacation. In July, the family went to Italy, just like they did in 2014, except this time without the media.



So far this year, de Blasio has gone to Seattle to visit his brother and to Florida. That's on top of other weekends out of state to visit family.



The time away from City Hall may be ammunition for his opponents.



"I am not comfortable leaving the state," said Governor Andrew Cuomo. "I got that ethic, frankly, from my father, who was governor for 12 years. His point to me as a young fellow was to do the job, you have to be there."

Of course, de Blasio is not the first mayor to take a break. His predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, was often away on the weekends, including at his home in Bermuda.



"These are the dog days of summer, and generally, no one will notice. Unless something happens," said George Arzt, a former aide to Mayor Ed Koch.



On top of the vacations, the mayor has also become less accessible to the media. Lately, he has only held one press conference a week to take off-topic questions from reporters.



At least for the next week, direct any questions to the first deputy mayor, Tony Shorris. While de Blasio is away, he is in charge.


Friends and family of a woman who was shot to death at a Harlem park held a rally over the weekend to denounce gun violence as police continue to search for her killer.

They gathered with community members at Charles Young Playground, where 61-year-old Odessa Sims was shot early Sunday morning.

Investigators say Simms was playing cards with friends when one group of men opened fire on another group of men.

Simms was hit in the neck and died at the hospital.

"Odessa was the warmest and sweetest human being you would ever want to meet," a friend said.

"This is devastating. This is more than you could ever imagine for anyone to have to go through," another said. "I can imagine her family is as devastated, just as much as we are here."

Police said no arrests have been made, and the investigation is ongoing.



That shooting was not the only violence in the neighborhood Saturday night.

Just three blocks away on 141st Street, two men were shot and wounded in an unrelated incident about two hours later, according to police.

They are both expected to survive.

Anyone with information on the cases should contact the Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS, or text CRIMES and then enter TIP577, or visit www.nypdcrimestoppers.com
KINGSTON, Jamaica, Aug. 19  Hurricane Dean left a trail of destruction as it surged across the Caribbean on Sunday, toppling buildings on islands along its periphery and taking at least eight lives. But it was in the tourist haven of Jamaica where the powerful storm was expected to leave its most destructive mark.

Jamaicans, who know hurricanes well, huddled in their homes as rain poured down, the beginning of what forecasters said would turn into gale-force winds, heavy flooding and mudslides. As night fell, the island was under assault, although the extent of the damage remained unclear.

The storm had already ripped off roofs and toppled foundations on other islands as it approached Jamaicas southern coast Sunday evening. The time for escape had passed as Jamaican authorities closed all airports Saturday night. The police also ordered businesses closed and strengthened patrols to thwart a repeat of the looting that followed Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

For the last time, Im asking you to leave or you will be in danger, Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller warned residents on Sunday in a final attempt to get them to take refuge in shelters. Her plea seemed to go unheeded as the vast majority of the 1,000 shelters established around the island remained empty, officials said.
Connie Crothers, a jazz pianist who carried the mantle of her famous mentor, Lennie Tristano, but built her own identity as an inventive composer, improviser and instructor, died on Aug. 13 in Manhattan. She was 75.

The cause was lung cancer, said Carol Tristano, Lennie Tristanos daughter and a drummer who often performed with Ms. Crothers.

From Tristano, Ms. Crothers adopted a densely layered pianism and a faith in free improvisation. Like him, she refused to align fully with either jazzs avant-garde or its traditionalists, insisting that structure and spontaneity could go hand in hand.

In all her work, from billowy solo piano to sharp ensemble playing, melody was her main concern.

My approach is not based on putting melodic material into chord changes. I feel thats false, she said in an interview with Chris Becker for his book Freedom of Expression: Interviews With Women in Jazz (2015).
PHOENIX  Three years ago, Kate Rogers was caught in the Bay Area struggle. She paid the astronomical rents. She did the crushing commute. She lived the frustration of always thinking about money even though she was a well-paid professional in the booming technology industry.

And then, just like that, the stress went away. All she had to do was move to Arizona.

I didnt want to have to decide between picking my son up at school and being successful at my job, said Ms. Rogers, who runs the Phoenix-area offices of Weebly, a San Francisco company whose software makes it easier for regular people to build websites. In San Francisco, that would not have been possible.

As start-ups across San Francisco and the Silicon Valley try to contend with high salaries and housing costs, many are expanding to lower-cost cities in the West and employing more people like Ms. Rogers. For Phoenix, which is about a 90-minute flight from San Francisco, the Bay Areas loss is its gain.
WASHINGTON  His successor, whether Democrat or Republican, opposes it, as does most of his party. Delegates at the Democratic National Convention waved signs saying T.P.P. slashed by a bold line, while the Republican Party platform opposed any vote on it in Congress this year.

Yet President Obama is readying one final push for approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest regional trade agreement ever, between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations. And though the odds may be long, a presidency defined by partisan stalemate may yet secure one last legacy  only because of Mr. Obamas delicate alliance with the Republicans who control Congress.

Both parties have candidates who have very strong rhetoric against trade, said Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for trade. Nonetheless, we cant grow Americas economy unless were not merely buying American but selling American all throughout the globe.

Still, he added, timing a vote is absolutely dependent on support for the agreement.

Although the administrations push will begin in September, no vote on the accord will occur before the election. Just as the White House and congressional Republican leaders mostly agree on the economic benefits of trade, they have parallel political interests in delaying debate.
That makes Mr. Hannity the ultimate product of the Fox News Channel that Roger Ailes envisioned when he founded it with Rupert Murdoch 20 years ago, as a defiant answer to what they described as an overwhelmingly liberal mainstream news media that was biased against Republicans. Mr. Hannity was there from the beginning with Mr. Ailes, who was forced out over sexual harassment allegations last month.

Mr. Hannitys show has all the trappings of traditional television news  the anchor desk, the graphics and the patina of authority that comes with being part of a news organization that also employs serious-minded journalists like Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly.

But because Mr. Hannity is not a journalist, he apparently feels free to work in the full service of his candidate without having to abide by journalisms general requirements for substantiation and prohibitions against, say, regularly sharing advice with political campaigns.

So there was Mr. Hannity last week, devoting one of his shows to a town hall-style meeting with Mr. Trump at which his (leading) questions often contained extensive Trumpian talking points  including the debunked claim that Mr. Trump opposed the Iraq invasion. (As BuzzFeed News first reported, Mr. Trump voiced support for the campaign in a 2002 discussion with the radio host Howard Stern.)

On other days, he has lent his prime-time platform to wild, unsubstantiated accusations that Hillary Clinton is hiding severe health problems. He showed a video of a supposed possible seizure that was in fact a comical gesture Mrs. Clinton was making to reporters, as one of them, The Associated Presss Lisa Lerer, reported. He also shared a report from the conservative site The Gateway Pundit that a member of Mrs. Clintons security detail appeared to be carrying a diazepam syringe, for patients who experience recurrent seizures.

A simple call to the Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole Mainor, as I made on Friday, would have resulted in the answer that the syringe was actually a small flashlight.

People in Mr. Hannitys audience of 2.5 million who are inclined to believe the health allegations, and who believe the mainstream media are covering for Mrs. Clinton, are unlikely to be impressed by the Secret Services explanation.
Entertainment / Music

by Tafadzwa Zimoyo

In a rare occasion in the history of hip-hop in Zimbabwe, Desmond Chideme a.k.a Stunner proved that he is a force to reckon with through his successful album launch held last Friday at Pablo'z VIP in Borrowdale.The album "If I Die Tonight" has 16 tracks featuring some of Zimbabwe's prominent musicians who include Albert Nyathi, Jah Prayzah, Logun, Mudiwa, Kapital K, Sir Ford, Ngoni Kambarami and Trigger among others.The glitz and glamour affair, which attracted the who-is-who in social networks and fashion industry, was held under the theme "Black Tie" with many attendees donning the themed colours.Socialites, business moguls, musicians, models, designers, producers and movie directors thronged the event and among them were Summer Rose, Spencer Madziya, Simon Itayi Mungazi, Olinda Chapel, Anonzi Xander, Elton Bryce, Cindy, Ex Q, Ngoni Kambarami, Giva, Andy Cutta, Candice Mwakalyelye and Rumbidzai Takawira among others.It later became the battle of who was the best dressed apart from guests enjoying free drinks and food courtesy of the Tazzoita Cash Records.Kambarami was the master of ceremony while P Stylez was on the decks.Sources revealed that more than $5 000 was spent on refreshments with close to $20 000 budgeted for the album launch.The event saw two Jamaican dancehall stars Kapital K and Sir Ford gracing the occassion and later joining Stunner on stage for an electrifying performance.Songs like "Mugara Ndega" and "Ndiri Humble" managed to wow the crowd as people sang along while "Switch"  a dance song which features Ba Shupi  was crowd's favourite. Stunner and wife Olinda walked on to the red carpet and they were joined by Olinda's son and a friend before the duo from Jamaica joined them.Visiting Sir Ford said he was happy to be in Zimbabwe."It feels like I am in Paradise, what we hear about this country is not what it is," he said.In an interview, Stunner's manager Godfrey Bakasa said he was overwhelmed with how the corporate world responded to the launch."All went according to plan and this is a milestone not for my artiste only but for myself too, considering my shift from dancehall to hip-hop. We have a lot coming on and now we are focusing on the video shoots," he said.Stunner later shot some videos with the Jamaican stars.However, rating the album, it seems Stunner is maturing although he uses the same tone on all songs with too many hooks.Somehow the music still has attributes of the same Stunner who made headlines with "Team Hombe" and "Dhafu Korera".Will the new album make it considering there are a lot of them being released this period?So far, he can be rated as king of hip-hop locally with such successful and well-choerographed album launch, especially in the genre were some are failing to produce a well-polished single.
SPECIAL POST  Exactly one year ago, the puzzle worlds heart collectively broke when Merl Reagle died unexpectedly at the age of 65.

At the time, in the grip of shock and disbelief, I wrote that I could not process a world without someone as widely beloved as Merl in it and, a year out, not much has changed. There is still a Merl-shaped hole in the universe, and his brilliance, his humor and his generous heart are deeply missed.

While weve had to let go of the man, there is something of his spirit that I feel is worth keeping alive. Its clear to me, based on discussion with others in the puzzle community, that Im not the only one.

Hardly a week goes by that I dont think about him and wish he were still here, wrote Will Shortz in an email. Going through some old files recently, I ran across a few word-teasers that Merl Reagle contributed to my weekly puzzle segment on NPR. One was to anagram PLEASANTLY to name a geographical location (answer: NAPLES, ITALY). Another was to anagram POTENTIAL to get a well-known brand name (LIPTON TEA). Man, was Merl good at anagrams! And all wordplay, for that matter.
BRIDGEPORT, Conn.  A shooting at a crowded house party early Sunday left 13 people wounded, and police officers in Connecticut are investigating what they say is an unusual outburst of violence here.

The Bridgeport police believe two gunmen opened fire around 1:30 a.m. on about 100 partygoers from behind hedges surrounding the backyard of the house. Responding officers discovered what the authorities called a chaotic scene.

The party was so crowded that some people believed the gunshots were fireworks, Capt. Brian Fitzgerald said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon.

The police have increased patrols in the area and are gathering information from witnesses and victims.
In the sweaty days of August, when stifling subway platforms become almost unbearable, riders are even more anxious than usual for their trains to arrive so they can cool off inside.

Unless, of course, the air-conditioning on board is broken.

They are known as hot cars, and Tracey-Ann Johnson found herself stepping onto one on a northbound No. 1 train in Manhattan on Sunday after brunch.

Its hot today, and I thought I was going to be relieved, Ms. Johnson, 34, of Upper Manhattan, said. But instead I got the opposite.

How hot was it aboard the train? Like a furnace, Ms. Johnson said before moving to another car at the next station.
It was well after midnight on a hot and sticky weeknight in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan when the hunt got underway.

A police car rolled slowly through the empty neighborhood in the predawn hours, its lights casting shadows on the buildings as a voice over a loudspeaker blared a warning to clear the streets.

Following behind, at six miles per hour, was a white pickup truck carrying men in protective clothing and equipped with a machine intended to cast off a cloud of poison targeting the prey: mosquitoes.

The droplets would awaken any insects in the area, cause them to take flight and then kill them.

The spraying is called adulticide  as opposed to larvicide, or killing insects before they hatch  and it was the first time that such a truck had ever rolled through the neighborhood.
1. President Obama, back from his familys vacation on Marthas Vineyard, prepared for the final few months of his tenure.

Hell head out on Tuesday to Louisiana, where heavy flooding killed 13 people, displaced tens of thousands more, and damaged tens of thousands of buildings, including homes, businesses and schools.
To the Editor:

Re To Get to Harvard, Go to Haiti?, by Frank Bruni (column, Aug. 14):

Students should be spared the yearly ritual of baring their souls and composing self-congratulatory accounts of their good deeds, at home and abroad.

No doubt some of these essays are sincere. But if students know that a college is looking for essays that reflect their ability to empathize with others, they will comply with the mandate, whether or not they are altruistic.

If admissions personnel are looking only for students who can append a list of public service activities to their applications, they will exclude those who, for various reasons, cannot work part time or travel to Guatemala to paint houses. Some of the excluded may be too busy studying, hoping that their grades and letters of recommendation will speak for themselves.

If college applicants are lacking in public service, it does not mean that they have no sense of empathy (which is becoming one of the most abused words in public discourse).
Atlanta  Recent polls show something that has caught even the most optimistic liberals by surprise: Hillary Clinton is tied with Donald J. Trump in Georgia, catching up with him in South Carolina and generally showing strength in traditionally Republican parts of the South. It seems like the Democratic dream come true  demographic changes are turning Southern states purple.

But this story has less to do with the future than the past, and both parties run a risk in misreading it. Mr. Trumps racially charged hard-right campaign reveals a fault line in Republican politics that dates from the very beginning of G.O.P. ascendancy in the South.

The Republicans Southern Strategy is one of the most familiar stories in modern American history: Beginning in the 1960s, the party courted white racist voters who fled the Democratic Party because of its support for civil rights.

But things were never quite so simple. Yes, racial reaction fed G.O.P. gains in the 1960s and 70s. And yes, Barry Goldwater called it hunting where the ducks are.
In a draft report to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Philip Alston, one of the United Nationss rapporteurs for human rights, condemned the response as morally unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating. The report, which was described in an article in The New York Times by Jonathan Katz, said the United Nations upholds a double standard according to which the U.N. insists that member states respect human rights, while rejecting any such responsibility.

United Nations auditors found that peacekeepers in Haiti were dumping waste into public canals as of 2014, according to a report that is dated June 30, 2015, but was released publicly only in recent days. The organization has chosen not to publicly disclose an earlier audit, issued in May 2013, that examined waste management at missions, including in Haiti, and made 18 critical recommendations.

Mr. Bans office said last week that within two months it would announce a reinvigorated plan to fight Haitis cholera epidemic.

The Haiti debacle is reminiscent of the handling of a 2014 sex abuse scandal by French peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. In that case, Anders Kompass, the official who brought the allegations to light, was suspended for leaking the information to French authorities. After news of his suspension caused an international outcry, Mr. Kompass, a veteran United Nations official, was reinstated. Mr. Ban commissioned an independent review that characterized the response by United Nations agencies to the allegations as seriously flawed. Mr. Kompass resigned this year, explaining in a statement that he had lost faith in the United Nations, where, he said, the benefit to the individual of not behaving ethically is perceived as greater than the cost of taking an ethical stance.

The United Nationss internal watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, has been hobbled by institutional and political constraints since it was created in 1994. In its most recent yearly report, which was issued in August 2015, Carman Lapointe, then the head of the office, lamented that efforts to prosecute people who committed fraud had been unsuccessful. She also bemoaned the frequency with which staff members in the organization avoid responding to allegations of misconduct, and ultimately avoid accountability altogether by taking paid sick leave.
The Justice Department instructed the Bureau of Prisons on Thursday to start phasing out the use of private detention facilities, a watershed step that should be the beginning of the end of an industry that has had an insidious effect on the American justice system.

In a memorandum, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said that the decline in the federal inmate population made it possible to start terminating and winding down contracts with private prisons, which she acknowledged were substandard and less safe than government-run prisons. They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs and resources, she wrote, adding that they also dont save substantially on costs.

Private prisons became an important part of Americas corrections system starting in the 1980s, as tough sentencing guidelines adopted in response to a sharp rise in drug-fueled violent crime drove up the population of inmates and the cost of housing them. Over the years, a handful of companies made handsome profits from warehousing people as cheaply as possible. The top two private prison companies had $3.3 billion in revenue in 2014, an increase from $1.9 billion in 2006.

While privately run detention facilities were once seen as a fiscally responsible alternative, theres now growing acknowledgment that they are a national shame. They are notoriously violent and dysfunctional, operating even more opaquely than state-run facilities, while paying miserable wages. The Justice Department inspector general reported this month that private prisons had higher rates of assaults and contraband than regular ones.
Invoking Republicans phantom fear of voter fraud, Gov. Bruce Rauner has vetoed a bipartisan measure to make Illinois a pioneer in one of the truly innovative reforms of modern politics  the automatic registration of citizens as they conduct routine business at motor vehicle departments and other state agencies.

In the past 18 months, five states have approved this obvious boon for electoral democracy; others have it under consideration. The state sends proof of registration electronically to local election officials. Voters are thus spared the old bureaucratic paperwork maze and haphazard record-keeping that compounds delays on Election Day. Citizens are free to not register (and, of course, to not vote), but they cannot complain about opportunity denied.

More than 30 states have registration systems that require a voter to opt in at motor vehicle offices. That places the burden on voters. Automatic voter registration (A.V.R.) takes the process a step further, placing the responsibility on the state. As it is, the United States is one of the few democratic nations that place the registration burden on voters, leaving up to a third of eligible citizens unregistered. Canadas automatic system has registered more than 90 percent of those eligible.

Had the Illinois measure gone forward, it would have added two million potential new voters to the rolls once it began in 2018. A more immediate effect would have been to update the registration of an estimated 700,000 voters in time for this Novembers elections.
News / National

by Staff reporter

MDC-T vice-president, Nelson Chamisa, yesterday said his party was ready to reach out to war veterans and include them in the fight for democratic rule, following their recent acrimonious fallout with President Robert Mugabe.Speaking to NewsDay following a rally in his Kuwadzana East constituency, Harare, Chamisa said he would volunteer to be in charge of the freedom fighters once the opposition party formalises the relationship.War veterans, who until last month, were undoubtedly Zanu PF's rear guard, ditched Mugabe through their infamous July 21 communique, accusing him of dictatorship and monopolising the ruling party."I thanked president Morgan Tsvangirai, when he appointed me one of the vice-presidents and I said to him, let me be in charge of the war veterans, so that we give them money and restore their dignity among other things," he said."They fought and sacrificed all for this country's independence, but now there has been no change. The late former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith's oppressive regime still prevails in many aspects."We haven't engaged them so far, but our hands are not limited. We will reach out to war veterans because they do not belong to any political party. They belong to all of us, we are ready to engage the liberators of this country, it's a necessity. They are a repository of our history and our future," he said.Asked to comment on chances of succeeding in their quest for change of government, Chamisa said change was only possible if key electoral reforms were implemented to ensure a level playing ground during elections.He said people should stop criticising Tsvangirai for appointing three vice-presidents, saying the strategy would work to strengthen the party.
To the Editor:

Re No Longer the Most Violent Place on Earth (Sunday Review, Aug. 14):

Sonia Nazarios article paints a rosy picture of American aid transforming Honduras and poses a rhetorical question: Who says American power is dead? For the people of Honduras, however, American power is deadly.

Our faith partners in Honduras tell us of the negative effects of American project funding: fanning divisions in communities and undermining local initiatives by creating rival groups. Most important, focusing on small projects diverts attention from whats really needed to transform the country: major change in American policy.

The article is silent on how American political and economic support serves to strengthen the rampant corruption, impunity and militarization underway. Death squads thrive; activists are targeted for repression; and millions have been siphoned from the public health system to the party of President Juan Orlando Hernandez. My eyes were opened when I visited Honduras.

If we ignore the big picture there, American policy will keep contributing to the violence consuming the country. The best violence prevention program is the Berta Caceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, H.R. 5474, calling for the suspension of American security aid.
A disaster area is no place for political theater. The governor of flood-ravaged Louisiana asked President Obama to postpone a personal visit while relief efforts were still underway. (Meanwhile, by all accounts, the substantive federal response has been infinitely superior to the Bush administrations response to Katrina.) He made the same request to Donald Trump, declaring, reasonably, that while aid would be welcome, a visit for the sake of a photo op would not.

Sure enough, the G.O.P. candidate flew in, shook some hands, signed some autographs, and was filmed taking boxes of Play-Doh out of a truck. If he wrote a check, neither his campaign nor anyone else has mentioned it. Heckuva job, Donnie!

But boorish, self-centered behavior is the least of it. By far the bigger issue is that even as Mr. Trump made a ham-handed (and cheapskate) effort to exploit Louisianas latest disaster for political gain, he continued to stake out a policy position that will make such disasters increasingly frequent.

Lets back up for a minute and talk about the real meaning of the Louisiana floods.

In case you havent been keeping track, lately weve been setting global temperature records every month. Remember when climate deniers used to point to a temporary cooling after an unusually warm year in 1998 as proof that global warming had stopped? It was always a foolish, dishonest argument, but in any case weve now blown right through all past records.
Long before travel restrictions from the U.S. to Havana were relaxed, Bryant Toth, the former membership manager at New Yorks Soho House, had racked up quite a few visits  and a growing collection of contemporary Cuban art. The pieces he brought back sparked immediate interest among his friends, and before he knew it, Toth, 28, was a de facto dealer. I didnt have this grand vision, he explains. My friends just asked about the artists. By last fall, demand was so high that Toth left Soho House to work full-time with seven of them, displaying their work mostly on his website and Instagram account, but occasionally in pop-up gallery shows, too: One he mounted at the Hotel Chelsea last November for the painter Hector Frank, a 55-year-old former electrical engineer, nearly sold out. Toth will exhibit the work of Cuban artists including Frank later this year in New York and Los Angeles.
Then, all of a sudden, it was like he was the fifth Beatle  a moment in history. Although collectors continued to buy his work throughout his life, the spotlight had shifted and early supporters began abandoning him. The curator Henry Geldzahler, one of his earliest champions, left him out of his landmark show, New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970, the Metropolitan Museums maiden foray into contemporary art. Lawrence Alloway, the British critic widely credited with coining the term Pop Art, afforded Wesselmann only a token presence in his 1974 Whitney Museum survey of Pop. In the late 70s and early 80s, a few feminist critics made Wesselmann the whipping boy for the male gaze, but more damaging was the unwillingness of American museums to show the nudes. In the wake of the obscenity trial that haunted the Robert Mapplethorpe show in the 90s, curators treated his brand of wholesome eroticism as if it was an advertisement for unprotected sex.

Wesselmanns reaction to the silence was typically industrious: He published a richly illustrated critical appreciation of his own work, with the help of one of his earliest collectors, the publisher Harry N. Abrams, with text he wrote himself under the delightfully silly pseudonym Slim Stealingworth. (As Slim, he wrote, Wesselmann was aware of a relationship between scale and eroticism. Too big a scale and eroticism decreases  perhaps because it is too hard to relate to a 15-foot woman.) Its still the most useful book on the painter, and a primer for working artists on cheerful, relentless, slightly ironic reinvention.

Oddly enough, he thrived throughout the decades of disregard, calling the period the happiest and most rewarding of his life. While he was completing the last of his Great American Nude series, he invented several remarkable genres. The first he called Drop-Out paintings, after an advertising term. Theyre masterpieces of intimacy  shaped canvases depicting, say, a seascape, a bedside tableau or even a self-portrait, with edges that trace the outline of a naked woman (her leg, arm, stomach, breast), and only a nipple in the painted portion. The nudity is domestic, not libidinous, somewhere between Bonnards glowing portraits of his wife at her bath and the idle vacation nudity of Eric Rohmers films from the mid-1970s.

Wesselmann also pioneered a method of turning drawings into laser-cut steel, so that his quick, sure-handed sketches from life could be turned into something solid. It is really like being able to pick up a delicate line drawing from the paper, he wrote later. The painter Eric Fischl, who visited Wesselmanns second floor studio on Bowery in the 80s, remembers spotting the steel-cut works and being jealous. But much as he wanted to try it out, he never did because Tom owns that technique completely.

In 1993, Wesselmann suffered a heart attack, and after this brush with mortality, he brought Claire out of retirement and returned to his defining subject. In the resulting series, the Sunset Nudes, his forms are extremely simplified  thick pink outlines and dropout whites compete for attention, the figure flickering between slim youth and Cycladic figurine, with the rest of his bright forms (flowers, the patterns of a chair) reduced almost to insignia. His career-long admiration for the work of a French master plays out in one of his last paintings, Sunset Nude with Matisse Odalisque, from 2003, the year before his death. The blond figure raises her arms over her head in an echo of a 1923 Matisse nude that Wesselmann tucked in the corner above her. One upshot of the heart attack is that it has brought Claire and I to an intense closeness, he wrote in his journal. Im wildly in love with Claire.
Nikki Chasin cant put her finger on the first time that she identified fashion designer as a profession, but she spent her girlhood in Coral Gables, Fla., practicing the basics. She remembers playing a Barbie computer game (you could choose from her, Skipper or four other characters, pick their outfits and put them in a setting like the mall or at a sleepover  then Id print them out and they were super-pixelated). She and a friend started a fashion company called AKNC (the pairs initials and also a nod to DKNY) that consisted of sketches of column dresses and feather boas. Wed list the stores that sold AKNC and one day, my younger sister was drawing with us, and for one of the stores where you could buy her outfit, she put Dairy Queen, Chasin says, laughing. She ultimately outlined her future career path in a book she made for school in fourth grade. For the about the author page, the last line read: Nikki wants to go to FIT and then move to Los Angeles and become a fashion designer.

Image Nikki Chasin Credit... Emily Adams Bode

It didnt quite pan out as such: Chasin attended Miamis Design and Architecture Senior High, a magnet school where fashion classes are built into the curriculum, and continued on to Parsons, balancing her studies and internships at 3.1 Phillip Lim, J.Crew and this very magazine. And today, at age 26, Chasin has her own eponymous womens wear brand, which she founded in fall 2014. Initially, I thought that I had to always include my version of a white button-down and my version of a plain black pant, she says, an idea she eventually abandoned inside and out of the studio. Ive gotten more and more colorful in my own wardrobe since moving to New York  people often comment that I dont wear a lot of black or a lot of jeans. Her pieces  easy, resort-like separates rooted in navy, pale pink and ivory  are informed by her hometown. People would always say I lived where everyone else vacations, so thats factored into my line, she says. My clothes are versatile, packable and comfortable.
I think its quite clear that Prop. 47 is the major contributor to the changes weve seen.

Last years decline in arrests, with the fewest felony arrests since 1969, is part of a long-term decline dating to the 1980s that has been spurred by the law as well as crowded jails and fewer police officers, Mr. Lofstrom said.

Bullet Train to Nowhere : Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, Construction of the California high-speed rail system, Americas most ambitious infrastructure project, has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare

A Piece of Black History Destroyed: Lincoln Heights  a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California  endured for decades. Lincoln Heights  a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California  endured for decades. Then came the Mill fire

Warehouse Moratorium: As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In Californias Inland Empire, the anger has turned to widespread action

It is too soon to say whether or not the changes are helping spur rising crime rates, and Mr. Lofstrom and other researchers are watching the relationship closely.

Law enforcement officials said drug offenders may now commonly be cited and released, or ignored because there may be little penalty if they are arrested and convicted. There were about 22,000 fewer drug arrests last year.

The de facto decriminalization of drugs may have an impact, said Donny Youngblood, the sheriff of Kern County and the president of the California State Sheriffs Association. We do know that theres a lot less arrests being made, which means there are a lot more people on the streets using drugs.

Multiple courts reported an increase in failures to appear for misdemeanor arraignments since Proposition 47 passed, according to a survey of 40 of the states 58 county superior courts carried out by the Judicial Council of California.
The first night, we asked ourselves what we would do if we were a virus bent on immortality, he said. They radioed every local missionary asking them to send runners to find out which villages had cases. They sent 80 percent of their vaccine to those villages, using it on the family of each case and all their recent contacts. The last 20 percent went to anywhere we thought the virus would go next  which was mostly to market towns where farmers and hunters sold their goods.

It took D. A. about a year to come around to ring vaccination, Dr. Lane, who worked with Dr. Foege, said. But once he did, he was an enthusiastic proselytizer.

The campaign, many experts have noted, succeeded just in time. A few years later, the virus that causes AIDS spread across Africa. Because the live smallpox vaccine can grow in an immune-compromised person into a huge, rotting, ultimately fatal lesion, it would have been impossible to deploy it.

In 1977, success in hand, Dr. Henderson became dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health.

He was an imposing guy  physically big and very confident, said Dr. Michael J. Klag, the schools current dean, who was a student in that era. He did not suffer fools gladly, and you were never sure if you were a fool or not.

Dr. Henderson shifted the curriculum to send more students into the field. He felt it was an ivory tower and needed an infusion of practical experience, Dr. Klag said.

He was also in demand as an expert on bioterrorism. In 1998 he was a founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, which was later taken over by the University of Pittsburghs medical school. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the mailing of envelopes filled with anthrax, he became the chief adviser on public health preparedness to the secretary of Health and Human Services.
Donald J. Trump is leaning heavily on Republican Party organizations to provide crucial campaign functions like getting out the vote, digital outreach and fund-raising, at a time when some leading Republicans have called for party officials to cut off Mr. Trump and focus instead on maintaining control of Congress.

Despite an influx of campaign cash from small donors in July, Mr. Trumps operation still largely resembles the bare-bones outfit that he rode to victory during the primary season, more concert tour than presidential campaign, according to interviews and documents filed with the Federal Election Commission through Saturday night. And some Republicans believe he is effectively out of time to invest in the kind of large-scale infrastructure that the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, will bring to the polls in November.

Mr. Trump spends little on polling and made his first advertising purchase of the general election campaign only last week. His rapidly growing digital fund-raising and voter-targeting operation is a partnership with the Republican National Committee, relying significantly on lists built and maintained in recent years by the party.

In July, when Mrs. Clinton spent almost $3 million to field a staff of 700 people at her Brooklyn headquarters and in swing states around the country, according to Federal Election Commission payroll data, Mr. Trump spent more money on renting arenas for his speeches than he did on payroll. A senior Trump campaign official, who asked for anonymity because he was not permitted to discuss staffing publicly, said Mr. Trumps campaign had fewer than 200 total staff members at the end of July, about evenly divided between field offices and New York.
Imagine if Donald J. Trump hadnt turned the presidential campaign into an argument over who founded the Islamic State or whether there should be ideological entrance tests for foreign visitors and immigrants. Then he and Hillary Clinton could have a debate over taxes, a serious topic on which they have clear differences.

Mr. Trump wants to give Americans huge tax cuts, especially the wealthy, which he claims will stimulate growth. Mrs. Clinton wants to increase taxes on corporations and the rich, and use the revenue to create jobs and help the middle class.

Both evade some specifics, but there is enough for a substantive debate.

Thats not possible on many issues because the candidates have made it so hard to take their claims seriously. Mr. Trump, for example, has abandoned Republican orthodoxy and said that he would make no cutbacks to entitlements. Could a President Trump continue to buck his party?

Mrs. Clinton has abandoned her original support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. But shes said so much on both sides of the issue that its easy to imagine a flop to that flip.
In Maryland, participants in the forums, designed with the help of Carnegie Mellon Universitys program for deliberative democracy, tended to favor saving the most lives or years of life by prioritizing people who were expected to survive their current illness or live the longest after being treated. However, many also said that a lottery or first-come-first-served approach would be appropriate for patients who had roughly equal chances of benefiting.

If you have one ventilator and five people who are good candidates, theres going to have to be a random sort of chance aspect to it, said Dr. Eric Toner, a senior associate at the UPMC Center for Health Security and one of the projects leaders.

Unexpected questions emerged in the discussions: Should an undocumented immigrant be eligible to get a ventilator? What about a drug or alcohol abuser, or a prisoner? After being told by a facilitator that discrimination would not be allowed, one participant asked whether using age, one of the principles under discussion, would not also be a form of discrimination.

Taking ventilators from patients who did not appear to be improving was the single most contentious issue, Dr. Toner said. Marylands attorney general released an opinion in December that lifesaving medical technology, including ventilators, could be removed from patients during a catastrophic emergency and reassigned to others who could potentially benefit more from them. Dr. Toner said it would be hard for any system to work without reallocation.

But at the forums, many expressed reservations. One woman said that she had been in a coma, on a ventilator, and that her family had been encouraged to turn it off and let her die. Health care providers are not God, another said. Ive seen it firsthand where they thought one thing and the outcome was different.
News / National

by Staff reporter

WITH pressure mounting on President Robert Mugabe to relinquish power, opposition Zapu and People's Democratic Party leaders Dumiso Dabengwa and Tendai Biti have described the Zanu PF leader as a "monster" who urgently requires exorcism.Dabengwa told a public discussion organised by the Southern African Political and Economic Series (Sapes) Trust on Thursday that the recent move by former freedom fighters to ditch Mugabe was a welcome development."We are happy now that the war veterans from the Zanla side have realised the blunders they made all along from the time of the liberation struggle to date," he said."They have realised that all along, they have been backing a monster that uses them and when it realises that they are no longer good for use, it will dump them, or worse still, chew them to pieces."Dabengwa said he also welcomed former Vice-President Joice Mujuru and other former Zanu PF stalwarts, who are now part of the Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF)."We also have colleagues now in the opposition People First, some of whom were forerunners in protecting the monster, but today, have realised they were backing the wrong person. There is also the church that seemed to think that all leadership is anointed of God, with some going to the extent of hero-worshiping the monster."We have to protect the interests of the people and the freedom that they fought for. Nobody expected things to turn out this way and the question among those who fought in the war is: Was it worthwhile?" Dabengwa said."We appreciate those who have taken the initiative to speak and do this without fear. Those who have taken it upon themselves to create platforms such as the Platform for Concerned Citizens (PCC) and the idea of the NTA (National Transitional Authority). The alternative is to fold our hands and wait for the revolution to unfold naturally, but nobody can guarantee the outcome in such a scenario," he said.Speaking at the same event, Biti said: "The person who will take over from Mugabe in Zanu PF will be the one who is willing to kill more than the other. But, at some point, they will need a time-out. The idea of an NTA will appeal to them because it will act as a breathing valve following the anticipated bloodshed."After Mugabe, the idea of (VP) Emmerson Mnangagwa and (Local Government minister) Saviour Kasukuwere sitting at the same table will create a spontaneous combustion. After a founding president, the State tends to go with him and examples galore, like Siad Barre in Somalia, Mobutu Sese Sseko in the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo], they are actually missing him now and Russia after Joseph Stalin. Mugabe will likely go with Zimbabwe, hence, the need for an NTA but only after him."Biti said the NTA would provide a "soft landing" for Zimbabwe.The PDP leader added the Government of National Unity (GNU) failed to create a self-reinforcing transformation, resulting in the conflation of multiple crises."But then we have the generation, a generation that believes in democracy, in an open society and all the freedoms that come with it," he said."This generation, unfortunately, is being suffocated by a government that is making every effort to stifle and constrain expenditure through legislation such as (Statutory Instrument) SI164. The State, that is Zimbabwe and its predecessors, has never been this weak since 1890 and government has been reduced to an innocent bystander, by an economic crises that is moving into a depression"Biti said Zanu PF has been surprised by the explosion of the social movements such as #ThisFlag and Tajamuka/Sesijikile."They have exposed the limitations of the old generation and also forced opposition parties to find each other," he said.One of the conveners of the PCC, Tony Reeler, said his group would continue to consult, including seeking buy-in fromZanu PF."If the broader society buys-in, then we see no reason why Zanu PF should be left out. We are deeply concerned that the fall-out over the succession fight in Zanu PF will be bloody. We hope the military sees its survival in a peaceful transition of power as a professional institution and will also support the idea of an NTA," he said.
For the performance, they were spaced around a large circle within the Stefanos Crater, which at nearly 1,000 feet in diameter is one of the largest active hydrothermal craters in the world. Each musician was hooked up to a center-facing amplifier, which fed into a 16-channel mixing board, all powered by a generator. In-ear monitors let each musician hear the others, as well as an engineered mix.

The result was an immersive layering of experimental, otherworldly soundscapes, evocative one minute of Sun Ra, the next of Aphex Twin or Autechre. Glitch and drone melded with desert-blown free jazz. Mournful loops of electrified cello overlaid throbbing synthesizer, the music constantly spinning apart and reassembling into a whole.

The organizers documented the event with photographs and an audio recording, which they plan to release in coming months. No artificial lighting was used inside the crater, so aside from the very beginning and end, when there was sunlight, the performance could not be captured by cellphone cameras.

I wanted it to be such a raw and primitive experience that no documentation can capture it, said Konstantinos Dagritzikos, the events 34-year-old artistic director and mastermind, who owns and runs six d.o.g.s, in Athens.

Mr. Dagritzikos began coming to Nisyros a few years ago and was entranced by the islands volcanic terrain, which attracts up to 500 visitors a day in high season, many from Kos, the popular beach-holiday island to the north.
I performed a group of her songs in my New York debut recital, and Peters producer caught wind of it. And Peter said that if I would be interested in it, he was hooking up with Claire Chase [the International Contemporary Ensembles founder], and they brought Tyshawn on board and Claudia Rankine to write poetry. There was a part of me that didnt know how much I wanted a white man grandfathering all this. But I think one of Peters great strengths is he brings together artists that seem to have a unique perspective and purpose.

TYSHAWN SOREY I didnt want to compose some nostalgic sort of thing, doing similar arrangements to the French ones by Jo Bouillon or others. Julia and I met at a diner in New York and just sat and listened for hours and talked about the lyrical content of the songs, and I identified more with that than with the French arrangements. I identified more with Baker as a figure of the civil rights movement, with the lyrical and emotional content. I wanted to recompose the music so that it would match that. I spent maybe four months of only listening to Baker songs, fully immersing myself in that music.

BULLOCK I honestly wasnt familiar with Tyshawns work at all. I wasnt sure how he was going to internalize and metabolize these French musical tunes. But I relinquished control over the situation. I just had to trust. And when we had our first rehearsal, I was just so moved because it was very clear that Tyshawn had taken the time to just sit with the repertoire.

How did you handle your physical presence in the piece, especially in that amazing stylized dance near the end?
NEW DELHI  Perumal Murugan, who was celebrated here on Monday as a major Indian writer, looked a bit miserable in the big city.

The son of an illiterate soda-pop vendor from small-town South India, he had limited his visit to the capital to 48 hours, and this appeared to be 46 hours too long. He prefers to sleep on a rope cot, under the stars, the way they do in the village, and has never owned a pair of shoes that were not sandals. Leaving an interview with the talk show host Barkha Dutt, who is Oprah Winfrey-league famous in India, he turned to the man escorting him and asked, politely, who she was.

Mr. Murugan had come to declare his return as a writer following a long spell of darkness. After undergoing a vicious attack by caste leaders in his home state of Tamil Nadu, his novel One Part Woman last month was the subject of a landmark court decision defending the right of artists to critically depict their own communities. Recent interest in Mr. Murugans work has exploded, with five novels coming out, translated into English from the original Tamil.

But Mr. Murugan seems unsure of what kind of writer he will be now. He remains so horrified by the collective punishment meted out to him in his hometown over One Part Woman that he barely speaks about it, even to friends. He doubts he will ever again write about small towns with the same unblinking realism.
Delta Air Lines has installed a system using bar-code tags that also have an embedded radio frequency identification, or R.F.I.D., chip. Such chips can store travel information and need to be only close to radio scanners along the way for the bags progress to be recorded. As with Deltas older barcode tags, fliers will be able to use the airlines travel app to keep track of their bags.

Image The radio chips embedded in the paper tags being used at McCarran ensure that checked suitcases move more quickly and accurately through the system and increase the likelihood that the bags make it onto the right airplanes. Credit... Brandon Magnus for The New York Times

This is the next step in reliability, said Rodney Brooks, general manager of airport operations at Delta.

Air France, the German airline Lufthansa and Qantas of Australia are among those that have experimented with radio chip luggage tags. But adoption has lagged at airlines in the United States  which could change, with Deltas decision.

The airline is spending $50 million on the necessary scanners, printers and radio tags, which also use bar codes and look little different from conventional bar-code tags. The system is now in place at all of the 344 airports into which Delta flies and is expected to be operational by the end of this month.

Though still fairly novel in airline applications, R.F.I.D. technology is hardly new. It has been used for decades to keep track of shipments of merchandise, which is why many people wonder why it has not already been adopted by airlines, said Ryan Ghee, editor of FutureTravelExperience.com.

Look at online retailing like Amazon and the logistics industry, Mr. Ghee said. People ordered something and could have it delivered immediately to where they wanted it to go. Every step on the journey they could see, Where is my parcel? People got used to that.

Widespread adoption of radio chip tags in the air travel industry has not been easy to achieve, despite the efforts of the International Air Transport Association, a trade group. It has set a deadline of summer 2018 when all 265 member airlines should be able to track and fully trace bags  not only on their own flights, but also when passengers connect to other carriers.
LONDON  The state-owned China National Chemical Corporation said on Monday that it had received clearance from a regulator in the United States for its $43 billion acquisition of Syngenta, a giant in farm chemicals and seeds.

The approval by the regulator, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, removed one of the biggest potential challenges to the deal, as the interagency body had previously proved to be an obstacle for cross-border agreements involving Chinese companies.

The China National Chemical Corporation, known as ChemChina, has been an active buyer in recent years, acquiring more than a half-dozen companies in Europe, the Middle East and Australia. But if it is completed, the Syngenta purchase would be Chinas biggest foreign deal ever.

ChemChina agreed to acquire Syngenta in February, about six months after the Swiss company rejected a $47 billion takeover bid by Monsanto. Syngenta said at the time that the American companys offer undervalued it, and that it might be difficult to execute because of regulatory concerns. Monsanto abandoned its pursuit in August.
GIFU, Japan  Kato Manufacturing, based in the blue-collar enclave of Gifu Prefecture, in central Japan, is a microcosm of the countrys industrial evolution.

The family-run metal shop, which was started 128 years ago, originally made simple farming tools for what was then a largely agrarian society. When Japan morphed into a manufacturing giant, churning out automobiles and electronics for the world, Kato supplied the metallic equivalent of skeletons: sculpted frames and housings that gave products their shape.

Now, as Japan aggressively tries to regain some of its manufacturing might in the face of competition from lower-cost countries like China, Kato is producing parts for airplanes. The company recently installed new metalworking machinery and hired a half-dozen workers to accommodate orders from domestic aircraft makers.

Airplanes, rockets  theyre a symbol for manufacturing, said Keiji Kato, the companys president and the fourth generation of the familys leadership at the firm.
Your plane reached its destination along with your checked bags.

But that doesnt mean the luggage will necessarily proceed swiftly to the baggage carousel  as Delta Air Lines travelers recently found on a Saturday night at the domestic terminal at Kennedy International Airport in New York.

While people from various incoming flights milled around at Carousel 10, those from Flight 2262 from Los Angeles waited an hour for their bags to appear.

Despite all the improvements in the way checked bags are tracked, various factors can still cause delays.

Electrical storms around the airport, for example, will keep bag handlers indoors until the lightning subsides, slowing delivery of bags to the terminal. That, in turn, can cause backups in unloading newly arriving planes.
Sudeps name pretty much explains what it is: Someone with epilepsy  unprovoked seizures, which are electrical surges in the brain  dies, and there is no apparent cause. Often a person with epilepsy goes to bed and is found in the morning, unresponsive. In some cases, there is indirect evidence of a seizure, like urine on the sheets, bloodshot eyes or a severely bitten tongue, leading to the suggestion that preventing seizures as much as possible with medications could lower patients risks. But so much about the syndrome remains unknown.

Neurologists say sudden unexpected death in epilepsy is second to stroke as a cause of years of life lost because of a neurological disorder. Sudep kills an estimated 2,600 people a year in the United States  some neurologists say the real figure is almost certainly higher  or one in 1,000 people with epilepsy. For people whose seizures are not controlled with the medication, the fatality rate is one in 150.

Some three million Americans and 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy. About a third of Americans with epilepsy have uncontrolled seizures, said Dr. Daniel Friedman, an epilepsy researcher at New York University. That means about a million Americans could be at high risk of sudden death.

Ms. Pearsons son was having at least 24 seizures a year despite anti-seizure medication. She could not bear to tell him about the sudden death risk. But he found out anyway three months later. He was meeting with an epilepsy support group meeting near their home in Galveston County in Texas and overheard people discussing it.

Ms. Pearson and her son were not alone in finding out about sudden death in epilepsy by accident. Despite the urging of professional organizations like the American Epilepsy Society and leading researchers to give patients the full picture, neurologists shy from a discussion of this phenomenon. The problem is that, at least for now, risk estimates are uncertain, and there are no proven ways to prevent it.
The data in a new report on thyroid cancer was stunning. From 2003 to 2007, as many as 70 percent to 80 percent of women in the United States, France, Italy and Australia who were told they had thyroid cancer and who often had their thyroids removed actually had tumors that should have been left alone.

In South Korea, the trend is more pronounced  90 percent of women with thyroid cancer probably did not require surgery.

The same trend applied to men, but to a lesser degree. In the United States and Australia, overdiagnosis accounted for about 45 percent of thyroid cancer in men over that four-year period. The rate in France, Italy and South Korea was about 70 percent, the report concluded.

The report in The New England Journal of Medicine by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, and the Aviano National Cancer Institute in Aviano, Italy, though, was not a complete surprise to cancer researchers. Call it the downside of screening, or the law of unintended consequences. Or, as a reader suggested by email, vomit, for victim of modern imaging technology.
The great Celtic cross of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, which usually soars 286 feet nearer my God than thee, was lashed to the scaffolding that encloses the churchs brownstone spire. It was so hard to make out among the metal struts that I didnt recognize it at first.

Wheres the cross? I asked, after climbing an open-air stairway high above Midtown Manhattan.

Derek Maddalena, the churchs director of facilities, pointed to the cross-shaped object behind me, with the four quarters of a distinctive Celtic ring at its base. He salved my embarrassment by confessing he had asked the same question the first time he reached the top of the scaffolding.

The 10-foot-tall cross, made of eight-inch-wide bronze plates treated with gold leaf, was installed in the early 1960s. At the time, a steel structure was constructed within and anchored to the brownstone spire. Besides supporting the estimated 350-pound weight of the cross, the inner structure contains a tremendous counterweight  four steel balls, hooked to one another, weighing a total of one ton  that prevents the cross from blowing over in high winds.
News / National

by Staff reporter

The United States Agency for International Development, USAid, says Washington has approved a new five-year strategy for its mission in Zimbabwe, which includes helping the government make evidence-based decisions on economic policy reforms.Zimbabwe, about 10% goes to economic recovery programmes. USAid Zimbabwe mission director, Stephanie Funk, said they will implement the new strategy when the fiscal year begins in October.Funk could not reveal further details, as USAid was approaching the end of its fiscal year in September.The 10% or the remainder of USAid's annual portfolio is after 61% that goes to health, 26% for humanitarian assistance and agriculture, and 10% for democracy and governance.For a long time, Zimbabwe's donors have been supporting crucial systems of the economy that include providing technical support towards economic policy reforms.
The defendants alleged actions strike at the very heart of our countys Muslim community, the district attorney, Richard A. Brown, said in a statement on Monday. Both victims were gentle men of peace, and their deaths are a devastating loss to their families and the community that they served.

Mr. Morel was taken into custody the day after the attack and was charged on Aug. 15. In a search of his home in East New York, Brooklyn, investigators found a .38-caliber revolver hidden inside a wall. Ballistic tests confirmed that it was used in the attack. Investigators also found clothing that matched descriptions of what the gunman was said to be wearing, and collected video evidence that connected Mr. Morel and his vehicle, a Chevrolet sport-utility vehicle, to the scene, officials said.

But Mr. Morels lawyer, Michael Schwed, said his client denied any involvement in the attack. Mr. Schwed took issue with a police lineup after, he said, a witness picked out someone who was not Mr. Morel as the gunman. He also said that, despite the location of the discovered gun, Mr. Morel had said the weapon was not his.

He has no idea why that was there, Mr. Schwed said, speaking to reporters after a brief hearing on Monday in which the indictment was handed up in Queens Criminal Court. He says he doesnt know anything about the gun. Mr. Schwed added that having clothing similar to that worn during the attack was not incriminating. The clothing is not going to be able to prove anything, Mr. Schwed said.

Mr. Schwed said Mr. Morel had told him that he had driven through the area near where the shooting occurred, around midmorning on that Saturday; he said he had taken a friend to a medical appointment.
When you look at other large systems  Paris, London, Toronto  you can really see and appreciate that these open-end car designs provide additional space, Ms. Hakim said in an interview.

To make it easier for riders to enter the cars, the new trains will have 58-inch doorways, up from 50 inches, though Torontos doorways are 64 inches. (To be fair, Torontos system is far from perfect; it still accepts tiny tokens while New York retired the coins more than a decade ago.)

Torontos reputation as a livable city with good transit has helped it grow to more than 2.8 million people, on par with the population of Chicago. Torontos transit system  the third largest in North America  has about 1.7 million riders each weekday on its network of subways, streetcars and buses, but those figures are dwarfed by New York Citys nearly 6 million daily subway riders.

Torontos transit system is facing major crowding challenges and uncertainty over funding. The city has three main subway lines, and its busiest, the Yonge-University line, is regularly packed at rush hour, mirroring conditions on New Yorks busiest lines.

Steve Munro, a longtime transit advocate in Toronto, said that the new cars had helped with crowding, but that the city should have built new subway lines to handle the rising demand decades ago.

By the time you realize you need the new trains, you already have a crowding problem, and there is a backlog of demand that will immediately fill the new capacity, Mr. Munro, 67, said at a cafe near the busy Bloor-Yonge station.
These allegations were never substantiated, and the police eventually linked the bombing to other attacks in the deep south. Officials also tried to implicate Red Shirts in the bombing of a Bangkok shrine last year.

Why is the military government so anxious to deflect attention from the Malay-Muslim insurgency? First, officials deny that Thailand is a target for terrorism, especially terrorism arising from a chronic domestic insurgency. One goal is to protect Thailands vital tourism industry, which indirectly contributes 20 percent of the countrys gross domestic product.

Second, the military characterizes the insurgency as disturbances perpetrated by misguided individuals, which serves to minimize its political implications. Many Thai officials harbor a deep fear of international intervention, which they believe would eventually lead to partition. Further, acknowledging the recent attacks as the work of Malay-Muslim militants would also mean confronting the Thai militarys own counterinsurgency failures. Voters in the three southernmost provinces emphatically rejected the draft constitution, reflecting the regions antipathy to the military and its centralization of power.

It is true that southern insurgents have largely refrained from attacking Thai targets outside the four southernmost provinces. But there are plausible explanations for why they might have decided to expand their operations now.

Last year, the International Crisis Group, an independent conflict-prevention organization, noted the possibility that the insurgents, faced with stalemate and diminishing returns from routine attacks in the deep south, might strike in tourist areas outside the traditional conflict zone. The senior leaders of the B.R.N. have rejected the military governments faltering peace process, which to them seems designed to maintain a semblance of talks without the substance of negotiations. Now, the referendum result may have revealed the futility of expecting to engage with an elected government in Bangkok, since the draft constitution entrenches the military governments power for at least another six years.

If, as available information indicates, Malay militants perpetrated the recent attacks, then the conflict has entered a disturbing new phase. For 13 years, the insurgency has had little effect on the lives of most Thais outside the deep south. Now, a wider insurgency risks stoking militant Buddhism and sectarian conflict.

Early last year, in spite of a ban on political gatherings of five or more people, large Buddhist demonstrations were held against a halal-industry zone in Chiang Mai and the construction of a new mosque in Nan Province in northern Thailand. Last October, a monk in Bangkok urged that a mosque be burned for every monk killed in the deep south.

It would be shortsighted and self-defeating of the generals running Thailand to insist on dismissing these latest attacks as a partisan vendetta unconnected to the conflict in the south. They should recognize the insurgency as a political problem requiring a political solution. That means restoring the rights of freedom of expression and assembly to Thai citizens, engaging in genuine dialogue with militants, and finding ways to devolve power to the region.
The British vote to leave the European Union has had many consequences, among them a plunge in sterling, sagging business confidence, an identity crisis in Britains two main political parties, confusion and uncertainty. One of its less-known results is that my daughter Adele is now contemplating becoming a Pole.

Dad, she said to me the other night over dinner in Brooklyn, if Britain starts up this Article 50 thing, Im going to get Polish citizenship. Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty lays out how a country quits the European Union. Because it is in a muddle over what to do, the British government has not yet triggered this procedure. But it almost certainly will.

On the face of it, Adeles choice is a curious one. The Nazis gassed her maternal great-grandmother Frimeta Gelband in Poland. Adeles grandmother Amalia Gelband, aged 11 in 1942, found herself alone in Nazi-occupied Poland, a Jewish girl hounded. She changed her name to Helena Kowalska, passed herself off as a Catholic, found work on a farm, and survived Germanys attempted annihilation of European Jewry.

After the war, Polish authorities stuck Amalia in a Jewish orphanage in Krakow, where she remained for three years. All she wanted of Poland was to get out of it. Her mother, her cousins, aunts and uncles had all been slaughtered.
To the Editor:

Re Mr. Trump and the Damage Done (editorial, Aug. 21):

Even assuming that Hillary Clinton is elected, the nation (and not only Republicans) will need to come to terms with the reality that millions of citizens fervently supported a candidate prepared to drive our constitutional democracy off a cliff.

While Donald Trumps message may be dark in the interest of fear-mongering, his success is proof enough of the nations self-destructive currents. Analyses of the rage of the white working class and the resurgence of unapologetic racism and nativism only partly explain his appeal. More widely shared is the belief that if the system is destroyed, something better will rise from the rubble.

A political culture in which rationality and compromise are possible again  already fast slipping away over the last decade  will somehow need to be restored. No one should be sanguine that it will be.

HENRY GREENSPAN

Ann Arbor, Mich.

To the Editor:

There are indeed Republican leaders prepared to lead the party away from Trumpism. But they cannot succeed unless party officials and officeholders have the predominant role in selecting the partys next presidential nominee. That will require a change in the present system, which assigns that role to a plurality of primary-election voters, who in many states may include those who have not even registered as party supporters.
The focus is still on the Northeast. That region has dense cities with strong electrical demand, high power prices, opposition to new power plants on land and some of the worlds stiffest ocean breezes off the coast. And the water remains relatively shallow many miles from shore, so wind farms could be installed far enough away that most of them would not be visible from the beaches.

With Northeastern states committing to the idea, the big question is: How much would it cost to get thousands of offshore turbines up and running?

When the first offshore projects were built two decades ago, European nations had to promise the developers extremely high prices for the electricity generated by their turbines, sometimes three or four times the wholesale power price, to get a new industry going.

Since then, offshore wind turbines have become a big business in Europe, worth billions, and the companies installing them have been able to create economies of scale. Recently, European nations have scrapped their old subsidy methods and have used competitive bidding to drive down the cost of the projects.

In some ways, the United States benefited by waiting for the industry to mature, as it can now take advantage of those falling costs. Installation is still pricier here than in Europe, and may be for a while, because few American companies have invested in the boats and other gear necessary to do the work.

The Block Island turbines were built overseas by a division of General Electric and were installed by a ship from Norway, brought over at a cost of millions of dollars, with help from an American vessel.
Otzi the Iceman was a dapper dresser. About 5,300 years ago, he sported a fur hat made from a brown bear, a sheepskin loincloth, leggings and a coat made of goat hide, shoelaces from wild cows, and a quiver made from deer leather.

Researchers from the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman at the European Research Academy in Bolzano, Italy, used genetic testing to identify the animals that made up the frozen mummys fur and leather ensemble. Their findings were published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

Otzi, as he became known, was found face down in a thawing glacier in the Otztal Alps, which border Austria and Italy, nearly 25 years ago. Since then, researchers have learned a lot about his life from studying his caramel-colored corpse. The Iceman had an arrow in his shoulder, parasites in his gut, wild goat meat in his stomach and tattoos all over his body. Now his wardrobe is giving scientists information about how the Copper Age man dressed.
In the case of the Swartkrans find, the specimen consists only of a foot bone. Again, the gender and precise identity cannot be determined. Homo ergaster and Paranthropus robustus have been found in the same stratum of the cave.

But diagnostic techniques have advanced since the first reports on Kanam Man. The Swartkrans tumor was initially described, in a doctoral thesis, as a benign growth called an osteoid osteoma. A scanning technology called microfocus X-ray computed tomography told a different story. After other diagnoses were considered and discarded, the strongest case was for osteosarcoma.

When you consider the biology of cancer, it is no surprise to find it in early hominins or any form of multicellular life. The oldest known example may be a metastatic bone cancer in a Jurassic dinosaur. (A slice of its skeleton was found by a keen-eyed doctor in a Colorado rock shop.) Errors in cellular division are inevitable and can lead to the development of a malignant tumor. Carcinogens and inherited genetic defects add to the risk.

A more difficult question is how much cancer there was in earlier centuries, compared with modern times. Almost six years ago, two Egyptologists made headlines with a paper in the journal Nature Reviews: Cancer concluding that a striking rarity of malignancies in the anthropological record suggests that cancer is limited to societies that are affected by modern lifestyle issues such as tobacco use and pollution resulting from industrialization.

That plays right into dystopian visions of cancer as a horror inflicted by a civilization gone amok. But other researchers, considering the same anthropological data, have rejected this view. In 2006, scientists studied the bones from two ancient Egyptian burial sites, dating to 3200 B.C., and a German ossuary, where bodies were deposited between 1400 and 1800 A.D. Those researchers concluded that cancer rates, adjusted for longevity, have probably held steady for centuries.

The seemingly small number of malignant tumors reported by anthropologists is probably an illusion. The only cancers that can be found in long-decomposed remains are those that originated in the skeleton or somehow left a mark there. They include cancers that spread from other organs or, like myeloma, could scar the skeleton in other ways. For most ancient cancers, the evidence rots away. Mummified bodies are rare, but here, too, an occasional cancer has been found.

If all of sciences excavated bones were examined as assiduously as the Swartkrans specimen, many more cases would probably emerge. All we can ever see is the tip of the iceberg.
Q. I observed a school of fish swirling around in a clockwise manner. Do they all do that?

A. Schools of fish swim in either direction, and scientists have not determined what factors determine it. The synchronized behavior of schools of fish is a source of fascination to researchers, with some of the latest findings, in a study of sticklebacks published this month in the journal Genetics, suggesting that the behavior is genetically coded, rather than learned.

There have also been limited studies of so-called handedness in fish, that is, the tendency for one side or other to dominate in organ development or activities like feeding.

In one such study, 50 Norwegian salmon farmers were asked to note the swimming orientation of their penned fish, Atlantic salmon, which swim in patterns that resemble the behavior of fish in schools. The farmers reported that the swirling might go in either direction, but that once the fish showed a given orientation, they maintained it, regardless of tide or season.
The pies served in the Broadway musical Waitress come with a main dish of romance. But a new batch arriving downtown in February will be much more sinister. The Barrow Street Theater will be reconfigured into an imitation pie shop to host a British production of the musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The production, from the Tooting Arts Club, originated in 2014 at Harringtons Pie and Mash Shop in London, where audience members sat at tables. Stephen Sondheim, the shows composer, attended the production, which received strong reviews in the British media and transferred to a cocktail lounge in the West End.

As in London, pie and mash will be served before the show at Barrow Street. (Assuredly, they will not be made with the same meat that Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett use.) The theater, which will seat 130, will be adjusted to try to capture the intimacy and atmosphere of Harringtons, which held just 35 audience members.

Sweeney Todd had its Broadway premiere in 1979, starring Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury; Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone played the leads in the 2005 Broadway revival.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Ex-Zanu Ndonga leadership has appealed to Zanu PF's first secretary, Cde Robert Mugabe to intervene in view of the alleged efforts by some elements within the revolutionary party to scuttle to smooth reunion of the two parties.A year after the Zanu Ndonga announced the disbanding of the party and the reunion with Zanu PF, the leadership of the former opposition party have raised concern on the alleged deliberate efforts by some forces within the revolutionary party to thwart the full readmission of ex-Zanu Ndonga members.Speaking at a rally held at Checheche Primary School in Chipinge, former Zanu Ndoga leader, Mr Wilson Khumbula said their reunion with Zanu PF is real and urged the party to unite in order to emerge stronger in the pending 2018 elections.Patron of the recently formed retrievers of Hope Association, Mr Jairos Mhike who stressed the need for co-existence told the party supporters who graced the rally that unity of purpose remains critical in re-invigorating the party.Meanwhile, the meeting also saw several former MDC-T and renewal members announcing their decision to abandon the opposition party and join Zanu PF.The meeting was graced by traditional leaders from the district, Zanu PF district chairpersons, war veterans, senior government officials and members of the revolutionary party.
1968 Richard Nixon continued the G.O.P.s courting of Southern whites, taking advantage of racial resentment (the so-called Southern strategy). But Mr. Nixon didnt win most of Goldwaters Southern states from 1964. George Wallace, running a segregationist campaign, did, capturing five Southern states as an independent candidate.

Mr. Nixon overperformed in the Electoral College (winning, 301-191) relative to his narrow victory in the popular vote over Hubert Humphrey (by less than one percentage point). In the elections aftermath, Congress considered whether the Electoral College should be replaced by the popular vote, with President Nixon supporting the idea initially. The effort, probably the most serious attempt to end the Electoral College system, was defeated mainly by Southern politicians from smaller states concerned about losing influence.
It had existed as a phrase for some time, but it wasnt until two black men died in the summer of 2014 that Black Lives Matter began to flicker to life as a Twitter hashtag.

The roots of the phrase are commonly traced to a July 2013 Facebook post by Alicia Garza, a California-based activist, but it appeared in the Twitter-friendly form #BlackLivesMatter only in fits and starts over the course of the following year, according to a Pew Research Center analysis on race and social media released this month.

The hashtag had a small, but sustained increase in use in the summer of 2014, when Michael Brown and Eric Garner died in encounters with the police, focusing a national discussion on race and policing and elevating a phrase that would define a movement.

[Read more on the missing Black Lives Matter activist who was found dead.]

This is a very powerful example of how a hashtag now is attached to a movement, and a movement, in some ways, has grown around a hashtag  and a series of really painful and really powerful conversations are taking place in a brand-new space, said Lee Rainie, director of internet, science and technology research at Pew.
That will by no means be easy. Even if the two-thirds threshold were reached, a convention would probably face a court battle over whether the legislatures calls for a convention were sufficiently similar. And as with any amendment that Congress proposes, state-written amendments would need approval by three-quarters of the states  either by their legislatures or by state conventions  to take effect.

But as Republicans have surged to control of state legislatures and moved sharply rightward during the Obama years, what was once a pet project of the partys fringe has become a proposal with a plausible chance of success. Some of the former Republican presidential candidates, including comparative moderates like John Kasich and Jeb Bush, have endorsed a state amendment convention.

So far, 28 states have adopted resolutions calling for a convention on a balanced-budget amendment, including 10 in the past three years, and two, Oklahoma and West Virginia, this spring. That is just six states short of the 34 needed to invoke the Article 5 clause.

I think the prospect is very good in 2017, said Gary Banz, a Republican who is the majority whip in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. You can look at any number of states that are not on board yet, and theyre controlled by very conservative elements.

Including nominally nonpartisan Nebraska, Republicans now control 31 state assemblies  more than double the number in 2010. Of the 11 states advocacy groups have targeted for pro-convention lobbying next year, Republicans control both houses of the Legislature in seven.
Donald J. Trump, tempering the tone of his hard-line approach to immigration for a general election audience, avoided repeating his previous call for mass deportations on Monday and instead said he wants to come up with a really fair plan to address the millions of undocumented immigrants now in the country.

The softer comments from Mr. Trump, who postponed plans to give a major immigration speech this week in Colorado, follow months of vows to build a wall along the Southern United States border with Mexico and deport immigrants who have entered the country illegally. Those proposals were a centerpiece of the platform that helped propel Mr. Trump to winning the Republican presidential nomination, and a shift would be significant.

Asked on Fox News if he was flip-flopping on his immigration ideas, Mr. Trump insisted that he still intends to be strong while emphasizing the importance of fairness when it comes to immigrants who came to the United States illegally.

We want to come up with a really fair, but firm, answer, Mr. Trump said. It has to be firm. But we want to come up with something fair.
WASHINGTON  The dispute over Hillary Clintons email practices now threatens to shadow her for the rest of the presidential campaign after the disclosure on Monday that the F.B.I. collected nearly 15,000 new emails in its investigation of her and a federal judges order that the State Department accelerate the documents release.

As a result, thousands of emails that Mrs. Clinton did not voluntarily turn over to the State Department last year could be released just weeks before the election in November. The order, by Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court, came the same day a conservative watchdog group separately released hundreds of emails from one of Mrs. Clintons closest aides, Huma Abedin, which put a new focus on the sometimes awkward ties between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department.

The F.B.I. discovered the roughly 14,900 emails by scouring Mrs. Clintons server and the computer archives of government officials with whom she corresponded. In late July, it turned them over to the State Department, which now must set a timetable for their release, according to Judge Boasbergs order.

While the emails were not in the original trove of 55,000 pages that Mrs. Clintons lawyers handed to the State Department last year, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said in July that he did not believe they had been intentionally deleted. Still, he characterized Mrs. Clintons handling of classified information during her years at the State Department as extremely careless.
WASHINGTON  In 2002, the Supreme Court barred the execution of the intellectually disabled. But it gave states a lot of leeway to decide just who was, in the language of the day, mentally retarded.

Texas took a creative approach, adopting what one judge there later called the Lennie standard. That sounds like a reference to an august precedent, but it is not. The Lennie in question is Lennie Small, the dim, hulking farmhand in John Steinbecks Of Mice and Men.

The Lennie in question is fictional.

Still, Judge Cathy Cochran of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wrote in 2004 that Lennie should be a legal touchstone.

Most Texas citizens might agree that Steinbecks Lennie should, by virtue of his lack of reasoning ability and adaptive skills, be exempt from the death penalty, she wrote. But, does a consensus of Texas citizens agree that all persons who might legitimately qualify for assistance under the social services definition of mental retardation be exempt from an otherwise constitutional penalty?
In a statement, several civil rights organizations that had submitted a brief opposing the injunction called the ruling unfortunate and premature.

A ruling by a single judge in one circuit cannot and does not undo the years of clear legal precedent nationwide establishing that transgender students have the right to go to school without being singled out for discrimination, the groups  Lambda Legal; the American Civil Liberties Union and the A.C.L.U. of Texas; the National Center for Lesbian Rights; the Transgender Law Center; and G.L.B.T.Q. Legal Advocates & Defenders  said in their statement.

The ultimate impact of the Texas decision is unclear and is likely to be limited, legal experts said. For one thing, more senior courts in other regions have agreed with the administration that transgender students and workers are protected by existing laws against sex discrimination, and their decisions will not be altered by the Texas ruling.

Also, the decision will not necessarily affect the outcome of other current cases. In the most prominent one, a federal court in North Carolina is weighing almost identical issues in suits brought by civil rights groups and the Justice Department that seek to block a state law requiring people in government buildings, including public schools, to use bathrooms that correspond to the gender on their birth certificates.

Adding another major note of uncertainty, the United States Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a decision by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that required a school district in Virginia to allow a transgender boy to use the boys bathrooms. The Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction until it decides, probably this fall, whether to hear the case.

If the Supreme Court does take the case and reaches a majority decision one way or another, then existing rulings by district and appeals courts could be superseded. If the Supreme Court takes the Virginia case but then is divided, four to four, on the issues, the Fourth Circuits existing decision in favor of transgender rights would take effect, although it would not be a nationally binding precedent.

The Texas lawsuit, filed by Mr. Paxton on behalf of officials in 13 states, argued that the Obama administration had overstepped its authority in a series of pronouncements in recent years holding that discrimination against transgender people is a violation of existing laws against sex discrimination, including Title IX in federal education laws and Title VII in federal civil rights laws governing the workplace.
Virginias governor said on Monday that he had signed papers restoring the voting rights of nearly 13,000 ex-felons, accomplishing on a case-by-case basis what the states Supreme Court last month had barred him from doing with a single executive order.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, cast the move as a civil rights victory in a state whose constitutional ban on voting by ex-felons has disenfranchised roughly one in five African-Americans. In a post on Twitter, the governor said, We will continue to fight to ensure that our fellow citizens are not marginalized forever.

State Republicans had called Mr. McAuliffes effort to restore voting rights a political plot to put more Democrats on the voting rolls. On Monday, Donald J. Trump, campaigning in Fredericksburg, Va., accused Mr. McAuliffe of getting thousands of violent felons to the voting booth in an effort to cancel out the votes of both law enforcement and crime victims.

They are letting people vote in your Virginia election that should not be allowed to vote, Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said.
Already reeling from corruption scandals and a declining security situation, President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico was accused on Sunday of plagiarizing nearly a third of his law school thesis, according to a report by an investigative journalist.

The journalist, Carmen Aristegui, has reported on several articles that have contributed to the presidents declining public approval ratings, including the disclosure in 2014 of his wifes questionable real estate dealings with major government contractors.

Image Carmen Aristegui, an investigative journalist, has reported on several articles that have contributed to the presidents declining public approval ratings. Credit... Henry Romero/Reuters

Ms. Aristegui lost her job in 2015 after her reporting on the Mexico City mansion built for the presidents wife, Angelica Rivera, by a firm that had received hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts. Since then, Ms. Aristegui has been publishing her work on her own website.
BEIJING  She was a face that people passed on the sidewalk without noticing, a sickly young woman with red lipstick and a pile of clothes. She hawked skirts for $15 and scarves for $10, joking with passers-by about the tedium of life.

But to those who stopped to listen, the woman, Liu Lingli, offered an extraordinary tale. She had once been a university teacher of English in Lanzhou, a city in northwest China, but she was fired for absenteeism after being treated for ovarian cancer. She decided to sue the school for wrongful termination, and in the meantime, to sell clothes on the street to pay her medical bills.

For much of the last two years, Ms. Liu grappled with her medical and legal battles in private. But on Monday, her story exploded into the public sphere, after Lanzhou Jiaotong University said it was deeply sorry and agreed to pay the wages it had denied her.

There was only one problem: After months of legal wrangling, Ms. Liu, 32, died on Aug. 14 from complications of cancer.
News / Religion

by TB Joshua Ministries

The statement below was published on TB Joshua's official Facebook Page yesterday. I felt it was newsworthy, hence my decision to send it to you alongside pictures:After the recent earthquake in Ecuador Prophet.T.B. Joshua and Emmanuel TV Partners reached out by chartering a cargo plane which carried 20 tonnes of emergency relief to distressed areas affected by the devastating earthquake. Apart from bringing immediate relief aid, rebuilding of a school and other constructions are taking place. An Israeli rescue and relief organization recognized by the United Nations, ZAKA had taken cognizance of this and numerous other charitable deeds done by Prophet T.B. Joshua and the Emmanuel TV Team.ZAKA's chairman, Rabbi Yehuda Meshi Zahav came to The SCOAN last week and escorted Prophet T.B. Joshua to Israel to award him for his efforts and to also invite him to partner with them to advance the work of God in the nation Israel.During his visit, Prophet T.B. Joshua held meetings with a number of government officials, including the Mayor of Bethlehem - Mrs Vera Baboun, Mr Ayoob Kara - the Deputy Minister of Regional Cooperation in the Government of Israel and his team, Ambassador Ran Ichay - Senior Deputy Director to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Mr Rafi Eitan - Former Mossad Intelligence Officer, who hosted the Prophet in his home.After his visit to Israel, Prophet T.B. Joshua stopped in Greece where he visited Biblical sites including the City of Philippi where Paul and Silas were jailed and released after singing praise to God while in chains. He took some moments to pray for viewers whilst at this holy place. Indeed, for those whose lives are centered on Christ the best is always yet to come.
The senators also heard from Harra Kazuo, whose husband, Jaypee Bertes, and his father, Renato Bertes, were killed by the officers inside the Pasay City police station after they were arrested.

She told the committee that the police had been extorting money from her husband, a small-time drug peddler. She said he had been preparing to surrender to the police because he was afraid he would be killed. About 600,000 people suspected of being drug dealers or users have turned themselves in to escape being killed since the antidrug campaign began, the authorities have said.

Wearing large sunglasses and partly covering her face with a shawl, Ms. Kazuo told the senators that the police had beaten her husband and threatened to shoot him if he did not hand over his drugs, but that he had nothing to give them. The police strip-searched their 2-year-old daughter looking for drugs, she said. Renato Bertes arrived in the middle of the commotion, and the police beat him for insisting they show him a warrant, she said.

If you want, we can shoot you all here, Ms. Kazuo said one officer told them.

At the station, the police severely beat the two men, breaking her husbands arm, according to a forensic report. The police said the two had tried to grab their guns and escape. Each man was shot three times.
TOKYO  Everyone knew that Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, was headed to Rio to represent the country that will host the 2020 Summer Olympics. But viewers who tuned into the broadcast of Rios closing ceremony on Monday morning Japan time were surprised to see their normally sober leader pop out of an oversize green drainpipe dressed as Super Mario, the star of the popular Nintendo video game series.

Mr. Abes appearance followed a glossy promotional video showing athletes in stereotypical scenes from Tokyo, as well as various characters from popular culture, including Hello Kitty and Doraemon. The scene cut to Mr. Abe in a Toyota Century, fretting that he wouldnt make it to Rio on time, followed by an animated Super Mario diving into a green pipe in Tokyo, emerging as a human figure from the green pipe on the field in Rio de Janeiro. When his costume fell off, the prime minister emerged, holding a red ball and waving a red cap, a shadow of a smile on his face.

Reaction on social media in Japan was swift and amused, with Abe Mario the top trending topic on Twitter.
PARIS  An Islamic extremist pleaded guilty on Monday at the International Criminal Court to destroying shrines and damaging a mosque in the ancient city of Timbuktu, Mali, in the courts first prosecution of the destruction of cultural heritage as a war crime.

Prosecutors said that Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a member of a jihadist group linked to Al Qaeda, took part in the smashing of a number of venerable centuries-old mud and stone buildings holding the tombs of holy men and scholars.

Mr. Mahdi, a teacher who was born in or around 1975 near Timbuktu and who studied Islamic law in a Saudi-sponsored school in Libya, was also accused of leading a morality brigade that meted out punishments like public floggings for minor infractions.

It is with deep regret and great pain that I had to enter a guilty plea on all the charges brought against me, Mr. Mahdi told the court on Monday. Begging for forgiveness, including from the people of Timbuktu, he said, I would like them to look at me like a son that has lost his way, and to accept my regrets.
BERLIN  Germany, France and Italy will be the three most important nations left in the European Union after Britains stunning decision in June to leave the bloc. Yet all are substantially weakened by nagging domestic problems at a critical moment when Europe needs a new direction.

So the summer weather did little to disguise the gloom that hung over a small summit meeting on Monday held by the leaders of the three nations off the coast of Naples, Italy, where they began charting a new course for the 27 countries that will be left in the bloc.

The three leaders used the moment to present a united front, emphasizing that the benefits of the union far outweighed the challenges it faced and making clear that Europe would persevere, even after the British vote.

We respect the choice of British citizens, but we want to write a new page for the future, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy said. The aftermath of the Brexit vote, as it is commonly known, called for strong measures to boost growth and fight youth unemployment, he said, as well as for investments and structural reforms.
LONDON  Convicts in British prisons who preach terrorism and extreme ideology to fellow inmates will be held in high-security specialist units, the government announced on Monday, amid efforts to crack down on Islamic radicalization in jails.

The announcement reflects an emerging trend in Europe to isolate terrorism convicts and influential extremists from the rest of the prison population. Prisons are often regarded as potential breeding grounds for would-be terrorists, particularly for young offenders serving sentences for crimes unrelated to terrorism but who nonetheless fall under the spell of older, charismatic inmates.

Last week, Anjem Choudary, one of Britains best-known Islamist activists, was found guilty of inviting support for the Islamic State. He could face a lengthy prison term.

There are a small number of individuals, very subversive individuals, who do need to be held in separate units, Elizabeth Truss, who took office last month as justice secretary and who made the announcement, told the BBC. Under the plan, prison wardens, or governors, will also be instructed to remove extremist literature and tighten the vetting of prison chaplains.
NICE, France  Terrorist attacks in France come often enough that they can seem to be variations on a painful pattern: carnage followed by disbelief, then condemnations, condolences, and shrines of flowers, candles and letters for the dead.

Yet to see the attacks only that way is to miss the one element that might buoy the national spirit: In nearly every terrorist episode here, ordinary individuals risked their own safety to try to halt the attack or to lend a hand to the wounded rather than running away. Some of these local heroes are recognized right away, though others never receive recognition and some receive it only belatedly.

What I saw was horrible, people crushed  it had to be stopped, said a 48-year-old man named Franck who would not give his surname even after he was decorated by the City of Nice for his effort to stop the driver of a cargo truck that ran over scores of people at a Bastille Day celebration on July 14.

A worker at the Nice airport, Franck, who was on a motor scooter, decided in a split second to chase the truck and when he caught up, rammed it  to no avail  and was knocked off. He got up and ran after the truck, managed to climb onto the running boards and began hitting the driver through the open window. As the driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, tried to shoot Franck his gun failed and at the same time, Franck tried to open the door of the truck, then tried climbing through the window, but the driver struck him on the head with the gun and he fell, breaking a rib and badly bruising his back.
Sporting detachable beards, the men drove a Humvee onto Old Town Square in Prague on Sunday, wielding fake submachine-style BB guns and waving an Islamic State flag. Accompanied by a camel and a goat, they shouted Allahu akbar and fired guns without pellets.

We are bringing you the light of true faith, the leader of the men, Martin Konvicka, who was dressed as an imam, told the crowd.

Mr. Konvicka is an anti-immigration activist, and his stunt  which had been preapproved by City Hall  was intended to sound the alarm about what he views as the threat posed by Islam to the Czech way of life. But he evidently did not anticipate how it would be received.

Prague is one of Central Europes most visited destinations; tourists throng the medieval Old Town and neighboring Josefov, the historic Jewish quarter, and nearby landmarks like the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle.
BEIRUT, Lebanon  Iran on Monday annulled permission for Russian planes to fly bombing runs into Syria from an Iranian base, only a week after having granted such extraordinary access, saying that the Kremlin had been unacceptably public and arrogant about the privilege.

The about-face and the explanation for it from Irans foreign and defense ministries appeared to reflect deep-seated and longstanding suspicions of Russia despite their tactical alliance in the Syria war.

The abruptness of the termination, even if temporary, also suggested that the Russians, eager to show widening influence in the Middle East, had seriously misread how a public announcement of their use of the Hamadan base in western Iran would reverberate among Iranians.

Russia state news media had been trumpeting the deal as a sign that its partnership with Iran was deepening. No foreign power has based forces in Iran since World War II.
There is that liability there of, like, Oh, dont poison yourself, Mr. Graf said. Its really caustic. So his home recipe instructs the baker to boil the bagels in salted water. (A Times reporter revised his recipe in 2012 to include baking soda, a common alternative to lye.)

Here I was trying to perfect the bagel and working with a G-rated version of his recipe. Its the tragedy of the food commons, he said, referring to the simplification of home recipes.

I was determined to try lye. By coincidence, I had dinner days later with a friend who had an unopened bottle in his closet. My friend had gone through a pretzel-making phase and had hoped to experiment with boiling in lye, but never had the guts to open the bottle labeled in red: Poison: Causes Severe Burns.

I took the bottle home. The next morning, I drank a cup of coffee and put on my safety gear.

Mr. Graf told me in an email to weigh the water and the lye so the chemical accounted for 0.15 percent of the solution. Using a kitchen scale, I weighed a pot with 2,200 grams of water (a bit more than a half-gallon) and determined I needed about 3 grams of lye, which amounted to a small pinch. (For safe measurements, brave bagel makers should always weigh the lye with a scale). I dropped the lye into the stainless steel pot of water, brought it to a boil and added the bagels. The water turned a disturbing yellow.

But after I transferred the bagels to the oven and baked them for 20 minutes, flipping them halfway through the cooking, I knew my quest had come to an end. The bagels came out exactly how I wanted them: crunchy and brown with a glossy sheen, a nice chew and soft inside. Not nearly as perfect as Mr. Grafs, but exceptional for a bagel from a home kitchen.

That day, some friends dropped by for brunch. Not one of them was poisoned. We fantasized for a moment about quitting our jobs and opening a bakery.
One of the richer paradoxes of the cocktail world is that, for all their Hawaiian shirts and beach-bum bonhomie, tiki aficionados are among the most doctrinaire pedants youll find in any bar.

Just ask Martin Cate, the owner of the beloved San Francisco tiki bar Smugglers Cove, and a bit of a stickler himself on the proper tiki aesthetic.

Image The new book by Martin and Rebecca Cate. Credit... Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times

It is quantifiable, Mr. Cate said. When I hear people say: Oh, tiki is whatever. It doesnt matter what it is. Its just a good time, now, no. Thats not true. To me, thats as crazy as walking into the Guggenheim and declaring it to be Art Nouveau. There are definitions in this world.
Opinion / Columnist

 Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice activist and commentator, writer, and journalist. He writes in his personal capacity, and welcomes any feedback. Please feel free to WhatsApp/call: +263782283975, or email: tendaiandtinta.mbofana@gmail.com. Follow on Twitter: @Tendai_Mbofana

When schools opened for their first term in 1999, my father - who was a grade six teacher - was summoned to the headmaster's office and was told that, since he had turned 65 years old a few days prior, he was officially retired and could not teach anymore.I remember being surprised to see him return home, only an hour after he had left for work, looking very dejected.He had loved teaching - he ate, slept, and talked teaching everyday - and he was very good at his passion.However, those with the knowhow on these issues have since concluded that - no matter how good and passionate one is at their profession, when they reach 65 years of age, they are too old and can no longer effectively deliver as is expected.I do not doubt and query these experts' conclusions, as I think they know better.However, what endlessly baffles my mind is why it is that a teacher can be regarded as being too old to handle a grade six class at 65 years old, and yet a political party can consider a 92 year old to be fit enough to lead a country.That just does not make any sense.Are these people telling us that it is far much easier to be the president of a country than it is to be a grade six teacher?This is exactly what is happening in Zimbabwe today.If the very same government that is in charge of the civil service agrees that at 65 years old, someone is now incapable of working efficiently, how on earth do they believe that a 92 year old will be able to effectively run a country?I do not know much about what a president of a country is expected to do on a day to day basis, but as the head of state and commander in chief of the country's defence forces, I would expect the person who fills that post to be in the sharpest of minds - and from what we have already established, someone over 65 years of age is considered incapable of such a responsibility.Surely, leading a country, especially Zimbabwe - which is experiencing one of the worse periods of its history - requires someone who is at their optimum, not their twilight.A country facing such economic, political, and social turbulence can not be left on auto-pilot, because the leader is now incapable of being on top of the situation.The country is in a desperate situation that needs someone who is still mentally agile to tackle these vexing problems head-on.Needless to say, as the situation stands presently, there can never be any hope of any improvement for the lot of the already overburdened and suffering Zimbabweans.Both the ruling party and Zimbabweans, as a whole, need to take the problems facing the country very seriously, and elect someone who is still on top of their game.It is not only brazen cruelty to the suffering people of Zimbabwe, but also reckless for anyone to advocate for the continued presidency of a 92 year old - who is now clearly too old for such a mega task - merely because he 'led' the country's 'liberation' struggle, and is also its founding 'father'.Whatever it is that he is said to have done for this country's independence - which, ironically, no one else seems to be enjoying - his legacy should be left to the history books.Similarly, as much as I love and adore my 78 year old mother - and forever grateful to her for bringing me into this world, and nurturing me, with so much love and sacrifice - there are things I appreciate that she is no longer able to do.That is nature, and is the same road anyone who is blessed enough to reach old age, will inevitably go through.Just because I acknowledge that she is now too old to do certain things, does not mean that I no longer love and appreciate her.As such, no matter how some sections of Zimbabwe genuinely adore, and are forever grateful to their leader for whatever role he has played in the country, it is time that they acknowledged that he is now too old to lead an institution as complex as a nation.They can respect him in other ways, but certainly not by allowing him to continue leading this country.If they are adamant that he should continue in this role, then that is a serious disservice to this country, and will clearly re-affirm that they do not care at all about the people if this country.A president should be someone who will be active enough to led in the rival of this economy.However, such recklessness in supporting someone who is no longer capable of delivering is not helping the country at all, and neither is it helping the president, as his very apparent failures only make him more unpopular.The year 2018 is just around the corner, and Zimbabweans, especially those from the ruling party have to make the right choice, and elect a leader who is still astute enough to take this country out of the mess that it is in.This country, and its people are too precious to be toyed around with in this manner, by electing into office someone who is regarded as too old to even teach a grade six class.
A writer for Tablet Magazine and a former parenting columnist for The Forward, Ingall starts by acknowledging that the popular image of a Jewish mother is typically something more cringeworthy than complimentary: Shes the clingy, kvetchy horror who douses her offspring in guilt and shovels kugel down their gullets. Ingall traces the images provenance to various elements of midcentury America, including, she concedes, a post-Holocaust anxiety  theres nothing like living in the shadow of a genocide to make moms cleave to their kids a little tighter  as well as the ascent of male Jewish novelists, comedians and television writers who were desperate to assimilate into mainstream society and spewed their mommy issues across the page, stage and screen. (Poor Sophie Portnoy.)

After dissecting and mostly disposing of the moth-eaten stereotype, Ingall focuses each chapter on a different sensibility imparted by Jewish parents, marshaling evidence from history, culture and sacred texts, and leavening it with contemporary research, jaunty humor and personal stories from her experience as a mother of two daughters. On the value of independence, she points out that the ancient practice of a bar mitzvah at age 13  whatever its glitzy evolution in the New World  is to publicly announce that a kid is not a wee, unreliable, undependable, footloose-and-fancy-free child anymore. The family stands before the community saying, Look! We have made an accountable human being!  On the value of discipline, she explains that the Hebrew word for sin, chet, is an archery term that means missing the mark, and extrapolates that Jewish parenting has commonly been about warmly but firmly guiding children to gain the self-control, self-motivation and sense of responsibility they need to hit their marks, whatever they may be, and face the consequences when they dont.

Less obvious but equally central values that Ingall highlights include having a healthy distrust of authority. Jews come from a vertiginously long tradition of questioning, yammering, challenging and disputing, she writes. The Talmud, the compendium of Jewish law, is pretty much a bunch of dudes contradicting one another. Each page is a big box of text in the middle, and wrapped around it like a frame is lots of Wait, you think what?  Encouraging such chutzpah and sharp debate from a young age has not only helped the tiny religious minority survive centuries of persecution, she argues, but also made them creative freethinkers as well as humanitarians who stand up for whats right. Likewise, on the value of education, she makes plain that Jews have customarily done well in this domain because of their love of learning, not for being dutiful bubble-filler-inners. And on the value of geekiness, she describes parents nurturing their kids natural enthusiasms no matter how uncool. Weve been taught not to be afraid to be passionate, focused dweebs, Ingall writes.

Of course, though she doesnt readily acknowledge it, the sensibilities she describes arent exclusive to Jews. And as she frets several times throughout the book, Jews arent always the best exemplars of their own received wisdom. Ingall worries that many modern American Jewish parents have fallen prey to the dominant cultures devotion to personal happiness and achievement, and explains why being fixated on me before we is not only totally nonkosher but also a pretty sure way to create selfish, brittle, needy brats. Heading a section with The Very Word Self-Esteem Makes Me Want to Hurl, she advises parents, Jewish or not, to worry about building a kid who is good, not a kid who has good self-esteem. If theres one overarching lesson of the book, its that Jewish-style child rearing, at its best, is about raising a mensch  a person of true goodness and integrity  which is less of a discrete value than something like a master password that unlocks all the rest. Ingall holds this goal up as a guide star for all parents, regardless of their heritage. After all, she writes, paraphrasing the old slogan for Levys rye bread, You dont have to be Jewish to be a Jewish mother.
Opinion / Columnist

As plans to form a coalition ahead of the 2018 general elections gathers momentum Dr. Amai Joice Mujuru briefly graced the march organised by President of MDC-T Dr Morgan Tsvangirayi march in Gweru on Saturday and the gesture shown was another good political move.ZimPF which is now more than a year old, had made inroads in most parts of the country. It has been ushered into the political arena at the right time when most of the people are crying for a change. It has so far attracted a very big number of supporters from different circles of the country ranging from war veterans, university graduates, school leavers, vendors and the civil organisations.Most of her maiden rallies which she has addressed have been well received by members of the public. Her entry into the political field has since breathed fresh air and has added a more powerful political voice to those seeking political change in Zimbabwe. This has been well received and applauded by many from the political divide.There are some state media sections who are trying to discredit her political career by wantonly tarnishing her image when she attended a demonstration in Gweru which organised by Morgan Tsvangirayi , before she proceeded to Mkoba Stadium where she addressed a big number of her supporters. The ZimPF as an opposition political party has its constitutional right to merge and join hands with any kind of opposition progressive democrats in order to get out of this mess caused by the ruling party Zanu PF.Working together in solidarity is health and it is proving to be the only best option at this moment .DrJoice Mujuru a well decorated war veteran will match her rival Robert Mugabe and with the growing support of the former liberation war fighters who have been labeled as rogue members of the war veterans association, Joice Mujuru will make a big change for real.Right now Mugabe' s Zanu PF is fretting over Mujuru and Tsvangirayi' s pact hence those allegations that they want to get sponsorship from the western countries. Zanu PF must be reminded that their days in the government are numbered and Zimbabweans want the much needed change to start again. This is not the Mujuru and Tsvangirayi union but all progressive opposition democrats are rekindling the push for electoral reforms ahead of the watershed 2018 general elections.The ruling party has for several times downplayed such a move but it looks like this cyclone tornado of change is coming and cannot be thwarted by any other means of machinations. Joice Mujuru is being very clear in most of her speeches that all these protests are being caused by hunger and that people are fed up and are not eyeing for political posts but want food , jobs, good service delivery and good gorvenance where citizens are allowed to air their views and concerns. A government that listens to people and not to dictate on them. She has been speaking of corruption, lawlessness and nepotism.It seems that the best thing that has ever happened to Dr Joice Mujuru was being kicked out of Zanupf. She left with her head held high and not bowing down to the old veteran Mugabe. She has remained true to her word that she will not go back to Zanupf after several efforts of luring her back.She has emphasised the need to join forces and dismantle this regime which has dismally failed to resuscitate the economy. She has conceded that Mugabe's removal must be done through a formidable united front in order to dislodge the ruling party. Its not about self interests but serving the interests of the people.Its likely that Zanu PF will throw spanners along the way to cripple the coalition of opposition political parties and Joice Mujuru should put on a brave face and show her political muscle to wrestle power from Mugabe. There is audacity of hope for Zimbabweans.
For many Alabama cities, including Opelika and Smiths Station, Tuesday is election day - but it wont be the last day voters will be showing up at the polls.

Secretary of State John Merrill said he expects the largest voter turnout in the history of Alabama on Nov. 8 for the presidential election.

But Nov. 8 wont be the only election day in November for Lee County. Nov. 29 will either be the runoff election for the Republicans running for House District 79 or the general election for the seat. An initial primary is set for Sept. 13 for the four Republicans looking to replace former Alabama Speaker Mike Hubbard in the Statehouse.

Four candidates running for the Ward 2 seat in Opelika and three candidates running for the Place 2 seat in Smiths Station could mean a runoff could take place in both cities if no candidate obtains more than 50 percent of the vote. The municipal election runoff is scheduled for Oct. 4.

Another special election could be called if the Legislature approves any constitutional amendments, like a state lottery, after Wednesday during the special session currently underway in Montgomery. Any amendments that pass before Wednesday will be put on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The state Senate approved Gov. Robert Bentleys lottery amendment on Friday but it is still pending in the House.

Jay Conner, Joe Lovvorn, Brett Smith and Sandy Toomer are scheduled to participate in a House District 79 candidate forum Monday at the Auburn City Council chambers, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of East Alabama, Spirit of Democracy and the Opelika-Auburn News. The forum will be moderated by Gerald Johnson, former Auburn University political science professor and founding member of Spirit of Democracy, a non-partisan group formed to encourage participation in politics.

The forum will be at 6 p.m. in the Auburn City Council chambers at 141 North Ross St.

Johnson said having different days for local and national elections comes from a philosophy that more informed voters will turnout for local elections when theyre held on separate dates.

The idea is that if you hold local elections on National Election Day then you would get a lot of voters that were there to vote for the president and not know much about the local election, local candidates, Johnson said.

Monday's forum is scheduled to be streamed live on oanow.com.
VictoryLand will reopen Sept. 13 with 500 electronic bingo machines and 200 employees.

Milton McGregor, VictoryLands owner, and Johnny Ford, Tuskegees mayor, jointly made the announcement in a press release Sunday afternoon.

The casino was closed in 2013 after a raid by the attorney generals office seized 1,615 electronic bingo machines.

Gov. Robert Bentley signed an executive order in November 2015 removing the attorney generals authority to enforce gambling laws and giving it to county sheriffs.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in March that VictoryLands bingo machines seized in the raid were illegal, overruling a circuit court judge who said the state was cherry-picking which facilities were allowed to operate and had ordered the machines returned.

Despite the ruling, McGregor said he would reopen this summer in an April press conference at the casino.

We have been working with Mayor Johnny Ford, our outstanding Sheriff and District Attorney, and many others for months to get the doors to VictoryLand back open, McGregor said in the press release Sunday. While it has taken longer than we hoped, the time is now here and we are pleased that hundreds of our people will have a new job and VictoryLand will be generating a badly needed shot in the arm for Tuskegee and this entire region of Alabama.

The opening on Sept. 13 will be a soft opening and more announcements about the casino are scheduled in the fall, according to the press release.

Macon County Sheriff Andre Brunson is supportive of VictoryLand reopening, and the new machines have been inspected by independent experts brought in by Brunson and District Attorney E. Paul Jones, the release said.

It is now time to get the doors open and put people back to work and to start paying charities and taxes. So much effort has been put forward by so many and we are glad that this day is finally here. VictoryLand has cleared all legal and regulatory hurdles, Brunson said in the release.

Ford preempted the announcement last week with news that the opening would be on Sept. 6, but retracted after he was contacted by the Opelika-Auburn News.

Everyone is anxious for VictoryLand to reopen as soon as possible, Ford told the Opelika-Auburn News on Aug. 15. We know Mr. McGregor is doing the best he can with a very difficult situation. Whenever it opens we will be very very grateful because we have at stake here over 2,000 jobs and millions of dollars that will benefit our schools, cities, county and our charitable organizations.

Ford, first elected mayor in 1972, is defending a challenge for the mayors seat by Tuskegee Councilman Lawrence Tony Haygood.

McGregor said hes seeking to rebuild VictoryLand to its former size. Before a 2010 raid from Gov. Bob Rileys taskforce on gambling, the casino had more than 6,400 machines, six restaurants and a 350-room hotel. It first opened in 2003 with 300 machines.

We will grow as our customer base allows it, McGregor said in the release. Our goal is to get open, build our business back to where it was before it was illegally closed, and then begin to reopen all areas previously open like our hotel and four-star restaurant.

Former staff writer Meagan Hurley contributed to this report.
Opinion / Columnist



Oops! can't go over the bar!

Deconstructing Zimbabwe's permanent rulers and Zimbabwe's permanently ruled

Echoes of the Iran-Iraq War

A political misreading of uMthwakazi vote

When symptoms are made the cause

Who are Mthwakazi's new political 'allies' now?

Of names, complements, G-40 

You replied sis'Thata ( Link ). Again, I thank you.For reasons of brevity, let me delve straight into exactly the question my views are attempting to answer in respect of the Mthwakazi Zanu-PF 'coalition' I am speaking about. And this is the essential question:Can it ever be the case that peace can be a continuation of a political struggle by other means?I would be grateful if you (and our readers out there) could try and keep this question at the forefront of your minds as you read on.In high jump, when you discover you can't clear the bar when at the point you need to spring yourself up, you abort the effort. You don't go and collide with the bar. Either you go under it or you brake the run and kill off the attempted jump. By either of these two actions (inactions), you are not necessarily saying you have given up the jumping completely, you are merely saying you will have another or other, better goes.But there are always in-built third, fourth, fifth alternatives available in this jump example, only most people don't exercise them. You could  for example  carry off the bar angrily, attack the officials, put the bar to a lower level you can clear (even if other competitors have set the new higher standard), or place a springy platform before the bar to assist your leap this time  The alternatives are potentially limitless. But are they alternatives at all?Power as the medium of exchange in politicsLet us bring all this back to Mthwakazi.I know I have defined politics separately in my last article, but here I want to define it in terms of what it is in essence and in terms of the rules by which politics is played.Politics is basically trade in power. If I am right  and believe I am  then there is no rule against maximising your chances of getting political power, outside criminal activities of course? So you could say politics is by definition a game of NO rules. If there are any, they are frameworks only. But politics isn't a rule-less game in this latter realpolitik sense; it is so by its very nature.Politics  or real politics  is not what you and me always see. Real politics are the behind-the-scenes unseen activities only 'legitimized' by the externals (voters such as you and me). As they say, politics is a game, but of frameworks rather than rules. Politics is not a moral or moralistic crusade  even as it is often couched in such language - such as we have allowed it to be as to us as uMthwakazi. Politics is about situating political power  State power  somewhere; with someone. And in a world organized as States, wanting State power is everything! At least fail, but want it (power)!It's worth giving an example about politics from the world's most powerful democracy and the world's only superpower. Last year (or there about) Ken Mufuka wrote in the Financial Gazette about how Ronald Reagan sent William Casey with bags of money to bribe voters during the 1980 elections, which Reagan went on to 'win' against Jimmy Carter. After Reagan 'won' the elections he went on to appoint William Casey the director of the CIA. Do you really need me to say that this move totally killed any potential criminal charges against William Casey  even against Ronald Reagan  for electoral fraud?In more recent times, people have opinions about how George W Bush won the presidency against Al Gore (who had won the majority popular vote). Was the Supreme Court decision which gave George W Bush the victory a judicial or political decision? Bear in mind the Supreme Court then was dominated by appointees of George W Bush's father, George H Bush, and that Jeb Bush - George W Bush's younger brother - was the Governor of Florida, the State where the 'controversial' votes (recall the pregnant chards and dimpled ballots?) on which the Supreme Court adjudicated emanated from. It was Florida and the US Supreme Court that gave George W Bush the US presidency against Al Gore.Such things are only the rare cases of politics that come out, otherwise the rest of it is played this way unnoticed, unseen or hidden  to varying degrees. If Gwede Mantashe's comments after the recent Hung Councils are any measure, it is welcome that the ANC in South Africa are now finally waking up to their naivety about democracy as this egalitarian figment.Until as uMthwakazi we begin to know, understand, and ACCEPT politics as such a game, not as a political church (in which we suffuse political with moral issues), we will need to wait as weeping victims in the political naughty corner for a very, very long time! To return to our jump example above, is it a crashing failure or a retaken restart for uMthwakazi now?Through Gukurahundi, Mugabe and Zanu-PF redefined the body politic in 1980 into a majority (Shona rulers) and minority (the ruled Mthwakazi) through the 'simple' formula of tribe. By this 'simple' divide-and-rule, a state of permanent access or permanent exclusion from State power was created for Mthwakazi and the Shona, to be repeated by election after election after election.So how do you as uMthwakazi come out this enforced inferiority or exclusion in a world which says you can ONLY change this through the ballot box?You basically have two options. First, you can go to war (which isn't a ballot box). Secondly, you can play politics. There is nothing in between. Political moaning and complaining  such as uMthwakazi has been doing and some people want uMthwakazi to continue to do  is only a comfortable escapism getting no one anywhere, in my view.If uMthwakazi wants to play politics  and I understand you sis' Thata as saying this  uMthwakazi must know what it is she wants.For me  which is the reason for my views  the real political issue for Mthwakazi is to 'remove' herself as an 'enemy' of Zanu-PF, the ruling party. UMthwakazi needs to kill this divide-and-rule tactic. If Zanu-PF positioned uMthwakazi as an enemy of the Shona (State) in order to divide the vote against it among the Shona, it makes sense for uMthwakazi to want to remove herself as such a political lever in Zanu's hands facilitating that divide-and-rule. As long as uMthwakazi is anti-Zanu-PF alone as a block  as is clearly the case now, Zanu-PF is guaranteed victory on the cheap based on a divided opposition vote (Mthwakazi and some Shonas will vote either way). The thing is, the 'opposition' simply does not have the ability to carry the rural vote to propel it to office, the largest and Zanu-PF's power-base, so the battleground is in the cities, but not for power, but for MP positions. And which 'opposition' anyway in the first place?It is not necessarily the case that Zanu-PF is now suddenly politically attractive to Mthwakazi  and it need not be the case  it is enough that what stands for 'opposition' is this deplorable lot that makes Zanu-PF a far attractive option to Mthwakazi than itself (that is, the 'opposition').As presently constructed Zimbabwe is a labyrinth of political levers and strings, of which the dominant and most politically lethal across the board is uMthwakazi, which Zanu-PF is manipulating for its sole benefit and to the detriment of uMthwakazi. Only uMthwakazi can temper and breach this lethal lever and level things out. Given the options on the table, Zanu-PF is an attractive proposition by which to advance uMthwakazi, not to reward Zanu-PF, going forward.Forgive me Sisi for piling up different examples of the same point, but this is important. Let me tap from a far-flung country, a distant history  from the Iran-Iraq war of 1980  88.On July 20, 1988, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran when endorsing the UNSC cease-fire under Resolution 598 said: ''Taking this decision was more deadly than taking poison. I submitted myself to God's will and drank this drink for his satisfaction.'' The Ayatollah went on: ''I had promised to fight to the last drop of my blood and to my last breath  To me, it would have been more bearable to accept death and martyrdom.''Contrast with what the Ayatollah had said in 1982. In 1982, the Ayatollah had said: ''Even if the Security Council orders, we will not make peace. Even if the whole world gathers, we will not make peace.'' For 'peace with the criminal is a crime against Islam'.And you have to remember that this decision was taken at a time when Iran was clearly winning the war against Iraq, a war in which Iraq had attacked Iran without provocation in 1982. But does all this not have a closely familiar ring, Mthwakazi?By making peace with Iraq the Ayatollah hadn't surrendered, given up or given in? You could ask, did the Ayatollah then fight the same struggle by peace rather than war, and win? Looking at Iran and Iraq today, it is not difficult to see to whom ultimate political victory belongs.Could it be history long put uMthwakazi in a position where she  like the Ayatollah did for Iran - has to swallow a bitter poison for a grander political victory for Mthwakazi years down the political line?I do not know the future and nobody does, but what we know now is that uMthwakazi is stuck at the moment twirling in circles and going nowhere politically while hogging lethal political power she could unleash for collective political gain. UMthwakazi must tip the outcome of this endgame by deploying its decision deliberately. This is not being a 'casting' vote, and it is far better than uMthwakazi waiting to be 'invited' in later to guarantee someone's rule after this endgame.I guess my simple point is that in this endgame Zanu-PF needs uMthwakazi as much as uMthwakazi needs Zanu-PF, far more that each needs these political turncoats and this loud and directionless mob currently shouting in shrill voices in the streets of Harare.You have said uMthwakazi is a 'deciding vote' Sisi, and gone on explain her as a 'swing' voter. I do not know how much you paid attention to those terms, especially whether you make a distinction between 'deciding' and 'decision', and I would therefore not wish to pin you down on that point. However, for me, 'deciding' suggests swing voters as you rightly point out (in your own argument). I want to suggest that uMthwakazi is and has always been a 'decision' voter, as opposed to a 'deciding' or 'casting' voter. I define 'decision' here as simply a strategic voter.I remember a Shona writer a couple of years back writing on NewZimbabwe or Bulawayo24 (that's how he described himself if my memory is right) described uMthwakazi as the most strategic voter ever in Zimbabwe. He was right.The MDC totally misread uMthwakazi, leading them to make outrageous claims such as Matebeleland being their 'stronghold'. But look at the 2013 elections  even if you factor in the Nikuv factor! Are we to reject Mthwakazi  simply because we don't want to hear it  that uMthwakazi saw the behaviour of the MDC under the so-called GNU  sokudliwa  and rejected and punished them (MDC) in 2013  strategically as strategic voters? I think rejection by uMthwakazi is closer to the truth than the Nikuv factor.I therefore would like to agree with you Sisi that uMthwakazi are not fools and it is precisely because they are not that I have put out this view out there about uMthwakazi going into 'coalition' with Zanu-PF. But over and beyond this  and for the same reasons  I do not believe uMthwakazi will ever prostitute ubuThwakazi bakhe blindly for anything. We now all know, the MDC has also failed where Zanu-PF has failed (in fooling uMthwakazi). If uMthwakazi agreed with me and saw the merits of such a 'coalition' with Zanu it will only be because uMthwakazi as uMthwakazi sees the merits of my view, not anything else. Equally, if uMthwakazi rejected my view, it will be for the same reasons. But at the very least, let us have this 'outrageous' view out there and being debated. And I hope it is!Lack of development, the never-ending debacle about MZWP, ZimAsset et cetera, are symptoms of a political problem but not the problem itself.When all things have been said, when all the dust has been thrown up, when all scholarly expositions have been made about the problems in Zimbabwe, when economic matrices have made, and all lies and blasphemies have been made by prophets and soothsayer - at the core of Zimbabwe's political problems  is a plain and simple problem. And that single problem is Gukurahundi and uMthwakazi. Without these two things, Zimbabwe would not be what it is now and Mugabe would not be a 93-year old clinging to power today, and 'happy' alternatives to his rule would have long been found.While these two issues remain  and they do  Mugabe and Zanu-PF won't relinquish political power, whether by hook or crook, until all those fingered in it  in turn  have protected themselves by the institution of the State (in practice, dying in office).So how do you go around this problem? You either remove the cause (expel uMthwakazi or something) or cause the protagonists to be removed (remove Mugabe and Zanu-PF).In my view, removing the cause  uMthwakazi  as such a cause  is key to changing the entire game politic in what is Zimbabwe today  perhaps forever! And by 'removing' uMthwakazi, I don't mean uMthwakazi ceasing to be uMthwakazi or being 'expelled'  it's impossible  or uMthwakazi prostituting herself to Zanu-PF (another impossibility that Nkomo and Zapu dismally failed in), but I mean uMthwakazi making that strategic political re-positioning of herself in this endgame of which I last spoke in previous articles. And I mean uMthwakazi doing so herself  not anyone - as she determines right!There are two ways by which uMthwakazi can do this. UMthwakazi can either do so by positioning herself even further away from political power than where she is now (partnering with the 'opposition') or by repositioning herself closer to political power (by partnering with Zanu-PF). In my previous articles I said why I think a 'coalescence' with Zanu-PF rather than the so-called 'opposition' is the better option for Mthwakazi to do now  in this endgame  and I won't rehash that discussion! This brings me to another pertinent point.You talk phishingly Sisi about this 'new' era of political bliss and plenty that is apparently dawing without identifying with whom uMthwakazi is partnering to bring about this new era, or indeed if such an era is there or really only a strong and passionate wish (no offence intended).If you ask me, in MDC-T I see Zanu-PF wearing a false, fake, and oversize cloak of democracy (you saw their behaviour under the GNU). In ZPF I see Zanu-PF telling you in broad daylight that they are she-goats, literally (the mischief-making imagery is apt too)!In so-called war vets, I see an ignoble mob recently kicked out of the feeding trough, lashing out and screaming while clinging onto the rim of the trough.In #Tajamuka #BeatthePot and similar outfits I see Zanu-PF militias, Green Bombers, etc feigning sophistication today while they remain the same Zanu-PF militias of the past (though now in the hands of different warring factions). It is not who they are, it is the principle (lack of it) that drives them to jamuka.In short, about all these, I see poor copycats of Zanu-PF stripped of any pretence at respectability. I guess you can conclude what I am saying. I am saying with Zanu-PF you at least have the 'authentic' Zanu-PF and the pretence of respectability than these utilitarian political forceps in the hands of shadowy operators  perennial political enemies of Mthwakazi. At least with Zanu-PF  at the very minimum - uMthwakazi knows her political enemy.So Sisi, who are all these people? In endtimes as these  a re-enactment of 1979-80  is uMthwakazi not better off with her enemy as friend than mentally constructed friends? Is this not the same euphoria in which uMthwakazi lost her way in 1979-80, now playing out as 2018?And tomorrow when you wake up to find history has repeated itself and you have been done another Zanu at five to political midnight by another unknown quantity, what do you do? Start from Ground Zero  again?I would hope that at the very least G-40  whatever that is  would be happy about my being freely donated to them. I am not G-40 Sisi.If this is so important to you, my name is Vuli Moyo and my ghost name is Xoxani Ngxoxo. The idea about a ghost name - at least here - is that you address my idea rather than me. I also see that someone called 'Afrikan' has made comments about my ghost name in your article. I don't think my use of a ghost name is as grim as 'Afrikan' would have people out there believe. But I would still hope 'Afrikan' will himself see the comic side of him attacking my ghost name while he himself comments using his pseudonym, 'Afrikan'.On a more serious note, for me, I hope there is now a debate out there and that some Mthwakazians are beginning to re-think this whole thing objectively without necessarily ascribing ulterior motives to me or indulging in name-calling.I thank you and 'Afrikan', Sisi, for your compliments. I would still hope that at the end of the day you also still see the strength of my view for itself rather than for the manner or medium by which it has been delivered.Finally, I agree also Sisi that my view is not a popular one and that there will be Mthwakazians who will find my view 'nauseating' as you put it. However, it is not usually mainstream ideas that leapfrog man to progress, bring in revolutions, or convert crazy ideas into new normals, but rather it is fringe and 'nauseating' ideas such as mine at this time that do. And we also need to be wary, Mthwakazi, of where pride is no longer a virtue but the gestation of a seed that will lead to a big political fall. That, I would suggest, we must avoid!
Philip and Denise Powell lost their home in 2011 after Philips hours as a pastor were cut in half and Denise was sidelined by a surgery. But they were determined to become homeowners again, so they rolled up their sleeves and got to work.

The Highland couple got financial counseling. They took control of their credit reports, tackled high-interest debts and cut spending. In 2015, they bought another home.

We thought wed never recover, Philip Powell says, recalling the devastation they felt after losing their home. No one in California was ready for the crash; it hit us hard.

Their story is typical of the more than 9.3 million homeowners who lost a home through a distressed property sale from 2006 through 2014, according to the National Association of Realtors.

As rents rise, low mortgage rates persist and the economy gradually improves, some who lost their home in recent years will be able to re-enter the housing market. A 2015 study by the NAR found that 1.5 million previous homeowners might be eligible to buy within the next five years, based on the time it takes to boost credit scores and save for a down payment, as well as mandatory wait times to buy another house.

For those looking to put down roots again, here are five tips:

1. KNOW YOUR OPTIONS: You no longer have to wait seven years after a bankruptcy or foreclosure to buy another home, says Ray Carlisle, president of the national nonprofit NID Housing Counseling Agency. For homeowners who had extenuating circumstances such as prolonged income loss or major medical expenses, Fannie Mae has shortened its waiting periods to two years after a pre-foreclosure sale  a short sale or deed in lieu of foreclosure  and to three years after a foreclosure. Thats down from the standard waiting periods of four and seven years, respectively.

To get a Federal Housing Administration loan after a foreclosure, the standard wait time is now three years  and as little as one year with extenuating circumstances, says April Brown, a spokeswoman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

2. CHANGE YOUR BAD MONEY HABITS: Focus on paying down debt, creating a solid savings strategy and avoiding new splurge purchases. Saving for a down payment and closing costs is one of the biggest hurdles that homebuyers face. Start socking away bonuses, windfalls, tax refunds and other extra cash in a savings account. Setting up automatic deposits to your savings account is another way to grow your down payment reserves, and it removes the temptation to spend money unnecessarily.

3. REPAIR YOUR CREDIT: The FHAs minimum credit score requirement for maximum financing is 580. Some lenders offer loans at that minimum, Carlisle says, but other mortgage lenders require a FICO score of 640 or higher. Paying off high-interest debt on time each month and not taking out new loans or running up your credit cards will help build your credit score. Also, ask your utility providers or landlord to report your on-time monthly payments to the major credit bureaus to have those count on your credit report, too.

4. BEWARE OF PREDATORY LENDERS: If you encounter lenders that try to seduce you with special zero-down home loans or real estate agents who recommend rosy rent-to-own or land contract agreements, run the other way. Carlisle says that 80 percent of NIDs clients are minorities who are disproportionately targeted by predatory lenders. Never sign any contract youre unsure of, and have a housing counselor , real estate attorney or different lender look it over to get a second opinion.

5. SEEK HELP FROM THE PROS: Not only can housing counselors help you address credit issues and set up a savings plan, they can connect you with state, local and private resources that can ease your path to homeownership, Brown says.

NEXT STEPS: If youre looking to buy again, reach out to a HUD-approved housing counselor before you begin. Also, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling provides help to more than 3 million people each year. Find an NFCC-certified housing counselor to discuss your options.
PARIS (AP)  French customs police have seized 2,000 dried seahorses smuggled into France in several postal packages en route from Guinea to Vietnam.

The endangered creatures were discovered in plastic bags by customs officers in a Paris suburban post office. The national customs police said in a statement Friday that the seahorses were slated to be sent on a flight to Vietnam, where they could be used in traditional medicine or sold to tourists.

Customs officers frequently seize endangered animals, alive or dead, being smuggled to or through France.

As part of efforts to fight the trade of protected species, the environment ministry this week banned all trade in ivory and rhinoceros horns in France.
BAGHDAD  Hatam Kareem received the telephone call on Sunday that he had been waiting for, saying the men who killed his brother had been executed by hanging.

It was the happiest call I have ever received, he said.

Thousands of other Iraqis shared his happiness on Sunday over the executions of 36 men convicted and sentenced to death for taking part in the Islamic State groups massacre of roughly 1,700 Shiite military personnel in 2014.

The massacre, carried out at the Camp Speicher air base near Tikrit, Saddam Husseins hometown, is the deadliest atrocity to date carried out by the Sunni militants of the Islamic State group, either in Iraq or in Syria. The crime galvanized Iraqs historically oppressed Shiites, who have been in power since the 2003 U.S. invasion, and took up a place in their collective memory alongside the atrocities Saddam inflicted on them.

Video images of the massacre that were made and released by the Islamic State group showed killing on an industrial scale, with one man after another being shot in the head and pushed into the flowing waters of the Tigris River. Other victims were killed on land and buried in mass graves. A survivor, speaking to The New York Times in 2014, described how he heard a bullet whiz past his head, then played dead in a pile of bodies and hid out for three days among the reeds along the river.

Iraqi forces recaptured Tikrit from the Islamic State group in 2015, and the riverbank became a site of pilgrimage, visited by relatives of victims from mainly Shiite southern Iraq.

Iraqi officials said that the 36 convicts were executed on Sunday at a prison in Nasiriyah in the south. The death chamber was crowded with the families of Camp Speicher victims who were invited to watch the executions. The convicts were hanged one by one, as women wailed and howled, their tears of joy mixing with tears of sadness, and men hugged each other in celebration, according to a prison official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

After the completed executions were announced, Sabah Radhi, whose brother was killed at Camp Speicher, said: Today is the day of victory for all of us, the day where happiness has entered our broken hearts. We have been waiting for this day since the massacre, and its finally come true.

Radhi said that as soon as he heard the news, he called his uncle, who lost a son at Camp Speicher. He was very happy, Radhi said. He felt that the Iraqi justice system has taken revenge for his son.

The convictions and death sentences were handed down this year. After an Islamic State bombing in Baghdad last month killed roughly 300 people, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi promised to speed up executions of convicted Islamic State terrorists.

Activists have long criticized Iraqs use of the death penalty because of the problems plaguing the countrys justice system and the number of convictions based on testimony from confidential informants, without any physical evidence. Human rights groups have also documented cases of confessions obtained by torture inside Iraqi jails.

The criminal justice system remains critically flawed in Iraq, Amnesty International wrote in a report in July. Trials, particularly of defendants facing charges under the antiterrorism law and possible death sentences, can be grossly unfair, with courts often admitting torture-tainted evidence, including when defendants recant their confessions in court.

Al-Abadis promise to fast-track executions drew sharp criticism from the United Nations. Given the weaknesses of the Iraqi justice system, and the current environment in Iraq, I am gravely concerned that innocent people have been and may continue to be convicted and executed, resulting in gross, irreversible miscarriages of justice, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a statement issued this month. Fast-tracking executions will only accelerate injustice.

Iraqi officials see things differently, and said on Sunday that the executions were the result of fair trials and that the sentences had been approved by the president in accordance with Iraqi law.

This is simple restitution to the martyrs families, said Yahiya al-Nasiri, the governor of Dhi Qar province, where the executions took place. Today, the Iraqi judicial system did its work. Today is an important day for the families, to see the people who killed their sons executed in front of their eyes.

Not all relatives of the Camp Speicher victims expressed satisfaction with the executions. Many believe that the massacre victims, who were mainly low-ranking military recruits, were abandoned and betrayed by senior officers when the Islamic State militants advanced on the air base.

Im not interested in the execution of these people, Khalaf Edan, who lost a son at Speicher, said Sunday. I would be happier if I attended the execution of one of the military commanders who caused this massacre.
PLACENTIA  Careli Ledezma had just spent the last hour laughing, holding hands and dancing to Mexican folk music with her mother and sisters at a friends party.

They were crossing the street to their own apartment when, suddenly, a car struck her mother and two of the girls.

In an instant, they were dead.

It was terrifying, said 16-year-old Careli Ledezma, who had watched in disbelief. It all happened so fast.

Two Placentia police officers were nearby at about 10:20 p.m. Saturday when they heard the impact of the crash, said Placentia Police Sgt. Michael Busse. They rushed to the 800 block of West La Jolla Street, a block lined with apartments, townhomes and small houses.

There, they found Patricia Ledezma, 34, and her two daughters, Stephanie, 8, and Dayana, 4, lying in the street.

The three could not be saved, Orange Fire Authority Capt. Steve Concialdi said. Firefighters from OCFA were joined by crews from Anaheim and Fullerton.

Police found the driver, identified as Nicolas Stephen Munoz, 27, standing next to his car. Munoz, of Placentia, who was uninjured, was booked on suspicion of murder and driving under the influence with injuries, Busse said.

Most witnesses told police Munoz exceeded the 35 mph speed limit, Busse said. On Sunday night, Munoz was in custody at Orange County Jail in lieu of $1 million bail.

Earlier in the day, a small memorial with candles grew near the spot where the three died. Truck vendors sold fruit and other treats at curbside, and the street was jammed with parked cars.

Residents stood around with strollers and talked about what happened to Ledezma and her daughters. (The family said her last name is Ledezma, but the coroner identified her as Patricia Santiago Ventura.)

Just before this happened, I said we need to get the city to do something about this street, said Rajas Hammoud, who lives a block away. They need stop signs and crosswalks. There are lots of children here and many vendor trucks stop to sell things. People speed through here and through the alleys. When we call police they are often already gone.

Jacqueline Gomez, 20, said the crosswalk on West La Jolla Street nearest to the accident was a few blocks away.

The lady and her daughters got run over because there is no stop sign, Gomez said. As citizens we deserve to have stop signs and a crosswalk here. People come here and speed. It should be 5 miles per hour here.

Careli Ledezma stood outside her familys small apartment. The family of five  there is another sister, 10-year-old Brianna  had been sharing the home with Isidro Ayala, Patricia Ledezmas father-in-law.

Ayala, an auto body shop repairman, said he was devastated by the loss of his daughter-in-law and two granddaughters. He and Patricia Ledezma shared expenses to raise the girls.

Its sad because two happy granddaughters are gone, said Ayala, 51. Now I will do the best I can to take care of the two that are still alive.

Inside the apartment, dozens of family members and friends bowed their heads as they surrounded a shrine of candles and flowers. Photos of Patricia Ledezma and the two girls were propped against the candles.

Careli Ledezman said her mother, separated from her husband for the past three years, did all she could to make her four daughters lives happy and fulfilled.

She was a single mom, the teen said. She worked in a factory at night making barcodes and she slept in the morning. She would wake up, do errands and then take us to the pool. Then she would cook and clean.

By 6:30 p.m., shed go back to sleep and then wake up at 11 p.m. to work in the factory. She did that every day.

She would give us everything she could, Careli Ledezma added. Even if she wasnt in the right circumstance, she would find a way to get it.

The teenager described 8-year-old Stephanie as a shy girl who had become more isolated after their father left.

She liked playing with Barbies and played videos on her tablet, Ledezman said. She was going into third grade at Melrose Elementary School. She was loving and caring and funny and always made people laugh.

Four-year-old Dayana was the most vivacious of the sisters, Careli Ledezma said. The little girl adored colorful sandals and the cartoon character Peppa Pig.

I cant believe they are gone, Ledezma said. Why would they leave so early? Especially the little one. She was so excited to go to preppy kindergarten and wear her new uniform.

Placentia police Sgt. Adam Gloe initially said early Sunday morning that a preliminary investigation showed Munoz was driving on the wrong side of the street. But witnesses told a reporter that while he was speeding, he was not driving in the wrong direction.

Anyone with information is encouraged to call the Placentia Police Traffic Bureau at 714-993-8157. Anonymous tips can also be submitted to Orange County Crime Stoppers at 855-TIP-OCCS or occrimestoppers.org.

Contact the writer: eritchie@ocregister.com or on Twitter:@lagunaini
SEAL BEACH  A Long Beach man was arrested Sunday morning on suspicion of child abduction after trying to take his 7-year-old son out of his grandmothers Leisure World home, where the boy lives, police say.

David Pitts, 44, who has an extensive criminal history, was also arrested on suspicion of burglary and vandalism, according to a Seal Beach Police Department statement.

The boys grandmother is Pitts mother.

Early Sunday morning, according to the statement, Pitts entered the grandmothers house in the 13000 block of Alderwood Lane.

Leisure World security found the father and son walking nearby, said Sgt. Michael Henderson.

Then, at 7:10 a.m., officers received a call about a family disturbance at the grandmothers house. When they arrived, the officers were told about the initial abduction and that Pitts had returned to take his son.

Pitts was not in the house, but police found him nearby and arrested him, Henderson said.

The boy was unharmed.

Contact the writer: 714-796-6979 or chaire@ocregister.com
FULLERTON  Police say two men in their late teens or early 20s suffered non-life-threatening stab wounds in the 1200 block of Teri Place around 12:20 a.m. Sunday.

Upon arrival, officers found that two males had been stabbed, police Sgt. Jon Radus said. One male [was stabbed] in the chest and one male in the arm.

The suspect is described as a Hispanic man, approximately 18 to 20, 510, 160-175 pounds. He was wearing a baseball-style cap, a dark shirt, and dark pants.

The alleged assailant fled before officers arrived, Radus said.

Detectives are reviewing video evidence of the incident. Video was not immediately available for the media.

It was unclear if the alleged attacker was also a student or connected to the campus.

Anyone with information can call Fullerton Police Detective Mario Magliano at 714-738-6753. Anybody who wants to remain anonymous can call Orange County Crime Stoppers at 855-TIP-OCCS (855-847-6227).

Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or jsudock@ocregiaster.com
Donald Trumps support among white men, the linchpin of his presidential campaign, is showing surprising signs of weakness that could foreclose his only remaining path to victory in November.

If not reversed, the trend could materialize into one of the most unanticipated developments of the 2016 presidential campaign: That Hillary Clinton, the first woman at the head a major party ticket and a divisive figure unpopular with many men, ends up narrowing the gender gap that has been a constant of American presidential elections for decades.

Surveys of voters nationwide and in battleground states conducted over the past two weeks showed Trump was even with or below where Mitt Romney, the Republican Party nominee four years ago, was with white men when he won that demographic by an overwhelming 27 percentage points.

For Trump, who has staked much of his legitimacy as a candidate on his strength in the polls, the numbers are a dose of cold, dangerous math. If he does not perform any better than Romney did with white men, he will almost certainly be unable to rally the millions of disaffected white voters he says will propel him to the White House.

Will they turn out?

All along, one of the central questions of the election has been whether there are enough white men who will turn out to vote to lift Trump to victory. And there may be enough, demographers and pollsters said.

But for now it appears that after a ceaseless stream of provocations, insults and reckless remarks, Trump has damaged himself significantly with the one demographic that stands as a bulwark to a Clinton presidency.

If you set out to design a strategy to produce the lowest popular vote possible in the new American electorate of 2016, you would be hard-pressed to do a better job than Donald Trump has, said Whit Ayres, a pollster who has advised Republican presidential and Senate candidates for more than 25 years. This is an electoral disaster waiting to happen.

There are still nearly three months before Election Day, ample time to shift the dynamics of the race. But the question Republicans inside and outside the Trump campaign are asking is whether the damage Trump has caused himself during the last few weeks is irreparable.

Interviews with voters found that Trumps increasingly outlandish behavior was rubbing many in his key voting bloc the wrong way.

I liked Trump until he opened his mouth, said Phil Kinney, a retired middle school administrator and a Republican from Bethlehem, Pa. The recent string of attacks Trump has unleashed, particularly his criticism of the family of a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq, left Kinney disappointed. Faced with the choice of voting for Trump or Clinton, Kinney said he may just stay home.

Clinton catching up

Two national polls conducted this month have Clinton catching up to Trump among men overall. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Clinton with 43 percent support among men to his 42 percent. A Bloomberg Politics survey put Trump with a low-single-digit lead among men, according to the pollster who conducted the survey, Ann Selzer.

Romney relied on his 27-point edge among white men to carry the male vote overall, but Trump is even more reliant on them because of how poorly he performs with nonwhite voters. If Trump is only doing as well or worse than Romney did with white men, he will never make up the votes he is losing among women and nonwhites.

Trumps troubles with white men do not end there. The data reveal a huge gap in those who have a college education and those who do not. As Trump saw in the Republican primaries, he is most vulnerable with white men who have a college education or higher. Romney won that group, which votes at a higher rate than those without college degrees, by 21 points. Recent national polls have put Trumps support with them far lower.

Were looking at a margin among college-educated white men for him thats less than half what Romney won, said Gary Langer, an independent pollster who conducted an ABC News/Washington Post survey this month that showed Trump losing overall to Clinton. And that is problematic for Trump given his need to appeal to whites.

Disapproval across board

Trumps difficulties with men are symptoms of a larger vulnerability: disapproval that runs deeply through many segments and subgroups of the voting population.

Self-identified Republicans, white women, the wealthy and well-educated people of all races are turning their backs on him. Two national polls have recently put his support from African-Americans at an astonishing 1 percent. Separate Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist surveys in Ohio and Pennsylvania from July found that zero percent of black voters said they planned to vote for him. The latest poll of Latinos, conducted within the past week by Fox News, had Trump with 20 percent support, below the 27 percent that Romney received in 2012.

Even under the rosiest projections of white turnout, Trump would still lose the popular vote if his poll numbers among whites do not improve considerably.

William H. Frey, a demographics expert with the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, conducted several simulations that tried to determine how much the turnout among white men without college educations would have to increase for Trump to win. He used the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll of registered voters that had Clinton beating Trump in a nationwide two-way race, 50 to 42 percent. It was among the better polls for Trump lately.

Frey tested different turnout assumptions, including improbably optimistic ones, like if 99 percent of white, non-college-educated men turned out to vote. None of the chain of events produced a Trump victory.

In fact, even if virtually all of the white, non-college-educated men eligible to vote did so, Frey found, Clinton would still win the popular vote by 1.1 million.

And Frey said he did not account for the expected growth in Hispanic turnout. Once you build that in, he said, its even worse for Trump.
ISTANBUL  The wedding on Saturday night was winding down, and some guests had already left. But the music was still playing and people were still dancing in the narrow streets of Gaziantep, a city not far from the Syrian border.

Just then a child  no more than 14 years old, Turkeys president said later  meandered into the gathering and detonated a vest of explosives.

Suddenly, the most joyous of occasions became a scene of blood and gore, with body parts scattered all around. Once again, the horrors of Syrias civil war had visited Turkey.

The devastating bombing of the Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep killed more than 50 people, for which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the Islamic State, the terrorist group that controls a swath of land straddling the frontier between Iraq and Syria.

In this area, we live in a ring of fire, said Hilmi Karaca, a Kurdish activist who witnessed the explosion. We live in a place where mothers are weeping for their dead children just hours after crying tears of joy at a wedding.

The attack was the deadliest in a string of terrorist bombings that have struck Turkey this year, as it grapples with the spiraling chaos of spillover from the war in Syria.

Mahmut Togrul, a lawmaker with the Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party who on Sunday visited the scene of the attack, said the wedding had been a traditional Kurdish ceremony and had taken place in a predominantly Kurdish neighborhood. He said that many of the victims  at least 51 people were killed and 69 more wounded, Erdogan said on Sunday  were children.

That the perpetrator of the attack and so many of its victims were so young was a potent illustration of the degradation of the Syrian war as it has inflamed the region.

The bride and groom on Saturday, Besna and Nurettin Akdogan, survived without serious injuries. Neighbors said they were cousins who had been engaged for six months. After being released from the hospital, the bride said, They turned our wedding into a blood bath, according to the state-run Anadolu News Agency.
In business, as in life, never underestimate the importance of happy accidents.

Take New York Hardware in Costa Mesa, for example. One of Orange Countys most reliable places to go for high-end door knobs, cabinetry pulls, switch plates, address numbers and the like, it was started almost on a whim.

According to David Willke, the present owner, his predecessor happened to put some attractive knobs on a cabinet he was building. They were a surprise hit.

Because we had so many designers coming in here, they started selling them some knobs and things. That ended up growing into the business it is today.

The name of the place also happened by chance, Willke said.

It came from an old sign that was found at a swap meet or yard sale or something like that. Many people come in and ask, Who here is from New York? And a few of them get a little upset that nobody is. But everybody seems to like the name.

Willke grew up in Northern California, got a business degree from San Francisco State Uni- versity, and was transferred by his company to Southern California in 1992. After spending time in other industries, including aerospace, he was hired by a company that manufactured high-end plumbing fixtures. Thats what got me into the decorative products industry, Willke said. As president and CEO of New York Hardware, he oversees three full-time and five part-time employees.

In a hyper-competitive world where online sales are becoming more dominant, Willke focuses on exclusivity  the kind of fascinating item you want to see up close in a store.

I spent some time in Europe last year looking for new vendors. We have unique products from all over the world. Like what? I found hand-stitched leather pulls from England that are supposedly made by one of the people who stitches the saddles for the queen of England.

Willke acknowledges his products arent for everyone. You can find a lower-end product that looks the same as one of ours in the big home centers, but its packaged differently and it might have lots of little dings and nicks and scratches. If youre putting that in a rental apartment, no problem, but in a $100,000 kitchen remodel its definitely a problem.

Willke has watched consumer tastes shift dramatically since he started.

In the last five years, oiled bronze has continued to get stronger and stronger. Polished nickel and satin finishes have maintained strength. About 15 to 20 years ago, polished brass was still very popular. That started to really fade away when satin nickel and bronze rolled in. Now, though, polished brass is making a comeback. Were re-doing our inventory to bring more of that in.

Willke is a stickler for quality. Almost everything we sell is solid brass or solid aluminum, finished in satin. You take the polished fixture and brush it with a special polishing wheel, and that gives it a softer, less bright finish. Those are all done by hand.

Willke has various plans to expand and improve his business, including a stronger online and social media presence. His pet peeve, he said, is potential customers who use his stores resources, displays and expertise, then buy online when its time to pull the trigger on a project.

The hardest thing I think is when people spend a bunch of time with us. Every brick-and-mortar store has this problem. A person uses your time and showroom, looks at catalogs and takes samples home. Then they buy the products online.

Willke paused. They might save maybe 5 or 10 percent. But the reality is theres a value to being on a busy street corner with parking and knowledgeable sales people and products that you can touch and feel. You cant duplicate that online.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7979 or phodgins@ocregister.com
Inspired by the 2004 Tom Hanks film The Terminal, a homeless army veteran looking for a place to sleep recently decided to move into Heathrow Airport. He originally planned on staying for a couple of nights, but hes been living there for almost a month.

A former member of the Parachute Regiment who served in Northern Ireland before working in private security, Simon Jones  fake name to protect his identity  fell on hard times after his business collapsed and his romantic relationship ended. Penniless and with no place to sleep, he remembered watching The Terminal, in which the main character is forced to live in an airport after war breaks out in his country leaving him stateless, and decided to crash at Heathrow Airport  the busiest in Europe  for a couple of nights.

I suddenly lost everything when my business, which provided high-risk assignments and the training of personnel, collapsed. The business put an enormous strain on my relationship and we separated. I was suddenly homeless and, because all the bank accounts were in joint names, penniless, Jones told English newspaper The Sunday Express. I was mulling over what to do. I dont want to be a burden on anybody, so felt I couldnt stay on friends floors for more than a night or two, especially since I cant pay my way. Then I remembered the Tom Hanks film about the bloke living at an airport. I realized there would be washing facilities and even free wi-fi.

Tom Hanks in The Terminal

He originally planned on living in the airport for a few days, but after seeing that nobody was bothered by his constant presence, he decided to stay until he finds something better. He has now been sleeping there for over three weeks, sleeping on the benches of a cafe, feeding on the leftovers of passengers, washing himself in the toilets and using the free wi-fi to look for job opportunities. Jones claims he hasnt spent any money since moving into the airport because he literally doesnt have a penny to spend.

A distinguished soldier who served in Angola, Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Israel ensuring the security of the Saudi royal family, high-profile US diplomats and senior British politicians including David Cameron, Simon Jones told reporters that he is seriously worried about the security of his new home.

Photo: Citizen 59

I didnt come here to criticize Heathrow Airports security but with my background in counter-terror work I couldnt help observe things that really worried me, he said. Over a period of one week, there were only two patrols by armed response officers in departures at Terminal 2, each with two officers. They walk very close together, which would make it very easy for any determined terrorist to take them out quickly.

He added that he saw no police presence in departures between 6pm and 8am. It would be the easiest thing for a group of three or four suicide terrorists to cause mass casualties in departures between that time. Theres no one to stop them.

Photo: Kenneth Iwelumo

Regarding the unlikely airport tenant, a spokesman for Heathrow Airport said: It is very sad when people fall on hard times and they occasionally come to the airport specifically because it is a warm and safe place. Heathrow employs a team of social workers to give assistance to those who need it.

Source: The Sunday Express
Joe Anthony

When the U.K. released the results of the European Union referendum a few weeks ago, how did you hear about it? Was it through Twitter? An email newsletter? Perhaps you heard from a blog, television network, through word-of-mouth, a mobile app alert, a newspaper or a news website?

Clearly, the number of ways people receive information has proliferated throughout the last decade, and consumers today are graced with the luxury of picking and choosing their preferred means of getting the news.

From my years working with financial services professionals, I know many in the business are news junkies. Keeping up with the story of the day, and how it affects their business, is a huge part of the job. While it may surprise some, the nugget of information I bring you today and its implications for the financial services community isnt about Brexit, the latest top headline. It is representative of a longer-lasting challenge facing the industry as information sharing evolves and is shaped by innovative technologies and new patterns of human behavior.

Heres what we already know: online sources of information are attracting larger audiences every day. Gone are the days when evening newscasts or local papers broke news stories. Direct mail feels like a quaint relic of the past and emails have multiplied to the point that they are as equally likely to be deleted as they are to be read. However, what you might not realize is that evening news is still relevant to millions of individuals. According to July 2016 study from The Pew Research Center, 57 percent of Americans often get their news from cable, local and network nightly television. People also like reading mail  from their mailbox or inbox  and 20 percent of Americans still regularly peruse print newspapers.

Now, some in the finance industry think the biggest F word to impact their business is the fiduciary rule announced by the Department of Labor earlier this year. But I contend another F word will make engaging current clients and attracting new ones more difficult than ever: fragmentation.

There is no longer a silver bullet line of communication that guarantees companies will reach their target audience in one fell swoop. Fragmentation is here and seems to occupy the space between relevance and obsolescence for a wide variety of news and information sources.

Fortunately, the marketing communication paradigm has evolved to help meet this new challenge. Given the natural time and resource constraints facing executives, the idea of having to proactively communicate and engage in multiple arenas can feel daunting. But worry not  integrated public relations campaigns can make a difference in this era of information fragmentation. Heres how:

Commit to custom content

Buying canned content is relatively cheap. Curating content shows you are paying attention, but custom content trumps the canned and curated on three fronts. It establishes your firms voice and specific perspective, it can power your search engine optimization and publicity efforts and it makes the material more shareable in a world revolving around the power of social media.

Leverage content across channels

Is your content good enough for your company blog? If so, its probably worth repackaging on LinkedIn Pulse. Did you happen to receive positive feedback from a recent presentation topic? Chances are those same sound bites will resonate with the press. The time and effort you put into generating custom content is too valuable not to mobilize in multiple fashions. But dont just repost on various platforms. Take the time to cater your material to the specific demographics associated with each communication silo.

Measure feedback or response

It is stunning how many financial services companies fail to monitor their web traffic. Most advisers on social media tend to vastly under or overestimate the size of their social networks simply because they arent paying attention. Ask yourself, what blog post was viewed the most? What LinkedIn comment yielded the most shares, likes or comments? Use Google Analytics and other traffic monitoring software to track which blog posts are bringing visitors to your companys website.

Expand your audience with coverage

Our friends in the media are regularly seeking experienced professionals to provide perspective on topics of interest. Chiming in when opportunity knocks can mean putting your firms name in front of new audiences. Media coverage also offers firms the opportunity to leverage the outlets distribution to reach new people and prospective clients. Media outlets are becoming increasingly savvy at disseminating information across multiple social channels. If your intended audience on television did not catch the original live broadcast, they might find it on Twitter the next day.

Its no secret that web-based platforms are growing as a primary source of information, especially for younger people. But according to the Pew Research study, just 38 percent of Americans use the internet often to get their news. While its prudent to target this channel, its also important to remember it represents just one slice of an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

In order to maximize the scope of your marketing and public relations efforts, each channel used to distribute information must be captured and utilized to its full potential. As your targeted audience disperses to difference corners or the media spectrum, its now your job to take the conversation to clients and prospects where they live.

Adapting your communications and marketing efforts to meet the increasingly fragmented audience is no longer a choice, but an imperative. Failure to adapt could crush your future marketing efforts and leave you in the dust behind your peers. While all of this can feel like an intimidating task, fear not  public relations representation is here to navigate this constantly evolving landscape.



* * *

Joe Anthony is President of Financial Services at Gregory FCA.
Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly...
His death shocked his friends even though his health had been failing for years.

Rich Koeppen had suffered ministrokes, a bum knee, colitis and worst of all, the damned dementia, as he called it.

Still, it seemed like Rich, who was 73, would get more time  that everyone who knew him and loved him would get more time and more Rich, with his barbed wit, righteous indignation and generous spirit.

Instead, we got phone calls and text messages earlier this month to which the only response was: Really? Now? So soon?

Death always seems to come too soon. For this former homeless shelter director, it came some time between July 29, when a friend talked to him on the phone, and Aug. 1, when police entered his apartment. A neighbor noticed that Richs car hadnt moved in three days. Rich was always going somewhere. The neighbors calls had gone unanswered for three days. Richs phone was practically an extension of his body.

Thats how Omaha police wound up in Richs apartment. He was found dead in his recliner. Police do not view the death as suspicious; the family has requested an autopsy.

A cousin, Rosemary Holeman, said Richs dementia had worsened in recent weeks.

It was a small comfort that when Richs good friend, Father Pat McCaslin, had gotten word, he raced to Richs apartment in north Omaha, talked his way past the officers and prayed over Richs body. McCaslin will celebrate a special Mass for Rich on Thursday at 6 p.m. at Holy Name Catholic Church.

Rich was a great character, you know? said Father Pat. Holiness on the one side and craziness on the other.

Rich was holy for serving the poor. Crazy for doing so, often to his own detriment.

Rich is an example of someone so often giving others the shirt off his back, that he ended up in poverty as a direct result, said Del Bomberger, who, like Rich, ran a homeless shelter in Omaha. Rich accepted poverty as the price for service to others. His commitment was complete.

How complete?

He was nearly homeless and wound up at the Leo Vaughan Manor in north Omaha, where low-income people can live at a reduced rate. Rich had to borrow money from friends, including Del, although Del said Rich always paid him back.

One time, Del said, he gave Rich a quick loan of just a few bucks which Rich turned around and gave to a homeless man whod asked for help, just as Rich was leaving Dels office at the Stephen Center shelter in South Omaha.

I never knew Rich to not give money to anyone who asked, Del said.

[Read Erin Grace's 2013 column: Champion of poor hits hard times, but he's not complaining]

Rich was generous in other ways. He gave his time, once quitting his lucrative job in Chicago to move back to Omaha in the early 1980s to care for his ailing parents until their deaths several years later.

He was generous about serving the homeless, whom he called guests. He liked to refer to the shelters he ran as the hospitality business.

Rich was in solidarity with the poor and the poorest, said Tim Sully, who used to volunteer at the now-defunct Anthony House, a mens shelter Rich ran  and lived in  near 16th and Locust Streets. He not only served the guests, he literally lived with the guests. 

Rich also headed the St. Vincent de Paul Family Shelter, later called the McAuley Center for Women and Families. That north downtown shelter closed, too.

Rich was born in Omaha, graduated from Holy Name and attended Creighton University. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve during the Vietnam War but was not sent overseas. For a while, he also studied to be a priest.

In the late 1970s, Rich started marketing insurance for Hartford Life in Omaha and then worked for International Telephone & Telegraph. Eventually, he started his own business in the Chicago area, offering insurance, investments and retirement planning.

He lived the high life there until his parents got cancer. Rich sold his business and, after his parents died in 1984, he entered hospitality work. That ended in 2007, and Rich worked other human service jobs until his health worsened and he retired.

Rich was engaged three times but never married. He never had children.

Though he may have devoted himself to others, he was no doormat. Rich had a biting sense of humor, often poking fun at himself. He laughed often and found joy in absurdity. He doggedly followed the news.

He also had such a strong sense of justice that he could be difficult. Hed argue and press. His righteousness could get him crossways with others, including the law. Rich once served six months in a federal prison in Duluth, Minnesota, for illegally re-entering Offutt Air Force Base during a demonstration against nuclear weapons.

His cousin described Rich as a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.

Everyone knew Rich, said Rosemary Holeman. But no one knew the whole puzzle.

I wouldnt pretend to. But I did enjoy his company. Every so often, Rich, Del, my colleague Christopher Burbach and I would meet for breakfast at a local greasy spoon.

Rich always seemed to know the waitresses by name and by story. Hed ask them about this or that in their lives. It was yet another small but sincere gesture of his humanity, which came so naturally.

When I wrote about Richs struggle with dementia and poverty in 2013, he resisted being cast as any kind of saint.

Because, he said, Im not.

Others, however, might disagree.

Del called Rich the best person I think Ill ever have the privilege of calling my friend.

Father Pat called Rich thoroughly good.

Thats the only way I could describe it, the priest said. In his holiness and in his craziness, a thoroughly good fella. A rare bird.
DES MOINES (AP)  The state agency overseeing Iowas transition to a privatized Medicaid program waived any possible sanctions against three insurance companies during the first two months of the new system but did not inform health advocates or lawmakers of that policy.

The Iowa Department of Human Services issued no written warnings or corrective action plans in April or May to the insurance companies that now run the states Medicaid program, according to information obtained by the Associated Press through a public records request. Fees for any purported violations were also waived.

Written warnings, corrective action plans and fees are among the compliance measures that DHS can take under state contracts signed with Amerigroup, AmeriHealth Caritas and UnitedHealthcare. The department had discretion to hold off on such sanctions, according to spokeswoman Amy Lorentzen McCoy, and doing so was ultimately the decision of DHS Director Chuck Palmer and Mikki Stier, the agency official who oversees Medicaid.

Processing Medicaid claims in a timely manner and resolving appeals and grievances are among several performance requirements that are subject to sanctions.

McCoy said DHS wanted to take a collaborative approach during the first two months.

We wanted to really focus on the problems and on fixing them, not just being punitive, she said. So, taking the time to really examine what the issues are, allowing the opportunity to fix those before you go into that sanctioning process.

The decision to delay sanctions wasnt shared outside the agency, and the news was a surprise to some health advocates and lawmakers monitoring Medicaid, which provides health care to roughly 560,000 poor and disabled Iowa residents and switched to a privatized system on April 1.

The program is under scrutiny over reports of late payments to health providers and delayed care to patients. DHS has said those issues are not systemic.

Of course they should have told us and all those involved in the system what their plan was going to be, said Senate President Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, a member of one of the legislative committees that review health issues. Her disabled adult daughter is a Medicaid patient.

No documentation exists to show that the department planned to delay sanctions or to formally issue them beginning in June. McCoy said data on possible infractions recorded during June isnt yet available because its tied to information submitted by the insurance companies on Aug. 1. That data is still being analyzed. Information on infractions collected for July is due on Sept. 1.

McCoy said the agency collected data from the three companies  also known as managed care organizations or MCOs  on possible problems recorded in the first two months, but thats also not available because they were addressed through daily communication with the insurance companies.

Were finding that the MCOs are making the changes that they need to meet the compliance standards in Iowa, she said. Still, McCoy said some data about early problems will be released in a quarterly report that will be made public for a legislative oversight committee on Aug. 29.

Sen. Liz Mathis, chair of the Senate Human Resources Committee, expressed disappointment that DHS wasnt more transparent about its plans during multiple legislative meetings on the transition.

Is it solely their decision to make? And why wasnt that made publicly? she asked.

Though most states have some form of privatized Medicaid, Iowa is among a handful of states that has switched the bulk of its program. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services was unable to provide information on de-facto grace periods in other states. McCoy also said she could not comment on the process for sanctions in other states.

DHS did issue two corrective action plans in March before the formal transition. It involved AmeriHealth Caritas and UnitedHealthcare and addressed plans for case management training, according to documents. McCoy said those plans were submitted to federal officials to get final approval to launch privatization.

Rhonda Shouse, a Medicaid patient who has testified about the program changes at legislative hearings, said the actions of the insurance companies have immediate consequences on health care providers and patients through delayed payments and care.

Why are the MCOs getting a free pass when nobody else is getting a free pass? she asked. This doesnt seem right.

Copyright 2016 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Hugs and happy tears greeted former patients of the Methodist Womens Hospital neonatal intensive care unit and their families Sunday.

About 500 people attended the annual NICU reunion, which started at Methodist and moved to West Dodge Station Elementary School for face painting, snacks and conversation.

The families got a chance to catch up with former staff members who, they said, became part of the family too during a tough time.

It was hard to go in to the NICU, said Chasity Greco of Council Bluffs, whose twin daughters spent seven weeks in the unit. But its also kind of hard to leave.

Greco said she connected on Facebook with two nurses who cared for her daughters.

The nurses, she said, helped her daughters become strong. But they also helped the parents learn to care for their preemies.

She said when Scarlett and Rayne were struggling to get enough nutrients, nurses made fake baby bottles out of paper and colored them in to show how much each girl had drunk. That way, Greco could see how much progress the girls had made.

They just did little stuff like that, she said.

The nurses, too, were excited to see the former NICU babies, said Carrie Furley, who came up with the idea for the event.

Furley spent time in a neonatal intensive care unit with her own triplets, who are now 22.

We become a part of the family, she said.

Todd Lovgren, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist, caught sight of one of his most difficult cases ever: Angel Perez, who was born 54 days after his mother was declared brain dead.

Lovgren and a team put the mother on life support so Angel could grow strong enough to survive until his birth in April of last year.

There have been just 33 similar cases reported in medical literature worldwide since 1982, according to a spokeswoman for the hospital system. Of those, the baby survived in 15 cases.

Sunday, Angel was toddling around the gymnasium like all the other babies.

Ill never see a case like that again for the rest of my career, Lovgren said. I cant believe it worked. I cant believe hes OK.

Lovgren said the reunion was a good chance to recharge.

Seeing the healthy former patients reminds you why you do your job, he said.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1084, roseann.moring@owh.com
LINCOLN (AP)  Dr. Todd Johnson of Lincoln is a modern-day pioneer, starting the first membership-based, insurance-free medical practice in Nebraska.

Access Family Medicine opened in mid-July and provides what is called direct primary care, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.

His patients pay a monthly membership fee for an old-fashioned relationship with their family doctor, undiluted by insurance rules and paperwork.

A few doctors in Nebraska dont accept insurance but are fee-based: Patients pay for specific services. Johnsons is the only membership-based, insurance-free practice in the state.

Direct primary care is a growing trend, said Dr. Bob Rauner, Lancaster County Medical Society board member.

Some doctors get retainer fees, on top of accepting insurance, primarily to give wealthier patients better access, longer appointments and more personal care. This is often called concierge medicine.

Thats not what Johnson is doing. Direct primary care doesnt take insurance and offers that kind of personalized care to everyone who pays the membership cost. His fees are age-based: $50 a month for younger adults, $75 for middle-age adults and $100 for senior citizens.

There are no copays and no deductibles, but unlimited consultations and office visits, he said.

Many of his patients have insurance, but he does not do the paperwork or collect payments from insurance companies. He said that gives him the freedom to focus on his patients.

So patients get a minimum 30-minute office visit rather than the seven to 15 minutes that primary care doctors often allocate per patient. They get access to the doctor any day of the week, even when hes at home.

Johnson gave up his practice to start one thats free from all the rules and paperwork that go with health insurance.

Ninety-nine percent of other doctors said I dont blame you,  he said. One hundred percent said You are crazy. 

But Johnson, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, gave up the financial security of a bigger practice for a chance to have the kind of relationship with patients that he believes allows for the best care.

By focusing on that, he said, he is doing what he knows is right.

Johnson learned about the model while working on the quality committee for a larger health system. The committee explored questions such as how to provide better care and increase efficiency. Last summer he went to Kansas City to attend a conference on membership-based, insurance-free health care.

It floored me. I couldnt believe how much sense it made.

He started digging, trying to find problems with the model.

The biggest hurdle was getting affordable access to immunizations for children, but hes found a pharmacy willing to work with him.

Otherwise, he said, he discovered very few flaws.

With insurance, he said, there is pressure to increase patient numbers. Too often doctors see patients all day, then spend another three to four hours doing paperwork. That leads to physician burnout, Johnson said.

The shift of focus from patient to documentation is chipping away at the doctor-patient relationship and disrupting the care patients get, he said.

Insurance itself isnt bad, Johnson said. About 99 percent of his clients have it.

He helps them navigate the insurance world to try to take advantage of deductibles and health savings accounts.

Copyright 2016 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The movie "Bad Moms" looks hilarious. The movie trailer, however, got me thinking about mom-isms and the pressures that accompany the maternal vocation. We all know supermoms; those ladies who have the mother tip on lock-down and live in a magical world that is surely sponsored by Pinterest.

They are phenoms and rock stars, but its OK to fall short of that.

No one has ever called me a supermom. If they did, I would seriously question their judgement. I could not love my adorable team of humans more, and as their creator, I do everything in my power to make them happy and successful. I think I manage to hit most of the nails that matter, but there are three items I wish to see removed from the "VP of Motherhood" job description.

1. Craftiness. I hate crafts. I was awful at them in grade school, and Im awful at them now. I cannot cut along dotted lines, I do not color within the lines (and that is not a metaphor about rebelliousness  Im truly inept) and Id rather roll around wet in a box of photographs than try to create a scrapbook. In fact, Id rather be punched in the throat multiple times  with brass knuckles  than go into one of those crafty fabric stores.

2. Skilled at cooking. I can cook. I make pasta and tacos and other things on the regular. My husband and kids dont go hungry. The need to be good at cooking  the compulsive desire to create new and delicious menus for my family  is completely absent from my DNA. If I could, I would make spaghetti and meatballs every day of the week and it would be great. Every night, I would exclaim, Yay! Spaghetti!  even after the carbs slowly transformed me into the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. For some reason, though, society and my children frown upon this lack of diversity and expect more.

3. Proficient sewer. Not sewer as in where our poo goes, but sewer as in one who sews. I once knew how to use a sewing machine. I know this because an ugly pig throw pillow exists as evidence, but my brain has deleted any intimate knowledge of the machine. Sewing machine day in Home Economics was like blackout drinking apparently. All I remember is the word "bobbin." Ive purchased a plethora of travel sewing kits over the years, but to me, getting the thread through such a tiny needle hole is impossible. Not hard, but impossible. If I could do that, Id be climbing freaking Mount Everest or running for president.

Here are 10 random confessions of a non-supermom. Go forth and conquer the day  taking solace in the fact that you are, most-likely, more skilled than I.

1. Id rather donate snacks than help with games.

2. I know firsthand that if you put a carbonated beverage in a sippy cup, it will shoot the liquid all over the world.

3. I get through boring school programs by watching the naughty kid and trying to match him with his parents.

4. Anything made in my home is called homemade. Period.

5. I have a cardigan thats so old, holes have appeared at the elbows. Do I sew them up? I do not. I have closed the holes using an intricate system of multi-sized safety pins, crisscrossing and tucking fabric from the inside. You cant even tell a difference  unless you look with your eyeballs  so Im golden.

6. I once used a hot glue gun to adhere patches to a Girl Scout vest, which resulted in us having to purchase a new, non-burned vest, as well as a fire extinguisher.

7. Sometimes, in order to nab the good spot in the school pickup lane, I show up 30 minutes before the kids are dismissed. I recline the driver seat all the way back, roll onto my side, cover up with the car seat cover and take a nice little nap.

8. My middle son hated preschool. A lot. In fact, I bribed him with a Kit Kat every freaking day, hoping to somehow make him like it a little. The shocker  it didnt help. He was just an unhappy kid with tooth decay.

9. Every Thanksgiving, when we buy a turkey, I have no idea what Im pulling out of the carcass. Bag of guts, a neck andis that an ear? Everything is usually still half-frozen, even after days of thawing, so I have to pull and tug and wiggle until whatever disgusting innards I have in my fist finally dislodge. Theyre all just horrific flesh popsicles when I finally hurl them into the trash.

10. Last confession  I dont know what to do with a pomegranate. When my son, Joey, was 6, he wanted me to buy one  he had tried it at school. Once I got the pretty fruit home, I was clueless. How to cut, which parts to eat, to peel or not to peel ... I am a fruit imbecile. I told my child that it was expired, chucked the thing and Ive never had another pom in my house.

***

Lynn Kirkle is married and lives in Omaha with her husband and five children. She is a young adult author, and you can follow her on twitter @LAPainter.
The hole at the corner of 15th and L Streets in downtown Washington, D.C., is deep  and getting deeper.

Earth-movers there are laying the foundations of a shiny new headquarters for Fannie Mae, the bailed-out giant of American mortgages.

But the sleek design, replete with glass sky bridges, belies a sober reality: Fannie Mae and its cousin, Freddie Mac, are once again headed for trouble.

In fact, theres almost no way around it. On Jan. 1, 2018, the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, will officially run out of capital under the current terms of their bailout. After that, any losses would be shouldered by taxpayers.

Granted, few people are predicting a disaster like the one in 2008, when the GSEs had to be thrown a $187.5 billion federal lifeline.

But eight years later, people still dont agree on what to do with these wards of the state. In Washington and on Wall Street, the fight over Fannie and Freddie drags on.

Everyone agreed that this was a broken business model that made no sense, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a Washington advocacy group that supports finding free-market solutions to create a smaller government. Now, inertia is driving the way.

The stakes are high. Earlier this month the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the GSEs, said Fannie and Freddie might need a $126 billion rescue if the economy were to stumble hard.

In recent years the Treasury has collected more than enough money from the GSEs, in the form of dividends, to cover a bill of that size.

But to the GSEs critics, the real problem is that policymakers have yet to come up with a long-term plan.

Republicans want to kill the quasi-governmental companies. Democrats have floated the idea of merging them.

Hedge fund managers like Richard Perry have gone to court to claw back dividends swept up by the Treasury.

And so one of the thorniest financial questions of the early 2000s  What role, if any, should the federal government play in Americas $10 trillion mortgage market?  will now fall to the next president. So far neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump has seized on the issue.

The good news is that taxpayers have recouped their bailout money, and then some. By September Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will have routed to the U.S. Treasury some $251 billion in dividends on senior preferred stock that the government acquired in the rescue. The GSEs have paid those billions to the Treasury rather than retain any of the money as operating capital.

FHFA officials say this controversial arrangement  instituted in 2012, the year that the GSEs returned to profitability  makes another rescue, however small, all but inevitable. The regulator has quietly examined whether it can suspend the payments unilaterally to build up the GSEs capital cushion, among other options.

The most serious risk, and the one that has the most potential for escalating in the future, is the enterprises lack of capital, Mel Watt, director of the FHFA, said in a speech in February.

Also at stake are Fannie and Freddie preferred shares, with a face value of $33 billion, along with common shares, potentially worth even more.

Investors including Perry and Bill Ackman, another prominent hedge fund manager, have sued over the bailout terms, so far with little success. A federal judge dismissed one lawsuit in 2014; an appeals court is expected to decide soon whether the investors deserve damages or at least another shot at making their case.

We only need to win one of those claims in any of the courts in order to ultimately be successful on the legal front, Ryan Israel, a partner at Ackmans company, Pershing Square Capital Management, said on a conference call with investors in July.

The differences are equally stark in Washington.

The 2016 Republican Party platform has characterized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a corrupt business model that has enabled executives and investors to reap the profits while sticking taxpayers with the losses.

In the Democratic camp, two Clinton advisers, Gene Sperling and Jim Parrott, have said they favor merging the GSEs into a single government-owned corporation.

In a March report, the two men, former advisers with the National Economic Council, and other authors suggested that the new organization be required to sell mortgage credit risk to private investors, thereby taking taxpayers off the hook for most future losses.

Im concerned that we exit this situation without fixing the original problem, said Rep. Ed Royce, a California Republican who sponsored a bill last year that quashed pay hikes for the companies chief executives. The status quo of a nationalized mortgage market is unsustainable for taxpayers.

None of this was supposed to go on for so long. When Fannie and Freddie were placed into a conservatorship under FHFA, most policymakers viewed the move as a short-term fix until Congress came up with a full solution.

Politically, the idea of preserving them was considered patently absurd, said Parrott, who helped lead housing-finance reform efforts for the White House from 2010 to 2013. Eliminating Fannie and Freddie was a prerequisite for discussion.

Plenty of ideas have been floated. Former FHFA Director Edward DeMarco and ex-Senate Republican staffer Michael Bright have proposed turning the GSEs into lender-owned insurers.

Others have suggested transforming them into what amounts to mortgage utilities, with capped rates of return; essentially keeping them in place in a more regulated form.

John Taylor, who leads the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said GSE reform proposals will fail. Think-tank libraries are filled with all these treatises with proposals from a year to 40 years ago that are simply gathering dust, he said. In all likelihood, the latest proposals are going to end up in the proverbial stockpile.
LOS ANGELES  The starting pay is about $34,000 a year, with no automatic pay raises based on tenure. They are on the front line in the battle against terrorism, but they dont carry guns. Their employer is routinely the punchline of jokes on late-night television shows.

Such is the life of a TSA screener.

Every now and then we get thanked by the public, but for the most part its a pretty thankless job, said Bobby Orozco Jr., a Transportation Security Administration screener at Los Angeles International Airport.

With U.S. airports handling record crowds this summer, airlines and federal lawmakers say they want to improve morale and reduce the unusually high turnover rate among the nations TSA screeners to ensure security lines are well-staffed during peak travel periods.

Lines that kept travelers waiting for two hours and longer this spring even persuaded airlines to donate money and workers to help TSA speed up the queues. The slowdowns prompted the Republican Party to call for TSA reform in its party platform this summer.

The attrition rate among full-time TSA screeners has been growing over the past few years and is especially high among part-timers, who represent about one in five TSA screeners.

The TSA recently was ranked nearly last among all federal agencies in a job satisfaction survey.

Without a fix, travelers can expect continued staffing shortages at the TSA and long lines at airport screening checkpoints.

The system is broken, no doubt about that, said Orozco, who is also president of his local union.

Lawmakers and aviation experts have offered two solutions: Either give airport screeners a raise and improve their employee protection rights, or turn over more airports to private security companies, which have a reputation for happier workers and a lower turnover rate.

The TSA employs about 42,500 screeners, down about 10 percent from 47,000 in 2012, according to the organization. Meanwhile the number of passengers screened at U.S. airports is expected to reach 740 million this year, up about 16 percent from 638 million in 2012, the agency said.

There are not enough transportation security officers, and that is very evident, said J. David Cox Sr., national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA screeners.

One reason for the decline in screeners is that Congress cut the TSA budget, assuming that more travelers would sign up for programs such as TSA PreCheck, which offers expedited screening lines for frequent fliers who pass a government background check.

Another reason for the drop is the turnover rate, according to union officials who represent TSA workers. They blame low pay and difficult working conditions and being denied the full rights given to other federal employees.

TSA representatives declined to comment on the subject, citing negotiations with the union. But in testimony before Congress, TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger has stressed the need for extra training to address morale problems.

I have worked to set up our front-line officers for success through improved training, enhanced protocols and advancing technology, he told a congressional panel in June.

The TSA was created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, replacing private security officers hired by individual airlines and overseen by the federal government.

But Congress initially didnt give TSA workers the same employee rights as other federal workers, such as the right to unionize, rely on collective bargaining for employee contracts or appeal disciplinary actions to a third-party board.

It wasnt until 2011 that TSA administrators allowed airport screeners to join a union. But TSA workers still have fewer rights than other federal workers, including other security and law enforcement staffers.

TSA officers, for example, dont get regular pay raises based solely on tenure. TSA screeners now get raises based only on performance and promotions. As a result, a TSA officer who has five or 10 years of experience can earn the same as a newly hired TSA officer.

You have folks that have been here since 2002 and are making the same amount as someone who has been here about a year, Orozco said. That doesnt add up.

In addition, new hires start as probationary screeners for two years, during a time that most maintain their starting salary. Orozco and Cox say many quit before they complete the probationary period.

The number of full-time TSA screeners who leave their jobs voluntarily has been on the rise in the past five years, increasing to 9.5 percent of TSA screeners in 2015 from 4.2 percent in 2010, according to a congressional budget report. Among part-time TSA workers, the rate has jumped to 19 percent in 2015 from 13 percent in 2010, the federal report says.

In contrast, the voluntary attrition rate among all federal workers is 6 percent, according to federal studies. Job satisfaction at the TSA is also a problem.

In a survey of more than 430,000 federal employees, the TSA ranked nearly last among all federal agencies. When federal workers were asked to rate their agency on a 1-to-100 scale, with 100 representing the most satisfied, the TSA was rated 40 last year, while the governmentwide satisfaction level was 58, according to the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government survey.

Efforts to give TSA screeners the same employee privileges as other federal workers have failed.

Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., introduced legislation in 2009 to upgrade employee rights and privileges for TSA staffers, but her bill failed to get a vote of the full House.

A government analysis of the bill estimated that the salary for most TSA screeners would increase by $1,700 a year. For the entire agency, the change would have increased the budget by $100 million for 2010 alone, according to the analysis.

Opponents of Loweys bill complained about the added cost and said giving TSA screeners the same employee rights of other federal workers reduces the flexibility to deploy screeners in the face of terrorist threats.

There is concern that this flexibility and security would be hampered in the event of the next plot if the administrator is not able to quickly make changes to screening operations to respond to an impending threat, Republican members of the Homeland Security Committee, led by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said in a statement about their opposition to the bill.

Another idea proposed by TSA critics is to allow private security contractors to screen passengers and luggage at more airports, with oversight by the TSA. But critics say federal agencies have made the process too difficult for individual airports to outsource screening to private contractors.

Only 21 of the nations 450 largest commercial airports rely on private contractors for passenger and luggage screening. The largest of those airports is San Francisco International Airport.

At least one study supports using private screeners at more airports.

A 2011 report by the congressional staff of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure estimated that the turnover rate of screeners at the San Francisco airport was 8.5 percent and that the initial training and recruitment cost at the airport was almost half that of the TSA. The report also said each San Francisco airport private security agent screens 65 percent more passengers a year than TSA screeners at the Los Angeles airport.

Taxpayers would save $1 billion over five years if the nations top 35 airports operated as efficiently as SFO does, the study report said.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP)  Authorities say a former Broken Bow man has been imprisoned for lying about a sex assault conviction to housing officials.

The office of U.S. Attorney Deborah Gilg said in a news release that Robert Tipton Jr. was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Lincoln to two years in prison.

The release said Tipton and his girlfriend applied for public housing in Broken Bow in February 2014. The application was checked "no" to a question of whether anyone in the household had ever been convicted of a crime. He signed the application and attested to its accuracy.

The prosecutors' release said Tipton was convicted in 2001 in Garfield County, Colorado, of felony sexual assault of a child. Federal regulations bar sex offenders from living in public housing.
An Iowa man was seriously injured Sunday when a passing SUV struck the 1949 Ford tractor he was driving on a rural road in northern Shelby County.

The Iowa State Patrol said Russell Buckley, 67, was driving the tractor north on Linden Road when Orin Wright, 23, attempted to pass him in a Lincoln Navigator.

The SUV struck the tractors left rear tire, tossing Buckley from the tractor, the patrol said. Buckley was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha after the 2:50 p.m. crash.

Buckley, who is from Earling, remained in serious condition Monday. Wright, of Kirkman, was not injured, the patrol said.

Wright was attempting to pass in a zone marked no passing, the patrol said.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has landed a $1 million grant that will benefit the teaching of K-12 math and science.

The Nebraska Department of Education grant will allow UNL faculty to coordinate professional development sessions across the state, including in Crete, Fremont, Grand Island, Norfolk, North Platte and Scottsbluff.

UNL faculty will work with about 40 teachers from schools with high needs. Three sets of sessions will be dedicated to elementary-integrated science, technology, engineering and mathematics, secondary mathematics, and secondary Earth and space science.

7 receive NU Graduate Fellowships

University of Nebraska President Hank Bounds has announced his 2016-17 Presidential Graduate Fellowships.

The seven recipients were selected based on high scholastic performance and personal accomplishment. They will receive a stipend from the University of Nebraska Foundation to pursue their studies full time.

They are:

 From the University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Dwi Riyanti of Pontianak, Indonesia, a Ph.D. student in teaching, learning and teacher education; Burdette Barker of Fruit Heights, Utah, a Ph.D. student in biological systems engineering; Kaitlin Phillips of Keller, Texas, a Ph.D. student in communication studies.

 From the University of Nebraska Medical Center: Aastha Chandak of Mumbai, India, a Ph.D. student in health services research, administration and policy; Carter Barger of Sioux City, Iowa, a Ph.D. student in cancer research.

 From the University of Nebraska at Omaha: Jack Taylor of Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, a Ph.D. student in neuroscience and behavior in UNOs Psychology Department; and Sarah Carp of Menlo Park, California, an M.A. student in neuroscience and behavior in UNOs Psychology Department.

D.C. library acquires Chadron profs art

Artwork by a Chadron State College professor has been acquired by the Library of Congress.

The multicolored silkscreen print called Bingo is by Laura Bentz, art professor and department chair at Chadron. It examines gambling on Native American reservations.

The print was purchased in July for the librarys prints and photographs department.

* * * * *

Correction: An earlier version of this story included imprecise information about the areas of study for the graduate fellowship honorees at UNO.
The Missouri Valley school board president died over the weekend after a tractor he was driving rolled at a farm northeast of Missouri Valley, Iowa.

Daniel Zaiser, 53, died after the rollover, which occurred about 3:15 p.m. Saturday at a farm off Niles Trail, the Harrison County Sheriffs Office said.

Zaiser was taken to CHI Health Missouri Valley and then transferred by medical helicopter to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. He was pronounced dead a short time later, the Sheriffs Office said.

Missouri Valley and Logan rescue squad personnel treated Zaiser at the scene after freeing him from under the overturned tractor, the Sheriffs Office said.

Zaiser was driving an International 460 tractor with an attached loader down a hill when the tractor rolled and pinned him, officials said.

Zaiser was elected to the Missouri Valley board in September 2006, according to the school districts website.
Authorities were searching the Missouri River near Hamburg on Sunday for a man who disappeared after the boat he was in was swept under a moored barge.

The mans identity was being withheld until relatives could be notified.

The boat stalled shortly after launching from a Hamburg boat ramp about 2 p.m., said Kevin Baskins, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

The boat drifted a short distance downstream before it was swept under the barge, which was moored to the bank, Baskins said.

Neither the boat nor the man could be found by late Sunday afternoon. The boats operator, Johnnie Fields, 47, of Shenandoah, was able to swim under the barge and was rescued downstream by people on shore, Baskins said.

Neither of the boats occupants had been using a life jacket, Baskins said.

The department was investigating the incident.
A 2-year-old Omaha boy was fetching wet sand to build a sandcastle on the beach of a Disney World resort when an alligator grabbed him and dragged him into the water, according to final reports released Monday by Florida authorities.

Officials suspect that the alligator mistook Lane Graves  who was 3 feet tall and 30 pounds  as its usual prey, such as an opossum, armadillo or raccoon. The boy died of head and neck trauma and drowning, the Orange County Medical Examiners Office concluded. The victims small size and position (bent down) at the time of the attack would appear to the alligator similar to many of its normal food sources, the report said.

For their report on the June 14 attack, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission interviewed witnesses and Lanes parents, Matt and Melissa Graves, and analyzed alligators that they trapped and killed in an attempt to determine which one had attacked the boy.

Officials said they were unable to determine which of two female alligators had attacked Lane because of a lack of a distinct wound pattern. A total of six alligators were captured, euthanized and examined.

Officials said, however, that they are confident that the evidence gathered shows it is very likely that one of the two females captured close to the attack location was the offending animal.

The Graveses, who live in the Elkhorn area, had left their room at Disneys Grand Floridian Resort and Spa in Orlando about 8:30 p.m. June 14 and headed to the beach to watch a scheduled outdoor showing of the movie Zootopia. The family, including Lanes 4-year-old sister, Ella, had arrived in Orlando two days earlier for a family vacation.

The showing of the movie was canceled because of incoming bad weather, officials said. The family walked to the edge of the water while Lane scooped up wet sand in his plastic bucket.

About 9 p.m., Matt Graves saw a splash in the ankle-deep water, but thought it was a fish. Then he saw an alligator that he estimated to be 5 to 6 feet long grab his sons head and pull the boy into the lagoon.

Graves, who was close enough to grab the alligator, told investigators that he jumped into the water and put his hands in the animals mouth  grabbing its teeth  but the alligator just took off.

Witnesses said they saw Graves punching the alligator and pulling his sons feet, but the alligator whipped (Lane) further out into the water.

Graves suffered puncture wounds on his arms, cuts to his hands and scratches on his feet, the reports said. Graves sought treatment at Florida Hospital Celebration Health at the suggestion of authorities.

A lifeguard at the splash pool told the Orange County Sheriffs Office that he heard screaming and saw Graves, with blood on his face and hand, yelling, Please come help my son, a gator got him.

The lifeguard saw a pair of white-and-black Under Armour shoes about 15 to 25 feet from the shore that appeared to be on the boys feet. He saw the alligator drag the boy away from the shore.

A 16-year-old youth walking on the beach with three younger siblings saw the alligator snatch Lane. The 16-year-old was crying and distraught afterward.

Another man lost consciousness after witnessing what happened, the Sheriffs Office said.

One witness, from Virginia, said he heard screaming and went to help. He heard the lifeguard yelling, Get out of the water! and saw Lanes parents looking for him in the lagoon. He said he watched the Graveses daughter while the parents searched.

Investigators also interviewed people who said they had seen an alligator before the attack. One man who was staying at the resort said he saw an alligator from his hotel balcony about 7:30 p.m., swimming toward the beach from the island southeast of the hotel.

A woman said she was with her two daughters, ages 15 and 9, at the beach at 8:15 p.m., about 45 minutes before the attack. The girls saw an alligator near a marsh about 5 feet from the beach.

The older girl ran to a Disney employee who was wearing a shirt marked Coordinator and told him about the alligator. The family then went to a nearby store. When the family returned, the attack was over.

Officials said the lagoon, which is up to 20 feet deep, is not unsuitable habitat for alligators, but it would not be considered a preferred location due to the deep clear water, lack of cover, insufficient areas to bask, limited sources of sustenance and high levels of human activity.

Lanes body was found intact a day later, 10 to 15 feet from the shore.

The boys scalp, jaw, neck and left hand had puncture wounds, according to a final autopsy report.

The report said No Swimming signs were posted near the beach.

Four days after the attack, Disney installed signs that warned of danger from alligators and snakes and said Stay away from the water; Do not feed the wildlife.

Workers also constructed a wide boulder wall along the beach line.

A separate investigation on incidents of alligator feedings is ongoing, officials said, but preliminary results show no correlation to the attack. The two female alligators that were examined had empty stomachs, officials said, and their drive for food would have been strong.

Before this attack, 17 unprovoked bites had been reported in the county in the 66 years since officials began keeping track, they said.

The Graveses released a statement in July saying they would not pursue a lawsuit against Disney World.

We will forever struggle to comprehend why this happened to our sweet baby, Lane, the parents said in the statement. As each day passes, the pain gets worse, but we truly appreciate the outpouring of sympathy and warm sentiments we have received from around the world.

Lane would have turned 3 in early September.

The family created the Lane Thomas Foundation that will make direct donations to various charitable organizations. To donate, go to lanethomas.org.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1068, alia.conley@owh.com
Authorities released the names of the three men who were killed Sunday on Interstate 80 near Hershey, Nebraska, when two semitrailer trucks crashed.

The Nebraska State Patrol said Hieu Trung Le, 56, of San Jose, Calif., Duy Trong Dao, 31, of Sacramento, Calif., and Zurabi Mdzeluri, 37, of Brooklyn, New York, died in the crash just before 6:30 p.m.

An eastbound semi hauling produce crossed the median and struck a westbound semi hauling cars before sideswiping a passenger vehicle, the patrol said. The semi hauling cars came to rest in an I-80 ditch, the patrol said, and the other semi ended up blocking the westbound lanes of I-80. Both semis caught fire and were engulfed in flames.

The driver of the eastbound semi, Hieu Trung Le, had a passenger in the big rig, Duy Trong Dao. The westbound semi driver was Zurabi Mdzeluri. All three men were pronounced dead at the scene, the patrol said.

Nobody in the passenger vehicle was injured, the patrol said. The crash closed a part of westbound I-80 for about six hours.

The investigation into the crash continues, the patrol said.
LYONS, Neb. (AP)  The Nebraska State Patrol says a 54-year-old motorcyclist was killed in a crash with a pickup truck.

The collision occurred Saturday night on U.S. Highway 77 on the east side of Lyons in Burt County.

The patrol said the northbound pickup was turning west when it crashed with the southbound motorcycle.

The motorcyclist was identified as Bruce Dannelly, who lived in Bellwood.

It was unclear whether the pickup driver was injured.

Copyright 2016, the Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Musician Don Petersen, a member of the Nebraska Music Hall of Fame band The Smoke Ring, collapsed on stage while performing in Columbus on Saturday and later died.

The band was performing before thousands during Columbus Days when Petersen collapsed, said fellow band member Mike Semrad.

Semrad said he used the microphone to summon help. Several medical personnel from the crowd assisted with CPR in the minute or so that it took an ambulance to arrive, he said.

The band took a break and then continued performing, Semrad said, not knowing until about 11:30 p.m. that Petersen had died.

It was pretty devastating, he said. He was a very nice person, a very good musician, one of those people who smiled all the time.

Petersen, 65, was a bass player and vocalist for the Norfolk-based band, which formed in 1965.

The Smoke Ring also has been inducted into the Iowa Rock 'n' Roll Music Association Hall of Fame and the South Dakota Music Hall of Fame.
LINCOLN  Nebraska law enforcement agencies are receiving additional resources to provide training meant to help officers combat cynicism on the job and improve community policing.

Last year the state piloted the Blue Courage program along with Washington, Arizona and Maryland. Now, through a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Nebraska will expand the program beyond training academies to existing law enforcement personnel.

Gov. Pete Ricketts made the announcement Monday alongside Darrell Fisher, executive director of the Nebraska Crime Commission; Nebraska State Patrol Col. Brad Rice; William Muldoon, director of the Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center; and representatives from the Omaha and Lincoln Police Departments.

Its a really neat program that Nebraska is on the forefront of, Ricketts said.

The grant allowed for $40,000 to pay instructors and cover their expenses and teaching materials, Fisher said. About $10,000 of that has to go toward an evaluation of the program, he said.

The 16-hour training covers topics including police culture, positive psychology, and health and wellness. The goals include increasing professionalism by reigniting officers sense of passion, purpose and commitment, as well as improving their physical, psychological and emotional well-being.

Hundreds of officers have taken part, including 444 sworn State Patrol officers, 114 officers from the Lincoln Police Department and 55 officers from the Omaha Police Department, plus many trainers and new recruits.

Omaha Police Capt. Michael McGee said the Blue Courage training stirred emotions in him about why he got into law enforcement and the pride he has in serving the community.

The training is aimed at honoring fallen officers, he said, noting that last years academy class was in session during the anniversary of Omaha Police Sgt. Jason Tye Pratts death. Pratt was shot and killed in the line of duty in 2003.

His widow, Stacy, spoke to the class and was motivating and encouraging, McGee said.

That is a very difficult subject to talk about ... but its that honor and pride of the profession that we instill through Blue Courage that causes us to go to work and face those dangers every day, he said.

Lincoln Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister said the principles taught through the Blue Courage curriculum make officers realize they are service-oriented people, and help them build relationships with their communities. Thats important while national rhetoric about policing can cause divisiveness, he said.

Policing is a partnership, and to be most effective in the service, this is what we need to do, he said.

Contact the writer: 402-473-9581, emily.nohr@owh.com
When I caught up with J.D. Vance, he still sounded a bit bemused by the success of his colorfully titled book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis.

I was just hoping to get some attention, he told me in a telephone chat as he prepared for a network TV appearance in Washington. I wasnt expecting nearly this much attention.

No, but nobody was expecting Donald Trump to be the Republican presidential nominee, either  especially not as a populist hero to a base of white working-class, non-college-educated voters.

Thats why, although Trumps name appears nowhere in Vances book, it quickly rose to Amazons top 10 amid glowing reviews as a narrative that helps to explain Trumps surprising appeal to the white underclass, the underprivileged group from which its author emerged.

You cannot understand whats happening now without first reading J.D. Vance, wrote Rod Dreher, senior editor of The American Conservative, after an interview with Vance. His book does for poor white people what Ta-Nehisi Coates book did for poor black people: give them voice and presence in the public square.

I agree. Just as Coates memoir Between the World and Me helps us to understand the rise of Black Lives Matter, Vance helps us to understand how shrinking opportunities for low-income whites helped to fuel the rise of Trump.

This narrative has special meaning to me. Vance and I share a lot in common. The 31-year-old was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, which happens to be the same factory town where I grew up. He also spent a lot of time growing up with what he calls his grandparents Scots-Irish tribe in rural Jackson, Kentucky.

Although we are more than a generation apart, his book helped me to see my hometown from the poor white side of town  and feel as never before how fortunate I was to grow up on the black side of town and, most important, in a more prosperous era.

Our family was working poor, as my factory worker dad would say, but rich with spirit, especially in the 1960s as segregation loosened and opportunities opened up for workers of color.

Vances upbringing, by contrast, was plagued with family and community violence and disorder brought on by alcohol, drugs and other types of dysfunction.

Fortunately, his life settled down after his often-feuding grandparents reconciled and took custody of him as he entered high school. After the Marines, Ohio State University and Yale Law School, he now is a principal in a Silicon Valley investment firm, far from the hills he used to know.

The old neighborhoods we knew now struggle against decay. Deaths by drug overdoses since 2014 in the county have outnumbered deaths by natural causes, according to the Butler County Coroners Office.

Vance writes about people who are very frustrated because they feel like the institutions that enable success are closed off from them, he said in an ABC This Week interview. When I got into Yale Law School, for example, a family member asked me if I pretended to be a liberal.

The sense that traditional markers of success are not open to them breeds a sense of learned helplessness, Vance says in his most controversial yet also most important argument. Learned helplessness or the sense that folks choices dont matter is crippling when it prevents individuals from taking advantage of available opportunities, like education or job training.

Vance, who also has written for National Review, is more conservative than I am, yet we agree on a lot. Like me, he sees Trump as someone who diagnoses the problems in a very successful and passionate way, but Vance doesnt see him as offering many solutions.

Indeed, his recent economic policy speech, for example, promoted a set of income tax cuts and credits that sound great until you realize that most low-income workers make too little to pay federal income tax, although they pay plenty of other taxes.

We also wonder if Trump loses  which has been looking more likely by the day  whether the Grand Old Party will react with a more populist stance to enlist low-income workers who have been overlooked in the past.

Or will they only breathe a sigh of relief and try to move on  until the next opportunistic demagogue steps up? That book has yet to be written. Contact the writer: cpage@tribune.com
The student-led effort to ban smoking and tobacco use at the University of Nebraska at Omaha is a logical outgrowth of younger generations increased interest in health and wellness.

The idea came from the elected leaders of UNO student government. Even UNO students who didnt vote should appreciate the results: fewer people puffing on the way to class.

UNO joins Creighton University and the University of Nebraska Medical Center in being smoke-free. As of Aug. 1, the University of Nebraska at Kearney is tobacco-free except for its parking garages. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln still allows outdoor smoking. But the wind appears to be changing direction.
The eastern red cedar tree can bring benefits to parts of Nebraska in the form of windbreaks and neighborhood landscaping. But in many areas of the state, the species is an unwanted invader.

The trees are highly flammable and can spread rapidly. Red cedar infestation was a central factor behind the wave of nearly 1,600 Nebraska wildfires in 2012 that burned more than 500,000 acres and cost more than $12 million to contain.

Wildfires along the Niobrara River east of Valentine that year destroyed more than 76,000 acres over a 10-day period.

The U.S. Department of Agricultures Natural Resources Conservation Service says that red cedars can spread across an area and convert prairie into a dense forest. This transformation displaces existing plants, including native shortgrasses, and reduces habitat for wildlife.

This threat is particularly a concern for the cattle industry. A new report from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln points to how the transformation of rangelands into red cedar woodlands has been particularly damaging to livestock production in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

The conservation service cites areas of southern Lincoln County in western Nebraska as an example. There, an influx of red cedars is reducing grazing land acres by 2 percent annually.

Additionally, the UNL study notes, the cedar- based degradation of grazing land means Nebraskas public schools will receive less funding.

The Nebraska Board of Educational Lands & Funds, the largest landowner in the state, owns and manages nearly 1.26 million acres of agricultural land, leasing it to farmers and ranchers. More than 950,000 acres are grasslands that generate income for public schools from grazing fees.

Over the past 15 years, such payments to Nebraska public schools have totaled $573 million.

If the red cedar infestation is unchecked, the UNL report says, steadily declining profitability will slowly consume school budgets at the rate of a few million dollars a year in the near term.

The land trust has supported programs for red cedar control since the 1980s and currently spends $400,000 a year on the effort.

Ritch Nelson, a forestry specialist in Nebraska with the conservation service, says that the red cedar problem raises concerns for the states $7.4 billion cattle industry, although the overall situation in Nebraska is not as severe as in some other Great Plains states. Which is why we want to try to spend time to focus on this issue now, before we have bigger problems down the road, he told The World-Herald.

One worthwhile approach is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, a voluntary program offered by the conservation service providing technical and financial assistance to landowners for red cedar removal through cutting, prescribed burning or a combination of the two.

Forestry specialists work with landowners to reach the needed balance, Nelson says, combating red cedar infestation in grazing lands but supporting red cedars in appropriate spots, such as protection for winter calving.

Addressing the red cedar issue on a piece of property is an ongoing process, he says, since seed sources often enable new growth. Landowners can benefit by being on the lookout early for any encroachment. Removing young trees is far easier than dealing with fully grown ones.

Its encouraging to see these efforts to reduce the threats to Nebraskas economy, environment and, as UNL has now explained, public school funding.
10 killed, 19 hurt as bus falls in canal; 3 die in car mishap

India

oi-PTI

Vijayawada (AP), Aug 22: Ten persons were killed and 19 others injured when their bus fell into a canal at Nayakangudem in Khammam district of Telangana in the wee hours today, police said.

Besides, three persons died in Andhra Pradesh when their car met with an accident in Chittoor district early this morning when they were returning from the Krishna Pushkaram festival, they said. The driver of the private bus was apparently driving the vehicle at a very high speed.

He lost control over the wheels, as a result the bus on its way to Kakinada from Hyderabad, fell into the canal under Kusumanchi mandal, police said. Andhra Pradesh government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 3 lakh each to the kin of the 10 deceased.

Some of the victims belonged to East Godavari and some were from West Godavari district of the AP. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed grief over the accident and spoke to East Godavari district Collector Arun Kumar over phone to enquire about the incident.

The 19 injured persons were admitted to the Government General Hospital for treatment, Kumar said. Meanwhile, three persons were killed in a separate road accident in the Chittoor district early this morning. The car they were travelling in rammed into a stationary lorry on the highway at Srimallavaram village, killing three persons belonging to Madanapalle.

The victims were returning to their town after taking part in the Krishna Pushkaram. Naidu also spoke to Chittoor district Collector Siddharth Jain over phone and enquired about the incident, a communication from the CMO here said.

PTI
After Erdogan's request, agencies probe claim of FETO infiltrating India

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Aug 22: Indian security agencies have started investigating claims made by the Turkish government about the infiltration of Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organisation (FETO) into India. Turkey's President, Tayyip Erdogan said that FETO had infiltrated into India and sought help to remove it. He had blamed FETO for the last month's failed coup attempt to topple him.

FETO which is headed by Turkish preacher Muhammed Fethullah Gulen runs many charity organisations. The organisation has several supporters across Central Asia and has been termed as a organisation which follows a moderate blend of Islam.

However, Erdogan says that FETO is a secretive transnational criminal network which has its presence across the world.

India will probe

India will now look into the allegations made by Erdogan regarding FETO. Although no clear presence of FETO which was termed a terrorist outfit by Turkey is visible in India, agencies would look into the allegations.

An Intelligence Bureau officer says that the first step would be to detect the presence of the organisation and also find out if it has been indulging in activity that is counter productive to the security of the nation.

There have been mixed views about FETO. Many would say that FETO was designated as a terrorist organisation after Gulen fell out with Erdogan. Gulen currently is in the United States of America and was recently blamed for the failed coup in Turkey.

FETO follows the preachings of Gulen. The organisation has several supporters in Central Asia. The followers of Gulen say that the organisation follows a modertate blend of Islam. Further the organisation has also adopted a modern approach.

FETO is active in active concerning education, finance, health, media, and humanitarian aid.

The members of FETO say that Erdogan is just looking for an excuse to scuttle Gulen. He seeks to neutralise any voice of dissent in Turkey and hence has decided to target FETO, its members also point out.

India's external affairs ministry spokesperson, Vikas Swarup says that India is sensitive to Turkey's concerns and the demands made by Ankara will be looked into by the security agencies.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, August 22, 2016, 9:59 [IST]
Akalis lambast Kejriwal on drugs issue

India

oi-PTI

Chandigarh, Aug 22: Ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab today lashed out at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over his comments on the issue of drugs in Goa saying the Aam Aadmi Party leader wants to befool people with the motive of achieving power.

Punjab Education Minister Daljit Singh Cheema said that it is "disgusting" to see that Kejriwal has tried to incite the people on the issue of narcotics in Goa as he had tried in Punjab. He said that the Delhi CM has leveled same allegations on the ruling party of Goa which he had leveled on the SAD leadership.

Similar is his claim of nexus between political class, police and narcotics traders in Goa as he had claimed in Punjab, Cheema said.

The SAD secretary and spokesman said that it is surprising that Kejriwal is using the same tactic of creating a fear among the masses and exploiting their sentiments on the drugs issue whose gravity perhaps he is unaware of. Cheema reminded the AAP leader that in this era of social media, his attempts of trying to befool the people of the two states won't work as he stood exposed nationally for his lies.

He expressed surprise over the statement of Kejriwal in which he has said that AAP does not have funds to contest the elections. He said that this is an old ploy of Kejriwal to win sympathy of the people wherever he goes and to earn money in the form of donations as well as sale of tickets.

Cheema asked Kejriwal to explain that if his party did not have money then was it the reason he wasted crores of rupees of people of Delhi on his media campaign in Punjab? He said that Kejriwal's statement of empty coffers of AAP is nothing but a sheer attempt to gain sympathy of the NRIs so that he could get more funds for the elections.

He said that everybody knows that the AAP is the major receiver of funds from abroad and Kejriwal's statement is only an attempt to get more funding from abroad as Indians here are already aware of his mischiefs and don't contribute towards his party.

PTI
Jigisha murder case: Two convicts get death penalty, life imprisonment for one

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Aug 22: A court here on Monday awarded the death penalty to two convicts for kidnapping and killing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh in 2009.

Additional Sessional Judge Sandeep Yadav awarded the death penalty to Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla, while the third accused, Baljeet Malik was sentenced to life in prison.

The court on July 14 convicted the three men under Section 302 (murder), Section 201 (destruction of evidence), Section 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder), Section 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery), Section 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), Section 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record), Section 482 (punishment for using a false property mark) with Section 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.

Jigisha, 28, who was working with Hewitt Associate Pvt Ltd as an operations manager, was kidnapped and killed on March 18, 2009 after her office cab dropped her near her home in Vasant Vihar area in south Delhi around 4 a.m.

Her body was found on March 20, 2009 near Surajkund in Haryana. The police later arrested Kapoor, Shukla and Malik in the case.

IANS
MP: Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan draws criticism, ridicule over flood picture

India

oi-PTI

Bhopal, Aug 22: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has drawn flak and ridicule for a photograph showing him being lifted by security personnel to cross a swollen nullah in the state's Panna district to meet flood-hit people there, with the Opposition Congress saying it reflected his "feudal mindset".

The picture, which has gone viral on internet with netizens taking pot-shots at the BJP leader, was issued yesterday by the State Public Relations department after his visit to the rain-ravaged district but was later withdrawn.

MP Congress chief Arun Yadav said Chouhan's "photo-stunt" for cheap publicity had backfired but Principal Secretary S K Mishra contended that the Chief Minister was a 'Z' security protectee and the security personnel had to ensure that he is not bitten by any poisonous animal in the flood waters.

"Chouhan in a bid to garner cheap publicity has indulged in this photo stunt. Instead of mitigating the problems of flood-hit people in Panna and other parts, the Chief Minister has himself become a problem for people (security personnel)," Congress leader Arun Yadav said. He said that the "real face" of Chief Minister has been exposed in the photo.

"Now people know him well. We seek his resignation over the photo, depicting his feudal mindset," the Congress leader said. In social media, social activist Ajay Dubey posted the photo of Chief Minister being lifted by security personnel with a caption "I am a prince".

Dubey took a dig at Chouhan saying the picture has revived memories of feudalism. Reacting to the photo, one Sachin Jain posted "Liability, isn't it". Likewise, journalist Abhilash Khandekar, who had written Chouhan's biography, has reacted to the photo commenting it as "Inhuman.Indecent".

Panna: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan visits flood affected areas in the state. pic.twitter.com/Q4HcBuEyOJ  ANI (@ANI_news) August 21, 2016

When a senior officer of State Public Relations Department was asked about the photo release, he said the picture was released by their Panna office to media houses and not by Bhopal office. However, it was withdrawn yesterday evening itself, he added.

Meanwhile, defending Chouhan, the Principal Secretarysaid the CM was having 'Z' security cover prompting his security personnel to lift him to ensure that any poisonous animal in water doesn't bite him. "Nothing should be read into it," Mishra told PTI.

"Chouhan in fact risked his life to cross the swollen nullah. He is too sensitive to people's problems. He is meeting people affected by flood round-the-clock. We should appreciate his concern, sensitivity for the people rather taking it the other way round," Mishra said.

PTI
Over 4 cr farmers may opt for Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana this yr: Radha Mohan Singh

India

oi-PTI

Rohtak, Aug 21 Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh today said the number of farmers opting for the 'Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana' this year is expected to cross four crore, as against three crore last year.

As many as 200 mandis across the country would be brought under the ambit of the scheme by next month.

400 mandis would be made online by March next year, while 585 mandis would go online by 2018, he said.

Singh said, "The scheme aims to make agricultural practice risk-free for the farmers, but the leaders in order to serve their own political agenda are not able to comprehend it."

"Earlier, crop insurance schemes profited insurance companies and farmers were not compensated for the losses due to crop damage caused by natural calamities after the harvest. Besides, premium rates differed according to location," he said. But this scheme is farmer-friendly.

The farmers are required to pay only minimal premium and can claim compensation for losses caused by natural calamities up to 14 days after the harvest, the Union minister said.

Reiterating the government's commitment towards increasing farmers' income, the minister said Prime Minister Narendra Modi understood the problems of the poor and the farmers and has taken several initiatives to alleviate their sufferings and provide amenities to them.

Bank accounts of more than 22 crore families have been opened in the last two years under the 'Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana' and the government has made it a mission to provide electricity to each household by March, 2018, he said.

Addressing a public meeting, Singh said the Tiranga Yatra was launched throughout the country on August 9 to mark 70 years of freedom and would continue till August 22. He also visited the ancestral house of Sir Chhotu Ram, one of the most prominent pre-partition politicians in the British India's Punjab Province.

Haryan Minister of State for Cooperation (Independent Charge) Manish Kumar Grover and state BJP chief Subhash Barala also spoke on the occasion.

PTI
African Swine Fever: 16 more pigs die in Mizoram; Toll rises to 770 in two months

Sinking of land in Mizoram, locals help 22 families evacuate

India

oi-PTI

Aizawl, Aug 22: Local volunteers helped 22 families to evacuate their houses and shift to safer places due to sinking of land at Hunthar locality of Mizoram's capital city here, state Disaster Management and Rehabilitation Director C Lalpeksanga today said.

Lalpeksanga, who visited the place this morning told PTI seven houses have been dismantled by the volunteers since yesterday as another spell of rain was most likely to sweep away the houses.

He said many displaced families were living with relatives while temporary accommodation arrangements were made for others in government buildings constructed for urban poor and the proposed office of Legal Metrology.

The landslide and sinking of land occurred after heavy downpour in the city for days which also severely affected the road linking the lone Lengpui Airport as the road itself had been sinking, he said.

Mizoram is one of most peaceful, progressing states: CM

Lalpeksanga said experts from the Geological Survey of India (GSI) in Shillong would be arriving here today to conduct a detailed study of the area from Tuesday.

A detailed project report (DPR) would be submitted to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) for prevention of the area from sinking further and reclamation of the area in accordance with the GSI report, he added.

PTI
This is 21st century, where have we reached in name of religion: SC on hate speeches

Special anti-corruption courts in every district: SC to take up plea next week

Stay on Guj HC order on 10 pc quota for poor to continue: SC

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Aug 22: The interim stay on Gujarat High Court's decision quashing a state government ordinance providing 10 per cent quota for economically backward among the unreserved category, including the agitating Patel community, would continue, Supreme Court said today.

A bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud said it would further hear the matter on August 29 and added that there would be no admission till further orders.

The bench was hearing a petition by Gujarat government challenging the high court's August 4 order quashing the ordinance. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Gujarat government, said the high court had struck down the ordinance which has been challenged.

Senior advocate Gopal Subramaniam, appearing for general category students, said the high court's stay was till August 17 and the order should remain operational till the apex court hears the matter. He also said there were holidays in between, due to which the apex court could not hear it.

While quashing the ordinance, the high court had stayed operation of its order by two weeks on the request of state government to enable filing of an appeal in the apex court.

Terming the May 1 ordinance as "inappropriate and unconstitutional", the high court had rejected the state's argument that it was a classification under the general category and not the reserved category and held that it will breach the 50 per cent quota cap set by the Supreme Court.

The court had observed that 10 per cent reservation for poor among the unreserved category took the total quota beyond 50 per cent, which was not permitted as per the apex court's earlier decision.

The high court had also said that the government took the decision without any study or scientific data. Petitioners Dayaram Verma, Ravjibhai Manani, Dulari Basarge and Gujarat Parents' Association had separately challenged the ordinance declaring reservation of 10 per cent seats to candidates belonging to the unreserved category with family income cap of Rs 6 lakh annually in government jobs and educational institutions.

Their petitions were heard together. The state government had said the quota was actually "a further classification in the general, open, unreserved category" and does not violate either the Supreme Court order or the constitutional provisions.

The state government, in its affidavit, said the ordinance does not violate provisions of the Constitution nor does it go against the apex court orders.

PTI
Iraq hangs 36 militants for killing soldiers in 2014

International

oi-PTI

Baghdad, Aug 22: Iraq on Sunday (Aug 22) said it had hanged 36 militants sentenced to death over the mass killing of hundreds of mainly Shi'ite soldiers at a camp north of Baghdad two years ago.

It is the highest number of militants executed in one day by the Iraqi government since Islamic State (ISIS) fighters took control of parts of northern and western Iraq in 2014. The executions were carried out at a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, state television quoted the Justice Ministry as saying.

As many as 1,700 soldiers were killed two years ago after they fled from Camp Speicher, a former US military base just north of Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit, when it was overrun by Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni group. The government came under increased pressure from local Shi'ite politicians to execute militants sentenced to death after a massive bombing that targeted a shopping street in Baghdad on July 3, killing at least 324 people.

Claimed by Islamic State, the truck bomb that blew up in the Karrada district was the deadliest since the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. Iraq's Justice Ministry announced days later that 45 death sentences had been carried out since the beginning of the year.

The United Nations said on August 1 that Iraq's efforts to speed up the execution of militants could result in innocent people being put to death. An estimated 1,200 people are on death row in Iraq, including possibly hundreds who have exhausted appeals, the UN statement said.

"Given the weaknesses of the Iraqi justice system, and the current environment in Iraq, I am gravely concerned that innocent people have been and may continue to be convicted and executed, resulting in gross, irreversible miscarriages of justice," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said in the statement.

PTI
Severe malnourished baby from Iraq with rare heart defect treated in India

Iraq gets a new government after a year of deadlock

IS executes 40 people in Iraq

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Baghdad, Aug 22: At least 40 persons were executed on Sunday (Aug 21) by the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Iraq's Mosul city, a security official said.

The victims were executed over charges of conspiring against the IS rule in Mosul, Xinhua news agency reported.

The victims were accused of helping people to flee the city and being former Iraqi security members.

"The IS terrorist group delivered the bodies of 40 men and a list of their names to the morgue of the main hospital in Mosul," a security official said.

The official said all the bodies were shot in the head.

IANS
Philippines police confirm 1,779 deaths in drug wars

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Manila, Aug 22: At least 1,779 people have been killed in the Philippine's war on illicit drugs since July 1 this year, authorities said on Monday (Aug 22).

A total of 712 were killed in ongoing police operations while 1,067 died in "vigilante-type" killings, Xinhua news agency quoted police as saying.

The police's "stand against extrajudicial killings is uncompromising", a police official said in a statement.

"If any cop is found violating the law of self-defence, he will be investigated, prosecuted and accordingly punished," he said.

"On the speculation of vigilante killings, the police does not and will never condone vigilante killings," he added.

"I have previously mentioned that these killings are perpetrated by various syndicate groups involved in illegal drugs."

The official vowed to apply the "full force of the law against those responsible for these killings outside of police operations".

The increasing number of killings in the administration's war against drugs has caught the attention of the UN and other international human rights groups.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, however, remains unfazed by the growing criticism and repeatedly says that the fight against drugs will be relentless and will be sustained.

"I am willing to answer all (my critics). I assume full responsibility for what happened because I was the one who ordered it," Duterte told the media in Davao City on Sunday.

"My instructions at the very first day of my term were that: go out and hunt for these criminals. Arrest them if they surrender peacefully but if they put up a violent stunt then you just have to kill them because I do not want people in government dying needlessly for doing his work when you were then leaving behind a family and children," he said.

So far, Duterte said 600,000 drug users and pushers have "surrendered" and taken the drug test since his administration launched the campaign after he took over the presidency on June 30 this year.

IANS
Failure to address unrest in J&K will lead to alienation, say Oppn leaders

New Delhi

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Aug 22: Opposition party leaders from Jammu and Kashmir on Monday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to initiate dialogue with stakeholders while also stating that a continued failure to address the unrest in Kashmir will further deepen the sense of alienation.

The opposition leaders led by former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah also urged the Modi to impose an immediate ban on pellet guns.

Govt seeks to sensitise TV coverage on J&K issue

While submitting a memorandum to the prime minister, the delegation said that the ground situation in the state was bad following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. They also said over 66 people have been killed in the state following clashes with security forces.

The opposition leaders had on Saturday met with President Pranab Mukherjee and voiced concerns about the situation in the state. During the meeting they urged the President to urge the Prime Minister to find a political solution to the ongoing unrest in Jammu and Kashmir.

The delegation says that the only way forward is to find a political solution to the problem. Moreover a solution to the problem can be found only if the government speaks with all stake holders in the Valley, the delegation also said.

Kashmir has been on the boil since the past 45 days following the death of Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani on July 8. Widespread protests broke out in the state between people and security forces following Wani's death.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, August 22, 2016, 11:13 [IST]
India, Syria to upgrade security consultation over ISIS threat

New Delhi

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Aug 22: With the threat of the ISIS looming large, Syria has urged India to play a larger role. India's minister of state for external affairs, MJ Akbar who held discussions with Syrian President, al-Assad decided that both countries would enhance cooperation in combating the threat posed by the ISIS.

While acknowledging that the ISIS was now global problem, it was decided that a channel would be opened between both countries to upgrade security consultations.

The security consultations between both countries would lead to enhancement of intelligence sharing. Further both countries would also better the screening process for Indians visiting Syria.

India has often stressed on the need for better global coordination to beat the threat posed by international terrorist outfits such as the ISIS. Syria in particular has been the hardest hit by the ISIS and has been reaching out to the global community to combat the problem.

During the meeting, the Syrian President told Akbar that India should take a strong stance and not shy away from the problem posed by the ISIS. India has so far stayed away from any global coalition fighting the ISIS.

India feels that any attempt to join the global coalition against the ISIS could effectively lead to sectarian clashes between the Indian Muslims. However, India now acknowledges the need to play a bigger part where intelligence networking is concerned and hence these security consultations with Syria would help in the long run.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Monday, August 22, 2016, 9:26 [IST]
Don't be obstructionist: SC to Kejriwal

New Delhi

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Aug 22: The Supreme Court on Monday took to task the Arvind Kejriwal led Delhi government for dragging its feet on the installation of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems. The court told the Delhi government to be progressive and forward thinking rather being obstructionist.

When asked why the project had not taken off, the government submitted that the transport department wanted to rethink about RFID. Although it had agreed at a meeting, it had later said that it wanted to rethink on the same, the government also told the Supreme Court.

The court then pulled up the government for dragging its feet on the issue and asked if it was advised by the toll contractors to rethink on RFID. Further the court said that the green levy collected from the goods vehicles entering Delhi would be used for the installation of RFIDs at the 13 entry points.

A petition had sought directions to the Delhi government and the Municipal Corporation to ensure commercial vehicles entering the city pay a sum of not less than Rs 600 (for LCV and 2-axle) and not less than Rs 1200 (for 3-axle and above).

The petitioner had also sought that all collection of toll for vehicles entering Delhi be switched to the Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) system of collection of toll on and from the 1st of December 2015.

The court had directed that the toll collectors would put in place RFID system at their own cost at nine main entry points in the city by November 30 and by January 31, 2016 at all the remaining 118 entry points to the city, failing which the contractors will be treated as being in breach of their obligation.

OneIndia News
Pakistan has arrested 5 separatist leaders of Balochistan for supporting PM Modi, accusing them of waging war against Pakistan. PM Modi on the Independence day thanked the people of PoK and Balochistan who hailed him for raising the human rights violations in their areas by Pakistan.
Tamil actress Radha on Sunday has filed a claimed against criminal Vairam alias Kundrathur Vairam alleging that he made a threat call to her from inside Puzhal Prison. The actor circulated the recording of a phone conversation Vairam had with her. The police are currently probing Radha's complaint and also to find out how the convict got his hands on a cellphone in a maximum security prison.
In Kashmir, schools are shut, but teachers are in attendance everyday

Srinagar

oi-Vicky

Srinagar, Aug 22: Abdul Rashid, the principal of a government school in Nadihal, Kashmir, is lying on a hospital bed in a critical condition. Some days ago, he decided to keep his school open and wait for the students to come in. The ones that did go to school and beat him up mercilessly were not students, but a mob of some 20 people.

The troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir has been under curfew for nearly 45 days now. Everything is shut, including schools and colleges. But strangely enough, teachers are going to school.

PM accepts that development alone can't resolve J&K issue: Omar

State Education Minister Naeem Akthar says schools have been instructed to remain open and teachers asked to attend everyday, despite the curfew. "The teachers have been coming to schools. Education is a priority for us. It's the separatists who have ordered schools to remain closed", he says.

Teachers across the state have been told they have to compulsorily go to school and mark attendance, else their salaries would be cut. But the children are not attending. Attendance is zero, because parents are unwilling to send their children to school for fear of violence.

"Rashid is still in hospital in a critical condition. It's not safe to send our children to school. What's the point of keeping schools open if they cannot provide security to our children. What if a mob attacks the school when our children are attending", Mushtaq, a father of two told OneIndia over phone from Baramulla.

"Our children's future is getting affected badly. My boys have been at home for the past 45 days. And there seems to be no solution in sight for the current troubles".

One school teacher, on condition of anonymity, said that teachers, on the other hand, had been left with no choice. "The Education Minister has said schools should remain open. Based on this, the department officials have told us, it is compulsory for us to sign attendance. We go to school in the morning and return by evening although not one student is attending class. What can we do? We need our salaries."

Everything's shut

Not just schools, almost every other service is shut in J&K. While mobile services are back -- only through BSNL's postpaid connections -- mobile internet service is not available.

People are forced to stay at home all day due to the curfew orders and television is the only recourse to pass time, but they are unable to recharge their direct-to-home TV subscriptions. Kashmiris are reaching out to their relatives across the country and asking them to recharge their television subscriptions for them.

Access to banking, too, is broken. When violence broke out in the state more than a month ago, many rushed to the banks to withdraw large sums of money, and banks ran out of cash. The banks reacted by capping ATM withdrawls to Rs. 4,000 per day.

Now, with oil industry staff on strike in the state, the petrol pumps have gone dry.

Rising Anger

Anger is rising among Kashmiris due to the hardships, with people questioning how ministers are moving around freely while the life of the common man has come to a standstill.

That anger is now directed at senior BJP ministers who travelled along with their supporters in long convoys to attend a rally in Smailpur, with people suspecting that the Centre has deliberately stopped fuel supplies to the state, although petroleum ministry officials said that tankers did not reach bunks last week on account of 'Raksha Bandhan' holiday.

OneIndia News
 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd.

All rights reserved.

One News is a registered trademark

of One News Page Ltd.
KTNV Channel 13 Las Vegas 06 May 2021

Prince William and Duchess Kate are launching a new YouTube channel as they push to modernize the monarchy. The move comes as Harry..
Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: The valuation of UK-based FinTechs after the Brexit vote can be questionable, said Philippe Paquet, managing director of Paris-based specialty investment manager NewAlpha Asset Management during the latest Opalesque 2016 France Roundtable. Paquet told participants of the Roundtable, "My point here is that with what happened with that Brexit vote, obviously the valuation of UK-based FinTechs can be questionable. I dont think that it is good for France, but certainly for the moment and short-term rather bad for UK startups." He added that since NewAlpha launched a venture capital fund investing in FinTech startup companies in 2015, one of the things that he noticed was the wide dispersion between valuations of UK-based FinTechs and for example, France-based FinTechs. The value differential can be between two and five times for companies "on the same market, with the same offering, and on the same path." The only rationale for this difference would be that UK companies may be two or three years ahead than the French ones. Paquet also put put a warning: "As you know, digitalization is based on the idea that the underlying market has no limits, no borders. So if you immediately set up again new borders, it raises the question about valuation. While theres no point to applaud the UKs decisio...................... To view our full article Click here
Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia:

Kim Ivey, co-founder of Hedge Funds Rock and The Australian Hedge Fund Awards, said that the Australian hedge fund industry is still looking to get attention as they battle local super funds preference to look offshore for alternative investments.

Speaking ahead of the annual awards night in September, Ivey said that local hedge funds are facing a "perennial" challenge and are contending with the "differing requirements of sovereign wealth, superannuation, offshore pension, HNW, family office and retail client bases," reported the Financial Standard.

He was quoted as saying, "It's not just with back office operations. If managers desire fiduciary institutions as clients, it is incumbent upon them to build quality client and consultant reporting mechanisms, automated trade reconciliations and collateral management systems, with dedicated operation, compliance and client service teams. This all takes time and money."

But Ivey also noted that Australian alternative managers are attracting investments from non-institutional sources because of "the demand for platform- friendly products from investors in the SMSF, adviser driven and pure retail space."

Overseas investors start noticing high-performing Australian hedge funds

However, after years of being overlooked in favor of their more high-prof......................

To view our full article Click here
In the week ending 18 August, 2016, it was reported that hedge funds are increasingly agreeing to hurdle rates which would be becoming the norm and more creative. While many investors are unhappy with underformance, hedge funds have also broadly avoided big losses despite the Brexit shock. However, Barry Rosensteins Jana partners suffered its worst performance in its 15-year history with its main fund in negative territory; Horseman Global lost -2.68% for the month of July (+3.13% YTD); Crispin Odey has emerged as the worst performing European hedge fund manager so far this year; distressed debt hedge funds have missed out on bond rebound, data showed. Meanwhile, Senvest Management has surged back into the black for the year on bets on small, out-of-favour companies; and Matrix Capital returned 8.3% net in the second quarter, outperforming the S&P 500 index which returned 2.5%.

Preqin Hedge Fund Index up 2.17% in July (+3.67% YTD) as industry marks 5th consecutive months of gains; The HFRI EM: Latin America Index surged +8.9% in 2Q (+24.4% YTD); The Barclay Hedge Fund Index gained 1.99% in July (......................

To view our full article Click here
Opalesque Industry Update - Northill Capital has released the report Nowhere to hide: Focused active asset managers outperform, analysing the structure of active asset management firms and the effects of those business models on delivering outcomes to investors. The research demonstrates that active asset managers focused on a single core skillset have significantly outperformed both generalist active asset managers and passive mandates across multiple asset classes over the past five years. Key findings: Focused active managers outperformed generalist managers  Comparing the average five year outperformance of 2,004 active US equity strategies, the largest sample in the study with a combined AUM of $3.9 trillion, the most focused managers (ranked in the top decile) generated average annualised gross outperformance of 116 basis points (bps) per annum relative to their benchmarks while the average manager delivered only 2 bps per annum.  The most focused mid-sized[2] active US equities managers generated average annualised outperformance of 146 bps per annum, 145 bps more than the average mid-sized manager. Evidence that focused active managers tend to outperform holds true in each of the additional asset classes analysed over the same period. The average five year annualised outperformance premium achieved by the most focused mid-sized managers over the average mid-sized manager was 94 bps per annum in European equities; 60 bps per annum in US fixed income; 29 bps per annum in global equities and 57 bps per annum in emerging market equities. The average focused active manager outperformed passive mandates after fees  Active US equity strategies offered by the most focused mid-sized managers generated 68 bps per annum average outperformance net of fees, while the average active US equity strategy underperformed passive mandates by an average -18 bps per annum after fees. The Report analysed the performance of over 5,000 active long only equity and fixed income strategies, with a total AUM of $14.2 trillion, over the five year period 2011-2015. Active asset managers offering a single investment strategy ranked within the top decile for focus[3]. The business models of focused managers typically exhibit key indicators that strengthen the alignment of interests with their clients, which is a key driver of outperformance:  100% of management time and resource committed to making a single, repeatable investment process as successful as possible.  All investment professionals work in a single team, which is the largest function of the firm.  Where distinct investment products tailored to client segments or investment universe constraints exist, they share a single research platform, and are therefore in general all successful or unsuccessful at the same time. Jon Little, Partner, Northill Capital LLP, said, This report provides evidence of a persistent link between asset managers focused on one asset class and their success in delivering outperformance to investors. Asset class and investment style specialists significantly outperformed both benchmarks and passive strategies on an after fees basis. Our findings show that focus tends to drive outperformance in multiple asset class disciplines; on average, focused active managers outperformed generalist active managers by an average 77 basis points per annum, said Ryan Sinnott, Director, Strategy and Development, Northill Capital LLP. Allocating to a focused active manager that is more directly aligned with the performance of its investment strategy can also help asset owners differentiate between luck and skill. Generalist managers may incubate many track records in multiple asset classes, but report returns only for strategies surviving a culling process. For single-purpose managers, a sustained period of underperformance can put the entire business at risk. With a single investment strategy, focused managers have nowhere to hide. Jon Little added: In truly focused active asset management firms all professionals work as one team to deliver the best possible investment results. The key decision makers also tend to hold a meaningful proportion of the firms equity. Their success and the long-term value of the firm are defined solely by the outcomes delivered for all clients. Focused firms do not risk their track record by growing assets beyond their true capacity, and do not attempt to diversify away from their core skillset to mitigate business risk. Diversification risks damaging outcomes for investors and does not play well with key investment talent. Firms offering multiple strategies become sidetracked by how to share the firms economics. These tensions destroy teamwork, damage firm culture and distract investment professionals. The clear alignment of interests between asset owner and asset manager maximises the probability that investors appointing focused managers will achieve long-term successful investment outcomes. Northill Capital is an independent, privately held asset management business, established in London in 2010, with substantial financial backing from interests associated with the Bertarelli Family. Northills long-term strategy is to build a portfolio of high quality, specialist asset management businesses. Combined assets under management in which Northill owns a majority interest total $38.5 billion (as at 30 June 2016). Northill brings deep industry experience and expertise and the patient, long-term application of substantial private capital to support skilled investment professionals to develop their business. Northill Capital LLP is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Reprinted from Paul Craig Roberts Website

News services abroad ask me if President Erdogan of Turkey will, as a result of the coup attempt, realign Turkey with Russia. At this time, there is not enough information for me to answer. Speculation in advance of information is not my forte.

Moreover, I do not know if it is true that Moscow warned the President of Turkey of the coup, and I do not know if Washington was behind the coup. Therefore, I do not know how to weigh the scales. As I see it, whether Turkey stays with Washington or realigns with Moscow depends first of all on whether or not Moscow warned Turkey and whether or not Washington was behind the coup. If this is what Erdogan believes, whether true or false, Erdogan is likely to align with Russia. However, other factors will also influence Erdogan's decision. For example, Erdogan's belief about how resolute Putin is to standing up to Washington.

Erdogan will not want to align with Russia if he thinks Russia is not up to Washington's challenge. Erdogan sees Putin endlessly asking for Washington's cooperation, and Erdogan understands that Washington sees this as a sign of Russian weakness. Washington slaps Putin in the face, and Putin replies by asking for cooperation against ISIS. I understand why Putin responds this way. He wants to avoid a war between US/NATO and Russia that neither side can win. Putin is a man of peace and accepts affronts in order to save life. This is admirable. But that might not be the way Erdogan sees it. Erdogan might see it like Washington sees it: weakness.

The second consideration is whether Washington or Moscow offers Erdogan the best deal. Washington most certainly does not want the breakup of NATO and will strive to keep Turkey in NATO at all costs. Washington, for example, might deliver Gulen to Erdogan, and Washington might put one billion dollars in a bank account for Erdogan. This is easy for Washington to do, as Washington can print all of the world's reserve currency it wishes to print. It is impossible for Moscow to deliver Gulen, and because Yeltsin accepted US advice conveyed through the IMF, the Russian ruble is not a substitute for the US dollar.

The world is accustomed to seeing Washington prevail, because Washington relies on force. Except for Putin's response to the Georgian attack on South Ossetia, the world is accustomed to seeing Putin rely on diplomacy. As Mao said, power comes out of the barrel of a gun, and so the world believes. Putin seemed to be decisive when he accepted the Crimean vote and reunited the Crimea with Russia, But Putin turned down the requests of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk to rejoin Russia, and this made Russia look weak. It also prolonged the conflict and the death and destruction continues.

In my opinion this strategic failure by Putin is the result of advice from the Russian "Atlanticist Integrationists" -- the people who think that Russia does not count unless it is part of the West. In every sense, these pro-Western members of the Russian government are de facto members of the Treason Party. Yet they serve as a constraint on Russian decisiveness. The absence of Russian decisiveness provokes more pressure from Washington. It is a losing game for the Russian government to invite pressure from the West.

Washington sees that Putin is unable to break away from the influence of the Atlanticist Integrationists, which includes the Russian economic establishment led by the independent central bank. Therefore, Washington continues to make Washington's cooperation with Russia in Syria dependent on Putin's agreement that "Assad must go." Putin wants to get rid of ISIS, because ISIS can infect Muslim areas of the Russian Federation. But if he agrees to get rid of Assad, chaos will prevail in Syria just as chaos prevails in Iraq and Libya, and Russia will have accepted Washington's overlordship. Russia will become another vassal country added to Washington's collection.

The real danger for Russia lies in Russia's desire for Western acceptance. As long as Russians have this desire, they are a doomed people.
Following a new wave of protest by Yemenite Jews, the Israeli government appointed Minister without Portfolio Tzachi Hanegbi, of Yemenite background himself, to investigate allegations of baby-stealing by state welfare and medical agencies in the 1950s. Following his appointment, Hanegbi proudly announced that he had also obtained approval for the investigation from Shin-Bet and Mossad"

Figure 2: Post World War II refugees arriving in Israel from Europe.

OccupyTLV, August 20 -- for decades, Yemenite Jews in Israel levelled accusations that during the early decades of the state, authorities stole their babies. Typically, they have been dismissed even recently as conspiracy theories. [i] Now the matter will be investigated again -- this time around, apparently with Shin-Bet and Mossad approval".

The typical cases were of large, impoverished families, where a new baby was born. The parents were told in the hospital that the baby died, but never got to see the body. Other cases involved families in transit immigrant camps, whose babies needed to be hospitalized. Again, they were told by medical or welfare personnel that the babies died, but were never shown a body, no death certificates were issued, and no graves were identified. Yemenite Jews alleged that such babies were kidnapped and given for adoption in Israel and abroad.

The issue was first raised in 1950 by an association of Yemenite Jews. Initial government response was typical - classifying the records.

The issue was the subject of both official and unofficial investigations in the 1960s and 1980s. Hundreds of cases were reviewed. In some cases it was established that the babies were indeed given for adoption in Israel. In other cases it was suspected that they were given for adoption abroad. Numerous cases were categorized as "missing babies". Yemenite Jews considered the previous investigations more of the cover-up.

In the past it was claimed that the practice was applied only to Yemenite Jews, and racism was inferred as a motive. [ii] However, very recent reports raise claims that the practice was more widespread, also applied to families of holocaust survivors. [iii] The affair has even gained some recent international media attention. [iv]

Demand for a true investigation has gained momentum again -- campaigns on social networks was the hallmark. In response, Prime Minister Netanyahu yielded and issued Twitter and Facebook messages, consenting to a new investigation. It's the new form of direct democracy in Israel.

On June 15, 2016 Netanyahu announced that Minister without portfolio Tzach Hanegbi was designated to head the new investigation, and later it was reported that he was formally appointed by the Israeli government.

Tzachi Hanegbi is a member of the ruling Likud party, and of Yemenite background himself. Therefore, his appointment was intended to lend credibility to the new investigation. (Hanegbi has some credibility issues on other accounts, including conviction of perjury in a case that originated in dozens of nefarious, political appointments to government jobs, including some fictitious jobs. Hanegbi also was subject of other criminal investigations, including a 1997 case, where it was alleged that he was the key actor in a deal, involving Netanyahu as well, where attempt was made to appoint a new Attorney General, who would close a bribing investigation against key coalition partner - cabinet minister Aryeh Deri -- later convicted and imprisoned on other corruption matters, now again serving as Interior Minister in Netanyahu's cabinet...)

With it, Hanegbi served in key government positions, including Minister of Justice, and Chairman of the powerful Knesset Committee on Foreign and Security Affairs.

On such background, Arutz Sheva (also known as Israel National News), an Israeli media network identifying with Religious Zionism, broadcast on August 17, 2016 an interview with Hanegbi, where he stated that he had obtained permission from the Shin-Bet and Mossad for his new investigation of the Yemenite baby-stealing scandal. [v]

Hanegbi explained in the interview, that in some of the related files, which he had already been exposed to, there were references to activities of the Mossad and names of Mossad personnel.

In Israel, no one seemed to question the need for Shin-Bet and Mossad approval of investigation into the conduct of welfare and medical personnel some 50 years ago, after the investigation had been decided by the cabinet" or the involvement of Mossad and Shin-Bet in the baby-stealing scandal in the first place" The situation is particularly striking on the background of claims of lack of Shin-Bet involvement in matters, where it should have been involved, or matters, where Shin-Bet was apparently involved in criminality. [vi]

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Imagine that across the planet, back in the early months of 2003, millions of people marched in the streets of global cities and small towns, protesting, toting handmade signs, making their voices heard in every way they could to indicate that the prospective Bush administration invasion of Iraq would be an immoral disaster (and no matter what he says now, Donald Trump was not among them). And imagine that they were right in ways that perhaps even they couldn't have dreamed of. And what of the few like the late Jonathan Schell, who, even earlier, spoke out against the invasion of Afghanistan? Yes, we're talking about a world of right and yet here's the curious thing: ever since then, when the media focuses on our failed wars, still ongoing and spreading so many years later, or asks for comments on what went wrong, they regularly turn to those who were involved in launching them, sustaining them, or cheering them on. This has been a commonplace of the last 13 years. The very people who couldn't have been more off the mark remain the official "experts," the go-to guys, on the subject. Those who got it right at the time have essentially been disappeared. The uniquely vast antiwar movement that preceded the invasion of Iraq has essentially been obliterated from history.

It's not that I haven't offered this complaint before (more than once over the years), and yet the story always seems to remain the same. The latest example: 50 Republican national security figures have come out staunchly against Donald Trump and that has been a headline story -- all the Mr. Rights finally take out after Mr. Wrong -- even though many of them bear a responsibility for the very world of war and failure that helped produce the moment of The Donald. In frustration, I asked TomDispatchregular Rebecca Gordon who knows a thing or two about the criminal wars of these last years (and has written American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes) to make some sense of this latest round of expertise and Election 2016. Tom

What Does It Mean When War Hawks Say, "Never Trump"?

The Enemies of My Enemy May Be War Criminals

By Rebecca Gordon It's not every day that Republicans publish an open letter announcing that their presidential candidate is unfit for office. But lately this sort of thing has been happening more and more frequently. The most recent example: we just heard from 50 representatives of the national security apparatus, men -- and a few women -- who served under Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush. All of them are very worried about Donald Trump. They think we should be alerted to the fact that the Republican standard-bearer "lacks the character, values, and experience to be president." That's true of course, but it's also pretty rich, coming from this bunch. The letter's signers include, among others, the man who was Condoleezza Rice's legal advisor when she ran the National Security Council (John Bellinger III); one of George W. Bush's CIA directors who also ran the National Security Agency (Michael Hayden); a Bush administration ambassador to the United Nations and Iraq (John Negroponte); an architect of the neoconservative policy in the Middle East adopted by the Bush administration that led to the invasion of Iraq, who has since served as president of the World Bank (Robert Zoellick). In short, given the history of the "global war on terror," this is your basic list of potential American war criminals. Their letter continues, "He weakens U.S. moral authority as the leader of the free world." There's a sentence that could use some unpacking. What Is The "Free World"? Let's start with the last bit: "the leader of the free world." That's what journalists used to call the U.S. president, and occasionally the country as a whole, during the Cold War. Between the end of World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the "free world" included all the English-speaking countries outside Africa, along with western Europe, North America, some South American dictatorships, and nations like the Philippines that had a neocolonial relationship with the United States. The U.S.S.R. led what, by this logic, was the un-free world, including the Warsaw Pact countries in eastern Europe, the "captive" Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the People's Republic of China (for part of the period), North Korea, and of course Cuba. Americans who grew up in these years knew that the people living behind the "Iron Curtain" were not free. We'd seen the bus ads and public service announcements on television requesting donations for Radio Free Europe, sometimes illustrated with footage of a pale adolescent man, his head crowned with chains. I have absolutely no doubt that he and his eastern European countrymen were far from free. I do wonder, however, how free his counterparts in the American-backed Brazilian, Argentinian, Chilean, and Philippine dictatorships felt. The two great adversaries, together with the countries in their spheres of influence, were often called the First and Second Worlds. Their rulers treated the rest of the planet -- the Third World -- as a chessboard across which they moved their proxy armies and onto which they sometimes targeted their missiles. Some countries in the Third World refused to be pawns in the superpower game, and created a non-aligned movement, which sought to thread a way between the Scylla and Charybdis of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Among its founders were some of the great Third World nationalists: Sukarno of Indonesia, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, along with Yugoslavia's President Josip Broz Tito. Other countries weren't so lucky. When the United States took over from France the (unsuccessful) project of defeating Vietnam's anti-colonial struggle, people in the U.S. were assured that the war that followed with its massive bombing, napalming, and Agent-Oranging of a peasant society represented the advance of freedom against the forces of communist enslavement. Central America also served as a Cold War battlefield, with Washington fighting proxy wars during the 1980s in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, where poor campesinos had insisted on being treated as human beings and were often brutally murdered for their trouble. In addition, the U.S. funded, trained, and armed a military dictatorship in Honduras, where John Negroponte -- one of the anti-Trump letter signers -- was the U.S. ambassador from 1981 to 1985.

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).
The statue was the coup de gras.





Right. Even his stalwart supporters have better memories than that.

Huffington Post:

Imagine Trump never said another derogatory thing about women. He'd still be the guy who lashed out at Fox News host Megyn Kelly by suggesting she asked tough questions because of her menstrual cycle. And he'd still be the guy who has at various points called individual women "pig," "dog" and "fat slob."

Imagine that Trump never uttered an unkind words about Latinos. He'd still be the guy who claimed that Mexico was sending rapists across the border, who thought he could court Hispanic voters by eating a taco salad on Cinco de Mayo and who questioned the integrity of a judge presiding over an anti-Trump lawsuit because of the judge's Mexican heritage.

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 WSWS

Donald Trump's campaign chairman Paul Manafort resigned Thursday, amid mounting signs that the Republican presidential candidate is refocusing his political efforts to combine the campaign for the November 8 election with preparations for launching a fascistic political movement in the post-election period.

Manafort was pushed aside Wednesday when Trump named Stephen Bannon, head of the ultra-right Breitbart News, as campaign CEO, while elevating one of his advisers, pollster Kellyanne Conway, to the position of campaign manager.

Spokesmen for the Trump campaign initially claimed that Manafort was not being displaced, but in barely 24 hours he had submitted his resignation and Trump had accepted it. The shake-up puts the Trump campaign under its third leadership in three months.

Manafort, a longtime Republican Party operative going back to the 1970s, joined the campaign to assist its delegate-selection effort after Trump's initial primary victories. He became campaign chairman in May, shunting aside campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was fired a month later.

The ouster of Manafort came after several days of media attacks over his work on the political campaigns of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The New York Times published the first report August 14, citing an alleged "black ledger" of under-the-table cash payments by Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president who was ousted in 2014 by a US-sponsored ultra-right coup.

Manafort had worked as an adviser to Yanukovych and his Party of Regions during his successful 2010 election campaign and then later during his administration in Kiev. He maintained contracts with well-heeled Ukrainian clients, including several billionaire oligarchs, until he joined the campaign of the American billionaire Trump.

The drumbeat escalated with an Associated Press report that Manafort had hired two prominent Washington lobbying groups, one Democratic and one Republican, to give the Yanukovych government a more positive image in official circles in the United States. The funds were routed through a London foundation, set up by a Ukrainian billionaire, to evade US requirements that lobbyists for a foreign government register as agents of that government.

The Democratic lobbyists hired by Manafort on behalf of Yanukovych were from the Podesta Group, a firm set up with the participation of John Podesta, who is currently the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, and still run by his brother Tony Podesta. But the US media has paid little attention to this connection, instead using the issue exclusively to pummel the Trump campaign chairman.

The Clinton campaign has used the Manafort resignation to intensify the Democratic Party attack on Trump from the right, portraying him as a virtual agent of Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is part of the Democratic Party's efforts to maintain the support of the military-intelligence apparatus and dominant sections of the ruling class on the basis that Clinton will be a more reliable "Commander in Chief" to lead the country into war.

Clinton's campaign manager Robbie Mook declared in a press statement released Friday, "Paul Manafort's resignation is a clear admission that the disturbing connections between Donald Trump's team and pro-Kremlin elements in Russia and Ukraine are untenable." Mook continued, "It's also time for Donald Trump to come clean on his own business dealings with Russian interests, given recent news reports about his web of deep financial connections to business groups with Kremlin ties."

While Trump released a brief written statement praising Manafort, his son Eric Trump gave an interview to Fox News in which he admitted, "My father didn't want to be, you know, distracted by whatever Paul was dealing with."

While the claims of shady dealings in Ukraine provided a pretext for removing Manafort, there is little doubt that he was on his way out anyway. Trump had repeatedly rebuffed Manafort's urgings to run a conventional election campaign, refusing to spend money on either television advertising or campaign organization in the so-called battleground states, the dozen or so states that have been competitive between the Democrats and Republicans over the past half dozen presidential elections.

The selection of Stephen Bannon as campaign CEO, and, in effect, Manafort's boss, was a declaration of war against such an approach. Bannon, a wealthy former Wall Street operative for Goldman Sachs, took control of Breitbart News after the death of its founder in 2012, and built it into a political center for ultra-right elements of the Republican Party.

He is publicly identified with the "alt-right," those who espouse "white nationalism" and other fascistic views, opposing the Republican congressional leadership as too soft on immigration and foreign trade. Bannon invited Nigel Farage, leader of the far-right anti-immigrant United Kingdom Independence Party, for a visit to Washington where he introduced him to prominent Republicans.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Visiting the Pentagon shortly after the Sept. 11th terror attacks in 2001, retired 4-star General Wesley Clark was shocked to learn from a former colleague that plans were being drawn up to invade Iraq.

"We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" Clark asked.

"I don't know," said his friend, another general. "I guess they don't know what else to do," Clark recounted, in an interview on Democracy Now.

The general then told Clark that even though the U.S. had no information linking Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to the 9-11 attacks, top officials were still bent on making war.

"I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments," he said, adding, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

Clark came back to see the same officer in November, and by that time the U.S. had already started bombing Afghanistan, the home base of the al-Qaeda terrorists who allegedly carried out the 9-11 attacks.

"Are we still going to war with Iraq?" Clark asked.

"Oh, it's worse than that," the general replied. Pulling up a piece of paper, he said, "I just got this down from upstairs --- the Secretary of Defense's office --- today. This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran."

The document, of course, was classified. A year later when Clark saw the same individual, he reminded him of the memo. The man replied, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"

**************************************************

In the 15 years since former General Clark heard the sweeping plan for regime-change abroad, the scenario has in large part become reality.

Iraq's government was removed by force by an American invasion and a brutal eight-year war. Libya's government was also changed at the point of a gun in 2011 after American and NATO forces bombed the country and gave support to a group of insurgents. Long-time leader Muammar Ghaddafi was murdered and a new government formed.

Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Reprinted from Sputnik



Saudi Arabia has been bombing Yemen and many of the arms used were sold to them from the UK

(Image by Flicker) Details DMCA



The silence is in spite of the fact that Western governments are profiting massively from supporting the Saudi military actions in its southern neighbor. Where is the presumed high-minded Western journalism to investigate this horror?

In the latest atrocity, on Monday, more than 10 civilian patients and one staff at a hospital were killed when Saudi warplanes bombed the facility in the northern province of Hajjah. The hit was confirmed by French-based medical charity, Doctors Without Borders, which runs the hospital. It was the fourth time over the past year that a DWB facility in Yemen was targeted in air raids.

Only days before the latest hospital strike, 10 children were killed when their school was hit -- again reportedly by Saudi warplanes -- in the adjacent province of Saada.

Elsewhere this week there were reports of two women and two children killed in airstrikes on residential homes near the capital Sanaa. Also, five civilians died after the vehicle they were traveling in was hit from the air.

The US government issued a condemnation of the hospital attack and the Saudi military coalition stated that it was "investigating" the incident. Meanwhile, the Saudis denied the deadly strike on the school, claiming that it was a training center used by Houthi rebels. Local sources negated the Saudi claim, confirming that the victims were all young children.

Condemnation from Washington about the hospital strike may not amount to much beyond empty rhetoric aimed at deflecting from the atrocity. Last October, the US Air Force carried out an airstrike on a DWB hospital in northern Afghanistan, killing more than 30 people.

If Washington had any compunction about wiping out hospitals, and a will to stop inflicting further civilian "collateral damage," then why does it continue to give full military and political support to Saudi Arabia in the latter's year-and-a-half war on Yemen, where hospitals, schools and homes are bombed from the air on a weekly basis?

Last week, the Obama administration signed off a $1.5 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. According to the Washington Post, the US has sold the Saudis a total of $20 billion in weapons over the past year.

Britain, France and Germany have also made a financial killing from selling weapons to the Saudi regime over the same period. Britain alone reportedly sold nearly $4 billion-worth of weaponry to the oil-rich kingdom in 2015.

Western arms exports include fighter jets, helicopter gunships, air-to-ground missiles, tanks and anti-missile defense systems.

Apart from the occasional verbal "concern" about civilian deaths in Yemen, Western governments have largely been mute on the slaughter occurring in that country.

Saudi Arabia and its regional allies -- other Western-backed oil-rich dictatorships in the Persian Gulf -- began attacking Yemen in March 2015. The so-called coalition waging war on the Arab region's poorest country received, from the outset, diplomatic and military support from Western governments, even though the legal grounds were highly dubious. Arguably, what is happening to Yemen is out-and-out foreign aggression -- a Nuremberg standard supreme crime -- which Western countries are fully complicit in.



The official reasoning is that the Houthi rebels ousted President Mansour Hadi. The Saudis and the Western media typically refer to deposed Hadi regime as the "internationally recognized" government of Yemen. The implication is that the Houthi-led uprising is illegitimate. However, the ousted president is seen by many Yemenis as a corrupt puppet of Saudi Arabia and Washington.

The Western media also repeat the Saudi claim that the Houthi rebels are backed by Iran, which again serves to justify the Saudi military assault. There is no evidence for that claim, and Iran denies it. It is rather a propaganda device giving cover to Saudi Arabia for what is patently international aggression, a propaganda device that the Western media fully facilitate.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
This is a reprint from NewsBred.

Indian Express came out in defence of Amnesty International this week and launched a scathing attack against the antiquated sedition law and the action initiated by the Karnataka government.

The matter in question is a recent gathering in Bengaluru held under Amnesty International "India's Broken Families Campaign." A few sufferers from Kashmir and their families were paraded before the audience and emotions were incited to the extent against the army and its "atrocities" that a section of gathering cited slogans of "Azaadi"--ostensibly freedom from India. Consequently, the charges and a sedition case were slapped on them by the state government.

Indian Express in its editorial has called it a "harassment" of Amnesty International, since the "azaadi" slogans were raised by a few individuals; It says, and I quote: "There is no reason to panic if a few students or activists raise anti-India slogans" It shows that the state is becoming intolerant and insecure"(and to) suppress inconvenient speech."

A few questions to Indian Express on our readers' behalf:

(a)If Amnesty India had no role why did it issue a press statement saying it was "neutral" on the matter of "any position in favour of or against demands for self-determination." That they consider the "right to peacefully advocate political solutions." Why Indian constitution, even Jammu and Kashmir constitution,clearly states that its an integral part of India. Shouldn't those who call for secession and those who give it a platform--without even condemning it--deserve to have a sedition case slapped against them?

(b)Doesn't Indian Express know that this same Amnesty International stated in the Charlie Hebdo case that the "freedom of speech" has to have a limit?

(c)Doesn't Indian Express know that this same Amnesty International didn't raise a word when the WMD bogey was deceitfully raised by United States to attack Iraq in 2003? That millions suffered and would suffer for a few generations in future.

(d)Doesn't Indian Express know that US State Department and Amnesty International are often found in sync in orchestrating an issue which embarrasses another country? That so many cases of human rights violations by the United States hardly elicit a reaction from Amnesty International?

Okay, you want the matter to be closer to home? Then Indian Express please explain:

(a)Why the families paraded in front of audience by Amnesty International in Bengaluru didn't include a Kashmiri Pandit. Why the exodus, humiliation, torture and murder of Kashmiri Pandits is never an issue with Amnesty International nor with Indian Express or our pseudo-intellectuals?

(b)While portraying Indian army as a monstrous presence in the valley, would Indian Express like to highlight the nation's gratitude to our soldiers' heroic work, putting their lives on line, in saving the Kashmiris during the terrible 2014 floods? Does it question Rahul Gandhis, Mayawatis and Mulayams for their indifference to martyrdoms of our soldiers, at the same time falling over each other over the "flogging" of Una?

(c)Doesn't Indian Express feel odd when a seven-year-old daughter makes a poignant parting salute to her dead father, the commandant killed in Jammu and Kashmir, yet the powerful image never makes it to its news pages. Does the blood of our soldiers is one of enemies in their eyes?

(d)Indian Express says: "There is no reason to panic (on "Azaadi" slogans). it shows that the state is becoming intolerant and insecure." Instead, it should have lauded the Indian state for its alertness. Indian state today knows how such secessionist forces are nurtured by Lutyens Media and foreign NGOs/Think Tanks. Indian state is prompt, not intolerant, and that's how an elected government ought to react when it comes to dealing with secessionist forces.

Amnesty International, by its conduct and subsequent statement, has shown itself contemptuous to India's sovereignty. Amnesty International can't be a host and mute to "azaadi" slogans against Indian state and hope the laws of the land won't swing into action.

Not everyone is as lucky and privileged as Indian Express, you see.
JMA Pilani Rajasthan Observes World Humanitarian Day

JMA Pilani Rajasthan Observes World Humanitarian Day

http://jmapilani.org/

World Humanitarian Day is a time to recognize those who face danger and adversity in order to help others. The day was designated by the General Assembly to coincide with the anniversary of the 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, Iraq.The world at large undoubtedly needs more of Happiness, Sustainability, Team Work, Peace, Healthcare, Education, Understanding, Clean Air, Drinking Water, Food, Clothing, Housing etc. To achieve this, more youngsters must come voluntarily forward to help others as World Humanitarian Day is all about Celebrating People Helping People.19 August, 2013 indeed marks 10 years since that tragic Baghdad event, which claimed 22 lives. This year, the international community will pause to remember those who died, as well as the dozens of aid workers, who have died in the years since. But World Humanitarian Day is also an opportunity to celebrate the spirit that inspires humanitarian work around the globe. The theme chosen for 2016 is One Humanity.JMA Pilani has established a rich tradition of celebrating various days of national as well as global importance. On 19 August 2016, JMA Pilani celebrated United Nations World Humanitarian Day. Addressing the students and teachers during assembly, Mrs Booma Natarajan Principal highlighted the significance of the day and the theme by stating that There is no Indian Humanity, Chinese Humanity, African Humanity, British Humanity and American Humanity but instead there is just One Humanity, nothing more, nothing less. The Principal also urged the students to be like monsoon clouds which carry water to quench thirst of others and a lit lamp which shows way for others.Smt. Jamuna Mishra Academy (JMA) established in the year 2004 which has been making rapid strides in early childhood education is presently one of the most sought after schools at Pilani Rajasthan well known in India today for BITS Pilani University as well as CSIR Laboratory CEERI and world renowned Birla Science Museum. JMA Pilani is a Co-educational English Medium School with Experienced Teachers, Spacious Classrooms and Modern Amenities designed to impart Quality Education combined with All Round Personality Development and lay the Best Foundation for the Childs Future. JMA which started in 2004 with an enrollment of 60 students for the Nursery, LKG, First Junior and Class I has grown today till Class XII and enrollment of 900. While the school admits both boys and girls, the girl student enrollment has been steadily rising every year and is presently nearly 50% of the total strength. The school has NCC for boys and the school girls band has been winning laurels every year too. Yoga and Fine arts are not just part of school routine but a way of life for the students.Mrs Booma Natarajan, M.Sc., M.A., B.Ed.Principal, Jamuna Mishra Academy  JMANear Old Pilani Post OfficePilani Rajasthan 333031 IndiaPhone 91-1596-242314Email booma_pilani at yahoo.co.inWebsite:
Worldwide Medical Tourism Market will grow at a CAGR of More than 17.0% by 2022

Worldwide Medical Tourism Market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/global-medical-tourism-market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/

Florida, August 19: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Medical Tourism Market by Treatment Type and by Geography - Global Industry Analysis by Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2015  2022.The Global Medical Tourism Market will Grow at CAGR of 17% in the given forecast period and will cross USD 54.00 Billion mark by 2022.Browse the full report here:Due to the rising medical services cost in the western countries and availability of high quality medical services at lower prices in the Asian countries like Singapore, India, Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey, South Korea, Costa Rica, Poland, Dubai and Philippines has led to the expansion of medical tourism industry in this area. Many countries are planning to leverage medical tourism as a strategy to boost their healthcare services and tourism industry. By encouraging its presence in the medical tourism market, a country can stimulate its economic growth and create employment opportunities.Consequently, the medical tourism industry is rapidly expanding and is anticipated to have a significant growth in the near future. According to the one study done by Medical Tourism Association it was estimated that approx 1.6 million Americans have travelled to other destinations in 2012 for medical/healthcare services and this number is anticipated to grow in the near future.This market research report on the global medical tourism helps in understanding the important forces responsible for the growth of this industry. The research report provides in-depth analysis of the geographies facilitating inbound medical services that include Singapore, India, Thailand, Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico, Turkey, Taiwan, South Korea and prospective countries. The market overview section of the report comprises qualitative analysis of the overall market considering the factors determining the market dynamics such as drivers, restraints and opportunities along with Porters five forces analysis. These different analyses would provide a thorough understanding about the market from its past, present and future perspectives and help market players to design effective business strategies. Further, the report on medical tourism comprises executive summary chapter that will help you understand the overall market size, growth rate of various segments, geographies and competitors present in the market in a very precise manner.The medical tourism industry is segmented on the basis of type of treatment and geographyBY TREATMENT TYPE Cosmetic Treatment Dental Treatment Cardiovascular Treatment Orthopedics Treatment Fertility Treatment Other General TreatmentBY GEOGRAPHY Singapore India Malaysia Mexico Costa Rica Brazil Turkey South Korea Thailand Taiwan Philippines Dubai PolandAbout MarketResearchEngine.comMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging healthcare technologies, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Website:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Multilayer Ceramic Capacitor (MLCC) Market : Dynamics, Segments, Size and Demand to 2015 - 2021

Multilayer Ceramic Capacitor Market

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/4732

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/4732

Ceramic capacitor is endowed with the alternate layers of ceramic and metal. The ceramic material acts as a dielectric. Demand for these ceramic capacitor is rising owning to increasing usage in approximately all the electronics devices. The growth of new designs of MLCCs with improved bypassing, higher capacitances, decoupling and filtering capabilities is estimated to increase ceramic usage. MLCC designs results are ensuring ever thinner layers: even less than one micron thick. With this technological advancement, MLCCs are not only smaller in size, but have better charge capacity owning to the increased number of layers. The industry trend in the direction of finer layers is creating the role of filtration more critical for MLCC manufacture.Request TOC :MLCC are used in several applications such as AC-AC and DC-DC converters and for EMI suppression. Ceramic capacitors of particular styles and shapes are used for RFI/EMI suppression and as power capacitors in larger dimensions for transmitters. The multilayer ceramic capacitor market is expected to show the double digit growth at a CAGR during forecast period.The major key factor that contributes to growth of this market is the increasing demand for multilayer ceramic capacitor in the electronics industry. The demand for MLCC is rising in the electronics industry with continuous increase in requirement of high-specification electronic gadgets. The demand for MLCC is majorly created by computers, televisions, mobile phones and other consumer electronics. The companies of high-end electronic devices and equipment have increased the use of MLCCs in electronic device. The multilayer ceramic capacitor has also been witnessing a constant decline in prices. However, the inherent drawback of ceramic capacitor is MLCC has ceramic as dielectric material that is flat to physical damage and may easily get cracked.The MLCCs should be handled with utmost care; otherwise the lifetime of MLCCs would get shorten. The different geographical regions for this market include North America, Europe, Asia-pacific and Rest of the World. The APAC region is the key manufacturing land for electronic device manufacturers. The constant demand for MLCCs in Asia Pacific has led to the appearance of manufacturers from several Asian countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and China. Manufacturers from Asian countries are increasing the production with the improved technologies for production of MLCCs. Moreover, these Asian companies offer MLCCs at comparatively low cost than the companies from other countries. Development and Market size trends of main MLCC application fields in China include computers, mobile phones and TV.Buy Full Report @Some of the major vendors for multilayer ceramic capacitor are Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Taiyo Yuden Co. Ltd., Fenghua Advanced Technology, Murata, Kyocera, YAGEO, Walsin Technology Corp., Chaozhou Three-Circle and Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co. Ltd. Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Murata stress the Chinese market than other markets. Samsung Electro-Mechanics set up four MLCC production plants in Tianjin, Suzhou and Dongguan to generate almost all the types of products. Murata has already established plants in Wuxi and Beijing and its product portfolio covers a wide range.Key geographies evaluated in this report are:North AmericaU.SCanadaEuropeFrance, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UKEastern EuropeCISAPACChinaIndiaJapanAustraliaOthersLatin AmericaArgentinaBrazilOthersKey features of this reportDrivers, restraints, and challenges shaping the Multilayer Ceramic Capacitor market dynamicsLatest innovations and key events in the industryAnalysis of business strategies of the top playersMultilayer Ceramic Capacitor market estimates and forecasts(2015 -2021)About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.ContactPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United StatesUSA - Canada Toll Free: +1 800-961-0353
Kuwait Diesel Gensets Market to Cross US$ 79 Million by 2023

Kuwait Diesel Gensets Market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/reportdetails/kuwait-diesel-gensets-market

http://www.marketresearchengine.com/

New York, Aug 20: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Kuwait Diesel Gensets Market - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2014  2023The kuwait diesel gensets market is expected to exceed more than US$ 79 million by 2023.Browse Full Report:The production business in Kuwait is flourishing among a sequence of new variety of projects which has completed in estimated period. Because of outcome of these projects, requirement of diesel gensets is increase in future. Diesel gensets are not only used to supply continuous power during work but also achieve large production project. This development preparation will helps to drive the funds in the Kuwait diesel gensets market. The charge of diesel in Kuwait is much low as compared to the worldwide average. So the approval of diesel fuel for generating power results fast. Small deviation of diesel gensets is used for primary power generation function. The higher capacity diesel gensets will used in large services for power backup process. The oil or diesel is economical backbone of Kuwait.The major driving factors of Kuwait diesel gensets market are as follows:Fast growing electricity utilization rates and natural gas feed stock insufficiency resultant in repeated power outagesAvailability of diesel at cheaper cost resultant in growing approval of diesel gensetsThe restraints factors of Kuwait diesel gensets market are as follows:Increase in power generation capacity addition and renewable energy deployment to reduce dependence on diesel fueled power solutionsThe Kuwait diesel gensets market is segmented on the lines of its type and capacity. Under type segmentation it covers rental gensets and new gensets. The Kuwait diesel gensets market is segmented on the lines of its capacity like 075 kVA, 5.3 75500 kVA, 5002000 kVA and Over 2000 kVA. The Kuwait diesel gensets market is geographic segmentation covers various regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Each geography market is further segmented to provide market revenue for select countries such as the U.S., Canada, U.K. Germany, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and GCC countries.This report provides:1) An overview of the global market for Kuwait diesel gensets and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2013, estimates for 2014 and 2015, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2020.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for Kuwait diesel gensets.4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.REPORT SCOPE:The scope of the report includes a detailed study of global and regional markets for various types of coatings with the reasons given for variations in the growth of the industry in certain regions.The report covers detailed competitive outlook including the market share and company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Caterpillar, Inc., Kohler Co., FG Wilson Ltd., MTU Onsite Energy GmbH, Perkins Engines Company Limited, Cummins, Inc., Kirloskar Brothers Limited, Aggreko Plc, Atlas Copco AB and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. Company profile includes assign such as company summary, financial summary,business strategy and planning, SWOT analysis and current developments.The Top Companies Report is intended to provide our buyers with a snapshot of the industrys most influential players.The Kuwait Diesel Gensets Market has been segmented as below:by Type AnalysisRental GensetsNew Gensetsby Capacity Analysis075 kVA5.3 75500 kVA5002000 kVAOver 2000 kVAby Regional AnalysisNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificRest of the WorldReasons to Buy this Report:1) Obtain the most up to date information available on all active and planned Kuwait diesel gensets industry globally.2) Identify growth segments and opportunities in the industry.3) Facilitate decision making on the basis of strong historic and forecast of Kuwait diesel gensets industry and unit capacity data.4) Assess your competitors refining portfolio and its evolution.About MarketResearchEngine.comMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Country: United StatesWebsite:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Worldwide Cloud Services Market Supply & Demand By 2015 2021

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/6667

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/6667

Cloud services are those services that are offered to users via the Internet from the server of cloud computing service provider. Such services provide scalable and easy access to various resources and applications, and are entirely managed by the cloud service providers. The examples of cloud services include web-based e-mail services, online backup solutions and data storage, document collaboration services, technical support services, and database processing among others. Cloud service providers supply the necessary software and hardware required for cloud service, thereby eliminating the need for organizations to deploy their own resources for managing networked services. The other advantage of cloud services over the traditional methods of providing infrastructure is faster deployment of services and reduction in in-house maintenance costs.Thinking about report: Please observe the beneath the hyperlinks to satisfy your necessities; Request for the Report sample :On the basis of mode of delivery, the cloud services market is segmented into Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). The SaaS mode of delivery is further segmented into SMB and mobile corporate SaaS cloud services, corporate SaaS cloud services, SMB SaaS cloud services and others. North America is the largest contributor to the cloud services market due to the high penetration of internet in this region. This region is followed by Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW).Major benefits offered by cloud services are driving business organizations in implementing the use of cloud services. Cloud services maximize the effectiveness of shared resources and ensure the business organizations higher returns and faster paybacks. In addition, cloud services offer scalable solutions to growing business organizations at low cost of ownership. This drives business organizations to invest in such services that allow them to generate higher revenues by optimizing the available resources. However, the data security issues are the roadblocks that are adversely affecting the growth of this market. The increasing data hacking incidences using sophisticated tools result in loss of sensitive data, causing serious dents in the business revenues. Also, there are constant evolutions of new security threats that are affecting the quality of cloud services. Further, the small and medium businesses find it difficult to repeatedly invest in the customized solutions available for cloud services security. Due to such factors, the business organizations are reluctant in investing in the cloud services and prefer to carry on with conventional methods of network infrastructure.Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report:Some of the major players in the market are improving their existing services by adding new and innovative features. This helps them in staying competitively ahead in the market. For instance, Akamai Technologies, Inc., one of the leading cloud services providers, recently added Zone Apex Mapping feature to its Ion network acceleration technology. This feature reduces DNS resolution time and avoids HTTP redirects. Other major players in the market include VMware, Inc., (U.S.), Taleo Corporation (Ireland), Oracle Corporation, (U.S.), NetSuite Inc., (U.S.), Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), Joyent Inc., (U.S.), International Business Machines Corporation (U.S.), Hewlett-Packard (U.S.), Flexiant Limited (United Kingdom), ENKI Consulting (U.S.), Etelos Inc.,(U.S.), Citrix Systems Inc., (U.S.), Cisco Systems Inc., (U.S.), CA Technologies, Inc., (U.S.), and SAP AG (Germany).About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Global Agricultural Enzymes Market Competitive landscape By 2020

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3304

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3304

Agricultural enzymes are biological catalysts used extensively in agricultural based biotechnological processing, such as enzyme-assisted silage fermentation, processing of crops and crop residues, bio-processing of fibers, and production of many animal feed supplements. The technological advancement in the field of agricultural enzymes has boosted both the manufacturing capacity and application of agricultural enzyme such as invent of phytases (enhances the nutritional contents of the food grains) and silage fermentation.Growing demand of processed food, rising demand of renewable energy sources such as bio-fuel, coupled with cost-efficiency of agricultural enzymes has helped in its wide acceptance in agricultural sector.Thinking about report: Please observe the beneath the hyperlinks to satisfy your necessities; Request for the Report sample :Based on the various crop types the global enzymes market can be broadly categorized as cereals & grains, oilseeds & pulses, fruits & vegetables and others. On the basis of the various chemical properties of the enzymes the global agricultural enzyme market can be segmented in five broad categories namely, carbohydrates, proteases, lipases, polymerases & nucleases and othersGrowing demand of natural and organic food, coupled with rising awareness towards hazardous properties of pesticides and other chemicals used in agricultural have raised the demand of green and naturally sourced agrochemicals over the years. Moreover rising government concern over food and environment safety in the Asia Pacific and Latin America has led to many stringent regulations, such as integrated pest management (IPM). Such regulations are forcing the farmers of this region to adopt bio-based chemicals in place of their conventional chemical counterparts. This trend is expected to increase the demand of agricultural enzymes in coming years.North America is the largest market of agricultural enzyme attributed to growing agriculture industry and rising awareness towards organic forming. It is followed by Asia Pacific and Europe. Asia Pacific is the fasted growing market of agricultural enzymes where growth rate is expected in double digit attributed mainly to government initiatives towards integrated pest management (IPM) and increasing acceptance of genetically modified (GM) seeds by the farmers in this region.Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report:Some of the leading global players operating in global agricultural enzymes market include, Novozymes A/S, Agrinos Inc., Agri Life., Stoller Usa Inc., Bioworks Inc., Syngenta Ag, Aries Agro Ltd., Greenmax Agro Tech., and Camson Bio Technologies Limited.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Worldwide Animal Vaccines Market Drivers and Restraints 2020

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3310

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3310

Vaccines make animals disease-immune for a particular disease. In biological terms, vaccination against a particular pathogen aims to mimic the development of naturally acquired immunity by inoculation of non-pathogenic but immunogenic components of that pathogen. Animal vaccines market is dominated by production animals due to increasing global consumption of meat and milk products. The animal vaccines market can be segmented into seven categories based on animal type namely livestock, companion animals, poultry, equine, aquaculture, and other animal vaccines. Some of the key segments are further categorized based on the application of these animals. The livestock vaccines can be segmented into bovine vaccines and small ruminant vaccines, whereas the companion animal vaccines include canine vaccines and feline vaccines.Based on technology, animal vaccines market are categorized under seven key segments namely live attenuated vaccines, inactivated vaccines, subunit vaccines, toxoid vaccines, conjugate vaccines, recombinant vaccines and DNA vaccines.DNA vaccines is growing at the fastest rate among the segments by technology due to cost effectiveness, convenient production and added thermo-stability as compared with traditional vaccines.Thinking about report: Please observe the beneath the hyperlinks to satisfy your necessities; Request for the Report sample :The animal vaccines market is also increasing due to the increasing animal bites which may be fatal for human if the animal is not vaccinated against diseases. According to King County (a county in the U.S.), out of the total animal bites in the U.S. every year, approximately two-thirds are dog bites, which is high among children of age group 5-9 years. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, in 2012 more than 27,000 people underwent reconstructive surgery as a result of dog bite. The Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that dog attack victims suffer losses of around one-two billion every year over treatment in the U.S.According to the European Pet Food Industry Federation, there were 271.1 million pet animals in the European Union in 2012 including 75.3 million pet dogs and 89.8 million pet cats. France, Italy, the U.K., Ukraine and Germany were in the list of top ten countries with the largest cat population, while France and Romania had the largest dog population in Europe. Leptospirosis is one of the key bacterial diseases which occur in 60% of U.K. dairy herds. The most common preventive measure for this disease is vaccination.Asia Pacific is witnessing high growth rate in production animals vaccines due to its increasing consumption and trade of meat. Chinas increasing demand for meat is making it one of the largest markets for animal healthcare products for production animals. In 2012, production animals accounted for 98% of the animal healthcare market in the country. According to USDA, with the consumption of 71.2 million tons, China consumed almost one quarter of the total meat produced globally in 2012. It is also the largest swine meat consumer globally.Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report:The global animal vaccines market is dominated by North America followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. Asia is expected to witness fastest growth during 2014-2020 on account of increasing per capita income which is increasing the expenditure of people on meat and milk products. The major companies in the animal vaccines market include Zoetis, Merck, Sanofi-Aventis, Bayer Healthcare Novartis and Virbac.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Worldwide Cattle Feed and Feed additives Market Dynamics 2020

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3334

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3334

Cattle feed and feed additives are used for improving the quality of feed to enhance yield and overall cattles health. Cattle feed are gaining popularities mainly due to the enhance performance and increasing application such as growth promoter, prevention and cure of diseases and for improving feed digestibility in cattle.Based on animal type, the global cattle feed market is categorized in three broad segments namely mature ruminants, young ruminants, and others. Based on the different product type, the market is segmented in six broad categories: antibiotics, vitamins, antioxidants, amino acid, feed enzymes, feed acidifier and others.Thinking about report: Please observe the beneath the hyperlinks to satisfy your necessities; Request for the Report sample :The rising awareness among consumers towards the nutritional content and safety of milk and meat, coupled with recent disease epidemic in cattle are some of the leading drivers of the market. Moreover demand for milk and meat is increasing in most part of the world and hence the formers are now more concern over the health and yield of the cattle which in turns helping the global cattle feed and feed additives market.Increasing prices of raw materials is one of the major challenges for the industry. However, the growing demand of cattle feed from the emerging economics such as China, Brazil and India are providing new growth opportunities for the cattle feed and feed additives markets. The manufacturers are advancing their production technology for both cost and capacity benefits.Asia Pacific is the largest market for cattle feed and feed additives market attributed to the large share of cattle population in this region. It is followed by North America and Europe. Asia Pacific and North America collectively account for more than 60% of the total market share of cattle feed and feed additives market. Asia Pacific is also the fasted growing region mainly fueled by the increasing demand from China and India. The rising dairy market in this region is expected to boost the cattle feed and feed additives market in upcoming years.Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report:Some of the major companies operating in global cattle feed market include, Kent Corporation Godrej Group, Land Olakes Inc., V. H. Group., Archer Daniels Midland Company, BASF SE, Cargill, Inc., CHR., Hansen Holdings A/S., Evonik Industries AG, and Royal DSM N.V.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Rising Expenditure on Animal Healthcare by Pet Owners and Livestock Farmers to Drive Global Veterinary Vaccines Market, reports TMR

http://bit.ly/2bvbiZV

http://bit.ly/2btAWfp

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

The global market for veterinary vaccines is highly consolidated, with the top five vendors accounting for a share of nearly 65% in the overall market in 2015, reports TMR in a new study. Zoetis, Inc., Merck & Co., and Sanofi Aventis, the top three companies in the market collectively held a share of more than 45% of the overall market in the same year.Get Free Sample Research Report:Targeted in-licensing and acquisitions, expansion of global manufacturing and supply capacities, and increased investments towards research and development activities are some of the key strategies adopted by leading vendors in the market. A recent instance is the strategic alliance of Sanofi with Boehringer Ingelheim in June 2016. Under this alliance, an exchange of Boehringer Ingelheims consumer healthcare (CHC) unit with Sanofis animal health business took place.Rising Prevalence of Zoonotic Diseases and Increased Spending on Companion Animals to Boost Demand for Veterinary VaccinesIn the past few years, factors such as globalization and intense changes in global climate have led to a vast rise in the prevalence of zoonotic diseases globally. To prevent the huge loss of livestock and potential threat to human lives that global outbreaks of several zoonotic diseases cause, there has been a surge in government initiatives aimed at mandating vaccination for companion and farm animals. Active efforts are also undertaken by government and non-government bodies to increase awareness among pet and livestock owners about rampant and hazardous animal diseases, their symptoms, and medication.Also, the vast surge in the global demand for meat, chicken, eggs, and milk is compelling livestock farmers to pay proper attention to vaccination to ensure the production excellent quality products and thereby keep their businesses sustainable and profitable. In the past few years, pet ownership and the money spent for ensuring health and wellness of companion animals has significantly increased on a global front. According to the national pet owners survey of 2015-2016, 65% households in the U.S. own a pet. The pet industry in the U.S. had a valuation of US$ 60.59 bn in 2015 and is expected to rise to US$62.75 bn in 2016.These factors are collectively expected to have a significant impact on the overall development of the global veterinary vaccines market in the next few years. Moreover, the market is also expected to benefit enormously from the vast rise in research and development activities and increased demand for advanced and more effective veterinary vaccines across the globe.High Dependence on Government Distribution Channels and Shorter Product Exclusivity to Hamper GrowthNational governments play a key role in deciding the profitability of the veterinary vaccines market. For instance, the Government of India purchases foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) vaccines in bulk from manufacturers and supplies it to different parts of the country. Such bilk purchases result in reduced prices of the vaccines, substantially bringing down the profitability of manufacturers.The short product exclusivity period in the animal healthcare industry, of nearly 3-5 years results in intense competition from cheaper generic substitutes and over-the-counter products. Additionally, strict regulations for product approval and the resulting decline in the number of products that can enter the market limit the overall profitability of the global veterinary vaccines market substantially.Browse Full Research Report:Live Attenuated Vaccines to Make Sizeable Contribution to Overall RevenuesThe global market for veterinary vaccines is expected to expand at a healthy 6.9% CAGR over the period between 2016 and 2024. The market, which had a valuation of US$6,271.8 mn in 2015, is expected to rise to US$11,403.6 mn by 2024. In terms of technology type, the segment of live attenuated vaccines is presently the leading contributor to markets overall revenues. The segment accounted for over 44% in the global market in 2015. Geography-wise, North America held nearly 37% of the global markets overall revenues in 2015.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Europe Connected Cars Market Report 2014-2020

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-44

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-44

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/europe-connected-cars-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Connected cars are considered to be the future of automobile industry. In addition to wireless LAN devices, connected cars have active safety solutions and automated driver assistance systems. Enabling car owners to connect with all the connectivity devices that are inside and in the vicinity of cars, connected cars also assure to maintain safe distance between cars on roads.These cars also allow drivers to mechanically monitor cars performance and physical condition. The connected car technology can also be used to connect to cars through smartphones or other mobile devices.Research indicates that the market for connected cars, after 2010, has been growing in a nascent stage each year. Providing a wide range of opportunities to automotive and telecom industries, as well as consumers, the market is anticipated to gain mass penetration and witness substantial growth in the near future.Europe, which is currently the second largest market for connected cars, is estimated to outpace North America and create the largest market by 2020 end. Rising demand for vehicle safety and security will continue to be a key driver for market growth.Europe Connected Cars Market: Key DriversIncreasing demand for electric vehicles from European consumers is playing a crucial role in boosting the market for connected cars. Moreover, the market is predicted to gain traction due to widespread adoption of mobile and wireless technologies.Request Free Report Sample@Some governments within EU are introducing various regulations and initiatives regarding vehicles safety, which could be a favourable move for connected car manufacturers and dealers. In addition, availability of advanced telecom and road infrastructure will also continue to fuel the European market for connected cars.Key RestraintsWhile the connected car technology and smartphone technology are conjoint in this industry, the difference in their lifecycles is significant. Car development is a five-year cycle but the smartphone is developed within a much shorter time span. This is expected to act as a major restraint for connected cars in tandem with smartphone technology.Moreover, car manufacturers will need long-term, compatible mobile partners, which is currently a challenge.A recent survey concluded that many consumers from the U.K., Netherlands, Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, and Italy are concerned about the lack of standards across connected car manufacturers. This is anticipated to be a major barrier in the market.Research reflects significant reluctance among consumers about data privacy and digital safety. A sizeable consumer population still prefers to personalise their cars web connection via smartphones USB or Bluetooth, rather than buying a connected car with built-in options. This is another factor that could be a major roadblock to market.Furthermore, many people are not yet ready to pay separately for embedded car connection, which is foreseen to be a setback for the market in Europe.Segmentation: Europe Connected Cars MarketFMIs research on the European market for connected cars provides a six-year forecast, segmenting the market on the basis of technology, hardware, service, and application.On the basis of technology, the market is segmented into long-term evolution (LTE), Wi-Fi, High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), and others.The hardware segment is further segmented as processor, sensor, CPU, memory device, and wireless and cellular module.Based on the service, the market is segmented into original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) services, connected services, after-market services, and other services (e.g. safety services).According to the application, the market is segmented as telematics, navigation, safety and security, infotainment, and communications. However, the safety and security segment is expected to outperform all the segments, followed by infotainment, which is said to record the fastest growth in the European connected cars market.Europe Estimated to Surpass the Current Market Leader, North AmericaThe EU has always been highly supportive in promoting the connected car technology. The European CEN and ETSI have set certain standards for cooperative intelligence transport systems (ITS), as per the demand from the European Commission for safer, more efficient, and more sustainable transport. The latest standards make it mandatory for manufacturers to equip each car model with a GPS system and 3G/4G connectivity. Moreover, the technology is expected to interconnect drivers with automakers, dealers, and auto repair shops. This has been a major breakthrough for the connected cars market in Europe.Request For TOC@Influential Trends in the Connected Cars MarketComplete smartphone integration, teen drivers monitoring, digital dashboards, GPS navigation systems with travel guidance, and self-driving (driverless cars) technology are the most notable trends in the connected cars industry, in Europe and globally.In the recent past, Volvo has launched a corporate initiative, according to which self-driving cars and autonomous driving features will be in market in the near future. The companys Drive Me Project in 2017 also featured 100 self-driving Volvos on public roads.Key Players: European Connected Cars MarketKey players in the European connected cars market include Apple, Inc., Airbiquity, Inc., BayerischeMotorenWerke AG (BMW), Delphi Automotive LLP, Ford Motor Company, Microsoft Corporation, TATA Consultancy Services Ltd., Toyota Motors Corp., Verizon Communications, Inc., and AT&T, Inc.Major car manufacturers have already started taking efforts toward smartphone integration to cater to connectivity demand from consumers. Since several companies from telecom and software verticals are rapidly entering the connected cars market, OEMs are expected to concentrate on strengthening their hold in the market.Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Agricultural Biotechnology Market: Growing population globally the drivers for agriculture biotechnology market by 2015  2021

http://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/agricultural-biotechnology-market-global-industry-perspective-comprehensive-analysis

http://www.zionmarketresearch.com/toc/agricultural-biotechnology-market-global-industry-perspective-comprehensive-analysis

http://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/agricultural-biotechnology-market-global-industry-perspective-comprehensive-analysis

http://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/agricultural-biotechnology-market-global-industry-perspective-comprehensive-analysis

http://www.zionmarketresearch.com

Biotechnology is the application of scientific techniques to improve and modify vast field and has application in variety of areas including healthcare, crop production or agriculture among others. Agricultural biotechnology is a collection of new techniques that develops plant, animal, and living organisms to enhance crop productivity and efficiency. Agriculture biotechnology provides farmers innovative technology that can make crop production cheaper and more reasonable. Agricultural biotechnology can be utilized to shield crops from destructive diseases. It is mainly used to modify the genetic sequence of crops known as transgenic or genetically modified crops, which increases the crop productivity.Request Sample Report:Rapid changes in highly technical fields including DNA sequencing, synthetic biology and genome editing are driving new applications and products in agriculture. The overall agricultural biotechnology market is expected to grow at a rapid pace, due to rising demand for food production. Growing population globally is one of the major drivers for agriculture biotechnology market. This factor led to higher demand for genetically modified crops to increase yield. Agriculture biotechnology plays a vital role in biofuel industry and growing demand for biofuels further increases growth of the market. However, strong concern about genetically modified crops and low acceptance by consumers may hamper the growth of market.The agricultural biotechnology market is segmented on the basis of application as transgenic crops and synthetic biology-enabled products and tools. Transgenic crops are further subdivided into major crop types as corn, soybean, cotton and others. Currently, transgenic crop application segment dominates this market. Synthetic biology-enabled products and tools accounted smaller share of agricultural biotechnology market in 2015. Soybean crop is expected to show the highest growth among other genetically modified crops in upcoming years.Request TOC (Table of Contents) of this report:Geographically, North America dominated the agriculture biotechnology market in 2015. This was mainly contributed by increased acceptance by consumers. In Europe market will grow moderately due to strict regulation on genetically modified crops. Asia pacific is expected to grow with high rate in next few years due to large population and high food demand in this region.Key players in this market are DuPont Pioneer, Dow AgroSciences, Evogene, Bayer CropScience, Syngenta, Mycogen Seeds, Monsanto, and Vilmorin among others.Global Agricultural Biotechnology Market: Application Segment AnalysisTransgenic cropsCornSoybeanCottonOthersSynthetic biology-enabled productsToolsDo Inquiry before buying:Global Agricultural Biotechnology Market: Region Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaBrowse report at:About Us:Zion Market Research is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations. Zion Market Research is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air. We have market research reports from number of leading industry and update our collection daily to provide our clients with the instant online access to our database. With access to this database, our clients will be able to benefit from expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends.Contact Us:Zion Market Research4283, Express Lane,Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249, United StatesTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:
Market Forecast Report on Energy Harvesting, 2014-2020

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-58

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-58

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/global-energy-harvesting-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Energy harvesting, one of the most promising technologies to address the energy crises without altering the existing energy sources, is foreseen to witness staggering demand and innovation in the near future. The process of energy harvesting harnesses the power of ambient energy to use later in varied applications. With growing use of ambient energy and advent of the energy harvesting technology, the energy harvesting market is currently heading at a considerable pace globally.FMI extensive research indicates that the global energy harvesting market is anticipated to gain momentum and grow at a double-digit CAGR by 2020 end. A number of newly innovated efficient energy applications and widespread acceptance of renewable energy sources are expected to play a vital role in the growth of the global energy harvesting market during the forecast period 2014-2020.Key Drivers: Energy Harvesting MarketDuring the past decade, there has been growing demand for safe, power efficient, and enduring systems, which require minimum or no maintenance. This is a major driver of market growth, expected to continue pushing the demand for devices based on the energy harvesting technology. Growing applications of the energy harvesting technology in building and home automation is another key driver to the market growth.Moreover, industrial WSN demand energy harvesting on a large scale, which is expected to continue during the forecast period as well. The green energy trend is effectively governing the market, while favourable initiatives by various governments are also boosting the market on a global level.Abundance of renewable energy sources, including tidal, wind, and ocean energy provide a dependable platform for the innovation of energy harvesting applications. This is also an influential factor contributing to the growth of market.Request Free Report Sample@Key Restraints to Market GrowthThe technology based on energy harvesting is typically used off-grid or on-demand. However, both of these usage patterns possess some technological complexities, which may restrict the widespread demand for energy harvesting devices in the market. Another deterring factor includes inadequate awareness among consumers about the availability and usage of the devices based on harvested energy.Moreover, relatively higher initial costs associated with these devices are expected to curtail the growth of the market globally. The energy harvesting technology generates lower current, which makes it incompatible for the application in all types of energy domains.Global Energy Harvesting Market: SegmentationFMIs research on the global energy harvesting market provides a six-year forecast, segmenting the market on the basis of different energy sources/fields, applications, and geography.On the basis of different energy sources/fields, the energy harvesting market is segmented into radiation (solar, electromagnetic, and light), mechanical (fluid, elastic, kinetic, and potential), chemical (battery, fuel cells, and phase change), nuclear, magnetic, electric, thermal, and gravitational. Among these, electric and magnetic fields form the most common source for harvesting energy.Based on the application, the energy harvesting market is segmented as wireless sensor network (WSN), consumer electronics, industrial, building, bicycle dynamo, military and aerospace, automotive, healthcare, and others (research, animals, and farming). Among these, consumer electronics, including mobile phones, wrist watches, calculators, and piezoelectric gas lighters cover the maximum share of the global energy harvesting market, followed by military and aerospace-based applications. However, building and home automation is the fastest growing application segment in the energy harvesting sector. Energy harvesting is also an integral part in a wireless sensor network (WSN) these days.According to the geography, the energy harvesting market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Japan, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. Among these, Americas are projected to remain the dominating markets in 2016, with a significant market share. However, Europe will be the fastest growing market, owing to burgeoning promotion and investments by The European Commission in R&D of energy harvesting and storage devices. North America and Asia Pacific will also account for remarkable market shares by 2020 end. In North America, the U.S. will dominate, whereas in APAC, Japan will reportedly contribute the largest share to the total energy harvesting market revenues.Request For TOC@Notable Market TrendsBuilding and infrastructure, automation of lighting, security, and electronics at homes, and WSNs for bridges include some of the most sought after applications of energy harvesting since the past few years.The use of mmWave (millimetre wave) for 5G cellular networks has been a popular trend of wireless energy harvesting.The market is expected to gain traction from growing application of energy harvesting in wearable devices and mobile phones.Energy harvesting is estimated to find increasing applications in automobile industry in the near future.The advent of nanotechnology has offered ample of growth opportunities to the energy harvesting market. Since nanotechnology helps manufacturing of compact-sized devices, the emergence of portable devices based on energy harvesting technology is the most likely occurrence in the market.Key Players: Global Energy Harvesting MarketSome of the prominent players competing in the industry include ABB Limited, Arveni, Enocean, Fujitsu, Cypress Semiconductor Corp., Green Peak Technologies, Honeywell International, Inc., Levant Power Corporation, Marlow Industries, Inc., Microchip Technology, Inc., MicroGen Systems, Maxim Integrated, G24 Innovations Limited, Texas Instruments Inc., and STMicroelectronics.Browse Full Report@Other notable players include Silicon Laboratories, Inc., Siemens AG, Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Mide Technology Corporation, Laird Plc., Lord Microstrain, EnOcean GmbH, Cymbet Corporation, POWERleap, Inc., Schneider Electric, Linear Technology, Microstrain, and Micropelt.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
New Research Report on Medical Tourism Market, 2014-2020

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-249

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-249

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/medical-tourism-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Medical tourism is one of the most dynamically growing industries today. Considered to be the direct impact of globalisation of healthcare, medical tourism certainly exhibits strong growth potential globally. However, based on FMIs research, the market of medical tourism is expected to concentrate within most of the emerging economies of the world.As developing nations are increasingly heading toward technological advancement and quality services in the medical and healthcare sector, the global medical tourism market is anticipated to witness robust growth over 2014-2020, predominantly in Asian countries.The top treatments people travel abroad for, include cancer therapy, cardiovascular surgeries, orthopaedic treatments, dentistry, cosmetic surgeries, reproductive treatments, weight loss therapies, health screenings, and medical tests and scans. In severe cases, a sizeable patient population also seeks second opinion from specialist doctors out of their countries.Key DriversHigh treatment costs and lengthy waiting times for medical procedures, being the two major factors in driving medical tourism, are also supported by easier and cheaper international travel. While the U.K.s population prefers to travel abroad for bypassing long waits, patients from the U.S. travel outside for availing of treatments at cheaper costs.Medical excellence along with international accreditation are the key factors fuelling a majority of international patient flow, eventually boosting international medical tourism. Currently, over 600 medical departments and hospitals all over the globe are accredited by the U.S. Joint Commission International (JCI). The number of accredited facilities is projected to increase almost by 20% each year. This is another important driver associated with the market growth.Request Free Report Sample@Developing countries, with ever-evolving innovation and demonstrable achievements in medical research are estimated to accelerate the approaching medical tourist flow over the forecast period. Growing healthcare investments by various government and private sectors are also anticipated to further bolster the market growth.Key RestraintsHowever, medical tourists are highly prone to a wide variety of health risks after they return. The conditions may include TB, paratyphoid, amoebic dysentery, deep vein thrombosis, and more; usually caused due to poor post-operative care and inadequate rest. This could affect the market to some extent.Stringent documentation processes, issues related to visa approval, and limited insurance coverage are reportedly some of the most deterring factors for the global market.Global Medical Tourism Market: SegmentationFMIs research on the global medical tourism market offers a six-year forecast, segmenting the market on the basis of type of medical treatment and geography.On the basis of the type of treatment, the market is segmented into cosmetic treatment, cardiovascular treatment, fertility treatment, dental treatment, orthopaedic treatment, and other general treatments.On the basis of geography, the market is segmented into Asia pacific, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, North America, and South America.Regional OutlookSome of the prominent medical tourism centres across the globe include Thailand, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Israel, Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines, Dubai, Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Canada, and the U.S. According to Patients Beyond Borders, the global medical tourism market is currently growing at an impressive rate between 15% and 25%, and the flow of patients seeking cross-border treatment options will be the highest in Mexico. South and Southeast Asia are expected to dominate the global market in the near future.Based on MTAs recently released Medical Tourism Index, there are 41 countries participating in the global medical tourism market. While India broadly secures #1, Israel ranks #1 in the quality of services and facilities.India is renowned for specialist cardiac surgeries, while Singapore is a popular medical tourism destination owing to the expertise in complicated surgical procedures. Thailand has been a popular destination for medical tourism and millions of patients have travelled to Thailand since 2006. It is also the top cosmetic surgery centre globally.Request For TOC@Malaysia offers state-of-the-art medical infrastructure and treatments by highly skilled medical professionals, making it another sought after centre among medical tourists. With economically affordable treatment options and favourable government initiatives, Malaysia is anticipated to acquire one of the top market positions in the global medical tourism market, during the forecast period.Key Players: Global Medical Tourism MarketSome of the top key players in the medical tourism industry include Asian Heart Institute (India), Apollo Hospitals (India), Prince Court Medical Centre (Malaysia), Gleneagles Hospital (Singapore), Min-Sheng General Hospital (Taiwan), Samitivej Sukhumvit Hospital (Bangkok), Raffles Medical Group (Singapore), Clemenceau Medical Centre (Lebanon), Bangkok Hospital (Thailand), Bumrungrad International Hospital (Thailand), Fortis Healthcare Ltd. (India), Wooridul Spine Hospital (Korea), KPJ Healthcare Berhad (Malaysia), Anadolu Medical Centre (Turkey), and Asklepios Klinik Barmbek (Germany).While these players rank amongst they compete on the basis of exceptional service quality, optimum patient comfort, and relatively reasonable costs for various treatments. Several facilities are also undergoing mergers, acquisitions, affiliations, and joint ventures for delivering enhanced medical care, thereby strengthening their market positions. A few prominent examples of highly productive collaborations include the collaboration between Bumrungrad International Hospital (Bangkok) and IBM Watson for better cancer care, and the collaboration of Anadolu Medical Centre (Turkey) with Johns Hopkins Medicine (U.S.).Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Worldwide Internet Security Market Report 2015-2025

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-995

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-995

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/internet-Security-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

The Internet security market is forecasted to witness staggering growth, according to Future Market Insights. During the forecast period 2015-2025, the global market for Internet security is expected to cover almost all verticals, including government, manufacturing, retail, IT and ICT, education, and BFSI to grow substantially in terms of value.Dynamically evolving cyber threats, rising usage of mobile apps, and growing implementation of IoT and Big Data are the key factors identified for the augmentation of demand for Internet security solutions and services. However, the information security market will continue to face a challenge due to the lack of adequate talent force. North America is anticipated to retain the top market position, while the Asia Pacific region will exhibit dramatically rapid growth in the Internet security market, through to 2025.Key Drivers for Increased Adoption of the Internet SecurityRising Cyber Threats Number and SeverityDynamically evolving, sophisticated, innovative, and collaborative cyber-attacks prompt at the need for improved security posture. Security specialists are investing efforts in evaluating vulnerabilities in older technologies, which are popularly used today. Advancement of new technologies fuel new security risks, boosting the demand for security solutions.Growing Use of Cloud and IoTAlthough the establishment of cloud technology, Big Data, and IoT are constantly facing multiple challenges, Internet security is found to be the first priority to be addressed, which is why SMEs and corporate are expected to be more inclined toward the adoption of trustworthy security measures in the near future.Request Free Report Sample@Favourable RegulationsOwing to burgeoning expansion of government networks along with growing interconnectivity and data, the governments all over the globe are representing empowered computing abilities. Several e-governance and ecommerce policies and regulations set by various governments, including South Africa, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Czech Republic play a key role in bolstering the spending on Internet security.Innovative Product DevelopmentThe Internet security market is expected to reach a maturity stage in the next few years, and service providers are striving to achieve competitive edge by developing new, innovative products for enhanced security.Restraints to Market GrowthSoaring costs of cyber security products may limit their sales. Pirated antivirus brands thus witness hefty sales in some regions of the world. Moreover, a sizeable population is some of the regions in the global market is not adequately aware of the aftermath of cyber-attacks, the necessity of trustworthy security solution, and the reasons to avoid pirated anti-phishing products. Insufficient expertise and lack of specialised resources available in the market are also expected to restrict the growth.Influential Market TrendsOne of the most prominent ongoing trends in the market is the implementation of cloud-based systems and adoption of cloud-based security services.Growing demand for Internet security in educational organisations is the current trend, estimated to continue.Development of electronic gadgets and communication devices with in-built Internet connectivity is on rise.Current trends in cyber security infrastructure include built-in and bolt-on, and point solution and centralised integrated solution.In addition to protecting computers and other devices, there is an upcoming trend of protecting cars against hacking.Internet Security Market: SegmentationFMIs research on the global Internet security market provides a 10-year forecast on the basis of segmentation, according toproduct type and service, technology, applications, and geography.Based on the product type and service, the market is segmented into hardware and software service. On the basis of technology, the market is segmented as authentication technology, access control technology, content filtering, and cryptography.By application type, the internet security market is segmented as financial institution, retail, government, telecommunications & IT, manufacturing, education, defense aerospace & intelligence, and others, including healthcare and automobile.Request For TOC@Geographically, internet security market is segmented into seven regions, including North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA).Regional Analysis: Global Internet Security MarketAmong all the seven regional segments of the global Internet security market, North America is anticipated to maintain the top market position in terms of revenues. Asia Pacific is predicted to provide the most attractive opportunities to key players, forming the fastest growing lucrative market during 2015-2025.According to Internet World Stats, the Internet penetration in North America is around 89%, while that in Asia is around 45%. However, Asia being the highest populous region forms the largest market for Internet security providers. It has around 50% of the total world population, currently using the Internet.Internet Security Market: Key PlayersThe key players of global internet security market are International Business Machine (IBM) Corp., Hewlett Packard, Microsoft Corp., Cisco System Inc., Intel Corporation (McAfee Inc.), Symantec Corporation, Trend Micro, Kaspersky Lab, and Dell (SonicWall Inc.). Symantec and IBM are anticipated to remain the most prominent markets globally.Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Oil Cleaning Market: Rising demand for oil from the automotive and machinery industry drive the growth of oil cleaning market by 2015-2021

http://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/oil-cleaning-market

http://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/oil-cleaning-market

http://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/oil-cleaning-market

http://www.zionmarketresearch.com/toc/oil-cleaning-market

http://www.zionmarketresearch.com

Oil is neutral and non polar chemical substance, viscous in nature and mainly used in different industries including marine, aerospace, automotive, production and manufacturing. Oil is used for smoothing the functioning of machinery and motors. Oil cleaning is the process to purify the oil by eliminating the impurities such as sludge, water contaminants, acids, solid particles and traces of fuels. Oil cleaning machine pass the oil to the purifier by using the engine pressure. Oil is filtered in the purifier and contaminants ranging greater than one micron are removed. These filters are recyclable and can be changed when the contamination limit is crossed. Oil cleaning system can be directly fitted to the engine.Request Sample Report:The report provides a comprehensive view on the oil cleaning market we have included a detailed value chain analysis. To understand the competitive landscape in the market, an analysis of Porters Five Forces model for the oil cleaning market has also been included. The study encompasses a market attractiveness analysis, wherein product segments are benchmarked based on their market size, growth rate and general attractiveness. The report also analyzes several driving and restraining factors and their impact on the oil cleaning market during the forecast period.Rising demand for oil from the automotive and machinery industry drive the growth of oil cleaning market. Constant development of oil cleaning system has increased the demand for the oil cleaning equipment. Moreover, low operating cost, escalating concern for recycle technology and demand for high quantity of oil is expected to boost the growth of oil cleaning market. However, low acceptance of oil cleaning technologies from the emerging countries may impede the growth of oil cleaning market. Lack of awareness about oil cleaning technologies is likely to hamper the growth of oil cleaning market. Nevertheless, rapid industrialization and developing urbanization in the developing countries is anticipated to open new opportunities in the forecast period.Do Inquiry before buying:Based on technology, oil cleaning market segmented into offline filter, glass fiber pressure filter, hydraulic bypass, vacuum filter, centrifugal separator, glass fiber pressure filter, and electrostatic filter. Centrifugal oil cleaning emerged as the potential segment for the oil cleaning while hydraulic bypass and magnetic filtration are the recently developed techniques. Oil cleaning has wide range of applications and used as clean oil in turbine, motors, machinery, automotive, cement, plastic modeling and forging, defense, aerospace and casting among others.North America and Europe together holds the largest share of oil cleaning market owing to developed industry and high demand for oil. Asia Pacific and Middle East are expected to grow at faster pace due to rapidly growing commercialization and increasing adoption of the oil cleaning equipments.Clean Oil Technology AB, Trident Engineering, Kleenoil Filtration Ltd., Puradyn Filter Technologies Inc., Kleentek, Ferrocare Machines Pvt. Ltd, KlassicKlarol Filters Private Ltd and Triple R Co. Ltd among others are some of the key players in the oil cleaning market.Browse report at:The report segments of the oil cleaning market into:Oil Cleaning Market: Technology Segment AnalysisOffline filterGlass fiber pressure filterHydraulic bypassVacuum filterCentrifugal separatorGlass fiber pressure filterElectrostatic filterOil Cleaning Market: Application Segment AnalysisTurbineMotorsMachineryAutomotiveCementPlastic modelingForgingDefenseAerospaceCastingOtherRequest TOC (Table of Contents) of this report:Oil Cleaning Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaAbout Us:Zion Market Research is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations. Zion Market Research is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air. We have market research reports from number of leading industry and update our collection daily to provide our clients with the instant online access to our database. With access to this database, our clients will be able to benefit from expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends.Contact Us:Zion Market Research4283, Express Lane,Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249, United StatesTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:
Virology Market To Increase at Steady Growth Rate

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1150

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1150

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/virology-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Virology, the study of viruses, is an unparalleled branch of life sciences. With immensely high prevalence of diseases such as flu, hepatitis, AIDS, and STDs, the importance of virology is repeatedly highlighted. The global virology market is expected to grow over 2015-2025.FMIs research identifies growing infectious diseases as a key force driving the market throughout the forecast period.Key Drivers: Virology MarketEarly in 2016, the WHO officially issued a warning about the possible spread of zika virus to each Western Hemispheric region, as the disease vector Aedes aegypti was found to thrive strong in tropical and sub-tropical climatic conditions. This has been a key driver of market growth throughout 2016.The virology market is constantly catering to the prevention and cure needs put forth by the healthcare sector; however, several diseases continue to demand R&D of novel applications, driving the growth of virology market. Various treatments and diagnostic processes also employ virology applications, further fuelling the market growth.Burgeoning applications of virology research in gene therapy, phage therapy, formulation of vaccines, and synthetic biology is another factor fostering the overall growth of the virology market.Moreover, the field of virology is extending in various forms, including molecular virology, paediatric virology, computational virology, and many more, prompting at increasing research findings throughout the forecast period. Research prospects are high and FMI indicates a continuing need for trained virologists in the near future.Public awareness programmes conducted worldwide on flu, zika virus, STDs, AIDS, and Ebola virus are also a key factor increasing public awareness and eventually influencing the market.Key Restraints to Market GrowthMaintaining the quality and safety standards of viral a controlling therapy has been a longstanding challenge, which is anticipated to hamper the market in the forecast period as well. Moreover, stringent approval processes for antiviral drugs is also foreseen to be a restraint to market growth. Another factor identified for affecting the market growth includes resistance toward and side effects of antiviral drugs for new treatment options.Request Free Report Sample@Current Trends in the Virology FieldIn 2015, the virology industry was predominantly influenced by ebola, MERS, and hepatitis C viruses. In 2016, zika virus is dominating the research, with better prospects in the near future.Virologists are persistently investigating novel applications for viruses. Currently, an ongoing research is experimenting on the exploitation of viruses for plant production, aiming at the efficient production of high quality, eco-friendly food.Global Virology Market: Competitive LandscapeBy 2017 end, a few important patents are approaching expiry, including Tamiflu, Sustiva, Tenofovir, Combivir, Relenza, and Telbivudine. Following expiry of these blockbuster drugs, the market is estimated to discover a dynamic competitive landscape. The generic competition in the virology market will be at a high pace 2017 onward.Apart from expiring drugs, the market also has some late stage pipeline drugs, including Inavir, Elvitegravir, Vicriviroc, Rilpivirine, and Rapiacta. These drugs are set to enter the global market, fostering the competition globally.Virology Market: SegmentationFMI's research on the global virology market provides a 10-year forecast, segmenting the market on the basis of product type, application, end-use, and region.Based on product type, the global virology market is segmented intoDiagnosing TestDNA VirusesRNA VirusesPrions Diagnostic TestOther Viral TestsViral Infection Controlling MethodsImmunoprophylaxisActive Prophylaxis (Vaccines)Passive ProphylaxisAntiviral ChemotherapyVirucidal AgentsAntiviral AgentsImmunomodulatorsInterferonsCytokinesBased on application, the global virology market is segmented intoSkin and Soft Tissue InfectionsRespiratory Tract InfectionsGI Tract InfectionsUrinary Tract InfectionsEye InfectionsCNS InfectionsSexually Transmitted DiseasesPerinatal InfectionsAccording to the end-user, the market is segmented intoHospitalsClinicsLaboratoriesDiagnostic CentresBlood BanksPharmaciesRegional Outlook: Global Virology MarketNorth America is the largest virology market led by the U.S., owing to technological advancements such as rapid, portable diagnostics. N. America is expected to retain the top market position over the forecast period as well.Europe is projected to maintain the position as the second largest market globally. During the forecast period, Europe is anticipated to record the highest CAGR, attributed by enhanced healthcare infrastructure, facilitated access to diagnostics, and growing affordability of diagnostic tests for viral diseases.Request For TOC@Japan is currently a growing virology market, which is estimated to grow at a remarkable CAGR through to 2025. However, APEJ and Africa are expected to witness the most promising growth opportunities during the forecast period. While China will be a leading APEJ market, India will contribute a considerable revenue share to the APEJ virology market.Segment-wise Market ForecastImmunoprophylaxis therapy and antiviral drugs are the fastest-growing market segments in the estimated forecast period.STDs, urinary tract infections, and respiratory tract infections are currently dominating compared to other application types in the global virology market.On the basis of diagnosis tests, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV, human papillomavirus (HPV), and other tests (influenza, ebola, and dengue) are estimated to attract the largest market shares globally.Hospitals and laboratories projected to continue the most dominating end-use segments, accounting for almost 50% market share globally.Key Players in the Global Virology MarketThe notable players identified in the global virology market include GlaxoSmithKline plc, Abbott Laboratories, Boehringer Ingelheim Corporation, Merck and Co. Inc., Novartis International AG, Siemens, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca AB, and Roche.Merck and Co. Inc. has several drug candidates in phase 2, including cancer, diabetes, cardiac arrest, and hepatitis C, and some candidates in phase 3, including breast cancer, atherosclerosis, Alzeimer's, ebola, and HIV. The company also has many other candidates, which are currently under review.Browse Full Report@Abivax, a high profile biotech company in Paris, France, has already successfully produced candidates against dengue and chikungunya viruses. The company has a few more candidates against HIV and ebola, currently under development.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Heat Stabilisers Market Forecast: Steady Growth Expected Over 2016-2026, China to Emerge as Most Lucrative Market

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1269

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1269

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/heat-stabilizer-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Heat stabilisers play a key role as an additive in the processing of PVC polymer, and the global market of heat stabilisers is largely dependent on the status of PVC market. While heat stabilisers play a key role in prevention of the decomposition chain reaction in PVC processing, there are several other reasons they are predominantly used in the PVC industry. Stabilisers are one of the decisive factors influencing the physical properties and quality of PVC, as well as their formulation costs. Moreover, they impart enhanced resistance against heat ageing, weathering, daylight effects, and other environmental conditions.Although these advantages and a wide range of commercial applications of heat stabilisers support their demand in the market, FMIs research indicates moderate growth of the global heat stabilisers market over the forecast period 2016-2026. The report focuses on assessment of various drivers and restraints impacting the market outlook, regional analysis, extensive segmentation, and major players participating in the market growth.Heat Stabilisers Market: DriversIntrinsic Properties of Heat StabilisersCompared to other stabilisers, which are used as additives in the PVC industry, heat stabilisers have a strong hold in the market owing to their advantages, high compatibility and lasting heat stability to mention the top two. Due to this competitive edge, the demand for heat stabilisers is higher.Widespread Applications of PVCBurgeoning demand for PVC for vital applications in construction, electronics, electrical, fashion, medical and healthcare, automotive, furniture, packaging, and commercial and consumer products industries, is a key driver bolstering the demand for heat stabilisers as additives.Request Free Report Sample@Growing Consumption of PlasticWith increasing population and urbanisation worldwide, the need for plastic products is also elevating. The growth of plastic industry is estimated to drive demand for heat stabilisers in the near future.Key RestraintsStern regulatory processes associated with the approval of heat stabilisers are estimated to pose a challenge to the market growth in the near future, especially in case of lead-based stabilisers. The approval processes differ with each country, restricting the international market from thriving. Other limiting factors include volatile prices of raw materials and poor SCM capabilities.Global Heat Stabilisers Market: SegmentationFMIs research on the global heat stabilisers market provides a 10-year forecast, segmenting the market, based on the type of stabiliser.Tin stabiliserLead stabiliserMixed metals stabiliserOrganic stabiliserOthers (calcium stabiliser, barium stabiliser)The choice of heat stabilisers for specific applications depends on multiple factors such as the PVC products technical requirements, formulation costs, and regulatory approval processes. This influences the demand for a particular stabiliser in the market. Out of the most prevalent stabilisers available globally, the lead heat stabilisers segment currently has the largest market share but is expected to witness decline in the near future owing to various health, regulatory, and environmental monitoring processes. However, the organic stabilisers segment is estimated to exhibit rapid uplift during the forecast period.Request For TOC@Regional Outlook: Global Heat Stabilisers MarketOn the basis of geography, the market of heat stabilisers is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific, and Middle East and Africa. While Europe and Asia Pacific collectively account for more than 80% of the profit share in the global market revenues for lead heat stabilisers, the tin heat stabilisers segment is led by North America. China is foreseen as the strongest and most lucrative market for heat stabilisers, over the forecast period. Asia Pacific is particularly anticipated to have high untapped potential of market growth.Key Players in the MarketSome of the important players competing in the market include Akcros Chemicals Ltd., Albemarle Corporation, Arkema Group, Cytec Industries Inc., Baerlocher GmbH, Ferro Corporation, and BASF SE.Most of the leading industry brands are expected to shift their manufacturing base for heat stabilisers, as lead-based stabilisers are consistently facing critisisation in terms of environmental impact. Mergers and acquisitions among major brands in the industry will aid them in enhancing their products portfolio and retain strong presence in the global market.Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Medical Devices Outsourcing Market is expected to be worth US$40.8 bn by 2018

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=361

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/medical-devices-outsourcing-market.html

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

The global medical devices outsourcing market is highly fragmented due to the presence of a large number of local and international players, finds a new report by Transparency Market Research. The top four companies that predominantly outsource product manufacturing and services to small and specialized service providers held only 28% of the market in 2011. These are Johnson and Johnson, GE Healthcare, Medtronic, and Baxter International.Download Free exclusive Sample of this report:Business alliances and partnerships are key strategies adopted by top companies for business growth, says a TMR analyst.Increased focused on research and development is one of the key growth models that companies receiving outsourced services in the global medical devices outsourcing market are employing for business growth. For instance, the research and development of Creganna-Tactx is focused on developing products with newer component and to develop technologies for minimally and less invasive medical delivery systems.Need to Reduce Production Cost for Competitive Reasons Fuels Market GrowthA TMR analyst points out, The ever-increasing demand for quality healthcare is one of the key factors driving the growth of the global medical devices outsourcing market. At present, the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases is leading to a rising demand for early disease detection for improved disease management. The quality of healthcare delivered depends on the quality of diagnostic devices. This is forcing device manufacturers to outsource product development to specialized third-party product manufacturers to stay ahead in the competitive healthcare industry.Product outsourcing helps reduce production cost by 10-15% thus allowing companies to survive competition, which is another major factor driving the global medical devices outsourcing market. Today, almost all medical devices are integrated with IT solutions for operational purposes. For example, software for patient monitoring devices that was initially developed in-house is now outsourced to domain experts such as HCL, Persistent Systems, Wipro, and Amdocs.Outsourcing of product manufacture and services help maximize revenue by means of reducing time-to-market, which is another key factor driving the growth of the global medical devices outsourcing market. This is because a significant amount of time is spent receiving approvals from statutory bodies in the manufacture of medical devices. This time can be reduced by leveraging outsourcing service providers such as Oracle, SAP, Infosys, and Patni that offer process control services for acquiring approvals from statutory bodies. Moreover, the expertise of these providers in developing the relevant application software reduces overall time of production.Demand for Quality Certifications of Leading Companies Presents Opportunities for Local Service Providers in AsiaIncreasing shift towards quality certifications among Asian service providers and medical device manufacturers is opening growth opportunities for top companies in the global medical devices outsourcing market, says a TMR analyst. The growing demand for medical devices in the Asian region is attracting top-notch players such as Johnson &Johnson and Boston Scientific to this region. To leverage this, an increasing number of local device manufacturers and service providers are streamlining their processes as per the ISO and requirements of other standardization organizations to attract global players.The global medical devices outsourcing market is expected to be worth US$40.8 bn by 2018, says TMR. On the basis of application, class II devices account for the largest market share due to moderate risks and minimal regulatory requirements.Browse Research Report on Global Medical Devices Outsourcing Market:About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Rosemary Extracts Market: Steady Growth Expected through to 2026, Food & Beverages Industry to Remain Dominant End-user

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1579

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1579

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/rosemary-extracts-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

One of the most sought after natural food preservatives, Rosemary extracts are also used in various end-use industries for their flavouring and aromatic attributes. In addition, Rosemary extracts impart a wide range of health benefits, which prompt at their growing demand in the market, addressing health conscious consumers.With a variety of industrial applications in pharmaceuticals, food and beverages, and chemical and household sectors, Rosemary extracts are currently witnessing high demand in the global market. FMI predicts this demand to continue in the near future as well, attracting substantial revenues over the forecast period 2016-2026.Key Drivers: Global Rosemary Extracts MarketRosemary is indigenous to Alps but is commercially cultivated in several regions across the globe for various end-use applications. This cultivation is highly supported by the growing demand from consumers who are predominantly choosing natural and organic food preservatives over artificial ingredients.Moreover, manufacturers are constantly ramping up their R&D efforts, leading to discovery of more benefits and potential applications of Rosemary extracts. This is expected to play a key role in bolstering and directing the demand for Rosemary extracts in the global market.Rosemary Extracts: Market TrendsThe adoption of Rosemary extracts for various food, pharmaceutical, and skin care products is trending in the market.Rising adoption of natural food colourants, and stevia as a healthy sweetener, is strongly supporting the demand for Rosemary extracts globally.Global Rosemary Extracts Market: SegmentationFMIs research on the global Rosemary extracts market offers a 10-year extensive forecast, segmenting the market on the basis of variety, application, and region.Request Free Report Sample@On the basis of variety, the Rosemary extracts market is segmented into three commercial varieties -Camphor-borneol1,8 cineoleVerbenoneCamphor-borneol has essential antioxidant properties and enjoys dominant market share and is widely used in the manufacture of premium products. Verbenone and 1,8 cineole rosemary extracts are expected to witness strong demand during the forecast period.Rosemary extracts are further segmented on the basis of its application in food and beverages industry, pharmaceuticals, household sector, cosmetics, and pet food market. Being a natural preservative, Rosemary extracts find wide-ranging applications in the food and beverages industry, especially in non-alcoholic beverages, bakery products, meat products, and culinary spices. The demand for Rosemary extracts is also robust in the pharmaceutical sector, where it is used for manufacturing drugs to treat skin allergies and slow down the progression of Alzheimers disease.Based on the geography, the global Rosemary extracts market is segmented into Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific.Regional Outlook: Rosemary Extracts MarketGeographically, FMI has thoroughly analysed the Rosemary extracts market. Their production, import, export, and consumption in North America, Europe, China, and Southeast Asia have been remarkably dynamic since the past few years.Request For TOC@Europe is the supply base, led by Spain and France in terms of supply and export, and production and consumption respectively.However, North America and APAC are estimated to emerge as the most lucrative markets over the forecast period 2016-2026. The U.S. has already started the agricultural cultivation of Rosemary in the Southwest region.Moreover, Mediterranean countries, including Turkey, Spain, and Morocco are rapidly growing, expected to become commercial production hubs for Rosemary extracts in the global market.Key Players in the Rosemary Extracts MarketKey manufacturers in the Rosemary extracts industry include Kemin, Kalsec, Nutrafur, Naurex, Dansico (DuPont), Flavex, Frutarom, Suptek, Hainan Super Biotech Co., Ltd., and Geneham Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. Kemins Rosemary extracts combined with green tea blend is one of the most popularly used to preserve the ideal colouration and flavour of meat, and extend its shelf life.Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Liquid Encapsulation Market Expected to Witness Healthy Growth through to 2025

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1006

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-1006

http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/liquid-encapsulation-market

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Overview: Liquid Encapsulation MarketElectronic circuit boards and other devices typically contain discrete semiconductors, resistors, capacitors, glass diodes, gold wire transistors, and silica chips, damage to which may result in failure of vital device functions. The process of liquid encapsulation plays a vital role in protecting delicate electronic components against thermal or mechanical shock, moisture, and chemicals. They also maintain the security of the technology. The liquid encapsulation technique is also widely used in products such as discrete integrated circuits, sensors, and optoelectronics.With the advent of automated dispensing equipment, liquid encapsulation has become the most sought after method among manufacturers since the past few years. The liquid encapsulation market is currently growing at a nascent stage but is expected to gain momentum, witnessing strong growth over the forecast period, 2015-2025. FMIs research indicates ample of growth opportunities for the global market throughout the 10-year period.Global Liquid Encapsulation Market: Key DriversIncreasing technological innovation in the electronics industry is anticipated to drive the demand for protective encapsulation. Moreover, the advancement of potting and encapsulation technologies is projected to offer several growth opportunities to the market globally. Growing demand for high-end packaging techniques, and rising number of electronic products miniaturisation practices are also the key drivers responsible for the growth of market.Other drivers identified to fuel the market growth include elevated expansion of consumer electronics market and growing advancements in sensors and integrated circuits market. The market is also expected to gain traction due to growing number of dispense equipment industries, and sealant and meter/mix manufacturers.Request Free Report Sample@Growth RestraintAlthough the applications of encapsulation in electronics and automotive industries are foreseen to increase in the near future, FMIs research observes sluggish demand for liquid encapsulates in developed markets, including N. America and Europe. This demand pattern may restrain the consumption of liquid encapsulation materials in the market.Liquid Encapsulation Market: SegmentationFMIs research report on the global liquid encapsulation market offers a 10-year forecast, segmenting the market on the basis of encapsulating material, encapsulated product, and application.Based on the encapsulating material, the global liquid encapsulation market is segmented into epoxy resin, epoxy-modified resin, and others. Epoxy resins are predicted to gain a sprint in sales in the near future, owing to their application in electronics.According to the encapsulated product, the market is segmented into integrated circuits, sensors, discrete semiconductors, and optoelectronics. Integrated circuits are estimated to cover the highest share of the total liquid encapsulation market revenues.On the basis of application, the global liquid encapsulation market is segmented into electronics, automotive, industrial, and telecommunications. Among all the applications, the electronic applications segment currently leads the market and is expected to continue its domination globally over the forecast period.Request For TOC@Regional Outlook: Global Liquid Encapsulation MarketThe global liquid encapsulation market is segmented on the basis of region, into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Eastern Europe, Japan, and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Over the forecast period 2015-2025, the Asia Pacific region is expected to dominate the market, witnessing the fastest growth rate. Being an emerging hub for the manufacturing of electronics and telecommunications products, the regions such as South Korea, China, and Taiwan are anticipated to provide an impetus to market growth. Moreover, increasing acceptance of wireless technologies, and growing demand for encapsulation materials from sensor devices and optoelectronics are identified to fuel the demand for liquid encapsulation materials in the Asia Pacific market.Key Players in the Global Liquid Encapsulation MarketSome of the companies leading the global liquid encapsulation materials market include Henkel AG & Company KGaA, Panasonic Corporation, BASF SE, Sumitomo Bakelite Co. Ltd., Hitachi Chemical Co. Ltd., Sanyu Rec Co. Ltd., Resin Technical Systems, Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd., Kyocera Corporation, Nagase & Co. Ltd, Nitto Denko Corporation, and Epic Resins.While BASF SE is the undisputed chemical giant of the German market, experts predict multiple mergers and acquisitions related to the company in the near future. Similarly, Henkel AG & Company KGaA is also anticipated to consider acquisitions for better growth opportunities.Browse Full Report@ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Dermatology Diagnostic Devices and Therapeutics Market is expected to reach US$20.1 bn in 2023

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=8908

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/dermatology-diagnostic-devices-therapeutics-market.html

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Demonstrating the presence of a considerably large number of companies, the vendor landscape in the global market for dermatology diagnostic devices and therapeutics is highly competitive. As per Transparency Market Research, Afga Gevart, Michelson Diagnostic Ltd., and Strata Skin Sciences have emerged as the top players in the dermatology diagnostics devices market. In 2014, these companies together accounted for a share of about 42% in the market.View exclusive Global strategic Business report :Likewise, the leading companies in the global dermatology therapeutics market include AbbVie, Janssen, GSK, Galderma, Valeant, and Novartis. These companies together held approximately 76% of the market with AbbVie accounting for the largest share. With an aim to gain competitive advantage, major companies in the dermatology therapeutics market are capitalizing on easy availability of products and superior distribution channel, says a lead analyst at TMR.Demand for Dermatology Devices and Therapeutic to Rise in Response to Increasing Incidence of Skin DiseasesGrowth prospects for the dermatology diagnostic devices and therapeutics market seem quite positive. Due to the increasing incidence of acute skin disorders, demand for dermatology devices and therapeutics is poised to surge at a rapid pace in the forthcoming years. Skin conditions such as acne, psoriasis, eczema, rosacea, pruritus, cell carcinoma, and dermatitis have become increasingly prevalent worldwide, thus necessitating efficient treatment modalities. As per TMR, such skin conditions can occur at any age and presently affects about 30% to 70% of the global population. This creates high demand for dermatology treatment, which translates into intense competition among leading players in the market. Besides this, increasing geriatric population also boosts demand for dermatology diagnostic devices and therapeutics.Despite witnessing favorable growth opportunities, demand for dermatology devices and effective therapeutics is likely to be hampered by the implementation of stringent regulations such as Affordable Care Act, said an analyst at TMR. Patent expirations also pose major threat to the leading manufacturers of dermatology devices and drugs. Nevertheless, the growing population and the increasing willingness among people to spend on aesthetically enhancing their beauty will keep the demand for dermatology devices and therapeutics high between 2015 and 2023.North America Presents Most Lucrative Prospects for Dermatology Diagnostic Devices and Therapeutics MarketRegionally, North America has emerged as the largest market for dermatological diagnostic devices and therapeutics. In the last few years, the number of patients complaining skin diseases such as melanoma, impetigo, and psoriasis has considerably increased in North America. This resulted in high sales of dermatology devices and therapeutics in the region. As per TMR, North America accounted for the dominant share of 43.8% in the global market in 2014.Demand for dermatology treatment is also expected to significantly increase in Southeast Asia, as this region witnesses a high prevalence of skin disorders. While Europe has emerged as the second largest market for dermatology diagnostic devices and therapeutics, the market in Asia Pacific is likely to exhibit the fastest growth.By product, the demand for imaging equipment is rising at a high pace in the dermatology diagnostics market. The segment held the largest share in the market in 2014. The high price of imaging equipment has helped the segment in gaining lead in the market. However, as per TMR, the demand for high sensitivity imaging equipment is expected to increase at a faster pace in the forecast period.The global dermatology diagnostic devices market is likely to exhibit a CAGR of 6.9% between 2015 and 2023. The market stood at US$0.6 bn in 2014 and is expected to reach US$1 bn by the end of 2023. The global market for dermatology therapeutics will however show a moderate CAGR of 1.9% during the forecast period. As per TMR, the market is expected to reach US$20.1 bn in 2023, from a valuation of US$17.5 bn in 2014.Browse Research Report on Global Dermatology Diagnostic Devices and Therapeutics Market:About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Digital I/O Cards Market 2016 Industry Trends, Sales, Supply, Demand, Analysis & Forecast to 2021

Digital Cards

http://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-digital-io-cards-market-2016-industry-trends.html

http://goo.gl/ZwnfHw

Global Digital I/O Cards Market 2016The Global Digital I/O Cards Industry report gives a comprehensive account of the Global Digital I/O Cards Market. Details such as the size, key players, segmentation, SWOT analysis, most influential trends, and business environment of the market are mentioned in this report. Furthermore, this report features tables and figures that render a clear perspective of the Digital I/O Cards market. The report features an up-to-date data on key companies product details, revenue figures, and sales. Furthermore, the details also gives the Global Digital I/O Cards market revenue and its forecasts. The business model strategies of the key firms in the Digital I/O Cards market are also included. Key strengths, weaknesses, and threats shaping the leading players in the market have also been included in this research report.Access Complete Report with TOC @The report gives a detailed overview of the key segments in the market. The fastest and slowest growing market segments are covered in this report. The key emerging opportunities of the fastest growing Global Digital I/O Cards market segments are also covered in this report. Each segments and sub-segments market size, share, and forecast are available in this report. Additionally, the region-wise segmentation and the trends driving the leading geographical region and the emerging region has been presented in this report.The study on the Global Digital I/O Cards market also features a history of the tactical mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships activity in the market. Valuable recommendations by senior analysts about investing strategically in research and development can help new entrants or established players penetrate the emerging sectors in the Digital I/O Cards market. Investors will gain a clear insight on the dominant players in this industry and their future forecasts. Furthermore, readers will get a clear perspective on the high demand and the unmet needs of consumers that will enhance the growth of this market.Access Sample Copy of Report @This report also presents product specification, manufacturing process, and product cost structure etc. Production is separated by regions, technology and applications. Analysis also covers upstream raw materials, equipment, downstream client survey, marketing channels, industry development trend and proposals. In the end, the report includes Digital I/O Cards new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, investment return analysis, and development trend analysis. In conclusion, it is a deep research report on global Digital I/O Cards industry.Table of ContentChapter One Digital I/O Cards Industry Overview1.1 Digital I/O Cards Definition1.1.1 Digital I/O Cards Definition1.1.2 Product Specifications1.2 Digital I/O Cards Classification1.3 Digital I/O Cards Application Field1.4 Digital I/O Cards Industry Chain Structure1.5 Digital I/O Cards Industry Regional Overview1.6 Digital I/O Cards Industry Policy Analysis1.7 Digital I/O Cards Industry Related Companies Contact InformationChapter Two Digital I/O Cards Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis2.1 High Purity colloidal silica Supplier and Price Analysis2.2 Equipment Suppliers2.3 Labor Cost Analysis2.4 Other Cost Analysis2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure2.5 Digital I/O Cards Manufacturing TechnologyAbout 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. 1-855-465-4651
Global Batch Management Software Market is Expected to grow at a Substantial Growth Rate by 2024

Batch Management Software

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/10912

The global batch management software market has also been witnessing increasing adoption of common platform. However, the need for maintenance and continues support is inhibiting the growth of this market. This software is intended to serve as an effective planning guide for current suppliers and new entrants in the market.This software is used in various industries such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, healthcare, retail, mining, food stuffs and mill products and others. The market is further segmented by geography into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe and rest of the world regions. Increased importance to performance, quality, and time-to-market, along with increased regulations on food and drug safety are fueling the growth of the batch management software market.The market is driven by factors such as the increasing demand in food and drug sector and the need for enhanced production. Some of the factors inhibiting the growth of the global batch management software market are non-availability of skilled workforce and need for maintenance and continuous support. Requirement of hardware is also restraining the growth of this market. The emerging applications and increase in R&D initiatives will serve as an opportunity, fuelling the growth of the global batch management software market.Request Table of Content, Figures, and Tables:Some of the key players dominating the global batch management software market are BB Ltd., Rockwell Automation Inc., Siemens AG, and Emerson Electric Co., General Electric Co., SAP AG, Honeywell International Inc., Invensys plc, Werum Software and Systems AG, Yokogawa Electric Corp., and Aspen Technology Inc. and others.Persistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.U.S. Sales OfficePMR Sales305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United StatesT: +1-646-568-7751U.S.-Canada Toll-free: +1 800-961-0353E: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Global Medical Disposables Market 2012 Share, Trend, Segmentation and Forecast to 2018

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=388

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/

A new market research report has been recently published by Transparency Market Research, titled Medical Disposables Market - Global and U.S. Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2012 - 2018. According to the research study, in 2011, the global medical disposables market was worth US$144.6 bn and is anticipated to be worth US$193.9 bn by the end of 2018, growing significantly at a 4.30% CAGR between 2012 and 2018.The research report has provided a detailed analysis of the global medical disposables market, emphasizing on the U.S. market. The report further talks about the market overview, product segmentation, growth drivers, restrains, and vendor analysis. The 50-page research report makes use of graphical representation such as tables and charts to showcase historical data and forecast figures.Rising demand for healthcare due to the rising global aging population, rising prevalence of chronic conditions that need long-time therapies, and expanding volume of inpatient days and hospital admissions are some of the major factors boosting the demand for medical disposables in the coming years. On the other hand, rigid FDA and GMP approval norms and reduction in the prevalence of healthcare-associated infections are the factors that are expected to curb the growth of this market in the forecast period.On the basis of product, the global medical disposables market has been segmented into nonwoven medical disposables, wound management disposables, drug delivery disposables, and others (such as laboratory and diagnostic disposables). Furthermore, the market has been classified on the basis of end use into home healthcare facilities, outpatient facilities, emergency care, hospitals, and physician offices. Among these, the hospitals segment is at the forefront of the U.S. medical disposables market. The demand for medical disposables is anticipated to rise in hospitals, thanks to the rising number of patient admissions, surgical procedures, and emergency visits.Interpret a Competitive outlook Analysis Report with free PDF Brochure:The global medical disposables market has been further segmented on the basis of geography into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. Among all these regions, North America exhibited strong demand for all product segments of the market in the recent years. According to the report, the U.S. medical disposables market held around 70% of the North America medical disposables market. In 2011, North America accounted for the largest share of 35% in the global medical disposables market. On the other hand, Asia Pacific is expected to witness rapid growth owing to rising awareness for healthcare. Some of the other factors that are expected to boost the demand for medical disposables in the Asia Pacific market are the huge aging population, increasing disposable income, and rising expenditure by governments on healthcare. The substantial rise of developing nations such as China and India is anticipated to propel the Asia Pacific medical disposables market.The report also talks about the prominent companies that are operating in the global medical disposables market. The comprehensive analysis includes company overview, product portfolio, business strategies, financial overview, SWOT analysis, and recent developments. Some of the key players are Dickinson, and Company, 3M Company, Becton, Johnson & Johnson, and Covidien plc.Key segments of the Medical Disposables marketProduct categorization of global medical disposables market:Drug Delivery DisposablesWound Management DisposablesNonwoven Medical DisposablesOthersMajor geographies analyzed under this research report are:EuropeNorth AmericaAsia PacificRest of the WorldTransparency 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:
Agrochemicals - a $260 billion opportunity by 2021

www.knowledge-sourcing.com/products/agrochemicals-market-forecasts-from-2016-to-2021

Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence announces the publication of a new report on Agrochemicals Market  Forecasts from 2016 to 2021 to their offering.Agrochemicals are substances that help to enhance the crop output to utilize them as food and fiber. They may also consist of synthetic fertilizers, raw animal manure, and other chemical agents. Thorough utilization, ideal doses, precise method and correct time of application of agrochemicals leads to augmented crop production. This report provides forecast and analysis of Agrochemicals Market which is expected to reach a global market size of $260.703 billion by the end of 2021, at a compound annual growth rate of 3.93% over the forecast period. Global population is increasing at an alarming rate. Feeding a seven billion plus population requires increasing the crop output even though arable land keeps on shrinking due to rapid urbanization. This has led to higher demand for pesticides and increasing pressure on farmers to reduce the cost of crop cultivation, and in turn purring up the demand for agrochemicals.High R&D costs to develop agrochemical molecule and application of genetically modified seeds which have self-immunity towards natural adversaries restraints the growth of this market. Moreover, lack of availability of these agrochemicals through retailers and distributors is a challenge. Development of safe alternatives such as bio-farming and organic pesticides is also limiting the market growth.Some of the major players of covered as part of the report are BASF, The Dow Chemical Company, Yara International, Monsanto, The Mosaic Company, Syngenta, Bayer CropScience, Israel Chemicals Limited, Agrium Inc., Sumitomo Chemicals among others.The report segments the Agrochemicals market into type, crop types, and geography as follows: By Typeo Fertilizers Nitrogenous Fertilizers Phosphatic Fertilizers Potassic Fertilizerso Pesticides Organophosphates Pyrethroids Biopesticides Neonicotinoids Others By Crop Typeo Oilseedso Cerealso Fruits and Vegetableso Other By Geographyo Americas US Canada Brazil Mexico Otherso Europe Middle East and Africa United Kingdom Germany France Otherso Asia Pacific Japan China India Russia Australia OthersPurchase complete report or request sample:Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence is a market research and consulting firm based out of India. Driven by industry experts, the company provides syndicated reports, custom research, and consulting services. Our proprietary data analytics model blended with quality primary and secondary research data, assists in generating quality reports providing crucial insights to managers and decision makers. The services offered by us helps companies to gain required competitive edge. Our expertise across 10 industries such as ICT, Chemicals, Semiconductors, Healthcare among others caters to diverse client needs.Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence LLPH-38, Sector 63 Noida, U.P., IndiaPhone: +1-866-714-4587E-mail: sales@knowledge-sourcing.com
Sapphire Technology Market : Information, Figures and Analytical Insights 2015  2021

Sapphire Technology Market

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/4785

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/4785

Sapphire is basically aluminum oxide in its pure from which has no porosity or boundaries, and hence dense in nature. Low dislocation and high purity have led to adoption of sapphire as an ideal material to be used in wide range of electronic substrates. Thin sapphire wafers are used as an insulating substrate in high-frequency and high-power CMOS integrated circuits. These integrated circuits are known as silicon on sapphire (SOS) chip. These chips are primarily used for high-power radio-frequency (RF) applications which include satellite communication systems, cellular telephones, and others. In SOS chip both analog and digital circuitry integration takes place. Since, sapphire has higher conductivity for heat and lower for electricity; sapphire provides good insulation and even balances the generated heat in the circuit.View Sample Report :Owing to these advantages, sapphire has evolved as a versatile material that is used specifically in semiconductor industry, which is characterized by requirement for cost effective, time saving, and efficient operational solutions. Incorporation of sapphire technology for fabrication of components for use in end-use products across industries such as consumer electronics, aerospace and defense, power, and other sectors can help device manufacturers, achieve efficient performance. There is huge potential for sapphire technology in different devices and applications required across different end-use industries. Thus, demand for sapphire technology is directly influenced by trend across these industries. For instance, a Silicon-on-Sapphire chip, which is formed by depositing a very thin layer of silicon in a sapphire wafer at high temperature, has profound use in consumer electronics sector majorly for LED technology market. There are primarily two ways to make SOS wafer which include epitaxial SOS semiconductor technology and bonded SOS technology. .Factors such as high cost effectiveness as compared to other substrate materials, increased demand for LED technology are expected to drive demand for sapphire technology in future. Moreover, improved manufacturing processes resulting in use of silicon on sapphire for wafer processing is further expected to fuel demand for sapphire technology.. n addition, manufactures are also keen on developing solutions using sapphire technology, which would result in less operational cost and maximize profits. This is due to the benefits of insulating substrate, which includes low power consumption, low parasitic capacitance resulting in increased speed, and better isolation, and high linearity as compared to bulk silicon. Furthermore, there are low entry barriers for players to invest in this market resulting is high degree of competition.The sapphire technology market is segmented on the basis of various parameters which include technology, substrate wafer and orientation type, and by application. Sapphire technology comprises of sapphire substrate technology and process, different production methods, and other growth methods for sapphire. The sapphire technology process is further classified as slicing, die polishing, lapping, and chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP). Different production methods for the same include kyropoulos method, Heat Exchanger Method (HEM), Czochralski Crystal Pulling Method, and Edge-Defined Film-Fed Growth (EFG) Method, among others. The market is further classified on the basis of silicon substrate wafer and orientation type which includes different sapphire types such as Silicon Carbide on Sapphire, Gallium Nitride on Sapphire, Silicon on Sapphire (SOS), and others. Based on the wafer size, classification includes 12 inch, 24 inch, 36 inch, and others. Moreover, varied plane orientations such as a-plane, c-plane, r-plane, and others are used to define orientation of sapphire substrates. Sapphire technology market classified on the basis of devices comprises of power semiconductor market and opto-semiconductors. The power semiconductor segment includes market for power discrete devices such as diodes, switches, Radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC), Monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC), and others. Sapphire technology has wide applications across consumer electronics, power, aerospace and defense, industrial, automotive, and others.Request TOC :The prominent players of this market include ACME Electronics Corporation, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Monocrystal Inc., Kyocera Corporation, Rubicon Technology Inc., DK Aztec Co., Ltd., GT Advanced Technologies Inc., Sapphire Technology Co., Ltd., Namiki Precision Jewel Co., Ltd, Tera Xtal Technology Corporation, Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. among others.Key geographies evaluated in this report are:North AmericaU.SCanadaEuropeFrance, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UKEastern EuropeCISAPACChinaIndiaJapanAustraliaOthersLatin AmericaArgentinaBrazilOthersKey features of this reportDrivers, restraints, and challenges shaping the Sapphire Technology market dynamicsLatest innovations and key events in the industryAnalysis of business strategies of the top playersSapphire Technology market estimates and forecasts(2015 -2021)About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.ContactPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United StatesUSA - Canada Toll Free: +1 800-961-0353
Defense Robotics Market : Facts, Figures and Analytical Insights 2015 to 2021

Defense Robotics Market

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/5087

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/5087

Most of the countries utilize the defense robotic system or are in the process of acquiring or building the technology to incorporate into military programs. These robots are used in form of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned group vehicles (UGVs) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Unmanned group vehicles are robots that move on wheels or tracks and perform the function of sentry duties and examine the potential hostile location. Unmanned aerial vehicles are essentially remotely controlled or automated robots. The use of all these robotic system includes same purpose of replacing or supplementing human in battlefield situations. Deployment of autonomous or semi autonomous robotic system in the battle field helps in improving the military efficiency, operational performance and accuracy.View Sample Report :Defense robotics has many advantages, the important one being performance similar to human being without danger of human casualties. Robots can endure damage done by bombs or other types of weapons that can destroy the human body. Another advantage includes various sizes of robots which enables them to fit into spaces that are not accessible for humans. Other advantages include transportation, drones and bomb disposal. The defense robotic system market across the globe is expected to show a substantial growth with a single digit increase in CAGR by the year 2019. The growth is due to the procurement of robotic vehicles for control, communication, simulation, training and other applications for military purposes.The market for defense robotics system is driven by factors such as desire to reduce the casualties in the field of operation and reduce the military spending. Development in the field of computer programming, sensing technology and material science help to create more advanced tools. Some of the factors restraining the market growth include reduced spending on defense system due to weak economic conditions, and high cost required in manufacturing of robots. Technological availability is enabling diverse applications of robots besides improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the system. Applications such as border patrolling are creating an increasing demand for UAVs and UGVs in countries such as Israel, South Korea, China and United States.The segmentation of defense robotics market can be done on the basis of product type, application and geography. On the basis of product type, the market for defense robotics can be segmented as unmanned group vehicles (UGVs), unmanned underwater vehicle (UUVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). On the basis of applications, the market can be segmented as simulation, control command and security, training and others. Global defense robotics market can also be segmented based on geographical markets as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the world. North America is the most technological advanced region in defense robotic system and Asia Pacific represents a strong opportunity due to the availability of technology in countries including China, Japan and India.Some of the players in the defense robotics market include iRobot Corp., Allen-Vanguard Corporation, Honeywell Aerospace, GeckoSystems Intl. Corp., Honda Motor Co. Ltd., Bluefin Robotic Corp., AB Electrolux, Deep Ocean Engineering Inc., ECA Hytec SA, McArtney Group, Fujitsu Ltd., Toyota Motor Corp., AeroVironment, Lockheed Martin and others.Request TOC :Key geographies evaluated in this report are:North AmericaU.SCanadaEuropeFrance, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UKEastern EuropeCISAPACChinaIndiaJapanAustraliaOthersLatin AmericaArgentinaBrazilOthersKey features of this reportDrivers, restraints, and challenges shaping the Defense Robotics market dynamicsLatest innovations and key events in the industryAnalysis of business strategies of the top playersDefense Robotics market estimates and forecasts(2015 -2021)About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.ContactPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United StatesUSA - Canada Toll Free: +1 800-961-0353
Wiring Devices Market : Opportunities and Forecasts, 2015 - 2021

Wiring Devices Market

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/5735

http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/5735

Wiring devices refers to any electrical devices that are used to provide and control connection points or joining points for low voltage lighting control systems, electrical sockets and wall switches. Wiring devices includes current carrying wiring devices and non-current carrying wiring devices. Current-carrying wiring devices market is highly variable depending on certain factors such as consumer purchasing power, growth in GDP, economic conditions and overall health of domestic construction and housing industry. Non-current carrying wiring devices contains boxes, plates, conduit and fitting, among others. The electrical conduits are used to protect the electrical wiring from weather conditions and mechanical injury.View Sample Report :Wiring devices market can be segmented on the basis of products and geography. Based on the products the wiring devices market can be categorized into receptacles, light dimmer, lamp holders, metal contacts, electric switches, wire connectors and other current carrying devices. Switches are used for controlling inductive and resistive loads mostly in the electric discharge lamps. Increasing use of electronic switches in construction and residential industry is one of the factors which is driving the growth of wiring devices market across the globe. The automated electronic switch owing to a number of features are widely being used in residential, construction and institutional occupancies. For instance, the fully automated lighting control system allows outdoor or indoor light to be operated remotely from any point within the system containing receiver and controller. The technological displacement in the field of wiring devices is expected to fuel the market growth. The company such as Schneider-electric is offering self-powered and wireless switches which allow instant installation and location flexibility. These switches are deprived of batteries which result in low maintenance and low running cost. These switches are self-powered and scavenging ambient energy powers the switches.Construction activity, consumer spending and private spending are expected to increase over the forecast period owing to the rising number of households which in turn is expected to stimulate the market growth. The boost in industries such as tourism, hotel and real estate will furthermore trigger the demand of wiring devices market owing to the huge investment in current carrying wiring devices. Moreover, the increasing use of light dimmers are expected to fuel the market growth due to the energy efficient nature of the light dimmer. The light dimmer is increasingly used for limiting the brightness of the light. The dimmer light switch can be controlled with the help of knob which ultimately results in energy efficiency. Increasing regulations for use of tamper resistant receptacles in the developed economies are expected to fuel the market revenue. National Electrical Manufacturers Associations (NEMA) and U.S. General Service Administration (GSA) are focusing on the extensive use of straight-blade and locking-type receptacle and plug caps and temper-less receptacles for safe usage of wiring devices.Request TOC :Some of the key players in this marketplace include ABB Incorporated, Cooper Industries plc, Eaton Corporation, Hewlett-Packard (HP) Development Company L.P., Hubbell Inc., Legrand Group, Leviton Manufacturing Co Inc., OREL Mfg. (Pvt.) Ltd., Schneider Electric SA, and SMK Corporation, among others.Key geographies evaluated in this report are:North AmericaU.SCanadaEuropeFrance, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UKEastern EuropeCISAPACChinaIndiaJapanAustraliaOthersLatin AmericaArgentinaBrazilOthersKey features of this reportDrivers, restraints, and challenges shaping the Wiring Devices market dynamicsLatest innovations and key events in the industryAnalysis of business strategies of the top playersWiring Devices market estimates and forecasts(2015 -2021)About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.ContactPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United StatesUSA - Canada Toll Free: +1 800-961-0353
Primary Care Doctor Market to be Driven by Favorable Healthcare Reforms and Graying Population

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=6916

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/primary-care-doctor-market.html

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

A primary care doctor, also known as a primary care physician, is a medical practitioner who consults patients suffering from common medical problems, and refers them to a specialist if advanced treatment is required. Given this basic yet pivotal role of primary care doctors and the rising demand for primary healthcare, the global primary care doctor market will expand at a steady rate over the next few years, says a report by Transparency Market Research. The report, titled Primary Care Doctor Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015  2023, projects the future of the primary care doctor market based on drivers, restraints, opportunities, trends, and the competitive scenario.Brochure Download:TMR analysts also state that regulatory changes in the United States will have a far-reaching impact on the global primary care doctor market; private healthcare is now affordable more U.S. citizens following a round of federal reforms in the insurance sector in the recent past.The report meticulously studies the primary care doctor market based on criteria such as type of treatment and geography. Based on the former, the report segments the primary care doctor market into family medicine doctors, pediatricians, gynecologists or obstetricians, internal medicine doctors, and geriatricians.The key regional markets studied in the report include: North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. North America is identified as the leading region in the primary care doctor market, while Europe is the second-largest market. A number of favorable reforms recently introduced in the United States will augur well for the lead that North America currently has in the primary care doctor market. As more people in the United States strive to maintain a healthy lifestyle well into their 70s and 80s, the role of primary care physicians becomes even more crucial. In 2015, in the United States, about 176,893 primary care physicians were licensed to practice internal medicine.Multiple emerging economies in the Asia Pacific region will contribute heavily to the creation of a multimillion-dollar primary care doctor market in the region. However, the primary care doctors market in the Asia Pacific region will benefit from the relatively affordable level of care offered by physicians here and the setting up of new medical infrastructure.Browse Research Report on :However, restraints such as an erosion in the quality of care and misdistribution will create challenges for the growth of the primary care doctor market. The report on the primary care doctor market provides a detailed analysis of the current and projected landscape of the primary care doctor market globally and for leading national markets.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Central Michigan University and Mid Michigan Community College recently announced the launch of the Chippewa Achieve Program  a collaborative student success agreement.

The program will provide additional support and services for students who plan to transfer to CMU after completing two semesters at MMCC.

Students are at the center of every decision we make as a university. Thats why were proud to partner with MMCC on this new program, CMU President George E. Ross said. No matter where a student chooses to attend school, finding an education path that best fits their goals and offers support through graduation is critically important to their success.

The program is one of only a few partnerships in the nation that provides custom services and access to ease students transition between a two-year and four-year institution. Freshman at MMCC will live in CMU residence halls and get involved in student life on campus before transferring to CMU their sophomore year.

We know that some students need additional time and support in order to show that they are ready to compete at the university level. This program offers an additional on-ramp to higher education, said MMCC President Chris Hammond.

Custom advising services and academic support, including the development of an education plan, will be provided at both MMCC and CMU to ensure the smooth transition of credits from college to university. Once at CMU, advisors will continue working with students to support academic progress and guide them to any needed resources, such as tutoring. The opportunity to become immersed in campus life and plan ahead for their transfer between institutions is expected to help students navigate the college experience.

Its not only about getting students to CMU, MMCC or any other school, it also is about making sure they are given the tools and resources to be successful once they are here, Ross said.

The first class of Chippewa Achieve Program students will begin in fall 2017. The university expects to accept as many as 50 MMCC students in the first year.
Some would argue against the idea that I, a finite, impotent, created being could do anything that would have an impact on God, an infinite, omnipotent, eternal being. I understand and respect the reasoning behind that position. However, it seems to me that the Bible teaches that God does feel emotions. God created me and desires to have a relationship with me. I do not understand that but it is true nonetheless. The fear of the Lord is a theme in both testaments. Surely I ought to live in awe of God, fearing and revering Him. Another theme in the Scripture involves my responsibility to behave in such a way that I do not bring grief to God.

Just as surely as I should be afraid of what God has the power and right to do to me, I should be afraid of what I might do to bring pain to God.

Ephesians 4:30-32 commands us not to grieve the Holy Spirit, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. (NASU) Clearly, I bring grief to God when I act with bitterness and wrath towards other children of God. Clearly, I grieve God when I refuse to be kind and forgiving towards Gods people.

The Bible speaks much about God feeling emotions especially painful emotions brought on by the unfaithfulness of His people. Over and over again, the children of Israel spat in the face of God in spite of His saving them, providing for them, and loving them. God called them unfaithful and treacherous and issued a painful divorce decree against them. The book of Hosea illustrates their unfaithful behavior. It is impossible to miss the pain that God feels in that tragic record. In an astonishing turn of events this ultimate grief resulted in tremendous love and compassion on the part of God toward His unfaithful people.

In Hosea 11:7-9 God speaks from His heart, So My people are bent on turning from Me. Though they call them to the One on high, None at all exalts Him. 8 How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned over within Me, All My compassions are kindled. 9 I will not execute My fierce anger; I will not destroy Ephraim again. For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, And I will not come in wrath. (NASU) His declaration in verse 8 that My heart is turned over within Me is a most beautiful phrase and a key to knowing God.

God sees that His people have turned from Him and does not exalt Him. Clearly He is considering doing to them what He did to Sodom, Gomorrah, Zoar, Admah, and Zeboiim. When God said that His heart was turned over within Him, He employed the exact same Hebrew phrase He used in Genesis 19 to describe what He did to these five wicked cities. The unfaithfulness of Gods people have turned His heart over within Him but His great love for them turned it back over. Next God declared that He would not pour out His great wrath on them and that He would remain their God. Truly He is worthy of our undying praise. May He protect me from bringing grief to Him.
St. Lukes UMC in Orlando offers financial counseling for families who are living in poverty.

For Shalania Crumpton, asking for help had always been a struggle. But she and her family needed help financially, so she reached out to an innovative program at St. Lukes United Methodist Church in Orlando.

I realized that its OK to ask for help, says Crumpton, and not let my pride get in the way.

St. Lukes officially launched Circles Orange County in 2013 after reviewing its strategic vision for the 1,500-member church, says Lynnette Fields, St. Lukes executive director of missions. They wanted to aid local children in poverty, she says, but realized it required assisting entire families.

We thought that if we could stabilize the family, says Fields, that would provide long-term, sustainable change for the children who are living in poverty.

Circles Orange County is based on Circles USA, a national initiative that combines case management, peer counseling, mentoring and more to help resolve barriers that keep families in poverty, Fields says.

Circles Orange County encourages Circle leadersthose seeking assistanceto state their goals, whether it is raising their credit scores, getting out of debt or finding work. The program then matches Circle leaders with middle- and upper-income volunteer mentors, called Circle allies, who share their expertise and help leaders find the resources they need to reach those goals. The program lasts 18 months.

Fields says three classes have graduated from the program, and three Circle leaders from the first graduating class are now allies. The program has a 90 percent retention rate.

Mentors helped Crumpton start her own home-based floral arrangement business, says Beth Witten, St. Lukes Circles coordinator.

Weve been able to let people know of her business, says Witten, so it widens their social network.

Besides business, Crumpton says she has learned another lesson: God puts people in your path to help you.

Find more ways to serve your community 
Whitfield County Sheriff Scott Chitwood returned from the Summer Conference of the Georgia Sheriffs Association, where he was recognized with two awards. He was named to the Top 10 Club for being in the top 10 of 159 counties raising money for the Sheriffs Youth Homes and also came in first place in the $100,000 Club, as the top fundraiser in the state for the Sheriffs Youth Homes.

I accept these awards on behalf of the many supporters for our Youth Homes across the state, the sheriff said, but particularly our local citizens that support Cherokee Estates here in Dalton. We have so many people in Dalton / Whitfield County that continually support the youth that we provide a loving home environment for.
PONTIAC  Six Illinois Department of Corrections officers suffered injuries in an apparent fight with five inmates Sunday at the Pontiac Correctional Center, the Chicago Tribune reported on its website.

IDOC spokeswoman Nicole Wilson told the Tribune the officers were treated for the injuries, which were not life-threatening.

A Pontiac firefighter told the Tribune the incident occurred about 2:30 p.m.

The IDOC officers were assaulted by five inmates, Wilson told the Tribune, but declined to give details on the injuries or exactly how the incident transpired. The maximum security facility houses only male inmates.
BLOOMINGTON  Deb Smith and Mary Ann Pullin saw more than three pallet-loads of donated shoes outside the Home Sweet Home Ministries Warehouse on Monday.

They saw opportunities for people to take steps in the right direction.

The 14th annual OSF Shoe Drive collected a record 3,524 pounds of shoes  157 pounds more than last year  for Home Sweet Home, representatives of OSF St. Joseph Medical Center and Home Sweet Home announced Monday outside the warehouse, 1700 W. Washington St.

The three pallet loads of shoes were part of the total of 9 pallet loads of shoes donated during the drive, said Pullin, Home Sweet Home CEO.

"Awesome," Tina Donnelly of Lexington, a Home Sweet Home shoe sorter, said when told of the amount donated as she sorted shoes inside the warehouse.

Donnelly also shops for shoes and clothes at Home Sweet Home's Mission Mart in Bloomington and Lincoln because she can get quality apparel "and it's not too pricey."

"Some of these shoes look brand new," added Smith, St. Joseph vice president and chief nursing officer, as she looked at the donated shoes. Among them were shoes donated by herself and her family.

"They have a lot of steps to walk yet," she said. "They'll be put on feet of people to further their growth and help them to take steps to improve their lives."

New and gently used shoes were donated  Aug. 5 though 14  in bins in parking lots of St. Joseph in Bloomington; OSF Medical Group-College Avenue, Bloomington; and Center for Health at Fort Jesse, Normal; and also during business hours inside entrances to the hospital.

Donors were OSF employees and their families, patients and the general public.

"This is one of the community events we strongly support and Home Sweet Home Ministries is a great partner," said Smith, who recalled that the drive began with podiatrist Dr. Todd Snoeyink and expanded when Snoeyink joined OSF Medical Group.

"We feel a sense of great gratitude toward the community and how much the community cares for its neighbors," Pullin said. "People will get good, wearable shoes at affordable prices."

OSF volunteers began sorting shoes on Saturday and sorting continues by Home Sweet Home workers.

Wearable shoes will be sold at Mission Mart locations in Bloomington and Lincoln, with proceeds used to support Home Sweet Home programs to lift up the homeless and others in need through meals, shelter and other services, Pullin said.

Non-wearable shoes will be recycled.

While this year's drive was the most successful so far, it's unknown how many pounds of shoes were donated during the first 13 years because OSF and Home Sweet Home switched last year from counting pairs of shoes to weighing shoes.

But Pullin said 25,000 pairs of shoes were donated during the first 13 years.
SPRINGFIELD  Gov. Bruce Rauner has signed an executive order and a pair of bills aimed at providing normalcy for the roughly 16,000 children in the care of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

The executive order requires that the department no longer use the terms ward of the state or ward of the department to refer to children in its care. Instead, theyre to be called youth in care. Changing the phrase in state law will require follow-up legislation.

Names matter, Rauner said ahead of signing the order and legislation Friday in the governors tent on Futures for Kids Day at the Illinois State Fair. Words matter.

Rauner said the issue came to his attention earlier this year during a meeting with members of the departments youth advisory boards. Those who attended told him about the stigma attached to the word ward, he said.

It was one of the most emotional but uplifting and inspirational discussions Ive ever had in my life, Rauner said.

Mostly, they just wanted to be treated like any other kid, he said.

To that end, the governor also signed a bill that will make it easier for kids in foster care to participate in extracurricular activities or even go to sleepovers at their friends houses with permission from their foster parents. Currently, those things require approval from the department.

We expect youth in care to grow up to be normal human beings and normal adults, DCFS Director George Sheldon said, and yet we do all these kind of nonnormal things to them. We even use nonnormal words.  Kids are kids.

The new law will empower foster parents to make age-appropriate decisions for the children in their care, Sheldon said.

Jesse Modjeski, 17, of Chicago is a member of the departments youth advisory board in Cook County. He thanked Rauner for taking the actions.

Without these laws and without these bills being passed and I start to be seen as an actual youth, nothing starts to change, said Modjeski, who hopes to attend Northern Illinois University and, eventually, law school.

Rauner signed another bill that expands the definition of fictive kin to include foster parents with whom a child has lived for at least a year and has established a significant and family-like relationship. This will allow them to play a more permanent role in the childs life, officials said.

The governor also signed a half-dozen other bills dealing with adoption and child welfare.
Bummer as it may be for the fans and followers but the return of "One Punch Man" Season 2 is still unknown. As for its storyline, rumors have also surfaced that Saitama's power punches will fail him and Genos would be the one to save the day.

Claims have come out that Saitama's power punches would lose its effect against Amai and the other enemies. Moreover, presumptions have also surfaced that Genos will abandon his master and do his own way. There will even come a time that Genos and Saitama would face other on opposite sides.

According to Parent Herald, rumors of Saitama experiencing love is expected to occur when "One Punch Man" Season 2 returns in the limelight. It is even expected that Genos and Saitama would be on different sides and they would be miles apart from each other.

The same report also conveyed that revenge is one of the plots that would dominate the episodes of "One Punch Man" Season 2. The story arc is also presumed to become the whistleblower for Saitama and Genos as both deals with their differences.

Many are wondering whether Genos would take the lesson or use his present skills to face his former master in combat. The structure of "One Punch Man" Season 2 is always unprecedented which is why many are expecting great things for the epic anime.

Game & Guide also reported that the epic fight that Saitama would face would be easier said than done. It might be a common tale for some but "One Punch Man" Season 2 is anticipated to render some answers for Saitama's powers and the strength of his power punches.

It remains to be seen as to when and how the storyline would form for "One Punch Man" Season 2. For the fans and followers, waiting might take awhile since the air date for the anime segment remains unsettled and unconfirmed.
As the equity gap in American education continues, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been urging educators, investors and tech companies to be more open in investing time and money in artificial intelligence-driven education technology programs. The reason? Gates believed that these AI-based EdTech platforms could personalize and revolutionize school learning experience while eliminating the equity gap.

With that said, Gates is reportedly excited about the evolving field of personalized learning and artificial intelligence tutor bots. According to Venture Beat, the world's richest man will also like the Mumbai-based company called Prepathon as it opted to create bots with specialized single concentration and purpose.

With the use of education chatbots, Prepathon CEO Allwin Agnel explained that the artificial intelligence-driven education technology bots are able to execute precise and detailed tasks that can improve or alter educational experiences by facilitating personalized learning. Agnel also added that creating several specific bots were much better than building a "one-size-fits-all" AI-driven education technology assistant because it eliminates the problems.

Due to the promising feedback bots, Prepathon believed that these artificial intelligence-powered education technology platforms have the potential to revolutionize education as humans know it. That's why, Education World revealed the company's plans to offer an extensive variety of personalized bots that suit the needs of every students in terms of specializations.

As of writing, Prepathon is concentrating on using artificial intelligence-driven education technology bots that will able to help students prepare for tests. In line with that statement, the company has introduced three new bots known as the Motivation, Revision and Announcement bots, which feature distinct functions that can assist students become proficient with examinations.

Despite the potential of these using artificial intelligence-driven education technology bots to change education, it remains uncertain if these bots will be the future of personalized learning. These bots, however, also prompt concerns among teachers and educators who fear that these bots will eventually replace them in the academe.

Fortunately, experts stressed that these artificial intelligence-driven education technology bots are useless without the human connection. As Prepathon continues to develop nonpareil educational tools, it introduces a far more accurate standard for success in the field of education technology by using data science-based information instead of just relying on artificial intelligence, The Lincolnian Online noted.

Do you think education chatbots will be the next big thing in education? Share your thoughts below and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.
The Hunter Museum of American Art will host Elizabeth Alberding, collections manager of the Kelly Collection, on Thursday, Sept. 1, from 6-7:30 p.m. The Kelly Collection is a comprehensive private collection of golden age illustration and one of the primary lenders to Masters of the Golden Age.

This event is open to the public with the special Throwback Thursday admission of $5 per adult (and free for members and children under 17 with paying adult).
Schools are supposed to be safe learning grounds for children. But parents of Massachusetts students are increasingly wary, given the alarming rate of bomb threats schools are getting these days.

Boston Herald reports that dozens of schools in Massachusetts have been receiving numerous bomb threats since April. According to 22 News, Massachusetts is now the state with the most number of hoax bomb threats with around 135 in total for last school year.

Last April, after 32 schools in Massachusetts received a bomb threat in just a day, the state police released a statement. "The response to the threats is being handled, variously, by local police and fire departments, the State Police Bomb Squad, State Police patrols and K9 units, and the office of the State Fire Marshal. The threats are being tracked by State Police at the Commonwealth Fusion Center. For each threat, a risk assessment is performed and authorities are responding accordingly," the statement read as published by Boston Patch.

This is exactly what happens when a school receives bomb threats on a regular school day. Students and staff are asked to evacuate, authorities from different offices are deployed for danger response and brings along with them their tools for investigation of a possible bombing.

There was never any dangerous explosives found. However, according to Sgt. William Qualls, this affects the whole community (via Boston Herald). It creates a fear among students and parents whether they could still regard school as a safe place for their stay.

As per Boston Herald, school administrators in Massachusetts are being trained to assess threats and to know their next course of action in response to the bomb threat. It has always been a choice for schools and police officials to either have people evacuated or call in the bomb squad.

What can authorities do to further stop bomb threats and assure parents of their children's safety in Massachusetts' schools? Sound off your thoughts in the Comments section and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.
If you are from Virginia, scroll down and read up. Before you order your favorite smoothie at the Tropical Smoothie Cafe in town, you might want to know that the establishment isn't currently friends with the health department.

Strawberry Smoothies May Lead To Hepatitis A

News 3 reports that those who consumed a strawberry smoothie from Tropical Smoothie Cafe in Virginia from August 5 to 8, may be at risk for hepatitis A. Since then, a total ten hepatitis A cases have been reported that were associated to the strawberry smoothies from the said cafe.

Good news is that those who have received vaccination for hepatitis A and those who have had hepatitis A have nothing to worry about. For being vigilant, they are immune to the virus.

Where Did The Strawberries Come From?

According to News 3, the frozen strawberries causing hepatitis A came from Egypt and had been the source of past outbreaks. Tropical Smoothie Cafe immediately stopped using the strawberries they ordered Egypt and found a new supplier.

Still, health officials are concerned that the frozen strawberries may have been bought by other restaurants and suppliers. So those who have had a strawberry smoothie within the last 50 days, watch out for symptoms of hepatitis A.

According to Mayo Clinic, symptoms of hepatitis A include fatigue, nausea and vomiting, abdominal pain or discomfort, clay-colored bowel movements, loss of appetite, low-grade fever, dark urine, joint pain

and yellowing of the skin and eyes or jaundice. These signs and symptoms may be noticeable after a few weeks of acquiring the virus.

What Are Other Cases of Hepatitis A Outbreaks In U.S. History?

As per Healthline, there had been a hepatitis-A related frozen strawberry scare in 1977 that made federal authorities recall more than a million pounds of strawberries from Mexico. The frozen strawberries had reached California and were feared to spread the virus.



In 2003, another hepatitis A outbreak was reported to have started from Chi-chi's restaurant in Monaca, Pennsylvania that were caused by green onions. According to the CDC as per Healthline, this was the largest hepatitis A outbreak in U.S. history after killing four people and making hundreds sick.



What do you think will happen with the sales of Tropical Smoothie Cafe in Virginia? Would you still order a strawberry smoothie from that place? Sound off your thoughts in the Comments section and follow Parent Herald for more news and updates.
Ryan Lochte has been in the spotlight for the past days now and it is not because of winning a medal at the recently-held Rio Olympics but due to the fact that he might have lied about the reports that he and three other U.S. swimmers were robbed at gunpoint. Lochte said in a recent interview that he over-exaggerated the facts and that his immaturity put him and the other swimmers in this situation.

Lochte sat down with NBC's Matt Lauer for his first ever television interview about the robbery incident. This comes after his claims were proven false by the authorities in Rio de Janeiro. Lauer told Lochte that the first version of his story regarding the robbery was about the mean streets of Rio de Janeiro and the version he hast told now is about the negotiated settlement that they had in order to cover up "dumb behavior," E! News reported.

Lochte said that he is taking full responsibility about the matter because if he did not over exaggerate the story, they would not be in such a mess. Originally, Lochte's passport was ordered to be seized but before a judge handling the case ordered that, Lochte has been back in the United States.

The U.S. athlete added that he over exaggerated because he felt threatened and wanted to leave the country. He said that they wanted to get out as quickly as possible so they gave the man their money. The interview of Lochte comes after he took to Facebook to say that he was not careful and candid about how he described the events leading to their money being given to the man with the gun. As opposed to Lochte's statement before that the gun was pointed at his head, he retracted that and said that the gun was pointed in their general direction.

ABC News also reported that he talked to Brazil's main broadcaster called Globo. He said that he was not lying about the robbing incident but reiterated that he over exaggerated what happened.

Officials at Rio de Janeiro claimed that Lochte and the other swimmers were not robbed as they vandalized a bathroom at a gas station and were confronted by armed security guards. They recommended that Lochte and the other swimmer, James Feigen, should be charged with false reporting. Feigen donated $11,000 to charity so as to avoid being prosecuted.

The two other swimmers, Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger have returned home after giving their statements.
Contact lenses greatly help in correcting vision in a safe and efficient manner. Improper use of contact lenses, however, can result in serious eye infections and long-term damages.

A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released last week found that one in five contact lens-related eye infections in the United States ended up damaging the eyes. Between 2005 and 2015, 1,075 contact lens-related infections occurred with injuries ranging from a scarred cornea, poorer vision, and requiring a corneal transplant.

Over 10 percent of the contact lens-related infections had to undergo emergency care in the hospital or in urgent care clinics. The report's researchers said the smallest of eye damages can be a significant disturbance in a person's life. Some cases required patients to visit an eye doctor every day or administer eye drops on their infected eye each hour.

Federal health officials said around 41 million people in the U.S. use contact lenses as an alternative to prescription glasses, ABC's First Coast News reported. Researchers in CDC's report also found that eye infection and damages can be easily avoided if patients were more proactive in caring for their contact lenses, such as removing the medical devices before sleeping. Some patients also wear contact lenses longer than the recommended amount of time.

The American Optometric Association, or AOA, advised people who often wear contact lenses to visit an eye doctor annually for proper evaluation of their vision and overall eye health. People should also purchase contact lenses from reliable sellers like those approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Make sure to stay away from online contact lens retailers. These online stores aren't capable of physically determining a person's exact prescription and they could ship wrong ones. Ill-fitted contact lenses can lead to irreversible loss of vision.

Other tips from AOA to prevent contact lens-related eye infection and damages are: refrain from sharing contact lenses with others; avoiding tap water to clean lenses and only clean them using contact lens solutions; maintaining the cleanliness of your contact lens cases; and not sleeping while still wearing your contact lenses. Users who also wear contact lenses longer than its suggested period are setting themselves up for permanent eye damage from bacterial infections and lack of oxygen.

Dr. Steven Shanbom, an ophthalmologist in Berkeley, Michigan, advised people to limit their eyes' exposure to contact lenses by wearing glasses every so often, Time reported. Shanbom recommended contact lenses to be used only during the work day and switching to glasses at home and during weekends. Swimming while wearing contact lenses is also a big no-no.
It's no secret that listening to music helps lift people's moods. But it turns out music can also benefit those who are undergoing cancer treatment. Experts found that music therapy helps lessen cancer patients' anxiety, pain, and fatigue and improves their quality of life.

A study from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania published by the Cochrane Library found that more than 3,700 cancer patients felt small to strong improvements in their anxiety and fatigue levels due to music therapy, Stuff.co.nz reported. Small declines in heart and respiratory rates and blood pressure were also found after cancer patients listened to different categories of music such as folk, country, classical, jazz, and religious.

Joke Bradt, the study's lead author and an associate professor at Drexel University, said listening to music could lower cancer patients' need for anesthetics and analgesics. Music intervention can also diminish patients' recovery time and hospitalization.

Bradt said more studies are needed to prove these findings, but she and her colleagues are hoping that health care providers would consider adding music therapy to cancer patients' psychosocial care. Sally Francis, head of the Arts in Health program at Flinders Medical Centre in South Australia, said music distracts cancer patients from their condition and improves their confidence in themselves, especially now that their illness pushes them to surrender all control and decisions to medical staff.

That boost of confidence is important during a time of hopelessness that a cancer diagnosis usually entails. According to Francis, listening to music relaxes cancer patients and encourages them to reflect and express their emotions.

Experts also believe that listening to music helps retain information and lower memory loss risk, The Huffington Post. This is particularly helpful for people with dementia, which is the decline of a person's mental ability that includes memory loss and struggles with language, thinking, and solving problems.

Listening to music helps people stay fit and healthy as well. Working out or exercising is easier to do with the aid of upbeat, pop, or rock and roll songs.

A study published on the ADVANCE Healthcare Network found that listening to music affects a person's Immunoglobin A or IgA, which is an important antibody that serves as the immune system's first defense against diseases. According to a 2013 analysis titled "The Neurochemistry of Music," there is promising evidence that music strengthens people's immune systems, but further studies are still needed for this. Music as medicine is encouraging because it's natural, cheap, and doesn't carry the side effects of pharmaceutical drugs and treatments.
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK (August 19, 2016) - September marks National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, and My Gym Manhattan is joining forces with Zumba to help fight the epidemic with activations in more than 100 My Gym locations across North America. The two companies are on a mission to empower children and families to dance away disease, be active, and live happy, healthy lives by providing free fitness activities including Zumba Kids/Kids Jr. classes. The partnership comes at a significant time when the U.S. obesity epidemic continues to worsen with one in three American kids and teens overweight or obese, according to the American Heart Association.

"Childhood Obesity Awareness Month is a time when the issue of children's fitness and health takes center stage," said Cory Bertisch, CEO of My Gym Enterprises. "We are proud to serve the My Gym communities with a comprehensive fitness curriculum designed to introduce children to a healthy lifestyle while developing positive social skills. We are thrilled to welcome both our member families and all newcomers to this event spotlighting the nationally-coordinated colorful and exciting Zumba Kids and Zumba Kids Jr. demonstrations. Come one, come all!"

Set for Saturday September 10, 2016, from 10:30 am - 1:30 pm local time, The My Gym Family Fit & Fun Party at all My Gym Manhattan locations, located at 250 East 60th, 1608 1st Avenue and 22 West 66th Street, will feature a specially-designed and fun-filled day of fitness for kids of all ages, including award-winning My Gym fitness programs and Zumba Kids/Kids Jr. fitness classes.

"This partnership with My Gym supports our continued commitment in helping spread awareness about the importance of fighting childhood obesity," said Alberto Perlman, CEO of Zumba. "Our goal is to educate kids and their families while encouraging a healthy lifestyle that incorporates fitness as an enjoyable part of their lives. Zumba not only teaches kids choreography but also instills teamwork, confidence, self-esteem, memory, creativity, coordination and cultural awareness."

An eagerly-anticipated highlight of the Family Fit & Fun Party day will be free Zumba Kids/Kids Jr. classes scheduled to kick off at 10:00 AM Pacific Time/11:00 AM Mountain Time/12:00 PM Central Time/and 1:00 PM Eastern Time. Across all My Gym participating locations, thousands of kids and families will dance together in unison to the Zumba beat, while spreading the message that exercise can be fun and effective.

The My Gym Family Fit & Fun Party Featuring Zumba Fitness is sure to be a fantastic time for kids and families alike. Please contact My Gym Manhattan at 212-421-9496 or via email at lizrubin@mygym for participation details and more information, or visit My Gym of Manhattan at here.

Established in 1983 and named #1 Children's Fitness Franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine in 2014, My Gym is a leading fitness center destination for children with over 400 locations worldwide, including international locations in China, France, Canada, and Brazil, among others. More than 30 additional locations are planned to open worldwide in the next 12 months. My Gym combines innovative early physical education/pre-gymnastics classes with state-of-the-art facilities to empower children ages 6 weeks through 10 years by helping them acquire the skills, confidence, and positive self-image needed to become healthy young adults. My Gym's award-winning, structured, noncompetitive and age-appropriate classes and birthday parties enhance children's overall development through games, music, exercise, sports, gymnastics, puppets, unique rides, and fun. The children gain strength, balance, coordination, fine and gross motor proficiency, agility, flexibility, and social skills. In addition to the recently added Dance, Martial Arts, and Zumba Classes (at select locations), My Gym features the interactive Building Blocks Program to all enrolled children ages 2.5 years and older. The program helps children work toward specific milestones in their physical, cognitive, and emotional development and then celebrates their achievements with stickers, progression ribbons, medals, trophies, graduation certificates and more in periodic Building Blocks Acknowledgment Ceremonies. The My Gym television show, "My Gym At Home," airs on BabyFirst, a 24/7 channel focusing on children's development. The My Gym at Home app is available for Apple/IOS and for Android devices.

For more information about My Gym and the location nearest you, please visit here.

About Zumba Fitness, LLC

Founded in 2001, Zumba is the largest branded fitness company in the world - reporting more than 15 million weekly participants, in 200,000 locations, across 186 countries. Known as "exercise in disguise," Zumba blends contagious world rhythms with easy-to-follow choreography for an effective, total-body workout that feels more like a party than exercise. In addition to its original Zumba program, the company offers 10 Zumba specialty classes- from aquatic-based to those specifically designed for active older adults and children. In 2016, Zumba launched its first non-dance, HIIT-based workout called STRONG by ZumbaTM, based on Synced Music Motivation. The Zumba lifestyle is rounded out by the company's many consumer product offerings, including DVDs, video games and original music, activewear and footwear, nutrition drink line "Zumba Shake Shake ShakeTM," and interactive Fitness-ConcertTM events. For more information about Zumba's programs and products, or to find a live class, visit zumba.com. Visit the ZLife blog and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
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
More than 43,000 donors and philanthropic investors chose to support the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in fiscal year 2016. That number represents an increase of more than 10,000 donors in the past three years.

In all, UT received $167 million in private and corporate gifts last fiscal year.

UT credits the 30 percent increase in the number of donors to more online engagement through email and social media and a boost in donor activity through its 63 alumni chapters. Many chapters have created and raised funds for new scholarships as a means of supporting local high school students who become new Vols.

More than half of UT's donors in FY 2016 provided gifts of $100 or less.

"We are grateful to see a growing number of Volunteers investing in our journey to become a top 25 public research university," said Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. "Our alumni, friends and corporate partners are making a difference in the lives of UT students and faculty and on our campus."

Private support helps to bridge the gap between state funding and student tuition and contributes to the state's goal of raising the percentage of college-educated Tennesseans, said officials.

"Private and corporate support is critical to ensuring that our doors are always open to qualified students who want to become new Volunteers," Chancellor Cheek said.

Close to $14.5 million was given for merit- and need-based undergraduate scholarships, and $22.5 million will help boost graduate enrollment through new fellowships and assistantships.

Last year, VOLstarter, UT's crowdfunding site, received more than $60,000 for 63 projects to help students grow and improve lives. Last fall's Big Orange Give received close to $1.4 million in one week. The online annual mini-campaign helps to reconnect many alumni and friends with UT. Nearly 80 percent of the gifts made through Big Orange Give were less than $100.

Chip Bryant, interim vice chancellor for development and alumni affairs, said the level of excitement and engagement of alumni and friends is also at an all-time high.

"They are excited about the direction of the university, and their investments are making an enormous difference in shaping our success," said Mr. Bryant. "Every gift and every donor contribute to our goal of becoming an even better university."
Attila Balaton bought an 8GB USB key to create a Windows 10 Recovery Drive only to find out 16GB was required.

Mea culpa: Answer Line was partly to blame, as my former colleague wrote that Microsoft suggests at least a 4GB USB key. Its not his fault, though, as on this support page Microsoft says in order to create a Windows 10 Recovery Drive you will need a, USB thumbdrive with 4 GB of space or more. Confusing things further is this page from Microsoft, where the company doesnt even mention how much space youll need. Finally, on its support page for Windows 8 Microsoft says the recovery image the software creates, is typically 3 to 6 GB in size.

However, based on Atillas feedback I went in and updated our article. Also in the video that accompanied the above article, we mention that when we tried the process on a laptop in our office it said we needed a 16GB key! This got the staff at PCWorld curious, so we also looked into this further to see if we could nail down a specific size requirement, and also figure out what factors play a role in determining the size of the recovery data.

First, to test what my own system would need I made a recovery drive on my personal PC, which has been running Windows 10 for approximately two years so I figured it would have a lot of system files, or files that needed to be saved. Yet when I went through the process of creating the Recovery drive I was met with the screenshot below.

On my own PCs (both of them) I needed just 8GB of space.

Next I turned to my laptop, which I use only for testing, so it is as minimal of an installation of Windows 10 as you could possibly get. I think the only thing I have installed on that machine is Chrome. Surprisingly Windows told me I needed 8GB for my laptop too!

Therefore, in my experience, with installations of Windows 10 that are both old and new it only required 8GB of storage. Also, when I examined the contents of the Recovery Drive for my personal PC I found it was 6.03GB in size.

Imagine that  only 512MB required!

Back in the office we returned to our 16GB recovery drive. We wondered why it needed to be so large, but then we realized this particular laptop had four user accounts, so we figured maybe it was 3GB per user. That makes sense, right? We decided to ask Microsoft about it, and an official spokesperson gave us a statement, which read, The size of the image varies on a wide variety of factors such as the number of device drivers, OS updates, language packs installed, as well as which version of Windows it is. The recommended size is also rounded up and may show as larger than exactly what is needed.

Just type Recovery into the Windows 10 search to find the launcher.

Thats great and all, but it didnt answer our question. When we pressed about how the number of users affects the size of the recovery drive, we received a definitive answer from Microsoft, which was, The required size of the USB storage is not related to how many user accounts are on the system.

So there you have it, or at least part of it.

One final ripple: when you start the wizard to create the Recovery Drive it asks you if you want to include System Files as well. When we un-checked this box it said we needed a USB key with a whoppingare you ready for this?512MB of storage! Do they even make those anymore?

The bottom line is this: A 16GB USB key is only $5 on Amazon, so just get more than you need to be safe. You can also find out the specific requirements of your system by simply running the wizard.

To do that just type Recovery Drive into the Windows search bar and select Create a Recovery Drive from the options. Itll examine your system and tell you how much space youll need before it does anything.
ARM conquered the mobile market starting with Apples iPhone, and now wants to be in the worlds fastest computers.

A new ARM chip design being announced on Monday is targeted at supercomputers, a lucrative market in which the company has no presence. ARMs new chip design, which has mobile origins, has extensions and tweaks to boost computing power.

The announcement comes a few weeks after Japanese company Softbank said it would buy ARM for a mammoth $32 billion. With the cash, ARM is expected to sharpen its focus on servers and the internet of things.

ARMs new chip design will help the company on two fronts. ARM is sending a warning to Intel, IBM and other chip makers that it too can develop fast supercomputing chips. The company will also join a race among countries and chip makers to build the worlds fastest computers.

The chip design is being detailed at the Hot Chips conference in Cupertino, California, on Monday.

Countries like the U.S., Japan and China want to be the first to reach the exascale computing threshold, in which a supercomputer delivers 1 exaflop of performance (a million trillion calculations per second). Intel, IBM and Nvidia have also been pushing the limits of chip performance to reach that goal.

Following Softbanks agreement to buy ARM, it should come as no surprise that the first supercomputer based on the new chip design will be installed in Japan. The Post-K supercomputer will be developed by Fujitsu, which dropped a bombshell in June when it dropped its trusty SPARC architecture in favor of ARM for high-performance computers. Fujitsu aided ARM in the development of the new chip.

Post-K will be 50 to 100 times speedier than its predecessor, the K Computer, which is currently the fifth fastest computer in the world. The K Computer delivers 10.5 petaflops of peak performance with the Fujitsu-designed SPARC64 VIIIfx processor.

The new ARM processor design will be based on the 64-bit ARM-v8A architecture and have vector processing extensions called Scalable Vector Extension. Vector processors drove early supercomputers, which then shifted over to less expensive IBM RISC chips in the early 1990s, and on to general-purpose x86 processors, which are in most high-performance servers today.

In 2013, researchers said less expensive smartphone chips, like the ones from ARM, would ultimately replace x86 processors in supercomputers. But history has turned, and the growing reliance on vector processing is seeing a resurgence with ARMs new chip design and Intels Xeon Phi supercomputing chip.

The power-efficient chip design from ARM could crank up performance while reducing power consumption. Supercomputing speed is growing at a phenomenal rate, but the power consumption isnt coming down as quickly.

ARMs chip design will also be part of an influx of alternative chip architectures outside x86 and IBMs Power entering supercomputing. The worlds fastest supercomputer called the Sunway TaihuLight has a homegrown ShenWei processor developed by China. It offers peak performance of 125.4 petaflops.

ARM has struggled in servers for half a decade now, and the new chip design could give it a better chance of competing against Intel, which dominates data centers. Large server clusters are being built for machine learning, which could use the low-precision calculations provided by a large congregation of ARM chips with vector extensions.

ARM servers are already available, but arent being widely adopted. Dell and Lenovo are testing ARM servers, and said they would ship products when demand grows, which hasnt happened yet.

ARM server chip makers are also struggling and hanging on with the hope the market will take off someday. AMD, which once placed its server future on ARM chips, has reverted back to x86 chips as it re-enters servers. Qualcomm is testing its ARM server chip with cloud developers, and wont release a chip until the market is viable. AppliedMicro scored a big win with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which is using the ARM server chips in storage systems. Other ARM server chip makers include Broadcom and Cavium.
An Indio Police Department officer shot and killed a 71-year-old Indio man who authorities say was holding a knife Saturday night, Aug. 20, in Indio.

Officers responded to the 44500 block of Jackson Street in Indio after receiving reports of the man threatening citizens in the area around 9:15 p.m., according to a Riverside County Sheriffs Department news release. The Sheriffs Departments Central Homicide Unit is investigating the incident.

Officers located the man  whose name coroners officials withheld at the request of investigators  and during the contact, an officer-involved shooting occurred, the news release said. The news release did not say what provoked the shooting.

The man died at 9:55 p.m. in the emergency room at John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital.

No officers or bystanders were injured in the shooting, the news release said. The officer who shot the person has been placed on administrative leave per Indio Police Department policy.

Anyone with information regarding the incident is asked to call sheriffs homicide detectives at 760-393-3528.
One thought has recurred to me over my years as columnist here at The Press-Enterprise: Im a lucky girl.

Im lucky to have had a platform to express my opinions about public life in the Inland Empire for the past 17 years.

Im lucky to have had the opportunity to write about issues and people I thought were important and thought you, my readers, would want to know about.

Im lucky to have worked with a bunch of the smartest, hardest-working journalists youll ever know.

Over 30 years writing for newspapers in the Inland Empire, Ive had some memorable moments.

I stood on the tarmac when two presidents landed at the former Norton Air Force Base (Bill Clinton in 1995; Barack Obama in 2015), and sat in the audience when another spoke at the Radisson Hotel in San Bernardino (George W. Bush in 2003).

I huddled behind a rope line with journalists from across the nation the day Richard Nixons body was brought home to the presidential library in Yorba Linda, and sat in the amphitheater for his funeral the next day, attended by every living president of the United States.

I attended President Obamas inauguration in 2009, and national political conventions in Los Angeles in 2000 (Democratic) and in San Diego in 1996 (Republicans).

I sat in the California Supreme Courts chamber to hear arguments in an Inland case in 2013, the first case heard after the small but historic room in Sacramento was restored.

Over the years, Ive seen newly elected officials burst on the scene with promise only to fizzle, and seen others arrive without fanfare but go on to impress with their dedication to the work of public service.

Ive met some amazing people: two Tuskegee airmen (the late Col. Paul L. Green of Highland and Dr. Thurston L. Gaines Jr. of Murrieta), and the soft-spoken cameraman who brought Huell Howsers Californias Gold to life (Luis Fuerte of Rialto). Im glad I could share their stories with you.

Ive celebrated Inland Empire victories  the return of local control for Ontario International Airport, soon to be consummated, and the defeat of a massive natural gas pipeline that would have torn up neighborhoods from San Bernardino to Moreno Valley.

Ive heralded Inland triumphs and the people who made them possible  the California Air Resources Boards choice of Riverside as its future headquarters, and Loma Linda University Healths choice to open a campus in San Bernardino.

And Ive noted struggles the Inland Empire continues to fight, including the shortage of judges that saddles Riverside and San Bernardino counties courts with the highest caseloads in the state.

Now, it will be someone elses turn.

I wont be here to follow San Bernardinos fortunes and misfortunes, the gigantic logistics center planned in Moreno Valley, the cleanup of toxic PCBs in a Riverside neighborhood, Beaumonts municipal troubles, or the millions of gallons of water being extracted from the drought-stricken San Bernardino Mountains without an environmental review.

But I will be reading what others write about them.

I am leaving for a new career in marketing and communication.

I hope to tell you about it in the coming weeks.

Its never easy to say goodbye.

I will miss you, readers of the P-E and The Sun and listeners on KVCR-FM. Hearing from you always gave me a lift.

Thank you for that. I wont say goodbye.

Just, Ill be seeing you.

Contact the writer: cmacduff@pressenterprise.com
It will be weeks, at best, before there are clear estimates on how much the Blue Cut fire will cost property owners and residents of the region. But just battling the fire, which has scorched 37,020 acres in and north of the Cajon Pass, will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

As of Thursday afternoon, San Bernardino County had already spent an estimated $2.5 million battling the blaze, according to county spokesman David Wert. But the county  and its taxpayers  arent alone on this.

Battling wildfires has grown more expensive in recent years, according to Daniel Berlant, chief of public information for the Cal Fire.

Since July 1, the start of the 2016-17 fiscal year, Cal Fire has spent $165 million out of the years budgeted $425 million emergency fund, which covers paying for anything other than standard day-to-day staffing.

Anything that goes beyond our initial attack goes against this fund, Berlant said.

If past years are any indication, the department may go through all of that $425 million and more: In the 2015-16 fiscal year that just ended in June, the department spent $547 million in emergency funds fighting fires, compared to $402 million in the 2014-15 fiscal year, $242 million in the 2013-14 fiscal year, $311 million in the 2012-13 fiscal year, $140 million in the 2011-12 fiscal year and a mere $90 million in the 2010-11 fiscal year.

The drought is the biggest factor in this, Berlant said. Not only have we seen larger, more damaging fires in the last couple of years, weve also seen an increase in the number of fires.

Taxpayers around the nation are on the hook for the fires raging across the West in recent years.

Ever more severe and frequent wildfires are a new reality, burning hotter and longer and endangering residential communities, Babete Anderson, spokeswoman for the US Forest Service, wrote in an email. As a result, the growth in fire suppression costs has steadily consumed an ever-increasing portion of the agencys appropriated budget.

Unlike other natural disasters, according to Anderson, there is no emergency disaster relief fund for firefighting. The Forest Service pays for fighting even for our most costly wildfires out of its fixed budget, she said.

One to 2 percent of fires consume 30 percent or more of annual costs, Anderson said.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spent a combined $2.1 billion in 2015, fighting 68,151 fires that consumed 10 million acres. Thats more money and a higher acreage than the government has spent on firefighting in any year since 1985, the first year for which records are immediately available.

The dilemma is that the fire season is not just intensifying, but also lengthening, and the policy has not caught up with nature, said Char Miller, professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College. The budgetary cycles are out of whack with the lengthening fire seasons.

Los Angeles County brought in leased water-dropping SuperScooper airplanes three weeks earlier than usual this year to combat an expanding fire season. The planes cost $1,100 an hour to operate.

County commissioners, state level officials and at the forest service level, they have not been able to convince the funders of these organizations that there has to be a bigger budget for a longer period of time. And thats a tough sell, Miller said. I hope theres a lot of thinking going on at the county level.

Following a disappointing El Nino this past winter in Southern California, the Pacific Ocean is headed into the drier La Nina cycle.

The data indicates that the next couple of years will be drying out, Miller said, so our budgets had better be more robust than they are now.

And a drier Southern California seems likely to mean even more and bigger wildfires.

Lets use the Blue Cut fire as a motivation to be proactive, Miller said. Lets start doing the prevention now. Job one is extending the budgetary cycle and making it match up with the natural cycle. And so far, we havent done that.

Contact the writer: byarbrough@scng.com or @LBY3 on Twitter
The Police have uncovered a shooting range at Tema Community 3 where armed do their shooting rehearsals before launching their attacks on innocent and law abiding citizens.



The suspected armed robbers had created their new improvised shooting range at the Ramsar site at Tema where they use empty plastic bottles as their targets.



The move by the police follows a robbery attack by these suspects at the Tema Heavy Industrial area at 2am on Saturday where they attacked a steel manufacturing company, robbing a Chinese expatriate of his valuable items.



They were busily rehearsing when the police stormed their hideout following a tip-off. The suspects upon seeing the police opened fire on them and the police returned fire killing one instantly.



Two others are currently on the run and are being hunted by the police. A total of 72 cartridges and several empty plastic bottles which served as targets for the shooting rehearsals were retrieved by the police.



At a media briefing Sunday, the Tema Regional Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Juliana Obeng urged the public to help the police arrest the suspects.



If you live in an area or you are working at the hospital and you see somebody with gunshot wounds, kindly alert the police so we can follow up and arrest these persons.





Source: kasapafmonline.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
Two veterans from the United States Air Force, one veteran from the United States Navy and one veteran from the United Stated Army were each honored for their service during the Vietnam War. Three of the veterans are currently employed and one veteran is recently retired from Advanced Technical Ceramics Company.

The veterans were called to a gathering with fellow coworkers and members of the Chief John Ross Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution. The veterans were surprised when it was revealed that the gathering was to honor each of them for their war time service. Each veteran was thanked for their service and presented a Vietnam Veteran Commemorative Pin by Chapter Regent Jessica Dumitru.

Daughters of the American Revolution, Chief John Ross chapter, is a Commemorative Partner of The United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration and honors Vietnam Veterans by thanking them for their service and presented each veteran with a Vietnam Commemorative Pin. The event was organized by Jennifer Sawyer Harvey, member of Chief John Ross, NSDAR.

.






A 34-year-old trader who posed as a medical doctor and was attending to patients at the Surgical and Emergency Unit of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital has been arrested by the police.



Jacob Nii Laryea was reportedly busted by doctors while he was wearing a white doctors apron, with a stethoscope around his neck and attending to patients.



Doctors on duty at the hospital told the police that that was the third time they had spotted the suspect posing as a doctor and attending to patients at the unit.



Luck eluded him when two of the doctors spotted him and questioned him, leading to his arrest on Wednesday, August 17, 2016.



He is currently in the custody of the Dansoman Divisional Police Command assisting in investigation.



Confirming the arrest to DAILY GUIDE, ACP Antwi Tabi, Dansoman Divisional Commander, said on August 17, 2016, Dr Mona Torto and Dr Theophilus Addo  both staff of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital  assisted by Evans Wampah and Ahmed Acquah, also staff of the hospitals security department, arrested Jacob Nii Laryea and brought him to the station. They asserted that on August 12, 2016 at about 9am,



The following day, the suspect was seen again still in possession of the stethoscope talking with a patient on admission.



Laryea, who claimed to be a medical officer, could not answer simple questions put to him by the two doctors and therefore they became suspicious of him.



On August 17, 2016, he emerged at the same premises and was asked to identify his department or unit but he could not tell doctors on duty his department.



When he was further asked to produce his identity card, Nii Laryea could not do that and attempted to run away.



He was given a hot chase by the security men on duty and arrested him at a distance.



He was later handed over to the Korle-Bu police for further interrogations.



He had provisionally been charged with defrauding by false pretence and would be arraigned before court.

Source: Daily 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
Managing Editor of the Insight Newspaper Kwesi Pratt Jnr has downplayed report by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) indicating that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was leading the table in terms of vote buying ahead of this years polls.



According to him, every government in every election year develops constituencies and changes lives of people as part of its interventions, and this is not intended to buy votes.



He believes politicians in the country buy votes and NDC should not be seen as the only political party which is accused of buying votes.



Speaking on Accra based Radio Gold Saturday; he said the CDD report should not be taken hook line and sinker.



"Everybody buys votes; even the smaller parties do so not to necessarily buy electorates but as part of government intervention, he said.



Mr Pratts comment follows a recent survey by the CDD which revealed that the NDC was leading the table in terms of vote buying ahead of this years polls.



The survey indicated that a total of 51 per cent of Ghanaians surveyed believed the Mahama government had been buying votes, followed closely by Nana Akufo-Addo's New Patriotic Party with 32 per cent.



However, the NPP as well as civil society groups have accused President John Mahama, who is currently on a tour of the ten regions dubbed to Account to the People, of buying votes by sharing outboard motors, sewing machines and other freebies to rural folks.



But Kwesi Pratt could not fathom why the results of the survey by the CDD come at a time both the president and his wife, Lordina Mahama, have been accused by the opposition NPP of buying votes and abusing incumbency.



It is very interesting that this report came up exactly at the same time the NPP was making those allegations and so I believe subjecting the report to strict examination wont be bad, he asserted.



He appealed to politicians to rather appreciate the developmental projects being undertaken by President Mahama and not condemn him.

Source: Adomonline.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
Following recommendations by the Council of State, His excellency President John Mahama has, in accordance with his constitutional powers under Article 72 of the Constitution, remitted the remaining prison sentence imposed on three persons: Salifu Maase (alias Mugabe), Alistair Nelson and Ako Gunn who were sentenced to 4 months imprisonment and a fine of GH10,000.00 each for contempt of court.



In the statement signed by Dr Omane Boamah,and copied to Peacefmonline.com the President reminds all Ghanaians to guard against the use of intemperate language which has the potential of causing unnecessary tension



PRESIDENT GRANTS REMISSION OF SENTENCE TO THREEE CONTEMNORS



The President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama has, in consultation with the Council of State and in exercise of his constitutional powers under Article 72 of the Constitution, remitted the remaining prison sentence imposed on three persons: Salifu Maase (alias Mugabe), Alistair Nelson and Ako Gunn who were sentenced to 4 months imprisonment and a fine of GH10,000.00 each for contempt of court. The remission is effective 26th August 2016



The three were sentenced on 27th July 2016 and have served part of the prison sentences imposed on them. They have also paid the GH10,000.00 (ten thousand Cedis) fines.



The decision of His Excellency the President to remit their sentences on compassionate grounds follows a petition submitted to him by the contemnors appealing to the President to exercise his prerogative of mercy even as they continue to express deep remorse and regret for the unacceptable statements they made against the Judiciary.



His Excellency, President Mahama takes this opportunity to remind all Ghanaians of the need to respect the institutions of State and exercise freedom of speech responsibly mindful of the need to preserve peace and national unity.



The President reminds all concerned especially persons working in the media or appearing on its platforms to be circumspect and guard against the use of intemperate language which has the potential of causing unnecessary tension especially in this election year.



The President is hopeful that all will draw lessons from the events leading to the conviction of the three persons and bear in mind the consequences of injudicious utterances.



Signed:

EDWARD K. OMANE BOAMAH (DR.)

(Minister)

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Ah dear.

Weve already reported an update on the incident at the AFL Showdown this weekend, during which a Port Adelaide FC supporter threw a banana at Adelaide FC forward Eddie Betts, who is an Aboriginal man.

Port Adelaide FC have since released a statement saying that her actions were clearly racially motivated, and have invited her to take part in the clubs Indigenous awareness programs in order to educate her on why her actions are not acceptable.

The womans mother refused to speak to media, and told The Advertiser that her daughter would not be speaking publicly about the incident.

But now, a man has called into local talkback radio FiveAA this morning, saying he is the womans father and proceeding to give a statement which probably wouldve been better left unsaid.

The man, referring to himself as Don, stated that hes angry shes being demonised by media, who are playing the race card.

Trust me, I am her father, Im the most honest person. I knew nothing about it. I knew the incident had occurred, and then there were people that I knew and I said look, show me on the phone, and there it was  my daughter. I am just absolutely shocked. Im just beside myself. Because its just so uncharacteristic. This kid is a beautiful kid. Shes very similar to her mother  unassuming, honest. This was so uncharacteristic.

He told the hosts that there was no way that her actions were premeditated, despite spokespeople for Port Adelaide FC stating publicly that the incident was clearly racially motivated: Unless my daughter was on drugs overnight, no way in the world.

I accept that (throwing objects at players is wrong), but dont demonise someone. The thing that irritates me the most is that were playing the racist card here. It was more an act of frustration than a racist act where shes thrown a banana. You people in the media  you can sensationalise anything. You dont know what kind of person (she is). She threw a banana in what, to me, was more in frustration. Theres a guy at St Kilda that used to irritate me  his name was Stephen Milne. If that bananas thrown at Stephen Milne, no fuss would be made about it.

Youre playing the racist game. Im not condoning what shes done. This is called media rubbish. Why do you people sensationalise things?

He told the talkback radio show that he doesnt condone what she did, but was adamant that she should not be banned from attending AFL games for life.

Dont demonise this human being, because I know what shes like.

Listen to the segment here:

Source: FiveAA.

Photo: Will Bishop / Facebook.
Oh, Usain.

Still basking in the warm afterglow of becoming the greatest sprinter of all time, Usain Bolt has allegedly found himself in the grainy sights of a phone camera. In the buff. With a 20-year-old student who is definitely not his longtime partner Kasi Bennett.

via @DJRNOFC / Twitter.





In photos obtained by Brazilian media, the track juggernaut is allegedly shown cozied up to local Jady Duarte. According to her, the Jamaican demi-god introduced himself while celebrating his Olympics campaign at a Rio club by commanding his security squad to get her attention.

Duarte said at the time did not even know it was him, because they were like many Jamaicans, before describing the whole shebang as not a big deal. It was normal.

While Duartes definition of normal seems to include snuggling up to the most recognisable athlete on the planet RN, she also apparently had the presence of mind to take a few snaps, which were then shared with mates on WhatsApp.

Of course, that wasnt the only, uh, fraternisation the bloke got up to. In a separate vid taken on the night, the man didnt leave room for Jesus as he danced with another club-goer:

Bennett  who Bolts sister recently claimed is likely to land a proposal from the fella upon his return  had been live-tweeting the shit outta the sprinters Olympic success. A cursory glance at her Twitter today doesnt quite evoke the same enthusiasm:

Doing something Im pretty sure Ive made fun of people for doing But here goes : Im tapped out. Logging off. ??  Kasi B. (@kasi__b) August 21, 2016

In response to this hullabaloo, torrents of social media users have been flooding Bennetts pages with support. While theres an abundance of users deadset on defending Bolt, theres already a cadre of commenters taking the images at face value:

Were hoping theres some kind of mutually beneficial resolution here. Perhaps this is all just a classic stitch-up. Maybe the pair have some kind of in-the-same-postcode arrangement.

Lesson learnt, though: you can be the fastest human of all time, and you still wont be able to outrun photos floating around on social media.

Source: Daily Mail.

Photo: Alexander Hassenstein / Getty.
Barely a goddamned week goes by without some form of ass-backwards racial prejudice stinking its way into Australias headlines.

As the media furore surrounding cartoonist Bill Leak and his damaging depiction of Indigenous Australians was just beginning to lose its intensity, we were hit with the news another AFL fan hurled a banana at an Indigenous player.

That is to say instances of racism against Australias ethic minorities occur with such brutal regularity that weve essentially come to expect them.

At every level of our culture, in every aspect of our day-to-day lives, youll still find people of colour facing indefensible intolerance.

Triple Js Hack often highlights those very same stories. A quick glance across the shows back-catalogue reveals host Tom Tilley has helmed some hefty discussions on race, prejudice, and on how Australia is still burdened by hatred based on the colour of someones skin.

Still, last Fridays episode flipped the typical script by discussing prejudicial language used against white Australians. The results of that chat, tucked into the tail-end of the show, were just short enough to pass by without a huge amount of notice. Still, that five-minute span centred around one hotly-contested point that warrants contemplation:

Is it racist to call someone a white c*nt?

Using libertarian Senator David Lleyonhjelms recent claim angry white man constitutes racist language as a starting point, Tilley and panellist Bhakthi Puvanenthiran fielded a call from Tammy-Lee.

Describing her childhood in Far-North Queensland, Tammy-Lee said I was, at seven years of age, constantly bombarded by the group of native (sic) Australians who lived across the road from us.

[I was] called a Captain Cook white Not going to say the word on radio.

Tilley interjected, filling in the blank with C-bomb! Ive had that one as well. Tammy-Lee responded in the affirmative, saying yeah, I copped that almost every morning, and I was not allowed to say anything.

The host asked Puvanenthiran if she believed that constituted racism. Her response of its bullying, but its not racism, was set upon instantaneously by Tilley.

But theyre denigrating her on the basis of her race, how can that not be racism?

Puvanenthirans reply demonstrated the gulf between the ways our society understands the issue. Her open-ended question of because you are white, do you face problems getting employment, finding someone to date you, do you face regular bullying? framed the issue in terms of oppressor and oppressed, whereby racism can only be enacted by the former on the latter.

Tammy-Lee asked if racism is not simply when somebody is vilified for the colour of their skin. Actually its not, Puvanenthiran said. Racism is a system of oppression that works against certain groups.

That definition was contested, with bloody haste, by Tilley. He ran through the dictionary definition of racism which conformed to Tammy-Lees take, and put it to his co-panellist by asking so youve got a different definition to the Oxford Dictionary? Yours involves this kind of institutionalised power imbalance.



Puvanenthirans response qualified the original white c*nt slur. She said its obviously a shitty thing to have heard, but it pales in comparison to the racist acts perpetrated on Indigenous Australians on a much broader scale. That statement was met with agreement from the caller, who went ahead and said she has brown friends.

That one, just quietly, was met with a barely-audible Christ from Puvanenthiran.

If anything, that short back-and-forth demonstrated how concepts like intersectionality and nuanced interpretations of power structures are working their way into the broader public conscience.

It was prickly. It was charged. But that doesnt mean its a discussion Australia should avoid, and for a few minutes on a Friday evening, a once-marginalised perspective was explored in primetime.

Listen to the entire episode here.

Source: Triple J / Hack.

Photo: Don Arnold / Getty.
The biggest gripe Australian TV and film consumers have had since bloody forever has been the delayed and staggered release schedule for new releases between the US/UK/literally everywhere else and here.

Its one of (if not the) key factors that pushed Australia to become the largest single pirater of shows like Game of Thrones, for example. The limited availability, or restrictive exclusivity of the product, preventing people from paying a fair price to access that thing they want.

Ever since we got an official version of Netflix, those calls have been dampened pretty significantly; turns out that people will actually pay for things when you let them do so, who wouldve thought.

But because nothing gold can stay and we are apparently destined to never have nice things, etc, this sudden influx of new, legal content is proving to be a massive headache for our apparently thunderously under-resourced Classifications Board, and to that end Netflix Australia has warned that they might have to start delaying new shows in Australia because the board simply cannot keep up.

The problem, as it stands, is that Netflixs barrage of content includes a laundry list of titles that havent been aired in Australia previously, and thus require Australian classification.

Broadcasters, like local free-to-air or cable channels, are the biggest distributors of new content in the country, and produce more than the board is capable of handling. So instead, they employ in-house content assessors that self-classify programs according to Australian standards.

Under current broadcasting laws, there is no provision for Streaming Video on Demand companies like Netflix to employ similar self-assessors, and thus all SVOD content has to go through the regular Government-backed classification process, which is buckling under the avalanche of new content.

Netflixs global public policy manager Josh Korn explains it all thusly:

Netflix adds thousands of hours to its Australian catalogue each month. Many of these titles, including Netflix original content, have never been shown in Australia and need to be given an Australian classification and labelled with appropriate consumer advisories.

As Netflix increases its investments in content, more and more titles will need to be given an Australian classification. However, there are significant obstacles associated with classifying large volumes of content. Processing delays could result in content being premiered later in Australia than in other Netflix markets.

There is currently no capacity for SVOD providers to self-classify the content supplied to their customers. Classification costs for the SVOD industry will continue to increase as the range of online content choices for Australian consumers continues to expand.

The Government is currently drafting a proposal that would see all classification work folded under the banner of the Australian Communications and Media Authority; a proposal that is being backed by Netflix and other SVOD companies. But the Classifications Board is resisting that call, arguing that ACMA assessors dont possess the skills required to assume full control of classification duties.

Its obviously hard to see Netflix actually delaying content coming in to Australia; these sorts of things tend to be idle threats more than anything.

Though while Government officials and the industry at large go back-and-forth on this whole rigamarole, the only people who will ultimately suffer will be Australian consumers.

But hey! Who knows! Maybe this whole thing will be sorted out in double-time and will lead us to a whole new world of hot, legal content.

*clears throat*

STRANGER THINGS have happened.

Source: IT News.
As you might know  possibly from the huge amount of media coverage of Taylor Swift landing in Australia with her boyfriend, Thor actor Tom Hiddleston  the new film in the huge Marvel franchise is currently filming in Queensland.

According to a bunch of Aussie morning shows, the films Brisbane set has been magically transformed into a street of New York City, complete with the citys iconic yellow cabs.

This morning, theres reports that a rehearsal was underway, with director Taika Waititi running the stars through what would be happening in the NY scene. Proper filming on the set began approximately an hour ago.

Watch below:

Thor and Loki are back on set. Rehearsal now kicking off! @tennewsqld #TenNews pic.twitter.com/aq5gek9kaz  Pippa Sheehan (@PipSheehan) August 21, 2016

This gives you a good idea of what the crowd is like (and theres more around corner) @ABCNewsBrisbane #Thor pic.twitter.com/FXWBOPNMYX  Patrick Williams (@PatrickWilliams) August 21, 2016

Local news are also reporting that Brissy cafe Atomic Coffee and Catering will be featured in the upcoming film.

Owners George Kalatzis and Julie Anthanassiadis said theyd be closing their doors to the public this week so Chris Hemsworth and his co-stars could film a scene inside the cafe.

Kalatzis told the Courier Mail,

When we got the cafe all we ever wanted to do was make nice coffee for nice people. Now were making nice coffee for the stars of a Hollywood movie.

CUTE.

Source: Today / Channel 10.

Photo: Twitter / Today.
The faculty at Chattanooga State Community Colleges Humanities & Fine Arts Division (HFA) took a break from their fall semester academic preparations to carry the Colleges mission of service beyond the campus and into the community.

Nearly 20 faculty members spent the morning at the Chattanooga Area Food Bank (CAFB) assisting the staff in the sorting and packing of food that is donated daily by local partners. The ChattState crew packed more than 125 emergency food boxes for distribution to area agencies and sorted 1.75 tons of sweet potatoes into 5-pound bags for individual distribution.

The CAFBs feeding programs provide 13.3 million pounds of food annually to their 165,000 clients who live below the poverty line in the Chattanooga service area. Ongoing volunteer opportunities include warehouse help, food sorting and packing, office assistance, truck driving, and special event volunteers.

ChattState shares the Chattanooga Area Food Banks mission of serving those in need in our community. As community college professors, we encounter daily in a very real way the extreme circumstances in which some of our fellow residents live. While we work hard to meet their educational needs and set them on the path to a better life, volunteering at the CAFB allows us to help meet some of the immediate physical needs as well, said Dr. Joel Henderson, Chair of the Humanities Department. We try to make our visit to the CAFB an annual event. As community college employees, the Food Bank is a natural destination for our volunteer efforts, he adds.

For more information on volunteering at the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, contact Mark Schock at 423-622-1800. For more information about ChattState service learning opportunities, contact Dedric Maffitt, Student Activities Director, at 423-697-2482.
Marion County received notification from the Appalachian Regional Commission that they had been awarded a $500,000 grant to assist with the construction of a rail spur to facilitate the expansion of an existing industry and to provide rail service into the Nickajack Port Industrial Park located in New Hope, Tennessee. The total project cost is estimated at $2.1 million and will consist of site infrastructure improvements to accommodate the new railroad spur track including site clearing and grading, storm water control facilities and track construction.

This critical rail infrastructure improvement will enable Colonial Chemical, Inc. to expand adding 39 new high paying jobs and will leverage almost $7 million in new capital investment. Additionally, it will provide the potential of rail service into the Nickajack Port Industrial Park giving this industrial site a competitive economic development edge. Local matching funds will be provided by multiple partners including Colonial Chemical, Marion County, the Nickajack Port Authority, the Marion County Economic Development Partnership and Marion County Natural Gas. New Hope Mayor Mark Meyers commented, The Town of New Hope is happy to partner with Marion County, the Port Authority & Colonial Chemical to further improve this industrial site and facilitate the creation of new jobs in our community.

ARC is an economic development agency of the federal government and 13 state governments focusing on 420 counties across the Appalachian Region. This funding constitutes a state and federal partnership which would not be possible without the support of our U. S. Congressional members, Governor Bill Haslam and the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development. Marion County was awarded this grant based on application to TN ECD and a recommendation to ARC from Governor Bill Haslam. Mayor David Jackson stated, Truly this award represents strategic partnerships working together for the betterment of our county. I am appreciative of the commitment being made by all partners to build critical infrastructure that will allow our county to grow. First and foremost to Colonial Chemical who for twenty years has continued to make investment in our county and create high paying jobs, to ARC & the State of Tennessee for investing in Marion County to strengthen economic growth and to all of our local partners for their commitment toward building critical infrastructure.

David Anderson, President & CEO of Colonial Chemical, stated: We are delighted with the news and excited about the prospect this has for Colonial Chemical and our neighbors! Our ability to continue to grow and prosper in Marion County has been based on a partnership with state and local governments that continue to work with existing industry to help meet needs that keep us competitive in the global economy.

The Nickajack Port Industrial Park is a prime industrial site in the southeast TN region and we are thrilled to be working in a public private partnership to build infrastructure that will provide us with a distinct advantage when recruiting new industry, said David Abbott, Chairman of the Nickajack Port Authority.
exam.jpg

Statewide results for state exams administered last school year generally show improvement over the prior year when a new baseline for scores were set due to some changes in the test.

(shutterstock.com)

More students scored at or above grade level on state math and language arts exams administered in grades three through eight this year than the year before when a new baseline score was set due to some changes made to the tests, according to the state Department of Education.

But the statewide, aggregate Pennsylvania System of School Assessment scores released on Monday also shows there remains more work to do to get the overwhelming majority of students, particularly in math, scoring at "proficient" or "advanced" levels on the state exams.

Parents will begin to receive individual student results on the state exams from their districts in early September, while school building and district-level data will be released by the education department at the end of September.

On the state math PSSA, the percentage of students scoring in those categories, which are considered at or above grade level, in grades three through eight are as follows:

Third grade: 54.4% (up from 48.5% in 2015)

Fourth grade: 46.6% (up from 44.4% in 2015)

Fifth grade: 44.4% (up from 42.8% in 2015)

Sixth grade: 41.1% (up from 39.7% in 2015)

Seventh grade: 37& (up from 33% in 2015)

Eighth grade: 31.2% (up from 29.8% in 2015)

On the state language arts PSSA, the percentage of students scoring "proficient" and "advanced" are:

Third grade: 60.9% (down from 62% in 2015)

Fourth grade: 58.7% (up from 58.6% in 2015)

Fifth grade: 61.5% (down from 61.9% in 2015)

Sixth grade: 61.7% (up from 60.7% in 2015)

Seventh grade: 61.5% (up from 58.6% in 2015)

Eighth grade: 58.4% (up from 58% in 2015)

On the state science PSSA, the percentage of fourth- and eighth-grade students scoring at or above the grade-level categories fell slightly in both grades, which are the only grades that take that exam.

In fourth-grade, 76.2 percent scored "proficient" or "advanced, down from 77.3 percent from the prior year. In eighth-grade, 57.7 percent scored in those categories, down from 58.8 percent the prior year.

The Keystone Exams are the state's measuring stick on student performance in the high school grades. These exams are administered at the end of a course and only a students' best score in each of the three subjects tested is counted.

According to the education department, more students' best scores on the state Algebra I, literature and biology Keystones fell into the proficient or advanced categories than in the prior year.

The 2016 scores show 68.2 scored advanced or proficient on the Algebra I test compared to 64.5 percent the prior year; 76.8 percent on the literature exam compared to 72.8 percent the year before; and 65.7 percent on the biology exam compared to 58.9 percent in 2015.

These exams initially were proposed to be a factor that determined graduation eligibility, but that requirement has been put on hold until 2019.

Rivera pointed out that while the overall state exam results show promise, a renewed commitment is needed to ensure that "every student has access to the tools they need to thrive and graduate college and career ready."

He followed that up with pointing out Gov. Tom Wolf is working on increasing the state funding for schools to ensure students graduate college and career ready. This year, Wolf succeeded in getting a $200 million increase in direct support to school district operations, to a record $5.9 billion.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association saw the scores on the revamped state exams as "a positive sign, and we anticipate more improvement in the years to come," said its spokesman Steve Robinson.

The state's largest teachers union gave credit to the state's educators for their role in the improvement shown in the student test results, while also pointing out the scores represent only a snapshot of student achievement.

Still, they also highlighted the fact that there is more work to do to whittle down the percentage of students scoring below grade-level in the "basic" and "below basic" categories.

"Research shows the best way to help struggling students is by reducing class sizes - and unfortunately that's not happening in too many Pennsylvania public schools today," said Pennsylvania State Education Association spokesman Wythe Keever.

He said with more districts planning to increase class sizes due to financial pressures, it will work with state policymakers to "highlight the need for investment in public education."

But Commonwealth Foundation's Nathan Benefield has a different takeaway from the scores.

Noting the high percentages of students not reading or doing math at grade-level, Benefield, the vice president of policy for the conservative-leaning policy center, said, "That shows a dramatic problem in our public school system. We would say the solution is more school choice. That's been proven to give students the opportunity they need for a chance at a better education."
FILE - In this Sunday, June 26, 2016, file photo, Ryan Lochte swims during a preliminary heat in the Men's 400-meter individual medley at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials, in Omaha, Neb. Speedo announced Monday, Aug. 22, 2016, that they are dropping their sponsorship of Lochte. The swimsuit maker says that it doesnAot condone behavior that is counter to its values. Lochte fabricated a tale that he was robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro during the Olympics. He later apologized. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)
FILE - In this March 23, 2016 file photo, actor Leonardo DiCaprio poses during a photo session of the movie "The Revenant" in Tokyo. Authorities say DiCaprio and his Danish supermodel girlfriend Nina Agdal werenAot injured when their vehicle was involved in a minor accident on Saturday, Aug. 20, 2016, on Montauk Highway in the Hamptons. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
The Ooltewah High School Marching Band will hold a BBQ fund raiser for Rose Parade on Sunday, Sept. 4, noon, at Steve Rays Midnite Oil.



"Come and buy your Labor Day Weekend BBQ from the OHS Band. All the pork butts will be smoked under the supervision of the award winning Owls Nest BBQ Team  BBQ at its best," organizers said.



Full butts will be pulled and packaged ready to go for $49  approximately 4.5 to 5 pounds, and will feed 12  14 adults. Or, you can purchase the pulled pork by the pound for $15.

"Either way, its the best pulled pork money can buy. All proceeds go to the OHS Band," organizers said.
East Jordan wins first playoff game since 1999, beat Frankfort in OT

FRANKFORT  If you were looking for the last time the East Jordan football team earned a playoff victory before Friday, you had to do a bit of scrolling in the record books.
As the Civil Air Patrol celebrated its 75th Anniversary on August 13, during the annual National Conference at Nashvilles Opryland Hotel and Conference Center, local resident Randy Stripling received the National Communicator of the Year award for the United States.

Lt. Col. Randall Stripling serves as the Tennessee Wing Communications Engineering Officer, but has held many positions within the Communications program since joining CAP in 1986. This award comes after also receiving South East Region Communicator of the Year.



While initial impressions of Civil Air Patrol often relate to teenagers, pilots, and planes, this only touches the surface of CAPs history and mission, officials said.

On December 1, 1941, just 6 days prior to Pearl Harbor, Civil Air Patrol was founded to provide border and coastal patrols, military training assistance, courier services, and other activities for the United States. The 60,000 plus member organization boasts the worlds largest fleet of Cessna single engine airplanes and operates under a Congressional Charter and mandate to perform emergency services, aerospace education, cadet programs, and to provide Total Force support to the United States Air Force.



Lt. Col. Stripling joined CAP as a teenager in Louisiana. After graduating from high-school, Randy, as he is known to friends, pursued a career in electronics thinking his days in CAP were over. Eventually moving to Cleveland, Tn., he met Barry Melton and Allen Wendt. After Randy commented about his days in Civil Air Patrol, Mr. Wendt informed him that a new squadron was forming in Cleveland, and that it's not just for teenagers. Mr. Stripling, Mr. Melton and Mr. Wendt, some of the original Charter members, joined to serve their community, state, and country with the Cleveland Composite Squadron, TN-173 of Civil Air Patrol. Those past thirty years have included many responsibilities in leadership for Lt. Col. Stripling from director of Cadet Programs, Logistics officer, Squadron Transportation officer, Supply officer, Communications officer, as well as the TN Wing director of Communications.



The hundreds of Cessna aircraft and civilian pilots are the work horses of CAP, but those essential field teams require coordination. The Civil Air Patrol communications position serves a crucial role to the mission as CAP handles 85% of inland search and rescue operations around the country. In emergency, search & rescue, or disaster relief operations, adults and cadets alike have been prepared to efficiently pass information from the field, planes, or airports to mission headquarters and back.



As director of Communications and Communications Technical Support officer, Lt. Col. Stripling has trained TN Wing cadets and senior members in the use of VHF (Very High Frequency) and short-wave radios. Each week squadrons across the TN Valley region check into radio nets with the designated Net control station for that week's net. Check in involves a roll call of all squadrons and individual cadets with his or her issued radio call sign. After roll call, information is shared between squadrons as needed. Checking in each week trains members to use the equipment and provides practice with the radio short-hand known as pro-words.



CAP has served in search and rescue missions for downed aircraft, missing persons and disaster relief. TEMA frequently request aerial photography missions after major disasters to help guide deployment of State resources. CAP was instrumental in Deep Water Horizon providing aerial photography in monitoring the clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico for 118 days. Much of Lt. Col Striplings work has involved making sure senior and cadet members both are prepared for such operations with sufficient experience and knowledge in CAP communications protocol.

The motivation for recognizing Lt. Col. Stripling as the National Communicator of the Year is clear when hearing of his reputation for going above and beyond to help others. He has been known to drive over a hundred miles each way to help the incoming director of Communications transition into the position. He has traveled at his own expense to help fellow South East Region staff set up their equipment. When other senior members participated in an out-of-state search and rescue exercise, Lt. Col. Stripling provided untold hours of research and assistance for the project. He repeatedly helps other Wing (state) director of Communications and regional communications staff with phone or e-mail support.



In addition to much of the office support, Lt. Col. Stripling participates in the missions of Civil Air Patrol such as Deep Water Horizon where he filled the role of an Observer and Aerial Photographer, words that do not adequately describe the job. Pilots fly the aircraft. Observers do most of the navigation, take the pictures (up to 1000's each day), download the photos, superimpose the latitude and longitude, direction of flight and put labels onto them, and then present them to the mission headquarters. The aerial photos provided by CAP members, such as Lt. Col. Stripling, enabled mission control to check on the oil absorbent booms, the progress of the oil spill clean-up and even keep track of the boom inventory.



Receiving the National Communicator of the Year for 2016 isnt the end for Lt. Col. Stripling. As others step in, he looks forward to more time in the air and on missions, perhaps with a little less time behind the desk. Recognition by Civil Air Patrol for such a dedicated senior member is a fitting award as the Cleveland Composite Squadron celebrates its 30th anniversary this year and expresses great appreciation for Lt. Col. Stripling and his 30 years of service as well, officials said.
ISSUES....

Inside, confidential and off the record

All in one in Mexico

Exxon-Chevron-Hess have until Nov. 18 to report bid groups to regulator







Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Hess Corp. have agreed to bid together for rights to drill for crude in Mexico's deepwater oil areas, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans.

The three U.S.-based producers have reached a Joint Operating Agreement, which allows the consortium to bid to produce oil in the 10 areas up for auction on Dec. 5, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the information isn't public. A Joint Operating Agreement is a contract that establishes the role and obligation of each company in the accord, and designates the party that will act as the operator of a production area should it be awarded in the auction.

Mexico hopes to raise $44 billion in its first-ever sale of deepwater drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico, located in the Perdido area near the maritime border with the U.S. and in the southern Gulf's Cuenca Salina. Seventy-six percent of the country's prospective oil resources are located offshore in deep waters, according to Energy Minister Pedro Joaquin Coldwell.

The country approved final legislation in 2014 to allow foreign crude producers to operate in Mexico for the first time since 1938, in an effort to reverse an 11-year decline in production. The Dec. 5 auction has been lauded by the government as the most likely to attract large foreign oil operators that possess the expertise and capital to produce crude miles below the surface of the Gulf, which Pemex has been unable to exploit because it lacks the technology to do so.

Close all those tabs. Open this email. Get Bloomberg's daily newsletter. Sign Up All of the 26 companies that qualified to bid in the auction, including Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Statoil ASA, and BP Plc, are expected to sign similar agreements because the government's capital requirements for bidding are considered too large for individual producers to do so alone. Petroleos Mexicanos, the country's state-owned oil company, announced in May that they were in talks with Exxon, Chevron and Total SA to sign agreements of mutual interest to consider the possibility of bidding together in the deepwater round.

A Joint Operating Agreement can be dissolved if one of the companies withdraws its intention to participate in the contract, and the companies may opt not to bid even if the consortium is still in place.

A Chevron spokesperson said that the company could not comment on speculation. A Hess spokeswoman declined to comment. Exxon would not comment on the proceedings, according to a press official at the company's Mexico offices.

Adam Williams & Amy Stillman / bloomberg / Aug. 18, 2016







ISSUES.... 08/ 22/ 2016 - Send Us Your Issues



ISSUES.... Inside, confidential and off the record

Is an independent journalist effort from Petroleumworld, on Inside, Confidential and Off The Record Information, its views are not necessarily those of Petroleumworld
Lagniappe

Leon Aron : Even Vladimir Putin cannot

kill the russian revolution AFP/Getty/Michael Evstafiev



Twenty-five years after the great revolution that toppled the Soviet regime,

the spirit of dignity and freedom still burns. The 25th anniversary of the August 1991 revolution is not likely to be met with widespread joy and pride, let alone cymbals. For one, wasn't it more of a revanchist coup attempt than a democratic revolution? Didn't the Soviet Union sort of just collapse on its own four months later? And what does it matter, anyway, in Vladimir Putin's 16th year in power? Wrong, wrong, and we'll get to the last bit later. By any measure, the August 1991 revolt was a classic, great revolution  consider its results, impact on Russia's future, and, most of all, objectives. Its core aims were moral. Like the American Revolution, the French, and even the uprisings of the Arab Spring, the overthrow of the Soviet system was about human dignity. Those who began the liberalization that ignited the revolution (Mikhail Gorbachev and his top aide, Alexander Yakovlev, the Godfather of Glasnost), as well as those who took it over, propelled by the upswell and radicalization from below (Boris Yeltsin and Yegor Gaidar), sought to end the complete subjugation of society to the state and the daily insults of shortages, fear, repression, lies, lawlessness, and moral degradation that resulted from this subjugation. In 70 years a system was built that is organically indifferent to the real, existing man, hostile to him, Yakovlev wrote . And not only in the mass repressions, the victims of which were millions, but in daily life, where a person means nothing, has nothing, and cannot obtain even basic things without humiliation. To Gorbachev, the essence of perestroika , or restructuring, was the struggle for the dignity of man, his elevation and his honor, according to a seminal 1987 essay by Mikhail Antonov in Oktyabr magazine. Yakovlev defined perestroika as the people's right to act as independent and rational human beings and responsible citizens  no longer powerless subjects of a totalitarian state. The socialist totalitarian state, which was doomed to perennial shortages in one of the most resource-rich countries in the world and which owned justice and the courts (as it owned everything else, including the livelihoods of every one of its 287 million citizens), was the culprit. Hence the aim of the revolution was to erect three tall hedges against the recurrence of such a state: private property, a free market economy, and popular sovereignty over the executive. In pursuit of these goals, the August 1991 revolution launched one of the most impressive economic and political modernizations in modern history. Those three rainy days in Moscow would usher in a new economic organization, a new political system, and create 15 new, independent states. In the largest privatization on record  wrenching, dislocating, and costing millions of Russians their jobs  the country sloughed off thousands of hopelessly obsolete subsidized enterprises that had wasted billions of rubles in raw materials and man-hours on things that nobody needed. Marred as it was by favoritism, manipulation, and outright fraud, privatization served as the foundation of the spectacular economic takeoff that began in 1999. Never before have as many Russians had access to as much quality food or as many goods and services as they do now. A 25-year-old today has never seen a food ration coupon. She doesn't know what it's like to line up for hours for milk, eggs, or pantyhose  or have meat only on major holidays. She cannot imagine a world without tampons and toilet paper or picture nuclear physicists and surgeons being sent to the countryside to dig up potatoes on collective farms. Once gray, dingy, and hungry, the downtowns of most Russian cities are indistinguishable today from their European counterparts. Along the way, revolutionary Russia underwent a self-administered demilitarization, unprecedented for a major power undefeated in war. Following an 80 percent cut in defense expenditures in January 1992, the defense sector's share of Russian GDP fell from at least one-fifth to 2 percent in 1999. The empire that the military guarded was dismantled as well. Between 1992 and 1995, Russia withdrew 800,000 troops from the former Warsaw Pact countries and roughly 40,000 troops from Estonia, shuttering all its military bases there. In December 1991, Moscow recognized Ukraine's independence and later signed a  Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership  with Kiev. It is nonsense to suggest that post-Soviet Russia cut defense because it had no money. What nation spends on its army solely by what's in the till and not by fear, pride, hatred, or aspiration? North Korea still manages to find the money for missiles. Cuba, which rations food, found the pesos to send 24,000 men to fight in Angola and still maintains the strongest armed force in Central America. And, of course, even with half the country's schools lacking central heat, running water, or indoor toilets, the Soviet Union had more soldiers than the United States, China, and the Federal Republic of Germany combined and twice as many tanks as NATO. But with the average price of oil at around $18 a barrel, post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s steadily increased health care expenditures; by 1999, it spent more than twice as much (7.3 percent) on health care as did the Soviet Union in 1990-1991 (2.9 percent), by share of GDP  and more than Putin's Russia does today (6.5 percent). Just as spectacular was the attempt at regaining dignity by liberty, the separation of powers, and the limitation of state power by law. Freedom of speech, the press, and of demonstration  never before seen in Russia save between February and November 1917  flourished. Three parliamentary ballots (in 1993, 1995, and 1999) and a presidential election (1996) were the freest in Russian history, except for the November 1917 election to the Constituent Assembly. Just as unprecedented was an independent and opposition-dominated parliament, which in 1999 came within a handful of votes of impeaching the president. Exercising its constitutional right to grant amnesty, Russia's lower house, the State Duma, ordered the release of the leaders of the October 1993 rebellion, in which black-shirted bands of leftist, anti-Semitic thugs shot at passersby from the top of the parliament building and lobbed grenades into the Ostankino television station. President Yeltsin's compliance with the amnesty law was another revolutionary miracle. It is impossible to find another instance in Russia's blood-stained history (or, for that matter, in almost any country) of unrepentant leaders of an armed uprising  who would have certainly executed Yeltsin had they succeeded  being freed by the victors with not one precondition. Since their release from detention, none has been persecuted or harassed in any way; none has been barred from politics; and several were later elected regional governors and Duma deputies. In another historical first for Russia, the First Chechen War (1994-1996) was ended not by defeat on the battlefield, but by free media and democratically exerted pressure on the executive. Yeltsin promised to end the conflict if re-elected in 1996  and he did, withdrawing all Russian troops by early 1997. Meanwhile, the courts, formerly pitiful appendages of state-owned socialist justice, were hugely empowered. For the first time in the country's history, citizens sued authorities at every level, including the president  with courts ruling for the plaintiffs in more than three in four cases. The courts banned the hated propiska , or residency permit, which allowed local authorities to determine (or deny) where people could live; threw out bans on foreign religious denominations (Jehovah's Witnesses and Pentecostals among them); and limited the military draft by affirming the right to alternate service. A St. Petersburg court also acquitted naval officer Alexander Nikitin, charged with espionage by the KGB successor, the FSB  the first not-guilty verdict in a treason case brought by security services since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. So where did these stunning accomplishments end up? Consumed without a trace by the Putin restoration  utterly cynical, preening, rapacious, belligerent, and corrupt on a scale that makes the accursed 1990s (as the Putin propaganda machine has dubbed the revolutionary decade) look like child's play? Looking back at the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of the events, mistakes, misjudgments which led Frenchmen to abandon their original ideal and, turning their backs on freedom, to acquiesce in an equality of servitude under the master of all Europe. Putin is not Napoleon (although he undoubtedly would love to be), but in claiming to defend the motherland from alleged NATO aggression, to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine from the  fascist junta  in Kiev, and to  stabilize the legitimate government  of Syria while  leading the world struggle against international terrorism , he has recovered for his compatriots the lost pride in being a counterweight  moral, as well as military  to the United States. Again, as in the Soviet days, millions of Russians see their country as a bulwark against evil and a guarantor of world peace. Obscured by the swelling of national pride are the indignities they suffer at the hands of the authorities, whom people consistently describe to pollsters as incompetent, corrupt, and callous. As the great Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov wrote ,  Ya rab, no rab tsarya vsellenoy!  (I am a slave, but I am a slave of the Master of the Universe!) True, reactionary restorations that follow great revolutions may last for decades. But no restoration has ever managed to extirpate completely the revolution it followed  and not one has proved permanent. The August revolution of 1991, too, lives on. Its slogans were on the placards of the tens of thousands of demonstrators in more than 100 Russian cities and towns who protested a rigged election and Putin's rule in the winter of 2011-2012. It shines through the honesty and integrity of many of my Russian colleagues , scholars, and experts who refuse to be bought or intimidated by the Kremlin. Its spirit animates civil rights activists from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad: courageous men and women who mobilize their fellow citizens to protect the Khimki Forest and Lake Baikal; to fight graft, corruption, electoral fraud, and oppose the destruction of parks, kindergartens, and hospitals to make room for grotesque shopping malls. Although most of these activists are too young to remember the heady days of 1991, in their quest for democratic citizenship their goals are indistinguishable from those of the August revolutionaries. The revolution lives also in the women and men who refuse to surrender their Russia to the thieves and swindlers, as the anti-corruption and pro-democracy leader Alexei Navalny called members of Putin's ruling party. And so they continue to come out to the streets, despite being met by truncheon-wielding anti-riot police. Navalny, meanwhile, continues his struggle with the Damocles's sword of a  suspended  prison sentence hanging over his head; his brother, however, has effectively been taken hostage by the regime  sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail. August 1991 also inspired the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, the first democratically elected governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region and, later, the first deputy prime minister in the Yeltsin government. When he was assassinated in February 2015  just 600 feet from the Kremlin Wall  an estimated 70,000 people came to his funeral. And the revolution continues to live in the work of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Nemtsov's close friend and younger associate. After a sudden and near-total organ failure in Moscow in May of last year, most likely due to poisoning , he is back in Russia organizing the pro-democracy opposition movement. Their quest for a democratic Russia may seem quixotic today, but the arc of modern Russian history bends closer to the Navalnys, Nemtsovs, and Kara-Murzas than to the regime trying to suppress them. Given a choice between freely competing parties and candidates, at every critical historical juncture, the majority of Russian voters have opted for democracy, modernization, and reform  not authoritarian reactionaries on the left or right: as in the votes for the 1906 Duma, the 1918 Constituent Assembly, and in the 1993 referendum and 1993 Duma. Tocqueville compared enduring national institutions to rivers that after going underground re-emerge at another point, in new surroundings. Driven deep into the ground today by the weight of repression, monopolistic propaganda, and war-mongering paranoia, the great August revolution, too, will re-emerge.





Leon Aron is the director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the author, most recently, of Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views Editor's Note: This commentary was originally published by Foreign Policy ; on Aug.18, 2016. Petroleumworld reprint this article in the interest of our readers. All comments posted and published on Petroleumworld, do not reflect either for or against the opinion expressed in the comment as an endorsement of Petroleumworld. All comments expressed are private comments and do not necessary reflect the view of this website. All comments are posted and published without liability to Petroleumworld. Use Notice:This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of issues of environmental and humanitarian significance. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.



All works published by Petroleumworld are in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.Petroleumworld has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Petroleumworld endorsed or sponsored by theoriginator.Petroleumworld encourages persons to reproduce, reprint, or broadcast Petroleumworld articles provided that any such reproduction identify the original source, http://www.petroleumworld.com or else and it is done within the fair use as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.



If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. Internet web links to http://www.petroleumworld.com are appreciated Copyright 1999-2009 Petroleumworld or respective author or news agency. All rights reserved.



We welcome the use of Petroleumworld stories by anyone provided it mentions Petroleumworld.com as the source. Other stories you have to get authorization by its authors.Internet web links to http://www.petroleumworld.com are appreciated Petroleumworld welcomes your feedback and comments,

share your thoughts on this article, your feed. back is important to us! Petroleumworld News 08/22/2016 We invite all our readers to share with us

their views and comments about this article. Follow us in : twitter / Facebook

Send this story to a friend Write to editor@petroleumworld.com By using this link, you agree to allow PW

to publish your comments on our letters page.



Any question or suggestions,

please write to: editor@petroleumworld.com Best Viewed with IE 5.01+ Windows NT 4.0, '95,

'98,ME,XP, Vista, Windows 7,8 +/ 800x600 pixels




Nigeria's crude offline, guerrilla militants slashed oil output

Issaka Adams





Anger in the Delta keeps oil majors quiet, Nigeria Militants claims responsibility for attacks in oil-rich Niger Delta State



LONDON/LAGOS

Petroleumworld.com 08 22 2016

Oil companies and even Nigerian officials are losing faith in a deal anytime soon with militants who have slashed the nation's oil output, casting doubt on a production recovery in what is typically Africa's largest oil exporter.

In the six months since the first major attack on Nigeria's oil  a sophisticated bombing of the subsea Forcados pipeline  dozens of attacks have pushed outages to more than 700,000 barrels per day (bpd), the highest in seven years.

Talk in the country has shifted from ceasefire optimism, and oil companies' assurances that repairs were underway, to hedged comments from the government and radio silence from oil majors.

"People are giving up in the short term," one oil industry source told Reuters of a resumption in exports of key Nigerian grades such as Forcados or Qua Iboe, adding that you "can't get anything" out of the majors, including Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil or ENI, about when the oil might come back.

Shell declined to comment, while the other companies did not immediately responded to a request for comment.

In June, Nigerian government officials said privately it had a ceasefire with militants. But pessimism crept in, with even Oil Minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu telling journalists this week "we are talking but (it) is not an easy thing," and "we need a ceasefire"  a contrast to the belief that a ceasefire was underway.

The problems reflect deep-seated issues in the Niger Delta, which produces the bulk of oil but whose local communities complain of pollution, a lack of opportunities and what they say is an insufficient share of petro dollars. These problems are compounded by an economic crisis and a government battle with Boko Haram militants in the north.

"This is likely the beginning," said Elizabeth Donnelly, deputy head and research fellow of London think-tank Chatham House's Africa Programme said of the unrest, adding that "the resolution that will come will not come quickly."

The government this month resumed cash payments to militant groups that it stopped in February, just before the launch of the worst violence since the payments began under a 2009 amnesty. But attacks continued anyway.

A group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers claimed the bulk of them, announcing strikes on Twitter even before oil majors themselves knew their remote pipelines had been hit. Twitter shut the group's account, but sources said the Avengers have extensive knowledge of oil sites, and follow the media closely to track companies' actions.

"With the Avengers, you don't want to say 'we'll be back up next Wednesday', because then you'll get a bomb next Tuesday," one oil executive said. "They have to be careful."

But new groups, such as the self-styled "Revolution Alliance", which claimed an attack on a Shell-owned oil line, loom, while non-violent local protests have also exacted a toll.

Collings Edema, a local youth leader of the Itsekiri group that has blocked access to Chevron's Escravos tank farm for almost two weeks, said "the oil companies have not shown any sign that they are ready to improve our lives."

Experts warned that as long as people are unhappy, militants and their targets could evolve in unpredictable ways.

"This is also about frustrations of younger people coming up in the Niger Delta and needs not having been addressed," Donnelly said. "This isn't just about militancy, though the political and economic context feeds it."

Kachikwu told journalists this week that it was too early to say when Nigeria could increase output due to security concerns.

But the Avengers call the country a "failed state," while youth groups in the region remain deeply skeptical of the oil industry.

"From the situation on the ground I do not think the oil companies are ready to improve the lives of people of the Niger Delta region," said Eric Omare, spokesman for the Ijaw Youth Council, the youth body of biggest ethnic group in Delta. "The present structure of Nigeria does not encourage that."








PDVSA PetroCaribe oil fund embezzle by Haiti's PM's and ministers - country's senate report



Michel Martelly (left) and Felix Bautista. In June Haiti's Senate opened an investigation against Dominican Republic senator's Felix Bautista , who allegedly funneled millions of dollars from PetroCaribe funds to former president Michel Martelly.



PORT-AU-PRINCE

Petroleumworld.com 08 22 2016

A Haitian Senate report has called for charges to be brought against two former prime ministers and several ministers for alleged embezzlement, abuse of authority and forgery stemming from the use of funds in a Venezuelan oil loan program.

The executive summary of the report, dated Wednesday, said heads of ministries granted multimillion-dollar projects to firms while bypassing the public bidding process and signed contracts that were not under their authority. The full report has not been released.

The Senate report will add to concerns about billions of dollars of aid promised to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Much of the money went to directly to aid organizations, with results on the ground mostly unimpressive. Aid flows have slowed as memories of the devastation fade.

Venezuela's PetroCaribe program, by contrast, funneled money directly to the Haitian government's coffers. The program, which Haiti joined in 2006, allowed Caribbean nations to pay low prices for oil from Venezuela, part of which would be financed upfront, with the balance put in a fund to finance social and economic projects.

That money, too, has dried up, however, as Venezuela, which has the world's largest proven reserves of oil, contends with domestic political problems and low oil prices.

The report caps a parliamentary investigation led by a senator from the southern town of Jacmel into whether funds from Venezuela's PetroCaribe program were misspent under previous governments led by presidents Rene Preval, under whom the program began, and Michel Martelly, who left office earlier this year.

The report calls for judicial investigations into Jean-Max Bellerive, prime minister under Preval; Laurent Lamothe, prime minister under Martelly; former ministers of finance, public works, planning, agriculture and health; the Office of the Monetization of Aid and Development Programs; and members of committee under the Ministry of Planning.

It also asks for certain companies granted funds under the program to return the money and called for investigations into overbilling and violations of contracts.

"The liberties taken by the successive administrations with the law, the maneuvers or strategies used to skirt the law, the lightness with which some dossiers were treated, the overbilling and other derivatives, the lack of ethics demonstrated that the interrogations and the suspicions of public opinion were well-founded," the summary reads.

Through his spokesman, former Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe said he was innocent.

A spokeswoman for the Venezuelan embassy declined to comment, saying this was an internal matter concerning the Haitian government.

A draft of the report has been distributed to senators for approval. If it is approved in a vote, it will be sent to an administrative court, the anti-corruption office and two financial authorities, Youri Latortue, the senator who led the investigation, said on radio station Magik 9 on Friday.

The Haitian Senate has not met regularly for months.

Haiti used about $2.1 billion in funds from the program for its investment budget between 2008 and March 2016, the executive summary said.

Haiti, along with Venezuela and Guinea-Bissau, were tied for 158th place in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index last year, out of a possible 167 slots.








Cleveland State hosted its sixth annual Freshmen Connection on Saturday.

First-time freshmen and their family and friends were invited to take advantage of this day devoted entirely to new freshmen.

Students were encouraged to take a tour of campus, purchase books and visit the academic and resource fair in the L. Quentin Lane Gymnasium.
Rotaract Club of Chattanooga, a Rotary-sponsored service club for young professionals ages 22-35, is hosting a fundraiser benefiting Lookout Mountain Conservancys Howard Intern Leadership Program. The event Lookout for Leaders seeks to raise money for additional funding for LMCs Howard Intern and Leadership Program.

The fundraiser will be held Thursday, Sept. 22, from 5:30-8 p.m. at Waterhouse Pavilion, 850 Market St.

The evening will celebrate the interns with music, cocktails, appetizers and a silent auction.

Tickets are $40 per person and $75 per couple and can be purchased at the door, via Facebook at Lookout for Leaders 2016 or at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lookout-for-leaders-tickets-26228657621.

Rotaracts President Stephen Ratterman of First Tennessee Bank said, We are very excited for our second Lookout for Leaders fundraiser to benefit the Lookout Mountain Conservancy. Our partnership with the Conservancy and the interns has continued to strengthen, and we are inspired by the meaningful work they do every day to improve the lives of their families and local community. The proceeds raised through this event go directly to support the endless efforts made by Robyn Carlton and her team at the Lookout Mountain Conservancy to provide every opportunity and resource earned by these students to continue to grow both academically and socially. We encourage everyone that can make it to please join us at Miller Plaza on Sept. 22 to meet the interns and learn more about this amazing program.

"On behalf of the entire Rotaract Club of Chattanooga, I would also like to give a special thank you to our corporate sponsors and recognize those who have contributed at the Presenting and Graduate levels: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga College of Business, BlueCross BlueShield Community Foundation, Jones Raulston Title, and Grace Healthcare.

The Lookout Mountain Conservancy employs students from Howard High School to preserve and protect Chattanoogas natural resources. The students learn about nature, conservation, teamwork and trust by establishing relationships with LMCs leaders and other students in the program. The program provides an opportunity for inner city students to have a safe work environment, provide supportive income for their families, and learn social and professional skills needed to succeed in life, said officials.

Since the creation of the internship program in 2013, Howard High School reports that participating students have become leaders in their class and set examples for other students. Their grades and attendance are improving with plans for attending secondary education upon graduating, a first in the family for many.

Additionally, LMC is receiving national attention from land trusts for establishing a unique program that connects inner city youth with a communitys natural resources - a program that many land trusts hope to replicate.

Rotaract has formed a strategic partnership with LMCs Howard Intern Leadership Program as mentors for these students. Connecting with the interns through land conservation creates an opportunity for building relationships and ultimately establishing mutual trust, respect and cooperation. Rotaracts intention is to show the interns that life outside of their neighborhood not only exists but is within their grasp so students can reach their fullest potential, said official.
5 Chicago Bars Make Playboy's Best Bars In America Nominees

By Anthony Todd in Food on Aug 22, 2016 4:00PM



The interior of Sparrow (Photos by Nicholas James).

Chicago cocktails lovers know that the bar scene here is blowing up, but it's always nice when that awesomeness gets national attention. Playboy has released a list of the 50 best bars in America, which will be narrowed down to a list of the 10 best bars in America with your votes. Chicago made a great showing, with five bars on the list.

The five entries are Mezcaleria Las Flores, GreenRiver, Milk Bar, Moneygun and Sparrow. I'm not at all surprised by Milk Bar and GreenRiver, given their national acclaim, but the other three were a pleasant surprise. None are in the Loop and Moneygun and Mezcaleria las Flores aren't associated with big-name nationally-acclaimed bartenders (at least not yet), and that means they don't often end up on magazine best-of lists. Plus, there's no sign of The Aviary, Sable, Lost Lake or some of the other stand-out bars that tend to get more attention.

Vote for your favorite to narrow the list down to 10let's make sure that some Chicago bars get represented on the final list!






RHEEDER TAKES THE WIN AND WE SAY GOODBYE TO

ZINK


Sen. Kirk Calls Obama A 'Drug Dealer' And Calls For Senate Hearings On Iran Deal

By aaroncynic in News on Aug 22, 2016 4:47PM



Mark Kirk / Getty Images / Photo: Gabriella Demczuk

The American people have a right to know if any U.S. taxpayer money sent to Iran is going to finance the new Shiite Liberation Army, Hezbollah or Hamas terrorists targeting our allies in Israel, or any other Iranian terrorist activities, said Kirk, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance in a statement on Monday.

Last week the Obama Administration said that the payment of $400 million, which has been owed to the country since the 1970s as part of a deal with the U.S.-backed Shah at the time, was made because of concerns that Iran might back out of a deal to release several American hostages in January.

"We had concerns that Iran may renege on the prisoner release, State Department spokesperson John Kirby told the AP, adding that the U.S. of course sought to retain maximum leverage until after the American citizens were released. That was our top priority."

Republican politicians and talking heads have called the payment a ransom after officials denied that the payment was connected to the release of the prisoners, despite the fact that the U.S. has owed the money for more than three decades for fighter jets Iran paid for when the countries were allies. Kirk however, likened President Barack Obama to a drug dealer, telling the State-Journal Register last week:

We cant have the president of the United States acting like the drug dealer in chief, giving clean packs of money to a...state sponsor of terror. Those 500-euro notes will pop up across the Middle East....Were going to see problems in multiple (countries) because of that money given to them."

A spokesperson for Rep. Tammy Duckworth, who is challenging Kirk for the Senate seat in November, said the senator should apologize. "Senator Kirks comments are misguided and deeply offensive, and beneath the dignity of the office he holds, said spokesperson Matt Mcgrath.


The NOBL Wheels Family at the Whistler EWS:

The Best Style in Whistler? Kyle Jameson:

NWD Greatest Hits Simmons:

Don't Fear the Reaper:

Ben Reid - Throwback 2012 - Escapade7:

2017 Pivot Thunderbird:

Team SUNN - EWS #6 Whistler:

Sunpeaks, more like FUNpeaks:

Paul Hertel - Portrait of Passion:

The Olympians: Emily Batty and Catharine Pendrel:

Crankworx 2006 - Ryder Kasprick:

Sam Hill at Crankworx Whistler Enduro World Series 2016:

Dennis Enarson - Down The Street:

Harry Main - 2016:

Great Wide Open: Episode 4 - The Wolfman:

The Fourth Phase - Official 4k Trailer:

Video by @MaxBerkowitz KJ, his bike, and Whistler. What more do you need?Wade Simmons reflects on his Moreno Valley gap from NWD3.Dane and Jakob Jewett head out for a shred in Squamish, BC to launch our new Reaper kids' full suspension bike. Guest appearance by their dad Scott, whose ankle still hurts.Throwback to the summer of 2012 in the French Alps with Ben Reid.Bernard Kerr looking stylish as usual.The race is now finished in the famous Whistler Bike Park for the most anticipated EWS of the year. It was a difficult race with the longest stage in EWS history. Around 25:00 for Stage 5, thats awesome!Made a last minute Sun Peaks trip on my way home from holidays and decided to share the fun with you guys.As a mechanic it is sometimes annoying that everybody is riding their bikes when you're working in the shop or supporting a rider. You've got to be really passionate for bikes and the people which are riding them. If you do, you will be or you are already a good mechanic. This clip is dedicated to all bike mechanics out there! Rider: Paul Hertel. Video: Roland Ogg.Mountain bikers Emily Batty and Catharine Pendrel have been quickly rising up the ranks on Canadian and international circuits and they're the medal hopefuls in Rio 2016. Although they've both faced adversity in their careers, they lean on each other for support and also motivate each other as competitors.Ahead of his time.Team Chain Reaction Cycles PayPal rider Sam Hill claimed another great result finishing eighth at the Crankworx Whistler Enduro World Series, on board his custom-painted Nukeproof Mega. Watch the edit now!Incredible.Easily one of the best park riders in the world.Featuring Doug Smith.The sequel to The Art of Flight looks neat.Title Photo by: Dave Trumpore To check out videos submitted by fellow Pinkbike members that didn't quite make Movie Mondays here
An 'unsustainable trajectory'

Bolden wasn't officially nominated as NASA administrator until May 2009. Lori Garver was chosen as his deputy, and the duo were finally confirmed by the Senate in mid-July.

An independent panel evaluating Constellation would be more politically palatable if it were appointed by the new NASA administrator.

But NASA's next annual budgetwhich is released according to the federal government's schedulewas due on February 1, 2010. If the Obama administration wanted to orchestrate a change by then, time was running out.

In May, just before Bolden and Garver's nomination, the White House decided it could wait no longer, and commissioned the Review of United States Human Spaceflight Plans committee, led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. Augustine had a long, distinguished history of serving on similar advisory panels under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

After three months of meetings, investigations and visits to NASA centers, the committee released a draft report in September 2009. The final report was issued in October, just days before the awkward Ares test flight.

"The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory," said the opening line. "It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources."

The committee concluded that under NASA's current budget, neither Constellation nor an alternative program would get astronauts to the moon until well into the 2030sif ever.

It would take an increase of $3 billion per year to open up the agency's options, the report said.

With such a funding increase, Constellation as currently designed could reach the moon in the mid-2020s. The program could also be revamped in a number of different ways, all of which still required some type of heavy lift rocket to heave massive amounts of payload into orbit.

The report also endorsed extending the life of the ISS to 2020, as opposed to 2016, and using commercial crew providers as a taxi service.

An overhauled, cash-infused Constellation program could also skip lunar landings in favor of what the Augustine committee called the "flexible path"missions to lunar orbit, near-Earth asteroids, gravitationally stable spots called La Grange points, and the moons of Mars. All of those destinations were deemed reachable in the mid-to-late 2020s, and would lay the groundwork for eventual trips to Mars, which the committee felt stood "prominently above all other opportunities for exploration."

At the highest level

Armed with the Augustine Committee's recommendations, the White House moved forward on changing NASA's direction.

But there were now just three-and-a-half months before the budget was due. The administration had to move quickly.

And because a large-scale change was bound to be controversial with involved NASA centers, members of Congress representing space districts, and the aerospace industry, the deliberative process was tightly held within the highest levels of the executive branch.

On a Saturday in mid-November 2009, Bolden sat down with the head of the Office of Management and Budget, which produces the government's entire budget. In December, he met with the president himself.

Jim Kohlenberger, who led the administration's National Science Foundation transition team before becoming chief of staff for the White House Office of Science and Technology, said this was an indication of how high NASA was on the president's radar.

"Other cabinet agencies didn't have that opportunity," he told me. "We brought the NASA administrator in to meet with the president in the Oval Office to talk about priorities. So there was a lot of engagement at that level."

In January, White House logs show both Bolden and Garver met with Office of Science and Technology Policy head John Holdren several times, including on January 29three days before the NASA budget came out.

But beyond the Obama administration and NASA's top political appointees, hardly anyone else knew what the budget would contain.

Doug Cooke was NASA's associate administrator for human spaceflight exploration programs, one of the highest non-political positions in the agency. He didn't find out what was in the budget until Wednesday, January 27, when the Orlando Sentinel published a story with a bombshell headline: "Obama aims to ax moon mission."

This meant the people responsible for NASA's day-to-day operations were not going to be well-positioned to defend the administration's changesassuming they even wanted to.

"I found out pretty late," Cooke told me with a slight laugh. "It was held pretty close."
Dolomites: gigantic rockfall off Kleine Gaisl

22.08.2016 by by Planetmountain

The video of mountain guide Roman Valentini documenting the enormous rockfall that took place last week on Kleine Gaisl (Piccola Croda Rossa), in the Braies group of the Italian Dolomites

Yet more rockfall in the Dolomites, this time though of gigantic proportions, on Kleine Gaisl (Piccola Croda Rossa), the 2859m peak in the Braies Valley in the South Tyrol. The rockfall occurred in various stages between Thursday 18 and Saturday 20 August and according to initial estimates it detached circa 500-700 cubic meters of rock. 30m deep, the front is believed to be a staggering 200 meters wide.

The newspaper sto.it reported that the mountain had been monitored all of last week after a crack appeared circa 200m below the summit. Path number #3 that joins Rossalm to Stolla-Alm and path #4 from Bruckele to Rossalm had previously been closed to avoid people from getting hurt.

The footage below was filmed by Roman Valentini, a mountain guide working for Alta Badia Guides, who was in the area on Thursday, August 18 at around 12:30. Although this is only the first, smaller part of the landslide, Valentini told planetmountain.com "It was 'sepctacular' ... Ive never seen anything quite like it. It looked like a river in spate, with rocks half the size of houses tumbling down."

Valentini confirmed that as a precautionary measure a helicopter evacuated two hikers off the summit of Kleine Gaisl that afternoon. The second part of the collapse - the main rockfall - took place between the night of Friday 19 and Saturday 20 August.




Milwaukee Shooting Footage Will Not Be Released Ahead Of Investigation

By Stephen Gossett in News on Aug 22, 2016 7:27PM



Photo: Darren Hauck / Getty Images

Police body camera footage of the fatal shooting death of Sylville Smith in Milwaukee will not be made public until after an investigation is completed, Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said on Monday.

Schimel said that keeping the video out of the public eye was necessary in order to prevent influencing witness accounts. Releasing the video sooner would compromise the integrity of the investigation, Schimel said, according to NBC News. It is sometimes necessary to confront witnesses with information they didn't know or they didn't know we know.

I cannot have witness statements colored or tainted by what they are seeing from other sources," he added.

Smith, 23, was fatally shot by an officer on the afternoon of Aug. 13. The shooting touched off two nights of violent protest that included arson and gunfire. The incident and its aftermath also brought to national fore Milwaukees troubled racial history.

Police Chief Edward Flynn claims that the videowhich is culled from two body camerasshows Smith turning toward officer Dominique Heaggan while holding a gun.

Schimel said that the footage alone does not offer a full illustration of the incident. (The cameras) give only a narrow and incomplete glimpse of the overall picture, Schimel said, according to Reuters. I can tell you now, viewing the body camera videos will not answer all of your questions.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has called for the footage to be made public ahead of the investigations completion. I want the video released, he said, according to ABC News. I believe the video will provide a lot of context as to what's going on.

The topic of releasing body-camera footage after a police shooting is a familiar one here in Chicago. The citys police accountability agency, the Independent Police Review Authority, released body-cam videos early this month that captured events before and after the fatal shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Paul ONeal by a Chicago police officer. According to policy, the videos could have been withheld for 60 days, with the possibility of a 30-day extension; but the agency chose to make the videos public ahead of the deadline.
2016 EPT Barcelona 50K Super High Roller Day 2: Timothy Adams Leads Final 9

August 21, 2016 Frank Op de Woerd

After Day 1a of the 2016 PokerStars.es EPT Season 13 Barcelona 50,000 Super High Roller resulted in 89 entries (73 uniques and 16 reentries), a bunch more were needed to eclipse last year's record of 99. Well, in a festival where just about all records have been broken already, the Super High Rollers weren't about to let anyone with high hopes down. They arrived en masse for Day 2, and with 13 new entries the total came to 102 participants.

Amongst the new players was Daniel Negreanu who felt too sick on Day 1, but had gained some strength and was just in time to try to spin it up on Day 2. He still didn't look too fit yet, and could return to bed after a couple of levels of play as he lost all of his chips in a coin flip to Niall Farrell.

In a tournament full of Super High Rollers where just about every face is familiar to poker fans worldwide, there's only a handful of players that can turn more heads than Negreanu. One of them, however, sat down as Day 2 started; Gerard Pique. The FC Barcelona player, a well-known poker aficionado, decided to battle with the best of the best and the cameras started buzzing and photo cameras started snapping pictures. Pique didn't make waves, with Claas Segebrecht the one ending the story after winning the crucial coin flip a few levels in.

Patrik Antonius, another a-list poker celebrity signing up right before Day 2 started, also didn't make it into the money. The list of high rollers hitting the rail wouldn't come to an end till 3 in the morning. The battalion that did so before the money stage was reached was leaving the tournament room with hanging shoulders. Amongst them the likes of Jason Mercier, Pratyush Buddiga, Anthony Zinno, Rainer Kempe and Steve O'Dwyer.

Igor Kurganov (16th), Davidi Kitai (15th) and Philipp Gruissem (14th) all got close but the cigars stayed in the box as they were done and dusted before the organization had to pull out their checkbook.

Philipp Gruissem bubbled the 50,000 Super High Roller

The first player to go once the bubble had popped was Connor Drinan, losing with ace-nine to the ace-king of Azerbaijani businessman Khangah Manuchehr. Adrian Mateos followed him out the door, receiving the same 98,000 min cash Drinan had signed for.

John Juanda, reigning Main Event champion here in Barcelona, fell in 11th place after his ace-eight failed to improve against the queens of Timothy Adams. Stanley Choi would fall short of the final table as well, busting in 10th place with pocket threes not improving against the queens of last year's Super High Roller champ Sylvain Loosli.

The remaining nine players played for quite some time at the unofficial final table, with German wunderkind Fedor Holz able to pick up some chips. By the time the clock struck 3, still 9 players remained and the organization decided to call it a night with still 30 minutes left on the clock for level 20 (40,000/80,000 with a 10,000 ante).

The players return at 1pm local time for the televised final table with the following chip counts. The final table will be live streamed on an hour delay, so check back at 2pm local time for our ongoing coverage of EPT Barcelona's biggest event.

Seat Name Country Chips Big Blinds 1 Timothy Adams Canada 8,045,000 101 2 Alexandros Kolonias Greece 1,385,000 17 3 Erik Seidel United States 850,000 11 4 Sam Greenwood Canada 1,050,000 13 5 Julian Stuer Germany 2,360,000 30 6 Daniel Dvoress Canada 1,050,000 13 7 Ahadpur Khangah Azerbaijan 3,670,000 46 8 Sylvain Loosli France 2,120,000 27 9 Fedor Holz Germany 4,970,000 62
2016 News Archive

This page includes links to all the news articles published on pokernews.com during 2016. For your convenience, the articles are segmented by month.
Officers Ed Pietrowski and Michael Sarro of the Euless (TX) Police Department (Photo: NLEOMF)

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) has selected Officers Ed Pietrowski and Michael Sarro of the Euless (TX) Police Department as the recipients of its Officer of the Month Award for August 2016.

On the afternoon of March 1, 2016, Officers Pietrowski and Sarro responded to a call of "shots fired" at a local park in Euless, TX, a suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth. Friends since working together for the New York City (NY) Police Department, the officers made their way to the park. Officer David Hofer, whom they also knew from their days at the NYPD, decided to back them up.

What they didn't yet know was that a gunman, who had recently been released from police custody by a judge, had gathered several guns and fired rounds for the sole purpose of drawing a response from local law enforcement. He then waited for the officers to arrive hiding in a nearby ditch.

As Officers Hofer, Pietrowski, and Sarro arrived, they searched the park, looking for the source of the gunshots. Officer Hofer noticed movement in the ditch and headed toward it. The suspect then stood up from his hiding place and shot the officer, fatally wounding him. He also immediately shot at Officers Pietrowski and Sarro.

"I was trying to process everything," Officer Sarro said. "What just happened? Was that real? I don't hear Dave [Hofer], that's not good, so I start returning fire."

"[Sarro] came on the radio, 'Officer down, shots fired,' and you can hear him shooting a distance from him," Officer Pietrowski said.

Officer Sarro, who was just feet away from Officer Hofer, started shooting back as he fought for cover. Officer Pietrowski engaged with the suspect from 40 yards away to try to draw the gunman's attention away from Officer Sarro. They were able to fire off multiple shots, striking and killing the suspect.

"The biggest relief was when I saw [Pietrowski] running in to help me," Officer Sarro said. "If it wasn't for him, I'd be dead too, I'm sure."

Due to their quick actions, no one else at the park, students from nearby schools or officers, were injured during the incident.

Officer Pietrowski took a lesson from the ambush. "I know I'd take a bullet for a guy I care about. As a great example of David Hofer, this loving guy would just show up and say, 'I'd take a bullet for you' jokingly. But with him it was never a joke."

"After the incident, both officers indicated the only thing they could think about as the events unfolded was how to get to, and save, their friend," Euless Police Department Assistant Chief Gary Landers said. "These officers were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, to lay down their lives for their brother and friend. It's acts of courage like those demonstrated by Officers Sarro and Pietrowski that should be held up as an example for all to see when they discuss what it means to be a community servant and police officer."

"Despite witnessing their colleague and friend get shot, Officers Sarro and Pietrowski were able to rely on their training and focus on their job to keep the community safe by taking down the gunman," Memorial Fund President and CEO Craig W. Floyd said. "The bravery these men showed that day earns them our gratitude, as well as the August 2016 Officer of the Month Award."

Located in the nation's capital, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund is a nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring the service and sacrifice of America's law enforcement officers. The Memorial Fund's Officer of the Month Award Program began in 1996 and recognizes federal, state, and local officers who distinguish themselves through exemplary law enforcement service and devotion to duty.

Officers Ed Pietrowski and Michael Sarro, along with the other Officer of the Month Award recipients for 2016, will be honored during National Police Week at a special awards ceremony in Washington DC in May 2017.

For more information about the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund's Officer of the Month Award, visit www.LawMemorial.org/OTM.
Six police officers who credit Armor Express body armor with saving their lives from death or serious injury gathered with their families in Central Lake, MI, to partake in a company sponsored Saves Retreat.

The Saves Retreat kicked off Thursday at the company's global headquarters, announced Matt Davis, CEO and President of Armor Express.

"We view our Saves as the true life-blood of our company," explained Davis. "This retreat gives us the opportunity to give a little back to these heroes that sacrifice so much to protect everyday citizens."

The company has a formal Saves Program which tracks those officers who have been positively impacted by the protective qualities of their products. Heading up the program is Armor Express Save Lt. Brian Murphy, who was the first responding officer to the 2012 Sikh Temple massacre in Oak Creek, WI. He was shot 15 times during the altercation with the assailant. His body armor absorbed three of the rounds.

"Only these officers and their families know exactly what they have gone through. By bringing them together we want them to know that they aren't alone. They form lifelong bonds and friendships which are part of the healing process," noted Murphy.

"What these families go through is all too often taken for granted. These guys are true heroes but little focus is given to their own personal healing. We try to foster an environment where that healing can take place," added Davis.

During the retreat the families have an opportunity to tour the Armor Express facilities, meet the employees, and share their life saving stories. Following the tour, the company hosted a picnic for all the Save Families and employees as a gesture of gratitude.

Davis continued, "The Saves wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the hard work of our employees. They take a lot of pride in what they do and they deserve a lot of thanks."

After that, the group moved to a home on Torch Lake which was donated for their use by a generous family from Central Lake. For the next three days they had the opportunity to relax, build relationships and enjoy some camaraderie.

About Armor Express Inc.

With headquarters in Central Lake, MI, and a nationwide network of sales representatives, Armor Express is an ISO 9001:2008/BA 9000:2012 certified company. It manufactures a range of quality products including concealable and tactical body armor, accessories, and hard armor. "Body Armor Reborn" is the company motto. For more information visit www.armorexpress.com.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

One statistic in a new poll shows just how badly Donald Trump has burned nearly all bridges with American voters.

According to the latest Morning Consult poll:

In a new poll this week, half of all voters said they would definitely not consider voting for Trump, while 45 percent of respondents said they definitely wouldnt consider voting for Clinton.

.

While 28 percent of Clinton and Trump supporters say they would consider voting for Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, more than a quarter (27 percent) of those currently planning on voting for Clinton said theyd consider backing Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Only 14 percent of Trump supporters say they would consider voting for Stein.

Half of the country has already decided that they will not be voting for Trump before the first presidential debate even airs. It doesnt seem to matter if Trump shakes up his campaign or starts running more ads. The Republican nominee has painted a clear picture for voters with his previous behavior to such a degree that there may be no turning back.

Hillary Clinton has a solid six point lead among voters who have made up their minds already. The 2016 presidential election is looking like a contest that will be won by the candidate that does the best job getting out their base. There arent many persuadable voters available for Clinton or Trump.

If Donald Trump loses the election experts may point to the candidates constant insistence on dividing his own party, along with historic levels of unpopularity, as the key reasons for his defeat.

The election is not a done deal. Much has already happened and more unforeseen events are guaranteed to occur before voters head to the polls in November, but Donald Trump has dug himself a hole that it might be impossible to get out of. The fact that half the country has already decided not to vote for him shows just how screwed Trump really is.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

In an obvious conflict of interest, CNN employee Corey Lewandowski was paid $20,000 for consulting by Donald Trumps presidential campaign in July.

Matt Viser of the Boston Globe tweeted proof that Lewandowski was still on Trumps payroll after he joined CNN on June 23:

Corey Lewandowski, via his firm Green Monster Consulting, is still being paid by Donald Trump. He made $20k in July. pic.twitter.com/4MX0FZPGsb  Matt Viser (@mviser) August 21, 2016

Supposedly, Lewandowski was no longer a Trump employee when CNN hired him, but why was he still being paid for consulting work after he was supposedly fired from the Trump campaign?

The most likely answer is that while Corey Lewandowski the campaign manager was fired, Corey Lewandowski the political consultant was not. The Trump campaign has an employee who was still on the payroll embedded with an American news network as a political analyst.

The fact that this arrangement doesnt bother CNN executives sends a dangerous signal for journalism. CNN no longer seems to care about its credibility. They were one of the first networks to buy into the myth that Trump is a ratings draw, and they have endlessly beaten the drum of Trump coverage.

In recent weeks, some CNN on-air talent looked extremely uncomfortable with the fact that paid employees from Trumps campaign are also being paid by the network under the pretense of providing objective political analysis.

Trump complains about Twitter on CNN, but the truth is that he has his own paid mouthpiece on their airwaves thanks to the networks credibility destroying Lewandowski hire.

CNN used to be the most trusted name in news, but the Lewandowski situation should leave viewers doubting the networks intentions.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

In a normal political environment, a national candidate seeking a model of what their proposed policies would produce would certainly choose a winner. However, this is no more a normal political environment than an elephant is quantum-sized, and the state of Kansas is no more an economic winner than Donald Trump is a quiet and thoughtful deep thinker.

This column has spent a fair number of words over the past couple of years defaming Kansas Governor Sam Brownback for the damage hes wrought on the ignoramus Kansas residents that keep voting for him. Brownback has inflicted such an incredible amount of economic devastation on the state due to his adherence and allegiance to the Ronald Reagan-era disaster known as trickle down economics, that even George W. Bushs Commerce Secretary said he is terrified of what a Trump economy would do to the country and is happily voting for Hillary Clinton.

Brownback boasted that as governor, he would prove once and for all that if the Republican economic agenda was fully implemented in Kansas, the entire nation would see what truly glorious prosperity would look like.

Thus far, Brownbacks glorious experiment looks like massive debt, credit downgrades, hospital closures, drastically underfunded schools, massive healthcare cuts, raided budgets, perpetual revenue shortfalls, and as reported this week, massive job losses. Most Americans comprehend that in Republicans minds, closing schools, hospitals, allowing roads to deteriorate, and massive debt is not a bad thing, and they justify those atrocities as necessary sacrifices to develop a job-creating Utopia. In fact, Governor Sam Brownback pledged to Kansas residents that his brilliant trickle down scheme would create at a minimum 2,000 jobs a month; and that was just the start.

Well this week it was revealed that not only has Kansas not created 2,000 jobs each month, the jobs losses in Kansas are increasing each month. And stunningly, Donald Trump is telling audiences across the nation that when he is president he will bless the entire country with the Kansas solution; all in spite of the growing data that Kansas economy is in its death throes.

Some of the statistics that inspired Trump to tap Sam Brownback as one of his most trusted key advisors on economic, agriculture and trade policy are:

In July the unemployment rate kept up its steady rise and grew by 1.3 percent in June. In the past 12 months Kansas lost 4,500 existing jobs. The Kansas economic growth rate over that same period came in at a minus 0.3 percent. Add to those disasters the revenue shortfall in May and June totaled over $109 million on top of the $45 million already lost in fiscal 2016. These are the results Republicans claim they want the whole nation to experience and Trump will aid is making it happen at the federal level if he is elected president.

One might think Republicans would, if not shy away from, pretend Kansas doesnt exist if for no other reason than it gives Democrats, any Democrat and any level, all the talking points they would ever need to demonstrate what kind of catastrophe happens when Republicans are in control. Instead, Trump is bragging on the great state of Kansas economy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants Brownbacks economic policies enacted in Washington, and Kansas despicable Secretary of State Kris Kobach was granted ultimate authority as a significant author of the National Republican Platform.

Now that the disaster in Kansas has been officially cited as the Republicans ultimate goal for the nation, it is baffling why Democrats arent devoting the lions share of their time and money bringing the rest of the countrys attention to exactly what Republicans have in store for Americans. For dogs sake Donald Trump has already proposed the typical Republican path to prosperity tax cuts for the rich as a starting point to rape and pillage all but the rich, and yet pundits and candidates alike are talking about his wife, his campaign, and his bigotry.

Heres a clue: most Americans may abhor a bigot, a stripper as First Lady, and a campaign founded on mendacity, but what they really hate is an economic agenda that sends them straight into economic distress. It is the agenda Brownback brought to stupid Kansas voters and now that the state is literally dying, Trump wants to unleash it on all Americans and have given Democrats a winning issue up and down the ballot  if they only use it to beat some sense into voters.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

America leads the world in many areas and some of those are worthy of praise and pride. This country is the richest in the world, has the most powerful military ever, and is kind of a representative democracy. However awesome those leadership positions are, they hardly outweigh some damning humanistic failures that should never occur in a nation drowning in wealth. It is because the most of the nations wealth is concentrated in the top one percent of the population that America ranks near the top of child poverty and hunger, an inordinate percentage of the working population barely survives week to week, the infant mortality rate is higher than all developed nations, and now the maternal mortality rate is higher than all but one nation among developed countries.

Maternal mortality as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) is:

The death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management; but not from accidental or incidental causes.

Worldwide the maternal mortality rate was so alarmingly high that the United Nations Millennium Development Goal instituted a planet wide drive to reduce the rate by 75 percent from 1990 and 2015. It is unfortunate that the U.N. Organization failed to meet its lofty goal, but 157 nations did achieve a decrease of 50 percent between 2000 and 2013. In fact, every country in a comprehensive study had remarkable decreases except for the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. Republicans and their religious right facilitators are likely celebrating that America ranked 30th among 31 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, barely beating out Mexico for the bottom spot.

According to whats being hailed as a disturbing new study of vital statistics, researchers found that the maternal mortality rate from 2000 to 2014 for 48 states and the District of Columbia rose by 26.6 percent. Only one state had a serious reduction in the maternal mortality rate: Democratically controlled California where religious Republican attempts to abolish womens access to reproductive healthcare has been stopped in its tracks.

Sadly, since America failed to publish the horrific statistics, an important study, Recent Increases in the U.S. Maternal Mortality Rate appeared in the highly regard and peer-reviewed journal, Obstetrics & Gynecology. The authors believe the actual maternal mortality rate in the United States may well have been higher than previously thought due to a Centers for Disease Control question related to pregnancy on standard death certificates.

In a separate part of the study focusing on Texas, the researchers revealed that there was a monumental surge in the mortality rate from 2010 to 2012 that did not occur in any of the 49 other states. While some of the researchers refrained from speculating on the cause of the doubling of maternal deaths, there is certainly a correlation between Texas policies on womens health and the extra deaths. As Laura Bassett noted in the Huffington Post:

The rise in pregnancy-related deaths coincided with [Republican] lawmakers slashing family planning funds by 66 percent in the state budget in 2011. The [Republican] cuts forced 82 family planning clinics to close, one-third of which were Planned Parenthood clinics, and left Texas womens health program able to serve less than half as many women as it had previously served. Low-income women in particular had less access to affordable birth control and thus had more babies, according to a [February] report by the Los Angeles Times.

So there is the legendary Texas pro-life Republicans great achievement that womens healthcare advocates have been screaming about: withholding healthcare that is beyond a doubt killing women in the name of Christianity. Of course the faithful will be apoplectic that anyone dares blame Americas religion driving the pro-life movement for killing off women for a fetus, but they cannot possibly deny that every dastardly attack on womens reproductive health is driven by religion; not the Christian bible, but a bastardized version of Christianity with absolutely no basis in scripture. The evangelicals know it, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) know it, and its relatively certain that Republicans know it; but they need a cause celebre to garner evangelical electoral support and championing a fetus is their BIG issue. But remember or take note: the almighty god of the Christian bible said more than once in Old Testament scripture that there is no such thing as a living being until it breathes air; a scriptural based fact Republicans and their pro-life religious right maniacs refuse to acknowledge because it proves they are religious liars.

Religious Republicans constantly complain that the secular Constitution, specifically that nasty 1st Amendment, prohibits them from putting god in the public forum, a term that is code for government, legislation and the law of the land. But there is a damn good reason the Founding Fathers and Constitutions framers refused to ever allow religion in government or god in the public forum or to drive legislation  people will die. And in this instance women are dying for the religious rights hypocritical pro-life agenda, an agenda solely driven by pro-life religious Republican legislation in blatant defiance of the United States Constitution.

This has been an extraordinarily bad and embarrassing year for America no matter how one assesses the current state of affairs. Republicans elevated a bigoted fascist as their standard bearer and now while the rest of the world reduced its maternal mortality rate by half, Americas mortality rate rose by over a quarter. It certainly puts a different light on American exceptionalism than one would consider admirable, but for religious Republicans, killing off living breathing women is an admirable achievement if they think theyre protecting a non-breathing fetus.

h/t MeteorBlades
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Donald Trump has abruptly canceled scheduled campaign events in Colorado, Oregon, and Nevada as questions grow over what is going on with the Republican nominees campaign.

After cancelling a heavily promoted speech on immigration in Colorado, the Trump campaign announced that they were canceling a scheduled rally in Nevada:

Trump Nevada campaign confirms the Friday campaign rally at South Point in Las Vegas has been cancelled for unspecified reasons.  Megan Messerly (@meganmesserly) August 22, 2016

Trump blamed the flooding in Louisiana for canceling a rally and fundraiser that was scheduled in Portland, OR.

OPB reported:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has canceled his Aug. 31 rally and fundraiser in Portland.

Trumps Oregon campaign director, Jacob G. Daniels, said scheduling changes surrounding Trumps trip to tour flooding in Louisiana forced the cancellation.

Trump has replaced the Colorado event with another hourlong appearance on Sean Hannitys Fox News show.

There is no evidence at this point, but the greatest irony of all would be if Trump had to cancel these events because he wasnt healthy enough and lacked the stamina to campaign on a full schedule.

A more realistic assumption is that the schedule shakeup is just more turmoil and drama coming from Donald Trumps unstable personality.

At a time when the Republican nominee should hitting swing states, Nevada is actually fairly close according to the polls, and Republicans once dreamed of winning Colorado, Trump is canceling events in swing states.

The Trump campaign is spending very little on ads, has no serious field operation, and now Trump is campaigning less.

One has to wonder if Donald Trump is still trying. Maybe the reality television billionaire is on the verge of taking his ball and going home. Either way, Republicans are trapped in more Trump turmoil.
Photos: Chicago's SlutWalk Fights Rape Culture And Slut-Shaming

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Aug 22, 2016 2:46PM

Chicago's SlutWalk returned to the streets of the Loop Saturday afternoon for another year of fighting rape culture and the hetero-patriarchy (yes, it's a thing) with a message of body-positivity and pride.

The international SlutWalk movement formed five years ago after a police officer told a group of college students to "avoid dressing like sluts" in order to protect themselves from sexual assault. Since then, SlutWalks have formed in cities around the world, encouraging people of all genders to march through the streets wearing whatever they want, support sex workers an spread the word that people should be able to wear what they want, identify as a slut (in the most positive sense of the word) or not, and live without the fear of being raped. Rain did not stop this year's participants, as hundreds gathered near the Bean to reclaim the word slut and show their solidarity with sexual assault survivors.

And counter-protesters (who appeared to have religious reasons for disapproving of the SlutWalk) didn't stop them, either. Photographer Tyler LaRiviere live-Tweeted as the SlutWalk participants counter-counter-protested and chanted to drown out the message of the protesters:


Portfolio English Edition's premium content is available only for subscribers

Learn about the hottest news of the day, along with immediate follow-up analyses and 1000's of exclusive articles with full access to the premium content.

Register and apply for a 14 days free trial period.
Dedicated, selfless, humble  a few words that friends and colleagues use to describe Dr. Matthew Bernard.

Now he can add "health hero" to the list.

In June, Bernard accepted the 2016 Rural Health Hero Award for his 20-year dedication to medical volunteerism and helping those in need.

The Minnesota Rural Health Awards are presented each year with the aim to recognize individuals as well as medical teams that have made significant contributions to rural health care.

Dr. Matthew Bernard is chairman of the Department of Family Medicine at the Mayo Clinic and is an associate professor professor of Family Medicine at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.

ADVERTISEMENT

Besides working full time at the Mayo Clinic, he also has 20 years of experience in volunteer medicine, most recently co-founding the Center Clinic at Dodge Center and serving as medical director. He treats patients there on Monday nights and teaches residents who volunteer at the clinic.

"One of our passions when going into family medicine is the idea of helping the community and doing volunteer services," Bernard said.

The Center Clinic is a mainly volunteer-based, nonprofit clinic that is dedicated to providing needed medical treatment to teens, children, and low-income men and women who are underinsured or uninsured. This includes physical and mental health care, along with counseling and education. The clinic is mainly run by nurses, with physicians working once or twice a week. On average, the clinic offers face-to-face treatment to about 12 to 15 people a day.

Jan Lueth, co-founder of the Center Clinic, said that she, along with other colleagues at the Center Clinic, chose to nominate Bernard for the award because of his endless dedication to the clinic and to helping those in need.

"He's pretty amazing, dedicated, and unselfish with his time. We're really grateful for what he has done for the community," Lueth said. "We know that if we ask him to help with something, he's going to do whatever he can. There's not a lot of people that I know that are like that."

Not knowing he was nominated, Bernard learned that he had received the award when his colleagues from the Center Clinic surprised him at a department meeting at Mayo Clinic.

"It's humbling. My immediate thought was, 'nice to get an award, but there are so many people deserving awards that hold the clinic together,'" Bernard said. "It was nice to accept the award on their behalf."

To accept the award, Bernard traveled to Duluth to attend the Minnesota Rural Health Conference on June 21. While at the conference, he said that he really appreciated the opportunity to speak with others in the medical field, including Minnesota Health Commissioner Ed Ehlinger , who addressed the banquet.

ADVERTISEMENT

"It was great to sit with him and talk with him," Bernard said. "And to realize that the leaders of our state have the same focus for helping the rural and under-served areas as we do."

Helping patients at the Center Clinic medically and with navigating the sometimes-confusing health care system, Bernard can think of many instances that have reinforced his love for volunteerism.

Bernard remembers a young woman who came into the clinic struggling with social issues. Working with the woman, he prescribed her medication and acted almost like her therapist, helping her manage the issues she was facing and working to find solutions. Six months later, Bernard received a letter from the woman, thanking him and updating him on the progress she had made.

"You talk about what keeps people in volunteer work, it's the recognition from the people that you helped. That's what keeps us going," said Bernard. "But even if there was none of that, it still feels good. Every time I do it it makes me re-energized."

Selfless and the ability to bring out the best in people: That is how Lueth describes her friend and colleague of 20 years.

"I wish we had more Matt Bernards in the world," she said.
A rollover crash early Sunday left one man with a neck fracture, but three others nearly uninjured, authorities said today.

Deputies responded at 2:50 a.m. to the 6300 block of 60th Avenue Northwest, in Kalmar Township, where they found a small SUV driven by James Hart, 24, of rural Byron, had crashed.

According to the report, the vehicle was northbound on 60th Avenue when it hit a pothole and began to slide. It went into a ditch and hit a small group of trees, then rolled onto its roof into a creek with about a foot of water, said Capt. Scott Behrns.

One of Hart's passengers, a 25-year-old man, at first reported just minor injuries, but later went to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a fracture of the neck, Behrns said.

A 27-year-old man in the SUV was uninjured, the report says; Hart and a 26-year-old female suffered minor injuries. The passengers are also from Byron.

ADVERTISEMENT

Alcohol was not a factor, Behrns said, but Hart was cited for having no insurance.
Authorities are looking for any information that could help them track down a $100,000 ski boat and trailer that were stolen from a local business Friday night.

Employees at River Valley Power and Sport, 5327 E. Frontage Road NW, discovered the items missing Saturday morning, said Lt. Jim Evenson.

Surveillance video at the scene indicates a light-colored SUV  believed to be a Tahoe or Yukon  pulled into the business lot and drove straight to the boat and trailer. The vehicle was in the lot from about 11:10 until 11:25 p.m. Friday, Evenson said.

The boat is described as a 2016 red and white Centurion ski boat with an inboard motor. It's an EnzoSV233 model.
Nearly two pounds of methamphetamine were recovered after leads sent Rochester authorities to a local motel room Friday afternoon.

Members of the Rochester Police Department Street Crimes Unit "developed information that these guys were transporting meth to Rochester," said Lt. Jim Evenson. The officers followed two suspects to a motel room, then obtained a search warrant for the room, the report says.

Inside, authorities found 1.84 pounds of meth, which carries a street value of about $81,000.

Two hours later, officers found and arrested two men they believe to be responsible for bringing the meth to Rochester.

Jose Noe Aguilera, 23, of Zumbro Falls, and Adrian Terrones, 21, of San Pedro, Calif., face possible charges of first-degree controlled substance crime-possession and sale, Evenson said.

ADVERTISEMENT

They could be arraigned as early as today.
Rochester police are investigating a shooting early Sunday that sent two rounds into a town home, but resulted in no injuries, officials said today.

Officers responded about 2:30 a.m. to several reports of possible gunshots in the 2700 block of Charles Court NW. Residents in the area reported hearing four or five shots fired.

Four children were asleep in the home, said Sgt. Dan Monnet of the Rochester Police Department; upon hearing the noise, one of the children investigated and found a sliding-glass door was shattered. The child notified an adult who called police, Monnet said.

Officers on the scene noted that four bullets had hit the residence, one coming through a sliding glass door and lodging in the leg of a table. Another round was found in an upstairs bedroom of the residence.

It is unknown if anyone who lives at the residence was targeted, said Lt. Jim Evenson. No one is in custody, but authorities have "some information about the suspect," he said.
You are here: Home

Bohai Steel Group, the indebted state-owned conglomerate, may receive help from a local government bailout fund to restructure its debts, the online financial magazine Caixin said at the weekend.

Bohai Steel, which was created in 2010 through the combination of four manufacturers, holds liabilities of 192 billion yuan (US$28.9 billion) from 105 creditors, alongside assets of nearly 290 billion yuan, Caixin reported.

The Tianjin government plans to create a local asset manager to assist in the debt workout of Bohai Steel, alongside other troubled Tianjin enterprises, the magazine said.

Restructuring of the group represented the biggest since the global financial crisis, Standard & Poor's analyst Christopher Lee told Reuters in March.

Bohai Steel creditors include the Tianjin branch of the Bank of Beijing Co Ltd and several trust companies.

China has been moving to empower special purpose restructuring managers, while accelerating debt-for-equity swaps with creditors, in a bid to manage rising state sector debt.
1991  25 years ago

 A crew from the "60 Minutes" television news program filmed a segment at the Mayo Clinic this afternoon for a story on neurosurgery. Leslie Stahl will interview Dr. Thoralf M. Sundt Jr. about his work and research. Dr. Sundt was honored by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons for his efforts in problems related to stroke and hemorrhage. (Dr. Sundt Jr., a pre-eminent brain surgeon at the Mayo Clinic who operated on former President Ronald Reagan in 1989, died of bone marrow cancer in September 1992).

 The goal of the 1991 fundraising campaign of the United Way of Olmsted County is $3,252,814. The goal is 5 percent higher than the amount raised last year.

1966  50 years ago

 A back-to-school show was held at the Northbrook Shopping Center. Six different teen bands played to a large group gathered at the shopping center.

ADVERTISEMENT

 Dover-Eyota Public Schools will open Aug. 31 for the new school term. Twenty more students will enroll in high school bringing the total enrollment to 370. The hot lunch fees have been raised this year to 25 cents for elementary students and 30 cents for high school students.

 The Olmsted County Sheriff's Dept. pistol team, competing in only its second match after being organized only a month ago, took first place in the Marksman division at the fourth annual Suburban Police Officers Pistol shoot in Bloomington. The team was composed of Stan Anderson, Jim Bennett, Fred Sliker, Ray Janz, Dick Ferber and William Broten.

1941  75 years ago

 The state highway patrol cars stationed in Zumbrota will be better prepared for law enforcement activities following installation of a radio in the cars that will be tuned in constantly to the state patrol radio station in St. Paul.

 The average car on Olmsted County farms is seven years old. A total of 1,377 farms reported owning tractors and 1,400 farms are served by telephones. Only 781 farms are currently lighted with electricity.

1916  100 years ago

 A Rochester man was fined $15 for insulting a lady on East Fifth Street. The man was arrested by officers after his inappropriate and naughty manner of speech. He pled guilty in justice court to intoxication and disorderly conduct.

 The Rochester City Council has mandated that all city prisoners will be required to cut the weeds and be placed to work on city streets.
WINONA  When the Winona County Board of Commissioners meets Tuesday night, there will be a new proposal concerning silica sand mining to add to the mix.

Commissioner Steve Jacob proposed an amendment to the current regulations on silica sand mining during a planning commission meeting on Aug. 11. That amendment  a compromise between an outright ban and the status quo  was approved by the commission on a 5-3 vote. It now will be forwarded as a recommendation to the county board.

Jacob's proposal would limit the number of industrial mineral mines to six, with no mine exceeding 40 acres. "It puts no limits on construction minerals," Jacob said. "It covers industrial minerals that could be used for such things as frac sand mining."

The proposal borrows from the definitions of industrial mining versus construction mining that are part of the ban proposal the county has been running through the approval process. A 60-day comment period on the ban ended on Aug. 1. Next up is Tuesday's board meeting, where the proposal will be discussed along with setting the date for a future public hearing on the proposed ban.

"I've knocked on two-thirds to three-fourths of the doors in St. Charles," he said, adding St. Charles likely will be affected more than other areas of the county because of the sand deposits in the area. "In knocking on those doors, I found roughly 25 percent want a ban, 25 percent don't want a ban, and 50 percent of the people feel the issue is damaging the community, and the community needs to be healed."

ADVERTISEMENT

Jacob said his compromise is aimed to do that. With the county board being split, it is likely the issue will come up again in six months or two years down the road.

"A future county board will undo the ban, and we'll be fighting over the issue," he said. "The best thing to heal the community is to find a place we'll find common ground."

However, planning commission member Chris Meyer said the problem with Jacob's compromise is it misses so much of what is at issue when it comes to frac sand mining in Winona County.

"The first thing is that the proposal that was originally brought to the planning commission addressed processing, mining and transportation," she said. "His amendment addressed just one of those three concerns."

Meyer, who was one of the dissenting votes against the compromise, said she has spent probably 80 hours listening to testimony and reading reports on the issue. One such report  a 200-page tome on frac sand mining in Trempealeau County, Wis.  came to the conclusion that regulating mining would be fine, as long as you can regulate the many public safety and community concerns effectively.

Winona County, with its limited financial resources, would have trouble effectively monitoring water and air quality, light pollution among neighbors, noise, blasting, property values and other issues.

"In terms of water quality, they recommended quarterly monitoring at the sites and yearly monitoring within one mile," Meyer said. "None of that stuff is addressed in any way by that amendment. So it seems like a really big gap to me."

Another example from Trempealeau County, she said, came from the town of Blair, Wis., where a silica sand operation was looking to expand during a temporary moratorium on new mining. The company convinced the city to annex 499 acres from the township to avoid the county's moratorium, promising the town jobs and an increase in property taxes. However, the change meant less in state funding for the local schools.

ADVERTISEMENT

"I don't see how this compromise would save Winona County from those kinds of maneuvers," Meyer said. "It would be quite burdensome to regulate and keep people safe."

For Johanna Rupprecht, a policy organizer for the Land Stewardship Project, an environmental policy organization that supports the ban on frac sand mining in Winona County, the bigger problem is that Jacob's compromise does nothing to address the public's desire for a ban.

"Nobody was asking for a compromise," Rupprecht said. "I think that message is already being sent loud and clear."

Meyer said the public comments she has heard have gone nearly four to one in favor of a ban. And written comments are favoring a ban at eight to one. One of her own concerns is the volume of sand -- not to mention the associated transportation and processing -- that comes with mining sand for fracking.

"Even at 40 acres, that's 250-300 truckloads of sand out of there a day," Rupprecht said. "It's not protecting the public from the intensity of frac mining. It's kind of a half-baked idea."

While the mining industry could bring as many as 300 jobs to the county -- if Winona County had the number of mines as the highly mined Trempealeau County -- that's not where Meyer said she sees Winona County's greatest need. "All of Southeast Minnesota, but Winona County particularly, we're facing a workforce shortage," Meyer said. "An industry that potentially degrades quality of life and the environment isn't going to attract people to move here."

Still, Jacob said he believes the county board will listen carefully to his compromise between a ban and current regulations. "If we were still looking just at the unmodified ban, I think there's a possibility (the county board members') minds were made up," he said. "This is significantly different than what was on the table before the ban process."
PLAINVIEW  A time to learn about Islam, and ask questions of two Muslims, will be from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Aug. 30 at the Plainview Community Center, 346 W. Broadway in downtown Plainview.

Speakers will be Regina Mustafa of Rochester, who formed the Community Interfaith Dialogue on Islam, a nonprofit organization that promotes interfaith dialogue and education, and Dr. Muhamed Elrashidi,a primary care internist in Rochester.

Besides hearing about Islam and its similarities with Christianity and Judaism, people will have a chance to ask questions about Islam.
Plainview celebrated its annual Corn on the Cob Days festival this past weekend, concluding Sunday with a grand parade and a free sweet corn giveaway.

The corn was freshly picked that morning. It wrapped up a weekend of games and food vendors in the park. The Knights of Columbus hosted bingo.

The parade honored local clubs, law enforcement and public services, with plenty of candy thrown.
Rochester Area Foundation on Monday morning announced the resignation of its president, JoAnn Stormer, and announced an interim president would assume executive leadership duties.

Karel Weigel has been selected as interim president, according to a Monday news release from the foundation. Weigel was previously Mayo Clinic administrator for community relations and she had served as founding chairwoman of Rochester Area Foundation's First Homes Board of Directors.

Stormer resigned Friday, "to enable her return to her family and home in Wisconsin," according to the news release.

Stormer had served more than four years with Rochester Area Foundation. She had overseen the foundation's move to its new building at the corner of Broadway Avenue North and Elton Hills Drive Northwest.

Wendy Shannon, chairwoman of Rochester Area Foundation's Board of Trustees, said the board and staff were appreciative of Stormer's leadership and the board would be confident in Weigel's leadership going forward.

ADVERTISEMENT

"Karel Weigel is a tremendous leader, and I am confident her management experience and passion for philanthropy will serve the foundation well during this transition," Shannon said in the release.

Weigel's experience includes service to the Olmsted County Social Services board and Greater Minnesota Housing Fund board. She is currently a co-chairwoman of a United Way investment team, is an active Rotarian, having recently served as a Rotary International District Governor for the region.

Rochester Area Foundation is a collection of charitable funds for individuals, families, businesses and nonprofit organizations.
Prince died of an overdose of the powerful opioid fentanyl, according to autopsy results released in June. Among the questions investigators were reviewing was whether Prince had a prescription for painkillers before his death.

A person close to the investigation of Prince's death told the Associated Press on Sunday that pills found in Prince's home marked as acetaminophen-hydrocodone actually contained fentanyl, suggesting they were counterfeit pills obtained illegally. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

Prescription opioid overdoses reached nearly 19,000 in 2014, the highest number on record. Total opioid overdoses surpassed 29,000 that year when combined with heroin, which some abusers switch to after becoming hooked on painkillers.

Some information on fentanyl:

What is fentanyl?

ADVERTISEMENT

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid, 50 times more potent than heroin, that's responsible for a recent surge in overdose deaths in some parts of the country. It also has legitimate medical uses.

Doctors prescribe fentanyl for cancer patients with tolerance to other narcotics. It comes in skin patches, lozenges, nasal spray and tablets. Because of the risk of abuse, overdose and addiction, the Food and Drug Administration imposes tight restrictions on fentanyl; it is classified as a Schedule II controlled substance.

Some pharmaceutical fentanyl is illegally diverted to the black market. But most fentanyl used illicitly is manufactured in clandestine labs. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has tied fentanyl seizures to Mexican drug-trafficking groups. On the street, fentanyl is sold alone as powder, added to heroin or made into counterfeit OxyContin pills. Users don't always know when they're taking fentanyl, increasing the risk of fatal overdose.

The DEA issued a nationwide alert about fentanyl overdose in March 2015. More than 700 fentanyl-related overdose deaths were reported to the DEA in late 2013 and 2014. Since many coroners and state crime labs don't routinely test for fentanyl, the actual number of overdoses is probably much higher.

What is a lethal dose?

It's tricky with opioids like fentanyl. Anyone who takes prescription opioid painkillers for a long time builds up a tolerance to the drugs. A dose that could kill one person might provide medicinal pain relief to another.

Experts in medical toxicology say it's important to know how much opioid medication a person has been using before a death to know how to interpret post-mortem blood levels. Pill bottles and medical history may become crucial evidence.

Does pain treatment lead to addiction?

ADVERTISEMENT

Prince had a reputation for clean living, and some friends said they never saw any sign of drug use. But longtime friend and collaborator Sheila E. has told the AP that Prince had physical issues from performing, citing hip and knee problems that she said came from years of jumping off risers and stage speakers in heels.

Becoming tolerant to opioid painkillers may lead some patients to seek stronger drugs from their doctors. Some users  whether they start as recreational users or legitimate pain patients  become addicted, experiencing an inability to control how much they take, so they use much more than is prescribed or seek out drugs on the black market.

With good management, however, opioids can offer relief to people with only a small risk of addiction, according to a 2010 review of the available studies.
AUSTIN  The driver of the semi that rolled into a ditch on U.S. Highway 218 between Austin and Lyle on Friday morning, forcing a detour, was treated at Mayo Clinic Health System - Austin and released, according to a Mayo spokeswoman.

The crash reported at 7:08 a.m. The State Patrol said Stanley Jones, 55, of Glenville was driving a semi south, just north of 160th Street, when the truck rolled into the west ditch

The Minnesota Department of Transportation closed the highway and detoured traffic until the crash was cleaned up.
HOWARD LAKE, Minn.  Kyla Mauk is nearing the end of her reign as Princess Kay of the Milky Way. She is the 62nd woman to put a public face to Minnesota's more than 3,000 dairy farmers.

"This year has been a whirlwind of excitement," Mauk said. "I've loved representing Minnesota's dairy farmers for the past year. It has been very busy, but good busy. Lots of early mornings, travel, learning, meeting so many different people."

Mauk is the first Princess Kay to hail from Wright County. She grew up on an 80-plus cow Holstein farm outside Howard Lake, where she worked with her parents, Harlan and Chris, and younger sisters, Briana and Sarah.

She's proud to be able to represent hard-working producers like her family for the past year.

"It has been truly an honor," Mauk said. "I know farmers across the state are getting up early and checking on their cows and producing milky in a safe and economic way. I'll be sad to give up the crown."

ADVERTISEMENT

One of the highlights of her time as Princess Kay has been getting to know so many farmers, Mauk said. Traveling to different events has given her the chance to see what drives them.

Travel she has.

Mauk counted more than 70 days in the past year that she was out and about as Princess Kay. Some had two or even three events rolled into one day. Now a junior at South Dakota State University, she often traveled home before going on to events around the state.

Being Princess Kay has made for an interesting talking point with her professors and fellow students. There hasn't been a Princess Kay going to the university for some time, so it was a point of pride. SDSU's emphasis on extracurricular activities has eased her path to a degree. Mauk is thankful for faculty who have been understanding and given her the flexibility to pursue her Princess Kay duties.

Through all the events Mauk has often focused on milk's nutrition. She has particularly enjoyed being part of several Fuel Up to Play 60 events with players from the Minnesota Vikings. Leading the dairy station at a Fuel Up to Play 60 Reward sticks in her mind as one of her favorite experiences. Anytime she sees consumers make the click from "Milk comes from the grocery store," to "Milk comes from a family farm like Kyla's," is rewarding, Mauk said.

As she looks at turning her title over to the next Princess Kay, Mauk is glad for all the relationships she built with farmers, consumers and teachers. She hopes she can be a resource for people.

Looking ahead, Mauk hopes to land an internship in Washington, D.C., next summer.

Mauk will give a parting address and crown the 63rd Princess Kay of the Milky Way during a ceremony starting at 8:30 p.m. Aug. 24 at the Minnesota State Fair Bandshell.
A fight between Mayo Clinic and a local labor union could become a hot topic on the campaign trail this fall.

More than 30 lawmakers recently signed a petition urging Mayo to reverse its decision to subcontract its food vendor services. Mayo has announced plans to switch from Sodexo to Morrison Healthcare at 20 facilities across the country. About 700 Mayo employees across southern Minnesota would be affected. SEIU Healthcare Minnesota represents many of the employees and has organized a picket in front of Saint Marys Hospital on Wednesday.

Sen. Dave Senjem, R-Rochester, has made the case that the lawmakers should not be interfering in a dispute between a private company and labor union. But his Democratic rival, Dale Amorosia, disagrees.

"I wholeheartedly disagree with my opponent. I think it is definitely well in the wheelhouse of current legislators to be concerned about this and ask questions about this," Amorosia said.

Some lawmakers have accused Mayo of reneging on promises made as part of the Destination Medical Center initiative. They point to Mayo leaders pledging that DMC will lead to good-paying jobs. In 2013, lawmakers approved a $585 million funding package to support the $5.5 billion economic development.

ADVERTISEMENT

Mayo has said the change has nothing to do with DMC. The nonprofit has said that all current employees will be offered a job at Morrison with their current rate of pay and will be credited for years of service. But that has done little to quell the concerns of SEIU leaders, who fear employees will see their benefits cuts.

Amorosia is smack dab in the middle of the dispute. The Byron Democrat works as a food cashier at Mayo Clinic. Amorosia said that, as a cashier, he is not a member of the union. He also is expecting to transfer out of Mayo's food service department before the transition. Still, Amorosia said he knows many of the employees that will be affected by the change.

"I am very disappointed by Mayo Clinic. And I know a lot of people are disappointed and scared because you will not be Mayo Clinic (employees) in two years," he said.

If elected, Amorosia said one of his priorities would be to make sure everyone in the community benefits from DMC.

"I would want to work with Mayo Clinic and work with the community to make sure this is beneficial for everybody and not just beneficial for the executives and for the people who are higher up in the Mayo Clinic food chain," he said.

Senjem said he understands why Mayo employees would be concerned about no longer working for the Rochester-based nonprofit. But he said it is really not lawmakers' place to get involved in this issue.

"If any other business had a labor-management dispute, would the state Legislature get involved in that? I don't think that often happens," he said.

Senjem worked at Mayo for 44 years doing environmental regulatory compliance before retiring. He also authored the DMC bill. He said people often forget that the state dollars approved for DMC do not go to Mayo Clinic. Instead, they flow to the city of Rochester to help pay for needed infrastructure upgrades to support the clinic's massive development.

ADVERTISEMENT

Senjem noted that Mayo recently announced plans as part of DMC to build an additional 2 million square feet of bioscience research space  a project that will bring good jobs to the city.

"It takes a lot of employees to occupy 2 million square feet, so they are certainly going to be adding employees there," he said.

At this point, Senjem said it makes sense for lawmakers to let Mayo and the union sort out the disagreement.

He added, "The best thing we can do is let it be resolved within the framework of the union and Mayo and that's what this is all about. That's the basis of labor-management negotiations."

Missed paperwork costs candidate

Rochester Republican Will Waggoner is going to miss out on $3,341 in public funding because of forgotten paperwork.

Legislative candidates in Minnesota are eligible to receive public funds if they abide by certain campaign contribution limits and sign a public subsidy agreement. To get those dollars, House candidates must raise at least $1,500 from eligible Minnesota voters. In addition, no more than $50 of each donor's donation can be counted towards the $1,500 goal.

Waggoner said he accomplished that fundraising goal. But the first-time legislative candidate said that his treasurer didn't realize he also needed to submit a notarized affidavit to the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board by July 25 to qualify for the subsidy. Waggoner learned about the error in a letter from the board.

ADVERTISEMENT

"I just have to go with it now. There's nothing I can do to change it except work harder," he said.

Jeff Sigurdson, the campaign board's assistant executive director, said that when a candidate fails to turn in the affidavit on time, they are simply out of luck.

"Unfortunately, there's not the ability of the board to waive the requirement. That's a statutory deadline. It must be filed by that date," Sigurdson said.

Waggoner is running against six-term Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester. Liebling is expected to qualify for a public subsidy payment of $4,473.

Waggoner said that while the loss of the money is frustrating, he is determined to overcome it.

"I told myself I can't keep down about this," he said "There's nothing I can change about it now. I just need to focus on my race."
Zhangjiakou, a city in north China's Hebei Province, seeks to be more internationalized in the country's Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordinated development plan and in its preparations as a co-host city for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Han Fangming, Chairman of the Charhar Institute, speaks at the 2016 Charhar Roundtable held in Yuxian County of Zhangjiakou on Aug. 20, 2016. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn]

The central government laid out the plan for the coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, also known as the capital cluster, two years ago, and thereafter, Zhangjiakou started to explore corresponding development opportunities. Apart from the Winter Olympics, Zhangjiakou also has a geographical advantage in that it borders Beijing and Tianjin in the east, Inner Mongolia in the north and Shanxi in the west.

"This is a strategic location for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Integration and for the Belt and Road Initiative. Zhangjiakou should focus on complementing with adjacent cities regarding respective advantages," said Han Fangming, chairman of the Charhar Institute, at the 2016 Charhar Roundtable held in Yuxian County of Zhangjiakou on Aug. 20, 2016.

Zhangjiakou has good environment and climate conditions, lower costs for life and business and is not far from Beijing, especially when the Beijing-Zhangjiakou high speed rail will be completed before the 2022 Games. As a result, Zhangjiakou may be an ideal place to accommodate startup entrepreneurs on an exodus from Beijing due to unbearably high costs and worsening air pollution.

"Zhangjiakou could be another Silicon Valley in the U.S. or like Zhongguancun of Beijing, as long as a cluster effect forms gradually," said Prof. Zhao Kejin of Tsinghua University, also a senior research fellow at the Charhar Institute. He believed that the potential inflow of talents, including young entrepreneurs could be the "sacred need" in boosting the city's fame.

Therefore, in the coordinated development of the capital cluster, Zhangjiakou and Hebei Province in a larger sense will no longer only support Beijing and Tianjin with natural resources and talents at the cost of sacrificing their own development opportunities. Instead, Zhangjiakou now has the capability to draw talents out of Beijing.

As for its industrial and infrastructure development, Zhangjiakou has properly positioned itself to highlight green industries, ecological conservation, renewable energies and recreation, hoping that these pursuits will bring the city back to vitality, said Wang Zhijun, the vice director of local legislature and the chief of the city's workers union.

Zhangjiakou is getting increasingly famous on the international level for hosting all the snow events during the 2022 Games and for that purpose new facilities are being built.

While the construction has already brought development opportunities and GDP growth, experts attending the roundtable already think beyond the Olympics; they cautioned that plans should be far ahead of time to prevent those facilities from being desolate immediately after the Olympics conclude as has happened in many previous Olympics.

"The years that lead up to 2022 are also a time when international resources will merge into the coordinated interprovincial development to put Zhangjiakou on the track of fast development," said Wang.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
It's easy to understand why global warming deniers refuse to believe the Earth's temperature is climbing and human consumption of fossil fuels is to blame.

Each new bit of evidence makes the climate change warnings sound like a broken record. The latest is that National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration this week reported that July was the hottest month on record for the planet.

The temperature was 1.57 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, shattering last year's July record of being the warmest by 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit, NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information reports.

July also was the 15th month in a row to break the monthly heat record. The data go back to 1880.

"For the year to date, the average global temperature was 1.85 degrees F above the 20th-century average," NOAA reports. "This was the highest temperature for this period, breaking the previous record set in 2015 by 0.34 degrees F."

ADVERTISEMENT

Some other striking data about the planet's rising temperature:

 The averaged sea surface temperature was a record high for July and from January through July.

 The average land surface temperature on Earth tied the 1998 record high for July and the record high for the year to date.

 There were near-records on some continents: Asia had its second warmest July; Oceania its fourth; North America its fifth; and Africa and Europe their seventh.

 The average Arctic sea ice extent for July was 16.9 percent below the 19812010 average. This was the third smallest July extent since records began in 1979.

 The average Antarctic sea ice extent for July was 0.2 percent above the 19812010 average, marking the smallest July Antarctic sea ice extent since 2011 and the 19th smallest on record.

Human consumption of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and gas, produces greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere. It causes the Earth to warm, polar ice and glaciers to melt and sea levels to rise, threatening coastal areas and increasing the risk of flooding.

The warming of the planet also results in spreading droughts such as those occurring in California, states in the Southwest, in sub-Saharan African nations and countries like Iran. The recurring wildfires in California are also an outgrowth of global warming.

ADVERTISEMENT

Thousands of people have had to flee devastating wildfires in Southern California, which have spread across nearly 50 square miles and consumed a number of homes and businesses. Five years of drought have turned much of the state into a tinder box with eight blazes burning from Shasta County in the far north to Camp Pendleton, just north of San Diego.

More than 34,000 homes and about 82,000 people are under evacuation warnings as firefighters focused on trying to save residents in the mountain communities of Lytle Creek, Wrightwood and Phelan. This is the second year that wildfires from the ongoing drought have consumed property and caused residents to become global warming refugees in California.

Because of climate change, storms when they do occur are often more severe. Louisiana has borne the worst of it this summer. The southern part of that state has been slammed with rainfall and flooding, with authorities estimating that 40,000 homes have been damaged, about a dozen people killed and more than 30,000 others have had to be rescued.

The rain and flooding also have caused more than 110 state highways to remain closed, making it even more difficult for families to flee to higher ground.

About 68,000 people have signed up for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and that number is expected to rise. President Barack Obama has declared a number of parishes disaster areas. It enables residents to apply for grants and loans to help them clean up and rebuild.

But federal budgets to help people recover from floods and wildfires have been devastated from the all-too-frequent occurrences of these climate change fueled disasters.

The Paris climate change summit last year was a coordinated response of many nations to try to arrest the warming of the planet. Efforts include increasing renewable fuels from solar, wind, hydro and geothermal sources.

Conservation efforts also will have to improve in addition to a continued reduction in burning coal, gas and oil as energy sources.

ADVERTISEMENT

But environmentalists worry that none of the efforts to save the planet is occurring fast enough to offset the effects of climate change. Their concern is that more disasters will keep occurring until ultimately they force people's hand to act with a greater sense of urgency.

Lewis W. Diuguid is a member of The Kansas City Star's Editorial Board.
The scandal of Hillary Clintons private email server is in a sense the ultimate Clinton scandal. It shows Hillary Clintons heedless treatment of national security for corrupt personal reasons. It shows her willingness to say anything to extricate herself from a fix.

Indeed, the scandal shows her pathological approach to facts. She may believe her own lies. One has the impression that she could pass a lie detector test on her multitudinous misrepresentations. She lies like a criminal, without a conscience, to cover up her criminal wrongdoing.

And like a criminal, she blames her wrongdoing on others. The buck stops somewhere down the line, with dedicated State Department professionals, or with Colin Powell. This past Friday Amy Chozick reported in the New York Times Hillary Clinton told F.B.I. Colin Powell advised her to use private email.

Thanks to Drudge, I find that Colin Powell told People Magazine on Saturday night in East Hampton that he does not accept the buck. He rejects it. He didnt do it! Its almost funny.

In her weekly Wall Street Journal column Kim Strassel explores Comeys FBI double standards (accessible here via Google). Like a good student of philosophy, Strassel considers the contradictions. The Clintons tarnish everything they touch. Neither James Comey nor the FBI emerges from the scandal with reputation intact.

The scandal also shows the psychology of wrongdoing. One transgression leads to another until the wrongdoer comes to believe that her wrongdoing is righteous.

In year eight of the Obama administration, with prospect of the return of the Clintons to the White House on the horizon, we can slightly revise the famous quote from Benjamin Franklin. Well, Doctor, what have we gota Republic or a Monarchy? A banana republic, if you can keep it.

The ultimate Clinton scandal of course requires a contribution from the man without whom Hillary Clinton would have led a frustrated career biding its time, like Grant in Galena and Dick Diver in Tender is the Night, in one town or another. At the Free Beacon David Rutz has posted the handy video below under the heading Bill Clinton fouls up email spin for Hillary.

Quotable quote from Colin Powell: Her people have been trying to pin it on me. The truth is, she was using [the private email server] for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did.
Yesterday, I questioned the extent to which the Trump campaign is getting the candidates message out. The campaign, I noted, wasnt on the air waves in Virginia and North Carolina, two potential battleground states.

Today, the Washington Post reports that although Trump nearly matched Hillary Clinton in fundraising last month, he doesnt seem to be spending the money. According to Post reporters Matea Gold and Anu Narayanswamy:

[N]ew Federal Election Commission filings show that Trumps campaign transferred in much less than anticipated from its joint fundraising committees with the Republican National Committee, sharply reducing his expected monthly take. And of the cash the campaign raised, it spent fitfully, making little effort to expand its meager field operation at a key juncture in the race.

Trumps approach, they say, makes the RNC the campaigns organizing arm, in effect. Given all of the upheaval in the Trump campaign, this may not be an entirely negative development. However, outsourcing voter mobilization efforts to the Party has an obvious drawback because Trumps interests are not perfectly aligned with the GOPs.

Trumps sole interest is, or should be, to mobilize voters in the half dozen to a dozen states where the presidential election, if its close, will be decided. The Party has an interest in winning tight House races all over the country and tight Senate races in some states where Trump may not be competitive.

Thats why veteran presidential campaign strategist Ed Rollins warns that Trump must make sure he has his own imprint. Otherwise, with Trump trailing in the polls, the temptation for the RNC to focus on key Senate races may well become too great to resist.

As for television advertising, the Post reports:

[Hillary Clinton] raced through $108 million by the end of July on TV ad production and air time, according to federal filings. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign launched its first general election TV ad last week, saying it planned to spend $4.8 million on a 10-day ad buy in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida.

Underwhelming is the word that comes to mind.

Amateur hour is the term.
Lagoa swimwear is a womens swimwear brand that offers invisible zipper pockets to keep your valuables safe at the beach, pool party, or just out and about! A must have for every girl's swimsuit drawer! A zip pocket - Keep your valuables safe in the zipper pocket. Problem solved! Seamless Adjustable Cool design Quality Made in Los Angeles

PR-Inside.com: 2016-08-22 18:53:06

Press Information

Lagoa Swimwear





Lauren Carkhuff

Founder



email

http://www.lagoaswimwear.com



Published by

Lauren Carkhuff

3128485232

e-mail

https://lagoaswimwear.com







# 486 Words

FounderLauren Carkhuff3128485232

Lagoa Swimwear  Finally, a swimsuit with zipper pockets to keep your valuables safe!Swimwear designer launches a line of stylish and functional swimsuits with invisible zipper pockets on Kickstarter.Lagoa swimwear is a womens swimwear brand that offers invisible zipper pockets to keep your valuables safe at the beach, pool party, or just out and about! The patent pending pocket swimsuits are designed by seasoned fashion wholesale rep, Lauren Carkhuff. The inspiration for the swimwear line began in 2012 while she was living in Brazil. I found myself wanting to go in the ocean with all of my friends, but nervous to leave my keys, money, and credit card unattended on the beach. I searched everywhere and could not find a swimsuit that allowed me to carry my valuables with me while in the water, says Carkhuff.She decided that there had to be a better solution for keeping her valuables safe. This led to the creation of Lagoa Swimwear. After a year of refining the patterns and perfecting the fit, she has created her first collection offering two reversible bikini tops and bottoms that you can mix and match and a one piece. The designs are made with high quality four way stretch nylon-spandex and available in sizes XS - L. It is a must have for every girls swimsuit drawer, says Carkhuff.Swimsuit features:A zip pocket - Keep your valuables safe in the zipper pocket. Problem solved!Seamless - The suits fit like a second skin eliminating the feeling of elastic digging into your skin.Adjustable - The tops have adjustable straps to ensure a perfect fit for your body.Cool design - The designs are fashion forward, reversible, and offer mix and match options for the bikinis.Quality - The suits are made with high quality four way stretch nylon-spandex.Made in Los Angeles - Locally sourced laborOur patent pending zip pocket design is strategically placed for ease of use and is large enough to hold a credit card, says Carkhuff The zipper is sewn between the two layers of fabric which make it invisible to the naked eye. Its a project that she cant wait to begin producing. Producing the collection requires large minimums from our manufacturer, says Carkhuff. Therefore, Lauren has decided to launch the first collection on Kickstarter.com in an attempt to raise $5,000 for the first production run.Kickstarter campaigns operate under an all-or-nothing funding model, so if Lagoa Swimwear doesnt reach its goal, the project will not be completed. Consider donating as little as $10 to help the project come to life. Check out the Kickstarter Project here. If you decide to donate more, you will be among the first get a suit and keep your valuables with you at the beach or pool.Kickstarter Site: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2110537605/lagoa-swimwear-womens-swimwear-with-pockets-has-ar Email: info@ lagoaswimwear.com Twitter: @ lagoaswimwear.com Instagram: @ lagoaswimwear.com
The Islamic Development Bank Group (IDBG) on Monday formally opened its Nigeria Country Gateway Office in Abuja with a mission to focus its services on health, agriculture, infrastructure, small and medium-scale enterprise and regional integration.

The group said it was also considering the education sector, particularly bilingual education, among its priority service areas in Nigeria as a key tool to counter extremism.

These are what we aspire to do as IDB Group and what we stand for, its President, Ahmad Ali, said in his statement at the opening ceremony in Abuja.

Reiterating IDBGs mission to strengthen solidarity and economic relationship among member countries, Mr. Ali said opening the office in Nigeria was to reinforce the cooperation between it and Nigeria as the largest member in Africa.

The groups presence in Nigeria, he said, would strengthen socio-economic, technical and commercial cooperation between the bank and member countries in Africa.

While expecting Nigeria to play a key role in realizing these objectives, Mr. Ali said this was important with the completion of the last portion of Trans Saharan Road linking Algiers in North Africa and Lagos.

There is an urgent need to develop and implement an action plan for countries along this road, including Nigeria, to benefit from the infrastructure economically, commercially and financially, he said.

As host of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) secretariat, Mr. Ali said it was important for Nigeria to contribute to regional cooperation and integration, assuring the bank would be willing to lend its support.

He pledged the banks readiness to support Nigerias development priorities and ensure its services complemented the ones by other development partners as they relate to the countrys transformation process.

The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, who, prior to the opening received Mr. Ali in her office, urged the IDBG to support Nigerias effort to reconstruct the North East part of Nigeria devastated by years of militancy by insurgent group, Boko Haram.

The minister said development partners should work with Nigeria for the implementation of recently constituted plan by the Buhari administration to reconstruct the region through various intervention projects relating to peace building, stability and social cohesion.

Mrs. Adeosun also called for support to critical productive infrastructure and service delivery; provision of capacity building and programme management support in national, states and local government institutions.

Describing the opening of the office as important milestone in the banks relationship with Nigeria, Mrs. Adeosun said it would not only strengthen cooperation, it would help bring the bank closer to the people and enable it appreciate the challenges ordinary Nigerians face.

Apart from collaborating with government to execute projects to improve living standards of the people, she said IDBGs presence would add to the pool of development partners in Nigeria and the banks international standing.

Nigeria looks forward to a stronger engagement in its development aspirations. The IDBG must use its experience in mobilizing resources, as it has done in other countries, to support government in its drive to diversify the economy.

As Nigeria strives to attain sustainable development goals (SDGs), IDBG must support through its products and services for Nigeria not to be left behind. The bank must scale up its concessional resource and increase overall financing to Nigeria and other African member countries, the minister said.

The IDBG is a multilateral development bank made up of 57 member countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America . Its aim is to foster economic development and social progress of member countries and Muslim communities in non-member countries.

Nigeria, the 56th member of the group, joined in 2005.
In a video message obtained by PREMIUM TIMES, Mr. Mbaka urged the devotees at his popular Adoration Ground in Enugu to desist from speaking evil against President Muhammadu Buhari.

PREMIUM TIMES could not ascertain the exact date of the message, but it addressed recent occurrences, including the hardship being experienced by Nigerians.

Read full transcript below.

The entire money voted for hospitals were looted out. Corruption was in quantum. To the level that the Nigerian bishops had to compose a prayer  Prayer against Bribery and Corruption, and assured all the Catholics to be praying that prayer every day after the Communion.

All the money voted for road constructions were swindled, eaten. Many of them became millionaires and billionaires in Naira, in Dollars, in Pounds, in Euro. Billionaires, when they have no workshop, no business centre. Somebody who has nothing hes doing, yet hes a billionaire, because hes a politician.

Then the oil money were messed up. Now the oil doom has come, and there is no preparation for it. The economy of Nigeria is an oil based economy. My beloved Nigerians, those who need us from last year downwards, they have killed this country. None of them is qualified to stay in this country by now. Both the presidents, the senators, the reps, the chairmen of local governments, the governors: they are wicked. It doesnt matter the man of God they worship with, I tell you before God and man, all of them are wicked. They hate this country. They succeeded in removing the liver, kidneys, and cardiovascular systems of this country, and paralyzed the neurological organs and handed over to Buhari, the new president, shambles, skeleton almost, a nation that is comatic. Nigeria right now, economically, security wise, is in the intensive care unit. If the oxygen is removed, Nigeria will go.

People of God prayed from here and there, God answered our prayers and gave us Muhammadu Buhari. And I want to tell you today, God has told us that Buhari is a prayer answered. President Buhari is an answered prayer. Whether you hate him or whether you like him, Buhari is a prayer answered. The bishops of Nigeria, the Catholics prayed against bribery and corruption and this president came with a magna charter that has to do with war against corruption.

All the prayers we gave been doing against corruption, God answered that prayer through a Muslim, who decided not to discriminate. Theres nothing like religious, racial discrimination in Buharis administration. Hes a man for all, he means good for this country, and we owe him support; unalloyed support, consistent support, perennial support, unstoppable support, spiritual and otherwise. Because if he is not the man on the helm of affairs now, had it been the last regime continued, by now Nigeria will be for sale. Who will buy?

All the monies voted to buy this and buy that, few people stole the monies, in billions of dollars. And you people are passing through chronic hunger, joblessness, many have died, many are dying because of few people. And thats why they want to engineer you people to cause crisis, even in this part of Igboland that Igbos are marginalized. Igbo people are unmarginalizeable. Nobody marginalized us. The spirit of God wanted me to speak good over what has happened so far in this administration, and thats what Im doing. Im not a sycophant, I dont support anybody for anything. I have the highest thing anybody can have, I have God.

So I want to tell you that so far, God is happy with Buhari. And him whom God has blessed, may you not try to accurse, because God will curse you. Many people people are planning, as it is revealed, to kill him. There are many plans on how to eliminate his life so that corruption will continue, so that quantum embezzlement will continue, but the Lord says God who put you there will not forsake you. Be firm, be resolute, remain focused, and be unbiased. Refuse to be intimidated and refuse to be distracted. Go ahead and war against evil. President Buhari, go ahead and war against corruption. President Buhari, God and his people are behind you, you are the answer of the prayers of the people, amen.

And when prayers are answered, what do people say?

Amen!

Amen and amen.

Wave your hands to the Lord.

Those who want magical results. Nigeria should be good. Nigeria should be better. This man entered and things are beginning to be hard, Now oil is being sold at the rate of 30 something dollars per barrel, as against 100 and. Now to find buyers are difficult.

In overseas, some countries have started building cars that use electricity, as you are charging your phone you can charge your car. Many people are no longer buying oil. There are no more wars here and there in Iraq and so on, that will make America to be buying oil to any level. Any level we can sell, amen.

Can you eat your cake and still have it?

No.

Our pastnot our past leaders, our past looters, you may not understand, looters, embezzlers pissed on the political positions, have eaten the cake of this country and now everybody is suffering it. The youths are suffering it. And they want to tell you that we are marginalized. The Yorubas are not marginalized, the Hausas are not marginalized, Efik people are not marginalized, and the Igbo people are not marginalized.

In the present political scenario, Igbo people have the ministerial position for Minister for External Affairs, full portfolio, in the person of Onyeama. Igbo people have the portfolio for Science and Technology, in the person of Ogbonnaya Onu. You go to Abia, we have the Industry and Commerce. Come over to Anambra, we have the Labour and Employment. And the problem of this country today is employment. If our youths are well employed, kidnapping will go. Kidnapping was a child of the past administration. They delivered that ugly baby, and that baby resembled them. Many of you were intimidated and you will say what they want you to say. But that is not the case. It is my job to put your mind right. When anybody want you to say that Igbos are marginalized, dont believe it. The Igbos in the north are doing well, and the northern people are not chasing them away. The Igbos in the Yoruba land, go to Idumota, go to Alaba, Ladipo and so on, they are treated with utter hospitality, with innovative kindness.

The Yoruba people are not fighting the Igbo people, so why are we evolving a war that does not exist. And as I said in the former message, those who are engineering this have their children abroad and they want to use our youths, unemployed and say come out of the road and begin to walk around, that Igbos are marginalized. Our roads were not done. By the end of this year, you will know who ate the money of these roads.

Listen, fellow Nigerians, what we are suffering now is just resultant effects from the past, previous malignant, maladorous, and intrinsically corrupt past political..
The Osun State government received nothing from the federation account in April 2016 after appropriate deductions by the federal government.

The deduction from Osun was part of the N32 billion deducted by the federal government from states as repayment for bailout funds and other loans extended to the affected states and the federal government.

For Osun, the states allocation of about N2.03 billion from the federal revenue was insufficient to offset its total debt to the federal government of about N2.391 billion.

At the end of the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) meeting for April 2016, the state went home empty handed. It still, however, owes the federal government about N361 million which will be deducted from subsequent months.

The Director, Osun State Bureau of Communication and Strategy, Semiu Okanlawon, did not respond to calls to inquire how the state government, which has had difficulty paying workers salaries, would cope without its April allocation.

Mr. Okanlawon did not also respond to a text message sent to his telephone on Sunday.

Apart from Osun, other states that had huge deductions by the federal government include Bayelsa, Cross River, and Ogun.

Bayelsa had N3.207 billion, 66.7 per cent, deducted from N4.812 billion allocated to it in April.

Other deductions included Cross River State, N1.405 billion (63.46 per cent); Ogun, N1.185 billion (57.2 percent); Plateau, N1.248 billion (56.52 per cent); and Ekiti, N1.067 billion (55.33 per cent).

Seven states  Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Jigawa, Kogi, Lagos, Rivers, and Yobe  along with the Federal Capital Territory did not have deductions, as they did not collect the bail-out funds used for the deduction.

Apart from bail-out funds, which took about N3.078 billion from the affected states, loans the states are now repaying to the federal government include debts on Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) loans, commercial agricultural credit scheme, bond issuance programme, obligations to contractors, and deduction from excess crude account.

Other deductions include refund/payment arrears of derivation, foreign loans, special intervention/flood management projects, the national FADAMA project and reconstruction of commercial bank loans into FGN bonds.

While speaking on how Bayelsa State would cope after losing two-thirds of its allocation to debt repayment, the Commissioner for Information, Jonathan Obuebite, said the state has adopted strategies to shore its internally generated revenue base.

Apart from slashing the salaries of political office holders and members of the state executive council by 50 per cent, Mr. Obuebite said the state government reviewed its tax collection strategies to capture evaders.

He said since the adoption of new revenue generation strategies, the states revenue yield improved from about N100 million per month to about N500 million.

Our target is to hit N2 billion every month, he said. Part of our strategy to realize that target is to get all the oil companies doing business in the state, including Shell, to pay their corporate tax to the state.

Already, we are in court to get all the companies to begin to pay taxes in their area of operation. The state will be comfortable with that arrangement.
People from Chibok community resident in Abuja and members of the #BringBackOurGirls (BBOG), movement on Monday said they regretted voting for President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2015 presidential election.

They expressed their regrets on in Abuja at a protest rally over the inability of the government to take measures to rescue the over 200 school girls kidnapped by the terrorist group, Boko Haram, in their school in Chibok, Borno State, in 2014.

Boko Haram had last week released a video of the girls who are still alive and said they were willing to trade the girls in exchange for their members in detention in various prisons.

One of the girls, Maida Yakubu, who also spoke in the video asked their parents to beg the Nigerian government to accede to the demand of Boko Haram so that they would be released.

Speaking during the protest on Monday, the chairman of the Chibok Community, Hosea Tsambido said members of the Community and BBOG voted massively for Mr. Buhari as against his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, who they voted for in 2011.

They tell us that our girls seen in the latest video was merely an arrangement, Mr. Tsambido said. No one has spoken to the family of any of the Chibok girls since the last video was released, by the terrorists. We regret our votes. We regret it.

Speaking further, the community leader said, We were promised that the president would visit Sambisa, after becoming president. We were also told that within two weeks our girls would be rescued.

But over one year now, there is no tangible statement about our girls. The presidency has stated instead that it is confused.

The BBOG group said it was embarking on a fresh 14-day campaign to re-energize the clamour for the rescue of the girls.

The protesters were heading for the Presidential villa to speak with the president as they usually do during their protests.

They were however, stopped by a combined team of security personnel at the entrance of the three arms zone.

The group said the current administration has ran out of excuses regarding the return of the Chibok girls.

No more excuses, they chanted several times.

The protest was still ongoing as at the time of this report.

A pro-Buhari group, the Buhari Media Support Group, (BMSG), had appealed to the BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) to shelve todays demonstration to the Presidential Villa.

The group in a statement by one of its members, Muhammad Labbo, said that was necessary to avoid complications and anything capable of undermining efforts of the government to rescue the girls unharmed.

Mr. Labbo noted that playing politics with the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls was unhelpful and embarrassing to the government and counterproductive to the silent efforts of the military to rescue them.

He said the government would take serious exception to the mobilisation of the parents of the kidnapped girls to score political advantage or exploiting the tragedy to play to the gallery.

Mr. Labbo said dragging the parents of the victims to Abuja for endless demonstrations would only compound a bad situation, and give them the impression that a rescue mission is as simple as abc.

According to him, the BringBackOur Girls Group should not claim monopoly of patriotism and humanity over the government by seeking to undermine the silent efforts of the military to map out strategies to safely rescue the girls.

He said if there was a formula for rescuing the girls within 24 hours unharmed, government would have done that, reminding the Bring Back Our Girls group of the complexities and sensitivity of hostage rescue missions.

The terrorists have no rules of engagement and therefore, would not mind killing all the hostages if the Nigerian military attempts any rash action, he said.
The alleged mastermind of the 2013 terror attacks on a secondary school in Yobe State has been captured, the State Security Service said on Monday.

In a statement signed by its spokesman, Tony Opuiyo, the SSS said Mudaisiru Jibrin, a spiritual leader of the Boko Haram sect, was arrested in Kano on August 17, three years after he allegedly coordinated the killing of 42 people in Government Secondary School, Mamudo, Yobe State.

The attack left at least 42 people dead, comprising mostly students and a few teachers.

The operation was in furtherance of ongoing tactical and counter-terrorism operations to degrade the capabilities of criminal gangs and syndicates in their hideouts across the federation, the SSS said.

The SSS said Mr. Jibrin was arrested in the Yankaba neighbourhood in Kano, where he was operating as a spiritual leader for a new Boko Haram sleeper cell.

Similarly, on 8th July, 2016, at Kinkinau area in Unguwar Muazu of Kaduna metropolis, the Service arrested one Mukhtar TIJANI, a notorious Boko Haram fighter and three (3) of his accomplices namely, Isiaku SALIHU, Abdullahi ISAH and Hindu ISAH, the secret police agency said.

The four suspects were apprehended while perfecting arrangements for major coordinated attacks on selected targets and locations in Kaduna State.

In a related development, on 12th August 2016, at Auchi in Edo State, three members of the ANSARU terrorist group hibernating in Kogi State were apprehended by the Service. Usman ABDULLAHI, Abdulmumuni SADIO and Ahmad SALIHU were arrested while making arrangements to launch attacks on some selected targets in Edo and Kogi States, before escaping to join ISIS in Libya.

The SSS also announced the apprehension of one Aikhoje Moses, a suspected criminal who allegedly threatened violence against some foreign diplomats and missions in the country.

According to the statement, no fewer than 18 people were reportedly arrested by the SSS between August 12 and 19 in several states across the country.

The full statement released by the SSS is published below:

In furtherance to ongoing tactical and counter-terrorism operations to degrade the capabilities of criminal gangs/syndicates in their hide-outs across the Federation, the Department of State Services (DSS) wishes to apprise the general public of recent successes recorded.

2. Following threat messages against some members of the Diplomatic Corps in Abuja and Lagos, this Service responded and subsequently apprehended one Aikhoje MOSES, on 19th August 2016, at Azagha by-pass off the BeninAsaba Expressway in Edo State. Before his arrest, MOSES had threatened the diplomatic community in Nigeria, particularly the Consular-Generals of Switzerland and Denmark and their Embassies in Nigeria, warning them to leave the Country.

3. The Service also arrested one Mudaisiru JIBRIN aka NAMAKELE/ALARAMA on 17th July, 2016, at Sauna quarters, Yankaba area in Kano. JIBRIN was the spiritual leader to a newly uncovered Boko Haram cell in Kano. Preliminary investigation so far conducted revealed that he was also the mastermind of the shooting of some students at Government Secondary School (GSS), Mamudo village near Potiskum, Yobe State, in 2013.

4. Similarly, on 8th July, 2016, at Kinkinau area in Unguwar Muazu of Kaduna metropolis, the Service arrested one Mukhtar TIJANI, a notorious Boko Haram fighter and three (3) of his accomplices namely, Isiaku SALIHU, Abdullahi ISAH and Hindu ISAH. The four suspects were apprehended while perfecting arrangements for major coordinated attacks on selected targets and locations in Kaduna State.

5. In a related development, on 12th August 2016, at Auchi in Edo State, three members of the ANSARU terrorist group hibernating in Kogi State were apprehended by the Service. Usman ABDULLAHI, Abdulmumuni SADIO and Ahmad SALIHU were arrested while making arrangements to launch attacks on some selected targets in Edo and Kogi States, before escaping to join ISIS in Libya.

6. Following recurring attacks by cattle rustlers in Zamfara State, this Service conducted series of operations in collaboration with the military to degrade the criminal network of one BUHARI General in the State. Sequel to these operations, this Service arrested one Abdullahi HARUNA aka DOUGLAS, a bread seller on 13th August, 2016, at Hayin Buba area in Gusau LGA of Zamfara State. HARUNA was intercepted while using the cover of his petty business, to monitor security bases and movement of security agents in the State, in a bid to facilitate counter-attacks against security personnel deployed to the State.

7. Also, on 12th August, 2016, at Aliero town in Aliero LGA of Kebbi State, one Hussaini Alhaji SULE aka YELLOW, was apprehended by the Service. His arrest was facilitated by an earlier operation of 29th July, 2016, when one Hafizu SANI, a spy and criminal associate of Buhari GENERAL, was apprehended by this Service. Prior to his arrest, SANI was also spying on the movements of security agents in Zamfara State. SANI in concert with other elements, have been terrorizing local communities in Kaduna, Katsina and Zamfara States respectively, engaging in cattle rustling and kidnap activities.

8. Meanwhile, following the spate of gruesome killing and kidnap incidents in Benue State, on 8th August, 2016, the Service arrested one Terfa JIRGBA and two (2) of his accomplices, namely Terzungee KWAGHAONDO and Mathias AENDE, at Badagry Street off Esther Aka road in Makurdi, Benue State. JIRGBA is an active ally and gang member of Terwase AGWAZA aka GHANA, a notorious kidnapper who runs a kidnapping and criminal network in Benue State.

9. In a follow-up operation, one TERUNGWA ABUR aka was trailed to Port-Harcourt City in Rivers State. He was eventually picked up on 16th August, 2016. ABUR is the second in Command to AGWAZA and a key member of the kidnapping gang of Terwase AGWAZA aka GHANA which operates from Benue State. He acts as a courier for the underworld gang and was the negotiator of the Four Million Naira (N4,000,000.00) ransom paid to the gang for the release of two Indian national staff of Dangote Cement Company, Yander-Gboko, who were kidnapped on 29th July, 2016, in Markudi city. He also participated in the killing of one ORTIN in Gboko township on 1st August, 2016.

10. The arrests of major criminal masterminds in Benue and other adjourning States will continue until these criminal gangs are routed and made to face justice.

11. To address the activities of various criminal syndicates that have in recent months terrorized residents of Calabar and parts of Akwa Ibom State, on 15th August, 2016, along Ukpong Street in Oron LGA, one Benjamin EMOMOTEMI and his accomplices namely Gabriel AMBROSE, Godbless Taliboth MATTIAS, Blessing SUNDAY, Simeon Blessing Sunday, Edet Effiong ASANAGASI and Rose WILLIAMS, were all apprehended by the Service tactical team. The suspects were part of a kidnap ring which masterminded the abduction of one Mr. Rufus AKV on 31st May, 2016 and Senator Patrick ANI on 6th July, 2016 in Cross River State.

12. This Service wishes to urge the general public to remain vigilante and alert to developments in their immediate environs, and to support security and law enforcement agencies, with critical information on suspicious persons and groups, for the sustenance of relative peace across the Federation.

Thank You.

Signed

Tony OPUIYO

Dept. of State Services,

Abuja

22nd August, 2016
Joachim Iroko, the man who named his dog Buhari, was on Monday arraigned before a Magistrate Court in Ota, Ogun State.

The accused faced a one count charge of conduct likely to cause breach of peace.

The prosecutor, Itaita Ebibomini, told the court that the accused committed the offence on August 13 at the Hausa section of Ketere Market in Sango-Ota, Ota Magisterial District.

Mr. Ebibomini, a police inspector, said the offence is punishable under Section 249 (d) of Criminal Code of Laws of Ogun State of Nigeria, 2016.

The one count charge read: That you Joachim Iroko aka Joe and other still at large on Saturday 13th day of August 2016, at about 5.30 p.m. at Ketere area Sango, in the Ota Magisterial District did conduct yourself in a manner likely to cause breach of peace, by writing a name Buhari on a dog and parading same in the Hausa section of Ketere Market Sango and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 249 (d) of Criminal Code of Laws of Ogun State of Nigeria, 2016.

At the hearing, the accused who pleaded not guilty to the offence, was represented by a counsel, U. Michael.

The counsel pleaded that the accused be granted bail, as the offence was a bailable one.

The prosecutor did not oppose the plea for bail.

The Chief Magistrate, B. J. Ojikutu, granted the accused bail in the sum of N50,000 and two sureties who must be regular payers of tax in the state, in same sum.

The sureties were also to attach four passport photographs each to the bail bond, depose to affidavits of being gainfully engaged and reside in the courts jurisdiction.

The magistrate thereafter adjourned the case to September 19.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how the accused, also called Joe Fortemose Chinakwe, was arrested on Saturday after one of his neighbours complained that he named the dog after his father, Alhaji Buhari.

The accused was first taken to Sango Police Station, from where he was transferred to State Command Headquarters at Eleweran, Abeokuta.

He was yet to meet all the bail conditions at the time of this report.
A Boko Haram attack on Kuburvwa village of Borno State has left at least 11 people dead.

Residents of the agrarian community said they buried 11 corpses on Monday after the Sunday evening attack. Several women and girls living in the community, close to Chibok were over 200 girls were kidnapped in 2014, are also yet to be accounted for.

A local security operative, who craved anonymity for safety reasons, told PREMIUM TIMES that many women, mostly married, were raped while others were taken away by the gunmen.

The spokesperson of the Vigilante Group of Nigeria, Abbas Gava, confirmed the attack to journalists in Maiduguri.

The attack took place in Kuburvwa village which is located between Chibok and Damboa towns. According to reports we received from our operatives in that area, the Boko Haram gunmen invaded the village at night on Sunday and began to shoot.

Many women, including house wives, were raped by the gunmen who also killed at least 11 persons.

According to our men, who called us from Chibok, many people that fled the village into the bushes have not returned to the community as at Monday morning.

Mr. Gava said his group, which works closely with the Nigerian military does not have the exact number of women that were reportedly abducted by the gunmen.

Nigerian security agencies are yet to respond to this latest attack by the terror group whom the government had claimed had been defeated.

The groups activities have caused the death of over 20,000 people since the insurgency began in 2009. The activities have been largely curtailed in the past year and most of the territory they controlled have been reclaimed by the Nigerian government.
A rights group, Committee for the Defence of Human rights, Ebonyi State Branch, on Monday accused security officials of extra judicial killings at the Abakaliki Prisons.

While the Comptroller General of Prisons, Jaafaru Ahmed, said six people were killed and ten others injured in the attempted jailbreak, others have said the casualty is much higher.

The Comptrollers assertion, the rights group, CDHR said, is not a true reflection of the events that transpired during the incident.

The CDHR chairman, Emeka Anosike, said an independent preliminary investigation conducted by the group revealed that not less than 14 prison inmates were deliberately shot at and killed by a combined team of security agents, including the police mobile force drafted from the police headquarters Abakaliki and armed prison guards.

Also about 16 others inmates were critically injured as a result of the gunshots they sustained from the attack by security agents, the group said.

Contrary to the prison officials claims, what happened was a protest by the inmates against poor conditions they face in prison yard especially with poor food given to them and not any attempted jailbreak as alleged by the prison inmates, the group said.

Mr. Anosike said contradictory statements from prison officials lent credence of a cover up of the true picture of what happened during the incident.

The Ebonyi State Comptroller of prisons, Emily Oputa at a press conference at the prison yard denied that there was no casualty resulting from the incident and asked any person that has doubt to confirm from the Federal Teaching Hospital Abakaliki.

However, there was a big twist to the above claim, when the Comptroller Jaafaru Ahmed visited Ebonyi and confirmed to the Governor and reporters that actually six prison inmates died in the process, he said.

The group rejected the 3-member panel of inquiry set up by the Comptroller General. It called on the federal government to urgently set up an independent panel of inquiry to investigate and make a report on the incident.

The panel of inquiry set up by Jaafaru to look into the matter is unacceptable to us because it is like being judge over ones case. We want an independent judicial panel into the matter and not the prisons setting up panel.

There will be lots of cover-up in the panel set up by the Comptroller General of Prisons but if it is a judicial panel of inquiry, witnesses will be called, some inmates who are alive will be called, the hospital authorities will be called and we will also be called to testify on what happened, the group said.

It also called for the immediate removal of Ebonyi State Comptroller of Prisons and Deputy Comptroller of Prisons in charge of Abakaliki prisons and all those involved in the unfortunate incident to allow for an unimpeded investigation of the matter.

While demanding an improvement in the welfare conditions and food given to prison inmates to forestall similar occurrences in the future, the group called on the Federal Government to build new prison facilities to decongest the prisons nationwide.

It also urged government to direct judicial officers to compel lawyers at various ministries of justice nationwide to give accelerated hearing to criminal cases in the various courts.

The group threatened to take the matter to court if its demands are not met.
Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, has approved N15.5million as seed funding and grants for final year students enrolled in the Ready.Set.Work (RSW) programme.

Ready.Set.Work is an entrepreneurship and employability training programme for final year students of tertiary institutions in Lagos State, aimed at preparing them for economic productivity as value-creating employees or employers of labour.

In June, five hundred (500) promising final year students from Lagos State University (LASU), Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH), and Lagos State College of Health Technology (LASCOHET) were enrolled in a rigorous curriculum either in the employability track or the entrepreneurship track.

At the end of the programme, over 90 top performing students in the employability track will be placed in six-month internship positions with organizations like PwC, SystemSpecs, FCMB, GTBank, Access Bank, TOTAL, Jobberman, Stutern, among others.

With Governor Ambodes recent financial commitment to the Ready.Set.Work program, up to 80 students in the entrepreneurship track will likewise have the opportunity to partake in three to six-month entrepreneur apprenticeships where they can learn the tricks of the trade, understand and develop processes for various business functions, and build a network of vendors, industry peers, and mentors.

Speaking on the development, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Education, Obafela Bank-Olemoh, said the focus of the initiative from the onset was to provide students in Lagos State with the tools, knowledge, and know-how to become effective employees or job creators.

We already secured 90 internship slots for students in the employability track of the program and we realized that students in the entrepreneurship track could also benefit from experience in a structured, supervised work setting, where they can learn the rudiments of running a business effectively, he said.

He said the N15.5m committed by Governor Ambodes administration would also provide seed funding and working capital for the top three teams to emerge from the RSW Business Pitch Competition, which will hold on September 3.

This announcement comes as the 13-week programme enters its penultimate week, while a graduation Ceremony has been scheduled for September to close the programme and celebrate the achievements of students who successfully complete their courses.
Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi visits the Museum of Terra-cotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shihuang, in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Aug. 20, 2016. Aung San Suu Kyi began a five-day official visit to China on Aug. 17. [Photo / Xinhua]

When Aung San Suu Kyi traveled to China last week, she obviously had several things in mind to discuss with the hosts. She is the one who probably knows better than anyone else in Myanmar that the future of the country depends on the nature of ties with their giant neighbor. A peaceful and cooperative relationship with China can easily transform Myanmar's politics and economy in a short span of time.

By the time she completed the visit, it was clear that she was successful in winning China's backing on the most contentious issue of ending over six decades of ethnic militancy through dialogue resolution. At least three of the most stubborn rebel outfits signed a letter to join the peace conference scheduled for August 31.

China's trip was Suu Kyi's first major diplomatic foray since her National League for Democracy (NLD) came to power in April after winning the election in November. Historically, China enjoyed close ties with Myanmar, as its military junta had been dependent to a large extent on Chinese aid and investment due to sanctions imposed by the United States.

But Myanmar needed to reset the ties with China after the transformation from military rule to popular democracy, which was made possible mainly due to the pressure and persuasion by the United States. Suu Kyi is considered very close to the U.S. and with this baggage she had daunting task ahead to convince China to continue economic and political support.

Now it appears that she was successful and found attentive ears, sympathetic hearts and receptive minds in China. It was proved by the red carpet welcome and the extensive engagements she had in China, which included meetings with President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang and other high ranking officials.

President Xi in the meeting with Suu Kyi made it clear that China was ready to work with the new government for a long term cooperative relationship. China is also willing to invest in key projects of development. Xi said in the meeting that it was for Myanmar to decide the kind of development path it wants to tread. It is the loudest message by China for its neighbors, eager to adopt different models for development. The assurance of support to strengthen economy and build infrastructure are highly reassuring for Suu Kyi.

The trip was also a test of her diplomatic skills. Waging a political struggle is different from engaging with other countries on issues of national importance.There is no doubt that Suu Kyi is an iconic figure for her people but she can further strengthen her position by having friends in her close neighborhood.

By embracing the new government in Myanmar, China has manifested its policy of noninterference in the domestic affairs of the other countries. It shows that China believes that it is prerogative of every country to decide about the political system. China's decision to work with the NLD government goes long before it came to power. It was clear when Suu Kyi visited China last year before her political victory in Myanmar and was received at the highest level including a meeting with President Xi.

As de facto ruler of the country, Suu Kyi needs to sort out several issues with China. On the top is the 3.6 billion dollar Myitsone dam in the north which China was to build. The previous government suspended it in 2011 after widespread criticism by environmentalists. Suu Kyi has already set up a committee to probe and resolve it. The talks in China would help to fix it if the two agree on the formula of 'win-win cooperation'.

As mentioned already, Myanmar has been facing ethnic militancy. Suu Kyi has said that peace is her priority. China can play a role due to its influence on some of the ethnic groups. It is important to resolve the conflict as Myanmar's support is needed for the 'Belt ad Road' initiative. A peaceful Myanmar will help to control illegal trade between the two countries and also provide a safe route to the Indian Ocean.

After her visit to China, Suu Kyi will pay another important visit to the United States. It would be interesting to watch how she balances her country's policies and safeguards interests while dealing with the two top economies in the world.

Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
A new law designed to prevent children from being struck by school buses is creating some confusion for school bus operators in New Jersey.

The law requires all school buses manufactured after July 17 come with child detection sensors designed to determine the presence of students in front of or behind a bus.

Dubbed Abigails Law after 2-year-old Abigail Kuberiet, who was killed when she was hit while crossing in front of a bus in 2003, the law got widespread support in the Legislature.

But the law did not provide specific instructions on how the sensors should work, including how many are needed, where they should be placed, how far they would sense objects, how big the object would have to be and what would happen if it sensed something. That is making it hard for school bus operators, who are awaiting the delivery of new buses this year.

We at least need some minimum guidelines said Warren Skip Fipp, transportation coordinator for Egg Harbor Township, which is getting several new buses.

He and other operators said the placement and range of the sensors is crucial. Place it too high, and it may not sense a preschooler. Place it too low, and it may go off for squirrels or debris in the road. Make the range too long, and it could be triggered by other vehicles.

Four Iowa school districts tested two systems and in 2014 reported that most problems revolved around sensor alignment and sensor placement, according to media reports. The report said the sensor systems sometimes picked up when a car was going by on the other side of the bus or even during rain if it was really pouring. Proper and professional installation and sensor settings were key to making the systems successful.

Sensors typically reach about 10 feet around a bus and are typically placed in areas that would create a blind spot for the driver.

In May, the Department of Education sent a memo to school district administrators saying it is working with the state Motor Vehicle Commission to develop regulations. Until then, it says, school bus manufacturers should comply with the statutes requirements as they see fit.

But that leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and no one wants to spend thousands of dollars on sensor systems that wont meet the regulations.

State DOE spokesman Mike Yaple said the regulations are being finalized and could be introduced as early as the September state Board of Education meeting.

Fipp said MVC inspectors will be coming in for the first inspection soon, and hes hoping they can provide some guidance.

Contact: 609-272-7241

Twitter @ACPressDamico
SEA ISLE CITY  Fiesty 92-year-old Henrietta Etta Creighton always has believed in thinking big. It has been her motto for decades.

Two years ago, Creighton began a campaign to have congregations sing God Bless America once a week at the end of their services. Her goal, she said, is to have churches across America participate.

Bit by bit, I have churches in different places that are singing it every week  thats the whole idea  from this coast, to the Pacific coast. Thats my think big, Creighton said.

Creighton is enthusiastic about her campaign; even the back of her motorized scooter has a bedazzled red, white and blue sign advertising her Sing GBA campaign.

Political correctness, we all know what that is. What about our spiritual correctness? Give that a little thought. If we join the entire country by house of worship filled with people, who love God and love America and sing a prayer God Bless America,  thats power.

With the help of her granddaughter, Creighton made postcards with different religious symbols on them. The cards, which Creighton hands out, give information about the campaign and how to join in. Theres also a website dedicated to the cause: singGBA.com.

I know were living in a time when it can go viral, she said. My kids are probably embarrassed, but I just keep handing it out. The thing is, one of these people that get (a postcard) is going to make it viral. Theyll know how to push the buttons; I dont know how to push the buttons.

Creighton, who said she goes to her home in Jensen Beach, Florida, when her feet get cold, was inspired by a community church group she attends at a recreation center. Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she said, the congregation has been singing God Bless America at the end of the service each week.

Creighton said she felt the good Lord had been nudging her for some time, and she was bothered by the shrinking place of God in America.

I dont care whos fighting about politics or how to do this or how to do that. All those people are putting their efforts, and lives, into helping America because they do love what we have  freedom, she said. Americans really, really need this. They need to depend on our heavenly father. Our whole country.

Creighton doesnt limit her campaign to Christians. Shes open to all denominations. She and her campaign recently were discovered after she contacted the Philadelphia Inquirer to get contact information from a rabbi, she said.

If you truly love God and truly love America, theyre in, she laughed.

Already, she said, she knows of a few churches spreading the campaign, even as far as Darrington, Washington, where her sister lives.

I sent this idea out to them, that maybe it would help those people when they went to church, she said. They started and have been singing this ever since.

Creighton also credits her parents, who met in a Bible study class, with giving her a Christian upbringing.

Sitting in the living room of her bay front house, Creighton said she gets gorgeous sunsets. Life wasnt always that bright for her.

She grew up during the Depression on a farm in Prospectville, Pennsylvania. She recalled the strength of her parents, Henrietta and Marcus Edwards.

Now thats the great American story, she said. My mother had the courage; my dad had the knowledge. They bought 25 acres. It took them 50 years to pay off the mortgage. But through the Depression, they did not lose the farm, and yet farms all around us lost it to the bank.

She said she remembered watching a neighbor pile all their belongings on a wagon like a scene from the film of John Steinbecks novel, Grapes of Wrath.

They lost their farm. They had two little children, and anything they could they put on a truck and headed down somewhere to Georgia or Florida, she said. This is not just that one family that we knew so personally. It was the whole country. Were still having problems, but theyre still not as horrible as the Depression. The faith is what brings you through.

After marrying in 1944, Creighton and her husband, Bill, opened Sea Isle Hardware store in 1947 across from an Acme. Later, they owned Creightons Trading Post.

When the Acme moved, she said, it took some of their business foot traffic with it. Despite this, the Creightons bought the former Acme property and relocated their store.

It took courage, she said.

Soon after, she made a sign for one of the blank walls that read Think Big.

So you see, Think big has been in our lives. Daring to take advantage of opportunities and maybe not really realizing how long its going to take to get the wagon over the hill. Thats how we lived, my husband and I, she said. We had a wonderful life.

Creightons husband died in 2000. They were married 56 years, and their three children have branched off seven grandchildren, 12 great grandchildren and 15 or 16 great-great-grandchildren.

Every week, the nonagenarian attends church at the Messiah Lutheran Church in Ocean View and is joined on Sundays at her home by some family for a big meal.

God has blessed me so much, she said.
Warning, this review contains spoilers for episode two. We also recommend reading the review for episode one.

Before we delve into the chapter two of Strangers Things, we first tell a tale of a timeless love.

Once upon a time in the 1990s, actor Johnny Depp met actress Winona Ryder after meeting at the New York premiere of Great Balls of Fire! in 1989 when she was 18 and he was 27. Soon after, the couple became engaged.

For a besotted Depp, the next logical step was to tattoo Winona Forever on his arm.

By 1993, the pair had split and the tattoo was changed to Wino Forever. After 23 years and one Tim Burton role that blends into another, Depp removing the tattoo clearly wasn't the worst decision he's ever made.

Although now it would serve him well.

Ryder has never lacked acting chops.Why shes never been fully recognized for her bottomless talent probably lies somewhere between Angelia Jolie winning the Oscar for "Girl Interrupted" and a hiatus from acting.

Since then, Ryder has been all over the place but Stranger Thing, reminds of us of why weve always liked her.

In Chapter Two: The Weirdo on Maple Street The real meat of this episode is Ryders portrayal of Joyce Beyers decent into hysteria after a mysterious call causes her phone to explode.

Joyce at this point is convinced its Will and that he's in danger. Theres a lot of tip-toeing around whether or not Joyce is mentally competent.

Ryder revived her Girl Interrupted role for this and then some by perfectly conveying a character that was already unstable, rapidly getting worse.

Chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour), per usual, is flippant until Joyce says she knows her son's own breathing and surely he would know his own daughter's.

Ryders wide-eyed, whimpering voice throughout the episode sounds like she's perpetually strangled by a sob which bodes well for a character whose son has gone missing. Shes more than just frantic or upset  Ryder genuinely convinces us shes falling apart at the seams.

For a show that sometimes lacks convincing emotion, her role is vital for making us care and feel the urgency of Will being missing.

We also see duplicity to Joyces character when she skillfully convinces her boss to give her two-weeks advanced pay, a new phone, and a pack of camels. Its a brief glimpse, but it shows that Joyce isnt meant to crumble to pieces in this series and that theres a reservoir of inner-strength somewhere.

Ryder balances a fine line in this scene of being manipulative and sincere, yet she nails it with an authentic sense of emotional complexity.

Other notable, plot items happen in the episode such as Mike (Finn Wolfhard) nicknaming Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) El, after he lets her stay in his basement unbeknownst to the oblivious Wheeler clan. She reveals her powers and recognizes Will from a photo.

Later, she picks up Wills wizard figurine from Dungeons and Dragons, flips over the board, says hes hiding and places it next to the monster piece.

Hopper continues his search, finding a piece of Els torn hospital gown on a drain pipe outside of Super Secret Sinister Government Lab. In a plot twist surprising to no one, we find out Hopper is a mess because he had a daughter who died.

Nancy (Natalia Dyer) attends a party at pushy Steves (Joe Keery) house with the cool kid gang of two. She drags along poor awkward Barb who slashes her hand trying to shot gun a beer.

Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), whos searching for his brother in the woods, pulls an ultra-creepy Rear Window"maneuver and begins photographing them as they splash around in the pool. This is all great kindling for a plot, truly.

He then takes his voyeuristic tendencies to a whole new level when he begins photographing Steve and a semi-nude Nancy through the bedroom window while poor Barb sits outside by the pool, clearly in need of stitches.

Jonathan takes one disinterested shot of her looking pitiful but only briefly because Nancy is naked. After taking the shot, Barb is disappears in a blink but Jonathan couldn't care less because Nancy is naked and she was nice to him once in the hallway.

But for us, dear viewers, we all know what vanishing suddenly means.

We round back to Joyce receiving another explosive phone call that leaves her feeling frustrated and hopeless. As the lights begin to flicker, and Wills favorite song begins playing on his boom box, she realizes hes trying to contact her

When something begins to push through the wall, she runs out of the house screaming to her car like any normal woman. But because this is Ryder playing Joyce, we see that flash of resourcefulness in her eyes.

Joyce gets out of her car and stomps her mullet back into the house to face down whatever is inside. If you cup your ear and listen very closely, you can hear collective audiences everywhere sigh: Winona Forever.
CAPE MAY  A replica of the ship that inspired the Americas Cup will berth at Cape May Harbor this month, giving visitors a rare chance to sail aboard what was once the worlds fastest ship.

The America is a replica of the schooner that won an 1851 race around the Isle of Wight called the Royal Yacht Squadrons 100 Guinea Cup. The race later became known as the Americas Cup, named for the double-masted schooner that dominated the race. Today, its held every few years in a different part of the world.

But sailing is still all about speed and harnessing the power of the wind, said Carl Behrens, of Lower Township, a spokesman for the Corinthian Yacht Club in Cape May. The club and South Jersey Marina are sponsoring the Americas visit on Aug. 30-31 at South Jersey Marina in Cape May Harbor.

My nickname racing Hobie cats was 'the psycho sailor' so I understand the quest for speed, Behrens said. There is only so much wind so we have to design around it.

Built in New York, the America was a champion of her day. She was sailed to England to show off American ingenuity at a London exhibition, according to the Royal Yacht Squadrons history of the race.

Ideas from Americas design, and more especially her sails, seeped into British yacht-building, the group said. America reaped a crop of glory; England a crop of wisdom.

The Americas Cup predates the modern Olympics. It takes place every three to five years, next in 2017 in Bermuda. An American team, Oracle Team USA, is defending its title.

Were all feeling a resurgence of patriotism these days. America is the defending champion of the cup, Behrens said.

The schooner was so fast that she was sold to the Confederacy to run Union blockades during the Civil War. The Confederacy scuttled her in the St. Johns River in 1862 during the capture of Jacksonville. The Union raised and repaired her and mounted two cannons aboard her, according to the U.S. Naval Museum. The schooner was scrapped in the 1900s.

Todays high-speed catamarans bear little resemblance to the 139-foot schooner. They reach speeds of more than 50 mph -- twice as fast as the America -- and practically float above the water on foils. But the principles are the same.

Sailing has always been a battle of technology, said John Cooke, a sailing enthusiast and manager of the Victorian Hotel in Cape May. The sail size, how you trimmed it. Now were dealing with carbon fibers and the boats are nearly as light as their sails.

He plans to sail aboard the America this month when she docks in Cape May.

I love all things sailing. When a classic yacht comes here, Id like to be on board, he said.

South Jersey Marinas Mark Allen said he thinks a wide audience of visitors will appreciate the schooner because of her classic look, speed and history.

You dont have to be a yachting enthusiast to appreciate the America, Behrens said. People think you have to be rich to sail. Well, Im not rich and Im rear commodore of the yacht club.

Two-dozen children take sailing lessons at the club, just like he did when he was a child.

South Jersey Marinas Mark Allen said the schooners visit coincides with a visit by New Jerseys Tall Ship, the A.J. Meerwald, which will be in Cape May from Aug. 11 through Sept. 3.

Having two tall ships in Cape May Harbor simultaneously will be pretty special, Allen said.
CAPE MAY  The controversy hasnt stopped two weeks after the citys new police chief took control of a department in turmoil over the past two years.

Chief Anthony Marino, a 25-year veteran of the department, acknowledges the unique challenges of his new position, where he oversees his old boss Robert Sheehan, whos currently suing Cape May to get his chiefs job back. And some say the decision as to who runs the Police Department still has not been settled.

In fact, as of last week, the departments website listed Sheehan as the chief and Lt. Clarence Chuck Lear  who retired as part of a settlement after a city probe into the use of comp time  as the departments second-highest ranking officer. The site was updated after the publication of this article.

City records indicate Sheehan still makes more money than Marino, even after Marino took over as chief. Sheehan earns $120,213 a year, while Marinos annual salary as chief is $109,382, according to the city clerks office.

Marino, 48, whos lived in Cape May for 30 years, said he tries to ignore outside voices as he leads the 28-member department and aims to improve quality-of-life issues in the tourist resort.

As far as detractors go, its something I try not to pay too much attention to, he said.

Cape May council replaces Sheehan as police chief CAPE MAY  City Council in a split vote on Monday appointed 25-year veteran Detective Sgt. A

Sheehan, also a 25-year department veteran, was demoted to captain in March 2015 after a city inquiry found Lear took compensatory time against department policy under Sheehans watch. The Cape May County Prosecutors Office determined the charge against Lear was not sustained by the preponderance of the evidence, and Lear agreed to retire after 37 years at the department ahead of a municipal disciplinary hearing.

City Council did not reinstate Sheehan, who remained acting chief until Marino was sworn in Aug. 15. Sheehan has filed a lawsuit under the states whistleblower act, and a court ruling could restore him to his position. Lear, meanwhile, is running against Mayor Ed Mahaney in November.

Christopher Gray, an attorney representing Sheehan, said the former chief was retaliated against after he spoke up about the way the comp-time investigation was handled, which Sheehan believed was illegal.

Because of his whistleblowing, he was demoted and skipped over for a promotion, Gray said, adding, He expects to be reinstated as chief.

Mahaney declined to comment on the issue.

Most of the citys critics are not attacking Marino directly. But some, like the head of the Cape May County Chiefs of Police Association, Middle Township Police Chief Chris Leusner, have expressed disappointment in Sheehans demotion, calling it a huge mistake. Lear put out a statement saying he was very pleased the departments leadership crisis had been addressed, but he also said he wanted Sheehan as chief.

Sheehan and Marino were two of the four officers considered for the job by council. Quite a few posters on social media displayed support for Sheehan.

Cape May settles payroll case with police lieutenant CAPE MAY  The city has reached a settlement with a police lieutenant accused of taking ille

People took it personally, said Ben Miller, 48, of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, a Cape May historian who operates the popular Cool Cape May Facebook page. They believe he was demoted for no legitimate reason.

Marino said he went to the police academy with Sheehan and that the two officers have maintained a good relationship even as politicians and residents pick sides.

There hasnt been any issues between us, Marino said. Weve known each other our whole careers.

Patricia Gray Hendricks, 62, of Cape May, who is running for council, doesnt see the issue going away anytime soon.

I dont think people will forget about it, she said.

Marino said when he was appointed that the department had weathered 18 months of turmoil while the question of who would become permanent chief lingered.

Our officers have handled everything very professionally over the last 18 months during this controversy, he said.

He said the departments main issues during the busy summer months include disorderly people at bars and house parties and bicycle thefts, which have become a big problem in the area. Marino also said he wants to continue to strengthen ties between officers and the community.

Even as he tries to lead the department forward, Marinos job remains in limbo  he could lose his post if Sheehan wins his case against the city or the makeup of council changes.

Its definitely a unique challenge in that Capt. Sheehan is still in the department, Marino said. He hasnt retired.

Its something for the court to decide, he added. Its not something I have an opinion on.

Cape May voters to fill unexpired City Council term CAPE MAY  The two candidates for City Council in the November election agree on most of the

Contact: 609-272-7411

Twitter @ACPressTomczuk
 Flash

Ethiopia and China have expressed their keen interest to cooperate on the development of tourism sector in the East African country.

The Chinese Embassy in Ethiopia on Friday organized a half-day Dialogue on China-Ethiopia Tourism Industry Cooperation on its premise in the capital Addis Ababa, to explore ways of collaboration between Ethiopians and the Chinese in the industry.

The event has been an opportunity for Ethiopians and the Chinese to discuss ways of attracting more Chinese tourists to Ethiopia and also ways of cooperation in the sector between the two sides.

In his opening remarks, La Yifan, Chinese Ambassador to Ethiopia, noted that Ethiopia's rich natural and historical heritages coupled with the government's heavy investments in infrastructure presents the country's huge potentials for tourism development.

Ethiopia's landscape, wildlife, flora and fauna as well as its diverse cultures, and the infrastructure developed over the past two decades is the potential to tap the tourism sector in the country, said the Ambassador.

He stated that the Chinese could participate in Ethiopia's tourism both as tourists and investors to cooperate with Ethiopians and jointly promote and develop the industry.

"Last year, the total number of outbound Chinese tourist reaches 120 million, making us the largest outbound tourist of all the countries in the world," he said.

"I have realized that there is a growing interest from the Chinese business sector to be exposed to the development of Ethiopia's tourism sector because they are the number one builder in the world, they build best roads, the best airport, the best electricity facilities, the best running water facilities in the world," said the Ambassador.

Tadelech Dalecho, Ethiopian State Minister of Culture and Tourism, noted on the occasion that China and Ethiopia are countries with very strong and solid relationship.

With a long-standing diplomatic tie, the two countries are enjoying strong relations at the levels of government to government, business to business, and also people to people, noted the State Minister.

She reiterated that Chinese investors are doing great jobs in Ethiopia, especially in the construction sector.

The Dialogue is another window for the Chinese investors and also to create partnership among the Ethiopian business community and Chinese business people in the tourism and hospitality sector, said Tadelech.

"Hospitality and tourism is one of the sectors growing very fast in Ethiopia for the past few years. Ethiopia has very unique tourism potential for leisure tourists, for business as well as conference and different types of tourism targets," she said.

"Currently, the government of Ethiopia is giving great attention to transform the tourism sector in the country. There are different packages of incentives provided for investors in hotel and tourism sector. The investment policy and the environment overall is very encouraging for foreign direct investment and for all tourism areas," noted the State Minister.
A fifth person pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme that stole millions of dollars from elderly clients of a in-home senior care company in Atlantic County.

Susan Hamlett, 57, of Egg Harbor Township, who worked as an aide for clients of A Better Choice, pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiring to steal over $100,000 from an elderly woman, according to a statement from New Jersey Attorney General Christopher Porrino.

Hamlett is the fifth person to plead guilty in the case since all five defendants were indicted in March 2015.

A Better Choice was billed as a company that offered in-home care and legal financial planning for senior citizens. In reality, it stole millions of dollars from its clients between 2003 and 2012. The defendants targeted older clients with a lot of money and who typically did not have any immediate family, offering them services such as household chores, errands, driving clients to appointments, scheduling, budgeting, paying bills, balancing checkbooks, and other tasks, according to the statement.

Hamlett was indicted with the owner of A Better Choice, her sister, a lawyer and a county social worker.

Jan Van Holt, 60, of Linwood, was the owner of A Better Choice and pleaded guilty in April to money laundering and is awaiting sentencing. Her sister, Sondra Steen, 61, of Linwood, pleaded guilty to the same charge and was sentenced in March to 10 years in prison.

The lawyer who conspired to help in the scheme, Barbara Lieberman, 64, of Northfield, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, ordered to give up $3 million in assets and was stripped of her law license.

The former social worker, William Price, 58, of Linwood, pleaded guilty to stealing over $125,000 from a client and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Hamlett is looking at 3-5 years in prison for her role in the scam.

By stealing the life savings of elderly clients who had no family to look out for them, these defendants placed themselves among the lowest of con artists, Porrino said in the statement. The victims are gone, but weve persisted in our quest for justice for them, securing prison terms for all of the perpetrators.
Two accidents took place within 90 minutes of each other late Saturday afternoon on Route 30 in Atlantic City, disrupting traffic on a busy summer weekend and sending nearly a dozen people to the hospital.

The first accident took place at 4:24 p.m. Saturday at mile marker 54.8 on Route 30, also called the White Horse Pike.

The second accident, at 5:53 p.m. at Route 30 and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, sent 11 people  including five children  to the hospital.

In the first crash, a woman was driving, had a medical emergency and went off the road, Atlantic City police Sgt. Kevin Fair said. Fair did not give her name.

The car hit and severed a utility pole. Electrical wires from the severed pole struck the three cars behind her, damaging each vehicle, Fair said. The woman was treated at the scene and not taken to the hospital, he said.

All westbound lanes and one eastbound lane of Route 30 were closed after the car knocked down the pole. Police eventually coordinated a lane reversal for the blocked westbound lanes, allowing drivers to go back into the city and find an alternate route.

Traffic into the city was still backed up around the Delilah Road overpass on the pike after 6 p.m.

Atlantic City Electric reported outages in the area of the crash. The company was still on the scene repairing the telephone pole as of 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Fair said.

In the two-car accident at later Saturday at Route 30 and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a van driven by Robert Schanek, 24, of Trenton, with nine passengers was driving east on Route 30 and collided with a vehicle traveling south on MLK, police said.

All 11 people were taken to Atlantic City Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries, Fair said.

The second driver, a 49-year-old man from Rochester, New York, and all 10 occupants of the van were taken to AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center, City Campus, with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

Schanek was issued six traffic summonses for having a suspended New Jersey drivers license and for failing to properly use approved child restraints for five children in his vehicle, police said.

Both accidents were handled by Atlantic City police Officer Eric Wessler.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Atlantic City Police Department Accident Investigation Unit at 609-347-5744. Information can be texted to TIP411 (847411). Begin the text with ACPD. All texts are anonymous.

Contact: 609-272-7202

Twitter @ACPressJackson
Last week Russian bombers flew out of Iranian air bases to attack rebel positions in Syria. The State Department pretended not to be surprised. It should be alarmed. Iran's intensely nationalistic revolutionary regime had never permitted foreign forces to operate from its soil. Until now.

The reordering of the Middle East is proceeding apace. Where for 40 years the U.S.-Egypt alliance anchored the region, a Russia-Iran condominium is now dictating events. That's what you get after eight years of U.S. retrenchment and withdrawal. That's what results from the nuclear deal with Iran, the evacuation of Iraq and utter U.S. immobility on Syria. Consider:

Iran - The nuclear deal was supposed to begin a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. Instead, it has solidified a strategic-military alliance between Moscow and Tehran. With the lifting of sanctions and the normalizing of Iran's international relations, Russia rushed in with major deals, including the shipment of S-300 ground-to-air missiles. Russian use of Iranian bases now marks a new level of cooperation and joint power projection.

Iraq - These bombing runs cross Iraqi airspace. Before President Obama's withdrawal from Iraq, that could not have happened. The resulting vacuum also gradually allowed a hard-won post-Saddam Iraq to slip into Iran's orbit. According to a Baghdad-based U.S. military spokesman, there are 100,000 Shiite militia fighters operating inside Iraq, 80 percent of them Iranian-backed.

Syria - When Russia dramatically intervened last year, establishing air bases and launching a savage bombing campaign, Obama did nothing. Indeed, he smugly predicted that Vladimir Putin had entered a quagmire. Some quagmire. Bashar Assad's regime is not only saved. It encircled Aleppo and has seized the upper hand in the civil war. Meanwhile, our hapless secretary of state is running around trying to sue for peace, offering to share intelligence and legitimize Russian intervention if only Putin will promise to conquer gently.

Consider what Putin has achieved. Dealt a very weak hand - a rump Russian state, shorn of empire and saddled with a backward economy and a rusting military - he has restored Russia to great power status. Reduced to irrelevance in the 1990s, it is now a force to be reckoned with.

In Europe, Putin has unilaterally redrawn the map. His annexation of Crimea will not be reversed. The Europeans are eager to throw off the few sanctions they grudgingly imposed on Russia.

And in a gratuitous flaunting of its newly expanded reach, Russia will conduct joint naval exercises with China in the South China Sea, in obvious support of Beijing's territorial claims and illegal military bases.

Yet the president shows little concern. He is too smart not to understand geopolitics; he simply doesn't care. In part because his priorities are domestic. In part because he thinks we lack clean hands and thus the moral standing to continue to play international arbiter.

And in part because he's convinced that in the long run it doesn't matter. Fluctuations in great power relations are inherently ephemeral. For a man who sees a moral arc in the universe bending inexorably toward justice, calculations of raw realpolitik are 20th-century thinking - primitive, obsolete, the obsession of small minds.

Obama made all this perfectly clear in speeches at the U.N., in Cairo and here at home in his very first year in office. Two terms later, we see the result. Ukraine dismembered. Eastern Europe on edge. Syria a charnel house. Iran subsuming Iraq. Russia and Iran on the march across the entire northern Middle East.

At the heart of this disorder is a simple asymmetry in worldview. The major revisionist powers - China, Russia and Iran - know what they want: power, territory, tribute. And they're going after it. Barack Obama takes the Ecclesiastes view that these are vanities, nothing but vanities.

In the kingdom of heaven, no doubt. Here on earth, however - Aleppo to Donetsk, Estonia to the Spratly Islands - it matters greatly.

Email Charles Krauthammer at letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican Donald Trump insists that he's not flip-flopping when it comes to his proposal to deport the estimated 11 million people living in the United States illegally  even though his new campaign manager now says his stance is "to be determined."

Trump said in an interview with Fox & Friends on Monday that he's "not flip-flopping," but wants to come up with "a really fair, but firm" solution.

Trump had previously proposed using a "deportation force" to remove the 11 million people living in the United States illegally a proposal that excited many of his core supporters, but alienated Hispanic voters who could be pivotal in key states. Republican leaders fear that Trump can't win  and could drag down GOP congressional candidates  if he doesn't increase his support beyond his white, male base.

Trump met Saturday with Hispanic supporters, representatives of a community that has been wary of the billionaire businessman's deportation proposals and his plans to build a giant wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Questioned on whether Trump still intends to deploy the deportation force, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Sunday: "To be determined."

There have been previous signs that Trump might be moderating his stance on deportations. At last month's GOP convention, the Republican National Committee's director of Hispanic communications, Helen Aguirre Ferre, told reporters at a Spanish-language briefing that Trump has said he will not do massive deportations. Hispanic and religious leaders who met privately with Trump ahead of the convention said he signaled that he is open to embracing a less punitive immigration policy that focuses on "compassion" along with the rule of law.

Trump's comments Monday come as Republican officials insist the GOP nominee is finally hitting his stride and will catch up with Democrat Hillary Clinton by early September, following a major shake-up to his campaign. Polls now mostly show Trump lagging Clinton by 5 percentage points or more nationally.

"Donald Trump has been disciplined and mature. And I think he's going to get this thing back on track," Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, said Sunday.

Conway echoed Priebus' optimism, contending that the candidate just had the best week of his campaign, "mostly because he's able to be himself, the authentic Donald Trump."

Conway was named to her post last week in a shake-up in which the campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, resigned and conservative media firebrand Stephen Bannon, who led Breitbart News, took over as campaign chief executive.

A new style was immediately evident as Trump, in a first, offered regrets for any remarks that had caused offense, stuck with his teleprompter at a series of events, and paid a visit to flood-ravaged Louisiana. Trump also announced his first ad buys of the campaign, more evidence of an acceptance of the traditional campaign elements most experts believe he will need in order to have a shot at winning. He made a direct appeal to African-American voters, insisting he wants the Republican Party to become their political home.

Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, disputed claims of a turnaround in Trump's candidacy. "We're not seeing a pivot. Donald Trump himself said this was not a pivot. He wants to double down on letting Donald Trump be Donald Trump," Mook said.

Indeed, Trump was back to his old self on Twitter Monday morning. He went after MSNBC's "Morning Joe," tweeting that the show is "unwatchable!" and said its host, Mika Brzezinski, "is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!"

Conway had said Sunday that Trump "doesn't hurl personal insults."

Conway, Mook and Priebus were interviewed on ABC's "This Week." and Conway also spoke on CNN's "State of the Union."

___

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

___

Follow Erica Werner on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/ericawerner
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.




Dongchuan, a rural area in the northeast of Kunming, SW China's Yunnan province, is believed to have the world's most imposing red earth, even more magnificent than that in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Due to the warm and humid climate, the Iron oxide in the soil deposited slowly through years and gradually developed an extraordinary reddish brown soil. The land is seldom visited by ordinary tourists for its remoteness and inadequate lodging facilities; however, the picturesque scenery there is paradise for photography fans. [Photo by Zhong Guilin/China.org.cn]

1 2 3 4 5 Next




 Flash

China has pledged a 10 million U.S. dollars aid to help South Sudan respond to humanitarian needs.

Chinese Ambassador to South Sudan Ma Qiang told Xinhua late Saturday the funds will be used to purchase food and non-food items in an effort to immediately rescue lives of thousands in dire humanitarian condition.

Ma said people of South Sudan are at critical humanitarian assistance aggravated by the recent fighting that has forced nearly 1 million people to flee their country to seek refuge in the neighboring countries.

"I am going to meet the minister of humanitarian affairs to discuss other items that are urgently needed so that we can immediately provide to rescue those in dire need of assistance," Ma told Xinhua in Juba.

The current humanitarian situation was prompted by renewed fighting between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar and the mid December 2013 civil strife.

Ma said the immediate humanitarian assistance needed includes rice, shelters and medical drugs for maternal diseases and cholera, as well as other valuable medical equipment.

He stressed that at this critical time China is still committed to providing humanitarian assistance to those who are in need.

In 2016, humanitarian needs in South Sudan have continued to grow as a result of violence, displacement, hunger and disease.
HONG KONG and DHAKA, Bangladesh, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Future Will Call the Past for a Better Present

The sixth edition of Denimsandjeans.com Bangladesh is going to be held on October 5-6 at Hotel Radisson, Dhaka with the theme - VINTAGE RECALL, Denim Goes Back To Its Roots. This semiannual denim show provides a platform where the global denim community comes together with an objective to share, interact and to establish future transactions with this very important supplier nation Bangladesh.

There is a strong trend of digging into the past and looking for denim characteristics which the jeans had in the early 1900s - the color, the slubs, the weave, the looks. The current production of denim involves high technology in spinning, weaving and finishing and the industry works on possibilities of giving the vintage character on the outside while using the high technology inside the fabric. VINTAGE RECALL celebrates this aspect of the denim trend direction.

Not limiting itself to an exhibition format; the event has many activities running on the sidelines. The show this time will have couple of seminars by international denim experts and veterans where they will share their ideas on the different prospects of denim. The show is Invite-only with invitations available here http://www.bdshow.denimsandjeans.com/invite.php

By 2020, it is expected that global market size of denim industries will be over USD 78 billion out of which more than 70% could come from Asia. Bangladesh has a huge potential in the textile, especially in denim and is already the top supplier of denim products to EU with exports over $1.1 billion.

"Our objective has been always to show the world the immense opportunity in Bangladesh through our denim shows," said Mr Sandeep Agarwal, Founder of Denimsandjeans.com Bangladesh.

Denimsandjeans.com also holds shows in Vietnam and the 2nd edition of this show will be held on March 8-9, 2017 at HCMC with the first edition held in June this year. The site also brings buyers and suppliers together at one place through the first Global Online Denim Show launched recently.

About Denimsandjeans.com

Denimsanjdeans.com is a premium fashion website dedicated to the denim industry and serves the industry since 2007. The articles and reports published by the website are considered as one of the most credible sources of information in the denim industry.

Media contact

Mr. Sandeep Agarwal

sandeep@denimsandjeans.com

+91-11-42828050



SOURCE Denimsandjeans.com
EDMONTON, Alberta, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Alberta Investment Management Corporation ("AIMCo") is pleased to announce that it has agreed to the purchase of up to US$500 million of Series B Preferred Units (Preferred Units) of Howard Energy Partners, on behalf of certain of its clients. AIMCo completed its initial purchase of US$300 million in Preferred Units on August 22, 2016, and has committed to purchase an additional US$200 million in Preferred Units in the future.

Howard Energy Partners is a diversified, growth-oriented midstream provider with assets in the Eagle Ford Shale region of South Texas, along the Gulf Coast of Texas, as well as in the Marcellus Shale region in Pennsylvania. The investment represents a compelling opportunity for AIMCo's clients to participate in an attractive midstream portfolio with exposure to high demand markets. It is supported by a high quality management team with a demonstrated track record of execution and a robust project pipeline that will produce stable, fee-based cash flows.

"AIMCo is very pleased to become an important investor in Howard Energy Partners," said Kevin Uebelein, AIMCo Chief Executive Officer. "Howard Energy Partners has set forth a plan to position the company for further growth that will see it executing on a number of key projects backed by long-term contracts with credit worthy counterparties, which when complete will contribute meaningfully to its growth as a diversified midstream company. AIMCo is looking forward to fostering a strong working relationship with management and the other investment partners."

Scott Archer, Chief Financial Officer of Howard Energy Partners adds, "AIMCo is a global institutional investor that not only understands our business, but has the patience and vision to work alongside our team and current partners to maximize long term value for all stakeholders. We remain committed to growing Howard Energy Partners and we look forward to a productive partnership with AIMCo."

About Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo)

AIMCo is one of Canada's largest and most diversified institutional investment managers with more than $90 billion of assets under management. AIMCo was established on January 1, 2008 with a mandate to provide superior long-term investment results for its clients. AIMCo operates at arms-length from the Government of Alberta and invests globally on behalf of 31 pension, endowment and government funds in the Province of Alberta. For more information on AIMCo please visit http://www.aimco.alberta.ca.

About Howard Energy Partners

San Antonio-based, Howard Midstream Energy Partners, LLC dba Howard Energy Partners is an independent midstream energy company, owning and operating natural gas gathering and transportation pipelines, natural gas liquids processing plants, rail facilities, liquid storage terminals, deep-water port facilities and other related midstream assets in Texas and Pennsylvania. The company has corporate offices in San Antonio, Houston and Mexico City. For more information on Howard Energy Partners, please visit our website http://www.howardenergypartners.com.

Media Contact: Denes Nemeth, Corporate Communication, O: +1-780-392-3857, M: +1-780-932-4013, E: denes.nemeth@aimco.alberta.ca

SOURCE Alberta Investment Management Corp.
PUNE, India, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The alcoholic drinks categories continue to evolve, driven by consumers' desire to unwind and enjoy the free time they have at the end of a hectic day or week. This report shows how consumers are driving new trends such as multi-sensory experiences or matched products, which will impact the consumption of beer, cider, spirits, and wine in the coming years.

Complete report on Alcoholic Drinks Market spreads across 35 pages is now available at http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/652977-top-trends-in-alcoholic-drinks-exploring-the-beer-cider-spirits-and-wine-categories.html.

Food pairing has become an important factor that drives the consumption of alcoholic drinks. Nearly half of global consumers aged between 25 and 34 say the quality of the production process is important to them when it comes to choosing alcoholic drinks. Consumers are demanding a multi-sensory experience in alcoholic drinks. Curiosity is the top reason that motivates people to try new flavors.

"Top Trends in Alcoholic Drinks" 2016 market research report seeks to explore the key trends and future opportunities that are being shaped by the changing consumer behaviors and needs in the alcoholic drinks products space. Consumer Insights: Data analyzed from consumer surveys delivers a clear picture of the global consumer in relation to alcoholic drinks categories. Trends: Understand the key consumer and innovation trends impacting the global market and analyze the key implications across packaging, formulation, and positioning. Innovation: See the best examples of innovation and recommendations for brands operating in the market.

Explore which innovations will shape the alcoholic drinks market. This report maps five new innovation opportunities, highlighting their influence across beer, wine, spirits, and cider. Discover how to target new opportunities in the market. Product examples and key recommendations will help you derive key strategies in areas such as formulation and packaging. Find out how to create an emotive connection with alcohol drinkers to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Order a Copy of Report at http://www.reportsnreports.com/purchase.aspx?name=652977.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Innovation Trends in Alcoholic Drinks

- Perfect Match

- Hybrid Drinks

- Multi-Sensory Experiences

- Digital Natives

- Embracing Novelty

3. Conclusions

4. Appendix

Another related report is Drinking Places (Alcoholic Beverages) World Report - This research Gives Market Consumption / Products / Services for Over 200 Countries by 6 to 10-Digit Naics Product Codes by 3 Time Series: From 1997- 2015 And Forecasts 2016- 2023 & 2023 - 2028. 59 Market Research Chapters. Spreadsheet Chapters: Market Consumption - in US$ by Country by Product/Service by Year. Market, Financial, Competitive, Market Segmentation, Industry, Critical Parameters, Marketing Costs, Markets, Decision Makers, Performance, Product Launch.

World & National Report Market Database & Spreadsheets. Financial Spreadsheets & Databases. Industry Spreadsheets & Databases.

Data Includes Market Consumption by Individual Product / Service, Per-Capita Consumption, Marketing Costs & Margins, Product Launch Data, Buyers, End Users & Customer Profile, Consumer Demographics. Historic Balance Sheets, Forecast Financial Data, Industry Profile, National Data. Complete report available at http://www.reportsnreports.com/reports/372083-drinking-places-alcoholic-beverages-world-report.html.

Explore other reports on Alcoholic Beverages Market at http://www.reportsnreports.com/tags/alcoholic-beverages-market-research.html.

About Us:

ReportsnReports.com is an online market research reports library of 500,000+ in-depth studies of over 5000 micro markets. Not limited to any one industry, ReportsnReports.com offers research studies on agriculture, energy and power, chemicals, environment, medical devices, healthcare, food and beverages, water, advanced materials and much more.

Contact:

Ritesh Tiwari

UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ

Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Pune - 411013

Maharashtra, India.

+1 888 391 5441

sales@reportsandreports.com



Connect With Us on:

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/ReportsnReports/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/reportsnreports

Twitter: https: //twitter.com/marketsreports

G+ / Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/111656568937629536321/posts

RSS/Feeds:http://www.reportsnreports.com/feed/l-latestreports.xml

SOURCE ReportsnReports
 Flash

Nearly four in ten voters believe that the U.S. media is biased for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. election, said a new poll.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, makes remarks at the 2016 National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) and National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) joint convention at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC on Friday, August 5, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

According to the Morning Consult poll released on Friday, 38 percent U.S. voters say that news coverage favors the former U.S. secretary of state, while only 12 percent believe that same is true for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

As to the amount of coverage each nominee is getting, the majority of voters approve of the amount of coverage of either nominee, said the poll.

However, voters voiced dissatisfaction with the fairness of the media, with 33 percent saying that the media's fairness to each candidate is "poor".

Another 22 percent voters believe the media coverage of each candidate is "only fair", and those who describe the media coverage as either "excellent" or "good" account for 35 percent in total, according to the poll.

The poll came as Trump doubled down on his accusation against "the crooked media."

"I'm not running against Crooked Hillary. I'm running against the crooked media," said the New Yorker during a rally on Aug. 13.

Though benefitting heavily from the media's wall-to-wall coverage of his campaign during the nomination contests, relations between Trump and the media deteriorated in the past weeks as the bellicose billionaire developer got embroiled in one political firestorm after another.

The media bombardment began late July after Trump derisively answered criticism from Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim American solider killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq.

On the final day of the Democratic National Convention, Khan blasted Trump for his divisive remarks and proposal to temporary ban Muslims entering the country.

The Republican standard-bearer responded by implying that Ms. Khan, who accompanied his husband on stage on the final day of the Democratic National Convention, was forbidden to speak.

Then on Aug. 9, Trump caused another round of media frenzy after suggesting that supporters of gun rights could take action against his Democratic counterpart Clinton if Clinton wins the election.

"Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment," said Trump during a campaign rally in Wilmington, North Carolina. "By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks."

"Though the Second Amendment people, maybe there is," he added.

As he was still scrambling to tackle the backlash after his gun rights comments, Trump on Aug. 10 handed the U.S. media new prime fodder after declaring that U.S. President Barack Obama "is the founder of ISIS," referring to the extremist group Islamic State.

Despite a conservative radio show host's apparent move to help him clarify his position, Trump on Aug.11 stepped up his accusation of Obama, saying that he "meant he (Obama) is the founder of ISIS."

Trump eventually backtracked on his accusation, blaming the media for missing his sarcasm.
TORONTO, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

/NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES/

AuRico Metals Inc. (TSX: AMI),("AuRico" or the "Company") announces that it has closed its previously announced bought deal offering of 11,500,000 common shares at a price of C$1.00 per common share, which includes 1,500,000 common shares issued pursuant to the exercise in full of the over-allotment option (the "Offering").

The shares were purchased on a bought deal basis by a syndicate of underwriters (the "Underwriters") co-led by National Bank Financial Inc. and Macquarie Capital Markets Canada Ltd., and included Mackie Research Capital Corporation, Canaccord Genuity Corp., Dundee Securities Ltd., and Paradigm Capital Inc.

In addition, Alamos Gold Inc. exercised its participation right to maintain its pro rata interest in full pursuant to a concurrent private placement undertaken in connection with the Offering for 1,272,611 common shares. As a result, combined gross proceeds raised by the Company totaled C$12,772,611.

The net proceeds from the Offering will be used to fund the potential acquisition of additional royalties, the advancement of permitting activities and detailed engineering at the Kemess Underground project, as well as for working capital and general corporate purposes.

The securities offered have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or any applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor will there be any sale of the securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

About AuRico Metals

AuRico Metals is a mining royalty and development company whose producing gold royalty assets include a 1.5% NSR royalty on the Young-Davidson Gold Mine, a 0.25% NSR royalty on the Williams Mine at Hemlo, and a 0.5% NSR royalty on the Eagle River Mine - all located in Ontario, Canada. AuRico Metals also has a 2% NSR royalty on the Fosterville Mine and a 1% NSR royalty on the Stawell Mine, located in Victoria, Australia. Aside from its diversified royalty portfolio, AuRico owns (100%) the advanced Kemess Gold-Copper Project in British Columbia, Canada. AuRico Metals' head office is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Cautionary Statement

This news release contains "forward-looking information" which may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the future financial or operating performance of the Company and its projects, as well as the use of proceeds from the Offering. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this press release and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances, management's estimates or opinions should change, except as required by securities legislation. Accordingly, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company believes that, in addition to conventional measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, certain investors use this information to evaluate the Company's performance and ability to generate cash flow.



please visit the AuRico Metals website at http://www.auricometals.ca or contact: Chris Richter, President and Chief Executive Officer, AuRico Metals Inc., +1-416-216-2780, chris.richter@auricometals.ca; David Flahr, Vice President, Finance, AuRico Metals Inc., +1-416-216-2780, david.flahr@auricometals.ca

SOURCE AuRico Metals
BLACKBURN, England, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Dinner Lady, a British vape company, showed that the proof really is in the pudding at the National Vape Expo in the USA this weekend when they won not one but two prestigious awards.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160819/399743 )



Other vape companies were left wondering what had hit them when the Brits invaded Foxwoods, Connecticut this week and won both the best-baked goods award and the Best Juice Award. With a swish of their aprons, the Dinner Lady team had American vapers captivated by the classic British dessert flavours and they voted Dinner Lady e-liquids as their number 1 in show.

The Dinner Lady team are said to be 'over the moon' with their outstanding achievement. Spokesperson for Dinner Lady, Mark Bentley said: "We are completely overwhelmed by the outpouring of love, support and appreciation by our American cousins. It is unprecedented for a UK juice to get this kind of reception let alone be voted the best in the show! This is a huge stepping stone in our ultimate goal of taking our brand global. We're making vape history!"

The family at Vape Dinner Lady credit their success to perfecting their product for the customer. The flavours are full, top quality and are not based on the principle of what is cheap to manufacture. So expect other vape companies to be extra nervous every time they see a Dinner Lady apron at an expo in the future.

With this level of success Dinner Lady is set to go from strength to strength and it won't be long before the rest of the world surrenders to these mouth-watering marauders. The team are already infiltrating the rest of Europe and can't wait to share their already acclaimed quality e-liquids with even more countries.

There's a British invasion coming to a country near you, with a barrage of baked goods, classic confection, and delicious desserts. These soldiers have a sugar mountain of awards and Dinner Lady is their name.

CONTACT: marketing@vapedinnerlady.com, +44-1254-865915

SOURCE Dinner Lady
This new CAS solution will enable exponential insights to drive global scientific innovation

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Aug. 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society (ACS), announced today that SciFindern will be available Spring 2017. This powerful solution will provide new and unique authoritative content, superior functionality and enhanced workflow features to help researchers be exponentially more productive.

SciFindern is made possible by the global network of CAS scientists analyzing and organizing the world's publicly disclosed chemistry and related scientific information that is the foundation of SciFindern. This unparalleled human curation, coupled with the latest innovations in technology and cognitive computing capabilities enable SciFindern to provide the best possible answers to scientific inquiry.

SciFindern will change the way scientists conduct research by providing access to expanded content along with the most relevant search results. Enhanced tools will help users optimally leverage information, dramatically reducing the time spent combing through answers. The entire research experience will be best in class, so users can quickly turn ideas into actions: advancing promising new discoveries, validating research and dismissing less productive ideas.

"The power of "n" shines the spotlight on scientists," said Dr. Matthew J. Toussant, senior vice president of product and content operations at CAS. "Compared to other information products, researchers who are testing SciFindern are confirming this new solution is significantly faster, easier to use and returns the best answers to their queries. A leading scientist remarked, 'I almost feel guiltyI should have to work harder to find this information.'"

SciFindern was announced during the ACS National Meeting, where preeminent researchers gather to share and exchange ideas related to chemistry and related sciences. ACS is the world's largest scientific society and draws thousands of participants to its biannual national meetings each year.

More information on SciFindern will be available in the coming months; visit the CAS website to stay up-to-date on the latest developments.

About CAS

CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, is dedicated to the ACS vision of improving people's lives through the transforming power of chemistry. The CAS team of highly trained scientists finds, collects, and organizes all publicly disclosed substance information, creating the world's most valuable collection of content that is vital to innovation worldwide. Scientific researchers, patent professionals and business leaders around the world rely on a suite of research solutions from CAS that enables discovery and facilitates workflows to fuel tomorrow's innovation. CAS.org

Related Links

http://www.cas.org



SOURCE CAS
LONDON and NEW YORK, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Risk Focus Inc. , the leading provider of control and compliance for regulatory trade and transaction reporting to the global capital markets, announces the appointment of Elena Gaetini as European Head of Business Development & Governmental Affairs, extending the company's reach in Continental Europe. Risk Focus is unique in providing clients with a regulatory trade reporting SLA, enabling financial institutions to stay ahead of regulators' compliance requirements.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160812/397753 )



Gaetini joins from the DTCC, where she served as the Director for Governmental Affairs and Head of Southern Europe and France for Deriv/SERV sales. Gaetini will be focusing on all European financial and regulatory centers: Frankfurt, Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Rome, Zurich, Amsterdam and Luxembourg. She has a solid track record in sales, project management and business development, along with multi-lingual skills (Italian, Spanish, French, English and Portuguese).

Andy Green, Global Head of Business Development at Risk Focus, said: "Elena's hire is an important cornerstone of our development strategy. Having worked with Elena at the DTCC I know she will be a valuable asset in extending our reach in Europe and building deeper relationships with the regulators. I'm very much looking forward to working together again and I'm sure our clients will be quick to appreciate her twenty years' experience and her extensive knowledge of financial regulations and post trade market infrastructures."

On her appointment, Gaetini said: "There couldn't be a more exciting time for me to join Risk Focus: I am very well aware of the regulatory pressures on institutions and have always been impressed by Risk Focus' work with regulators to minimize the pain-points for clients. It's growing rapidly and building a presence in Continental Europe. I've worked in these markets for almost two decades now and I'm very much looking forward to helping firms in Europe benefit from Risk Focus' market-leading control and compliance solutions for trade and transaction reporting."

Before the DTCC Gaetini was at LCH.Clearnet, Paris, where she was responsible for ensuring the successful delivery of international projects in OTC fixed income markets and derivatives. Gaetini holds a graduate degree in Administration and Management from Harvard University and has studied at University of Paris X and University of Turin.

Editorial contacts

Anne-Charlotte Duhaut

Moonlight Media Ltd.

Tel: +44-(0)20-7250-4770

Email: annecharlotte@moonlightmedia.co.uk



SOURCE Risk Focus
NEW YORK, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Increasing Vehicle Production, Rising Sale of Vehicles and Growing Vehicle Exports to fuel Germany Automotive Components Market in the Coming Years

According to TechSci Research report, "Germany Automotive Components Market By Vehicle Type, By Demand Category, By Component Type, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021", automotive components market in Germany is forecast to surpass  51 Billion ($58 Bn) by 2021. In addition to a huge domestic automobile industry, Germany is one of the prominent global exporter of automobiles. With surging demand for automobiles from international markets, the automotive components market in Germany is anticipated to witness growth in the coming years. Moreover, presence of more than 40 automobile assembly and production plants in the country is a huge positive for the country's automotive components market.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140117/663730 )



Browse 26 market data Tables and 25 Figures spread through 120 Pages and an in-depth TOC on

"Germany Automotive Components Market"

https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/germany-automotive-components-market-by-vehicle-type-pc-lcv-m-hcv-2w-3w-otr-by-demand-category-oem-vs-replacement-by-component-type-engine-parts-body-chassis-suspension-brakes-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/762.html

In 2015, South West region dominated the automotive components market in Germany, followed by South East region. Backed by presence of leading automobile manufacturers in the country's South West region, the region's dominance is expected to continue through 2021. With a huge passenger car fleet, automotive components market in Germany is dominated by the passenger car segment. Robert Bosch GmbH is the largest automotive components manufacturer operating in the country. With an advantage of being a domestic manufacturer, strong distribution network across the country, and increasing number of collaboration with major car manufacturers, Robert Bosch is expected to maintain its leadership position in the coming years.

Download Sample Report

@ https://www.techsciresearch.com/sample-report.aspx?cid=762

Customers can also request for 10% free customization on this report.

"Expanding passenger car fleet size, economic stability and favorable government policies are expected to drive growth in Germany automotive components market over the course of next five years. Growing initiatives to make Germany an automotive components hub coupled with continuous government efforts to attract foreign investments into the country are expected to boost Germany automotive components market during the forecast period.", said Mr. Karan Chechi, Research Director with TechSci Research, a research based global management consulting firm.

"Germany Automotive Components Market By Vehicle Type, By Demand Category, By Component Type, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021" has evaluated the future growth potential of automotive components market and provides statistics and information on market size, consumer behavior and trends. The report intends to provide cutting-edge market intelligence and help decision makers take sound investment evaluation. Besides, the report also identifies and analyzes the emerging trends along with essential drivers, challenges and opportunities in automotive components market of Germany.

Browse Related Reports

India Automotive Spark Plug Market By Vehicle Type (Passenger Car, Two-Wheeler & Three-Wheeler), By Type (Copper, Platinum & Iridium), By Demand Category (OEM Vs. Replacement), Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-202

https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/india-automotive-spark-plug-market-by-vehicle-type-passenger-car-two-wheeler-three-wheeler-by-type-copper-platinum-iridium-by-demand-category-oem-vs-replacement-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/709.html

Qatar Passenger Car Aftermarket Components Market By Component Type (Batteries; Brake Pads and Shoes; Clutch; Bearings; Car Care Products; Air Filters; Spark Plugs; and Oil Filters), Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021

https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/qatar-passenger-car-aftermarket-components-market-by-component-type-batteries-brake-pads-and-shoes-clutch-bearings-car-care-products-air-filters-spark-plugs-and-oil-filters-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/720.html

India Automotive Components Market By Vehicle Type, By Demand Category, By Component Type, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011 - 2021

https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/india-automotive-components-market-by-vehicle-type-pc-lcv-m-hcv-2w-3w-otr-by-demand-category-oem-vs-replacement-by-component-type-engine-parts-body-chassis-suspension-brakes-etc-competition-forecast-and-opportunities-2011-2021/749.html

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
DUBLIN, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global Over-the-Counter Drug Market 2016-2020" report to their offering.

The analysts forecast the global over-the-counter (OTC) drug market to grow at a CAGR of 6.19% during the period 2016-2020.

The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global over-the-counter (OTC) drug market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers revenue generated from the sales of OTC drugs used to treat disorders, including gastrointestinal disorders, pain, and dermatological and respiratory disorders.

OTC drugs are medicines that can be bought without a prescription from a doctor because the US FDA considers them safe for use without medical supervision. These drugs are used to treat conditions that do not necessarily require a doctor's advice, such as pain, itches, cough and cold, sleeping problems, smoking cessation, weight problems, gastrointestinal problems, and tooth decay. They are sold through hospitals, pharmaceutical stores, grocery stores, catalogs, and online retail stores.

Promotion and marketing initiatives will be a key trend for market growth. Vendors in this market are spending heavily on promotional activities targeted at both the healthy population and those with illnesses. They are trying to build a larger consumer base through marketing campaigns and activities through different media platforms. Marketing strategies for OTC products are very important, especially since these products lose the patent and enter the generic market, resulting in competition.

According to the report, one of the key drivers for market growth will be rise in self-medication. The growing healthcare costs and an increase in the older population demand the need for better accessibility and affordability of healthcare services. Self-medication with non-prescription drugs play an important role in this and help in improving the accessibility and cost-benefits of healthcare services. Apart from this, the increase in self-care and self-medication is influenced by factors such as lifestyle, socioeconomic factors, and easy accessibility of drugs.

Further, the report states that presence of counterfeit drugs will be a challenge for the market. The sale of counterfeit OTC drugs in the market is increasing, and this problem is usually unreported to the regulatory authorities in majority of the cases.

For instance, in April 2014, it was reported that over 2 million counterfeit drugs were seized from France, which included about 1 million packets of fake aspirin, which contained sugar in place of the API. It is estimated that counterfeit drugs account for 10% of the global market, as compared to 1% in the developed world, and the market for these drugs is on a rise. In the US, allergy OTC drugs are among the most counterfeited. Similarly, in 2015, over $100,000 worth fake medicines from the Philippines drugs market were seized.

Key vendors

- Bayer HealthCare

- GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)

- Johnson & Johnson

- Pfizer

- Sanofi

Key Topics Covered:

Part 01: Executive summary

Part 02: Scope of the report

Part 03: Market research methodology

Part 04: Introduction

Part 05: OTC drugs: An overview

Part 06: Market landscape

Part 07: Market segmentation by therapeutic class

Part 08: Global respiratory OTC drugs market

Part 09: Global dietary supplements market

Part 10: Global gastrointestinal OTC drugs market

Part 11: Global OTC pain medications market

Part 12: Market segmentation by route of administration

Part 13: Geographical segmentation

Part 14: Market drivers

Part 15: Impact of drivers

Part 16: Market challenges

Part 17: Impact of drivers and challenges

Part 18: Market trends

Part 19: Vendor landscape

Part 20: Key vendor analysis

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/85mrgd/global

Related Topics: Over the Counter (OTC) Drugs

Also Available

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com



SOURCE Research and Markets
SAN FRANCISCO, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The global high purity alumina market is expected to reach USD 6.41 billion by 2024, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Substantial demand for the product in plasma displays as it is a cost-effective and an energy efficient substitute for traditional materials including incandescent light bulbs is expected to drive demand. Moreover, growing demand for plasma displays is projected to propel the growth of the market over the forecast period. High purity alumina is an essential base material for artificial sapphire substrates, which are used in numerous electronics.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150105/723757 )



Growing demand for high purity alumina in niche applications including medical, precision optics and defense is expected to drive demand over the forecast period. Moreover, increasing adoption of LED screen as they provide high-definition images is projected to boost demand for alumina products over the forecast period.

Browse full research report with TOC on "High Purity Alumina Market Analysis By Product (4N, 5N, 6N), By Application (Light Emitting Diodes, Semiconductors, Phosphor, Sapphire) And Segment Forecasts To 2024" at: http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/high-purity-alumina-market

Further key findings from the report suggest:

4N high purity alumina is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 18.0% from 2016 to 2024. The increasing use of the product in ceramics, smartphones, and batteries on account of its superior electrical insulation, low moisture absorption, and improved thermal conductivity is expected to drive the demand. The product is being widely used to coat ceramic separators in lithium ion batteries.

Rising demand for lithium ion batteries owing to growth in Electric Vehicle (EV) and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) is expected to drive the market demand for high purity alumina over the forecast period.

Sapphire production accounted for over 12.5% of high purity alumina consumption in 2015. Growing investments in sapphire glass production on account of its increasing requirement across a wide array of applications including smartphones, tablets, LEDs and semiconductors is expected to open new opportunities over the forecast period.

North America high purity alumina demand was 4.31 kilo tons in 2015. The material is being increasingly used in plasma displays as it helps in reducing the overall dimensions of the final product by making it lighter and thinner. A boom in utilities rebate on account of using LED retrofits is expected to drive the market over the forecast period.

high purity alumina demand was 4.31 kilo tons in 2015. The material is being increasingly used in plasma displays as it helps in reducing the overall dimensions of the final product by making it lighter and thinner. A boom in utilities rebate on account of using LED retrofits is expected to drive the market over the forecast period. Significant demand for the material from the LED industry owing to growing use of energy efficient lighting in emerging economies including China and India coupled with rising government initiatives to increase the market share of LED lamps and minimize the use of incandescent lamps is projected to augment growth. Abundant raw material availability coupled with adequate manufacturing capabilities has led to relatively lowering production costs.

and coupled with rising government initiatives to increase the market share of LED lamps and minimize the use of incandescent lamps is projected to augment growth. Abundant raw material availability coupled with adequate manufacturing capabilities has led to relatively lowering production costs. Nippon Light Metal is a key market player which manufactures high purity alumina, aluminum metal alloys, industrial parts, metal rolls, capacitor foils and heat exchangers. Baikowski Pure Solutions is involved in producing high purity alumina powders and other fine composites & oxides including YAG, ZTA, ceria, and Spinel. The company has its manufacturing facilities located in Japan , U.S., and France .

Grand View Research has segmented the global high purity alumina market on the basis of product, application and region:

High Purity Alumina Product Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) 4N 5N 6N

High Purity Alumina Application Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) Light Emitting Diodes Semiconductors Phosphor Sapphire Others

High Purity Alumina Regional Outlook (Volume, Tons; Revenue, USD Million, 2013 - 2024) North America U.S. Europe Germany Asia Pacific China Latin America Brazil Middle East & Africa



Browse related reports by Grand View Research:

3D Camera Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/3d-camera-market

Warm Air Heaters Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/warm-air-heaters-market

Bit Error Rate Testers Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/bit-error-rate-testers-market

Auto Wiring Harness Market - http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/the-global-auto-wiring-harness-market

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.

Read Our Blogs - ni2014.org , grandviewresearch.com/blogs/semiconductors-and-electronics

Contact:

Sherry James

Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc

Phone: 1-415-349-0058

Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519

Email: sales@grandviewresearch.com



Web: http://www.grandviewresearch.com

SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
TOKYO, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd. will participate for the first time in "The MICAM" shoe exhibition to be held at FIERA MILANO in Italy from Saturday, September 3, to Tuesday, September 6, 2016, which will draw worldwide attention.

During the event, Isetan Mitsukoshi will display its spring/summer 2017 models, which it has created by taking advantage of artisanship it has nurtured by producing "NUMBER TWENTY-ONE," the company's ladies' shoe brand that originated at Isetan Shinjuku Store, known as "the world's best fashion museum." and will allow visitors to feel their corporate message "this is Japan." through its goods and services as well as its in-store displays following Premiere Classe held in France in January 2016.

Original press release (English): http://prw.kyodonews.jp/prwfile/release/M102762/201608193515/_prw_OR1fl_aWsfP99g.pdf

1. Details of Isetan Mitsukoshi's participation in The MICAM

Period: Saturday, September 3 , to Tuesday, September 6, 2016

, to Venue: FIERA MILANO

Hall: 1-V

Booth: International Designers' Booth (No. V39)

The "Isetan Shoes" lineup mainly consists of well-designed and easy-to-wear Japanese-made shoes under the concept of "valuable products that make you feel uplifted" as you wear shoes every day. The company produced these shoes through careful manufacturing processes, such as manually cutting materials. The company also pursues a combination between fashionability and functionality in these products.

Details of shoes to be displayed

(1) Collaboration with Japanese creators who are active on a global scale and young creators who are active mainly in Tokyo: production of shoes that pursue fashionability and functionality.

Collaborative brands: FACETASM, CINOH, LOKITHO, IN-PROCESS, doublet

(2) Pursuit of decorativeness and customization

In recent years, there is a growing tendency to customize basic products to increase their originality. Isetan Mitsukoshi will display the "newneu." brand of shoes that enjoyed high popularity at Premiere Classe as well as sneakers with accessories developed in collaboration with creators.

9 Images:

http://prw.kyodonews.jp/opn/release/201608193515/

2. Past projects of "Isetan Shoes" (Participation in Premiere Classe)

Isetan Mitsukoshi for the first time displayed the "Isetan Shoes" line at Premiere Classe -- an exhibition of accessories and other miscellaneous goods held in Paris, France, which began on January 22, 2016.

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1zda-xPzlc

Related link: http://www.imhds.co.jp/english/depakachi/



Related Links

http://www.imhds.co.jp/english



SOURCE Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd.
NOTTINGHAM, England, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

In today's global business environment when employees dispersed around the world need to be able to exchange data across their networks securely and effectively, a solid IT infrastructure is an organisation's safety net.

For many enterprises, File Transfer Servers (FTS) are the back-bone of their network. Essentially a computer within the client/server model responsible for the central storage and management of data files, an FTS allows other computers on the same network to access the files and data housed on the FTS. A file transfer server adds value to any enterprise by providing users with the ability to share information over a network without having to physically transfer files with external storage devices or via email.

Yet, as business becomes increasingly global and the number of files being shared by employees across regions increases, alongside the need for real-time collaboration, organisations increasingly need both a high level of security and additional capabilities from their FTS. This is where a Managed File Transfer Server (MFTS) offering maximum security and enhanced features comes into its own.

So what are the benefits of an MFTS? Firstly, it's important to note that both FTS and MFTS platforms share some common traits, that are worth outlining.

1: Simple, secure sharing of business data

Enterprise grade, high performance File Transfer Servers enable your remote workforce to securely share and access files from anywhere. This is achieved from solutions that support an array of protocols including FTP/S, SCP, SFTP, WebDAV, HTTP/S.

2: Remote security and administration

Whether you're a small business or a fortune 500 company, effective File Transfer Servers provide user management and permissions that are flexible enough to cater to any environment. FTS solutions should provide your network with the ability to manage users or groups with built-in directory or by connecting to your Active Directory. This includes the ability to manage permissions to all files and locations with fine-grained policies.

3: Reliability from trace-ability

Effective FTS solutions let your IT staff watch every file transfer to and from your network. This provides the ability to track every user's remote actions and see which files they have remotely accessed. Ideally this capability should operate in real-time, and includes notification of any event happening within your network.

4: End to end remote security

Last but not least, an effective FTS keeps your data safe. This includes secure authentication across browsers and within the native clients which discourages unauthorized access to your network. This security should also include a multi-factor authentication.

In addition, MFTS solutions offer a number of enhanced capabilities over and above this that give organisations with operations in various locations greater network security and peace of mind.

Some of the particular features of MFTS that are worth looking out for here include:

Ad-hoc File Sharing

File encryption, such as PGP, Zip or SMIME

Auditing

Ability to execute tasks based on system events or automated schedule

Anti-virus integration

An architecture that means there is no storage of files in the DMZ (perimeter network)

Integration with Enterprise DB

WAN optimisation to increase the speed of access to critical applications and information

Security to meet compliance standards including PCI and DSS

As well as these technical advantages, Managed File Transfer Servers often come with increased vendor support and additional training, vital for building employee trust and confidence as networks become more complex.

There are arguably several different flavours of Managed File Transfer Servers on the market. Assessing the above criteria will enable organisations to find the best solution - whether that's FTS or MFTS solution and ensure that their network's back-end has a robust and secure backbone.

Notes to Editors

About Hypersocket Software

Hypersocket Software provides enterprise level network security and access management software to help businesses create more secure IT environments. Affordable Single Sign-On, Managed File Transfer Server and Virtual Private Networking products give organisations of all sizes the tools to enable people to work smarter and more securely. And by creating solutions that focus on areas where security is paramount and tackling the IT security challenges that businesses face every day, Hypersocket Software provides customers not only with peace-of-mind but also an outstanding return on investment.

Press contacts

Stephanie Dobson

Lumiere PR Limited

Direct: +44(0)7831-623-533

Stephanie@lumierepr.com



Reha Joshi

Hypersocket Software

Reha@hypersocket.com



SOURCE Hypersocket Software
LONDON, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Cashfloat.co.uk, a trading style of Western Circle Ltd (WCL), releases their latest technological update which provides customers with an unprecedented level of flexibility regarding their loans. This is in response to the recent outcry about the high charges for unarranged overdraft.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160817/398829LOGO )



Western Circle Ltd (WCL), a London-based lending company trading as Cashfloat.co.uk, introduces a new level of flexibility into their loans, allowing customers to log in and repay any amount of their loan at any time without extra cost. The new dynamic payday loan features allow borrowers to calculate on the minute the savings related to early repayments, regardless of the loan's original duration. As well, the technology allows borrowers to pay earlier and save on the daily interest with no extra fees.

Cashfloat pride themselves on being a moral lender, running their business based on honesty and transparency. Their unique client login allows customers to take full control over their loan, displaying clearly the exact cost of repayment and how they can save on interest by paying early. This not only brings the cost of their payday loans down, it also helps customers handle their repayments with ease.

"We, along with the rest of the country, were shocked to find out just how much an unarranged overdraft can cost you. We also realised the responsibility this puts on us - with more people turning to dynamic payday loans as the preferable option, we have to ensure that our loans truly are cheaper and easier to use than ever before," says Peter Kimpton, COO.

The tool has a dynamic feature where a customer can type in an amount they can repay at that moment, and it will display how much they are saving on interest through this payment. This represents a very real saving opportunity for borrowers. The new dynamic payday loan tool is available for free to all Cashfloat.co.uk customers through the login area here

About Cashfloat

Cashfloat.co.uk is a trading style of Western Circle Limited; an FCA-fully authorised direct lender. The Cashfloat model is based on fundamentally good morals and the most advanced artificial intelligence technology designed to help and protect people taking payday loans online.

Contacts

Kelly Richard

+44(0)20-3757-1933

kelly.richard@cashfloat.co.uk



or



SEO related queries

Ofer Valencio Akerman

akerman@masterlevelseo.com



Social media accounts

http://www.cashfloat.co.uk

https://www.facebook.com/cashfloat

https://twitter.com/cashfloat_kelly

https://www.linkedin.com/company/cashfloat

https://plus.google.com/+CashfloatUk-loans



SOURCE Cashfloat.co.uk
 Flash

The Kenyan government said Sunday it's willing to help South Sudan tackle her economic challenges caused by political conflict.

State House spokesman Manoah Esipisu said the gesture follows a meeting President Uhuru Kenyatta held with a visiting delegation from South Sudan this week, adding that the purpose of the meeting was to request Kenya's help.

"We can also confirm that the South Sudan delegation made requests regarding the possibility of Kenya supporting their country at this time when they are facing severe economic challenges," Esipisu told journalists in Nairobi.

During the visit, South Sudan's new First Vice President Taban Deng Gai presented an economic package program to Kenyatta.

"In response to this request, the President said that in principle, Kenya was willing to assist South Sudan to the extent that it can, but this was subject to better understanding South Sudan's needs," Esipisu said.

The meeting agreed that the South Sudanese government sends a delegation to Nairobi to deliberate on the subject.

"That delegation should include the Finance Minister, Central Bank Governor, as well as other relevant officials involved with food security, economic management and humanitarian affairs, who hopefully, would have a clear proposal outlining the needs of our northern neighbour," said the spokesman.

He said Kenya's team, led by National Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich, would then "make an assessment and advice the President and the Government on how to move forward".

Despite an August 2015 peace deal, heavy fighting broke out in South Sudan's capital Juba last month, killing some 270 people and displacing thousands others, a conflict that has seen the country's economic situation worsen as investors escaped the war.
PUNE, India, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The report "Protective Coatings Market by Resin type (Epoxy, Alkyd, Acrylic, Polyurethane), Formulation (Solvent-borne, Water-borne, and Powder), End-use industry (Industrial, Oil & gas, Marine, Automotive, Mining) and Region - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, The global market size is estimated to grow from USD 17.63 Billion in 2016 to USD 21.47 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 4.0%.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302)

Browse 226 market data Tables and 75 Figures spread through 240 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Protective Coatings Market"

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/protective-coatings-market-125206748.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.

The market is driven by increasing demand for protective coatings in emerging markets and high demand from infrastructure & construction, oil & gas, automotive, aerospace, industrial, and marine industries.

Epoxy, the largest segment of protective coatings

The growing popularity of various types of protective coatings such as alkyd, acrylics, epoxy, polyurethane, and polyester in various end-use applications plays a significant role in driving the market. Epoxy protective coatings accounted for the maximum share, in terms of value, of the overall market due to its excellent customizability and easy to apply & remove properties. There is rising demand for high performance and environmentally friendly nature of protective coatings, which is expected to drive the market for this segment.

Industrial applications, the fastest-growing market segment for protective coatings

Industrial application is the fastest-growing market, in terms of value, for protective coatings. The use of protective coatings due to increased need for protection of machineries and equipment which function in harsh environment is driving the market in this segment.

Make an Inquiry @http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=125206748

Rising demand in Asia-Pacific, the major driver for growth of the protective coatings market

In 2015, Asia-Pacific dominated the Protective Coatings Market. The region is also projected to register the highest growth rate, both in terms of value and volume, owing to high demand from China and India between 2016 and 2021. China is the largest market for protective coatings, globally, with major demand from the marine industry. The Indian government has started investment promotion programs to assist infrastructure & construction projects, which is expected to drive the growth of the protective coatings market.

The key companies profiled in the protective coatings market research report are PPG Industries (U.S.), Akzonobel N.V.(Netherlands), The Sherwin-Williams Company (U.S.), Arkema (France), Sika A.G. (Switzerland), RPM International (U.S.), and Hempel (Denmark).

Browse Related Reports:

Anti-Corrosion Coating Market by Type (Epoxy, Polyurethanes, Acrylic, Alkyd), Technology (Solvent, Water, Powder) and End-use Industry (Marine, Oil & Gas, Industrial, Infrastructure, and Power Generation) - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/anti-corrosion-coating-market-155215822.html

Insulation Coating Market by Type (Acrylics, Epoxy, Polyurethane, YSZ, Mullite, and Others), End-Use Industry (Aerospace, Automotive & Transportation, Industrial, Marine, Buildings & Construction and Others), & by Region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and South America) - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2021

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/insulation-coatings-market-26484290.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.

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: sales@marketsandmarkets.com

Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/chemical

Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets

SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
HYDERABAD, India, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Mordor Intelligence announces the publication of their research report on the critical infrastructure protection market. The report titled, "Global Critical Infrastructure Protection Market - Growth, Trends and Forecasts," discusses the current landscape and outlook of the said market.

The global critical infrastructure protection (CIP) market was valued at USD 87.34 billion in 2015, and is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 8.50% to reach USD 131.33 billion by 2020.

North America is projected to retain its dominance, followed by Asia-Pacific and Europe. Stringent regulatory standards coupled with high levels of market penetration drove CIP solutions growth in North America. The Asia-Pacific region is forecasted to record the highest CAGR growth of 9.02% over the reporting period, with China and Japan accounting for a sizeable portion of the market.

Physical security accounts for over 60% of the market share in the CIP security technology market, followed by SCADA security (10%), network security (8%) and CBRNE (5%). Physical security solutions have evolved considerably from the deployment to analog cameras to more advanced solutions such as IP Video Surveillance, scanners and biometrics. Vehicle Identification management solutions are forecasted to record the highest CAGR growth of 24.85% over the reporting period.

The CIP market is highly diversified, with a mix of established players and smaller companies vying for attention in an increasingly contested market space. Relatively moderate barriers for entry and growing focus on smart grid technology have enabled smaller firms to gain entrance into the market. However, recent trends show that industry players such as Honeywell International Inc., BAE Systems, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin are eventually acquiring smaller companies in a bid to consolidate their market position. Several collaborations are also being forged between existing companies, as they remain focused on providing integrated solutions and services to tackle dynamic attacks.

About Mordor Intelligence:

Mordor Intelligence is a global market research and consulting firm. Our focus is to provide research insights to facilitate business success. Our research expertise covers niche segments under Agriculture, Healthcare, ICT, Chemicals, Manufacturing, Logistics, Electronics and Automotive, among others. We believe in data, and we provide solutions through it. Optimum solutions and goal-oriented strategies define our endeavors and make us the preferred choice for clients.

For information regarding permissions and sales, please contact: info@mordorintelligence.com

Media Contact:

Madan Gopal

AVP - Marketing & Strategy

Email:madan@mordorintelligence.com

Direct Line: +1 617-765-2493



SOURCE Mordor Intelligence
LONDON, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Connecting the enterprise with the Internet of Things

Heise Medien and Situation Publishing, the people behind The Register, will launch the Building IoT conference in the UK for the first time in March, 2017.

The three-day conference will bring leading industry figures together with senior developers, architects, managers and executives to discuss internet of things, from sensors, hardware architectures and user interfaces through to transport and communications, security and big data.

The event will take place at 30 Euston Square, London from March 27 to 29, 2017.

With 40 conference sessions over two days, and a third day of deep dive workshops, Building IoT London will take attendees beyond the big picture, to show how real world developers and engineers are cracking the problems associated with developing for the internet of things, from the devices generating the data, right through to the back end analytics systems turning that data into insight.

Building IoT is the second Heise conference brought to the UK by Situation Publishing, the people behind The Register. In May this year, over 250 people participated in Continuous Lifecycle London, the UK manifestation of Heise's flagship conference. Continuous Lifecycle returns to London in May 2017.

Linus Birtles, managing director of Situation Publishing, said: "Continuous Lifecycle London 2016 was an unqualified success. We are delighted to be expand our UK events programme for 2017."

"We know our readers want to explore the potential and pitfalls of the Internet of things, and we look forward to once again delivering three days of deep, technical content to a knowledgeable audience in an intimate environment."

Heise Media CEO Dr Alfons Schrader said, "The IoT is not just about vision - it needs people, who are willing to put the time and effort into implementations and making all the ideas become reality. Building IoT in Germany showed us that those people need a meeting place and thanks to London's exciting tech scene and our colleagues at The Register we can bring this experience to an English speaking audience."

A call for papers has been issued, http://www.buildingiot.london/call-for-papers/, and the programme committee looks forward to hearing from practitioners in the user, vendor, academic and consulting industries.

The programme committee, including senior Heise and The Register editors together with key figures from the industry, will produce the event agenda by the end of October.

Situation Publishing

Situation Publishing is the home of The Register, The Channel and The Next Platform, which together form one of the most vocal and influential communities in the tech world.

Heise Medien

Publishing group Heise Medien publish telephone books, directories and magazines - both print and digitally. Heise Medien is known for its two renowned IT magazines c't and iX, as well as for its technology magazine Technology Review. The IT news site heise online has consistently been one of the most widely-used IT news services in Germany since 1994. Heise Events organise conferences and workshops for IT specialists.

Contact: Joe Fay, joy.fay@sitpub.com or Tom Fry, sitpub@brightbee.co.uk , +44(0)-208-8193170

SOURCE Situation Publishing and Heise Medien
DUBLIN, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Smart Weapons - Global Strategic Business Report" report to their offering.

This report analyzes the worldwide markets for Smart Weapons in US$ Million. The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Rest of World. Annual estimates and forecasts are provided for the period 2015 through 2022. Market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research. Company profiles are primarily based on public domain information including company URLs.



The report profiles 40 companies including many key and niche players such as



Alliant Techsystems, Inc. ( USA )

) BAE Systems PLC (UK)

NORINCO ( China )

) Curtiss-Wright Corporation ( USA )

) Denel SOC Ltd ( South Africa )

) Finmeccanica SpA ( Italy )

) General Dynamics Corporation ( USA )

) Harris Corporation ( USA )

) Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd ( Israel )

) Kongsberg Gruppen ASA ( Norway )

) Lockheed Martin Corporation ( USA )

) L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. ( USA )

) MBDA France ( France )

) Nexter Group ( France )

) Northrop Grumman Corporation ( USA )

) QinetiQ Group PLC (UK)

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd ( Israel )

) Raytheon Company ( USA )

) Rheinmetall AG ( Germany )

) Roketsan AS ( Turkey )

) Sagem ( France )

) TASER International Inc. ( USA )

) Textron Inc. ( USA )

) Thales Group ( France )

) The Boeing Company ( USA )



Key Topics Covered:



1. INDUSTRY OVERVIEW



Smart Weapons: Augmenting National Defense with Intelligent, Accurate, and Digital Technologies

Changing Realities of Modern Warfare Shape Smart Weapons Market

Smart Weaponry: Enabling Reduction in Wastage of Ammunitions and Human Resources

Smart Weapons: Ushering an Era of Brilliant Self-aware Weapons with Artificial Intelligence

Despite Challenges, Smart Weapons Market Continue to Witness Strong Growth

The United States : Largest Market for Smart Weapons Worldwide

: Largest Market for Smart Weapons Worldwide Spearheaded by China , Asia-Pacific Continue to Turbo Charge Market Growth

, Asia-Pacific Continue to Turbo Charge Market Growth Directed Energy Weapons to Witness Robust Growth in Demand

Military Cooperation: A Double-Edged Sword?

Competitive Landscape

Ballooning Defense Budgets Attract Leading Weapon Manufacturers to China and India

and Manufacturers Focus on Advanced Technologies to Suit Market Needs

Synergistic Alliances: Key to Growth

2. MARKET GROWTH DRIVERS &TRENDS



Surging Defense & Military Expenditures Worldwide: A Strong Growth Driver

Escalating Global Arms Race Provides the Perfect Platform for Market Expansion

Successful Deployments of Smart Bombs Drive Robust Demand

Joint Air-To-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and Artificial Intelligence Increase the Smart Quotient of Smart Bombs

Despite Higher Costs, Precision Guided Munitions Offer Lucrative Market Growth Opportunities

Leveraging Existing Designs and Using Low Cost Materials: An Apt Solution to the High Cost Concern

Demand for Airborne and Surface-to-Air Missile Systems Gain Momentum

Market for Air-to-Air Missiles Continues to Expand

Imaging Infrared Technology Finds Favor in IR Missile Guidance

Satellite Guidance Emerge as the Preferred Medium of Land Attack Cruise Missile Guidance

Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) Set to Transform Electronic Warfare

Sensor Fuzed Weapons to Substitute Unguided Cluster Bombs, Bodes Well for Market Adoption

Sensor Fuzed Weapons: From Undiscriminating Weapons to Highly Discriminating and Effective Systems

Smart Gun and Personalized Gun Technologies Offering Higher Accuracy and Safety to Become Mainstream

3. TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS & ADVANCEMENTS



Defense Weaponry Witness a Perpetual State of Innovations and Advancements

Mobile Lasers and Electromagnetic Railguns for Engaging UAVs and Mortars

Smarter Drones with Cheaper Missiles for Future Warfare

Light Weight and Small-Sized Weapon Seeker

Compact Laser Weapon System using ATHENA (Advanced Test High Energy Asset)

The Stealthiest and Smartest Missile LRASM Replace Harpoon Anti-Ship Missile

LRASM: Stealth Exterior and Shape with Reduced Infrared Footprint and LPI (Low Probability of Intercept)

LSRAM as Escort Jammers for Cruise Missiles: A Futuristic Application

XM-25 Punisher: Smart Firearms for Infantry Divisions

Self-Steering EXACTO Bullets for Engaging Moving Objects

Self-Guided Projectile: A Smart Bullet for Firing from a Smooth-Bored Gun Barrel

Networked MALDs: Unlocking New Dimensions for Attack on Air- Defense Systems

MALD: An Important and Indispensable Component of Air Combat

B-52 Aircraft: On the Threshold to Becoming a Smart Weapons Carrier

4. PRODUCT OVERVIEW



Smart Weapon

Smart Bombs

Small Diameter Bomb

Missiles

Air-to-Surface Missiles

Surface-to-Air Missile

Stand-off Missiles

Directed-Energy Weapons

Smart Bullets

Electro-Magnetic Pulse Weapons

Sensor Fuzed Weapons

Precision Firearms

Precision Artillery Munitions

5. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT, TESTING & INTRODUCTIONS



IMI Demonstrates Precision Guided Range Munitions

Lockheed Martin to Develop Lightweight Weapon Seeker Prototype

Lockheed Martin, Roketsan to Jointly Develop SOM-J Air-to- Surface Standoff Cruise Missile

Boeing, DSTO and DMO Collaboration Unveils JDAM-ER Wing Kits

Department of National Defence, DRDC, and Colt Canada Develop Prototype Smart Gun

US Army to Commence Acceptance Testing of Orbital ATK's XM25 Counter Defilade Engagement System

Tactical Missile Corp Releases Export Version of Grom High- Precision Bomb

DARPA Conducts Tests of Self-Steering Bullets Developed Under EXACTO Program

Lockheed Martin Field Tests ATHENA Laser Weapon

Detroit Engineer Develops Identilock Biometric Authentication Smart Gun Technology

US Military Commences Testing of TrackingPoint's Precision- Guided Smart Rifles

TASER International Unveils TASER X26P Conducted Electrical Weapon

TrackingPoint Develops Laser Guidance Based Smart Rifles

6. RECENT INDUSTRY ACTIVITY



Boeing Delivers Smart Weapon Bay Launchers for B-52 Stratofortress to USAF

TASER International Receives Bulk Orders for Smart Weapons from Several Law Enforcement Departments

TASER International Takes Over Tactical Safety Responses

Harris Corporation Take Over Exelis

General Dynamics Land Systems Selects Kongsberg's PROTECTOR MCRWS for Stryker Vehicles

US State Department Approves Smart Bomb and Weapons Sale to Saudi Arabia

USAF Research Laboratory Awards Contract to SARA for Home-on- Jam Demonstration into JDAM and SDB-I Smart Munitions

TASER Receives Bulk Contracts Smart Weapons, CEW from US Military, Government and Law Enforcement Agencies

Honeywell Inks Agreement with Tata Power SED to Manufacture TALIN 2000

Kongsberg Receives Order for Remote Weapon Stations from Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation

Boeing Secures USAF Contract for Modifying Weapon Launchers of B-52 Bombers

7. FOCUS ON SELECT PLAYERS



8. GLOBAL MARKET PERSPECTIVE



Total Companies Profiled: 40 (including Divisions/Subsidiaries 47)



The United States (15)

(15) Canada (2)

(2) Europe (19)

(19) - France (5)

(5) - Germany (4)

(4) - The United Kingdom (2)

(2) - Italy (1)

(1) - Rest of Europe (7)

(7) Asia-Pacific (Excluding Japan) (5)

(Excluding Japan) (5) Africa (2)

(2) Middle East (4)

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/4ht99g/smart_weapons



Related Topics: Missiles and Missiles Technology

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com



SOURCE Research and Markets
Frost & Sullivan article reveals how harnessing the power of social media can positively affect brand strategies

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today's changing consumer landscape has seen the increasing use of digital channels over more traditional voice, chat and email modes of customer service. In particular, consumer adoption of all forms of social media and messaging apps is at an all-time high. In this new mobile, social environment, businesses are now challenged to design strategies that will enable them to solve customer service issues on social channels with immediacy and authenticity.

Frost & Sullivan's latest article, Empower Your Customer Service Team to Be Brand Advocates, highlights the business value of social customer service, what makes customer service the new form of marketing, as well as the importance of having the right technology and people to handle social as a channel.

To download the complimentary article, please visit: http://bit.ly/2bvjVlW

In a recent Frost & Sullivan thought leadership forum which included the participation of a select group of Customer Experience executives from diverse organizations such as Moo, Jet, Sparkcentral, Shopify, David Yurman and Siemens Building Technology, panelists shared perspectives about a business climate where social customer service has become a necessity, and revealed how harnessing the power of social media can have a positive impact on brand performance.

"Social media shouldn't be viewed as a different animal, but as a valuable interaction channel that can create the 'make or break' factor in solving issues and creating good and lasting impressions with customers," said Frost & Sullivan Digital Transformation Principal Analyst Nancy Jamison. "To achieve this demands due diligence in finding the right tools to easily train and empower agents to handle this exciting new interaction channel."

To meet the changing landscape, organizations are going beyond inquiries and customer support to proactively engage with customers. Ultimately, social media can be utilized by businesses to do more than serve customers; it can be used as an effective strategy to garner promotion and boost community advocacy momentum.

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:

Clarissa Castaneda

Corporate Communications  North America

P: 210.477-4841

F: 210.348.1003

E: clarissa.castaneda@frost.com

http://www.frost.com

Related Links

http://www.frost.com



SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
VALLEY COTTAGE, New York, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Mechanical keyboards will continue to witness stellar demand, owing to their growing application in PC gaming. Global revenues are anticipated to reach US$ 637.3 Mn in 2016.

New PC games continue to lure consumers, fuelling higher demand for mechanical keyboards compared to membrane keyboards globally. While enhanced features of mechanical keyboards, such as improved response time and tactility will continue to foster demand, their high cost can pose challenges to widespread adoption. Declining sales of desktop PCs will also have a restraining effect on global mechanical keyboard market.

Request a Free Sample Report with Table of Contents: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1764

By application, gaming segment will remain dominant, accounting for over 50% revenue share in 2016. Demand for mechanical keyboards from the gaming segment is anticipated to remain strong in North America and Europe. The gaming segment accounted for a market share of nearly 67.1% in Europe in 2015, and is anticipated reach a value of US$ 321.5 Mn in 2016.

Region-wise, North America and Europe are estimated to be the largest markets for mechanical keyboards, collectively accounting for more than 70% of the marketplace in revenues, in 2015. North America is anticipated to lead the market with over 40% of the total market revenues, followed by Europe. The U.S. will dominate the N. American market, with over 90% of the revenue share. Growing inclination of European manufacturers toward adoption of technologically advanced products is expected to create a lucrative market for mechanical keyboards in 2016.

Preview Analysis on Global Mechanical Keyboard Market Revenue By Region: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/mechanical-keyboard-market

Demand for mechanical keyboards for gaming is strong in Europe, whereas whereas the office and industrial segment account for bulk of the demand in Asia Pacific and other emerging regions.

Some of the major mechanical keyboard players include Logitech International S.A., Razer Inc., Corsair Components Inc., Roccat Studios Inc., SteelSeries ApS, Bloody (A4tech Co Ltd.) and Rapoo Corporation (Shenzhen Rapoo Technology Co.) Some of the major switch manufacturers include ZF Friedrichshafen AG - Cherry, Kaihua Electronics Co. Ltd., OMRON Corporation, Trantek Electronics Co. Ltd. - TTC, and Huizhou Greetech Electronics Co. Ltd.

Speak with Analyst for any report related queries: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1764

Long-term Outlook: Global mechanical keyboard market is projected for twofold growth during the forecast period 2016-2020 to reach US$ 656 Mn, registering a double digit CAGR of 17.9%. Global mechanical keyboard consumption is expected to increase at a CAGR of 16.9% over 2016-2020.

More From FMI's Cutting-edge Intelligence:

APAC Home Wi-Fi Security Solution Market: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/apac-home-wi-fi-security-solutions-market

Interactive Whiteboard Market: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/interactive-whiteboard-market

Smart Railways Market: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/smart-railways-market

About Us

Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights and an aerial view of the competitive framework and future market trends.

Contact Us

616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,

Valley Cottage, NY 10989,

United States

T: +1-347-918-3531

F: +1-845-579-5705

T (UK): + 44 (0) 20 7692 8790

Sales: sales@futuremarketinsights.com

Website: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com

Press Release: http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/press-release



SOURCE Future Market Insights
DUBLIN, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Market 2014 - 2020" report to their offering.

Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Market for Hose, Cable & belting, Medical & Industrial Gloves, Adhesives & Sealants, O-Rings & Seals, Molded & Extruded Products and Other Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2020'



The report covers forecast and analysis for the nitrile butadiene rubber market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2014 along with a forecast from 2015 to 2020 based on both volume (kilo tons) and revenue (USD million). The study includes drivers and restraints of the nitrile butadiene rubber market along with the impact they have on the demand over the forecast period. Additionally, the report includes the study of opportunities available in the nitrile butadiene rubber market on a global level.



The study provides a decisive view on the nitrile butadiene rubber market by segmenting the market based on products, applications and regions. All the segments have been analyzed based on present and future trends and the market is estimated from 2014 to 2020. Key application markets covered under this study includes hose, cable & belting, medical & industrial gloves, adhesives & sealants, o-rings and seals, molded & extruded products and others. The regional segmentation includes the current and forecast demand for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa with its further bifurcation into major countries including U.S., Germany, France, UK, China, Japan, India and Brazil.



The report covers detailed competitive outlook including the market share and company profiles of the key participants operating in the global nitrile butadiene rubber market. Some of the key industry participants in global nitrile butadiene market includes Lanxess AG,. Lanxess AG, KOSSAN RUBBER INDUSTRIES BERHAD,Omnova Solutions, Zeon Chemicals, Synthos S.A., Adventa, Kumho Petrochemical Co., JSR Corporation, Sibur Holding and Versalis. The detailed description of players includes parameters such as company overview, financial overview, business strategies and recent developments of the company.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction



2. Executive Summary

2.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber market volume and revenue, 2014 - 2020 (Kilo Tons) (USD Million)

2.2. Global nitrile butadiene rubber market: Snapshot



3. Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Market -Industry Analysis

3.1. Nitrile butadiene rubber: Market dynamics

3.2. Value chain analysis

3.3. Market drivers

3.3.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber Market drivers: Impact analysis

3.3.2. Increasing demand from automobile industry

3.3.3. Growing aerospace industry in developing countries

3.4. Market restraints

3.4.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber Market restraints: Impact analysis

3.4.2. Price volatility

3.5. Opportunities

3.5.1. Strong demand for bio based products

3.6. Porter's five forces analysis

3.6.1. Bargaining power of suppliers

3.6.2. Bargaining power of buyers

3.6.3. Threat from new entrants

3.6.4. Threat from new substitutes

3.6.5. Degree of competition

3.7. Market attractiveness analysis

3.7.1. Market attractiveness analysis by application segment

3.7.2. Market attractiveness analysis by regional segment



4. Global Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Market - Competitive Landscape

4.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber: company market share

4.2. Global nitrile butadiene rubber Market: Production capacity (subject to data availability)

4.3. Global nitrile butadiene rubber Market: Raw material analysis

4.4. Global nitrile butadiene rubber Market: Price trend Analysis



5. Global Nitrile Butadiene Rubber Market - Application Segment Analysis

5.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber Market: Application overview

5.1.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber market volume share by application, 2014 and 2020

5.2. Hose, Belting and Cable

5.2.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber market for hose, belting and cable, 2014 - 2020 (Kilo Tons) (USD Million)

5.3. Medical & Industrial Gloves

5.3.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber market for medical & industrial gloves turbines, 2014 - 2020 (Kilo Tons) (USD Million)

5.4. Adhesives & Sealants

5.4.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber market for adhesives & sealants, 2014 - 2020 (Kilo Tons) (USD Million)

5.5. O-Rings and Seals

5.5.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber market for o-rings and seals, 2014 - 2020 (Kilo Tons) (USD Million)

5.6. Molded & Extruded Products

5.6.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber market for molded & extruded products, 2014 - 2020 (Kilo Tons) (USD Million)

5.7. Others

5.7.1. Global nitrile butadiene rubber market for other application, 2014 - 2020 (Kilo Tons) (USD Million)



6. Global Nitrile butadiene rubber Market - Regional Segment Analysis



7. Company Profiles

Lanxess AG

Kossan Rubber Industries Berhad

Zeon Chemicals

Synthos S.A.

Kumho Petrochemical Co.

JSR Corporation

Adventa

Sibur Holding

Omnova Solutions

Versalis



For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/7g2wl2/nitrile_butadiene



Related Topics: Rubber

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com



SOURCE Research and Markets
HOUSTON, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the latest mid-year forecast assembled by World Oil magazine, only 14,430 wells will be drilled in the United States this year, on par with the years 1930  1934, when not a single year topped 20,000 wells drilled. In fact, this will be lowest total since 11,700 wells were drilled in 1933.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160822/399934LOGO

World Oil has surveyed oil and gas companies, and state agencies, as part of the process to arrive at its forecast. The global oil and gas publication, which celebrated its 100th Anniversary this year, has been conducting this survey and forecasting U.S. drilling activity for the last 90 years. Back in January, with the information then available, World Oil had forecast 19,179 wells for 2016. However, the drop in the price of crude, and the corresponding drop in the rig count to an all-time low of 404 on May 20, have led activity downward through the first half of the year.

Thus, on a year-to-year basis , U.S. drilling will plummet 50%, to 14,430 wells in 2016, from 28,842 in 2015. The 2015 total represented a roughly 40% drop from 2014's level.

Kurt Abraham, Editor and Chief Forecaster for World Oil, notes that activity in the second half of 2016 will show an increase of 13% over the first half of the year, pointing toward a trend that should continue. "We believe that with some price stability, the E&P market in the U.S. will show steady improvement, though from a very low base of activity," said Abraham. "Our survey indicates that large operators are very conservative about future investment in drilling programs. Smaller firms will be more active in the second half of the year."

Looking at second-half vs. first-half activity in some key states , drilling should rise 8.9% in Texas; improve 16.4% in Oklahoma; jump 50.3% in Louisiana (after a very slow first half); increase 12.1% in Colorado; gain 15.2% in Pennsylvania; and pick up 29.3% in Kansas. North Dakota will remain level, while California should drop 3.1%. Offshore, the Gulf of Mexico is beginning to recover, with a 37.5% rise predicted

The complete article may be viewed at www.worldoil.com.

World Oil is a 100-year old trade publication serving the global oil and gas industry through its monthly issues and its website, Worldoil.com. World Oil is one of the oil and gas information products of Gulf Publishing Company, an independent, Houston-based media company with offices in Houston and London. Other Gulf Publishing information brands include Hydrocarbon Processing, Petroleum Economist, and Gas Processing.

CONTACT: Kurt Abraham

Editor/Chief Forecaster

World Oil

Email

1 (713) 525-4601

SOURCE World Oil

Related Links

http://www.worldoil.com


"We are extremely proud to be recognized again as one of America's fastest growing companies," stated Ernie Bray, ACD's CEO. "The hard work and dedication of our entire team along with our valued insurance partners have helped us achieve this honor six times, which is simply unheard of in the insurance claims technology sector. Our focus on helping insurers win, succeed and drive their own success inspires us every day," added Bray.

The 2016 Inc. 5000, unveiled online at Inc.com and with the top 500 companies featured in the September issue of Inc. (available on newsstands August 23) is the most competitive crop in the list's history. The average company on the list achieved a mind-boggling three-year growth of 433%. The Inc. 5000's aggregate revenue is $200 billion, and the companies on the list collectively generated 640,000 jobs over the past three years, or about 8% of all jobs created in the entire economy during that period. Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at www.inc.com/inc5000.

"The Inc. 5000 list stands out where it really counts," says Inc. President and Editor-In-Chief Eric Schurenberg. "It honors real achievement by a founder or a team of them. No one makes the Inc. 5000 without building something great  usually from scratch. That's one of the hardest things to do in business, as every company founder knows. But without it, free enterprise fails."

The annual Inc. 5000 event honoring all the companies on the list will be held from October 18 through 20, in San Antonio, TX. Speakers include some of the greatest entrepreneurs of this and past generations, such as best-selling author and strategist Tony Robbins, SoulCycle co-founders Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice, Cornerstone OnDemand founder, president and CEO Adam Miller, Marvell Technology Group director and co-founder Weili Dai, and New Belgium Brewing co-founder and executive chair Kim Jordan.

ABOUT ACD

In an era of connectivity and rapid change, ACD's AutoLink claims workflow platform is a market leader in innovation that connects and unifies a fragmented auto insurance claims industry with digitally empowered solutions. ACD, an award-winning company, has been ranked four years on Deloitte's Technology Fast-500 of North America and six times on the INC. 5000. ACD's technology and claims service group has processed over $3B in claims, smoothing the way for insurers and their customers. ACD is a leading Insuretech firm located in Carlsbad. #insuretech For more information visit ACD www.acdcorp.com

CONTACT:

ACD

Brian Bray, VP Operations,

888-403-4223, ext. 760

[email protected]

More about Inc. and the Inc. 500|5000

Methodology

The 2016 Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2012 to 2015. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2012. They had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independentnot subsidiaries or divisions of other companiesas of December 31, 2015. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2012 is $100,000; the minimum for 2015 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.'s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

About Inc. Media:

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today's innovative company builders. Winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in both 2014 and 2012. Total monthly audience reach for the brand has grown significantly from 2,000,000 in 2010 to over 15,000,000 today. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

The Inc. 5000 is a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation. Started in 1982, this prestigious list of the nation's most successful private companies has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success. The Inc. 5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony is an annual event that celebrates their remarkable achievements. The event also offers informative workshops, celebrated keynote speakers, and evening functions.

For more information on Inc. and the Inc. 5000 Conference, visit http://conference.inc.com/.

For more information contact:

Inc. Media

Drew Kerr

212-849-8250

[email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160819/399642

SOURCE AutoClaims Direct

Related Links

http://www.acdcorp.com


EDMONTON, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Alberta Investment Management Corporation ("AIMCo") is pleased to announce that it has agreed to the purchase of up to US$500 million of Series B Preferred Units (Preferred Units) of Howard Energy Partners, on behalf of certain of its clients. AIMCo completed its initial purchase of US$300 million in Preferred Units on August 22, 2016, and has committed to purchase an additional US$200 million in Preferred Units in the future.

Howard Energy Partners is a diversified, growth-oriented midstream provider with assets in the Eagle Ford Shale region of South Texas, along the Gulf Coast of Texas, as well as in the Marcellus Shale region in Pennsylvania. The investment represents a compelling opportunity for AIMCo's clients to participate in an attractive midstream portfolio with exposure to high demand markets. It is supported by a high quality management team with a demonstrated track record of execution and a robust project pipeline that will produce stable, fee-based cash flows.

"AIMCo is very pleased to become an important investor in Howard Energy Partners," said Kevin Uebelein, AIMCo Chief Executive Officer. "Howard Energy Partners has set forth a plan to position the company for further growth that will see it executing on a number of key projects backed by long-term contracts with credit worthy counterparties, which when complete will contribute meaningfully to its growth as a diversified midstream company. AIMCo is looking forward to fostering a strong working relationship with management and the other investment partners."

Scott Archer, Chief Financial Officer of Howard Energy Partners adds, "AIMCo is a global institutional investor that not only understands our business, but has the patience and vision to work alongside our team and current partners to maximize long term value for all stakeholders. We remain committed to growing Howard Energy Partners and we look forward to a productive partnership with AIMCo."

About Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo)

AIMCo is one of Canada's largest and most diversified institutional investment managers with more than $90 billion of assets under management. AIMCo was established on January 1, 2008 with a mandate to provide superior long-term investment results for its clients. AIMCo operates at arms-length from the Government of Alberta and invests globally on behalf of 31 pension, endowment and government funds in the Province of Alberta. For more information on AIMCo please visit www.aimco.alberta.ca.

About Howard Energy Partners

San Antonio-based, Howard Midstream Energy Partners, LLC dba Howard Energy Partners is an independent midstream energy company, owning and operating natural gas gathering and transportation pipelines, natural gas liquids processing plants, rail facilities, liquid storage terminals, deep-water port facilities and other related midstream assets in Texas and Pennsylvania. The company has corporate offices in San Antonio, Houston and Mexico City. For more information on Howard Energy Partners, please visit our website www.howardenergypartners.com.

SOURCE Alberta Investment Management Corp.

Related Links

www.aimco.alberta.ca


 Flash

A truce has been reached between Syrian forces and Kurdish fighters in the volatile northeastern province of Hasakah under a Russian mediation, pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV reported on Sunday.

The report said the regime of calm includes a cessation of battles, evacuation of wounded people, return to the previous lines of both parties, and the start of negotiations.

The ceasefire starts as of 5 p.m. on Sunday coupled with transporting the wounded to hospitals in the city of Qamishli in Hasaka.

The military positions should return to their previous state, as the negotiations are set to start on Monday at the Qamishli airport between representatives of the Syrian and Kurdish sides as well as Iranian and Russian mediators.

A day earlier, a source in the city told Xinhua that the Russians started mediation efforts to defuse the tension and the battles that have raged between the Kurdish police forces, Assayish, and the Syrian National Defense Forces (NDF), a paramilitary forces backing the army, over the past few days.

Tension started last week, when both the NDF and Assayish arrested members of each other.

As tension grew bigger, the Kurdish militias demanded the dissolve of the NDF in Hasakah, a request denied by the Syrian army.

Later on, the Assayish started shelling the NDF positions inside Hasakah, prompting the Syrian army to respond with airstrikes for the first time, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Assayish and the People Protection Units (YPG) said they will respond to the attacks of the Syrian forces, unleashing wide-scale offensives on the NDF positions inside the city of Hasakah.

The source said the Kurds couldn't advance in government-controlled areas, contrary to their claims that they have achieved that.

The Syrian artillery and airstrikes responded to the attempts of the Kurds to advance, he added.

He added that 80 percent of the people of Hasakah have fled their homes to areas in the countryside as a result of the latest confrontation.

Previous tension occurred between the Syrian forces and the Kurds, but both parties contained the situation to avoid further confrontations.

The YPG and other Kurdish militant groups have been assuming positions in Hasakah since 2012.

At the time, reports emerged about a tacit agreement between the Kurds and the Syrian government.

Even though many Kurdish figures denied it, but it's widely believed that the Kurds are planning to carve out a piece in northern Syria with heavy Kurdish weight as their autonomous state.

Buoyed by the support of the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition, the YPG and the allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have made sweeping victories against the Islamic State (IS) group, stripping the terror-designated militants of key areas in northern Syria.

The Russians were said to have also backed the Kurdish fighters in their push against the IS, but the Kurdish groups didn't disclose that, or admit receiving such support from Russia.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Alanco Technologies, Inc. (OTCQB: ALAN), today announced that it has reached agreement with David C. Johnson, a seasoned executive with over 16 years of senior executive experience in the Behavioral Health ("BH") market, to be President of Alanco's new BH subsidiary; Alanco Behavioral Health, Inc.

Mr. Johnson's extensive experience in the BH market has been as Owner, CEO and COO of leading BH organizations. His positions included CEO of a large Arizona treatment center that achieved over 100% growth before selling to a private equity fund backed Behavioral Health company and COO of a Southwestern multistate Behavioral Health company that realized over 400% growth under his leadership. In addition, Mr. Johnson was founder of Peak Consulting Partners, an industry leading consulting firm advising BH organizations and private equity groups focused on strategic growth and acquisitions. Mr. Johnson has been responsible for over $50 million of BH M&A transactions on both buy side and sell side with both public and private companies. For the past ten years, he has also been a national public speaker addressing the Behavioral Health market.

Mr. Johnson will be responsible for all BH operations with initial responsibilities focusing on finalizing the first phase of the acquisition plan and working with Alanco management to raise required capital. According to David Johnson, "With an estimated 30 million people in the US suffering from Addiction and Mental Illness and the market projected to continue to grow at approximately 3% per annum for the next five years, we believe there is a great need for care providers. Alanco's objective will be to create a market leader in Behavioral Health Treatment Services helping people and their families.

"I have been independently working on this BH consolidation project for the past three years and am extremely excited to have the opportunity to work with a public company with the objective of enhancing shareholder value. We are poised to announce our first acquisition in the third quarter and have several additional acquisition candidates already identified and we are excited to be moving forward on those immediately.

"Alanco's BH Subsidiary will apply an innovative approach to each investment, using private and public funding to enhance its long term goals. Owners of private companies in the BH market with strong cash flows will be able to exchange their private holdings at competitive market prices, for consideration that may include common shares in a publicly traded vehicle. With offices in Scottsdale and Denver, we have the skills and resources needed to execute high growth strategies for our shareholders."

John Carlson, Alanco CEO said, "We are launching Alanco's BH subsidiary to provide a liquidity alternative to small cap private companies in the expanding BH market and translating that to the public markets by an aggressive acquisition strategy providing strong revenue growth and cash flow. Alanco's corporate strategy will be to continue to liquidate non BH assets and use the funds to support the BH market acquisition strategy. We welcome Mr. Johnson with his extensive experience in the BH market and are delighted that he has joined our team."

EXCEPT FOR HISTORICAL INFORMATION, THE STATEMENTS CONTAINED IN THIS PRESS RELEASE ARE FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS MADE PURSUANT TO THE SAFE HARBOR PROVISIONS OF THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995. ALL SUCH FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS ARE SUBJECT TO, AND ARE QUALIFIED BY, RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES THAT COULD CAUSE ACTUAL RESULTS TO DIFFER MATERIALLY FROM THOSE EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED BY THOSE STATEMENTS. THESE RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO, THE FAILURE OF THE COMPANY TO ATTRACT PRIVATE COMPANIES THAT MEET ITS INVESTMENT CRITERIA, AND THE FAILURE TO FIND ACCEPTABLE FINANCING WITH WHICH TO COMPLETE THE ACQUISITION OF THESE ACQUISITION TARGETS ON TERMS THAT ARE ACCEPTABLE TO THE COMPANY. WE UNDERTAKE NO OBLIGATION TO PUBLICLY UPDATE ANY FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENT, WHETHER AS A RESULT OF NEW INFORMATION, FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS OR OTHERWISE, EXCEPT AS MAY BE REQUIRED BY LAW.

SOURCE Alanco Technologies, Inc.
FULTON, Mo., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Teachers live through the lives of the students they touch, but the students of Westminster College Political Science Professor John Langton, affectionately known as "Dr. John," have taken it a step further, it was announced today.

A group of them have come forward to secure commitments of more than $1 million to endow the Dr. John Langton Professorship of Legal Studies and Political Science, creating the first named professorship in Political Science in Westminster's history.

"The Langton Professorship is the extremely gratifying and deeply appreciated icing on the cake of my 35-year career at Westminster," said Dr. Langton. "But, the delicious cake itself has been helping my students to learn and grow and realize their dreams."

Alumni Jim Bennett, '92, and Elizabeth Cole, '94, both from St. Louis, MO, and Phil Boeckman, '88, of London, England, who is also a Westminster Trustee, have led the effort, contacting other alumni and inspiring them to give. Their mission is to ensure that Westminster's pre-law program and its Political Science Department have a dynamic and effective leader to step into Dr. Langton's shoes to teach a new generation.

Since he came to Westminster in 1981, Dr. Langton has taught more than 5,000 students and served as the Chair of the Department of Political Science for more than 20 years. He designed Westminster's pre-law minor and more than 200 of his students have attended law school.

Six of his students have earned Ph.Ds in Political Science. Another one is currently a doctoral student at Washington University, where the chair of the department also is a former student of Professor Langton.

He is the winner of the Governor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1997, and he received the Alpha Chi Lifetime Achievement for Excellence in Teaching and Service in 2012. He has been selected since 2001 by 11 inductees of Alpha Chi, Westminster's honorary academic society, as their "most inspiring professor."

His articles have been published in The American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Sociology, The British Journal of Sociology, Administrative Science Quarterly, the American Behavioral Scientist and Missouri Lawyers Weekly.

The campaign is more than halfway toward its goal of $2 million, which would fund an endowed chair. Funding is ongoing, and gifts of all sizes are welcome at www.westminster-mo.edu/giving.

SOURCE Westminster College

Related Links

http://www.westminster-mo.edu


ORLANDO, Fla., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hyundai Hope On Wheels (HHOW) and Orlando-area Hyundai dealers will present Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children with a $50,000 Impact Grant tomorrow to be used to improve care and increase treatment options for kids with cancer. Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children was chosen because of its proven track record of caring for children with pediatric cancer, and is one of 18 recipients across the country to receive a 2016 Hyundai Impact Grant from Hyundai Hope On Wheels (HHOW).

The $50,000 Impact Grant will be presented during a Handprint Ceremony, during which the handprints of local Orlando-area brave young cancer patients will be captured on a white 2016 Hyundai Tucson  the Hyundai Hope On Wheels hero vehicle  to commemorate their fight against the disease. The ceremony will also feature:

Elyse Starling , pediatric cancer patient

, pediatric cancer patient Cary D'Ortona, Chief Operating Officer, Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children and Chief Financial Officer, Arnold Palmer Medical Center

Don Eslin , MD, Pediatric Hematologist and Oncologist at the Haley Center for Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children

, MD, Pediatric Hematologist and Oncologist at the Haley Center for Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children Pediatric cancer survivor and 2016 HHOW National Youth Ambassador, Hannah Adams (age 13)

About the Hyundai Hope On Wheels Impact Grant



During the months of July and August, HHOW will award 18 hospitals in the US with a $50,000 Hyundai Impact Grant for pediatric cancer research to help end childhood cancer. The Impact Grant supports the programmatic needs of pediatric oncology. The grant may also be used to support direct patient assistance programs, such as enrichment programs, play room/teen center equipment, family on-site support, educational initiatives, or other efforts to improve care and cure for kids fighting cancer.

In addition to the Impact Grant winner, Hyundai Hope On Wheels will soon announce the winners of its Hyundai Scholar and Young Investigator Grants. This year alone, HHOW will award more than $13 million in new pediatric cancer grants. Since 1998, the program has funded $115 million in research to Children's Oncology Group (COG) member institutions nationwide. The program also creates awareness about the importance of the disease, which is the leading cause of death by disease in children in the United States (source).

Attendees at the various ceremonies will include HHOW's two national youth ambassadors and pediatric cancer survivors, Hannah Adams and Ryan Darby, who will deliver a message of hope to children's cancer hospitals. Hannah was five years old when she was diagnosed with a Stage 3 Wilms tumor that enveloped her kidney. Since her recovery, she has pursued her love of dancing and singing to help uplift and encourage other children and families through their fight. Twelve-year-old Ryan was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia six years ago, and since his recovery, he has shared his story and words of encouragement with children and families across the country. Watch Hannah and Ryan's story at www.HyundaiHopeOnWheels.org

"Our mission at Hyundai Hope On Wheels is clear: End Childhood Cancer," said Scott Stark, Chairman, Hyundai Hope On Wheels Board of Directors. "By funding transformational research through our Impact Grants and celebrating the lives of the brave young cancer fighters at our handprint ceremonies, we move closer to our dream of a day without cancer. This is a fight you can count on us to be in until no child ever has to hear the words: you have cancer."

HYUNDAI HOPE ON WHEELS

Hyundai Hope On Wheels is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is committed to finding a cure for childhood cancer. Launched in 1998, Hyundai Hope On Wheels provides grants to eligible institutions nationwide that are pursuing life-saving research and innovative treatments for the disease. HHOW is one of the largest nonprofit funders of pediatric cancer research in the country, and primary funding for Hyundai Hope On Wheels comes from Hyundai Motor America and its more than 830 U.S. dealers. Since its inception, Hyundai Hope On Wheels has awarded more than $115 million towards childhood cancer research in pursuit of a cure.

To learn more about Hyundai Hope On Wheels, please visit www.HyundaiHopeOnWheels.org or follow us on social media at www.facebook.com/HyundaiHopeOnWheels, www.twitter.com/hopeonwheels, and www.youtube.com/hopeonwheels.

HYUNDAI MOTOR AMERICA

Hyundai Motor America, headquartered in Fountain Valley, Calif., is a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Co. of Korea. Hyundai vehicles are distributed throughout the United States by Hyundai Motor America and are sold and serviced through more than 830 dealerships nationwide.

Please visit our media website at www.hyundainews.com and our blog at www.hyundailikesunday.com

Hyundai Motor America on Twitter | YouTube | Facebook

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140319/LA86658LOGO

SOURCE Hyundai Hope On Wheels

Related Links

http://www.HyundaiHopeOnWheels.org


LONDON, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Capacity (MW) & CAPEX ($m) Forecasts for Biomass Power in Electricity Generation, Combined Heat and Power (CHP), Biomass-Fired Steam Power Plants, Coal-Fired Plant Conversion to Biomass, High-Efficiency Co-Firing (Direct and Indirect Co-Firing and Parallel Firing); Featuring Direct Combustion, Biomass Burn, Gasification, Pyrolysis, Bubbling Fluidised Bed, Spreader Stoker Units

Visiongain assesses that CapEx on Biomass-to-Power will reach $5,933 million in 2016. Drivers for the production and use of biomass energy included rapidly rising energy demand in many countries and local and global environmental concerns and goals. Challenges to bioenergy deployment included low fossil fuel prices and rapidly falling energy prices of some other renewable energy sources, especially wind and solar PV. Ongoing debates about the sustainability of bioenergy, including indirect land-use change and carbon balance also affect development in the sector. Given these challenges, national policy frameworks continue to have a large influence on deployment of biomass to power technologies.

Report scope: Resources used for biomass to energy include agricultural residues; animal manure; wood wastes from forestry and industry; residues from food and paper industries; municipal green wastes; sewage sludge; dedicated energy crops such as short-rotation (3-15 years) coppice (eucalyptus, poplar, willow), grasses (miscanthus), sugar crops (sugar cane, beetroot, sorghum), starch crops (corn, wheat) and oil crops (soy, sunflower, oilseed rape, iatropha, palm oil). Organic wastes and residues have been the major biomass sources so far, but energy crops are gaining importance and market share. Residues, wastes and bagasse are primarily used for heat & power generation. Sugar, starch and oil crops are primarily used for fuel production.

The study of biomass to power is the main aim of this report; hence, this report only includes plants that generate at least some electricity from solid biomass. Bio-refineries and anaerobic digesters (AD) are not included in this project, as they use biogas to energy or bio waste AD technologies and cover different aspects of the energy industry. With reference to this report, biomass for energy includes a wide range of materials.

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on [email protected]

The realities of the economics mean that high-value material for which there is an alternative market, such as good quality large timber, are very unlikely to become available for energy applications. However, there are huge resources of residues, co-products and

waste that exist that could potentially become available at relatively low or even negative costs, where there is currently a requirement to pay for disposal.

This report mainly covers the CAPEX spending on new and upgraded biomass to power plants globally, forecasting this from 2016 to 2026. This report also covers the installed capacity of new and future biomass plants globally in megawatts (MW) throughout the same period of time. This includes direct combustion, advanced thermal and gasification, but not biological processes. In gasification, biomass is pre-treated and then placed in a gasifier with little or no oxygen, and undergoes chemical conversion to produce syngas, which can be burned to produce electricity and/or heating.

Spending is presented in US dollars ($). Spending accounts for capital expenditure of projects, including construction, upgrades and replacement facilities, but not general operational maintenance. In addition, the report includes installed power capacity for operational biomass power plants on a global and regional level, as well as forecasts for the level of capacity these markets will reach until 2026.

5 Reasons why you must order and read this report today:

1. The report delivers considerable added value by revealing global and regional market forecasts and analysis covering the period 2016 to 2026 in terms of capital spending ($m) and installed capacity (MW):

- Europe

- Asia Pacific

- North America

- Latin America

- Africa

2. It outlines key legislation, programmes and drivers and restraints in a large number of national biomass to power markets:

- UK

- Ireland

- Germany

- Austria

- Finland

- Denmark

- Netherlands

- China

- Japan

- India

- Australia

- US

- Canada

- Brazil

- South Africa

3. The analysis is also underpinned by our exclusive interviews with 2 leading experts:

- Principal consultant for re:heat and respected biomass energy expert Steve Luker

- Dr. Ehsan Ali of the Punjab Bioenergy Institute at UAF in Pakistan

4. The report profiles the leading companies operating within the sector:

- Babcock & Wilcox Vlund

- China Everbright

- New Generation Power International

- CHE Group

- Dohwa Engineering

- Veolia Environnement

- Orthios Group

5. Project tables and analysis provide extensive details of major contracts and programmes:

- Operator

- Technology type

- Capacity (tpa)

- Capacity (MW)

- Construction

- Status

- CAPEX ($m)

The report will answer questions such as:

 What are the prospects for the overall biomass-to-power industry?

 Where are the major investments occurring?

 Who are the key players in the biomass-to-power industry?

 What are the market dynamics underpinning the sector?

 How consolidated is the sector amongst the large industry players?

This independent 186 page report guarantees you will remain better informed than your competition. With 93 tables and figures examining the biomass to power market space, the report gives you a visual, one-stop breakdown of your market including capital expenditure and installed capacity forecasts from 2016-2026, as well as analysis, keeping your knowledge that one step ahead helping you to succeed.

This report is essential reading for you or anyone in the energy or waste sectors with an interest in biomass energy. Purchasing this report today will help you to recognise those important market opportunities and understand the possibilities there. I look forward to receiving your order.

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on [email protected]

To request a report overview of this report please emails Sara Peerun at [email protected] or call Tel: +44 (0) 20 7336 6100

Or click on https://www.visiongain.com/Report/1714/Biomass-to-Power-Market-Report-2016-2026

Companies Mentioned in This Report

Abengoa

Aboitiz Power

AECOM

Agroindustrial Guatemalteca

Agrogeneradora

Algae Tech.

AirWater

Amec Foster Wheeler

Ancillary Components

Andritz

Auro mira

Aurora Wood Pellets

Baker and McKenzie

Balcas

Balfour Beatty

BC Hydro

Bester Generacion

Biogen Power

Biomass Power Association (BPA)

Biosystems Engineering Pty

Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Blue Sphere Corp

BNP Paribas

Building Energy

Business Council for Sustainable Energy

BWSC

B&W Power Generation Group Ibc.

B&W Vlund

Canadian Northern Timber

Canford Corporation

CHE Group

China Everbright International

Clean Energy Canada

Cogen Ltd

Comet Biorefining

Concord Blue

Constellation NewEnergy

Damm and Triebel

Diageo

Diacarbon Energy

Dohwa Engineering

Don Carlos Biomass Energy Corporation

Double H Nurseries

DP CleanTech

Drax

DRENL

Eco2

Eco2 Links

EEA Holdings

Eggborough Power Ltd

Eldorabo Brazil Celulose S.A.

Enviroparks Operations Ltd

E.ON

EPH

EPRL

Estover Energy

Evermore Energy

Fengate Capital

GDF Suez

Glenmont Partners

Grandblue Environmental Protection

Georgia Power

Globus Spirits Limited

Godavari Power

Green Power Panay Philippines Inc (GPPPI)

Guangdong Chant Group

Hafield Wood Recyclers

Hindustan Pencils

Howrah Mills Co Ltd

HRS Energy

Hu Honua Bioenergy LLC

Icon

Indus Green Bio energy Pvt. Ltd

Igges and Paperboard Ltd

Infinis

Intervate Renewable Energy

Ispat Ltd

Kalilangan Biomass Energy Corporation

Kauai Island Utility Cooperative

Kedco

Kerck

Kohlbach

Lahti Energia

MGT Power

MGT Teesside

MHIEC

Misamis Oriental Biomass Energy Corporation

Mitsubishi Paper Mills

Morgan Credit Energy

MW Energie

MVV Environment

National Australia Bank

National Bio Energy Co.,Ltd

New Energy Corp

New Energy Development Ltd

New Forest Industries

New Generation Power International (NGPI)

Nexterra

Ngodwana Energy

Nippon Energy Solution (NES)

Nippon Steel

Northern Engineered Wood Products Inc.

Nuchem Ltd

Nuziveedu Seeds Limited

Obayashi Clean Energy Corp

Oji Green Resources

Orthios Group

Portucel S.A.

Protocol Biomas Corp

Re:heat

Real Ventures

Renergi Pty Ltd

Renewa Oy

Renova

REG Bio-power

RES

Resource Recovery Solutions

RWE Group

RWE Npower Cogen

Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC)

Scottish Biofuels

Scottish Bio-power

Sembcorp

SITA UK

Softbank China Venture Capital

Solar 21

Spencer Group

SSJD Bioenergy Limited

SSE

Statkraft

Steinmuller Babcock Environment

Stobart

Suez Environnement

Sugarfed

Sumitomo Metal (NSSMC)

Sumitomo Osaka Cement Co

Taiheiyo Cement

Takkei

Tamil Nadu

Thermogen

Tampere Power Utility

Torftech

Toshiba

Turku Energia

Tyrone Energy

UPM

WA Biomass

Warwick International Ltd

Welsh Power

WVEL Energy.

W4B

Veolia Dalkia Bioenergy

Veolia Environmental Services

Viaton Energy Pvt. Ltd

Vital Energi

York Timbers

Zhuzhou Qifeng Green Energy Co

Zilkha Biomass Energy

2OC Consortium

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on [email protected]

SOURCE Visiongain Ltd
PISCATAWAY, N.J., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- BlackStratus, a leading provider of cloud-based security and compliance technology tailored for both SMBs and large enterprises, announced today that its newly announced Security-as-a-Service, CYBERShark, received several top awards from the New York-New Jersey ASCII Group event. BlackStratus won Best Security Solution for CYBERShark, one of the top awards given at the industry gathering. The ASCII Group IT community is made up of a supporting network of more than 2,000 MSP/VARs worldwide, making it one of the most respected industry bodies when it comes to security and compliance matters affecting small and midsize businesses.

The Best Security Solution award comes a few months after the national launch of CYBERShark, a white labeled security and compliance service aimed specifically at the MSP community and their SMB customers. CYBERShark empowers MSPs to build a sustainable managed services business without the need to invest in expensive infrastructure, buy expensive hardware appliances and recruit expensive security analysts. By simply sending their end-customer event log data to the advanced CYBERShark cloud, MSPs will receive a white-labeled portal view of their customers' compliance reports and security posture complete with step-by-step remediation to resolve security incidents and malicious activity.

"Being awarded Best Security Solution by ASCII members for a third consecutive time this year signifies the incredible reception CYBERShark is receiving from the MSP community overall and a testimony to the impact it's having on comprehensively policing the network of SMB's," said Dale Cline, CEO of BlackStratus.

CYBERShark Features

Advanced architecture designed to cover complex regulatory compliance, business continuity and risk management needs

Multi-tenancy support silos customer accounts and files, protecting privacy and data integrity

Real-time attack visualization identifies zero-day attacks based on rules-based, vulnerability, statistical, and historical correlations

Vulnerability correlation integrates data from detection systems, eliminating false positives and freeing up your team to focus on actual threats

Unparalleled visibility in distributed networks to correlate activity in individual customer environments, identifying hidden threats, suspicious trends and other potentially dangerous behavior

Sophisticated reporting tools for ISO, PCI, HIPAA, SOX and other compliance standards

To learn more about becoming a partner of CYBERShark, please contact the sales team at 203-569-2444 or visit www.cybershark.com.

About BlackStratus

BlackStratus is a pioneer of trusted security and compliance platforms that protect millions of devices and thousands of brands around the globe. Their enterprise class technology solution is deployed and operated on premise, in the cloud or as a service at an affordable cost. The firm's patented software based multi-tenant Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) technology, is able to deliver organizations unparalleled security visibility, prevents costly downtime, and achieves and maintains compliant operations at a lower cost to operate. BlackStratus is headquartered in Piscataway, New Jersey, and services thousands of businesses worldwide.

For more information about BlackStratus, please visit www.blackstratus.com. Follow the firm via Twitter as @BlackStratusInc.

BlackStratus PR Contact:

David Splivalo

[email protected]

1.703.798.2395

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160418/356345LOGO

SOURCE BlackStratus

Related Links

http://www.blackstratus.com


"Patricia is helping some of the nation's largest power companies chart a new course in energy," says Scott Newland , vice president and general manager of Burns & McDonnell, Chicago. "Many of those companies are in our backyard. To provide even more 'boots on the ground,' Patricia will be growing our workforce in the Chicago region with top talent in the industry by as much as 25 percent each year."

Scroggin specializes on projects involving water treatment processes and air pollution control process design and installation. She works closely with major utility and power companies across the nation to develop systems aimed at efficiency and sustainability. Scroggin's leadership to help develop an innovative design at the Merrimack Station with Public Service of New Hampshire treat Flue Gas Desulfurization (FGD) wastewater to produce distillate that is returned to the FGD process, a small purge stream of quality suitable for landfilling with fly ash and a dry salt waste product with potential for beneficial reuse.

"Patricia looks at projects differently than others," says Rick Halil, senior vice president of Energy, Burns & McDonnell. "She understands that energy touches each of us every day and propels our nation forward. That is why she is always looking for ways to make energy cleaner, faster and more efficient than ever before."

Scroggin earned her Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from Missouri University of Science & Technology in Rolla and is a professional engineer in Missouri, Illinois and New Hampshire. Scroggin currently serves on the executive committee for the International Water Conference.

For photos and support materials, CLICK HERE

About Burns & McDonnell

Burns & McDonnell is a company made up of more than 5,300 engineers, architects, construction professionals, scientists, consultants and entrepreneurs with offices across the country and throughout the world. We strive to create amazing success for our clients and amazing careers for our employee-owners. Burns & McDonnell is 100 percent employee-owned and is proud to be No. 16 on Fortune's 2016 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information, visit burnsmcd.com.

Contact: Kristi Widmar, Burns & McDonnell

816-448-7379

[email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160822/400129

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160426/360057LOGO

SOURCE Burns & McDonnell

Related Links

http://www.burnsmcd.com


"I am honored to be recognized among the most influential leaders in health care," said Tyson. "Modern Healthcare's annual ranking is a testament to the leaders who are working every day to impact health care for millions of Americans. The 200,000 employees and 19,000 physicians at Kaiser Permanente made my recognition possible, and together we are transforming the future of health."

Under Tyson's leadership, Kaiser Permanente serves as a model for the future of health through its industry-leading approach that is transforming care for the 21st century. The organization continues its commitment to delivering quality care through innovation and technology rooted in patient-centered design and service. In the past year, Kaiser Permanente conducted nearly 59 million telehealth visits. In addition, Kaiser Permanente plans to launch its own school of medicine and to acquire Seattle-based Group Health. Tyson has also continued to champion specialty drug pricing reform and has advocated for greater dialogue on mental health nationally.

Eugene Washington, MD, president and CEO of Duke University Health System and member of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Hospitals boards of directors is recognized as No. 88 on the Modern Healthcare List.

Now in its 15th year, Modern Healthcare's annual "100 Most Influential People in Healthcare" list continues to honor individuals who make a significant impact on both the health care industry and within their organizations.

About Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America's leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Founded in 1945, Kaiser Permanente has a mission to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve more than 10.6 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal physicians, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the-art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health. For more information, go to: kp.org/share.

For more information:

Marc Brown, 510-271-6328, [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160821/399867

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130718/SF49717LOGO

SOURCE Kaiser Permanente

Related Links

http://www.kaiserpermanente.org


AUBURN, Ala., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Chicken Salad Chick, the nation's only southern inspired, fast casual chicken salad restaurant concept, announced today it will be expanding in Florida with its third location in Jacksonville. The new restaurant will open on Tuesday, Aug. 30 in Galleria Marketplace in Southpoint at 6025 Butler Point Road. Chicken Salad Chick of Jacksonville  Galleria marks the 14th Chicken Salad Chick restaurant in Florida and is owned and operated by existing husband-and-wife franchisee team Becky Roland and Richard Meadows, alongside their son, David Roland.

During grand opening week, guests will enjoy southern hospitality through giveaways and specials at the new Chicken Salad Chick restaurant:

Tuesday, Aug. 30  The first guest will win a free pound of chicken salad per week for an entire year; the next 74 guests receive a free pound of chicken salad per month for a year.*

 The first guest will win a free pound of chicken salad per week for an entire year; the next 74 guests receive a free pound of chicken salad per month for a year.* Wednesday, Aug. 31  The first 100 guests will receive a complimentary Chicken Salad Chick Selfie Stick.

 The first 100 guests will receive a complimentary Chicken Salad Chick Selfie Stick. Thursday, Sept. 1  Guests who spend at least $30 in the restaurant will receive a limited edition Chick Tervis Tumbler.

 Guests who spend at least in the restaurant will receive a limited edition Chick Tervis Tumbler. Friday, Sept. 2  Guests who purchase two pounds of chicken salad receive a free cooler.**

 Guests who purchase two pounds of chicken salad receive a free cooler.** Saturday, Sept. 3  Guests will be entered into a raffle for a Chicken Salad Chick beach bag filled with goodies.

"Richard, David and I are incredibly proud to be a part of the Chicken Salad Chick family and have enjoyed growing with the brand over the past four years," said Becky Roland. "The unique concept and exceptional dining experience is truly unmatched, and we are thrilled to continue to be part of the company's growth in Jacksonville. We look forward to being able to share our delicious food and genuine hospitality with the Jacksonville community for many years to come."

Becky Roland discovered the Chicken Salad Chick concept when her daughter was in school at Auburn University. Roland, who owns the Wishbone Group Inc., along with her husband and son, opened the first franchised restaurant in 2012 in North Port, Fla. Wishbone Group Inc. now owns six Chicken Salad Chick restaurants across the southeast, including the first Chicken Salad Chick in Jacksonville, which opened in May 2015.

The Chicken Salad Chick concept, born in Auburn, Ala., was established in 2008 in the kitchen of founder, Stacy Brown. When Stacy discovered that the local county health department would not allow her to continue making and selling her delicious recipes out of her home kitchen, she overcame that obstacle by launching her first restaurant with the business expertise of her future husband and fellow founder, Kevin Brown. Together, they opened a small takeout restaurant, which quickly grew; the company now has 59 restaurants across the Southeast.

Chicken Salad Chick in Jacksonville is open daily from 11 a.m.  8 p.m. For more information, visit http://www.chickensaladchick.com. Follow Chicken Salad Chick on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for the latest news and trends.

*Eligible winners must be over 16 years of age and are required to download the CravingCredits app.

**While supplies last.

About Chicken Salad Chick

Chicken Salad Chick puts an edgy twist on a southern classic, offering guests a "custom fit" chicken salad experience, with 15 original flavors to choose from, as well as gourmet soups, flavorful side salads and freshly-baked desserts. Today, the brand has 59 locations across the Southeast, and has currently sold 147 franchises to be developed across the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. The brand was recently named as the top chicken salad in the country to try in the March/April issue of Cooking with Paula Deen, as well as one of FastCasual.com's top Movers and Shakers and as one of NRN's 2015 Breakout Brands. Corporate offices are located at 724 North Dean Road in Auburn, Alabama. See www.chickensaladchick.com for additional information.

Contact:

Tiffany Trilli

Fish Consulting

954-893-9150

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151005/274280LOGO

SOURCE Chicken Salad Chick

Related Links

http://www.chickensaladchick.com


HONG KONG, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- China Cord Blood Corporation (NYSE: CO) ("CCBC" or the "Company"), China's leading provider of cord blood collection, laboratory testing, hematopoietic stem cell processing and stem cell storage services, today announced its unaudited financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 ended June 30, 2016.

First Quarter of Fiscal 2017 Highlights

Revenues for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 increased by 4.6% to RMB173.0 million ( $26.0 million ) from RMB165.4 million in the prior year period.

( ) from in the prior year period. New subscribers and accumulated subscriber base were 16,637 and 520,905, respectively.

Gross profit increased by 5.2% to RMB135.5 million ( $20.4 million ) from RMB128.8 million in the prior year period.

Gross profit increased by 5.2% to ( ) from in the prior year period. Gross margin increased to 78.4% from 77.9% in the prior year period.

Operating income increased by 7.7% to RMB52.1 million ( $7.8 million ) from RMB48.4 million in the prior year period.

( ) from in the prior year period. Operating income before depreciation and amortization and share-based compensation expenses was RMB79.8 million ( $12.0 million ), up 6.6% compared to RMB74.8 million in the prior year period. 1

( ), up 6.6% compared to in the prior year period. Interest expense was RMB28.8 million ( $4.3 million ) compared to RMB25.9 million in the prior year period.

( ) compared to in the prior year period. Net income attributable to the Company's shareholders increased by 16.0% to RMB15.7 million ( $2.4 million ) from RMB13.6 million in the prior year period.

( ) from in the prior year period. Net cash provided by operating activities for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 increased to RMB131.0 million ( $19.7 million ) from RMB130.1 million .

1 See exhibit 3 of this press release for a reconciliation of operating income to exclude the non-cash items related to the depreciation and amortization and share-based compensation expenses to the comparable financial measure prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles ("U.S. GAAP").

"Demand for our cord blood banking services showed healthy improvement as the number of newborns in China grew in the first quarter of fiscal 2017. We continued to optimize our marketing efforts and enhance our sales force, resulting in over sixteen thousand new subscribers during the reporting period, a reasonable increase over the prior year. Our accumulated subscriber base rose 13.9% to over 520,000 as of the end of June 2016, compared with that as of the end of June 2015," said Ms. Ting Zheng, Chief Executive Officer of China Cord Blood Corporation. "As we look at our opportunity in the near-term, we maintain a prudent outlook as China's overall economy continues to slow, which could impact consumer spending levels. Additionally, the National Health and Family Planning Commission recently rolled out a detailed policy to further regulate the clinical applications of various stem cells. These events may result in some near-term slowing of new client subscriptions, however we believe such regulation will benefit CCBC and the broader cord blood banking industry over the longer term. Looking ahead to the second quarter, we are committed to meeting such challenges by raising awareness and emphasizing the clinical benefits of our services. We will strive to achieve our full year subscription target goal through careful planning and prudent execution."

Summary  First Quarter Ended June 30, 2015 and 2016





Three Months Ended June 30,



2015



2016 (in thousands)

RMB



RMB



US$ Revenues



165,363





172,952





26,024 Gross Profit



128,790





135,519





20,392 Operating Income2



48,427





52,135





7,845 Interest Expense



25,883





28,833





4,338 Net Income Attributable to the

Company's Shareholders



13,551





15,722





2,367 Earnings per Ordinary Share

 Basic3 and Diluted (RMB/US$)



0.19





0.22





0.03























Revenue Breakdown (%)





















Processing Fees



64.8%





61.8%







Storage Fees



35.2%





38.2%































New Subscribers (persons)



16,090





16,637







Total Accumulated

Subscribers (persons)



457,449





520,905











2 The reported operating income for the three months ended June 30, 2015 and 2016 included the followings: (i) Depreciation and amortization expenses of RMB12.3 million and RMB12.6 million ($1.9 million) for the three months ended June 30, 2015 and 2016, respectively; and (ii) Share-based compensation expense of RMB14.1 million and RMB15.1 million ($2.3 million) for the three months ended June 30, 2015 and 2016, respectively, relating to the Company's restricted share unit scheme ("RSU Scheme") in which 7,300,000 RSUs were granted to certain executives, directors and key employees during the three months ended December 31, 2014.

3 The terms of the convertible notes provide the holder with the ability to participate in any excess cash dividend. As there is no excess cash dividend for the three months ended June 30, 2015 and 2016, such participating right effect is nil.

Summary  Selected Cash Flow Statement Items





Three Months Ended June 30,



2015



2016 (in thousands)

RMB



RMB



US$ Net cash provided by operating activities



130,126





131,014





19,714 Net cash used in investing activities



(5,579)





(79,129)





(11,907) Net cash provided by financing activities



-





-





-

First Quarter of Fiscal 2017 Financial Results

REVENUES. Revenues increased by 4.6% to RMB173.0 million ($26.0 million) in the first quarter of fiscal 2017 from RMB165.4 million in the prior year period. The key driver of this increase was the solid increase in storage fee revenues.

Revenues generated from storage fees increased by 13.6% to RMB66.1 million ($9.9 million) in the first quarter of fiscal 2017 from RMB58.3 million in the prior year period. The increase was due to the expansion of the accumulated subscriber base. The subscriber base grew to 520,905 by the end of June 2016. Storage fee revenues accounted for 38.2% of total revenues, compared to 35.2% in the prior year period.

Revenues generated from processing fees and other services in the first quarter of fiscal 2017 were RMB106.9 million ($16.1 million), compared to RMB107.1 million in the prior year period. Revenues generated from processing fees accounted for 61.8% of total revenues, compared to 64.8% in the prior year period.

GROSS PROFIT. Gross profit for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 amounted to RMB135.5 million ($20.4 million), a 5.2% increase from RMB128.8 million in the prior year period. Gross margin was 78.4%, up from 77.9% in the prior year period.

OPERATING INCOME. Operating income for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 increased by 7.7% to RMB52.1 million ($7.8 million) from RMB48.4 million in the prior year period. Accordingly, operating margin increased to 30.1%, compared to 29.3% in the prior year period. Depreciation and amortization expenses for the reporting quarter were RMB12.6 million ($1.9 million), compared to RMB12.3 million in the prior year period. Share-based compensation expense totaled RMB15.1 million ($2.3 million) for the first quarter of fiscal 2017, compared to RMB14.1 million in the prior year period. Operating income before depreciation and amortization and share-based compensation expenses totaled RMB79.8 million ($12.0 million), a 6.6% increase compared to RMB74.8 million in the prior year period.4

Research and Development Expenses. Research and development expenses remained stable at RMB1.9 million ($0.3 million) in the first quarter of fiscal 2017.

Sales and Marketing Expenses. Sales and marketing expenses for the first quarter amounted to RMB38.2 million ($5.7 million), compared to RMB37.2 million in the prior year period. The increase was mainly due to further marketing efforts and sales force refinement. As a percentage of revenues, sales and marketing expenses were 22.1% compared to 22.5% in the prior year period.

General and Administrative Expenses. General and administrative expenses for the first quarter increased slightly to RMB43.2 million ($6.5 million) from RMB41.2 million in the prior year period. General and administrative expenses as the percentage of revenues remained stable at 25.0%, compared to 24.9% in the prior year period.

4 See exhibit 3 of this press release for a reconciliation of operating income to exclude the non-cash items related to the depreciation and amortization and share-based compensation expenses to the comparable financial measure prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

OTHER INCOME AND EXPENSES.

Interest Expense. Interest expense was RMB28.8 million ($4.3 million), compared to RMB25.9 million in the prior year period. Interest expense was mainly related to the Company's outstanding convertible notes denominated in USD. The increase was due to the compounding interest effect of the convertible notes and the effect of the depreciation of RMB against the USD.

NET INCOME ATTRIBUTABLE TO THE COMPANY'S SHAREHOLDERS. Income before income tax for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 was RMB27.9 million ($4.2 million), compared to RMB28.5 million in the prior year period. As Zhejiang Cord Blood Bank was qualified as a High and New Technology Enterprise in January 2016 which entitled it to the preferential income tax rate of 15%, income tax expense for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 decreased to RMB11.7 million ($1.8 million) from RMB15.0 million in the prior year period. Net income attributable to the Company's shareholders for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 increased to RMB15.7 million ($2.4 million), up 16.0% from RMB13.6 million in the prior year period. Accordingly, net margin for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 increased to 9.1% from 8.2% in the prior year period.

EARNINGS PER SHARE. Basic and diluted earnings per ordinary share for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 were RMB0.22 ($0.03).5

5 During the quarter ended December 31, 2014, the Company granted a total of 7,300,000 RSUs to certain executives, directors and key employees under the Company's RSU Scheme, subject to certain performance conditions. Out of 7,300,000 RSUs granted, 7,080,000 ordinary shares ("Shares") were then issued and deposited into a trust sponsored and funded by the Company ("Trust"), and will be transferred to respective executives, directors and key employees (or their designated nominees) under the Company's RSU Scheme when the performance conditions are met. The Trust facilitates the granting (and subsequent vesting) of incentive RSUs and holds such Shares for the benefit of such executives, directors and key employees as a class. Taking into account of such Shares, in addition to 73,003,248 outstanding shares, basic and diluted earnings per ordinary share would be RMB0.17 and RMB0.20 ($0.03) for the three months ended June 30, 2015 and 2016, respectively.

LIQUIDITY. As of June 30, 2016, the Company had cash and cash equivalents of RMB3,070.4 million ($462.0 million), up from RMB3,008.4 million as of March 31, 2016. The Company had total debt6 of RMB1,008.2 million ($151.7 million) as of June 30, 2016, up slightly from RMB966.2 million as of March 31, 2016. Net cash provided by operating activities for the first quarter of fiscal 2017 amounted to RMB131.0 million ($19.7 million).

6 Total debt represented the carrying amounts of bank loan and convertible notes, net.

Recent Developments

On April 27, 2015 , the Company announced that its board of directors (the "Board") had received a non-binding proposal letter from Golden Meditech Holdings Limited ("Golden Meditech"), pursuant to which Golden Meditech proposed to acquire all of the outstanding ordinary shares of the Company not already directly or indirectly owned by Golden Meditech for $6.40 per ordinary share in cash in a "going-private" transaction (the "GM Proposal"). On the same day, the Board had formed a special committee of independent directors, consisting of Mr. Mark Chen , Ms. Jennifer Weng and Dr. Ken Lu , who are not affiliated with Golden Meditech to evaluate such proposal and certain other potential transactions involving the Company. The special committee subsequently appointed Houlihan Lokey ( China ) Limited as its independent financial advisor, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP as its United States legal counsel and Maples & Calder as its Cayman Islands legal counsel to assist in evaluating GM Proposal and the Company's other alternatives but has not set a definitive timetable to complete its evaluation of the GM Proposal or any other alternative.



, the Company announced that its board of directors (the "Board") had received a non-binding proposal letter from Golden Meditech Holdings Limited ("Golden Meditech"), pursuant to which Golden Meditech proposed to acquire all of the outstanding ordinary shares of the Company not already directly or indirectly owned by Golden Meditech for per ordinary share in cash in a "going-private" transaction (the "GM Proposal"). On the same day, the Board had formed a special committee of independent directors, consisting of Mr. , Ms. and Dr. , who are not affiliated with Golden Meditech to evaluate such proposal and certain other potential transactions involving the Company. The special committee subsequently appointed ( ) Limited as its independent financial advisor, & Hamilton LLP as its legal counsel and Maples & Calder as its legal counsel to assist in evaluating GM Proposal and the Company's other alternatives but has not set a definitive timetable to complete its evaluation of the GM Proposal or any other alternative. In May 2015 , Golden Meditech initiated a series of agreements and transactions to acquire, directly or indirectly, $115 million in aggregate principal amount of the Company's outstanding 7% senior convertible notes due 2017 ("Convertible Notes") and 7,314,015 ordinary shares of the Company (the "CGL Sale Shares").



, Golden Meditech initiated a series of agreements and transactions to acquire, directly or indirectly, in aggregate principal amount of the Company's outstanding 7% senior convertible notes due 2017 ("Convertible Notes") and 7,314,015 ordinary shares of the Company (the "CGL Sale Shares"). On August 6, 2015 , the Company announced that the Board had received a non-binding acquisition proposal letter from Nanjing Xinjiekou Department Store Co., Ltd. ("Nanjing Xinjiekou"), pursuant to which Nanjing Xinjiekou offered to acquire all of the Company's China business, including all of the Company's equity interests in its China subsidiaries and its assets and resources relating to its business in China (the "Nanjing Xinjiekou Proposal"). The purchase price offered is not lower than RMB6.0 billion .



, the Company announced that the Board had received a non-binding acquisition proposal letter from Nanjing Xinjiekou Department Store Co., Ltd. ("Nanjing Xinjiekou"), pursuant to which Nanjing Xinjiekou offered to acquire all of the Company's business, including all of the Company's equity interests in its subsidiaries and its assets and resources relating to its business in (the "Nanjing Xinjiekou Proposal"). The purchase price offered is not lower than . On November 5, 2015 , the Company was informed that Golden Meditech and Nanjing Xinjiekou entered into a non-binding framework purchase agreement (the "MOU"), pursuant to which Nanjing Xinjiekou proposed to acquire from Golden Meditech approximately 65.1% of the Company's issued share capital on a fully diluted basis and to provide assistance, including possible financing, to Golden Meditech in its proposed "going private" transaction involving the Company. Concurrently, Nanjing Xinjiekou also indicated its intention to acquire the remaining 34.9% of the Company's ordinary shares owned by other shareholders of the Company.



, the Company was informed that Golden Meditech and Nanjing Xinjiekou entered into a non-binding framework purchase agreement (the "MOU"), pursuant to which Nanjing Xinjiekou proposed to acquire from Golden Meditech approximately 65.1% of the Company's issued share capital on a fully diluted basis and to provide assistance, including possible financing, to Golden Meditech in its proposed "going private" transaction involving the Company. Concurrently, Nanjing Xinjiekou also indicated its intention to acquire the remaining 34.9% of the Company's ordinary shares owned by other shareholders of the Company. On November 30, 2015 , Golden Meditech entered into agreement with Mr. Yuen Kam, the Company's chairman, to acquire 357,331 ordinary shares of the Company (the "Kam Sale Shares").



, Golden Meditech entered into agreement with Mr. Yuen Kam, the Company's chairman, to acquire 357,331 ordinary shares of the Company (the "Kam Sale Shares"). On January 4, 2016 , Golden Meditech, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Golden Meditech Stem Cells (BVI) Company Limited ("GM Stem Cells"), completed the acquisitions of the Convertible Notes, the CGL Sale Shares and the Kam Sale Shares, using the net proceeds from open offer and issuance of promissory notes. GM Stem Cells became the owner of the Convertible Notes, the CGL Sale Shares and the Kam Sale Shares.



, Golden Meditech, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Golden Meditech Stem Cells (BVI) Company Limited ("GM Stem Cells"), completed the acquisitions of the Convertible Notes, the CGL Sale Shares and the Kam Sale Shares, using the net proceeds from open offer and issuance of promissory notes. GM Stem Cells became the owner of the Convertible Notes, the CGL Sale Shares and the Kam Sale Shares. On January 7, 2016 , the Company was informed that GM Stem Cells entered into a conditional sale and purchase agreement with Nanjing Xinjiekou on January 6, 2016 regarding the disposal of its shares and Convertible Notes, representing an aggregate 65.4% equity interest of the Company on a fully diluted basis, for a total consideration of approximately RMB5.764 billion .

The total consideration consists of a cash payment of approximately $504.8 million (approximately RMB3.264 billion) and the issuance of RMB2.5 billion new shares by Nanjing Xinjiekou at the initial issue price of RMB18.61 per share (the "NXD New Shares"). Pursuant to the conditional sale and purchase agreement, Nanjing Xinjiekou requires the existing Company management team to stay on until December 31, 2018 and GM Stem Cells has agreed to a three-year performance guarantee and to have the NXD New Shares subject to a three-year lock-up period.

GM Stem Cells also entered into another conditional sale and purchase agreement with Nanjing Xinjiekou, pursuant to which GM Stem Cells agrees to sell the remaining 34.6% equity interest (on a fully diluted basis) of the Company to Nanjing Xinjiekou for a total cash consideration of approximately $267 million (approximately RMB1.73 billion), if the privatization of the Company is completed. The completion of both sale and purchase agreements are conditional upon the satisfaction of effectiveness conditions and the satisfaction (or waiving, if applicable) of all the conditions precedent to completion, including but not limited to obtaining all relevant regulatory approvals and shareholders' approvals, and the completion of the two sales and purchase agreements are not interconditional.

The Company cautions its shareholders and others considering trading its securities that no decisions have been made with respect to the Company's response to GM Proposal and Nanjing Xinjiekou Proposal, and there cannot be any assurance that any transactions will be completed with respect to the proposals made by Golden Meditech and Nanjing Xinjiekou and the proposed transactions between GM Stem Cells and Nanjing Xinjiekou, or that this or any other transaction will be approved or consummated.

Conference Call

The Company will host a conference call at 8:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, August 23, 2016 to discuss its financial performance and give a brief overview of the Company's recent developments, followed by a question and answer session. Interested parties can access the audio webcast through the Company's IR website at http://ir.chinacordbloodcorp.com. A replay of the webcast will be accessible two hours after the conference call and available for three weeks at the same URL above. Listeners can also access the call by dialing 1-631-514-2526 or 1-855-298-3404 for US callers, or +852-5808-3202 for Hong Kong callers, access code: 9195976.

Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures

GAAP results for the three months ended June 30, 2016 include non-cash items related to the depreciation and amortization and share-based compensation expenses. To supplement the Company's unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements presented on a U.S. GAAP basis, the Company has provided adjusted financial information excluding the impact of these items in this press release. The non-GAAP financial measure represents non-GAAP operating income. Such adjustment is a departure of U.S. GAAP; however, the Company's management believes that these adjusted measures provide investors with a better understanding of how the results relate to the Company's historical performance. Also, management uses non-GAAP operating income as a measurement tool for evaluating actual operating performance compared to budget and prior periods. These adjusted measures should not be considered an alternative to operating income, or any other measure of financial performance or liquidity presented in accordance with U.S. GAAP. These measures are not necessarily comparable to a similarly titled measure of another company. A reconciliation of the adjustments to U.S. GAAP results appears in exhibit 3 accompanying this press release. This additional adjusted information is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for U.S. GAAP financials. The adjusted financial information that the Company provides also may differ from the adjusted information provided by other companies.

About China Cord Blood Corporation

China Cord Blood Corporation is the first and largest umbilical cord blood banking operator in China in terms of geographical coverage and the only cord blood banking operator with multiple licenses. Under current PRC government regulations, only one licensed cord blood banking operator is permitted to operate in each licensed region and no new licenses will be granted before 2020 in addition to the seven licenses authorized as of today. China Cord Blood Corporation provides cord blood collection, laboratory testing, hematopoietic stem cell processing, and stem cell storage services. For more information, please visit our website at http://www.chinacordbloodcorp.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements relate to future events or the Company's future financial performance. The Company has attempted to identify forward-looking statements by terminology including "anticipates", "believes", "expects", "can", "continue", "could", "estimates", "intends", "may", "plans", "potential", "predict", "should" or "will" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These statements are only predictions, uncertainties and other factors may cause the Company's actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. The information in this press release is not intended to project future performance of the Company. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, the Company does not guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. The Company expectations are as of the date this press release is issued, and the Company does not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date this press release is issued to conform these statements to actual results, unless required by law.

The forward-looking statements included in this press release are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions about the Company's businesses and business environments. These statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events and are not a guarantee of future performance. Actual results of the Company's operations may differ materially from information contained in the forward-looking statements as a result of risk factors some of which include, among other things: continued compliance with government regulations regarding cord blood banking in the People's Republic of China, or PRC and any other jurisdiction in which the Company conducts its operations; changing legislation or regulatory environments (including the recent relaxation of China's one child policy) in the PRC and any other jurisdiction in which the Company conducts its operations; the acceptance by subscribers of the Company's different pricing and payment options and reaction to the introduction of the Company's premium-quality pricing strategy; demographic trends in the regions of the PRC in which the Company is the exclusive licensed cord blood banking operator; labor and personnel relations; the existence of a significant shareholder able to influence and direct the corporate policies of the Company; credit risks affecting the Company's revenue and profitability; changes in the healthcare industry, including those which may result in the use of stem cell therapies becoming redundant or obsolete; the Company's ability to effectively manage its growth, including implementing effective controls and procedures and attracting and retaining key management and personnel; changing interpretations of generally accepted accounting principles; the availability of capital resources, including in the form of capital markets financing opportunities, in light of industry developments affecting issuers that have pursued a "reverse merger" with an operating company based in China, as well as general economic conditions; compliance with restrictive debt covenants under our senior convertible notes; the non-binding proposal letters from Golden Meditech and Nanjing Xinjiekou; and other relevant risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States.

This announcement contains translations of certain Renminbi amounts into U.S. dollars at specified rates solely for the convenience of readers. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Renminbi to U.S. dollars as of and for the periods ending June 30, 2016 were made at the noon buying rate of RMB6.6459 to $1.00 on June 30, 2016 in the City of New York for cable transfers in Renminbi per U.S. dollar as certified for customs purposes by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. China Cord Blood Corporation makes no representation that the Renminbi or U.S. dollar amounts referred to in this press release could have been or could be converted into U.S. dollars or Renminbi, at any particular rate or at all.

For more information, please contact:

China Cord Blood Corporation

Investor Relations Department

Tel: (+852) 3605-8180

Email: [email protected]

ICR, Inc.

William Zima

Tel: (+86) 10-6583-7511

U.S. Tel: (646) 405-5185

Email: [email protected]

CHINA CORD BLOOD CORPORATION UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS As of March 31 and June 30, 2016













March 31,

June 30,

2016

2016

RMB

RMB

US$

(in thousands except share data) ASSETS









Current assets









Cash and cash equivalents 3,008,422

3,070,419

462,002 Accounts receivable, less allowance for doubtful









accounts (March 31, 2016: RMB38,261; June 30, 2016: RMB39,898 (US$6,003)) 124,645

120,720

18,165 Inventories 28,326

26,185

3,940 Prepaid expenses and other receivables 24,412

15,662

2,356 Deferred tax assets 14,056

14,793

2,226 Total current assets 3,199,861

3,247,779

488,689 Property, plant and equipment, net 574,567

569,128

85,636 Non-current prepayments 218,379

232,755

35,022 Non-current accounts receivable, less allowance









for doubtful accounts (March 31, 2016: RMB62,633; June 30, 2016: RMB63,856 (US$9,608)) 165,011

162,378

24,433 Inventories 64,322

66,541

10,012 Intangible assets, net 111,307

110,152

16,574 Available-for-sale equity securities 162,734

227,783

34,274 Other investment 189,129

189,129

28,458 Deferred tax assets 2,617

2,398

361 Total assets 4,687,927

4,808,043

723,459











LIABILITIES









Current liabilities









Bank loan 60,000

60,000

9,028 Accounts payable 13,248

13,345

2,008 Accrued expenses and other payables 61,304

65,335

9,831 Deferred revenue 257,692

273,148

41,100 Amounts due to related parties 53,255

28,080

4,225 Income tax payable 8,524

9,842

1,481 Deferred tax liabilities 14,300

15,600

2,347 Total current liabilities 468,323

465,350

70,020 Convertible notes, net 906,222

948,208

142,676 Non-current deferred revenue 1,321,239

1,373,876

206,725 Other non-current liabilities 255,932

266,443

40,091 Deferred tax liabilities 22,786

22,689

3,414 Total liabilities 2,974,502

3,076,566

462,926











EQUITY









Shareholders' equity of China Cord Blood

Corporation









Ordinary shares









- US$0.0001 par value, 250,000,000 shares

authorized, 73,140,147 shares issued and 73,003,248 shares outstanding as of March 31 and June 30, 2016, respectively 50

50

8 Additional paid-in capital 873,654

888,975

133,763 Treasury stock, at cost (March 31 and June 30, 2016: 136,899 shares, respectively) (2,815)

(2,815)

(424) Accumulated other comprehensive income 84,779

71,349

10,735 Retained earnings 753,585

769,307

115,757 Total equity attributable to China Cord Blood

Corporation 1,709,253

1,726,866

259,839 Non-controlling interests 4,172

4,611

694 Total equity 1,713,425

1,731,477

260,533 Total liabilities and equity 4,687,927

4,808,043

723,459













EXHIBIT 2





















































CHINA CORD BLOOD CORPORATION

UNAUDITED CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME

For the Three Months ended June 30, 2015 and 2016

















Three months ended June 30,





2015

2016





RMB

RMB

US$





(in thousands except per share data)

















Revenues

165,363

172,952

26,024

Direct costs

(36,573)

(37,433)

(5,632)

Gross profit

128,790

135,519

20,392

Operating expenses













Research and development

(1,934)

(1,949)

(293)

Sales and marketing

(37,209)

(38,192)

(5,747)

General and administrative

(41,220)

(43,243)

(6,507)

Total operating expenses

(80,363)

(83,384)

(12,547)

Operating income

48,427

52,135

7,845

Other expense, net













Interest income

4,710

4,277

644

Interest expense

(25,883)

(28,833)

(4,338)

Foreign currency exchange (losses)/gains

(41)

135

20

Dividend income

1,180

-

-

Others

89

152

23

Total other expense, net

(19,945)

(24,269)

(3,651)

Income before income tax

28,482

27,866

4,194

Income tax expense

(14,989)

(11,676)

(1,757)

Net income

13,493

16,190

2,437

Net loss/(income) attributable to













non-controlling interests

58

(468)

(70)

Net income attributable to













China Cord Blood Corporation's













shareholders

13,551

15,722

2,367

















Earnings per share:













Attributable to ordinary shares













- Basic

0.19

0.22

0.03

- Diluted

0.19

0.22

0.03

































Other comprehensive













income/(loss),









net of nil income taxes









- Foreign currency translation adjustments

559

(6,960)

(1,047)

- Unrealized holding gain/(loss) in

available-for-sale equity securities

10,860

(6,470)

(974)

Total other comprehensive

income/(loss)

11,419

(13,430)

(2,021)

Comprehensive income

24,912

2,760

416

















Comprehensive loss/(income) attributable to non-controlling interests

58

(468)

(70)

Comprehensive income

attributable to China Cord Blood

Corporation's shareholders

24,970

2,292

346































EXHIBIT 3 CHINA CORD BLOOD CORPORATION RECONCILIATION OF NON-GAAP OPERATING INCOME For the Three Months ended June 30, 2015 and 2016









Three months ended June 30,



2015

2016



RMB

RMB

US$



(in thousands)

































GAAP amount of operating income



48,427



52,135



7,845



















Depreciation and amortization expenses7



12,328



12,584



1,894



















Share-based compensation expense8



14,093



15,059



2,266



















Non-GAAP operating income



74,848



79,778



12,005



















7 Depreciation and amortization expenses relate to property, plant and equipment and intangible assets respectively.

8 Share-based compensation expense relates to the Company's RSU Scheme in which 7,300,000 RSUs were granted to certain executives, directors and key employees during the three months ended December 31, 2014.

SOURCE China Cord Blood Corporation

Related Links

http://www.chinacordbloodcorp.com


MARLBOROUGH, Mass., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Concentric Energy Advisors, Inc. ("Concentric") is pleased to announce that Ralph Zarumba has joined the firm as Vice President, and on August 29, 2016 Gregg Therrien will join the firm as Assistant Vice President, both in the regulatory consulting practice of the firm.

Mr. Zarumba has more than 30 years of experience performing economic, regulatory and financial analysis. He has specialized in theoretical and applied techniques of electricity cost and pricing analysis, market analysis, and regulatory policy. Mr. Zarumba has testified as an expert witness in multiple jurisdictions and is currently leading a team who is supporting the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority in their first rate request before an external regulator. Prior to joining Concentric, Mr. Zarumba served as a Director of the Energy Practice at Navigant Consulting.

Mr. Therrien is a former utility executive who has held Director level positions at Connecticut Natural Gas Corporation and affiliated companies for more than 15 years. Most recently, he served as the Director, Gas Construction at Connecticut Natural Gas and The Southern Connecticut Gas Company and Director, Regulatory & Tariffs at UIL Holdings, Inc. Mr. Therrien's experience includes developing regulatory strategies and addressing technical rate case issues such as utility cost of service, rate design, tariff writing and administration, as well as leading pricing, gas cost accounting, gross margin and load forecasting efforts for regulated utilities.

"As we see the energy industry undergo major shifts in regulation and traditional utility business practices, Concentric's stable of energy experts are assisting the industry in addressing these challenges and developments," said John J. Reed, Concentric's Chairman and CEO. "With the additions of Ralph and Gregg to our team, we will continue to provide highly-regarded experts with extensive testifying experience and in-depth knowledge of emerging regulatory trends to our clients to guide them through these evolving issues."

Mr. Zarumba will be located in Chicago, Illinois and Mr. Therrien will be located in Concentric's headquarters in Marlborough, Massachusetts.

Concentric Energy Advisors (ceadvisors.com) specializes in management consulting and financial advisory services with an exclusive focus on the North American energy industry. Our staff possesses expertise in all aspects of the power and natural gas markets at both the wholesale and retail levels, as well as the oil pipeline industry. Our service areas include: utility regulation, financial advisory, market analysis and resource planning as well as litigation support. Our energy industry experts have held positions with utility companies, regulatory agencies, integrated energy companies, regional transmission organizations, retail marketing companies, and utility management consulting firms.

Contact:

Maggie Connolly

508-263-6236

[email protected]

SOURCE Concentric Energy Advisors, Inc.

Related Links

www.ceadvisors.com


 Flash

Israeli war jets carried out on Sunday night a series of intensive airstrikes on militants posts in northern Gaza Strip in response to earlier rockets firing from the area into southern Israel, security sources said.

The sources said that Israeli tanks stationed on the borders between northeast Gaza Strip and Israel fired around nine shells on agricultural areas in the town of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza Strip, no injuries were reported.

Eyewitnesses said that Israeli drones and war jets hovered over the area and carried out 15 successive airstrikes on posts and facilities that belonged to Islamic Hamas movement, the Islamic Jihad and the left-wing Popular Front (PFLP).

Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of Gaza health ministry, said two civilians were injured in the Israeli strikes on northern Gaza Strip, adding that they were taken to a nearby hospital for medical treatment.

The security sources said that since Sunday afternoon, the Israeli army had carried out 46 artillery shelling and airstrikes on the northern area of the Gaza Strip in response to the earlier rockets' firing into Israel.

Earlier on Sunday, unknown militants fired four rockets from northern Gaza Strip into southern Israeli town of Sderout. One of the rockets caused severe damages to two houses in the town, no injuries were reported.

However, a military group, affiliated with the Salafist and sharing the same logo of the Islamic State, claimed responsibility in a statement for firing the four rockets into Israel.
LAVAL, QC, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. (TSX: ATD.A ATD.B), ("Couche-Tard"), today announces a definitive merger agreement with CST Brands, Inc. (NYSE: CST) ("CST") under which Couche-Tard would acquire CST in an all-cash transaction for US $48.53 per share, with a total enterprise value of approximately US $4.4 billion including net debt assumed. The terms and conditions of the agreement were unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies.

CST is based in San Antonio, Texas and employs over 14,000 people at over 2,000 locations throughout the Southwestern United States with an important presence in Texas, in Georgia, in the U.S. Southeast Region, in the State of New York and Eastern Canada. CST also controls the general partner of CrossAmerica Partners LP (NYSE: CAPL) ("CAPL"), owns 100% of its Incentive Distribution Rights and holds a significant equity investment in it. CAPL distributes branded and unbranded road transportation fuel to more than 1,100 locations in the United States.

The transaction price represents a premium of 42% to CST's closing share price on March 3, 2016, the last trading day prior to CST announcing that it would explore and review its strategic alternatives to further enhance its stockholder value.

This all-cash transaction is expected to be financed by Couche-Tard's available cash, existing credit facilities and a new term loan. The CST transaction is expected to close in early calendar year 2017 and is subject to the approval of CST's stockholders and regulatory approvals in the United States and Canada.

Couche-Tard has also entered into an agreement with Parkland Fuel Corporation (TSX: PKI) pursuant to which it would sell certain Canadian assets of CST after the merger for approximately US$ 750 million. The assets in Canada that would be sold include a) CST's Cardlock business, b) CST's Dealer and Commission Agents business, c) CST's Commercial and Home Energy business, d) a number of company-operated stores to be determined following the Competition Bureau of Canada's review of the transaction and e) CST's Montreal corporate head office. This transaction is subject to customary regulatory approval and closing conditions. Couche-Tard intends to use the proceeds from this sale to repay part of its credit facilities.

"We look forward to welcoming CST and CAPL to the Couche-Tard family" says Brian Hannasch, Couche-Tard's President and Chief Executive Officer. "CST is an excellent company and is well positioned in the Southwestern United States with an important presence in Texas, Georgia, in the U.S. Southeast Region, New York and Eastern Canada. With this transaction we would strategically strengthen our positioning in both the "sun belt" and the east coast of North America. Our teams are looking forward to meeting CST customers and welcoming them into the Couche-Tard family."

"We are excited to share best practices with CST as well as to combine the capabilities of CST's team with Couche-Tard's, to enhance value for our stockholders. We strongly believe that our all-cash offer is a compelling one for CST's stockholders, giving them the opportunity to realize full and immediate value for their investment," says Brian Hannasch.

Alain Bouchard, Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors, Couche-Tard says, "I have always thought that in our industry 'size matters', whether that be for purchasing, logistics, best practices or for becoming famous for our product categories. The addition of CST's exceptional people and its strategic assets takes us one step further towards all these goals. I look forward to welcoming the CST and CAPL teams onboard into our growing company."

Upon completion of the transaction, Couche-Tard would establish a new business unit in San Antonio with attached shared services operations.

Faegre Baker Daniels LLP and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg are acting as legal advisors to Couche-Tard. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and National Bank Financial advised Couche-Tard in connection with the transaction.

INVITATION TO CONFERENCE CALLS AND WEBCAST

FOR ANALYSTS AND MEDIA REPRESENTATIVES  AUGUST 22, 2016

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. invites analysts and media representatives to two separate conference calls in which representatives of Couche-Tard's management team will participate.

An investor presentation will be available on http://corpo.couche-tard.com.

For analysts: There will be a conference call for analysts only that will take place today, starting at 8:30 a.m. (EDT) promptly. Analysts will need to contact CNW at one of the following numbers: (866) 865-3087, (514) 807-9895 or (647) 427-7450, conference number 69750702# and will need to identify themselves. Lines will be available 30 minutes in advance to allow them to register. Participants will not be able to join the call after it has started. The session will be taped and the recording will be made available on http://corpo.couche-tard.com for a 30-day period.

For media representatives: There will be a conference call and a webcast for media representatives only that will take place today, starting at 11:00 a.m. (EDT) promptly. Media representatives will need to contact CNW at one of the following numbers: (866) 865-3087, (514) 807-9895 or (647) 427-7450, conference number 69746602# and will need to identify themselves. Lines will be available 30 minutes in advance to allow them to register. Participants will not be able to join the call after it has started. A live audio webcast of the conference call will be available through the following link: webcast.

About Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc.

Couche-Tard is the leader in the Canadian convenience store industry. In the United States, it is the largest independent convenience store operator in terms of number of company-operated stores. In Europe, Couche-Tard is a leader in convenience store and road transportation fuel retail in the Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden and Denmark), in the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, in Ireland and in Russia with an important presence in Poland.

As of April 24, 2016, Couche-Tard's network comprised 7,888 convenience stores throughout North America, including 6,490 stores with road transportation fuel dispensing. Its North American network consists of 15 business units, including 11 in the United States covering 41 states and 4 in Canada covering all 10 provinces. Approximately 80,000 people are employed throughout its network and at its service offices in North America.

In Europe, Couche-Tard operates a broad retail network across Scandinavia, Ireland, Poland, the Baltics States and Russia through ten business units. As of April 24, 2016, Couche-Tard's network is comprised of 2,659 stores, the majority of which offer road transportation fuel and convenience products while the others are unmanned automated fuel sites which only offer road transportation fuel. Couche-Tard also offers other products, including stationary energy, marine fuel, aviation fuel, lubricants and chemicals. Including employees at its branded franchise stores, approximately 25,000 people work in its retail network, terminals and service offices across Europe.

In addition, under licensing agreements, almost 1,500 stores are operated under the Circle K banner in 13 other countries and territories worldwide (China, Costa Rica, Egypt, Guam, Honduras, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam), which brings the total network to over 12,000 stores.

For more information on Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., please visit: http://corpo.couche-tard.com.

Additional Information and Where to Find It

This communication does not constitute a solicitation of any vote or approval. In connection with the proposed transaction, CST intends to file a proxy statement and other relevant documents concerning the proposed transaction with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. CST will provide the full proxy statement to its stockholders. Investors and stockholders are urged to read the proxy statement and any other relevant documents filed with the SEC when they become available, as well as any amendments or supplements to those documents, because they will contain important information about the transaction. Investors and stockholders will be able to obtain a copy of the proxy statement as well as other filings containing information about CST free of charge at the SEC's Web Site at http://www.sec.gov. In addition, the proxy statement, the SEC filings that will be incorporated by reference in the proxy statement and the other documents filed with the SEC by CST may be obtained free of charge from CST's Investor Relations page on its corporate website at http://www.cstbrands.com.

CST and its directors, executive officers, and certain other members of management and employees may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies in favor of the proposed transaction from the stockholders of CST. Information about the directors and executive officers of CST is set forth in CST's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015 and the proxy statement on Schedule 14A for CST's 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which was filed with the SEC on April 29, 2016. Additional information regarding participants in the proxy solicitation may be obtained by reading the proxy statement regarding the proposed transaction when it becomes available.

Forward-Looking Statements

The statements set forth in this press release, which describe Couche-Tard's objectives, projections, estimates, expectations or forecasts, may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of securities legislation. Positive or negative verbs such as "will", "plan", "evaluate", "estimate", "believe", "expect" and other related expressions are used to identify such statements. Couche-Tard would like to point out that, by their very nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties such that its results, or the measures it adopts, could differ materially from those indicated or underlying these statements, or could have an impact on the degree of realization of a particular projection. Major factors that may lead to a material difference between Couche-Tard's actual results and the projections or expectations set forth in the forward-looking statements include the effects of the integration of acquired businesses and the ability to achieve projected synergies, fluctuations in margins on motor fuel sales, competition in the convenience store and retail motor fuel industries, exchange rate variations, and such other risks as described in detail from time to time in documents filed by Couche-Tard with securities regulatory authorities in Canada. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Couche-Tard disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The forward-looking information in this press release is based on information available as of the date of the release.

SOURCE Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc.

Related Links

http://corpo.couche-tard.com/


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CPFD Software LLC, developers of process engineering software for fluidized reactors, today announced the formation of a Technical Advisory Board. The initial three members, Ken Peccatiello, Principal Consultant of Peccatiello Engineering, Stephen McGovern, Principal Consultant of PetroTech Consultants, Allen Hansen, VP of ClinChain, form the distinguished core group that will provide their expertise and knowledge to support CPFD in development and application of its Barracuda Virtual Reactor simulation software and provision of support services for oil refining, petrochemicals and clean energy producers worldwide for design and optimization of fluidized systems.

The CPFD Technical Advisory Board (TAB) advises the CPFD Board of Directors and executive leadership team on matters related to the technical agenda of CPFD. The TAB focuses on improving the product development roadmap, understanding engineering and process optimization requirements of operators and designers of industrial fluidized reactors and advising on fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC), petrochemical and polysilicon manufacture, coal and biomass gasification, and clean energy and related markets and technical trends.

Ken Peccatiello has over 38 years experience in FCC and RFCC operations and technology including Director of FCC Technology for Valero Energy Corporation in San Antonio, TX and ChevronTexaco FCC Expert (worldwide). Ken also worked for WR Grace's Technical Service division and as Technical Superintendent at the Lake Charles, LA catalyst manufacturing facility. Ken began his career with Amoco Oil in 1978 at the research facility in Naperville, IL where he was involved with multiple FCC studies and the development stages of RFCC, resid processing. He later became FCCU Operating/Process Engineer at the Amoco, Texas City, TX refinery. Ken holds a BSChE from The Illinois Institute of Technology.

Stephen McGovern has over 40 years of industrial experience in many process technologies critical to the Petroleum Refining Industry. Prior to joining PetroTech Consultants, Steve's industrial career had been spent with Mobil Corporation in the Research and Technical Service Division of their Corporate Technology Department. Steve has specialized in hydroprocessing and FCC with many important contributions and patents in both areas. His understanding of cyclone fundamentals led to Mobil's development of their Close-Coupled reactor cyclone system and their Cyclofines third stage separator system. He has been involved in the troubleshooting and improvement of many FCC units. Steve holds a Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from Drexel University, a Master's degree and a PhD in the same field from Princeton University.

Allen Hansen has over 26 years of industrial experience, including extensive work in FCC spanning hardware design, modeling, technical service, and hands-on operations. Prior to founding ClinChain who provide modeling and advanced optimization consulting services to the process industries, he worked for Aspen Technology and Mobil Research and Engineering. He holds a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware, and a master's and PhD in the same field from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

President of CPFD Software, John Favier said: "I am excited to welcome these three experts to our Technical Advisory Board. Their deep technical and industry knowledge will help guide CPFD in providing industry with software and services delivering key engineering and process control information for a wide range of fluidization equipment to industry. We look forward to working with the TAB to support our customers in leveraging the power of Barracuda VR to transform the engineering of their fluidization processes."

About CPFD Software

Founded in 2006, CPFD Software has developed the only engineering simulation technology with the ability to serve as a true Virtual Reactor for design optimization of industrial fluidization units used in: oil refining; coal and bio-mass power generation and gasification; petrochemical reactors, e.g., polyolefins/plastics, acrylonitrile, titanium dioxide, polysilicon for photovoltaics; and numerous clean-tech applications, such as chemical-looping and flue gas scrubbing. CPFD's Barracuda Virtual Reactor software simulates complex 3D fluid-particle flows, including thermal effects and heterogeneous chemical reactions in any environment.

CPFD's customers are using Barracuda VR simulation in engineering design, process optimization, troubleshooting and maintenance of fluidized reactors to increase production efficiency, to fix off-design performance problems, to reduce catalyst and product losses, to minimize operational risk in plant upgrades, to reduce emissions and for gas cleanup. CPFD provides its Barracuda VR simulation solutions worldwide through licensing, applications support, and turnkey engineering simulation services.

Barracuda Virtual Reactor is used internationally by industry leaders including GE, SABIC, Aramco, Shell, BASF, Dow, Chemours, Technip, CB&I, INEOS, and B&W to increase on-stream reliability and gross margins, to reduce capital and operating costs, to support regulatory compliance, and to develop next-generation fluidization technology.

Barracuda Virtual Reactor, Barracuda VR, Barracuda and CPFD are registered trademarks of CPFD Software, LLC.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160820/399818LOGO

SOURCE CPFD Software LLC

Related Links

http://cpfd-software.com


SAN DIEGO, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Shareholder rights law firm Johnson & Weaver, LLP has launched an investigation into whether the board members of CST Brands, Inc. (NYSE: CST) breached their fiduciary duties in connection with the proposed sale of the Company to Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. ("Couche-Tard"). CST operates as an independent retailer of motor fuel and convenience merchandise items in the United States and eastern Canada.

On August 22, 2016, CST announced it had signed a definitive merger agreement with Couche-Tard. Under the terms of the agreement, CST stockholders will receive $48.53 per share in cash.

The investigation concerns whether the CST board failed to satisfy their duties to the Company shareholders, including whether the board adequately pursued alternatives to the acquisition and whether the board obtained the best price possible for CST shares of common stock. Nationally recognized Johnson & Weaver is investigating whether the proposed deal price represents adequate consideration; especially given that the price target for one Wall Street analyst is $55.00

If you are a shareholder of CST and believe the proposed buyout price is too low or you're interested in learning more about the investigation or your legal rights and remedies, please contact lead analyst Jim Baker ([email protected]) at 619-814-4471. If emailing, please include a phone number where you can be reached.

About Johnson & Weaver, LLP:

Johnson & Weaver, LLP is a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm with offices in California, New York and Georgia. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in shareholder derivative and securities class action lawsuits. For more information about the firm and its attorneys, please visit http://www.johnsonandweaver.com. Attorney advertising. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

Contact:

Johnson & Weaver, LLP

Jim Baker, 619-814-4471

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160211/332409LOGO

SOURCE Johnson & Weaver, LLP

Related Links

http://johnsonandweaver.com


NASHVILLE, Tenn., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Direct Auto & Life Insurance will award more than $2,000 to outstanding high school students during its upcoming Hispanic Heritage Month celebration.

This new initiative comes on the heels of a successful 2016 Back to School campaign, which featured free backpack giveaways at more than 400 Direct store locations across the southeast. It's coupled with the company's continuing partnership with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation for their 2016 Youth Awards, and it demonstrates the company's continued focus on education in the communities it serves.

"For us, supporting these education initiatives is all about community," said Jack Campbell, Chief Operations Officer of Direct Auto & Life Insurance. "We take pride in the fact that we live and work in the same communities as our customers, and an important part of supporting these communities is providing opportunities for advancement and growth."

Nominations for the contest can be submitted online at https://www.directgeneral.com/HHM or at Direct store locations between Sept. 1 and Sept. 30. The finalists will be selected based on GPA (B average or better), extracurricular involvement and leadership qualities. A selection committee will review the nominations and reward the finalists:

Grand Prize: $1,000

Second Place: $750

Third Place: $500

In addition, the three individuals whose nominations are selected will receive a $100 gift card for their participation.

In keeping with the company's continued focus on community, education and diversity, Direct will sponsor the Hispanic Heritage Youth Awards presented by HHF for the third consecutive year. The 2016 Youth Awards will help provide educational grants to Latino high school seniors who have excelled in the classroom, community and "priority fields" of mathematical science, healthcare & science, technology, engineering, business & entrepreneurship, education and community service. To learn more and apply for this grant, visit http://www.hispaniceheritage.org/programs/youth-awards. The deadline to apply is Oct. 2, 2016.

To learn more about Direct or its Hispanic Heritage Month celebration (including contest details), visit www.directgeneral.com/HHM, stop by a local Direct store, or call 1-877-GO-DIRECT (1-877-463-4732).

About Direct Auto & Life Insurance

Direct General Corporation, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, is a privately owned financial services holding company whose principal operating subsidiaries provide non-standard personal automobile insurance, term life insurance, and other consumer products and services primarily on a direct basis in the southeastern United States. The Company, whose annual revenues exceed $500 million, markets and sells its products and services under the Direct Auto & Life Insurance brand in over 400 retail store outlets, by phone through its call center, and via the Internet.

Press Resources:

Direct Corporate Website: http://www.directgeneral.com

Direct Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/DirectAutoIns

Direct Twitter Handle: @DirectAutoIns

SOURCE Direct Auto & Life Insurance

Related Links

http://www.directgeneral.com


NEW YORK, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- /PRNewswire/ -- Drexel Hamilton announces that it will host its annual Telecom, Media and Technology Conference for institutional investors on Wednesday, September 7 and Thursday, September 8, 2016 in New York City. The event will take place at the W Hotel, 541 Lexington between 49th & 50th streets. Please register at www.drexelhamilton.com.

The event will offer presentations from a wide range of leading Telecom, Media and Technology companies, and many C-Level executives are slated to attend. Attendees will have the option of formal company presentations, group meetings and individual meeting opportunities with executives from the following companies:

Company Name Ticker Adesto Technologies Corporation IOTS ADTRAN, Inc. ADTN Agilysys Inc. AGYS Akoustis Technologies, Inc. AKTS Alaska Communications Systems Group Inc. ALSK Alpha & Omega Semiconductor, Ltd. AOSL Applied Micro Circuits Corporation AMCC ARRIS International plc ARRS Asseco Poland Spolka Akcyjna ASOZY AT&T Inc. T ATN International, Inc. ATNI AudioCodes Ltd. AUDC Calix Inc. CALX Cambium Learning Group, Inc. ABCD CEVA Inc. CEVA Cincinnati Bell Inc. CBB Cogent Communications Holdings, Inc. CCOI CommScope Holding Company, Inc. COMM Consolidated Communications Holdings Inc. CNSL Diodes Incorporated DIOD DSP Group Inc. DSPG EarthLink Holdings Corp. ELNK F5 Networks, Inc. FFIV Fairpoint Communications, Inc. FRP Gray Television, Inc. GTN GTT Communications, Inc. GTT Harmonic, Inc. HLIT Hawaiian Telcom Holdco, Inc. HCOM Inteliquent, Inc. IQNT Internap Corporation INAP International Business Machines Corporation IBM InvenSense, Inc. INVN Iridium Communications, Inc. IRDM Juniper Networks, Inc. JNPR LivePerson, Inc. LPSN Lumos Networks Corp. LMOS Neonode, Inc. NEON NetApp, Inc. NTAP NetScout Systems, Inc. NTCT Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd. NVMI NTT DOCOMO, Inc. DCM pdvWireless, Inc. PDVW Phoenix New Media Limited FENG Power Integrations Inc. POWI Qorvo, Inc. QRVO Quintillion Subsea Holdings PRIVATE Remark Media, Inc. MARK Resonant Inc. RESN Rogers Corporation ROG SeaChange International SEAC Semtech Corporation SMTC Shenandoah Telecommunications Co. SHEN Sigma Designs, Inc. SIGM Silicon Laboratories Inc. SLAB Skyworks Solutions Inc. SWKS Sonus Networks, Inc. SONS SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. SSNC STMicroelectronics NV STM Synchronoss Technologies, Inc. SNCR Technicolor SA TCH.PA Telephone & Data Systems Inc. TDS Telit Communications TCM.L Tower Semiconductor Ltd. TSEM TTM Technologies Inc. TTMI United States Army  United States Military Academy

VASCO Data Security International Inc. VDSI Verizon Communications Inc. VZ World Wrestling Entertainment WWE Zayo Group Holdings, Inc. ZAYO

The conference will be hosted by Barry Sine, Brian White, Cody Acree, Tony Wible and Greg Mesniaeff, Drexel Hamilton's lead TMT research analysts.

"This in depth conference brings together large and small cap industry leaders, with a diverse range of investors in an intense, high-energy environment," said Jim Cahill, President of Drexel Hamilton. "In addition, our stellar team of analysts will be available throughout the conference to meet with investors."

Barry Sine, CFA, CMT, Managing Director of Research at Drexel Hamilton said, "We are very excited to present this conference covering the dynamic TMT industry. It's a unique opportunity for attendees to learn firsthand not only of the key capabilities of presenting companies, but to also gain an overview of the pace of innovation as well as disruptive forces in the industry."

The firm's equity research team regularly conducts interactive industry conferences for institutional investors. Over the next year, it will be hosting companies from its research coverage universe, as well as other companies. All conferences will offer one-on-one meeting opportunities with the management teams of the presenting companies.

Keynote Presentations

Wednesday September 7, 2016

Breakfast Keynote

8:00 AM

International Business Machines Corporation

Martin Jetter

Senior Vice President

IBM Global Technology Services

Lunch Keynote

12:30 PM

AT&T, Inc.

Steven J. Hodges

Senior Vice President of Customer Experience

AT&T Business Solutions & AT&T International

Thursday September 8, 2016

Breakfast Keynotes

8:00 AM

United States Army  West Point Military Academy

Col. John M. Graham, PhD

Chief Scientist

Army Research and Development in Cyber and Space Conducted at West Point

8:20 AM

Juniper Networks, Inc.

Rami Rahim

Chief Executive Officer

Lunch Keynote

12:30 PM

Verizon Communications Inc.

Michael Stefanski

Senior Vice President

Investor Relations

About Drexel Hamilton, LLC

Drexel Hamilton, a full-service institutional broker-dealer founded in 2007, partners military and service-disabled veterans with Wall Street veterans in the institutional financial services industry. In addition to the presentations and one-on-one meetings, participants will have an opportunity to meet some of the military and service-disabled veterans working at Drexel Hamilton. The firm is committed to maintaining a concentration of at least 40 percent military and service-disabled veteran employees.

Please register at www.drexelhamilton.com.

Contacts

Drexel Hamilton, LLC

Lynn Orenstein +1-212-632-0413

Head of Corporate Access

[email protected]

SOURCE Drexel Hamilton LLC

Related Links

http://www.drexelhamilton.com


TSX: ELDNYSE: EGO

VANCOUVER, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Eldorado Gold Corporation, ("Eldorado" or "the Company") is pleased to announce plans at four new exploration projects.

The large Bolcana porphyry copper-gold system in Romania , recently acquired through public auction, provides a new opportunity contiguous with the Company's growing land package in the highly prospective Apuseni mining district in Romania .

, recently acquired through public auction, provides a new opportunity contiguous with the Company's growing land package in the highly prospective Apuseni mining district in . The Borborema and Nazareno gold projects in Brazil will be explored under an option agreement with Votorantim Metais. These new projects expand the Brazilian exploration portfolio into two regions with proven metallogenic potential, and establishes a partnership with a highly respected local mining company with a long history of discovery and mine development.

will be explored under an option agreement with Votorantim Metais. These new projects expand the Brazilian exploration portfolio into two regions with proven metallogenic potential, and establishes a partnership with a highly respected local mining company with a long history of discovery and mine development. The Karavansalija Mineralized Centre project in Serbia is a large skarn and epithermal system with multiple mineralized zones and untested targets, and provides an entry into this emerging mining-friendly jurisdiction.

Peter Lewis, Vice President of Exploration at Eldorado, stated: "Our team is excited by the addition of these projects to our exploration portfolio, as they all include defined targets that we plan to drill aggressively for the remainder of 2016, in addition to the outstanding long-term exploration potential on the surrounding license areas."

Bolcana, Romania

In August 2016 the Romanian National Agency for Mineral Resources awarded the Troita - Pitigus exploration license covering the Bolcana project to Eldorado's 100% owned Romania subsidiary SC European Goldfields Deva SRL. The Bolcana project is located in the Golden Quadrilateral mining region of the Apuseni Mountains near the historic mining centers of Deva and Brad, and approximately six kilometres west of the Company's Certej development project. The Troita - Pitigus license area is contiguous with the Company's existing exploration and mining licenses, bringing Eldorado's land position in the district to 46 square kilometres.

The project area comprises a central copper-gold porphyry system, flanked by vein-hosted and disseminated epithermal gold deposits and occurrences. The porphyry deposit was explored as a copper prospect by the Romanian state in the 1970s and 1980s. From 2002 to 2004, European Goldfields conducted detailed exploration in the upper 200 metres of the porphyry via drilling and resampling of five levels of underground workings. Key results of the previous exploration work that highlight the potential of the porphyry target include:

A surface footprint of phyllic and argillic alteration of approximately 2 kilometre by 1 kilometre with localized potassic alteration and stockwork vein networks.

High copper and gold grades reported in the 2002 drilling program, including an intercept of 208 metres starting from 10 metres downhole grading 0.99 grams per tonne gold and 0.32% copper ( see European Goldfields news release dated March 04, 2003 ).

). A geophysical signature consisting of an 850 metre by 500 metre magnetic anomaly coincident with a high chargability zone.

Distal portions of the Bolcana porphyry and epithermal gold deposits and occurrences on surrounding licenses have historically been explored. Drilling by Eldorado in both 2013 and 2015 on the Certej North exploration license abutting Bolcana to the north intersected porphyry-style mineralization (181 metres at 0.40 grams per tonne gold and 0.25% copper) interpreted as representing the northern edge of the Bolcana porphyry, as well as zones of disseminated epithermal mineralization (76 metres at 0.37 grams per tonne gold).

The Troita - Pitigus exploration license is granted for a period of five years and can be renewed for an additional three years. Within the first year, Eldorado is obligated to complete a work program comprising target delineation work and 24,000 metres of drilling. This drilling will test the Bolcana porphyry deposit over a north-south extent of over a kilometre, with drillhole fences spaced at approximately 100 metres. Drillsite permitting is underway, and drilling is expected later this year.

Borborema and Nazareno, Brazil

On July 26, 2016, Eldorado signed definitive agreements with Votorantim Metais granting Eldorado the option to acquire up to 70% ownership in the Borborema and Nazareno license areas, located in Pernambuco and Minas Gerais states respectively. Under the terms of the agreements Eldorado can earn 51% of either project by spending a minimum of $2 million in the first year and $1 million in every subsequent year on exploration, and generating a NI 43-101 compliant resource of at least 500,000 ounces of gold or by spending a total of $10 million over five years. Eldorado can increase its ownership to 70% by producing a feasibility study within ten years of signing the agreement.

Nazareno Project

The Nazareno project consists of 382 square kilometres adjacent to the prolific Quadrilatero Ferrifero (QF), known for its past producing high-grade gold deposits (e.g. Corrego do Sitio  10.7 million ounces at 5.4 grams per tonne gold; Sao Bento  1.2 million ounces at 10.6 grams per tonne gold; Caete  2.5 million ounces at 3.3 grams per tonne gold). The project covers over 90 kilometres strike length of a prospective mineralized shear zone, and is underlain by the same Nova Lima Group rocks that host most gold mineralization in the QF. The licenses under option include the Gamba Zone where Votorantim previously identified and drill-tested high grade gold mineralization, and numerous untested gold in soil anomalies along strike from the Gamba zone. Only 20% of the project area has been covered to date by soil samples or geological mapping.

Work planned for the first year of the Nazareno option agreement includes 4,000 metres of drilling on known occurrences, and systematic mapping and sampling programs focused on generating new exploration targets.

Borborema Project

The Borborema project covers 3,400 square kilometres in Pernambuco state in northeast Brazil. The project encompasses drill-ready targets at the Vulture Zone and the Parnamirim Zone as well as multiple other targets defined by high-grade rock samples and untested soil and stream sediment anomalies.

The Vulture Zone is centered on a 300 metre long mapped exposure of stockwork veining, breccia, and strong silicification controlled by a steeply-dipping fault system. A strong gold-arsenic soil anomaly and chargeability anomaly extend well beyond the exposed mineralization, defining a target area over 1.4 kilometres in strike length. Twenty outcrop grab samples collected by Eldorado returned gold values of 0.91 to 48.5 grams per tonne with an average value of 7.2 grams per tonne. The Parnamirim Zone covers at least four northwest-striking orogenic quartz veins with mapped strike lengths ranging from 0.9 to 1.3 kilometres, and apparent widths on surface of up to 20 metres. Of thirty-eight chip samples collected by Eldorado, gold results range from below detection to 483 grams per tonne gold and average 38.1 grams per tonne gold. There is no previous drilling at the Vulture Zone and only limited drilling at Parnamirim.

Eldorado's initial exploration program at Borborema will include drilling of the Vulture and Parnamirim zones and mapping, rock, soil, and stream sediment sampling elsewhere on the large property position.

KMC Project, Serbia

Eldorado signed agreements in October 2015 with Euromax Resources Ltd. and Ridge Minerals DOO providing a one-year option to acquire 100% of the Karavansalija Mineralized Centre (KMC) project in southeastern Serbia. Eldorado currently has three rigs active at the project with approximately 10,000 metres completed to date. Based on drilling results the Company has elected to exercise the option for total payments of US$633,000.

The KMC project is host to a large magmatic-hydrothermal system with multiple zones of gold, copper, and base metal mineralization. Prograde and retrograde skarn is present within regionally extensive limestones, generally in close proximity to Tertiary dykes and plugs. Epithermal-style alteration and mineralization overprints skarn and in many cases extends upward into an overlying volcanic package.

Eldorado's comprehensive re-interpretation and integration of geological, geochemical, and geophysical datasets generated by previous explorers has identified numerous new drill targets. Our drilling to date has targeted high grade epithermal gold mineralization at the Copper Canyon zone, the 800 metre gap in drilling between the Copper Canyon and Gradina zones, a prominent magnetic anomaly peripheral to previous drilling at the Shanac zone, and a target to the south of Copper Canyon.

About Eldorado Gold

Eldorado is a leading low cost gold producer with mining, development and exploration operations in Turkey, China, Greece, Romania and Brazil. The Company's success to date is based on a low cost strategy, a highly skilled and dedicated workforce, safe and responsible operations, and long-term partnerships with the communities where it operates. Eldorado's common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: ELD) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: EGO).

Qualified Person

Dr. Peter Lewis, P. Geo., Vice President, Exploration at Eldorado, is the Qualified Person for the technical disclosure in this press release. Certified standard reference materials, field duplicate, and blank samples were inserted prior to shipment from the preparation sites and were regularly monitored to ensure the quality of the data. Samples from the KMC project in Serbia and the Bolcana project in Romania were analyzed at ALS laboratories in Romania and Ireland. QAQC samples were inserted into each batch at a rate of two or three standards, two duplicates, and variable numbers of blanks per batch. In Brazil, rock samples collected from the Borborema and Nazareno projects were analyzed at ALS laboratories.

Certain of the statements made herein may contain forward-looking statements or information within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements and forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negatives thereof or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements or information herein include, but are not limited to the Company's Announcement of New Exploration Projects in Romania, Serbia and Brazil.

Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information by their nature are based on assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information. We have made certain assumptions about the forward-looking statements and information, including assumptions about the political and economic environment that we operate in, the future price of commodities and anticipated costs and expenses. Even though our management believes that the assumptions made and the expectations represented by such statements or information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statement or information will prove to be accurate. Furthermore, should one or more of the risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements or information. These risks, uncertainties and other factors include, among others, the following: political and economic environment, gold price volatility; discrepancies between actual and estimated production, mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries; mining operational and development risk; litigation risks; regulatory environment and restrictions, including environmental regulatory restrictions and liability; risks of sovereign investment; currency fluctuations; speculative nature of gold exploration; global economic climate; dilution; share price volatility; competition; loss of key employees; additional funding requirements; and defective title to mineral claims or property, as well as those factors discussed in the sections entitled "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Information Form & Form 40-F dated March 30, 2016.

There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements or information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements or information contained herein. Except as required by law, we do not expect to update forward-looking statements and information continually as conditions change and you are referred to the full discussion of the Company's business contained in the Company's reports filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada and the U.S.

SOURCE Eldorado Gold Corporation
TORRANCE, Calif., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Culminating more than 20 years of research and development, Emmaus Life Sciences, Inc. today announced that it expects to submit a New Drug Application (NDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September for the company's treatment for sickle cell disease. Sickle cell disease is one of the most devastating hereditary disease with painful symptoms and shortened life span. The treatment consists of orally administered pharmaceutical grade L-glutamine.

The submission, expected in early September, coincides with National Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month, which calls attention to sickle cell disease, which, according to the National Institutes of Health, is estimated to affect as many as 100,000 Americans and 25 million people worldwide.

"The submission of the NDA is the culmination of many people's life work, marking a milestone for all the patients, researchers, investors, partners, advocates and employees who have contributed to this achievement," said Yutaka Niihara, M.D., MPH, Chairman and CEO of Emmaus. "We look forward to the NDA submission early next month and discussing the positive safety and efficacy data from the trial with the FDA."

Data from the Company's Phase 3 sickle cell disease trial demonstrated a reduction in the frequency of sickle cell crises and hospitalizations, as well as a reduction in cumulative days hospitalized and a lower incidence of the life-threatening acute chest syndrome. The clinical trial enrolled 230 adult and pediatric patients as young as five years of age, across 31 experienced sickle cell disease treatment centers in the United States. There were no major adverse events attributable to the treatment.

Emmaus' sickle cell disease therapy has Orphan Drug designation in the U.S. and Europe and Fast Track designation from the FDA.

About Emmaus Life Sciences

Emmaus Life Sciences is engaged in the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative treatments and therapies for rare diseases. The Company's research on sickle cell disease was initiated by Dr. Niihara at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. For more information, please visit www.emmauslifesciences.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

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 potential 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. Additional risks and uncertainties are described in reports filed by Emmaus Life Sciences, Inc. with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Emmaus is providing this information as of the date of this press release and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For more information, contact:

Matt Sheldon

PondelWilkinson Inc.

310-279-5975

[email protected]

Media:

Lori Teranishi

510-290-6160

[email protected]

Investors:

Willis Lee

310-214-0065

[email protected]

SOURCE Emmaus Life Sciences

Related Links

http://www.emmausmedical.com


"John has been a trailblazer for First 5 LA, providing critical leadership for the essential backbone functions that enable us to do our best work on behalf of children and families in L.A. County," said Kim Belshe, Executive Director of First 5 LA. "This new role represents an evolution of his current duties, and I look forward to continue working with John to broaden our impact for kids."

Belshe noted how the new role of Executive Vice President will lead First 5 LA's efforts to improve outcomes for young children and their families by working with County agencies in new ways.

"County departments and agencies touch the lives of millions of families with young children," Belshe added. "By working with County leaders to improve the coordination and integration of services and supports for families, First 5 LA, under John's leadership, can contribute to strong families and healthy, safe and school-ready children."

The County government is comprised of 37 departments and approximately 200 committees and commissions serving nearly 10 million residents. In total, there are more than 500 political districts such as school boards, water districts, and sanitation boards that have varying responsibilities and constituencies within L.A. County.

As Executive Vice President, Wagner will be leading First 5 LA's efforts to engage County departments, agencies, and elected officials by identifying aligned priorities, facilitating learning among Best Start community parents and County leaders, convening meetings of family-serving organizations and County officials, and leveraging First 5 LA investments to address County priorities.

"I am pleased to enter this new phase of my work at First 5 LA," said Executive Vice President John Wagner, who has prepared for his new role in recent months by meeting with L.A. County leaders to discuss and develop potential points of collaboration in order to provide better outcomes for young children. "I look forward to continuing to support our staff and talented leadership team as well as the opportunity to strengthen our collaboration with County officials and other partners in building systems and services for the benefit of children and families."

Some of the potential areas of alignment with local government include homelessness, trauma-informed care, child welfare and protection from abuse and neglect. Wagner already has held discussions with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, the new Los Angeles County Office of Child Protection (OCP) and leaders within the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office (CEO), which is working on behalf of the County on solutions to homelessness.

Along with Executive Director Kim Belshe, Wagner will be a key leader within the five-member executive leadership team that includes several recent appointments: Kim Pattillo Brownson as Vice President of Policy and Strategy, Daniela Pineda as Vice President of Integration and Learning, and Christina Altmayer as Vice President of Programs.

This new management structure is a result of a process undertaken by the entire First 5 LA team over the past two years to strengthen the organization's ability to effectively execute its 2015-2020 Strategic Plan and to help it become a higher performing, higher impact organization for children prenatal to age 5, their parents and caregivers. In the near future, the executive team will be naming directors for newly-created departments as well as several departments that have significantly changed their scopes of work.

Wagner's experience with First 5 LA will be invaluable during this process. In December 2012, Wagner was named the first Chief Operating Officer of First 5 LA, overseeing all internal operations at First 5 LA under the direction of the Executive Director, including aligning the organization's grantmaking strategies, internal capacity building, contracts, and strategic partnerships to achieve First 5 LA's organizational priorities.

Prior to serving First 5 LA, Wagner served as Director of the California Department of Community Services and Development from 2011-2012, and Director of the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) from 2007-2011. At CDSS, he oversaw a budget of over $20 billion and programs affecting California's most vulnerable residents, including foster children and youth; children and families receiving aid through the California Work Opportunities and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs); and children and adults in state-licensed community care facilities.

Prior to coming to California, Wagner served as the Assistant Secretary for Children, Youth and Families for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, where he coordinated policies and programs across many state agencies. Additionally, he served as the state's Commissioner for the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance from 2002 to 2007.

Wagner earned a master's degree in Public Administration from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, a master's degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University and a bachelor's degree from Marquette University.

Wagner's appointment as Executive Vice President is effective immediately.

ABOUT FIRST 5 LA

First 5 LA is a leading early childhood advocacy and public grantmaking organization created by California voters to invest Proposition 10 tobacco tax revenues in Los Angeles County. In partnership with others, First 5 LA strengthens families, communities, and systems of services and supports so that all children in L.A. County enter kindergarten ready to succeed in school and life. Please visit www.first5la.org for more information.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160822/400198

SOURCE First 5 LA

Related Links

http://www.first5la.org


"Utilizing the output of the TSPS platform, drivers can save on average, at least 15 minutes searching for parking, which translates to approximately $4.4 billion per year from the 400,000 daily parking events," said Frost & Sullivan Senior Research Analyst Sundar Shankarnarayanan. "Furthermore, fleet managers can save nearly two gallons of fuel per driver, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 pounds per parking search."

Meanwhile, with the support and vision of the Michigan Department of Transportation, TSPS developed a wireless truck parking network to support truck parking at public and private facilities. It created a responsive and informative parking network by collecting real-time data through cameras and sensors from various parking sites. The system has been fully operational for two years in the important trade corridor that runs through Canada, Detroit, and Chicago, which sees the movement of 10,000 trucks every day.

TSPS has mobilized real-time location data, simplifying prioritization and ensuring smooth workflow optimization for truck drivers. In effect, TSPS parking data has provided access to real-time information through roadside signs, web sites, in-cab messaging and smartphone applications for over 35 million trips, enabling drivers to make well-informed parking decisions. This helps reduce driver fatigue and thereby improves highway safety. TSPS continues to work with public and private organizations to accelerate the reach of this critical network.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in implementing strategies that proactively create value for its customers with a focus on enhancing the return on the investment that customers make in its services or products. The award recognizes the company's extraordinary focus on enhancing the value that its customers receive, beyond simply good customer service, leading to improved customer retention and ultimately customer base expansion.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About TSPS

Truck Specialized Parking Services, Inc. (TSPS) is addressing the national truck parking needs for the commercial vehicle industry, with its scalable and proven parking logistics software platform, set of standards, and best practices. Using ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) technology, TSPS provides real-time information from its national data network that is improving safety, productivity and environmental impacts. The TSPS specialized smart parking solution is modular in nature and is being implemented across the nation's busiest roadways and surrounding areas. Truck drivers, truck stop operators, Departments of Transportation and the general public all benefit from the TSPS services.

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: [email protected]

Harry Voccola

P: 844.879.8777 X 702

Rick Warner

P: 844.879.8777 X 701

www.goTSPS.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160818/399266

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan

Related Links

http://www.frost.com


This new formulation, which exceeds the FDA Healthcare Personnel Handwash requirements, 1 is gentle on hands making it mild enough for everyday use. This non-irritating, hypoallergenic, dermatologist-tested formulation maintains the skin's natural moisture barrier. 2 PROVON Antimicrobial Foam Handwash with 2% CHG also:

Is fragrance and dye free

Leaves hands feeling clean and soft

Rinses quickly with no sticky, tacky residue

Is compatible with latex gloves

"We are committed to developing safe and effective hand hygiene products," said Jeff Hall, healthcare business vice president and general manager, GOJO. "This CHG formulation delivers strong germ kill as well as an unexpected mildness not usually associated with CHG handwashes and surgical scrubs. We know hand hygiene plays a critical role in protecting patient safety and reducing germ transmission, but practicing good hand hygiene can be difficult on your hands when you are not using the right products. This is why we continue to advance the science of hand hygiene and develop products that are efficacious and maintain skin health. This newest formulation is an example of this commitment."

GOJO offers a full portfolio of safe and effective hand hygiene solutions including antimicrobial and non-antimicrobial soaps and PURELL Advanced Hand Sanitizer, as well as the world's largest portfolio of green certified soaps and hand sanitizers, which provides healthcare facilities the benefit of choosing the best hand hygiene solution to meet their needs.

To learn more about the full portfolio of GOJO, PROVON and PURELL products, go to www.gojo.com/healthcare

About GOJO

GOJO Industries is the leading global producer and marketer of skin health and hygiene solutions for away-from-home settings and THE INVENTORS OF PURELL. The broad GOJO product portfolio includes hand cleaning, handwashing, hand sanitizing and skin care formulas under the GOJO, PURELL and PROVON brand names. GOJO formulations use the latest advances in the science of skin care and sustainability. GOJO is known for state-of-the-art dispensing technology, engineered with attention to design, sustainability and functionality. GOJO programs promote healthy behaviors for hand hygiene, skin care and compliance in critical environments. GOJO is a privately held corporation headquartered in Akron, Ohio, with operations in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Japan, Mexico, Canada and Brazil.

1 Meets Healthcare Personnel Handwash Requirements

2 GOJO SCLC Study #2015-12-110484 Antibacterial (CHG-TCS-PCMX-BAK) 4D-48X FCAT II

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140430/82508

SOURCE GOJO Industries

Related Links

http://www.gojo.com


 Flash

South Korean and U.S. forces kicked off their joint annual war game on Monday despite strong backlashes from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The annually-held Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) will be conducted from Aug. 22 to Sept. 2, Combined Forces Command said in a press release.

The computer-assisted simulation exercise will mobilize about 25,000 U.S. troops, including 2,500 reinforcements from the U.S. mainland and the U.S. Pacific Command. It was lower than last year's 30,000 U.S. forces.

From the South Korean side, some 50,000 forces will join the military exercise. It was almost the same as last year's.

The combined forces will reportedly apply Operation Plan 5015 to this year's UFG exercise. The OPLAN 5015 is a wartime joint defense scenario signed in June last year between Seoul and Washington to preemptively destroy the DPRK's nuclear and missile bases in times of military conflicts.

The United Nations Command's military armistice commission notified the DPRK at about 9:40 a.m. local time of the drill schedule and its defense nature verbally in Panmunjom, the truce village in the border dividing the two Koreas.

All of military communications lines between South Korea and the DPRK have been shut down after Pyongyang's nuclear detonation in January and its launch of long-range rocket in February that was seen as a disguised test of ballistic missile technology.

Tensions were heightened further as Seoul and Washington agreed in July to deploy one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korean soil by the end of next year.

The U.S. missile shield caused strong backlashes from the DPRK as well as China and Russia as the THAAD's X-band radar can snoop on Chinese and Russian territories.

This year's UFG exercise would not mobilize U.S. strategic weapons, according to local media reports, for fear of escalating the already-heightened tensions further in the region.

The DPRK slammed the UFG exercises, saying the drill is "an outrageous provocation for a nuclear war against the North aimed to encroach upon the dignity and sovereignty of the DPRK and infringe on the vital rights of its people."

The official news agency KCNA carried the statement on Sunday for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country (CPRC) that said it is "the resolute stand of the DPRK to decisively foil all hostile acts and threat of aggression and provocation with the Korean-style nuclear deterrence."

Each year, South Korea and the United States conduct a number of joint military drills including "Key Resolve," "Foal Eagle" and "Ulchi Freedom Guardian" which they claim to be defensive in nature. But the DPRK says the annual war games are designed for northward invasion.

Seoul's unification ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee told a press briefing that it was very regrettable for the DPRK to distort and denounce the "annually-held defensive" exercise, urging Pyongyang to make a right choice by stopping nuclear and missile developments and avoiding provocative acts.
LONDON, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The hemodynamic monitoring systems market is projected to reach USD 1,143.7 million by 2021 from USD 925.2 million in 2016, growing at a CAGR of 4.3% during the forecast period. Factors such as rising prevalence of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, technological advancements, initiatives adopted by industry players, and rising aging population are driving the growth of the hemodynamic monitoring systems market.



Hemodynamic monitoring is the measurement of blood circulation and cardiac functions. It allows doctors to evaluate whether enough oxygen is being delivered to the organs and tissues. Healthcare providers use this information to detect changes or problems in a patient's health.



The disposables segment is expected to account for the largest share of the hemodynamic monitoring systems market, by product, in 2016. Hemodynamic disposables form an integral part of hemodynamic monitoring to determine the hemodynamic parameters in critically ill patients, thus attributing to the large share of the segment.



The invasive monitoring systems segment is expected to account for the largest share of the hemodynamic monitoring systems market, by type, in 2016. The large share of this segment is mainly attributed to the increasing utilization of invasive hemodynamic monitoring systems in both intensive care units (ICUs) and operating theaters (OTs) for the monitoring of patients with critical illnesses and hemodynamic instability.



The hospitals segment is expected to account for the largest share of the global hemodynamic monitoring systems market, by end user, in 2016. The large share of this segment is mainly attributed to the rising aging population and increasing prevalence of diseases such as cardiovascular and diabetes.



North America is expected to account for the largest share of the hemodynamic monitoring systems market in 2016, followed by Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Rest of the World (RoW). The large share of the North American region can be attributed to technological advancements, initiatives adopted by industry players to boost the demand of hemodynamic monitoring systems in the U.S., and prevalence of high diabetes in Canada propels the market for Hemodynamic Monitoring Systems in North America. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to witness the highest growth rate in the forecast period, mainly due to the rapidly aging population in India and China and the high prevalence of diabetes in Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, China, and India.



The hemodynamic monitoring systems market is highly competitive, as there are several big and small firms with similar product offerings. These companies adopt various strategies (mergers and acquisitions; agreements, partnerships, collaborations, and joint ventures; new product launches, funding, and FDA approvals; and marketing & promotion) to increase their shares and establish a stronger foothold in the global hemodynamic monitoring systems market.





Reasons to Buy the Report:

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 them garner a greater market share. Firms purchasing the report could use any one or a combination of the below-mentioned five strategies (market penetration, product development/innovation, market development, market diversification, and competitive assessment) for strengthening their market shares. The report provides insights on the following pointers:

- Market Penetration: Comprehensive information on the product portfolios of the top players in the hemodynamic monitoring systems market. The report analyzes the market based on product, type, , and end user

- Product Development/Innovation: Detailed insights on upcoming technologies, research and development activities, and new product launches in the hemodynamic monitoring systems market

- Market Development: Comprehensive information about lucrative emerging markets. The report analyzes the markets for various hemodynamic monitoring systems across regions

- Market Diversification: Exhaustive information about new products, untapped regions, recent developments, and investments in the hemodynamic monitoring systems market

- Competitive Assessment: In-depth assessment of market shares, strategies, products, distribution networks, and manufacturing capabilities of the leading players in the hemodynamic monitoring systems market



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/4073944/



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


Mike Barnhart, President of AARP Ohio, commented: "Barbara Sykes combines impressive leadership skills with a lifetime dedicated to public and community service. We are pleased and honored to have someone with her stature, passion and experience to lead AARP Ohio into the future."

Sykes, a graduate of the University of Akron where she earned her undergraduate degree in social work and her master's degree in public administration, served three terms in the Ohio House of Representatives from 2000-2006. Barbara has also been Deputy Auditor for Summit County, the Past President of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus and she was the first African-American woman to serve on the Akron City Council.

For the last ten years she has served as president and CEO of Ohio United Way (OUW)the state association for United Ways in Ohiowhere she worked to strengthen local United Ways with an emphasis on education, health and financial stability.

During her tenure at OUW, she made the 2-1-1 health and human service information referral system a priority. She secured over $2 M in federal, state and private funding for the program, making this gateway to vital services available to 10.6 M Ohioans across 91% of the state.

"Particularly impressive is the work Barbara has done to engage legislators from both sides of the aisle around the challenges and issues Ohio families face. Establishing regular contact and building relationships is crucial to our social advocacy work," said McNally.

Speaker Cliff Rosenberger (91st District) of the Ohio House added: "Although I did not have the privilege of serving in the Ohio House alongside Barbara, I have come to know the Sykes family well at the Ohio Statehouse, and I truly admire Barbara's passion for selflessly serving others. I know she will take that commitment, combined with her experience with local and state issues and policies, to lead and represent AARP Ohio into continued success."

"I am grateful to be appointed to this leadership position with AARP," Sykes said. "I am very appreciative to join the staff and volunteers who are passionate about and committed to this organization and its social mission to fight for and equip each individual to live their best life."

Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge (Ohio, 11th District) said, "She will be a proven asset and presence in this state who will be a staunch advocate for our seniors and will influence AARP's growing impact as an organization.

"Barbara is a well-respected, visionary servant leader, who I know will continue her life's work as a dedicated champion for Ohioans through AARP."

Speaker Pro Tempore Ron Amstutz (1st District), of the Ohio House, added: "Barbara and I have been friends for years from our work together as legislators. I've seen her at work with the United Way and she has really hit her stride in the non-profit world. She will be a tremendous asset to AARP and their members."

Lisa Bateson, Ohio United Way Board Chair, commented: "I have tremendous respect for Barbara. I have known her for over 16 years and have always known her to be a strong advocate, dedicated to helping the most needy in our society. AARP will benefit from her as a leader."

Throughout her career, Sykes has been recognized for her outstanding community service and leadership through various awards from numerous organizations, some of which include: Ohio Jewish Communities; Akron Community Health Resources, Inc; Women of Color Foundation; and Legislator of the Year by the Ohio Children's Hospital Association, Second Harvest for Hunger, and Voices for Children of Greater Cleveland.

Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, Ohio's largest charitable response to hunger said, "Barbara has dedicated her life to fighting for Ohio's most vulnerable citizens, and I know she will continue that fight in this new role. I have worked in partnership with her for more than two decades on a variety of health and human services issues, and she has demonstrated a true commitment to hungry Ohioans. As a friend, colleague and fellow advocate, I look forward to continuing our long partnership in her new role."

AARP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, with a membership of nearly 38 million, that helps people turn their goals and dreams into real possibilities, strengthens communities and fights for the issues that matter most to families such as healthcare, employment and income security, retirement planning, affordable utilities and protection from financial abuse. We advocate for individuals in the marketplace by selecting products and services of high quality and value to carry the AARP name as well as help our members obtain discounts on a wide range of products, travel, and services. A trusted source for lifestyle tips, news and educational information, AARP produces AARP The Magazine, the world's largest circulation magazine; AARP Bulletin; www.aarp.org; AARP TV & Radio; AARP Books; and AARP en Espanol, a Spanish-language website addressing the interests and needs of Hispanics. AARP does not endorse candidates for public office or make contributions to political campaigns or candidates. The AARP Foundation is an affiliated charity that provides security, protection, and empowerment to older persons in need with support from thousands of volunteers, donors, and sponsors. AARP has staffed offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Learn more at www.aarp.org.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160822/400202

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160822/400215LOGO

SOURCE AARP Ohio

Related Links

http://www.aarp.org


TORONTO, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Hydro One Ltd. announced today the appointments of Paul H. Barry to the role of Executive Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development, Hydro One Ltd. effective September 1, 2016 and Greg Kiraly to the role of Chief Operating Officer, Hydro One Ltd., effective September 12, 2016.

"Both Paul and Greg are seasoned executives, with significant experience in the North American utility market in transmission and distribution in the electricity, gas and water sectors," said Mayo Schmidt, President and CEO, Hydro One Ltd. "We have now established a leadership team with considerable depth and expertise in delivering transformation, growth, operational and service excellence."

Paul Barry

Paul Barry has significant strategy, business development and financial expertise in the electric power, natural gas, and water utility sectors. Mr. Barry was recently Chief Executive Officer and founding partner of Public Infrastructure Partners LLC, a power and utility strategic advisor to leading private equity, infrastructure, and pension funds in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Mr. Barry's prior executive leadership roles include Senior Vice President and Chief Development Officer, Head of Mergers & Acquisitions, and President of the commercial business for Duke Energy Corporation. At Duke Energy, Mr. Barry was responsible for executing over $50 billion of strategic transactions that transformed the company into the largest electric utility in North America. He served as CFO for Pepco Holdings, a Fortune 500 mid-Atlantic utility based in Washington, D.C., and was Vice President, Business Development, Energy Financial Services, for General Electric Company. Mr. Barry also served as Senior Advisor, City of Los Angeles, Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the largest municipal electric and water utility in the U.S.

"Paul Barry is a seasoned financial executive with a broad mix of skills and expertise in transmission and distribution in the energy and water sectors," said Mayo Schmidt, President and CEO, Hydro One Ltd. "His strong strategy orientation and his experience leading major transformative initiatives will position Hydro One for success now and into the future."

"I am extremely excited to join Hydro One as it transforms into a leading growth-oriented commercial enterprise and preeminent investor owned utility," said Mr. Barry. "This is a highly dynamic period in the utility sector and I look forward to working with Hydro One's new team to develop and execute strategies that create significant growth, shareholder and customer value."

Mr. Barry earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he also attended the Executive Program, and a Bachelor of Science, magna cum laude, in Finance from Northeastern University.

Greg Kiraly

As COO, Mr. Kiraly will oversee Planning, Engineering, Construction, and Operations for Hydro One, Ontario's largest electricity transmission and distribution company. Mr. Kiraly is a highly regarded power and utilities executive with 30 years of experience. He has an extensive background in energy transmission and distribution, in both electricity and gas, having having served in various executive leadership roles across three of the largest investor-owned utilities in the U.S.; Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), and Public Service Electric & Gas Company (PSEG).

Mr. Kiraly most recently held the role of Senior Vice President, Electric Transmission and Distribution for PG&E in San Francisco, and also served in several other key executive assignments over the past eight years. Prior to joining PG&E, Mr. Kiraly worked for ComEd in Chicago from 2000-2008 during which time he held senior roles in the areas of Distribution System Operations, Construction and Maintenance, and Energy Delivery. Prior to ComEd, Mr. Kiraly started his career at PSE&G in New Jersey, having served in various leadership roles over fifteen years, where his accountabilities focused on Health and Safety, Electric and Gas Distribution.

"As we transform Hydro One into a performance-driven company, it is critical to have executives of Greg Kiraly's caliber on our team," said Mayo Schmidt, President and CEO, Hydro One Ltd. "Greg has an outstanding track record delivering growth and operational excellence at top U.S. utilities as well as deep and extensive expertise in a complex North American electric and gas utility market."

"I am pleased to join Hydro One as it moves forward on its journey to become a top-tier, globally recognized utility," said Mr. Kiraly said. "Hydro One's success will be built on a platform of disciplined planning, operational and execution excellence and building teams of highly motivated, empowered employees. I look forward to contributing to Hydro One's success on behalf of our customers, shareholders and employees."

Mr. Kiraly earned a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and an M.B.A. from Seton Hall. Mr. Kiraly also completed the Advanced Management program from Harvard Business School.

About the Company:

Hydro One Limited (TSX: H) Hydro One is Ontario's largest electricity transmission and distribution company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario with approximately $24 billion in assets and 2015 revenues of over $6.5 billion. Hydro One delivers electricity safely and reliably to over 1.3 million customers across the province of Ontario, and to large industrial customers and municipal utilities. Hydro One owns and operates Ontario's approximately 29,000 circuit km high-voltage transmission network and an approximately 123,000 circuit km primary low-voltage local distribution network. For more information about Hydro One, visit www.HydroOne.com

SOURCE Hydro One Limited

Related Links

http://www.hydroone.com


All monetary amounts are expressed in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise indicated.

TSX: IMG NYSE: IAG

TORONTO, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - IAMGOLD Corporation ("the Company") today announced the early tender results of its previously announced tender offer to purchase for cash from each registered holder (each, a "Holder" and, collectively, the "Holders") up to $150,000,000 in aggregate principal amount (the "Maximum Tender Amount") of the Company's outstanding 6.75% Senior Notes due 2020 (the "Notes") (the "Offer"). The early tender deadline and the withdrawal deadline for the Offer were, in each case, 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on August 19, 2016 (such date and time, the "Early Tender Time" and the "Withdrawal Deadline").

The Company has been advised that, as of the Early Tender Time, $145,702,000 aggregate principal amount of Notes, or approximately 23.0% of Notes outstanding, have been validly tendered and not withdrawn pursuant to the Offer. The Company intends to accept for purchase all of such Notes on the Early Settlement Date (as defined below).

The Offer is being made by the Company pursuant to the Offer to Purchase dated August 8, 2016 (the "Offer to Purchase") and the related letter of transmittal (the "Letter of Transmittal" and, together with the Offer to Purchase, the "Offer Documents") previously distributed to Holders of Notes.

The table below summarizes certain payment terms of the Offer:

Description of

Notes CUSIP / ISIN Nos. Outstanding

Principal Amount Maximum

Tender Amount Tender

Consideration(1) Early

Tender

Payment(1) Total

Consideration(1)(2) 6.75% Senior

Notes

due 2020 CUSIP: 450913AC2;

C4535AAA8 ISIN: US450913AC25;

USC4535AAA81 $635,000,000 $150,000,000 $940 $30 $970

___________________________________ (1) Per $1,000 principal amount of Notes tendered and accepted for purchase. (2) Includes the Early Tender Payment.





The Offer will expire at 12:00 midnight, New York City time, on September 2, 2016 (one minute after 11:59 p.m., New York City time, on September 2, 2016), unless extended or earlier terminated (such date and time, as may be extended, the "Expiration Date").

The total consideration for each $1,000 principal amount of the Notes is $970 (the "Total Consideration"), which includes an early tender payment of $30 per $1,000 principal amount of the Notes (the "Early Tender Payment") and a tender payment of $940 per $1,000 principal amount of the Notes (the "Tender Consideration").

The Early Tender Payment is payable only to Holders who tendered and validly delivered their Notes prior to or at the Early Tender Time. Holders who validly tendered and did not withdraw Notes prior to or at the Early Tender Time will be eligible to receive the Total Consideration (including the Early Tender Payment) on the Early Settlement Date in respect of Notes accepted for purchase. Holders who validly tender their Notes after the Early Tender Time and prior to or at the Expiration Date will be entitled to receive the Tender Consideration, namely an amount equal to the Total Consideration less the Early Tender Payment, on the Final Settlement Date (as defined below) in respect of notes accepted for purchase. In addition, Holders whose Notes are purchased in the Offer will receive accrued and unpaid interest in respect of their purchased Notes from the last interest payment date to, but not including, the applicable Settlement Date (as defined below).

Payment for Notes that were validly tendered at or prior to the Early Tender Time and not validly withdrawn at or prior to the Withdrawal Deadline, and accepted for purchase in the Offer, will be after the Early Tender Time but prior to the Expiration Date (the "Early Settlement Date"), and is expected to be on or about August 22, 2016. Payment for Notes that are validly tendered after the Early Tender Time, but at or prior to the Expiration Date, and accepted for purchase in the Offer, will be promptly after the Expiration Date (the "Final Settlement Date", and the Final Settlement Date and the Early Settlement Date each being a "Settlement Date") and is expected to be on or about September 6, 2016.

If the aggregate principal amount of Notes validly tendered in the Offer exceeds the Maximum Tender Amount, then, subject to the terms and conditions of the Offer, the Company will accept Notes on a pro rata basis as described in the Offer to Purchase.

The Withdrawal Deadline for the Offer has now passed. Notes already tendered pursuant to the Offer may no longer be withdrawn, and any other Notes tendered prior to the Expiration Date may not be withdrawn, except as required by applicable law.

The Company's obligation to accept for purchase, and to pay for, the Notes validly tendered pursuant to the Offer is subject to, and conditioned upon satisfaction or waiver of, certain conditions, as set forth in the Offer Documents, in the sole discretion of the Company. The Offer is not conditioned on any minimum participation by the Holders.

The Company may increase the Maximum Tender Amount in its sole discretion but is under no obligation to do so. There can be no assurance that the Company will exercise its right to increase the Maximum Tender Amount.

Notes may be tendered and will be accepted for payment only in denominations of $2,000 and any integral multiple $1,000 in excess thereof. Any tender of Notes the proration of which would otherwise result in a return of Notes to a tendering Holder in a principal amount below the minimum denomination of $2,000 principal amount may be rejected in full or accepted in full in the sole discretion of the Company.

The Dealer Manager for the Offer is:

Citigroup Global Markets Inc.

390 Greenwich Street, 1st floor

New York, New York, 10013

U.S.A.

Attention: Liability Management

Group

U.S. Toll Free: +1 800-558-3745

Collect: +1 212-723-6106

The Information and Tender Agent for the Offer is Global Bondholder Services Corporation. To contact the Information and Tender Agent, banks and brokers may call +1-212-430-3774, and others may call U.S. toll-free: +1 866-470-4500. Additional contact information is set forth below.

Global Bondholder Services Corporation







By Mail, Hand or Overnight Courier:



By Facsimile Transmission:







65 Broadway, Suite 404

New York, NY 10006

USA

Attention: Corporate Actions

E-mail: [email protected]



(for eligible institutions only)

+1 212-430-3775/3779

Attention: Corporate Actions

Confirmation by Telephone

+1 212-430-3774









Holders of the Notes are urged to read the Offer Documents carefully. Any questions or requests for assistance in relation to the Offer Documents may be directed to the Dealer Manager at its telephone number set forth above or to the Holder's broker, dealer, commercial bank, trust company or other nominee for assistance concerning the Offer. Requests for additional copies of the Offer Documents may be directed to the Information and Tender Agent at the addresses and telephone numbers set forth above. Documents relating to the Offer, including the Offer to Purchase and the Letter of Transmittal, are also available at http://www.gbsc-usa.com/iamgold/.

This announcement is neither an offer to purchase nor a solicitation of an offer to sell any of the Notes or any other securities.

The Offer is being made solely pursuant to the Offer Documents. The Offer is not being made in, nor will the Company accept tenders of Notes from, 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. None of the Company, Computershare Trust Company, N.A., Computershare Trust Company of Canada, the Dealer Manager or the Information and Tender Agent is making any recommendations to the Holders as to whether or not to tender all or any portion of Notes. Holders must decide whether to tender Notes, and if tendering, the amount of Notes to tender.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements. All statements, other than of historical fact, that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future (including, without limitation, statements regarding the terms and timing for completion of the Offer, including the acceptance for purchase of any Notes validly tendered and the expected Expiration Date and Settlement Date thereof, the potential increase to the Maximum Tender Amount, the satisfaction or waiver of certain conditions of the Offer, the expected, estimated or planned gold production, cash costs, margin expansion, capital expenditures and exploration expenditures and statements regarding the estimation of mineral resources, exploration results, potential mineralization, potential mineral resources and mineral reserves) are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by use of the words "will", "continue", "expect", "estimate", "intend", "to have", "plan" or "project" or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict, that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things, without limitation, failure to meet expected, estimated or planned gold production, cash costs, margin expansion, capital expenditures and exploration expenditures and failure to establish estimated mineral resources, the possibility that future exploration results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations, changes in world gold markets and other risks disclosed in IAMGOLD's most recent Form 40-F/Annual Information Form on file with the SEC and Canadian provincial securities regulatory authorities. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

About IAMGOLD

IAMGOLD is a mid-tier mining company with four operating gold mines on three continents. A solid base of strategic assets in Canada, South America and Africa is complemented by development and exploration projects and continued assessment of accretive acquisition opportunities. IAMGOLD is in a strong financial position with extensive management and operational expertise.

SOURCE IAMGOLD Corporation

Related Links

http://www.iamgold.com


CHICAGO, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Paula Wolff, Director of the Illinois Justice Project, issued the following statement on Monday about Gov. Rauner's approval of a series of criminal justice reform bills:

These bills are welcome steps in reform of the adult and juvenile criminal justice system in Illinois. The General Assembly and Governor have worked together to improve a system acutely in need of policy change.

SB 2370 is especially important because it expands a requirement that an attorney be present to protect children questioned for the most serious crimes. Most people are surprised to learn that teenagers can be interrogated for hours without a lawyer in the room. The practice has led to false confessions and long periods of incarceration for youth who don't understand their rights.

Other bills signed by the Governor will streamline the expungement process for some juveniles (HB 5017); will reduce the probation period for some youth (HB 6291); and will expand employment opportunities for men and women leaving state prisons (HB 5973).

These bills make it more likely those youth and adults will remain out of trouble and will make our neighborhoods safer. We look forward to working with members of the General Assembly and Gov. Rauner to continue efforts to divert people away from prison and to needed services and to continue to reduce the size of the state's prison population while keeping the public safe.

About the Illinois Justice Project

The Illinois Justice Project (ILJP) engages in criminal justice reform efforts that promote policies that will make our communities safer and reduce recidivism among youths and adults. Established in 2014 as a legacy project of Metropolis Strategies, the non-profit ILJP is a supporting organization of the Chicago Community Trust and an affiliate of The Commercial Club of Chicago. www.ILJP.org

SOURCE Illinois Justice Project

Related Links

http://www.iljp.org


FREMONT, Calif., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Innodisk, the worldwide innovative leader for service-driven flash and DRAM storage products, is showing what is Absolutely on Board this coming August 28-31 at VM World 2016 in Las Vegas, NV. Innodisk highlights "Total Solutions" for today's technology through demos and displays. While exhibiting the industry's widest selection of DRAM modules and flash form factors, Innodisk will provide a live in-booth demonstration, while partnering with AIC to showcase the latest in innovative solutions. With 62 global patents and growing, come visit booth 2707 and experience Innodisk.

Flash is On Board

Innodisk will display and demo the latest SATADOM 3IE3 solution. This newest Innodisk innovation supports Innodisk's iSLC solution in extending endurance more than six times over MLC solutions. Along with the live in-booth demonstration highlighting the SATADOM - ML 3IE3 V2 128GB's will be the M.2 P42 3ME, which is a PCIe Gen. 3x1 with NVMe. Because it has a capacity of up to 256GB, it is positioned to be the next generation boot-up device for server applications.

Staying on board, Innodisk will display the M.2 (S80) 3MG2-P. This product scales up to 1TB in capacity with iSMART features for disk health and an error recovery system. All of these products are designed to work under harsh conditions with temperature ranges of -40C to +85C. Visit the Innodisk team for a hardware analysis and see why we are a complete storage solutions provider.

DRAM Memory for High Performance

Innodisk understands that no board is fully complete without the power of memory. Therefore, Innodisk features a live demo and display with DRAM modules that are developed to perform. Showcased inside the demo will be the DDR4 32GB RDIMM 2400MT/S module. This product has Gold Finger 30" along with a JEDEC standard 1.2V (1.26V~1.14V) Power Supply and a

JEDEC Standard 288-pin. On display is the DDR4 16GB RDIMM 2400MT/S. It has the same features as the 32GB DDR4 2400MT/S, however the DRAM IC is 128Mbit x 4 I/Os x 16banks (2Gx 4)x18ea. It is worthy to note that this high performance module can go up to 128GB. With hundreds of DRAM products supporting their portfolio, Innodisk continues to provide total solutions worldwide.





Innodisk Partnering with AIC

Innodisk is "Absolutely On Board" this year and very proud to be partnering with AIC and their SB202-LB storage server. This total server solution features Innodisk DDR4 RDIMM 16GB 2400MT/S modules. Also on board is the M.2 (S80) 3MG2-P and the SATADOM  ML 3IE3 VS. The AIC SB202-LB, supporting dual Intel Xeon Processors E5-2600 v3/ v4 product family and 16 DIMM slots using the Innodisk DDR4 modules, has tool-less drive carriers and features 12Gb/s SAS storage architecture. We invite you to come and view the total collaboration presented by AIC and Innodisk.

You are invited to visit us at:

VM World 2016

Location: Mandalay Bay Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Date: August 28-31, 2016

Booth: #2707

About VM World 2016

VMworld, hosted by VMware, is the number-one event for enabling the digital enterprise. VMworld offers four full days of innovation to accelerate your journey to software-defined businessfrom mobile devices to the data center and the cloud. Provided is an exhibition to highlight sponsors and other technology companies' products and services. It starts with General Sessions on the trends that matter most to your business and IT, then goes deeper into Breakout Sessions, Group Discussions and Expert Panels. In attendance are a mix of IT technical professionals and business decision-makers representing a wide range of industries.

About Innodisk

Innodisk is a service driven provider of flash memory and DRAM products for the industrial and enterprise applications. With satisfied customers across the embedded, aerospace and defense, cloud storage markets and more, we have set ourselves apart with a commitment to dependable products and unparalleled service. This has resulted in products including embedded peripherals designed to supplement existing industrial solutions and high IOPS flash arrays for industrial and enterprise applications. The expanded business lines are leading our next step in being a comprehensive solution and service provider in industrial storage industry.

Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan with engineering support and sales teams in China, Europe, Japan, and the United States, Innodisk is able to support clients globally. With abundant experience and an unrivaled knowledge of the memory industry, Innodisk develops products with excellent quality, remarkable performance, great cost-efficiency, and the highest reliability. For more information about Innodisk, please visit www.innodisk.com.

Innodisk Media Contact: Marsha Harrison

Tel510-770-9421 ext. 106

email[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120308/SF67400LOGO

SOURCE Innodisk

Related Links

http://www.innodisk.com


WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Vinson & Elkins continues to strengthen its global Intellectual Property practice with the addition of two partners in Washington, D.C. The firm's newest partners, Jennifer Chen and John Fuisz, join an IP team bolstered by several recent hires in California and Texas, and the opening of the firm's Taipei office.

Chen and Fuisz represent and counsel clients in patent and technology asset creation, use and management, finding solutions by drawing from varied legal tools and collective experience, including patent licensing and litigation.

Fuisz has been in practice for more than 20 years and has collaborated with Chen for more than 15 years, including advising companies in Japan. Fuisz is a first chair litigator with extensive experience representing clients in patent infringement lawsuits, particularly before the United States International Trade Commission.

Chen is a seasoned IP licensing and transactional lawyer who has served as counsel for several major international technology companies.

"John and Jennifer are outstanding lawyers and their addition reinforces our commitment to building and maintaining a world-class intellectual property practice," said V&E Chairman Mark Kelly. "Our newest partners are joining the firm during a period of exciting growth in our IP group, which has also included the addition of several key partners on the West Coast and in Texas, as well as the launch of our IP-focused Taipei office."

Chen's experience includes negotiating patent license agreements, know-how license agreements, joint research and development agreements and developing patent portfolio management strategies. She has litigated patent disputes before district courts and the ITC involving a wide array of technology and served as a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

For five years, Chen was an attorney for Hitachi, Ltd., resident in its Tokyo-based intellectual property group, where she helped manage a substantial patent portfolio and develop and execute complex licensing strategies. She also worked on licensing matters with other Asian technology companies, including in Taiwan and South Korea.

Chen earned her law degree from George Washington University Law School and is a registered patent attorney.

"Vinson & Elkins' reputation for excellence, vision of its leadership, and commitment to growing its intellectual property practice were especially attractive draws for us," said Fuisz.

"The firm's global platform allows us to better serve the increasing needs of our clients, and John and I are excited about the opportunities presented by V&E's presence in the Asia Pacific, including Taiwan and Japan. We couldn't be more thrilled about joining the firm," added Chen.

Over the course of his career, Fuisz has represented clients in patent litigation and related technology disputes such as 35 U.S.C. 146 actions, and breach of technology related contracts. He has appeared before the ITC, the PTAB, and numerous federal district courts, including the Northern District of California, the Eastern District of Texas, the Eastern District of Virginia, and the District of Delaware.

Some of his notable representations include representing Hitachi Ltd. in a major ITC Investigation concerning RAID storage systems, representing a major medical device company in coordinated patent priority, patent infringement and breach of contract actions relating to AAA bifurcated stent grafts, and obtaining the second largest fine ever imposed by the ITC for violation of a consent order.

Fuisz earned his law degree from Catholic University and his LL.M from George Washington University Law School and is a registered patent attorney.

"Jennifer brings a wealth of insight to the table and we believe her international IP counselling practice will generate synergy with V&E's robust Taiwan practice," said Darryl Woo, co-head of V&E's Intellectual Property practice. "Likewise, John's significant ITC litigation experience and his ability to find innovative solutions will greatly benefit our clients around the world. And together they boost our Japan IP practice. They are a welcome addition to our growing intellectual property group."

Prior to joining V&E, Chen and Fuisz were both formerly partners with McDermott Will & Emery before they each launched successful independent law practices, which they combined in 2015 as Fuisz Chen LLP. During their time at McDermott, Chen and Fuisz were colleagues of Craig Seebald, who currently serves as managing partner of V&E's Washington, D.C. office.

"Jennifer and John are great additions to the firm and the Washington, D.C. office," Seebald said. "In addition to being highly talented attorneys, they have a collegial nature that will fit well with our firm's culture. I have every confidence that their abilities will add to the spectacular growth of our IP group at V&E."

The addition of Chen and Fuisz follows V&E's recent hire of five IP litigation partners in Texas. In June, Fred Williams, Michael Simons, Todd Landis and Eric Klein joined the firm from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, along with Craig Tyler from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC.

In May, V&E opened an office in Taipei, which is focused on serving the U.S. intellectual property and commercial litigation needs of more than 40 Taiwanese companies introduced to the firm through the addition of partners Chris Kao and David Tsai, who joined V&E's IP practice in San Francisco and Palo Alto last September. They joined Woo, who previously had chaired the Litigation and Patent Litigation Groups of Fenwick & West. Woo now co-chairs V&E's IP Group along with Hilary Preston.

V&E's global IP practice, which spans eight offices worldwide, has an established record in obtaining, protecting, defending and enforcing clients' intellectual property rights, including patents, trademarks, trade dress, trade secrets and copyrights. The firm's lawyers have litigated such matters in state and federal district courts throughout the U.S. and have obtained results for V&E's clients at the U.S. International Trade, before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and in a variety of appellate courts, including the Federal Circuit.

Vinson & Elkins LLP is an international law firm with approximately 650 lawyers across 16 offices worldwide. For more information, please contact Jeremy Heallen at +1.713.758.2079.

SOURCE Vinson & Elkins LLP
NEW YORK, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Montefiore Health System and SBH Health System have signed a "Letter of Intent" (LOI) agreeing to explore a closer integrated relationship, further strengthening a partnership that has served the Bronx for years.

The two health systems already have a long tradition of sharing the best elements of their unique strengths. SBH's Level 1 Trauma Center and expert stroke and AIDS care are complemented by Montefiore's high end clinical research, and advanced specialty care in fields like cancer, cardiology and transplant. In a more integrated relationship the combined specialties of these two health systems has the potential to touch thousands of lives in need.

"For years SBH has been our steadfast partner in providing the best quality healthcare to Bronx residents," said Steven M. Safyer M.D., President and CEO of Montefiore Health System. "With this Letter of Intent we can build on the strong foundation already in place to improve our community's health outcomes. Our combined expertise offers clinical excellence, specialty care, a trauma center, and perhaps most important, an unwavering dedication to delivering the best possible healthcare to an underserved community."

"We see this as a logical next step for formalizing what has been a long and positive relationship. All citizens of the Bronx deserve the very best care and together we will deliver on that commitment," added David Perlstein, M.D., President and CEO of SBH Health System. "This confirms our mutual intent to evaluate a possible integration and collaboration that will align with the transformation of healthcare and ensure the delivery of the highest quality care to the community for many years to come."

In addition to sharing clinical practice, in recent years, Montefiore and SBH have also teamed up in a number of programs devoted to improving healthcare delivery in the Bronx. Bronx Partners for Healthy Communities (BPHC), their New York State recognized DSRIP Performing Provider System; the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Pioneer ACO program; and participation in HealthFirst's provider network are just a few. Montefiore and SBH also share numerous clinical and academic affiliations.

Montefiore and SBH are two of New York City's most venerable healthcare organizations. Founded in 1884, Montefiore is the academic medical center and University Hospital for Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Consisting of ten hospitals with more than 3,000 beds, Montefiore includes the Children's Hospital at Montefiore (CHAM), Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and close to 200 outpatient care sites. The advanced clinical and translational research at Montefiore and Einstein makes Montefiore one of the nation's premier research and healthcare institutions.

St. Barnabas Hospital, the flagship for SBH, is a 422-bed, not-for-profit, acute care community hospital with a Level I Trauma Center, a dialysis treatment center and New York State-designated Stroke and AIDS centers. It provides primary care, specialty services and behavioral healthcare at sites throughout the Bronx. The primary clinical affiliate of the new CUNY School of Medicine, it celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2016.

About Montefiore Health System

Montefiore Health System is one of New York's premier academic health systems and is a recognized leader in providing exceptional quality and personalized, accountable care to approximately three million people in communities across the Bronx, Westchester and the Hudson Valley. It is comprised of 10 hospitals, including the Children's Hospital at Montefiore, Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and close to 200 outpatient care sites. The advanced clinical and translational research at its' medical school, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, directly informs patient care and improves outcomes. From the Montefiore-Einstein Centers of Excellence in cancer, cardiology and vascular care, pediatrics, and transplantation, to its' preeminent school-based health program, Montefiore is a fully integrated healthcare delivery system providing coordinated, comprehensive care to patients and their families. For more information please visit www.montefiore.org. Follow us on Twitter and view us on Facebook and YouTube.

About SBH Health System

SBH is a community-based, patient-friendly healthcare system serving individuals and families in the Bronx with high-quality inpatient, outpatient and emergency medical, mental health and dental services. The health system is home to St. Barnabas Hospital, a seven-story ambulatory care facility, and a 40-station dialysis treatment center. In addition, primary care, specialty services and behavioral healthcare are offered at sites throughout the Bronx. This includes New York State-designated Level 1 trauma, stroke, AIDS and Perinatal centers, as well as a federally-designated Community Center of Excellence in Women's Health. SBH heads the Bronx Partners for Healthy Communities (BPHC), a Performing Provider System (PPS) with over 200 members that was created in response to the New York State Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) program, a state-wide effort to reform the Medicaid system. Last year, SBH became the clinical affiliate of the new CUNY School of Medicine. When SBH opened its doors in 1866, it was America's first hospital for chronic diseases and only the second such hospital in the world. For more information please visit www.sbhny.org. Follow us on Twitter and view us on Facebook and YouTube.

SOURCE Montefiore Medical Center

Related Links

http://www.montefiore.org


The music of the film Kicks acts almost as another lead character in Tipping's urban coming-of-age tale set in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was important to have the film be reflective of a place and time, and local Bay Area artists like Mac Dre, Iamsu!, Roach Gigz, Dave Steezy and NanosauR help to do just that. Almost every song heard in the film is available as part of the soundtrack album. It also boasts songs that you can't get anywhere else from NanosauR, Jay Casio & Brian Reitzell.

The songs in the movie are held together by composer Reitzell's pulsating score, which often acts as the music bed for some of lead actor Jahking Guillory's poignant moments of spoken rap. Creating his own unique method of scoring films, Reitzell draws equally from his experience as a recording and touring musician. His vision for this film score was to create a seamless landscape of songs, score and source music. It also helps that Reitzell himself is from the East Bay area, where the film takes place. "I have always wanted to score a film based there," says Reitzell. "Justin [Tipping] captured the look and feel of the place in such a real way. It was a very natural process for me because I felt so connected to it. The people, the streets, BART trains, the music it's under my skin."

When asked about the selection process for the music in the film, Tipping says, "I always knew I wanted to weave an eclectic soundtrack together that intertwined hip-hop and sweeping score to reflect the bay area sound as well as the world inside the characters' imagination. With so many genres mashed up together, Brian [Reitzell] was the dream composer for Kicks because of his unique and diverse musical background. He's truly a genius in the studio. He created a sonic through line that elevated the story to an entirely new level."

Composer Reitzell goes on to compliment his director, saying, "Justin has impeccable taste. The source music he selected, mostly hip-hop tracks, really put you in the East Bay whether you knew it or not. It's a timeless collection. We wanted the score to connect with the source music sonically. I think that when you do that, the music as a whole  both songs and score  make for a more immersive/connective experience."

About the Film

When a local hood snatches his hard-earned kicks, fifteen-year old Brandon (Guillory) and his two best friends go on an ill-advised mission across the Bay Area to retrieve the stolen sneakers. Featuring a soundtrack packed with hip-hop classics, Tipping's debut feature is an urban coming-of-age tale told with grit, humor  and surprising lyricism.

Track List

1.) Spaceship  Brian Reitzell

2.) Party and Bullshit (Dialogue Interlude 1)  Jahking Guillory

3.) Friends Hanging Out  Brian Reitzell

4.) The Sheboygan Left  RJD2

5.) C.R.E.A.M.  Wu-Tang Clan

6.) BBQ Music  Marc E. Bassy

7.) Kitchen Astronaut (feat. Jahking Guillory)  Brian Reitzell

8.) Self Made  Keith Jenkins

9.) Slow Trap  NanosauR

10.) Travel to Oakland  Brian Reitzell

11.) Sincerely Yours  Iamsu!

12.) 37 - Roach Gigz

13.) Hella Super High  YMTK

14.) Wave on $Wim  Dave Steezy

15.) Get Stupid (Remix)  Mac Dre

16.) Aye  Jay Casio

17.) In You (I Found a Love)  Charles Bradley & Menahan Street Band

18.) Sideshow  Blue Magic

19.) Fireworks Went Off  Brian Reitzell

20.) Flaco Arrives  Brian Reitzell

21.) Flaco Chases Brandon  Brian Reitzell

22.) Party and Bullshit (Dialogue Interlude 2)  Jahking Guillory

23.) 606 in the 510  Brian Reitzell

Back Lot Music is a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, a Comcast company.

For more information, please contact:

Nikki Walsh, Marketing & Publicity for Back Lot Music

(818) 777-9151, [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160819/399779



Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160202/328908LOGO



SOURCE Back Lot Music
 Flash

New Zealand Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce will be looking to drum up business and innovation cooperation in Japan and South Korea this week.

Joyce said Monday he would visit Tokyo before travelling on to Seoul and Busan in South Korea, with the focus of his visits being trade and investment links as well as education and science.

The South Korea-New Zealand free trade agreement entered into force late last year.

Japan and South Korea were also two of the largest origin countries for international students in New Zealand.

"There is also scope to boost science and technology relationships, with both countries recognized as being world-leaders in research and development and innovation," Joyce said in a statement.

"We want to strengthen links in sectors like robotics and functional food, and geothermal energy is a particular focus for us in Japan," said Joyce.

"Investment from both countries also makes a significant contribution to our economy especially in regional New Zealand and our exports. We need to grow those linkages further," said the minister.
INDIANAPOLIS, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) and AstraZeneca today announced they have received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Fast Track designation for the development program in Alzheimer's disease for AZD3293, an oral beta secretase cleaving enzyme (BACE) inhibitor currently in phase 3 clinical trials. The FDA's Fast Track program is designed to expedite the development and review of new therapies to treat serious conditions and tackle key unmet medical needs.

"We are pleased the FDA places a high priority on the development of drugs that target Alzheimer's disease, one of the most critical health issues of our time," said Phyllis Ferrell, vice president and global development leader for Alzheimer's disease at Lilly. "Most importantly, this is a positive step forward for the millions of patients, families, caregivers, advocates and healthcare providers who fight every day for progress."

"The Fast Track designation in the U.S. for this promising potential therapy reinforces the ambition of the AstraZeneca-Lilly BACE alliance to help advance science for patients and their families managing this devastating illness," said Craig Shering, AZD3293 Project Lead in Global Medicines Development at AstraZeneca. "BACE inhibitors have the potential to transform the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, one of the biggest challenges facing medical science today."

In addition to the continuing AMARANTH phase 2/3 study, Lilly and AstraZeneca have also announced the planned initiation of a second phase 3 trial for AZD3293. The trial, called DAYBREAK-ALZ, studies the safety and efficacy of AZD3293 in people with mild Alzheimer's dementia and began enrolling participants in the third quarter of 2016.

AZD3293 has been shown in studies to reduce levels of amyloid beta in the cerebro-spinal fluid of people with Alzheimer's and healthy volunteers. The progression of Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the accumulation of amyloid plaque in the brain. BACE is an enzyme associated with the development of amyloid beta. Inhibiting BACE is expected to prevent the formation and build-up of amyloid plaque which in turn may help slow the progression of the disease.

About the AstraZeneca and Lilly BACE Alliance

AstraZeneca and Lilly announced an alliance in 2014 for the development and commercialization of AZD3293. Under the agreement, Lilly will lead clinical development, working with researchers from AstraZeneca's Research and Development Team, while AstraZeneca will be responsible for manufacturing. The companies will take joint responsibility for commercialization of the molecule and will share all future costs equally for development and commercialization, as well as net global revenues post-launch.

About Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease is a fatal illness and is the most common form of dementia, accounting for 60 to 80 percent of cases.1 There are currently an estimated 46 million people living with dementia worldwide, and this number is expected to exceed 74 million in 2030 and 131 million in 2050.2 Only 50 percent of people with dementia ever receive a formal diagnosis,3 and Alzheimer's disease continues to be one of the most significant health challenges facing the world. The total estimated worldwide cost of dementia in 2015 was $818 billion.2 By 2018, dementia will become a trillion dollar disease, rising to $2 trillion by 2030.2

About AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca is a global, science-led biopharmaceutical company that focuses on the discovery, development and commercialisation of prescription medicines, primarily for the treatment of diseases in three therapy areas  Respiratory and Autoimmunity, Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases, and Oncology. The company is also active in inflammation, infection and neuroscience through numerous collaborations. AstraZeneca operates in over 100 countries and its innovative medicines are used by millions of patients worldwide. For more information please visit: www.astrazeneca.com.

About Eli Lilly and Company

Lilly is a global healthcare leader that unites caring with discovery to make life better for people around the world. We were founded more than a century ago by a man committed to creating high-quality medicines that meet real needs, and today we remain true to that mission in all our work. Across the globe, Lilly employees work to discover and bring life-changing medicines to those who need them, improve the understanding and management of disease, and give back to communities through philanthropy and volunteerism. To learn more about Lilly, please visit us at www.lilly.com and newsroom.lilly.com/social-channels.

This press release contains forward-looking statements (as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995) about LY3314814/AZD3293 as a potential treatment for Alzheimer's disease, and reflects Lilly's current belief. However, as with any pharmaceutical product, there are substantial risks and uncertainties in the process of development and commercialization. Among other things, there can be no guarantee that LY3314814/AZD3293 will receive regulatory approvals or be commercially successful. For further discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, see Lilly's most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, Lilly undertakes no duty to update forward-looking statements to reflect events after the date of this release.

P-LLY

1 Alzheimer's Association. 2016 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures. Alzheimer's & Dementia. 2016; 12(4).

2 Prince M, et al. World Alzheimer Report 2015: The Global Impact of Dementia, An Analysis of Prevalence, Incidence, Cost and Trends. Alzheimer's Disease International. August 2015.

3 Department of Health. Dementia  a state of the nation report on dementia care and support in England. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/262139/Dementia.pdf. Accessed 8 July 2015.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20031219/LLYLOGO

Refer to:

Media: Nicole Hebert, [email protected], +1-317-701-9984

Investors: Phil Johnson, [email protected], +1-317-655-6874

SOURCE Eli Lilly and Company

Related Links

http://www.lilly.com


ST. LOUIS, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Local public health organizations and healthcare institutions support legislation introduced today by St. Louis County Councilman, Dr. Sam Page that would prohibit the sale of tobacco products to anyone under the age of 21 in St. Louis County. The Tobacco 21 bill will reduce tobacco use among young people, save lives and help make the next generation tobacco-free.

"Tobacco 21 is a policy long overdue, says Philip Abraham, MD, FAAP, Instructor in Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine. "High school youth can easily obtain cigarettes from their older peers despite having our current laws in place. Tobacco 21 laws can help current and future St. Louis children avoid a lifetime of tobacco addiction and tobacco related disease."

Increasing the tobacco sales age to 21 also has broad public support. A recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 75 percent of adults  including seven in 10 smokers  support increasing the minimum age for sale of tobacco products to 21.

"We should send our kids back to school without easy access to tobacco products, offering them a long, happy and healthy life," says Dr. Sam Page. "Tobacco 21 saves lives. The life we save might be someone close to you, or even your own child."

In time, smoking prevalence could be significantly lower in our schools, workforce, and community. As a community we should be doing all we can to prevent our children from a lifelong deadly addiction to tobacco use.

"Research shows that raising the legal minimum age for sale of all tobacco and nicotine products to age 21 could reduce overall smoking rates and decrease smoking initiation among youth," says Karen Englert, Government Relations Director, American Heart Association. "As a community we should be doing all we can to prevent our children from a lifelong deadly addiction to tobacco use."

The suburban city of Needham, Massachusetts was the first to implement Tobacco 21 in 2005, and saw teen smoking decrease by an astonishing 46 percent between 2006 and 2010. Following Needham's example, 190+ cities in 12 states; 2 states (California and Hawaii) have statewide ordinances. Missouri has six cities with T21 ordinances: Columbia, Kansas City, Independence, Gladstone, Grandview and Lee's Summit.

Tobacco 21 STL METRO is a partnership of business, health care organizations, hospitals, nonprofits, government, and more. To date, 29 businesses and organizations have endorsed Tobacco 21 STL METRO.

For more information or to join our growing list of supporters, please visit: http://motobaccofacts.org/index.php/policy/tobacco-21/t21stl/

(Note: For questions regarding legislation, please contact the office of Dr. Sam Page at 314-615-5437)

Endorsing Organizations



As of 8/19/16

A special thank you to the St. Louis Metro businesses and organizations that have taken the lead on endorsing this important health policy for the St. Louis Metro area. Tobacco21|MO now covers over 750,000 Missourians in 6 cities, and over 60 million Americans nationwide. The policy is expected to save over 2,500 lives of children born in the STL Metro area between 2000 and 2019.



Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine

Ameren Missouri

American Academy of Pediatrics Missouri Chapter

American Cancer Society

American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network

American Heart Association

American Lung Association

American Medical Association

Asthma/Allergy Foundation of America, St. Louis Chapter

BJC HealthCare

ENT Society

March of Dimes

Mercy

Missouri Public Health Association

Missouri State Medical Association

National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse (NCADA)

Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation

Rockwood Drug Free Coalition

Saint Louis University

SSM Health St. Louis

St. Louis Business Health Coalition

St. Louis Metropolitan Medical Association

St. Louis OB/GYN Society

St. Louis Regional Health Commission

Tobacco Free Missouri Coalition

Tobacco Free STL

Tobacco21.org

Washington University in Saint Louis

Western Anesthesiology Associates

SOURCE Tobacco 21

Related Links

http://motobaccofacts.org/index.php/policy/tobacco-21/t21stl/


TORONTO, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -

Who: Foresters Financial, an international financial services provider committed to doing more for families and communities, is offering assistance to its members affected by the blue cut fire in San Bernardino County.



What: Eligible members experiencing significant personal hardship as a result of the fires can receive grants to help with immediate needs.

Members who are directly affected by the flooding can contact Foresters toll-free at 800 828 1540 between the hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST, Monday to Friday, or e-mail Foresters at [email protected].

About Foresters Financial

Foresters Financial is an international financial services provider with more than three million clients and members in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, and total funds under management of $34 billion1. With a history of more than 140 years, we provide life insurance, savings, retirement and investment solutions that help families achieve their financial goals, protect their families and improve their communities. For more information, visit foresters.com.

Foresters Financial and Foresters are trade names and trademarks of The Independent Order of Foresters (a fraternal benefit society, 789 Don Mills Road, Toronto, Canada M3C 1T9) and its subsidiaries.

Products offered vary by country. Not all products are available for distribution in all jurisdictions. In the United States, products are offered by The Independent Order of Foresters and its subsidiaries, including Foresters Financial Services, Inc. a registered broker-dealer. Securities, life insurance and annuity products are offered through Foresters Financial Services, Inc. or independent producers. Insurance products are issued by Foresters Life Insurance and Annuity Company, New York, or The Independent Order of Foresters. Investment advisory products and services are offered through Foresters Advisory Services, LLC, a registered investment adviser.

1 in Canadian dollars as of December 31, 2015

SOURCE Foresters

Related Links

www.foresters.com


SAN DIEGO, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mesa Biotech Inc., a privately-held, molecular diagnostic company that has developed a testing platform designed specifically for point-of-care (POC) infectious disease diagnosis, today announced that it will unveil its novel point-of-care molecular diagnostic system at the eighth annual Next Generation Dx Summit to be held August 22  25 at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, DC. In a platform presentation on Wednesday August 24th entitled"Finally, a Point-of-Care Molecular System for the Physician's Office" Emily Winn-Deen, Ph.D., Chief Strategy Officer, Mesa Biotech, Inc. will describe the new testing system, which will also be available for meeting attendees to preview in the company's exhibit booth. The system, which is currently for investigational use only, will be launched for sale in Europe in the spring of 2017.

"This summit's theme of 'moving assays to the clinic' is a great fit for us," said Emily Winn-Deen, Chief Strategy Officer, Mesa Biotech, Inc. "Mesa Biotech is breaking diagnostic barriers by making highly advanced, accurate, laboratory quality molecular testing available to all levels of healthcare providers in a portable, easy-to-use, affordable POC system."

About Mesa Biotech Inc.

Mesa Biotech is an emerging molecular diagnostic company, bringing the superior diagnostic performance of nucleic acid amplification to the point-of-care (POC). Mesa Biotech's diagnostic system consists of a portable, palm-sized dock and a disposable, assay-specific test cassette. This patented system will allow healthcare professionals to obtain actionable, laboratory-quality results at the POC in 30 minutes or less with greater sensitivity and specificity than many current infectious disease rapid immunodiagnostic tests. Mesa's technology development has been funded to date by a series of grants and private equity investments totaling approximately $30 million. The company is preparing for Series A funding in 2016 and expects to obtain FDA approval for its first product, an influenza assay and dock, in 2017. For more information visit http://www.mesabiotech.com.

SOURCE Mesa Biotech Inc.

Related Links

http://www.mesabiotech.com


WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Dignity and Truth Platform Party

Moldovan civil society and opposition leader Andrei Nastase, President of the Dignity and Truth Platform Party, came to Washington, D.C. last week for his first official visit to America's capital. The political leader held warm and productive meetings with a number of lawmakers and State Department officials, as well as non-government and think tank organizations, including the German Marshall Fund, the International Republican Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the National Democratic Institute, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

During these dialogues, Mr. Nastase discussed the rampant corruption taking place at the highest levels of the current Moldovan government, including the role of Moldovan oligarch and politician Vladimir Plahotniuc in the disappearance of 1 billion dollars from three major banks in Moldova in 2014. In addition to corruption concerns, D.C. officials raised their fears about a fair election campaign environment and discussed efforts to improve the election process that would enable Moldovans to have a true voice in electing their first president in 20 years.

"We are dealing with a captured state by definition and a genuine model of kleptocracy in a 2016 European country, which is beyond unacceptable," said Andrei Nastase. "Moldova's hope for change now relies heavily on support from international institutions. A first important step towards restoring the rule of law is electing a fair and proactive president, who will not accept dark compromises, has competence within the national security field and will appoint an independent Prosecutor General. In order to achieve these measures, ensuring free and democratic elections is imperative if Moldova is to ever become the success story we are all hoping for."

Mr. Nastase plans to return to the nation's capital this fall to hold further discussions and meetings with U.S. government officials. Moldova's upcoming national elections will take place this October.

About Andrei Nastase and the Dignity and Truth Platform Party

Andrei Nastase was elected President of the Dignity and Truth Platform Party in December 2015.

He is also the elected President of the Great National Assembly Council (CMAN), a group of prominent journalists, artists, political analysts and other public figures, who work to provide a strategic framework for peaceful protest in the country. Mr. Nastase is a former prosecutor, lawyer, and university lecturer.

The Dignity and Truth Platform Party, which grew out of the ongoing anti-corruption grassroots movement in Moldova, calls for a pro-European political alternative. The Party's popular protests rail against the country's political system, which is often criticized as oligarchic.

SOURCE Dignity and Truth Platform Party
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- PAX Labs, Inc., a leader in reinventing the smoking experience, has announced Tyler Goldman as CEO. Goldman joins the thriving company at a monumental time: sales of the company's PAX premium vaporizer (current MSRP $279.99) recently passed one million units; and JUUL, the company's premium e-cigarette (current MSRP $49.99), now ranks as the second leading U.S.-based independent e-cigarette company in sales, despite being in only 7% of stores.

As CEO, Goldman will be responsible for continuing to build the company's platform to deliver premium, non-smoking experiences to fulfill unmet consumer demand. Goldman's initial focuses will be on meeting the growing demand for JUUL, expanding the PAX portfolio to address additional consumer segments, leveraging the company's innovative technology to continue improving vapor experiences for both PAX and JUUL consumers, and expanding the PAX Labs team to support the company's fast growth.

Introduced last year as the first premium e-cigarette, JUUL is the fastest-growing electronic smoking device in the U.S. convenience store channel, having grown 94% this year according to IRI. It has also out-indexed industry growth in the e-cigarette category by 600% this calendar year. Demand for JUUL validates the emergence of a premium segment e-cigarette category, with JUUL being priced materially above all other offerings. Despite recently quadrupling production capabilities, JUUL continues to experience sellout across the country.

PAX is the world's best and highest selling portable vaporizer. PAX continues to outpace the overall rapid growth in the vaporizer industry and maintain the dominant market share in its category. The company plans to release additional products in the near future, which are poised to do the same in new markets. As tech-meets-culture website The Verge noted, "PAX is ahead of everyone else and still sprinting."

"Tyler has a tremendous track record in the tech industry, building premium brands by delivering products in new categories that super-serve consumers," said PAX Labs co-founder and chief product officer James Monsees. "We have set out to do the same from day one, achieved a great deal of success in a short period of time and are confident that Tyler is the ideal executive to further accelerate our growth and lead us into our next stage."

Goldman has over 20 years experience leading technology companies. He was previously the CEO, North America at Deezer, a top global music streaming service, CEO of BUZZMEDIA, the largest pop-culture digital publisher, SVP and founding member of Movielink, a movie streaming service sold to Blockbuster, and founder and CEO of Broadband Sports, an early Internet pioneer.

"Over one billion people in the world smoke. Almost all are looking for a better solution. While early, PAX Labs' platform is offering these consumers better solutions and, in so doing, the company is transforming the smoking business. PAX Labs already has scale with two market-leading products, has developed incredible IP we can continue to leverage to better meet existing needs and address new needs, and is growing at a rapid ratewhat's not to like?" said Goldman.

About PAX Labs, Inc.

PAX Labs was founded in 2007 by two Stanford Design Program Masters graduates, with the mission of making beautiful and technologically advanced vapor products for adult smokers. Headquartered in San Francisco, the vaporization technology company is leading the reinvention of the smoking experience with its innovative, premium vaporizers. Offerings from the company include PAX 2, the second generation of its popular PAX product line, and JUUL, a game-changing new product in the e-cigarette category. Both PAX 2 and JUUL were winners of the 2016 iF DESIGN AWARD. For more information, please visit www.JUULvapor.com and www.PAXvapor.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151211/295404LOGO



SOURCE PAX Labs, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.pax.com


PITTSBURGH, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- PNC Bank today announced it will utilize Pinterest to expand its financial and early childhood education initiatives in social media. Two new Pinterest boards will provide visual content where consumers, parents and caregivers are likely to search for it.

Many of PNC's financial education materials already are found online. In the second quarter of 2016, approximately 23,000 consumers viewed content related to budgeting, home buying and savings at pnc.com. PNC's resources related to Grow Up Great, its early childhood education initiative, are also avidly searched. PNC will use the Pinterest platform as an additional avenue to raise awareness of this valued content that appeals to consumers' aspirational goals.

"We understand the value of providing educators, parents and caregivers with quality materials that better prepare children for kindergarten," said Sally McCrady, director of Community Affairs at PNC Bank. "For years, Grow Up Great has posted online resources created by outstanding science and arts organizations. Pinterest offers us an opportunity to reach those who are most interested in this content, so they can access it when and where they want, in the places they are already searching."

Additional PNC Pinterest boards will provide content relevant to the home buying process and long-term financial planning. To view PNC's Pinterest boards, please visit pinterest.com/pnc/.

PNC Bank, National Association, is a member of The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. PNC is one of the largest diversified financial services institutions in the United States, organized around its customers and communities for strong relationships and local delivery of retail and business banking; residential mortgage banking; specialized services for corporations and government entities, including corporate banking, real estate finance and asset-based lending; wealth management and asset management. For information about PNC, visit www.pnc.com.

CONTACT:

Joe Balaban

(412) 768-5095

[email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160506/364550LOGO

SOURCE PNC Bank

Related Links

http://www.pnc.com


"Rosalynn and I are thrilled to lend our hands in Memphis this week, and we look forward to working with Habitat homeowners and volunteers. Their dedication continues to inspire and motivate us each year," said President Carter. "Decent shelter is something we all need to thrive. With the help of volunteers we will create strong, stable homes and communities."

Country music stars and longtime Habitat volunteers Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood will join the Carters during the week. Brooks and Yearwood have been helping Habitat build and strengthen communities in the U.S. and around the world since 2007.

Hosted by Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis, volunteers will spend the week helping families build or improve places they can call home through new home construction, neighborhood beautification and home modifications for seniors. Projects include:

Nineteen new homes in the Bearwater Park area just north of Uptown Memphis.

Ten neighborhood beautification projects, including painting and landscaping.

Six aging in place projects to enhance accessibility and mobility for seniors.

"We are grateful to President and Mrs. Carter, Garth and Trisha for working with us this week to help families build the foundation for a better future," said Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity International. "Their support and commitment to Habitat's mission has helped us make a long-lasting, tangible difference in the lives of every homeowner and volunteer who partners with us to empower communities through shelter."



"It's an incredible honor to have President and Mrs. Carter in Memphis to help us raise awareness and consciousness of the many housing issues faced by families in our community," said Dwayne Spencer, President and CEO, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis. "We remain dedicated to addressing housing disparities by both our physical actions  pounding nails and raising walls  as well as by serving as a voice for so many who have few options to improve their housing situations."



Since 1984, President and Mrs. Carter have traveled across the U.S. and the world with Habitat, donating their time and voices annually to build and improve homes, and raise awareness of the critical need for decent and affordable housing. Inspiring millions over the last three decades, President and Mrs. Carter have worked alongside more than 92,260 volunteers in 14 countries to build, renovate and repair 3,944 homes.

Habitat's Carter Work Project is made possible thanks to our volunteers, homeowners and the following national sponsors for this year's build week: Tennessee Housing Development Agency; The Assisi Foundation of Memphis, Inc.; FedEx Corporation; The Plough Foundation Aging in Place Initiative; Bank of America; The Dow Chemical Company; Lowe's; Memphis and Shelby County Community Redevelopment Agency; ServiceMaster; Altisource; AutoZone; City of Memphis, Division of Housing & Community Development and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati; First Tennessee Bank; Hope Church; Nissan North America; Oasis of Hope; and the Wells Fargo Housing Foundation.



To learn more about Habitat's Carter Work Project, visit habitat.org/cwp/2016.



About Habitat for Humanity International

Driven by the vision that everyone needs a decent place to live, Habitat for Humanity has grown from a grassroots effort that began on a community farm in southern Georgia in 1976 to a global nonprofit housing organization in nearly 1,400 communities across the U.S. and in over 70 countries. People partner with Habitat for Humanity to build or improve a place they can call home. Habitat homeowners help build their own homes alongside volunteers and pay an affordable mortgage. Through financial support, volunteering or adding a voice to support affordable housing, everyone can help families achieve the strength, stability and self-reliance they need to build better lives for themselves. Through shelter, we empower. To learn more, visit habitat.org.

About Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis

Since 1983, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis has been working to realize the vision that everyone in Memphis and Shelby County needs a decent place to live. Memphis Habitat partners with people in our community to help them build or improve places they can call home through new home construction, rehabilitation work and Aging in Place accessibility and mobility modifications for seniors. Memphis Habitat has helped more than 445 first-time homebuyers secure affordable mortgages and completed rehabilitation projects in partnership with more than 80 Uptown residents, helping them achieve the strength, stability and independence they need to build a better life for themselves and their families. For more information, please visit MemphisHabitat.com or follow Memphis Habitat on social media.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160822/400066

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20050501/NYSU020LOGO

SOURCE Habitat for Humanity International

Related Links

http://www.habitat.org


CHICAGO, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- PSC Group, LLC is proud to announce that Chris Johnson has been selected as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft. Microsoft recognizes and appreciates Chris's extraordinary contributions related to the development of custom solutions using Office 365 technologies.

Click to tweet: "Chris N Johnson @PSCGroup Named Microsoft Most Valuable Professional #mvpbuzz"

With fewer than 4,000 recipients worldwide, Microsoft MVPs represent a highly select group of experts. MVPs share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. They represent the diversity of today's technical communities.

"PSC is honored to have Chris as a member of our team," stated Rick Parham, Partner and Microsoft Practice Leader at PSC Group. "Being named as a Microsoft MVP is an exceptional accomplishment and Chris's dedication to supporting the local technical community shows a great representation of what we value at PSC. We are very proud of him and his work to achieve this recognition."

As a recipient of this year's Microsoft MVP award, Christopher joins an exceptional group of individuals from around the world who have demonstrated a willingness to reach out, share their technical expertise with others and help individuals maximize their use of technology.

PSC's commitment to supporting technical communities is evidenced by its community leaders. Chris Johnson is PSC's second Microsoft MVP. Michael Blumenthal became a Microsoft MVP early last year. PSC is also home to six IBM Champions: John Head, Mark Roden, Shean McManus, Kathy Brown, Brad Balassaitis and Toby Samples.

About PSC Group, LLC

With offices in downtown Chicago, Schaumburg, IL and Overland Park, KS, PSC Group is a professional services and information technology consulting firm that understands technology is fundamental in the development of business solutions.

Success is collaboration, creation and innovation. It's about helping businesses take what they do best and doing it even better. When it comes to the evolution of technology and how it can help make companies successful, PSC is there every step of the way.

It all starts with listening, and that's one of the things we do best. We then utilize our team of talented, experienced professionals with proven and emergent technology to design, deliver, and service solutions that meet specific and unique business needs. We turn IT into an effective, strategic resource that improves efficiencies and work streams, delivers a measurable return on investment, and helps companies grow. For more information, visit: http://www.psclistens.com/

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160404/351344LOGO

SOURCE PSC Group, LLC

Related Links

http://www.psclistens.com


DULLES, Va., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) has been awarded a subcontract valued up to $104 million to modernize the ground segment for the U.S. Air Force RQ-4 Global Hawk autonomous aircraft. Raytheon partners with Northrop Grumman as the ground integrator for Global Hawk contracts.

Raytheon and Northrop Grumman have a long history of providing end-to-end Global Hawk solutions. Northrop Grumman builds the Global Hawk, the U.S. Air Force's high-altitude, long-endurance platform used to gather a variety of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, data. Raytheon provides modernized ground controls to enhance capabilities, safety and cybersecurity of Global Hawk operations worldwide.

Global Hawk's modernized mission control stations will use an open architecture to give the U.S. Air Force flexibility for adding different mission payloads and new platforms. Proven safety features are combined with Raytheon's cutting-edge cybersecurity for a safe and secure system.

"The Raytheon and Northrop Grumman team delivers innovative solutions that help the Air Force develop critical battlefield intelligence capability," said Todd Probert, vice president of Mission Support and Modernization at Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services (IIS). "We modernize systems with a unique approach that enhances the mission and reduces overall costs."

Raytheon will develop and install building-based mission control stations at Beale and Grand Forks Air Force Bases. The new stations will replace the current, shelter-based, mission control and launch & recovery elements.

Raytheon mastery of unmanned command and control systems extends across the U.S. military. Raytheon recently announced the U.S. Navy's MQ-8 deployment aboard the USS Coronado, with advanced control stations based on the same open architecture model that will be used by the Air Force.

About Raytheon

Raytheon Company, with 2015 sales of $23 billion and 61,000 employees, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, civil government and cybersecurity solutions. With a history of innovation spanning 94 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration, C5I products and services, sensing, effects, and mission support for customers in more than 80 countries. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. Follow us on Twitter @Raytheon.

Approved for Public Release, Distribution Unlimited: 88ABW-2016-3996, 15 August 2016; NG16-1342

Media Contact

Raytheon

Rachael Duffy

571-250-1517

[email protected]

SOURCE Raytheon Company

Related Links

http://www.raytheon.com


 Flash

Iran said on Monday that Russia has stopped using Iranian Hamedan airbase for carrying out operations against militants in Syria.

"Russia neither has (military) base in Iran nor has it established (one) in the country. It was the subject which is over for now," Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi told a weekly press conference.

The operations from Iran's airbase started on Tuesday as confirmed by the Russian Defense Ministry and Iranian officials.

Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Deqhan said on Saturday that Tehran may allow Russian fighters to use more air bases of the country in the fight against terrorism in the region.
More than 2,500 people from 42 countries registered for the August 17 auction; 1,350+ items sold

TIPTON, CA, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Traditionally an agricultural hub for Ritchie Bros., the company's Tipton, CA auction site held a largely construction and transportation focused auction last week and set a new site sales record in the process. On August 17th, 1,350+ equipment items were sold for US$21+ million.

More than 2,500 people registered for the Tipton auction, including 1,650+ people registering online. Half of the assets in the auction were sold to online bidders, from as far away as Hungary, Poland and Australia. Approximately 72 percent of the equipment was sold to buyers from California. Every item was sold without minimum bids or reserve prices.

"We signed a big construction package early on, which allowed us ample time to market it and build a sale around it," said Chad Apland, Regional Sales Manager, Ritchie Bros. "As a result, we saw huge attendance for this time of year. In fact, we had close to 1,000 more bidders compared to our Tipton auction in August 2015. We usually see our biggest crowds in our February sale as it's so close to the World Ag Expo, but this sale rivalled it, helping us achieve great results for consignors."

Close to 200 companies sold equipment in last week's Tipton auction, including Sturgeon Services International.

"Ritchie Bros. once again has shown us that they are the number one player in the heavy equipment auction space," said Christopher Sturgeon, Vice President of Sturgeon Services International. "Our relationship with Ritchie as both buyer and seller spans decades, and once again I am pleased to say that the decision to go with them was easy and rewarding. We very much look forward to the continued business relationship that Ritchie Bros. has so wonderfully kept, as well as the decades of continued business between our companies."

Equipment sales highlights:

Three Caterpillar 962K wheel loaders sold for a combined US$520,000

Two Caterpillar 725 6x6 articulated dump trucks sold for a combined US$300,000

A 2014 IMS 7012 Gold Cup IT4 51 ft., 5 in. dredge sold for US$320,000

A 2013 Caterpillar 815F series II compactor sold for US$300,000

A 2012 Caterpillar 980K wheel loader sold for US$260,000

A 2013 Kenworth T800 T/A liquid ring vacuum truck sold for US$235,000

A 2013 Caterpillar 140M series II VHP plus motor grader sold for US$230,000

A 2004 Caterpillar D8R series II crawler tractor sold for US$135,000

AUCTION QUICK FACTS: TIPTON, CA (AUGUST 17, 2016)

Total Gross Auction Proceeds  US$21+ million * New site record

US$21+ million * Amount sold to online bidders  US$10+ million * New site record

US$10+ million * Total registered bidders (in person and online)  2,500+

2,500+ Registered online bidders  1,650+

1,650+ Total lots sold  1,350+

1,350+ Number of sellers  190+

Ritchie Bros. next Tipton, CA auction will be held on November 17, 2016. Visit rbauction.com for more info.

About Ritchie Bros.

Established in 1958, Ritchie Bros. (NYSE and TSX: RBA) is the world's largest industrial auctioneer, and one of the world's largest sellers of used equipment for the construction, transportation, agriculture, energy, mining, forestry and other industries. Ritchie Bros.TM asset management and disposition solutions include live unreserved public auctions with on-site and online bidding; EquipmentOneTM, an online auction marketplace; MascusTM, a global online equipment listing service; private negotiated sales through Ritchie Bros. Private Treaty; and a range of ancillary services, including financing and leasing through Ritchie Bros. Financial Services. Ritchie Bros. has operations in 19 countries, including 44 auction sites worldwide. Learn more at rbauction.com, EquipmentOne.com, mascus.com, rbauction.com/privatetreaty and rbauction.com/financing.

Photos and video for embedding in media stories are available at rbauction.com/media.

SOURCE Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers

Related Links

www.rbauction.com


As Los Angeles Downtown News recently reported, ROC is the first official tenant of The Row DTLA , a huge adaptive reuse project of loft-style workspaces in Downtown LA's Arts District. The thirty-acre space originally served as workspaces for the Pacific Railroad Company in the 1920s, and The Row reflects that history and charm in its open, industrial feel.

As The Row's first tenant, ROC will take over about 27,000 square feet of the six-building complex. ROC signed a 15 year lease on this space, which will be its 13th location.

As The Real Deal pointed out, the rise of collaborative workspaces in LA has led to a sharp decrease in office vacancy in Los Angeles, especially the downtown area. This means there should be high demand for space at The Row once it is fully functioning.

"The overall vacancy rate for the region decreased by 10 basis points to 15.1 percent in the first quarter from 15.8 percent a year ago," the article reads. "Vacancy fell most substantially in West Los Angeles, where it dropped from 12.7 percent to 11.3 percent in just a year."

Tenants of ROC's newest office space will have access to all the services and amenities currently enjoyed by other ROC community members, ranging from practicalities like reception and tech support to perks like coffee and juice bars and outdoor work spaces.

Along with other office tenants, ROC will be joined at The Row by shopping and dining experiences as well. The first retail space for The Row was announced in May: interior design store A+R.

ROC currently plans to officially set up camp at The Row in autumn, and is currently accepting new members at the Downtown Los Angeles office. Once the new office finally opens, all of the ROC community will benefit from this exciting new connection to LA's Arts District.

Contact: [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160819/399726

SOURCE Real Office Centers
With more than 60,000 households affected and more than 30,000 rescued, thousands of children face risks of serious emotional and developmental consequences in lieu of proper support. Close to 1,000 of the most vulnerable children remain in temporary shelters and thousands more could be out of school or child-care for weeks or even months, Save the Children warned.

"Families here feel forgotten," Fritzler added. "They're in desperate need of a turning point that will drive more resources to their aid. If not, prospects for children  especially those from families with the fewest resources  could really be quite dire."

Four years after Hurricane Katrina, one large-scale study of families displaced by the storm showed that 37 percent of children were suffering from serious emotional consequences. Louisiana is one of the poorest states in the nation and 28 percent of children live in poverty there.

"Our country can and must do better for Louisiana's most vulnerable children this time around," Fritzler said.

Save the Children is working to meet the urgent needs of displaced children and families and has created safe spaces in emergency shelters where children can play and begin to work through a variety of distressing experiences with caring experts. The organization is also working to fill recovery gaps by assessing the extent to which hundreds of area child care centers have been damaged and will need support to reopen.

"The sooner we can get children back in supportive learning environments, the sooner they can recover, build resiliency and continue their healthy development," Fritzler said.

Save the Children has responded to children's needs in emergencies around the world for nearly a century. Since mounting a major response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Save the Children has served more than 1 million U.S. children affected by disaster.

To support Save the Children's Gulf Coast Floods Children's Relief Fund, please donate here: www.SavetheChildren.org/gulf-floods

Save the Children gives children in the United States and around the world a healthy start, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. We invest in childhood  every day, in times of crisis and for our future. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Media Contacts:

Tanya Weinberg: [email protected], 202-247-6610

Claire Garmirian: [email protected], 203-209-8545

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160822/399999

SOURCE Save the Children

Related Links

http://www.savethechildren.org


DETROIT, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The leaders of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) and microlender Justine PETERSEN today announced the formation of the Aspire Entrepreneurship Initiative, a groundbreaking new $2.1 million partnership to expand access to entrepreneurial education and microloans for formerly incarcerated individuals, with a specific focus on those who are parents. Initial rollout for the initiative is planned for Detroit, MI, Chicago, IL, Louisville, KY and St. Louis, MO.

"Entrepreneurship and small business ownership are proven paths toward wealth creation and financial independence especially for people who might otherwise feel trapped by their circumstances" said SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet. "America remains a land of opportunity, a place where we believe in second changes for those who have paid their debt to society. Entrepreneurship can be a ladder of opportunity for citizens who have paid that debt but are still struggling to find employment after incarceration. With the training and startup tools provided through this partnership, these American citizens can finally start to rebuild their lives and restore their relationships with their families and communities."

"At the Kellogg Foundation we know that children thrive when their families are economically secure," said La June Montgomery Tabron, president and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. "It is vital that parent returning citizens have the opportunity to create economic prosperity for their families. One path to that success is creating more opportunities for entrepreneurship by opening access to the capital and training needed for parents to become small business owners in their communities. By giving parents a second chance, we are also giving their children an opportunity to succeed."

"At the heart of the American dream is opportunity," stated Robert Boyle, Founder and CEO of Justine PETERSEN, "And the dynamic partnership of the SBA, W. K. Kellogg Foundation and Justine PETERSEN provides the necessary programmatic infrastructure for such opportunity to be afforded and ultimately realized. We at Justine PETERSEN are inspired and excited about bringing entrepreneurial opportunity to returning citizens and their families."

SBA will oversee strategic planning for the pilot initiative, work with its microlending partners to make capital available for program participants, and leverage its policy research expertise to craft a comprehensive evaluation design for assessing the pilot's effectiveness. Justine PETERSEN will deliver the intensive, cohort-based entrepreneurial education program and the Kellogg Foundation will fund the pilot initiative and provide matching revolving loan funds and evaluation support. The Kellogg Foundation will also partner with the SBA to produce a white paper summarizing the insights produced by the pilot initiative.

Background

An estimated 60 percent of formerly incarcerated individuals remain unemployed one year after their release, raising the risk of recidivism and resulting in lost lifetime earnings. This cycle has major implications for American families as nearly half of all U.S. children have at least one parent with a criminal record. In 2015, SBA expanded its Microloan Program to small business owners currently on probation or parole. This partnership expands on that policy change to give parents the opportunity to generate income and create economic prosperity for their families.

ABOUT THE U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (SBA)

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) was created in 1953 and since January 13, 2012 has served as a Cabinet-level agency of the federal government to aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns, to preserve free competitive enterprise and to maintain and strengthen the overall economy of our nation. The SBA helps Americans start, build and grow businesses. Through an extensive network of field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations, the SBA delivers its services to people throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam. www.sba.gov

ABOUT THE W.K. KELLOGG FOUNDATION

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), founded in 1930 as an independent, private foundation by breakfast cereal pioneer, Will Keith Kellogg, is among the largest philanthropic foundations in the United States. Guided by the belief that all children should have an equal opportunity to thrive, WKKF works with communities to create conditions for vulnerable children so they can realize their full potential in school, work and life. The Kellogg Foundation is based in Battle Creek, Michigan, and works throughout the United States and internationally, as well as with sovereign tribes. Special emphasis is paid to priority places where there are high concentrations of poverty and where children face significant barriers to success. WKKF priority places in the U.S. are in Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico and New Orleans; and internationally, are in Mexico and Haiti. For more information, visit www.wkkf.org.

ABOUT JUSTINE PETERSEN

Justine PETERSEN (jP) was created in 1997 to connect institutional resources with the needs of low-to-moderate income families and individuals in order to build assets and create enduring change. Furthering the legacy of St. Louis social worker Justine M. Petersen, jP partners with mainstream financial institutions, public entities and philanthropic organizations to impact the lives of families throughout the United States through credit building, home ownership and small business development. Learn more at www.justinepetersen.org.

Cosponsorship Authorization #16-6010-124. SBA's participation in this cosponsored activity is not an endorsement of the views, opinions, products or services of any cosponsor or other person or entity. All SBA programs and services are extended to the public on a nondiscriminatory basis.

Release Number: 16-60

Contact: Cecelia Taylor (202) 401-3059

Internet Address: www.sba.gov/news

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Blogs

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110909/DC65875LOGO

SOURCE U.S. Small Business Administration

Related Links

http://www.sba.gov


Based in the firm's San Francisco office, Peebles focuses his practice on helping those affected by asbestos-related diseases, such as mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer. He brings more than 15 years of litigation experience, which includes product liability and personal injury cases involving medical malpractice, auto accidents, toxic torts and other injuries caused by the negligence of others.

Formerly an Assistant District Attorney for the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office in New Orleans, Peebles also was an attorney with several law firms in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He earned his law degree from Louisiana State University's Paul M. Herbert Law Center and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New Orleans.

Boswell is based in the firm's New York office, where she focuses her practice on complex litigation matters, including mass torts, class actions and multidistrict litigation. Previously, she was an attorney in the Kansas City, Mo., office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P., where she focused on all aspects of litigation. Boswell earned her law degree, cum laude, from the University of Missouri  Kansas City School of Law. She holds a Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, from Eastern Nazarene College.

Boswell also is active in pro bono work assisting underprivileged clients in matters relating to a broad range of domestic matters and criminal charges. She was named to the Diamond Level of the Missouri Bar's Pro Bono Honor Roll for providing more than 500 hours of pro bono service in a single year.

Hausmann works from the firm's Alton office and also focuses his practice on asbestos litigation. Prior to joining the firm, he served as a law clerk in the Staff Attorney's Office of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit.

Hausmann earned his law degree, magna cum laude, from St. Louis University School of Law. During law school, he served as a judicial intern for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and for the Illinois Third Judicial Circuit. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Eastern Illinois University.

About Simmons Hanly Conroy, LLC

Simmons Hanly Conroy LLC is one of the nation's largest mass tort law firms and has recovered more than $5 billion in verdicts and settlements for plaintiffs. Primary areas of litigation include asbestos and mesothelioma, pharmaceutical, consumer protection, environmental and personal injury. The firm's attorneys have been appointed to leadership in numerous national multidistrict litigations, including Vioxx, Yaz and Toyota Unintended Acceleration. The firm also represents small and mid-size corporations, inventors and entrepreneurs in matters involving business litigation. Offices are located in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Alton, Illinois. Read more at www.simmonsfirm.com.

Contact: Mark Motley, Chief Marketing Officer

618.259.2222 | [email protected]

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160819/399677

SOURCE Simmons Hanly Conroy

Related Links

http://www.simmonsfirm.com


LA JOLLA, Calif., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Singlera Genomics, a fast-growing, non-invasive genetic testing company, today announced it has successfully raised US$20 million in a Series A financing. The financing round was led by Lilly Asia Ventures, together with Green Pine Capital Partners, CDBI Partners and others.

Based in La Jolla and Shanghai, Singlera has proprietary technologies in single cell sequencing, DNA methylation and bioinformatics. Singlera's main products and services include tumor diagnosis and personalized treatment, non-invasive prenatal diagnosis and more. Singlera is dedicated to the development of precision medicine, striving to help patients through early, accurate and informative diagnoses.

The funding will help Singlera expand the development and commercialization of its non-invasive genomic sequencing tests for cancer and other genetic diseases. Singlera will also use the funds to further expand its R&D operations and expedite the launch of new product lines that address tumor diagnosis and personalized treatment.

Professor Yuan Gao, Chairman of Singlera Genomics, said, "Singlera's non-invasive genomic sequencing diagnostic technologies could significantly enhance the accuracy of tumor diagnosis and provide powerful guidance for the new treatments. This new funding is a strong vote of confidence in our technologies, scientific research and commercial operations from a group of highly respected healthcare investors. They will bring in many valuable resources to fuel Singlera's growth, and we are looking forward to using the funds and these new resources to establish Singlera as the leader in the genetic testing field."

"We are very pleased to partner with Singlera Genomics to help the company continue to strive in the field of non-invasive genomic sequencing diagnoses," said Fei Chen, Managing partner at Lilly Asia Ventures. "We've been very impressed with the strength of their management team, proprietary technologies and their commitment to precision medicine. With our investment and strategic resources, we look forward to working with Singlera to achieve ultimate goal of early detection and prevention of cancer and other severe diseases."

Singlera Genomics Inc. (http://www.singleragenomics.com)

Singlera Genomics Inc., a fast-growing company focusing on non-invasive genetic testing, was co-founded in July 2014 in San Diego, California by Professor Yuan Gao (Johns Hopkins University), Professor Kun Zhang (University of California at San Diego), Mr. Jiangli Zhang (CEO), Mr. Qiang Liu (COO), Dr. Rui Liu (CTO). The company currently has R&D centers and business operations at both La Jolla, California, and Shanghai, China. Singlera has proprietary technologies in single cell sequencing, DNA methylation and bioinformatics.

Singlera's main products and services include tumor diagnosis and personalized treatment, non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, pre-implantation genetic screening, and other genetic disease diagnosis, as well as customized technology and scientific research services. Singlera is dedicated to the development of precision medicine, striving to help the patients through early, accurate and informative diagnoses.

Lilly Asia Ventures (http://www.lillyasiaventures.com)

Lilly Asia Ventures, founded in 2008 and headquartered in Shanghai, is a life sciences and healthcare sector focused venture capital firm, focusing predominantly on biopharmaceutical, med tech and diagnostics investments in Asia, particularly in China. As a leading biomedical venture fund, Lilly Asia Ventures provides wise capital, industry expertise, and global resources to its portfolio companies to accelerate their growth.

Green Pine Capital Partners (http://www.pinevc.com.cn)

Green Pine Capital Partners (GPCP) was established in 2007 in Shengzhen, China. With the vision of "Becoming one of the most valuable investment institution", Green Pine Capital is playing active roles in funding & nurturing early to high growth-stage innovative enterprises. Green Pine Capital is ranked among the highest performing VC/PE firms in China, our core investment team have over 20 years of experience on venture capital investments.

CDBI Capital (http://www.cd-pe.com/index.asp)

CDBI Partners is a healthcare focused venture capital firm actively looking into the best growth opportunities in China. Since its establishment in 2013, CDBI has built a focused portfolio on in vitro diagnosis, third-party services, medical imaging and minimal-invasive device sectors, providing valuable resources to facilitate their growth. CDBI aims to be the best partner for Chinese healthcare industry talents to realize their entrepreneurial dreams.

SOURCE Singlera Genomics

Related Links

http://www.singleragenomics.com


DUBLIN, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "South Korea Pico Projectors Market By Technology, By Application, By Type, Competition Forecast and Opportunities, 2011-2021" report to their offering.

The market for pico projectors in South Korea is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 24% during 2016 - 2021.

LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) technology garnered the highest share in South Korea pico projectors market in 2015, due to better image quality, high resolution and efficiency, less power consumption, etc., as compared to other display technologies.

South Korea pico projectors market witnessed rapid growth over the past few years on account of their growing acceptability and rising usage in various end user segments such as consumer electronics, defense & aerospace, automotive, etc. Rising demand for pico projector integrated devices, growing IT investments and increasing mobile workforce is projected to propel growth in the country's pico projectors market in the coming years.

Additionally, growing penetration of various compact and small projection display technologies along with increasing demand for handheld and portable devices is projected to drive growth in South Korea pico projectors market during 2016 - 2021.

Due to these advantages, LCoS technology is being increasingly used in smartphones, tablets, televisions, head up displays, etc. In 2015, the country's southern region was the largest market for pico projectors, on account of the region's high per capita GDP and high level of industrialization. Few of the leading companies operating in South Korea pico projectors market include SK Telecom and LG Electronics, among others.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Research Methodology

2. Analyst View

3. Product Overview

4. Global Pico Projectors Market Overview

5. South Korea Pico Projectors Market Landscape

6. South Korea Pico Projectors Market Outlook

6.1. South Korea Pico Projectors Market Size

6.1.1. By Value & Volume

6.2. South Korea Pico Projectors Market Share

6.2.1. By Application (Consumer Electronics, Defense & Aerospace, Automotive & Others)

6.2.2. By Technology (LCoS, DLP, LBS & Holographic)

6.2.3. By Type (Standalone, Embedded, Media Player & USB)

6.2.4. By Region

6.2.5. By Company

7. South Korea Standalone Pico Projectors Market Outlook

7.1. South Korea Standalone Pico Projectors Market Size

7.1.1. By Value & Volume

7.2. South Korea Standalone Pico Projectors Market Share

7.2.1. By Application (Consumer Electronics, Defense & Aerospace, Automotive & Others)

7.2.2. By Technology (LCoS, DLP, LBS & Holographic)

8. South Korea Embedded Pico Projectors Market Outlook

8.1. South Korea Embedded Pico Projectors Market Size

8.1.1. By Value & Volume

8.2. South Korea Embedded Pico Projectors Market Share

8.2.1. By Application (Consumer Electronics, Defense & Aerospace, Automotive & Others)

8.2.2. By Technology (LCoS, DLP, LBS & Holographic)

9. South Korea USB Pico Projectors Market Outlook

9.1. South Korea USB Pico Projectors Market Size

9.1.1. By Value & Volume

9.2. South Korea USB Pico Projectors Market Share

9.2.1. By Application (Consumer Electronics, Defense & Aerospace, Automotive & Others)

9.2.2. By Technology (LCoS, DLP, LBS & Holographic)

10. South Korea Media Player Pico Projectors Market Outlook

10.1. South Korea Media Player Pico Projectors Market Size

10.1.1. By Value & Volume

10.2. South Korea Media Player Pico Projectors Market Share

10.2.1. By Application (Consumer Electronics, Defense & Aerospace, Automotive & Others)

10.2.2. By Technology (LCoS, DLP, LBS & Holographic)

11. South Korea Pico Projectors Market Attractiveness Index

11.1. By Application

11.2. By Technology

11.3. By Type

11.4. By Region

12. Market Dynamics

12.1. Impact Analysis

12.2. Drivers

12.3. Challenges

13. Market Trends & Developments

13.1. Integration of Laser Pico Projectors in Smartphones

13.2. Rising Potential in Growing BYOD market

13.3. Use of OLED Micro-displays

13.4. Pico Projectors in Smart bands

13.5. Growing Usage in Head Mounted Displays

14. Policy & Regulatory Landscape

15. South Korea Economic Profile

16. Competitive Landscape

16.1. SK Telecom Co., Ltd.

16.2. LG Electronics Inc.

16.3. 3M Korea Ltd.

16.4. Celluon, Inc.

16.5. Sony Korea Corporation

16.6. Optoma Corporation

16.7. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

16.8. BenQ Korea Co., Ltd.

16.9. AAXA Technologies

16.10. AIPTEK International Inc.

17. Strategic Recommendations

For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/svlp6c/south_korea_pico

Related Topics: Consumer Electronics, Computer Accessories

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


NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- To further its mission of advancing health-related educational programs in the state, New Jersey Health Foundation (NJHF) has once again contributed $100,000 to fund Student Summer Research Programs at Rowan and Rutgers Universities. To date, NJHF has contributed more than $4 million in support of these summer programs.

This year's grant is being used to fund students at the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Rutgers School of Health Related Professions and the Rowan School of Osteopathic Medicine.

"Through these summer programs, students are able to individually develop their skills as they work in biomedical research laboratories, clinical investigations and behavioral and health science research," explained George F. Heinrich, M.D., vice chair and CEO of NJHF.

While each school operates its summer program differently, the goal of each is to inspire students toward a future research career.

"At Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, our objectives for this program include providing a valuable experience for highly motivated and talented medical students and acquainting students with scientific methodology to enhance their analytic and laboratory skills," explained Celine Gelinas, PhD, senior associate dean for research. "Our rationale is that exposure to a superior research environment will ultimately result in better and more able physicians."

The goals are similar at the Rowan School of Osteopathic Medicine.

"The purpose of our Summer Research Program is to promote and facilitate education in scientific research where students participate in basic science, biopsychosocial and clinical research activities at a professional level," according to Carl Hock, PhD, senior associate dean for Research and Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. "The emphasis is to provide a mentored research experience for our students."



New Jersey Health Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation that supports research and health-related education programs in New Jersey through several grant programs and its affiliate, Foundation Venture Capital Group, which makes private equity investments in life science start- up companies in New Jersey headed toward commercialization.

SOURCE New Jersey Health Foundation

Related Links

http://www.njhf.org/


KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- TeamHealth Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: TMH), a leading physician services organization, announced the acquisition of the operations of Grossmont Emergency Medical Group (GEMG). Based in the San Diego area, GEMG provides care to more than 100,000 patients each year through staffing and management of the emergency department at Sharp Grossmont Hospital.

"We are excited to partner with TeamHealthan organization that offers a like-minded, physician-centric culture," said Erwin Handley, MD, managing partner of GEMG. "Grossmont Emergency Medical Group's mission is to improve the health of everyone we serve, and TeamHealth will provide the resources and support necessary to continue delivering on this promise."

"The physicians and advanced practice clinicians of Grossmont Emergency Medical Group have a reputation for providing excellent patient care," said Michael D. Snow, president and CEO of TeamHealth. "As we continue to expand our presence in California, we look forward to partnering together to serve the greater San Diego community."

About TeamHealth

At TeamHealth (NYSE: TMH), our purpose is to perfect our physicians' ability to practice medicine, every day, in everything we do. Through our more than 19,000 affiliated physicians and advanced practice clinicians, TeamHealth offers outsourced emergency medicine, hospital medicine, critical care, anesthesiology, orthopedic hospitalist, acute care surgery, obstetrics and gynecology hospitalist, ambulatory care, post-acute care and medical call center solutions to approximately 3,400 acute and post-acute facilities and physician groups nationwide. Our philosophy is as simple as our goal is singular: we believe better experiences for physicians lead to better outcomesfor patients, hospital partners and physicians alike. Join our team; we value and empower clinicians. Partner with us; we deliver on our promises. Learn more at http://www.teamhealth.com.

The term "TeamHealth" as used throughout this release includes Team Health Holdings, Inc., its subsidiaries, affiliates, affiliated medical groups and providers, all of which are part of the TeamHealth organization. "Providers" are physicians, advanced practice clinicians and other healthcare providers who are employed by or contract with subsidiaries or affiliated entities of Team Health Holdings, Inc. All such providers exercise independent clinical judgment when providing patient care. Team Health Holdings, Inc. does not have any employees, does not contract with providers and does not practice medicine.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131111/CL14595LOGO

SOURCE TeamHealth

Related Links

http://www.teamhealth.com


The Tech Titans Award for Emerging Company CEO recognizes the CEO of a technology company headquartered in the DFW Metroplex with operating revenues of at least $2 million who has demonstrated leadership, vision, commitment and involvement with quantifiable company-wide success and a measurable impact on the technology industry. The Tech Titans Fast Tech list represents high growth companies within the technology sector in North Texas.

"The Tech Titans Awards celebrate companies and individuals who directly influence growth in the North Texas technology sector," said Tech Titans President and CEO Bill Sproull. "Greg Fasullo was a natural choice for Emerging Company CEO for his contributions to the community, impact on the industry and his commitment to success at EnTouch, a Fast Tech company that has experienced rapid growth delivering IoT technology for energy and facility management."

"I am honored to receive the award for Emerging Company CEO and accept it on behalf of the EnTouch team," said EnTouch CEO Greg Fasullo. "The people behind our products inspire my leadership with their vision, innovation and creativity. We are collectively changing an industry with domain leading IoT technology for energy efficiency. I look forward to continued growth and hope to return to Tech Titans in 2017 to claim a top five spot on the Fast Tech list."

About EnTouch

EnTouch is a technology company that leverages facility asset and energy intelligence solutions to accurately assess and control energy consumption and expenditure. The company's award winning EnTouch 360 platform provides a dedicated team of energy experts who utilize leading-edge software, best-in-class hardware and predictive or "targeted" analytics to improve operational efficiencies, significantly reduce energy consumption and maximize energy savings. Nationally recognized for its ongoing commitment to sustainability and innovative internet of things (IoT) approach, EnTouch supports over 4000 locations in diverse industries including retail, restaurant, grocery, commercial real estate, healthcare and hospitality.

About the Tech Titans Awards

The Tech Titans Awards were launched in 2001 by Tech Titans, North Texas' most comprehensive organization supporting technology. The prestigious annual contest recognizes outstanding technology companies and individuals in the North Texas area who have made contributions during the past year locally, as well as to the technology industry overall. The Tech Titans committee is a group of dedicated volunteers who organize the awards ceremony each year, and judges for the contest are drawn from a variety of disciplines in technology, leaders in the DFW area and past winners. For more information, visit www.techtitans.org

For further information, please contact Samantha Foley at [email protected] or 214.263.3547.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160822/400093

SOURCE EnTouch Controls

Related Links

http://www.entouchcontrols.com


WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) announced a new advocacy campaign, #intheblack, to introduce tools and resources to support the need for knowledge about student loan repayment and overall financial literacy for Historically Black College and University (HBCU) students and parents.

The Campaign will address the student loan debt repayment crisis, which is a major factor delaying financial independence for many new graduates. It will serve as a resource to educate students and parents about the various student loan repayment options and provide financial aid literacy development opportunities. The goal is to get more students out of debt (in the red) and financially #intheblack.

Funded by a grant from the Federal Financial Aid Advocacy Fund, administered through HCM Strategists, the grant is made possible by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which supports innovative, timely advocacy activities that engage new stakeholders and partners in federal policy-making for financial aid.

"The average student graduates with more than $30,000 in debt," said Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., President & CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. "TMCF has historically worked with our partners to provide financial literacy to college students; however, there aren't many discussions around student loan repayment. Through this campaign, we will be able to direct students and their parents to a resource that will answer their questions and provide guidance on how to responsibly navigate the student loan debt repayment process."

HBCUs disproportionately enroll low-income, first-generation and academically underprepared college students. Only 22% of HBCU graduates leave school with no debt, compared to nearly double the number of graduates at non-HBCUs. The campaign will help students customize a loan repayment plan by offering tools such as a loan repayment calculator. A major component of the Initiative is a student loan repayment advocacy and engagement conference in Washington DC, for 50 HBCU students this September.

"I believe my peers and I are guilty of thinking short-term," said Jerel Smith, a Mass Communications & Marketing major at Winston-Salem State University. "Looking back, I wish I prepared as much for my financial future as I did for my educational one."

For more information or to join the #intheblack coalition, visit www.getintheblack.org.

About Thurgood Marshall College Fund

The Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), established in 1987 is named for the U.S. Supreme Court's first African-American Justice. TMCF represents all Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and its member-schools include the 47 publicly-supported HBCUs. With TMCF member-schools educating 80% of all students attending HBCUs, TMCF helps students with a clear intention to succeed acquire a high-quality college education at an affordable cost. TMCF also efficiently connects high performing, world-ready students with top tier employment opportunitiesaccess that students or employers might not have on their own. Through its scholarships and programs, TMCF plays a key role in preparing the leaders of tomorrow.

TMCF is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, charitable organization. For more information about TMCF and its initiatives, visit: www.tmcf.org.

SOURCE Thurgood Marshall College Fund

Related Links

http://www.tmcf.org


FREDERICK, Md., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SLCA) today announced that members of the management team will participate in the following investor conferences during the third quarter of 2016:

Simmons 2016 European Energy Conference

Aug. 30  Sept. 1, 2016

Gleneagles Hotel  Scotland

Barclays 2016 Energy-Power Conference

Sept. 7, 2016

Sheraton New York Times Square  New York City, NY.

7th Annual Credit Suisse Small & Mid Cap Conference

Sept. 14, 2016

Waldorf Astoria New York  New York City, NY.

Management will meet with institutional investors throughout these events. Please note, when applicable, the presentations will be posted on the Company's website prior to the start of each event at www.ussilica.com.

About U.S. Silica

U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc., a member of the Russell 2000, is a leading producer of commercial silica used in the oil and gas industry, and in a wide range of industrial applications. Over its 116-year history, U.S. Silica has developed core competencies in mining, processing, logistics and materials science that enable it to produce and cost-effectively deliver over 260 products to customers across our end markets. The Company currently operates nine industrial sand production plants and nine oil and gas sand production plants. The Company is headquartered in Frederick, Maryland and also has offices located in Chicago, Illinois and Houston, Texas.

U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc.

Michael Lawson

Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications

301-682-0304

[email protected]

SOURCE U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.ussilica.com


MEMPHIS, Tenn., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- American Paper Optics, the largest 3-D glasses manufacturing company in the world, has announced the one-year countdown to the next total solar eclipse in the United States, an event that last happened 38 years ago. On Aug. 21, 2017, millions of people across 12 states, stretching from Oregon to South Carolina, will be directly impacted by the total solar eclipse. The remaining 38 states will experience a partial eclipse. Everyone will need special solar glasses to view the event.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160819/399767

All total eclipses begin and end with a partial eclipse, with the entire event taking nearly three hours. However, the total part of a solar eclipse usually lasts only two to three minutes. During a total solar eclipse, daylight is replaced by darkness, bright planets and stars become visible while the temperature drops and the sun is completely covered by the moon. It is an experience described by those who have witnessed it in other places around the world as amazing and unforgettable.

The 12 states that will witness the total solar eclipse fall within the "Path of Totality." To view a state-by-state map of the path of totality, click here: http://www.eclipseglasses.com/pages/2017-eclipse-state-by-state.

While experiencing the 2017 solar eclipse could literally be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, APO urges viewers to practice safety precautions by wearing ISO-certified solar glasses. APO's Eclipser Safe Solar Glasses block the harmful ultraviolet and infrared rays of light that come from the sun and are essential for viewing the partial phases that precede and follow totality.

"It's finally our turn [in the US] to witness this indescribable event! And, what's even more exciting is that the only thing you really need to be prepared for this amazing experience is a pair of our safe solar eclipse glasses," said John Jerit, president and CEO of APO. "This is a rare opportunity for possibly hundreds of millions of people, so we're encouraging everyone to get out and enjoy your slice of the sun on Aug. 21, 2017."

Viewers outside the path of totality must view the partial solar eclipse with Eclipser Safe Solar Glasses. Viewers inside the path will need the glasses for the partial phases but can view those rare and beautiful two minutes of totality without the glasses.

"I honestly can't think of an event that will have this much of an impact on so many people, and we are thrilled to be part of history. For a few minutes, the entire country will stop what they are doing to take in this event. I can't tell you the last time that has happened," said Jason Lewin, director of marketing at APO. "While the excitement continues to grow about the upcoming phenomenon, we definitely want people to be safe. Our low-cost glasses will allow viewers to witness this event with the peace of mind that they have put safety first."

Given that anyone and everyone who hopes to experience this rare and unique event in the sky must be wearing solar glasses in order to do so, APO expects to sell 100,000,000 of the glasses before Aug. 21, 2017. While this seems like an impossible feat, the company has done it before. APO produced 134,000,000 3-D glasses for Intel, Pepsi and DreamWorks' promotion of the movie Monsters vs Aliens during the 2009 Super Bowl. For the last year, Jerit has been talking with corporations and organizations across the US, from universities to CVBs and from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses, who want to capitalize on the event for their customers and employees. The glasses can be custom-branded for any company  using size, shape and color scheme to promote the business while giving customers and employees the opportunity to experience the event.

"This is the largest and most impressive celestial event most people will ever see, and this historic opportunity is something major corporations, companies and organizations of all sizes can participate in at a very inexpensive cost. We are encouraging groups to order early since the demand is expected to be extremely high," Jerit said.

To additionally commemorate the historic countdown to the 2017 total solar eclipse, APO has created a special Spotify playlist available here. For more information and to purchase Eclipser Safe Solar Glasses, call 1-800-767-8427 or visit http://www.eclipseglasses.com.

About American Paper Optics

American Paper Optics, the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of 3-D glasses and other 3-D/optical products, is a one-stop source for anything 3-D. Over a span of 25 years, APO has manufactured more than two billion paper 3-D glasses. APO also offers an endless variety of frame styles, specialty optics, full color printing, and intricate die-cutting capabilities.

For more information, contact:

Jason Lewin Sarah Sherlock American Paper Optics Obsidian Public Relations Phone: (901) 381-1515 Phone: (210) 883-5469 Email Email

SOURCE American Paper Optics

Related Links

http://www.eclipseglasses.com.


NEW DELHI, Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Vyome Biosciences, a clinical-stage specialty biopharmaceutical company developing novel medicines for treating skin diseases caused by resistant microbes, announced today that it has closed a $14 million Series C financing round. This financing round was led by Perceptive Advisors, a leading New York-based life sciences fund, and Romulus Capital, a Boston-based venture capital firm, along with participation from existing investors including Kalaari Capital, Sabre Partners and Aarin Capital.

"The support from leading global and leading life investors and the continued support from our largest existing shareholders validates our Company's strategy, science and development programs. The Company will utilize these funds predominantly to advance the clinical development of our lead product, VB 1953, while continuing to develop other proprietary products in our pipeline," said Venkateswarlu Nelabhotla (N. Venkat), Co-Founder & CEO, Vyome Biosciences.

"Vyome is well positioned with a rich pipeline to become a leader in antimicrobial resistance and treatment of skin infections with this new funding round," remarked Dr. Shiladitya Sengupta, Co-Founder of Vyome and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

According to the American Academy of Dermatology, acne represents the most common skin disease, affecting 40-50 million people in the United States, including 85 percent of teenagers. Approximately 40 percent of people with acne are suffering from antibiotic resistance. Physicians around the world have cited a large unmet need for new, improved topical therapy options, vis-a-vis the current available topical products. Vyome's VB 1953 targets this patient population and a potential market of USD $2 billion. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently accepted Vyome's Investigational New Drug Application (IND) for VB 1953, and the company soon will initiate clinical studies in the United States.

In addition to VB 1953, Vyome has a deep pipeline of preclinical new chemical entities, unique in their ability to overcome the development of resistance based on its patented Dual Action Rational Therapeutics (DARTs) technology. In addition, Vyome has clinically proven antifungal products based on its breakthrough technology platform Molecular Replacement Therapy (MRT), for which Vyome is currently pursuing commercialization discussions globally.

About Vyome Biosciences

Vyome Biosciences is an innovation driven clinical stage bio-pharmaceutical company, which has novel platforms technologies and a deep pipeline of novel drugs for antibiotic resistant acne, other opportunistic pathogens and antifungal agents in Dermatology. Vyome anticipates initiating clinical trials for its lead program VB 1953 for the treatment of antibiotic resistant acne following FDA acceptance of its IND recently. Vyome has assembled a world-class team of scientific and management experts from India and the United States who collectively have a significant track record of conducting acclaimed scientific research, developing breakthrough products and building sustainable businesses. More information is available at http://www.vyome.in

About Perceptive Advisors

Founded in 1999, Perceptive Advisors, LLC is a privately owned hedge fund sponsor focused on supporting the progress of the life sciences industry by identifying opportunities & directing financial resources to the most promising technologies in healthcare. The firm invests globally in public biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostics, and health services companies. It also makes long term structured investments in privately held growth-oriented healthcare companies to fund their corporate goals. Perceptive Advisors is based in New York. More information is available at http://www.perceptivelife.com

About Romulus Capital

Romulus Capital is a seed- and early-stage venture capital firm focused on building, rather than betting on, the next big technology and science-enabled companies. The firm partners with entrepreneurs looking to become industry leaders and works with them to build world-class teams, win major customers, iterate on product, and think strategically about building a strong foundation. The firm was founded out of MIT in 2008 and manages about $150M. More information is available at http://www.romuluscap.com

About Kalaari Capital

Kalaari Capital has $650 million under management with a strong advisory team in Bengaluru, investing in early-stage, technology-oriented companies in India. They are passionate about investing in entrepreneurs who are poised to be tomorrow's global leaders. They seek companies that are capturing new markets, providing innovative solutions and generating lasting results. They are India's leading investor in early-stage businesses, nurturing them through every aspect of growth on the transformative journey towards success. Since 2006, they have worked closely with over 60 companies including market leaders such as Snapdeal, Myntra, Via, Urban Ladder, Simplilearn, Attero and Zivame. More information is available at http://www.kalaari.com

About Sabre Partners

Sabre Partners is an India focused private equity fund with a distinguished track record of having delivered stellar returns for its investors. Founded by professionals from the financial services industry, the team has decades of experience of investing, managing and operating businesses in Asia and India. Sabre has followed a thematic investment approach and has successfully combined it with its rich experience of investing across economic cycles and business environments. It has invested over $325 million in the last decade in India, in sectors such as financial services, infrastructure and healthcare and has distributed over $1.6 billion, which includes one of Asia's most successful financial services private equity exits of all time. More information is available at http://www.sabre-partners.com

About Aarin Capital

Aarin Capital is a stage-agnostic venture fund with the ability to actively support its investee companies from incubation to exit. They seek to create long-term value by partnering with talented, hungry management teams actively complementing their skills with their insights derived from experience in building valuable companies. They aim to build sizeable, profitable companies with sustainable value propositions. Their focus areas are healthcare and life sciences, education and other large opportunities that are technology driven. More information is available at http://www.aarincapital.com

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160822/400026LOGO

SOURCE Vyome Biosciences

Related Links

http://www.vyome.in


ANN ARBOR, Mich., Aug. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- This summer, eight MBAs from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business set out from Ann Arbor on road trips to help social entrepreneurs improve their businesses. Sponsored by the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, the Center for Social Impact and Chevrolet, the Ross Open Road program spanned five weeks, seven states and nine businesses to give students firsthand experience in solving the challenges facing today's social entrepreneurs.

Ross Open Road is modeled after the MBAs Across America program, which sent teams of students across the country for several weeks in order to work with and learn from entrepreneurs and small businesses located across the United States. Teams spend one week on an intensive consulting project with each company. Ross Open Road embedded two teams of first-year MBAs in their chosen companies, allowing them to build on the skills learned in their foundational classes and apply them to real-life situations.

Team IBAM, composed of Aaron Steiner, Iris Nguyen, Blake Van Fleteren and Mikaela Rodkin, visited companies with deep social impact and community roots.

"It was inspiring to work with people like Tippy Tippens of Goods That Matter, who is dedicated to the environment and making green products," said Steiner. "Our team built a financial modeling tool to project her revenues that she's already planning on sharing with other makers. After operating the business for more than five years, she's a veteran entrepreneur and requires resources like these to take her to the next leveland we can't wait to see the impact her company will create."

The companies the team visited included:

Sweet Potato Sensations, a bakery in Detroit looking for help cost accounting to better understand their margins and position their company in the marketplace, as well as to identify bottlenecks during pie preparation to help keep up with Thanksgiving demand

looking for help cost accounting to better understand their margins and position their company in the marketplace, as well as to identify bottlenecks during pie preparation to help keep up with demand Discovery Recycling, a recycling company in Daleville, Ala. , that needed help launching an electronic waste recycling business

, that needed help launching an electronic waste recycling business Goods That Matter, a one-woman product design shop in New Orleans that wanted to increase revenues and decrease overall expenses

that wanted to increase revenues and decrease overall expenses AMP360, an organization dedicated to empowering the underserved to prevent incarceration and recidivism in Austin, Texas , that sought help creating a volunteer management program

, that sought help creating a volunteer management program Connecting for Good, a nonprofit closing the digital divide in Kansas City, Kan. , that needed to grow its efforts sustainably

Team SASA, composed of Anita Lin, Sarah Haroon, Sanmeet Jasuja and Alexander Ho, focused on organizations with roots in agriculture and IT. From the moment they walked through the door, the team was fully immersed in the problems these entrepreneurs faced and the communities that rallied around them.

"We only had a few days to fully integrate ourselves into the business and culture of every company we visited, and we were impressed with what we found every time and inspired to help them improve," said Ho. "Flipgrid, for example, is dedicated to improving the classroom experience and giving each student an equal voice. We were able to develop a full marketing strategy and suggestions for new product features down the road that we hope will enable them to help even more teachers. By helping one business, we have the ability to affect the whole community."

Team SASA worked with:

Mitten Crate, an experiential marketing company working with food producers in Detroit that needed a product launch plan

that needed a product launch plan Garden Fresh Farms, a hydroponics company in Maplewood, Minn. , looking to raise enough capital over two months to support the business

, looking to raise enough capital over two months to support the business Emerging Prairie, an organization that connects the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Fargo, N.D. , looking to design a Community Activities Office to serve the Fargo community and retain lasting quality talent

, looking to design a Community Activities Office to serve the community and retain lasting quality talent Flipgrid, an edtech company in Minneapolis with a platform that allows teachers to pose questions that students can answer with short video responses

"Entrepreneurs are the heart of innovation and local economies in this country," said Stewart Thornhill, executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute. "Giving students the chance to use what they've learned to embed themselves in the heartbreaks and successes of being an entrepreneur is crucial to their development and potential to be the next generation of innovators."

"Our students increasingly seek business solutions that also deliver social impact," said Rishi Moudgil, managing director of the Center for Social Impact. "This was a great opportunity for them to partner with like-minded small business owners in creating positive change in their local communities."

"Open Road is the ultimate representation of what Ross stands for: entrepreneurial, student-run, social impact minded, action-based," said Rodkin of Team IBAM. "The experience hit its mark and gave me the perfect opportunity to put into play everything I've learned thus far."

The Ross Open Road program is sponsored by the Zell Lurie Institute, the Center for Social Impact, the Sanger Leadership Center and Chevrolet. For more information on the program and posts on this year's student experiences, follow #RossOpenRoad on Instagram and Twitter or visit the Ross blog.

About the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies

The Institute and its Center for Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance bring together an impactful combination of deep-seated knowledge, enriching experiences and strategic opportunities from the front lines of entrepreneurship and alternative investment. Students' learning experiences are further enhanced through internships, entrepreneurial clubs, business competitions and campus-wide events that foster valuable networking and engage the business community. The School's five student-led investment funds, with over $8.5M under management, immerse students in the entrepreneurial business sourcing, assessment and investment process. Founding Zell Lurie advisory board members include Samuel Zell, chairman of Equity Group Investments, and Eugene Applebaum, founder of Arbor Drugs Inc. For more information, visit the Institute's website at www.zli.bus.umich.edu.

About the Center for Social Impact

Since its inception in 2014, the Center for Social Impact at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business has engaged hundreds of students across U-M and worked with a wide array of partners to define and advance the practice of social impact, social innovation and entrepreneurship. The center has a significant interest and stake in the city of Detroit.

The Center for Social Impact's model for delivering social impact includes focusing on developing four key elements: cross-sector thinking and leadership; multidisciplinary skill building; action-based, practical learning; and striving for positive, lasting change. Specialty areas include: social entrepreneurship, nonprofit and public management, social funding methods, community/economic development, urban renewal, social innovation and education management. For more information, visit socialimpact.umich.edu.

About Michigan Ross

The Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan is a vibrant and distinctive learning community grounded in the principle that business can be an extraordinary vehicle for driving positive change in today's dynamic global economy. The Ross School's mission is to develop leaders who can solve global problems and contribute to the betterment of the world. Through thought and action, members of the Ross community drive change and innovation that improve business and society.

Ross is consistently ranked among the world's leading business schools. Academic degree programs include the BBA, MBA, Part-time MBA (Evening and Weekend formats), Executive MBA, Global MBA, Master of Accounting, Master of Supply Chain Management, Master of Management, and Ph.D. In addition, the school delivers open-enrollment and customized executive-education programs targeting general management, leadership development and strategic human resource management.

SOURCE Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies

Related Links

http://www.zli.bus.umich.edu


ALBANY, New York, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Transparency Market Research states that the global white biotechnology market will expand at a healthy CAGR of 4.5% over the period between 2016 and 2024. Rising at this pace, the market, which held an opportunity of US$178.1 bn in 2015, will reach US$262.3 bn by 2024.

The global market for white biotechnology is largely consolidated, with the top five companies collectively accounting for over 71% of the market in 2015. Transparency Market Research states in a recent report that these prominent vendors, including Cargill Inc., BASF SE, Novozymes, DuPont, and Archer Daniels Midland Company, have focused largely on expanding their global footprint, mergers and acquisitions, and diversifying product portfolios.

The January 2016 inauguration of a new US$100 mn worth corn milling plant in Davangere, India, by Cargill, Inc., is an instance of the several expansion strategies that the companies in the market are pursuing to strengthen their positions in the highly competitive global market. Entry barriers in developing regional markets are relatively less intense and competition is moderate. Developed countries such as the U.S. feature fragmented markets and the presence of several companies operating amid intense competition.

Download Free exclusive Sample of this report: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=2317

Government Initiatives Aimed at Raising Awareness and Increasing Usage to Fuel Global White Biotechnology Market

The vast environment-related benefits linked with the use of white biotechnology products across a number of application areas has led to the increased focus on the field's development from industries as well as government bodies in the past few years. Most governments have either already allocated or are in the process of allocating substantial budgets for the implementation of white biotechnology technology in the industrial sector. Focus has also improved on attempts for increasing the production of biofuel, one of the most notable products of the field of white biotechnology, with the aim of reducing dependence on oil and gas imports, especially in countries with no or very sparse oil reserves. Strict emission norms are also compelling industries to adopt white biotechnology across an increasing number of application areas.

These factors are expected to have a significant impact on the overall development of the global white biotechnology market in the next few years. At the same time, the market is also expected to benefit from rapid technological developments in the field of production of white biotechnology products, making them cheaper and competitively priced as compared to conventional alternatives, such as, for instance, fossil fuels.

Declining Fertility of Agricultural Lands and Unevenness in Feedstock Supply to Hinder Market's Growth

To exploit the opportunity of the rising demand for bio-crops to its fullest, the trend of increased usage of fertilizers and pesticides with the view of improving yield has gained prominence in the past few years. The irresponsible use of fertilizers has stripped agricultural lands of their fertility to a huge extent. This issue is expected to have a direct impact on the overall production of bio-crops, the central determinants of the overall development of the white biotechnology market, hindering the overall growth prospects of the global market to a large extent.

Browse Press Release: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/white-biotechnology-market.htm

Nevertheless, the fact that less productive lands could be used for the production of biofuel crops will enable the market get sustained gains in the next few years. Transparency Market Research estimates that the global white biotechnology market, which had a valuation of US$178.1 bn in 2015, will expand at a healthy CAGR of 4.5% over the period between 2016 and 2024 and rise to a valuation of US$262.3 bn by 2024.

Among the key product varieties available in the global white biotechnology market, the segment of biofuel dominated, accounting for a significant 38.16% share in 2015. The segments of biochemical and biomaterial held nearly 30% and 18% share in the global market, respectively, in the same year.

Geography-wise, North America stood as a leading market, accounting for a share of over 35% in the global market in terms of revenue. In terms of application, the energy industry emerged the one with the most promising returns and accounted for a share of nearly 33% share in the market's overall revenues in 2015.

Browse Regional PR: http://www.europlat.org/white-biotechnology-market.htm

For the study, the market is segmented as follows:

Global White Biotechnology Market, by Product

Biochemical

Biofuel

Biomaterial

Bioproduct

Global White Biotechnology Market, by Application

Food & Feed

Pharmaceuticals

Pulp & Paper

Textile

Energy

Others

Global White Biotechnology Market, by Feedstock

Grains & Starch Crops

Agricultural Residues

Food Waste

Forestry Material

Animal By-product

Energy Crops

Urban & Suburban Waste

Global White Biotechnology Market, by Geography

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Latin America

Middle East & Africa

Browse Other Latest Research Reports:

Separation Systems for Commercial Biotechnology Market:

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/separation-systems-commercial-biotechnology-market.html

Metabolomics Market:

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/metabolomics-market.html

Organ Preservation Solutions Market:

http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/organ-preservation-solutions.html

About Us:

Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a U.S. based provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMR's 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.

US Office Contact



Transparency Market Research

90 State Street, Suite 700

Albany, NY 12207

Tel: +1-518-618-1030

USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453

Email: [email protected]



Website: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com

Blog: http://www.tmrblog.com/



SOURCE Transparency Market Research
PUNE, India, August 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

RnRMarketResearch.com adds "Global and China Wind Turbine Industry Report, 2016-2020" and "Global Wind Turbine Industry 2016 Market Research Report" to its online business intelligence library.

In 2015, global new installed wind power capacity reached 63.01GW, up 22.41% YoY, refreshing new installed wind power capacity records again. China continues to lead the global wind power market with new installed capacity of 30.75GW in 2015 and the first worldwide ranking for six consecutive years. The wind power market will continue to be buoyant during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020). The global total installed wind power capacity is expected to surpass 700GW by 2020, of which, China will reach around 250GW. Complete Report of 145 pages is available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/global-and-china-wind-turbine-industry-report-2016-2020-market-report.html .

Large-scale wind power is the development trend of wind power technology in recent years. China's new per-unit power of wind turbine has been on the rise since 2000, hitting 1,837kW in 2015, more than three times as much as that in 2000. Concerning China's new installed wind power capacity in 2015, 1.5MW and 2MW wind turbines were predominant with a combined 84% share, of which, 2MW wind turbine outperformed 1.5MW wind turbine for the first time and accounted for 50%. Development of offshore wind power growing at a steady pace is expected to accelerate in the future. In 2015, China's new grid-connected capacity of offshore wind power was recorded at 360.5MW, occupying 10.7% of the global total. China's total installed grid-connected capacity of offshore wind power is planned to hit 30GW by 2020, while the cumulative actual installed capacity was merely 1GW in 2015. Given this, the offshore wind power construction will be greatly sped up. To solve the wind turbine suspension problem, distributed wind power generation will be the first choice in the future. There has been a phased saturation for large-scale wind power development in Northwest, Northeast and North China, where the wind turbine suspension problem is increasingly severe. In 2015, wind turbine suspension volume reached a peak i.e. 33.9 billion kWh in five years, registering an average suspension rate of 15%. To improve the situation, the government has proposed the priority development of distributed wind power during the 13th Five-Year Plan period. According to the plan, the installed distributed wind power capacity will be 25GW by 2020 and 70GW by 2050.

With global new installed capacity of 7.8GW, Goldwind Science & Technology Co., Ltd. became the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer in 2015, followed successively by Vestas, GE, Siemens and Gamesa. In June 2016, Siemens announced the signing of a binding agreement with Gamesa on merging wind power business of both sides (including Siemens Wind Power Services). Affected by this, the global wind turbine market structure will be changed in 2016. In addition to Goldwind Science & Technology, there were 8 Chinese players reporting new installed wind power capacity of over 1MW in 2015, namely United Power, Envision Energy, Mingyang Wind Power, CSIC (Chongqing) HaizhuangWindpower Equipment, Shanghai Electric, XEMC Windpower, DongfangElectric Corporation and Zhejiang Windey, in succession. Furthermore, wind-turbine parts companies in China have good supply capability. In terms of wind power blade, China has possessed the 1.5MW wind blade R&D and production capacity, which will increase gradually to 3MW, 5MW and even more; representative firms include AVIC HuitengWindpower Equipment Co., Ltd., Shanghai FRP Research Institute Co., Ltd., Lianyungang ZhongfuLianzhong Composites Group Co., Ltd. and Sinoma Science & Technology Co.,Ltd. With respect to wind power gearbox, Nanjing High Accurate Drive Equipment Manufacturing Group Co., Ltd. (NGC) as a leader in China and even in the world registers a share of 60% domestically and 23% globally. In the aspect of wind power converter, foreign brands like ABB, Converteam and Emerson take the leading position; however, Sungrow Power Supply, Hopewind Electric, Shanghai Hi-tech Control System Co., Ltd. (HITE) and other local firms are rising. Order a copy of Global and China Wind Turbine Industry Report, 2016-2020 at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/contacts/purchase?rname=640501 .

Another research titled Global Wind Turbine Industry 2016 Market Research Report provides analysis for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions' development status. The research focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Companies mentioned Global Wind Turbine Engine Industry are Sinovel Wind, Goldwind, DEC, Guodian United Power Technology, MingYang Electrical Appliance, Vestas, XEMC Windpower, GE Wind, Suzlon, Gamesa, Shanghai Electric Wind, Zhejiang Windey Wind Power Enginerring, Repower, China Creative Wind Energy, Beijing BEIZHONG Steam Turbine Generator, Envision Energy, CSR Zhuzhou Insitute, ZheJiang Huayi Wind Energy Development, Nordex and New Unite Holdings. Browse Complete Global Wind Turbine Industry 2016 Market Research Report http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/global-wind-turbine-industry-2016-market-research-report-market-report.html .

Explore more Turbines Industry research report at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/reports/manufacturing-construction/machines-equipment/turbines .

About Us:

RnRMarketResearch.com is your single source for all market research needs. Our database includes 500,000+ market research reports from over 100+ leading global publishers & in-depth market research studies of over 5000 micro markets. With comprehensive information about the publishers and the industries for which they publish market research reports, we help you in your purchase decision by mapping your information needs with our huge collection of reports.

Contact:

Ritesh Tiwari

UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ

Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Pune - 411013

Maharashtra, India.

Tel: +1-888-391-5441

[email protected]



Connect with Us:

G+ / Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/104156468549256253075/posts

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RnRMR

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/RnR-Market-Research/413488545356345

RSS / Feeds: http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/feed

SOURCE RnR Market Research
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
Kabul, Aug 18 : Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday wished his countrymen on the country's 97th Independence day.

"A very happy Independence Day to my fellow Afghans. Let's all work for peace/prosperity to pay homage to the sacrifices of our forefathers," the President tweeted.

Ghani also said that the country's main enemy was economic but that the issue could be overcome if the people unite, Tolo News reported.

Prior to addressing guests at the Presidential Palace, Ghani placed a floral wreath at the Menar-i-Istiqlal (Independence Minaret) in Kabul.

High-ranking government officials, including Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Abdullah Abdullah, National Security Advisor Mohammad Hanif Atmar, cabinet members, parliamentarians, military officers and foreign diplomats attended the wreath-laying ceremony.

The walls of the Menar-i-Isteqlal were covered with pictures of Ghazi Amanullah Khan, King Zahir Shah, Ahmad Shah Abdali, Mirwais Nekah and other heroes who brought independence to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, which was not part of the British Empire, celebrates the day to commemorate the 1919 Treaty of Rawalpindi, which granted it independence, Tolo News reported.

Ghani also made it clear that having gained independence 97 years ago, the country will never hand over its foreign policy.
Ghaziabad, Aug 20 : A Pawan Hans helicopter on its way to Agra made a forced landing on Saturday in a farm in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh after developing a technical snag, police said here.

The helicopter was piloted by Captain S. Kumar and had three passengers onboard, S.K. Sharma, Krishna Kumar and Jadhav Thar, said Superintendent of Police (Rural) R.K. Pandey.

"The police control room received information from Air Traffic Control (ATC) that some technical snag has developed in the chopper. The ATC asked us to assist the crew," he said.

The pilot landed the chopper safely in a field, Pandey said.

"We have deployed a police force around the helicopter. It is still parked in the field under police guard."
New Delhi : Stories we are used to when young have clearly discernible heroes and villains but this may change up as we grow -- particularly in adolescence, or when exposed to the real world's less clear-cut distinctions and imperfections. Then a less-than-noble, rule-breaking hero or the anti-hero may be more to our taste -- and has been for years -- James Bond, 'Godfathers' Vito and Michael Corleone, or for us, the 'Angry Young Man', and many others on the "wrong side" as far as motives and/or methods are concerned.

While anti-heroes have always been part of story-telling tradition, it is only in the 20th century they have come into their own to become principal protagonists -- and usually in a more lethal avatar. This may be due to the turbulent century's big and small wars -- which end with a considerable number of men trained to kill coming back to civilian life. While many do re-adjust, a few need to find an outlet for the violence they are still capable of. Like Max Allan Collins' "Quarry", who is back in the limelight after four decades.

Collins (b.1948) has been a prodigious and prolific mystery writer across all forms -- novels, screenplays, comic books, comic strips (like Dick Tracy), short stories, movie novelisations ("Saving Private Ryan", "Waterworld", among others) and historical fiction -- and his sheer output is only matched by its diversity. He has to his credit at least 12 series of which the best known is the 20-odd installment Nathan Heller series about a Chicago private investigator who gets involved in famous crimes of the 1930-1940, the half-a-dozen Disaster series about a mystery entwined around a real-life scenario like the Titanic sinking or the Pearl Harbor attack, and graphic novel "Road to Perdition" series about a mob enforcer and his son in Depression-era America seeking vengeance against a mobster who murdered the rest of their family (adapted into a 2002 film starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Daniel Craig).

But it is the Quarry series about a former US Marine sniper turned professional assassin that was his first -- and longest-lasting.

Of the first "The Broker" (1976, reissued as "Quarry", 2015) which he began to write in 1971 when at the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa but only found a publisher in 1975 -- Collins says that apart from proving that "crime fiction could be written using a common Midwestern small-town setting rather than the much more common New York or Los Angeles" was to create a higher level of anti-hero -- having already done so with his Nolan series about a professional thief -- taking up a notch by making the character a hired killer, but otherwise "a normal person in his early twenties -- not a child of poverty or cursed by a criminal background, but a war-damaged Vietnam veteran". And he would narrate the story first person.

Our hero -- we never learn his real name -- returns home from Vietnam to find his wife cheating on him. Resolving to leave her, he first wants to find his rival's intentions. But when he goes to meet him, the cocky adulteror -- who is working under a car -- sneers at our hero, who kicks away the jack, crushing him to death. Arrested and tried but acquitted, he, now cut off from his family and is virtually unemployable, is approached by the "Booker" who offers him a job as a contract killer, and on his agreement, renames him Quarry.

The adventures are not linear -- the opening novel begins with Quarry five years into the profession and realising the mission he is on is a huge double-cross. "The Broker's Wife" (1976, reissued as "Quarry's List", 2015) sees him break out independent -- and in a different role. In possession of the Broker's papers, he now tracks the other killers working for his former boss, ascertains their targets, whom he approaches and warns of the threat. For a fee, he offers to eliminate the assassin concerned and for some more, the person behind it.

This goes on in "The Dealer" (1976, as "Quarry's Deal" 2016), where the other assassin is a beguiling woman; "The Slasher" (1977, as "Quarry's Cut", 2016), where dead bodies start piling up in a pornographic film shoot; "Primary Target" (1987, "Quarry's Vote" 2016); short story collection "Quarry's Greatest Hits" (2003); "Quarry In The Middle" (2009); "Quarry's Ex" (2010), where he runs into his ex-wife at a film shoot, and "The Wrong Quarry" (2014).

On the other hand, "The Last Quarry" (2006), which resurrected him, is his last caper with an explosive finale, "The First Quarry" (2008) his first case and "Quarry's Choice" (2015) is also a flashback.

Though full of violence -- and sex -- the series is made unforgettable by the main character himself, who may be a killer but not a psychopath, insightful enough to know when something is wrong in the story he has been told and a moral compass to righten matters, as well as tight plots, tersely vivid descriptions and crisp dialogues. The series are available as e-books from the Hard Case Crime collection.

(21.08.2016 - Vikas Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
New Delhi, Aug 22 : A court here on Monday awarded the death penalty to two convicts for kidnapping and killing IT executive Jigisha Ghosh in 2009.

Additional Sessional Judge Sandeep Yadav awarded the death penalty to Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla, while the third accused, Baljeet Malik was sentenced to life in prison.
New Delhi, Aug 22 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday acknowledged that "only development can't resolve the problem in Jammu and Kashmir", said former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who led a delegation of ppposition parties from the state that met the Prime Minister.

"The Prime Minister has acknowledged that development alone can't resolve the problem in the state," Abdullah told the media after the meeeting.

As curfew continued for the 45th day in Kashmir, the delegation told the Prime Minister that a "political solution" would have to be found to the "political issue" in the state.

"We stressed on the fact that the issue in Jammu and Kashmir is a political issue. If we don't find a political solution to this, then every time we'll repeat the same mistakes.

The delegation warned that the continuing law and order problem and unrest in the state will only further alienate the people.

"We have told the Prime Minister that it is required to understand the problem that has led to the current situation in Jammu and Kashmir and find a right solution to the issue," Abdullah said.

The delegation, he said had come with the "hope that our voices will be heard. We have not come here with any complaints, we have come here with a request. The message with which we've come here, if it is executed, it will not only benefit the state of Jammu and Kashmir, but the country as a whole".

The delegation also submitted to the Prime Minister a memorandum that demanded an immediate ban on the use of pellet guns in the troubled state.

The meeting came a day after the delegation met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi here on Sunday to discuss ways to contain the prevailing unrest in Kashmir Valley.

The Valley has been crippled by a curfew and protests called by separatists since July 9, a day after the killing of a top militant, Burhan Wani, in a gunfight with the security forces.

At least 68 people have died in clashes with the security forces.
New Delhi, Aug 22 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday told Jammu and Kashmir opposition parties that "there has to be a dialogue" to end the weeks-long unrest in the valley but any solution to the problem will be "within the Constitution" of India.

The Prime Minister's statement indicates that the government may be considering some political initiative on Kashmir where the over-five weeks long agitation has left nearly 70 people dead in clashes between pro-freedom protesters and security forces. Opposition parties in Delhi as well as in Kashmir have been pressing for political solution to the unrest.

At a meeting with a delegation of opposition parties from the state, Modi expressed "deep concern and pain" over the violence in Kashmir and the loss of lives in the unrest.

"Those who lost their lives during recent disturbances are part of us, our nation. Whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us," Modi said, according to an official statement from the Prime Minister's Office.

"There has to be a dialogue and we need to find a permanent and lasting solution to the problem within the framework of the Constitution," he said.

Leaders of Kashmir opposition parties led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah urged the Prime Minister for a political initiative to deal with the unrest, complaining that the state and central governments had shown no political will to respond to the crisis -- the deadliest Kashmir has seen in six years.

Abdullah said they told Modi that Kashmir was not an issue related to the development or the lack of it. "It is a political issue and we told the Prime Minister that we need a political approach to deal with the situation in Jammu and Kashmir," Abdullah told IANS.

"If we don't find a political solution to this, then every time we'll repeat the same mistake."

The National Conference working president said the they handed over a memorandum to the Prime Minister warning him against the "tried and tested formulations of dealing with the issue in Kashmir administratively rather than politically".

"We are of the firm opinion that the central government should waste no further time in initiating a credible and meaningful dialogue with all stakeholders to address the unrest."

State Congress chief G.A. Mir said the meeting with Modi may augur well for Kashmir. "The Prime Minister agreed that development isn't the only way out, indicating a thinking that a dialogue over Kashmir is being considered. We are hopeful that it will happen soon."

But Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari said the government had an incoherent policy over Kashmir with Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley "not on the same page". He was referring to Jaitley's remarks in Jammu on Sunday, ruling out any dialogue and warning that those indulging in violence would be dealt sternly.

The Prime Minister's meeting with the Kashmir politicians comes as the valley remained under strict curfew for the 45th day in a row. The valley has been on the boil amid violent clashes between stone-throwing protesters and security forces since the July 8 killing of rebel commander Burhan Wani.

The clashes have also left thousands of people, including children, injured, mostly in pellet firing. Hundreds of the injured have partially or fully lost their eyesight after being hit by pellet guns -- a dangerous mob control weapons used in Kashmir.

The Kashmir delegation sought an "immediate ban on pellet guns" and also urged the Prime Minister "to advice relevant quarters against the policy of mass harassment, raids, and arrests" in the valley.

"This has worsened an already volatile situation and also goes against the values and principles of democracy."

The opposition leaders, including Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Yusuf Tarigami, have been in the capital for the last three days.

They met President Pranab Mukherjee and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, seeking their intervention in bringing about an end to the unrest that has crippled life in the restive valley.
New Delhi, Aug 22 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Monday jointly inaugurated Kabul's Stor Palace via video-conference and called the monument a "setting for many momentous historical events".

"The inauguration signalled and showed our joint commitment to strengthening the foundations of modern Afghanistan. The India-Afghanistan-Iran transit corridor agreement that we signed in May this year was another landmark in our partnership," Modi said.

"It manifested our clear and common determination to build new pathways for Afghanistan's economic progress and prosperity and, a month later, in June this year, we joined hands and inaugurated the Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam," he said.

Modi also recalled the time when he inaugurated the Afghan Parliament building on December 25 last year.

"Today's video inauguration of Stor palace is an entirely different, yet in many ways more fundamental, dimension of our engagement. I say this because it brings back to life a valuable landmark of Afghanistan's cultural heritage," the Prime Minister said.

"The Stor Palace has been the setting for many momentous historical events. To those who cannot see beyond shadows of violence in Afghanistan, the restored Stor Palace is a reminder of the glory of Afghanistan's rich traditions."

He said that for the Afghan people, it revived the beauty, the richness and splendour of lost memories of Afghan society.

The Indian government had promised to help Afghanistan renovate many of its war damaged structures, among them the Executive Block of the Afghan Parliament building and the Stor Palace -- also known as Darul Aman Palace -- in Kabul city.

The Stor Palace was built during the reign of Amir Abdul Rahman Khan in 1880.

The palace was gradually developed later on in the reign of Amir Habibullah Khan and Amir Amanullah Khan.

In 1919, one of the rooms in the palace was the setting for the signing of the Rawalpindi Agreement, by which Afghanistan became an independent sovereign state.

Amir Habibullah Khan, the late King of Afghanistan, used to live in the palace. Later, the palace was used by renowned intellectual, reformer and the first Afghan Foreign Minister Mahmood Tarzi (1919-22 and 1924-27), as an office.

The palace also housed offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs till 1965, when most functions were re-located to a modern building in the vicinity of Stor Palace.

President Ghani in his remarks on Monday recalled that the Government of India in Exile formed by Raja Mahendra Pratap had unilaterally declared Independence from the British rule in 1915 from this palace.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during his visit to Afghanistn in 2011, committed to renovate and restore the Stor Palace located in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Campus.

Though the proposed renovation was estimated to cost about $5.7 million, an initial grant of $4 million was committed.

The work was entrusted to Agha Khan Trust for Culture and the project was to be completed in 36 months starting from July 2012.

Subsequently, the ministry sanctioned the balance funding of $1.7 million in July 2015 and the project was scheduled to be completed by the first week of August 2016.

The renovated and restored building will provide high-quality space for hosting official domestic and international events and functions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Afghan government.

It serves as another example of India's reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan.
New Delhi, Aug 22 : A court here on Monday awarded death penalty to Ravi Kapoor and Amit Shukla for kidnapping and killing Jigisha Ghosh in 2009, saying the magnitude and brutality of the crime made it "a rarest of rare cases".

Additional Sessions Judge Sandeep Yadav also sentenced the third accused, Baljeet Singh Malik, to life imprisonment.

Kapoor and Shukla looked impassive while Malik seemed shocked upon hearing the sentence.

The parents of Jigisha Ghosh, who worked as an IT executive, welcomed the verdict, saying justice has been done to their deceased daughter.

"I had hoped for the two convicts to get death penalty and that is exactly what has happened," Jigisha's mother said.

The court imposed a fine of Rs 1.1 lakh against Kapoor, Rs 2.8 lakh against Shukla, and Rs 5.8 lakh against Malik and directed that Rs six lakh be given to Jigisha's parents as compensation from the amount collected from the convicts.

"Offence in the present case was committed in cold-blooded, inhuman and cruel manner," the court said.

"Innocent, helpless and vulnerable victim remained in the captivity of convicts for hours."

The court observed that to save herself Jigisha handed over her debit card and other belongings to the convicts. She also disclosed the PIN numbers of the debit card to the convicts.

The convicts killed Jigisha even after she pleaded for her life and were satisfied only by brutally mauling her to death, the court said.

"In other words, the convicts behaved in uncivilised and barbaric manner against a helpless girl," the court said.

"It is the level, magnitude and degree of brutality, attitude and mindset of wrongdoer behind the crime along with other factors which makes it a rarest of rare cases."

Gruesome crimes against women are on the rise and showing leniency will send a wrong message to the society, the court said.

Leniency will encourage criminals like the convicts while passing an appropriate sentence in such cases will go a long way in arresting the increasing trend of crime against women, the court said.

In awarding death penalty to Kapoor and Shukla, the court relied upon a report submitted by probation officer which recommended extreme penalty, observing that they cannot be reformed and would be a threat to society.

The probation officer said Malik's behaviour was normal throughout the trial.

The court on July 14 convicted the trio under Sections 302 (murder), 201 (destruction of evidence), 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder), 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record), 482 (using a false property mark) with 34 (common intent) of the Indian Penal Code.

Public Prosecutor Rajiv Mohan sought maximum punishment for the convicts as they showed no remorse while killing Jigisha.

The convicts are also facing trial for killing journalist Soumya Vishwanathan and a taxi driver, the prosecution told the court.

Defence counsel pleaded for leniency, contending that the convicts were young.

Jigisha, 28, who was working with Hewitt Associates Pvt Ltd as an operations manager, was kidnapped and killed on March 18, 2009, after her office cab dropped her near home in south Delhi's Vasant Vihar around 4 a.m.

Her body was recovered on March 20, 2009, near Surajkund in Haryana.

Police later arrested Kapoor, Shukla and Malik for the crime.
Mumbai, Aug 22 : For Kareena Kapoor Khan "the best compliment" till date by her actor-producer husband Saif Ali Khan is for her remix song "Yeh Mera Dil" in the 2006-released Shahrukh Khan starrer "Don".

Saif finds her sexy in the song. "The hairstyle for the song 'Yeh Mera Dil' was very sexy. And my husband always tells me even though you're overweight (in the song) you looked very sexy," says Kareena.

"That's the best compliment for me," said Kareena at an event organised by Adhuna Bhabani's hair salon Bblunt. The "Heroine" actress is paranoid about cutting her hair and thinks hair plays an important part for an actress to portray a role.

"The entire softness of Rosy in 'Taalash' came out because of her hairstyle. Hair plays an important part in building a character," she said.

The mom-to-be said her pregnancy does not affect her hectic work schedules or her career. "Well I will definitely go on with my normal life. I am a working woman and there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. I love my job and am passionate about my work. I have wanted to became an actress ever since I was in my mother's womb. So I will continue acting all my life until I am 80."

Talking about Rohit Shetty's comment on missing Kareena in "Golmaal 4", the 35-year-old actress quipped, "Those who have a role for me will come to me, irrespective of my being pregnant or not."

"Whichever role I do, I am not going to camouflage it on screen. I am proud of this phase (being pregnant) that I am in and there is nothing to hide about it. Whichever film I choose to do you will see me the way I am. Right now, I am working on dates so it all depends on how I feel," she added.

Kareena will soon be seen playing the lead role in Shashanka Ghosh's "Veere Di Wedding", a rom-com co-starring Sonam Kapoor, Swara Bhaskar and Shikha Talsania and it's about four women who embark on a trip from Delhi to Europe.
New Delhi, Aug 22 : Members of civil society groups on Monday urged the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to address the many "shortcomings" of the Transgender Bill, before passing it.

Members of 'Sangama' and 'Reach Law', two Bangalore-based minority rights group, presented a chapter wise review of 'The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill', 2016, introduced in Lok Sabha on August 2, to bring to notice the Bill's flaws and gaps with respect to transgenders' abuse, rehabilitation, education, and equal status in the society.

Among its many shortcomings discussed, they strongly opposed the use of 'biological test' to pronounce a person as transgender as proposed in the draft bill and advocated for the use of 'psychological test' instead. They also recommended to the ministry to extend reservation in educational institutes and for public appointments to transgender persons.

They also demanded removal of the derogatory words such as "chakka, ombotthu, gandu etc." and the removal of the term 'Third gender' to refer to transgenders as they're discriminatory.

B.T. Venkatesh, former public prosecuter, Karnataka High Court, and a lawyer with Reach Law, told IANS that the term 'third gender' is discriminatory and has emerged from a patriarchal mindset.

"Third to what? who are first and second?", he said.

"The proposed Bill is far from inclusive and there many flaws in it. Government must make changes in the corresponding laws as well to make to wholly applicable and inclusive," he said.

"Section 377 needs to be abolished. It's in contradiction to what we are trying to do with the Bill. Who will identify as a transgender as long as 377 is there.. same needs to be done with domestic violence law which recognises only wife as the one who can seek redressal," he continued.

" There always are at least 10 percent people in a given community who identify themselves as transgenders.. we also demand that sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) be struck off from the Bill as one of the criteria to be identified as transgender, as in India changing one's sex is illegal, again a contradiction!," Venkatesh added.

The current Bill is a redrafted version of 'The Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2015', proposed by DMK, MP, Tiruchi Siva as a private member bill. Siva himself has in the past called the bill a "diluted" version of the original.
New Delhi, Aug 22 : The Delhi government and the opposition faced off in the state assembly on Monday after Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia accused the Centre of trying to "destabilise" the AAP-led government.

The opposition said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi has chosen "a path of confrontation".

"Like Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the central government is consistently trying to run Delhi indirectly like a President-ruled state," Sisodia said during a short duration discussion on the situation arising out of the August 4 judgement by the Delhi High Court.

The court had ruled that the national capital "continues to be a Union Territory" under the administrative control of the Lt Governor and "does not acquire the status of a State".

Sisodia said Delhiites had chosen the AAP government and its work is being praised around the world.

"We might be children in politics but if you (Centre) will obstruct our work and stop us from delivering on our promises, we will not spare you," Sisodia said.

Leader of Opposition Vijendra Gupta countered Sisodia, saying "the Delhi government is doing politics of confrontation and wants to continue it".

Sisodia also ridiculed Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for being carried by two police officials while inspecting a flood situation in his state.

"There are two types of working styles of governments. One (Aam Admi Party government) is working continuously for the benefit of the people while in the other (BJP government in Madhya Pradesh) flood inspections are being conducted by sitting in the lap of security personnel," Sisodia said.

He said the AAP government was working very hard on education, health, water, public transport, which has rattled the central government.

"Our work is being praised even abroad. We will keep fighting for the people of Delhi. We will form government in Punjab, Goa and Gujarat too," Sisodia added.
Chandigarh, Aug 22 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be the chief guest at the state-level function to be held on November 1 to mark the Golden Jubilee year of the inception of Haryana, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar announced this in New Delhi on Monday.

"Modi has accepted Haryana's invitation and given assurance to participate in the Golden Jubilee function. Besides, he also congratulated the people of Haryana for holding the International Gita Jayanti Mahotsav in Kurukshetra from December 6 to 10," Khattar said after meeting Narendra Modi.

The Haryana government is planning to organise year-long festivities and activities to mark the 50 years of the state.

"Swaran Jayanti" (Golden Jubilee) gates will be installed at 28 entry points of the state during the year. The main gate would be installed on the Delhi-Gurgaon road.

Haryana was created on November 1, 1966, after bifurcating the erstwhile Punjab. Haryana, which surrounds national capital Delhi from three sides, has seen investment in industry and software sectors since early 1980s.
Ankara, Aug 23 : A US delegation of officials from the Justice and State Department arrived in Ankara on Monday to discuss developments following the failed coup, the local media reported.

The four US officials were expected to discuss with their Turkish counterparts on Tuesday and Wednesday the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, who is believed to have masterminded the failed July 15 coup attempt, Xinhua news agency reported.

Turkey Justice Ministry officials stated they would share with their US counterparts the extradition demand documents in addition to evidence indicating Gulen's direct involvement in the attempted coup.

Turkey sent a second request to the US for the arrest of Fethullah Gulen earlier in August.

Tensions brewed after Ankara expressed its discontent over lack of support from Washington in the wake of the failed coup.

Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag warned that the relationship between both countries could be negatively affected if Gulen was not extradited.

However, the US insists that the cleric would only be extradited following legal procedures according to relevant legislature and treaties.
Tripoli, Aug 23 : Libyan parliament on Monday voted against the UN-backed unity government, with 66 votes to reject it, 12 abstained from voting and one voted for approval.

Quorum was formed for a voting session for the first time since January in the eastern Tobruk-based parliament, Xinhua news agency quoted a parliament official as saying.

The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) was appointed based on an UN-sponsored peace deal signed by the country's political rivals in order to end the state of political division.

GNA, however, faced opposition from several members of the parliament.

Monday's voting was considered to be another obstacle to the government that has been trying to get the approval of the parliament.

Meanwhile, GNA's forces fighting the Islamic State Terrorist Group in Sirte were gaining more control of the city in a fight which started in May and has claimed the lives of at least 350 government fighters and has injured 1,000 others.
Riyadh, Aug 23 : A Saudi Arabia court sentenced an Egyptian national to six years in jail on Monday over spying for Iran, the local media reported.

The Egyptian, who will be deported after serving his sentence, was found guilty of sending a confidential document on the Saudi army to the Iranian embassy in Lebanon's capital city Beirut, Xinhua news agency reported.

The court believed that the convict received a letter from the embassy asking for additional information on the Arab state.
Landlords are being urged to consider low carbon property upgrades that can deliver better outcomes for tenants with a new study suggesting they can be done cost effectively.

A new analysis of data on the energy efficiency of real homes and what residents want from their heating by Energy Systems Catapult has calculated the most efficient low carbon heating upgrade pathways for five common UK housing types.

It is described as the first modelling study of its kind for landlords and housing associations with the aim of providing a clear, evidence-based way to plan future property improvements and prioritise upgrades which deliver the greatest energy efficiency and comfort.

It could also help identify the root causes and innovative solutions to problems that right now are not being addressed effectively and suggest new ways to improve domestic heating performance and control.

The study follows the recent report from the Committee on Climate Change that advised that improvements to building efficiency and adoption of low carbon heating systems, such as heat pumps, district heating and hydrogen boilers, were required for the UK to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050.

With two thirds of UK homes currently suffering from damp, drafting or overheating, the study found smart heating controls combined with insulation and other energy efficiency retrofit could ensure the switch to low carbon heating also delivers improved outcomes for householders.

The study utilised the Catapults new Home Energy Dynamics (HED) tool that takes data from heating systems, radiators and pipe networks, building fabric, consumer choices/behaviour and weather, to target the right retrofit solutions for different housing types.

The study highlighted a number of possibilities for the design of low carbon heating systems that deliver good comfort. Smart heating controls, with an ability to set different temperatures in individual rooms, were found to be key to the design of low carbon systems, as they could attract consumers through offering a better experience while improving energy efficiency.

Electric heat pumps were also found to provide good levels of comfort in all the modelled gas-heated homes if sized and operated effectively and combined with building fabric upgrades.

Hybrid heating systems could also play an important role in transitioning to low carbon heat, as these provide the option of replacing natural gas boilers with thermal storage, lower carbon gas or hydrogen boilers.

The study also says that thermal storage could help manage the demand placed on energy networks, particularly at peak times. However, the space required for thermal storage is typically larger than the space made available for hot water storage in most homes. But it points out that innovations, such as the use of phase change materials or deeper levels of fabric retrofit, could make this solution more viable in future.

To meet 2050 climate change targets we must eliminate the 20% of UK carbon emissions that come from heating homes, which means in the next decade we will need to be converting millions of homes to low carbon heating every year. This will be much easier if the solutions provide households with heating outcomes that are better than what they have today, said Richard Halsey, director of Capabilities at Energy Systems Catapult.

We found that integrating low carbon heating solutions, such as electric heat pumps, hybrid and district heating systems, with smart heating controls and targeted retrofit measures such as improving insulation or upgrading radiators, can deliver better heating outcomes for consumers living in existing housing stock, he explained.

Our research has previously found that 85% of households that trialled smart heating controls, were open to switching to low carbon technology, compared to just 36% of the general population, as long as current or improved levels of comfort and cost could be guaranteed, he pointed out.

This represents a huge opportunity for the development of better integrated heating solutions and related products and services to deliver low carbon heating at home, he added.
If youre an existing, or even prospective landlord in the UK you may be wondering what the impact of new lending rules will have on the sector. Tax changes due to be implemented next April will mean landlords no longer have the option of offsetting the cost of their mortgage interest against the income they generate through rent. In response to this, the Bank of England has advised lenders to introduce more stringent stress tests on buy-to-let property purchasers.

Sarah Davidson of thisismoney.com recently discussed the issue in an ebook put together by landlord insurance provider, HomeLet. But how will the new changes affect landlords?



The possible impact

In news that may concern landlords, a study completed by Property Partner has suggested that the new rules could significantly increase the deposits that landlords need to raise in certain parts of the country. It claimed that investors in more than two thirds of major cities and towns may have to put down deposits of 40% or more. In some places, buy to let investors might have to raise deposits of 60%.

According to Property Partner, the worst affected area would be Worcester in the West Midlands. This is because average house prices in the city are 188,694, while average rental yields are just over 490 a month. If the tougher lending rules are adopted by all mortgage providers, this would mean that landlords in Worcester would need deposits of 61%.

Raising financial barriers

Commenting on the research, chief executive of Property Partner Dan Gandesha suggested that the squeeze on lending will increase the financial barriers facing landlords. He noted that investors have also been hit by a 3% increase in stamp duty surcharge for buy to let properties and second homes (which was implemented in April this year) and they will be affected by the gradual removal of tax relief on mortgage interest from April 2017.

You can read Sarah Davidsons take on this, and much more in HomeLets ebook .
"Purchasing a vintage vehicle from WWVA can be done entirely from the comfort of your own home, from preview to delivery."

Often referred to as the Amazon for classic cars, Worldwide Vintage Autos has helped change the way collectible cars and trucks are sold online. To celebrate their five year anniversary, Worldwide Vintage Autos is giving away a one of their rarest cars, a 1932 Ford Roadster, as a thank you to their customers.

Our fans have given us so much over the past five years, and we want to give back, says co-founder Alex Prinster, What better way than to give one of our favorite cars away for free?

Started by four friends, each with their own taste in classic cars, what set Worldwide Vintage Autos apart from the competition when they opened their doors in 2011 was an expansive online presence, with customers able to browse, explore, and purchase the classic vehicle of their choice from the comfort of their own home, delivery included.

Everything else you buy online can be done simply, with a few clicks, Prinster explains, We saw no reason that vintage cars should be any different.

Most of the business is done over the phone or online, and Worldwide Vintage Autos works diligently to make the buying process as smooth, unobtrusive, and simple as possible. Their team of car experts work very closely with clients, providing detailed images, documentation, and videos of each car. Interested individuals can request a live virtual tour of the car or truck, exploring every nook and cranny as if they were in person. Once the sale has been made, Worldwide Vintage Autos even delivers.

Our classic cars, trucks, and motorcycles have been delivered to collectors right around the block and as far away as Asia, says Prinster, And the process is the same for everyone. Why make it difficult to get the car you want?

For those that are more hands on, Worldwide Vintage Autos also has a massive warehouse in Denver, Colorado that houses two-hundred unique vehicles at any given time. Clients can make an appointment with Worldwide Vintage Autos to visit the warehouse, view the autos first hand, and test drive any of the available vehicles. In fact, their warehouse is overflowing with classic cars, so much so that they are professionally stacked two high on car lifts in order to fit each and every unique piece.

Worldwide Vintage Autos was formed by four car enthusiasts who wanted to share their joy of vintage autos with the masses. By focusing on unparalleled electronic customer service theyve made it possible for even the most reserved collector to purchase the vehicle theyve always wanted. Despite being less than five years old, their company is now one of the largest vintage automobile dealerships world.

I know we always hoped, but five years ago, we would have never have imagined this level of success, Prinster acknowledges, We owe everything to our customers. Giving the Roadster away is the least that we can do to show how thankful we are.

To celebrate their past five years, Worldwide Vintage Autos is giving away a 1932 Ford Roadster. This yellow engineering marvel will be handed over to its new owner after a drawing held on Labor Day, 2016 (Monday, September 5th).

For more information about Worldwide Vintage Autos, call +1 (720) 457-9145 or visit http://www.worldwidevintageautos.com. To enter in their free car giveaway, become a member of their VIP List by completing the form on http://www.worldwidevintageautos.com/coming-soon/.
Southern New Jersey Were really just so proud to have been chosen by the people who live and work in this community as the best in the area

PROSHRED Southern New Jersey has been selected by the editors and readers of South Jersey Biz magazine as Best in Biz for the Document Destruction/Security category for 2016. The award and full list of winners will appear in the August 22nd digital edition of South Jersey Biz and can be found online at SouthJerseyBiz.net.

Each year, the magazine invites readers to nominate and subsequently vote for admired South Jersey businesses in a variety of categories. Over 100 businesses are honored for their overall contribution to the Southern Jersey community in categories ranging from Construction to Insurance Management. Were really just so proud to have been chosen by the people who live and work in this community as the best in the area, says Simone Bryerman, President of PROSHRED Southern New Jersey. Ultimately, theyre our customers and we really work hard to provide them with a superior service.

This marks the first year Document Destruction/Security has been included in the magazines list of Best in Biz categories. The PROSHRED Southern New Jersey team is made up entirely of Jersey residents, specializing on a community-centric approach to business services. Operating all throughout the southern NJ region, PROSHRED services areas as far and wide as Atlantic City and Wilmington, DE.

The PROSHRED brand has been a pioneer in at-home and on-site document and electronic shredding for over 30 years, now with over 30 locations nationwide and over 5 million of trees saved. Through unwavering commitment to ISO 9001 and NAID AAA quality standards, it has become one of the most trusted names in commercial and consumer shredding and destruction services. A few of the standout features of PROSHREDs document destruction services include no management fees, no fuel surcharges, and flat-fee pricing. A full listing of the service options offered by PROSHRED Southern New Jersey can be found at http://www.PROSHRED.com/southern-new-jersey.

PROSHRED SOUTHERN NEW JERSEY has been operating out of their West Berlin, New Jersey, headquarters for nearly three years. The franchise is currently expanding, planning to add both new trucks and employees in the coming months.

For more information on PROSHRED Southern New Jerseys services and pricing, please contact Simone Bryerman at 856.336.2820 .
For project professionals looking to fill the risk management specialist role, hone their basic project management skills and showcase their specialized expertise to employers, the PMI-RMP credential is ideal.

The highly regarded Project Management Institute (PMI) is perhaps best known for its Project Management Professional (PMP) credential but PMI also offers the PMI Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP) for governance, risk and compliance professionals. This certification recognizes individuals who have a combination of top-notch project management skills with the ability to identify and accurately assess project risk, and to also mitigate identified threats to organizations.

For organizations investing heavily in high stakes and highly expensive investment projects, the need for professionals with the optimal credentials will become ever more important. For professionals managing large scale, complex, and high budget projects, the PMI-RMP certification is a significant differentiator, especially when there are over 720,000 PMPs. For project managers in smaller organizations, the concepts and practices advocated by this Risk Management Professional training, will scale to small businesses and projects as you apply the framework of risk management.

Project Risk Management accounts for the unpredictable. It forces project professionals to acknowledge that things do not always go right and the need to have a plan in place for when projects start having snags. Developing the right plans also saves the project team from scrambling to figure out what to do when things go wrong; therefore having the right contingency planning is important. These risk management practices can bring large payoffs, but it is up to the project professionals to determine if the risks are acceptable. Can organizations take the potential financial hit that failure would cause? What happens if the project goes significantly over budget? Suppose a senior programmer is injured and cannot work? Are the projects able to stretch your deadlines or can you find a suitable stand-in quickly?

The PMI-RMP certification demonstrates skill and competence in this specialized area of project risk management. For project professionals looking to fill the risk management specialist role, hone their basic project management skills and showcase their specialized expertise to employers, the PMI-RMP credential is ideal. All PMI certifications are mutually exclusive, which means that professionals do not need to hold a Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification to become PMI-RMP Certified. Ready to take your career to the next level? Join PMO Advisory on site at their 3 day training course in risk management on October 10-12 in their offices in Northern New Jersey. For those wishing to join the Live Instructor Led Virtual Classroom with participants from around the world, PMO Advisory is also offering this PMI-RMP training course in November of 2016. For Details visit them at http://www.pmoadvisory.com

About PMO Advisory

PMO Advisory is a socially minded management advisory and training firm with expertise in business and IT execution, serving as a resource to help enable ideas for organizations. PMO Advisory helps transform business ideas, plans, objectives and vision into reality using a proven, customizable consulting approach. The firms advisory team is expert in portfolio, program and project leadership, process improvement, and business transformation. As a training company, the firm is striving to be the most comprehensive project management training firm in the world offering certification training in Portfolio (PfMP), Program (PgMP), Project (PMP, CAPM), Risk (PMI-RMP), Agile (PMI-ACP, Scrum), and Project Management Office (PMO) training.

PfMP, PgMP, PMP, CAPM, PMI-RMP, and PMI-ACP are registered marks of Project Management Institute Inc.
Goodcents Deli Fresh Subs promoted Scott Ford to president to lead the nearly 30-year-old franchise-based deli sandwich company based in De Soto, Kan. Previously, Ford was chief operating officer managing day-to-day operations and human resources.

In addition to his responsibilities as COO, Ford will now oversee the strategic vision of the business, including franchise growth and overall customer experience.

We have aggressive growth plans for our business, and we need a strong leader to help us achieve them, said Joe Bisogno, chairman and CEO of Goodcents. Scott knows the business and has played a key role in innovating our brand and strengthening the experience for our customers, employees and owners. Im confident he is the right person to accelerate our growth moving forward.

During the last year, Ford has lead the charge on a new digital consumer interaction and ordering strategy for the business, including the launch of a new mobile app and online ordering system and the unveiling of its new Goodcents of the Future restaurant prototype featuring some of the industrys first in-store and drive-thru digital ordering kiosks. Also, he initiated a new area representative agreement (ARA) to allow for more rapid franchise expansion.

His strong focus on technology has benefited franchise owners and employees. He helped to develop a new mobile app for franchise owners that provides up-to-the-minute sales, product and labor details for individual restaurants, as well as territory, ownership groups and enterprise levels. He also helped launch a new e-learning platform for training employees.

We have a strong brand and a strong team that is poised for rapid growth, said Ford. Im excited at the opportunities ahead of us and look forward to continuing to build on our success.

Ford has worked in the restaurant industry for more than 30 years. Before joining Goodcents in 2010, Ford worked in leadership roles at Boston Market, McDonalds and Applebees. He is based in the Goodcents national headquarters office in DeSoto, Kan.

About Goodcents

Goodcents first opened in the Kansas City Metropolitan area more than 25 years ago with a focus on providing deli fresh subs, house-baked breads and pasta made in the restaurant every day. Now called Goodcents Deli Fresh Subs rather than Mr. Goodcents, the company remains true to its singular focus: offering a fresh, quality experience to its customers by slicing sandwich meats and cheeses to order, baking fresh bread each day and providing hearty pasta meals cooked in its restaurants. Goodcents has more than 80 locations across eight states. Visit http://goodcentssubs.com for more information. To connect with Goodcents through Facebook visit http://www.facebook.com/GoodcentsSubs or Twitter @EatGoodcents and Snapchat at GoodcentsSubs.
Keith Longacre, newly appointed Partner at Frazier & Deeter Keith Longacre brings years of internal audit, risk management and regulatory compliance expertise to our financial services clients.

Frazier & Deeter announced the addition of Keith Longacre, CIA, CISA as its new National Financial Services Practice Leader. Longacre joins the firm as a partner in the firms Process, Risk & Governance practice.

Keith Longacre has more than 30 years of experience providing internal audit and risk management services in the financial services industry, said Seth McDaniel Managing Partner of Frazier & Deeter. Financial services is a highly specialized industry requiring unique expertise. We are delighted to have Keith provide his leadership and experience in this key segment of our client base.

Longacre joins Frazier & Deeter after serving 14 years as a partner in the advisory practice of Ernst & Young LLP in Atlanta.

Keith Longacre is a seasoned professional with a deep understanding of the unique issues and risks facing financial services companies in this unprecedented regulatory environment, said Louis J. Beierle, former Chief Audit Executive at Hudson City Bancorp. Keiths leadership on our internal audit engagement was instrumental in helping us address the heightened expectations of our multiple regulators while also generating value for the company. Frazier & Deeter has gained a tremendous leader with the addition of Keith.

Keith Longacre brings years of internal audit, risk management and regulatory compliance expertise to our financial services clients, said Sabrina Serafin, Partner and National Leader of Frazier & Deeters Process, Risk & Governance practice. Keith is an ideal fit with our expanding team of world-class experts and we are delighted that he is joining the team.

Frazier & Deeter is one of the fastest growing firms in the country and they have built a risk advisory practice that is very highly regarded, said Longacre. I believe Frazier & Deeter is ideally suited to serve the needs of the financial services industry and I am excited to have the opportunity to help continue to build this important practice.

Longacre holds the designations of Certified Internal Auditor and Certified Information System Auditor. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration at the University of Delaware.

About Frazier & Deeter

Frazier & Deeter is a nationally recognized CPA and advisory firm headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The firm provides tailored services across a wide range of tax, audit, accounting and advisory needs to achieve each client's unique financial goals.

Frazier & Deeter has been named one of the 2016 top Accounting Firms to Work For, the 56th largest CPA firm and one of the Fastest Growing CPA firms among the top 100 firms in the U.S. by Accounting Today magazine. Frazier & Deeter has also been named a Best of the Best CPA firm by INSIDE Public Accounting nine times.
We are very excited to be named to the Inc5000 list for the third time since our founding 22 years ago. Our growth through the years is attributable to our incredible team members, thought leaders, integration consultants, and partners.

Inc. magazine today ranked REMEDI Electronic Commerce Group NO. 3922 on its 35th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. the list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economys most dynamic segment its independent small businesses. Companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Dominos Pizza, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees of the Inc. 5000.

The 2016 Inc. 5000, unveiled online at Inc.com and with the top 500 companies featured in the September issue of Inc. (available on newsstands August 23) is the most competitive crop in the lists history. The average company on the list achieved a mind-boggling three-year growth of 433%. The Inc. 5000s aggregate revenue is $200 billion, and the companies on the list collectively generated 640,000 jobs over the past three years, or about 8% of all jobs created in the entire economy during that period. Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

We are very excited to be named to the Inc5000 list for the third time since our founding 22 years ago. Our growth through the years is attributable to our incredible team members, thought leaders, integration consultants, and partners who deliver their best work to the client every day, comments CEO Tracy Loetz. We appreciate our clients, past and present, who trust us with their business and system integration initiatives.

REMEDI Electronic Commerce Group is an information technology business and systems integration solutions provider founded in 1994. The company assists clients with "All Things Integration" as it pertains to B2Bi, EDI, MFT, & EAI consulting, professional services, training, software (on-premises, SasS, cloud), managed services, recruiting and full-time placement.

"The Inc. 5000 list stands out where it really counts, says Inc. President and Editor-In-Chief Eric Schurenberg. It honors real achievement by a founder or a team of them. No one makes the Inc. 5000 without building something great  usually from scratch. Thats one of the hardest things to do in business, as every company founder knows. But without it, free enterprise fails.

The annual Inc. 5000 event honoring all the companies on the list will be held from October 18 through 20, in San Antonio, TX. Speakers include some of the greatest entrepreneurs of this and past generations, such as best-selling author and strategist Tony Robbins, SoulCycle co-founders Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice, Cornerstone OnDemand founder, president and CEO Adam Miller, Marvell Technology Group director and co-founder Weili Dai, and New Belgium Brewing co-founder and executive chair Kim Jordan.
Durante Rentals, LLC has once again been named to Inc. Magazines exclusive list of 5000 of Americas fastest-growing private companies  The Inc. 5000.

Coming in at #1643 (#71 in Construction) on the 35th Annual List, this is Durante Rentals fourth consecutive selection and highest placement to date. Their previous rankings were #1869 in 2015, #2098 in 2014 and #1879 in 2013. Durante Rentals made this years list with a remarkable three-year sales growth rate of 228% and 2015 annual sales of $15.8 million. During the same time period, they added a noteworthy 45 new jobs to the local New York economy.

2015 was a special year for us, as we really scaled nicely and our financial performance proves it, said Chief Financial Officer, Christopher Jones. We were ahead of budget all year and this is attributed to the hard-working and talented staff we have. From our drivers to the mechanics to the rental coordinators to the support staff, everyone worked together to produce fantastic results we can all be proud of, he said.

Inc.com referred to this years winners as Superheroes of the U.S. economy and deservedly so. Durante Rentals joins some familiar faces on the list such as fellow ARA member Nickell Rental (#3885), Smashburger (#2243) and Omnibuild (#459), along with newcomers to the list such as Dollar Shave Club (#65) and Renewal by Andersen (#1090). You can see a complete list of past and present winners on the Inc. website.

Were extremely proud of our team for a fourth consecutive victory, said President, John Durante. We understand how difficult it is to maintain this type of growth, but that is exactly what drives our team each end every day  to be better than yesterday, he said.

About Durante Rentals

Founded in 2009 by three entrepreneurs, Durante Rentals is the most trusted name in construction equipment and tool rentals in the NY tri-state area. With the core values of Speed, Convenience and Culture, general contractors look to Durante for all their equipment needs including excavators, skid steers, light towers, generators, compressors, forklifts, air tools, boom lifts and more. With seven convenient locations and counting, their geographic footprint continues to expand while servicing all five boroughs of NYC, Westchester, Rockland and Putnam County, Connecticut and New Jersey. For more information about Durante Rentals, visit http://www.DuranteRentals.com. For more information about their subdivision, New York Takeuchi, visit http://www.NYTakeuchi.com.

About Inc. and the Inc. 5000

The Inc. 5000 is a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation. Started in 1982, Incs nationally-recognized list has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success. Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for todays innovative company builders.

###
Tutors International A disappointing grade can absolutely be turned around.

The 2016 academic year saw multiple changes in the A-level curriculum and subject matter given to inadequately-prepared teachers and students, across a wide range of subjects, at A and AS-level. As a result, Ofqual warned that exam results were likely to dip. 2016 is also the first year that AS results will not be counted towards a students final A-level grade.

Adam Caller, independent education consultant and founder of leading private tutoring firm, Tutors International, was quick to respond with advice for worried parents and disappointed students, and offered potential solutions.

The issues identified with the latest A-level curriculum, and the potential for a drop in grades, neednt be a disaster for students. Instead, it could offer the perfect opportunity to revisit the subject matter with a fresh perspective. Private tutors present the ability to tailor the curriculum, and the style in which it is taught, to suit the needs and ambitions of the student. A great private tutor is able to adapt curricula in a way that best suits a students learning style and what results he or she needs to achieve to attend their first choice of university.

Tutors International, founded in 1999, has placed exceptional private tutors with students all over the world, on a full- or part-time basis, studying multiple curricula, sometimes simultaneously, and have repeatedly seen students thrive, even when past results were poor.

Mr Caller added: If a student doesnt understand something, a traditional classroom is not the best place for them to be brought up to speed. The one-to-one nature of tutoring, away from the bustle and pressures of the classroom, allows students to learn on their own terms, according to their own specific needs and interests. We have found that by doing this, students understanding and interest in new and challenging subject matter is greatly improved. A disappointing grade can absolutely be turned around, and weve seen students revisit exams with great success following time spent at home with our tutors. I would happy to hear from any parents with exam concerns and questions about home tutoring, full or part-time, and offer tailored advice.

To find out more about the services offered by Tutors International, visit tutors-international.com.

END

References

[1] Teachers fear A-level results after year of curriculum change. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/aug/15/teachers-fear-a-level-results-after-year-of-curriculum-change Sally Weale & Rebecca Ratcliffe. The Guardian. 15 August 2016

About Tutors International

Tutors International is a worldwide organization providing experienced private tutors to work with children of all ages and nationalities. Tutors are available for full-time tutoring positions, for major support and tutoring outside school hours, or for home-schooling. Tutors International provide provide a bespoke service to find the right tutor that suits the child's needs and aspirations, and if a live-in tutor is required, it is essential that the assigned tutor is the right match for the family and fits in the environment.

Tutors International was founded by Adam Caller who has tutored students of all ages. He has received specialist training in dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder and is very sensitive to children's educational difficulties. He has now turned this expertise to recruiting, training and placing other tutors to help families.
The world's first Tonal Earphone was developed to capture the essence of each music genre and delivers a sound that is true to any music piece's original recording.

Chord & Major, the first Tonal Earphones brand in the world, will be exhibiting at NY NOW. The brand will be presenting their exquisite Tonal Earphone design combined with technology and delicate craftsmanship to the world at the Javits Centre in New York, August 21-24.

In combining sound engineering, technology and a love of music, Chord & Major developed the worlds first Tonal Earphone set that captures the essence of the genre it was created for and delivers a sound that is true to any music piece's original recording.

Each of Chord & Majors Tonal Earphones is designed and superbly finished using high quality materials from wood to carbon fiber. In addition, all earphone sets are housed in an elegant wooden box, which also acts as a visual metaphor for the music we love.

The worlds first Tonal Earphone concept, coupled with extreme detail and a premium packaging design, makes an excellent lifestyle gift for the discerning music lover who appreciates something unique and beautiful.

Chord & Major has designed a range of Tonal Earphones, optimized to suit a variety of listener preferences. The models include:

Major 514 - World Music

Major 613 - Ballad

Major 713 - Jazz

Major 813 - Rock

Major 913 - Classical

Major 0116 - Electronic Music

The Major 913  Classical model is the first and only in-ear earphone to receive the prestigious Diapason dOr "Outstanding Product of the Year" award.

Innovative products make NY NOW the Leading Tradeshow for the Home, Lifestyle and Gift Market. At NY NOW, the Market for Home + Lifestyle + Gift, New Yorkers will have access to new, design-focused resources from around the world.

Date: August 21-24, 2016

Booth: 3871

Area: Level 3 - Home: Accent on Design

Venue: Javits Centre, New York City

NY NOW  The Market for Home, Lifestyle + Gift

Website: http://www.nynow.com

Chord & Major

Website: http://www.chord-m.com
Its great to see that the people who really know project-based businesses  Plumbline Consulting  are taking the lead on Progressus.

Plumbline Consulting, LLC, the premier resource for Microsoft Dynamics Partners and ISVs has announced their plans to enhance Microsoft Dynamics 365 and NAV for professional services firms. Plumblines new software solution, Progressus Software, is tailored for professional services firms using Microsoft Dynamics.

Progressus Software is a next-generation professional services automation (PSA) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which is mobile-enabled and architected for the intelligent cloud. The software solution adds advanced accounting and project management capabilities to the financial management and basic project management functionalities of Microsoft Dynamics.

Microsoft Dynamics is a global business management solution that provides small and mid-size organizations greater control over their financials. Dynamics simplifies all aspects of a company from professional services and project management to supply chain management and manufacturing. Microsoft Dynamics is available both in the cloud on Microsoft Azure and on premise and offers native interoperability with Office 365.

Its great to see that the people who really know project-based businesses  Plumbline Consulting  are taking the lead on Progressus, said Greg Staples of Altara, a Microsoft Dynamics Gold Certified partner.

With the launch of Progressus Software, Plumbline Consulting is taking the lead on professional services automation for Microsoft Dynamics, said Joseph Longo, President of Plumbline Consulting. We are eager to create this new age of PSA and push the industry forward.

Progressus Software is available in the cloud on Microsoft Azure. Learn more about Progressus at http://www.progressussoftware.com.

About Plumbline Consulting

The Plumbline Consulting team has over 30 years history in implementing project-based ERP solutions. Plumbline provides software engineering and consulting services for Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics Channel Partners and Microsoft Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). Plumbline offers software development, application support, technology and business process consulting, with a focus on delivering excellence and building lasting relationships. Plumbline also provides Dynamics SL (formerly known as Solomon Software) Product Management, Development and Support services for Microsoft Corporation. The company is headquartered in Findlay, Ohio. More information about Plumbline Consulting can be found at http://www.plumblineconsulting.com.
Milpower Source, Inc. was pleased to host New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte and members of her staff on Tuesday, August 16, 2016 at their facility in Belmont, NH. Senator Ayotte met with representatives from Milpower Sources leadership team and spoke with three new employees to the company, all recent graduates from local schools and universities. Senator Ayotte was provided a facility tour by representatives from Milpower Source.

Providing a comment while on the production floor, Senator Ayotte said, Ive been very impressed with Milpower Source in terms of its ability to produce parts for the military  V-22s, F-18s, and equipment for the Patriot Missile System. Senator Ayotte went on to say, As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I know how important the business of supplying the military is.

Mr. Tomer Eshed, General Manager at Milpower Source added, were proud to have roots in Belknap County, offering high technology jobs and stability in the area. Its critical to establish the dialogue with our elected officials to partner in ways that can improve the economic growth in New Hampshire, and provide the local workforce and new graduates with quality employment opportunities in our state.

Milpower Source has engaged local and state technical schools, community colleges, and universities with the goal of supporting local graduates and providing an opportunity for prosperity in New Hampshire.

About Milpower Source  Since 1984, Milpower Source has been a leading manufacturer of custom rugged power supplies, serving the military and aerospace markets. Milpower Sources products are widely used in applications such as fighter aircraft, radar, and RF communications. Milpower Source is an AS9100 certified company. More at http://www.milpower.com
IMSTA FESTA NYC is an annual celebration of music technology open to all to attend at no charge. It is such a great opportunity for current and former students as well as the public to meet professionals in the audio field.

SAE Institute, a premier provider of creative media education, will partner with the International Music Software Trade Association (IMSTA) to host IMSTA FESTA, a celebration of music technology, at its New York campus on Saturday, September 24 from 11am to 6pm.

Free to attend and open to the public, IMSTA FESTA is a one-day networking and learning event that brings together a group of top audio technology companies in an exciting environment that provides face-to-face interaction with music makers. Attendees are set to include music entrepreneurs, professional and semi-professional musicians, DJs, songwriters, music producers, audio engineers, music students, and music educators. Anyone who makes music or is interested in the art of music making is sure to benefit from this event in numerous ways. Youll find new opportunities to make connections, gain knowledge and ideas, and accelerate careers, as well as learn about new techniques in music production, legal software use, and using music software to enhance their skills.

We are excited to partner with IMSTA FESTA again in 2016. It is such a great opportunity for current and former students as well as the public to meet professionals in the audio field, says Steven Kashkin, Campus Director at SAE Institute New York. The team at IMSTA is a pleasure to work with and we know that they are going to come through with another amazing event this year.

IMSTA FESTA is known for bringing together the best minds, innovators, heavyweight music industry professionals, and music and audio companies to share fresh perspectives, keen insights and first-hand knowledge on the state of the music business, music production, technology, and more.

Scott Jacoby, acclaimed composer, GRAMMY award-winning writer, producer, engineer, mixer, musician and recording artist, Founder/President of EUSONIA Records, Owner of EUSONIA Studios, CEO of SCOJAC Music Productions will deliver the keynote address at IMSTA FESTA NYC 2016. With his work spanning all genres of music, and collaborations with notable musicians including John Legend, Vampire Weekend, Sia, Rachel Platten, Laura Izibor, Jose James, Vanessa Hudgens, Fabolous, Naturally 7, Cory Henry, Chimene Badi, Jackie Evancho and Ronnie Spector, his speech is sure to add a great deal of excitement to the lively atmosphere.

2016 IMSTA FESTA NYC Highlights:



A keynote speech by GRAMMY award-winning writer, producer, engineer, mixer, musician and recording artist, Scott Jacoby

Network with some of New York's heavy hitters in the music community

Explore non-stop live demonstrations of the latest studio gear, software, and equipment from a line-up of reputable software manufacturers

Get hands-on with the latest music production products on the market

Register for a class in the IMSTA Master Class Series to gain exclusive knowledge on the most coveted products currently on the market

Learn tips and tricks on how to maximize the efficiency of production tools

Win prizes from top audio technology companies

Receive a gift for visiting exhibiting companies

Raffle and door prizes will be distributed randomly to attendees who check-in to the event at the end of each panel discussion

IMSTA FESTA NYC will take place on Saturday, September 24 from 11:00am  6:00pm at SAE Institute New York: 218 West18th Street, 4th floor, New York, NY 10011. Admission is free and open to the public with online registration at imsta.org

About SAE

SAE Institute provides aspiring creative media professionals with a foundation of practical theory and valuable hands-on training in their chosen areas of concentration. Under the guidance of industry-experienced faculty, students gain the essential experience they need for entry-level jobs in the creative media industry. Students are supported in their job searches by SAEs international network of alumni, many of whom are leaders in the music, film, game arts, and live performance arenas. SAE Institute offers programs in Audio Technology in seven US campuses, along with a Music Business program at select locations, all fully accredited and focused on preparing students for employment upon graduation. Bachelors Degree programs in Animation & Visual Effects, Digital Filmmaking, Game Art & Design, Interactive Audio, and Sound Arts are available at SAE Institute San Jose and SAE Expression College in the San Francisco Bay Area, formerly Expression College. SAE Institute Group, Inc. is a part of Navitas LTD. Learn more at usa.sae.edu.

About Navitas

Navitas is an Australian global education leader, providing pre-university and university programs, English language courses, migrant education and settlement services, creative media education, student recruitment, professional development, and corporate training services to more than 80,000 students across a network of over 120 colleges and campuses in 31 countries. Learn more at Navitas.com.
The Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC), the largest technology council in the nation, is celebrating the third year anniversary of the NVTC Veterans Employment Initiative (VEI) and its efforts to connect Veterans to employment opportunities in Virginia's technology community.

The VEI is driven by the Northern Virginia business and technology community, in conjunction with the regions academic institutions and policymakers. Since its launch in Aug. 2013, the VEI has developed and expanded several programs to support NVTC member companies in their efforts to recruit, hire, train and retain qualified Veteran employees and to help match Veterans and military spouses with jobs, internships and mentorships.

Were excited about the VEIs success to-date in matching Veterans to jobs in our regions technology community, stated VEI Program Manager Steve Jordon. More than 4,000 Veterans and military spouses have been hired by NVTC member companies over the three years since the Initiatives inception.

The VEI online community and job board, http://www.novatechvets.org, hosted by career industry leader Monster.com and Military.com, provides tools designed to assist service members transition into the civilian workforce. Veterans can use the military skills translator to match their service related experience to civilian skill sets, access a searchable database of jobs at NVTC member companies and tap into educational resources to help them develop skills to thrive in a private sector career. Currently, over 400 NVTC corporate recruiters use the job board and more than 7,000 job opportunities are posted on the site. In addition, NVTC member recruiters can access Monsters database of more than 950,000 Veteran resumes, use state of the art search tools to find the right potential employee, and post and manage job openings.

In addition to the online community, the VEI hosts bi-monthly Recruiting Day events to match companies with transitioning service members, Veterans, military spouses and members of the National Guard and Reserve. 535 Veteran job seekers have participated in these events over the last three years.

The VEI also runs the VETWORKING program to facilitate development of Veterans professional skills, help them build their professional networks and empower them through the support of fellow job seekers or newly-employed colleagues. Offered in partnership with the MITRE Corporation, VETWORKING has served 120 job seekers. The VEI also has teamed with the regions colleges and universities to help connect student Veterans with summer internships with NVTC member companies. Additionally, the VEI collaborates with state and federal policymakers to support legislative and/or regulatory action that enhances a companies' ability to hire and train Veterans.

We are thrilled by the growth of the Initiative in its first three years, said NVTC President and CEO Bobbie Kilberg. We look forward to expanding our efforts to help connect Veterans with employment in our technology sector in the coming years.

The VEI is funded by the NVTC Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit. Major corporate donors to date include the Northrop Grumman Corporation, Harmonia Holdings, Pentagon Federal Credit Union and Visa.

For more information about the VEI, visit http://www.nvtc.org/veterans or visit the Veteran online community and resources at http://www.novatechvets.org.

# # #

The Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) is the membership and trade association for the technology community in Northern Virginia. As the largest technology council in the nation, NVTC serves about 1,000 companies from all sectors of the technology industry, as well as service providers, universities, foreign embassies, nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies. Through its member companies, NVTC represents about 300,000 employees in the region. NVTC is recognized as the nation's leader in providing its technology community with networking and educational events; specialized services and benefits; public policy advocacy; branding of its region as a major global technology center; initiatives in targeted business sectors and in the international, entrepreneurship, workforce and education arenas; the NVTC Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity that supports the NVTC Veterans Employment Initiative and other priorities within Virginia's technology community. Visit NVTC at http://www.nvtc.org.
Bottar Leone, PLLC

Six Bottar Leone, PLLC attorneys were recognized in Upstate New York Super Lawyers (2016). Each year, no more than 5% of the lawyers in a state are selected by the research team at Super Lawyers to receive this honor.

Attorneys listed in Super Lawyers were Anthony S. Bottar, Michael A. Bottar, Edward S. Leone and Aaron J. Ryder. Michael Bottar was also named to the "Top 50" list.

Anthony S. Bottar, Michael A. Bottar and Edward S. Leone were also recognized recently in the 2017 edition of the Best Lawyers In America, with Michael A. Bottar being named the Best Lawyers 2017 product liability law "Lawyer of the Year" in Syracuse, New York.

In addition, Paul G. Lyons and Adam P. Mastroleo were recognized by Super Lawyers as "Rising Stars."

Super Lawyers, a Thomson Reuters business, is a rating service of outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. The annual selections are made using a patented multiphase process that includes a statewide survey of lawyers, an independent research evaluation of candidates and peer reviews by practice area. The result is a credible, comprehensive and diverse listing of exceptional attorneys.

About Bottar Leone, PLLC:

Bottar Leone, PLLC, is a nationally recognized upstate New York personal injury law firm founded in 1983. Based in Syracuse, New York, with satellite offices in Albany, Binghamton, Watertown and Utica, the firm's award-winning lawyers are widely known for record recoveries for injured patients, workers, motorists and consumers.

Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Some or all of this release may be considered attorney advertising.
AccountingSuite Cloud Accounting and Inventory Platform "Our mission is to empower accountants and business owners to serve their customers with our AccountingSuite platform," said Warren Wong of AccountingSuite.

The AccountingSuite team will be showcasing their latest update, the St. Bernard at the largest CPA gathering in the US at the 2016 Midwest Accounting & Finance Showcase (Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 23-24, 2016).

Were thrilled to be in the Prairie State with the Illinois CPA Society, said Warren Wong, PR and Marketing Manager. Our mission is to empower accountants and business owners to serve their customers better with our AccountingSuite platform.

Accountants can use AccountingSuites cloud business software where one account serves multiple clients, one window can execute multiple tasks and cloud-based access provides on-the-go accessibility or collaboration from any browser.

AccountingSuite will be exhibiting at Booth #1526 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont, Illinois. (5555 N. River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018).

About AccountingSuite:

AccountingSuite is a powerful, all-in-one business application that combines accounting, banking, order management, inventory management, project and time tracking into one cloud-driven platform.

Visit http://www.AccountingSuite.com or call, 415-GO-BLISS.

Follow AccountingSuite on Twitter @AccountingSuite and the show at #FlaggICPAS2016
As a leader in the behavioral healthcare industry, Northbound is proud to support CHOC's initiative in building a program that will serve the children and families in our community.

Healthcare providers have recognized a growing need for higher quality care for children, teens, and young adults in Orange County in the area of mental health. In May 2015, Childrens Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) began creating the Childrens Mental Health Center to provide inpatient care for young patients as well as connections to robust outpatient services. This center is the first of its kind in Orange County and Northbound is proud to support this initiative and raise awareness of the importance of childrens mental health. Northbound will be partnering with CHOC to hold The Missing Link: The Creation of CHOC Childrens Mental Health Initiative, a free CEU event for healthcare professionals on Thursday, August 25, 2016.

As a mother of four children in Orange County, It is imperative that there are pediatric mental health services available given the current scarcity of resources for children in this county, said Emily Bielen, Director of Referral Relations. As a leader in the behavioral healthcare industry, Northbound is proud to support CHOC's initiative in building a program that will serve the children and families in our community.

CHOC is committed to partnering with community leaders and organizations such as Northbound to create an exceptional pediatric mental health system for children and their families. Attendees will learn more about this mental health initiative, its objectives, and the growing need for inpatient and outpatient treatment programs for children, during the one-and-a-half-hour presentation. This is a landmark initiative for Southern California and the ongoing care of children with mental health disorders and co-occurring disorders. In addition to the Mental Health Center, a Co-Occurring Clinic was also opened in September 2015.

The presentation will be given by Dr. Heather Huszti, a licensed psychologist and the head of the CHOC Mental Health Initiative. She is the Chief Psychologist at CHOC Childrens and Section Chief for Pediatric Psychology. Throughout her career, she has served as principal investigator on several research projects regarding adherence to treatments for medical illnesses. Pediatric psychology, children and families struggling with life stress and mental health issues, and techniques to help reduce pain are her main areas of interest.

This 1.0 CEU credit event may be beneficial for a wide range of healthcare professionals including psychologists, counselors, social workers, and addiction professionals. CE Learning Systems and Northbound have been approved to offer continuing education for the American Psychological Association, the Association of Social Work Boards, the California Association for Alcohol/Drug Educators, the American Academy of Health Care Providers in the Addiction Disorders, and the California Consortium of Addiction Programs and Professionals.

The Missing Link: The Creation of CHOC Childrens Mental Health Initiative will be held on Thursday, August 25, 2016 from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Boathouse Collective, 1640 Pomona Avenue, Costa Mesa, California. The event is free to attend and will offer 1.0 CEU credit for completion. Northbound encourages interested individuals to attend the program and learn more about the phenomenal efforts provided by this initiative and the positive difference it can make in the lives of children and their families in Orange County.

ABOUT:

Northbound is located in Orange County, Calif., and is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF) and is a member of the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers (NAATP). Northbound provides its clients with individualized treatment programs covering the full spectrum of care, from detox and residential treatment to outpatient programs and support services, for those seeking to overcome substance use and mental health disorders and achieve lifelong recovery. Clients will establish a healthier lifestyle through participating in a variety of individual and group therapies grounded in evidence-based practices, holistic approaches and gender specific programming. Northbound takes an individualized approach to care that allows clients to make the most of their recovery and overcome the challenges they face in a safe, supportive environment. Additional information about Northbound can be obtained by visit their website: http://livingsober.com
Given its singular focus on Education Technology, they recognized that EdTech180 is the best partner to help them achieve their global market goals.

Reflecting the continued global growth of the Education Technology industry, public relations firm EdTech180 today announced the addition of two new international clients, Empower the User (ETU) from Ireland, and Chalk Talk Solutions from Jordan and Boston. ETU specializes in delivering simulations for workplace and soft skills assessment and training. Chalk Talk Solutions provides test preparation software and services to the Middle Easts premier English-speaking schools. These companies join EdTech180s growing international client base.

These companies know that Boston is a global center for EdTech innovation, founder Josef Blumenfeld explained. Both Empower the User and Chalk Talk Solutions looked for the strongest communications support they could find when they opened offices in Boston. Given its singular focus on Education Technology, they recognized that EdTech180 is the best partner to help them achieve their global market goals.

Since its launch in January with seven clients, EdTech180 has doubled its client base to 14 and broadened its global footprint to support a wide range of international companies from North America, Europe and the Middle East.

We wanted a partner to help us navigate the education technology communication field, said Chalk Talk Solutions founder and CEO Mohannad Arbaji. EdTech180 brings a unique understanding of both the global and US EdTech markets, which are increasingly intertwined. We knew right away that EdTech180 was the best partner to help Chalk Talk grow beyond its base in the Middle East, into the US and beyond.

Declan Dagger, CEO of ETU, commented, We have enjoyed working together with EdTech180 to gain exposure as we build our North American client portfolio for simulation-based learning. EdTech180 is assisting us in highlighting the collaborative nature of our authoring tool, the importance of our talent analytics and the ease of integration of our software into existing learning systems.

EdTech180 was started to help EdTech companies tell their stories better, Blumenfeld continued. EdTech innovation is not limited just to the US. Boston continues to lead the global EdTech industry, and when international companies come here they look for the best partner to help them. I am thrilled that they selected EdTech180, and look forward to providing them with the talent and expertise they need, while continuing to grow our global business.

About EdTech180

EdTech180 is a public relations firm dedicated solely to serving the booming Education Technology market. Founded by PR veteran Josef Blumenfeld, EdTech180 brings important specialization to an industry in need of communication resources and talent. EdTech180 has clients in the US, Canada, Ireland, Jordan, and Israel. For more information, please see EdTech180.com and follow @EdTech180 on Twitter.

About EmpowerTheUser (ETU)

ETU provides a cloud-based platform for the rapid creation and delivery of simulations for workplace and soft skills assessment and training. ETU partners with many of the worlds largest organizations to deliver immersive simulations at scale across recruitment, selection, risk, compliance, on-boarding, leadership, sales management and customer success. ETUs simulations are extensively proven to increase learner engagement, reduce development costs and enable data-driven business and HR decisions. For more information, please contact Emma Connolly emma(dot)connolly(at)empowertheuser(dot)com
TEN Capital Group is pleased to announce Texas Venture Summit 2016 which will be held October 6, 2016 at Brazos Hall in Austin. Texas Venture Summit 2016 is an invitation only growth equity event hosting national and statewide investors matched to qualified Texas technology companies for one-on-one sessions. For more, or to request an invitation, see https://texasventuresummit.com/

Last year, the first Texas Venture Summit connected 27 companies with 42 investors, resulting in 125 one-on-one meetings. In the 12 months since, there have been seven funding events worth $84 Million that have resulted from Texas Venture Summit 2015. This year, the event will bring together over 40 expansion stage and over 60 growth stage technology companies with over 100 investors from across the US. This is an event that no Texas technology company in growth mode should miss. And for investors across the US interested in the best technology Texas has to offer, October 6 will bring them all together.

From the first Texas Venture Summit, in 2015, Delta-v Capital met Austin-based NSS Labs and invested $16 million in its Series B, along with initial investor Live Oak Venture Partners. Venu Shamapant, a general partner with LiveOak, said the conference and its emphasis on capital for Series B and growth will help the investment climate in Texas as a whole move beyond its recent emphasis on startups and early stage funding.

Dan Williams, vice president of Delta-v with offices in Dallas and Boulder, CO, said, for a tech hub thats as prominent as Austin, its great to have an event that brings the right people together. The leads are immediate and you can move forward whereas most other times deal flow comes from relationships and networks, a much longer process for everyone.

Texas Ventures Summit is produced by TEN Capital Group, formerly known as Texas Growth Capital Forum, a financial services company that facilitates company and investor connections, shares data and analytics and puts on three growth equity conferences a year, one focused on healthcare, HealthCare Texas; one on consumer products; and this Texas statewide premier growth capital summit.

Our mission is to measurably increase venture capital and investor presence throughout the state, said Hall T. Martin, director, TEN Capital Group. Startups founded in Texas need broader access to capital at every stage of growth to maximize their potential to achieve global scale. We are proud of what we accomplished last year with our second Texas Venture Summit. We expect more, and better, at Texas Venture Summit 2016. Do not miss it.

This past May, the inaugural conference HealthCare Texas was produced by TEN Capital Group and presented by The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School. It featured over 20 speakers, over 30 investors, and over 40 company innovators in healthcare information technology, digital health, life science, and therapeutics.

TEN Capital Group is dedicated to igniting innovation and the long-term success of high growth Texas companies using the power of network and technology to optimize fundraising and investor relationships. By combining funding platforms, data analytics, and venture capital conferences, TEN Capital Group endeavors to build lasting relationships between entrepreneurs and investors worldwide.

More on the annual Texas Venture Summit, held each year in the Fall, and coming up next October 6, 2016, can be found at: https://texasventuresummit.com/
Kickfurther is a crowdfinancing solution that helps companies fund purchase orders, increase revenue, tap into new buyers and grow brand awareness all at the same time. Thats our amazing value proposition.

Buyers on Kickfurther, the leading inventory crowdfunding marketplace that connects companies and individuals, have funded $10.2 Million of inventory for 288 product companies, earning an average greater than 2% consignment profit per month on completed Consignment Opportunities.

Its rewarding for our entire team to pass another significant milestone, said Kickfurther Co-Founder & CEO Sean De Clercq. Kickfurther is a crowdfinancing solution that helps companies fund purchase orders, increase revenue, tap into new buyers and grow brand awareness all at the same time. Thats our amazing value proposition.

As a rapidly growing company, time is our most important asset. We need to be focused on growing the business, and raising capital takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of resources, said MM Local Foods Co-Founder & CEO Jim Mills. The (Kickfurther) process was a really positive experience for MM Local. Weve been able to merge our customer base with the Kickfurther community, and we had a number of our customers participate in our Kickfurther raise.

MM Local partners with family farmers to preserve surplus produce at the height of harvest through its two brands: MM Colorado and MM Pacific Northwest. Their production model helps prevent food from going to waste and helps local farmers grow. On Kickfurther, MM Local fans earn Consignment Profit when the brands inventory sells.

Kickfurther Consignments are not loans. Buyers provide inventory, marketing, and sales support for businesses, and they earn Co-Op profits when Consignment Inventory sells. In this way, the interests of the businesses are directly aligned with the interests of their Buyers. Brands can learn more via the webinar: How To Scale And Market Your Product Brand Using Crowdfinancing.

About Kickfurther

Kickfurther is a leading inventory crowdfunding marketplace that connects companies with individuals. The Kickfurther marketplace enables consumer product companies seeking capital to grow by sharing sales opportunities with individuals interested in participating in micro-retail.

Businesses post Consignment Opportunities by choosing the amount of inventory they want, the consignment profit Buyers will earn as inventory is sold, and the estimated duration of time it will take to sell the inventory based on prior sales history. Since its 2015 launch, Kickfurther has funded $10.2 million of inventory in 339 Consignment Opportunities by 288 product companies. Kickfurther users have earned, on average, more than 2% consignment profit per month on completed Co-Ops. For additional information, please visit http://www.kickfurther.com
Good Music Deserves Better From an engineering standpoint, there is absolutely nothing about the shape of a square box that is conducive to the faithful reproduction of musicnothing!

Some people like to talk about out of the box thinking, but at Princeton Audio theyre actually doing it. In fact, the first thing Princeton Audio founder Michael Pelland did when designing his award-winning Site:1 speaker was to jettison the box itself altogether. Pelland, an engineer by trade and lover of good music by nature, had been increasingly exasperated by the poor sound and cheap build quality of portable audio speakers. Finally, he decided to work out how to create a beautiful speaker that is built to last, and would produce clear, deepand most importantly truereproduction of the music he loves. Methodically, doggedly, Pelland eventually arrived at a form factor for his speaker that gave him the deep, resonant sound that he had been looking for.

And it was shaped like a triangle.

Pelland is outspoken in his defense of the unconventional appearance of his Site:1 speaker. From an engineering standpoint, there is absolutely nothing about the shape of a square box that is conducive to the faithful reproduction of musicnothing! he said.

Pelland argues that most manufacturers favor the traditional boxy shape of audio speakers partly out of a failure of imagination, and partly for their ease of assembly. Similarly, he says that most companies use cheap plastics in speaker construction for reasons that have nothing to do with quality sound, and everything to do with cranking out product as quickly and cheaply as possible.

When it comes to portable audio speakers, consumers have basically been sold a bill of goods, Pelland said, Decades ago, it simply wasnt possible to create an affordable portable speaker with great sound. People were persuaded that they had to settle for inferior sound quality in order to have portability. But over the years, though technology continued to advance, making better-sounding speakers possible, many audio companies found it convenient to keep consumers expectations low to help pad their bottom lines. Good music deserves better, Pelland added.

Princeton Audios rallying cry to upset the audio industry establishment is to Reclaim our music, and that theme of reclamation is a thread that runs through everything the company does. Dedicated to helping revive the hometown that inspired their company name, and committed to the use of local, sustainable materials for their speaker construction, Princetons passion for reclamation is more than just skin deep.

The unique triangle shape of his companys Site:1 speaker is not the only thing unorthodox about it; Pelland also insisted on the use of instrument-quality tonewoods for the construction of his high-end speakers. Variously crafted out of solid mahogany, black walnut, maple, and black cherry, the Site:1 speakers are as visually stunning as they are sonically beautiful.

Site:1 speakers are designed to take advantage of the special acoustical properties of these gorgeous tonewoods, Pelland explained, Inside, the Site:1 boasts upgradeable electronics to deliver that audiophile-quality sound. Customers have the option of either 15 or 40 hours of long-lasting battery life; the Site:1 is a fully-portable, Bluetooth-enabled speaker that allows you to hear music the way the artist intended it.

As Pelland notes, the final proof of the Site:1 speakers is in their remarkable sound quality.

People need to hear these speakers to believe them, he stresses, The clarity, the gorgeous tone, the imaging, the warmth -- they speak for themselves. And to anyone who is tired of the forced boominess and tinny highs of speakers made from cheap plastic, portable boxes, I have two words for you: Try Angle! he added.

The Site:1 is available for order for $349.99 from the companys website at http://www.princeton-audio.com.

About Princeton Audio: Founded in 2014 by Michael Pelland, Princeton Audio is dedicated to the creation of high-quality, handcrafted audio products, and reclaiming and rejuvenating the proud history of local manufacturing in Princeton, Wisconsin. At Princeton Audio, we promise that our products will be worthy of the music you love, that they will be beautiful, and that they will last.
No one makes the Inc. 500 without building something great

'Inc.' magazine today ranked OneStream Software NO. 293 on its 35th annual Inc. 500, the most prestigious ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economys most dynamic segment its independent small businesses. Companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Dominos Pizza, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees of the Inc. 500.

We are extremely honored to have made 'Inc.'s prestigious top 500 list, said Tom Shea, President of OneStream Software. This is our second company to be honored as an Inc. 500 fastest-growing private company. Previously, UpStream Software was a two-time honoree and we are really proud to have been honored again with a 3-year growth rate for OneStream Software of 1345%. We have been steadily and profitably expanding our sales, support and delivery offices nationally as well as globally. Our corporate performance management solution, OneStream XF, unifies and streamlines financial reporting, consolidation and planning and allows complex enterprises to implement sustainable process improvements and report with confidence. Coming in at position #293 is incredible and a testament to the quality and success of our product and the team of industry experts working at OneStream.

The 2016 Inc. 5000, unveiled online at Inc.com and with the top 500 companies featured in the September issue of Inc. (available on newsstands August 23) is the most competitive crop in the lists history. The average company on the list achieved a mind-boggling three-year growth of 433%. The Inc. 500s aggregate revenue is $200 billion, and the companies on the list collectively generated 640,000 jobs over the past three years, or about 8% of all jobs created in the entire economy during that period. Complete results of the Inc. 500, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

"The Inc. 500 list stands out where it really counts, says Inc. President and Editor-In-Chief Eric Schurenberg. It honors real achievement by a founder or a team of them. No one makes the Inc. 500 without building something great  usually from scratch. Thats one of the hardest things to do in business, as every company founder knows. But without it, free enterprise fails.

The annual Inc. 5000 event honoring all the companies on the list will be held from October 18 through 20, in San Antonio, TX. Speakers include some of the greatest entrepreneurs of this and past generations, such as best-selling author and strategist Tony Robbins, SoulCycle co-founders Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice, Cornerstone OnDemand founder, president and CEO Adam Miller, Marvell Technology Group director and co-founder Weili Dai, and New Belgium Brewing co-founder and executive chair Kim Jordan.

OneStream Software is a leader in Corporate Performance Management solutions for the mid to large enterprise. OneStreams single unified CPM platform, OneStream XF, simplifies processes to deliver financial consolidation and reporting, planning and operational analytics for complex organizations. OneStream customers enjoy the multiple benefits of owning a single agile CPM system that is capable of adapting to business changes quickly and easily.

CONTACT

Craig Colby

OneStream Software

362 South Street

Rochester, MI 48307

+1 404-786-7932

Ccolby(at)onestreamsoftware(dot)com

About OneStream Software LLC

OneStream Software is a privately held software company created by the same team that invented the leading financial solutions of the last decade. We provide a unified Corporate Performance Management (CPM) platform which enables the enterprise to simplify financial consolidation, reporting, budgeting and forecasting for complex organizations. This powerful platform can be extended with simple downloads from our XF MarketPlace to enable the enterprise to deliver additional analytic solutions without adding any technical complexity. By delivering multiple solutions in one application, we offer increased capabilities for financial reporting and analysis while reducing the risk, complexity and total cost of ownership for our customers. We are driven by our mission statement that every customer must be a reference and success.

For more information, visit OneStream Software http://www.onestreamsoftware.com or on Twitter @OneStream_Soft.

More about Inc. and the Inc. 500|5000

Methodology

The 2016 Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2012 to 2015. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2012. They had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independentnot subsidiaries or divisions of other companiesas of December 31, 2015. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2012 is $100,000; the minimum for 2015 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.'s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

About Inc. Media:

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today's innovative company builders. Winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in both 2014 and 2012. Total monthly audience reach for the brand has grown significantly from 2,000,000 in 2010 to over 15,000,000 today. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com.

The Inc. 500 is a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation. Started in 1982, this prestigious list of the nation's most successful private companies has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success. The Inc. 5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony is an annual event that celebrates their remarkable achievements. The event also offers informative workshops, celebrated keynote speakers, and evening functions.

For more information on Inc. and the Inc. 5000 Conference, visit http://conference.inc.com/.

For more information contact:

Inc. Media

Drew Kerr

212-849-8250

drew(at)four-corners(dot)com
INTERalliance IT Careers Camp "Security Innovation came to mind immediately based on the success of a recent Hackthon with some of our developers. The hacking websites and scoring systems are great for education and fun. It was a big hit with the students!

I NTERalliance focuses on developing experiences which are designed to inspire young talent to pursue a career in the Greater Cincinnati IT industry. They make this mission a reality through internships, high school chapter meetings, TechOlympics events and an annual IT Careeers Camp.

The nationally acclaimed IT Careers Camp introduces students first-hand to how technology is applied to real-world business problems. Students explore what the career possibilities in IT really are, earn a Mini-MBA and experience college life for a week. Local area companies sponsor students which helps keep costs low. And for students who are unable to pay the fee, limited financial aid is also available.

A sponsoring company that has been involved with the camp for many years is Great American Insurance Group.

Great American Insurance Group has been involved in the INTERalliance for years to help encourage local tech talent to attend local colleges and to enter the workplace locally, said JD Rogers, CISO at Great American Insurance Group. When planning an event for the students we wanted to include something around cybersecurity. Security Innovation came to mind immediately based on the success of a recent Hackthon with some of our developers. The hacking websites and scoring systems are great for education and fun. It was a big hit with the students!

When Security Innovation learned about the INTERalliance mission from Rogers and how they could get involved with the IT Careers Camp, they jumped at the opportunity to provide access to their CMD+CTRL Web Application Hackathon.

Assisting both INTERalliance and Great American Insurance Group in their quest to increase awareness among your people about careers in IT was a natural fit for our company, said Greg Smith, VP of Sales and Marketing at Security Innovation. Over 80% of our employees are IT professionals and we relished the opportunity to give back to the community while assisting young people with their career choices. With the demand projected to continue to grow for IT professionals, tools like our CMD-CTRL hackathon are an interactive, stimulating, and lively way to experience a day in the life an IT security professional.

CMD+CTRL Hackathons are interactive learning events where development and IT teams come together to put their security skills to the test. Players learn offensive and defensive tactics in real-world environment where they compete to find vulnerabilities in web applications and defend IT infrastructure.

In addition to the IT Career Camp, Security Innovation has run their CMD+CTRL Hackathon at several industry and events including: DEF CON 24, WISP, RSA, ToorCon, OWASP AppSec California, SecureWorld Portland, Connected Security Expo; as well as for many enterprise clients around the globe.

About INTERalliance

Since its inception, INTERalliance has helped more than 2,500 area high school students learn about careers in IT through its programs that include summer internships with Fortune 100 companies, technology-in-business summer camps and the TechOlympics Expo. Its members include Kroger Co., Procter & Gamble Co., Great American Insurance Group, Cincinnati Bell Technology Solutions, GE Aviation, Toyota Motor Engineering, Vora Industries, Fifth Third Bank and Ethicon Endo-Surgery.

About Security Innovation

Since 2002, Security Innovation has been the trusted partner for cybersecurity risk analysis and mitigation for the worlds leading companies, including Microsoft, Sony, GM, Disney and Dell. Recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Awareness Computer-Based Training for the second year in a row, Security Innovation is dedicated to securing and protecting sensitive data in the most challenging environments - automobiles, desktops, web applications, mobile devices and in the cloud. Security Innovation is privately held and headquartered in Wilmington, MA USA. For more information, visit http://www.securityinnovation.com.

About Great American Insurance Group

Great American Insurance Groups roots go back to 1872 with the founding of its flagship company, Great American Insurance Company. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, the operations of Great American Insurance Group are engaged primarily in property and casualty insurance, focusing on specialty commercial products for businesses, and in the sale of traditional fixed and fixed-indexed annuities in the retail, financial institutions and education markets. Great American Insurance Company has received an A (Excellent) or higher rating from the A.M. Best Company for over 100 years (most recent rating evaluation of A+ (Superior) as of May 12, 2016). The members of the Great American Insurance Group are subsidiaries of American Financial Group, Inc. (AFG), also based in Cincinnati, Ohio. AFGs common stock is listed and traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AFG.
Mayor Sylvester Turner

Mayor Sylvester Turner will welcome more than 100 Texas business, civic and education leaders to the Houston UNCF Mayors Luncheon at noon, Friday, Aug. 26, at the Hyatt Regency Houston. The fundraising event supports UNCFs efforts in providing quality higher education for minority students. Dr. Michael L. Lomax, UNCFs president and CEO, will make opening remarks on UNCFs impact, and Turner will deliver the keynote address.

Im honored to support UNCF and its work as the nations largest private scholarship provider to minorities, Turner said. Education is an investment in the future. It opens doors of opportunity that can lead to fulfilling and lucrative careers.

Events such as the Mayors Luncheon are vitally important in providing the necessary resources for Texas students to go to and through college. Last years luncheon raised more than $40,000 in providing scholarships and operational support to UNCF-member institutions in Texas: Huston-Tillotson University, Jarvis Christian College, Texas College and Wiley College.

UNCF remains steadfast in our determination to create a college-ready environment for our young people to succeed, Lomax said. We charge our leaders to unite the community in the quest for higher education, thus securing a better future for us all.

Sponsors of the luncheon are Air Liquide, CenterPoint Energy, HEB Texas Grocery and Shell.

To purchase individual tickets, which are $150, contact Juana Collins at 713.942.8623 or juana(dot)collins(at)uncf(dot)org.

For more information or to stay connected, go to UNCF.org/houston or follow us at @UNCFHouston.

About UNCF

UNCF (United Negro College Fund) is the nations largest and most effective minority education organization. To serve youth, the community and the nation, UNCF supports students education and development through scholarships and other programs, strengthens its 37 member colleges and universities, and advocates for the importance of minority education and college readiness. UNCF institutions and other historically black colleges and universities are highly effective, awarding nearly 20 percent of African American baccalaureate degrees. UNCF awards more than $100 million in scholarships annually and administers more than 400 programs, including scholarship, internship and fellowship, mentoring, summer enrichment, and curriculum and faculty development programs. Its logo features the UNCF torch of leadership in education and its widely recognized motto, A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but a wonderful thing to invest in. Today, UNCF supports more than 60,000 students at more than 1,100 colleges and universities. Learn more at UNCF.org or for continuous news and updates, follow UNCF on Twitter @UNCF.
The American Academy of Nursing recently announced four individuals it will celebrate as Honorary Fellows during its annual policy conference on Saturday, October 22nd in Washington, DC. The Academy is comprised of nurse leaders in education, management and research. The Honorary Fellow designation recognizes the contributions of outstanding professionals who are outside of the nursing profession.

"These individuals have been leaders in promoting and improving health care in ways that value the important contributions that nurses make to achieve these goals. We are thrilled to welcome them into the Academy as Honorary Fellows," said Academy President Bobbie Berkowitz, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN. "Collaboration with extraordinary individuals outside of the nursing profession is essential to our mission and the Academy looks forward to working with these four as we continue to shape and transform health policy."

American Academy of Nursing 2016 Honorary Fellows:

Yvette Perry Conley, PhD, is Professor of Nursing and Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing. Dedicated to enhancing the research abilities of nurses, Dr. Conley is Director of an NIH-funded T32 titled "Targeted Research and Academic Training of Nurses in Genomics" that educates pre- and post-doctoral scholars. She has been a primary faculty member for the National Institute of Nursing Research Summer Genetics Institute for 15 years, where she has assisted over 300 nurse scientists. An expert in the field of molecular genetics, Dr. Conley' has focused her research on variability in patient outcomes in the context of conditions such as traumatic brain injury and stroke.

Lorina Marshall-Blake, PhD(hon), MGA, is President of the Independence Blue Cross (IBC) Foundation and Vice President, Community Affairs, Independence Blue Cross. Under her leadership, the IBC Foundation has invested $20 million over the past decade to support nurses through undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral scholarships. An expert in philanthropy and corporate management, Dr. Marshall-Blake most recently led a Foundation initiative that committed $1.5 million to fund nursing students at 21 schools in southeastern Pennsylvania. In 2014, she committed the Foundation to be an inaugural funder of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Future of Nursing Scholars Program to increase the number of PhD-prepared nurses.

Daniel B. Oerther, PhD, MS, is a Professional Engineer and Professor of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He is also a Foreign Affairs Officer at the U.S. Department of State's Office of Global Food Security. Dedicated to preventing disease and promoting wellness, Dr. Oerther has partnered with nurses, physicians, and other professionals to focus his interventions on water, sanitation, nutrition and food safety. His international efforts have brought clean drinking water, sanitation and access to health care to more than 100,000 villagers in Guatemala, India, Kenya and Tanzania.

Edward Salsberg, MPA, is Director of Health Workforce Studies at the Health Workforce Institute at George Washington University and an instructor at the GW School of Nursing. Previously he served as the founding Director for the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis at the Health Resources and Services Administration, where he was responsible for the first federal national sample survey of nurse practitioners. An expert on supply, demand, distribution, and use of the health care workforce, Mr. Salsberg was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee for Assessing Progress on Implementing the Recommendations of The Future of Nursing report.

To become an Honorary Fellow, an individual must be sponsored by three Academy Fellows and demonstrate extraordinary contributions to nursing and health care. The Academy's board of directors annually selects only a small number of applicants to become inducted as Honorary Fellows.

About the American Academy of Nursing

The American Academy of Nursing (http://www.AANnet.org) serves the public and the nursing profession by advancing health policy and practice through the generation, synthesis, and dissemination of nursing knowledge. The Academy's more than 2,400 Fellows are nursing's most accomplished leaders in education, management, practice, policy, and research. They have been recognized for their extraordinary contributions to nursing and health care.

CONTACT: Barry Eisenberg

202-777-1174

Barry_Eisenberg(at)aannet(dot)org
Our tremendous growth was caused by two aspects of Strategic Planning; strategic thinking and execution planning. - Jason Tapolci, President

VoIP Innovations, a premier wholesale VoIP carrier, announced being named on the 2016 Fastest Growing Companies list by the Pittsburgh Business Times. VoIP Innovations ranked 65th on the list.

Jason Tapolci, President of VoIP Innovations said, Our tremendous growth was caused by two aspects of Strategic Planning; strategic thinking and execution planning. On the strategic thinking side, we built an industry dominating strategy that identified a market pain point and built a differentiating solution to address this market pain. On the execution planning side, it was our people who executed our strategic plan by using the Rockefeller Habits Checklist, priorities, rhythm, and data and a lean methodology.

One hundred companies were named on list of Fastest Growing Companies, honored for their revenue growth, at the Westin Convention Center hotel in downtown Pittsburgh last Thursday evening. VoIP Innovations parent company ABG Capital was also named on the list, at number 60, and their sister company, InspiraFS, placed at number 3.

In 2016, VoIP Innovations also ranked on the Inc. 5000s Fastest Growing Companies in America and was recently awarded the 2016 Communications Solutions Products of the Year Award for its Titanium III BackOffice.

For more information on the 2016 Fastest Growing Companies and the full list of companies chosen, please visit the Pittsburgh Business Times.

About VoIP Innovations

VoIP Innovations is an Inc. 5000 company that specializes in providing the largest DID and termination VoIP footprints in North America. Their network includes over 500,000 DIDs in stock in over 8,500 rate centers in the US and Canada. Recently, VoIP Innovations expanded their footprint to include DIDs in over 60 countries and now offers A-Z termination. VoIP Innovations is owned by ABG Capital and is based in Pittsburgh, PA. To learn more, please visit the VoIP Innovations Blog.

About the Pittsburgh Business Times

The Pittsburgh Business Times is Western PA's premiere source of local business news coverage keeping business professionals up-to-date with the changing business landscape in the region. It is an invaluable tool for any business owner looking to grow a business. Every week, the Business Times delivers exclusive business leads, Top 25 Lists, executive profiles, new businesses filings and unlimited online access to exclusive content for subscribers only. For further information, please visit the Pittsburgh Business Times.
The BAE Audio preamplifiers are being used alongside the bands existing vintage channels to expand channel count while maintaining sonic consistency. BAE has nailed the sound and since youre not dealing with 30-year old contacts, dusty pots, and worn connectors its way more reliable.

When Metallica and producer Greg Fidelman hunkered down to begin work on the legendary bands latest record, he knew he needed the flexibility to hop in and out of the bands studio and from instrument to instrument with ease.

Theyre really busy guys, so we wanted to have all of our sounds for drums, bass, and guitar set up all at once and leave them that way, Fidelman says. That way they can get in there and cut a few takes without having to spend time dialing in sounds or breaking down mics each time.

He knew that the 30 channels of vintage preamps the band had already in the studio would not be enough to simultaneously facilitate the multi-mic drum sound and detailed guitar micing setups he was envisioning for the sessions. He turned to BAE Audio preamplifiers to nearly double his available inputs, matching the classic sound of Metallicas existing vintage gear with the added reliability of BAEs modern construction and components.

A New Classic

Fidelman had first worked with BAE Audio preamplifiers on a recent Slipknot record he was producing.

On that record we were working on a full vintage console but had to change studios halfway through recording to one with a more modern console, Fidelman recalls. The band was concerned about retaining a consistent guitar sound so we took extensive notes of our mic placements and EQ settings and took snapshots of direct and reamped guitar to test in the new space. The new studio had a rack full of BAE 1073s and other BAE preamplifiers so we ran everything through those with our notated settings and A/B'd it with what we had done in the previous studio.

Fidelman said the results were indistinguishable.

I think if anything our sounds were 5-10% better because of the new components in the BAE gear, he adds.

Fitting Right In with the Original

Fidelmans experience with BAE Audio gear on the Slipknot record gave him the confidence to recommend it for the Metallica sessions to expand their vintage input count. He procured 11 channels of the BAE Audio 1073 and 8 channels of the 1028 in a mix of module and standalone rack format. Fidelman opted for the mix of vintage and new vintage inputs over the studios built-in modern console because of the unique qualities of the vintage circuit design.

With the 1073, the way you can manipulate the bottom end is pretty unique, with the low-end boost and the filter working together, Fidelman says. Theres also a quality to the top end thats always musical. If you need a little extra you can really dig into it without it becoming harsh. And not just the high frequency boost/cut, but also the higher frequencies in the midrange band.

Fidelman notes that the midrange band is particularly key for articulating the top end of kick and snare drums.

Its pleasing with drums, you can boost what you want without the other garbage, he says. To get the core guitar sounds for Metallica Im sometimes routing a mic into the 1073 and then out into the direct input of another 1073 or 1028 to get access to another midrange or low end band for extra control.

Fidelman appreciates the additional frequency selections provided by the 1028 on things like overheads.

You can dig in deeply with some of those additional frequencies to define the sound youre looking for, he says. It provides the versatility I need.

Great Sound, Worry-Free

Though Fidelman says he grew up on vintage consoles and loves their sound, he acknowledges that working with older gear has its perils.

I was working at a studio in Hollywood recently with a (great) vintage desk, but even with the techs working through one or two modules every day, the reality was that stuff was failing faster than they could keep up with, Fidelman says. BAE has nailed the sound and since youre not dealing with 30-year old contacts, dusty pots, and worn connectors its way more reliable.

Both preamps sport the same Carnhill/St Ives transformers specified in the original vintage circuit design and feature BAEs renowned hand-wired construction, conducted at their facility in California, enabling them to capture the vintage sound that has been the signature of many beloved recordings.

Ready to Rock, 24/7

Fidelman and the bands approach have proven fruitful over the course of the tracking sessions.

We began these sessions back in June and have been tracking bits and pieces as recently as two weeks ago, Fidelman says. We never had to stop and reset things to switch instruments, and weve got consistent sound on every single channel, whether its with our vintage channels or the BAE channels. We can hop from laying down Kirks guitars to Larss drums seamlessly and know we have sounds worthy of a Metallica record ready to go at all times.

Working in tandem with vintage and new vintage gear by BAE Audio, Fidelman has also kept a coherent and consistent sound on a record thats been in process for several months.

There are always interruptions when youre working on a high-profile record, but we were able to eliminate technical interruptions from the project with the consistency and reliability of BAE hardware, all without sacrificing that vintage sound that I love. BAE preamps are the new first choice for Fidelman: I cant really tell the difference between BAE and the original.

About BAE Audio

BAE Audio is a U.S.-based manufacturer of high-end microphone preamp and equalizers, all of which are faithful to vintage designs of the seventies and before. The company is committed to the vintage philosophy of hand wiring and hand soldering all of its components to achieve a high quality and authentically vintage sound. For more information on BAE Audio, please visit our website at http://www.baeaudio.com.
Dublin Ohio Family Dentist Releases 5 Secrets to a Successful Back-to-School Check Up While annual checkups are important for people of all ages, scheduling check ups this time of year can really benefit kids heading back to school. As many of us know, dental pain can be a major distraction.

Dublin family dentist, Dr. Jerry Cheung, works with patients of all ages throughout the Greater Columbus, Ohio area and surrounding suburbs, however, during the later months of summer, the dentist sees an influx of youngsters heading back to school. As part of an ongoing educational service to patients, the Dublin OH pediatric dentist recently released an article titled, 5 Secrets to a Successful Back-to-School Check Up. In the recent PSA, the Dublin OH pediatric dentist discusses how these checkups, in particular, can help prevent dental disease, any pain associated with existing issues, and ultimately better learning.

Dr. Cheung writes, While annual checkups are important for people of all ages, scheduling check ups this time of year can really benefit kids heading back to school. As many of us know, dental pain can be a major distractionif not excruciating, and can cause barriers to learning and increased absence. According to Attendance Works, a non-profit organization devoted to raising awareness in regards to the link between school attendance and higher academic performance, Children between 5 and 17 years miss nearly two million school days in a single year nationwide due to dental health-related problems. 

On the Dublin OH family dentists list are the following:

Make Dental Hygiene a Routine Part of the DayEncourage kids to brush for two minutes twice a day and flossing once a day.

Feed the child a light meal before entering the dentists officeenough for a filling snack, but not too much, as the gag reflex can take hold. When kids are hungry, grouchiness is soon to follow. Make the dental visit a positive, comfortable experience by making sure the child has had enough to eat.

Encourage the child to ask questions independently. If questions in advance arise in advance, be sure to let the child know that the dentist is accessible and more than willing to help satiate any curiosity or concerns.

Parents must manage anxietyfor both the adult and child. Any sign of apprehension or concern can set a child into a panic. Much like many adults, the visit to the dental office can be overwhelming and particularly scary for those new to the processparticularly in the case of younger pre-school children.

Plan ahead. Children are prone to accidents, especially when engaged in horseplay. Dentists see chipped and broken teeth all throughout the school year. To be able to respond quickly, take a card, create a contact in the mobile device, and be prepared for any possible emergencies.

Dr. Cheung, well-known to patients as a comfort-focused Dublin Ohio Family Dentist, comments, These are some basic, but handy secrets to making the annual check up a pleasant experienceall of which should be extremely manageable for parents. If you havent scheduled it yet, get your kids in before school so that they can go back without any anxiety or interruptions from class.

For more information on the Dublin OH family dentists practice, BrightSmile Dental, call 614-799-9140 or visit http://www.brightsmilepowell.com.

Bright Smile Dental is known best for being a comfort-driven practice that emphasizes a positive experience for patients patients of all ages. The state-of-the art facility boasts a highly trained, experienced staff, as well as specialized instruments used to specifically treat children and patients with special needs. Serving all members of the family, Bright Smile Dental provides cosmetic dentistry, sedation dentistry, emergency dental services, and orthodontics.
Beninese crew member Emmanuel Essah, Biomedical Technician, presents the flag of Benin to Madam Claudine Gbenagnon Talon, First Lady of Benin Behind all statistics, there is a story, a life, a person who needs a new hope, a treatment, or a cure...

Mercy Ships returned to Benin for a 10-month field service that had been delayed since 2014 due to the Ebola outbreak. The hospital ship and its crew were warmly greeted by welcome festivities including national music and dances. A brief tour of the ship was provided for the heads of state and dignitaries.

The all-volunteer crew is eager to fulfill plans that were postponed for two years. During the Africa Mercys 10-month stay in the port of Cotonou, Mercy Ships plans to meet immediate medical needs by providing over 1,700 life-changing surgeries for adult and pediatric patients onboard and by treating over 8,000 at a land-based dental clinic. To improve Benins healthcare delivery system, Mercy Ships will also provide medical training to Beninese healthcare professionals.

"Mercy Ships has been serving West Africa for 25 years. We are pleased to be back in Benin for our fifth visit providing specialized surgeries and healthcare training to the Beninese, who hold such a warm place in our hearts, commented Mercy Ships President and Founder Don Stephens.

During the arrival ceremony, Madame Claudine Gbenagnon Talon, First Lady of the Republic of Benin, addressed the crew, saying, Behind all statistics, there is a story, a life, a person who needs a new hope, a treatment, or a cure. I wish that this enriching collaboration of Benin with Mercy Ships will continue to grow year after year for the well-being of the population.

Benin ranks 166 out of 187 countries according to the United Nations Humanitarian Development index, which indicates the great need that exists in this West African nation. The free surgeries provided by Mercy Ships will include removing life-threatening tumors, repair of cleft lips and palates, obstetric fistulas, hernias, severe burn-related injuries and correction of pediatric orthopedic deformities. A dental clinic will offer treatment to patients for the duration of the 10-month stay, and an ophthalmology program will start in January 2017.

Each year, Mercy Ships has an average of 900 volunteer crew serving onboard its hospital ship, the Africa Mercy, with about 400 crew from over 45 nations serving at any given time. In total, Mercy Ships has more than 1,600 volunteers helping in its various locations around the world.

The Mercy Ships crew is anxious to start serving the Beninese, and the screening process for patients will begin this week to select those who have conditions that can be treated by Mercy Ships. The delivery of hope and healing to Benin has begun!

###

ABOUT MERCY SHIPS:

Mercy Ships uses hospital ships to deliver free, world-class healthcare services, capacity building and sustainable development to those without access in the developing world. Founded in 1978 by Don and Deyon Stephens, Mercy Ships has worked in more than 70 countries providing services valued at more than $1.2 billion, treating more than 2.54 million direct beneficiaries. Each year Mercy Ships has more than 1,600 volunteers from 45 nations. Professionals including surgeons, dentists, nurses, healthcare trainers, teachers, cooks, seamen, engineers, and agriculturalists donate their time and skills to the effort. Mercy Ships seeks to transform individuals and serve nations one at a time. For more information click on http://www.mercyships.org

For More Information Contact:

For USA: Pauline Rick

US Public Relations Coordinator

Mercy Ships

Office Tel: (903) 939-7000

Mob: (972) 922-5442

Email: us.media(at)mercyships(dot)org

For Intl: Diane Rickard

International Media Manager

Mercy Ships

Diane.rickard(at)mercyships(dot)org

http://www.mercyships.org

Hi-res photos and general Mercy Ships B-Roll video footage are available upon request.
These events are a great opportunity for our loyal customers to become better acquainted with our team and the treatments and products were offering.

AYA Medical Spa will be hosting their semi-annual Open House event at their newest location at Avalon in Alpharetta. Owned and operated by four highly-skilled plastic surgeons of Atlanta Plastic Surgery, P.C., AYA Medical Spa has provided the latest medical grade rejuvenation treatments to the Atlanta area for nearly 15 years.

AYA invites the public to celebrate at their Avalon Open House on Thursday, August 25th from 5pm to 8pm at their Alpharetta location: 2130 Avalon Blvd, Alpharetta, Georgia, 30009. Event attendees will enjoy 20% off all skincare products, in addition to exclusive skincare offers on injectables like Juvederm XC or Voluma, CoolSculpting nonsurgical fat reduction, Microdermabrasion, and more, as well as complimentary hors doeuvres and refreshments provided by Bite, free gifts for those who RSVP and additional chances to win excellent gifts and prizes. Board-certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. James Namnoum, one of AYA Medical Spas licensed providers, will be available for complimentary consultations for plastic surgery (by appointment only).

Named Best Medical Spa of Atlanta for three years by JEZEBEL Magazine, AYA provides the latest skincare technology systems and a large variety of minimally-invasive treatments for patients of all ages and skin types. The experienced providers of AYA Medical Spa perform laser skin resurfacing and hair removal, CoolSculpting nonsurgical fat reduction, Botox and facial filler injectables, dermaplaning, a wide array of chemical peels and more to serve patients trying to restore a youthful, vigorous appearance.

We couldnt be more excited to be hosting the first Open House at our new location in Avalon, says Jessica Chaney, Spa Director. These events are a great opportunity for our loyal customers to become better acquainted with our team and the treatments and products were offering. We love building these connections and are look forward to building lasting relationships with the Avalon community as a whole.

AYA Avalon Open House attendees dont have to RSVP for this FREE event, but appointments are required for skincare analysis, cosmetic injectables and plastic surgery consultations. 20% skincare product promotion is available by phone up until day of the event. To RSVP and book an appointment with Dr. Namnoum, cosmetic injectors or licensed providers today, contact AYA Avalon at (678) 534-5035 or email avalon(at)ayamedspa(dot)com.

About AYA Medical Spa

AYA Medical Spa is an Atlanta-based medical spa, owned and operated by four of the highly skilled plastic surgeons of Atlanta Plastic Surgery, P.C., specializing in medical-grade skin rejuvenation treatments for the face and body. For nearly 15 years now, AYA has been offering FDA-approved skincare technology treatments and minimally invasive anti-aging treatments in a relaxing spa atmosphere performed by certified and experienced physicians assistants, estheticians, nurses, and medical assistants and overseen by the plastic surgeons of Atlanta Plastic Surgery at the Avalon, Phipps Plaza, and Northside locations. Striving to stay up-to-date with the latest skincare treatments and technologies to enhance patient safety and rejuvenation results, AYA offers a varietal menu to help patients maintain healthy, radiant skin including: cosmetic injectables, Sciton laser skin resurfacing, Ultherapy skin tightening, chemical peels and facials, CoolSculpting non-surgical fat reduction, skincare products, and more. AYA is now accepting new patients and always provides complimentary skin analysis consultations. Avalon and Phipps Plaza AYA locations are open 7 days a week. AYA Avalon is now accepting evening appointments as late as 8pm by appointment only.
Inc. magazine ranked ARCpoint Franchise Group, franchisor of ARCpoint Labs, at No. 2886 on its 35th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. This is the 2nd time that the company has been ranked on the list. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economys most dynamic segment its independent small businesses. Companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Dominos Pizza, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees of the Inc. 5000.

To rank on the Inc. 5000 for the 2nd time validates the incredible hard work of all team members across the ARCpoint Labs system, said Felix Mirando, CEO of ARCpoint Franchise Group. Our franchisees have spread the core values of the company and displayed our commitment to quality in their ARCpoint Labs locations serving communities across the entire U.S. We are proud to be recognized for the sales momentum and growth the company is enjoying as a result.

The 2016 Inc. 5000, unveiled online at Inc.com and with the top 500 companies featured in the September issue of Inc. (available on newsstands August 23) is the most competitive crop in the lists history. The average company on the list achieved a mind-boggling three-year growth of 433%. The Inc. 5000s aggregate revenue is $200 billion, and the companies on the list collectively generated 640,000 jobs over the past three years, or about 8% of all jobs created in the entire economy during that period. Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

"The Inc. 5000 list stands out where it really counts, says Inc. President and Editor-In-Chief Eric Schurenberg. It honors real achievement by a founder or a team of them. No one makes the Inc. 5000 without building something great  usually from scratch. Thats one of the hardest things to do in business, as every company founder knows. But without it, free enterprise fails.

The annual Inc. 5000 event honoring all the companies on the list will be held from October 18 through 20, in San Antonio, TX. Speakers include some of the greatest entrepreneurs of this and past generations, such as best-selling author and strategist Tony Robbins, SoulCycle co-founders Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice, Cornerstone OnDemand founder, president and CEO Adam Miller, Marvell Technology Group director and co-founder Weili Dai, and New Belgium Brewing co-founder and executive chair Kim Jordan.

ARCpoint Franchise Group has created and refined a franchising blueprint for steady, intelligent growth over the last decade. The ARCpoint Labs model has attracted entrepreneurs from a variety of industries looking to move into business ownership who recognize that ARCpoint Labs may be one of franchisings best kept secrets. In 2015, the brands 10th year, ARCpoint Franchise Group broke several records including 10 consecutive months with gross sales over $1 million. Additionally, several locations hit triple digit percentage increases for year-over-year sales. In 2016, the brand will surpass 100 locations across the country, and has executed plans to grow their marketing footprint and focus on their training program. In 2015, ARCpoint Franchise Group sold 36 new territories and anticipates ending 2016 by selling 45 territories and has a goal of growing to 325 units by 2020. The focus for growth includes Detroit, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Houston, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Salt Lake City, Miami, Buffalo, Hartford, and San Diego.

Our success, as recognized by the Inc. 5000 ranking, is fueled by the individual sales success of all of our franchisees, said Mirando. As we look toward the future, we aim to continue to provide the support and encouragement to allow all of them to continue achieving their business goals, which will drive ARCpoint Labs for many years to come.

For more information on the growing brand, check out ARCpoint Franchise Group on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ARCpointFranchiseGroup, follow ARCpoint on Twitter at twitter.com/arcpointfg, and connect on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/company/arcpoint-franchise-group. For franchising opportunities, please visit: http://arcpointlabsfranchise.com/.

About ARCpoint Labs

ARCpoint Labs is a Greenville, S.C.-based full-service national third-party provider/administrator providing Accurate, Reliable, and Confidential drug, alcohol, DNA and steroid testing, employment/background and wellness screening and corporate wellness programs. After the success he saw with his own drug screening facility in 1998, 17-year industry expert Felix Mirando saw the growth potential of the brand and founded ARCpoint Franchise Group LLC in 2005. ARCpoint Labs has become one of the fastest growing, and most flexible models in the franchise industry behind the leadership of Mirando, the brands chief executive officer, and the corporate team of experts he has assembled in order to stay ahead of trends in the space and constantly look for new revenue streams to benefit existing franchisees and attract new qualified operators to the system. There are nearly 100 ARCpoint Labs locations across the country with plans to grow to 325 franchise locations nationwide by 2020. ARCpoint Franchise Group is proud to have landed on Entrepreneur's "Franchise 500" in 2016. The brand was also recognized on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in 2014 and is nationally recognized as a member of the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry Association (DATIA) and Substance Abuse Program Administrators Association (SAPAA). For more information on ARCpoint Labs visit http://arcpointlabs.com/.

About Inc. Media

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today's innovative company builders. Winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in both 2014 and 2012. Total monthly audience reach for the brand has grown significantly from 2,000,000 in 2010 to over 15,000,000 today. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com.

The Inc. 5000 is a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation. Started in 1982, this prestigious list of the nation's most successful private companies has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success. The Inc. 5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony is an annual event that celebrates their remarkable achievements. The event also offers informative workshops, celebrated keynote speakers, and evening functions.

Methodology

The 2016 Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2012 to 2015. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2012. They had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independentnot subsidiaries or divisions of other companiesas of December 31, 2015. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2012 is $100,000; the minimum for 2015 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Companies on the Inc. 500 are featured in Inc.'s September issue. They represent the top tier of the Inc. 5000, which can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

###
'The committee is hopeful that bipartisan legislation, which proposes to increase New Jerseys gas tax, is a smart first step toward getting our states infrastructure back on track,' said Landry.

Moretrench Chief Dewatering Engineer Greg Landry, P.E. is recognized as a key player in compiling the 2016 Report Card for New Jerseys Infrastructure. Released on June 16, the report provides a snapshot of New Jerseys current infrastructure conditions and needs. It was compiled by civil engineering professionals and educators in New Jersey.

Landry, a former resident of ASCEs North Jersey branch and the New Jersey Section, was a member of the three-person steering committee that managed the report, along with Luis Barragan, P.E. and Michael Sears, P.E., also former North Jersey branch presidents. They drew from experts across the state to compile each of the following categories: Water, Wastewater, Parks, Dams, Levees, Ports, Roads, Rail, Transit, Bridges, Energy, Hazardous Waste and Solid Waste. Grades were assigned on an A to F basis according to the following criteria: capacity, condition, funding, future need, operation and maintenance, public safety, resilience and innovation. The report also outlined a vision for what New Jerseys infrastructure will look like in the future and some of the actions needed to get there.

Overall, New Jersey infrastructure earned a cumulative GPA of D+ in the 13 categories. Among the lowest grades were transit (D-), bridges (D+) and roads (D), all of which are funded by the states Transportation Trust Fund. Following the statewide release, a press conference was hosted at the State House by Assembly Majority Leader Louis D. Greenwald, which focused on the need to fix the states Transportation Trust Fund, which will go bankrupt on July 1 if state lawmakers do not act.

The committee is hopeful that bipartisan legislation, which proposes to increase New Jerseys gas tax, is a smart first step toward getting our states infrastructure back on track," said Landry.

To learn more about Landry and his work at Moretrench, visit http://www.moretrench.com or call (973) 627-2100. The company is located at 100 Stickle Ave in Rockaway, N.J. 07866.

Moretrench specializes in underground construction in the Rockaway, N.J. area. They offer services for deep foundations, dewatering, earth retention and anchors, environmental remediation, ground freezing, grouting, industrial construction and underpinning. They offer solutions to problems such as contaminated groundwater and soil, settlement control and dam rehabilitation and reconstruction. Created as a family business, Moretrench has been 100% employee owned since 1999.
The question of privacy versus safety has never been as important or as topical as it is today. EC-Council Foundation will be encouraging debate on the controversies surrounding this complex issue by With the recent tug of war between the US government and Apple, as well as the fact that so much of the advancing technology in the industry seems to be based on what some could argue is an invasion of privacy, we knew this topic would be a big draw

EC-Council Foundation is hosting a presidential style debate to argue where the line should be drawn between protecting the publics safety versus protecting the publics privacy. This debate applies to governments, corporations, families, and the information security industry at large. The debate will be held during a joint session of EC-Council Foundations premier annual conference, Hacker Halted.

Slated to contribute their points of view are Kurt Opshaul from the EFF to represent Privacy, Amar Singh, former CISO of News International, to represent executive cybersecurity; Jack Daniel, security researcher at Tenable Network Security to represent Hackers; and retired FBI Special Agent Steve Bongart, representing the interests of the government. A member of the media specializing in information security will moderate the debate.

Hacker Halted attracts a broad group of industry professionals, from researchers to managers. The Global CISO Forum, EC-Council Foundations other security event coinciding with Hacker Halted, is an event tailored for the executives of information security. The two conferences cover very different topics, as the CISOs are less interested in the technical details of their roles and more in the policy, governance, strategic, and financial implications of security decisions. However, for the Privacy vs. Security Debate, both Hacker Halted attendees and Global CISO Forum attendees will be present for the debate  a rare time one topic has been of such importance to both groups.

The fact that this debate is of interest to both groups really speaks to the broad applicability of the topic and why EC-Council Foundation knew it needed to be brought to the stage, said Eric Lopez, Executive Director of EC-Council Foundation. He added With the recent tug of war between the US government and Apple, as well as the fact that so much of the advancing technology in the industry seems to be based on what some could argue is an invasion of privacy, we knew this topic would be a big draw for both crowds. We hope good discussion and real collaboration can take place.

Companies have to grapple with the decision of where to draw the line when it comes to monitoring their employees in order to keep their data secure. This used to just mean warning employees that their browser history, emails, chats, and other modes of communication were not private, but with recent technology breakthroughs, the debate now includes things like location tracking and other more detailed metrics. While those kinds of questions can feel trivial, other aspects of the debate deal with life or death, national security questions. When should the government be able to access the data of a private citizen? When should companies comply with government requests and demands for such information? If one branch of a government is given access to a citizens information for one situation, should that set a precedent for future, similar situations? Is there anything to stop governments from expanding their access once some level of access is granted? These are the kinds of questions the participants will discuss, each from their own perspective.

The Privacy vs. Security debate will not only be available to attendees of both events but will also be live streamed as well. Anyone interested in watching remotely should check the Hacker Halted website for details. To attend the debate in person, register for either Hacker Halted or the Global CISO Forum (open only to director-level or above information security professionals).

About EC-Council Foundation:

EC-Council Foundation is a charitable and educational organization dedicated to educating and training individuals in cyber security. Established in 2012 by EC-Council, the foundation seeks to raise awareness, build capacity across nations and ultimately unify global cyber defense. EC-Council Foundation is the creator and organizer of Global CyberLympics, Hacker Halted, TakeDownCon, The Global CISO Forum, and Live.Learn.Secure. an education and training program. For more information regarding EC-Council Foundation or any of its programs visit foundation.eccouncil.org.
TextSurf We made it our goal to use technology to make the college experience easier and more affordable. With TextSurf, we think weve managed to move one step closer to doing that.

TextSurf, a free online comparison site created by eCampus Ventures that helps students find better prices for textbooks, is gearing up for back-to-school season with tips, tricks and best practices for saving. The online service has saved students as much as $1,000 a year and makes it easier than ever to sell old textbooks and compare prices.

All students have to do is find the books they need on their schools website, search TextSurf using the ISBN number or the title and compare. TextSurf compares prices from several different book retailers, to ensure that students are getting the best deals on books, and then gives students the links that they need to buy the books they need at the best prices.

Our company is all about creating ways to make college life easier through technology, said co-founder Dan Thibodeau. The prices of textbooks are outrageous these days and not everyone can afford them, nor should they need to pay that much. We made it our goal to use technology to make the college experience easier and more affordable. With TextSurf, we think weve managed to move one step closer to doing that.

For students who are planning to sell their books back, TextSurf provides advice on how to treat textbooks, when to sell them and other best practices. The site also lets students enter the ISBN number of their book and view the best selling options and which sites to sell from. Students can also catch up on other savings advice from TextSurf with tips like the best times to purchase textbooks and where to purchase them from.

TextSurf is as easy as pointing and a clicking, and will also prepare students for a semester of savings so they can spend their money on other academic necessities. For more savings information or to sell a book, visit http://www.textsurf.com.

ABOUT TEXTSURF

Based out of Charlotte, North Carolina, TextSurf compares prices on new, used, digital and rental textbooks. They save students money by finding them the best price on books. For more information, visit http://www.textsurf.com.
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. Cookies are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.Website use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. ("Google") to help analyse the use of this website. For this purpose, Google Analytics uses"cookies", which are text files placed on your computer.The information generated by the cookies about your use of this website - standard internet log information (including your IP address) and visitor behaviour information in an anonymous form - will be transmitted to and stored by Google including on servers in the United States. Google will anonymize the information sent by removing the last octet of your IP address prior to its storage.According to Google Analytics terms of service, Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website and compiling reports on website activity.We not use, and not allow any third party to use the statistical analytics tool to track or to collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to this site. Google may transfer the information collected by Google Analytics to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google`s behalf.According to Google Analytics terms of service, Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.You may refuse the use of Google Analytics cookies by downloading and installing Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics.Cookies are also used to record if you have agreed (or not) to our use of cookies on this site, so that you are not asked the question every time you visit the site.You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed.Most browsers allow you to:If you chose to delete cookies, you should be aware that any preferences will be lost. Also, if you block cookies completely many websites (including ours) will not work properly and webcasts will not work at all. For these reasons, we do not recommend turning cookies off when using our webcasting services.
Morton Schindel, founder of the Weston Woods Studios, a company lauded for its quality audiovisual adaptations of award-winning childrens books, died on August 20. He was 98.

Schindel was born in Orange, N.J., in 1918. He graduated from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in economics in 1939 and later earned a masters in curriculum and teaching at Columbia Teachers College in 1949. Following his undergraduate work, he lived in New York City where he founded a machine shop, ELMOR Manufacturing Company, in 1941. But he contracted tuberculosis in 1944, which forced his move to Saranac Lake, N.Y. That brush with serious illness changed his career path; in a 2003 interview with Booklist magazine, Schindler told Candace Smith: I was lucky enough to contract tuberculosis when I got out of college. It took a number of years to recover, and when I did, my doctor said my best chances of staying well would be if I didnt work. But how could I support my family if I didnt work? He said, Become an artist. I had no pretensions that I could be an artist, but photography was my hobby, and I thought maybe I could turn this hobby into a vocation.

Schindels pursuit of a new line of work led to the company Teaching Films in 1949, where he tried creating films. But when that company went bankrupt, he became an independent producer. In 1951, he began service as film officer and attache in the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey. Following his term in Turkey, Schindel settled in Weston, Ct., with his wife, Ellen Bamberger, whom he married in 1941, and their three children. In 1953, inspired by the books he had read with his daughters and son, Schindel launched Weston Woods Studios, with a dream of animating childrens books.

Schindel signed up titles throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s like Andy and the Lion, the Caldecott Honor book by James Doughty, and began working on his dream. He was a pioneer of the iconographic style of filmmaking, which took still images from a picture books illustrations, and giving them motion. Weston Woods first animated production, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, was released in 1963. But Weston Woods struggled to find its financial footing. Then the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act which was passed in 1966, made way for the opening of the countrys first school libraries. The boost from that new marketplace meant that Weston Woods sales quadrupled overnight.

Production of audio and visual materials continued and accolades rolled in. In 1984, Doctor De Soto, based on the book by William Steig, received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short, and Owen, adapted from the Kevin Henkes picture book, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Childrens Video in 1996.

In 1996, Weston Woods Studios was acquired by Scholastic, a deal that Schindel told Booklist was influenced by his relationship with Scholastic president and CEO Richard Robinson, who spent summers with his family in Connecticut near Weston Woods. Dick would come over with his children to pick up films. So he knew our product line from screening them at home with his kids, Schindel said in the interview. Scholastic had distributed our recordings, so I felt that when the time was right, I would turn to Dick. Schindel went on to say of the acquisition, I think of this more as a legacy than a business transaction.... Ive never had a minute of regret. Schindel produced more than 300 films and 450 recordings while he was at the helm, and Weston Woods has gone on to create several hundred more since joining Scholastic.

From 1982 to 2016, Schindel served as chairman of the board of directors of the nonprofit Weston Woods Institute, which was founded to support innovative efforts behind literacy and education for children.

Richard Robinson, chairman, president and CEO of Scholastic, offered this tribute: Mort Schindel not only founded the art form and business of creating films based on outstanding childrens books, he also helped generations of teachers and librarians understand how they could reach more children with these great stories through the medium of film, video and television. He pioneered this important art form by working with hundreds of authors and illustrators including Maurice Sendak, William Steig and Robert McCloskey, winning their support by making creative films like Where the Wild Things Are, Blueberries for Sal, Harold and the Purple Crayon, and The Amazing Bone, which adhered absolutely to the spirit and story of the original printed work.

Schindel is survived by his wife, the author Cari Best, whom he married in 1988, a sister, and his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Amazon moves into Madison, Wis.; a Vermont bookshop expands; stores in Massachusetts and Minnesota prep to open; and more.

Bridgeside Books Adds Home Store: Hiata DeFeo is expanding the seven-year-old bookstore in Waterbury, Vt., by opening a new store a block away with vintage decorations and art at the end of this month. She also plans to carry some DIY and decorating titles at Bridgesides new location, Bridgeside Home.

Milkweed Books Launches Kickstarter Campaign: Minneapoliss nonprofit publisher Milkweed Editions is hoping to raise $25,000 to stock its 600 sq. ft. bookstore slated to open in the Open Book building complex.

Date Set for Belmont Books: A new bookstore slated for the Boston suburb of Belmont, Mass., which was announced earlier this summer, will open its doors in March 2017. The bookstore will be located in a former Macys currently undergoing renovation.

Amazon Pickup Location Coming to University of Wisconsin: Late last week the regents signed a five-year agreement with Amazon for a pickup location at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's historic Red Gym.

Velveteen Rabbit Bookshop to Close: After 22 years, the childrens bookstore in Fort Atkinson, Wisc., and its nine-year-old guesthouse are closing on September 30. In a letter to customers that went out last week, owners Jim and Marie Nelson wrote, We just currently needed more support and have family concerns we need to care for.
Beth Moore is best known for her speaking tours, Bible study books, and nonfiction books, including the 2010 bestseller So Long, Insecurity (Tyndale), but when Tyndale editor Karen Watson asked her about a possible novel, the question landed with a heavy thud because Ive wondered about writing fiction since childhood, Moore told PW.

So Long, Insecurity reached the New York Times and PW bestseller lists and has sold 148,138 print units to date, according to Nielsen BookScan. Her most recent title, Audacious (B&H, 2015), was also a hit, selling 80,545 print units copies to date.

Nevertheless, Moore turned her attention away from what she calls her primary calling of nonfiction and began working on a novel in secret. I didnt tell anyone I was writing a novel for ages, Moore said. I never dreamed it would happen or that Id finish it.

Today, Moores secret is out of the bag, and The Undoing of Saint Silvanus will be published by Tyndale in September. The book is nearly 500 pages of Southern mystery and down-home colloquialism, reflecting Moores love of New Orleans. Its a lead title for Tyndale, with the initial print run of 100,000+ copies, which is consistent with best-selling authors like Francine Rivers and Joel Rosenberg, according to the publishing house.

The story centers on Jillian Slater, who returns to New Orleans at the request of Adella Atwatermanager of her grandmother Olivia Fontaines apartment building called Saint Sansupon the death of Jillians, father Raphael Fontaine. Jillian and Olivia struggle through their grief, finding healing with help from Adella and the odd cast of characters who populate the apartments.

I come from a background of deep family conflict, said Moore. Starting in 2012, something really hard happened and it hit me in such a way that I went mute. I had so much going on inside that I couldnt tell what was going on. I sat at my laptop and started writing a story.



Her novel reflects the drama that unfolds in families after years of conflict and generational dysfunction. The story is important because God is reconciling situations and people who dont want to be reconciled, said Moore.

Saint Silvanus is a far cry from her nonfiction work, but faith still played a major role in the writing process, according to Moore. Faith elements are found throughout the story, with Olivia Fontaine rekindling her belief in God while Jillian comes to faith by the end of the book.

Moores debut in fiction arrives during a sales slump in Christian fiction, but she remains unfazed. I dont write for the money, she said. I write because something in me is constantly compelled.

Pre-orders for The Undoing of Saint Silvanus come with four free gifts on bethmoorenovel.com, where readers can also download New Orleans-inspired recipes, book group guides, and other exclusive content. Moore will help launch Saint Silvanus with a media tour including radio and TV interviews as well as book signings in Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Orange County, Calif. Further, Moore is planning a live webcast book group to take place on January 20 called Beths Big Book Group LIVE from the Big Easy.
DAVENPORT -- If it wasn't for Hillary Clinton in 1998, Tom Vilsack probably wouldn't have become the first Democratic Iowa governor in 30 years, he told Scott County Democrats at Credit Island Sunday.

Then the first lady, Mrs. Clinton was asked by Mr. Vilsack's wife, Christie, to help his campaign that summer -- when he was out of money and down 23 points in the polls. Mrs. Clinton was good friends with Mrs. Vilsack's brother, Tom Bell, who had died suddenly just two years earlier, at age 50.

"I want you to know how loyal this woman is," Mr. Vilsack, who has been U.S. agriculture secretary since 2009, said at Sunday's Democratic Picnic in the Park. "She hears people's concerns. If she remembered 24 years later, my brother-in-law, I guarantee you she's gonna remember all of us in 2017 when she takes the oath of office. None of this happens without Scott County."

In 1974, Mrs. Clinton, then an attorney, shared Washington office space with Mr. Bell while they worked on the Watergate impeachment process. After holding a Washington fundraiser for Mr. Vilsack in 1998, he was able to get to even in polls. Then the weekend before the election, Mrs. Clinton spoke in Des Moines to thousands of people, galvanizing support for Mr. Vilsack, who served as governor until January 2007.

"She's very loyal and she's a very caring person," the 65-year-old former mayor of Mount Pleasant said. "I know her, and unfortunately not everybody in the country has the chance to be in the same circumstance I've been in, to see the warm, caring person she is. She didn't have to call my sister-in-law at the memorial service. She certainly didn't have to do anything in 1998 for me. That's the Hillary I know."

Mr. Vilsack said that while most politicians say -- every year -- this year is a big election year, he said this is the most important election in his lifetime. And Iowa can help decide the presidential race between Mrs. Clinton and Republican businessman Donald Trump.

"We only lose when people sit on the sidelines and don't get involved," he said of Democrats. "In Scott County, it's gonna be that close; in Iowa it's gonna be that close, and in this country, it's gonna be that close."

"It's about having the right policies, the right values, and the ability to get things done," the former governor said, noting Mrs. Clinton as former U.S. senator and secretary of state has a proven track record of helping families be safe and secure, at home and abroad.

On the economy, Republican policies of tax cuts and deregulation have failed and don't work for working families and middle-class families. Mr. Vilsack said.

"What does Trump want? He wants to cut taxes for the wealthy, deregulate industries," Mr. Vilsack said. "Have we seen this story before, this movie before? Remember George (W.) Bush, remember the tax cuts, the deregulation. What did we get? The greatest recession since the Great Depression. Why would we want to go back?"

He belittled Mr. Trump's plan to cut the estate tax to only help the super-rich, oppose a minimum-wage hike, and isolate the U.S. in national security. Mrs. Clinton wants to help working families afford child care and college, and supports pay equity for women, Mr. Vilsack said.

He asked if Democrat Patty Judge, who's running to unseat U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley in Iowa, got elected, should she get a lower salary? "Nobody would buy that," Mr. Vilsack said. "Why would we buy it anywhere else in the economy? You work the same job, do the same job, work hard, you gotta get paid the same," he said.

He called the minimum wage "not enough to support a family; it's not a living wage." Mr. Vilsack also opposes Mr. Trump's calls to bring torture back when dealing with terror suspects, and allow other nations to have nuclear weapons.

"There is a sharp contrast, whether it's the economy or our place in the world," he said of this year's presidential race.

Mr, Vilsack said Sen. Grassley, who has served in the Senate since 1980, is not doing his job. "He has been in public office for 58 years," he noted. "You get to thinking you don't have to actually do the job. You just have to show up. Time after time -- on the farm bill, on the tax bill, on the Supreme Court -- Sen. Grassley has been AWOL. He's shown up, but he hasn't done his job."

If anyone else did that, they'd be fired, Mr. Vilsack said. He's known Ms. Judge since their days in the state senate, and when she was state agriculture secretary while he was governor. Ms. Judge also served as lieutenant governor after being elected in 2006.

Ms. Judge and several other Democratic officials and candidates spoke earlier Sunday afternoon, castigating Sen. Grassley for blocking hearings on President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, as well as for federal judges.

"He is absolutely refusing to go out and take unscripted questions from the public," she said of the GOP senator. "He is not serving the interests of the state. He's serving the interests of Mitch McConnell and his caucus."
Submitted press release

The Rock Island County NAACP's Community Day and Resource Fair hosted by our Community Outreach Committee will be held at the Martin Luther King Community Center, 630 9th St., Rock Island. This event will be held on Saturday, Aug. 27, from noon to 4 p.m. This event is free, and the public is invited.

The Community Day and Resource Fair is a family event and there are activities for everyone from age five to ninety-five. Activities include bouncy houses and face painting for the very young at heart and bingo for the not so young.

This event is not limited to games and fun. This year, more than 25 local agencies will share information about their programs and services. Those agencies include the Rock Island Growth Corporation; Arsenal-Joint Munitions Command; Rock Island Housing Authority; UnityPoint Trinity Health System; NAACP Health Committee; National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI); Quad City Interfaith Jobs Task Force and much more.

Rock Island Mayor Dennis Pauley will emcee a brief program at 1:30 p.m. with presentations from Congresswoman Cheri Bustos' office and remarks from Brian Hollenback, President and CEO of RI Economic Growth, RIPD Chief Jeff VenHuizen, Chief Jeff Yerkey, RI Fire Department, Dr. Mike Oberhause, Superintendent of the Rock Island-Milan Schood District, Gail Brooks, Marketing and Public Relations for the Rock Island Housing Authority, and Berlinda Tyler-Jamison, President of the Rock Island County NAACP.

Music will be provided by popular DJ Charles Swift. Refreshments will include walking tacos," fruit and soft drinks!

For more information regarding the event, please contact Ametra Carrol-Castaneda at 309-373-1202.
EAST MOLINE -- In the past two decades, Ray Eddleman has married, had three kids, and has buried his grandmother, mother and his sister. But he and his family still hope to find his niece, Trudy Appleby.

On the 20th anniversary of the disappearance of then-11-year-old Trudy from the driveway of her Moline home, Mr. Eddleman pleaded for answers Sunday at the annual vigil held at East Moline's First Baptist Church.

"We know who you are. We know that Trudy was with you," he said of the family he suspects was involved in her abduction. "Whatever happened, was it an accident? It could have been not intentional."

"My family would be happy with you giving us the information so that we can put a lid on this and close it," Mr. Eddleman said. "Just give us Trudy back, so we can lay her to rest and we can say goodbye to her."

"I want to tell you what you've taken from us," he said, noting his mother said at the 1997 vigil: "We have empty spaces in our hearts and Trudy is the only one that can fill them. It's a big, big void that we have."

His mother collected all the articles about Trudy, and Sunday Mr. Eddleman showed the thick notebook.

"That's 20 years. Do you know what this is? It's Trudy," he said. "We don't have a body to hold, to hug. She doesn't come to weddings, family trips, hang out with her friends. My parents don't get to see her kids, their grandkids. She doesn't come walking in the door and say, 'Hey, I'm here.

"You took that away. You stole it," he said. "How can I hug this? This doesn't hug me back....You have a family, too. Turn it around and how would you feel if it was your family, your daughter?" Mr. Eddleman asked.

Two weeks before her 12th birthday, Trudy was seen entering a gray four-door sedan in her driveway, with a white man in his 20s with dark, curly hair. She hasn't been seen since, and Moline police have investigated thousands of leads, resulting in no suspects or arrests.

"We continue to grieve with you and support you." Moline police Det. Michael Griffin told the family and friends gathered Sunday at the church of Trudy's family. He thanked the community for helping in the search. Det. Griffin noted the person who may have committed the crime could be deceased.

He also implored the suspect's family or friends to come forward. "It takes a lot of courage to do what's right," Det. Griffin said. Continuing to hold secrets about Trudy's whereabouts "is something I just can't understand," he said. "We never give up hope."

"Let's end the nightmare for Dennis and Trudy's family," he said of Trudy's father, who attended Sunday.

"One person could step forward and reveal the truth of Trudy Appleby's whereabouts," said Dan Yeager, pastor of First Baptist. "Someone is holding the truth, the key that will free the minds and hearts of all who knew Trudy. The truth that will set the truth-teller free from these past 20 years of guilt-ridden conscience."

Mr. Eddleman -- the brother of Brenda Gordon, Trudy's mother -- was 23 when she went missing. Now he and and his wife have three children. On Sunday, he and other family and friends wore T-shirts that show Trudy's information, a photo of her when she went missing, and an age progression photo (from 2014) put together by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

On the shirt back are angel wings, a heart surrounding the words "Keeping Hope" and Ms. Gordon's name, with the dates 1961-2014. Trudy's mother was 53 when she died Oct. 10 two years ago, after being struck by a drunk driver as she was walking. That was the same day she came home from visiting her mother at a Peoria hospital, Mr. Eddleman said.

His mother Ann was in a car accident in 2014, with Ms. Gordon as passenger, and Ann Eddleman died in January 2015 at 77.

Attendance at the annual vigils has declined over 20 years, Mr. Eddleman said, and money collected hasn't been enough to put together a sizable reward for information leading to an arrest.

He knows the family he thinks was involved in her abduction; police have interviewed them, but have released no more suspect information or made any arrests. Police told Mr. Eddleman not to make direct contact with that family, he said.

"How long are they going to be hypocrites?" he asked after Sunday's event. "They go to church, but they can't give up the secret."

Jordan Schneider, a representative from Attacking Trafficking, spoke on the growing industry of sex and labor trafficking nationwide. She asked everyone to work to prevent child and adult enslavement, and abide by a motto on a church wall, "Love one another."

"The one thing I have to keep is hope," Mr. Eddleman said after the service. "That word is something I hang on to. That hope is not so much that she's found alive, but just getting an answer."

The 24-hour hotline to call if you've seen a missing child is 1-800-THE-LOST (800-843-5678).
(Editor's note: This is the second in a series about politics and policymaking in Illinois.)

In his biography of Illinois governors titled Mostly Good and Competent Men, the late Chicago Tribune reporter Bob Howard concluded that the 40 to hold the office thus far have been, with a few notable exceptions, okay but not remarkable, certainly no visionaries among them.

Are there lessons to be learned by Illinois GOP governor Bruce Rauner, who has struggled in his battles with Democratic House Speaker Mike Madigan, from those who have gone before? Maybe; maybe not.

Several past governors stand out.

A penurious lawyer on the frontier, Democrat Thomas Ford (1842-46) restored fiscal integrity to the state, important for prospective outside investors.

Ford insisted that Illinois tax itself to pay in full a huge debt that had been run up earlier by the likes of lawmakers Lincoln and Douglas to pay for internal improvements (canals, plank roads and railroads) that mostly died aborning.

Republican Frank Lowden (1917-1921) received national notice for reorganizing a state government comprising scores of tiny bureaus into but a handful of state agencies.

Lowden might well have become president in 1920 but for lack of support from a corrupt Chicago faction within his own party. At a convention deadlocked between Lowden and General Leonard Wood, the delegates, unimpressed by Lowdens inability to command his own state delegation, finally went for Warren Gamaliel Harding.

Democrat Henry Horner (1933-1940) saw the state through the Depression, replacing a faltering state property tax with a new sales tax, in order to generate funds for relief for the many destitute.

In 1936, the Chicago Democrat Machine led by Mayor Ed Kelly and party boss Pat Nash dumped Horner from their slate because of his independence from them and for passing the two cent sales tax.

The ensuing no-holds-barred election battle made the current political war between Gov. Bruce Rauner and Speaker Mike Madigan seem like childs play.

At a time when Ku Klux Klansmen were parading at the state fair in white robes and cone hats on state militia horses, Jewish Chicagoan Horner nevertheless swept every downstate county to win party re-nomination, and then reelection.

William Stratton (1953-1961) and Richard Ogilvie (1969-73) were highly productive Rockefeller-style Republican governors (that is, spenders and builders).

Both raised taxes. They also modernized state government. Stratton pushed through a model judicial reform and redistricted the legislature years before the U.S. Supreme Court demanded it.

Ogilvie added to Strattons revamped highways and tollways, created an environmental protection agency before the feds did so, and established a professional budget bureau.

And significantly, both collaborated with Chicago Democratic Mayor Richard J. Daley to gain passage of their initiatives.

While Democratic governors and their party leaders have squabbled, Illinois Republican governors have generally controlled their own party. In my masters thesis a half-century ago, I pointed out that under Strattons governorship, 82 of the states 102 county GOP chairmen held state jobs.

With patronage jobs mostly gone today, Gov. Rauner controls his partys apparatus with money instead. He has infused the state party with millions from his own pocketbook and struck the fear of God (that is, of well-funded opposition) into the hearts of any of his own partys lawmakers who might oppose him.

No governor before Rauner has come into office with the overriding objective of the equivalent of driving the money changers out of the temple, that is, of forcing House Mike Madigan into submission.

So maybe history provides little useful guidance for the present.

I do think the most effective Illinois governors have wheeled-and-dealed with the opposition to achieve their objectives, in what until recent decades had always been a politically balanced state.

Rauner has rejected this approach, instead demanding for the past year a take-it-or-leave-it turnaround agenda.

Thus far the governor has been unsuccessful in his paramount objective of forcing the House speaker to knuckle under to the agenda.

The question is whether the long-term costs imposed on the state during the Rauner-Madigan conflict, such as the failure to fund higher education for a year, are worth the benefits he hopes will flow from the uncertainty of success in humbling Madigan.

Rauner appears to have broken the mold for the Illinois governorship. His backers say it had to be done to overcome entrenched failure.

Yet I have my doubts a state as diverse as Illinois can ever be effectively governed by attempted fiat.
CALDCs Halloween Celebration A Real Treat! The Central Astoria LDCs 7th annual Batty Over Halloween Celebration held on Sunday, October 23rd was a real treat for everyone who came out. Despite...

Meng Brings NASA Astronaut To Queens On October 17, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Queens) brought NASA astronaut Dr. Jonny Kim to Queens where he met and spoke with students at Francis...

Celebrating Columbus The Federation of Italian-American Organizations of Queens (FIAO) held their annual Columbus Day parade in Astoria, on Saturday, October 8, during Italian Heritage Month. The...
"Indonesia continues to be actively involved in conflict resolution in the South China Sea through peaceful negotiations after."

This was the statement of President Joko Widodo during his state address on Tuesday before the Indonesia's 71st Independence Day.

"We continue to push for peaceful resolutions to international conflicts," he added.

The mention of the South China Sea dispute in Widodo's national address emphasizes the importance that Indonesia attaches to the Natuna Islands, one of the small islands in disputed South China Sea that is claimed by both China and Indonesia.

Earlier this year, the tension between both claimants increased after Jakarta rejected the request of China regarding the immediate release of eight Chinese trawlers who were detained by Indonesia's Coast Guard near the Natuna Islands.

Later, the visit of Indonesian President to the Natuna Islands on a naval warship was understood as Jakarta's claim of sovereignty over the disputed islands.

Recently, Indonesia strengthens the security around the Natuna Islands after an international tribunal ruling on the South Chinese Sea where in China's territorial claims on the disputed island was dismissed.

However, the Chinese government does not accept the verdict under any circumstances regardless of the international pressure. They even described it as a conspiracy by Western forces to deteriorate its control over the maritime territory.
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!
Craig Wagstaff is the new General Manager for Hit104.7 and Mix 106.3.

It marks a home coming for Craig and his family after 9 years working overseas. With 15 years in media, it has come full circle. Craig started his career as an Account Manager at Canberra FM before progressing into a senior management role. He then moved to Malaysia to work on a number of roles with the Astro Group before taking up his most recent position at Motivate Publishing in the United Arab Emirates.

Craig said he was excited about returning to Canberra with his family and looked forward to being back at Canberra FM.

Through its leadership and people, Canberra FM Radio and both station brands across Hit104.7 and MIX 106.3 carry a significant, well-earned and special place in the minds and hearts of the loyal listeners, a wide range of commercial partners, and the Canberra community at large.

I am extremely enthusiastic and excited to again join the wonderfully diverse team that continue to make this happen,he said.

ARN Chief Operating Officer and CFO Michael Harvey said: Craig brings a wealth of experience to this role, which hes gained in Australia and overseas, along with a sound understanding of the Canberra market. I am pleased to welcome him to Canberra FM as the new GM as we continue to build on the strength and success of the business.

Craig joins Canberra FM on 29 August, he replaces former General Manager Eoghan OByrne who moved to the University of Canberra.
Pandora makes another move for their share of ear. Partnering with Holden, Pandora Warehouse will be their first event in Australia,

The launch of Pandora Warehouse in Australia signals Pandoras move into the event and experiential space in the market with Holden being led in by the Carat argency. 1,000 Pandora listeners will have the chance to attend the launch of Pandora Warehouse at what they describe as an iconic top-secret location in Sydney, with the chance to secure limited tickets to the event in October.

Pandora Commercial Director Chris Freel said: Australians are in love with Pandora and now is the perfect time to progress the brand into the live event space. Our listeners have a hunger for live experiences and Pandora Warehouse will bring them a unique and mind blowing mini festival. It also offers brands the opportunity to form deep connections with the young adult market and be associated with the discovery of new and exciting music artists. We are thrilled to partner with Holden and its agency Carat to further enhance the event experience.
The Edge 96.ONEs Mike E & Emma celebrated five years on air together by throwing a party at The Broadway Crown on Saturday night.

To secure tickets to the event, only the biggest fans of the show with the most knowledge about Mike E & Emma got a spot.

Working for the Edge has been amazing  it is like no other station. Our listeners are a huge part of our show so we couldnt image celebrating our five year anniversary without them! Emma Chow said.

Plus, what a great excuse for a party! Michael Etheridge added.
In a sales tactic tied in with Sevens Zumbos Just Desserts and Westfield, KIIS 1065 Kyle & Jackie Os Mirror Mirror is rolling out the pick carpet.

With a Willy Wonka themed sweet factory, you just step up to the mirror and ask: Mirror, Mirror on the wall who is the sweetest of them all?. Today hundreds have already headed down to Westfield Burwood waiting for their chance to taste sweet victory.

If lucky, the magical mirror will reward them with tens of thousands in cash, nights out, sweet treats and more.
What happens when Australias most attractive twins tell you to quit radio and move to New York?

You do it.

That is exactly what happened to StarFM Dubbos Jase & Joel while speaking with Zac Stenmark of the Stenmark brothers  labelled as Australias most attractive twins.

The boys sent Zac a picture of themselves and asked him for some honest feedback:

You guys are rigs, you definitely got it. I reckon, you just give up this radio thing straight away. Go for gold, just buy a plane ticket straight to New York. Zac Stenmark

Zac must have liked The rigs with Star FMs Jase & Joel picture featured on their socials.
North Metropolitan Tafe college station Boom Radio already trains and operates with RCS Zetta, GSelector and Zetta News and the addition of Aquira now ensures a complete RCS suite experience.

General Manager of RCS Australia, Mike Crothers said: RCS continues its long and valued partnership with Boom Radio with the installation of Aquira. Aquiras integration with the existing RCS products, Zetta and GSelector, allows Boom Radio to reap the benefits of the worlds best practice software.

The course objective is to simulate as close to industry as possible with graduates developing a practical advantage. The RCS products and training is part of the software advantage NMT believes their students offer to the entry level radio job market.

Head of Radio  North Metropolitan Tafe, Phillip Vinciullo said: The addition of Aquira to our suite of RCS products ensures our students are the most equipped in radio software knowledge across the nation.
VIROQUA  U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin heard alarming testimony from Vernon County officials at a round table discussion about heroin and opioid drug abuse.

The Wisconsin Democrat spent an hour talking first about her efforts in Congress on the Jason Simcakoski Promise Act  bipartisan legislation that promotes the responsible, measured prescription of opioid painkillers.

Baldwin said her visit to Vernon County was specifically to hear more to inform my work as I go back to (Washington, D.C.).

Health, law enforcement, local government and judicial representatives agreed opioid abuse is a growing problem.

Viroqua Police Chief Daron Jefson said his department was dealing with an overdose death earlier this month. The syringe was still in the drug users hand.

We learned this same person had overdosed on July third in La Crosse and then one other time since then before their death, Jefson said. We are seeing multiple overdoses ... Its getting worse and worse.

Jefson said of particular concern were false reports of stolen prescriptions, by which prescription drug abuser get new prescriptions just days after an initial prescription is written.

Someone abusing drugs and getting two long-term painkiller prescriptions within days could really go on a tizzy then, Jefson said.

Baldwin said a balance has to be struck with the medical truth that opioid prescription drugs are a necessary, useful treatment for pain. She said since 2000, measuring pain and treating pain has become a vital statistic measured by medical professionals. The key is looking at the duration of a prescription and shortening it.

Baldwin said recent new guidelines for opioid prescriptions by the Center for Disease Control have become the gold standard for medical professionals and the federal government has supported reforming how it is addressing the national epidemics of prescription opioid and illegal heroin trade through the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, passed by Congress this year.

CARA is an important first step at the federal level, Baldwin said.

A number of local professionals including Sharon Williams of the Vernon County Department of Human Services, Paul Schmidt of Center Point Counseling Services and Vernon County Coroner Janet Reed echoed concerns about number of different treatment options that are impractical or difficult due to lack of money.

Schmidt said that drug addicts who are on federal medical assistance as their primary health payment method actually cause health care providers to lose between $12 and $15 an hour because the reimbursement rate is so low.

Schmidt said one such provider closed due to lack of funding in the Prairie du Chien area.

Reed said Monroe County is a big hotbed for drugs when it comes to heroin and other illicit drugs. Vernon County Lt. Deputy Jason Crume said that in addition to opioid drugs, there continues to be a steady growth in the abuse of methamphetamine.

Vernon County District Attorney Timothy Gaskell said drug abuse continues to cause untold collateral damage as it affects children and families.

My greatest concern is for children who try it once and are hooked because its such a high, Gaskell said of heroin and methamphetamine. What I would like to echo from what Ive heard is that we have a strong community of professionals who are trying to address the issue.

Baldwin was heartened by what she learned.

I suspected I would hear a lot about the need for resources, Baldwin said, noting a sense that all those at the table were working together.

This is an emergency like the Zika virus or the Ebola virus, Baldwin said, pointing out that lives are being lost.

We learned this same person had overdosed on July 3rd in La Crosse and then one other time since then before their death. We are seeing multiple overdoses ... Its getting worse and worse. Daron Jefsonk, Viroqua police chief My greatest concern is for children who try (heroin or methamphetamine) once and are hooked because its such a high. Timothy Gaskell, Vernon County district attorney
Transnet placed an order with CNR (now part of CRRC) and its local south African consortium CNR RSSA for 232 class 45-000s in March 2014 as part of a broader procurement of 1064 locomotives, which are being supplied by four manufacturers.

The first 20 locomotives are being built in China by CRRC Dalian Locomotive and Rolling Stock, while the remaining 212 units will be assembled at Transnet Rail Engineering's workshop in Durban under the supervision of CRRC. Deliveries are due to be completed in 2019.

MTU is supplying 232 MTU Series 4000 diesel engines for the fleet under a 100m contract awarded in January 2015. The type 20V 4000 R63L power units will have an output of 3.3MW and are the most powerful locomotive engines in MTU's range.
The Night Tube is expected to boost Londons economy by 77m a year, and will cut late-night journey times by an average of 20 minutes and in some cases more than an hour.

To meet the expected demand for these services, six additional trains will run per hour through central London on all Night Tube lines between 00:30 and 05:30.

Night services will operate on Friday and Saturday nights and the early hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings through the capital on the following lines:

 Central Line: Ealing Broadway  Loughton / Hainault

 Victoria Line: entire line

 Jubilee Line: entire line

 Northern Line: entire line except on the Mill Hill East and Bank branches

 Piccadilly Line: Cockfosters  Heathrow Terminal 5

The Night Tube is expected to support 2000 permanent, over 500 of which have been created directly through the operation of the service.

The Mayor of London, Mr Sadiq Khan launched the new service when he travelled from Brixton on the first Victoria Line Night Tube on August 19. The city has invested an extra 3.4m towards policing for the Night Tube.

Oxford Circus was the busiest station with 6500 entries, while 4250 passengers disembarked at Stratford.
Welcome to Railway Gazette. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of these cookies. You can learn more about the cookies we use here.

OK
The history of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is a tale of 1,001 nights that catalogues every dimension of frustration in combatting terrorism: an impoverished failing state, a heavily armed society with a warrior subculture, persistent and resilient adversaries, corrupt and duplicitous governors, shifting tribal loyalties, sectarian divisions and foreign powers with conflicting agendas, among others. But despite this dark assessment, it is still possible that the United States and its Gulf allies, namely Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are finally getting the measure of the group. But will that turn out to be another illusion?

The United States views AQAP as the most dangerous of al Qaeda's affiliates, yet its pursuit of the group has been inconsistent. Today, amid the tumult, the United States is backing Saudi Arabia in its efforts to prop up the beleaguered Yemeni government. At the same time, the United Arab Emirates has made modest progress as the leading U.S. ally in the fight against AQAP.

Unlike al Qaeda's other affiliates, which have generally concentrated on local contests, AQAP, while engaging its foes in Yemen, has never abandoned Osama bin Laden's line of attacking the far enemythe United States.

AQAP has never abandoned bin Laden's line of attacking the far enemy: the United States.

Al Qaeda was operating in Yemen years before Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States in 1996. In 1992, al Qaeda operatives bombed two hotels in Aden, narrowly missing the U.S. Marines who had just departed on their way to Somalia.

Four years after bin Laden's notorious declaration, AQAP struck again in October 2000, killing 17 in a bombing that nearly sank the USS Cole. The bombing of the Cole brought no sharp reaction from the Clinton administration, which was in its final months.

Contrastingly, the 9/11 attacks brought about an intensified global effort against jihadist groups worldwide. Under U.S. pressure, the Yemeni government cracked down hard on al Qaeda operatives in the country. By 2003, al Qaeda in Yemen had been smashed, its leaders dead or in prison. Considering the victory final, the United States turned its attention to other frontsmost notably the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was a mistake.

Given this reprieve, al Qaeda's surviving operatives in the region merely went underground and regrouped. A mass prison break in Yemen in 2006 facilitated the rebuilding of the organization. In 2009, Saudi al Qaeda operatives who had survived an intense crackdown on al Qaeda in Kingdom, crossed into Yemen and joined with the Yemenis to form AQAP. Looking to execute another spectacular attack, the new configuration launched a series of attacks on U.S. aviation targets. Between 2009 and 2012 at least three aircraft bombing attempts failed, including the so-called underwear bomber in 2009.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born citizen of Yemeni descent, was a particularly persuasive communicator for AQAP and was seen as the source of inspiration for a number of homegrown terrorists and plots in the U.S., including Army Major Nidal Hasan, who in 2009 shot 43 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. Although it had no role in planning the attack, one of the Kouachi brothers who carried out the January 2015 attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris claimed he was fighting on behalf of AQAP, and the group claimed responsibility for the assault.

The United States declared AQAP a terrorist organization in 2009, and in 2011 it refocused on combatting AQAP once again. Distracted by mounting anti-government protests, the Yemeni government was a weaker partner this time, and its brutal response to its domestic turmoil alienated Washington. The United States subsequently decided to support diplomatic initiatives to remove Yemen's president.

This exemplifies a recurring dilemma in U.S. counterterrorist effortsthe United States seeks tough local allies willing to take on the terrorists, but these often turn out to be cruel and corrupt strongmen.

In this second round, the United States went after AQAP primarily with special operations and drone strikes aimed at its leadership. By 2015, more than half of AQAP's leaders, including its commander Nasir al-Wahishi, as well as its chief international recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki, had been killed.

This history illustrates recurring patterns in U.S. counterterrorist efforts. Battlefield success brings no permanent gain. When pressed on the ground, jihadist groups switch to propaganda and recruiting, and rebuild their organization for an eventual renewal of armed conflict. They are persistent and resilient.

The history of AQAP illustrates recurring patterns in U.S. counterterrorist efforts.

U.S. policymakers miss this point. Once chased off the battlefield, the groups are considered defeated and are then ignored as the United States turns its attention to other pressing events. The ensuing interval allows groups to mount a comeback.

As in Syria, U.S. efforts in Yemen must navigate a labyrinth of local quarrels. Yemen's conflicts are complicated, began long ago, and seem interminable. Fault lines between northerners and southerners still run deep. The current civil war, which began in 2004, pits Yemen's northern Shia tribes, called Houthis, against the southern Sunnis. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies back the government, claiming that Iran is supporting the Houthis.

AQAP has benefitted from this kaleidoscope of internal quarrels, which distract central authorities who see AQAP not as enemy number one, but as a surrogate force against more existential threats. Authorities acknowledge the threat posed by AQAP, but this is often just a means of extracting resources from an alarmed West that tends to see all local conflicts solely through the lens of the war on terror.

Saudi Arabia, however, historically views what happens in Yemen as a strategic concern. In response to the Houthi takeover of Yemen's capital in Sana'a, Saudi Arabia, leading a coalition of Arab states, intervened militarily in support of the government in 2015. The Saudi-led intervention has the backing of the United States and a number of European nations. This, however, meant that the United States supported military operations against the Houthis, who were the most determined and effective foe of AQAP.

The intervention has been difficult. When a Saudi prince and future king commanding victorious Saudi forces in Yemen in 1935 wanted to take over the entire country, his father the king ordered the impetuous prince to withdraw, warning him that Yemen is not a country that can be easily conquered  it is not to our benefit  to imprudently squander our forces in a war that might go on for decades. His advice still holds.

Intense Saudi bombing, which has prompted international criticism, has pushed the Houthis back, but they still hold Sana'a. The Saudi-supported government's real authority is confined to the small area of its temporary capital in Aden. The fighting elsewhere has enabled AQAP to expand the territory under its control east of the capital, creating its own little Islamic State to plunder and govern. Unlike ISIS, AQAP has avoided atrocity, which would dangerously alienate its local supporters.

While the Saudis continue to concentrate on the Houthis, forces from the UAE began a military offensive against AQAP earlier this year. This news was welcome in Washington and the United States deployed a small number of forces to Yemen to help the UAE with intelligence. The United States also has kept up its own counterterrorism strikes against AQAP.

The UAE offensive has made some progress in its mission to degrade, disrupt and destroy AQAP in Yemen, recapturing several towns and reducing the terrorist organization's territory. It has been reported that U.S. Special Forces are cooperating with the UAE in this effort. The UAE is an effective local partner and sticking to Special Forces allows modest U.S. participation.

It may be too early to tell whether these most recent results will hold. If any lesson has been learned, it is that the situation will require detailed local knowledge, continued attention and an abundance of patience.

Brian Michael Jenkins is a senior adviser to the president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and author of numerous books, reports, and articles on terrorism-related topics, including How the Current Conflicts Are Shaping the Future of Syria and Iraq and Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?.

This commentary originally appeared on The Cipher Brief on August 21, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
Schoolchildren from small-town Georgia to suburban Baltimore will encounter a new approach to learning when they head back to class this fallone that makes them partners in their own education, not just participants.

It's called personalized learning, and it has become one of the buzziest of buzzwords in American education in recent years, even though there's no single definition of what it is. A recent RAND study sought to clarify, following dozens of schools to see how educators personalized the learning in their classrooms, and what it meant for their students.

The study found that students in personalized learning classrooms made greater gains in math and reading than their peers in other schools. Yet it also found barriers to fully personalized learning, from rigid state standards to time demands on teachers.

There's a lot of challenge here, a lot of things to work out, said John Pane, the study's lead author, a senior scientist at RAND who holds the distinguished chair in education innovation. But it looks promising.

Teachers Plus Technology

To understand what personalized learning is, start with what it is not: one teacher standing at the front of a classroom, delivering the same lesson to 30 kids at a time. In a personalized classroom, those 30 kids would follow their own pathways through the material, at their own pace, guided by their own goals and learning plans.

Good teachers have always tried to meet students where they are and engage their strengths and interests. What's different now is the degree to which technology allows teachers to tailor lessons for every studentand make sure those students stay on task.

Today's technology lets teachers tailor lessons for every studentand make sure they stay on task.

At Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland, Calif., for example, teachers use a reading program that presents the same lessons in different genres and at different difficulty levels, according to student interests and needs. The software can then update them on each student's progress, allowing them to spend more time with those who need it mosta break from the old teach-to-the-middle model.

When you can teach to students where they're really at, you're challenging them but not frustrating them, said Bruce Stoffmacher, a policy analyst and former teacher whose two sons now attend Redwood Heights. That's where learning can really occur.

Promising Findings

RAND's study was the largest and most rigorous attempt yet to test such a personalized approach to education. It followed 62 schoolsmost of them urban charter schools serving low-income studentsas they implemented personalized learning programs between 2013 and 2015.

All of the schools had received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested tens of millions of dollars in personalized programs, and brought in RAND to measure their impact.

The results provide an unprecedented look at how personalized programs can workand how well.

The initial findings would be remarkable, and very exciting if they hold up in future research.

Students in most of the schools made significant gains in both math and reading, compared with students in similar schools who were not part of the personalized programs. Those gains were especially apparent in the earliest grades: Elementary school students moved up 13 percentile points on standardized tests in math, on average, and 8 points in reading.

The schools were generally testing below national averages in math and reading at the start of the study. Two years later, they had caught upand even moved ahead.

Those findings would be remarkable, and very exciting if they continue to hold up in future research, Pane said especially more rigorous, randomized experiments. At this point, we're saying there's promise here, he added. We still need to do more to understand the true effect.

Steps, Not Leaps

Ryan Imbriale, the executive director of innovative learning in Baltimore County, Md., recently sat in on a second-grade classroom to see personalized learning in action. The district is implementing a personalized approach in all of its schools that it calls STAT, for Students and Teachers Accessing Tomorrow.

Students in one area were reading out loud into a microphone, he said, while others listened to the same story on headphones, and still others hunched over pencils and paper, practicing their writing. The teacher sat in a small circle of maybe half a dozen desks, working one on one with students who needed a little more help with their reading.

There's better purposeful conversation that's happening now, Imbriale said. It felt very personal for the kids in the room. They were doing activities as second-graders that allowed them to demonstrate mastery.

The most successful schools in RAND's study shared some of those characteristics. They were flexible in how they used classroom space and time, allowing students more freedom to work in groups or on individual projects. They made better use of data to group students according to their individual needs and progress, and they worked with students to map out their goals.

Most of the schools were moving toward greater personalization by steps, not leaps. Teachers continued to align their overall lesson plans with state and district curriculum standards, for example. Few had implemented more radical visions of personalized learning, such as competency-based progression, in which students earn credit whenever they can demonstrate mastery of a subject, not just at the end of the year.

Teachers and school administrators cited the demands of standardized testing and state seat-time requirements as barriers to further personalization. More than half of the teachers RAND surveyed also cited the time it took to prepare individualized lesson plans.

Photo courtesy of Baltimore Country Public Schools

Rethinking Achievement

Researchers have been taking a closer look at a subset of mostly newer schools in the study. Those schools have run into more constraints, Pane said; their results were still positive, but the effects were not as large as in the bigger sample that included older schools.

That study has led RAND to a better understanding of the school features that seem to help make learning personalized: a clear understanding of the needs and goals of each student; instruction tailored to meet those needs and goals; and frequent and constructive dialogue between teachers, parents, and the students themselves. Technology can enable that kind of learning, and help teachers manage the complexities of itbut it cannot substitute for a good teacher.

It's the difference, Tony Townsend likes to say, between a lesson and a learning experience. He's the principal at Locust Grove Middle School in Henry County, Ga., in the outer orbit of Atlantaa public school that has made personalized learning a part of every class.

The students are not just sitting back and waiting for the teacher to direct their education. They can take control of their own learning. Tony Townsend, principal of Locust Grove Middle School

Its students spend much of their time not in lectures, but in labsapplying knowledge, district officials say, not just acquiring it. Each has a learner profile that says where they are and where they need to goand some flexibility to choose how they get there. One student last year earned credit for a music class by following his interest in composing and writing several pieces of music, including a national anthem for an imaginary country.

We're used to school looking a certain way, Townsend said. This has been a huge paradigm shift. The students are not just sitting back and waiting for the teacher to direct their education. They can take control of their own learning.

That's the purpose and the promise of personalized learning: You're never going to have two kids at the same place at the same time, Townsend says, ever.

 Doug Irving

The author would like to thank Bruce Stoffmacher, Ryan Imbriale, and Tony Townsend for sharing their insights and experiences. Their schools were not among those who participated in the RAND research study.
Paraguay is preparing a new law to regulate the countrys growing Internet-based TV services, specifically targeting the taxation of over-the-top (OTT) operators.





The announcement was made by congressman Dany Durand during the Centreo de Estudios para el Desarrollo de las Telecomunicaciones de America Latina ( CERTAL ) summit.According to Durand, the law wont be a traditional media regulation, as this is banned by the constitution, but rather a law intended to fill the gap between regulated pay-TV operators and online service providers. He cited Netflix as a case in point, as the American subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service doesnt pay the same taxes as local cable companies.During CERTAL, held in the Paraguayan capital Asuncion, many official voices pointed out the need for an OTT regulation in Latin America which guarantees competition.In fact, Paraguay is not the first country to consider regulating a booming OTT industry. Argentina tried to do so locally in Buenos Aires in 2014, and Brazil is currently debating the necessity of a specific law for VOD platforms.
In the wake of its former CEO Phillipe Daumans announcement that he would be stepping down, Viacom has settled on what to do next.





In an agreement with stakeholders National Amusements Inc (NAI), members of company chairman Sumner Redstones family and related parties, its been decided that all lawsuits among them and Dauman will be terminated, and Viacom will create an expanded board of directors to include the five Viacom directors elected in June by NAI.Dauman will be succeeded by Thomas Dooley, who will serve as interim president and CEO until 30 September, the end of Viacom's fiscal year. Dooley will work closely with the new board to develop a financial and strategic plan to position Viacom for future success. By then the board, working with Dooley, will make a decision on succession plans. Dooley has been COO of Viacom since 2010; he joined the company in 1980.Dauman meanwhile will remain as non-executive chairman of the board of Viacom until 13 September. The new board will then select a successor for chairman. Redstone will remain chairman emeritus and Shari Redstone will remain non-executive vice chair. Once Dauman departs, the board will consist of 15 directors.The five new Viacom board members elected by NAI are Kenneth Lerer, Thomas May, Judith McHale, Ron Nelson and Nicole Seligman. Seligman will head the governance and nominating committee, while Nelson will head the audit committee and McHale the compensation committee. The five new directors elected to the Viacom board will comprise a majority of each committee.In his remaining time, Dauman will have the opportunity to present a proposal on the previously announced exploration of a potential sale of a minority equity stake in Viacom's Paramount Pictures film unit, for consideration by the expanded Viacom board. A provision adopted in June by NAI remaining in effect would require unanimous agreement by the board for the completion of the sale of an interest in Paramount.I care deeply for Viacom, which has been an important part of my life since I joined Sumner in the acquisition of the company 30 years ago, Dauman said. I believe this agreement will give the company and its employees the best opportunity to continue a smooth evolution into the future. I will do my utmost to ensure an effective board and management transition in my remaining time as non-executive chairman.He continued: It has been a privilege to lead Viacom and have the rare opportunity to work side-by-side with so many friends and colleagues to build great brands and implement successful initiatives in the US and around the world. Most of all, I am proud of our people, our culture and our inclusive values.Redstone, for his part, added: We thank Philippe for his many years of dedicated service and the important role he has played at Viacom. We also welcome the new board members who join us today. By strengthening Viacom's governance and leadership, these changes will enable the Company to embark swiftly on a strategy that strengthens its position as an industry leader. Viacom has extraordinary assets and people, and we look forward to taking the necessary steps to realize the Company's full potential to the benefit of all stockholders.The formal agreement comes after months of speculation as to Viacoms future. A power struggle for control of Viacom escalated in May with Dauman and director George Abrams suing over their unexpected removal from the trust that will control the firm when 93-year-old Sumner Redstone dies.The trust controls Redstones company National Amusements, which owns 80% of both Viacom and CBS. Redstone has named a current National Amusements executive, general counsel Ted Jankowski, and family friend Jill Krutick as their replacements.In the complaint, Dauman called his removal illegal and alleged that Redstone is being manipulated by his daughter, Shari Redstone.The move had been made to accomplish her [Shari Redstones] long-held goal, which Mr Redstone has always opposed, of gaining control of National Amusements and Viacom.But Viacom is in trouble: it has lost more than a third of its stock value in the last 12 months, and Dauman has been shopping Paramount Pictures  a move Redstone is said to oppose.The bad blood is a recent development. Sumner and I have a more than 30-year history, side by side, building his media empire, Dauman said in an earnings call in February. He and the board of Viacom, believing in my ability and my character, have entrusted me with weighty responsibilities, none of which are inconsistent or incompatible.In a statement at the time, Redstone said he regrets that Mr Dauman has diverted resources to these baseless attacks and misrepresentations, rather than focusing on the continuing challenges that are faced by Viacom. Mr Redstone will continue to act in what he believes are the best interests of Viacoms shareholders.
Lidixe Montoya would not be here if not for Debrah Adams. Many years ago the Chippewa Falls woman founded the Mission of Healing, which started out by providing medical care to the people in San Salvador and other small communities.

Through Adams trips to El Salvador, she wound up working with Montoya, who moved to Chippewa Falls one year ago last week. Montoya has seen some huge differences since coming here

The food is different, cars are more abundant and she thinks its a more peaceful environment to raise her son. Here, he wont have a chance to succumb to the violence and gangs that run through her home country.

An era of war

The 39-year-old from the capital San Salvador grew up in an era of war. The Salvadoran Civil War lasted 12 years, from 1980-92, and Montoya and her family had to experience death, disappearances, imprisonment and uncertainty about the future.

One of the worst moments from the war for her was the disappearance of her sister when Montoya was 4years old.

She and her husband were last seen when they were dropping off their 2-month-old baby at her sisters mother-in-laws house. Then, in a nighttime raid, police came and took them away from their home.

Montoya said she has not heard from them since and assumes they are dead. Still, Montoya misses her and hopes to find her and see her again some day.

Really, in the bottom of my heart, I still wait for her even though I know she wont be with us ever again, Montoya said. In that time, you never knew if you were going to see your loved ones again because it was a war.

Two years later, Montoyas mother was accused of running a clandestine hospital for the rebel forces inside their home, which she said was not true. Police came once again in the middle of night and took her and her mother, who then spent 15 months in jail. Montoya was left to travel between foster homes.

She lived with friends of her mother and while she was welcomed, she said it wasnt a good environment for a child since she wasnt treated like a part of the family.

Through the traumatic disappearances and multiple foster homes, Montoya simply kept trying to survive.

It was the war so you just had to live and keep going, and thats it, she said.

When she was around 15, the war ended and then there was just hope; hope for everybody to get a better life and a better country.

Montoya then started her career as a physician. But she said the government doesnt have enough money to establish clinics for everyone and she was left unemployed for a period of time. Her mother started working for a local Lutheran church, which is a partner church with Hope Lutheran Church in Eau Claire. In 2006, a bishop recommended Montoya to help with some mission work.

ddd

Montoya was one of the doctors for Debrah Adams mission and performed examinations and prescribed medicine. When the mission was launched, Adams was the only health care provider, so she and Montoya worked together for several years sharing an exam room. The multi-faceted health clinic provided lab work, health care, pastoral care and many other medical benefits for four days once a year.

After nine years of missions, Montoya decided another degree would give her a chance for a better job, a better chance for employment, and she would be able to provide a better life for her son.

Montoya and her son Pavel moved to the United States and now live with Adams and her husband Bob while attending UW-Eau Claire for health administration. The Chippewa Falls couple has been happy to have her here.

The first day she was here we said, Pavel, you can go outside and play, Bob said. Lidixe said, Is it safe? Can he go outside in the front yard?

Montoya said everyone from Debrah and Bob Adams to the people at the church have been very supportive of her, paying for her first semester of college and even donating winter clothes and school supplies for her and Pavel.

At the moment, Montoya plans to return to El Salvador after she gets her degree, but is open to other opportunities that may come that are in the best interests of her son.

In that time, you never knew if you were going to see your loved ones again because it was a war.  Lidixe Montoya, El Salvador native
Critically acclaimed crime drama series The Last Panthers has been acquired by leading Latin American satellite television provider DIRECTV.





Jointly distributed by STUDIOCANAL and Sky Vision, the Johan Renck-directed series has been commissioned by Sky Atlantic and CANAL+ with SundanceTV and produced by Haut et Court TV and Warp Films. It features a star-studded cast led by two-time Academy Award nominee Samantha Morton, French Cesar Award winner Tahar Rahim, Goran Bogdan and BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning actor John Hurt.The Last Panthers was shot in the UK, France, Serbia, and Montenegro in three languages and has already across Skys multi-territories, including the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria, and CANAL+ in France. The series, sold to 122 territories in total, recently wrapped its run on SundanceTV in the US. In addition, the drama aired on SBS Australia, HBO Nordics and across all Fox Networks Group Crime channels in Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. It has already been nominated for Best International Co-Production by The Edinburgh International Television Festival 2016.Were thrilled to bring The Last Panthers exclusively to our subscribers, commented Willard Tressel, general manager of OnDIRECTV. The producers have brought together an amazing team of talented people to create this gripping series that feels closer to cinema than to television.Added Katrina Neylon, executive VP, sales and marketing, STUDIOCANAL: An extraordinary and provocative series, The Last Panthers features production values and writing of the highest calibre. We are confident that Latin American audiences will be riveted by the series intensity, emotion and complex storyline.
Egyptian plane crash case victims suit against insurer set for September 20

MOSCOW, August 22 (RAPSI, Yevgeniya Sokolova)  The Basmanny District Court of Moscow has postponed the hearing of a lawsuit filed a victim in the case over Airbus A321 plane crash in Egypt against VTB-Strahovanie insurance company until September 20, RAPSI reported from the courtroom on Monday.

The claim was lodged by a woman whose daughter died in the plane crash. She is seeking full payment of compensation from the insurer.

The hearing was adjourned because of the plaintiffs motion to bring the dead womans daughter as a third party in the case.

Claims under the lawsuit are based on the subject matter of overall contract insurance contract concluded by the plaintiff with VTB-Strahovanie. According to the plaintiffs lawyers, the claims amount reaches about $105,000.

The Airbus A321, operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia, crashed into a mountainous area of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on October 31 leaving 224 people dead. The airliner was flying from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg in Russia.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) chief, Alexander Bortnikov earlier said that a terrorist attack was the cause of the plane crash.

A militant group linked to Islamic State said in a statement that it had brought down the plane in response to Russian airstrikes in Syria.
Transaero appeals against collection of $40.7 mln in favor of Aeroflot

MOSCOW, August 22 (RAPSI) - Transaero has filed a cassation appeal against a court ruling ordering the air carrier to pay 2.85 billion rubles ($44.5 mln) in debt to another airline Aeroflot, RAPSI learned in the Moscow District Commercial Court on Monday.

The appeal will be considered on September 14.

On January 25, the Moscow Commercial Court ruled in favor of Aeroflot in a lawsuit against Transaero, ordering the defendant to pay about 2.85 billion rubles it owes to the competitor. A counterclaim by Transaero seeking to find the loan agreement between airlines invalid was dismissed. The Ninth Commercial Court upheld the ruling.

A Transaero representative told the court that on the moment of agreement, CEO of the airline, Dmitriy Saprikin, was a member of the Aeroflots Board of Directors and that this deal had to be approved by the Board. However, there was no such approval.

Transaero has also told the court that Aeroflot was aware that the loan could not be repaid. The airline believes that decision to provide the money was made in order to increase the debt of Transaero in order for Aeroflot to get rid of competitor and get its air routes. Representative of Aeroflot denied such allegations and said that the loan was given to Transaero so the airline would be able to fulfill its obligations to passengers.

Transaero found itself unable to pay its debts estimating 250 billion rubles ($3.9 billion). Government-approved plan of transferring 75% of companys shares to Aeroflot failed. Its problems resulted in a large number of flight cancels and delays.

In October, Sberbank and Alfa Bank filed bankruptcy petitions against the troubled airline. The Commercial Court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region initiated a bankruptcy procedure against Transaero on December 16.
Jehovahs Witnesses booklets declared extremist in Russian Ural

MOSCOW, August 22 (RAPSI)  The Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Russian Ural has declared booklets of the Jehovahs Witnesses extremist, RIA Novosti reported on Monday.

The court thus upheld a lower courts ruling.

According to court records, in January 2015, representatives of the Jehovahs Witnesses organization distributed religious reading materials at one of the shopping malls in Serov town, the Sverdlovsk region. Booklets were sent to several examinations which found that materials contain statements aimed to stir up hatred and enmity against other religions.

The Serov City Court has granted prosecutors motion and declared the booklet extremist. The Jehovahs Witnesses members appealed the ruling arguing that seizure of the reading materials constituted a violation of their civil rights.

Jehovahs Witnesses have had many legal problems in Russia.

On June 16, The Supreme Court of Russia on Thursday declared The Jehovahs Witnesses of Stary Oskol in the Belgorod Region an extremist organization and ruled to liquidate it.

On June 9, the court banned the Jehovahs Witnesses of Belgorod as extremist organization.

In March 2015, a court in Tyumen fined the organization 50,000 rubles ($782) and seized prohibited literature.

In January 2014, a court in Kurgan ruled to ban the organizations booklets as extremist. The books talk about how to have a happy life, what you can hope for, how to develop good relations with God and what you should know about God and its meaning.

In late December 2013, the leader of the sects group in Tobolsk, Siberia was charged with extremism and the prevention of a blood transfusion that nearly led to the death of a female member of the group.

In 2004, a court in Moscow dissolved and banned a Jehovahs Witnesses group on charges of recruiting children, encouraging believers to break from their families, inciting suicide and preventing believers from accepting medical assistance.

Jehovah's Witnesses is an international religious organization based in Brooklyn, New York. Since 2004 sever branches and chapters of the organization were banned and shut down in various regions of Russia.
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.
'OPEC Has Done It Again'

It seems talk of OPEC's demise as a market manager was premature. OPEC's talked up the oil price again. Essentially Saudi Arabia gets to have it both way. It's pumping flat out into a glutted market (thereby staying in the battle for market share against arch-rival Iran) while easing the price per barrel up to around $50, 2016's version of a good number.

How did they do it? According to Bloomberg, "This is all courtesy of some very well-timed comments from the Saudi oil minister [dangling the possibility of a freeze agreement when the cartel meets next month in Algiers]," said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York hedge fund focused on energy. "Theyve been successful over the last year in jawboning the market, and this is the latest example."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-21/-well-timed-opec-talk-forces-oil-bears-into-record-reversal
We should have man-free zones in schools, parks, youth activity centers and other places where many people gather. This is the suggestion put forward by rapper Linda Pira to Goteborgs-Posten, the daily paper of Sweden's second largest city Gothenburg.
This article first appeared in Les Echos.

PARIS  In the wake of last month's tragedy in Nice, just like after the attacks in Paris on November 13th, the same solution was put forward for France: the Israeli model, where the terrorist threat is part of daily life.

In Tel Aviv, military experts invited on television sets appeared to be modest, avoiding any kind of reference to an Israeli anti-terrorist model. The Jewish state, whose people have been through seven wars and two intifadas since its creation, has become a textbook case for how to handle a permanent state of insecurity. This expertise could be a source of inspiration for European decision-makers.

In the aftermath of the attacks in Paris, Cannes mayor David Lisnard called upon former Israeli Brigadier-General Nitzan Nuriel to help local authorities and emergency intervention teams prepare for a possible attack during the world-famous Cannes film festival. Last April Nuriel, who also headed Israel's anti-terrorism bureau from 2007 to 2012, conducted a terror simulation at the festivals convention center to test the citys reinforced security measures. He had previously carried out an audit based on lessons learned from the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2004 Madrid bombings, the two disasters professionals remember most.

One of his recommendations was to secure the seafront and enhance controls on all land and sea access points to the city of Cannes. Asked about the Nice attack, he told Les Echos: I have the feeling France wasnt really prepared for such a disaster.

Ben Gurion, the worlds safest airport

In the past 18 months, delegations of countries struck by terrorism have been visiting Israel's Ben Gurion International airport  considered the world's safest  to assess the country's fight against terrorism. A country where homeland security isnt the responsibility of the army, but of intelligence services and the police.

In February, former Nice mayor Christian Estrosi traveled to Israel, where he met the CEO of the Eagle Security and Defense company Giora Eiland, also the former director of the Israeli National Security Council. During his visit, Estrosi insisted on the need to be at the forefront of the fight through intelligence against cybercrime, considering that radicalization is done through social networks. A field in which the Jewish state excels, as it is one of the worlds pre-eminent cyber-powers along with the United States, China, Russia and the United Kingdom.

A third intifada?

Why is the Israeli approach so efficient? "For decades, Israel has been confronted with a multiform and disseminated threat," says David Khalfa, research associate for the think tank IPSE. "The country has suffered a series of terror attacks with an ever-changing modus operandi. Israel's anti-terrorism strategy has had to permanently adapt by taking on an approach based on anticipation and rapidity of reaction, with mixed results, but countries faced with an important terror threat are scrutinizing this experience," he says.

According to Khalfa, this threat has gone through important changes over four broad periods of time: First the 1970s with the attacks from the Palestinian fedayeen; then the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and its wave of suicide attacks; followed by the post-Oslo years during which Israel  faced with the second intifada  found itself targeted by rocket or missile fire from Hamas and Hezbollah; and now, the more recent escalation of car-ramming or knife attacks.

"Israeli anti-terrorism is based on defensive modes of action, such as safety barriers and military checkpoints, as well as offensive ones like infiltrations, preventive arrests, and targeted killings. This double-edged approach, coupled with its security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, allowed Israel to significantly bring down the number of major scale attacks, even though small-scale attacks by Palestinians with rudimentary means have taken over in the last few months," says Khalfa.

Intelligence as the cornerstone

The cornerstone of Israel's anti-terrorism system is the intelligence apparatus, which works in concentric circles: in the West Bank, at Israel's borders, and inside the country. Inside Israeli cities, the Jewish state relies on elite counter-terrorism units placed under police command, except for the former riot police unit Yasam, which now patrols on motorbikes inside Israel and directly answers to Shin Bet, the internal security service.

Israel can thus react extremely quickly in case of an attack, and Israeli civil society plays an especially important part in fighting terrorism. The army plays a crucial role, as every young Israeli is required to serve three years  two for women  under the flag. But there's also the fact that the authorities have made it easier to carry weapons, meaning that civilians can respond more quickly when there's an attack, not to mention the private protection companies which mushroomed at the beginning of the second intifada and its suicide attacks.

"The public's awareness and resilience are a key asset," explains Boaz Ganor, director of the International Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT) of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. The authorities take many preventive measures, such as banning vehicles from circulating in entire areas altogether during major events and gatherings. Checkpoints and barricades are also erected, an action plan that was reinforced during the recent wave of terror attacks that killed more than 31 Israelis, 4 foreigners and 207 Palestinians, including 130 assailants, since the fall of 2015.

A population aware of the risk

While this cycle of violence has produced 140 attacks with knives, guns or ramming cars initiated mostly by young Palestinians considered "lone wolves," it hasn't had the same psychological impact as the suicide bombings of the second intifada. "We've experienced worse but the 'knife intifada' has broken a run of six years of relative calm," says Ely Karmon, research director at the ICT. As a matter of fact, Israeli security forces have found themselves helpless against Palestinian assailants aged between 13 and 20, unknown to the intelligence services and acting mostly alone. But as usual, the operational adjustment has been swift: Blocks of concrete or metal rods were installed at bus stops to protect commuters and stop ramming attacks against exposed pedestrians, and the authorities raised awareness among the population.

Another defensive approach that's evolving is the monitoring of social networks. "Israel has invested heavily in this area," explains Khalfa. "Especially since it noticed the growth of ISIS's influence on certain young, self-radicalized Palestinians, for whom the fight is more in line with jihadism, as was recently observed in the attack in Tel Aviv's Sarona market."

That attack, on June 8, was carried out by two cousins from a West Bank village south of Hebron. They opened fire on people sitting at the terrace of a chocolate shop, killing four and wounding about fifteen people. According to Shin Bet's investigation, the two terrorists had decided to carry out an ISIS-inspired attack, but hadn't been officially recruited by the terror organization nor had they received help in the process. Against such attacks, even Israel hasn't found a solution yet.
New Abedin Emails Reveal Hillary Clinton State Department Gave Special Access to Top Clinton Foundation Donors

Crown Prince of Bahrain Forced to Go Through Foundation to See Clinton, after Pledging $32 Million to Clinton Global Initiative

Hollywood Executive Casey Wasserman, Slimfast Mogul Daniel Abraham, Controversial Appointee Rajiv Fernando also among Clinton Foundation Donors Granted Special Favors from Clinton State Department

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Judicial Watch today released 725 pages of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Hillary Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state. In many instances, the preferential treatment provided to donors was at the specific request of Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band.

The new documents included 20 Hillary Clinton email exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department, bringing the known total to date to 191 of new Clinton emails (not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over to the State Department). These records further appear to contradict statements by Clinton that, "as far as she knew," all of her government emails were turned over to the State Department.

The Abedin emails reveal that the longtime Clinton aide apparently served as a conduit between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton while Clinton served as secretary of state. In more than a dozen email exchanges, Abedin provided expedited, direct access to Clinton for donors who had contributed from $25,000 to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. In many instances, Clinton Foundation top executive Doug Band, who worked with the Foundation throughout Hillary Clinton's tenure at State, coordinated closely with Abedin. In Abedin's June deposition to Judicial Watch, she conceded that part of her job at the State Department was taking care of " Clinton family matters ."

Included among the Abedin-Band emails is an exchange revealing that when Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through "normal channels" at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened, however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours. According to the Clinton Foundation website , in 2005, Salman committed to establishing the Crown Prince's International Scholarship Program (CPISP) for the Clinton Global Initiative. And by 2010, it had contributed $32 million to CGI. The Kingdom of Bahrain reportedly gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. And Bahrain Petroleum also gave an additional $25,000 to $50,000

To: Huma Abedin





Sent: Tue Jun 23 1:29:42 2009





Subject:

Cp of Bahrain in tomorrow to Friday

Asking to see her
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
Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale

Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada.

Search Real Estate
Property details:

On Biggerstaff Mountain in Bostic, North Carolina. Lot 17, Hardwoods and Pine Trees galore, Lookout top of the mountain 7+/- acres. HOA, $250 a year. Private and Gated Community. Taxes are $220 in 2015. Super place for that cabin overlooking miles of NC Valleys and mountains. Purchased to build however health issues prevailed. Please contact me at (864) 578-4508 or (864) 505-4484 should you wish to make an appointment to visit the property...

Price: $ 47,900 Seller State of Residence: South Carolina Property Address: Lot 17 Fire Tower Road State/Province: North Carolina City: Bostic Type: Homesite, Lot Zoning: Residential Location: 280**, Bostic, North Carolina

You will be redirected to eBay



Nearby Residential
,



We're sorry, this article is not currently available
Images

Sorry, there are no recent results for popular images.
This Saturday, Aug. 13, 2016, photo, cars form a line near the race track at the Bonneville Salt Flats near Wendover, Utah. Speed-starved racers are finally back at Utah's world-famous Bonneville Salt Flats to hit speeds of 400 mph or more as they compete in Speed Week for the first time since 2013 after wet weather and rough salt cancelled the races for the last two years. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

SHARE

By MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press

BONNEVILLE SALT FLATS, Utah (AP)  Blinding white salt stretches across the earth to distant purple mountain ranges, an otherworldly landscape famous for providing a natural track for racers seeking breakneck speeds but fragile enough that rain can easily break it down.

Thousands of adrenaline junkies have descended this week on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats, coming from as far away as New Zealand, Japan and Russia. In this stark place about 100 miles west of Salt Lake City, they have set up a caravan of campers, tents and trailers as they spend a week trying to beat the clock  some topping speeds of 400 mph.

They haul modified motorcycles, vintage hot rods and roadsters, and custom vehicles that look like rockets or spaceships, with names such as "Disturbing Da Peace" or "Loosenuts Special." They'll wait for hours in line under the brutal sun just to get a chance to zoom across the flats, hoping to see if their latest modifications help them beat their previous records or go fast enough to earn a spot in the "200 mph Club."

While the racers are glad to be back at Speed Week, which runs through Friday, it's a bittersweet return after a two-year hiatus marked by disappointments and accusations that federal land managers have failed to protect the unique area.

U.S. officials partly blame heavy rains and say they're trying to preserve the salt by requiring a nearby mining company to pump brine onto the flats each year.

Wet weather and rough salt scuttled the major races in 2014 and 2015, and organizers say they no longer find enough smooth salt to set up raceways of 10 miles or more to give many vehicles enough room to hit top speeds and safely slow down.

This year, organizers with the Southern California Timing Association found enough dry, relatively smooth salt to eke out three racetracks for Speed Week, the largest of several annual races at the flats.

Racers say that while they're grateful weather has been favorable and they're whipping across the salt again, they pointed out the less-than-pristine conditions.

"It looks thinner to me," said Ben York, a driver from Roseville, California, who has been coming to the flats since 2009. His team was trying to break a 334 mph record with their vehicle the "Adrenaline Rush," an elongated racecar style known as a Lakester.

York said that when the salt is flat, it's very good, but this year it feels bumpy and coarse.

"Compared to past years, it's spotty at best," said Dallas Volk of Bountiful, Utah, whose family has been racing at Bonneville for nearly six decades.

Volk, 49, who first came to the races as a toddler, was selling T-shirts and other gear out of a trailer to support the Save the Salt organization, one of several racing groups calling for federal land managers to keep the salt from depleting and lobbying members of Congress to step in.

"You can definitely tell it's not the same salt it was five or six years ago," Volk said.

His father, Larry Volk, pulled out a pickax and struck it into the salt, revealing a layer of mud about an inch below, creating a speedway that's less hard and fast than it used to be. He said that when he started racing in 1958, they could find 14 miles of speedway where the salt top was 7 or 8 inches thick.

"That's what we'd like to see it get back to," he said.

Monsoon storms are partly to blame for the cancellations, but it's unclear exactly why there appears to be a smaller, thinner expanse of smooth salt.

The racing community says nearby potash mining is draining a salty aquifer that helps replenish the flats each year.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the flats, said it requires the mining company to pump several hundred thousand tons of brine onto the flats every winter so that when the area begins to bake under the summer sun, the water evaporates and the salt crust thickens.

Racers want to see much more brine pumped on the flats every year and are working with Republican U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart on legislation to restore the area. His office said it's still drafting the legislation and would not offer details.

Larry Volk said congressional action is a last-ditch effort to try to preserve the area for decades of future racing.

Though conditions are poor this year, Volk said the speed demons are still glad to be back.

"We're racers, OK?" he said. "Give us anything and we'll try to race on it."
SHARE

The Siskiyou Sheriff's Office raided seven marijuana grows over a week starting Aug. 14.

Agents found marijuana plants, processed marijuana, guns and water being diverted at the various grow operations and made several arrests.

On Aug. 16 the Siskiyou Interagency Marijuana Investigation Team served a search warrant in the 18000 block of Camp Creek Road, Hornbrook.

According to the Sheriff's Office, agents arrested Daniel Donovan, 26, on the suspicion of unauthorized cultivation, possession of marijuana for sale, and maintaining a location for unlawful purposes.

Agents seized 187 marijuana plants, guns and concentrated cannabis, according to law enforcement.

Donovan also faces charges for illegally diverting water from Camp Creek, said the Sheriff's Office.

On Aug. 18 agents served six search warrants in the Shasta Vista area at six separate properties with grow sites.

Agents seized 600 marijuana plants and five people were arrested on suspicion of illegal cultivation and drug-trafficking.

Four pounds of processed marijuana, two guns, and one generator were seized.

The Siskiyou County District Attorney's Office Bureau of Investigations, California Highway Patrol, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Lawn Enforcement, Etna Police Department and Siskiyou Unified Major Investigations Team were also involved in the raid.

During the raid a man ran from the scene, but was found hiding in a rock formation by a CHP officer and later arrested.

SIMIT is a joint unit formed through the Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney's Office.

The Sheriff's Office is also working with the U.S. Forest Service to take down large-scale marijuana grows on public land in Siskiyou County. During the week of Aug. 14 investigators seized 12,320 marijuana plants in the Rock Creek area, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Anyone with information about an illegal marijuana cultivation site can contact SCSO's 24-hour Dispatch Center 841-2900.
SHARE

The 2010 Citizens United decision  in which a bitterly divided Supreme Court ruled that corporations have political speech rights and shouldn't have limits on their independent political expenditures  has been depicted as a disaster for American democracy by most Democrats and nearly all progressives since the moment it was announced.

Former President Jimmy Carter says donations without limits could lead to the "complete subversion" of democracy as politicians traded favors for campaign support. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren repeatedly characterize corporate donations as barely disguised bribes.

This line of thinking has an appealing clarity. When a corporation, a special interest or an individual gives money to a politician, a group supporting a politician or to a politician's pet cause, it is an attempt to win influence.

This perspective also offers the simplest way to see through the double talk and rationalizing that perpetually surround Hillary and Bill Clinton. Once it is applied, the way the Clinton Foundation functions looks just as tawdry as the corporate chicanery that Carter, Sanders and Warren fear and decry. We have a former president and a prospective future president selling access, the appearance of access and the Clinton aura to Wall Street giants, governments such as Saudi Arabia and Germany, tycoons from several nations, multinational corporations and more. The foundation has collected $2 billion since its 2001 founding. Since then, the Clintons have also amassed more than $150 million in speaking fees, often from the same donors.

These special interests are not giving money because the foundation is such an effective charitable organization; a 2013 New York Times investigation made it seem chaotic. They are not paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to hear shopworn speeches because they expect to obtain profound insights. They want the Clintons' help, and they're willing to pay for it.

That is the obvious conclusion to draw from The New York Times' 2015 bombshell about how a Russian firm obtained control of one-fifth of all U.S. uranium production capacity from 2009-13  which required approval from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton  while the company's owner used a Canadian partnership to surreptitiously convey $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Emails released this month have drawn fresh attention to this dynamic. Contrary to Clinton's promise to President Obama before she was named his secretary of state, the emails show contacts between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department in which a foundation employee, Doug Band, seeks a favor  access to a top U.S. diplomat  for a donor who is a Lebanese billionaire, and is assured by Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin, that help is forthcoming. The tone of the exchange indicates how routine the interaction was.

Inevitably, the Clintons' apologists will depict such concerns as old news  and in one sense, they are. The 1996 novel "Primary Colors" -- journalist Joe Klein's thinly disguised fictional account of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign  hinges on whether an idealistic aide can stomach the sleaziness of the faux Clintons because of the good he thinks they can achieve. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has mined this territory for years.

But just because this pattern is what we've come to expect doesn't mean we should come to accept it. Just because her opponent for the White House is awful doesn't mean Hillary Clinton should escape the harsh judgment her conduct deserves. America deserves much better options than these.

This editorial originally appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
'Population density and the lack of infrastructure are two primary reasons to look at India as a market.'

'Hyperloop can build the system with a sixth of the budget of high-speed rail, using a fraction of energy.'

'Lufthansa and BMW sponsor most of our events. We are not a threat to them. We are better than them.'

Hyperloop concept was first released in 2013 by Tesla and SpaceXs Elon Musk as an alternative to high-speed rail. Musk said he wanted to make Hyperloop an open-source project for high-speed transportation. Several separate entities have since been formed to explore the possibilities.

Musks white paper had the basic concept of how a pod could propel over 100,000 people at the speed of sound, from one city to another in vacuum tubes. It felt like an idea from the world of HG Wells. Within a year, two companies said they had raised money. One is Hyperloop Transportation Technology (HTT) and the other Hyperloop One - a Boeing or Airbus of the Hyperloop world.

They have slugged it out in the press for months, claiming to have an upper hand in technology. Bibop Gresta, bottom, left, COO, HTT, spoke to Patanjali Pahwa on Sunday at the i5 summit organised by the Indian Institute of Management, Indore. Excerpts:

Image: 2016 is a breakthrough year for Hyperloop. Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters

Your visit comes at a time when India is betting big on high-speed trains? Do you see a market here for HTT?

We are here primarily to speak to your politicians and see if there is a real interest in solving the transportation problems of this country. The population density and the lack of infrastructure are two primary reasons to look at India as a market.

India is talking about implementing new ways of transportation. You have been talking, for years, about high-speed rail. I believe, this could be the worst thing to do. It is obsolete technology and it will be a burden on the next generation.

India doesnt need to repeat the mistakes of other countries. And high-speed rail is a mistake. These high-speed rail systems mean you spend too much money and cant recoup the investment.

What do you mean by mistakes? Please explain.

I was talking to the Chinese rail authority officials before I came to India. They said they had to speed up the line three times because the system had reached its maximum capacity on certain routes.

Above 600 kmph, there is so much resistance in the air that it becomes liquid. The amount of energy you need to increase the speed depends solely on how much energy is pushed in. That is expensive and doesnt work in the long term.

How does Hyperloop change that?

When you talk about Hyperloop, there is no air. So theres no resistance. Theoretically, you can go at the speed of light. We can build the system with a sixth of the budget of high-speed rail, using a fraction of energy.

The way we produce energy is interesting: solar panels, wind, regenerative energy and in cases where solar is not possible, we will use geo thermal. This means, we will produce 30 per cent more energy than we consume. Hyperloop effectively becomes a giant power station that also happens to transport people.

But is India a viable market? In Mumbai and Bengaluru, it took a better part of a decade to get simple Metro lines ready.

The best place to build a Hyperloop is underground but right now because we dont have the technology, we will build it on pylons.

Building on pylons means we can take advantage of the right of way that already exists. We can use existing infrastructure to give us an entry and exit into the city. It has miles and miles of right way. If needed, we can start building it now. We have already analysed two potential corridors in the country.

What about the displacement of the local population? That is one of the big reasons why projects get delayed here.

Right now, when we build a railway of highway, we make a barrier. Farmers cannot pass to the other side, neither can animals. It is disastrous. Building on pylons takes it all out. The way we build it, the pylons can resist an earthquake with magnitude of 9 on the Richter scale.

We put a pylon every 60 meters and dont block the road. The pylons are made in a way that the electricity produced by the Hyperloop can be given out, it can collect water, we can bring electricity and bandwidth.

We increase the value of the land. India can be a good country to build that. Instead of using a technology which needs high maintenance cost, we can build something cheap and clean. There is no expense to run it because there is no friction or mechanical parts.

You have been accused by various media outlets of being too secretive about your designs. You havent even released the results of the tests.

What you see right now on the internet is not what will emerge. Why wont we give out our designs? We have another player in the market and we dont want to give them anything they can copy. They came in one year after us and thats what they do. You will see us releasing some designs at a time where it cant be used against us.

But what about testing and prototypes?

We are building the prototype right now. We hope to get a few permissions in February for our project in LA. In 2019, we should have our first ride. This we could foresee. What we could not were our parallel projects. We signed two big deals: one in Slovakia and the other we havent announced yet.

Internet is full of speculation that the second deal is in Dubai?

I wont give you the name. But it could be a country which could see the first Hyperloop system in the world.

Image: Passengers entering the Hyperloop.

Even before Los Angeles?

Possibly.

Do you see any Indian partnerships on the horizon?

We have hired 14 people in India who are discreetly working for us. We will announce details of these partnerships soon. We believe India could be the focal point for engineering and computer programming. We are doing a call to action for all companies that want to join us. We have 600 people working for us in 52 countries. But they will come on as consultants, not acquisitions. Acquisitions are also on the table.

What is your long-term plan?

We want to create a sustainable company. We dont want to use exhaustible resources as unlimited ones. If you had to build a high-speed rail system between two cities in the US, you will need to keep the mines occupied for 24 years, at 99 per cent of capacity. And imagine transporting steel to the site because it can only be welded on site. This is not sustainable or smart.

We dont want to be builders. We seek to make local partnerships to help us build our system. Maybe in phase two or three we might go there. But right now we just want to be a platform. We want to be Disney.

Concord started with a similar ambition of reducing time of travel but it retired in 2003. How do you stop HTT from becoming another Concord?

Concord did two things wrong. One, it was expensive and polluting. Two, it was a blackhole for other service providers. Airlines make money of business class and first class passengers. They pay a premium so the rest of them can pay less and travel.

If you take away the first class passengers, the airline industry collapses. We dont do that. We are complimentary to others. Not a replacement. In fact, Lufthansa and BMW sponsor most of our events. We are not a threat to them. We are better than them.
If RBI's recommendations are finalised, it will give more teeth to the existing fair practice code

Kumar Karpe, chief executive officer (CEO), TechProcess Payment Services, an electronic payments services firm, remembers the harrowing experience of a person who used his credit card in the US.

Even after he came back to India, his card was used again. When he lodged a complaint with the bank, he had to prove the fraud by showing his boarding pass, stamp of immigration and other documentary evidence. "Currently, the onus is on the customer to prove fraud and it is a tricky situation,'' he says.

Victims like him might finally get some relief. With the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issuing a draft circular on customer protection last week, which seeks to limit the liability of customers in unauthorised electronic banking transactions, things could improve soon.

There are two key benefits proposed in the circular: The liability on customers could be lower if it is the fault of the bank and if you report within three working days of receiving the communication.

While some of these recommendations are already prescribed in the Banking Codes and Standards Board of India (BCSBI)'s fair practice code for banks, if

Bank frauds: Limited liability for customers? RBI finalises the circular, the rules will become mandatory. "The main purpose of BCSBI's banking codes is to limit the customer's liability in unauthorised electronic banking transactions and compensate the customer for any loss of interest in the case of debit cards and does not bear any additional burden of interest, in case of credit card transactions," says A C Mahajan, Chairman, BCSBI.

These proposals, if accepted, will apply to banking transactions-remote/online and face-to-face/proximity payment transactions. The former do not require the physical payment instrument like credit or debit card to be present, such as internet banking, mobile banking or card not present transaction.

The latter include transactions where the physical instrument such as card or mobile is present, that is, ATM or point-of-sales transactions.

Whether these will also include transactions done through non-bank payment instruments such as e-wallet, is not clear, say experts. While RBI gives a licence to e-wallet companies, whether these guidelines will apply to them is yet to be seen, says Deepak Chandnani, CEO, Worldline South Asia and Middle East, a payment and transactions company.

Zero liability: A customer has zero liability if the fraud or negligence is on the part of the bank, even if the customer does not report the fraudulent transaction. If the fault is neither the customer's nor the bank's but the customer notifies the bank within three working days of receiving a communication about the transaction, there is no liability on the customer.

Limited liability: If the customer has shared payment details with an unauthorised person, the customer will be liable for the entire loss till the unauthorised transaction is reported to the bank. Once the transaction is reported, any loss after that will be borne by the bank.

In cases, where neither bank nor customer is responsible for the fraud, and there is a delay of four to seven working days on part of the customer in informing the bank, the customer's liability will be limited to the transaction value or Rs 5,000, whichever is lower.

If there is a delay in reporting beyond seven working days, the customer liability will be determined, according to the bank's board approved policy.

The circular also says once the customer informs the bank about a fraudulent transaction, the bank should credit the amount to the customer's account within 10 working days from the date of receiving the notification.

Banks may also use their discretion to waive any customer liability, in case of fraudulent transactions due to customer negligence.

Banks should resolve a complaint within 90 days of receiving it. Banks must also ensure that in case of a debit card or bank account, the customer does not lose out on the interest. And, in the case of credit card transactions, the customer does not bear any additional burden of interest.

The circular further says the burden of proving customer liability in unauthorised electronic banking transactions shall be on the bank. The bank's policy shall also specify the maximum time period for establishing customer liability, after which the customer will be compensated.

According to Reshmi Khurana, managing director, Kroll, India, a company that investigates fraud and data breach, the current rules pertaining to fraudulent transactions were set in 2002 and are quite open-ended. There was a general requirement for banks to respond quickly and promptly to address the complaint but there was a need to introduce a law about who is liable - which is what RBI has done with the current draft proposal.

"Currently, if the value of the fraudulent transaction is small, most banks reimburse customers in order to avoid reputational risk and to retain customers. But, the draft proposal puts the onus firmly on banks. It will have a trickle-down effect on smaller banks,'' she says.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com
home Tech LG V20 release date, specs news: Smartphone's release details revealed

The upcoming LG V20 has recently made headlines following an alleged leak that was posted on Reddit. According to the reports, the leaked details revealed the new smartphone's pricing information and launch plans including its availability, promotions and pre-order schedule. There are speculations saying that the handset may arrive on T-Mobile in the United States as the leaked information was shared on the company's subReddit.

A Redditor that is connected to the company shared the leaked details to T-Mobile subReddit, which could indicate the arrival of the handset in the U.S.

Redditor, Jordanpeterson234512, claims that he was also the one who leaked the important details about the new Samsung Galaxy Note 7's arrival on the same mobile carrier.

"Hey guys, I leaked a few weeks back the Note 7 bonuses on here, forgot my temp login but I got some new stuff for you guys," Jordanpeterson234512 said on his Reddit post. "No final release date as of yet, but more than likely September 23rd considering it is still the temp date."

The post also suggested that the upcoming LG V20 will come with multiple bonuses. Bonus 1 will include "Extra battery and Enhanced Hand Grip." Bonus 2 includes a Memory Module Attachment, while Bonus 3 will give users one year subscription of Hulu streaming and 3 Vudu movie rentals.

Jordanpeterson234512 ended his post by saying: "As usual, will be here for an hour or so for any questions. I have not seen the phone at all, this is just documentation."

According to Techno Buffalo, the device will come out with a $650 price tag and preorders will start on Sept. 14.

Some people may find the leaked information legit; however, it is important to take these details as rumors and speculations until LG decides to confirm them.

As of the moment, the company has remained its silence with regard to the rumored release of its new smartphone.
There were reports that Infosys had laid off 500 people in the aftermath of losing its multi-million pound deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Infosys on Monday said it has laid off "a few" people on grounds of non-performance and disciplinary issues but denied reports of 500 jobs being cut by the country's second largest software services company.

"We would like to clarify that there are no layoffs at Infosys. There have been a few separations that are in response to performance and disciplinary issues, which take place on an ongoing basis and this is no different from previous years," an Infosys spokesperson said.

She added that the number of 500 people being laid off is "incorrect and the number is far below".

There were reports that Infosys had laid off 500 people in the aftermath of losing its multi-million pound deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland.

RBS had announced that it will not pursue its plan to separate and list a new UK standalone bank, Williams & Glyn (W&G), for which Infosys was a key technology partner. The move led to ramp down of about 3,000 jobs at the Bengaluru-based company.

At the end of first quarter of FY2017, Infosys had 1.97 lakh employees with an attrition rate of 21 per cent during April-June, 2016.

Infosys said it offers counselling to employees not meeting the expected standards of performance.

"After adequate counselling, those found consistently deviating from expectations are asked to find alternate employment. This applies to employees across levels and is not connected with any business situation that is not in the control of the employee. The numbers are very low and this is no different from what we have done in the past," it said.
'Cultural property crimes have been linked by the United Nations and others to terrorism.'

'These links show the perpetrators to be associated with major criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS.'

For an excited five-year-old boy, perched on the edge of his seat in a New England theatre, nothing could be more thrilling than watching the exploits of an archaeologist-professor, played by Harrison Ford, who escapes his university classroom to heroically assist North Indian villagers recover the holy Sankara stone relic belonging to their ancient temple.

The Steven Spielberg film and Indiana Jones -- its swaggering, fedora-sporting hero, who salvages historical loot -- made a lasting impression on the little boy. Especially since he was seeing Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom for the second time!

He had already seen it on television at home and hankered to see Indiana Jones' swashbuckling antics, king size, on the big screen too. But his town lacked a cinema. The youngster then dragged his folks to see it in a theatre in a neighbouring town. And, every Halloween thereafter, he religiously dressed up as Indiana Jones, in khakhis, black leather, hat, bullwhip and all.

So durable was the movie and Jones' impact that when Brenton Easter grew up and left the "rural, rural" north-eastern American town of "2,000 or less," whose name he does not wish to disclose, and went to Brandeis, Massachusetts, he chose to study, along with anthropology, archaeology like the good ol' Dr Cowboy.

When he started looking for a job, he was certain it would be for Homeland Security Department's New York office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In Indy style, when he was appointed a special agent, Easter became a rescuer of relics, mounting perilous investigations on behalf of the US government to uncover robbed artefacts. A real-life noble treasure hunter.

Quite reminiscent too of the beloved cinematic character Dr Henry Walton aka Indiana Jones Jr, this agent is something of a 'non-superhero superhero' -- low-profile, unpretentious but passionate and focussed on his work, say those who know him.

"At first blush, Brent Easter is a soft-spoken, doe-eyed gentleman with a passion for antiquities. But that disarming first impression belies the tenacious pit bull of a federal agent whose investigative work has done more to curb the illicit antiquities trade that anyone I know," says Jason Felch, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist who has investigated the antiquities trade for many years.

As one of the most experienced agents at the antiquity division of the ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), Easter, along with his team (up considerably from the small unit they began as a decade ago), has done a tremendous job behind the scenes, raising awareness about the trafficking of stolen cultural objects and their clandestine passage to America from their country of origin.

Every operation to return an object -- more than 8,000 apparently till date -- from the US to its home culture -- Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Turkey, Syria (in the past) among others -- has the invisible signature of Easter and his colleagues on it, even if on a telephonic interview from New York, which takes 10 months to materialise because the agent really keeps busy, he is matter of fact and laconic about his role.

More importantly, Easter ought to be a household name for all of us in India. He is a man we Indians, who are proud of our centuries-old culture and history, owe a huge debt to.

Easter & Co, have, over a decade plus, repossessed, among other looted historical treasures, innumerable stolen Indian artefacts and notified Indian authorities to have them rightfully sent back to India, many in connection with the Hidden Idol Operation, the largest US seizure of stolen antiquities worth $107.6 million, leading to the arrest of kingpin dealer Subhash Kapoor.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in America to address the United States Congress in June, he stopped by at the Indian embassy in Washington DC to take back a Chola-era Sripuranthan village Ganesha idol (stolen a decade before from Tamil Nadu and sold for $245,000) and 200 other valuable items that were handed over to him by US Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Easter was not there.

But, yes, he and his team were the people behind this haul.

This special agent has been to India on the trail of a stolen antiquities case. To Mumbai and Tamil Nadu. "I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I loved the culture and the people and the food!" he says,

He popped in at the Taj Mahal, Agra, and to see our capital, when his work was done and he had put his badge away. "I hope to go back. Both for business and pleasure in the future," he adds.

It is both laudable and ironic that the tiny boy, who admired Doc Indy with all his little heart, grew up to become a figure larger than his film hero. In an exclusive interview to Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel, over e-mail and on the phone, Easter discusses how he and the ICE squad go out reclaiming historical treasure and chase the villains who trade in it.

They painstakingly build up dossiers for difficult-to-pull-off criminal prosecutions, based on substantiated facts because, as Easter told CNN, the facts are vital just the way Indy put it: 'Archeology is not about finding the truth, it's about finding facts.'

IMAGE: How the stolen treasures were transported.

Your role in the recovery of hundreds of Indian idols and antiquities that are now slowly making their way back to India, as part of Operation Hidden Idol and other operations mounted by the ICE, makes you a big figure in India.

How did you get into this profession? And into recovering antiquities?

When I was growing up, there was a movie character named Indiana Jones. He kind of inspired me as a child to want to do something along the lines of hunting and rescuing treasure. And giving things back to villages.

There is even a movie called (Indiana Jones And The) Temple Of Doom where Indiana Jones recovers artefacts for a village in India! That was definitely an inspiration.

I joined (the) government (service) because I had learned there was a group in New York that did some cultural property investigations. It took me a little while to get into this group.

But when I got there, about 10 years ago, I really loved the work and loved the people I was working with. And I have been successful at working on this stuff.

What do you love most about the work?

The opportunity to do something good while stopping something bad.

I get to catch the bad guys and save a bit of history at the same time. That's very satisfying.

What is the high point of your daily work?

There are numerous high points in this field. It is gratifying when you recover an artefact. Doing so stopped it from going to the people who are trying to profit off another peoples's history and culture.

It is very, very satisfying, gratifying to give those pieces back later on in the investigation, when the pieces have been forfeited and (can be) repatriated.

It is also incredible if you can put handcuffs on a person who has been making a profit off of someone else's property.

There are a lot of different high points in an investigation -- high points that occur for me, hopefully, on a fairly regular basis.

Probably no raid to uncover antiquities is similar to another? Without divulging anything confidential, can you please tell us if is there is some way in which you plan a raid? And how it happens? How it evolves?

I don't really term anything I do as a raid -- what we do is conduct operations.

Operations are typically long-term, multi-person investigations that we conduct in an effort to try and disrupt or dismantle transnational criminal organisations that are dealing in cultural property and profiting from it.

One of the goals is to see if we can link these individuals to other crimes as well, whether it is money laundering or other types of smuggling.

Cultural property crimes have been linked by the United Nations and others to terrorism. These links show the perpetrators to be associated with major criminal and terrorist networks like ISIS.

This is an issue that concerns not just our shared history, but also our current levels of international security.

Inside those operations, hopefully, we will have arrests; hopefully, we will have search warrants conducted. I think search warrants might be what you are thinking of when you hear raids.

Yes, and when you find something? Either in a shipment? Or in someone's house? Warehouse?

Right, right. In some of those search warrants we have executed, we have recovered hundreds of artefacts.

We have conducted search warrants in different kinds of locations. Some of the (places) we have seen are labs where people were getting huge amounts of antique coins or numismatic material or other types of metal-detected antiquities -- they have to recondition them in order to be able to sell them.

(They have) all kinds of apparatuses, magnifying glasses and pots of chemicals in order to try to bring those things up to marketable conditions.

We have done (laughs) search warrants in very uncomfortable situations -- in little storage units where temperatures, literally, might be 100 plus degrees. Or you might end up inside someone's garage.

And you will find some of the weirdest things inside of these garages. Like ancient Egyptian sarcophagi.

(These raids then) run the ambit from smaller antiquities to large. From cold to hot temperature conditions. From first-class storage units or high-end apartments to some of the most despicable, (rundown) conditions you can imagine.

It is the same with shipments. Sometimes, you will see something packaged exceptionally well. At other times, a shipment is packaged incredibly poor(ly).

You will see, unfortunately, the antiquity or cultural property suffer in some of those poor conditions. You feel the lack of regard for the history and culture, which is sad.

'When cases are made public, these networks adapt and change to elude the authorities. That can be seen with the recent theft of a Jain idol of Lord Mahavira from Bihar.'

Is the Subhash Kapoor case a watershed when it comes to stolen Asian antiquities?

Has a lot changed after Kapoor was caught in terms of bringing about awareness and cleaning up things in general, on all sides?

There are pros and cons when a case like Operation Hidden Idol goes public.

It is great to heighten awareness within the art trade that stolen cultural property is out there. It is also important for the public to realise that this is a serious issue.

Unfortunately, there is still much work to be done when combating transnational criminal networks dealing in illicit cultural property.

When cases are made public, these sophisticated networks adapt their methods and change with the times in an effort to elude the authorities. (That) can be seen with the recent theft of a Jain idol of Lord Mahavira from Bihar (earlier this year).

People are still committing thefts and individuals are still smuggling and buying illicit cultural property.

It is a trade as old as civilisation and it won't end any time soon. The demand may have diminished, but it hasn't disappeared.

You said you first encountered a stolen Indian artefact nearly a decade ago. Would you say that you are pretty much an authority on identifying an Indian piece, its date or period?

One of the things we have been able to do here in New York is that the agency has become exceptionally (adept) at utilising sources.

We have been doing this for about 10 years (now). That allows me and my group the opportunity to obtain sources and to network and find resources within almost every single aspect of the trade.

If we need an expert for Syrian artefacts, we have got one.

If we need a person we can count on for Indian artefacts, we actually have quite a few (experts) at this point.

If we need somebody who will help us (with a) recast or with a restoration or if we need to see if something is a certain age or (for a) chemical analysis -- we have got experts that can do almost every single aspect of the trade.

A lot of the agents, like myself, have become very good at what we do (but) we still rely on those experts.

We know that, while we have to look at everything, they look at only one specific type of (historical) material. That way, if we ever do go to court, their opinions will be much harder to refute than any of ours.

So basically you have a good gut feeling about artefacts which you back up with connections with all kinds of experts. Would that be how to sum it up?

Yes. But it is not just the experts that we utilise. It is our contacts, our sources that we have developed over the past 10 years. That's one of the reasons why we have been so successful.

In fact, we changed the model, I think, over the last decade, of how these investigations are being conducted. We have gone from the seize and repatriate model, which is what we used to do.

We used to find artefacts predominantly, recover them, forfeit them and repatriate them.

Now, we are actually going after the individuals who are responsible, both here and abroad, for stealing another nation's cultural property, for stealing what might be considered a peoples's identity and heritage and giving it back.

So we have created experts, yes. But (also) sources.

People who will help us from inside the shipping community.

People who will help us from inside the dealer community. The restorer community.

People who really are aspects (participants in) the trade. Not just academics at a university. Or professors of different types of (historical) material and culture. Really people from all ranges of the trade.

It is very hard to talk about figures. But do you have any measure of knowing how many Indian antiquities are still out there in America, which are recently stolen but not discovered yet? (Interpol, two years ago, estimated the illegal trade was worth $9 billion.)

That's a great question. I don't think anybody can give you a solid number. Or figure. One of the reasons for that is that I don't think there is anyone in India who can tell you how much was there. And how much has gone missing.

I can tell you that, over the last 10 years, our agency, working with CBP (US Customs and Border Protection) has identified numerous instances where Indian antiquities have been either smuggled into the United States or appeared to have been stolen and imported into the United States.

I think we recovered some Indian antiquities just this last March and the people still dealing in this illicit material should be ashamed. Especially after seeing how Operation Hidden Idol has exposed how ripe the market is with problems.

So, although people are becoming aware that this is a problem, (there is still a) market for Indian antiquities.

The market is starting to become aware that there are some problems with this portion of the trade; that there might be some issues. I think they are reacting to that.

Hopefully, the trade of illicit antiquities out of India will decrease. Awareness was (boosted) with some of our successes.

It is also going to have an impact, not just on the trade here in the United States and abroad, but on how things progress in India.

I have been reading about additional arrests down in Tamil Nadu. That's wonderful. I am glad that we have been able to help and to provide whatever assistance and evidence we can.

I think the collaboration that is occurring between investigators and prosecutors, and between countries, with regard to these investigations is very, very important. Hopefully, it will continue to grow.

(Easter told National Geographic in June: 'I don't always know the good guys around the world, the other law enforcers in different countries. But the bad guys all seem to know each other. It's like they're on speed dial.'

He was recently informed by a collaborator that smugglers/dealers have gotten to know about ICE's successes to which the special agent said grimly to National Geographic: 'Guess that means I've got their attention. Good. Now I know I'm doing my job.')

We are in 2016. Let's look at it over a 10 year time frame. What are the chances that the journey of a stolen Indian antiquity travelling secretly from a historic site in India to America will remain unbroken today? And how does today compare with how it was 10 years ago or five years ago?

I think the big difference between five or 10 years ago and now is the level of awareness. People are much more cognisant that there is an issue. Cognisant that there is illicit trade. Because of that, the market is adapting and changing.

I also (believe) that custom officers, both here and abroad, are probably trying to look for more of these problematic shipments. That's one way in which things have changed.

So is it 50 per cent better? Or 90 per cent better than say five or 10 years ago?

I think it is impossible to give a number on that right now. Because we don't know what numbers were in the past.

But I think the odds have dramatically decreased especially since the levels of awareness have increased.

'It is a trade as old as civilisation and it won't end any time soon. The demand may have diminished, but it hasn't disappeared.'

Museums across America -- and across the world, Australia, Europe -- now understand the issue of pilfered artefacts. They are trying very hard to make sure they are not acquiring new stolen antiquities. But isn't it still happening in a small way? Accidentally? Or through carelessness?

What I have seen, for the most part, from the museum community in the United States and abroad, (is that) when there is a problem they work with law enforcement to try and remedy it.

When I deal with them, they are extremely agreeable and complicit. They help me out.

The Honolulu Museum (of Art) was one of the first ones we worked with, with great success. They helped us immensely. They helped us to go beyond what we were originally looking for.

I think that museums are currently trying to do the right thing. You are always going to have people who are trying to pull a fast one.

Crime exists, right? That's why I am here. But for the most part, I think people are genuinely trying to do the right thing.

I think that's what you see across the board with these institutions. So I don't think it is fair to say that an institution, whether it is an auction house or a museum as a whole is doing something wrong.

If they do do something wrong, then it is probably one individual responsible for that, not an institution as a whole.

Could there exceptions to the rule? Well, of course. That's what I am here, to try and find out.

I applaud museums actually at this point for their assistance. I find a lot of private collectors have also been very helpful in terms of the investigations.

Have attitudes changed considerably in America and the world over with reference to how Asian antiquities are acquired?

The climate surrounding the acquisition of art in the world has steadily changed since the UNESCO agreement in 1970. Most museums now hold themselves to a high standard when they look to purchase cultural property.

In most cases, it appears that collectors and institutions are doing their due diligence; however, there will always be the few exceptions to the rule.

We just saw ancient treasure lost to history due to ISIS terrorism in Palmyra, Syria. It leads to views that it is first-world museums that keep treasures of other cultures safe.

Many are of the view: 'Well, we are keeping it more safe than them.' And better a stolen artefact in a museum than it being lost entirely to history.

In India too, so many of our ancient treasures are not looked after well enough. Is that an attitude you are up against?

There are some people who do have that attitude. People that feel some things of history will be safer in institutions.

And their homes?

And in their homes.

But you know what? I am not paid to have that opinion. I am paid to find violations of law. So I don't concern myself with those arguments.

What I concern myself with is if someone is knowingly transporting or moving stolen property or if any import regulations or laws are being broken.

If somebody is going to let their thinking cloud their judgement and do something wrong, then I will enforce the law.

If their opinions are not affecting whether or not they are breaking the law, then they are fully entitled to them.

You mentioned that a lot of work needs to be done to keep antiquities from getting stolen and leaving the country of their origin. In the case of India, what are two key points? Especially anything that needs to be done from the Indian side?

One of the things that made this case (Hidden Idol) very successful was the inventory that was held by the French Institute of Pondicherry (Institut Francais de Pondichery, the 1955-established institution that studies Indian civilisation and culture and has a 160,000 photo archive devoted to ancient South Indian art).

Those inventories of what were in (Tamil Nadu) temples allowed us to (prove) that certain artefacts had been were stolen from those temples.

What that shows you is that inventories are incredibly useful and helpful to making criminal cases.

(In) Other cases (relating) to Indian antiquities, theft reports and records showing that something had (belonged to someone) had been useful. Or documentation of a person's property or temple property. Basically, paper trails.

Is the ICE now well-outfitted to deal with intercepting smuggled Asian, specifically Indian, artefacts? What are some of the system changes that have come about? Is there enough manpower?

HSI (Homeland Security Investigations) is definitely better equipped to investigate and ultimately to disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal organisations dealing in cultural property now than we ever have been in the past.

We annually train agents all over the country to investigate these crimes and there are now two or more agents at most offices and ports around the nation prepared and searching for illicit cultural property.

We have continued to increase our numbers of seizures and arrests on a regular basis and it is anticipated that we will continue to successfully combat cultural property crime.

IMAGING: Rajesh Karkera/Rediff.com
At least 14 people have been reported killed in Bihar and over 5 lakh have been affected in one of the worst floods in Patna since 1975, triggered by a sudden discharge of 11.67 lakh cusecs (cubic foot per second) of water into Sone river from Indrapuri barrage in Rohtas district.

IMAGE: Villagers walk through flood waters at a village in Patna district of Bihar. Photograph: PTI Photo

The enormous discharge of water in Bihar marooned nearly 50,000 people in Patna alone and 10,000 had to rescued as water from Ganga rose above the danger mark and entered homes, residential colonies and buildings situated on the riverbank.

The flood situation in Bihar remains grim, Bihar Disaster Management department officials said on Monday, adding that thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes and take shelter on higher grounds, including relief camps set up by the state government.

Floods have ravaged 12 of the 37 districts in the state -- the worst-affected being Patna, Vaishali, Bhojpur, Khagaria and Samastipur districts.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday spoke to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is believed to have briefed the former on the flood situation and the steps taken for rescue and relief of the marooned people.

Rajnath has assured all central help in dealing with the disaster.

IMAGE: Villagers shifting to a safer place from a flooded village in Patna district of Bihar. Photograph: PTI Photo

Meanwhile, National and State Disaster Response Force have already been deployed in the affected districts.

Kumar said that apart from taking help of big boats meant to ferry sand to evacuate people and animals, the government has made all preparations to airlift the people if needed.

Besides, Army has been put on alert to help the people out from the flood affected areas, Kumar added.

"We want to assure the people that we are alert... People should not get panicky and should tackle the situation bravely," Kumar said adding that government is taking every necessary step to provide relief to the people as "victims of disaster have the first right on state's coffers."

A disaster management department statement said altogether 1,326 boats are being plied by the government to evacuate the affected people to safer places.

IMAGE: A woman waiting for help and relief in a flooded locality in Nakta Diyara, Patna . Photograph: PTI Photo

The statement said several other rivers, apart from Ganga, were too flowing above danger mark and they were Sone at Koilwar (Bhojpur) and Maner (Patna), Punpun Sripalpur (in Patna), Ghaghra at Gangpur-Siswan in Siwan and Saran districts, Gandak in Hajipur, Kosi at Baltara and Kursela in Katihar district and Burhi Gandak in Khagaria.

The chief minister has already cancelled the leaves of all the officers to facilitate their deployment in flood-affected areas.

All the DMs and SPs of flood affected districts would keep moving in order to assess the ground realities, he said, adding that DMs would carry out aerial survey of their respective districts.

'Farakka Dam' responsible for Patna flooding?

The chief minister held Farakka dam responsible for slow discharge of water from Ganga which has become shallow due to heavy siltation. This causes flood water to spread to other areas.

IMAGE: Transport vehicles moving at submerged national highway 31 near Fatuha in Patna district of Bihar. Photograph: PTI Photo

He asked the Centre to remove the dam or come out with a 'Silt Management Policy'.

If the central government has any other option (other than removing the dam), then it should start working on it, he said.

IMAGE: A child wades through knee-high water in Chhapra. Photograph: PTI Photo

In his Independence day address too, Kumar had raised the issue saying that the depth of river Ganga had reduced following the silt deposition in the river due to construction of dam at Farakka.

Stressing that Ganga has become shallow due to siltation, Kumar said "I have consistently been raising this issue for the past 10 years. I had raised the issue when Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister and now I am raising it before the Narendra Modi government."

IMAGE: Volunteers help a child to get down from the roof of a submerged house to shift him to safety near Danpur in Patna district of Bihar. Photograph: PTI Photo

Due to siltation in the river, the depth of Ganga river has reduced and water spreads to the adjoining areas in the event of rise in the water level, he said.

"I appeal to the Government of India to prepare a policy on silt management. The central government should consider it after taking stock of the situation...It should come out with the mechanism or way out to prevent silt getting deposited in the river Ganga, otherwise it could prove to be a terrible situation in years to come," Kumar said.

Additional Reportage: PTI
Action to evict Payal Abdullah, estranged wife of former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, from the Jammu and Kashmir government bungalow in New Delhi was initiated on Monday evening by the state authorities.

A squad from the Jammu and Kashmir Resident Commissioner's office broke the outer gate of the bungalow and were taking out her belongings.

The action followed a Delhi High Court order on August 19.

After asking her orally to "gracefully" vacate the official bungalow, the court had said Payal and the estranged couple's two sons staying with her are "liable to be evicted forthwith", terming their entitlement to retain it as "wholly illegal".

Payal, who has been residing at the bungalow since 1999, had approached the High Court after the trial court on August 16 had asked her to move out of the house in Lutyen's zone in the national capital.

The high court was hearing Payal's plea seeking that she and her children be not evicted from 7, Akbar Road (type VIII) bungalow or an alternative accommodation be provided in view of their security status and threat to their lives.

The Jammu and Kashmir government opposed Payal's stay in the bungalow, saying it was faced with an extremely piquant situation as it does not have an appropriate accommodation to house the chief minister in Delhi befitting her position and security imperatives.

The Centre, through its counsel Anurag Ahluwalia, appearing for Ministry of Home Affairs, submitted that there is no substantial reduction in the security given to Payal since she started living in the present bungalow.

"Delhi Police will take care of the security personnel who will be deployed at the residence where she will move," the MHA counsel said.

The Centre told the court that government accommodation, on security grounds, is given only to SPG protectees. It said that a "general threat to them is perceived from Kashmiri militants for being the family member of Omar Abdullah and Farooq Abdullah, and in Delhi their threat quotient is assessed to be not as high as in Kashmir".

The Centre also said there is "no input with it indicating any specific or imminent threat to Payal Abdullah".

Photograph: ANI Photo
India on Monday requested Iraq for assistance in rescuing 39 Indians taken hostage in war-ravaged Mosul two years back as Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar held extensive talks with President Fuad Masum and other top Iraqi leaders in Baghdad on a range of issues including threat from Islamic State.

Iraq has been hit hard by the Islamic State (IS), which has captured vast swathes of the oil-rich country and the talks focused largely on ways to combat terrorism and the two countries resolved to support each other in fighting the menace.

Besides President Masum, Akbar held talks with President of the Council of Representatives Salim al-Jabouri, Foreign Minister Ibrahim Al-Eshaiqer Al-Jaafari and National Security Advisor Faleh al-Fayyadh.

In the meetings, Akbar sought Iraq's assistance in tracing the 39 Indians and securing their safe release. The Iraqi leadership assured full cooperation and support in the matter, the external affairs ministry said in New Delhi.

The two sides discussed the entire gamut of bilateral engagement, including in spheres of trade, investment, energy security, defence and security and counter terrorism.

Akbar arrived in Baghdad on Sunday on a three-day visit, as part of a three-nation trip to Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.

"The two sides acknowledged the grave threat posed by international terrorism and its sponsors to international peace and security as also the very architecture of nation state.

"They conveyed strong support to each other in their common fight against the menace of terrorism," the external affairs ministry said, sharing details of Akbar's meetings with Iraqi leaders.

The MEA said Akbar conveyed India's support for the unity and territorial integrity of Iraq and conveyed New Delhi's abiding commitment to the emergence of a stable, peaceful, united and democratic Iraq, which was in the interest of regional and global peace and security.

The minister conveyed New Delhi's willingness to partner in the reconstruction of Iraq as also for continued assistance through India's well acknowledged capacity-building programmes under Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme (ITEC).

Before Akbar, the then External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid had paid a visit to Iraq in June 2013. Khurshid's visit then was first visit by an foreign minister since 1990.

IMAGE: Relatives pose with the photographs of Indian workers, who have been kidnapped in Iraq, in front of the holy Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple, in Amritsar. Photograph: Reuters
An Indian-origin woman faces 25 years to life in prison in the United States for strangling her 9-year-old step-daughter to death as federal prosecutors charged her with the murder and her ex-husband for obstructing the investigation.

Arjun Shamdai Pardas, 55, was arraigned on Sunday before Queens Criminal Court Judge Gerald Lebovits on a criminal complaint charging her with one count of second-degree murder -- an intentional killing that is not premeditated -- of Ashdeep Kaur.

Pardas, who faces up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted, was ordered held without bail.

She will return to court on September 2.

Pardas' former husband Raymond Narayan, 65, is being held on charges of obstructing governmental administration and faces up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said Pardas' actions are "beyond comprehension" and she will be brought to book.

"This is a horrifying case of a child, a defenceless nine-year-old, who was left in the care of her stepmother who allegedly strangled her to death. Her actions, if true, are beyond comprehension and must be severely punished," Brown said.

Queens Assistant District Attorney Michael Curtis said Pardas repeatedly and on numerous occasions threatened to kill the victim, "most recently doing so this past Tuesday. On Friday, she made good on that threat."

Ashdeep had arrived in the US from India three months ago and was living with her father Sukhjinder Singh and Pardas in an apartment in Queens that was shared with another couple.

The housemate had seen Ashdeep go in the bathroom with Pardas, who later came out alone and left the building. She allegedly said that Ashdeep was taking a bath.

The charges added that on the evening of August 19, the housemate saw Pardas leaving the house along with Narayan, and her two grandchildren aged 3 and 5.

When the housemate asked Pardas about Ashdeep, she allegedly said that the child was in the bathroom and was waiting for her father to pick her up.

The housemate had observed that the bathroom light had been on for several hours and called Ashdeep's father.

She was instructed to break open the bathroom door at which time she found Ashdeep's lifeless naked body in the bathtub. There were several bruises on her body.

A report filed by the medical examiner's office determined that the cause of death was manual strangulation.

It is further alleged that New York Police Depratment detectives went to Narayan's residence and found him, Pardas and the two grandchildren inside the apartment.

Pardas refused to come out and refused to allow entry to the police for over one hour.

Narayan later opened the door and both defendants were apprehended.

Ashdeep's relatives said the young girl had been previously allegedly abused by Pardas, who had been entrusted with her care while Singh worked in a local restaurant.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday appealed to youth in turbulent Kashmir to shun violence and at the same time said security forces will have to act in self-defence if they are attacked.

Stating that a political solution to the problem in Jammu and Kashmir will have to be fond soon within the Constitutional parameters, Jaitley said security forces need not use force if the protests are peaceful.

"But if they bring weapons, explosives (and) attack security forces... come in thousands and pelt stones on security forces, this constitutes an attack and security forces will have to act in self-defence," he told Aaj Tak news channel.

At an event in Jammu on Sunday, Jaitley while acknowledging that the situation in Kashmir is "serious" asserted that there can be no compromise with those indulging in violence and described stone-pelters as "not satyagrahis but aggressors" who target police and security forces.

"I want to appeal to the youth of this country who have strayed on wrong path, that they should leave the wrong path as they will otherwise be a loser in the end," he said.

Jaitley also blamed Pakistan for not just training and funding terrorists but also for instigating the youth in KashmirValley.

"Security forces cannot lower their guard (against terrorists)," he said, adding, "Those who live by the gun, (will) perish (by the gun)."

On possible solution to the problem, he said separatists and terrorists will have to be isolated while needs of the common citizens in the Valley addressed compassionately.

"We have to take along the common citizen of KashmirValley. There cannot be any scope for any injustice to the public at large but at the same time there is also no room for any compassion for terrorists," he said.

On talks with Pakistan, he said the present government as well as the previous ones were of the view that dialogue with the neighbour has to continue but the issues to be discussed will be decided by the ministry of external affairs.

Jaitley said armed separatists receive "weapons, training as well as funding from Pakistan with a view to destabilise the country... there is evidence to this effect."
A 28-year-old Jawaharlal Nehru University student has filed a rape case against an All India Students Association activist accusing him of raping her in a hostel room on the university campus, police said on Sunday night.

The woman is a first-year PhD student and she has alleged that Anmol Ratan, a JNU student and AISA activist raped her on Saturday, police said.

According to the complaint filed by her at Vasant Kunj (North) police station, she had posted on her Facebook profile that she wanted to watch Sairat and asked if anyone had a CD of it.

It said Ratan apparently messaged her saying that he had a copy. Thereafter, he picked her up on the pretext of giving her a CD of the film and took her to Brahamputra Hostel, where he stays.

She said in the complaint that he offered her a spiked drink and allegedly raped her. He also threatened her and asked her to not report the matter.

However, the woman approached the police on Sunday and a case of rape was registered and further investigation is underway.

When contacted AISA said it has taken strong note of the allegations and has expelled Ratan from the membership.

AISA takes serious note of the fact that Anmol Ratan, a leading activist of AISA, is facing a criminal complaint of sexual assault. He is, henceforth, expelled from the primary membership of AISA.

AISA will reflect on and deal with this issue with all the firmness it deserves. AISA will be unflinching for the principles of gender justice even if it involves a leading member of the organisation. We stand by the complainant in her fight for justice, Ashutosh Kumar, AISA Delhi state secretary, said.
Two-term Bahujan Samaj Party MP Brajesh Pathak on Monday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party expressing faith in its "developmental" agenda for poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, a day after attending Mayawati's rally in Agra.

Pathak joined the saffron organisation in the presence of its president Amit Shah and Union minister Mahesh Sharma and was described as a "pillar" in the Hardoi-Unnao region of the state. Assembly polls in UP are scheduled next year.

Sharma said Pathak joining the BJP will help the party consolidate Brahmin votes.

Even though he was at the BJP headquarters fulfilling his joining formalities, the BSP expelled him for the party, apparently after coming to know of his plans.

Unlike some BSP leaders, including Swami Prasad Maurya, who tore into BSP supremo Mayawati as they joined the BJP, Pathak did not attack her but said nepotism, corruption and goondaism ruled the roost in the state.

"I thought any delay will be harmful. Only Prime Minister Narendra Modi's developmental agenda and Amit Shah's efforts can rescue UP," he told reporters.

Asked about his presence in the BSP rally on Sunday and he joining the BJP is less than 24 hours, he said he was doing his job in the BSP as long as he was there.

Pathak said he had played a role in swinging Brahmin voters to the BSP during the 2007 assembly polls, but Brahmins were disappointed by the party.

The BJP is counting on the former Unnao Lok Sabha MP and now a sitting Rajya Sabha member, to help it win over Brahmin voters, who are also being wooed by Congress.

IMAGE: BJP Chief Amit Shah with Brajesh Pathak. Photograph: @dr_maheshsharma/Twitter
Under attack over the Amnesty International row, Karnataka Home Minister G Parameshwara on Monday said he had not given a clean chit to the rights advocacy group, which has been booked for sedition for hosting an event where anti-India slogans were allegedly raised.

"First of all let me clarify because there is a lot of talk in the media about it.... let me be very clear, I have not given any clean chit to Amnesty International," Parameshwara told reporters in Bengaluru as he went into damage control mode after his remarks drew sharp criticism.

"All I have said is that I have not heard Amnesty International being involved in any anti-national activity. Second thing is, there is an investigation going on, and I am not a fool to say that everything is well," he said.

To a query, Parameshwara said his remarks had been misinterpreted.

"Of course, I have been misinterpreted. That is why I did not want to react to it unnecessarily," he added.

"Now that the investigation is going on, the law will take its own course. That's all I have said and I am also standing by that statement," he said.

He said he is not going to interfere with the probe as the home minister and it has been left to the police to decide on the next course of action against Amnesty International.

"The (police) commissioner has made a statement which will be on record. It is left to the police and the Investigating Officer to take action accordingly whether to close the case; whether to take it forward... I am not going to interfere in that."

Parameshwara rejected the charge by some Union ministers that the state government was protecting Amnesty International and had virtually given it a clean chit.

He asked the Centre to get the activities of the NGO probed and take action accordingly.

"Why they (central government) think that we in Karnataka are trying to protect them, trying to give them (Amnesty international) a clean chit and all those things.

"They (BJP) have the government of India in their hands and also all investigation agencies in their hands. Let them find out what Amnesty international is doing and take action accordingly," he said.

"Nobody can stop the Centre or the Union home ministry or any other agency which is responsible for that (from probing Amnesty's activities)," he added.

Parameshwara had on August 20 said Amnesty has never involved itself in any kind of anti-national activities.

"I have not heard of Amnesty International being involved in any seditious activity so far," he had said.

The Kashmiri Hindu Cultural Welfare Trust Chairman Romesh Kumar Mattoo had criticised him for having given a "clean chit" to the organisation when it was being probed for alleged sedition.

The Congress had come under attack from top ministers in the Modi government for "sympathising with supporters of terrorists" following Karnataka home minister's remarks.

Leading the offencive, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said on Sunday that 'Azadi' slogans cannot be treated as freedom of speech and slammed the Congress and its Karnataka government for "indulging in vote bank politics" over the issue.

"Four days ago, in the capital of Karnataka, during a programme in Bangalore, 'Azadi' (freedom) slogans were raised by a few people."

"An organization, which gets funding from abroad, organized the event and yesterday I read the statement of Karnataka home minister in which he said that whatever happened is nothing wrong," Jaitley had said.

Union Minister Ananth Kumar, who met a group of ABVP activists on a dharna in Bengaluru here yesterday, had charged the Congress government in Karnataka with "sympathising with supporters of terrorists" and taking action against nationalists.

However, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor defended Parameshwara's remarks on Amnesty, saying national security does not get compromised when a few people chant anti-national slogans.

He had also said, "Charging Amnesty with sedition law was already a big mistake. The NGO has not advocated violence and no one at the conference did so."

Meanwhile, the BJP on Monday submitted a memorandum to Governor Vajubhai Vala seeking a probe by the National Investigation Agency into the "anti-national episode" at the Amnesty event.

The memorandum also alleged that a section of the audience had raised anti-national slogans and the organisers did not stop it.

"We are having a strong feeling that they (Amnesty) are also a part of this malicious campaign. The programme also showed a nexus between Amnesty and secessionist forces and has exposed a systematic and sustained misinformation campaign against the Indian government agencies, especially the Army," it said.
The Mumbai Police on Monday registered a case of criminal intimidation against unidentified persons who allegedly questioned a 24-year-old man in a menacing way on suspicion that his bag was made from cow skin.

The incident had happened on Friday with Barun Kashyap, who hails from Assam and works as creative director with a private firm, in suburban Andheri.

Kashyap wrote about it in a Facebook post, following which the police initially lodged a non-cognisable offence.

"With a permission from the magistrate's court, we today registered an FIR against a group of men who allegedly accosted Kashyap," a senior official said.

The FIR was lodged under sections 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC.

Further probe was underway, the official said.

According to Kashyap, when he was travelling to his workplace in an auto-rickshaw, the driver became curious about his identity.

At a traffic signal, the driver started looking at Kashyap's leather bag and concluded after touching it that it was made from cowhide.

Kashyap told him it was made from camel leather and bought from Pushkar. But the he was not satisfied.

The driver then stopped the vehicle near a temple and signalled three men sitting there. They asked Kashyap to step out, which he refused. One of them examined his bag.

"One of them asked my full name. He looked at the other two and said something in Marathi...I could only understand the word 'Brahmin'. May be hearing Kashyap, they thought I am a Brahmin and left the spot," he said.

Kashyap also noted the vehicle's registration number and asked the driver for his phone number before getting down at the next traffic signal.

Image Courtesy: Barun Kashyap/Facebook
In a bid to reach out to people of Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday expressed his deep concern and pain over the situation there and asked all political parties to work together to find a permanent and lasting solution to problems in Jammu and Kashmir.

Making an appeal for restoration of normalcy in the Valley where the unrest entered the 45th day, Modi emphasised that there has to be a dialogue.

An official statement issued after his 75-minute-long meeting with a joint opposition delegation led by former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said the prime minister appreciated the constructive suggestions made by them during the talks and reiterated his governments commitment to the welfare of people.

The 20-member delegation comprising Omar and seven of his National Conference MLAs, Congress legislators led G A Mir and Communist Party of India-Marxist MLA M Y Tarigami had called on the prime minister on Monday morning and made an appeal for a political approach for resolving the crisis in the Valley and to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated.

Immediately after the statement was released , Omar tweeted, we welcome the statement of the Hon PM @narendramodi ji and look forward to working together to find a lasting solution to problems of J&K.

The 46-year-old working president of National Conference Omar told reporters after the meeting that they requested the prime minister for finding a political solution to the Kashmir issue so that a lasting peace is ensured in the state as well as in the country.

The PM emphasised on the need for dialogue to find a permanent and lasting solution within the framework of the Constitution and also asked all political parties to work together to find a solution to the problems in Jammu and Kashmir.

Expressing his deep concern and pain at the prevailing situation, the prime minister said those who lost their lives during recent disturbances are part of us, our nation; whether the lives lost are of our youth, security personnel or police, it distresses us.

Government and the nation stand with the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the prime minister said, and suggested that all political parties should reach out to the people and convey the same.

He expressed his commitment to the development of the state and its people, and appealed for restoration of normalcy in the state.

Kashmir has been witnessing unrest since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8 and so far over 60 people have been killed.

Omar told reporters the PM agreed with the delegation that development alone is not an answer to the crisis.

The PM told us in categorical terms that development alone will not resolve this problem, he said and refused to draw any conclusion from that.

I am not going to put words into the PMs mouth nor am I going to draw further meaning from what he said, Omar said.

We talked about the same thing that we have been talking with other leaders ever since we arrived in Delhi that the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, especially in light of the present crisis, needs to be understood correctly after which a solution is required.

We emphasised that the issue of Jammu and Kashmir is more of political in nature. Time and again such situations do arise but if we are unable to find a political solution to it, we will be repeating our mistakes again and again, he said.

Omar said the PM listened to us with patience and accepted our memorandum.

He also tweeted saying he is grateful to @narendramodi ji for taking out the time to receive the delegation from J&K and giving us a patient hearing beyond allotted time.

The leaders flagged the issue of youths falling victims to the continued protests, including a young teenager named Irfan who was killed on Sunday night when a teargas shell hit him on his chest.

We also implore you to announce an immediate ban on pellet guns and advise relevant quarters against the policy of mass harassment, raids and arrests as this has worsened an already volatile situation in the State and also goes against the values and principles of democracy, the memorandum submitted to Modi said.

Asked about the statement made by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Jammu on Sunday that stone-pelters were no satyagrahis but aggressors, Omar said, I do not wish to say anything on this as the prime minister told us nothing like this.

And more importantly, lets not play politics over Jammu and Kashmir. We will get ample time to play political games later.

The delegation also comprising National Conference leaders Nasir Wani and Davinder Rana -- has been camping in the national capital and meeting political leaders from the government and opposition.

The delegation started the political initiative on Saturday when it met President Pranab Mukherjee and submitted a memorandum, requesting him to use his office to influence the Centre for initiating a political dialogue with all stakeholders in the state.

On Sunday, the delegation met Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and apprised him about the situation in the state.

Image: Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with the joint delegation of opposition parties led by former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Monday. Photograph: @PIB_India/Twitter
Five cases, including that of sedition, have been registered against three top Baloch nationalist leaders in Pakistan for allegedly backing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's supportive words on Balochistan in his Independence Day speech.

Brahamdagh Bugti, Harbiyar Marri and Banuk Karima Baloch were booked under sections 120, 121, 123 and 353 of the Pakistan Penal Code at five police stations in Khuzdar area in the restive province following complaints, a senior police official said on Monday.

The sections relate to "concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment", "waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against Pakistan", "concealing with intent to facilitate design to wage war", and "assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty".

The complainants have alleged that Bugti, Marri and Baloch had 'supported' Modi's speech, Acting District Police Officer Khuzdar Muhammad Ashraf Jatak said.

On August 15 from the historic Red Fort, Modi said that people from Balochistan had thanked him for highlighting the atrocities by the Pakistani state on the people of Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

Pakistan has said Modi crossed the "red line" by talking about Balochistan and asserted it will "forcefully" raise the Kashmir issue at next month's the United Nations General Assembly session.

India and Pakistan have been engaged in a war of words over Pakistan and its Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's statements on the situation in Kashmir, which has been witnessing unrest following the killing of Hizbul commander Burhan Wani on July 8.

Following Modi's supportive words for the people of Balochistan, protests against him were held in Balochistan, with large numbers of tribesmen coming out on the streets in Dera Bugti, Khuzdar, Quetta, Chaman and other parts of the province.

In retaliation, Afghan protesters also held rallies at the friendship gate at the Chaman border crossing between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the gate has been closed indefinitely by Pakistani authorities after the angry Afghan protesters burnt a Pakistan flag and pelted stones at the gate.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sanaullah Zehri in a speech last week alleged that the Indian government "fully supports the ongoing insurgency in Balochistan".

Zehri's speech came days after a video showing exiled Baloch leader Brahamdagh Bugti appreciating 'support' given to the Baloch people by Modi began circulating on social media.
IMAGES: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan President Ashraf GHani jointly Inaugurate renovated Stor Palace in Kabul via video-conferencing. Photographs: @PIB_India/Twitter



Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said the 1.25 billion people of India will always stand with Afghanistan in ensuring peace and prosperity as he jointly inaugurated through video conferencing the restored Stor Palace in Kabul with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Afghanistan is a close friend. Our societies and people have had age old ties and links. It, therefore, saddens us to see that your proud nation continues to be challenged by externally sponsored instruments and entities of violence and terror.

Let me assure the people of Afghanistan that in your quest to build a prosperous Afghanistan and to bring peace, security and stability to your society, the 1.25 billion people of India will always be on your side, he said.

Modi, while speaking from his North Block office in New Delhi, stressed that whatever may be the odds, India will work with you for a bright future for all Afghans.

The pledge of our partnership and strength of our friendship with Afghanistan is unwavering. Todays (Mondays) event is a testimony to the resolve and range of our cooperative endeavours. We want each Afghan to flourish and your society to be benefited from fruits of economic growth, he said.

On his part, Ghani said the logic of peace and benevolence will defeat the logic of terror and violence as he said India and Afghanistan have always been close friends and joint initiatives like these are a fruitful journey of cooperation between the two nations.

The prime minister underlined that in our hearts and minds Indians and Afghans have always been closest of friends.

Modi also thanked the Afghan government for protecting the Indian Embassy and consulates and ensuring the safety and security of Indian experts working in Afghanistan.

The sacrifices made by our Afghan brothers will not be forgotten, the prime minister said.

Modi said the Stor palace brings back to life a valuable landmark of Afghanistans cultural heritage.

The palace, located on a hilltop in capital city Kabul, was built by Afghan King Amanullah Khan in the 1920s.

The Stor palace has been the setting for many momentous historical events. To those who cannot see beyond shadows of violence in Afghanistan, the restored Stor palace is a reminder of the glory of Afghanistans rich traditions.

And for our Afghan brothers and sisters, it revives the beauty, the richness and splendor of lost memories of Afghan society, he said.

True to the foundations of Indo-Afghan ties, Modi said, it links the present of the friendship to the historical bonds.

I must commend all the artists, experts and consultants who worked day and night to accomplish this delicate task, he said.

Calling Afghanistan a close friend, the PM said the societies and people of the two nations have had age-old ties and links.

It, therefore, saddens us to see that your proud nation continues to be challenged by externally sponsored instruments and entities of violence and terror, he added.

During his speech, the PM talked about the successful joint initiatives that both the countries have accomplished in the past like inauguration of the new Parliament complex in that country and the Salma dam in June this year, also called as the Afghanistan-India Friendship dam.

The Salma dam will revive and renew not just the economy and agriculture of the Heart region of Afghanistan. But will also build a strong and lasting pillar of support for Afghanistans overall growth and development.

The historic palace, also known as the Darul Aman palace, has been a witness of decades of conflict in the country.
Myanmar will not allow its territory to be used for any anti-India activities, this was conveyed by Myanmarese leaders to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who assured all help to the new government that came to power in March after decades of military rule.

In the first high-level visit from India after the civilian government assumed office Nay Pyi Daw, Swaraj called on President U Htin Kyaw and held talks with State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi on key bilateral issues, including cross-border activities by certain insurgent groups.

Describing India as a friendly country, Myanmarese President U Htin told Swaraj that he looks forward to a very productive partnership.

Myanmar leadership assured that they will not allow any insurgent groups to use any territory for action against India, (that) they all recognised is a friendly country which has stood by people of Myanmar and they look forward to a very productive partnership with India as Myanmar continues on its journey of peace, progress and development, MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.

The issue of cross-border activities by certain insurgent groups was taken up by Swaraj in her maiden meeting with the countrys first democratically-elected President in five decades, according to sources.

Swarajs visit comes just days after the Indian Army had an encounter with National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang terrorists in Nagaland who were trying to enter the country from Myanmar. While reports suggested that the Indian Army had crossed over to Myanmar, it was denied officially by India.

Swaraj also discussed with the Myanmarese leadership how India can help in Myanmars development efforts.

They discussed a number of areas of possible collaboration, such as power. India is already supplying 3 MW electricity to Myanmar through the Moreh-Tamu link, but this can be further upgraded, Swarup said.

Cooperation in renewable energy, transport, health, education and social development was also discussed during the meeting Swaraj had with the leadership.

They also discussed the possibility of strong cooperation in area of agriculture, particularly pulses where there is a possibility of importing large amount of pulses from Myanmar, Swarup said following Swarajs 45 minutes-long meeting with Suu Kyi.

Congratulating Suu Kyi for the victory in the first genuine election, Swaraj assured her of all help.

India is committed to strengthening your democratic institutions and socio-economic development of your people, Swaraj said during her meeting with Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party won a historic landslide election last year that finally brought an end to five decades of military rule.

Swaraj said this was the message of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee.

Both sides agreed to make efforts to ensure peace and security along the long shared border. The Myanmar side stated that activities of insurgent groups would not be countenanced from Myanmar territory and suggested that this issue should be addressed and taken forward through cooperation in established bilateral forums, sources said.

Swaraj extended invitations to both the Myanmar President and Suu Kyi to visit India at their earliest convenience. Both invitations were accepted, sources said.

Suu Kyi recalled her long association with India. Both Suu Kyi and the President said they were looking forward to a visit to India.

Swaraj also conveyed Indias very strong support to Myanmar in exploring possibilities of further strengthening democratic institutions.

The Myanmarese President remarked that India is a country that Myanmar can learn from, Swarup said.

India is the country we should get best lessons from on what democracy means, U Htin was quoted as saying.

This visit by Swaraj will serve as a very strong foundation for development and diversification of bilateral ties which are set for a very bright future, Swarup said.

Discussions were held in a very cordial and friendly atmosphere as befitting the traditionally close ties and strong people to people links between the two countries. Myanmar leaders were deeply appreciative of the fact that the EAM represented the first Cabinet-level dignitary who had paid a visit to Myanmar after the new government took office, sources said of Swarajs meetings with the leaders in the Burmese capital.

Swaraj expressed fullest support to the new Myanmar government in its efforts to meet its developmental goals.

Suu Kyi also briefed Swaraj on the preparations for the upcoming 21st Century Panglong Conference for National Reconciliation. Swaraj, on her part, conveyed Indias full support to this process and said India stands ready to extend any necessary help.

Both sides agreed that India's Act East Policy fitted neatly into Myanmars needs and as such areas of mutually beneficial cooperation should be identified in the near future, sources said.

Swaraj was accompanied by Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and other senior MEA officials.

Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar and a Nobel laureate besides being a democracy icon, thanked Swaraj for the support.

Banned from becoming president by a junta-era Constitution, Suu Kyi has a strong control over the countrys first civilian-led government.

The Constitution effectively bans her from the top post as it rules out anyone with foreign-born children or spouses from becoming president. Suu Kyi married and had two sons with a British national.

The military also retains control of the key home, defence and border affairs ministries, while 25 per cent of parliamentary seats are reserved for unelected soldiers.

Incidentally, Swarajs visit comes just days after Suu Kyi made a high-profile trip to China.

IMAGES: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj meets Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in Naypyitaw on Monday. Photographs: @MEAIndia/Twitter
The Centre on Monday night rushed 10 National Disaster Relief Force teams to flood-hit areas of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in order to launch massive relief and rescue operations to help those marooned in these states.

NDRF Director General O P Singh told PTI that while five teams are being airlifted for immediate deployment from its base in Odisha to Uttar Pradesh, the rest five are being picked by choppers from Bathinda in Punjab and will be sent to Bihar.

"These fresh teams will be launched into operation by early tomorrow," the DG said, adding they would be equipped with boats and essential items like medicines.

Singh said the teams will be in addition to the 56 such contingents which are undertaking flood combat operations in these two states, besides Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The DG also briefed Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh with full updates of the flood situation in these states late in the night.

In order to launch massive operations in the two worst-affected states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the NDRF has created on-ground control rooms in these two states and deputed two senior Deputy Inspectors General (DIGs) S S Guleria (Patna) and R K Rana (Varanasi) to take control of the situation.

Earlier on Monday, the NDRF said it had rescued more than 26,000 people from the flood-ravaged areas of these states.

"So far, the NDRF teams have evacuated more than 26,400 people from various flood-prone areas in the country this monsoon season. Besides the rescue work, these teams have provided medical care to the more than 9,100 people in these States," the NDRF said.

In Bihar on Sunday, NDRF teams evacuated 3,400 people from Didarganj, 580 from Bakhtiyarpur, 545 from Danapur, 380 from Chhapra, 355 from Vaishali and 15 from Maner in Patna.

The NDRF said 11 flood rescue teams rescued 275 people from Ballia, 275 from Varanasi and 325 from Chitrakoot in UP on Sunday.

Nearly 150 marooned people were shifted to safer places from Rewa district in Madhya Pradesh on Sunday.

"An NDRF team pre-positioned in Sikkim conducted similar operations in Tingbung and Lingdang villages and evacuated more than 450 people on Sunday," it said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised full support to these flood-hit states in the conduct of rescue and relief operations.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh is closely monitoring the situation and had telephonic conversation with Chief Ministers Akhilesh Yadav (UP), Harish Rawat (Uttarakhand), Nitish Kumar (Bihar) and Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan) and took stock of the flood situation in the states.
Ten passengers, including two women, were killed and 18 others injured when a private bus they were travelling in fell into a canal at Nayakangudem in Telangana's Khammam district in wee hours on Monday, police said.

Besides, in another accident, three persons died in Andhra Pradesh when their car met with an accident in Chittoor district on Monday morning when they were returning from the Krishna Pushkaram festival, they said.

The bus accident occurred at around 3 am when the vehicle, proceeding to Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh from Hyderabad, hit a road railing of a bridge and fell into the canal under Kusumanchi Mandal of Khammam district resulting in the death of 10 passengers and injuries to 18 others, a senior police officer said.

"Around 30 passengers, besides two drivers and two attendants, were travelling in the ill-fated bus when the mishap occurred. After the accident, both the drivers and the attendants are not to be seen," DIG (Warangal Range) T Prabhakar Rao told PTI over phone.

As per preliminary information, the bus was on high speed and the driver seems to have lost control over the wheels resulting in the accident, the DIG said.

The injured were rushed to Government General Hospital in Khammam, he said adding that police were in the process of registering a case.

Earlier, Khammam collector Lokesh Kumar and senior police officials visited the spot and monitored the rescue operation.

The Andhra Pradesh government announced an ex-gratia of Rs 3 lakh each to the kin of the 10 deceased.

Some of the victims belonged to East Godavari and some were from West Godavari district of the AP.

Meanwhile, three persons were killed in a separate road accident in the AP's Chittoor district.

The car they were travelling in rammed into a stationary lorry on the highway at Srimallavaram village, killing three persons belonging to Madanapalle.

The victims were returning to their town after taking part in the Krishna Pushkaram.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed grief over the accidents and spoke to the collectors of East Godavari and Chittoor districts over phone to enquire about the incidents, a communication from the CMO said.
A Bharatiya Janata Party leader's son has been kidnapped from Assam's Tinsukia district with the Paresh Barua-led United Liberation Front of Assam-Independent releasing an Islamic State-style video that purportedly shows him surrounded by armed and masked militants and appealing to Chief Minister Sarbanda Sonowal to secure his early release.

The video, aired by local TV channels today, shows BJP leader and Tinsukia Zilla Parishad vice-president Lakheswar Moran's son Kuldeep, who was allegedly abducted by the group on August 1, pleading to Sonowal, his uncle and Sadiya BJP MLA Bolin Chetia and his parents to secure his release.

Surrounded by five masked men pointing their rifles towards the kneeling young man in a jungle area, Kuldeep is seen looking at a video camera and narrating his plight -- about his deteriorating health, about the danger to his life as he could be caught in a crossfire between his kidnappers and security forces and about being moved from place to place.

Meanwhile, Sonowal tonight appealed to the abductors to release him on humanitarian ground.

"I appeal to the abductors to release the boy as a humanitarian gesture. Our government believes that violence will achieve nothing and we are committed to the peace process," he told PTI.

MLA Chetia said he had received a phone call from the anti-talk ULFA-I faction demanding Rs one crore ransom for his nephew's release, adding paying that amount was not possible for him and he also did not endorse the idea of paying ransom.

Kuldeep's mother and wife had earlier appealed to the ULFA-I to release him saying they do not have the finances to pay the ransom.

Assam and Arunachal Pradesh police are carrying out search operations to rescue Kuldeep from his abductors.

IMAGE: A video footage leaked on media showing Kuldeep Moran in the custody of ULFA militants. Photograph: PTI
At the 2016 IPCPR Trade Show, one of the big stories was around A.J. Fernandez, who collaborated with several leading manufacturers on projects. One manufacturer was General Cigar Company where he worked on two cigars. One of those cigars is a new addition to the Hoyo de Monterrey line known as the Hoyo La Amistad.

Last year, the Hoyo de Monterrey brand celebrated its 150th anniversary. A limited commemorative cigar called Hoyo de Monterrey Edicion de Cumpleanos 150 was introduced that featured a more contemporary look for the Hoyo de Monterrey brand. That look carried over into the 2016 when the company launched the Hoyo line, which was based of the Cumpleanos 150 concept. At the time, Alan Willner, Vice President of Marketing for General Cigar said the new Hoyo branding would be used for Small batch cigars, collaborations and other exciting special projects. With the Hoyo La Armistad, we get a collaboration that General describes as limited edition.

The packaging features the new contemporary Hoyo banding, however Fernandezs name is on the secondary band  and its a secondary band reminiscent of one seen on many of A.J. Fernandezs own brands.

The name La Armistad is also significant because its Spanish for friendship. Its a cigar that was blended by Fernandez and made at his Tabacalera Fernandez factory.

In a press release announcing Hoyo La Armistad, Willner commented, AJ Fernandez embodies the same ethos as the Hoyo brand. His passion for the craft of cigar making is what led us to collaborate with him on La Amistad. This collection combines AJs love of tobacco and blending with the knowledge of Hoyos cigar makers in Honduras and Nicaragua.

In addition to Hoyo La Armistad, Fernandez also collaborated with General on a new release for its Foundry brand called Time Flies.

Fernandez has worked with several companies on high profile releases. This includes La Palina Nicaragua, Foundation Cigar Companys Tabernacle, and Boutique Blends Aging Room Pelo de Oro,.

At a glance, here is a look at the Hoyo La Armistad:

Blend Profile

Wrapper: Ecuadorian Habano

Binder: Nicaraguan (Esteli)

Filler: Nicaraguan (Esteli, Ometepe, Condega, and Jalapa)

Country of Origin: Nicaragua (Tabacalera Fernandez)

Vitolas Available

There are four sizes for the Hoyo La Armistad. Each is available in 20 count boxes:

Rothschild: 4 1/2 x 50 (SRP $6.49)

Robusto: 5 x 54 (SRP $7.59)

Toro: 6 x 50 (SRP $7.79)

Gigante: 6 x 60 (SRP $7.99)

Photo Credits: Cigar Coop
Turkey: UN chief condemns terrorist attack on wedding party that kills at least 50 people

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 21 August 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Turkey: UN chief condemns terrorist attack on wedding party that kills at least 50 people, 21 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57baa05e40e.html [accessed 29 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.

21 August 2016 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today condemned yesterday's terrorist attack on a wedding party in the Turkish city of Gaziantep  an act that was reportedly carried out by a suicide bomber and killed at least 50 people and wounded dozens of others.

The Secretary-General condemns the attack and hopes that the perpetrators of this act will be quickly identified and brought to justice, Mr. Ban's spokesperson said in a statement.

The UN chief again stressed the need to intensify regional and international efforts to prevent and combat terrorism and violent extremism, the statement said.

Also in the statement, the Secretary-General expressed his deepest sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims and to the Government and people of Turkey, and wished a speedy recovery to those injured.
UN official 'deeply concerned' about health of detained Palestinian hunger striker

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 20 August 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN official 'deeply concerned' about health of detained Palestinian hunger striker, 20 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57baa08140e.html [accessed 29 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.

20 August 2016 - A senior United Nations official today expressed a deep concern about the deteriorating health of a Palestinian detainee on hunger strike for more than two months in protest of his detention after completing a 14.5-year prison sentence.

I am deeply concerned about the deteriorating health of Bilal Kayed, said Robert Piper, UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance and Development Aid in the occupied Palestinian territory, in a statement on Israel's continued practice of administrative detention.

Mr. Kayed has been on hunger strike for 67 days after being placed on administrative detention by Israeli authorities on the day of his scheduled release from imprisonment.

This is an egregious case, Mr. Piper said.

According to the statement, six other detainees, including journalist Omar Nazzal, are also on hunger strike in protest of their administrative detention and prolonged solitary confinement, and a further 100 Palestinians in prisons across Israel have undertaken hunger strikes in solidarity.

The number of administrative detainees is at an eight-year high, said Mr. Piper, reiterating the UN's long-standing position that all administrative detainees  Palestinian or Israeli - should be charged or released without delay.
FIDH and its member organisation in Pakistan, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) condemn in the strongest possible terms the terrorist attack that claimed 74 lives, mostly lawyers, and injured 112 others at the entrance of the Civil Hospitals emergency room in Quetta, Pakistans Balochistan province on Monday, 8 August 2016.

The attack took place when lawyers had gathered at Quettas Civil Hospital to accompany the body of Bilal Anwar Kasi, the President of the Balochistan Bar Council after he was shot dead the same morning by unidentified men. [1].

We stand in solidarity with all the people of Pakistan and call on the government of Pakistan to ensure the safety and security of its populace, notably of lawyers, journalists, and human rights defenders. We also recall that in its efforts to counter terrorist threats, the government of Pakistan must abide by international law and its human rights obligations, noting that peace and security can only be ensured through the respect for human rights and the rule of law.
Unfair referendum process demands the repeal of oppressive decrees

Publisher International Federation for Human Rights Publication Date 10 August 2016 Cite as International Federation for Human Rights, Unfair referendum process demands the repeal of oppressive decrees, 10 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57baa1c94.html [accessed 29 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.

FIDH and its member organization Union for Civil Liberty (UCL) today rejected the referendum process that resulted in the adoption of the draft constitution as unfair and lacking many of the basic conditions that would have ensured broad participation in such a pivotal political event.

The two organizations urge Thailand's military junta, the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), to immediately repeal its oppressive decrees and restore all civil and political rights prior to the next general election.

On 9 August 2016, in a blatant attempt to provide a semblance of legitimacy to a widely discredited process, Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) issued a statement that claimed that the referendum was conducted in a "free, fair and transparent manner." The statement outrageously declared that, in the lead-up to the referendum, "citizens were free to express opinions regarding the draft." MOFA's assertion that over 60% of the eligible voters had cast their ballot was contradicted by official figures from the Election Commission (EC), which set the turnout of the 7 August referendum at 59.4%.

According to the EC, 33.6% of eligible voters (or 61.4% of those who cast valid ballots) voted in favor of the draft constitution. Thais living abroad were excluded from the vote.

In a report released on 3 August 2016, FIDH and UCL documented the oppressive environment in which the NCPO orchestrated the constitution drafting process and the referendum on the draft charter. The report, titled "Roadblock to democracy - Military repression and Thailand's draft constitution," illustrated how the run-up to the referendum was marred by severe restrictions on people's ability to debate and criticize the content of the draft charter.

Authorities used decrees issued by the NCPO and repressive legislation to harass, detain, and prosecute critics of the draft constitution. From 27 April to 6 August 2016, authorities arbitrarily detained at least 55 people for criticizing or campaigning against the draft constitution. Authorities also detained at least 38 members of the anti-establishment United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) in connection with the group's attempts to establish referendum monitoring centers.

In addition, police and military personnel regularly attended and monitored public discussions on the draft constitution. In many cases, authorities ordered organizers to cancel seminars and panel discussions on the draft charter. In others instances, authorities intimidated meeting participants. While authorities continued to stifle public debate on the draft constitution, the NCPO mobilized considerable resources to promote the draft charter in a campaign that was marred by double standards and bias.

FIDH and UCL call on the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) and the National Legislative Assembly (NLA), two NCPO-appointed bodies, to swiftly draft and adopt election laws that are conducive to a free, fair, participatory, and inclusive election process. On 9 August 2016, NCPO head General Prayuth Chan-ocha announced that a general election would be held in November 2017.
South Sudan: One year since peace deal, justice still elusive for victims

Publisher International Federation for Human Rights Publication Date 16 August 2016 Cite as International Federation for Human Rights, South Sudan: One year since peace deal, justice still elusive for victims , 16 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57baa26a4.html [accessed 29 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.

Renewed violence underscores the urgency of bringing to account those responsible for crimes under international law committed during South Sudan's armed conflict, said Amnesty International and FIDH today, a year on from a faltering peace agreement.

The peace accord was signed on 17 August 2015 in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. It requires the African Union (AU) to set up a hybrid court for South Sudan to investigate and prosecute individuals suspected of committing genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity since the conflict began in December 2013.

Since the agreement was signed, the AU and South Sudanese authorities have made little progress in setting up the court. In the meantime, hostilities have continued and recently escalated, further worsening the human rights situation for millions of South Sudanese people.

During and after the recent fighting between government and opposition armed forces, civilians were once again targets of killings, rapes and other forms of sexual violence, and their property was looted and destroyed.

The organizations reiterated that all those suspected of criminal responsibility for crimes under international law committed during South Sudan's armed conflict should be brought to justice in fair trials without recourse to death penalty.

They also called on the AU to ensure that the court complies with international fair trial standards, draws on best practices of other hybrid and ad hoc tribunals, includes South Sudanese nationals among its personnel, provides for the participation of victims at all stages of the proceedings and guarantees the protection of victims and witnesses.

Background

The African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan (AUCISS) recommended in its final report published in September 2015 the creation of "an Africa-led, Africa-owned, Africa-resourced legal mechanism under the aegis of the African Union supported by the international community, particularly the United Nations to bring those with the greatest responsibility at the highest level to account." It added that, "Such a mechanism should include South Sudanese judges and lawyers."

The August 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (ARCSS) provided for the establishment of a Hybrid Court for South Sudan (HCSS) by the African Union Commission.

The heads of state and government of the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) subsequently agreed to the establishment of the court. In a September 2015 Communique, the PSC requested the Chairperson of the AU Commission to "take all necessary steps towards the establishment of the HCSS, including providing broad guidelines relating to the location of the HCSS, its infrastructure, funding and enforcement mechanisms, the applicable jurisprudence, the number and composition of judges, privileges and immunities of Court personnel and any other related matters."

In his January 2016 report to the AU PSC, the Chair of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, Festus Mogae, stated that delays in implementing other elements of the peace agreement should not delay establishment of the court. He called for the AU Commission to "ensure that the HCSS is established without further delay, in order to ensure the aspirations for justice and accountability contained in the Agreement are realized."

In a 5 August Communique, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) called for "an urgent in-depth independent investigation by the African Union on the fighting that took place in Juba to identify those responsible with a view of ensuring they are held responsible for their criminal acts." The AU PSC endorsed this call on 11 August.

Both Amnesty International and FIDH have repeatedly recommended the establishment of justice mechanisms in South Sudan, including the speedy establishment of a hybrid court to try those responsible for international crimes and to deter further violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in the country.
Mali: Al Mahdi trial on destruction of cultural heritage opens at the ICC

Publisher International Federation for Human Rights Publication Date 17 August 2016 Cite as International Federation for Human Rights, Mali: Al Mahdi trial on destruction of cultural heritage opens at the ICC, 17 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57baa9394.html [accessed 29 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 trial of Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, also known as Abu Tourab, will open on 22 August at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The former head of the Morals Police Brigade (Brigade des moeurs) based in Timbuktu faces war crimes charges for his alleged involvement in the destruction of historical and religious monuments in northern Mali. Al Mahdi expressed his intention to plead guilty, which would be the first of such pleas before the ICC. Our organisations welcome this historic first trial on the destruction of cultural heritage, but call upon the ICC to continue its efforts to investigate and prosecute other crimes, including sexual and gender-based crimes, committed in northern Mali.

Believed to be chief of the Hisba, the Morals Police Brigade linked to the armed group Ansar Dine, a mainly Tuareg movement associated with other militia groups active in Mali who together spearheaded the 2012 occupation of the north of the country, Al Mahdi is charged with perpetrating and facilitating the destruction of nine mausoleums as well as one mosque in the Timbuktu region. These culturally and historically significant buildings were either completely destroyed or severely damaged as a result of the attack.

Al Mahdi would be the first person to admit to committing war crimes before the ICC as well as the first suspect to appear in relation to the situation in Mali. The trial is estimated to last just one week as a result. Multiple victims have been granted the right to participate in the trial as well, deemed as having suffered material and moral harm from the destruction of the mausoleums and mosque. The decision to recognise damage beyond purely physical harm is a significant step towards understanding the full impact of international crimes on individuals, communities and societies.

According to information obtained by FIDH and its member and partner organisations, members of the Islamic police - and in particular its unit responsible for upholding public morals and preventing vice, the "Hisbah" - have since 2012 committed some of the gravest international crimes including torture, crimes against humanity and crimes of sexual violence. In March 2015, our organisations filed a criminal complaint in the name of 33 victims from Timbuktu before the Bamako courts against Al Mahdi and 14 others, for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including sexual and gender-based crimes such as rape and sexual slavery.

Background

In January 2012, Mali faced a Tuareg armed rebellion in the north of the country. The National Liberation Movement of Azawad (MNLA) quickly launched an offensive, which was opportunely joined by Islamist groups present in the Sahel band (Ansar Dine, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Oneness Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), and Boko Haram). Hostilities were conducted in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. The main northern cities fell into the hands of armed groups from early April 2012 until January 2013 at which point French Malian troops intervened.

Mali ratified the ICC Statute on 16 August 2000. It referred the situation to the ICC Prosecutor on 13 July 2012. On 16 January 2013, the Office of the Prosecutor formally opened an investigation into possible crimes within its jurisdiction committed in Mali. On 13 February 2013, the Malian government and the ICC signed a cooperation agreement in accordance with Section IX of the Rome Statute. The Pre-Trial Chamber issued the first arrest warrant under seal in the Mali situation against Al Mahdi on 18 September 2015. One week later, Al Mahdi, who was in custody of Niger authorities, was transferred to the ICC.

On 24 March 2016, the ICC confirmed charges against Al Mahdi for the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against religious and historical buildings in Timbuktu, as a member of the armed extremist group Ansar Dine, affiliated with Al Qaeda. He is suspected of destroying 10 historic buildings, including multiple mausoleums and a mosque. The entire city of Timbuktu is considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

According to our investigations conducted in January and February 2015, Ahmad Al Mahdi Al Faqi alias Abu Tourab, a native of the region of Timbuktu, was head of the Hisba (Brigade des moeurs), and one of the four commanders of Ansar Dine responsible for the brutal imposition of power of jihadist armed groups in Timbuktu. At the head of the Hisba, he also endorsed the actions of the "Centre for the implementation of the suitable and prohibition of the blameworthy" (Centre d'application du convenable et de l'interdiction du blamable). Elements of this group have persecuted women, imprisoning them, and subjecting them to forced marriages. Al Mahdi also sanctioned rape and sexual slavery, directly and by his subordinates. Evidence we have collected also shows him in the process of leading and participating in the destruction of the mausoleums of saints and other Islamic cultural property of great value. After leading the Hisba in Timbuktu, he likely left to fight against the French and Malian armed forces in Konna in January 2013 before retreating to northern Mali and crossing into Niger where he was arrested by French forces and handed over to Nigerian authorities, and then transferred to the ICC in September 2015.
1.Who is Al Mahdi and what is the background of the case?

2. Can the destruction of religious buildings and historic monuments amount to a war crime?

3. What will be the process followed for Al Mahdis trial?

4. Will victims of the crimes allegedly committed by Al Mahdi be allowed to participate in his trial?

5.Why is the Al Mahdi case before the ICC?

6. Has Al Mahdi committed other crimes?

7. Are other legal proceedings underway in relation to crimes allegedly committed by Al Mahdi and other members of AQMI and Ansar Eddine?

1. Who is Al Mahdi and what is the background of the case?

Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, also known by his nom de guerre Abou Tourab, was born in approximately 1975 in Agoune, 100 kilometers west of Timbuktu in Mali. He was a member of the radical Islamic group Ansar Eddine, a Malian armed jihadist group linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). As head of the Islamic Police based in Timbuktu, he was one of the four commanders of Ansar Eddine responsible for the brutal occupation by jihadist armed groups in Timbuktu. Furthermore, until September 2012, he was head of the "Hesbah" ("Manners Brigade") and was also involved in the work of the Islamic Court of Timbuktu, including implementation of its decisions. [1]

In January 2012, Mali faced a Tuareg armed rebellion in the north of the country. The National Liberation Movement of Azawad (MNLA) quickly launched an offensive, which was opportunely joined by Islamist groups present in the Sahel zone (Ansar Eddine, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the Movement for Oneness Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), and Boko Haram). Hostilities were conducted in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. The main northern cities fell into the hands of armed groups from early April 2012 until January 2013, at which point French and Malian troops intervened.

Between 30 June 2012 and 10 July 2012 when the facts allegedly giving rise to Al Madhis individual criminal responsibility took place, Timbuktu was under the control of AQMI and Ansar Eddine. During this period, Al Mahdi worked closely with the leaders of these two armed groups, at the epicentre of the structures and institutions they had established. It is alleged that he was an active personality in the context of the occupation of Timbuktu.

The Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC has indicated that Al Mahdi is responsible for war crimes committed in Timbuktu, consisting of intentional attacks against ten religious and historic buildings and monuments (nine mausoleums and one mosque). All the attacked buildings and monuments were under UNESCO protection, and most are also listed as world heritage sites. [2]

2. Can the destruction of religious buildings and historic monuments amount to a war crime? ?

Yes. Article 8.2(e)(iv) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines war crimes as including "intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives".

This is the first time these charges have been brought in a case before the ICC.

3. What will be the process followed for Al Mahdis trial?

Al Mahdis trial will open on 22 August 2016. It will be conducted by Trial Chamber VIII, which is composed of a panel of three judges: Judge Raul C. Pangalangan, Presiding Judge (Philippines), Judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua (Democratic Republic of Congo), and Judge Bertram Schmitt (Germany).

After reviewing the submissions by the parties, and considering that Al Mahdi intends to plead guilty, the Chamber has estimated that the trial will only last a few days. The judges have expressed their intention to conclude the trial within one week.

Al Mahdi is the first defendant at the ICC who has intended to submit a guilty plea.

4. Will victims of the crimes allegedly committed by Al Mahdi be allowed to participate in his trial?

Participation in trial proceedings is a right guaranteed to victims by the ICC Statute. Their participation, as envisaged under Article 68.3 of the Rome Statute, is a key part of the accountability process and thus constitutes an essential component of justice.

To date, three victims have been granted the ability to participate with the common legal representation of an external lawyer. An additional six applications for participation have been filed.

The Trial Chamber found that each of the victims accepted to date have suffered personal and economic moral harm as a result of the events that come within the parameters of the charges confirmed against Mr Al Mahdi []. The Chamber stressed that precedent indicates that harm can include emotional suffering and economic loss in addition to physical harm.

Victim participation is particularly significant in this trial, as victim experiences demonstrate how the destroying cultural property doesnt merely damage buildings and monuments, but also harms the social, cultural and historic fabric of communities.

5. Why is the Al Mahdi case before the ICC?

Mali ratified the ICC Statute on 16 August 2000. The situation in Mali was referred to the Court by the Government of Mali on 13 July 2012. After conducting a preliminary examination of the situation, on 16 January 2013 the Office of the Prosecutor opened an investigation into alleged crimes committed on Malian territory since January 2012. On 13 February 2013, the Malian government and the ICC signed a cooperation agreement in accordance with Section IX of the Rome Statute.

The warrant of arrest against Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi was issued by ICCs Pre-Trial Chamber I on 18 September 2015. On 26 September 2015, he was surrendered to the ICC by the authorities of Niger and transferred to the Courts Detention Centre in the Netherlands.

On 30 September 2015, Al Mahdi appeared before the single Judge of Pre-Trial Chamber I, Judge Cuno Tarfusser, in the presence of the Prosecutor and the Defence. He was represented by his Duty Counsel, Mohamed Aouini. [3]

On 24 March 2016, the charges against Al Mahdi were confirmed by the Pre-Trial Chamber I. He is accused of the war crime constituted by attacks against 9 mausoleums and one mosque [4].

6. Has Al Mahdi committed other crimes?

FIDH, together with its member organisation the Malian Association for Human Rights (AMDH), conducted field missions and investigations in Northern Mali during which the testimonies of numerous victims of jihadist armed groups were collected. On 6 March 2015, FIDH, AMDH and five other human rights organisations in Mali filed a complaint on behalf of 33 victims of crimes committed in Timbuktu before the High Court of the Commune 3 of Bamako. The complaint accuses Al Mahdi and 14 others of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including sexual and gender-based crimes. This filing follows an earlier complaint filed in November 2014 on behalf of 80 victims of rape and sexual violence committed during the occupation of northern Mali.

The 33 victims denounced the atrocities brought about by the Islamist police force and in particular its "Centre for the implementation of the suitable and prohibition of the blameworthy" (Centre d'application du convenable et de l'interdiction du blamable) of the "Manners' Brigade" led by Abou Tourab during the early stage of the occupation of Timbuktu. The crimes denounced include torture, arbitrary detentions, rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence. [5]

In this context, FIDH has already sought to encourage the Office of the Prosecutor to also consider credible allegations of Al Mahdis involvement in further international crimes committed against civilians, including rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage.

7. Are other legal proceedings underway in relation to crimes allegedly committed by Al Mahdi and other members of AQMI and Ansar Eddine?

Beyond the 120 anti-terrorist investigations which led to practically no criminal trials, the Malian judicial authorities are only investigating two cases concerning crimes against humanity and other grave human rights violations committed in northern Mali since 2012. These two cases, initiated by FIDH and AMDH together with five other Malian human rights organisations in the name of 123 victims, are stagnating and no substantive progress has been seen. The suspects  despite being located  have been freed as a result of lack of willingness and resources on the part of the authorities. Numerous suspects identified in the complaint filed by our organisations in March 2015 have been freed, are abroad or are otherwise not at all concerned by it. This is principally the result of the application of "trust measures" linked to the Peace and Reconciliation Agreement signed in Bamako on 20 June 2015, to requests for prisoner and hostage exchanges and to a lack of solid evidence against those arrested during military operations. [6]
According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, both Pakistani and Indian authorities have denied the UN access to the region of Kashmir to observe and investigate allegations of serious human rights violations and violence by security forces.

Since the killing of Burhan Wani and two other Hizb-ul-Mujahedin militants [1] in an armed exchange with Indian security forces on 8 July 2016, mass protests erupted across the state of Jammu & Kashmir. In response to the sometimes violent protests and looting, the Indian authorities responded with an intense crackdown, shooting at protesters and civilians with pellet guns [2] and arbitrarily arresting hundreds of people. Acting under the authority of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the Public Safety Act, police and security forces have disregarded basic rights and liberties and targeted unarmed civilians. These clashes have reportedly resulted in at least 60 deaths, 5000 injured civilians, and 4500 injured security personnel.

The government also imposed a curfew and a complete phone, internet, and media blackout in the state of Jammu & Kashmir on 9 July. Media houses have been raided, newspapers confiscated, and telecommunications have been cut off. Although mobile internet services were restored on 26 July, the curfew remains in place after over a month. This crackdown has left residents isolated and vulnerable, as independent groups are unable to access the region or verify allegations of ongoing violence.

On 10 August the Indian parliament unanimously adopted a resolution calling for an all-party delegation to visit Kashmir to hold talks with relevant stakeholders, including members of civil society, with an aim to resolve the ongoing tensions. Although such multi-stakeholder talks are a welcome development, our organisations emphasise that in order to secure an end to the current violence and human rights violations independent observers must be granted access to the region. In addition, an independent investigation must take place in order to ensure accountability for any violations that may have taken place.

We therefore call on the governments of India and Pakistan to grant access to Kashmir to independent observers from the UN and other journalists and human rights groups. We also remind the authorities of their obligation under international law to ensure the protection of civilians and the respect of their rights to free peaceful expression, movement, and access to information. We condemn the use of pellet guns as a means of crowd control, and urge the relevant authorities to ensure that such measures are no longer used against unarmed civilians, as per the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials and the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials [3].
Burundi : intelligence agency holds another journalist

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 19 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Burundi : intelligence agency holds another journalist, 19 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57baabda4.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demands the immediate release of Gisa Steve Irakoze, a radio journalist who was abducted by members of the National Intelligence Agency (SNR) yesterday evening in Gatumba, a town 10 km west of the capital.

Gisa Steve Irakoze, who works for Radio Buja FM, was taken from a bar in the Kajaga district of Gatumba. Witnesses said the SNR agents arrested him without giving any reason. After being bundled into a pickup, he reportedly spent the night in an SNR cell in Gatumba and was transferred to an unknown location today.

"Gisa Steve Irakoze, who has Rwandan and Burundian dual nationality, has been summarily arrested by SNR agents one month after the disappearance of Jean Bigirimana, a journalist with Infos Grands Lacs and Iwacu who was accused by the authorities of making too many visits to Rwanda," RSF said. "Bigirimana cannot be found and the

investigation into his disappearance has stalled. These repeated arbitrary

arrests of journalists and the impunity with which intelligence officers act

are unacceptable."

Steve's family told SOS Medias Burundi: "He has not eaten anything since yesterday and his health is fragile. He is diabetic. We fear for his health. Something serious could happen to him."

The police spokesman today said that Steve was accused of "endangering state security."

RSF appealed to President Pierre Nkurunziza on 11 August to hold the SNR to account over Bigirimana's disappearance. There was no response to the appeal.

Burundi is ranked 156th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Algeria: RSF asks authorities to protect journalists from cyber-violence

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 19 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Algeria: RSF asks authorities to protect journalists from cyber-violence, 19 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57baac844.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns a smear campaign and death threats on social networks against the news website Algerie-Focus and its editor, Abdou Semmar, and calls on the Algerian authorities to protect them.

The attacks began after the site revealed on 15 August that an official villa had been assigned to the son of the minister for habitat, urbanism and the city. The smear campaign was launched on a popular Facebook page, which went so far as to attack Semmar's private life, while members of the public posted explicit death threats.

"The phenomenon of cyber-violence is increasingly widespread and is a source of real concern," said Yasmine Kacha, the head of RSF's North Africa desk.

"Anonymity and the use of pseudonyms makes it hard to identify those responsible for these smear campaigns but the threats must be taken serious, especially when they are repeated, as is the case with Algerie Focus. The authorities must face up to their duty to protect Abdou Semmar and all other journalists who are subjected to this kind of pressure."

"This is not the first time that people have tried to attack me by talking about my private life," Semmar said. "But these intimidation attempts are assuming alarming proportions and I am beginning to be really afraid, not for myself but above all for my two children and my family."

Semmar added that Algerie-Focus is the target of harassment whenever it broaches such sensitive subjects as homosexuality, Islamic State links in Algeria and the status of Shiites in Algeria.

Algeria is ranked 129th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Madagascar : journalists urge president to send media bill back to parliament

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 19 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Madagascar : journalists urge president to send media bill back to parliament, 19 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57baafe84.html [accessed 29 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 collective representing all categories of journalists in Madagascar has just launched a petition urging President Hery Rajaonarimampianina to not promulgate a proposed new media law, called the Code of Communication, which has just been approved by the High Constitutional Court, and to instead send it back to parliament for revision. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) criticized some of the proposed law's provisions in May, especially its disproportionate penalties for media offences.

Here is the text of the petition:

"We, journalists employed by or working for local and international media outlets, signatories of this declaration,

- Voice our disappointment at the High Constitutional Court's decision to declare the Code of Communication to be in compliance with the constitution;

- Express our concerns about this law, which in our opinion tramples on the fundamental rights and freedoms of expression, opinion and information and constitutes a major obstacle to the practice of journalism;

- Regret that the calls issued by many bodies for a resumption of dialogue were not heeded and were therefore made in vain. We will just cite the Movement for Freedom of Expression, the Madagascar Group of New Media and Multimedia Publishers (GEPIMM), international media freedom NGOs, civil society groups and the international community;

- Deplore the fact that the president, who on 14 July nonetheless left a window open for dialogue and discussion with a view to resolving the problems arising from the Code, did not deign to follow through on his own statements and, on the contrary, allowed the process to continue its course.

As the process has not yet concluded and as we count on our leaders' commitment to democratic values and universal principles of freedom, we the journalists who have signed this declaration,

- Hope that the president will not promulgate the Code of Communication in its present form and will instead submit it to Parliament for further deliberations, as he is allowed to do by the constitution;

- Reiterate our willingness to resume the participative process and announce our readiness to take an active part in the various discussions and consultations necessary for the further deliberations about this bill.

Antananarivo, 16 August 2016."

Madagascar is ranked 56th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.

To find out more about the situation of freedom of information in Sudan, click here.
Azerbaijan: renewed human rights crackdown ahead of referendum

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 18 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Azerbaijan: renewed human rights crackdown ahead of referendum, 18 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bab1d84.html [accessed 29 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.

Less than six weeks ahead of a constitutional referendum, the Azerbaijani authorities have unleashed a new wave of repression to silence critical voices. The undersigned members of the Sport for Rights coalition condemn this renewed crackdown, and call on the Azerbaijani authorities to take immediate steps to improve the human rights situation in the country, starting with the release of political prisoners.

On 12 August, prominent Azerbaijani economist and Executive Secretary of the opposition Republican Alternative (REAL) movement Natig Jafarli was arrested on charges of illegal entrepreneurship and abuse of power, and sentenced to four months of pre-trial detention. On 17 August, the Court of Appeals rejected the appeal for his release. According to the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety, a member of the Sport for Rights coalition, Jafarli has been locked up for his "peaceful criticism" of the country's upcoming constitutional referendum. The charges against Jafarli stem from a criminal case the Prosecutor General's Office launched against a group of NGOs in 2014. If convicted, Jafarli may face up to eight years of imprisonment.

On 13 August, NIDA civic movement activist Elgiz Gahraman was arrested, held incommunicado over the weekend, charged on 15 August with drug possession, and sentenced to four months' pre-trial detention. Also on 15 August, REAL movement youth activists Elshan Gasimov and Togrul Ismayilov were arrested and sentenced to seven days of administrative detention each on charges of resisting police. Authorities also harassed civic activist and former political prisoner Bakhtiyar Hajiyev, calling him in for questioning and then subjecting him to a court hearing that dragged out over three days, before fining him 100 AZN on charges of "minor hooliganism".

Sport for Rights considers the charges against Jafarli, Gahraman, and the other activists to be politically motivated, and calls for their immediate and unconditional release, along with the release of all of Azerbaijan's dozens of political prisoners - including opposition REAL movement leader Ilgar Mammadov, whose release has been ordered by the European Court of Human Rights; journalist Seymur Hezi; and youth activists Ilkin Rustemzade, Giyas Ibrahimov, and Bayram Mammadov.

This spate of repression takes place in the aftermath of Azerbaijan's latest mega event, the Formula One European Grand Prix, held in Baku in June. It also takes place on the eve of a constitutional referendum set for 26 September, which will decide a series of problematic amendments aimed at further consolidating power in Azerbaijan's already dominant presidency. The Azerbaijani government's proposal of these amendments immediately followed July's coup attempt in Turkey.

Events in Turkey have played a further role in Azerbaijan's renewed crackdown. On 15 August, the Azerbaijani Prosecutor General's Office announced it had opened a criminal case against supporters of the Turkish Gulen movement "to prevent illegal actions on the territory of Azerbaijan". Detained NIDA civic movement activist Elgiz Gahraman was linked to the Gulen movement in an article in the pro-governmental press that also targeted figures of the opposition Popular Front Party and the satellite Azerbaycan Saat ("Azerbaijan Hour") programme, signalling possible further pressure to come. On 17 August, the Caucasus University in Baku announced it had fired 50 Turkish instructors for alleged links with the Gulen movement.

Broadcast of Azerbaycan Saat was stopped on 27 July when Turkish television station Bars TV, which carried the programme, was among the media outlets shut down by a presidential decree in Turkey, alleging their connection to the Gulen movement. The transmission of another rare critical news source on developments in Azerbaijan, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's programme Azadlq ("Freedom") A-LIVE, was halted without explanation by Turksat satellite on 8 August. In Azerbaijan, private national television station ANS TV remains off the air following a court order on 29 July to revoke the station's license in connection with an interview it had planned to broadcast with Fethullah Gulen.

All of this occurs against the backdrop of a dire overall human rights situation in Azerbaijan. The media remains completely dominated by the state, and critical journalists operate in a climate of fear.

Excessive restrictions remain on civil society, severely hindering the ability of independent NGOs to operate. Travel bans continue to be used against journalists, activists, and politicians - including journalists

Khadija Ismayilova, whose appeal to lift her travel ban was denied on 15 August, and Elchin Mammad, who was detained when trying to cross the Azerbaijani border on 9 August.

The Sport for Rights coalition calls for the Azerbaijani authorities to immediately cease these gross and systemic violations and take steps to improve the human rights situation in the country, starting with the immediate and unconditional release of political prisoners held for their peaceful political activities or exercise of their right to freedom of expression. Sport for Rights further calls for sustained attention to Azerbaijan by the international community, and concrete action to hold the Azerbaijani government accountable for its human rights obligations.

Supporting organisations:

ARTICLE 19

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression

Civil Rights Defenders

Freedom House

Freedom Now

Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights

Human Rights House Foundation

Index on Censorship

Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety

International Media Support

International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)

International Partnership for Human Rights

Netherlands Helsinki Committee

Norwegian Helsinki Committee

PEN America

PEN International

People in Need

Reporters Without Borders

World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
JED and RSF press for release of Burundian journalist held in DRC

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 17 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, JED and RSF press for release of Burundian journalist held in DRC, 17 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bab3354.html [accessed 29 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.

Journalist in Danger (JED) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) wrote to the Democratic Republic of Congo's minister of justice and human rights, Alexis Thambwe Mwamba, on 11 August asking him to intercede personally and urgently to obtain the release of Egide Mwemero, a Burundian journalist who has been detained in the DRC for the past ten months. Egide Mwemero works as a technician for Radio Publique Africaine (RPA), a Burundian radio station that has been banned from operating by the Burundian authorities since April 2015. He is currently being held in a completely illegal manner in Makala prison in the DRC's capital, Kinshasa.

The letter - copies of which were sent to the DRC's president and prime minister and to the head of the UN Joint Human Rights Office in the DRC - calls on Mwamba to put a stop to the stalling tactics being used by the prosecutor's office to keep Egide Mwemero in detention.

After expressing outrage at the way Mwemero has been held incommunicado for ten months in various detention centres operated by the security services in the eastern DRC and in Kinshasa, the letter provides the justice minister with a summary of all that this journalist has undergone.

Mwemero arrived in Uvira, a Congolese city near the Burundian border, on 13 October 2015 on a three-day assignment to assist RPA's partnership with the Uvira-based radio station Le Messager du Peuple. He was outside the radio station with two Congolese journalists when members of the DRC's intelligence services arrived and, after greeting the two Congolese journalists by name, arrested all three.

They released the two Congolese journalists later the same day but not Mwemero although he had entered the country legally and although he had his Burundian passport and a copy of this three-day assignment order on him.

After being transferred to the city of Bukavu on 1 November 2015, he was handcuffed and put on a boat going to the city of Goma the next day. The day after that, he was flown to Kinshasa. During all this time, he remained in the custody of military intelligence.

From 3 November 2015 to 28 April 2016 - for nearly seven months - he was held in a detention centre operated by the DMIAP (a military intelligence unit).

After representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) found him there - with almost no clothes and without the right to wash - he was quickly taken to the military prosecutor-general's department.

From there, he was transferred on 30 April to Ndolo military prison, where he remained until 28 May, when he was secretly moved to Makala central prison. He continues to be held there in Cell 21 of Wing 1.

On 9 June, the prosecutor's office at the appeal court of the Kinshasa district of Gombe opened a case file (RMP 83310/KAD) in which Mwemero was accused of "espionage". An investigating judge questioned Mwemero in Makala prison on 23 July. Two charges were cited at this hearing, not only "espionage" but also "entering the country illegally", a charge that had not been mentioned before.

It was clear from this hearing that Mwemero had provided no information to an enemy country and that his trip to Uvira complied with the regulations laid down by the DRC's General Directorate for Migration. The prosecutor's office therefore concluded that no charges could be brought against Mwemero.

"Curiously, instead of releasing Mwemero, the prosecutor's office staged a U-turn and sent the case to the High Military Court of Gombe," the letter says. "This decision by the prosecutor's office constitutes a denial of justice and a violation of one of the basic principles of law, non bis in idem, under which no one may be tried twice for the same cause."

The letter concludes: "No one seems to be concerned about Egide Mwemero's continuing ordeal. For this reason, JED and RSF are turning to you, the Minister of Justice, to protest against his illegal detention and to ask you to intercede personally to end the stalling tactics to which this journalist is being subjected by the prosecutor's office and the High Military Court of Gombe after more than ten months in detention."

The DRC is ranked 152nd out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Turkish police close Kurdish daily, arrest more than 20 journalists

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 17 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Turkish police close Kurdish daily, arrest more than 20 journalists, 17 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bab4154.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns yesterday's closure of the Kurdish daily Ozgur Gundem and the arrest of more than 20 journalists when police raided its Istanbul headquarters to enforce the closure.

An Istanbul court yesterday ordered the newspaper's indefinite closure on the grounds that it was allegedly acting as "mouthpiece" of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and was therefore publishing "a terrorist organization's propaganda."

The police then stormed the newspaper's Istanbul headquarters, seizing computers and arresting at least 17 members of its staff. Two journalists with the DIHA news agency and another two with IMC TV, who happened to be in the newspaper's offices at the time, were also arrested*.

"Are we going to have to get used to seeing the police storm media outlets in Turkey?" said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF's Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. "Closing a media outlet is the most extreme form of censorship, showing a determination to gag it rather than challenge its editorial policies.

"This unacceptable measure has dealt a new blow to pluralism and sent a strong intimidatory signal to all journalists in Turkey. We call on the authorities to lift the measures taken against Ozgur Gundem."

Launched in 1992, at the height of the fighting between the Turkish army and the PKK-led Kurdish rebels, Ozgur Gundem has had a long history of persecution. It was banned from 1994 to 2011 and had to keep changing its name. Many of its reporters were murdered from 1992 to 1995 and his headquarters was bombed in 1994.

The ensuing years were less violent, but saw a succession of raids, arrests and seizures. Three human rights defenders, including RSF's Turkey representative, Erol Onderoglu, spent ten days in prison in June for participating in a campaign in solidarity with Ozgur Gundem. Charges are still pending against them.

Ozgur Gundem's website has been blocked in Turkey since fighting between the army and the PKK resumed in July 2015. The judicial authorities also requested the blocking of its Twitter account in late July. RSF published a report in October 2015 about the relationship between the Kurdish issue and media freedom in Turkey.

Turkey is ranked 151st out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index. The situation of the media was already bad but got much worse as a result of the witchhunt launched after the 15 July coup attempt. A total of 102 media outlets have been closed by decree, a draconian state of emergency is in effect and no fewer than 44 journalists have been placed in provisional detention, making Turkey the world's biggest prison for media personnel.

*The following journalists were arrested yesterday: Gunay Aksoy, Kemal Bozkurt, Reyhan Hacoglu, Onder Elald, Ender Ondes, Sinan Balk, Davut Ucar, Frat Yesilcnar, Inan Kzlkaya, Zeki Erden, Elif Aydogmus, Bilir Kaya, Ersin Caksu, Sevdiye Ergurbuz , Amine Demirkran, Bayram Balc and Burcu Ozkaya (Ozgur Gundem); Ozgur Paksoy and Mesut Kaynar (DIHA); Gulfem Karatas and Gokhan Cetin (IMC TV).
Kurdish reporter murdered, another killed while covering fighting

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 16 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Kurdish reporter murdered, another killed while covering fighting, 16 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac0524.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns a Kurdish reporter's brutal murder on 13 August in Dahuk, in the northeast of Iraqi Kurdistan, and a TV cameraman's death the next day while covering fighting between Kurdish forces and Islamic State near Mosul. Widat Hussein Ali, a 28-year-old reporter for RojNews, a news agency that supports the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was kidnapped and then murdered. According to local media reporters, he was abducted in the morning and his body was found at the side of a road shortly after midday with marks suggesting that he may have been tortured to death. Nevertheless, the motive is still unknown. The Dohuk police said they have opened an investigation. The murder was also firmly condemned by the UN secretary-general's deputy special representative for Iraq

Mustafa Saeed, a cameraman with Kurdistan TV, a satellite TV channel owned by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK), was killed on 14 August while covering the fighting in the east of the city of Mosul (400 km north of Baghdad) between Islamic State and kurdish forces. He and Kurdistan TV reporter Hayman Nanqli, who was badly injured, were embedded with Kurdish security forces. RSF urges the authorities to do everything possible to shed light on these crimes and to ensure that those responsible for the violence are brought to justice. "Although journalists in Iraqi Kurdistan are often the victims of threats, intimidation, attacks and arbitrary arrest, little action is taken to render them justice," said Alexandra El Khazen, the head of RSF's Middle East desk. "We remind the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) that media freedom constitutes one of the foundations of democracy and we therefore urge the KRG authorities to deploy the necessary means to protect journalists' work." Demonstrations were held today in Erbil and other Kurdish cities in protest against Ali's murder. Friends and colleagues of Ali say he told them he had been threatened by members of the Asayish (the Kurdish security forces) and that he felt he was being followed. Kurdistan and Iraq in general are characterized both by violence against media personnel and by a significant level of impunity for those responsible for attacking or murdering journalists. Iraq is ranked 158th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Press freedom violations recounted in real time January 2016

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 16 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Press freedom violations recounted in real time January 2016, 16 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac1664.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is outraged to learn that Issa Saharkhiz, a well-known independent journalist who edited several reformist newspapers, wassentenced to a total of three years in prison by a Tehran revolutionary court on 9 August.

His lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh-Tabatabaie, said Saharkhiz was given two years on a charge of anti-government propaganda and one year for "insulting Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Revolution's Supreme Leader." Two other pending charges against Saharkhiz  publishing false news and insulting the head of the judicial system  are to be tried separately as political crimes before a court of assizes, the lawyer added.

Saharkhiz was one of several journalists who were arrested on 2 November 2015. He has been in a Tehran hospital since 10 March after suffering a heart attack and going on hunger strike.

Often proposed since the 1979 revolution, the controversial law on political crimes was finally adopted by the Iranian parliament in May. This law violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which Iran has signed) and other international norms.

----------







18.07.2016  Narges Mohammadi ends hunger strike

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved that imprisoned journalist and human rights defender Narges Mohammadi abandoned her hunger strike on 16 July after being able to talk by phone with her two children, who now live with their father in Paris. RSF is pleased that the judicial authorities allowed this but points out that she should not be in prison, especially as she is in very poor health.





RSF was also pleased to learn that Afarin Chitsaz, a journalist held since a wave of arrests on 2 November 2015 , was released on bail of 1 billion toman (720,000 euros) on 5 July pending a decision on his appeal. Two other journalists who were arrested the same day, Ehssan Mazndarani and Saman Safarzai, were each granted three days' furlough on 5 July. Mazndarani had been hospitalized with pulmonary problems after being on hunger strike for more than three weeks.

----------







08.07.2016  Narges Mohammadi on 12th day of hunger strike

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is concerned about the conditions in which journalist and human rights activist Narges Mohammadi is being detained. She has been on hunger strike since 27 June in protest against her treatment and, in particular, a ban on contacting her husband and children, who live in exile in France. Her state of health is very worrying. "She is continuing her hunger strike although she has to take several medicines every day and has been the victim of convulsions in her cell twice," her husband, Taghi Rahmani, said.





A spokesperson of the Centre for Human Rights Defenders (which has been arbitrarily banned in Iran since 2006) and a close aide of Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, Mohammadi has had many spells in prison in connection with her human rights activism. Her current period in detention began when she was arrested on 5 May 2015. She was given a 10-year jail sentence on 18 May 2016.



At an event that RSF organized at the Theatre du Rond Point in Paris on 2 May 2016, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo awarded the City of Paris medal to four journalists proposed by RSF. One of them was Mohammadi, who sent a poignant message to the event from her Tehran cell. Her health is in danger but she is being denied the medical treatment she needs. In October 2015, she was taken from prison to a Tehran hospital, where she spent ten days handcuffed to a bed before being returned to prison against medical advice.

--------







30.06.2016 - Iranian blogger sentenced to 444 lashes

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is outraged by the sentence of 444 lashes that a court in the city of Saveh, in central Iran, imposed on Mohammad Reza Fathi, a journalist and blogger, on 9 June. The sentence is to be implemented in six sessions of 74 lashes. Fathi has filed an appeal. RSF urges the judicial authorities to overturn the sentence, which is inhumane and medieval, and contrary to international law.







The sentence is the outcome of three complaints filed by local officials, including a legislator, a deputy mayor and 11 members of the Saveh municipal council, about articles critical of the municipal government and local officials that Fathi posted anonymously on his blog, called Radio Saveh (http://www.pooria6.blogfa.com/). Arrested by members of the FTA (Iran's cyber-police) on 5 August 2012, he was released on bail 13 days later pending trial on a charge of "publishing false information with the aim of upsetting public opinion." The trial finally began on 13 April 2015 and concluded with the announcement of the sentence three weeks ago.







A number of media outlets and prominent figures have protested against the sentence, some of them in a letter to President Hassan Rouhani. Defending the sentence at a news conference, judicial authority provincial director Ghasem Abdolalhi said flogging was sometimes preferable to imprisonment "because only the culprit feels the consequences, while a jail term also affects the family" and because this form of punishment also satisfied the culprit's victims more. He also pointed out that the sentence could be reduced to a fine on appeal.







Fathi was previously arrested in 2005 in connection with his posts in an earlier blog, Savehjam (http://www.savehjam.blogspot.com), criticizing the provincial governor and Saveh's mayor, and a letter he wrote to then President Mohammad Khatami lamenting "the limited ability of officials to accept criticism." After the release of the letter, he was questioned by members of the Edareh Amaken, Iran's vice squad, on 26 March 2005. Nine days later, members of the local police arrested him on the street and held him for three days. Under pressure from the authorities, he finally closed his blog, which had been very popular in his region.

-------------







22.06.2016 - Jail terms for former Iran CEO and three journalists

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the 91-day jail sentences passed on 18 June on Ali Akbar Javanfekr, former CEO of the Iran media group and onetime adviser to controversial former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and three former journalists with the group's pro-government daily Iran, Abdolreza Soltani, Said Yousefipour and Hassan Ghassemi.

The pro-Ahmadinejad website Dolat Bahar said a special court for government employees convicted them on 19 May of an "act of rebellion against government agents." Their lawyers have appealed.





They were convicted in connection with the events that took place on 21 November 2011, as Javanfekr was holding a news conference at Iran's headquarters to protest against the one-year jail sentence and three-year ban on working as a journalist that a court had given him the day before. Tehran prosecutor's office representatives and police carried a particularly violent raid on the newspaper during the press conference, arresting Javanfekr and using teargas on the Iran journalists who were there to support him.

------







21.06.2016  Reformist daily Ghanoon suspended

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi's decision yesterday to suspend the reformist daily Ghanoon with immediate effect in response to a complaint by the Revolutionary Guards accusing it of defamation and "publishing false information with the aim of upsetting public opinion." The newspaper's name means "The Law" in Persian.





Dolatabadi said the decision was taken under article 114 of the code of criminal procedure, which provides for immediate measures for the "prevention of crime." He did not say what prompted the complaint but Ghanoon often publishes articles critical of the conservative factions that support the Supreme Leader and have the judicial system's support.

A Ghanoon article dated 25 May and headlined "The latest change: ministry of intelligence 2" criticized a bill that was approved on the last day of the latest session of parliament, on 25 May. It granted full powers to the Revolutionary Guard intelligence agency, which operates independently of the ministry of intelligence.

---------------







16 June 2016 - Conservative website closed, reformist editor prosecuted

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterates its condemnation of government harassment of print and online media outlets following the closure of a conservative news website and the start of judicial proceedings against the editor of a reformist newspaper.





The Committee for Press Authorization and Surveillance, the censorship wing of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, closed the conservative Jahannews website on 15 June under paragraph 11 of article 6 of the press code, which bans "spreading rumours and false information and misusing content written by others." The committee did not say which content had caused offence.





The site often posts stories critical of the government. In recent months, it posted information about the visits to Iran by Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed in a US drone strike in May, and revealed the content of a letter from European Union foreign affairs representative Federica Mogherini to the Iranian foreign minister about problems implementing the international agreement on Iran's nuclear programme. It also revealed information about the dismissal of a member of the Rouhani administration. According to Iranian media reports, both the foreign ministry and the president's office have filed complaints against Jahannews.





The reformist daily Ghanon was the victim of a complaint by the prison administration accusing it of publishing false information. On 14 June, the Tehran public prosecutor confirmed that Ghanon editor Mahnaz Mazaheri would be prosecuted over an 11 June article headlined "24 cursed hours" about the mistreatment and injuries that a detainee received in the course of a 24-hour period in a prison in the southern part of the capital.





Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of the ultra-conservative daily Kayhan, was meanwhile questioned by the prosecutor's office for culture and media on 15 June about complaints filed by various government bodies accusing it of publishing false and libellous information. A former interrogator at Tehran's Evin prison, Shariatmadari was appointed as Kayhan's editor by Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei in the early 1990s.

-------------







15.06.2016  Five Internet activists freed conditionally

Reporters Without Borders is pleased to learn that five Internet activists who had been held for the past three years  Amir Gholestani, Fariborz Kardarfar, Masoud Ghasemkhani, Seyyed Masoud Seyyed Talebi and Amin (Faride) Akramipour  were granted conditional releases on 13 June.

Gholestani had been due to serve another 12 years in prison, Kardarfar another 10, Ghasemkhani another eight, and Talebi and Akramipour another four. All of them also have suspended sentence of five years prison. This means they will be under judicial control for the next five years and will have to report to a police station every month.





Revolutionary Guards arrested them and three others in September 2013 because of their activities on social networks, above all their Facebook posts about human rights abuses. After being placed in solitary confinement in Section 2A of Tehran's Evin prison and subjected to a great deal of pressure, the eight defendants were sentenced to a combined total of 123 years in prison on 27 May 2014 on charges of anti-government propaganda, "insulting what is sacred" and "insulting the Supreme Leader of the Revolution."





An appeal court reduced the sentences significantly in April 2015. Two of the other three activists, Naghmeh Shahi Savandi Shirazi and Mehdi Reyshahri, were released in 2014 and 2015 respectively. The third, Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht, is still held.

----------------







14 June 2016  Kabodvand paroled but Mazndarani back in his cell

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved to learn that imprisoned journalist Mohammad Sedegh Kabodvand ended his hunger strike on 9 June after being acquitted of the new charges brought against him and welcomes the decision by the judicial authorities to grant him four days of medical parole, which began on 12 June.





RSF nonetheless points out that Kabodvand should have already been released under article 134 of the new Islamic penal code (as amended in 2013), which recommends that a defendant convicted on more than one criminal charge should serve only the longest sentence.





RSF continues to be concerned about the health of Ehssan Mazndarani, an imprisoned journalist who has been on hunger strike since 17 May. According to his family, he was taken back to Tehran's Evin prison on 11 June although he is still refusing to eat and is suffering from pulmonary problems and anxiety attacks.





In a joint statement published on 11 June, 76 Iranian journalists called for the immediate release of these two journalists. "We are concerned about the crucial consequences that the hunger strike could have on the lives of these detained journalists and we condemn the violation of their legal and fundamental rights," the statement said.

----------







07.06.2016 - Concern about two journalists on hunger strike in prison

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) continues to be concerned about the way the authorities in Tehran's Evin prison are treating Mohammad Sedegh Kabodvand and Ehssan Mazndarani, two journalists who are on hunger strike in protest against the conditions in which they are being held and the injustices to which they have been subjected.









Mazndarani has refused to eat since 17 May, according to his family, who were unable to locate him in the prison for several days after he had a heart attack on 21 May. It later turned out that, without telling the family, the prison authorities transferred him to a hospital, where doctors voiced concern about his condition. His family says he was also the victim of violence by a prison guard on the day he was hospitalized.





Kabodvand was hospitalized after he, too, had a heart attack on 25 May but was sent back to Evin prison a week later. Doctors say that his condition is critical and that the hunger strike could cost him his life.





As there no longer seems to be any limit to the persecution of media personnel in Iran, RSF calls on the authorities to give an immediate undertaking to guarantee the health of these two journalists. RSF also reminds Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, that he has a duty to intercede without delay and to demand official explanations from the authorities.





---------





23.05.2016  Alarm over fate of two journalists in Evin prison

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is outraged by the lack of transparency and denial of justice surrounding the hospitalization of Mohammad Sedegh Kabodvand, a journalist on hunger strike since 8 May in protest against his continuing detention and the judicial harassment to which he has been subjected in recent months

Kabodvand was taken to hospital on 21 May after collapsing in his cell in Tehran's Evin prison but, after 24 hours of observation, he was returned to his cell. His family was able to visit him today but he was very weak and was unable to remain standing. He is continuing his hunger strike and his condition is very worrying.





Ehssan Mazndarani, another journalist held in Evin prison, has meanwhile disappeared within the prison, according to his wife, Malieh Hossieni.

She was told on 17 May that, on the orders of Revolutionary Court Judge Mohammad Moghiseh, he had been transferred back to Section 2A of Evin, a section controlled by the Revolutionary Guards.

But Evin prison officials denied this on 20 May without saying where he was. Arrested on 2 November 2015 along with three other journalists, Mazndarani was sentenced to seven years in prison on 26 April .





RSF urges Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, to intercede quickly and demand official explanations from the Iranian authorities.

Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is party, denying medical care constitutes a violation of the ban on torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

----------





12.05.2016 - Shargh's former political editor released



Reporters Without Borders has learned that Keyvan Mehregan, a journalist who writes for reformist newspapers and used to be the daily Shargh's political editor, was released yesterday after serving nine months of a one-year jail term. His wife said a judge granted his conditional release at a Tehran prosecutor's request.



Mehregan was arrested when he went to the Tehran passport office to renew his passport on 26 August 2015. From there he was taken to Evin prison's sentence enforcement office, where he was told that he had been sentenced to a year in prison and that he had to begin serving the sentence at once. He had been detained on several previous occasions since 2009.



----------







09.05.2016 - Two citizen-journalists freed conditionally

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomes the decision taken on 4 May to grant a medical parole to citizen-journalist Hossien Ronaghi Malki in return for bail of 300 million toman (220,000 euros). Malki, who was arrested in December 2010 and is serving a 15-year jail sentence, has undergone several kidney operations and is in very poor health. He began a hunger strike more than a month ago.

According to his family, a forensic doctor said his medical problems were incompatible with further detention. The Tehran prosecutor's office therefore obtained for him a suspension of sentence for one month on medical grounds.

RSF reminds the judicial authorities that Hossien should already have been released for good under article 134 of the new Islamic criminal code (as amended in 2013), according to which someone convicted of more than one crime serves only the main sentence.





RSF has also learned that citizen-journalist Atena Ferghdani was freed conditionally on 3 May following last month's announcement by her lawyer, Mohammad Moghimi, that a Tehran appeal court had reduced her jail sentence from 12 years and nine months to 18 months. She continues to be sentenced to three years in prison on a separate charge of insulting the Supreme Leader but this sentence is now suspended and will expire in four years' time .

----------



29.04.2016 - Well-known cartoonist freed conditionally



Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomes the release of Hadi Heidari, a well-known cartoonist who worked for the daily Shahrvand and ran the Persian Cartoon website. He was freed conditionally in Tehran on 27 April after completing half of a one-year jail sentence.



Plainclothesmen from the Tehran prosecutor's office arrested him at Shahrvand on 16 November 2015 and took him to Evin prison, where he managed to inform his family that evening that he had been arrested to serve a prison sentence.





----------







26.04.2016  Long jail terms for journalists arrested in November



Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the heavy jail sentences that have been passed on three journalists who were the victims of a wave of arrests in November.



Afarine Chitsaz of the daily Iran, Ehssan Mazndarani, the editor of the daily Farhikhteghan, and Saman Safarzai of the monthly Andisher Poya were sentenced to ten, seven and five years in prison respectively, according to their lawyers, Mahmoud Alizadeh-Tabatabaie and Iman Mirzazadeh.





A revolutionary court tried them on 7 March on charges of anti-government propaganda, conspiring against government officials and insulting government officials.





They and Issa Saharkhiz, a well-known independent journalist who edited several reformist newspapers in the past, were arrested at their homes by Revolutionary Guard intelligence officers on 2 November. No sentence has been announced for Saharkhiz, who has been in a Tehran hospital since 10 March after going on hunger strike and suffering a heart attack.

Iran is still one of the world's five biggest prisons for media personnel and is ranked 169rd out of 180 countriesin the 2016 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.



----------





25.04.2016  Court reduces citizen-journalist's 12-year sentence



Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved to learn that an appeal court has reduced the sentence imposed on citizen-journalist and human rights defender Atena Ferghdani, and that she is now due to be freed next month. RSF nonetheless calls for her immediate release because she is the innocent victim of judicial persecution.



Her lawyer, Mohammad Moghimi, told journalists today that a Tehran appeal court had reduced her jail sentence from 12 years and nine months to 18 months, and that she should therefore be able to leave prison on 11 May.



"The appeal court acquitted her on the charge of plotting against the regime and ordered a four-year suspension of her sentence for insulting the Supreme Leader, while her sentence for insulting Iran's President and the guards of Section A2 of Evin prison was commuted to a fine," he said. The only sentence upheld by the court was the 18-month jail term for anti-government propaganda, he added.



Ferghdani was arrested on 11 January 2015 when she responded to a summons from a Tehran revolutionary court for posting a video on Facebook and YouTube the previous month. In the video she had described her experiences in Section 2A of Evin prison  a section controlled by Revolutionary Guards  after a previous arrest in August 2014.





----------







07.04.2016 - Two journalists freed

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved by this week's release of two

journalists  citizen-journalist Vahid Asghari

on 4 April and professional journalist Said Razavi Faghih on 6 April.

A young information technology student arrested on 11 May 2008 at Tehran's main international airport,Asghari was sentenced to death twice by a

revolutionary court on charges of "publishing false information with the aim of stirring up public

opinion," "activities threatening national security" and "hosting anti-Islamic

and counter-revolutionary websites and collaborating with foreign media." After

an international outcry,



the death sentence was quashed and, on 6 December 2012, another revolutionary court gave him an 18-year jail sentence, which a Tehran appeal court reduced to 15 years two months later.



Asghari has various ailments including Carpal tunnel syndrome (compression of the median nerve in the hand and forearm). He spent seven months in solitary confinement and was mistreated and tortured. In

a letter to the presiding judge of one of the revolutionary courts on 17

October 2009, he gave a detailed description of the horrific interrogation

sessions to which he was subjected.





Faghih used to work for various newspapers including Yass-e

No, which the authorities closed in 2009. Arrested on 24 February 2014, he should have been released on completing a one-year sentence in March 2015 but he was given a new sentence of three and a half years in prison on charges of

anti-government publicity and insulting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Assembly of Experts.

He suffers from various renal and cardio-vascular ailments and underwent a heart operation in January 2015, following which he was returned to Rajaishah prison. He began a hunger strike on 27 March in protest against the way he was being treated and was released ten days later.

----------



29.03.2016  Two journalists freed

pending trial

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has learned that the journalist Hassan Shikhaghai was released on bail on 15 December, pending trial. The editor of Ruwange, a news website based in Mahabad, in the northwestern province of

Kurdistan, he was arrested on 7 October 2015 by plainclothesmen at

the Mahabad revolutionary court's behest.

RSF has also been told that Farzad

Pourmoradi, a journalist based in the western province of

Kermanshah who works for the Kermanshah Post, has also been

released pending trial. He had to pay 90 million toman (70,000 euros)

in bail. Revolutionary Guard plainclothesmen raided his home and

arrested him on 2 November after he created a Kalaghnews page

on the Telegram social networking service. He is charged with

"activities against national security," "anti-government

publicity" and insulting government officials. He suffered acute

cardiac and pancreatic problems while in prison.





----------





17.03.2016 - Sent into exile after four years in prison





Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

condemns the ruthless manner in which the judicial authorities are enforcing

the sentence imposed in 2013 on journalist and researcher Said Madani. Released on 15

March, after four years in prison,Madani has been ordered to travel at once to

the southern city of Bandar Abbas to begin a period of two years in exile

there.

A sociologist and writer (who haswritten

many articles for independent media outlets), Madani was freed under article

134 of the new Islamic criminal code (as amended in 2013), under which someone

convicted of more than one crime serves



only the main sentence.

After being arrested by

plainclothesmen at his Tehran home on 7 January 2012, Madani spent a year in isolation

in Section 209 of Tehran's Evin prison. The decision to sentence him to a jail

term followed by exile was taken by a Tehran revolutionary court on 18 June

2013.

----------





18.02.2016  Four Narenji website employees returned to prison

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns yesterday's rearrest of four senior members of the Narenji (Orange) tech news website to begin serving long jail sentences that were confirmed on appeal. The four  Ali Asghar Honarmand, Hossien Nozari, Ehsan Paknejad and Abass Vahedi  are sentenced to eleven, seven, five and two and a half years in prison respectively.

Originally arrested along with seven colleagues in the southeastern city of Kerman on 3 December 2013, they were convicted by a Kerman court on 24 May 2014 on charges of "anti-government publicity," "actions threatening national security" and "collaborating with TV stations based abroad." Their seven colleagues received suspended sentences. All were freed in return for payment of large bail amounts. A court upheld the sentences on 30 November 2015 but the authorities did not notify them prior to the time of their rearrest.

---------

12.02.2016 - Former BBC journalist detained in Tehran

Reporters Without Borders condemns the detention of Bahman Darolshafai, a 34-year-old former BBC journalist with British and Iranian dual nationality. Arrested at his Tehran home by plainclothesmen on 3 February, he managed to make a short phone call to his mother five days later, telling her he was "in a cell in Evin prison and under interrogation."

After several years in London, Darolshafa left the BBC's Persian Service n 2014 and returned to Iran. Thereafter he was repeatedly interrogated by intelligence ministry officials and was forbidden to do any kind of journalistic activity. He had been translating literary and philosophical works.

----------

2.02.2016 - Four journalists held provisionally for past two months

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the continuing provisional detention of four journalists who were the victims of a wave of arrests exactly two months ago, on 2 November 2015 .

Mahmoud Alizadeh-Tabatabaie, a lawyer representing two of the four, said: "There are differences between the investigation judge and the prosecutor as regards the charges against my clients." He is defending Ehssan Mazndarani, the editor of the daily Farhikhteghan, and Issa Saharkhiz, a well-known independent journalist.

As well as being accused of "propaganda activities against the government," they are also charged with "acting against national security by means of meetings" and "conspiring against and insulting government officials."

The case has been sent to the Tehran revolutionary court, whose president, Aboughasem Salevati, has been persecuting journalists and online information providers for years. He staged the "Stalin-style" mass trials in August 2009 and alone is responsible for convicting more than 100 journalists.

The other two journalists arrested on 2 November are Afarine Chitsaz of the daily Iran and Saman Safarzai of the monthly Andisher Poya. All four continue to be denied all their rights.

------------

14.01.2016  Woman journalist detained for fourth time since 2009

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns journalist Rihaneh Tabtabai's detention for the fourth time since 2009. Tabtabai, who has worked for Shargh,Etemad, Bahar and other reformist newspapers, was jailed on 12 January to serve a one-year sentence on charges of endangering national security and anti-government publicity.

Originally imposed by a revolutionary court in November 2014, the sentence was upheld by a Tehran appeal court two months ago. She is also sentenced to a two-year ban on political and journalistic activity in the media and online after she completes the jail term.

After being arrested on 12 December 2010, she was released on bail of 10 million toman (7,500 euros) on 16 January 2011. On 2 April 2012, she received a two-year jail sentence from a Tehran revolutionary court that was reduced to six months on appeal. She served the sentence from 21 June to 11 November 2014. She was also detained from 31 January to 26 February 2013, when she was freed on bail.

---------------

12.01.2016  Journalist sent back to prison

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns Meisam Mohammadi's

reimprisonment on 8 January. A onetime political editor of Kalameh Sabaz (a daily closed by the authorities in June 2009) and contributor to the Beheshti Foundation website, Mohammadi was arrested at his home by intelligence ministry officials on 10 February 2010 and was freed on bail two months later, pending trial. He was sentenced in May 2012 to four years in prison and a five-year ban on journalistic and political activities on charges of anti-government publicity and "meeting to conspire against national security."

Kalameh Sabaz's owner, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, the writer Zahra Rahnavard (who is Mousavi wife) and Mehdi Karoubi, a former parliamentary speaker and owner of the closed newspaper Etemad Melli, are still illegally held under house arrest and have been detained since 24 February 2011. Mousavi and Karoubi, who were both presidential candidates in 2009, have also been stripped of all of their rights. Their state of health is very worrying.





--------------------

Press freedom violations recounted in real time (January -December 2015)

-------------------

Press freedom violations recounted in real time ( January-December 2014)

----------------------

Press freedom violations recounted in real time ( January-December 2013)

----------------

Press freedom violations recounted in real time (January-December 2012)

----------

Press freedom violations recounted in real time (January-December 2011)

-----

Press freedom violations recounted in real time (July-December 2010)

--------

Press freedom violations recounted in real time (January-July 2010)

---------

Press freedom violations recounted in real time (June-December 2009)
Violence against the media in Brazil: 5 emblematic cases

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 15 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Violence against the media in Brazil: 5 emblematic cases, 15 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac1ab4.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

As part of its "Some wins don't deserve a medal" campaign, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is looking back at the cases of Brazilian journalists who were killed in recent years just for doing their job, cases that serve as a reminder of the essential role played by the media in this still young democracy, a country marked by corruption and violence.

Launched on 4 August by RSF's Rio de Janeiro-based Latin America desk to coincide with the start of the Rio Summer Olympics, the campaign aims to draw the international community's attention to the dangers and violence that media personnel still face in Brazil, and to the lack of consideration for the precarious situation of many journalists, especially those who are not working for the leading media groups and those working outside the major cities.

No fewer than 22 Brazilian journalists have been killed because of their work since the last Summer Olympics in 2012. This means that Brazil holds the title of Latin America's second deadliest country for media personnel, after Mexico.

RSF has focused on a few of these 22 cases because they illustrate the different kinds of dangers that reporters, bloggers, radio programme hosts and other journalists may face in Brazil and the urgency of finding effective protection and alert mechanisms.

Their deaths must not be forgotten because their stories highlight the important role played by journalists - especially investigative journalists and those who are brave enough to denounce the stark realities around them - in shedding light on the truth and helping to combat corruption and organized crime.

Gleydson Carvalho (1982-2015)

Gleydson Carvalho was a radio presenter for Radio Liberdade FM 90.3 in Camocim, a town in the northeastern state of Ceara. Two men with pistols stormed into the radio station on 6 August 2015 and one of them shot Carvalho several times during a musical interlude in the middle of his programme. They then fled on a motorcycle. Carvalho died a few minutes later while being rushed to hospital. He had been denouncing political corruption in Ceara for years and had received many death threats, which he had reported to the authorities.

The seven people taken in for questioning in the course of the investigation included the uncle and nephew of the prefect of the neighbouring town on Martinopole. Three people have been arrested pending trial - the suspected hit men and the alleged instigator.

Evany Jose Metzker (1948-2015)

Journalist and blogger Evany Jose Metzker was found beheaded in a rural area near Padre Paraiso, in the northeast of the state of Minas Gerais, on 18 May 2015. He had been missing since 13 May, the date of the last entry in his blog, called Coruja do Vale. According to the Minais Gerais Union of Professional Journalists, he had been investigating drug trafficking and child prostitution for several months. He had also covered several regional corruption cases in his blog, accusing local officials of involvement.

The Minas Gerais Civil Police, who were in charge of investigating Metzker's murder, said it might have been a crime of passion or politically motivated. They did not rule out any possibility, they said. No one has ever been charged with the murder.

Pedro Palma (1967-2014)

Pedro Palma, the editor of a local weekly, was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle outside his home in a Rio de Janeiro suburb on 13 February 2014. His weekly, Panorama Regional, was distributed in the Rio de Janeiro suburbs and contained investigative reporting about municipal corruption.

A year later, in February 2015, the police arrested four members of a criminal gang in the course of "Operacao Icaro," an investigation into fraud and the use of false contracts in the Sul Fluminense and Baixada Fluminense districts. In all, a total of 9 arrest warrants were issued as part of this operation, which was the result of Palma's reporting and the investigation that followed his murder.

Santiago Ilidio Andrade (1964-2014)

Reporter and TV cameraman Santiago Ilidio Andrade was covering a protest against public transport fare hikes for TV Bandeirantes on 6 February 2014 when he found himself in the middle of an altercation between demonstrators and members of the military police. He was hit by large firework-style explosive device apparently thrown by one of the protesters and died of his injuries in hospital a few days later. Two youths who had allegedly been throwing these explosive devices were initially detained on a charge of murder. A year later, the judicial authorities declassified the case and the two youths were released pending new proceedings.

Decio Sa (1965-2012)

Newspaper reporter and blogger Decio Sa was gunned down in a bar in Sao Luis, the capital of the northeastern state of Maranhao, on 23 April 2012. He had worked for 17 years on the political desk of O Estado do Maranhao, a regional paper owned by the Mirante de Comunicacao group. His blog, Blog de Decio, was one of the most popular in the region. He covered politics, corruption and organized crime. Shortly before his death, he exposed a criminal network that illegally lent money to local politicians to fund their campaigns. When elected, the politicians used public funds to repay the debt.

Sa's death led to a local and national police investigation that broke up a network of corruption involving 41 districts. It had embezzled around 100 million reais (more then $31 million). The masterminds and perpetrators of Sa's murder were arrested and tried.

RSF would like to revive the debate about the lack of an effective national system of protection for media personnel (see the detailed recommendations) and urges the authorities to adopt concrete and lasting measures to address this issue.

Brazil is ranked 104th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Local and international media defense organizations express alarm over cybercrime law adopted today in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 12 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Local and international media defense organizations express alarm over cybercrime law adopted today in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 12 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac2634.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the International Press Institute (IPI) issued the following joint statement after Saint Vincent and the Grenadines adopted a cybercrime bill this afternoon that poses a serious threat to press freedom and the free flow of online information.

We the undersigned organizations defending freedom of the press and access to information are deeply concerned by the cybercrime law adopted today in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Several provisions of this bill pose a serious threat to freedom of the press, the free flow of online information, and public debate.

Defamation in print, written and broadcast media is punishable by up to two years' imprisonment under Saint Vincent's penal code, pre-dating the adoption of the Cybercrime Law, but the new legislation extends criminal defamation to online content.

In addition to broadening criminal defamation to include online expression, the law also introduces worryingly vague and subjective definitions of cyber-harassment and cyber-bullying, both of which are punishable by imprisonment.

The negative value and chilling effect that criminal defamation places on freedom of expression and of the press have been well noted at the local, regional and international level, and states have been repeatedly called on to abolish criminal defamation laws. The issue of criminal defamation has particular importance in the Caribbean, where a similar law was adopted in Grenada in 2013 and subsequently amended after international outcry. Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana are currently considering similar legislation now under critical review by national, regional, and international stakeholders.

The steps taken today in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to strengthen criminal defamation laws and stifle online dissent and discussion could reverse the positive legislative trend in the Caribbean and serve as a negative example for Saint Vincent's regional neighbors. It is therefore our view that the law as adopted today must be revised and criminal defamation must be abolished, and we urge the government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to do so as soon as possible.

Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM)

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

International Press Institute (IPI)

Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a member of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), which ranks 30th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Burundi: RSF appeals to president over journalist's disappearance

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 12 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Burundi: RSF appeals to president over journalist's disappearance, 12 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac2cb4.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) asks President Pierre Nkurunziza to do everything possible to locate Jean Bigirimana, a journalist working for Iwacu and Infos Grands Lacs who was last seen in the custody of members of the National Intelligence Service (SNR) in the central province of Muramvya on 22 July. RSF calls on the Burundian authorities to produce evidence that Bigirimana is still alive and to launch a formal investigation to establish his present whereabouts.

Last week, an SNR source said he was still alive and was being held in Bujumbura. But in the absence of any evidence from the authorities to support this claim, RSF is forced to conclude that it seems increasingly unlikely.

A team of journalists dispatched by the newspaper Iwacu found two bodies at the bottom of a ravine in Muramvya a few days ago but it has not yet been possible to establish whether one of them is Bigirimana's. The Red Cross and a Burundian emergency services team were trying to recover the bodies yesterday.

"Jean Bigirimana was last seen by several witness in the custody of the SNR, which confirmed that it was holding him and then retracted," RSF said. "It is outrageous that, three weeks later, we still do not know his whereabouts. We call on President Pierre Nkurunziza to just do his job and to call his intelligence service to account, so that we can know where Bigirimana is."

"An operation to recover two bodies in under way in Muramvya but, regardless of its results, the authorities must explain what happened to this journalist. We urge President Nkurunziza, who has gone to great lengths to hold on to power, to use this power wisely because Burundi has become a lawless country where anyone can disappear from one day to the next, apparently without repercussions. Is this what Nkurunziza plans for his people?"

Instead of helping the search being conducted by the Iwacu team, the police at first tried to obstruct it. As the journalists progressively published the results of their enquiries, they encountered attempts by the local police to intimidate them.

Police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye even attacked the journalists in an interview for Jeune Afrique on 8 August. "Iwacu does not want to cooperate," he said. "We asked the journalists not to publish their findings and to give them to the police. But they have not done that. What they have published has just confused our investigator's work."

When the journalists first reported discovering a body in a ravine (a day after the first joint field visit by the journalists and police), the police spokesman responded by saying this was just an allegation and had not been formally referred to him. His attitude raises grave doubts about the good faith of the authorities' professed desire to establish what has happened to Bigirimana.

The members of the United Nations bureau in Bujumbura have meanwhile yet to go to Muramvya although it is only 40 km away.

Iwacu editor Antoine Kaburahe, who now lives in exile, continues to be very concerned about Bigirimana but says he has noted a change in the behaviour of the police and hopes it will be positive.

"The police spokesman now retweets what Iwacu reports about the case so you could say this is an implicit recognition of our work," he said. "Nonetheless, it is not normal that the journalists are more effective and motivated than the police."

Burundi is ranked 156th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Opposition journalist in great danger in Tajik prison

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 11 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Opposition journalist in great danger in Tajik prison, 11 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac39d4.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders has received alarming information about imprisoned journalist Khikmatullo Sayfullozoda's state of health, which is deteriorating dangerously, and calls on the Tajik authorities to give him access to the medical care he needs without delay.

The editor of Najot, a newspaper linked to the opposition Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), Sayfullozoda was arrested on 16 September 2015, at the same time as the IRPT's leaders, and was sentenced to 16 years in prison on 2 June 2016.

Aged 66, he is still in a overcrowded centre for provisional detainees, where he is being subjected to various forms of mistreatment including sleep deprivation. He has heart problems and pains in the legs, one of which is reportedly gangrenous.

According to the latest information, he nonetheless continues to be denied access to the treatment he needs. The IRPT reports that he has just begun a hunger strike.

"Khikmatullo Sayfullozoda is in danger of dying and must be given appropriate medical treatment as a matter of urgency," said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF's Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.

"Convicted at the end of a sham trial for purely political reasons, this journalist has no place being in prison. It is vital that the international community should put pressure on the Tajik government to end its campaign to suppress media freedom."

Tajikistan's main opposition party, the IRPT was banned in September 2015 and its leaders were arrested for allegedly trying to overthrow the government.

A mysterious attack on a police station in a Dushanbe suburb served as a pretext for the crackdown, the latest in a series of autocratic measures by President Emomali Rakhmon. Harassment of independent journalists has also intensified in recent years. Several lawyers who defended the IRPT's leaders were themselves tried and convicted, while two thirds of the country's lawyers have been disbarred.

Tajikistan fell 34 places in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index and is now ranked 150th out of 180 countries.
Oman: RSF calls for release of three journalists, reopening of newspaper

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 16 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Oman: RSF calls for release of three journalists, reopening of newspaper, 16 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac3d24.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the arrests of three senior journalists with the independent Omani newspaper Azamn in the course of the past two weeks in connection with an article about an alleged case of judicial corruption. All three are still held and are due to appear in court next week.

The latest to be detained was deputy editor Youssef Al-Haj, who was arrested on 9 August, six days after Zaher Al-Abri, Azamn's local news editor. The first was editor Ibrahim Al-Maamari, who was arrested on 28 July, two days after the offending article's publication.

In a related move, the information ministry ordered the suspension of Azamn's print and online editions with effect from 9 August. According to the Omani Commission for Human Rights, the three journalists will be taken before a judge next week.

RSF calls on the Omani authorities to release the three journalists at once and to allow the newspaper to resume publishing.

"These draconian measures, the arrests of the journalists and the newspaper's closure, show that the authorities are determined to silence them," said Alexandra El Khazen, the head of RSF's Middle East desk.

The deputy editor's arrest came one day after he reported in the newspaper that he had interviewed supreme court vice-president Ali Al-Nomani and that, in the course of the interview, Al-Nomani had confirmed the suspicions of corruption in the case covered by Azamn. He also reported that Al-Nomani had voiced support for the newspaper and its journalists.

The Sultanate of Oman is ranked 125th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Mexico: threats against author of book about Veracruz governor

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 11 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Mexico: threats against author of book about Veracruz governor, 11 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac4554.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the authorities to protect Noe Zavaleta, the weekly magazine Proceso's correspondent in the eastern state of Veracruz, who has been hounded ever since the publication of a book by him about outgoing Veracruz governor Javier Duarte's term in office.

Noe Zavaleta has had the tough job of replacing Regina Martinez as Proceso's Veracruz correspondent. Martinez was brutally murdered in her home in Xalapa, the state's capital, in 2012.

Zavaleta says that since early july he has been getting threats on social networks and has been the victim of online harassment and intimidation attempts in connection with his book, El Infierno de Javier Duarte ("Javier Duarte's Hell"), about the widespread corruption and violence during Duarte's six years as governor.

"This campaign of harassment and these threats against Noe Zavaleta are very disturbing and must stop at once," said Emmanuel Colombie, the head of RSF's Latin America desk.

"The heavy toll of violence against media personnel in Veracruz, where 17 journalists have been murdered since 2010, justifies urgent intervention by the federal authorities in this case. They must do whatever is necessary to guarantee Zavaleta's safety and punish those responsible for these repeated threats."

Zavaleta reported the threats to the federal authorities but is still awaiting a satisfactory response.

One of the sources of the threats is Jose Abella, the editor of the daily El Buen Tono and a Duarte supporter, who is named in the book as a privileged recipient of Veracruz state advertising. Abella has publicly threatened Zavaleta, including on his Facebook page.

A photo of Zavaleta with a gun in a police station, taken while he was on a reporting assignment, has been circulating on social networks since last week. It is accompanied by comments linking him to local gangs, especially the "Los Zetas" cartel. Zavaleta told RSF he was very concerned about the attempts to associate him with these criminal groups.

This kind of disinformation campaign is far from unprecedented in Veracruz, one of the most dangerous states in Mexico for journalists. After the journalist Anabel Flores was kidnapped and murdered in February, Abella said he had fired her from his newspaper because of her supposed links with organized crime.

According to the Veracruz Commission for the Attention and Protection of Journalists, there were 176 cases of violence, intimidation, threats, aggression, cyber-attacks, blackmail, murder and enforced disappearance in which journalists were the victims from 2013 to June 2016.

Veracruz newspaper reporter Pedro Tamayo became the ninth journalist to be murdered in Mexico since the start of the year on 20 July.

Mexico is ranked 149th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
RSF calls for rule of law to be restored in Kashmir

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 11 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, RSF calls for rule of law to be restored in Kashmir, 11 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac4eb4.html [accessed 29 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.

After physical attacks on at least two journalists in the past few days in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, in northern India, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for investigations to identify members of the security forces responsible for abuses against journalists and all other violations of freedom of information.

Muneeb Ul Islam, a photojournalist working for the Kashmir Reader and Daily Roshni newspapers, was beaten by members of the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Anantnag, in the west of the state, while covering unrest on 8 August.

He said that, after thrashing him, the paramilitaries used him as a human shield to protect themselves against the stones that youths

Mir Javid, a reporter for Kashmir News Network, a local news agency, was injured in an eye by shotgun pellets in the border district of Kupwara, in the north of the state, on 5 August. Clashes were taking place between protesters and paramilitaries at the time, but he was not near any of these clashes when the pellets were fired

at him.

After being taken to a hospital near Kralgund for treatment, Javid found himself in the middle of assault on the hospital by police firing teargas grenades. He fled from the hospital to the home of a friend, where he extracted many of the pellets embedded in his body, and finally made it to a hospital in Srinagar, where his eye injury was treated.

He told several media outlets that he had also been threatened in attempt to dissuade him from covering the situation in Kupwara for Srinagar-based newspapers.

"We have seen many reports, often accompanied by photos, offering a shocking insight into the aggressive actions and behaviour of the security forces towards the general public and journalists in particular, who are regarded as undesired witnesses," said Benjamin Ismail, the head of RSF's Asia-Pacific desk.

"We call on the authorities to carry out investigations to identify those responsible for targeted violence against journalists who risk their lives to inform their fellow citizens. The interior ministry, which is in charge of the Central Reserve Police Force, and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti cannot turn a blind eye to these abuses, or else people will think the rule of law and democracy end at the gates to Jammu and Kashmir."

Communications have often been cut in Indian-controlled Kashmir since 8 July, when a separatist military commander, Burhan Wani, was killed in the south of the state. RSF has condemned the media blackout and harassment of local journalists by the local authorities, and has called on the Indian government to stop using security and law and order as pretexts for cracking down on the media.

India continues to languish in the bottom third (133rd of 180 countries) in RSF's World Press Freedom Index because of the number of journalists killed in connection with their work and the impunity for crimes of violence committed against the media.
Turkey  world leader in imprisoned journalists

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 10 August 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Turkey  world leader in imprisoned journalists, 10 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac5e64.html [accessed 29 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 witchhunt launched in the wake of the 15 July coup attempt in Turkey continues to take a heavy toll on journalists. In the draconian state of emergency imposed after the abortive coup, the authorities have closed more than 100 media outlets critical of the government, placed 42 journalists in provisional detention and banned many others from travelling abroad.

Detained journalists

"The 42 newly detained journalists combined with those who were already in prison before the abortive coup makes Turkey the world champion in imprisoned media personnel," said Johann Bihr, the head of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

"How can a supposedly democratic country surpass even China and Iran in order to take this title? How can the coup investigation justify these increasingly severe measures against so many journalists? A media outlet's editorial positions do not prove that its staff collaborated in the coup attempt. Jailing journalists because of their opinions, and without regard for their health or family situation, is unacceptable and unworthy of the Turkish people's manifest commitment to democracy."

After an initial period in police custody, the 42 journalists (complete list available here) were formally placed in provisional detention as part of the investigation into the abortive coup.

Seventeen of them, including well-known TV presenter Nazl Ilcak, were detained on 30 July on charges of belonging to the "FETO," the acronym used by the government to brand the movement headed by US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen as a "terrorist" organization.

Six journalists who used to work for the daily Zaman were detained the next day on suspicion of "praising a terrorist organization" and "legitimizing the coup attempt." They included former Zaman columnist Sahin Alpay. Twelve more journalists, including former Zaman columnist Mumtazer Turkone, were detained on 4 August.

Most of the six journalists arrested on 31 July are elderly and ill. Essentially, they are accused of continuing to work for Zaman after its editor, Ekrem Dumanl, was placed under

investigation on suspicion of belonging to the Gulen Movement because of his newspaper's coverage of corruption allegations against several members of the government.

In their statements, the six journalists did little more than recount their journalistic careers and political positions, and point out that these were incompatible with any support for the abortive coup. The judge cited the fact that Dumanl is now a fugitive from justice as grounds for detaining them. The defence pointed out that this violated the principle of individual criminal responsibility.

Passport seizures and cancellations

Journalist Hayko Bagdat's passport was confiscated on landing at Istanbul airport on 6 August at the end of a trip abroad. It was only after lawyers and opposition parliamentarians interceded that he was finally able to recover his passport three days later.

The passports of many other journalists such as Eren Keskin have been cancelled without their being given any explanation. When Selina Dogan, a representative of the opposition party CHP, contacted the police, they said it was a "preventive measure" that would probably be lifted when investigations had been concluded.

Some of the affected journalists nonetheless said their passports were cancelled as a result of their having been reported lost or stolen - reports they had not made.

Social networks not spared

At the end of July, an Ankara judge ordered the blocking of the Twitter accounts of dozens of supposedly pro-Gulen journalists and media outlets (such as Faruk Mercan, Emre Uslu, MerkurHaber,

SamanyoluMedya and KanalTurk TV), pro-Kurdish media outlets (such as Ozgur Gundem and DIHA) and other journalists (including Rifat Dogan, Gokce Frat and Feyzi Isbasaran).

The Twitter account of Amnesty International's Turkey representative, Andrew Gardner, was among those affected. Reached by RSF's Turkey representative, he described the decision as "stupid but serious." He said he would challenge the measure but regretted having to lose time on this when he was already "very busy verifying the many cases of torture and free speech violations."

Turkey is ranked 151st out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.

Read RSF's previous releases on the abortive coup and its consequences here
Kenya: Parliament passes Access to Information law

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 19 August 2016 Cite as Article 19, Kenya: Parliament passes Access to Information law, 19 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac7274.html [accessed 29 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.

ARTICLE 19 welcomes the recent passage of the Access to Information Bill 2015 by the National Assembly and the Senate, and calls on the President to append his signature to enable its assent into law. The passage of the Bill is the culmination of years of advocacy, undertaken principally by civil society, to have a right to information law in place.

'The passage of this Bill heralds a new era for transparency in the country, as citizens will now be enabled to access and use information to hold their government accountable and promote legitimate good governance in the country,' said Henry Maina, the Director, ARTICLE 19 Eastern Africa.

The Bill positively enshrines a number of progressive freedom of information principles, as it affirms a legally enforceable right for every citizen to access all information held by public entities and private bodies; clear and simple procedures for assessing information; the creation of comprehensive proactive disclosure regime; and provision for exempt information subject to international standards.

"Considerations should now be made to ensure the effective implementation of the provisions within the bill and the empowerment of oversight institutions such as the Commission on Administrative Justice. We also call for the speedy formulation of the regulations by the Cabinet Secretary, once the Bill assents into law, which should be realized through a consultative process that are inclusive of other stakeholders like the private sector and CSOs," added Maina.

The Bill confers on the Commission on Administrative Justice (CAJ) oversight and enforcement powers over the provisions of the Act and requires the Commission to work with other public bodies on the promotion of access to information. It's also mandated to hear and determine complaints and review decisions arising from breach of provisions of the Act.

The Bill was sponsored to the National Assembly as a private members bill by the Women Representative for Nyeri County Hon. Priscilla Nyokabi.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Uganda: Online News and Twitter Coverage of the 2016 Election

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 18 August 2016 Cite as Article 19, Uganda: Online News and Twitter Coverage of the 2016 Election, 18 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac8244.html [accessed 29 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.

ARTICLE 19 has partnered with the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power, part of the Policy Institute at Kings College London, to analyse the media coverage of specific human rights issues in the run-up to the 2016 Ugandan elections. This focus and timeframe provided an adequate framework to verify whether the media produced a fair and complete coverage of all the diverse viewpoints that were at play during the electoral campaign.

The research demonstrates that the incumbent candidate Yoweri Museveni and his party the National Resistance Movement (NRM) largely dominated the media space. In a detailed case-study of the day before the polling day, the research also shows that the government-controlled New Vision has been supportive of President Museveni, while another newspaper, Daily Monitor, covered all major candidates in a more critical perspective.

This work is part of ARTICLE 19s evidence-based advocacy in order to promote and protect media freedom, independence and the public interest in an increasingly globalised, digitised and converged media landscape worldwide. While this is a contribution to other empirical research that relate the monitoring of media content with an analysis of public advertising and other means of public funding of the media, it is also hoped that the findings and conclusions of this report will serve to inform media reforms in Uganda, especially on the need for fairness in coverage of important political issues.

Executive Summary

Online news coverage

Incumbent president Yoweri Museveni was mentioned in by far the most online articles  1,597  published by the sampled news outlets. The next most covered candidate  Kizza Besigye  featured in 1,029 articles, while Amama Mbabazi featured in 558 articles. The five other candidates each appeared in fewer than 200 articles across the month of February.

This advantage in coverage for Museveni was more pronounced before polling day than after. He featured in 59 articles on average per day before polling day and 48 afterwards. Besigye rose from 32 articles per day to 37 per day after the election.

The NRM also had an advantage over rivals in terms of volume of coverage  it appeared in 1,303 articles, verus the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC)s 998. The TDA-Go Forward movement was in a distant third place with 256 articles.

Museveni was the most featured candidate in all five outlets selected for in-depth analysis of candidate coverage. These included newspaper websites (New Vision, Daily Monitor and The Observer) and online-only sites (The Insider and ChimpReports).

Policy issue agendas in online news

The campaign coverage tended to focus on issues of democratic legitimacy, fairness, and security. The most frequently covered policy issues during the campaign were: Corruption (1,326 articles mentioned this issue); Security (1,123); Justice (1,008) and Democracy (915).

Concerns about corruption and democracy rose significantly after the election. Prior to polling day, Security was the most prevalent policy issue, measured by the number of articles in which it was referenced at least once. After polling day, however, there was a substantial decrease in the number of articles mentioning security-related issues.

Corruption was the most common issue across all outlets, but security, justice and democracy always featured prominently.

Sources in online news coverage

NRM spokespeople featured most often in coverage of the campaign, being mentioned or quoted in 211 articles. FDC spokespeople were featured in 51 articles.

In all eight sampled publications, spokespeople affiliated with the NRM were most common.

The campaign on Twitter

Most candidates Twitter profiles were relatively restrained during the campaign, with the exception of Abed Bwanikas, which published 928 tweets in the month of February. Though many of these were retweets, there was still a contrast in how candidates communicated on the platform.

The candidates tended not to mention their opponents. Criticism was rare. This also extended to party-affiliated profiles.

Across all sampled Twitter profiles, many of the features of online news coverage were present: Museveni gathered the most mentions, with Besigye in second place; the NMA was by far the most mentioned party; corruption, security, justice and democracy were the most common policy issues mentioned (though corruption significantly less so, in relative terms).

The governments attempted election day shut-down of social media platforms was not as successful on Twitter  polling day saw the second-highest number of tweets (5,534) by sampled profiles, second only to the day of the presidential debate on 13 February.

Case studies

The day of the second presidential debate was dominated by speculation about whether or not Museveni would appear. This was the key issue on the majority of online news coverage and on Twitter. On the day after the debate, very little coverage focused on the debate itself.

Twitter coverage of the debate was dominated by the #UGDebate16 hashtag  most profiles, especially those of media outlets, used this as part of live coverage and updates of the debate as it happened. Criticism by official party or candidate profiles of opponents was rare, though party-affiliated accounts did occasionally criticise opponents directly, and more often republished critical tweets from other users outside the sample.

On the day before polling day (17 February), the conversation on Twitter among parties and candidates was respectful and usually congenial. Some candidates published messages of goodwill to others. Party-affiliated accounts made extensive use of hashtags to rally support, and retweeted many messages of support.

The Twitter profiles of media outlets generally refrained from covering candidates and parties on 17 February. Of 1,045 tweets in total, Museveni was mentioned in 40, and Besigye in 42. The FDC appeared in 25 tweets by media outlets, and the NRM in 16. The majority of media twitter activity was information-oriented, and made extensive use of the #UgandaDecides hashtag.

Online news coverage on 17 February gave almost equal prominence to Museveni and Besigye (mentioned in 67 articles and 63 articles respectively), and the NRM and FDC also received almost equal coverage (45 and 46 articles).

The policy agenda across all sampled outlets on 17 February was little different from that of the campaign as a whole. Corruption was the top issue, mentioned in 88 articles.

An in-depth comparison of New Vision and Daily Monitor shows the difference in both publications coverage on 17 February. New Vision published several comment pieces that were broadly or explicitly supportive of Museveni. Two of these comment articles also contained direct criticism of Besigye. Daily Monitor published more articles that were factual news reports, and had a closer balance of articles focusing on Museveni, Besigye, and to a lesser extent Mbabazi. Though the Monitor contained two comment pieces showing some degree of support for Besigye, it published articles that contained criticism of all major candidates.

Other publications (The Observer, Red Pepper, The Independent, The Investigator, The Insider and ChimpReports) published little in the way of commentary on the day before polling day. Criticism and support for Museveni and Besigye tended to come in the form of partisan quotes from officials or supporters of their respective parties. None of these publications was uniformly partisan in their coverage of presidential candidates; each featured criticism or support for both of the main candidates, though to varying degrees.

In the immediate aftermath of polling day 19 and 20 February  coverage continued to focus on Museveni and Besigye and their respective parties, and was largely preoccupied with issues of the validity of the election process, and public order and security (including the arrest of Besigye and affiliated party officials. There was a lack of clarity and consensus about these issues.

Coverage post-election was almost entirely absent of quotes from presidential candidates, and featured very little commentary. Partisan support or criticism of the different candidates and their parties was relatively rare.

Downloads

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Philippines: Right to information law must follow Executive Order

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 17 August 2016 Cite as Article 19, Philippines: Right to information law must follow Executive Order, 17 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac8a84.html [accessed 29 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.

ARTICLE 19 welcomes the Executive Order requiring all Philippine executive branch government officials to fulfil the publics right to information and the Presidents request to the legislature to follow with a comprehensive law. Combatting impunity for crimes against journalists and state actors refraining from making statements stigmatising journalists are also critical tools for freedom of expression and information in order to tackle corruption.



The Philippine government adopted Executive Order No. 2 on 23 July 2016, three weeks after the new President assumed office. The Order, which only applies to the executive branch of government, comes after a three-decade public campaign and nine separate bills in the legislature, none of which succeeded. On 15 August 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte called on the Philippine legislature to follow suit and adopt a comprehensive right to information law that was long overdue.



Philippines joins Vietnam and Sri Lanka with new laws, and Myanmar and Fiji with new bills, in a wave of transparency reforms in Asia this year.



While the adoption of Executive Order No.2 is a welcome first step to tackle Philippines comparatively high levels of corruption, it does not absolve the legislatures responsibility to adopt a comprehensive right to information law as commanded by the Philippine Constitution, after three decades of public demand and repeated failed promises. The Order itself also has some weaknesses that should be addressed in any subsequent law said David Diaz-Jogeix, Director of Programmes at ARTICLE 19.



As well as strong right to information legal framework, the Philippine government and authorities must refrain from stigmatising journalists and take concrete steps to challenge the culture of impunity for attacks against and killings of journalists. Respect for the rule of law and international human rights commitments and a recognition of the importance of freedom of expression and information in the fight against corruption are now more crucial than ever, added Diaz-Jogeix



Executive Order No.2 weaknesses



Executive Order No. 2 is an important first step to enforcing the right to information. However, it is significantly limited because it is only an executive order and not a comprehensive law covering all parts of the state. As such, it does not apply to the legislative or judicial branches.



In addition, when compared to international standards, the Order includes the following weaknesses:

Section 2 limits the Order to cover national executive government offices only. Local governments are only encouraged to observe and be guided by its provisions. This leaves significant space for them to arbitrarily decide whether to accept or reject requests for information at the non-national level.

Local governments are only encouraged to observe and be guided by its provisions. This leaves significant space for them to arbitrarily decide whether to accept or reject requests for information at the non-national level. Section 18 limits the Order only to override or repeal existing regulations, rules, and orders, not laws. Any existing legislation which restricts the right to information remains in force.

Any existing legislation which restricts the right to information remains in force. Sections 3 and 9 limit the Order to Filipino citizens only. Section 3 limits the right of access to every Filipino. This is enforced in Section 9 which requires valid proof of identification or authorisation. As a basic human right, the right to information should be open to all people. Requirements to show identification are likely to disproportionately impact poor and/or displaced people, who may not have access to identification.

Section 3 limits the right of access to every Filipino. This is enforced in Section 9 which requires valid proof of identification or authorisation. As a basic human right, the right to information should be open to all people. Requirements to show identification are likely to disproportionately impact poor and/or displaced people, who may not have access to identification. Section 4 does not define which information is exempt. The Order includes a number of concerning issues relating to exemptions: 1) exempted information is to be decided by the Department of Justice and the Office of the Solicitor General in 15 days from the date of effect, without public consultation; 2) the list of information can be changed without proper process; 3) information that is limited by any existing laws will be exempt; 4) exemptions are absolute, without consideration of harm or public interest; 5) the Data Privacy Act 2012 may limit access to personal information in many cases.

The Order includes a number of concerning issues relating to exemptions: 1) exempted information is to be decided by the Department of Justice and the Office of the Solicitor General in 15 days from the date of effect, without public consultation; 2) the list of information can be changed without proper process; 3) information that is limited by any existing laws will be exempt; 4) exemptions are absolute, without consideration of harm or public interest; 5) the Data Privacy Act 2012 may limit access to personal information in many cases. The presumption of release is limited. While the order states that all information is presumed to be public, when information falls under the exemption list, there is a very limited provision to release information that only applies if the denial is intended primarily and purposely to cover up a crime, wrongdoing, graft or corruption. Therefore, for example, if the denial is to protect privacy or commercial confidentiality and hides corruption or toxic pollution releases, it will not apply.

While the order states that all information is presumed to be public, when information falls under the exemption list, there is a very limited provision to release information that only applies if the denial is intended primarily and purposely to cover up a crime, wrongdoing, graft or corruption. Therefore, for example, if the denial is to protect privacy or commercial confidentiality and hides corruption or toxic pollution releases, it will not apply. Section 10 requires applicants to show reasons for the request. Section 10 requires that applicants show proof of identification and provide the reason for, or purpose of, the request for information. This is somewhat limited in the following sentence about denials but still violates the right to freedom of information as well as the Philippine Constitution which does not include this requirement.

Section 10 requires that applicants show proof of identification and provide the reason for, or purpose of, the request for information. This is somewhat limited in the following sentence about denials but still violates the right to freedom of information as well as the Philippine Constitution which does not include this requirement. Section 13 does not include an independent oversight body. While there is a mandatory internal appeal, and then appeals to a court, there is no provision for an independent oversight body such as an ombudsman to review the decision or to review the implementation of the rule.

President Duterte has in the recent past sparked concerns among civil society and media workers who defend the right to freedom of expression and information in Philippines. In May 2016, President Duterte stated that killed journalists had done something to deserve punishment. Philippines has one of the highest rates of unsolved killings of journalists in the world. 34 journalists were killed in one day alone, on 23 November 2009 in the Ampatuan massacre, and at the time of writing no individuals have been held accountable.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Iran: Execution of Kurdish Prisoners must stop immediately

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 15 August 2016 Cite as Article 19, Iran: Execution of Kurdish Prisoners must stop immediately, 15 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bac9144.html [accessed 29 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.

Rights groups condemn recent execution of Kurdish prisoners and call for an immediate moratorium on all executions in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iranian authorities must immediately put a halt to the execution of Kurdish political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, 22 human rights organizations stated. These organizations also urged for an immediate moratorium on the death penalty and a right to due process and fair and public retrials for all prisoners sentenced to death.



Since the beginning of August 2016 until today, Iranian authorities summarily executed at least twenty-four Kurdish political prisoners.

On Tuesday August 9, 2016, at dawn, five Kurdish prisoners were hanged on narcotic charges in Urmia Central Prison in Iran, according to official sources and Iran Human Rights (IHR). One of the executed men was Mohammad Abdollahi. Abdollahi was charged with the capital offense moharebeh (enmity against God) for his alleged membership in a Kurdish political party. Abdollahi insisted that he had simply obtained a membership card from the group.

These Urmia executions followed the August 2, 2016 execution of twenty Kurdish political prisoners in Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj, which was confirmed by Iranian authorities. According to multiple human rights organizations, these men were part of a larger group of thirty-three Kurdish and Sunni prisoners subjected to a pattern of severe human rights abuses and procedural violations. Many of these men were convicted of moharebeh based on confessions allegedly obtained by means of torture. Many were held for months, some for more than two years, in solitary confinement, and convicted in hasty unfair trials in which they were denied the right to proper defense and judicial safeguards.

Politically-motivated executions are the gravest violation of the right to freedom of expression, and foster a climate of fear in which individuals and group self-censor, further limiting freedom of expression in the country.

According to a report by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the country had the highest rate of executions per capita in the world in 2015. The executions have not stopped in 2016. According to the database Iran Prison Atlas, 915 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience are in detention as of August 2016  390 of whom are Kurds. The vast majority of prisoners sentenced to moharebeh are Kurds. Meanwhile, nearly all executions in the ethnic regions of Iran are carried out secretly or not announced by official Iranian media. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic, thousands of prisoners have been reportedly executed for drug-related offenses, a significant number of whom include ethnic minorities.

We call for the following immediate actions:

We urge the Islamic Republic of Iran to impose an immediate a moratorium on the death penalty.

We urge the members of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to pressure Iran to facilitate a fact-finding mission by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions to investigate the alarming use of the death penalty, including against Kurds and other minority groups. One focus of the investigation should be the extent to which executions are being carried out as a means to silence political dissent and free association in the country.

We urge the European Union (E.U.) to call on Iran to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in light of its upcoming human rights dialogue with the E.U. The E.U. should insist that as a sign of good will Iranian authorities should cease all executions at minimum for the duration of the dialogue. We also urge the E.U. to insist on the right to fair trials in all cases.

Signatories

Thomas Hughes, Executive Director

ARTICLE 19

Roya Boroumand, Executive Director

Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation



Karim Abedian, Director

Ahwaz Human Rights Organization



Hassan Nayeb Hashem, Representative to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva

All Human Rights for All in Iran



Kamran Ashtary, Executive Director

Arseh Sevom



Ava Homa, North America Director

Association for Human Rights in Kurdistan of Iran-Geneva (KMMK-G)



Shahin Helali Khyavi, Member of Board of Directors

Association for the human rights of the Azerbaijani people in Iran (AHRAZ)



Karen Parker, President

Association of Humanitarian Lawyers



Mansoor Bibak, Co-Director Balochistan Human Rights Group



Shirin Ebadi, Founder and President

Center for Supporters of Human Rights



Raphael Chenuil-Hazan, Executive Director

Ensemble Contre La Peine de Mort



Ibrahim Al Arabi, Executive Director

European Ahwazi Human Rights Organisation



Kamal Sido, Representative

Gesellschaft fur bedrohte Volker Deutchland



Mani Mostofi, Director

Impact Iran

Hadi Ghaemi, Executive Director

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran



Lydia Brazon, Executive Director

International Educational Development, Inc.



Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, Executive Director

Iran Human Rights



Shadi Sadr, Co-Director

Justice for Iran



Mahmood Enayat, Director

Small Media



Christoph Wiedmer, Director

Society for Threatened People Switzerland



Mehrangiz Kar, Chairperson

Siamak Pourzand Foundation



Firuzeh Mahmoudi, Executive Director

United for Iran

Downloads

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Philippines: MNLF Hardens Stance Toward Abu Sayyaf

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Publication Date 19 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 17 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Philippines: MNLF Hardens Stance Toward Abu Sayyaf, 19 August 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 17, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bacb124.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Four members of the Southeast Asian militant group Abu Sayyaf were killed in the southern Philippines during a confrontation with members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) on August 9. While the MNLF has worked with the military in the past on such operations, the recent clash appears not to have been coordinated with the authorities, although an army spokesman all but welcomed the news (The Philippine Star, August 10).

According to MNLF, those killed included mid-level Abu Sayyaf commander Jennor Lahab, sometimes known as Jim Dragon, and his son (Manila Times, August 11). The two were from an Abu Sayyaf faction led by Alhabsy Misaya, whose group is behind a series of kidnappings carried out in collaboration with criminal gangs, including one that ended in the brutal beheading of a Malaysian engineer (Asia Times, November 17, 2015; The Star [Malaysia], December 1, 2015). Lahab himself is suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of 10 Indonesian sailors, who were freed in May on payment of a ransom (The Philippine Star, May 1).

It is in this context that the clash seems to have occurred. The MNLF generally opposes Abu Sayyaf (which split from the group in the 1990s), and its chairman, Nur Misuari, vowed several years ago to prevent the group form using Sulu as a base for its kidnapping operations. The recent beheading of Canadian hostages John Ridsdel and Robert Hall by an Abu Sayyaf faction linked to Islamic State brought unwelcome international attention to the situation in the southern Philippines and appears to have reaffirmed the MNLF's resolve to stamp out the kidnapping operation (The Philippine Star, April 27; The Philippine Star, June 21).

The clash is also likely a response to recent calls from President Rodrigo Duterte - the Philippine's first president to hail from Mindanao, and himself an advocate of violent reprisals on criminals - for the MNLF (and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front) to explicitly reject Abu Sayyaf. Duterte himself has demonstrated a somewhat mixed attitude towards Abu Sayyaf in the past, but has come out strongly against IS.

At the same time, Duterte has taken steps to move forward on the stalled peace process in the southern Philippines, approving a roadmap put forward by Jesus Dureza, the presidential adviser on the peace process, which envisages massive on-the-ground development projects to boost the local economy. The MNLF will be loath to jeopardize such an opportunity, and a further bloody response to Abu Sayyaf may well be the result.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Pakistan: Rivals Lay Claim to Quetta Hospital Attack

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Alexander Sehmer Publication Date 19 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 17 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Pakistan: Rivals Lay Claim to Quetta Hospital Attack, 19 August 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 17, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bacb804.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

A suicide bomber blew himself up at Quetta's Civil Hospital in the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province on August 8, killing more than 70 people and injuring about 100 others. Many of those killed were lawyers who had gathered to protest the earlier killing of Bilal Anwar Kasi, the president of the Balochistan Bar Association. Also among the dead were journalists reporting on the lawyers' protest.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a breakaway faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the bombing, as well as for Kasi's murder, but a few hours later Islamic State (IS) also stepped in to claim the bombing (First Post, August 9). Meanwhile, Balochistan's Chief Minister Sardar Sanaullah Zehri told local reports that India's intelligence service was behind the attack (Dawn, August 9).

Islamic State probably has the capacity to carry out such an attack through a Pakistani affiliate, and the rival claims cannot be verified. However, the more established Jamaat-ul-Ahrar - which briefly aligned itself with IS in 2014 before switching back to the TTP - has experience carrying out high-casualty attacks in Pakistan. It has masterminded several devastating blasts, including one at a crowded Easter celebration at a park in Lahore in which 72 people were killed (Express Tribune, March 27).

Some commentators have suggested the loss of so many legal experts in the Quetta attack could have serious repercussions at a local level, but why the group should specifically target lawyers is open to speculation. Professional groups have come under attack from Jamaat-ul-Ahrar in the past, notably health workers treating polio, who are sometimes portrayed by militants as part of a Western conspiracy to sterilize Muslims (Dawn, April 21, Dawn, March 18, 2015). Possibly as a professional group lawyers are an obvious symbol of constitutional authority. The lawyers certainly feel they are under fire, boycotting the courts during a period of mourning in the aftermath of the attack and demanding greater protection (Dunya News, August 16).

However, the group's most frequent targets are the security forces and members of minority communities, a reflection of the sectarian hatreds harbored by many of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi commanders who make up its ranks (See Terrorism Monitor, July 22). Most likely, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar was focused more on the location - the bomb went off in a hospital, the kind of soft target the group favors - than on the profession of the blast victims.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Al-Shabaab Aims for 'Hearts and Minds' With Establishment of Islamic Police Force

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Sunguta West Publication Date 19 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 17 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Al-Shabaab Aims for 'Hearts and Minds' With Establishment of Islamic Police Force, 19 August 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 17, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bacbfe4.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, claims to have established a religious police force in an area it controls in southern Somalia, seeking to push forward its Islamist agenda even as it struggles to hold on to its territory in the face of the advance of African Union (AU) troops.

Al-Shabaab has lost a great deal of territory to the Somali National Government forces and the troops of the AU mission in Somalia (AMISOM) over the years, but it continues to control parts of southern Somalia (Horseed Media, May 6).

While some analysts suggest that contradictory policies and AMISOM's own inefficiencies have sustained the conflict and even bolstered al-Shabaab, the group has nonetheless suffered heavy losses at the hands of better-armed AMISOM troops and struggled with internal differences (Herald, May 17). The establishment of the new (so-called) Islamic police, or Hisba, is yet another indication that the group is far from defeat.

Islamic 'Police Force'

The Hisba officers were first sighted in Jilib, the most populous town in Somalia's Middle Juba region and currently the group's political and military headquarters, on August 9. Photographs released by the group through its mouthpiece Radio Andalus showed men in uniform with ID cards and branded vehicles on patrol in the city (Hiraan Online, August 9).

From Jilib, al-Shabaab hopes to deploy the force across the areas it controls, including Juba, Gedo, Lower Shabelle, Middle Shabelle, Bay and Bakool, Hiraan, and Galgudud in southern Somalia.

News of the Hisba's establishment followed the release on July 12 of the first audio message - entitled "Sharia or Martyrdom" - from Sheikh Ahmad Umar Abu Ubaidah, the leader or emir of al-Shabaab (see Terrorism Monitor, August 5).

That Umar felt compelled to release the message at all suggests morale among the militant group was low. Through his message Umar sought to inspire his forces. While the audio recording was aimed at the fighters, the message sent by the establishment of the Hisba force is clearly intended for the public in the regions al-Shabaab controls.

The establishment of the new force is intended to win the movement public support in those areas by highlighting its role in the dispensation of justice.

Seeking Public Support

According to the group, the force will be unarmed, but it will work as part of the commission for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice and seek to "encourage" morality among Somali citizens.

The Hisba will carry out its work under the group's strict interpretation of sharia. Its main task is providing moral guidance in line with Islamic teachings, and al-Shabaab has made clear the new force can be expected to arrest and even behead those engaging in the consumption and sale of alcohol. The group has also made clear the force will carry out harsh punishments including cutting-off men's penises as a punishment for adultery, stoning to death promiscuous women, and amputating the hands of those caught stealing. Those wearing Western clothes regarded un-Islamic will also be detained. It will also protect the quality of food, medicine, and clothing in the market (Zipo, August 10).

This is reminiscent of group's early activities from 2006-2009, when it stormed through central and southern Somalia and implemented a strict form of sharia, cutting-off limbs, stoning women to death, and caning others who broke its religious laws (Standard, September 27, 2014). In those days, the group even carried out double amputations - cutting-off the arms and legs of people suspected of stealing people's property in Southern Somalia (Hiiran Online, June 22, 2009). This harsh dispensation of justice reduced crime with brutal efficiency, but this came at a huge cost to personal and social freedoms (SomaliaReport , January 24, 2012; Somalia Report, December 4, 2011).

Jilib as a Strategic Stronghold

In many ways, the Hisba is not a new phenomenon; the militants themselves have carried out such duties in the past (Tuko, August 9). In regions where the government has no administrative control (such as Jilib), al-Shabaab continues to conduct its sharia courts, run schools, manage a taxation system, and install its own governors (Zipo, August 10).

Jilib became al-Shabaab's de-facto base in 2015, after the group was forced out of Bardheere, its operation and logistical headquarters, and Dinsoor, its political center, by AMISOM troops (Tuko, July 24, 2015; Horseed Media, July 24, 2015).

Jilib, with its population of 45,000, is a commercial town located on the main road from Mogadishu's south to the port city of Kismayu. Once the headquarters of Islamic Courts Union, the Islamist movement from which al-Shabaab splintered amid the Union's defeat in 2006, Jilib's location allows al-Shabaab to access the Indian Ocean through secret routes. Through these routes, it receives contraband, including arms, and new recruits.

Jilib is described as vast, flat agricultural zone that ensures access to food for the group, and it provides them with a tactical advantage. AMISON forces and their international partners recently increased aerial bombardment of the city with a view to weakening the movement (Intelligencebriefs, August 26, 2015). Hundreds of fighters are believed to have been killed in the attacks, which have been carried out mainly by the Kenya Defense Forces.

Potential for Local Appeal

With the announcement of its new police force in Jilib, al-Shabaab is seeking to strengthen its grip on the city, one of its few remaining strategic strongholds, by creating a force that can easily engage with the public, maybe even winning over public opinion and furthering public support for the group.

Judging by the group's past success in combating crime, it is possible the new force will have some appeal at a local level.

Meanwhile, the heavy public promotion of the new Islamic police force will likely encourage further sustained attacks by AMISOM and its partners, who will be wondering at al-Shabaab's confidence in heralding the establishment of such a unit.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Political Turmoil in KRG Risks Hindering Kurdish Efforts Against Islamic State

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Goktug Sonmez Publication Date 19 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 17 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Political Turmoil in KRG Risks Hindering Kurdish Efforts Against Islamic State, 19 August 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 17, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57baccce4.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq have been some of the most effective in tackling Islamic State (IS) on the ground, but the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) itself has been mired for more than a year in political turmoil over the extension of President Masoud Barzani's term in office (Al-Monitor, May 22, 2015; Anadolu Agency, April 13).

In May, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Gorran Movement, which broke away from the PUK in 2009, signed an agreement opposing what they view as Barzani's one-man rule (Ekurd Daily, May 17). The document, which consists of 25 articles, emphasizes the importance of liberal democratic values and strongly criticizes the lack of such values in the KRG.

At the same time, the KRG faces a growing economic crisis, and while political compromise could end the parliamentary stalemate, only the defeat of IS appears likely to end the Kurdish autonomous region's economic problems.

Barzani's Rule

Masoud Barzani, who leads the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), has been president of the KRG since 2005. His second term ended in 2013, but his rule was extended for a further two years by parliament. Under this legal amendment he should have stepped down on August 19, 2015. Instead he has ruled without a mandate for nearly a year.

From the outset, there was disagreement over the move to extend Barzani's presidential term. Both the PUK and Gorran demanded Barzani's powers be reduced in favor of parliament. The KDP, on the other hand, wanted to call a presidential election, which they expected would see Barzani granted another term. The political debate spilled over into violence. Barzani dismissed ministers from Gorran and banned Yusuf Mohammed Sadiq, the speaker of the Kurdish parliament, from Erbil (Ekurd Daily, October 12, 2015).

These moves appear to have brought the PUK and Gorran closer together. It had been though that the PUK could soften its stance towards Barzani in the hope of eliminating Gorran, and regain its position as the main political partner of the KDP. The PUK-Gorran deal in May, then, came as a surprise to many but indicates the two parties believe that united they may be able to remove Barzani from office and share power between themselves.

Economic Crisis

Amid the political turmoil, the KRG is also suffering on the economic front, hit both by the declining oil price and the financial burden of the fight against IS. Numerous construction and development projects have been halted and the government is struggling to pay the monthly salaries of teachers, doctors, and even MPs and the Peshmerga. Considering the Peshmerga is about 100,000-strong, the payment that needs to be made to them alone could constitute up to $300 million (Reuters, December 04, 2015).

Around 6,000 construction projects have been halted in the region and electricity provision has slipped to around eight hours a day, a disappointing figure by any yardstick, but especially compared to earlier provision of 22 hours (Ekurd Daily, January 01).

While the decline in the oil price has had a significant impact, the KRG already had a budget deficit of about $6.5 billion due to the Baghdad government's decision to stop transferring the KRG's previously agreed share of state revenues, which constitutes 17 percent of Iraq's overall state budget (Rudaw, December 16, 2015; Al Jazeera Turk, June 08, 2015).

The KRG also bears some responsibility for its current economic problems, mainly because of its failure to channel revenues from energy sales in earlier years into R&D and profitable industrial projects. It is also argued that behind the economic crisis lie corruption, nepotism, and a lack of accountability that complicates deals and negatively impacts politics (Reuters, December 04, 2015). As a consequence, many qualified educated people, including teachers and doctors in the region, are looking to leave - some travelling without the required documents - to neighboring countries and further afield to Europe, in order to find better opportunities there.

Disputed Territories

More broadly, the Peshmerga's efforts to recapture areas taken by IS, have complicated Iraq's political situation.

When IS began its campaign in 2014 and took control of Mosul, Baiji and Tikrit, Tal Afar, Anbar and advanced into Kirkuk and Diyala, capturing hydrocarbon resources and military equipment, they became in effect the neighbors of the KRG. When IS advanced towards Erbil - a move that was marked by the first U.S. air strike against the group - it became clear the KRG would need to fight back.

The Kurd's successful campaign has allowed the KRG to expand its influence in almost all the areas it disputes with the central government. This came about in part because of the Iraqi army's earlier failure in the face of IS, although it has not been without cost to the Kurds, who saw at least 1,500 Peshmerga fighters killed and about 8,000 injured over a six-month period (Rudaw, November 1, 2015; Iraqi News, November 4, 2015).

The Peshmerga are now in de facto control of Kirkuk. This occurred as a result of their presence on the ground and the influence of Governor Najmaddin Kerim, a leading PUK figure who has used his position to extend Kurdish security forces' control over the city and its energy resources.

The settlements of Tuzkhurmatu and Tazekhurmatu are a further point of tension, in this case between Kurds and Turkmen. Given that a significant amount of the Turkmen forces in these areas fight under the aegis of the Hashd-al Shaabi, an umbrella organization for Shia militia groups that has official links to the Iraqi prime minister, these conflicts could escalate further.

The Kurds have been able to take the upper hand in Kirkuk and have gone largely unchallenged, except in Arab-populated Havija. The Peshmerga's capture of Shingal from IS was welcomed internationally and provided an important boost to Kurdish morale, indeed the Kurdish military gains have led KRG officials to increasingly talk about a three-state solution for a post-IS Iraq.

However, the fighting has also exposed the KRG's internal political struggles and quarrels over the control of territory and natural resources have underlined the rift between the KDP and PUK. Their treatment of other ethnic groups within these territories is also under scrutiny.

Political Tensions

While the KDP, Gorran and PUK all share the position that the disputed territories belong to the KRG, attempts to officially link them to the Kurd's autonomous region have the potential to further deteriorate already tense relations between Erbil and Baghdad.

The Turkmen presence in the region means Turkey also claims an interest, further complicating the situation. The potential for tension to spill over into regional conflict means the Iranians and the United States are also closely monitoring events.

In the light of all these factors, President Barzani's frequently repeated calls for independence seem unlikely to be realized any time soon. In fact, the call for independence is viewed by most Kurds as merely a political rallying cry as the current state of the KRG's politics have left it in no shape to pursue it.

Whether the May 2016 deal between the PUK and Gorran signals the end of the KDP rule in the near future remains to be seen. It does present a challenge to the KDP. If Gorran and the PUK can consolidate their deal, their political power combined could herald defeat for the KDP. That may push the KDP towards compromise. But the KDP has resorted to repression in the past, notably during a period of tension with Gorran in 2015, and could do so again. Gorran is particularly susceptible to the threat of force since, unlike the other two parties, it does not maintain its own Peshmerga.

With IS undefeated, the consequences of KRG internal tensions erupting into conflict could be severe. That should ensure the KDP favors compromise, but a real end to the crisis will only come with the defeat of IS and the re-capturing of the oil-rich regions that are under IS control, most of which are within the PUK sphere of influence. Free from any dispute with the central government, the revenues from these could end the KRG's economic crisis.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Boko Haram: Abu Musab al-Barnawi's Leadership Coup and Offensive in Niger

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Jacob Zenn Publication Date 19 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 17 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Boko Haram: Abu Musab al-Barnawi's Leadership Coup and Offensive in Niger, 19 August 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 17, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bacd2f4.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

On August 3, Islamic State (IS) announced that Habib Yusuf (a.k.a. Abu Musab al-Barnawi), the son of Boko Haram founder Muhammed Yusuf, was the new wali (governor) of its "West Africa Province," the name IS gave to Boko Haram after Abubakar Shekau pledged loyalty to Abubakar al-Baghdadi in March 2015.

Al-Barnawi is the first Boko Haram factional leader to successfully depose Shekau, who has led the group since Yusuf's death in 2010 and thwarted a number of rivals in that time (Terrorism Monitor, September 22, 2011). Al-Barnawi, like others before him, accuses Shekau of excessively killing Muslim civilians and may have been aided in his "coup" by outside support and validation from IS, which depends on al-Barnawi because he  not Shekau  controls the lines of communication to IS.

Shekau, meanwhile, claims that al-Barnawi's faction manipulated IS by preventing Shekau from sending complaints to Abubakar al-Baghdadi about al-Barnawi using "personal opinion" (rather than God's directives) in deciding who to avoid killing.

In an August 7 video, where Shekau showed his face for the first time since his March 2015 pledge to al-Baghdadi, and again in the recent August 15 video of the captive Chibok schoolgirls, Shekau and Shekau's spokesman and military amir confirmed that Shekau has reverted to being the leader of Jamatu Ahlis Sunna Lidawatti wal Jihad (JAS)  Boko Haram's original name  and is no longer part of West Africa Province (Vanguard, August 7; Vanguard, August 15)). Thus, al-Barnawi is now the leader of West Africa Province, and Shekau is the leader of JAS, though both groups are commonly still referred to as "Boko Haram."

In the long-term al-Barnawi will likely refresh alliances, including, paradoxically, to al-Qaeda. But in the short-term, his influence has been evident on the battlefield, particularly with West Africa Province's offensive in Niger.

This article reviews the history of JAS and what is now West Africa Province in Niger, including the recent offensive and corresponding IS media blitz that promoted it. It discusses why al-Barnawi's faction was likely behind the offensive and examines the nature of al-Barnawi's faction in comparison to Shekau's, concluding that, in the long-term, al-Barnawi's alliances, targets, and areas of operation are likely to be more closely aligned to al-Qaeda than IS.

Initial Attacks in Niger

Although there were Nigeriens among the early followers of JAS, even prior to Shekau's assumption of leadership and declaration of "jihad" in 2010, the first publicized arrests of JAS militants in Niger came in 2012 (Terrorism Monitor, November 2, 2012).

Even then, JAS carried out no attacks in Niger until 2015. A breakaway group, Ansaru, the predecessor of al-Barnawi's faction, did take part in attacks led by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) on a French-run energy plants in Arlit and Agadez, and a prison break attempt in Niamey in 2013. JAS mainly used Niger mostly as a rear base for logistics, recruitment, and recovery after battles in Nigeria and did not want to risk provoking Niger into launching a large-scale crackdown on JAS networks in the country (Jeuneafrique, May 13, 2013).

Then, in February 2015, JAS sent a two-person team of suicide bombers  one male, one female, with the man reportedly dressed in a hijab  to the town of Diffa, where they blew themselves up in retaliation for Niger's participation in a regional military offensive against JAS (Jeuneafrique, February 11, 2015). The Diffa attack was promoted on the Twitter account called "Al-Urhwa Al-Wutqha" that JAS was using as a platform to advertise Shekau's then upcoming pledge to al-Baghdadi. Al-Urhwa Al-Wutqha was launched in coordination with IS' North Africa-based Africa Media, which was in contact with al-Barnawi (Twitter [account now suspended], February 13, 2015). Moreover, it also seems likely former Ansaru operatives masterminded JAS's female suicide bombing program, which deployed more than 200 women in female suicide bombings over a two-year period. These media and tactical connections, in addition to Ansaru's pre-existing operations in Nigeria, strongly suggest al-Barnawi had a role in the attack.

Al-Barnawi's faction was also already a part of JAS at the time of the Diffa attack, forming (albeit only hesitantly) a "General Command" with Shekau's faction, as demanded by IS. IS had requested the two groups present a united front in order for JAS to be designated as its West Africa Province.

Following the Diffa attack until May 2016, Niger was rarely targeted, while attacks escalated in Cameroon and Chad. More recently, however, West Africa Province has scaled back attacks on Chad, possibly as a result of a tacit agreement with the country's leadership, and Cameroon too has seen fewer attacks, due to a large-scale counter-insurgency effort that has stymied West Africa Province in the country's north. The Niger offensive that began in May 2016, then, has got under way in the context of reduced attacks in Chad and Cameroon, and with an aggressive Nigerian military offensive bringing pressure to bear in the Boko Haram heartland of northeastern Nigeria.

Mounting the Campaign

The campaign in Niger began on May 19 in Yebi, near Bosso, where West Africa Province razed the town, killed several civilians, and left dozens of people injured. Nigerien forces expelled Boko Haram the following day, but many of the town's inhabitants had already fled. Following the operation in Yebi, West Africa Province carried our four more operations in Niger:

On May 27, Nigerien forces repelled an attempt to attack Bosso in a battle lasting several hours.

On May 31, around 40 militants again attacked Yebi in the evening, killing several civilians.

On June 3, around 100 militants attacked Bosso, killing several dozen Nigerien and Nigerian soldiers, and taking several civilian hostages.

On June 5, militants again attacked Bosso and neighboring villages, but did not inflict as much damage as the attack two days before (maghrebandsahel (blog), July 6).

Coinciding with these attacks were various statements by IS on behalf of West Africa Province:

On June 4, IS claimed West Africa Province killed 35 Nigerian and Nigerien soldiers and looted arms in an attack on Bosso (referring to the June 3 attack).

On June 7, IS released, via its Amaq News Agency, a one-minute video showing the June 3 Bosso attack.

On June 14, IS' weekly al-Naba newsletter featured an interview of a "military source" claiming a "surprise attack" on the Chadian, Nigerien, and Nigerian armies, again referring to the Bosso attack.

On June 17, IS claimed an attack on Nigerien forces in Diffa that allegedly killed "seven apostates."

On June 19, IS' Amaq media agency released a short video of an attack in Diffa.

On July 5, IS released a 14-minute video via Telegram of the June 3 attack in Bosso called "Invading Niger: Scenes from Liberating the Nigerien Apostate Army Camp in the Area of Bosso" (Twitter, July 6).

In late July, IS released two infographics, one which called Niger an area of "medium control" for IS (along with Nigeria, Afghanistan, Libya and six other countries), and another which provided statistics on weapons looted from the June 3 Bosso attack.

Media Messaging Points to al-Barnawi

Al-Barnawi's hand in the attacks in Niger can be seen first and foremost in the way the operations were promoted in IS media. Al-Barnawi was the "spokesman" for JAS and the operator of the Al-Urhwa Al-Wutqha Twitter account that JAS used to advertise its intended pledge to al-Baghdadi, made in March 2015. It is unlikely to have been coincidental that Al-Urhwa Al-Wutqha resurrected the profile of the late Muhammed Yusuf, al-Barnawi's father, a figure that had been nearly absent in Shekau's messaging (Twitter, March 3, 2015). Al-Barnawi then ran several Twitter accounts to advertise the new West Africa Province after Shekau's pledge in March 2015, but those were short-lived. Several members of his media team were killed in battle, Twitter blocked the accounts, and Algerian and Tunisian security forces killed his partners in Africa Media (@bernawi10 still is active but appears to be unused).

In the months after Shekau's pledge, al-Barnawi's faction of West Africa Province continued to release videos representing the group. The videos promoted the establishment of an Islamic State in northeastern Nigeria and its control over large swathes of territory, as well as advertising the group's victories over Nigerian troops and the regional nature of West Africa Province, including making threats to the African Union and neighboring countries (Twitter, June 2, 2015).

Notably, as with the pre-pledge Al-Urhwa Al-Wutqha Twitter account, Shekau was absent in early West Africa Province messaging, despite IS recognition of him as the wali. This was likely because al-Barnawi still controlled West Africa Province media and was not eager to feature Shekau, who al-Barnawi accepted as wali but whose visibility al-Barnawi wanted to manage.

In August and September 2015, the first signs of a leadership tussle in West Africa Province became visible. Shekau issued two West Africa Province audio messages that affirmed his leadership after rumors surfaced he had been deposed (Twitter, August 16, 2015; Twitter, September 19, 2015). While it is unclear what transpired internally, over the next few months the al-Barnawi "fingerprint" was reduced in West Africa Province videos. Instead, Shekau's faction had a more obvious presence. For example, one of his military amirs appeared with several hundred worshippers in videos of Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr sermons in September 2015; led dozens of militants in a group pledge to al-Baghdadi in October 2015; and was the "judge" in a sharia punishment video a month later in November (Youtube, December 13, 2014; naji.com, September 28, 2015; Twitter, November 2, 2015). Although al-Barnawi still had control over West Africa Province's video propaganda and its lines of communications to IS, he seems to have allowed Shekau and Shekau's faction to take more of the center stage in West Africa Province in mid-to-late 2015.

After November 2015, however, West Africa Province media became virtually silent until the Niger attacks in May 2016. This suggests that control of West Africa Province media was once again denied to Shekau's faction and returned to al-Barnawi's faction by the time of the Niger offensive. This may be why Shekau's faction accused al-Barnawi of "manipulating" IS and complained about Shekau's messages not being transferred to al-Baghdadi (Vanguard, August).

Different Approaches

An assessment of the al-Barnawi faction and Shekau faction videos (as well as the history of operations of both factions) shows differences in their styles. Shekau faction videos tended to feature masses of fighters congregating, which is consistent with his faction's grassroots and "insurgency"-based approach to violence. Al-Barnawi faction videos tend to be "action-scenes" that emphasize raids on military barracks (consistent with his targeting preferences to avoid large-scale civilian casualties) in Nigeria or in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon so as not appear to fight exclusively in Nigeria.

In sum, the key difference is that Shekau is territorial-focused while al-Barnawi, like his Ansaru predecessors, prefers versatility and not to be pinned down to a single base. As al-Barnawi sees it, relying too much on territory, such as Shekau's bases in Sambisa, is a risk because the military can overrun and capture it. Moreover, with his faction's AQIM and Ansaru pedigree his fighters have likely learned lessons from failed al-Qaeda affiliate attempts to hold territory in Yemen in 2010 and northern Mali in 2012, and the importance of adopting a gradual approach to winning hearts and minds before controlling territory.

Given that the promotion of the West Africa Province attacks in Niger emphasized first that these were raids, second that they were on military targets, third that there was a regional aspect (fighting the Africa Union), and fourth coincided with al-Barnawi's reasserted leadership of West Africa Province, it appears likely that al-Barnawi's faction was behind the Niger offensive.

Moreover, al-Barnawi provided justification for the operation as "self-defense" in his interview with IS on August 3 in which IS announced he was the wali of West Africa Province.

In his interview, Al-Barnawi said:

"[Africa Union forces] operate their heinous war through a joint operations room in Niger. If they want to launch an attack on us, they would send against us the American and French forces that are present in Niger, and the unmanned aerial vehicles to observe the locations, and then the joint forces launch the attack with intense aerial bombardment (Twitter, August 3)."

Possible Realignment With AQIM

A number of historical, strategic, and messaging indicators suggest al-Barnawi's faction of West Africa Province had a lead role in the Niger offensive. Yet these same indicators  as well as al-Barnawi's faction's ideological and operational proximity to al-Qaeda  suggest he may consider the West Africa Province affiliation useful for deposing Shekau and generating media "buzz" for his Niger offensive, but less beneficial as a way of empowering West Africa Province operationally.

In the long-term, al-Barnawi may renew collaboration with AQIM, which would also be consistent with the way al-Qaeda affiliates have been infiltrating, weakening and winning back those who defected to IS. Al-Barnawi also seemed to acknowledge the debt he owes AQIM in his August 3 interview, where he credited AQIM with training his father's disciples in the "Greater Sahara" after his father's death.

Any new al-Qaeda realignment, however, would likely come disguised as a "local movement." Due to al-Qaeda's subtle expansionist strategy, it will likely come with less promotion than West Africa Province's arrival, but with no less violent effects. AQIM's strong presence in nearby Mali could facilitate upgraded coordination with West Africa Province.

Much will depend, however, on whether al-Qaeda can provide a suitable alternative vision to the caliphate, which has a distinct attraction to both al-Barnawi and Shekau. If the IS caliphate manages to survive despite ongoing pressure against it in Libya, Iraq, and Syria, it could be enough to not only keep al-Barnawi with IS but to spur a reconciliation between him and Shekau under the West Africa Province umbrella.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Mali: ICC trial over destruction of cultural property in Timbuktu shows need for broader accountability

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 22 August 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Mali: ICC trial over destruction of cultural property in Timbuktu shows need for broader accountability, 22 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bace154.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

In response to the opening today of the trial of Ahmad Al-Fadi Al-Mahdi, an alleged senior member of the Ansar Eddine armed group, for attacks on mosques and mausoleums in Timbuktu in 2012, Amnesty International's Senior Legal Advisor Erica Bussey said:

"Attacks against religious and historical monuments violate cultural rights and can cause significant harm to the local and sometimes broader communities. They are war crimes and those suspected of carrying out such attacks should be prosecuted."

"However, while this case breaks new ground for the ICC, we must not lose sight of the need to ensure accountability for other crimes under international law, including murder, rape and torture of civilians that have been committed in Mali since 2012."

Background

Al-Mahdi is accused of intentionally directing attacks against 10 mausoleums and mosques in Timbuktu between 30 June and 11 July 2012. The situation in Mali was referred to the ICC by the government in 2012.

This is the first ICC case to focus on the destruction of cultural property and the only ICC case so far addressing crimes under international law committed during the 2012 conflict in Mali.

Although it has been reported by the ICC that Al-Mahdi intends to make an admission of guilt and the trial has initially been scheduled for one week, he must be presumed innocent until the ICC is fully convinced of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and delivers that verdict.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
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.
Jordan: Positive Steps on Education for Syrian Children

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 22 August 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Jordan: Positive Steps on Education for Syrian Children, 22 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bacfcb4.html [accessed 29 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.

Jordan's education minister has instructed public schools to allow Syrian children to register in the fall semester even if they lack government-issued documents that were previously required, Human Rights Watch said today. Carrying out this and other announced policy changes could help thousands more children attend school this semester.

Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in Jordan have been unable to obtain or to update documents called service cards, which are issued to Syrians by Jordan's Interior Ministry and are required for Syrian children to enroll in public schools. Human Rights Watch interviewed Syrian children in 2015 and 2016, who had been unable to go to school because they lacked the cards.

"Jordan's Education Ministry has taken an important step by ordering schools to accept Syrian children this fall even if they don't have their papers in order," said Bill Van Esveld, senior children's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. "This move advances Jordan's significant efforts to support education for Syrian refugees."

Human Rights Watch attended a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)-sponsored meeting on August 16, 2016, at which the education minister and other ministry officials notified district-level staff of new policies on school enrollment, including the relaxed documentation requirements.

Other plans include doubling the number of schools operating "double shifts" to create spaces for up to 50,000 more Syrian students, and establishing a "catch-up" program to reach another 25,000 children ages 8 to 12, who have been out of school for three or more years. Jordanian regulations that preceded the Syria conflict had barred all children who were three or more years behind their age cohort from enrolling.

In a recent report, Human Rights Watch identified lack of service cards and the "three-year rule" as among the policy barriers that have prevented many Syrian children from receiving an education in Jordan. Jordanian nongovernmental groups have opened unaccredited, informal schools to reach these children.

More than 83,000 Syrian refugee children were not in formal education during the last school year  68,000 of them in Jordanian towns and cities and the rest in refugee camps  according to UN data that the Education Ministry presented on August 16. About 50,000 of these children have been out of school for more than three years. Half of them are between the ages of 8 and 12 and are eligible for the new catch-up program. The other half are 13 and over, but may enroll in another accredited, informal program operated by Questscope, a nongovernmental organization.

Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees are estimated to be ineligible for service cards, because they left refugee camps informally after Jordan began to enforce strict camp-exit requirements. If these children are required to present the cards to stay in school in the spring 2017 semester, they will have to drop out. The Education Ministry should extend its generous waiver throughout the school year and beyond.

There are also limited spaces available for children over 13 who have been out of school for three or more years. The relatively small Questscope program for this age group has reached only a few thousand Syrian children. It is expanding with donor support, but capacity will still fall far short of the 25,000 Syrian children in this age group who have been out of school for three or more years. More educational opportunities are critically important for these children, whose enrollment rates decline dramatically.

The largest obstacle to education for many Syrian families is poverty. Jordan has improved policies that prevented many Syrian refugees from supporting themselves through work and has issued more than 20,000 work permits to Syrian refugees this year, but at least 160,000 are believed to work informally. Impoverished parents are often unable to pay school-related costs like transportation, since there are no public school busses.

Under the Education Ministry's new plans, Syrian children will not necessarily be enrolled at the school where they register if those schools are overcrowded. But if children are enrolled at distant schools, they may be unable to afford transportation, and longer distances may be an insurmountable barrier for children with disabilities. The Education Ministry, with support from donors and UN agencies, should ensure that children are enrolled in schools that they can reach.

"Donors and other Jordanian officials should support the Education Ministry's efforts to get all children on Jordanian soil into school," Van Esveld said. "The ministry's plans should benefit thousands more Syrian children this year, but for many, the lack of access to school is still an ongoing crisis."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
Sierra Leone: Prison Reforms Bring No Relief

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Success Ibrahim Sei Kamara Publication Date 16 August 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Sierra Leone: Prison Reforms Bring No Relief, 16 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bad4794.html [accessed 29 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.

Recent reforms to Sierra Leone's prison system have failed to bring much meaningful improvement, according to an IWPR investigation.

Official figures show that the current inmate population stands nationally at 3,184, even though the system only has capacity for 1,785.

New laws introduced by the correctional service in 2014 sought to provide an alternative to incarceration, a major reason for overcrowding.

An antiquated legal system with stiff custodial penalties for even minor offences and lengthy periods of remand had put enormous pressure on the country's prisons.

Poor hygiene and malnutrition meant that disease was rife, with very little hope for rehabilitation and reintegration back into society.

But the legislation seems yet to have had any meaningful impact, with human rights groups warning that overcrowding, inadequate food, poor sanitation and a lack of access to healthcare are still major issues.

The crisis is particularly acute at the country's largest correctional facility, Freetown Central Prison - commonly known as Pademba Road - which was built in the pre-independence era to house 220 prisoners.

According to Sierra Leone's Human Rights Commission, it housed 1,545 people in 2015. Of these 713 were convicted men, 235 were prisoners on remand and 597 people on trial.

In some prisons, cells measuring six by nine feet held nine or more prisoners.

Despite the reforms, the population has only continued to grow. Today, it holds well over 1,600 inmates, some on remand and others serving jail terms. Many face prolonged stays in holding cells because of a massive backlog in court cases.

"It seems as though there hasn't been much appetite to do anything about this," said Wolfgang Kofler of the Don Bosco Fambul NGO, who works with Pademba Road to help provide healthcare, clean water and food as well as advocating for the release of those wrongfully held.

"It's either there are many criminals in the country which the prison capacity cannot accommodate or many are detained for no good reason," Kofler said. "Believe me, those prison cells at Pademba Road were designed for two persons.

"Today you have six persons per cell, some eight and others nine. There are no toilets and water accessibility is a huge challenge," he said adding, "Put about eight persons in one small room day by day how would you feel if it were you?" he asked.

LEGISLATIVE PUSH

The reforms introduced two years ago were intended to bring the prison system in line with others around the world.

It replaced the Sierra Leone Prisons Ordinance Act of 1960 and was part of a plan to shift the focus away from punitive custodial sentences so as to ease the pressure on facilities.

The Criminal Procedure Act 2014 also regulated criminal trials, introducing several mechanisms intended to simplify and speed up the process as well as provide alternatives to prisonsuch as community service, suspended terms and probation.

The new laws also incorporated international standards by eliminating penalties including corporal punishment, prolonged periods of remand, hard labour and solitary confinement.

Some of these sentences had not been put into practice for years but the step was seen as a symbolic move to reform the sector.

It also introduced measures to reduce preliminary investigation procedures which which contributed to delay in trials and subsequently overcrowding.

But despite these efforts, the country still has stiff penalties for even minor offences and misdemeanours.

Inmates are sent to prison who could instead be given suspended sentences or community service. For instance, misdemeanours such as civil defamation and libel can carry a prison sentence of up to three years.

All too often, minors detained for petty crimes end up serving prison terms, further exposing them to violence and carrer criminals, giving them little hope for their lives after release.

"Such rigid obsolete Sierra Leonean laws and the fact that they are still on the books, often provoke humour. But old-fashioned laws are no laughing matter," said lawyer Francis Ben Kaifala, a barrister with the High Court of Sierra Leone.

According to a 2015 report on by Human Right Watch (HRW) in Sierra Leone, conditions remain below minimum international standards because of overcrowding, poor hygiene and a lack of medical attention.

Prison cells often lack proper lighting, bedding, ventilation or mosquito nets. Most prisons do not have piped water, and some prisoners lack sufficient access to drinking water.

The Correctional Service Strategic Plan for 2015 -2017, which sets out future policy, showed that the Sierra Leone prison system has an official capacity of 1,785 but a current inmate population of 3,184.

There are 1,605 prison officers in the system, which is below United Nations standards of inmate-staff ratio.

The majority of the country's prisons, built during the colonial era, are cramped with little possibility for expansion. The strategic plan recommended that most should be relocated so as to provide space for inmates, recreational facilities and accommodation for staff and their families.

"Overcrowding in correctional centres can lead to serious health problems," Kofler said.

BRINGING DOWN NUMBERS

A number of local NGOs such as Don Bosco Fambul, Prison Watch Sierra Leone and Caritas Freetown have fought for years to reduce inmate numbers in the country's prison system.

They have faced challenges including government reluctance and a scarcity of resources.

According to HRW, the Bureau of Prisons received only 2,500 Leones (half a US dollar) per prisoner per day for food.

Furthermore, the failure of the government to pay food vendors at the Pademba Road Correctional facility resulted in severe year-round food shortages and consequent malnutrition issues.

Peter Konteh, executive director of the Catholic charity Caritas in Freetown, said that little effort had been made to counter the national overcrowding crisis. His organisation has been working with partners to mount legal representation on behalf of inmates especially those wrongfully incarcerated.

"We have been working with Don Bosco Fambul and a local law firm, known as Ngevao and Partners, to provide legal assistance to inmates with a view to decongesting the Pademba Road correctional centre, and so far there has been improvement in that aspect, though more works needs to be done. I don't think there's been much judicial action in tackling overcrowding," Konteh said.

Mohamed Opito Jimmy, the spokesman for the Sierra Leone correctional service, argued that there had been some progress in recent years.

He noted that most inmates on death row had had their sentences commuted to life terms and that there was a moratorium on the death penalty.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Nigeria: Herders and Farmers Clash Over Land

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Hannah Ojo Publication Date 19 August 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Nigeria: Herders and Farmers Clash Over Land, 19 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bad4d54.html [accessed 29 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.

Mariam Popoola, a 65-year old farmer in the village of Ibeku in Ogun state's Yewa North, wept as she described how attacks by Fulani herdsmen were making local peoples lives a misery.

Some 500 herdsmen were using the Agua border area in Ketu local government for grazing between December and April each year. Although they had been passing through for the last two decades, friction had been getting increasingly worse for the last ten years.

Popoola said that women found alone on their farms were raped and cattle left to foul drinking water supplies.

"[Herdsmen] open up our barns in the farm and eat up the maize and cassava we kept. Even the planted ones are uprooted and stepped on in the process of grazing. If we question them, they carry their gun and shoot at us," she said.

Tensions are rising between Fulani pastoralists and settled farmers in southwestern Nigeria.

Farmers accuse the herders of damaging crops and allowing their animals to run wild. In some cases, they allege Fulani involvement in serious violence including rape, robbery and murder.

For their part, the herdsmen say that they have no choice but to find pasture for their animals and argue they are the victims of unfounded prejudice.

Local agriculturalists say that some villages in Ketu, including Asa, Agon-ojodun, Ayetoro, Ogunpa, Kodera and Igo nla, have been left almost empty of their inhabitants.

Timothy Olasope, another Ibeku farmer, said that his crops had been destroyed for the last two years. He agreed that the presence of the Fulani herdsmen left villagers so frightened that they kept indoors in the evening for fear of attack.

Community leaders have kept lists of attacks.

Incidents include the death of Yomi Alade, a teacher in the Area Community High School who was killed in a fight with herdsmen on December 24, 2011, although no one was ever convicted.

Three years earlier, local woman Ruth Oga died in a stand-off with herdsmen in her farmland in the village of Asa. A fellow villager was raped and killed as she tried to defend her farm from herdsmen.

In neighbouring Oyo state, a community leader said that the herders had caused havoc in the ten local government areas of Oke-Ogun.

Chief Amos Ajibesin, the chairman of the All Farmers Association, Oyo State, recounted a murder earlier this year that nearly led to a riot.

"On February 18, this year, the pastoralists met a woman in the farm and they beheaded her. I had to run there with the commissioner of police to avert crisis as the villagers were already set on rioting," he said. Local police confirmed the incident.

There are some seven million predominately Muslim Fulani people living in Nigeria. While settled Fulani live permanently in towns and villages, many have kept a nomadic way of life and move with their livestock every few months.

With Nigeria's land resources depleted by development as well as desertification, there is often conflict between these sedentary and pastoral communities.

Chief Rafiu Magbeje, a community leader in Afua, near the town of Ayete in the Ibarapa North local government of Oyo State, accused pastoralists of allowing their herds to rampage over farmland.

They delegated children to look after their cattle, who were unable to keep the animals on designated grazing paths, he continued.

"How can someone just place one man and little children to oversea a herd of 60 cattle?" he asked. "We have held meetings with their leaders to no avail. It has now gotten to the extent that our farmers can no longer get food to eat on their farms, yet the farmlands in the Fulani settlement are booming.

"Our traders now buy cassava from the Fulanis, which they usually buy from the farmers in the hamlets," he continued. "Young farmers have been affected, as some of them who took loans from the bank have been sent into debt."

Community leader Chief Samuel Edun, the Ashamu Apesin of Oja-Ona, said that he no longer believed the herdsmen were interested in grazing animals.

"They don't event eat grass anymore. They are after our farm yields. If they meet a couple in the farm, they will chain the husband and rape the wife in his presence. We tried to contain them but we are at our wits end. When God is ready, he will come and help us," he said.

VIOLENCE AND REPRISAL

Turaki Shehu Muhammad is the State Secretary of the Association of Fulani Chiefs of Nigeria, Ogun State chapter.

He told The Nation that the current situation had made life hard for farmers and the herdsmen alike.

"The government of the day has formed a committee which is represented by the Fulani people and the native farmers. We have written a letter of memorandum to the government of the day telling them what to do, but knowing our political setting, it is the government that is delaying the implementation of these things. It is true really, both parties suffer. The Fulani community suffers and the native community suffers," he said.

Yakubu Bello, the head of the Miyeti Allah association of Fulani herdsmen in Surulere government, Oyo State said that his group had met with farmers and begged them for a end to violence and reprisal attacks.

He added that the nomadic herdsmen were the ones who caused violence, insisting that there had always been a cordial relationship between the settled Fulanis and members of their host communities. He cited numerous intermarriages that have served in many instances to cement relationships.

Fulani leaders have called for grazing reserves to be set aside for their exclusive use, arguing that this would also help reduce friction with settled communities. Although there is some provision of this kind, it is far from adequate for all their needs.

But the All Farmers Association's Ajibesin said that they would not agree to the creation of a reserve for the herdsmen to graze their cattle in Oyo State.

He added that the association had written a proposal to the pastoralists to source readymade feeds for their cattle as was done by poultry farmers.

Some farmers now resort to spraying chemicals on their lands or poisoning streams where the herders' cattle graze.

In turn, herders have threatened to sue farmers if their cattle die on their land.

Dele Raji is a farmer from Saki, one of the towns in the Oke-Ogun area, and also doubles as the chairman of the Oyo state chapter of the Maize Association of Nigeria.

He said that herders had no right to complain if their livestock fell ill while grazing on other people's property.

"Is it the farm that went to meet the cow or the cow went to meet the farm?" he asked. "That is our contention. Even if it is an open space, can an intruder just come into someone's house without permission?"

ANGER WITH THE STATE

Farmers say that they have been betrayed by a police force unwilling and incapable of protecting them from the Fulani pastoralists.

They complain that even when disputes are taken to the authorities, the compensation offered does not cover the cost of the farmlands destroyed.

Raji said that farmers were often locked up unjustly, and that Fulani herdsmen had often bragged about having the means to 'take care' of the police.

Police spokesman Adekunle Ajisebutu said that any allegations of partiality were baseless.

"We are a federal security organisation and we work according to the constitution. The constitution guarantees freedom of association and movement and when there is crisis between one ethnic group and the other, you do not expect us to begin to support one ethnic group against the other".

He added that the police had been trying to mediate using alternative conflict resolution methods.

Asked about arrests, Ajisebutu replied, "I can't give you the number of arrests we have made now but I can tell you that we have effected some arrests as regards skirmishes and crises emanating from those places and they have been arraigned in court. Whether they are Fulani or they are farmers, I don't know."

In Ogun State, police spokesman Abimbola Oyeyemi said that local forces had always taken action and called stakeholders meetings involving both groups.

The herders say that they carry guns to protect their cattle, but Oyeyemi said that allegations that the herdsmen were better armed than the police were untrue.

He added that the herdsmen have been warned not to carry arms. All they needed were the traditional sticks used to direct cattle while grazing.

"Once we get wind of any such information, we will act swiftly to prevent violence", he said.

This report was funded by Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) through the AccessNG project.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Afghanistan: Women Divorcing Addict Husbands

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Mohammad Ibrahim Speasalay Publication Date 15 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ARR 552 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Afghanistan: Women Divorcing Addict Husbands, 15 August 2016, ARR 552, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bad5924.html [accessed 29 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.

Qadria, 23, divorced her heroin addict husband a month ago.

"My husband was not only smoking heroin but also stealing others people's things," she told IWPR, adding that he had also taken all the money she earned as a seamstress and sold all their household goods.

"Then people started coming to our home and asked me to pay for what he had stolen," she continued. "I had to pay for both his heroin and his stealing."

Qadria now lives with their three children at her widowed mother's house and faces an uncertain future.

Officials in the southeastern province of Kandahar report that large numbers of women are seeking divorces because they can no longer live with their drug addict husbands.

Addiction remains a serious problem in Afghanistan, the world's top producer of opium and its refined product, heroin.

Noori, the deputy head of the provincial department of women's affairs, said, "Twenty-five cases of divorce have been registered with us recently due to heroin addict husbands who didn't care about their families."

One or two women in the same situation approached them each day, she continued, adding that there were likely to be many more such cases that went unreported.

Shugofa Sahar, the head of the women's department of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in Kandahar said that they knew of 15 women who had got divorced because of addiction in the last four months.

Divorced women had to return to live with their parents until they remarried, she added. Often, custody of any children was handed to the husband's parents.

Malika, 60, recounted how her daughter had moved back to live with her after getting divorced.

However, her in-laws kept her two children and now the young woman stayed up late every night crying for them.

Malika said that she had told her daughter many times to remarry, but she refused to do so until she got her children back.

"There is deep pain in my heart," Malika said. "I am so shocked to see my daughter's condition, and my daughter also constantly suffers thinking of her children."

In Afghanistan, it is seen as deeply shameful for a woman to end her marriage. But many women say that they have been left with no choice.

"I know is nothing worse than divorce for a woman, but I had to get divorced," said Fatima, who was married for six years and has two children.

She said that poverty had driven her husband to addiction. With tears in her eyes, she recalled how her husband had been so desperate for drugs that he wanted to sell his own children.

Fatima said that they were so poor that she and her children were always hungry and had to depend on their neighbours for food.

She had tried to get her husband off drugs and send him for treatment in hospital but he refused.

"He sacrificed my happiness for his addiction," she said.

Head of the AIHRC's research and investigation department, Farhad Saqib, said that when a woman petitioned for divorce, the court ordered a medical report to ascertain whether her husband was a genuine addict.

The man would then be referred to an addiction treatment centre. If he was willing to undergo treatment, the divorce petition would be dismissed.

If he refused, then this amounted to a danger to his wife and children and both Afghan and Sharia law mandate that women can seek a divorce without their husbands' consent.

Opium, particularly in more remote parts of Afghanistan, has traditionally been used as a medicine. Poverty and decades of war have driven many to take heroin and the entire family suffers from the impact of addiction.

Sa'eeda, 50, has a son who has been taking heroin for six years. She said that she did not blame her daughter-in-law for seeking a divorce and returning to live with her own parents.

Her son simply no longer cared about anything apart from drugs, Sa'eeda said, adding that she had begged him to stop, tried to get relatives to convince him and even sent him a clinic for treatment, but to no avail.

"I married my son off very happily, but he got in with a bad crowd of friends and became addicted," she said. "My home was destroyed, and now in my old age I am left to fight all these family problems alone."

COUNTER-NARCOTIC STRETCHED THIN

According to the 2015 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report, poppy farming fell significantly in Kandahar last year, but it remains a major area of drug production.

Gul Mohammad Shukran, head of counter-narcotics in Kandahar, said that they had ended drug cultivation in many districts and were trying to eradicate it completely by providing poppy growers with an alternative means of livelihood.

Kandahar police spokesman Zia Durrani said more than ten addicts were arrested each week and sent for treatment.

There is some provision for addiction therapy in Kandahar, but it is woefully under-resourced.

Officials in Kandahar's health department said that 200 addicts were currently in treatment around the province, but there was such demand that those on the lengthy waiting list would have to wait over a year for treatment.

A maximum of around 700 people were treated in Kandahar addiction clinics each year.

The head of addiction treatment at the provincial health department, Bilal Ahmad Keramat, said that the problem was on a huge scale. He estimated that more than 130,000 men and more than 10,000 women and children were addicted to heroin in Kandahar alone.

"If we could expand our facilities, then it would be possible to treat more patients, but still we are doing very well and have done a great deal of work with not much capacity," said Keramat.

Many people who pass through the treatment centres also fail to stay off drugs in the long-term.

Religious scholars argue that a woman should stay in her marriage and try to help her husband tackle his problems.

Mawlawi Obaidullah Faizani, head of the ulema council of Kandahar, called for women to be patient and try to save their marriages.

"Islam has given men the option of divorce, and a woman cannot divorce her husband," he said, adding that the break-up of a marriage was a huge misfortune for all concerned, so both parties needed to be patient.

The pressure has been too much for many relationships.

Kandahar city resident Jamil Ahmad said that he had been dabbling in drugs for the last two decades, but had become addicted to heroin in the last six years. He was trying to detox at the Addicts' Treatment Hospital in Kandahar.

He told IWPR that his wife and family now despised him. She had left him and taken their three daughters and one son with her.

"It has been two years now since my wife and children left me and went to live in her father's house," he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. "I feel so sorry and would rather die than continue to live the way I do now."

This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Abuse Allegations Dog Afghan Hospital

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 16 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ARR 552 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Abuse Allegations Dog Afghan Hospital, 16 August 2016, ARR 552, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bad6264.html [accessed 29 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.

Shaima, 38, came to Parwan's government hospital in the throes of labour to receive medical attention. Instead, she said, she was hit and verbally abused by the very people who were supposed to be looking after her.

"When I was taken to hospital, two caregivers asked me how many children I already had. I replied that this was going to be my seventh child, so suddenly they started mistreating me and used foul language and started beating me very hard."

She said that the experience had left her traumatised.

"Since that day I began to hate hospitals," she added. "In the future, even if I develop a fatal disease, I will never go to that hospital again."

An IWPR investigation has discovered widespread reports of abuses by medical staff in Parwan's 200-bed government-run hospital. Local officials confirm these reports and add that corruption and mistreatment are rife in hospitals across the province. Women in labour are particularly vulnerable to such mistreatment.

Binazir, 28, was pregnant for the first time and sought treatment at Parwan state hospital because she was carrying twins.

The behaviour of the staff there shocked her, she continued.

"The midwives asked one woman for money to help deliver her child," Binazir continued. "At the beginning she agreed to pay them [but] when she gave birth to her child, she said that she didn't have money. As a result, the midwives slapped her a few times, and left cursing her. I witnessed this whole scene."

Asking for money from patients was an everyday occurrence, she added. Sick people who did not agree received all kinds of awful threats with no-one prepared to come to their aid.

"This wasn't just a problem with the medical workers who misbehaved toward the patients, the cleaners weren't kind either," she said. "They insulted the patients as much as they could, too."

Binazir explained that she had been so shocked that she asked her husband to take her somewhere else to deliver her babies.

"My husband took me to the Emergency Hospital of Parwan. There, they treated me in a very kind manner and I bore my children very easily."

Patients and relatives claim that staff misconduct extended to selling equipment and medicines to patients that they should receive for free.

Naida, 23, said that she had taken her sister-in-law to the public hospital two months ago to deliver her baby.

"Nurses and caregivers not only take 50 US dollars from patients as bribe, but they also make patients buy medicines and other things they need - that they should get for free - from outside the hospital. Once the patients buy all this paraphernalia, nurses and caregivers can sell medicines and tools to other patients. "

She added, "Doctors only serve a patient when they know they are powerful, have money or connections in the hospital."

Article 52 of the Afghan constitution states that the government must provide all citizens with free healthcare facilities.

According to the World Health Organisation's constitution, access to healthcare is a human right and should be provided free of any racial, religious, social or economic discrimination.

But Wali Aziz, head of communications at the provincial department of public health, said that mistreatment was rife in hospitals across the province.

"We have investigated many cases in which doctors misbehave towards patients and also cases in which doctors demand bribes from patients. After the investigations, the accused officials were referred to the investigation team of the ministry of public health and their enquiries are ongoing.

He also added, "I absolutely can confirm that in many hospitals patients are mistreated and abused. Doctors don't respect the oaths they took when they graduated."

Hospital officials reject all such accusations of abuse.

Parwan hospital head Mohammad Qasim Sangeen said there was no truth to claims that patients were beaten, asked for money and insulted.

"I totally reject such allegations," he told IWPR. "I think it's the patients who should be blamed as they don't consider the rules and regulations of the hospital. We have installed cameras in different parts of the hospital to watch and control the movements and activities of our staff and by installing such cameras we have solved almost 98 per cent of the patients' complaints."

Sangeen did acknowledge that the hospital suffered from severe shortages.

"We accept that we face the limitations regarding medicines, beds and rooms; therefore, one bed is used for two patients or one patient should be discharged so that another patient should replace him or her. We also have a lack of rooms for the relatives who accompany the patients. The construction of the new building is underway and when that is complete all the problems should be solved."

However, an official at Parwan hospital who asked to remain anonymous told IWPR, "All the officials lie. The statements made by the patients are true especially regarding the taking of money, which is blatant and undeniable."

Parwan provincial council member Hosai Bayani agreed that the government hospital had severe problems.

"Patients have met me many times to complain about their problems," she said. "Patients are not only mistreated, but also doctors extort money from them in various ways. I personally talked to the head of government hospital of Parwan regarding the issue and he accepted all the accusations."

Bayani confirmed that Sangeen was taking action to combat wrongdoing.

"The head of the hospital told me that he had installed cameras in different parts of the hospital and has caught many officials red handed," she said. "He has cut salaries of some officials and some of them have been formally warned for mistreating patients."

Yet nothing was being done to address a wider culture of abuse, she continued, although the problem had been raised numerous times during provincial council sessions.

"I have also discussed this issue with the Parwan governor and he promised to share the issue to the minister of public health; however, nothing has so far been done to solve these problems," Bayani said.

Back in Parwan's government hospital, Hamid waited for his wife to give birth. He said that he was prepared for a familiar process of bribery and mistreatment.

"This is the third time that I've taken my wife to the hospital to give birth," Hamid explained. "Whenever I come here, the doctors and nurses ask for money in the form of a gift. All three times, when I gave them 20 dollars as a gift, they refused to accept this amount, so I had to pay more to keep them happy and satisfied.

"Every time I've come here, I bought all the medicines I needed outside the hospital, and the hospital didn't provide anything. I don't know if the government provides medicines and equipment to the hospital for free or not."

This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Afghan Media Crying Out for Female Voices

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Rozuddin Ayazi Publication Date 16 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ARR 552 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Afghan Media Crying Out for Female Voices, 16 August 2016, ARR 552, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bad66a4.html [accessed 29 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 lack of female journalists working in the conservative province of Kandahar in southeast Afghanistan means that a whole range of vital social issues are not being reported.

Despite numerous training schemes aimed at increasing the number of women in the media, social prejudice prevents graduates of these courses from pursuing careers in journalism.

There are currently 18 local media outlets in Kandahar employing 350 people. However, this number includes only 14 women, who work as producers in two TV networks and nine radio stations.

Local media rarely covers issues such as forced marriage and social exclusion because strict rules of gender segregation in Afghan society mean that it is often viewed as unacceptable for a male journalist to interview a woman, even on the telephone.

"Every day I hear information about violence being committed against women in most villages, but I cannot cover these issues because I am a man," Kandahar journalist Asadullah Zra Swand told IWPR. "Women in the villages are not allowed to speak with male journalists. So I am forced to avoid such issues, which means that government officials don't get to hear about women's problems."

Samim Khpalwak, the spokesman of the Kandahar governor, explained that conservative traditions meant families would not allow female members to work in the media.

Although women's access to education has increased dramatically since the fall of the Taleban in 2001, it is still widely felt to be shameful for a woman to work outside the home. Fields such as journalism are viewed as particularly suspect.

"The local administration in Kandahar does not have any programmes to recruit educated girls in the media at the moment," Khpalwak added.

VOICES SILENCED

Women in Kandahar say that they have no way to raise issues of concern to them and no opportunity to tell their stories.

Nasima, a 25-year-old woman from a village in the north of Arghistan District, told IWPR that she had been forced into marriage ten months ago as part of a Pashtun custom known as baad in which women or girls are given to another family to resolve a dispute and avoid a long-running feud.

In Nasima's case, her brother had fought and killed a neighbour's son a year ago. Village elders had organised a traditional Jirga assembly and decided to give Nasima to the victim's brother.

Nasima said that her in-laws treated her cruelly and her husband beat her every day.

"There is nobody I can tell my story to and get help," she said.

Such stories illustrate the need for more female input into local media and Sayed Sarwar Amani, head of the Kandahar press club, stressed that a handful of women working as producers was not enough.

"We need more female journalists, editors, and managers," he said.

There have been numerous efforts by international organisations to train women in Kandahar to work in the media.

Abdul Samay Ghairatmal, head of the Kandahar office of NAI Supporting Open Media in Afghanistan, said that he knew of more than 40 young women, mostly schoolgirls interested in radio broadcasting, who had been trained in such workshops.

However, their family members rarely allowed them to pursue a career in the media.

A shopkeeper in District Nine of Kandahar city, who asked to remain anonymous, told IWPR that although he was illiterate his daughter had graduated from high school and went on to participate in a 2015 journalism training

The 54-year-old said that his daughter had then asked him if she could go on to work at a radio station, but he refused, as this would have brought shame upon his family, he said.

Kandahar director of information and culture, Hazrat Wali Hotak, said that he could not remember a single female job applicant approaching his office in the last year.

He agreed that female voices were desperately needed in local media, adding, "I will welcome women who ask for jobs as journalists at the national radio and TV in Kandahar."

Female graduates of training schemes say that it is incredibly frustrating not to be able to follow their dreams.

Spozhmay, 20, told IWPR in a phone interview that she had taken part in a workshop on radio journalism after graduating from school. She asked her father to allow her to go on to work as a producer in a local station, but he refused.

IWPR approached Spozhmay's father, an illiterate trader, to ask why he had forbidden his daughter from working.

"The more important thing for me is to find out when and where you met my daughter," he told the IWPR journalist, before beginning to beat him.

This hostility is a very common phenomenon.

Nadia, 17, from District Nine in Kandahar city took part in a NAI workshop in January 2015.

Her father, Sardar Mohammad, refused to let her go on to work in television, insisting it would bring shame on the family.

Approached by IWPR, Mohammad responded angrily that he did not want to discuss the issue.

"My daughter has gone to Dubai and will not return to Kandahar," he said.

But for those women suffering from gender violence, talking to a journalist feels like a lifeline.

Sakina, a 19-year-old from a village in Zharey district, was also married against her will. She said that her father gave her to a 55-year-old man in the village so that he could marry her new husband's 18-year-old sister.

Sakina said that such forced marriages were a common occurrence in Kandahar, but there was no one to whom women could tell their stories.

This was the first time she had encountered a report in her life, Sakina added.

"Firstly, I am happy because a reporter has asked me about the problems in my life. Secondly, I am confident that this reporter will deliver all my grief and pain to the government."

This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Afghan Policewomen Proud to Serve

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Farid Tanha Publication Date 19 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ARR 552 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Afghan Policewomen Proud to Serve, 19 August 2016, ARR 552, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bad7af4.html [accessed 29 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 crowd of women are queuing at the entrance to the department of women's affairs in Panjshir province, on their way to attend a workshop on gender violence.

Before they can enter, 32-year-old policewoman Zarmina checks each one. She conducts a painstaking search, even down to looking inside each woman's shoes.

Zarmina has been with the Panjshir police department for the past three years.

"At first, my husband did not allow me," she said. "He said if I became a policewoman, he would lose his honour. Later, when our [financial situation] became worse, he brought me to the police headquarters himself and enrolled me in the police."

Now, she earns more than 200 US dollars a month and finds her job extremely satisfying, even helping in investigate a number of criminal cases.

Zarmina explained that women played a vital role in security work, not least because of Afghanistan's strict separation of the sexes.

"In one case, a woman involved in a murder refused to surrender herself to the policemen," she said. "When I approached her, she surrendered very easily."

Officials at Panjshir police headquarters report a steady rise in the number of female officers applying to work with the force.

Panjshir police chief Abdul Aziz Ghairat said that there were 13 policewomen now working in various fields.

Two years ago, there were only two policewomen in the whole of the province.

"We cannot use men to search women in our traditional society," he said. "For this reason, the enemy often uses female clothing as a disguise so as to carry out terrorist activities. The presence of policewomen is also essential in investigating criminal cases where the suspect is a woman."

He acknowledged that women made up a tiny minority - his force is currently made up of 1,114 officers - but noted that the trend was encouraging.

Najib Danish, the deputy spokesman of the ministry of the interior, said that conservative traditions remained major obstacles in recruiting women to the police.

He said that there were 3,500 policewomen employed across the country, but that at least 10,000 were needed. Efforts were underway to step up recruitment.

"Policewomen present a real headache for our country's enemies," he explained. "The insurgents are worried about their increasing number, because their most violent attacks, which they carry out in women's clothing, are more likely to be discovered by policewomen. A female presence at the checkpoints and in searching women in criminal cases is highly valuable."

In Panjshir, Alia Atai, the director of women's affairs, said that their office was running a campaign via mosques, schools, and religious scholars to raise public awareness about the need for female officers.

Quite apart from benefits to national security, she said that joining the police represented an excellent economic opportunity for women, especially those who were struggling to provide for their families.

"We are happy that women can shrug off the ridicule that their relatives sometimes subject them to," she said. "One widowed woman told us that when she ate, her brother would say bad things to her and taunt her for eating for free. Today, that woman is a policewoman, has a salary and feeds herself from the proceeds of her own hard work."

Gul Andam is one of those whose new career has given her both self-respect and a steady income. After she lost her husband a year ago, she joined the ranks of the police as a way of supporting her family.

At the moment, she is responsible for searching women at the entrance to the Panjshir police headquarters.

"I carry out my work with great enthusiasm," she said. "I have respect and credibility, and also a good salary and I can look after my family. I also serve my people and my country. What can be better than this?"

Andam said that she saw herself as a public servant and would be happy to work anywhere in Afghanistan. She had seen for herself the difference female police officers could make to a case.

"A girl in the Manjor valley of the Bazarak area of Panjshir had run away from home," she recalled. "We went to bring her to the department of women's affairs so her family would not harm her. She was not ready to get in the car when policemen tried, but when I told her not to worry as I would be with her, she calmed down and got in the car."

She added, "In most criminal cases, female suspects do not tell policemen the truth, but when we talk to them they tell us everything and it helps the police solve the cases more easily."

Islamic experts say that that there should be no obstacle to women joining the police force, if certain strictures on modesty and dress are adhered too.

"Policewomen should have the Shariah-based hijab," explained religious scholar Mawlawi Gulzar. "Their accommodation and activities should be separate [from men] and they should not be in contact with policemen. They should also not mingle with men while performing their duties."

Some local people still believe that having female police officers is completely incompatible with conservative Afghan traditions.

Kabul taxi driver Ibrahim told IWPR, "When a woman leaves her household, stays with hundreds of young men and is out with them day and night in the name of duty, she cannot be her husband's wife anymore. She finds new husbands. In my opinion, anyone, who enrolls his wife or daughter in the armed forces, loses his honour and is a cuckold."

But others have a more positive attitude.

Mohammad Shah Azimi, a resident of Panjshir's Shotol district, said that he believed most people agree that it was important to recruit women to the ranks of the police.

"I do not have a young girl in my family, but if I did, I would have enrolled her to become a policewoman, because it serves society. Women do well at investigating criminal cases; women accused of crimes are happier to share their secrets with policewomen rather than with policemen."

And despite the difficulties, young women are continuing to pursue this career choice.

Zarifa, 24, is a high school graduate in the process of applying to the police.

"Everyone in our family works in the military," she explained, "and so I would like to be a policewoman. My family has given me permission and I want to be a police officer. I want to serve my society this way."

This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Afghanistan: Outrage at Marriage of Six-Year-Old Girl

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 20 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ARR 553 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Afghanistan: Outrage at Marriage of Six-Year-Old Girl, 20 August 2016, ARR 553, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bad7f44.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Women's rights activists are calling for an example to be made of a 60-year-old Afghan cleric who married a six-year-old girl.

Sayed Abdul Karim, an imam at a mosque in the Obeh district of Herat, was sentenced to seven years in prison after he married Gharib Gul three months ago. Her father, Mullah Abdul Qader, received a four-year term.

Campaigners say that these sentences are too lenient and warned that it would only add to the already grim state of women's rights in the province.

Underage marriage is common in Afghanistan, but this case was so extreme that some resident of the village of Gehr, where the wedding took place, forced the imam to leave.

He was eventually arrested in a village near Firoz Koh, the provincial capital of neighbouring province Ghor.

Ghor is one of Afghanistan's most underdeveloped provinces, with some remote areas entirely out of government control.

Underage and forced marriages are a major problem along with "baad", the custom of settling disputes by handing over a girl to the family of the perceived victim of a crime.

However, once again, Abdul Karim's marriage caused a public outcry.

Jan Mohammad, a resident of the village of Darrah Qazi, said that Abdul Karim came to stay with him on the night of July 25 and introduced the small girl with him as his daughter.

"I sent them to the guestroom and served them dinner," Mohammad said. "When I went to talk to Sayed Karim to ask if he needed anything, the lights were on. I noticed through the window that he was nakedI went into the room, tied his hands and informed the police. People gathered around were angry and beat him. Then the police took him away."

Mohammad Azim Wakili, head of the provincial criminal investigations team, said, "Local people called us on July 25 and informed us that they were holding a 60-year-old man accused of having intercourse with a six-year-old girl. Our police went to the area and brought them both to the criminal investigations' office. We started investigating and we found that this 60-year-old man really had married six-year-old Gharib Gul."

Wakili said that hospital doctors said that the six-year-old was psychologically damaged but had not been physically harmed.

Father-of-five Abdul Qader confessed that he had sold his daughter to Abdul Karim because he had been experiencing financial problems.

Abdul Karim, who had never been married before, confirmed this when questioned by police.

"I married her in the presence of 40 residents of Gehr village in Obeh district of Herat, and I gave Gharib Gul's father two goats, a parcel of rice, and a bottle of oil and some sweets in return," he said.

Gehr elder Haji Abdul Zaher told IWPR, "When Qadar gave his daughter to Sayed Karim, we disagreed and opposed his decision because the girl was too little, but he didn't listen to us. Later we heard that Sayed Abdul Karim had been arrested because of his marriage to a child by police in Ghor province."

Public anger meant the case against the two men was processed exceptionally fast.

On August 11, Ghor's provincial court sentenced Karim to seven years imprisonment and Qader to four years.

Ghulam Hazrat Hadid, head of the Firoz Koh court, said, "These two people have been sentenced to long-term imprisonment but it is not the final decision because both parties can appeal to the court of cppeal for a reconsideration."

Some were happy that the case had been handled so rapidly.

Khudayar Waqif, head of the Association of Civil Organisations in Ghor, said, "This is the first time that judicial and security organisations have dealt with a case in less than a month. If other cases are also handled this quickly, the number of crimes of violence will decrease."

However, other campaigners said that the sentences were woefully inadequate.

Farida Naseri, head of women's affairs at the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in Ghor, said that Abdul Karim's seven-year prison term was not enough.

She also warned that he might be released even sooner in an amnesty.

"One of our greatest and most common problems in Afghanistan, especially in Ghor, are underage marriages, and when a six-year-old child is married to a 60-year-old man it is a serious violation of human rights," Naseri continued. "These marriages destroy the girls psychologically and sometimes even leads to their death."

Masoma Anwari is the head of Ghor's women's affairs department and one of only a handful of female civil servants in the province.

She said that gender violence is particularly bad in Ghor, noting that some 80 per cent women in the province were married against their will. The vast majority of women were deprived of their inheritance rights and any access to justice, while at least three-quarter of girls in the province were deprived of an education.

(See Afghanistan: Sold for a Herd of Cows).

In a case that won international attention last year, a 19-year-old girl named Rukhshana was stoned to death in Ghor by a group of armed men.

(See Summary Courts Deal Out Brutal Justice in Afghanistan's Ghor Province).

In June, a married woman named Aziz Gul was shot dead in Ghor after trying to run away with another man.

Only last month, a four-months pregnant 14-year-old girl was burned to death.

The family of Zahra, who died in July in Kabul's Isteqlal hospital, accused her in-laws of setting her alight, a charge they denied.

Anwari emphasised she wanted to see real justice in this case.

"If Gharib Gul's case is not handled properly, I will resign," she added.

Ghor women's rights activist Latifa said, "Women are stoned, shot, and burnt in this province, and 70 per cent of the girls' schools are closed, which we are furious about."

She said that most perpetrators of violence against women in Ghor were allowed to go free.

"When I heard that a 60-year-old had married a 6-year-old girl, and saw that this innocent girl trembled in fear and cried, I feel deep pain."

Gul Bibi, another Ghor activist, said that the government had failed to live up to any of its promises on women's right.

She said that Kabul's rhetoric was only intended to impress the international community, with nothing practical being achieved on the ground.

She added, "As long as these awful cultural traditions rule society, we will not be able to give women their rights."

This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Tajikistan: Disabled Orphans Face Double Burden

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 11 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol RCA 793 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Tajikistan: Disabled Orphans Face Double Burden, 11 August 2016, RCA 793, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bad8e04.html [accessed 29 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.

Both of Alena Kharlamova's parents died before she turned six, and she spent most of her childhood begging on the streets of Dushanbe.

Taken into care by the police at the age of 12, Alena was placed in a state boarding school where she finally learnt how to read and write. However, after graduating at the age of 16 she once again became homeless.

"They did not even tell us that we would have to leave soon; where we should go, where we should live," Kharlamova, now 20, told IWPR. "Nobody discussed these questions with us. We had no idea, we simply did not know that life on the street was waiting for us again."

To complicate matters, she had also been left with mobility problems following an accident and now walks with a limp.

Although Kharlamova managed to rent a cheap room in Dushanbe for a couple of years after she left school, finding even a small sum of money each month was desperately hard.

Luckily, she received help from the authorities to study computing at a technical college, where she was provided with free accommodation.

But the tiny room - in a state of disrepair with broken windows and rusty, leaking pipes - was on the fourth floor, meaning it was hard for Kharlamova to access..

And when her course came to an end, so did this accommodation. Kharlamova is now living in Yovon, Khatlon province with a friend who has made clear that the arrangement can only be temporary.

"I wrote to, spoke to, asked [the authorities for help] but with no result," she continued, wiping away tears. "[The officials] always tell me that there are no apartments, no rooms and that government is not obliged to provide accommodation. One high-ranking official in the mayor's office once told me that Dushanbe is not a place for the poor and homeless."

Graduates of care homes in Tajikistan face an uncertain future, with little state provision for their futures.

A significant proportion of them are also disabled, which leaves them facing particular problems as they lack family support structures to help out with finding accommodation or work.

Tajik housing law lists several categories of particularly vulnerable people who should have priority for municipal housing. These include orphans, people with disabilities and war veterans.

However in practice there is little help at hand for those in need.

According to the ministry of education, there are 77 state boarding schools and orphanages in the country. A total of 12,175 children are in the system, 1,459 of whom are disabled.

There are several community homes for disabled adults in Tajikistan, but these cater only for those with mental challenges.

Rustam Gulov is a 33-year-old wheelchair user and a graduate of a Dushanbe orphanage.

For the past five years he has rented a room at shared apartment, but told IWPR that conditions were very poor, with regular electricity and water shortages as well a lack of bathrooms adapted for wheelchair users.

Gulov, who is self-employed and owns a small television and electronic equipment repair workshop, dreams of buying a plot of land and building a house in the capital.

He recently got married and his wife, who is partially sighted, also finds their living conditions challenging.

For three years, he has been negotiating with the authorities to be given access to a plot of land. He said he would arrange to have a house built on his own expense.

"I wrote to everyone and approached everyone, but it all proved to be useless. I sent so many applications to the chairman of Sino district [one of four districts of Dushanbe], lost so much time, but with no result," Gulov said.

"If you are disabled, you become an object of pity, fear, someone to avoid or insult. Officials often prefer to ignore you and your problems."

LITTLE CHANCE OF A HOME

A tiny minority of orphanage graduates go on to university, where they are entitled to dormitory accommodation for the duration of their studies.

Juma Davlatov, 24, has used a wheelchair since a botched polio vaccination when he was a child. He enrolled at the Tajik State Institute of Language in the hope that a degree would help his chances of finding a job, but acknowledged that it was beyond the dreams of many others in his situation.

"The housing issue stops many [disabled individuals] from getting higher education. When one has nowhere to live, it's hard to think about studying or other goals like that," Davlatov told IWPR.

"Disabled people are often not hired for higher-paid jobs corresponding to their [university] degree. People tend to think that the disabled won't be able to cope with job responsibilities, although we do have a lot of potential," he added.

Lawyer Fatima Shamsiddinova, herself disabled, provides legal assistance to vulnerable social groups.

She said that that state legislation on housing, adopted more than 20 years ago, looked great on paper but barely worked in reality.

A small one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Dushanbe costs around 20,000 dollars or can be rented 500 somoni (63 dollars) a month.

This was far outside the reach of disabled people living on monthly benefits of 130 somoni or 16.5 dollars.

"The housing code entitles anyone listed in the queue [for housing] to a certain number of square metres. In particular, that is the case for people with disabilities who are unable to earn enough money to buy an apartment," Shamsiddinova told IWPR. "However, the practice of putting someone on a housing list does not really lead to people getting accommodation in Tajikistan."

Kudratullo Kurbonov, who heads the Tajik health ministry's social protection department, told IWPR that orphans, including children with disabilities, were provided with a monthly grant of 800 somoni (100 US dollars) to cover their housing, food and education up to the age of 16.

After graduation, the orphans were no longer the responsibility of the state and needed to turn to their local authorities for help, Kurbonov continued.

However he stressed said that although the municipality did not always find the perfect solution, everyone found somewhere to live.

"District authorities are obliged to provide [state boarding school graduates] with housing, if they lack it. Basically they are being settled in nursing homes for the elderly, or some start living with relatives, but nobody is left on the street," Kurbonov told IWPR.

Graduates of state care homes such as Kharlamova dispute this.

"Can it be true that they can't build a few houses for people like me?" she asked. "So many new fancy buildings are being built in the capital, why can't the government make [developers] build social housing instead of shopping malls?"

Shamsiddinova agreed that it was perfectly possible for people to wait for years and never be housed.

"A disabled individual or orphanage graduate almost always ends up without a job," she explained. "A bank won't issue them with credit. And is it worthwhile going into more debt for someone who is broke anyway?"

This publication was produced under two IWPR projects: Empowering Media and Civil Society Activists to Support Democratic Reforms in Tajikistan, funded by the European Union, and Strengthening Capacities, Bridging Divides in Central Asia, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Cuba: Last Chance to Leave for US

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Fernando Donate Publication Date 20 August 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Cuba: Last Chance to Leave for US, 20 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bad95a4.html [accessed 29 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.

Roberto Castillo's finger glides over the map showing one of the possible routes he can take through Central America when he leaves Cuba.

His final destination will be the United States where he aims to take advantage of the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows Cubans arriving on US soil to request legal residency.

It will be a difficult and risky journey. But as far as as Castillo (not his real name) is concerned, this is his last chance to get away from the economic shortages and lack of opportunities in Cuba.

"I'm 31 years old and I'm a mechanical engineer," he said. "I worked in the 26 de Julio agricultural tool factory in Holguin but I never saw the benefits of my work."

Castillo lives with his mother, stepfather and older brother in an unfinished two-room house. Construction materials are prohibitively expensive for the majority of the population.

Castillo's salary at factory was 650 pesos per month (26 US dollars); a sack of cement can cost up to 140 pesos (six dollars), amounting to a fifth of his monthly income.

"There's not enough money. Everything is really expensive: food, clothes, construction materials," he continued.

His wages were barely enough to cover the costs of the country's staple foods when pork costs 35 pesos per pound, rice five pesos, and beans ten pesos.

Clothing is also expensive; a pair of trousers costs 500 pesos (20 dollars) while shirts and shoes cost 300 pesos (12 dollars).

Confronted by such difficulties, the family decided to obtain a so-called cuentapropista license, which allows small-scale private enterprise. For more than two years they have run a cafe at the entrance of their house, managed by Roberto's stepfather, who made the initial investment.

"I stopped working for the state because I get more money with a private business, on average 1,000 pesos per month (40 dollars); but it's not enough to meet our economic needs," Castillo said.

He calculates that leaving Cuba will cost around 10,000 dollars. That includes a flight, which has to be a round trip to put immigration agents at his first destination off the scent. The rest of the money will cover accommodation and transport up to Mexico and the cost of a so-called coyote, or people smuggler.

The sum is made up of family savings and a loan from a friend, which he will have to repay with interest within two years.

The family agreed that Castillo should use the family's savings for the trip because of the lack of opportunities for them in their own lives.

"My stepfather convinced me to make the trip," Castillo explained. "He's given me material and moral support from the beginning. My mother also agrees, so that's why I can't fail. My loved ones' futures depend on the money I send back from the US.

"I'm betting on all or nothing. Life is risk and I have faith that I can do it," he said, clasping a picture of Cuba's patron saint, the Virgin of Charity, in his right hand.

To prepare for his trip, Castillo made a list of all the countries with visa-free entry for Cubans, such as Russia and Trinidad and Tobago.

"I think that going through the Caribbean will be easier and cheaper," he said.

He knows that it will be a difficult journey and that he will have to face many obstacles. The first will be passing immigration at his initial destination.

Thousands of Cubans were stranded when they tried to enter Costa Rica last year and others are currently stuck in Quito, Ecuador and Turbo, Colombia.

Castillo has also heard stories about the coyotes, the people who will guide him throughout his journey from Central America to the US.

"I know cases of Cubans who have been ripped-off and have lost all their money or have died in the hands of the coyotes," he said.

But these tales will not stop him in his efforts to achieve a better life that he says he will never find in Cuba.

WET FOOT, DRY FOOT

The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act means that citizens can automatically apply for asylum once they reach US territory and are almost certain to be allowed to stay.

A 1995 revision to this act means that the US Coast Guard returns those intercepted at sea to Cuba, the so-called "wet foot/dry foot" distinction.

Before migration reforms in 2013, the Cuban government prevented its citizens from travelling freely.

The majority of Cubans left the country illegally and arrived on North American soil on improvised rafts.

The journey started from the northern Cuban littoral, from a point close to the Florida coast.

Some achieved their goal, but most were either intercepted at sea by the US Coast Guard or when their rafts landed in other Caribbean countries. In both cases they were deported back to Cuba.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, the US Coast Guard stopped 3,505 Cubans at sea in 2015.

That is why Castillo decided against the idea of reaching North American soil on a raft.

"The rafts are crude creations and I could be shipwrecked or drowned; or I could get intercepted by a coast guard boat and be sent back to Cuba," he said.

Since 2013, when Cuba abolished its exit permit requirement, the land route has been more appealing. Arriving by land is not only less dangerous but also more likely to lead to US residency.

Everything has now been put in place, and Castillo plans to set off soon.

"I'll leave Holguin by bus to Havana," he said, showing his ticket.

He will arrive in the capital a day before his flight and will stay at the Ulloa hotel.

"This hotel is very close to the bus stop that will take me to the airport," he said.

Castillo believes that the Cuban Adjustment Act will be revoked soon because of the progressive unfreezing of relations between Havana and Washington, which began in December 2014.

"One day we were enemies and the next day we woke up to the news of the reestablishment of relations," he said, adding, "Things will not improve in Cuba even if the embargo ends. Opportunities only come once in a lifetime and I have to take advantage of that to leave the country now."

A modified version of this story first appeared on the Animal Politico website. Castillo has since left Cuba to head for the US.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Delivering Hot Meals to Syria's Homeless

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Darin Hassan Publication Date 16 August 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Delivering Hot Meals to Syria's Homeless, 16 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bad9c14.html [accessed 29 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.

Each afternoon Imad sits outside his tent waiting for his free meal.

The nine-year-old is one of many children whose families have been internally displaced, leaving them jobless and unable to provide for their children.

Every now and then, Imad glances down the road to check if the van has arrived to deliver home-cooked meals to the camp where he now lives.

Idlib's mobile kitchen was founded by a group of young men to help people living in poverty.

"The aim of the project is to provide home-cooked meals to opposition fighters and the internally displaced," Musaab al-Adnan, the head of the project, told Damascus Bureau.

"We call it the mobile kitchen because we use a van to distribute the meals cooked at our base to the various camps and farms we cater for."

Funded by donations collected from local residents, the project started off on very small scale.

Matters changed when the Syrian National Coalition began funding it. The kitchen now provides 1,500 meals a day at a monthly cost of 75,000 US dollars.

"We try to cook a different meal every day and to package the food properly, so it will still be hot and fresh when delivered," said 27 year-old al-Adnan, adding that he hoped to expand the capacity to reach even more families.

Akram al-Abd, who drives the kitchen van, told Damascus Bureau he delivered meals to many remote areas.

"We also distribute small boxes of dates to the adults and sweets to the children," the 33 year-old said,

"We also try to give out bars of soap and towels every now and then, to help people keep clean and healthy. We hope these small gestures brighten up their lives a little."

Al-Abd said he faced numerous challenges on a daily basis. The constant bombing made it difficult for him to drive from one location to another and sometimes he was delayed. On more than one occasion he had been forced to cancel deliveries when heavy exchanges of fire broke out.

Idlib's mobile kitchen employs more than 30 people. Each one of them is paid 1,000 Syrian pounds (five dollars) a day.

Ahmad al-Hussain and his wife both work at the kitchen and told Damascus Bureau they were very happy to be earning a living while doing something to help those less fortunate.

"Each evening we buy ingredients from the local market for the following day. We start work early in the morning and aim to finish cooking by 1pm," said 37 year-old al-Hussain.

"My wife and a number of other women clean the ingredients and cook the meals. Several workers then package and seal them."

Abu Samir, 45, is one of those depending on the daily hot meal.

"One of the worst things that can happen to a person is to be forced out of their home," he said.

"My family and I fled the violence in Hama's countryside with only the clothes on our backs. We had nothing. The food the mobile kitchen delivers to us is a great help. It never fails to put a smile on my children's faces."

Umm Omar is also thankful for the help provided by Idlib's mobile kitchen. When her son fled to Lebanon, the widow, who is in her sixties, found herself alone with no source of income.

"I have no money, and live off donations handed out to me by generous neighbours," she said.

"I rely on the meal I receive from the mobile kitchen to keep me going all day."

Darin Hassan is the pseudonym of a Damascus Bureau contributor from Idlib countryside, Syria.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
The News of Death Never Stops

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Mona al-Mohammad Publication Date 16 August 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, The News of Death Never Stops, 16 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bada434.html [accessed 29 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

As a newsreader at a local radio station inside Syria, I am constantly updated about the latest national and international developments.

News related to Syria is always grim. It is always of massacres, torture, and displacement. When I present such news, I try not to think about what I'm reading, otherwise my emotions will get the better of me.

On Wednesday April 27, 2016, I delivered news of a massacre in Aleppo.

Russian aircraft had targeted the Al-Quds hospital in the Al-Sukari neighbourhood, killing 25 people and injuring more than 42 men, women, children and elderly people.

Again, the following day, I relayed more news of more death in Aleppo.

Al-Sukari had once again been targeted, along with the Al-Kalasa, Bustan al-Qasr, and Al-Sakhur neighbourhoods.

The last paediatrician in Aleppo's opposition-held neighbourhoods had been killed during an airstrike on the hospital where he worked.

Twenty-five civilians had been martyred and scores had been wounded. These numbers were expected to rise, as many people had been trapped under the rubble.

As I monitored developments so as to update my bulletin, I could not help but react to some of the reactions I read.

The International Committee of the Red Cross had published a statement that "following a week of intense violence, Aleppo is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis".

What was the use of issuing such warnings after all those people had died? Absolutely none.

Another report on a pan-Arab news website also caught my eye. It said the United States had expressed "extreme anger at the bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, and had urged Russia to contain Bashar al-Assad's government".

I laughed bitterly when I read this report. So what if the US was angry? What would that change? Would it put an end to the increasing death toll in Aleppo? I doubted it.

Friday April, 29 was my day off work, so I sat at home listening to the news on the radio or watching it on TV.

The headlines were still about Aleppo; matters were getting worse.

Ten civilians had been martyred and 15 injured when government aircraft bombed the Al-Ferdous neighbourhood.

A woman had been martyred and three civilians had been injured when government aircraft targeted the Al-Mashad neighbourhood.

A man had died of wounds he sustained during a government airstrike on the Bab al-Neirab neighbourhood.

My father turned to me and asked, "How long are we going to live like this, while the world watches in silence and does nothing?"

I didn't think my father expected an answer from me, so I too remained silent.

We carried on listening to the news. A report was being broadcast about a regime sniper positioned in Aleppo's Al-Qasr al-Baladi neighbourhood who was targeting civil defence teams as they attempted to rescue those wounded in the Bustan al-Qasr airstrike.

"No news of casualties," I thought to myself. "Finally an airstrike without casualties!"

I was elated.

Yet, that night, I found it hard to get any sleep. The colour red had dominated Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, as news of what was happening in Aleppo spread.

Timelines were flooded with photos showing the aftermath of the massacres: blood, body parts, dead bodies, charred children, women buried under the debris, buildings reduced to rubble and deserted residential streets.

Hashtags had been launched to draw attention to the calamity: "Aleppo is burning", "Save Aleppo", "Peace be upon Aleppo" and so on.

People kept sending me messages urging me to interact with the hashtags and share news of what was happening with my followers.

It was hard to look away.

I wondered what would be in store for me the following day at work. Would the news still be about Aleppo? Or would another city fall victim to government bombardment?

The answer was Aleppo. The next day, a Saturday, its residents were subjected to more murder and more devastation.

The following Thursday, May 5, a temporary ceasefire was announced and we expected Aleppo's devastating news to quieten down. But the bulletins I read out that day still carried reports of death.

"Despite the commencement of a ceasefire, a number of civilians were martyred today when Al-Assad tanks targeted a vehicle in Aleppo's northern countryside, on the motorway close to the Al-Muhandisin bridge," I read.

Aleppo was still being victimised.

Each day, I relay news of death to the general public, and the continuing death toll makes me wonder about my own fate.

I am terrified of being killed the way many others have, the remains of my body dismembered or charred in a mortar or a missile attack.

Although I hate to think about it, I always find myself wondering how my life will end.

Mona al-Mohammad is the pseudonym of a Damascus Bureau contributor from Tabaqa. The 20-year-old was forced to abandon her Arabic literature university course and flee to Idlib's countryside where she and her family are now displaced.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Medical care cut off as Taliban assaults key Afghan city

Publisher IRIN Publication Date 17 August 2016 Cite as IRIN, Medical care cut off as Taliban assaults key Afghan city, 17 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57badc9b4.html [accessed 29 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.

Civilians cannot access medical care in Lashkar Gah and aid agencies are preparing for a possible Taliban takeover as militants lay siege to the city, which is the capital of Afghanistan's southern Helmand Province.

Fighting since the beginning of August has displaced about 10,000 people, according to the UN's emergency aid coordination body, OCHA. About 6,000 people fled into Lashkar Gah as militants battled government soldiers in surrounding districts, while another 4,000 took refuge in an area under the control of anti-government forces.

Afghan security officials have noted that the Taliban fighters seem unusually well trained and are using new equipment such as night-vision goggles, but government forces have so far been able to withstand the assault and officials have repeatedly said they won't let the city fall.

Despite such reassurances, aid groups are making contingency plans.

Medecins Sans Frontieres has "a mass casuality plan prepared and ready to implement immediately in the case of a further deterioration of the security situation", said Guilhem Molinie, MSF's country representative. The medical charity has also been in contact with militants, as well as government and allied forces.

"We have to constantly reassess whether all parties fully accept us providing medical care impartially, whether the fighting is six kilometers away from Lashkar Gah, inside the city itself, or whether the control of the city changes hands," he told IRIN.

Heading off another Kunduz

If Lashkar Gah were to fall to the Taliban, it would be the second provincial capital to do so since the regime was ousted in 2001. The Taliban briefly took over the northern city of Kunduz last October. During that occupation, the Taliban allowed MSF to continue treating war-wounded in its trauma centre until it was destroyed by a US airstrike.

As in Kunduz, MSF has provided GPS coordinates of its facility to all sides in the conflict in Lashkar Gah.

"We know very well that sharing our GPS coordinates is not a sufficient guarantee to protect our staff and patients," Molinie said. "We not only need people to know where we are located, but we also need their firm commitment to respect the fact that we work in a neutral and impartial way."

The US has conducted about 30 airstrikes in the area over the last two weeks, according to Colonel Michael Lawhorn, a spokesman for the NATO mission in Afghanistan. American air support has helped Afghan forces recover many checkpoints from the Taliban, which has suffered "a number of casualties".

Discover More

Does Countering Violent Extremism work?

"In general, the situation in Helmand is not entirely clear," he told IRIN.

Medical access

Between 3 and 15 August, MSF treated 25 war-wounded people in its emergency room, six of whom died of their injuries. But fighting has made it extremely difficult or impossible for many civilians to travel to Lashkar Gah to seek treatment.

"Patients report that roads are blocked and checkpoints are delaying them reaching the hospital," said Molinie.

This has cost at least one life: a 15-year-old girl who died from meningitis.

The girl started showing symptoms as fighting raged in Nawa District, which borders Lashkar Gah. The journey to the city from her village usually takes a few hours, but it took the family a week.

"We knew when we admitted her for treatment that it was probably too late," said the doctor, Erland Gronningen. "Twenty four hours after she started treatment, and subsequently falling into a coma, she died."

Others are likely suffering and even dying from injuries or treatable diseases, because they can't reach the hospital.

Gronningen said the usually bustling paediatric wards and the Intensive Therapeutic Feeding Centre in the government hospital that MSF supports are now full of empty beds.

"The wards should be full of noisy children and young patients getting treatment for malnutrition or life-threatening conditions, but instead the wards are eerily quiet," said Gronningen.

Aid agencies are now distributing food, water, and items such as kitchenware to displaced people who have managed to make it to Lashkar Gah, according to OCHA. If the city does fall to the Taliban, civilians may be trapped, as the route to Kandahar City in the neighbouring province of Kandahar, is blocked by fighting.

"The highway linking Lashkar Gah-Kandahar has been inaccessible for civilians and threatens the delivery of assistance," OCHA said.
Gay and transgender refugees seek safety in the Middle East

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author Matthew Saltmarsh Publication Date 15 August 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Gay and transgender refugees seek safety in the Middle East, 15 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57badd724.html [accessed 29 October 2022]

As a transgender woman, Nadia* long struggled to find acceptance in her native Iraq, where years of abuse culminated in her abduction by an extremist militia targeting transgender people.

"They tortured us and beat us severely," she says, recalling how some of her peers had their orifices sealed up with glue. Several were killed.

After a harrowing flight across the Middle East in search of safety, she is now under the protection of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, in Lebanon and feels ready for a new start.

"I've said goodbye to Iraq forever and it hurts," she says.

Raised male by a cold mother and an abusive father, Nadia, 23, self-identifies as female. Her flight took her from the sectarian strife of post-war Baghdad to Kurdistan, Iran and now Lebanon. Soon, she hopes to resettle in a new country.

But she cannot bury the confusion, betrayals and abuse of the past. "I thought I was the only one on the planet who had this," Nadia says, speaking of her transgender identity. "I wondered why I was like that. It was disgusting, really disgusting," she said, referring to the reaction of those around her.

Similar experiences are recounted by a host of other lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people - collectively known as LGBTI - now living as refugees under UNHCR protection across this conflict-torn region.

As refugees, the perils are often magnified, according to testimony gathered by UNHCR and its partners. LGBTI refugees face a heightened risk of harassment, arrest, kidnap, torture, rape and even murder. Some, like Nadia, are targeted by extremists or criminal gangs. There are also daily concerns like finding jobs and shelter, hard enough for other refugees.

Lebanon is considered more tolerant of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities than most of its neighbours. Still, its criminal code prohibits sexual relations "contradicting the laws of nature," and that can trigger prosecutions.

There is a lack of data on how many LGBTI people are in need of assistance, but MOSAIC, a UNHCR partner working with marginalized groups in Lebanon and other parts of the region, says its services have reached 810 LGBTI people so far this year. But that merely scratches the surface.

"So much depends on how they come here and whether they have support already," says MOSAIC's founder, Charbel Maydaa. "There are many factors that define safety. Are they in a safe house? Are they properly registered and protected? Do they have access to support organizations? Being a refugee and LGBTI can be a double stigma."

For its part, UNHCR recently rolled out the largest and most comprehensive training package of its kind for staff and the wider humanitarian community working with forcibly displaced LGBTI people. It has also provided an overview of its progress made in protecting LGBTI refugees and others of concern.

In Lebanon itself, specialized social workers provide psychological counselling and referrals for medical assistance  especially post-trauma care. Other assistance to LGBTI refugees includes shelter, mental health aid, and legal and emergency cash assistance. When necessary, refugees are resettled.

UNHCR also works closely with partners like MOSAIC, the ABAAD-Resource Centre for Gender Equality and other national and international NGOs which provide individual and group support to LGBTI refugees. UNHCR and its partners have trained police to help them understand the community's needs, and recently introduced rainbow 'safety' badges to highlight frontline staff trained to respond to the needs of the community.

As the terrifying ordeal of Nadia's abduction and torture in 2012 made shockingly clear, life in Baghdad is dangerous for the transgender community. While several of her peers were murdered, others faced unrelenting harassment.

"In Iraq, gays and trans are persecuted," she says. "Most trans commit suicide in the end because there's no life. They cannot live the way they want."

Nadia initially fled to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and subsequently to neighbouring Iran in her quest to transition from male to female, but was unsuccessful. When she returned to Baghdad, her family abuse escalated.

"In Iraq, gays and trans are persecuted ... most trans commit suicide in the end because there's no life."

Unconvinced by a medical diagnosis that she could not become a man, her father and uncle confined and tortured her, scrubbing her skin with steel wool in an attempt to stimulate hair growth, and forcibly injecting testosterone.

She finally managed to flee to Lebanon, helped by a friendly doctor and her aunt. "My aunt told me, 'go and never come back. If they see you they will kill you,'" Nadia says. "I have a new life because of her."

Awaiting resettlement in Beirut has not been easy. There have been challenges finding work and paying rent as well as insults from housemates and threats from the family of her new partner, a Syrian refugee whose ring she now wears and with whom she hopes to be reunited after resettlement.

For the future, Nadia hopes to help others. "I dream of settling and adopting a family, having a baby with my boyfriend. I want to be a goodwill ambassador for trans people and raise awareness."

For professionals like Maydaa of MOSAIC, the case of Nadia and countless others like her show that there is hope for the LGBTI refugee community in this region. But he added, "cultural change will take time."

*Name changed for protection reasons
Rwandan refugees head home after a generation in Angola

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author Martim Empis Gray Pereira & Casilda Gil de Santivanes Finat Publication Date 22 August 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Rwandan refugees head home after a generation in Angola, 22 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bade4d4.html [accessed 29 October 2022]

Musabyenamariya Fratenata's husband died five years ago, leaving her struggling to find the money to raise their six children alone in Angola.

Originally from Rwanda, she fled during the horrors of the 1994 genocide, and has been a refugee ever since. Now, she is finally going home.

"It has been a long time since I left Rwanda and I cannot imagine how everything is now, but I am very excited to go back and finally see my family again," Fratenata said as she packed and prepared to leave Angola, her home for 18 years and the place where all her children were born.

"My younger siblings were very little and I cannot remember them very well, and neither can they remember me, I want us to get to know each other."

Fratenata and her family are among 340 Rwandans living in Angola whose legal status as refugees is expected to come to an end in September. The change is encouraging many to consider returning home, and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is ready to help all of those who want to return to Rwanda as part of its global drive to find 'durable solutions' for long-term refugees.

"For years, the Rwandese community in Angola was sceptical about returning to Rwanda," says Manuel Abrigada, UNHCR's Senior Protection Associate in Luanda, the Angolan capital. Reasons included historical concerns about insecurity, and more recent worries about integrating back into their communities after staying so long away.

"However, with the feedback from the few families that are going back, they are starting to change their minds," Abrigada continues. "Repatriation is becoming more appealing for the Rwandese refugees and more are considering going back home."

An estimated 800,000 Rwandans - mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus - were killed by their fellow Hutu countrymen over 100 days in 1994. It was sparked by the shooting-down of then President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane on April 6, 1994.

Fratenata, 38, said she was unsure what the future would hold once she returned to Rwanda, which she fled aged 16 when horrific ethnic violence engulfed the country.

She speaks to her parents and relatives back at home on the telephone when she can afford the call charges, and says they are excited to welcome her back. But she was keen that UNHCR would help her family settle down once they arrived back to rural Rwanda

"My family is waiting for me and they will help us," she says. "I will work with my relatives in agriculture and my parents, at the beginning, will assist me sending my children to school."

Lambert, Fratenata's 17-year-old eldest son, was forced to drop out of school after his father died because his mother could no longer afford the school fees. He is excited about restarting his education once he is in Rwanda.

"I will miss very much my Angolan friends and the church, but I hope that I can finish my studies in Rwanda and enrol in university to study accounting," he says.

For his younger siblings, there is only the excitement of travelling to the place they are told is their home, even though they have never been there. Nizeyimana and Sebastiao, two of Lambert's brothers, laugh and say together: "We are Rwandans."

Fratenata's family are the not the first Rwandan refugees to return home recently from Angola. Several others have already made the move. Among them are two brothers, Uwizeyimana Donatien and Ndasyisabye Donath, who are now home after 22 years away.

"Arriving here in Rwanda, everything was quite new," said Uwizeyimana, 33, who worked at an internet cafe in Luanda. "I had never been to Kigali before, but we used to see it on TV and it is totally different from what I thought."

His brother said there he heard many rumours about the dangers of returning home before he left Angola.

"People used to say that there is no security and liberty in Rwanda," he said. "They told us that if we went back, we will be imprisoned; but I can see that Rwanda has transformed. It was just gossip."

Eugene Sibomana contributed reporting from Kigali, Rwanda
Title The treatment of Ivorian Popular Front (FPI)/Gbagbo supporters in Cote d'Ivoire by both state and non-state actors; incidents of arrests and/or violence against FPI/Gbagbo supporters in Cote d'Ivoire; the willingness and ability of the State to protect FPI/Gbagbo supporters in Cote d'Ivoire

Publication Date 17 August 2016

Cite as Country of Origin Research and Information (CORI), The treatment of Ivorian Popular Front (FPI)/Gbagbo supporters in Cote d'Ivoire by both state and non-state actors; incidents of arrests and/or violence against FPI/Gbagbo supporters in Cote d'Ivoire; the willingness and ability of the State to protect FPI/Gbagbo supporters in Cote d'Ivoire, 17 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57bb21484.html [accessed 29 October 2022]
Mayor Costin provides council district update & talks about other city projects

A town hall was held at Martinsville City Hall Thursday evening where residents were encouraged to attend and discuss their concerns or questions with Martinsville Mayor Kenny Costin.
GARY BOMAR/BIG COUNTRY AG Scott Anderson, longtime Brown County Extension agent, has been recognized for his work by two noteworthy organizations.

SHARE

By Gary Bomar of the Abilene Reporter News

Scott Anderson, who has been the Brown County Agricultural and Natural Resources AgriLife Extension Agent since 1997, has been awarded the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of County Agricultural Agents.

The award is the highest honor a county Extension agent can receive at the county level. Anderson formally received the honor at the National Ag Agents meeting recently in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was also honored by the Texas Association of County Agricultural Agents last July in Waco.

Anderson, a 27-year veteran of Extension, is a product of the Big Country. A native of Cisco, Anderson was very active in both FFA and 4-H, receiving both the Gold Star Award and the Lone Star Farmer Degree. His major projects were livestock, where he showed cattle, swine and lambs. While in high school, he maintained a flock of Southdown sheep.

"I always knew that I would always be connected to agriculture in some way," he said. After high school, Anderson attended Cisco College, and then Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. He received scholarships both in agriculture and rodeo. Anderson was an active member of the collegiate rodeo team at both schools and a competing member of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association. Tie-down calf roping was his main event.

Upon graduation, Anderson worked for the well-known Granada Land and Cattle Company in its Brangus division for two years. In 1989, he accepted the position of Assistant County Extension Agent in Palestine.

"Being under a great trainer agent, Glen Huddleston, I learned a lot, especially dealing with horticulture at the same time developing a strong Extension background," Anderson said.

Even, as a young agent, Anderson was given the responsibility of developing an adult beef cattle program. This was in addition to a large 4-H program for the county.

In 1991, Anderson underwent a major transfer in Extension, from the East Texas position with a large population. He assumed the position of County Extension Agent-Ag in Presidio County, with his office in Mafia.

"The county had more cows than people, and covered vast rangeland," he recalls.

Taking his Extension base, Anderson developed a Range Management Program, and an active 4-H program in this far West Texas county.

"People do not realized that in the south part of the county along the Rio Grande, there are many acres of vegetables commercially grown," he said.

Also, alfalfa is major crop in the fertile river bottom, and Anderson worked with several producers along the Texas- Mexico border. While in Mafia, Anderson earned a master's degree in agriculture from Sul Ross State University.

From far West Texas, Anderson transferred to Brown County in 1997. These past 19 years, he has developed a well-rounded educational program with a strong 4-H and youth base, conducted pesticide training events, taught horticultural activities and maintained an active range and beef educational program with banner events such as the Heart of Texas Annual Beef Conference.

Taking advantage of his rodeo experience, Anderson has been the coordinator of the Texas 4-H roping school for the last 26 years. For this dedication, he was given special recognition by the Texas A&M University Animal Science Department for outstanding equine educational programs and events.

Anderson and his wife Ginger, have three children, Blake, Ryan and Sydnee. In his leisure time, he can be found still in the rodeo arena, no longer calf roping, but now entering in the steer tripping competition.
Abilene residents seeking to learn more about pet care might benefit from helping a Girl Scout earn her Gold Award.

Julia Dickerson, a member of Troop 7162 who will be a senior at Wylie High School, has organized an animal care clinic from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Abilene Public Library, 202 Cedar St. During the event, local animal care professionals will give insight and answer questions about keeping pets healthy.

Presenters will include Dr. Barry Eitelman, veterinarian for Southwest Animal Clinic; Dr. John Dearing, owner of Dearing Veterinary Clinic; Dr. Dale Hembree, an employee of Dearing's who specializes in exotic pets; and Maegan Jennings, a technician at Ridgemont Animal Clinic.

Topics to be covered include vaccinations and common emergencies; bathing and grooming techniques; spaying/neutering; dental and nail care; and feeding and nutrition.

The clinic will be in the auditorium on the second floor of the library. Refreshments will be served.

Choosing the project was a natural for Dickerson, who wants to become a veterinarian. It still took around two years to decide on the final form of the project and get it together, according to her father, Russell Dickerson.

'We brainstormed ideas that had to do with helping animals and pets,' he said. 'We ended up with this because it made the most sense.'

Brief breaks are scheduled between talks by the professionals. The plan is to have all speakers remain until the end for a question-and-answer session.

GIRL SCOUT RECRUITING

A recruiting event for girls interested in Girl Scouts will take place from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Nelson Park splash pad.

Adult leaders are always needed, so if you are interested in supporting the program in that way, be sure to check out the event.

If you can't make it, contact the Abilene office of Girl Scouts of Texas Oklahoma Plains at 325-670-0432 for more information.

Girls living in counties south of Interstate 20 (if the highway goes through your county, call the Abilene office) can call the Brownwood office at 800-346-3215.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Tot Spot, for children ages 3-5 (and an adult), 9:30 or 11 a.m. first Thursday and Friday of each month, The Grace Museum, 102 Cypress St. Free for museum members, $5 for nonmembers. Reservations required; 325-673-4587 or www.thegracemuseum.org.

The National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature, 102 Cedar St., 325-673-4586, offers free art activities each Saturday from 1-4 p.m.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

This just in...
A worker cleans the street in front of a construction site on a rainy day in Huangshan, eastern China's Anhui province, Dec. 9, 2015.

China's government has grown increasingly anxious about an apparent slide in private investment as the economy struggles to meet official growth goals.

Government planners have been on alert since April when first-quarter data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed growth of private investment in fixed assets like buildings and machinery dropped sharply to 5.7 percent from 10.1 percent for all of 2015.

On May 4, the cabinet-level State Council ordered an investigation into local practices affecting private investment following a meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang.

"The importance of private investment cannot be overemphasized," said a commentary by the official Xinhua news agency, noting that the private economy generates over 60 percent China's economic growth and over 80 percent of its jobs.

Since then, the cumulative growth numbers for private investment this year have only gotten worse, falling to 5.2 percent in April, 3.9 percent in May and record lows of 2.8 percent in June and 2.1 percent in July.

The cumulative growth figures indicate that private investment started shrinking in June compared with year-earlier rates.

Meanwhile, total fixed-asset investment (FAI) growth, excluding rural households, declined only slightly from 10 percent at the end of 2015 to 9 percent at midyear and 8.1 percent in July, NBS data said.

From looking at the numbers, an observer would conclude that the steeper declines in the private sector were responsible for dragging total investment down, while state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were still supporting growth.



Government inspections

Official responses to the reports suggest the government believes that is the case.

Government inspections have been followed by warnings to local authorities about equal access to credit for private enterprises, new guidelines and reform promises, all apparently to no avail.

In July 18, Premier Li urged new efforts to stimulate private and mixed-ownership investment by "removing obstacles" and blocking funds to state-owned industries with surplus production capacity.

One week later, a top planning agency official argued that the government ought to boost public investment for SOEs "to offset the effect of lackluster private capital" and keep the economy going, Xinhua reported.

"Given the slowdown, the government should begin to invest more, partly through special construction funds, to stimulate investment and stabilize the economy," said Zhang Yong, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

On Aug. 4, the NDRC voiced its concern again, suggesting that private investment should be encouraged with preferential policies and access to previously off-limits sectors like electricity and telecommunications, where SOEs have been favored in the past.

Xinhua cited drops in business confidence and investment for exports, while some economists pointed to higher risks for private enterprises which lack the same level of support from state banks as SOEs.

Government officials noted fundamental problems in attracting investment for economic growth.

"Businessmen invest for profit, and it is understandable that they hold up investment when traditional sectors such as manufacturing and real estate now offer only marginal profits due to a lack of innovation," Zhang said.

Breaking the cycle

The government's focus on falling private investment reflects concern that it has not fostered a favorable business environment as it tries break the cycle of perpetual credit for unproductive but politically-connected SOEs with "supply-side reforms."

But beyond that, the official hand-wringing may be seen as a setback for the government after years of promoting a shift from investment-led growth to a consumer-driven economy.

Worries about weakening of traditional growth factors like FAI and exports may only be a sign that the government has realized that economic transition will take longer than the replacement of one slogan with another in the official press.

But a closer look at the NBS data may raise questions about whether the private sector is to blame.

Although the agency announces the growth rate of private FAI in monthly reports for the press, it publishes entirely different figures in supporting statistics on its website.

In its Aug. 12 press release on seven-month data, for example, the NBS lists the growth rate of private investment as 2.1 percent, but its supporting table for FAI by business registration shows the rate for "private enterprises" as 8.3 percent.

What would appear to be the same category is apparently not.

Derek Scissors, an Asia economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said the NBS webpage on "fixed assets by status of registration" represents a long-established and relatively consistent series of data broken down by business type.

But the categories are confusing and complex, ranging from SOEs to "state joint ownership enterprises," "collective joint ownership enterprises," "joint state-collective enterprises," and limited liability corporations of various types. The NBS lists 28 categories of FAI in all.

At some point, the agency merged some of the categories in its press reports on private investment, reflecting non-state participation in various forms of businesses and limited liability corporations listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Sketchy explanations of the NBS calculations make it impossible to evaluate the reported private investment problem without getting down into the weeds.

A footnote to the NBS data suggests that the headline figure for private investment consists of a hodgepodge of business categories, including collective enterprises, joint- stock cooperative enterprises, private partnerships and their investments "in the mixed economic components with industrial and commercial registration."



Hard to tell

How much is really private or state-controlled is hard to tell.

"They grabbed some firms out of this category. They grabbed some firms out of the other category," said Scissors.

"The Chinese have oh-so-helpfully aggregated the data into state and private. They don't tell us how they aggregated them, and everyone uses them anyway," he said.

The result is that no one can be sure what the publicized drop in private FAI growth percent means, since the 8.3- percent rate for purely private firms is actually stronger than the 8.1-percent growth for all FAI, while the growth rate for the category listed as "state-owned enterprises" is much weaker at a negative 5.7 percent.

Looking at the details, an observer would conclude that purely private business is pushing up the investment total, not dragging it down.

Although its process is unclear, the NBS has created a broader investment category and labeled it as "private" in compiling its press release figures, making it seem that declining FAI growth is attributable to the private sector rather than SOEs, although many companies are likely to remain under functional state control.

"We don't have sufficient information in the big category of limited liability corporation investment to say that we know which ones are state and which ones are private," Scissors said.

The internal massaging of the numbers may renew questions about whether China's policy makers have access to more accurate data when making economic decisions or whether they rely on widely-doubted official growth rates.

Despite the steady slippage in investment numbers, China maintained its official 6.7-percent growth in gross domestic product through the second quarter, contributing to continued skepticism about GDP claims.

Another possible interpretation is that the weak private investment figures publicized by the NBS are an example of the "real" data that government officials are using to guide economic policy, which could account for the State Council's concern.

But the lower private FAI numbers may also serve political purposes on both sides of the debate over SOE reforms and efforts to cut production overcapacity.

"The state side can say we told you that you can't trust the private sector, so you should support us, and reformers can say if you don't support the private sector, we're all doomed," Scissors said.
Cambodian land rights activists shout slogans during a protest in front of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court building, Aug. 22, 2016.

Two land rights activists in Cambodia were convicted Monday of insulting a public official for their version of a Black Monday protest earlier this month.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found Tep Vanny and Bov Sophea guilty and sentenced each of them to six days of imprisonment and an 80,000 riels (U.S. $20) fine  a verdict the activists and their supporters said is unjust.

It is very unjust for us as victims, Bov Sophea told RFAs Khmer Service in a telephone interview. We only called on Prime Minister Hun Sen to solve the land issues. I believe the courts ruling against us is nothing short of an attempt to silence us.

Bov Sophea and Tep Vanny were originally charged with the more serious offense of incitement to commit a felony for their protest, in which they buried headless mannequins in sand pits to represent the mindlessness of government officials.

Under the new charge, Bov Sophea was released for time served, but Tep Vanny was still being held.

The arrest and conviction failed to dampen Bov Sopheas enthusiasm as she vowed to continue with the protests.

Such action only adds fuel to the fire of our wrath, she said as she called on the government to free Tep Vanny.

Please release Tep Vanny immediately, she said. Its not acceptable to imprison her.

'Who have we insulted?'

Another land-rights activist, Song Srey Leap, told RFA the convictions are nonsensical because their protest wasnt aimed at a single individual.

Who have we insulted? We used the headless dummies to refer to the institutions, and not any particular individuals, she said. Since they have treated us like that, it means the government colludes with the court officials to protect the corrupt and bad people who have mistreated us.

An official with the Cambodian rights group Licadho said the governments only reason to pursue the women was because they are well known for their activities.

The courts ruling badly affects peoples rights, said Lichado official Am Sam Ath. Tep Vanny and Bov Sophea were arrested and detained because they are prominent activists.

Tep Vanny and Bov Sophea gained prominence as activists fighting the Boeung Kak Lake land grab, when some 3,500 families were evicted from land surrounding the urban lake.

The lake was filled with sand to make way for a development project with close ties to Prime Minister Hun Sen and the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP).

Seizure of land for developmentoften without due process or fair compensation for displaced residents is a major cause of protests in Cambodia and other authoritarian Asian countries, including China and Laos.

Black Monday began as an effort to win the release of four human rights workers and an election official who were jailed on charges widely seen as attempts to muzzle political opponents of Prime Minister Hun Sen and the CPP.

The protest, which gets its name from the color of the cloths that protestors wear, has become a more generalized form of demonstration.

Hun Sen and other officials have condemned the protests as a color revolution.

Over the years, Hun Sen has repeatedly inveighed against color revolutions, named after a series of popular movements that used passive resistance to topple governments in countries of the former Soviet Union during the 2000s.

Reported for RFA's Khmer Service by Sel San. Translated by Nareth Muong. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen (L) is hwon posing with his son, Hun Manet (R), during a ceremony at a military base in Phnom Penh in this undated file photo.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen called on the U.S. ambassador in Phnom Penh to take action against a Khmer-American living in the U.S. who questioned the parentage of the strongmans eldest son.

During a forum on natural resource protection and preservation on Monday, Hun Sen said he would not forgive the man, and that he would have been arrested immediately if he lived in Cambodia.

It was unclear what action Hun Sen wants U.S. Ambassador William A. Heidt to take.

Although Hun Sen didnt mention a name, a Cambodian-American living in the U.S. named Brady Young posted video clips on his Facebook page in April that included accusations that Hun Manet was the son of Hun Sens wife Bun Rany and the late Vietnamese military commander Le Duc Tho.

After the posts appeared, Hun Sen accused the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) of secretly engineering the effort and warned that he would not let the CNRP rest in peace, despite an immediate statement from the opposition party disowning the comments.

On May 16, the CNRP dismissed Young from the party and CNRP President Sam Rainsy expressed deep regret about the incident.

Vietnam and Cambodia have had a fraught relationship for centuries, but the animosity with Hun Sen dates from the 1979-89 Vietnamese occupation that ended the murderous rule of the Khmer Rouge.

Hun Sen emerged and was appointed during the period of Hanoi control over Cambodia.

As Cambodian foreign minister and then prime minister, Hun Sen played an important role in the 1991 Paris Peace Talks that brokered peace among Cambodias warring factions.

Hun Manet, the prime ministers eldest son, is a lieutenant general in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. He is often mentioned as a successor to his father.

The prime ministers relationship with Vietnam has been used by the opposition to raise questions about Hun Sens loyalties, and Hun Sen has attacked political opponents who have attempted to make it an issue.

In April, Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) lawmaker Um Sam An was jailed after Hun Sen ordered police to arrest anyone accusing the government of using fake maps to cede national territory to neighboring Vietnam.

In 2015 police arrested Sam Rainsy Party Senator Hong Sok Hour after he posted comments on social media that claimed an article in the 1979 Cambodia-Vietnam Friendship Treaty was meant to dismantle, rather than define, the border between the two countries.

Although the Sam Rainsy Party merged with the Human Rights Party to form the CNRP, the party still holds seats in the Senate. It is expected to fully integrate with the CNRP after the national elections in 2018.

Sam Rainsy has been living abroad since he was stripped of his parliamentary immunity in 2015 because of a warrant issued for his arrest in another defamation case in which he accused Deputy Prime

Reported by RFA's Khmer Service. Translated by Nareth Muong. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
Chinese political prisoner Guo Feixiong, who has refused food and water for more than 100 days in protest at his treatment in jail, may have had his request for a transfer granted, his wife told RFA on Monday.



Guo, whose birth name is Yang Maodong, had been subjected to forced feeding after beginning his hunger strike in early May in protest at the treatment of political prisoners in China.



His lawyers had requested his transfer from Yangchun Prison in the southern province of Guangdong after a public outcry triggered by his hunger strike.



I have heard that [Guo has left Yangchun Prison] but we havent had this information confirmed yet, Guos U.S.-based wife Zhang Qing said. Some of the family are planning to visit him on Aug. 26, so we probably wont hear anything for a while.



Our information is incomplete right now, said Zhang, who was granted political asylum in the United States in November 2009 along with the couple's daughter Yang Tianjiao.



According to rights activist Ai Wu, who heads the Guo Feixiong Concern Group, the initial report of Guos departure from Yangchun came in the form of a phone call from Guangdong authorities to his sister, Yang Maoping.



The Guangdong provincial prison bureau sent out a tweet on Friday, which was followed by a private phone call to Guos elder sister, saying that he had been transferred to another prison, Ai said.



If this is true, I will be very happy about it, because nobody wants anything bad to happen to him.



But Ai said it is still unclear whether Guos other demands of better treatment for political prisoners have been met, and therefore whether or not he has willingly ended his hunger strike.



It is a small concession for them to fulfill his request for a transfer, but the government has yet to respond to his demands regarding the bigger, humanitarian issues that he made on arrival at Yangchun Prison, she said.



Call for reforms, end to torture



Guo began his hunger strike on May 9, calling on President Xi Jinping to implement democratic reforms, end the use of electric shocks in prison, improve the treatment of political prisoners, and ratify a United Nations covenant on civil and political rights.



His action was prompted by a forced rectal cavity search at the instigation of state security police, as well as forced head shaving and verbal abuse from prison guards, his sister said at the time.



More than 400 rights activists have been on relay hunger strikes in support of Guo since he began refusing food and water.



Ai said Guo had also spoken out against a lack of nutritious food in jail, against being beaten and forced to kneel, and on forced exercise sessions.



But Guo Feixiong has been forced to squat down with his hands on his head more than three times, and threatened with an electric baton, and these are very serious forms of physical and emotional abuse, Ai said.



If he has really been transferred to another jail, then I hope that similar things wont continue to happen at the new prison, she said.



According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), Yangchun Prison twice admitted guo to hospital between April and May, but only for checkups. No diagnosis or medical treatments were offered.



Guo was sentenced last November for "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble" and "gathering a crowd to disrupt social order" after a prolonged period in pretrial detention.



During his sentencing hearing, Guo shouted in protest at his treatment while in police custody, where he was held in solitary confinement in a small, dark cell and denied permission to exercise outdoors since August 2013.



Reported by Yang Fan for RFAs Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.




Universities in northwestern Chinas Xinjiang region have begun a new push to strengthen faculty loyalty to Beijing, with instructors forced to write papers promoting ethnic unity and praising initiatives of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, sources said.



The move beginning Aug. 15 has introduced a range of new demands and has shortened the time available to instructors for summer break, one teacher in Xinjiangs mostly Muslim south told RFAs Uyghur Service.



This year our summer break was cut short, and political studies have already begun, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



We are writing and studying papers expressing support for [Chinese] president Xi Jinpings call to prevent Western ideology from entering the schools, along with various other directives sent out by the Education Ministry.



This is our present situation, and it will be the same on Teachers Day, Sept. 10, when we usually get a day off, he said.



Our own course of political studies began on Aug. 15, another teacher said, speaking from Xinjiangs regional capital Urumqi.



We are learning how to curb our students inclinations toward religion, stamp out religious extremism, and promote ethnic unity [between Uyghurs and Han Chinese], he said.



Calls seeking comment from several Xinjiang universities rang unanswered, but one Xinjiang teacher told RFA that faculty had been warned against speaking in interviews or taking phone calls from abroad.



In an Aug. 11 posting, however, the website of southwestern Xinjiangs Kashgar University boasted increased political education and ethnic unity education as school achievements in a quote by university president Erkin Omer, speaking to Han students visiting from Chinas Jilin province.



Obstacles to advancement



Strict political requirements have meanwhile created obstacles for teachers seeking advancement on the basis of academic accomplishments alone, one Xinjiang instructor told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity.



These have made it difficult for me to get a professors title, or even an associate professorship, so I had to give this up, he said.



Because some of my students were found praying, I was disqualified twice, he said.



Many teachers have left their posts, and some have gone abroad. I might apply for early retirement as well because of the stress over politics.



Faced with growing assertions of Uyghur national identity in Xinjiang, China regularly conducts strike hard campaigns in the groups traditional homeland, including police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the Uyghur peoples culture and language.



But experts outside China say that Beijing has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur "separatists" and that Chinese domestic policies are largely responsible for instability in the region.



Reported by Mihray Abdilim for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by Mamatjan Juma. Written in English by Richard Finney.
KYIV -- Ukraine said on August 21 that a Russian opposition activist known for being repeatedly detained for protesting against Russian President Vladimir Putin's rule has asked Kyiv to grant him political asylum.

Oleh Slobodyan, a spokesman for Ukraine's State Border Guard Service, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service on August 21 that activist Roman Roslovtsev requested political asylum earlier in the day at passport control at the Novi Yarilovichi crossing on Ukraine's northern border with Belarus.

The border guard service had issued a statement earlier on August 21 that did not name the individual, describing him only as a "famous Russian writer and public figure who was involved in active protest activities against Putin's existing political regime in Russia."

Roslovtsev, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment via Facebook, is not known as a writer but rather for being detained on numerous occasions for staging one-man protests while wearing a Putin mask.

Slobodyan did not clarify why the border guard service's statement had described Roslovtsev as a "famous writer."

Roslovtsev has said his Putin-mask pickets are aimed at demonstrating the absurdity of Russia's protest laws, which Kremlin critics say are enforced arbitrarily in order to stamp out public criticism of the government. 

WATCH: In this video from June 10, Roslovtsev is arrested once again for wearing a mask of the Russian president in Red Square. He was continuing a campaign against a law that bans mass protests in Russia. (RFE/RL's Russian Service)

Roslovtsev told Ukraine's independent Hromadske.tv channel on August 21 that he has asked Ukraine for political asylum because of persecution by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor agency to the Soviet KGB, and "the inability to continue protest activity in Russia."

He did not say in the published version of the interview that he was the individual cited in the State Border Guard Service statement.

The State Border Guard Service added that the man's case has been referred to migration authorities.

Oleksiy Makeiev, political director at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, did not provide details when reached by RFE/RL on August 21.

"I hope I will know more about it tomorrow," he said.

Numerous Russian opposition activists have sought and been granted political asylum in Ukraine over the past decade, claiming political repressions under Putin's government.

Moscow and Kyiv's pro-Western government have been locked in a 2-year-old standoff over Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea territory in 2014 and subsequent backing of armed separatists battling Ukrainian forces in the east of the country.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Christopher Miller in Kyiv
A major crossing on the Afghan-Pakistan border has been closed over a dispute over the burning of a Pakistani flag by Afghan demonstrators last week.

Pakistani officials said the Chamman crossing was closed after a group of Afghan youth celebrating the country's independence day on August 19 ransacked the border gate and burned a Pakistani flag.

Pakistani and Afghan officials held meetings over the weekend to resolve the issue, but no agreement was reached.

Hundreds of trucks carrying food and other goods were parked on both sides of the border on August 22.

Chamman, in the southwest Pakistani province of Balochistan, is one of the two major border crossings. The other is Torkham in northwest Pakistan.

Torkham was closed for weeks earlier this year when troops from both countries clashed over a border post Pakistan had planned to build.

The controversial border posts have rekindled the thorny issue of the Durand Line, which Pakistan considers to be an international border but Afghanistan has never recognized.

Based on reporting by dpa and Dawn
We're about to learn where Vladimir Putin really wants to take Russia.

We're about to see what one-man rule really looks like.

We're about to witness Putin unbound and unchained.

And this is because, until recently, Putin was basically the front man for a ruling oligarchy -- one comprised mostly of his old pals from the KGB.

But as Putin culls his old inner circle, ditching cronies like Vladimir Yakunin and Sergei Ivanov, Russia will be ruled less by a so-called "collective Putin" and more by Putin the individual.

The Kremlin leader long ago freed himself from the traditional checks and balances on executive power -- things like the legislature, the courts, and the media.

He long ago made it clear he would not be restrained by civil society.

The only thing left was his inner circle -- his Politburo -- the stakeholders in the Putin system who had his ear, who made themselves fabulously wealthy, and who relentlessly lobbied for their interests.

Now, to be sure, a cabal of like-minded cronies is a pretty imperfect restraint on the will of one man -- especially one who appears to believe he has a historic mission to restore Russia's lost greatness.

But it was a restraint nonetheless.

And as it is eliminated, we're about to see the real Vladimir Putin in action.

So hold onto your hats.

Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says the world faces the most dangerous decade since World War II and predicted that the historical period of the West's "undivided dominance over world affairs" is coming to an end.

Speaking on October 27 at a conference of international policy experts in Moscow, Putin said the decade ahead is "probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important...since the end of World War II."

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, Russian protests, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

Putin laid the blame for the situation at the feet of Western countries, which he said have cast aside the norms of international affairs in order to maintain dominance and hold down countries they see as "second-class civilizations."

The Russian leader also said he had no regrets about sending troops into Ukraine and sought to explain the conflict as part of the efforts by Western countries to secure their global domination.

Putin claimed in his speech to the Valdai Discussion Club, a think tank, that the West had helped incite the conflict and also seeks to stoke a crisis over Taiwan in an attempt to enforce global dominance.

Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, triggering the biggest military conflict in Europe since World War II and driving relations with Western countries that back Ukraine and its drive to be part of the European Union and NATO to their lowest depths since the Cold War.

Putin cast the conflict in Ukraine as a battle between the West and Russia for the fate of the second-largest Eastern Slav country. It is partly a "civil war," he said, as Russians and Ukrainians are one people. Kyiv has flatly rejected both of those ideas.

The goal of what Russia refers to as a "special military operation" is to take the eastern Donbas region, Putin said, adding that in his view the region would "not have survived" on its own had Russia not intervened militarily in Ukraine.

WATCH: A local official told Russian conscripts "You are not cannon fodder" in a video published online recently. The men responded by angrily shouting that, actually, that's exactly what they are.

But the war has gone far beyond the Donbas region, with Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, residential buildings, and other nonmilitary structures, killing tens of thousands of Ukrainians across the country.

Putin used the speech largely to rail against the West, saying it has nothing to offer to the world "except its own domination," and the goal of globalization "is neocolonialism to dominate the world." He said Russia is only trying to defend its right to exist in the face these Western efforts.

Putin also asserted that more and more nations refuse to follow Washington's demands and Russia will never accept the West's attempts to dominate the world.

Citing gay pride parades and the acceptance of transgender people in Western countries, Putin also defended "traditional values" and said "nobody can dictate to our people how to develop and what society we should build."

He also said Russia has never considered the West an enemy and has many things in common with it but will continue to oppose the diktat of Western neoliberal elites.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Putin's speech presented no new ideas.

"We don't believe that Mr. Putin's strategic goals have changed here. He doesn't want Ukraine to exist as a sovereign, independent nation state," Kirby said.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Putin's speech can be described as "for Freud," referring to psychoanalysis founder Sigmund Freud.



"The person who invaded a foreign country, annexed its land, and committed genocide accuses others of violating international law and the sovereignty of other countries? One truth: The person who started a wind will get a storm. The storm is coming," he said on Twitter.

Answering questions from journalists after his speech, Putin reiterated the Kremlin's assertion that Ukraine plans to use a so-called dirty bomb on its own territory. The claim has been dismissed as false by Ukraine and its allies, who say Russia may have raised the matter because it plans to use such a bomb in Ukraine as a pretext for escalation.

"It was me who ordered [Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu to inform by phone all his colleagues about it," Putin said, adding that Russia does not need to use dirty bombs in Ukraine.

Putin also said he supported plans by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit Ukraine's nuclear power plants for inspections.

"It must be done as soon and as openly as possible because we know that Kyiv authorities are now working to cover up such [dirty-bomb attack] preparations," Putin said, without giving any exact information proving the claim.

Ukraine invited IAEA inspectors to visit its nuclear facilities after the Kremlin made its unsubstantiated claim about the preparation of a dirty bomb -- which would use the explosion of a conventional warhead to spread radioactive material or chemicals over a wide area.

Ukraine said it would welcome inspections because it had "nothing to hide."

According to Putin, Russia has never talked about the use of nuclear weapons in the war with Ukraine despite his own promise to defend Russian territory with any means at our disposal" and saying his words were "not a bluff."

"We see no need for [using nuclear weapons in Ukraine]," Putin told reporters. "There is no sense for that, neither political, nor military."
Ukrainians have increasingly woken up to the sound of suicide drones as Russia turns to Iranian-made imports to destroy civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Now they may have another deadly Iranian weapon to worry about -- ballistic missiles.

Cheap but effective, Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 "kamikaze" drones have already made a deadly impact in Ukraine.



If U.S. intelligence assessments pan out, Russia will soon be able to supplement its use of Iranian suicide drones and its own cruise and ballistic missiles with powerful short-range Iranian Fateh-110 and Zolfaghar ballistic missiles.



Coming as the Kremlin is reportedly struggling to maintain its depleted stockpile of aerial weapons as it ramps up strikes, the missiles would potentially boost Russia's ability to continue its costly air campaign.



Jeremy Binnie, a Middle East defense specialist at the global intelligence company Janes, said having more missiles gives Russia the ability to sustain the bombardment against Ukraine."



Going Ballistic



The Fateh-110, which was unveiled in 2001 and has a stated range of 300 to 500 kilometers, was developed from a heavy artillery rocket dating from the 1980s. To increase the weapon's accuracy, the Fateh-110 was given a guidance system and movable fins that allow it to be steered as it approaches its target.



The Zolfaghar, which debuted in 2016 and also has guidance capabilities, comes from the same family as the Fateh-110 but boasts a much longer range due to its use of a lighter carbon-fiber airframe and a smaller warhead.



Binnie said the Zolfaghar's use against the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in eastern Syria confirmed that the missile was capable of reaching at least 650 kilometers, which he said is "a statement of how much the Iranian tactical missile program has really advanced over the years."



Iran's claim that the Zolfaghar can travel even farther -- up to 700 kilometers -- would put the western Ukrainian city of Lviv within range of strikes launched from Russian territory, while the more powerful Fateh-110 could potentially hit the city from Belarus, which has served as a staging ground for Russian attacks.



While there has been no indication that Russia plans to purchase launching systems from Iran, Binnie suggests that the Russian military could pair the missiles with existing equipment because the Iranian launchers were adapted from a Soviet-era system.



"It might be possible for the Russians to quickly adapt some old equipment they have lying around into launch systems," Binnie said.



The Iranian military, he added, fitted the Soviet system to trucks, allowing for mobility and concealment.



"Those civilian trucks can be covered over to make it hard to spot that they're actually missile launchers," Binnie said.



'Lawnmowers' And 'Mopeds'



Iranian military drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have been homing in on targets across Ukraine since late August, according to the United States.



The buzzing sound of the Iranian Shahed-136 and Shahed-131 drones, built with off-the-shelf components, have earned them derisive monikers such as "lawnmowers" and "mopeds." But the slow-moving, low-flying drones, which are maneuvered to crash into their target, have proven themselves capable of hitting their mark both in terms of military effectiveness and cost.

It is capable of extracting or delivering attrition and damage when launched, but it costs little compared to other UAVs that Russia has in its own arsenal," said Samuel Bendett of the Virginia-based Center for Naval Analyses (CNA).

Ukraine alleges Russia has ordered 2,400 of the Iranian suicide drones, and its military has claimed to have shot them down in great numbers, often using conventional anti-aircraft guns or even small-arms fire. But their ability to be launched in bunches of five -- often from the cover of civilian trucks -- improves their chances of reaching their target.



"The Ukrainians are stopping most of these, but the whole point of these drones is that they fly in a large mass," Bendett said. "The air defense does not always catch all of them. All it takes is for several or even one to make it through."

The estimated range of the Shahed-136 varies, but Iran says it is capable of traveling 2,500 kilometers. The slightly smaller and older Shahed-131, which has been used by Huthi rebels in Yemen to attack Saudi targets in the Arabian Peninsula, has been estimated to have a range of 900 kilometers, according to tests conducted by the Ukrainian military.



Ukraine's Defense Ministry has published multiple images of downed Shahed-136 drones in recent weeks, and the Ukrainian National Guard on October 19 claimed to have shot down a Shahed-131.



Ukraine has also claimed to have shot down a more advanced Iranian combat UAV, the Mojer-6 drone capable of carrying out both reconnaissance missions and aerial strikes within a range of 200 kilometers. There have also been reports of Russian interest in obtaining Irans Shahed-129 and Shahed-191 combat drones.



"When launched from any territory that Russia controls or is allied with -- anywhere from the south, from the Donbas, from Belarus -- they're able to strike a lot of Ukrainian targets," Bendett said.

In addition to the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia will soon boost its arsenal with Iranian ballistic missiles, as first reported by The Washington Post on October 16, the White House on October 20 said that Iranians are now "directly engaged on the ground" in Moscows war against Ukraine after sending "a relatively small number" of personnel from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to assist Russian forces in using the Iranian drones.

Iran has denied sending combat drones to Russia, and Moscow has rejected claims that it is using Iranian UAVs.

Images of downed Iranian drones appear to show that they have been rebranded to look Russian-made, experts say, with the markings in Cyrillic naming them as the Geran-1 (the Shahed-131) and Geran-2 (the Shahed-136).

Observers are widely skeptical of Russia's denials, noting that the drones are essentially identical right down to the font of the serial numbers. Even Russian Defense Ministry experts have unwittingly admitted that the suicide drones are Iranian.



But the rebranding of the drones to make them appear to be Russian has opened the possibility that Moscow could, if it is not already doing so, seek to manufacture or assemble the Iranian drones on its own territory.



Sustaining A Campaign



The new aerial weaponry fits well with the Russian military's renewed focus on striking military and civilian targets far from the front lines in southern and eastern Ukraine. The air assault has ratcheted up following the October 8 appointment of Colonel General Sergei Surovikin, a former Aerospace Forces commander, to lead the Russian war effort.



Just days after Surovikin's appointment, Russia launched the biggest air strikes since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine in February. Moscow said the drone and missile strikes, which targeted civilian areas and infrastructure in cities throughout Ukraine, were in response to a bomb blast that damaged a key bridge linking Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula.

While the Kremlin has accused Ukraine's intelligence services of carrying out the "terrorist" attack on the Crimea Bridge, Ukraine has denied responsibility.



Since the initial air assault in response to the bridge blast, Russia has continued to pound Ukrainian infrastructure, often targeting power plants in what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said is a deliberate effort to wear down the Ukrainian people by denying them heat and electricity as winter approaches.



"Civilian infrastructure is obviously the new layer in this war. The Ukrainian economy is now the target, the Ukrainian population is now the target," Bendett said.



Hard To Stop



The hypersonic speed and high trajectory of Iran's Fateh-110s and Zolfaghars, should they arrive, would be extremely difficult for Kyiv to counter without a network of high-tech and costly antimissile batteries it currently does not possess.



Ukraine has repeatedly requested more advanced missile-defense systems from the West, and in the face of the threat of the delivery of Iranian ballistic missiles reportedly sent an official request to Israel this week for components of its "Iron Dome" system.



While the United States has said that it is seeking to expedite the process of sending two U.S. air defense systems known as NASAMS, Washington has appeared reluctant to provide more advanced Patriot missile systems.



Janes' defense expert Binnie is skeptical that the delivery of the Patriot system, which has proven to be successful in shooting down ballistic missiles, is realistic for Ukraine.

"It's eye wateringly expensive and it's probably not really practical because each [missile] battery only covers one city," he said. "You would never get enough batteries to get the coverage you would want. You just wouldn't be able to find them, produce them, and train enough Ukrainians."
Kazakh authorities say officials from the defense and finance ministries suspected of embezzlement and corruption have been sent to two-month pretrial detention.

The press service of the Astana City Court told RFE/RL on August 22 that 10 people, including six officials and four private businessmen, were detained earlier in August. The most high-profile arrest was Colonel Tolemis Zhumqaziev of the armed forces' directorate for technical and material support.

Eight of the individuals were later sent to pretrial detention, while two other suspects were placed under house arrest.

The Committee for National Security told RFE/RL that they made nine other arrests after apprehending Zhumqaziev, who is suspected of accepting a bribe of 20 million tenges ($59,000) on August 8.

In recent years, several Kazakh officials have faced prosecution on suspicion of graft, with some sentenced to lengthy prison terms.
The leader of the Kazakh opposition party Algha (Forward), Vladimir Kozlov, said his early release on parole was made possible by the involvement of the European Union.

Addressing reporters in Almaty on August 22, three days after his release from jail, Kozlov said the EU and the European Parliament had helped him "remain a human being" while in jail.

Kozlov said despite some parole restrictions he would "continue doing everything to be useful for people."

Kozlov was arrested in January 2012 for his role in a mass strike by oil workers in the western city of Zhanaozen that ended in violence in December 2011.

During the unrest, police shot dead at least 16 people. More than 100 people were also injured.

In October 2012, Kozlov was found guilty of inciting social discord and sentenced to 7 1/2 years in jail.

EU officials and rights organizations had called on the Kazakh government to release Kozlov.
Kyrgyz authorities say Uzbek border guards have entered disputed territory along their shared border in the southern region of Jalal-Abad.

Kyrgyzstans Border Guard Service said on August 22 that seven Uzbek border guards were deployed by helicopters to a small mountain known as Unkur-Too.

According to the service, Kyrgyzstan will hold talks with the Uzbek border guard officials to resolve the issue.

Unkur-Too is located in disputed territory along the border between the two Central Asian nations and is the site of a Kyrgyz government radio transmitter.

In September 2013, Uzbek border guards appeared at the site and raised the Uzbek national flag atop the mountain.

Following Kyrgyzstans official protestations and negotiations, the Uzbek border guards took down the flag and left the site.

About 300 kilometers of the 1,000-kilometer-long Kyrgyz-Uzbek border have remained in dispute since the two neighbors secured independence in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.


Having failed to persuade key defendants in the so-called Nardaran trial to implicate Azerbaijan Popular Front Party (AHCP) Chairman Ali Kerimli in an alleged plot by Islamic extremists to incite mass disturbances with a view to seizing power, the Azerbaijani authorities have now changed tack. Over the past several days, four AHCP activists have been apprehended on a variety of charges; one of them is accused of being a follower of exiled Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen, who Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claims was behind the botched coup attempt last month.

According to Azerbaijani presidential administration deputy head Novruz Mamedov, several Azerbaijani opposition parties have links to Gulens Hizmet movement. He warned that all its supporters in Azerbaijan will be identified.

The AHCP, together with the Musavat Party, is one of Azerbaijans longest-established opposition parties -- it is the successor organization of the Azerbaijani Popular Front established in 1989 -- and one of very few ever to have won parliamentary representation. Kerimli, 50, who has served as party chairman since 2000, was elected to parliament in 1995 and 2000.

Kerimli has for years been denied a passport for travel abroad, and the Justice Ministry declined late last year to recognize as legal his reelection as AHCP chairman.

Of the four AHCP activists detained, Qadim Bekirov was arrested on August 18 and remanded for 25 days for resisting police. Vasif Niftiyev, detained the following day, has not yet been formally charged. Neither has Faiq Amirov, Kerimlis aide and financial director of the AHCP newspaper Azadlyq, which is struggling to pay its outstanding debts to the state printing house. (UPDATE: A court in Baku ruled on August 22 to place Amirov under arrest for three months on charges of inciting religious hatred.)

The fourth is Fuad Ahmedli, head of the AHCPs youth organization in Bakus Khatay district. He had previously been detained in May and December 2015, reportedly for as retribution for criticizing the Azerbaijani authorities.

Police claim that during a search of Ahmedlis home on August 18, they confiscated banned religious literature and CDs, copies of Gulens sermons, and documents originating with his Hizmet movement.Ahmedlis father denies this, however: he is quoted by the news site Caucasus Knot as saying that the police took only works of literature and some leaflets published in the late 1980s by the emerging nationalist-democratic movement. Asked why they were confiscating those writings, an officer reportedly replied Weve got to take something.

Kerimli denied any connection between the AHCP and Gulen, noting that when the July 15 coup took placed he immediately affirmed his full support for the Turkish leadership. He branded the detentions of the four AHCP supporters politically motivated.

Ahmedli, who worked for the mobile phone company Azerfon, has been charged with illegally circulating personnel data of mobile phone subscribers.On August 19, the State Security Service and the Prosecutor-Generals Office released a statement accusing Ahmedli, together with Shahin Israilov of Bakcell Ltd and Etibar Musayev of Azercell Telecom, of supplying a fourth man, identified as Vuqar Qasymov, with details of the mobile phone accounts of numerous subscribers. Israilov, Musayev, and Qasymov have also been arrested.

The AHCP has released a statement branding the arrest of Ahmedli the start of a new wave of reprisals in retaliation for the partys uncompromising criticism of the planned referendum on constitutional amendments intended, in the view of many opposition activists, to ensure the rule in perpetuum of the family of President Ilham Aliyev.

Kerimli formally asked to be allowed to attend the session at which Azerbaijans Constitutional Court was to rule on whether the proposals to extend the presidential term from five to seven years, abolish the minimum age limit of 35 for presidential candidates, and introduce the posts of first vice president and vice president, both to be appointed by the incumbent, are constitutional, but was refused. He subsequently denounced that refusal as evidence that the countrys entire judicial system, including the Constitutional Court, is controlled by one person -- Ilham Aliyev.

Kerimli has condemned the planned amendments as destroying the principle of the division of powers, and suggested that Aliyevs motive for proposing them was mistrust of unnamed oligarchs among his immediate entourage and within parliament.

The AHCP is not the only political force to be targeted for its negative stance with regard to the referendum, which is scheduled for September 26. Three members of the civic movement Republican Alternative -- Elshan Gasymov, Togrul Ismail, and ReAl executive secretary Natiq Cafarli -- have likewise been apprehended. Gasymov and Ismail were charged with resisting the police, while Cafarli has been charged with obtaining grants illegally and remanded in custody for four months.

ReAlis trying to collect the requisite 45,000 signatures to register a group that will formally campaign against the proposed constitutional amendments, which it described in a statement as intended to preserve the existing authoritarian system and contrary to the traditions of democratic statehood.
Police have clashed with protesters who attacked TV stations in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi, leaving one person dead and eight wounded.

Supporters of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) marched on two TV stations and torched three vehicles on August 22.

The MQM supporters rushed to the TV stations after a speech broadcast from London by the partys self-exiled leader, Altaf Hussein, who accused the media of failing to cover a six-day hunger strike protesting the recent arrest of party members.

Senior police officer Saqib Ismail said police fired tear gas and arrested 12 people.

A local hospital official said one person was killed and eight others were wounded, two by gunshots.

The MQM has held sway over Karachi for years. Opponents and others, including the police, have accused the party of links, allegations the MQM have denied.

Based on reporting by Reuters
MINSK -- The reintroduction of coins in Belarus has led to a dangerous rise in consumption -- by children requiring medical attention to remove kopeks they have swallowed.

The choking threat posed by small coins had not been much of an issue in Belarus after the country went exclusively to paper currency following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But the shiny new coins that Belarus began circulating on July 1 have proven to be an irresistible temptation for young children prone to putting small objects in their mouths.

The danger became apparent to doctors at the Republican Scientific and Practical Center of Pediatric Surgery in Minsk shortly after eight denominations of coins were circulated.

During the first two weeks of July, surgeons at the center saw upward of 10 cases per day of young coin swallowers.

About half of them required anesthesia while doctors performed surgery.

The procedure involves a tubelike instrument called an endoscope that is inserted through the mouth of the child to reach their esophagus, stomach, and upper portion of their small intestine.

Alyaksandr Svirsky, head of the department of pediatric surgery at the medical facility, told RFE/RL that most of the young coin gobblers have been between the ages of 2 and 5.

"We know that a child from the age of 2 to 5 absorbs information like a sponge," Svirsky said. "They explore the world not only with their eyes, but also by tasting. A baby will put anything in its mouth, especially all that glitters and makes a jangly sound."

Svirsky's medical unit had anticipated the influx of such cases well before the new Belarusian kopeks were introduced, and even took the step of purchasing new surgical equipment to aid in their removal.

"We have had a whole generation grow up without any coins in this country," Svirsky explained. "So we did assume that there would be a significant increase in the number of children swallowing coins."

Svirskys staff had seen cases of coin-swallowing kids before July 1, but the number of incidents was much smaller and the coins were from abroad.

Oleg Pataleta, an endoscopist at the pediatric surgery center in Minsk, said the hospital has assembled an exotic "endoscopic numismatic collection" from young patients that includes coins from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as French francs and German coins from before the advent of the single euro currency.

Since mid-July, when Belarusian media began reporting a surge in coin-swallowing cases, parents appear to have become more vigilant about the risk posed to children.

By late July, the pediatric surgery center was seeing only a couple of cases each day.

Svirsky warns, however, that more can be expected once the school year begins on September 1.

"The attention parents pay to this situation will weaken," Svirsky said, while children's curiosity will not.

Svirsky says parents need to remain vigilant and make sure small objects are not within the reach of young children.

"You need to carefully inspect the room from the viewpoint of the childs eye level," he advises.

He also notes that coins are not the most dangerous choking hazard for children.

That would be button batteries that power small electronic devices -- from watches, toys, games, flashing jewelry, hearing aids, and singing greeting cards.

An electrical current can form around a battery, even if the battery is dead, generating hydroxide that can burn through internal tissue.

Written by Ron Synovitz in Prague with reporting from Minsk by Anton Trofimovich.
A court in Russia has order that Nikita Belykh, the former governor of the Kirov region who has spent two months in custody on a charge of accepting a bribe, should be kept there until December 24.

Belykh, who has described his arrest as unlawful, was dismissed from the post of governor by Russian President Vladimir Putin in July.

Once a leader of a liberal opposition party, the Union of Rightist Forces, he was one of the few provincial governors not to be closely allied with Putin.

In late June, Russian investigators detained Belykh, saying they had caught him accepting a bribe of 400,000 euros ($452,720) in a Moscow restaurant.

Based on reporting by Reuters and Interfax
ON MY MIND

This week, on August 24, Ukraine celebrates a milestone -- a quarter-century of independence. And this week, fears of a fresh Russian offensive against Ukraine are at their highest levels in years.

This is probably not an accident. As I note on today's Power Vertical Briefing (featured below), the very idea of an independent Ukraine is offensive to Vladimir Putin.

Ukraine is Russia's road not taken. It has truly competitive elections, a pluralistic elite, and a vibrant civil society. And since the Euromaidan revolution, it has been trying with mixed results to take the next crucial step -- moving from oligarchic pluralism to the real thing. It's an alternative model of governance that is threatening to Putin, and he feels compelled to crush it.

And for that reason, Ukraine's independence celebrations this week will be tense indeed.

TODAY'S POWER VERTICAL BRIEFING

On today's Power Vertical Briefing, we discuss the rising tensions between Moscow and Kyiv, which come as Ukraine prepares to mark 25 years of independence.

LATEST POWER VERTICAL PODCAST

In case you missed it, the latest Power Vertical Podcast, All The President's Men, looks at Vladimir Putin's culling of his inner circle and what it portends. Joining me are co-host Mark Galeotti, a senior research fellow at the Czech Institute of International Relations in Prague and a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Andrei Soldatov, editor in chief of the investigative website Agentura.ru and co-author of the books Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators And The New Online Revolutionaries and The New Nobility: The Restoration Of Russia's Security State And The Enduring Legacy Of The KGB.

IN THE NEWS

Irans Foreign Ministry says Russias use of a military base in Hamadan for striking targets in Syria has ended for now.

Russian authorities are investigating an attack on journalist Yulia Latynina in which the prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin was doused with fecal matter by an unidentified assailant.

The Ukrainian military and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine continue to accuse each other of violating a cease-fire agreement.

Austria's Constitutional Court has refused to consider an appeal by Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash in an attempt to fight his extradition to the United States, where he is wanted on corruption charges.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reassured his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, that Ankara will continue to recognize the Crimean Peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Russia, as Ukrainian territory.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden urged both Russia and Ukraine to show restraint one day after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko warned he could not rule out "a full-scale Russian invasion."

According to a poll by the Levada Center, nearly a quarter of Russians would be prepared to sell their votes in next month's State Duma elections.

Russian media is reporting that opposition figure Aleksei Navalny is seeking ways to run for president in 2018.

WHAT I'M READING

Remembering August 1991

Prominent Russian journalist Sergey Parkhomenko has a piece up on the Kennan Institute's Russia Files blog recalling the events of August 19-21, 1991.

And in Vedomosti, Oleg Ozherlyev, who served as an aide to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, speculates about what Russia might look like today if the August 1991 coup attempt never happened.

The Kremlin's Election Dilemma

Sergei Orlov has a piece on Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Open Wall web portal on the dilemma facing the Kremlin in next month's elections.

"The Kremlin loudly trumpets its wish to see free and fair elections this September, but it needs to come up with a public strategy, which ensures that the desired result keeps the courtiers in place while at the same time observing all the external proprieties," Orlov writes.

The Crimea Incident

Writing in Slon.ru, Moscow-based foreign affairs analyst Vladimir Frolov unpacks the so-called "Crimea incident" and Russia's recent saber-rattling with Ukraine.

"Russia wants to solve the 'Ukrainian issue' through negotiations, not on the battlefield. But it wants to resolve it directly with the West, without Ukraine's participation," Frolov writes.

"Moscow is presenting the West with an ultimatum -- either you provide a 'Minsk-2' right now and over Poroshenko's head, or Russia has a free hand -- and everything is possible."

Death Of A Mobster

Writing on his blog, Mark Galeotti examines the recent killing of Azerbaijani-born mob boss Rovshan Janiev, also known as Rovshan Lenkoransky.

"What made Janiev interesting is that around him cohered a loose coalition of hungry young and youngish gangsters, who felt the relative stability of the post-'90s status quo -- and the end of the rapid social mobility caused by periodic turf wars and gangland killings -- was locking them out of the big time," Galeotti writes.

The 1999 Apartment Bombings

Writing in The National Review, veteran Kremlin-watcher David Satter -- a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and author of the recently published book The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russias Road To Terror And Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin -- looks back at the 1999 apartment bombings that helped bring Putin to power.

"I believe that Vladimir Putin came to power as the result of an act of terror committed against his own people," Satter writes.

"The evidence is overwhelming that the apartment-house bombings in 1999 in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk, which provided a pretext for the second Chechen war and catapulted Putin into the presidency, were carried out by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Yet, to this day, an indifferent world has made little attempt to grasp the significance of what was the greatest political provocation since the burning of the Reichstag."

Russia's Opposition Is Dying -- Literally

Moscow-based journalist Andrew Kramer has a piece in The New York Times on how many of the Kremlin's opponents keep winding up dead.

Ukraine And August 1991

Don't miss the latest edition of Hromadske Radio's Ukraine Calling Podcast. Host Marta Dyczok and her guests look at the failed hard-line coup of August 1991 from Ukraine's perspective.
Around 100 U.S. troops in Afghanistan have been deployed to a southern city at risk of falling to the Taliban.

The spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan said the soldiers had arrived in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, to provide training and support to Afghan forces.

The spokesman also said on August 22 that the U.S. soldiers would serve as a new presence to assist the police zone.

Taliban fighters have taken control of several nearby districts in recent weeks and now threaten to overrun the city itself.

The head of Helmand's provincial council, Kareem Atal, told the AP news agency that battles were under way "on several fronts" in the province, closing off roads and highways.

Helmand's annual $3 billion opium crop produces most of the world's heroin and is used to fund the insurgency. Its population is mainly Pashtun, the ethnic group from which the Taliban derives most of its support.



Based on reporting by AP and AFP
Uzbekistan has temporarily closed its border with Kyrgyzstan ahead of festivities marking the 25th anniversary of the country's independence.

The Kyrgyz Border Guard Service said in a statement that the border was closed as of August 22.

The Border Guard Service said Kyrgyz citizens who entered Uzbekistan before the border closure will be allowed to return.



It said foreigners and employees of diplomatic missions and international organizations will be allowed to cross the border.

It is not clear when the border will be reopened, the statement said.

Uzbekistan marks its independence day on September 1.

Relations between the two Central Asian neighbors has been tense since 2010 when ethnic clashes between local Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in southern Kyrgyzstan left hundreds, mainly Uzbeks, dead and thousands displaced.
Anne Holton, wife of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, will return to campaign in the Richmond area this afternoon.

Holton, Virginias former secretary of Education, will visit a Democratic coordinated campaign office on Augusta Avenue in Henrico County to thank organizers and volunteers and encourage voter registration in the state before the Oct. 17 deadline.

Holton then heads to the western part of the county to visit a juice bar in the Tuckahoe Village Shopping Center to discuss Hillary Clintons plans for small businesses.

Kaine  a former governor elected to the Senate in 2012 and chosen as Clintons running mate in July  will not be with his wife. He will be on the campaign trail in Denver on Tuesday.

In addition to being Virginias former first lady, Holton is a former Richmond juvenile court judge. She is a daughter of former Gov. Linwood Holton.

Kaine and Holton have lived in Richmond for decades and raised three grown children in the citys north side.

Virginia is considered a swing state in the presidential election. Three recent polls showed Clinton with a double-digit lead in Virginia.
Calling rights restoration an issue of basic justice, Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced Monday that he had restored the rights of more than 13,000 felons on a case-by-case basis and will continue to do so for the rest of about 206,000 ex-offenders.

Saying the states restoration process was, and is, unfair, an undaunted McAuliffe promised that his administration would continue to restore rights to ex-offenders who have served their sentences but do so consistent with the state Supreme Courts ruling July 22 that restoration must be done on an individual basis.

He said felons whose rights he restores will have been subjected to a thorough review that involves more than a half-dozen agencies. McAuliffes administration still has not released the list of the approximately 206,000 felons subject to his April 22 order that was overturned.

We will proceed, McAuliffe said to the crowd of recently restored voters, elected leaders and administration officials during a noon ceremony at the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial on Capitol Square in Richmond. I will not stand down.

The governor said each of the 13,000 people who had registered to vote before the Supreme Court overturned his order was mailed an individual letter Friday indicating that their rights had been restored after a review. Accompanying the letter was a voter registration card, so they can re-register.

McAuliffe said those sent the letter, and those individual felons who are granted rights in the future, will be subject to a thorough review that involves agencies including the Virginia State Police, Department of Corrections, Department of Criminal Justice Services, Department of Juvenile Justice, Department of Behavioral Health, and the Secretary of the Commonwealths office.

The governor had promised to swiftly restore rights a second time on an individual basis for the roughly 13,000 ex-offenders who registered to vote before the Supreme Courts ruling. Administration officials Monday said the process took about three weeks and more than a dozen staffers to complete.

The restoration announcement for the 13,000 applied to felons who had been granted their voting rights under McAuliffes mass civil rights restoration orders in April, May and June but were ordered stricken from the voting rolls when the Supreme Court of Virginia rescinded the order after a legal challenge by Republican leaders in the General Assembly.

McAuliffe said restorations will be handled in the order of those who have waited the longest. He said the administration will release a list of all people whose rights have been restored on the 15th of each month.

These men and women have endured enough hardship and disappointment, the governor said, taking aim at Republican leaders in the legislature who he said have deliberately worked to suppress their votes in our democracy.

McAuliffe was introduced by Eric Branch, who served four and a half years in prison for breaking and entering and was released in April 1992.

This is a wonderful occasion, said Branch, whose rights were restored in June 2015. The governor clearly understands that this is a moral issue and an economic issue  in the context of our greater struggle for civil rights.

***

Mondays event amounted to a public relations reset for the McAuliffe administration, which announced with much fanfare a mass restoration order four months ago based on a list of felons believed eligible for reinstatement.

But the list proved to have flaws and unintentionally qualified some felons who still were incarcerated or ineligible for restoration.

In April, McAuliffe had said he issued the mass restoration order to address Virginias restoration policy, which he said was a vestige of the states Jim Crow laws aimed at disenfranchising the black vote.

While a host of Jim Crow restraints  such as poll taxes and literacy tests  impeded voting by blacks, the felon ban dates to a version of the state constitution adopted in 1830.

The ban on felons voting disproportionately affects blacks, who made up 58.5 percent of Virginias prison population as of mid-2014, according to the Department of Corrections. Virginia is one state among a handful that does not provide some form of automatic rights restoration to ex-offenders.

Republican leaders, angered over McAuliffes blanket order in April, criticized it as an unconstitutional act contradicting the requirement that a governor restore rights on an individual basis.

They also called it an attempt by the Democratic governor to fatten the voting rolls to help his party in the upcoming presidential and congressional elections. McAuliffe is a longtime friend of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and was chairman of her 2008 presidential bid.

The GOP leaders sued  and in a 4-3 ruling on July 22, the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down McAuliffes order. The court ordered the Virginia Department of Elections to cancel the registration of all felons who had been invalidly registered under McAuliffes actions.

Virginians believe in second chances, and that is why our constitution established an individualized process to restore the political rights of those who are deserving, House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, said in a statement issued after the McAuliffe announcement Monday.

The numerous mistakes Governor McAuliffe made attempting to restore rights en masse and the ongoing evaluation of an unknown number of individuals originally affected by the original order demonstrates the wisdom of a case-by-case process, added Howell, saying that leaders will review McAuliffes process and serve as a check on the excesses of executive power.

***

The governors restoration orders and the Virginia Supreme Courts ruling created electoral chaos.

McAuliffes office had blamed the complications on Republican leaders in the legislature who challenged the governors order in court. GOP leaders say they brought the suit to hold McAuliffe accountable to the state constitution.

Local registrars were obligated to remove from the voting rolls felons who had registered.

One of the affected voters was a candidate for Richmond School Board. In another local case, Michelle Mosby, a candidate for mayor of Richmond, submitted the minimum number of 50 ballot signatures from one district. One of her 50 signatures was from a felon who regained his rights under McAuliffes April order, then lost them in the Supreme Courts ruling.

In addition to the right to vote, restoration of civil rights enables an ex-offender to serve on a jury, become a notary public and seek elected office. People who regain their civil rights subsequently may petition a circuit court for restoration of their rights to possess firearms.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, said McAuliffe alone was responsible for those who have endured the roller-coaster of bureaucratic incompetence his executive overreach exposed.

Norment said the governors criticism of the Supreme Courts July 22 court ruling and the legislature was petulant and imprudent and said the episode should serve as a cautionary tale for those who would declare policies by fiat, circumventing the protections enshrined in the Constitution of Virginia.

McAuliffe said he again would ask the GOP-controlled legislature to back automatic restoration, a process he said is the law in 40 other states.

Extending voting rights to individuals who are living and working in our communities is not a partisan act, he said in urging lawmakers, Democratic and Republican alike, to go earn these Virginians votes.

Republicans might not be in the mood to cooperate with the governor. A number take issue with McAuliffes decision to make his restoration policy apply to violent as well as nonviolent felons.

Others were angered by an order he issued last year that allowed felons to restore their civil rights without first needing to satisfy their court fees or pay restitution to crime victims.

Undoubtedly, the governor has restored the rights of some deserving citizens, Howell said. But, there is also no doubt that he has restored the rights of some odious criminals.

In the meantime, the governor said he will concede no ground despite the monumental and momentous task to undertake restoration on a case-by-case basis.

The lesson of history will show that our aim is true and our cause is just, he said.

Toward the end of his remarks Monday, McAuliffe said he realized there would be some errors in the mass restoration policy due to its massive administrative challenge and 17 million data points.
Workers and visitors at Fort Lee may hear simulated gunfire today as part of an active shooter drill, the post announced Monday.

The exercise, which will include state and federal authorities, will test Fort Lees emergency response procedures, a spokesman said.

The purpose of the exercise is to evaluate current response concepts, plans and capabilities for an active shooter event on Fort Lee, said Scott Brown, chief of the Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security.

Post employees, contractors and visitors also may experience delays during shelter-in-place procedures or because of temporary road closures associated with the exercise, Fort Lee said.

This is how we exercise and evaluate the installations ability to respond and recover from an emergency incident, Brown said. We appreciate the patience and full cooperation of everyone affected by this important assessment of our plans and personnel.
In 1945, New York City native Alan George Fleischer began practicing law in a tiny office in downtown Richmonds Central National Bank Building, fresh from his time serving in World War II with the Navy.

His name would go on to become one of the most well-known in the Richmond law scene.

He was just a truly fabulous, larger-than-life person with tremendous interest and intelligence and a sense of adventure, but also commitment, said a daughter, Tenley Fleischer Beazley, of Richmond. Life with him was always terribly interesting, but still fun.

The co-founder of Richmond law firm Hirschler Fleischer died of natural causes in his Richmond home on Aug. 17. He was 99.

In addition to a private burial, a memorial service will be held for Mr. Fleischer at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 17 at the University of Richmonds Cannon Memorial Chapel, 36 Wilton Way. It will be followed by a reception at the universitys Jepson Alumni Center, 28 Westhampton Way.

Mr. Fleischer and fellow World War II veteran Edward Hirschler launched their firm in 1946. It now has about 80 attorneys as well as two additional Virginia offices, in Fredericksburg and Tysons Corner.

That growth was due in part to the grit and determination Mr. Fleischer exhibited, said Jim Theobald, chairman of Hirschler Fleischer.

The firm really grew with people who shared that same vision and, to this day, I think the firm has that psyche that both he and Ed Hirschler brought to the firm. It was a hard, scrappy kind of, Ill just make my own way, idea, Theobald said.

It wasnt easy for two Jewish lawyers in the 40s to make it in Richmond in the legal profession. They werent mad about it; they just decided that they were moving forward.

According to Theobald, Mr. Fleischer was an aggressive lawyer.

He went for the jugular, Theobald said. He wasnt your kinder, gentler lawyer. He was an advocate in every sense of the word. There arent many lawyers who can be presented with an issue suddenly who could analyze it and then turn it to the benefit of his client in a matter of seconds.

Mr. Fleischer started out as a litigator, then turned to corporate and business law, focusing on acquisitions and mergers, federal and state securities law, and commercial real estate transactions.

He was a brilliant lawyer, but an even better businessman, Theobald said.

Along with Hirschler, Mr. Fleischer founded Fidelity Bankers Life Insurance Co. and Security Industrial Loan Association, as well as Metropolitan National Bank.

He really paved his own path and was never afraid to follow his own interests or convictions, rather than maybe conforming to something that was more traditional, Beazley said.

After more than 50 years of practice, Mr. Fleischer retired, Theobald said, but he continued to come in.

He kept coming in less and less until he finally stopped, Theobald said.

When he finally stopped, it was 2007 and the firm had been in its current Tobacco Row headquarters in the Edgeworth Building for about a year. Mr. Fleischer was 90.

When he wasnt busy with the firm and with Richmonds business scene, he served on various nonprofit and corporate boards, including the United Way, Multiple Sclerosis Society, Fidelity Corp. and Heilig-Meyers.

He did feel a tremendous commitment to the city and community, Beazley said. A prime example of that is, even though he did not grow up here nor go to school here, he put so much value in education and really took a strong interest in the University of Richmond and also (Virginia Commonwealth University).

Mr. Fleischer served as the UR board of associates chairman and helped found VCUs Commonwealth Society. He also spread his commitment to education throughout the state, Beazley added, in his work with Norfolk State University.

He was first appointed to Norfolk States board of visitors in 1986 by Gov. Gerald L. Baliles and then was given a seat a second time in 1990 by Gov. L. Douglas Wilder. He then went on to serve as rector of the university for three years.

His commitment to education reached his family, as well.

We would sit down at the dinner table and many times there would be a conversation that he would bring up or a question he would pose, getting our thoughts on politics or current events or telling us a story from his war days, Beazley said. There were lots of anecdotes that he would love to tell over and over again.

Mr. Fleischer was born in New York on May 22, 1917, and went on to attend New York University and then graduate from its law school in 1939. He briefly worked at a Wall Street firm before heeding the call to service.

During World War II, Mr. Fleischer served as a communications officer in the Pacific on the aircraft carriers USS Saratoga and USS Bunker Hill, as well as the USS Venango, an attack cargo ship. He was discharged as a lieutenant senior grade and received the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with eight stars.

He had an incredible interest in history and especially in World War II, which played a strong, defining role in, I think, who he became after his service, Beazley said.

He was very humble, but it was obvious that it was an incredibly meaningful and defining time in his life, she said. I think he felt great pride that he was able to serve his country and was deeply touched by those around him who he went and served with who did not come home from the war with him.

In addition to Beazley, Mr. Fleischer is survived by his wife of 27 years, Dr. Dawn Mueller; two other daughters, Sydney Fleischer Camp of Richmond and Leslie Fleischer Aidman of Tampa, Fla.; a sister, Fran Fisher of Muskegon, Mich.; eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Henrico County police are investigating a report of a robbery this afternoon at a business in the 4700 block of Finlay Street, near the intersection of Williamsburg Road and S. Laburnum Avenue.

At about 12:15 p.m., a man displayed a handgun and demanded cash from the business before fleeing with an undisclosed amount of money, according to Henrico police Lt. C. L. Garrett.

The suspect is described as a white man, 25 to 30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, 230 pounds, wearing a brown sweatshirt, red bandana and sunglasses.
Its been a long time since the White House travel-office scandal, but gray-hairs will remember the plot: The Clintons fired longtime civil service employees so they could install their buddies  our people, as Hillary described them. Subsequent investigations cleared Bill Clinton of wrongdoing but found that Hillary had lied.

That old storyline got a fresh treatment last week. Newly released emails  produced as a result of a lawsuit over Hillarys records from her time as secretary of state  showed that Doug Band, an executive at the Clinton Foundation and aide to Bill Clinton, tried to arrange a meeting at State with a big donor to the foundation. If Hillary really had released all her work-related emails, as she has repeatedly claimed, this would have come to light months ago. But she lied about that, too.

That meeting never took place, but Band might have had more luck in trying to secure a job at State for somebody. Important to take care of (redacted), he emailed Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Abedin replied that We have all had him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options. How many of those options involved sacking some career bureaucrat to make room for Mr. Redacted?

Then theres Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian business big shot who has given millions to the Clinton Foundation. He did get an audience at the State Department, during which he tried to downplay concerns over Ukraines increasing ties with Russia. And there are questions about Uranium One, which also gave millions to the Clinton Foundation  and which later received a favorable State Department decision while Hillary was secretary.

Stories such as those might explain why the FBI asked the Justice Department to investigate the Clinton Foundation. The Justice Deparment refused. Apparently Justice honors the wishes of FBI Director James Comey only when his recommendations are favorable to Hillary.

But somebody ought to dig deeper into the connections between State and the foundation, especially now that we have learned Cheryl Mills, Clintons top aide at State, was moonlighting for the Foundation at the time.
By Ike Koziol, Kenneth Olshansky and David F. Gardner

The annual Remote Area Medical Clinic was held in Wise County in Southwest Virginia from July 21-24. This clinic treated more than 2,000 individuals who have no health insurance.

It is an event that stirred up emotions of pride and anger in all three of us. Pride, because we came away feeling good that we helped people in need. Anger, because this clinic should not have to happen in the richest country in the world.

Remote Area Medical is a national nonprofit organization that provides free health care where it is not available or many residents have no health insurance coverage. Wise County is one of those areas. The four-day event is the largest free medical clinic in the United States.

A year ago, one of us  Dr. Koziol  wrote a letter to the editor at The Times-Dispatch regarding the tragic medical situation in Southwest Virginia. Coal mines have closed and poverty abounds. Tens of thousands of people have no health insurance and limited access to health care.

Many of these proud folks worked in or had family members in the mines. Now, they work in fast food and small businesses and have no health insurance. They make too much for Medicaid eligibility and too little to pay for coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

In their local communities, they have to rely on an overworked medical system known as the Health Wagon. The Health Wagon does wonderful work, but it can only do so much. There is limited access to x-rays, lab tests, medications, and specialists.

For surgery, people in the area often go to local hospitals and accumulate enormous debts. The wonderful staff of the Health Wagon covers a multi-county area with free clinics. They rely on donations and grants to maintain their operations.

***

How proud we were to be a part of this incredible event. Once a year, patients come from near and far  Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia. They arrive and line up the night before at the Wise County Fairgrounds, sleeping in their cars and tents, and at dawn they start the process.

Volunteers register and escort them to the numerous health-care venues. They receive dental, vision, and hearing evaluations. They get their lungs checked for coal-related problems. Women get Pap smears and mammograms, and patients can even get dentures, hearing aids, and eye glasses.

They see doctors in multiple specialties (e.g., orthopedics, dermatology, internal medicine, gynecology, dentistry, oral surgery, and many others), as well as get advice on nutrition, diabetes management, stress management and general wellness.

All of this care is provided by hundreds of selfless, dedicated and compassionate volunteers who come from Florida to Maine, as well as from surrounding states. The volunteers come from all walks of life and spend four days in the hot sun doing for these people what our society has not done.

Each patient is treated with dignity, as if they were in a private health-care setting. The problem is the four-day event is held only once a year, and the Health Wagon can only serve a small percentage of those in need for the rest of the year. There are an estimated 40,000 people in this area who need basic services. They suffer through no fault of their own.

***

For a new volunteer, the weekend was an eye-opener. We all know there is poverty, and people do not get needed medications or do not see dentists, get glasses and hearing aids, etc. We all know that in many Third World countries easily treated illnesses can kill in the absence of basic medical care. But do we know that areas in our country like Wise County are just as bad when it comes to health care?

One of the volunteer oral surgeons shared that in his morning clinic he had to do a full mouth extraction on a 26-year-old man who never had dental care in his entire life. It will probably be another year for him to return for dentures unless he can find some type of charitable organization to pay for this service.

Do we all know that much of this suffering can be prevented? Do we even appreciate how much suffering there is in areas like Wise? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is all well and good, but without good health care a person can lose life early and not be free enough to pursue any semblance of happiness. We are all equal under God and that should include access to health care.

This is the reason we feel angry. Our state delegates and senators know this exists and they choose to ignore it. Good leaders should be interested in the welfare of all of their citizens. Our Republican legislators have blocked Medicaid expansion for many years. This expansion would cover an estimated 40,000 citizens in southwest Virginia and some 400,000 statewide.

The fact that Medicaid expansion has not happened has cost all of us billions of dollars in lost revenue from the federal government that should have come back to Virginia. That is the financial toll. What is much more devastating is the human toll.

People die early. Diabetics cannot get insulin. Teeth rot. On top of all that, people cannot see or hear and that just adds to the suffering. Those that block Medicaid expansion are hurting our fellow citizens. They are not physically assaulting them but by their actions and inactions, they are nonetheless injuring them. Neglecting the problems is shameful.

President Jimmy Carter said it best: The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. We implore all of our legislators to attend and volunteer at one of these clinics to see first-hand the human suffering. We appeal to our leaders to do the right thing: Expand Medicaid.
By Doug Mesecar and Don Soifer

With last years SOL test scores just released, it is important to consider how Virginia can revitalize holding divisions and schools accountable for student results under a new federal education law. This is a pivotal opportunity for the commonwealth to move away from No Child Left Behind and focus on student academic growth, personalized teaching and learning, and more comprehensive views of student success.

The new Every Student Succeeds Act gives states the opportunity and responsibility to create a more compelling and effective education system. The law goes into effect with the 2017-18 school year. Heres how Virginia can use the next year sowing the seeds for success:

The Standards of Learning Innovation Committee can help modernize Virginias accountability and assessment system by focusing on more powerful measures of learning that better align with innovative instructional practices, like personalizing learning - the targeting of teaching to the different levels and pace at which individual students learn, so that students share responsibility for their learning.

Further, the state Board of Education is reviewing the Standards of Quality and can address outdated, prescriptive requirements that inhibit more flexible, state-of-the-art approaches. For example, the dictates of SOQ 3 involving accreditation and assessment tightly lock up decision-making about student progress and success at the state board with narrow definitions of achievement on the SOLs.

Since Virginia instituted its SOL-based accountability system 18 years ago, the tests have shown that holding schools accountable for students academic achievement can make an important difference in raising achievement levels. But the states accountability and testing practices have become snapshot, after-the-fact exercises in scorekeeping. While it may be useful to know where students have been in the past, it isnt helpful to teachers in figuring out where they need to go right now.

Virginia can reframe accountability as a system of aligned supports, rather than punitive sanctions, to encourage continuous improvement rather than frustrated compliance. By incorporating indicators of student success that gauge, support and enhance personalized learning, the Old Dominion can take a bold step toward a more aligned, cohesive and compelling public education system.

Schools across the commonwealth, and across the country, are using personalized learning to tailor the educational experience to each students individual needs and interests, rather than teaching to the middle and hoping for the best. In a personalized approach, students can access digital resources to work at their own pace, moving on to the next stage of learning when theyre ready instead of following rigid grade levels.

A growing number of Virginias school divisions are utilizing technology in potent new ways to provide these more customized student learning experiences. A great example of this is underway in Loudoun County, the third largest school division in the state, where teachers are employing new software and using real-time information about individual student achievement to accelerate learning and encourage deeper levels of understanding.

In the Bedford County schools, an elementary school pilot program allowing students to work at their own pace using computers  while teachers employ different interventions  is producing not only higher test scores, but fewer behavioral issues.

The highly individualized approach of personalized learning can be unified with the broad application of state standards; the end goal is the same for all students, but the path to that goal can be different for each student.

The performance of Virginias students on the Standards of Learning, as well as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, is generally strong, but progress has slowed and broad gaps in student achievement persist.

Under the new federal law, Virginia can emphasize student achievement growth toward rigorous graduation requirements over simple grade level expectations in a wide range of subjects. Measuring student growth along individual learning trajectories, including mastering deeper levels of knowledge, is a more robust way of looking at student achievement and provides teachers more opportunities to help students succeed.

Finally, Virginia should consider integrating one or more indicators specific to personalized learning that are not related to academic assessment. In a personalized learning environment, success is defined by a comprehensive view of a students knowledge, skills, habits and mindsets.

To re-establish itself as a bastion of excellence as well as innovation, Virginia must rebuild accountability and rejuvenate assessment. It will take vision, creativity, expertise  including collaboration with local school divisions  and commitment to get Virginias system right.
It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search?

Search for: Search
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
The UAE Kimberley Process Chair 2016, Ahmed Bin Sulayem, has published a mid-term report, highlighting key initiatives such as on-site visits to diamond producing nations of Africa; the initiation of a series of Valuation Seminars; and a proposal which explores the use of block chain technology to help enhance security measures.

Ahmed Bin Sulayem: This year the Kimberley Process Chair has taken concrete steps to support the efforts of various groups and monitoring teams, to ensure that some of the worlds poorest diamond producing countries are able to join or come back into the KP family and receive a fair share of the revenues created by the mining and export of rough diamonds.

Bin Sulayem, KP Chair since January 2016, has been pro-active in not only upholding the principles of the Kimberley Process remit, to facilitate the legitimate mining and trading of rough diamonds, but also in working closely with governments and KP working groups to promote and enhance ethical and best practices.

The report also offers a preview of activities for the remainder of the year including the KP Plenary meeting (13-17 November) that will see representatives from all over the world meet in Dubai to discuss the future of the diamond industry.

Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished




Dominion Diamond Corporation (Dominion) has released the second fiscal quarter 2017 (May through July) sales results for the Ekati and Diavik diamond mines, and Ekati production results for the period.

The company raked in US$160.0 million ($209.7 million in Q2 fiscal 2016) from three rough diamond sales held during the quarter. Dominion plans to hold two rough diamond sales in the third fiscal quarter of 2017.

Dominion reports that during Q2 fiscal 2017, the Ekati Diamond Mine recovered 0.9 million carats from 0.6 million tonnes of ore processed (Q2 fiscal 2016  0.9 million carats recovered from 1.0 million tonnes processed).

Commenting on the diamond market, the company noted that after buoyant market conditions in the first quarter, rough prices stabilized in the second quarter supported by confident U.S. retail demand. The positive conditions in the first half of the year reduced inventories throughout the pipeline and improved liquidity in the industry. However, despite the improvements in sentiment, the banks that finance the industry remain cautious.

The retail markets outside the U.S. remain impacted by the strong U.S. dollar, making jewelry comparatively expensive in domestic currency terms. Despite declines in the top end luxury sector, retail demand growth in China is focused on the broader commercial sector of the market supported by a growing middle class.

Also in the Far East, Japanese demand remains robust supported by luxury tourism from China. Conversely, the retail markets in Europe, Hong Kong and the Middle East remain somewhat subdued, Dominion noted.

Alex Shishlo, Editor of the Rough&Polished European Bureau in Brussels




The mining giant Rio Tinto has decided to close its diamond mine project in Madhya Pradesh state of India, facing Green hurdles.

The following is the statement issued on 19th August 2016 by Rio Tinto's spokesperson: As part of its ongoing efforts to drive shareholder value by conserving cash and cutting costs further, Rio Tinto has decided to not proceed with development of its Bunder project in India. Accordingly, we will be seeking to close all project infrastructure by the end of year 2016.

Rio Tinto firmly believes that the Bunder deposit is a high-quality discovery. Rio Tinto will now work with both the [Government of India/Union Government] and the Government of Madhya Pradesh and is currently looking at options for a third-party investor to carry forward the development of the project.

Rio Tinto remains committed to its Diamonds business and the Indian diamond industry through its two world-class underground mines in Australia and Canada.

Rio Tinto remains committed to India as an important market for our metals and minerals and as a key global hub for Rio Tintos shared services delivery. We expect to expand our footprint to support our global operations in future.

As a part of the transition, Rio Tinto will offer an equitable Voluntary Severance Scheme to contractors employed at the project site.

Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished






Angola's state-owned diamond trading company, Sodiam exported diamonds worth 31.6 billion kwanzas ($191 million) in the first quarter of the year, according to data released by the countrys finance ministry.

Macauhub reports that Sodiam was the second biggest exporter in the country during the quarter under review.

The company was also the only non-oil firm to make it to the top 10 exporters in the first quarter of the year.

Angola exported $1.3 billion of rough diamonds in 2015, according to Kimberley Process figures.

Meanwhile, the Angolan oil company Sonangol was the largest foreign currency earner in the country as it exported crude oil worth 125.9 billion kwanzas ($755 million) between January and March.

This was, however, a 54 percent drop when compared to the same period last year, reflecting the sharp decline in the international price of oil in the first three months of 2016.

Diamonds were tipped as a potential top exporter in Angola should crude oil prices continue on a downward trajectory.

Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




PJSC ALROSA, the world leader in diamond mining, will participate in the Second Eastern Economic Forum on September 2-3, 2016, as its official partner. The announcement came in the company's press release received by Rough&Polished.

The Eastern Economic Forum is held annually in Vladivostok in accordance with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. The aim of the Forum is to promote the accelerated development of the economy of Eastern Russia and expand international cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.

ALROSA delegation, headed by the President Andrey Zharkov, will participate in the events of the Forum and represent a number of the Companys investment projects, including:

CJSC MMC Timir that owns four licenses for the development of iron ore deposits in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) with total iron ore resources of 3.5 billion tons for open-pit mining. The key shareholders of Timir are EVRAZ and ALROSA.

ALROSAs gas assets that include Urengoy Gas Company LLC and CJSC Geotransgaz, which hold licenses for the exploration and development of gas and gas condensate fields in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District.

ALROSA is planning to sign an agreement with the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East for its largest investment project  Diamond Mining Plant on Verkhne-Munskoe Ore Filed. The Companys total project investments throughout the mine development period will amount to RUB 62,984.3 million, with the state support for the construction of the project infrastructure of RUB 8,525.8 million.

The launch of the Eurasian Diamond Centre on the territory of the Free Port of Vladivostok will become a landmark event for the Company. The unique cluster will bring together complementary companies of the diamond industry: those engaged in the production and sale of rough diamonds, manufacturers of polished diamonds and jewelry, gemological laboratories, banks, insurance companies, specialized transport companies, and government agencies: specialized customs and state control bodies.

A unique 360 video film about ALROSAs production facilities will be presented to the guests at the Companys exhibition stand.






I am saddened and shocked that a piece of the roof collapsed in an accident at the venue in Oslo tonight. ()My thoughts are with those injured, and I wish them a speedy recovery, he wrote in some messages on the network. Sentrum Scene is a popular club in Oslo. The club was nearly at capacity. Photos from the scene are starting to surface on social media, with police and paramedics on scene organizing evacuations and offering medical assistance to injured concert-goers. Steve Aoki is known for wild performances, from tossing cakes, to spraying fans with champagne. Pollstar designated Aoki as the highest grossing dance artist in North America from tours. Aoki has won and been nominated for a number of industry awards, both in annual competitions and in magazine rankings.
Florida Georgia Line have released their collaboration with the Backstreet Boys, according to Rolling Stone Country.

The song titled "God, Your Mama, and Me," is included on the group's forthcoming Dig Your Roots album.

In the past Florida Georgia Line have explained that the Backstreet Boys were a big part of their musical upbringing, which was part of the reason why they wanted the group to contribute to the track.

Florida Georgia Line's Dig Your Roots, which is their third studio album and follow-up to 2014's Anything Goes, is being released on Friday, August 26. They are currently on their Dig Your Roots tour with Kane Brown, The Cadillac Three and Cole Swindell.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Entertainment News
Estonia's producer prices continued to decline in July, though at a slower pace than in the previous month, figures from Statistics Estonia showed Monday.

The producer price index dropped 1.0 percent year-over-year in July, following a 1.4 percent decrease in June.

The fall in July was largely caused by a 13.1 percent slump in the price index of mining and quarrying, followed by electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply with 8.1 percent decline. At the same time, manufacturing prices edged up 0.1 percent.

On a monthly basis, producer prices slid 0.3 percent at the start of the third quarter.

Data also showed that import prices dipped 3.4 percent annually and by 0.8 percent monthly in July. Similarly, export prices slipped 1.1 percent in July from a year ago and dropped 0.2 percent, month-on-month.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
COLUMBUS  Several people were injured when a school bus transporting Lakeview Community Schools students collided with another vehicle Monday afternoon near the district's junior/senior high school.

Rescue personnel were called to the accident along 83rd Street just west of Monastery Road around 3:45 p.m. Monday.

According to a Platte County Sheriff's official, the westbound bus was transporting students from Shell Creek Elementary School when it struck a Chevrolet Avalanche that was stopped in the roadway while waiting to turn into the Lake North camping area.

The sheriff's official said the bus driver, 41-year-old James Lemburg of Columbus, attempted to stop before the collision, but was unable to do so. Lakeview Community Schools contracts with Mid States School Bus Inc. of Wayne for its busing services.

Nobody on the school bus was injured in the accident, but four passengers in the Avalanche were transported by ambulance to Columbus Community Hospital, one with serious injuries.

Three adult passengers were treated at the local hospital and released. A 6-year-old girl was flown by medical helicopter to an Omaha hospital for treatment.

The driver of the Avalanche, 29-year-old Brian Zierke of rural Columbus, was uninjured.

According to the sheriff's office, the 6-year-old was seated in the middle of the vehicle's front seat and wearing a seat belt. The other four occupants were not wearing seat belts.

The occupants of the Avalanche were camping at Lake North, according to the sheriff's official.

Students were transported from the scene by school vans. Approximately 60 students were riding the bus at the time of the accident.

Columbus Fire and Rescue, the Platte County Sheriff's Office and Nebraska State Patrol responded to the accident, which remains under investigation.
Swiss agriculture company Syngenta International AG (SYT) announced Monday that its takeover by China National Chemical Corp., known as ChemChina, has received clearance on their proposed deal from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States or CFIUS.

In addition to CFIUS clearance, the closing of the deal is subject to anti-trust review by numerous regulators around the world and other customary closing conditions.

Syngenta said both companies are working closely with the regulatory agencies involved and discussions remain constructive.

It was in February this year that ChemChina offered to acquire the Swiss crop chemicals firm at a value of over $43 billion. The offer was $465 per ordinary share plus a special dividend of CHF 5.

The proposed transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Swedish human care company Elekta AB (publ) (EKTAF) announced Monday an agreement to open a new facility in Algiers.

The facility will be a training site for local engineers from public hospitals, as well as service center for Elekta's growing installed base in Algeria. The company said the new office will be established through a recently signed joint venture in Algeria with its commercial partner, General Medical Provider or GMP.

In 2013, Algeria's Ministry of Health, Population and Hospital Reform or MoHPHR launched a five-year cancer plan, with the ambition of equipping or building 13 new cancer centers. In January, 2014, Elekta announced that it would support this initiative with hardware and software solutions.

In addition to equipment and software for the treatment of cancer, Elekta will have personnel on site for technical instruction and clinical training.

This staff will also ensure maintenance quality and manage the spare parts stock in Algeria.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Shares of Teleperformance (TLPFF.PK) gained around 9 percent in the early morning trading in Paris after the French company in outsourced omnichannel customer experience management announced Monday that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire LanguageLine Solutions LLC from ABRY Partners and minority equity owners. The consideration for the transaction will be $1.52 billion at closing.

US-based LanguageLine Solutions is a provider of over-the-phone and video interpretation solutions. It had revenue of $388 million and adjusted EBITDA of $147 million in 2015.

With the deal, Teleperformance will boost its presence in high-end process outsourcing services in the US, Canada and the UK.

When completed, the acquisition will create immediate value for Teleperformance shareholders as it is expected to be accretive to earnings per share by around 10% on a pro forma basis for 2016.

The transaction is expected to close before year end, subject to receipt of certain regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

The acquisition will be fully financed through a debt financing provided by Credit Agricole, HSBC and Societe Generale.

In Paris, Teleperformance shares were trading at 90.21 euros, up 9.43 percent.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Taiwan's export orders continued to decline in July, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said Monday.

Export orders slid 3.4 percent year-on-year in July, faster than the 2.4 percent drop in June.

It was also bigger than the 1.5 percent fall expected by economists. Orders have been falling since April 2015.

On a monthly basis, export orders dropped 1.9 percent compared to a 5.9 percent increase in June. This was the first decline in three months.

During January to July, export orders decreased by 6.8 percent from the same period of last year.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
U.K. shares fell slightly in choppy trade Monday, as losses among commodity-related stocks overshadowed gains in the banking and construction sectors.

Amid lack of fresh triggers, investors look ahead to Fed Chair Janet Yellen's speech at Jackson Hole later this week for clarity on the pace of future rate increases.

The benchmark FTSE 100 was down 20 points or 0.29 percent at 6,839 in midday trading after closing 0.2 percent lower on Friday.

Miners Anglo American, BHP Billiton, Glencore and Rio Tinto fell 2-4 percent as commodities slipped on a stronger dollar.

Energy giant BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell dropped around half a percent each while Tullow Oil lost over 1 percent.

Precious metals mining company Fresnillo slumped 5.5 percent as gold prices hit a two-week low on U.S. rate hike prospects.

Housebuilder Persimmon rose over 1 percent ahead of its earnings results due on Tuesday, while Berkeley Group advanced 1.5 percent and Taylor Wimpey added 2.5 percent.

Banks traded mostly higher, with Barclays and The Royal Bank of Scotland rising about 1 percent each.

Shares of Image Scan soared 11 percent after the X-ray screening supplier said it expects to approach EBIT break-even in the current financial year.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com
Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. (ANCUF.PK,ATD_B.TO,ATD_A.TO) Monday announced a definitive merger agreement to acquire CST Brands, Inc. (CST) in an all-cash transaction for $48.53 per share. The total enterprise value of the deal would be approximately $4.4 billion including net debt assumed.

The terms and conditions of the agreement were unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies.

The transaction price represents a premium of 42% to CST's closing share price on March 3, 2016, the last trading day prior to CST announcing that it would explore and review its strategic alternatives to further enhance its stockholder value.

The company said the all-cash transaction would be financed by Couche-Tard's available cash, existing credit facilities and a new term loan.

The CST transaction is expected to close in early calendar year 2017 and is subject to the approval of CST's stockholders and regulatory approvals in the United States and Canada.

Further, Couche-Tard said it has entered into an agreement with Parkland Fuel Corp. (PKI.TO) pursuant to which it would sell certain Canadian assets of CST after the merger for approximately $750 million.

The assets in Canada that would be sold include CST's Cardlock , CST's Dealer and Commission Agents business, CST's Commercial and Home Energy business, a number of company-operated stores to be determined following the Competition Bureau of Canada's review of the transaction and CST's Montreal corporate head office.

This transaction is subject to customary regulatory approval and closing conditions. Couche-Tard intends to use the proceeds from this sale to repay part of its credit facilities.

Upon completion of the transaction, Couche-Tard would establish a new business unit in San Antonio with attached shared services operations.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car

I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ...
Greenpeace supports DENRs call for a review of coal plant permits in the country

Press Release

August 10, 2016

MANILA  On the Department of Environment and Natural Resources intent to review all permits and operations of the countrys coal-fired power plants, Greenpeace Philippines Climate and Energy Campaigner Reuben Muni said:

"Greenpeace welcomes the announcement by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Secretary, Ms. Gina Lopez, to review all permits and operations of coal-fired power plants in the country. We also wish to challenge the DENR to take this initiative further by putting on hold all other pending coal-fired power applications until said review is concluded and a more rigorous permitting system is in place.

Coal is the single greatest threat to the global our climate. Given the economic, social and environmental havoc that climate change has wrought in the Philippines, continuing to power our development with embracing coal is a dangerous policy. Short term benefits of coal to some elite players in the Philippine economy pale in comparison to the billions that coal is costing the Philippines as a nation with respect to public health, not to mention climate change impacts.

Our current national policies on coal and climate change just aren't cutting it. The DENRs announcement to review permits on coal-fired power plant operations is in line with the Climate Change Commissions move for an energy and climate policy and permit review. We hope this becomes the first step to reduce the countrys dependence on dirty coal and chart a decisive path towards a in favor of a future powered by clean renewable energy.
Leadership Samoas two-day forum on the Environment ended after looking at Climate Change and our community, Urban management and Apia township development and Samoas resilience to natural disasters.

Climate Change was the highlight of it all. ACEO for Disaster Management Organisation, Afioga Muliagatele Filomena Nelson presented on the impacts of climate change in Samoa, and how vulnerable Samoa is to hazards such as landslides, tsunami s and cyclones considering 70% of our population live along coastal areas. She mentioned ongoing pilot programmes the Ministry has in place to help reduce climate change, such as tree planting, seawalls, and clean ups to mention a few.

Muliaga said Our belief is that we cannot learn anything about Climate Change if we do not do anything. So we did not wait for the international community to tell us - okay you better do this and you better look at renewable energy or build sea walls. Instead of waiting for them we started implementing pilot projects.

Muliaga also spoke on the vital role D.M.O .plays when Samoa is under any threat, elaborating on the four phases of risk disaster management-prevention, preparedness, recovery and response.

There were a lot of questions raised from the LS 2016 cohorts but the one that stood out is how Samoas risk management is coping with these adaptations.

Thus the risk of transiting from mitigation to adaptation applies that we are targeting community based awareness programs as the next holistic strategic approach.

We were also introduced to building codes and measures addressed under the PUMA Act by the ACEO  Ms Toleafoa Fetoloai Yandall - Alama and in relation to Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Development Consent (DC) compliance.

These documentations serve the purpose of minimising damages on individual properties and also Samoa as a whole. In addition, the Planning and Urban Management Agency (PUMA) is highly anticipating leading government projects such as the Apia waterfront recreation area.

Chief Executive Officer of Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Afioga Sulumalo Amataga Penaia spoke on Government plans for improving Samoas environment. One of the challenges he mentioned was changing the mindset of Samoan people, so we can sustain our resources for future generations.

LS 2016 cohorts participated actively and impressed with the high level speakers during the two-day forum, learning how they can implement changes within their household and pass on their knowledge to their communities such as tree planting, keeping our rivers clean, saving water, and composting.

Marina Sua Keil a participant of LS 2016 said We all need to contribute to help our environment because we live in it, so why dont we start within our homes and within our villages. By working together, we can definitely make big changes for a greener Samoa.

It is everyones responsibility to protect our environment and think more seriously of the impacts of Climate Change as the world that we leave behind is the world our children will have to grow in.

So really we must ensure that we do the best that we can so our future generations can have a healthy and safe environment to grow up in, said Tapuni Tanielu Suesue, NHS Savaii  participant of LS 2016.
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaois now infamous interview about the internal battles among members of the governments legal fraternity is more than just a good laugh.

But when weve stopped giggling, it must be said its a direct admission about the disunity that exists within the government, which they have found impossible to contain so that the legal system today has become the laughing stock of the world.

Prime Minister Tuilaepas interview last week was not an accident. It was not a slip of the tongue either. His comments  as light as they might have seemed  reflected a far more serious problem within his administration. It is the fight for power, the battle to show who is more superior.

Its nothing new though. It started among members of the H.R.P.P (with differences still simmering from what weve been told) and now it has filtered down to public servants whose egos are just like their masters.

Interestingly enough, with the Prime Minister admitting that my children are suffering a bit of fever as they struggle with teething problems in their fight test their skills on each other, the picture is as clear as daylight.

There are divisions among the ranks and it is extremely worrying.

Which brings us to the point that nothing good comes from division.

Let us be reminded today, division and disunity breed destruction.

And yet thats precisely what we are seeing unfold before our very eyes with this government. Who wants to be in Prime Minister Tuilaepas shoes? It could perhaps explain why he chose to make light of the issue when his opinion was sought last week.

The worry is that not only are these divisions becoming glaringly obvious, the results are ugly too, judging from whats been happening in this country lately. While the law enforcement officers are being caught up in their ego tangle, crime figures continue to alarm.

Just last week, a young girl reportedly took a 24ft white fiberglass boat from Apia Harbour in what can only be described as a James Bond-type mission. Although the Police are investigating, a few days later, a girls body was found floating on the water by some fishermen at Utualii. The boat was also found abandoned.

Is there a connection between the boat and the dead girl? What might have happened to the girl? And could something have been done earlier to save her life? This is just one of the questions that demands the full attention of our law enforcement bodies. These are cases worth investigating with the idea everything must be done to protect Samoas borders. And yet our law enforcement officials  who are Tuilaepas so called children  are too occupied playing their ego games.

To be brutally frank, everything points to a government that is slowly but surely losing the plot. Whereas some politicians are behaving like an uncontrolled bunch of kids, the public service cant help but follow suit.

We cant really blame them. They are merely emulating the behavior of their masters.

If their masters are behaving erratically, what makes you think the people they rule over would not?

The simple truth is that regimes come and go, regardless of how powerful they become. History exists to tell us this. And during the past few years, weve witnessed enough powerful regimes being toppled near and far.

In many cases, some of the worlds most powerful men who were behind these regimes ended up deeply embarrassed. Thats if they survived of course.

Its undeniable that the political system in Samoa today is dominated by a party mostly concerned about its predominance. Their philosophy  like most political parties  is about winning power and keeping it.

The sad truth is that this system is responsible for unemployment; hardship and rising poverty since it promises wealth and money for loyal followers while the rest are left to fend for themselves. This has been the case in Samoa for a while now. And while politicians and people in power enjoy the sweetness of their evil ways, you cant say the same about those poor people who are finding it increasingly difficult to get by.

Look at all the street vendors hawking goods in Samoa day and night. But they are not the only ones.

Lately, there has been a trend of thieves and robbers going after the properties of people they perceive as the rich in this country. That must be a real concern.

Hardly a day goes by in Samoa when there is not some sort of incident that makes you shake your head in unbelief about what has become of our paradise.

Weve said this before and we will say it again, we need to be warned not to allow complacency to turn this country into a joke where it looks beautiful from afar when its actually becoming rotten at its core.

As for the government and the public service, lets remind them here and now that division breeds destruction. If this sort of carrying on is allowed to continue, its hard to be encouraged about the future. What do you think?

Have a great Tuesday Samoa, God bless!
Richard Parker, one of Samoas famous artists with a global following has some exciting news for his fans.

He has just launched his new single titled Baby Why in Rarotonga. Baby Why is now on sale worldwide on ITunes and Google Play.

Speaking to the Samoa Observer, Parker said his new single is based on a true story about what happened to one of his close friends.

The message behind the song is that just because you care about someone doesnt mean that that person is the right person for you, said Parker.

This song was written about ten years ago and I recently put it together and recorded it for this new single, said Richard.

Peter Seuseu, my guitarist at the time is also co writer on this song.

Reflecting back to his journey from where he started to where he is now, Richard said it hasnt been a smooth journey for him.

It hasnt been easy, he said. There has been a lot of finance and labor put into making the recordings, videos and other costs.

However, he believes that all his hard work and sacrifices had taken him this far in his career.

I believe in the saying that there is no substitute for hard work, he said.

There has been a lot of challenges and its ups and downs, but the Samoan community worldwide has been gracious in supporting me over the years and I am grateful for that.

I havent reached all my goals yet, and I have a lot more to do and accomplish, he said.

Said Richard, his songs are mainly inspired from real life events and relationships.

Looking forward, Richard said his next project is his full Samoan album.

I have been working on it for the last 3 years and it will be launched in Sydney this coming November, 2016, he said.

Richards message for the youth of Samoa and to the aspiring musicians of Samoa is very simple.

If you really want something in life, work hard and you will get back what you put in to it.

Richard already has a strong following in New Zealand, Australia, Samoa, Tonga, Europe and the USA.
Samoa took another gigantic leap forward yesterday in terms of road infrastructure.

It happened when the $68.8million Vaitele Street widening project was officially opened.

The 7.2km four-lane extension, which starts from Malifa to Saina, was carried out by Ott Construction and BECA  with assistance from other sub contractors.

Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, hailed the opening of the road as a major milestone for Samoa.

He said its a road that serves the public and enables the public to serve each other.

Close to a hundred people gathered to witness the project opening. Among them was Australias Minister for the International Development and the Pacific, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Land Transport Authority, Leasi Vainalepa Galuvao welcomed the special guests.

Maeva Betham-Vaai, of the World Bank congratulated the government of Samoa for the great achievement. The project was funded under the Enhance Road Access Project (E.R.A.P), which is financed by the government of Samoa, the World Bank and the government of Australia.

The bank (World Bank) contributed a grant of 20million USD towards funding of E.R.A.P, she said.

The extension from Vailoa to Saina of the upgraded Vaitele Street is an addition to the first phase from Malifa to Lepea.

The improved Vaitele street from Malifa to Saina as it is now, is an important part of Samoas Land Transport Infrastructure as it serves as the economic corridor connecting cross-island road, the Matautu Wharf and Apia City to the industrial zone and onwards to Faleolo airport and Mulifanua wharf.

She also commended the governments commitment in restoring key road infrastructures and to enhance climate resilience of critical roads and bridges in the country.

She added that the completion of this project has also achieved the objective they had in the beginning, which was to reduce traffic congestions and improving climate resilience.

The objective was achieved through widening of the road into four lanes and improved drainage. The upgrade also includes pedestrian walkways and streets lights among other enhancement.

As the result of these improvements, we believe that communities along the way are much safer and the road users can now have easy and quick access to critical infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and markets, therefore, we applaud your commitment.

Ms. Fierravanti-Wells thanked the government of Samoa for allowing the Australian government to contribute to the development of Samoa in the infrastructure sector.

I want to congratulate the government of Samoa for the work that you have done on this road renovation on time and on budget, she said.

Australia is very proud to have supported this development. One of our main projects in working with the government of Samoa is to make it easy for Samoans and visitors to Samoa to do business with one another and to enjoy all that Samoa has to offer.

To make it easier and quicker to go around between the airport and town and to get to the inter-island ferry and get to and from work easily. And most importantly, to make is safer for everyone to get around.

Australias support for this project is part of their ongoing commitment to help the development of Samoa.

In 2013, the Australian government provided 20 million dollars towards Samoas infrastructure. Including 13 million dollars to support the development and climate resilience of Samoas national road network. It is good to see firsthand the results from our commitment here today.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa thanked everyone who contributed in completing the project.

This is a great project, he said. We have been blessed to receive funding from the World Bank and the Australian government to make this project come to life through the Second Infrastructure Management Project through the enhance road access project (erap).

The total length of the upgraded road is 7.2km and it cost $68,840,000 WST, said Tuilaepa.

We were also fortunate to have with us throughout the whole process from start to finish, BECA Consultants with the assistances of local consultancy firms who designed and supervised the project. And to Ott Constructors for constructing the entire road length.

The groundwork for the venture began in 2003 where a Feasibility Study was carried out in regards to the project.

The outcomes of such studies and normal consultations with relevant stakeholders have resulted in todays official opening and in witnessing the successful completion of this major government project.

The life of this project has provided major benefits for the nation of Samoa. It has not only improved the traffic flow by decreasing the delayed time for traffic along the main route from the town area to the industrial zone (Vaitele) but it also created the most comfortable and smooth ride on a road in Samoa.

With the increasing number of vehicles being brought into the country every year a route of this caliber is no longer a luxury but a necessity. It serves the members of the public who commute to work in Apia. Students can now get to school quicker and easier, patients making their way to the hospitals will no longer have to encounter bad and bumpy roads.

This is the way forward to Samoa, a road that serves the public and enables the public to serve each other and the many who visit the shores of Samoa.

The upgrade of Vaitele streets also provides safe footpaths for pedestrians; speed bumps crossing and street lightings for night hours and stops have been positioned all along to allow for public transport to have minimal destructions to ongoing traffic.

A major improvement we have seen from the upgrade of Vaitele Street is the efficient drainage run of water. Traffic is no longer prevented from travelling due to flooding during extreme rainfall.

In his last remarks, Tuilaepa uttered that the government of Samoa has allowed growth to occur in various ways only for the benefit of the tens of thousands of people living in Samoa.

We want to continue to see this growth and we hope that in future years, the standard that has been set for Vaitele streets will be mirrored in other major roads around Samoa.

I want to thank everyone for bringing this project to life and this is an outcome we should all be proud of.
Chief Justice, His Honour Patu Tiavaasue Falefatu Sapolu yesterday declined to give a judgment by consent on a mediation agreement in relation to a sexual allegation made against the former Chairman of the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa.

This is despite the defendant, Angeline Lesa, being served by lawyer, Semi Leung Wai, with a motion of claim, requiring her to front before the Court.

Mr. Leung Wai is representing the former Chairman of C.C.C.S, Rev Dr. Uili Afereti.

During the Supreme Court civil mention, Mr. Leung Wai argued that he has done his part in serving the defendant, who again failed to appear in Court.

He urged the Court to enter the mediated agreement by judgment for the sake of his client.

The difficulty is that my client needs the judgment by consent to give to the elders of the church to clear his name, said Mr. Leung Wai.

The mediation agreement is confidential and that is why we wanted to have it as a judgment by consent and have it as a record of the Court.

But the Chief Justice insisted that the judgment by consent could only be given if both parties, including the defendant, gives her consent.

It has to be judgment by consent but if the defendant has given no consent to the judgment then I cannot give a judgment by consent, said his Honour Patu.

But Mr. Leung Wai insisted.

He told the Court he has done his part in serving the defendant and therefore the Court should consider his application.

In response, Chief Justice Patu said he thought that the defendant would appear yesterday but she still hasnt turned up.

And I cannot enter judgment by consent without the defendants presence to tell the Court that she given consent, he added.

What we have is a mediated agreement but the advantage of making such agreement subject of consent judgment is then you can have the powers of the Court with regards to enforcing of the mediated agreement because it has become a judgment.

It was at this point that Mr. Leung Wai asked if the mediation agreement can be defaulted as his instructions from his client is to have the agreement in judgment by consent.

But His Honour Patu asked the lawyer to tell his client he cannot givea judgment by consent for the reasons he has given.

The Chief Justice also granted leave for the lawyer for Angeline Lesa, Alalatoa Rosella Papalii, to withdraw as lawyer.

He then moved on to the next case without announcing whether the case will proceed.

Two weeks ago Alalatoa made the application to withdraw after the lawyer was unsuccessful in finding her client when she had contacted her several times.

Earlier this year, Rev. Afereti filed a defamation case against Angeline Lesa when he was stripped off his key roles from the Church.

The case was referred to mediation where an agreement was reached. The details of that mediation remain confidential.
A few months ago, I headed to the Truck Stop for a movie presentation by Rachel Graham, shark champion, sea warrior, educator and biologist with the Mar Alliance. She was presenting an episode of The Great Barrier reef narrated by David Attenborough  SIR David Attenborough  and amidst all the talk of polyps and coral reproduction one statement screamed out to me as totally absurd: our white sandy beaches are made of parrot fish excrement.

Waitwhat? Parrot fish? The beautiful multi-colored clown fish that are constantly gnawing at the reef? They make our beaches? I dont remember seeing thousands of them on my last snorkel. This seemed incredibly hard to believe. But thenas I often doI forgot all about it.

Yesterday I went for a walk north and sat for a bitadmiring the sand and the tiny shells that are all over. No reallythats what I was doing.

Lots of things washed up on the shores during and after Hurricane Earl, big chunks of coral, lots of sponges, lots of seagrass and seaweed, logs, trees and plenty of pretty little shells.

So I got thinking about this bold statement made by the BBC

And I decided to do some research (nono parrot fish dissections)  some internet research. And I found out that the common parrotfish is one interesting creature. And some think, may be one of the answers for climate change affecting our coral reefs.

Which makes this picture, taken a few years ago in a Portland, OR supermarket pretty sad.

Awwwww Momnot PARROT FISH AGAIN!

Heres what I found out. Many beaches of the world are made from erosion of rocks offshore or from onshore, headland or river rock, that is crushed by wave action and deposited as beaches. So your local beach might be made of rockFloridas Emerald Coast is white due to quartz from the Appalachian mountains, Hawaiis famous black beaches are made from volcanic materials, and many are justsand colored. On a hot summer day, these beaches heat as rocks do andcan burn your bare feet.

But many of the white sandy beaches of the Caribbean and other tropical spots are different. The sand is made up of ground coral and pretty shells  calcium carbonate that bleaches white in the sun and stays cool even under the hottest sun.

It makes for gorgeous beaches.

But we dont see much wave action here on Ambergris Caye much  except during storms. Where is all this sand coming from?

Crazy thing? Its produced by parrot fish. Not completelybut a shockingly large percentage.

If youve been snorkeling or diving at our reef, youve definitely seen parrotfish. And you may have heard them. With their hard beaks, they bite off chunks of coral. You can hear the scraping and crunching underwater.

Not only is it an odd looking fish with that beak and all but it tends to be a hermaphordite and some types sleep deeply in a protective mucous pouch. But that is not at all what Im talking about

THEY POOP OUT A HUGE AMOUNT OF GROUND CORAL.

They eat algae from the coral and excrete sand. In the Maldives, Scientific America estimates up to 85% of the island chains sand. Other sites and other areas estimate 75-90%. Parrot fish make 150lbs of sand a year or morelarger ones up to a ton! They also clean and eat much of that algae fur that can develop on coral while they are doing it.

Sowhy is this fish for sale at any supermarket? Not only is it making our beachbut it is cleaning the reef. Potentially the reefs answer to climate change? (See Virgin.coms: Parrotfish: The Fish that Can Save Our Coral Reef)

They are, thankfully, protected in Belize since 2009 as are other herbivores like Blue Tang. But they are considered a delicacy in some parts of the world.

Super interesting to me. For lots more information check out these real scientific (and super interesting articles)

To Save Coral Reefs, Save the Parrot Fish  National Geographic

Protect the Reef, Protect the Parrot Fish  Cool Green Science

Absurd Creature of the Week: This Goofy Fish Poops Out White Sand Beaches  Wired.com

Maybe you already knew all this  bravo! And its just strange look into the types of things I think about during the slow season.
Copenhagen, Denmark -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/22/2016 -- Dansk Kontorstole Forsyning ApS, also known as Danish Office Supply, is thrilled to announce the launch of their brand new collection of premier office chairs. The all-new collection will soon be available to consumers across the United States.



Danish Office Supply is pleased to release a collection of finely crafted, 100 percent ergonomic office chairs for all styles. Whether customers are looking for classic, traditional, or contemporary office chairs, they can find a wide selection of world-class office chairs at Danish Office Supply.



Currently, the team at Danish Office Supply offers more than 75 designs. Customers can easily browse and select their favorite office chair by perusing the company's selection of workplace, home, and office desk chairs. These chairs can be easily purchased in a variety of colors, heights, and materials. In addition, Danish Office Supply can outfit chairs with a variety of exciting features, including extra high gas lift and specialty wheels. The company also provides a variety of office chairs with high backs and day office chairs with low backs.



Danish Office Supply understands that choosing the ideal color for an office chair is of utmost importance, which is why their expert team provides selections in classic black, white, red, beige, cream, blue, brown, white, and more.



All chairs are ergonomic to create the most efficient workspace possible, and Danish Office Supply backs each purchase with a number of incentives.



For instance, each customer can take advantage of a 24 month warranty, free shipping direct to door, a company satisfaction guarantee, and free extras including soft wheels, feet, and more.



While Danish Office Supply offers an impressive collection of office chairs, some customers are surprised to find that the company offers XXL chairs, stools, 12 hour chairs, and other unique products. All chairs come with armrests that can be easily detached, further customizing usage.



Danish Office Supply is proud to offer Denmark's most comprehensive, competitively priced range of office chairs.



"You also get a stamp of quality showing each product is ISO 9001 accredited," said the company's team. Danish Office Supply is committed to providing a high level of quality and comfort at excellent values, and their team is pleased to announce that these values will soon be extended to consumers in the U.S.



According to Danish Office Supply, they will soon offer their leading line of office chairs to consumers across the United States. Whether business owners, professionals, or employees are looking for the ideal desk chair, they will be able to turn to Danish Office Supply for help.



Danish Office Supply offers flexible, reliable payment options and international shipping. In Denmark, delivery times are usually within 1-3 days, and the company hasn't announced the method of shipping they'll be using with American consumers.



More information can be found at http://dankontorstole.dk/.



About Dansk Kontorstole Forsyning ApS

Dansk Kontorstole Forsyning ApS, or Danish Office Supply, is Denmark's premier supplier of office chairs.



Contact:

Dansk Kontorstole Forsyning ApS

Naverland 34 Denmark

Web: http://dankontorstole.dk/
Copenhagen, Denmark -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/22/2016 -- Fashion brand Denim Project is revolutionizing the industry by producing garments that are made from 98% denim waste. The creator, Jesper Kejser launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise USD 177,000 by September 8, 2016. Funds received will be used to purchase machinery, source wasted fabric for production and create the base materials.



Jesper has been in the fashion industry for almost 20 years. He has worked with some of the best retailers and brands in Denmark and around the world. About three years ago, Jesper became aware of just how much of a negative impact the textile industry is contributing to the environment. The production of virgin textile materials, such as cotton, creates numerous ecological damages that are detrimental to the land and water supply, especially when pesticides are applied. There's an overwhelming amount of usable/reusable waste being created by the fashion industry as they consume precious resources while generating pollution. Up to 15% of fabric intended for clothing are wasted during the cutting process. The estimated waste can provide every person on the planet three new T-shirts per year. This waste also contains enough water that could have supplied 25 million people annually, which equates to 38.5 billion liters of fresh water.



The Denim Project was founded to make a change by creating garments by cutting waste. It is the most resource neural denim label in the world. All the fabric that have been discarded by expensive brands will be sorted by color, re-fiber, and spun into yarns. Then Denim Project will add 2% stretch to the 98% wasted fabric and design a brand new line. Not only will the company focus on saving the Earth's natural resources, but provide stylish denim at a fair price. The goal is to dress the world while doing good.



"The purpose of my engagement in Denim Project has, from the start, been to change our production, to show how 'easy' it is. How easy it is to save water and the environment. My dream is to set a positive footstep within my reach. I think that should be the goal for everyone. Especially the ones fortunate enough to have kids." ~ Jesper Kejser, CEO of Denim Project



To learn more about how the success of this project can help save 183,000,000 liters of fresh water, visit the Kickstarter campaign. Click here to make a contribution. Backers can choose from a number of attractive rewards. Perks will be delivered by February 2017.



This is an incredible opportunity to be a part of a special project! Help the campaign reach its goal by sharing this on Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks. The more people know about this, the more support the campaign will receive.



Contact: Jesper Kejser

email: keiser@denimproject.dk

Website: http://www.denimproject.dk
Anna, OH -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/22/2016 -- The managers working for KiwiTaxi reported the launch of the German version of their official website. The necessity of this step is explained by the global development of tourism and the need to make the company popular with the clients across the world.



Kiwitaxi is an international company, which offers professional and high quality transfer booking services to the residents of many countries of the world. The company was created in 2010, which means that they have over 6 years of experience in the business and are always eager to meet the needs and requirements of their clients. Offering comfortable and quick private transfers from the airport to the place of a customer's destination, the company ensures maximum convenience and time economy.



From now on, the German version of the website will be available round the clock. Its main purpose is the increase of the client base of the company. The launch of the German version of the site will help popularize the service among the German-speaking population, who are looking for professional transfer services, irrespective of the country they travel to.



What makes KiwiTaxi special is that they make it possible to book the transfer to/from the airport on the website. The only thing that is needed to do that is to fill out the online request form and wait for the answer of the managers of the company. "In each country, we carefully choose our service providers and work only with the most reliable taxi services. Germany is not an exception. We have partners in this country as well and are ready to offer our clients the most reliable and professional transfer services", - underline the representatives of the company.



As of today, the company owns several classes of automobiles their clients may choose from. The choice depends upon the number of people, amount of luggage, destination and other important nuances that are discussed in each case individually.



For more information, please, feel free to visit http://kiwitaxi.de/



About KiwiTaxi

KiwiTaxi is a popular and reputable international airport transfer company, which sees its objective in helping their clients get to the places of their destination in the shortest time possible and with maximum comfort. The company was founded in 2010 and has served thousands of tourists across the world since that time. They employ punctual and decent drivers, who are ready to meet the needs and preferences of each client. KiwiTaxi cooperates with top class taxi companies in many countries to provide on time transfer services any time of the day.



Contact Info

Address: 11401 Street 29, Anna, 45302 Ohio, USA

Tel.: 937-225-3678

E-mail: support@kiwitaxi.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kiwitaxi

Website: http://kiwitaxi.de/
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/22/2016 -- The travel and business bags market in Italy is expected to decline during the forecast period. The market has been declining in the past few years because of the countrys declining economy and the impact of the Eurozone crisis. In 2014, the trolley bags/suitcases segment dominated the market in both revenue and volume terms.



The travel and business bags market in Italy to grow at a negative CAGR of -0.81% by revenue and -0.96% by volume during the period 2014-2019. This report provides an overview of the travel and business bags market in Italy and in-depth analysis of the usage of the product in the market. The report considers 2014 as the base year and forecasts the market value to 2019.



The travel and business bags market in Italy can be segmented into five segments: Backpacks, business bags, duffle bags, suitcases, and trolley bags. The report also presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the eight major vendors in the market.



Browse Market info, get a Sample PDF with TOC: http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=301319



Key Vendors

- Delsey

- Hermes

- LVMH

- Prada

- Rimowa

- RV Roncato

- Samsonite

- Valentino



Other Prominent Vendors

- Adidas

- Amazonlife

- Anyvention

- Aldo

- Alfred Dunhill

- Boconi

- Bottega Veneta

- Caribee

- Chanel

- Donna Karan International (DKNY)

- Ferrari

- Gianni Versace

- it luggage

- Jany Luggage

- Lulu Guinness

- Mandarina Duck



Enquiry at: http://www.researchmoz.us/enquiry.php?type=E&repid=301319



Key questions answered in this report

- What will the market size be in 2019 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?



About ResearchMoz

ResearchMoz is the world's 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. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.



Contact Us:

Mr. Nachiket

Albany NY - 12207

United States

Tel: 518-621-2074

Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)

Email: sales@researchmoz.us

Follow us on LinkedIn at: http://bit.ly/1TBmnVG
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/22/2016 -- Food ingredients provide unique color, textures, nutrients, functionalities and flavors to the cooked or processed food products. Food ingredients are added to enhance taste and flavor to the processed food items. Specialty food ingredients are used by food and beverage industry to enhance taste and flavor to the processed food. Specialty food ingredients are able to meet customer's demands owing to their unique features including processing aids, coloring, preservation, emulsification and nutritional enhancement. Also, help in enhancing shelf-life, stability and texture of the food products. Specialty food ingredients are majorly sold to food processing industry including large food manufacturing companies as well as medium-sized companies.



On the bases of function of different food ingredients global specialty food ingredients market can be bifurcated into color, acidulants, food enzymes, flavor, food preservatives, food emulsifiers, starches and nutraceuticals. Nutraceuticals has the largest market share for specialty food ingredients, and is expected to dominate the global market in forecasted period. Specialty food ingredients are majorly used by food processing industry. Other major application of specialty food ingredients includes bakery and confectionery, diary, convenience food, meat and seafood products and functional food items.



Thinking about report: Please observe the beneath the hyperlinks to satisfy your necessities; Request for the Report sample: http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3406



North America has the largest market share for specialty food ingredients, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. North America is expected to dominate the global market in forecasted period owing to increasing consumption of processed food in the U.S. and Canada. Healthy eating habit is expected to boost the European specialty food ingredients market. However, Asia Pacific region is expected to witness highest growth in the coming future. Emerging markets of China, India and Brazil is further expected to boost the global specialty food ingredients market.



Increasing urban population coupled with rising disposable income level is increasing the penetration for packaged and convenience food items, in turn increasing the demand for specialty food ingredients. Additionally, rising rate of diabetes and obesity in both developed and developing countries, prompts the consumer to focus more on healthier lifestyles, in turn demand for health and wellness food ingredients from food and beverage manufacturing companies. This is also driving the global specialty food ingredients market to some extent.



Request TOC (desk of content material), Figures and Tables of the report: http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3406



Changing consumer consumption trends towards health and wellness food products shows increased purchasing power of individual; this is providing ample growth opportunity for the food manufacturing companies to expand their market in healthy food products. Some of the major companies operating in the sodium reduction ingredients market are Cargill Inc., Kerry Group Plc., Cambrian Solutions Inc., Advanced Food Systems Inc., E. I. Dupont De Nemours and Company, Specialty Commodities, Sensient Technologies Corporation, Koninklijke DSM N.V., Ingredion Incorporated and Tate & Lyle.
[MELBOURNE] Immunology today is at the forefront of clinical therapies for diseases from cancer to Zika, providing new hope for global health.

This is the key message from the 16th International Congress of Immunology (ICI) which opened Sunday (21-26 August) at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre hosted by the Australasian Society for Immunology and the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS). More than 4,000 delegates from 70 countries are in attendance to discuss new research and developments in the field of immunological science.

There has never been a time when more hopes and dreams lie at the feet of immunology. Jose Villadangos, ICI

Welcoming the delegates on opening day, ICI president Jose Villadangos said, There has never been a time when more hopes and dreams lie at the feet of immunology. We have the potential of cancer immunotherapy, there are vaccines for allergies, and we have a new beast that we need to use immunological tools against in Zika.

He said, These immunology congresses used to be largely about basic research  and its still the backbone of what we do, but now immunology is at the forefront of clinical therapies as well.

The current congress has attracted the highest participation of young students and early career researchers like Justin Nono Komguep from the Division of Immunology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa who is excited to meet researchers from other countries.

My research is on how immunoparasitology is used to target fibroproliferative diseases with special focus on liver fibrosis. I am hoping that my research will enable us to have a direct therapy against liver fibrosis, which will benefit people in the developing and developed world, he said.

Michelle Sue Lee from Immunology Frontier Research Centre in Japan is attending her first immunology conference. I am looking forward to learning from others the techniques they are using to understand how immune cells interact and respond. Understanding the immune system is important for combatting diseases.

IUIS president Jorge Kalil noted, Globalisation poses new challenges to immunology. Rapid spread of viruses is a terrible threat to humankind. Dengue infects more than 300 million people per year and the association of Zika and microcephaly frightens the world. This is why international efforts are so important.



This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets South-East Asia & Pacific desk.
In a new study, scientists used a number of biomarkers to study changes related to aging in genes. They have found that Latinos age at a slower rate than other ethnicities.

"Latinos live longer than Caucasians, despite experiencing higher rates of diabetes and other diseases," Steve Horvath, lead author and professor of human genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles, said in a news release. "Our study helps explain this by demonstrating that Latinos age more slowly at the molecular level."

According to Health Day, researchers of the study explained that a newly developed genetic "clock" has found that Hispanics or Latinos age much slower than other ethnicities because they are more immune to natural processes that get in the way with cell repair and development. They added saying that the biological clock measured Hispanic women's "genetic" age to be 2.4 years younger than non-Hispanic women of the same physical age after they undergo menopause.

For the study, researchers used 18 sets of data on DNA sample from almost 6,000 people of the seven different ethnicities such as two African groups, African-Americans, Caucasians, East Asians, Latinos and an indigenous people genetically related to Latinos called the Tsimane. After analyzing for difference in cell composition, researchers were able to discover that the blood of Latinos and the indigenous group aged slower than others. Horvath also said that the result of the study can explain why Latinos in the United States most live 3 years longer than whites, blacks, Asians and other ethnic groups.

Horvath also said that this unique phenomenon has puzzled a number of medical experts since they all know that there are more Hispanics diagnosed with diabetes and other diseases that would have shortened their life expectancy. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average life expectancy for Hispanics is 82 and 79 for Caucasians.

"We suspect that Latinos' slower aging rate helps neutralize their higher health risks, particularly those related to obesity and inflammation," Horvath said. "Our findings strongly suggest that genetic or environmental factors linked to ethnicity may influence how quickly a person ages and how long they live," fox32chicago.com reported.

Meanwhile, Fox News reported that the same study also showed that the Tsimanes aged even much slower than Latinos which researchers said shows the group's minimal signs of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity or clogged arteries. Michael Gurven, study coauthor and a professor of anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara explained in the news released that though Tsimane people suffer from different infections, they still exhibit little symptoms of chronic diseases that commonly affect the society. "Our findings provide an interesting molecular explanation for their robust health," Gurven added.

Researchers are already planning their next study which will include the aging rate of other human tissues and to identify the molecular mechanism that protects Latinos from aging.
A team of international researchers has recently found has recently found that one of the four coronaviruses most commonly pointed out as the cause for the cold, a virus known as HCoV-229E, came from camels before being transmitted to humans.

Independent.co.uk reported that the first human to get sick with a cold may have gotten it from a camel. They revealed that the cold was from the same animal that caused the deadly, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, more popularly known as MERS. The recent study claims that camels may be responsible for more infections that what was originally thought. Aside from rhinoviruses and the three other coronaviruses, it turns out that HCoV-229E is one of the main virus that causes the common cold people suffer from.

Lead researcher Christian Drosten, from the University Hospital of Bonn in Germany said: "In our MERS investigations we examined about 1,000 camels for coronaviruses and were surprised to find pathogens that are related to 'HCoV-229E', the human common cold virus, in almost 6 percent of the cases."

For the study, Science Alert reported that the scientists collected samples of the camels' viruses and found that they can infect humans. However, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said that the tests revealed no apparent danger of a new cold epidemic because humans' immune system has already been prepped against it. It was also said that a number of human disease were first thought to have infected other animals before mutating genetically. The mutation was believed to give the viruses characteristics that allowed them to infect humans.

"The MERS virus is a strange pathogen: smaller, regionally restricted outbreaks, for example in hospitals, keep occurring. Fortunately, the virus has not adapted well enough to humans, and has consequently been unable to spread globally up to now," Drosten said. However, there is still reason to believe that the common cold virus will eventually evolve to spread between humans, which will then evolve MERS at some point. This is something experts need to keep their eye on, tribuneindia.com reported.

"Our current study gives us a warning sign regarding the risk of a MERS pandemic - because MERS could perhaps do what HCoV-229E did," Drosten added.

Clinical trials for MERS vaccine is schedule starting 2017. By that time, researchers would have hopefully gained a better understanding of the disease and what systems work behind it, which will enable them to find new ways to treat patients infected with MERS and ways to permanently stop it from spreading.
Samsung and Apple have been competing against each other for as long as everybody can remember. However, the release of the South Korean giant tech company's new flagship "phablet" device could be the best bribe to make iPhone users change their minds.

Cnet.com has initially has given the new device four and a half stars and said: "The Galaxy Note 7 is a beautiful, capable Android phone that showcases Samsung's best in design, battery life, speed and features. The 64GB base model leaves you plenty of space for photos, videos and games, and it's a real improvement over 2015's Note 5."

Initial reviews cited some issues such as the device's price being too high ($849) and some minor problems with the S-Pen. However, after giving the device a go, users have found nothing wrong with the S-Pen. Samsung's small pen doesn't require a battery like the Apple Pencil which makes it perfect for on-the-go use, The Inquistr reported.

The Note 7 may look like a monster smartphone at first with its 6.04 x 2.91 x 0.31 inches (153.5 x 73.9 x 7.9 mm) size and would even make you think it's a little heavy at first look. But, you will be surprised to know that it's lighter than what you had originally thought. The smartphone has a slick polished glass feeling only iPhone used to give. However, it's time to say bye-bye to Samsung's cheap looking plastic case, which the company used to use to keep the weight of their smartphones and tablets to a minimum.Gorilla Glass 5 was used to cover the front and back of the device. The new Gorilla Glass is said to stop scratches and, most importantly, prevent cracks in the device after falls.

According to CNBC, analysts have branded Note 7 as an example of how the South Korean tech giant can remain on top at the edge of innovation. The Note 7 will "act as a premium showcase which will improve Samsung margins, define how Samsung's strategy differs from Apple and Huawei," analysts IHS said.

Samsung has also fixed some screen issue they had with Galaxy S7 Edge and made sure the new Note 7's screen is perfect. S7 Edge's screen was curved a little too much making it easy to accidentally touch the curve with a finger. The new Note 7's screen has the same 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution as the Note 5 and the Galaxy S7 Edge but the screen don't extend too much.

The Note 7 runs on the same Snapdragon 820 processor that runs the Galaxy S7 Edge which is a good thing. The same 4GB of RAM seen in the Galaxy Note 5 and the S7 Edge is also present in the new Note 7. There will be no problem running two or three apps at the same time, however, users will notice some lag when they run four app. Still, Note 7 is known to be the fastest phone in existence today, and yes, it's even faster than the iPhone6s or 6s Plus, nrt3.com reported.

The iPhone maker has recently been struggling with its declining sales of iPhone if the leaks that have been surrounding the web are true, iPhone 7 could be a lifeless launch with nothing to make it stand out. Because there are a group of iPhone users who purchased the iPhone 6 when it was first launch, they may have already come to the end of their 2 year contract. Surely, these customers are looking for a stand-out up grade, and if Samsung gets the marketing right, this could change the hearts of a lot of Apple customers.
It is common knowledge that the very first pyramids were built in Egypt to become tombs for their pharaohs. However, archaeologists in Kazakhstan have recently unearthed a pyramid-shaped mausoleum that is believed to be over 3,000-years-old, which in theory will make it older than some, but not all Egyptian pyramids.

'It was built more than 3,000 years ago in Saryarke for a local "pharaoh", a leader of a local mighty tribe dating to late Bronze epoch,' said Viktor Novozhenov, one of the archaeologists from the Saryarkinsky Archeology Institute in Karaganda who made the discovery, metro.co.uk reported.

According to Mail Online, the once unknown Egyptian-style pyramid has been discovered in a far flung area of the Kazakhstan steppe about 3,900 miles northeast of Cairo. The structure, now ruins, is believed to look like that of the famous Pyramid of Djoser in Egypt, but was build 1,000 years earlier. Archeologists unearthed is last year but has kept mum about their "sensational find" until now. The team, led by Igor Kukushkin from Karaganda State University, is expected to explore the unopened burial chamber of the pyramid complex 'within days'. They also said: "All finds will be passed to the archaeology museum of Karaganda State University."

Archaeologists said that the mausoleum is about 2 meters (6.6 feet) tall and 15 by 14 meters (49 by 46 feet long) which is a little bit small for a pyramid. "It's made from stone, earth and fortified by slabs in the outer side," Novozhenov told Owen Jarus from Live Science. The structure of the pyramid was also found to be one-of-a-kind. Instead of having a pointed top like the Great Pyramid of Giza, the newly discovered pyramid structure was made up of six stepped layers with a flat top, making it look more like a stepped rectangle than a true pyramid shape.

From the inside, the team found out that the pyramid's burial chamber was most likely robbed years ago with only pottery, a knife, and a few bronze objects. However, according to Science Alert, there has been no statement given as to whether or not someone's remains were actually buried there. Evidence showed that the structure was likely build around the time of the late Bronze Age. But, contrary to what some outlets have claimed, it's not the oldest pyramid ever found.
US space agency NASA is going to launch its much anticipated Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) next month. As part of the mission, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will travel to asteroid Bennu and capture a boulder from the surface of the asteroid, drag it into orbit around the Moon and then bring the sample back to the Earth for further study.

What's interesting to note is the fact that the mechanics that will make possible the collection of dust sample from the asteroid is inspired by a Solo cup. The $800 million OSIRIS-Rex mission, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, is aimed at collecting space dust which could be more than 4.5 billion years old. It is believed that the asteroid sample will throw light on how life originated on Earth and how the materials necessary for life- carbon and ice- reached the planet, reported Phys.org.

Dante Lauretta, Osiris-Rex principal investigator with the University of Arizona, Tucson, said that they are seeking asteroid debris which date back to the very dawn of the solar system. The spacecraft will launch will launch atop an Atlas V rocket on September 8 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The spacecraft will take at least two years' time to reach asteroid Bennu and it will return back to the Earth with the samples in 2023.

The one issue which bothered NASA scientists was not landing on the asteroid but getting close enough to collect dust samples for several seconds. As there will be zero gravity on the asteroid, it was feared that the device might scatter dust, instead of gathering it. Luckily, Jim Harris, a Lockheed Martin Engineer, had a solution for the issue- the reverse-vacuum concept, reported Pulse Headlines.

Harris placed a pierced Solo cup with the rim facing down on the ground. Then, he used an air compressor to blow air through the cup's holes. The dirt which came out through the holes was collected in another container. Initially, Harris named his creation Muucav, "vacuum" spelled backwards, but, later on he changed it to TAGSAM, an acronym for the Touch and Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism. The NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission will rely on the same TAGSAM mechanism to collect debris from the asteroid.
The Crystal Serenity, a huge luxury liner will depart from Anchorage, Alaska and head to Northwest Passage even though the Arctic is melting this week. The extravagant cruise is the largest cruise ship that attempts the risky and dangerous voyage.

A Nearly Ice-Free Northwest Passage : Image of the Day https://t.co/ZIkRwe31fJ pic.twitter.com/0s1wJf0PmU  The New Science (@NewScienceWrld) August 22, 2016

The cruise is on a 32-day voyage in the Northwest Passage, which is the sea route that links the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It is reported that it was historically impassable. On the other hand, the warming of temperature due to climate change is transforming the Arctic and its ecosystem, according to Huffington Post.

Extinction tourism? More on the Crystal Serenity cruise through the NW Passage https://t.co/KI2YLAMZbk pic.twitter.com/22KOYJB5L7  Kristin Westdal (@KWestdal) August 20, 2016

The extravagant cruise carries 1,070 passengers 670 crew members. It has nine passenger decks, which tower over a hundred feet above the surface of the ocean. Passengers could enjoy things such as shopping, play in a casino or watch a movie in its theater. There are several bars on board too. The passengers can also perceive the sights, which for centuries have been largely the provenance of intrepid explorers and a small population of native people. They are clustered in hamlets that can be divided by hundreds of miles of Arctic tundra and icy waters.

Crystal Serenity assures their passengers that everything will go well. The cruise is using low-emission fuel and they would not dump untreated sewage. They have a high-efficiency garbage incinerator. Paul Garcia, the company's spokesperson told the Think Progress that Crystal Cruise has been working on this project since 2013 and will be implementing a number of additional precautions to ensure the safety of all guests and crew, as well as to protect the pristine environment.

He further said that they have taken many extraordinary operational and equipment-related measure to ensure a safe voyage. If in case there is trouble, they have additional ship-to-shore boats, helicopters and a large hotel's worth of provisions and amenities. Mr. Garcia also said that typical conditions along the planned route during the Arctic summer are substantially free of ice and within Crystal Serenity's safe operating parameters.
Human Papiloma Virus or HPV cases in the United States is rapidly increasing. The most alarming part is that most cases of HPV belongs to the teen and pre-teen demographic category. This is why there is a proposal to the US Health Department to consider imposing HPV vaccines mandatory to all schools.

However, according to a study conducted by researchers from School of Global Public Health - University of North Carolina, Parents are still hesitant about a law that mandates the HPV vaccine.

Based on 1,501 respondents who are parents of kid 11-17 years old, only 21% agreed while 54% disagreed. However, the parent approval rating triples to 57% if the law included an opt-out clause. This provision in the simply means that a parent can withdraw from the mandatory vaccination if he/she feels that the terms and conditions deemed unacceptable. The researchers worry that the opt-out provision might affect the effectivity of the vaccine implementation.

According to an interview by ABC News, to William Calo, the lead author from the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina: "We were expecting a higher number of parents supporting vaccine requirements, 21 percent is a lot lower than we expected."





According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the sexually transmitted disease HPV increases the incidence of cancer development to infected patients. It is mostly associated to cervical cancer. Based on a data gathered from 2008 to 2012, there is 38,793 reported cases of HPV infections that lead to cancer in the United states. There are 23,000 cases for female and 15,793 for males. It is reported that HPV is responsible for 90% of all cervical and anal related cancers, about 70% for vaginal and vulvar cancers and 70% for penile and oropharynx cancer. The rapid increase in the HPV cases were said to be caused by unprotected sex mostly by teenagers.
Apple and Google, together with 30 other telecoms and tech companies, joined the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create a strike force against "robocalling." Robocalling is an automated prerecorded phone calls by several companies to consumers. This method of marketing is deemed unlawful and violates several consumer and privacy rights based on Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991.

The planning for the crackdown operation started last Oct. 19 joined by several representatives from the tech companies. They are planning to implement a nationwide caller ID verification standard to block calls from unverified phone numbers. There will be proposed sanctions to companies violating the TCPA.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler urged companies to join them in making a collective action against telemarketers and scammers. He described the act as "scourge" and "must be stopped" as reported by Reuters. Wheeler added in a report by Reuters, "The bad guys are beating the good guys with technology. Robocalls continue due in large part to industry inaction."

Joan Marsh, vice-president of federal regulatory issues at AT&T added "We have wrangling in this problem long enough to know there is no silver bullet. Nothing by itself is going to do it." According to The Verge, tech companies may also rip more benefits in joining and complying to FCC. Several TCPA class action lawsuits in the past about harassment cases involving robocalls posted large fines to companies.

Other companies that joined the strike force include, Blackberry Ltd, British Telecommunications, Charter Communications Inc., Frontier Communications, LG Electronics Inc., Microsoft Corp, Nokia Corp, Qualcomm Inc., Samsung Electronics Co Ltd., Sirius XM Holdings Inc., T-Mobile US Inc. and U.S. Cellular Corp as reported by Reuters
After being dependent on Russia in flying astronauts to and from the space station for five years, Boeing is getting ready to take charge. Its CST-100 is currently on its way to replacing Russia's Soyuz.

Known as the Chief Builder of the International Space Station, Boeing thought it should be the one providing taxi services to American astronauts, reports Air & Space Mag. As of writing, the company's goal is becoming closer to reality as a new parking spot gets installed in the station. On Friday, August 19, NASA astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins made a spacewalk and had an adapter attached on the docking port of the shuttle, according to a report made by TRT World. This device will enable the taxis being developed by Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies to park.

In 2015, NASA aimed to install the first new docking port. The equipment, however, was destroyed due to a SpaceX cargo ship launch accident. Williams and Rubins routed a cable for the installation of the second docking port in 2018. Priority maintenance tasks were also expected to be done; but, communication problems occurred with the space suit of Williams, leading to the spacewalk's end.

On September 1, the two astronauts are set to make another spacewalk. The activity aims to install a high-definition camera on the exterior frame of the station and take back an unused solar array cooling panel. Relying on Russia costs $70 million for each person; hence, ending the dependence will apparently lead to saving a significant amount of money which can be used for the development of other projects.

Boeing, since the beginning of its operations, contributed a lot to the International Space Station's integration particularly its complicated parts. It also supports other enhancements for the station in 2024 and beyond. The enhancements include lithium-ion batteries for the solar arrays and new communication system. Lastly, it supports laboratory experiment racks.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Two new businesses in Third Loop Plaza have formed an unusual partnership in the Pee Dee.

Anything Customs Printing and Apparel is the brainchild of Reggie Mitch Stigger, and it offers screen printing, embroidery and more.

Kosmic Sole is Justin Purvis' emporium of hard-to-find shoes where youll see shelves displaying a variety of Air Jordans and other high-end sneakers.

Its a big leap forward for Stigger, 33, and Purvis, 26, who were both working from home not long ago.

Last year this time I was working out of my bedroom, said Stigger, a Chicago native who moved south with his mother Lenora Jones in 2001.

My mom wanted a change of environment, he said, recalling how he was going through different things, getting in a little bit of trouble back then.

His uncle Byron Jones suggested a move to Florence, to get away from the city, he said.

First he got his GED. Then he enrolled in Florence-Darlington Technical College and earned two degrees  one in management and the other in marketing  and a certificate in retail.

I worked my share of jobs. I did my share of hard labor, Stigger said, and he decided it wasnt for me.

Several business ventures followed as his design work led to a clothing company under the moniker Da Only Pure Elevation clothing, or DOPE.

Being dope is being elevated  not doing what you were doing before. Being greater than you were last year, thats dope, he said. Setting goals and achieving them. Always pushing for more and doing better.

As his T-shirts gained popularity, more and more people requested custom designs, and Stigger did some research and cut out the middle man as he began screen printing.

I just invested in some equipment and started doing it, he said.

His social media presence has helped reach a wide audience, he said, and he initially had moved into Third Loop Plaza last November into a small suite. When the landlord told him a larger space was coming available, he quickly realized a partnership might be key.

Purvis  everyone calls him JP  started out repairing smart phones and restoring shoes. Then the Florence native started getting into the sneaker business and grasped that high demand and low supply meant an untapped market. Traveling to a sneaker convention in Charlotte was the "aha" moment as he saw tables filled with inventory he knew would sell back in the Pee Dee as well as online.

Conventions in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Dallas would follow.

Ive been all over the country, Purvis said. We cant find a lot of these shoes around here.

JP has had to rent U-Hauls on occasion to bring newfound sneakers back home to Florence.

Online is big," he said. "I have people ordering from China, Australia, Canada. They cant get (Air) Jordans in Canada.

JP also is willing to buy lightly worn shoes and offers a shoe cleaning and restoration service as well. He and Stigger hosted an early Friday evening grand opening and an open house celebration last week. They have been surprised at the overwhelmingly positive reception. Theyve both been surprised at how many folks have been drawn from neighboring areas.

Thats my first question when they walk in the door is: Where are you from? Purvis said. Because you never know.
FLORENCE, S.C.  A the saying goes, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades  but theres no almost about the role Florences business community played in drawing the 2018 National Horseshoe Pitching World Tournament.

Florence Civic Center General Manager Kendall Wall spoke Monday at a Rotary Club of Florence meeting and took the time to thank the businesses that have made Florence a selling point for large events.

The community has played a huge part in this, even though they may not realize it, because of all the amenities that have been developed in Florence over the last 10 years, Wall said. Whether its a restaurant, or a hotel, or any of the developments downtown  were able to sell Florence as a whole community.

Wall said Florence was able to beat out El Paso, Texas, and Shreveport, Louisiana, to secure the 2018 event.

The horseshoe tournament will be the largest single event ever hosted in Florence. Its expected to draw thousands of tourists, generate 8,000 or more room nights at local hotels and have an estimated economic impact of $3.5 million.

Wall told Rotarians there are several other major events being courted by the Florence Civic Center in the foreseeable future.

Were looking at 2018 through 2022 for some of these, he said. We have about 20 on our list that were looking at, but a lot of that is going to depend on the expansion and the final amount of meeting space.

The Civic Centers $15 million expansion is expected to be completed by January 2018.

That plan currently includes an extension into the lower parking level, with the loss of approximately 300 parking spaces. The section will include roughly 8,000 feet of sub-dividable meeting rooms, a new kitchen space and renovations of existing portions of the civic center.
DILLON, S.C.  The Dillon Police Department is searching for a suspect involved in a carjacking early Sunday morning on Radford Blvd. in Dillon.

According to an incident report from Dillon police, officers were dispatched to Waffle House at 803 Radford Blvd. at approximately 5:45 a.m. and found a female victim who was bleeding from her head.

The victim said she was arriving at the location to go to work when a person approached her driver's side door and demanded she get out of the car. When she refused, the suspect struck her in the head, cutting her severely, according to the report.

The suspect then pulled the victim from the vehicle and drove away. The victim described the suspect as a black male ranging from 20 to 29 years old. The stolen vehicle is a 2004 Grey Chevy with South Carolina license plate. The plate number is 9830DZ.

Anyone with information about the suspect or the stolen vehicle should contact the Dillon Police Department at 843-774-0051 or Crime Stoppers of the Pee Dee at 1-888-CRIME-SC.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Francis Marion University President Fred Carter told university faculty members at their annual kickoff breakfast Monday morning that FMU is in for an interesting and innovative year.

More than 300 faculty members and university staff attended the breakfast, which signals the opening of the academic year. FMU was expecting more than 4,000 students for the 2016-17 fall semester which began Monday afternoon.

Carter has entered his 18th year, is the longest-serving president in FMU history and the senior public university president in South Carolina. He lauded faculty members for the power they have to transform society.

Thats the uniqueness of our profession, Carter said. You can see the collective effects of our labor through the work of our graduates every single day. And those effects are phenomenal. Please know how very proud I am of what you do. You make an enormous difference in the lives of those you educate  and in the lives of those who benefit from that education.

Carter also told the faculty that theyre in for an interesting year, in large part because of the national and state political climate. But he also noted that back here on the ranch, things are going pretty well.

Carter highlighted a number of new programs and initiatives underway at the university, including:

>> Continuing development of a new program in speech pathology. Following state approval later this fall, the program is expected to begin in 2018.

>> Plans for a new honors center on campus. The new building would house the universitys rapidly expanding honors program as well as the Robert E. McNair Center for Research and Service and the universitys growing international program.

>> The new Center for Academic Success and Advisement (CASA). The center will expand and enhance academic support and advisement services on campus. Two new advising director positions and two graduate student support positions will be part of the initiative. The key focus will be on providing support for freshmen students. Jennifer Kunka will assume leadership of the new entity with the title of associate provost.

>> A new Social Sciences and Humanities Institute at Hobcaw Barony in Georgetown. Francis Marion University and Coastal Carolina University will partner with the Baruch Foundation to administer the new institute, which will encourage and develop new research opportunities at Hobcaw Barony, the 18,000-acre preserve operated by the Belle Baruch Foundation.

>> An increase in the number of research sabbaticals available to FMU faculty each year.

>> A 10 percent increase in funds available for faculty research projects and professional development.

>> An increase in the number of faculty summer research stipends. The new stipends will include some funds for tenured faculty. Previously, the funds were available only to un-tenured faculty, as a means of supporting their research early in their career.

>> Plans that are moving ahead for a Doctorate in Nursing Practice degree at FMU, and that the university also will consider a new baccalaureate degree in recreational therapy. Carter told faculty that its simply time for FMU to offer doctoral level instruction for nurse practitioners. FMU began offering the masters-level family nurse practitioner degree in 2012.

>> Plans to hire an archaeologist for the history department next year. Were located in the middle of a region rich in colonial, antebellum and postbellum history, Carter said. Its time that this university play a part in exploring, excavating, and preserving this history.

At Mondays breakfast, the university also recognized 21 faculty members for state service anniversary. Those recognized:

>> 10 years: Larry Englehardt, Alena Eskridge-Kosmach, Nathan Flowers, Charles Jeffcoat, Daljit Kaur, Faith Keller, Associate Provost Chris Kennedy, Ron Murphy, Hari Rajagopalan, Shawn Smolen-Morton, Jeff Steinmetz, Matt Turner and Nancy Zaice.

>> 20 years: Ken Araujo, Tim Hanson, Peter King and Christopher Johnson.

>> 30 Years: Allan Lockyear, Demetra Pearson, Glen Gourley and Charlene Wages, vice president for administration.
For many parents, this time of year is bittersweet.

Watching children embark upon a new school as they inch closer to adulthood is a joyous occasion, marred only by worries about their well-being. While parents cant control everything, they can alleviate nutritional concerns with just a little bit of dialogue and planning.

School lunches are touted as being much healthier these days, but what good are healthy options if children arent eating them? Are children eating proper lunches? Would parents like more control over what they are provided?

By asking these questions and opening a dialogue with the child, parents may come to the conclusion that a packed lunch is a win-win for all parties.

Planning ahead

Few households run so smoothly as to avoid the morning rush, so pre-planning can save a lot of grief in the long run.

Giant Food Stores nutritionist Shanna Shultz suggests sitting down with the child and consulting the U.S. Department of Agriculture website, www.choosemyplate.gov, to learn about nutrition guidelines and options available.

A simple graphic divides a plate into sections, which include protein, grains, fruits, vegetables and a side of dairy. By clicking on each section, the viewer is provided with a list of foods belonging to each group.

Shultz encourages parents to use those lists to learn the childs likes and dislikes. The idea is to pack one from each food group for each lunch. If you cant get all five in, we suggest at least three, she said.

According to Shultz, engaging in dialogue is one of the best ways to educate children on choices they never knew they had, as well as to provide alternatives to the mundane.

Take peanut butter and jelly, for instance. Shultz suggests swapping out the sugar-laden jelly with sliced strawberries or apples. And for those who eschew milk, Greek yogurt mixed with fruit is a suitable swap.

Children who avoid vegetables may just give them a second look if you add a dip, like hummus or low-fat ranch, into the equation.

Keeping things interesting

Theres actual science behind the phrase, We eat with our eyes, and its particularly true of children who tend to judge quickly based on sight.

Thats why its important to plan lunches that are pleasing to the eye. With that goal in mind, organization and order is often helpful. Containers with divided sections not only remind parents to select from the five groups, but also provide a more attractive meal presentation.

Mike Kravanis was inspired to create healthier lunches for his own consumption after a trip to Japan several years ago. When he returned, he bought a Bento box and began his food art hobby inspired by a Japanese phenomenon called cute culture.

I decided to do it to keep from raiding the vending machine and actually stop and eat a lunch, he said.

Co-workers took notice, and he began sharing his creations on his Instagram site, OMGiri. The Harrisburg resident uses a variety of ingredients like ham, cheese, olives, broccoli, snap peas and other vegetables to craft his creative characters.

His site is a wealth of information in thinking beyond the box to build a better lunch. Beau Coffron is also a source of inspiration for healthy lunch ideas. His site at Lunchboxdad.com provides tips and tutorials on making healthy lunches for the little ones.

Of course, these two men take the art of lunch to a whole new level with their creative imaginations. Parents may not have the time to use even a fraction of the ideas they provide, but they may benefit from a few, while having fun viewing their alternatives to the boring old sack lunch.

For those who would like additional nutritional assistance, Giant Food Stores offers parents and their children a personal consultation on building a better lunch at their locations in Camp Hill, Linglestown and Hampden Township. For a $20 fee, a nutritionist will work with parents and children to determine what will work best for their personal needs. The fee will be reimbursed with a $20 Giant gift card at the end of the session. For more information, go to https://giantfoodstores.com.
Kelly Bear Hart distinctly remembers the moment the nurses pulled her aside to let her know that her older son did not have matching bone marrow for Trevor, then 15, who was suffering from acute myelogenous leukemia.

It just took the air right out of me, she recalled.

Hart, however, wasnt given much time to dwell on the news. The nurse had something far different to say next.

Though his brother was not a match, Trevor did have 155 other matches for bone marrow.

She said the most matches shed ever seen was 30. She had worked there for 10 years, Hart said.

Eventually from those 155 matches, it was narrowed down to 10 and then again narrowed down to two. Eventually, Trevor had his matchMarius Kunz, then 19, and living in Germany.

Fast forward five years, the last three of which Trevor spent in remission, and the two finally meet face to face.

Kunz flew in Saturday and plans to spend the week with Trevor, now 20. Sunday was a special picnic for the extended Hart family to share with Kunz.

Its so he can meet the family because he is family now, Hart said. Hes like another son to me.

Which is why when Kunz arrived Saturday at the airport in Philadelphia, he was welcomed as such.

Trevor, who admitted that he is a little shy around people, immediately pulled Kunz into a hug.

I just started yelling, This is the kid who saved my life! I yelled it to everyone at the airport. I even got it on video, Trevor laughed.

It was a special moment for Trevor to meet Kunz face-to-face. Kunz not only donated the necessary cells once, but he also went back to the hospital twice after that since Trevor had relapsed 11 months after the initial bone marrow transplant. The last visit to the hospital required surgery on Kunzs part, which put him in the hospital for two nights and involved a recovery for one to two weeks.

Kunz, who stood in a makeshift bedroom in the Harts South Middleton Township home, shrugged about what he did to give Trevor what was needed.

They told me Trevor needed it, Kunz said simply, noting that he had first gotten the call about being a donor three weeks after he entered the military in Germany. The military helped to check my health (while I was recovering).

Kunz, now 24, didnt give much thought for anything he had to sacrifice for Trevor and instead was far more interested in what he would get to do and see with Trevor during his first week in the United States.

Knowing that it would be Kunzs first trip to the states, Trevor said he wanted to make sure they packed a full schedule. The 10-day trip includes visits to Philadelphia, New York City and Washington D.C., as well as some local attractions like Hersheypark and a tour of Trevors favorite places in Boiling Springs.

I think we knew for about two months in advance (of Kunzs trip to their home). The planning has been pretty stressful, but its been in a good way, Trevor said. I just want to make sure hes happy. Its the only thing I can do. How can I repay someone like that for saving my life?

The end-of-summer vacation for Kunz likely wont be the last time the two of them will see each other. There are already plans in the works for Trevor to take a trip to Germany to Kunzs neck of the woods.

Though Kunz had registered himself with DKMS out of Germany to be a bone marrow donor, Trevor was matched through Be The Match Registry, a national marrow donor program. For more information, go to https://bethematch.org.
Administrators from some of Cumberland Countys school districts tried to get out to the schools yesterday to check in with teachers and students, saying hello and painting a picture for themselves on what goes down on the first day back.

You never know whats going to happen on the first day, said Cumberland Valley School Districts Superintendent Frederick Withum III in between visits to schools within the district. Its been a great start. I was in so many classrooms where kids just picked up the routine. They were excited to be back in school, and they fell right into the swing of things.

While the first day of school may have gone accordingly, the lead up to Monday has been everything but, and thats true for not only Cumberland Valley, but for the Carlisle Area School District as well.

Enrollment at CV has boomed since 2010, but between 2014 and this year, Withum said theres been an increase of nearly 1,000 students. That surge causes various schools within the district to make space where there necessarily wasnt any before to accommodate the influx of students.

Our biggest problem is finding classroom space, he said. In preparation for the school year we had to clean out some storage areas to create class space, conference rooms, shop areas were cleaned out for space. We added two classrooms in the library at Good Hope Middle School.

According to Withum, classes in his district are all either at or slightly above their thresholds.

Kindergarten and first-grade classes average about 22 students. Grades 3-5 see a gradual increase so that fifth-grade classrooms have about 28. Sixth-grade through 12th-grade classes are packed to about 30 students.

Withum said the growth occurs every summer and is expected at this point. Its just another challenge school district administration must handle to ensure the first day runs as smoothly as theyd like it to, which, he said, it has.

Like Withum, CASDs Superintendent John Friend was going school to school Monday, and agreed with his CV counterpart in the fact that things run smoothly on the first day of school because of all of the preparation that goes into the weeks leading into it.

On Monday alone, CASD saw approximately 50 students register, and the intent is to get them started today.

Of those 50 students registered on Monday, Friend said none of them were residents from the U.S. Army War College, which sees about 300 students enter the school district each year.

We work directly with the War College and their approximate 300 students from there. Most are American military family students and some are international fellows, Friend said.

Friend added that CASD holds an orientation on the War Colleges campus to help transition the families and students to life in the schools. Acclimating those students is of high importance to district administration and teachers, and while they may not be dealing with the influx that CV is, both schools ramp up toward the end of the summer to ensure students first day of school is smooth for both students and teachers.
The vessel commenced work in Brazil on 14 August 2016, with operations in for Petrobras in Brazil being done through its Brazilian joint venture 50-50 company with Seadrill, Sapura Navegacao Maritima (SNM).

SNM was awarded two long-term major contracts, worth a total of $4.1bn, by Petrobras in November 2011 and June 2013.

The contracts were to build and operate a total of six PLVs for offshore deepwater flexible pipelay work in Brazil over a period of up to eight years, with an extension option of up to another eight years.

Sapura Rubi joins five other fully integrated pipelay vessels that were delivered in stages and are all now working in Brazils deepwater fields.

The commencement of work for Sapura Rubi marks the completion of our building program of six pipelay vessels to our customer, Petrobras, to operate in the ultradeepwater regions in Brazil.

All vessels are now in operation, on time and on budget, highlighting our continued commitment to operate efficiently and effectively, said SapKencana president and group ceo Shahril Shamsuddin.
British newspaper The Guardian recently published an extraordinary report on brutal living conditions at the Australian detention camp at Nauru Island. The cache of more than 2,000 leaked incident reports has generated worldwide outrage. Laura Ling has the details in today's Seeker Daily dispatch.

The set of documents referred to as the Nauru files reveal detailed accounts of violence, child abuse, sexual assault and other criminal offenses endured by refugees and asylum seekers. The Nauru Regional Processing Center is one of two isolated, offshore detention centers used by the Australian government to detain those who try to enter the country by boat.

The leaked reports were compiled by guards, case workers, medical officers and others who worked at Nauru over the years. Until the recent disclosures, little was known about conditions in the detention centers. Employees are legally prohibited from discussing facility policies, and detainees are not allowed access to phones or social media.

RELATED: Why Is Australia So Anti-Immigrant?

The internal incident reports were never intended to see the light of day, and the details are disturbing. According to the leaked documents, detainee families at Nauru endure prison-like conditions and regular, systemic abuse from guards, locals and other asylum seekers.

Shockingly, more than 50 percent of the incidents involve children, even though minors represented just 18 percent of the detainee population at the time of the reports. Nauru and Manus, Australia's other offshore detention center, house about 1,300 people at any given time.

The documents also reveal that the Australian government was aware of conditions at the facility, yet failed to take any action. Australian officials say that the leaked documents are uncorroborated and unconfirmed.

In response to the Guardian expose, human rights groups around the world have demanded immediate action. Legal, medical and religious organizations have also joined the call for change, as well as two official United Nations agencies.

Check out Laura's report for more details, including some disturbing indications that the recent disclosure may be just the tip of the iceberg.

-- Glenn McDonald

Check out Discovery GO!

Learn More:

The Guardian: The Lives of Asylum Seekers in Detention Detailed in a Unique Database

BBC: Australia to Close Manus Island Asylum Centre

NPR: Claims Probed of Brutal Conditions for Refugees on Island of Nauru
But before we go getting too excited, the rumors of an "Earth-like" exoplanet are just that, rumors. And even the term "Earth-like" is quite misleading.

Should this exoplanet have any Earth-like qualities, this historic astronomical discovery could transform our outlook of the galaxy.

Though the announcement is vague, there's excitement surrounding the possibility of a potentially habitable extrasolar planet (or exoplanet) orbiting the sun's nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri. The red dwarf star is located only 4.25 light-years away and, if confirmed, the world would be the closest confirmed exoplanet to our solar system.

In a press notification on Monday, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said only that they "will host a press conference at its Headquarters in Garching, near Munich, Germany" and that the ESO's Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, will open the event. The press conference will start at 1 p.m. Central European Time (CET) -- 7 a.m. EDT/4 a.m. PDT. There was no mention of the scientists who would be in attendance or what astronomical topic the event would focus on.

On Wednesday, Aug. 24, we could find out whether or not the recent rumors of an Earth-like exoplanet existing on our interstellar doorstep are real.

According to the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel on Aug. 12, the discovery was made by the ESO's La Silla Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile. La Silla is home to several telescopes, including instruments that are designed to seek out planets orbiting other stars.

For example, La Silla's High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS, has been studying the light from stars in the hope of detecting the very slight spectroscopic "wobble" caused by exoplanets gravitationally tugging at them as they orbit. This high-precision technique of exoplanet hunting is known as the "radial velocity" method. If there's a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, though a Earth-sized planet would have a minuscule effect on its parent star, perhaps HARPS has been able to detect the slight wobble as Proxima Centauri is so near.

RELATED: New, Nearby Earth-Like Planet Discovered

As exciting as this potential discovery is, "Earth-like" carries a lot of caveats. The term is often bandied around to describe an exoplanet, of approximately Earth dimensions orbiting within a given star's habitable zone. The habitable zone is the distance from a star where it's not too hot and not too cold for water on a hypothetical rocky world to remain in a liquid state. On Earth, where there's liquid water, there's life, so finding an alien world in any star's habitable zone is exciting for the possibilities of extraterrestrial biology.

But there's a lot more to Earth than simply being in the right place around the sun that makes it habitable. Earth is also rocky, has a thick atmosphere, has a protective magnetosphere etc., all ingredients for a bona fide life-giving world. The only planet we know that is Earth-like is Earth.

Should there really be a world that approximates Earth mass/size at a distance that could allow water to exist in a liquid state on its hypothetically rocky surface, that's all we'll know. We won't know whether it has an atmosphere or a magnetosphere. We won't know if it possesses water.

And as Proxima is a red dwarf star, which is cooler than our sun, a habitable zone planet would need to orbit very close to the star, which presents the problem of tidal locking -- a very un-Earth-like quality!

RELATED: 'Air Conditioning' Could Make Exoplanets Habitable

So if there has been an exoplanetary discovery at Proxima, we'll need to wait for more powerful observatories before we'll know just how Earth-like it is, but it will be perfectly placed for us to astronomically study. It's not such a stretch to think that when NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is launched in 2018 that such a world would be high on the list of targets.

We could decipher if the Proxima exoplanet possesses an atmosphere, if this atmosphere contains water and ifit contains any traces of molecules that would hint at some kind of extraterrestrial biology.

For now, this is all speculation, but Wednesday could be the historic day when we start pondering an exiting new world a mere galactic stone's throw from Earth.
HARRISBURG  Gun-control politics put down more roots in Pennsylvania's race for U.S. Senate on Monday as former Democratic congresswoman Gabby Giffords endorsed the re-election bid of Republican incumbent Pat Toomey over Democratic challenger Katie McGinty.

Giffords, who was gravely wounded in a 2011 mass shooting in Arizona, and her husband, Mark Kelly, made the endorsement in an editorial on behalf of their organization, Americans for Responsible Solutions.

Toomey, they said, "broke from the gun lobby" in a 2013 vote to expand background checks to gun purchases online and at gun shows. The bill - a response to the shooting rampage at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 - ultimately failed amid Republican opposition.

Gun control is already the subject of two TV ads running in Pennsylvania's U.S. Senate race, which is viewed as crucial to determining control of the chamber next year. Polls show a neck-and-neck race between Toomey and McGinty.

McGinty's campaign said that her positions on gun control are more in line with Giffords' and that Toomey has hardly strayed from the National Rifle Association's positions in a flurry of recent votes.

On Monday at the Pennsylvania Press Club in Harrisburg, McGinty attacked Toomey as doing little more than lending his name to the background-check legislation before abandoning it. He touts his "A rating" with the NRA and twice voted against measures to prevent terrorism suspects from buying guns, McGinty said.

"He's not been a fighter for common-sense gun safety," McGinty said.

Democrats also noted that McGinty supports a ban on the sale of assault weapons and limits on magazine capacity. Toomey does not.

In a statement, Toomey said he was honored by the endorsement and committed to "bridging the partisan divide" to close the terrorist loophole, expand background checks to gun shows and online sales, and fund research into gun violence.

"I look forward to introducing a bill next Congress that works to achieve these ends," Toomey said.

Toomey also is endorsed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, another gun control advocate.

Toomey opposed Democrats' bills to close the terrorist loophole because, he said, of the barriers they would create for someone who is mistakenly put on a terrorist watch list and blocked from buying a gun.

Rather, Toomey supported a Republican measure to block such purchases, legislation that Democrats defeated and criticized as being ineffective. GOP leaders did not allow a vote on a proposed compromise bill Toomey drafted in June, and he sided with Democrats on another proposed compromise sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. The NRA opposed Collins' bill, and Republicans defeated it.

Five weeks before the 2010 election, the NRA gave Toomey an "A'' rating and endorsed him in his race against Democrat Joe Sestak. It has not issued an endorsement of Toomey's re-election bid or updated his rating, and a spokesman would not say whether the NRA plans to endorse Toomey in this campaign.

In one of the gun-control TV ads running in Pennsylvania, a national Democratic group, Senate Majority PAC, portrays McGinty as stronger on gun control and shows video of Toomey last month telling an audience, "I have had a perfect record with the NRA."

In the other ad, run by Bloomberg's group, the daughter of the principal slain in the Sandy Hook shooting says she is grateful for Toomey's willingness to defy GOP leaders on legislation to expand gun background checks.
This fall, certain neighborhoods around Austin, Texas -- some of which don't have a single grocery store -- will gain access to farm-fresh organic produce, thanks to this pilot program.

Farmshare Austin, the non-profit behind the idea, recently received a $50,000 grant from the city to help launch the innovative program. Essentially a farmers market on wheels, the vehicle will make designated weekly stops in neighborhoods that currently lack access to organic fruits and vegetables, both in Austin, including Hornsby Bend, and other parts of Travis County, such as Del Valle.

"Large areas of the city and county do not have full-service grocery stores, and it can be difficult for people in these places to get fresh, affordable food for themselves and their families," Taylor Cook, Farmshare Austin's executive director, tells Modern Farmer.

RELATED: Massive Urban Farm Is Coming to Detroit

The market will target four areas, for now, that need the service most, and it will park in each district through an afternoon and evening. Cook says besides offering fresh seasonal produce from the organization's 7-acre organic farm, they will also offer other staples, like cooking oil, on hand, so residents will have access to everything they need to cook a meal.

The program accepts SNAP benefits and participates in the Sustainable Food Center'sDouble Dollars program, allowing consumers using food assistance to double their buyer power for fruits and vegetables. The pilot program will begin next month and run through the end of December. Cook says they hope to expand the mobile farmers market program in the coming years.

This rollout is just one of the latest mobile farmers markets to launch across the country. Folks have launched similarly creative solutions in places as diverse as New Orleans, Washington DC, and central Arkansas.

RELATED: Man Incubates Supermarket Eggs, Now Has Cute Pet Quail

At Farmshare Austin, the mobile market also provides a learning opportunity. Founded in 2013 to train the next generation of farmers in central Texas and to address local food access issues, among other objectives, the organization operates a 20-week organic farming program called "Farmer Starter" in Garfield, about 20 minutes southeast of Austin. There, students learn how to manage a sustainable farming business, and those same trainees will staff the mobile market as part of their coursework.

"Everyone's really excited about this program," says Cook. "It's a big deal for many people to finally have easy access to fresh, local produce."

More From Modern Farmer:

This article originally appeared on Modern Farmer, all rights reserved.

WATCH VIDEO: Will Meatless Meat Be The Future Of Food?
In the latest indignity for the human species, scientists in Switzerland have developed a robot that can consistently defeat experienced players in the time-honored game of foosball. It's depressing is what it is, but I suppose we must soldier on and report the news.

The foosball robot has actually been in development for several years now, as a kind of side project for grad students in the Automatic Control Laboratory at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL).

RELATED: Realistic Robot Lady Cheerfully Agrees To Destroy Humans

It works like this: A high-speed camera under the foosball table's transparent floor tracks the ball's movement at 300 frames per second. Those images are then processed by a computer which sends actuation commands to an attached system of motors. The motors, in turn, are connected to the handles -- the spinny things, if you want to get into technical jargon.
The Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious book that has frustrated code breakers and linguists for a century, will be "cloned" in 898 copies to help experts decipher it.

A small Spanish publishing company has secured the rights to make exact replicas of the manuscript, which is currently locked away in a vault at Yale University's Beinecke Library.

The copies will faithfully reflect every stain, hole and sewn-up tear in the parchment.

Pages from the book are already available online, but touching the manuscript is an experience the Internet can't capture, Juan Jose Garcia, director of the publishing house Siloe, told Agence France-Presse.

RELATED: Mysterious Manuscript Has Genuine Message

"It's a book that has such an aura of mystery that when you see it for the first time ... it fills you with an emotion that is very hard to describe," Garcia said.

Siloe, which specializes in producing facsimiles of old manuscripts, will make the 898 Voynich replicas. The clone number is in line with the coded mystery of the manuscript - 898 is a palindrome, a figure that reads the same backwards or forwards.

"Cloning" the manuscript will take 18 months and will involve the use of a special paper made from a paste developed by the company.

"We call it the Voynich Challenge," Garcia said.

He added that Siloe plans to sell each copy for $7,800 - $8,900 each. Around 300 pre-orders have already been received.

WATCH:How Science Reveals Hidden Secrets in Art
Twisted Roots, a beauty supply retailer in Eastern Market

Block Party, a building on Livernois that will house two restaurants and the Live6 Alliance

Detroit Vegan Soul, a West Village restaurant opening a second location on Grand River

Norma G's, a Caribbean cuisine food truck opening a brick-and-mortar location on East Jefferson

Live Cycle Delight, a cycling studio opening in West Village

Amaze-Enjoyment, an early childhood center at 20067 John R Street

Guadalajara #2, a butcher shop expanding into a full-service facility in Southwest

Lil Brilliant Mindz, an east side daycare and Head Start facility

Beau Bien Fine Foods, an artisanal jam, fruit preserve, chutney, and mustard maker expanding in Eastern Market

Meta Physical Wellness Center, an affordable holistic spa opening in Corktown

Third Wave Music, a music instrument retailer opening in the Forest Arms building in Midtown

Detroit continues to grow its base of entrepreneurs through its Motor City Match program, awarding 11 more grants ranging from $15,000 to $75,000 to area businesses. The awards complete the fourth round of Motor City Match, marking one full year for the quarterly program.That pipeline of entrepreneurs, as Detroit Economic Growth Corporation CEO Rodrick Miller calls it, consists largely of Detroiters. According to figures released by Motor City Match, 64 percent of MCM winning businesses are owned by Detroiters, 72 percent are minority-owned, and 68 percent are woman-owned.In the program's first year, Motor City Match has awarded $2 million in grants to 40 small businesses, leveraging over $13 million in total investment in the city.This round of grant winners include:"These are the kinds of businesses that help to create complete neighborhoods where people want to live," says Mayor Mike Duggan. "Motor City Match is helping dozens of Detroit entrepreneurs live their dream owning their own business while being a real part of our citys neighborhood comeback."In addition to the 11 businesses awarded grants, seven others will receive free design and architectural services, 26 have been connected with landlords, and 50 more will receive free business planning support.The next round of the Motor City Match application process begins Sep. 1 and closes Oct. 1 Got a development news story to share? Email MJ Galbraith here or send him a tweet @mikegalbraith
Landline Creative Labs' plan to create a complex of nine low-cost creative studio spaces in Ypsilanti has received a big hand from Ann Arbor SPARK in the form of an Innovate Ypsi grant.

Mark Maynard, co-founder of the $650,000 mixed-use development in downtown Ypsi, says the $56,000 performance-based grant will help with the costs of getting the project up and running. The Landline team has completed demolition in the former Michigan Bell building the project will occupy, and is now turning towards building out studio spaces.

It'll help tremendously, and it's really helped us to move quickly, Maynard says. "Today we have carpenters in the space, a historic window restoration team, plumbers, and electricians."

Expected to open in early fall, Landline will complement the SPARK East Incubator in Ypsi, according to Jennifer Olmstead, a senior business development manager at SPARK who oversees the Innovative Ypsi program.

In order for downtown Ypsi to be successful, it needs to develop a critical mass of successes and a mix of businesses, retail and residents, Olmstead says.

SPARK's support for the project isn't necessarily limited to providing funds. SPARK has also helped Landline secure a tax incentive from the city of Ypsilanti. Olmstead says SPARK is committed to helping Landline, and similar efforts in the area, succeed through access to its range of development and talent services.

"The success of Landline Creative and the momentum it is building in Ypsi is an important next step for downtown Ypsi, and certainly a story that Ann Arbor SPARK can use to highlight the types of businesses that can achieve success in Ypsi," she says. "Entrepreneurs at all levels...are looking for communities that provide a sense of place and affordable rents and downtown Ypsi has all of these ingredients."
PITTSTON  Ed Zimmo Zimmerman Thursday returned from Vietnam for the third  and hopefully  last time.

Zimmerman served with the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, having spent 13 months in country and participating in some 26 battles during a 13-month tour in 1968-69.

In 2014, he guided a group of U.S. Military personnel to the exact spot where he last saw two fallen Marines after the 73-day siege at Khe Sanh in April, 1968. Those two Marines  Pfc. Anthony John (Tony) Pepper, 20, of Richmond, Virginia, and Cpl. James Mitchell Trimble, 19, of Eureka, California  were never recovered and never returned home to their families.

On Thursday, Zimmerman again returned from Vietnam to a waiting crowd of family and friends after helping a U.S. Military Search Team locate the site where the Marines were left behind.

Zimmerman said he had no problem directing the U.S. governments Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, search team to the exact spot where he last saw Pepper and Trimble. The search team will now begin excavating the site for up to 30 days to locate the remains of the two soldiers.

They want to find them as much as I do, Zimmerman said of the search team members. Theyll do whatever it takes.

The 67-year-old Bear Creek resident, who formerly resided in Edwardsville, left Aug. 10 for Vietnam to assist the recovery effort to search and, hopefully, recover the remains of his two Marine brothers.

As Zimmerman walked slowly through the terminal at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport Thursday, his wife, Cathy, their three daughters, Lori Kosierowski, Leah OBoyle and Nadine Burney, his grandchildren and several friends waited with open arms.

Welcome back, Marine, said Don Wilmot, of Sterling, a fellow Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam.

Zimmerman appeared a little weary from the long plane ride and the emotional experience of having the opportunity to get closer to finding Pepper and Trimble, ending a nine-year ordeal during which he managed to convince the U.S. military to undertake the search.

Its really been a journey, he said as his family took turns hugging him. Its been a non-stop whirlwind from the time I left.

Zimmerman was a 19-year-old Marine helping his unit clean up after a battle at Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, on April 6, 1968. A member of F Company, 2nd Battalion of the 26th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, he was with his unit when he saw the bodies of the two Marines in a ravine. They were members of G Company, the other unit in the battle at Khe Sanh.

The image of the two Marines lying in that ravine has been with Zimmerman since 1968, and it heightened in 2009 when he learned their bodies had never been recovered. Since then, he has devoted much of his life to convincing the government and the military to return to the site to search for their remains.

Zimmerman said he has had many restless, sleepless nights and plenty of nightmares over the years. Finding the two Marines will bring peace to him and closure to the families of the two soldiers.

Im still trying to filter it all, he said. While I was there, a lot of memories came back to me.

Wilmot reminded Zimmerman of the 58,000 Americans killed in Vietnam.

They only got a one-way ticket, Wilmot said.

Zimmerman will be notified when the remains of the two Marines are found. He plans to attend their burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

The families of Pepper and Trimble have been supportive in his efforts and keep in touch with him. He wishes he could have stayed in Vietnam to aid the search.

They wouldnt let me dig, he said. Ive done all I could. Its up to the search team now.
Press Release

August 21, 2016 PANGILINAN SEEKS HELP FOR FARMERS, AS HABAGAT DESTROYS P280.9 MILLION WORTH OF CROPS MANILA - With the recent southwest monsoon or habagat causing P280.9 million worth of damage in crops, Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan on Sunday sought help for the affected farmers, particularly in the immediate release of calamity assistance, crop insurance, and climate-resilient seeds. "Agaran dapat ang pag-release ng calamity assistance para makapagtanim muli ang ating mga magsasaka. Pag nagtanim sila sa mas lalong madaling panahon, mas mabilis silang makakatayo sa sariling paa at makaka-recover. Ang agarang ayuda ay mangangahulugan ng mas mabilis na pagbangon muli (We call for the immediate release of calamity assistance so our farmers can plant again. The sooner they are able to plant, the quicker they will be able to get back on their feet and bounce back and recover. Immediate assistance will mean quicker recovery)," said Pangilinan, who is Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food. Pangilinan cited figures from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), and noted that agriculture bore the brunt of damages at P280,877,989.38, or 98.9 percent of total P283,993,989.38 worth of damages. The rest was to infrastructure. In its August 20, 2016 situation report, NDRRMC said a total of P14,246,030.42 worth of relief assistance has been provided the affected families in Regions 1 (Ilocos Region), 3 (Central Luzon), Negros Island Region, National Capital Region, and Cordillera Autonomous Region. "Yan ay 5 porsyento lang ng pinsala. Yan ay napakaliit (That is only 5 percent of the damage. That is too little)," Pangilinan said. The senator said the crop insurance system in the Philippines should be fixed so that more farmers are covered, and affected farmers are correctly identified. "Dapat na ring i-release ng mga scientists sa International Rice Research Institute ang mga climate-resilient seeds na naimbento nila (Scientists at the International Rice Research Institute can also roll out the climate-resilient seeds they have developed)," Pangilinan added. According to the same NDRRMC report, the habagat since August 8 caused damage in Regions 1 (Ilocos Region), 3 (Central Luzon), Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR), and National Capital Region (NCR). "Marami sa ating nasa Maynila ang naperwisyo ng habagat. Binaha tayo. Walang pasok ang mga bata. Nagkakasakit tayo. Pero para sa ating mga magsasaka sa hilaga ng Maynila, kabuhayan ang nawala (Many of us here in Manila were inconvenienced by the southwest monsoon. Our streets were flooded. Classes were suspended for the children. Many of us got sick. But our farmers north of Manila, they lost their livelihood)," said Pangilinan. The same NDRRMC report said the recent habagat resulted in 19 deaths, 12 injuries, and seven missing persons in Regions 3 (Central Luzon), Calabarzon (Cavite-Laguna-Batangas-Rizal-Quezon), Mimaropa (Mindoro-Marinduque-Romblon-Palawan), National Capital Region, and 6 (Western Visayas). "Alam po natin ang paghihirap na dinaranas ng ating magsasaka tuwing nasasalanta ng mga sakuna. Madalas hindi na sila makaahon pagkatapos masalanta, nababaon sila sa utang sa mga usurero. Kailangang mas maayos ang ating crop insurance para sa mga magsasaka, na pinakamahirap sa ating lipunan bagamat sila ang nagpapakain sa atin (We know the hardships that our farmers suffer every time there's a disaster. They usually cannot recover after a disaster, deep in debt to loan sharks. We should fix our crop insurance for our farmers, who are among the poorest in our society despite feeding us)," Pangilinan said. The government must also prepare for La Nina, which according to the state-run weather bureau PAGASA will be experienced in the country in a mild form starting September, he said. La Nina, which is characterized by more rains, causes flooding in low-lying agricultural lands, extensive damage to standing crops, increase in pest and disease, and coastal erosion due to strong waves and coastal flooding, among others.
Press Release

August 21, 2016 VILLANUEVA WANTS TO ENSURE BETTER JOB OPPORTUNITIES FOR RETURNING OFWs FROM SAUDI In cognizance of the ongoing economic upheaval in Saudi Arabia after prices of crude plummeted to its lowest in the past 12 years, Senator Joel Villanueva has urged government to ensure that there will be better job opportunities for returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Villanueva, who chairs the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resources Development, is pushing for the expansion of government scholarship programs for returning OFWs especially in skills development or technical vocational education. "Most, if not all, of our OFWs go abroad because of lack of opportunity in the Philippines. Some of them do not even consider returning to the Philippines due to shortage of jobs that would suit their skills and financial needs. One way in which we can assure them of a better life here in the country is through provision of assistance and incentives to OFWs who will invest in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) by giving them access to resources and by developing their capacity for innovation and potential to grow," Villanueva explained. Previous reports state that thousands of Filipinos in Saudi Arabia are at risk of losing their jobs due to a huge budget shortfall and falling oil prices being faced by the Middle Eastern country. At present, there are about one million Filipino migrant workers in Saudi Arabia. "We urge the government to strengthen its support services to our OFWs. As of now, what we have are DOLE ASSISTWELL centers where they can inquire about the availability of jobs in the country. However, we won't stop there. We already filed a bill which institutionalizes cluster-based programs and projects through inter-local cooperation and people's participation. This bill enjoins LGUs to gather their resources and coordinate with the private sector to bring in investments and create more jobs," the senator noted. Recently, officials from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) met with representatives of the Saudi Ministry of Labor and Social Development to address the plight of stranded OFWs. DFA teams were also deployed to provide humanitarian, legal and medical assistance to the OFWs. Prior to the said meeting, Saudi King Salman Bin Abdullaziz Al Saud issued an order waiving penalties for around 11,000 stranded OFWs due to expired working permits. He also ordered officials of the Saudi government to facilitate the transfer of affected OFWs to other companies with vacancies. With the lifting of penalties, OFWs with expired working permits can choose whether to reapply with their employers or avail of the government's repatriation program. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte already issued a directive ordering the repatriation of stranded OFWs. Along with the said order is the immediate provision of assistance to the victims. "This crisis has brought great distress not only to our OFWs but also to the families who depend on them. We commend government's efforts in taking action on the plight of our overseas workers. However, we must not only provide a band-aid solution in the form of giving them the assistance they need while recovering from financial turmoil. We must also ensure that our skilled workers, in the long run, would be able to find viable jobs here in the country so that they won't be forced to leave their families in search of greener pastures in a foreign country. Greener pastures should be found here." Villanueva said.
Press Release

August 22, 2016 Cayetano: Duterte's anti-drug war has started to restore order in PH

Kicker: 'EJK' being used loosely to discredit admin Contrary to what the enemies of real change are claiming, Filipino people now feel safer after the Duterte administration waged an all-out war against illegal drugs. Senator Alan Peter Cayetano had this to say during last Monday's (August 22) Senate Justice Committee hearing on the alleged extrajudicial killings of drug suspects under the current administration. During his five-minute opening statement, Cayetano clarified that there is no significant increase in the number of killings under the Duterte government, as opposed to what the public is being made to believe. In fact, he added, crime volume even decreased a month after the President assumed power. Citing PNP data, the senator said the country's overall crime volume already dropped by 5,522 incidents after the first 31 days of the new administration. "The old norm was that drug lords and their cohorts acted in impunity..." Cayetano said. "Ngayon po, the respect and fear of the law have been restored. Drug lords and their supporters are on the run. People are beginning to feel safe. [There is a] renewed trust in the government under President Duterte," he added. "EJKs being used loosely to discredit the gov't"' Meanwhile, Cayetano also expressed doubts regarding the justice committee's intention to conduct a probe against officials of the Philippine National Police (PNP), who are in the frontline of the administration's ongoing fight against illegal drugs. He contested claims that the new government's anti-crime and -drug campaign is solely to blame for the alleged spate of murders in the country. Cayetano lamented how critics of the Duterte administration are wrongfully branding all drug-related casualties as 'extrajudicial killings' (EJKs). To prove his point, he cited Administrative Order No. 35 under the Aquino administration, which presented a more specific definition of EJKs. Under the said order, killings involving common criminals were not classified as EJKs. The senator said before the Duterte administration, most murders involving common crimes were merely classified as "riding-in-tandem" cases. In fact, of the 1,400 people killed during the Aquino administration, only 394 were categorized as EJKs, he cited. "Are we [therefore] using the term 'extrajudicial killings' loosely to discredit the PNP and Duterte administration? I was hoping that we could educate the people more, para hindi sila ma-mislead na lahat ng patayan [ngayon] ay extrajudicial killings," Cayetano said. The senator tagged such efforts as mere attempts to undermine the administration's continuous campaign to end the country's perennial problem on illegal drugs. "[The Filipino] people support the anti-drug war, criminals don't. Ang mga kriminal at drug pusher ay gumagastos ngayon... sa kahit ano para i-discredit ang administrasyon na ito, para matuloy ang kanilang multi-billion na negosyo," Cayetano said.
BRICS Women Parliamentarians forum passes Jaipur Declaration

Published: August 22, 2016

BRICS Women Parliamentarians forum has unanimously passed the Jaipur Declaration on the concluding day of the Forums meeting held in Jaipur.

The 19-point declaration was adopted at the two-day meeting of BRICS Women Parliamentarians forum held in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

The meeting was attended by heads and members of delegation from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Key highlights of Jaipur Declaration

Strengthen strategic partnership between members on all three dimensions of sustainable development viz., economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection.

Parliamentarians expressed concern over the climate change on ecological systems, biodiversity and as well as food security (i.e. food production).

Members will focus to work out integrated solutions to preserve and protect ecological systems and forests.

It also called upon international financial institutions (FIs) to extend support to developing and least developed countries.

The FIs should help developing and least developed countries gain easier access to new and affordable technologies as envisaged under UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Paris Agreement.

Emphasized the need to inform, communicate and educate citizens about developmental schemes.

Emphasized on plans for incorporating gender concerns and greater involvement of women parliamentarians in integrating citizens in the development process.

Month: Current Affairs - August, 2016

Topics: BRICS  International  Jaipur Declaration  National  Women Related Issues

Latest E-Books
Press Release

August 22, 2016 De Lima laments 'war on drugs' as excuse for murder Sen. Leila M. de Lima today expressed serious concern about using the administration's all-out campaign against illegal drugs to kill suspected drug offenders by vigilantes and scalawags within the law enforcement agencies. De Lima, who chairs the Senate justice and human rights committee, aired her concern at the start of the Senate's public hearing on the unabated spate of extrajudicial and vigilante killings carried out in the campaign against illegal drugs. "What is particularly worrisome is that the campaign against (illegal) drugs seems to be an excuse for some law enforcers and other elements like vigilantes to commit murder with impunity," she said. "Hindi lahat ng nagaganap na pagpatay sa operasyon ng mga pulis ay walang legal na batayan sa paggamit ng lethal force. Masyado lang marami ngayon ang napapatay sa mga engkwentro kumpara sa mga nakaraang panahon para hindi magduda kung nasusunod ba talaga ang rules of engagement," she added. The neophyte senator explained that there are some indications that some lawless elements or vigilantes might just be exploiting the government's campaign against illegal drugs to kill their own cohorts or carry out their nefarious activities. "Mayroong mga nakikisakay at nakikisabay lang sa lehitimong operasyon ng kapulisan para makatakas sa batas at para pagtakpan ang kanilang partisipasyon sa kalakalan ng droga," she said. De Lima also noted the testimony made by PNP Director General Ronald de la Rosa at the Senate Committee on Public Order and Illegal Drugs last Aug. 18 that there are 665 drug suspects killed in police operations from July 1 to August 15. "But what is even more disturbing is that in the same hearing, the PNP Chief stated that there are 899 drug-related deaths committed by unknown killers during the same period," she said. "Grabe ito! Katumbas po yun ng tatlumpu't limang tao na patay kada araw (This is serious! It means 35 people are being killed every day)," she added, mindful of the differing accounts tallied by some media organizations. At yesterday's Senate hearing, however, PNP Chief De La Rosa told the senators that from July 1 to Aug. 22, there are 1,779 suspected drug offenders who were so far killed, 712 of whom were from legitimate police operations while 1,062 by vigilantes. The Senate justice committee is scheduled to resume its public hearing tomorrow (August 23) and is expected to hear PNP Director General De La Rosa's report as well as the testimonies of other witnesses and invited resource persons.
Press Release

August 22, 2016 GORDON TO PRESIDE HEARING ON CREATION OF MINDANAO RAILWAY TODAY Taking another step towards the creation of a railway system in Mindanao that would spur development in the island, Senator Richard J. Gordon will conduct a hearing today to discuss proposed measures calling for the creation of an agency that would oversee the construction and operation of the Mindanao railway. Gordon, chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Corporations and Public Enterprises, will preside the hearing which will be conducted jointly with the Committees on Public Services; Ways and Means; and Finance. "Having a railway in Mindanao would bring in much-needed development in the island that we call the Land of Promise. Aside from providing cost-efficient and speedy means of travel for people, trains also facilitate trade and commerce through the transport of cargo and agricultural products, promoting tourism, providing jobs, and relieving traffic, among others. Trains contributed largely to the economic development of countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Korea and others. In America, the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 made possible a six-day trip from New York to San Francisco, helped shape the landscape and geography, brought thousands of westward-bound immigrants to the American West and opened new townships," the senator pointed out. "If we have a train in Mindanao, the construction, alone, would provide jobs. Once it is operational, the farmers there will be able to move their products easier. It would create opportunities for Mindanaoans. I have always believed that the rebellion in Mindanao is spurred by the lack of opportunities produced by the absence of proper governance there. It is difficult for farmers to bring their produce to the market and there is insufficient means of livelihood that's why people there turn to guns," he added. Aside from proposed measures calling for the creation of an agency that will spearhead the construction and operation of a Mindanao railway, Gordon said proposed measures calling for the restoration and rehabilitation of the existing lines of the Philippine National Railways will also be discussed. "We already had trains as early as the 1880s. We had trains going from the Tutuban Central Terminal to as far as Damortis in La Union and Legazpi City in Bicol. We even had trains in Cebu, Panay and Negros. But we let them go. If we improve our railways system and create new ones, we will not only spur development, but also decongest Metro Manila and the other congested urbanized cities across the country. It will also promote tourism. President Gloria Arroyo had the right idea when she made an effort to get the North Rail Project underway," he noted. Gordon's Senate Bill No. 103 or the Mindanao Railway Act, which aims to create the Mindanao Railway Corporation, an agency that would be authorized to establish and maintain an efficient railway system, will be among the proposed measures to be taken up. "To invest money and time in the Mindanao Railway System would be risky beyond anything ever before attempted, but when it is completed, it would link the entire island of Mindanao, forever changing the nature of Mindanao's politics and economy," he said. Gordon has long been proposing the development of what is tagged as the country's Food Basket, thus he authored Republic Act 9996 or the Mindanao Development Authority Act of 2010.
Press Release

August 22, 2016 OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR RICHARD J. GORDON

AT THE ORGANIZATIONAL AND FIRST GOCC COMMITTEE MEETING

22 AUGUST 2016, 10AM, COMMITTEE ROOM #3 Mindanao is dubbed as the "land of promise" because of its rich biodiversity and natural resources. However, the major island in the south of the country experiences rampant poverty with 60% percent of the entire population living below the poverty line and nearly a third of the population battling with hunger on a daily basis. - the Social Weather Stations conducted a survey and Mindanao has the highest incidence of 23%. These challenges to development are compounded by clan wars, kidnapping, piracy, corruption, regular clashes and killings. And yet the people of Mindanao live in a land that is rich with agriculture (banana, pineapple, cacao, coffee and rubber), sea products, minerals (copper and gold) and energy products (natural gas and oil The solution is a train - a Mindanao Railway Project that is highly needed to boost the economic development in the region. The railway system is expected to connect major urban centers such as Cagayan de Oro, Iligan, Zamboanga, Dipolog, Butuan, Surigao, Davao, and General Santos to facilitate the movement of goods and people in an efficient and cost effective manner. Now that there is a President, a Senate President and a House Speaker who all hail from Mindanao, it is high time to fulfill the promise of full development for Mindanao which has long been overdue. The Mindanao Railway is the grand express that will pump prime the development of Mindanao. Our vision is to bring goods and passengers from one important trade hub to another in that part of the archipelago. We seek to build a train that will connect one end of Mindanao to another, and the land areas adjacent to the railroad tracks will naturally appreciate in value. For every train stop, we will create not just transport hubs, but economic opportunities since business and investments will be encouraged to set up their facilities (factories, housing, retail outlets) in these populated and high-traffic areas. The construction of railroad tracks and the building of this train system will need a huge labor force and will create jobs for the impoverished population in Mindanao. Thus, the people of Mindanao will no longer need to travel and relocate to congested Manila and other urban areas in Mindanao and the Visayas in order to earn a living. We likewise wish to provide an alternative transport system that can easily, in a cost effective and reliable manner, bring the agricultural products of poor farmers in Mindanao from one point to another. The transport of goods via railway, instead of the highway or regular road networks, will create an advantage for the farmers. Speed and reliability are the main ingredients for growth and development. Whoever can bring their goods faster and on schedule to its market will have more chances of providing quality service while gaining a profit. The impact of the Mindanao Railway Project is of gargantuan proportion. Social impact includes mixing of cultures due to greater mobility, increased short-term travel to domestic tourism spots and encouragement of using other local areas for re addressing peace and order issues. To reiterate, the economic impact includes employment generation since people are needed to construct, run and maintain railways; the transport of heavy materials and cargo will become more cost-effective and will reach its destination market faster; perishable food can be moved quickly; regional products will reach other parts of the country and can become household names; people and corporations will invest in railway stocks and boost the economy not only in the Mindanao region but in the country as a whole. It is clear that we need the Mindanao Railway Project but the more important question in everyone's mind is how much will this cost, and can we afford it? This is surely no small-scale endeavor because a railway project is very expensive indeed (around P3 billion/kilometer) with current cost estimates ranging from P420 billion to over a 1 trillion pesos. I will readily admit to you that the government will initially not be able to recoup this huge investment, whichever way you look at it. However, rail globally is subsidized. This is admittedly a loss leader, but we will benefit later on from downstream investments and no one can belie the social, political and economic impact that the Mindanao Railway Project can bring to the Mindanao region. The people of Mindanao deserve this investment now. Building the Mindanao Railway will jumpstart the development sought in the region. Our government must anchor this railway investment using the developmental approach. If we lay down the vision now, and enact the law for the Mindanao Railway, slowly we will be able to see the fruits of our investment. The multiplier effect will follow so much so that we will be able to exclaim: "Wow, Mindanao!"
Press Release

August 22, 2016 GORDON SEES NEED FOR MULTI-PRONGED APPROACH TO ERADICATE DRUG MENACE Given the gravity of the country's illegal drugs problem, Senator Richard J. Gordon has underscored the need for a multi-pronged approach to attack and eradicate the menace. In an interview, Gordon reiterated his statement at the Senate Public Order and Dangerous Drugs committee hearing that drug abuse should be nipped in the bud by involving the schools in addressing the problem. He said school administrations and the Parent-Teachers Associations should wage a campaign against drug abuse, proposing that they should launch a "Do You Know What Your Children Are Doing Right Now" campaigns because accountability should also go down to the schools and the family. "To me we cannot escape accountability by the police, sisihin ko kayo, sisihin ko ang NBI, sisihin ko ang Department of Justice, sisihin ko yung mga fiscals. But the brunt of the problem, the accountability goes back to family, then to the school, then to the community, then to the churches and then kung nasa bilibid yung nagdudrugs, drug lords dun may mga TV, may mga Jacuzzi, may baril, may babae, then ano yung ginagawa ng Bilibid? Hindi ba pwede isara yung pinto ng bilibid?" the senator said. "According to statistics, people as young as 10 to 19 years old are into drugs. Dun sa concert last May, five died and one of them was an 18-year old. Investigation showed that some of the deaths were caused by drug overdose. Parents should be more aware of what their children are doing," he added. Gordon pointed out that if there are drug abuse problems in schools, they should have well-trained guidance counsellors and the cities should have psychiatrists for really serious drug problems. "If we have a problem like this in schools, you need guidance counselors that are well trained. We should have psychologists. If there is a problem like this, he can spot it and right away he should apply the necessary approach. Kapag talagang grabe na, you get a psychiatrist in the city," he said. The senator also stressed the need for strict implementation of Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, particularly its provisions that are unfortunately not enforced. He particularly cited the law's provision which mandates the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency to recommend to the Department of Justice the forfeiture of properties and other assets of persons and/or corporations found to be violating the provisions of RA 9165. "Kailangan kapag nakahuli ng drug lord, kukunin yung pera, yung ari-arian, yung eroplano, yung mga kotse. Were you able to do this?" the senator asked, to which a DOJ official replied that almost no confiscation has been done and that they only get the evidence covered. Gordon also cited the provision which requires forensic laboratories established in each Philippine National Police office in every province and city in order to facilitate action on seized or confiscated drugs which would hasten its destruction without delay. He also expressed concurrence to a proposal to eradicate the need to apply for a court order before a drug user could be admitted to drug rehabilitation facilities, adding that a letter of request should be sufficient so as not to prolong the process. "We already have the law and the agencies that would implement it. We just need to enforce the law properly. Do we really need a cosmetic change in the law and create the PRADA, when we already have the PDEA?" the senator stressed. Gordon also proposed that the Department of Foreign Affairs should send a note verbale to China after law enforcement authorities admitted that many Chinese citizens are involved in the illegal drugs trade here and that illegal drugs and raw materials for manufacturing drugs mostly come from China. He said the government should appeal to China to help arrest their citizens who bring drugs here by asking their Customs authorities, as well as the officials of their airports and seaports, to strictly inspect Philippines-bound shipments and Chinese travelers.
   ,     :         ,   -  
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

PHOENIX  Three years ago, Kate Rogers was caught in the Bay Area struggle. She paid the astronomical rents. She did the crushing commute. She lived the frustration of always thinking about money even though she was a well-paid professional in the booming technology industry.

And then, just like that, the stress went away. All she had to do was move to Arizona.

I didnt want to have to decide between picking my son up at school and being successful at my job, said Rogers, who runs the Phoenix-area offices of Weebly, a San Francisco company whose software makes it easier for regular people to build websites. In San Francisco, that would not have been possible.

As startups across San Francisco and Silicon Valley try to contend with high salaries and housing costs, many are expanding to lower-cost cities in the West and employing more people like Rogers. For Phoenix, which is about a 90-minute flight from San Francisco, the Bay Areas loss is its gain.

The Phoenix metro area was hit hard by the housing bust, but it is experiencing a strong recovery. The unemployment rate has recently fallen below 5 percent, the lowest in eight years, and several Bay Area companies, including Yelp and Uber, have opened offices in the region. A reviving downtown Phoenix now has a cluster of companies that make business software.

At the end of last year in the Bay Area mega-region  including both the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas  there were 530,000 tech and engineering jobs, a 7 percent increase from a year earlier. Phoenix has about one-fifth as many tech jobs, but the total grew 8 percent from a year ago, according to Moodys Analytics.

The Bay Areas explosive growth is almost too much for the region, said Jackson Kitchen, an analyst at Moodys Analytics. They are bidding up wages so high that companies are saying, Lets expand to Phoenix or Boise or Salt Lake City where wages and real estate are that much cheaper.

Indirectly, of course, this is also good for the Bay Areas tech cluster, allowing companies to grow faster and make jobs more appealing. By expanding to Arizona, for example, Weebly was able to turn freelance customer service representatives into full-time employees.

The companys Scottsdale, Ariz., office has Silicon Valley perks like catered lunches and a massage room, along with some local touches, like a No Weapons sign to remind employees that open-carry laws do not extend onto company property.

Wages, taxes and energy cost about 25 percent less in Phoenix than they do in San Francisco, according to an index of business costs compiled by Moodys Analytics.

Housing is tremendously cheaper. The median home price in the Phoenix metropolitan area is $221,000, according to Zillow. In San Francisco, it is $812,000.

For Rogers and others, that is a far bigger perk than an extra vacation or a raise in California. Instead of renting a rundown house in Redwood City and commuting an hour or more to work, she now lives 10 minutes from the office in a house that is twice the size  with mortgage payments that are half the cost of her California rent.

When I had a kid, it forced the decision for me, Rogers said.

Hordes of young dreamy entrepreneurs still flock to the Bay Area each year in search of venture capital. Silicon Valley is to tech entrepreneurs what Hollywood is to actors, and the region continues to significantly outpace the nation in creating engineering jobs.

But as companies grow and add large numbers of sales and customer service jobs, its less about survival and having everybody in the same room, said Lawrence Coburn, chief executive of DoubleDutch, a San Francisco maker of software for live events that recently laid off a quarter of its staff to try to become profitable sooner.

This year, the company opened a downtown Phoenix office with sales and customer service jobs. San Francisco is a terrible place for entry-level people, Coburn said, because the infrastructure and housing are failing.

Local economic development agencies and real estate developers are doing what they can to keep the movement going. Take, for instance, the downtown Phoenix offices of Gainsight, a Redwood City company whose software helps companies track and retain customers. In November, Gainsight opened its 12-person Phoenix office, with modernist touches like exposed ceilings and concrete floors in the hallways, along with the crammed desks and open floor plan favored by tech companies.

The only private spaces are a handful of conference rooms, including one that has a pingpong table and is decorated with posters with famous quotes by luminaries including Mother Teresa.

Most of the buildings floors have a more traditional layout full of offices and carpet. But the buildings owner, Ironline Partners, renovated the more open floor with an eye toward software companies, of which there are now three, including Gainsight.

Since those guys moved in, weve blown out the entire 15th floor and the entire fifth floor to do more of the same, said D.J. Fernandes, an architect at Ironline Partners who designed the spaces.

The Bay Area has never been especially cheap, and tech companies have a long history of moving their more expensive and labor-intensive functions to second-tier cities where land and labor are less expensive. Intel, the semiconductor giant, was founded in Silicon Valley in 1968, and by 1979, it had manufacturing facilities outside Portland and Phoenix.

But as the latest exodus gathers steam, these outlying cities hope some of the higher-paying engineering jobs will start moving as well.

We dont want to be San Franciscos back office  we need more creators here, said Scott Salkin, a founder and the chief executive of Allbound, a Phoenix company that makes sales software and has offices down the hall from Gainsights.

Chris Camacho, chief executive of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, says better-paying jobs will follow, since companies prefer to expand in cities where they already have offices. That has been true for Intel, which over the last few decades has added a number of different positions to its original manufacturing hubs.

This is why part of Camachos strategy is to focus on Bay Area startups just as they reach a growth spurt. The reality is all of these companies are going to hit a pain point once they hit more than 50 employees, he said.

But while Phoenix is recruiting companies, its technology scene lacks some crucial elements. Salkin, from Allbound, said he still flies to the Bay Area once a month for networking or other events. Were doing amazing things here, he said, but weve got a way to go.

Salkin added that for technology companies, which hire people from all kinds of backgrounds, Arizonas socially conservative politics can be a form of cultural baggage. For example, the former governor, Jan Brewer, signed one of the nations toughest immigration laws in 2010, and same-sex marriage was illegal until a federal court overturned a voter-approved ban in 2014.

In San Francisco, You can come from any walk of life and feel pretty much accepted and safe, Salkin said. You struggle to say that here right now. I think thats changing, but it has not been the case in Arizona, and I think thats a big thing.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A new mother attended a social workers seminar about the importance of nutrition for mental health. When she sought a clean place to pump breast milk for her baby, an argument ensued.

Lynda Mazzalai Nguyen chronicled her encounter with an employee at the Embassy Suites by Hilton San Francisco Airport, which hosted the conference, in a post on Facebook that drew widespread attention last week and inspired a call for a nurse-in protest at the hotel Sunday.

When Nguyen went to the front desk asking for a private space to pump, two different staff members told her to use the bathroom, she said in the post.

I told them I dont eat lunch in the bathroom, so its gross to expect me to contaminate babys milk in there, she wrote.

Nguyen said she had requested a hotel room or a private office only to be told that she hadnt paid for a room, that the rooms were full and that the employee didnt feel comfortable putting her in an office, according to Nguyens post. When she asked where nursing employees who pump breast milk do so said the staffer said theyd never had one.

F you, @embassysuites, Nguyen wrote on Facebook. Im livid.

She said the general manager of the South San Francisco hotel later told her the facility does have policies in place to put mothers who want to pump in hotel rooms or in an office if the rooms are sold out.

We deeply regret this situation and apologize for the lack of sensitivity shown to this guest, a hotel representative wrote in a statement. Celebrating mothers and families is a part of our DNA at Embassy Suites by Hilton and its our goal to deliver the very best guest service every day.

Nguyen posted a photo Saturday calling on mothers to lactate and educate! in the hotel lobby on Sunday at 1 p.m. in an effort to support her and other nursing mothers who felt harassed.

Jessica Floum is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jfloum@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @jfloum.
Number of the day

$4 million

Thats about how much Wells Fargo will pay to settle the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus claims that its student-loan policies boosted costs for borrowers. Wells will pay $3.6 million to the bureau and $410,000 in restitution to some of the thousands of student borrowers who encountered problems with their loans or received misinformation about their payment options because of breakdowns in Wells Fargos servicing process, the bureau said Monday.

A role model  or a model for your role

First a supermodel, then the host America's Next Top Model, and next an instructor at Stanford? Well, not exactly  but close. Tyra Banks does plan to team up with Stanford lecturer Allison Kluger on a spring class for MBA students. The class, which will include broadcasting on television, streaming on Facebook Live and creating videos on You Tube, will help the students build and extend their personal brands, according to the syllabus.

Shooting for startups

Retired Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant has revealed that he has a $100 million venture capital fund that is investing in media, technology and data companies. The Bryant Stibel fund is co-managed by investor Jeff Stibel, who met Bryant through mutual friends. It has already made investments in 15 companies, including LegalZoom and Juicero, but is going public now that Bryant has retired.

The Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. See more items and links at www.sfgate.com. Twitter: @techbriefing
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The parents of a 23-year-old man shot and killed by a Newark police officer while fleeing a fast-food restaurant with a toy gun filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city Monday, claiming that their son was shot in the back by the officer who didnt identify himself or yell any commands.

Teodoro Valencia Jr., a barber who lived in Newark, died the night of March 11 after police said he robbed a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in the city. His parents, Maria Magdalena Rodriguez and Teodoro Valencia, filed the wrongful-death suit in federal court in Oakland, seeking unspecified damages.

Police officials said Valencia pointed a weapon  later determined to be a BB gun  at Officer Conrad Rodgers before the officer shot him. Family members and their attorneys dispute that account and said footage from a surveillance camera showed Valencia running from the fast-food restaurant without pointing the weapon and an officer shooting him in the back.

A police spokesman maintained that the footage does show Valencia pointing a weapon.

The Police Department received reports of a robbery at the restaurant at 5724 Thornton Ave. about 9:50 p.m. An employee reported that a man armed with a handgun had forced another worker to open the cash register, authorities said.

Officers arrived to find an employee with her hands in the air. Police said Valencia left through the kitchen and was spotted by Rodgers, a three-year department veteran, who was at the rear of the building ducking behind a trash container.

Rodgers yelled at Valencia to stop, and Valencia responded by turning around and pointing what the officer thought was a real handgun, according to the police account. Rodgers, armed with an AR-15-type semiautomatic rifle, fired one round at Valencia, who ran south on St. Edwards Street before collapsing, police said.

Valencia died of a single gunshot wound to his left upper back, according to an autopsy report.

The police are not allowed to shoot someone in the back, said Dan Siegel, an attorney for Valencias family. The standard is whether the police officer reasonably believed he was in danger. Its pretty apparent from the video Teo Valencia had no clue that there was even a police officer at the scene.

Siegel said the officer did not identify himself to Valencia or give any commands before firing. Grainy surveillance-camera footage from outside of the restaurant, which Siegel released Monday, shows a figure behind a trash bin while Valencia runs outside of a building. As Valencia passes the garbage container, a bright flash is seen.

Siegel said that Rodgers is the figure crouched behind the trash bin and that the flash is his gun being fired. The attorney contends that the surveillance-camera footage shows that Valencia never pointed his BB gun at the officer.

Cmdr. Mike Carroll, a police spokesman, said he had not seen the lawsuit. But he said the surveillance footage does show Valencia pointing the BB gun.

The video I watched matched the officers statement, Carroll said.

Rodgers was placed on paid administrative leave for three days after the incident, then returned to active duty as a patrol officer.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
Monday

Farmington City Council

The Farmington City Council meets in regular session at 6:30 p.m.in the council chambers located at 110 W. Columbia St. The meeting is open to the public.

Desloge Board of Aldermen

The Desloge Board of Aldermen meets in regular session at 7 p.m. at city hall, at 300 N. Lincoln St. The meeting is open to the public.

Tuesday

North County Board of Education

The North County Board of Education meets in regular session at 6 p.m. in the administration offices located at 300 Berry Rd. The meeting is open to the public.

Park Hills City Council

The Park Hills City Council meets at 5:30 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.

Thursday

Bismarck R-5 Board of Education

The Bismarck R-5 Board of Education meets in regular session at 6 p.m. in the elementary library. The meeting is open to the public.

West County Board of Education

The West County Board of Education meets at 6 p.m. for a regular session in the Board of Education room located at 1124 Main St. in Leadwood.
Thomas Schultz

Schoenberg didnt write much for the piano, and most of what he wrote was terse. But his output did include the Piano Suite, Op. 25  a key work in the development of the composers 12-tone technique  as well as several sets of short character sketches that provide a glimpse of his stylistic development.

Pianist Thomas Schultz, a longtime stalwart of the local new-music scene, will include the composers complete piano music on his solo recital this week, which will still leave time for music by Brahms and Liszt. Expect performances of expressive depth and formal clarity.
ThirstyBear Organic Brewery

New breweries pop up in San Francisco every month, but what is really impressive is when one can stick around for a decade or more. Thats why ThirstyBear Organic Brewerys 20th anniversary is cause for celebration.

The SoMa brew pub, founded in 1996, marks the milestone Saturday, Aug. 27, with a brew festival featuring ThirstyBears best as well as 24 other  mostly San Francisco-based  breweries. ThirstyBears brewmasters, Ron Silberstein and Brenden Dobel, will release a couple of special styles, a wet hopped anniversary ale and a barrel-aged American strong ale, and present a selection of cask-conditioned beers from several of the breweries in attendance.
CITRONELLE, Ala.  The suspect in the killing of five people at a home in Alabama attacked them while they slept and then abducted his estranged girlfriend and an infant  both of whom were found alive, authorities said Sunday.

It could take investigators days to sort out the grisly murder scene in Citronelle, a small town 30 miles northwest of Mobile. Authorities said the dead included a pregnant woman and were found Saturday afternoon inside the home.
AUSTIN, Texas  A federal judge in Texas has blocked the Obama administrations order that requires public schools to let transgender students use the restrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity.

In an injunction signed Sunday, U.S. District Judge Reed OConnor ruled that the federal education law known as Title IX is not ambiguous about sex being defined as the biological and anatomical differences between male and female students as determined at their birth.

Texas and 12 other states challenged the White House directive as unconstitutional. The judge also sided with Republican state leaders who argued that schools should have been allowed to weigh in before the White House directive was announced in May.

The action has no impact on schools in California, which are governed by a state law that took effect in 2014. The law, the first of its kind in the nation, requires public schools to let each student use restrooms and other facilities that are consistent with his or her gender identity. Opponents tried to submit the issue to the voters but failed to collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, had argued that halting the Obama order before school began was necessary because districts risked losing federal education dollars if they did not comply. Federal officials did not explicitly make that threat upon issuing the directive, although they also never ruled out the possibility.

The Justice Department issued a brief statement saying it was disappointed in the ruling and was reviewing its options.

The ruling does not prohibit schools that allow transgender students to use the facilities of their choice from continuing to do so.

Chronicle staff writer Bob Egelko contributed to this report.
1 Pedestrians killed: Two small children and a woman were struck and killed by a speeding vehicle driving on the wrong side of the road in Placentia (Orange County), authorities said. Two officers who were nearby heard the collision late Saturday and found the three pedestrians lying unresponsive on the street. All three were pronounced dead at the scene. Their names and ages have not been released. Nicholas Stephen Munoz, 27, was arrested on suspicion of murder and driving under the influence of alcohol, causing injury, said police Sgt. Adam Gloe.

2 Party shootings: Police in Bridgeport, Conn., are investigating a violent outburst at a house party early Sunday in which 13 people were shot and wounded. Investigators believe two shooters opened fire on partygoers from behind hedges surrounding the homes yard just after 1 a.m., police said. Eleven men and two women were shot, but none of the injuries was considered life-threatening.
DEAR HARRIETTE: I got invited to attend a book club by one of my friends. She thought it would be a great way for our friends and the women in the neighborhood to meet one another. I was all for it, and I never turn down a chance to read and discuss books. However, when I got there, I was immediately offered booze and gossip.

I don't think anyone at my friend's house even knew what book we were reading, except for two women I had a great conversation with. I don't feel comfortable calling this gathering a book club, but I did get a chance to meet two like-minded women. Normally something like this wouldn't be for me, but maybe this is what book clubs are now? -- Bookworm, Denver

DEAR BOOKWORM: Many book clubs present legitimate opportunities for participants to engage in lively conversations about books that they have actually read. Indeed, some book clubs are very strict about their guidelines and may even send reminders to participants that they must have completed the reading before the time of the meeting, or they should not attend.

On the flip side, other book clubs serve more as opportunities for social engagement. Food, drink and socializing can take precedence in these gatherings, at least on occasion. This, naturally, can be frustrating for people who really want to discuss the meat of the book.

What you should do as you continue to search for your right fit is to ask a few questions upfront so that you find out if the club you are considering follows guidelines that you agree with.

DEAR HARRIETTE: Upon traveling home to visit my elderly father, I reconnected with a childhood friend who didn't leave the city we grew up in. We spent so much time together and shared nightly walks through the city. We caught up and were brutally honest about how we've been hurt in the past but are now looking for love. I think we each felt a spark in that moment. I plan on going back for Christmas.

We live thousands of miles apart, but I've known her for so long that it feels like this is right. My rational side is telling me to stop thinking she'd move for me, while my romantic side is telling me this could be the key to my happiness. Which do I listen to? -- Dreamer vs. Realist, Los Angeles

DEAR DREAMER VS. REALIST: Listen to each other. Be brave and talk to your childhood friend about how you feel and what you have been thinking. Ask her if she would consider trying to see if there is a future between the two of you. Be honest about the challenges, including that you live so far away from each other. Be upfront. Ask your friend if she would consider moving to where you live. Know that since she never moved, this may be way past her comfort zone. You, too, should consider if you would ever move back home.

Know that you do not have to make a definitive decision right away. You can agree to try it out, spending time in your hometown and in your current town to see how things go. Take your time. Be sure to tell each other how you feel about the relationship as it evolves so that you protect each other's feelings, no matter what ultimately happens.

DEAR HARRIETTE: I have decided to attend graduate school in fall 2017 because I do not feel like I am ready to attend this September. I have an extra 11 months to find the necessary monies to fund my graduate degree. Finding the money will be no problem; however, I am scared of taking the GRE and GMAT exams because I do not think I am good test-taker. What are some steps I can take to ease the anxiety of taking these exams? -- On the Clock, Jacksonville, Florida

DEAR ON THE CLOCK: If you are serious about getting into business school, you must do everything you can to prepare for these tests. This is the time for test prep. There are many books available that you can read, along with practice tests that you can take. But you may want to consider enrolling in a class with a live instructor who can guide you in test prep. You can immerse yourself in the readings and practice tests provided by the instructor and receive important feedback about areas where you may need improvement. Look for a class you can attend in person, or look online for a virtual class. Do your best to find one that offers interaction with the teacher.

DEAR HARRIETTE: I am a 45-year-old screenwriter, and I have submitted my ideas to a numerous television production companies over the past 10 years. I remain hopeful because I am getting positive responses from various media companies for my style of writing. My family has their concerns because they would like me to work a regular job and stop chasing my dream of becoming a television writer.

I am slowly thinking I may have to put my dream of becoming a writer on the shelf, and this has me wondering, is there a time limit on working toward your dream? -- Patiently Waiting, New York City

DEAR PATIENTLY WAITING: On one hand, it's great that you have not given up on your dream. On the other, you really do need to figure out how to support your family consistently and responsibly. Many screenwriters have full-time jobs until they have their big break. It's similar to actors who wait tables until their day comes.

You cannot and should not shirk your responsibilities simply because a dream burns inside you. Chances are, you would do better with your family supporting your dream if you stepped up and showed initiative in putting your family first.

Bottom line: You have to determine if your time is up on this dream. Time is certainly up on you ignoring your family's financial security. Admit that to your family. And take concerted steps to find viable work that will provide some fulfillment for you as it immediately helps to fortify you and your loved ones.

DEAR HARRIETTE: My wife, "Tammy," has an adult son from a previous marriage. I think Tammy's son is a total deadweight to her. Tammy told me a few months ago that she lent her son $8,000 for him to move into his own home because he and his "baby mama" couldn't work things out. I was so angry and shocked at Tammy. I wanted to know when our bank account would be paid back, and she told me that when you lend money to family you shouldn't expect it back. After confronting my stepson, he told me he couldn't give me a date when he would be able to pay me back. I think this is cowardly. A grown man (he is almost 30) shouldn't need handouts from his mother.

How do I get my $8,000 back when neither my wife nor stepson are willing to work to get it back in the right bank account? -- Losing Battles, Jackson, Mississippi

DEAR LOSING BATTLES: You are going to have to accept that you may never get that money back. That said, you can establish ground rules for the future. Let your wife know that you will not co-sign giving more money to her son and his family, because you do not think it is healthy for them. Offer to support them in other ways, including giving advice on becoming financially independent, if they are open to it.

Work with your wife on establishing boundaries for the health of the entire family. Make sure that you do not pose this in a way that is "us against them." You will not win if you even unconsciously attempt to alienate your wife from her son. Instead, work toward whole-family health, which includes agreeing on how to support adult children.

Harriette Cole is a lifestylist and founder of DREAMLEAPERS, an initiative to help people access and activate their dreams. You can send questions to askharriette@harriettecole.com or c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Tenure laws that provide job security for 277,000 California schoolteachers were preserved Monday when a divided state Supreme Court rejected a challenge by opponents who said the laws shielded incompetent instructors and harmed low-income and minority students.

The 4-3 vote was a victory for teachers and their unions, who argued that tenure was essential to protect teachers from arbitrary and politically motivated firings and that there was no evidence the job-security laws have damaged public education in California.

When teachers feel protected, they can stand up for their students, said Eric Heins, president of the states largest teachers union, the California Teachers Association. Its a good day for students and for educators.

Opponents said they would keep pressing for changes in the laws.

Californians will continue to demand that the state address the massive and inexcusable inequality in access to quality teachers in our public schools, said David Welch, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who funded the suit by nine students. He said the court case had cast a much-needed spotlight on these shameful laws and the enormous harm they inflict on thousands of children every year.

The courts vote left intact an appellate ruling that upheld the tenure laws after a Los Angeles judge struck them down. In an unprecedented 2014 ruling, the judge found that teacher tenure and seniority rules violated students right to an equal education.

In a separate 4-3 vote Monday, the Supreme Court also refused to take up the issue of school funding in California, which ranks near the bottom of the states in educational spending and test scores.

Teachers groups and school district officials argued that state education spending was so low that it violated the California Constitutions guarantee of a public education, and required the courts to step in, as courts in many other states have done. But the justices denied review of an appellate court decision that said the Constitution does not give students the right to an education of any particular level of quality or funding.

Dissenting justices in both cases said the issues affected millions of public school students and should be decided by the states top court.

The schoolchildren of California deserve to know whether their fundamental right to an education is a paper promise or a real guarantee, Justice Goodwin Liu wrote in the school funding case. He and Justices Mariano-Florentino Cuellar and Ming Chin said the court should have taken up both cases, one short of the majority needed for review.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Justices Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, Carol Corrigan and Leondra Kruger voted against Supreme Court review.

The tenure laws allow schools to fire teachers for any reason in their first two years, but require good cause for dismissals after that.

Nearly every state grants tenure to teachers, but California is one of only five that provide the protections after two years. Most states have a three-year probation period, and some have four or five years.

Supporters of tenure say the laws protect teachers from arbitrary dismissals, strengthen academic freedom, and attract high-quality candidates for high-stress, relatively low-paid work that is vital to the community. Opponents said they were not challenging all tenure laws, but contended that two years was not enough time for a meaningful evaluation, particularly since, as an administrator testified, practicalities required an assessment to be completed by March of a teachers second year.

Their suit also challenged the last hired, first fired laws that require school districts to follow seniority during layoffs and dismiss the least-senior teachers first, with exceptions for those with needed and specialized skills.

In June 2014, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu declared both laws unconstitutional, the first ruling of its kind in the nation. He said the laws make it prohibitively time-consuming and expensive to remove incompetent teachers.

Citing testimony from an eight-week trial, Treu said two years is not enough time to evaluate a teacher properly, and as a result, grossly ineffective teachers are assigned too often to schools with large numbers of poor or minority students. He said the seniority laws require schools to ignore teacher quality and base layoffs entirely on years of experience.

The result, Treu said, is a violation of students constitutional right to equality of education.

But the states Second District Court of Appeal overruled Treu in April and said the judge had failed to cite any evidence that tenure or seniority laws were to blame for substandard education.

The challenged statutes do not inevitably lead to the assignment of more inexperienced teachers to schools serving poor and minority students, Presiding Justice Roger Boren said in the 3-0 ruling.

Some teachers protected by the laws may turn out to be ineffective, Boren said, but school officials determine where those teachers are assigned, and overturning the laws would not affect their decisions or the quality of education at needy schools.

In seeking state Supreme Court review, opponents of the tenure laws said the appeals court should have accepted the findings of the trial judge, who had heard the evidence firsthand.

In a pair of unusually lengthy and detailed dissents Monday from the courts decision not to review, Liu and Cuellar said there was strong evidence that the two-year period for tenure assessment, and the time and expense needed to fire tenured teachers, result in protections for weak instructors who inflict lasting harm on their students.

The justices also said the court should have taken up a case that charged that Californias paltry level of financing for public education violates students constitutional rights.

The plaintiff in that case  including the San Francisco and Alameda school districts, seven other local districts, the California Teachers Association and the State PTA  said California trails virtually every other state in per-pupil spending, school staffing and test scores, a status it has held since shortly after the Proposition 13 property tax cut of 1978.

They argued that the California Constitution, which since 1879 has required a public school system that encourages the promotion of intellectual ... improvement, gave students a right to an education of at least some minimal level of quality.

Six days after the appellate ruling on tenure, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco rejected their arguments.

The appeals court ruled 2-1 that the California Constitution does not require the state to fund schools at any particular level, regardless of the impact on education.

The constitutional provisions leave the difficult and policy-laden question associated with educational adequacy and funding to the legislative branch, not the courts, Justice Martin Jenkins said in the majority opinion.

By letting the appeals court decision stand, attorney John Affeldt of the nonprofit Public Advocates law firm said Monday, the high court affirmed that theres no meaningful quality owed to our students under our Constitution.

The tenure case is Vergara vs. California, S234741. The school funding case is Campaign for Quality Education vs. California,S234901.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @egelko

The opinions

The dissenting opinions in the tenure case can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/2bQ2QG5

The dissenting opinions in the school funding case can be viewed here: http://bit.ly/2bQ2MpT
Country

Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Canada Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cuba, Republic of Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Dominican Republic Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Haiti, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Jamaica Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Mexico, United Mexican States Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu US Virgin Islands Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. 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
SAN SIMEON, San Luis Obispo County  More than 10,000 firefighters battled wildfires Monday from the Central Coast to Sierra Nevada forests or mopped up remnants of destructive blazes beaten into submission up and down the state.

Almost 1,900 structures were threatened by an almost 50-square-mile blaze in San Luis Obispo and Monterey counties, where more than 2,400 people were under evacuation orders, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

The blaze was just 35 percent contained after destroying 34 homes and 14 other buildings.

Hearst Castle, the palatial ocean-view estate built by the late newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst and a major stop on summer road trips, remained closed because of proximity to the fire. The estate is a state park, but it is surrounded by Hearst Ranch, which is owned by Hearst Corp., the parent company of The Chronicle.

Eighty miles up the coast, Californias biggest fire grew to nearly 135 square miles in rugged wilderness coast along Highway 1 north of Big Sur.

More than 400 homes remained threatened by the fire, which was started July 22 by an illegal campfire and has destroyed 57 homes and 11 other buildings. A bulldozer operator was killed in a rollover accident last month.

The prevalence of poison oak in the region was proving a problem. About 500 firefighters, including 200 in the past three days, had sought treatment after contact with the toxic shrub, authorities said.

In the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara, a wildfire expanded to almost 37 square miles as it chewed through critically dry brush, grass and oak canopies.

Just 20 percent contained, the blaze has caused the closure of campgrounds and recreation areas but remains far from communities. It was, however, a threat to vegetation in watersheds important to supplies on the south coast of Santa Barbara County.

In the southern Sierra Nevada, a fire feeding on critically dry, beetle-killed timber expanded to more than 30 square miles of Sequoia National Forest in Kern and Tulare counties northwest of Lake Isabella.

Almost 1,600 people in 13 small communities were under mandatory evacuations orders, and evacuations were recommended for a half-dozen others, said fire spokesman Naaman Horn. He said the fire is within a mile of Alta Sierra (Kern County).

Thunderstorms were a concern as well Monday, not for rain but because of the potential for lightning and gusty winds.

Sixty miles east of Los Angeles, minimal activity was seen at fire that burned almost 58 square miles and 105 homes in Cajon Pass and the San Gabriel Mountains last week. With all evacuations lifted, firefighters were extinguishing hot spots and doing erosion control while utility crews replaced infrastructure lost to the blaze.

At Lower Lake, 80 miles north of San Francisco, recovery efforts remained under way in the aftermath of hard-hit Lake Countys latest wildfire, which destroyed 189 homes since erupting Aug. 13. A man has been charged with arson in connection with that fire and others.
Bill Hutchinson / The Chronicle

Members of an advocacy group for public workers on Saturday demanded that the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency release surveillance video to the public which allegedly shows a female bus driver being assaulted by a man last week in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood.



During a news conference outside Muni's office at 1 South Van Ness Avenue, members of United Public Workers for Action alleged that the driver is not being supported by her employer, Muni, and is instead being punished for speaking out about the incident.



"Why is the SFMTA not releasing the video for the public?" UPWA member Steve Zeltzer said. "We think there is a record of harassment, of bullying of San Francisco Muni transit workers in San Francisco. Many have been harassed and bullied for making health and safety complaints."



The incident reportedly happened the morning of Aug. 13, near the corner of Third and Mission streets. Driver Carla Romero had exited her bus to correct an issue with the bus's overhead poles, when a driver stopped his car and confronted her, resulting in a physical altercation, according to Zeltzer.



Both the driver and the man filed complaints against each other, and both were cited with battery.



The UPWA believes the releasing of the video is important, as it shows Romero was defending herself during the incident.



Muni spokesman Paul Rose said surveillance video from the bus Romero was operating has been handed over to police.



Additionally, Rose said that while Muni is working with the police department on investigating the incident, Muni fully supports Romero, who is still employed with the transit agency.



"We know that our operators have very difficult and demanding jobs and that the vast majority of them do an extremely great job," Rose said. "However, physical violence should never be an option for people who have issues with the system."



In response to the incident, Muni has launched a campaign in conjunction with the Transport Union Workers Local 250-A aimed at the public to educate them about the dangers drivers often face.



"We're doing everything we can to ensure the safety of our operators through the systems, including working with the operators union on a campaign that will help personalize our operators, to get the message their out that they have families and are people too."



The ads, which will be displayed across buses and trains next month, include pictures of Muni operators and quotes from them, as well as apparent friends and family members, urging people to avoid targeting bus drivers. The ads also employ the hashtag #Keepthemsafe.



The UPWA agrees that bus drivers are often the targets of drivers and others who are frustrated with the city's increasingly congested traffic conditions.



"Unfortunately a lot of that stress and anger is being taken out on public workers. It's being taken out on the drivers and that's unacceptable for us. We have to end the harassment and the bullying. We have to have healthy and safe places for our Muni drivers," Zeltzer said.



Zeltzer, however, maintained that Muni has not done enough to protect operators and discourages employees from making complaints.



"What happens in many of these incidents is that the driver gets fired. They blame the driver and they retaliate against the driver. The driver gets the brunt of this."



The San Francisco Police Department was not immediately available for comment on the incident.







601-1637



United Public Workers for Action (415) 282-1908



San Francisco police (415) 837-7395












SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)



Police in San Francisco are searching for a suspect that allegedly attacked and bit off the finger of a bartender near the Marina District in July.



According to police, shortly after 2 a.m. on July 17 a bartender was attempting to close a bar in the 1900 block of Lombard Street, when a man that had been drinking in the bar earlier attempted to regain entry.



After unsuccessfully trying to climb through a window, the suspect allegedly became irate and began kicking and pulling on the front door.



Police said the bartender went outside to advise the man that the bar was closed, but the suspect began attacking him by climbing on top of him and striking him several times in the face.



The bartender attempted to stop the attack, however the suspect then bit and severed one of his fingers.



Police said the suspect then left the area with friends, and the victim was transported to a nearby hospital where he suffered swollen eyes, several bruises to his head, scrapes on his hands and an amputated finger.



The suspect was described as a Hispanic man around six feet tall, weighing 180 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.



Police said a photograph and two surveillance videos were available.



One video shows the suspect eating, and wearing a pink shirt, blue jeans and brown shoes, and the other shows the suspect with his shirt off tussling with one of his friends who was wearing a black leather jacket.



Anyone with information about this incident or who may recognize the suspect is encouraged to contact the San Francisco police at (415) 837-7395.
















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.
Californias ban on suction dredge mining for gold, a technique that extracts minerals from riverbeds while dumping residue that can include toxic mercury, was unanimously upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.

The use of the high-pressure underwater vacuums, mainly in mountain and foothill waterways, has been regulated by the state since 1961 and prohibited since 2009. Brandon Rinehart, who holds a federal mining claim in the Plumas National Forest, challenged the ban. He argued that the states rules effectively prohibit gold mining in the area and that federal law forbids state interference with mining on federal land.

A state appeals court ruled in Rineharts favor and said a state may not impose restrictions that make federally approved mining commercially impractical. But the states high court said federal law for at least 130 years has left environmental regulation of mining largely up to the states.

States can place limits on effective but environmentally destructive methods without violating congressional laws that allow mining on federal lands, Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar said in the 7-0 decision.

She said federal courts in the late 19th century had upheld California laws against hydraulic mining, which used high-pressure blasts of water to dislodge gold from hillsides while depositing gravel and debris into riverbeds, and triggering downstream floods.

The ruling was cheered by environmental groups and the Karuk Indian tribe, whose members live in northwestern California lands affected by the practice.

Suction dredging is a continuation of the genocidal legacy of gold miners that started over 150 years ago, said Leaf Hillman, the tribes director of natural resources.

James Buchal, the miners lawyer, said he plans further appeals. He said the ruling reflected a deep-rooted animus against natural resource use in mining and was like saying that when logging in a national forest, you have to use axes instead of machinery.

The suit also drew support from commercial mining associations.

Suction dredging vacuums earth and gravel from river bottoms, runs it through a sluice box that separates the heaviest substances, including gold, and discharges the rest back into the waterway. State regulators say the practice has contaminated fish with mercury and damaged the habitat of endangered coho salmon.

California started requiring permits for suction dredging in 1961, made some waterways off-limits in 1975 and halted the permits in 2009 with a moratorium that has since been extended indefinitely.

Mining groups say the rules amount to a total ban because manual removal of minerals would be prohibitively expensive.

States are free to regulate the environmental impacts of mining, but the Supreme Court of the United States has made it clear (a state) cant just ban mining. ...Thats what California has done here, said attorney Jonathan Wood of the Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed arguments on behalf of the Western Mining Alliance and Siskiyou County.

But attorney Jonathan Evans of the Center for Biological Diversity said the ruling was a victory for the state and its natural resources.

Saying only a small number of suction dredge miners do it for a living, Evans called the practice a very destructive recreational hobby ... that pollutes our waters.

The case is People vs. Rinehart, S222620.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko

Read the ruling: www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S222620.PDF
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

ABOARD THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER GARIBALDI  The leaders of Italy, France and Germany pledged Monday to boost joint European security efforts in the wake of Islamic extremist attacks as they made a symbolic bid to relaunch the European Union after Britains vote to leave.

From the deck of the Italian aircraft carrier Garibaldi, which is spearheading the EUs migrant rescue and antismuggling effort, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Holland also promised new economic prospects to young people  albeit without any specific proposals or details.

The three leaders traveled to the sun-soaked island of Ventotene to pay tribute to one of the founding fathers of European unity, Altiero Spinelli, and show common cause going into a bigger EU-wide summit next month in Slovakia.

Spinelli, along with another intellectual confined to Ventotene in the 1940s by Italys fascist rulers, co-wrote the Ventotene Manifesto calling for a federation of European states to counter the nationalism that had led Europe to war. The document is considered the inspiration for European federalism.

Renzi invited his French and German counterparts to the island off Naples to remind Europe of its founding ideals as the EU forges ahead amid a spate of challenges, from slow economic growth, to extremist violence, to Britains vote to leave the bloc.

The three placed bouquets of blue and yellow flowers  the colors of the European Union  on Spinellis tombstone before meeting for an hour privately aboard the nearby Garibaldi.

Many people thought that after Brexit, that Europe was finished. Its not like that, Renzi said from the deck. We respect the choice of Britains citizens, but we want to write a page for the future.

Renzi, Merkel and Hollande all voiced support for improved internal and external defense measures, including better intelligence-sharing and beefed-up border defenses, after a spate of Islamic extremist attacks in France that have rattled Europeans sense of security.

Renzi said such measures were an absolute priority for the EU going forward.

Europe should have a framework of protection. For security we need to have borders that can be guarded, Hollande said. We also want there to be more coordination in the fight against terrorism.

Merkel said the EU is confronting enormous challenges and needs to work together especially on the security front at home and abroad.

We feel that faced with Islamist terrorism and in light of the civil war in Syria that we need to do more for our internal and external security, she said. Defense cooperation ... should be strengthened, and the exchanges between our intelligence services must be intensified.

Mondays mini-summit served as a warm-up for an EU-wide summit in Bratislava in September designed to chart the EUs post-Brexit future.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands  An Islamic radical accused of involvement in destroying historic mausoleums in the Malian desert city of Timbuktu goes on trial at the International Criminal Court on Monday and has already told judges he intends to plead guilty.

A swift and relatively straightforward conviction is expected, marking only the fourth conviction since the Hague-based court was established in 2002. If convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of up to 30 years.

But activists say the court is missing an opportunity to file more charges against the al Qaeda-linked radical, Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, for war crimes including rape and sexual slavery.

Prosecutors allege Al Mahdi was a member of Ansar Dine, an Islamic extremist group with links to al Qaeda that held power in northern Mali in 2012. The militants were driven out after nearly a year by French forces, which arrested Al Mahdi in 2014 in neighboring Niger.

Al Mahdi was a Timbuktu-based expert on Islamic law recruited to enforce Ansar Dines strict interpretation of Islam on the occupied Timbuktu, prosecutors told judges at a hearing earlier this year. He allegedly led an organization called the Hisbah tasked with upholding public morals and preventing vice.

His lawyer, Jean-Louis Gilissen, told a pretrial hearing in March that Al Mahdi was concerned with doing what is right, seeking the means to allow his conception of good over evil to prevail.

The radicals destroyed 14 of Timbuktus 16 mausoleums because they considered them totems of idolatry. The one-room structures that house the tombs of the citys great thinkers were on the World Heritage list and most of them have since been restored.

At the pretrial hearing, Al Mahdi told judges he planned to plead guilty, leading the court to schedule only a week for his trial. Other ICC trials have taken years to complete.

Al Mahdi, who is charged in attacks on nine of the mausoleums and a mosque, is the first suspect to face an ICC charge of deliberately attacking religious or historical monuments. The courts chief prosecutor has likened the case to the destruction last year by Islamic State extremists of historic ruins in the Syrian city of Palmyra.

Human rights activists accuse the Hisbah of going beyond targeting buildings and allege that its members also tortured and raped civilians.

International rights group FIDH says its member organizations have documented a litany of crimes and filed a criminal complaint on behalf of 33 victims in Malian courts naming Al Mahdi and 14 others as alleged perpetrators of crimes including rape and sexual slavery.
1 Somalia attack: A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the gates of a local government headquarters in Somalia on Sunday while another bomber targeted a nearby marketplace, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 30 others, police said. One bomber rammed the car into a checkpoint in Galkayo town after reaching the main gate of Puntlands local government. The al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group claimed responsibility for the attack. The northern town, unlike other parts of the country where al-Shabab continues a deadly guerrilla campaign, rarely sees such attacks.

2 Syria bombing: The brother of a wounded Syrian boy who gained international attention has died three days after suffering serious injuries in an air raid on the northern city of Aleppo, opposition activists said Sunday. Ali Daqneesh, 10, died Saturday from wounds sustained in the same air strike on a rebel-held neighborhood in Aleppo, activists said. Syrian activists released haunting footage showing Alis brother Omran Daqneesh, 5, rescued from a partially destroyed building in the aftermath of the air strike Wednesday. Omran was treated and later discharged. Omran was rescued along with his three siblings and his parents from the rubble of their apartment building.
BEIRUT  Iran annulled permission Monday for Russian planes to fly bombing runs into Syria from an Iranian base, only a week after having granted such extraordinary access, saying the Kremlin had been unacceptably public and arrogant about the privilege.

The about-face and the explanation for it from Irans foreign and defense ministries appeared to reflect deep-seated and long-standing suspicions of Russia despite their tactical alliance in the Syria war.

The abruptness of the termination, even if temporary, also suggested that the Russians, eager to show widening influence in the Middle East, had seriously misread how a public announcement of their use of the Hamadan base in western Iran would reverberate among Iranians.

Russia state news media had been trumpeting the deal as a sign that its partnership with Iran was deepening. No foreign power has based forces in Iran since World War II.

In response to the annulment, the Russian military issued a statement saying its planes had already completed their missions.

The Russian military aircraft involved in launching air strikes from the Iranian Hamadan base against terrorist sites in Syria successfully accomplished the tasks they had set out to complete, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. All aircraft involved in this operation are now on Russian territory.

The agreement had seemingly marked a milestone for Russian foreign policy and a strengthening alliance with the regions Shiite powers of Iran, Iraq and the government side in Syrias civil war.

But Irans minister of defense, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, accused Russia of having publicized the deal excessively, calling the Kremlins behavior a betrayal of trust and ungentlemanly.

The perceived Russian arrogance may have been a step too far for Iranian sensitivities since the Russian takeover, nearly a year ago, of Irans role as the Syrian governments leading ally.
ANKARA, Turkey  Turkey vowed Monday to fight Islamic State militants at home and to cleanse the group from its borders after a weekend suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding, an attack that came amid recent gains by Syrian Kurdish militia forces against the extremists in neighboring Syria.

The bombing Saturday in the city of Gaziantep, near the border with Syria, killed at least 54 people  many of them children. Nearly 70 others were wounded in the attack.
Unemployment Rates 3rd Highest in Nation

At 6.4 percent, New Mexico still has the third highest unemployment rate in the nation in July,

. Nationally, unemployment rates in July averaged 4.9 percent.

MedPot Patients Finally Get a Break

The New Mexico Department of Health with has been struggling to keep up with processing medical cannabis applications. The program will extend existing patient cards 60 days so

without fear of being arrested. Regulators are scheduled to be questioned by lawmakers at an interim committee meeting today in Taos.

States Use of Private Prisons Also Questioned

At the same time that the federal government is planning to stop using private prisons, including one in Cibola County, the ACLU thinks

for five privately owned state prisons.



Espinoza Cleared

Acting Secretary of State Brad Winter cleared Nora Espinoza of allegations she violated the campaign finance reporting act, but



Joy Ride

Gary Johnson



Clinton Picks Up Endorsement in New Mexico

No surprise here:



Santa Fe Police Officers Finally Get Body Cameras; Raises Are a Different Matter

It took longer than expected, but the Santa Fe Police Department will begin Meanwhile, a couple of the states biggest law enforcement agencies are boosting pay and redoubling efforts to recruit experienced officers, raising concerns among city officials that the Santa Fe Police Department might be left behind in the competition for personnel.



Hiring law enforcement officers in New Mexico has grown competitive in recent years, largely because of chronic understaffing at the Albuquerque Police Department amid tumult and federal oversight, but also because changes to the retirement age have enticed officers around the state to begin drawing their pensions earlier than they might have planned. Santa Fes Public Safety Committee recently approved a resolution calling on officials to work together on a plan for retaining officers.

Police Videos Released

Jeff Proctor got his hands on body camera videos that shows Albuquerque Police officers raiding a needle exchange program mobile trailer earlier this summer. The videos seem to contradict what the cops originally claimed about their interactions with health care workers. Video footage shows a chaotic scene at the syringe exchange, with several officers in street clothes and balaclavas to cover their faces rushing the van with assault-style rifles while others shout commands at people standing on the sidewalk nearby.



The videos cast doubt on APDs key claim: The detectives did not know the van was a syringe exchange prior to storming it. The detectives ask the Health Care for the Homeless staffers who they work for, but at no point do any of the officers ask about what is going on inside the van. One of the officers seems to have known without being told what Gabaldon was doing inside  exchanging syringes. That same officer enters the van and appears unsurprised by what he finds. Acting Secretary of State Brad Winter cleared Nora Espinoza of allegations she violated the campaign finance reporting act, but suggested she do a better job with details on her future reports.Gary Johnson rallied his home state supporters at a big weekend rally in Albuquerque and even took time for a lowrider joy ride.No surprise here: Pueblo Indian governors in New Mexico are endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.It took longer than expected, but the Santa Fe Police Department will begin issuing body cameras to officers by the end of August. Cops in the capital city also want a raise , but Andrew Oxford reports the citys flat budget is standing in the way.Jeff Proctor got his hands on body camera videos that shows Albuquerque Police officers raiding a needle exchange program mobile trailer earlier this summer. The videos seem to contradict what the cops originally claimed about their interactions with health care workers.

Santa Fe Reporter
Former Treaty negotiator Ngatata Love defended hiring Redwood Group for a potential building project in Wellington, saying the Auckland property developer understood some of the complexities of working with iwi land.

Love began his testimony in the High Court in Wellington today in a case where he's accused of signing an agreement in late 2006 with Auckland property developers Redwood Group and Equinox Group to ensure they could lease land owned by the Wellington Tenths Trust, and that he received service fees through Pipitea Street Development Limited (PSDL), a company owned by his partner Lorraine Skiffington, without the trusts knowledge.

The Tenths Trust had become aware of Redwood because of work the developer had done with Ngati Whatua in Auckland, and the relationship he had with chief executive Tiwana Tibble, Love said.

Ngati Whatua's "philosophy wasn't dissimilar to ours, we wanted a developer that would take on all the risk," he said. "Here we had a developer that could understand our philosophy because they had worked with an iwi I knew well."

Love defended the lack of tender process for the development contract, which the Crown has asked previous witnesses about, saying that a tender process would normally be centred on a project, which wasn't the case with respect to the Pipitea Street development.

"All we had was the possibility of acquisition of land, it wasn't really part of what we could do," Love said. "This was to participate in an initiative which may or may not go ahead. There was no guarantee. Few developers would take on that sort of project."

The nature of Love's relationship with Skiffington was also called into question. Defence counsel Colin Carruthers QC said the Crown had characterised Skiffington as Love's partner, and asked Love why he had lived with Skiffington in the Moana Rd property.

He met Skiffington while working on treaty negotiations around 2001 when she was working for the then-Treaty Settlements Minister Margaret Wilson.

Love said he wasn't sure of the definition of partner and that he and Skiffington had been friends, connecting on a spiritual level, but there had been no sexual relationship.

He had moved into the Plimmerton house with his youngest daughter because it was closer to the city than Waikanae, where he had previously lived, Love said. He and Skiffington had different bedrooms, bathrooms and didn't share the same taste in food so didn't eat together, he said.

Love is charged with obtaining a secret commission and obtaining significant sums by deception. Skiffington was also charged but has been granted a permanent stay due to her ill health, while Ngatata Love's son Matene Love has already pleaded guilty to accepting a secret commission.

The judge-alone trial before Justice Graham Lang is continuing.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

SKO - FY23 Interim Results Announcement Date - 23 November 2022

Downer awarded $490 million road maintenance contract

SKC - 2022 ANNUAL MEETING OF SHAREHOLDERS AND TRADING UPDATE

TCL - Result of AGM

TradeWindow secures U.S. footprint with FoodChain ID

October 28th Morning Report

October 25th Morning Report

Mainfreight Investor Day / Market Update

GFI - Greenfern - Offer closes 27th Oct

MCY - Quarterly Operational Update


OCS Group has sold Envirocomp back to the original owners after writing down the value of the Christchurch-based composting firm to zero last year.

Frontier Group Partners, a consortium including Envirocomp founder Karen Ashby, bought the local firm for an undisclosed sum, and plans to review the operations with a view to introducing new technology to expand the business, OCS said in a statement.

The New Zealand unit of UK facilities management group OCS bought Envirocomp in February 2011 for $979,000, attributing $705,000 of goodwill to the New Zealand company. At the time of purchase, the company's accounts said Envirocomp generated annual revenue of $185,000 a year.

In calendar 2015, OCS Group NZ wrote down that subsidiary's goodwill to zero and said Envirocomp's closure meant the group will repay the bank loan and other liabilities attached to the unit and an intercompany receivable will potentially be written off in 2016.

In February last year, OCS New Zealand took out a $1.5 million loan from HSBC secured over Envirocomp, and as at Dec. 31 owed $1.2 million to related parties.

OCS managing director Gareth Marriott said his company had made a "significant investment in research and development in Envirocomp over the past five years" and is still committed to operating in an environmentally sustainable manner across its remaining businesses.

In 2010, Envirocomp received a $30,000 grant from the government's waste minimisation fund to identify a market and location for a nappy composting facility in the Wellington region, and a year later received a $700,000 grant to build a facility in the Wellington region.

Envirocomp operates facilities in Canterbury and Wellington, collecting and processing residential and commercial sanitary, incontinence and nappy waste which it estimates reduces each region's landfill waste by about 7,200 tonnes.

OCS New Zealand generated a profit of $2.2 million on revenue of $127 million in calendar 2015, compared with a profit of $4 million on sales of $118.9 million a year earlier.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

SKO - FY23 Interim Results Announcement Date - 23 November 2022

Downer awarded $490 million road maintenance contract

SKC - 2022 ANNUAL MEETING OF SHAREHOLDERS AND TRADING UPDATE

TCL - Result of AGM

TradeWindow secures U.S. footprint with FoodChain ID

October 28th Morning Report

October 25th Morning Report

Mainfreight Investor Day / Market Update

GFI - Greenfern - Offer closes 27th Oct

MCY - Quarterly Operational Update


Former Treaty negotiator Ngatata Love has taken the stand in the High Court in Wellington where he is accused of defrauding the Wellington Tenths Trust by taking payments to ensure property developers would win work with the iwi entity he chaired.

Preceded by a karakia from the public gallery, Love began his testimony today by outlining his personal history. The session was shortened to one hour to allow for Love's ill health, which had seen him hospitalised during the court hearing, and his doctor was on hand at today's hearing.

Love is the first defence witness to be called by his counsel, Colin Carruthers QC. The prosecution launched its case two-and-a-half weeks ago for the hearing that was initially set down for 11 days.

The former Victoria University of Wellington academic, who was made a Principal Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to Maori in 2008, is charged with obtaining a secret commission and obtaining significant sums by deception.

The Crown says he signed an agreement in late 2006 with Auckland property developers Redwood Group and Equinox Group to ensure they could lease land owned by the Tenths Trust, and that he received service fees through Pipitea Street Development Limited (PSDL), a company owned by his partner Lorraine Skiffington, without the trusts knowledge. That money is said to have been used to repay a property loan.

Skiffington was also charged but has been granted a permanent stay due to her ill health, while Ngatata Love's son Matene Love has already pleaded guilty to accepting a secret commission.

The judge-alone trial before Justice Graham Lang is continuing.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

SKO - FY23 Interim Results Announcement Date - 23 November 2022

Downer awarded $490 million road maintenance contract

SKC - 2022 ANNUAL MEETING OF SHAREHOLDERS AND TRADING UPDATE

TCL - Result of AGM

TradeWindow secures U.S. footprint with FoodChain ID

October 28th Morning Report

October 25th Morning Report

Mainfreight Investor Day / Market Update

GFI - Greenfern - Offer closes 27th Oct

MCY - Quarterly Operational Update


Former Treaty negotiator Ngatata Love told the High Court he didn't know about a $1.5 million payment from a developer chosen for a land deal involving the trust he chaired, even though it was paid into his partner's account and used to cover a mortgage on the house he lived in.

Love began his testimony this morning. He's accused of signing an agreement in late 2006 with Auckland property developers Redwood Group and Equinox Group to ensure they could lease land owned by the Wellington Tenths Trust that involved secret commissions paid via Pipitea Street Development Limited (PSDL), a company owned by his partner Lorraine Skiffington, without the trusts knowledge.

Skiffington was charged but has been granted a permanent stay due to her ill health, while Ngatata Love's son Matene Love has already pleaded guilty to accepting a secret commission.

In December 2006 the developers signed an agreement to lease the land, with a services agreement in which they agreed to pay $1.5 million to Pipitea St Developments, according to the prosecution case. The Serious Fraud Office found a draft copy of the Services Agreement marked Ngatatas working copy in a document destruction bin from Love and Skiffington's Plimmerton residence.

Love today denied having the "working copy" and said the document destruction bins had been collected from the house because it was "easier to sort it out separately" than to do it in the office.

He also said he'd had no knowledge of, and wasn't involved in, money movements between the developers and various trusts and bank accounts he and Skiffington were responsible for. Skiffington had authority to move money from the joint account the two shared, he said.

Love hadn't been responsible for the payment of the mortgage on the Moana Rd house in Plimmerton, and his responsibility while living there was to pay for items such as groceries and Sky TV, he said.

"I had nothing to do with that, I was a tenant," Love said.

He and Skiffington had never shared or developed assets together, and they hadn't had access to each other's banks accounts, he said. Love had expected the mortgage to be paid by Skiffington selling property she owned in Khandallah, but it was "her house and her responsibility," he said.

Defence counsel Colin Carruthers QC presented a loan application analysis from Westpac stating Love had $8 million in property assets and no debt. Love said he hadn't given the bank the information on the loan application analysis, and didn't recall meeting Campbell Cowan, the manager who had prepared the loan analysis.

"Absolutely not, that information's not correct," Love said.

He had allowed Skiffington to use his name on the mortgage application as he understood Skiffington had "needed some support" to get the loan, on the proviso that he could "come out" of the situation and not be responsible for the mortgage, he said.

Earlier in the day, Love didn't give a definitive answer about the nature of his relationship with Skiffington. The Crown has characterised her as having been his partner, but Love said he wasn't sure of the definition of partner and that he and Skiffington had been friends, connecting on a spiritual level, and that there had been no sexual relationship.

He had moved into the Plimmerton house with his youngest daughter because it was closer to the city than Waikanae, where he had previously lived, Love said. He and Skiffington had different bedrooms, bathrooms and didn't share the same taste in food so didn't eat together, he said.

The judge-alone trial before Justice Graham Lang is continuing, with Love due to be cross-examined by the Crown tomorrow.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

SKO - FY23 Interim Results Announcement Date - 23 November 2022

Downer awarded $490 million road maintenance contract

SKC - 2022 ANNUAL MEETING OF SHAREHOLDERS AND TRADING UPDATE

TCL - Result of AGM

TradeWindow secures U.S. footprint with FoodChain ID

October 28th Morning Report

October 25th Morning Report

Mainfreight Investor Day / Market Update

GFI - Greenfern - Offer closes 27th Oct

MCY - Quarterly Operational Update


Australian steel manufacturer Bluescope is seeking another A$15 million a year in savings from its New Zealand operations, which broke even on an operating earnings basis, after depreciation and amortisation, in the latest financial year.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation from Bluescope's two Auckland units, NZ Steel and Pacific Steel, came in at zero in the year ended June 30, compared with a A$26.8 million positive contribution in the previous financial year, the Melbourne-based company said in a statement.

New Zealand operations recorded a A$20.3 million increase in losses on an ebit basis to A$53.5 million, reflecting lower regional steel prices and iron ore prices, offset by a weaker NZ/US dollar exchange rate and cost savings totalling A$45 million. The company is now targeting annual savings from the Kiwi operations of A$60 million at the same time as it determines "whether operations can be internationally competitive and profitable".

The latest financial year saw Bluescope write down the pre-tax value of its New Zealand net operating assets to A$234.7 million from A$634.8 million and it has put its Taharoa ironsands export operation up for sale in a process it says is "progressing".

Cost savings achieved to date are being offset by higher carbon prices under New Zealand's emissions trading schemes, the potential for higher electricity transmission prices under proposals from the Electricity Authority, and the firm is pushing for an anti-dumping inquiry into Chinese steel exports to New Zealand.

The company's announcements today give no sense of the implications for the New Zealand operations if they failed to be internationally competitive, although noted that cost savings in Australian and New Zealand steelmaking "provided the basis to continue to make steel for now".

The acquisition from Fletcher Building of Pacific Steel is in part a strategy to focus on the New Zealand domestic market, where Bluescope sees a prolonged uplift in residential and non-residential construction.

Underlying ebit losses were also much lower in the second half of the financial year, at A$6.4 million, compared with A$47.1 million in the first half. Pacific Steel is expected to produce a NZ$40 million "annualised economic benefit" in the current financial year, being the full run rate forecast from the acquisition, having produced NZ$10 million in the second half of the year just ended.

In the year ahead, Bluescope expects a "slight improvement" over the second half of the last financial year, mainly from Pacific Steel and billet caster economics being fully realised, and higher steel pricing.

While the New Zealand unit's earnings were the group's weakest, Bluescope reported a strong surge in profitability as a variety of strategic acquisitions, cost-cutting initiatives and asset revaluations started flowing to the bottom line.

That was despite "continuing global overcapacity and production which drove regional commodity steel spreads in the six months to June 30 2016 to their lowest levels since Bluescope listed in 2002", managing director Paul O'Malley said.

Underlying ebit for the year rose by 89 percent to A$570.5 million while underlying net profit after tax at A$293.1 million was a 119 percent improvement on the previous financial year.

Total steel despatches from NZ and Pacific Steel fell to 697.1 million tonnes, from 782.6 million tonnes in the previous year, contributing to a fall in revenue to A$887.3 million from A$972.1 million the previous year. Domestic steel sales were relatively steady, but export sales fell apart from iron sands, where volumes rose sharply.

Key influences on the difference between the New Zealand units' performance in the latest year were a A$70.9 million fall in export prices and a A$27 million fall in domestic prices, offset by a A$106.8 million gain on exchange rate conversions and other costs. Export price losses reversed to a A$4.6 million gain in the second half of the year.

At Taharoa, there was an underlying ebit loss for the year of A$14.2 million. Some A$15.2 million of new capital expenditure was approved in the second half, but "further growth capex is under review and subject to the outcome of (the) sale process."

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

SKO - FY23 Interim Results Announcement Date - 23 November 2022

Downer awarded $490 million road maintenance contract

SKC - 2022 ANNUAL MEETING OF SHAREHOLDERS AND TRADING UPDATE

TCL - Result of AGM

TradeWindow secures U.S. footprint with FoodChain ID

October 28th Morning Report

October 25th Morning Report

Mainfreight Investor Day / Market Update

GFI - Greenfern - Offer closes 27th Oct

MCY - Quarterly Operational Update


New Zealand Refining posted an 82 percent slump in first-half profit and trimmed its interim dividend as a build-up in global oil stocks weighed on the Marsden Point refinery operator's margins.

Net profit dropped to $11.4 million, or 3.71 cents per share, in the six months ended June 30 from $65.2 million, or 20.91 cents, a year earlier when cheap oil fattened the Whangarei-based company's margins. Revenue fell 24 percent to $155.6 million, with gross refining margins shrinking to US$5.25 a barrel from US$9.09/barrel in 2015.

The company's board said it would pay an interim dividend of 3 cents per share on Sept. 22 to shareholders on the register at Sept. 8.

"We fully expected the stellar refining margins seen in 2015, where the company operated at cap or near cap refining margins, to return to more normal levels," chief executive Sjoerd Post said in a statement. "In the first half, global refining margins have been supported by ongoing strong gasoline demand in the US, China and India and lower crude oil prices.

"At the same time, there is near-term pressure from product 'overhang', the result of a build-up of surplus stocks."

Analysts were expecting NZ Refining to be hit by the changing dynamics in global oil markets, and the company's result was better than Forsyth Barr analyst Andrew Harvey-Green was picking. He forecast profit of $5.2 million on revenue of $151.9 million and an interim dividend of just 2 cents.

Post said an upgrade to the refinery's hydrocracker unit bolstered margins. Excluding a shutdown period, gross refinery margins were US$6.37/barrel in the half, near the top of the company's historical average. Throughput was 21.1 million barrels in the half, up from 20.9 million barrels a year earlier.

The product overhang is expected to persist for several months and NZ Refining has lowered its capital expenditure programme in response.

"We have refocused on the continued safe operation of the refinery and the vital few revenue growth projects with attractive payback periods," Post said.

NZ Refining shares last traded at $2.56 and have dropped 32 percent so far this year. The stock is rated an average 'buy' based on three analyst recommendations compiled by Reuters, with a median price target of $3.05.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

SKO - FY23 Interim Results Announcement Date - 23 November 2022

Downer awarded $490 million road maintenance contract

SKC - 2022 ANNUAL MEETING OF SHAREHOLDERS AND TRADING UPDATE

TCL - Result of AGM

TradeWindow secures U.S. footprint with FoodChain ID

October 28th Morning Report

October 25th Morning Report

Mainfreight Investor Day / Market Update

GFI - Greenfern - Offer closes 27th Oct

MCY - Quarterly Operational Update


MUMBAI: Real estate-focused fund Nisus Finance Services Co (NiFCO) plans to raise USD 50 million (around Rs 335 crore) through an offshore fund in the next 4-5 months.



The fund will invest the proceeds in mid-income residential projects in seven key markets across the country, a top official of the company said.

This will be the company's maiden offshore fund. It had successfully raised Rs 80 crore since the start of its operations in August 2014.



"Our focus is on raising small funds and invest in mid-income residential projects. International investors especially the high networth individuals (HNIs) are keenly looking at the Indian real estate market and we are hopeful we will be able to complete raising the funds in the next 4-5 months," Nisus Finance Services Co Chief Executive Amit Goenka told PTI.



He said the company will invest the funds in key markets, including Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Delhi-NCR.



The fund will have a tenure of four years, and the company will look at investing around Rs 30-40 crore in every project. The investment will be made for around two to two-and-half years.

Read Also: Sesame Software Gets Investment From U.S.-Based Speridian

LeEco Signs Deal With 3 Leading Indian Digital Solutions Firms
NEW DELHI: Chinese mobile internet giant Alibaba Group on Friday announced the launch of a book donation drive in India, inviting people to donate textbooks and educational material to empower those who are underprivileged.

The "Mission Million Books" is a pan-India initiative aimed at providing the underprivileged with the access to quality educational materials for their growth and advancement, the company said in a statement.

The campaign, which will run till September 16, also supports the government's efforts to enable access to quality education for all.

"Quality education is everyone's right and plays a fundamental role in building character and intelligence at an early age, ultimately shaping a nation," said Guru Gowrappan, Global Managing Director, Alibaba Group.

Collected material will be distributed to more than 2,500 educational institutions across India.

In association with Crossword and Ratna Nidhi Charitable Trust, Alibaba Group will also donate over 50,000 books to the campaign, and Alibaba.com and mobile browser UC Web will provide online marketing support to maximise the impact.

Read Also: India Further Cuts U.S. Govt Securities Exposure To $117 Bn

Indo-Candian Sikh MP Becomes Canada's 1st Woman House Leader
BEIJING: China's largest high speed train maker has announced that its first USD 63.4 million joint venture plant in India to repair and manufacture railway locomotive engines has started operations.



The state-run China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) is the first foreign company to set up assembly line of rail transportation equipment in India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled his ambitious 'Make in India' campaign in 2014, the company said in statement.

The joint venture named CRRC Pioneer (India) Electric Co. Ltd., is housed in Haryana.



The plant was set up with an investment USD 63.4 million and the Chinese side holds 51 per cent of the share, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.



The India plant will repair and manufacture railway locomotive engines.



It will also provide technology support to India's rail system and supply electric transmission systems to oil drilling, wind power generation and mining equipment making in India, the report said.



This is China's first major investment in Indian Railways after the two worked out a multi-pronged collaboration for Chinese participation in the modernisation of Indian railway systems.



While Indian Railway engineers are getting trained in China in heavy hauling, China is also cooperating with India to set up a railway university similar to the one it developed.



Besides the high speed train, India and China have agreed to cooperate to identify the technical inputs required to increase speed on the existing railway line from Chennai to Mysore via Bangalore.



China is also conducting feasibility study to build a high speed railway line between Chennai and New Delhi.



Japan has bagged the first bullet train project to build a high speed rail line between Ahmedabad and Mumbai.



CRRC Vice President Yu Weiping said the new plant will create jobs and tax revenue for local people and help improve infrastructure.



It will advance cooperation in industrial capacity and local equipment manufacturing, he said.



India has one of the world's largest railway network spanning about 64,000 kilometres.



Since its presence in the Indian market in 2007, CRRC has supplied it with subway trains, locomotive engines and other railway vehicles and parts, the report said.



"Given more than 60,000 kilometres of railways in India, it is far from enough to build a single locomotive engine plant in India," Yu said.



"CRRC will build more plants (that are) able to produce trains, locomotive traction systems and other key parts in India," he said.



CRRC, formed from the merger of former rivals CNR Corp. And China CSR, has been aggressively reaching out to overseas markets, exporting rail transportation equipment to 101 countries and regions.



Its first plant in North America started operations in September 2015 in Massachusetts.

Read Also: India, China Hold 8th Financial And Economic Dialogue

Obama To Travel To China For G20 Summit, Meeting Modi On Cards
BENGALURU: In an event hosted by Niti Aayog, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and industry chamber CII, government announced setting up a team to enhance the innovations across the country. The issues raised in Global Innovation Index report, which was released at the event, are going to be addressed by Government of India. Nirmala Sitharaman, commerce minister of India remarked that from the Department (of Commerce) a team would be formed that would look at repositioning India in the sphere of innovations.

As mentioned by Global Innovation Index 2016, India has been ranked 66th on a list of most pioneering economies, climbing 15 places from last year, according to a new UN report. The report emphasis for more candid policies to ensure a better innovation index from the country. Talking about the formation of new team Sitharaman said, This team, which will include members from both government and outside, will not reinvent the wheel, but will go into the report, identify challenges and weaknesses to Indias innovation and what the government can do  where it should step in and where it should step back and away.

The Global Innovation Index ranks innovation performance of 128 countries and economies accross the globe, based on 82 indicators. Although the rank has improved from previous year, the team has been advised by the government to lead from front and specify the policies of innovative business environment and education. I commit myself to the governments assistance and facilitation to improve Indias innovation ranking next year, Sitharaman added.

Commerce minister also wanted, the innovation policy experts, to look at a structure of not driving children to perform only in a conventional examination. It is unpredictability which is going to bring in performance and innovation, she added.

Read Also: The Perks of Being an Indian Politician

Zuckerberg Gives Away $95 Mn Facebook Shares In Charity
TORONTO: Indo-Canadian Sikh MP Bardish Chagger has been named as the new Leader of the government in Canada's House of Commons, becoming the first woman to hold the post in the country's history.



Ms Chagger, the 36-year-old Waterloo MP and Minister of Small Business and Tourism, was among 19 Indian-origin candidates who won in last year's general election.



"This is a tremendous opportunity. I have been involved in the political process for basically my whole life," Ms Chagger told reporters on Parliament Hill after her swearing-in yesterday.



"I know what democracy should look like. Democracy should be engaging Canadians. That is the leadership of our prime minister and that's why the whole of government approach will work for Canada," she was quoted as saying by CBC News.



The latest development makes her the first woman in Canadian history to hold the job of guiding government legislation through Parliament and replaces Dominic LeBlanc.



Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his "confidence in minister Chagger as a worthy successor", the report said, citing a government statement.



On the first day on the job, Ms Chagger said she "really does believe that we can all work together...let's work with the team and let's get there," she said.



Ms Chagger, who was born and raised in the Waterloo region, attended the University of Waterloo where she was the president of the Young Liberals.



She will retain her title as the minister along with the new role.



She is one of the four Sikh Canadians inducted into Trudeau's Cabinet besides Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan - a combat veteran who did three tours in Afghanistan as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi and Innovation Minister Navdeep Singh Bains.

Read Also: Obama To Travel To China For G20 Summit, Meeting Modi On Cards

India, China Hold 8th Financial And Economic Dialogue
NEW DELHI: India is expected to raise its concerns over the visa issue and pitch for fast-tracking the talks for the proposed Social Security Agreement during the second US-India Strategic and Commercial Dialogue (S&CD) here on August 30.



"During the day-long meeting, India and the US would discuss issues to further strengthen bilateral economic relations. India is likely to raise the issue of visa and Social Security Agreement in the meeting," an official said.

Besides, the two sides would deliberate on ways to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in both the countries.



India wants early conclusion of the Totalisation Agreement or Social Security Agreement with the US.



The US has entered into this agreement with several nations for the purpose of avoiding double taxation of income with respect to social security taxes.



Under these, professionals of both the countries would be exempted from social security taxes when they go to work for a short period in other country.



India has voiced concern over hike in visa fee by the US time and again, saying it impacts Indian IT professionals.



India had already filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against the US decision to impose high fees on temporary working visas.



The official said the India-US CEOs Forum would meet on August 30 to discuss ways to enhance trade and investments between the two countries.



The meeting gains importance given India's need for massive funding in infrastructure and the ambitious goal set by the two countries to increase bilateral trade to USD 500 billion per annum from the existing about USD 100 billion.



From Indian side, Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry will co-chair the forum's meeting. About 20 top CEOs would participate in the meet from each side.



For the S&CD, US Secretary of State John Kerry and US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker will visit the national capital. From the Indian side, Foreign Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will attend the meeting.



The first dialogue of US-India S&CD was held in Washington last year in September.



The US leaders are also expected to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 31.



The bilateral trade in goods between the countries stood at USD 62 billion in 2015-16. India has received USD 17.94 billion foreign direct investment from the US during April 2000 and March 2016.

Read Also: Obama To Travel To China For G20 Summit, Meeting Modi On Cards

India, China Hold 8th Financial And Economic Dialogue
NEW DELHI: Russia is a "time-tested" and "reliable friend", Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today and expressed shared commitment with President Vladimir Putin to expand, strengthen and deepen the bilateral engagement across all domains.



He made the remarks while receiving Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin who conveyed Putin's greetings to the Prime Minister and briefed him on the progress in ongoing projects between India and Russia, according to a PMO statement.



Modi recalled his recent meeting with Putin in Tashkent in June and via video-link for dedication of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1 at the beginning of this month.



The Prime Minister conveyed that India is eagerly awaiting the Russian President's visit here, the statement added.

Read Also:

Indo-U.S. Strategic & Commercial Dialogue On Aug 30

Setting Up MSMEs Necessary For India's Progress: Minister
BENGALURU: It might be true for the British prime ministers to vacate the official residence at 10 Downing Street immediately after demitting office; but in India the privileged class seems to have a greater affinity towards everything that comes with the office. The political class in India seems to hold an unfair advantage over the masses and their reluctance to vacate their houses even after demitting office is a clear case of unflinching affinity towards the plush bungalows and houses.

In Britain its not the state's business to worry about the future housing prospects of their Ex- Prime Ministers. After a long sojourn in the temporary digs, the Camerons, for instance, are expected to move back into their own house in London.

However, that seems to be the only British tradition that we Indians decided not to emulate, and the political class seems to have made themselves comfortable and at home in the spacious plush bungalows built for colonial grandiose. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, as our netas are just not satisfied with one bungalow and occupy several, in various citiesand try to fit into those bungalows for as long as possible. They dont have to worry about finding affordable housing ever again in thi.s life or maybe afterlife.

This strong fascination for official housing is obviously why rather than paying attention to the Allahabad High Court directive to divest former chief ministers of their state housing, the UP government is all set to change the law so that they can stay there for as long as they want. It is very difficult to find a rationale for politicians feeding off the state till eternity. Such leases are certainly not a wise move and its only a matter of years when political masters will outnumber available accommodation.



Original title: The perks Indian political class enjoys includes a house, on the house

Read Also:

Zuckerberg Gives Away $95 Mn Facebook Shares In Charity

Alibaba Group Launches Book Donation Drive In India
The New York State Fair begins its 12-day run this week at the state fairgrounds located on 375 acres in the town of Geddes. Last year, 908,147 people attended the end-of-summer event.

Here's a guide to special days, concerts and new events at the fair.

Special days and events

Thursday, Aug. 25

It's Opening Day. Gates open at 8 a.m., and visitors should expect a line. The New York State Fair will offer $3 Thursdays again this year, a continuing effort to grow opening day attendance. The $3 will cover general admission, which is usually $6 for advance sales and $10 at the gate. It's also Governor's Day.

"Real Housewives of New Jersey" star Teresa Giudice will visit the fair at 6 p.m. in Empire Theater in the NYS Fair's Art & Home Center. Tickets are on sale for $30 for the Q&A with a meet-and-greet or $20 without the meet-and-greet.

At Chevy Court, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy will perform at 2 p.m., and Kesha will perform at 8 p.m. At the Lakeview Amphitheater, Keith Urban's show will begin at 7:30 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Thursday, Aug. 25

Friday, Aug. 26

Friday is the first official Pride Day at NYS Fair. Events include a flag raising, an official ceremony, an information fair and participation in the Special Day Parade at 6 p.m. It's also Law Enforcement Day at the fair, with free admission to any active law enforcement personnel who presents a badge and/or picture ID from their law enforcement department.

There will also be a food drive on this day. Volunteers will be stationed at gates 1, 3, 4 and 11a as well as in the Orange Lot at the walkway to accept donations. M&T Bank will donate $1 to the Food Bank for every pound of food donated.

At Chevy Court, Braiden Sunshine and Chance Pena will perform at 2 p.m., and Toto will perform at 8 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Friday, Aug. 26

Saturday, Aug. 27

At Chevy Court, Canadian band MAGIC! will perform at 2 p.m., and emo rockers Dashboard Confessional will take the stage at 8 p.m. At the Lakeview Amphitheater, KoRn and Rob Zombie will perform at 6:30 p.m.

There will also be a food drive on this day. Volunteers will be stationed at gates 1, 3, 4 and 11a as well as in the Orange Lot at the walkway to accept donations. M&T Bank will donate $1 to the Food Bank for every pound of food donated.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Saturday, Aug. 27

Sunday, Aug. 28

Syracuse City Market will set up three dozen booths along the back of Chevy Court in front of the State Park on Sunday. Here you'll find handmade arts, crafts, and antiques, as well as handmade jewelry from around the world. Open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

At Chevy Court, Air Supply will perform at 2 p.m., and Bruce Hornsby and The Noisemakers will perform at 8 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Sunday, Aug. 28

Monday, Aug. 29

It's Dairy Day as well as one of two Senior Citizen Days, Monday Aug. 29 and Tuesday Aug. 30. Senior citizens, 60 and older, are offered free admission. ID showing date of birth may be requested to allow free admittance.

At Chevy Court, Herman's Hermits will take the stage at 2 p.m., and Brian Wilson with Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin will perform at 8 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Monday, Aug. 29

Tuesday, Aug. 30

It's Beef Day and Fire & Rescue Day with free admission to any active member of a fire department or emergency services organization who has a picture ID from that department or organization. It's also the second Senior Citizen Day. Senior citizens, 60 and older, are offered free admission. ID showing date of birth may be requested to allow free admittance.

At Chevy Court, Survivor will perform at 2 p.m., and The Commodores will take the stage at 8 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Tuesday, Aug. 30

Wednesday, Aug. 31

It's Women's Day, Attend the annual Women's Day Luncheon plus many special events have been planned throughout the day. Highlighted events include the Fine Arts and Photo Exhibition in the Art & Home Center as well as judging in the Culinary Arts area. During the entire day, various women's advocacy organizations will be at a "mini-fair" set up in the Chevy Court Pavilion.

It's also Ride For $5 Day. Sponsored by Mello Velo Bicycle Shop, cyclists can join a free group ride beginning at the Salt Museum at Onondaga Lake Park at 9:30 a.m. Anyone who rides a bike to the fair will receive a $5 discounted admission. Bikes will be checked into a secure parking area with staff on hand, provided by Mello Velo.



At Chevy Court, Macy Gray will perform at 2 p.m., and Three Days Grace will perform at 8 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Wednesday, Aug. 31

Thursday, Sept. 1

It's Armed Forces Day, with free admission to any active duty or veteran with identification (Military ID Card, form DD-214 or NYS Driver's License, Learners Permit or non-driver ID card with a veteran designation). It's also the second $3 Thursday.

At Chevy Court, Natalie La Rose performs at 2 p.m., and Flo Rida takes the stage at 8 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Thursday, Sept. 1

Friday, Sept. 2

It's Six Nations Day and Native Americans receive free admission on this day. ID is not required, but it is asked that attendees enter through Gate 4 only. Friday is also Student's Day. Youths 18 years old and younger are admitted free on this day. ID showing date of birth may be requested to allow free admittance.

At Chevy Court, A Tribe Called Red performs at 2 p.m., and Culture Club takes the stage at 8 p.m. At the Lakeview Amphitheater, Florida Georgia Line will perform starting at 7 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Friday, Sept. 2

Saturday, Sept. 3

It's Grange Day, marking the achievements of the NYS Grange organization.

At Chevy Court, X Ambassadors take the stage at 2 p.m., and Rachel Platten and A Great Big World perform at 8 p.m. At the Lakeview Amphitheater, ZZ Top will perform beginning at 8 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Saturday, Sept. 3

Sunday, Sept. 4

At Chevy Court, Robert Cray will perform at 2 p.m., and Daughtry will perform at 8 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Sunday, Sept. 4

Monday, Sept. 5

Labor Day honors those working women and men who make America strong. Supporters of labor can meet at 10 a.m. near Gate 4 and then at 10:30 a.m. they will march to Chevy Court for a Labor Day rally.

Monday is also the fair's "Summer Send Off Dollar Day." Adult admission is $1 per person all day and rides in the Wade Shows Midway are $1 per ride. Food vendors offer $1 specials, as well. Fair parking will still cost $5.

At Chevy Court, Chicago will perform at 6 p.m.

>> Detailed daily schedule for Monday, Sept. 5

Good to know

>> Admission: Adults are $10 at the gate; Children under 12 free every day. Gates open at 8 a.m. Exhibit buildings are open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. On Labor Day, exhibit buildings close at 9 p.m. The midway is open 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. every night except on Labor Day, when it closes at 9 p.m.

>> Fairgrounds map

>> Schedule of Chevy Court music acts and Lakeview Amphitheater music acts.

>> Parking: Lots surrounding the fairgrounds can accommodate 23,000 cars. Parking is $5. For a map and directions visit the fair's website. Parking is $5. Visitors can pay in cash or via EZ-Pass. | Map and Directions

>> The rules: Visitors can bring coolers with food and drink, but no alcoholic beverages, on the fairgrounds. No glass containers. No pets are allowed, unless they are working dogs, canine companions or in a competition. All bags, backpacks, coolers, purses and fanny packs are permitted but subject to search upon entry. You cannot bring alcohol, weapons, guns, signs, placards, selfie sticks, roller blades, skate boards or bicycles onto the grounds.

>> Follow the latest news and features on syracuse.com/statefair.
MANORVILLE, N.Y. -- A former aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and two others were killed -- and eight others, including two children, were injured -- in a multi-car crash Sunday on Long Island.

Scott Martella.

The crash occurred about 9:30 a.m. on the Long Island Expressway near Manorville. The driver of a Subaru, Carmelo Pinales, 26, of Hicksville, apparently lost control and struck a Honda and a BMW.



Pinales and his sister, Patricia Pinales, 27, were killed. Carmelo's 10-year-old son was hospitalized in critical condition.



The driver of the Honda, Scott Martella, 29, of Northport was also killed. He was a spokesman for Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Newsday reported that Martella worked for Cuomo as the state Department of Labor's Long Island regional representative.

Martella's fiance, Shelbi Thurau, suffered non-life threatening injuries in Sunday's crash.



Six others, including a 3-year-old girl, also suffered non-life threatening injuries.



Police said speed may have been a factor in the accident.
South Korea Earns Hyundai Motor

Hyundai and Mitsubishi are recalling thousands of cars for defects that could increase the risk of accidents.

(AP/Ahn Young-joon)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Hyundai and Mitsubishi are recalling thousands of cars for defects that could increase the risk of accidents.

MITSUBISHI RECALL

Mitsubishi's recall is for more than 82,000 2015 and 2016 models of the Outlander Sport and 2016 Outlanders and Lancers. These vehicles have a problem with the automatic transmission that can delay acceleration in certain driving conditions, according to wemakeitsafer.com.

The recall website reports that since 1998, Outlanders have had about 17 recalls due to defects with various car components, including the lower arm, blower, electrical system, belts and associated pulleys and switch.

MMNA (Mitsubishi Motors North America) said the company will reprogram the CVT control unit with modified software, free of charge. Owners of recalled vehicles can call 1-888-648-7820.

HYUNDAI RECALL



Hyundai is recalling more than 64,500 2013 model Elantras, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

The defect is the brake pedal stopper can deteriorate, which could cause the transmission to shift out of park without applying the brake pedal.

Hyundai said it will replace the brake pedal stopper pad "with an improved part," for no charge. Owners of recalled Hyundais can call 1-855-371-9460.

to search the NHTSA database to see if your vehicle's VIN number is part of the recalls.

FOLLOW TRACEY PORPORA ON FACEBOOK
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Rossville is the one of the most recent locations of the illegally parked mobile speed camera.

Located not far from the intersection of Woodrow and Bloomingdale roads in Rossville, a white SUV was parked, again, in a "no standing zone."

Submitted by SILive.com reader Joey Fiorella, a photo shows the SUV in clear violation of the sign.

Fiorella also noted that the SUV is parked in front of a fire hydrant, which is also illegal.

Stopping, standing or parking closer than 15 feet of a fire hydrant carries a fine of $115 in New York City. The fine for parking in a "no standing" zone is $65.

The Department of Transportation can put cameras within a quarter mile of a corridor that passes a school building or has a school's entrance or exit on the street. The cameras can only be active on school days, from one hour before classes start and one hour after the school day has ended. The cameras can also operate during school activities, as well as 30 minutes before and after those activities.

The mobile speed camera is .02 miles away from PS 56, located at 250 Kramer Avenue.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

Less than one month ago, two white SUVs appears on opposite sides on the street in front of New Dorp High School.

And you guessed it, both were parked in a "no standing" zone.

Motorist Michael Caruso spotted the two SUVs, one white and one grey, violating the posted parking regulation signs, snapped photos and sent them to the Advance.

Caruso hoped that the photos would alert fellow motorists, as well as give other motorists who may have already been ticketed a defense, should they choose to fight it.

In the month of June, the northbound camera in front of New Dorp High School issued 40 speeding violations, and the southbound camera issued 46, according to data from the city Department of Transportation (DOT).

In November 2014, a mobile school-zone speed camera was parked in a controversial location on Goethals Road North in Graniteville, behind the Staten Island School of Civic Leadership facing in the direction of the off-ramp of the Staten Island Expressway.

From June to October of 2014, the camera generated 25,034 speeding tickets, good for $1.25 million in fines, making it second in the five boroughs when it came to generating revenue.

Councilman Steven Matteo (R-Mid-Island) quickly got involved, stating that it is "ludicrous for the city to allow vehicles with cameras to be parked in standing areas."

Some drivers were able to have their tickets dismissed with the Matteo's help, at the judge's digression, citing that the mobile cameras were parked in a ''no standing'' zone.

The city Department of Transportation (DOT) said the camera was not placed in the location to issue tickets, but rather to "measure the area for a potential new site."

DOT DEFENDS CAMERAS

Recently, the DOT would not comment on why the mobile speed cameras were allowed to be parked in "no standing" zones, but a spokeswoman did say that "the speed camera program is successful at deterring illegal speeding near schools, as average violations issued at fixed locations dropped by half at Staten island schools since the program started."

However, last November the DOT defended parking the unit in a "no standing" zone.

Under New York City Traffic Rules, section 4-02(d)(1)(ii), "traffic/parking control vehicles" are allowed to operate outside of traffic regulations.

"This camera is properly located," a DOT spokesman stated at the time.

SPEED CAMERA VIOLATIONS

Mobile and fixed speed cameras on Staten Island have issued a total of 43,315 violations so far this year for driving more than 10 MPH over the speed limit in a school zone, a spokeswoman for the city Department of Transportation (DOT) told the Advance.

Of the 43,315 tickets issued, 23,368 violations were from the borough's six fixed cameras, while the remaining 19,947 were from the mobile speed cameras, the spokeswoman said.

In the month of June, 7,538 violations were issued.

The total includes violations issued from two mobile cameras that are parked in a "no standing" zone in front of New Dorp High School.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Authorities rescued a 17-year-old male bicyclist from Brooklyn who threatened suicide on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge early on Monday morning, according to a spokeswoman for the NYPD.

MTA Bridge and Tunnel officers teamed with NYPD Emergency Service Unit members to bring the teen safely off the span, said a spokesman for the MTA.

The teen called 911 and said he wanted to commit suicide, police said.

Bridge and Tunnel officers responded to a report of a bicyclist on the upper level of the westbound span at 12:47 a.m. and an abandoned bicycle was spotted at 12:49 a.m., according to the MTA.

The emotionally disturbed teen was wandering on the catwalk of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, a spokesman for the MTA said.

ESU and EMS also responded and at 1:41 a.m., the teen was taken into custody and then transported by EMS to Staten Island University Hospital at 1:52 a.m, the MTA said.

The teen suffered no injuries and was taken to the medical facility for evaluation, police said.
Page Content

Minister of Education Silveria Jacobs expresses deep and heartfelt condolences to the parents and family of the young boy whose life was tragically lost in an accident on Saturday morning at the Princess Juliana International Airport.





This tragedy is one that will forever change the landscape of the lives of all involved, including the victim, his family, the driver of the van and his family as well as eyewitnesses and the community at large.





No words can properly suffice to offer comfort at this time. It is my wish that while the investigation is ongoing that speculation be left aside out of respect for those who are mourning and in deep shock as a result of this accident.





It is also my fervent hope and prayer that they are given the emotional support necessary to deal with the aftermath of this tragedy in the days, weeks and months to come.





While it may fade from our daily thoughts after some time, such a tragedy can continue to haunt those involved for years to come. May God grant them the faith and strength to get through this most difficult journey.





All parents, guardians and institutions are asked to exercise diligence to avoid the reoccurrence of such a tragedy and others that we read about daily around the world, as we must ensure the safety and security of all citizens.





The entire island community is in deep shock and prayers for compassion, strength and healing are extended to all involved, Minister Silveria Jacobs stated on Saturday.




Page Content

Prime Minister Marlin returned home from the Dominican Republic on Wednesday having attended the inauguration of Danilo Medina as the President of that country. The two-day event was attended by an array of international guests including royals, cardinals, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Ministers, and ambassadors, as well as representatives of international organizations. William Marlin, in his capacity as Prime Minister of Sint Maarten headed the delegation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which included the Prime Minister of Curacao Ben Whiteman of Curacao, the Minister of Health, Social Welfare, and Labour of Aruba Paul Croes, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the Dominican Republic Marijke van Druinen-Littel, and representatives of the Department of Foreign Relations of both Sint Maarten, represented by Mr. Patrice Gumbs Jr, and Aruba, represented by Mr. Edwin Abath.





The Prime Minister underscored the strong ties between both Sint Maarten and the Dominican Republic and the need to give content to these historical links. The Dominican Republic is by far one of our most important regional partners. The historical and cultural links between the Kingdom countries in the Caribbean and more significantly the strong ties between Sint Maarten and the Dominican Republic made the decision to attend the inauguration most obvious. Prime Minister also noted in his address upon arrival that he is here not only representing the Kingdom of the Netherlands but the large number of Dominican people who call Sint Maarten their home.Prime Minister William Marlin attends inauguration of Dominican Republican President Danilo Medina





Prime Minister Marlin returned home from the Dominican Republic on Wednesday having attended the inauguration of Danilo Medina as the President of that country. The two-day event was attended by an array of international guests including royals, cardinals, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Ministers, and ambassadors, as well as representatives of international organizations. William Marlin, in his capacity as Prime Minister of Sint Maarten headed the delegation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which included the Prime Minister of Curacao Ben Whiteman of Curacao, the Minister of Health, Social Welfare, and Labour of Aruba Paul Croes, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the Dominican Republic Marijke van Druinen-Littel, and representatives of the Department of Foreign Relations of both Sint Maarten, represented by Mr. Patrice Gumbs Jr, and Aruba, represented by Mr. Edwin Abath.





The Prime Minister underscored the strong ties between both Sint Maarten and the Dominican Republic and the need to give content to these historical links. The Dominican Republic is by far one of our most important regional partners. The historical and cultural links between the Kingdom countries in the Caribbean and more significantly the strong ties between Sint Maarten and the Dominican Republic made the decision to attend the inauguration most obvious. Prime Minister also noted in his address upon arrival that he is here not only representing the Kingdom of the Netherlands but the large number of Dominican people who call Sint Maarten their home.




2016 SkS Weekly Digest #34

Posted on 21 August 2016 by John Hartz

SkS Highlights... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... He Said What?... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...

SkS Highlights

Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus-the 97%, Guardian) garnered, by far and away, the most comments among the articles posted on SkS during the past week. The comment thread discussion is lively and wide-ranging. If you have not done so already, check out the article and participate in the discourse.

Toon of the Week

Hat tip to I Heart Climate Scientists

Quote of the Week

This is extinction tourism, said international law expert Professor Michael Byers, of the University of British Columbia. Making this trip has only become possible because carbon emissions have so warmed the atmosphere that Arctic sea ice in summer is disappearing. The terrible irony is that this ship  which even has a helicopter for sightseeing and a huge staff-to-passenger ratio  has an enormous carbon footprint that is only going to make things even worse in the Arctic.

Inuit fear they will be overwhelmed as extinction tourism descends on Arctic by Robin McKie, Observer/Guardian, Aug 20, 2016

Graphic of the Week

Source: NASA Analysis Finds July 2016 is Warmest on Record, NASA News Release, Aug 16, 2016

He Said What?

In a recent CSPAN broadcast, Republican Party and Climate Change, former Rep Bob Inglis (R-SC), who has embraced the concept of global warming, talked about why he believes his fellow Republicans should come together with Democrats to make an effort to reduce climate change.

During the Q&A session of the broadcast, the following exchange occurred.

Caller: Good morning Mr. Inglis, originally called to ask you something about solar flares, but i need to ask something else first. Listening to you about the carbon tax, under the gore plan, apparently one company did not use all the carbon allotment, and the tax credits could be sold to another company. So the same amount of carbon would go into the air. I need to know what you're talking about, if it is that or if you are going to use less carbon? In addition to that, there is a book out that is a scientist saying that the solar flares, which have been exceptionally strong recently, is the predominant cause of the global warming. Have you checked into that end of it? That is my question, and i will get off-line to listen to you. Thank you for taking my call. Inglis: Thanks, lucille. On the solar flares, i suggest you go to a site called Skeptical Science, and you will see a discussion about solar flares there. A lot of people talk about solar flares, especially on my side of the aisle, because they want to find that as the explanation. But what you will see at Skeptical Science is that it does not correlate with the warming that we are seeing now. In fact, flair activity would cause the earth to be cooling now, rather than warming. So it does not correlate. You can see more of that and go really deep if you want to add Skeptical Science. It is a neat site. About your carbon credit question,...

SkS in the News

In his Sydney Morning Herald article, Malcolm Roberts leaves NASA 'flummoxed' with Q&A climate claims, Peter Hannam states:

For Roberts to be right, at least 80 science academies around the world have to be wrong, as would almost 100 per cent of the scientists publishing work in the field. John Cook, a climate communications research fellow at the University of Queensland, is part of a crew offering a free lecture series "Making Sense of Climate Science Denial" to help explain why "empirical science" will never sate Roberts or sceptics like him. As Cook notes, the onus really should sit with Roberts to explain why so many changes predicted by climate science are being observed - such as cooling in the upper atmosphere as less heat escapes to space because of the additional greenhouse gases accumulating in the biosphere.

SkS Spotlights

Nexus Media: Original reporting on climate change and clean energy. Videos and articles available for no-cost syndication. Contact us at info@nexusmediastudios.com.

Coming Soon on SkS

Historical documents reveal how quickly we're vanishing Arctic sea ice (Dana Nuccitelli)

(Dana Nuccitelli) Rising seas could ease coral bleaching but will be too little too late (Robert McSweeney)

(Robert McSweeney) Guest Post (John Abraham)

(John Abraham) IPCC special report to scrutinise feasibility of 1.5C climate goal (Roz Pidcock)

(Roz Pidcock) Range anxiety? Todays electric cars can cover vast majority of daily U.S. driving needs (Jessica Trancik)

(Jessica Trancik) 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #35 (John Hartz)

(John Hartz) 2016 SkS Weekly Digest #35 (John Hartz)

Poster of the Week

Hat tip to I Heart Climate Scientists

SkS Week in Review

97 Hours of Consensus:

Gavin Schmidt's bio page

Quote derived with permission from author from:

"...what we anticipate is that because we're continuing to add carbon dioxide to the system, we're going to continue to warm decade by decade by decade. The exact magnitude of where we're going to go is going to depend a little bit on the system, but also on the decision that we make as a society to either reduce carbon emissions or just to carry on with business as usual."

High resolution JPEG (1024 pixels wide)
The cast and crew of Atlanta, including Zazie Beetz '13, earned the 2017 Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical.

Turning on the TV and seeing herself is still a surreal experience for prolific actor Zazie Beetz 13. Shes starring in the much-anticipated show Atlanta, written and produced by Donald Glover and set to premiere on FX on September 6.

Rapper, director, and actor Glover is known for his appearances in 30 Rock, Community, The Martian, and more. His Atlanta is a half-hour comedy featuring cousins Earn Marks (Glover) and Alfred Miles (Brian Tyree Henry) trying to gain traction in the Atlanta music scene. Beetz plays Vanessa Van Keifer, Earns on-again-off-again girlfriend. She has also appeared in the Netflix series Easy, Love & Pipes, Tied Up Tied Down, and Slice, but she says her role as Van has received the most buzz.

Although this may be her biggest role to date, Beetz knows theres more to come. She says the project feels small, since it hasnt yet been seen by the public: All thats going on now is a few more Instagram followers, she jokes. But she adds, This is definitely a project bigger than myself, even though it does still feel intimate.

At Skidmore, Beetz earned a BA in French but was always heavily involved in theater. In her freshman year, she recalls, Professor Alma Becker cast me in the mainstage production, and I felt so honored! From that moment, Beetz took advantage of opportunities beyond the coursework prescribed by her degree.

She says she continues to use the lessons learned in acting and camera courses at Skidmoreeven in her screen test for Atlanta. Fighting through her nerves while reading with Glover, she admits, I still use my ha ha breaths. Anyone who has taken Kate Kelly Bouchards class will know what I mean! Beetz is thankful for the community of classmates and professors who allowed her to explore her passions, and who continued to support her after graduation.

With Skidmores education I was able to humor another huge part of myself, she explains. I suppose thats the beauty of a liberal arts school.
By clicking Agree, you consent to Slates Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to withdraw consent.

Agree
Helle Frederiksen recently left the BMC-Etixx Pro Triathlon Team and she is now on a sharp looking LOOK 796 Monoblade. The split came only 6 months into her renewed 2 year deal with the team, but it was a mutual split that Frederiksen says was the right thing for me. The team were always respectful of my focus as an athlete and I always respected the teams vision. We parted ways on great terms.



Before joining the Belgian based squad Helle Frederiksen had a close relationship with the French LOOK brand and she is now happily back in that fold.



She won Challenge Samorin this past weekend and here is a closer look at her Shimano, ENVE, Continental, CeramicSpeed, TorHans, SpeedFil equipped LOOK 796.



The LOOK 796 Monoblade of Helle Frederiksen as it was race ready setup prior to Challenge Samorin.

Helle Frederiksen with her new race bike, but it is truly new as she has only been on it since the end of July.

Frederiksen has had 3 detailed fit sessions with Boulder based, Ivan OGorman. Ivan has been Helles go to fit consultant for the past years. The position has changed slightly. Frederiksen is longer in the front. The LOOK arm pad reach puts Helle 9mm further forward than what the BMC was and this has helped lower and lengthen Helles upper body.

Helle chooses the 12Nm version of LOOKs Keo Blade 2. Due to LOOKs ZED 3 adjustable crank, Helle has moved to 167.5mm crank arms. This LOOK crank that Helle has fitted enables her to choose between 3 settings; 162.5, 165 or 167.5mm.

Helle has been testing a number of hydration setups over the past weeks. She has settled on Torhans VR as a frame bottle for racing.

LOOKs Aerobrake 2 is an incredibly discreet, well engineered system. For Challenge Samorin, Helle opted for a ENVE SES 7 tubular front wheel with ENVEs carbon brake pads mounted to the brake shoes that sit inside the fork.

The bike is running CeramicSpeed throughout; Shimano 11 SPD OSPW, UFO Chain, BB and wheel bearings. CeramicSpeeds global headquarters are located in the same small Danish town as Helles parents, Holstebro. CeramicSpeed first started supporting Helle in 2009 as one of the first sponsored triathletes of the company. When Helle parted ways with BMC-Etixx, CeramicSpeed quickly took the opportunity to support Helle.

The stock rear brake on the LOOK 796 has been replaced with a TriRig Omega-X. Helle is not running the aero cover as she says it dropped off during IRONMAN 70.3 Wiesbaden. The aero cover is held on by magnets.

Polar V650 is the computer of choice for Frederiksen at this time. Upon her return to the U.S. Helle is expected to ride PowerTap rear hubs for the foreseeable future.

The Speedfil Z4 has been a go to for Frederiksen since 2013. She has been testing Torhans front hydration systems for their aero benefits but is yet to get the straw far enough forward to a point where it is usable.

Helle is running 35mm of standard spacers that sit below the 8 degree angle spacer. This enables her to get to her optimal Armpad of -109mm. The LOOK base bar is flipped to the -25mm drop position.

Helles saddle of choice currently is a Cobb Max. It is a recent change for Helle, having run a Bontrager Hilo XXX since July 2014. The saddle has a custom grip solution applied to the surface and is tilted to a -4.9 degree as communicated by Helle, a change made after my final ride before traveling to the U.S.

The LOOK handlebar has double layer bar tape applied to provide extra comfort.

The frontal view of the LOOK 796 is incredibly impressive and insanely narrow.

ENVEs Carbon Hub with CeramicSpeed bearings as a stock spec feature on this race setup. Helle has ENVE SES 7.8 or a ENVE SES 4.5 as race wheels in her wheel house, with a HED Jet Disc Black as her rear disc choice.

The LOOK 796 features 2 x top tube bolts for a storage solution. Helle choose X-Labs Stealth Pocket 500c to fit all her race hydration. One of these top tube bolts doubles as the bolt that holds in place the very smart Di2 junction box housing. Here it is sitting underneath the X-Lab storage.



The Di2 junction box sits neatly inside the top tube allowing full button functionality and visibility of the junction box lighting even though it is housed inside the top tube.

The non-drive side view of this LOOK 796.

Continental Competition Pro LTD is Helles go to tubular. These are not widely available, in fact somewhat of a rarity for consumers. These Pro LTD tubulars are typically only distributed by Continental to professional teams and athletes.

Helles LOOK 796 is a size XS/S, as you can see from the picture, a advertised reach of 382mm and 488mm stack. Helle is running LOOKs own chain rings, a 53-tooth big ring and a 39-tooth inside ring. To date LOOK do not manufacture a chain ring bigger than 53. Helle has previously ridden 54.

LOOK offer two stem lengths on this 796 build, Helle opts for the longer 110mm Aeroflat Stem. As mentioned above Helle is not, at this time, maximizes LOOKs internal routing capabilities, of which sees the cables run through the carbon base bar and inside the Aeroflat Stem exiting into the top tube. Black 3M vinyl covers the cables that run into the top tube.



According to her husband and manager, Ben Powell It is worth noting that Helle is not under contract with any endemic company for 2017 and beyond at this time. Her move away from BMC-Etixx made her available in almost all sponsorship categories. It is exciting. Naturally interest in Helle is high. Eurobike, Interbike and Kona will settle everything in terms of industry partners. By the start of November Helles support team for 2017 will be in place. For us there has to be a fit. I want to see Helle representing the companies that she feels she is able to passionately and organically represent. Companies that her profile and platform can positively impact.
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f09a6518)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0a0c268)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f09a6518)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0a0c268)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612efef8f80)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0a0c268)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0a0c268)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ea6bb478)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0a463e8)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0a463e8)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948

/var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0721fe8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ea6ba790)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0721fe8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ea6ba790)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f0710098)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ea6ba790)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ea6ba790)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f0069040)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0073040)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0073040)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
The Canberra man whose criminal record reads like a "Greek tragedy" will spend more time in jail for selling methylamphetamine to a cop.

Matthew Massey, 40, has spent more than two decades behind bars.

Matthew Massey, in 2001.

He was arrested again in 2013, one of 60 people arrested and charged as a result of an investigation into the supply of prohibited drugs.

On the day his trial was due to begin, Massey pleaded guilty to selling 7.2 grams of methylamphetamine to a police officer.
There is plenty of room for interpretation, from the artist making art with his blood; Pollock as an early performance artist, and the gender implications in this portrait of the artist. What does matter is that Parr's narrative is written in his own blood, rather than through the use of smoke and mirrors to create the illusion. His commitment, sincerity and integrity cannot be denied. Parr who turns 71 this year, remains a self-proclaimed maverick in Australian art.

Despite this overexposure to Parr's work, he remains a challenging and slippery artistic character with an endless ability to surprise and confront the viewer. Above all, he is a thinking artist, constantly probing, exploring and challenging himself and his audiences. Since the 1970s, one of his favourite strategies has been to use self-inflicted pain and self-mutilation to confront the beholder. In a performance piece in 1973 at Central Street he pushed pin tacks, or thumb tacks as they are sometimes called, into his leg in a straight line. It was simply titled Push tacks into your leg until a line of tacks is made up your leg (wound by measurement 1). Self-harm through cutting, powder burns, nailing an arm to a wall, sewing up his lips, food deprivation and other forms of torture have been the hallmark of Parr's performance art for more than 40 years. True to form, Parr's opening performance in Canberra, titled Jackson Pollock the Female, involved the artist dressed in a white gown being made up on stage to have a more feminine appearance, then bled surgically and finally lying on the floor, in a state of semi-consciousness, while an assistant splattered and splashed his garments with Parr's own blood. Pollock's Blue Poles had been rehung for the performance to form a backdrop.

In Australian art, Mike Parr is neither an outsider, nor particularly shocking or controversial. He is the artist most recognised by the Australian art establishment, representing Australia at the Venice Biennale (1980); included in numerous Sydney biennales; showered with surveys and retrospectives in state galleries, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney (2006) and now the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Earlier this year I witnessed his massive installation at the Carriageworks as part of the Sydney Biennale, I missed his major piece in Hobart organised by MONA a few months ago, and remember vividly his extensive video survey on Cockatoo Island (2008).

Works by Mike Parr in the National Gallery of Australia exhibition. Credit:Karleen Minney

The show at the National Gallery is impressive, multifaceted, but still represents only a small fragment of Parr's total oeuvre. It is structured thematically, over six main galleries, plus a display of the artist's diaries in the foyer, films in the theatrette and the artist's archive in the so-called Information Centre. I did not see the big Parr survey exhibition at the Kunsthalle in Vienna in 2012 but, of the shows that I have seen, this is the most comprehensive, varied and extensive. All of Parr's favourite mediums  performance, installations, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, films and paintings  are represented in this exhibition. Chronologically the exhibits range from the early 1970s through to the present.

It is difficult to speak of a unifying theme in Parr's art, but three aspects come to mind. Firstly, most of Parr's art springs from a concept that is realised through performance. This applies as much to the performance pieces as to the gestural drawings, etchings and sculptural installations. Secondly, much of his work is designed to engage with society, whether it is on specific political issues, such as armed conflict, treatment of refugees and global warming, or on broader ideas of coercion, multiculturalism and social justice. The shock quality of much of his work treads a fine line with sensationalism, where the language itself absorbs the attention of the audience and there is scant regard for the content. However, the desire to shock is not a gimmick in Parr's art, but an integral part of his process of realisation of the concept. Finally, his art presents a continuum, where Parr is constantly testing and playing with the shape of time. Having witnessed a number of his performances "in the flesh", video documentation of performances distorts perception; on the screen we witness a very different performance in which we sample bits, rather than engage with the whole. This remains an insurmountable difficulty in the translation of the live experience to photographic documentation, as some of Parr's performances, as well as that of many other performance artists, range over a number of days. With Parr, the performance frequently has a narrative, which is lost unless you experience the whole story and the abridged snippets tells only part of this story. When you are at the performance you generally stay the distance, while video records you tend to sample, in other words, consume through fragments.

Parr is largely a self-taught artist and a self-taught thinker, albeit a very well informed one. At times his approach to art making is that of a bush carpenter  carefully planned and prepared  but breaking the rules in its execution as if he was not aware that these rules existed in the first place. This is particularly evident in his drawings and etchings, where there are well-established technical conventions. In his intaglio prints he has fortunately collaborated with John Loane, an artist and a skilled master printer, who has guided Parr's hand and has transformed the marks on the plates into skilfully produced prints, such as the recent series Hitler's war wound (2016). Many of these prints are huge, brilliant, memorable and have an enormous sense of presence.

In the final room of the exhibition, there is a wall of these monumental prints that Parr has painted over with red acrylic paint to create his Foreign Looking (2013-15). In the accompanying video documentation, it is shown how he "completed" the works with the artist mounted on a scaffold vigorously painting over the etchings. In the background we hear recordings of Chinese choirs performing The East is Red and The Internationale. As with so much of his art, interpretations remain open-ended, but there is a prevailing note of mutilation and sacrifice somewhere in the mix. He has an aversion to things appearing attractive and artistically resolved and employs a generous dose of rawness and ugliness to shock the complacent viewer.
Mark Fucik, a member of the US dance troupe Pilobolus for 15 years and the creative director Shadowland, says the show is "a coming-of-age story: a girl is trying to figure out who she is and what she wants in her life".

It sounds a conventional enough subject but there's more to it than that and the trick is in the telling. He says, "This is the first show we've ever done with shadows."

A scene from Shadowland. Credit:Ian Douglas

The teenager falls asleep ands when she wakes up finds something lurking behind her bedroom wall. It's her shadow, and then the wall of her bedroom begins to spin, trapping her on the other side and forcing her on a journey of discovery as she tries to find a way out. Along the way she meets all manner of strange creatures  funny, seductive, and threatening  in a dream-like adventure.

Fucik says work began on Shadowland in 2008 and it premiered in 2009 and has been touring internationally since.
It started with one or two capsules of MDMA.

Over a series of meetings organised by text message, Emma Di Bitonto, 25, sold a man a capsule or two at each meeting.

The woman was given a suspended jail sentence for selling drugs.

At a later meeting, he bought 12, and at another 17.

The amount sold was escalating, the court heard, and it was fair to say that had she not been caught, it would have continued.
About 100 people gathered on Monday morning for a ceremony to farewell a Sydney construction worker who died in August after a tragic crane accident at the University of Canberra's public hospital work site.

The ceremony, which followed the man's funeral in Sydney, included a traditional Ngunnawal smoking ceremony to cleanse the construction site that CFMEU ACT secretary Dean Hall described as a "very appropriate ceremony".

ACT Police, health and WorkSafe staff on the university construction site after a crane toppled killing a worker. Credit:Rohan Thomson

It is understood the man died after a small crane on the site toppled, with the boom striking him, on August 4 this year.

Mr Hall said he was touched by the ceremony, which he said would help to heal and "strengthen the spirit" of those who worked alongside the man.
The ACT's oldest politician, Val Jeffery, has been largely absent from ACT Parliament save for stints in Question Time.

Mr Jeffery, who runs the Tharwa general store, will be paid about $30,100 for his 11 weeks. His contribution has been to highlight issues facing Tharwa and the bush, with a question on each of the six sitting days. His questions focused on bushfire readiness and the neglect of rural communities, including the Mount Clear fire in 2015, the bushfire response in 2003, and water in Tharwa.

Val Jeffery, beginning his brief term as a politician last year. Credit:Graham Tidy

As to the responses, he said, "They skirt around the bush and you don't get straight answers". But he was pleased to have Tharwa issues on the agenda.

Mr Jeffery, 81, delivered his maiden speech on Tuesday, August 2, and attended Question Time and some party room meetings, but was "paired" for all of the major votes  which means Labor agrees to drop one of its votes to match the Liberals having one less.
Canberra's television tribe has spoken: couch potatoes in the capital prefer to watch their fellow Canberrans sweating, squirming and scheming in the jungle.

The two ACT contestants on Australian Survivor helped boost the much-hyped reality show to a timeslot win on debut on Sunday night.

Canberra law student Conner, 23, is a contestant on the new series of Survivor Australia.

While the return of The Block on Nine led the ratings in metropolitan markets, WIN Television claimed victory for Australian Survivor across all age groups in Canberra.

The 24 contestants divided into three competing tribes on Sunday's opening instalment of the revamped series include Canberra law student Conner, aged 23, and 62-year-old air traffic controller Peter.
Adelaide may be without key midfielder Rory Sloane for their crucial final-round clash with West Coast after he was hit with a rough conduct charge.

Sloane has to decide whether to accept a one-match ban for a hit on Port Adelaide's Brad Ebert after the AFL match review panel ruled that there was medium impact to Ebert's head. If he contests the suspension Sloane would risk being sidelined for the first week of the finals as he would lose the early-plea discount.

Heath Grundy of Sydney can accept a $1000 fine with an early plea after he was charged with rough conduct against North Melbourne's Lindsay Thomas in Hobart on Saturday.

The incident was assessed as intentional conduct with low impact to the body. The incident was classified as a $1500 sanction, with a discount for the early plea.
Homophobic flyers targeting footy fans are just the start of what the LGBTI community faces ahead of next year's divisive marriage plebiscite, according to Victoria's Gender and Sexuality Commissioner.

On Saturday, AFL fans attending the St Kilda vs Richmond match at the MCG were confronted by a man handing out flyers suggesting there will be "another stolen generation" if same-sex marriage is legalised.

St Kilda fan John Wall with one of the flyers. Credit:Justin McManus

The pamphlet also accused the AFL of "bias" over the recent gay Pride match between St Kilda and the Sydney Swans, directing people to an anti-gay marriage website.

"Everybody is already welcome at the footy, it's no big deal who or what you are," the leaflet says.
Whether you want to take your dog camping or sail the world with your chicken, traveling with pets can be fun. Before you pack up your pet, however, there are a lot of things to consider, from method of transportation and cost to finding dog-friendly wineries.

Below are our top tips to help plan a safe and fun vacation with your pet.

Visit the Vet

The vet can make sure your pet is healthy for travel, and can safeguard against potential travel issues: They can provide you with flea and tick medication before an upcoming camping trip, and ensure your pet is up-to-date with vaccinations.

Many states require a certificate of veterinary inspection  technically, even if you're just crossing state lines in a car. However, pet owners traveling by air definitely need a certificate from a federally accredited veterinarian stating that the pet has no signs of disease that could be passed to other animals or people. Regulations vary by destination; health certificates from the U.S. for domestic travel, Mexico, and Canada can be completed up to the day of the move.

For international travel, some countries require a health certificate that is completed within a few days, while preparations for some destinations may take six to seven months, according to information from IPATA, so it's best to plan ahead. Some airlines also require an acclimation certificate for air travel.

Prepare Pet Paperwork

"It's always a good idea to travel with Fido's paperwork and vaccination records," says Lauren Greer, social media and partner relations manager for BringFido.com. "While not every hotel will require it, we recommend keeping it with you just in case."

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) recommends bringing your vet's information, a list of emergency vets along the way and at your destination, info for National Animal Poison Control, and a travel ID tag. Also make sure that the microchip information is up-to-date with your current contact info.

Consider Cost

Before taking your pet on vacation, add up the costs: a visit to the vet, flight fees, the cost of a carrier and other possible travel supplies, and possible hotel or accommodation fees. However, just as with booking any hotel room, research and planning ahead can save you some money. For example, the search filters on BringFido.com allows for a searching by price or for hotels with no pet fees.

Add up all the fees that you'll incur by bringing your pet on your trip. You may find that it's cheaper to bring them than it is to board them at home.

"Taking your pet on vacation can actually be more affordable than paying to board them while you're away," says Greer. "Several hotel chains welcome pets to stay free, while others may only charge a one-time cleaning fee. It's best to do the research ahead of time ... Even a hotel with a small fee can be less than the cost of boarding."

SEE ALSO: 5 Annoying Things Travelers Do That Drive Us Crazy

Know the Rules When Booking a Flight

The rules and prices for pet travel vary by airline. BringFido.com has a handy list of airline policies and prices for both cabin and cargo transport, but double-check with the airline before booking.

Airlines typically have a limit of how many animals can be in the cabin, and there's also often a size limit. Service animals, such as seeing-eye dogs  and, often, emotional support animals with the proper documentation  fly in the air cabins at no additional charge outside the carrier.

However, some restrictions apply only to brachycephalic, snub-nosed animals (like bulldogs, pugs, and Himalayan cats), because they are more vulnerable to air changes. Some airlines will not accept snub-nosed animals as cargo.

While some pet owners might be wary of putting their animals in cargo, 2015 data from the U.S. Department of Transportation shows that pet travel is the safest it has been in years. "Shipping a pet is very safe when the proper precautions are taken," says Kim Cunningham, communication director for the International Pet and Animal Transportation Association (IPATA), a network of pet shippers. "Dogs and cats generally do very well traveling in cargo as pet shippers plan their shipment very carefully."

Check if There's a Heat (or Cold) Embargo

If you're playing on flying with a dog or cat, be sure to keep the weather in mind. When temperatures are extremely hot or cold, airlines often do not accept pets as cargo for the animals' safety.

"Many airlines institute heat embargoes during the summer, which protect pets from exposure to extreme heat while moving between terminals and aircraft or while awaiting departure," says Cunningham. If you're traveling in the summer or winter, says Cunningham, "The best advice is to check with the airline or a pet shipper before making reservations."

Pack Properly for Your Pet

Whether flying or driving, make sure you have the correct carrier. In the case of airlines, the requirements may vary for cargo versus cabin travel. "Each airline has different requirements and restrictions, so it's best to check before purchasing," says Greer. "In general though, soft-sided carriers often work best for small dogs who may travel as a carry-on," she says. "Just make sure they are leak proof. Hard-sided carriers are required for dogs that need to be checked into cargo. Make sure the carriers are well ventilated; and Fido must be able to stand up and move around inside the carrier."

Pack a food bowl and water bowl, and leave them in the crate in case an airline employee needs to feed your pet during a wait before or after the flight. The USDA recommends feeding your pet four hours before the flight.

Also make a checklist of whatever your pet might need on the go: a leash, collar, ID, food and treats, waste bags, grooming wipes, and any prescription medications, as well as a recent photo of your pet saved to your phone, says Greer. Cats will also need a litter box or disposable litter pans.

Consider a Pro Pet Shipper

If the thought of regulations, pet passports, and health certificates is making your trip stressful, consider a professional pet shipper. "Pet shippers have expertise dealing with heat embargoes, airlines, flight regulations, flight container requirements, pickup and delivery arrangements, quarantine, boarding, import and export arrangements and proper identification," says Cunningham. "Your pet is a member of your family and you want to make sure they have a safe, comfortable travel experience."

While the price depends on a variety of aspects  including city of origin and destination, time of year, and size of the animal  pet shippers should be able to provide a cost estimate quickly, she says.

Deal With Anxiety

"The most common issue that we encounter is animals that suffer from anxiety," Cunningham says. "These animals are best placed on anti-anxiety medications prescribed by your veterinarian starting several weeks before travel and acclimating them to their travel kennel and traveling within the kennel."

"The most common issue that we encounter is animals that suffer from anxiety."

While anxiety medications prescribed by a vet are OK, the AVMA recommends not giving animals tranquilizers or sedatives for air travel, because it can increase the risk of heart and respiratory problems. Almost half of all pet deaths during air transportation are caused by over-sedation. Pets should be sedated only if it is deemed absolutely necessary by your vet.

Think About Car Safety

The temperature in a parked car can rise 20 degrees in just 10 minutes, so don't leave your pet alone. The AMVA recommends that the animal should be properly restrained in a carrier or harness for the pet's safety, as well as everyone else's safety, as an animal could be a distraction and cause an accident.

Book a Pet-Friendly Room

"All hotels have different pet policies," says Greer. "On BringFido, we provide information such as pet weight limits, pet fees and deposits, restrictions, and if pets are only allowed in certain room types."

Some hotels and resorts even cater to the furry members of your travel party. Kimpton boutique hotels, for instance, offer amenities like pet concierges, loaner pet beds and bowls, bags for walking the dog, and a list of nearby pet-friendly businesses. The Soho Grand Hotel in New York has a dog park and even loaner goldfish (for people, not cats).

"If you plan on going out to dinner or to an event where Fido may not be welcome, you'll want to confirm that the hotel will allow him to be left alone," Greer says. "Some hotels provide pet sitting services. If Fido cannot be left alone and no sitting services are offered, Rover.com and DogVacay.com can be great resources to find someone local to watch Fido while you're out." If your dog might bark or howl when left alone, leave a number at the hotel's front desk so you can be reached.

Know What 'Pet Friendly Hotel' Means

Keep in mind that not all dog friendly hotels and motels accept cats. "It's always a good idea to check with the hotel first," says Greer. "This goes for other animals as well. We've helped find accommodations for pigs, monkeys, chickens, rabbits, birds and fish."

Keep in mind that some cats often hide when they arrive in unfamiliar places, so check that the hotel room is safe for the cat and that you won't spend hours trying to coax him from under the bed.

Take Care of Business

While a cat can have a litter box in your hotel room, a dog will need to be walked, so make sure you know where to go  or specifically, where the dog can go. "In big cities, even pet-friendly hotels often have little green space," says Greer. "Finding a dog park or greenway nearby is important." A few airports, including JFK, O'Hare, and Vancouver International Airport, have specific pet bathrooms.

The BringFido app can help you find dog-friendly parks, beaches, restaurants, and other businesses while traveling. GoPetFriendly.com also has a helpful Road Trip Planner with more than 60,000 locations mapped out throughout the U.S. and Canada, so you can find off-leash parks, campgrounds, hotels, and even dog-friendly wineries while you travel.

SEE ALSO: How to Tell If Pet Insurance Policies Are Worth the Cost

Research Other Forms of Transportation

Most buses won't take pets as passengers, according to IPATA, but Amtrak recently changed its policy and allows for cats and dogs as passengers.

Only the Queen Mary 2 has a kennel space for transatlantic journeys. If you're boating, have a dog-overboard plan and invest in a lifejacket.

Know Beach and Campground Rules

"Pet owners want Fido to be able to play in the water and walk on the beach, but many beaches prohibit dogs," says Greer. "When planning a vacation with Fido, it's always important that not only a hotel or rental be pet-friendly, but the surrounding area have plenty of pet-friendly features as well."

Along the same lines, find a dog-friendly campground, but find out the fees, amenities, and rules first. Before you go, make sure your dog will be allowed on hiking trails and in the water. Even if your dog has flea and tick repellent, do a tick-check if he's been in wooded or grassy areas.

Allow for More Travel Time

Amy Burkert, co-founder of GoPetFriendly.com, reminds pet owners to be conservative with travel time estimates  making a plan and then dividing by two  as everything takes a little longer when traveling with a pet. "And that's a good thing!" she writes. "It reminds you to slow down and 'sniff the roses.'"

Reader, what are your tips for traveling with pets? Let us know in the comments below.
National Australia Bank, ANZ Banking Group and Westpac Banking Corp have told the corporate regulator to back-up "serious allegations" they engaged in rigging the bank bill swap rate, rather than airing the claims in the media, as the major banks hunker down for a protracted legal battle.

But Federal Court judge Justice Jonathan Beach scolded the banks and told them to get on with the case, such as agreeing on the mechanics of the bank bill market despite the banks' legal teams telling the judge it will delay the trial.

ANZ chief Shayne Elliott argues its traders couldn't have impacted the broader BBSW market. Credit:Vince Caligiuri

"[The Australian Securities and Investments and Commission] have launched the case with a very detailed pleading, the pleading makes serious allegations, ASIC has gone to press to explain those serious allegations, it must be presumed that they are in the position to file evidence that backs up the very serious allegations that they have made", Mr Neil Young QC, representing NAB told the court, claiming the case has already been an "enormous and costly exercise" costing more than $1.5 million.

Bold assertions
Consumer advocate Choice is demanding Airtasker back up claims that workers can earn "up to 20,000 a month" by completing random tasks through the odd-jobs website.

In an email sent to members last week, Airtasker claimed thousands of Australians were earning "good money" by completing jobs through the website, which connects people wanting to outsource chores with people looking for extra cash.

Consumer group Choice has called on Airtasker to substantiate claims about how much workers can earn.

The company operates on a similar business model to Uber and Airbnb and collects a commission from workers using the site.

It told subscribers it was possible to earn up to $5000 a month through the website and that some people were earning "up to $20,000 a month" by doing odd jobs for people in their area.
The casual observer of our reporting season at the half-way mark might think Australian business is very patchy indeed, if not seriously weak. The actual numbers tell a different story, particularly in regards to Australian investors' greatest love: dividends.

There's a persistent line of commentary that our high dividends can't keep growing  but they are. The occasional major company that cuts its divvy payout gets headlines while the majority quietly growing pass unnoticed.

Fortunately, AMP's Shane Oliver keeps a ready scorecard. With results in from 51 per cent of ASX reporters, a rather large 70 per cent of them have increased dividend payments compared with this time last year and only 8 per cent have cut them. The 70 per cent figure is the highest of the five years recording in Oliver's accompanying graph.

There's a school of thought that our affair with dividends is a bad thing for the economy, that if we were more like Americans wanting capital growth instead of income, companies would invest more money in productive purposes to grow. Alas, that's only a theory in a world of excess capacity  companies not interested in dividends have been more likely to pursue unproductive share buybacks and value-destructive takeovers.
However, Obama's policy of no American combat involvement in countering the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and the so-called Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq, and a reluctance to balance out Russian, Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah's military engagement in support of the Assad regime, has now landed the US with the potential loss of all influence across the region. A Moscow-Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus-Hezbollah axis has come to define the Levant's strategic landscape.

There is no question that upon assuming the presidency, Obama found his hands tied by his predecessor's disastrous post-invasion management of Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the so-called "war on terror". It is also equally true that he has had to deal with a hostile Republican-dominated Congress, where Israel's interests have repeatedly trumped those of the United States. As a result, he has been careful not to entangle the US in another long and costly war in the Middle East, and has backed away from securing a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a means to demonstrate that the US is a dispassionate and unbiased player in the region.

Washington's handling of the Levant crisis, and relations with Iran and Putin's Russia, go to the heart of American policy problems in the Middle East. Its approach has all along exhibited confusion and contradictions, with no coherent strategy that could advance US interests and contribute to regional stability. It has left the US vulnerable to all its adversaries.

The strategic map of the Middle East is rapidly changing, and Russian president Vladimir Putin is the main catalyst in the process. He has skilfully outmanoeuvred his Western counterparts. US President Barack Obama may well leave office as an intelligent but poor strategist, who presided over a foreign policy that substantially weakened America's position in the world in general, and the Middle East in particular.

This axis has gained enormous potency in the last couple of days as a result of Iran making its Hamadan airfield available to Russia for air operations against opposition forces in Syria  something that may also be extended to Iraq. With the possibility of a significant NATO member, Turkey, collaborating with the axis, given Ankara's cooling of relations with the US and the EU and its warming ties with Russia, this axis is now in a position to change the regional paradigm. It enables Russia and Iran not only to save the Assad regime, roll back IS from Iraq, and energise Hezbollah further, but also to thwart the US and its allies from regaining their traditional position of geopolitical influence in the Gulf region.

The US and its allies are now confronted with three very difficult choices. One is to accelerate their military operations to raise the cost of the war for the powers that support the Assad regime and have secured determining influence in Iraq. This can only be done if the US repeats the policy that enabled the Afghan Islamic resistance forces to overcome Soviet air power in Afghanistan in the 1980s: that is, to equip the Western-backed forces in Syria with anti-aircraft missiles. This carries the risk of a major confrontation with Russia and Iran. Given the configuration of forces on the ground in the region, this is not an option that could now be entertained.

Another is to seek to persuade President Putin and to encourage Tehran to reach an understanding for a resolution of the Levant crisis. However, since the US is not in a very strong position, this could only lead to a settlement on Russian and Iranian terms, which may require the US and its allies to give in to Russia's strategic ambitions in Ukraine and other European states bordering Russia. In a US presidential election year, this could play into the hands of hardliners in American politics. It could also seriously discomfort Israel and America's Arab friends more than they have already been in the region.

The third option is to do whatever it can to ensure that Turkey is not favourably disposed towards the axis, and that Arab allies are strengthened against it. But this is not an easy choice either. A substantial improvement in Turkey's relations with the US and the EU requires the latter to embrace President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's severe purges of domestic opposition, and Washington to hand over the reclusive leader of the Gulen movement, Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the United States and whom Erdogan has accused of being behind the recent failed coup attempt against him.

Providing more military and logistic assistance to Arab friends, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, is not highly desirable either, as it would mean reinforcing authoritarian rule in those countries. Given the intense rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and their proxy conflicts in the Levant and Yemen, any substantial increase in American assistance could only widen the conflict and ripen the environment for a direct Saudi-Iranian confrontation, which will be in no-one's interest.
Theories on the whereabouts of the ducks of Victoria Park, Broadway, continue. From Avalon Beach, Rosemary Campbell dispatches "at the village where I live, ducklings are taken by ravens and I last saw some in January 2014. The ravens are still around, so as long as they are here, sadly I don't expect to see ducklings."

Prosaic teaching methods continue to trickle in. Robert J Lindley, of Culcairn, feels a step was missed when recounting Miss Holland of Summer Hill's practice of turning students upside down to demonstrate a solution in mathematics. "Perhaps being taught to invert fractions first when dividing followed by multiplying would be more effective ... My personal 'old school days' bugbear was long division, some requiring up to half a page. Mr Oldenburg thought it necessary to complete our year 8 evenings with 30 problems, including worded exercises, about four times each week. Did it help my long division understanding and speed? I doubt it. Hindsight 'informs' introductory algebra would have been infinitely more interesting and useful.

And because it's impossible to get enough of hearing what teachers really thought before teachers were told they had to be positive. Ronda Bergin, of Seaforth, thought "my year 2 report was quite glowing  until it came to handwriting. My teacher wrote 'a racehorse is none the worse for being well groomed'." Make of that what you will.

And on the sore subject of school milk, Peter Riley, of Penrith, quotes "the Perth Daily News on 16 August 1950. The federal minister for health, Sir Earle Page, stated that in areas where one-third pint bottles were not available, three children would share a one-pint bottle, each with a straw. Can you imagine trying to suck down your quota with your two snotty-nosed drinking buddies blowing bubbles?"


We live in a world where technology is disrupting old business models. Whether it be Uber, Deliveroo or Airbnb  the web has broken down the layers between consumers and service providers with both positive and negative consequences, depending on where you sit in the chain.

I've just returned from Berlin where the city has passed a law making it illegal to rent out entire apartments using the global accommodation website Airbnb. This follows similar moves in San Francisco and elsewhere as a response to locals fed up with being forced out of an already highly pressured housing market.

Billboards around town make local sentiments clear. "F--- Airbnb," they say. In a city such as Berlin, famous for its rent controls and progressive social policies protecting tenants rights, perhaps the negative reaction is not altogether unexpected.

At any rate, it didn't seem to be working because I had rented out an Airbnb place in the centre of Kruetzberg without a hitch. So how practical is such a ban and should we consider doing the same in Australia where the housing situation is worse  with a whole generation effectively locked out of the housing market?
Donald Trump is hoping that with campaign teams, as with wives, the third time's a winner.

Last week, Trump upended his campaign. He brought in two fresh faces while forcing out campaign director Paul Manafort. The switch-up, his third this year, reveals Trump is planning to double down on the techniques that won him the nomination. Focusing on messaging over mobilisation, Trump will spend the next few months as an unreality-TV star, relying on free media, muddled messages, and a growing disconnect from reality to win him the presidency.

The idea behind "Let Trump Be Trump", the campaign's new rallying cry, is that the Donald Trump of the past few months has been a restrained version of the candidate. Credit:Laura McDermott

Controversy-plagued leadership has been a feature of the Trump campaign throughout 2016. In June, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was fired. A few months earlier he had been charged with battery after grabbing a woman reporter from the right-wing website Breitbart. (Prosecutors declined to proceed with the case.) But it wasn't battery that got Lewandowski booted. It was an internal power struggle with campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Manafort, who took over from Lewandowski, brought problems of his own. The darling of dictators around the world, Manafort has a reputation for gussying up strongmen and peddling them as reformers. One of his recent projects involved helping pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych win the presidency of the Ukraine. Given Trump's admiration for Vladimir Putin, the rise of Manafort raised questions about the ties between the campaign and the Russian dictator.
Dyson founder James Dyson is a clever and inventive guy. His vacuums, fans, and lighting products don't just resemble fixtures on the Starship Enterprise  they also work with amazing utility and dependability. In fact, Mr. Dyson is the inventor of something called cyclonic vacuum technology; it took him five years and more than 5,000 prototypes to nail it.

Which Dyson vacuum might be right for you? Of the 21 available, here we look at five different models and price points, taking into consideration their features, specialized uses, and overall coolness as objets d'art of cleaning. Read on to find the best Dyson vacuum for your home!

SEE ALSO: Spend More on These 10 Items Now and You'll Save Big in the Long Term

Murder on Dirt: Dyson V6 Trigger

Price: $199.99

Dyson bills the V6 as "the most powerful handheld vacuum," though the suction power matches the more expensive V6 Top Dog. While that vacuum is geared more toward pet dander, the V6 Trigger is your basic, no-frills Dyson. A new fade-free battery delivers 50% more power than previous models, and you can shift into a formidable "max power" mode for six minutes.

Suction Pup: Dyson V6 Top Dog

Price: $229.99

As Dysons go, the Top Dog is priced at entry level, and being targeted toward pet owners, it also functions to get rid of allergens, with extra tools for home cleaning. One possible drawback: As a rechargeable device, the Top Dog has a run time of just 20 minutes.

SEE ALSO: Here's the Scoop on Buying Cat Litter

Let's Get Small: Dyson Small Ball Multi Floor

Price: $399.99

If you rent an apartment or live in a dorm, some Dysons would simply be overkill. The Small Ball comes in at a more attractive price point, weighs just above 12 pounds, and has a cord length of about 10 yards. Attach a hose and you can reach up to 42 feet, which is 25% longer than previous models. That's just about long enough for your slothful undergrad to clean the room while loafing on his bed.

Something Wild: Dyson Ball Animal

Price: $499.99

Dyson's upright vacuum cleaners resemble a bowling ball on a stick, but there's nothing silly about the Ball Animal's performance. Its suction power is fairly massive  it's among the strongest of the Dyson models  and the vacuum comes with four tools that can handle stairs, small spaces, difficult angles, and dirt wedged into the couch.

Your Cordless Hot Rod: Dyson V8 Absolute

Price: $599.99. V6 cordless vacuums run from $299.99 to $499.99.

It's one of the most expensive vacs Dyson offers, but ultimate convenience doesn't come cheap. As a cordless, the V8 conquers floor-to-ceiling tasks, such as zapping spiderwebs in ceiling corners and sucking up gunk you can't get at hoisting a canister machine into the air. But the V8 weighs less than 6 pounds. The lithium-ion battery lasts up to 40 minutes, the machine runs on a digital motor, and the extension stick clicks off to make the V8 a handheld.

SEE ALSO: 10 Things You Should Throw Away Right Now

Dyson's prices are mucho dinero compared to a $5 garage sale special, or more competitive (and less rad-looking) models such as the WindTunnel 2 ($99.99) from Hoover. Nor is Dyson by any means perfect; it's voluntarily recalled some heaters due to potential safety issues. But let's face it: Cleaning a floor is as much fun as scrubbing a grease-crusted pot. If you're going to apply some elbow grease, there's nothing like a space-age appliance in your hands.

Readers, what do you think of Dyson vacuums? If you own one, does the performance make up for the price tag? Let us know in the comments below!
Communications minister Mitch Fifield said he doesn't think there is anything "systematically wrong" with Australia's offshore detention system despite recent disturbing reports about the experiences of detainees on Manus Island and Nauru.

On ABC's Q&A on Monday night, Tracey Donehue - a former teacher who said she worked on Nauru until November 2015 - described "appalling" instances of death threats levelled to students by guards. In one case, she said a "very large guard" lifted a student and threw them to the ground with force.

Ms Donehue said some of the reports she filed about the incidents were included in "The Nauru Files", a cache of more than 2000 leaked reports published by Guardian Australia.

"The government has again tried to absolve itself of responsibility," Ms Donehue said. "What do you think is the responsibility that the Australian government has for the refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru?"
The Australian Federal Police has urged dozens of members who may have been the victims of rapes or attempted rapes by colleagues to come forward after a shocking report found "pervasive" sexual harassment and bullying in the organisation.

In a finding that has echoes of the revelations that have shaken the Australian Defence Force in recent years, a major study of the AFP's internal culture by former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick indicated about 30 staff members had been victims of rape or attempted rape in the past five years.

AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin has issued an apology to sexual harassment and bullying victims. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The study found 46 per cent of women and 20 per cent of men reported being sexually harassed or abused in some way in the workplace, which is almost double the national average. Sixty-six per cent of women and 62 per cent of men said they had been bullied.

Australian of the Year David Morrison, who drove cultural change within the army as its chief, said on Monday night he would contact AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin.
Rio may be one for Australia to forget - as for Team USA, they to may want to put it behind them, although for different reasons. After admitting to "over-exaggerating" his claim that he was robbed at gunpoint when he was actually forced to pay up for vandalising property at a service station, Speedo USA has dropped its sponsorship of US swimmer Ryan Lochte. A short time later, Ralph Lauren announced they would not be renewing their sponsorship of Lochte either. [Reuters] 3. More than 1,700 killed in drugs crackdown

It is really worth paying attention to what's happening in the Philippines where the recently elected President Rodrigo Duterte has pledged to wipe out the illegal drug trade. This has led to the deaths of 712 alleged drug dealers at the hands of police since 1 July, when President Duterte took office. And a further 1,067 have been killed by "vigilantes." [Lindsay Murdoch/Fairfax] The United Nations is urging Manila to stop the killings, saying they are a crime under international law. How has Duterte reacted? "I will prove to the world that you are a very stupid expert," he said of the UN. "Maybe we'll just have to decide to separate from the United Nations. If you are that disrespectful, son of a whore, then I will just leave you." [Sky News UK] The rise of authoritarianism, as embodied by Donald Trump, is not confined to the west alone.

4. Aus politics round-up After reports of widespread abuse and self-harm attempts among asylum seekers warehoused at Nauru, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield defended offshore detention on Q&A last night saying there was nothing "systematically wrong" with the policy. [Georgina Mitchell/Fairfax] The stoush over same-sex marriage continues with prominent government advocate Warren Entsch saying there should be no public funding for the Yes/No campaigns. But prominent critic, conservative senator Cory Bernardi, says there should be equal taxpayer funds allocated to avoid "foreign interests" funding either side's campaign. [Rosie Lewis/The Australian] Treasurer Scott Morrison and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann in Perth. Credit:Phillip Gostelow West Australian Liberal Mathias Cormann has been conducting his own post-mortem of the election campaign.

"The reason Bill Shorten lost the election is because the Australian people decided they could not trust him with their money," the Finance Minister told The Sydney Institute. Cormann believes Labor has a choice between being a party of Peter Walsh (a former Labor Finance Minister) or the party of the spend-o-meter. [James Massola/Fairfax] While Cormann is generally perceived to be a poor retail politician for the Coalition, he is considered good at holding the government line (to the point of being robotic) and considered well within the party. Last night's speech was an insight into some of the sharper political attacks we can expect to see from the Coalition as it tries to co-opt Labor into sharing the blame for any parliamentary gridlock. "For somebody who continues to aspire to be the next Australian prime minister, it is not good enough for Bill Shorten to try and keep hiding behind the Senate crossbench," Cormann said. Watch that line be repeated in coming weeks if Labor starts blocking budget savings measures. However, I'm not sure if this one of Cormann's is going to take off: "Or will he be like jelly on that plate  the Wibble Wobble Wibble Wobble Jelly on a Plate, first opposing, then supporting, then not knowing what to do?" SMH. NEWS. ELECTION 2016. Member for Grayndler Anthony Albanese votes at Annandale Public School on the 2nd of July 2016. Photo Dominic Lorrimer Credit:Dominic K Lorrimer

Such is the world of politics that it's worth watching out for who Labor appoints to the position of Deputy Senate President, as the victor could have factional implications for Leader Bill Shorten. [Phillip Coorey/Financial Review] And a great column from Shaun Carney assessing the likelihood of an Anthony Albanese challenge to Shorten's leadership before this term is out. [Herald Sun] 5. Sarkozy to run Former French President and conservative party UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy. Credit:Thibault Camus Nicholas Sarkozy lost the Presidency of France to Francois Hollande in 2012. Releasing the cover of his upcoming book, the 62-year old confirmed he would be seeking nomination to run for the job in next year's presidential elections.
When it comes to onscreen diversity, it seems Hollywood's finally realised change is in their best interest - but what about cinemagoers?

Your usual gang of outraged, mouthy trolls took to social media over the weekend to denounce the latest casting rumour around Marvel's upcoming blockbuster Spider-Man: Homecoming, after industry site The Wrap announced that actress Zendaya was set to star as Spidey's love interest, Mary Jane Watson.

Actress Zendaya at this year's Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Sports Awards. Credit:Alberto E. Rodriguez

For those of you not hip on your breakout Disney stars-slash-internet heroes, Zendaya is black, while, in the comics, Mary Jane Watson - previously played on the big screen by Kirsten Dunst - is white, a fact that has troubled a bunch of the internet's more sensitive man-babies.

"Since Mary Jane is being played by a black woman, can MLK be played by a white man in [the] next movie about him?," asked one guy, who clearly flunked debating class.
During one of my mother's recent visits to Australia to see me, I suggested we go to the Sexpo exhibition. She agreed, although without knowing exactly what she was agreeing to.

You see, my mother lives in Crown Heights, a Hassidic neighbourhood in Brooklyn. Along with my father and brothers, she moved there from Israel 15 years ago. In Crown Heights, where the air ripples with klezmer music deep into the night and the residents believe their dead leader Rabbi Lubavitch will eventually make his comeback as the Messiah, exhibitions featuring nipple clamps aren't exactly a prominent feature.

Lee Kofman's visit to Sexpo with her mother was a surprisingly bonding experience. Credit:Stocksy

I don't think my mother even realised that Sexpo had anything to do with sex. All she probably heard was this was an invitation to spend time with her daughter at some mysterious exhibition, and she loves art.

So in my eagerness to shock my mother, to show her how different my life was now from the one she had hoped I would lead, I stooped so low as to capitalise on her naivety.
Beijing: It would have been highly contentious in mainland China, let alone in Australia's largest cities.

A planned concert series next month glorifying the life of controversial Communist Party icon Chairman Mao at the Sydney and Melbourne town halls has sparked outrage among Chinese-Australians, while serving to highlight the widening schism within the local diaspora.

China's rise as an economic superpower has impacted Australian cities beyond trade figures, tourist arrivals and international student enrolments. With mainland Chinese migration sharply increasing in recent years, state-backed political astroturfing has become more pronounced, from pro-Beijing South China Sea demonstrations in Melbourne and Sydney, to mobilising cheering, flag-waving crowds to drown out Free Tibet and Falun Gong demonstrators during President Xi Jinping's visit in 2014.

The organisers are typically business, community and patriotic associations with close ties to the Chinese embassy and consulates which harness the local community in an attempt to advance the mainland's strategic interests and have a greater influence on public discussion in Australia.
A controversial former mayor is suing a council staffer for defamation after he was described negatively in a report about asbestos on one of his properties.

Former Hurstville mayor Con Hindi is in court this week, suing the former director of planning at the council for defamation, Michael Watt.

Con Hindi is suing for defamation. Credit:Dallas Kilponen

The dispute is believed to relate to a council report written by Mr Watt relating to a development site of Mr Hindi's in Crump Street, Mortdale.

The report is understood to have made allegations regarding Mr Hindi's conduct during an inspection of the property.
NSW Premier Mike Baird fractured a vertebra after slipping down the steps at his Manly home in the middle of the night.

Mr Baird posted an X-ray of his fractured vertebra on Facebook and Twitter, anticipating the jokes that would follow.

And they did, ranging from the obscure to the political. For the most part, though, commenters on his Baird back were polite, and few were disc-hurteous.

On his Facebook page, he wrote: "Note to self: when fetching a glass of water late at night, don't walk down the stairs in your socks with the lights out."
Dressed in a tracksuit with court papers in her hand, Sabrina Bremer is pictured on CCTV walking out of Logan police station on Monday last week.

Police did not know they would be among the last people to see her alive.

Four days later, the 34-year-old mother's body was found burning on a quiet bush track in northern NSW.

Strike Force Faringdon detectives released CCTV images from Logan police station, south of Brisbane, on Monday in the hope someone will come forward with information that may help to piece together her final moments.
Sanaa Derbas reeled her victims in one by one using a telephone and online dating service called Lavalife.

The 41-year-old mother of four told many of the lonely men that she loved them.

She even pretended that some of her children had died in order to drain the bank accounts of some of her victims.

Altogether Derbas netted more than $2 million from seven men, after "borrowing" money off them for various reasons, including bogus medical bills and funeral costs for relatives.
A pollution monitor near some of the state's biggest coal mines has been found to generate wild data swings  even negative ones  despite receiving preliminary approval from the NSW Environment Protection Authority.

James Whelan, a researcher for Environmental Justice Australia, analysed seven months of data from the Maules Creek monitor, which is supposed to track air quality of nearby mines owned by Whitehaven and Idemitsu in the Namoi Valley.

Dr Whelan found days where little or no data was collected. For some periods, such as May 23 to May 29, about 40 per cent of readings showed negative levels of PM2.5, a gauge of particulates just 2.5 micrometers in diameter that are known to lodge in lungs.

During another five-day stint in June, readings of larger PM10 particulates were also consistently negative, an impossibility, he said.
A security guard blamed for the death of an elderly patient he tackled to the ground in a Brisbane hospital will return to work after being released from custody.

Shane Kilgariff, 50, was granted bail when he faced the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Monday, charged with manslaughter over the 81-year old patient's death.

A security guard charged with manslaughter of a patient at a hospital has been released on bail.

The case dates back to April 30 when the patient allegedly became aggressive and grabbed a fire hose and began spraying it around his ward at the Prince Charles Hospital, prompting security be called to intervene

"In doing so, it is alleged he was tackled to the ground and the injuries that were inflicted by that have subsequently resulted in his loss of life," police prosecutor Sergeant Tony White told the court.
Former NRL star Anthony Watts has been granted bail after he allegedly assaulted a guest at a wedding on the Gold Coast.

Police accused the former Cowboys hooker, 29, of repeatedly kicking and kneeing the 28-year-old victim in the chest, abdomen and head at the Mudgeeraba nuptials on Friday night.

The alleged victim was the husband of the maid of honour and has returned to his Newcastle home following the altercation.

Watts' lawyer Campbell MacCallum told the Southport Magistrates Court on Monday his client had completed six weeks of a 16-week anger management program.
"Shortly after 2pm police were called to an address in Labrador in relation to shots being fired," he said.

Police have confirmed a man shot at a home in Labrador has died as a result of his injuries.

Imperial Road has been closed after a man was injured near a primary school. Credit:7 News Queensland/Twitter

He said a woman was taken from the scene and was assisting police with their inquiries while another woman seen being taken away was believed to be a witness.

Inspector Thompson said police weren't able to confirm the type of weapon used in the incident but did confirm it was a firearm.

He also wouldn't go into the relationship between the woman who was helping police and the man who died but he did confirm they were known to each other.

At this stage no charges had been laid but Inspector Thompson said police were treating the matter very seriously.
More than 20 students have been suspended from a Gold Coast school after naked photos, believed to be of other students, were shared.

The string of punishments came in the wake of outrage over a website sharing nude photos of hundreds of women and targeting schools around the country but the suspensions weren't believed to be linked.

Palm Beach Currumbin State High School.

A Department of Education spokeswoman confirmed 22 Palm Beach Currumbin State High School students were suspended last week for sharing "inappropriate images".

"Unsafe online behaviour and inappropriate use of technology is a community-wide issue," she said.
The corner of Mary and Albert street in Brisbane's CBD might traditionally be where late-night revellers go to get a cheeky kebab after partying the night away.

But on Monday, the inner-city intersection scrubbed itself off and turned into New York.

From the famous yellow taxis to the New York's finest, a visiting tourist may have wondered if they had got off the plane at the wrong stop.

But it was all for the big-budget blockbuster Thor: Ragnarok which was lured to Queensland with a wad of taxpayer money.
The ATO had previously allowed companies to accumulate more than $345,000 in back taxes before taking legal action.

The ATO says it is focused on taking "more timely action" to prevent corporate tax debts escalating and potentially impacting other creditors. Credit:Andrew Quilty

The ATO is being urged to take legal recovery action earlier to prevent small to medium companies trading while insolvent.

The Australian Taxation Office says it will take "more timely action" to prevent small business debts escalating.

An ATO spokesman said the agency was rethinking its approach. "The community has told us they want firmer treatment of tax debtors who do not address their debt," a spokesman said.

"Businesses that ignore their obligations will receive timely, firmer action from the ATO. This will include legal action where there is evidence the business is insolvent."

But Donna Smith, managing director of debt collection agency Reliance Recoveries, said the Tax Office was still too lax when it came to calling in debts from larger small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

She said in one instance, a company was allowed to merge with another business despite owing more than $700,000 in back taxes. This was after being put on nine different payment plans by the ATO and being issued with a legal proceeding that was never followed through.

The company was later discovered to be insolvent but not until after it merged, she said, leading to twenty job losses.
Accused cat burglar Di Miao spent his nights stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in luxury goods from wealthy Asian targets across Melbourne, a court has heard.

Mr Miao, a Crown Casino high roller, allegedly donned a dark wig before he broke into homes in the city's premier suburbs.

Alleged cat burglar Di Miao, 53, makes his getaway from Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday. Credit:Pat Scala

When detectives raided his house after an 18-month investigation, they allegedly discovered an Aladdin's Cave of more than 200 stolen items.

Among them were pearls, jade, Prada and Hermes bags, watches from Vacheron Constantin, Saint Laurent and Dior purses, Chanel sunglasses and Louis Vuitton luggage.
More young drivers, and their passengers, would die on Victoria's roads if the probationary driving age was lowered to 17, road safety experts have warned.

Some groups, including the Victorian Farmers Federation and the Law Institute of Victoria, have called for the probationary driving age to be lowered.

Seventeen-year-old Charlotte Verley, pictured on the family farm, believes 17-year-olds should be able to get their probationary licence. Credit:Penny Stephens

But doctors and road safety researchers from across the country have urged the state government to reject the push, arguing it would increase Victoria's road toll.

The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, which has a long history of road safety advocacy, has pushed for "a national minimum driving age of 18", passenger restrictions and night time curfews "particularly in the first year of driving" and mandated first aid training as part of the licensing system.
A former Victorian policeman allegedly caught with almost half-a-kilogram of ice at an airport is facing new charges, Melbourne Magistrates Court has heard.

David Cameron Lister was arrested at Townsville Airport in April, three months after resigning from the force. Police allege he ferried the drugs from Melbourne in a backpack.

David Lister leaves court in May. Credit:Luis Ascui

The 37-year-old, who is on bail on charges of trafficking a commercial quantity of drugs and cultivating cannabis, faced the Melbourne Magistrates Court again on Monday.

Prosecutors asked Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg for an adjournment, saying police may also charge Mr Lister with conspiracy offences.
The West Australian government is paying half a million dollars a month for hundreds of empty bays at the long delayed Perth Children's Hospital.

The $1.2bn construction project is long overdue for completion with contractor John Holland recently missing an August 4 deadline for handover - the latest in a series of delays, including revelations that asbestos had been discovered in roof panels.

The State Government signed a contract with Wilson Parking around three years ago to manage 300 parking bays at the PCH site built at taxpayer expense. But delays in the completion of PCH have now made the state liable to pay compensation to operator Capella Parking Consortium, contracted by the State Government to provide and operate parking at the QEII site until the site is fully operational.

Wilson Parking will take the contract on when the site is up and running, but is not being paid at present.
Both sides of politics in Western Australia not only don't want a plebiscite on same-sex marriage, they're worried it will prove a distraction one month before the state election.

Health Minister John Day said he expected Premier Colin Barnett would raise the matter with the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The WA government wants the federal government 'to make a call' on gay marriage.

"We would prefer the federal parliament to actually make a decision about the issue itself ... rather than going through what may well be quite a divisive debate in the community," Mr Day said on Sunday.

Opposition spokesman Roger Cook agreed the timing was bad, with the plebiscite expected in February and the WA election following in March.
London: Charismatic extremist Islamists in English prisons are acting as "self-styled emirs", controlling and radicalising the wider Muslim prison population, a new UK government report has warned.

They lead a Muslim gang culture involved in violence and drug trafficking, they aggressively encourage conversion to Islam, and they intimidate prison Imams and other staff and exclude them from the room during weekly prayer meetings.

A former inmate says prison staff are frightened of the radical Islamists. Credit:Bloomberg

The review also found books and other materials promoting extremist literature were held by prisoners and even kept in some prisons' all-faith chaplaincy libraries.

In response to the report, the government announced a plan for special units in English and Welsh jails for extremist prisoners "who seek to poison the minds of others".
The boyfriend of Australian Sara Connor has confessed to a violent confrontation with a Balinese police officer at Kuta beach on August 17, according to his lawyer.

British DJ David Taylor smashed police officer Wayan Sudarsa in the head with the victim's binoculars after getting into a fight because Mr Taylor suspected him of having Ms Connor's missing handbag, lawyer Haposan Sihombing said.

The lawyer said Mr Taylor then hit the victim using the sharp object, a mobile phone, and a beer bottle against the back of his head.

"That is when the victim stopped struggling," Mr Haposan said. "So the point is that he regrets what he did."
Rodrigo Duterte warned before he was swept into power in the Philippines that fish would grow fat in Manila Bay from eating the bodies of criminals.

Now seven weeks into his presidency the carnage in the president's war on drugs has topped almost 1800, and the killings show no sign of abating as the island nation's system of governance is up-ended in a one-man revolution that has deeply upset the country's traditional ruling elite.

A pregnant witness, the live-in partner of JP Bertes, an alleged drug-pusher who was killed while in police custody, tearfully recounts their ordeal as she testifies before the Philippine Senate which is probing the extra judicial killings related to President Rodrigo Duterte's "War on Drugs". Credit:BULLIT MARQUEZ

Human Rights Watch has called on Mr Duterte, the foul-mouthed former mayor of southern Davao city, to stop inciting violence which the New York-based organisation says should reap severe diplomatic and economic costs.

But opinion polls show Mr Duterte's approval rating hovering around 90 percent despite that since taking office he has threatened to seize additional powers through martial law, called the US ambassador of "son of a bitch" and homosexual, promised a hero's burial for the late corrupt dictator Ferdinand Marcos and complicated attempts by regional nations to preserve a common front against China's aggressive claim to the South China Sea.
Istanbul: The wedding on Saturday night was winding down, and some guests had already left. But the music was still playing and people were still dancing in the narrow streets of Gaziantep, a city not far from the Syrian border.

Just then a child  no more than 14 years old, Turkey's president said later  meandered into the gathering and detonated a vest of explosives.

Suddenly, the most joyous of occasions became a scene of blood and gore, with body parts scattered all around. Once again, the horrors of Syria's civil war had visited Turkey.

The devastating bombing of the Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep killed at least 51 people and wounded 69. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed Islamic State, the terrorist group that controls a swath of land straddling the frontier between Iraq and Syria.
Last community gesture before returning to Netherlands

Pond Island:--- Representatives of the New Start Foundation Childrens Home, Sally Benjamin (left) and Edward Benjamin (right) with Peter Mazereeuw (2nd left) and son Matthijs - the kind donors of a fully-working model train set to St. Maarten-based home.

Philipsburg  Former St. Dominic High School, and Milton Peters College Physics and General Science teacher, Peter Mazereeuw and his two children left the island recently to return to the Netherlands  but not before delivering a surprise gift to some deserving children of the New Start Foundation Childrens Home.

The gift was a valuable train set, complete with 200 meters of track, five locomotives, numerous wagons and many accessories such and buildings, trees and props to build life-like scenes to amuse, entertain and help educate the children about a means of transportation they probably have not seen in real life.

The train set was lovingly packed into five boxes, and, according to Peter, while it has given many hours of pleasure to his family over the years and holds a lot of sentimental value, both he and his son Matthijs are equally pleased that it can also bring a lot of happiness to the children of the childrens home under the charge of home director, Sally Benjamin.

The train set was delivered to the home on Friday with some rapid instructions on how everything fits together.

We would have loved to set everything up before leaving, but we just ran out of time, Peter and Matthijs explained.

We are sure they will enjoy the train set and will have a lot of fun working with their imaginations about their own train journeys around the track said, said Peter.

Matthijs said although he and his father discussed making the donation, it was still at a tough decision to make. He, however, knew they had made the right call when the visited the childrens home and met the children themselves.

Father and son were thanked, by New Start Foundation representative, Mrs. Benjamin, who said the gesture was a very kind one indeed.

To think they have had this in their family for so many years and that they would donate their collection to our children is very generous and we want to thank Peter and his family on behalf of the children, said Mrs. Benjamin.

Also included in the delivery was a box of model racing cars for some the older foster children who may wish to start racing them with Mr. Reggie Corums St. Maarten Model Racing Association.

Peter, son Matthijs, sister Janneke, and the two family dogs were set to return to Rotterdam Sunday, where Peter will soon be taking up a new teaching post at Rotterdam University.

He says he will miss St. Maarten and the many, many friends he has made over the years as a teacher, but also as a program manager for government, a businessman dealing with automation systems, a Head Judge for the St. Maarten Spelling Bee, a tireless worker with Foresee Foundation (DigiKidz and DigiWorkz) and a member of the Rotary Mid-Isle club.

Mathias and I did a lot of work with the Heineken Regatta and also with the Spelling Bee working behind the scene with the scoring and setting up the computer systems, and I have also worked along with many organizations and different people on the island, said Peter.

He says he is leaving the island with his family for the second time, having left once before in 2000 after experiencing a number of hurricanes, only to return after ten years to help to build up the new Country Sint Maarten.

This time, around I will be taking on new and exciting challenges back in the Netherlands and the children will also be taking up higher levels of study,  said the proud father.

He says he has spent the best part of the past month saying goodbye to everyone and apologizes to anyone he has missed out.

All I can say is that this is not a really goodbye because I am affected with the Sint Maarten virus assures the former teacher, community worker and now train set hero to some very grateful foster children of St. Maarten.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Sharine Daniel from St Maarten is the first female to head the Supervisory Board of Directors of the Social Health Insurance USZV as Chairlady.

She joined the board as a member earlier this year and was elected as designated chairperson on August 17, 2016. She replaces Dr. Michel Petit, who served on the board as a member from 2011 and as chairman from December 2014, until his resignation, which became effective as of August 15.

The Minister of Public Health Social Development and Labor VSA, Emil Lee, and the Supervisory Directors of USZV accepted Dr. Petits resignation as Chairman.

Minister Lee thanks, Dr. Petit for his contribution to the board during his lengthy tenure as a member and subsequently as Chairman and wishes him all the best in his future endeavors.

Sharine Daniel is armed with years of experience in the financial sector in St. Maarten and the United States of America. She currently serves as Chief Internal Auditor at NV GEBE.

She holds a Bachelors of Administration (BA) Degree in Accounting, Masters of Science Degree in Accounting and a Masters in Business Administration MBA in finance. She is currently finalizing her doctoral study - Doctorate in Business Administration with a specialization in Accounting which is scheduled to be completed in December 2016. Besides her degrees, she is also certified in Forensic Accounting and is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE).

Ms. Daniel is happy to serve on the board of one of the most important institutions in St. Maarten. I am honored to serve and contribute towards the further development of one of the most important institutions on our island and will do my utmost to meet the requirements and challenges ahead.

Minister of VSA Emil Lee Press Release.
GREATBAY:--- Amidst news that the director of the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten is under investigation and may face criminal charges over irregularities at the Central Bank and allegations of funds from Ennia Insurances being invested leaving policy holders uncovered, leader of the OSPP Lenny Priest urges cooler heads to prevail.

He reiterated his earlier call that the parliament of St. Maarten convene a meeting with all parties involvedCentral Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten, Central Bank of Holland, Governments of St. Maarten and Curacao and with the management of Ennia to air out truths and iron out solutions.

It is unfortunate that once again the name of our young country St. Maarten is being tarnished. It is particularly hard to stomach because it could have been avoided. In June of 2015 when all of these allegations first came out our name was tarnished. We urged our government to put an end to it and avoid further negativity aimed at our island by hosting a meeting with all parties and fixing the situation before it got out of hand. This first step is so easy that even a first grade student would have realized they must speak to each person together if they are ever to figure out the truth of this situation. Yet our parliament felt it unworthy in its simplicity and today we are again being mucked through the mud, the OSPP leader said in a press statement.

He appeals to all parties involved to organize a meeting and find solutions to any discrepancies and instill safe guards to ensure it doesnt happen again.  Our officials have to put personal loyalties, personal obligations or indeed personal debts aside and do the job they were elected to do. The coalition supporting the government refused to call the meeting and we can only conclude that it was not done due to the fact that it is alleged that the Central Bank under the leadership of Mr. Tromp assisted in putting the entire package deal together regarding the completion of the government building. It is also alleged that the Ennia bosses have been financing the campaigns of the traditional parties over the years and therefore they are refusing to ruffle their feathers. Thirdly, the bond issue for the construction of the Cause way bridge it is also alleged that the Central Bank orchestrated that entire bond issue resulting in the opposition United People Party refusing to request a meeting of parliament to iron out the allegations made by the Dutch Central Bank about the functioning of the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten. This has gone far enough.

Now that the director of the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten is under investigation the OSPP is calling once again for the parliament of St. Maarten to do their job and organize a meeting of all institutions involved regardless to their friendship with them or any financial contribution they may have received now or anythime in the past. The fact that an election is taking place is no excuse not to continue to perform their duties, afterall they continue to collect their full salaries at the end of every month. The people want to know that an institution as important as the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten should not be embroiled in any type of allegations of corruption.

I am demanding that the entire parliament, those supporting the government and the opposition to organize this very important meeting to find solutions to any discrepancies in the report of the Dutch Central Bank regarding this entire Ennia affair. Secondly, it is important for St. Maarten to meet the new management of the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten and not wait for another year. The Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten is to important for the further development of the economy of St Maarten to allow all these allegations to continue without our elected officials having a say in this matter.

Over the last six years the image of St. Maarten has been dragged through the mud with our elected officials embarrassing us time after time. We have had more integrity reports done in six years than many nations that exist for years. We are young, we are still learning, but we cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes over and over, Lenny Priest concluded. It is time for us to grow up and focus on securing the future of the next generations to come. We owe them that much.
Corey Lequieu will serve 2.5 years in prison on Federal Conspiracy charges

Corey Lequieu on guard duty with an assault rifle at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside of Burns, according to federal prosecutors.

Corey Lequieu has become the first defendant sentenced for the armed takeover the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January.

U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown sentenced Lequieu to 2  years in prison followed by 3 years of supervised release in the federal conspiracy case. He must also pay restitution, in an amount to be determined later.

Lequieu, 46, was the first of the 26 defendants to plead guilty. He admitted to impeding federal employees through intimidation, threats, or force.

A conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of six years, but federal prosecutors recommended that Lequieu serve less time as part of a plea agreement. Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel said the government took under considered the fact that Lequieu was the first in the case to take responsibility for his illegal actions.

Gabriel dismissed Lequieu's remaining count of possessing a firearm in a federal facility. Lequieu, of Fallon, Nevada, had ties to the 2014 Cliven Bundy standoff near Bunkerville, Nevada. The government also agreed not to file felon in possession of a firearm charges against Lequieu in either state.

Lequieu's defense attorney, Ramon Pagan, told the court that his client was grateful that they reached an agreement without Lequieu agreeing to testify against other defendants in the case.

The government had asked that Lequieu's sentencing be pushed back until December, when other defendants in the case will be scheduled for sentencing, so that the victims could make just one trip to Portland to speak about the fear they felt and continue to feel because of the occupation. The workers, employees of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management, couldn't make Lequieu's hearing on Tuesday.

Brown decided to move ahead because Lequieu wished to do so. The judge noted that Pagan will no longer be available to represent Lequieu in December because he was recently appointed as a Circuit Court Judge in Washington County.

Ten other defendants charged in the case have also pleaded guilty.

Gabriel told the court that Lequieu was among a group of protesters, including Jon Ritzheimer and Ryan Bundy, who were first to arrive at the refuge and enter the buildings with weapons on Jan. 2. He jad traveled to Harney County from Nevada in December in preparation for the occupation.

Lequieu was clearly seen holding an assault rifle in a video calling for militia members to support the occupation, Gabriel said. He also worked as security for the occupiers and was armed with an assault rifle in that capacity, the government has said.

Lequieu has claimed ties to the Nevada and 3 percent militia groups and prosecutors have said that he has made violent threats against the Bureau of Land Management and the FBI.

While the government has characterized Lequieu as one of the planners of the takeover, Pagan has said his client didn't play a leadership role.

Multnomah County Sheriff Booking mugshot of Corey Lequieu

Lequieu left the refuge on January 26 after the FBI and state police arrested Ammon Bundy and other leaders during a stop outside the refuge. He was arrested in Nevada on February 11 and returned to Oregon.

In April, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones declined to release Lequieu from custody pending trial. "You're just too dangerous to let out at this time,'' Jones said at the time.

Pagan told the court that before the takeover, his client hadn't recently engaged in criminal behavior and his life was moving in a better direction.

Lequieu then asked if the judge could recommend that he serve his time at the federal prison in Sheridan, which is the closest to his Nevada home, making the trip easier for his family and supporters.

Brown agreed to make the recommendation, but ultimately, she said, the Federal Bureau of Prisons will decide where he goes.
Indiana's death chamber

Attorneys for a man who faces charges in the deaths of 7 women have argued in court filings that the state of Indiana's death penalty law is unconstitutional.





The Post-Tribune reports that Darren Vann remains in isolation at the Lake County jail. His attorneys argued in an Aug. 5 filing that an Indiana Code statute is unconstitutional in 2 main areas.





They question how a jury is supposed to weigh factors that could influence a death sentence. They also say it's unconstitutional to allow a judge to determine a defendant's death sentence when the jury can't.





Government prosecutors have until Sept. 7 to file a response to the claim.





Lake County prosecutors requested the death penalty for Vann last year.





Lake County prosecutors requested the death penalty for Vann last year. He faces charges in connection with the deaths of Anith Jones 35, of Merrillville; Afrikka Hardy, 19, of Chicago; Teaira Batey, 28, of Gary; Tracy Martin, 41, of Gary; Kristine Williams, 36, of Gary; Sonya Billingsley, 52, of Gary; and Tanya Gatlin, 27, of Highland.





If convicted, he could join 13 other people on death row in Indiana.





Kevin Charles Isom, the other man facing the death penalty in Lake County, also questioned the factors a jury is supposed to weigh before sentencing someone to death. The Indiana Supreme Court ruled against him in 2015.





The constitutionality of capital punishment is an issue the country has grappled with for decades as states have altered their death penalty laws.





"Pieces of things in the statute have been pulled off and changed (in Indiana)," said Andrea Lyon, dean of Valparaiso University Law School. "But Indiana Supreme Court and, thus far, any other federal court has not said that Indiana, generally, has been unconstitutional."





Delaware's highest court ruled its state's death penalty law was unconstitutional less than two weeks ago. It said it gave judges too large of a role over juries in imposing death sentences.





Vann's attorneys say in the motion that the situations in Delaware and Indiana are similar.





 | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

Source: Associated Press, August 21, 2016
Putin always gets the better of Obama, despite a much weaker military and much smaller economy. Why?

In a Star Trek episode, the Enterprise discover a powerful alien who possesses an unknown painting by Leonardo da Vinci and an unknown work of music by Johannes Brahms. Kirk and Spock confront him and the man admits that, yes, he is both da Vinci and Brahms. He is in fact immortal and omni-powerful.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the move. His special forces units are preparing for another invasion of eastern Ukraine. In a recent piece in the Washington post, Charles Krauthammer ponders how this former KGB chief has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East from the US-Egypt alliance to the new alliance between Iran and Russia. He is dictating to the US and NATO, the future of Syria. So impressed are they with Putin, that Iran's mullahs for the first time are allowing Russian bombers to use bases in Iran. The first foreign troops on Iranian soil and 50 years. Krauthammer writes:

This week Russian bombers flew out of Iranian air bases to attack rebel positions in Syria. The State Department pretended not to be surprised. It should be. It should be alarmed. Iran's intensely nationalistic revolutionary regime had never permitted foreign forces to operate from its soil. Until now.

The reordering of the Middle East is proceeding apace. Where for 40 years the U.S.-Egypt alliance anchored the region, a Russia-Iran condominium is now dictating events. That's what you get after eight years of U.S. retrenchment and withdrawal. That's what results from the nuclear deal with Iran, the evacuation of Iraq and utter U.S. immobility on Syria.

Charles Krauthammer, The Price of Powerlessness, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-price-of-powerlessness/2016/08/18/f61d2c34-6575-11e6-96c0-37533479f3f5_story.html?utm_term=.6f6e67364bf7

Meanwhile half the Russian navy ships are unable to get underway. A holdover from Soviet days is that Russian naval crews report to their stations, take home a paycheck, and never even report whether or not their ships have working engines. The Russian Navy does have a few good units; but Russia's one aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsova had to be towed into port recently. The oil based Russian economy is floundering to the point where Putin has to arrest formerly allied oligarchs, in order to shake them down for cash.

How is all of this possible?

The obvious explanation is the Putin is some sort of powerful being, such as Vlad the Impaler a.k.a. Dracula. Or that the Russians have discovered the secret to time travel. Photos are circulating though the blogosphere, showing Putin as a soldier in 1920, in 1941, and again today.

So is Putin an all powerful being who has mastered time travel, or an immortal being who has learned secrets only a thousand years of life could reveal? Neither, probably. But he may have risen to power by faking an act of Chechen terrorism, to secure his own election in 1999. The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Act of Terror that Brought Putin to Power, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible?utm_source=NR&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=August17satter

David Satter, the only Journalist not killed for investigating the bombing incident, writes: All available evidence points to Putin's complicity in the 1999 apartment-building bombings in Russia. Those who have tried to investigate have been killed off, one by one.

I believe that Vladimir Putin came to power as the result of an act of terror committed against his own people. The evidence is overwhelming that the apartment-house bombings in 1999 in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk, which provided a pretext for the second Chechen war and catapulted Putin into the presidency, were carried out by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Yet, to this day, an indifferent world has made little attempt to grasp the significance of what was the greatest political provocation since the burning of the Reichstag.

So why is it that the average Russian doesn't care? Why is it that about 65% of the Russian electorate approves of Putin, and has elected him leader to four terms over 16 years? Again, Krauthammer explains:

Consider what Putin has achieved. Dealt a very weak hand - a rump Russian state, shorn of empire and saddled with a backward economy and a rusting military - he has restored Russia to great-power status. Reduced to irrelevance in the 1990s, it is now a force to be reckoned with.

In Europe, Putin has unilaterally redrawn the map. His annexation of Crimea will not be reversed. The Europeans are eager to throw off the few sanctions they grudgingly imposed on Russia. And the rape of eastern Ukraine continues.

Putin doesn't see US Interests as necessarily in contrast to America's. Abandon NATO as a relic of the past, he suggests to American friends such as Donald Trump. Russian interests, Putin probably suggests to Trump, are compatible with America's true legitimate national goals. Chinese interests are also not incompatible with American and Russian interests, because they lie in dominating South Asia and the South China Sea. Together with China and Russia, the U.S. can dominate the worlds smaller countries, including those in the Americas, Europe and Asia, throughout the 21st Century. He need not be a time traveller or immortal to see the world in this way, because the Russians have seen it thusly since Lenin.

"At last, Russia has returned to the world arena as a strong state  a country that others heed and that can stand up for itself."--Vladimir Putin, 2008

In a way, Putin really is immortal. His political ideals come directly from the the very first political scientist. Niccolo Machiavelli, who wrote The Prince in 1513, approved of the leader of a state to lie, cheat, steal and kill, as long as he did it to further the national interest. No wonder Putin appears in Jan van Eyk's paintings from that same time period. Perhaps Vlad and Nikko hung out together, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli
Katrina Pierson diagnosed Clinton's condition as Dysphasia on leftist MSNBC. She was ridiculed. But what if she's right?

"Katrina" Pierson says that Hillary Clinton suffers from a medical condition -- dysphasia --which has damaged her brain and affects her cognition. But what if she's right?

The Washington Post, which among American newspapers is the most unabashedly pro-Clinton and Anti Trump, says "(Trump Campaign Spokeswoman) Katrina Pierson is at it again:"

"... saying Thursday on MSNBC that Hillary Clinton suffers from a medical condition -- dysphasia -- with which Clinton has never been diagnosed. "What's new are the other reports of the observations of Hillary Clinton's behavior and mannerisms, specifically with what you just showed in those previous clips, as well as her dysphasia, the fact that she's fallen, she has had a concussion. . . . it's merely the latest counterfactual claim Pierson has made this month and this campaign. While Pierson's comments have long been controversial, they have taken a particularly strange turn in recent weeks."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/15/donald-trumps-top-spokeswoman-katrina-pierson-is-saying-some-very-strange-things-this-month/

But what if Pierson's right? What if the candidate given an 84% probability of being elected President in November (by the LA Times), suffers from Aphasia (often called Dysphasia)? What does this disability imply for us and for her presidency?

As we've reported on this website, Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton has suffered what appear to be seizures on camera. http://www.smobserved.com/story/2016/08/19/politics/did-hillary-clinton-suffer-seizure-on-camera-in-june-watch-video/1748.html

The leftist media has ignored it, but Clinton herself acknowledges falling and hitting her head in 2012 in her bathtub, while Secretary of State. She is known to take blood thinners (i.e., anti-coagulants) for this condition

In addition, Clinton is Hypo-thyroid, and takes thyroid tablets--not at all uncommon for 69 year old women.

In the late 1980's Ronald Reagan almost certainly suffered from Alzheimer's Syndrome. This became clear to the public during his second term as President. This affected his cognition, his memory, his reputation and his ability to lead.

And of course, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected and re-elected in the 1930's and 1940's, despite his polio and partial paralysis. He could not walk unassisted.

Today, FDR and Reagan are revered as Presidents go. But it's widely believed that in 1944, months before his death, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin took advantage of FDR's physical and mental weakness, to negotiate his way into Soviet domination of half of Europe for 50 years following the meeting between Stalin, FDR and Churchill. Reagan was not at his best in 1987 and 1988; if you lived during that time period, as I did, you remember all the bad press every comment from Reagan earned.

Is this really the best we can do as a nation? Where is the national conversation on Hillary's Health? (answering my own question, it's on twitter: #hillaryhealth #hillaryshealth. But nowhere else, on the nation's news websites, except perhaps foxnews.com and here).

Katrina Pierson does tell some stories that are clearly not true: That Obama was behind the decision to invade Afghanistan, for example. This doesn't change the fact that something is going on with Mrs. Clinton. As Pierson correctly points out, the Democratic presidential nominee hasn't held a press conference in 2016. Why doesn't she hold one now, and answer some questions from the press about her health?

Aphasia is an inability to comprehend and formulate language because of dysfunction in specific brain regions. Most often caused by a cerebral vascular accident (CVA), which is also known as a stroke, aphasia can cause impairments in speech and language modalities. To be diagnosed with aphasia, a person's speech or language must be significantly impaired in one (or several) of the four communication modalities following acquired brain injury or have significant decline over a short time period (progressive aphasia). The four communication modalities are auditory comprehension, verbal expression, reading and writing, and functional communication. This description, at times, does seem to fit Mrs. Clinton.

The difficulties of people with aphasia can range from occasional trouble finding words to losing the ability to speak, read, or write; intelligence, however, is unaffected.

MSNBC "Katrina Pierson Diagnoses Hillary Clinton with Dysphasia"

Aphasia also affects visual language such as sign language. In contrast, the use of formulaic expressions in everyday communication is often preserved. One prevalent deficit in the aphasias is anomia, which is a deficit in word finding ability.

The term "aphasia" implies that one or more communication modalities have been damaged and are therefore functioning incorrectly. Aphasia does not refer to damage to the brain that results in motor or sensory deficits, as it is not related to speech (which is the verbal aspect of communicating) but rather the individual's language. An individual's "language" is the socially shared set of rules as well as the thought processes that go behind verbalized speech. It is not a result of a more peripheral motor or sensory difficulty, such as paralysis affecting the speech muscles or a general hearing impairment.
Verimatrix Showcases Revenue Security Convergence Across Major Pay TV Trends at IBC 2016

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS  (Marketwired)  08/22/16   , the specialist in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-network, multi-screen digital TV services around the globe, will illustrate how security solutions are at the core of all key monetization strategies for the pay-TV and Internet video service markets at IBC 2016, 9-13 Sept. 2016 at the RAI Convention Centre (booth #5.A59). Throughout the show, the company will highlight its role in revenue enablement and protection across major industry trends, including premium ultra HD (UHD) deployments, app enablement for over-the-top (OTT) video, high-integrity video analytics and the extension into Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

Becoming a next-generation video operator involves raising the bar across a range of key service dimensions that involve security. Our expertise in the secure delivery of video to any device over any network against any threat has made our role within the partner ecosystem very valuable for operators to more easily take advantage of these opportunities, said Tom Munro, CEO of Verimatrix. At IBC, we look forward to reinforcing the benefits of a comprehensive revenue security platform at the core of any next-generation video services deployment.

Booth demonstrations will showcase how Verimatrix can enhance revenue security by taking more proactive approaches to combat revenue threats and identify emerging opportunities that can further monetize their business. Highlighted solutions and services include:

As a follow up to the launch of , Verimatrix will be announcing the availability of a quick start evaluation package designed to help operators quickly realize the full potential of their video data and the benefits for multiple departments across the organization. The Verspective Analytics solution will also be on display at the booth, demonstrated alongside key partners Genius Digital and ThinkAnalytics, to show the power of combining different sources of video data including CDN, VOD and linear streams. Verspective Operator Analytics has been shortlisted for the 2016 CSI Awards in the Best data & analytics innovation category

The Verimatrix VCAS Ultra solution has been bolstered by additional features within the core offering, including the integration of the VideoMark live profile, which will be demonstrated at the booth. A complement to established forensic watermarking methods, the VideoMark live profile is specifically designed to protect valuable live linear content against real-time re-broadcasting threats. It can be combined with the content discovery and video capture technologies from Friend MTS to provide powerful automation in the rebroadcasting control process. This latest version of the VideoMark solution has also been shortlisted in the 2016 CSI Award program for the Best ultra HD TV technology category.

In addition, Verimatrix is now offering Verspective Monitoring services as part of the VCAS Ultra bundle. Verspective Monitoring provides a local, cloud-based system for operators to proactively monitor its VCAS system for threat analysis, performance, resource usage, and network integrity.

As the functionality of OTT delivery platforms evolves, the solution has gained traction from operators and online video publishers (OVPs) evaluating their multi-DRM options, seeking the freedom to choose the right security approach across all devices.

In a recently developed white paper, Frost & Sullivan analyzes the true costs and complexities of building in-house multi-DRM programs and compares them to implementing preconfigured solutions like MultiRights. Copies of  and more information about an upcoming webinar on this topic will be available at the booth.

Members of the Verimatrix executive team will also be on hand to discuss the findings from , a brand-new white paper developed with ABI Research that highlights the parallels of securing IoT applications with video delivery content.

Verimatrix is also supporting a number of key industry events during the show:

Competition or Co-opetition: Rethinking the World of Online TV  Friday, 9 Sept. at 18:00 hrs at the West India House

Verimatrix is sponsoring this Videonet event to further the debate on the best strategies that will propel the next-generation video services platform  one that consumers are willing to pay for. To register your spot at the dinner event, .

2016 CSI Awards ceremony  Fri. 9 Sept. at 18:00 hrs in room E102 at the RAI.

Verimatrix has been shortlisted in two categories for its Verspective Operator Analytics and VideoMark live solutions. Winners will be announced at the ceremony.

4K 4Charity Fun Run  Sat. 10 Sept. at 7:30 hrs at Amstelpark.

Team Verimatrix is proud to be continuing its support of this annual event that will benefit global charitable organization Heifer International and local Amsterdam charity Jeugdsportfonds.

For additional information about Verimatrixs presence during IBC 2016 or to book an appointment, please visit .

specializes in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-network, multi-screen digital TV services around the globe and is recognized as the global number one in revenue security for connected video devices. The award-winning and independently audited Verimatrix Video Content Authority System () family of solutions enable next-generation video service providers to cost-effectively extend their networks and enable new business models. The company has continued its technical innovation by offering the worlds only globally interconnected revenue security platform, , for automated system optimization and data collection/analytics.

Its and close relationship with major studios, broadcasters and standards organizations enables Verimatrix to provide a unique advantage to video business issues beyond content security as operators introduce new services to leverage the proliferation of connected devices. Verimatrix is an ISO 9001:2008 certified company. For more information, please visit , our and follow us , and to join the conversation.
The Datera Universal Data Fabric Simplifies Stateful Application Provisioning on Kubernetes

SUNNYVALE, CA  (Marketwired)  08/22/16  Datera, the , today announced a new integration with Googles open source container system The Datera universal data fabric seamlessly complements the Kubernetes orchestration framework and allows for automatic provisioning and deployment of stateful applications. With the Kubernetes integration, Datera translates service-level objectives such as performance, durability, security and capacity into its universal data fabric. This integration allows enterprises and service providers to build private clouds at any scale for any kind of application.

Google recently released a Kubernetes update that supports , enabling developers to run thousands of traditional enterprise workloads. However, traditional data storage is cumbersome and expensive to deploy and manage, especially at scale. With this integration, Datera expands Kubernetes to automatically tailor runtime storage capabilities for each stateful application, automatically scale applications, and automatically isolate and protect them with dedicated storage segments. This brings public-cloud-like infrastructure capabilities to any data center and allows businesses to manage applications of any kind at a fraction of the cost and time.

.@DateraInc announces integration w/Googles @kubernetesio to simplify stateful application provisioning .

As data centers are re-imagined for cloud, theres a need for a universal platform that can orchestrate workloads and data anywhere across private and public clouds, said Marc Fleischmann, CEO and co-founder of Datera. Google Kubernetes contributes the necessary orchestration framework and Datera supplies the complementary universal data fabric. Kubernetes and containers are emerging key technologies, and foundational integrations like this will take them mainstream to create tomorrows autonomic multi-cloud datacenter.

See a demo of the integration and learn about the benefits

Founded by the authors and maintainers of the Linux I/O storage stack, Datera brings webscale operations and economics to private and public clouds. Dateras products are used in production by large enterprises and service providers worldwide. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA and is backed by Khosla Ventures, Samsung Ventures and Silicon Valley luminaries Andy Bechtolsheim and Pradeep Sindhu. For more information, visit or follow @DateraInc on Twitter.

Shauna Roberts

BOCA Communications for Datera

(415) 298-1486
CRN 2016 Annual Report Card: Sophos Announced as Overall Winner for Data Security and Network Security Categories and Wins Product Innovation Sub-Category for Endpoint Security

BURLINGTON, MA  (Marketwired)  08/22/16  (LSE: SOPH), a global leader in , today announced that it has been named as the Overall Winner in the prestigious categories of Data Security and Network Security in s (ARC) awards program. Sophos also won the award for Product Innovation in the Endpoint Security category.

recognizes in 2016 #CRNARC

The Annual Report Card summarizes results from a comprehensive survey that details solution provider satisfaction across product innovation, support and partnership for the hardware, services and software vendors they team up with. The vendors with the highest ratings are named to the prestigious Annual Report Card list of winners and celebrated as best-in-class by their partners. The results also provide the IT vendor community with valuable feedback  directly from their solution providers  that can be used to refine product offerings, enhance support offerings and improve communication with partners.

Sophos is a channel-first, channel-only company that focuses all its efforts towards technical innovation, marketing, sales and support initiatives that help our partners succeed on all levels. It is testament to the strength of our channel that we continue to outgrow the market in both endpoint and network security, said Kendra Krause, vice president of global channels at Sophos. We are a next-generation security company with an unparalleled dedication to our channel partners and I am honored that once again our efforts are recognized by those we serve. Winning CRNs ARC awards validates Sophos as a channel leader that continues to drive the IT security market forward.

This years group of honorees was selected from the results of an in-depth, invitation-only survey by The Channel Companys research team. More than 2,840 solution providers were asked to evaluate their satisfaction with 80 vendor partners in 24 major product categories. The winners will be honored throughout The Channel Companys XChange 2016 conference (), taking place August 21-23 in San Antonio, Texas.

CRNs Annual Report Card gives solution providers a unique opportunity to evaluate vendors products and provide detailed feedback on their real-world experience working in the field as partners with those technology companies. In turn, ARC gives technology vendors valuable, actionable feedback on channel satisfaction levels across multiple facets of their partnerships, said Robert Faletra, CEO of The Channel Company. An ARC Award is a truly meaningful distinction  a direct accolade from partners attesting to the quality and ingenuity of the winners product, support and partnership. We heartily congratulate each of this years ARC Award winners and look forward to celebrating them at this years XChange Conference in August.

The 2016 Annual Report Card results can be viewed online at and will be featured in the October issue of CRN.

Read the latest security news and views on our award-winning and read more about us at .

Protect every Mac and PC in your home with the next generation of centrally managed free internet security software, .

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos complete security solutions as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Simple to deploy, manage, and use, Sophos award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions are backed by SophosLabs  a global network of threat intelligence centers. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K., and is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol SOPH. More information is available at .

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequaled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace.

, and

Melanie Turpin

The Channel Company

(508) 416-1195

Sara Eberle

PR manager, Sophos

339-223-9265

Mike Bradshaw

partner, Connect Marketing

801-373-7888  office

801-361-2580  mobile
YouTube





Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @Songbird_Callum





Contact us on Twitter , on Facebook , or leave your comments below. To find out about social media training or management why not take a look at our website for more info: TheSMFGroup.com





YouTube is awash with 'inspirational' travel vloggers. You know the sort, they speak in the language of time lapses, swelling post-rock music montages, group shots with a collections of excited locals and over-the-shoulder views of canyons and misty mountain ranges.It's an understandable way to be if you're fortunate enough to spend such a huge portion of your life trekking all across the planet, but it's been a long time since the first 'Where the Hell is Matt?' and the market has become slightly over-saturated. Granted, it's still one of the less mind-numbing corners of YouTube, but there's only so many times you can watch a white guy in Oakleys brandishing his GoPro over the edge of Victoria Falls and talking about how 'sick' it is.The real appeal comes from seeing someone look at an unfamiliar place from a familiar perspective, so you can see where it might be interesting for such a traveler to go somewhere as unsettling and bizarre as North Korea. Tourists do visit the infamous nation, but the government are very careful about what they let them see, so often the impression they come back with is airbrushed, theatrical, and utterly removed from the brutal oppression we read about in the news.One shouldn't logically expect even the most intrepid YouTuber to be able to sidestep such a heavily regimented tourist package, but you would think they would at least be able to understand and pay some credence to that fact.This is why Louis Cole has drawn in so much controversy since he started posting about North Korea. The 33-year-old, dreadlocked Brit has more than 1.8 million subscribers, he's posted videos from all over the world, either solo or with his partner, and he recently returned from North Korea. The videos he's posted of the trip have titles like 'BEYOND THE TOURISM', 'PLAYING WITH LOCAL KIDS' and 'BREAKING BARRIERS', and he states that he tried to accentuate the positive aspects of the country during his time there.The problem with that is that Cole isn't the only vlogger to have spent time in North Korea recently. In fact, it's become something of a haven for them, and many have pointed out that they were only ever allowed to see staged attractions, and draw disturbing conclusions from that. Cole, on the other hand, never even implicitly broaches on that, and it's made some people very suspicious.On the most extreme end of the spectrum, some have said that Cole was in the employ of the government, tasked with presenting a squeaky clean impression of the country to throw westerners off the scent. Others have offered more measured criticisms, saying that his attempts to stay positive have resulted in a complete misrepresentation of North Korea, and does a disservice to the countless people suffering under the regime of Kim Jong Un.Cole has since posted a response to the ongoing criticisms, in which he states that he is very much aware of what's going on there, that he is in no way affiliated with the North Korean government and that the reasoning behind his approach was to meet people and spread positive messages which would ultimately resonate through the country. If you ask me, this probably was indeed Cole's approach, and his biggest mistake was not to address that in his other videos. Without such a disclaimer, he seems hopelessly naive, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he is.One of the biggest voices being thrown around in this debate has been Philip DeFranco's. The YouTube megastar initially criticised Cole for accentuating the staged aspects of his North Korean tour, using the analogy of being shown around a mansion which you're only allowed to see part of because people are being murdered in the other rooms, and then not mentioning that. Cole actually addressed this in his response video, stating that it's also important to interact with and tell stories about the people in the 'rooms' which you are allowed to see.It's a complicated situation, and one could argue that anyone who participates in one of these staged tours of North Korea should have some reason for doing so beyond mere curiosity, especially since the money they pay to do it eventually finds its way to the government there. Equally, it could be suggested that a visit to any country with an oppressive government, or mass poverty (many of which are popular holiday destinations) could be judged by the same token.Vlogging is an odd, young medium and the accusations being levied against Cole are ridiculous when you consider how many other people like him have done the exact same trip. The only difference is the tone of their commentary. Should he have talked more about the bigger picture? Almost certainly, but the fact that Cole is suddenly at the centre of the most widely broadcasted news item about North Korea just goes to show that the scale of someone's internet fame rarely lines up with their significance. If Cole had only a few hundred, or even a few thousand subscribers, none of us would have even heard about this.
Solar Novus Today Has Been Integrated

With Novus Light Technologies Today

Visit Novus Light Technologies Today to see all the cutting-edge stories and products that you have come to enjoy on Solar Novus Today. In addition, you will find more information on related light-based technologies.



Get the latest solar and renewable energy news delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for the Green Technologies newsletter





CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR GREEN TECHNOLOGIES NEWSLETTER






























1,800 drugs-related killings recorded since president Duterte took office seven weeks ago. Since President Duterte took office on June 30, this country has seen so many people killed by vigilante death squads. The "kill list" tallied from that time by the Philippine National Police presents an appalling death toll of Since President Duterte took office on June 30, this country has seen so many people killed by vigilante death squads. The "kill list" tallied from that time by the Philippine National Police presents an appalling death toll of 465 extrajudicial executions





The President has acknowledged abuses in the war on drugs, but is not backing down from a shoot-to-kill order against drug dealers. He has also ordered the reinstatement of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime, which he has pledged to eradicate in the first 3 to 6 months of his presidency.





Mr. Duterte has explained these draconian measures that have given the Philippines the international reputation of being Asia's latest killing field, reminiscent of the genocidal slaughter of up to half a million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge when they occupied Phnom Penh in 1975.





He has justified these massacres, saying that most drug dealers and addicts slain in gun battles had put up a fight, but he was sure some were "salvaged" - a local term for extrajudicial killings by law enforcers. The excuse has alarmed human rights activists who denounced it as "at least, legally questionable," as an attempt to whitewash law enforcement agents' involvement in the killings, or to look for scapegoats in the witch-hunt for those responsible for the summary executions.





Mr. Duterte has been battling with international organizations condemning his controversial crime war that has claimed 1,000 lives. He hit out on Wednesday at "stupid" UN criticism, warning it not to interfere in Philippine domestic affairs. "Why should the United Nations be so easily swayed in the affairs of this republic? There were only 1,000 killed," he said.





"What's the problem? You inject politics. Only 1,000 died, and you put my country in peril, in jeopardy?" he said. He should have been asked: Why are you not bothered by the killings of Filipinos on the basis of nothing more than suspicion of having committed crimes. He told foreign human rights watchdogs "not to investigate us as though we are criminals" and warned they would not be treated well in the Philippines.





Amnesty International (AI) has told Mr. Duterte he must fulfill his inauguration pledge to uphold the country's commitment to international law and lead a break with the country's "poor human rights record."





Lend substance to words





"President Duterte was elected on a mandate to uphold the rule of law," the London-based AI said. "It is encouraging that he spoke of honoring the Philippines' obligations under international law in his inauguration speech. But now that he is in power, he needs to lend substance to those words and break with his earlier rhetoric. Throughout his campaign, the President made inflammatory remarks that, if translated to policy, would mark a sharp deterioration in the already problematic human rights situation in the Philippines. President Duterte's promises to adhere to the rule of law must be translated into actual policy and implemented in practice," AI said.





Since winning the election, AI noted, Mr. Duterte has "triggered widespread alarm" by calling for the restoration of the death penalty, vowing to preside over a wave of extrajudicial executions, threatening journalists and intimidating human rights defenders.





Regional leader





"This is a context where a climate of impunity for human rights violations prevails in the Philippines, including for torture and ill treatment. Only 1 police officer has ever been brought to justice under laws criminalizing torture, and few have been held accountable for killing journalists ...





"Among President Duterte's many troubling positions is his intention to restore the death penalty. Doing so would reverse a decade-long ban in the Philippines of this cruel and irreversible punishment. For this [position] the Philippines is a regional leader, as it went against the grain of other countries in the region.





"President Duterte has said that he intends to apply the death penalty to a range of crimes including offenses that do not meet the threshold of 'most serious crimes,' which is the only category of crimes for which international law allows the death penalty.





"There is no evidence that the death penalty serves as any more of a deterrent than prison. At a time when this cruel and inhuman and degrading punishment has been abolished in the majority of the world's countries, reimposing it will set [the Philippines] in the wrong direction."

Number of deaths soars in Philippines war on drugs

1,800 drugs-related killings recorded since president Duterte took office seven weeks ago

A victim of summary execution. The Philippines has recorded about 1,800 drug-related killings since President Rodrigo Duterte took office seven weeks ago and launched a war on narcotics, far higher than previously believed, according to police figures. The Philippines has recorded about 1,800 drug-related killings since President Rodrigo Duterte took office seven weeks ago and launched a war on narcotics, far higher than previously believed, according to police figures.





Philippine national police chief Ronald Dela Rosa told a Senate committee on Monday that 712 drug traffickers and users had been killed in police operations since July 1st.





Police were also investigating 1,067 other drug-related killings, Nr Dela Rosa said, without giving details. The comments came a day after Mr Duterte lashed out at the United Nations for criticising the wave of deaths.





As recently as Sunday, the number of suspected drug traffickers killed in Mr Dutertes war on drugs had been put at about 900 by Philippine officials. But this number included people who died since Mr Duterte won the May 9th presidential election.





Mr Duterte said in a bizarre and strongly worded late-night news conference on Sunday that the Philippines might leave the United Nations and invite China and others to form a new global forum, accusing it of failing to fulfil its mandate.





However, his foreign minister, Perfecto Yasay, said on Monday the Philippines would remain a UN member and described the presidents comments as expressions of profound disappointment and frustration.





We are committed to the UN despite our numerous frustrations and disappointments with the international agency, Mr Yasay told a news conference.





UN criticism





Last week, two UN human rights experts urged Manila to stop the extra-judicial executions and killings.





Mr Yasay said Mr Duterte has promised to uphold human rights in the fight against drugs and has ordered the police to investigate and prosecute offenders. He criticised the UN rapporteurs for jumping to an arbitrary conclusion that we have violated human rights of people.





It is highly irresponsible on their part to solely rely on such allegations based on information from unnamed sources without proper substantiation, he said of the United Nations.





Senator Leila de Lima, a staunch critic of the president, started a two-day congressional inquiry into the killings on Monday, questioning top police and anti-narcotics officials to explain the unprecedented rise in killings.





I am disturbed that we have killings left and right as breakfast every morning, she said.





My concern does not only revolve around the growing tally of killings reported by the police. What is particularly worrisome is that the campaign against drugs seems to be an excuse for some law enforcers and other elements like vigilantes to commit murder with impunity, Ms De Lima said.

 | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

Source: opinion.inquirer.net, August 22, 2016Source: Reuters, August 22, 2016
Death-row isolation cells on Nusakambangan penal island, Indonesia.

We were sheltered in a car at Port Cilicap, the gateway to Indonesia's Nusa Kambangan island prison, with few places to take cover outside. It was a torrential downpour so heavy you could barely see your hands in front of your face.





It was 11:30pm on July 28, so heavy was the rain that speculation was mounting the firing squad could not complete its gruesome duty that day. The targets tied to wooden posts, either kneeling or standing, would be too hard to see.





But by 2:30am, as thunder cracked over the prison island, we received word that the executions had taken place as planned.





In the hours ahead we would establish it had been a day of confusion, mismanagement and deep human suffering.





We'd arrived at Cilacap earlier that morning knowing the inmates had been given 72 hours notice, meaning they should face the firing squad sometime after midnight on the Friday.





Not long after at the prosecutor's office, the families began to emerge after being told the executions would take place that evening, short of the 72 hours notice required, a self-imposed rule Indonesia seems to largely disregard





The raw grief was palpable. So hard to watch and to hear.





The family of Pakistani man Zulfikar Ali had just been told he would soon die. His wife could barely stand.





Earlier that week I had visited the Pakistani embassy where, unexpectedly, I'd established there was a widespread deep and real question mark over Ali's innocence.





I sat with the deputy head of mission while he explained that while Pakistan supports the death penalty, there had been at least 2 extensive reports showing Ali was innocent.





So much so that even the former Indonesian president Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie appealed to President Widodo to save this man's life.





Later on the prison island, the families gathered in a specially erected tent to sit and wait until the deed was done.





The lightning and thunder prevented them from hearing the sound of gunfire.









"They were all in their cells ... and obviously we could see it wasn't going to happen because it was too late and time was going on," Father Burrows told me.





3 Nigerians and 1 Indonesian, all involved in drug crimes, were executed





Another 10 inmates , who had just lived through what they believed to be the last moments of their lives, were not.





"It all happened pretty quickly in the end," said Father Burrows.





"All the spiritual accompaniers went together to the shooting place, with the ones who were actually active, and we were all asked to wait there and we said a few prayers together."





Father Burrows described the mental state of the 4 men in those final moments.





"There was a lot of anger -but eventually, usually they realise that they're going to die, so it's best you try and die with dignity."





Indonesia provided no clarification as to why some of the inmates were spared that night, and whether the excruciating day for inmates and families would be relived in the future.





No apology, no explanation, no reason.





 | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

Source: abc.net.au, Samantha Hawley, August 22, 2016
What you need to know about Powerball and the $825 million jackpot
You will note that the Progs were quite silent until they got their talking points. Only they are the only ones buying the BS which they are shoveling.






Welcome to SwanseaOnline - your home for the best news, sports and what's on coverage of the city.

Never miss a Swansea story with our daily newsletter Sign up to comment on our stories here

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter | Swansea City news | Ospreys news | InYourArea
Look, Web. I understand exactly what you are saying and in THEORY, I agree.

But reliving past mistakes and blaming those who made poor choices (whatever the reason) gets us NO WHERE.

WE can talk till we're blue in the face about making a home--being a jerk--not taking responsibility--good choices--moral values, but in the end it becomes a personal decision. We do not control people. We can't MAKE them 'behave' or take personal responsibility. AND we can't punish innocent children born into ghetto/gang neighborhoods. This is a very complicated issue. It took decades to create and it's going to take at least that long to straighten it out, but placing blame and stereotyping minorities will never solve the problem.
On St. Patrick's Day 2015, astrophotographer Shawn Malone set out once again to capture the northern lights over Lake Superior in Marquette, Michigan. But this time, instead of seeing the usual green aurora, she stumbled upon something unlike anything she had ever seen before: a vivid, rainbow-colored sky with rare, prominent streaks of blue.

Auroras that display such vibrant hues of blue are a rare sight for skywatchers  even those observing near Earth's North and South poles, where the lights are most visible. Although auroras can take on a whole spectrum of colors, green and pink are the most common. [The Most Amazing Aurora Pictures of 2016 (Gallery)]

"When I saw the large spectrum of color, including the magentas and especially the blues, I was completely shocked," Malone told Space.com in a recent email chronicling the March 17, 2015, sight. "That is the most beautiful blue I have ever captured, and I've been photographing the aurora for about 15 years now." Malone also captured a stunning time-lapse video of the blue auroras, which you can see on Malone's Facebook here.

Auroras occur when the solar wind, or charged particles emanating from the sun, meet Earth's magnetosphere. This massive magnetic field encases our planet, shielding it from the solar wind by redirecting incoming charged particles. Most of the solar wind particles are redirected back into space.

At the poles, however, the magnetosphere is more vulnerable to intruders. Particles traveling to the poles at high speeds can break through the magnetosphere's protective barrier. When these intruding particles interact with different elements in the atmosphere, the result is a spectacular display of colored light across the sky. Auroras over the North Pole are known as the northern lights, while their southern counterpart are dubbed the southern lights.

The different colors are the result of solar particles interacting with molecules in the atmosphere. Common green and yellow auroras occur when the charged particles excite oxygen molecules. Excited nitrogen can create shades of red and violet. The rare blue lights only happen when the nitrogen is ionized. [The Best Places (and Time) to See the Northern Lights]

When the sun spews extra particles toward Earth  the result of increased solar activity like sunspots  aurorae become supercharged. These auroras tend to be brighter and more colorful than usual.

Skywatchers hoping to see a colorful display of auroras can monitor the space weather forecast for increased solar activity by following the space weather forecast from the Space Weather Prediction Group at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. When Malone shot her video of the blue northern lights over Michigan, "There had been a forecast of a relatively strong aurora," she said, "so I knew there might be a chance for some stronger activity." [How the Northern Lights Work (Infographic)]

For the most beautiful view of the auroras, a good camera can reveal colors that the human eye might not see. It wasn't until after Malone shot the time-lapse video of the aurora over Lake Superior that she realized how colorful it really was. "If you watch carefully, you can see me walking through the frame  something I would have never done if I knew exactly what I was capturing at the moment."

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on Space.com.
SpaceX founder, CEO and lead designer Elon Musk is unveiling his humans-to-Mars plan at next month's 67th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), to be held in Guadalajara, Mexico. The world space meeting runs from Sept. 26-30.

On the second day of the IAC, during a special keynote entitled "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species," Musk will discuss the long-term technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation of a permanent, self-sustaining human presence on Mars.

The technical presentation will focus on potential architectures for colonizing the Red Planet that industry, government and the scientific community can collaborate on in the years ahead. [SpaceX's Red Dragon: A Private Mars in Pictures]

SpaceX Dragon on Mars. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Red Dragon

In the past, Musk has detailed his intention to use a Red Dragon spacecraft to fly to Mars in un-crewed mode in the 2018 time period. Later flights of the craft would transport humans to the planet.

Using supersonic retro propulsion to touch down on the Red Planet, the Red Dragon may well deploy scientific devices, particularly hardware that could demonstrate made-on-Mars propellant.

Gwynne Shotwell, President of SpaceX, underscored her firm's Mars plans on Aug. 9 at the 30th annual Conference on Small Satellites, held at Utah State University in Logan, Utah.

"If you talked about this 15 years ago we probably would have been institutionalized," Shotwell told a standing room only audience. "The conversation has changed  now we can talk about going to Mars," she said.

Shotwell said retro-propulsion is "really the answer" contrasted to airfoils, parachutes and ballutes. "In addition, retro-propulsion will scale. We're not talking about dropping 10 tons on Mars. We'll be dropping hundreds of tons on Mars  dropping, I mean, settling down gently."

Retro-propulsion trial by fire. SpaceX first stage landing taken by remote camera photo from "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship on April 8, 2016. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Raptor engine

A key SpaceX propulsion development for Mars is the Raptor, a liquid oxygen/methane engine, Shotwell noted, pointing out that the first Raptor engine will soon be test fired.

In terms of what a 2018 un-crewed Red Dragon might take to Mars, "we haven't figured out how do you get stuff in Dragon onto the surface, but we're working on it," Shotwell said.

"We're working on some ISRU [in-situ resource utilization] payloads," Shotwell added. "I need my spaceship back to take more people to Mars. The return trip is free."

Scene from "Mars," a National Geographic Channel miniseries due to air in November. (Image credit: National Geographic, Imagine, RadicalMedia, Robert Viglasky)

Clothing opportunities

In terms of degree of difficulty for SpaceX Mars planning, Shotwell said that the hardest thing is getting return fuel from Martian resources. "Mining your own fuel on the surface to lift off againbecause the return trip I think is really important," she said.

Shotwell said that SpaceX is looking at some electric propulsion technologies for in-space activities.

"There's a lot to do," Shotwell observed. "I want to see transportation to other solar systems  get into a spaceship and go to some crazy planet. All those new clothing opportunities," she suggested.

Red Planet Resources

To view a trailer for National Geographic Channel's global event series "Mars," premiering in November, see:

Among those interviewed is Elon Musk, chief rocketeer at SpaceX:

"The future of humanity is fundamentally going to bifurcate along one of two directions: either we're going to become a multi-planet species and a spacefaring civilization, or we're going to be stuck on one planet until some eventual extinction event. In order for me to be excited and inspired about the future, it's got to be the first option," Musk says in the series.

Before "Mars" premiers, there will be an extensive digital virtual-reality experience available at: www.MakeMarsHome.com

For more information on the book  "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet" (Disclaimer: Leonard David is the book's author)  to be released Oct. 25, go to:

https://shop.nationalgeographic.com/product/books/books/new-books/mars (opens in new tab)

Also go to Amazon at:

http://www.amazon.com/Mars-Our-Future-Red-Planet/dp/1426217587/ref=sr_1_1?ie (opens in new tab)

For a pre-look at Musk's masterplan for Mars, go to this video via:

http://www.recode.net/2016/6/6/11840936/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-mars-full-video-code

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," to be published by National Geographic this October. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel six-part series coming in November. A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. This version of this article was published on Space.com.
Artist's illustration of cometary material crossing the face of a star  one possible explanation for the strange dimming exhibited by "Tabby's star."

Nearly a year after first making headlines around the world, "Tabby's star" is still guarding its secrets.

In September 2015, a team led by Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian announced that a star about 1,500 light-years from Earth called KIC 8462852 had dimmed oddly and dramatically several times over the past few years.

These dimming events, which were detected by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, were far too substantial to be caused by an orbiting planet, scientists said. (In one case, 22 percent of the star's light was blocked. For comparison, when huge Jupiter crosses the sun's face, the result is a dimming of just 1 percent or so.) [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]

Boyajian and her colleagues suggested that a cloud of fragmented comets or planetary building blocks might be responsible, but other researchers noted that the signal was also consistent with a possible "alien megastructure"  perhaps a giant swarm of energy-collecting solar panels known as a Dyson sphere.

Astronomers around the world soon began studying Tabby's star with a variety of instruments, and reanalyzing old observations of the object, in an attempt to figure out what, exactly, is going on. But they have yet to solve the puzzle.

"I'd say we have no good explanation right now for what's going on with Tabby's star," Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University, said earlier this month during a talk at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, California. "For now, it's still a mystery."

More surprises

In fact, that mystery may have deepened over the past 12 months.

By surrounding their star with swarms of energy-collecting satellites, advanced civilizations could create Dyson spheres. [ Read the Full Dyson Sphere Infographic Here .] (Image credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist)

For example, in January, Bradley Schaefer, a professor of physics and astronomy at Louisiana State University, determined that, in addition to the weird short-term dimming events, the brightness of Tabby's star had dropped by about 20 percent overall between 1890 and 1989. That pattern is very difficult for known natural phenomena to explain, he said.

Schaefer came to this conclusion after poring over old photographic plates of the night sky that captured Tabby's star. Other researchers suggested that the trend Schaefer saw could have been caused by changes in the instruments used to take those photos over the century-long timespan. However, a new study bolsters Schaefer's interpretation.

In the new work, Benjamin Montet (of the California Institute of Technology and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Joshua Simon (of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington) reanalyzed Kepler observations of Tabby's star from 2009 through 2013. They found that the object dimmed by 3 percent over that span, with a rapid 2-percent brightness dip over one 200-day period.

"Of a sample of 193 nearby comparison stars and 355 stars with similar stellar parameters, 0.6 percent change brightness at a rate as fast as 0.341 percent [per year], and none exhibit either the rapid decline by > 2 percent or the cumulative fading by 3 percent of KIC 8462852," Montet and Simon wrote in the new study, which they uploaded to the online preprint site ArXiv on Aug. 5. "No known or proposed stellar phenomena can fully explain all aspects of the observed light curve."

Schaefer's results, combined with those of Montet and Simon, make the comet hypothesis look less and less likely, Wright said in his SETI talk.

"Why would comets, over a century, make the star dimmer?" he said. "What's going on?" [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life]

Alien megastructure?

The sustained dimming of Tabby's star is still consistent with at least some variants of the "alien megastructure" hypothesis, Wright said.

"Some people have sort of facetiously offered that perhaps this is a Dyson sphere under construction: You're seeing lots of material getting built," he said. "In just 100 years, they've blotted out 20 percent of the starlight. That seems kind of fast to me  but, you know, aliens, right?"

It's also possible that the alien megastructure  if it exists  is fully constructed, and some parts are just denser than others, Wright added.

"That would naturally make the star get brighter and dimmer, as dense parts of the swarm came around," he said. "So if I had to invoke megastructures to explain it, that seems consistent. You've got lots of panels of different shapes, different sizes, and the big ones make big dips and the little ones make little dips, and the whole swarm is sort of like a translucent screen that makes the whole thing dimmer."

But Wright and others have always stressed that the "E.T. did it" scenario is very unlikely, and that a more prosaic explanation will probably rise to the top eventually. And indeed, other recent observations throw some cold water on the alien-megastructure idea  and any other hypothesis that invokes some object or phenomenon near Tabby's star.

Any structure surrounding the star, be it alien-made or naturally occurring, would heat up and give off infrared radiation, Wright said. But he and his colleagues saw no signatures of such "waste heat" in data gathered by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft. And another research team  which analyzed observations by the Submillimeter Array telescope and the Submillimeter Common-User Bolometer Array-2 instrument, both of which are in Hawaii  also came up empty.

Whatever is blocking the starlight from Tabby's star is "not surrounding the whole star  it must be along our line of sight," Wright said. "So you can do that if it's in a disk of some kind. And that hopefully will help constrain what the heck is going on."

Wright has a hunch that the answer lies far away from Tabby's star, out in the dark depths of space.

"I think I've all but abandoned circumstellar explanations, and I think now we're going to have to talk about [some] bizarre structure in the interstellar medium, and stuff like that," he said.

Still, Wright hasn't given up on the alien-megastructure hypothesis. While the lack of waste heat is "almost a fatal blow" for the idea, he said, it's still viable if the purported aliens are doing something with the waste heat  turning it into matter, for example, or converting the heat into radio waves for communication purposes.

Astronomers have already searched for such signals coming from Tabby's star using the Allen Telescope Array, a network of radio dishes in northern California operated by the SETI Institute. They found nothing. But Wright and his colleagues plan to conduct another search beginning in October; they've secured time on West Virginia's huge Green Bank Telescope for this purpose.

"This is a 1-in-300,000 object," Wright said. "People have gone looking for more, and it's the only one. So that also says you're allowed to invoke one really rare thing, because it is a rare phenomenon."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Pick your battles, they say -- a sentiment that also applies to strong countries like Germany that are based on the rule of law. A few fully covered women do not threaten our freedoms. Nor will they set back women's emancipation in Europe. Of course we expect Muslims in Germany to adhere to our constitution. But that same constitution also sets high hurdles when it comes to curbing religious freedoms or other civil liberties. And clothing rules are a massive incursion on personal rights.

Banning the burqa is irrelevant to the fight Islamist fundamentalism and to the battle for the liberation of Muslim women. It would merely save us from having to look at them. What we should instead be doing is extending a helping hand to those who are suppressed in the form of language courses, neighborhood meetings or invitations for a coffee. We should be confident that our way of life is attractive enough that it encourages imitative forms of emancipation.
'Obstacle to Teaching'

Even schoolchildren and university students can be banned from wearing facial veils. In 2014, a young Muslim woman who had applied at a vocational school in Bavaria in a headscarf saw her acceptance revoked when she showed up to class in a niqab. A court upheld the revocation, arguing that the facial veil was an "objective obstacle to teaching." It claimed that the student could not be identified, that it would hinder communication through mimicry and gestures that enables "social integration within the class," that her voice was too difficult to understand and that she was in danger of injury during scientific experiments.

Then there was the case of a teaching student from the central German city of Giessen, who, in the face of pressure from the university, agreed to appear unveiled to lectures and seminars, but then never showed up. The case of a young Muslim woman, who had studied for years wearing a full veil at the University of Bochum, did not, however, attract public attention. The university had accepted her on the condition that she raise her veil prior to exams so that a female university employee could confirm her identity.

"The student was actually very active, pretty extroverted," says one of her professors, Stefan Reichmuth. As such, he says, there was no problem understanding her or recognizing her under the veil: "She was unmistakable." Still, after the student obtained her bachelor's degree in Islamic studies, the university established new rules. When the niqab-wearing student wanted to begin her master's studies in 2014, she was given the choice: wear her veil or continue her studies -- and she chose the veil.

In the teaching profession, veils sometimes cause conflicts, and most German states have at least enacted limitations. Full veiling can be seen as an "indication of attitudes in opposition to the values of the Western world" and could "endanger neutrality," according to a bulletin from the Hesse Interior Ministry.

Other employees of the state have likewise been prevented from wearing full veils to work. An employee of Moroccan origin at the Frankfurt municipal office, for example, had wanted to wear a full veil when she returned from her maternity leave in 2011. The city, however, objected. "We want to see the faces of our employees," says then-head of personnel, Markus Frank, a member of the CDU. The woman ultimately left her job "voluntarily."

Mothers can also be required to remove their veils in schools or kindergartens. An elementary school in the western German city of Essen, for example, has rules in place to prevent mothers from entering school grounds in a niqab. In other places, fully veiled mothers must identify themselves to female employees when picking up their child from daycare.

France's Precedent

In France, the ban on full veils emerged from a traffic incident. A police officer stopped a woman who was driving with her niqab and gave her a ticket for 22 euros, which the woman challenged as discrimination. The incident triggered a broader debate which ultimately led to a ban on any kind of facial covering in public spaces, including in schools, government buildings, means of transportation, hospitals and museums.

Those who hoped this would lead to a decrease in the number of women in veils, however, were to be disappointed. The number of women wearing a burqa or niqab has remained almost constant over the past five years -- at about 2,000, experts say. Many of them are converts, between 20 and 30 years of age. About 400 fines are given out every year, a number that has likewise remained constant.

In Germany, a ban on burqas would have little effect, if only because no women here wear them. "In Germany I have thus far only seen one single burqa," says Rohe, the expert on law and Islam, "and that is the one I own." There are also only a few hundred Muslim women in the country who veil themselves with the niqab, according to estimates -- though cities like Munich, with high-end shopping areas, also attract tourists from the Arab world.

Either way, the debate is less about numbers than it is about symbolism. The same, of course, is true in France as well, where several beaches have banned the burqini -- the full-body swimwear preferred by some Muslim women. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has said that it is "not a new bathing suit collection, not a fashion trend." Instead, he said: "It stands for a political project, for the creation of a counter-society that is based on the subjugation of women."

The Sparkasse branch in Neuss, by contrast, has opted for a practical solution. The couple in question was invited in for a meeting and told that the issue was not religious freedoms but security for all customers -- which is why the bank's sign did not explicitly indicate that veils were prohibited. "During Carnival we have revelers who want to enter the Sparkasse with clown masks and so forth, and that isn't acceptable either, of course," says Sparkasse spokesperson Stephan Meiser.

It was agreed that the woman would go to the central branch and notify them about her visits ahead of time. A female employee is then made available to accompany the woman into a side-room where her veil is lifted. The two then return to the main area. Since then, there haven't been any problems. "Thank God," says Meiser, "everything is just fine."
New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte is starting to pay a hefty price for her decision to back Donald Trump. The controversial Republican Party nominee for president is a drag for some GOP politicians running in swing states.

In a new spot, Independence USA PAC, which was founded by billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, goes after Ayotte for still supporting Trump. The senator has built her career on the idea that she is an independent voice in Congress.

Democratic candidate Maggie Hassan is currently leading the Republican incumbent in most polls. Hillary Clinton is also beating Trump in the state. Ayotte has been trying for months to make a difference between voting for Trump and endorsing him. She recently told local media:

Theres a presidential race going on. Ive said that Im going to be voting for our nominee but Ive also been quite clear when I have disagreements with him, which I will continue to do.

However, the narrator in the ad does not seem to be convinced by her stance, the voice stated:

Why does Kelly Ayotte still support Donald Trump for President? Independent minded Republicans across America put principle ahead of party and said no to Trump. But not Kelly Ayotte. She says she still supports Trump. If shes so independent, why is she still supporting Trump.

With more ads like this one, Bloomberg might help Democrats win back the Senate, according to experts.
Three employees of Greater Albany Public Schools have been nominated for national LifeChanger of the Year awards sponsored by the National Life Group Foundation.

Laurie Robinson, kitchen manager, and Les Sprinkel, head custodian, both of South Albany High School, and Pam McQueary, special education assistant and behavior specialist at Liberty Elementary School, each received a nomination for the 2016-17* award.

Fifteen LifeChanger awards plus a 16th National Spirit award winner will be announced next spring. Winners will receive cash awards that are split between the individuals and their schools. The national grand prize is $10,000.

The LifeChanger of the Year program recognizes and rewards K-12 public and private school educators and employees across the United States who are making a difference in the lives of students by exemplifying excellence, positive influence and leadership.

Oregon had only four nominees for 2015-16. The other is from The Dalles*. (Information on the awards is available at https://lifechangeroftheyearnominees.com/.)

Robinson was nominated by Kathy Pitzer, general manager of the school districts nutrition program. Sprinkel was nominated by South Albany Principal Brent Belveal and McQueary was nominated by Liberty Principal Rich Sipe.

Robinson spends most of her year at South Albany High School, but in the summer she is lead cook and manager for the Summer Lunch Program, which feeds 12 sites.

In her nomination for Robinson, Pitzer said she goes above and beyond every day to provide the highest quality of meals and to make student and staff dining experiences as enjoyable as possible.

Laurie Robinson knows every student by name and always takes the time to chat with them during breakfast and lunch services, even if its just to say hello, Pitzer said. Ms. Robinson is a joy to work with and a model employee and member of the Albany community.

Robinson is going on her 16th year with Greater Albany Public Schools, all with food service.

And what keeps me coming back is the kids and my staff, they are where my heart is, she told the Democrat-Herald. I enjoy so much working with all the kids, feeding them and talking to them. It's such a warm feeling to me to see a smile and the gratitude that comes from the kids. I enjoy going out in the community and running into present and past kids that have already graduated and see what they have done with their lives and of meeting their children and family and that is what keeps me coming back with a smile.

Robinson said she had no idea she was being nominated and was surprised and grateful.

I also would like to thank my staff for all of their support  could not do it without them, she said. If I were to win, I hope that the funding the school will get will be a helpful resource, and for me, I have not thought what my part of the award is going to be used for.

Sprinkel joined Greater Albany Public Schools in February 2010 and has been South Albanys head custodian since May 2011.

Each year, he oversees every aspect of the schoolwide talent show, including bringing in participants, holding auditions and setting up and running sound and lighting.

He also runs sound and lighting for the school's theater, dance and cheer team productions and coordinates almost all aspects of each year's graduation ceremony, including working security and staying for hours afterward to clean up.

Belveal said Sprinkel is known by the name "Mr. Awesome" and credited him with being the glue that holds South Albany High School together.

Last April, South Albany had an arson fire destroy a huge part of campus that included the cafeteria, food service, Family and Consumer Studies classrooms, the band classroom and the choir classroom, Belveal said.

Mr. Awesome has gone above and beyond by putting many, many volunteer hours into making sure that the students had the best possible situation, in spite of many hurdles. He has patiently worked with modular classrooms, 12 hour a day construction, no storage and classrooms moving. He has managed everything with a smile and a can do attitude, even in the most difficult situations.

Sprinkel said what keeps him coming back is the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of students.

There are many opportunities to do crazy stuff during assemblies, sporting events  even on a daily basis, he told the Democrat-Herald. I'm all about having fun, and making the experience students have here at SA the best that I can.

Sprinkel said he especially loves seeing students shine at the talent show he organizes. I see this from backstage, and am floored by these students. Thats what keeps me coming back year after year. When I see students step outside of their comfort zone, and go for it. Thats what its all about.

The Mr. Awesome nickname came from early in his career, when he was working temporarily at Takena Elementary School. A musician and guitarist, he was playing his guitar and singing Christmas carols with students getting ready for winter break. He paused and asked if they knew his name. One youngster fumbled over Sprinkel, so Sprinkel replied, Why dont you just call me Awesome?

Sprinkel said hes honored and humbled by his nomination and curious to see what happens with it. Should he win, he said, It just might be a great year to take Mrs. Awesome, ninth-grader Ms. Awesome, and little miss Kinder-Awesome to Disney.

McQueary has been with Greater Albany Public Schools for 11 years and is joining the district office team this fall as a behavior specialist.

In 10 years at Liberty Elementary, Sipes nomination said McQueary interacts with students who have a variety of needs ranging from emotionally charged issues to social services.

The result of her positive attitude and work ethic is a committed and dedicated staff member who brightens students' lives on a daily basis, Sipe wrote. Patient, persistent, and resourceful, Ms. McQueary has a gift for reaching all kinds of students. She can successfully de-escalate even the most volatile situation and get students back on track.

"Liberty Elementary has been blessed to have her outstanding services for the past 10 years.

McQueary said regardless of her position, what keeps her coming back are her young charges.

Kids. 100 percent the kids, she said. They change my life every day. They come looking for love every day. They want help. Theyre very accepting. They care, and we care, and I just want to be the best person I can for them.

McQueary said she had no clue about the nomination, and the email about it left her speechless.

I was crying. I literally walked into the office because I got this email, LifeChanger of the Year Award, and Im all, what? she said. I never expected it.

If she wins, McQueary said, shell likely donate some of the funding to the Albany Public Schools Foundation. And maybe a vacation, she added.

 * The year of the award nomination and number of Oregon nominees have been corrected from the print version of this article.
Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, a commanding general of XVIII Airborne Corps, based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, appeared at a ceremony this Sunday where he was given authority of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Lieutenant General Townsend is now in command of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, a role previously given to Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the commander of III Armored Corps based at Fort Hood, Texas. Here is a brief bio of Lt. Gen. Townsend as presented by Fort Bragg:

Lieutenant General Stephen J. Townsend commissioned in the Infantry upon graduation from North Georgia College in 1982. His initial assignment was with the 82d Airborne Division where he served as a Platoon Leader, Executive Officer and assistant S3 in the 2d Battalion (Airborne), 505th Infantry and deployed for Operation Urgent Fury, Grenada. Next, he was assigned to the 7th Infantry Division (Light) at Fort Ord, California where he served as the Battalion S3 of 4th Battalion, 21st Infantry and commanded Alpha Company. LTG Townsend was then reassigned to Fort Benning, Georgia, where he served as the S3 (Air) and assistant S3 at HQs, 75th Ranger Regiment, deployed for Operation Just Cause, Panama, and commanded Charlie Company, 3d Ranger Battalion.

It goes on to say:

After Command and General Staff College he returned to Fort Benning where he served as Senior Liaison Officer at Ranger Regiment HQs and S3 of the 3d Ranger Battalion and deployed for Operation Uphold Democracy, Haiti. He was then assigned to United States Pacific Command, Hawaii as a J-5 Action Officer and later as Special Assistant to the Combatant Commander.

The Iraq-Syria War Commander spoke at the ceremony, which was presided by Army Gen. Joseph L. Votel, U.S. Central Commands commanding general. Looking at the hundreds of American and foreign soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines he forcefully condemned both Russia and Syria for the recent airstrikes around the northeastern city of Hasakeh.

He also confirmed that preparations are under way to retake Mosul, which was seized by ISIS fighters in 2014. The decorated Lieutenant might be the best man for the job, for he commanded 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team and led Task Force Arrowhead on offensive operations across Iraq and Mosul. Mr. Townsend explained:

I dont want to make promises, but I intend to have Mosul and Raqqa done on my watch. With the fall of those two capitals, essentially, you have eliminated the physical vestiges of the caliphate.

He went on to say:

The enemy at that time [will] have to crawl into holes and little villages in the desert and hide, and hell become an insurgency, which is a new and dangerous phase in its own right, and well have to deal with that. But right now, my focus is on destroying the physical caliphate.

Townsend highlighted the long list of progress made in the region:

Over the past year, CJTF-OIR, led by my good friend Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland and his III Armored Corps, and our coalition and regional partners, have done incredible work to degrade and dismantle ISILs oppressive and brutal regime.

Townsend was blunt and stated that despite the progress, their technology, and manpower that the war was a long way from over. He shared:

There are hard days ahead.I dont think this war is anywhere near over. In a war the enemy gets a vote, and the enemy is going to throw some punches and hes going to get lucky here and there. Hes going to throw some punches that we dont see coming. I think it gets tougher the closer we get to defeating [Islamic State].

The likelihood militants will transform themselves into an insurgency such as Afghanistans Taliban has some questioning whether U.S. troops might get involved in another prolonged conflict. A spokesman for Inherent Resolve, Army Col. Christopher Garver, added:

Im not saying its going to be an enduring presence, but there continues to be a role for the coalition.

According to experts, the coalitions decision to try to stop Syrian and Russian warplanes will lead to a costly confrontation.
The King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, called on the diaspora to reject Islamist extremism in a speech given on Saturday.

Mohammed VI of Morocco spoke not only to the people of his country, but he also addressed the millions of Moroccans living abroad.

The leader felt compelled to address terrorism and ISIS grip on so many young Muslims after the countless and senseless attacks in France, America, England, and Germany in the past months.

While Syrian refugees perpetrated the attacks in Germany, the horrific mass murders in France and Belgium were committed by European citizens of Moroccan origin, who were indoctrinated by ISIS.

Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Chakib Akrouh, who killed many in Paris last fall, were of Moroccan heritage. The Brussels bombers  Khalid and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui  were also of Moroccan origin.

In his remarks, the king condemned the murder of innocent people and spoke at length about Father Jacques Hamel. The 84-year-old priest had his throat slit by an ISIS militant during mass in Rouen. The king of Morocco said:

Moroccans abroad to present a united front against extremism and to defend peace, harmony, and unity in their respective countries of residence. We strongly condemn the murder of innocents, the murder of a priest at the altar of his own church in France unforgivable.

His Majesty Mohammed VI added:

Terrorists who kill in the name of Islam, are condemned to eternal hell. They are exploiting some young Muslims, particularly in Europe, exploiting their ignorance of Arabic and true Islam to relay their messages and false promises.

Mohammed VI, who is personally very popular, has carried out many reforms to make the monarchy more modern, although he retained broad powers for himself.

Experts say Morocco was able to avoid most of the problems other countries in the Middle East and North Africa have faced in the last few years.
Boumerdes (Algeria), August 22 2016 (SPS) - First Minister, Abdelkader Taleb Amar, oversaw Monday the closing of the seventh edition of the Summer University of SADR and Polisario Front executives , the University of Shaheed Mohamed Abdel Aziz, held under the theme of "loyalty to the commitment of martyrs" in Algerian province of Boumerdes on August 9-22.

In his speech, the Prime Minister offered sincere thanks and gratitude to the Algerian National Committee of Solidarity with the Saharawi people and through them to all the Algerian people in particular His Excellency President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, as well as and its authority of Boumerdes province for providing the appropriate conditions for the success of this edition of the Summer University.

The closing ceremony saw the presentation of a photographed reportage on the life of late President Martyr Mohamed Abdelaziz and achievements during his career of struggle in the framework of liberation and independence.

The Summer University honored Martyr Mohamed Abdelaziz, President of the Republic Brahim Ghali, Sahrawi People's Liberation Army fighters, the delegation from the occupied territories, in addition to a number of officials and institutions that contributed to the success of the Summer University. (SPS)

062/090/TRA
This follows the recent statement from the UK Chancellor, Philip Hammond MP, on the commitment to Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Pillar 1 spending (direct support) for agriculture until the end of the Multiannual Financial Framework in 2020.

In the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote, Scottish Government indicated it would be open to the idea of protecting spending on Scottish CAP support so long as the funds were committed by Treasury. With this intention now being signalled by the Chancellor, NFU Scotland is looking to Scottish Government to follow suit in order to provide a confident platform for Scottish farmers and crofters that is in line with their counterparts elsewhere in the UK.

The Union is seeking reassurances over future Scottish arrangements for direct support (Pillar 1)  Basic Payment Scheme, Greening, and headage schemes for beef calves and hill sheep - and through the Scotland Rural Development Programme (Pillar 2) which delivers Less Favoured Areas Support and agri-environment measures.

The Union sought similar reassurances when it met with Scottish Secretary of State David Mundell on farm in East Lothian.

Writing to Mr MacKay, NFU Scotland President Allan Bowie said:

The Treasury statement has gone some way in providing assurances to farmers and crofters in Scotland that they will be financially supported throughout the period of negotiation as the UK exits the EU.

Clarity, confidence and stability will be key for our farming and crofting members as they face the uncertain prospect of life outside of the EU. The welcome reassurance from Treasury that essential direct support will remain to 2020 will allow our members to continue to produce and invest in their businesses  at least in the short to medium term.
Officially launched in the UK at Cereals in 2015, the 6-metre ESPRO 6000 R received the 2015 Machine of the Year award at the SIMA 2015 exhibition. A new 4-metre foldable version  the ESPRO 4000 R  has now been launched and is available in the UK and throughout Europe.

In common with its larger sibling, the 4000 R uses two rows of cultivating discs followed by a single row of large diameter (900mm) wheels which are offset and fitted with specially designed deep tread tyres which create an ideal seed bed. The 4000 R also uses Kuhns Crossflex coulter bar: each coulter is mounted on polyurethane blocks which allow the individual coulters to follow terrain contours. This ensures a consistent seeding depth across the machines full working width and, in turn, results in homogenous seedling emergence.

The ESPRO 4000 R requires very little power to be operated and can be used with tractors with as little as 140hp. Despite its low power requirement, the new machine boasts high drilling speeds and is compatible with a wide variety of seed types and sizes.
NEWTOWN  Newtown Savings Bank is taking steps to become a holding company, the mutual bank confirmed on Monday, a proactive move that would allow the bank to access capital in ways currently unavailable.

This gives us certain avenues if we have to raise capital for whatever reason, John Trentacosta, president and CEO of Newtown Savings Bank, said. I figured this would be good to do in the event we need it.

The bank posted a Notice of Filing of Bank Merger Application in newspapers on Monday according to federal regulations.

Trentacosta said the daily operations of the bank will remain the same.

There are no changes to jobs, positions, services, branches. Everything stays the same, he said. Its business as usual, but this is something we wanted to do in case some day we needed it.

Trentacosta said it takes about nine months for full federal approval. Late next month, notices will be sent to depositors asking for their approval. He said it is theoretically a merger in that the bank becomes a stock bank with the shares merged into the holding company.

At the end of the day we are still a mutual bank and intend on staying a mutual bank, which is why we are doing this now, Trentacosta said.

Mutual savings banks are owned by its members.

He said possible reasons the bank may need access to capital in the future include growth opportunities, portfolio acquisitions and being able to weather a drastic economic downtown.

If we have an opportunity for growth, we want to be able to take advantage of that, he said.

He said the bank does not have a current pressing need for capital.

According to the Connecticut Department of Banking, there are more than 50 bank or financial holding companies in the state, including banks such as Fairfield County Bank based in Ridgefield, Bankwell based in New Canaan, First Bank based in Greenwich, and Patriot National Bank based in Stamford.

cbosak@hearstmediact.com; (203) 731-3338
Gary Vider is making a name for himself on the national comedy scene with his subtle style of humor. Audiences cant help but laugh when he jokes about everyday things  like his need to earn more money.

Hows everybody doing, financially? he says, in his measured, thoughtful, self-deprecating way. I make $11,000 a year. Which is not a good amount ... if youre familiar with money. Heres how I know its not. The government doesnt make me pay taxes. Basically, theyre like, Gary, you keep it. You need it more than we do. And theyre right.

Vider goes on to say hes reached the age where he cant ask his parents for money. Because they told me not to ask them anymore.

Audience members will learn more when Vider performs at the Fairfield Theatre Co. I discuss a lot of stuff about me, cause Im in the show, he said.

His delivery is reminiscent of Steven Wrights deadpan humor. Though he hasnt met Wright yet, hes been in the company of many other renowned comics, such as Conan OBrien and Howie Mandel. He made his television stand-up debut on Conans show in 2014, and was a 2015 finalist on Americas Got Talent.

Mandel, a judge on Americas Got Talent, told Vider he was funny and intelligent, like the new Woody Allen. Judge Howard Stern concurred, saying Vider was terrific and that he could picture him on the big screen.

More Information Fairfield Theatre Co., StageOne, 70 Sanford St. Friday, Aug. 26, 8 p.m. $30. 203-319-1404, FairfieldTheatre.org See More Collapse

Vider pictures big things for his future, too. And hes doing what it takes to get there, like honing his skills through stand-up shows. The performance in Fairfield features Vider as the headliner, plus comic Dan Shaki (Gotham Comedy Live!), with emcee Christian Duran (Carolines on Broadway).

When asked what the audience can expect, Vider said, I hope that they have a good time and that Im not gonna ruin their Friday night. Hopefully, theyve watched some of my clips online. I hope they stay the whole entire show.

So what if Vider didnt win Americas Got Talent. Hes still one of only four comics to have made the final round on the NBC hit show. Hes also a veteran of the New York City comedy scene, where he beat out 63 comedians to place first in the 2014 Carolines on Broadway March Madness competition.

Looking back on his early years, Vider, who grew up in Dix Hills, N.Y., said, I wasnt necessarily the best student, but I always could make people laugh.

lkoonz@newstimes.com; Twitter: @LindaTKoonz
No one thought this would be easy, the state's attempt to reform its public records laws.

In fact, as a task force convened by Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum tackled its work, it became apparent just how difficult the work would be. Participants in the group, which included journalists, government officials, members of the public and others, worked to try to unravel the more than 400 exemptions to the records law  in other words, documents that used to be open to the public but now are not.

Members of the task force also grappled with the question of how long government agencies should have to respond to requests for records from journalists and members of the public. They struggled with the critical issue of cost: How much should agencies be allowed to charge members of the public who are seeking records? It's not at all uncommon for a government agency to drag its feet on responding to a records request or to charge an exorbitant fee for those records; both strategies can, in the long run, make it virtually impossible to access important records.

So it's not really a surprise that the first batch of recommendations from Rosenblum's office doesn't solve all those issues  and it's fair to say that the recommendations were greeted with disappointment in some circles.

But the best way to think about these recommendations is as first steps in a much longer journey, not at all the final destination. And, after all, it took decades to weaken Oregon's public records law  we're not going to be able to turn that around overnight.

And just because the bulk of the work has yet to be done doesn't mean there isn't at least some value in this first set of recommendations.

For starters, the recommendations specify that public bodies acknowledge a request for records within five business days and fulfill them within 10. (Schools that are not in session would be exempted from this particular requirement.) And the recommendations include an acknowledgment that the default mode for government should be to make records available to members of the public.

That "default mode" was the basis on which Oregon overhauled its public records law back in 1973. At the time, Oregon's law was among the strongest in the nation. But each time legislators have gathered in the years since, they have placed different sets of government records off-limits to the public. It's fair to say that Oregon's public record law is a shadow of what it was a half-century ago.

Rosenblum's task force still hopes to catalog those exemptions (the idea being, one hopes, to eliminate as many of them as possible), but that work won't be ready in time for the 2017 Legislature.

The cost issue may be even trickier to resolve. We understand why cash-strapped governments may want to recover the legitimate costs of fulfilling records requests. But too often government officials have quoted outrageous fees as a means of squelching legitimate requests.

Rosenblum says she wants to keep the task force at work to deal with some of these big issues, and that's a good development.

But really reinvigorating the state's public records law will require a sustained commitment from the top. Gov. Kate Brown has talked a good game so far about her desire to increase the transparency of state government, but she needs to back up the talk with consistent leadership. During the election campaign, voters should make a point of asking Brown (and her Republican opponent, Bud Pierce) how best to return sunshine to state government. (mm)
The Soviet Union officially fell on Dec. 25, 1991, but before its collapse, the country was highly focused on science and technology discoveries.

Now, nearly 25 years later, some of the Soviet Union's sites that were of great importance to technological progress have become abandoned, places frozen in time that have lost their significance.
Just days after issuing a rare apology for "using the wrong" words, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump is back on Twitter, and this time he's turned his focus on MSNBC morning co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.

"Tried watching low-rated @Morning_Joe this morning, unwatchable! @morningmika is off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!" Trump tweeted while the show was on air.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

You can still follow the Yellow Brick Road to a spooky, forgotten amusement park called the Land of Oz in the mountains of North Carolina.

Photographer Seph Lawless, who specializes in landmarks in disrepair, shot the now defunct park on Beech Mountain for his new book "Bizarro: The World's Most Hauntingly Beautiful Abandoned Amusement Parks."

"Being there was almost like entering another planet," Lawless says. "It was surreal and completely beautiful."

The Land of Oz was built in 1970 as a theme park based on the classic movie "The Wizard of Oz." Actress Debbie Reynolds, who shared ownership of Dorothy's dress with the park, and her soon-to-be-famous daughter, Carrie Fisher, attended the ribbon cutting, according to Watauga Lake Magazine.

Besides laying a bright yellow brick road, the park re-enacted scenes and props from the film, including Dorothy's tornado house and Munchkin dwellings.

One can only imagine how many '70s stoners fired up a bowl before accosting the trees in the Enchanted Forest or mellowing out in the Poppy Field.

Tourists could ride on the Great Oz's "hot-air balloon"  a ski lift at the adjacent Beech Mountain ski resort. The park's Emerald City burned down in 1975, the fire destroying some artifacts and costumes, including the dress Judy Garland wore in the movie.

In its first year, the park was one of the top attractions in the Southeast (some 20,000 turned up on the opening day), but by the late 1970s, its appeal had waned. It closed in 1980.

Today, the park opens for one weekend of the year, the legacy of an annual reunion started by former employees in the late '90s. The owner of the land has restored the grounds and turned Dorothy's house into a museum.

You can't miss it. It's the one with the Wicked Witch of the East's leg sticking out.

For more Seph Lawless landscapes, see his work on Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr.
E mbattled outsourcer Serco, still reeling from its infamous tagging scandal and a string of profit warnings, will need to focus on hunting elephants if it is to keep its turnaround on track.

The assessment from UBS is not advice for the FTSE 250 firm to change its business model, but rather a warning that it must win one of the four big contracts its management have in their sights over the next 12 months.

Those are three major light rail and tram operations in the Middle East, which make up around 30% of the value of Sercos bid pipeline, and a contract to operate the Defence Fire & Risk Management Organisation, the Ministry of Defences fire rescue service.

Even then, UBSs Rory McKenzie has doubts it will be enough to prevent revenues from tumbling.

The total bid pipeline is far outweighed by the rebid risks on existing revenues, so even assuming a 85% retention and rising win rate (from 10% today to around 30% in time) we see revenues fail to rise above current levels until 2019, he said in a note.

The shares, which have recovered 35% this year, rose 2p today to 131.5p as McKenzie lifted his target price slightly to 131p, arguing that Serco is on a path to improvement, but we think the pace of the recovery will not be as fast as bulls would hope.

It came as JPMorgan reduced its holding to below 3%. The big daily swings from blue-chip stocks feel like a distant memory to traders, still either on holiday or taking the chance to take their foot off the pedal while others are.

The FTSE 100 advanced a woeful 4.08 points to 6863.03, though there was some action among miners, whose shares reversed in line with commodity prices.

These include gold and silver, taking the shine off Fresnillo, down 125p at 1814p, and Randgold, off 420p at 7930p.

EasyJet moved 8p higher to 1113p even as Credit Suisse dismissed speculation of a potential bid from AerCap, the worlds largest aircraft-leasing company.

AIM traders latched onto Myanmar-focused social-media tiddler MySquar, which rose 0.27p to 3.65p.

The company said its MyFish game has attracted 500,000 users in just three weeks and expects to have five million for all its applications by the end of the year.

MySquars house broker Beaufort said having four million unique users is the point at which potential buyers start to sit up and take notice.
W est End retailers have cheered high-rolling tourists who splashed cash in their stores last month  but warned of storm clouds on the horizon.

Sales hit 400 million in the capitals shopping heartland in July, 4.9% higher than last year, the New West End Company (NWEC) has reported. Bond Street was the standout performer with a surge of 11.5%.

However, retailers warned that headwinds, including increasingly onerous business rates and fears over UK consumer confidence, had ruffled their prospects.

The post-Brexit bounce was put down to opportunistic tourists cashing in on the pounds slump in value since Junes European Union referendum.

Spending by Chinese tourists was up 21% year-on-year, with the average spend at 1410 per visitor.

Across London, international tax-free spending  purchases by foreign visitors eligible for a refund of VAT  rose by 8% in July, according to tax-free shopping network Global Blue.

The West End had a remarkable July. Tourists looking to cash in on the weak pound have helped to alleviate, albeit on a temporary basis, some of the shock waves that hit the economy following the Brexit vote, NWEC chief executive Jace Tyrrell said.

Big spenders Top average spending nations in London: Qatar: 2014 +17% China: 1291 +9% UAE: 1165 -11% Greatest numbers of international shoppers: China: 32% Middle East: 12% US: 7% Source: Global Blue

But Tyrrell warned the good run may soon run out of steam, especially with the looming business rates revaluation. From 2017, rates will be based on rents as of April 1 last year.

Fears are mounting that central London firms will therefore pay the price for the imbalance in Britains economic recovery towards the South-East as rental bills soar.

This will undoubtedly have a knock-on effect to jobs and investment, Tyrell said.

Harrods chief Michael Ward said trade had been strong but added: I believe that this prehistoric tax puts an undue burden on bricks-and-mortar businesses.

Gavin Haig, boss of luxury fashion retailer Belstaff, said the change will seriously impact our ability to invest in Londons High Streets.

Meanwhile Brian Bickell, the chief executive of Shaftesbury which owns swathes of Chinatown and Carnaby Street, said: Businesses across London are concerned at the prospect of bearing much increased rates as a result of the revaluation.

Coupled with Brexit uncertainties, we hope the Government recognises the potential negative impact on the economy and acts to ensure increases are not excessive and are phased in over a period to limit damage to business confidence.

The British Retail Consortium has called on the Government to implement more frequent revaluations every three years from 2020 to make the system fairer and more reflective of economic conditions.
TalkSport owner Wireless Group has predicted a strong future as it prepares to be swallowed up by News Corp in a 220 million takeover.

Despite a first-half profits fall and worries the Brexit vote could harm ad revenues, chairman Richard Huntingford said the long-term outlook was strong.

TalkSport is a highly attractive medium for advertisers seeking male audiences, he said, adding that the three new digital stations launched in the first half, including the return of Virgin Radio  whose breakfast show is hosted by Edith Bowman, were all on target.

Euro 2016 helped boost talkSports audience to its second-highest level of 3.3 million listeners a week, and it has upped Premier League coverage.

Wireless, the former UTV, sold its commercial television business to ITV in February, leaving the remaining radio business ripe for News Corps takeover.

News UK believes there can be good crossover between The Sun and talkSport.

Wireless first-half pre-tax profits dropped to 4.5 million from 5 million.
P AY campaigners have welcomed a ground-breaking move by one of the Citys best-known names to scrap bonuses and replace them with fixed salaries, in a policy shift which could trigger an overhaul of executive pay.

Neil Woodford, who is one of the UKs most influential investors, will no longer pay discretionary bonuses at his Oxford-based funds group. Instead, all 35 staff will get a normal base salary only, plus traditional benefits like a pension.

Its definitely brave because it challenges the orthodoxy and conventional wisdom, High Pay Centre executive Stefan Stern said. Bigger firms may not be so brave. If it works for Woodford, others may follow.

Reaction in the City was broadly positive. At least one small rival fund manager, who did not want to speak publicly, said Woodfords policy would encourage other boutique fund firms to scrap discretionary bonuses.

And Rob Burdett, a partner at Fit Remuneration Consultants who advises on pay structures, added: All organisations are now encouraged to pay their staff in the manner that best fits the organisation rather than default to the traditional approach of salary plus annual bonus plus long incentive.

No doubt Neil [pictured] believes that scrapping bonuses is right for his firm. However, that will increase his fixed costs and make it harder for these costs to be reduced in leaner times.

Also, will his high performers feel appropriately rewarded compared to their less-well-performing colleagues?

Pay for fund managers, who are often tasked with holding listed companies feet to the fire over remuneration, has been under scrutiny since M&G paid one fund manager 15 million this year. It has since rejigged remuneration policies to prevent huge pay.
Y oung people across London will be celebrating this week as their GCSE results are revealed. They deserve our congratulations, as do the thousands of teachers and school support staff who have devoted untold hours of care and devotion to raise standards throughout the capital.

No matter the trends we see this year, though, one trend that will sadly continue is the gap between those from low-income backgrounds and their wealthier peers.

Almost a quarter of British children on free school meals live in London and last year only 45 per cent of them achieved five grade A*-Cs including English and Maths  compared with 65 per cent of their better-off peers in the capital.

We need to redouble our efforts to reduce this gap. It is a matter of social injustice that we continue to allow this to happen  too many young people from low-income backgrounds are not receiving the education they need to make the most of their talents and set them up for the futures they are capable of.

Not only is this unfair for them, it is unfair for the country to lose out on the talent it needs to fill the dynamic jobs of the future.

As the new Secretary of State for Education, Justine Greening, charts the direction of the Governments agenda, I ask her to ensure that every child  no matter what their background  leaves school with a broad academic curriculum. One that covers all the essentials a young person needs to succeed, with subjects such as maths and English at its heart.

Already on the horizon is the debate over the re-introduction of grammar schools. While these will accommodate the few, we must reach the many.

We no longer live in a society where only a small percentage of children need a high-quality education

We no longer live in a society where only a small percentage of children need a high-quality academic education.

Instead, we need to embrace the growth mind-set of many of the most successful education systems in the world that ensure no young person is held back by preconceived notions of what they are capable of, wherever they start out at age four or 11.

This can only be done through a curriculum, ethos and ambition that seeks to provide an education that the best grammar schools would be proud of for every child.

This would allow them to have a fair choice. A choice of whether to go to university, on to an apprenticeship or straight into a job.

For a growing number the choice is becoming an apprentice. But new analysis from Teach First and PA Consulting Group this week shows that young people from low-income backgrounds are less likely to be able to take up the best apprenticeships.

We therefore also need to remove some of the barriers they face. We need a one-stop shop for apprentices, like we have UCAS for universities, and we need to ensure the low, 3.30-an-hour minimum wage isnt putting off young people from low-income backgrounds from taking up this route.

So congratulations to those young people who open their envelopes on Thursday.

But for those thousands of youngsters yet to take their exams lets ensure they have the fairest possible choice ahead of them  determined solely by their hard work, skills and determination rather than their family background.
B ritain, or rather England, is in no position to give London the sack. But when it voted to quit the European Union it was suggesting that, given half a chance, it might try. Like most capital cities London is seen as spoiled and cosseted, looked upon both jealously and dismissively by those who live elsewhere.

The referendum result was a punishment for the capital. It was a reminder that the boom the city has enjoyed for much of the past two decades cannot be taken for granted.

But, give or take a bit less mayoral triumphalism, that is no reason for London to stop being London.

It is more than a capital city. It is also a kind of city state, which is both a strength and a vulnerability. City states are different from capitals, which benefit from the symbolism of national prestige and have first call on taxes.

A city state is more like an infant prodigy, equipped either with an enormous brain, in the manner of Singapore, or else a vast fortune in natural resources. But both are vulnerable when the neighbourhood bully turns nasty. Hong Kong is a case in point. So was Kuwait. Qatar might still be.

And though the circumstances are different, for London to continue to be successful it needs to bear this in mind as it operates as both a national capital and a world city.

To call yourself a Londoner is different from describing yourself as English or British. Its a more welcoming version of identity

London has existed for far longer than anything that could remotely be described as England. To call yourself a Londoner, or for that matter a New Yorker or a Muscovite  two other cities with equally complex relationships to their respective national hosts  is different from describing yourself as English, British, American or Russian.

Its a more welcoming version of identity. To call yourself a Londoner or a New Yorker is not to suggest that anybody who doesnt is a foreigner. But the very concept of national identity is based on creating a sense of difference between those who belong and those who dont.

Londoners shared identity depends on a complex set of mutual understandings, some deep-seated and fundamental, others apparently superficial. At its heart is a continually evolving language.

Londoners recognise each other by the way they use words. Cockney has absorbed the way newcomers speak. There have been Jewish or Yiddish words in the mix for more than a century and Caribbean rhythms are making themselves felt in estuary English.

And there are the social antennae that come with residency that allow Londoners to navigate a street with Orthodox Jews at one end, Rastafarians at the other, and Brazilians in the middle, without skipping a beat.

In similar fashion they can navigate a crowd in which many have abdicated their responsibilities as pedestrians by concentrating on a small screen, rather than interpreting the nuances of human interaction to avoid collisions.

To be a Londoner is to have noticed, perhaps only subliminally, that street signs in Westminster look different from those in Acton

To be a Londoner is to have a mental map of a city cut in two by a river, with an east and a west with radically different characters. To be a Londoner is to have noticed, perhaps only subliminally, that street signs in Westminster look different from those in Acton. Londoners know that the difference between NW10 and SW10 is about more than the legacy of a 19th-century post office sorting system.

Cities never stay static. Like so many other mature western capitals London spent most of the 20th century steadily losing people.

From a peak of 8.1 million in 1938 the population fell to 6.8 million in 1991. Then, in the next decade, something startling happened. It increased by more than a million, and by 2011 was back to its pre-war peak.

The turnaround can be traced to the end of a government policy that encouraged people to leave for the new towns in the 1970s, Margaret Thatchers Big Bang banking shake-up, and the re- establishment of city government for London.

The unexpected outcome of this was a policy drafted in the Ken Livingstone mayoral era and faithfully followed by Boris Johnson: London was going to become the dominant financial capital of the world, with all the economic benefits that would bring. The impact of half a century of decline could be reversed, and the city could be encouraged to grow eastward by investing in Crossrail and the post- Olympic legacy of Stratford.

This was a strategy that seemed to depend as much on ostentatious visual gestures as on science. If London was going to be the financial centre of the world, it had to look the part. That meant it was going to end up more like Shanghai than any other city in Europe.

Success came at a price. The growth of property as an asset class has threatened to stifle whole areas with affluence even as some outer suburbs rotted.

Few people in London knew that in electing Livingstone and Johnson they had voted for a skyscraper city. Nobody voted for housing priced grotesquely beyond the means of most of its citizens.

The crucial policies that a city needs are not generally susceptible to a simple yes or no alternative on a ballot paper, and politicians choose the ground they fight on carefully. Sadiq Khans promises about transport fares are likely to be easier to meet than solving the affordable-housing crisis.

London has done astonishingly well in the past 25 years, becoming more prosperous, more populous, and more creative. It has built a modern transport system.

Its universities attract gifted students from around the world. It is home to the most ambitious financiers and tech start-ups, and it has built new museums that lead the world. A successful city needs all this and more.

The cities that succeed are the ones that are rooted in a culture that is creative enough not just to build museums but convincingly to fill them as well.
T hose who like their painting with a bit of politics should head down to Lazarides art gallery in Fitzrovia to catch an exhibition all about oil spills.

The notorious French artist Zevs, also known as Aguirre Schwarz, has a solo exhibition entitled The Big Oil Splash that uses paintings and sculptures to explore a modern crisis with oil.

The artists work involves sabotaging brand logos and distorting recognisable images, in a technique called liquidation. The exhibition at Lazarides uses a number of his motifs, including references to pop art and film noir, as well as references to other artists, including William Egglestons photographs of Americana.

The artist follows a narrative of how the oil industrys reach has become immeasurable, impacting on everything from foreign policy to tourism and leisure.

Zevs has been a pioneer of street art in France since the 1990s, and was arrested in 2009 related to an act of vandalism in which he covered a Giorgio Armani storefront with an edited Chanel logo.

The Big Oil Splash is at Lazarides until September 1.

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout
T op chefs are calling on the Mayor of London to ban polystyrene packaging, amid claims the full extent of its use in the food industry is being hidden.

Ed Baines, Theo Randall, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Mark Hix are among those calling for the capital to outlaw the environmentally harmful packing, which cannot be recycled and ends up in landfill sites.

Baines, owner of Randall & Aubin in Soho, said while progress had been made in shops, behind the scenes its usage remained widespread.

He told the Standard: Its less prevalent in the retail sector because companies want to be perceived as having credentials. Therefore the public see it. But behind the scenes, what the public dont see are the trucks delivering products  an awful lot of which are still in polystyrene. Its a bit like the wools being pulled over peoples eyes  its still there, its just being done on a much bigger scale.

San Francisco passed laws against polystyrene this year and Baines believes Sadiq Khan should follow suit. The chef said: An awful lot of stuff is sent to me in these enormous polystyrene boxes which they put fish in. Its ironic that the stuff they pack fish in is something that floats around the ocean poisoning fish.

Commercially it is a real pain. It is a nightmare to get rid of. Its an enormous product that uses vast quantities of bin bags. We get through about 10 of these boxes a day, and thats one restaurant. Around the restaurants in Soho its absolutely everywhere.

The chefs say reinforced cardboard is a viable alternative for food packing and that legislation would speed up progress. Randall, whose restaurant is at the InterContinental London Park Lane Hotel, said: The easy option is to keep using it and ignore the bad side. A ban would make sure we had to find alternatives, wed be forced to use biodegradables which are far better for the environment. Everyones made so much effort with packaging and using biodegradables, so why are we still using it?

The chefs want a ban to come into force in one to two years, to give firmss which make the polystyrene boxes time to evolve into doing something more sustainable.

A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: Sadiq does not have the power to enforce a ban on polystyrene packaging in London but he is extremely supportive of initiatives to help boost recycling and make London cleaner.

He will be asking his new deputy mayor for environment to deliver a number of ambitious proposals that encourage better waste management and tackle pollution across the city.

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout
The look: This neighbourhood joint could easily be mistaken for a concept store in Copenhagen or Amsterdam. The huge space is a chic study in Scandi-style contemporary simplicity. Think whitewashed floorboards and walls, accessorised with giant cactus in concrete plants, velvet chairs in on-trend dusky pinks and rose reds, marble table tops, pendant lighting and copper and brass details. In other words: an interior-lover's dream. You'll find yourself taking sneaky snaps on your phone to add to your 'dream home' moodboard.

There's also a courtyard at the back, which in all its white beauty could be an alfresco spot in Ibiza or Greece. Lucky Chiswick.

Whos behind it: Indy bar group Darwin & Wallace, who are also behind No. 11 Pimlico Road and No 32 The Old Town in Clapham. The design studios Box 9 and Red Deer have collaborated on all of the D&W projects, and between them have worked on Soho House Berlin and Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings.

Mariell Lind Hansen

What should I try? No 197 Chiswick Fire Station styles itself as a bar that does great food. So if you just come for cocktails, you should grab one of the midnight blue bar stools dotted around the huge central bar and make your way down the lengthy list  youll find classics like bellinis, espresso martinis and cobblers as well as their own creations: think watermelon sours and gingerbread manhattans.

The ourdoor area / Mariell Lind Hansen

If youre coming to eat, this is no ordinary bar snack menu  it acts like a proper restaurant. Order a few crostini to share if you dont want a massive starter each  the spiced crab and crushed avo were particularly tasty.

Sea bass and chips at 197 Chiswick Fire Station / Mariell Lind Hansen

After expecting to feel serious food envy for my dates steak, the grilled sea bass & chips came out on top, not least for the delicious accompanying pea hummus and watercress and creme fraiche tartar  a great and healthier take on fish and chips. If you have room for pudding, the Bitter Chocolate tart is enormous and easily feeds two, maybe even three.

Mariell Lind Hansen

Go there if: You live in west London and you're partial to highly Instagrammable surroundings. It's just as suitable for a long lazy lunch with the girls as a romantic nightcap.

Even the bathrooms at No 197 Chiswick Fire Station are photogenic / Mariell Lind Hansen

Cheque out: around 100 for two for 3 courses and a bottle of wine

Bellini cocktails are on the menu / Mariell Lind Hansen

How do I book? 0203 857 4669 or no197chiswickfirestation.com

Nearest tube: Turnham Green is a five minute walk away

Follow Kate on Twitter @kate_lough and Instagram @kateloughtravel
T here was nothing between me and the deep blue sky. A blue to make Farrow & Ball weep into their paint pots and surrender to the superiority of nature. Mountains reared all around: the dramatic immediacy of the Italian Dolomites, the frosted Austrian Alps in the distance. Meadows beamed with wildflowers and a metal cross marking the 2,157m summit of the Pralongia Plateau raised its arms to the heavens. I felt like doing the same.

I was sweaty but elated. And, at this pre-breakfast hour, alone except for my equally sweaty partner and Filippo, the man-of-the-mountains whod led us up here  at a decent jog. This was our first foray into skyrunning, and I felt on top of the world. This sport created by Italian mountaineer Marino Giacometti in the Nineties is defined as running above an elevation of 2,000m, where the incline exceeds 30 per cent. Or, as Filippo put it: Its starting from the village, going up to the top of the peak, then back down  a little bit scrambling, a little bit climbing.

Wed started from the Rosa Alpina Hotel in the village of San Cassiano, tucked into the Italian South Tyrols Alta Badia valley. The hotel launched a three-night skyrunning package this summer, comprising two two-hour guided runs, tailored to your ability, as well as massages and more food than you could hope to run off over a long weekend.

On arrival wed read the hotel newsletter, which offered a little mantra: Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. As we broke into a trot, heading away from the church, across the river and towards the hills, I guessed I was about to find out if that was true.

Tanned and unassuming, Filippo, it turned out, holds the record for the fastest ascent of 3,343m Marmolada, highpoint of the Dolomites. Fortunately he was taking it easy with us on day one  wed discussed our fitness levels and aspirations with him the night before, so hed planned accordingly. We were starting on a trail that was wide and gravelly  not too technical, no agile mountain-goating required. But it was relentlessly up: through pine forest, by wooden hay-shacks, alongside fields of forget-me-nots and globe flowers.

Skyrunning is freedom, Filippo explained as we huffed and panted. You wear shorts, T-shirt, tie a jacket around your waist  thats it. Any tips? Take small, light steps; if you need to walk, press your hands on your thighs for extra power.

The Dolomites Valparola Pass (Krys Bailey/Alamy ) / Krys Bailey/Alamy

I was pleased that walking was allowed, and that the scenery justified plenty of photo (recovery) stops. Every stride revealed more mountains, the views taking away any breath I had left. Eventually, after 600m of vertical ascent, we reached Pralongias summit. From here, Filippo pointed out beefy Marmolada, the Sella Massif, tower-like Sassongher and his favourite training hill, scored by First World War trenches  a reminder that this high-altitude playground was once a frontline.

After tracing a grassy ridge it was downhill all the way back to San Cassiano  easier on the lungs, tougher on the knees. I was envious of Filippos running poles, light as pencils, which helped take his strain. I would feel this tomorrow...

Run done, we set about recuperating. We had Alpine herb massages with arnica and pine, designed to relieve muscle tension. We used the valleys extensive cable-car network to access limb-stretching strolls amid the flower-bright mountains. We even tried yoga at the base of a waterfall  good for the soul, though our stiff salutations seemed to incite not sun but thunder, which rolled ominously around the peaks.

Less ideal preparation for the next days run was dinner at Rosa Alpinas two-Michelin-starred St Hubertus restaurant. While pre-exercise fuelling is important, Mo Farah probably wouldnt opt for a five-course-plus-extras banquet including petal salad, beetroot gnocchi with beer soil and beef cooked in hay. Or a wine list so hefty it required its own table. Did it set us up for a run? No. Did we care, as we savoured silky porcini-sabayon tortellini? Not a jot.

Michelin-starred fare at Rosa Alpina

So, fuzzy-headed and heavy-limbed, we set off again with Filippo the next morning. This time we drove further up the valley  todays skyrun would involve less ascent but a more technical, uneven trail.

Today were fog-running, said Filippo as we set off from the Valparola Pass into a low murk. However, the fog lifted in a flash, revealing an Alpine bowl of splendour. Soon we were bouncing over boggy grass, hurdling tree roots, skipping along skinny tracks and balancing on boulders, skirting around the seven-peaked Setsas massif.

It was, in fact, less exhausting than the previous days climb. This is more head than heart, confirmed Filippo as we descended a slippy crevice via an iron cable. All but the most skilled skyrunners will walk when necessary, carefully picking the safest route. Do you often fall? I asked. Sometimes, Filippo answered. But you must fall like a child  get straight back up.

A post-run rest

The slower pace allowed more opportunity for admiring the mountains, which  at this early hour  we shared with only chamois and marmots. As we neared our runs end, dashing down a buttercup-bright meadow, it was all I could do not to burst into song: the hills were alive and I was too.

It would be tough to top such a morning but that evening came close. The Rosa Alpina owns a private mountain-side hut. It has no electricity or running water but it has a huge wood-burner and a barbecue, on which Carlos, a sous-chef from St Hubertus, cooked a huge meat feast (well, protein is essential for run-recovery...). Carlos then left us alone with a white Friuli and hunks of strudel to watch the sinking sun paint the peaks red-pink  the enrosadira. Another colour unique to Mother Nature.

Details: Italy

Rosa Alpina Hotel & Spas three-night skyrunning package, from 1,855pp, includes half-board and one night in a cabin (00 39 0471 849500; rosalpina.it). Powder Byrne (020 8246 5300; powderbyrne.com) arranges breaks at Rosa Alpina from 1,695pp B&B for five nights; flights extra.

altabadia.org
A British schoolboy has been killed after a grenade was thrown through the window of a flat in Sweden.

Yuusuf Warsame, 8, who was born and raised in Birmingham to Dutch parents, was visiting relatives in Gothenburg with his mother, brother and sister when the incident happened.

Yuusuf's father Abdiwahid Warsame told the Birmingham Mail his son had died in the attack, which happened in the early hours of this morning.

The boy was injured at about 3am, and was rushed to hospital, where he later died from his injuries.

Police spokesperson Thomas Fuxborg told The Local that the incident was being treated as murder.

It could have ended much worse, he said.

Someone was standing outside the apartment and threw a hand grenade through the window, into the living room. The boy was not part of the family registered at the address.

"This is abhorrent. From the outside it is impossible to know who is in the apartment. That it affects an eight-year-old completely innocent boy is despicable.

Police have described the incident, in which an explosive was thrown through the window of a third-floor flat in the Biskopsgarden suburb of the city, as a possible revenge attack.

Mr Fuxborg said one of the men who was registered as living at the apartment Yuusuf was visiting had been involved in a fatal shooting at the address last year.
O ne of the founding DJs of Radio 1 has admitted another appalling catalogue of sex crimes against young boys stretching across his showbiz career.

Chris Denning, 75, used his access to celebrities and an "Aladdin's cave" of pornography at his home to lure victims into his web of abuse.

He is already serving a 13-year prison sentence passed in 2014 for abusing 24 boys as young as eight in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

The depraved DJ - a close friend of Jimmy Savile who helped launched the career of paedophile popstar Gary Glitter - has now admitted another 11 victims fell into his clutches.

Denning was on the rostrum of DJs when Radio 1 was launched in 1967, lining up alongside the likes of Tony Blackburn, John Peel, and Terry Wogan.

He was the first voice heard on BBC 2, and helped propel stars including Glitter and the Bay City Rollers to stardom while at the helm of Decca Records.

But his showbiz career effectively ended in 1974 when he was first convicted of sex offences. He has been in and out of prison since for abusing boys, including spells behind bars in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

At Southwark crown court this morning, Denning admitted 17 counts of indecent assault on boys aged under 16, three counts of indecency with a child, and one charge of inciting boys under 14 to commit acts of gross indecency.

Among the confessions are abuse of four boys at the notorious Walton Hop disco in Surrey, which was regularly frequented by convicted sex offenders including pop impresario Jonathan King.

When he appeared in front of Judge Alistair McCreath in December 2014, Denning was branded "utterly depraved".

The court heard he abused one boy at Savile's home, using "the allure of the record industry and celebrity" to draw in his young victims.

His home in Winchester was described by one victim as an "Aladdin's cave" of pornographic magazines, and Denning recorded or photographed many of his victims.

Denning was arrested in June 2013 under Operation Yewtree, the police probe set up to probe historic sex abuse by celebrities.

The latest raft of abuse convictions come from Yewtree and Operation Ravine, the Surrey Police investigation into the Walton Hop.

The full details of the latest crimes he has admitted to have not yet been revealed in open court.

Denning, who suffered a heart attack in 2009 and has Parkinson's and diabetes, walked gingerly into the dock for today's hearing, and was allowed to stay seated to enter his pleas.

Judge Peter Testar remanded Hayes-born Denning, formerly of Collingwood Road, Basildon, Essex back into custody until sentencing on October 6.

Denning denied three further charges against him, which will be left to lie on file.
A young father was shot in the head after an argument in a music studio erupted into the street, neighbours said today.

Police were called after gunshots were heard on a quiet residential road in Hornsey, north London, at 9pm on Saturday and the man was taken to hospital where he died just after midnight.

The victim, a former pupil of Islington Arts and Media School named by friends as Dawud, is said to have been an aspiring musician who lives locally and has a young daughter.

Friends today told of their shock and paid tribute to a devout Muslim who used his influence as a positive force among young people in the community.

It is understood Dawud, also called David, was rehearsing at a music studio in a block of flats off Sunnyside Road when he was shot dead.

A group of childhood friends visited the scene last night and lit candles beside the road.

Scene: A tent is put up at a crime scene in Sunnyside Road / Lucy Young

One told the Standard: Weve come here to give our condolences. I dont know whats happened or whats been going on, I just saw the news. He was our younger pal so to see him go like this is awful.

He was only 25. We all know him well. He was our mate. He was funny and he loved music. He loved rap music especially Skepta and JME.

We used to go to the youth club together after school and trips out of London. This was his neighbourhood. Its so sad.

Another friend said: He was a really good guy and a father. And at the same time he used to do a lot to try and be a good influence on the youth in the area.

He was very popular and most importantly a very devout Muslim. Its always the good guys this happens to.

A 21-year-old neighbour who called police after discovering finding the body in the doorway of the studio, said: I was just on my way up the road. It was really quiet. I looked inside and saw a body on the floor.

Initially I thought he had been knocked out or something. But then I saw his head open.

He had obviously been shot and there was blood everywhere. He was dying.

I called the police and then I called my mum and told her not to be scared.

Hes more like a poet that a rapper, he writes about his life and just general things like that.

Hes a very religious, very faithful person. The sight of seeing him like that is really affecting me.

Police forensics officers, dressed in light blue overalls, continued to comb the area last night.

Detectives from the Homicide and Major Crime Command are investigating led by Detective Chief Inspector Dave Whellams.

No arrests have been made and enquires continue.

Anyone who witnessed the incident is asked to contact the incident room on 0208 345 3775 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or at crimestoppers-uk.org
I

 Peter Rozovsky 2016

've never been to Tasmania, but I made it into this week's Saturday Mercury newspaper of Hobart, capital of that hospitable Australian island.The occasion is a profile of David Owen, a Tasmania-based crime writer whose novels featuring Franz "Pufferfish" Heineken I have enjoyed for years. The writer, Sally Glaetzer, overstates my radio experience, but she does a hell of a job with the article, very much better than what newspapers generally do when they deign to notice crime writers. I thought I knew Owen and his work fairly well, but Glaetzer's piece told me things I had not known before, about his political activity in South Africa, for instance. Here's the article . Here's my review of Owen's most recent novel, 13-Point Plan for a Perfect Murder.

Labels: Australia, David Owen, Pufferfish, Tasmania
A man has been arrested in south-east London after allegedly snorting cocaine outside the biggest police station in the country.

Lewisham Police took to Twitter to shame the alleged drug-user who was caught taking the Class A substance on a wall outside the station in the High Street last night.

They wrote: A little tip... If you want to snort cocaine after a night out, try not to do it right outside the largest police station in the country...

Officers then tweeted a picture of a man in handcuffs outside the station adding that he would be seeing the inside of the station.

Later in the shift, officers were called to reports of a drunk man allegedly abusing staff and security crews at Lewisham Hospital.

He was also taken into police custody.
A man has been rushed to hospital after he sustained a head injury during a suspected robbery.

The incident happened just before 4pm today in Brixton's Windrush Square, close to the Roxy Cinema.

A large police cordon was in place in the area this afternoon.

The man, who is believed to be in his 50s, was taken to hospital by ambulance for treatment to an injury that police described as not life-threatening.

Following the incident, a woman was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: "Police were called by the London Ambulance Service shortly before 4pm to reports of a man suffering from a head injury on Windrush Square in Brixton.

"The victim, believed to be aged in his 50s, was taken to a south London hospital where he remains in a stable condition; his injuries are not life-threatening.

"At this stage it is thought that the man was assaulted during a robbery.

"A woman has been arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm and taken to a south London police station where she remains in custody."
A Muslim "bully" attacked a 16-year-old schoolboy and branded his girlfriend a whore after spotting them cuddling in the street, a court heard today.

Michael Coe, 35, allegedly grabbed the teenager round the neck and threw him to the ground in the unprovoked attack in east London, it is said.

He is said to have objected to the boy hugging his girlfriend, and then assaulted a passing teacher who witnessed the attack and tried to photograph Coe's car numberplate.

Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay told Southwark crown court the April 15 incident "started as unpleasant bullying with religious overtones" and swiftly became an assault.

Coe was driving along Wilson Road, East Ham, when he spotted the young couple standing together.

"They were standing on the pavement doing what some 16-year-olds do some of the time, cuddling each other in the street", said Mr Polnay.

"They had the misfortune that of all the people to drive by was this defendant."

Believing the boy was older than 16, Coe stopped his car and said: "Let that schoolgirl go."

Mr Polnay said the boy objected, telling him they were both 16, and Coe told him: "How would you like it if your sister was cuddling?"

Coe allegedly asked if the couple were Muslims - which they are - but they denied it because they were "worried what this defendant would do if they said yes".

"At which point the defendant said: 'Why am I wasting my time with you if you are not Muslim?

"There followed an exchange of words, during which this defendant said something insulting about his girlfriend, calling her a whore."

The boy replied: "don't call my girlfriend a whore", said Mr Polnay, at which time Coe allegedly "moved from unpleasant bullying to someone in the street to something that is quite simply an assault."

He is accused of grabbing the boy around the neck, throwing him to the ground where he lost consciousness.

"The next thing he woke up on the floor and he was bleeding", added the prosecutor.

"We would say it is really completely unpleasant and utterly unwarranted. This is a grown man on a child, a 16-year-old."

Jurors were told a teacher, Boutho Siwela, heard the boy's girlfriend scream and went to take a photo of Coe's car numberplate.

"The defendant wasn't having that, he gets out, comes over to Mr Siwela saying given me that phone", said Mr Polnay.

"Mr Siwela obviously didn't want to hand over his phone, the defendant grabbed him and threw him to the floor."

Coe, of Devenish Road, Greenwich, denies assault occasioning actual bodily harm and battery.

He told police he was acting in self defence.

The trial continues.
A man is in hospital after being stabbed and slashed outside London Victoria rail station.

Police said the victim was apparently attacked with a broken bottle during a fight at about 8pm on Monday evening.

Paramedics treated the man at the scene before taking him to hospital. Police could not immediately provide an update on his condition.

Two people have been arrested on suspicion of GBH, Scotland Yard said.

A spokesman added: "We were called at 8.10pm to reports of a fight on Buckingham Palace Road.

"Officers attended and found a man suffering from stab and slash injuries."

He said the wounds were consistent with those sustained from a "broken bottle".

Part of the bus station adjacent to the rail hub was cordoned off while police scoured the crime scene for evidence.
A man sexually assaulted a schoolgirl and then tried to grope another passenger on a Tube train.

The man initially targeted the 14-year-old girl on a Central line service, after she stood near him at about 10.20pm on Friday, August 12.

She had got on the carriage at Holborn with her family, British Transport Police said, and the man was sitting down and staring at her.

The man began sexually assaulting her and, when the teenager sat down, he touched her thigh.

According to police, the suspect then approached a woman and tried to kiss her and touch her before getting off the train at Mile End.

British Transport Police are now hunting for the man and are appealing for information from the public.

He is described as white with short light-brown hair, of a larger build, in his late twenties and wearing a light blue polo shirt and jeans.

Investigating officer Andrew Parkinson said: We would like to speak to anyone who saw this incident taking place  or if you were the unknown woman who was also targeted by this man.

We are committed to making sure that this kind of behaviour is stamped out on public transport.

Incidents like this can make the victims feel threatened, scared and powerless  and that is totally unacceptable.

If you see something like this happening, or if it happens to us, tell us and we can do something about it.

Anyone with information is asked to contact British Transport Police on 0800 40 50 40 or text 61016, quoting 180 of 12/8.
A student has been awarded 4.5 million compensation after accusing his school of turning a blind eye to a year-long affair with a sex-crazed teacher.

The student began meeting his English teacher, Laura Whitehurst, for unprotected sex when when he was just 16

Whitehurst, 31, who reportedly also had flings with two other pupils, was exposed when she became pregnant and was jailed just two months after giving birth.

The student claims staff at Citrus Valley High School in California knew about the affair and did nothing and has successfully sued the education authority for six million US dollars.

He alleged the authority had been negligent and complicit in abuse.

English teacher: Whithurst and the student had a child together that is now ages three / The San Bernardino County DA

His lawyer Vince Finaldi, who led the case against Redlands Unified School District, said the settlement was the biggest against any public entity in the country involving child sex abuse.

The student, who shares custody of the three-year-old child with Whitehurst, told the court that he had been left scarred for life by the affair, adding: I am the father of a child when I am still myself a child.

After her arrest two other former students came forward saying they had also engaged in sexual activity with the teacher.

Civil case: The school was accused of negilgance and compliance with the abuse / Google StreetView

Despite the payout the school district denied any wrongdoing and spokesman Tom DeLapp reportedly said the money was not an admittance of guilt or liability.

Whitehurst, faced up to 29 years on 41 sex charges but was sentenced to 12 months after admitting six counts in a plea deal.

She was also put on five years probation and will be registered for life as a sex offender.
T he EU Parliament has sparked a backlash with a medal tally graphic which knocked Team GB off the podium.

In a Twitter and Facebook post with the caption "together stronger", the EU claims to show what the Rio 2016 final medal table would look like if the EU counted as a single country - and puts them in top place with 325 medals.

Behind them come the US and China in second and third place, with Team GB are nowhere to be seen.

Twitter users have reacted angrily to the EUs claim they would top the table, calling the tweet ridiculous.

Team GB defenders have pointed out how the number of participants to each event is limited for each country, meaning the EU bloc would not have been able to get so many medals.

Kristof Willekens wrote: Can someone please explain [to European Parliament] how ridiculous this is? Number of participants is limited/country.

Others hit out at the EU for counting Team GB medals as European.

Ali DeSouza said on Facebook: "I

Rick Squires wrote: You can take GB medals off the count. GB not part of your Europe. We told you to get stuffed-remember? #Brexit.

Another Twitter user, writing under the name of Stu, said: Nice to see the EU trying to cash in on the UKs success. Make the most of it. Wont be using us at the next Olympics.

Team GB's Rio golds - the final tally of Olympic victors

Saxon Infidel wrote: "How many of those medals did Team GB get for the EU? Going to be a large hole in tally next Olympics."

But some jumped in to defend the EU. Sunny, who posts as @SunScot on Twitter, said EU money helped fund Team GB's sporting achievements.

Writing on Facebook, Anna Jeznach said: "Why people take it literally? They want to emphasise that united we are stronger. This is a metaphor with ending of Rio 2016."

The EU Parliament's tweet, which comes nearly two months after Britain voted to leave the EU, reads: "Huge congratulations to all the European winners and participants at #Rio2016, you did brilliantly!"
A pioneering doctor is to swim the English Channel to raise funds for the 10 million rebuild of a specialist intensive care unit for children he founded almost 25 years ago.

Dr Parviz Habibi, a 64-year-old grandfather, will set off for France on Friday  two months before he retires from St Marys hospital, Paddington.

He hopes to raise 20,000 towards the 2 million that his Cosmic (Children of St Marys Intensive Care) charity and the Imperial College Healthcare Charity are donating towards the transformation of the unit to enable it to treat an extra 200 critically ill patients each year. Today the charities revealed they were halfway towards the target of their More Smiles Appeal.

Dr Habibi has been training for two years and has done four previous Channel swims as part of a relay team, but admits the scale of the solo challenge is daunting. Im afraid, he said.

Kevin Murphy, so-called King of the Channel with 34 crossings, warned him to expect the loneliest feeling ever.

Dr Habibi said: He told me, After three or four hours you hit a wall. The demons come to you. You are thinking of ways you can save face and stop. You are frightened because it is the dark.

Eighty per cent of swimming across the Channel is mental. The failure rate is 70-80 per cent. The Channel takes no prisoners.

Dr Habibi will swim overnight in temperatures of 15-16C without a wetsuit to comply with Channel Swimming Association regulations. He expects to lose six to eight kilograms of body fat.

Im looking forward to getting back in my Armani suit, he joked. I take cold showers. I wear no extra clothes in the winter. I say to myself: the Channel is going to be worse than this.

The odds are against me succeeding. But knowing what is riding on this, that is the strongest motivation for me.

The unit Dr Habibi set up in 1992 at St Marys, with one bed and one nurse, helped transformed the care of children who are unexpectedly taken seriously ill. Paediatric intensive care largely didnt exist in the Nineties and sick children faced a lottery of whether they could be found a bed in hospitals such as Great Ormond Street.

Dr Habibi also pioneered a specialist retrieval service to transfer such critically ill children from their local A&E to St Marys. The unit is being expanded from eight to 15 beds to prevent it having to turn away about 230 cases a year.

It treats children at risk of death from drowning, pneumonia, meningitis and serious complications from epilepsy, asthma and diabetes. Preparatory work is due to start later this year.

justgiving.com/fundraising/ParvizSoloChannelSwim
R adio One DJ Nick Grimshaw has apparently flipped his car onto its side while swerving to avoid a cat.

Neighbours said the presenter was driving his 80,000 black Mercedes in Stoke Newington when he skidded on a residential street.

Representatives for Mr Grimshaw said he had swerved to avoid a cat in the road, it was reported.

Both Mr Grimshaw and the animal were unhurt following the incident, which happened in Clissold Crescent just before 7pm.

Mr Grimshaw was supposed to be on air with Annie Mac and MistaJam this evening, but was forced to cancel following the accident.

However, he is expected to return to the airwaves for his breakfast show tomorrow.

A neighbour told the Standard: "He seems a very nice man and his main concern was that the cat was okay, which it was."

A representative for Mr Grimshaw told the Sun: Nick is absolutely fine  he was driving at no more than 15mph and he swerved to avoid a cat.

Crashed: Nick Grimshaw swerved to avoid a cat / BBC

No one was hurt and Nick will be doing his breakfast show as normal tomorrow morning."

A Met Police spokesman said: "Police were called at 18.47 to reports of an overturned car on Clissold Crescent, at the junction with Burma Road in Hackney.

"Officers attended; there were no reports of any injuries and no arrests."
T he opening weekend of the Night Tube was today hailed as a great success after more than 100,000 passengers used the service in its first 48 hours.

Six trains per hour were run on the Victoria and Central lines between 12.30am and 5.30am on Saturday and yesterday.

Some 50,000 people used it on each night, bringing total passenger numbers for the first weekend to 100,300.

TfL expects 200,000 journeys per weekend once the service is rolled out on the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines by the end of the year.

Managing director of TfL Mark Wild said: We planned meticulously and it went exactly as we hoped. It was a great success. Indeed there was a mood of celebration and it showed how important the Night Tube will be in opening up the economy.

There were no issues around safety or security. It was a quiet weekend and in fact there were fewer incidents than a normal Friday and Saturday. We will debrief today but it was a solid start.

No disorder: Police said they were not aware of any crimes being committed (REUTERS) / Reuters

One of the busiest stations on the first night of operation was Oxford Circus, which saw 6,500 people tapping in with their Oyster and contactless payment cards.

Stratford station was among the busiest for people ending their journeys with 4,250 customers tapping out.

British Transport Police, which has allotted 100 officers to patrol the nocturnal network, said the first weekend passed peacefully and it was called to just four incidents on the first night.

A magician on the night tube

The only arrest was a 17-year-old on a Victoria line platform at Oxford Circus at 2am yesterday on suspicion of drugs possession and carrying a blade.

Mayor Sadiq Khan, among passengers on the inaugural 12.34am Victoria line service from Brixton, hailed the boost the 24-hour weekend Tubes would bring to the capital.

He said: Its been a landmark weekend for London. Weve changed the face of weekend travel forever and Im delighted that tens of thousands of Londoners and visitors to the capital were able to travel faster and more safely at night than even before.

British Transport Police chief inspector Dominique Ioannou said: There was a great atmosphere throughout and I would like to thank the travelling public for their support and cooperation, which guaranteed the launch weekend passed off peacefully.

Launch: The mayor said he was surprised the service had taken so long to organise

This success confirms what we already knew and what we expected to see  crime on the Underground is low and evidence from 24-hour metros around the world suggests crime levels at night are no greater than during the day.

We will continue to work closely with Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police and other agencies to ensure the safe running of the service beyond the launch.

The Night Tube is expected to support about 2,000 permanent jobs in Londons night-time economy, which could be boosted by up to 77 million a year.
By Devdutt Pattanaik Mid-day

Published on 21st August, 2016, in Mid-day.

Once upon a time, a group of Hindus insisted that that the mosque in Ayodhya was built on the remains of a Hindu temple that marked the birthplace of Ram. The matter went to court. Academicians, historians, archaeologists and lawyers argued the case for decades. Like all things Indian, records were inconclusive. And, the traditional spirit of adjustment drew the ire of activists. So, a bunch of fiery impatient men stormed the mosque, deemed disputed structure, and tore it down. What followed were vicious riots where hundreds were killed. Some demanded justice. Others vengeance. Western academicians who wrote on Ramayana invariably began their essay by referring to the Babri Masjid demolition, and used it as yet another stick to mock the Hindu reverence for Ram. Hindus accused them of Hinduphobia. A simmering rupture exposed itself. More violence followed. Now, across India, temples and mosques and other disputed structures, are surrounded by fences and security guards, determined to ensure religious fanatics do not rip apart the secular fabric of the nation.

Meanwhile, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia the holiest city in Islam, which houses the Kabba that is the focus on the Hajj pilgrimage that is mandatory for Muslims, something extraordinary is happening. The Government of Saudi Arabia, to cater to the rising number of pilgrims visiting the city is demolishing heritage sites, tombs and mosques associated with the Prophet Muhammad, his family and early Islamic history. These are being replaced by state-of-the-art skyscrapers that house hotels and shopping malls and apartment blocks, alarming Islamic scholars and art historians, whose protests are being unheard, and who are watching helplessly an ancient heritage being wiped out in the name of practicality and modernity and development. They fear that underlying this apparent pragmatism is a puritanical ideology that does not appreciate the veneration of anything or anyone but God. In this version of Islam, the Shia veneration of the Prophets family, and for leaders known as Imams, and for dargahs, is considered inappropriate. Even Sufism is seen as sin, a form of polytheism.

Thus, we see two different outcomes to the destruction of venerable Islamic structures in two different locations. In India, Babri Masjid demolition leads to rage and riots, and international condemnation. In Saudi Arabia, the demolition of mosques, tombs and heritage buildings, encouraged by a pragmatic and some say, puritanical, government, is being grudgingly tolerated.

Why the difference? Is it because, in India, the government is not Islamic and the demolition involved Hindu fanatics who disregarded the law? Is it because in Saudi Arabia, the government is Muslim, and the royal family is the traditional guardian of the Mecca shrine and it is the local clerics who decide what is holy and what is not?

Perhaps, the difference reveals that outrage over demolition has nothing to do with rationality. It has to do with meaning. What meaning do we give to the buildings being demolished and to the demolishers? To understand the difference in todays over-sensitive hyper-religious world, an analogy helps: It is okay if I crack jokes about my mother. But you cannot crack jokes on my mother. If you do, then I will be outraged. How do we expect the rational judicial systems to resolve this issue remains the question.
S adiq Khan urged Jeremy Corbyns supporters to conduct a civilised campaign today after he faced a backlash for encouraging them to ditch their Labour leader.

The London Mayor was targeted on social media and booed at a campaign rally for Mr Corbyn after he claimed that he was extremely unlikely to win a general election.

Mr Khan hit back, saying that party members had to recognise that winning elections was the only way to make a difference.

Labour began sending out leadership ballot papers to more than 640,000 members, supporters and trade union affiliates who will decide between Mr Corbyn and Owen Smith, who has the Mayors backing. Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn unveiled a range of ideas to democratise our country, including boosting workers bargaining rights for companies with more than 250 workers, replacing the House of Lords with an elected second chamber and referenda for local residents on the privatisation of services.

Mr Khan said: In a modern democracy and civilised society, there should be no place for abuse for anybody. What is important is that we conduct our politics in a civilised manner.

He said colleagues must unite behind whoever wins  which is expected to be Mr Corbyn. Ill work with whoever the leader is, but the reality is we need to win the next election. Its really important we unite as a party, he said. But talk of a new party is irresponsible. It would make it even harder to win the next election. 

Mr Khan said he had played no part in the turmoil that had engulfed Labour in the last few months.

At a rally in Kilburn last night, large parts of the 4,000-strong audience jeered and booed when a speaker mentioned Mr Khans name. One Labour MP said: This says it all, that theyre booing a guy who showed how to win.

TODO: define component type apester

However, Mr Corbyns campaign spokesman said: Sadiq Khan is entitled to his opinion. But he won the London mayoralty by standing on a Labour platform under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

Former mayor Ken Livingstone, who was suspended from Labour amid an anti-semitism row, said: The surge of people joining Labour are just ordinary people who feel the last Labour government did damn all for them.

At the weekend, 220 London councillors signed a letter backing Mr Smith, saying it was the only path to getting Labour back into Government.

They included the leaders of Camden, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Lewisham, Merton, Redbridge and Waltham Forest.

Len Duvall, chair of the London Labour party, tweeted: Its sad were having another leadership contest, but Corbyn simply hasnt done enough to connect to the general public.

Mr Smith said: "I deplore the booing of Sadiq Khan. I think Sadiq is someone whom we're very proud of in the Labour party for all sorts of reasons. He's a winner. He's someone whose background speaks volumes about the Labour Party's mission for social mobility in this country therefore to boo him is completely wrong and should be condemned by all of us.

"But It's a measure of how low we've sunk, it is a measure of how divided we've become and crucially we need to get beyond that. We need to remember that there's far more than unites us in the Labour Party than divides us."


A pop-up theatre group is taking over a disused library as part of a long-term bid to re-open it as a cultural community centre.

Theatre Delicatessen have taken on the old library in Burgess Park, Camberwell, which is owned by Southwark Council, and are inviting the public in this weekend to have their say about its future.

The groups co-artistic director Roland Smith said he hoped their two-year tenancy would be the start of a long-term relationship with the council and the parks friends group.

He said: If it it had been a working library making way for us we would not have moved in, as that would be against everything we stand for, but this is a building that has been empty for I think 20 years and it was intended as a cultural resource for the community and that is what we are returning it to albeit in a slightly different form.

The building, which also includes an old bathhouse, was the subject of a recent feasability study which recommended it become home to a village hall concept with artists studios and a cafe.

It will host circus performers, a dance company and a virtual reality performance this weekend as part of the annual Camberwell Fair.

Mr Smith said: Also most importantly we will be opening our doors to local people and seeing what they want to do here.

Theatre Delicatessen, which specialises in creating cultural pop-ups in disused places, already have a line-up of artists expected to work at the venue and want to put on drama and circus skills classes.

Former productions include Shakespeare, Ibsen, a play set on the Tour de France and an immersive marketplace of performance at the Bush Theatre.

Councillor Johnson Situ, Southwarks cabinet member for business, employment and culture, said: Investing in arts and culture is tougher than ever for local councils but we are really pleased to be able to welcome Theatre Delicatessen to Old Wells Way Library over the next two years. Their plans to turn it into a creative hub that the whole community can enjoy are really exciting and Im looking forward to seeing local people get involved.

www.theatredelicatessen.co.uk
A man has been charged with the attempted rape of a teenager in north London.

The 18-year-old woman was alone when she was allegedly sexually assaulted at knifepoint on Billy Fury Way, near to Finchley Road and Frognal rail station, in Hampstead

A 22-year-old man has now been charged in connection with the alleged sex attack at around 8pm last Tuesday, Scotland Yard said.

But police think the alleged assault could be linked to a separate incident just 40 minutes later where a woman was followed by a man in the same area.

Police want to speak to the woman, believed to be aged between 18 and 30, who left Finchley Road and Frognal train station at 8.38pm.

She was followed by a man into Lymington Road and, fearing for her safety, approached a security guard at a Jewish community centre on Finchley Road. Police said she "sought refuge" and hid in the centres cafe for around half an hour.

The woman is described as white, 5ft 7ins and of medium build with long dark hair.

Detective Constable Scott Barefoot, from the Met Polices team for sexual offences, exploitation and child abuse command, said: "If you recognise yourself from this description please come forward.

It is really important because shortly before this incident another woman was the victim of an attempted rape and we need to establish whether these events are linked and if you have any information that could help our enquiries."

Police arrested the 22-year-old man on Thursday, August 18 and he was later charged.

Anyone who might be able to help is asked to please contact officers on 020 8733 5999 or to remain anonymous, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Local Camden councillor Philip Rosenburg, for West Hampstead, said he was distressed to hear of the attack.

He posted on Twitter: This is a rare incident but looking at how to make [Billy Fury Way] safer.
J ean-Claude Juncker today claimed secure borders were the worst invention ever in remarks that deepened the divide between the Brussels chief and other European leaders.

His outburst came as German leader Angela Merkel was holding a summit with Frances Francois Hollande and Italys Matteo Renzi with the migrant crisis high on the agenda.

Germany and other countries are having to tighten border controls after experiencing chaos from the flood of people trying to enter Europe.

But Mr Juncker, president of the European Commission, speaking at Alpbach Media Academy, called for the opening of all borders, saying: Borders are the worst invention ever made by politicians.

British diplomats were amazed that Mr Juncker appeared to be heading in the opposite direction to most elected leaders who have been alarmed by public unease over security and immigration in the borderless zone.

One British official said: Theresa May would certainly not agree with him.

The summit with Mrs Merkel, Mr Renzi and Mr Hollande was being staged to agree how to respond to the UKs Brexit vote. The trio are likely to press Britain to spell out the sort of relationship it wants with the EU and to start the formal exit process by June at the latest.
A job advert in a north London shop window left passers-by baffled by its ambiguous phrasing

The shop, in Islington's Upper Street, appeared to advertise job opportunities for "mainly black" staff.

Its advert left people baffled as pictures of the sign swept the internet.

But the reason for the unusual phrasing is entirely legitimate; the name of the clothes shop is in fact 'Mainly Black'.

The cause of the confusion is the sequence of words: mainly black part time staff required.

There are irregular lines between the phrases but no punctuation, and the font used is the same.

The shop, which sells womens fashion made in Italy, Portugal and Croatia, says it does mainly black  but we do black very well.

Advertising: Clothes shop Mainly Black. / Google Earth.

The advert was posted on social media site Reddit with the caption phrasing could have been better. It has now been viewed more than 12,000 times.

The person who originally posted the image said it is confusing because the shop front does not clearly show the shops name, Mainly Black.

On Twitter, Mark Burlison posted a link to the photo and said: Did they mean what I think they meant?

The Evening Standard has approached the shop for comment.
N ew Zealand faces a British invasion following the Brexit vote, immigration officials have said.

More than 10,500 Brits have registered with Immigration New Zealand since the UK voted to leave the European Union in May.

The day after Brexit, 998 people applied to emigrate to the country - despite just 109 people showing their interest in moving the day before the country took to the polls.

In the 49 days since Brexit, New Zealand immigration services received 10,647 applications from British nationals compared to just 4,599 in the same period last year.

Professor Paul Spoonley, from the countrys Massey University said he was not surprised by the spike.

He claimed applicants were tired of narrow-minded Britain.

Brexit is the push factor and it confirmed the exclusive or narrow nationalism of the UK, of some at least," he told the New Zealand Herald.

The academic added that he anticipated a spike in interest from potential American immigrants if Donald Trump wins the American election.

The two countries have a similar land size but Britain has a population of 64 million people compared with just 4.7 million in New Zealand.

Britain was traditionally New Zealand's main source for permanent migrants.

It was overtaken by China in 2014, which has remained the largest source of immigrants since.

Professor Spoonley told the New Zealand Herald that he did not think many of the Britons who registered interest would actually migrate.

He said he believed China and India would continue to dominate immigration numbers in the foreseeable future.

Last month, Immigration accepted 272 applications for residence by Britons and 566 Chinese applications.
B roadcast regulator Ofcom has rejected complaints that it was inappropriate for Channel 4 to allow a Muslim journalist wearing a hijab to report on the Nice attack.

Ofcom received a total of 17 complaints after Fatima Manji presented coverage of the Islamic State truck attack in July.

Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor and now columnist at the Sun, attacked the decision in his column and called on readers to complain.

Mr MacKenzie wrote: Was it appropriate for her to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim?

Inciting hatred: Hundreds of people complained about Mr MacKenzie's column / Getty Images

Was it done to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer who looks at the hijab as a sign of the slavery of Muslim women by a male-dominated and clearly violent religion?

Ofcom assessed the complaints but decided there are no grounds to launch a full investigation.

We received a small number of complaints that it was inappropriate for a presenter wearing a hijab to present a report on the attack in Nice, said a spokesman for Ofcom.

We wont be taking the matter forward for investigation. The selection of a presenter is an editorial matter for the broadcaster, and the way in which the presenter chose to dress in this case did not raise any issues under our rules.

IPSO complaints: Kelvin MacKenzie's column appeared in The Sun's print edition and online

Ms Manji has since complained about his comments to IPSO on the grounds of religious discrimination.

Ben De Pear, editor of Channel 4 News, said: "ITN believes the article was in breach of a number of provisions of the Editors' Code, in particular discrimination, harassment by intimidation

"A further complaint was also made by ITN CEO John Hardie, which fully supports and endorses the grounds and reasoning of Fatima's complaint.

Mr De Pear added: "ITN accepts and understands that our reporters and presenters are in the public eye and can expect criticism and comment from many quarters, including newspaper columnists.

"What it cannot accept is an employee being singled out on the basis of her religion.

"We are not going to simply stand by when an employee is subject to an act of religious discrimination."

More than 1700 people have contacted IPSO in complaint of Mr Mackenzies column.
T ate boss Sir Nicholas Serota would be warmly welcomed if he became head of Arts Council England because the Government would listen to him, according to sources.

He has spent almost 30 years at Tate and helped transform it, overseeing the creation and expansion of Tate Modern. Sir Peter Bazalgette, the head of ACE, which hands out millions of pounds of public money and lottery funding to the creative industries, leaves in January.

A source at the Department for Culture, Media & Sport, which is in charge of the recruitment process, said: Nothing has been confirmed but I would be very surprised if Sir Nicholas does not take the job.

One member of the council said he would be warmly welcomed, adding: He would represent the sector effectively and be listened to by Government.

A spokeswoman at the DCMS said the appointment process was ongoing.
V andals let three saltwater crocodiles loose at a school in Australia.

Bizarre CCTV footage shows the crocodiles being pushed through a broken window pane in a fire exit at Taminmin College, located in the Northern Territory town of Humpty Doo.

Four masked intruders, clad in just boxer shorts, then push through the door, hop over the reptiles and ransack an office at the school.

Wildlife rangers who captured the female reptiles said they were in poor health and had their mouths taped up.

According to ABC local radio, it is likely that the beasts will be put down.

Speaking to the radio station, Ranger Luke McLaren said when the crocodiles were found they were basically skin and bones, (with) not much meat left on them.

He added: (They had) really poor skin condition, like they havent been kept in water for quite a while, havent been fed, and one of them looked to be blind (as a result of neglect).

Looking at their condition its likely theyll have to be destroyed.

It is believed the animals came from a crocodile farm.

The largest crocodile was 2m long. It is not known why they were let loose in the school.

Police are searching for the intruders, who are all men.

The gang face fines of up to $50,000  the equivalent of 29,000 - for animal cruelty.
A British man died after seeing his 10-year-old daughter being rescued when they got into difficulties while swimming off a Spanish beach.

Around a dozen other bathers entered the water to save the child after spotting the pair being dragged towards rocks by the strong current.

Lifeguards reached her father moments later, who witnesses said at first appeared okay after being brought to safety. He then collapsed with a suspected heart attack.

The tragedy happened shortly before 2.30pm yesterday in front of the mans wife and other daughter, aged five, at El Penoncillo Beach in Torrox on the eastern Costa del Sol, about 30 miles from Malaga.

Samuel Pozo, 35, from Malaga, who helped save the British holidaymakers daughter, told a local paper: If it hadnt been for me and the other people who helped by jumping into the sea or helping out from the rocks, the child would have died as well.

Mr Pozo added: The red flag was up but flying from a watch tower 300 metres away. Being foreigners, probably they didnt see it because it was so far away. It should have been on the sand.

An autopsy was due to take place this morning in Malaga. The dead man was identified by Spanish authorities only by his initials  RBM  and is believed to be from London.

An appeal to raise money for a girl fighting for life after being swept out to sea with her father who drowned has topped 23,000.

McKayla Bruynius, two, and her father Rudy, from Morden, south London, were dragged off rocks by a 10ft wave on holiday in Newquay, Cornwall. Her mother Cindy was rescued by lifeguards and her two older brothers managed to scramble back to shore amid treacherous conditions on Friday afternoon.

McKaylas mother posted a message online through a friend, saying: She is stable and all vitals same during the transition. So the decision has been made to take her to the Bristol Childrens Hospital.

Please continue to pray for my miracle baby, for her to pull through, as they cant give me a certain indication of how much brain damage occurred during her time in the water.
A woman has stabbed and wounded three people in front of terrified passengers on board a bus in Brussels, Belgian prosecutors say.

The attacker was shot and injured by police following the assault in the Uccle area of the Belgian capital.

Broadcaster RTBF quoted officials as saying police did not believe the incident was politically motivated and the woman is thought to have mental health problems.

Brussels has been on high alert since local Islamic State militants carried out the attacks in Paris last November and suicide bombings in the Belgian capital in March.

A string of less violent incidents across the continent have kept Europeans on edge since 85 people were killed after a truck was driven into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice last month.
A former aide to New York governor Andrew Cuomo was among five people who died when a driver lost control and struck two other vehicles on Long Island.

Six other people were injured in the crash at around 9.30am local time on Sunday on the Long Island Expressway, near Manorville.

Scott Martella, 29, of Northport, a communications director for Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and a former aide to Mr Cuomo, was killed.

Police said the driver of an eastbound Subaru Outback, Carmelo Pinales, 26, of Hicksville, apparently lost control of his vehicle, crossed into the westbound lane, went airborne, and struck two vehicles, a BMW and a Honda.

Mr Pinales and his 27-year-old sister, Patricia Pinales, of Westbury, were killed. His 10-year-old son, Christopher Pinales, died of his injuries in hospital later.

Horror smash: the aftermath of the collision / ABC7-NY

Two others in the Subaru, including the three-year-old daughter of Ms Pinales, were treated for non-life threatening injuries.

A passenger in the BMW, Isidore Adelson, 81, of Westhampton, died of his injuries late Sunday at a hospital. Three others in the BMW, including Mr Adelsons wife, were also treated for non-life-threatening injuries.

Mr Martella, who was driving the Honda, was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. His 29-year-old fiance, Shelbi Thurau, of Northport, was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Mr Cuomo said Mr Martella had served in his administration for more than four years. He called him a dedicated, beloved public servant who worked day in and day out to improve the lives of his fellow New Yorkers.

Mr Bellone said: Scott dedicated his all too brief life to public service and to helping others.

My thoughts and prayers are with all those who lost their lives and suffered injuries in this horrible accident as well as their families.

Suffolk County police said detectives were investigating whether speed was a factor in the crash.
A student who shared pictures of herself apparently in bed with bare-chested Usain Bolt has said she is dying of shame.

Jady Duarte shared the snaps of herself appearing to cuddle and kiss the Olympic champion on Whatsapp.

She had allegedly met the sprinting superstar him at All In, a club in the Barra de Tijuca suburb of Rio, as he celebrated his 'treble treble' Olympic gold medal haul and his 30th birthday.

Pictures of the pair, including one which appears to show Bolt kissing the young woman on the cheek, were shared worldwide despite her claiming to have only sent them to girlfriends over the online messaging app.

Rio Olympics: Usain Bolt sambas his way out of his press conference

Speaking to Brazlian newspaper Extra, Miss Duarte said she never wanted to be famous and was dying of shame.

Intimate: One of the pictures appearing to show Usain Bolt with the student

She added: It's very negative. I never wanted to be famous, I'm dying of shame.

The student then went on to describe her night with the Olympic megastar  who reportedly has a long-term girlfriend  as normal.

She claimed Bolt sent a security guard over to her but insisted she didnt know who her suitor was.

She said: He sent a security guard to call me over. We spoke quickly.

But at that moment I didn't know it was him, because there were many Jamaicans who looked similar.

Early departure: Bolt was seen leaving Rio an hour before the Olympic closing ceremony

Bolt is believed to be in a two-year relationship with fellow Jamaican national 26-year-old Kasi Bennett.

According to MailOnline, the athletes sister Christine Bolt-Hylton believed the pair were due to get engaged on his return from the Olympic Games.

Miss Bennett tweeted to say she was logging off Twitter after the pictures emerged.

"Doing something I'm pretty sure I've made fun of people for doing... But here goes : I'm tapped out. Logging off," she wrote.

She had previously shared birthday wishes to Bolt and reweeted pictures of her beau wearing his medals.

Miss Duarte took to Facebook to tell followers she was feeling angry following the scandal.

She posted what appeared to be song lyrics in Brazilian calling on fans to stop drama.

In a second post she added that she had never had Twitter.

Bolt is believed to have left Rio a day early, missing out on last nights closing ceremony.
A 20-year-old student who shared pictures appearing to show her in bed with Usain Bolt is the widow of a notorious drug lord known as Dina Terror, it is claimed.

Jady Duarte is said to have had two children with Douglas Donato Pereira, who was shot dead by elite police forces in March after being wanted for at least 10 violent crimes.

He was one of Rio de Janeiro's most dangerous drug lords, responsible for crimes including the torture and murder of a teenage girl in 2014, police say.

According to Mail Online, Duarte wrote on Facebook after his death: In eternity, I will be with my love the way I always wanted, because in heaven all the time is time to be happy.

God will take you in, its my hope that in eternity I will see you.

Embrace: Bolt appears to wrap his arm around 20-year-old Miss Duarte

Duarte was thrown into the limelight after pictures, first published by Brazilian title Extra, appeared to show her snuggled up with three-time Olympic 100m champion Bolt.

One snap seems to show the bare-chested sprinter embracing the student while another apparently captures Bolt giving Duarte a peck on the cheek.

Following the revelations, Duarte said she was "dying of shame".

The images emerged after the Jamaican runner was spotted partying until the early hours of Sunday morning - his 30th birthday - at a club in Rio.

The blowout marked the sprinters final Olympics at which he won three gold medals in the 100 meters, the 200 meters and the 4x100-meter relay.

Early departure: Bolt was seen leaving Rio an hour before the Olympic closing ceremony

Last week, it was claimed Bolt is in a long-term relationship with 26-year-old fellow Jamaican Kasi Bennett.

Dubbed his first lady, Bennett shared a cryptic tweet after fans claimed they had discovered she was the stars partner and hailed her hot.

She replied: I wish there was no discovery, but thank you so much. That's really sweet of you."
H oliday-makers were left shocked after a police officers gun was reportedly accidentally fired on board.

The Vueling aircraft was waiting to leave Ibiza to travel to Madrid-Barajas airport in Spain when the weapon went off in front of alarmed passengers.

The pistol discharged inside the National Police agents case as he handed it over to the pilot for safe-keeping.

Luckily, the bullet fired into the agents luggage, avoiding him and all other passengers, Spanish media reported.

Local news site Ultimahora.es said that two passengers saw what was going on.

Travellers told Noudiario.es that the sound of a gunshot and smell of gunpowder sparked unrest on the plane.

After the gunshot, the officer is said to have moved away from passengers to remove the gun and bullets from his bag.

Flight VY3420, which was due to leave Ibiza at 1.15pm local time on Saturday, was delayed for half an hour while engineers ensured no damage had been done to the plane.

A spokesman for Vueling told Mirror Online that the incident was minor and without further consequences for the passengers and crew or the plane.

He added that the police officers followed the security procedures.

The Standard has contacted Vueling for a comment.
A wealthy French businessman has vowed to pay the fines of women who defy a ban on wearing burkinis on a French beach.

Rachid Nekkaz, a real-estate entrepreneur of Algerian descent, said that although he personally opposes the Islamic swimming costumes he will fight for the right of others to wear them.

Mr Nekkaz told the Telegraph: As soon as I see that France is not respecting fundamental liberties, I always get my cheque book out."

I personally am against the niqab and the burkini, but I am like the philosopher Voltaire," he added.

Once I do not agree, I will fight to the death to give the possibility to these people to express their opinion or to dress as they please. That is freedom. It is a question of principle.

Mr Nekkaz was born in France to Algerian parents but gave up his French nationality in 2013 in a failed bid to run for Algerian president.

The businessman has also run for the French presidency.

In 2010, the entrepreneur set up a 1m "freedom defence fund" to pay fines for women who chose to wear the niqab, or full face veil, despite it being outlawed in a number of European countries.

Mr Nekkaz says he has already paid out 245,000 in fines and associated legal fees on behalf of 1,165 women in France, 268 in Belgium, two in the Netherlands, and one in Switzerland.

He has now also extended his reach to fighting burkini bans.

The burkini, a full body swimsuit that Muslim women wear to swim in without exposing their bodies, has so far been banned three beach resorts in France; Sisco, Cannes, and Nice.

At least four women have already been fined for defying the ban, while six others have been ordered to leave the beach.
B oy band founder Lou Pearlman has died in prison at the age of 62.

The businessman and music mogul, who launched Backstreet Boys and NSync, passed away on Friday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has revealed.

Pearlman, whose cause of death is currently unknown, had been serving a 25-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas.

The producer was convicted in 2008 over a Ponzi scheme that left investors $300 million out of pocket.

He had pleaded guilty to conspiracy, money laundering and male false statement during bankruptcy proceedings.

Pearlman launched Trans Continental Records with a view to finding the next big boy band, following the success of New Kids on the Block.

He put together both Backstreet Boys and NSync in the 1990s, and helped launch the solo careers of Nick Carter and Justin Timberlakce.

Following news of Pearlmans death, Timberlake tweeted: I hope he found some peace. God bless and RIP, Lou Pearlman.

Lance Bass wrote: Word is that #LouPearlman has passed away. He might not have been a stand up businessman , but I wouldn't be doing what I love today wout his influence. RIP Lou,

Aaron Carter, who filed a lawsuit against Pearlman back in 2002 at the age of 14, wrote on his Twitter account:

#LouPearlman my old manager died in prison... Rip Lou not the best business guy really at all but he did discover me karma is real.
K ings of Leon have announced plans to release their seventh studio album.

The Tennessee rockers, whose last album Mechanical Bull was released in 2013, have revealed that the new record will be called Walls.

Confirming the news in a teaser video, the band listed all of their album titles, before adding: The wait is over. 7 is coming. #WALLS #KOL7.

The band updated their Facebook cover image on Saturday, leading fans to believe that a big announcement was on the way.

Drummer Nathan Followill revealed that the band were back in the studio last year and were keen to release something in 2016.

We've already started pre-production in our studio for the next record, but the main thing on the calendar for 2016 is getting the record finished, he said.

And then the whole press machine kicks up and doing press for the record."

Speaking to SiriusXM last June, frontman Caleb Followill said: Weve been at home writing, trying to get some new stuff going.

And we kind of had to put it on hold because we have this and another festival coming up, but we have big enough breaks in between most of them to where I think were going be able to get the album written by the end of the year.

But record number seven, most people take like, what, five years to make that or something? So were still in the very early stages of our five-year plan for this next record.

Follow @StandardEnts for more entertainment news.
A fter three weeks of summer fun in Rio, the BBC is returning to 19th century Whitechapel in Ripper Street.

Many viewers may have caught up on the hit period drama since Series 3 finished last year - or have even seen this series itself on Amazon Video, who took over production in 2013.

If youre feeling rusty on all things Ripper, here are six things to know before you dive back into the murky world of DI Edmund Reid and co.

1) The end is nigh for these East End Bobbies

The shows creator Richard Warlow is adamant that the show will not enter the 20th century. Written and filmed as one long story, the show will be capped off by a final fifth series next year, with the narrative ending at the stroke of midnight on New Years Eve, 1899.

2) The past will have consequences

Warlow also is keen to emphasise that he is not wasting this opportunity to deliver a real ending for the series. After being left in the lurch when the BBC decommissioned the show after Series 2, Warlow told the Radio Times he was determined that our characters, and their followers, would not be left in the lurch this time.

He has ominously hinted that justice is coming to Ripper Street, particularly for Long Susan Hart, who is currently imprisoned for her involvement in the catastrophic train derailment last series.

Ripper Street: Series 4 Trailer - BBC Two

3) Long Live the Queen

This season will kick off with the Diamond Jubilee celebrations for Queen Victoria - a three-year time jump from where we left off last series. As Whitechapel prepares to enter the new millennium, change will undoubtedly be in the air.

This will form a big part of the show moving forward, as tensions rise between the old and the new.

4) New Digs

No one will feel this tension more than our hero, DI Edmund Reid (Matthew Macfayden, back in the bowler hat), returning from his self-imposed seaside exile to find a new police station, staffed by new police officers and led by his old right-hand man Bennet Drake (Jerome Flynn).

Best TV dramas 2016 1 /38 Best TV dramas 2016 The Missing The addictive and twisty second series of the BBC's crime anthology series BBC/New Pictures/Robert Viglasky Dark Angel Joanne Froggatt stared as Victorian mass murderer Mary Ann Cotton in this ITV drama ITV Close to the Enemy Stephen Poliakoff's post-war drama thriller BBC/Little Island Pictures Ordinary Lies The BBC anthology drama returns with more twisted tales BBC/Red Productions/Adrian Rogers The Night Of Riz Ahmed stars in HBO's critically acclaimed crime mini-series HBO Cold Feet The classic ITV comedy-drama returns - and it's just as good as it ever was ITV Victoria ITV have given Poldark some stiff competition with this period drama about a young Queen Victoria ITV Poldark The BBC's hit drama returns with more brooding, and less naked scything BBC/Robert Viglasky One of Us The BBC kept everyone guessing with this claustrophobic four-part whodunit Ripper Street The fan-favourite Victorian police drama returned for Series 4 BBC/Tiger Aspect 2016/Bernard Walsh The Secret Agent Toby Jones led the cast in the BBC's Joseph Conrad adaptation BBC/World Productions/Mark Mainz/Matt Burlem The Living and the Dead The BBC's gothic romance debuted in full on iPlayer BBC Preacher AMC's adaptation of Garth Ennis' cult comic book is available week-by-week on Amazon Prime Amazon / AMC Versailles A raunchy royal romp around the court of King Louis XIV, spicing up Wednesdays on BBC Two Canal +/ BBC Locked Up The Spanish prison drama came to the UK thanks to Channel 4's Walter Presents series Channel 4 / Global Series Peaky Blinders The Birmingham-set gangster thriller was more popular than ever in its third series BBC/Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd/Tiger Aspect/Robert Viglasky The A Word The BBC gave us a nuanced and emotional take on autism BBC/Fifty Fathoms Marcella Anna Friel stars in ITV's British take on the Scandi-noir thriller ITV Grantchester James Norton is back as the crime-solving vicar ITV / Lovely Day Stag The comedy-thriller from the team behind The Wrong Mans is both hilarious and chilling BBC/Des Willie/Hal Shinnie/Matt Burlem Vinyl Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger present a glossy drama about the Seventies music industry HBO American Crime Story: The People vs OJ Simpson Cuba Gooding Jr leads an all-star cast in a dramatic re-telling of the 'trial of century' BBC/Fox Happy Valley Sarah Lancashire returned as Sgt Catherine Cawood for a second series of the gritty crime thriller BBC/Red Productions/Ben Blackall The X Files Mulder and Scully return for a brand new set of mysteries War and Peace The BBC's epic adaptation of the Russian literary classic BBC/Mitch Jenkins Call the Midwife The BBC period drama moved into the Sixties for Series 5 BBC/Neal Street Productions/Sophie Mutevelian Dickensian Charles Dickens' most famous characters collide in this historical soap BBC Jericho ITV's British western set in the wilds of Yorkshire Silent Witness The hugely popular detective drama returns for a 19th series

5) Hot Fuzz

A mix of familiar and fresh faces will be wandering Whitechapel this time around, including Reids old friend Isaac Bloom, now accused of murder.

Meanwhile Matthew Lewis makes an entrance as Sergeant Sam Drummond, with the famously sexy Harry Potter star sporting a spectacular moustache which he grew for this series.

Frank Gallagher also looks set to make his mark on the East End as Shameless David Threlfall joins the series - his roguish Abel Croker casts a long shadow over the docks of London.

6) CSI: Whitechapel

Be ready to wow at the pinnacles of modern technology, as the young cohort of new police officers bring the future to Leman Street Station.

"I'm at the forefront of this new generation of policemen who have a new weapon in their armoury," says Lewis.

"The technology of the era is advancing so I'm trying to get everyone to use a telephone and this wonderful new device called a microreader."

Monday, 9pm, BBC Two
Harness racings newest stars battled it out Saturday night (August 20) at Mohawk Racetrack in Grand Circuit action.

The Nassagaweya and Eternal Camnation Stakes put two-year-old pacers in the spotlight. Each event carried a total purse of $211,000 and saw two divisions contested. Many of the rookies battling in Saturdays stakes were preparing for next weeks Metro Pace and Shes A Great Lady eliminations.

The Nassagaweya Stakes started off with a bang, as 60-1 longshot Rock This Way pulled off a stunning upset over eight other colts and geldings in the $106,250 first division.

Bettors Dream was made the 1-5 heavy favourite, as the Scott McEneny trainee carried a perfect three-for-three record into the event. Driven by Doug McNair, the son of Bettors Delight left hard and cleared to the lead at the opening quarter in :26.3.

There was no breather for Bettors Dream in the second-quarter, as 30-1 shot Classic Pro was parked out and pressing the leader to the half in :53.4. McNair kept Classic Pro to the outside, as Bettors Dream continued to power along around the far turn and took the field by the three-quarter pole in 1:22.3.

The big fractions set up well for those near the back to make a stretch bid, including Rock This Way and Mario Baillargeon. The 60-1 longshot got away last and was into the outer flow around the final turn, but continued to sit ninth.

In the stretch, Bettors Dream dug in to try and finish the job, but Rock This Way unleashed a :27.3 final quarter to sweep by his rivals for the 1:51.3 victory. Bettors Dream was a game second, finishing two and a half lengths behind the winner. Classic Pro also showed grit and hung in to finish third.

Trained by Ben Baillargeon, Rock This Way is owned and was bred by Santo and Nunzio Vena. The gelded son of Rocknroll Hanover was winless in four prior starts to Saturday, but Mario Baillargeon had plenty of confidence in the rookie after his start a week ago.

Last week he came his last three-quarters in 1:21.4, said Baillargeon. Hes been battling sickness, but he was our best colt all winter.

Baillargeon noted many similarities between Rock This Way and another horse he had plenty of success with back in 2002.

I always told Ben [Baillargeon] that he reminds me of Totally Western. Totally Western was a great two-year-old and he acts exactly like him.

Rock This Way, who is eligible to next weeks Metro Pace eliminations, entered the Nassagaweya Stakes with just $700 earned, but exits with a bankroll of $53,825. He returned $140 to win.

The second division of the Nassagaweya didnt feature a major upset, but saw a great three-horse finish.

A field of eight clashed in the $104,750 second split. Macs Jackpot went off as the even-money favourite for new trainer Tony OSullivan, who also sent out Calvin K.

Driven by Sylvain Filion, Macs Jackpot got away fourth, while Windsong Napoleon cut an opening quarter of :27.1. Calvin K quickly leapfrogged from second to first entering the backstretch and led the field by the half in :55.3.

Filion was able to pick up cover around the final turn, as Macs Jackpot sat second over. Meanwhile, Calvin K continued to motor along on the lead and had more than three lengths on the field at the three-quarter pole in 1:23.3.

In the stretch, Calvin K had almost five lengths on his rivals with an eighth of a mile to go, but Macs Jackpot and Darlings Dragon, who was third over on the final turn, both hit their best strides late to make it a wild finish. Macs Jackpot reached up in the final strides to score the 1:52 victory. Darlings Dragon finished second by a head, while Calvin K was beat a neck in third.

A son of Somebeachsomewhere, Macs Jackpot had been racing south of the border for trainer Jim Campbell and was sent up to OSullivan by owner/breeder Jeffrey Snyder for the Nassagaweya and other stakes events.

We literally just got him this week, said OSullivan following the race. I trained him a trip and he felt like hes a big powerful gelding and Jim had said that he was kind of going in the right direction, so all the credit goes to Jim Campbell.

Macs Jackpot is the third foal out of Michelles Power, a winner of $1.3 million. He now has three wins in six starts and $79,569 earned. Macs Jackpot paid $4.10 to win.

Over on the pacing filly side, the first $105,550 Eternal Camnation division saw Candlelight Dinner improve to four-for-four to start her career with a 1:52.2 score.

The Casie Coleman trainee was unhurried off the wings of the gate by driver Jonathan Drury and patiently made her way towards the front. Parked by the opening quarter in :27.4, Candlelight Dinner quickly grabbed command entering the backstretch and it was lights out from there.

The daughter of American Ideal posted middle-half panels of :56.4 and 1:25, before firing home in :27.2 to win at odds of 1-9. Happy Hannah finished a length and a half behind Candlelight Dinner in second, while Everyones Watching was third.

Following the Eternal Camnation victory, Drury talked about the development of Candlelight Dinner.

She qualified like a real nice filly, did everything you asked of her and did it all on her own, said Drury, who noted he wanted to make things easy for the rookie on Saturday.

I didnt want to push her to the front, I wanted to try and get there as easy as I could.

Candlelight Dinner sold for $110,000 last falls Lexington Selected Yearling Sale. She now has $86,675 earned through four starts for owners Mac Nichol, Let It Ride Stables Inc. and Howard Taylor.

With victories in the Whenuwishuponastar Series final and now the Eternal Camnation, Candlelight Dinner is expected to headline next Saturdays Shes A Great Lady eliminations.

In the $105,550 second division, Bettors Up made a statement of her own with a 1:52.1 victory. The McEneny-trained filly was returning to Mohawk after three starts in the Pennsylvania Sires Stakes, where she posted two victories and a runner-up finish.

Sent off as the 1-2 favourite, Bettors Up and driver James MacDonald got away sixth before making a second quarter brush to the lead. Once on top, the daughter of Bettors Delight posted middle fractions of :57 and 1:25.2.

In the stretch, Bettors Up fired home in :27.2 for a convincing 1:52.1 score. Fade, who got a two-hole trip, was second, while Manhattan Play was third.

Owned by Brad Grant, Teresa Davidson and Michelle McEneny, Bettors Up now has five wins from six starts and earnings of $140,730.

Following the race, Scott McEneny noted that the filly is not eligible to the Shes A Great Lady and next up will be a return to Pennsylvania.

Shes got one more start at The Meadows and then shes got the Pennsylvania Sires Stakes final, he said.

Bettors Up paid $3 to win.

Many of these two-year-olds will return for their respective stakes eliminations next Saturday. The Grand Circuit continues at Mohawk on Friday evening (August 26), as three-year-old trotting fillies will battle in the Casual Breeze Stakes.

In Preferred action, State Treasurer now boasts back-to-back victories in the $34,000 top pacing class, with his latest conquest on Saturday night a season's-best 1:48.3 mile over Nickle Bag and Ellis Park. The reigning Horse of the Year was driven by Chris Christoforou and is trained by Dr. Ian Moore for owners Sally MacDonald and Paul MacDonald.

To view Saturday's harness racing results, click on the following link: Saturday Results - Mohawk Racetrack.

(With files from WEG)
Delegates from 86 Countries at Evangelism Explosion Congress of Nations in Indonesia

Contact: Debbie Revitzer, Evangelism Explosion International , 828-214-5686, drevitzer@eeworks.org MALANG, Indonesia, Aug. 22, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Delegates from 86 nations gathered in Malang, Indonesia, in August, for the third triennial Congress of Nations sponsored by Evangelism Explosion International, a global outreach that trains people to share their faith in Jesus Christ.The assembly of Evangelism Explosion leaders from every continent is "very important to the worldwide ministry of EE and, more importantly, to fulfilling Christ's mandate to take the Gospel message to every tribe and every nation," said Dr. John B. Sorensen, President of Evangelism Explosion International.More than 10 million people worldwide professed faith in Jesus Christ through Evangelism Explosion in 2015 and the Congress gives delegates the opportunity to strategize on how to reach even more people with the Gospel. Nation delegates shared methodologies and approved a series of resolutions that were included in a formal Declaration issued at the conclusion of the strategic conclave.The gathering in Malang comes six years after delegates from 30 nations participated in the first Congress of Nations in 2010 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That inaugural Congress launched a new approach to the global work of EEI in which indigenous EE organizations partner to strategize and work together for the effective spread of the Gospel.Founded in 1962 by the late D. James Kennedy, Ph.D., EE was planted in every nation by 1996. It is now intentionally focusing operational strategy of the evangelism equipping outreach to include a growing international covenanted network of indigenous EE partnerships.Each national EE group at the Congress of Nations has met a rigorous set of 12 standards necessary to participate and to be designated as an Evangelism Explosion "Multiplying Nation." Qualifying national groups must be self-supporting and have a board of directors, a national director, paid field staff, and an annual action plan. They must also be actively implementing EE in churches nationwide."By the 2019 Congress, our goal is to have more than 100 nations reach Multiplying status. We're on our way to meeting and possibly exceeding that goal," said Sorensen.EEI's ultimate goal is to see every person on earth have the opportunity to hear the good news about Jesus, and believes a key strategy for that to happen includes equipping Christians through an EE movement in every country.The Congress of Nations includes pageantry with a ceremony in which delegates march into the assembly hall, each carrying their nation's flag."It's not just a ceremony," says Sorensen. "Each of these participating nations represents ministries that are having a profound impact on the world through training people to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the ultimate goalreaching every tribe, every nation and every people group with the good news of salvation through Christ alone!"
Countries & Areas

Search for country or area A Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan B Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi C Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Costa Rica Cote dIvoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia D Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic E Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia F Fiji Finland France G Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana H Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary I Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy J Jamaica Japan Jordan K Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan L Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg M Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique N Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Korea North Macedonia Norway O Oman P Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territories Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Q Qatar R Republic of the Congo Romania Russia Rwanda S Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria T Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu U Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan V Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Y Yemen Z Zambia Zimbabwe
This page may have been moved, deleted, or is otherwise unavailable. To help you find what you are looking for:

Enter Search Term(s):

Still cant find what youre looking for? Send us a message using our contact us form. To report a broken link or other problems with the website, please include the URL.

Thank you for visiting state.gov.
Monday, 22 August 2016 16:25:28 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

According to the Brazil Steel Institute (IABr), Brazilian crude steel production in July this year amounted to 2.7 million metric tons, with a six percent decrease year on year. In the same month, Brazilian rolled steel output decreased by 0.4 percent to 1.91 million metric tons compared to the same month of 2015.

Meanwhile, Brazilian steelmakers produced 17.57 million metric tons of crude steel in the first seven months of this year, down 12 percent year on year. Brazil 's rolled steel product output totaled 12.13 million mt in the given period, down 12.7 percent year on year.

Brazilian domestic steel sales decreased by 3.3 percent year on year in July to 1.38 million metric tons, while domestic sales in the first seven months of this year totaled 9.6 million metric tons, decreasing by 13.9 percent year on year.

Brazil 's exports of steel products in July amounted to 896,100 metric tons, falling by 39 percent, with a value of $402.5 million, down 38.3 percent, both on year-on-year basis. Steel product exports in the January-July period of this year totaled 7.58 million mt, worth $2.95 billion, with an increase of 5.3 percent in volume and a fall of 25 percent in value compared to the same period of last year.
Monday, 22 August 2016 16:47:20 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

Italian plantmaker Danieli has announced that it will supply a new cold strip complex to Vietnam-based steel producer Hoa Phat Steel Sheet. The new plant will be built in the region of Hanoi and will include a push-pickling line with a production capacity of 600,000 mt per year, two reversing cold rolling mills with 200,000 mt capacity per year each and two hot dip galvanizing lines with production capacities of 150,000 mt per year and 350,000 mt per year.





In the new plant, Hoa Phat Steel Sheet will produce high-quality cold rolled galvanized products meeting Japanese, European, Australian and American standards. The commissioning of the complex is foreseen by the end of 2017.
Monday, 22 August 2016 23:24:43 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo

A Peruvian labor authority said a halt at Aceros Arequipas mill in the Arequipa region is unfounded and demanded the company pay their dismissed workers.





Aceros Arequipa, one of Peru s largest steelmakers, suspended activities at its Arequipa mill in late July due to the unfair competition generated by the imports of sections from China at dumped prices, as previously reported by SteelOrbis. Around 98 workers were dismissed.





At the time, at a filing at the nations securities exchange commission, Aceros Arequipa admitted the mill had no conditions to compete given the current economic conjuncture.





Despite the companys claims for idling the mill and dismissing the workers, employees complained to a local labor authority, GRTPE, that the company fired them arbitrarily. The employees demanded payment for their wages as the provisional halt continues.





Aceros Arequipa couldnt explain in an effective way the reasons for suspending operations at its Arequipa mill, and as such, acted in an arbitrary way against its workers, Arequipas labor authority, GRTPE, said.





GRTPE demanded Aceros Arequipa to make justice and pay the workers wages for the time the plant remains idled, noting that the reasons Aceros Arequipa used for suspending its activities are not proportional to the type of halt it adopted.





As the Arequipa mill remains shutdown, the company is concentrating sections production at its Pisco mill as a way to reduce costs. Aceros Arequipa said in July supply of sections to clients wont be affected.


According to the statistics released by the Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs, in July this year Taiwan 's basic metal and basic metal product export orders amounted to $2.0 billion, down 1.2 percent compared to July last year and rising by 0.6 percent compared to the previous month. In June, Taiwan s basic metal and basic metal product orders had recorded a 2.8 percent rise month on month.
Monday, 22 August 2016 17:13:20 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

In the week from August 15 to August 21, on the Orbis Steel Index the Turkish scrap index moved upwards, while the US (East Coast) HMS I/II scrap export index continued to remain stable. In the given week, the Turkish rebar index continued to decrease, while the Turkish flat rolled indexes mostly indicated sideways movement.

As per the Orbis Steel Index data, the index movements in the week from August 15 to August 21 as per product are as follows:

Turkish Scrap Index moved upwards, with the index value rising 1.0 percent to 92.85 compared to the previous week. moved upwards, with the index value rising 1.0 percent to 92.85 compared to the previous week.

US (East Coast) HMS I/II Scrap Export Index moved sideways in the given week, with the index value remaining at 101.65. moved sideways in the given week, with the index value remaining at 101.65.

Turkish Rebar Index continued to decline. The index value fell 1.23 percent to 91.69 compared to the previous week. continued to decline. The index value fell 1.23 percent to 91.69 compared to the previous week.

Turkish HRC Index increased by 0.89 percent week on week to 65.72. increased by 0.89 percent week on week to 65.72.

Black Sea HRC Export Index continued to increase, with the index value rising 2.26 percent week on week to 72.34. continued to increase, with the index value rising 2.26 percent week on week to 72.34.

Turkish HDG Index moved sideways, remaining at 71.29.

Turkish CRC Index continued to move sideways, with the index value remaining at 76.03. continued to move sideways, with the index value remaining at 76.03.

*Explanations:

Turkish Scrap Index: based on the weighted average of prices published by SteelOrbis of domestic ferrous scrap purchased weekly by Turkish steel mills, and imported HMS 80/20 CFR Turkey.

Turkish Rebar Index: based on the weighted average of prices published by SteelOrbis of commercial quality deformed steel reinforcing bars produced and sold by Turkish mills and subsequently merchants, both in the domestic market on ex-warehouse basis and for export on FOB Turkey basis.

Turkish HRC Index: based on the weighted average of prices published by SteelOrbis of commercial quality HRC produced or imported, and then sold by Turkish mills on ex-warehouse basis.

01.01.2005 value is 100.
Monday, 22 August 2016 23:23:48 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro announced the countrys state-run steelmaker Sidor will run at three shifts as a way to boost production.





The company, which remained halted for much of H1 due to lack of electricity, resumed billet output in July, and restarted a rebar rolling mill in August.





According to state-run television network VTV, Maduro guaranteed between 400 and 700 megawatts to each shift, so Sidor can keep running.





Since rains didnt allow us to recover the Guri [dam], well start three special production shifts, Maduro announced, adding he has ordered all needed megawatts to increase Sidors output.





Late in July, a Venezuelan government official said Sidor should end 2016 producing 2 million mt of steel. As for 2017, Sidor is expected to produce some 4.3 million mt of steel.








In one of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's biggest cases tied to the 2008 financial crisis, former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Daniel Mudd has reached a settlement with regulators, according to court papers filed on Monday.

The deal with the SEC, detailed in papers filed in Manhattan federal court, resolves a 2011 lawsuit accusing Mudd of misleading investors about Fannie's exposure to risky mortgages before the crisis.

Mudd had denied wrongdoing and he did not admit any in the Monday agreement. The deal concludes one of the SEC's few remaining cases tied to the housing downturn.

Mudd was one of six executives at mortgage funding giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sued by the SEC. The prosecutions were announced at a press conference in December 2011 but they ended in modest settlements over the following years.

Under terms of the latest deal, Fannie Mae will contribute $100,000 on Mudd's behalf to a Treasury Department account that receives financial gifts to the United States, according to documents.

Fannie's former chief risk officer, Enrico Dallavecchia, and former Executive Vice President, Thomas Lund, agreed to similar terms when they settled for $25,000 and $10,000 respectively in September 2015.

A Fannie Mae spokesman declined to comment on the Mudd case. The SEC did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

Mudd had continued to litigate alone after Lund and Dallavecchia settled last year and he was due to face trial in November.

"I appreciate Fannie Mae and the current leadership of the SEC stepping in to end a case that should have never been brought," Mudd told Reuters.

CRISIS TENURE

Mudd led Fannie Mae as a national housing bubble grew to bursting point from December 2004 to September 2008, when the Treasury Department effectively took control of the company.

That same month, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc filed for bankruptcy as Wall Street was rattled by a wave of mortgage defaults.

Officials injected taxpayer money to stabilize Fannie and it's sibling Freddie which were conceived by Washington to promote home ownership and had helped underwrite a share of the easy-to-get subprime loans.

The SEC had accused Mudd and the five other Fannie and Freddie executives of downplaying the companies' exposure to risky loans.

The SEC said Fannie Mae concealed exposure to more than $100 billion of subprime and $341 billion of Alt-A loans - another class of mortgage offered to risky borrowers.

Former Freddie Mac chief Richard Syron as well as former executives Patricia Cook and Donald Bisenius previously settled their cases for $250,000, $50,000 and $10,000, respectively.

The case is U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Mudd, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-9202.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Andrew Hay)
Bankrupt coal company, Peabody Energy, has reached a financial settlement regarding its cleanup obligations with the state of Illinois, which joins three other states  Wyoming, New Mexico and Indiana  that had similar agreements approved last week.

A statement released by Peabody indicates that a sum of $200 million will be made available to Illinois along with the three other states, and allocated based on a proportion of the company's self-bonding commitments in each.

Last week, a bankruptcy hearing in federal court upheld similar agreements Peabody reached with Wyoming, New Mexico and Indiana to partially fund its cleanup obligations in those states.

Peabody has three mines in Illinois. The motion for the Illinois agreement is expected to be heard in court in September.
NEW YORK  "Good Morning America" co-anchor Amy Robach has apologized for saying "colored people" on Monday's broadcast of the ABC program.

Her use of the term sparked criticism on social media. "Offensive," tweeted one viewer. Another said Robach "gets a pass this time" but vowed to ditch "GMA" for a rival morning program if it happened again.

During a segment on diversity in Hollywood, Robach had noted recent criticism for casting white actors "in what one might assume should be a role reserved for colored people."

After the broadcast, Robach released a statement explaining she had meant to say "people of color."

She called the incident "a mistake" and "not at all a reflection of how I feel or speak in my everyday life."
Girl Scouts have to sell a lot of cookies to raise $1 million, so it must be especially welcome that Peggy Piotraschke of Union decided to donate that amount to the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri.

Piotraschke's pledge sets aside the money for building a new lodge at Camp Fiddlecreek in Labadie. Scout officials said the lodge should be open by 2017.

Saying she had "fond memories" of her stays at the camp, Piotraschke said in a statement, My experiences at camp helped me develop meaningful friendships, leadership skills and an appreciation for nature."

Piotraschkes family has a long tradition of supporting Girl Scouts. Her late mother, Kirkwood artist Myrtle Walker, contributed two of her "Myrtles' Turtles" to the camp. Another pair, donated by Piotraschke, will greet girls at the new lodge.
In partnership with Caleres (formerly Brown Shoe Co.), St. Louis Fashion Week will award a $10,000 grand prize to a fashion brand and a second prize of $5,000 in a fashion-meets-Shark Tank style grant competition and event.

Applications for the competition are open to St. Louis-based apparel and accessories makers and brands now through Sept. 30 at stlfw.com/site/fec. The finalists will be announced Oct. 14.

After years of New York-based finalists winning the grand prize at St. Louis Fashion Week events, this prize is a great way to kick-off the event's next decade and support the city's growing design community as it struggles to remain viable. Tickets for the public event on Nov. 10 at the Majorette, 7150 Manchester Ave., are available at stlfw.com/site/fec.

First, fashion entrepreneurs will pitch their business idea to a panel of business and fashion experts, including representatives from Arch Grants, St. Louis Regional Chamber, Toky Brand & Design, St. Louis Fashion Fund, and Alive Magazine. Those selected as finalist will compete for the cash prizes at the Caleres Fashion Entrepreneur Competition event on Nov. 10 and they'll present their proposals and collection during the event and a third People's Choice prize will be awarded.

Ten years is an impressive milestone for a regional fashion event that fought the odds to survive while similar events in larger communities petered out. This fall there will be 10 weeks of fashion-focused activities to commemorate the milestone starting Sept. 1.

To name a few:

 House Ov Beeombi presents Sept. First., Sept. 1

 Celebrate Style, Sept. 30

 St. Louis Fashion Week presents a fashion panel discussion during St. Louis Design Week, Oct. 5

 An Evening of Ballet & Fashion with St. Louis Ballet and St. Louis Fashion Fund, Oct. 8

 The Factory Fashion Show and Night Market, Oct. 8

 Living Collective Pop-Up Shop, Oct. 15

See the full calendar of events at stlfw.com.

The anniversary coincides with the St. Louis Fashion Incubators upcoming announcement of its inaugural class of designers. The announcement will take place on Wednesday in New York, followed later this year by the official launch of the incubator at 1533 Washington Ave.

The St. Louis Fashion Incubator is a two-year intensive residency program open to emerging designers across the country. The program includes pro bono studio space in St. Louis, a stipend, mentorship and business support.
Clayton native Shannon Vincel, ever the optimist, had finished chemotherapy and was undergoing radiation at a treatment center in Illinois, ready to beat breast cancer for good and get on with her life, Vincels mother said Monday.

She certainly was looking forward to being Shannon again, said Anita Adam, 86. Shed lost all her hair, but she dealt with it so well. She just accepted it: This is what Ive been dealt, Im going to take care of it and get better.

She was a girl unto herself.

That hopeful spirit will be remembered Tuesday at St. Clement of Rome Catholic Church, when mourners gather for Shannon Vincels funeral. Vincel, 46, was attacked by a stranger and fatally beaten last week in Zion, Ill., as she waited for a shuttle to the Cancer Treatment Centers of America.

Police say she and another person were sitting outside on the evening of Aug. 15 when a man in dark clothing approached Vincel from behind and struck her in the head with an unknown object. The attacker ran off. Adam said her daughter was on life support and died the next day. The Lake County Major Crime Task Force and the Zion Police Department are investigating. They reported no developments in the case on Monday morning.

I feel like Im in a nightmare ... how anyone could be so cruel? her mother said.

Police have made no arrests. The Cancer Treatment Centers is offering a $25,000 reward for information. Cancer Treatment Centers of America is in Zion, north of Chicago.

Adam said Vincel, who lived in Springfield, Mo., was born and raised in Clayton. She attended Our Lady of Lourdes and then Clayton High School before heading to Springfield for Drury University.

She returned home to work for her father, the late Gary Vincel, at his Pontiac dealership. She also worked in retail, was a hair stylist and did volunteer work. She returned to Springfield about 10 years ago to be around her many friends.

Vincel heard about the treatment centers from a friend. She would travel there for the week, living in the hospitals extended-stay housing; she would fly back home on weekends to tend to her cat and bearded dragon. She had finished her chemo and had had two weeks of her eight-week radiation treatment when she was killed.

Whenever shed walk into the hospital, Adam said, shed always say, Oh, what a beautiful morning. So optimistic. She never complained about anything.

Adam said she was extremely close to her daughter. They talked two or three times a day. Vincel would end every conversation telling her mother she loved her, just as she did the day she was attacked.

Its broken my heart. I cant believe shes gone, Adam said.

The funeral will be at noon Tuesday at St. Clement of Rome Catholic Church, 1510 Bopp Road in Des Peres. Visitation will be at 11 a.m. at the church. In addition to her mother, Vincel is survived by her stepfather Eugene Adam, of Town and Country; and two sisters, Fabienne Vincel, of Chesterfield, and Lucian Vincel, of St. Louis.
ZION, Ill.  Cancer Treatment Centers of America is offering a $25,000 reward for information in the death of a Missouri patient beaten to death outside her Illinois hospital residence.

The health care facility in Zion, north of Chicago near the Wisconsin border, announced the reward Thursday. Police are investigating the Monday night beating of 46-year-old Shannon Vincel of Springfield, Mo., who died Tuesday. Police say Vincel was sitting outside her hospital residence on Monday night when someone hit her in the head with an unknown object. Authorities say she suffered "severe head trauma."

Authorities have said the attacker was dressed in dark clothing and ran off.

Vincel's sister, Fabienne Vincel, says she hopes the reward money "leads to the quick capture" of the attacker.

Cancer Treatment Center of America spokeswoman Kirsten Gerlach says security around the Zion facility has been increased.
A federal judge has barred the Ferguson-Florissant School District from conducting school board elections, ruling that the current political process is stacked against African-American voters.

U.S. District Judge Rodney W. Sippel said that while he does not see evidence of intentional discrimination, there is a more subtle complex interaction of political processes that deter black voters from electing the candidates of their choice.

Rather, it is my finding that the cumulative effects of historical discrimination, current political practices, and the socioeconomic conditions present in the District impact the ability of African-Americans in (the school system) to participate equally in Board elections, the judge concluded in a 119-page ruling issued Monday.

The Ferguson-Florissant district serves about 11,200 students in parts of 11 municipalities. About 80 percent of those students are black, and 12 percent are white. District residents are nearly evenly split between black and white.

The ruling states that the election system is in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As a result, the Court enjoins Defendants from conducting any elections for the Districts Board until a new system may be properly implemented, the judge ruled.

The ruling calls for a status conference on Friday to discuss a remedies briefing schedule to further address the matter. The courts decision applies only to the Ferguson-Florissant district.

Julie Ebenstein, the ACLU attorney who argued the case, said one possible remedy would be to do away with or curtail the use of at-large elections, in which candidates for school board must win the support of voters across the entire school system. Such a system may be stacked against blacks.

Imagine, she said, a district with 10 open school board seats. If 70 percent of voters are white and 30 percent are black, and people vote along racial lines, its possible that nearly all the seats on the board could be filled by white candidates.

Ebenstein said a possible approach may be to also have candidates run in specific geographic areas of the school district. That way, she said, black candidates might be more likely to prevail in areas with a higher concentration of black voters.

Voting patterns

All other school districts in the state, except Kansas City, have at-large school board elections, said Missouri School Boards Association spokesman Brent Ghan.

While the ruling could lead to other voting methods in Ferguson-Florissant, Missouri law would have to change in order to alter how other school districts vote.

Ghan said at-large voting is typically the preferable system because it works well in most of the state to ensure district-wide representation.

Cindy Ormsby, the lawyer for the Ferguson-Florissant School District, agreed an at-large voting system works best for African-American representation.

She said Monday the district continues to believe the system does not violate the federal Voting Rights Act. She points to the fact that three of the current seven board members are African-American and that black candidates have won seats in each of the past three years.

However, looking at the race of the board members to determine whether theres a problem is too simplistic, said ACLU Missouri Legal Director Tony Rothert.

This (case) is really just about the right to elect the candidates of your choice, he said.

In much of the decision, the judge wades through competing expert testimony on voting patterns in the Ferguson-Florissant district.

In doing so, the judge seeks to determine whether legal standards have been satisfied to demonstrate a violation of voting rights. Those standards are spelled out in the 1986 federal case of Thornberg v. Gingles.

Among those tests is whether voting across the school system has been racially polarized.

More to the point, the judge asks  as prescribed in the Gingles case  whether candidates favored by blacks have been historically less likely to prevail than those favored by whites.

Looking at a decade of election returns, the judge found that to be the case.

Over that period, the most-favored candidates among blacks won three of seven times, compared to seven out of seven victories for the candidate most favored by whites.

In court, the school district focused on the most recent success of black candidates.

Among them is Donna Thurman, who was elected to the board in 2014. The election followed the controversial ouster of Superintendent Art McCoy, who is black and popular among African-Americans.

A year later  following the racial turmoil that accompanied the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer  voters elected Courtney Graves, who is also African-American.

But the judge ruled that the successes of black candidates in both those elections were due to special circumstances and are not representative of typical election years.

The case was argued in January. In April, Constance Connie Harge, who is black, was elected, securing the most votes of any candidate.

The judge said he considered the most recent election in his ruling, though he did not have the benefit of expert testimony on its significance.

An unequal voice

In 1988, Doris Graham became the first African-American woman to be elected to the board, and she did it without putting her photo on campaign fliers. Years later, she heard some voters in the district say that they had voted for her thinking she was Delores Graham, a well-known principal who was white.

Nobody deliberately said were going to make it hard for Doris to win, Doris Graham said. But the structure thats in place makes it hard for a black person to win.

The at-large structure tilts in favor of white candidates with strong civic or business ties in Ferguson, she said.

They have always felt they are the better to lead the district. They dont reach out for a black candidate like myself.

Graham lost her bid for re-election in 2011.

Ormsby, the lawyer for Ferguson-Florissant, said the district is reviewing its options, including an appeal of the courts decision.

ACLUs Rothert said he believes the Ferguson-Florissant case highlights state voting methods, including at-large and alternative voting systems, that can cause African-American voters to have an unequal voice.

The Legislature might want to look at if its wise to keep mechanisms in place that tend to dilute the votes of African-Americans, he said.

Elisa Crouch of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.
Kevin McDermott Kevin McDermott is a member of the Post-Dispatch Editorial Board. Follow Kevin McDermott 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

Missouri Republican gubernatorial candidate Eric Greitens is out with a new general election ad that continues the kinder, gentler theme he has taken up since the end of the primary campaign.

Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, made waves in Missouri and nationally for a primary campaign commercial in which he shoots a military-style semi-automatic rifle across a field to spark an explosion. The ad had no real issue focus, and was widely seen as a blunt appeal to testosterone in the GOP base.

Greitens' first commercial of the general election was a classic pivot to more substance and a more humanitarian tone. That ad features Greitens talking about how he started The Mission Continues, an organization that arranges community service projects to be undertaken by returning U.S. service members.

The newest Greitens ad continues that theme, this time with an interview of a returning U.S. Army sergeant talking about what Greitens' organization did to bring purpose back into his life after was diagnosed with PTSD. The ad can be viewed HERE.

Greitens faces the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, in the Nov. 8 general election.
JEFFERSON CITY  Those paying a visit to www.judybaker.com expecting the campaign website of the Democratic candidate for Missouri treasurer are going to be in for a bit of a surprise.

All they'll find is a distorted image of former state Rep. Judy Baker, with text splashed across reading, "Judy Baker Missouri's Obamacare Architect." That's because Baker doesn't own judybaker.com. Her opponent does.

She's running for treasurer  the state's chief financial officer  against state Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Glendale Republican whose campaign has bought the domain name for that website. Her real website is found at www.showmebaker.com.

It's become a common practice in politics known as "domain squatting," where opponents or other interested parties buy up the domain names of candidates who haven't thought ahead to purchase different variations of their potential URLs.

For example, in the Republican presidential primary election, candidate Carly Fiorina didn't register www.carlyfiorina.org. On the day she announced her candidacy, opponents used that address to host a site slamming her for laying off employees at Hewlett-Packard.

Campaigning in the digital age, it's a chance for opponents to expose anyone who might instinctively visit a politician's first and last name plus ".com" to a negative ad about that candidate.

In this case, the website is criticizing Baker for her role in implementing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in Missouri as regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In a statement Monday, Baker's campaign said the "shadowy" website was meant to undermine her campaign after polling has shown a close race.

"Eric Schmitt will follow in Donald Trump's footsteps, stoking fear and hatred in the name of his own political gain," it said.
WASHINGTON  In attempting to keep control of the United States Senate, Republicans have seized upon a $400 million payment to Iran that critics say amounted to ransom to four Americans held in Iran who were released at about the same time the payment was made in January.

The State Department had long denied it was a payment for hostages and that it was in keeping with long-standing U.S. policy to not pay ransom. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said those claiming it was ransom were really attacking President Barack Obamas controversial deal with Iran that Earnest said has prevented Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

But last week, the White House acknowledged that the release of the $400 million to Iran  which the U.S. agreed was due to that country as part of an earlier agreement  was contingent upon the release of prisoners.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who raised questions about the payment in January in the Post-Dispatch, is using the controversy in his fundraising appeals. And Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., who, like Blunt, faces a tough re-election challenge in November, now is promising to hold hearings on the payments when Congress returns for a brief session next month.

Its emblematic of emerging Republican attempts to portray a GOP-controlled Senate as a check on Hillary Clinton if the Democratic nominee  whose trustworthiness is questioned by large swaths of Americans, according to polls  becomes the next president. Clinton has opened a lead over Donald Trump nationally, and in several battleground states, since the national political conventions last month.

Kirk, who faces Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Schaumburg, is the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance. He said Sunday he would hold a hearing on whether the payment was a quid pro quo for the release of American hostages, and whether the money was used to finance terrorism by groups aligned with Iran.

Blunt, who faces Democratic Secretary of State Jason Kander in November, sent out a fundraising email that made reference to him questioning Secretary of State John Kerry about the payments in a hearing this spring.

After misleading the American people, the Obama administration has now admitted that it withheld its $400 million cash payment to Iran until the hostages were released, proving what I and many others have said from the beginning: This was a ransom to a terrorist regime that has backed deadly attacks against America and our allies, Blunt says in the fundraising appeal.

Kander was one of the earliest Democratic candidates to oppose the overall nuclear arms agreement with Iran, and he told KRCG in Jefferson City this month that if the $400 million was indeed ransom, it would be unacceptable.
Police armed with rifles and backed by an armored vehicle surrounded the house on South Pennsylvania Avenue near McClintock Avenue in east Belleville. After speaking with police negotiators, the man left the house on his own about 3 p.m. and was taken to a hospital for observation, KTVI-TV (Channel 2) reported.
BRENTWOOD  Pull into the Promenade at Brentwood right now and history is probably the last thing on your mind.

Its the future, rather. As in, how do you get in and out of the sweltering retail jungle and back on the highway with the quickest bearing home.

The shopping plaza parking lot  and the rest of tiny Brentwood for that matter  is smack at the crossroads of the St. Louis region. Highway 40 (Interstate 64) buzzes with traffic headed downtown and to west St. Louis County. Interstate 170, which abruptly ends here, runs to points north such as Clayton and the airport, while Brentwood Boulevard juts south, to Webster Groves.

All the bustle and development makes it hard to remember the tight-knit black community called Evans Place that used to be where Target and Trader Joes are today. Same with the sprawling brickyards where many worked. And the time in the 1960s when the factory went up in flames and was the biggest fire this city of 8,000 people had ever seen.

It was wood and the floor was saturated with some kind of solvent, said Dan Fitzgerald, 57, who grew up here. When I was a kid, I could see the glow from my house, and my house was a mile away.

Fitzgerald is part of the old blood that built Brentwoods solid foundation by staying put and involved. In that way, he stands out from a town whose residents are increasingly transplants and may have little interest in local history.

Fitzgeralds children attend the same school he did as a child. Instead of bouncing around, hes always worked at the local police department, most recently as chief.

He wears a lot of hats, including being president of the Brentwood Historical Society, which has fallen on hard times because of lack of interest.

To be honest, we really havent had a meeting in over a year, he said.

In the 1980s, residents came together to preserve stories about Evans Place and all kinds of other stitches, big and small, in the citys fabric. Most recently, the society has been in a house at 8754 Rosalie Avenue. It was open for a few hours on Friday mornings. Residents might drop off a briefcase full of photos and scrapbooks for the collection after a relative died. Or peruse a high school yearbook.

But like many of the historic places around town, even the historical society has now closed, which raises a question: What is left of original Brentwood?

No old-town barbers. No old-town doctors office, really, said Fitzgerald, offering a loose accounting of the place. Never even thought about that lately, but it really has gotten to that point. Everything is gone. What some people will tell you is that we have progressed. But there are a lot of folks here who miss that kind of old-time feel. Theres a sentiment that they wish they would stop building all this retail stuff because weve lost the old places where we used to hang out.

That jarred an obvious omission.

Carls Drive-In. Its a couple of blocks from the chiefs house. The diner on Manchester Road dates to 1959. Patrons belly up to the counter to eat paper-thin burgers cooked on the griddle and wash it down with draft root beer served in frosty mugs.

Weve seen kids start kindergarten then graduate college, said Pam Martin, a waitress there.

Relying on retail

Carls is a throwback to when Brentwood hadnt been redeveloped into a retail dream. Today, 64 percent of the citys revenue comes from sales tax.

In 2015, the website NerdWallet named Brentwood as the third-best place in Missouri to start a business, behind Creve Coeur and Clayton. The report said Brentwood had 1,350 businesses that averaged $1.73 million in annual revenue.

They talk about food deserts, said Chad Carpenter, 38, a software designer and father of three who lives here. This is an oasis.

While retail provides modern conveniences and keeps local taxes down, it also has raised concerns about traffic congestion and a diminished sense of place, according to Brentwoods most recent comprehensive plan, which was finalized in 2006.

Residents feel that Brentwood is indistinguishable from its neighbors and that the community has begun to lose its small town charm, the report states. They want the city, transportation departments, and developers to pay more attention to the elements of good urban design; to engage in more place-making.

Critics such as Louise Charboneau, 69, say the plan was too vague and pointed to the citys approval last week of a six-story, 80-unit apartment complex  the Metro on Manchester  at the corner of Manchester and Hanley roads.

Whats more, further back in the residential areas, a transformation is well underway. Small, old housing stock is being replaced with bigger, modern homes.

We dont have strong enough enforcement standards to ensure compatible design of the in-fill housing so it doesnt stick out like a sore thumb, said Charboneau, who lives in an old house on Madge Avenue and is a regular at public meetings. She added: We have no formal tree policy.

Others say the residential development is needed.

I like the bigger houses, said Kevin Madras, 57, a longtime resident out walking a dog. It allows families to move in.

Paul Juranek, 59, transferred here from New Jersey a few years ago. His family lives in a home that was built in 2003. He said a home being built across the street from them replaced an eyesore.

When you build these newer homes you are probably going to have owners versus renters, he said, which is good for the overall growth of Brentwood.

Strong schools

Despite major changes to Brentwood, which covers less than 2 square miles, there are cheerleaders in the mix who say the city hasnt lost its identity.

Brentwood probably seems boring surrounded by ritzy Clayton, party animal Maplewood and expensively quaint Webster Groves and Kirkwood, Steve Bowman, editor of TheBrentwoodSpirit.com, said in an email. But underneath the surface, the school district is superb, our cops and firefighters are friendly and the city government is responsive (because they live next door). The houses might seem small, but we actually get to spend time in them instead of in our cars.

Many here say the community is held together by its award-winning school district, which superintendent David Faulkner said is the smallest in St. Louis County. As former principal of the high school, which graduated 62 seniors last year and didnt have any dropouts, he said he knew each students name.

When you know somebody as a person, it changes the way you interact, he said. There is a closeness that you wont get from a factory-sized school.

The schools main rivalry is rooted in Brentwoods creation that was done in 1919 to avoid being annexed by its neighbor, Maplewood.

The spirit of wanting Brentwood to be Brentwood is still here several generations after it was formed, Faulkner said.

As evolving Brentwood gets ready to upgrade its future development goals again, there are also plans to lean on the archives at the historical society for the citys centennial celebration.

The historical society building is closed, but it hasnt been paved over. There will be old stories to unearth and share.

Fitzgerald is in charge of putting it all together. We are just now starting to get that cooking, he said. In another few years, the historical society will start to have a more active part in the community again. Right now, we are just kind of on hold.
Robert Bobby Sansone, longtime head of St. Louis powerful Teamsters organization throughout the 1980s, died Friday (Aug. 19, 2016) of respiratory failure at the age of 78, according to his family. His uplifting personality made him one of the citys most gregarious and colorful labor leaders.

For a dozen years, Mr. Sansone was Missouris top Teamster as president of Joint Council 13, which represented St. Louis 35,000 members. He was also past president of Teamsters Local 682 and executive secretary-treasurer of the St. Louis Building and Construction Trades Council. He served as labors co-chairman of PRIDE, St. Louis nationally recognized group that strives for labor-management harmony in construction.

There may be a more ebullient, people-oriented trade unionist somewhere in the country, but none comes to mind, wrote union and labor expert Philip Dine when Mr. Sansone retired in 1998. Dine was a reporter for the Post-Dispatch at the time.

Marvin Kropp, the current president of Joint Council 13, wrote a tribute Sunday on social media, describing Mr. Sansone as a man who worked tirelessly to advance the St. Louis labor movement and a mentor to many. If there was a labor problem, Bob was there, Kropp wrote. If he met you once, he remembered your name; and not only yours, but your entire family.

Mr. Sansone worked since the age of 16, when he got a Teamsters union card to drive a dump truck at a concrete plant in St. Louis. When he got out of the Army at the age of 26, he was hired as a business agent at Local 682 and worked his way up the ranks.

But in an upset, Mr. Sansone lost a bid in 1991 for vice president of the 1.4-million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Two years later, after a quarter-century as a Teamster official, Sansone was banned from the organization for failing to look into an aides alleged mob ties. The civil charges were part of the governments effort to crack down on the union after settlement of a racketeering suit.

Mr. Sansones appeal had failed, despite three volumes of affidavits from St. Louis political, civic and business leaders.

The youngest of Mr. Sansones two sons, Nicholas Sansone, 44, of Fairview Heights, said his father never let that or other setbacks dim his spirit.

He handled it with the utmost integrity and never looked back on it, the younger Sansone said. That will always resonate with me for the rest of my life.

On a personal note, Nicholas Sansone remembers he and his brother having to wear tuxedos to their dads award dinners. Their dad also was dressed to the nines. He always made sure his hair was right, the suit was right and the tan was right, his son laughed. He was a dapper guy.

Mr. Sansone was a devout Catholic, and for the last several years, he spent his Sunday mornings serving coffee at St. Vincent DePaul Parish, which provides outreach to the homeless, Nicholas Sansone said. It gave him the most joy.

Survivors include his wife of 30 years, Terri Sansone, of Chesterfield; another son, Joseph Sansone, 47, of St. Louis; a sister, Mary Ann Barthelmass; and two grandchildren.

Visitation is 3 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Kutis Affton Chapel, 10151 Gravois Road. Funeral services will begin at 10:15 a.m. Wednesday at the chapel with 11 a.m. Mass at St. Anselm Catholic Parish. Interment follows at Resurrection Ceremony, 6901 Mackenzie Road.

Donations can be made to St. Vincent DePaul Parish, 1408 South 10th Street, St. Louis, Mo., 63104; or Most Holy Trinity Scholarship Fund in care of the St. Anselm Parish, 530 South Mason Road, Creve Coeur, Mo., 63141.
ST. LOUIS  On Aug. 22, 1876, voters in St. Louis and St. Louis County went to the polls to decide the region's most fateful ballot question - the "Great Divorce," or whether to split the city away from the county.

The idea narrowly carried the city but lost badly in the county. That should have been the end of it. But the tale is a complicated affair, as it has been ever since with any serious public issue straddling the city-county line.

In the years after the Civil War, business leaders of the fast-growing city became aggravated by what they considered meddling by the Missouri Legislature, made possible largely through statutes empowering St. Louis County government. As always, a big issue was taxation. Pro-separation leaders considered county government redundant and burdensome.

In 1875, the city was St. Louis County's largest municipality, and its boundary reached just past Grand Boulevard. But the 1870 population of 310,864 represented a 30 percent increase in the five years since war's end. The unincorporated county, meanwhile, was home to barely 31,000 souls. Kirkwood was a whistle-stop 12 blocks square, Ferguson a lonely station platform, Creve Coeur a post office. The future site of the courthouse in the future Clayton was a farm.

A special Board of Freeholders proposed to expand the city limit, separate it entirely from the county and create a city home-rule charter. The new boundary would more than triple the city's area, to 61.37 square miles, and take in Forest, Carondelet and O'Fallon parks. With so much land west of Grand undeveloped, boosters thought there was plenty of room.

Opposition came from rural interests and ward politicians such as Edward Butler, the city's closest example of a Tammany-style boss. When the votes were counted, city residents approved the split 11,878 to 11,525, but countians trounced it 2,617 to 848, for an overall "no" margin of 1,416 votes.

Prominent promoters cried foul and rushed to court. Hearings found such likely fraud as a rural precinct that recorded 132 votes against and two in favor, with 128 ballots showing eraser marks. A Butler minion, pressed in court about irregularities, blurted: "I deny the facts."

The Missouri Court of Appeals, including the vigorously pro-city Judge Thomas Gantt, eventually affirmed the tossing of 5,068 ballots, most of them "no" votes, for an overall victory margin of 1,253. The city declared itself independent in March 1877, and the courthouse crowd conceded.

Ever since, efforts to repair the divorce have taken upon a Humpty Dumpty difficulty. In 1926, a reconciliation carried in the city and failed in the county. In 1962, both sides of Skinker Boulevard rejected a New York-style borough plan. Pro-merger forces have had to content themselves with such steps as the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, the Zoo-Museum District and the regional sales tax for trails.

And finally, in May of 2019, after months of widespread and unflagging criticism, organizers of the city-county merger initiative called Better Together, pulled their beleaguered consolidation proposal from ballot consideration.

From Auguste Chouteau to Jon Hamm: A whirlwind tour of St. Louis history in photos On Feb. 15, 1764, Auguste Chouteau began construction of what would become St. Louis. The 15-year-old, led a group of men to the spot picked 
CREVE COEUR  A proposal to bump the minimum age for tobacco purchases to 21 years of age from the current 18 in St. Louis County is about to land on the desk of county lawmakers.

Councilman Sam Page, an anesthesiologist, announced plans to introduce the legislation Monday morning at a Mercy St. Louis briefing attended by health and medical professionals from across the region.

The start of the school year is the perfect time to hit the reset button, Page said. It is far too easy to purchase tobacco products in St. Louis County.

If enacted, St. Louis County will join Columbia, Mo., 18 metropolitan Kansas City municipalities and local governments in 12 other states in adopting what is known nationally as Tobacco 21 or T21 ordinances.

The age restriction would cover the sale of vape products in addition to cigarettes, cigars and smokeless tobacco.

The T21 legislation in Missouris most populous county has the potential to cut into underage cigarette sales in a state that ranks among the top 10 nationally in tobacco use by young people.

A recent survey cited by Page determined that 8 percent of Missouri high school students reported trying cigarettes before the age of 13. The national average is 6.6 percent.

Additional studies have placed tobacco use among Missouri high school students at 17.1 percent compared to 14 percent nationally.

Health experts say Missouri inflates teen smoking rates with the lowest tobacco tax in the U.S.

The tobacco industry continually loses its customer base because it has a product that kills people, said Karen Englert, government relations director for the St. Louis area chapter of the American Heart Association. As a result they need replacement customers  our children.

Anti-tobacco advocates say hiking the minimum purchase age has had a profound impact on teen smoking rates elsewhere.

In Needham, Mass., teenage tobacco use dropped by 47 percent in the five years after the 21-and-older benchmark took hold, according to an analysis by the academic researcher, EDC.

Does it eliminate teen smoking? asked Ginny Chadwick, who while a member of the City Council spearheaded the T21 initiative in Columbia. No. But this is more effective than any other tobacco prevention program, including raising taxes or quality indoor air ordinances.

The T21 legislation will mark the second time this year St. Louis County has taken the lead on a health issue.

Led by Page, the County Council in March passed a prescription drug monitoring program  the first in the state to establish a database that physicians and pharmacies can use to track the distribution of Oxycontin and other opioid painkillers.

Jackson County in June began the process of adopting similar legislation. The policy is under consideration in St. Louis and other nearby jurisdictions.

Blocked by a legislator who claims the program impedes individual liberties, Missouri alone has yet to enact a statewide tracking system for prescription opioids.

Page said he hopes county adoption of T21  like the monitoring program  will prompt regional cooperation.

Chadwick acknowledged raising the minimum age for tobacco sales in one jurisdiction to the exclusion of neighboring communities can present a challenge.

But since increasing the age limit in late 2014, Chadwick said Columbia has found the kids who are already addicted to tobacco products will go across the border to get (cigarettes). But because the products are harder to get, the kids who arent addicted wont bother to drive to the next county.

The T21 legislation being sought by Page clashes with the councils reluctance to expand a county indoor smoking ban to the 135 establishments currently exempted.

The unwillingness to force the River City Casino and Hotel in the Lemay area, the Hollywood Casino in Maryland Heights, a handful of bowling alleys and a number of smaller watering holes to abide by the no-smoking rules has drawn fire from anti-tobacco and health activists.

Page on Monday distanced T21 from a three-year delay on expanded smoking ban legislation.

This fixes a lot of problems, the Democrat said, acknowledging that there are other issues out there. But we need to tackle them one at a time.

Phil Abraham, Washington University pediatrician and chair of the St. Louis Tobacco 21, said Monday the time for addressing teen smoking in St. Louis County and regionally has come.

Why wait until the next 13-year-old picks up his first cigarette? Abraham asked.
Can we be assured that the plant will not pollute our land or water supply so that we are not discovering something decades later like so many areas in Missouri?
LONDON MARKET CLOSE: FTSE makes weekly gain but banks weigh on Friday

Friday, October 28, 2022 - 17:08

The FTSE 100 managed a weekly gain, despite underperforming peers on Friday, while strong results from oil majors lifted the mood in New York, shaking off poor numbers from Amazon.

Central banks move into focus again next week. The Federal Reserve announces its rate decision on Wednesday, with the Bank of England following on Thursday.

The FTSE 100 index closed down 26.02 points, or 0.4% at 7,047.67 on Friday, but finished the week 1.1% higher.

The FTSE 250 ended down 165.25 points, or 0.9%, at 17,916.67 - closing the week up 4.1%. The AIM All-Share closed down 4.09 points, or 0.5%, at 805.37, finishing 2.7% higher over the past five days

The Cboe UK 100 ended down 0.5% at 703.81, the Cboe UK 250 closed down 1.0% at 15,378.84, and the Cboe Small Companies ended down 0.5% at 12,320.39.

The pound was quoted at $1.1595 at the London equities close Friday, up slightly from $1.1573 at the close on Thursday. Though sterling's marked rise tempered slightly on Friday, the currency has gained 3.2% over the past week.

Markets have so far taken confidence from the new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

In the FTSE 100, Centrica added 5.2% after it announced the reopening of the Rough natural gas storage facility off the east coast of England.

Centrica, which owns British Gas, said the facility is operational for winter. The facility increases the UK's storage capacity by 50% despite it operating at just 20% of its previous capacity.

GSK closed up 2.3% after it said its majority owned ViiV Healthcare venture has received the European Medicines Agency's validation for its marketing authorisation application for HIV prevention, and said its MAA for respiratory syncytial virus adult vaccine has also been accepted.

NatWest was the worst performer. It plunged 8.3% as it reported strong income growth in the third quarter, boosted by both increased lending and higher interest rates, but the bank warned it is keeping a close on eye on any change in behaviour from its customers.

In the three months to September 30, operating profit before tax rose to 1.09 billion from 976 million a year before.

Putting a cap on the bank's profit, NatWest set aside 247 million in the quarter to cover an expected increase in bad loans, which is reversed from a 221 million gain the year prior.

Lloyds fell 3.3% in negative read across.

Glencore fell 1.0% as it trimmed annual guidance for some of its commodities after a disappointing third-quarter performance dominated by supply chain disruptions in Kazakhstan, extreme weather in Australia, and strikes in Canada and Norway.

In the FTSE 250, ASOS tumbled 11%.

The stock was rocked by a Telegraph report which stated some hedge funds have shorted the stock, just days after retailer Frasers bought a stake.

Elsewhere in London, China-focused investment trusts fell.

JPMorgan China Growth & Income fell 2.9% and abrdn China Investment dropped 3.5%.

Investor sentiment turned sour as Chinese cities doubled down on Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.

Stocks in New York were firmly in the green at the London equities close, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 2.0%, the S&P 500 index up 1.7% and the Nasdaq Composite up 1.8%.

After disappointment from tech stocks, oil majors put some shine on this week's US corporate earnings calendar.

Exxon Mobil revenue in the third quarter of 2022 jumped 52% to $112.07 billion from $73.79 billion a year prior. Attributable net income soared to $19.66 billion from $6.75 billion. The oil major's bottom line rose 10% from $17.85 billion in the second quarter.

Chevron posted pretax earnings of $14.80 billion, up from $8.06 billion the year before. Revenue increased to $66.64 billion from $44.71 billion the year before.

Exxon shares rose 1.8%, while Chevron was up 0.3%. Amazon slid 10%, after its poor numbers overnight.

Wall Street also shook off a higher inflation reading for the US on Friday.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Fed's preferred inflationary measure, the core personal consumption expenditures index, which excludes food and energy, shot up 5.1% year-on-year in September, quickening from a 4.9% hike in August.

"The Fed's favoured measure of inflation is heading higher, rather than lower, while employment costs continue to rise at double the rate experienced over the past 15 years. The market is probably right to expect the Fed to slow the pace of rate hikes from December, but this is by no means guaranteed," analysts at ING commented.

On Thursday, the European Central Bank on Thursday lifted its benchmark interest rates by 75 basis points, as expected.

In European equities on Friday, the CAC 40 in Paris ended up 0.5%, while the DAX 40 in Frankfurt ended up 0.2%.

The euro stood at $0.9943 at the European equities close Friday, lower against $0.9984 at the same time on Thursday.

Against the yen, the dollar was trading at JP147.54 late Friday, higher compared to JP145.90 late Thursday.

Gold was quoted at $1,640.91 an ounce at the London equities close Friday, down sharply against $1,662.60 at the close on Thursday. The precious metal has an inverse relationship with the greenback, weakening as the dollar strengthens.

Brent oil was quoted at $93.34 a barrel at the London equities close Friday, down from $94.75 late Thursday.

In Monday's UK corporate calendar, there are full year results from self storage company Lok'n Store and kidney disease-focused diagnostics firm Renalytix.

In the economic calendar, the EU will publish its latest GDP and CPI readings.

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
-by Dr. Lee Rogers





Anaphylaxis is a deadly reaction to an allergy. After exposure to an allergen, a person breaks out in hives, lips swell, has difficulty breathing, and wheezes, which can eventually lead to shock and death. It has happened to as many as 1 in 50 Americans. Yet, it is one of the simplest emergencies to treat. The initial life-saving treatment is injecting epinephrine (adrenalin) into the fat or muscle, followed by care from a medical professional.





Epinephrine is a hormone produced by the adrenal glands. The body releases it during the fight-or-flight response. It increases the heart rate, improves blood flow to muscles, dilates the bronchioles in the lungs (to increase air exchange), and constricts other blood vessels (to shunt blood to vital organs). As a hormone, it a product of nature and cannot be patented.





Seems pretty straight forward, right? Well, not any more. Mylan Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the most commonly used device to deliver epinephrine, called the EpiPen, just jacked up the price of the medication over 400% and there doesn't seem to be any better reason than... because they could.





EpiPen has been around since 1977, but Mylan acquired the product in 2007 when the it cost about $57. Now according to many media outlets and the prescription drug price comparison website www.GoodRx.com, the price has skyrocketed to $640. Fortunately for Mylan, EpiPen has an expiration date of one year, causing the company to bank on an annuity of more than $600 from families who need the life-saving medication, a vast majority of which go unused every year.









The price of epinephrine hasnt increased in the past 10 years. In fact the epinephrine inside EpiPen costs less than $1. I doubt the price to manufacture EpiPens autoinjectors has changed. So what has changed? There are two recent events that help explain. First, EpiPens only major competitor, Auvi-Q made by Sanofi, underwent a voluntary recall due to possible dosage miscalabrations. And secondly, this year the FDA rejected an application , which would have been much cheaper, perhaps costing only $10-20, however not auto injected. That opened the door for Mylan to price-gouge consumers into paying outrageous fees for their life-saving medications.





Just in case you might be susceptible to the poor pharmaceutical company argument, EpiPen, just one of the products Mylan sells, brings in $1 billion a year and which boosted the companys 2nd quarter numbers in 2016.





Deja vu?





If any of this sounds familiar, thats because it is. We all remember Martin Shkreli, the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, the sole manufacturer of Darapim, who notoriously raised the price of the generic HIV medication from $14 to $750. Shkreli faced tremendous public scrutiny and was referred to by the media as the most hated man in America. Eventually, he was subpoenaed to testify before Congress, charged with securities fraud, and resigned as CEO of Turing.





Now theres something wrong when even this man, Martin Shkreli, recently called the executives at Mylan vultures for their slimy move!





Who is Shkreli referring to? None other than Mylan CEO Heather Bresch. Bresch isnt some ordinary greedy pharmaceutical executive. Shes the daughter of US Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV). She finished her BA in political science at West Virginia University (WVU) and was hired by Mylan in 1992 after her powerful father spoke to former CEO Milan Puskar. She rose through the ranks at Mylan, eventually serving at Director of Government Relations from 2002-2005, while her father was WV Secretary of State. In 2008, there was a controversy at WVU after she claimed to have an MBA. The university initially disputed the claim, but then awarded her an MBA despite only completing 22 of 48 credits required. After public embarrassment, WVU rescinded her degree and the university president, a former consultant and lobbyist for Mylan, resigned in disgrace.





In 2011, just after her father was elected to replace the late Robert Byrd as US Senator, she spearheaded the effort in Congress to pass the Generic Drug User Fee Act, making it more difficult for foreign generic drug makers to import into the United States. In 2012, she became CEO of Mylan Pharamceuticals. Fortune Magazine named her as one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in 2012 and 2013.





Then in 2015, Mylan purchased Abbotts generic drug division located in the Netherlands. At that point,Bresch led Mylan through complex and controversial corporate tax inversion to base Mylans headquarters (domicile) in the Netherlands in an effort to avoid paying US corporate taxes. The corporate executives still live in the US and run the company from the US . The tax inversion is expected to reap the company an additional 10% in profits. The move wasn't good for everyone. Normally there are no tax implications from a corporate merger for shareholders. But with tax inversions, investors have to pay capital gains tax on the difference between the stock price at their initial investment and what the new companys stock price would be. Some shareholders were advised to sell their shares at a loss to offset tax capital gains taxes theyd have to pay.





All of this may cause political problems for Breschs father, Sen. Manchin. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been very critical of the price hike, taking to Twitter to decry the move. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who was an advocate for getting EpiPens into schools, is now breathing fire over this decision by Mylan. In a recent statement, she said:

"This outrageous increase in the price of EpiPens is occurring at the same time that Mylan Pharmaceutical is exploiting a monopoly market advantage that has fallen into its lap, said Klobuchar. Patients all over the U.S. rely on these products, including my own daughter. Not only should the Judiciary Committee hold a hearing, the Federal Trade Commission should investigate these price increases immediately. The Commission should also report to Congress on why these outrageous price increases have become common and propose solutions that will better protect consumers within 90 days."

Hauling a fellow Senators daughter into Congressional Hearings a la Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli would certainly not be good for Senate Democrats, not to mention the embarrassment to Senator Manchin casting light on his daughters actions during her tenure as CEO of Mylan.





Additionally, Breschs actions may win her a new title, next to Shkreli as the most hated woman in America.





What Can Patients Do?





I agree, the EpiPens design makes delivering a life-saving drug as simple and as effective as possible. But if you cant afford to be price-gouged for $600, there are alternatives that are still just as life-saving.





A 1 mL ampule of epinephrine costs less than $5. The dose of epinephrine for anaphylaxis is 0.3 to 0.5 ml delivered subcutaneously (in the fat) or intramuscularly (in the muscle). If patient and family members are comfortable with drawing up their own medication and injecting (no more difficult than using insulin), they can request a prescription from their doctor for the vial and syringes. An example of how the prescription would read is below. This would cost about $10.





Prescription:





Rx: Epinephrine 1:1000, 1 mL ampule



Rx: 1 cc syringe with 25g 1.5 cm needle



Instructions: For severe allergic reaction, break ampule and fill syringe with 0.3 mL of epinephrine, inject under the skin. Call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.*



*specific instructions will differ, always confer with your doctor.









Owen Mumford makes an auto-injector called Autoject which costs $28. This could be used instead of the syringe if autoinjetion is desired. It is more complex than the EpiPen and above method.





Another alternative is the Adrenaclick epinephrine autoinjector which is closest to the EpiPen. It costs approximately $200.





I always recommend patients price shop for their medication. The GoodRx website is a good place to start. A pharmacist can also help find certain coupons or incentives might be available that lower the out-of-pocket costs.









Dr. Lee Rogers is board certified podiatrist, author, and national speaker. He ran for US Congress in Californias 25th district in 2012 and 2014 where he was endorsed by the LA Times, Blue America, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), mostly for his leadership on healthcare issues.
I still think of Drew Estate as a newer cigar company, probably due to its modern marketing, sleek packaging, unique fan base, and urban, non-traditional vibe. How many other cigar outfits have an in-house art studio turning out graffiti and tattoos, or their own social media app? How many other brands have such a dedicated cult following among younger clientele?

But while Drew Estate lacks the history of industry stalwarts like Arturo Fuente or Joya de Nicaragua, its no spring chicken, either. It also cant be considered among the ranks of small boutique outfits anymore. Drew Estate runs the largest cigar factory in Nicaraguaproducing over 10,000 cigars a dayand in 2014 it was acquired by Swisher International, the largest cigar company in the world.

Drew Estates size and parent carry some advantages. For example, in the midst of all the FDA malaise, Ive been thinking a lot about what cigars in my current rotation will still be available in a few years. Its hard to imagine Swisher will have any trouble coming up with the capital necessary to overcome the yet-to-be-detailed-though-surely-onerous approval process for any Drew Estate cigars that are selling.

Surely theyll do so for the Liga Privada No. 9 blends, which became available in the summer of 2007just after the February 2007 exemption deadline. Today, I thought Id revisit my favorite cigar in that line, the Toro (6 x 52). While I might not have much new to say about a cigar thats been on the market for nearly a decade, its helpful to reexamine old favorites. And, heck, I guess I just wanted an excuse to fire a few Toros up.

By now, we all know the story. Former Drew Estate chief Steve Saka, now owner of Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust, began work in 2005 on a personal blend for his own enjoyment. After over 50 blends of testing with Jonathan Drew and Nick Melillo (now owner of Foundation Cigar Co.), a final recipe was arrived at: a dark Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper fermented for at least 18 months, a Brazilian Mata Fina binder, and filler tobaccos from Honduras and Nicaragua.

Liga production is still limiteda limitation, according to Drew Estate, thats due to tobacco availabilityso the cigars can be tough to find and expensive. When you get your hands on a Toro, though, youll find a highly pleasurable, full-bodied cigar with tons of flavor and a fair amount of spice. Leathery in texture, the core tastes include black pepper, cocoa, espresso, cream, and that infectious sweet grassiness that can only be found in certain Drew Estate cigars.

Construction is outstanding, including a straight burn line and a solid white ash. Notably, the draw is incredibly easy and the smoke production is intensewelcome characteristics that have become trademarks of Drew Estate over the years.

You can expect to pay $12 or more for the Toro. While thats a considerable cost, you can be assured of a solid, consistent, tasty experience. Ive been smoking this cigar for a long time, and I think the most fitting rating is an exceptional four and a half stogies out of five.

[To read more StogieGuys.com cigar reviews, please click here.]

Patrick A

photo credit: Stogie Guys
Corruption, red tape and the lack of a long-term strategy are stifling businesses.

Most private equity investors say that corruption is the main obstacle they face in Vietnam, according to a survey conducted by business advisory firm Grant Thornton Vietnam of decision makers working in private equity both in and outside of Vietnam.

"Government red tape/processes" and "management's lack of long-term strategies" are the second and third biggest obstacles for investors in Vietnam, the survey said. Meanwhile, 20 percent more investors from a year ago consider constantly changing policies the "most critical issue".

Source: "Look out for steady investment growth", Grant Thornton, August 2016

Corruption in Vietnam is perceived as "serious", with the country ranking 112th out of 168 countries on the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index compiled by Towards Transparency. This is reflected in the country's business environment where companies need to offer bribes to get things done and suffer political interference.

Investors are hoping for greater transparency now that the new government is looking to revise the Anti-Corruption Law, which took effect in 2005.

In an effort to improve the business environment, the government revised the Enterprise Law and Investment Law in 2014. The move has helped to reduce the time needed to register a business, obtain an investment license and eased regulations for mergers and acquisitions, while also clarifying the role of foreign investors.

However, such changes to laws and regulations could backfire and actually raise concerns about the legal environment among companies and investors, said Grant Thornton. If policymakers continue to issue new documents without synchronizing the entire legislative system, it could become one of the most critical investment obstacles for Vietnam, the firm said.

Still, over 80 percent of surveyed companies put their faith in Vietnam, and plan to increase their investments in the country over the next 12 months.

Source: "Look out for steady investment growth", Grant Thornton, August 2016

Related news:

> New business laws have entrepreneurs flooding in

> Vietnam overtakes Indonesia as ASEAN's top investment magnet: survey

> Foreign investment rockets in Vietnam to reach $10 billion in first five months
A WNAA helicopter landed on the Arden Street car park

A man who was crushed between a canal boat and the canal bank in Stratford was airlifted to hospital on Saturday morning.

The incident, which occurred close to Stratfords Premier Inn on Birmingham Road just after 9am, resulted in a 35-year-old man suffering pelvic injuries.

An ambulance, the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance and a paramedic in a rapid response vehicle, were sent to the scene and the casualty was airlifted to the major trauma unit at University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire.

Warwickshire Police were called at 9.30am to assist with traffic management on Birmingham Road and the air ambulance landed in the Arden Street car park.

The man was out of the canal by the time the ambulance service arrived.

The extent of the mans injuries are not known but a spokesperson for the ambulance service said they were potentially serious.
Arrangement of various world currencies including Chinese Yuan, US Dollar, Euro, British Pound, in this picture illustration taken January 25, 2011. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration

By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. retail broker Forex Capital Markets (NYSE: FXCM) said on Friday it promptly notified the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the National Futures Association of its capital deficiency on January 15 last year, when the Swiss National Bank moved to abandon the Swiss franc's peg to the euro.

This was contrary to what the CFTC said in its lawsuit against FXCM filed on Thursday. The CFTC said FXCM was under-capitalized for two days in January last year and failed to report that to the commission.

The New York broker eventually disclosed its capital shortfall, but only after the CFTC and NFA initiated contact, according to the CFTC lawsuit.

FXCM is the largest U.S. retail broker, with about 200,000 customers worldwide and 88,000 in the United States.

In its statement, FXCM said following the SNB move, FXCM customers lost approximately $225 million by the close of business on Jan. 15, 2015.

"As a result of such losses, FXCM experienced for the very first and only time in its history a one-day regulatory net capital shortfall," the company said.

"FXCM thereafter promptly notified both the CFTC and the National Futures Association of its net capital shortfall due to the unforeseen SNB Event."

The company added that within hours of that notification, teams of CFTC and NFA personnel were on site at FXCM's offices.

Based on CFTC regulations, FXCM's capital requirement is $25 million.

By the afternoon of Jan. 16, 2015, FXCM said it was able to cure its shortfall through a $300 million loan from Leucadia National Corporation.

"We averted the crisis. Given those facts, we could not be more disappointed that the CFTC has decided to pursue an undercapitalization violation claim against FXCM," FXCM said.

The New York-based broker also disputed claims by the CFTC that it guaranteed customers it would not lose money by "zeroing out negative customer balances."

CFTC rules explicitly prohibit a retail currency dealer like FXCM from representing it "will guarantee customers against loss, limit the loss of customers, or not call for or attempt to collect security deposits, margin, or other deposits of customers."

FXCM said it has repeatedly warned its customers of the significant risks of trading currencies and that such trading is appropriate only for individuals who can assume risk of loss in excess of their investment and margin deposit.

In mid-afternoon trading, FXCM was down more than seven percent at $9.46 per share, its lowest in two weeks.

(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Former chief executive of Fannie Mae Daniel Mudd exits U.S. District Court in the Manhattan borough of New York City, January 27, 2016, after attending arguments in the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) case against him. REUTERS/Mike Segar

By Patrick Rucker and Nate Raymond

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - In one of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's biggest cases tied to the 2008 financial crisis, former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Daniel Mudd has reached a settlement with regulators, according to court papers filed on Monday.

The deal with the SEC, detailed in papers filed in Manhattan federal court, resolves a 2011 lawsuit accusing Mudd of misleading investors about Fannie's exposure to risky mortgages before the crisis.

Mudd had denied wrongdoing and he did not admit any in the Monday agreement. The deal concludes one of the SEC's few remaining cases tied to the housing downturn.

Mudd was one of six executives at mortgage funding giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sued by the SEC. The prosecutions were announced at a press conference in December 2011 but they ended in modest settlements over the following years.

Under terms of the latest deal, Fannie Mae will contribute $100,000 on Mudd's behalf to a Treasury Department account that receives financial gifts to the United States, according to documents.

Fannie's former chief risk officer, Enrico Dallavecchia, and former Executive Vice President, Thomas Lund, agreed to similar terms when they settled for $25,000 and $10,000 respectively in September 2015.

A Fannie Mae spokesman declined to comment on the Mudd case. The SEC did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

Mudd had continued to litigate alone after Lund and Dallavecchia settled last year and he was due to face trial in November.

"I appreciate Fannie Mae and the current leadership of the SEC stepping in to end a case that should have never been brought," Mudd told Reuters.

CRISIS TENURE

Mudd led Fannie Mae as a national housing bubble grew to bursting point from December 2004 to September 2008, when the Treasury Department effectively took control of the company.

That same month, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc filed for bankruptcy as Wall Street was rattled by a wave of mortgage defaults.

Officials injected taxpayer money to stabilize Fannie and it's sibling Freddie which were conceived by Washington to promote home ownership and had helped underwrite a share of the easy-to-get subprime loans.

The SEC had accused Mudd and the five other Fannie and Freddie executives of downplaying the companies' exposure to risky loans.

The SEC said Fannie Mae concealed exposure to more than $100 billion of subprime and $341 billion of Alt-A loans - another class of mortgage offered to risky borrowers.

Former Freddie Mac chief Richard Syron as well as former executives Patricia Cook and Donald Bisenius previously settled their cases for $250,000, $50,000 and $10,000, respectively.

The case is U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Mudd, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-9202.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Andrew Hay)
Cotonou, Benin, West Africa (PRWEB) August 22, 2016

Mercy Ships returned to Benin for a 10-month field service that had been delayed since 2014 due to the Ebola outbreak. The hospital ship and its crew were warmly greeted by welcome festivities including national music and dances. A brief tour of the ship was provided for the heads of state and dignitaries.

The all-volunteer crew is eager to fulfill plans that were postponed for two years. During the Africa Mercy's 10-month stay in the port of Cotonou, Mercy Ships plans to meet immediate medical needs by providing over 1,700 life-changing surgeries for adult and pediatric patients onboard and by treating over 8,000 at a land-based dental clinic. To improve Benin's healthcare delivery system, Mercy Ships will also provide medical training to Beninese healthcare professionals.

"Mercy Ships has been serving West Africa for 25 years. We are pleased to be back in Benin for our fifth visit providing specialized surgeries and healthcare training to the Beninese, who hold such a warm place in our hearts," commented Mercy Ships President and Founder Don Stephens.

During the arrival ceremony, Madame Claudine Gbenagnon Talon, First Lady of the Republic of Benin, addressed the crew, saying, "Behind all statistics, there is a story, a life, a person who needs a new hope, a treatment, or a cure. I wish that this enriching collaboration of Benin with Mercy Ships will continue to grow year after year for the well-being of the population."

Benin ranks 166 out of 187 countries according to the United Nations Humanitarian Development index, which indicates the great need that exists in this West African nation. The free surgeries provided by Mercy Ships will include removing life-threatening tumors, repair of cleft lips and palates, obstetric fistulas, hernias, severe burn-related injuries and correction of pediatric orthopedic deformities. A dental clinic will offer treatment to patients for the duration of the 10-month stay, and an ophthalmology program will start in January 2017.

Each year, Mercy Ships has an average of 900 volunteer crew serving onboard its hospital ship, the Africa Mercy, with about 400 crew from over 45 nations serving at any given time. In total, Mercy Ships has more than 1,600 volunteers helping in its various locations around the world.

The Mercy Ships crew is anxious to start serving the Beninese, and the screening process for patients will begin this week to select those who have conditions that can be treated by Mercy Ships. The delivery of hope and healing to Benin has begun!

###

ABOUT MERCY SHIPS:

Mercy Ships uses hospital ships to deliver free, world-class healthcare services, capacity building and sustainable development to those without access in the developing world. Founded in 1978 by Don and Deyon Stephens, Mercy Ships has worked in more than 70 countries providing services valued at more than $1.2 billion, treating more than 2.54 million direct beneficiaries. Each year Mercy Ships has more than 1,600 volunteers from 45 nations. Professionals including surgeons, dentists, nurses, healthcare trainers, teachers, cooks, seamen, engineers, and agriculturalists donate their time and skills to the effort. Mercy Ships seeks to transform individuals and serve nations one at a time. For more information click on http://www.mercyships.org

For More Information Contact:

For USA: Pauline Rick

US Public Relations Coordinator

Mercy Ships

Office Tel: (903) 939-7000

Mob: (972) 922-5442

Email: us.media(at)mercyships(dot)org

For Int'l: Diane Rickard

International Media Manager

Mercy Ships

Diane.rickard(at)mercyships(dot)org

http://www.mercyships.org

Hi-res photos and general Mercy Ships B-Roll video footage are available upon request.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016_08_Mercy_Ships/Arrival_Benin_West_Africa/prweb13629408.htm
New York, NY (PRWEB) August 22, 2016

SAE Institute, a premier provider of creative media education, will partner with the International Music Software Trade Association (IMSTA) to host IMSTA FESTA, a celebration of music technology, at its New York campus on Saturday, September 24 from 11am to 6pm.

Free to attend and open to the public, IMSTA FESTA is a one-day networking and learning event that brings together a group of top audio technology companies in an exciting environment that provides face-to-face interaction with music makers. Attendees are set to include music entrepreneurs, professional and semi-professional musicians, DJs, songwriters, music producers, audio engineers, music students, and music educators. Anyone who makes music or is interested in the art of music making is sure to benefit from this event in numerous ways. You'll find new opportunities to make connections, gain knowledge and ideas, and accelerate careers, as well as learn about new techniques in music production, legal software use, and using music software to enhance their skills.

"We are excited to partner with IMSTA FESTA again in 2016. It is such a great opportunity for current and former students as well as the public to meet professionals in the audio field," says Steven Kashkin, Campus Director at SAE Institute New York. "The team at IMSTA is a pleasure to work with and we know that they are going to come through with another amazing event this year."

IMSTA FESTA is known for bringing together the best minds, innovators, heavyweight music industry professionals, and music and audio companies to share fresh perspectives, keen insights and first-hand knowledge on the state of the music business, music production, technology, and more.

Scott Jacoby, acclaimed composer, GRAMMY award-winning writer, producer, engineer, mixer, musician and recording artist, Founder/President of EUSONIA Records, Owner of EUSONIA Studios, CEO of SCOJAC Music Productions will deliver the keynote address at IMSTA FESTA NYC 2016. With his work spanning all genres of music, and collaborations with notable musicians including John Legend, Vampire Weekend, Sia, Rachel Platten, Laura Izibor, Jose James, Vanessa Hudgens, Fabolous, Naturally 7, Cory Henry, Chimene Badi, Jackie Evancho and Ronnie Spector, his speech is sure to add a great deal of excitement to the lively atmosphere.

2016 IMSTA FESTA NYC Highlights:



A keynote speech by GRAMMY award-winning writer, producer, engineer, mixer, musician and recording artist, Scott Jacoby

Network with some of New York's heavy hitters in the music community

Explore non-stop live demonstrations of the latest studio gear, software, and equipment from a line-up of reputable software manufacturers

Get hands-on with the latest music production products on the market

Register for a class in the IMSTA Master Class Series to gain exclusive knowledge on the most coveted products currently on the market

Learn tips and tricks on how to maximize the efficiency of production tools

Win prizes from top audio technology companies

Receive a gift for visiting exhibiting companies

Raffle and door prizes will be distributed randomly to attendees who check-in to the event at the end of each panel discussion

IMSTA FESTA NYC will take place on Saturday, September 24 from 11:00am 6:00pm at SAE Institute New York: 218 West18th Street, 4th floor, New York, NY 10011. Admission is free and open to the public with online registration at imsta.org

About SAE

SAE Institute provides aspiring creative media professionals with a foundation of practical theory and valuable hands-on training in their chosen areas of concentration. Under the guidance of industry-experienced faculty, students gain the essential experience they need for entry-level jobs in the creative media industry. Students are supported in their job searches by SAE's international network of alumni, many of whom are leaders in the music, film, game arts, and live performance arenas. SAE Institute offers programs in Audio Technology in seven US campuses, along with a Music Business program at select locations, all fully accredited and focused on preparing students for employment upon graduation. Bachelor's Degree programs in Animation & Visual Effects, Digital Filmmaking, Game Art & Design, Interactive Audio, and Sound Arts are available at SAE Institute San Jose and SAE Expression College in the San Francisco Bay Area, formerly Ex'pression College. SAE Institute Group, Inc. is a part of Navitas LTD. Learn more at usa.sae.edu.

About Navitas

Navitas is an Australian global education leader, providing pre-university and university programs, English language courses, migrant education and settlement services, creative media education, student recruitment, professional development, and corporate training services to more than 80,000 students across a network of over 120 colleges and campuses in 31 countries. Learn more at Navitas.com.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/08/prweb13627629.htm
Poisonous chemicals in seafood shipments have left a bad taste in the mouth.

Vietnamese authorities have warned local aquaculture companies that they will not renew their export licenses unless the latter comply with safety standards following a recent warning from the European Union.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has taken the decision, which took effect August 15, after shipments to the E.U. were found to contain excess levels of antibiotics.

Licenses will only be renewed when full investigations into the allegations have been carried out and measures have been taken to remedy the situation. The enterprises flagged by the E.U. will also have to pass strict inspections conducted by Vietnams National Agro-Forestry-Fisheries Quality Assurance Department.

Vietnam is trying to improve food safety control over seafood products after banned substances were found in shipments to the E.U. Photo from fistenet.gov.vn

The European Commission's Health and Food Safety Department blocked a Vietnamese agriculture firm from exporting goods to the bloc after traces of a banned antibiotic were found in its shipment earlier this month.

The department previously warned in April this year that seafood shipments from four Vietnamese aquaculture enterprises did not meet E.U. food safety requirements.

Catfish shipments from the Can Tho Export-Import Seafood JSC have been blocked by German authorities due to traces of sodium carbonate, and Spain will no longer accept the same fish from the Southern Fishery Industries Co Ltd after sodium erythorbate was detected.

Germany also raised the alert on canned tuna shipments that contained histamine, while the Netherlands has blocked shipments of swordfish from Khang Thong JSC after traces of mercury were found.

Related news

> Drought and fish deaths drown Vietnams seafood exports

> Drought killing Vietnamese shrimp hits seafood exports

> Vietnam assures seafood safety after E.U. issues warning
SINGAPORE -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- Singapore's real estate industry will once again celebrate the achievements of the year's finest developers and developments at the sixth edition of the South East Asia Property Awards (Singapore), an international event organised by PropertyGuru Group, Asia's leading online property group.

Presented by title sponsor Hansgrohe, the annual South East Asia Property Awards (Singapore) is the first component of the South East Asia Property Awards grand finale that will take place on Thursday, 24 November 2016, at the prestigious Shangri-La Hotel Singapore, official venue of the Awards.

Nominations are now being accepted until 9 September at AsiaPropertyAwards.com/nomination/seapa/. Submissions are open to developers, consumers and the general public. All entries and judging sessions will be supervised by BDO, one of the world's largest accountancy and auditing firms, and long-time judging supervisor of the Asia Property Awards.

This year the independent judging panel will assess eligible entries for a new category -- Special Recognition in Sustainable Development -- in addition to the existing Special Recognition in Corporate Social Responsibility that has been a coveted award among entrants over the last five years.

"Singapore continues to produce world-class developments that are the gold standard for any country in ASEAN and is a regional leader in CSR and sustainable development," says Terry Blackburn, founder and managing director of the Asia Property Awards, which is now in its 11th year.

"We're confident that this new category will recognise the growing importance of sustainability among developers not just in Singapore but in Southeast Asia as a whole, and will set a new benchmark of quality for the region's real estate sector."

Another popular category from last year, Best Commercial Development, has been expanded. Entries are being accepted for Best Retail Development, Best Office Development, Best Hotel Development and Best Mixed-Use Development.

In addition to the Singapore award categories, the editors of Asia's industry-leading Property Report magazine will also name the Real Estate Personality of the Year. The only award that is not selected by the judging panel, this honour will be given to an individual who, in the past year, has contributed significantly to Singapore's property sector.

Renowned architect and designer Mink Tan, chief design officer at MINKKE Pte Ltd, returns as the chairman of the judges in 2016, following his stint as head judge last year.

"The experience has been enriching and rewarding, as I have gained and learned much from my fellow judges who all hail from diverse backgrounds like development, finance, investment, amongst others," says Tan. "As a judge, I would think that the impact of the Awards must surely be a positive one, otherwise you wouldn't see all these developers sending multiple nominations and Winners brandishing the Awards on their advertisement banners year after year."

As with the rest of the national editions of the Asia Property Awards, the top winners in Singapore will move on to compete in the Best of the Best round of the ASEAN grand finals for various categories, including Best Commercial Development (South East Asia), Best Condo Development (South East Asia), Best Green Development (South East Asia), and the biggest regional award, Best Developer (South East Asia).

Building on the success of the 2015 ceremony that was attended by more than 400 high-profile guests, the South East Asia Property Awards (Singapore) 2016 will showcase the leading lights and outstanding developments in Singapore's property sector at a time when cooling measures have caused transactions and rents to decline.

"Despite a slow year for new launches, Singapore is still a model for many emerging markets in the region. Quality, sustainability and green building are the top priorities for many developers, and we can't wait to see which projects will make it to the final shortlist this year," comments Blackburn.

Finalists will be announced in the final week of October in a press conference in Singapore.

The South East Asia Property Awards (Singapore) 2016 Gala Dinner will be boosted by the support of official media partner Property Report; some of the region's highly respected business associations and media outfits; and the network of 16 million real estate consumers of organiser PropertyGuru Group, Asia's leading online property group.

Super early bird tickets to Singapore's premier real estate event are now available (valid until 26 August only) for an exclusive bundle package with the second Property Report Congress Singapore, a two-day conference featuring Asia's industry leaders and influencers. Single entry is USD630 (full price: USD810) and a table of 10 costs USD5,670 (full price: USD7,300).

For bookings and more information, contact [email protected] or visit the official website: AsiaPropertyAwards.com/seapa/

Note to editors: Use of the official South East Asia Property Awards (Singapore) logo is limited to the publication of this article only.

Company logo http://release.media-outreach.com/i/Download/5368

About South East Asia Property Awards (Singapore): Returning for a sixth year in 2016, the South East Asia Property Awards (Singapore) is part of the regional Asia Property Awards programme and held concurrently with the South East Asia Property Awards grand finals. The South East Asia Property Awards (Singapore) is the most credible and prestigious industry awards in the city state, with the top and emerging names in real estate celebrating the best developers, developments and design.

About Asia Property Awards: The Asia Property Awards are the largest real estate event in Asia, playing host to annual gala dinners for up to 600 C-level executives and leading industry figures in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Jakarta, Yangon, Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City. The Awards programme has an unparalleled reputation for being credible, fair and transparent, with an independent panel of judges and trusted awards supervisor.

Originally launched by Ensign Media in Thailand in 2005 at the height of Asia's property boom, the Asia Property Awards in 2016 became part of PropertyGuru, Asia's leading online property group.

About PropertyGuru Group: Founded in 2006, PropertyGuru Group is Asia's leading property media group used by more than 16 million property buyers, viewing over 130 million property pages and generating over 500,000 enquiries for real estate developer and agent advertisers every month across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. The Group has a full suite of integrated property media capability, from its original core business in online, mobile and events, to television broadcast (in Indonesia, via an investment and partnership with EMTEK), and a recent acquisition of print and events businesses, under the brand names of "Property Report" and "Asia Property Awards."

Partnerships: Tanattha Saengmorakot Media Relations Manager Tel: +66 982 515 224 Email: Email Contact Sales & Sponsorships: Udomluk Suwan (May) Business Development Manager Tel: +66 87 699 4433 Email: Email Contact Press Enquiries: Richard Allan Aquino Corporate Communications Manager Tel: +66 929 544 154 Email: Email Contact Tickets: Kaoru Kawahara Outreach Manager Tel: +66 2 204 9599 Email: Email Contact

Source: PropertyGuru
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS -- (Marketwired) -- 08/22/16 -- IBC 2016 (Booth #5.A59) - Verimatrix, the specialist in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-network, multi-screen digital TV services around the globe, will illustrate how security solutions are at the core of all key monetization strategies for the pay-TV and Internet video service markets at IBC 2016, 9-13 Sept. 2016 at the RAI Convention Centre (booth #5.A59). Throughout the show, the company will highlight its role in revenue enablement and protection across major industry trends, including premium ultra HD (UHD) deployments, app enablement for over-the-top (OTT) video, high-integrity video analytics and the extension into Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

"Becoming a next-generation video operator involves raising the bar across a range of key service dimensions that involve security. Our expertise in the secure delivery of video to any device over any network against any threat has made our role within the partner ecosystem very valuable for operators to more easily take advantage of these opportunities," said Tom Munro, CEO of Verimatrix. "At IBC, we look forward to reinforcing the benefits of a comprehensive revenue security platform at the core of any next-generation video services deployment."

Booth demonstrations will showcase how Verimatrix can enhance revenue security by taking more proactive approaches to combat revenue threats and identify emerging opportunities that can further monetize their business. Highlighted solutions and services include:

Verspective" Operator Analytics As a follow up to the launch of Verspective" Operator Analytics, Verimatrix will be announcing the availability of a "quick start" evaluation package designed to help operators quickly realize the full potential of their video data and the benefits for multiple departments across the organization. The Verspective Analytics solution will also be on display at the booth, demonstrated alongside key partners Genius Digital and ThinkAnalytics, to show the power of combining different sources of video data including CDN, VOD and linear streams. Verspective Operator Analytics has been shortlisted for the 2016 CSI Awards in the Best data & analytics innovation category

VCAS Ultra" The Verimatrix VCAS Ultra solution has been bolstered by additional features within the core offering, including the integration of the VideoMark" live profile, which will be demonstrated at the booth. A complement to established forensic watermarking methods, the VideoMark live profile is specifically designed to protect valuable live linear content against real-time re-broadcasting threats. It can be combined with the content discovery and video capture technologies from Friend MTS to provide powerful automation in the rebroadcasting control process. This latest version of the VideoMark solution has also been shortlisted in the 2016 CSI Award program for the Best ultra HD TV technology category.

In addition, Verimatrix is now offering Verspective Monitoring services as part of the VCAS Ultra bundle. Verspective Monitoring provides a local, cloud-based system for operators to proactively monitor its VCAS system for threat analysis, performance, resource usage, and network integrity.

MultiRights" OTT As the functionality of OTT delivery platforms evolves, the solution has gained traction from operators and online video publishers (OVPs) evaluating their multi-DRM options, seeking the freedom to choose the right security approach across all devices.

In a recently developed white paper, Frost & Sullivan analyzes the true costs and complexities of building in-house multi-DRM programs and compares them to implementing preconfigured solutions like MultiRights. Copies of "Total Cost of Ownership: The Key Metric for Multi-DRM Strategy" and more information about an upcoming webinar on this topic will be available at the booth.

IoT Security Members of the Verimatrix executive team will also be on hand to discuss the findings from "Selecting the Right Partner for Securing the Internet of Things," a brand-new white paper developed with ABI Research that highlights the parallels of securing IoT applications with video delivery content.

Verimatrix is also supporting a number of key industry events during the show:

Competition or Co-opetition: Rethinking the World of Online TV - Friday, 9 Sept. at 18:00 hrs at the West India House Verimatrix is sponsoring this Videonet event to further the debate on the best strategies that will propel the next-generation video services platform - one that consumers are willing to pay for. To register your spot at the dinner event, click here.

2016 CSI Awards ceremony - Fri. 9 Sept. at 18:00 hrs in room E102 at the RAI. Verimatrix has been shortlisted in two categories for its Verspective Operator Analytics and VideoMark live solutions. Winners will be announced at the ceremony.

4K 4Charity Fun Run - Sat. 10 Sept. at 7:30 hrs at Amstelpark. Team Verimatrix is proud to be continuing its support of this annual event that will benefit global charitable organization Heifer International and local Amsterdam charity Jeugdsportfonds.

For additional information about Verimatrix's presence during IBC 2016 or to book an appointment, please visit www.verimatrix.com/ibc2016.

About Verimatrix Verimatrix specializes in securing and enhancing revenue for multi-network, multi-screen digital TV services around the globe and is recognized as the global number one in revenue security for connected video devices. The award-winning and independently audited Verimatrix Video Content Authority System (VCAS") family of solutions enable next-generation video service providers to cost-effectively extend their networks and enable new business models. The company has continued its technical innovation by offering the world's only globally interconnected revenue security platform, Verspective" Intelligence Center, for automated system optimization and data collection/analytics.

Its unmatched partner ecosystem and close relationship with major studios, broadcasters and standards organizations enables Verimatrix to provide a unique advantage to video business issues beyond content security as operators introduce new services to leverage the proliferation of connected devices. Verimatrix is an ISO 9001:2008 certified company. For more information, please visit www.verimatrix.com, our Pay TV Views blog and follow us @verimatrixinc, Facebook and LinkedIn to join the conversation.

Source: Verimatrix
Buildings are seen at a new economic zone of Yulin, Shaanxi Province, China, June 18, 2016. Picture taken June 18, 2016. REUTERS/Sue-Lin Wong

By Sue-Lin Wong

YULIN, China (Reuters) - At the section of the Great Wall of China that runs through Yulin, tour guide Gao Jing says she tried to learn English in expectation of the increased number of overseas visitors the city planned to attract as part of its economic transformation.

But the international tourists haven't come to Yulin, once a coal, oil and natural gas boom town in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, and in their absence she has forgotten her English.

"Sure, there's lots of talk about developing our tourism industry but walking the talk is a different matter," said Gao, who's been a tour guide there for 10 years.

"There's an immediate return on investment if you invest in energy. But you may need to wait 10, or even 100 years, if you want to see a return on investment in tourism."

The experience of Yulin carries a lesson for other Chinese cities trying to re-tool their economies  establishing a vibrant services sector takes time, and in the meantime you cannot afford to abandon your industrial strengths.

As its economy matures, China is trying to steer away from the export and investment-led model that fuelled its dizzy rise towards a more sustainable base built on domestic consumption.

Yulin has been a poster child for that attempt to move up the value chain, singled out by the national media as an example of economic transformation worthy of study by other regions.

Aside from gushing news articles about Yulin's success in diversifying its economy away from natural resources, the provincial government is notable for releasing a 27-step plan in 2013 about how this economic transformation should occur.

But since then things have not gone precisely to plan.

A slowing economy has dragged down industries such as tourism and renewable energy, handpicked by the provincial government as new drivers of Yulin's economy.

"At the peak of the coal boom we were already thinking about how to transform our economy, move it up the value chain, but it hasn't been the success we'd hoped it would be," said Zhang Changqing, Yulin investment bureau's party secretary.

GROWTH LESSONS

The goal was for Yulin to shift into services, move away from an economy dominated by state-owned enterprises (SOE) towards one with private businesses at its core, and produce higher value coal, oil and natural gas.

Services made up just over 30 percent of Yulin's economy in 2015, and the government has set an ambitious target of raising that to nearly 40 percent by 2020.

With a population of 3.4 million, Yulin is a smaller city by Chinese standards, and its fluctuating fortunes highlight the challenges facing similar lower-tier centres.

Yulin's published GDP growth rate plummeted to 4.3 percent in 2015, from a high of 23 percent in 2008, although, as at the national level, there are some who doubt that official figures reflect the true state of the real economy.

"It's meaningless to look at the official statistics as an indicator of growth," a government official at the local bureau of commerce told Reuters, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to the press.

A retired official from a state owned enterprise (SOE) was also sceptical about GDP data.

"I look at tax revenue instead, it's been dropping rapidly these past few years," he said. "The problem is there aren't enough people here for us to rely on the services industry to spur economic growth."

In the first half of 2016, Yulin's total fiscal revenue dropped 21.2 percent from the previous year, according to official statistics, and investment in services plummeted 36.6 percent in 2015.

CAN'T ALL HAVE A TERRACOTTA ARMY

Exacerbating Yulin's difficulties, nearby cities that were similarly reliant on traditional industries, such as Ordos and Baotou in Inner Mongolia, are trying to attract comparable kinds of investment projects and develop industries such as tourism.

"It's hard for us to develop a tourism industry. We don't have the same history as Xi'an," the retired SOE official said, referring to the ancient home of China's terracotta warriors.

"You come to Yulin maybe once in your life and you're finished seeing the whole city in half a day."

The government is also trying to boost consumption, both through e-commerce and bricks and mortar stores, but locals have been hesitant to spend in the downturn, with Walmart Stores Inc (NYSE: WMT) pulling out of Yulin early last year, Zhang from the investment bureau told Reuters.

Meanwhile real estate projects, a favourite growth stimulant for local governments in China, have dried up, meaning fewer jobs for migrant worker and less demand for raw materials.

Sprinkled around the city are empty or half-completed apartment buildings, a far cry from the days locals planted their excess cash made from the resources boom in property.

"Most of these projects are from years ago and many of them stopped mid-way, when the developers and construction companies ran out of money," said the official at the commerce bureau.

Blessed with abundant sunshine and wind, the government is hoping to develop the region's renewables industry, but demand for energy and electricity has shrunk as the property sector has tanked.

To be sure, Yulin hasn't abandoned the industries that fuelled its economic boom - indeed, some of its efforts to make its oil and coal companies more competitive are starting to pay off.

The Yulin Coal Trade Center has shifted from logistics and quality control to providing clients with a full supply chain, from procurement to financing options, according to Luo Wenjie, from the company's operations department.

Their clients are scattered around the country, and mostly find the company on popular online platforms such as WeChat.

"Unlike smaller companies that may swap out Yulin's high-quality coal for lower-quality coal, we're big enough to provide clients with peace of mind that we won't do that," said Luo, adding that the company has 100,000 employees.

"Our competitive advantage is that we aren't going to run off with our client's money."

(Reporting by Sue-Lin Wong; Additional reporting by the Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Alex Richardson)
By Lesley Wroughton

NAIROBI (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday he and regional states were committed to giving momentum to the planned deployment of extra U.N. troops to South Sudan and said the country's leaders needed to recommit to a peace deal.

Fierce fighting in the capital Juba last month has raised fears that the five-year-old nation could slide back into civil war. It prompted the United Nations to authorize the deployment of 4,000 additional U.N. troops to bolster a U.N. mission there.

"We need to move forward with the deployment of a regional protection force," Kerry told a news conference in Nairobi after talks with foreign ministers from Kenya and other African states that had focused on South Sudan and Somalia's reconstruction.

Kerry said regional states, which have pushed for sending the new troops to help South Sudan's 12,000-strong U.N. mission UNMISS, had agreed on "the immediate implementation process" of meetings and steps to "guarantee some momentum builds up."

About two years of conflict that pitted troops loyal to President Salva Kiir against those of his former deputy Riek Machar was supposed to have ended with a peace deal last year. But fighting persisted and flared again last month in Juba.

After the latest violence, Machar, who had returned to the capital in April to resume his post as vice president, withdrew again to the bush and was picked up this month by U.N. peacekeepers in Democratic Republic of Congo with a leg injury.

Kiir has again sacked him and appointed a new vice president.

Kerry said it was up to South Sudan's leaders, political parties and neighbors to work out "what is best or not best with respect to Machar", but all sides had to stop fighting.

"We urged all the parties to recommit in word and deed to the full implementation of the peace agreement," Kerry said.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed, speaking at the same news conference, said the new U.N. force should be deployed "sooner rather than later" but said it could be sent gradually.

South Sudan's government initially said it would not cooperate with the new U.N. troops which will be under the command of the 12,000-strong UNMISS mission. But since then it has said it was still considering its position.

"We have not rejected it or accepted it. The sovereignty of the people of South Sudan will be decided by the parliament," South Sudan's presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said.

World powers and regional states have struggled to find leverage over South Sudan's warring factions despite U.S. and European sanctions on some military leaders and African threats of punitive actions.

South Sudan secured its independence in 2011, but by December 2013 the longtime political rivalry between Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and Machar, a Nuer, had led to civil conflict that often followed ethnic lines.

The fighting has killed thousands of people and driven more than 2 million people from their homes, with many of them fleeing to neighboring states.

Kerry, who pledged new humanitarian aid to South Sudan worth $138 million, said the new U.N. troop contingent was "not an intervention force" but would protect civilians and support those working to ensure peace prevailed.

In the latest flare-up in July, Washington was particularly concerned by an attack on a Juba hotel by uniformed men who killed a U.S.-funded journalist and raped civilians, including aid workers.

The U.N. has launched an investigation into accusations U.N. peacekeepers in Juba failed to respond properly to the attack.

South Sudanese government officials say that just because the perpetrators were in uniform did not mean they were either under the command of the government or the opposition.

(Additional reporting by Denis Dumo in Juba; Editing by Edmund Blair and Dominic Evans)
UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION WASHINGTON, DC 20549 FORM 8-K/A Amendment No. 1 CURRENT REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 Date of report (Date of earliest event reported): June 13, 2016 CONTRAVIR PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. (Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter) Delaware (State or other jurisdiction of incorporation) 001-36856 46-2783806 (Commission File

Number) (IRS Employer Identification

No.) 399 Thornall Street, First Floor Edison, New Jersey 08837 (Address of principal executive

offices) (Zip Code) (732) 902-4000 (Registrants telephone number, including area code) (Former address, if changed since last report) Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions: o Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425) o Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12) o Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b)) o Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c))

Explanatory Note On June 13, 2016, ContraVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ContraVir) filed a Current Report on Form 8-K under Item 2.01 (the Initial Report) to report the completion of its acquisition of Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Ciclofilin) on June 10, 2016. In response to parts (a) and (b) of Item 9.01 of the Initial Report, ContraVir indicated that it would file the required financial information by amendment, as permitted by Item 9.01(a)(4) and 9.01(b)(2) to Form 8-K. This Current Report on Form 8-K/A amends Items 9.01(a) and 9.01(b) of the Initial Report to provide the required financial information. Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. (a) Financial statements of businesses acquired. The historical consolidated financial statements of Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. as of March 31, 2016 (unaudited) and June 30, 2015 and for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (unaudited), the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014, including the notes to such financial statements and the report of the independent auditor thereon, are attached as Exhibit 99.2 to this Form 8-K/A. (b) Pro Forma Financial Information. The Companys unaudited pro forma condensed combined balance sheet as of March 31, 2016 and the unaudited pro forma condensed combined statement of operations for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and the year ended June 30, 2015 and related notes, showing the pro forma effects of the Companys acquisition of Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. are attached as Exhibit 99.1 to this Form 8-K/A. (d) Exhibits. Exhibit

Number Description 23.1 Consent of Independent Auditors. 99.1 Unaudited pro forma condensed combined balance sheet as of March 31, 2016 and unaudited pro forma condensed combined statement of operations of ContraVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and year ended June 30, 2015, and related notes. 99.2 Consolidated financial statements of Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (unaudited), the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014, and related notes. 2

SIGNATURES Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized. CONTRAVIR PHARMACEUUTICALS, INC. By: /s/ James Sapirstein Name: James Sapirstein Title: Chief Executive Officer Date: August 22, 2016 EXHIBIT INDEX Exhibit

Number Description 23.1 Consent of Independent Auditors. 99.1 Unaudited pro forma condensed combined balance sheet as of March 31, 2016 and unaudited pro forma condensed combined statement of operations of ContraVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and year ended June 30, 2015, and related notes. 99.2 Consolidated financial statements of Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (unaudited), the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014, and related notes. 3

Exhibit 23.1 Consent of Independent Auditors We hereby consent to the incorporation by reference in the Registration Statements on Form S-3 No. 333-202625 and Form S-8 No.333-203867 of ContraVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. of our report dated August 22, 2016, relating to the consolidated financial statements of Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary (Ciclofilin), which appears in this Form 8-K/A of ContraVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Our report contains an explanatory paragraph regarding Ciclofilins ability to continue as a going concern. /s/BDO USA, LLP August 22, 2016

Exhibit 99.1 Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial Statements of ContraVir Pharmaceuticals Inc. The following unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial information has been prepared to reflect adjustments to the financial condition and results of operations of ContraVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (the Company or ContraVir) to give the estimated effects of our acquisition of Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a Delaware corporation (Ciclofilin). On June 10, 2016, ContraVir acquired 100% of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock of Ciclofilin for total consideration of $3,820,000. Consideration for the acquisition consists of cash consideration of $500,000 and certain milestone payments (contingent consideration) valued at $3,320,000: Milestone Event under the ContraVir Merger

Agreement Milestone Payment to Stockholders Upon receipt of Phase I Positive Data from the Phase I trial of CPI-431-32 in humans (1) Such number of validly issued, fully paid and non-assessable shares of Buyer Common Stock equal to 2.5% of the issued and outstanding Buyer Common Stock on the Closing Date and (2) $1,000,000 by wire transfer of immediately available funds. Upon receipt of Phase II Positive Data from a proof of concept clinical trial (whether an HBV-positive Phase I clinical trial or a separate Phase II clinical trial, or otherwise) of CPI-431-32 in humans (1) Such number of validly issued, fully paid and non-assessable shares of Buyer Common Stock equal to 7.5% of the issued and outstanding Buyer Common Stock on the Closing Date and (2) $3,000,000 by wire transfer of immediately available funds. Upon initiation of a Phase III trial of CPI-431-32 $5,000,000 Upon the acceptance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of a new drug application for CPI-431-32 $8,000,000 The Merger has been accounted for as a business combination (in accordance with ASC 805 Business Combinations) and, as such, the Ciclofilin assets acquired and liabilities assumed have been recorded at their respective fair values as of the effective date of the merger. The determination of fair value for the identifiable tangible and intangible assets acquired and liabilities assumed requires extensive use of accounting estimates and judgments. Significant estimates and assumptions include, but are not limited to: determining the timing and estimated costs to complete the in-process research and development projects, projecting the likelihood and timing of obtaining regulatory approval, estimating future cash flows and determining the appropriate discount rate and the likelihood of successfully achieving the contingent consideration clinical and regulatory milestones. The estimated fair values of the assets acquired and liabilities assumed on the Merger date included in the Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Financial Statements (the Statements) are provisional. As used herein, the terms the Company, we, and our refer to ContraVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and, where applicable, its consolidated subsidiaries. The Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Balance Sheet as of March 31, 2016 gives effect to the Merger as if it had occurred on that date and includes historical data as reported by the separate companies as well as adjustments that give effect to events that are directly attributable to the Merger that are factually supportable. The Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Statements of Operations for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and the year ended June 30, 2015 give effect to the Merger as if it had been consummated on July 1, 2014, and include historical data as reported by the separate companies as well as adjustments that give effect to events that are directly attributable to the Merger.

The pro forma adjustments reflecting the consummation of the Merger are based upon the acquisition method of accounting in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and upon the assumptions set forth in the Notes included in this section. The Statements have been prepared based on available information, using estimates and assumptions that our management believes are reasonable. These estimates and assumptions affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements and the reported amounts of revenues and expenses during the reporting period. These estimates and assumptions are preliminary and have been made solely for purposes of developing this unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial information. The Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Balance Sheet has been adjusted to reflect the allocation of the purchase price to identifiable net assets acquired and of the excess purchase price to goodwill. The pro forma adjustments are based on currently available information and upon assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable under the circumstances. A final determination of the allocation of the purchase price to the assets acquired and the liabilities assumed has not been made, therefore, the allocation reflected in the unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial statements should be considered preliminary and is subject to the completion of a more comprehensive valuation of the assets acquired and liabilities assumed. The final allocation of purchase price could differ from the pro forma allocation included herein. Amounts preliminarily allocated to intangible assets and goodwill may change significantly, and amortization methods and useful lives may differ from the assumptions that have been used in this unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial information, any of which could result in a material change in depreciation and amortization expense. The unaudited pro forma condensed combined statements of operations are provided for illustrative purposes only. The unaudited pro forma condensed combined statements of operations are not necessarily, and should not be assumed to be, an indication of the results that would have been achieved had the acquisition been completed as of the dates indicated or that may be achieved in the future and should not be taken as representative of future combined results of operations or financial condition of the Company. Furthermore, no effect has been given in the unaudited pro forma condensed combined statements of operations for synergistic benefits and potential cost savings, if any, that may be realized through the consolidation of the two companies or the costs that may be incurred in integrating their operations. The assumptions used and adjustments made in preparing the Statements are described in the Notes, which should be read in conjunction with the Statements. The Statements and related Notes contained herein should be read in conjunction with the Consolidated Financial Statements and related Notes included in the Companys Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2016 to be filed on or before September 30, 2016.

Contravir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Balance Sheet As of March 31, 2016 Historical Contravir Historical Ciclofilin Pro Forma

Adjustments Pro Forma

Contravir

Combined ASSETS Current assets: Cash $ 5,956,761 $ 6,157 $ (500,000 ) 3a $ 5,462,918 Tax receivable  5,405 5,405 Prepaid expenses 669,659 1,769  671,428 Total current assets 6,626,420 13,331 (500,000 ) 6,139,751 Property and equipment, net 71,920 15,634  87,554 In process research and development   3,190,000 3b 3,190,000 Goodwill   1,879,841 3c 1,879,841 Other assets 51,344 5,085  56,429 Total assets $ 6,749,684 $ 34,050 $ 4,569,841 $ 11,353,575 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS EQUITY Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 3,441,248 $ 233,921 $ (233,921 ) 3a $ 3,441,248 Accrued liabilities 847,430 18,477 (18,477 ) 3a 847,430 Current portion of capital lease obligations  14,271  14,271 Total current liabilities 4,288,678 266,669 (252,398 ) 4,302,949 Derivative financial instruments - warrants 1,165,677   1,165,677 Long-term portion of convertible notes payable 1,034,730 (1,034,730 ) 3a, 3f  Deferred tax liability   1,269,620 3e 1,269,620 Acquisition related contingent consideration   3,320,000 3d 3,320,000 Total liabilities 5,454,355 1,301,399 3,302,492 10,058,246 Stockholders Equity: Series A convertible preferred stock 12,500,000   12,500,000 Series B convertible preferred stock 1,200,000   1,200,000 Common stock 2,731 2,000 (2,000 ) 3f 2,731 Additional paid-in capital 26,998,824 1,401,799 (1,401,799 ) 3f 26,998,824 Accumulated deficit (39,406,226 ) (2,736,147 ) 2,736,147 3f (39,406,226 ) Accumulated other comprehensive income  64,999 (64,999 ) 3f  Total stockholders equity 1,295,329 (1,267,349 ) 1,267,349 1,295,329 Total liabilities and stockholders equity $ 6,749,684 $ 34,050 $ 4,569,841 $ 11,353,575 See accompanying notes to the unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial information

Contravir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Statement of Operations For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 Historical Contravir Historical Ciclofilin Pro Forma

Adjustments Pro Forma

Contravir

Combined Revenues $  $  $  $  Operating Costs and Expenses: Research and development 10,994,712 338,854  11,333,566 General and administrative 4,016,503 1,331,504 5,348,007 Loss from Operations (15,011,215 ) (1,670,358 )  (16,681,573 ) Other Income (Expense): Interest expense  (54,393 ) 52,042 3g (2,351 ) Change in fair value of derivative financial instuments - warrants 3,218,846   3,218,846 Foreign exchange loss  (18,763 )  (18,763 ) Total Other Income (Expense) 3,218,846 (73,156 ) 52,042 3,197,732 Net loss (11,792,369 ) (1,743,514 ) 52,042 (13,483,841 ) Series A and B converible preferred stock beneficial conversion feature accreted as a dividend     Net loss attributable to common stockholders $ (11,792,369 ) $ (1,743,514 ) $ 52,042 $ (13,483,841 ) Net Loss per Common Share Basic and Diluted $ (0.46 ) $ (0.53 ) Weighted Average Common Shares Outstanding Basis and Diluted 25,403,001 25,403,001 See the accompanying notes to the unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial information

Contravir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Statement of Operations For the year ended June 30, 2015 Historical Contravir Historical Ciclofilin Pro Forma

Adjustments Pro Forma

Contravir

Combined Revenues $  $ 113,786 $  $ 113,786 Costs and Expenses: Research and development 8,403,579 277,081  8,680,660 General and administrative 5,556,400 540,927  6,097,327 Loss from Operations (13,959,979 ) (704,222 )  (14,664,201 ) Other income (expense): Interest expense  (49,156 ) 47,629 3g (1,527 ) Change in fair value of derivative financial instuments - warrants (387,898 )   (387,898 ) Foreign exchange loss  (52,714 )  (52,714 ) Total Other Income (Expense) (387,898 ) (101,870 ) 47,629 (442,139 ) Net loss (14,347,877 ) (806,092 ) 47,629 (15,106,340 ) Series A and B converible preferred stock beneficial conversion feature accreted as a dividend (7,844,643 )   (7,844,643 ) Net loss attributable to common stockholders $ (22,192,520 ) $ (806,092 ) $ 47,629 $ (22,950,983 ) Net Loss per Common Share Basic and Diluted $ (1.02 ) $ (1.05 ) Weighted Average Common Shares Outstanding Basis and Diluted 21,754,623 21,754,623 See the accompanying notes to the unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial information

CONTRAVIR PHARMACEUTICALS, INC. NOTES TO UNAUDITED PRO FORMA CONDENSED COMBINED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS Note 1. Basis of pro forma presentation The unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial statements are based on ContraVirs and Ciclofilins historical consolidated financial statements as adjusted to give effect to the acquisition of Ciclofilin. The Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Statements of Operations for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and the year ended June 30, 2015 give effect to the Ciclofilin acquisition as if it had occurred on July 1, 2014. The Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Balance sheet as of March 31, 2016 gives effect to the Ciclofilin acquisition as if it had occurred on March 31, 2016. The Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Statements of Operations do not reflect the non-recurring expenses that we expect to incur in connection with the Ciclofilin transaction, including fees to investment bankers, attorneys, accountants and other professional advisors, and other transaction-related costs that will not be capitalized. Additionally, the Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Statements of Operations do not reflect the effects of any anticipated cost savings and any related non-recurring costs to achieve those cost savings. The Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Statements of Operations do not purport to represent our actual results of operations that would have occurred if the acquisitions had taken place on the dates specified, nor are they necessarily indicative of the results of operations that may be achieved in the future. Note 2. Preliminary purchase price allocation On June 10, 2016, ContraVir acquired Ciclofilin for total consideration of approximately $3,820,000, including contingent consideration with a preliminary fair value of $3,320,000. The Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined financial information includes various assumptions, including those related to the preliminary purchase price allocation of the assets acquired and liabilities assumed of Ciclofilin based on managements best estimates of fair value. The final purchase price allocation may vary based on final appraisals, valuations and analyses of the fair value of the acquired assets and assumed liabilities. Accordingly, the pro forma adjustments are preliminary and have been made solely for illustrative purposes. The following table summarizes the preliminary purchase price allocation as if the acquisition had occurred on March 31, 2016: Cash $ 6,157 Tax receivable and prepaid expenses 7,174 Property and equipment, net 15,634 Other assets 5,085 In-process research and development (IPR&D) 3,190,000 Total identifiable assets 3,224,050 Accounts payable and accrued expenses  Current portion of capital lease 14,271 Total liabilities assumed 14,271 Net identifiable assets acquired 3,209,779 Goodwill 1,879,841 Deferred income taxes arising from basis differences of tax aspects of IPR&D (1,269,620 ) Net assets acquired $ 3,820,000

The above estimated fair values of assets acquired and liabilities assumed are provisional and are based on the information that was available to estimate the fair value of assets acquired and liabilities assumed. We believe that this information provides a reasonable basis for estimating the fair values but we are waiting for additional information necessary to finalize those amounts. Thus, the provisional measurements of fair value reflected are subject to change. Such changes could be significant. We expect to finalize our purchase price allocation as soon as practicable but no later than one year from the closing date of the Ciclofilin acquisition. Note 3. Pro forma adjustments a. The cash consideration of $500,000 was used to pay off accounts payables and accrued expenses up to $300,000 as part of the transaction closing and to repay ContraVir $200,000 for a loan made in April 2016. No pro forma adjustment has been made for transaction costs incurred subsequent to March 31, 2016, as these amounts will be paid off upon closing of the transaction with the cash consideration of $500,000 and do not change the assumed liabilities of ContraVir at either March 31, 2016 or June 10, 2016. b. For the purpose of preparing the unaudited pro forma condensed combined financial information, the total purchase price is allocated to the Ciclofilin net tangible and intangible assets acquired and liabilities assumed based on their estimated fair values as of June 10, 2016. The fair value of the in-process research and development asset was estimated as of the acquisition date resulting in a fair value of $3,190,000. The fair value of other assets and liabilities approximate their book value. The multiperiod excess earnings method was used to value the in-process research and development. These provisional measurements of fair value reflected are subject to change. Such changes could be significant. c. Represents an adjustment to goodwill to reflect the balance that would have been recorded if the acquisition occurred on March 31, 2016. The Company preliminarily allocated the purchase price to the net tangible and intangible assets based upon their estimated fair values at the Merger date. The excess of the purchase price over the estimated fair values of the net tangible and intangible assets acquired has been recorded as goodwill at March 31, 2016 including deferred tax liabilities resulting from the tax attributes of the in-process research and development (see Note 3e). d. Reflects recognition of the estimated fair value of the contingent consideration payable with cash and issuance of ContraVir common stock upon achievement of certain future clinical and regulatory milestones, the achievement of which is uncertain. A discounted cash flow method was used to value the future milestone payments. e. There are no proforma adjustments to the statement of operations for amortization and depreciation since both in-process research and development and goodwill are not amortizable and there is no difference between the book and fair value of other assets and liabilities. Based on the preliminary fair value of identifiable in-process research and development acquired, the Company recorded a net deferred tax liability of $1,269,620 in the pro forma balance sheet as of March 31, 2016 using a combined federal and state statutory income tax rate of approximately 39.8%. Such deferred tax liability represents the basis difference of the in-process research and development for tax and book purposes. The in-process research and development asset acquired is an indefinite-lived intangible asset due to its current pre-clinical stage development, and in the opinion of management, there is no basis for realization of the related deferred tax liability. Therefore, the deferred tax liability recorded as part of the acquisition accounting is not expected to reverse in a period such to allow realization of the Companys deferred tax assets that currently have a full valuation allowance. f. Represents an adjustment to eliminate Ciclofilins historical stockholders deficit. Prior to the acquisition transaction, convertible debt and related accrued interest of Ciclofilin was converted into shares of Ciclofilin common stock. g. Represents the elimination of interest expense associated with the convertible note payable held by Ciclofilin that was converted into shares of Ciclofilin common stock prior to the Merger.

Note 4. Items not included The Unaudited Pro Forma Condensed Combined Statements of Operations do not include any expected cost savings or restructuring actions which may be achievable or which may occur subsequent to the Merger or the impact of any non-recurring activity, including Merger costs that were paid subsequent to June 10, 2016.

Exhibit 99.2 Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Consolidated Financial Statements March 31, 2016 and June 30, 2015 and 2014

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Table of Contents Page Financial information Independent Auditors Report 3 Consolidated Balance Sheets at March 31, 2016 (Unaudited), June 30, 2015 and 2014 4 Consolidated Statements of Operations and Comprehensive Loss for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 5 Consolidated Statements of Stockholders Deficit for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 6 Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 7 Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements 8 2

Independent Auditors Report Board of Directors Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Edison, New Jersey We have audited the accompanying consolidated financial statements of Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and its subsidiary, which comprise the consolidated balance sheets as of June 30, 2015 and 2014, and the related consolidated statements of operations, changes in stockholders deficit, and cash flows for the year then ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (date of inception) to June 30, 2014, and the related notes to the consolidated financial statements. Managements Responsibility for the Financial Statements Management is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of these consolidated financial statements in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America; this includes the design, implementation, and maintenance of internal control relevant to the preparation and fair presentation of consolidated financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error. Auditors Responsibility Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these consolidated financial statements based on our audits. We conducted our audits in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States of America. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the consolidated financial statements are free from material misstatement. An audit involves performing procedures to obtain audit evidence about the amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. The procedures selected depend on the auditors judgment, including the assessment of the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated financial statements, whether due to fraud or error. In making those risk assessments, the auditor considers internal control relevant to the entitys preparation and fair presentation of the consolidated financial statements in order to design audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the entitys internal control. Accordingly, we express no such opinion. An audit also includes evaluating the appropriateness of accounting policies used and the reasonableness of significant accounting estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our audit opinion. Opinion In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and its subsidiary as of June 30, 2015 and 2014, and the results of their operations and their cash flows for the year then ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (date of inception) to June 30, 2014 in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America. Emphasis of Matter Regarding Going Concern The accompanying consolidated financial statements have been prepared assuming that the Company will continue as a going concern. As described in Note 2 to the consolidated financial statements, the Company has suffered recurring losses from operations and has a net capital deficiency that raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. Managements plans in regard to these matters are also described in Note 2. The consolidated financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of this uncertainty. Our opinion is not modified with respect to this matter. /s/ BDO USA, LLP August 22, 2016 3

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Consolidated Balance Sheets As of March 31, 2016 (Unaudited), June 30, 2015 and 2014 March 31,

2016

(Unaudited) June 30,

2015 June 30,

2014 ASSETS Current Assets: Cash $ 6,157 $ 51,308 $ 136,884 Prepaid expenses 1,769 1,769 1,769 Tax Receivable 5,405 2,025 2,124 Total Current Assets 13,331 55,102 140,777 Property and equipment, net 15,634 21,133  Security deposit 5,085 5,149 3,537 Total Assets $ 34,050 $ 81,384 $ 144,314 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS DEFICIT Current Liabilities: Accounts payable $ 233,921 $ 144,323 $ 34,395 Accrued expenses 18,477 12,457 6,181 Current portion of capital lease 14,271 6,026  Total Current Liabilities 266,669 162,806 40,576 Long-term portion of convertible notes payable 1,034,730 846,688 294,059 Long-term portion of capital lease  14,839  Total Liabilities 1,301,399 1,024,333 334,635 Stockholders Deficit: Common stock, par value of $0.001 per share. Authorized 4,000,000 shares, 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 issued and outstanding at June 30, 2015 and June 30, 2014, respectively 2,000 1,000 2,000 Notes receivable from officers  (1,000 ) (2,000 ) Additional paid-in capital 1,401,799   Accumulated deficit (2,736,147 ) (992,633 ) (186,541 ) Accumulated Other comprehensive income (loss) 64,999 49,684 (3,780 ) Total Stockholders Deficit (1,267,349 ) (942,949 ) (190,321 ) Total Liabilities and Stockholders Deficit $ 34,050 $ 81,384 $ 144,314 The accompanying notes are an integral part of these consolidated financial statements. 4

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Consolidated Statements of Operations For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 Nine Months

Ended

March 31,

2016

(Unaudited) Nine Months

Ended

March 31,

2015

(Unaudited) Year

ended

June 30, 2015 January 13,

2014

(Inception) to

June 30, 2014 Grant revenues $  $ 95,985 $ 113,786 $  Costs and Expenses: Research and development 338,854 220,002 277,081 76,921 General and administrative 1,331,504 451,748 540,927 110,234 Total operating expenses 1,670,358 671,750 818,008 187,155 Loss from Operations (1,670,358 ) (575,765 ) (704,222 ) (187,155 ) Other (Income) Expense: Loss (gain) on foreign currency transactions 18,763 61,254 52,714 (3,602 ) Interest expense, net 54,393 32,810 49,156 2,988 Total Other (Income) Expense 73,156 94,064 101,870 (614 ) Net loss $ (1,743,514 ) $ (669,829 ) $ (806,092 ) $ (186,541 ) Other Comprehensive Income Foreign currency translation gain (loss) 15,315 60,609 53,464 (3,780 ) Comprehensive Loss $ (1,728,199 ) $ (609,220 ) $ (752,628 ) $ (190,321 ) The accompanying notes are an integral part of these consolidated financial statements. 5

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Consolidated Statements of Stockholders Deficit For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 Common Stock,

$0.001 par value Receivable Accumulated

Other Total Par Additional from Accumulated comprehensive Stockholders Shares Value Paid-In Capital Officers Deficit income (loss) Deficit Balance January 13, 2014  $  $  $  $  $  $  Issuance of common stock 2,000,000 2,000     2,000 Notes receivable from officers    (2,000 )   (2,000 ) Other comprehensive loss      (3,780 ) (3,780 ) Net loss     (186,541 )  (186,541 ) Balance June 30, 2014 2,000,000 $ 2,000 $  $ (2,000 ) $ (186,541 ) $ (3,780 ) $ (190,321 ) Share cancellation (1,000,000 ) (1,000 )  1,000    Other comprehensive income      53,464 53,464 Net loss     (806,092 )  (806,092 ) Balance June 30, 2015 1,000,000 $ 1,000 $  $ (1,000 ) $ (992,633 ) $ 49,684 $ (942,949 ) Issuance of restricted stock 1,000,000 1,000     1,000 Vesting of restricted stock   1,401,799    1,401,799 Payment of note receivable from officer    1,000   1,000 Other comprehensive income      15,315 15,315 Net loss     (1,743,514 )  (1,743,514 ) Balance March 31, 2016 2,000,000 $ 2,000 $ 1,401,799 $  $ (2,736,147 ) $ 64,999 $ (1,267,349 ) The accompanying notes are an integral part of these consolidated financial statements. 6

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 Nine Months

Ended

March 31,

2016

(Unaudited) Nine Months

Ended

March 31,

2015

(Unaudited) Year

Ended

June 30,

2015 Period from

January 13,

2014

(inception) to

June 30, 2014 Cash Flows From Operating Activities: Net loss $ (1,743,514 ) $ (669,829 ) $ (806,092 ) $ (186,541 ) Adjustments to reconcile net loss to net cash used in operating activities: Amortization of assets held under capital lease 4,547 3,523 6,083  Non-cash interest expense on convertible notes payable 52,042 31,751 47,629 2,988 Stock-based compensation expense 1,401,799    Convertible debt issued for services provided  10,000 10,000  Unrealized foreign currency loss (gain) 18,763 61,254 52,714 (3,602 ) Changes in operating assets and liabilities: Accounts receivable  (35,274 )   Tax receivable (3,352 ) 601 (221 ) (2,065 ) Prepaid expenses    (1,769 ) Security deposit  (1,745 ) (1,717 ) (3,538 ) Accounts payable and accrued expenses 93,702 70,921 125,321 37,984 Net Cash Used In Operating Activities (176,013 ) (528,798 ) (566,283 ) (156,543 ) Cash Flows From Financing Activities: Issuance of convertible notes payable 136,000 495,000 495,000 291,071 Proceeds from officer receivable 1,000    Issuance of restricted stock 1,000    Principal payments on capital lease (5,619 ) (4,153 ) (5,368 )  Net cash provided by financing activities 132,381 490,847 489,632 291,071 Net (decrease) increase in cash and cash equivalents (43,632 ) (37,951 ) (76,651 ) 134,528 Effect of change in foreign exchange rates on cash and cash equivalents (1,519 ) (11,315 ) (8,925 ) 2,356 Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 51,308 136,889 136,884  Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $ 6,157 $ 87,623 $ 51,308 $ 136,884 Supplemental schedule of noncash financing activities: Common stock issuance $  $  $  $ 2,000 Share cancellation $  $  $ (1,000 ) $  Convertible notes payable issued for services $  $ 10,000 $ 10,000 $  Equipment capital lease $  $  $ 27,216 $  The accompanying notes are an integral part of these financial statements. 7

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary

Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements

For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30,

2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 1. Business Overview Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (CPI) is a biopharmaceutical company incorporated January 13, 2014, in California. On October 15, 2014, CPI became a Delaware corporation. CPI has one wholly-owned subsidiary, Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals Corp. (CPC), incorporated in Canada on January 24, 2014. Together, CPI and CPC (the Company) specialize in the development of cyclophilin inhibitors, an emerging class of drugs for infectious, inflammatory, and degenerative diseases. The Companys lead drug candidate, CPI-431-32, is a potent cyclophilin inhibitor that blocks multiple HBV activities including entry into cells and replication, and is currently in pre-clinical development. The drug may act additionally by stimulating the bodys natural defenses against HBV. CPI-431-32 also independently impedes liver fibrosis, a major contributor to cirrhosis and cancer development. 2. Basis of Presentation and Going Concern Basis of presentation The accompanying consolidated financial statements have been prepared in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (U.S. GAAP). Any reference in these notes to applicable guidance is meant to refer to U.S. GAAP as found in the Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) and Accounting Standards Updates (ASU) of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). The accompanying unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared by the Company in conformity with U.S. GAAP and are unaudited. In the opinion of management, the accompanying unaudited financial statements include all adjustments, which include only normal recurring adjustments, necessary to present fairly the Companys interim financial information. Principles of Consolidation The consolidated financial statements include the accounts of CPI and its subsidiary, CPC, which conducts operations in Canada. All intercompany balances and transactions have been eliminated in consolidation. Going Concern As of March 31, 2016 and June 30, 2015, the Company had $6,157 and $51,308 in cash. Net cash used in operating activities was $176,013 and $566,283 for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and year ended June 30, 2015, respectively. Net loss was $1,743,514 and $806,092 for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and year ended June 30, 2015, respectively. As of March 31, 2016 and June 30, 2015, the Company had negative working capital of $253,338 and $107,704. The Company expects to incur losses for the next several years as it expands its research, development and clinical trials of CPI-431-32. The Company is unable to predict the extent of any future losses or when the Company will become profitable, if at all. These consolidated financial statements have been prepared under the assumption that the Company will continue as a going concern. Due to the Companys recurring and expected continuing losses from operations, the Company has concluded there is substantial doubt in the Companys ability to continue as a going concern within one year of the issuance of these financial statements without additional capital becoming available to attain further operating efficiencies and, ultimately, to generate revenue. The consolidated financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of this uncertainty. The Company will be required to raise additional capital within the next year to continue the development of CPI-431-32 and to continue to fund operations at the current cash expenditure levels. The Company cannot be certain that additional funding will be available on acceptable terms, or at all. 8

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary

Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements

For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30,

2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 3. Summary of Significant Accounting Policies Use of Estimates The preparation of the consolidated financial statements in conformity with U.S. GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements and the reported amounts of expenses during the reporting period. Changes in estimates and assumptions are reflected in reported results in the period in which they become known. Actual results could differ from those estimates. Cash As of March 31, 2016, June 30, 2015 and 2014, the amount of cash was $6,157, $51,308 and $136,884, respectively, consisting of checking accounts held at U.S. and Canadian commercial banks. Cash is maintained at financial institutions and, at times, balances may exceed federally insured limits. The Company has never experienced losses related to these balances. Fair Value of Financial Instruments ASC Topic 820, Fair Value Measurement (ASC 820), establishes a fair value hierarchy for instruments measured at fair value that distinguishes between assumptions based on market data (observable inputs) and the Companys own assumptions (unobservable inputs). Observable inputs are inputs that market participants would use in pricing the asset or liability based on market data obtained from sources independent of the Company. Unobservable inputs are inputs that reflect the Companys assumptions about the inputs that market participants would use in pricing the asset or liability, and are developed based on the best information available in the circumstances. ASC 820 identifies fair value as the exchange price, or exit price, representing the amount that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in an orderly transaction between market participants. As a basis for considering market participant assumptions in fair value measurements, ASC Topic 820 establishes a three-tier fair value hierarchy that distinguishes among the following:  Level 1Valuations based on unadjusted quoted prices in active markets for identical assets or liabilities that the Company has the ability to access.  Level 2Valuations based on quoted prices for similar assets or liabilities in active markets, quoted prices for identical or similar assets or liabilities in markets that are not active and models for which all significant inputs are observable, either directly or indirectly.  Level 3Valuations based on inputs that are unobservable and significant to the overall fair value measurement. To the extent that the valuation is based on models or inputs that are less observable or unobservable in the market, the determination of fair value requires more judgment. Accordingly, the degree of judgment exercised by the Company in determining fair value is greatest for instruments categorized in Level 3. A financial instruments level within the fair value hierarchy is based on the lowest level of any input that is significant to the fair value measurement. Financial instruments consisting of cash, accounts payable and accrued expenses are stated at their respective historical carrying amounts, which approximate fair value due to their short term nature. Income Taxes The Company accounts for income taxes under the asset and liability method. The Company recognizes deferred tax assets and liabilities for the future tax consequences attributable to differences between the financial statement carrying amounts of existing assets and liabilities and their respective tax bases, as well as for operating loss and tax credit carry-forwards. The Company measures deferred tax assets and liabilities using enacted tax rates 9

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary

Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements

For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30,

2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 expected to apply to taxable income in the years in which the Company expects to recover or settle those temporary differences. The Company recognizes the effect of a change in tax rates on deferred tax assets and liabilities in the results of operations in the period that includes the enactment date. The Company reduces the measurement of a deferred tax asset, if necessary, by a valuation allowance if it is more likely than not that the Company will not realize some or all of the deferred tax asset. The Company accounts for uncertain tax positions by recognizing the financial statement effects of a tax position only when, based upon technical merits, it is more-likely-than-not that the position will be sustained upon examination. Potential interest and penalties associated with unrecognized tax positions are recognized in income tax expense. Lease Accounting The Company accounts for operating lease transactions by recording rent expense on a straight-line basis over the expected life of the lease, commencing on the date it gains possession of leased property. Capital lease transactions are reflected as a liability at the inception of the lease based on the present value of the minimum lease payments or, if lower, the fair value of the property. Assets under capital leases are recorded in property and equipment, net in the Consolidated Balance Sheets and depreciated over their estimated useful lives. Grant Revenue Recognition The Company recognizes grant revenue when persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists, delivery has occurred or services have been rendered, the price is fixed and determinable, and collectability is reasonably assured. The Company received research grants from the National Research Council (NRC) to assist in the funding of certain research activities from August 8, 2014 through May 31, 2015. The maximum contribution under the agreement for reimbursements of certain salary and contract research organization expenses was Canadian Dollar (CAD) $135,000. For the year ended June 30, 2015, the Company recognized $113,786 as revenue related to this grant. Research and Development Research and development (R&D) costs, which include expenditures in connection with an in-house research and development laboratory, salaries and staff costs, application and filing for regulatory approval of proposed products, purchased in-process research and development, license costs, regulatory and scientific consulting fees, as well as contract research, insurance and FDA consultants, are accounted for in accordance with ASC Topic 730, Research and Development, (ASC 730). Also, as prescribed by this guidance, patent filing and maintenance expenses are considered legal in nature and therefore classified as general and administrative expense, if any. The Company does not currently have any commercial biopharmaceutical products, and does not expect to have such for several years if at all. Accordingly, R&D costs are expensed as incurred. While certain of Ciclofilins research and development costs may have future benefits, the policy of expensing all research and development expenditures is predicated on the fact that the Company has no history of successful commercialization of product candidates to base any estimate of the number of future periods that would be benefited. Also as prescribed by ASC 730, non-refundable advance payments for goods or services that will be used or rendered for future research and development activities should be deferred and capitalized. As the related goods are delivered or the services are performed, or when the goods or services are no longer expected to be provided, the deferred amounts would be recognized as an expense. There were no prepaid R&D expenses at March 31, 2016, June 30, 2015 or 2014. Foreign Exchange The functional currency of CPI is the U.S. dollar. The functional currency of CPC is the Canadian dollar. The Companys reporting currency is the U.S. dollar. The assets and liabilities of CPC are translated into U.S. dollars using period-end exchange rates; income and expenses are translated using the average exchange rates for the reporting period. Unrealized foreign currency translation adjustments are deferred in accumulated other comprehensive loss, a separate component of shareholders deficit. 10

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary

Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements

For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30,

2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 Transactions in foreign currencies are remeasured into the functional currency of the relevant subsidiary at the exchange rate in effect at the date of the transaction. Any monetary assets and liabilities arising from these transactions are translated into the functional currency at exchange rates in effect at the balance sheet date or on settlement. Resulting gains and losses are recorded in other foreign exchange (gain) loss within the consolidated statements of operations. Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income A company is required to present, either on the face of the statement where net income is presented, in a separate statement of comprehensive income or in the notes, significant amounts reclassified out of accumulated other comprehensive income by the respective line items of net income. There were no amounts reclassified out of accumulated other comprehensive income for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 or 2015, the year ended June 30, 2015 or for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014. Other comprehensive income for the nine months ended September 30, 2016, year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 related to foreign currency translation adjustments. Segment Information Operating segments are defined as components of an enterprise about which separate discrete information is available for evaluation by the chief operating decision maker, or decision-making group, in deciding how to allocate resources and in assessing performance. The Company, through its chief operating decision maker, views the operations and manages the business in one segment. 4. Recent Accounting Pronouncements In February 2016, the FASB issued ASU 2016-02, Leases (Topic 842). The new standard establishes a right-of-use (ROU) model that requires a lessee to record a ROU asset and a lease liability on the Consolidated Balance Sheet for all leases with terms longer than 12 months. Leases will be classified as either finance or operating, with classification affecting the pattern of expense recognition in the consolidated income statement. ASU 2016-02 is effective for annual periods beginning after December 15, 2018, including interim periods within those annual periods, with early adoption permitted. A modified retrospective transition approach is required for lessees for capital and operating leases existing at, or entered into after, the beginning of the earliest comparative period presented in the financial statements, with certain practical expedients available. The Company is currently evaluating the potential 0impact of the adoption of this standard. In May 2014, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued Accounting Standards update (ASU) No. 2014-09, Revenue from Contracts with Customers (ASU 2014-09). ASU 2014-09 represents a comprehensive new revenue recognition model that requires a company to recognize revenue to depict the transfer of promised goods or services to customers in an amount that reflects the consideration to which the Company expects to be entitled to receive in exchange for those goods or services. This ASU sets forth a new five-step revenue recognition model which replaces the prior revenue recognition guidance in its entirety and is intended to eliminate numerous industry-specific pieces of revenue recognition guidance that have historically existed. In August 2015, the FASB issued ASU No. 2015-14, Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606): Deferral of the Effective Date, which deferred the effective date of ASU 2014-09 by one year, but permits entities to adopt one year earlier if they choose (i.e., the original effective date). As such, ASU 2014- 09 will be effective for annual and interim reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2018. In addition, during March, April and May 2016, the FASB issued ASU No. 2016-08 Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606): Principal versus Agent Consideration (Reporting Revenue Gross versus Net), ASU No. 2016-10 Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606): Identifying Performance Obligations and Licensing, and ASU No. 2016-12 Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606): Narrow-Scope Improvements and Practical Expedients respectively. These additional amendments clarified the revenue recognition guidance on reporting revenue as a principal versus agent, identifying performance obligations, accounting for intellectual property licenses and on transition, collectability, noncash consideration and the presentation of sales and other similar taxes. The Company is currently evaluating the impact of this standard on the Companys consolidated results of operations and financial position including possible transition alternatives. 11

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements

For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30,

2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 5. Asset Purchase On February 14, 2014, the Company entered into a Purchase and Sale Agreement (the Agreement) with Aurinia Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Aurinia) to acquire Aurinias entire interest in a pre-clinical stage library of Non-Immunosuppressive Cyclophilin Antagonist Molecules derived from Cyclosporin A (NICAMS) to various cyclophilin targets for an undefined indication. There was no upfront consideration. There are future milestone payments of up to CAD $2.9 million, which are to be paid within 30 days of achieving such milestone. In addition to the milestone payments, the Company may have other future payment obligations (in Canadian Dollars CAD) including a royalty of 2.5% of net sales by the Company or its licensee(s). The amount payable under the foregoing royalty obligation is uncapped. The Company shall pay to Aurinia a royalty on license revenue received by the Company. The amount of the royalty is dependent on the timing of the Company having a qualifying Equity Financing (as defined in the Agreement), up to a maximum of CAD $5.0 million. The Company shall pay to Aurinia a milestone payment in the amounts (CAD) set out as follows upon the occurrence of a Liquidity Event. If the Liquidity Event occurs (1) prior to 12 months following the first Equity Financing, the Company will pay Aurinia 30% of proceeds to a maximum of $5,000,000; (2) later than 12 months and before 24 months following the first Equity Financing, the Company will pay Aurinia 15% of proceeds to a maximum of $5,000,000; and (3) thereafter, 5% of proceeds to a maximum of $5,000,000. No amounts were owed to Aurinia as of March 31, 2016, June 30, 2015 or 2014 for either milestone payments or royalty payments. T his acquisition is accounted for as an asset purchase because only inputs were acquired (no processes were acquired). The IPR&D acquired in this transaction does not currently have alternative future use, therefore any cost of the purchase should be expensed. However, there was no upfront consideration in this asset acquisition, and contingent consideration is not recognized until probable of being paid, so no expense is recognized upon acquisition. As the Company further develops this IPR&D, all costs should be expensed as incurred until there is alternative future use. 6. Equity Transactions Notes receivable from officers On January 13, 2014, The Company issued 2,000,000 shares of common stock at par of $0.001 per share to two Company officers in exchange for receivables totaling $2,000. These notes receivables from officers are classified within Stockholders Deficit. On April 18, 2015, in connection with a separation agreement with one of its Company officers, the Company cancelled 1,000,000 shares at par of $0.001 per share offsetting $1,000 of the Companys notes receivable from officers. In October 2015, the remaining $1,000 note receivable was paid off. There were no notes receivable from officers outstanding at March 31, 2016. Restricted Stock On July 15, 2015, the Company granted 1,000,000 shares of restricted stock to three employees for a purchase price of $1,000. The shares vest 50% immediately; and 25% on April 24, 2016 and 2017. In addition, the restricted stock will vest upon the occurrence of a Change in Control (as defined in the Restricted Stock Purchase Agreements). The shares remain subject to forfeiture if vesting conditions are not met. The fair value of these awards upon issuance was $1.91 per share. The compensation expense for these awards was determined based on the fair value of the Companys stock at the date of grant applied to the total number of shares that were anticipated to fully vest. The Company recognized compensation expense of $1,401,799 related to these shares for the nine months ended March 31, 2016. As of March 31, 2016, the Company had unrecognized compensation expense of $507,201 related to these restricted stock awards which is expected to be recognized over a weighted-average period of 1.07 years. Upon the change in control, the remaining expense of $507,201 was expensed. 12

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30,

2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 7. Debt and Capital Lease Convertible Debt In April 2014, the Company began issuing convertible promissory notes (Notes) to individual investors under a subscription agreement, with a maximum offering amount of $2,000,000. The Notes have an original maturity date of April 11, 2016, which is two years after the initial closing. The maturity date may be extended by one year at the option of the Company. The Notes will convert automatically into newly issued preferred equity if the Company has an equity financing for greater than $2,000,000, at a conversion rate of 80% of the price of preferred equity issued in the equity financing. They also convert automatically at the maturity date or at the option of the holders, as long as 50.01% of the holders agree, into a new series of preferred equity at a conversion price that is equal to the original issuance price of that equity. The Notes are redeemable for cash by the Company at any time at principal plus accrued interest, except for in the case of a Liquidity Event, as defined in the Notes agreement. In the case of a Liquidity Event, the holder has the option of converting the principal plus accrued interest into common shares or receiving payment for an amount 2x the aggregate amount of principal plus accrued interest outstanding. As of March 31, 2016, June 30, 2015 and 2014, the Company had principal outstanding of $932,071, $796,071 and $291,071, respectively and had recorded accrued interest of $102,659, $50,617 and $2,988, respectively. Interest expense on the Notes for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015, the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from inception to June 30, 2014 was $52,042, $31,751, $47,629 and $2,988, respectively. As of March 31, 2016 and June 30, 2015, the entire amount outstanding of debt and accrued interest is included in long-term liabilities due to the Companys ability to extend the maturity date by one year. On April 1, 2016, the Company sent notice to the Holders of the Notes informing them the maturity date would be extended by one year, as discussed further in Note. 11 Subsequent Events. As of March 31, 2016 and June 30, 2015, the fair value of the Notes was estimated to be $865,330 and $783,469. Capital Lease Obligations In September 2014, the Company entered into a lease for a variety of equipment necessary in conducting certain research and development operations of the Company. The term of the lease is from October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2016, with monthly rental payments of CAD $1,000 and a CAD $12,200 remaining balance due on September 30, 2016. The lease is accounted for as a capital lease because ownership transfers to the Company at the completion of the lease term. Interest expense related to the capital lease was $1,030 for both the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 and $1,455 for the year ended June 30, 2015. Amortization of assets held under the capital lease was $4,547 for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and $6,083 for the year ended June 30, 2015 and is included in research and development expense. The net book value of equipment acquired under the capital lease was $15,634 as of March 31, 2016 and $21,133 as of June 30, 2015 and is reflected in on the Consolidated Balance Sheets in Property and equipment, net. The estimated useful life of the assets held under the capital lease is 4 years. 13

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30,

2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 Future obligations under the capital lease as of March 31, 2016 are as follows: 2016 (in CAD) $ 3,000 2017(in CAD) 15,200 Total minimum lease payments $ 18,200 Less: Amount representing interest and currency translation 3,929 Current portion of such obligations (in USD) 14,271 8. Income Taxes The Company provides for income taxes under ASC 740. Under ASC 740, the liability method is used in accounting for income taxes. Under this method, deferred tax assets and liabilities are determined based on differences between financial reporting and tax bases of assets and liabilities, and are measured using the enacted tax rates and laws that will be in effect when the differences are expected to reverse. The Company has not recorded a current or deferred income tax expense or benefit since its inception. The Companys loss before income taxes was $806,092 and $186,541 for the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from inception to June 30, 2014, respectively, and was generated entirely in the United States and Canada. Deferred taxes are recognized for temporary differences between the basis of assets and liabilities for financial statement and income tax purposes. The significant components of the Companys deferred tax assets are comprised of the following: Year Ended June 30,

2015 For The Period From

January 13, 2014

(inception) to June 30,

2014 Federal Net Operating Loss (NOL) $ 78,730 $ 9,638 State NOL 13,510 1,654 Canadian NOL 146,475 32,306 Total net operating loss carryforward 238,715 43,598 Intangible Property & Other 52,744 38,775 Deferred tax valuation allowance (291,459 ) (82,373 ) Net deferred tax asset $  $  The Company has evaluated the positive and negative evidence bearing upon the realizability of its deferred tax assets. Based on the Companys history of operating losses since inception, the Company has concluded that it is more likely than not that the benefit of its deferred tax assets will not be realized. Accordingly, the Company has provided a full valuation allowance for deferred tax assets as of June 30, 2015 and June 30, 2014. The valuation allowance increased by $209,086 the year ended June 30, 2015 due primarily to the generation of net operating losses during the periods. 14

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30,

2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 A reconciliation of income tax benefit computed at the statutory federal income tax rate to income taxes as reflected in the financial statements is as follows: Year Ended June 30,

2015 For The Period From

January 13, 2014

(inception) to June 30, 2014 U.S. statutory income tax rate 34.0 % 34.0 % State income taxes, net of federal benefit 5.8 5.8 Valuation allowance (39.8 ) (39.8 ) Effective tax rate   As of June 30, 2015 and June 30, 2014, the Company had U.S. federal and state net operating loss carryforwards of $231,558 and $28,437, respectively, which may be available to offset future income tax liabilities and will begin to expire at various dates starting in June 2034. As of June 30, 2015 and June 30, 2014, the Company also had foreign net operating loss carryforwards of $552,734 and $121,910, respectively, which may be available to offset future income tax liabilities and will begin to expire at various dates starting in June 2034. Under the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, the NOL and tax credit carryforwards are subject to review and possible adjustment by the Internal Revenue Service and state tax authorities. NOL and tax credit carryforwards may become subject to an annual limitation in the event of certain cumulative changes in the ownership interest of significant shareholders over a three-year period in excess of 50%, as defined under Sections 382 and 383 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, respectively, as well as similar state tax provisions. This could limit the amount of tax attributes that the Company can utilize annually to offset future taxable income or tax liabilities. The amount of the annual limitation, if any, will be determined based on the value of the Company immediately prior to the ownership change. Subsequent ownership changes may further affect the limitation in future years. The utilization of these NOLs is subject to limitations based on past and future changes in ownership of Ciclofilin pursuant to Section 382. The Company files income tax returns in the United States, Canada and various state jurisdictions. The federal and state income tax returns are generally subject to tax examinations for the period from January 13, 2014 (Date of Inception) to June 30, 2014 and for the year ended June 30, 2015. To the extent the Company has tax attribute carryforwards, the tax years in which the attribute was generated may still be adjusted upon examination by the Internal Revenue Service or state tax authorities to the extent utilized in a future period. The Company had no unrecognized tax benefits or related interest and penalties accrued through June 30, 2015. 9. Commitments and Contingencies Operating Leases The Company leases office space under cancellable and noncancelable operating lease agreements. Rent expense was $54,340 and $53,175 for the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 and $70,437 and $18,352 for the year ended June 30, 2015 and for the period from inception to June 30, 2014, respectively. The 15

Ciclofilin Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Subsidiary Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements For the nine months ended March 31, 2016 and 2015 (Unaudited), the year ended June 30,

2015 and for the period from January 13, 2014 (inception) to June 30, 2014 noncancelable office lease expires June 30, 2016. 10. Related Party Transactions On April 18, 2015, in connection with a separation agreement with one of the Companys officers, the Company wrote off $45,000 of unpaid receivables, recorded an additional $50,000 receivable to be repaid over 12 months beginning in May 2016, and cancelled 1,000,000 shares at par of $0.001 per share offsetting $1,000 of the Companys Notes receivable from officers. In June 2015, the Company wrote off the remaining $50,000 receivable after determining it was uncollectible. This expense is included in general and administrative expenses for the year ended June 30, 2015. 11. Subsequent Events The Company has evaluated events and transactions subsequent to the balance sheet date through the time these consolidated financial statements were available for issuance on August 22, 2016. Loan from ContraVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. On April 12, 2016, ContraVir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (ContraVir) loaned the Company $200,000 through the issuance of a 1% convertible promissory note due October 12, 2016. This note was repaid in full on the date ContraVir acquired the Company, with a portion of the cash consideration received by the Company at closing. Convertible Promissory Notes On April 1, 2016, the Company provided notice to the holders of its convertible promissory notes that it had elected the option to extend the maturity date of the notes by one year, as allowed by the note agreements. This changed the maturity date from April 11, 2016 to April 11, 2017. On May 1, 2016, the Company issued a total of $100,000 in convertible promissory notes to four employees and consultants for services provided to the Company. These notes had the same terms as the Companys other outstanding convertible promissory notes. On May 11, 2016, the Company amended the Notes agreement to amend the terms of conversion of the Outstanding Notes and to require conversion just prior to the Effective Date of the Merger. The amended terms include that the Notes shall be automatically converted immediately prior to the Merger, assuming a pre-money valuation of $5 million. Immediately prior to the acquisition of Ciclofilin by ContraVir, as discussed further below, the outstanding convertible promissory notes with an aggregate principal amount of $1,044,571 and accrued interest of $118,141 were converted into 465,072 shares of Ciclofilin common stock at a conversion price of $2.50 per share. Acquisition of the Company by ContraVir On June 10, 2016, ContraVir completed its acquisition of Ciclofilin in accordance with that certain Agreement and Plan of Merger dated May 26, 2016 (the Merger Agreement) by and among Ciclofilin, ContraVir, Ciclofilin Acquisition Corp., a Delaware corporation and wholly owned subsidiary of ContraVir (Merger Sub), and Robert Foster, Pharm.D., Ph.D., solely in his capacity as the representative of the stockholders of Ciclofilin. Pursuant to the Merger Agreement, Merger Sub merged with and into Ciclofilin, with Ciclofilin continuing as the surviving entity and a wholly-owned subsidiary of ContraVir (the Merger). At the closing of the Merger (the Closing), ContraVir acquired all of the outstanding equity interests in Ciclofilin for the right to receive future milestone payments, which will be allocated among the holders of Ciclofilin common stock and certain creditors who converted their debt into equity immediately prior to the Closing. The milestone payments will consist of up to $17 million cash and up to 10% of ContraVirs issued and outstanding common stock as of the date of Closing and will be paid upon the achievement of certain developmental and/or regulatory milestones related to CPI-431-32, Ciclofilins lead development candidate. The Merger Agreement contains customary representations and warranties and covenants from each of the parties. The Milestone events under the Merger Agreement are as follows: 16
UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, DC 20549

SCHEDULE 13G



Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934





YY Inc.

(Name of Issuer) Class A Common Stock, $0.00001 par value per share (Title of Class of Securities) 98426T106 (CUSIP Number) August 18, 2016 (Date of Event Which Requires Filing of this Statement)

Check the appropriate box to designate the rule pursuant to which this Schedule is filed:

o Rule 13d-1(b)

x Rule 13d-1(c)

o Rule 13d-1(d)

*The remainder of this cover page shall be filled out for a reporting persons initial filing on this form with respect to the subject class of securities, and for any subsequent amendment containing information which would alter the disclosures provided in a prior cover page.

The information required in the remainder of this cover page shall not be deemed to be filed for the purpose of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Act) or otherwise subject to the liabilities of that section of the Act but shall be subject to all other provisions of the Act (however, see the Notes).

CUSIP No. 98426T106 SCHEDULE 13G Page 2 of 6 Pages 1 NAME OF REPORTING PERSONS Melvin Capital Management LP 2 CHECK THE APPROPRIATE BOX IF A MEMBER OF A GROUP (See Instructions) (a) o (b) o 3 SEC USE ONLY 4 CITIZENSHIP OR PLACE OF ORGANIZATION Delaware, USA NUMBER OF SHARES BENEFICIALLY OWNED BY EACH REPORTING PERSON WITH 5 SOLE VOTING POWER 2,500,000 6 SHARED VOTING POWER 0 7 SOLE DISPOSITIVE POWER 2,500,000 8 SHARED DISPOSITIVE POWER 0 9 AGGREGATE AMOUNT BENEFICIALLY OWNED BY EACH REPORTING PERSON 2,500,000 10 CHECK IF THE AGGREGATE AMOUNT IN ROW (9) EXCLUDES CERTAIN SHARES o 11 PERCENT OF CLASS REPRESENTED BY AMOUNT IN ROW (9) 6.5% 12 TYPE OF REPORTING PERSON (See Instructions) IA CUSIP No. 98426T106 SCHEDULE 13G Page 3 of 6 Pages Item 1. (a) Name of Issuer YY Inc. (b) Address of Issuers Principal Executive Offices Building 3-08, Yangcheng Creative Industry Zone No. 309 Huangpu Avenue Middle Tianhe District, Guangzhou 510655 The People's Republic of China Item 2. (a) Name of Person Filing Melvin Capital Management LP (b) Address of Principal Business Office, or, if none, Residence 527 Madison Avenue, 25th Floor, New York, NY 10022 (c) Citizenship Delaware, USA (d) Title of Class of Securities Class A Common Stock, $0.00001 par value per share (e) CUSIP No.: 98426T106 CUSIP No. 98426T106 SCHEDULE 13G Page 4 of 6 Pages Item 3. If this statement is filed pursuant to 240.13d-1(b) or 240.13d-2(b) or (c), check whether the person filing is a: (a)  Broker or dealer registered under section 15 of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78o); (b)  Bank as defined in section 3(a)(6) of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78c); (c)  Insurance company as defined in section 3(a)(19) of the Act (15 U.S.C. 78c); (d)  Investment company registered under section 8 of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (15 U.S.C. 80a-8); (e) o An investment adviser in accordance with 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(E); (f)  An employee benefit plan or endowment fund in accordance with 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(F); (g)  A parent holding company or control person in accordance with 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(G); (h)  A savings associations as defined in Section 3(b) of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (12 U.S.C. 1813); (i)  A church plan that is excluded from the definition of an investment company under section 3(c)(14) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (15 U.S.C. 80a-3); (j)  A non-U.S. institution in accordance with 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(J); (k)  A group, in accordance with 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(K). If filing as a non-U.S. institution in accordance with 240.13d-1(b)(1)(ii)(J), please specify the type of institution: CUSIP No. 98426T106 SCHEDULE 13G Page 5 of 6 Pages Item 4. Ownership Provide the following information regarding the aggregate number and percentage of the class of securities of the issuer identified in Item 1. The Reporting Persons may be deemed to be the beneficial owners of 2,500,000 shares of common stock, which includes 1,950,000 shares of common stock if 19,500 options were exercised. The percentage of beneficial ownership herein is determined by dividing the number of shares beneficially owned by Melvin Capital Management LP, 2,500,000, by the number of shares outstanding at June 30, 2016, 36,616,590 plus 1,950,000, the number of shares that could be acquired if certain options were exercised. (a) Amount beneficially owned: 2,500,000 (b) Percent of class: 6.5% (c) Number of shares as to which the person has: (i) Sole power to vote or to direct the vote: 2,500,000 (ii) Shared power to vote or to direct the vote: 0 (iii) Sole power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 2,500,000 (iv) Shared power to dispose or to direct the disposition of: 0 Item 5. Ownership of Five Percent or Less of a Class Not Applicable. Item 6. Ownership of More Than Five Percent on Behalf of Another Person Not Applicable. Item 7. Identification and Classification of the Subsidiary which Acquired the Security Being Reported on by the Parent Holding Company or Control Person Not Applicable. Item 8. Identification and Classification of Members of the Group Not Applicable. Item 9. Notice of Dissolution of Group Not Applicable. Item 10. Certification

By signing below I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the securities referred to above were not acquired and are not held for the purpose of or with the effect of changing or influencing the control of the issuer of the securities and were not acquired and are not held in connection with or as a participant in any transaction having that purpose or effect.

CUSIP No. 98426T106 SCHEDULE 13G Page 6 of 6 Pages SIGNATURE After reasonable inquiry and to the best of my knowledge and belief, I certify that the information set forth in this statement is true, complete and correct. Date: August 22, 2016

Melvin Capital Management LP By: Evan Cohen Name: Evan Cohen Title: Chief Compliance Officer
The LGBT community got on their bikes to fill Hanoi streets with vibrant colors yesterday as part of the fifth annual VietPride.

The "Viet Pride - Path of Pride" parade organized by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community Sunday morning called for eradication of homophobia in Vietnam.

Hundreds of LGBT people and their supporters, including U.S. Ambassador Ted Osius and many other diplomats, joined the parade to celebrate the freedom of love and personal expression, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.

My most special feeling when I am in Pride is when I stand with other people and realize that I am not alone," said Chu Thanh Ha a transgender man from the youth leadership group NextGEN. "At the same time, you feel small but you also feel part of something so big,"

The parade was part of the fifth annual Vietnam LGBT Pride that run from August 19-21. Over three days, the LGBT community held film screenings, talks, as well as musical events, speed dating, forum theater, LGBT history exhibition, and a PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) panel.

Viet Pride, which first started in 2012, is a movement advocating for an end of prejudice, discrimination, shame, and invisibility faced by LGBT people. Viet Pride celebrations have taken place in more than a dozen of cities and provinces across Vietnam, with the most prominent ones being in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

In the last four years, Vietnam has made numerous legislative changes towards increased acceptance of LGBT rights. In 2013, the government abolished fines on same sex marriages and a year later the parliament repealed the constitutional provision defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Since 2015, the law has allowed same sex weddings but still not recognized same sex marriage. Also in November of that year, Vietnam passed a landmark law allowing those who have undergone reassignment to register under a new gender.

A participant attends the 5th annual Viet Pride in Hanoi. Photo by Reuters/Kham

U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius (R) and other diplomats attend the 5th annual LGBT pride parade entitled "Viet Pride - Path of Pride" in Hanoi. Photo by Reuters/Kham

Participants attend the 5th annual Viet Pride in Hanoi. Photo by Reuters/Kham

Participants Mo Ngoc (L) and Khanh Bi kiss each other at the 5th annual Viet Pride at American Club in Hanoi. Photo by Reuters/Kham

Pop singer Thu Minh performs at the 5th Viet Pride at American Club in Hanoi. Photo by Reuters/Kham

Related news:

> Vietnam supports United Nations mandate on LGBT rights

> U.S. Ambassador and family celebrate Ghost Festival at Hanoi pagoda

> Tens of thousands take to London's streets for annual gay pride parade
Formosa's toxic disaster: are fish safe to eat now in central Vietnam?

A villager shows dead fish he collected on a beach in Phu Loc District, in the central province of Thua Thien Hue in April. Photo by AFP

A long-awaited government report fails to answer the most important question.

The Vietnamese government has remained non-committal about whether it is now safe to catch and eat fish along the country's central coast that bore the brunt of the toxic disaster caused by the Vietnam unit of Taiwanese conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group last April.

Instead the authorities concerned have just said broadly that the coast is safe for swimming and aquaculture.

The government has completed its assessment of the environmental damage caused by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel along a 200 kilometer stretch of the country's central coastline.

It called a press conference on Monday, chaired by Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Tran Hong Ha and attended by foreign and local scientists and leaders of affected provinces, to announce the results of the investigation into what Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc described as the worst environment disaster the country has faced.

On June 30, Vietnam made an official announcement that Formosa Ha Tinh Steel was to blame for discharging toxins into the ocean in the central province of Ha Tinh, home to Formosa's $10.6 billion plant.

It confirmed that the chemical spill, containing harmful chemicals such as phenol, cyanide and iron hydroxide, was responsible for killing marine life and poisoning fish in the central provinces of Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien  Hue.

However, it remains unclear whether the quality of water is safe to fish in within 20 nautical miles of the coast.

At the conference, Mai Trong Nhuan, who headed the study on the disaster commissioned by the environment ministry, presented an extensive report on how the marine environment in the disaster zone has recovered from the toxic pollution.

Firstly, according to the report, marine life, including sea water and sea-bed sediment, is generally within Vietnamese safety standards for aquaculture farming, fishing, and tourism activities.

Secondly, the toxic chemicals the steel factory dumped into the sea, including cyanide, phenol and iron hydroxide, have shown signs of diluting.

Thirdly, the marine ecosystem, coral reefs, sea grass and other marine resources, which were seriously damaged in terms of scale and species, has started to make a recovery.

In addition, levels of chemical residue found in seafood caught along the coastline of the four affected provinces have gradually fallen, according to the Health Ministry.

Harmful chemicals in the sea water seem to have dissipated, but some pollutants such as phenol remain at relatively high concentrations, said Trinh Van Tuyen, the director of the Institute of Environment Technology.

But it remains unclear whether the fish in the area are now safe to eat. Friedhelm Schroeder, a German scientist hired to study the consequences of the toxic disaster, said at the conference that fishermen should not go back to work yet. He said the Health Ministry needs to keep a close eye on the situation and give concrete advice about the safety of the fish there.

Environment authorities have set up tracking stations to monitor discharges of harmful waste into the sea.

Officials at the press conference on Monday. Photo by VnExpress/Duc Hung

In early April, local people in Ha Tinh Province, about 400 kilometers south of Hanoi, began noticing an abnormally high number of dead fish washing up on shore. A month later, roughly 100 tons of dead fish had been collected along a 200 kilometer stretch of coastline.

Three months after the fish deaths, the government officially blamed Formosa for the disaster.

Vietnam's government said toxic industrial waste from the Taiwanese-owned steel plant was responsible for the mass fish deaths that have ravaged local fisheries, disrupted peoples lives and hit tourism in the area, destroying the livelihoods of thousands of people in the region.

Formosa took responsibility and promised to pay VND11.5 trillion or $500 million in compensation to treat the pollution and mitigate the consequences.

Vietnamese authorities said the compensation will go towards helping local fishermen in the area find new jobs.

The toxic pollution caused by Formosa has hit at least 200,000 people where it hurts the most: their pockets, the government said last month.

In a report sent to the National Assembly, Vietnam's legislature, the government said that around 41,000 fishermen and over 176,000 people dependent on them have been affected by the incident.

Authorities estimate that seafood catches have fallen 1,600 tons per month, according to the report. 140 tons of fish, 67 tons of oysters and 16 tons of shrimp died as a result of the disaster, it said.

Related news:

> Formosa pays Vietnam first $250 mln fish death compensation

> Where Formosa buried its waste

> Formosa catastrophe takes toll on tourism in Vietnam province
A tale of two horrors, Nazism and Stalinism In his series Her Courage Gerard Robuchon writes on Margarete Buber-Neumann who survived persecution by both Hitler and Stalin View(s): View(s):

We looked at the railway bridge which was the border between Poland occupied by the Germans and Poland occupied by the Russians. A soldier slowly walked over the bridge, coming towards us. When he arrived closer, I recognized the cap of the SS. On the other side of the Brest-Litowsk bridge, we saw a small wooden hut. Betty Oldberg was tottering from weakness, cold and emotion. Someone suggested: Carry her inside the hut! They let us both coming inside. An SS, his tracker dog beside him, opened us the door. For the first time I closely saw an SS cap, with skull and crossbones and below, a real SS face.

Margarete Buber-Neumann (1901-1989) twice faced extermination; once from Stalin and once from Hitler. She survived both fatal experiences and she testified in several books of the horror from both sides.

She was born Margarete Turing in Germany. In the early 1920s she joined the new German Communist Party. She married another militant, Rafael Buber, son of the renowned Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965, author of I and you). After divorcing him, she lived with Heinz Neumann, another Communist militant.

When the Nazis took power in Germany, they left for Russia (USSR). But during the Great Purge that was Stalins repression against intellectuals and Jews, Heinz Neumann was arrested in 1937 and disappeared, probably shot the same year as a deviationist. In 1938 Margarete was also arrested and sent to a Gulag, labour camp in Siberia.

In 1940, following the non-aggression reciprocal agreement passed between Hitler and Stalin, she was sent back to Nazi Germany and was immediately interned at the Ravensbruck concentration camp. There she spent five years, mainly as a member of the administrative staff. It was there that she was able to save the life of Germaine Tillion when the latter was about to be sent to the gas chamber.

In 1945, while the Red Army was advancing, the administration allowed her to leave the camp. But she was forced to walk a long distance in order to avoid being caught again by the Russian army, of whom she was terrified.

She succeeded and settled in West-Germany. She had spent seven years in extermination camps  two years in a Russian Gulag, and five years in the Nazi concentration camp of Ravensbruck.

1n 1949, during the trial in Paris of the Russian defector Viktor Kravtchenko, she appeared as a decisive witness, as both of them were the first people to publicly expose to the world Stalins Soviet labour camps and to connect them to Hitlers concentration camps: Margarete was a survivor from both extermination systems.

She spent the rest of her life in West Germany; she joined a conservative German party and became an advocate of anti-communism. For her, liberal democracy was not the best, but the less bad form of government, where at least diversity and opposition are allowed.

She is the author of several books written in the German language and widely translated. As a prisoner of Stalin and Hitler, is probably the most famous one and it depicts her life in the camps, in Russia and Germany. She describes how important the prisoners workforce was  real slaves  in developing the colonization of Siberia. She relates many stories of women from all Soviet states, including Gypsies and Muslims, political prisoners, and common law criminals.

The book which was probably the dearest to her was Milena, where she sketches a biography of Milena Jesenska, Franz Kafkas great love. Margarete had befriended Milena at Ravensbruck before the latter died in the camp.

Her fight was directed against all forms of totalitarianism. Even though she was not a theoretician, she remained the first person, together with the philosopher Hannah Arendt, to have analysed the tyranny of both fascism and communism. But unlike Hannah Arendt, who fortunately was able to escape Europe in time, though narrowly, Margarete Buber-Neumann was able to describe in detail the physical suffering of the flesh and the mental suffering inflicted on her by both ideologies so specific to the 20th century.

She had been a militant, an activist, and political prisoner. Writing about all those innocent women who died at Ravensbruck for nothing else than racist reasons (Jews, Gypsies, Jehovahs Witnesses), Margarete Buber-Neumann explained: The political prisoners adapted themselves more easily to the life in the camp. They had fought  and that was sufficient to give a meaning to their sacrifice. Their internment in a concentration camp confirmed them the danger which they represented for National-Socialism (Nazism). It strengthened the opinion they already had of themselves. But the bulk of the detained women were innocent  they had done nothing and ignored for which reason they had to find themselves in such a horrible situation. Margarete acknowledged that as an administrative staff she had been relatively privileged: Unlike in other camps where the common-law criminals were holding the highest positions, in Ravensbruck the SS heads made the work easier for themselves by instituting a sort of self-management among the detained women  and the political prisoners were part of the framework. Such prisoners were given a position. They were a privileged component of the camp, a sort of cast of notables distinguished from the masses of slaves who had to toil.

Margarete Buber-Neumann died in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1989, before the fall of the USSR and the re-unification of her country.
Pandering to western imperialists View(s):

For the past few days I have been musing about the great Anagarika Dharmapala, whose 152nd birth anniversary falls on the 17th of next month. Quite apart from the invaluable service Anagarika did with regard to reviving the place of Buddhism in this country during British colonial times and setting up the Maha Bodhi Society, one of his great qualities was that he worked hard to help develop self-respect in our people, ruthlessly attacking their aping of unnecessary British habits and paying pooja to western imperialists.

What he would have thought and had to say about the behaviour of our current leaders, as they pay pooja to the new western imperialists, I can only imagine. Just take the recent newspaper headline US commends SL on passage of OMP bill, and the prominent quotes on the front page of that paper from such important persons like the US ambassador Atul Keshap, US Assistant Secretary of the State Department Nisha Biswal and US Assistant Secretary of the State Department Tom Malinowski who tweeted their approval of the legislature of our country passing a bill to set up the Office of Missing Persons.

I do not want to comment on the propriety of a foreign diplomat like Keshap who is serving as his countrys representative in this country having the gall to comment on such internal matters. Would the Sri Lankan ambassador comment in the Washington papers on American internal matters  even on the ludicrous farce of the current American presidential campaign? Decent diplomats should diplomatically steer clear of discussing in public the internal matters that do not concern them. I recall in 1991 when a British high commissioner to Sri Lanka, David Gladstone, was expelled from this country because he started poking his fingers into our local elections.

Of course at that time we had a President who had a bit more of a spine and was a stronger personality than our current President, who does not have the guts to even expel members of his own party who defy him!

I also find it particularly galling to our see the pronouncements of minor functionaries of the US government (Assistant Secretaries of State, for heavens state) given such prominence in our daily newspapers. Would even a small town newspaper in America give such prominence to the tweets of an assistant secretaryof a Sri Lankan government department?

And let it be known that this Tom Malinowski is a man who is well known to have contributed US $500 to the 2004 presidential campaign of John Kerry. When Kerry was appointed Secretary of State, we find Malinowski appointed as his Assistant Secretary! Rewarding political supporters with the plums of office is not a practice confined to Sri Lanka!

Sadly we in this country are now governed by a set of leaders who appear to be so subservient to the dictates of the US that we keep bending over backwards to obtain the approval of these low level functionaries of a government that functions in the world today with absolute no regard for the human rights of the Afghans, the Syrians, the Iraqis

Are we, an independent sovereign nation, so subservient to American imperialism that we need to seek the approval of that nation for everything we do? Now that the cabinet has approved the purchase of new fighter planes for our Air Force, will we subserviently have to purchase them from the US, the country which is the worlds largest exporter of armaments?

Anagarika Dharmapala would have had much to say about our leaders lack of self-respect.
Both of them are listed in the red books of Vietnam and the world.

The Endangered Primate Rescue Center (EPRC) has received a yellow-cheeked gibbon and a black shanked douc langur in Vietnam, which were voluntarily handed over by locals on August 18.

According to EPRCs Facebook page, the endangered yellow-cheeked gibbon, aged 4, was found stuck on a snare in the forest three years ago by Pham Thi Tu's family in the remote mountains of Kon Tum Province in the Central Highlands. The family decided to bring it home without knowing how endangered and rare this species was. She lost two fingers after that accident.

Since then, the gibbon has been raised like a member of the family, given human's food like rice, meat, fish or even coffee in the morning. She was showered every few days, lived together with the family under the same roof, and has become very used to walking bipedally like humans.

Tu voluntarily gave the endangered gibbon to the EPRC on the request from the districts forest protection officials.

The black shanked douc langur, just six months old, weighs about 800 grams. A week ago, Doan Duc Loc, a man from Ho Chi Minh City paid VND5 million ($221) for the animal from a local in the southern province of Binh Phuoc.

The two threatened animals have been transported to EPRC in Cuc Phuong National Park in the northern province of Ninh Binh. They have shown signs of being stressed after a 40-hour trip.

It will take time for the center to adjust the eating habits of the two animals after they were fed with unsuitable food by locals, according to Elke Schwierz, an official from EPRC.

EPRC was established in 1993 and is a project of the Frankfurt Zoological Society. Currently it houses a lot of individuals of various species and sub-species, including some found nowhere else in captivity.

Related news:

> Meet Sausage, the yellow-cheeked gibbon

> Endangered moon bear rescued in Vietnam after decade in captivity

> France seizes 2,000 dead seahorses en route to Vietnam
About 5000 heads will peer under 100-plus bonnets put up under the cherry blossoms in Greerton next month, when Tauranga Street Machines & Customs 39th Anniversary Bash parks up on Chadwick Rd.

And just like the trees, the clubs hotrods, streetrods and classic cars  plus those displayed by visiting car-lovers  will shine in all their glory for the public to admire.
Mess with the Dame and you mess with the whole cul-de-sac.

Not so much a warning from a neighbour in a beanie and gumboots. More an indication of the reverence in which the Dame is held in this scruffy little enclave of state houses. Probably the respect she is held in the whole hood, which is Merivale.
The assets, which include a forestry block and property, will be forfeited by Valentine Nicholas, a senior member of the Maketu Mongrel Mob.

The judgment follows two criminal trials where Nicholas was facing charges of money laundering.

Nicholas was found not guilty at a second trial after the first trial ended in a hung jury.

The judgment is a significant decision and a reminder to all that the absence of a criminal conviction does not prohibit the successful forfeiture of assets under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act, says Detective Inspector Paul Hampton

The judgment from Justice Hinton in the Tauranga High Court found Nicholas could not show evidence of a legitimate source of income for a number of years.

Instead the court found Nicholas had profited to the value of $1.17million from criminal offending.

Police believe the forfeiture of these assets will have a significant impact on preventing harm in the Bay of Plenty community by ensuring profits from criminal activity cannot be reinvested into future criminal activity.

Paul says the successful forfeiture follows extensive work with partner agencies, such as the Ministry of Social Development and Inland Revenue and reflects the whole-of-government approach to targeting organised crime.

The judgment from Justice Hinton found Nicholas had an interest or control over the assets in question and that the assets were derived from significant criminal activity.

Under the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act Police have restrained and secured the forfeiture of over $390 million of cash and assets since December 2009.

The recovery and forfeiture of assets under the Act is an important preventative tool as it reinforces the message that crime doesnt pay.
Vietnamese high school students find out about an American college during an international education fair in Hanoi. Photo by AFP/Hoang Dinh Nam

Around 300,000 overseas Vietnamese are active in the fields of science and technology.

Vietnam plans to build an information database of Vietnamese scientists living overseas so that the country can tap into their potentials, according to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Vu Hong Nam.

Vietnam has compiled a list of thousands of Vietnamese scientists currently active in a variety of scientific, technological and economic fields, the government's online portal quoted Nam, who is also the chairman of the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Affairs, as saying.

Of the five million overseas Vietnamese, about 300,000 are directly involved in scientific and technological development, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, highlighting the fact that Vietnam needs their expertise back in the country.

As part of the governments efforts, the Ministry of Education and Training has offered overseas Vietnamese intellectuals employment at local universities so that they can provide training as lecturers and researchers.

Vietnamese universities currently employ about 600 foreign experts on short-term contracts, of whom just 52 are overseas Vietnamese, according to a survey of 49 local universities and colleges.

Local governments have also seen the potential of luring these individuals home.

For instance, the Overseas Vietnamese Club for Science and Technology, set up by the Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Committee around 10 years ago, has helped connect overseas Vietnamese scientists with local institutions and individuals who need their skills and abilities.

Last year Ho Chi Minh City failed to hit its recruitment targets, hiring only half the number of foreign experts, including overseas Vietnamese, that it needed, according to the citys Department of Science and Technology, due mainly to a lack of financial incentives.

Vietnam received $12.3 billion in overseas remittances last year, slightly up from $12 billion in 2014, according to the central bank.

Remittances from overseas Vietnamese remain a key source of foreign currencies for the country's economy, in addition to foreign direct investment and official development assistance. There are currently 4.5 million Vietnamese people living overseas who send home foreign currencies equivalent to about 8 percent of the countrys gross domestic product.

The Vietnamese government has tried to keep the link between those living outside the country and the homeland alive.

Last month, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc approved a Vietnamese-language online teaching program which targets younger generations of overseas Vietnamese.

Related news:

> Overseas remittances hit $2.5 bln in HCM City

> Online program to teach national language for overseas Vietnamese
Antonio Banderas tries on his own creations. :: Josele-Lanza

Antonio Banderas earlier this month presented his first mens clothing collection in El Corte Ingles in Puerto Banus. In collaboration with Selected, the Malaga actor has transferred the colours of the Mediterranean to the clothing from a modest and respectful viewpoint combined with authentic passion and creativity. And just like that, on its first day on sale, the item he believes to be the must have of his collection sold out; a collarless, white polo shirt which was flying off the shelves for hours.

Banderas said that he felt somewhat compelled to make the foray into designing clothes after 20 years of understanding, managing and collaborating with the fashion world. The moment I embarked on this journey, I only had one specific prerequisite: to show integrity. I, therefore, had to study and get myself clued up about it.

So, committed to his new project, he set out to find an academy demanding academic excellence which could also tailor its curriculum to suit his working life, combining going to classes and shooting films. He found what he was looking for in St Martins, London.

Without showing off, his goal isnt to design clothes for catwalk models but to encompass a male audience that can identify with him and his lifestyle. His idea caters for a more informal, day-to-day style, one in public for interviews and presentations and one for his gala nights on the red carpet. This attitude is built upon three basic pillars: Knowledge: I want to know about how many parts make up a shirt. I want to know about sustainability, background and the creative process which goes into designing clothes, he explains. Credibility [is also important] when launching a product, as well as respect for entering into a very complicated world with dignity and morality, he continues. Then, the successes and failures will follow.

Its all down to the prudence that he gives to vital experience and listening intently to teachers advice. You already have an established name but if you go mad on the collections, theyll hit you hard. For me, the most important thing is keeping it simple and the differential factor of the product, like taking the collar off the polo shirt, he outlined.

The Malaga actor chose Selected, a Danish firm, because Bestseller, the group to which the brand belongs, decided to put its Spanish headquarters in Malaga because of its value for money as prices can range from 40 euros for a polo shirt to 400 for jackets. Currently they have have outlets in Puerto Banus and in El Corte Ingles stores.
Pepe Navajas, pioneer of the first 24-hour English language radio station in Spain, has retired after more than 40 years in the world of radio communications

Pepe Navajas, the man behind OCI Radio. :: T. B.

Many expats living on the Costa del Sol will remember OCI, an English language radio station that supplied the coast with news and information for almost eighteen years, but few of them will know the man behind the scenes.

Pepe Navajas is considered a pioneer in the world of radio on the Costa del Sol, because he is the person responsible for setting up the first international radio station in Spain; a project he initiated almost singlehandedly .

Born in Cordoba in 1951, Pepe Navajas acquired his love of radio while working with a local radio station in the Canary Islands, and his obsession for music and radio eventually took him to Madrid, where he studied Communications Science.

It was important for the young radio entrepreneur to understand how verbal human communications are created, transmitted and received. Once this had been achieved, he went to Marbella, where, in 1986, he became involved with the birth of Radio Onda Cero.

Onda Cero only had one frequency at the time and they only broadcast in Spanish.

In 1988, they began broadcasting in English and Scandinavian languages between the hours of 2pm and 5pm, but Pepes ambition was to open a separate station dedicated to the expatriate population of the Costa del Sol.

In 1991, Onda Cero obtained another frequency, but Pepes suggestion of an international radio station, with news broadcasts, information, chat shows, competitions and music, appeared somewhat ludicrous to his bosses in Madrid.

There were a lot of expats in Marbella and along the coast, but Madrid was still very Spanish, and they viewed situations very different to how we saw things on the coast, so initially it was difficult, Pepe explains in his polite, unassuming tone.

Pepe eventually convinced his bosses that the project would be profitable, although he had just six weeks to get his project on air.

Speed was the essence, because Pepe felt he had not gained the complete trust of the hierarchy in Madrid, and he had to find premises, equipment and presenters; an almost impossible task in the time-span allotted.

However, on 1 July 1991, OCI made its first broadcast from a small studio in the centre of Marbella, and the new English-language radio station quickly became popular with the expat communities along the coast.

After broadcasting from the tiny premises for twelve months, OCI moved to a plush studio on the outskirts of the town.

Many of the OCI presenters became local celebrities and Pepes baby would eventually become the most listened to English language radio station in Spain.

Even though several other English radio stations began to follow Pepes initiative, OCI was always at the forefront, making outside broadcasts from different locations along the Costa del Sol, but probably the most adventurous was a live transmission from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

We had a brilliant team of presenters, newsreaders and sales personnel, and they were all very passionate about the station, and this is what made it so successful, Pepe says proudly.

Pepes expertise in the world of radio communications was vital for the stations success, and through his many contacts, and his growing reputation, he was able to form a long-lasting relationship with the BBC.

The radio station went from strength to strength, but trouble lay ahead, because the powers in Madrid were about to pull the plug on OCI.

In 2008, OCI broadcast its last ever show, forced off the air after the frequency was given to another station and Pepe was devastated by the decision.

For me, the experience of OCI was the best period of my life and it is a good memory for many people, but sometimes things happen that you have no control over, and the closure of OCI was one of these situations, Pepe explains.

Many of OCIs presenters are still active on the coast, although none of them continued in the world of radio.

Laurie Scott, OCIs first presenter, now works as a mobile disc jockey, and Terry Clear, the night time Blues man, spends his time tending a smallholding in Coin.

Leah Dunn, long-serving newsreader at OCI, has retired to Ireland, and Brenda Padilla, the morning chat-show host, works as a communications consultant.

Adrian Allen is a schoolteacher in Malaga, and he was, like Terry Clear, Leah Dunn and Brenda Padilla, with OCI when it closed in 2008.

Pepe is grateful for the unfaltering dedication that these people showed during OCIs golden years, and to show his appreciation for their help and support, he invites them all out to lunch every year during the week leading to Christmas.

We were a very close unit, like a family, and I cannot forget how hard everyone worked to make OCI a success, and it is also great to catch up and reminisce about the old days, he says appreciatively.

Pepe has kept himself busy with the day to day running of Radio Onda Cero in Marbella, but this year, the stations thirtieth anniversary, he has decided to hang up the headphones and retire.

Pepe admits that it will be very difficult to sit back and do nothing, although for the first few months he plans to do a few simple things that being the director of Onda Cero had prevented him doing in the past.

Music was the reason for his forty-year affair with radio communications, and he has now gone complete circle and returned to his roots, becoming involved with a local station called Memory FM.

At present, it is only a hobby, and he has simply supplied the station with a music file of seven-thousand songs, but who knows what the future will bring for Pepe.

I am officially retired and so I am not involved with the business side of Memory FM, but you never know what may transpire, for music has always been my passion and it will be hard to release myself from that, he says with a mischievous smile.
The mayor of Malaga talks to the software engineers. :: F. L.

Sequel Business Solutions, a British leader in software for the insurance industry, has opened an office in Malaga city centre employing 70 people. The new Spanish team will develop software products for business customers around the world.

The move to Malaga has been driven by London-based Mario Garcia, Sequels CEO, who is originally from the Costa city.

Stating that it was always his dream to expand to Malaga, he praised the new-found attractiveness of the city as a place for international software engineers to work. He hopes to double the workforce within two years.

Declaring the operation open, mayor of Malaga, Francisco de la Torre asked Garcia to continue to act as a form of ambassador for Malaga in the world of the City of London.
Gibraltars bishop-elect, Monsignor Carmelo Zammit :: SUR

The Gibraltar government has published a bill to amend the Civil Marriage Act so that same-sex couples can marry in civil ceremonies. The government stressed that if the bill becomes law, it will not change the definition of marriage as defined by any religion.

The news generally seemed to be welcomed, particularly by the Equality Rights Group (ERG) which has actively campaigned for this change in legislation.

In a press release on Wednesday, ERG stated that: It is a very touching experience for us, after having struggled with hostility and non-recognition for so long, to witness the broad changes in public opinion and social attitudes that have occurred. They occur when people talk to each other and start the process of understanding. In this process, not only do individuals begin to recognise the many commonalities we all share whilst slowly discarding obstinate, and all too often distorted perceptions, but we can come to recognise the humanness of the other side. We are particularly touched by the recent public congratulations and support expressed by the Gibraltar Womens Association. Both ERG and the GWA are fundamentally interested in issues of equality rights. It will be good to develop strong ties of cooperation between us and commence a journey of mutual support and solidarity as we move into the future. Our deepest and sincerest thanks to the GWA and to all the good people of Gibraltar.

However, not everyone was happy about the news. Gibraltars bishop-elect, Monsignor Carmelo Zammit, who is to be ordained in Malta on 8 September, said that for Roman Catholics, marriage is the union of a man and woman and that partnerships between same-sex couples should not be called marriages. Monsignor Zammit intends to express his concerns to the government.
Nguyen Van Con pointed at the middle area of Hau River, where once lied Ca Doi Islet. Photo by Cuu Long.

Some of them have been wiped off the face of the map.

Having lived on Son Islet in the middle of the Hau River for 48 years, 66-year-old Cao Van Ba is now witnessing his beloved, prosperous land fall away before his eyes. His whole family live in fear of being swept away at any moment.

This islet used to cover over 100 hectares (247 acres), but now it is only 60 hectares, said Ba. My family owns a two-hectare farm on the headland, but erosion has wiped out half of the farm in just 10 years.

Formed by silt deposits from the Hau River, Son Islet is a land of fruit orchards. All the households here depend on their farms, with additional incomes made from community tourism activities

However, many families have been forced out of their own homes, leaving only 300 residents on the islet.

Pham Van Nhu, who struggled to stay on Son Islet for decades, ended up fleeing to the mainland to escape the erosion. Between 1978 and 2012, he had to move his house ten times and lost 8,000m2 (86,100 square feet) of his 10,000m2 plot of land to erosion.

I failed to hold on to the land and had to sell the remaining piece at a low price to move my family to the mainland, said Nhu, who now lives in Binh Tan District, Vinh Long Province.

Elders remember the islet used to stretch one kilometer further than its current headland, close to Tra Noc Ward. However, after years of excessive sand extraction on the Hau River, landslides along the bank have become more severe and more often, causing deep subsidence on the islet.

A little further upstream once lied another islet called Ca Doi in Thot Not District. Now it can no longer be found on the map of Can Tho City after erosion washed itt away.

Back in 1960, Ca Doi was four kilometers long and covered by paddie fields and sugar cane farms.

I remember when locals from nearby areas used to row their boats to Ca Doi to take care of their farms every morning and then head back home in the afternoon, recalled Le Van Huan, chairman of the Fatherland Front of Thot Not District. Life was bustling on the islet in those days.

Nguyen Van Con, a local on the neighboring islet of Tan Loc, said: It was a vast area lying not far from my house here. People could just call over to us from there and we could hear them very clearly. Now it has vanished without a trace. Con sadly said as he looked out across the vast expanse of water.

Long Thu Thuan Islet in Dong Thap Province is under serious threat of erosion. A sign installed on the bank reads: "Erosion Road." Photo by VnExpress/Cuu Long

A million people affected

Ca Doi's demise has worried locals on the nearby islet of Tan Loc.

In the last ten years, the headland has retreated about one kilometer, and 10 hectares have been lost since 2010. The erosion rate in Tan Loc is getting faster and faster, said Le Thanh Nghi, deputy chairman of Tan Loc Ward's Peoples Committee. It's causing the loss of thousands of square meters of crops every year.

Desperation has turned into anger, and a group of 50 islet locals have used motorbikes to chase off sand mining barges operating on the Hau River, with some confrontations requiring police intervention.

Serious erosion is also hitting the Tien River in the Mekong River system, including the islets of Long Phu Thuan and Tay in Dong Thap Province, and Cho Moi Islet in An Giang Province.

250 families on Tay Islet lost their homes to the river in 2011 alone. The situation at the time was so urgent authorities had to build emergency shelters for residents. In recent years, the Tien River has swept away hectares of crops and paddy fields.

Over two thousand households in Dong Thap Province are now residing well within a so-called "riverbank erosion belt", or areas at risk of collapsing into the river. A VND900 billlion (US$40.1 million) plan to save the land has been submitted to the government by local authorities. Thousands of families in the upstream province of An Giang are also living under the same threat, but no evacuation plan has been drawn up.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, every year the Mekong Delta loses 500 hectares of soil to rivers and the sea. Besides 450km of riverbank being slowly worn away, 200km of coastline in the region is also under the threat of sea intrusion.

It is estimated that by 2050, the lives of one million people in the Mekong Delta will be directly affected by this silent catastrophe.

The Ministry of Construction recently submitted a proposal to the central government to build concrete barriers to protect 44,800 households in the region from serious riverbank erosion.

Experts have identified the main reason for the problem as the increasing number of dams upstream which have caused the water level to change, blocked sediment and reduced biodiversity in the Mekong Delta.

Related news:

> Chinese dams a threat to Lower Mekong River

> Mekong Delta loses $210 million to drought and salinity

> Saltwater threatens to drown nearly half of Vietnam's paddy fields
Do Steps Toward Freedom Create Net Benefits? By: David Henderson

Noah Smith recently wrote a piece titled Being an Ideologue Means Never Having to Say Youre Wrong.

It starts out well. He writes:

Communism would have worked, if the Soviet Union had only tried it for real. I must have heard this argument a dozen times from die-hard leftist friends. Marxist economists such as Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick even wrote a book making exactly this claim. No doubt, true believers will be just as unwavering in the face of Venezuelas collapse. That country, which embarked on a misguided Bolivarian revolution under Hugo Chavez and his successors, has imploded almost as spectacularly as the USSR  the country is in such dire straits that the government is now calling for forced labor. Yet there will be many who claim that the dramatic reversal of what some on the left hailed as an economic miracle just a few years ago tells us nothing about the efficacy of socialist revolutions.

Then Smith writes:

This demonstrates that for any political-economic ideology, there is always a hard core of believers who will never waver in their conviction that if only the program were tried in its pure form, it would succeed. Any failures  even debacles on a grand scale, including the fiasco of 20th century communism  will be chalked up to ideological impurity and improper application.

See what Smith did? He took two examples from the left and then concluded that this applies to any political-economic ideology. It may well apply to any political-economic ideology. But he doesnt demonstrate that. He demonstrates it only for the left.

He then writes:

In economists models, humans are a rational bunch, willing to change their beliefs as soon as new evidence presents itself.

Actually, and, admittedly, this is a detour, thats not totally true. Especially within Public Choice models, we often talk about rational ignorance. And co-blogger Bryan Caplan goes further, talking about rational irrationality.The point is that unless you have a strong incentive to change your mind, you tend not to, no matter how strong the evidence. Because your individual vote doesnt matter, you lack the incentive to change your mind when presented with new evidence about the effects of various government policies.

But Smith tries to apply his idea, well-backed about the left, to people who are strong believers in free markets. How does he do it?

Heres how. He writes:

The tendency toward ideological commitment is now being tested in the U.S., as free-market dogma  sometimes known as neoliberalism  is coming under increasing attack. Bernie Sanderss presidential campaign gained a surprising amount of support from young people. Economists, both in the public eye and out of it, are focusing more on inequality and embracing a more activist role for the state. Business professors are starting to question the short-termism of financial markets and shareholder control. Some researchers at right-leaning think tanks are saying that Republicans need to move away from Reaganomics and its mix of tax cuts and deregulation.

Notice his introduction of the word dogma. Also notice something else. Although Smith points out correctly that many young people voted for Bernie Sanders, that many economists are embracing more government intervention, that some business professors are claiming that financial markets are too short-term, and that some researchers at right-leaning think tanks are saying that Republicans need to move away from Reaganomics and its mix of tax cuts and deregulation, none of this is evidence of free-market failures. At most its evidence that some people believe free-markets have failed. Its not even close to being in the same league as the evidence on Communism and socialism.

So how will Smith make his case, which he hasnt made yet: his case that believers in free markets are ideologues who dont change their views with the evidence? Heres how he tries. He writes:

Certainly, free markets havent produced dramatic failures on the level of the USSR or Venezuela, but not as bad as communism is a fairly low bar to clear, and theres a definite sense that the reigning economic policies have run out of steam.

Its true that not as bad as communism is a low bar. Perhaps then he will show us where free markets have failed. Can it be that his evidence is that theres a definite sense that the reigning economic policies have run out of steam. Actually, yes, thats about it. There are three problems with this:

(1) His passive theres a sense doesnt tell us who has this sense and what they base it on.

(2) The reigning economic policies are not free-market policiesthey are a mix of free market policies, subsidies (would Smith say that subsidies to agriculture are free market policies?), and heavy regulation (The FDAs new regulations of e-cigarettes are an example; heavy state regulation in the form of occupational licensure that prevents various people from getting various jobs is another example), and a very distorting system of taxation. The White House recently published an excellent critique of occupational licensure. It wrote:

There is evidence that licensing requirements raise the price of goods and services, restrict employment opportunities, and make it more difficult for workers to take their skills across State lines.

That is a critique of a subset of reigning economic policies. Is it a critique of the free market? Obviously not.

(3) He still hasnt given evidence. Which free-market policies have failed? Smith doesnt tell us.

Smith continues:

In the face of this wave of attacks, many proponents of free-market ideology will be tempted to double down. If we had only tried real laissez-faire, they will say, we wouldnt be experiencing problems like declining median income, decreased economic dynamism and excessive health care costs. On Twitter, my friend Russ Roberts, host of the EconTalk podcast and a staunch free-marketer, opined that we should actually try free markets, instead of just talking about it. I encounter sentiments like Robertss on a regular basis, when I call for a more activist government. Many people bought into the laissez-faire idea very strongly over the past few decades, and are not prepared to abandon it just because a socialist candidate wins some votes or an economist writes a paper suggesting we need higher taxes. They will chalk up our problems to insufficient rather than excessive free-marketism.

This is as close as Smith gets to making his case. He criticizes Russ Roberts for calling for more economic freedom but doesnt actually show that the problems we have come from the economic freedom we have. So Russ Roberts is wrong in calling for more economic freedom only if the problems we have are due to too much economic freedom. Again, zero evidence from Smith.

Smith finally gets to something I agree with, writing:

Thats why I think theres very little hope for political-economic programs whose benefits only become apparent after a very large dose. For an ideology to be successful, a moderate amount of it has to do a moderate amount of good. Relatively few nations have the unity and commitment to push through the doldrums in search of some grander success thats just over the next hill.

Hes right. People want to see that a little more economic freedom leads to more net benefit. And thats exactly what we can show and have shown. Take airline regulation. Please. When Fred Kahn took over the Civil Aeronautics Board in 1977, he started de facto deregulating airline fares and routes. Result: more competition and lower fares. Then Congress stepped in and deregulated further. Result: even more competition and lower fares. The next step would be open skies, whereby any airline in the world could compete in the U.S. market. The result would be even lower fares.

Or consider deregulation of surface transportation, particularly trucks and railroads. That deregulation, that happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s, brought more competition and lower rates to those sectors.

Deregulation of oil prices under Carter in his last year in office and Reagan in his first month in office undercut OPECs power and helped bring down world oil prices.

Freer trade in textiles has made clothing substantially cheaper for 300 million residents of America.

So the evidence that steps toward more freedom do bring more net benefits is strong.
SHARE Steven Braten

Q: My neighbor is being pursued by our board for a seemingly benign or conjured violation which could result in a fine being levied. Our condominium documents have a "boiler plate", catch all nuisance provision. Can an open-ended "nuisance" provision be used to manufacture a so-called violation?

K.M., Stuart

A: Your question is a common question asked by many of our association and unit owner clients when an owner causes a disturbance, whether it be loud parties, dog barking at all hours of the day or night, or even when a unit owner is verbally abusing neighbors, board members, and vendors.

Although I am not aware of the specific facts of the situation to which you refer, your community's nuisance provision is similar to Florida's common-law definition of "nuisance." You stated that your condominium declaration states that "no use or practice which is either an annoyance to unit owners or an interference with the peaceful possession and proper use of the Condominium Property by the unit owners shall be allowed." You also stated that the board has not adopted any rules and regulations to expound upon what is considered to be a "proper use" of the Condominium Property.

I agree with you that a community association should adopt rules and regulations concerning prohibited uses of the Condominium Property and prohibited uses of condominium units. This way, unit owners, renters, and guests are all on notice of what behavior is considered to be a nuisance.

These rules must be reasonable, and not arbitrary, or have no relation to the intended purpose  prohibiting nuisance behavior. That said, it is impossible for association boards and their legal counsel to conceive of every type of obnoxious or unreasonably annoying behavior. Accordingly, in the absence of specific rules, it is appropriate to rely upon a general nuisance provision in the declaration. Courts will consider nuisance scenarios on a case-by-case basis.

In the condominium context, Florida "courts have recognized that condominium living is unique and involves a greater degree of restrictions upon the rights of the individual unit owners when compared to other property owners," according to Woodside Village Condo Ass'n, Inc. v. Jahren, 806 So. 2d 452 (Fla. 2002). Also, the Courts have long recognized '"that the law of private nuisance is bottomed on the fundamental rule that every person should so use his own property as not to injure that of another, as expressed in the maxim "Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas" and that "'anything which annoys or disturbs one in the free use, possession, or enjoyment of his property, or which renders its ordinary use or occupation uncomfortable, is a 'nuisance' and may be restrained."  Baum v. Coranado Condo Ass'n, Inc., 376 So. 2d 914 (Fla. 3rd DCA 1979) (emphasis added) (quoting Jones v. Trawick, 75 So. 2sd 785, 787) (Fla. 1954)); see also Rae v. Flynn, 690 So. 2d 1341, 1342 (Fla. 3d DCA1997) (holding a residential property owner has a duty not to unreasonably interfere with other persons' use and enjoyment of their property).

Ultimately, nuisance cases will rise or fall on the testimony and documentary evidence presented to the court.

Q: I have heard a lot of different opinions on whether my condominium association must "opt out" of the requirement to retro fit a condominium building with a fire sprinkler system by December 31, 2016. Can you please explain this issue?

MD, Hutchinson Island, FL.

A: Excellent question! There have been numerous opinions circulating over whether all condominiums are subject to Florida's fire sprinkler retro fit requirement, which originates from a national model code  NFPA 101 Life Safety Code  that the Florida Legislature adopted. Florida's Prevention Code can be found at Florida Administrative Code 69A-3.012 ("Code"). Over the past 15 years, the deadline to comply with the retro fitting of condominium buildings that are covered with a fire sprinkler system has been extended. To be subject to the fire sprinkler retrofit requirement, your condominium association's building or buildings must have the highest occupiable story higher than 75 feet above the lowest level of the fire department's vehicular access. It must also not currently have fire sprinklers in the units and common areas of the building. The Code does not require an existing and properly functioning fire sprinkler system to be upgraded. To verify whether your condominium building is subject to the fire sprinkler retrofit requirement you should contact your local Fire Official. If you are a low-rise or mid-rise condominium, should your association opt-out? Many of my clients are opting out to be "safe". To opt out of the Code's fire sprinkler retro fit requirement, Section 718.112 of Florida's Condominium Act requires the Association to obtain a favorable majority vote of the total voting interests of the condominium (i.e., a majority of all unit owners eligible to vote). If your building meets the Code's height requirements and your association elects to opt out of the fire sprinkler retro fit requirement, your association will need to have its building(s) evaluated by a fire protection engineer and establish a plan for an Engineered Life Safety System (ELSS). For more information on this issue, I encourage you to contact your association's legal counsel.

Steven R. Braten Esq., is Managing Partner, Palm Beach of the Law firm Goede, Adamczyk, DeBoest & Cross. Visit www.GADClaw.com or ask questions about your issues for future columns, send your inquiry to: question@GADClaw.com. The information provided herein is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. The publication of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship between the reader and Goede, Adamczyk, DeBoest & Cross, or any of our attorneys. Readers should not act or refrain from acting based upon the information contained in this article without first contacting an attorney, if you have questions about any of the issues raised herein.

The hiring of an attorney is a decision that should not be based solely on advertisements or this column.
SHARE

Diane Chazotte, Vero Beach

Letter: Erin Grall is the only strong, conservative candidate in the race

In recent weeks, we have been besieged by political campaigns, signs and slogans by candidates for local, state and national offices. Those of us in District 54 must soon decide for whom we will vote for state representative. The only strong, conservative candidate in the race is Erin Grall.

Family values are at the core of her being; if family is important to you, she is your family too. As one of eight Grall siblings, and as a wife with two kids of her own, Erin knows what it is to be a part of something bigger than herself.

Born and raised in Vero Beach, Erin is "Pro-Life" to her core. These words not only mean "Anti-Abortion," in which she strongly believes, but she stands for life  period. From the unborn, to those injured or disabled by accidents or predators, Erin Grall is a protector of life.

Erin stands with victims of violence by supporting the Indian River County Victims' Rights Coalition, once again showing that she is "Pro-Life." She advocates for the lives of those injured or maimed and is willing to fight for the lives of her clients.

Please stand with Erin Grall for District 54 on Aug. 30. Show that you support Erin as the best candidate in this area to serve as a Florida State House Representative.
When Bundchen was at the top of supermodel fame, in Miami Beach

When Gisele Bundchen was at the height of her supermodel fame, she visited the Victoria's Secret store in Miami Beach with other supermodels.
SHARE

Keith Donahower, 52, St. Cloud; warrant for second amended violation of probation, petty theft.

Rena Phillips, 41, 3200 block of South U.S. 1, Fort Pierce; warrant for violation of probation, grand theft.

Jason Hamrick, 36, 6100 block of Southeast Audubon Lane, Hobe Sound; possession of marijuana over 20 grams; possession of marijuana; possession of cocaine with intent to sell; possession of cocaine.

Jessie Fogle, 33, Thurmont, Maryland; warrant for violation of probation, trafficking in hydrocodone.

Fernando Soares, 25, 3800 block of Northeast Indian River Drive, Jensen Beach; possession of a controlled substance (diazepam).

Willie Williams, 30, 400 block of Southeast Tejon Street, Stuart; aggravated assault (domestic).

Tyler Coughlan, 36, Lantana; warrant for fugitive from justice, Anne Arundel County, Maryland, violation of probation, possession of narcotics with intent to distribute.

Vincent Quarta, 40, Delray Beach; grand theft auto.

Thor O'Brien, 25, 2700 block of Southwest Martin Downs Boulevard, Palm City; escape.
SHARE

Tyrell Simpson, 25, Albany, Georgia; warrant for failure to appear, grand theft, uttering a forged bill, check or draft.

Thomas McVeigh, 24, 3000 block of Southeast Darien Road, Port St. Lucie; leaving the scene of an accident with injuries; out-of-county warrant, Martin County, violation of probation, fresh pursuit arrest.

Stanley Perch, 61, 400 block of South Drive, Fort Pierce; domestic battery by strangulation.

Michael Nesmith, 2300 block of Southwest Kent Circle, Port St. Lucie; possession of marijuana with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver; possession of marijuana over 20 grams.

Scott Gendreau, 45, 8300 block of Mulligan Circle, Port St. Lucie; warrant for court order for pretrial detention and termination of pretrial supervision, battery by strangulation.

Joe Allen, 26, 3100 block of Florida Avenue, Fort Pierce; grand theft of a motor vehicle.

Cherrie Johnson, 33, 3500 block of Avenue F, Fort Pierce; warrant for grand theft.

Matthew Marshall, 38, 2200 block of Southeast Midtown Road, Port St. Lucie; warrant for out-of-state fugitive, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, violation of parole.

Sharee Barnes, 36, 600 block of Sixth Street, Vero Beach; battery on an officer.

Shane Keffer, 19, 100 block of Westglen Drive, Fort Pierce; possession of cocaine.

Richard Mills, 51, 1000 block of South 27th Circle, Fort Pierce; aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill.

Paola Ramirez, 39, 200 block of Southwest Palm Drive, Port St. Lucie; battery on a medical care professional; warrant for violation of probation, driving without a valid driver's license.

Terrence Powell, 41, 2100 block of Southeast Rich Street, Port St. Lucie; warrant for failure to redeliver leased vehicle.

Jonathan Bourgeois, 36, Orlando; possession of a controlled substance (hydrocodone) without a prescription; possession of marijuana over 20 grams.

Linard Daniel, 23, 600 block of Southwest Nichols Terrace, Port St. Lucie; possession of cocaine.

Jeffrey Williams, 59, 5200 block of Northwest North Lovoy Circle, Port St. Lucie; aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill.

James Hanna, 33, 600 block of North Seventh Street, Fort Pierce; battery, prior conviction. Arrested in Indian River County.

Joenathan Allen, 26, 3100 block of Florida Avenue, Fort Pierce; grand theft of a vehicle.
SHARE Sunset at Sebastian Inlet State Park. (FILE PHOTO)

By J.D. Gallop, Florida Today

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the death of a 57-year-old man found naked and acting erratically just after sunrise near Sebastian Inlet State Park and hours after eluding deputies in several traffic stops.

The state agency is reviewing the in-custody death while Brevard County sheriff's investigators are looking into the circumstances leading up to deputies subduing the man.

The incident unfolded after Brevard County sheriff's investigators detained the man about 7:15 a.m. early Saturday, apparently out in the waterway of the park located near the Brevard-Indian River county line.

"He was naked and that pretty much drew attention. It was definitely something out of the norm," said Cpl. Dave Jacobs, spokesman for the sheriff's office. "He was detained, not arrested," said Jacobs, without elaborating.

Deputies, who reported the man appeared to be under the influence of an unidentified drug or substance, was taken to Holmes Regional Medical Center for an evaluation. However, the man, identified as West Palm Beach resident Peter Robinson, was pronounced dead on arrival, sheriff's officials reported.

"It's still early in the investigation. Investigators are talking to witnesses," Jacobs said.

Several hours before encountering Brevard deputies, Indian River County patrol deputies spotted Robinson driving erratically and attempted several times to conduct a traffic stop. In each of the cases, deputies said Robinson sped from officers. He eventually ended up on the Brevard County side of the inlet when he caught the attention of observers, officials reported. Robinson's body was turned over to the medical examiner's office in Rockledge where an autopsy will take place early this week.

Contact Gallop at 321-242-3642, jdgallop@floridatoday.com and Twitter at @JDGallop
Goldsmith prepares to take the blood pressure of one Kitongo resident, while others line-up for assistance.

SHARE Jim Goldsmith with a group of youngsters from Kitongo. Jim and Seth Goldsmith

By Jeannette Weiss, Your Newsweekly Contributor

Jim Goldsmith, a Dale Sorensen Real Estate manager in the company's downtown office, recently completed a successful mission trip to Kitongo, Uganda.

The trip was in conjunction with the national organization, Imani Milele Children (ImaniMilele.com), an organization that cares for over 3,000 orphaned and vulnerable children in Uganda.

Goldsmith attended as a member of the Coastal Community Church of Sebastian.

"This was a life-changing experience on both sides," said Goldsmith. "For me, seeing the great needs of these wonderful people and being able to help them was so gratifying. But it also changed hundreds of lives in Uganda as we were able to treat so many diseases and injuries in such a short span of time."

The trip lasted for 14 days, which consisted of six travel days and eight days working in the community.

Goldsmith said the group of 25 Americans, including nurses, doctors, ministers and lay people, came from California, Georgia North Carolina and Florida.

The team set up tents and over the six days treated 3,400 people for various diseases, including malaria and AIDS-related symptoms, as well as treating injuries, congenital defects and illnesses.

The group also did AIDS, breast cancer and cervical cancer testing at their makeshift labs.

"We were also able to provide dental and optometry care for residents. One particular child had cataracts, and we were able to give him his eyesight back. Another child had a temperature of 105.8 degrees, and we were able to treat him pretty quickly. Unfortunately, there was also a child that has a hole in his heart.

"Our group now wants to raise the $6,000 necessary to treat him. We couldn't help everyone, but I feel like we certainly fulfilled a great need in the short time we were there."

In addition, the group had a temporary surgical site set up for minor surgeries including hernias and abnormal growths.

While there, the team also held Vacation Bible School and helped with construction on a school site.

Goldsmith's son, Seth, who is the minister of Coastal Community Church, attended the mission trip as well, and the two are already making plans to go back in 2017, provided they can raise the funds.

Goldsmith will definitely go back if given the opportunity.

"It is humbling to be a part of such an epic effort to reduce the suffering of people living in poverty.

"The bright smiles that beamed on their faces gave us hope that there is relief in the midst of suffering.

"We have been privileged to see first-hand the tangible long-term impacts of hope growing within this small village."

Seth Goldsmith and his wife, Christa, have a 13-year-old adopted daughter from Uganda.

Goldsmith can be reached at 772-473-6418 or goldsmith@sorensenrealestate.com.
While both Microsoft and Sony have upgraded mid-generation consoles on the way, only the Xbox maker appeared to be releasing a slimline (and slightly more powerful) version of its current machine - the Xbox One S. But according to reports and leaked images, we'll also be getting a slimmed-down version of the PlayStation 4.

Sony is expected to unveil its 4K-enabled console, codenamed Neo, at a New York event in a couple of weeks time. But the Japanese firm has made no mention of plans to follow Microsoft in releasing a slim version of its current-gen machine. A bit surprising, considering it had released slimline models of the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3.

But it looks as if Sony was just playing its cards close to its chest. Purported images of a thinner, rounder PlayStation 4 recently appeared on a UK auction website listing, which has since been pulled. However, there are more images on NeoGAF and from Twitter user shortman82 that show the console's 500GB hard drive, different model number (CUH-2016A) and plug for the PlayStation VR. There are also photos comparing the machine with the current PlayStation 4.

While some have greeted the images with skepticism, the pictures were given more authenticity by a report from the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Citing sources "familiar with the matter," the publication said that two new consoles will be introduced at the Sony event in a bid to "maintain demand" for the PlayStation 4.

We'll find out all about the Neo and this new PlayStation 4 slim at Sony's Times Square media event, which starts at 3 pm ET on September 7.
Constantly upgrading to the latest smartphone isn't cheap, which is one of the reasons why Apple's trade-in program has been well-received. Selling on officially refurbished versions of its high-end phones has so far proved quite successful for the Cupertino company, so it comes as little surprise to learn that rival Samsung looks set to launch a similar program.

According to a report from Reuters, the South Korean giant is "looking for ways to sustain earnings momentum after reviving its mobile profits by restructuring its product line-up."

With Samsung's version of the program, which could arrive as early as next year, the refurbished phones will come from users who signed-up to the company's one-year upgrade programs in locations such as the US and South Korea.

Once someone hands in their old device when the 12 months are up, the company will refurbish and resell it at a discounted price. There was no word on just how extensive these discounts would be, which handsets would be on offer, or the countries where the program would be available.

Brokerage house BNP Paribas says that a used Samsung phone sells for about 51 percent of its original price in the US, while second-hand iPhones tend to be priced at 69 percent of their original cost.

It's unclear to what extent the second-hand phones would be refurbished by Samsung. Reuters notes that refurbished phones typically are fitted with parts such as a new casing or battery.

While the program could help Samsung compete with the increasing number of low-cost Chinese smartphones flooding the market, it may also affect sales of its own mid-tier devices.
The woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) may have been extinct for 4,000 years but the ancient animal that scientists believed is closely related to the modern day elephant could get legal protection under wildlife and conservation trade rules.

The move, which would be made under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), could make the woolly mammoth the first long-extinct animal to be given legal protection under conservation trade rules.

Giving legal protection may not bring back the lost species which lived during the ice age and may have gone extinct when the weather became warmer. The legal protection is an attempt to put an end to the laundering of elephant tusks amid concerns that the massive ivory trade has severely impacted the population of modern-day elephants particularly in Africa and Asia.

Mammoth ivory has become a lucrative export in Russia because of climate change. Large amounts of ivory mammoth tusks have been unearthed in the Siberian tundra because the warming weather has melted the permafrost, where the ancient tusks can be found.

As many as 150 million dead mammoths are estimated to be lying underneath the tundra. With rich harvest, Russia exports up to 100 tons of these ivories per year to Vietnam and China.

While the trade of mammoth ivory is legal and considered an ethical alternative to trading of elephant ivory, there are concerns that the growing trade in mammoth tusks could give way for smugglers to launder illegal ivory from African elephants.

Smugglers can pass the ivories off as coming from the extinct animals. Poachers have been passing off elephant tusk ivory as derived from mammoths so they can get around restrictions currently imposed on elephant tusks.

Although the proposal involves limiting the trade of mammoth ivory, the primary aim is to protect the elephants with their dwindling numbers already impacted by conflict and habitat destruction.

The proposal aiming to limit mammoth ivory trade is on the agenda of the Cites conference set next month in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Cites secretary-general John Scanlon said that the problem is that the mammoth ivory can be confused with ivories that were taken from endangered elephants.

"This is the first long-extinct animal considered for a restriction in trade. We have to work out how we might legally do this."

Mammoth ivory is used as a fashion item. U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama even wore it in a necklace, a fashion choice that subjected her to criticisms from conservationists.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The International Space Station (ISS) has made significant contributions in the field of science. The orbiting laboratory also provided scientists with an opportunity to make preparations for the planned manned mission to planet Mars, but NASA now wants to turn it over to a private entity.

The U.S. space agency has signalled an intention to offload the space station a few years from now with a statement made by NASA's Bill Hill. During a press conference, Hill noted that NASA is looking to hand over the ISS to a private company in the next decade.

Hill said during a panel discussion on plans for Mars mission that some of NASA's long term plans to reach the Red Planet is to work with private spaceflight companies such as Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Given declining governmental commitments and the rise of private space industry, commercial partners could help maintain the ISS.

Hill said that the U.S. agency is trying to come up with economic development in the low-earth orbit.

"Ultimately, our desire is to hand the space station over to either a commercial entity or some other commercial capability so that research can continue in low-earth orbit."

The ISS was launched in 1998 and remains operational up to this day. Boeing, its primary contractor, is looking at the feasibility to operate the space station nearly twice the length of time it was originally designed for.

It is not clear though how the arrangement will be like if a private company would take over the station and if commercial space companies are even interested. As NASA focuses on getting humans to planet Mars, the fate of the habitable artificial satellite may likely depend on the role it plays in interplanetary missions the space agency plans to undertake in the future.

With its microgravity environment, the ISS provides scientists with the opportunity to conduct studies and experiments that could help up the chances of a successful manned Mars mission.

Studies on how an astronaut's body responds in microgravity, for instance, offer hints on what could possibly happen to astronauts during the long space flight from planet Earth to Mars or other extraterrestrial worlds.

Astronauts stationed at the ISS also successfully attempted to plant and harvest Zinnia flowers that could pave way for the development of more sustainable food production systems that can be used when people go for long-duration space explorations.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Acknowledging that the United States is an important market for consumer electronics and lifestyle brands, Vice President Hugo Barra has reaffirmed that Xiaomi is definitely looking at an expansion into the U.S. smartphone market.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Barra stated that the company is looking forward to introducing its brand to the U.S. consumers.

"We are going to make our way into the U.S. market, slowly of course," says Barra in an interview. "Everyone expects us to launch smartphones there in the near future."

While failing to give a time frame, the company vice president has revealed that it is in the process of launching a number of products in the U.S. Barra also divulged that a product will come to the U.S. this October.

When probed on why the company will take the slow approach for market expansion and not come out with a "big bang," Barra reminded that Xiaomi is just six years old and as such, it has to take things slowly. He also explained that the U.S. is a complex market and that customer service and after-sales support for the country has to be laid out very carefully. Moreover, Xiaomi is currently engaged in market expansions outside the U.S., such as India and Indonesia.

Commenting on the company's strategy for entering the U.S. market, Barra detailed that the planned approach is to lead with social media and get in touch with the younger generation who is enthusiastic about technology.

Refraining from divulging much about the company's financial details, Barra explained that Xiaomi does not need any further investments for the planned market expansion and that the company has raised a substantial amount of capital that was extracted from its own operations. The vice president has also shed some light on Xiaomi's funding of other companies, noting that the company's investment firepower is "quite significant."

Questions regarding Xiaomi's finances were raised after the International Data Corporation (IDC) released figures showing its smartphone sales falling by more than 38 percent compared to 2015. Huawei, Oppo and vivo, respectively, now sit atop Xiaomi that has fallen from first last year to fourth this year. Note that all three of the mentioned companies have gained in sales.

However, it is also important to bear in mind that Xiaomi doesn't just sell smartphones and is putting out products from rice cookers to foldable electric bikes. Xiaomi also recently launched its take on VR headsets.

Talks of Xiaomi's interest in entering the U.S. market have been floating around since last year. It further solidified earlier this year after Xiaomi's announcement of acquiring more than 1,500 Microsoft patents. Some experts believe that this puts Xiaomi in a better position, compared to last year at least for competing against Apple and Samsung, which dominate the U.S. market.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The excitement for LG's impending flagship smartphone the LG V20  the successor of the second screen-supported LG V10  is gathering momentum, as its Sept. 6 debut draws nearer.

The South Korean company is leaving no stone unturned to market the upcoming Android 7.0 Nougat-powered handset  the first device to boast the latest OS from Google  and is building the hype for the LG V20.

On Aug. 22, LG Electronics released a new teaser image for the LG V20, which shows off the device on top of a microphone stand.

The teaser image was posted on LG Korea's official website and is the real deal. It also highlights the device's release date as Sept. 7 in Seoul. The date discrepancy between the U.S. and South Korea is due to the time difference.

The teaser image suggests that the LG V20 will pack-in superior audio capabilities, which could potentially be a game changer. The image is also accompanied by a message which reads "hear, see and more" when translated to English. The message reaffirms the notion that the LG V20 is set to entice consumers with its audio prowess.

Interestingly, LG's post also heralds the impending smartphone's video and audio prowess.

"LG Electronics offers consumers a camera, an audio technology-intensive 'V20' the best video and audio experience," notes the company (translated).

Tech Times reported earlier in August that LG has already confirmed that the LG V20 will be the first-ever smartphone in the world to tout a 32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC. The company has teamed up with ESS Technology for the purpose. This technology will basically bring a superior audio experience to the device.

"As a technology more typically available in high-end audio equipment, Quad DAC on the V20 will make users feel as if they are carrying around a professional home-audio system on their smartphone," shared Robert Blair, the CEO of ESS Technology.

Basically, this technology will ensure crisp and clear sound emanating from the LG V20, which is comparable to a live performance. The Quad DAC technology also reduces ambient noise by almost 50 percent when compared to DAC.

The 5.7-inch LG V20 could be a trendsetter as the flagship will look to offer a premium audio experience thanks to its superior chipset. The presence of great audio capabilities may tilt the scales in LG's favor because it seems that most OEMs usually overlook this aspect.

The LG V20 will debut on Sept. 6 in San Francisco and is rumored to hit the U.S. shelves on Sept. 23 on T-Mobile. The unlocked variant of the handset is anticipated to be priced at $649.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A leading official from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) warned that the threat of the Zika virus could spill over from Florida to other Gulf Coast states since these areas provide suitable breeding grounds for disease-carrying mosquitoes.

Director Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) revealed on Sunday, Aug. 21, that coastal states such as Texas and Louisiana are the ones most vulnerable to a possible Zika outbreak.

He said that the Aedes mosquito's penchant for thriving in sub-tropical or semi-tropical climates and the presence of individuals with travel-related infection cases help increase the likelihood for these areas to experience widespread Zika cases similar to those in Florida.

Fauci noted that the recent flooding in Louisiana also adds to its vulnerability to the mosquito-borne illness. He said it would be difficult for people in the state to get rid of the stranding water from the flood.

Zika Transmissions In Florida

Cases of mosquito-related Zika transmissions were first detected in the neighborhoods of Miami Beach and Wynwood in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Health officials believe these infections originated from known Zika hotspots in the Caribbean and Latin American countries.

However, with the confirmation of non-travel-related Zika transmission cases in Miami Beach last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has decided to include the popular tourist destination, as well as Wynwood, in its travel advisory for pregnant women.

Fauci said the best way to prevent an outbreak of the disease is to control the spread of the mosquitoes that carry it.

While he doesn't believe that the Zika virus could end up spreading across the continental United States, the NIAID director stressed that Americans should take the threat of the disease seriously and be prepared for it.

Fauci added it is likely that the Zika virus could remain a public health problem for at least a couple more years.

"Hopefully, we get to a point to where we could suppress it so that we won't have any risk of it," he said.

People infected with the Zika virus often develop several symptoms, including a sudden appearance of rashes, fever, joint pains and a reddening of the eyes (conjunctivitis).

Recent studies have shown that the virus can cause severe health problems, especially on pregnant mothers and their unborn child. These include the development of abnormally-sized heads (microcephaly) in babies and other brain disorders.

Health officials advise the public to take all necessary precautions against the spread of Zika, from preventing mosquito bites to practicing protected sex between partners.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
An image of the Xiaomi Mi Note 2 has emerged online, along with the specs suggesting that the smartphone will have a design similar to the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge.

Xiaomi has already launched its flagship smartphone, the Mi 5, during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) event in February this year. The Chinese company is said to be working on a new flagship phablet, the Mi Note 2, which is expected to be launched soon.

It launched the Mi Note in January 2015, so given the time gap a successor is long overdue. However, an image of the Mi Note 2 has been posted by @KJuma on Weibo, which gives a clue that it may be released soon and offering a glimpse of what the handset may look like.

If the leaked image is to be believed, then the Mi Note 2 has some design aspects borrowed from the Galaxy S7 edge, which was launched in February this year. However, the specs of the purported Mi Note 2 are said to be different from the Samsung offering.

The latest leaked image of the Mi Note 2 suggests that the mobile phone will have a 5.5-inch display. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor and 6 GB of RAM may power the device. Customers should expect 128 GB of internal storage, probably with the option to expand the memory with a microSD card.

Previous rumors hinted that the Mi Note 2 may come with a 5.7-inch screen. Others also suggested that Xiaomi may launch the Mi Note 2 in two models: one with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of internal storage and another with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB onboard storage.

Given that the original Mi Note was available in two variants, it is likely that the Mi Note 2 will also be available in more than one model.

Xiaomi is facing stiff competition from other Chinese smartphone makers such as Huawei, Vivo and Oppo. The company has a decent presence in China but it also launches its products in other parts of the world to attract handset customers.

The company initially launched the Mi Note only in China but later the mobile phone also made its way to other regions including the U.S. It is likely that Xiaomi will launch the Mi Note 2 in China, U.S. and other regions across the world.

Rumors suggest that the base model of the Mi Note 2 will have a price tag of CNY 2,499, or about $375, while the higher-end variant will cost CNY 2,799, or around $420. Speculations are rife that Xiaomi may launch the Mi Note 2 on Aug. 25.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
It seems that unborn children aren't the only ones vulnerable to the devastating effects of Zika as a new study suggests that the infection can also cause severe damage to the brain of full-grown adults.

Previous studies have associated the Zika virus to a development of serious brain defects in infants, including microcephaly, which causes the child to be born with an abnormally sized head.

Subsequent research also showed a potential link between the mosquito-borne disease and a rare paralysis-inducing disorder known as Guillain-Barre syndrome.

In a new study featured in the journal Cell Stem Cell, researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LIAI) in California have discovered that the virus may also attack a particular type of brain cell responsible for memory and learning abilities of a person.

Rockefeller University professor Joseph Gleeson and his colleagues engineered laboratory mice to display the same characteristics of a human infected with the Zika virus. They then used fluorescent biomarkers in order to tag specific infection sites in the animals.

The researchers were surprised to find that the Zika virus hijacked a group of brain cells in the mice known as neural progenitor cells, leaving the animals with a relatively smaller brain and suffering from mental impairment.

"Our results are pretty dramatic  in the parts of the brain that lit up, it was like a Christmas tree," Gleeson said. "It was very clear that the virus wasn't affecting the whole brain evenly, like people are seeing in the fetus."

Neural Progenitor Cells

According to the researchers, neural progenitor cells can mostly be found in the brain of developing fetuses, serving as a form of stem cell. When people grow into adulthood, some of the neural progenitor cells remain in their bodies to replenish the neurons in their brains.

While this helps maintain the good function of the brain, it also leaves the organ susceptible to Zika as the virus tends to attack neural progenitor cells. When this happens, the brain experiences a retarded growth.

Gleeson and his colleagues believe that the reason why adults are more resistant to Zika compared to infants is they have more development neurons. However, the presence of neural progenitor cells means that they are still vulnerable to brain damage by the virus.

"We asked whether [these cells] were vulnerable to Zika in the same way the fetal brain is," Gleeson pointed out. "The answer is definitely yes."

The researchers, however, noted that their study provides only an initial finding to how the Zika virus can affect the brain cells of adult humans. They were only able to focus on its impact on engineered mice and only at a single point in time during the infection.

Gleeson and his team said more studies are needed to determine whether the results they were able to arrive at will be the same as those for infected humans. They also want to find out if the damage they witnessed on the adult brain cells will result in long-term damage to the neurons.

Increased Brain Cell Deaths And Reduced Neuron Generation

One key finding of the study is that the mice that were infected with the Zika virus had more dead brain cells while also suffering from a reduced neuron generation, which is crucial to an individual's ability to learn and remember.

A person who suffers damage in his neural progenitor cells would show poor cognitive performance and have a higher likelihood of developing serious mental conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and depression.

LAIA professor and study co-author Sujan Shresta explained that the Zika virus has been shown to be devastating to the early development of the brain. However, many of the adults infected with the virus rarely show any detectable symptom of the disease.

Through the help of the recent findings, Shresta said they now know what specific signs to look for in these individuals.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Microsoft's Windows-powered Surface Pro 5, the Surface Pro 4's successor, is one of the most hotly anticipated devices on the market.

Rumors pertaining to the tablet's release have been surfacing frequently as eager consumers await the device's arrival.

We take a look at the specs, features and potential release date of the Surface Pro 5 in this rumor roundup.

Specs And Features

Little has leaked with regard to the Surface Pro 5's specs but it is anticipated to sport a 12.3-inch PixelSense display like its predecessors.

The impending tablet is also rumored to tout a 2K resolution display and a 4K Ultra HD variant is allegedly also on the cards. This news will be welcomed by fans as Microsoft stuck to the 2,736 x 1,824 resolution for both the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Pro 3.

Rumors are also rife that the top-end variant of the Surface Pro 5 will house 16 GB of RAM. The tablet may also run on Windows 10 (Redstone 2 update) and house AMD or Nvidia Pascal GPU.

The tablet will allegedly come with an upgraded Surface Pen, which could pack in a rechargeable battery that supports wireless charging when attached to the tablet magnetically. A patent from the company previously hinted at the new features.

The device is also expected to offer an improved battery and come with USB-C support for charging. It is slated to house Intel's seventh-gen processor  Kaby Lake.

Release Date

The release date for the Surface Pro 5 has been the center of quite a bit of drama. Previous reports hinted at a June 2016 release. However, since that time window lapsed, rumors started circulating that Microsoft would release the tablet in spring 2017.

Speculation is also rife that the company had to hold off the release as the Intel processor would release by the end of this year. Moreover, the Surface Pro 5's 2017 release date also coincides with the Windows 10 Redstone 2 update's arrival.

In July, a developer tweeted images that showed off placeholders for new Surface devices. One placeholder revealed a 2016 release date for a Surface device, and three others showed 2017. The words "Coming Soon" were also seen in a close-up of one of the images, which were taken in Microsoft's Building 88. This suggests that the company could debut the device soon enough.

Other reports suggest that Microsoft may actually announce the Surface Pro 5 in October this year but release it in early 2017.

Price

The base model of the Surface Pro 5, presumably the non 4K UHD variant, will likely start from $899. The top-end 4K UHD variant is anticipated to be priced at $1,599, according to rumors.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
If you're the type that simply can't get enough of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, more commonly known as NASA, but are not in a position where you would be able to get your fix, then you're in luck. The agency announced over the weekend a massive new public project that has made all of its research available for free online.

The portal, called Pubspace, hosts a multitude of NASA research topics that anyone who has expressed any level of interest in the group's work in the past will no doubt enjoy, ranging in topics like the toxicity of lunar dust or the composition of Earth's early atmosphere, to keeping fit in space and the ages of the lunar seas.

"At NASA, we are celebrating this opportunity to extend access to our extensive portfolio of scientific and technical publications," said NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman. "Through open access and innovation we invite the global community to join us in exploring Earth, air and space."

This development was made possible thanks to the Obama Administration, which in 2013, directed NASA and other agencies to increase access to their research, which was typically hidden behind a paywall (if it was available online in the first place). Now, NASA will be required to post any research articles funded by it on Pubspace within a year of publication.

As one might expect, however, not all of NASA's research will be available for viewing. Research relating to national security or patents is exempt from this new rule, though for what it's worth, they were never available to begin with  not even to those who paid. Regardless, as of writing this, there are already 863 articles available on the website, and that number will only increase as time passes.

"Making our research data easier to access will greatly magnify the impact of our research," Ellen Stofan, NASA's Chief Scientist, said in a statement. "As scientists and engineers, we work by building upon a foundation laid by others."

NASA isn't the only one making a hefty portion of its research available to the public; this move is one mirrored by the worldwide scientific community that is collectively moving toward making knowledge more available to the public. For example, the EU announced in May that it has plans to make all European scientific papers available for free by 2020.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Arctic is not commonly a destination for leisure, but all that could change as sea ice melts, opening the area to commercialism and tourism.

On Aug. 15, the Crystal Serenity cruise embarked on a luxury tour of the Arctic, promising to bring passengers through the Northwest Passage as it heads for New York City from Seward, Alaska.

The 68,000-ton cruise ship arrived in Nome on Aug. 21 for its last port call in Alaska. The town sees a cruise ship or two every summer, but none as big as the Crystal Serenity, which was carrying 1,060 paying passengers. Including its crew, the cruise ship has a capacity for 1,700 people.

Cruise-only tickets for the historic trip started at about $22,000, running up to $120,000. A cruise-only fare includes all beverages, non-alcoholic and otherwise; gratuities for cruise staff; eight complimentary dinners; 24-hour room service; enrichment workshop classes; and more.

The Crystal Serenity also houses a putting green and driving range; a movie house; a casino; several pools; half a dozen restaurants; a library with thousands of books, DVDs and games; a fitness center; spa; and hair salon.

Despite the hefty price tag, the cruise trip quickly sold out, already prompting the planning of a second journey. Crystal Cruises might not have trouble arranging more, because scientists have projected that the Arctic may become virtually ice-free at some point during summers, maybe as soon as the coming decades.

While Arctic sea ice may have melted enough to allow the Crystal Serenity passage through the Northwest Passage, the cruise will not be making the trip on its own for safety purposes. Along the way, it will be accompanied by two helicopters and an ice-breaking boat.

The U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards have also been working with the cruise company to help ensure the safety of the passengers. However, as the cruise route is relatively obscure, the U.S. Coast Guard is continuing with its research to study navigational efficiency and safety through the Bering Strait, even as the Crystal Serenity is making its way through it.

Additionally, the Crystal Serenity will be receiving constant updates from the Canadian Ice Service to help it monitor the presence of ice in the area, alongside its two ice searchlights, a thermal imaging camera, a forward-looking sonar and software that improves radar detection.

While most people are cheering on the Crystal Serenity, wishing its success on its first Arctic trip, others have also pointed out the potentially harmful effects the dreamy cruise will have on the already-stressed Arctic environment.

"The unique wildlife is already stressed by a warming climate and the loss of sea ice, and the arrival of mega-cruise ships in this part of the world could push it further towards the edge," said Rod Downie from the World Wildlife Fund.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Since the announcement of "Project Scorpio," Microsoft has been telling gamers and developers that this is a console designed with 4K in mind. Not only for movies, but most importantly, video games.

It has been the talk of the town, but many were skeptical of the 4K/60 frames per second claim. If we look at the PC market right now, many of the most expensive graphic cards are unable to deliver 4K games properly, causing some to wonder if Project Scorpio with its 6-teraflop GPU can deliver.

Recently, the company claims it can certainly deliver 4K gaming with the 2017 console, but according to Microsoft's Albert Penello in an interview with The Inner Circle, gamers should not expect every game to hit the 4K and 60 fps mark. He said developers have the option to do whatever they want, which simply means they can choose to create 4K native games, or deliver at a lower resolution and upscale to 4K.

"I think people get confused and say our messaging is weird. Not every developer is going to use it that way. Not every developer is going to decide to take that 6 TFLOPs and do 4K/60fps with it," says Penello. "They might decide for their game, their engine that they want to do something different and that's fine. But our goal is to build a box that delivers true 4K games at the same level of fidelity that you see on your current Xbox One games."

Despite third-party developers having the room to do whatever they want, Microsoft has decided to restrict itself to focus on 4K games. Penello said creating games at 4K is Microsoft's own goal, so fans should expect all titles from the company's studios in the future after Project Scorpio to be 4K.

We can see this already with several of the company's upcoming video games. Forza Horizon 3 and Gears of War 4 are both 4K-capable on PC, and we expect the Xbox One versions to have 4K support, but will only shine when played on the new system.

Microsoft is pushing Project Scorpio as the most powerful console ever when it's released later in the 2017 holiday season. Along with 6 teraflops of GPU power, the console is rumored to have 12 GB of GDDR5 RAM, and should be able to produce HDR games similar to that of the Xbox One S.

When it comes down to pricing, we can't say right now, but Microsoft is calling this a premium experience, so do not expect it to be cheap.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Eroded mesas and buttes, capped with rock that is resistant to wind erosion: it sounds like scenery straight out of the U.S. Southwest, and you'd likely be inclined to believe so if you weren't made aware of the fact that it was actually the description for the latest images of Mars sent back from NASA's Curiosity Rover.

To come up with the panorama, the rover made use of its Mast Camera. Through the Mastcam imaging system, Curiosity was able to capture a number of component images on Aug. 5, 2016, exactly four years after its historic landing inside Mars' Gale Crater.

The 360-degree images of Mars can be seen on NASA's website or through an interactive video, and they allow users to explore a part of Mars called the Murray Buttes on lower Mount Sharp, Curiosity's primary mission site. The Murray Buttes, a series of mounds about 50 feet high and about 200 feet wide near the top, are named in honor of Bruce Murray, a former director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Murray, who passed away in 2013, was also a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology.

The images themselves show parts of the Murray Buttes, the Gale Crater rim and upper Mount Sharp, as well as terrain features such as baked mudstone and buttes. The mesas and buttes are capped with wind erosion-resistant rock, which, according to NASA, "helps preserve these monumental remnants of a layer that formerly more fully covered the underlying layer that the rover is now driving on."

As you might know, these images aren't the primary reason why the Curiosity is on Mars. The rover is on the red planet in order to assess whether it ever had a habitable environment  something that was already confirmed to be true. Now, the rover is on an extended mission where it examines younger layers of terrain as it makes its way to the lower area of Mount Sharp. This time around, the objective is to learn how freshwater lake conditions have evolved into states that are now less-suited to supporting life because of aridity, as well as monitor the planet's modern environment.

All these efforts are aimed at the eventual manned mission to Mars, which NASA hopes to achieve by the 2030s.

In addition, while NASA works toward that goal, we can have the next-best thing thanks to an interactive video. Simply use a mouse or mobile screen to take in a view that would have you forgetting that you are looking at the surface of another planet.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Opening A Torrent Site May Land You In Jail For 3 Years | TechTree.com

Did you rejoice when Torrentz2.eu, a new clone to the most popular Torrentz.eu surfaced online recently? Well, if so, here's something for you! A recent report claims that the Indian government will, from now onwards, issue a three-year jail sentence along with a fine of up to INR 3 lakh, if it found out that you have visited a blocked URL.

Yup. You read that right! To invite the jail sentence and fine, you don't have to download the torrent file, but just viewing it would be enough.

Deccan Chronicle recently posted that they tried visiting one of the blocked websites uploadable.ch to see what happens! However, they seem to have the following message which has been quoted in the report:

This URL has been blocked under the instructions of the Competent Government Authority or in compliance with the orders of a Court of competent jurisdiction. Viewing, downloading, exhibiting or duplicating an illicit copy of the contents under this URL is punishable as an offence under the laws of India, including but not limited to under Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act, 1957 which prescribe imprisonment for 3 years and also fine of upto INR 3,00,000/-. Any person aggrieved by any such blocking of this URL may contact at [email protected] who will, within 48 hours, provide you the details of relevant proceedings under which you can approach the relevant High Court or Authority for redressal of your grievance.

Also Read: Why Does Microsoft Love Piracy?

Now, it looks like, both the government and Internet Service Providers are pretty serious about what they are upto - to fight piracy.

However, it seems that not all blocked websites are showing the new warning message. But, the older message is definitely getting changed at a faster pace. The government seems to have now pooled in big companies such as Tata Communications and Airtel into the scenario, to ensure they maintain the blocking goals, as per the plan, reports Deccan Chronicle.

While the new warning message is definitely threatening, we are still not clear on how would this be enforced. However, it seems high time, to be extremely careful while browsing the internet, else, you may end up in jail!

Recommended:

Pirate Ahoy! And We Just Can't Stop Them

TAGS: Torrent, Blocked URL, piracy
Tech Giants Strike Against Robocall | TechTree.com

Major technology giants like Alphabet, AT&T, Apple, and Verizon have joined hands to fight against 'robocalls', automated, pre-recorded phone calls. It seems like these companies have also met the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to discuss their issues. Calling themselves as 'Robocall Strike Force', the group is working hard to bring in and adopt new tools and solutions.

According to the statement by Randall Stephenson, the Chairman and CEO of AT&T, the 'Strike Force' will be meeting the FCC by October 19 this year to discuss concrete plans 'to accelerate the development and adoption of new tools and solutions', as Reuters reported. The main task for the group, would be to block calls from 'spoofed' numbers by creating a 'do not originate' list to stop the impersonators from duplicating their origins with legitimate phone numbers from banks, governments, and others. In fact, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has urged everyone in the group to take new action to block these 'robocalls' which often are used as a popular method by telemarketeers and other scam artists.

Stephenson had been putting forward his word on the complexities and breadth of the problems at hand. He said, "This is going to require more than individual company initiatives and one-off blocking apps." He then added, "Robocallers are a formidable adversary, notoriously hard to stop."

The FCC does not require robocall blocking and filtering, but has strongly encouraged phone service providers to offer those services at no charge. The strike force brings together carriers, device makers, operating system developers, network designers and the government, towards a common issue.

Stephenson also explained, "We have calls that are perfectly legal, but unwanted, like telemarketers and public opinion surveyors. At the other end of the spectrum, we have millions of calls that are blatantly illegal." He did mention that technical experts representing the companies involved had 'preliminary conversations about short- and longer-term initiatives' which clearly the aggression with which the issue is being perused. However, Joan Marsh, the AT&T Vice-President of Federal regulatory issues, was a bit more skeptical about the problem, and called the problem more 'complicated'. "We have been wrangling with this problem long enough to know there is no silver bullet," she said. "Nothing by itself is going to do it," she added.

[Image Via Twilio]

TAGS: Robocalls, Automated Calls, Pre Recorded Calls, Strike Force
As adoption of wearables becomes more mainstream in the Middle East, it brings added complexity to BYOD in an enterprise. One of the more interesting features of wearable tech is its ability to tether to, and control, smartphones over a remote connection. So even if wearables are denied access to enterprise networks, they may already be able to access it. Which means they can download and store company data. Many come with built-in cameras. This will understandably make IT departments worried.

According to recent studies by Aruba, the new generation of employees #GenMobile  expect mobility at the workplace to be a given, so any blanket decision to ban such devices from the workplace will be highly unpopular. In fact, almost two-thirds of study respondents say they use mobile devices to help them manage their work and personal lives better.

If the decision is made to accept wearables into the organisation, it is unlikely that existing BYOD policies that govern the use of corporate data be enough - new policies will be required.

When tinkering with these policies, CIOs have to keep in mind the fact that there will be other IoT-based devices coming along that could be embedded into an employees clothing or even office kitchen appliances. The acronym BYOD will soon have to be replaced with BYOX, with the X symbolising practically anything.

Failure of First Generation of BYOD policies  Lessons to be learned

The first generation of BYOD devices received similar levels of access to the network, in a fairly uniform approach. This needs to stop. CIOs

Ammar Enaya

should now turn their attention to the context of the use case, and the underlying communications network. This means putting in place solutions that can secure any mobile device that connects to corporate Wi-Fi; giving them complete visibility of the number, type and frequency of mobile devices assessing their network.

Todays network should be capable of enforcing flexible security policies that are capable of analysing  and acting on - the context of how an employee uses the mobile device. For instance, an employee using a smartwatch at a coffee shop to access corporate data may not be granted the same level of access as one who uses a PC during office hours. Depending on the context, different policies should be applied to make sure that the right balance between flexibility and security is met.

By incorporating these new levels of network visibility, companies will also be able to identify specific applications and who is using them. After these apps are identified and visualised, access controls and policies should be applied to prioritise the performance of business-critical apps over personal ones. By analysing and controlling access management systems, it is possible to get as granular as disabling a devices camera in restricted locations.

Key security considerations for BYOD

People talk about BYOD or 'choose-your-own-device' - but it could really end up being BYOD 'bring-your-own-disaster' if you haven't thought about the fallout of that going wrong. There are a number of security habits companies need to adopt to adequately protect themselves against a breach:

Regulate Wi-Fi traffic with intelligent policy firewalls that can keep track of app usage. This ensures that different apps are classified according to its security rating based on the role of the employee within the organisation. These apps would be allowed to be used on select mobile devices by select users, only if they satisfy live security monitoring by the policy firewall and cloud-powered content filtering. Make sure that all communications over the air are encrypted and sent over secure channels. This requires a smart combination of encryption and VPN-on-demand technologies that prevent information from being snooped on, and  even in the event that the information falls into the wrong hands  is rendered gibberish. Focus on the interactions between users, apps and data. The perimeter has shifted from the idea of building a wall around your enterprise and fortifying your organisation with a firewall. The Internet of Theft (IOT) and Bring your own Disaster (BYOD) have become prevalent in the organisation, considering that business users and consumers nowadays demand access to data and business insights anywhere and in a commoditised form. Managing the security of BYOD, IoT, BYOX, whatever youd like to call it, requires a secure yet flexible wireless network within the workplace. Companies should deploy flexible security policies that are capable of analysing  and acting on - the context of how an individual employee is using a mobile device, and where they are accessing information from.

By all means, organisations in the Middle East should embrace #GenMobiles penchant for openness, innovation and collaboration, using any device they wish. But only when they can understand and plan for the security risks these behaviors bring along.

Edited by Alicia Young
Elecciones presidenciales

El pais mas grande de la region elige este domingo a su proximo mandatario. Tras no lograr hacerse con la mayoria de los votos en los comicios del 2 de octubre, Luis Inacio "Lula" Da Silva y Jair Bolsonaro se disputan la Presidencia en una balotaje que enfrenta tendencias y valores contrapuestas. Con equipos en el terreno, Telam presenta una cobertura exclusiva con noticias, analisis, opinion, fotos y mas.
On Friday, former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took advantage of the last debate between candidates before Sunday's presidential elections to accuse the current president,... | Read More
Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez on holiday last week in Ibiza. GTRESONLINE

Spains Socialist Party (PSOE) says it will not review its decision to reject supporting interim Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the Popular Party (PP) in his bid to form a government at the investiture debate beginning on August 30, opting instead to wait until October, after two key regional elections in Galicia and the Basque Country, when its federal committee will meet.

The Socialist Party is already assuming that Rajoy will fail to garner enough support in Congress at a first vote on August 31.

In order to be reinstated as the countrys prime minister, following a second inconclusive election in June, Mariano Rajoy will need to secure an absolute majority in a vote to be held on August 31. If he fails, a second vote, at which a simple majority will suffice, will take place on September 2.

The Socialists won 85 seats in the June 26 elections, while Podemos garnered 71, leaving them 20 seats short of a majority

At present, Rajoy lacks the support in Congress to be voted in as prime minister. He would have 170 votes with the support of Ciudadanos and the Canary Islands Coalition, but would still need six more for an absolute majority in the first round, or a total of 11 abstentions in the second, and as such will have to look for backing from the countrys regional parties.

The PP acceded to Ciudadanos demands last week and signed an anti-corruption pact. The deal was part of a memorandum of six measures Ciudadanos presented to the PP last week. But Ciudadanos has made clear that the deal is simply a pre-condition for supporting Rajoy in the congressional vote later this month.

The Basque Country and Galicia will both hold elections on September 25, the outcomes of which could affect Rajoys chance of garnering support in Congress to try to form a government should he fail later this month and the country has to return to the polls for a third time in 12 months  this time on December 25  which would likely produce a similar result to Junes.

The Socialists have rejected supporting Rajoy, rejected the idea of third elections on Christmas Day, and so far have rejected advances from Podemos

In both regions the balance of power is delicate: Galicia is currently run by the PP, where it has a one-seat majority in the regional parliament; in the Basque Country, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) rules a minority administration with the support of left-leaning nationalist group EH Bildu.

The Socialists, led by Pedro Sanchez, have rejected supporting Rajoy, rejected the idea of third elections on Christmas Day, and so far have rejected advances from the leftist Podemos party to form a coalition administration and seek the support of Ciudadanos and the nationalist parties. Sanchez has few options: the federal committee met in July and reiterated its refusal to support Rajoy.

The Socialists won 85 seats in the June 26 elections, while Podemos garnered 71, leaving them 20 seats short of a majority. It is unclear whether Ciudadanos, which put together a joint electoral program with the Socialists in February, would support such a coalition.

So far, the Socialists have ruled out trying to form a coalition, in large part because of Podemos insistence that Catalonia be allowed to hold an independence referendum. Both parties appear to have lost the political initiative.

English version by Nick Lyne.
An ambulance car is stuck in traffic in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: An Bang

Ho Chi Minh City plans to set up emergency aid stations in many places to provide first aid more effectively given its heavy traffic.

The health department has proposed cooperation with an Australian university to train paramedics to man the 25 planned stations, or an average of one per district.

Tang Chi Thuong, deputy director of the health department, said setting up such centres is appropriate for a crowded city prone to traffic jams.

The emergency stations, which can use spare ambulances at district hospitals, would make sure patients get first aid promptly before they can reach a hospital, he said.

The city of 12 million, including migrants, has more than 200 ambulances, but they do not always reach patients in time due to the heavy traffic.

Le Truong Giang, chairman of the HCMC Public Health Association, said if the ambulances can be stationed at the proposed centres, the system can serve 30 times more patients than now.

Also, each emergency care station will be staffed and equipped to provide first aid for people of all ages and various conditions from injuries to strokes, something no hospital in the city can currently do.

The estimated cost of the project has not been disclosed.
Police in Son La Province on the Laos border Saturday seized 6.6 kilograms of heroin from a smuggling gang after a shoot-out.

A police source said they started shooting back after the gang of more than 10 people fired at them.

The gang fled after 20 minutes, leaving a gun and the drugs behind.

The police are looking for the smugglers.

Vietnam has some of the worlds toughest drug laws. Those convicted of possessing or smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine face the death penalty.

The production or sale of 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics is also punishable by death.

Although the laws have been strictly enforced with capital punishment handed down regularly, drug running continues in border.

The Son La police arrested 25 people and seized around 300 kilograms of heroin smuggled in from Laos in a one-year period up to May 2015. This year too many drug smuggling attempts have been busted.
Two students specializing in mechanical engineering. Carlos Rosillo

The Spanish job market is experiencing a paradox. There are 4.5 million unemployed in Spain, according to the Active Population Survey (EPA) statistics for the second quarter of this year. But while people are desperate to find work, companies say that they cant find candidates to fill their vacancies. The reason? A lack of skills, experience and knowledge.

As Ana Jimeno de la Casa, head of Repsols Selection, Performance and Development unit, explains: We are finding it hard to fill positions that require someone who is highly and recently qualified, who has an international profile, speaks a number of languages, and holds a degree in finance-economics or engineering.

Meanwhile, the General Workers Union (UGT) points out that companies are asking for experience people cant possibly acquire due to the temporary nature of current contracts.

We are finding it hard to fill positions that require someone highly and recently qualified who has an international profile, various languages and a degree in finance or economy or engineering

A total of 56% of companies recognize there is a gulf between the skills they are looking for and the suitability of applicants, according to the 2016 Guide to the Job Market released by the employment consultancy Hays. Consequently, they are casting their nets further afield.

We need to hire people who will optimize resources and improve efficiency, says a spokesperson from global energy operator, Acciona. We are attracting talent from the UK, America, Canada, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates and Australia.

According to Mari Carmen Barrera, secretary for social policy, employment and social security at labor union UGT, the government is not doing enough to address the discrepancy between what companies need and what young Spaniards can offer them. The cuts have meant the loss of 3,000 labor counselors whose job it was to study the demands of the job market. The cuts also meant job-training schemes being curbed.

For the few vacancies that exist in the under-26 age bracket, companies are looking for highly trained and experienced employees. Santiago Soler, from employment agency Adecco, points out that for those over the age of 45, the situation is equally dramatic as their age makes them eligible for only 4% of jobs.

The most employable age group is 26 to 35, which snaps up 61% of the jobs on offer.

Responsibility

But while Spain needs to renew its Education Plan and academic institutions are being asked to adapt courses to meet company requirements, IESE Business School Professor Sandalio Gomez believes that the companies themselves should provide training to suit their own needs. In Germany, companies assume this responsibility, he says. They sign a work contract with their students. Thats why they only have 8% youth unemployment compared to Spains 46.5%.

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

Meanwhile, the head of UGT believes the government needs to address the situation by reforming the countrys labor laws. The lack of balance between supply and demand is due to the fact that companies are asking young people for experience they cant possibly acquire on temporary contracts [averaging 3.2 years, according to a report from website Infoempleo and Adecco]. Right now, six out of 10 jobs last less than a week and so its impossible to accumulate three years experience.

To reach a solution, Infoempleos director general Jorge Guelbenzu says that companies should develop promotion policies and recycle the skills of employees over the age of 45 without worrying about whether they will go off in search of new challenges. The younger generation needs to be able to multi-task and there should be a lot of focus on digital and technical training.

English version by Heather Galloway.
The results of a study released Monday show that Vietnams central coast is again safe for swimming and aquaculture, four months after toxic effluents discharged by Taiwan-owned Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp caused mass fish deaths.

Prof Mai Trong Nhuan of the Hanoi National University, who headed the study commissioned by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, said that coastal areas in Ha Tinh, Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien-Hue provinces have been recovering gradually.

The presence of the toxic substance has reduced by 90 percent in samples taken in July and August and coral reefs are recovering, he said at a conference held in Quang Tri by the environment ministry and the Vietnam Institute for Science and Technology.

Aquatic creatures are returning and the ecosystem is recovering, he said.

According to the study, contamination in most areas is well within the limits deemed safe for swimming, aquaculture and aquatic conservation.

Several areas need further monitoring, including near Ha Tinhs Son Duong Port, Quang Binhs Nhat Le Beach and Thua Thien Hues Son Cha Island since dissemination of the toxic substance in these areas is slow due to specific current patterns.

Coral reefs and marine creatures, which saw a significant decline, have made a recovery, the study found.

Prof Tran Nghi of the Hanoi University of Natural Sciences said it was the first stage of the study.

We are waiting for the second stage results that will show if fish are safe and the sea has recovered fully.

Environmental chemistry expert Friedhelm Schroeder of the Germany-based Center for Materials and Coastal Research said the study is highly credible.

Schroeder, who consults Vietnamese agencies on the environment crisis, said there are small fishes along the coast of the four central provinces.

But there should be frequent tests by the health ministry and foreign agencies on fish safety, he said.

An estimated 70 tons of dead fish washed ashore along more than 200 kilometers of coast in April.

Formosa, a subsidiary of Taiwan's Formosa Plastics, has been held responsible and pledged compensation of US$500 million.

The government said the disaster has harmed the livelihoods of more than 200,000 people, including 41,000 fishermen.

Formosa had dumped wastes containing phenol, cyanide and iron hydroxides in the water, the government said.
Bena Kang from South Korea cries after finding out her purse with valuable papers was lost in Vung Tau on August 17. Photo courtesy of Vung Tau Passenger Port

A South Korean woman who possibly had her purse stolen in Vung Tau with all her money and papers burst into tears at the hydrofoil jetty and is all over social media as a result.

Bena Kang arrived at the pier Wednesday afternoon to travel back to Ho Chi Minh City, but when she reached for her purse in her bag, she found it was gone.

She began to sob in panic since the purse had her passport, flight ticket and other papers.

Security guards and others working there tried to help her but in vain since she had no idea where she could have lost it.

They then donated some money so that she could take a bus to the city and seek help from the South Korean consulate.

Kangs story on social media has drawn criticism about the poor security in the beach town.

Many people said it might be the last time she visits Vung Tau, possibly even Vietnam.

Phan Truong Son, director of the Vung Tau Passenger Port, tried to deflect the criticism, telling news website Zing: She said she lost the purse, not that she was robbed..

South Korea is Vietnams second biggest tourism market with nearly 860,000 Koreans arriving in the first seven months of this year, up 37 percent from a year ago.
A family member of a victim of a suicide bombing at a wedding celebration mourn over his coffin during a funeral ceremony in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep, Turkey, August 21, 2016.

A suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 carried out the attack on a wedding party in the Turkish city of Gaziantep on Saturday that killed at least 51 people, the president said.

The attack was the deadliest in a series of bombings in Turkey this year, and President Tayyip Erdogan said Islamic State was likely behind it.

"Initial evidence suggests it was a Daesh attack," Erdogan said in Istanbul on Sunday, using an Arabic name for the hardline Sunni Islamist group. He said 69 people were in hospital and 17 were "heavily injured".

A destroyed suicide vest was found at the blast site, officials said.

Islamic State has been blamed for other similar attacks in Turkey, often targeting Kurdish gatherings in an effort to inflame ethnic tensions. The deadliest was last October, when suicide bombers killed more than 100 people at a rally of pro-Kurdish and labor activists in Ankara.

Saturday's attack comes with Turkey still in shock just a month after Erdogan and the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on U.S.-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen. Gulen has denied the charge.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said the wedding party was for one of its members. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt.

The bomb went off as guests spilled out into the streets of the city close to the Syrian border after the traditional henna night party, when guests have their hands and feet painted.

Women and children, including a three-month-old baby, were among the dead, witnesses said.

Blood and burn marks stained the walls of the narrow lane where the blast hit. Women in white and checkered scarves wept outside the morgue waiting for word on missing relatives.

"The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing," said 25-year-old Veli Can. "There was blood and body parts everywhere."

"We want to end these massacres," witness Ibrahim Ozdemir said. "We are in pain, especially the women and children."

Funerals, forensic tests

Hundreds gathered for funerals on Sunday, with coffins draped in the green of Islam. But some ceremonies would have to wait because many victims were blown to pieces and DNA tests would be needed to identify them, security sources said.

A family member of a victim of a suicide bombing at a wedding celebration mourn over a coffin during a funeral ceremony in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep, Turkey, August 21, 2016.

"Every type of death is painful. But it is even more painful when it comes with religious slogans. It is even more painful when they mix religion with politics," said Omer Emlik, who said he was an uncle of two of the victims.

"All the people here are suffering."

The United States condemned the attack and said Vice President Joe Biden would discuss the fight against terrorism during a visit to Ankara this coming week.

"The perpetrators of this barbaric act cynically and cowardly targeted a wedding, killing dozens and leaving scores wounded," said Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, in a statement.

Anti-government protests erupted at at least one funeral, where threw plastic bottles and chanted "Murderer Erdogan!"

Some in Turkey feel the government has not done enough to protect its citizens from Islamic State.

NATO member Turkey is a partner in the Western coalition against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, allowing U.S. jets to fly missions against the group from its air bases. It has also supported some rebel groups in Syria.

Syrian rebels backed by Turkey were preparing to launch an operation to capture a town held by Islamic State near the Turkish border, a senior Syrian rebel said on Sunday.

Islamic State is also fighting U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish rebels, who have taken ground from the hardline group. Ankara considers the Syrian Kurdish fighters a terrorist group and worries their advance against Islamic State will encourage Kurdish militants in Turkey.

Ethnic faultlines

"ISIS has been trying to agitate or exploit already tense ethnic and sectarian faultlines to retaliate for the advancement of Syrian Kurds in the north of Syria and by Turkey's attack on ISIS targets in Syria," said Metin Gurcan, an independent security analyst and retired Turkish military officer who writes a column for Al-Monitor.

"For ISIS it is hitting two birds with one stone."

Three suspected Islamic State suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul's main airport in June.

Violence also flared again this week in the largely Kurdish southeast. Ten people were killed in bomb attacks, mostly police and soldiers, in an escalation that officials blamed on PKK Kurdish militants.

Turkey began air strikes against Islamic State in July 2015. A peace process with the PKK collapsed and it also began targeting PKK targets in northern Iraq.

Just a half an hour away from Gaziantep is the border town of Kilis which has been repeatedly hit by rockets and shells fired from Islamic State territory, sometimes killing civilians.

On Sunday, Erdogan and ruling AK Party lawmakers emphasized they see Islamic State as no different to the Kurdish separatist PKK and the group led by Gulen, all three classified by Turkey as terrorist organizations.
Advocate staff photo by BILL FEIG -- Governor John Bel Edwards, front left, talks about the meeting to discuss the recent severe weather and flooding in Louisiana with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Craig Fugate, front right, at the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP). Watching, background from left, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, LA GOHSEP Director Jim Waskom and LSP Major Doug Cain.
Republican state Rep. Kenny Havard asked Sunday that the governor and the Louisiana congressional delegation press for changes in law to allow flood victims to tap their retirement accounts without penalty.

Government aid, private insurance and charity are all important, Havard said, but often doesnt cover the full cost of recovery.

At some point, he said, we are all faced with personal expense when disaster strikes. These victims should be allowed to use a limited portion of these special savings accounts, without penalties for early withdrawal, to help meet extraordinary repair and replacement costs not covered by the available public and private sources of assistance.

Havard recommends a limit of $50,000 or a percentage of funds during a specific time frame and only for storm victims in federally declared disaster parishes.

It is my hope that our elected officials can take the opportunity of the visit to Louisiana this week by President Obama to urge him and the appropriate federal officials to act, by executive order or other means, to allow our citizens to borrow or withdraw from their own retirement accounts without penalty to help meet these extraordinary and truly painful expenses,  Havard said.

Library offers services to victims of floods The East Baton Rouge Parish Library and most of its branches are available to help flood vic

SLU creates regional flood relief web portal With so many residents still reeling from recent floods across the region, Southeastern Loui
CCTV footage of the kidnapping of the son of 'El Chapo'. EFE

More information Liberado el hijo de El Chapo Guzman en Mexico

The son of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman has been released a week after he was abducted, say members of the Sinaloa Cartel leaders family. The news has not been confirmed by the Mexican authorities.

Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar, 30, was freed along with the five other men kidnapped with him on August 15, a relative who requested anonymity for security reasons told AFP.

There has been media speculation of an imminent war for control of the area between the northern states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua

Mexican weekly magazine Rio Doce said on its website that Alfredo Guzman Salazar, aged 30, and considered the heir apparent to El Chapo, who was arrested in January and is awaiting extradition to the United States, had been released along with five other men who were taken at gunpoint from an upscale restaurant in the resort of Puerto Vallarta, on Mexicos Pacific coast.

French news agency AFP said it had spoken to a member of the Guzman family who said: They were negotiating all this time, but they are now free and everything is fine.

On Sunday morning, the Twitter account associated with Guzman Salazar included a message saying: One has to forget the past, make the best of what remains, and wait for what comes.

The kidnapping of Alfredo Guzman by upcoming drug cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion sent shock waves through Mexico, sparking fears of renewed violence. The cartel is locked in a turf war with the Sinaloa Cartel, which is trying to restructure in the wake of El Chapos incarceration.

Video footage released after the kidnapping showed how easily a group of heavily armed men from the Jalisco cartel had taken Guzman Salazar without firing a shot.

In June, more than 100 unidentified armed men briefly took over the palatial residence occupied by El Chapos mother

It took the authorities two days to realize that El Chapos son was among the six men.

The incident highlighted the vulnerability of the Sinaloa Cartel now that its leader and founder is behind bars, and was just the latest in a series of blows it has suffered to its reputation.

In June, more than 100 unidentified armed men briefly took over the palatial residence occupied by El Chapos mother, Consuelo Loera, in the tiny village of La Tuna in the mountains of Sinaloa, close to the US border on Mexicos Pacific coast.

Earlier in the year, two of El Chapos cousins were murdered.

There has been much speculation in the Mexican media of an imminent war for control of the so-called golden triangle between the northern states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua, which is now a major heroin-producing area.

Some observers believe the assault on La Tuna was part of a power struggle within the Sinaloa Cartel pitting Alfredo and his brother Ivan Archivaldo against the old guard, represented by the figure of their fathers former partner Ismael El Mayo Zambada. There has even been speculation that members of the Beltran Leyva cartel, long-standing enemies of El Chapo, had returned to Sinaloa. But responsibility for the kidnapping of Alfredo points to the Jalisco Nuevas Generaciones.

The recapture of El Chapo, who has escaped from behind bars on two occasions, the last via a tunnel that was dug underneath his cell, has left a power vacuum within which episodes such as the kidnapping of his son adds further uncertainty to an already fragile situation, as Mexicos leading criminal organization restructures.

English version by Nick Lyne.
Letters: Not just the media with an agenda
Volunteer Shawn Wilson, left, and school couselor Chastity Craven empty flood damaged bookshelves in the library of Westside Elementary School on Wednesday, August 17, 2016, in Scott. Most of the books on the upper shelves were spared from the flooding, but the shelves will need to be replaced.
On the one hand, the historic flood that has wreaked havoc on south Louisiana this month hasnt really fazed Jonetta Bennett.

Yes, the flood ravaged the Baton Rouge home Bennett shares with her sister, cresting at 2 feet and contaminating everything in its path. Sure, the pair waited for hours in the muddy water before being rescued by boat, then truck.

But it was no Hurricane Katrina.

For Katrina, I lost everything, said Bennett, 54, an event planner who lived in the Broadmoor neighborhood in New Orleans before moving near Cortana Mall in Baton Rouge.

Her New Orleans home got 6 feet of water. This time, she was at least able to save pictures and other mementos when the rainwater swept in.

On the other hand, the flood is an insult to the conventional wisdom the Bennetts adhered to when they fled swampy New Orleans after the storm for the capital citys higher ground: Destruction by water doesnt happen there.

They are among an unlucky cluster of victims of the most recent disaster to shake up south Louisiana -- distressed Katrina survivors who left for other areas of Louisiana they deemed safe, only to face devastation anew as floodwaters in recent days left thousands of people homeless and at least 13 people dead.

The one-two punch has forced them to deal with a mixture of emotions: despair, because they cant seem to escape disaster, and yet a strange sort of calm, fueled by the knowledge that, this time, they at least know what to expect.

For the Bennetts, there also are light moments.

As they stand on slippery floors in their washed-out home on West Tams Drive, Bennett and her 53-year-old sister Natalie Bennett Thomas, a radiologic technologist who lived in Mid-City before Katrina, laugh when they think of how they plugged towels and rugs at the door early on Aug. 14, a Sunday, hoping to keep the water from rushing in.

They laugh again when they consider how they must have looked hours later, as they jumped and screamed from the murky water to catch the attention of rescuers.

Somebody would pass in a boat, and my sister would be like, Hey!  said Thomas, waving her arms in the air.

The sisters and Thomas daughter soon made it to the considerably less-damaged home of their other sister and brother-in-law -- Artelia Bennett Banks and Jay H. Banks, the couple who reigned as queen and king of Zulu in New Orleans' Mardi Gras celebration earlier this year.

The women spent much of Wednesday and Thursday trekking the 10 minutes from their neighborhood north of Cortana Mall to the Bankses' home in the Sherwood Forest area, grabbing what little they could save and hauling the rest out for trash pickup.

Their street, like many others in the city, is lined with moldy and soaked furniture. They plan to drag their own furniture to the curb once Jay Banks and others can help them with the heavy lifting, Thomas said.

Both homes are close to Jones Creek, which eventually deposits into the Amite River.

Banks, 56, held onto his New Orleans home after Katrina but also bought property in Baton Rouge, thinking he'd have a safe haven there from flooding. "But somebody forgot to send a memo to the water," he said.

Things are generally better for them this time, he said. Both he and his sisters-in-law have flood insurance, and while they certainly werent looking forward to another disaster, theyve approached it with a grim determination.

As horrible as it may sound, we have an advantage in that we kind of know what we are doing, Banks said.

At least one other Katrina and flood survivor seemed more solemn. On Aug. 14, Charles Dalton, 36, was seated with his wife and four of their children on a National Guard truck for the slow, watery crawl from the Vincent Road Wal-Mart in Livingston Parish, a makeshift gathering point for people whose homes had flooded, to yet another makeshift shelter on Satsuma Road.

Dalton and his wife had spent the previous morning rescuing neighbors and helping others evacuate, only to find their own way out swamped by the time they got home.

On the somber ride away from his neighborhood, Dalton  who lost his home and possessions in Gentilly during Hurricane Katrina before moving to Livingston Parish  snapped photos of well-known neighborhood landmarks, many of them now little more than a roofline poking through the ubiquitous brown water.

"There's nothing even to see," Dalton said as he looked out through the open back hatch of the truck. "I live here, and there's just nothing."

The family had hoped to make it that day to Dalton's mother's home in New Orleans  where two of their sons already were waiting  only to learn on the trip that part of the highway remained under water.

Gladier Dalton said Thursday that her son did find her.

Hes having to go through this again, she said. Im going through it with him, too.

Churches not immune from flood damage but keep on ministering Natural disasters are times when churches help the hurting. But what about when the churches

Advocate staff writer Bryn Stole contributed to this report.
Last weeks devastating south Louisiana floods, which have forced tens of thousands of people overnight to look for housing, comes at a time when the metro Baton Rouge housing market was already grappling with a limited inventory of homes.

As of July, there were 3,382 homes on the market in the metro areas, according to figures compiled by the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors Multiple Listing Service. Thats 15 percent lower than the number of homes for sale in July 2015. The supply of homes for sale is 3.9 months, based on current sales activity. Six months is considered an adequate inventory.

Inventory is already low, said Ginger Maulden, president-elect of the GBRAR. Now youre going to have all these people trying to find a house.

In the immediate aftermath of the flooding, Maulden said she expects the inventory will drop even further. Some people who had listed their property may end up taking it off the market and letting displaced family or friends live there. Some homes that were listed may have been damaged by floodwaters and cant be sold at the current time.

We already had a situation in our market when people were getting multiple offers for their houses, said Maulden, with Coldwell Banker One in Prairieville. Its going to be crazy.

FEMA disaster recover centers in Baton Rouge, St. Francisville, Amite FEMA opened disaster recovery centers in East Baton Rouge, West Feliciana and Tangipahoa par

Population shifts are also expected to happen as a result of the flooding as people look to buy homes in neighborhoods that didnt flood.

Were still in very early stages of this, but there will definitely be a population shift, said Rick Haase, president of Latter & Blum, the New Orleans company that operates C.J. Brown Realtors in Baton Rouge. People will move out of the areas that were just flooded.

The flooding has already created a shift in what people are looking for. Haase said that 84 percent of the traffic on C.J. Browns website one night was people who were looking for rental housing. Before that, normally 3 to 5 percent of the people on the website were looking for places to rent.

I dont think youre going to have a massive flight out of the Baton Rouge area, he said. People will land in temporary housing and work to rebuild and move back in.

[LINK: Click here to view The Advocate's homes listings.]

Kyle Petersen, an agent with Keller Williams First Choice Realty in Prairieville, said he had seven or eight appointments Saturday to show the houses he currently has listed. Thats an abnormally high number of showings for a spring weekend, when families are typically in the market to buy houses, much less in late August, when vacations are winding down and children are settling back in school.

The run on housing has begun, Petersen said. When we get into next week, it will be very, very apparent.

Petersen said he had sold two houses in the previous 24 hours, both of them at nearly full asking price.

+5 'It hit everywhere': Denham Springs devastated by record flooding Deanna Welch, her hair up and shoulders bare, sat out on the steamy sidewalk in a soggy offi

According to a preliminary analysis released Friday by the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, 31 percent of the homes in metro Baton Rouge were identified as being in areas that saw flood waters. Thats more than 110,000 homes.

Livingston Parish was the hardest hit. The BRAC report estimates that 87 percent of the homes in the parish were in areas that experienced flooding, while parish officials have said they believe up to 75 percent of the parish's homes could have taken on water.

There are reports of some people raising the asking price for their home because of the increased demand or wanting to back out of contracts to sell a house at an agreed-to price. Maulden noted that unless someone is buying a home with cash, there will still be appraisals and lenders wont put out money for houses that are priced out of whack.

We need to keep the standards that we have, Petersen said. The market is smarter than all of us.

To help manage the situation, GBRAR held a conference call Thursday morning stressing to members the importance of keeping MLS listings as up to date as possible. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when there was a massive run on housing in metro Baton Rouge driven by displaced New Orleans residents, Petersen said there were issues with houses being under contract, but the MLS listings not getting updated. We want to avoid that, he said. People depend on the listings.

Petersen said of the buyers hes spoken to, most of them are looking for well-established subdivisions that stayed dry in neighborhoods off Perkins Road, Bluebonnet Boulevard and Siegen Lane.

Maulden said homes in neighborhoods that didnt experience flooding will see their value go up. Going forward, real estate agents will make a point of mentioning that a house didnt flood in 2016 to potential buyers.

People are going to think twice about purchasing a home in a flood zone, she said. There will not be the same attitude.

The rush of people looking to lease a place to live is expected to boost the apartment market, which was experiencing some softening, said Craig Davenport, who tracks the apartment market for Cook, Moore & Associates.

Rental rates for Baton Rouge apartments dropped 0.74 from 2014 to 2015, the first time thats happened since the market started being tracked in 1988. The vacancy rate also rose, because of the 4,460 apartments units have been or should be completed between 2015 and 2016.

There was a wide range of damage and this is going to have an impact on the whole region, he said. Long-term, everything thats available will be leased.

Its not known how many apartment units were damaged by flooding. Some complexes that flooded may not rebuild. Davenport noted the properties in the Gardere Lane area that took on water. If youre charging $400 a month rent and you didnt have flood insurance, its going to be tough to rebuild, he said.
The shelter at Celtic Media Centre is expected to close by the end of the week once all of the flood victims staying there move to the Baton Rouge River Center, which will likely stay open as long as it's needed, a state official said Monday.

The number of flood victims staying in shelters across the region is about half of what it was last week, going from 4,857 on Aug. 15 to 2,817 Monday as evacuees trickle out after they find temporary homes with family members and friends. Other evacuees, though, are still sleeping on cots alongside hundreds of strangers, unsure of where to go next.

State and Red Cross workers expect that by the end of the week, the people staying at Celtic Media Centre will all be moved into the Baton Rouge River Center. As of Monday morning, 433 people were staying at Celtic, where volunteers transformed warehouse-like sound stages into a living space for thousands of evacuees.

But the number of Celtic evacuees who will make the move to River Center is probably less than the 433 there now as more and more people find long term housing elsewhere, said Terri Ricks, Department of Children and Family Services deputy secretary.

The River Center had 865 evacuees staying there as of Monday morning.

Ricks said the moving process began Monday with evacuees at Celtic who have vehicles moving to River Center. By Wednesday, transportation assistance will be provided to move people to River Center.

The last group of people scheduled to be moved are families with children, who were to move on Friday. The reason the plan called for the end of the week move was to give children a chance to finish out the week at school without having to worry about adjusting to life in a new shelter, Ricks said. But late Monday, East Baton Rouge school district officials announced they were delaying the opening of school until Sept. 6. It was unclear whether that would impact the shelter's moving schedule.

"We're very concerned with wanting to make sure that the people who have found community within both of those spaces have the time to find comfort in their new space, which is why we're not intending to move all of them at the same time," Ricks said.

Caseworkers from the agency are meeting with evacuees to help them make plans for their future, Ricks said.

Hotel assistance, disaster food program launching for displaced flood victims Help is on the way, at least temporarily, for people displaced by floods who are seeking hou

FEMA has a program in place to pay for hotel rooms on a 30-day basis for those who lost their homes and have registered with the agency.

The hotel assistance is only available to those who were displaced by the floods and are now living in shelters, cars, hotels, motels or their place of employment, and they should have received a phone call from FEMA telling them about the process.

Ricks said she hopes the majority of people in shelters will be eligible for FEMA programs or find housing with family or friends. But she said shelters will stay open as long as there is a need for them, and that smaller shelters may still take over once fewer people need a place to stay.

"The large scale shelter is needed as long as there's a large population," Ricks said.

The medical special needs facility at LSU had 92 evacuees living there as of Monday while the Lamar Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales had 381 people.

People interested in volunteering at shelters should go through the American Red Cross' volunteer training and registration process, which they can complete online, Ricks said. In addition, people should not bring donations to the shelters, Ricks said, adding that they should be taken to donation centers in the community.

If shelters need a particular item, they will request it from the donation centers, Ricks said.

+2 'Chateau Evacuee' most exclusive salon in town It's the most exclusive hair salon in Baton Rouge at the moment but you probably don't want 

"It's better that way so that we're not having to manage donations on top of meeting the needs of survivors that are in a shelters," she said.

She also discouraged people from buying items to donate to shelters, and said they are better off making cash donations to the organizations running shelters like the American Red Cross or to groups collecting money for flood victims like the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.
Steve Parrill, assistant superintendent for Livingston Parish public schools, said he and other district officials on Sunday conducted site inspections at the parish schools, assessing damage and cleanup efforts.

Parrill had visited three Denham Springs-area schools before speaking to The Advocate and said students will be able to return much sooner than others outside the school system had suggested, but district officials will need alternatives for some of the more heavily damaged campuses.

Parrill said he hopes to have more definitive information on a return date by mid-week, once the inspections are complete and teachers have had a chance to return to their classrooms and take stock of the damage.

Baton Rouge public pre-k and kindergarten students will have later start, back to school Aug. 29 East Baton Rouge Parish schools plans to reopen on Wednesday dont apply to kindergarten an

The administration also will have to address transportation for students and possibly some staff, Parrill said. Well over a third of the district's staff was displaced by the flooding, with many losing their vehicles as well, he said.

The district also lost 50 or so buses to the floodwaters, he said.

Elsewhere in the Baton Rouge area...

Public schools in Assumption, Iberville, St. Helena, St. James, Lafayette, Tangipahoa as well as in Baker are reopening Monday.

A dozen more Baton Rouge-area Catholic schools are reopening Monday. Two more, St. Alphonsus and Cristo Rey, are reopening Aug. 29, Cristo Rey is in a temporary locale.

Almost all charter schools in the area are reopening Monday morning. Mentorship and Slaughter Community are reopening Tuesday. Geo Prep and Friendship Capitol will reopen Wednesday.

Public schools in East Feliciana and Zachary reopen Tuesday. East Baton Rouge reopens Wednesday.

Central won't reopen until Sept. 6 at the earliest.
'Not in my backyard': Neighborhood opposition kills plans for St. Tammany workforce housing

'Not in my backyard': Neighborhood opposition kills plans for workforce housing in St. Tammany subdivision
The ACT government has been ordered to pay more than $540,000 damages to a woman whose identity was stolen by overseas scammers who then secretly sold her Canberra house and pocketed the money.

International fraudsters profited by $430,000 when they sold the woman's four-bedroom Macgregor house in 2014 in a sophisticated hoax that took months and spanned South Africa, Australia and Indonesia.

This Macgregor house was sold by overseas scammers in 2014. Credit:Jay Cronan

Fresh details of the crime were revealed by Fairfax Media this week, as court documents tendered in the ACT Supreme Court showed the thieves, who haven't been caught, conned real estate agents, lawyers and a bank in their elaborate lengths to steal the home.

The scam began in September 2013 when the fraudster impersonated the woman using a bogus email address, believed to have originated in South Africa, and asked her property manager to change her contact details.
Three summers ago, for a brief but happy period, Veronica Wensing and Krishna Sadhana's love was equal before the law.

The small window between the passing of the ACT's same-sex marriage bill and the High Court annulment allowed them to wed in a hastily planned ceremony, surrounded by 200 loved ones in Gungahlin.

ACT Greens candidate Veronica Wensing and her partner Krishna Sadhana who are calling for the federal government to drop the same-sex marriage plebiscite. Credit:Rohan Thomson

"Nothing will ever take that day and that experience away from us," Ms Wensing said.

The wedding made them one of several dozen same-sex couples to have married in Australia.
Shares of Noni B  the fashion powerhouse for the middle-aged suburban woman  have been on a tear since James Packer decided that his Pretty Woman Fashion Group was a bit frumpy for the current squeeze and offloaded the business to Noni a few weeks ago.

It shows that Noni B's controlling shareholders  the Babcock & Brown boys, Phil Green and Trevor Loewensohn  still know how to cut a deal with the best of them.

Their boutique advisory, Alceon, won over Noni B's owners with a paltry 51 a share offer in 2014, which delivered them a 77 per cent stake. Shares last changed hands at $1.32.

That sort of return would tempt even the dapper Mr Green to frock up.
The legal battles of Indian billionaires Pankaj and Radhika Oswal are far from over after the Australian Taxation Office revealed it was further assessing the couple's tax affairs.

The revelation was made at an urgent Federal Court application by the Oswals to enter into mediation with the ATO over a 2007 income tax dispute. The couple's tax bill, penalties and interest is already estimated to exceed $100 million.

Justice Tony Pagone ordered the ATO and the Oswals to begin mediation early next month despite protests from the Tax Office.

The couple sought to mediate the tax proceedings after entering settlement talks with the ANZ Bank and receivers from PPB last week over the 2010 sale of their stake in West Australian fertiliser company Burrup Fertilisers. The Oswals allege ANZ and PPB shortchanged them by as much as $2.5 billion.
It's nice, I guess, that the Premier took time out of gushing over Marvel's superhunks yesterday to thank the city for its patience with the traffic delays and inconveniences of hosting Thor: Ragnarok here in Brisneyland. It wasn't necessary, though. Only the most punishing bore or provincial sucktooth would surely object. After all, what is your temporary disruption and bother when measured against my eventual pleasure at seeing three or four blocks of this place atomised by the Hulk, or whoever the Hulk is HULK SMASHING in the next instalment of Marvel's Ring Cycle.

If the producers are reading this, I have some notes I'd be happy to share about a few worthy targets for a bit of smashy green lovin'. We could start with that stupid carpark near Ben's Burgers, which exists solely to lure unsuspecting drivers into a tow-truck trap, before moving on to the Story Bridge, when it's full of slouch bikers. Tourists come from all over the world to see the Story Bridge, and then they get delayed by slouch bikers and towed, just around the corner from Ben's Burgers, so I'm sure this would be popular.

The Strong Choices Tower is looking close to finished, but hasn't filled up with squishy public servants yet. It would make a marvellously loud noise, crashing down with some super villain riding the penthouse south to oblivion. Mr Strong Choices himself would make an excellent super villain, just in case you're looking for one. The Riverside Expressway is crying out to be demolished; either by Thor and his magical nut cracker, or by the Hulk waving the Sky Needle around carelessly. (Be cool to see him put out the Brisbane Eye with that thing too).

They could usefully sink The Island, even if it was occupied at the time; I don't think anyone would object. In fact, make sure it's occupied and then get the Hulk to throw the Kookaburra Queen at it.
When the federal government blocked two Chinese firms from buying a 99-year lease of Sydney's electricity network, it sparked a firestorm of criticism. And it's still raging.

On the face of it, the critics seem to have a pretty good case. Most colourful was the former Labor foreign affairs minister, Bob Carr, a regular commentator on China now that he fronts the Australia-China Relations Institute.

Illustration: John Shakespeare

By preventing the two Chinese companies from buying a controlling 50.4 per cent stake in Ausgrid, said Carr, the Turnbull government had made "a policy sacrifice to the witches' sabbath of xenophobia and economic nationalism stirred up in the recent federal election".

It's a very unpleasant thought that Australia would turn away a prospective $10 billion investment out of sheer xenophobia. China's foreign affairs ministry picked up on the theme.
The Herald has long supported same-sex marriage and associated legal reforms when community opinion demands it. We have argued for a free vote on both sides of Parliament.

The timing of such a momentous social reform must, as always, be determined by the Australian people, either directly or indirectly.

The interests of the nation, thousands of same-sex couples and their children will be best served by a civil debate that produces a clear mandate for changing the legal definition of marriage.

A parliamentary conscience vote is unlikely any time soon, however, given entrenched views within the Coalition. Even if MPs had a free vote, there would be no guarantee of support for same-sex marriage. What's more, desperate opponents of change would seize on the lack of a popular mandate. A "politicians' marriage law" would always be exposed to political whims or biases.

Logistical reality means the direct alternative, the government's planned non-binding plebiscite, will be deferred until next February.

The Herald believes a plebiscite could have been held in conjunction with the July 2 federal election, for minimal extra cost and with little risk of divisive debate. But same-sex marriage is now likely to dominate the next six months.

Handled badly, the debate could legitimise homophobia and exacerbate the suffering of people who deserve the right to legal validation of a loving, exclusive relationship.

Former High Court judge Michael Kirby fears the plebiscite will mean "running out the old issues of hatreds and animosities, abominations and all the old arguments against gay people".
The Coalition has made 800 policy decisions that will save the budget $221 billion by 2026-27, but there is "much more work to be done on budget repair", Finance Minister Mathias Cormann says.

In a major speech to the Sydney Institute on Monday evening that set out the magnitude of the budget repair task still facing the government  and the nation  Senator Cormann challenged Labor to "step up to plate" and work with the Coalition to pass savings through Parliament.

Of the Finance Department's estimated $221 billion in medium-term savings, $26 billion of it would be made in the four years to 2020-21, while the remaining $195 billion would be realised from structural spending cuts that build over the decade, Senator Cormann said.

But more savings  including $6.5 billion contained in an omnibus savings bill that will be presented soon after Parliament returns next week  were needed to repair the budget and "we expect to receive bipartisan support", the Finance Minister said.
Sexual harassment and assault are fundamentally an issue of student safety and welfare, and the University has a duty to its students to provide a safe environment that is conducive to learning. The University has failed to live up to this duty and instigate genuine cultural change. Our demands are as follows: Research 1. That the University conduct a student-wide survey into the current culture at the University, particularly student attitudes and beliefs around sexual assault, gender and consent. Data about sexual assault prevalence does not tell the whole story and cannot be meaningfully analysed without information about the culture in which these data arise. 2. That the University commission an independent review, by 'End Rape on Campus Australia', of sexual harassment and assault reporting procedures in operation at other universities and educational institutions. That this review be used to develop a best-practice reporting model that the University will then adopt.

3. That the University fully participate with the Australian Universities' Sexual Assault and Harassment Survey currently being developed by The Hunting Ground Australia Project in collaboration with the Human Rights Commission. Education and training 4. That the University consult with the Full Stop Foundation to provide 'Sex and Ethics/ Bystander' training to student groups. 5. That the University consult with the Full Stop Foundation to provide 'Responding with Compassion' training to all staff employed by the University as well as all relevant student representatives. That the University also provide optional training to anyone else who is in a position where they are likely to receive disclosures of sexual harassment or assault, for example, tutors, editors of student publications, university health workers, college staff etc. 6. That the University consult with the Full Stop Foundation to provide 'Vicarious Trauma' training to all staff employed by the University as well as all relevant student representatives, or anyone who is in a position where they are likely to receive disclosures.

7. That the University create an online module to educate students about sexual assault and harassment that must be completed by all students once per semester. Student representatives, including the Wom*n's Officers, Sexual Harassment Officers and Queer Officers, must have genuine involvement in the creation of content for this module. 8. That the University license The Hunting Ground for screening each year for the next three years, with screenings to be organised by the SRC Wom*n's Department. Policy and procedures 9. That the current task-force led by Elizabeth Broderick investigating college culture, and any future task-force, committee or advisory group that addresses sexual harassment or assault (including in a college context) automatically include at least two student representatives, one of whom must be a SRC Wom*ns officer. The other position to be filled by a Queer Officer, Sexual Harassment Officer, or other suitable student representative, to be selected in consultation with the Wom*ns Officer. 10. That all counselling and casework staff employed by Counselling and Psychological Services (CaPS) undergo specialised trauma training to better support survivors of sexual assault. Until this training is implemented, it should be made clear on all advertising for USyd Counselling and Psychological Services that the counsellors are not specially trained for responding to sexual assault.

11. That the University create a clear policy statement regarding its response to complaints about sexual harassment and assault, detailing how information in the complaint will be stored and who will have access to it; the timeline and method by which the University will communicate with the complainant; the University's powers to discipline perpetrators; and the supports that the University is able to offer to survivors (for example, granting extensions and special considerations and providing counselling and counselling referral). 12. That a one-page resource, approved by the current Wom*n's Officers, informing students about key policies and organisations relating to sexual harassment and assault is created for inclusion within all Unit of Study Outlines from Semester 2, 2016 onwards. This resource should include: a. A clear and accessible definition of consent b. An outline of the Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination Prevention Policy 2015 and a link to the full policy c. An outline of the procedure for making a formal complaint to the University and a link to the Student Complaints Portal

d. A link to the SRC Casework page e. A link to the Safer Community website f. Contact information for the police, the 1800RESPECT hotline and the NSW Rape Crisis Centre Signed: Anna Hush, 2016 Wom*n's Officer

Vanessa Song, 2016 Wom*n's Officer Xiaoran Shi, 2015 Wom*n's Officer Julia Readett, 2014 Wom*n's Officer Phoebe Maloney, 2014 Wom*n's Officer Hannah Smith, 2013 Women's Officer

Emily Rayers, 2013 Women's Officer Kate O'Brien, 2012 Women's Officer Jaya Keaney, 2011 Women's Officer Rosie Ryan 2010 Women's Officer Tamsin Thomas (nee Dingley), 2009 Women's Officer
A group of current and former student councillors from the University of Sydney have penned an open letter to Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence, arguing that campus sexual assaults have for too long been ignored by a management that prioritises reputation over safety.

12 Women's Officers from the past decade signed Monday's letter, which lays out damning failures of student safety mechanisms and recommends a raft of policy changes to guarantee that instances of sexual harassment and assault are taken seriously by the university.

Sydney University Women's Officer Anna Hush Credit:Christopher Pearce

"For an entire decade we have been raising the issue of sexual assault and harassment on campus with the administration. For an entire decade we have been met with resistance to change", reads the letter.

"It seems to us that the University has deliberately stalled action on sexual assault, assuming that once Women's Officers and other activists finish their term, or graduate from university, the institutional knowledge required for a sustained campaign on this issue is lost.
Investing isn't a secret society, but nor is it exactly like anything else we do. Choosing a broker, opening an account, depositing funds, making a trade, filling in the paperwork  it's not hard but it's all new  and that can put some people off. It shouldn't; done well, the outcome is more than worth the effort  but I get it.

And sometimes things you're not expecting just hit you from out of the blue. That's just what happened to one reader, Sean, who'd just dipped his toe into investing  and now the company whose shares he owns is being taken over.

When Woolworths South Africa bought David Jones, once shareholders passed a scheme of arrangement, it became compulsory for all shareholders to sell. Credit:Don Arnold

The company has apparently suggested that he sell, but he's not sure he wants to  and wants to know what will happen if he doesn't. So let's break it down.

It's important to distinguish which company is suggesting Sean sell. The acquiring company wants you to sell, of course  they're aiming to buy the company. The company whose shares you own, though, may have a different view. Sometimes they'll feel like the buyer isn't offering enough money, so they'll suggest you keep your shares. Other times, the directors of your company will feel the money being offered is a good deal, and will recommend you take the cash.
A government employee responsible for investigating illegal dumping in Western Sydney allegedly solicited bribes in exchange for ignoring the dumping of dangerous waste products including asbestos, a corruption inquiry has heard.

Craig Izzard, a former investigator with the Western Sydney Regional Illegal Dumping Squad (RID), is being examined by the Independent Commission Against Corruption over his alleged involvement in "black market" dumping.

ICAC heard allegations Craig Izzard solicited bribes to ignore illegal dumping of dangerous waste, including asbestos. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Counsel assisting the inquiry James Mack told the hearing former rugby league player Mr Izzard was the principle person of interest in four allegations of corrupt conduct, including three occasions in 2015 when he allegedly solicited bribes from people in exchange for not investigating their dumping activity.

In his opening address, Mr Mack told the hearing the high costs associated with dumping dangerous products legally had created a "black market for dumping".
There are still "too few offices" and "too few meeting rooms" in Queensland's newest home for its public servants, 1 William Street, the state's public sector union says.

From October 1, more than 5000 Queensland public servants from 16 buildings will shift into 1 William Street in the biggest-ever George Street public service shuffle ever announced.

The departments to move into 1 William Street and new offices for Queensland's public servants are identified below.

Together Union secretary Alex Scott said senior public servants were still raising concerns with the floor layout as the government shift got closer.
Social media expert and managing director of L&A Social Media, Gina Lednyak, says the key form of marketing for a lot of new businesses is social media. "They do essentially start from a Facebook post or an Instagram post." Social media is the starting point for a lot more small businesses because it's extremely cost effective, she says. So has Facebook become the old-fashioned noticeboard? "Within a week of posting it, I had my first chat with someone who wanted help, and she is still my client today." "It definitely already has," says Lednyak. "Especially for communities. Like the Swap Sell Buy or Trade  Eastern Suburbs group has thousands of people in it and if you post about a lost dog or a lost wallet, you tend to get hundreds of responses straightaway.

"It's essentially a hyperactive community board with the whole community standing around the board at the same time." To harness the reach of Facebook, one of the things Lednyak recommends would-be entrepreneurs do is start a business Facebook page. "Having a business Facebook page allows more flexibility and it allows you to advertise as well. Facebook advertising lets you reach people in a very, very targeted way. "The second thing is start finding relevant groups that you could join. So find your local community group or a local business group and start engaging with people there. "Once you are comfortable with your business offering, what you can actually do is launch your Facebook advertising, where you can actually target people that are exactly in your postcode. "For example, if you are a decorator you could target people that are interested in the local homeware store.

"And that will actually allow you to drive people straight to your website, and you could track how many people purchase or contact you from there." As for promoting a business on Facebook, Lednyak says, "the biggest thing is to be authentic and open and give it as much personality as you can. "And because of the way the Facebook algorithm is set, the more people engage with your content, the more people are actually seeing your content." Jess May now has an engaged Facebook page for her business and continues to post in the same local group. She says she would not contemplate doing a nine-to-five job anymore. "I see myself becoming someone else's nine-to-five."

May has ambitious plans for Beautiful Business Systems. "I am really excited to be bringing on employees, likely within the next 12 months." Gina Lednyak's seven steps to business success on Facebook Develop a strategy: Have an understanding of what your business offering is, who you are targeting and what you would like them to do. Get creative: Think of an engaging way to deliver your message. Facebook is a crowded channel and the only thing that will cut through is creative and engaging content. Look professional: Triple-check for typos, make sure your image is the right size. Your Facebook page is a reflection of your business.
Police have laid charges over the abduction of a man in Melbourne's south-east on Saturday evening.

Police were told the 54-year-old victim found an unknown man with a knife inside his Frankston home about 5.30pm on Saturday.

The 47-year-old alleged offender, also from Frankston, allegedly made threats towards the victim and then bound his arms, police said.

Investigators believe that the victim was then forced into the passenger seat of his own car, and the kidnapper drove them away from the property.
A woman has described the "scary but amazing" moment she spotted what looked like a tornado in Melbourne's west on Monday morning

Catharine Kennedy-Lamplough was getting into her car after feeding her horses in a paddock at Mount Cottrell, 40 kilometres west of the city, when she saw a cloud shaped like a funnel twirling in the sky above her just before midday.

"It was like fairy floss dissolving into the bigger cloud," she said.

"The clouds above it were very dark. It was amazing to see."
Rat-infested food, kitchens piled with rubbish, and unhygienic hand washing facilities in Melbourne's grubbiest restaurants have attracted hefty fines of tens of thousands of dollars, an analysis of health department data shows.

Eleven restaurants across Melbourne were found guilty of breaching the Food Act last year, with Cafe Student Curries and Pizza Restaurant facing the highest sum in fines, at $55,000 and $12,500 in costs.

At Pabu Grill and Sake on Smith Street, Collingwood, rodent faeces was found in flour, rice and bread crumbs. Credit:Thinkstock

The breaches included risking food contamination due to unsanitary conditions, and inadequate storage facilities for chemicals, clothing and personal belongings.

The Clayton restaurant, which is close to Monash University, was convicted in August last year. It was one of two restaurants fined in the City of Monash.
Vending-machine style boxes could be installed on the verges of willing homeowners to provide free food to the homeless in Cockburn - in an Australian first.

Having witnessed a similar concept at work in Mexico, Scott Johnson hopes to pitch the "you matter" boxes to the City of Cockburn next month.

If taken up by the council, the boxes will be installed on verges and maintained by volunteers from Mr Johnson's charity AYLA incorporated.

An electronic code will be required to access the box to prevent opportunists from taking advantage of the freebies and the boxes will be filled with fresh food donated by volunteers on a daily basis.
More bizarre assertions have emerged in the grisly alleged murder of a policeman in Bali with claims the officer bit Australian Sara Connor after she asked him about her missing handbag.

Her lawyer Erwin Siregar emerged from the police interrogation on Monday admitting the story was a "little bit different" to claims earlier ventilated by the lawyer for Ms Connor's boyfriend David Taylor.

He said Ms Connor had approached a man lying face down in the sand whom she suspected of having something to do with her missing handbag.

"At the time Sara did not know whether it was police or not. She saw this person and asked while shaking the person: 'Where is my bag? Where is my bag?'"
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 22/08/2016 (2259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two years after the implementation of the Non-Essential Use of Pesticides regulation, the province wants to hear Manitobans thoughts on the ban.

The legislation, which prohibits the use of certain prescribed pesticides to lawns and adjoining areas, like sidewalks, driveways and patios of residential, commercial, government, and institutional properties, was implemented under the former NDP government with concerns about health and safety of people and pets.

The current Conservative government announced last month they would collect feedback on the ban and review it.

Health minister and Steinbach MLA Kelvin Goertzen said its important to remember that these pesticides are themselves regulated and Health Canada has their own standards to adhere to.

The ban was partially talked about in terms of protection of people and pets. Its important to remember that the products are already regulated by Health Canada, so its not as though there wasnt a bit of a check before. Certainly, there was discussion about whether or not things can be improved or there could be greater safety by putting the ban in place, said Goertzen.

Now, having had it in effect for a couple of years, its valuable to look back and see how its working.

Goertzen said as an MLA, he has heard a great deal of feedback over the ban.

I hear both views, but Ive heard many concerns from municipalities as well. The government generally has concerns about the ability to keep control over weeds and do it in a cost effective way and make sure there still are green spaces that are not only aesthetically nice, but that are usable, he said.

Theres a balance. On the one hand, we want to ensure that it is protecting people from a health perspective. Im also the Active Living minister, so we want to make sure people have places to be active that are accessible, so its a good time to review it and look at it.

Manitobans can provide feedback through email at pesticide.review2016@gov.mb.ca or online at www.gov.mb.ca/conservation/envprograms/initiatives/cosmetic_pesticides/ until Sept. 12.
By Linda Qiu and Katie Sanders

News shows were ground zero for campaign spin Sunday.

Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook shrugged off This Week host George Stephanopouloss questions about the Clinton Foundation accepting foreign government donations, pivoting to the foundations charitable work and calling Donald Trump a puppet of the Kremlin.

New Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, said the Republican nominee is coming off his best week yet, days after campaign chairman Paul Manafort tendered his resignation amid reports of his business involvement with pro-Russian officials in Ukraine.

Stephanopoulos pressed Conway to explain if Trumps recent statement of regret for some things he has said during the campaign would lead to apologies to either the family of a Muslim-American soldier who was killed in Iraq or war veteran Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). She said Trumps regret was more general.

Hes expressed his regret publicly and said, if I have caused you personal painthat can include me, that can include youthat he regrets that, Conway said.

The politics left little room for discussion of a haunting video showing a dazed Syrian boy, Omran Daqneesh, pulled from the wreckage of an airstrikean omission in both nominees campaign proposals, according to Julie Pace, chief White House correspondent for the Associated Press and frequent Fox News Sunday panelist.

If you are a voter in this election, and you look at that picture of that little boy and you feel sick to your stomach, like most of us do, you should look at your presidential candidates and demand a plan, Pace said. Neither Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump have a plan for addressing the civil war in Syria.

Paces statement rates Mostly True.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, agreed with Pace that neither candidate has really tackled the civil war issue.

In fairness to them, he said, its really difficult to address. The Obama administration has been tied in knots by it.

The crisis in Syria involves myriad actors, confusing alliances, and conflicting motives. According to the United Nations, no sides hands are clean of war crimes, including murder, torture, and rape. Investigators have also found evidence of President Bashar al-Assad and ISIS using chemical weapons against civilians.

More than 250,000 have died in the past five years, with millions displaced from the country. The crisis, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, is only getting worse.

The situation started in the mid-2000s, when a severe drought in the countrys breadbasket created an internal mass migration of refugees into Syrian cities already crowded by Iraqi migrants displaced by the Iraq war. That exacerbated existing problems like unemployment, corruption, and brewing discontent with the Assad regime.

The unrest reached its boiling point during the Arab Spring of 2011, when pro-democracy protesters took to the streets and were met with a government crackdown. That summer, opposition groups began taking up arms, and war erupted.

Religious divides and foreign power proxy wars make the conflict even more complicated. Most of the rebels are Sunni Muslim, backed by Sunni countries, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as well as Russia, while Assads security forces belong to the minority Alawite sect, aided by Shia regimes like Iran and Iraq.

In the early days of the war, the Obama administration (with Clinton as secretary of state) focused on overthrowing Assad and supported moderate rebel groups. But the United States priorities have shifted to airstrikes on ISIS targets.

With that move, the United States has given Russia freedom of action in backing Assad while the United States focuses on ISISchoices that also empower Iran and raise critical questions about who will really win in Syria if the United States does defeat ISIS, Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a working paper.

The record largely backs Paces claim that Clinton and Trump have yet to propose a comprehensive plan on how they would address the Syrian civil war. Clinton has given a few more specifics than Trump, whose campaign did not respond to us by deadline.

Both candidates talked about the war at large in fall 2015, when Russia began bombing anti-Assad rebels. In an interview, Trump said he wanted to sit back andsee what happens. Clinton, breaking with the Obama administration, advocated for a no-fly zone, in which unauthorized aircraft are prohibited from entering the zone.

Since then, Trump has said little regarding the civil war, keeping his focus on ISIS without a lot of specifics to preserve an element of surprise.

When Trump does mention Syria, its to bolster his criticism of Clinton and Obamas foreign policy or his proposal to ban Muslim immigrants and refugees.

In recent months, Trump has repeatedly argued for working with Russia to knock the hell out of ISIS. This position is more or less aligned with the current policy of learning to live with Assad, Gartenstein-Ross said.

Clinton has been more specific than Trump regarding the conflict at large. Heres what shes proposed as a presidential candidate:

 A no-fly zone that will stop Assad from slaughtering civilians,

 Creating safe havens for civilians,

 More support for opposition forces,

 Removing Assad through diplomacy,

 Stopping the ongoing bombing that Russia has carried out in support of the Assad regime against the Syrians.

Both Pace and Gartenstein-Ross said Clintons varied ideas dont amount to a full vision for ending the war.

Its a recipe for escalating the conflict without resolving the civil war, he told us. Its unclear to me what the end game is and what the solution is.

Neither candidate has said what should happen as a result of a piecemeal approach: Is the goal of a no-fly zone to help opposition groups oust Assad? Pace asked. Similarly, is the goal of working with the Russians on airstrikes to prop up Assad?

The United States narrow strategy in Syria may be self-defeating in the end, according to Cordesman. Even if ISIS is defeated, any new government will be hopelessly unstable given all the ethnic and religious divisions and foreign involvement.

Both candidates may choose to continue to address these issues in silence, but there is even less doubt than in the case of Iraq as to what the real legacy of the Obama administration is likely to be by the spring of 2017, Cordesman wrote. The transition plan seems to consist of a poison chalice.

Pace acknowledged that the Syrian crisis is one of the worlds most difficult problems but said that if the humanitarian crisis really matters to voters, they should make that known for this election and demand more clarity from the candidates.

One of them will inherit this problem, she said.

Read more fact-checks at PunditFact.com.
Just about every single Donald Trump stump speech has the same moment.

The mogul pauses, pulls a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket, and reads off a list of factory closures printed on it. The factories are all in the general vicinity of the rallywell, for the most partand Trump uses their closures as evidence of a central theme of his campaign: that free trade is sending all our jobs to China or Mexico.

Just one hiccup: In some cases, the factories Trump names havent actually closed. And in other cases, companies that closed plants subsequently opened plants in other parts of the United States.

In one situation, a company Trump called out as an outsourcer actually manufactures products in the U.S. that are then exported to China. Now, Trumps general ideathat manufacturing in the U.S. is having a tough go of itis correct. But the evidence he uses to push that narrative is often sloppy, incomplete, or just plain wrong.

Earlier this month, for instance, Trump went through his local-closed-factories routine at a rally in Ashburn, Virginia. Setting aside the fact that Ashburn is in Americas richest county and has basically zero manufacturing, Trumps comments had some curious factual deficiencies. One of the companies he named as evidence that Virginias economy was suffering was Smithfield Foods Inc. And the company did close some Virginia plants, several years ago. But then a Chinese firm purchased itin 2013 for $7 billion, as Institutional Investor reportedand kept operations going in the Old Dominion. Institutional Investor noted that theres strong demand among middle-class Chinese consumers for American-made premium food products. So its not surprising that in 2014, Smithfield had its most profitable year ever, according to the Virginian-Pilot. Last September, Voice of America News reported that [a]fter two years under Chinese ownership, the Smithfield company is doing well financially and employment is growing.

And that growth is happening in Virginia.

Apparently no one told Trump.

In another case, Trump told rally attendees that the closure of a Chicago-area Nabisco plant would result in 1,200 people losing their jobs to Mexico. The mogul spent much of last year bashing Nabisco for the downsizing, and even said he would stop purchasing Oreo cookies to punish the company. But the damage was only half the size Trump said it was; the local ABC affiliate reported that the closure resulted in 600 lost jobs, not 1,200.

Also wrong: Trumps statement that Nabisco was closing up shop in the Windy City. The plant he referred to stayed open, just with fewer employees.

And in a June press release, Trump pointed to the closure of an Ethan Allen facility in Vermont as a casualty of Clinton-backed trade policies. Ethan Allen did indeed close a Vermont facility, in 2009. As a result, more than 200 workers lost their jobs.

But an Ethan Allen spokesperson defended the companys corporate practices to The Daily Beast, saying its two remaining Vermont facilities actually export products to China.

Ethan Allen is one of the very few companies that makes about 70 percent of products in our North American manufacturing plants, the spokesperson said.

Another company Trump cited in that release, Osram Sylvania, also defended its commitment to New England. Company spokesman Glen Gracia said it closed a plant in Manchester, New Hampshire, because of decreasing global demand for the lighting products manufactured there, not any free trade agreements.

Trump spoke to supporters in front of the empty factory in June of this year. But it wont be empty indefinitely. The Concord Monitor reported on June 30 of this year that developers plan to spend upward of $40 million to turn it into a mall. That endeavor will, inevitability, create a job or two.

Trump also ripped into Risdon AMS for laying off 40 workers in 2002 when it moved some manufacturing work from New Hampshire to Mexico. According to an AP report at the time, about 20 of the workers who lost their jobs were refugees, including workers from Bosnia, Nigeria, and Iraq. What Trump didnt mention is that the company that owns Risdon AMSCrown Holdings Inc., which manufactures packagingannounced in January of this year that it will invest $132 million on a new manufacturing facility in upstate New York. New Yorks governor, Andrew Cuomo, estimated that the facility will create 160 new jobs. But that isnt the kind of thing that sounds good in a Trump stump speech.

Look, its not up for debate that the United States has lost a ton of manufacturing jobs over the past few decades. But Donald Trumps apocalyptic vision of the American economy is often based on evidence thats faulty, incomplete, or just plain wrongalmost like he hasnt quite figured out whats going on.
Please do not turn to Rudy Giuliani for medical information.

The former mayor of New York appeared on Fox News Sunday this past weekend to speculate about Hillary Clintons purported ill health. After asserting a media cover-up on her behalf, Giuliani encouraged viewers to take to Google to find videos backing up his claims.

Apparently it needs saying that this is not a reliable means of establishing a medical diagnosis.

I generally discourage my own patients from using internet search engines to research their own concerns. Oftentimes the diagnoses they end up with are far more dire or obscure than the common and benign conditions actually responsible for them. Googling simply misdirects them toward undue anxiety.

But the improbability of those results pales in comparison to the unmistakable claptrap youll find if you take Giulianis advice. The evidence youll come across is heavily edited videos that take brief clips (including Clintons admittedly goofy reaction to the balloon drop during the Democratic National Convention) and stitch them together in order to create the impression of some kind of neurological dysfunction.

Suffice it to say, nothing in any of the videos I saw came close to sound evidence of any neurological condition. While I have had parents bring in videos of their children displaying seizure-like or other unusual behaviors, which have at times been helpful in figuring out what (if any) medical condition might be worth investigating, they are useful insofar as they add information to what Ive already obtained from a detailed history and thorough examination.

The blatantly biased videos youll find about Hillary Clinton are diagnostically meritless.

Unfortunately, there is precedent within Giulianis own party for misusing edited videos for ideologically-based medical diagnoses.

In 2005, then-Sen. Bill Frist, a cardiothoracic surgeon, proclaimed from the Senate floor that Terri Schiavo, the woman at the center of a controversial end-of-life case, was not in a persistent vegetative state as doctors who had examined her had said. He based this on videos he had seen, not on any kind of examination he performed himself.

It was grossly inappropriate for him to have done so.

Admittedly, there are mental health professionals who are all too eager to diagnose Donald Trump from afar without actually having examined him themselves. The New York Times quoted several who justify their decisions because they consider Trumps candidacy a serious threat to the nations future. However well intentioned they may believe themselves, I strenuously object to this practice, not only because it deviates from medical ethics, but because it contributes to the stigma of mental illness by using it as a convenient means of explaining behavior we deem unacceptable.

Giulianis conduct is another level of disgracefulness, however. He is among Trumps most high-profile surrogates, and is presumably promulgating misinformation about Clintons health with the campaigns approval, tacit or otherwise. Given Trumps previous statements erroneously linking vaccines and autism, he seems to have no trouble trafficking in medical conspiracies if it suits his ends. I greet the prospect of a medical conspiracist in the Oval Office with abject dismay.

Doctors for both Clinton and Trump have released statements attesting to the health of the candidates. Trumps was written in a highly idiosyncratic manner, and Clintons have been followed by leaked forgeries that added yet more fuel to the unfounded rumors about her wellbeing. But there is no valid reason to dispute either campaigns assertions that the candidates are basically healthy.

Giuliani is no medical professional, and touting plainly slanted videos as evidence of Clintons neurological deterioration is egregious. Given the surprising lapses in his own memory, he should devote his attention to his own mental health, and refrain from commenting publicly on anyone elses.
RANGOON, Burma  When Moe Yan, a 19-year-old transgender sex worker in Burma, was raped at knifepoint in her friends house, she knew there was no point going to the police.

Her community of trans women, who live on the industrial outskirts of the city of Rangoon (Yangon), are an easy target for muggers and rapists, but she and her friends count those who are supposed to uphold the law among the biggest threats to their safety.

A friend of mine was taken in for questioning by police, said Moe Yan, as trucks belching exhaust fumes rumbled past the roadside teashop where she sat. They raped her all night without letting her sleep.

Two other trans women told The Daily Beast they were detained and raped on the street by police officers and their plainclothes accomplices.

Arbitrary arrests, beatings, extortion and sexual assault are an everyday threat to LGBT women and men in Burmas major cities. The perpetrators enjoy complete legal impunity, not least because many of them are officers of the law.

When we report crimes to the police, they tell us were wasting their time and talking nonsense, Moe Yan said. They say if something did happen, then it must have been another gay, the implication being that it is the LGBT communitys fault and therefore not a police problem.

Many activists and their allies are hopeful that the first democratic government in decades, led by Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, will help them to tackle these abuses and begin writing LGBT rights into law. But the signs so far are anything but promising.

Im not interested, said Win Htein, one of Suu Kyis closest aides, when asked if the government planned to do anything about LGBT rights abuses. He was answering amid bursts of seemingly uncontrolled laughter. Burma is not like the West. Gender issues are not important, he said. (The recording of the phone call can be heard at the end of the documentary Life in the Shadows: Silent Suffering in Myanmars LGBT+ Community.)

Win Htein has become well known among foreign journalists in Burma for his cantankerous dismissal of questions about the countrys persecuted Muslims, but at least he has enough respect for the gravity of that issue not to find it hilarious.

Since Burma began opening up after decades of military rule, the LGBT community has become more visible and started calling attention to abuses. For some, greater openness has been met with severe repression, but the backlash has thankfully been far less ferocious than in other countries with anti-gay laws.

Win Htein is in some respects a symbol of disappointment in Aung San Suu Kyis government, which brought with it such high hopes for a liberalization of politics, law, and society. But it has to be said that his flippant attitude is an improvement on public statements made by members of the previous government, which was staffed with former military men from the old regime.

I hate gays very much because they are useless. I call them fake people, Hla Swe, a lawmaker in the previous parliament, wrote on Facebook last year.

In the same post, the former lieutenant colonel boasted that he forced gay people to be military porters in the 1980s while serving in Burmas army, which is notorious for coercing civilians.

Last year the minister for security in the central city of Mandalay vowed to crack down on gay men who assume they are women and described their existence as unacceptable.

Phyo Phyo, a trans makeup artist from the city, knows all too well what its like to be the victim of the authorities bigotry. She was among a group of 12 LGBT citizens arrested and subjected to beatings and humiliation in 2013.

They made us take our clothes off, she said, and made some of us walk like we were in a model show.

She added: The police noticed that I couldnt shout or speak in a deep voice like a man. They ordered me to shout Man! Man! And when I couldnt shout like a man they slapped me.

Phyo Phyos case made headlines in local media because it was publicized by activists, but there are likely hundreds more similar cases a year that go unchallenged.

Hla Myat Tun, program coordinator at the LGBT rights group Colors Rainbow, is part of an effort to document these abuses. Last year his group recorded 65 cases of wrongful arrest, and he was just looking at three of Burmas 325 townships.

He believes the data collected by his modestly sized organization represents only a fraction of the true number of cases around the country. The figures do not, for example, include Mandalay, the second-largest city and the place where Phyo Phyo was arrested.

The vast majority of the arrests are made under a statute known as the darkness law, which carries a maximum sentence of three months.

The law, a section of the Police Act enacted under British colonial rule, gives officers the power to arrest anyone they deem to be acting suspiciously, or who is out after dark wearing a disguise. The latter has in some cases been used to target trans women who wear makeup and womens clothes.

They cant arrest us under any other law, so they use the darkness law, said Moe Yan, the sex worker. She spent 15 days in Rangoons infamous Insein Prison after being detained under the darkness law last year.

The prison has a separate area for trans women and openly gay men, and newly arrived LGBT prisoners are given a choice between staying on the mens ward or the gay ward.

Burma does have a law against unnatural sexual acts, another relic of British rule that is often called the sodomy law. But actually proving that two people have had sex is difficult, so the darkness law is the weapon of choice for authorities targeting the LGBT community.

The law is also a useful tool for police looking to extract bribes because it makes it easy for them to threaten their victims with jail time.

Laura Haigh, Burma researcher for Amnesty International, said she has encountered several cases where LGBT people, including trans sex workers, had been arrested and then beaten by police during interrogation, often to extort money from them.

I remember someone described LGBTI [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex] people as walking cash machines when it comes to police extortion, she added.

Chit Ko Ko, a police captain in Rangoon, told the Daily Beast the allegations of abuse and wrongful arrest made against his force were huge lies.

While stalwarts of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party, like Win Htein, have little interest in LGBT rights, younger and less senior members tend to be more sympathetic.

We absolutely should recognize their rights, said Oo Win Maung, an NLD member of Parliament for Hlaing Thayar, the Rangoon township where Moe Yan was raped. Its not just the police who are making trouble for LGBT people, he added.

Our interview with Moe Yan was cut short when a group of men who appeared to be drunk approached us carrying sticks and machetes. This is none of your business, they shouted. What the fuck are you doing here?

Moe Yan wasnt at all fazed. She calmly assured us that she would be safe if we left, declining our offer to take her somewhere else, and waved us off with a smile. Sadly, shes seen it all before.

 Additional reporting by Connor Macdonald
Two days after he tweeted I need to move out of my place before I viciously murder my roommates, Zachary Penton called 911 and confessed to killing his roommate.

Penton, of Gilbert, Arizona, was booked in Maricopa County jail after police said he called on Sunday to tell them he had shot and killed his roommate, 41-year-old Daniel Garofalo, according to Phoenixs ABC15 . The Gilbert Police Department did not immediately return a request for comment.

Ten days ago, Penton retweeted a meme that purported to show data counting the causes of death in the U.S. through June 15, putting gun murders at the bottom.

Abortion: 501,235  Her body! Her choice! Obesity: 140,939  Healthy at every size! it reads, next to a a smiling stock photo of a woman. Murder by gun: 5,276 OMG What?! We need gun control! it says.

Four days later, Penton tweeted he needed 2 boxes of 9mm (ammo) stat.

Penton has long been obsessed with guns and violence, as he documented on Twitter. On Dec. 21, 2012, he tweeted Get me a gun. Three months later, he wrote I wish I had a gun. Id feel safer. He tweeted his desire to own a gun six more times in the next four yearsincluding an apparently deleted tweet from July of 2013, retweeted from user @Kevin_Klun, that reads Someone sell me a gun so I can shoot up an imax.

On June 3, 2016, about seven weeks ago, Penton appears to have finally purchased a firearm. Holy shit, buying a gun is so easy, he tweeted.

Pentons timeline simultaneously railed against gun control while frequently tweeting about wanting to kill people .

In February 2013, Penton wrote, Ever wanted to kill someone? Two days later, he followed up: srs lets go kill someone.

The next month, he tweeted, Guns dont kill people Jer bear. People kill people. Three weeks later, he tweeted again to a friend: Lets kill people.

Penton also made public his struggle to find a roommate over the past four years on Twitter . On Nov. 1, 2012, he tweeted Anyone wanna be my roommate? :) Six months and three tweets later, it appears he still couldnt find one.

WHAT THE FUCK I NEED A ROOMMATE. HELLO? he wrote. By August of 2013, it appears he still had not completed his roommate search. Why is it so hard to find a roommate... he wrote.

Pentons friends condemned his actions on Twitter, while defending the person they knew.

Zac Penton has been a good friend of mine for years. No one should be defending him, he likely snapped and made a horrible, irreversible decision, wrote Kat, a friend with whom Penton regularly conversed, according to Twitter archives.

It truly, truly disgusts me that social media has become a massive platform for humiliation and defamation in cases like this, the person continued. You dont know what his roommates from Craigslist were like, if they were on drugs, if they threatened a knife or even another gun, ANYTHING could have happened and yet youre shaming him for point blank murder.

Kat later set her account to private, but cautioned those making light of Pentons alleged crime to wait for more facts. She did not respond to a request for comment.

The insensitivity he used when he joked about killing his roommates over a drunken bee sting is the SAME INSENSITIVITY YOURE ALL USING WHEN YOU MAKE JOKES ABOUT IT AND REPOST FOR LIKES, she wrote.

Another Twitter friend condemned the rumors spreading on social media.
Last week, the news of a male performers ban from the Upright Citizens Brigade theater burst through the bubble of the New York comedy community and entered the public conversation. And while some comics seem shocked by the allegations and UCBs strong response, others argue that the venues ban is a step in the right direction.

In 2016, the comedy world is still reckoning with the fallout of several high-profile abuse cases. Once-beloved comic Bill Cosby stands accused of sexually assaulting over 60 women. And Louis C.K., another well-respected male comedian, has been accused of sexually harassing female comics. Both cases and more have raised questions about whether comedy culture caters to male privilege, empowers abusers, and shames victims into silence. The stakes are high. Still, its not every day that a comedy venue bans a performer.

The details of last weeks widely publicized ban remain murky. Last Saturday, a woman posted in a private Facebook group for female comedians a warning for others about Aaron Glaser, a New York comic who hosted a monthly stand-up showcase at UCB. Posting this on behalf of a woman in the community, who would like to remain anonymous, but wants to warn other women and let other women who may have been raped by this man know that theyre not alone, the post begins. It proceeds to outline how multiple women came to UCB with allegations of sexual assault and harassment against Glaser, prompting an internal investigation. Subsequently, Glaser was permanently banned from UCB for raping women in the comedy community for years.

As news of Glasers ban reverberated throughout the community, the comic denied the accusations and condemned their dissemination as a witch-hunt. In a lengthy, since-deleted Facebook post, he wrote, Let me be clear: I have not sexually assaulted anyone. My reputation, my only asset as a performer, is being dragged through the mud because UCB did some sort of back-room, kangaroo court investigation and then decided to publicly ban and shame me.

Conversations surrounding sexual assault in the comedy world have become increasingly open in recent months. Many cite comic Beth Stellings story as a catalyst. Last December, Stelling posted a groundbreaking series of Year in Review Instagram postsphotos of her bruised arms and thighs, alongside recollections of rape and verbal and physical abuse. She referred to her abuser only as her ex, a fellow performer in the L.A. comedy circuit. And three days later, sketch comic Courtney Pauroso told her podcast listeners that she had also been abused by the same man.

I dont want him here, I dont want him around me, I dont want him to have the chance to work in the community, Pauroso said, without naming her abuser. I think it is an appropriate punishment for him to be ostracized.

Paurosos and Stellings stories resonated. When there are known predators in the community, people dont usually call it out for any number of reasons, including everything from fear for their safety to a desire to stay on this persons good side if you view them as successful, explains Jasmine Pierce, a New York comic whos been involved with UCB for years. When Beth Stelling spoke out about her trauma last year, I think it made it seem more possible to stand up against those in our community who are harming others.

Stelling and Pauroso brought a new tactic to a national stage: a method of speaking out in solidarity that didnt necessitate going to the policewhom many women dont trust with accusations of rape or intimate partner violenceor appealing directly to venues. The two women initially considered taking their allegations straight to UCB, where their mutual ex performed, but were afraid that they would be ignored and ultimately ostracized.

I think the pressures that keep women from speaking up in the comedy community are similar to those that prevent victims from coming forward all over, says Chicago-based comic Kristin Clifford. Being raped or assaulted is incredibly traumatic, especially if youre at all aware of how most victims are treated. Couple that with a fear of losing status in your chosen career, and its not hard to see why many victims might be afraid to speak up.

New York stand-up Maria Wojciechowski recalls a friend who recently came forward with allegations and was exposed to her abuser because the club owner wanted to handle the problem internally. It traumatized her on a whole new level. Her story was spread around, opening it up to speculation by third parties who had no business weighing in on her experience.

In this climate of suppression and fear, Stelling and Pauroso started a powerful social media movement. At least three men accused of abuse or harassment in private Facebook groups were later banned from some of Los Angeless most prominent theaters. In addition to putting pressure on individual cases, this social media vigilantism triggered structural change: Last year, Los Angeless UCB and iO West instated new misconduct policies and hired new staffers to execute their new protocols. iO West confirmed that its initiatives were a direct result of the cluster of Facebook allegations that Stelling and Pauroso inspired.

The private Facebook groups in which these topics are being discussed may not seem like the perfect place to everyone in which to talk about things like sexual harassment and rape and abuse, but unfortunately, right now, its the best option women have, explains Gina Ippolito, a Los Angeles-based comic who serves as administrator for multiple Facebook groups geared toward women in comedy. She points out that time and time again, the groups have connected women with the same abuser and made it possible to see a pattern of violence that would otherwise have remained invisible for who knows how long.

Social media vigilantism is a flawed system, but it can be an effective one. In late January, Chicago nonprofit Women in Comedy pulled together a Google Form called Gross Things That Happened to Me As A Woman in Comedy. The responses, which Women in Comedy posted anonymously to its blog, detailed ubiquitous allegations of misogynya litany of endured injustices. Anecdotes included reportedly being non-consensually slapped and fondled in the middle of an improv scene and being called a cum-guzzling cunt by a club owner.

One anonymous comic wrote, My experiences range from a simple assumption that I was backstage because I was someones girlfriend even though I was the headlining act to being violently sexually assaulted then shunned because I refused to sit down and have a chat with my attacker and another comedian so we could work it out.

This virtual safe space inspired Chicago comic Caroline Sabatier to go public with her own story. Sabatier revealed she had been harassed and assaulted by a respected authority figure in the improv world. She subsequently called for a blackout boycott of theaters, classes, and shows in Chicago where female comics have felt unsafe.

After L.A. and Chicago, it was only a matter of time before the New York scene witnessed a similar call to action, sparked most recently by Glasers ban from UCB.

New York-based Reductress editor Beth Newell, who has performed at comedy venues in New York, tells The Daily Beast, Pretty much all of us women in the community have experienced some type of sexual assault or harassment at some point in our careers, with varying degrees of severity. Mo Fry Pasic, a comic who describes herself as a student, performer, and supporter of UCB, agrees, adding that thus far, silence has been the default handling of abuse cases.

I dont think its for a lack of institutional ears, she says, but due to cultural practices that cater to male dominance and stop a conversation from ever starting.

Glaser, meanwhile, has said he will not passively accept UCBs verdict, pledging, Ill be seeking both informal and formal action to clear my name against the people who made these statements, because they are defamatory and destroying my career. Glaser declined to comment for this story, instead directing The Daily Beast to his legal representation, Byron A. Divins Jr. According to Divins, Glaser was entirely unaware of the allegations and of UCBs subsequent investigation. The theater informed Glaser of the ban, he says, at a meeting that was devoid of the things you would hope [for], a chance for Glaser to hear the accusations or respond to them.

At this point, he doesnt know who the accusers are, what the accusations are, the dates, or where theyre alleged to have occurred, Divins says. As he understands it, UCB will eventually present that investigation to my clientClearly, he wants to learn more so that he can prove his innocence. When asked what informal and formal action Glaser might pursue, Divins explained that they would wait for UCB to detail the accusations and investigation, after which the comic will avail himself of whatever processes are available to him.

UCB declined to comment on Glasers ban, saying only in a statement: UCB has always had an open door policy and encourages anyone with a complaint or concern regarding sexual harassment to report it immediately to any of our Directors of Student Affairs, who are trained professionals. Any such complaints are always taken very seriously.

Newell is less reserved, writing in a post-ban Facebook post, The guy were referring to didnt just slip up and he wasnt just making a joke. Thats how he behaves towards women. Thats how he thinks about women.

In the wake of Glasers ban, both male and female comics have taken to social media to raise awareness and support survivors. Jordan Carlos, a writer for The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, asked his Facebook friends an uncomfortable rhetorical question: How hard is it to get behind the notion that a woman should feel safe in the comedy community? In a strongly worded post, he urged men to stop blowing off and diminishing womens feelings and understand that your mothers, your girlfriends, sisters, wives, daughters, and female friends face dangers you dont ever know as [a] man.

Carlos told The Daily Beast that he was prompted to speak up by a female comic and felt he couldnt keep her hanging. He believes that social media is, at its best, a tool of organization that can galvanize action and shine a light on an important issue like this one. Its especially useful to victims who need support and encouragement and who might otherwise feel ashamed, isolated, and alone.

I also disagree with those who have called the online movement to keep up the pressure on this case a witch-hunt, he adds. In my opinion, this move smacks of obvious defensiveness and fear, and implies that if women take up a cause like this that theyre somehow a wrong-headed rabble out for blood. And to disqualify a movement, particularly this one, as a witch-hunt is to say that its motives are irrationalcause thats what women are, right?!

But according to one male comic, who asked to remain anonymous, some performers have been caught off guard by the perceived trial-by-social media. A lot of people I think are rattled by how easily everyone took it for granted that the guy was guilty, he says. Even though he probably is, people are turned off by how quick to judgment everyone was.

Glaser echoed that complaint on social media, condemning UCBs investigation as not official and not legal. But many performers have applauded the ban, or at least acknowledged the venues ability to regulate its own roster. According to Kristin Clifford, a comic based in Chicago, The police don't have to be involved for a person to be banned from performing at a privately owned theater. Its a privilege, not a right.

Carlos agreed that, as a private company, UCB can book whoever they want!

If they werent doing business with a comic on the grounds that he was overweight or disabled, that would be a different story, he says. But Im pretty sure possible sexual predator isnt exactly a marginalized group that needs special protections.

Newell agrees that bans can be effective, but offers a crucial caveat: I dont think bans are fully effective if they arent common knowledge, as they can have the effect of pushing the person in question into another unsuspecting community. But I understand there may be legal ramifications for a theater to release information of who theyre banning.

No comedian has attracted more attention for their reaction to Glasers ban than Kurt Metzger, the former Inside Amy Schumer writer who seemingly committed career suicide with his response to Glasers fall. Hey [Glaser]s guilty lets start with that! What happens when the next guy isnt? Metzger wrote in one Facebook post. Is that just worth it to get rapist [sic]? So sometimes we gotta break a few eggs is that the argument? I know it is. And you think Im supposed to not have a massive fucking problem with this? You disgust me. And what you want to establish is WORSE than actual rape. Please quote that last line angrily to other imbeciles. Because I so mean it.

Metzgers tireless trolling has had the unintended effect of further publicizing the allegations against Aaron Glaser. Since Metzger refused to stop talking, Schumer herself was eventually forced to publicly condemn him, even going so far as to tweet, Kurt does not work for me. He is not a writer on my show. Please stop asking me about it. His words are not mine.

Metzgers humor, when placed under a media microscope, crosses the line from cringe comedy to blatant misogyny. But Metzgers response to Glasers ban sheds light on larger issues crowding the intersection of comedy, sexual assault, male privilege, and rape culture. The majority of comics The Daily Beast contacted described Glaser as symptomatic of a bigger story: a toxic culture that venue bans alone cant combat. Ippolito explains, Everyone in comedy wants the same thing: to do comedy and feel safe doing comedy and safe to be creative. Up until recently, men have enjoyed that feeling of safety at vastly disproportionate rates than women, while women just hope they can make it through an improv class without a relative stranger pimping her into a scene in which he gets to grab her butt or fake rape her.

People attempt to separate work from personal life, but in comedy, your work is your personal life. And vice versa, says Pierce. In a community where the roles of romantic partner, friend, colleague, and boss often blur, trying to fight rape culture and out abusers can feel like an uphill battle. I hear stories from women often about the horrible things theyve gone through and how they dont want to come forward because they dont feel safe from that person they still had to see all the time, because they are too hurt to talk about it, or because they dont feel protected by the community like they should be, Pierce continues. I know women who have spoken against their accuser privately and have friends and peers that will still knowingly work with them. And thats a really tough betrayal to handle because we all want to work together and we all want to feel safe together.

While the comedy worlds problem with sexual assault and harassment has no easy solution, Carlos offers a possible first step: Another way to combat misogyny is for us guy comics to try not being total dickbags. I think that would go a long way.

And bans like UCBs might prove to be an important tool for change. I think UCBs ban is unique but is hopefully becoming part of the new normal, says Clifford.

Pierce describes the effect Glasers widely publicized ban has had throughout the comedy world: The day of, people were posting about dropping him from their shows, not going to shows he booked them on, etc., she says.

Rebecca Trent, who owns and operates Long Island Citys The Creek and The Cave, bolstered Glasers ban on Facebook, posting, If you have been banned from a comedy venue in NYC for rape, you are also banned from my venue I will not participate in the creation of another Cosby.

Still, female comics told The Daily Beast that widely respected comedians often continue to be enabled by the comedy community in the wake of harassment allegations. While Pierce thinks that Glasers outing could very well sabotage his career, she also says she wouldnt be surprised if things settle and we dont hear about it again. It remains to be seen if online displays of male allyship will result in real-life actions, like refusing to perform alongside an accused comic. Carlos, for one, thinks that this case will make you think twice about who you associate yourself with. Period.

As for Aaron Glaser, his profile may have been erased from UCBs website, but his story, and the complicated legacy it leaves behind, is far from settled.
Philando Castile devoted his working life to Minnesotas public schools, so it was fitting that one of themhis high schoolhonored him with a benefit concert on Sunday.

Castile, who was shot dead by a police officer at a traffic stop on July 6, graduated from St. Paul Central High School in 2001. Yesterday his former classmates celebrated his life there with live music, DJs, activities for children, and plenty of food.

Its that last part that was especially appropriate for remembering Castile, who worked as a cafeteria supervisor at J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School, also in St. Paul. Proceeds from the event will go toward a new scholarship in Castiles name, for students who wish to study culinary arts or childhood development. (You can donate to it here.)

John Thompson, a friend of Castiles who was at the concert, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press about Castiles devotion to the students he served, even opting to work at an additional school, Chelsea Heights Elementary, serving lunches to summer school students.

Thompson asked his friend why he would give up his summer vacation.

Because I love the kids, Castile told him.
Why has the Trump campaign taken as its new head a self-described Leninist?

I met Steve Bannonthe executive director of Breitbart.com whos now become the chief executive of the Trump campaign, replacing the newly resigned Paul Manafortat a book party held in his Capitol Hill townhouse on Nov. 12, 2013. We were standing next to a picture of his daughter, a West Point graduate, who at the time was a lieutenant in the 101 Airborne Division serving in Iraq. The picture was notable because she was sitting on what was once Saddam Husseins gold throne with a machine gun on her lap. Im very proud of her, Bannon said.

Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a populist or an American nationalist, as so many think of him today. Im a Leninist, Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

Lenin, he answered, wanted to destroy the state, and thats my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of todays establishment. Bannon was employing Lenins strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.

I emailed Bannon last week recalling our conversation, telling him that I planned to write about it and asking him if he wanted to comment on or correct my account of it. He responded:

I dont remember meeting you and dont remember the conversation. And as u can tell from the past few days I am not doing media.

Riding on the Metro to the party, I read an article that had just been posted on National Review Online and in TownHall.com by Thomas Sowell, the conservative economist, in which he opposed the tactics used by the Tea Party in shutting down the government. He favored the intent of the Tea Party, but strongly opposed its tactics. "The only question," he wrote, "is about the tactics, the Tea Party's attempt to defund Obamacare." Their actions did not fit the standard set by Edmund Burke, he wrote, of a "rational endeavour." There was no chance of making a dent in ObamaCare or defunding it when Democrats controlled the Senate. and the public created a "backlash against that futile attempt," so that "there was virtually nothing to gain politically and much to lose."

I then asked Bannon whether or not he had read Sowell's piece, since Bannon was in favor of the very Tea Party tactic that Sowell had criticized.

National Review and The Weekly Standard, he said, are both left-wing magazines, and I want to destroy them also. He added that no one reads them or cares what they say. His goal was to bring down the entire establishment including the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress. He went on to tell me that he was the East Coast coordinator of all the Tea Party groups. His plan was to get its candidates nominated on the Republican ticket, and then to back campaigns that they could win. Then, Bannon said, when elected they would be held accountable to fight for the agenda he and the Tea Party stood for.

If they didnt, we would force them out of office and oppose them when the next election for their seats came around.

That, essentially, was the tactic employed when Eric Cantor was ousted by a far right candidate, virtually unknown college economics professor Dave Brat, in his Virginia districts primary. It was also the path Donald Trumps supporters took in Wisconsin, when hoping to duplicate their successful tactics in Virginia, they ran a candidate in the Wisconsin Republican primary against Speaker Paul Ryan in his own district. There are a few Republicans that Bannon does respect. One of them is Rep. Louis Gohmert, the fiery congressman from Texas, who was also at the party. Gohmert, who is part of the self-proclaimed anti-establishment wing of the Republican Party, was an ally of Cruz in the government shutdown.

Trumps decision to take on Bannon indicates that he wants to wage his campaign along the lines laid down by himthat of destroying the Republican leadership and the Party as we know it. Trumps behavior thus far has been compatible with Bannons belief in Leninist tactics. As the Bolshevik leader once said, The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.

Only one question remains. Knowing this, why do leaders like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and others, who regularly condemn Trumps statements but yet still endorse him, stick with such a self-defeating approach? They will only end up helping Bannon and company cast them into oblivion and finish their hostile take-over of the GOP.

Editor's Note: This article has been updated to reflect when the party took place, and which Thomas Sowell article was discussed at it.
Its hard not to be suspicious of British Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg, the subject of a new documentary, The Confession, which revolves around an in-depth interview about his life before, during, and after the two years he spent in extrajudicial detention in Guantanamo Bay.

Begg was held without trial at the Cuban facility after he was taken from a house he was living in with his wife and two kids in Pakistan in 2002, following the failed U.S. attempt to capture Osama bin Laden in late 2001.

The U.S. suspected him of being an enemy combatant and having links to terrorism but, in common with many other men detained in overseas U.S. facilities as part of the war on terror, he was never formally charged or accused due to the extrajudicial nature of the process.

He has since his release become a vocal critic of the U.S. and U.K. governments wars on terrorism, speaking extensively at universities, through the media, and now through this compelling but uneven film.

He has attracted notoriety as a director of the Muslim rights pressure group Cage (in 2015, Cages research director Asim Qureshi described ISIS executioner Mohammed Jihadi John Emwazi as a beautiful young man and appeared to blame the British security service for the fact that he had become radicalized).

But this documentary starts with Beggs early days: He was born in 1968 and grew up in the British city of Birmingham, the son of a bank manager, but as a teenager he became increasingly interested in fundamentalist Islam.

He traveled to Bosnia as part of an aid convoy in 1994 and describes in the film how he perceived the war there to be an attack on Muslims, and was inspired by the army of foreign Muslim fightersMujahedeenwho flocked to the country to take up arms on behalf of their Muslim brothers.

The film does not tackle Begg about a 1998 trip to Pakistan reported in other media. Married, with two small children, he moved his family for a brief spell to Peshawar, Pakistan, on the border with Afghanistan.

Interviewer and director Ashish Ghadiali instead focuses on his activities when he came back to the U.K. in 1998 and started a fundamentalist Islamic bookshop in Birmingham selling books and videos featuring radical Islamic clerics.

The shop put him firmly on the security services radarit was raided by police and he was visited by a shadowy British spy named Andrew, but the authorities were never able to prove that Begg was doing anything illegal or make a charge stick.

In 2001, Begg moved his family againto Kabul.

I didnt join the Taliban, he says in the film, I lived under them.

And, all in all, he seems to have been quite amenable to the experience of living in a fundamentalist Muslim theocracy, and his wife, Sally, says that she liked it too, because she could walk around Kabul in her traditional Islamic clothing without people calling her a ninja and telling her to go home like they did back in Birmingham.

Begg labors the point that the Western media distorted the reality of life under the Taliban. There were schools for girls, he says, by way of example.

But then he undoes himself by casually mentioning that one day he came across four men hanging from cranes in the center of town.

He says they had been killed, ironically, for terrorism, but further details of the incident are not furnishedhowever, the sight prompted him to worry in a generalized kind of way about what kind of legal process the victims might have received (the implication being, not much of one).

Its this kind of vacillation between two narratives that makes Begg weak as his own witness. He seems to be saying, Oh, the Taliban werent as bad as the Western media made out. They had schools for girls! But I do think they did possibly execute people without a fair trial.

After the 9/11 reprisal bombings in October 2001, Begg and his family relocated from Kabul to the safer town of Logar, but Begg returned to Kabul, to collect, he said, valuables and possessions from his house there.

He tries to cast this as a one-off visit, but director and interviewer Ghadiali knows his stuff, and challenges Begg; Begg then admits that he went back week after week on what he now describes as essential shopping trips to get supplies.

The Americans have alleged, more simply, that Begg was a Taliban fighter, and thats why he was in Kabul.

And certainly the American narrative looks credible when you consider what Begg claims happened nexthe says he got into a vehicle with some Pakistani guys who he thought were going to Logar, but they end up dropping him in some unnamed mountains.

Tora Bora, interjects Ghadiali.

Beggwho claims he never met bin Laden and did not even know the mountains were called Tora Boraeventually made it to Pakistan and reunited with his family by walking along goat paths for three days.

Once there, they holed up in a friends house in Islamabad.

He says he thought his nightmare was over, but it was just beginning. A knock on the door in the dead of night came in January 2002. He was seized by the CIA and transported to a prison camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Bagram Air Base in Iraq (where Andrew makes another appearance), before being finally deposited in Guantanamo.

Whatever one thinks of the veracity of Beggs protestations of innocence up to this point, the indictment of the U.S.s treatment of captives in secret prisons and in Guantanamo Bay that his story reveals is utterly shocking.

He says he was threatened that his throat would be cut for praying in Arabic on a transport plane. His clothes were cut off him with a knife while he was hooded and shackled. He implies that he was raped. He claims to have witnessed murders by U.S. troops. He claims he was forced to sign two false confessions.

The film makes a strong argument that the torture Begg endured during his extrajudicial detention negates completely the credibility of his confessions.

When Begg makes the claim that similar confessions by other detaineeslater served up by Colin Powell and George W. Bush to the United Nations as justification for the invasion of Iraq, affirming the individuals signing them were helping Saddam Hussein develop weapons of mass destructionwere obtained in similar circumstances, it is hard to disbelieve him.

Begg says Bagram and Kandahar were worse than Guantanamo, where he says he was kept in a 6-by-8-foot cage for almost two years.

Begg was released relatively early on due to his British citizenship and was greeted by a police officer with a packet of crisps and a copy of The Sun tabloid newspaper when he boarded an RAF transport plane home.

He was arrested again on landing, but this time there was a differencehe was asked if hed like to make a phone call. The contrast between the British justice system and the American extrajudicial processes could not be clearer.

Begg claims not to be angry or vengeful but, when he got his passport back, he started traveling again, and in 2012, he appeared in Syria, where he was accused of running a training camp for militia fighters.

Bizarrely, Begg pitches his efforts there as a harm-mitigation exercise because the inexperienced fighters, fired up with an excess of zeal, were accidentally shooting each other or shooting themselves in the foot.

The security services saw things differently and thought he was very much running a training camp, and in 2014 he was once again arrested and questioned on suspicion of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas.

He was held in a British prison for eight monthsand then the case was dropped. He now lives in an affluent area of Birmingham in a house he paid for out of a settlement awarded to him by the U.K. government for the time he spent in Guantanamo. Begg sued the British government, claiming Britain had been complicit in his extrajudicial detention, and in November 2010 he received an undisclosed compensation payment.

Begg may be right when he says the case against him was never going to succeed and was inspired solely by a vindictive agenda.

And few would be surprised to learn, as Begg claims, that many of his fellow detainees, when they did finally get out, were heavily involved in the foundation of ISIS.

Without the horrors of Baghram, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo, Begg says, we would have fewer Jihadi Johns and ISIS fighters in the world.

The viewer may or may not think hes right.

But weve all seen the pictures of the horrific acts of depravity inflicted by U.S. forces on those fighters suspected of terrorism at places like Abu Ghraib, and listening to Beggs calm, precise delivery is to be reminded that those victims were real people.

It grates when Begg says he never did anything wrong, and whether or not he deserved what happened to him depends to some extent on how much you believe his denials of any involvement.

But he eloquently makes a point with his story that, while not original, bears repeating over and over again: Everyone is a loser when the Wests war on terror ignores the basic principles of justice and decency. The Confession is available for rental or purchase in the U.S. through the Google Play store.
LONDON  Perhaps the worlds most mainstream pro-ISIS Western media agitator, Anjem Choudary, finally has been convicted of terrorism in the United Kingdom.

It took 20 years to bring him to justice, but after jurors at the Old Bailey heard last week that hed pledged allegiance to the so-called Islamic State, they were not going to let Choudary walk free again. He now faces up to 10 years in prison.

I first met Anjem in 1995 when I was 17 years old. Back then, we were both students of the pro-caliphate group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT).

A year before, HT had organized an international caliphate conference at Wembley Arena. In an unprecedented move, we gathered 10,000 people under orange banners proclaiming Khilafah [caliphate]coming soon to a country near you.

Then, one of our associates, Saeed Nur, murdered the Nigerian student Ayotunde Obanubi on the campus of Newham College in London. This was probably Britains first jihadist street murder.

I was expelled from the same college due to my unruly Islamist activity, and I got in touch with Anjem because he was a lawyer, and I was seeking his legal advice. But our paths soon diverged.

Eventually, I left Islamism altogether, but after the murder at Newham the more extreme al-Muhajiroun broke away from HT, and Anjem was appointed its U.K. leader. They began to call openly for jihad.

During the two decades that followed, many of us, Muslim or otherwise, dismissed Anjem as an irrelevant fringe voice, almost a parody of an extremist. But like an evil clown, Anjem courted this jester brand while concealing beneath it an incredibly nefarious network. Our neglect and mockery of his manic call to enforce a burqa on the queen and fly the ISIS black flag over Downing Street suited him perfectly.

But evidence now shows that Anjem Choudary was one of the most dangerous extremists in Europe.

Over the course of his 20-year jihadist freefall, Anjems group al-Muhajiroun and its Sharia For offshoots have been deemed responsible for half of all U.K. terrorist attacks. Anjem himself has been directly linked to the RAF Lakenheath plot, to radicalizing Jihadi Johns British successor Siddhartha Darr, the Anzac Day plot in Australia, the plot to behead a British soldier, the murder of drummer Lee Rigby at Woolwich in London, the Royal Wooten Basset plot, the London Stock Exchange Plot, and suicide bomber Omar Khan Sharifs 2003 attack in Tel Aviv. Anjem has also been indirectly linked to Londons 7/7 bombings, the shoe bomber, the ricin plot, the fertilizer bomb plot, the dirty bomb plot, and the Transatlantic bomb plot.

Around 6,000 European citizens dont just get up out of a vacuum and leave to join the worst terrorist group of our lifetime. Anjem Choudary was a key voice responsible for cultivating what eventually became this ISIS support network in Europe. And he acted with impunity.

No surprises, then, that police revealed his link to 500 British jihadists fighting with ISIS in Syria.

At my counter-extremism organization Quilliam, we had been warning about this for years, only to be suspected of taking the court jester too seriously.

But Anjem was the jihadist Fagin: the ideologue who produced the zombies; the battlefield standard bearer to whom they all rallied; the inciter who took them to the brink, while remaining just on the right side of the law to survive another day.

While we dismissed him as a clown, Anjem was no fool. His jester brand was cynical, deliberate, and planned. He was a trained criminal lawyer who stopped practicing law only because he came to believe that appealing to man-made law meant apostasy.

With hindsight, many may now be wondering how such flagrant incitement was tolerated in Britain for over 20 years. His story serves as a lesson in tolerating gross intolerance. But now that Anjem is in prison, another challenge confronts us. He will be held for a while at HMP Belmarsh, previously described as a jihadist training camp. How will he be stopped from playing his wicked tune through his crooked flute in jail? This time his audience is made up of hardened criminals.

As a society, we are that far behind in countering extremist propaganda that even jailing jihadists can exacerbate the problem. There are some, though, who work exclusively with incarcerated terrorists in order to deradicalize them. My friend and colleague Usman Rajas organization The Unity Initiative specializes in just such a task. Usman has a track record initiating a certain change in people like Jordan Horner, a convicted member of the Muslim Patrol group that was prowling Londons streets enforcing its medieval take on Sharia, and Ali Beheshti, leader of the Jewel of Medina petrol bomb plot.

Both men had ties to Anjems group al-Muhajiroun but have now apologized for their past jihadist extremism. It may be slightly too optimistic to see this happening to Anjem anytime soon, but action to at least neutralize his recruitment efforts must certainly be considered. And any plan should form a blueprint for building such intervention to scale, globally.

The way in which my path eventually forked from Anjems symbolizes the split at the heart of the civil war playing out within Muslim communities, and beyond: Islamists against secularists. Muslims with varying levels of devotion, and even non-Muslims, sit on both sides of this divide. They straddle a largely passive Muslim majority that values its religion and culture but just wants to get on in life.

Islamist theocrats will not allow them to do so.

A civil war has unfolded within Islam, and none of us can any longer afford to remain neutral. First and foremost, this is an ideological war. The state, private companies, and civil society must intervene on behalf of secularists. A rally of thousands calling for a caliphate at Wembley in 1995 followed by a jihadist murder on Londons streets should have acted as a clear warning of the ISIS brutality that was set to follow.

Anjems story highlights the dangers of underestimating theocratic Islamist ideologues while allowing their ideology of Islamism to fester as it morphs into violent jihadism. We all stood by hoping it was just going to go away by itself. It hasnt. And it wont.

This cancer requires treatment.
Small Scotch distillery auctions first bottles

The malt countdown is truly on for Strathearn Distillery, which is set to become the first of the new wave of small distilleries in Scotland to launch its malt whisky with an exclusive online auction of the first 100 bottles.

Whisky Auctioneer based in Perth will host the live auction commencing August 23, which also marks Strathearns third birthday. The auction will run until December 1, 2016.

Strathearn Distillery, which is based in Perthshire and widely considered one of Scotlands smallest distilleries, is currently maturing artisan single cask, single malt Scotch whisky using traditional methods and ideas. In December, Strathearns whisky will reach three years old - the minimum age to be considered Scotch whisky.

Tony Reeman-Clark, founder of Strathearn Distillery says: "Strathearn is the first of a new generation of small distilleries to bring its single malt single cask scotch to market. With only 100 bottles this year an auction seemed like the only fair way to set a price. After all, what price would you put on bottle 001?"

The spirit is matured in small octave size (50 litre) casks to give the whisky a traditional and distinctive flavour. By using either peated or non-peated malt and varying the type of cask between sherry, rum or bourbon, each batch of whisky will be entirely unique.

Stuart McMillan, distillery manager at Strathearn Distillery said: Scotch whisky fans from around the world will be able to own a piece of Strathearn history and because of this, we want to hand deliver bottle 001 to the lucky bidder. Heres hoping they live somewhere exotic!

While the whisky has been reaching maturation, Strathearn has been focused on creating other spirits, namely a range of four core gins, Uisge Beatha and Scotlands first cider brandy giving Strathearn the deserving title of the home of craft spirits in Scotland.

The auction will run from 9am on 23 August until 9am on the 1 December on www.whiskyauctioneer.com. Post auction, Strathearn will host an exclusive dinner in the distillery grounds with all the winners to celebrate the first batch of their whisky.

For more information on Strathearn Distillery, visit www.strathearndistillery.com

22 August 2016 - Felicity Murray The Drinks Report, editor
Too big to fail. That expression could often be heard in 2008. The meltdown in the international banking system was choking off the supply of cash to finance and industry.

The US, the UK and other nations rushed through moves to shore up teetering corporations. General Motors was bailed out while the British bank Northern Rock was nationalised and brought under control by the government.

To not act would have been to risk large sections of our globalised economy going to the wall. We can think of these large corporations as 'keystone species' in an economic ecosystem. Remove them and the entire system can come crashing down.

This may support the view that the affairs of smaller corporations can be safely ignored. Businesses go bust every day. However, there may be vital information about the state of entire economies lurking in data about seemingly inconsequential businesses.

The natural world is subject to the same sort of process. If we are to avoid a collapse in ecosystems then we may be best served by monitoring the presence and absence of species great and small, as they all give important information as to the underlying health or resilience of a system.

This is the conclusion of new research we conducted as part of an international team, and published in Ecology.

Detecting trouble ahead

Given humanity's continual assault on biodiversity, we risk producing rapid changes that can sweep through an entire ecosystem. Such changes are called critical transitions and have been observed in kelp forests, drylands, shallow lakes or even in the total ecosystem collapse of portions of the Great Barrier Reef. Very few ecosystems are not being affected in some way.

If we could get an early warning of critical transitions, then we may be able to put in place changes to avoid future collapse. Searching for these warning signals has become a hot research topic.

The theory underlying much of this work is that ecosystems can take multiple stable states. For example, a freshwater lake can have clear water, and an abundance of plants and fish species. It can also be a cloudy, dark green algal soup with very few plants and fish. Lakes can flip from clear to cloudy water state in a matter of weeks - a classic critical transition, which powerful feedback loops make very hard to reverse.
JMA: First, we want to make these conflicts visible. These are not NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) cases; they happen across the board, everywhere. There are many injustices and many environmental protests. You can present these facts to journalists. The EJAtlas has had very good reports based on it in Colombia, India and other countries, also in The Guardian. Second, we want to facilitate the task of studying these conflicts and ourselves make the analysis of these conflicts, in order to advance in the field of study called Political Ecology. It is also used for secondary and university education and for doctoral theses and articles and academic books. The EJAtlas, which is the result of academic-activist collaboration, is popular with environmental justice organizations in many parts of the world. We have received European funds and also from the International Social Sciences Council (in two different projects, one led by Joan Martinez Alier, and another one led by Leah Temper focusing on successful alternatives). Both projects together will double the number of cases in EJAtlas by 2021 and also update them if necessary. Third, the Atlas also serves to encourage participants in the great global movement for environmental justice. The idea of making a map of environmental conflicts was anticipated by OCMAL in Latin America (Observatory of mining conflicts) and there were other similar initiatives by other environmental groups, which have been our source of inspiration and information.

FD: The EJAtlas is a means of communication, to make the conflicts visible, but it is also a study tool to investigate the causes, responsibilities, actors and strategies. It promotes democratic and informed debate about the relationship between the economy and environment. The EJAtlas shows that thousands of similar conflicts are not simply derived from a culture of saying 'no', but are rather legitimate claims to justice. In the same way that the workers' struggles achieved a reduction in working hours and improved working conditions, wages and the welfare state, organizations for environmental justice struggle in favor of the environment because people depend on it to live. They fight for water or clean air, in defense of their land and territory because their existence and their livelihood depend on it, and they also fight for the general interest and future generations.



What causes these environmental conflicts?



JMA: For some it is neoliberal capitalism, but we think that a social democratic Keynesian capitalism would not have a very different social metabolism and therefore also reach the current level extraction of oil, coal, gas, metals and oil palm. The ultimate cause of these environmental conflicts is the increased social metabolism, meaning flows of energy and materials. The industrial economy is not circular but entropic, like happens with the burning of fossil fuels the energy of which is dissipated. Only a very small part of the materials can be recycled. Therefore, we have to go back for more each day. Today, we get 90 million barrels of oil from the earth and tomorrow again. Thus, in the Amazon of Peru and Ecuador the pollution is killing humans and animals and destroying biodiversity. There are many protests.

FD: The Atlas organizes almost two thousands cases in different categories, such as mining, waste disposal, tourism, biodiversity, water use, or public or private built infrastructure. Biologists study the metabolism of organisms, but we study the metabolism of the economy. The economy depends on the flows of materials and energy. If it grows, it needs more oil, minerals or cement. But even when it does not grow, you always need new flows because the materials can be recycled only to a minor extent, while the energy cannot be recycled. This is thermodynamics, very basic undisputable physics. Companies want to maximize their profits and are forced to compete or die. So many times the environmental costs (like pollution) do not enter in their accounts, they are 'externalized'. In other words, companies (sometimes with the complicity of states) shift these costs to other social actors (often weaker, such as immigrants or indigenous). These actors sometimes react to injustice, when the companies attempt to save costs at the expense of the health of people and the environment (which is the same). It's like I was at a bar, I drink a beer and I go out without settling the bill and shouting, "that guy over there will pay for the beer". Or it's as if I walk my dogs down the street and do not pick up their droppings. These costs are displaced. But of course, there is a difference between dropping dog shit and dropping cyanide or mercury onto land or rivers, or spreading glyphosate on the fields (and on top of people) or spilling barrels and barrels of oil in the Amazon.



Do these protests compose a global environmental justice movement?

JMA: Indeed, this movement was born out of these protests. In the EJAtlas files you can find what we call the vocabulary of the Global Environmental Justice Movement. For example, in Brazil they complain against "green deserts" that tells us of a protest against eucalyptus monoculture for paper pulp, they explain that "plantations are not true forests". In Argentina the banner "stop fumigating" expresses protests against planes spraying glyphosate for soybean cultivation in populated areas. Or if a newspaper in India announces a new victim of the "sand mafia", we know that there is another deadly conflict around the extraction of sand and gravel from rivers or beaches. Each conflict and each country contribute their own words and slogans to the global environmental justice movement. It is the same as in former years when labor disputes contributed words to social history like "boycott", "scab" or "lockout". Or like the expression "the double shift" in the feminist movement. We are merely philologists of that global movement for environmental justice. This is what I've been interested in since my 2002 book titled "The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation".

FD: The hypothesis is that there is a global movement for environmental justice, and that it can be an important political actor to promote the sustainability of the economy. With the Paris conference on climate change in December 2015, we saw that states are not able to bring up the courage needed to face the environmental crisis. There is no acknowledgement for "liability" for climate change in the Paris agreement between states. So, which actors could play a key role? We believe it is the global movement for environmental justice, which consists of an informal and horizontal network of all organizations involved in environmental conflicts and the networks they form across borders. Specific cases are different, but the EJAtlas shows that there is a potential to further articulate their struggles and demands, and develop proposals for joint solutions. From below and with courage. Resistance is important, but not enough. We need our own narratives, imaginaries and alternatives.

What are now the most serious environmental conflicts?

JMA: There are many conflicts in the EJAtlas featuring hydropower, mining companies, oil and gas. We have special maps on issues like fracking. We also have a map with all claims against a single company: Chevron. But there are not only conflicts around mining and biomass, also in the export of waste, such as the breaking of huge ships on beaches in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, where steel is recycled at the cost of huge local pollution, including asbestos and heavy metals. All these cases are in the EJAtlas. And the main residue is perhaps carbon dioxide that produces excess climate changes. In the EJAtlas we have protests from the Kuna from Panama, who perceive the light sea level rise already. We also have cases of good alternatives, such as the proposals and actions to leave coal, oil or gas in the ground to avoid local damage but also to avoid global CO2 emissions. There is for example a case in Fuleni (KwaZulu Natal, South Africa) against coal mining, a case that we have put on the Atlas just a few weeks ago, or also the Sompeta case (Andhra Pradesh in India) against coal mining.

FD: The most serious conflicts occur where people die. People die by pollution or they are killed because they are a key character of the struggle, such as Berta Caceres in Honduras. According to Global Witness, Honduras is "the world's deadliest country" for environmentalists in proportion to population, because in the last 5 years more than 100 defenders of nature have been killed and the vast majority of these crimes remain unpunished. Conflicts are also severe when they leave permanent damage to the environment and compromise the livelihoods of local people who are forced to migrate to cities and to other countries in search of opportunities. These are also called environmental refugees.



What solutions are proposed?

JMA: The environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous, the environmentalism of the people, is growing in the world, despite a sequel of assassinations, such as Berta Caceres in Honduras and many others. In the EJAtlas, murder of socio-environmental activists appears in 12% of all cases. But environmental protests sometimes succeed (in the EJAtlas there are almost 20% of cases with success for environmental justice). These successes contribute to a transition to an economy and a society that is less unsustainable.

FD: The solutions are first to understand the causes and responsibilities, the complexity of the conflict. The simple strategies of silence and oppression don't help us. Too often we find denial from companies and public authorities, as has happened for a long time with climate change. The resistance against environmental justice comes from those who benefit from the status quo. In each conflict, the organizations for environmental justice propose alternatives. They ask that the project be done differently, or that, if it is intrinsically unsustainable, be not carried out at all. Sometimes they ask for repairing the damage, such as removal of pollutants. In some cases, they just want respect for existing laws, while in other cases or at other times in the same case they question the legal framework and propose legislative changes. For every conflict, there are different 'solutions' and one always has to ask: 'for whom'? There are always winners and losers, this is the essence of political ecology. We wish there were only win-win options, but that is not always possible, not to say almost never. Each conflict resolution goes to the benefit of some and harms others, and this depends on the power relations. Conflicts arise when those affected by a project (for example, a mine or a road), who are often the weakest, raise their voice. It is a question of democracy.



What is the relationship between environmental justice and degrowth movement?

JMA: The new research project called "EnvJustice" in ICTA (with funding from the European Research Council) will precisely study the links between environmental justice struggles around the globe and the small European degrowth or postgrowth movement (or "prosperity without growth", as Tim Jackson says), which is promoted by a group of researchers at ICTA UAB called Research & Degrowth. Federico Demaria is in charge of studying this relationship. Many of the movements in the South want to stop the extraction of raw materials. They are against looting and robbery or, put in a more polite way, they are against "ecologically unequal trade", and also against biopiracy. They also demand that the ecological debt from climate change is paid for at least acknowledged. There are common purposes between the two movements, Degrowth and Environmental Justice.

FD: Our research shows that environmental conflicts are related to the social metabolism, to the increasing flows of materials and energy in the economy. We must recognize that a development model based on increasing production and consumption necessarily has impacts on the environment and generates environmental injustices. Therefore, we must question a socio-economic model based on economic growth and truly bet on sustainability, which implies a decrease of flows of energy and materials. There are alternatives to development. Degrowth, one of these, is not the same as recession. The movement is based on the assumption that we can live well with less, and we need to do it differently. The question is how to manage the economy without growth so that it can meet the goals of ecological sustainability, social equity and well-being of people. The questions has become even more pressing now that undoubtedly mature economies are not growing as they used to do. This is the issue that we discuss in our book: Degrowth. A Vocabulary for a New Era (Routledge, 2015), and that will be at the center of the 5th international degrowth conference in Budapest (30th August - 3rd September, 2016). As ecological economists Tim Jackson and Peter Victor wrote recently in the The New York Times: "Imagining a world without growth is among the most vital and urgent tasks for society to engage in".

The project: Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (http://ejatlas.org/)

Joan Martinez Alier is Emeritus Professor and Federico Demaria is a researcher, both at the Environmental Science and Technology Institute (ICTA) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain.

This double interview, translated and edited by Ecologist New Voices contributor, Nick Meynen, was first published in La Vanguardia, Barcelona (Spain)
Iowa high school football playoffs: All the state quarterfinal games

The winners of this week's Round-of-16 games advanced to next week's state quarterfinal round of the playoffs.
Legendary actress Bette Midler is never one to mince words  even when it comes to unexpectedly weighing in on 
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

NORWALK  The number of Americans who identify as Catholic has shrunk in recent years, and Connecticut leads the nation in that decline.

While Norwalk is no exception to the trend  cumulative parish registration is down 11 percent and mass attendance has declined 20 percent across the citys seven Catholic churches  one Norwalk church has found a way to grow.

Saint Ladislaus Parish, located in South Norwalk, is the only Norwalk church that has seen an increase in both parish registration and mass attendance. It has grown Mass attendance from about 100 members three years ago to more than 500 on any given weekend, and parish registration has grown 48 percent since 2008.

Patrick Turner, director of strategic and pastoral planning at the Diocese of Bridgeport, attributes the growing attendance to changes in the church that have drawn in a younger and more diverse crowd.

Theyre a really exciting success story in South Norwalk, Turner said. It has absolutely blossomed in the last couple of years and I think theres really two reasons for that. The first is they have a new, young, very dynamic pastor, and the second is he has added outreach to the Hispanic community in Norwalk.

Father Juan Gabriel Acosta, the pastor at St. Ladislaus Parish, could not be reached for comment as the church office is closed through the middle of September.

Elsewhere in Fairfield County, Danburys Catholic churches also stand out.

More Information St. Matthew is the largest parish in Norwalk, but is not immune to the challenges faced across the nation. Their mass attendance in 2015 was 2,310, down 33 percent from 2011. St. Jerome parish has seen an increase in parish registration from 1,200 in 2008-2009, to 1,348 in 2014-2015, but mass attendance has declined slightly from 941 people in 2011 to 900 in 2015. St. Philip in Norwalk has also seen a slight increase in parish registration and a fairly stable mass attendance with only a 1 percent drop from 2011 to 2015. See More Collapse

Figures supplied by the Diocese of Bridgeport show St. Peter, Our Lady of Guadalupe and Immaculate Heart of Mary churches all increased attendance at Mass from 2011 to 2015.

Mass at these three churches, as well as St. Ladislaus, is conducted not just in English, but also Spanish or Portuguese, or both.

In Norwalk, several of the Catholic churches have added services in languages native to their parishioners.

At St. Joseph Church in South Norwalk, Mass is conducted in English, Spanish and French Creole. St. Mary Parish and St. Ladislaus both offer services in English and Spanish, and St. Mary is the only area church to offer Mass in traditional Latin.

Erlinda Zelaya, administrative assistant at St. Mary, said the Sunday Latin Mass is by far the most well-attended service at the church. Zelaya estimated roughly 40 percent of the families in the parish are from Latin America.

Very few churches offer the Latin Mass, Zelaya said. We have a lot of people who come from all over Fairfield County for the Latin Mass and theyre members of ours because they like this particular mass.

Turner said it is this sort of ingenuity that can help draw people back to the church.

Its an exciting story and what we obviously hope in all of our parishes over the coming years is they figure out some of the specific ways to begin to bring people back, Turner said.

In 2007, 23.9 percent of Americans identified as Catholic, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. By 2014, that share had fallen to 20.8 percent. Connecticut showed the sharpest decline of the 50 states  10 percent.

But at Danburys St. Peter church, which offers Mass in all three languages, average weekly attendance increased 27 percent  from 1,459 in 2011 to 1,854 in 2015  the largest increase of any parish in the region.

We are a very multicultural parish, said the Rev. Gregg Mecca, who conducts Mass in English. Were happy Catholics from around the world and are comfortable here. Our future looks healthy and happy.

Danbury has been recognized as one of the most diverse communities in the country. Latinos make up roughly one-third of the citys population of 83,000, including approximately 10,000 Brazilians whose native language is Portuguese.

In Norwalk, Latinos make up nearly 25 percent of the population as more and more people immigrate to the area. Even so, Turner said its impossible to pinpoint an overall cause for growth or decline. He said changes in pastors, mass schedule changes, cleaning up parish registration rolls and changes in neighborhood demographics are all potential individual disruptions to the trends seen.

In Danbury we know these trends are related, Turner said. The ones that are growing are attracting that immigrant population. In Norwalk I cant say its an exact equation again, but it seems likely.

The Pew Religious Landscapes Studies were conducted in 2007 and 2014 via telephone interviews with more than 35,000 Americans.

The study showed the Catholic Church is not the only major denomination to shrink in recent years. Americans identifying themselves as adherents to one of the mainline Protestant denominations shrank by 3.4 percent from 2007 to 2014, and evangelical Protestants by just under 1 percent.

Christians overall decreased from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent of the population, a net decline of 5 million people. The drop was visible across demographic categories, including age, race, sex and educational level, but was particularly pronounced among younger age groups.

Non-Christians, including Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, saw an increase of 1.2 percent, with Muslims accounting for nearly half of that total.

The number of Americans who describe themselves as unaffiliated, including atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular, climbed 6.7 percent.

Theres some interesting challenges here in Norwalk for us, Turner said. We have several very successful parishes in Norwalk, but even those that are successful have seen decreases in the number of people coming to Mass. National studies of Catholics indicate that attending weekly Mass is no longer seen as being important to self-identifying as Catholic.

kkrasselt@scni.com; 203-354-1021; @kaitlynkrasselt
NORWALK  With the Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton race the first presidential election for many millennials, college-age voters are concerned over how they will cast their votes away from home.

This election has woken up the younger generation, said Norwalk Town Clerk Richard McQuaid. Absentee voters are going to be important this time because of college students.

Anne Caldwell, 18, voted for the first time in the Democratic primary in April. She will be attending Syracuse University in the fall and wants to make sure her voice is heard as an absentee voter.

I dont like how its going, Caldwell said of the election process. I dont think theres a good choice, just because theres Trump and all his madness, and he lies a lot, and then theres Hillary who lies a lot, too. Its just not good.

I think its important to vote because the system was created so everyone can have a voice, she said. It doesnt make sense for people to complain about our issues when they dont vote. They could have voted if they wanted to.

Caldwell says theres no excuse not to vote with the resources to learn about the candidates policies available.

I dont think thats making a statement, she said. Choosing nothing isnt really a choice. Someones going to be chosen.

More Information To make your vote count College students should not delay in registering to vote and arranging for absentee ballots. 1. Register as a voter online at http://voterregistration.ct.gov OR fill out voter registration form available at Town Clerk's or Registrar's Office and return to Registrar's Office. 2. Obtain an absentee ballot application; download from http://voterregistration.ct.gov or from local town or city clerk's office. 3. Fill out and mail in or bring in person to the clerk's office. 4. 31 days before presidential election an absentee ballot will be mailed to you. 5. VOTE! Fill out the ballot and return to your clerk's office See More Collapse

Caldwell constantly reminds her friends to vote and hopes to see progress made on the national debt, gun control and racial tension.

Sonam Katira, 17, the valedictorian of Norwalk High Schools class of 2016, will attend Northeastern University in the fall to study engineering. She is not registered to vote, but plans to register and apply for an absentee ballot before she leaves for school.

Katira plans to vote for Hillary Clinton.

I believe its better to have a qualified president than to have someone with no experience as president, she said. If Donald Trump is elected I dont know what the future will entail.

Katira disagrees with Caldwell that theres no excuse not to vote.

We havent really been given the information or been taught how to vote, or how to participate, she said. Its not our fault if we dont show up. I personally have no idea how to vote, which definitely impacts how I feel about this election. I think it is our duty to to learn as much as we can about this, but I dont blame people if they dont know how.

Priyanka Thakkar, 18, is registered to vote, but since shes attending the University of Connecticut in Storrs she doesnt plan to apply for an absentee ballot.

I dont fully support either candidate but I would say I support Clinton before Trump, Thakkar said. I think our generation is a lot more educated about voting and a lot more aware, especially through social media and the easy access to information. However, I do think some students do pass up the opportunity just because they dont think its important enough or their vote isnt going to count.

How to Register to Vote

McQuaid advises everyone to make sure they are registered to vote, and for absentee voters, we suggest that everyone get their application in now.

Students can register to vote in a variety of ways:

Online at http://voterregistration

.ct.gov.

By filling out a voter registration form, available at either the Town Clerks office or the Registrars Office at town or city hall. The form can be turned in by mail or in person at the Registrars Office.

At the Department of Motor Vehicles website, which redirects to the Secretary of States website where you can download the form and either mail or hand in the form to the Registrars Office.

We are very diligent and very careful that everyone has the opportunity to vote, said Norwalk Republican Registrar Karen Doyle Lyons.

Once registered, students qualify as absentee voters if they will be out of town during voting hours on Election Day. To vote absentee, they must complete the absentee application available in the Town Clerks Office or on the website above under the voting tab under departments.

Once the application is processed, the voter will be sent an absentee ballot 31 days before the general election. To be counted in the election it must be returned in person or by mail by the close of polls on Election Day.

It is important to note that an absentee application must be filled out for each election someone, including referendums and primaries.

McQuaid said his office is preparing for 3,000 absentee voter ballots and with ballots being sent out Oct. 7.

Myths cleared up for young voters

Despite a persistent myth that absentee ballots count only in close elections, McQuaid said as long as voters properly fill out and submit their ballots and they are received by the end of the day on Election Day, the votes will count.

Another point of confusion is whether 17 year olds can ever vote. In Connecticut and many other states 17 year olds can vote in primaries and caucuses if they are 18 by the date of the general election. For a student voter fact sheet go to http://bit.ly/2b6yxLj.
A variety of factors contributed to Theranoss prolonged public deception, though theyre often summed up by tech hype. The companys founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was a Stanford dropout who dreamed of making a difference in the world. Her company was valued at nearly $10 billion. She was hailed as the next Steve Jobs.

Blogger and media entrepreneur Anil Dash explains that Theranos successfully drummed up buzz about its faulty products because the company, its founder and its investors all shielded themselves under the cultural cover of being a glamorous member of the tech industry rather than a prosaic medical supplier.

Related: The 10 Best U.S. Cities for Tech Jobs

Its absurd to refer to companies that specialize in vastly disparate goods and services all under the umbrella of tech, Dash argues in a Medium post titled, There is no technology industry. If Theranos had been treated as a blood-testing company rather than a tech company, his argument follows, it would have been under far more scrutiny from day one.

Its not simply an imprecise description, Dash notes. He emphasizes that this overarching label obscures the reality that there is no such thing as the tech industry, in terms of a common set of regulations for the companies that supposedly exist within it.

Mature industries develop their own regulatory frameworks, their own systems for self-regulation, and their own standards for monitoring transgressions within the industry, Dash writes. Today, tech as an industry is almost completely lacking in all of these areas.

In other words, a tech company in pursuit of disruption is not exempt from the law. See: Uber and its disregard for background checks based on its self-designation as a technology company rather than a taxi service.

Obviously Dash is not the first to make the argument that the tech industry is a misnomer for a nonexistent collective. In a May 2012 Slate piece, It's Official: There's No Such Thing as a Tech Company, journalist Matt Yglesias wrote of Apple and Amazon, they're in different lines of business, so there's no ex ante reason to expect them to [be] valued in a similar way.

In March 2013, reporter David Yanofsky wrote in Quartz, To stay competitive in todays marketplaces, every company, by the current standard, could be called a tech company, which of course, is another way of saying that none of them should be.

Related: 10 Tech Companies to Watch - Entrepreneur's Brilliant 100

Yet in the third quarter of 2016, the phrase tech industry persists, as companies continue to incorporate technology, in the broadest most literal sense of the word, into their business operations and consumer products. Now that technology is omnipresent, its time to start conceiving of tech companies based on their sub-industries -- transportation, information, food and beverage -- and impose restrictions on them based on the specific services they provide.

Every company occupies the business space, but society does not treat all of these companies as though they exist on the same plane. The same should be true of tech. Embrace the reality that your company is more than a tech company and establish what differentiates you from all of the tech startup bandwagoners out there.

Related:

Get a $300 Gift Card Plus One of the Best TVs You Can Buy for Less Than $1,000

How to Hire a Developer When You Have No Money

Want to Cheat the System? Call Yourself a Tech Company.



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
On Tuesday, the Hall County Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution addressing health insurance premiums for elected oficials. This opinion is meant to inform the public regarding the intent of that resolution.

Approximately two years ago last December, the county board was required by state statute to set four-year salaries for Hall County elected officials up for election. Those salaries were set in compliance with the comparable array of counties recognized at that time by the Court of Industrial Relations. The city of Grand Island had exceeded the threshold of 50,000 population and, as a result, was given the designation of a MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) for salaries and other comparisons. Hall County believed that we would not be drawn into that comparison.

In the spring, as Hall County prepared for union negotiations, we were advised differently. A salary study was ordered using counties within MSAs most similar to us. None of these counties are even located in Nebraska! The study revealed that to stay in compliance with the Court of Industrial Relations, many employees would be receiving an increase of 12 percent to 22 percent to be reached within a three-year period. Meeting the cost of these increased salaries has been a challenge for the Hall County budget to withstand, but the county board of supervisors has made very difficult choices and put our financial resources into the required salaries for our employees. We have not raised taxes.

All salaries, to date, have been addressed regarding the new requirements of the MSA and the courts except for elected officials. And let me again state, Hall County has not raised taxes to accomplish this, but rather has put off some necessary improvements. Many officials with subordinates have a lesser salary or nearly a lesser salary than those employees working for them. Obviously, the elected official has far more responsibility and liability than those employees. Ask yourself, how would you feel about a business where management made less money than the employees? As a business owner, do you pay yourself or managers less than you do the workforce?

Salaries for elected officials cannot, by state statute, be changed for about two more years. However, we can address a small portion of the difference by changing the health insurance premium contribution made by elected officials. Health insurance is considered a benefit and not a salary. The resolution states that this provision will end when the new salary resolution takes effect. So, for approximately two years, and only that time, county elected officials will have this benefit. When the new salaries can be adjusted, county elected officials will pay the same contribution toward health insurance as other county employees. This is a small and temporary fix, but it is a gesture toward improving elected officials status. Once again, Hall County will not raise taxes for this to be accomplished.
Trade helps grow Nebraska. From commodities like corn and soybeans to beef and pork, Nebraska reaps the benefits of international trade to the tune of about $10 billion. We didnt achieve this level of success overnightit has been the product of a lot of hard work in building trade relationships with countries around the world. With low commodity prices right now, it is particularly important we work to expand trade opportunities and open up new markets across the globe.

Last week, the Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) and I announced that Nebraska would be signing letters of intent with Taiwan to expand our trade relationship with the country. Taiwan has historically been a very important trade partner with our state. During a visit to the country this month, the Nebraska Ag Director signed letters of intent on behalf of the state with Taiwan to purchase more than $405 million in Nebraska corn, soybeans, wheat, beef, pork, and distillers grains. The letters outline Taiwans intent to purchase over $100 million each of wheat, corn, and soybeans as well as a total of about $20 million of pork and beef products.

These letters of intent build on our successful trade missions last year. Our efforts to build relationships during international trade missions have led to several successful investments from companies including Morio Denki, Geist, and Worldlawn. In addition to these successes, Kawasaki announced in January that it would establish its first U.S. aerostructures production line in Lincoln. Kawasaki leadership said last falls trade mission to Japan played a part in their decision-making to expand Kawasakis presence in Nebraska. This expansion is great news for Nebraska, and builds on Kawasakis current production lines that produce railcars and all-terrain vehicles and employ 2,000 people in Lincoln.

Another tool that could help Nebraska expand overseas trade relationships is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is currently under consideration in Congress. TPP would bring down tariffs and help expand markets for Nebraskas commodities along the Pacific rim. Earlier this year, I partnered with the Nebraska Farm Bureau to unveil an analysis of TPPs economic impact on Nebraska. The analysis released by the Farm Bureau showed that TPP had the potential to add $378 million in cash receipts for Nebraska in ag products alone.

Trade agreements like the letters of intent Nebraska is signing or TPP, which the federal government is negotiating, require a great deal of relationship building over time. To this end, I will be leading a trade mission to China later this fall. China is Nebraskas fourth largest trading partner after Mexico, Canada, and Japan, and its a country with a growing economy and middle class, who have an increasing demand for quality food products. During this trade mission, we will highlight Nebraskas quality commodities and manufacturers.

Nebraska businesses and ag producers who do business in China, or those that are hoping to enter this market, should contact the Department of Economic Development or NDA to express their interest in joining the trade mission. Departmental contacts include Cobus Block at 402-480-5806 or cobus.block@nebraska.gov or Stan Garbacz at 402-471-2341 or stan.garbacz@nebraska.gov. You can also download the form for yourself at http://opportunity.nebraska.gov/trademission. Space is limited, so contact the departments soon!
There is little doubt that an international experience is one of the most life-changing events for a college student. That is what one hears from students when they return, particularly from those who have never even been abroad in their lives. Cost is usually mentioned as the major barrier for Americans to have such an experience. And this barrier can be particularly high for minority and first-generation college students.

Yet, there is a little known but very successful federal program known as The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program that serves to help U.S. college students interested in going abroad.

Named after the former Republican U.S. Representative from New York, the program was established in 2001 and is administered by the U.S. Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Gilman, who retired in 2002 after serving in the House for 30 years and chairing the House Foreign Relations Committee, commented, "Study abroad is a special experience for every student who participates. Living and learning in a vastly different environment of another nation not only exposes our students to alternate views, but also adds an enriching social and cultural experience. It also provides our students with the opportunity to return home with a deeper understanding of their place in the world, encouraging them to be a contributor, rather than a spectator in the international community."

The aim of this initiative is to offer grants for undergraduate students who are U.S. citizens and have limited financial means to participate in study and internship programs abroad. Award recipients are chosen through a competitive selection process and must use the award to defray eligible study or intern abroad costs, such as program tuition, room and board, books, local transportation, insurance and international airfare. Since its inception the program has awarded more than 22,000 scholarships.

Last April the program published a report full of good news, the kind one rarely sees publicized about higher education anymore. The report was the result of a study of the medium- and longer-term outcomes for recipients of the Gilman scholarship between the years 2003 and 2010. It also considered the impact of the scholarships on U.S. higher education institutions and on the families and communities of scholarship recipients.

The data collected showed that representation of minorities among Gilman scholarship recipients well exceeds that of the U.S. study abroad population as a whole. For example, the participation in the Gilman program from African-American, Latino and Asian communities was two to three times greater than their participation in U.S. study abroad overall. Furthermore, about half of Gilman scholars in the cohort examined were part of the first generation in their families to enroll in higher education.

The study also showed that there was a significant impact on the way these students saw the world and that they expressed an increased interest in working on global issues while improving their foreign language skills.

For example, 66 percent of Gilman scholar survey respondents found opportunities to serve as a bridge between Americans and people from different countries and cultures when they returned to the United States.

While 52 percent of the survey respondents said that they had had concerns about living in a foreign country prior to participation in the program, 79 percent continued to follow media coverage of the country or geopolitical region where they studied and 74 percent kept up an active interest in the culture of the country where they studied following their return to the U.S.

Of the 1,441 survey respondents who returned to undergraduate studies after their Gilman scholarship, 87 percent reported taking a greater interest in international or cross-cultural topics, and more than one-third indicated that they had chosen an academic major or minor field of concentration with an international or cross-cultural focus.

Seventy-nine percent of survey respondents studied a foreign language while on their academic study abroad program. And among those, 82 percent sought opportunities to speak the language they had studied when they returned home.

Of the 819 survey respondents who were attending or already completed graduate or professional school at the time of the evaluation, 48 percent had chosen a concentration with an international or cross-cultural focus, and 36 percent had studied abroad again or pursued international field research.

Eighty-three percent of survey respondents indicated that the Gilman scholarship had enabled them to undertake academic activities overseas that they could not have taken at their home institutions. Eighty-three percent of survey respondents found jobs where they could interact with people from different backgrounds or nationalities, and 54 percent reported working in a field that includes an international or cross-cultural component.

Almost three-quarters (73 percent) of survey respondents reported that the Gilman scholarship experience caused them to broaden the geographic range of locations where they were willing to work in the future.

One-third of university representatives interviewed, across all types of institutions, credited the Gilman scholarship directly for changes in their schools study abroad program offerings and for contributing to their internationalization efforts. Many stated that the Gilman scholarship had allowed them to expand their study abroad programs to more diverse, non-traditional locations, including Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

Several study abroad representatives, primarily at minority serving institutions, reported using the Gilman scholarship parameters as a model for revising their study abroad programs. Other effects included adaptation of campus study abroad programs to meet Gilman scholarship parameters, attracting new sources of funding for study abroad in general, expanding course offerings to help students prepare for a wider array of study abroad opportunities and promoting professional development of study abroad professionals.

In a globalized world where we need more U.S. citizens versed in the ways of dealing with international affairs, the Gilman scholarship program is an excellent example of your tax money put to good use.

Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. is a writer and college professor with leadership experience in higher education. He can be contacted through his website at: http://www.aromerojr.net
A question on the ballot this fall will allow voters here a chance to voice whatever displeasure they may have with lawmakers who have routinely been funding schools at a level far below what is required by the state constitution.

The results, while not binding, are intended to shine a light on the issue for Madison County residents who may not be aware of the underfunding, and to send a message to state legislators.

The County Board passed the advisory referendum Wednesday night. County Board member Mike Walters is sympathetic to the idea but said a resolution almost feels like were attacking some of our own legislators on both sides of the aisle.

I think our legislators do a fine job, and I feel like were telling them they should not do this, said Walters, a Republican who represents Godfrey.

The issue, he added, is a state issue that should be handled at the state level. Most people wouldnt understand the complexities of state funding for public schools, he said, and most wouldnt realize that its simply an advisory referendum.

While the state Constitution requires the state to fund schools at at least the 50 percent level, in reality it has been funding only 28 percent, said County Board Chairman Alan Dunstan. All this is doing is asking that the state of Illinois pay its fair share for education, he said. If they would do that, you would see property taxes reduced.

The question that goes on the ballot for the Nov. 8 general election reads:

Shall the State of Illinois meet its Constitutional responsibility to provide the primary funding for the public school system, combined with a permanent reduction in property taxes for Madison County taxpayers?

Its a county issue, Dunstan said, because voters often tell their representatives that they want their property tax bill reduced. Tax bills are mailed out by each county, with the largest chunk - more than 62 percent - going to school districts, which are trying to compensate for a lack of state funding. The countys portion of the tax bill is only 8 percent. It has actually gone down, but because we send out the tax bill, we get the blame, Dunstan said.

Illinois is among the lowest in the country for funding its public schools, according to County Administrator Joe Parente. Thats the reason why Illinois has some of the highest property taxes in the country, too, Parente said.

Art Asadorian and Liz Dalton disagreed with Walters contention that voters wont realize that the question is only an advisory one. I have a little bit more confidence than some, said Asadorian, who represents parts of Granite City. I believe voters can actually read what theyre voting on.

Said Dalton: You have to give voters credit for knowing what theyre voting on. I know there are some that dont, but a majority are very educated now and I think we should give them a chance to say that yes, they are advised on this. Because some of the people are not aware that the state is not funding education as much as they are supposed to. And I think that by bringing this to light, it tells the state that its really lagging behind, and they really do need to get on board.
Maryville firefighter and paramedic Derek Sonnenberg resigned from his position of lieutenant in order to pursue a medical degree at the University of Illinois School of Medicine.

Sonnenberg, who has been a firefighter and paramedic with the Maryville Fire Department since 2009, was granted a leave of absence from the department until Dec. 31, 2016, at which time he said he would likely resign from the department.

His request was made so the department could fill the role of lieutenant in Sonnenbergs absence.

I wish to extend my deepest gratitude and thanks to Chief (Kevin) Flaugher and Deputy Chief (George) May, he said. I feel I havent worked a day since earning my paramedic license and I get paid to do what I love.

Sonnenberg said some his most prized possessions are the thank you letters and clinical save recognitions that he has received from patients and Anderson Hospital.

In March of 2016, Sonnenberg received one such honor from the hospital for providing care to an individual suffering from chest pains.

Paramedics received a call about a patron at a local restaurant suffering from chest pains.

Unbeknownst to EMS staff, Sonnenberg, who was off duty at the time, was at the restaurant.

When on-duty paramedics arrived, they found the patient had regained a pulse due to the CPR work of Sonnenberg.

Mayor Larry Gulledge wished Sonnenberg luck in his new path.

I appreciate Derek and hes done a wonderful job for the village, Gulledge said. Hes a fine young man and we wish him the best of luck.

The board also approved the addition of two probationary firefighters to join the department.

Maryville residents Shane Fulton and Andrew Jerome were approved as probationary firefighters.

Their probationary and training completion date is in February, 2017.

Chief Flaugher reported that the officers of the department had interviewed both men and the consensus was that they would be good additions to the department.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Pandaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly may not have the eloquence of a natural orator, but when defending his policy to grant Independence Day remissions to 82,000 prisoners in a media briefing last week, he used well-chosen words that sounded almost like he was giving a eulogy.

They are packed into small, terribly overcrowded cells. Some have to sleep standing with their backs bent forward. Others have to take turns to sleep. And they are all sons of the nation, just like you. No difference.

Trying to evoke empathy, he added, They cant go anywhere. They cant go to shopping malls or take a leisurely stroll.

Yasonna wants to see graft convicts, drug lords and terrorists as well as ordinary detainees leave their stinky cells sooner than judges ordered because prisons across the country are unbearably overcrowded, to the point that the government spends over Rp 1 trillion (US$76 million) a year just on their food.

Receiving this years Independence Day remissions were 27 terrorists, 428 graft convicts and 12,161 drug criminals.

According to official figures, penitentiaries nationwide were designed to accommodate 119,000 inmates, but now they house about 197,670  of whom 81,200 are drug convicts and 3,630 are graft inmates.

An Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician, Yasonna has been in the spotlight lately for pushing the plan, despite fierce public objections, to revise Government Regulation (PP) No. 99/2012, which he regards as the piece of legislation primarily to blame for the appalling prison conditions.

Advocates have resisted his plan because the regulation prescribes tight prerequisites for inmates of extraordinary crimes  corruption, drugs and terrorism  to obtain remissions. It was designed to create a greater deterrence effect for would-be plunderers of public funds.

Even with the 2012 regulation still in place, the ministry is already very generous about remissions. Among the graft convicts granted sentence cuts on this years Independence Day were former Democratic Party politician Muhammad Nazaruddin and his wife Neneng Sri Wahyuni, who received five- and six-month remissions, respectively. For Nazaruddin, who is serving a 13-year jail term, it was his second discount so far this year. On the Idul Fitri holiday last month he received 45 days remission.

Terror convict Abu Bakar Baasyir, who has been serving a 15-year sentence since 2011, got three months reprieve.

The Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono administration introduced the 2012 regulation based on a common conviction about the menace that the three extraordinary crimes pose to the nation.

If Yasonna gets his way, graft convicts, drug criminals and terrorists will be entitled to remissions just like prisoners of general crimes such as goat thieves and wallet snatchers. But because corruption and drugs have always involved big money and bigwigs, the regulation has been constantly targeted.

Back in 2013, Yusril Ihza Mahendra  a lawyer and a former law and human rights minister  filed a petition with the Constitutional Court on behalf of three convicts demanding that the regulation be dropped on the grounds that it discriminated against extraordinary crime inmates.

To the publics relief, the court rejected Yusrils motion and ruled in favor of the Law and Human Rights Ministrys argument that the regulation in no way deprived drug, graft and terror convicts of an equal chance to receive remissions. The ministry also stood firmly behind the principle that drugs, corruption and terrorism were extraordinary crimes whose eradication required extraordinary measures.

Hilariously, Yasonna now uses exactly the same argument that Yusril unsuccessfully put forward to shoot down the regulation three years ago. He is also trying very hard to convince the public that giving such convicts an equal chance to secure remissions would help relieve overcrowded penitentiaries nationwide.

One can imagine Yusril laughing out loud upon discovering that he may not even have to lift a finger to see the disputed 2012 regulation revised in his clients favor if Yasonna succeeds in his bid.

A crucial point that Yasonna wants to scrap from the disputed regulation is the clause on justice collaborator status, which is usually accorded to suspects who are willing to tell all in court. In return, they are entitled to a more lenient sentence.

The status was created with the intention of helping law enforcement bodies catch the bigger fish in cases involving powerful politicians, government bureaucrats and politically wired businesspeople. It is understood that, often, the people the KPK agents arrest in sting operations are only the field operators of a larger plot while the big players remain at large.

Its intriguing that the number of graft inmates accounts for less than 3 percent of all prisoners crammed into our overcapacity penitentiaries, but the government is so gung ho about giving them early exits. For example, why not focus on revising drug laws instead, to allow for the relocation of drug users from penitentiaries to rehab centers?

The Institute for Justice Reform estimates that detained drug users total about 60,000, or 30 percent of prisoners. This means that if they are moved to rehab centers, it would significantly ease pressure on penitentiaries.

Yasonnas plan demonstrates the governments half-hearted political commitment to eradicating corruption that has been blamed for the numerous ills plaguing the country. It will decimate the deterrence effect expected from harsh punishments.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Tunggal Pawestri (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

The hysteria surrounding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues in Indonesia continues. The newest development is a petition taken to the Constitutional Court by the anti-LGBT group Love Family Alliance, which seeks to criminalize consensual sex between people of the same gender  and between unmarried people  through an amendment of the Criminal Code (KUHP). The petition requests the amendment of articles 284 (adultery), 285 (rape) and 292 (sex between adults and minors of the same gender).

According to court documents, the alliance argues that the current articles threaten family and national resilience, and the proposed changes are necessary to protect religious values.

The court has already held five hearings on the matter, despite attracting barely any attention. Another hearing has been scheduled for Aug. 23. Fortunately, the courts website provides documentation on all court hearings. A review of these documents shows that the government team from the Law and Human Rights Ministry, which was charged with reviewing the petition, rejected it on the grounds that the petitioners did not themselves suffer as a result of the existing articles.

However, the team suggested the petitioners submit their views directly to the House of Representatives, which is currently deliberating the amendment of the Criminal Code.

During the courts last two hearings, six experts from the petitioners side spoke in support of the proposed changes. No less than three experts, sworn under the Holy Quran, claimed that the LGBT movement was a proxy war. Another so-called expert claimed that the LGBT movement was historically initiated by Jewish people in the US, and furthermore that the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) were both promoting same-sex marriage.

The first claim is not worth responding to, but on the issue of same-sex marriage I would like to quote academic and LGBT activist Hendri Yulius: Since the [early days] of the gay movement, marriage equality has never been the goal [] How [can] Indonesian LGBT persons strive for marriage equality, while many [are] still beaten up, harassed and fired from their jobs, just because of their sexual orientation and gender identity? (The Jakarta Post, Feb. 19, 2016)

Health issues are also a key component of the petitioners arguments. One of the experts, dermatologist Dewi Inong Irana, gave a graphically illustrated presentation on sexually transmitted infections (STIs), arguing that gay sex leads to STIs and HIV/AIDS.

My eyebrows rose when she concluded with a rhetorical question to the judges about whether anal sex was in line with the principles of Pancasila. Too bad the judges didnt answer.

Regarding the technical content: especially for someone trained as a medical doctor, her misunderstanding of the relationship between gay sex and risk of STI transmission is unfortunate. There are actually only five recognized factors that put individuals at greater risk of contracting HIV (World Health Organization, July 2016). Guess what? None of them are gay sex. The primary risk is unsafe sex, particularly with a partner who is already infected (Comparative Quantification of Health Risks, WHO, 2004). STIs and HIV are not limited to gay sex, but are also transmitted through heterosexual sex.

A number of actions have been taken to prevent HIV transmission in Indonesia. The Health Ministry has been taking the Abstinence, Be Faithful, Condoms, No Drugs, Education (ABCDE) approach, and in addition has a special agency to tackle HIV/AIDS. The ministrys guidelines have been carefully developed on the basis of in-depth research, and they make no mention of any evidential link between (safe) gay sex and STIs and HIV transmission.

Another health issue raised by the petitioners regards mental health. Dadang Hawari, a psychiatrist, presented the view that LGBT people suffer from a contagious mental illness. He argued that LGBT people can be cured by restorative therapy designed to target biological, psychological and social elements. However, a full cure can only be achieved if LGBT people bertaubat (fully surrender to God).

The professor refuted the guidelines of the American Psychological Association that do not classify LGBT orientations as a mental illness. Its my guess that he would also refute a 2014 consensus statement of the UKs psychological professions, including the British Psychological Society, denouncing conversion therapy and its claims to change sexual orientation and reduce same-sex attraction.

It is hardly rocket science to find the flaws in these arguments. However, the public is easily misled, never believing that an expert might dare fabricate facts in front of the Constitutional Court. Furthermore, this is a high-alert situation for people working on HIV issues. Much more must be done to raise public awareness, and to break the stigma on LGBT and HIV-related issues.

Nevertheless, the hearings in the Constitutional Court will continue. Lets hope that common sense and scientific evidence will not be defeated by ignorance and hatred.

***

Feminist and womens rights activist. She can be found @TunggalP on Twitter.

---------------

We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to community@jakpost.com. For more information click here.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Hello Sehat (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

For some women, makeup is a kind of happiness. They love to color their lips and draw their eyebrows, cover up the wrinkles and acne with liquid foundation.

Makeup is a way for women to express themselves, to look prettier and more confident. Several offices in Jakarta even require their employees to wear makeup at work. Lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, foundation are items that are always in their makeup bag.

Not all makeup products have an expiry date label. You need to pay extra attention to decide when it is time to toss out and replace old makeup products. Bear in mind that your makeup is a potential bacteria-breeding ground. Write down the purchase date on your makeup products when you have a hard time keeping track of the usage period.

Mascara (3-4 months)

Overall, mascara is the most vulnerable product in which bacteria can easily grow once it is opened and you put the wand back into the tube.

Throw away your mascara after four months of use or when it has distinct gasoline-like smell, and replace it with a new one. In some cases, if the mascara dries up before 90 days, do not add water because it increases the bacteria that cause irritation such as redness, itchiness, or pinkeye and sties. Better to throw out all eye makeups and its applicators before the bacteria spreads out and gets worst.

Eyeliner (3 months)

Simple makeup can easily be achieved by applying some eyeliner, either liquid or pencil. Many women found themselves guilty when a survey showed that eyeliner should be replaced every three months, an exception is pencil eyeliner. Nevertheless, for the sake of your eyes, keeping it longer can spread more bacteria and can cause you to experience some irritation near such a sensitive area.

In extreme cases, conjunctivitis, itchiness and redness can occur, which absolutely will disturb your vision and disrupt some of your activities. To prevent from such side effects, sharpen your pencil eyeliner before application.

Liquid foundation (6 months  1 year)

Bacteria love water-based products. Once the seal of the foundation is opened, it can last for a year.

Do not dip your fingers into the bottle of liquid foundation; keep it away from heat and moist environments. Heat can speed up the growth of bugs and change the smell or color that could cause irritation.

Concealer (2 years)

It functions to cover blemishes. Toss out your concealer once the color changes. Stick and powder concealer can last for two years.

(Read also: 12 inspiring rainbow makeup ideas)

Face powder (2 years)

If the powder contains botanical extracts such as green tea extract, aloe vera or chamomile, it may be prone to bacteria growth if you leave it open in moist areas such as the bathroom. Be on notice if the color changes and has a funny smell.

Lipsticks (1 year )

This makeup product is a favorite among girls and women. The variation of colors let you fit any occasion. The average women owns about three to six lipsticks, which can be kept for no more than a year.

The majority of lipsticks do not contain water. However, the risk of bacteria infestation comes from the repeated expose to the mouth area. Its time to ditch your lipstick if there is a change in the texture and if you cannot spread the pigment on the lips. Expired lip-gloss will feel streaky when you try to apply it. Replace your lipstick and glosses once a year.

Avoid sharing lipstick, especially when you are sick, because the bacteria can spread and harm your immune system.

Tips to prevent bacteria from infecting your makeup

- Remember that makeups that contain water are high risk to promoting bacterial growth.

- Do not leave your liquid makeup open in the bathroom or moist environments.

- Avoid storing makeup near heat, where a cool place is ideal.

- If the makeup smells bad or changes color, throw it out.

- If there is no expiry date label, put a label on yourself with the date of purchase before the first application.

- Buy cosmetics as your need. There is no use in hoarding makeup if you will end up throwing away most of it anyway.

- Have your own makeup. Shared makeup increases the speed of bacteria spreading like staphylococcus aureus and staphylococcus epidermis. (kes)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan  Mon, August 22 2016

The Indonesian Air Force has dispatched a team to investigate allegations that several of its personnel vandalized and stole from a mosque in Medan, North Sumatra.

On Aug. 15, dozens of personnel from the Soewondo Airbase clashed with civilians over a disputed plot of land in Sari Rejo subdistrict. During the incident, personnel allegedly damaged and took money from an alms box at a nearby mosque, and assaulted residents. At least 10 were injured during the unrest.

The investigation team, led by Air Force military police commander Col. Bambang Suseno, visited the Al Hasanah Mosque on Jl. Teratai, on Saturday. After meeting the mosque caretakers, the investigation team also took pictures of the damaged alms box and made an inventory of damage around the mosque.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

Corruption convict and former Banten governor Ratu Atut Chosiyah has given her blessings to her son, Golkar Party politician Andika Hazrumy, to run as a deputy governor candidate in the 2017 Banten gubernatorial election.

Andika, who will pair with the Democratic Party's Wahidin Halim in the election, has several times visited his mother at the Tangerang female penitentiary. Atut is serving seven years in prison for corruption, Atut's Islamic teacher Mul said on Monday.

Atut also expressed her support for Wahidin to run for the position of governor, saying he had the capability to lead Tangerang for two terms.

"Wahidin and Rano Karno have a place in her heart. But of the two figures, only Wahidin visited her in prison. From that she believes Wahidin can guide Andika to develop Banten together," Mul said, quoting Atut, as reported by tempo.co.

He was referring to the current Banten governor, who was Atut's deputy prior to her corruption conviction.

Atut and Rano defeated Wahidin and Irna Narulita Dimyati in the Banten election in 2013.

Four political parties  the Democrats, Golkar, Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and Hanura Party  have declared their support for Wahidin and Andika, who are both members of the House of Representatives.

Atut is part of a notorious political dynasty in Banten controlled by the family of prominent local figure Tubagus Chasan Sochib. Despite an image tarnished by corruption cases, the dynasty remains strong, with family members holding top positions in the local administration as well as on legislative councils throughout the province. (rin)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Andi Hajramurni (The Jakarta Post) Makassar  Mon, August 22, 2016

Barru regent Andi Idris Syukur, 60, in South Sulawesi was sentenced to four years and six months in prison and a fine of Rp 250 million (US$17,857) for corruption and money laundering.

A panel of judges, presided over by Cakra Alam, at Makassar District Court on Monday decided that Idris was guilty of committing graft as regulated in Article 12 in the 2001 anti-corruption law. The defendant was also found guilty of violating Article 3 of the 2010 money laundering law.

Idris was elected to be regent for the period from 2016 to 2021.

We find that Andi Idris Syukur committed corruption and money laundering, Cakra said.

The court ordered Idtris to return the Pajero Sport car he received from the Bosowa Corporation. The car, which has a market price of Rp 350 million, was registered under the name of Andi Mirza Riogi, Idris son.

During the trial, Idris was not detained and he also continued working as regent.

Cakra said Idris asked for some money from Bosowa, which was applying for a license to prospect for clay and limestone in Barru in 2012 for its subsidiary, PT Semen Bosowa Barru. Bosowa fulfilled his request and several days after the car was received by Idris, the license was issued on Oct. 9.

Idris lawyer, Aliyas Ismail, said his client had yet to decide to accept or appeal the sentence.

But the decision was not unanimous because there were two judges offering dissenting opinions, Aliyas said.

Bosowa was founded by Aksa Mahmud, a brother-in-law of Vice President Jusuf Kalla. (evi)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

The Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) has said it may cooperate with other government agencies, which have the authority to conduct investigations on suspicious transactions, in an effort to tackle "money politics" in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election.

Bawaslu commissioner Nasrullah said the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) were among the institutions the Bawaslu was still considering to partner with to prevent "money politics" or transactional politics by candidates.

"The Bawaslu has no authority to look into someone's bank account to investigate an allegedly suspicious transaction, thus we might ask assistance from the PPATK and KPK," he said recently.

Nasrullah warned transactional politics still posed a serious threat, including in the upcoming gubernatorial election. It was a continuing problem and posed difficulties for Bawaslu officials to detect such practices.

He further said the Bawaslu would closely cooperate with the National Police and the Attorney General's Office (AGO) under the agencys law enforcement center Sentra Gakkum, which was established to create synergy between election supervisors, police investigators and prosecutors in ensuring fair and clean democratic elections. (ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Bassem Mroue (Associated Press) Beirut  Mon, August 22, 2016

The brother of a wounded Syrian boy who gained international attention has died three days after suffering serious injuries in an air raid on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, opposition activists said Sunday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Aleppo-based activist Baraa al-Halaby said that Ali Daqneesh, 10, died on Saturday from wounds sustained in the same airstrike on a rebel-held neighborhood in Aleppo.

Syrian activists released haunting footage showing Ali's brother Omran Daqneesh, 5, rescued from a partially destroyed building in the aftermath of the airstrike late Wednesday. Omran was treated and later discharged.

The Halab Today opposition TV station posted a photo of Ali in a hospital with a tube coming out of his mouth, saying he later died from his wounds.

Omran was rescued along with his three siblings and his parents from the rubble of their partially destroyed apartment building, according to photojournalist Mahmoud Raslan, who took the memorable photo. The building collapsed about an hour after the family was rescued.

On Sunday, Raslan said Ali was wounded by a collapsing wall.

A man who said he was the doctor who treated Ali, told The Aleppo Media Center, an activist collective, that the boy suffered chest wounds, broken ribs and internal injuries. Doctors performed surgery on the boy's stomach and found damage to his liver and kidney.

"His general conditions were bad," said the man wearing a surgical mask who identified himself as Abu Rasoul in a video released by the Aleppo Media Center. "His heart stopped three times, we resurrected him three times but with deep regret he died in the end."

The activists reported fresh air raids on Aleppo and its suburbs on Sunday, inflicting casualties.

The Observatory said the death toll of an air raid on the northern village of Orem on Saturday rose to least 25 people including three children and four women. The Aleppo Media Center said the airstrike killed at least 16. (**)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22 2016

The Jakarta Water Management Agency has called on residents to clear obstructions from waterways after flooding in several areas of the capital, which reportedly claimed the life of a resident of Cilandak, South Jakarta.

The recent flooding is believed to be the result of clogged drains, agency head Teguh Hendrawan told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.

Almost all reports that we have received are about blocked drains. Hence, we are prioritizing the restoration of gutters, as well as other drainage tunnels in the capital, Teguh said.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

Democratic Party chairman Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has temporarily dismissed Ruhut Sitompul as the partys spokesman, a party politician said on Monday.

Dems deputy chairman Didik Mukrianto declined to comment on the reason for the dismissal, saying only that the party wants to refresh several positions on the central executive board.

Ruhut has openly expressed his support for Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama to seek reelection, although the Dems have not yet made a decision on which candidate they will support in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election.

We will refresh positions in the central executive board. We want to give opportunities to other senior members of the party, Didik said on Monday as reported by kompas.com, adding that many of boards members would be replaced.

Ruhut is an outspoken politician, known for defending policies that Yudhoyono expressed both as party chairman and when he was president. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

A lawmaker has advised the government to cautiously study a proposal to sharply increase tobacco excise that would significantly increase cigarette prices from an average of Rp 15,000 (US$1.14) per pack to about Rp 50,000.

I personally agree with the idea as it would discourage smoking, but the government must also consider the fate of the people who work for tobacco companies, Saleh Daulah of House of Representatives Commission IX overseeing demographic, health, manpower affairs told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

The proposal came from University of Indonesias Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies (PKEKK) and was discussed at the Indonesian Health Economics Association (InaHEA) congress in Yogyakarta last month.

National Mandate Party (PAN) lawmaker Saleh said a tax increase would seriously affect cigarette sales and lead to layoffs in the tobacco industry and therefore the government must consider the possible impacts of raising the tax.

Meanwhile, Health Ministry spokesman Oscar Primadi said his office supported the proposal as it would significantly decrease smoking among children. Young people will not start smoking if the price increase is approved by the government, Oscar told the Post on Monday.

According to a survey conducted by the PKEKK involving 1,000 smokers from December 2015 to January, 72 percent of respondents would stop smoking if cigarette prices increased to Rp 50,000 per pack. (rez/bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

The government is seeking solutions to immediately process the deportation of 177 Indonesians detained by Philippine authorities for trying to pass as Filipino pilgrims, Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly has said.

Yasonna said on Monday that his office, the Foreign Ministry and the directorate general of immigration were closely cooperating with the Philippine government through the Indonesian Embassy to progress the deportation of Indonesians who had misrepresented themselves as Filipinos and were considered undocumented and undesirable aliens.

"The perpetrators are using [the Philippine haj quota] because our own haj quota is limited. It surely violates the law [...] we are now in the process of solving the problem and deporting them back to the country," Yasonna said on Monday.

The 177 Indonesians caught using fake passports came from various parts of Indonesia including South Sulawesi and Java, Yasonna said. They had cooperated with a criminal syndicate consisting of Indonesian and Filipino citizens, which provided them with Philippine passports after they entered Philippine territory on Indonesian passports.

Yasonna said the government was also investigating information on the possible involvement of Indonesian immigration officials in the case. (dan)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22 2016

A 14-year-old boy died from electric shock while playing on the banks of the Permata Buana River in Kembangan Utara, West Jakarta, on Saturday.

Maulana was playing with his friends, Zaqi, 14, and Ridho, 14, when the incident took place. The victim touched a torn cable of an electricity pole on the riverbank and was electrocuted, Kembangan Police chief Comr. Aldo Ferdian said as quoted by kompas.com.

His friends failed to help, fearing that they would also get electrocuted, and reported the incident to his parents instead. He was rushed to Puri Indah Hospital but doctors said he could not be saved.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22 2016

Jakarta Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat said on Saturday that the Kampung Tanah Tinggi Festival in Central Jakarta could unite people in the area and therefore prevent inter-community brawls.

This is a high-crime area, he said at the festivals opening ceremony on Jl. Kramat Pulo Gundul as quoted by beritajakarta.com.

The collective desire to preserve Betawi culture would help build strong relationships among communities, he said.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Bogor  Mon, August 22 2016

A 36-year-old vice principal of a private vocational school (SMK) in Bojonggede, Bogor, has been arrested by Depok Police for allegedly raping a female student.

Depok Police chief Harry Kurniawan said the suspect, identified only as AN, was arrested after the victims parents reported the case to Bojonggede Police on Friday.

The student came for additional tutoring at the vice principals house. He then raped her and recorded the act on his mobile phone, Harry said on Saturday as quoted by tribunnews.com.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (Associated Press) Miami  Mon, August 22, 2016

A National Institutes of Health official said Sunday that the Zika virus could "hang around" the United States for a year or two.

Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC's "This Week" that other Gulf Coast states, besides Florida, are most vulnerable to the spread of the disease.

"I would not be surprised if we see cases in Texas and Louisiana, particularly now where you have the situation with flooding in Louisiana," said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "There are going to be a lot of problems getting rid of standing water."

Mosquito-borne Zika cases have been found in two neighborhoods of Miami-Dade County the Wynwood neighborhood and Miami Beach. They are the first areas on the US mainland where health officials determined mosquitoes were transmitting Zika, which has spread through Latin American and the Caribbean.

The discovery last week of non-travel-related infections in Miami Beach prompted the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to expand its travel warning for pregnant women to include the area known for nightclubs, pedestrian thoroughfares and beaches, as well as Wynwood, a neighborhood known for art galleries and boutiques.

Fauci said mosquito control is the best way to stop the spread of the Zika virus, which can cause severe birth defects, including microcephaly, in pregnant women.

"With our experience with other similar viruses like dengue, this is something that could hang around for a year or two," Fauci said. "Hopefully, we get to a point to where we could suppress it so that we won't have any risk of it."

Meanwhile the mayor of Miami Beach said city workers are doing everything in their power to go after mosquitoes in the popular tourist destination.

Mayor Philip Levine told New York radio station AM 970 that Miami Beach is running smoothly, despite the Zika concerns.

"Those 15 mosquitoes have been put under arrest. They've been apprehended. We have them in jail right now," Levine joked on "The Cats Roundtable Show."

"All kidding aside, we have contained the small little outbreak of Zika, which was very limited," he added. "It's something we're watching. It's closely contained and it certainly hasn't disrupted the business of Miami." (**)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Paul Ramadge (The Jakarta Post) Melbourne  Mon, August 22 2016

Hands up if you know of a relationship between Indonesia and Australia that is 100 percent positive? Thats right, zero.

Every bilateral relationship has its love-hate moments. Indonesians know a lot about Malaysia but this doesnt necessarily mean that the bond is rock solid. Australians have a lot in common with New Zealanders but the two nations are super-competitive and love to make up jokes about each other. Lets not mention England and Scotland.

The reality is that progressive, outwardly focused nations like to maximize the opportunities for closer relationships with important neighbors and trading partners, while reducing the impact of points of difference.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Toba Samosir  Mon, August 22 2016

With a two-day visit to the Lake Toba region in North Sumatra, which some people envision as the Monaco of Asia, President Joko Jokowi Widodo has demonstrated his commitment to develop the region into a major tourism magnet.

Jokowi said that although Lake Toba had immense potential and was internationally renowned, its image had declined in recent years and fresh efforts were needed to develop ecotourism in the region to capitalize on Lake Tobas breathtaking natural beauty.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Toba Samosir  Mon, August 22, 2016

With a two-day visit to the Lake Toba region in North Sumatra, which some people envision as the Monaco of Asia, President Joko Jokowi Widodo has demonstrated his commitment to develop the region into a major tourism magnet.

Jokowi said that although Lake Toba had immense potential and was internationally renowned, its image had declined in recent years and fresh efforts were needed to develop ecotourism in the region to capitalize on Lake Tobas breathtaking natural beauty.

The development of Lake Toba as a travel destination would not harm the local culture and would instead strengthen its unique character, Jokowi said on Sunday in his inaugural speech at the 2016 Wonderful Lake Toba Independence Carnival in Balige, the capital city of Toba Samosir regency.

It is home to the Batak Simalungun, Toba, Pakpak, Mandailing, Karo and Angkola ethnic communities. It is the differences that unite us. I am glad that today all members of the community wear the traditional ulos scarf, said Jokowi.

The carnival commenced with leaders of the communities joining Jokowi in beating the traditional

gondang drums.

Throughout the event, Jokowi wore the Ragidup Sirara ulos, usually reserved for honorable men, or kings, while First Lady Iriana donned the Tum-Tumon ulos, a rare Batak ulos motif commonly used by the womenfolk.

The carnival involved participants from 26 provinces, North Sumatras 26 regencies and municipalities as well as a number of government ministers.

It was launched on a floating stage hosting a number of events, including a folk music performance and a culinary festival. Other stages were erected in Parapat, Simalungun regency, and in Balige.

Jokowi praised the carnival for demonstrating unity in diversity among the Batak community, representing the different characters and identities of the nation.

The President said he expected the carnival to continue as an annual event in North Sumatra.

Jokowis presence in the land of the Batak people was greeted with joy by thousands of residents around Lake Toba, especially those living on the Samosir Island, located in the middle of Lake Toba, who saw their dream come true as the countrys president set foot on the island.

Jokowi is the first president to visit Samosir after we waited for 71 years. We are very pleased, as our dream has come true, said Samosir Regent Rapidin Simbolon, representing his community to welcome Jokowi in the tourist village of Tomok on Sunday.

Jokowis visit to Tomok was one of several activities he carried out during the two-day visit to Lake Toba, including planting trees in Toba Samosir and Samosir regencies, holding a dialogue with the local people and also joining the Independence Day Carnival in Balige.

Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said the Wonderful Lake Toba Independence Carnival was part of Jokowis commitment to develop Lake Toba. The carnival is aimed at helping to boost tourism in the Lake Toba region in the future.

Arief added that the Tourism Ministry expected to attract 1 million tourists to the Lake Toba region by 2019. The plan could fail if the government failed to build infrastructure to support tourism.

Accessibility is our weakness. We will continue to improve flights and highway access to Lake Toba, said Arief.

He said other plans included the establishment of the Lake Toba Authority Board, which had won approval from Jokowi.

Besides the Lake Toba visit, Jokowi initiated his visit to North Sumatra by visiting Nias Island on Friday, where he joined the groundbreaking ceremony for a 70-kilovolt extra-high voltage power line project stretching 110 km from Idanoi to Teluk Dalam on Nias Island.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

The seven political parties in the Kinship Coalition have prepared two alternatives candidate pairs for nomination in the 2017 Jakarta gubernatorial election to challenge incumbent Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, a politician has said.

The first alternative [will be taken] if the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle [PDI-P] leaves the collation and gives its support to Ahok and the second alternative is if PDI-P will remain in the coalition, said member of Gerindra Partys Jakarta chapter Syarif in Jakarta on Monday as reported by kompas.com.

The PDI-P, the largest political party in the city, has not made a decision on its Jakarta gubernatorial candidate, but Akok said he had the support from PDI-P chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri as long as he paired with his current deputy, Djarot Saiful Hidayat, who is a PDI-P politician.

Syarif said the collation planned to announce its candidate early September. We will announce our candidate on Sept. 5. We listen to the aspirations of the people, who want to immediately know our candidates, he added.

The seven parties in the coalition are the PDI-P, Gerindra Party, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the Democratic Party (PD), the United Development Party (PPP), the National Awakening Party (PPP) and National Mandate Party (PAN). (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Haeril Halim and Margareth S. Aritonang (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22 2016

The door now appears open for President Joko Jokowi Widodo to reappoint Arcandra Tahar as energy and mineral resources minister after lawmakers hinted at their approval of the reinstatement of the latters Indonesian citizenship.



Having spent 20 years in the US and having acquired US citizenship, Arcandra was recently appointed by Jokowi as energy minister, only to be dismissed 20 days later due to public uproar upon the discovery of his citizenship status.



Arcandra claimed that he was in the process of renouncing his US citizenship. However, as the government had yet to complete the process of reinstating his Indonesian nationality, he was not legally acknowledged as Indonesian, making his appointment as a minister illegal.



Law No. 39/2008 on state ministers stipulates six requirements for a ministerial job, including Indonesian citizenship.



The Law and Human Rights Ministry has said that citizenship can be recovered by the issuance of a decree from the ministry or through a process at the House of Representatives. But Jokowi decided to discharge Arcandra before either process took place.



House Commission III member Arsul Sani of the United Development Party (PPP) said the House was aware that Arcandra had violated the law when he did not tell the government about his US citizenship status when appointed minister, but that he deserved a second chance once he regained his Indonesian nationality.



If later the government submits a proposal [to reinstate Arcandras citizenship], it is enough for the government to say, for example, that it needs Arcandras expertise [in the countrys energy sector], Arsul told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.



House Commission III, which oversees legal affairs, will process the proposal if the government opts to go ahead with it.



Arsul said that it found no reason to prevent the Jokowi administration from reinstating Arcandras citizenship status, adding that the House would never interfere with Jokowis prerogative with regard to Cabinet decisions.



Jokowi has achieved strong control of the House, having secured the formal support of seven out of 10 political parties.



Despite the brouhaha surrounding Arcandras citizenship, the House has expressed no desire to question Jokowis alleged violation of the law in installing Arcandra as minister on July 27.



Another Commission III member Masinton Pasaribu of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), also supported Arcandras reinstallation as a minister in the national interest.



As long as the reasons to be submitted by the government along with the proposal comply with national interests then the PDI-P will have no problem [approving the request], Masinton told the Post.



The Law and Human Rights Ministry says it has yet to decide on the mechanism. As of today, the government has yet to decide, said the director general for public law administration at the ministry, Freddy Harris.



Earlier, Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said the post of energy and minerals minister was important and strategic, thus, the State Palace would not leave the job in the hands of an acting minister for long.



However, Pramono declined to speculate on who Jokowi favored as Arcandras successor.



The President is listening [to input] and is currently looking at some people as candidates for the post, Pramono said.



Golkar Party lawmaker Eni Maulani Saragih said his party was prepared to submit names of nominees as Arcandras successor.

_________________________________________

To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam  Mon, August 22, 2016

The Indonesian Navy's Western Fleet Quick Response (WFQR) team and Mapor patrol ship apprehended a Malaysian-flagged fishing vessel and arrested its Singaporean passengers for allegedly trespassing and fishing illegally in Bintan waters, Riau Islands, on Sunday.

The patrol boats arrested the captain of the Seven Seas Conqueress, Singaporean Ricky Tan Poh Hui, along with nine other Singaporean passengers and three Indonesian crew. They were caught 12 kilometers off Tanjung Berakit in Bintan, Tanjungpinang Navy commander First Adm. S. Irawan said on Monday. They are currently being detained at the Tanjungpinang naval base in Batu Hitam.

"We will charge them under the Fisheries Law and we will also hand them over to the immigration office. The boat was fishing in Indonesian waters without a permit. The violations are pretty clear," Irawan told The Jakarta Post.

As the patrol team approached the boat, personnel allegedly found the suspects fishing illegally. Lights were on around the boat and fishing rods were in use around the hull. Furthermore, the authorities found freshly caught fish on the boat, which showed strong indications of illegal fishing, Irawan said.

Based on checks by the Navy, the Malaysian-flagged boat belongs to Singapore's Odyssey Marine PTE Ltd. The boat had a Singapore Port clearance issued on Aug. 19 to sail the open seas and the boat was also listed on the Langkawi International Yacht Registry of Malaysia.

"We are committed to giving harsh punishment to boats caught fishing illegally in Indonesia by sinking them," he added.

The case will later be processed to reach a verdict on whether the vessel was trespassing in Indonesian waters. (rin)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

A photography exhibition showing hundreds of pictures, which span over seven decades, offers historic glimpses into significant moments of the Foreign Ministry. The exhibition entitled Indonesian Diplomacy History marks the 71st anniversary of the ministry.

Deputy Foreign Minister AM Fachir said the photo exhibition aimed to give the public deeper knowledge about Indonesian diplomacy.

People can learn the history of Indonesian diplomacy through pictures displayed in this exhibition, he said during the opening of the event at Senayan City shopping mall in Central Jakarta on Sunday.

The displayed photos tell stories of Indonesian diplomats who have made great contributions to the countrys diplomacy starting from 1945 to date.

It is the first time the Foreign Ministry has held a photo exhibition at a mall. Held from Aug. 21 to 28, the exhibition will have print and digital photos on display.

Apart from the launch of the photo exhibition, the Foreign Ministry also held on Sunday a discussion on art and creative diplomacy it dubbed as an Indonesian way to promote itself around the world. Among speakers at the discussion were Indian Ambassador to Indonesia Nengcha Lhouvum, CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network Indonesia Harris Thajeb and Indonesian actor Joe Taslim.

Movies can become a way to promote Indonesian tourism abroad, such as [the film] Eat, Pray, Love, with a shooting location in Bali and starring Hollywood actress Julia Roberts, Joe said at the discussion.

The Foreign Ministry celebrates its anniversary on Aug. 19 annually. (ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22 2016

What appears to have been a desperate effort to go on the haj pilgrimage, the ultimate goal of any devout Muslim, has led to the arrest of 177 Indonesians who were allegedly attempting to go to Mecca by making use of the Philippines quota.



The group of pilgrims were arrested on Friday at Manila International Airport after it was discovered that they could not speak the local language and their Philippine passports were fake.



This case of falsifying passports and using a foreign quota is not the first instance of Indonesian pilgrims, who can wait for up to two decades to get a chance to go on the pilgrimage, trying to get around the countrys relatively small quota.



The available quota and the demand [for Indonesia] is not balanced nowadays. This happens not only in Indonesia. In neighboring countries, people can even wait 50 years to get a place to go to the holy land, the Religious Affairs Ministrys director-general of Haj and Umrah, Abdul Jamil, said.



The Directorate of Immigration in Jakarta is currently investigating whether the 177 people flew to the Philippines in a group or individually.



This year, the Saudi Arabian government has granted Indonesia around 168,800 haj places, the same quota that it gave to the country in 2015.



In 2015, the kingdom pledged an additional 10,000 seats for Indonesian pilgrims, but these can only be taken up after Saudi Arabia finishes the renovation and expansion of the Masjidil Haram grand mosque in Mecca in 2017.



Saudi cut haj quotas for Indonesia from 211,000 to 168,800 for safety reasons when it started the expansion of the mosque in 2013. The Indonesian government expects to get the normal 168,800 haj quota and the additional 10,000 places when the mosque construction is finished in 2017.



In June last year, police in Parepare, South Sulawesi, arrested 37 pilgrims who had attempted to go to Mecca also using the Philippine quota, which is known for being under-used and traded through international syndicates.



The pilgrims who were arrested on Friday reportedly paid between US$6,000 and $10,000 per person to depart as haj pilgrims from the Philippines.



Philippine authorities are still investigating the case, but insist they will bring the 177 people, who are currently being detained at an immigration detention center, to court along with two Philippine escorts, in order to uncover the network of haj syndicates in the country.



The Indonesian Foreign Ministry has welcomed the plan as it believes that the 177 people were victims of an international haj syndicate based in the Philippines.



The legal process in the Philippines could also help the government of Indonesia to figure out whether any parties in Indonesia have assisted the Philippine syndicate in recruiting haj pilgrims in Indonesia and whether the practice has been ongoing in Indonesia for some time.



We support the plan to pursue the legal process because we also have an interest in curbing the syndicates. As for the [177] Indonesians, we are confident that they are victims in the case, unless, it is later found out that some of them also acted as members of the syndicate, the Indonesian Foreign Ministrys director for the protection of Indonesian nationals and entities abroad, Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, told The Jakarta Post.



Iqbal said the Indonesian government would provide assistance during the legal process and would ensure that both countries made the best decisions for the Indonesian nationals in accordance with the rule of law in the case.



Vice President Jusuf Kalla said that many people took advantage of poorly educated people by offering them illegal ways to Saudi Arabia.



The pilgrims are victims. It is the people who give them passports who should be punished, Kalla said.

____________________________________

To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

The Jakarta Police rejected a plan from some 1,000 application-based taxi drivers to drive in convoy along the streets of the capital on Monday, to protest a regulation that affects their work.

Previously, representatives from Uber, Grab and other operators said the drivers would travel in convoy from the State Palace to the House of Representatives, Peoples Consultative Assembly and Transportation Ministry.

Because they planned to hold a convoy, the police did not issue a permit, Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Awi Setiyono said on Monday as reported by kompas.com.

Awi said representatives of the drivers had met with Jakarta Police deputy chief Brig. Gen. Suntana to discuss the plan on Monday. They have been told that the protest should not turn into anarchy and, therefore, a convoy is not allowed, Awi added.

Previously, representatives from each operator said that during the demonstration, the drivers would demand the government revoke Transportation Ministry Regulation No. 32/2016 on online taxi operations.

Among the requirements rejected by the drivers are roadworthy tests for vehicles, a requirement to obtain public transportation drivers licenses and that vehicles should be owned by operators.

A number of the articles in the regulation have caused problems for the drivers, who mostly own their cars used for online taxis, said drivers spokesman Andryawal Simanjuntak, adding that with the requirement to pass roadworthy tests, vehicles total risks became invalid because the vehicle would take on public transportation status. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Fadli (The Jakarta Post) Batam  Mon, August 22 2016

Following allegations that a Batam-based radio station has been spreading Islamic State (IS) propaganda, the management of the radio station is planning to meet Singaporean officials to explain the radios broadcasts.

On Friday, the Singaporean Ministry of Home Affairs issued an announcement regarding the arrest of a number of its citizens in connection with IS under the countrys Internal Security Act.

The announcement, which was posted on the ministrys website, also mentions that one of those arrested, namely Rosli bin Hamza, acknowledged he was first exposed to IS radical teachings on the Batam-based radio station Hang FM.

to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,500/month Unlimited access to our web and app content

e-Post daily digital newspaper

No advertisements, no interruptions

Privileged access to our events and programs

Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Hyung-jin Kim (Associated Press) Seoul  Mon, August 22, 2016

South Korea and the United States began annual military drills Monday despite North Korea's threat of nuclear strikes in response to the exercises that it calls an invasion rehearsal.

Such fiery rhetoric by Pyongyang is not unusual. But the latest warning comes at a time of more tension following the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a US plan to place a high-tech missile defense system in South Korea.

The North's military said in a statement Monday that it will turn Seoul and Washington into "a heap of ashes through a Korean-style pre-emptive nuclear strike" if they show any signs of aggression toward the North's territory.

The North's "first-strike" units are ready to mount retaliatory attacks on South Korean and US forces involved in the drills, according to the statement, carried by Pyongyang's state media.

South Korea's Unification Ministry expressed "strong" regret over the North's warning, saying the drills with the US are defensive in nature. Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said they have no intentions of invading Pyongyang.

The 12-day Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday are largely computer-simulated war games. The training involves 25,000 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers, according to the US and South Korean militaries.

The drills come just days after Seoul announced that Thae Yong Ho, No. 2 at the North's embassy in London, had recently defected to South Korea because he was disillusioned with the North's leadership. Pyongyang's state media called him "human scum" and a criminal who had been ordered home for a series of alleged criminal acts, including sexually assaulting a minor.

South Korea's President Park Geun-hye said Monday that there were signs of "serious cracks" in the North's ruling elite class after defections of key figures she didn't identity. Park told a security meeting that Pyongyang could carry out cyberattacks or other provocations on South Korea to divert public attention away from such domestic problems.

Many analysts said Thae's defection was an embarrassment to the North Korean government of leader Kim Jong Un, but would not weaken the unity of the country's elite class.

North Korea has already boosted its war rhetoric because of the planned deployment of the US Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system in South Korea, which Washington and Seoul says is needed because of the increasing North Korean threats.

About 28,500 US troops are in South Korea to help deter potential aggression from North Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with armistice, not a peace treaty.

However, Lu downplayed the significance of the meeting for China-Japan relations, saying "this is not a visit to Japan by Foreign Minister Wang Yi."
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

The Finance Ministry has admitted that the realization of the countrys flagship tax amnesty during its first month of implementation was below target.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati explained that 82.6 percent of assets declared as of Aug. 20 were dominated by individual taxpayers. The average amount of declared assets per taxpayer was Rp 6.4 billion (US$484,115), of which 17.4 percent was contributed by non-small and medium enterprise (SME) corporate taxpayers, with repatriated assets amounting to only Rp 9 million, she added.

Meanwhile, the average amount of declared assets per corporate taxpayer was only Rp 4.1 million. "These are still very small compared with our set targets," Sri Mulyani said Monday.

The Finance Ministry recorded that as of Monday, declared assets amounted to only Rp 42.6 trillion, far from the target of Rp 4 quadrillion. Of the total, Rp 35.5 trillion worth of assets were declared in Indonesia while the remaining Rp 5.56 trillion was declared overseas. Meanwhile, the total amount of repatriated assets was Rp 1.45 trillion.

The ministry added that redemptions recorded as of Monday amounted to Rp 863 billion, only 0.5 percent of the target of Rp 165 trillion expected by the government to add to its tax revenue by the end of 2016.

The figures are alarming because the first three months of the tax amnesty implementation were supposed to be the most interesting period for those wanting to join the program and enjoy the biggest penalty cuts.

The minister estimated that the figures would rise in September because big taxpayers may have completed legal adjustments to participate in the program. (ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

The trial for Wayan Mirna Salihin's murder against the accused, defendant Jessica Kumala Wongso, in Central Jakarta District Court was adjourned on Monday as Jessica requested not to attend due to illness.

Jessica developed a fever after attending the 13th day of her trial on Thursday, her attorney Otto Hasibuan said on Monday. He had asked for the next hearing to be canceled to the panel of judges and the court's clerk of the last hearing.

The request was filed even though Otto admitted the agenda for Monday's session was significant as it would present toxicologist I Made Agus Gelgel Wirasuta as a witness to the court.

"Even though this witness' testimony is very important, Jessica is not feeling well and the panel of judges have given her permission [to not attend]," Otto said on Monday as quoted by wartakota.tribunnews.com.

Previously, Jessica asked the panel of judges to have her hearing on Monday adjourned as she had a cough and sore throat. In the hearing, presiding judge Kisworo approved her request. The trial will resume on Thursday.

In the last hearing, forensic psychiatrist Natalia Widiasih Raharjanti revealed in her testimony on the details of Jessica's mental health when she was living in Australia. Natalia told the court that Jessica reportedly tried to commit suicide several times and was hospitalized at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in October and November 2015 after she was upset about breaking up with her boyfriend Patrick in September that year. (rin)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

A public debate on early marriages wafted out again when the son of prominent ustad (Islamic teacher) Arifin Ilham, 17-year-old Muhammad Alvin Faiz, married Larissa Chou, 20, on Aug. 6.

Proudly announcing his full blessing, Arifin said he married off his child to protect him from harm in the world and after life. On his official Facebook account, Arifin said with marriage, Alvin could be more focused on tafaqquhu fiddiini [studying Islam].

Alvins case is not a one-off. Early marriages are prevalent in Indonesia, influenced by the adherence to religious beliefs and socio-economic aspects. The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) recorded the percentage of Indonesian children, especially women, who get married before reaching their 18th birthday at 23 percent in 2015.

The 1974 Marriage Law sets the minimum age of marriage for females at 16 years, and 19 years for males. Alvin must first obtain a marriage dispensation from the Cibinong Religious Court because he is considered underage.

Indonesia Planned Parenthood Association (PKBI) member Frenia Nababan said early marriages should not be seen as a favored way to avoid pre-marital sex because it could dismiss a reality at its corechild marriages constituted sexual relations with or among children.

Early marriage is merely seen as the best option to protect children from committing adultery or pre-marital sex. Marriage, however, is not all about sex, Frenia told The Jakarta Post.

As a result, she said, the conventional wisdom was that the younger the men decided to marry, the more responsible he would seem to be in the eye of the public although this might not be the case.

Read also: Early marriage campaign gains ground

Union of two people: Muhammad Alvin Faiz, 17, kisses his wife Larissa Chou, 20, after their marriage ceremony on Aug. 6. (Courtesy of Bintang.com/-)

For girls, early marriages are often used as a strategy to reduce household economic burdens. There are many things one should consider before he or she enters a marriage, such as their mental and physical readiness, earning capacity and their capability to raise children, said Frenia.

She said child marriages were closely linked to poverty. Girls who were married as children tend to be school dropouts, limiting their employment opportunities. They were also prone to complications during pregnancy and labor. These will hamper the countrys efforts to achieve quality human resources, said Frenia.

The PKBI is part of the Indonesian Coalition to End Child Marriage (Koalisi 18+), a social movement that aims to stop child marriage and the forced marriage of young people. Last year, Koalisi 18+ filed a judicial review against the 1974 Marriage Law, requesting the government to increase the minimum age of marriage to 18 for females. The Constitutional Court rejected the request in a hearing in June 2015.

The coalition would continue to advocate and raise awareness against child marriages and forced marriages despite the disappointing result, Frenia said.

Meanwhile, the National Family Planning and Population Agency (BKKBN) is of the opinion that the minimum age of marriage for females should be 21. It says, according to health aspects, a woman will be physically and mentally ready at 21 while the minimum age for a man should be 25.

Clinical and forensic psychologist Kassandra Putranto said mental and social immaturity within child marriages would impact the quality of a family.

She said teenage brains were wired uniquely, in which the prefrontal cortex, or the control part of the brain, was still immature. Whereas, part of the brain that sought pleasure and reward, tended to be more developed.

This was why, Kassandra said, parents had a duty to assist their children in making the best decisions for their future. (ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Cinar Kiper (Associated Press) Istanbul  Mon, August 22, 2016

A child suicide bomber killed at least 51 people and wounded nearly 70 others at a Kurdish wedding party near Turkey's border with Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday, decrying the attack as an apparent attempt by Islamic State extremists to destabilize the nation by exploiting ethnic and religious tensions.

"As of now, the preliminary conclusions by our governor's office and the police establishment point to an attack by Daesh," Erdogan said, using another common term for IS.

"It was clear that Daesh had such an organization in Gaziantep or was attempting to make room for itself in recent times," he said.

The bombing late Saturday in Gaziantep was the deadliest attack in Turkey this year.

It comes amid ongoing struggles between the government and Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, known as the PKK, and as the country is still reeling from the aftermath of last month's failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers.

Erdogan said immediately after the Gaziantep attack, which he blamed on IS, that any strategy "meant to incite the citizens against each other along ethnic and religious lines will not work."

Later, addressing the nation before Istanbul's city hall, Erdogan said the attacker in Gaziantep was aged between 12 and 14. He said 69 people were wounded, with 17 of them in critical condition.

He again blamed the attack on the Islamic State, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The pro-Kurdish political party HDP condemned the attack on the wedding, which it said was attended by many of its party members.

It said in a statement that it was "quite significant" that the attack, which it also blamed on IS, came hours after the Kurdistan Communities Union, a militant organization that includes the PKK, announced plans to try to negotiate to end a three-decade conflict between Kurdish militants and the Turkish government.

"This attack targets those determined and persistent in peace, resolution, and those struggling for democracy, equality, freedom and justice," the HDP said. "The attack was planned to disable the spread of peace and success of possible negotiations."

A bus driver who shuttled some of the guests from Siirt to Gaziantep said that he couldn't believe the party was targeted.

"This was a wedding party. Just a regular wedding party," Hamdullah Ceyhan told the state-run Anadolu Agency. "This attack was deplorable. How did they do such a thing?"

The bride and groom weren't in life-threatening condition and were undergoing treatment, but the groom's sister and uncle were among the dead, Anadolu reported.

Multiple opposition parties denounced the attack, as did many foreign governments including the U.S., Germany, Austria, Russia, Egypt, Sweden, Greece, France, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan and global institutions including the United Nations, the European Union and NATO.

"We stand by our ally Turkey and pledge to continue to work closely together to defeat the common threat of terrorism," said U.S. Ambassador to Turkey John Bass.

In the Vatican, Pope Francis led hundreds of people in silent prayer for the victims of the attack, concluding by asking "for the gift of peace for everyone."

Security expert Metin Gurcan, a former Turkish military officer and columnist for the online newspaper Al-Monitor, said that IS view the attack as "hitting two birds with one stone"  as retaliation for Syrian Kurdish advances on their forces in Syria, and for Turkey's attacks on IS targets.

Gurcan said in an email to The Associated Press that IS has been trying to agitate or exploit ethnic and religious tensions in Turkey, and "we know very well to what extent wedding attacks can sow disorder in nation's social fabric from the Afghanistan experience."

The suicide bombing follows a June attack on Istanbul's main airport where IS suspects killed 44 people. A dual suicide bombing blamed on IS at a peace rally in Turkey's capital, Ankara, in October killed 103 people.

Meantime, there have also been ongoing attacks claimed by the PKK or linked to the militant group, as well as the coup attempt blamed on Gulen's movement. Gulen has denied any involvement.

Earlier this week, a string of bombings blamed on the PKK that targeted police and soldiers killed at least a dozen people. A fragile, 2 year peace process between the PKK and the government collapsed last year, leading to a resumption of the three-decade-long conflict.

In the immediate aftermath of the Gaziantep bombing, Erdogan said there was "absolutely no difference" between IS, Kurdish rebels and Gulen's movement, calling them terrorist groups.

Gurcan said, however, that it was a "grave mistake" to lump the three together.

"Putting these three organizations with different political objectives, tactics and techniques into the same basket ... causes the failure of tailoring specific counter strategies," he said.

Following the attack, police sealed off the site of the explosion and forensic teams moved in. Outside the perimeter, hundreds of residents gathered chanting "Allah is great" as well as slogans denouncing attacks.

Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek and the country's health minister traveled to the scene, visiting the wounded and inspecting the site.

"This is a massacre of unprecedented cruelty and barbarism," Simsek told reporters. "We ... are united against all terror organizations. They will not yield."

In Istanbul, HDP supporters organized a rally attended by hundreds Sunday evening to protest the bombing. One participant, shop owner Ercan Yilmaz, 36, told the AP it was "always those kinds of people being targeted  a Kurdish wedding party, opposition groups or people calling for peace in Ankara," referring to the peace rally attacked in October.

"On the other hand, the AKP (Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party) has gatherings and rallies everywhere but they're never bombed," he added.

___

David Rising in Berlin and Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed to this report. (**)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin David Keyton (Associated Press) Oslo  Mon, August 22, 2016

Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende on Monday opened a new round of peace talks between the government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and communist rebels aimed at ending one of Asia's longest-running rebellions that has killed 150,000 people.

Brende said the talks were welcome but cautioned that the issues are demanding.

The negotiations, scheduled to last until Saturday, were facilitated by a cease-fire imposed by Duterte and a truce announced by the rebels that began Sunday.

Maoist rebels have fought successive Philippines administrations for nearly 50 years, holding out against constant military and police offensives. They draw support from those dissatisfied with economic inequality, especially in the countryside, and the Philippines' alliance with the US.

The rebels trace their roots to a communist party whose guerrilla wing helped fight Japanese occupation forces in World War II and their ranks swelled after dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972. They set up jungle camps over the sprawling archipelago as launching pads for raids targeting the military and police, large agricultural and mining estates as well as US forces, which maintained major bases in the Philippines until 1991.

The peace process, which has lasted decades, broke down in 2001 when the rebels backed out after the US government  followed by the European Union  placed them on a list of terrorist organizations, but under the leadership of Norway the talks resumed in 2011.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Christopher Bodeen (Associated Press) Beijing  Mon, August 22, 2016

A look at recent 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:

DUTERTE TAKES LOW-KEY APPROACH TO DISPUTE WITH CHINA

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said last week that he would not raise maritime disputes with China at a meeting of Southeast Asian nations in Laos next month, preferring to talk quietly with Chinese officials.

"I will only bring the issue when we are together face to face," he told reporters. "Because if you quarrel with them now and you claim sovereignty, make noise here and there, they might not just even want to talk."

Duterte has been lukewarm in his support for the international arbitration case filed by his predecessor and has said he was adopting "a softer approach" to resolving the disputes.

He said last week that his special envoy to China, former President Fidel Ramos, is paving the way for possible talks with China.

"Let us create an environment where we can sit down, talk directly, and that is the time when I would say, we proceed from here," he said.

Ramos flew to Hong Kong earlier this month to meet the Chinese legislature's foreign affairs chief, Fu Ying, and a leading government-backed scholar on the dispute, and they agreed on the need to reduce tensions through talks.

China welcomed him to visit Beijing for discussions, but the tribunal ruling was not directly discussed, Ramos told reporters. He gave no indication of when any talks might be held.

PHILIPPINES RECEIVES COAST GUARD SHIP FROM JAPAN

The Philippine coast guard took possession last week of the first of nine multi-role response vessels being provided by Japan in an effort to boost a chronic shortage of maritime assets amid Manila's territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea.

The 44-meter (144-foot) BRP Tubbataha was formally received at the port in the capital, Manila, after having left Japan on Aug. 11 with a dozen officers and sailors on board. The ships are being built by the Japan Marine United Corporation's Yokohama shipyard.

Alongside the US military's heightened emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region, Japan has been upping its presence in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, partly to counter China's growing footprint. Aside from their close geographic proximity, the Philippines and Japan are both US treaty partners who are locked in maritime territorial claims with Beijing.

The Philippines challenged the validity of China's claims and aggressive actions in the South China Sea after Chinese government ships took control of disputed Scarborough Shoal following a tense standoff in 2012. China, meanwhile, claims sovereignty over a string of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea controlled by Japan and has lately stepped-up coast guard activities in the area.

Closer cooperation between Japan and the Philippines is sure to anger China, which suffered from Japanese invasion in World War II and warns constantly of a resurgence of militaristic sentiments within Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's conservative government.

CHINA, ASEAN AGREE ON RULES GOVERNING SEA ENCOUNTERS

Senior officials from China and Southeast Asian Nations met in northern China last week to agree on rules governing unexpected encounters at sea in hopes of avoiding conflicts.

Representatives from Beijing and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations discussed implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea signed in 2002.

That agreement was intended to promote "peace, stability and mutual trust in the South China Sea," but has been largely shoved aside by China's decision to assert its own claim to virtually the entire strategic water body.

Despite that, all parties say they want to avoid hostile encounters that could spark a larger conflict. The agreed on Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea had already been adopted by several, but not all ASEAN countries, at a meeting in China in 2014.

"The code itself is technical, but applying the code has political significance. It is politically important to prevent potential risks on South China Sea," Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told attendees at the meeting in the city of Manzhouli in northern China's Inner Mongolia region.

China and ASEAN are still discussing a South China Sea Code of Conduct that would more explicitly define rights and obligations among countries with overlapping territorial claims in the crucial water body.

CHINA HOLDS LIVE-FIRING EXERCISES IN GULF OF TONKIN

China's coast guard launched live-firing exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, the latest in a series of military drills that come amid a renewed focus on the multinational dispute over maritime claims in the South China Sea.

The Maritime Safety Administration said ships and boats were barred from the area, called the Beibu Gulf by China, from Monday to Wednesday. The gulf lies between China's southern island province of Hainan and the northeastern coast of Vietnam

China's navy and air force have held a series of drills in surrounding waters since an international arbitration panel in The Hague issued a ruling last month invalidating Beijing's claim to virtually the entire South China Sea, where six governments in all claim territory.

China angrily rejected the ruling and said it would begin flying regular air patrols over the strategic waterway while continuing to develop airstrips, harbors and other infrastructure of military value on man-made islands it controls in the disputed Spratly group.

China also plans joint naval exercises with Russia in the South China Sea next month in a move criticized by the US as harming regional stability.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin (Associated Press) Hanoi  Mon, August 22, 2016

A Vietnamese government minister says it's now safe to swim at most beaches in four central provinces where massive fish deaths occurred more than four months ago because of toxic chemicals released by a Taiwanese steel company.

The online newspaper VnExpress quoted Environment Minister Tran Hong Ha as telling a conference Monday that aquaculture is now also safe in most areas, but that research by the Ministry of Health is needed to determine whether it's safe to eat fish caught within 20 nautical miles (23 miles, 37 kilometers) off the coast of the four affected provinces.

Professor Mai Trong Nhuan, who headed a team of Vietnamese and foreign scientists commissioned by the government to study the impact of the disaster, told the conference that the chemicals, including cyanide and carbolic acids, are becoming more dilute, according to VnExpress.

Nhuan said the marine ecosystem, including coral reefs, sea grasses and other marine resources that were seriously damaged, has begun to recover.

The factory, owned by the Formosa Plastics Group, acknowledged in June that it was responsible for the pollution that killed large numbers of fish off the central Vietnamese coast, and pledged to pay US$500 million to clean it up and compensate affected people.

The country's worst environmental disaster has devastated the fishing and tourism industries in the region.

The government said in a report to the National Assembly in July that the disaster harmed the livelihoods of more than 200,000 people, including 41,000 fishermen.

An estimated 115 tons of fish washed ashore along more than 200 kilometers (125 miles) of the central coast in April, the report said. The pollution sparked rare protests across the country.

Formosa Plastics's US$10.6 billion steel complex in Ha Tinh province includes a steel plant, a power plant and a deep sea port, and is one of the largest foreign investments in Vietnam.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

The Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) has introduced an online media center as a source for copyright-free, downloadable images and videos related to tourism in Japan.

Dubbed the Japan Online Media Center, it reportedly has a database of over 7,000 photos and videos, especially of popular tourist attractions, landscapes, food, historical experiences and culture.

(Read also: Popular onsen to visit in Japan)

Users simply need to register to gain access to high-quality content, with photos and videos organized based on areas and themes. The website also provides general information about the country.

The JNTO itself provides various information for visitors to Japan, including travel tips, a list of festivals and events, transportation, accommodation and visa information and other useful material about the country. (kes)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, August 22, 2016

Celebrating the 71st anniversary of Indonesian independence, Karnaval Kemerdekaan Pesona Danau Toba (KKPDT) was held from Aug. 20 to 21 in Parapat and Balige, Toba Samosir district.

With at least 26 provinces, 26 districts, as well as municipalities in North Sumatra, and seven districts in the Lake Toba area participating, the carnival was filled with many attractive events. Attractions included a parade of ships that were decorated with colorful lamps, the first ever floating stage on Lake Toba that hosted a musical show, Pesona Tarian Kontemporer (contemporary dance) based on traditional dance, a Batak opera performance, along with a culinary festival in Parapat, carnival and stage performance in Balige.

(Read also: Jokowi pushes for faster development of Lake Toba)

The stage at the Pesona Danau Toba event(JP/Ady Pamungkas)

Aside from celebrating independence, the event is one way to promote Lake Toba as one of the ultimate tourist destinations in Indonesia, says Tourism Minister Arief Yahya, The attractiveness of Lake Tobas nature and the local culture will be a magnet for visitors.

Spanning 3.5 kilometers, the Lake Toba carnival route stretched from Soposurung to Simpang Sibulele. It moves through the traditional market in Balerong that consists of six majestic buildings that were built in 1930 decorated with Batak Gorda carvings.

President Joko Widodo at the Pesona Danau Toba event.(JP/Ady Pamungkas)

The carnival will be attended by no less than 50,000 people, predicted chairman of the KKPDT committee, Premita Fifi, in a press conference in Jakarta on Aug. 10. The event appeared to draw a crowd close to that.

Also on show were 700 women who wore traditional clothing while holding tandok (head baskets) filled with rice, 300 seruling (flute) players from the Humbang Hasundutan group, and other traditional performances. President Joko Widodo attended the carnival together with first lady, Iriana Joko Widodo, wearing traditional clothes by designer Edward Hutabarat. (asw)
Labour leadership contender Owen Smith has come under fire for his remarks that to solve the crises facing Iraq and Syria we will need to get people round the table  but was he right?

Smiths remarks have been called a mistake and criticised for legitimising Isis, but there are clearly questions about how to solve the conflict, and what groups of people we should be negotiating with in the region.

Here are some experts' opinions on negotiating strategies with Isis.

How do negotiations work?

The Good Friday Agreement was a landmark for Northern Ireland peace talks (PA)

The Northern Ireland peace process in the 1990s had to deal with how to bring politicians from both sides of the conflict to the table and leave behind the shadow of paramilitary activities.

Monica McWilliams, a former member of the Northern Ireland Assembly who had a seat at the multi-party negotiations, explained how the Good Friday Agreement worked.

When we entered the talks in Northern Ireland we had about six different principles that we all had to agree upon. Clearly one of those was that we would adhere to and work towards resolving our difficulties through political means only and not by the use of any violent means, she said.

The principle of ceasefire is crucial to navigating successful negotiations  Sinn Fein were banned from negotiations for a year because the IRA had not reinstated its ceasefire.

McWilliams, who has more recently trained women to play a part in the Geneva peace talks on Syria, listed the key things to consider when negotiating with groups: How representative are the group? How accountable are they? What are the structures youre negotiating with? And are they able to carry through on what will be agreed and what will be be delivered?

Could we negotiate with Isis?

Pro-Isis demonstrators in the Iraqi city of Mosul (AP)

Bearing in mind the standards required for successful negotiations, McWilliams said: I dont think Isis is at that stage.

I dont think Isis is interested in being seen as representative and certainly not interested in being held to account  so I would be wary of who we would be negotiating with.

Andrew Hosken, a BBC senior correspondent and author of Empire Of Fear: Inside The Islamic State, agrees.

This is a genocidal organisation thats committed crimes against humanity. It wants to conquer all of the so-called Muslim lands, and then afterwards they want to take over the rest of the world, and theyve been very open about this, and subject it to their form of extreme Islam.

Its very difficult for me to see what the negotiating position would be with Isis.

Jonathan Powell, who served as chief of staff to ex-PM Tony Blair between 1995 and 2007, and was instrumental in the Northern Ireland peace talks, has a different perspective.

He wrote in the Guardian last year that whilst military strategy is important in defeating Isis, so is dialogue. He said that even if Isis was defeated militarily, the idea behind it would still exist.

I am not suggesting for a moment that we should sit down with Baghdadi (the leader of Isis) now and try to negotiate, even if he were prepared to sit down with us, he wrote.

But we should do what we did in all previous conflicts: open a quiet channel that will allow us to begin negotiations once both sides have come to the realisation that there is no military solution.

Could we negotiate with anyone else in Iraq?

Iraqi capital Baghdad (Karim Kadim/AP)

Hosken said one group that should be included in talks are the Sunni Muslims in Iraq.

The Sunnis, one of the two major denominations of Islam, the other being the Shias, made up large swathes of the Iraqi elite before the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

They took top positions in Saddam Husseins ruling Baath Party, including senior posts in the military, the security services and other government jobs.

The Americans saw this as a problem  the majority of Iraq is populated by Shias. So, when they invaded, they implemented a policy of de-Baathification, which led to the sacking of thousands of Sunnis from these positions  widely considered one of the worst policy decisions made by the American government during this period.

When the Sunnis lost their jobs, many of them became insurgents, later taking their skills, tactics and anger to Isis.

In terms of broader talks about the inclusion of the Sunnis in Iraq yes, people are talking about that and there are attempts to do that with the new government in Iraq already, said Hosken.

Its something that clearly needs to happen because this was one of the big problems that fuelled the rise of Isis from 2010 to 2011. The ostracism of the Sunni and the feeling that they were being excluded helped Isis get back on its feet after almost being destroyed.

What about in Syria?

Historic Palmyra came under attack from Isis in Syria (AP)

As well as Isis, other actors in Syria include the Free Syrian Army, the Al-Nusra Front, and President Assads government forces.

Al-Nusra, a Sunni Islamist group with links to al Qaida, are not the natural bedfellows of the secular Free Syrian Army, but importantly neither group is Isis, and both groups are fighting Assad.

McWilliams, who has worked with Syrians, said: When I talk to them they constantly ask me should we be talking to Al-Nusra? She said the two groups have joined forces in Aleppo to take back Assad-controlled territory, and that considering the unusual alliance, it would make more sense to talk to them [Al-Nusra] than Isis.

The West already broadly backs the Free Syrian Army, but negotiating with Al-Nusra would mean making sure the group fulfils the criteria for successful negotiations, said McWilliams. She added that would include demonstrating they care about human rights  something Al-Nusra are not famed for.

So what next?

(Steve Parsons/PA)

In the controversial televised Labour leadership debate, Owen Smith said: My view is that, ultimately, all solutions to these international crises do come about through dialogue, so eventually if we are to try to solve this all of the actors do need to be involved. But at the moment Isil [Isis] are clearly not interested in negotiating. At some point for us to resolve this, we will need to get people round the table.

It doesnt need saying that the situation is intense, volatile and dangerous  but whatever is decided happens next, it seems essential to have a rational debate and consider all the options.
A monthly gin and tonic club is looking for an intern to travel around the UK and parts of Europe to discover  and, wait for it, also sample (erm, is this real life?)  new gins to work with.

real job Just in case you have your doubts, we can confirm this is an actual,that you could find yourself getting paid to do.

ILoveGin.com are a website that helps people discover their new favourite craft gins. And their new gintern (clever, huh?) has to be happy to spend their days trying new gins, finding new brands, visiting distilleries and just generally ginspiring. Phew. Anyone else feel tipsy just reading that?

Gin GIF  Find & Share on GIPHY



And, its not just gin youll be trying expect a lot of delicious tonic tasting too. Because another role of the paid internship is to try new mixers and expertly pair gins with exactly the right tonic.

Now, if this job sounds like your dream career (yep) you should know the role is flexible, so you can work from home. But, you must be over the age of 18, obvs, and you also need to hold a full drivers license and live in the UK. Oh, and its currently only a 6-month contract but you might be offered a full-time position after that.

ILoveGin have also made it clear in the job advert that the new gintern will need to be happy to travel to a real variety of events and places. Typically youll be visiting one or two new gin companies each week.

One day you might be up in Edinburgh tasting a new craft gin, the next going to a launch event in London for a new tonic water, they explain on their website. Oh, its a tough life

*Stops everything to write a new CV*
Two Irish women travelling to the UK for abortions recorded every step of their journey on Twitter this weekend.

@TwoWomenTravel Using the account, the anonymous women shared their journey to raise awareness of Irelands strict anti-abortion laws, particularly the Eighth Amendment of the constitution.

According to their Twitter account, the women left Ireland this morning on a flight bound for the UK on Saturday.

Tagging Taoiseach Enda Kenny in each post, they updated followers on their progress throughout the day.

We stand in solidarity with all women exiled by @EndaKennyTD, his predecessors, and apologists. #twowomentravel pic.twitter.com/aNk2e0MMLd  Two Women Travel (@TwoWomenTravel) August 20, 2016



According to the Irish Family Planning Association, 3,451 women and girls travelled to the UK for an abortion in 2015 to ensure they were not prosecuted under the Eighth Amendment.

The amendment was signed into law in 1983 and gives a foetus equal rights to the woman carrying it, effectively banning abortion completely.

Pretty ordinary sights, in a place away from home. Can't say it's comforting, though @EndaKennyTD #twowomentravel pic.twitter.com/3FTxYGAG1y  Two Women Travel (@TwoWomenTravel) August 20, 2016



However, opinions are changing in Ireland. An Irish Times/IPSOS Mori poll in July found that 67% of people support repeal of the Eighth Amendment to allow for abortion in cases of rape or fatal foetal anomaly.

The women, who described their Twitter activity as Two Women, one procedure, 48 hours away from home, posted from two different waiting rooms due to a change of plan.

People showed their support for the women on Twitter, using the hashtag #Repealthe8th

Solidarity with @TwoWomenTravel and the roughly 12 women who travel to UK every day, 5000 every year. #repealthe8th #twowomentravel  Lisa Hannigan (@LisaHannigan) August 20, 2016



Hi @TwoWomenTravel Just wanted to showe the love and support on our facebook page for you 2 #twowomentravel pic.twitter.com/HMqovtipzN  Abortion Rights IE (@freesafelegal) August 20, 2016



Just want to tweet in support of @twowomentravel #twowomentravel I will continue campaign to #repealthe8th in my teaching & my activism  Dr Declan Kavanagh (@DrDeclanK) August 20, 2016



I have nothing but the utmost respect for the bravery of @TwoWomenTravel and the utmost shame that they need to do so. #repealthe8th  Annihilation of Man (@aoifemrtn) August 20, 2016



A later tweet thanked followers for their support.
Tentang Situs Slot Online Resmi MGS88 Nama Situs  MGS88 Minimal Deposit  Rp. 10.000,- (Sepuluh Ribu Rupiah) Proses Deposit   2 Menit Metode Deposit  Bank Transfer,  Pulsa,  E-Wallet Judi Online Terbaik  Slot Online,  Judi Bola,  Casino Online,  Togel Online,  Tembak Ikan Provider Slot Gacor Mudah Maxwin  Pragmatic Play,  PGSoft,  MicroGaming,  Habanero Slot Gacor Gampang Menang  Gates of Olympus,  Sweet Bonanza,  Wild West Gold,  Starlight Princess Win Rate 98%

RTP Live Slot Gacor Tertinggi Hari Ini Terbaru Terlengkap

Selamat datang di halaman RTP live dan informasi soal slot gacor hari ini dari situs MGS88 yang setiap hari selalu update. Berdasarkan RTP Live MGS88, Anda bisa mendapatkan informasi tentang slot online yang saat ini yang sedang Gacor atau onfire dengan persentase yang terbukti akurat, ini bisa menjadi rekomendasi anda sebelum memilih permainan slot online di situs MGS88. Cek RTP Slot sekarang juga bosku

Klik Provider Slot Untuk Mengetahui RTP Slot Secara Real Time

Selamat datang bagi kalian yang sedang mencari situs RTP Live terlengkap dan terkini hari ini. Sangat sesuai jika Anda mengunjungi website MGS88 RTP live untuk informasi tentang permainan slot yang lagi gacor dengan slot RTP yang terupdate. Persentase kemenangan yang kami berikan tentunya diambil dengan data yang sangat valid dan hanya untuk permainan slot yang tersedia di situs MGS88. RTP yang tersedia juga akan selalu diperbarui setiap hari berdasarkan level kemenangan yang diberikan kepada member kami.

Memang sih untuk bermain slot itu tergantung hoki dari setiap pemain, Namun RTP live atau bocoran slot dari yang kami sediakan ini adalah data autentik dari banyaknya pemain yang telah bermain dan mencapai kemenangan tinggi. Sederhananya, kalau banyak pemain yang menang di dalam 1 permainan slot, karena itu permainan slot tersebut akan mempunyai persentase RTP yang sangat tinggi.

Namun kami tegaskan sekali lagi, ini bukan sebuah paksaan kami situs MGS88 untuk anda bermain di game slot yang mana. Ini bisa dijadikan sebagai referensi atau tolok ukur, boleh dicoba kalau anda mempunyai feel yang kuat dalam memainkan permainan game slot. Anda dapat mengakses kapan saja dan di mana saja selama anda siap bermain. Jangan ragu untuk bertanya ya seputar pola putaran terhadap kami, sebab kami juga menyediakannya loh.

Apa itu RTP Live?

RTP Live ialah informasi mengenai persentase tertinggi saat ini dari hasil RTP Live dengan bocoran kemenangan pemain saat ini. RTP Live merupakan singkatan dari Return To Play atau bisa juga diartikan sebagai Return to Player. Karena itu, para pemain slot sekarang jika ingin mengetahui seberapa besar kemenangannya, bisa dengan memainkan permainan yang akan dimainkannya dan bisa untung dengan mudah dan tentunya maksimal.

Apa itu RTP Slot?

RTP Slot juga dikenal sebagai return to player atau pengembalian ke Pemain. RTP slot ialah persentase dari nilai pengembalian semua uang yang dipertaruhkan pemain dari waktu ke waktu. Dengan kata lain, RTP juga dianggap sebagai salah satu fitur slot yang mengembalikan uang pemain saat pemain kalah.

Persentase digunakan untuk menghitung RTP dalam permainan slot. Misalnya, jika slot memiliki RTP 97%, itu berarti untuk setiap 100.000 koin yang hilang di slot, slot dapat mengembalikan 97.000. Jika Anda mengetahui RTP sebuah permainan slot, Anda dapat memutuskan permainan slot mana yang akan dimainkan tanpa kerugian besar.

Apakah Angka Persentase RTP Slot Itu Penting?

Biasanya pemain slot itu tidak memperhatikan RTP dalam permainan yang akan dimainkan, biasanya setelah anda mengisi saldo utama anda akan langsung buru-buru memainkannya. Yang terakhir 90-96% mempengaruhi jumlah kemenangan. Semakin tinggi jumlah RTP yang digunakan, semakin luas peluang untuk mendapatkan keuntungan.

Akan namun itu segala tak secara 100% menjamin kemenangan kau dalam bermain, RTP itu cuma sebagai kalkulasi pengeluaran anda saja selama bermain slot.Dengan adanya RTP, kau dapat mengerjakan pengaturan atas uang yang akan kau pertaruhkan nanti pada ketika bermain.Untuk itu pada ketika kau bermain slot dan telah mengalami banyak kekalahan di satu permainan, direkomendasikan kau pindah ke permainan slot lainnya yang RTP nya lebih tinggi dari permainan yang tadi kau mainkan.

Keuntungan Menggunakan Bocoran RTP Slot Hari Ini

Situs MGS88 Akan dengan senang hati akan beberapa keuntungan yang didapatkan jika anda bermain slot dengan menggunakan RTP Live yang telah disediakan. Berikut Keuntungannya :

Peluang Kemenangan Meningkat Tentu saja, saat bermain slot online, menang adalah hal yang paling penting. Di sinilah RTP berperan sebagai metode atau metode baru yang akan membantu Anda memilih permainan slot persentase tinggi. Mendapat variasi dalam Memainkan Game Slot Pastinya banyak pemain slot online yang hanya memainkan 3-5 permainan slot saja. Namun dengan RTP Live slot akan memberikan banyak game slot lain yang bisa anda coba. Tentunya semua permainan slot memiliki potensi kemenangan yang besar, jadi jangan hanya mengandalkan beberapa permainan saja. Menambah Pengalaman Dalam Bermain Slot Keuntungan terakhir adalah Anda tentu saja menambah pengalaman dan keahlian dalam permainan slot online. Dengan berbagai macam permainan slot yang dimainkan, Anda pasti mengetahui karakteristik dari setiap permainan slot yang Anda mainkan. Akibatnya, Anda pasti bisa dianggap sebagai pemain slot yang andal, yang pasti akan meningkatkan peluang Anda untuk menang besar menggunakan RTP.

Daftar 8 Situs Dengan RTP Slot Live Tertinggi Hari Ini

Ada banyak penyedia mesin slot online di internet. Tetapi tidak semuanya memiliki peluang tinggi atau RTP Live Slot yang sangat tinggi. Tapi jangan khawatir, berikut ini adalah situs slot gacor yang akan memberikan bocoran slot dengan RTP Live Tertinggi:

RTP Live Slot Pragmatic Play (RTP Slot 97.85%) RTP Live Slot PG Soft (RTP Live 96.15%) RTP Live Slot Habanero (RTP Slot 95.89%) RTP Live Slot CQ9 (RTP Live 98.83%) RTP Live Slot Spade Gaming (RTP Live 94.99%) RTP Live Slot Micro Gaming (RTP Slot 95.39%) RTP Slot Live Top Trend Gaming (RTP Live 96.14%) RTP Slot Live JOKER123 (RTP Live 97.45%)

Itulah Daftar 8 Provider Slot Gacor dengan RTP Live teratas diatas tentunya kami analisa terlebih dahulu. Anda bisa membuktikannya langsung dengan mengklik banner atau meprovider game slot yang sudah tersedia di atas. Saran kami yaitu Anda harus memainkan semua penyedia slot di atas untuk mencapai peluang kemenangan terbaik.

Daftar Slot RTP Live Tertinggi Sering Kasih Jackpot

Selain mempertimbangkan RTP Slot Gacor yang ada, sebenarnya ada banyak faktor penting untuk menang dalam permainan judi online. Sebab ada banyak game yang memiliki fitur dan mekanisme unik dan bisa membantu anda meraih Jackpot yang sangat besar.

Berikut ini akan kami ulas daftar 5 game slot paling populer karena sering memberikan jackpot:

RTP Live Gates of Olympus Gates of Olympus adalah game slot teraneh dan terbaik di Indonesia. Karena permainan mesin slot ini paling populer karena kakek Zeus dapat mengizinkan pengganda x500. Selain itu, fitur dan mekanik Gates of Olympus juga sangat menguntungkan untuk memenangkan Grand Jackpot. Secara teoritis, RTP slot langsung Gates of Olympus bernilai 96,50%, yang berarti peluang Anda untuk memenangkan MaxWin cukup tinggi. RTP live Sweet Bonanza Sweet Bonanza adalah permainan slot terpopuler kedua. Game slot bertema buah dan permen yang lezat ini sepertinya akan menarik banyak perhatian karena tergolong slot gacor yang mudah menang. Secara teoritis, slot Sweet Bonanza RTP bernilai 96,48%, yang berarti peluang Anda cukup tinggi untuk memenangkan jackpot. RTP Live Wild West Gold Wild West Gold adalah permainan slot bertema koboi yang juga populer di kalangan penggemar konspirasi. Permainan slot Wild West Gold sendiri kerap menawarkan kejutan jackpot bagi para pemainnya. Selain itu, nilai RTP Live Slot menunjukkan indeks tertinggi hari ini, yang berarti sangat layak dan sangat direkomendasikan. RTP Live Starlight Princess Slot Starlight Princess ini memiliki gaya dan fitur yang mirip dengan Gates of Olympus. Perbedaannya hanya pada desain dan karakter gamenya saja, karena memiliki fitur dan mekanik yang sama tentunya RTP slot teoritis pada game slot ini sama yaitu 96,50%. RTP Live Cash Elevator Mungkin sebagian dari Anda baru mengenal slot Cash Elevator. Namun dari data benchmark yang diungkap, ternyata banyak sekali yang menikmati permainan slot ini. Dengan fitur dan mekanisme unik seperti Lift up and down asli, slot ini juga memiliki slot RTP Live dasar 96,64% yang juga memiliki mekanisme yang sangat menguntungkan untuk memperlancar tingkat kemenangan besar.

Bocoran Jam Main Slot Gacor Hari Ini

Dalam bermain permainan slot online itu tidak bisa dilakukan dengan sembarangan yah. Jadi, Jika anda bermain pada waktu tertentu seperti yang akan kita bahas sesaat lagi, ada kemungkinan anda untuk mendapatkan kemenangan lebih tinggi. Jam RTP Slot Gacor merupakan bocoran jam main slot yang akan memberikan anda kapan waktu yang pas dalam bermain game slot.

Tentu saja seluruh provider slot online memiliki jam tertentu dalam memberikan peluang kepada para pemainnya untuk mendapatkan kemenangan. Disini kami akan memberikan anda Bocoran Jam Slot Gacor yang Paling Akurat Hari ini:

Jam Slot Gacor Pragmatic Play 02:30 WIB - Jam 05:25 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Habanero 14:26 WIB - Jam 17:38 WIB Jam Slot Gacor CQ9 00:45 WIB - Jam 05:53 WIB Jam Slot Gacor PG SOFT 14:25 WIB - Jam 17:35 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Joker123 17:41 WIB - Jam 20:42 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Microgaming 22:30 WIB - Jam 00:35 WIB

MGS88: Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Pay4D Resmi dan Terpercaya

MGS88 adalah situs game slot online Gacor terbaru yang bermitra dengan Pay4D, Pay4D sendiri merupakan daftar situs game slot online terpercaya dengan berbagai macam permainan judi yang mudah dimenangkan seperti Game Bola, Casino Online, Slot Pay4D, Tembak Ikan dan Pay4D Online Permainan togel seperti Singapura, Hongkong, Sydney dan lain-lain. Tujuan utama kami adalah menjadi situs judi online Pay4D yang menyediakan layanan judi online terbaik di Indonesia.

Kami juga salah satu situs resmi PAY4D di Indonesia yang pasti akan membayarkan semua kemenangan kepada semua member kami, karena kepercayaan dari semua member kami adalah prioritas utama kami sebagai mesin slot 4d Asia terbaik di Asia, khususnya di Indonesia.

Dalam melakukan sistem transaksi sistem simpanan dapat dilakukan dengan mudah melalui mobile banking dan electronic banking berupa bank BCA, BSI, BRI, BNI, Cimb Niaga, Permata dan Mandiri. Selain itu, transaksi e-wallet juga tersedia melalui Dana, Gopay, LinkAja dan Ovo serta dapat digunakan untuk pulsa tanpa dipotong.

Untuk mempermudah dan kenyamanan dalam melakukan registrasi atau melakukan setiap transaksi, MGS88 menyediakan layanan live chat dan Whatsapp terhubung langsung dengan customer service online 24 jam.

Mengenal Istilah Dalam RTP SLOT

Di slot RTP Live Anda akan melihat berbagai fitur yang mungkin tidak Anda pahami masing-masing. Namun jangan khawatir, disini sebagai situs slot gacor MGS88 kami akan memberikan penjelasan lengkap mengenai tentang istilah yang ada di RTP SLOT dibawah ini.
Bodies found on, near Phi Phi believed to be missing crew

PHUKET: The Royal Thai Navy recovered the body of a man found floating in the sea west of Phi Phi Island yesterday and are en route to recovering another body found washed ashore at the popular tourist island today (Aug 22).

Monday 22 August 2016, 12:03PM

Both bodies are believed to be missing crew members of the fishing boat Bumrungthainawa 1, which capsized in a storm conditions off Phuket early last week. (See story here.)

Crew on the local tour boat Hong Fai 29 reported seeing a body about 10km west of Phi Phi Island at about 9:30am, said Capt Pongjak Uraiman, Commanding officer of Naval Air Squadron Third Fleet Area Command.

Navy rescue boat Tor 993 was sent to recover the body, Capt Pongjak said.

Officers on Tor 993 reported there were no wounds on the body. We believe the man had been dead for about five days before his body was found, and so we believe he may have been one the crew from the Bumrungthainawa 1 who are still missing, he said.

The body was handed over to police on Phi Phi Island, Capt Pongjak added.

We are on our way to recover another body found at Phi Phi today, he told The Phuket News this morning.

The Bumrungthainawa 1 disappeared in rough weather about two nautical miles southwest of Phromthep Cape, Phukets southernmost point, at about 8pm last Monday (Aug 15) with nine crew, comprising the Thai captain, 58-year-old Prayad Klaewglaharn, and eight Myanmar migrant workers, on board.

Crewmen Aomachu, 26; Jamayu, 30; Mackha, 34, were rescued last Tuesday (Aug 16). Capt Prayad did not survive. His body has been recovered. (See story here.)

A fifth crewman was rescued later on Tuesday. (See story here.)

Nuea Khlong Hospital in Krabi has informed us that another body was found yesterday and transported to Krabi Hospital, Capt Pongjak said today, but noted that the bodies had yet to be positively identified as those of the missing crewmen from the Bumrungthainawa 1.

The Navy have now called off their search for missing crew after six days of scouring the seas by air-sea rescue helicopters and patrol search boats.

We are no longer actively searching for the remainin crew, but we will respond and follow up to all reports of bodies found in the sea or on the shore, Capt Pongjak said.





UPDATE: Another body has been found washed ashore at Koh Lanta this afternoon (Aug 22), The body is believed to be one of the missing crew, bringing the total number of people rescued and bodies recovered to nine, the full complement of the capsized Bumrungthainawa 1. However, Capt Pongjak noted hat positive identification of the bodies had yet to be conducted.
French woman drowns at unprotected Phuket beach

PHUKET: A 23-year-old French woman drowned at a small beach south of Nai Thon on Saturday (Aug 20). The small beach is one of the few beaches in Phuket where lifeguards are asked not to patrol the waters to keep tourists safe.

deathaccidentsmarinepolicetourism

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 22 August 2016, 11:32AM

Lt Thanakan Uchanaratsamee, an inspector at the nearby Sakoo Police Station, was notified at 4:09pm that a woman, later identified as French national Anne Sophie Faisant Torrijos, 23, had drowned at the beach.

She was swimming with friends when the surf dragged her away about 30 metres away from the beach, Lt Thanakan said.

She was caught in the strong waves for about 20 minutes, he said.

Kusoldharm rescue workers later recovered Ms Torrijos, unconscious and unresponsive, from the water near rocks beside the beach.

Attempts to revive Ms Torrijos were unsuccessful, Lt Thanakan said.

They tried to revive her, but she did not respond and remained unconscious. She was rushed to Thalang Hospital, but doctors there pronounced her dead on arrival, he added.

The small beach where Ms Torrijos drowned is within Sirinath National Park (see map) and the next beach south of Nai Thon Beach, which was one of five beaches declared closed to swimmers due to dangerous surf last week. (See story here.)

All five of those beaches have been re-opened, Vitanya Chuayuan, Deputy Chief of the Phuket Lifeguard Service, told The Phuket News this morning.

But we urge all swimmers to swim only in the areas marked with red-and-yellow flags where there are lifeguards on duty, she said.

Last Sunday (Aug 14), a Russian man, now identified as Sergey Nederlin, drowned at Naiharn beach at the southern end of Phuket. (See story here.)

Additional reporting Tanyaluk Sakoot
Inaugural Benefit Gala 2016

Start From: Saturday 24 September 2016, 06:00PM to Saturday 24 September 2016, 10:30PM Mon. Tue. Wed. Thu. Fri. Sat. Sun.

Celebrate Phuket International Academy (PIA) becoming United World College Thailand (UWCT) in an evening filled with good food, free-flow drinks, live music, DJ, raffles and prizes, all in aid of a good cause. All proceeds will go towards a full scholarship for an underprivileged local Thai student to attend UWCT next year. Ticket donation 3,500 THB. Book your tickets now on uwcthailandgala.org or contact UWCT Front Office: psg+gala@pia.ac.th. This event is proudly sponsored by The Phuket News.
IS child bomber kills at least 51 at Turkey wedding

TURKEY: A suicide bomber as young as 12 killed at least 51 people at a wedding in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday (Aug 21), pointing the finger at the Islamic State group.

violencepoliticsreligiondeath

By AFP

Monday 22 August 2016, 09:05AM

Relatives grieve at hospital in Gaziantep following a late night militant attack on a wedding party in southeastern Turkey. The governor of Gaziantep said 22 people are dead and 94 injured in the late night militant attack. Photo: AFP

Erdogan said Saturdays blast in Gaziantep near the Syria border was the result of a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 who either detonated (the bomb) or others detonated it.

The explosion was the latest attack to rock the key NATO member in a horrific year that has seen strikes blamed on Kurdish and Islamist militants as well as a bloody July 15 botched coup.

The president said the Islamic State group was the likely perpetrator of the bomb attack, the deadliest in 2016, that targeted a celebration attended by many Kurds.

The remains of a suicide vest were found at the scene, the chief prosecutor's office said according to broadcaster CNN-Turk.

Gulser Ates, one of scores wounded in the attack, told Hurriyet the attack took place as the party was breaking up in the mainly Kurdish neighbourhood.

We were sitting on chairs, having a chat with one of our neighbours.

During the explosion, the neighbour died on top of me. I remember being underneath. If my neighbour hadnt fallen on top of me, I would have died, she said.

The bride and groom's happiest day was poisoned.

The bride and groom  Besna and Nurettin Akdogan  were rushed to hospital but were not seriously wounded.

According to the state-run Anadolu news agency, the bride was released from hospital, saying as she left: They turned our wedding into a bloodbath.

She later returned to hospital after repeatedly fainting, Anadolu reported.

Women and children wounded

Funerals for many of the victims took place on Sunday with an AFP photographer saying some covered relatives coffins with the Kurdistan flag.

As hundreds waited to say their final goodbye, some voiced anger at what they perceived to be the governments failure to prevent the attack.

Shouts of shame on you, Erdogan rang out while others hurled water bottles at police who kept their distance from rowdy crowds for fear of violence.

One distraught mother wailed: I lost my children, now I will never see them again.

Erdogan told reporters the death toll was now 51 with 94 hurt in the attack.

A total of 69 people remained in hospital, with 17 in critical condition.

Health Minister Recep Akdag said a large number of those injured were women and children.

You will not succeed

The bride and groom were reportedly from the mainly Kurdish region of Siirt further to the east and had themselves been uprooted due to the flare-up in violence with Kurdish militants.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) said its members had been present at the wedding, also attended by many women and children.

Erdogan said such attacks aimed to sow division between Turkeys different groups including Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen and to spread incitement along ethnic and religious lines.

Many jihadists see Kurds as one of their main enemies, with Kurdish militias playing a significant role in the fight against IS on the ground in Syria.

A defiant Erdogan said there was no difference between the group of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen  whom he blames for the failed coup bid  the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Daesh (IS), the likely perpetrator of the attack in Gaziantep.

"Our country and our nation have again only one message to those who attack us  you will not succeed! he said.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Gaziantep would show the same spirit it had shown in 1921, when it defeated French forces in Turkeys Independence War which led to the word Gazi (war hero) being added to its original name of Antep.

World leaders condemned the suicide bombing, with French President Francois Hollande denouncing the vile incident and German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling the attack cowardly and underhand.

The United States also condemned the heinous attack. We stand by our ally and partner Turkey and reaffirm our commitment to defeating the common threat of terrorism, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

The pope urged the faithful to pray for the victims while UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for the perpetrators to be quickly identified and brought to justice.

More active Syria role

A major city just 60 kilometres north of the Syrian border, Gaziantep has become a hub for Syrians fleeing the civil war in their country.

But as well as refugees and opposition activists, there have long been fears it was home to a significant jihadist presence.

IS suicide bombers have carried out several attacks in Istanbul this year, while Kurdish militants have hit targets in both Ankara and Istanbul.

On Thursday, 12 people were killed in three bombings blamed on the PKK, who Erdogan said had killed 70 members of the security forces in the last month alone.

The blast in Gaziantep came just hours after Yildirim said Ankara would play a more active role in efforts to solve the Syrian civil war.
Large turtle found dead at Kamala Beach

PHUKET: Marine wildlife experts have yet to determine what killed a large turtle found dead on Kamala Beach on Friday (Aug 19).

marineanimalsenvironmentdeath

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Monday 22 August 2016, 02:10PM

The Olive Ridley turtle was found dead washed ashore at Kamala Beach on Friday (Aug 19). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

The Olive Ridley turtle was found dead washed ashore at Kamala Beach on Friday (Aug 19). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Local residents called Kusoldharm rescue workers in Patong after finding the turtles remain washed up on the beach at 10:30am.

The remains were taken to Phuket Marine Biological Centre (PMBC), where experts at the Rare Sea Animal Division are working on determining the animals cause of death.

The turtle was an Olive Ridley sea turtle, about 10-15 years. It weighed about 17.5 kilogrammes, said Dr Patcharaporn Gaewmong, a veterinarian at the PMBC.

There were no wounds or injuries on turtles body, and we believe the turtle died about two to three days before it washed ashore.

We are working on what caused the turtles death. Due to the condition of the remains, it is proving very difficult to figure this out, she said.

Additional reporting by Tanyaluk Sakoot
PIWC Meet & Greet Coffee September

Start From: Thursday 8 September 2016, 10:30AM to Thursday 8 September 2016, 12:00PM Mon. Tue. Wed. Thu. Fri. Sat. Sun.

WHERE: Starbucks @Central Festival WHEN: 2nd Thursday of each month from 10:30AM to NOON WHAT: New members are encouraged to join our monthly Meet & Greet Coffee Morning to find out more about our organization. Its also a great opportunity to chat with a few members in a more casual setting over a cup of coffee.